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Steve needs to get up.
He can’t, though, not right now. He should’ve done it an hour ago; then, Danny’d still been awake. Still delightfully warm against his left side, still smelling like home, but awake. Now his head is resting on Steve’s shoulder, so close all Steve would have to do is slouch a little and he could press a kiss to the top of it. Steve’s stuck, and he needs to pee. He can’t go anywhere though, certainly doesn’t want to.
Brooke shifts against his other side and annoyance spikes through him at the distraction, makes him pull away from her. He doesn’t know if that’s why she stands, can’t find it in himself to care beyond basic manners.
She looks down at him—them—and her eyebrows pull together. She opens her mouth.
Steve lifts his index finger up, against his lips, flicks his eyes down. Her frown deepens. She doesn’t get it. She doesn’t get it’s imperative they let Danny sleep. Doesn’t get that Danny hasn’t been sleeping for weeks, that he haunts the house at all hours, every night, scaling the rooms until he exhausts himself. That Steve lies awake too, burning with the need to catch Danny in his arms and hold him until he sighs and falls asleep, just like he did against Steve’s shoulder twenty-three minutes ago.
“I’m going to—“ she mouths, and stabs her finger toward the door.
Steve nods, musters a grin. “Thanks for coming,” he mouths back.
She flashes him an uncomfortable smile in return and makes her way out. Only Tani’s left of their movie night now, dozing in the recliner she’s extended, swallowed by its size. She’s lost a lot of weight. He should talk to her; he’s sure it’s related to Junior’s absence. Maybe ask Danny to do it, the way Steve does without really asking; it’s a delicate subject, much better handled by Danny, not that Steve would ever admit it.
God, Danny smells good. Steve inhales quietly, sucks in all the end-of-day, after-a-case, leather-and-whisky-and-musky Danny he can get, still quietly baffled by this unexpected treat he’s gotten. He wonders if Danny did it on purpose, if he knows what it means for Steve to get to touch him like this, if this is some sort of underhanded thank-you for not letting Danny be alone on Valentine’s Day. Steve wants to pull him in more, closer, but he doesn’t, unwilling to risk waking him up.
Steve doesn’t really let himself think what if, anymore, not really. These days, he lets his mind wander rarely, only under extenuating circumstances, down the still well-worn paths of old daydreams. He’s proven before that he shouldn’t; he used to do it all the time in the beginning, and like with everything he does, he went overboard, lost himself in it. It’s dangerous, fantasizing about things he can’t have.
Things like Danny’s mouth, how it would taste if Steve leaned down and captured it with his lips. What Danny would sound like if Steve slipped his tongue into his mouth, swiped it across Danny’s, teased it, sucked gently on it. How he would shudder if Steve wrapped his hand gently around Danny’s throat, thumb on his accelerating pulse, held him in place while he drank him in. God, Danny’s throat, Steve wants to touch it, has wanted for the last nine years. Taste it. Leave a mark on it, big and purple, right at the collar of his shirt so people wondered if it was really there, who’d left it, whom Danny belonged to.
He wants to unbutton Danny’s shirt slowly, kiss the skin revealed like the gift it would be, rub his cheek against the chest hair he knows is soft. Bury his nose under Danny’s arm and inhale and inhale until Danny was all he could smell, trace kisses down his side, the grooves of his hipbones to slide down and nuzzle into his lap. Press more kisses to his groin, the insides of his thighs, where Steve would pause and rest, just for a second, just to be grateful for being allowed to have Danny like that. He’d do it every time, every day without fail; he’d never take it for granted.
Maybe not, though. Maybe instead of that he’d just lean down and hook his hands under Danny’s knees, pull his legs up and over Steve’s lap, shift him until he was truly lying with his head on Steve’s chest. Danny would burrow into his neck, inhale him back, and Steve would nose down, find his lips, for a dozen small kisses. Practiced, easy kisses, because they would’ve been together almost a decade, and Steve’s ring would be on Danny’s finger, and it would catch the light just so when Danny stroked his hand up Steve’s arm. Steve’d coax him up with more kisses around his nose, his eyes, and wrap his arms around Danny’s body from behind and walk him upstairs.
Danny’d grouse about needing a shower but being too tired to take one and Steve’d smile to himself, hoping they’d just go to bed, because Danny at the end of the day always smells better to him than Danny after a shower, and they’d climb into bed in their underwear and Danny would fit in his arms, perfectly like he always does. The room’d be cool because they’d have installed air conditioning, years ago, because Danny tends to run hot, and he’d sigh when Steve presses a final kiss to the back of his shoulder and let himself rest in Steve’s embrace. Good night, Danno, Steve would whisper, and Danny would hum back in reply. I love you, Steve would say, and Danny would say I love you too.
Danny snuffles a little and yanks Steve back to reality, to the lump in his throat. Loss lances sharp in his chest, still inexplicably strong as it is maddening, after all these years. It forces him to close his eyes for a second. He needs to stop. He can’t do this, indulge himself; he’s proven over and over again he can’t control it.
He swallows it away and takes one last deep breath of Danny. He dips his head so his lips rest on the top of Danny’s head for one second, one guilty second, and finally straightens. He opens his eyes.
Tani’s staring at him, eyes wide. As Steve watches, realization ripples over her expression, chased closely by sympathy. Fuck.
Steve’s stomach drops, it sinks, down his body, into the ground. He feels exposed, embarrassed. Annoyed, because he has to cut it short now, Danny unexpectedly in his arms, who knows when he’ll get to have it again?
He grabs the throw pillow and shifts Danny so his weight rests against the couch cushion and wedges the pillow under Danny’s arm so he stays balanced. He shoves himself to his feet, hates his hips for the way they twinge every time since he turned forty, and strides out to the powder room. Behind him, the recliner creaks like someone got off of it, but he closes the door without looking back.
He leans against the sink with suddenly shaky hands. Stupid, so stupid, how could he have been so stupid. Annoyance makes his movements clipped as he pisses and flushes and washes his hands, hoping against hope that Tani knows better than to engage.
A bracing breath, and he opens the door, instantly coming eye-to-eye with Tani. He averts his gaze and marches past her, his silence as mulish as he can make it.
Her footsteps follow him anyway, into the kitchen. He yanks open the refrigerator. “You want something to drink?”
“No,” she says, incredulous. “What was that?”
Steve rolls his eyes at the inside of the fridge. Tani, straight to the point. Kono at least took him surfing and bought him loco moco first. Chin brought a six pack and was kind enough to let Steve drink most of it. Lou gave him scotch and a big palm on his shoulder. Jerry stammered around it and offered him a chocolate bar. Before Junior left, Steve’s caught him frowning a few times, deep wrinkles in his forehead like he’s trying to work through a complicated algebra problem. He probably hasn’t gotten there yet, but then, Tani will no doubt fill him in at the first opportunity.
“What was what?” Steve asks, and decides plain water will do. He takes out the pitcher and busies himself with finding a glass.
“Don’t give me that,” she says. “I saw it. Saw you—” She breaks off.
His back to her still, Steve presses his lips together. He starts filling his glass, slowly. “Just let it go.”
“How long?” she asks.
Steve drinks his water without hurry. “How long what?” he asks, without looking at her, while he rinses his glass off and fusses with it.
Tani’s breath comes out in an impatient huff. “How long have you been in love with Danny?”
Steve stops what he’s doing and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Are you going to leave it alone if I tell you?”
“Can’t promise that.”
That gets him to look at her. He finds her with her eyes slightly wide, arms crossed on her chest like a disapproving grade school teacher. “It’s not new,” he says at last. “So let it go.”
Her eyebrows pull up. “Why haven’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why haven’t you let it go? If it’s not new, why haven’t you figured out how to get over it?”
Because there is no getting over it. He loves Danny like his heart beats, like his lungs take in air. It’s an integral part of his being now; he wouldn’t be himself anymore if he didn’t love Danny. “I don’t understand what you’re asking me.”
She stabs a thumb back toward the living room. “Have you told him?”
Annoyance spikes again and overcomes the embarrassment, the resignation. “Yes, Tani, of course I told him. You think we just met, you think we haven’t been through this, I haven’t been through this half a dozen times?”
She flinches minutely, appropriately chastised. “Why aren’t you together, then?”
“He—“ His voice gives out. He has to clear his throat. “He doesn’t swing that way. Okay? He doesn’t. Let it go.”
Her expression tightens in sympathy. “What did he say?”
Steve rolls his eyes. “He said he doesn’t swing that way.”
“When did he say that?”
“When we talked about it.”
His voice comes out sharper than he anticipated. She squints her eyes like he lunged for her, but doesn’t back off. “What did you say?”
“I said do you want to try something with this, and he said I don’t swing that way, and that was that, okay? What else do you want to know, huh? Can you let it go now, please?”
“When?” she asks again, still unfazed by his snarl.
“A few years ago,” he hedges.
“How many years ago?”
Steve draws a deep breath. “Seven. Eight.”
Her eyes bug out. “You didn’t want to bring it up again, maybe, oh, I don’t know, every few years, instead of suffering in silence? Pining away quietly?”
“What would you like me do? Ask him do you like me now? how about now? every few months? Sexually harass him, make him uncomfortable, until he quits? Is that what I should’ve done?”
“No,” she says, her even voice a good contrast to his bark. “You should’ve told him you’re deeply in love with him. Did you tell him that? Did you tell him just how madly in love with him you are?”
Steve’s heart starts to pound, in this chest of his that’s suddenly too tight for it. No, he didn’t say that. He didn’t say it because he didn’t want Danny to look at him with pity, didn’t want the awkwardness, the eggshells around each other. He wants Danny, everything about him, all of him, to watch even if he can’t touch. He doesn’t want Danny to hold back. He wants Tani to back the fuck off, leave them alone.
“No, he hasn’t.”
It feels like the floor tilts. Steve has to grab onto the counter. Tani’s eyes widen comically, then she twists to look behind her, and sure enough, Danny, hair mussed and shirt rumpled—beautiful—is staring, at Steve, directly at Steve.
“Oh no,” Tani breathes.
“Get out,” Danny says, flicking his hand toward Tani, without taking his eyes off of Steve, like his gaze is all that’s holding Steve in place. It probably is, if Steve’s honest, it feels like he might just sink down through the floor if Danny looks away from him. “Tani, I say it with love, but get out, please. Get out, right now.”
She hesitates for a second, throwing a final, regretful look at Steve. “Yeah. I’m sorry. Shit.”
“Just—go,” Danny says again.
Tani slips past him and disappears. Steve’s hardly breathing, pinned in place, paralyzed by Danny’s piercing gaze. Other than shoving his hands in his pockets, Danny doesn’t move. Steve has lost the ability anyway; they stand there and stare at each other.
The front door closes.
Danny reanimates with the sound. He takes one hand out and points behind him, ironically duplicating Tani’s gesture. “Is it true? Is she right? Is what she said true, Steve?”
Steve’s throat is tight. He has to swallow, and he still sounds like a jackass. “You know.”
“You know, he says, you know. I know? What do I know, Steve?” Hands back in his pockets. Danny bends at the waist, his expression both betrayed and incredulous at the same time. “I know you were attracted to me at some point, some undefined amount, almost a decade ago. I know you floated the idea of pursuing it, almost a decade ago. I don’t know what she’s talking about. I don’t know anything about love, being in love, I don’t know anything about pining, someone pining away for someone else. I don’t know anything about that.”
“I told you,” Steve says, weakly. He wishes Danny would take his hands out of his pockets. It’s less serious when Danny’s hands are moving. Danny like this, genuinely agitated, is terrifying.
Danny blinks, rapidly. “Told me? Told me what? That? You never told me that. When did you tell me that?”
“In the building, the collapsed building? Later, on the phone. The nuke. When we were driving the nuke around—“
“You said I love you, bro! You told me to give my girlfriend a chance! That’s not telling someone you’re in love with them!”
God, Danny’s going to leave. Steve’s gone and done it, all these years of being careful, of modulating his responses, of staying just far enough, and he’s screwed it all up on a random Friday night, just because he couldn’t control himself for one lousy second. It’s a joke, his life is a joke.
“Danny, it doesn’t matter,” Steve tries. “It doesn’t change anything; it’s nothing new.”
“It doesn’t change anything, he says—are you out of your mind, Steve, are you out of your oft-thunked, thick-headed, unbalanced mind? It changes everything, you—you animal, it changes everything!”
Steve’s heart’s gone off, and he’s fifteen again, losing everything, watching himself lose everything and unable to do a goddamn thing about it. “Danny, please.”
Danny has his mouth open to say something, but whatever it is Steve managed to convey with those two words, it stops him short. His eyebrows knot. “Please what?”
Steve draws in air around the lump in his throat. It’s so quiet in the house. “Please don’t leave.”
“Leave?” At least he doesn’t sound angry anymore, just heartbroken. “Steve, why would I leave?”
Because that’s what happens. People leave. That’s what happens when Steve indulges himself; he doesn’t get to have it, this, in his life. He doesn’t know how to put that into words. He just shrugs.
Danny tilts his head and studies him for a few seconds, and Steve watches his eyebrows settle and his jaw set, watches him make a decision, though Steve has no idea what it is. Danny strides forward, his usual swagger muted, and comes to a halt directly in front of Steve, in Steve’s space.
“You’re going to let me do this,” Danny says, and his hands curve over Steve’s shoulders, slide to his neck, and guide him down, down—into a kiss.
Steve’s brain shorts out at the first touch of their lips. He has to hang on to the counter with both hands so he doesn’t keel into Danny, take them both down to the floor, and he can’t stop his breath from escaping when Danny nudges his mouth open, his quicksilver tongue swiping into Steve’s mouth.
Pure survival gets him to move. He wrenches his head away, gets his hands on Danny’s chest, creating space between them for himself to slide away. He lists the long way around the island, almost goes down when his foot gets stuck on it, but manages to twist away when Danny grabs for him.
“Steve, don’t—“
Steve’s gained speed now, and his instincts are engaged. His truck, the truck, where are the keys, not in his pocket, upstairs? Doesn’t matter, he can walk, run, he can run away on foot, call a cab later, go—
“Stop. Just stop. Please, Steve, you were just begging me to stay, and now you’re leaving me?”
The distress in Danny’s voice makes his choice for him. He can’t walk away from that, even if it meant certain destruction, he can’t. He comes to a halt three steps away from the front door.
“You said you thought you were attracted to me, some undefined amount, Steve. You made it sound like it was nothing. Almost a decade ago, and you never mentioned it again. You didn’t tell me you were in love with me. You didn’t tell me that.”
Impotent tears prickle Steve’s eyes. He wants to be released, he wants to leave, plunge into the ocean, swim away. He does, he does realize it doesn’t make sense.
But he did, he did say. “What difference would it have made?”
“What difference? Do you know what happened after you told me that? Do you?”
Steve thinks he does, but the way Danny’s asking, he allows the possibility that he’s wrong. He turns his head a little, but not enough to see Danny.
“You told me that and I said what I said, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I kept looking at you. I kept looking at your hands, I kept wondering what it would feel like to hold them. I kept looking at your mouth, I wondered what you tasted like, what it would feel like to kiss you. How different it would be, your body, instead of—“ Danny cuts himself off. Steve’s throat hurts, god, it hurts. “I read up on it. I watched it. Porn, I watched porn. I thought maybe I did swing that way a little, I certainly seemed to be swinging your way a lot. But I wasn’t going to risk it on maybes, not what we have, a fleeting attraction that in all those years you never, ever mentioned again, and you always had so much more going on, I thought—”
His voice thins at the end and Steve doesn’t hear it, not right away, too busy settling down his mind to parse the words.
“It makes all the difference, don’t you see?” Danny draws a sharp breath. It sounds like a sniffle. “It makes all the difference because I love you too, you insane idiot. I love you too, like that, I’m in love with you too.”
It can’t be true, what he’s hearing, he must be hearing it wrong, maybe his blood pressure’s plummeted, maybe he’s the one asleep, how could it be, if that were true, how could he not know, but Danny didn’t know about Steve, and could they have been that blind, that dense, could they—
Danny nudges him with his hand, makes him turn more, and his eyes fall on Danny’s face. A jolt goes through him—he recognizes the expression on it, the warmth that shines in Danny’s eyes, the affection. He’s seen flashes of it, fleeting, hidden away. He’s lived for it.
“Can you—“ Danny has to clear his throat. “Can you let me kiss you again, please? I couldn’t—it wasn’t enough, can you—“
Steve shouldn’t. He shouldn’t, if it goes nowhere, if Danny’s wrong, if he changes his mind, Steve will be wrecked, more than that, obliterated; there’ll be nothing left of him.
Danny’s hand is curled around his elbow and it gives a tug and Steve stops resisting. He cups Danny’s face and tilts his, crashing their lips together, plunging his tongue into Danny’s mouth. Danny makes a surprised sound in his throat and wavers for a second, but then his fingers dig into Steve’s elbows and he straightens, matching Steve stroke for stroke.
It’s not enough. Steve presses closer, wraps arms around Danny’s body, licks deeper into his mouth. He’ll make it good, make it everything he dreamt of, the lifetime together he’s wanted, imagined, everything that’s possible to cram into one kiss, if that’s all he gets to have. It’s hot and wet and glorious and his air runs out much quicker than it should. They break apart again, foreheads leaning together, panting.
“Oh, god,” Danny whispers, his hands tight around Steve’s waist. “Oh my god, it was right there, right in front of us, how stupid, huh, how stupid have we been?”
“What?”
“What, he asks, what what, didn’t you—“ Danny leans back a little, eyes wide with horror. “Did you not—feel that, didn’t you—“
Steve stares, helpless.
“Tell me that wasn’t the best kiss of your life.”
Steve blinks. “Of course it was.”
Danny laughs. “Of course it was, he says, matter-of-fact, like he knew all along, like it was me who didn’t, like he didn’t—“
“I did,” Steve says.
“You did what?” Danny asks, and god, his eyes, his eyes are so soft, so fond, and it doesn’t get schooled away, it doesn’t disappear, it stays. It stays there, for Steve.
“I knew.”
Danny punches him in the shoulder. “Why didn’t you tell me, then, huh?”
Steve’s vision blurs. “I did.”
“God, Steve,” Danny breathes, and pulls him in, a hand on the back of his neck to guide him into Danny’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I didn’t get it. I’m sorry.”
Steve tightens his arms and they just stand there like that, holding each other, just inside his door. Danny’s hand strokes his hair, slowly, gently, and Steve inhales him with every breath, without having to hide. His shoulders hurt from his slouch and he’s sure Danny’s neck must be tightening up, but it doesn’t matter. None of it matters.
“Steve?”
“Yeah, Danny?”
Danny’s quiet for a few breaths, then says, “You know, you’re going to have to give Tani a raise, don’t you?”
The laugh gurgles out of him, punches the tension away, leaves behind a giddiness he didn’t know he could feel. “Yeah, you think?”
“I think so.” Danny draws him up so they can look at each other. The same weariness he feels is in the lines around Danny’s eyes, but also the same elation in his smile.
He’s left uncertain, all of a sudden. “What—what do we do now?”
Danny draws a deep breath. “Now we—“ his gaze swings out for a second. He flinches. “It’s almost midnight. Now we, uh, we go sleep, and maybe kiss some more, and do some of the stuff I watched that I thought might be fun, and then we have a nice, long talk about us, this new us, and—and then, I think we just live happily ever after, babe.”
Steve’s heart skips a beat. His eyes are drawn to Danny’s throat and he raises his hand to it, touches reverently, fits his thumb over Danny’s thundering pulse. He nods. That’s what they’ll do.
Live happily ever after.