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Goddamn it! Danny cracks open an eye because he's awake. And if he's going to be awake, he at least wants to know how pissed off he ought to be.
The room is dark, the window is dark, and the scrap of sky he can see behind the broken corner of blind is not showing even a hint of morning glow. He groans at the stupidly cheerful display on his clock radio and buries his throbbing head in the pillow.
It's five am.
One day he'll have a life where he isn't yanked out of a peaceful slumber by rodents wearing jackboots and conducting full-scale military exercises inside his walls, or by neighbors who can only communicate at 100 decibels, but today is not that day. He will never, ever, in any universe, comprehend what in the name of all that's holy could be so important that anyone would want to shout about it at five fucking am.
He curls into a stubborn ball and squeezes his eyes shut tight. It's probably a futile exercise, but he's warm, there's still another hour until he needs to get up and damn it he only fell into bed three hours ago. What does he need to do to catch a break?
The noise ratchets up a few more decibels and he hauls the pillow out from under his head and jams it over his ears to give it one last try, but it's a lost cause; his body's already snapping into up-and-at-'em mode, and to top it all off, he needs to pee. Ever since Gracie was born, he's somehow lost the knack of sleeping through the night, and he's never been able to just 'go back to sleep' once he's awake. Not when his full bladder's demanding relief, and especially not when World War "You-Selfish-Bastard" is raging on the other side of his paper-thin wall.
Goddamn it, he wants to sleep.
"You'd think by my age a man would have at least gained control over his own sleeping patterns," he mutters, dragging himself upright and propping his aching head in his hands. His mouth tastes like the bottom of a bird cage. To top it off, he's bone tired -- hardly surprising considering he's coming off a new four-day high of McGarrett-instigated crazy.
Although, to be fair -- and Danny can do that, he's a reasonable man -- McGarrett gets a pass for yesterday morning because that little bit of "no sweat, boss, I'll just shimmy up the pole, slide across that fifty-foot gap on a wire, and take out the bad guys from the next roof over" inspiration had been all Kono. McGarrett's proud grin and "Okay, I'll give you a boost" hadn't really helped, but by then the insanity goose had been well and truly cooked.
He pushes to his feet and heads for the bathroom, rubbing absently at a sore spot on his neck and, ouch, what the hell is that?
There's no light at all coming in the slatted window, so he fumbles for the switch and squints into the mirror over the sink, and ... holy shit!
That's--- He presses his thumb into the patch of irritated skin just above his collar-bone, fascination waring with a dawning horror as he realises that it's beard-burn. Right there, in living, breathing color. On his neck.
"Well, that's just charming, you Neanderthal animal," he scowls. He has beard-burn -- on his neck -- courtesy of one Steven J. McGarrett and his no-holds-barred undercover technique.
He tilts his head and twists his neck to get a better view, and okay, that's pretty impressive, he thinks, as he takes in its red and irritated glory. The skin is dark and blotchy, and when he runs the pads of his fingers over it, he can feel how over-sensitized it is.
He prods at it some more, fascinated by the way the color bleeds out of the skin only to flood back in when he lifts his fingers, and then suddenly he's not seeing his own reflection in the mirror any more. He's seeing a replay of McGarrett's expression last night, when Danny had climbed into his lap, cupped his face and pressed a warm, friendly kiss right onto his mouth. Remembers the way Steve's face had morphed through confusion and alarm into something Danny doesn't even know how to identify. Because unexpectedly, Steve had kissed him back -- his mouth warm and wet and tasting of mai tais, his big hands hard and hungry when he'd groaned and pulled Danny in tighter, his stubble sharp as it rasped and dragged across Danny's neck -- and yeah, that would pretty much explain the beard burn.
He runs a nervous hand over his mouth and stares hard at the here-and-now of himself in the mirror, because the images his mind is constructing out of something that really was undercover work, just a simple case of him doing his job, are pretty goddamn graphic, and really, it should stop doing that right the fuck now.
But he can't quite stop his fingers sliding carefully down and back over the irregular patch, testing its dimensions and sensitivity, and he definitely can't ignore the rising heat in his belly or the color that floods up his neck as he remembers the sensation of determined lips and teeth and tongue nuzzling into the soft skin above his collarbone.
Fuck!
So okay, yes, he may have had some hand in initiating the whole beard-burn-leaving-scenario thing, but it's not as though he'd actually had a whole host of options at the time. One minute they'd been having a normal -- well, normal considering the way things tended to go when McGarrett was involved -- conversation, and the next, LeJoy had just been there. Danny had merely done his job and made sure his partner stayed safe in a tricky situation. Hiding in plain sight, and all, it's not as though things like invisibility cloaks actually exist outside Gracie's story books, okay?
And it's definitely not his fault that McGarrett kisses like he does everything else in his life -- terrifyingly, full steam ahead, no prisoners taken -- running his hands over Danny's back and ass, pulling him in tight to kiss him like there was some doubt as to whether the sun would come up in the morning. And if Danny's hands had indulged in a little reciprocal wandering under McGarrett's shirt, then that had nothing to do with anything other than the fact that Danny is a goddamn quick thinker.
He peers at his neck closely one more time, then snaps off the bathroom light with a sense of purpose.
McGarrett's a conquer-the-world-before-breakfast kind of guy, so it's not too early for him to hear just how annoyed Danny is; after all, the man is responsible. Besides, it's about time he learned that Danny is not some kind of a prop to be deployed, then discarded without a word whenever it strikes McGarrett's fancy. And who does that, anyway, kisses and runs without actually talking about what the hell happened?
He dresses in the three-quarters dark and grabs his gun, badge and keys. And when he leaves, he closes the door quietly because he, Danny Williams, is a considerate man, and aside from his immediate neighbors, there are people sleeping. And he knows better than to trample all over another person's needs.
Unlike some people he could mention.