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“What’s this?” Danny asks, turning up the volume knob of the Camaro’s sound system against the buzz of the car driving down the highway. “Ah, The Beatles. Where did this come from?”
Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends,
Mmm, I get high with a little help from my friends,
Mmm, I'm gonna try with a little help from my friends
Steve smirks and glances briefly at Danny from the driver’s seat. “I found some Beatles CDs in my dad’s CD stash the other day. Switched them out from my truck during lunch. There’s more in the glove box.”
Sure enough, Danny finds a small CD binder in the glove box, next to the car insurance statement and extra gun ammo. It has a few other classic rock CDs, but the Beatles CDs are in the first few sleeves.
Do you need anybody?
I just need someone to love
Could it be anybody?
I want somebody to love
“Not as good as the Stones, but okay,” Danny answers smartly, then leans back after he closes the glove box. He looks out the window at the ocean bordering the highway and smiles.
---
It happens the next day.
Danny, Chin, and Kono exchange worried glances over the tech table as Steve strides out from his office following a long, hushed phone call. He’s walking with just a little too much control.
“Everything okay, boss?” Kono asks with forced lightness.
Steve looks at Danny. “Yeah, it’s fine, I’ll fill you all in about it later.”
For Danny, later is that night after work. Steve shows up at his apartment door with a stony expression.
“I’m being temporarily re-activated by the Navy for a SEAL mission.”
“I knew it. I knew it,” Danny snaps back and starts pacing the room.
“Danny, just don’t,” Steve says tiredly, putting a hand up bidding him to stop. “I don’t want to be doing this either.”
Danny stops his pacing to look directly at Steve. “Did I say anything about not wanting you to do this?” he shoots back, the words coming out more scathingly than he intended.
Steve just looks at him for a long, long moment, reading Danny’s face. Danny hates it when he does this.
“No, you didn’t. I’m sorry,” Steve replies carefully.
Danny crosses his arms tightly and looks away. “So what is this, Strawberry Fields 2.0? Why the hell do they need you? Don’t they have any newer and shinier models to pick from?
“I can’t tell you why, Danny,” Steve answers quietly.
“Right, or you’d have to kill me,” Danny sneers, this time intending all of the acid in his words to sting.
Steve looks down and lets out a weary sigh, then turns back to the door and opens it to leave. He pauses to look back at Danny from the doorway.
“Watch the house for me? You always did it better than Mom did.”
Danny gives him a sullen look. “Yeah. I’ll housesit for you while you’re out.”
Steve looks truly hurt, in a way that Danny has never seen before. “I’m sorry. I really am.”
Then he’s gone.
---
The next day, Danny turns on the Camaro and finds that the Beatles CD is still in the player.
Let me take you down
'Cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields
Nothing is real
And nothing to get hung about
Strawberry Fields forever
Living is easy with eyes closed
Misunderstanding all you see
It's getting hard to be someone
But it all works out
It doesn't matter much to me
Danny’s phone beeps with a new text message.
It should only be 2 or 3 months. You won’t even miss me.
“You’re right,” Danny says, and throws his phone down into the empty passenger seat.
---
A week later, when Danny can’t listen to another track on that damn Beatles CD again, he digs around in the glove box at a red light for the CD binder. After a moment’s hesitation, he puts in the next Beatles CD.
You say yes, I say no
You say stop and I say go go go, oh no
You say goodbye and I say hello
I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello
I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello
“Beats the shit out of me,” Danny yells back at the music, then angrily switches the music to the radio.
Later, lying in bed before going to sleep, Danny replies to Steve’s text with I’ll see you when I see you. He doesn’t know if it’s good or bad that Steve may not get the text.
---
Danny had known Steve’s influence was bad, but he hadn’t known how bad.
“Kono! For the love of all that is holy, slow down!” Danny yells, gripping the handle above the passenger door like he’s hanging on for dear life. (And he very well may be, he realizes.)
Kono grits her teeth. “Don’t distract me, we’re almost on him!”
She swerves around a bumbling bystander’s car, throwing Danny’s head into the car window with a thump.
Baby you can drive my car
Yes I'm gonna be a star
Baby you can drive my car
And maybe I'll love you
I told that girl that my prospects were good
She said baby, it's understood
Working for peanuts is all very fine
But I can show you a better time
“I thought McGarrett was bad, but you’re Evil Knievel!” Danny practically sobs.
I told that girl I can start right away
When she said listen babe I got something to say
I got no car and it's breaking my heart
But I've found a driver and that's a start
“Is this The Beatles?” Kono asks, grinning wickedly. “Aww, you miss the boss, don’t you! I knew it!” she teases mercilessly.
“I’m the boss right now, and I have jurisdiction over your paychecks, so – ” Kono swerves again. “ – watch yourself!”
Kono just laughs and speeds up after the suspect.
---
Two months turns into three, and still no word from Steve.
That evening, Danny finds himself sitting on his familiar roadside perch, where he had taken Grace the day he received the papers informing him that Rachel was attempting to change their custody agreement. The place has become a balm of sorts, the beautiful view a reminder that even though this place has represented so much of the bad in his life, it also has the people he loves most.
Loves.
Danny hears a bike pull up and then stop. Two pairs of feet crunch the ground leading up to him before they stop as well.
“Hey, brah,” Chin greets quietly. He and Kono sit on either side of him.
“You used the GPS tracker in the car to find me,” Danny says, more as a statement than a question.
Chin's smile for Danny is slightly strained by his underlying sadness. “And you’re a good detective.”
After several moments of silence, Kono adds softly, “And Steve will be back soon.”
Before the drive home, Danny puts in yet another Beatles CD from the CD binder.
Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they're here to stay
Oh, I believe in yesterday
Suddenly, I'm not half to man I used to be,
There's a shadow hanging over me
Oh, yesterday came suddenly
Why she had to go, I don't know, she wouldn't say
I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday
Danny wonders if the spirits of Lennon and Harrison are after him, or if he just needs to start listening to The Rolling Stones again for a change.
---
The next day is Friday, and Danny is picking up Grace from school for a weekend with her.
“Danno!” she announces as she spots Danny amid the swarm of parents, parked cars, and other students. She bounds down the school’s steps towards Danny, her face lit up in a way that always makes Danny’s heart squeeze.
“Monkey!” Danny cheers back as she launches into his waiting embrace.
Grace pulls back in his arms and looks up at him hopefully. “Are we going to Uncle Steve’s house again this weekend?” she asks, out of breath. Grace has become accustomed to Steve’s stretch of beach, but that doesn’t seem to ever dampen her excitement for it.
Danny gives her an indulgent grin. “You bet we are. Come on, let’s go.” He breaks their hug to open her car door for her. “You want some shave ice first?” he asks, punctuating his words with a grand sweep of his arms towards the seat that makes her giggle.
“Yeah!” Grace agrees as she bounces into the seat.
As they’re driving down to Kamekona’s shave ice stand, Grace asks Danny curiously, “Do we still get to stay at Uncle Steve’s sometimes when he comes back?”
Here comes the sun
Here comes the sun, and I say
It's all right
“Maybe. Danno would like that. That’ll have to be Uncle Steve’s decision, though,” Danny answers simply.
“Is he going to be back soon?” Grace asks, this time with a little longing in her voice.
Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun
Here comes the sun, and I say
It's all right
Danny, squinting against the harsh sun glaring through the Camaro’s windows, is still able to find it in himself to smile just a little, feeling oddly serene. “Yeah. Soon. He’ll be home soon.”
---
The Monday after that weekend, Danny had asked Chin to start stealthily tracking Steve down. He's tired of not knowing where Steve is or when he's coming back, mission secretiveness be damned. Chin wasn’t terribly happy to be asked to do something so risky, but Danny still asked because he knows Chin is frustrated too (and also enjoys a challenge - not that Chin would admit to that in this case.)
“So? Anything?” Danny asks Chin the next Monday morning after that, breezing into the 5-0 office towards Chin at the tech table.
Danny has most of his answer through Chin's defeated expression.
“Nothing, except for one thing.” Chin slides his fingers across the tabletop, and a single email message appears on one of the wall screens. The sender’s address is a garbled mess of keyboard characters.
Soon.
“You can’t track that?” Danny asks Chin, exasperated.
Chin shakes his head. “No. Its pathway is too convoluted. It’s untraceable, and purposefully so.” Chin pauses. “Danny, it probably wasn’t safe for him to send us that, and the fact that he replied to us with just one word is probably him telling us as much. We’ve got to stop this and just keep waiting. He’ll come home someday soon.”
Danny sighs wearily, then gives Chin a tight smile. “Yeah. Let’s hope so. Thanks for trying, buddy.” He gives a little wave before heading to his office.
Driving to pick up lunch later, Danny switches the music from the radio to the CD player.
He's a real nowhere man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land,
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody
Doesn't have a point of view,
Knows not where he's going to,
Isn't he a bit like you and me?
Nowhere Man, please listen,
You don't know what you're missing,
Nowhere Man, the world is at your command
He's as blind as he can be,
Just sees what he wants to see,
Nowhere Man, can you see me at all?
Danny lets out a derisive little snort, throwing up a hand. “Are you kidding me?” he says, again, to no one.
The next day, when "P.S. I Love You" happens to play, Danny answers God, the universe, Lennon and Harrison, whoever, with a somber silence.
---
Three months turn into four. Four months turns into five.
Many times I've been alone
And many times I've cried,
Anyway you'll never know
The many ways I've tried
And still they lead me back
To the long, winding road
You left me standing here
A long, long time ago
Don't leave me waiting here
Lead me to your door
Danny turns off the music and sheds a few tears under the cover of night, driving himself home after yet another day.
Later, lying in Steve’s bed before going to sleep, Danny types out a text to Steve.
Come home already
He deletes the words instead of sending them, then turns out the bedside lamp and goes to sleep.
---
It happens the next day.
Danny is watching a game on Steve’s television, drinking a beer from the six-pack in Steve's fridge that he has replaced again and again as he’s waited for him to come home. The t-shirt he has on is one of Steve’s physical training shirts, a little too long in the torso and a little too tight in the shoulders.
He sits up straight as a rod when he hears the front door being unlocked. When he turns to see who’s about to walk in, his stomach lurches; he knows exactly who it’s going to be, but he’s still got this fear that it’s just going to be someone else.
Steve is lean, leaner than he has ever seen him. The dusting of gray at his temples is a little lighter and the circles under his eyes are a little darker, but the weight of the last five months seems to fall away with the soft grin that lights up his face.
Danny observes this from his stance right in front of him, where he had abruptly stopped to stare in near disbelief. He’s unsure of what to do next.
“Well?” Steve teases as he drops his duffel bag in the doorway, never breaking eye contact with Danny.
Danny snaps forward to pull Steve into a tight hug, Steve folding himself around Danny just as quickly. They stay there, holding on to each other desperately.
“After the mission was over, I requested a voluntary discharge. I’m not in the Navy anymore,” Steve says softly, his mouth above Danny’s ear.
Danny lets out a laugh into Steve’s shoulder, the tension pouring out with it replaced with warm relief. “Good. Because if this happened again, I’d make you get a lawn service. I don’t love you enough to do your landscaping for five months again, there’s a reason why I live in apartments.”
Steve pulls back and holds Danny by the shoulders, still grinning fondly. “Good to see you too, Danno.”