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Steve kept glancing over at him with worry, the deep creases between his eyebrows furrowing in concentration, his mouth in a tight, thin line.
Danny knew it was uncharacteristic of him to stay quiet for so long.
He hadn’t said a word to Steve since they had left the inner-sanctum of the U.S. Navy. He hadn’t said a word since seeing with his own eyes the exact destruction Steve was capable of. He hadn’t said a word since watching the veiled curtain that had so long hung in front of the internal images Danny had of SEAL Steve be pulled back abruptly as the true nature of Steve’s abilities came crashing through the romantic-image Danny had concocted in his mind.
Danny was an intelligent man, and he knew that Steve was, for lack of a better term, an assassin. Sure, he used terms like Ninja and Super SEAL almost daily, but he was never under any misconception of Steve’s true job description – locate target and eliminate. Period. End of story.
But Danny was not prepared to see the cold, emotionless way in which the SEAL Team operated as they took out the cartel. He was not prepared to see the clear lack of feeling or distance the men put between themselves and the task they were to complete. Chin had said he was glad Steve was on their team. Lori agreed.
Danny said nothing.
After asking Steve, his voice breaking as the words squeaked out, if he had done this and Steve had responded with a curt, “I can neither confirm nor deny,” he hadn’t said a word.
Chin and Lori may look at Steve as an asset, thankful that he is on their side and fighting for their team, taking down any bad guys Hawaii had to offer. And don’t get Danny wrong, he knows how lucky the 5-0 task force and the people of Hawaii are to have Steve running headfirst, consequences be damned, into the line of fire to protect this island and her people. He’s lucky that Steve is his partner.
But, the thing is, Steve is not just Danny’s work partner. Steve is Danny’s life partner, his husband.
Steve is the man that Danny goes home with every night, the man he cooks dinner with, watches their children grow up with, and he’s the man that he falls asleep next to every night. He’s the man he makes love to and he’s the man he married. He’s the man he turns to when life gets hard and Danny just doesn’t want to get out of bed in the morning.
Danny can’t reconcile that man, the loving, gentle, caring man he’s grown to love and cherish above all things with the cold, calculated killers he sees on the screens.
And so Danny says nothing because he doesn’t have the words to describe what he’s feeling right now. They drive in silence, and he knows that Steve is fidgeting; worried that Danny might make a run for it, open the door and roll across the road as the car takes a turn doing 45 in a residential zone.
And don’t think he didn’t consider it. Okay, he didn’t really consider it, more the metaphorical idea of running. His knew his knee couldn’t handle a bucket roll out of a moving vehicle at his age.
And Danny wanted to console Steve, assure him that his Danno wasn’t going anywhere, he just needed time to process. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He couldn’t move his hand a few inches to the left where it would be pressed against the long fingers of Steve’s hand. He couldn’t bring himself to touch the man who had been trained to withstand hours of torture and execute a perfect prisoner evac mission while killing all insurgents, collateral damage be damned.
And Danny felt terrible. He felt terrible for putting Steve through an excruciating amount of pain as he ruminated over the possible reasons for his silence.
But he just didn’t know what to say, a first for him.
Their house came into view, giving him slight hope that he would be able to escape the nagging guilt gnawing at his heart, threatening to push out in a tidal wave of tears and screams when he was no longer forced to remain in such close quarters with Steve.
Danny was out of the Camaro and through the front door before Steve had the opportunity to fully cut the engine and unbuckle his seatbelt. Danny toed off his shoes in the front hallway, steadying himself against the doorframe as he took a few calming breaths.
“Are you okay, Danno?” Grace asked. He looked up and saw her and Avery sitting at the kitchen island eating pineapple and chocolate sauce.
“I’m fine. You do know that you are ruining perfectly good chocolate sauce, right?”
The girls laughed as they each dipped their large pieces of pineapple into the chocolate and held them out towards him when he moved to give them each a kiss. “Try it, Danno,” they said in unison.
“No, thank you. Where is Olina?”
“She’s upstairs putting away the laundry, but she saw you guys pull in so she’ll be down in a few minutes.”
He nodded as he pulled them to his chest, needing the familiar comfort of his two girls leaning against him, knowing that no matter what happened that day, they would always be his girls and that would never change.
“Danno, you’re suffocating us,” Avery squealed as she and Grace tried to pull themselves out of his grasp. He looked at them both fondly, blinking back a few errant tears as he thought about how big they’d gotten and how they were slowly becoming his not-so-little girls anymore, a thought he was not ready to deal with.
“Where’s Dad?” Avery asked, popping another offending piece of fruit into her mouth.
“He’ll be here in a minute. Hey, do you girls think you could go for a swim with Dad? He’s had a rough day at work, and I think he’d really like it.”
The girls grinned, identical smiles of glee showing on their faces as they hopped down from their chairs, leaving their disgusting snack abandoned on the counter for the more enticing prospect of swimming.
“First one to the rock and back gets to pick the movie for movie night for a whole month,” Grace yelled as she took off for the stairs.
“No fair, you got a head start,” Avery yelled as she followed her sister towards their bedrooms, almost clipping Steve as he came in the front door.
“Where are you going in such a hurry,” Steve called after them.
“No time to talk, Dad! We’re going swimming, get your trunks on. The first one to the rock and back gets to pick the movies for movie night for a whole month.”
The apparent glee on Avery’s face as she grinned back at Steve before continuing her sprint up the stairs put a contented smile on Steve’s face, the first less-than-pained expression he had worn since they left Pearl.
“Is it okay, Danno?” Steve asked hopefully.
“Go have fun, Aquaman.”
Steve flashed Danny a wary smile, not quite sure if Danny was really okay with it, but must have decided Danny was being serious because he shrugged his shoulders and ascended the stairs, two at a time.
Danny’s two children, and Steve, who was really like a third child, spent the next two hours in the ocean, racing and splashing around as the two losers (Grace and Steve) tried to dunk Avery under the water in retaliation for beating them with an unfair advantage (“She’s on a swim team, that’s an unfair advantage,” Grace had yelled. “Danno, tell her it’s unfair.”) Grace’s pleading hadn’t convinced anyone, so she was resigned to splashing Avery at every chance she got, all in good-natured fun of course. Both girls were laughing like there was no tomorrow as Steve threw them both over his shoulder before dropping them in the water.
Danny watched as both of the girls snuck up behind Steve and pounced, dragging him under the surf. Danny knew Steve helped them along by going weak, but the girls were having fun and that was all that mattered.
This, this image of his girls and Steve laughing and playing in the ocean like there were no bad guys or top-secret missions in their lives was the image Danny willed himself to keep in his mind.
He tried to force his brain to replace the image of a heartless killer with the image of the devoted father he had fallen in love with.
It wasn’t easy as Danny wrestled with the many emotions clouding his mind; painful images of Steve, feeling nothing as he double-tapped an unsuspecting child while he made his way towards the intended target, floated through his consciousness, flooding every nerve fiber his brain had to offer.
But as Steve walked out of the water, droplets sliding down his taut skin, with one girl slung over each shoulder fireman-style, Danny’s heart clenched and, suddenly, the bad images were gone, replaced instead with memories of family dinners, the bi-weekly movie nights they have when it’s Grace’s weekend, and the nights where they would fall into bed, wrapped in each other’s arms, protecting each other from the evil of the world.
As Steve walked towards him, shaking his head out like a dog, spraying both girls with salt water, Danny no longer saw Steve the SEAL. No, he was Steve the Husband and Steve the Father.
He saw everything he loved about this man and so much more.
Yes, Steve was a trained killer, but Steve was not cold and he was certainly not heartless. Danny would know because he felt Steve’s heartbeat every night as he fell asleep to the rhythmic beat as it thumped against his chest.