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Steve's seen the way Danny stares at his tattoos -- has watched his eyes fix on those small hints of ink that occasionally show at the lower curve of his biceps.
Well, he thinks it's the tattoos. It's possible Danny has a thing for polo shirt sleeves but that'd be weird, even for Danny, so it has to be the ink.
Steve's tattoos are a part of him; more than just ink on skin, more than swirls and lines and a touch of color. They're hard-wired to his libido so Danny's interest isn't something he'd miss.
He's been working on them for years now, from when he first joined the Navy, when tatts and beer and fun nights out went hand-in-hand. There weren't many recruits who didn't give it a go and Steve, well he was hooked from the start. He remembers that first time like it was yesterday, fronting up to the studio the morning after a big night out, scared shitless without the benefit of a skin full of whiskey (the tattoo artist had refused to even talk to a bunch of sailors three sheets to the wind the night before), and Steve so helpless in the face of a dare he'd actually gone back. What a fucking rush it'd been -- adrenalin and endorphins and pure unadulterated fear all adding up to an unbelievable high.
Someone staring at his ink the way Danny does almost gets him there, too, because in his experience staring usually leads to more, and more is... well. More is good.
He tried an experiment once -- took off his shirt in the middle of the parking lot just to see what Danny would do. Sure enough, amid the hand-waving and the sarcasm, Danny's eyes locked on the ink. Lingered there, skittered away, and then slid back as if he were helpless to resist.
Steve's been trained to gather hard data so he can't help but be smug at the experiment's success.
It's definitely the tattoos.
He needs more, though, just knowing isn't enough. Now he wants to see how far Danny will go, what it will take to make him break, because for all Danny's words -- and there's a lot of those -- his eyes say more than any man Steve's met and what they say is "I want to touch".
Funny how Steve wants that, too.
He knows 147 ways of extracting information from even the most unwilling of targets, and he figures this will be simple. Over-exposure should do it, so he takes off his shirt any chance he gets.
But no dice; Danny is unmoved and pretty soon Steve is dangerously pissed. Fact is, nothing's simple where Danny Williams is concerned so the only choice is to escalate.
The shirt comes off on even the slightest pretext -- in the office, on the dock, down by the deck chairs on his beach. Seriously, if Danny doesn't concede soon, he's going to give up shirts altogether just to make a point.
Still, the break, when it comes, is a surprise -- not the what, as much as the timing -- and it happens so fast it's ridiculous. But then, he's maybe a little dopey at the time, considering that beer on top of pain pills for a broken arm isn't the brightest thing to do. He wouldn't admit it to anyone, but it's possible his judgment is off.
Regardless, when Danny drops him home after the team dinner then follows him in, he doesn't think twice about asking "can you give me a hand?", gesturing from his shirt to the cast. It's not actually something that requires two people -- he got this shirt on just fine, by himself, earlier in the day -- but for some reason the whole idea of getting it off by himself is way too hard.
"What are you, five years old?" Danny bitches, as they wrestle Steve's shirt past his good arm and over his head. "My daughter is more self-sufficient than you."
Steve grins and he knows it's the goofy one, but Danny's been hyper all night so it's about time he put all that energy to good use. It takes him longer than it should to realise Danny's gone silent.
"This from today?" Danny finally asks, and Steve twists his head to see Danny staring at a graze from where he hit the rock ledge hard. It's high on his shoulder and hardly visible among the ink but, yeah, there's a small rough area that looks raw and angry.
"I guess," he says and shrugs. He left a lot of skin up on the mountain today and that's hardly the worst of it.
"What's gonna happen when it heals?" Danny asks, and suddenly Steve can't speak, can barely breathe, because Danny's reaching out with one finger, and Jesus, if he'd known that this was all it took he'd have ground his shoulder into the asphalt weeks ago.
"Ahhh---" Steve's throat closes up as Danny traces the skin around the wound; he seems mesmerized, eyes tracking the path of his finger across the swirls and patterns in the ink, each time stopping just before the raw section.
Steve clears his throat and tries again, "it'll most likely scab a bit and then the skin will shrink. Probably won't even be able to see it when it's gone."
"Like this one?" Danny asks, and Steve twists a bit further to see that Danny's tracing a white line that cuts through the bottom of the lotus. It's thin, the remainder of a knife slash that's more than five years old, and he knows it's barely visible. Danny's other hand is wrapped around his elbow now, the heat of his palm raising goose bumps up the inside of Steve's arm, and suddenly there's not enough oxygen in the room.
"Yeah." His voice breaks and he swallows hard. "Just like that."
He watches Danny's head dip, hears the murmured "you should take better care of it", and feels the soft heat of Danny's exhale the second before his mouth deposits a soft kiss just below the graze.
Steve's eyelids drop and he sucks in a harsh breath, and Jesus, his heart is pounding so hard it's a wonder the neighbors can't hear it. Danny's thumb traces a repeat path from the inside of his elbow, up and over the muscle of his bicep and back while his lips and tongue explore the lines of the Buddha. Somehow the rough drag of Danny's thumb over the sensitive skin of his inner arm, is reminiscent of the scrape of the tattooist's razor preparing the skin. Steve's nerve endings might as well be hot-wired to his dick -- he's hard so fast he feels light-headed.
"Danny." It's no more than a gasp, but Danny stops, starts to pull back, and Steve knows it's now or never.
"There's another one," he says and he doesn't even care that he's almost panting. "One you haven't seen." He knows neither one of them is thinking about the graze, now.
And, oh yeah, there it is, he thinks, as Danny's pupils dilate, and his mouth curves into a grin.
"Show me," he demands, and yeah, Steve thinks, yeah, I can do that.
He grabs hold of Danny's tie and their eyes lock as Steve starts to walk backward toward the stairs.
He's been waiting so fucking long, and is almost quivering with anticipation and his body's reaction to Danny's touch, that it's a wonder he doesn't end up on his ass on the first step.
But Steve's a determined man, and sometimes it's fine to just let instinct take over.
And sometimes, he thinks, there's no real difference between victory and surrender.
~*~*~*~*~*~