Work Text:
The first time that Steve truly notices, it’s a wet and gloomy Sunday morning - nothing too surprising for this time of the year. Well. At least not beyond the way Danny’s hair keeps fluffing up, even more than usual, no amount of product able to tame the effects of the heavy humidity.
It’s a thought that makes Steve goofily happy, and he smiles down at the little pot of shaving cream ensconced in his palm. Around and around, clockwise and counter-clockwise, gathering a good lather. With a soft hum, he reaches up to stroke the fine synthetic bristles against the curve of his jaw.
There is a crash, then a clatter, and then finally Danny stumbles blindly into the bathroom. He’s all pink skin and blond stubble, and he’s got one hand pressed over his face as though he can’t quite come to grips with the burden of being awake.
The other is wandering over the flat expanse of his belly, fingertips questing through the heavy layer of hair there before slowly sliding south. An eternal font of charm, he reaches under the elastic of his blue boxers, gives himself a thorough morning scratch, and then stumbles on over to the shower.
It happens as he’s passing behind Steve, naked feet padding over the tiles and kicking up the foot-towel. For a second, Steve thinks that Danny has tripped, is merely using his body for balance.
Danny’s whole hand presses to the small of his back. It’s a fleeting touch, there one minute and gone the next, and even though Steve suspects that it wasn’t a conscious action, it still feels like it says a thousand things; I love you and good morning and you’re a goof all rolled into one. It’s the way you touch a person when you don’t even need to think about it, when their shape and their warmth and their breath against you is a habit, and you’re so familiar with their skin that it feels like your own.
By the time Steve is done cataloguing the moment and storing the memory, Danny’s naked and stepping into the shower. Perhaps because Danny’s half-asleep, or perhaps because he has greater experience with long-term relationships, (and is thus not a complete idiot about simple little things) he doesn’t seem to notice that he’s done something extraordinary in its simplicity.
Steve is not a man who’s lived a life starved of touch, and god knows that he and Danny have explored each other’s bodies, passionately, intimately, even half drunk and giggling in the bath. But it’s the most absent-minded, casual, lazily affectionate contact that he’s ever experienced, and it sets something inside him on fire.
He scrubs his face clean, skin still mottled with a heavy bruise of dark stubble, stalks forward, and slides the stall door open.
Danny looks thoroughly perplexed as to why he’s suddenly being pounced on. Then he just looks pleased as punch.
-
It’s mornings like these when Steve truly loves Hawaii. Sometimes, in between the greed and the cruelty and the murdered tourists, it’s hard to remember that there’s still an element of paradise to his home.
More to the point, it’s mornings like these when even Danny, begrudgingly, loves Hawaii too - and Steve is all for anything that makes Danny happy. (Even if he does enjoy watching his partner squirm when he’s angry).
The air is cool, easy to breathe, lighter without the heat and humidity of months prior. The world feels quiet, save for the roll of the waves and the sleepy snuffling coming from somewhere near his hip.
Considering how vehemently Danny had mocked Steve’s suggestion that they put a day-bed out the back, he’s currently sprawled across the mattress with impressive flair. It took Danny a few months to learn to sleep peacefully with the ocean right next-door - about as long as it took Steve to accept that he was forever doomed to twenty percent of the bed.
Truth be told, he’s not normally one for this kind of indulgent, luxurious lazing around, book creased between his fingers and empty cup of coffee perched on his knee. Danny’s the reader – from what Steve has learned, Mrs. Williams trained him from an early age to calm down with a novel, lest he shout himself into an early heart-attack. Steve likes the idea of tiny-Danny, strong and passionate and opinionated.
This morning, however, a combination of exercise, orgasms and a heavy breakfast has coaxed Steve into a relaxed state.
He’s just fumbling the page over, a one-handed wiggling of fingers that he’s slowly perfecting, when something flutters against his leg. Nose still in his book, he reaches down to brush the fluttering off, thinking it’s a leaf or a spider. A second is spared to toy with the idea of shooing it down the back of Danny’s shirt. (He loves Danny, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t still devote considerable energy to driving him crazy).
It’s only at the last second that he realizes the touch is not an insect, but rather Danny’s hand, and he glances down to take in the sight of his partner.
Danny looks snoozy, half asleep and hair fluffed up – it’s freshly-cut, and it’s still in that stage where it sits all over the place, errant and ruffled, making him look just-fucked all day long.
His knuckles dance back and forth against Steve’s knee, feathering a lazy pattern into the crease of the joint. With a languid flick of his wrist, he begins to smudge the pad of his thumb into the knobs and angles that form the bone, massaging against the cap. His fingers join in, scratching through the crinkle of body hair, one, two, three gentle scritches.
The touch stops almost as soon as it began, his hand falling idly to rest against Steve’s thigh as he drifts off once more.
Steve re-reads the same sentence four times before he finally gives in, folding the book and setting the cup onto the grass. The day-bed creaks as he slithers down, tugging Danny up against his side and arranging their bodies into a tangle.
There is a quiet flurry of grumbling, before Danny’s nose ends up squashed against his. Bump, bump, bump, left, right, left, right, a gentle dance as they absently nuzzle each other. “Mind the heffalumps,” Danny slurs, some strange dream escaping into the real world via speech.
“Sure thing, Danno,” Steve replies earnestly, closing his eyes.
-
Danny moves around the house with an odd sort of grace. He’s neither quiet, nor delicate in his movements, but the routes that he traces as he prepares for work are so well-worn as to be second nature.
Steve is so charmed that he has to duck his head, watch Danny through lowered lids lest he jump up and undo all of Danny’s hard work. He thinks that the house looks best when there’s a trail of clothes scattered throughout, but Danny doesn’t always agree at oh-seven-hundred on a Monday.
Not every morning is as calm as this one. Sometimes Danny is cranky, or Steve is tired. Sometimes they’re battered and bruised, propped up against each other at the kitchen table as they gloomily work their way through a shared bowl of wheaties. Sometimes they’re in the middle of a furious argument, or a case is weighing heavily on their shoulders.
But no matter the circumstances, Steve is always comforted by the thought that his home is now Danny’s home, too. Detective-Sergeant Daniel Williams, proud son of Jersey, quivering ball of anger and energy, epitome of snark and ferocious loyalty, living life with 2727 Piikoi as its base.
Danny does this thing - Steve’s never had the guts to point it out, lest he somehow stop it from happening, or interrupt its natural progression. When they get home after a long day, Danny’s whole face softens into the most content of expressions. The crinkles at his eyes smooth, as though he’s finally comfortable enough to stop squinting into the world, expecting something to attack him at any second. He always licks his lips, a darting of his tongue from bottom to top, hungry for the comfort or the food or the sex that lies beyond the front door.
Now, early morning light halos Danny as he plucks his watch from the table by the television. For all that his fingers are blunt, they twist and turn against the clasp with surprising nimbleness, knuckles prominent and angular. He smoothes his hand down his shirt, passing the wall-mirror and casting an eye over his presentation – Steve would be hung, drawn and quartered if he ever divulged the fact that Danny tends to button his shirt up wrong in the morning when he’s tired.
Deeming himself acceptable, he then hooks a foot beneath the couch, snagging his shoes and sliding them out. Every night he toes them off before flopping into the cushions, and every night Steve tidies them up, pairs them side by side and tucks them away.
Like clockwork, Danny frowns and looks down.
Steve can’t contain his laugh, belly-deep and loud – they dance this dance every single morning, and he braces himself for what’s coming with a happy heart.
“You untied the laces,” Danny states, choosing to ignore Steve’s laughter in an unusual display of restraint. No accusation, no anger. Just an announcement of fact.
From his perch at the bottom of the stairs, Steve smiles beatifically, chin in hand. “I did.”
Danny’s left eyebrow twitches. “We’ve had this discussion, Steven.”
“We have. I’m still not convinced.”
Said eyebrow gives in, arching high before furrowing down to join its twin in an impressive scowl. “You’re still not convinced that these are my shoes, and thus curious McGarrett fingers have no business touching them?”
“Everything of yours is my business, Danno.” He’s not quite brave enough to maintain his grin so openly, so he surreptitiously scrubs his hand up across his mouth, pretending to scratch an itch.
Sure enough, Danny puffs up, looking both pleased and angry at Steve's possessive tone.
Steve, of course, is quick to ruin the moment by being a knucklehead. “There’s no ‘my own’ in a friendship, remember? And we're way past that.” He can’t help but smirk suggestively, wiggling his ass against the step in the hope of directing Danny’s thoughts.
The tips of Danny’s ears flush pink, and were he a little younger and a lot less mulish, he’d probably scuff the toe of his unlaced shoe against the hardwood floors. But an embarrassed Danny is a Danny on the attack, and soon enough Steve is being aggressively poked in the ribs.
“I remember fine. You’re not subtle, babe.” He flicks his gaze to the stairs, clearly recalling just how uncomfortable it was to be fucked hard and fast against the wooden join of the step.
Sometimes Steve gets impatient. And it’s not like Danny has much of a leg to stand on, considering how he’d tugged Steve down on top of him like they were a collapsing house of cards.
“The point,” Danny continues, gripping Steve’s jaw and angling it up, “is that I cannot be bothered to tie my shoes in the morning.”
Steve bristles, but he knows that explaining military neatness is a lose cause. Besides, it’s not like he’s going to stop. Danny might like to complain about everything that he says, does, and is, but Steve knows that Danny fell in love with him for a reason. “You can’t just stomp your way into them. You’re not a four year old boy! How did you teach Grace to put her shoes on? You’ll break the backs.”
“This, from the man who tackled a suspect into a storm-drain the other week.”
They stare at each other, neither giving in, before finally Danny huffs, a whole-body shake. He swoops down, ties his laces, and stalks off to the kitchen without a second glance. “It’s called being the bigger man, Steve.”
His next words are slurred, and he walks back into the living room with his badge tucked between his teeth, fingers working his holster to his hip. “And don’t even think about it, asshole, it’s a figure of speech, not a literal assessment.”
Steve halts his exaggerated sweep of Danny’s form, no longer caring about their discussion, because Danny’s leaving. He’s ready, he’s dressed, he’s got his badge tucked into the crook of his pocket, and soon he’s going to be out the door, working the morning stakeout with Kono.
Steve knows what’s coming, licks his lips anticipatorily, his stomach squeezing. He feels uncharacteristically nervous and stupidly pleased, because what’s about to happen means the world to him. And the thing is, Danny doesn’t even notice. That’s not a bad thing, it’s good that he doesn’t – if he was conscious of this little ritual, it would cease to be.
Danny steps past him on the way to the front door. He’s still fussing a little with his holster, attention divided as he tucks a finger to Steve’s chin, angling his head up. He swoops down mid-stride - one, two, three quick kisses to Steve’s lips, feather light and achingly absent-minded – and then with his next step, he’s out the door, no words of farewell or declarations of love.
It’s a kiss like any other. Danny’s kissed him a thousand times before, will kiss him a thousand times again. It’s as natural as breathing, and even though his enjoyment of something so silly always makes him feel a little defensive, it also leaves him with a warm, happy feeling.
He can’t help it, and in the end he doesn’t really want to. He likes habitual kisses.