Work Text:
“I’ve never been very good at being in love,” Steve says, and then proceeds to be the most aggravatingly perfect person Danny has ever dated.
Of course Danny doesn’t tell him this. He bitches and complains in small measures, just like Steve expects from him. That way, they can both save face and pretend they’re not fumbling their way across a tightrope in the dark while carrying their own glass hearts.
Their first kiss was on a Sunday. Steve was reheating leftover pizza for dinner after they took Charlie to the zoo and dropped him off at Rachel’s, and Danny was thinking about how this was the best day he’d had in a long time when Steve said, “You know, if we could do this every day for the rest of our lives, I’d die a happy man.” So Danny just went for it. He kissed Steve, and Steve kissed him back, and the microwave interrupted and it just made them both laugh, and then they had pizza and kissed some more. They both saw it coming yet not at all, and it was the most obvious thing in the world that they never could have predicted, and having Steve as a romantic partner instead of just a general work and life one is a lot like that.
He doesn’t hold doors, but he remembers when Charlie gets out of school. He doesn’t bring Danny flowers or chocolates, but there are always mint patties in the freezer, even when Danny finishes a bag on a Saturday and the only store that’s not half an hour’s drive away is closed on Sunday. He never stops being an asshole, but he always asks if Danny is okay just when he’s not, because not only does he know Danny so well he invariably picks up on it, he also genuinely gives a shit about hearing the answer. He listens, even when all Danny has to say is filtered through that dark cloud that sometimes takes over his mind.
And he’s not irrationally jealous when Danny talks to Rachel or other women, he’s honest about what he wants once he manages to get it out there, and he never shuts down and stops touching or talking to or kissing Danny when they have a fight. Danny... is not sure how to deal with it, sometimes.
He’s so unsure, in fact, that he feels like he needs to test Steve. Lie about who was on the phone when Rachel calls to talk about Charlie’s pickup time. Flirt with some woman in the supermarket. Insult John McGarrett, and the Navy, and anyone who died at Pearl Harbor. He feels those impulses all the time, and he knows that he could hit Steve below the belt, because he has just as accurate a chart of where Steve’s weak spots are as Steve does about him. All he’d have to do is make a few pointed comments, and then they would really have it out and eventually he’d break Steve and things would come crashing down to earth and everything would be miserable and normal again and Danny would feel much more comfortable.
So he does the reasonable thing. He sits Steve down, and he says, “You should find someone else.”
Steve, who went with mild sputtering and amused confusion when Danny took him by the arm and led him to the couch, suddenly doesn’t look amused anymore. The corners of his mouth drop and the lines around his eyes go tight. “What?”
“I’m no good,” Danny says, and he knows he’s talking from emotion, but he also knows he’s not wrong. Just the fact that he’s saying this, doing this, dumping someone he’s head over heels for? That should be evidence enough he is messed up.
Steve has always been good at seeing patterns, but he works with a different set of blueprints than Danny does. “What are you talking about?” he asks, and he’s frowning now, and that line on his forehead says he’s worried, and he’s leaning forward towards Danny like he wants to reach out.
Danny goes against instinct and scoots away on the couch. It’s only an inch or so, but it makes the point. “I’m screwed up.”
“I know you are,” Steve says, like Danny is just telling him the sky is blue. “What the fuck does that have to do with anything?”
For such a perceptive and highly trained man, Steve can be painfully naïve when it comes to people he thinks he can trust. That’s not going to fly. Danny will just have to spell it out for him. “I’ve been thinking of ways to hurt you so you’d get mad so I’d feel better,” he says, and actually putting it into words, and saying those words out loud, cements the whole thing to reality. There’s no going back; he’d only be beating his head into a wall. “You deserve more than that.”
Steve shakes his head. “Danny-”
The conversation has barely even begun, but Danny has already had enough. This wasn’t supposed to be a conversation at all. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands, because they itch to reach out and grab Steve’s shoulder or rub his neck, but they can’t and shouldn’t. This sucks, and on top of all of that- “I’m breaking up with you, and you’re not even yelling at me?”
Steve stares at him for a long, silent moment, and he looks unhappy, and that’s bad but it’s good because it is so bad. It means that maybe Steve can also see this brick wall, and he accepts it as an actual obstacle instead of running into it heart-first.
But then Steve says, “You’re not breaking up with me.” And he doesn’t just say it, he says it with a voice that’s so far from being shaky that it’s an insult, really. Of all the arrogant, controlling, self-centered shit-
“You don’t get to decide that,” Danny reminds him, and now he’s pretty close to yelling. That’s also not the way this was supposed to go, which doesn’t make him want to yell any less.
It still doesn’t get Steve riled up, even though usually he’d good at paying Danny back in like kind. “No, I guess I don’t,” he says, curt but gentle, and Danny hates that Steve is so good at that because he definitely wasn’t when they met. “But neither do your nightmares.”
Well.
That’s a nice thought, except what Danny is afraid of is not fiction, it’s lived reality. He went down this road with Rachel multiple times, he walked it with Melissa, and he would have gone there with Gabby if she’d stuck around long enough in the first place for him to get cold feet. Having nothing to lose is a type of security a person can grow used to. “I’m going to sabotage this,” he says, and he can hear himself start to sound pleading, because Steve needs to open his goddamn eyes. He has to. “That’s what I do. I sabotage my own relationships.”
Steve blinks and there’s a flash of something, something more heated, something that implies he’s not as calm as he looks. “So you decide to fix that by sabotaging yourself intentionally before you get a chance to sabotage yourself by accident? That makes no sense, Danny.”
And that’s also Steve, through and through: Danny comes with perfectly justified awful predictions, and Steve goes “nah” and makes it sound like he’s got a point. He does that even when he’s mad, and even when by all means, it shouldn’t be on him to untangle Danny’s nonsense. And in some ways that’s not how this works, really – there’s no fiddling with complicated knots, but a flash of some ungodly Swiss Army knife with camo print, and somehow that’s all it takes for Danny’s previously so solid-seeming fears to come crashing down.
Danny can’t stay seated, so he jumps up and gets out from behind the coffee table and walks from the TV to the opposite wall and back. And back. And back.
He’s a pacer. He paces.
On his third and-back, Steve is standing by the TV when he turns. Steve’s feet are planted, his arms crossed but loosely, like he’s not about to move but trying to look open. “What spooked you?”
“You’re too nice,” Danny tells him, right to his face.
And that, for the first time, really gets Steve to emote. He does an actual doubletake, which is a stronger response than he had to the news that Danny was trying to break up with him. “I’m too nice?” He points at himself, as if to verify. “Me?”
Obviously the answer is no, but it’s also yes, and that should be very obvious. Danny knows what to do with his hands now, and the answer is gesture, wildly. “You leave Brussel sprouts out of everything because you know I don’t like them, even though I don’t do the same for you with mushrooms.”
“You’ve always been very clear that you eat what you get and you don’t get upset.” There’s a hint of irony in Steve’s voice, which is always there when he quotes Danny’s life lessons for Charlie. “Though now that you mention it-”
Danny interrupts him, because he’s about to veer off-topic and there’s no room for that in the middle of Danny’s crisis. “You bring home birthday cards for me to send to my grandmother, because you know she’d get a kick out of a drawing of a giraffe knitting a happy birthday sweater. You moved one of the two bottles of stuff you use in the shower to the floor, just so I’d have space for all four of mine.”
Steve nods along for a bit, like he’s actually considering all of this. Then he stops and he doesn’t shrug, but he seems like he might want to. “You do realize I’ve been doing all those things for years now. That has nothing to do with whether we’re dating or not.”
And damn Steve. Damn Steve all the way to hell, or wherever the most annoying people on earth end up.
Because he’s right.
Danny throws his hands up. There’s not much else to do at this point. “Why would you even want me?” he asks, because maybe that’s what it’s all about, in the end. It’s not about the Brussel sprouts – it’s about what’s behind them. The careful layers of consideration hidden in all those gestures, which take effort and attention and other energy that’s wasted on him.
Steve huffs. “Danny, you’re my best friend. Just let me want you the same way you want me, asshole.”
“Fuck,” Danny says, because yeah, again, that makes sense. It makes complete sense, and none of what Danny’s brain has been telling him today really did, and on some level he knew that, but he still needed Steve to point it out to him.
Which Steve did, because he really does know Danny as well as Danny knows him.
Danny looks away and takes a deep breath and tries to remember that even a really dark storm cloud never sticks around forever. He looks back at Steve, and it’s a little easier to believe. “I love you,” he says, on his breath out.
“So then we’re not breaking up?” Steve uncrosses his arms. One of his hands makes an aborted movement, like again he wants to reach out, but is keeping himself in check out of respect for Danny’s space.
Screw space. Danny moves a step closer and puts a splayed hand on Steve’s shoulder, which is warm and solid, like the rest of the man. Maybe that’s the wall Danny thought he was running into. “We’re not breaking up. That was stupid.” He can feel Steve’s well-hidden tension leak away under his hand. “I’m sorry.”
“Then I love you too,” Steve says, which sounds oddly conditional. He must read that criticism on Danny’s face, because he shrugs, for real this time, and adds, “Would’ve been embarrassing to say that while you were still in the middle of dumping me.”
“Ugh,” Danny says, and he’s not even sure if that’s directed at Steve or at himself.
Steve doesn’t bother with the distinction. He loops an arm around Danny’s neck and pulls him into an embrace. They stand there for a moment, just breathing.
“Hey,” Steve says eventually, half-whisper, like he’s going to say something sweet. “Want me to make dinner with Brussel sprouts tonight?”
Danny hides a laugh against Steve’s shoulder. And he supposes, even if that’s the worst thing that’s going to happen to them – even if Steve is always right there next to him but tries to feed him revenge Brussel sprouts once in a while, and that’s all – then he can probably learn to live with that.