Chapter Text
Danny peered out the window at the still-pounding rain and groaned. Maybe the only things waiting for him at home were a microwave dinner and a bad movie, but he still wanted to get home to them. Instead, it looked like he was stuck inside the bakery until Hawaii’s absolutely insane weather decided to switch back to its normal infuriatingly calm and sunny state. He’d’ve appreciated the rain under any other circumstance.
He waved a grumpy hand at it and turned back to the bread racks, stopping just short of actually making a rude gesture in case Kono, who was standing at the door watching the rain hit the grey concrete of their little alley as if she actually enjoyed the sight, thought it was aimed at her. Not that she’d likely take offence anyway. He had yet to discover anything either she or her cousin actually did take offence at, which was probably a large part of what made them ideal employees for him.
He’d just gotten halfway through what he was doing with the bread racks – absolutely nothing; they’d already been emptied, since Chin had gone home an hour ago and he and Kono had been planning to follow immediately before the rain started – and was contemplating turning to do nothing to the display cases when Kono called, “Hey, boss, there’s some guy standing outside.”
“He’s allowed,” Danny said, staying at the bread racks for the time being. “I guess.”
“Think we should let him in? He’s getting kinda wet. Also, he’s cute.”
“Kono, if you try to set me up with a random guy who didn’t have the sense to get out of a torrential rainstorm, I really am going to fire you.”
“No you’re not. Anyway, who says he’s gay? Maybe I was looking for me.”
“Sure you were. I’ve seen you making eyes at that lawyer every time he ostensibly comes in for the sandwiches, like it’s a perfect coincidence that it always happens to be when you’re front of house.”
Kono sniffed. “His name’s Adam. And he wants to leave his firm. And he’s on a schedule, and he does like the sandwiches. At least I’m getting out there.”
“My life was uprooted a year ago, I’m allowed to not ‘get out there’ yet,” Danny returned, rehashing a very well-worn argument.
“I just wanna see you not lonely as hell, boss,” Kono reiterated, then waved a hand at their glass windows. “Should I let this guy in?”
Danny sighed. Between the dying light, the rain, and the reflections from the inside lights, he couldn’t really see anything more than the vague outline of said guy, but he was hunched sort of miserably. And hey, maybe he’d remember them as that nice bakery that let him inside, and he’d come back and buy things. “Yeah, okay. But if you try anything on my behalf I’m throwing you both out into the rain.”
Kono didn’t deign to reply to that, just opened the door and leant out. “Hey, brah, you wanna come inside?”
The man jumped, apparently not having realised the store behind him still had people in it, and turned around. Kono raised a hand. “Sorry to startle you. You look like you could do with a proper roof till the rain stops.”
“Yeah. Thanks,” he said, and followed Kono’s inviting gesture inside into the light.
Danny had never actually had his world move in slow motion before, but he’d also never had possibly the most beautiful man he’d ever seen walk into his bakery out of the pouring rain, shaking droplets of water from his hair. Tall, dark, and handsome was made for this man, still didn’t measure up, and Danny was retroactively offended by Kono calling him ‘cute’. Then he grinned sheepishly at Kono, and Danny had to revise his opinion on that again, because it turned out he was also adorable.
“Sorry, I don’t want to interrupt. Just, wet out there.”
“You’re not interrupting anything,” Danny said, and was impressed to find his voice still worked normally. “Unless you count boredom.”
“We’re as stuck here as you are,” Kono added, re-locking the door and wandering over to one of the two tiny tables that masqueraded as dine-in space in front of the counter.
“In that case,” the man said, flashed Danny a split-second blinding grin, and took the chair across from the one Kono had claimed. “Hi. I’m Steve.”
“Kono,” she introduced herself. “And this vision of cheer is Danny. It’s his bakery, I just work here and keep it running and make sure we actually sell anything.”
“She’s right about the last part,” Danny admitted. “But without me there’d be nothing to sell.”
“You’re the baker?” Steve asked curiously, turning his gaze onto Danny. “You’re not from Hawaii, are you?”
“What gave me away, babe?” Danny drawled in his strongest Jersey accent, and Kono laughed behind Steve. Steve was grinning too as he said, “Okay, New Jersey. Moved to paradise, huh?”
“So people keep telling me.”
“Not his choice,” Kono explained, barely. Which was fine, because this guy didn’t need to know his entire life story.
He just kept looking at Danny, though, like he was expecting to hear it anyway, and for some reason that definitely had absolutely nothing to do with the deep blue of his eyes and the tattoos peeking out from under the dampened sleeves of his t-shirt, Danny found himself opening his big mouth and telling him. “My ex-wife’s new partner got a job transfer out here, so they moved. If I wanted to keep seeing my daughter at all, I had to follow. Unfortunately.”
Steve seemed to find that an acceptable answer, by the way his eyes crinkled up slightly at the corners before he cocked his head and asked, “You don’t like Hawaii?”
“I do not. That’s where the name of the bakery came from, actually.”
Steve looked around, like there was going to be a flashing neon sign on the wall with the bakery name and explanation. Kono took pity on him long before Danny would have and said, “We’re called Yeast and Sugarcane.”
“Oh?”
“They’re the only things me and this island can agree on.”
Steve outright laughed at that, and seemed to relax back into his chair. Why that had been the trigger for him to feel comfortable, Danny had no idea. Nor was he sure he was happy about it, especially when the next thing Steve’s mouth did was form an entirely-too-cocky smirk and ask, “You any good?”
Danny may have spluttered for a moment, okay. He’s man enough to admit that. And really, who walks into another person’s bakery and asks them if they’re any good? “Yes, of course I’m good,” he told him indignantly when he recovered his poise. Or, as much poise as he ever had at the end of a workday around an irritatingly hot guy, which was admittedly a depleted level.
“He really is,” Kono added supportively. Although it was probably less out of a genuine attempt to support Danny and more just her calling it like she saw it. Because he was good. And she knew that.
Steve was still smirking at him, so Danny huffed and said, “Okay, I’m getting the fuck-its. I have something to prove now.”
“I’ll get ‘em, boss,” Kono volunteered before Danny could turn on his heel, and had disappeared into the back before he could throw her a ‘no, let me recover my composure’ look. Not that the look would have done any good, probably.
“The… what?” Steve asked, apparently thrown slightly off-balance again by that, which Danny definitely did not take a gleeful pleasure in. The complete absence of glee was also why he replied solemnly, “Yes. The failed children.”
“O….kay.”
“Why were you out there, anyway?” Danny asked, deciding to let him stew with that for a while.
“I was swimming,” he replied matter-of-factly, like that wasn’t a completely insane answer.
“You were swimming? At 6:30 at night? In the rainy season?”
Steve nodded, and Danny called over his shoulder, “Kono, you let a crazy person into the bakery!”
“Yell if he pulls out an axe!” she shouted back. Danny shook his head despairingly.
“I’m a seal,” Steve offered, with the distinct air of someone who thought it would clear things up.
“You’re a semiaquatic mammal?”
Steve laughed. “No. Well, yes, technically, but no. Navy SEAL.”
“Ah.” That did clarify the night-swimming very slightly. Still insane, but less death-inviting, probably. “You here on the base?”
“Nah. Leave. Not that I’ve been back for a long time, but Hawaii’s home.” Seemingly almost as an afterthought, he added, “Bereavement leave.”
“Oh. For who?”
“My father. Funeral was today.”
Danny winced. “I’m sorry.”
Steve shrugged. “Don’t be. Or, do be, if you want, but we hadn’t talked for years. And we weren’t going to unless we both suddenly got very cool about a bunch of stuff.”
“…Ah.” He wasn’t going to ask. That would be a little much, given he’d just met the guy. He was saved from asking anyway, because if there was one thing Danny had never been particularly good at it was controlling his own mouth, by Kono coming back out. She’d arranged the children on a tray, rather than their usual paper grab-bag, which explained why she’d taken so long. Of course, taking so long might have explained why she’d bothered to put them out, if she was still on the ‘random insane person outside the bakery is a perfectly good dating prospect’ train.
“The fuck-its,” Kono said, setting them in front of Steve with a dramatic flourish. Danny knew that they today consisted of three bread rolls that had decided halfway through the baking process that the big noise next door was really too much to bear and dropped flat, half a batch of burnt butter cupcakes that had taken the ‘burnt’ part a little too seriously, and the remainder of yesterday’s third attempt at making a loaded banana bread with any kind of equal distribution of loadings. Steve surveyed them, then looked back up at Danny with raised eyebrows.
“The ones,” Danny now deigned to explain, “which got put into the oven and immediately said ‘fuck it’.”
Huffing out a chuckle, Steve leant forward and reached for the banana bread, which was unfortunately the correct choice. Danny didn’t really want to be endeared to this random arrogant soldier. His chances of that seemed shot to hell, though, because the next thing Steve did was take a bite, close his eyes, and produce a long, low noise that belonged somewhere in hardcore pornography, not Danny’s nice clean bakery.
When Steve recovered his composure – during which time Kono had thrown a smug grin at Danny and snagged one of the cupcakes for herself – he swallowed and opened his eyes, before looking over at Danny. “Buddy,” he said fervently. “I have no idea how much you charge, but if those are your failures, it’s not enough.”
“Failures in appearance, usually,” Danny felt compelled to point out. “Not in taste.”
“If they taste like that and look perfect, you’re definitely undercharging.”
“What I’m hearing, boss, is that you need to up prices and give me a raise,” Kono said.
“Interesting. What I’m hearing is that maybe I need to reconsider my stance on this man’s sanity. Although I suppose insane people are still allowed to have good taste.”
Steve half-smirked at him – which was frankly insulting, that wasn’t how people were supposed to react to being called insane – and grabbed a cupcake.
It took another 20 minutes for the rain to stop, during which time Danny deigned to come out from behind the counter only long enough to grab one of the bread rolls before Steve hoovered his way through the entire plate. When Kono pointed out the lack of water falling from the sky – because Steve had his back to the windows and Danny was too busy being annoyed by how easily he swung between ego-boosting adoration of Danny’s food and horribly cocky comments – Steve grabbed the last of the banana bread, stood up, and said, “I should go, then. Mary will be wondering where I am.”
Danny’s heart definitely did not sink at that, because it wasn’t like he was planning to do anything that would be hampered by the existence of a girlfriend anyway. Instead, he nodded, and waved, and all in all did absolutely nothing to prompt Steve taking two steps to the door and then looking back and clarifying, “My sister. We’re staying at the house together.”
Danny smiled at him in acknowledgement, which obviously sent entirely the wrong message because Steve shot back a smile just this side of open flirtation and took a step backwards, pushing the door open without turning around. “Nice to meet you, Danny. Kono.”
Whatever Danny had been going to grudgingly mutter in return, he was saved from by Kono standing up, cheerily saying, “Come back any time! Within opening hours, when the food costs money,” over the top of Danny’s grudging mutters, and waving at Steve as he left.
When the door shut behind him, Kono turned back to Danny and waggled her eyebrows in an expression Danny would be perfectly happy to never have directed at him again. “His sister.”
“Mark my words,” Danny told her drily. “That man is a bad omen.”
Kono laughed. “And how do you know that, Harry Potter?”
Danny put his hands on his chest, roughly over his top surgery scars, and deadpanned, “My scars, they’re aching.”
“I think that feeling in your chest is called ‘liking someone’, boss,” Kono told him, still grinning at him. “Actually, maybe this is the perfect thing to get you back on your feet. A little no-strings-attached fling with the hot soldier.”
“Okay, I’m tossing you out. Go, go, go,” Danny said, grabbing his bag off the table and pushing her out the door. When they were both outside, she threw him her standard little mock-salute and sauntered off down the street, leaving Danny to lock the door behind him. He looked up at the sign for a moment longer. He had his bakery, he had Grace. He was fine. And he absolutely did not need a fling with a soldier, no matter how hot he was.
~
Steve was standing in the kitchen, staring at his dad’s coffee machine and trying to figure out if it had actually worked in any time more recent than 1985, when Mary came down the next morning. “Hey,” she muttered, headed for the machine, then stopped two steps in front of Steve, clearly coming up against the same problem he had.
“Huh,” she said. “You’re gonna want to replace that.”
“You’re gonna want to replace it.”
“Whichever one of us gets the house thrust on them’s gonna want to replace it. Which is going to be you, because you’re the eldest.”
“Mmrmph,” was all Steve managed to respond. There was a moment’s pause while both of them continued to stare at the machine, then as one they gave up and turned away. A decade and a half spent mostly apart had left them off-kilter around each other in a lot of ways, but in other things they’d settled immediately back into a very slightly more mature version of childhood dynamics. The latter included, apparently, ancient coffee machine rejection.
Mary went over to rummage in the fridge, and Steve turned to grab a banana from the meagrely stocked fruit bowl on the counter. Mary had got to the island before him, so she’d been the one to do the grocery shopping, and her idea of healthy eating had always tended more towards having lettuce and tomato on her hamburgers than towards Steve’s actual appreciation of fruits and vegetables.
“So where’d you wind up last night, anyway?” Mary asked, head still stuck in the fridge. “I know I crashed out early, but I figure you weren’t actually still swimming two hours after sunset.”
And there was one of those reminders of time apart. He hadn’t been, of course, but none of his SEAL buddies would have – Freddie definitely wouldn’t have – doubted for a moment that he could have been. He hadn’t even told Mary about Freddie yet – he’d have to eventually, eventually she’d ask about him, but for now- “I got caught in the rain. This little bakery off Ala Wai let me in to wait it out, even though they were closed.”
“Huh.” She withdrew empty-handed from the fridge. “You think they’d have coffee?”
Steve raised his eyebrows. “They might. I… yeah, I’m pretty sure there was a coffee machine behind the counter.” He’d maybe been looking more at the man in front of it, a confusing and compelling mix of grumpiness and sunshine packed into five-foot-something and a stubbornly maintained Jersey accent. But he definitely remembered seeing something chrome and shining in his peripheral vision as he’d laughed at Danny’s dry description of two regular customers flirting over the cookies.
“Okay, bro. Take me to your new friends and their coffee.”
Grabbing his keys and following her out of the kitchen, Steve protested weakly, “They’re not my friends.”
Mary shot him a look over her shoulder, and he instantly knew that had been a bad idea. There was no way he could let her inside to see Danny. She’d always had an annoying habit of picking his crushes from five metres away, and he did not want to see if that had survived the time apart.
As it turned out, he’d kinda been wrong about the friends thing anyway. After he’d firmly-but-not-too-firmly told Mary to stay in the car and let him go in and get everything, he walked the convenient half-street – short walk, but far enough that she couldn’t watch through the wide glass front of the bakery – and pushed through the doors, now with an ‘Open’ sign hanging from them. Kono was working the till, laughing and talking about… cat figurines? With an old lady who looked to be buying out half the bread rack, and a man a couple years older than her was packing the lady’s brown bag full of said bread. It took Steve a moment of squinting at him to connect the threads, and realise he’d been wrong about the ‘couple years’ – he’d just barely aged in the last decade. “Chin Ho Kelly?” he said out loud, and the man himself turned around and broke into the same outlandishly handsome grin. Speaking of high school crushes Mary had spotted…
“Steve McGarrett!” he replied, and Kono looked back and forth between them for a minute before she realised aloud,
“Oh, you’re that Steve! The one who broke all your records, huh, cuz?”
Steve shrugged modestly. “Could only break them ‘cause he’d set them.”
Chin raised one hand in the air, then dropped it. “I shoulda put it together when she told me about a Navy SEAL called Steve. Baby cousin failed to mention you were coming home, not just here on Navy business.”
“Well, somewhere in between, actually.”
Chin nodded, sobering. “You’re here for John’s funeral?”
“And to help organise everything. Mary’s on the island too.”
“Tell me if there’s anything I can do to help, yeah?”
“Thanks, Chin.”
Kono had been watching Chin with her head tilted slightly to the side, and she took the opportunity to jump in with, “Chin, you knew his dad?”
“Not well,” Chin answered, and handed the full paper bag over to her, smiling apologetically at the woman who’d been patiently listening to this conversation that had absolutely nothing to do with her. “Sorry, Mrs. Miller.”
“Not a problem, honey,” she told him, waving a hand at him, then turning to dig through her bag for her wallet.
“I didn’t know him well,” he repeated to Kono. “But I usually ended up next to him in the bleachers for this guy’s games.”
“You did?” Steve asked in surprise. He’d always been too focused on playing to ever really look at who might’ve been watching, but he’d almost never seen his dad before or after. He always thought he’d been too busy working.
“Yeah,” Chin answered, raising his eyebrows slightly. “You didn’t know? Obviously, I had to come watch the kid breaking all my records, and he was always there. Don’t think he missed a single one of your games.”
“I… no, I didn’t know.”
As Mrs. Miller walked out, Kono looked over at Chin and said, “I gotta go do something,” gesturing behind her. He nodded, and as she walked through the doors that separated the storefront from the back, Steve shook himself, refocused on Chin, and changed the subject.
~
The afternoon’s bread was rising in lots huddled around the stove for the extra warmth; the ingredients for the muffins he may or may not have to make, depending on how well trade went, were stacked in the corner; Chin’s pastry had been transferred to rest in the fridge, which was the most interaction Danny was willing to have with it. The kitchen was a calm, quiet, and sweet-smelling space with nothing further to do for now, and Danny had just settled into the chair he kept in the corner for exactly these times and pulled out The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, prepared to watch someone else run around exercising the little grey cells, when one of the swinging doors was pushed open and the head of his beloved and extremely irritating employee appeared through it.
“Danny, gotta go to the bathroom,” she said. “Go deal with your customers.” Then she promptly disappeared again.
Danny shook his head at the still-moving door. “Hey, I’m supposed to be the boss,” he yelled after her, to no avail, then sighed and put his book down. He’d specifically hired people so he didn’t have to deal with his customers.
When he walked through into the bakery, there was a distinct lack of ‘customers’, plural. In fact, there was only one, talking animatedly with Chin, and he looked a hell of a lot like last night’s visitor without the rain-damp hair and clothing. His light blue checked shirt was perfectly dry, and still somehow clung to his biceps and chest in all the right ways. Oh, damn that woman to hell and back. He blamed the undentable confidence with which she said things for the fact that he hadn’t even questioned why he’d be needed when he knew Chin was working out here.
“Hello, Steve,” he said, when the man broke off from whatever he’d been talking about with Chin to look at him, then to Chin, “Remind me to dock your cousin’s wages.”
Chin just grinned at him in that annoyingly unruffled way he had.
“Hey, Danny,” Steve said, forcing Danny to look back at him. He was extraordinarily tempted to make a crack about calling too soon after the first date, but anything Chin heard Kono would hear through the inevitable Kelly-Kalakaua communication network, and he did not want to deal with that. “Chin was a few years above me at Kukui High,” he continued, explaining why they were acting like old friends. “He set all the quarterback records.”
“Which he remembers because he broke all of them,” Chin added.
“Small island,” Danny said, with as little bitterness as he could manage. No reason they should be punished for his own personal problems with island life.
Chin was the one to reply, “It is. And it has a way of bringing people together.”
Danny snorted at the trademark Chin Ho Kelly enigmatic motivational poster statement. “You should write for the tourism board.”
Chin’s lips quirked and he clearly would have been a hairs-breadth from rolling his eyes at Danny if he was anyone else.
“So, Steven,” Danny said, turning back to him. “You here to actually pay for your food this time?”
“It’s not like I solicited it last time,” he pointed out.
Danny waved a hand dismissively, and was on the verge of an absolutely devastating comeback when his phone started buzzing in his pocket.
“Is that the Psycho theme?” Steve asked, and Danny groaned.
“Hang on, I have to get this,” he said, and picked up, despite his best wishes. “Hello, dear.”
“Danno?” asked a confused and definitely-not-Rachel voice on the other end, and Danny scrambled to reply,
“Monkey! Sorry, I thought you were your mom. What’s up, why’re you calling me? Not that I’m not always ready to hear your voice.”
“I just wanted to talk to you. Can we go to the beach this weekend?”
“Sure, monkey. I’m looking forward to it, a lot.” Steve was watching him with a mostly indecipherable expression that definitely had too much curiosity in it, whatever else was the case. Consequently, even though he could never be glad about having to stop talking to Grace, he was a little relieved when Rachel’s voice called Grace’s name from somewhere distant to the phone.
“Oops, I have to go,” Grace said, somehow simultaneously sounding like exactly what she apparently was – a kid who’d just been caught doing something she wasn’t supposed to – and also an adult woman who’d just been called to a meeting. “Bye-bye, Danno, I love you!”
“Bye, Grace. Danno loves you.” There was a click as she hung up, and he pushed his phone into his pocket and looked back at Steve who was now definitely, discernibly, grinning at him.
“Who’s Danno?” he asked, way too amused.
“None of your business, is who Danno is.”
“Okay.”
That seemed way too easy. His suspicions were confirmed when Steve elected to continue, “Waimanalo Bay Park.”
“What?”
“It’s a half hour’s drive, but it’s a great beach for kids. Deserted half the time, calm surf. I learned to surf there. You just got to keep an eye out for Man O’ Wars, but you should be safe this time of year.”
Danny eyed him suspiciously. “And your point is?”
“You should take Gracie there.”
“How do you know we’re going to the beach?”
Steve grinned at him. “Your daughter isn’t a quiet speaker. Pretty sure I know where she got that from.”
“Hmph.”
“Waimanalo Bay,” Steve repeated decisively, then pointed over Danny’s shoulder. “Does that mean you serve coffee here, or is it exclusively for grumpy bakers and gorgeous employees?”
Danny considered lying to him, just in return for those descriptions if nothing else, but Chin was right there, smiling quietly at something, and he… might not actually correct him, but again, the Kelly-Kalakaua communication network, and Kono’d give him hell for it. “Yes, Steve, the coffee machine means that we serve coffee,” he said instead. “And Chin is a baker as well, not just a gorgeous employee.”
“Careful, Danny, or I’ll have to call HR,” Chin joked.
“Oh, I see how it is, only the supermodel is allowed to call you gorgeous.”
Chin’s answering grin and Danny’s realisation that maybe he shouldn’t have called Steve that in front of both the man himself and a Kono conduit were both interrupted by Steve turning to Chin and reprimanding, “You didn’t tell me you were baking here too.”
“Yeah, brah. Pies and tarts are all mine.”
“Pastry hates me,” Danny explained. “But loves him.”
“I’m mounting a campaign to convince him about selling malasadas, too,” Chin confided in Steve. “You’d never guess it, but he’s very stubborn.”
Steve laughed, which Danny might have chosen to get offended at if it hadn’t been so adorable. Danny got the impression that the whole commanding, subject-jumping, seemingly unguarded thing he had going on was very much a façade, probably covering up a whole mess of issues – just knowing he was active military and hadn’t talked to his father in a decade was enough to ensure that – but he really did light up when he laughed. The whole mask seemed to drop for a moment, which just showed how tense he actually was when it returned.
But he wasn’t supposed to be psychoanalysing the cute customer, he was supposed to be serving him. “Did you actually want coffee, or was that just an idle inquiry?”
“Oh, yeah,” Steve said, like he’d entirely forgotten his actual reasons for coming in. “Neither Mary nor I have any idea how to operate Dad’s coffee machine, so until we get a new one we’re in your hands.”
Not that Danny would mind that. He firmly told his brain to shut up and replied, “Far be it from me to refuse custom, however it comes.”
Chin wordlessly moved behind Danny to the machine, clattering around the various things it demanded be done pre-actual coffee-making.
“Black with no sugar, as strong as it can be made, like a macho, macho man, right?” Danny said.
Steve, deadpan, replied, “Yeah, that is my sister’s order,” and Danny couldn’t help grinning back at him.
“No, we both drink lattes like completely average human beings,” Steve continued.
Danny raised his eyebrows doubtfully. “I don’t think ‘completely average’ is a term anybody would ever use to describe you.” Wait, was he flirting? It had been so long since he’d deliberately flirted with somebody that he honestly wasn’t sure.
Steve just flashed him a blindingly brilliant smile for a moment, then pointed into the display case. “I’d better take a couple of Chin’s tarts, prove to Mary we should keep coming back.”
“Wow. I’m hurt. Hurt and offended.”
“The man has taste,” Chin said, and Danny tossed his hands into the air.
“Betrayed by my own friends and employees. I don’t know why I’m surprised.” Danny grabbed a white box and transferred two of the admittedly delicious miniature tomato tarts that Steve had been gesturing at, as the man himself folded his arms on top of the display case directly in front of Danny and said, “And as proprietor of this fine establishment, what else would you recommend, Mr.- what is your last name?”
“Williams,” Danny replied, setting the box down and immediately regretting it as he lifted his head directly into Steve’s intensely blue-eyed gaze. He coughed slightly and continued, “And everything is good, clearly, because I made it. But the raspberry muffins have been doing a fine, brisk trade.”
“We’ll have two of those as well, then. And a loaf of whichever bread is your favourite – our kitchen could do with being better-stocked.”
Danny could turn away to get those, which also meant he regained enough equilibrium to cleanly ask, “Your house is close?”
“Ish,” Steve answered. “I was fine running home last night, but my sister’s not in agreement on that. She’s in the car out there.”
Danny glanced back over his shoulder as he teased, “What, you didn’t want her to meet me?” and was rewarded with an honest-to-god blush darting its way across Steve’s face.
“Something like that,” he agreed smoothly, belying the pink that was still visible high on his cheekbones.
Danny was interrupted from pursuing that particular promising line of inquiry by Chin turning around and sliding two takeaway coffee cups across to Steve. Danny realised he was holding a loaf of bread in metal tongs above a paper bag, having apparently gathered everything on autopilot, and dropped it in, then put it on top of the box already resting next to the coffees. Steve reached out as he did; the backs of their hands brushed, and Danny jumped a little as static electricity transmitted between them. Steve didn’t say anything, but raised his eyebrows quickly and huffed out a chuckle. Danny shook his head slightly. He was relieved when he heard the door from the back open behind him.
“I’ll leave you in Kono’s capable hands to secure payment,” he told Steve. “I have to get back to my bread.” A complete lie, but not one Steve was about to call him on. “Goodbye, Steve.”
As he pushed through the doors, Steve called after him, “Bye, Danno!”
Danny turned around at the last second and glared at Steve, continuing to walk backwards until the doors closed behind him. Then he shook his head again, huffed out a breath, and walked firmly back to his Poirot book and rising dough.