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The first thing Danno says when Steve sees him is, "It's not really as bad as it looks."
Danno, with his black eye and the cuts and scrapes all down his arms, and the walking dead man with a gun pressed against his spine.
Steve's grip tightens on his sidearm. He stares down the asshole holding Danny. "I'm not going to arrest you," he says calmly. "I'm going to kill you."
"I am going to pretend you didn't just say that," says Danny loudly, and then he flinches from a jab of the gun into his back.
"I'm going to count to three," says Steve, ignoring Danny and Danny's blood on the outside of his body, "and by the time I reach three, if your gun isn't on the ground, you will be."
"Fuck you," says the asshole.
"One," says Steve.
"Motherfucker, I'll kill you both."
"Two." Danny's eyes are cutting to the left; shooter on the roof? "Oh, fuck it," Steve says, and shoots the asshole in the chest.
Danny flinches away from the shot as the asshole falls backward. Steve swings around to cover the left; he thinks he sees a head ducking away but that's all, there's no threat up there.
"You killed him?" Danny asks, staring down at the guy and kicking away his weapon. Danny's hands are still cuffed with cable ties.
"I don't think so. Maybe," says Steve, walking over to Danny on autopilot, pulling out his folding knife and cutting the restraints without giving the matter much thought.
Danny rubs at his freed wrists; they're red and chafed and there's so much dried blood on his arms. Steve can't stop staring at it. "You couldn't wait for backup?" Danny demands. "Where are Chin and Kono?"
"Around. Monitoring. Are you okay? No serious injuries?" Steve watches Danny's face as he runs his hands down Danny's arms firmly, looking for a flinch.
"Just a little banged up, ease off." Danny backs up a step. "You still look murder-happy."
No apparent injuries to his arms. The eye looks tender; Steve will pin him down later to ice it if he has to. He zones out a second on Danny's face; Danny's still talking, going on and on about something or other.
"You were gone for ten hours," says Steve suddenly.
Danny shuts up and just looks at him.
"For ten hours--" Steve's voice is on the edge of cracking.
Danny grabs his shoulders and squeezes a little. "I'm here. I'm fine. We've probably lost the rest of the drug ring unless Chin and Kono caught them on the way out of the shipping yard but hey, they're dumb. They'll pop up again. And now we have their friend, if he makes it."
Steve lets out a sigh that releases ten hours of knotted muscles and a stress headache of epic proportions. Danno smiles at him, just a little, hands still on his shoulders. Steve grabs his face and kisses him.
"Mmph," says Danny, releasing his shoulders to flail around a little. Steve just tilts his head and squeezes his eyes shut; he's fucking terrible at 'using his words', as Danny puts it, but maybe he can express himself anyway.
Danny's hands come down to curve around Steve's elbows and he starts kissing back.
"It's okay," he says into Steve's mouth after a minute. "It's okay."
Steve just dives back in to kiss him some more; he has to get all he can out of this, he's sure of that. Danny seems to melt against him. Then he tenses again. Steve desperately tries to ignore it for as long as he can, but Danny's pushing at his chest, shoving him away.
"Uh," Steve gasps, blinking stupidly.
"So I see you've got things pretty well locked up here," says Kono loudly.
Steve whips around to stare at her while Danny fidgets in embarrassment. Kono and Chin are standing next to a shipping container. Chin shakes his head and walks over to the asshole bleeding on the ground, who's starting to come to and making annoying pained noises.
Steve clears his throat and straightens his shoulders, then gestures at the piece of shit he unfortunately didn't kill.
"Book 'em, Danno."
"Uh huh," says Danno, giving Steve the hairy eyeball.
THE END