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gyzymFor more information, please see Part One.
In his first six hours working with Steve again, Danny is shot at, thrown into a wall, called four different vile names, threatened at knifepoint, and mildly concussed.
"You're making that last one up," Steve says, taking a corner too hard and knocking Danny's head into the window. "You can't claim concussion every time you get a little bump, people will stop believing you."
"This is not The Boy Who Cried Wolf," Danny snaps, mostly for show. The truth is, he's never been so happy to be in screaming pain in his entire life. "This is a head wound. I didn't take you as the type to let your men suffer in silence, huh, McGarrett?"
"This is suffering in silence?" Steve asks, the edge of his mouth quirking up. It's not as lighthearted as it would have been, once--there's still enough of an edge in his voice that Danny can tell at least some of his annoyance is real--but he remembers this, remembers this process. He and Steve had genuinely pissed each other off at first, but they'd grown into it, gotten comfortable. Danny remembers how it happened, so he figures he can speed it along a little.
"You are heartless," he says, flopping back against his seat and wincing. "Cruel and heartless. They don't teach you compassion in the SEALs?"
"They don't teach to suck it up in the Jersey PD?"
"I'm just saying," Danny says, magnanimously letting that one go, "if I'm concussed because you're the kind of crazy bastard who likes to charge into situations without backup--"
"Brought you, didn't I--"
"Without backup other than me," Danny amends, giving him that one out of the kindness of his heart. "But yeah, if I'm dying of a brain bleed right now, you're going to feel pretty fucking stupid, huh?"
Things Danny is going to have to file away for the future: Steve in this reality has a hell of a guilt complex. Before he can even mention that he was kidding, for fuck's sake, Steve is wrenching the car across three lanes of traffic to park it on the shoulder.
"JESUS FUCKING CHRIST," Danny yells, his grip white-knuckled on the door handle. "Oh my god, McGarrett, what the fuck is the matter with you, are you actually trying to kill me--"
"Look at me," Steve snaps. Obligingly, Danny turns his glare to the left, expecting the fight to continue. Instead Steve takes Danny's face in his hands and leans in, and for a second--for a second Danny thinks--
"Follow my finger with your eyes," Steve instructs, cupping Danny's chin and holding him still. And Danny would argue, he would, except that his skin is on fire where Steve is touching him, except that he's almost got a contact high just from this. He follows Steve's finger back and forth and tries to control his breathing as Steve runs him through a quick barrage of hearing and memory tests. He doesn't move his hand from Danny's chin, and once, just for a second, Danny thinks his can feel Steve's thumb brush ever so lightly against his throat.
"Right," he says finally, pulling away, "so, you're not concussed, you're just whiny."
Danny's having some trouble controlling his urge to launch himself across the car and attack Steve like a wild animal; he wrestles it down, barely, and coughs.
"Yeah, well," he says, "I'd rather have been concussed than be driven across the highway like that, I mean, Jesus, don't you have any self-control--"
"There really isn't anything you won't bitch about, is there?" Steve asks, slanting a genuinely amused smile at him. Danny decides, in an absent sort of way, that he's going to go ahead and hold onto this moment for the rest of the day.
"I'm just saying," he says, "I'm a father, you can't be all--"
"You've got kids?" Steve asks, pulling the car back out onto the road. "I didn't know that--good for you, man. How many?"
It takes Danny a second to answer, because he has to remind himself to breathe. He should have anticipated this--of course Steve doesn't know about Gracie, hell, he only met Steve two days ago--but it winds him anyway, hits him like a punch to the face. He's angry, just for a second, a white hot flare of it; he wants to grab Steve and shake him, remind him that he helped Grace with her science project just last month, took them all to the North Shore afterwards to watch the surfing.
"Just one," he says, when he feels like he can talk again. "Gracie--Grace, my daughter. She'll be nine in a couple of months."
"Good for you," Steve repeats, in that same dispassionate tone, like he's interested in that obligatory way circumstance requires. Danny's grip goes white-knuckled on the door handle again, but this time it's mostly in an attempt to restrain himself from doing something stupid, something like howling his anguish out the window towards the Jersey shore.
"You," he says finally, and has to clear his throat. "You'd like her."
"Yeah, man, I'm sure," Steve agrees, his eyes never straying from the road.
--
It only takes a week of working with Steve before Danny notices a couple of things.
The first is that, for the first time in his professional career, he's having some trouble remembering the details of the case. He knows they've been to see a whole cabal of derelicts, the who's who of the Jersey criminal network--they got their hands on Frank Salvo two days in, and Danny'd all but jumped out of his skin to see the man alive. He remembers the meetings but not the details, remembers Steve's crazier interrogation tactics but not the information they produced.
He doesn’t even care that much, is the worrying part. He keeps forgetting to be stressed about it.
He mentions it to Steve, in the car on a stakeout on the sixth night, and Steve's face goes blank for a second. When he blinks back to himself, he answers a question Danny didn't ask about his coffee preferences, and it takes Danny an hour and a half to realize the topic was dropped.
It gives him hope, in a pained, oblique sort of way. Either he's losing his mind or there's something off in this reality, something that might mean he'll get to go home one of these days. He tries not to cling to that, tries to keep himself from thinking of the island and his life there as something he wants, because he's never been much of an optimist and he's not really prepared to start now. It's hard, though. He wants to take every moment he can't remember and cherish it; he wants to take everything he's forgotten and use it as evidence in the court of not my life.
The second thing he notices, rather more rapidly than the first, is that this version of Steve is a far larger mess than the Steve he knew in Hawaii. He'd known that from the get-go, of course, but it just gets clearer as the time trickles by, as they spend more and more time together. Steve in Hawaii had wanted Hesse, had pushed every angle on every case to the breaking point, but this Steve isn't like that. This Steve is so desperate to catch Hesse that each dead lead they hit shows on his face, like it's gutted him.
And then there's also…well. Island Steve, Five-0 Steve, Danny's Steve--he'd been a little socially challenged, definitely, a little rough around the edges, especially at first. Danny'd had to apologize for him on more than one occasion, and he'd had to get used to the way Steve always wanted to stay a little later, push a little longer, anything to keep from going home. Eventually he'd figured out Steve was lonely, which had lead to Danny and his stupid bleeding heart dragging him out for beers and barging into his house uninvited. And somewhere in the process there, in the act of being big and loud to distract Steve from his demons, Danny had discovered Steve was doing the same for him, just in slightly less…traditional ways.
To a certain degree, the fact that they'd ended up sleeping together was almost a foregone conclusion. It would have been nearly impossible to get that wrapped up in someone else's life and not end up wanting them, especially when that someone was so damnably attractive to begin with.
But this Steve…oh, god. Danny knows what he needs, because he's done this before, but he doesn't think even he can be big enough and loud enough to drown out this Steve's problems. This Steve never settled down after his father died, never stopped to take a break and process, never stumbled over confessions of grief in Danny's Camaro after one drink too many. This Steve hasn't seen his sister in over a decade and this Steve never got the catharsis of emptying his gun into Hesse's chest, regardless of the fact that it didn't stick. This Steve hasn't had anyone to talk to, anyone to listen to, any distraction except the hunt for an entire year, and the toll it's taken on him is obvious and terrible.
So Danny starts spending more time than he should at the office. Danny starts staying late, ignoring the worried mutters from Mikey and McNally, to make sure he's got Steve's back. Danny starts dragging Steve to bars and restaurants, starts demanding to know when the last time he has fun was, starts bringing him donuts and coffee in the mornings to round him out a little. He knows he should be at home with his wife, but it's a losing battle; he knows he should be at home with his daughter, but looking at her breaks his heart, makes him want to scream and rage and kill until he can find a way to light her up again.
Steve's a problem he can't solve, but a smaller one than all his others. Danny throws himself into fixing him like it's a full-time job.
He should really see it coming before it happens, is the point. He remembers the last time he felt this way, like he had to stay at the station, like going home was a curse or a death sentence or something; remembers the last time his back ached from sleeping on the couch and his skin itched with a pervading sense of failure. He remembers it, he does, but he's been trying not to for so long that it blinds him a little, makes him blot out details he shouldn't miss.
He should really see it coming, but he doesn't, and that's why he comes home a month after Steve pops into his life to find Rachel with an open suitcase, slamming drawers.
"Rachel," he says, staring.
She looks up at him, and there are tears streaking her cheeks, and oh, god, he remembers this too. He remembers this moment, exactly this moment, like it's a police sketch or a photograph laid out in front of him. She's wearing the same clothes she was the first time--it's even the same pair of shoes in her hand, Jesus--and he knows what she's going to say before she says it.
"I'm sorry," she says, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but I don't want to be this person, I don't want to--I hate you, I don't want to hate you but I do, I can't help it and I--I never wanted it to be like this, but I have to, I have to go, Danny, I have to."
Danny swallows and swallows again, feeling tears prick up behind his eyes. This shouldn't hurt the way it does--he's already lived it once, should be comforted to know that this would have happened to them in any reality--but it's still almost deafening, the roaring in his ears. Distantly, he remembers the way he'd screamed at her the first time around, both of them sobbing and furious before the end, the way Gracie's panicked wail had echoed through the halls after they were gone.
This time he steps forward and pulls her into his arms, bites down on the things he could say and just holds her there, sobbing into his shoulder.
"It's okay," he says, rubbing her back. Rachel shakes harder against him, and he thinks again of how sorry he is, of how much he couldn't let himself see before. "It's okay, babe, you don't have to be unhappy, we shouldn't have to be unhappy. I don't want to be this person either, Rachel, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's okay."
He helps her pack, quiet for once in his life, trying not to hate himself as he remember the way he'd thrown things last time. He helps her pack and calls her a cab, loads Grace into the car after her with a hushed, cautious hand.
"You and Mommy are going to a hotel, okay, Monkey?" he says, and she's hugging him too tight, her tiny hands fisted in his shirt. She'd cried, last time, cried like she was never going to stop, but this time she’s silent and terrified, like she knows what it means. He knows she's older, has lived with it longer, has probably been waiting for it, but her resignation still makes something twist inside him. Her eyes are dry when she pulls back, but the expression on her face is years too old, and he tucks her hair behind her ears and tries to smile.
"Where are you gonna go, Danno?" she asks. It's barely above a whisper, but he hears it anyway.
"I'm gonna be right here," he tells her, "right here at the house, and you'll still see me all the time. Some things are gonna change, baby, but I love you and there's nothing that could change that. You know that, right? You know that Danno loves you?"
She nods, and he can't help but pull her into one last hug.
"Say it for me, okay? So I know you know."
"Danno loves me," Gracie says, and she is crying a little now, he feels it against his cheek as he pulls away.
"Good girl," Danny whispers. He kisses her and steps back, rests his hand on the cab door. "You be good for your mom, okay? And I'll see you soon, I promise."
She stares out the window at him as the cab pulls away, twists in her seat to wave at him until the car turns the corner. Danny stands in the street for a long time, his stomach churning, before he goes inside.
His phone is ringing on the kitchen table when he shuts the door.
"Williams," he answers.
"McGarrett," Steve returns, in his business voice. "Got a lead. I'll be at your place in five."
"Okay," Danny says, sinking into a chair and resting his head in his hands, "yeah, Steve, alright."
--
He doesn't tell Steve until three days later, and even then it only comes out because they're a little drunk.
"It's not that big a thing," he says carefully, when Steve's face twists into that self-recriminating expression he hates so much. "We've been heading towards it for years, believe me."
"But if I hadn't--if you'd spent less time with--" Steve says, and then shakes his head like he's trying to clear it. "Williams, man, I'm really sorry."
"Why do you call me that?" Danny asks, before he can help himself. "We've been working together for a month, you'd think you could use my first name."
Steve smiles, a small, sad thing, into the neck of his beer.
"It's easier," he says. "I'm never--you know, I'm not on land very often, right, and it's easier not form attachments. You're--you've been really great, right, really helpful, but at some point we're gonna get Hesse or he's going to leave Jersey, and then I'll have to go too."
"You think you're not gonna miss me if you call me by my last name?" Danny jokes, trying not to let all the panic behind it slip into his voice. Steve is going to leave--Steve is going to leave, and then Danny's going to be stuck here with his empty house and his empty life, with nothing but memories of a time that maybe never existed to keep him company. It's not exactly a pleasant thought.
It takes him a minute to realize Steve hasn't answered; when he looks up Steve is staring at him, his eyes wide and fierce. They've both had a couple beers too many, and Danny swallows hard against a sudden influx of his past. It's like a phantom ghosting over him, the images of Steve's hands, of Steve's mouth--
"I think I'm going to miss you one way or the other, Danny," Steve says, his voice hoarse. "It's just a question of minimizing the impact."
Danny shouldn't kiss him. He should not kiss him--they're sitting in the bar of Steve's hotel, where anyone could see them, and he's three days off his wife leaving him and in love with a different version of the guy. He shouldn't kiss him because it's frankly blatant abuse of the knowledge he has about Steve, of what he knows of all those Navy boys Steve told him about after-hours in Hawaii, and he should wait until this Steve tells him that, shouldn’t take advantage of his circumstances.
He shouldn't kiss him and maybe that's why he does, curling his hand around Steve's neck and drawing him in, biting at his lower lip the way Danny knows he likes.
Steve growls into his mouth and kisses back, and even this is wrong--his Steve doesn't kiss like this, like he's mounting an attack, like he's so achingly hungry for the contact that he'd climb inside Danny's skin. His Steve kisses a thousand different ways, playful and intent and soft and searching, but never selfishly; his Steve treats sex like a game or a competition or a declaration, but never, ever like a mission.
But it's still Steve, right, he's still basically the right size and shape under Danny's hands, he still makes the same noises and grinds forward the same way. He's not good enough, but he's better than anyone else would be, and Danny will take what he can fucking get. They're pawing at each other in the elevator faster than even Danny can believe.
"This is so stupid," Steve says against his neck, "oh, fuck, Danny, I shouldn't, we shouldn't--"
"Too fucking late," Danny gasps, and cups Steve's cock over his pants, grinning a little at the noise Steve makes in return. "Might as well take our chances while we've got them, McGarrett, don't back out now."
Steve groans into Danny's hair and drags him off the elevator, fumbling for his wallet in his pants pocket. "God, you are like--you are just--I have no idea why I can't control myself around you, I never do this, I don't--"
"You really have no idea," Danny says, nipping at Steve's neck, "really, no idea at all, what you're talking about. Jesus, Steve, the things I want to do to you--"
Steve groans and pushes him off just long enough to get the hotel key into the lock, and then they're kissing again, clawing at one another in the doorway. Danny hears the door click shut, but Steve's got him up against the wall, both hands on his face, kissing him fierce and hungry. Danny grinds back into him and it's terrible, it's not even close to enough, but it's so much better than anything Danny's had in weeks--
"Well, well, Steve," says an accented voice from the bowels of the room, "I must admit, this is rather a surprise."
--
Danny's not entirely sure how he ends up on his knees, with his hands zip-tied behind his back, watching three guys wrestle Steve into submission.
Well, empirically knows how it happened. Steve went reeling back from him, sure, and neither of them was at their most focused, and Hesse's men descended like locusts, peeling out from every corner. Danny knows this, knows they would have gotten the jump on Steve regardless, but it still seems impossible to watch it happen. He's struggling uselessly against his own bonds and trying not to stare at the blood pouring out of the side of Steve's face as two henchmen finally get his hands behind his back and pin him to the ground.
"You motherfucker," Danny spits, tasting copper.
Hesse smiles at him, understated and winsome, like he's just taken the lead in a particularly trying game of chess. He looks better than he did the last time Danny saw him--but then again, the last time Danny saw him he'd been freshly recovered from the slugs Steve put in his chest.
"Are you going to tell me I'm not going to get away with this?" he asks, his head tilting in amusement. His accent rolls off his tongue in waves, hitting harder on certain vowels, and Danny's never hated anyone so much in his life. "Because I must say--while I am, of course, going to get away with it--you did make the whole thing rather easier, didn't you? If I was Captain McGarrett, I'd start doubting your loyalties."
"Jesus, you guys are all the same, aren't you?" Danny says, because he's always been good at running his mouth and they need to buy some time. "Always pushing for another thing, right, another little victory, and yeah, okay, you caught us in kind of a compromising position, I'm not denying that, I'm a little embarrassed over here, but the mind games seem kind of unnecessary, you know? Plus, I'm just saying, hotel room grab, not your classiest move ever, all your talk and you'd think you could try something a little--"
"You are a mouthy little man, aren't you?" Hesse asks, narrowing his eyes. "You've served your purpose well enough, I'm sure, but I'm not particularly interested in your prattling. Gag him."
"Like hell you--" Danny starts, but then they're putting duct tape over his mouth. He struggles against it for a second, trying to speak around it even though he knows, he knows it's pointless, and then falls still. He settles for glaring, but Hesse has turned to Steve, his expression going hard and unforgiving.
Steve, being Steve, doesn't even look afraid. You stupid shit, Danny thinks, if we get out of this I'm going to kill you.
"Now, Steven," Hesse says, pulling a gun off the side table and turning it over in his hands, "I have to say I'm a little disappointed. I was looking forward to a real fight, here--didn't anyone ever teach you not to let your guard down in times like these?"
Danny only sees the flinch because he's looking for it--he recognizes that comment for the dig it is, and the muscle spasm under Steve's eye says he sees it as the same. Steve holds himself ramrod-straight anyway, never one to cave in any reality, and smirks up at Hesse.
"So let me go," he says. "I can chase you down properly, and you won't have to spend the rest of your life wondering if you could have taken me in a fair fight."
"I'm sorry," Hesse says, "did I give you the indication that I enjoy fighting fair?"
He walks over to Danny, tapping the gun against his thigh, and fists a hand in his hair. Danny tries not to wince when the cool metal of the gun barrel comes to rest against the side of his throat, but he can't help himself; it's a quick thing but Steve sees it, and his poker face cracks at once.
"Don't," he snaps, "look, don't, if it's me you want then take me, that's fine, but he didn't--"
"You know, I'm not a man of many regrets," Hesse says. He rubs the edge of the gun against Danny's face almost absently, and Danny wishes his mouth was free so he could bite this motherfucker. "But the way I killed your father--I should have worked that better. It would have been far preferable if I could see your face, don't you agree?"
"I am going to kill you," Steve growls, low and intent. "I swear to god, Hesse--"
"I find that rather unlikely," Hesse says, and he's whipping the gun towards Steve and firing before Danny has the chance to so much as cry out.
The bullet hits Steve in the shoulder; he moans, obviously against his will, and slumps back against the wall. Danny can feel blood seeping out around his wrists where he's pulling at his zip-ties, can hear the sounds of his own screams, muffled through the duct tape.
"Oh, I am going to enjoy this," Hesse says, stepping over Steve's body and grinning down at him. He shoves the barrel of his gun into Steve's mouth and Danny's howling, screaming bloody murder under the gag, pulling at his bonds like his life depends on it but it's not going to be enough, this bastard is going to kill Steve and then him and he can't stop it, there's nothing he can do, and--
"Shut him up," Hesse barks, and Danny's being pistol-whipped, his vision blacking out as he hears the sound of gunfire.
--
The afterlife, upsettingly enough, looks a lot like the inside of Kamekona's shave-ice stand.
Danny blinks up at the ceiling, his tongue thick in his mouth, and tries to get his bearings. He can't actually be dead--if he is, it's an awful lot like being alive--but his hands are free, which is in and of itself a surprise. He'd expected bindings and runs his fingers across his wrists, looking for the cuts the zip-ties would have left. There's nothing there, and when he reaches up to touch his head there's not so much as a scab. He feels…he feels good, actually, really good, except for how his marriage is over all over again and his daughter's out there somewhere with sad eyes and his partner's dead--
"Look who has returned to the land of the living," Kamekona says, leaning over so his head is directly in Danny's line of vision. "Sweet dreams?"
Danny stares at him for a second, trying to decide between emotions. Disbelief takes the lead at first, followed by a surge of relief so strong he can hardly bear it, but as usual anger wins the day. He lifts his hands and brings them around Kamekona's throat, choking off his air supply as he stands.
"Brah!!" Kamekona gasps, waving his hands, "C'mon, brah--"
"What did you do to me?" Danny demands, shoving him into the wall. "What the hell am I doing here, I didn't--I was--what did you do, what the fuck did you do?"
"Nothing," Kamekona cries, and Danny digs his thumbs in a little harder. "Okay, something, but--can't--breathe--I'll tell you just--leggo, man, I can't--"
Danny steps back, left hand curling into a fist at his side, right hand extended to poke at Kamekona's chest. "You have five seconds."
"McGarrett is rubbing off on you," Kamekona says, rubbing at his neck and glaring. "I liked you better when you--"
"Four," Danny snaps, shoving at him again, and Kamekona puts up his hands.
"Alright, alright," he sighs. "Look, brother, I just--you're going to havta suspend your disbelief a little here, alright?"
"I just spent," Danny says, rounding out his vowels, "two months in fucking Hoboken, okay, I just watched Steve--he was--my disbelief is suspended into next year, okay, into next century, into the next goddamn millennium--"
"Oh, shit," Kamekona says, his eyes going wide. "How long?"
"You don't know that?" Danny demands. He means it to come out furious, but it ends up sounding more like a shriek. "You mean whatever you did to me isn't an exact fucking science--not that it would come down any easier on you if it was, okay, because from where I'm standing I'm pretty damn sure you drugged and kidnapped me and there's a name for that, there is prison time for that--but seriously, seriously, okay, I need to get out of here, I need to see some people like, like a long time ago, like yesterday, I have some shit to take care of that is past its sell by in a big way so you need to start talking before I fucking kill you!"
He's breathing heavily at the end of that, and when he stops talking his ears are ringing, and that's how he knows he's been yelling. Kamekona, for his part, actually looks kind of scared, which is more than a little gratifying.
"Okay, brah," he says, and then he sighs like he knows this isn't going to go over well and finishes, "thing is, right, that I'm the Sandman."
"You're the," Danny says, and stops. "I'm sorry, you're the what? You're the Sandman, is that what you said, because I thought that I heard you--what, like the guy in the picture books with the sprinkly dust, that Sandman, the fucking Sandman is your excuse for this?"
"You said you would suspend your disbelief!" Kamekona says, throwing his hands in the air. "I had this customer, alright, one of my regular Haoles during the tourist season, you know, rented a place out here--anyway, he used to come in late-night, and we didn't get so much business then, and we got to know each other, okay? And he just kind of...he was the old Sandman, but he needed someone to take over and it's interesting, right, as a side thing, and he started training me but his wife got sick, man, I wasn't supposed to take over so soon! I'm still learning!"
Danny stares at him for a second, and he knows, he knows that his mouth is working up and down like he's some kind of beached fish, but he feels pretty justified.
"You're still learning?" he demands finally, his voice cracking on it.
"It was just supposed to be a little nap," Kamekona says mournfully. "Make you see things a little more clearly, you know, it's supposed to be good for you--"
"Good for me," Danny repeats. Some of the anger is starting to drain away, to be replaced by the itching need to see Steve alive, to hug his daughter, and he needs to find out what happened here before the urge to give in to that overwhelms him. "I--just--50 words or less, okay, summarize for me what happened and I how I got here."
"I did kind of drug and kidnap you," Kamekona admits. "Only it wasn't drugs, it was the--you don't want to know, okay, brother, but supposed to be a like, a little eye-opening dream, show you that you've got it pretty good here--but then I called you and you didn't answer and I went by your place and you were still asleep and I just kind of panicked, alright? Because I knew if McGarrett found you like that he would like, he'd come kill me, brah, and I have a life expectancy, you know?"
This isn't possible. Danny knows it isn't possible, because Danny's not a complete idiot or a five year old girl, and the Sandman doesn’t fucking exist. This isn’t possible, but if he's going by the rules of basic reality he was never in Jersey, and he knows, he knows he was. It's not possible, but it resonates in him anyway, makes a strange kind of sense. He remembers that disconcerting feeling that he was forgetting details and realizes it was him picking at the edge of the dream, trying to unravel it before the strangeness slipped away again.
"Oh my god," Danny says. He rubs at his face, tries to get his bearings, and can't. "Okay, look--look, I'd really like to, um, murder you, actually, that's what I'd really like to do, but I need to--I have to go. Could you just--what time is it?"
"It's five, brother," Kamekona tells him. "And it's, uh, Saturday."
"Five?!" Danny demands. "Saturday--Kamekona, that means I slept for--"
"Twenty-six hours," Kamekona agrees, wincing. "I overdid it a little, my bad."
"I am going to come back here tomorrow," Danny says, enunciating clearly, "and I am going to ruin your life."
"Maybe I can work it off," Kamekona says hopefully. "Like a debt, right, free shave-ice for life in exchange for you not--"
"No," Danny snaps, "no, no, nothing will ever--"
He stops, and reconsiders.
"Well, wait," he says. "You got a car I can borrow?"
--
Danny doesn't actually consider the Jeep Wrangler he ends up in a car, because he has rules about cars like anything else. Rule one is roofs, which the Jeep violates blatantly, but it was this or the shave-ice mobile.
"Try not to dent her," Kamekona calls after him.
"You'll be lucky if I don't run it off a goddamn cliff!" Danny yells back, and peels out of the parking lot.
He drives like Steve, the music turned up loud to drown out the sound of his own thoughts, the steering wheel leaving imprints of its stitching on his hands. The sky is darkening over him, threatening one of those torrential Hawaiian downpours Danny's gotten used to despising, and he's surprised at the way his heart jumps at the thought of it. The world is familiar around him, the path he's driving well-traveled and rock solid and his, and he's grinning without even meaning to by the time he gets to Rachel's.
"Look," he says into the intercom, not bothering to say hello, "five minutes, please, I just need to see her for five minutes, I know it isn't my day but please, please."
"You don't need to sound so desperate," Rachel's voice comes back, nearly deafened by the creak of the gate opening. "I'll even give you ten minutes, if you like."
He doesn't answer her, just runs up the drive and finds her at the door.
"Are you alright?" she says, peering at him with concern. "I told your Commander McGarrett you were probably just having a sulk, but you look--"
"Fine," Danny says, looking around frantically. Something in the back of his brain pings an alert--Steve had been worried about him, worried enough that he'd called Rachel--but he can't focus on that right now. "Grace, Gracie, where is she?"
"Danny--" Rachel starts, the concern on her face deepening, but then his daughter is tearing around the corner and Danny forgets how to think at all.
"Danno!" she cries, and oh, god, she's tan and her hair is long, long the way she likes it best, and she's smiling at him. She laughs as he picks her up, shrieks in glee when he throws her in the air before pulling her into a tight hug.
"Hi, Monkey," he says, closing his eyes and breathing deep. He smells sunblock and saltwater, the remnants of one of Step-Stan's inevitable beach trips, and smiles so hard his face hurts against her hair. "Oh, god, is it ever good to see you. You're a sight for sore eyes, you know that? Huh?"
"I know, Danno," Gracie tells him, leaning back in his arms to look at him. "Ms. Applebaum at school says I'm gonna be a heartbreaker when I grow up."
"Yeah, well, we'll see about that," Danny says, laughing as he puts her down. He can't help crouching to meet her eyes, and she raises her eyebrows at him, a little bit wicked and a lot fond. This is his kid, and yeah, she's gonna be a heartbreaker and probably a hellion too, if the way she plays poker is anything to go by. Give her an inch and she'll take a mile, grinning at him like she's ready for anything, fearless, feckless Gracie--hell yes, this is his daughter.
"Can I ask you a question?" she says, poking him in the shoulder.
"Yeah, Monkey, anything you want."
"Did you talk to Steve yet?" Grace tilts her head to the side, makes a face like she's looking right through him--which, hell, maybe she is, she's the most brilliant kid he's ever met and she's here and his and happy, thank god, thank god. "Because I love you, Danno, but he seemed pretty sad when he was here before."
"Steve was here?" Danny says. Gracie just nods, like Steve coming by looking for him is a normal thing.
"He said he wanted to talk to you but he thought you were mad at him," she says. "I don't think I was supposed to hear, but he should check the closets before he starts talking to Mommy."
"Grace, darling, it's not nice to eavesdrop," Rachel says, trying to sound stern but covering a smile with her hand. Grace looks up at her and, hey, that devious little expression is one she picked up from her mother, no question about it.
"I told him you weren't really mad," Grace confides, leaning close to whisper in Danny's ear. "Because sometimes you yell a lot but really only when you love people, right? I don't think he believed me, though, so I gave him a hug, and he seemed better after that. I think maybe you should give him a hug, okay, Danno? I don't like it when Steve's sad, he makes faces."
"Yeah," Danny says, shaking his head to clear it--because how'd his daughter get so smart, huh, how'd he get so lucky? "Yeah, I know all about the faces, baby. Thank you for taking care of that for me, that was very nice of you."
Grace gives him a high five and a kiss on the cheek and then runs off, presumably to be the best eight-year-old in the history of time in some other part of the house, which leaves Danny alone with Rachel. He needs to get to Steve, needs to confirm he's okay and alive and not that fucked-up run-down guy he's spent a month trying to heal over, but there's something he has to say first.
"You're sure you're alright?" Rachel asks, before he can even start.
"Yeah," Danny says, and then, "uh, no, actually, no, not really, I've had kind of a…look. I just, I want you to know that I'm…that I--you and Stan seem really happy, and that's really great, and I know I've been kind of…of terrible, but--"
"Did you suffer a head injury?" Rachel asks, laughing. "Honestly, who am I talking to, shall I call the Commander and tell him you've been replaced with a pod person--"
"Rachel!" Danny yells, because even when he's trying to apologize he sometimes can't help himself. Her face goes guarded at once and he swears under his breath, grabs her hands before they can start really going at it.
"Hey," he says quietly, "hey, look, I'm sorry, I'm shit at this, but I just--I wanted you to know that I--I know you tried, okay? And I don't blame you. I mean, I did blame you, at the time I totally blamed you, there was so much blame I kind of couldn't keep it to myself and I spread it around my family a little and, uh, sorry about that too--"
"You're not really helping yourself here," Rachel says, but she hasn't pulled away, and her expression is curious, bordering on hopeful.
"I'm glad you're happy," Danny says, and means it. "I'm so glad, Rachel, I just want you to be happy, and I'm--you know, no promises, I know I'm not easy to deal with but I just, I want you to know that, okay? Not that it matters, but just--happiness. I wish you nothing but happiness, alright?"
She's staring at him now, mouth open, her eyes too bright. She pulls her hands back, and Danny thinks for a second that she's going to ask if he's mocking her, that she's going to hit him. Then she throws her arms around him, draws him into a brief, fierce hug, before stepping away and smiling at him like she maybe actually likes him.
Danny smiles back.
He's at the door before she calls his name. When he turns she's got her head cocked, her brow knitted together like she's trying to figure out a puzzle, but the expression clears when she meets his eyes.
"Right," she says, "so, ah, Stan and I are having a get together for a few of Gracie's friends next week. It's just a small thing, you understand, I would have told you if it was a big party--dinner and miniature golf, I believe, is the plan. You should--bring Steve, of course, if you like--but you should come."
He looks at her for a long minute, the faint sound of thunder rolling in the distance. She looks good, she's always looked good, but the circles he's come to expect under her eyes are gone again, and the platinum wedding bands on her left hand glint faintly in the dying light. It hurts a little, knowing she's happy, for all he wants that for her--he thinks it's always going to hurt a little, that it'll always be just a little bit hard. But when she smiles he remembers the person she was and not the person she grew to be, tangled up in all the ways they turned out to be wrong for each other. He thinks he could relearn to love her like this, as his past and his co-parent and his friend. He thinks he'll be okay to grow old near her instead of with her, their daughter ebbing and flowing between them like the morning tide.
"I'd like that," Danny says, and if it comes out a little choked, Rachel doesn't seem to mind.
--
The rain starts halfway to Steve's, which is just fucking perfect. Danny's annoyed, annoyed at the way he can't get the roll-top up and at how he's soaked through in under a second, but mostly he's pissed that he has to go slower to avoid rolling the damn truck. He would call Steve, has wanted to call Steve since he woke up, but he knows full well that if he hears Steve's voice he'll do something crazy like steal a helicopter or spontaneously learn to teleport or burst into really undignified tears.
He just drives, the wind ripping the rain sideways into his face, and thinks almost there, Danny, almost, almost.
The sight of Steve's house, holding steady against the downpour, would be enough to bring him to his knees if he wasn't sitting down already. He cuts the engine and tears towards the front door, but he doesn't even have time to knock before Steve's wrenching it open.
"Okay," Steve says, and god, he looks pissed, off-kilter and sharp-eyed and maybe, underneath it, a little bit scared. "Listen, Danny, we need to institute a new rule about the way you handle anger, alright? Because you can be as pissed off at me as you want, that's fine, I get that, but there is a difference between being angry and vanishing off the face of the goddamn planet, there is a difference between being angry and making me worry that you've been…Danny. Danny, are you listening to me?"
Danny's not, not really. He'd like to be, honestly, because even Steve's voice sounds amazing, his vowels softer, his sentences less clipped than Danny’s grown used to--he'd like to listen but he can't, because he's a little occupied with taking in the sights. Steve's face is rounded out again, none of those sharply jutting lines that made Danny want to feed him, and his cheeks are smooth, the remains of knife-wounds that never happened vanished. His shoulders, broad and sculpted as ever, are set, but not like he's planning on a firefight any time soon. He's holding himself in the doorway with his arms crossed and yeah, he's mad, he's definitely mad, but he's also at home, barefooted and wearing board shorts under his t-shirt.
"I'm," Danny says, and reaches up a hand to touch his face. He runs his thumb along Steve's cheek, along the path of where that scar once was, and shudders.
"Hey, Danno," Steve says, and he doesn't sound angry anymore. He sounds worried, had sounded worried under the fury too, and that's all his Steve. This guy Danny's come to love, with his crazy ideas and his ninja tricks, has gotten comfortable enough here to let himself be a soft touch--he's almost nothing like that other guy, so afraid of getting close that he called Danny by his last name.
"Could you just," Danny says, cupping Steve's whole jaw in his hand, unable to pull away. "Could you just call me that again, please?"
"What?" Steve says. He catches Danny's hand, pulls it off his face and holds it, peers at him like he's resisting arrest. "You hate it when I call you Danno, you--"
"I don't," Danny says, "oh fuck, Steve, I don't, I don't hate it, please don't think that I--" and his control breaks, all at once, the floodgates opening and pouring over him. He launches himself at Steve, locks their mouths together and kisses him like his life depends on it, which, hey, right now, maybe it does.
"Danny," Steve says, pushing him back and holding his shoulders, "hey, Danno, easy, easy. What happened? You look…Jesus, hold on, okay, I'm right here, we can do that in a second, but you wanna tell me what's wrong first?"
Danny can't stop staring at him, can't stop touching him, can't figure out where to begin. His hands are roaming over Steve's torso now, sliding across his shirt like he's checking for holes, and he pauses at his shoulder, biting down against a terrible, wretched noise. It's whole under his hand, though, muscle firmly stitched together, and this is real, it's okay, he's awake now.
"Is it Grace?" Steve presses, looking out-and-out freaked. "Is it Rachel, because I just talked to her, buddy, she called to say you were coming here, so they're okay, it's okay--"
"I just need to," Danny says, and closes his eyes. When he opens them Steve's still standing there, mouth still twisted up in concern, hands still on Danny's shoulders.
"Okay," Danny says, "okay, so I need to…I need to say some stuff, Steve, okay, and I need you to let me get to the end before you get all--"
"Danny--"
"Interrupting," Danny says, laughing like he's choking on it. "Like that, if you could--can you not do that for a couple of minutes here? I know it goes against your basic nature--"
"That's your basic nature," Steve argues, apparently unable to control himself even in times of stress. Danny laughs again, and he knows, he knows how fucked up it must sound from the way Steve's fingers tighten on his shoulders, but he can't help it.
"Right," Danny says, "mine or yours, whoever's it is, can you just--no speaking, alright? None. Five minutes, that's all I'm asking."
Steve narrows his eyes for a second, but then he nods, and Danny lets out a rush of relieved breath and finds it all pouring out of him at once.
"So, thing is, I've had a bad day," he says. "Maybe the worst day ever, and I can't really--I can't explain why, because you'll never believe me, and if you did believe me it would mean the Navy knows a lot about shit that I didn't ever want to know about and I'd rather not know that, you know? But the point, right, the point is that I didn't know what I was talking about, when I said I wanted to be back in Jersey, I didn't--"
"Look," Steve cuts in, "no, don't, you were right, I've been trying to find you to apologize, I shouldn't have--"
"Shut up," Danny says, reaching up to cup his face again. Steve lets him this time, obviously struggling not to bombard him with questions, and Danny has to kiss him once, just has to, before he can go on. "Just, just shut up, because I'm not--Rachel's right about me, she is, I do say things I don't mean and mean things I don't say and so this is probably the only time I'll be able to get through this so just, complete silence, please and thank you, I'm not gonna ask you again. "
"Okay," Steve says, confused but quiet. "Okay, Danno, go ahead."
"I'm never going to like pineapple on pizza," Danny says. "Because it's--it's wrong, okay, there shouldn't be pineapple on pizza, and I'm not really much of a sand guy, it gets into places that sand should never be, and I'm. I'm not cut out for island life, I never was, I'm a city kind of guy, and I'm always going to want to vacation to Jersey and I'm always going to want to be there, a little bit, except that I didn't--I didn't understand, right, that when people say you can't go home again it's because they mean you've gone and set up home somewhere else by mistake."
Steve's keeping his promise to be silent so well that Danny's actually nervous; his face is blank, that guarded neutral he uses when he's trying not to get something wrong. And oh, god, Danny's such a coward, but he closes his eyes, has to close his eyes, can't finish this when Steve is looking at him like that, so careful and so close.
"Or maybe that's not what they," he starts, and shakes his head. "But it's not about the island, right, it's about Grace and Rachel and that I'm--I'm stupid in love with you, okay, d'you understand, the amount of love I have is so stupid that it actually hurts in my soul because one of these days you're going to get us both killed and then I'll have to defend your stupid reckless ass in the afterlife, that kind of love, and I don't want you to change and I don't want to leave. And I'm a selfish person, okay, on a basic level, I like things the way I like them and the thing is, Steve, the crazy thing is that I don't even care if you love me back--I mean, look, obviously I care, I care a lot, but if you don't that's okay, we just need to--you just need to stop fucking me, if you’re not--because you need to find someone who makes you happy, because I just--I need you to be happy, I know I sound crazy but I need to know, I need to know that you're okay and that you're not tearing yourself up inside and that you're--"
"Hey," Steve says. His voice is soft, open, and it's that more than anything that makes Danny open his eyes. But oh, Jesus, he's glad he did--Steve's face has broken open into that grin Danny never managed to worm out of the other him, the big goofy one that takes over his face.
"Danno," Steve says, "I am happy."
It would be nice, Danny thinks vaguely, if he could turn this moment into something classy and elegant. It would be nice if he could lean in and kiss Steve like a guy out of a storybook or a sappy movie, so later he could look back and feel like he'd done right. It would be nice, but Danny's not really that kind of guy and Steve certainly isn't, so instead…
…well, instead he stares, dumbfounded, kind of not believing his luck until Steve grabs him by the back of the neck and hauls him inside. Danny more or less falls into him, dripping everywhere, hands roaming.
"Never did learn to dress for the weather," Steve says, kicking the door shut behind them as he tries to undo the buttons on Danny's shirt.
"Never will," Danny agrees, and leans in to run his tongue along Steve's neck. He smells, tastes, like saltwater, like his morning surf, and Danny bites down a little just because he can. Steve rips his shirt open in response like the animal he is, all bad decisions and brute force, laughing into Danny's hair when he squawks in protest.
"I thought you wanted to make me happy," Steve says, grinning down at him. "You being naked? That makes me happy."
"I'll give you happy," Danny snaps, half-annoyed just for the sport of it, and tackles Steve into the wall.
The thing is, though, that he can't sustain it, can't even keep up a pretense. He pulls Steve's shirt over his head and his hands stumble against Steve's chest, trying to touch everywhere at once, and his heart feels like it's going to burst out of his chest. Steve must see it on his face--Steve knows him well enough to tell, Steve knows him, Steve knows him--because they're kissing again a second later. His lips are soft against Danny's mouth, soothing, and his hands run up under the ruins of Danny's shirt.
"Just take it off," Danny gasps, "just--I don't even care, I just, Steve, I--"
"I know," Steve says, pulling the sodden remains of his shirt loose. "I know, Danny, me too."
They stumble to the couch, bare chests pressed together, urgent like they've never been before. Steve's got the upper hand because he's dry and shoeless, not tripping over his squelching loafers the way Danny is, so he throws Danny down across it and bears down on him. And oh, god, Steve's sliding out of his pants, pulling at Danny's belt, he's everywhere at once and Danny remembers this, remembers how easy it's always been even when everything else didn't make sense at all.
"Do you remember," Danny says, senselessly, as he kicks his shoes off and toes the onto the floor, "after that case with the coke dealers and the grenade launcher, in the alley behind the--"
"Yeah," Steve says, frowning down at him as he pulls at Danny's pants. "You want to suck me off in an alley? Because, I mean, not that I didn't enjoy it, but I was kind of thinking--"
"No," Danny breathes, "no, I want you to fuck me like we just escaped from--"
"Danny, Jesus," Steve says, and leans down.
They're more or less naked now--Danny's still wearing his soaked-through socks, and Steve, being the overachiever he is, uses his feet to divest him of them without breaking the kiss. They rut against each other for a second, tongues tangled, Steve's hand in Danny's hair, Danny's fingers tight around the swell of Steve's ass, and if it hadn't been two months--felt like two months--Danny would let them come like this.
However, things being what they are…
"Lube, McGarrett," Danny says, using what limited leverage he has to pull away. "Unless you're planning on making this much shorter than it could be."
Steve laughs against his mouth, but it's soft, no mockery in it at all, like he's surprised. Belatedly, it occurs to Danny that maybe Steve is just as shell-shocked as he is, if for different reasons. He thinks about the Steve in Jersey, so starved for affection that it was like he couldn't feel it, desperate enough for someone to talk to that he nearly broke down in a goddamn interrogation room.
They're not that different, really, even if one of them was a product of magic, his imagination, whatever. This Steve, his Steve, arches around to side table, washboard abs all on display, and Danny watches the line of his his back with hungry eyes as he returns.
"See," Steve says, "the Boy Scout thing taught me all about preparation, so you can stop mocking me for it any--"
"C'mere," Danny says, running his hands down Steve's back and drawing him closer. "God, babe, I want you to fuck me, okay, and if dropping the Boy Scout jokes is what it's going to take--"
"Stop trying to make me come first," Steve groans, which isn't at all what Danny's doing, but it's gratifying all the same. He just opens the lube and slicks three of Steve's fingers, leaning forward briefly to suck Steve's thumb into his mouth. Steve groans again, but it's lower, rougher this time, and he bucks against Danny, grinding their cocks together.
"Your fingers," Danny reminds him, "my ass, any day now."
"Danno," Steve whines, and, okay, yeah, maybe he really is riding the edge, Danny had kind of forgotten what a hair-trigger he can be sometimes. He spreads his legs, pinning Steve between them, and grinds out a harsh breath when Steve slips a finger inside.
"Yeah," he says, because Steve likes it when he talks, because he's never been able to control himself anyway and doesn't see any reason to start now. "Yeah, babe, like that, just like that, oh, fuck, fuck, I can take more, I want more, wanna feel you in me, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon."
Steve's got a second finger inside him and then a third, all deft hands and quick movements, playing over Danny's weak spots like it was part of his SEAL training. Danny'd never know from his steady hands how wrecked he is, but that's the saving grace of Steve's ridiculously expressive faces--he's cracked open just from this, just from watching Danny under him, and the rush of that never seems to stop getting Danny high.
"No condom," Danny says, when Steve pulls his fingers out and gives him a questioning look. They're both clean and they've toyed with it, with the pluses and minuses of using one--usually Danny's for and Steve's against, but not this time. This time Danny wants to feel all of him, wants him everywhere all at once, and fuck the mess he'll be afterward. He pours lube over Steve's cock, getting it everywhere, and then raises his eyebrows to keep himself from begging Steve to get on with it already.
Steve moans and leans close, bites down on Danny's shoulder hard enough that it'll probably leave a bruise as he slides in. Danny doesn't care, can't spare the energy to give a flying fuck, because he's grinding up into Steve's cock and gasping out whatever comes to mind.
"Feels so good," he manages, "oh, god, babe, if you ever stop I swear I'll kill you, just like that, oh, god, Steve, fuck."
Steve makes one of the unintelligible gorilla noises Danny has discovered he's prone to while fucking; at first they only confirmed his theory that Steve was some kind of Navy robot, but he's come to realize they mean "If I focus on anything other than holding it in I'm going to come right now." He runs his hand down Steve's spine, means it to be soothing but succeeds only in making him shudder, and decides it's about time to pick up the pace.
It's desperate and dirty and quicker than Danny would like, but the sensation of Steve over him, whole and alright and not going everywhere, is more of an aphrodisiac than he'd anticipated. He's coming in long spurts all over Steve's stomach before he's even had a chance to cry out, and when he gasps, "Fuck, oh god," Steve lets out a strangled moan and collapses on him, his cock twitching with release against Danny's prostate.
"Missed you," Danny breathes against his neck, too out of it to remember how crazy it'll sound. He thinks for a second that the rain has saved him, the slowing pound of it against the roof a decent cover, but then Steve shifts a little on top of him, like he's confused.
"Never left," he murmurs. "Not planning on it, either."
"Yeah," Danny says, "yeah, neither am I."
In his first six hours working with Steve again, Danny is shot at, thrown into a wall, called four different vile names, threatened at knifepoint, and mildly concussed.
"You're making that last one up," Steve says, taking a corner too hard and knocking Danny's head into the window. "You can't claim concussion every time you get a little bump, people will stop believing you."
"This is not The Boy Who Cried Wolf," Danny snaps, mostly for show. The truth is, he's never been so happy to be in screaming pain in his entire life. "This is a head wound. I didn't take you as the type to let your men suffer in silence, huh, McGarrett?"
"This is suffering in silence?" Steve asks, the edge of his mouth quirking up. It's not as lighthearted as it would have been, once--there's still enough of an edge in his voice that Danny can tell at least some of his annoyance is real--but he remembers this, remembers this process. He and Steve had genuinely pissed each other off at first, but they'd grown into it, gotten comfortable. Danny remembers how it happened, so he figures he can speed it along a little.
"You are heartless," he says, flopping back against his seat and wincing. "Cruel and heartless. They don't teach you compassion in the SEALs?"
"They don't teach to suck it up in the Jersey PD?"
"I'm just saying," Danny says, magnanimously letting that one go, "if I'm concussed because you're the kind of crazy bastard who likes to charge into situations without backup--"
"Brought you, didn't I--"
"Without backup other than me," Danny amends, giving him that one out of the kindness of his heart. "But yeah, if I'm dying of a brain bleed right now, you're going to feel pretty fucking stupid, huh?"
Things Danny is going to have to file away for the future: Steve in this reality has a hell of a guilt complex. Before he can even mention that he was kidding, for fuck's sake, Steve is wrenching the car across three lanes of traffic to park it on the shoulder.
"JESUS FUCKING CHRIST," Danny yells, his grip white-knuckled on the door handle. "Oh my god, McGarrett, what the fuck is the matter with you, are you actually trying to kill me--"
"Look at me," Steve snaps. Obligingly, Danny turns his glare to the left, expecting the fight to continue. Instead Steve takes Danny's face in his hands and leans in, and for a second--for a second Danny thinks--
"Follow my finger with your eyes," Steve instructs, cupping Danny's chin and holding him still. And Danny would argue, he would, except that his skin is on fire where Steve is touching him, except that he's almost got a contact high just from this. He follows Steve's finger back and forth and tries to control his breathing as Steve runs him through a quick barrage of hearing and memory tests. He doesn't move his hand from Danny's chin, and once, just for a second, Danny thinks his can feel Steve's thumb brush ever so lightly against his throat.
"Right," he says finally, pulling away, "so, you're not concussed, you're just whiny."
Danny's having some trouble controlling his urge to launch himself across the car and attack Steve like a wild animal; he wrestles it down, barely, and coughs.
"Yeah, well," he says, "I'd rather have been concussed than be driven across the highway like that, I mean, Jesus, don't you have any self-control--"
"There really isn't anything you won't bitch about, is there?" Steve asks, slanting a genuinely amused smile at him. Danny decides, in an absent sort of way, that he's going to go ahead and hold onto this moment for the rest of the day.
"I'm just saying," he says, "I'm a father, you can't be all--"
"You've got kids?" Steve asks, pulling the car back out onto the road. "I didn't know that--good for you, man. How many?"
It takes Danny a second to answer, because he has to remind himself to breathe. He should have anticipated this--of course Steve doesn't know about Gracie, hell, he only met Steve two days ago--but it winds him anyway, hits him like a punch to the face. He's angry, just for a second, a white hot flare of it; he wants to grab Steve and shake him, remind him that he helped Grace with her science project just last month, took them all to the North Shore afterwards to watch the surfing.
"Just one," he says, when he feels like he can talk again. "Gracie--Grace, my daughter. She'll be nine in a couple of months."
"Good for you," Steve repeats, in that same dispassionate tone, like he's interested in that obligatory way circumstance requires. Danny's grip goes white-knuckled on the door handle again, but this time it's mostly in an attempt to restrain himself from doing something stupid, something like howling his anguish out the window towards the Jersey shore.
"You," he says finally, and has to clear his throat. "You'd like her."
"Yeah, man, I'm sure," Steve agrees, his eyes never straying from the road.
It only takes a week of working with Steve before Danny notices a couple of things.
The first is that, for the first time in his professional career, he's having some trouble remembering the details of the case. He knows they've been to see a whole cabal of derelicts, the who's who of the Jersey criminal network--they got their hands on Frank Salvo two days in, and Danny'd all but jumped out of his skin to see the man alive. He remembers the meetings but not the details, remembers Steve's crazier interrogation tactics but not the information they produced.
He doesn’t even care that much, is the worrying part. He keeps forgetting to be stressed about it.
He mentions it to Steve, in the car on a stakeout on the sixth night, and Steve's face goes blank for a second. When he blinks back to himself, he answers a question Danny didn't ask about his coffee preferences, and it takes Danny an hour and a half to realize the topic was dropped.
It gives him hope, in a pained, oblique sort of way. Either he's losing his mind or there's something off in this reality, something that might mean he'll get to go home one of these days. He tries not to cling to that, tries to keep himself from thinking of the island and his life there as something he wants, because he's never been much of an optimist and he's not really prepared to start now. It's hard, though. He wants to take every moment he can't remember and cherish it; he wants to take everything he's forgotten and use it as evidence in the court of not my life.
The second thing he notices, rather more rapidly than the first, is that this version of Steve is a far larger mess than the Steve he knew in Hawaii. He'd known that from the get-go, of course, but it just gets clearer as the time trickles by, as they spend more and more time together. Steve in Hawaii had wanted Hesse, had pushed every angle on every case to the breaking point, but this Steve isn't like that. This Steve is so desperate to catch Hesse that each dead lead they hit shows on his face, like it's gutted him.
And then there's also…well. Island Steve, Five-0 Steve, Danny's Steve--he'd been a little socially challenged, definitely, a little rough around the edges, especially at first. Danny'd had to apologize for him on more than one occasion, and he'd had to get used to the way Steve always wanted to stay a little later, push a little longer, anything to keep from going home. Eventually he'd figured out Steve was lonely, which had lead to Danny and his stupid bleeding heart dragging him out for beers and barging into his house uninvited. And somewhere in the process there, in the act of being big and loud to distract Steve from his demons, Danny had discovered Steve was doing the same for him, just in slightly less…traditional ways.
To a certain degree, the fact that they'd ended up sleeping together was almost a foregone conclusion. It would have been nearly impossible to get that wrapped up in someone else's life and not end up wanting them, especially when that someone was so damnably attractive to begin with.
But this Steve…oh, god. Danny knows what he needs, because he's done this before, but he doesn't think even he can be big enough and loud enough to drown out this Steve's problems. This Steve never settled down after his father died, never stopped to take a break and process, never stumbled over confessions of grief in Danny's Camaro after one drink too many. This Steve hasn't seen his sister in over a decade and this Steve never got the catharsis of emptying his gun into Hesse's chest, regardless of the fact that it didn't stick. This Steve hasn't had anyone to talk to, anyone to listen to, any distraction except the hunt for an entire year, and the toll it's taken on him is obvious and terrible.
So Danny starts spending more time than he should at the office. Danny starts staying late, ignoring the worried mutters from Mikey and McNally, to make sure he's got Steve's back. Danny starts dragging Steve to bars and restaurants, starts demanding to know when the last time he has fun was, starts bringing him donuts and coffee in the mornings to round him out a little. He knows he should be at home with his wife, but it's a losing battle; he knows he should be at home with his daughter, but looking at her breaks his heart, makes him want to scream and rage and kill until he can find a way to light her up again.
Steve's a problem he can't solve, but a smaller one than all his others. Danny throws himself into fixing him like it's a full-time job.
He should really see it coming before it happens, is the point. He remembers the last time he felt this way, like he had to stay at the station, like going home was a curse or a death sentence or something; remembers the last time his back ached from sleeping on the couch and his skin itched with a pervading sense of failure. He remembers it, he does, but he's been trying not to for so long that it blinds him a little, makes him blot out details he shouldn't miss.
He should really see it coming, but he doesn't, and that's why he comes home a month after Steve pops into his life to find Rachel with an open suitcase, slamming drawers.
"Rachel," he says, staring.
She looks up at him, and there are tears streaking her cheeks, and oh, god, he remembers this too. He remembers this moment, exactly this moment, like it's a police sketch or a photograph laid out in front of him. She's wearing the same clothes she was the first time--it's even the same pair of shoes in her hand, Jesus--and he knows what she's going to say before she says it.
"I'm sorry," she says, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but I don't want to be this person, I don't want to--I hate you, I don't want to hate you but I do, I can't help it and I--I never wanted it to be like this, but I have to, I have to go, Danny, I have to."
Danny swallows and swallows again, feeling tears prick up behind his eyes. This shouldn't hurt the way it does--he's already lived it once, should be comforted to know that this would have happened to them in any reality--but it's still almost deafening, the roaring in his ears. Distantly, he remembers the way he'd screamed at her the first time around, both of them sobbing and furious before the end, the way Gracie's panicked wail had echoed through the halls after they were gone.
This time he steps forward and pulls her into his arms, bites down on the things he could say and just holds her there, sobbing into his shoulder.
"It's okay," he says, rubbing her back. Rachel shakes harder against him, and he thinks again of how sorry he is, of how much he couldn't let himself see before. "It's okay, babe, you don't have to be unhappy, we shouldn't have to be unhappy. I don't want to be this person either, Rachel, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's okay."
He helps her pack, quiet for once in his life, trying not to hate himself as he remember the way he'd thrown things last time. He helps her pack and calls her a cab, loads Grace into the car after her with a hushed, cautious hand.
"You and Mommy are going to a hotel, okay, Monkey?" he says, and she's hugging him too tight, her tiny hands fisted in his shirt. She'd cried, last time, cried like she was never going to stop, but this time she’s silent and terrified, like she knows what it means. He knows she's older, has lived with it longer, has probably been waiting for it, but her resignation still makes something twist inside him. Her eyes are dry when she pulls back, but the expression on her face is years too old, and he tucks her hair behind her ears and tries to smile.
"Where are you gonna go, Danno?" she asks. It's barely above a whisper, but he hears it anyway.
"I'm gonna be right here," he tells her, "right here at the house, and you'll still see me all the time. Some things are gonna change, baby, but I love you and there's nothing that could change that. You know that, right? You know that Danno loves you?"
She nods, and he can't help but pull her into one last hug.
"Say it for me, okay? So I know you know."
"Danno loves me," Gracie says, and she is crying a little now, he feels it against his cheek as he pulls away.
"Good girl," Danny whispers. He kisses her and steps back, rests his hand on the cab door. "You be good for your mom, okay? And I'll see you soon, I promise."
She stares out the window at him as the cab pulls away, twists in her seat to wave at him until the car turns the corner. Danny stands in the street for a long time, his stomach churning, before he goes inside.
His phone is ringing on the kitchen table when he shuts the door.
"Williams," he answers.
"McGarrett," Steve returns, in his business voice. "Got a lead. I'll be at your place in five."
"Okay," Danny says, sinking into a chair and resting his head in his hands, "yeah, Steve, alright."
He doesn't tell Steve until three days later, and even then it only comes out because they're a little drunk.
"It's not that big a thing," he says carefully, when Steve's face twists into that self-recriminating expression he hates so much. "We've been heading towards it for years, believe me."
"But if I hadn't--if you'd spent less time with--" Steve says, and then shakes his head like he's trying to clear it. "Williams, man, I'm really sorry."
"Why do you call me that?" Danny asks, before he can help himself. "We've been working together for a month, you'd think you could use my first name."
Steve smiles, a small, sad thing, into the neck of his beer.
"It's easier," he says. "I'm never--you know, I'm not on land very often, right, and it's easier not form attachments. You're--you've been really great, right, really helpful, but at some point we're gonna get Hesse or he's going to leave Jersey, and then I'll have to go too."
"You think you're not gonna miss me if you call me by my last name?" Danny jokes, trying not to let all the panic behind it slip into his voice. Steve is going to leave--Steve is going to leave, and then Danny's going to be stuck here with his empty house and his empty life, with nothing but memories of a time that maybe never existed to keep him company. It's not exactly a pleasant thought.
It takes him a minute to realize Steve hasn't answered; when he looks up Steve is staring at him, his eyes wide and fierce. They've both had a couple beers too many, and Danny swallows hard against a sudden influx of his past. It's like a phantom ghosting over him, the images of Steve's hands, of Steve's mouth--
"I think I'm going to miss you one way or the other, Danny," Steve says, his voice hoarse. "It's just a question of minimizing the impact."
Danny shouldn't kiss him. He should not kiss him--they're sitting in the bar of Steve's hotel, where anyone could see them, and he's three days off his wife leaving him and in love with a different version of the guy. He shouldn't kiss him because it's frankly blatant abuse of the knowledge he has about Steve, of what he knows of all those Navy boys Steve told him about after-hours in Hawaii, and he should wait until this Steve tells him that, shouldn’t take advantage of his circumstances.
He shouldn't kiss him and maybe that's why he does, curling his hand around Steve's neck and drawing him in, biting at his lower lip the way Danny knows he likes.
Steve growls into his mouth and kisses back, and even this is wrong--his Steve doesn't kiss like this, like he's mounting an attack, like he's so achingly hungry for the contact that he'd climb inside Danny's skin. His Steve kisses a thousand different ways, playful and intent and soft and searching, but never selfishly; his Steve treats sex like a game or a competition or a declaration, but never, ever like a mission.
But it's still Steve, right, he's still basically the right size and shape under Danny's hands, he still makes the same noises and grinds forward the same way. He's not good enough, but he's better than anyone else would be, and Danny will take what he can fucking get. They're pawing at each other in the elevator faster than even Danny can believe.
"This is so stupid," Steve says against his neck, "oh, fuck, Danny, I shouldn't, we shouldn't--"
"Too fucking late," Danny gasps, and cups Steve's cock over his pants, grinning a little at the noise Steve makes in return. "Might as well take our chances while we've got them, McGarrett, don't back out now."
Steve groans into Danny's hair and drags him off the elevator, fumbling for his wallet in his pants pocket. "God, you are like--you are just--I have no idea why I can't control myself around you, I never do this, I don't--"
"You really have no idea," Danny says, nipping at Steve's neck, "really, no idea at all, what you're talking about. Jesus, Steve, the things I want to do to you--"
Steve groans and pushes him off just long enough to get the hotel key into the lock, and then they're kissing again, clawing at one another in the doorway. Danny hears the door click shut, but Steve's got him up against the wall, both hands on his face, kissing him fierce and hungry. Danny grinds back into him and it's terrible, it's not even close to enough, but it's so much better than anything Danny's had in weeks--
"Well, well, Steve," says an accented voice from the bowels of the room, "I must admit, this is rather a surprise."
Danny's not entirely sure how he ends up on his knees, with his hands zip-tied behind his back, watching three guys wrestle Steve into submission.
Well, empirically knows how it happened. Steve went reeling back from him, sure, and neither of them was at their most focused, and Hesse's men descended like locusts, peeling out from every corner. Danny knows this, knows they would have gotten the jump on Steve regardless, but it still seems impossible to watch it happen. He's struggling uselessly against his own bonds and trying not to stare at the blood pouring out of the side of Steve's face as two henchmen finally get his hands behind his back and pin him to the ground.
"You motherfucker," Danny spits, tasting copper.
Hesse smiles at him, understated and winsome, like he's just taken the lead in a particularly trying game of chess. He looks better than he did the last time Danny saw him--but then again, the last time Danny saw him he'd been freshly recovered from the slugs Steve put in his chest.
"Are you going to tell me I'm not going to get away with this?" he asks, his head tilting in amusement. His accent rolls off his tongue in waves, hitting harder on certain vowels, and Danny's never hated anyone so much in his life. "Because I must say--while I am, of course, going to get away with it--you did make the whole thing rather easier, didn't you? If I was Captain McGarrett, I'd start doubting your loyalties."
"Jesus, you guys are all the same, aren't you?" Danny says, because he's always been good at running his mouth and they need to buy some time. "Always pushing for another thing, right, another little victory, and yeah, okay, you caught us in kind of a compromising position, I'm not denying that, I'm a little embarrassed over here, but the mind games seem kind of unnecessary, you know? Plus, I'm just saying, hotel room grab, not your classiest move ever, all your talk and you'd think you could try something a little--"
"You are a mouthy little man, aren't you?" Hesse asks, narrowing his eyes. "You've served your purpose well enough, I'm sure, but I'm not particularly interested in your prattling. Gag him."
"Like hell you--" Danny starts, but then they're putting duct tape over his mouth. He struggles against it for a second, trying to speak around it even though he knows, he knows it's pointless, and then falls still. He settles for glaring, but Hesse has turned to Steve, his expression going hard and unforgiving.
Steve, being Steve, doesn't even look afraid. You stupid shit, Danny thinks, if we get out of this I'm going to kill you.
"Now, Steven," Hesse says, pulling a gun off the side table and turning it over in his hands, "I have to say I'm a little disappointed. I was looking forward to a real fight, here--didn't anyone ever teach you not to let your guard down in times like these?"
Danny only sees the flinch because he's looking for it--he recognizes that comment for the dig it is, and the muscle spasm under Steve's eye says he sees it as the same. Steve holds himself ramrod-straight anyway, never one to cave in any reality, and smirks up at Hesse.
"So let me go," he says. "I can chase you down properly, and you won't have to spend the rest of your life wondering if you could have taken me in a fair fight."
"I'm sorry," Hesse says, "did I give you the indication that I enjoy fighting fair?"
He walks over to Danny, tapping the gun against his thigh, and fists a hand in his hair. Danny tries not to wince when the cool metal of the gun barrel comes to rest against the side of his throat, but he can't help himself; it's a quick thing but Steve sees it, and his poker face cracks at once.
"Don't," he snaps, "look, don't, if it's me you want then take me, that's fine, but he didn't--"
"You know, I'm not a man of many regrets," Hesse says. He rubs the edge of the gun against Danny's face almost absently, and Danny wishes his mouth was free so he could bite this motherfucker. "But the way I killed your father--I should have worked that better. It would have been far preferable if I could see your face, don't you agree?"
"I am going to kill you," Steve growls, low and intent. "I swear to god, Hesse--"
"I find that rather unlikely," Hesse says, and he's whipping the gun towards Steve and firing before Danny has the chance to so much as cry out.
The bullet hits Steve in the shoulder; he moans, obviously against his will, and slumps back against the wall. Danny can feel blood seeping out around his wrists where he's pulling at his zip-ties, can hear the sounds of his own screams, muffled through the duct tape.
"Oh, I am going to enjoy this," Hesse says, stepping over Steve's body and grinning down at him. He shoves the barrel of his gun into Steve's mouth and Danny's howling, screaming bloody murder under the gag, pulling at his bonds like his life depends on it but it's not going to be enough, this bastard is going to kill Steve and then him and he can't stop it, there's nothing he can do, and--
"Shut him up," Hesse barks, and Danny's being pistol-whipped, his vision blacking out as he hears the sound of gunfire.
The afterlife, upsettingly enough, looks a lot like the inside of Kamekona's shave-ice stand.
Danny blinks up at the ceiling, his tongue thick in his mouth, and tries to get his bearings. He can't actually be dead--if he is, it's an awful lot like being alive--but his hands are free, which is in and of itself a surprise. He'd expected bindings and runs his fingers across his wrists, looking for the cuts the zip-ties would have left. There's nothing there, and when he reaches up to touch his head there's not so much as a scab. He feels…he feels good, actually, really good, except for how his marriage is over all over again and his daughter's out there somewhere with sad eyes and his partner's dead--
"Look who has returned to the land of the living," Kamekona says, leaning over so his head is directly in Danny's line of vision. "Sweet dreams?"
Danny stares at him for a second, trying to decide between emotions. Disbelief takes the lead at first, followed by a surge of relief so strong he can hardly bear it, but as usual anger wins the day. He lifts his hands and brings them around Kamekona's throat, choking off his air supply as he stands.
"Brah!!" Kamekona gasps, waving his hands, "C'mon, brah--"
"What did you do to me?" Danny demands, shoving him into the wall. "What the hell am I doing here, I didn't--I was--what did you do, what the fuck did you do?"
"Nothing," Kamekona cries, and Danny digs his thumbs in a little harder. "Okay, something, but--can't--breathe--I'll tell you just--leggo, man, I can't--"
Danny steps back, left hand curling into a fist at his side, right hand extended to poke at Kamekona's chest. "You have five seconds."
"McGarrett is rubbing off on you," Kamekona says, rubbing at his neck and glaring. "I liked you better when you--"
"Four," Danny snaps, shoving at him again, and Kamekona puts up his hands.
"Alright, alright," he sighs. "Look, brother, I just--you're going to havta suspend your disbelief a little here, alright?"
"I just spent," Danny says, rounding out his vowels, "two months in fucking Hoboken, okay, I just watched Steve--he was--my disbelief is suspended into next year, okay, into next century, into the next goddamn millennium--"
"Oh, shit," Kamekona says, his eyes going wide. "How long?"
"You don't know that?" Danny demands. He means it to come out furious, but it ends up sounding more like a shriek. "You mean whatever you did to me isn't an exact fucking science--not that it would come down any easier on you if it was, okay, because from where I'm standing I'm pretty damn sure you drugged and kidnapped me and there's a name for that, there is prison time for that--but seriously, seriously, okay, I need to get out of here, I need to see some people like, like a long time ago, like yesterday, I have some shit to take care of that is past its sell by in a big way so you need to start talking before I fucking kill you!"
He's breathing heavily at the end of that, and when he stops talking his ears are ringing, and that's how he knows he's been yelling. Kamekona, for his part, actually looks kind of scared, which is more than a little gratifying.
"Okay, brah," he says, and then he sighs like he knows this isn't going to go over well and finishes, "thing is, right, that I'm the Sandman."
"You're the," Danny says, and stops. "I'm sorry, you're the what? You're the Sandman, is that what you said, because I thought that I heard you--what, like the guy in the picture books with the sprinkly dust, that Sandman, the fucking Sandman is your excuse for this?"
"You said you would suspend your disbelief!" Kamekona says, throwing his hands in the air. "I had this customer, alright, one of my regular Haoles during the tourist season, you know, rented a place out here--anyway, he used to come in late-night, and we didn't get so much business then, and we got to know each other, okay? And he just kind of...he was the old Sandman, but he needed someone to take over and it's interesting, right, as a side thing, and he started training me but his wife got sick, man, I wasn't supposed to take over so soon! I'm still learning!"
Danny stares at him for a second, and he knows, he knows that his mouth is working up and down like he's some kind of beached fish, but he feels pretty justified.
"You're still learning?" he demands finally, his voice cracking on it.
"It was just supposed to be a little nap," Kamekona says mournfully. "Make you see things a little more clearly, you know, it's supposed to be good for you--"
"Good for me," Danny repeats. Some of the anger is starting to drain away, to be replaced by the itching need to see Steve alive, to hug his daughter, and he needs to find out what happened here before the urge to give in to that overwhelms him. "I--just--50 words or less, okay, summarize for me what happened and I how I got here."
"I did kind of drug and kidnap you," Kamekona admits. "Only it wasn't drugs, it was the--you don't want to know, okay, brother, but supposed to be a like, a little eye-opening dream, show you that you've got it pretty good here--but then I called you and you didn't answer and I went by your place and you were still asleep and I just kind of panicked, alright? Because I knew if McGarrett found you like that he would like, he'd come kill me, brah, and I have a life expectancy, you know?"
This isn't possible. Danny knows it isn't possible, because Danny's not a complete idiot or a five year old girl, and the Sandman doesn’t fucking exist. This isn’t possible, but if he's going by the rules of basic reality he was never in Jersey, and he knows, he knows he was. It's not possible, but it resonates in him anyway, makes a strange kind of sense. He remembers that disconcerting feeling that he was forgetting details and realizes it was him picking at the edge of the dream, trying to unravel it before the strangeness slipped away again.
"Oh my god," Danny says. He rubs at his face, tries to get his bearings, and can't. "Okay, look--look, I'd really like to, um, murder you, actually, that's what I'd really like to do, but I need to--I have to go. Could you just--what time is it?"
"It's five, brother," Kamekona tells him. "And it's, uh, Saturday."
"Five?!" Danny demands. "Saturday--Kamekona, that means I slept for--"
"Twenty-six hours," Kamekona agrees, wincing. "I overdid it a little, my bad."
"I am going to come back here tomorrow," Danny says, enunciating clearly, "and I am going to ruin your life."
"Maybe I can work it off," Kamekona says hopefully. "Like a debt, right, free shave-ice for life in exchange for you not--"
"No," Danny snaps, "no, no, nothing will ever--"
He stops, and reconsiders.
"Well, wait," he says. "You got a car I can borrow?"
Danny doesn't actually consider the Jeep Wrangler he ends up in a car, because he has rules about cars like anything else. Rule one is roofs, which the Jeep violates blatantly, but it was this or the shave-ice mobile.
"Try not to dent her," Kamekona calls after him.
"You'll be lucky if I don't run it off a goddamn cliff!" Danny yells back, and peels out of the parking lot.
He drives like Steve, the music turned up loud to drown out the sound of his own thoughts, the steering wheel leaving imprints of its stitching on his hands. The sky is darkening over him, threatening one of those torrential Hawaiian downpours Danny's gotten used to despising, and he's surprised at the way his heart jumps at the thought of it. The world is familiar around him, the path he's driving well-traveled and rock solid and his, and he's grinning without even meaning to by the time he gets to Rachel's.
"Look," he says into the intercom, not bothering to say hello, "five minutes, please, I just need to see her for five minutes, I know it isn't my day but please, please."
"You don't need to sound so desperate," Rachel's voice comes back, nearly deafened by the creak of the gate opening. "I'll even give you ten minutes, if you like."
He doesn't answer her, just runs up the drive and finds her at the door.
"Are you alright?" she says, peering at him with concern. "I told your Commander McGarrett you were probably just having a sulk, but you look--"
"Fine," Danny says, looking around frantically. Something in the back of his brain pings an alert--Steve had been worried about him, worried enough that he'd called Rachel--but he can't focus on that right now. "Grace, Gracie, where is she?"
"Danny--" Rachel starts, the concern on her face deepening, but then his daughter is tearing around the corner and Danny forgets how to think at all.
"Danno!" she cries, and oh, god, she's tan and her hair is long, long the way she likes it best, and she's smiling at him. She laughs as he picks her up, shrieks in glee when he throws her in the air before pulling her into a tight hug.
"Hi, Monkey," he says, closing his eyes and breathing deep. He smells sunblock and saltwater, the remnants of one of Step-Stan's inevitable beach trips, and smiles so hard his face hurts against her hair. "Oh, god, is it ever good to see you. You're a sight for sore eyes, you know that? Huh?"
"I know, Danno," Gracie tells him, leaning back in his arms to look at him. "Ms. Applebaum at school says I'm gonna be a heartbreaker when I grow up."
"Yeah, well, we'll see about that," Danny says, laughing as he puts her down. He can't help crouching to meet her eyes, and she raises her eyebrows at him, a little bit wicked and a lot fond. This is his kid, and yeah, she's gonna be a heartbreaker and probably a hellion too, if the way she plays poker is anything to go by. Give her an inch and she'll take a mile, grinning at him like she's ready for anything, fearless, feckless Gracie--hell yes, this is his daughter.
"Can I ask you a question?" she says, poking him in the shoulder.
"Yeah, Monkey, anything you want."
"Did you talk to Steve yet?" Grace tilts her head to the side, makes a face like she's looking right through him--which, hell, maybe she is, she's the most brilliant kid he's ever met and she's here and his and happy, thank god, thank god. "Because I love you, Danno, but he seemed pretty sad when he was here before."
"Steve was here?" Danny says. Gracie just nods, like Steve coming by looking for him is a normal thing.
"He said he wanted to talk to you but he thought you were mad at him," she says. "I don't think I was supposed to hear, but he should check the closets before he starts talking to Mommy."
"Grace, darling, it's not nice to eavesdrop," Rachel says, trying to sound stern but covering a smile with her hand. Grace looks up at her and, hey, that devious little expression is one she picked up from her mother, no question about it.
"I told him you weren't really mad," Grace confides, leaning close to whisper in Danny's ear. "Because sometimes you yell a lot but really only when you love people, right? I don't think he believed me, though, so I gave him a hug, and he seemed better after that. I think maybe you should give him a hug, okay, Danno? I don't like it when Steve's sad, he makes faces."
"Yeah," Danny says, shaking his head to clear it--because how'd his daughter get so smart, huh, how'd he get so lucky? "Yeah, I know all about the faces, baby. Thank you for taking care of that for me, that was very nice of you."
Grace gives him a high five and a kiss on the cheek and then runs off, presumably to be the best eight-year-old in the history of time in some other part of the house, which leaves Danny alone with Rachel. He needs to get to Steve, needs to confirm he's okay and alive and not that fucked-up run-down guy he's spent a month trying to heal over, but there's something he has to say first.
"You're sure you're alright?" Rachel asks, before he can even start.
"Yeah," Danny says, and then, "uh, no, actually, no, not really, I've had kind of a…look. I just, I want you to know that I'm…that I--you and Stan seem really happy, and that's really great, and I know I've been kind of…of terrible, but--"
"Did you suffer a head injury?" Rachel asks, laughing. "Honestly, who am I talking to, shall I call the Commander and tell him you've been replaced with a pod person--"
"Rachel!" Danny yells, because even when he's trying to apologize he sometimes can't help himself. Her face goes guarded at once and he swears under his breath, grabs her hands before they can start really going at it.
"Hey," he says quietly, "hey, look, I'm sorry, I'm shit at this, but I just--I wanted you to know that I--I know you tried, okay? And I don't blame you. I mean, I did blame you, at the time I totally blamed you, there was so much blame I kind of couldn't keep it to myself and I spread it around my family a little and, uh, sorry about that too--"
"You're not really helping yourself here," Rachel says, but she hasn't pulled away, and her expression is curious, bordering on hopeful.
"I'm glad you're happy," Danny says, and means it. "I'm so glad, Rachel, I just want you to be happy, and I'm--you know, no promises, I know I'm not easy to deal with but I just, I want you to know that, okay? Not that it matters, but just--happiness. I wish you nothing but happiness, alright?"
She's staring at him now, mouth open, her eyes too bright. She pulls her hands back, and Danny thinks for a second that she's going to ask if he's mocking her, that she's going to hit him. Then she throws her arms around him, draws him into a brief, fierce hug, before stepping away and smiling at him like she maybe actually likes him.
Danny smiles back.
He's at the door before she calls his name. When he turns she's got her head cocked, her brow knitted together like she's trying to figure out a puzzle, but the expression clears when she meets his eyes.
"Right," she says, "so, ah, Stan and I are having a get together for a few of Gracie's friends next week. It's just a small thing, you understand, I would have told you if it was a big party--dinner and miniature golf, I believe, is the plan. You should--bring Steve, of course, if you like--but you should come."
He looks at her for a long minute, the faint sound of thunder rolling in the distance. She looks good, she's always looked good, but the circles he's come to expect under her eyes are gone again, and the platinum wedding bands on her left hand glint faintly in the dying light. It hurts a little, knowing she's happy, for all he wants that for her--he thinks it's always going to hurt a little, that it'll always be just a little bit hard. But when she smiles he remembers the person she was and not the person she grew to be, tangled up in all the ways they turned out to be wrong for each other. He thinks he could relearn to love her like this, as his past and his co-parent and his friend. He thinks he'll be okay to grow old near her instead of with her, their daughter ebbing and flowing between them like the morning tide.
"I'd like that," Danny says, and if it comes out a little choked, Rachel doesn't seem to mind.
The rain starts halfway to Steve's, which is just fucking perfect. Danny's annoyed, annoyed at the way he can't get the roll-top up and at how he's soaked through in under a second, but mostly he's pissed that he has to go slower to avoid rolling the damn truck. He would call Steve, has wanted to call Steve since he woke up, but he knows full well that if he hears Steve's voice he'll do something crazy like steal a helicopter or spontaneously learn to teleport or burst into really undignified tears.
He just drives, the wind ripping the rain sideways into his face, and thinks almost there, Danny, almost, almost.
The sight of Steve's house, holding steady against the downpour, would be enough to bring him to his knees if he wasn't sitting down already. He cuts the engine and tears towards the front door, but he doesn't even have time to knock before Steve's wrenching it open.
"Okay," Steve says, and god, he looks pissed, off-kilter and sharp-eyed and maybe, underneath it, a little bit scared. "Listen, Danny, we need to institute a new rule about the way you handle anger, alright? Because you can be as pissed off at me as you want, that's fine, I get that, but there is a difference between being angry and vanishing off the face of the goddamn planet, there is a difference between being angry and making me worry that you've been…Danny. Danny, are you listening to me?"
Danny's not, not really. He'd like to be, honestly, because even Steve's voice sounds amazing, his vowels softer, his sentences less clipped than Danny’s grown used to--he'd like to listen but he can't, because he's a little occupied with taking in the sights. Steve's face is rounded out again, none of those sharply jutting lines that made Danny want to feed him, and his cheeks are smooth, the remains of knife-wounds that never happened vanished. His shoulders, broad and sculpted as ever, are set, but not like he's planning on a firefight any time soon. He's holding himself in the doorway with his arms crossed and yeah, he's mad, he's definitely mad, but he's also at home, barefooted and wearing board shorts under his t-shirt.
"I'm," Danny says, and reaches up a hand to touch his face. He runs his thumb along Steve's cheek, along the path of where that scar once was, and shudders.
"Hey, Danno," Steve says, and he doesn't sound angry anymore. He sounds worried, had sounded worried under the fury too, and that's all his Steve. This guy Danny's come to love, with his crazy ideas and his ninja tricks, has gotten comfortable enough here to let himself be a soft touch--he's almost nothing like that other guy, so afraid of getting close that he called Danny by his last name.
"Could you just," Danny says, cupping Steve's whole jaw in his hand, unable to pull away. "Could you just call me that again, please?"
"What?" Steve says. He catches Danny's hand, pulls it off his face and holds it, peers at him like he's resisting arrest. "You hate it when I call you Danno, you--"
"I don't," Danny says, "oh fuck, Steve, I don't, I don't hate it, please don't think that I--" and his control breaks, all at once, the floodgates opening and pouring over him. He launches himself at Steve, locks their mouths together and kisses him like his life depends on it, which, hey, right now, maybe it does.
"Danny," Steve says, pushing him back and holding his shoulders, "hey, Danno, easy, easy. What happened? You look…Jesus, hold on, okay, I'm right here, we can do that in a second, but you wanna tell me what's wrong first?"
Danny can't stop staring at him, can't stop touching him, can't figure out where to begin. His hands are roaming over Steve's torso now, sliding across his shirt like he's checking for holes, and he pauses at his shoulder, biting down against a terrible, wretched noise. It's whole under his hand, though, muscle firmly stitched together, and this is real, it's okay, he's awake now.
"Is it Grace?" Steve presses, looking out-and-out freaked. "Is it Rachel, because I just talked to her, buddy, she called to say you were coming here, so they're okay, it's okay--"
"I just need to," Danny says, and closes his eyes. When he opens them Steve's still standing there, mouth still twisted up in concern, hands still on Danny's shoulders.
"Okay," Danny says, "okay, so I need to…I need to say some stuff, Steve, okay, and I need you to let me get to the end before you get all--"
"Danny--"
"Interrupting," Danny says, laughing like he's choking on it. "Like that, if you could--can you not do that for a couple of minutes here? I know it goes against your basic nature--"
"That's your basic nature," Steve argues, apparently unable to control himself even in times of stress. Danny laughs again, and he knows, he knows how fucked up it must sound from the way Steve's fingers tighten on his shoulders, but he can't help it.
"Right," Danny says, "mine or yours, whoever's it is, can you just--no speaking, alright? None. Five minutes, that's all I'm asking."
Steve narrows his eyes for a second, but then he nods, and Danny lets out a rush of relieved breath and finds it all pouring out of him at once.
"So, thing is, I've had a bad day," he says. "Maybe the worst day ever, and I can't really--I can't explain why, because you'll never believe me, and if you did believe me it would mean the Navy knows a lot about shit that I didn't ever want to know about and I'd rather not know that, you know? But the point, right, the point is that I didn't know what I was talking about, when I said I wanted to be back in Jersey, I didn't--"
"Look," Steve cuts in, "no, don't, you were right, I've been trying to find you to apologize, I shouldn't have--"
"Shut up," Danny says, reaching up to cup his face again. Steve lets him this time, obviously struggling not to bombard him with questions, and Danny has to kiss him once, just has to, before he can go on. "Just, just shut up, because I'm not--Rachel's right about me, she is, I do say things I don't mean and mean things I don't say and so this is probably the only time I'll be able to get through this so just, complete silence, please and thank you, I'm not gonna ask you again. "
"Okay," Steve says, confused but quiet. "Okay, Danno, go ahead."
"I'm never going to like pineapple on pizza," Danny says. "Because it's--it's wrong, okay, there shouldn't be pineapple on pizza, and I'm not really much of a sand guy, it gets into places that sand should never be, and I'm. I'm not cut out for island life, I never was, I'm a city kind of guy, and I'm always going to want to vacation to Jersey and I'm always going to want to be there, a little bit, except that I didn't--I didn't understand, right, that when people say you can't go home again it's because they mean you've gone and set up home somewhere else by mistake."
Steve's keeping his promise to be silent so well that Danny's actually nervous; his face is blank, that guarded neutral he uses when he's trying not to get something wrong. And oh, god, Danny's such a coward, but he closes his eyes, has to close his eyes, can't finish this when Steve is looking at him like that, so careful and so close.
"Or maybe that's not what they," he starts, and shakes his head. "But it's not about the island, right, it's about Grace and Rachel and that I'm--I'm stupid in love with you, okay, d'you understand, the amount of love I have is so stupid that it actually hurts in my soul because one of these days you're going to get us both killed and then I'll have to defend your stupid reckless ass in the afterlife, that kind of love, and I don't want you to change and I don't want to leave. And I'm a selfish person, okay, on a basic level, I like things the way I like them and the thing is, Steve, the crazy thing is that I don't even care if you love me back--I mean, look, obviously I care, I care a lot, but if you don't that's okay, we just need to--you just need to stop fucking me, if you’re not--because you need to find someone who makes you happy, because I just--I need you to be happy, I know I sound crazy but I need to know, I need to know that you're okay and that you're not tearing yourself up inside and that you're--"
"Hey," Steve says. His voice is soft, open, and it's that more than anything that makes Danny open his eyes. But oh, Jesus, he's glad he did--Steve's face has broken open into that grin Danny never managed to worm out of the other him, the big goofy one that takes over his face.
"Danno," Steve says, "I am happy."
It would be nice, Danny thinks vaguely, if he could turn this moment into something classy and elegant. It would be nice if he could lean in and kiss Steve like a guy out of a storybook or a sappy movie, so later he could look back and feel like he'd done right. It would be nice, but Danny's not really that kind of guy and Steve certainly isn't, so instead…
…well, instead he stares, dumbfounded, kind of not believing his luck until Steve grabs him by the back of the neck and hauls him inside. Danny more or less falls into him, dripping everywhere, hands roaming.
"Never did learn to dress for the weather," Steve says, kicking the door shut behind them as he tries to undo the buttons on Danny's shirt.
"Never will," Danny agrees, and leans in to run his tongue along Steve's neck. He smells, tastes, like saltwater, like his morning surf, and Danny bites down a little just because he can. Steve rips his shirt open in response like the animal he is, all bad decisions and brute force, laughing into Danny's hair when he squawks in protest.
"I thought you wanted to make me happy," Steve says, grinning down at him. "You being naked? That makes me happy."
"I'll give you happy," Danny snaps, half-annoyed just for the sport of it, and tackles Steve into the wall.
The thing is, though, that he can't sustain it, can't even keep up a pretense. He pulls Steve's shirt over his head and his hands stumble against Steve's chest, trying to touch everywhere at once, and his heart feels like it's going to burst out of his chest. Steve must see it on his face--Steve knows him well enough to tell, Steve knows him, Steve knows him--because they're kissing again a second later. His lips are soft against Danny's mouth, soothing, and his hands run up under the ruins of Danny's shirt.
"Just take it off," Danny gasps, "just--I don't even care, I just, Steve, I--"
"I know," Steve says, pulling the sodden remains of his shirt loose. "I know, Danny, me too."
They stumble to the couch, bare chests pressed together, urgent like they've never been before. Steve's got the upper hand because he's dry and shoeless, not tripping over his squelching loafers the way Danny is, so he throws Danny down across it and bears down on him. And oh, god, Steve's sliding out of his pants, pulling at Danny's belt, he's everywhere at once and Danny remembers this, remembers how easy it's always been even when everything else didn't make sense at all.
"Do you remember," Danny says, senselessly, as he kicks his shoes off and toes the onto the floor, "after that case with the coke dealers and the grenade launcher, in the alley behind the--"
"Yeah," Steve says, frowning down at him as he pulls at Danny's pants. "You want to suck me off in an alley? Because, I mean, not that I didn't enjoy it, but I was kind of thinking--"
"No," Danny breathes, "no, I want you to fuck me like we just escaped from--"
"Danny, Jesus," Steve says, and leans down.
They're more or less naked now--Danny's still wearing his soaked-through socks, and Steve, being the overachiever he is, uses his feet to divest him of them without breaking the kiss. They rut against each other for a second, tongues tangled, Steve's hand in Danny's hair, Danny's fingers tight around the swell of Steve's ass, and if it hadn't been two months--felt like two months--Danny would let them come like this.
However, things being what they are…
"Lube, McGarrett," Danny says, using what limited leverage he has to pull away. "Unless you're planning on making this much shorter than it could be."
Steve laughs against his mouth, but it's soft, no mockery in it at all, like he's surprised. Belatedly, it occurs to Danny that maybe Steve is just as shell-shocked as he is, if for different reasons. He thinks about the Steve in Jersey, so starved for affection that it was like he couldn't feel it, desperate enough for someone to talk to that he nearly broke down in a goddamn interrogation room.
They're not that different, really, even if one of them was a product of magic, his imagination, whatever. This Steve, his Steve, arches around to side table, washboard abs all on display, and Danny watches the line of his his back with hungry eyes as he returns.
"See," Steve says, "the Boy Scout thing taught me all about preparation, so you can stop mocking me for it any--"
"C'mere," Danny says, running his hands down Steve's back and drawing him closer. "God, babe, I want you to fuck me, okay, and if dropping the Boy Scout jokes is what it's going to take--"
"Stop trying to make me come first," Steve groans, which isn't at all what Danny's doing, but it's gratifying all the same. He just opens the lube and slicks three of Steve's fingers, leaning forward briefly to suck Steve's thumb into his mouth. Steve groans again, but it's lower, rougher this time, and he bucks against Danny, grinding their cocks together.
"Your fingers," Danny reminds him, "my ass, any day now."
"Danno," Steve whines, and, okay, yeah, maybe he really is riding the edge, Danny had kind of forgotten what a hair-trigger he can be sometimes. He spreads his legs, pinning Steve between them, and grinds out a harsh breath when Steve slips a finger inside.
"Yeah," he says, because Steve likes it when he talks, because he's never been able to control himself anyway and doesn't see any reason to start now. "Yeah, babe, like that, just like that, oh, fuck, fuck, I can take more, I want more, wanna feel you in me, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon."
Steve's got a second finger inside him and then a third, all deft hands and quick movements, playing over Danny's weak spots like it was part of his SEAL training. Danny'd never know from his steady hands how wrecked he is, but that's the saving grace of Steve's ridiculously expressive faces--he's cracked open just from this, just from watching Danny under him, and the rush of that never seems to stop getting Danny high.
"No condom," Danny says, when Steve pulls his fingers out and gives him a questioning look. They're both clean and they've toyed with it, with the pluses and minuses of using one--usually Danny's for and Steve's against, but not this time. This time Danny wants to feel all of him, wants him everywhere all at once, and fuck the mess he'll be afterward. He pours lube over Steve's cock, getting it everywhere, and then raises his eyebrows to keep himself from begging Steve to get on with it already.
Steve moans and leans close, bites down on Danny's shoulder hard enough that it'll probably leave a bruise as he slides in. Danny doesn't care, can't spare the energy to give a flying fuck, because he's grinding up into Steve's cock and gasping out whatever comes to mind.
"Feels so good," he manages, "oh, god, babe, if you ever stop I swear I'll kill you, just like that, oh, god, Steve, fuck."
Steve makes one of the unintelligible gorilla noises Danny has discovered he's prone to while fucking; at first they only confirmed his theory that Steve was some kind of Navy robot, but he's come to realize they mean "If I focus on anything other than holding it in I'm going to come right now." He runs his hand down Steve's spine, means it to be soothing but succeeds only in making him shudder, and decides it's about time to pick up the pace.
It's desperate and dirty and quicker than Danny would like, but the sensation of Steve over him, whole and alright and not going everywhere, is more of an aphrodisiac than he'd anticipated. He's coming in long spurts all over Steve's stomach before he's even had a chance to cry out, and when he gasps, "Fuck, oh god," Steve lets out a strangled moan and collapses on him, his cock twitching with release against Danny's prostate.
"Missed you," Danny breathes against his neck, too out of it to remember how crazy it'll sound. He thinks for a second that the rain has saved him, the slowing pound of it against the roof a decent cover, but then Steve shifts a little on top of him, like he's confused.
"Never left," he murmurs. "Not planning on it, either."
"Yeah," Danny says, "yeah, neither am I."
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Date: 2011-02-18 06:48 am (UTC)Plus that whole Sandman thing was hilarious and adorable Gracie is adorable! H50 has taken over parts of your life and I AM SO GLAD I BENEFIT.
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Date: 2011-02-18 07:10 am (UTC)And Danny's home coming with Steve...mmmmmm...it was just how i imagined it would be.
This is great work. I'm adding it to my favs now.
*g*
How do you feel about a sequel? lol.
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Date: 2011-02-18 07:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-18 07:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-18 07:46 am (UTC)THIS IS SO GOOD.
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Date: 2011-02-18 07:54 am (UTC)1) SANDMAN WHUT
2) *dies*
3) Danny and Rachel - their relationship was perfection, even when it really hurt
4) STEVE. BOTH STEVES. ANY AND ALL STEVES.
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Date: 2011-02-18 08:30 am (UTC)Kamekona as the sandman was very funny.
alternate!Steve just broke my heart and the ending was just perfect.
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Date: 2011-02-18 08:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-18 09:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-18 09:25 am (UTC)(I confess that whenever I read fic that's based on a movie I then want to go and watch the movie, and it unfailingly ends up not measuring up to the fic, so I shall try to refrain with this one as I don't think this would be any different - i.e. you're awesome and hopefully that made sense :P )
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Date: 2011-02-18 09:35 am (UTC)The scariest thing in this fic was sad altGracie. :( But everything got solved by hugs...and porn. Delicious porn.
Thank you for writing this. :D
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Date: 2011-02-18 10:48 am (UTC)AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Date: 2011-02-18 11:21 am (UTC)Laughed my ass off with Kamekona screwing up the dosage, hilarious. Danny definitely wouldn't be happy again back in Jersey. He belongs to Hawaii with Steve.
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Date: 2011-02-18 11:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-18 12:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-18 12:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-18 01:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-18 01:38 pm (UTC):whimpers everywhere:
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Date: 2011-02-18 02:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-18 02:16 pm (UTC)You.
Writing 5-0! Steve/Danny 5-0! And as brilliantly as ever, too. :D
♥♥♥
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Date: 2011-02-18 02:22 pm (UTC)LOVE LOVE LOVE.
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Date: 2011-02-18 02:32 pm (UTC)And alternate!Gracie, OH MY GOD.
Thank you for putting everything back in its place again. I don't think I could have survived without this ending.
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Date: 2011-02-18 02:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-18 02:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-18 03:15 pm (UTC)But, on re-reading and really thinking about the Sandman references...I just want to know:
Does that make Chin Destiny maybe? And Kono could be...well I really don't know if I can see her as either Desire or Death,although I'm much fonder of Death than Desire...which sounds very wrong but I'm sure that anyone who has read Neil Gaiman would understand... So that leaves who Delight? Maybe before she was Delerium...
Just curious. ;-)