Danny isn't sure when Steve stopped being the annoying, ridiculously reckless guy who turned his professional life upside down-and started being the annoying, ridiculously reckless guy who turned his professional life upside-down and was also the subject of his night-time fantasies.
Not the sexual ones -- whatever, he has eyes, he noticed that Steve was hot from the get-go; he's pretty sure he started fantasizing about that the day they met -- but the corny ones. The ones he wouldn't admit to anyone, not even if Steve's bizarre and often alarming methods of interrogation were involved.
Because it's just embarrassing to be a grown man who sometimes falls asleep imagining being held. Not getting laid, not sucking Steve's cock, not the thousand and one creative things they could probably do with an inexhaustible supply of lube and a few neckties he didn't mind having to wash, but cuddling. Jesus: just thinking about it makes him blush.
Which is of course when Kono catches him staring down the neck of his beer bottle with apparently some kind of wistful expression on his face, because she elbows him and raises an eyebrow. "You okay?" Steve's bringing the pizza, Chin is running late, so for now it's just the two of them at sunset on the beach. And Danny has no sense at all of how long he's been deep in reverie, which is never a good sign.
"Yeah, yeah, just thinking," Danny says, which is perhaps the lamest answer ever, and is obviously not going to satisfy her. He's bracing himself for the inevitable interrogation, but it doesn't come.
"You gotta stop doing that -- it's Friday night," Kono says, and stands up. "You want another beer?"
He hadn't actually noticed that his bottle was empty, but it is. "Sure," he says, and digs his feet slightly further into the cool sand and watches the waves roll in as Kono pads over to the cooler. It doesn't occur to him until much later that if Kono isn't giving him a hard time about his obvious crush on Steve, that might mean she's aware of just how hard he's fallen. Which might mean that Steve is, too. In which case he is totally screwed.
There is pizza, and to Danny's chagrin (how is he going to bitch about this?) it's actually good. And apparently Steve picked toppings specifically to make him happy. Even though Steve makes like it wounds him personally to have ordered a pizza for Danny's philistine tastebuds, Danny can't help feeling warmed.
Between the four of them they polish off three pies, and probably more beers than is entirely reasonable, and Chin tells a hilarious story about a guy and a surfboard and a deflated beachball that has Danny almost falling off his beach chair with laughter. He catches Steve looking at him with a peculiar expression of pride, and demands "What?" as belligerently as he can manage, but Steve just raises his bottle as in a salute or a toast and says "admit it: you like it here."
"I do not!" Danny protests, but it's pro forma and they all know it. "Nobody wears closed shoes, and it never gets cold, and what passes for city life--"
Kono smirks at him. It's pretty obvious that his rant is sounding thin.
"...okay, it's maybe not so bad," Danny acknowledges. He's trying to sound grudging about it, but it's hard to hold the tone when Steve is grinning at him like that.
He's being ambushed. It's as though the three of them are collaborating to prove to him that Hawai'i isn't as bad as he thinks. Worst part is, it's working.
Danny has never been what you'd call a morning person. And the first few weeks he was living here, the goddamned tropical birds woke him up at 4:30 every day. These days he doesn't even register their caws and whoops. Even on a Saturday when he doesn't have Grace and therefore gets to sleep in.
He's halfway through his first bleary cup of coffee when someone bangs on the door. Before he can even put a hand on his gun -- force of habit -- he hears Steve yell "I know you're awake in there, c'mon!"
Danny yanks the door open. "How, exactly, do you know that?" he asks. Steve pushes right past him carrying a white box. He'd like to be able to claim it's the pastry box that gets Steve in the door, but the truth is, he was going to let Steve in anyway and Steve knows it. "Have you been keeping tabs on me? Hidden a bug under the endtable?"
Steve snorts. "You think your life is interesting enough for me to want to plant a mike?"
"Screw you," Danny says amiably, helping himself to pastry, because who is he to look a gift horse in the mouth? Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, Steve's rummaging around in the sink for a clean coffee mug, so Danny doesn't get the chance to see if his face would have given away any response to the innuendo.
Which is fine, because it's not as though they've never slung innuendo at each other, and it's never meant anything before. Why would today be any different?
"You free this afternoon?" Steve asks, overly-nonchalant, and it is obvious that he is up to something; he has some kind of harebrained plan. It's probably a sign of something he doesn't want to consider that Danny agrees to go with him without even finding out where they're going or why.
After an hour of climbing, Danny is hot, cranky, and dusty. Even the view of Steve climbing ahead of him -- a view of not-inconsiderable hotness; Steve McGarrett has a very fine ass -- isn't enough. After the amount of beer he'd consumed last night, he should have had some kind of big greasy breakfast: eggs and fries and bacon, maybe. (His mouth is watering at the thought.) That's what a stomach full of too much beer requires. Not pastries and coffee like they're in goddamned Paris.
And it is his day off. This level of physical exertion should not be involved. He should be watching stupid reruns on the television. Or maybe -- maybe! -- napping on the beach. The one at sea level. Which doesn't require this much work to get to.
"Have I mentioned lately that I hate you?" Danny asks, just for form's sake.
"Few times, yeah," Steve calls back, and keeps going.
Maybe not surprisingly, when they finally get to where they're headed, it's totally worth it. (Which kind of makes Danny even more annoyed with Steve, not that that's logical.) There's a break in the tree cover, there's a breeze, there's a waterfall, there's a pool of water beneath the waterfall, and Steve is already stripping off his shirt and dropping a six-pack of cans into the shallow end to chill.
"You didn't tell me to pack a swimsuit," Danny says regretfully, because wow, that water looks good.
Steve shrugs. "Who cares?" And he's unlacing his boots and yanking them off, and unfastening his shorts, and Danny turns away. It's one thing to be able to strip down in front of another guy; he's been in men's locker rooms his whole life, this is not exactly a new experience. But it's another thing to actually watch another guy undress. Especially when there's only two of you standing there. He's pretty sure that qualifies as inappropriate and possibly creepy.
He is not looking to see if Steve is checking him out. He is not looking. He is above that. He is walking over to a boulder which looks like a pretty likely spot from which to jump in; water in front of it looks nice and deep, he's not going to hit anything.
"I should warn you," Steve says conversationally from right behind him, and Danny turns to look at him. Focusing on his face, obviously. Nothing further down his body than that. "Water's pretty cold," Steve says, looking smug -- what, does he think Danny's going to chicken out?
"So what," Danny says, and turns and leaps. And then yells a string of profanity, because the water is seriously fucking cold. And Steve's right there beside him, treading water, and the bastard just laughs.
The trouble with not bringing swimsuits is that they didn't bring towels, either. So they spread their shirts out and sit on those to eat their sandwiches, which is fine; the air feels great after their glacial swim, and the food tastes good, and the beer is cold, and Danny is a pretty happy man.
But then Steve lies back, folds his arms behind his head, and puts on his sunglasses. And Christ, he looks like a centerfold.
"What, you're just going to lie there?" Danny grouses, because his heart is pounding and he is beginning to realize that he may be in some serious trouble, here. "Working on your tan?"
Steve, damn him, just smiles. "I thought you wanted to relax a little."
"Relaxing is something you do by the side of a pool, with fruity drinks and little paper umbrellas," Danny retorts. It's a weak response, but it's the best he can manage under the circumstances.
"This isn't nice enough for you?" Steve asks, raising an eyebrow over the top of his sunglasses.
"Of course it is, this is spectacular," Danny says, and maybe he can blame this on the beer, or on the sun making him light-headed, because he hears himself keep talking, and what he says is, "you're just giving me some mixed messages here, is all."
Steve takes off the sunglasses, which means he's squinting a little, but it also means Danny can see his whole face. He looks serious. Danny's heart does a somersault. Or maybe that's the butterflies in his stomach. Why did he say that? Why did he go and say that, what was he thinking?
"I have to ask," Steve says, slowly, carefully, and Danny's heart is going to pound its way right out of his chest before the next words come out of Steve's mouth, "what exactly is 'mixed' about this?"
Danny gapes at him, momentarily too startled to respond.
"I brought you pastries," Steve says, sitting up, the more easily to tick off items on his fingers, "I took you on a hike to my favorite swimming hole, the one my dad used to take me to when I was a kid--"
"You didn't tell me that," Danny manages, but Steve just talks over him.
"--I brought sandwiches, I brought beer, there was skinny-dipping -- was I supposed to hire skywriters to put 'this is a date' over that mountain?"
There's only one reasonable response to that degree of sarcasm, so Danny climbs over the remnants of their lunch and kisses him.
In retrospect there is nothing surprising about the fact that Steve McGarrett kisses like a man on a mission. If the mission is to drive Danny out of his mind. Which apparently it is, and Danny would have to admit, if anyone were asking, that he doesn't exactly object.
Danny's on top, which means Steve's the one whose body is probably coming in contact with dirt and little rocks and whatever island vegetation they're crushing right now. Danny, in contrast, is pretty much only coming into contact with Steve. Which is fine by him.
Steve's got one calf hooked over his and one arm locked around the small of his back -- because, what, he thinks Danny's going to pick up and leave? change his mind and decide he's not interested? -- and they're kissing like they invented the act. Slow and stunned and touch-drunk. And God, that's Steve's cock poking at his hipbone, Steve's sun-hot skin dragging against his erection in a way that makes him want to whine with pleasure.
There are an awful lot of things Danny would like to do to this man. He's had more than a few daydreams about kneeling at his feet and blowing his fucking mind. Not to mention his ardent curiosity about whether McGarrett has any experience with a man's ass, because he's figuring that the answer to that is "yes" and that his life is going to get a whole lot hotter as a result. But none of them exactly lend themselves to the hot, dusty, probably mosquito-infested great outdoors.
So Danny contents himself for now with biting at Steve's exposed neck (Steve gasps and tips his head back obligingly) and hitching his erection against Steve's tight flat belly, because the more they rub against each other the more desperate Danny feels, until finally he shudders against Steve, his cock jerking between them. Steve pushes him back just enough to let their mouths meet and kisses him sloppily and thrusts into the newly-slick space between them and comes. It's messy, they're on the ground, and Danny cannot begin to bring himself to care.
Lying on top of Steve McGarrett should not actually be comfortable, but it kind of is. And the slow sweep of Steve's hand over his lower back, up to his shoulderblades, and back down again feels amazing. They lie there for a while.
And then Steve says "...mixed messages?" -- like he just can't believe it -- and Danny has to pull back so he can whack him on the shoulder.
"Hey!" Steve protests, laughing.
"You are infuriating," Danny tells him, wincing a little as they pull apart, reaching for his t-shirt because God, he didn't even put on sunscreen, they've been lying in the sun for ages, he is so doomed. "You are a grade-A pain in the ass, my friend."
"You really want me to dignify that with a response?" Steve asks, crouching to reach for his boxers and then standing to slide them on in one fluid gesture. This time, Danny lets himself watch.
"Yeah, not really," he admits, and Steve sees him looking, and straightens up -- flexing a little, it's like he can't even help it, and Danny's caught somewhere between wanting to roll his eyes (because who does McGarrett think he is?) and wanting to lick his lips (because God, those hips, he is going to nibble his way up from Steve's inner thighs and make him beg, it is the highest thing on his agenda as soon as they are back in civilization.)
"Start of a beautiful friendship?" Steve asks, smirking a little.
"Okay, that is it, I don't care if you did bring me pastries," Danny grouses, "you drive me insane."
"Pretty much the plan," Steve agrees, and puts on his cargo shorts, and if this is the way things between them are going to go -- well, hell: Danny could do a lot worse.
The End