Chapter Text
Hawaii Five-0
“I don’t even get why we’re doing this, Danny,” Steve secured another section of lights to Danny’s roof and looked down at its owner, who was currently holding a long section of Christmas twinkle lights in his hand and feeding them up to Steve while staring serenely up at him with clear blue eyes and a perfectly content look on his face, as if decorating two houses for Christmas was what everybody did and should be the life goal of everyone on Earth.
“Well, Steven, in case you weren’t listening the first hundred times I explained it to you, I will be magnanimous and attempt it once more for the one hundredth and first time,” Danny’s voice couldn’t have sounded more irritatingly calm and Steve had to admit quietly to himself that most of the reason he’d brought up the subject again was to ruffle Danny’s feathers. He grinned and looked down the ladder at him.
“That’d be really nice of you, buddy, thanks.”
“Because,” Danny rolled his eyes, feeding Steve more light line, “I still live here, and my son still lives here – half the time, anyways, – and as long as my name is on the deed to this house, there will be Christmas decorations donning the roof and windows, and a Christmas tree in the living room. This is the way the Williamses do Christmas; never have we ever owned a dwelling and not decorated said dwelling for Christmas. That is a crime where we come from.”
“Yeah, but you practically live with me now, Danny. You’re hardly ever here.” Steve stretched the last few inches to secure the final section of warm, golden lighting and straightened himself out before carefully climbing back down the ladder. “And we still need to decorate my place too, remember?"
"And we will," Danny's sunny answer greeted Steve as his sneakered feet hit the ground and he brushed the dirt and twigs off himself that had followed its way down.
"But?"
"But now, we're going to find a Christmas tree for my living room."
"I know a place -"
Danny's finger went up so quickly Steve almost jumped back from it, eyes crossing as the tip of the digit homed in on its target, which appeared to be Steve’s undivided attention. "Legally this time, Steven. Legally."
Hawaii Five-0
In the end, they headed back to Steve’s to grab his truck and wound up getting not only a tree for Danny’s place, but for Steve’s as well. It was pretty helpful to have a macho, gas guzzling, overcompensating amalgamation of steel that just so happened to have the ability to haul several things all at once. Well, so said Steve. Danny just rolled his eyes and bobbed his head along with everything Steve said just to make him feel better, because Danny knew, he knew where this day was leading, where the conversation from earlier was heading. It was going where all their talks went that had to do with replicating doing something at Danny’s house that could just as easily be done at Steve’s.
Steve had been trying to convince Danny to move in with him for the better part of two months, and Danny hadn’t forgotten about the bet Steve had made with him during their vacation to Kailua. But Steve had really gone all in as of late, trying to persuade Danny into selling his place and moving in with him. It had all started a few days before Halloween, where Steve had not-so-subtly hinted that his place was perfect for a kid (Charlie) to host a Halloween party for his entire class, and how all the kids could have a Halloween scavenger hunt for extra candy before their parents came to pick them up and take them on their own Trick-or-Treating routes. “My neighborhood’s pretty good when it comes to candy, too, Danny – hey, the little lady down the street? She hands out whole candy bars, the big ones. Adult size.”
Steve had been convincing enough on the candy selection available in his neck of the woods, so instead of Trick-or-Treating in Danny’s hub, Steve, Danny, and Charlie had canvassed up and down the streets near Steve’s house. Even Danny had to admit that Charlie had walked away with a pretty nice haul, including the full sized, adult candy bars from Steve’s elder neighbor as promised. Ever since, Steve had brought up the benefits of Danny and Charlie moving into his place whenever and wherever he could:
“It’s closer to Charlie’s school.”
“Hey – you’d already be here for Thanksgiving! No need to lug food around, since it’d already be here.”
(Steve had used the same argument for Christmas, only substituting presents in for food.)
“It’s closer to Rachel’s place.”
“Hey, if Mark actually wins the governor’s race, I’d feel a lot better if we were all under one roof, you know?”
And so it had gone, through Veterans’ Day and Thanksgiving, leading up to Pearl Harbor Day and right up to this morning. Danny hummed quietly to himself as Steve turned his truck into the driveway and came to a stop in front of the fence.
“What.”
Danny should’ve known Steve’s bat-like ears would hear him. “Nothing,” he answered, unbuckling his seat belt and opening the door on his side, “just thinking we can string some lights up through your trellis.”
Steve blinked, slowly. “If that’s a come on, it needs a little work.”
“You’re hilarious,” Danny snickered, unlatching the tailgate, and reaching in to tug out the very fragrant Frasier Fur they’d managed to find. Yes, they’d found it three hours and one hundred and fifty dollars later, but it was a live tree and there was no risk of Pua or anyone else from HPD knocking on their door this year to tell them that they owed the good State of Hawaii twelve hundred dollars because they’d sawed down and absconded from a protected forest preserve with precious vegetation in tow. Danny was reminded of a line out of the movie Moonstruck – “It costs money. It costs money because it saves money!” And sure the character saying that was a plumber trying to con a couple into purchasing more expensive pipes for their bathroom, but for this situation, the line fit perfectly.
Together, they lugged the tree into the house, even getting an assist from Eddie once they crossed the threshold. The dog was more interested in sniffing it from trunk to crown, and once it was snuggly ensconced in the tree stand, Eddie settled himself down underneath it, continuing to explore the branches. Danny shook his head at him. “Look, buddy, if you’re thinking you’re gonna climb up this thing, you’ve got another thing coming.” Eddie pulled his nose out and offered half a sneeze in response as Steve came up behind him, a bundle of green corded twinkle lights in his hands and a grin in his eyes. Danny looked from Steve to the lights and back to Steve again.
“You’re gonna put them on now?”
“Yeah, why not?”
“Well, because this is a live tree, babe,” Danny flourished a hand towards their – Steve’s – tree. “The branches have to fall, remember?”
The pout, the absolute crestfallen look that swam over Steve’s face reminded Danny of when he’d told Charlie that, no, he couldn’t have the awesome new Nerf gun set because he had twenty other awesome Nerf gun sets that he hardly played with anymore. But Steve wasn’t a kid, and he wasn’t in a store begging to buy a toy. “But, uh… you know, if you put the lights on now, it probably won’t make much difference,” Danny soothed. “Just make sure to push them a little further back so they don’t drop off the branches.”
That seemed to placate Steve enough, and Danny did not miss the little smirk of triumph his partner wore as he started to loop and attach the lights from the top of the tree and down around the green, prickly body. Yes, Danny knew he’d been played, but that was okay; Danny had tricks of his own he could use when he wanted to get his way. He stepped back and watched as Steve slowly made his way around the tree, stepping over Eddie who had yet to move from his chosen spot on the floor, and it wasn’t long before Steve was making his final pass around the tree and plugging the lights into the outlet strategically positioned behind it.
“See? Perfect,” Steve stepped back, crossing his arms over his chest and bumping his side gently against Danny’s. “You know, you should get some ornaments to put on the tree, too. You and Charlie and Grace.”
The corner of Danny’s mouth went up. Steve wasn’t subtle, but for humor’s sake, Danny played along, as if he didn’t know exactly where this suggestion was leading. “Oh yeah? I think the kids already have a couple here.”
“Yeah, but you can never have too many, you know?”
Danny personally agreed with that sentiment, but he wasn’t about to tell Steve that, not yet. He was going to enjoy stringing Steve along on this one. “Babe, you have three huge boxes upstairs of ornaments and decorations that we still have to bring down here,” he pointed out, literally directing a finger above them towards the attic, logic patiently lacing his tone. “You’ve got plenty there to decorate ten trees.”
“Yeah, maybe but a lot of that stuff is old,” Steve reasoned, rocking back and forth on his heels a bit. “It’s time to update a little bit.”
“Update?”
“Yeah. I’ll go through all the ornaments, keep the sentimental stuff, and then, I don’t know,” Steve shrugged, “maybe give the ones I don’t want away to a charity or a church or something. Anyways, I’ll need new ornaments. You and the kids should pick some out.”
Danny hummed, considering, feeling Steve’s eyes on him as he deliberately took his time answering. “We could bring some of the ornaments we’re not using this year over and put them on the tree?” He offered. He looked over then, seeing Steve nod agreeably and then, just to be contrary, Danny added, “and then take them back over to my place once we take the tree down.”
Steve stuck his lip out in a determined pout. “Or you could just leave them over here? Or buy ones to leave over here?”
“Yeah, maybe, I dunno. On another note, we need to think about food; I’m hungry.” Danny pushed back against him gently before buoying off and heading for the kitchen, leaving Steve to stew and congratulating himself on extricating his way out of yet another conversation designed to get him to consider moving in with Steve. It was good for Steve, Danny knew, for someone to pull the reigns back every now and then, or to bop and weave around the subject and leave it for another day. Besides, it wasn’t as if Danny had outright told Steve ‘no’. He just hadn’t said ‘yes’. As Danny poked around for something to put together for dinner, he heard Steve head up the stairs and a few minutes later, his partner popped his head into the kitchen only long enough to let Danny know that he was going swimming.
Steve’s reactions to certain things were predictable. Danny knew this after ten years. Steve hated it when his plans didn’t hit the mental benchmarks he’d laid out, and Danny knew he was purposely throwing wrenches into Steve’s idea of them moving in together by either pushing off the conversation or side stepping the topic like he’d just done in the living room by controlling the discussion and not even allowing Steve to offer up Danny and Charlie moving in with him as a possibility. As a result, Steve was stroking through the Pacific now trying to regroup, to come up with other ways to get Danny to see sense, and Danny knew his partner was reaching the point where Steve was going to start thinking there might be other reasons Danny didn’t want to live with him.
He peeked out the kitchen window and saw Steve cutting through the water at a faster-than-normal clip, working out his frustration in solitude. Danny actually felt a little badly for that; for all the casual conversation and hint dropping Steve had been doing, Danny knew that he and Charlie moving in was something Steve wanted very badly, especially with everything else going on in his life at the moment. Family had never come easily to Steve. It was the one thing that he wanted, yet had always seemed to escape him, at least until recently. He wanted to make it official. Danny understood that, loved him even more for it.
“Patience, babe,” Danny murmured, as if Steve could hear him across the sand and through the choppy waves that swallowed him up.
If anything, Steve only seemed to move through the water faster. Danny smiled to himself and went back to figuring out dinner.