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When someone starts banging on his door at half past eleven at night, Danny instantly knows who it is. It doesn’t matter that this person should be able to let themselves in, because there is no one else he knows who would consider this acceptable behavior so late at night. “Steve,” he yells, as he turns off the TV and drags himself up from his comfortable position on the couch. “Stop that!”
The pounding does stop. For about two seconds, and then it starts right back up again. Danny is tempted to leave Steve out on the doorstep just for that, but he’d be torturing himself too if he let this go on.
When Danny tears the door open, there’s Steve, his hand still raised to knock some more. It’s just what Danny expected to find, except that Steve is dressed a lot nicer than he could have possibly imagined. It’s making Danny feel shabby in his sweatpants and t-shirt. Steve’s wearing an actual suit – black jacket and pants, crisp white shirt, collar unbuttoned far enough that it’s distracting to a point where he possibly shouldn’t be allowed to go outside like that.
“Huh,” Danny says. He keeps himself from staring by turning and heading back inside, confident that Steve will follow him in after the racket he made about it.
“I left my key at home,” Steve says as he pushes the door shut behind him, which explains why he even had to knock in the first place. That’s one mystery solved.
Danny sinks down on the couch again. He swings his feet up on the coffee table, folds his hands over his belly and observes Steve from the relatively safe distance provided by the fact that Steve is still hovering by the door. He is definitely dressed up for something, which is odd, because usually Danny would know about anything in Steve’s life that could warrant shoes that shiny.
“Did you ever consider that there’s a doorbell right next to that door you were banging on?” he asks, instead of commenting on Steve’s appearance. He’ll freely admit that he does it mostly because he knows it might start an argument. That doesn’t sound like a positive thing, but he’s long since accepted that somewhere along the way, arguing with Steve has become one of the things that make life worth living. “You could’ve woken Grace and Charlie up, you putz.”
Steve puts his hands in his pants pockets, which should make him look casual, but mostly makes him look like he’s guilty and trying to hide something. That’s worrying, because there aren’t a lot of looks Steve can’t pull off. “I knew I wouldn’t wake them,” he says, surprisingly subdued. “They’re at Rachel’s this weekend.”
Danny gives himself a moment to look Steve over properly. He takes notice of Steve’s slightly wild eyes for the first time, which he’d missed because he’d gotten stuck on the clothes before. “Okay, so what’s happening? Did you come over here to show off your Danny-stalking skills?”
“Uh,” Steve says. His hands fall from his pockets. His face does something between a frown and a wince. “No. But I think you might… not interpret it that way?”
Danny fully frowns at him, no wince in sight. Steve nervously hovers some more, like he’s forgotten there are other things he could be doing.
“Did that make any sense to yourself, babe?” Danny asks, eventually, when it becomes clear that that’s really all Steve has to say. “Because from over here it didn’t.”
Steve scratches his neck. It makes the fabric of his white button-up stretch across his chest in interesting ways. “Yeah. Sorry.”
“How about you come over here,” Danny says, with a pat to the space next to him, “and try to keep from giving yourself an aneurysm by relaxing just a little?”
“Yes, okay.” Steve stalks over to the couch like he’s on a mission. He sits down next to Danny, but any sliver of relaxation appears to have been a bit too much to hope for. “I have to tell you something,” Steve announces.
“Alright.” Danny does his best to sound encouraging, and not as massively confused as he feels. He would be worried sick, by now, if it weren’t for that suit. It can’t be about the radiation poisoning – nobody wears a suit to a doctor’s appointment, or has that kind of appointment this close to midnight, for that matter.
Steve breathes in and then out deeply. “I had a date. We went out for dinner.”
That does very little for Danny except let his confusion grow to humongous proportions. “That’s great?” he asks more than says. Not that it would be completely unprecedented for Steve to talk to him about dating, but the way he’s going about it suggests that there’s a little more to it. Either that, or Steve has finally misplaced that last little bit of sanity he’s been clinging to all these years.
“Yeah,” Steve says. “Um. He was okay, I guess.”
It takes Danny a second to understand that Steve isn’t anthropomorphizing the restaurant and giving it male pronouns. “Oh,” he says, when he gets it. He drops his feet to the floor, sits up a bit and draws one leg up on the couch. He tucks his socked foot under his other thigh and leans an elbow on the back of the couch, so he’s turned to Steve more fully. Steve is still sitting ramrod straight, but he’s looking at Danny’s legs, which is at least faintly in his direction. “You know that’s fine, Steve, right?”
“Hm?” Steve looks up, but he seems distracted. He waves a hand around, as if hurrying them past his coming out, which is a sign he hasn’t turned into a robot yet, but also – still, or again, or whatever – very odd. “Yeah, no, that’s not even what I needed to tell you.”
“Then what? Because I’m guessing it’s not something work-related-” He pauses there, just long enough for Steve to shake his head no in confirmation. “-but I’ve never, in eight years of knowing you, seen you this much on edge about anything that didn’t involve death and destruction on a massive scale.”
Steve swallows with an audible click. “Does the name Brian Caruana mean anything to you?”
“Not at all. Why?”
Steve looks a little lost, like he had really hoped Danny would suddenly understand whatever is happening, and the prospect of having to explain more is physically painful to him. “He said it might not.”
“Who is this guy? He was your date?”
“Yeah.”
“And he knows me?”
“Well,” Steve hedges, “that might be stretching it a little far. He knows, uh, part of you.” Steve’s eyes stray in Danny’s direction, but he tears them away before they can land anywhere.
Danny watches Steve have a staring contest with the wall. “You know interrogations have never been my favorite part of the job. If you don’t want to tell me, then just don’t-”
“So-” Steve starts. “So I was on this date, right, with this guy, and I’m not really used to that yet but I figured, can’t be that different from dating a woman, and we got to talking over this dating app so we just, well, I went for it, I guess. And it was fine, but I kept mentioning you, because I’m always talking about you, because you’re just, you’re everywhere, Danny, how the fuck do you even do that-”
“Hey,” Danny says, a little offended despite his good sense. “How did this turn into a complaint about me? If you think we spend too much time together, you could have told me that outright, instead of-”
“No!” Steve raises a hand as if he wants to reach out and touch Danny, but he drops it without having done anything, whatever it was he wanted to do in the first place. He looks away again. “That’s not it, at all. The thing is, I was talking about you, and this guy, Brian, he asked some questions, and then he asked if I had a picture of you, so I showed him one – the one I took last month of you and Charlie and Eddie, remember, in my backyard, it’s my screensaver now – and then he, uh, he said he’d sucked your dick once.”
Danny’s mouth absolutely does not drop open. That would be ridiculous and comical and is something that only really happens in movies.
His jaw might go a little slack, though.
Steve crosses his arms and carries on with his studious inspection of the wall. He’s scowling at it, but in a way that looks more panicked than like he’s planning on making the white paint confess to its sins. “In a bathroom stall, in the back of a club. A few years ago. He said he remembered because- Uh, for multiple reasons, but mostly because he saw you on the news shortly after and found out you were Five-0, and then when he heard tonight that I was, too, and I kept describing you, he made the connection.”
Steve quits talking, and it’s a relief, but Danny almost wishes he would keep going. Sitting there in awkward silence, still turned toward Steve because neither of them has moved and with Steve still very much avoiding so much as looking in his direction, is not much better, on the whole.
It takes him a while before he manages to find some words. He’s sure Steve would be teasing him for that right now, if it weren’t for this, this, whatever this is. “Okay, listen to me, Steve, no offense, but how the fuck-” He falters, and he has a tiny bit more sympathy for why Steve needed so much time to explain why he nearly kicked Danny’s door down five minutes ago. He clears his throat. “Seriously, I know this is an island, but there’s more than three people here. You couldn’t haven chosen someone for your big gay experiment who hasn’t had his mouth on-”
Steve turns to him with such an alarmed look that he abruptly falls silent again. The problem is, though, that now they’re looking at each other, and with the inclusion of some very direct eye contact no less.
“Uh,” Danny says.
“It wasn’t an experiment.”
Steve’s eyes are very blue. They’re so blue Danny needs a moment to parse his words. “Excuse me?”
“It wasn’t a big gay experiment,” Steve clarifies. “I like both men and women, and I’ve known forever, but I’ve never really done anything about it.”
“Right. You were a Navy man.” Danny can’t claim he knows exactly what that must have been like, but he knows, on an intellectual level, what it means.
“That’s most of it, yes. What about you?”
“I wasn’t in the military.” It’s not much of an answer, but in the context of their conversation and how much they’re both trying to avoid escalating the awkward tension even further, it works. Steve seems to get what it implies, anyway.
“No,” he says. “You were in a bathroom stall.”
“Seriously?” Danny snaps, before he has the time to consider if that’s something he wants to do. He doesn’t feel too sorry about it after, so it’s fine. “Are you really- Are we doing the whole thing where you’re judging me for choices I made for myself that only involved other consenting adults?”
Steve bites his lip, which is very distracting in this atmosphere charged with confusion. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Yes, you did. Everyone always does.” Danny is vaguely aware he’s started hitting the back of the couch for emphasis with the flat hand that was resting there, but it’s fine. It’s his own damn couch. “Look, we’re not all single Navy SEALs with chiseled jaws and ridiculous bodies who’ve recently started exploring the fact that we have even more options than just every available and reasonably aged woman on this island, okay? Some of us have to make do with being perfectly normal overworked cops paying child support, and we need to let off some steam every once in a while. You don’t get to cast a moral judgement on us over that.”
“I’m not,” Steve says. When Danny keeps glaring at him, he frowns, looking frustrated – whether with himself, or Danny, or the situation in general, Danny can’t tell. “I didn’t mean to. You’re right. You’re an adult, and you’re allowed to do whatever and whoever you want.”
“Thank you,” Danny says, because that’s correct, he is an adult, and he can handle conversations in a way that reflects that.
“I just wish it wasn’t that guy.”
Danny’s hands go flying again in a gesture that he hopes conveys his utterly furious disbelief. He has given up on taking his frustration out on the couch, but he’s not very far from hitting Steve instead. He’s only done it once, that very first day after Steve got him shot, but he remembers it as being very cathartic.
“I don’t mean it like that,” Steve says again, before the white hot rage has cleared enough from Danny’s brain that there’s any room for him to string a sentence together. “I’m just surprised. A little jealous, obviously, but I know that’s my problem. I’ll deal with it.”
And well, shit, this time Danny’s mouth actually does drop open, all his claims of overexaggeration in fiction be damned.
“You’re what now?” he asks. There’s a number of different explanations, all very plausible – maybe Steve is jealous that Danny got to have that experience, or maybe he’s suddenly dysfunctionally possessive over his platonic best friend, or maybe Danny just heard him all wrong and none of that is happening.
It’s just. Steve doesn’t look like any of those reasonable excuses apply. He looks like he’s gone right back to the uncharacteristically stiff mess he was when he came storming in here. “I’m jealous,” he says, despite how rigid his spine has gone again. It’s loud and clear and there’s no mistaking the words. “I thought you knew.”
“Knew?” Danny repeats. “Knew, knew what?”
Steve lets out a slow, sad breath. Danny doesn’t even know how anyone can manage to breathe so expressively, but Steve does it. “Okay,” Steve says. “So you didn’t know. Oops.”
Danny is lost, and maybe finally a little scared, so he does what he does best. He runs his mouth. “Oops? Are you for real, Steven? Because you come to my house, in the middle of the night, and you make enough noise to wake the whole neighborhood, and then you sit on my couch in that stupid suit of yours and I think, oh, maybe you need to talk about something. But no, I have to drag every single word out of you, and when I finally do those words are used to shame me for something I thought we both just agreed I should certainly not be shamed for, but then you turn around and say the same thing again and you imply there’s something I should know which I don’t, but instead of telling me about it, you say ‘oops’ and leave it at that. What am I supposed to do with that, Steve, huh? What do you want me to make of that? Because the only thing I can think of right now to do is kick you out and get back to my, my-” He gestures at the TV for a little longer than possibly necessary. “Whatever I was watching,” he finishes, and yells it a little louder to cover up that he has no fucking clue what that was.
Steve sits up even straighter, impossibly, but he looks offended now. And that’s good – that’s exactly what Danny wanted. “You’re a detective, Danny! And you’re a damn good one, so why do you even need me to tell you I’m in love with you? Aren’t you the one who’s supposed to know how human interaction works, huh?”
“Yes!” Danny yells back. “I am! And clearly I’ve failed, because we’re fighting when we could be making out right now!”
Steve blinks at him. The rigid lines of his body soften and he sits back, looking stunned. “You’d want to make out with me?”
“Steve, buddy, I’d want to do a lot more than make out with you.”
“But- Not…”
“Not for a quickie in a bathroom stall, no.”
Steve looks so damn hopeful that it breaks something inside Danny. They’ve already come this far, fumbling and tripping, so there’s no sense in trying to hold back now.
He lays it all out. “These past couple of years, when it comes to you, I’ve been thinking more along the lines of, you know, in my bed, and then in your bed, and then hopefully eventually in a co-owned bed that is ours for the rest of our lives.”
Steve’s grin is huge. “Maybe the bathroom at work, sometimes.”
“Absolutely not,” Danny says, but he has a niggling suspicion that what Steve hears is ‘hey, persuade me to let go of my very firmly held belief in the importance of professionalism in the workplace before we’ve even had our first kiss’.
“We’ll discuss it later,” Steve says, confirming everything Danny just thought.
“No, we won’t.” Danny cuts Steve’s undoubtedly infuriating reply off before it begins by changing the subject. “Hey, how, uh, how did your date end, after that revelation with the picture?”
“Good. Very good.” Steve chooses this moment, bafflingly, to shrug out of his suit jacket without getting up. He folds it neatly over the side of the couch, which gives off the impression that he plans on sticking around for a little longer, but doesn’t entirely line up with the words he just said. “He spent the rest of dinner talking me into making a move on you, which I am, so I’d call it a success.”
Danny’s heart, which had sunk quite a bit during Steve’s little stunt, now pops back up. “Ah, good old Brian. I always knew I liked him.”
“But not as much as you like me,” Steve says, with complete confidence.
Danny watches Steve bend in half to pick at his shoelaces. “That’s an unfair contest. I like you a truly stupid amount. Boggles the mind, really.”
Steve takes off his shoes and mirrors Danny’s sideways position on the couch, one arm thrown over the back, one leg drawn up. He’s smiling. “I’ll boggle your mind good, Danno.”
Danny tuts, but also inches the tiniest bit closer by pretending to shift in place. Their knees touch. “Really, Steven? No wonder Brian tried to foist you off on someone else, with lines like that.”
“Yeah.” Steve’s hand creeps along the back of the couch until it reaches Danny’s. He takes it in a loose grip, more of a press of palm to palm than anything. “Good thing I always have you as back-up.”
“Wow,” Danny says, a little horrified at himself for how completely Steve’s terrible flirting is working on him. He attempts to hide it under some bluster. “You really don’t know how to talk your way into a guy’s pants.”
“I doubt those sweatpants will be too hard to get into.”
“Technically true, but not very charming.”
Steve moves his hand so their fingers end up in a tangle. “I could go out and pick you some flowers, if you like.”
And that’s the thing – or part of the thing, or of one of the things, or whatever. The thing, the bit that makes Danny’s insides go all gooey: he is utterly, overwhelmingly sure that Steve is not fully joking. If Danny said he wanted flowers, there would be flowers, the absurdity of the request and the darkness outside at this time of day be damned. If Danny said he wanted to be wined and dined, he would be wined and dined. If Danny said he wanted Steve to trek around the world and solve some impossible puzzles on his way to prove his love, Steve would probably have some questions, but then he’d start packing his bags.
“Danny?” Steve asks, presumably confused about the sudden lack of a quick retort.
“Yeah,” Danny says, while his mind is still buzzing with the newfound knowledge that maybe Steve’s shock about Danny not having realized Steve’s feelings before this very night was a lot more justified than Danny had thought it was at the time.
He’s distracted from that train of thought, quickly and decisively, when Steve kisses him. It’s a dry press of lips at first, Steve leaning over and curving into Danny’s space, until Danny tries to push closer. He’s pushed back instead. For a moment, he’s both annoyed and worried, but then he suddenly has Steve in his lap, straddling Danny’s legs, and he decides he’s pretty damn delighted instead.
When they come up for air, he has one hand fisted in the collar of Steve’s way too open shirt, scrunching the fabric and straining the first of the few buttons that Steve actually deigned to close, while Steve is still holding his other hand captive. Steve’s lips are very red.
Danny uses his grip on Steve’s shirt collar to pull at him until their foreheads are pressed together. It’s not necessarily the best feeling, skull to skull, but Danny just needs him closer.
“Brian is quickly turning into the best date I’ve ever been on,” Steve says, into the tiny sliver of space between them.
Danny would nod if that wouldn’t mean bashing his head into Steve’s. “We should write him a thank you note.”
“Dear Brian,” Steve says, in a voice like he’s writing a letter out loud, “thank you for giving my partner a blowjob an unspecified number of years ago.”
“Dear Brian,” Danny echoes, “thank you for outing me to the guy I’m in love with in the most batshit insane way possible.” He lets go of the dictation voice. “Doesn’t really work, does it?”
Steve pulls back just enough that they can really look at each other. His eyes have gone soft in a way that makes Danny understand what people mean when they talk about heart eyes. “I think it’s perfect.”
All of it is having a peculiar effect on Danny’s own vital organs. He hums. “Maybe just a nice edible arrangement.”
“I’m not sending him you.”
That’s more than worthy of a groan. It’s going to give him whiplash, how rapidly Steve switches from deep, meaningful declarations to the worst innuendo Danny has possibly ever heard.
Not that he really minds all that much.
Not that he’s going to let Steve know that he doesn’t really mind. “How am I the one who’s going to have to kiss you to shut you up?” he asks, doing his best to dig up some exasperation from somewhere to tamp down on the grin threatening to rise to the surface. “In what universe does that make sense for our dynamic, huh?”
Steve has no such qualms. His grin is honest and happy and makes Danny want to kiss him for reasons that have nothing to do with shutting him up. “It’s important to be open to change, Danny.”
Danny decides to take this advice and change his current status from ‘not kissing Steve’ to ‘definitely kissing Steve a lot’. Steve seems highly satisfied with this outcome.