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“There might be something in my fridge that’s still edible,” Steve said, feet planted flat on the floor, left arm over the back of the sofa just above where Danny was slumped next to him. “We could cook.”
“Do you want to cook?” Danny demonstrated his own very low motivation level for anything requiring movement by sliding slow and heavy toward the opposite armrest, head nudging a couch pillow into place as he settled in.
“No.”
“Yeah, so….let’s order. I’m frigging starving.”
They had started their day together, going out surfing at zero six hundred hours. It was a point in time that Danny still saw virtually never on a Saturday. Then work got in their way in the form of a ship at the docks carrying gobs of smuggled goods. That meant a lot of running around a huge boat helping catalogue the crime scene, and chasing down a few of the ringleaders who’d gotten away on foot.
Now it was almost nine at night and they hadn’t stopped, really, all damn day.
“Okay,” Steve shifted and got his phone from his pocket, waving it. “What do you want?”
“I picked last time. You pick.”
“Actually, I picked last time. Didn’t I?” Steve looked almost sheepish. “Or at least I, uh, controlled the outcome.”
Danny felt a smile pushing at the corners of his own mouth, hearing those words. Steve had really been trying since that surveillance stint last week and their latest mandated hour with the shrink.
That wasn’t to say he was expecting to spend substantial amounts of time driving his own car or not bickering with the guy but…. there had been more give and take. And Danny was starting to feel something like good about those sessions.
“How about Japanese, then?” He ventured, smile widening in anticipation of yumminess when Steve made an ‘I could go for that’ face. “We dial up sashimi….something with noodles. And that spicy seafood soup, too, with the scallops and the shrimp.”
“You got it…. Sushi coming up….”
Steve phoned and Danny watched his face as he did – the methodical way he listed and repeated what they wanted, the circles under his eyes, the way he yawned all wide and unselfconscious while the person at the other end was reading back the order to him.
“Forty five minutes,” Steve said as he put his phone on the coffee table and sat back again.
“How about you play for us while we wait?” Danny nodded toward the recliner, and the new guitar stand next to it. His gift to Steve was out of the case and on it, at the ready. “Give us some mood music, huh?”
It was obvious Steve had really taken to the guitar - had probably been doing a fair amount of practicing in the few days since he’d given it to him.
“I don’t know…maybe later, when I’ve had lessons…”
“Not looking for you to rip into Stairway to Heaven, buddy. Just play us some chords,” Danny sat up and gave him a nudge. “It’s only me.”
Soft smile number two for the night appeared on Steve’s face as he got up and went over to it, and Danny thought he looked like an overgrown kid when he did that. It did things to him that he wished he had the nerve to tell Steve about.
“I thought about trying to learn some slack style,” Steve said, starting out with just that – a few bars of Aloha Oe in Hawaiian slack guitar. “It’s harder than it looks.”
“Not so slack, huh?” Danny said.
Steve made a face at the pun and slid into some open chords- basic ‘E’ to ‘G’ stuff with a little bit of pretty, sad, minor key stuff interspersed. Something about the intimacy of it – the quiet room and the strumming sounds and them all loose and exhausted made Danny feel brave.
“Hey, babe?”
“Hmmm?”
“Why were you so damn fast to tell nosy neighbor lady we weren’t gay?”
The music stopped, but only briefly and then Steve kept playing, eyes firmly on the guitar.
“I don’t know. I guess it’s like you said… I don’t feel the need to let just anyone in.”
And she hit a nerve; Danny translated the part Steve hadn’t said, because she came a little too close to the truth.
Which was that Steve was omnivorous and they both knew Danny knew it - though they’d never discussed it.
“Just …wondered,” Danny said, backing off.
It got quiet except for the guitar, again, and then Steve piped up.
“Can I ask you something too, D?”
“Sure.”
“You said ‘I love you’ the other night. While we were eating, remember?”
“Yeah. And?”
“What do you mean? What does it mean to you, when you say that?”
Okay, that was going pretty deep. For Steve. For anyone, really.
“You’ve said it to me, too. More than once…”
Damn. And that was knee jerk. Of him.
“Yes, but you’ve said it a lot. At Kamekona’s after my car got stolen, and the other night, and in the hall at work. So… what does it mean to you?”
“It means exactly what you know it means. That you’re very important to me. As in kind of irreplaceable.”
Steve stopped playing and looked at him. He wasn’t smiling anymore.
“Danny…you …aren’t….you wouldn’t ever… want….”
“Uh….hey… know how I’m always on you about verbalizing?” Danny waited for him to nod. “I’m inclined to give you a pass this time. Because this stuff? It’s always hard. And ‘cause right now, while neither of us is in some long term thing? I think it might be a good idea if you come over here to me. Like now.”
The fast but very controlled, deliberate way Steve got up and put down the guitar? The speed with which he was headed his way, eyes bright? It gave Danny the same warm fission all over the place that the earlier, boyish grins had.
But with a little something else in there.
~*~
“Hell, yeeaaaah, Danny….like that… fuuuuck, yeah…”
Steve was on top, was everywhere around him in Steve’s bed, all deliciously warm skin, damp and slick and shaking as they twisted.
But it was Danny who had them both in hand, stroking and teasing fast and slow and fast again, thumb swiping and pressing and making Steve buck and moan.
They’d kissed on the couch until dinner arrived, then ate it standing up by Steve’s sink – feeding each other bites of fish and sipping the soup right from the container, touching each other - pressing together, kissing some more as they satisfied their empty stomachs.
Then Steve had walked him up the stairs, a hand around Danny’s forearm, possessive.
“Slow down….slow….” Danny wrestled to get them sideways, going more gentle with his hand, shushing Steve when he groaned at the downshifting. “…c’mon, seriously…we’ve waited this long…I don’t want it over anytime soon.”
“Think we can go for three hours?” Steve asked him and they both laughed, rueful.
“No fucking way, beautiful,” Danny nipped at Steve’s mouth. “But hey… it’s good to have goals.”
They could work on it. And anything else they needed from each other.
And they didn’t have to tell the shrink, Danny thought. Unless Steve wanted to.
They’d decide together.