McDanno stuff

One-shot: Insecurities

When Danny woke up, he could hear the shower running. Steve had just come back from his morning run.
Danny turned around and pulled the covers over his head. Just a few more minutes...

When he awoke for the second time, he decided it was time to get up and take a nice long shower. Steve was probably already downstairs making breakfast. Danny smiled as he got up. He loved weekends like this.

But to his surprise, Steve was still in the bathroom, standing in front of the mirror.

Danny held back a witty comment when he saw Steve was inspecting the scars and marks scattered across his bare torso.

Bullet wounds, stab wounds, and of course the surgical scar on his stomach that matched Danny's.

"Hey," Danny began carefully. Steve didn't answer. "Babe, you alright?" He stood behind Steve, wrapping his arms around his partner's waist, peeking out from behind him so he could look at him in the mirror.

"Yeah," Steve croaked. He looked away, gently trying to remove Danny's arms from his waist. "Yeah, I'm good."

But Danny knew Steve too well. He turned him around, forcing him to look at him. "No, Steve. No you're not, and I wanna know what's up."

"Look at me. I'm covered in scars." Steve picked at a scab on his arm.

Danny frowned. "Of course you're covered in scars, it'd be weird if you weren't, but why is that suddenly a problem?" He took Steve's hands in order to keep him from picking at himself.

"I- I look at my body... and I don't see myself, Danny. Not anymore. I see... a list of injuries; I see something... broken. Damaged. You know, when you- when you patch something up too many times, at some point it will only consist of patches. So much of my skin is just scar tissue."
He closed his eyes, waiting for Danny's reaction.

After a few moments, he felt Danny cup his face, carefully stroking his cheeks.
"Steve," he breathed, "this- this is still you. Yeah, you don't look like you did ten years ago, but hell, neither do I, because we've aged.
Bodies change all the time, you know, some cells die, some others multiply, and in a couple of years your body will be a completely different one because all your old cells are gone.
But it's always you, because these cells grow in your body, they have your DNA.
Even the scar tissue is you. It's your body fixing itself.
So, yeah, your body might look like a list of injuries - past injuries, but that only shows all the stuff you survived. All the shit that couldn't kill you because you were stronger. And this one," he ran his fingers across the long surgical scar, "the biggest one... it saved your ass."

Danny thought for a second. "They're like boy scout patches," he explained. "Some for surviving a gunfight, one for surviving getting stabbed in jail... and one for getting a new liver." He chuckled. "Got an impressive collection there, you know that?"

When he looked up at Steve, he could see tears streaming down the taller man's face. "I love you, Danny," he sniffled, trying not to sob. He wrapped his arms around Danny and buried his face in his blond hair.

"I love you too, Steve."

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*gross sobbing*