I'll Sleep When I'm Dead

Danny sleeps beside him, passed out from their earlier escapades. It's been a long and wonderful and frustrating week since that morning on the lanai. A week of longing looks and emotional texts and phone calls. Of too-short make out sessions in the mornings when Danny picks him up for work, held hands and fingers on thighs in the Camaro, and stolen kisses in the hallway at the Palace. Steve wonders if the looks and the touches and the I love yous looked or sounded any different than they always had to the team. They haven't told anyone yet, not even Grace, wanting to just enjoy each other, alone, for as long as they can.

Rachel and Stan arrived back home early this morning so this has been the first night since the dance that Steve and Danny had seen each other outside of work. They'd managed to hold off the fireworks long enough to eat a pizza and talk, just relaxing and enjoying each other for the first time since they'd finally admitted their feelings for each other.

Now Danny's laying on Steve's pillow in Steve's bed with Steve's sheet riding so low there's almost no point in having pulled it up at all, with Steve himself wrapped around him. His face is half-buried in Danny's neck. Their legs are tangled up together and their arms around each other. Danny's embrace had loosened as he fell asleep, while Steve's still grips him tight. His body begs him to join Danny in sleep, but he's fighting it. He doesn't want to take his eyes off Danny, off his beautiful face, muscular chest, strong arms that feel so good wrapped around him. His mind supplies the images, no longer imagination but memory, of what lay hidden under the sheet – powerful legs, thick cock that had felt so good, right, inside him as Danny had finally claimed him, made him his.

He chews his lip, soothes it by burying his face farther into Danny's neck and kissing him where it meets his shoulder, the love bite Steve had left there has already almost faded. He wants to make that mark stay, so everyone will know Danny belongs to him and no one else.

Danny lets out a little, needy noise and his arms tighten around Steve for a moment before he settles back asleep.

Steve's never felt this need to possess someone so completely before, or to be possessed in return. Granted, the closest thing he's ever had to relationships in the past had been that cheerleader in high school – because the quarterback was supposed to date the head cheerleader, wasn't he? – and Catherine, and Lynn, who was even more a case of 'friends with benefits' than Cath had been. Possession always seemed wrong, like it would be viewing the other person as an object to be controlled and paraded around.

But that's not what Steve's possessiveness of Danny is about. This is about being so consumed by Danny that he doesn't know where he ends and Danny begins. It's about wanting to tell the whole world about it because he's happy and can barely contain himself. Maybe he's crazy. Maybe he's a little obsessive. He doesn't really care. He just doesn't want Danny to ever leave him.

Maybe it's because so many people have left or betrayed him that he just wants to hold onto Danny, who he knows without a shred of a doubt would never do either of those things. Maybe it's because he didn't think anyone could ever want him enough to feel that possessiveness toward him that he hadn't even known he could feel that way about Danny until tonight.

The realization had scared him, thought it would scare Danny away, too. He tried to lock it down, talk himself out of it. Danny wasn't an object; he wasn't someone that should be possessed or needed protecting.

But then, as Danny had explored his way down his body, he'd alleviated all his fears. His hand, that had been driving Steve wild playing with his nipples, stilled over Steve's heart. Their eyes met and Danny growled out "mine" before taking Steve's cock into the wet heat of his mouth.

It was at that moment that Steve realized what it really meant to truly possess someone, and be possessed in return.

"Yes, yours!" Steve had agreed, wholeheartedly, as he ran one hand over his face and tangled the other in Danny's hair.

"Fuck me, Danny."

Danny had groaned around him before pulling off.

"Yeah, babe, let's do that."

He sighs deep at the memory, still burning fresh not only in his mind but his body. He blinks a long blink before opening his eyes wide again, trying to stave off the inevitable.

He wishes he could get away without ever sleeping again, so he can spend the rest of his nights just watching this man, making sure he always looks this peaceful, and that nothing ever happens to him. And if he never goes to sleep, well then he never has to worry about waking up to find out it has all just been a dream.

"Go to sleep, you goof," Danny says. "I'll still be here in the morning." Steve grins, kisses Danny's shoulder, leans up to kiss his mouth. Danny seems happy to return the kiss until Steve pulls back just enough to say "I love you" against his lips.

Danny kisses him again, hard and quick, eyes still closed as if he's still asleep. He pulls at Steve's bottom lip with his teeth, soothes it with his tongue.

"I love you, too. Now go to sleep."

Steve goes to sleep.