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"And so you know, there are a lot of things on this planet that I’m worried about, losing you in a combat situation is not one of them. Okay?”
- Danny Williams, 3x15 "Hookman"
*
It wasn’t until Steve pulled the Camaro into his driveway that he realized something was missing. Turning to look at the passenger seat, he tracked Danny’s every motion with sharp eyes. Noticed the way his partner turned from where he’d been quietly gazing out the window to work his seat belt, fingers pressing down slowly to undo the buckle.
It should’ve been an easy thing - a well rehearsed routine by now. The simple picking up and bringing back home. This little dance they did when switching seats, Danny going from passenger to driver and back again, each and every day. It’d be accompanied by the sweet soundtrack of his partner’s angry grumbling as he jiggled the handle to push the seat way, waaaaay up so his much shorter frame could once again fit his own car, thanks so much, Steve. It would float through the open car window right about the time Steve passed through his gate, not even bothering to hide his grin.
If he’d paid more attention to the details, maybe Steve would have noticed the quiet so much sooner than this. But he’d been haunted by that beautiful goodbye out in the street, where he saw the faces of men he’d admired and loved, damn it, free from signs of death and pain and struggle. So he’d lost sight of Danny, for a while. He’d lost all sound of Danny, almost immediately after those sharp words from a biting tongue, even though he’d been unable to mask the way his voice had trembled a little.
And afterwards, the silence. No ramblings to cut through the quiet - and something about that should have clued him in.
He took a breath, now. “Danny - ”
His partner, of course, beat him to it. “You know, it’s not just you anymore.”
Okay? Steve quirked an eyebrow, goading Danny into one of his long, drawn out arguments that he was sure his partner needed as much as Steve needed to hear it. “Not just me .. what?”
He felt a little victorious when Danny squinted back at him, looking at him like he thought Steve was being an uncomprehending idiot on purpose. Which.. maybe. Today had been hard and sad and so damn near painful that he needed some normalcy. And he needed it by way of the soft and sometimes jarring comfort that was so uniquely Danny Williams. So sue him.
Danny’s hands shot up, stuttering back to their semi-natural rhythm, like a thousand volts had been sent through, kickstarting them to life from their slow, almost dormant state. If Steve thought he could get away with smiling, he’d try his damndest.
“You are not just a deluded hooyah bloody SEAL going the distance for his country anymore. You’ve got a team now, okay?” He started counting people off on his fingers, jiggling them a little each time like explaining piggies going to the market. Pointer finger. “There’s Chin - brilliant, pretty, master of zen despite everything we deal with on a daily basis.” Middle finger. “There’s Kono - you remember her, badass sniper who saved you today. Also very pretty. Surfs with you sometimes, at the crack of dawn when no person in their right mind is even awake, so, you know, maybe she’s as crazy as you are, I fear for her future, I do.”
His fingers caught on the ring finger that used to bear the telltale mark of his marriage to Rachel, but was now bare and empty. Steve’s feelings on that were… a little complicated. He knew about all the pain his divorce had caused Danny, knew it was at the root of so much of his partner’s suffering… but that train wreck was the very thing that had brought Danny to the island. And seeing how Rachel had continued to show her true colors time and time again over the course of the years, he was a little relieved to have his partner more or less free of her. Winning the court case, Danny being granted joint custody of Grace… he couldn’t think of anyone who deserved it more.
“You have me as your partner. I swear to you, Steven, you do anything like that again, you bet your Hawaiian ass I’m going to go ‘Scarface’ on the whole neighborhood and end with punching you in the face. Hard. And you -”
He paused for a second, twisting his face to look through the windshield, studying Steve’s house like it was the most interesting thing on the entire planet. Steve watched as he swallowed through whatever emotion he was so obviously trying to keep at bay.
“You’ve got this little girl, okay?” Danny continued, voice soft and reverent and brimming with a mixture of sadness and love, “You’ve got this little girl called Grace Williams who adores you, okay? And I do not want to have to tell her that her Uncle Steve got himself killed by acting like a stupid, reckless jackass, when his whole damn team could’ve had his back in an instant. I- I can’t do that to her, Steve.”
And that… that he had not been expecting. But there it was. There she was, appearing like a tangible memory in the forefront of his mind. And she was there in the reflection of her father’s eyes. And she was a phantom presence leaning across and over from the backseat, her two pigtails swinging as she turned in his direction and gave him a sweet and shy smile, like she wanted to prove to him her Danno’s words were the absolute truth.
His heart thudded once. LOUDLY. Danny was still going, though… so Steve doubted he’d been caught.
“Despite all the times she’s heard me complaining about you and insisting, insisting with the utmost certainty, on your stupidity and complete lack of brain cells, my precious little girl has decided she wants to claim you, okay? You’re her Uncle Steve, who made sure she gets to stay on this godforsaken island by being all sweet about it in a courtroom, right in front of a judge.”
He gave Steve a harsh look.
“So I need you to think about the absolute privilege that is my daughter loving you for a second.” He nodded, decidedly. “And then I’m gonna need you to think about it again whenever you decide to jump off the tallest building or drive my car through a hailstorm of bullets from someone actively trying to target and kill you. Please and thank you.”
“I..” Steve found himself saying, “yeah.”
Danny drew his hand across his face, suddenly looking tired after running out of steam. “And I know that I’m being extremely unfair right now, because you, you know… you didn’t ask for her. You didn’t ask for Grace.” He sucked in a quick breath. “But you got her anyway, babe. Don’t break her heart.”
Hang on. Just hang on for one second.
For whatever reason, anger surged through him like a tidal wave not even the kidnapped professor could’ve determined on a scientific scale. “I’m sorry,” Steve began, trying to school his voice so it wouldn’t shake, “did you just say I didn’t ask for her?”
Danny shrugged. “You didn’t, Steve. She just came attached to this loud Jersey cop you decided to bully into being your partner because he’d had the misfortune of being assigned your father’s case.”
And suddenly, his feelings weren’t even quantifiable anymore. Never mind the tsunami warning graph, all he knew now was that it was too much. Too much to be contained by the metal body of the car, even with the holes that had punctured it today. He freed his own seatbelt from its buckle, opened the door with an angry push and stepped out onto the grass.
His peripheral vision (always at the ready, always on the lookout) showed Danny following, apology already forming. “Babe, I’m just saying…”
“No.” Steve twisted back to Danny, holding up his hands, not so much as a shield for protection, but as a method to stall him, to break off the forthcoming apology when Danny probably didn’t quite understand what it was for.
“You think I only asked you to be my partner because you were assigned my father’s case?”
Danny fidgeted a little, as if he really believed there might be some truth to that. But then his familiar self-defense mechanism kicked in, and he tried to deflect. “As previously stated, several times in fact, ‘asked’ might not be the right word for it.”
Which, again… no.
“I picked you because you had good instincts, Danno.” He explained, his voice just a tad shy of shouting. “I picked you because you punched me that first day, and complained about proper procedure and pineapple infested hell holes in the car and even then I knew I could trust you one hundred percent. And I knew you’d always have my back.” He looked at Danny, knowing the angry look he was giving him probably wasn’t proportionate to the words he was trying to say . Which were meant to be reassuring. Complimentary, even. “And I knew I’d always have yours.”
The thing about Danny that most people failed to understand, was that you could only truly get a sense of him by mostly ignoring what he was saying. People were always so distracted by Danny’s loud mouth and flailing hands, they forgot about those icy blue orbs broadcasting everything his partner was feeling, if only you turned into the right frequency. Not that he could blame them, he’d taken that misdirection too, at first. But over the years, Steve had learned. Watched for Danny’s tells, until he was able to read his partner like a damn manual. Right now, his eyes told him that same story he’d seen in them before. It was there, every time Steve uttered the words I’d do the same for you. Not the other way around - because You’d do the same for me was a given in Danny’s world : yeah, of course he’d do the same for Steve. That and more besides. It was the other way around he had a harder time believing. Steve was going to work on that, starting today.
“And you know what, Danny,” This, this was important. “I’ve loved Gracie from the very second you introduced us at that football game. If I could’ve loved her before that, I would have, I assure you.”
He didn’t think he’d ever forget that day; the first time she’d smiled at him mischievously, telling him in no uncertain terms that well, her daddy talked about him a lot, too! and their first little fist bump. There were other days too, like the first time she’d called him Uncle Steve like it was the most natural thing in the world for her to do. The way she’d skipped down the stairs to her school to hug him when he came to tell her about Danno being sick. Her little hand in his as they walked into his hospital room together. The way she’d been so brave when Petersen had taken her, Steve trying to undo the binds tying her to the chair as quickly as humanly possible and aching inside when he couldn’t gather her up in a tight hug right alongside Danny, Rachel taking that place instead.
“Not just because she happened to come attached to you, either.” He huffed a bitter laugh. “I could give you a list of a million reasons why, Danny. She’s a great kid. It would probably be longer than the list of reasons why I like you, so you know, I wouldn’t tempt me if I were you.”
Over the course of his rant, Danny’d been moving steadily closer, before he’d frozen in place a few feet away from where Steve was still practically vibrating out of his skin. He probably wanted to stay out of the danger zone for a little bit. Which Steve had to admit, wasn't a bad idea.
The look in Danny’s eyes…well, that wasn’t quantifiable either. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, trying to say something. Cleared his throat when it seemed the words wouldn’t come out either way.
“So,” he finally settled on, “you’re eh - going to think about that list next time you wanna throw yourself in front of a sniper gun?”
Seeing Danny’s initial point, Steve could only nod. “Yeah.”
“You know,” Danny continued, “that’s what family does, babe. You think about all the reasons you love them… and all the reasons they love you - and let me tell you, I bet Grace’s list about you is equally elaborate - and then you decide to be safe. For them.”
His heart surged, a smile slipping out when he felt the cracks that had formed there heal just a little more when Danny took the final step to reach him.
“You know what else family does?” Danny grinned, scratching the back of his neck a little. “They uh - they hug each other after a really bad day.” He opened up his arms, much like he had the first time, and made a grabby motion. “C’mon.”
Steve laughed at him, allowing his partner to calm the final tremblings of his body (God, he felt so old and tired and drained) with the soft embrace of strong arms, hands warm against his back.