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Steve went still as Danny’s fingertips ran slowly over the flecks of gray in his newly shorn hair, the indecision on how to react written clearly across his face. He didn’t pull away, only shifted his gaze sideways, cookie stuck in limbo between the plate and his mouth. Danny’s brow furrowed deeper as he tried to separate the two images that overlayed each other, one of a dapper Steve in the kitchen of a restaurant that didn’t (yet) exist and one of a Steve in sweats and a t-shirt, antsy and stir crazy.
He realized what he was doing entirely too late to turn it into a joking gesture or steal the cookie from Steve’s hand, instead pulling his hand back with a sheepish ‘sorry’ and sinking into the couch deeper. The stitches in the side of his chest tugged and he hissed quietly, his hand sneaking over to gently press against it until the moment passed.
Steve finally turned his head to watch him, chewing slowly on the cookie. “You okay, buddy?” he asked, one cheek puffed out in a way that Danny once designated the Lieutenant Commander Squirrel Look. There was that worry etched on his face that was so quick to surface these days, as if Steve didn’t have enough to worry about anyway.
Danny waved his free hand slowly in the air. “There was cutting through muscles there and healing and every time I figure out which positions are a no go quiet yet, I find a new one. ‘m fine,” he replied nonchalantly. Whatever passed for ‘fine’ in Five-0 lingo.
The last of the cookie disappeared and Steve brushed the crumbs off on his sweatpants before shifting around, one leg resting on the couch between them as he focused more intently on Danny. “That’s good to know but that wasn’t the only thing I was talking about,” his partner stated, wagging a finger at his hair. “You’ve always got an opinion on anything and that was…”
Danny motioned towards his own hair. “I’m just getting a better look at it is all, seeing all the gray,” he said quickly, trying to brush it off as mere curiosity, not the need to anchor himself to reality and sort between images still tumbling through his brain that didn’t belong. “Just curious.”
Steve hesitated a moment before he got to his feet, shuffling back towards the kitchen. Danny heard the soft rustle of someone looking through cupboards, the opening and shutting of his fridge door, before Steve returned with two glasses of milk. “You, uh, know there’s beer in there, right? Since you’re staying the night, you can help yourself. Don’t stay sober on my account.” He accepted one of the glasses, taking a swig to wash away the last of the chocolate taste in his mouth, still staring straight ahead at the hearth.
“I seem to remember someone refusing to drink until I could.” Steve settled back in his place on the couch, drawing his long legs up to rest his bare feet on the edge of the coffee table. “You know, Danny, it’s okay to not be okay, right? After what you’ve been through, you don’t have to - “
A soft snort cut him off, Danny shaking his head slowly. “No offense, babe, but that’s rich coming from you.” He finally glanced towards Steve to see his expression darkening, that wall going up again. That was the wrong thing to say, at least in the way Steve had taken it and if Danny was being perfectly honest, there were a few ways he could have said it better. He leaned forward to set the glass down and then shifted carefully in his spot to face Steve.
“Look, I shouldn’t have said it that way. I mean, we’ve known each other for how long now? Eight years? In eight years, I’ve seen you go to Hell and back more than once and each time, you adopt the stiff upper lip and try to convince everyone around you that it’s a day ending in ‘y’ for you. I even believed that in the beginning but then I got to know you, Steven, and you started to open up, remember that you’re an actual human being, and all I’m saying is that you don’t have to carry my weight on your shoulders when you have enough of your own. More than enough. Whatever’s happened to you, whatever you’ve done, the world isn’t yours to carry, Atlas,” he stated, keeping his voice to a low mumble in case the passionate declaration necessitated an increase in volume to make his point.
“I’m not looking to take it from you, Danny. I just want to help.” He expected a little more vehemence in Steve’s tone but instead the SEAL seemed to stare into his half-finished glass of milk, looking like a lost little boy instead of the leader of one of the toughest taskforces in the entirety of the US.
“As if you already haven’t? You cut me open and stuck your finger inside to make sure I returned home to my kids. I don’t know if anyone has ever informed you of this, but that is top tier friendship there, my friend. Very, very few people ever achieve that quality of friendship and all jokes about dirty hands aside, the appreciation I feel for your efforts is, ah…” Danny trailed off as the lump growing in his throat stopped the words cold, gazing down at his hands.
Sitting there, side by side, the faint images of two old men watching the tide gently lap up against the beach came back to him. Feelings of contentment, love, peace all tugged at the corners of his mind. He drew the pad of his thumb beneath one eye, wicking away the moisture. “Thank you. I know that’s not much but what you did for me, Steve, I can’t…” Danny shook his head and laughed. “After everything we’ve said to each other, you’d think this wouldn’t be so hard.”
He gestured to the hearth, the four stockings hung across the mantel. The tree in the corner, what little light remained in the room coming from the lights woven through its branches, packages stacked up underneath. The stacks had grown since Danny hustled Charlie off to bed, no doubt Steve’s contributions. “The, uh, the first Christmas Eve after my divorce finalized, I’m sitting in this shitty little motel room alone. Ma and Pops, they sent me this invite telling me to come over, that Matt and Bridget and Stella are there, and the kids are there, and I’m just...Gracie’s not. Gracie is with Rachel and this guy that might one day be her stepfather and suddenly I might not be in her life at all. I couldn’t move, I just sat there on the edge of the bed and I’d had more than a couple of drinks and my thoughts were just so dark that…”
Danny stared harder at his hands, not wanting to see the expression on Steve’s face when he finally admitted something that he’d never told a soul, not even Matt. “When I said that if I lost Grace, I’d throw myself off a cliff...I wasn’t joking, Steve. Only this time, it was my service revolver in my hands.” He hesitated, terrified of admitting how close he’d come to surrendering in a disgusting, cheap motel room, and that was long enough for the couch cushions to shift and suddenly Steve was there, wrapping his arms around him, holding onto him so damn tight that Danny briefly wondered if his lung might collapse again.
“I don’t want that anymore, Steve,” he whispered as he held him tightly, chin resting on his shoulder. Danny squeezed his eyes shut, fighting back the emotions threatening to render him unable to tell Steve the point of his confession. “As I lay there on that table with you hovering over me, hearing you talk, I kept thinking - I kept thinking how it wasn’t going to happen like this, it couldn’t, because I wanted to live. I wanted to live to see my two beautiful children grow up and live their lives, I wanted to live to see my family and my friends find their own happiness,” he added softly.
“I started to...I don’t know, dream? Hallucinate? And you were there, in all of ‘em, in some form. The moment I started slipping away, I remember that, okay? I’m not being dramatic here, I remember that, and I’m thinkin’ - I’m thinking ‘no, it’s not happening this way’, and then there’s the image, the two of us sitting on your beach, old and wrinkled and gray and we’re there together, even if we can’t hear a damn thing the other was saying.” He felt Steve shake with light laughter under his hands, Danny joining with a light laugh of his own.
“Through it all though, that’s what made me hold on. I want to grow old with you. I want to live. You and Grace and Charlie, Steve, you saved my life.” Danny’s hands wadded up Steve’s worn t-shirt as if that would help hold him tighter, Steve’s grip on him not unlike a drowning man catching a lifesaver. They stayed like that for a long time, holding on, Danny feeling the light tremor running through Steve. “Thank you.” Every ounce of love, thankfulness, adoration, and yeah, sometimes a little frustration, that Danny had for the man in his arms came out in those two words. “Thank you.”
It was a moment before Steve nodded his head slowly and then pulled away, sniffing as he turned his head towards the Christmas trees. Danny used the hem of his shirt to wipe at his eyes, wondering if the lightness he felt was the weariness of navigating difficult emotions settling in or the weight of a secret slipping off his shoulders.
“You’re not allowed to go anywhere without me, you got that?” Steve said suddenly, looking towards Danny again. “‘cause we are gonna grow old together, you and me. You’re stuck with me.” He gave Danny a shaky grin before ducking his head, fingers running over his shorn hair awkwardly. The motion was endearing right then, Danny remembering a Steve McGarrett just home from the military, a Steve who wouldn’t show this kind of emotion in the beginning of their partnership. How far they’d come.
“Through strife and tough times and the heart-stopping times, through the good ones too, through bad hair choices-”
“It’s not that bad!”
“It’s growing on me,” Danny admitted as he reached out to pick up the last cookie. It broke in two easily and he held one half out to Steve. His partner accepted it and the two of them gently clinked their milk glasses together, silently eating their cookies and finishing off the milk.
Then they sat back on the couch again, gazing at the Christmas tree, a little lighter.
“I mean, it is growing on me, but you are definitely on the path to becoming a silver fox, showing your age a little bit there.”
“Shut up, Danno.”