Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of this work of fiction, and am not making a profit, monetary or otherwise, through the writing of this.
A/N: This was a spur of the moment write that was inspired by the name of the German town that my friend will be living in for the next year. It is not meant to be offensive (I apologize if anyone is offended), and is not meant to be taken overly seriously. This is plotless fluff and crack.
"Schweinfurt," Danny said into his phone, and then he listened a few seconds longer, nodding, rolling his hand through the air in a 'that's what I just said' gesture, "Yes, yes," he said, and repeated, "Schweinfurt," before hanging up and grimacing.
He held the phone away from himself, shaking his head at the absurdity of people who don't actually listen, before finally tucking the phone into its holster, and dismissing the entire, irritating conversation from his mind, because he was at work, and there were more pressing matters at hand. Namely, Steve, who was giving him an odd look.
"Bless you," Steve said once Danny was off the phone.
Danny gave him a funny look and moved toward his office, but Steve intercepted him before he could reach it. Frowning at his partner, he assessed Danny for the beginning signs of a cold, or the flu. One could never be too careful about health issues nowadays. A simple cold or the flu could quickly snowball and become something much worse. Danny's cheeks weren't flushed, and his eyes weren't glassy, he didn't feel warm to the touch, but that didn't mean that he wasn't starting to get sick.
Danny backed away from Steve, arms windmilling, when his partner placed his wrist on Danny's forehead, and then cheeks, an intense look on his face that Danny had rarely seen outside of the interrogation room. Danny slapped at Steve's hands in an effort to stop his partner's strange, not so appropriate for the workplace, actions.
"Stop that you...handsy octopus. Hands off," Danny said in a very firm, do not mess with me, tone of voice. He smoothed a hand down the front of his shirt, just to make sure that it hadn't become disheveled when Steve had mauled him.
"It's okay, Danny," Steve said. "I'm just checking you for a fever."
Danny blinked at his partner, and narrowed his eyes as he searched Steve's for a sign that the man had somehow become concussed between their ride on the elevator to the short walk from the elevator to their offices. There'd been no explosions, the car ride in, and the elevator ride up, had both been smooth, but maybe Danny had missed a concussing moment when he'd blinked or something. One could never be too cautious where Steve was concerned.
"Checking me for a...Steven, would you stop that?" Danny slapped Steve's hand away from his face, and took another step away from his overbearing partner.
"I don't have a fever," he said, enunciating each word clearly so that Steve wouldn't misinterpret anything that he'd said.
"But you sneezed," Steve said, thwarted hand hanging in the air, ready to test Danny for a fever the second that Danny let his guard down.
Danny shook his head, and pinched the bridge of his nose, and gave his partner a look that he hoped conveyed his extreme irritation, and disbelief at his partner's words.
"No, I didn't," he said, thinking back to the past forty-five minutes that he'd spent in Steve's presence on the drive to work, the elevator ride, and the walk to their offices. He hadn't sneezed once. At least he didn't think he had.
"Yes, you did. I heard you sneeze," Steve insisted, fever-checking hand still aloft in the air, practically vibrating with Steve's need to touch and assess.
Danny was giving Steve a look that said multiple things all at once, namely: what the hell have you been smoking this morning? and, you touch me, you die, and, are you losing your mind, do I need to check you into Kahi Mohala?
Steve was concerned about his partner's well being, and was not deterred by the looks that Danny was giving him. He'd faced far worse than any looks Danny could send his way, and had survived. Torture. Being pinned down behind enemy lines. Grace's bottom lip trembling.
"Steven, put your hand down, and back away," Danny said, voice firm. The unspoken, but nonetheless clear, 'or else', hung heavy in the air between them.
Steve did put his hand down, but he did not back away. "I just want to make sure that you're not coming down with something," Steve said, trying to be reasonable.
Steve's voice was sincere, his eyes were giving that ASPCA commercial that Danny hated (only because it made him tear up) a run for its money, and Danny found himself capitulating, letting Steve creep closer into his personal space, and in essence, feel him up, as he checked Danny for a nonexistent fever to make sure that Danny's imaginary sneeze wasn't going to lead to some life-threatening illness that would keep him from doing his job properly. Danny almost giggled when the tips of Steve's fingers felt along his rib cage, but he held his breath, and his reactions to Steve's touch, and close proximity.
Steve's hands hovered over Danny's shoulders, and, though they weren't quite touching, Danny could feel the heat from them, and he shivered. Steve's gaze locked on Danny's lips for a split second, before flitting away.
Danny suddenly found it very difficult to breathe when Steve's eyes, dark and intense as a flame, locked on his own, and Steve's hands settled on Danny's shoulders, a warm, welcome weight. He felt dizzy, and Danny wondered if maybe he had sneezed after all, if maybe Steve was onto something, and Danny needed to have his partner drive him home so that he could crawl into bed, and...
Steve licked his lips, and swallowed. Danny followed the movement with his eyes, and bit his lip. Though he was certain that, before Steve had gotten his hands on him, he hadn't had a fever, he did now.
"You don't seem to be running a fever," Steve said in a voice that was far too thick and husky for what was actually happening in the middle of Five-0's offices.
It was an innocent act, one partner looking after the welfare of the other, because partners were supposed to have each other's backs. It was a code. A manly, brotherly code.
"Funny," Danny said, giggling a little. "I feel a little hot. Are you sure that you're checking me properly?"
Steve's lips parted and Danny's stomach clenched, and he closed his eyes, because Steve was tilting his head, and his parted lips were coming dangerously close to Danny's. The dizziness hadn't yet passed, and Danny must've sneezed, even though he didn't remember sneezing, because right now he was burning up with a fever that was off the charts.
"Eh-hem." Grover cleared his throat and Steve and Danny snapped apart as though they'd been shocked.
"Something you been meaning to tell us, bosses?" Kono asked, winking at Danny, who groaned and wiped a hand over his face.
His mouth felt dry, and the dizzy spell still hadn't passed, and Steve was staring at him, mouth gaping, eyes bulging like a fish too long out of water. It was as endearing as it was comical.
"Steve was uh, he was..." Danny waved his hands in the air as he tried to explain, in a way that would make sense, what their co-workers had walked in on. To explain away the awkwardness of what it was that they had witnessed.
At the onset, it had been an innocent act, neither man had known what was going to happen when Steve's hands descended on Danny's shoulders, and he tilted his head just so. Steve really had been checking Danny for a fever because of an un-sneezed sneeze.
Danny's breath caught in his throat, and he suddenly felt cold and hot all at once as his thoughts raced, and he felt like strangling Steve. Had this imagined sneeze been Steve's poor attempt at copping a feel? Had Steve orchestrated the whole thing, thinking that, because they'd come into the offices early, no one else would be in until after he'd had his way with Danny? Was the not-sneeze Steve's sick way of hitting on Danny and his poor handsy imitation of Florence Nightingale, some warped attempt at seducing him?
Danny opened his mouth to question Steve right then and there, but snapped it closed when he saw that Kono's eyes were glinting with excitement. She was hoping to hear something juicy, and Danny would be damned if he'd give it to her. He'd already given up enough to Steve, and his octopussy hands.
"I was checking Danny for a fever. He sneezed," Steve blurted out, face going red, eyes still way too wide to convey the truth of his words.
It really had started out that way. He'd only been concerned about Danny's health, but then...well things had gone distinctly south, in more ways than one, when he'd gotten close enough to his partner to determine that Danny did not, in fact, have a fever.
Steve was starting to think that maybe he was the one with the fever, because he was getting a little hot around the collar and the room was starting to spin, just a little, and Danny was looking at him like he was going to kill him with his bare hands.
"Woah, boss, if that's how you check for a fever, I just might have to invite you over to my house the next time I'm feeling a little under the weather," Kono joked. She waggled her brows, and chuckled.
Grover looked from Kono, to Steve, to Danny and shook his head. Pointing toward his office, he said, "I'm going to be in there if anyone needs me. I suggest that no one need me for as long as it takes for whatever this is to be taken care of."
Kono stifled a laugh into a fist, eyes sparkling with ill-contained mirth, and she sashayed into her office, leaning back out the door to holler, "Let me know if the two of you need any uh...help with, uh, breaking that fever of Danny's." She quickly slipped the rest of the way into her office, and secured her door, and the blinds, before Danny could say anything scathing in return.
"I do not have a fever," Danny said, just to say something, and to keep his mind off of the fact that he and Steve were, in essence, alone again. Grover had shut, and locked his door, and pulled his blinds shut, too.
"Hey, Danny." Chin, oblivious to the tension that he'd inadvertently walked into, smiled and waved as he walked toward his office. He nodded in Steve's direction, and got a terse nod in return, and, "Hey, Chin."
"You're sure that it's, Schweinfurt, Germany, and not Schweighausen, that our diamond thief was lying low in?" Chin asked Danny. "I wanted to try a different angle in hunting him down, and just wanted to double check with you."
Sighing, Danny nodded. "Yes, I'm sure. Our liaison in Germany said, Schwienfurt, not Schweighausen. Didn't Schmidt call you? I spoke to someone at HPD about it earlier this morning."
"Wait, did you say, Schweinfurt?" Steve asked, face going beet red.
Eying his partner warily, Danny nodded. "Yeah, you were with me this morning when I was on the phone with HPD, and..."
"Is everything alright?" Chin asked, looking from one to the other in confusion as Danny burst out into laughter and Steve, still red-faced, hurried to his office, slamming the door and clicking the lock into place behind him.
Danny shook his head. "Everything's more than alright, Chin," Danny said when he could catch his breath again. "Just a slight error on a phonemic level."
Chin nodded, and ducked into his office. It was clear that he was simply going to ignore the crazy rather than question, or participate, in it.
Danny, instead of heading to his own office, walked to Steve's, and pulled the lock-pick out of his pocket. He never left home without it. Working with Steve had taught him a lot of things over the years, and always having a means of picking a lock was one of them.
It took very little time for him to break into Steve's office, and even less time for him to shut and lock the door behind him, and draw the blinds that Steve, in his haste, had neglected to shut. His partner was still red in the face, and refused to look Danny in the eye until Danny got right up into his personal space, reversing their roles from earlier, and made him, hands bracing either side of Steve's face.
"Is a sneeze all it takes for you to do this?" Danny asked, running his fingers along Steve's rib cage, much the same as Steve had done to him earlier.
Steve drew in a shaky breath, and let it out. "Danny, I-"
"Next time, instead of copping a feel when you think I'm sick, maybe try offering me a tissue?" Danny teased, smiling at the nod that he got from Steve. "And make sure to clean out those ears of yours. We don't need another international incident on our hands because you can't discern the name of a town in Germany from a sneeze."
Danny closed his eyes, and, life in his hands, heart on his sleeve, leaned in close to Steve, and, tongue darting out, licked at Steve's ear, nibbling, and sucking just a little on the lobe.
Steve's hands went to Danny's hips, and he pulled him close, moaning as he turned his head to trap Danny's mouth in the kiss that Grover and Kono had interrupted prematurely.
There was the explosion that Danny had missed earlier, right behind his eyes, colorful and dizzying. It had the force of a concussion blast, and then some. When he and Steve parted to draw in much needed air, their pupils were blown wide, and Danny wasn't sure which was was up.
"Wow." Danny breathed out the word against Steve's chin. "If I didn't have a fever earlier, I sure do now."
He wanted to say something cheesy, like, I've got a fever for you, but he didn't. He let it end there - Steve's hands resting on his hips, their hearts pounding a duet, lungs burning for much needed oxygen, the doors to everyone's offices locked tight, and time enough for at least one more kiss.