Moonlight splits the window into shards, the curtain covering most of it’s glow with a few beams leaking through. Danny stares up and out, measures his breathing into slow and easy beats, and feels the calmness seep into his bones.
It still happens often enough, being jarred from sleep with no recollection for the why, the only evidence of his displeasure a thin veneer of sweat and the ghost of some kind of panic in his chest. Tonight’s easier, his awakening sudden but his teeth aren’t on edge, and he feels safe.
He turns, cheek pressed into the pillow, and finds Steve. He’s beautiful, laid out against the sheets, half his body covered and half exposed to the cool bedroom air. The moonlight hits his long lashes and brightens the hair on his head and chest, and Danny marvels at how perfect and his Steve is.
The room as settling as it is, Danny stays like that for a while, drifting in that calming state of asleep and awake and thinking about not much of anything. It isn’t until Steve makes a mumbling noise in the back of his throat, shifting closer to Danny in his sleep, that Danny feels any need to move.
Its a little thing, but Danny has to swallow on the sudden press of emotion in his chest, so intense that he rolls and sets his hands on Steve’s skin, feeling his warmth beneath his fingers. He feels blessed in more ways than one, because though he can count on hands and toes (and probably then some) all the ways he’s been fucked over by life in general, there are lots he’s been handed that have turned everything around for the better. Hawai’i in general being one, for both him and Grace; she’s doing so well here, and he is too, and it’s something that becomes more and more obvious every day.
And then there’s this, that he has the luxury of doing this at all. The swell of emotion hits again with an intimidating force, and he can’t keep from pressing closer, from pressing his lips to the back of Steve’s shoulders, from finding all the skin he can.
He doesn’t know if he’s woken Steve or not, can’t get enough thought into his head to even care. All he is is the touch and the frightening level of love he has for the man, and he exhales on a sign, breathing in the scent of him, finally feeling like he’s come home.