All the Girls Out On the Stoop, Steve/Danny, NC-17.

[mirabella]

Title: All the Girls Out On the Stoop
Fandom: Hawaii 5-0, Steve/Danny, NC-17
Summary: Danny's Veela genes have never been a problem before now. Now? They're a problem.
Disclaimer: Regardless of where you might have come in from, I am not in any way, shape, or form affiliated with the OTW, Fanlore, or the AO3.

A/N: Danny's brother in this fic is an OC, not a spoiler, and therefore will get jossed sooner or later.





It's not until he's in the middle of the whole thing and looks back that Danny realizes something: when he heard the voice in Jack McGarrett's house where voices should not be because it was an active crime scene, he was already on his way to the garage. He tries to convince himself that it was just coincidence, and he really wasn't making straight for the garage in his attempt to figure out what smelled so fucking amazing in that house.

Danny's not actually very good at lying to himself. It's a problem.



His first clue that he's got trouble is when the gun-runner doesn't shoot him.

Or no, maybe it starts before that, when he wakes up that morning with that itch under his skin that feels like his temperature's up, in such a foul mood that even his Gracie better not set a foot out of line. Fortunately she's an angel, so by the time Danny drops her off at school he's in a little better a mood; but three hours later, when he's staring down the barrel of his own gun into the barrel of a gangster's, because that is how his life goes, he's wondering if it would really be so bad to pull a page out of Steve's book and throw the guy off a roof.

"I said, put the fucking gun down," he snarls. "So help me god, I'm having a shit day and I have no problem taking it out on you."

"You put your fucking gun down, haole," the gun-runner snaps back.

"Seriously?" Danny demands. "Are we seriously gonna do this?"

"No, I'm just gonna shoot you," the guy says.

And that's when it happens. That suddenly, a little voice in Danny's head says like hell you are, and something in him just… shifts a little.

He doesn't even know what it is. All he knows is that the guy fumbles his gun, actually drops it on the ground, and stares at Danny like Jesus was standing behind him making bunny ears behind his head.

Danny doesn't want to look around. "What?" he demands.

The gun-runner does this weird slouch and rubs the back of his head. It takes Danny a minute to figure out that he's trying to look cool, of all the weird-assed things. "Hey, brah," he says, sounding a lot friendlier than he did before he dropped his gun. "You know I'm the head of the Tong on this island?"

"What the fuck is the matter with you?" Danny asks him.

"Yeah, I could give you names of every big-shot gangster in Asia. Names and addresses. Wanna fuck?"

"What?" Steve demands from right behind the guy.

"Hey, I got this," Danny protests.

"Back off, man, I saw him first," the gun-runner says to Steve, puffing his reedy little chest out angrily.

"Shut up and stand there while I cuff you," Danny orders.

The gun-runner smirks back over his shoulder and sticks his hands behind his back. "Baby, I let you cuff me, you gonna let me stuff you?"

Okay, it's crude. Danny concedes this freely. He just doesn't think it's just cause for Steve to haul off and dickpunch the guy so hard that Danny's eyes water and he has to do the reflexive crotch-grab.

"You have the right to remain silent," Steve says, glowering down at the gun-runner snuffling on the ground at his feet.

Yeah, Danny realizes with a sinking feeling. This could be trouble.



The thing is, you wouldn't know it to look at Danny or his siblings, who are as American as G.I. Joe, but he's only a couple of generations removed from the Old Country. He's never even met his maternal grandparents and his mom is so tight-lipped about them that he figures there must be some serious bad blood there, and the way she tells it, it was even worse blood that brought her grandparents over from Europe. So for a while there everyone was pissed at each other; but now the American branch of the family is all settled in and big and boisterous, indistinguishable from the people whose ancestors staggered tipsily off the Mayflower to invent spike heels and Aqua Net, solid Jersey from one end of the DNA strand to the other.

Except. Except for that one little rung on the gene ladder that still thinks they're in the fucking Black Forest or somewhere. He's always known that little rung was there, lying in wait to screw up his life in some unspeakable way; but he's in his thirties now, for fuck's sake, he's been married and has a kid, and maybe, maybe, he was finally starting to let himself think he'd dodged that bullet.

Veela, his mom says, but Danny's never been able to find any country or ethnicity that looks or sounds like that. He's probably spelling it wrong. Or it's an ethnicity that's called different things depending on who's doing the calling and in what historical era, like Rom instead of gypsy. Danny knows jack shit about Veela culture. His mom doesn't collect folk art from it or make weird goulashes or anything. All he knows is that his Veela blood is why he's blond.

Oh, yeah. And the whole thing about how finding your mate will trigger a sort of fuck-or-die heat when the right time of the year rolls around, Danny knows about that one too.

He just was hoping it was only a metaphor, is all.



The next day – though if you'd asked Danny the day before if it was possible he would have said "No, and also fuck you" – the next day is worse.

Danny wakes up climbing the walls, horny like he hasn't been since seventh freaking grade, and also so short-tempered that even jerking off makes him mad. It takes four cups of coffee to get his head back in the game, and his day just gets worse from there, until 3:30 finds him – overcaffeinated, underfed, and still fucking horny – getting a strip torn right off his ass by his psycho boss in front of the HPD and every civilian in a three-block radius.

Danny would be pissed – like, punching pissed – if he weren't busy staring at Steve in utter bewilderment. In fact, everyone around Steve is staring at him in utter bewilderment, and no small amount of superstitious terror, like Steve's a volcano goddess and they've been slacking on the offerings.

"Hey, uh," Danny ventures when Steve reaches a point where he physically has to either stop shouting or collapse a lung. "You feeling okay?"

"No, I am not feeling okay, and you know why?" Steve bellows. "Because I almost lost my goddamn partner because he wouldn't wait five fucking minutes for backup! Will you look at – you're bleeding, where's the fucking ambulance?"

Danny has a cut on his head. It's dripped a little onto his shoulder. Danny's pretty sure one good dose of Shout will take care of it. Married life being what it is, he and Rachel traded a lot of tips for getting bloodstains out of clothing, and he was grateful for her laundry advice longer than he was grateful for her. Oh, and the cut on his head, a freaking band-aid will take care of that, the threat to his shirt if he doesn't get it in the wash soon is gonna be a lot more serious. "Jesus, will you calm down? It's just a scratch."

"It's a head wound! You could have a concussion!"

Off to the side, Kono is trying to physically shove Chin out into the middle of the situation without doing anything as potentially hazardous as moving. He's got to have a bruise the shape of her elbow in his ribs by now, but he's rooted into the earth with the power of his brain or something and isn't budging. In the meantime, Danny's a little concerned that Steve might actually have lost his mind.

Because, okay, the truth of the matter is that Danny might, by some definitions, have gone a little too hot into a hostage situation. On the other hand, the hostage-taker was a skinny teenager with a box-cutter who shut down an electronics store when they told him they wouldn't fix his computer in-house. Danny's only bleeding because the kid got in a lucky shot with a peripheral CD-ROM drive from 1994 while Steve was still talking to mall security. Danny's mother could have taken him down. The only reason the 5-0 is even there instead of doing something to stop the freighter full of high-powered armaments that is probably chugging toward Hawaii as they speak is that the kid's related to somebody and the Governor didn't want him sniped by overzealous cops, which pissed Steve off to begin with, not that that's been hard to do the last few days.

In short, nothing about the situation explains the way in which Steve "I fully expect gunfire to bounce right off the shield of my righteous glare" McGarrett is ripping Danny a new asshole for, of all things, being reckless. Danny's just… bewildered. A little hurt, a little annoyed, but mostly bewildered.

Steve's just getting going again when a nervous-looking EMT comes up on his flank, making sure to stay visible at all times. "Um," says the EMT unhappily. "Commander McGarrett?"

"What?" Steve swings on him, fully prepared to vent his inexplicable wrath on one more person who doesn't deserve it.

"We, um. Heard there were wounded? We got a call. Who is it that needs help?"

Steve gives him a look like the guy's just spit on his dad's grave, like he's equal parts disbelief at how incredibly stupid the guy must be and inability to decide which of the many methods of homicide the guy best deserves, and Danny's had about enough. It's bad enough Steve spills his stupid-ass neuroses all over Danny, but Danny did take a vow to protect and serve, after all.

"Hey," he says, "hey, McGarrett," and steps forward to put his hand on Steve's shoulder.

He fully expects to get it ripped off. Instead Steve's muscles go soft and loose under his hand, leaving him almost limp and shaking a little. McGarrett, shaking. For causes apparently unrelated to injuries or exhaustion. Danny really feels like he just needs to go home and pull the covers over his head, because this is freaking him out.

"My partner's hurt," Steve says with as close to politeness as he ever gets with outsiders. "He's got a head injury, can you take a look?"

"Sir, we really need to look at that," the EMT says to Danny, with the underlying subtext being not because otherwise you could go into a coma and die but I have a wife and kids, man, help me out with the crazy guy here.

Danny claps Steve on the shoulder again, then leaves his hand there, just in case. It's kind of a stretch, because Steve is a fucking redwood. "You," he says. "You're coming with me. I think you got hit in the head harder than I did."

"I didn't," Steve says, muted, reaching up to thumb a drip of half-dried blood away from Danny's temple. "And you shouldn't have gone in without me."

"Sure," Danny says consolingly. "Next time, you and me will double-team the ninety-eight pound teenager."

Steve stays calm after that, relatively speaking. Danny makes him sit on the back stoop of the ambulance while the EMT cleans Danny's forehead up, the two of them pressed up against each other from shoulder to knee. Danny sort of gets a contact high from it, a weird kind of buzzing contentment that follows him through the afternoon, so that when Kono nudges him and grins and calls him the Steve Whisperer, he just glares at her a little.

Steve isn't out of his space for more than three minutes for the rest of the day. Danny tries to be upset about that and doesn't quite succeed.



"I love you, baby," a six foot four, three hundred pound informant declares a couple of days later, staring at Danny with a horrible glassy-eyed soppiness. "Quit this job and come live with me, I'll get you the best cocaine on the island."

"What?" Danny yelps.

"What?" Steve bellows.

"Oh, my God," says Kono.

"Did you just –" Steve starts ominously, hand on the grip of his gun.

"Hey, hey, hey," Danny protests, waving his hands like he's bringing an 747 in for a landing on an aircraft carrier. They're standing on the top of a six-story parking garage overlooking downtown Honolulu, five feet away from a low wall, and Steve's working the Aneurysm Face; Danny's not sanguine about how this is going to end.

"No cocaine?" the informant says mournfully. "You just tell me what you want, baby, I'll get it for you. You want pakalolo? E? Horse? Oh, hey, I got…" He pats his pockets like he's rummaging for meth or something.

"You know you got the right to remain silent, right?" Danny feels obliged to say.

"Hey – hey, asshole," Steve snaps. "We were talking about gun shipments, remember?"

"That was before I met the love of my life, brah," the informant says, giving Danny a sickly leer that he seems to be trying to pass off as a loving smile.

"What is wrong with you?" Danny demands. He seems to be saying that a lot lately.

"Gun. Shipments," Steve says between his teeth. That vein in his neck is throbbing worryingly.

"Later, man," the informant says dismissively. "C'mon, baby, come here. Daddy gonna treat you good."

Steve slams into the informant, ninjas him in some way that's too fast for Danny to even see, and the next thing Danny knows, the informant is going over the wall like a pole-vaulter on his way to Olympic disaster.

"What in the!" Danny screeches so loud his throat hurts. "You just! I don't even know what to! What in the flying fuck are you!"

"Ow, motherfucker," says the informant from somewhere that doesn't sound six stories down.

Danny and Kono rush the wall and hang over it, peering down. The garage is tiered on this side; the informant is lying on a terrace where the roof of the next floor down sticks out, looking disgruntled but not grievously injured. Danny's knees go a little weak with relief.

"You knew, right?" he demands, glaring back over his shoulder at Steve. "You knew the roof was right there so the guy wasn't actually gonna fall to his death?"

Steve crosses his arms and looks sullen.

"I would trade places with Tila Tequila's personal assistant right now, that's how low I would go to be living someone else's life instead of mine," Danny says.

Kono pats him on the shoulder. That weird noise from behind them might or might not be Steve actually growling low in his throat; but Kono takes her hand away fast anyway, then does a sort of casual yoga stretch and looks out over the city, like a cat who doesn't want anyone to think the dog had any influence on her decision to move. Danny is surrounded by very strange people.

In the car on the way back to the office, he does not stop yelling until he runs out of breath. He tries to yell while he's inhaling too, it just doesn't work all that well.

"He was trying to bribe a 5-0 officer," Steve grumbles, eyes fixed on the road. "With drugs."

"So you threw him off a roof? Are you actually psychotic? I mean, I know I joke about it, but if this is a real thing, Jesus, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have made fun of your very genuine mental illness. Can you forgive me and just take your fucking meds?"

It's too goddamn close in the car. Danny's roasting. It's making him even shorter-tempered; that and the fact that he can't get away from the leathery cop-smell of Steve's Kevlar vest and, faint underneath it, the saltwater smell of Steve's skin. It's making him crazy, not being able to quite pin down exactly what that scent is reminding him of. He just wants to climb into Steve's lap and sniff him, and considering that Steve's doing eighty on the freeway, that might not be such a good idea.

Okay, so maybe one of Steve's more annoying mutant powers is the ability to smell fucking amazing even when he's covered in blood and six kinds of grime and just had to jump out a window onto a trash heap in the course of a foot pursuit. It just… well, Danny wants to say that it doesn't usually go straight to his dick like this, but there's that thing where he's bad at lying to himself, and really the best he can say is that he's usually a lot better at ignoring it.

"I'm not psychotic!" Steve protests. "Forgive me for, for taking insults to the professionalism and ethics of my team personally!"

"You go ahead and take them personally!" Danny yells. "You take them any damn way you want them, but when it comes to throwing people off roofs like you were a bit player in The Godfather – Jesus fuck, will you turn on the air conditioner? It's a hundred degrees in this car."

Steve gives him a weird look. "It's winter, Danny. It's seventy degrees out. And your window's cracked."

"Freakin' seventy degrees in winter, don't even get me started," Danny says, tugging on his collar. His tie loosens a little bit under his fingers.

Steve makes a tiny noise that in anyone but Steve might have almost been a whimper. It's probably called something way more manly when SEALs do it. Danny shoots him the side-eye. "What?"

"Nothing," Steve says, snapping his eyes back to the road. His hands are tight on the wheel, tendons standing out in lean lines down the soft insides of his forearms the way they would if he were grabbing onto his headboard for dear life, sweat slick over all that bare skin –

It is so hot in this car Danny might actually throw up.

"Hey, are you okay?" Steve asks.

"Fine, fine, I'm good," Danny croaks.

Steve cranks up the air conditioner and keeps it on all the way back to the office. It helps, but only a little.



"Yeah, I can see why you didn't call Ma with this," Danny's brother Mike says that night.

Danny flops back onto his bed, clutching his phone. He's feeling better but there's still that weird electricity crawling under his skin and heating him up from the inside out. "Just tell me you know for a fact that the whole fuck-or-die thing is a myth."

"I don't know that," Mike says disobligingly. "I don't think anybody knows that. As far as I know, the last person in our family who had a mate was Great-Aunt Gretchen, and she married him."

Danny frowns and changes the channel on the muted TV. "Does that ever bug you?" he asks finally. "Thinking you might have a, I don't know, a soul mate or some shit out there and you just never found her?"

"No, 'cause I thought the whole goddamn thing was just a family superstition like Grandma Emily and her horseshoe over the door, just like you did. Look, have you been to a doctor? Are you sure you don't have leprosy or something?"

"Leprosy, what the fuck?"

"Because Molokai's right there, I mean," Mike explains. "With the leper colony."

"Is there even still a leper colony on – no, you know what, this is not what we're discussing. We're discussing the very real possibility that if I don't have gay sex with my batshit insane partner I'm gonna die."

"Well, do you want to have gay sex with your batshit insane partner?" Mike asks in what he probably thinks is a reasonable tone.

"How should I know?" Danny demands. "I mean, okay, I have up to this point been sort of congratulating myself on not tripping him right down onto the floor of the garage in an active crime scene, but what if it's all just pheromones or something? What if I wake up the next morning and realize I just thought I wanted to fuck him because I was under the influence?"

"God knows we've all been there," Mike says philosophically.

"Yeah, but in my case I'll be stuck with him for life."

There's a thoughtful silence on the other end of the line. "So you really want to do him," Mike says finally. "You feel like that about anyone else?"

"No. Wait, yeah. Milla Jovovich."

"Anyone real, smartass."

Danny sighs, defeated. "No. Like, not even – no. As soon as this shit started it's like everybody else on the planet got completely unappealing overnight. Even Kono in a bikini isn't doing it for me anymore and I'd have sworn to God I'd have to be dead before that didn't make my dick sit up and take notice. If you ever meet her cousin, do not tell him I said that."

"So it's him, but you don't know if it's just pheromones or what," Mike says. "Okay, I got an idea."

"If this ends in me hiding from the cops in the water hazard of a miniature golf course again I'm going to kick your ass," Danny says gloomily.



"What is that under your nose?" Kono asks, staring at him in fascination.

"Ids Bigks," Danny explains.

Chin blinks at him. "Message not received, brah. Retransmit."

Thoroughly annoyed, Danny pulls off his nose plugs. "It's Vicks," he clarifies. "You know, like the shit the coroners use when they've got smelly cadavers?"

"We don't smell like cadavers," Kono says, sounding a little affronted. "Unless Steve gets blood all over him and thinks questioning suspects won't wait for him to shower it off. I admit he can get a little rank when that happens."

Danny has honest to God never noticed. He sighs and puts the nose plugs back on. The damn office smells like Steve, even when he's not here. Danny hates his life, and also the way that smell makes him want to curl up and purr like a sleepy cat. "I'm getting a cold," he explains as clearly as he can. "My brother said to try this."

"You need echinacea tea," Chin corrects him.

"He needs to gargle salt water," Kono argues.

"He needs to get in the car," Steve says from right behind him. "Houlihan's headed out of town, which means the shipment's not coming into the docks."

Danny jumps half out of his skin when he hears Steve's voice. He doesn't think Steve's ever been able to sneak up on him like that. He turns to Steve, and goddamnit, it's like Steve's a ghost or something, or on the other side of a glass wall that Danny can't get through; Danny can't smell shit except Vicks and it's like Steve's only half there. The part of Danny's brainstem that he's starting to think contains some sort of Veela Mr. Hyde really doesn't like that, wants to take the nose plugs off and wash his face and, oh God, pin Steve against the wall and rub all over him until their pheromones are all back where they should be.

It's not that he can't smell Steve smelling like Steve that's got his Veela brainstem in a pissy mood, he realizes with a sinking heart. It's that he can't smell Steve smelling like Danny. He had no idea his fucking nose was this picky, because up until this point it's pretty much done what noses do and not given him any trouble unless a perp puked in the back of the squad car or something. Also, and clearly Danny might as well just go home and eat his service revolver because the fuck-or-die thing is obviously not a myth like he thought it was, he wants those cargo pants to hit the floor so bad he can taste Steve's cock at the back of his throat.

Fatalistic, Danny sighs, takes off the nose plugs, and fishes in his pocket for a kleenex. "My brother has stupid ideas sometimes," he says, and blows his nose.



Callum Houlihan started out his career as a two-bit gangster wearing an ironic "No Irish need apply" t-shirt and swaggering around with what Danny has to concede is a pretty convincing Belfast accent despite the fact that he was born in Omaha, Nebraska and hasn't been any nearer to Ireland than the Macy's St. Patrick's Day Parade. He started out pushing roofies at clubs, where he quickly evinced such a gift for ferreting out weapons sales opportunities that even the Triad took notice. Houlihan's still a free agent – Danny suspects him of holding out for the IRA to open up a satellite office in Honolulu – but he's a successful enough one to have an expensive house on the beach and half a dozen accounts in the Caymans.

He's also on the move, which means that Steve is driving at insane speeds down things that are not roads no matter what he thinks, in an attempt to close to a decent tailing distance. Danny finally puts his phone on speaker and lets Chin give directions out loud, because trying to relay them to Steve only resulted in ball-shrinking donut turns when Chin said something like "Left here – no, that left, the one you just passed."

He's also fucking smart, is Houlihan. He's just good at hiding it, which is why people tend to forget it until, e.g., they come around a corner too fast to stop in time to avoid t-boning a 1975 Cadillac blocking the road with half a dozen armed bodyguards standing around it.

The airbag slams into Danny's face, which, okay, is better than the dashboard slamming into his face, but not by much; it still dazes him for a few crucial seconds too long, and before he knows which way is up he's being hauled out of the car and thrown onto the ground behind it. Danny opens his eyes, and the first thing he sees is the barrel of a machine gun in his face; the second is Steve, white-faced, dropping his gun, putting up his hands, and going down on his knees.

Turns out that Steve, scared shitless and on his knees in front of another man with a gun, is pretty much all Danny's Veela brainstem needs to see.

"Look, I dropped my gun, see?" Steve says. "Now get yours out of my partner's face."

Danny still doesn't know what that is that shifts over in his head. He just lets it shift, fast and easy, and watches the guy holding the gun on him go cross-eyed. "Hey, uh. You want to give me that gun?"

The guy almost brains Danny with the grip in his haste to hand it over. "Sure, sure!" he babbles. "This is an awesome gun, it's a Daewoo K11 with an onboard targeting computer and an overbarrel grenade launcher –"

"Yeah, right, thanks," Danny says, and shoots him in the shoulder.

He rolls to his feet and watches every head around snap in his direction. Including Steve's, though Steve's expression is not so much stupid lust as Aneurysm Face with a side of incredulity, like he can't believe Danny's putting himself on the front line like this instead of waiting for Steve to rush off and put himself on the front line.

Not that it matters. Because wow, that Veela brainstem Danny's getting so intimately acquainted with, it's on one hell of a power trip right now.

"Okay, boys," Danny purrs, sighting through the electronic scope, wow, very nice, "let's see who can drop their guns for me the fastest."

Steel starts hitting dirt like a very loud rain. Steve's hand drops to his empty holster for a split second before he gets hold of himself, comes up off the ground like the wrath of God, and takes out the three goons nearest to him with a roundhouse kick and a couple of blindingly fast throat punches. Danny's deep inner conviction that Steve kicking ass is the hottest goddamn thing he's ever seen doesn't keep him from shooting another goon who snaps out of his daze long enough to grab part of the front bumper and come up on Steve's blind side with it. That leaves two, and Steve vaults over the car and lays them out before they've managed to tear their eyes away from Danny's ass and remember that their weapons exist.

A minute later, it's just Steve, Danny, and a handful of unconscious and bleeding goons. And Chin's voice, still coming over speakerphone with an edge of alarm.

Steve stops glaring around and ducks through the shattered car window to rummage for the phone. Danny takes deep breaths and tries to shut down the Veela thing, and also to stop staring at Steve's ass. He's only successful at one of them, and it ain't the staring, but he's successful enough to start going around zip-tying some bad guys.

"Chin," Steve says. "We need an HPD van out here for seven perps. And we need a new car, fast, before Houlihan gets away with those guns."

"HPD's on its way," Chin says. "I'll have then send a van and an unmarked car too. Are you guys okay?"

"Are you counting whiplash?" Danny grumbles, straightening up from zipping Goon Number Three.

"We're fine, gotta go," Steve says in a strangled voice, and drops the phone.

"Hey," Danny protests.

"Would it have killed you to stay down on the ground and let me work?" Steve demands.

"Work?" Danny yelps, ablaze with righteous indignation. "Work what? The doomed hostage look, is that what you were working right there?"

"I had a plan!"

"You had a – Jesus Christ. I cannot believe I have to explain to you that any plan that involves you being unarmed, on your knees, in front of a goon with a gun, is by definition not a good plan!"

"It was a good plan!" Steve insists, looking more crazy-eyed by the minute. "Just, you got in the middle of it before I –"

"You had a plan like I got Wynona Ryder's phone number, goddamn it, you admit it!" Danny orders.

Steve opens his mouth to argue, then at the last minute just can't. "He had a gun in your face, Danny," he says instead. "I would've… But I did have a plan, okay? I did."

Danny's heart does a weird melty thing. This is not the place for weird melty things, so Danny covers it up by smirking a little. "Yeah, well, turns out I'm capable of getting guns out of my face all by myself, who knew?"

He has more comments along those lines to make, and they're good comments, too. Sadly, that's as far as he gets before his back slams into the side of the car and Steve is pinning him there with his whole body, causing Danny's entire nervous system to become a confusing bundle of ow ow ow and ohshit and oh god yes.

"You did that on purpose," Steve snarls.

"I – what? Jesus, get off me, you nut case, we've got arrests to make."

Sure enough, appealing to duty makes the crazy-eye ebb a little, and Steve's grip on Danny eases down from imminent tissue damage to still not going anywhere.

"Okay," Steve says, sounding eerily lucid. "Okay."

"Okay?" Danny prompts, because seriously. Danny is not made of iron. If Steve pins him against this car for a minute longer, Danny's going to take those goddamn cargo pants off with his teeth.

"But you never do that again," Steve says, and Danny just has time to process the fact that Steve still looks pissed off but mostly he looks hurt and unhappy, when Steve leans in and fucking smells him, inhaling in a long slow line up the side of Danny's neck from collarbone to ear with the tip of his nose barely brushing Danny's skin.

"Better now?" Danny asks, and to his horror he actually means it.

"Yeah," Steve says, and shifts back, looking a little dazed. There are sirens in the distance, coming closer. "I'm… yeah."

He doesn't go far, though. Which is fine with Danny, because despite having gotten a prime lungful of Steve's-not-hurt himself, Danny doesn't really want to let him out of his sight. A lot of mayhem ensues when Steve is unsupervised. It's just practical.



"The Vicks didn't make it stop," he tells Mike that night. "And the gun runner got away."

"Shit," says Mike. "You might have to man up and mate for life with this guy."

"I'm pretty sure he's –" Danny starts, then has to stop and figure out just where he's going with this. Even before this whole thing started, he would have been hard pressed to convincingly argue that Steve was entirely straight. "Well. Mostly straight. And he's got this girl he sees sometimes, y'know?"

"Is there any point at which you have wanted to rip this woman's face off?"

"What – no! Number one, Jesus Christ, if Ma heard you talk like that about a lady she'd kick your ass, and number two, Catherine can commandeer intelligence satellites to track perps on the freeway. I fuckin' love her. I may mate for life with her instead of Steve."

"Then she can't be much of a threat," Mike diagnoses. "Also, I may have heard you mention this Steve guy's name in conversation once or twice. Dude is not straight. There is no reason for straight guys to do the shit he does, and I speak to you as a straight guy, so I know."

"Yeah, but," Danny says, and then is quiet while he rummages around in the refrigerator for a beer and pops off the cap.

"But?" Mike prompts.

"But now I don't know," Danny says quietly. "If it's me, I mean, or if it's the Veela pheromone shit. Honest to God, Mike, I will die before I rope Steve into something he never would have wanted just because I accidentally roofied him."

There's a minute more of silence before Mike sighs. "Shit. You're my favorite brother so I hope to hell you don't mean that, but I know you do."

"Yeah." That's about all Danny can say. The thought that Steve might not want him is enough to make the Veela part of him want to honest to God sit on the kitchen floor and cry. Fortunately, Danny reminds himself, that part of him is small, so there will be no sitting on the floor and crying tonight. He decides he's only going to have one beer, to make sure.

"You in love with this guy? For real, not just because it's fuck-or-die season?"

"Wouldn't make any difference if I was, I'm still not roofie-ing him," Danny says, deeply uncomfortable. He shuts up after that, hoping that Mike will forget he's a Williams and not push Danny into admitting something he doesn't even want to think.

"Okay," Mike says finally. "Time for Plan B."

"Your Plan A sucked."

"Excuse you, Plan A was brilliant. It just didn't work. Plan B is brilliant and will work, or will at least buy you some time and maybe make it so you don't fucking die and leave your family devastated, so shut up and listen while I tell you how it's gonna be."

And that is how Danny finds out that when Kono sets out to cockblock, it looks a lot like one of those NFL bone-crunchers where some poor bastard spins horizontally through the air and gets carried off the field on a stretcher.



Mike's theory, and Danny's pretty sure it's a crappy theory that is the very definition of grasping at straws but the point is that Mike has a theory and Danny doesn't and beggars can't be choosers – Mike's theory is that just because finding your mate sends you into a fuck-or-die heat during mating season doesn't mean it's necessarily your mate you have to fuck. Granted that's how the evidence trends, since the heat thing has made Danny so horny he's about to lose his mind while at the same time making people who are not Steve look about as appealing as chopped liver; but Mike's been reading Richard Dawkins and theorizes that the Veela genes are not too bright and the "fuck" part is more important to them than either the "mate" part or the "or die" part. So if Danny can overcome the part of the heat that makes his mate the only one that's attractive to him, Mike reasons, the genes might be fooled into thinking that Danny's done the mating-for-life thing and going back into hiding.

Danny's a little worried that Mike is anthropomorphizing their communal DNA, but Mike insists that it's only a metaphor for explaining complex biological processes in an easily understandable manner, so Danny swallows his pride and hits the singles bar.

He keeps the whole pheromone thing clamped down as best he can, because seriously, Danny's philosophy on bar hookups can be pretty much summed up by the words No Roofies, but it doesn't matter. Within half an hour he's got six drinks lined up in front of him and two guys hovering over him, both of whom bear a distinct resemblance to Steve, one of whom appears to be a Nobel laureate in rocket science and the other of whom is currently marketing a single-dose cure for cancer. Neither of them are really doing it for Danny, but he's just decided that he could maybe get it up for the cancer guy when the door opens and Kono walks in with a passel of girlfriends.

He sort of tries to edge behind Rocket Science Guy, but too late – she's spotted him. He gives her the half-assed "Hey, love ya, trying to get laid here" bar salute, and she rolls her eyes at him in amusement and pulls out her cell phone. Probably calling Chin to laugh at him, Danny thinks, and grabs one of his drinks off the bar.

When Rocket Science guy attempts to impress Danny with his drinking prowess and then has to stumble away to the bathroom to puke, Danny counts it as a win. All he has to do is seal the deal with Cancer Guy and he's home free, and not a moment too goddamn soon, because speaking of pheromones, all the sex hormones floating around in this bar are making his head spin, not to mention getting him hard. He's just started to think that maybe he ought to just angle Cancer Guy into a discreet dark corner when he catches sight of Kono again. She's still on the phone, only now she's looking over at Danny with narrow-eyed displeasure and appears to be reporting to someone – Chin, please God, or her mother, or freakin' Rachel for all Danny cares, just not Steve – on his every move.

Okay, it's hard not to lose the mood with Kono giving him the evil eye.

"Hey," he says, cutting Cancer Guy off in the middle of a description of the time he saved twelve Romanian orphans from an Al-Qaeda suicide bomber. "What do you say we get out of here?"

Cancer Guy looks like he's won the lottery. "Great!" he enthuses, and Danny winces and tries to get his dick to ignore the reminder that this is not in fact Steve. "Oh, hey, my Maserati's in the shop so all I've got is my sister's Range Rover, but –"

"Awesome," Danny cuts him off. "There's a motel a few blocks from here. Got a room already. Let's roll."

The great thing about guys is that you can be blunt. Rachel would have kicked him in the balls for that, but Cancer Guy just beams at him and slides a hand low onto his back to guide him toward the door. They're halfway there, so close to safety that Danny can taste it, when Kono materializes in front of him like the vengeful dead mistress in a horror movie.

"Danny," she says very loudly, and pokes him in the chest. "You motherfucker, you got me pregnant!"

The entire bar probably does not come to a screeching halt around Danny, but it sure as fuck feels like it.

"He said he loved me," she sniffs at Cancer Guy. "Yeah. And then he was all like 'Baby, I'm clean and I'm shooting blanks, we don't need a rubber.' Well, I haven't gotten my test results back yet so I don't know about the clean thing, but he's sure as hell not shooting any damn blanks."

"Oh my God, what in the actual fuck are you doing?" Danny stammers out now that his vocal cords have somewhat recovered function. "Do you and Chin have a bet or something? Look, um – Ray, it's Ray, right? Kono's a teammate of mine. At work. We have never actually had sex. I would know if I'd had sex with her, and I have not."

Kono gives a loud and deeply disdainful snort. Cancer Guy is eyeing both of them nervously.

"Yeah, we work together," she snaps. "Us and his wife."

"Jesus Christ," Danny says, catches Kono above the elbow, and tugs her a few steps away. "Look. Kono. I beg of you, do not do this. It's literally a matter of life and death that I get laid tonight or in the very near future, okay, so have mercy on me and tell the guy you were just fucking around. Please?"

The way Kono is glaring at him doesn't bode well for his chances of getting laid… well, ever again, really. "So I called Chin and told him about how you were at the bar picking up Steve lookalikes," she says in a deceptively conversational tone. "You know what Chin said?"

"I am pretty sure you're gonna tell me whether I want to know or not."

"Chin said, 'Oh my God, stop him from doing that or Steve will get put away on an aggravated homicide charge for real.' And I started thinking and realized that not only was he right, but Steve would be broken-hearted. Broken-hearted and LWOPped. Which would mess things up at the office so bad that the 5-0 might get disbanded, and that would be so, so bad, Danny, for every one of us but especially for Chin. Do you know what I'm going to do to you if my cousin has to go back to selling popcorn shrimp to haoles in sock garters because you couldn't keep your dick in your pants?"

"Steve doesn't have to know, Kono, jeez! How is he gonna know unless one of you tells him?"

"He's Steve," Kono says with what Danny's really afraid is irrefutable logic. "He'll find out."

"So, what, I'm never supposed to have sex again?"

"Not until you get whatever this is worked out with Steve," Kono tells him. "And don't even think you're going to walk out of this bar and go somewhere else, Danny Williams. I already called the rest of the cousins and put out an APB."

"Kono," Danny says. "I beg of you. Do not cockblock me this one time, this one and only time, and I'll work out whatever you want me to work out with Steve until you're completely satisfied that any and all issues are worked out between us. We'll work out a friggin' laundry schedule. Just do not keep me from getting into this guy's pants, because you have no idea how much is riding on it. Please. Please."

Kono is a good-hearted woman, and Danny can see her starting to thaw a bit under his groveling. Sadly, she shakes her head anyway. "Sorry, brah. Chin was really close with Steve's dad so he feels like he's got a responsibility, and he made me promise to keep your pants zipped."

Danny risks a glance off to the side. Cancer Guy is nowhere to be seen. "Shit," he sighs, wilting in just about every sense of the term.

Kono pats him on the shoulder. "Danny, sorry, really," she says, sounding like she means it. "But there are only four of us, you know? We have to keep things on an even keel. Also Steve threw a three-hundred-pound guy off a roof for coming on to you, so if you're not gonna go there you should probably spell that out for him."

"This shit never happened to me back in Jersey," Danny says gloomily, and goes home to jerk off.



Danny's the last one in in the morning despite the fact that he deliberately came in fifteen minutes early so he could have some alone time in his office to drink a gallon of coffee and put himself together before anyone else came in. He can hear voices floating out from the debriefing room, and worse, he feels like he's walked into some sort of four-alarm Steve fire, like those PSAs from his childhood where they always tell you to crawl out of the house on the ground so the smoke won't fill up your lungs and choke you to death – not even the smell of him this time, but just the feel of his presence, thick as a blanket. For a weird moment he actually wonders if the Steve is less dense down on the floor. About a dozen "stop, drop, and roll" jokes pile up behind his eyeballs, but since they're competing for head space with a blistering headache, they die out pretty fast.

Things go from bad to worse when Steve looks up from the computer table and gives him that smile like Danny is six brand-new handguns in pineapple wrapping paper strapped to the back of a pony. It gets worse because at some point the Veela brainstem figured out that Danny almostalmostalmost got laid and failed to seal the deal, and wow, is it pissed. He jerked off three times in the shower this morning before the water even ran cold, he feels like he's running a hundred and ten degree fever, and all he wants in the world right now is to walk over there and bite one of those tattoos. He doesn't even care which one, though if he does get a vote, that stupid tramp stamp is going to get a hickey in it so fast.

Chin and Kono are giving him distinctly grim "I know what you tried to do last night and I better never catch you doing it again" looks. Considering that Steve doesn't get that look when he throws people off roofs, Danny's feeling a little put-upon.

"You feeling okay, Danno?" Steve asks, frowning. His whole body's gone on alert, like he thinks the best way to cure the flu or whatever is to intimidate the virus to death.

"Yeah," Danny says, not quite as firmly as he intended. "Just… maybe a little under the weather."

"Big night last night?" Steve asks, looking back down at the table monitor; his body's still on alert, but not in the good way now, and he's working up to Aneurysm Face like he's going to blow straight past it to Immunity Means I Can Shoot Out Kneecaps Face.

"No," Danny snaps, giving Kono and Chin a sour look. "I did not have a big night last night. In fact, I had a pretty crap night last night. Not a lot of sleep was involved, and not in the festive way, if you take my meaning."

"Come over here and help us go through these cargo manifests, it'll make you feel better," Steve tells him, scowling down at the table.

"Wow, cargo manifests," Danny says glumly. "It's like it's my birthday."

It's not so bad, though – the glass is cool against his overheated skin, and it's like a puzzle, trying to match cargos and figure out what ships are running under or over capacity in about the weight of a gun shipment. He's just gotten into the swing of it when a beautifully fragrant, gloriously huge cup of coffee moves into his field of vision and lands on the manifest he's looking at.

"Happy birthday," Steve says into his ear, so close Danny can feel the heat of his body all up and down his own back. "What've you got?"

No brain capacity, is what Danny's got right now, because his spine is melting under the warmth of Steve's skin and his nerves are purring with contentment and slow arousal. Just having Steve stand there is like waking up slow to the warm sun on his skin, nowhere to be and a nice easy round of morning sex ahead of him. "Uh," he says, trying valiantly to make an answer to Steve's question come out of his mouth instead of something godawful like C'mere, baby, take those off. "Nothing yet."

"Jesus, you're burning up," Steve says, concerned. His hand comes down on the small of Danny's back and smoothes up, long and slow, until his fingers are laced into Danny's hair at the nape of his neck. "Danno. You're sweating right through your shirt."

"Nothin', it's nothing," Danny croaks.

"Bullshit, it's nothing." Steve's hand tightens a little on the back of Danny's neck. If he'd just step the fuck back then maybe Danny could think again, but no, not Steve "Personal space what?" McGarrett. "I'm taking you home."

Those words need to never come out of Steve's mouth in Danny's presence again, he decides. Also, the Veela brainstem can just fucking stop doing the end-zone dance, because I'm taking you home means I'm dropping you off at your lonely rathole apartment and not, as it seems to believe, I'm taking you back to my place where we will have wall-slamming sex for eighteen straight hours and then barbecue something.

Chin comes out of the records room, takes three steps into the room, catches sight of Steve and Danny, and does a strange little sort-of-moonwalk that reverses his forward trajectory as smoothly as a wave ebbing.

"Chin," Steve says in his brook-no-bullshit voice. Chin, who for whatever reason is not looking happy to be in the room just then, just looks at him with a Why, God? expression on his face. "I'm taking Danny home. He's sick. We'll be out for the rest of the day."

"Where are you going?" Danny puts enough brain cells together to ask. Steve's hand is still sitting on the back of his neck. If he leaves it there any longer, Danny's brainstem is going to start think it and Steve are going steady, and that's not going to be any good for anyone.

"I'm taking you home," Steve repeats with iron patience.

Which would be bad enough, it really would. Except that just then his hand tightens on the back of Danny's neck and Danny's knees just give, both of them, good and bad united in their complete unwillingness to hold up his weight. For a minute he thinks he's going to break his teeth on the monitor table; but then Steve grabs him, and only the reflexes honed during a long year of being the shortest ninth grader at Holy Cross keep Danny from getting swept off his feet like the damsel in distress he is not.

"Ambulance?" Chin asks with that vaguely fretful expression on his face that means he's really worried.

"Houlihan," Danny points out hoarsely. He just, Jesus, needs to sit down for a minute.

"Houlihan is dead to me," Steve informs him. "Chin, lock up."

"Hey," Danny protests, but it does him about as much good as he expects it to. By the time he gets his feet under him again, Steve has dumped him into the truck, buckled him in, and screeched out into the street so fast that he nearly sends a pickup into a shave ice stand.

"Look," Danny tries. "I'm not sick. Exactly."

Steve gives him the Irritated Frog face. His face seriously is made out of rubber when it's not cemented into the I Am A Navy SEAL Rarrr face. It would be hilarious if it weren't such a turn-on, and oh God, does Danny ever not need that right now. "You're not sick," Steve says with deep skepticism. "I can feel your fever from all the way over here, but you're not sick."

"Will you watch the road?" Danny croaks, then leans his head back against the headrest and tries desperately to think cool thoughts.

"So what exactly is wrong with you if you're not sick?" Steve prods him.

"Malaria," Danny blurts out.

Steve raises an eyebrow. "Malaria."

God, that eyebrow is fucking distracting. Danny wants to straddle Steve right there in the driver's seat and grind off on him while Steve raises that eyebrow at him. Oh, fuck, this is bad. "Yeah, malaria. I, um, caught it while we were on vacation one time. It flares up."

"Do you have any idea how many cases of malaria I've seen? Just so we're clear, the exact number is 'a whole goddamn lot,' okay?"

"Will you just take me home," Danny manages, strangled. Then he wishes he hadn't been looking straight at Steve when he said it, because he would maybe have missed the way it hits Steve like a baseball bat between the eyes.

Aw, shit, come on, no, Danny thinks, and squeezes his eyes closed in the desperate hope that if he keeps them closed long enough he'll wake up in New Jersey with a wife and live-in kid and one rung fewer in his DNA.

That pain at the thought of being Steve-less might actually be the Veela part of him chewing on his aorta. There's not much he'd put past it at this point.



It's not entirely surprising when they pull up outside Steve's house instead of Danny's apartment. That doesn't mean it's any less inconvenient.

"Dammit, McGarrett, no. Just take me back to my place, will you?" Danny whines. "Come on, I just wanna do the animal crawling back to its den thing for a couple of – are you even listening to me? McGarrett!"

Too late. Steve's already opening Danny's car door and manhandling him out. This makes Danny's body feel ridiculously good but appears to be offensive to the Veela part of his brainstem, which is loudly insisting that he ought to be the one doing the manhandling. Meanwhile, Steve is babbling.

"Look, will you just come inside where I can take care of you? Because I can. Take care of you. I've got aspirin for your fever and –"

Danny's heart sinks straight down to his toes, because that's not Steve. That's the Veela roofies talking with Steve's vocal cords. Danny doesn't really like the sound. "No," he says accordingly, planting his feet with a sudden surge of determination. "I changed my mind. Take me to the hospital."

He doubts there's a doctor in the world going to know what to do with Veela heat, but it's got to be easier to cope with than Roofied Steve.

Steve, however, is not on board with the hospital plan. First he looks sort of like Danny has slapped him, and ouch, those huge blue eyes really make Danny want to say ridiculous sappy things and kiss it better, which is so much less dignified than just wanting to rip Steve's clothes off and fuck him blind that Danny kind of wants to shoot himself. Then Steve's expression firms up into I'm Busting Into This Meth Lab and You Cannot Stop Me face and he steps up right into Danny's space and looms over him.

God damn, Steve's a big guy.

"Look, you kept trying to say you weren't even sick," he points out, sounding rational enough for the moment. Or, well. As rational as Steve ever sounds. "That's fine. I respect that. But if you think I'm letting my partner have seizures on my front lawn because he couldn't make up his mind about where he wanted to go then that fever really has scrambled your brain, so we're going inside and getting it taken care of before the damage is permanent."

Danny is trying to be an active participant in this conversation. He really is. But the truth is he's gotten so derailed by how freaking good Steve smells that all he can manage is, "Um."

"Inside," Steve says hoarsely. "Right now."

Danny sort of feels like he should stand his ground, here, but the unspoken or I will fuck your brains out right here on the lawn in front of God and the neighbors has him hightailing it obediently into the house, because there is going to be no fucking in front of the neighbors.

Actually, there will be no fucking at all, he informs his libido sternly. His libido somehow manages to make the Steve McGarrett Meth Lab Face back at him.

God, it's roasting in this house. He doesn't see how Steve can stand it. Feeling a little faint, Danny leans back against the arm of the couch and pulls his tie loose.

Steve shuts the door behind them and turns back to Danny. "First thing we should do is get you in the…" He trails off, staring at Danny's neck like a vampire on a low-iron diet.

"In the?" Danny prompts. He fidgets uncomfortably against the couch, trying to arrange himself a little more stably, shifting his legs apart to take the weight off his bad knee.

"You took off your tie," Steve observes.

"Yeah? I do that on occasion."

"You do that in front of people who aren't me?"

Danny takes one look at Steve's expression and decides that bald-faced lying is the better part of valor. "No. The tie removal is a very private thing and I don't do it in front of other people, but since God knows you are the exception to many, many rules –"

"Jesus Christ," Steve states in a weirdly even tone; and the next thing Danny knows Steve is pinning him to the couch by the hips, about a dozen octopus arms sliding all over him while Steve buries his face in Danny's neck and just breathes him in like that's enough to get him off all by itself.

"Hey!" Danny squawks, grabbing hold of Steve's shirt.

"Did I ever tell you about the time my team and I liberated Qatar?" Steve pants against Danny's skin, then draws his tongue in a slow, damp line right up the side of Danny's neck.

"You know, the worst part is that I genuinely don't know if you're exaggerating," Danny manages, unable to keep himself from going limp against Steve's hold. Well, limp in the muscles, anyway. He's so wound up that all it's going to take is one good grind of Steve's hips against his and he's going to come so hard it may injure his balls. "Jesus, will you – stop licking me, you fucking animal, what the hell."

He really, really doesn't want Steve to stop licking him. Like, at all, ever. But… he doesn't want it like this, either, with Steve not even knowing what the hell he's doing.

"Danno," Steve groans. "Come on, just let me –"

Danny smacks Steve's hand away from his fly. "First, do not ever call me Danno when you're trying to hump my floating ribs like a Rottweiler, what the fuck is the matter with you? Second, is this any way to treat a sick guy?"

"You're not sick," Steve whispers, tilts Danny's head so far back it feels like it's going to pop right off his neck, and kisses him like a goddamn storm breaking.

Danny's body is faster to react to the fact that Steve's tongue is in his mouth than his brain is. By the time he gets caught up, in fact, his body has managed to map out the smooth terrain of Steve's soft palate and is in the process of climbing him like a tree. Steve slaps a forearm under the curve of Danny's ass and hoists him into the air like he was a ninety-pound cheerleader, and wow, that's a new experience, but it's enough of an affront to the Veela brainstem that Danny manages to unlock his legs from around Steve's waist and wriggle back down onto the arm of the couch. Steve makes a protesting noise and sucks hard on Danny's lower lip.

"Waitwaitwait," Danny manages, or at least manages something he hopes sounds like it. It's a little difficult when trying to disentangle his lips from Steve's is like trying to pry himself off of industrial strength flypaper, and also when he's fighting his own body, which seems to be under the impression that his tongue's rightful home is in Steve's mouth. "McGarrett. Stop."

Steve stops. He doesn't let go, and he's clearly not happy about it, but he stops. "What's wrong?" he demands plaintively.

Danny leans his forehead against Steve's chest and tries to breathe. "Look, you don't know what you're doing right now, okay? You don't want this. Go get me some aspirin and just let me crash on your couch for a while."

Steve makes an exasperated noise and rakes his hand through Danny's hair, probably messing it up, the bastard. "Really, that's what's been bugging you? Look, I've got a respirator with a built-in oxygen canister, okay? It's out in the garage."

Danny gives him a weird look. "You use that for fevers?"

Steve kisses him again like he can't help it, mouth soft and frantic and ohgod does he taste good, and then pulls away, panting. "No. It'll block out the pheromones. If I leave it on for a while until they clear out of my system, then will you believe you're not roofie-ing me with them?"

For a minute, all Danny can do is blink at him in shock. "Wait, you – you know? How do you know? You knew and you still brought me here instead of – will you talk, you asshole?"

"You weren't done yelling yet," Steve explains.

"And I'm not done yelling now, either. Feel free to interrupt just like you always do."

"I've been a lot of places, and I've seen some weird things, okay? Things like Veela."

Well, okay. Somehow in the back of his head Danny has always sort of assumed that his family was the only Veela stock left, but on reflection that was probably not a logical thing to assume. He's just never met any others, is the thing. "Okay. Granted. Doesn't explain how you knew I was one."

Steve shifts closer and nuzzles behind Danny's ear again. "I could smell you when you came into the garage the first time I met you. Maybe I didn't put two and two together right away, but I knew it wasn't any sort of aftershave making you smell that good. Remember I called the governor and told her I found something that changed my mind about leading the task force?"

"I thought you were talking about that goddamn toolbox I wouldn't let you take out of the house," Danny groans, running his hand up underneath the sleeve of Steve's shirt. He really wants to lick those tattoos.

"That's because you're dumb sometimes," Steve informs him. "So, yeah. You're a Veela, your pheromones make me crazy, and for the last week your fuse has been twice as short as normal and I've been so horny I'm about to climb out of my skin. Then just now in the office, I thought you were really sick until I realized that if I had to go another hour without getting you home and getting you naked I was honest to God going to shoot something that didn't deserve it. Ergo –"

"Ergo?"

"– Ergo, it's mating season. So we should do the mating thing now, because I've been waiting for this like it was Christmas."

It figures Steve McGarrett would be more in touch with his animal side than Danny is. It just figures. "I can't believe you knew and you didn't say anything."

Steve pushes away and actually gets down on one knee, looking up at Danny. It's possible Danny's brain actually runs out his ears a little at that point, because it sure as hell has melted right there in his skull. "I'm saying something now, okay? I just… couldn't figure out how to before. Except for throwing three hundred pound guys off roofs, which I guess didn't, I don't know, speak to you or something. Seriously, do you need a ring? I will get you a ring."

"What, right now?"

"Would you settle for the riser ring off a parachute harness for a day or two?" Steve asks, sort of desperately.

Undecided, Danny reaches down and touches Steve's mouth with his thumb, soft and shaky.

"Hey," Steve says, sliding his hand over Danny's. "Do you seriously not know that the whole mate-bond thing has failsafes? It's not just, bam, pheromones, you're screwed. If mating season rolls around and it turns out you're not into each other on a deeper level than that, it just – just goes away. Why do I know more about your heritage than you do?"

"Maybe you don't," Danny protests while his dick and his libido scream at him to stop arguing oh my God how are you actually brain damaged. "What, this is shit you read on Wikipedia or something?"

"No, it's shit I've heard from actual Veela." Steve takes a deep breath and stands up, sliding his hands onto Danny's shoulders. With a visible effort, he says, "Look, we don't… have to, okay? If you want me to I'll take you home and we won't – but if you die, Danny, it's going to kill me, I swear to God. I swear to God I do not mean that less than literally."

"If we do this and you freak about about it tomorrow or at any point in the future, I will kick your ass so hard it will render you useless for any and all future acts involving testosterone," Danny tells him.

"Not freaking," Steve says against Danny's collarbone, gathering him in like he can't go a minute longer without touching Danny. Danny understands the feeling. "So can we?"

"No one's ever said no to you in your entire life, have they?" Danny mutters, but his hands are already burrowing up under Steve's shirt, tracing out shoulder blades and the strong line of Steve' spine, skimming around to find the line where bare skin gives way to a dusting of wiry hair that rubs raw on the nerves in Danny's overheated hands. "C'mere, c'mon, why's this still on? You're shirtless at the drop of a hat, c'mon, hat's dropped already."

Steve makes a broken noise in his throat and whips his shirt off, sending it flying to land God knows where. "Upstairs," he pants, fumbling at the buttons of Danny's shirt. "Upstairs or I'm gonna fuck you right here –"

"Aw, listen to you thinking you're topping, aren't you cute," Danny manages between attempts to map out Steve's tonsils with his tongue, because the Veela part of him is very clear on how this is going to go. He just hopes it's not going to insist on keeping it up until Steve gets pregnant. Danny's pretty sure he's going to start chafing before that happens.

"Lube's upstairs. You wanna do this with spit?" Steve grates out, pausing in his attempts to suck hickeys into Danny's mouth long enough to rip Danny's shirt and undershirt off over his head in one quick ninja move.

And now they're skin to skin, chest hair scraping rough over stiff nipples, and oh fuck, Danny can't hurt Steve but he can't wait, he can't. "Gun oil," he gasps. "C'mon, babe, don't you clean your guns in the living room fuckohfuck –" and then he loses all ability to think, because Steve has both hands shoved down the front of Danny's pants like one will just not do, gripping and stroking and twisting his wrists until Danny's pretty sure his head is about to explode, never mind his dick. He shoves Steve back and goes down on his knees, bad knee not even twinging, yanking those goddamn cargo pants open and down where he's wanted them for fucking weeks now. And God, he thought Steve smelled good but it's nothing compared to how he tastes, how it feels to swallow Steve's cock down and feel the heat of it all the way into his throat, precome slick and salty on his tongue. Steve makes a sound like something just got ripped out of him and grabs hold of Danny's hair in both fists, hips stuttering forward like it's taking every ounce of his self-control not to just fuck into Danny's throat.

Danny likes that, that power, that ability to take Steve right to the edge of his control; likes it almost better than Steve's dick in his mouth. One of these days he's going to make Steve just fucking lose it, and that thought's the best yet – Danny hums around Steve's dick at just the idea of it, and Steve's knees give, knocking both of them to the floor.

Seriously, lube. Danny has never needed a viscous substance this bad in his entire life.

Steve reaches back, arches off the ground, groans when Danny crawls on top of him and licks hot over his nipple, and yanks until he's brought the couchside table down almost on top of their heads. The crash is impressive and something breaks that's probably the lamp, but Danny is so not interested, because he's got Steve mostly naked and underneath him and he's finally, finally getting to pin one of Steve's shoulders to the floor and lick that tattoo, suck a mark right into it to mingle with the ink while Steve's other arm is busy doing something behind him that Danny doesn't even care about until Steve slaps a little plastic bottle into his hand. Danny tears himself away from the tattoo and looks down at the bottle, trying to blink himself out of his daze long enough to focus on something besides Steve's skin.

"Gun oil? Seriously?"

"You were right, I clean them in the living room," Steve says defensively, grabbing the bottle back. "Fine, give it here."

Danny wants to make a smart-ass remark. He really does. But then there's oil spilling over Steve's fingers and Danny's only just gotten over how weirdly hot that is when Steve's fingers slide down between his own legs and up and in and Danny pretty much forgets how to think, like, ever.

"Condoms in there too?" he asks faintly.

"No," Steve says, not stopping with the stretching himself open that is seriously frying Danny's brain from the inside out.

"You gonna think less of me when I tell you I'm completely down with barebacking right now?"

"I'm gonna think less of you if you don't shut up and fuck me," Steve pants. "God, Danny, come on."

And that's it, that's it, Danny's done. He has just enough sanity left to slick himself up in the half a second it takes Steve to get on his hands and knees and then he's slamming home, groaning as Steve's body opens for him smooth and easy like his dick doesn't belong anywhere else. Steve makes a broken, frantic sound and shoves back against him, the muscles under that tramp stamp Danny's still going to lick flexing with the effort to get Danny's dick so deep in him that he can't breathe for being stuffed so full of it. Danny obliges, hauls off and fucks him hard while Steve moans and gasps out encouragement and invective underneath him and the smell of sex and sweat and pheromones makes both of them absolutely fucking crazy. He's almost blind with it, God, Steve's body wrapped tight around him and Steve's voice all raw and desperate in his ears, and it's less politeness than need to touch that has him wrapping his hand around Steve's cock and slipping all that hard silky length of it through his fingers. He gets to the end, thumbs under the head, and Steve comes like it was punched out of him, gasping don't stop don't stop even as he's spilling come all over Danny's hand and that nice Hawaiian hardwood. And Danny doesn't want to stop, holy shit does he ever not, but no way can he keep from sticking fingers damp with Steve's come into his mouth, and –

And that's it, done, all she wrote, and all Danny can process for about the next ten seconds of his life is ohfuckingshitsogood and ow my finger and a vague but definite unwillingness to ever let Steve put clothes on again.

When he can move without risking falling right on Steve, who's still on his knees and elbows panting like he just sprinted across Azerbaijan in full Kevlar armor, Danny eases himself down onto his back, winces a little as he straightens out his knee, and blinks up at the ceiling. He really sort of wants to pass out; instead he gathers Steve in close, noses a little at the damp skin behind his ear, content with the way Steve smells like them. Danny doesn't feel that different, but deep down inside him something's settled down, taking with it what feels like a fog of vague crazy that's been keeping Danny from knowing quite what the hell he's doing for a week now. It feels good. He feels good, clear and settled, like at long last everything's right where it should be.

"Next time I'm taking my pants all the way off," Steve says, and kisses Danny. "And my shoes. And so are you."

"Yeah?" Danny asks, and kisses him back. "I'm down with that. Maybe real lube next time too, huh?"

Steve shifts to nudge Danny's jaw with his nose so he can get in there and lick that space under Danny's ear that he seems to really like. "And I'm topping."

Danny waits for the Veela brainstem to kick up a fuss over that one, but none is forthcoming. Maybe it's satisfied that they've showed Steve who's boss, or something. The Veela brainstem is maybe not too bright. "Yeah, okay," he says.

"And maybe we should just take a permanent vacation and stay naked all the time so you'll always be this agreeable," Steve says against Danny's throat.

"In your dreams, McGarrett," Danny snorts.

"I do have some pretty good dreams," Steve agrees, shifting closer with his face still buried in Danny's neck. Improbably enough, Danny's dick is starting to take an interest in the proceedings.

"Yeah? Do I need to take my pants off to hear about this?"

Speaking of pants, it's about then that Steve's start ringing. Swearing under his breath, Steve does some sort of improbably bendy yoga move or something that brings them up within reach and then fishes his phone out of his pocket. "Chin," he says. "What's up?"

Danny sort of wants to be that annoying distracting person who gives Steve head while he's trying to talk on the phone. He pulls Steve back close to him and debates it sleepily.

"Shit. Seriously?" Steve asks. He's a little tense now but he's not at Defcon One, so Danny doesn't let him go.

"Yeah, okay. Keep me updated. No, he's…" Steve leans in and drops a silent kiss right under Danny's collarbone. "He's still running a fever. I'm going to keep him here for the rest of – was that Kono? What did she just say?"

Danny winces at the thought of what Kono's likely to be over there saying. Kono is not a woman who believes in mincing her words.

"Yeah, well," Steve says, making the Irritated Frog Face at the phone. "Just keep me updated, huh? We'll be back in tomorrow." He ends the call and drops the phone on Danny's stomach, making Danny yelp at cold plastic where warm Steve ought to be.

"What's up?" he asks.

"HPD just picked up Houlihan for trying to solicit an undercover vice cop."

"God damn it," Danny says. "I wanted to be the one to bust that guy."

"We can role-play," Steve says, completely straight-faced. Until Danny hits him, at which point he starts cackling like the goddamned lunatic that he is.

In the ensuing scuffle, Danny's pants lose a button, one of his socks manages to completely disappear, and Steve's cargo pants get gun oil all over them. But they achieve actual nakedness, is the point, so Danny counts that as a win even if it takes them another hour to make it to the bed.

Comments

[fallia]

I won't lie, I have been waiting for this since you first posted the snippet, and it is everything I dreamed it would be (and more because OH MY GOD KONO). Amazing.

[mirabella]

Thanks! I originally wasn't going to use that snippet but it turned out to work better than what I had written to begin with, so.