Work Text:
After all of the commotion, all of the stress, all of the dread, Steve finds the one face he’s looking for in the crowd of teens in formal wear. Grace calls for him the way he’s yelling for her – uncle Steve, that’s him – and then he’s folding her in his arms.
It’s only when he lets her go that he can finally focus on the guy hovering behind her, and of course the guy hovering behind her is Danny. Danny, sweaty and wound up and looking like he’s really been through the ringer, and Steve knows he has, because that’s his kid they were pointing guns at. That’s his Grace.
But Danny is uncharacteristically withdrawn and rooted to the spot, and that’s stupid, so Steve throws out something stupid, too. He can feel every bit of how shaken Danny looks reverberate through his own bones. “What, nothing, nothing? No hug?”
It works: Danny’s face twists like he might cry, but he doesn’t. Instead he says, breathless and sweaty and with emphasis, shaking a hand around with index finger and thumb together, “I’m so happy to see you right now, I’ll give you a hug, I’ll give you a kiss, pick a base.”
And Steve is also breathless and sweaty and feeling full of emphasis. He blinks, and then he doesn’t pick so much as accidentally reveal a choice made long ago. “Marry me.”
It hardly even takes a beat. “Marry you?” Danny asks. He’s still too winded for it to come out anything other than flat, but the words are slowly arching, the tone taking on a more familiar shape. His eyebrows do the same.
“I took credit for your sandwiches tonight,” Steve says, and out of the corner of his eye he can see Grace make some sort of gesture that involves her hand going to her face, but he can’t look away from Danny to figure out if it’s shock or disgust or joy.
“What?” They’ve drifted closer somehow, and when Danny’s second hand joins in on the gesturing it almost hits Steve’s arm cradling the rifle. “What, what does that mean? I know I’m still half out of my mind, but have you lost yours completely?”
That’s not too far off. “I took credit for your sandwiches,” Steve repeats, because that shouldn’t matter anymore, but it does. “After you told me not to. And then Lou’s call came in, and for a moment there, for a moment I had to consider-” He doesn’t want to say it. It was a very Williams sort of thought, and he knows now that they hadn’t already shot Danny, and Danny did make it out alive – as did Grace, as did Grover’s kid, as did everyone else – so it doesn’t bear dwelling on.
He can see something shift in Danny’s eyes, something that’s a little shocked but that very clearly knows, letting him off the hook. “So, so what?” Danny asks. He actually does hit Steve in the chest this time, past the rifle and over the tac vest. Steve barely feels it and yet it rattles the very core of him. “I’m here. This is, terrible as that sounds, nothing new for us.”
“It’s not,” Steve agrees. The situation isn’t, and neither are his feelings. “I just thought I should tell you.”
“About the sandwiches?”
“About the sandwiches.” He grabs Danny’s hovering hand, puts it flat on the tac vest. Keeps it there. “And that I always want to take credit for them, so you can always yell at me about it. So marry me.”
“I thought you’d take the hug,” Danny says, stunned into something near stillness again, but then, so quick that Steve almost thinks he misheard, “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“That’s another word for yes,” Danny says, right to his face, and so like himself that it’s almost like nothing ever happened. “You may have heard it used before.”
“Oh, shut up,” Steve shoots back, feeling bafflingly like he might burst from giddy happiness, and that only gets worse when Danny opens his mouth to almost definitely call him out on how recently he said that he wants Danny to complain at him forever – but Danny is cut off before those words make it.
“Oh my God.” It’s Grace, and when they both whip their heads around to her, she has one hand on her hip, she is throwing the other one up into the air in a way that makes her pretty dress ripple, and she looks incredibly like Danny. “Kiss him already,” she says, like she can’t believe they’re making her say it out loud.
Steve isn’t sure which one of them she’s talking to in that moment, but they both take it to heart at the same time. Danny leans up, he leans down, and they both lean in, and it’s that easy – it’s that simple, in front of the whole world, God, and Danny’s daughter.
The approval of one of those matters a whole lot more than the rest of them, but it seems like they’ve already got it.
When they part, Danny’s hand is still on his vest and his on the side of Danny’s face. There’s a moment, briefly, where all Steve does is breathe – where all he needs to do is breathe. Then Danny’s hand curls into a fist, tapping Steve’s chest once, right over his heart. “Idiot,” Danny says, but it sounds like I love you, and it still thrums through Steve’s veins when Danny turns away to hook an arm around Grace and pull her in to drop a kiss in her hair.
She leans into Danny, her head on his shoulder, almost hiding her smile. “Danno,” she says, shocked, but like the cause is laughter, not tears. “Uncle Steve. What base even is that?”
“Home run,” Steve says, which makes Grace actually giggle into Danny, who is sending a quiet salute to Will across the auditorium. Will gives one back, and right next to him Lou’s eyebrows are reaching up for his invisible hairline, but he’s grinning, so Steve figures they can probably deal with the inevitable teasing questions later.
At the moment that’s a distant secondary concern. Danny goes from saluting Will right to hooking his hand under Steve’s arm, drawing him in, like Steve needs any guidance to stick close. No force in the world could peel him from Danny and Grace’s side – not even when he catches Grace’s eyes for a moment and she’s still laughing at him, and Danny sets their wobbly trio in motion and asks, “What took you so long, huh?”
“I didn’t find a ring yet,” Steve says, and his arm along Danny’s back reaches far enough that he can feel it when Grace’s second wave of giggles hits, and Danny’s hand on him tightens, and Steve finally feels steady on his feet again.