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At first Danny sleeps on the couch and lives out of a bag and complains only a little. Then he sleeps on the couch and lives out of a bag and complains a lot, until one afternoon Steve has had enough and empties out half of the ancient oak wardrobe in his room. He donates some of his clothes to charity, stores a box of them in the attic, and then watches as Danny unpacks each of his three bags (when did they multiply?) and still scoots a pile of Steve’s shirts over to the side so his own won’t get wrinkled. “Happy now?” Steve asks.
“Ecstatic,” Danny says, very drily.
So then Danny sleeps on the couch but lives out of Steve’s closet, and that’s fine, except Steve didn’t fully take into account the practical implications of this. Those being, mainly, that every morning at ten to seven (on the dot – Danny is shockingly punctual) some asshole comes into Steve’s room, pushes the curtains open to get enough light, and rummages around in his wardrobe. The hinges squeak and the slide of the drawers is heavy in a way Steve never noticed before.
He oils the hinges, but he suspects Danny of not even really trying to be quiet, because Danny keeps “accidentally” slamming the doors.
And then the first weekend rolls around. Steve goes to bed on Friday feeling relieved. He wakes up on Saturday, at ten to seven precisely, because someone enters his room.
He knows who it is. His instincts would be ringing a lot more alarm bells if it were anybody else, but this particular person doesn’t deserve to be named at this particular junction. He rolls over, away from the sound and subsequent stream of light that come with the curtains being pushed open, and drags his pillow over his head. “It’s a weekend,” he complains, heavily muffled.
“I’m an insomniac. Maintaining a regular sleeping schedule is important.”
“Danny,” Steve wails, still half asleep, and he wants to cling to that half too badly for him to even wake up enough to lift his head and enjoy mostly naked Danny. That perk of having Danny use his room to change isn’t as perky before eight in the morning. His Navy days are too far behind him. “This is stupid.”
“What is?” Danny’s disembodied voice asks.
“This. You coming in here every morning all the way up the stairs so you can get dressed. It’s silly.”
“What do you want me to do about it? Put my own dresser in front of your tv?”
“No.” Ugh, why is Danny being difficult? Steve blindly flings out a hand and hits open space and cool cotton. He pats it a few times. “Put your you up here in bed.”
There’s a long enough silence he starts to think his suggestion is being ignored. He doesn’t take that time to wonder why that would be, because really, he’s just glad for the moment of peace and quiet.
“Okay,” Danny says, eventually, by the time Steve was just starting to entertain the hopeful notion he might have quietly teleported away. “What’s the dress code for your bed?”
Things seem to be going Steve’s way after all, so he pushes his pillow back under his head without looking and plants his face in it. A lot more comfortable this way. “Anything. Nothing. I don’t care, just get over here and stop making noise.”
“That’s very open-minded.”
The return of darkness on the other side of his eyelids says that Danny closed the curtains back up. A moment later, there’s movement on the bed, and someone tugging at Steve’s blanket, even though he was only using half to begin with. If he were at all unsure, he’d know it’s definitely Danny at this point.
“Hey,” he says, giving a sharp tug back, and Danny huffs a complaint but deigns to content himself with what he has. Steve’s bigger problem is suddenly that somehow, in the middle of this process, Danny made him open his eyes, in spite of all his valiant efforts to avoid that exact thing. He resents that for a second.
Then he figures out what he’s actually looking at.
He’s never slept in one bed with another guy before, let alone one showing so much skin everywhere the blanket doesn’t cover him.
Which jolts Steve into being very awake, very abruptly. What’d he say about dress code? “Are you naked?” he asks, which is just not something he was expecting to have to wonder about Danny in his bed on a Saturday morning. He feels a spike of either alarm or something else entirely.
Perhaps both.
Danny wraps a definitely unclothed arm around the pillow he’s claimed and stretches out, unconcerned. His dubiously decent body under the blanket moves. He appears perfectly at ease. “Why do you want to know?”
Words. Steve should remember what they are. “You’re in my bed.”
“You invited me in.” Danny absently strokes the mattress in a way that is probably not actually as suggestive as Steve’s brain insists it is. “This half is mine now.”
“That’s not how an invitation works.” Possession being nine-tenths of the law nonsense aside, Steve’s pretty sure about that. You don’t own your friend’s house if you come over for coffee, though if that’s how Danny’s internal rule system works, it might explain a lot about the progression of their friendship.
Danny’s hand on the mattress relaxes and he hums like he’s getting settled in. He closes his eyes, so Steve does so too, demonstratively. “I’m wearing boxers,” an unseen Danny says. “You’re safe.”
“Hey, I live for danger.” Steve just throws it out there as a quippy comeback, mouth running on autopilot to contradict whatever Danny says, but then it registers. He’s forced to open his eyes yet again when his head shoots up so he can look at Danny.
Danny, face smushed by his pillow but eyes staring right back at Steve, seems wryly amused. Perhaps a bit too much of it is at Steve’s expense, but other than that it’s better than most of the alternatives. “My dick is really not that dangerous,” he says, after letting Steve stew in his awkwardness for a decently sized moment.
Steve rolls on his back and falls into his pillow. He sighs. Might as well go for broke. “Still wanna see it.”
Danny doesn’t leave him hanging this time. “We can do that.” That sounds wildly promising, until he adds, “After a nap.”
“God,” Steve says, feeling simultaneously giddy and irked, “you’re insufferable.”
“You left me to sleep on your couch for months,” Danny reminds him.
Steve would respond, but he’s too offended by Danny following that up by rolling over and turning his back on Steve. Steve doesn’t get long to work through his clashing emotions, because Danny reaches back, grabs his wrist, and pulls.
He’s gently bullied into wrapping his arm around Danny’s waist and spooning up to him from behind. He doesn’t pretend to resist too much, but he does end up with a laundry list of questions. “Did you plan all of-”
“Sssh,” Danny says, in a way that would be soothing if it weren’t so smug. “It’s a weekend, remember?”
Steve opens his mouth, ready to start that argument, but realizes it’s still shy of seven in the morning and there’s no way Danny could get up to be annoying about his clothes again without having to wriggle free from Steve first. If Danny even tried, Steve could just pin him to the bed.
That’s a pretty sweet deal, so he snaps his mouth closed again. “This is still stupid,” he insists. It just doesn’t do to let Danny get away with his manipulative schemes. No more than necessary, anyway.
Danny lets out a deep, satisfied breath. “Whatever you say, babe.”
For some reason, that seems like a pretty good set of last words on an early Saturday morning while they’re cuddling in bed a few feet from the closet they both live out of. More and more out, these days.