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There are a few rules in the universe. The ocean is blue, the earth is circling the sun, Danny and Steve are always in each other’s space. As it is normal for them to touch almost always, Kono frowns when she sees them sitting in their respectable offices in the morning, doing their paperwork for the last case.
Don’t misunderstand! They manage to do their paperwork just fine, Danny would never just not do it. But normally they would sit in one office together. They would touch at their shoulders, or their thighs, or, if nothing else was possible because they needed to have a little bit of space between them, their feet and lower legs.
Just to be sure that they don’t have an unexpected guest, which is the only plausible reason for them to not sit together, she let her eyes roam over the open office space. Noone else except of her cousin, Chin, was there.
Chin is also sitting on his desk, in his own office, doing paperwork, when Kono steps through the door and into his office. “Hey Cous”, she greets him. He repeats her words and gives her a questioning glance. “What’s up?”, he asks and raises one of his eyebrows. The woman in question laughs shortly and lifts her hand up to her neck. “Did you realise something weird about McGarrett and Danny this morning?”, she asks. He glances towards the offices of the men in question.
“Actually, yes, they didn’t come in together, didn’t talk and Danny just went straight into his office. That’s unnatural for them”, he answers. “I have never seen them apart for so long, not even when the Gouverneur is here.”
Kono looks again to Danny and she begins to frown, the second time in the last ten minutes. “That’s so untypical of them, do you think something happened? Something serious?”, it’s more of a theoretical question than an actual one. Still, Chin shrugs with his shoulders. “We will see. If it’s just a little argument, they’ll be glued together by lunch.” They both laugh and Kono goes into her own office, also doing boring paperwork.
---
As opposed to what Kono and Chin expected, the two men aren’t back in each other’s spaces by noon. When Chin asks them to come to lunch with Kono and him, Steve stands up and follows them, but Danny just tells him he’s not hungry and that he’ll eat later. Steve sees it and shortly his mimic becomes sad before he gets his face under control and shows a happy smile again. But it was not fast enough, Kono saw it.
Later, their lunch sitting in front of them, Kono addresses the topic carefully while Chin is talking to Kamekona. “Sooo, Boss, what’s going on with you and Danny?”, she asks. Her boss begins to pull up his shoulders. “Nothing”, he says but it more sounds like a question. “I don’t know what you mean.” Kono just raises one of her eyebrows, a skill common in her family. When she doesn’t respond to it, Steve sinks even more into himself and begins poking his food with his fork. “It’s complicated, okay?”, he mumbles.
That is the point in which Kono, once again, frowns. Steve does a lot. He laughs, he’s loud, he’s aggressive but never, in the time she knows him, has he ever mumbled. “What did Danny do?”, she asks, slowly beginning to be angry at him. She likes Danny, she really does, but sometimes he’s too loud and too quick-tempered. Surprised and a bit shocked by the tone of his youngest team member Steve looks up and searches for eye contact. “Danny wants to go on a date”, Steve begins, exhaling before speaking again, “with me.”
Kono’s confused. “But… aren’t you already a couple? What’s the problem?” Now it’s Steve’s turn to look confused. “We are not?! I don’t do romance or other stuff. I never have.” “So, you’re aromantic? Or asexual?”, Kono asks. She has not expected that. A friend from surfing is aromantic and after their outing as aroace she had read into the labels behind the A in the queer community.
“I’m what? No, Kono, I’m not a plant!” Confused and shocked the teammates look at each other. “You… You don’t know the term aromantic? As in the queer label aromanticism?” Her mouth was standing open in shock when he knits his brows. “Ehm, no?”, he accentuates it as if his answer was absolutely obvious. With a quick look at her wristwatch, she closes her eyes and breathes slowly. “We should head back to the office, but I’ll send you a few links with explanations. You don’t need to tell me if something might feel right for you, just know you can talk to me. Also, you might want to talk to Danny after your research.” She chuckles lightly and begins standing up.
Chin, who realised a important talk was happening at the table, had sat down with Kamekona but when he sees the conversation was over, he stands up and joins Kono and Steve. He looks at Kono with a questioning glance but she mouths ‘later’ so he doesn’t ask about the chat she had with Steve.
---
Back at the office, Steve lets himself fall into his office chair. Shortly he lets himself look at Danno, only for a second, before he opens his computer.
Like Kono said, he got an email with a few links an hour into working on paperwork. He opens the first link, a Wikipedia-link:
“Aromanticism is a romantic orientation characterized by experiencing little to no romantic attraction.[3][4][5][6] The term "aromantic", colloquially shortened to "aro", refers to a person whose romantic orientation is aromanticism.[7][8] It is distinct from, though often confused with, asexuality, the lack of sexual attraction.“ (Wikipedia, Aromanticism”)
Slowly he exhales. He didn’t realise holding his breath until that point. ‘Why does that actually sound like him?’ Quickly he opens link after link, learning more and more about this new label, it almost feels like a new world is opening up infront of him. After reading through everything the links had to give, he begins searching himself. Aromanticism, Asexuality, Queerplatonic Relationships, the difference between aesthetic attraction, sexual attraction, platonic and emotional attraction. He reads and reads and reads.
He gets thrown out of his research bubble when Chin taps his knuckles against the door and opens it. “Kono and I’ll call it a day, Boss, don’t stay too late!”, he tells the SEAL. “Yeah, sure”, Steve answers, looking at the watch for the first time in a few hours, his paperwork laying abandoned at one side of his desk.
Chin closes the door and leaves, his cousin one step behind him.
Steves eyes wander towards Danny’s office. The blond was still sitting on his desk, tipping on his keyboard with his index fingers. Steve smirks, that is so typical for his partner.
Once again, he looks at his computer monitor, inhales deeply and turns it off. He grabs his bag and heads over towards Danny’s office. He knocks at his door and pushs it open. “Hey, Danno, can we talk?” He addresses his partner. The other man looks up at Steve. “Sure!”, he replies and crosses his arms over his chest.
Steve inhales, opens his mouth and, he stops. He tries again but stops before words can leave his mouth. “Okay, harder than I thought”, he says quietly.
“Come, sit down”, Danny nudges him into his office, lightly knocking onto the chair nearest to his. Normally Steve already would’ve sat onto this chair all day. He obeys quickly.
“Kono showed me something today and… and at first I didn’t understand but then she sent me this links and suddenly I understood myself so much better!”, he says, getting back his voice.
Danny opens his mouth, wanting to say something but Steve disrupts him. “Sorry, I need to say this now or I’ll never be able to say it.” Once again he inhales deeply. “I am aromantic. That means I don’t feel romantic attraction. I never have but I thought that was just me but its not and I’m not as alone with this as I thought. And I love you, I really do but not like that and I want to go with you, have a date but you need to understand that I’ll never be in love with you. You deserve so much bett- “. This time it’s Danny disrupting Steves rambling. “Babe, Stevie, Babe, listen- “, he tries to get Steves attention “ -stop, please, listen to me. I love you, too. I have never felt like this. Not with Rachel, not with anyone. I’m not in love with you, I don’t have butterflies flying around my stomach, but I know I love you with everything I am. We can find out what that means exactly, okay? Together.” Steve actually stopped talking to listen to Danny. His eyes are almost comically wide open. “You… for real? You’re not kidding?”, Steve needs to hear it again. “Yes, babe, I love you, I won’t leave you.” Danny’s voice has a soft tone he normally only uses for Gracie. “Now come here, you big softie!” he says in his normal exaggerated tone and pulls Steve into a hug.
---
The next morning Danny slowly begins to wake up. He’s sweating. When he wants to move away from the hot source, it moves and tightens around him. Confused he opens his eyes. Of course, now he remembers. After the conversation with Steve, they decided to have their ‘date’ on the same evening. They went to a nice but not too nice restaurant, had a fantastic evening and at the end they didn’t want to split up. The decision to go back to Steve’s House made fast and after watching TV and cuddling in front of it, they went to bed. Together.
So, the hot source who’s not letting him go is his boyfriend (?), partner (?) Steve McGarrett. He definitely needs to look into what exactly they have and are now.
The SEAL is laying over Danny’s whole body, kind of looking like an octopus as hard as he’s holding onto the blond man. His head is positioned over Danny’s heart. He’s showing the first signs of waking up, sniffling into Danny’s shirt, frowning when the sun is hitting his face. Danny laughs lightly at the sign of his deeply relaxed partner wrinkling his nose. “Rise and shine, babe”, Danny whispers in his ear. Still delirious Steve lifts his head and places a little kiss onto Danny’s chin.
The smaller man looks surprised. He did not expect that. He catalogues ‘talking about what intimacy is good to go’ into his brain for talking about it later and just strokes Steve’s hair for the morning.
Later they will talk about everything and do the needed research but for now only being here, with each other, cuddling, was enough.