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Steve gets taken off reserves on a Tuesday, musters the spine to tell Danny on Thursday, and suffers the brunt of his loaded silence all weekend until Steve marches back into the Five-0 offices on Monday morning, furious.
"What the hell is your problem, huh?" he yells at Danny from across the room, striding in through the glass doors.
Chin and Kono escape wordlessly to their respective offices, figuratively ducking behind the water trough.
It's high fucking noon in Honolulu.
Danny is futzing incompetently with the tech desk, ignoring Steve so blatantly it makes Steve's eye twitch. His voice sounds almost bored when he mutters, "I don't have a problem. You're late, by the way."
It's 8:05. The amount of how much these five minutes don't matter is astounding.
"Fuck you, I'm late. You didn't come in on Friday and bailed on beers on Saturday. You sulking now, Danno?"
Danny about-faces suddenly, jaw tight, and jabs a finger at him. The déjà vu slams into Steve, leaving him dizzy. Danny's voice is cold, quiet. Terrifying.
"Don't you Danno me, you jackass. Why are you even in today, huh? Don't you have some grenades to pack, some boots to shine? Spare us the teary departure, would you? I'm not in the fucking mood."
"You're never in the fucking mood, Danny," Steve spits back, taunting the bull and he knows it.
Danny just stares at him for a second then just walks away, spitting a quiet, "Fuck you, McGarrett," as he goes.
Steve stares after him with his hands on his hips, quietly gaping, then follows him into his office, too close to avoid a fist to the jaw if Danny wanted to swing one at him. Maybe he's hoping Danny does. It'd be something.
But Danny doesn't even look at him long enough to slam the door in his face.
"Danny," he starts, but Danny doesn't interrupt him, just shuffles shit around his desk, and Steve flounders, shaken off his axis. "I didn't... They asked me to. I'm not just going because I want to. They asked me. I can't just say no."
Danny chuckles, high and loud, and it's an ugly, ugly sound. "Oh no, the great Steve McGarrett would never turn down his country, would he. Just like he didn't give me a choice either."
Steve blinks at the sudden change of tack, lost. "What?"
Danny finally looks up at him, looking livid but mostly just sad and tired around the eyes. His chest heaves once with an exhausted sigh and his hand goes into his pocket, curled into a fist. The other one flies with familiar gestures, but they're tired, like he's already given up on the argument they're barely having.
"Four years ago, okay? You walked into my home, such as it was, and you didn't give me a choice. I had a perfectly fine, perfectly shitty position with HPD but no, you said you're Five-0 now, you're with me now, and that was that. And now you leave? Now, after everything, you feel you're done with this and it's back to the-- wherever the fuck you're going, the jungle? the desert? Pearl fucking Harbor even, right down the street? Huh? You're fucking bailing Steve, that is what the hell my problem is. I'm here because of you, we all are, and you're bailing. So have fun. Go. But don't expect a fucking goodbye parade."
Steve stands there, stunned, numb with terror at Danny's quiet rage. Because he's wrong, he's so wrong, that's not how it is at all.
Is it?
"Danny," he tries again, voice shaky, and he has no idea what his next words are going to be. "That's not how it is. That's not what I'm doing, okay? I'm not bailing. I'm not."
"The hell you aren't," Danny says hotly, meeting his eyes squarely. Steve tries not to recoil at the utter disappointment he sees in them.
"They're. They're sending me to Bahrain. They have a--" he stops, shakes himself. Fuck. "It's classified, I'm sorry, I just. I'm not bailing, Danny. This is what I am. This is what I do. They ask me to go so I have to go."
Danny's glares softens, but there's still a steely resolve there that Steve has no idea what to do with.
"What if I asked you to stay?" he murmurs, be he might as well be screaming. "What if Kono and Chin did? Or the Governor? Or Grace? You owe us nothing so you don't have to do anything we ask, is that it? Is that fucking it, Steven?"
Danny's anger is potent now, palpable. Steve squares his shoulders, plants his weight, but he feels like the fight is leaving him. "You're not military, you don't get it." His argument is weak even to his own ears.
Danny is laughing, and it's the worst thing Steve's ever heard. He's shaking his head too, agitated, but he looks like his heart isn't in it anymore. "No, you're right, I don't."
He walks around the desk and past Steve and out of his office with a quiet, dismissive, "Say bye when before you leave. Or something."
Fight over. Steve deflates, thrown off by the abrupt end of the argument. He realizes, maybe belatedly, that maybe he wanted Danny to fight for it. For him.
What the fuck, McGarrett?
He stalks out of the office but Danny is nowhere to be seen. Kono is standing in the doorway to her office, eyeing him carefully with her fingertips in the pockets of her jeans. "You're an idiot, boss," she says quietly but with feeling, before heading out too.
There is nothing in this goddamn office to punch so Steve just closes his eyes and tries to count to ten. Then again, and again.
When he no longer feels like breaking something, he just leaves.
*
Danny shows up at his house that night as Steve is shoving regulation t-shirts into a duffel in his bedroom. He doesn't knock, he never knocks, and Steve doesn’t even hear him come in, just walks in on Danny standing in the middle of his living room, waiting. Steve nearly jumps out of his skin at the sight and seriously questions his own awareness skills. Maybe he's too rusty for action anymore after all.
"I came for my car key," Danny says dully, sounding all the world like he can't be bothered to be upset anymore.
They stand a few feet apart, unmoving for a moment, then Steve digs into the pocket of his cargos and fishes out his keys, unscrewing the Camaro's spare and tossing it at Danny, who catches it one-handed.
He eyes Steve for a second, gaze unreadable, then he shakes his head, chuckles humorlessly, and leaves without saying anything else.
Steve listens to the roar of the Camaro, the crunch of its tires rolling in reverse out of the driveway, the gunning of the engine once it hits the blacktop, peeling away too fast.
Then he finds a surface to punch, the thin wall between the living room and the kitchen, and the crunch of bone and drywall is oddly satisfying.
*
He's due at NSPH at oh-nine-hundred the next morning and he's just closing the house up when Gracie calls him, his phone lighting up with a smiling picture of her from a couple years back, when she'd gotten her phone. He stares at it for a few obstinate rings, paralyzed with indecision, then rushes to answer before the call goes to voicemail.
"Hey sweetheart," he croaks, doing his best to smile enough so she can hear it. He falls a little short, even to his own ears.
"Uncle Steve." She, however, is communicating stern disapproval pretty efficiently in a remarkable economy of words. A skill gleaned from Rachel, no doubt, because those were never words that applied to Daniel Williams.
"Hi Gracie. Is everything okay? Danno okay?"
He immediately regrets asking.
"He's not," Grace says, and the frostiness of her words immediate thaws, replaced by shaky tearfulness. "He's not okay. He just picked me up and he's not okay but he won't tell me why. But I know why, it's because you're leaving isn't it. Why are you leaving? Where are you going?"
He's not even sure which of these questions matter the most.
"I'm going somewhere the Navy is sending me to fight more bad guys, baby girl. I have to. I'm sorry it's making your Danno sad."
"No you're not!" she cries. "You're not sorry, or you wouldn't go." She sounds angry now, and he can hear tears. He's never made her cry before. It's the worst feeling he's ever had.
"I'm sorry," is all he can say, and he hears how lame and gutless it sounds.
He's got nothing.
Grace says nothing for a little while, and he listens to her cry over the line, feeling like the worst human being alive.
The misery of it doesn't even feel like enough of a punishment.
*
Steve is sitting in his parked truck outside the Pearl Harbor personel check point in his service camo staring dejectedly at his silent phone when the Camaro roars into view and skids to a stop in front of him, tires spitting gravel. He hadn't even heard it speed over; seriously what the fuck is wrong with him this week?
Danny is out of the car before the dust even settles. "You made Gracie cry!" he's hollering at Steve, slamming the door and striding around the car to the driver's side of Steve's truck. He slams both hands against the frame of it, making Steve jump. "Get out! Come on!"
Steve has seen Danny this riled up, this spoiling for a fight, but never directed at him before. Well, maybe once. A lifetime ago.
"I'm sorry," Steve is saying, stepping out of the truck carefully. It's all he seems to be able to say now. Danny has stepped back to let the door open, but now he's all up in Steve's face again, angrier than Steve's ever seen him. And he's seen him plenty pissed.
"You made Gracie cry," Danny says again. It's quieter but just as lethal, slicing right into the soft parts of him. Steve thinks he sees Danny's eyes shine, but it might just be a trick of the light. "You stupid, selfish son of a bitch. You made my little girl cry. You have no heart, okay? None. You need to get out of my life, out of her life, before you do any more damage."
Just as Steve's heart is breaking he gets a surge of anger, flashing white-hot in his gut. He gets in Danny's face. "I'm leaving, Danny. I'm already out of your life. Happy? This what you want? Why are you even here, huh?"
Danny staggers back a step, gesturing with wordless, ineffectual rage.
Steve advances on him. "You told me to go. Not twenty-four hours ago, you told me to fuck off. I do what I'm told, Danny."
Danny laughs, hand flailing. "Of course you do. You mechanical, heartless asshole! The Navy needs its robocop back, who am I to deny them, right?"
"Fuck you," Steve spits out at him, hands curled into tight fists.
"That's my line!" Danny yells, then they both get quiet, the wind knocked out of them.
The noise of the nearby dock and curious tourists goes thunderous in Steve's ears, like the furious thudding of his pulse, the angry rush of blood to his head. Fuck, fuck.
"Why are you leaving," Danny finally says, and yeah, he's crying. Bra-fucking-vo, McGarrett; you made the one person who matters the most in your life cry.
"They asked me," Steve says uselessly, because he knows that's not why he's leaving. And the reason why he's leaving is too unspeakably stupid to say out loud.
"I'm asking you not to," Danny says, quietly pleading, hands steepling at Steve then curling in to touch Danny's chest. "For Grace and Kono and Chin and Five-0 and me, okay? I'm asking you. Please don't go. Please. Please."
And the way his voice breaks on the last word just kills Steve. Kills him. If he did go to Bahrain now, nothing that could happen there would come anywhere close to how painful this is, right here. It puts things abruptly in perspective, something he's severely lacked since he buried his father, and it feels like something has finally stopped his tailspin and left him dizzy, sick to his stomach, but finally steady on his feet.
Feels like he's both drowning and taking his first real lungful of air in years.
"Okay," Steve croaks, nodding, because the best course of action has always been to fake it till he made it, and he's starting to think that maybe his head might just follow his heart, one of these days. "Okay."
Danny nods too, chest shaking with another deep breath as he closes the distance between them, yanking Steve down into a tight hug. Steve returns it in kind, and then some.
*
Grace falls asleep on him just past ten that night, in the soft glow of the lanai lights. In another chair, across a table of Longboard empties, Danny is smiling at him, eyes squinting happily. Steve pets Grace's hair, hiding his own smile in it.
"I'm gonna put her down in Mary's old room, all right? Be right back."
Danny lets him, lets Steve take his little girl upstairs and tuck her in and kiss her head and come back downstairs, feeling a weight off his shoulders he hadn't known he'd been carrying since he came back to the island. He grabs them a couple of fresh beers and pads back out to the lanai, handing Danny his before sitting back down.
"I think I'll have the room repainted," Steve says, because he's a coward and can't quite say the things that need to be said just yet. Getting there, though. "Gracie can pick the color, and we'll get her new sheets, maybe new furniture if she doesn't like Mary's old stuff."
"Okay," Danny says, easy, seemingly amused by Steve's clumsy skirting of the topic at hand. "She'll love that."
"She's here a few times a month, she should be comfortable," Steve continues, a little defensively. Danny's eyes shine with amusement. Steve frowns, feeling his facade challenged. "And I'll redo the third room too, put my old stuff in storage and make it into a guest room, for when you crash here too. The couch can't be good for your back, Danno."
"The couch is fine," Danny says, smiling as he's getting up from his chair.
"The couch is not fine, Daniel. You deserve better."
"Damn right I do," Danny says, walking around the table to Steve, who looks up at him, puzzled. Danny leans over him with a hand on the back of Steve's chair and Steve has to crane his head back to keep eye contact, ready with a counter-argument about the couch thing, because really.
But he doesn't get to voice it because Danny kisses him, a soft but decisive press of mouth that punches the breath out of Steve's chest as surely as a right hook would've. The noise he lets out makes Danny chuckle as he pulls away, already walking off into the house.
"Come inside, Steven," Danny calls patiently, out of sight. Steve stares at the doorway dumbly for a beat, then scrambles off the chair so fast he nearly falls on his face, grinning.
It's not a bad feeling, all told.