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Danny had been in their home office grumbling over the new paperwork format the governor had implemented. He was pretty sure all of the new requirements were a direct result of Steve’s approach to proper police procedure.
He glanced at the clock deciding it was close enough to dinner time that he could take a break and cook up something delicious for him and Avery who was currently sitting at the coffee table in the family room drawing a picture she wanted to send to Steve.
Steve had been gone for almost nine months, but it seemed like much longer. There had been some e-mails, sporadic phone calls, and a hastily signed birthday card for Avery’s seventh birthday.
The lack of communication was torture. The deployment had been sprung on them so fast that there wasn’t any time to prepare, any time to discuss how they were going to communicate, what information needed to make its way to Steve and what things were better left stateside. Danny knows he’s verbose; he’s very aware that he talks a mile a minute and lacks some brain to mouth filters. But, Danny wears his heart on his sleeve and you can always tell what he’s feeling. He doesn’t hide and he doesn’t apologize for being honest. And up until this point, his approach to life, relationships, and conversations had served him quite well. Up until, however, his husband deployed for some undisclosed location across the world.
Danny couldn’t talk to Steve so he wrote. He wrote what he was feeling, he wrote about the cases they got at Five-0, he talked about the injuries he received because Kono had been hanging out with Super SEAL way too long, he told Steve about Grace’s troubles with her spelling tests, and he told Steve about the many bloody noses Avery had been getting. He told the good things and the bad things and kept nothing a secret. Danny had done marriage before and secrets became commonplace, crumbling their foundation, pulling them apart, and making them unrecognizable to each other. Danny didn’t want that to happen again, not with Steve. Because Danny, as we have already established, was honest, and if he was honest with himself, he knew that Steve was his proverbial ‘One’ and that Rachel had just been a misguided stop along the way.
When Danny heard Steve’s voice for the first time after almost two months apart, it was a voice he couldn’t recognize. It was scratchy and frantic and came out in a forced whisper. He could picture Steve’s face on the other side of the phone, pinched and guarded and emotions clouding his eyes. At first Danny thought something had happened, that Steve had been injured or lost a team member. It took him a few minutes to realize that Steve was frantic and worried and anxious because of the things Danny had told him. Steve was worried about him and the new three inch scar on his bicep from a shard of glass a suspect used to fight him off; Steve was worried about the doctor’s appointment Avery had that Danny forgot to tell him went fine; and Steve was asking about Grace’s spelling tests, if she needed a tutor, if there was a better way to help her study. Steve didn’t stop talking for the first five minutes of the phone call, and when he finally took a breath Danny didn’t know what to say.
He apologized for not knowing how to handle this situation, for not knowing that some things needed to remain at home, away from the depravity that had become Steve’s world. He assured Steve that they were all fine, that the doctor said Avery’s bloody noses were from the chlorine and would heal up as long as she used a nasal spray he prescribed. He talked about the improvements Grace was making on her spelling tests, and that the caseload at Five-0 had died down a little.
Steve relaxed considerably. After saying they loved and missed each other, Steve had to go and they didn’t talk for another two months. But Danny improved. He started to figure out, through trial and error, the things he could tell Steve and the things that would need to wait until he came home.
And so far, things had been going okay. Avery went to the Y three times a week, spent almost every weekend with Grace either at the McGarrett-Williams house or Rachel’s house, and her and Danny spent a lot of their free time in the kitchen cooking up things Steve would not have approved of. So far, Avery’s favorite had been the homemade corn dogs; she said it reminded her of the corn dogs they ate at Yankee Stadium the previous summer when they took their first family vacation to New Jersey. All in all, Danny and Avery had fallen into a routine that worked for them. They didn’t forget Steve, but they had begun to learn to live without him.
Grace would come over every other weekend and the three of them would watch movies, yell at bad calls by hockey refs and baseball umpires as they cheered for the New Jersey/New York teams to win whatever game they were watching, and spend too much time for Danny’s liking on the beach behind their house building sandcastles and playing in the ocean.
Each girl had a picture on their bedside table. Avery’s picture was of the father-daughter dance at their wedding; they had begun the dance with Steve hunched over to hold onto Avery’s hands, but halfway through the song he picked her up and they moved swiftly around the dance floor. The picture was captured by Danny’s mother. Steve was nuzzling Avery’s nose as she laughed and had her arms wrapped around his neck, wearing his uniform cap over her curled hair. It was one of Danny’s favorite pictures of the two of them, a picture, he thought, that captured their relationship perfectly: laughing and spinning and holding on to each other.
Grace’s picture was from right after he and Steve had cut the cake. The girls had snuck up behind them, intent on getting white frosting on the closest body part they could find. Grace had been much sneakier than Avery, getting a glop of butter cream on one finger, tapping Steve on the shoulder with the other hand and asking for a hug. Grace knew that Steve always crouched down to hug his girls so they could wrap their arms securely around his neck instead of his waist. As Steve knelt down to her eye level, his arms stretched out in the universal sign for ‘come give me a hug,’ Grace took her frosting-covered finger and wiped it across his nose and cheeks, a playful smirk on her face. The picture was captured with the two of them staring at each other, their eyes sparkling with amusement and silent laughter. It was carefree and innocent, a reminder of a time when they were a united unit, a family that could never be torn apart.
Danny sighed and made his way towards the kitchen and began pulling out the ingredients he needed to make spaghetti. It was a simple dinner, but he didn’t have the energy to cook up something more intricate.
As Danny placed the pot of water on the stove he heard his cell phone ring on the kitchen island. Double checking the temperature on the burner he turned towards his phone and picked it up, noticing moments before answering that the number was a blocked number.
“Detective Williams,” he answered as he took out an onion to chop up and add to the sauce.
“Is this Detective Daniel Williams,” said the man on the other end of the phone. The sound of his voice, official and to the point, caught Danny off guard and he immediately stopped what he was doing to cradle the phone closer to his ear.
“Yes, and who is this?”
“I’m Admiral Jensen, Lieutenant Commander Steven McGarrett’s commanding officer.”
Danny’s heart sank, knowing before the Admiral spoke another word that the purpose of this phone call was not a happy one, “Yes, Admiral, what can I do for you?”
“You are listed as Commander McGarrett’s emergency contact and legal guardian of his daughter when he’s deployed.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I hate to tell you this, but Commander McGarrett was injured in the field yesterday, and is being evaced to a base hospital in Japan for emergency surgery.”
Deep breaths, Danny reminded himself, he needed to take deep breaths and get all of the important information from the Admiral before he hung up. “What happened?”
“Well, most of it is classified…”
“Stop it with the stupid classified bullshit!”
Okay, sue Danny for not being able to keep his temper in check, he just found out his husband was injured. “That’s all I hear from you Navy SEALs, can’t tell you that because it’s classified. No, right now, whatever happened is not classified because I have a little girl in the next room who’s drawing a picture for her dad thinking that he’s okay, and when I hang up from this call I’m going to have to tell her what happened, and I’m not going to lie and tell her that he got hurt tripping over a tree branch or in a helicopter crash. I want to know the truth.”
“I’m really sorry, Detective, but I can’t tell you the details.”
Aggravated and pissed off, Danny ran his fingers through his hair, tugging at the ends. He made another attempt at a deep, calming breath, remembering that he couldn’t be too suspicious; to the Navy Danny was only a very good friend of Steve’s, not his husband, “Well then what can you tell me?”
“I can tell you that Commander McGarrett sustained severe injuries to his torso and face, and will require surgery to repair a tear in his kidney. He will receive the surgery at our base hospital in Japan and will then be flown back to Hawaii to undergo further treatment for his facial injuries.”
“He’s coming home?”
“Yes, Detective, he’s coming home.”
Part of Danny wanted to jump in the air, whoop out loud like the girls did when they got excited, and thank the Admiral over and over for letting Steve come home. But, another part of Danny wanted to curl into a little ball in their bed, pull the covers over his head, and hide from everything. Steve was coming home, but he was injured, severely injured, and he had no idea what that meant.
“What are his chances, Admiral, in the surgery? Is he coming home alive?”
“It’s hard to say, but the doctors are confident that it should be a relatively routine surgery. He will require weeks, probably months, of rest and rehab to get back to the shape he was in before, but the doctors expect him to make a full recovery barring any complications from the surgery.”
“When will he be home?”
“In the next few days. I will make sure Commander McGarrett or another officer informs you of his arrival time in Hawaii.”
“Thank you, Admiral.”
And then the phone line went dead, the silence deafening to Danny’s ears. Danny didn’t move from his spot poised over the counter, knife gripped in his hand, until Avery’s small voice interrupted the monologue of worry going through his mind.
“What are we having for dinner, Danno?”
Danny broke out of his reverie and looked towards the small girl, her eyes smiling and innocent, no hint of worry or concern that the phone call could indicate anything bad at all.
Looking down at Avery’s smiling face broke him. The tears began to well as he thought about the worst-case scenario, the scenario where he had to kneel down in front of this small, innocent, carefree child and tell her that her daddy wasn’t coming home. He couldn’t bear the thought of having to do that, and the Admiral had said that Steve should be fine, that after the surgery they would know better. So Danny held onto that thought, pushed away the dread and doom threatening to take over, and answered, “Spaghetti with sauce, but Danno’s just getting started so it’s going to take a little bit, okay munchkin?”
Avery nodded and skipped back over to the living room, sitting down and pulling out another crayon to use on her already colorful picture. Danny watched as she worked on the picture with a determination that could rival another McGarrett he knew.
Over the next few hours Danny tried to remain calm; every time his mind flitted over to a fear or worry about Steve’s condition he forced himself to remember the Admiral’s words that the doctors expected Steve to make a full recovery. To distract himself, Danny spent the evening with Avery, keeping the little girl occupied and hopefully unaware of the worry gripping her Danno.
Danny also noticed, with so much clarity that he was surprised he never noticed some of it before, how very similar Avery and Steve really were. It shocked him when he first noticed that they both stuck the tip of their tongues out slightly when concentrating hard, that they both began to pace back and forth when they felt like they’d been cooped up inside too long, and how calming the sound of the ocean was to them.
Danny put Avery to bed a few hours later, listening to her read a chapter from her very first chapter book, and watched her place a small kiss on the picture of her and Steve, “I love you, Daddy. I can’t wait to see you.”
Danny forced a watery smile onto his face, pushed back the tears, and gripped Avery into a bone-tight hug, “I love you so much, Avery. Sleep well and Danno will be here in the morning.”
“I love you too, Danno,” came the muffled reply.
With one last kiss to the top of her head, Danny left the room, keeping the door open an inch to hear anything that may go wrong throughout the night. He made his way to his own bedroom, intent on finishing up the paperwork he had started earlier in the evening, anything to get his mind off the phone call and the long wait he had ahead of him.
At some point Danny must have dozed off because the shrill of his cell phone jerked him awake, papers stuck to his cheek from where he had drooled onto them.
“Ah, dammit,” he cursed as he tried to find the phone in the folds of the blanket and mess of papers strewn all over the bedspread.
Finally grasping onto the offending device, he answered quickly, “Hello, hello.”
“Danno…” the words came out soft and raspy, but the voice was so obviously Steve’s that Danny’s heart pounded in his chest.
“Babe? Is that you? How are you feeling? Did everything go okay?”
Danny heard Steve chuckle before a cough racked his body and he groaned in pain, “Calm down, Danno, I’m fine.”
“Of course you are, that’s why you needed emergency surgery.”
“I meant that the surgery went fine; I feel as if a semi hit me doing eighty, backed up, and hit me again.”
“Wow, alert the presses, Super SEAL is actually admitting he’s injured.”
“Thanks, Danny.”
“For what, babe?”
“For acting normal, being you, I needed that.”
Danny didn’t think a ‘You’re welcome’ would suffice in this situation, so he just let the conversation hang for a minute before asking the question that had been burning at the tip of his tongue since he first heard Steve’s voice, “When are you coming home?”
And Danny would swear he could hear the smile in Steve’s voice. “Two days.”
“Two days, that I can work with, gives me just enough time to hide all of the things I bought while you were gone that you won’t approve of.”
“You better not be priming me up to let me know that my daughter’s gained fifty pounds because all you guys have eaten the last nine months is junk food.”
“No, Avery is not over a hundred pounds thank you very much, I am nothing if not a responsible father. And, in my expert opinion, a responsible father not only makes sure she gets all of her nutrients and gets some physical activity, which in this case wasn’t that hard because, of course, she’s a McGarrett and for some reason physical activity is like an addiction to you guys, but it’s also my responsibility to make sure she still gets to enjoy some of the finer, more tasteful items that the world has to offer.”
“Danny, what did you feed her?”
“I fed her plenty of things from the anal-retentive SEAL’s list of approved menu items; I just threw in a little something extra every now and then.”
“Sure, sure.”
“You think I’m lying, Steven?”
“I think you really want to get yourself into trouble.”
“Guess it’s a good thing you won’t be able to punish me for awhile.”
“Get your mind out of the gutter, Williams.”
“Just joining you there, McGarrett.”
And both men laughed and sat in a comfortable silence, relishing the moments uninterrupted by screaming children and IED blasts.
“Hey, the nurse is going to come in soon to see how I’m doing.”
“Okay, um, you do everything the doctors say, you hear? I want you back here in as close to one piece as possible.”
“I promise to be good, Danno.”
“Good. Do you want to talk to Avery?”
“Tomorrow. I don’t want her to hear me like this.”
“Okay. What do you want me to tell the girls, you know, about your injuries?”
“Tell them the truth.”
“The truth?”
“Yeah, this guy once told me that the truth is always preferable to a lie.”
“A very smart man must have told you that.”
“I love you, Danno.”
“I love you too, Steve.”
*H50*
When Avery woke up the next morning, earlier than Danny because she was a McGarrett after all, and climbed into bed with him, he curled his arm around her shoulders, pulling her flush next to his side, scooting up a bit so he was in a seated position and her head was resting on his chest.
“Good morning, Danno,” she said with sleep still lacing her voice.
“Morning, munchkin.”
They sat like that for a few minutes, Danny’s hands combing through her messy curls all knotted and frizzy from the night. He felt the soft rise and fall of her breath as she relaxed into his arms, finding comfort in the solidarity he presented.
“We’ve gotta talk, Avery, about Dad.”
She sat up immediately, stick straight like a soldier, a look of fear gracing her beautiful features, “Is he okay, Danno?” Her voice came out quiet, giving her true feelings away. Danny sucked in a breath, remaining as calm as possible. He needed to be her rock.
So, he was.
“He’s going to be okay. He got hurt and the doctors had to fix some cuts in his body, but I talked to him last night, and he’s going to be fine. And he’s going to come home in two days.”
Avery broke into a smile that could rival the Cheshire Cat, hugged Danny, and jumped off the bed yelling, “Daddy’s coming home! Daddy’s coming home!”
Danny couldn’t help himself, he laughed. Watching the seven year old dance around the room with reckless abandon, not thinking or caring about the state at which Steve would be in when he arrived, not worrying about the rehab and the cost and the torture it would put Steve under to be cooped up all day and night, just happy to know that her father was coming home to her in as close to one piece as possible.
And that was how he ended up swinging her around his bedroom, laughing with her as they danced and spun and giggled with each other, relishing in the knowledge that Steve was coming home, alive.
*H50*
Danny shifted nervously from side to side, one hand holding on to Grace and the other holding onto Avery, as he waited for the transport that was bringing Steve to the hospital at Pearl.
Grace tugged on his sleeve, “Danno, when is Uncle Steve going to be here?”
Danny looked down at two sets of questioning eyes and knelt down so he was eye level, “He should be here soon, monkey. Girls, you need to remember that Dad is going to be a little banged up when he gets here, okay? He’s going to have some cuts and bruises on his face and he’s not going to be able to walk for a few days. We have to make sure we are really gentle, alright? No human jungle gym for awhile.”
“Alright, Danno,” Avery agreed as Grace nodded along beside her. Danny straightened up just in time to see the transport pull around the corner.
Danny felt his heart constrict in his chest, his breath catch as the knowledge that he was about to see Steve for the first time in nine months really hit him. Hard, fast, and strong the brunt of this knowledge knocked him back, metaphorically, as he held on tighter to the two girls who were keeping him grounded.
The bus pulled up to the front doors of the emergency entrance, right beside where Danny and the girls were waiting. A team of doctors hurried out, waiting for the emergency personnel to open the back doors and pull the gurney out of the back. The back of the gurney was pushed up at an angle slightly less than ninety degrees so that Steve was sitting up, a look of pure annoyance on his face. Danny knew that Steve felt the gurney was unnecessary and that he could certainly walk on his own or at least with the help of crutches.
Danny was siding with the doctors this time, however, because Steve’s face was mangled and chipped and bruised almost past the point of recognition. If Steve’s eyes weren’t opened and looking straight into Danny’s own, the piercing blue shining with life that wasn’t present anywhere else on his broken body, Danny probably wouldn’t have recognized him.
But, Danny would recognize that piercing stare anywhere.
“Daddy,” Avery yelled, pulling out of Danny’s grip, Grace not far behind.
He tried to open his mouth, remind them to be careful, but the words didn’t come out, lodged in his throat at he watched the smile lighten up Steve’s face as he grabbed their hands and kissed them both on the top of their heads, the only place he could reach given his current position on the gurney.
Danny looked away for a moment, giving Steve the privacy he deserved to say hello to his girls, but he couldn’t look away for long. His eyes were tugged back to the scene in front of him, his two girls greeting Steve after nine long months apart, Steve’s face already beginning to lose the hardness of battle that had been etched into its lines.
After a few more minutes of the girls babbling on and on about everything Steve had missed, Steve’s eyes glanced up, catching Danny staring. The smile was small, barely visible to anyone but him. They had to be careful, surrounded by Navy personnel. But it was an invitation, a silent invitation to at least say ‘welcome back.’
And Danny knew why Steve was giving him that look because he knew Steve better than anyone. Steve needed the assurance that Danny was real. So, Danny gave him that. He walked towards the gurney and clasped his hand on Steve’s shoulder, making the gesture manly to the outside world, but giving Steve a look that assured him it meant much more.
“Glad to have you back,” Danny said, hating the distance he had to place in his voice.
“It’s good to be back,” Steve responded, the same hint of displeasure in his tone.
They looked at each other for another moment, Danny’s hand still firmly clasped on Steve’s shoulder, Steve’s hand winding its way up to grasp Danny’s forearm, and they exchange a look that said ‘Later, later we will say hello for real. We will be in our own home, in our room, and we will remember everything we’ve forgotten about each other, but right now, we are going to stay strong and work through this obstacle that’s been placed in front of us. We are going to listen to the doctors and follow their orders so that when we do go home we can be us the way we’re meant to be – together, open, and honest.’
And a few days later when Steve was home from the hospital, recuperating in his own bed, he got the homecoming he deserved, twenty-one gun salute and all.