Work Text:
In 2020, Danny develops an intense dislike for Tuesdays.
It’s not his fault.
It’s a Tuesday he gets shot. Another Tuesday that Steve leaves.
Grace’s flight to the mainland leaves early on a Wednesday morning, which could be construed a late Tuesday night.
It was a Tuesday when he and Rachel decided to call it quits. Again. For the last time. Maybe. And everything else that followed.
It’s also a Tuesday all that everything comes back around.
—
That May is unseasonably warm and humid, sweltering. Grace is off to college, at Penn State of all the places. Steve is still at Mary’s in LA.
Five-0’s already spread thin, chasing gun runners across the island. Danny’s at the tech table with Adam when the guy in the low-slung jeans and loose hoodie appears, the officer from the downstairs security checkpoint escorting.
“Hey, Detective,” Sergeant Jenkins says. He’s got the thick neck of bodybuilders and the scrawny thighs of missed leg days. “This guy says he’s got important information about your case.”
Danny straightens from where he’d been bent over the table, skimming the hoodie guy head to toe. “Is that right?”
“Yeah. You’re Daniel Williams?” the guy asks. He can’t be older than thirty, and sounds way more sophisticated than his appearance leads Danny to believe.
“Yes,” Danny says, and the guy offers him a stack of papers. Danny takes them.
“You’ve been served,” the guy says, and gives him a two-fingered salute, then turns on his heel to stride out of the bullpen. Jenkins’s wide eyes travel from him to Danny, then back, and he sprints to catch up.
Danny flips the empty cover page, blood pressure climbing. He’d thought he and Rachel had become friends at long last, at the very least reached an understanding; this is just what he needs, when he’s hanging on to sanity and reason with the very tips of his fingernails, being sued for Charlie’s custody.
Except, where it should read R. Hollander, it says M. LaPietra.
—
The soonest he can meet with the lawyer Adam recommended is the following Tuesday.
The guy, an ageless local, is narrower than him, which isn’t that uncommon, but he’s also several inches shorter, which is rare. He frowns at the accident report Danny brought along.
“Why do you have this?” he asks, at last.
Danny blinks. “What do you mean why do I have this? I have this because I was in the accident.”
“Yes, but this is the internal police report,” the lawyer says. Mike; his name is Mike. “You shouldn’t have this.”
“I’m police,” Danny states, which, he’s fairly certain, he opened with. “I’m Five-0. Interim director, actually.”
Something like understanding or exasperation flattens Mike’s expression. “I see.”
—
Mike explains it to him three times before Danny manages to wrap his mind around it.
HPD investigated the accident that cost Joanna her life and found Danny, as the driver, not at fault. Criminal charges were therefore not filed. However, that does not mean Joanna’s family cannot come after him in civilian court, and indeed they have, with the basis of their claim being that he was a) drunk, b) taking advantage of his position as a police officer to impact the outcome of the traffic investigation, and c) in fact negligent as a driver which led directly to her demise. Ergo, Danny is being sued for wrongful death, and they want three million dollars in damages.
“This is ridiculous,” Danny says for the fourth time. “I wasn’t drunk.”
“Okay. Where’s the breathalyzer report?” Mike asks, for the fifth time.
Danny flashes back to the day and bile rises in the back of his throat. He can smell the hot asphalt, the metallic tang of blood, that distinct aroma of a car accident with which he’s intimately familiar. He sees the breathalyzer in Duke’s hand, sees it lift toward him, then sink back down, Duke’s face contorted in sympathy. Danny had said something to Duke to make him do that, barked something along the lines of I’m not drunk that had rung in the silence, and Duke hadn’t pushed it.
God, he wishes now Duke had pushed it. Is that really what her family believes, that he would do that, get her killed because he was too horny, too selfish, too something to recognize he was unfit to drive?
“I can try to get your medical records,” Mike says. “See if they ran a tox screen in the emergency room.”
Danny closes his eyes and shakes his head a little.
“What?” Mike asks.
“They didn’t.”
Mike’s eyebrows climb, his fancy fountain pen poised to continue its damning scrawl across the yellow pad on his desk. “You’re sure?”
“Yes. I didn’t go to the hospital.”
“You didn’t go to the hospital.”
“No.” Mike considers him with a look that feels so full of judgment that Danny has to rear up a little. “Look, if you don’t want to take the case, don’t take the goddamn case. I’m not here to beg you for your attention.”
“No, you pay me for my attention,” Mike states. “I’ll take your case. Adam’s a good friend, and besides, you’re tight with the governor, right? Run her task force? Never a bad thing to accrue some favor with her.”
Danny’s still tempted to walk out but where is he going to go? It’s not like he can do this by himself and he doesn’t have even close to the motivation or attention span necessary to attempt to learn it.
He exhales and makes eye contact with Mike. “Fine. All right.”
“Good. Let me gather some information, read through this brief. I’ll get back to you.”
—
Steve calls on a Tuesday next. Danny’s just moved back to his own house, Eddie in tow. It had been getting too hard, watching Tani and Junior’s admittedly well-concealed, but in the end futile efforts at muting their thriving romance.
For an unknown reason, something shivery flutters low in Danny’s belly at the sight of Steve’s name on his phone. He tells himself to stop being stupid. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Steve rumbles on the other end. The butterflies in Danny’s gut go wild. “Danno.”
One of the butterflies breaks up and melts into something warm and bittersweet. “Steve.”
Steve clears his throat. “You good?”
Danny’s eyes sting. He has to press his lips together to stop himself from telling. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good.” He has to clear his throat too. On Steve’s side, someone yells in the distance. “Are you? Where are you?”
“Outside,” Steve says, and offers nothing else. “I’m good. Yeah, I’m good.”
Danny runs his lips through his teeth, biting down extra hard. He’ll keep following the script, then. “You calling for a ride?”
Steve chuckles, gravelly and low. The butterflies flap harder. “Not just yet, Danno.”
“Okay.” Too quick. He sucks in a breath. “How’s Mary? And Joanie?”
“They’re great.”
“Say hi.”
“Will do.” A pause. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“Yeah. Later.”
The line beeps off.
—
Steve left on a Tuesday and called, for the first time, the next day for the first iteration of their you-good-yeah-I’m-good talk. They repeated it first five days later, then six after that. Between this last call, the fourth Danny’s gotten, and the one before, were eight days. A steady, barely perceptible increase, as if Steve’s weaning him off.
Except, Danny perceives it. He perceives it as if tearing flesh, deep in his core. The gunshot that almost killed him hurt less in comparison.
It’s funny how Steve’s so deeply ingrained in his being. He’s had friends before, really good friends. He’s fallen out of touch with people, even family members, and not even noticed. Steve’s absence stabs him like a knife, rips at him like a spade. It’s there in the morning when he wakes up and at night when he goes to sleep. His chest feels raw with every breath.
The knock on his open office door draws his attention. He licks lips that dried while he was busy staring into the distance and focuses on the person there.
“Hey,” Adam says, eyebrows pulled up in that way everyone’s been looking at him since the summons. No, since Steve left.
“Yo,” Danny responds, shaking it off.
Adam takes that to mean it’s okay to wander in. He makes it look casual. “You meet with Mike yet?”
Danny grimaces, even though he tries not to. “Yeah. Yeah, I did.”
Adam perches on the arm of one of the chairs in front of Danny’s desk. “Okay, good. What did he say?”
“He’s trying to see if they’ll settle,” Danny says.
Adam frowns. “Settle? Why would you settle? I thought the accident wasn’t your fault.”
“I was driving,” Danny says. “In a way, yes, it was my fault.”
“That’s not how Duke told it.”
“She’s still dead.”
Adam stares at him. Danny doesn’t stare back. Eventually, Adam gives up and leaves.
—
The third time he meets Mike is another Tuesday, after work. The sun is setting outside as he walks into the nondescript medium-sized office building with the puke-colored walls and ugly carpet. This time they’re in a conference room and there’s a young woman present, poised with legal pad and pen. Mike introduces her as his paralegal and Danny promptly forgets her name.
“—back and forth with their lawyer, and let me tell you, they were surprised we called looking to settle. That tells you something, you know, that tells you they’re not certain of their case. It’s a good sign.”
Danny pinches the bridge between his eyebrows, right where a thin, annoying headache has lodged. “Okay. So what, they don’t want to settle?”
Mike’s quiet for so long Danny has to look up. “No, they would love to settle.”
“Okay, great. Let’s settle then.”
Mike glances at his paralegal. “I can’t in good conscience advise you to do that, at least not at this juncture. It’s a lot of money they want.”
“How much?”
Mike’s mouth twists with the way he worries the inside of his cheek. “Two-hundred and fifty thousand.”
Danny huffs out his breath. It is a lot, but between the money from the restaurant and Charlie’s college fund, he should be able to produce most of it. He could get a loan to keep helping Grace with her expenses, and if he downscales to the type of apartment he started out with in Honolulu, he could even save for Charlie again. It could work.
Better would be to keep living in Steve’s house, but ever since Steve left, Danny’s been seeing ghosts too, and he prefers peace of mind at his domicile. It is kind of a must-have.
“It’s fine,” Danny says. “I’ll pay.”
Mike stares at him some more. “Okay, but not just yet. I have a few leads. Let’s see what pans out first. Okay?”
Danny doesn’t argue.
—
Steve calls on a Thursday next.
“Hey,” he says. It’s quiet, wherever he’s at, this time.
“Hey,” Danny says. He’s on his lanai, his beer sweating untouched next to his hand. Ever since he got served, he’s had trouble with bringing himself to drink. Even though he wasn’t drunk. He wasn’t.
He did go home and drink after the ditch, though, instead of the hospital. That much is true.
“You good, Danno?”
No, Danny’s not good. Not really. But Steve’s worse; Steve’s been through worse. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good. You?”
“Yeah, I’m good.”
Danny wants to tell him. He’d wanted to tell him back then too, but Steve had been circling the drain long before he let himself be washed down and disappear. He wants to ask if whatever Steve’s been doing without him, without the ohana he so painstakingly made for himself, is working.
He can’t do it. “You calling for a ride?” he asks instead.
Steve chuckles. It makes Danny want to cry. More than usual, that is. “Not just yet, Danno.”
“Okay.”
Steve clears his throat. “Okay. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Later.”
Ten days. This time, it was ten days.
He’s left staring at the phone, longing so intense lodged just at the base of his throat that it almost feels like physical pain, like someone’s carving out the space between his trachea and his lungs. Absently he taps into his photos and starts scrolling, looking, and at the same time not looking, for a picture of Steve, maybe, of them together, before it all went to hell.
He has to scroll for a long time. Neither of them photograph very well, he has to admit, one or both of them always seeming a little self-conscious, a little wooden. The best pictures are the candids, and the best of those the ones Kono took. The smiles she’s caught on Steve’s face are unparalleled, bright and genuine.
Danny’s struck suddenly by how beautiful Steve is. He doesn’t usually associate that word with men, and it’s not about Steve’s looks that he’s doing so now, rather about Steve as a whole. The thought doesn’t feel new either, more like one of those things he doesn’t let himself look at too closely, like other people’s public displays of affection or Steve’s bare chest.
He scrolls more and finds a video. Speaking of Steve’s chest—in the video, he is shirtless, sporting the light gloves he’d worn for the MMA fight he’d subbed in for. The video is a snippet of that fight. Danny can’t remember if Steve had won or not. Knowing Steve, he probably had.
—
He’s somewhere crowded. It’s hot and the air is thick with something, anticipation maybe, but not danger. He’s tense, but not afraid. He feels a draft against his skin and looks down to find himself wearing black silk shorts, boxer’s shoes. His hands are covered with boxer’s tape.
He’s in the ring with Steve. Steve’s shorts are red and he grins around his mouthguard, gloved hands coming together in front of his chest.
“Wait,” Danny says. “I can’t find my gloves.”
Steve winks at him and charges.
The crowd is gone. They’re in Steve’s house and the ring is in the living room. Steve’s not fighting to hurt; he’s got a warm, solid arm around Danny’s shoulders and he’s pressed along Danny’s side, so hot he’s almost scalding. They shove and push at each other, playing, Steve’s body never losing contact with Danny’s. Danny wants him closer.
The moment the thought crosses his mind Steve’s touch gentles. The gloves are gone. He fits his free hand under Danny’s jaw and tilts his face up.
“Hey,” Steve says. The mouthguard is gone too. He smiles that gut-punching smile of his, the most beautiful one yet. “Danno. You good?”
“Yeah,” Danny breathes. He can’t look away from Steve’s lips. “Yeah, I’m good.”
Steve kisses him.
Danny wakes up.
—
It’s not the first time he’s had a dream like that about a guy. The first time it had happened, in high school, he’d been terrified it meant he was gay. He hadn’t told anyone. Then, in college, after he’d discovered the beauty of the internet, he’d researched it, found out it was normal. Sex was sex, especially in a dream state. Human brains didn’t much concern themselves with boxes created by the societies they themselves conceived. Usually, he read, it just meant that the dreamer wanted to be close to the dream-ee, which, really, is so obvious it’s bordering on dull. Harmless.
It wasn’t even the first sex dream he had of Steve, nor the most explicit one, though it’d been a while since the last. The first six months of their partnership it was almost a weekly occurrence, part of the reason why Danny didn’t let himself look at Steve’s chest a lot, yelled at him every time he flung his shirt off like it was nothing. When it became a lot, he stopped touching Steve too. It was weird and he didn’t want weird between them, not when Steve clearly was the best thing that had happened to him since Grace.
The last dream he recalls was in Agnes and Mr Pickles’s apartment, entirely predictable. They’d been mistaken for a gay couple, watched and listened to one copulate for hours, and Danny’s brain had been chock-full of Steve because of the therapy thing. Not to mention the big hazel eyes Steve’d flicked at him while telling Danny about the thing with the guitar.
Steve didn’t take the guitar with him when he left, Danny doesn’t think. He didn’t check though.
They didn’t linger, those dreams, and Danny put them out of his mind. It wasn’t very hard. He always had other things to worry about, the kids, the job, Steve’s continued wellbeing which always took precedent over his statuesque looks and what Danny’s subconscious cooked up.
This one does.
He finds himself drifting off during a briefing at work. In traffic, he gets honked at for not realizing the light has turned. Once, he spaces out for half the movie he’s supposed to be watching with Charlie, taking the dream and turning it into fantasy. He’d kiss down Steve’s neck, across his collarbones. He’d pull Steve closer, tuck his face into the crook of his neck, and hold him. Let him rest there, press a kiss to his forehead, help him mend. God, how he wishes he could help Steve mend.
“Hey. Detective.”
Danny blinks. Mike’s staring at him again. His eyebrows do that thing too now, that pinched look of worry/sympathy. “Yes.”
“You okay?” Mike asks.
“Yeah. Yes. I’m sorry; I had a long week.”
Mike nods slowly. “It’s Tuesday.”
“Tells you something, doesn’t it?”
A small smile hushes over Mike’s face. “Yeah, it does, it really does.” He shuffles some papers and points at them as he speaks. “So, here’s the deal. The facts are that one, you left a bar where you spent multiple hours, a period of time during which we have no way of accounting for what you did or did not drink. Two, that you were driving the car when the accident occurred, and three, that it does look like you were going ten over the speed limit.”
Danny’s second guessed himself hundreds of times regarding that day. Why had he gone to that bar, why had he talked to her, why had he done what he did like some idiot college kid? Why hadn’t they taken the Camaro, why hadn’t he let her drive?
He hadn’t let her drive because he wanted her to feel the same way he feels when Steve drives him around. Not that Steve isn’t a control freak, not that Danny didn’t wholeheartedly mean everything he’s ever said to Steve about his dogged determination to drive. Most of the time it was just that, especially later, Steve’s slowly growing desperation to control things the more they slipped away from him, but that wasn’t how it started.
The way it started was on the day of Meka’s funeral. Danny had been tired and upset. That day, Steve had offered to drive simply because he’d wanted to take care of Danny. Every time after that, Danny had felt the echo of that warm feeling whenever he’d watched Steve’s hands on the wheel. He’d wanted to pay it forward.
“What’s more, you are a police officer, a decently well-known one at that, with ‘immunity and means’, and considering that you walked in here with a document that should have been confidential, they could spin it so that it looks like you or someone on your behalf suppressed the investigation.
“But on the other hand, Ms. LaPietra spent hours with you at that bar. She got into the car willingly; we do have the surveillance footage from outside the bar that proves that. It’s easy to argue that she should’ve refused to get in the car if she’d thought you were under the influence.” Mike considers him solemnly and takes out another sheet of paper from his folder. “Here’s the real kicker. I was able to get the insurance assessment of the car after the accident. The brake discs were quite worn, though I was told they’d pass inspection. I then investigated where the car came from, and found out that she’d purchased it through social media three months prior to the accident. I was able to track down the previous owner, a licensed car mechanic, who stated he’d warned her about the brakes. He’d offered to fix them before she took ownership of the vehicle, but she turned him down in the interest of time and promised to return. She never did.”
Danny stares back at Mike’s kindly face. He reminds Danny of his aunt’s dog, a mutt who looked sleepy and stupid at home but turned into a pitbull the moment it laid eyes on a squirrel. “So?”
“So he can testify on your behalf. He’s a good guy, with a good reputation. I checked into him. I would never promise any outcome for a trial, but I think we have a very good chance of winning this. You too have a great reputation; you’ve protected and served Hawaii for over a decade, New Jersey before that. I have friends in the prosecutor’s office, I’ve watched you testify. You’re charismatic and believable, not to mention the tremendous amount of guilt you seem to be still carrying about this event. In my opinion, you will come across as much more sympathetic than the older sister of a grown woman, who is, more than likely, fishing for an easy paycheck.”
Danny nods slowly and after he deems a sufficient amount of time, inclines his head. “That’s fine. I think the settlement offer is reasonable. I’d rather do that than be dragged through a trial.”
Mike’s mouth tightens. “Look, Danny—can I call you Danny?” He waits for Danny’s gracious furl of hand before he continues. “Danny, you’re talking about your life’s savings. I think this is a mistake.”
“Why do you care?” Danny asks, and to his satisfaction, sounds completely matter-of-fact. “You’re going to get paid regardless, aren’t you? The trial hours add to your bill, is that what it is?”
Mike scowls. “No, that’s not what it is. Adam’s a friend, a good friend, and he said you’re ohana. I’m treating you like it. This is what I would tell my own brother, my own cousin. Don’t settle this.”
“You’re not, though,” Danny says. “You’re my lawyer. I would—“ like to settle, he wants to say, but his phone going off stops him short. He glances at it—a text, from Tani: 911. “Excuse me,” he says instead, and rocks to his feet.
He steps to the hallway outside of Mike’s office, hitting Tani’s number. “Hey,” Tani says. She sounds solemn but not rushed. Danny frowns.
“Hey. You okay?”
“Yeah.” He can fairly hear the grimace in her voice. “I’m fine. It’s Junior.”
Still with zero urgency. “Are you going to spit it out or do you want to drive me up the wall here?”
“Sorry, I’m sorry.” She exhales. “His dad. He passed away earlier today. His mom found him. Seems to have been a stroke. No foul play.”
“Jesus Christ,” Danny breathes, and, god help him, feels giddy.
—
Most days, Danny’s pretty good at pretending he’s a normal human being, a good one at that, a decent one that wouldn’t torture kittens and kick puppies. Every once in a while, though, something happens to remind him that’s not necessarily true.
Like that time he stuffed Curt Novak into a locker because someone told him Curt had a crush on him.
The time he shot a man in cold blood, Matt’s dead body so much more important than his best friend’s living one behind him.
The time he fucked a woman in a bar bathroom and then let her die in her car like roadkill.
The time he was glad his friend, his subordinate’s father is dead because it’ll force Steve to come home.
—
Steve doesn’t come home.
—
The day of the funeral, Junior gets a phone call that makes his eyebrows lift significantly, the first expression Danny’s seen on his tired, downtrodden face for a week, and he shows his phone to Tani before shooting to his feet and out to the lanai in one hungry lunge.
Later, Danny overhears Junior tell her, “At least he finally called,” eyebrows pulled up in despondency. Tani rests her hand on Junior’s back and Danny feels too ashamed to keep watching.
He phones Mike on his way home and tells him to get the papers drawn up for the settlement.
“I really don’t think that’s the best course of action,” Mike says.
Danny tells him to think less and do more.
—
They chase a murderer for a few days and catch him early on a Friday, call it a weekend after the psycho is booked in celebration. Danny goes to Steve’s to check the yard and cut the grass, then heads home before he runs into Junior and Tani.
The knock at his door isn’t surprising, nor is the way his heartbeat spikes, wondering if, maybe, finally.
Of course it’s not. It’s just Adam. “Can I come in?” he asks.
Danny steps aside, but nods at the chairs on his postage stamp lanai. “Nah, sit there. I’ll bring beers. Want a beer?”
“Sure.”
It’s a balmy night. Adam revisits their case for a few minutes, breaking the ice with shop talk, and conveniently doesn’t mention how Junior’s father passing away brought up memories of his own murdered father. Eventually he leans forward with elbows on his knees and pulls on his concerned face. “You know, Mike and I went to college together. He’s a good guy.”
“Yeah, agreed. Thank you for recommending him, buddy, I really appreciate it.”
Adam studies his face. Danny drinks his beer so he doesn’t tell him to stop it. “He asked me to talk to you. He said he’s concerned you’re making a mistake.”
Danny pulls in his top lip between his teeth and wags his head slowly. “That feels like a, you know what, a breach. A breach of confidentiality, that’s what it feels like.”
“He didn’t give me details. He just said he’s advised you to the opposite and you won’t listen.” Adam’s quiet for a few more seconds. “I thought maybe I could help, you know, if you told me what’s going on.”
“Mike and I, we have a difference of opinion,” Danny states, at last, elbow planted on the arm of the chair, chin resting on his fist. “He’s telling me to go to trial. I’d rather settle.”
“How much do they want?” Adam asks.
“Something manageable.”
Adam’s fingers twist around each other in his lap. “And you’re not bothered by the fact that it’ll look like you’re admitting guilt?”
“That’s not what I’m doing,” Danny says. “Something bad happened, okay? I’m trying to help however I can.”
“Danny, the woman suing you doesn’t need that money. She’s just trying to make a quick buck, like most people bringing these nuisance suits. You should fight.”
Not to mention the way she seemed so receptive to his comfort in the morgue that day, then turned around and did this. But her sister is still dead and Danny’s still a poor excuse for a human being and this, he can do for them. “Maybe.”
“Don’t do this,” Adam says. “It’s your future, your childrens’ future. Don’t sacrifice it for misplaced guilt.”
“Misplaced, huh?” Danny echoes, and gets up. “I’m beat; I’m going to bed. Feel free to finish your beer, just grab the gate on your way out.”
Adam, predictably, rises to his feet as well. Danny carefully avoids eye contact. “Is there anything I can do to change your mind?” Off Danny’s soft snort at that, he presses, “Did you talk to Steve about it? What does he think?”
“You know, I lived thirty something years fine without him, making my own decisions just fine, so no, Adam, I did not talk to him about this, and I’m not going to, okay? It doesn’t concern him, just like it doesn’t concern you.” He heads for the door without waiting for a response. “Good night.”
He flicks a glance through the screen door involuntarily. Adam’s jaw is set under his sympathy brows.
—
Mike draws up the settlement papers but won’t let Danny sign them in his office, instead ordering him to take them home, read them carefully, and they’ll meet back in a week to discuss. Danny goes home, signs them, and wants to send them off to the court, but the address has been blacked out as if Mike knew he’d try to do that. Thus foiled, he places the big envelope on the side table by the door, ready to go.
Steve calls on a Tuesday next, twelve days from the last time they spoke. Something black and acrid smolders in Danny’s gut as he sees whose name is flashing on the screen of his phone.
“Hey,” Steve says. Danny keeps quiet. “Danno.”
He can’t hold his breath any longer. “Yeah.”
Steve’s exhalation matches his. “You good?”
“Yeah,” Danny says. It comes out flatter than he feels.
Steve’s waiting for their usual dialogue. “Danny?” he asks eventually.
“Let me ask you something,” Danny says. It boils out of him, pours out, that ugly thing. “Why do you keep calling, huh? It can’t be because of the scintillating conversation, can it, since we never really talk about anything. Tell me, Steve, what are you getting out of this, huh? Why are you still calling?”
Steve’s silence is stunned now. “I like hearing your voice,” he says finally.
“I like hearing your voice he says, you like hearing my voice, except, you never ask me anything, Steve. You never tell me anything. Enlighten me, please, what are you getting out of this, because I’m getting nothing, okay? I’m getting nothing out of this. So if you’re doing it for me, out of some misguided sense of duty for leaving me alone on the island you told me to make my home, you very nearly forced me to make my home, with a barely healed hole in my chest, I’m here to tell you that I hereby absolve you of your duty, okay? You are absolved, you are freed, go forth and enjoy life as Mr. Rollins and forget we ever knew each other. You owe me nothing, okay? You have my blessing. You don’t have to call anymore.”
Did he mean to say all that? Does he think that, truly, is that what he wants, that Steve disappears and never calls again, fading into the realm of memory where Danny’s imagination can make him whatever it wants?
“Danny,” Steve says finally. “What’s wrong?”
Danny hangs up.
—
They’re in the car this time and Danny’s driving. Steve’s laughing at something and Danny can’t look away from the curve of his throat and the other car is right there when he looks back.
They crash.
Danny wakes up.
—
He wakes up too late, has to scramble to get to the office, and in the process forgets about his after work meeting with Mike, to the one he’s supposed to take the completed paperwork. He has to drive back all the way to his house later, in rush hour traffic, to pick them up.
The papers aren’t by the door where he’s certain he left them. He looks up, around, and sees a worn duffel bag leaning against his couch. His breath catches on something jagged in his throat.
He has to make himself walk, take the corner to get to the kitchen.
It’s him. It really is him, unless Danny is still dreaming or in a coma or something similar which, he has to admit, is equally likely.
Steve’s sitting at the island, the envelope empty in front of him, two inches deep into the settlement papers. He flicks his gaze up when he sees Danny appear, then lifts the page with Danny’s signature like it’s the last piece of damning evidence he needs for an arrest. “Really, Danny? What the fuck are you thinking?”
It must be a dream. He dreams of Steve constantly now, has been going to bed early expressly to do so because nine times out of ten the dreams are not unpleasant.
In them, Steve never looks at him like that, though, like Danny’s personally picked up a knife with the sole purpose of driving it into his back. Smell is absent too in his dreams, and right now, if he strains, Danny can pick up Steve’s aftershave, sandalwood and sun and ocean, right there at the edge of his olfactory abilities. His stomach twists with longing; he wants more of that scent, he wants to pull it all into his lungs.
“Your entire life’s savings,” Steve says, dropping the papers down irreverently. Danny almost startles. “You think that’s what you owe her? Who the fuck was she, Danny, this woman you knew for what, fifteen minutes? How is this fair? How is this fair to Grace, to Charlie, huh? Why won’t you fight?”
He’s said that before, to Danny, the exact same words, when was that? Danny’s brain is short-circuited, overwhelmed, so taken aback it’s finding it hard to string words together to explain just what kind of a surreal turn the day has taken.
“That’s—“ Danny sounds like he’s got smoke inhalation, so he clears his throat. “That’s what you’re asking me? Is that what you’re asking me, is that what you’ve come here to ask me, after weeks, Steve, weeks—I haven’t seen you in over a month, you think you can just show up and start ordering me around—“
“Well, someone has to, clearly,” Steve retorts, talking over him. “Clearly you’re so beyond logic, so beyond rational thought that you’re not listening to your lawyer, you’re not listening to your friends, Adam—“
“Is that who called you, is that who told you to come? You shouldn’t have, Steve, you really shouldn’t have, because you’ve made it clear, okay? You’ve made it very clear I’m not your responsibility, you made it very clear when you walked out on me while I was still wheezing. I’m not your responsibility and you’re not mine. This doesn’t concern you.”
“What the hell are you even talking about?” Steve says. “Yes, I did. I did come back to stop you from making a huge mistake, of course I did. What else are friends for, Danny, huh? Aren’t we friends, aren’t we best friends? What else am I supposed to do if it’s clear to me that you’ve lost your mind?”
He’s put a weird inflection on friends, each time he’s said it, and Danny scowls, thrown off course trying to identify it. “What do you mean, aren’t we friends? What kind of a question is that, huh, how did we get to the point that you’re questioning that—is that what you’re doing, is that what this is—“
“This is about you,” Steve growls, and jabs so severely toward the middle of Danny’s chest he almost feels the tap from six feet away. Steve then jams his fingers onto the mess of papers on the island and continues, “taking what’s yours, what’s your kids’, and giving it to some random stranger who hits on you in a bar, who sleeps with a guy she’s known for less than an hour, you think that’s the person of your dreams, huh, are you that naive, that stupid that you would do this, against the advice of everyone you know?”
Danny brings his hands together in what he hopes is a motion of finality. “Okay, I’m not talking about this with you. You don’t even live here anymore; when are you going back, huh, how long are you even staying? You’re no part of this. Give me the papers so I can go deliver them and that’ll be that. There’ll be nothing left to discuss.”
“No,” Steve says. “I’m not doing that.”
Danny lunges forward, aghast, and Steve scrabbles to collect as much of the paper mess he’s made on the island to pull it out of Danny’s reach. “Stop it! Give me!”
“No.” Jaw set, Steve yanks away the sheets Danny’s gripped, tearing some of the pages in the process. He frowns at the piece in his hand, then grins gleefully, holding it aloft. “Signature page is gone. You’re going to have to get them redrawn.”
“What the hell is the matter with you?” Danny demands. The surreality has risen to unprecedented levels, would be drowning him if he wasn’t so angry. “What is the matter with you? Get out. Just get out. You’re the one who walked out, you don’t get to walk back in whenever you want—“
He doesn’t get to finish his thought and Steve doesn’t get to answer when Danny’s phone goes off. He works it out of his pocket. Mike, of course. He steps back from Steve and picks up.
“Mike, yeah, apologies,” Danny starts. “I know I’m late.”
“It’s no problem,” Mike says. “Do you have an ETA or did you want to—“
Something hits his hand and dislodges the phone. Danny spins around, grasping for it vainly, only to find Steve now having a hold of it, in the process of lifting it to his own ear. “Hello. Who is this?”
“Jesus Christ—“ Danny lunges for the phone but Steve deftly steps away. Danny follows. “What is this, what are you, five years old, give me back—“ The wall stops Steve’s retreat and suddenly Danny’s pressed all along his side, that scent he’d been dying to suck in slamming into him along with that essence that’s Steve, heavy from traveling, and it slots in with the dreams and jolts him like electricity. He flinches away like he would from a scalding pipe.
Steve’s brow furrows; whether at Danny’s sudden recoil, or what he hears on the phone is unclear. “This is Steve McGarrett,” he says. “I’m a friend of Detective Williams, a good friend. He’s going to have to reschedule.”
Danny hears the words and intellectually knows he ought to protest, but his focus is shot, heat rising to his face. He’s probably flushed, red as a tomato, incriminating and embarrassing. He retreats further into the kitchen, spots the refrigerator out of the corner of his eye and dives for it.
He blinks unseeing eyes into it. He needs to get Steve out of his house. He needs time to think, regroup, get his brain back on straight—ironic choice of words, that—and he can’t do that with Steve’s infuriating presence right there.
A thunk makes him straighten. Steve’s dropped the phone on to the kitchen island. “He’ll call you,” he announces, hands on his hips.
Danny closes the door to the fridge. “Oh, nice. Great. Thank you. So which is it, did you come back to be my secretary, or did you come back to drive me insane? Which is it?”
Steve’s shoulders sink on a soundless breath and his exhaustion suddenly shows. It makes Danny ache inside. Steve rubs his hand over his mouth, mumbling something.
Danny leans forward. “Didn’t catch that. What was that?”
“Nothing,” Steve says. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on with you?”
“Nothing’s going on with me. Something happened and it had consequences and now I’m making an informed decision on how to deal with those consequences. That is all.”
“It’s not your responsibility to deal with those consequences.”
Danny holds out a hand. “No one asked you. No, really, literally no one asked you. Why are you back, Steve, really? Is it a mission? Did Catherine forget something? What’s brought you back?”
“I already told you, Danny,” Steve answers with a roll of his eyes. “You. I’m here because of you.”
“Yeah? Me? Why did you leave in the first place then, because I’ve been here the entire time. You mind telling me that?”
Steve considers him like he’s truly thinking over the question. “Yeah, I would, actually. I would mind.”
He doesn’t budge, doesn’t look like he’s going to. Maybe Danny could leave, then, but where’s he going to go? Back to the office? “Fine. Don’t tell me.”
They fall into an uneasy silence. Steve’s the one to break it. “It’s good seeing you.”
Danny snorts, still refusing to look at him directly. “Whatever, Steve.”
Steve exhales again and starts moving. When Danny chances a glance, he finds Steve bent over picking up the mauled papers. “At least this time I didn’t have to go out of the country,” Steve mutters at the floor.
“What?”
Steve straightens with a glower at him. “You. Your insane ways of punishing yourself. At least this time I didn’t have to go out of the country.”
He’s not making any sense at all. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You, Danny,” Steve says. “You, punishing yourself. Remember Colombia? Remember the prison, what you put yourself through for a two-bit drug-dealing murderer? Now it’s a car accident and money for a two-bit—“ Steve cuts himself off with a grimace and a wave of his hand. “It’s the exact same thing.”
“No, it’s not,” Danny says, but he’s denying out of habit, not true belief. He should address that half formed word too, just out of principle, but one thing at a time.
Steve shakes his head with a small eye-roll like it’s so obvious he can’t be bothered to explain. “You’re not feeling guilty, then?”
“I didn’t say that. Of course I’m feeling guilty. I was driving. I couldn’t get help; I couldn’t do anything. I let her die. Of course I’m feeling guilty. I am guilty.”
“That doesn’t mean it was your fault.”
“How was it not my fault, were you not listening? I was driving. I drove the car into the other car, I drove it down into the ditch, it was me.”
Anger sparks in Steve’s eyes. “Why were you driving her car to begin with, huh? I know you. I know you wouldn’t have left your car. So why, huh? Why?”
“She wanted—“ Danny starts, but Steve barrels over him.
“She wanted. She did. She could’ve driven. It was her car. Why didn’t she drive, huh, Danny?”
He doesn’t really know the answer, doesn’t remember it, except for that feeling of wanting to take care of someone. Had she been drunk? “It doesn’t matter—“
“Yes, it matters. Why were you in that car to begin with? Because she came on to you, she picked you up, not the other way around. It wasn’t your fault. If it was anyone’s fault, it was hers.”
“She’s dead!” Danny half-shouts. “Is this what you’re here to do, blame the victim? Call a dead woman names?”
“It could’ve been you!” Steve snaps back. “It could’ve been you, dead, in that ditch, because of her! You think she would’ve given Grace and Charlie—“ He snorts. “Not even Grace and Charlie, Bridget and Stella, you think she would’ve given your sisters her life’s savings? You think she would’ve remembered your name, Danny? Your backroom hook-up, you think it was that special?”
Of course Danny knows it wasn’t. Of course he knows he would’ve found a way to screw it up, like he did with every meaningful relationship he’s ever had, present company included. “That’s not the point.”
“What is the point, then?” Steve asks. “You mind telling me what the point is?”
“Yes, I do, actually, I do mind.” He makes a shooing motion toward the door, forcing himself to swallow through the lump in his throat. “Go. Go home, wherever that is. Go back to your trip, back to Catherine. Just leave me alone.” He looks for the beer he took out of the fridge—but maybe he didn’t? He opens its door again, and sure enough, he never removed one from the carton. He does so now, shoves the door shut, and heads out of the room.
He shuffles through the living room, too claustrophobic suddenly to stay inside the home he chose partly for the reason that it’s light and airy. His latest chest wound is throbbing all of a sudden, the muscles in his leg with the bad knee spasming painfully, and he realizes why when he steps out. It’s pouring rain. Still he sinks into the chair that’s just this side of dry enough to be sat on, protected under the awning, and lets the humid air whip around him.
He wants to go back in. God, he’s missed Steve, he’s missed him so much more than he realized, than he let himself feel. Steve’s back, in his living room, and he walked out, didn’t even give him a hug. Just that brief, accidental contact made him feel like a live wire, what would a deliberate embrace do?
Steve left anyway. He’ll leave again; Danny saw the shadows under his eyes, unchanged from the time Steve walked away from him, the defeated slant to his shoulders. Danny should go back in. He should go back in and find out what would happen if they hugged now. If they kissed, like in his dreams. God, Steve smelled good. He smelled like home.
Danny’s just coiling himself to get up when the door opens. Steve steps out, a bottle of beer in his hand too, and though he hesitates for a few seconds, he still comes over and folds down into the other chair.
Danny’d bought that chair for Steve before they knew about Charlie. He hadn’t had room for a third on his little lanai, and Grace hadn’t minded, choosing one of theirs’ arms to perch on whenever she and Steve both happened to be there at the same time, usually sun-soaked and stuffed to the gills with good food and pure in their happiness. Sudden, fierce longing for those days makes Danny’s eyes prickle. He lifts the bottle to hide behind.
“You’re—“ Danny tries, but his voice gives out. He clears his throat. “You’re pretty mad at her, huh, at a dead woman.”
He sees Steve flinch out of the corners of his eyes. It’s yet maybe a whole other minute before Steve speaks. “I’m not mad at her.”
“You’re mad at me.”
“No, Danny. I get it. I get what you’re doing.”
He listens to Steve suck in air. When he speaks again, Steve’s voice is mild, almost gentle. “You blamed yourself for not stopping Matt, for lying to the FBI, so you stayed when you should’ve gone with Rachel to Jersey. You blamed yourself for getting him killed, so you shot Reyes, knowing what that guilt would do to you, and then you let it, abandoning your kid to get yourself punished in some Colombian prison. Now you’re doing the same, but you have nothing else left, so you’re giving up the life you built for yourself, for your children, again, just in a different way.” He exhales. “You think there’s something wrong with you, something dark and twisted, you think that’s why you don’t deserve happiness. You’re wrong, Danny. You have no idea what dark and twisted really is.”
Danny has to unstick his throat before he can speak. He swallows thickly. “Oh, and you do.”
Steve’s breath comes out in a weak puff, the sketch of a snort. “Oh, I do.”
“You’re not dark and twisted,” Danny says. “You’re just a little boy whose mother abandoned him, who has been looking for the way she used to make him feel for all of his life.”
He still won’t look, but he knows Steve’s smiling. “No, not really. I mean, yes, you’re right, I did, I did look for that feeling of belonging, of family.” Steve’s foot starts tapping the way it does when he’s forcing himself to talk. The rain’s lightened up as if it’s curious too about what he’s going to say. “I did look, and then I found it.”
Danny’s surprised into glancing at him. He finds, for the first time in years, a face on Steve that he doesn’t recognize. “You did.”
Steve nods and takes a sip from his beer. Danny has to make himself look away from the long column of Steve’s throat. “And I couldn’t be happy with what I had so I kept wanting more and more and eventually I made it impossible for myself to stay.”
Danny shifts in his chair to stare at Steve openly, now at a complete loss. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Steve huffs a weak laugh, then grimaces like the experience is physically painful for him. He keeps his gaze straight ahead, not looking at Danny, his foot tap-tap-tapping away. “I’m not mad at Joanna, Danny. I’m jealous of her.”
Danny understands the words, but they don’t make sense to him, none at all. “What? Why? Because she’s dead?”
Steve’s eyes cut to his for a second, utterly stunned, then flicker away again. “No,” he says. “Of course not.”
He doesn’t elaborate, so Danny prods, “Why else then?”
“Why else then, he asks,” Steve parrots to himself, like Danny does sometimes. Steve does that occasionally, without realizing it Danny thinks, echo the little mannerisms that Danny recognizes as his own, and each time it happens, something tender slips inside of Danny’s chest in response. “She walks into a bar and fifteen minutes later you’re ready to let her into your life, Danny, your bed, your body, and—“ his face spasms with what seems to be pure anguish. “And here I am, ten years of waiting, of hoping, and it doesn’t even occur to you. It doesn’t even occur to you.”
He’s gone red, face still twisted, his fingers digging into the bridge of his nose. “It just—I think it just pushed me over the edge. And Joe, and my mom, I just—I didn’t have the strength left, Danny. Every time I looked at you, it was the life I’d never have, and this woman, this stranger, she just—and now you still—you just—“ He throws his hand up and leans back like he’s giving up on words, then too quickly wipes the little bit of moisture that escaped away from around his eyes.
“I asked you to stay,” Danny says. His voice comes out small, defeated. “I asked you to stay, I told you I wanted to grow old together with you.”
A broken smile passes over Steve’s face. “Yeah, until the next woman in a bar, or you and Rachel back together, or—eventually you would’ve left me. I just couldn’t wait for it to happen anymore.” He snorts wetly, glancing up. “Not to mention the way I am too, getting you hurt, nearly dead from my baggage. Think that was easy to watch?” He looks down again and stills his foot, pulls his nose. “I’m not good for you. I want you in all the wrong ways and I’m dangerous and the best thing I could’ve done for you was to leave, Danny. So I did. I left.”
Danny’s own eyes are full of hot, insolent tears. “I was glad Junior’s dad was dead,” he chokes out. “I was glad because I thought it would make you come home. You’re telling me I’m not twisted, how is that not twisted, not despicable, huh? How is that not the most selfish thing you’ve ever heard?”
Steve barks a laugh, such a genuine sound that it makes Danny forget what they’re talking about for a second. “I felt the same way. I thought it was the perfect excuse to come home. I bought my ticket and all.”
It’s so rare that Danny’s left speechless, but such he is now, staring at Steve open-mouthed. “But you—“ he manages.
Steve’s face does something funny. Something around his eyes relaxes and he tilts his head, looking at Danny suddenly with the evidence of all he’s claimed. The way he used to look at Danny a lot in the first few years of their partnership, that same open, raw expression of affection that he’d slam something hard in front of for the rest.
The way he looks at Danny in Danny’s dreams.
“If you were that way, Danny, you wouldn’t be beating yourself up about it. Is that all you feel, just selfish and guilty about it?”
“No, of course not—“
Steve’s eyes grow bright. His face twists again and he glances away, like it hurts to look at Danny like that. It lodges a lump in Danny’s throat in answer.
“You didn’t, though,” Danny says, with that same thin voice that seems to be all he can manage. “You didn’t come home.”
“Mary talked me out of it. She—I told her. You, I mean, about you. She guessed, I mean. When we stopped by her place on our way back from DC?”
Danny nods dumbly. Steve hadn’t been sleeping even then, but Danny had for the both of them, bowled over by exhaustion and jet lag and loose with the relief of having Steve within reach at last, and whenever he’d been awake, he’d dedicated himself to entertaining Joanie so Steve and Mary could have some time to each other. He’d just never suspected he was one of the subjects of their heart-to-hearts.
“She said I had to move on, and that after ten years, maybe I had to admit that being in each other’s pockets wasn’t exactly the best environment to do that in.” His foot starts tapping again. “She said I also had to admit that after those ten years, the chance of you suddenly waking up one day and realizing you had similar feelings for me was pretty slim. And she was right.”
Was she, though? “What—“ Danny says, and his voice breaks. “What, um, what kind of feelings?”
Steve turns an incredulous look at him. “Seriously, Danny? After all this, you need me to spell it out?”
“Yes, I do,” Danny says, with a flare of what’s probably blind panic, but feels like annoyance. “I actually do, Steve, because, see, I can’t afford to misunderstand what you’re saying now, and you’ll have to admit, admit too, that after ten years of watching you swagger around all alpha male making every woman in a five-mile radius swoon, it’s a little hard to wrap my mind around the fact that you apparently—“ Danny stops now, suddenly unsure how to describe what he’s hearing. His heart starts thumping wildly against his chest; his pulse pounds in his throat.
“I apparently what?” Steve asks.
It’s hard reconciling the next with what he knows of Steve, to fit the words, so he takes the easy way out. “That’s what I want you to say, what I want you to spell out. Exactly that.”
“That I’m bisexual?” Steve asks, without hesitation. “That I’ve had romantic feelings for men, that I’ve slept with men, that I’ve fallen in love with one? Is that what you need me to spell out?”
Danny’s heart is going so fast there are actual black dots in the periphery of his vision. He has to pay attention to breathing for a few seconds before he can speak again. “Why—“ he starts, haven’t you ever told me, he almost continues, but look at him, look at them, how could Steve have? Ten years of waiting, he said, ten years of hoping, and Danny had no idea. He had no fucking clue.
“Why what?” Steve asks, and he sounds defeated. “Why I sleep with men? I don’t know. I’ve asked myself that too. I mean, I’ve always, you know, noticed both men and women, but it started at military school, I think I was—rebelling, maybe, against my dad, and the situation, and then in the Navy, DADT, it was dangerous and I think maybe that made it more attractive too.”
It would, for lunatics with zero self-preservation instinct, one of whom is sitting right there in front of Danny at this moment. “Who—“ Danny manages next.
Steve flicks him a glance. “Not that many. My friend Sam, who died. Whom you didn’t meet.” He grimaces. “Nick.”
It hits Danny like a punch to the gut. “Nick Taylor?”
Steve’s eyes cut to him, surprised. “You remember him?”
“Of course I remember him, Steve, he almost—“ Jesus Christ. “You and he—“
Steve makes a shrugging motion. “On and off for a few years.”
Danny had hated the guy’s guts on sight, eventually ascribed it to the backstabbing lowlife he’d turned himself out to be, but it had been more than that. He’d wanted to wedge himself between them, not let Taylor touch Steve, not even allow him to get too close long before they had any evidence of betrayal.
Maybe Steve doesn’t have the monopoly on jealousy in this relationship. But obliviousness, now, that’s a different story. Danny’s the one who’s got that in spades, an unlimited supply.
“Huh,” Danny says. Another distasteful thought hits him in the gut. “When he was here, did you—“
Steve screws up his face. His whole leg starts bouncing. “Yeah.”
“Jesus,” Danny breathes. “And then he—“
“Yeah.”
“Jesus Christ.” Danny wipes his hand over his face. “Oh my god.”
“I’m s—“ Steve stops himself, then huffs a laugh. “Mary made me promise I wouldn’t ever apologize to you for not telling you any of this.” He laughs again. “It’s not easy.”
“No,” Danny manages. His tongue feels thick in his mouth, useless. “She’s right. You shouldn’t.” He shakes his head, self-loathing welling up in him like an ocean wave. “I’m sorry. I’m the one who should be sorry, and I am. I’m so sorry.”
Steve’s leg stops moving. “You? You’re sorry?”
“Yes. Yeah, of course. Of course I am. I had no idea.” His eyes grow in size with the next leap of logic. “Freddie—“
“No,” Steve says quickly. “Freddie and I, we were just friends. Great friends, best friends, but no.”
Does Danny even have an idea of the losses that Steve has endured in his not-so-long life? Does anyone? “Okay. Okay, good.” He scowls. “But you—and Catherine—you’re with her now. Aren’t you?”
Steve inhales a weary sigh. “No, Danny, I’m not. She actually did figure it out. Me, I mean, she figured me out. She and I, we were great friends, and we had great sex. That’s all it was, all it should’ve been, but I was so hungry for more—“ He shakes his head and looks away. “I’m not proud of this. I wanted more, not necessarily with her, but I did, and I forced us into something we weren’t, and yeah, she was with me for a week or so after I left while we hashed this out, but then she went her way, and I—“
He trails off. “And you what?” Danny echoes.
“And I went to therapy,” Steve says.
“Seriously?”
“Nah. Just one session.” Steve snorts, this time self-deprecatingly. “It reminded me of you too much so I didn’t go again.”
Him. Danny. They’re back to Danny again. “Steve, what are you saying?”
Steve turns his big eyes up at him, looking drawn and listless. “What am I saying about what, Danny?”
“Me, Steve. What are you saying about me?”
Steve’s eyes skim over Danny’s features, his expression gentling. “You need me to spell that out too?”
The lump in Danny’s throat swells. “Yes. Please do. Please.”
That spasm of anguish twists Steve’s face again and this time, he leaves his eyes shut. His knee jumps up and down a few times, then stops. “I, uh, I love you.”
He says it the way he always says it, but differently too, like there are layers Danny’s never seen, like the tip of an iceberg that goes deep and deeper and deeper all the way into his core. That’s usually where he stopped before, that’s when Danny ceased listening, but not this time. This time Steve goes on and Danny keeps his ears and eyes and every fiber of his being peeled.
“I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone else, more than I ever thought I could. I love your kids too, way more than appropriate for a family friend, I love them like they’re my own. Sometimes I pretend they’re mine too, when it gets really bad, I—“ his voice breaks and Danny has to pull in air through a twisted throat, an especially insistent pair of the damn tears finally falling. “I’m sorry about that; I know I have no right to do that. I, uh, I always want to sit too close to you. I want to see you every day; any day I don’t see you feels like a waste. I want to hold your hand. I want to kiss you, your face, your lips, I want to kiss you until you, until we’re out of breath, and then I want to kiss you more. I want to make love to you, and I want to fall asleep in your arms and then I want to wake up in them and then I want to do it again, and I want to do it for the rest of my life, Danny.”
Danny pulls in air and it hitches in his nose, in his throat, every raw place inside of him. “Oh god,” he whispers. He wipes his face, his eyes and through slightly clearer vision sees the tracks of tears on Steve’s face. His eyes are still closed.
“Is, uh—“ Steve clears his throat and opens his eyes, deliberately not looking anywhere close to Danny. “Is that spelled out enough for you, or do you need me to say more?”
Danny has to gulp in several breaths before he trusts himself enough to speak. “No, you, uh, you painted quite the detailed picture there.”
Steve nods. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and stays still for a second. Then he nods once more, with finality, and drains his bottle. With clipped, efficient movements, he places the beer next to his chair and coils himself to get up. “I’ll be—“
Sudden, intense panic makes Danny lunge for him. He gets his hand around Steve’s wrist and clamps down, startling them both. “No, stop. Don’t. Just give me a second.”
The tendons in Steve’s wrist are taut like steel ropes. Danny holds on. “Danny, I know you don’t feel the same way. It’s okay.”
“No, Steve. Stop.”
Steve exhales impatiently, his body angling away from Danny, though his arm stays where it is, pinned by Danny’s white-knuckled grip. “I swear it’s okay, I’ve made my peace with it. Maybe I should’ve told you before I left and it would’ve been easier for both of us, but—“
“Will you just shut up for one second, just be considerate and shut up, is that too much to ask? Just for a second?”
Steve pauses. Danny thinks he hears the soft pop of his mouth closing.
He looks up, finds Steve’s lips pressed together into a tight line. He pulls at the wrist in his hand, slowly reeling Steve in until he can fit his hand under Steve’s jaw, the stubble softer than he recalls but not unfamiliar. Steve’s eyes are wide, his body tense like a wire; Danny has to put in effort to bring him closer. Steve’s pulse thumps harder and faster under his fingertips.
“Danny, what—“ Steve’s voice, so gravelly it must be scratching his throat, fails again. “Danny, don’t. Please.”
“Why?” Danny demands. Steve smells good, better than he remembers. His lips are a rosy color, standing out dark against his pale skin. They look dry but not chapped. Soft. They look like they’d be soft. “Why not? What, what do you have to lose, huh? What’s left to lose?”
Steve’s breath hushes softly over Danny’s nose, his mouth, and he stops resisting, lets Danny tilt his head slightly, press their lips together.
Soft, Steve’s lips are soft, cool from the beer Steve just swigged, and Danny rests there like that, letting his own heart pound against his ribs, the heat race up and down his limbs, pool in his groin. Jesus, has he ever kissed softer lips, is it even possible, and Steve’s not breathing, he’s not moving, just a fine tremor shaking him, into Danny at the points where their bodies are still connected.
Danny pulls back slightly, just to see what Steve looks like, and finds him wrecked, eyes wide. Longing crests in him, breaks apart hotly, and he hauls Steve back in, this time meeting him open-mouthed.
At the first touch of Danny’s tongue to his bottom lip, Steve makes a wounded sound in his throat, his free hand gripping Danny’s elbow, his biceps, his body pushing closer. Danny has the same impulse, following it with filling Steve’s mouth with his tongue, chasing that something sweet that for some reason he’s always known was going to be there. He would’ve climbed into Steve’s lap if Steve hadn’t already been on the move with the same idea.
Danny scoops him up, wants him closer, wants nothing between them, but the chair, the stupid chairs he picked, fuck him, they’re too narrow and Steve’s big thigh won’t fit on it with Danny there. Steve makes that same sound again, distressed and desperate, abandoning the chair to kneel in front of Danny, between his legs, pawing at him like all he wants to do is crawl into Danny.
Danny wants that too, he wants Steve closer, he wants them occupying the same space, he wants to bury his nose in Steve’s neck and never, ever stop breathing him in, and he can, he can, so he does, breaking the kiss with smaller ones to Steve’s damp, hot cheekbone, the corner of his mouth, down his jaw, finally into the junction of neck and shoulder where he’s been before, never close enough or long enough, or, as it turns out, aware enough.
Steve’s breaths are coming in near-gasps, his arms so tight around Danny it finally feels like Danny’s been reeled back in, stopped floating around without purpose. Danny holds him back, running his fingers through Steve’s hair, soft too, almost downy at the back of his neck, a little slick with sweat, then stroking down the column of his spine. He’s hot against Danny, still shaking with that fine tremor.
While Danny’s trying to devise a way to get even closer, Steve pulls back, getting his hands around Danny’s jaw so he can keep him at arm’s length and look into his eyes. “Danny, do you—have you ever—“
Danny clears his throat preemptively. It doesn’t feel as thick anymore, not when he can see the tiny little gold specks in Steve’s eyes. “What? Done this with a man?” Steve nods, eyes still wide, lips pressed together in dread as if merely asking the question will remind Danny that he doesn’t really want to do this. “No. No, I haven’t.”
“So—what—are you—“
Danny smiles. Apparently all it took to take away Steve’s ability to form sentences was a kiss. “I’d also never dangled a suspect off a roof or jumped off a helicopter or defused a nuclear bomb before, but I did it. With you.”
Steve’s eyes jerk back and forth over Danny’s face, and Danny can tell the moment his words sink in, because they fill with tears.
“I’ve had dreams,” Danny says. “Of kissing you, of more, pretty regularly, for as long as we’ve known each other. I made myself think they didn’t mean anything. Every time you mentioned Catherine or someone else, it felt like something was lodged in the pit of my gut, right here—“ he presses his fist low against his belly to demonstrate. Obediently Steve flicks his gaze down to look, and that, of all the things, breaks Danny. He inhales a sob. “I just never let myself look too closely at it, but then you left, and all I could do was look at it, and it was like someone had ripped away a piece of me, and I’d never be whole again, and I—“ He screws up his eyes against the anguish, his and Steve’s, curls his fingers into Steve’s shirt along his waist.
Steve’s hands shift and pull him closer, those ridiculously soft lips of his pressing against the tender skin under Danny’s eyes, his forehead, the corner of his mouth, before Steve draws him back in, into their near-desperate embrace.
“And you’re wrong,” Danny manages, the words hitching. “I didn’t stay when Rachel left to punish myself. I stayed because I wanted to. For you, I wanted to stay for you. With you. I’m sorry I didn’t realize why. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
“Jesus, Danny,” Steve says, the words carried by an explosion of breath. “Are you saying—what are you saying, that you’re not just—that this isn’t just—“
“Just what?”
Another breath out of Steve like he was punched, then, “Not just pity? Not a goodbye?”
“No,” Danny blurts out, eyes flying open, tightening his arms around Steve. “No, it’s not. Don’t leave. Don’t go. I can’t do this again.”
Steve pulls back, has to fight Danny’s grip to do it, but he doesn’t go far, just enough to look at Danny’s face, his own a red-splotched mess of tears that still can’t hide the heart-wrenching wonder with which he gazes up at Danny. As Danny watches, he pulls in a breath, holds it, lets it go. He does it again before he tries to talk. “Danny, I, uh, I think I’m going to need you to spell it out for me too. What are you saying?”
“I’m saying what you’re saying. Don’t leave. Stay. Stay with me, like this, too close, though—“ he has to clear his throat, something light and giddy stirring in his chest, like his body finally caught on to just who it is that he has in his arms. “Though I personally think it’s not close enough, but whatever, uh, whatever you want to call it, and hold my hand and kiss me breathless, like, uh, like you just did, and, uh, and the other thing, which, I mean, after everything we’ve done, together, and the way you look, and the way you move I can’t imagine could be anything but the best sex of my life, and the—“ His own throat closes up, a fresh batch of tears breaking free. Steve’s arms spasm around him. “And the going to sleep together and then waking up together, I like that. I really, really like that a lot. I want it for the rest of my life too. It just might be the best idea that your poor little insane brain has ever come up with.”
Steve’s quiet so he forces himself to open his eyes and look, and he finds Steve still staring dumbstruck. There he is, the little boy Danny was talking about, in the curve of Steve’s pulled up brows, his too-big eyes. “Really?” he asks, and that makes Danny’s insides ache like a bruise.
“Yes, really, you lunatic.”
Steve heaves in a breath, face twisting like hearing that hurt, and leans in for another kiss.
—
The Tuesdays redeem themselves in the second half of the year.
The day Steve came back was a Tuesday. It obviously also happened to be the day of their first kiss, and the day they got together. That, after all, was one of the best days of Danny’s life, alongside the kids’ birthdays, so that was a big plus in the Tuesday column.
The first time they make love is early that Wednesday morning, a little awkward and stilted until Danny throws it off and just goes for it, and then it’s great, it’s amazing, just like he thought it would be. That counts as a late Tuesday night.
It’s also very, very late on that same Tuesday night that Danny calls Grace and on speaker asks her to cite whom she’s put down as her emergency contacts at college.
“You, Uncle Steve, mom, Stan,” Grace says, voice thick in the early Pennsylvanian morning. “In that order. Can I go back to sleep now?”
Steve develops yet another face that Danny’s never seen before, eyebrows scrunched up as if in Aneurysm Face, but eyes big as in Puppy Face, and lips pressed together like the new face that Danny’s dubbed You’re the Love of My Life Face. Not because he’s Steve’s, but because the other way around. “Depends,” Danny says on a whim.
“On what?” Grace whines, in a respectable imitation of her father. The biologic one, that is. She’s got three, after all.
Danny stares at Steve without blinking while he says, “Whether or not you want to hear about Uncle Steve now having become Step-Steve.”
Steve blinks with his whole body, eyebrows now flying up, eyes growing yet wider, mouth dropping into a perfect O. While Grace’s end is dead silent, Danny can’t resist pressing his thumb on the kiss-swollen softness of Steve’s bottom lip.
Then Grace starts squealing with pure joy and Danny has to turn down the volume of the phone speaker lest they both lose their hearing.
It’s also a Tuesday that Steve moves in, having decided long ago that Danny’s ghost-less house has been more of a home for him than his parents’.
The whole team helps. Mary flies in, both to lend a hand and to celebrate with them, and the first thing she does as soon as she gets Danny alone is apologize. “I gave him some really shitty advice. I’m so sorry.”
Danny shakes his head. “No, you didn’t. You gave him great advice. He’s just too pig-headed to listen.”
Mary’s smile grows the longer she studies Danny’s face, which is no doubt doing its own iteration of He’s the Love of My Life. “Thank god for that.”
Danny beams back at her, his cheeks twinging with it. “Yeah. Thank god.” He cranes his neck, looking for Steve like he’s done a thousand times, and like he’s done a few times now, doesn’t ignore the sweet little tug of affection in the center of his belly.
Steve’s standing around the pizza they ordered, with Junior. As Danny watches, Junior lets out the first belly-laugh since his father passed, one hand on Steve’s shoulder, Steve’s hand on his elbow. Danny’s gaze catches on Tani as he turns it back to Mary, and he finds Tani grinning with a similar kind of wild affection that he’s feeling in himself.
Later that night, while Danny’s putting away the few kitchen items Steve wanted to keep, Steve wraps himself around him from the back, so tightly for a second that Danny stops what he’s doing and strokes his hands.
“You good?” Danny asks.
Steve huffs a laugh into the crook of his neck. “Yeah, Danno. I’m good. You?”
Danny leans back into the solid weight of Steve and closes his eyes. “You have no idea.”
“I think I do,” Steve whispers. “You know, sometimes I still worry it’s a dream.”
Danny too may or may not have been pinching himself a few times a day since they got together. “Justifiably so, I mean, I’m so clearly out of your league that I’d be worried too, if I were you. It might just be that you’ve been dosed by a psychoactive drug or something, or, or even better, inhaled something at school.”
He can feel Steve’s grin against his skin. “That’s a brilliant idea. Maybe I can come up with something that’ll fix that mouth of yours.”
Danny grins to himself and opens his eyes, returning to his task. “You sure you want to mess with that mouth of mine?”
Steve stills behind him. “Okay, fine, yes. I don’t. You’re right.”
It wasn't a Tuesday that Steve retired from the Navy; it was a Monday, and the day he enrolled at HSU for his state-approved teacher education program a Wednesday. He said he was done with being shot at. Danny agreed, and put in for his own retirement that very Friday.
The lawsuit gets settled on a Wednesday, in a much more anti-climactic fashion than Danny imagined. Steve and Mike put their heads together and strategize like it's actual combat, and with the evidence Mike uncovered and the entire police department on Danny’s side, it wasn't hard negotiating the settlement down to next to nothing. Danny wanted to help, though, so they agreed on him splitting the funeral costs with Joanna’s sister.
That Wednesday in July, Steve walks him into Mike’s office with a hand on the small of his back and off-color jokes whispered into his ear so he can’t get into his own head, and sits right next to him while Danny signs the dotted lines and initials by the post-its.
Ironically or not, the first availability City Hall has is also a Tuesday.
The night before, Danny dreams of Steve again. In this one, they’re in Steve’s old office at headquarters, and they’re sitting together on the couch. Danny wants to kiss Steve, but he wakes up before he can.
It doesn’t bother him, though. He just gets up, tracks Steve down where he is on the lanai drinking his post-run coffee, and kisses him. It’s way better than any dream could be.
—