Work Text:
The rhythmic beeping from the monitors attached to Steve were soothing in a way that Danny, sat at the man’s bedside, didn’t want to think about too much, sure that it spoke to a familiarity he wasn’t comfortable having developed. Not content to trust the machines, and needing the connection, Danny himself had a hand wrapped around Steve’s wrist, fingertips resting over the strong, though too-rapid, pulse, trying to ignore how hot the man’s skin felt beneath his touch.
“You’re an idiot, you know”, Danny informed the unconscious man. “You could have mentioned to someone, anyone, that you didn’t feel well but oh, no, SEALs power through.”
It hadn’t been a hail of bullets, or a well-placed bomb, or even being crushed beneath the immense stack of paperwork Steve never did that had brought the man to Trippler’s ICU once more. No, the big bad Commander had been felled by his own appendix. While the surgeon had successfully operated to remove it, it wasn’t until after it had burst and the resulting infection was waging war within the SEAL, his temperature worryingly high and he’d yet to wake even twenty-four hours after surgery.
Usually Danny loved to watch Steve sleep. Safe in their bed, in his arms, Steve would sleep like a baby, a careless sprawl of limbs, free of the tension and weight of responsibility he bore when he was awake.
On the rare days when he woke first, Danny loved to watch Steve as he roused: the flutter of dark eyelashes as he started to shift around; the sweet flexing of his hands as, even in sleep, the man searched for Danny; the furrow that would appear between his brows as Steve struggled to stay asleep; and finally, finally his eyes would open, immediately searching for Danny. Every time, Steve would smirk at catching Danny staring before the corners of his lips would curve up into a broad smile. He’d call his husband creepy and then kiss away Danny’s complaints about morning breath.
But the sight before him wasn’t the peaceful scene he so enjoyed. A film of sweat covered every inch of visible skin, wires and IVs crisscrossed over Steve’s chest and arms, and a mask covered much of his face.
“Such an idiot. Do you know what it did to me to see you go down, right in the middle of your office? Huh? Place you’re meant to be safe? I fucking thought you’d been shot through the window or something. Worst ten seconds of my life.”
His horrified shout had so scared Lou that the man, just pushing through the glass doors back from lunch, had spilled burning hot coffee down himself, grousing in Danny’s wake until he’d seen what had caught Danny’s attention, instantly tossing aside his cup to pull out his phone and order an ambulance, latte cascading across the polished floor.
The hand under Danny’s twitched, pulling him from the memories of Steve pale and unresponsive on his office floor. Glancing up at his husband’s face, relief flooded him at finding Steve staring back. His head was lolling to the side at an uncomfortable looking angle, his gaze unfocused and a little glassy, but he was staring at Danny with abject wonder.
“Are you m’ nurse?” Steve’s voice was muffled by the mask strapped to his face, but Danny was just able to make it out.
“I look like a nurse to you?”
Steve’s gaze dipped, taking in Danny’s body, days-old workwear and all, with obvious appreciation. “You look like an angel.”
“Gabriel, that’s me.”
“Gabriel.” The name was little more than a sigh, slipping from Steve’s tongue with reverence. “You’re just…wow.”
Danny’s brow creased in confusion, but before he could speak, Steve reached up, clumsy and awkward, and tugged the oxygen mask off his face, flinching when it snapped against his chin when he let it go.
“Is it sacra-sacri-wrong to think an angel is hot? ‘Cos you are. You’re hot as Hell.”
Tamping down the thrill the compliment gave him, Danny rolled his eyes.
“You’re really looped aren’t you, babe?”
Leaning over, Danny pressed the call button beside the bed, summoning a nurse who bustled in, all military efficiency, before Steve could utter another ludicrous word.
*
Ten minutes - and a lecture for Steve about seeking timely medical assistance in future that Danny was sure he would ignore - later, the two men were once more left alone. Danny had been handed a pack of animal crackers while a pitcher of fresh water sat atop the table erected over Steve’s bed and he was under strict orders to ensure his partner tried to keep down some of both given it had been a couple days since he ate. To that end, Steve currently had a loose grasp on a cracker but he was more interested in Danny than the food.
“An agency send you, Gabriel?”
“My name’s not-”He shook his head, reminding himself to be patient with Steve’s fever-fueled confusion, but more than a little hurt that his husband seemingly didn’t remember him. “My name’s Danny.”
“Da’y.”
“Danny.”
“Dann-o.” Smiling broadly, Steve gazed at him, pleased, tongue working weakly to roll a bit of cracker around his mouth in lieu of actually chewing, far more interested in checking Danny out.
Danny exhaled sharply. “You would remember that. It’s gonna take fucking dynamite to get that out of your brain.”
“If not a nurse, what you doin’ here?”
“I’m your partner. I’m here to ensure you eat your cracker.”
“I’d rather you were my boyfriend, angel.” Steve ignored the cracker in favour of letting his eyes rove over Danny, lingering on his biceps and broad shoulders with every sign of interest and enjoyment.
“Then I’ve got some news for you.” Grateful that at least his husband hadn’t suggested he eat something else, Danny held up his left hand and waggled the fingers, showing off the thick band that rested on his ring finger.
“You’re married?”
“That I am, buddy, that I am.”
“I’ll fight them,” Steve flailed his hand around in a loose fist, cracker crumbs scattering across the pristine sheets, monitors on the machines he was still attached to racing wildly. “I’ll fight them for you.”
“I’d pay to see that.” Danny shook his head at the nurse that popped her head around the door-jam at the commotion, waving away her concern at Steve’s antics.
Seemingly unaware of her presence, Steve tried to leer, the muscles in his face no more coordinated than his limbs. “You just wanna see me sweaty, huh?”
“You’re an animal.”
“Oh, I can be.”
Seeing Steve settle once more, the nurse retreated with a smirk, more than familiar with the pair’s flirtatious bickering and not wanting to get in-between.
Ducking his head, Danny covered his face with his hands, trying to smother his laughter at his husband. It wasn’t, entirely, Steve’s fault he was delirious, but it was taking everything in Danny not to pull out his phone and record the ridiculous man because he was sure he could dine out on the spectacle before him until the day he died. Which seeing as how Steve hadn’t paid for a meal in nearly a decade, would come in handy.
“Hey, no! Don’t do that Beautiful. Lemme see your pretty face.” Steve’s hand landed atop Danny’s, pushing them down so he could get an unobstructed view.
“You’re the most gorgeous guy I’ve ever seen.”
“I know.” And he did; Steve had learned, slowly but surely, to verbalise more over the years and ensured that Danny was assured not only of the other man’s love for him, but how attracted to him he was.
Which, apparently, the man was more than honest about if his current interest was any indicator.
A smile spread across Steve’s face, gummy and goofy.
“Did you jus’ Han Solo me?” He sighed in delight, far too endearing and guileless for Danny to cope with. “I knew we’d be perfect together.”
“You’re a real princess alright, Sweetheart.” Oh, if only the criminals of the world could see Steve now. Danny knew that the SEAL’s legend, and to a lesser extent his own thank-you-so-very-much, was comparable to Baba Yaga among the criminal classes of Hawaii. To look at him now, Danny was sure not even Sang-Min’s mullet would be intimidated.
“Your hair’s not right for Solo. It’s better.”
“That’s because if anyone here is a half-witted, stuck up, scruffy looking nerf herder it’s you.”
Ignoring the insult, and also that Danny had finally conceded that he was indeed Solo, Steve reached out towards the golden strands. “It’s so shiny. I bet it’s soft too.”
Intercepting the hand, and the increasingly disgusting cracker that it held, Danny redirected it towards Steve’s lax mouth. Steve’s love of Danny’s hair, and more specifically of tangling his fingers in it, was the stuff of legend, and the detective wasn’t risking a crumb conditioner mask.
“Eat your cracker, babe.” He was gratified when Steve started to gnaw half-heartedly at the cracker, though more of it fell onto his chest than into his mouth, reminding Danny of a six-foot version of Charlie, but at least he was getting the idea.
For two whole seconds.
“You called me ‘babe’.” Crumbs once more spewed forth from Steve’s mouth, and were Danny any less in love the chunk of half-masticated cookie that clung to Steve’s lower lip would end his sex life for good.
Even then it was a close run thing.
“I have a chance, right? ‘Cos you called me babe. So, you’re interested. I’m a real good shot, I could fight for your honour.”
“I’ve seen you riddled with bullets enough for multiple lifetimes, thanks all the same.”
“I wouldn’t get hit,” Steve’s tone was mulish and petulant at the very idea, tongue snaking out to lick at the mess on his lip, causing the clump to slip to his chin and then slip down his neck in what was probably the most repulsive, and hilarious, sight Danny had ever been privy to, and he had two children.
“Wouldn’t be so sure about that right now, buddy.” Danny had witnessed Steve conduct feats of incredible, practically impossible, physicality, but at that moment he doubted even he could have withstood even a gentle breeze.
“I’m a SEAL.” Steve tried to puff out his chest, only to wince in pain as the movement tugged at his new wound. He frowned down at his abdomen for a moment before dismissing the discomfort at Danny’s next words.
“So is he.”
The gasp that escaped Steve wouldn’t have been out of place in one of Grace’s favourite telenovelas and Danny had to bite down, hard, on his tongue to not laugh.
“What did I do to deserve this shit?” Danny asked the ceiling, put upon and questioning every single one of his life choices, as Steve muttered darkly about how his ‘brother’ had betrayed him.
Eager to put himself out of his misery, Danny grasped Steve’s left wrist and lifted the hand up in front of Steve’s face. A silver band that matched Danny’s own glinted in the bright lights where it sat on Steve’s ring finger.
“It’s you, you addle-brained amphibian. I married you.”
“I’m your husband?” Steve’s jaw went slack, and he turned his hand this way and that, prodding at the ring with his other hand, disbelieving his own eyes.
“According to the certificate you insisted on framing.” Of course, Steve had referred to it as a receipt when he’d hung in on their wall on their anniversary, but it had been a sweet gesture nonetheless.
Me?!”
“You.”
“I bought you that ring?”
“You did,” Danny confirmed, wondering why the hell he’d accepted it when Steve had dropped to one knee in the garage beside the Marquis. If he’d known where it would lead, he’d have asked Lou to don his golf cleats and knelt down for the face stomping he so deserved.
“Woooooow, I must really, really like you.”
“Considering you cracked open the ancient tomb known as your wallet for me? Yeah, I think you like me. Might even love me, just a little bit.”
“You love me, too?” There was a vulnerable edge to Steve’s tone, and Danny couldn’t help himself from shuffling closer to the bed, one hand resting heavily atop Steve’s knee.
“More than you can imagine,” he replied honestly, though at that moment he did wonder why he loved the goof quite so much.
The light returned to his husband’s eyes and he groped around for Danny’s hand, trying to pull Danny’s hand a little more north.
“I got a real good imagination. Lemme show you.”
As though anxious to demonstrate, Steve dropped the cracker from his other hand and reached for Danny’s shirt, tugging weakly at the fabric, trying to tug the other man onto the bed with him.
“Hey, hey hey, no funny business!”
“But we’re married,” cried Steve as he pawed at Danny’s buttons, huffing in annoyance when Danny sat back, the chair squeaking harshly on the floor as he pushed it away from the bed and out of harms reach. “Hey! Come back, c’mere.” Steve held his hands out, holding them up by his face.
“C’mon, I’ll keep my hands to myself, promise!”
Snorting, Danny pushed further away from the bed with another screech of metal on linoleum. “Liar,” he jabbed a finger at his husband. “Liar. You’re the handsiest guy I know.”
“You married me, though.” The smugness in Steve’s tone had Danny once more questioning that decision.
“You gonna at least show me the goods? If I’m not allowed to touch?”
“The goods? Am I gonna show you ‘the goods’? No, sincerely, I am not showing you the goods.”
“Please?” Of all things that Danny resented about the close relationship between his children and husband it was that it had taught Steve the fine art of wheedling and how to play Danny like a fiddle, all big eyes and soft voice. “I’ll keep my hands to myself, and we’re married, right? So I’ve seen it.”
“Then you don’t need to see it again, do you?”
Steve’s face suggested, quite firmly, otherwise.
“Dann-o, please? It’ll make me feel better!”
“Oh for…” Danny eyed the box of crackers in his lap and the abandoned one that lay atop crisp sheets. He looked back to his husband and contemplated his options.
The things one did for love.
“Will you eat your cracker if I do?”
“Huh?”
“The cracker, babe. You need to eat.” Cupping his hand around Steve’s wrist, Danny lifted Steve’s hand and showed him the half-eaten cookie, pressing it between lax fingers. A giraffe, if Danny guessed right, though decapitated now.
Figured.
“If I show you the goods, do a little twirl, debase my good person for your carnal edification, will you eat the cracker like a good boy?”
“Will you bend over?” Steve’s eyes lit up at the very thought and once more he tried to grope at Danny’s shirtfront, taking advantage of his proximity.
“Never again at this rate,” Danny vowed, sitting back and letting his husband’s hand drop heavily back to the mattress. “One rotation, one cracker. Deal?”
“Hmm-hmmm.”
Danny sighed. “Say it, Steven. If I get up, you’ll eat the cracker.”
“If I get up, you’ll eat the cracker.”
“Close enough.”
Resting the box of crackers on the floor, Danny stood with a sigh.
“Slowly,” Steve ordered with an attempt at a sexy wink. It looked more like he was being tazed.
“Divorces are expensive. This is your own fault, you vowed for better or for worse,” Danny muttered to himself under his breath as he walked to the end of the bed.
“What was that?” Steve didn’t look away from where he was staring at Danny’s crotch like he had X-ray vision.
“Nothing, Dear,” he replied as he slowly rotated on the spot, throttling the part of his brain that thrilled at the sound of Steve’s sharp intake of breath and appreciative whistle when he was facing away.
“Ooooh, yeah! Winner, winner chicken dinner!”
Unable to help himself, Danny broke into a wide grin, not missing his husband’s gasp of pleasure at the sight, though it didn’t stop him from insulting the oversized child. While the man was an abject moron most of the time, he was often an adorable one and from the moment they’d taken their relationship romantic, Danny had had to fight against the desire to give the other man everything he wanted when he turned baleful eyes at Danny.
“You like that, huh?” Danny completed the spin and returned to the chair, ignoring Steve’s moue of displeasure at the disappearance of what he clearly considered to be his husband’s best asset.
“Like it? That ass is really buttering my pancake.” More tazer-face from Steve, more throttling of that stupid traitorous part of his brain from Danny.
“Eat your cracker, you animal.”
“I’ll eat your cracker, alright.”
“I was sober when I married you. Do you know that?” Danny asked conversationally. “That was a decision I made in sound mind. Or as sound as possible after eight years with you.”
“Hold this,” Steve waved the remains of the cracker at his husband, interrupting his complaint.
“Why?” Eyeing the slobbery snack with distaste, the detective made no move to take it from his husband, though he did place his hand in the middle of Steve’s chest to push him flat on the bed, stalling his movements.
“I gotta get up so you’ll eat the cracker.” Steve bat at Danny’s hand, still weak as a kitten and smearing the moist neck of the giraffe along his forearm.
“Oh for fuck’s sake.”
They both realised at the same time that Danny’s hand rested upon Steve’s chest, just above the curve of one firm pec, and was, therefore, back in groping range of Steve’s freakishly long arms.
With a speed and strength Danny would have sworn thirty seconds earlier that the SEAL didn’t possess, Steve grabbed at Danny’s wrist, sliding his palm atop Danny’s hand and clutching tight.
“What you think you’re doing there, Steven?”
“Nothin’.” Steve glanced up at the detective through his ridiculous lashes. “Your hand looked lonely, so I’m gonna hold it for you.” Dry lips pressed kisses across Danny’s knuckles as Steve linked their fingers together and squeezed tight.
“I can’t believe I fell for this shit,” Danny griped, ignoring the heat blooming in his belly. Steve’s look of utter adoration never failed to affect him even after so long together. “Fucking SmoothDog.”
“Ya did though, you fell for me.” Steve ducked his head and grinned, Danny’s heart clenching at the bashful move despite the self-satisfaction weighing the other man’s tone.
Danny bit back on the, ‘like a tonne of bricks, you smug asshole,’ that hovered traitorously on the tip of his tongue.
“Stumbled, more like,” he said instead. “Tripped, at best.” The smile tugged at his lips unbidden, and before Danny could stop himself, he was matching Steve’s grin, wide and happy.
“Fuck, look at you! I hit the jackpot, my guy’s a model,” whooped Steve, eyes wide and shining as he drank in Danny’s smile. More kisses were peppered along the back of the hand he held, moving up towards Danny’s wrist, too-warm lips mouthing at the sensitive skin and making his husband shudder.
Which, even in his addled state, Steve noticed and took ruthless advantage of, tongue snaking out to trace the strong tendons of Danny’s forearm.
“You sure you married me, babe? That what we call each other, right? ‘Babe’? ‘Cos no way I got so lucky.”
“You're a dope.”
“And you should smile all the time; you’re like sunshine. Bet you’re my sunshine.” Danny had a moment’s warning, the time it took for Steve to take a deep breath, before the SEAL broke out into a heartfelt, but tuneless, rendition of ‘You Are My Sunshine’ that would wake the dead.
Able to resist for only so long, he was human after all, Danny gave into temptation, pulled out his phone with his free hand and opened the camera app.
“Smile, babe!”