Title: Marked
Fandom: Hawaii five-0
Rating: PG
Length: 531
Content notes: Hawaii five-0 AU. There are bonding marks and no five-0, really. Just millionaire Danny, SEAL Steve and a ton of complications. This is a "missing scene" from something Bru and I have been working on from time to time.
Author notes: This is my first OFFICIAL co-authored piece with the amazing and lovely brumeier. We've been having these little private "roundrobins" but nothing we ever prettied up enough to post. This changes today. I'm so excited and honored to have such a lovely partner in crime.
Summary: Steve's thoughts about his mark, Danny and taking chances.



Steve traced the outlines of the blue and crimson bonding mark that wound up his left forearm. If someone had told him a week ago that he would want Danny, would want the bonding to work out the way he did right now, he wouldn’t have believed them. At first glance, bonding with someone like Danny, who was ostensibly self-absorbed and shallow, was a really stupid idea. But it didn’t take long for the real Danny to show through: the one who was lonely, and kind, and who had found a surrogate family in his housekeeping staff. Steve's mind still reeled from the things he had learned in the past two days, their shallow bond supplying him with emotions and fragments of information Steve wasn't sure Danny was aware was being transferred.

For someone as self-contained as Steve normally was, it was disconcerting to say the least. But it was also right in ways he couldn't even begin to fathom. To know someone so well, someone who was essentially a stranger, should've been weird. It wasn't.

If only Danny would open up a bit to him. They’d agreed to get to know each other, but Danny was avoiding him at all costs. He spent hours holed up in his office with the door closed, and he'd side-stepped all of Steve's attempts to find out anything about the man Daniel Williams was. In fact, he had provided less information over the last two days than he had during their first meeting over breakfast.

Steve studied the mark, every loop and whirl as individual as a fingerprint. Not completely unique, though, since Danny's mark was an exact match. He wondered if they'd be as perfect a match as the soul marks indicated they’d be.

Steve knew he wasn't the easiest person to be with, part of which surely stemmed from the early loss of his mother and his subsequent estrangement from his remaining family. The Navy had used his instinctual need to detach himself from others and honed it into a skill. His whole life was compartmentalized, neat and structured; his emotions shut away as best as possible. It made him an outstanding SEAL and excellent soldier, but also a nightmare to be in a relationship with. Steve had lost count of the times he had been called cold and distant. But this bond was his chance. Already he felt closer to Danny than he’d felt to anyone, ever.

And if that were true for him, surely it was the same for Danny. How much of a read was he getting off Steve through the bond? What secrets was Steve unintentionally giving away about himself?

He wasn't the best communicator, he knew. But it seemed like the bond could facilitate an understanding of the things he couldn't express. It was terrifying and liberating all at once.

"Steven, dinner is ready. Please come and eat it while it’s still hot." Maria’s voice coming from the corridor startled Steve out of his thoughts.

He needed to come up with a plan, and quick, before it was too late and this huge chance would slip through their fingers. Steve would think of something.

But first, dinner.