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“So,” Danny says, the moment Steve sets foot in the kitchen, “I’ve been thinking about making you a sandwich.”
“Okay,” Steve replies, only a little dubious, because on the surface a declaration like that isn’t out of character for Danny Williams, and it wouldn’t be unwelcome for Steve McGarrett.
It should however be noted, at this point, that Steve did not come into the kitchen for a sandwich. It’s only two hours after breakfast, and he came to get himself a glass of water, only to find an unexpected Danny occupying a spot on the kitchen counter, starting a conversation as if they were already in the middle of one.
Nevertheless, certainly not strange enough to genuinely worry a veteran observer, and if Steve didn’t count himself among those yet after working with Danny for nine years, he certainly does now that they’ve lived together for three. That they’ve spent the last two of those awkwardly figuring out that they might have been dating for a whole decade before they intentionally started doing so should give him a little additional credibility. Sure, they kiss now, and there’s definitely more sex than when they were both convinced they were being normal male friends, but it turns out that if you’ve already built your life around someone platonically and neither of you particularly like roses or candles, there’s not much that a shift towards the romantic actually adds in terms of depth of relationship. Love is strange like that.
Danny, consistently much stranger still than love, seems oddly distressed. He clasps his hands in his lap, only to immediately move them to the counter, before grabbing his own knees. It’s as if he’s not sure what to do with them, which Steve knows isn’t true - that’s one of the things the last two years did let him rediscover in entirely new ways. “So you’d want it?” Danny asks.
At this point, Steve decides to forgo staying hydrated in favor of standing in the middle of their kitchen staring at Danny. “The sandwich?”
“Yes,” Danny says, in a way that doesn’t come across all too convincing. Steve has to wonder how long he’s been sitting here before Steve came in. Danny’s not exactly known for being good at sitting still or staying quiet - maybe the effort’s finally driven him insane.
So Steve, even though he isn’t hungry, out of pure curiosity says, “I guess, sure. If you’re making one.”
“Oh.” Danny bobs his head and digs his fingers into his knees. “Okay. Good.”
Steve gives him a moment, but Danny is biting his lip now, and apparently he’s doing so hard enough to keep in the words that should normally spill out. Steve looks around, but there are no sandwich ingredients anywhere, or even a plate set out in preparation. “This sandwich, it’s not poisoned, is it?” he quips, which is supposed to be an icebreaker. They don’t need many of those in Hawaii, but sometimes the fact that Danny’s from Jersey still sticks out.
“I mean,” Danny starts, hesitantly, but it doesn’t sound like he’s joking. It sounds like he can’t give a straight no, which-
Yeah, Steve’s definitely worried now. In his veteran Danny observer capacity, but also for his own food safety, which is a baffling turn for a boring morning to take.
Eventually, Danny goes through a little shoulder shake and arrives at, “No.”
Steve barks a nervous laugh. “Are you feeling okay?” He closes the distance between them and tries to feel for Danny’s forehead, undecided whether it’s another attempt to lighten the mood or if he’s expecting to find something.
Danny catches his hand before he makes it that far. He keeps it, gentle but firm. “You should, uh. You should look in the fridge.”
Steve considers asking questions, but it would be easier not to. He goes the more direct route and takes his hand back to use it to open the fridge.
There’s a sandwich in it, sitting on the top shelf. It’s a square of bread with a neat diagonal cut, photogenic the way sandwiches in movies are, and it’s on a little white breakfast plate. In spite of all the talk of it, Steve is still surprised. He lifts the top, which reveals bacon and lettuce and perfectly sliced tomato and a fried egg and mayonnaise and mustard and a dash of sriracha, exactly the way Steve likes it.
He looks over his shoulder at Danny, who nods encouragingly, so Steve takes the whole plate from the fridge, goes back to where he was, and puts the mysterious food on the counter next to Danny, for them to gawk at.
“It’s one of my finer works,” Danny says. “I think I can say that.”
Steve would agree if he understood any of what’s happening. “You weren’t just thinking about making it, you already did it.” Which is sweet. Strange, and with this current mood of Danny’s in mind a little frightening, but sweet.
“Yeah.” Danny rubs his leg. “But it’s not finished.”
It looks pretty finished to Steve. “What’s missing?”
For a moment, Danny is frozen. Then he reaches behind himself on the counter and produces something that his body blocked from Steve’s view until now. It’s very small and round and golden, like Grace forgot an earring when she went back to her mainland college.
Only-
There’s no hook or pin, and Grace doesn’t wear this style of jewelry. “Huh?” Steve asks, intelligently. His heart has decided it knows what this is, and is skipping several beats ahead of his brain.
Danny’s face is somehow both pinched and glowing. He seems like he wants to be happy but can’t be, not yet. “Remember when I said rings in champagne glasses were tacky, and you said you thought it was cute?”
Steve does, vaguely. It was last New Year’s Eve. They were hosting the team, and the words were aimless, just a little exchange between the two of them that hadn’t seemed like much to him then - but knowing that Danny made something out of it has him grabbing Danny’s thigh, like Danny was doing. Steve gets it now, that need for something to hold onto.
“Well.” Danny rolls the ring between his thumb and forefinger, as if it’s just a curious little object. Like picking up a pretty stone to watch it catch the light. “We almost never drink champagne, and I was getting impatient.”
“So you, uh-” Steve says, overwhelmed. Completely flattened even. He might need to grab Danny with both hands, but he makes do with squeezing his leg.
“Yeah.” It comes out almost mournfully. “Sandwich. But then I thought, you know, isn’t that dangerous? But I didn’t have a good back-up plan because I’d banked everything on the sandwich being kind of charming, only I don’t want to charm you to death, because I know you and I know how you eat sandwiches. And even if you didn’t choke, imagine if you swallowed the metal inside whole and I’d need to fall to one knee next to your toilet bowl in a couple of-” Danny stops talking when Steve tugs the ring from his grip. He seems to stop breathing, too.
“That would be bad,” Steve says, even though the world feels anything but, while he’s got Danny up on the kitchen counter right in front of him and he’s looking at this silly little gold thing. It has a hole in it, no less.
Danny hums a nervous agreement. “Terrible. You’re the second person I’ve ever proposed to, but that doesn’t mean I want to do it over a number two.”
Steve puts the ring flat on the counter, a safe foot away from Danny’s ass, nowhere near the sink, and deliberately not on the sandwich. They both watch it as if it might grow legs and start running. “Yes.”
Danny’s head snaps around to him. “What?”
“Yes,” Steve repeats, and he was already sure the first time, so this time he can just enjoy how it feels to say that, out loud in his own home to a person who, after half a bottle of wine, he would not hesitate to describe as the love of his life to everyone he happens to run into.
Or as an idiot, even without the wine. “Yes, you want to marry me?” Danny asks, as if suspicious about how well this went.
“Yes.”
“So you like the ring?”
“Yes.”
“And you forgive me for almost killing you with a sandwich?”
Four yeses feel like a pretty good amount to Steve, so he skips number five and kisses Danny instead. Danny seems to take that as not just five, but also six, seven and eight, because he tries to draw Steve closer, fists a hand in his shirt and hooks a leg around his hip, and Steve crowds against the counter and eggs him on any way he knows how - and he knows a few, after all those years - and looks forward, with all of his erratically pounding heart, to awkwardly figuring out that they might have been married all along, too.
And to eating that sandwich. His fiancé happens to be a pretty good cook.