hawaii 5-0 fic: just like the barrel going over the falls [steve/danny, r]
WAIT, WAIT, HERE'S WHAT HAPPENED, IT'S NOT MY FAULT.
Okay, so the other day was illian's birthday, and I said "Oh hey, happy birthday, I will write you an H50 ficlet!" And then, later, hermette and thegrrrl2002 and I had this brief conversation about how Steve and Danny would have like, atrociously failtastic date nights. And I thought to myself, "Oh, self, here is what you will do! You will write a ficlet about Steve and Danny going on terrible terrible dates!"
Nine...thousand...words later...
Happy birthday, illian. I hope you enjoy this, hermette, thegrrrl2002. The rest of you...should probably just give up on me now. I am clearly a lost cause.
Title: just like the barrel going over the falls (crying all the way down 'i never asked to be involved')
Pairing: Steve/Danny [Chin/Malia, Kono/Ben Bass]
Rating: R (boooordering on NC-17)
Wordcount: 8,720
Summary: Peer pressure convinces Danny and Steve (well, okay, just Steve) that date nights are a necessary part of a healthy relationship. They try them out. It...doesn't go well.
Danny moves into Steve's place on a Wednesday.
He really should plan it better--should schedule it for a Friday or Saturday, when theoretically Kono could be delayed in hearing about it. But he isn't thinking about potential disaster, just about his lease ending and getting shit in boxes and never having to hear Steve bitch about his couch again.
And yeah, okay, maybe a little bit about Steve himself, about slow Sunday mornings and fast Monday nights, about having something shared and theirs. Only a little bit, though. It's definitely at the bottom of the list.
The point is, Danny doesn't plan properly, because Danny is a little distracted, and when he moves into Steve's place on Wednesday Steve just distracts him further. "Our chairs," he says, the sentimental bastard, "our table," and Danny says, "What's the point in co-owning a table if you're not going to fuck me on it," and when they go to work on Thursday morning, they're still kind of blissed out and unprepared.
So when Kono says, "What'd you two get up to last night," Danny doesn't panic.
He doesn't even panic when Steve says, "Oh, we moved in together," like it's no big thing.
It's when Kono says the word "housewarming," followed immediately by the word "party," that he starts to freak out in earnest.
--
"It'll just be a small thing," Kono says.
"I just invited a couple of other people," Kono says.
"You should probably buy more beer," Kono says, and when Danny gives her the evil eye over the head of their latest perp, she just grins. "Also maybe up your pizza order. You're welcome."
Point is, when it rolls around to Saturday night, Steve's house--their house, Danny reminds himself, and tries not to feel too ridiculously smug about it--is packed full, people milling around and spilling out onto the beach. There's Kamekona and his girlfriend, in a heated debated with Gracie about his latest flavor of shave ice, and Ben Bass, following Kono around like a lovesick puppy. There's Malia, who Danny knows is responsible for Chin's recent upswing in happiness, chatting with Rachel, who Danny knows Steve invited.
There's…well, there's a lot of people Danny doesn't know, but they all seem friendly enough, and he's pretty drunk, and Steve keeps grinning at him when he's not double-checking that the exits are clear, so.
"My cousin throws a hell of a party," Chin says, slinging an arm across Danny's shoulders. "Sorry, brah, you shouldn't have given her the excuse, I thought you knew better."
"It's fine," Danny says, catching Steve's eye from across the room. Steve lifts his beer and his eyebrow, and oh, shit, Danny's heart is doing that thing again, with the erratic beating and the clenching. Maybe he should get it looked at.
"You should know that you're officially embarrassing yourself," Chin says, amused, which is when Danny realizes he's got a truly goofy grin spread across his face. He tries to get rid of it and can't, but Chin's smiling at him, steering him out towards the lanai.
Danny chats with Ben, who doesn't seem to understand quite what he's gotten himself into, insanity-wise, with Kono. He chats with Malia, who knows exactly what she's gotten herself into with Chin, and seems genuinely happy about it. He takes Grace from Kamekona when he starts to complain that she'll change his whole menu if he's not careful, and that draws Rachel over, and then Steve's putting a broad hand on his shoulder, squeezing lightly.
And somehow--Danny's not sure how, there's been a lot of beer--somehow the night ends with the last few of them out on the beach. Danny's sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs they picked up last month, Grace fast asleep on his chest, and Steve's sitting at his feet, leaning against his legs. Chin's in the chair next to him, Malia perched on his lap, and Ben and Kono are sprawled out on a towel, still damp from their swim. Rachel's in the second-to-last chair, the picture of composure except for her bare feet, and Kamekona's coming back from seeing his girlfriend to her car, a beer in hand.
"Think it's the last one, brah," he says, when Danny tips his head back inquiringly. "You shoulda bought more, I guess."
"I'm probably good anyway," Danny admits, gesturing for him to sit in the free chair. Steve leans back a little, his head resting on Danny's knee, and grins up at him.
"Probably?" he says. "Because I definitely saw you drop a plate inside earlier."
"My drunken coordination is not your concern," Danny says, but he lets his hand brush across the hair at the nape of Steve's neck anyway. "And hey, hey, who do you think drank most of that beer, huh? Mr. Navy SEALs can hold their liquor, you are pretty punchy at the moment, my friend."
"Mmmm," Steve agrees, settling back against him. "If you say so."
"Houston, we have agreeability," Danny says. "We should start getting you drunk on the job, babe, make my life easier, you know?"
Steve snorts. "Right, because you're so agreeable yourself."
"Hey!" Danny says, when everyone laughs. "Hey, hey, that's not fair, I am clearly the more agreeable of--"
"Oh, please," Rachel says, but it's light, easy teasing, not the barb it would've been once. "Would you like me to tell them about the time at the opera, Daniel? I will, you know. I think your team especially might enjoy the story."
"You," Kono says, raising her eyebrows, "sat through an opera?"
"No," Rachel says, laughing around it, "no, he did not. He, in fact, sat through an entire twenty minutes of La Boheme before he faked an urgent phone call--"
"It was not faked!" Danny cries, and then winces when Gracie shifts a little against him. "It was not faked," he repeats, quieter. "It was a homicide, okay, sometimes there are just murders--"
"In the middle of the opera you'd been trying to get out of for weeks, yes, I'm sure," Rachel says, grinning at him. They'd had this fight a million times when they were married--once it had been enough to get Danny's blood up like nobody's business. Now, though, with their daughter conked out against him, Steve still craning his neck to smile in his direction…well, now he can joke about it. Now he can admit it's kind of funny.
"Okay, okay," he says, "I may have asked the guys at the precinct to, uh, not hesitate to call me if anything came up."
"It was a dog," Rachel says gleefully. "A dog was killed. He left me at the opera for a doggy homicide."
"I am an animal lover!" Danny says, when Steve throws his head back and howls with laughter. "That creature's killer needed to be brought to justice."
"You are a bold man," Chin says. "To run a play like that? Very bold. Stupid, but bold."
"Oh, well," Rachel says, "it's hardly the worst date night we ever had."
"Hey!" says Danny.
"I can only imagine," says Kono.
"Date night?" says Steve.
"Don't look at me like that, Daniel," Rachel says, and turns to Kono. "Don't listen to a thing he says, we were once escorted from a Dave & Buster's and banned for life."
"That was her fault," Danny says, pointing at Grace. "That totally doesn't count."
"I'm sorry," Steve says, "can we go back for a second? Date night?"
"Yeah, man," Kamekona says, looking at Steve like he's crazy. "Do you guys not do that? You're awfully…y'know, lovey-dovey, not to."
"We are not lovey-dovey," Danny sputters.
"You kind of are," says Ben, which, considering the way he has seriously been trailing after Kono like he's seen the light of god, is actually kind of embarrassing.
Steve just laughs, because they apparently remove the embarrassment gene along with the sanity one in the SEALs. Danny means to smack him upside the head, but he's a little drunk and his arm's mostly asleep from Grace, so he kind of ends up petting Steve's hair instead.
Ben gives him a look that very clearly says "See what I mean?" and Danny despairs of his life.
"Seriously, though," Malia says, "you guys don't go on dates? I'd think with the high stress job and everything, you'd have to either make time for that kind of thing or go insane."
"Well, for one thing, he is already insane," Danny says. "And for another, yeah, there is the whole job thing, so we're, you know, a little busy--"
"Chin makes time," Malia points out.
"So does Kono," Ben adds, and okay, Danny's starting to hate Ben a little.
"Not to pile on," Rachel says, "but Stan and I always make time for them, and, Daniel, you know your job was--"
"Oh, god, could we not?" Danny moans. "This is different, Steve and I have the same job, this is not like--this is not a sign of an unhealthy relationship, guys, we're very happy, can we let this go?"
"You should know about this anyway, brother," Kamekona says to Steve, ignoring Danny entirely. "Your sister got me and my girl back together, you know, and she told me date night was an important part of maintaining a healthy relationship. Her words, man. She not talk to you about this kind of thing?"
"You see!" says Danny, because he's feeling control of this situation slipping away from him rapidly. "We can't be taking relationship advice from Mary, Mary is a lovely person and I'm very fond of her, but she doesn't have the best history with--don't look at me like that, Steven, I love Mary, I'm just saying, you, me, date night, I'm not seeing it."
""Might be a good idea," Steve says, in the tones of a man weighing a serious and possibly life-threatening decision, and Jesus Christ, Danny is so fucking fucked.
--
They make it to the next Friday without Steve bringing up the whole dating thing again, and Danny is lulled into a false sense of security by his silence. He must have been too drunk to remember, he decides, even though he knows better. He must have decided it's a stupid idea, he tells himself, even though Steve's never met a stupid idea he didn't like.
Then Friday rolls around, and they're still in the office at 6:45, going over the suspect pool with Kono and Chin for the millionth time, when Steve glances at his watch and says, "Okay, we're done."
"We're done," Danny repeats. "I'm sorry, we're--we are not done, we're halfway through this list, you can't just arbitrarily decide that this is the end of the day, what do we look like here, is this not--"
"If this is going to end up being a 'you're not the boss of me' argument," Steve says, "I'd like to go ahead and point out that right now, in this office, I am actually the boss of you."
"Like hell you are," Danny growls, stalking forward. He means to follow that statement with some, er, particularly pointed proof to back it up, but Chin coughs hastily and reminds Danny that they're not alone.
"Right." Danny says, pausing to giving Chin a sheepish look, "uh, sorry. But, okay, Steven, okay, I understand that you've decided you're ready to be done or whatever, but, I say again, we're only halfway through this list--"
"That we've gone over five times today alone," Kono says.
"Not helping," Danny snaps, because he's got a bad feeling about this. "Why do you want to leave anyway, McGarrett? Since when are you the type to abandon the office on a Friday, who are you, what is this, huh?"
Steve grins at him, slow and dangerous, and oh, man, Danny's gonna die like this one of these days, with Steve making that face at him from the other side of a gunfight.
"We have plans," he says.
"We have plans," Danny repeats, slowly, like maybe that sentence will come to mean something else if he's careful enough about it. "Plans, what plans are these, I don't recall any plans. I think, for us to have plans, that means that you have to have, at some point, mentioned them to me--"
"I'm mentioning them now," Steve says, shrugging. "Come on, it's date night."
"I'm sorry," says Danny, "it's what?"
--
They start with dinner, which actually goes okay. Steve and Danny have eaten together at restaurants before, after all--it's just that it's never officially been a date before, that's never really been something they did. Their relationship had kind of grown out of a mutual passion for blowjobs and crimefighting, and then Danny had turned around one day and realized he was in love with the bastard. Dating had never been part of the equation.
But yeah, dinner's alright. Steve wants to split a meal, which Danny firmly does not allow--Steve's idea of a fair split generally involves him getting a larger share of the food and then bitching that Danny should eat more vegetables--but otherwise it's fine. They argue good-naturedly over their food, and then when Danny doesn't finish his Steve again brings up the splitting thing, and they fight about it mostly for sport as they drive back to the house to drop the leftovers in the fridge.
Then they go to the movie theatre. Things go downhill from there.
"We missed a preview," Steve snaps, settling into the seat next to Danny. "I hate missing the previews."
"Of course you do," Danny says. "Of course you do, even though I know you can find them online--"
"Says the man who insists on ordering things from catalogs even though it's the 21st century."
"Do we need to have the master cylinder conversation again?" Danny says, snatching the popcorn from Steve. "Do we? Because we can, I would be happy to go down that road with you, I will go down that road with you all day long."
"I'm just saying, if we had split the meal we wouldn't have had to go home--"
"Jeez, this again, I didn't want what you were ordering--"
"You just didn't want to share--"
"You do recognize that by having this argument with me you are, in fact, just missing another preview--"
"Shhh!" says the woman sitting behind them, sounding put upon.
"It's just the previews!" Danny cries, because no one on this entire island is sane but him.
Steve and the lady behind them give him identical disappointed looks. Danny sinks low in his chair, irritated, and starts in on the popcorn.
This works for six minutes. Then:
"Jesus, Danny," Steve says, "I thought you weren't hungry."
"That was for steak," Danny says. "This is popcorn, we're in a movie theatre, it's different."
"It's going to give you a heart attack," Steve says, eyeing it. "Seriously, I can feel my arteries clogging from here."
"There is something wrong with you," Danny says.
"Well, I'll tell you what isn't wrong with me, and that's my cardiovascular system."
"You are the one who wanted to come to the movie!" Danny says, maybe a little louder than he intended. "We could be having sex right now!"
The woman behind them makes a noise that indicates she's choked on her soda in horror. Steve, being Steve, takes Danny's comment as a suggestion, and Danny has to spend the next hour and a half batting his hands away and hissing about public indecency, which is not his idea of a good time.
When they leave, the woman they've offended gives them a look that says, clear as day, that she doesn't know what she did to deserve them.
Danny sympathizes.
--
The next week, they manage to wrap up their Friday relatively early. Chin peels off to pick up Malia, Ben shows up with flowers for Kono and says "Well, it's hard to be romantic when compared to your bosses" when she asks what the occasion is (seriously, Danny hates him a lot), and Steve corners Danny in his office.
He's like a tiger. A crazy, crazy tiger.
"What," Danny says, "what is it, please tell me that you just want to have sex in public or something."
"No," Steve says, and then pauses. "Wait, would you be up for that?"
"No," Danny says, "no, we are officers of the law, Steven, how many times do I have to tell you this--"
"Well, that's not what I came in here to talk to you about anyway, so I'll let it go," Steve says, like Danny's the one being unreasonable. "It's Friday, Danny. Date night."
Danny thinks longingly of their house, of the beer in the fridge, of the couch and the hammock and Steve's mouth on his dick. "Or we could just go home," he suggests. "No people to deal with, no previews to miss, no strangers to offend? Sounds pretty great to me."
Steve frowns like he's considering it, and Danny leaps in to push him the rest of the way.
"I'll make it worth your while," he says, raising his eyebrows and looking pointedly down at Steve's crotch. Steve swallows hard, and oh, fuck yes, Danny's definitely going to win this one--
"Oh," Steve says, "that sounds…that sounds great, Danno, it really does, but, uh. I kind of already bought the tickets."
"Tickets for what?" Danny says.
"Well," Steve hedges, "there's this play…"
"Stop," Danny says, "just stop. Stop, because unless I have somehow managed to miss the fact that Gracie is in a play this week--which I doubt, babe, my doubt is vast and extremely sincere--but unless it's for Gracie, I don't do plays. It's for the best, alright, trust me on this, let's just, let's go home, okay, come on, I know you want to go home, secretly, I know you do--"
"Dates are an important part of maintaining a healthy relationship," Steve says, in a tone that indicates very clearly that he's reciting. Danny groans.
"You talked to Mary."
"And Rachel," Steve admits. "Look, Danno, I know this isn't--but everyone says--I just don't want to…"
He trails off, and he's making that face, the one he makes when he genuinely thinks he's fucked something up. Oh, right, Danny thinks, not for the first time, Steve doesn't know normal people relationship rules.
He takes pity. He can't help but take pity.
Then he finds out it's a musical.
"There is a difference," Danny says, standing outside the theatre in a goddamn suit an hour later, "between a play and a musical, Steven. The main difference, I will grant you, is the singing, but there's also the fact that plays only make me want to tear all my hair out, whereas musicals--"
"This isn't a musical," Steve says, peering at the tickets. "Rachel said--"
"Oh," says Danny, "oh, oh, it's all so clear to me now, some detective I am. Rachel hooked you up with these tickets, Rachel who knows exactly how I feel about Sondheim--"
"Wait," Steve says, "you know who wrote it?"
"Yes, I know who wrote it," Danny snaps. "I know you persist in thinking that Jersey is some kind of, I don't know, cultural hellhole, but I do actually have brain cells, okay, working ones, they function--
"I don't think Jersey's a cultural hellhole," Steve says. "Just a hellhole. It's a fine distinction."
Danny is really annoyed to realize he's so used to that kind of thing that it doesn't even bother him. "My point here, okay, my point is that I spent ten years married to a woman who, despite my strenuous urging, would not give up her interest in The Theatre, and also fuck you very much on behalf of the entire state of New Jersey."
The lights flicker, and Steve smirks at him. And, oh, Jesus, Danny's going to have to keep yelling at him because the alternative is going to be jumping him. Steve looks stupidly, painfully good in a suit, so good it makes Danny's throat go a little dry, but the last thing the man needs right now is positive reinforcement.
"The real question," Danny says, "is why you don't know that Sondheim wrote Into the Woods."
"Why would I know that?"
"You're the one who did the whole," Danny waves a hand to indicate that he doesn't quite know how to explain, and Steve raises an eyebrow, so he's forced to continue, "you know, Naval…Intelligence…thing."
"Yes, Danny," Steve says, very dry, "that's what we did in Naval Intelligence. Watch musicals."
"Well, how the hell am I supposed to know what you got up to?" Danny asks, and, oh no, they're at their seats, the lights are dimming, this is actually happening to him. "Okay, Steve, babe, listen to me, we still have time to get out of this, trust me, now is the time to go--"
"We're here," Steve says, "and we're doing this. Now be quiet."
--
"I hate this," Steve whispers, fifteen minutes in.
"You hate this?" Danny hisses incredulously. "You do, really, because if I recall correctly you were the one who insisted--"
"Handjob?" says Steve, shifting a little in his chair.
"You are a deviant," Danny says, "no, really, there is something wrong with you--that wasn't permission, McGarrett, get off me, oh my god, we're in public, what the hell is the matter with--hhhhng, Steve."
The guy sitting next to them notices what they're up to when Danny comes, jerking in his chair, and calls security on them. It's only their badges that keep them from getting arrested for public indecency, and Danny bitches at Steve the whole way home, but doesn't quite manage to remove the smirk from his face.
It's not necessarily the worst musical he's ever been to, is the point.
--
"This is an arcade," Danny says the following Friday. "You told me we were going to interview a suspect."
"Maybe the suspect is in the arcade," Steve says, with shifty eyes. "He could be, you don't know."
"But he's not," Danny guesses, "because it's Friday and it's 5 o'clock, and this is yet another ill-fated attempt at a date."
"Er," says Steve.
"You do recall," Danny says, crowding up into Steve's personal space, "that I have to pick up my daughter in an hour, right? Because Stan and Rachel have that thing with her Sunday, which we talked about yesterday? You do remember that, don't you? The conversation about my daughter? Cute kid, about yay high, goes by Grace? Ringing any bells?"
"Er," says Steve. "I might have, ah. Taken care of that?"
Danny has half a second to run through all the terrible possibilities--sent a helicopter, misappropriated a squad car, or, god forbid, hired a babysitter--before he hears a familiar voice crying "Danno!"
Danny turns; Grace is tearing down the hallway towards him, Rachel walking at a more sedate pace behind her. He crouches and swoops Gracie up into a hug, balancing her on his hip.
"Hi, Monkey," he says. "Did your mom bring you out here to hang with me and Steve, huh? Is that what happened?"
Gracie nods gleefully, and Rachel's caught up now, is smirking at them. "I figured I owed you," she says, "for the Sondheim thing."
"You still owe me," Danny says, but he can't really bring himself to mean it, not when Grace is jumping out of his arms and running over to Steve like that. "That was cruel and unusual."
"But funny!" Rachel says. Danny glares at her, and Rachel sighs, shakes her head, and nods towards Steve, who's bent down next to Gracie. They're talking about something--Grace is pointing towards various games she wants to try and Steve's nodding along, smiling hesitantly in Danny's direction every few seconds.
Danny's heart issues are getting to be a real problem, although this time it's less of a clenching sensation and more like it's going to beat its way out of his chest. He's too young to die of heart failure. He has a daughter.
"He's trying, you know," Rachel says, her voice low. "Maybe you could cut him a little slack, Daniel, he just wants to do things the right."
"There was nothing wrong to begin with," Danny murmurs, unable to tear his eyes from Steve and Grace. When he finally does manage to glance back at Rachel, she looks surprised. "What?"
She shakes her head. "Nothing," she says, smiling at him. "I just--it's nothing. Have fun tonight, yes?"
"Thanks for bringing her," Danny says, because it needs to be said, regardless of the kind of torture Rachel'd indirectly subjected him to the previous week.
"Anytime," Rachel says. "Grace, darling, I'll see you on Sunday, alright?"
"Okay, Mommy!" Grace agrees. "Steve and I are gonna go get corn dogs, Danno, c'mon!"
It goes really well, for awhile. Steve chokes down almost an entire corn dog, to Danny's great amusement, and Grace bounces back and forth between them like a Ping-Pong ball, all crazy excitement and sugar highs. Steve teaches her to cheat the shooting games, which is unsurprising, and she and Danny play pinball together, each of them manning a flipper.
"Yeah, that's right," Danny says, landing a particularly difficult tilt shot and winning them a thousand points. "Take that, you 1980's relic--yeah, that's right, I said it, burn."
"Are you talking to the pinball machine?" Steve asks. He sounds like he's trying hard not to laugh.
"Of course not," Danny says, pausing to let out a whoop as Gracie sinks their ball into the extra turn slot. "You've obviously had one head injury too many, McGarrett, you're losing your mind--oh, no, wait, I take it back, you've always been crazy."
"Oooh," says Steve, completely deadpan, "burn," and Gracie laughs and laughs as Danny smacks him upside the head.
They used to do this back in Jersey, the arcade, just Danny and Grace, their own private thing. Danny's surprised to find that he doesn't mind having Steve with them, can't resent the way Grace holds both of their hands as she drags them from machine to machine. When they've amassed a collection of tickets beyond even the capacity of Steve's cargo pockets, Danny laughs and ruffles her hair.
"Danno," Grace complains, and Danny grins.
"How bout you let Steve take you to trade in some of those tickets, huh?" he says, mostly because of the way Steve's face lights up at the suggestion, but also because Gracie's starting to droop a little, and they'll probably have to head home soon. "Don't let him make you pick out anything weird."
"I don't think Steve would do that," Grace says.
"Then you don't know Steve very well, Monkey," Danny says, and Grace just smirks up at him, nine years old and so fucking smart it's hard to believe. He watches them walk away, Grace grabbing Steve's hand and hauling him along, and Steve looks over his shoulder and catches Danny's eye.
And here's the thing about stumbling into new definitions of family while you're not paying attention--it's kind of blindsiding, kind of overwhelming, when it all hits you at once. Steve's looking at Danny like he's not sure what he did right, but he wants to keep doing it, and that in and of itself puts a knot in Danny's throat; what's worse is the way he's not jealous of Steve, not at all, for the way Grace is holding his hand.
But the middle of an arcade is hardly the place for sweeping sappy revelations, so Danny starts scouting around for a Ms. Pacman machine. He finds one in the back corner, occupied by some kid, about 16, with sickly pale skin and greasy hair. His focus on the screen is absolute. Danny sighs and clears his throat.
"Hey," he says, "when d'you think you're going to be done?"
"Later," the kid says, "fuck off," which, okay, is not ever the best way to get rid of Danny, especially when between him and something he wants to do with his daughter.
"Wrong answer," Danny says cheerfully. "You should wrap it up, take yourself outside, maybe get acquainted with the sun, huh? I've got it on good authority that we got more of that here than most places, you should check it out."
"Was I not clear?" the kid says. "Fuck. Off."
"You know," Danny says, mostly to be irritating, "I got to Triple Banana a couple of times."
"You're still a liar," says Steve, returning from the ticket exchange. He's got Gracie tucked under one arm, a big pink elephant in her hands.
"Danno," she says, "look what I got! Steve said I should get the green one, but I told him pink was better."
"Steve doesn't know what he's talking about, Monkey," Danny says, grinning at her. The kid at the Ms. Pacman machine looks up, rolls his eyes, and snorts.
"So what is this," he says, "some kind of gay thing? You a couple of--"
"Careful," Steve snaps, at the same time Danny says, "You shut your mouth in front of my daughter."
"Then fuck off," the kid says, shrugging.
Danny takes a deep breath and looks at Steve, who shrugs. "My hands are full, he's all yours."
"Right," Danny says, "Grace, baby, I want you to look at Steve, okay? Just look at Steve, everything's fine."
Grace narrows her eyes. "Is this gonna be like the time at Dave and Buster's, Danno? Because I like it here, I want to be able to come back."
"Er," says Danny. He's reconsidering his course of action when Gracie adds, "And what does fuck mean?"
"Christ," says Steve, giving Danny a look that says Kill this asshole. "Okay, Grace, definitely don't look at your Dad, let's go find a new game, alright?"
Danny's got the kid shoved up against the wall three seconds later, his thumb pressed a little harder than it needs to be against his throat.
"Right," he says conversationally, "so I have gathered that you must have a limited amount of human interaction, that's great, I get that, you do that, no judgment here, but you think long and hard before you swear in front of a nine year old again, huh? Because, y'see, you've never had kids, so how would you know this, but I don't really relish having to tell my baby girl what that word means, you know? And also, since we're talking here, since I've got you, homophobia? It's not a classy choice, buddy. D'you understand what I'm saying here?"
The kid nods frantically, and Danny releases him, wipes his hands down on his pants.
"Also," he adds, "in the future, guy like me, carries himself a certain way, holster on his hip--even if it's empty--probably a cop, you know? Better to move when asked."
The kid nods again, and Danny almost feels bad, and then he remembers what this jackass was going to say in front of his daughter and thinks better of it.
"Run along," he says.
The kid doesn't need to be told twice.
--
Grace falls asleep in Steve's arms after the conversation with the manager of the place--who, Danny suspects, only doesn't ban them because he's a father himself--but before they get to the car. Steve stops walking when he realizes she's out, stands stock-still in the middle of the parking lot, like the slightest movement will wake her up.
"Relax," Danny says, taking her from him easily. She shifts a little and then quiets against him, and Steve's arms are waving around a little, like he's not sure what to do with them now that they're free. "She could sleep through an earthquake, you were fine."
Steve laughs. "I'll keep that in mind for the future."
"Yeah," Danny says, and then, "hey, Steve. Thanks."
"For what?"
"For," Danny says, and waves towards the arcade. "that, I guess. It was. It's nice that you're willing to--it was just nice of you, that's all."
"Don't be stupid," Steve says, reaching over to pull Danny's keys from his pocket. Danny gets Grace in the backseat, buckles the seatbelt over her, tucks her new toy under her arm. He's in the passenger side already when Steve cups his jaw, forces Danny to meet his eyes.
"I'm serious, Danno," he says. "Don't be stupid. You have to know that I'm--"
And Danny kisses him, can't help but kiss him, in the hushed quiet of the car. Steve groans very softly into his mouth, his hand tangling in Danny's hair, and if it weren't for Grace in the backseat this would probably get very inappropriate very fast. As it it, Danny pulls back after a few seconds, grinning, and Steve presses their foreheads together for a minute, because he's a stupid sappy goof under that tough-guy SEAL exterior.
"That doesn't really count as a date," Danny points out when they're halfway home.
"Yeah," Steve admits. "I didn't figure you'd mind."
"I don't," Danny says, and grins. They go to the arcade every second Saturday, after that.
--
Danny actually gets a three week respite from the whole date night thing, because they get tangled in a case that barely leaves time for breathing, let alone anything else. He and Steve spend most of their time shooting, researching, or trying to get each other to sleep, with varying degrees of success.
In the middle of the second week, Steve passes out sitting up on their couch, having been awake for four days straight. Danny sighs when he finds him, pulls the file from his hands and nudges him sideways, until he grunts and falls, prone, against the cushions.
"C'mere," Steve mumbles, and Danny's not even sure he's awake enough to mean it, but he strips down to his boxers and goes anyway. He wakes hours later with Steve on top of him, his face tucked into the curve of Danny's neck, his breathing slow and not quite even.
"We should get up," Danny says, because he's never once beaten Steve awake. Even the act of him waking up wakes Steve--it's one of those things he's just gotten used to, one of those things that doesn't even phase him now.
"Yeah," Steve agrees, and doesn't move.
"My back hurts," Danny tries.
"Whiner," Steve mumbles.
"We've got--"
"Jesus, Danny, I know," Steve says, and shifts. "Give a guy a minute, I haven't seen you in a week."
"Has the sleep deprivation started eating braincells?" Danny asks. "You see me every day, you lunatic, sometimes for eighteen, nineteen hours at a time--on runs, in the car, at the office, while you're pistol-whipping suspects against my urgent advice--"
"I thought you were gonna let that go," Steve says, and yawns. "And no, my brain cells are fine."
"Debatable."
"I meant I haven't seen you like this," Steve says, and oh, okay, his hand is in Danny's pants, hello Commander McGarrett. "Which, by the way, is driving me nuts, because I have to look at you all the time, and you need to stop wearing shirts that fit you, I've been meaning to tell you that. I'm starting to see the truth in the expression 'Don't shit where you eat,' is my point."
"You hadn't learned that lesson already, Navy-boy?"
"Not quite this well," Steve says against his jaw.
"Well," Danny says, and his breath is only hitching a little, not so much that it's undignified, definitely not, "I have been told I'm a learning experience."
"Yeah, I bet," Steve laughs, and scoots lower on the couch. It's a tight fit to begin with--two grown men and one of them a giant, this thing was not designed for these kinds of eventualities--so Steve looks ridiculous between Danny's legs. He's bent up all crooked, his feet draped over the arm of the couch, and his face is still heavy with sleep. There are dark smudges under his eyes betraying his exhaustion, and Danny's sure he's got matching ones.
Steve's grinning, though, a soft, lazy thing, as he nudges Danny's dick out from under his boxers and wraps his mouth around it.
"Fuck, babe," Danny breathes, letting his head tip back and closing his eyes. Steve hums some kind of agreement and keeps tonguing at him, his usual technique abandoned in favor of something looser, more casual. Danny reaches down to bury a hand in Steve's hair, grounding himself, and Steve's thumb is rubbing circles on the inside of his thigh.
The sun is just starting to filter in through the window, casting everything in a faint golden glow. There are dust specks in the air, catching in the beams of light landing on the hardwood, and Danny watches them drift with Steve's name caught in his throat. When he comes, it's as quiet and easy as everything else; a sharp intake of breath, an almost anti-climactic release, the sensation of Steve swallowing around him.
"Morning," Steve says, pulling his mouth up and standing up. "We've got to get to the office, so I'll just--"
"The fuck you will," Danny says, and grabs his wrist. Steve lets himself get yanked back down, lets Danny slide a hand under the shorts he'd passed out in, lets Danny lick into his mouth as he pulls him off. He's laughing about something, little gasps of mirth between kisses, but Danny can't quite be bothered to find out.
"What," he says finally, when he's got Steve's come all over his hand, "what, what is it, what's so funny," and Steve smirks at him.
"You've got bedhead," he says, like it's the most hilarious thing in the world.
Danny sighs. "I thought you'd come to terms with the way my hair is in the morning, I really did. This is regression, McGarrett."
Steve kisses him again and ruffles his hair like an asshole before he gets up.
"Could be worse," he says, and yeah, for once he's probably right.
--
Then the case ends.
"A double date?" Danny repeats, staring at Steve from the passenger seat of the Camaro. He'd let himself think that the whole 'date night' thing had fallen by the wayside, which was obviously an error. "What made you think that would be a good idea, given our track record, huh?"
"Well, technically it's a triple date," Steve admits, taking a corner so hard the tires squeal for absolutely no reason at all. "I would have felt weird just asking Chin, or just Kono--I wouldn't want to send the impression of favoritism."
"A triple date," Danny says. "Steven, it may have escaped your attention--and it's not that I don't enjoy spending time with Chin and Kono, please understand that--but you have noticed that the four of us tend to draw trouble, right? Tell me you've noticed that."
"We do not draw trouble," Steve says.
"You are touched in the head," Danny says. "No, no, you are more than touched in the head, touched in the head is not nearly a strong enough--"
"It's just dinner, Danno," Steve says. "What could happen?"
"You've just doomed us all," Danny says morosely. "When the island explodes tonight, I hope you blame yourself."
The island doesn't explode. Dinner actually goes remarkably well, all things considered, until an actual real life gunfight breaks out at the next table while they're eating dessert.
"You see?" Danny cries, nailing the nearest perp in the shoulder.
"This proves nothing!" Steve yells over his shoulder, not breaking stride in his foot pursuit of the original shooter. No doubt he's off to engage in some ill-advised hand to hand combat, but Danny's adjusted to his inability to behave like a normal person by now.
He catches Ben Bass's eye as he's cuffing his perp, and is surprised by the degree of fellow feeling that wells up. Ben's mouth is working silently, and his eyes are wide--Danny's guessing that has something to do with the way Kono had stood up on her chair and vaulted the table to land a kick on that one guy's throat.
"Didn't break his neck," Kono calls, and then, when the guy grunts, adds, "yet, princess, don't even think about it."
"Welcome to the club," Danny says, as Ben blinks like he's trying to clear his head of the madness.
"You get used to it," Malia chimes in. She's still at the table, calmly finishing her mousse while Chin sweeps the last shooter's legs out from under him. "Eventually."
"Danno," Steve calls, coming back in with a body dragging behind him, "does this jackass need to be conscious for you to book him?"
"Date nights are a terrible plague on society," Danny says, mostly to himself, and goes to see how many of the Geneva conventions Steve's broken this time.
--
They go to an informal surf competition the next week, although Steve protests vehemently that it's not a date, it's just an outing, so Danny doesn't need to look at him like that.
"Did you pack dinner?" Danny asks.
"No," Steve says.
Danny looks at him, at the smug, self-satisfied grin, and sighs. "Did you order dinner?"
"We have to eat, Danno," Steve says, and really, he's going to strain his eyes with how often they go all shifty like that. "Be reasonable."
"Reasonable," Danny says, "is not a word you get to use, ever. Remove it from your vocabulary, okay, because it doesn't mean what you think it means, and using words you don't understand can lead to unfortunate confusion. Let's call to mind the time I said 'You can't hit him, it will make the evidence inadmissible,' and you said, 'Sure, Danno, whatever you say--'"
"We got to use his testimony anyway."
"Because you abused your government privileges!" Danny cries, waving his hands. "Again, it's enablement is what it is, you have a disorder and the governor is only aiding and abetting you, I'm going to have to stage an intervention--"
"It's just surfing, Danny," Steve says. "And a little dinner. Kono and Ben are both competing, you want to support them, don't you?"
"I want to support Kono," Danny agrees readily. What goodwill towards Ben he'd managed to build up had evaporated the previous Tuesday, when Ben--who shouldn't even have been in the building--had sided with Steve on the whole 'Eat more vegetables, Danny,' debate. "She is a teammate and a friend, and I want her to succeed. I just don't understand why we can't support her from home, with encouraging text messages and maybe the occasional 'Go team' phonecall."
"You're lucky you have me," Steve says, pulling into the parking lot and cutting the engine. "You'd never leave the house otherwise. I bet you'd get cats."
"I hate cats," Danny mutters. "And you, right at this moment, more than a little."
"Yeah, yeah," Steve says, "I see Chin and Malia, come on."
Danny makes a fatal mistake: he stops to go to the bathroom. If he were a normal guy, in a normal relationship with a regular old human and not a hyped up lunatic SEAL freak, this would not be an issue--normal people, he imagines, go to the bathroom without causing any chaos all the time. He remembers being one of them, those sweet, long lost days when straying from his partner's side for five goddamn minutes wasn't the first step in a chain reaction of crazy.
But that's not his life anymore, and when he gets over to Chin and Malia, Steve's nowhere to be found.
"He entered, didn't he," Danny says. It's not really a question.
Chin gives him one of those looks that Danny has surreptitiously been trying to learn from him--the one that says a combination of 'You know how stupid you sound, right?' and 'Do I look like I have time to answer obvious questions?'
"Do you really have to ask?" he says.
Danny sighs and settles in next to them, and Malia offers him some pity snacks, which Danny takes gratefully. He watches Ben nail his turn; Kono goes after him, shredding a wave so hard Danny's surprised the ocean doesn't just give up and recede. A number of kids he vaguely recognizes from that housewarming party follow them, and most of them manage to stay upright, and then it's Steve's turn.
"You stupid ass," Danny mutters under his breath, trying to ignore the fact that his whole body tenses as Steve gets to his feet on the board. "I can't leave you alone for a second, can I?"
"He can't actually hear you, brah," Chin says, in the long-suffering tones of someone who is used to him.
"He's worried, Chin," Malia chides. "It's okay for him to express himself."
"I am not," Danny starts, but then his eye is drawn back to the water, and oh fuck, oh fuck, Steve is falling. Danny's on his feet before he even realizes he's getting up, and Steve's still under, hasn't surfaced, and all the Navy SEAL training in the world won't save him if he's been shot like Ian Adams was--
--and then it's over, Steve's head is popping up from under the waves, and Danny can breathe again.
"Jesus," Chin says behind him; he sounds distant, like he's talking through water, which is probably fitting. "Danny, maybe you should sit down."
"Your color's not looking good," Malia adds, and this is ridiculous, this is so ridiculous, that he's getting lectures of safety when Steve is the one who nearly drowned. Chin yanks him back down onto the sand, which does effectively stop him from running into the water and bashing Steve to death with his board, but is undignified nonetheless.
"You see," he hears Chin say to Malia, "this is why I don't like to go places with them."
Danny's kind of gratified to know that at least he's not the only one against him and Steve subjecting the world to…well, to Steve. Then he processes the word 'them,' and can't even really bring himself to blame Chin. At all.
Steve runs up the beach a couple minutes later, board--probably borrowed--tucked under his arm, a broad grin on his face. Kono and Ben have both placed, and are accepting the back-pats and bragging rights that this has yielded them, which is for the best--the fewer witnesses around for Steve's murder, the better. There's an angry red mark around his ankle, where his board strap had probably saved him from certain death, and sand in his hair.
He takes one look at Danny's face--and maybe Danny's color is bad, how would he know--and stops smiling.
"Sorry," he says, and it's so fucking hangdog, so genuinely unsure. He's always so ready to go to the worst-case scenario, Steve is, always so sure that this is the fuck-up that's going to be the last straw.
Danny still wants to kill him, but maybe a little less than he did before.
"Can we just go home," Danny says, "before you do anything else idiotic?"
Steve doesn't even argue with him. Hell, Steve lets him drive.
--
Danny steels himself the following Friday, waits for the axe to fall. He waits through breakfast and lunch, through two briefings with HPD, through a high-speed chase and the messy aftermath. He waits through a pile of backlogged paperwork and a phone call with Rachel, through the end of the workday and the drive home.
It's only when they pull into the driveway that he bites the bullet and says, "Okay, what is it, what are you making me do tonight in the name of relationship health, tell me before the suspense actually kills me, I beg of you."
Steve shrugs, the corner of his mouth pulling down. "I'm not making you do anything."
"What?" Danny says. "Wait, really? Nothing? This isn't like--this isn't some kind of cruel ruse, right, McGarrett, you're not just trying to--"
"We're not very good at it," Steve says, clipped. He's out-and-out frowning now, and Danny feels something like guilt stir in the pit of his stomach. "And you don't seem to enjoy it, and that was the whole point, so."
Steve gets out of the car then, leaves Danny behind, walks to the house with a frankly unsettling slump to his shoulders. And oh, shit--Danny had been so caught up in all the ways date nights were a stupid, stupid plan that he'd forgotten to account for Steve's less-than-ideal interpersonal skills. He'd forgotten to consider the concept that Steve might actually think their relationship was on the rocks if they weren't going out on dates every week, because Steve didn't exactly have a normal relationship to compare them too.
"Goddamn it," Danny says, and gets out of the car.
Steve's in the kitchen, rummaging through the cupboards, when Danny gets inside.
"Come on, babe," he says, "I have a plan."
"For dinner? Because we're mostly out of--"
"For a date," Danny says. "Gimme the keys, c'mon, c'mon, I haven't got all night."
Steve follows him outside, climbs back into the car, and really this is a lot of effort Danny's going to to prove a point, but it'll be worth it.
"Right," Danny says, "no questions until we get there, alright?"
"Danny, what--"
"It's a simple directive, Steven, shhh," Danny says, and backs out of the driveway.
He turns right at the first intersection.
He turns right at the second intersection.
He turns right at the third intersection, and Steve draws in a breath like he's going to argue, and Danny says "Nothing, not a word, that's what you said."
"I didn't say that," Steve says.
"Well, you didn't not say it," Danny says.
"That's not a logic based--"
"Just shut up for five minutes, alright?" Danny says, pulling into their driveway and cutting the engine again. "Is that so hard?"
"I'm pretty sure that's my line," Steve says. "And also, what are we--"
"Inside," Danny instructs. "And silence."
Steve actually listens, which is in and of itself the most shocking part of Danny's week. They go back into the house, and Danny grabs two Longboards from the fridge, tosses one to Steve before beckoning him out to the lanai. He settles into one of the chairs close to the water, waits for Steve to do the same, and then smiles.
"Look, babe," he says, "I hate dating."
"I've gathered," Steve starts, his brow furrowing, and Danny flicks him lightly on the arm.
"Talking here, let me finish." He waits for Steve's nod and then sighs and continues. "You don't--okay, so, the first time Rachel and I went out, right, like, outside of the whole she-hit-me-with-the-car thing and the driving lessons, I accidentally set my menu on fire and then blamed it on the waiter. I've never been to a movie I didn't end up talking through, and you can't sit still if your life depends on it--"
"If my life depends on it I can totally sit still," Steve says. "I've been in that situation at least fifteen times, Danny."
"Okay," Danny says, narrowing his eyes, "fine, short of your life depending on it, you can't sit still, and it's not that I don't want to…do shit with you, okay? I just don't want it to be a thing, because you get all weird about pressure, and then I get all weird about pressure, and sometimes after a long week I just want to have a beer and, y'know, relax with you, alright?"
"But," Steve says.
"Look," Danny says, "look, okay, I get it, I get that everyone says this is what you do, and I'm not saying they're wrong, I'm just saying it's maybe not for us, you know? You're not doing anything wrong here, is my point--and do not let that go to your head, Steven, I can see you getting smug from here, you do things wrong all this time, just not, you know, this, okay? Do you understand what I'm saying here?"
"Kind of," Steve says, and he's smiling just a little now, and shit, shit, Danny's so in love with this lunatic it almost hurts to breathe, "but if you could maybe give me the Cliff's Notes version? That was a lot of words to keep track of."
"Stop trying to date me, asshole," Danny says, and kisses him, beer cool between his thighs, Steve's laughter warm against his mouth.
Okay, so the other day was illian's birthday, and I said "Oh hey, happy birthday, I will write you an H50 ficlet!" And then, later, hermette and thegrrrl2002 and I had this brief conversation about how Steve and Danny would have like, atrociously failtastic date nights. And I thought to myself, "Oh, self, here is what you will do! You will write a ficlet about Steve and Danny going on terrible terrible dates!"
Nine...thousand...words later...
Happy birthday, illian. I hope you enjoy this, hermette, thegrrrl2002. The rest of you...should probably just give up on me now. I am clearly a lost cause.
Title: just like the barrel going over the falls (crying all the way down 'i never asked to be involved')
Pairing: Steve/Danny [Chin/Malia, Kono/Ben Bass]
Rating: R (boooordering on NC-17)
Wordcount: 8,720
Summary: Peer pressure convinces Danny and Steve (well, okay, just Steve) that date nights are a necessary part of a healthy relationship. They try them out. It...doesn't go well.
Danny moves into Steve's place on a Wednesday.
He really should plan it better--should schedule it for a Friday or Saturday, when theoretically Kono could be delayed in hearing about it. But he isn't thinking about potential disaster, just about his lease ending and getting shit in boxes and never having to hear Steve bitch about his couch again.
And yeah, okay, maybe a little bit about Steve himself, about slow Sunday mornings and fast Monday nights, about having something shared and theirs. Only a little bit, though. It's definitely at the bottom of the list.
The point is, Danny doesn't plan properly, because Danny is a little distracted, and when he moves into Steve's place on Wednesday Steve just distracts him further. "Our chairs," he says, the sentimental bastard, "our table," and Danny says, "What's the point in co-owning a table if you're not going to fuck me on it," and when they go to work on Thursday morning, they're still kind of blissed out and unprepared.
So when Kono says, "What'd you two get up to last night," Danny doesn't panic.
He doesn't even panic when Steve says, "Oh, we moved in together," like it's no big thing.
It's when Kono says the word "housewarming," followed immediately by the word "party," that he starts to freak out in earnest.
--
"It'll just be a small thing," Kono says.
"I just invited a couple of other people," Kono says.
"You should probably buy more beer," Kono says, and when Danny gives her the evil eye over the head of their latest perp, she just grins. "Also maybe up your pizza order. You're welcome."
Point is, when it rolls around to Saturday night, Steve's house--their house, Danny reminds himself, and tries not to feel too ridiculously smug about it--is packed full, people milling around and spilling out onto the beach. There's Kamekona and his girlfriend, in a heated debated with Gracie about his latest flavor of shave ice, and Ben Bass, following Kono around like a lovesick puppy. There's Malia, who Danny knows is responsible for Chin's recent upswing in happiness, chatting with Rachel, who Danny knows Steve invited.
There's…well, there's a lot of people Danny doesn't know, but they all seem friendly enough, and he's pretty drunk, and Steve keeps grinning at him when he's not double-checking that the exits are clear, so.
"My cousin throws a hell of a party," Chin says, slinging an arm across Danny's shoulders. "Sorry, brah, you shouldn't have given her the excuse, I thought you knew better."
"It's fine," Danny says, catching Steve's eye from across the room. Steve lifts his beer and his eyebrow, and oh, shit, Danny's heart is doing that thing again, with the erratic beating and the clenching. Maybe he should get it looked at.
"You should know that you're officially embarrassing yourself," Chin says, amused, which is when Danny realizes he's got a truly goofy grin spread across his face. He tries to get rid of it and can't, but Chin's smiling at him, steering him out towards the lanai.
Danny chats with Ben, who doesn't seem to understand quite what he's gotten himself into, insanity-wise, with Kono. He chats with Malia, who knows exactly what she's gotten herself into with Chin, and seems genuinely happy about it. He takes Grace from Kamekona when he starts to complain that she'll change his whole menu if he's not careful, and that draws Rachel over, and then Steve's putting a broad hand on his shoulder, squeezing lightly.
And somehow--Danny's not sure how, there's been a lot of beer--somehow the night ends with the last few of them out on the beach. Danny's sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs they picked up last month, Grace fast asleep on his chest, and Steve's sitting at his feet, leaning against his legs. Chin's in the chair next to him, Malia perched on his lap, and Ben and Kono are sprawled out on a towel, still damp from their swim. Rachel's in the second-to-last chair, the picture of composure except for her bare feet, and Kamekona's coming back from seeing his girlfriend to her car, a beer in hand.
"Think it's the last one, brah," he says, when Danny tips his head back inquiringly. "You shoulda bought more, I guess."
"I'm probably good anyway," Danny admits, gesturing for him to sit in the free chair. Steve leans back a little, his head resting on Danny's knee, and grins up at him.
"Probably?" he says. "Because I definitely saw you drop a plate inside earlier."
"My drunken coordination is not your concern," Danny says, but he lets his hand brush across the hair at the nape of Steve's neck anyway. "And hey, hey, who do you think drank most of that beer, huh? Mr. Navy SEALs can hold their liquor, you are pretty punchy at the moment, my friend."
"Mmmm," Steve agrees, settling back against him. "If you say so."
"Houston, we have agreeability," Danny says. "We should start getting you drunk on the job, babe, make my life easier, you know?"
Steve snorts. "Right, because you're so agreeable yourself."
"Hey!" Danny says, when everyone laughs. "Hey, hey, that's not fair, I am clearly the more agreeable of--"
"Oh, please," Rachel says, but it's light, easy teasing, not the barb it would've been once. "Would you like me to tell them about the time at the opera, Daniel? I will, you know. I think your team especially might enjoy the story."
"You," Kono says, raising her eyebrows, "sat through an opera?"
"No," Rachel says, laughing around it, "no, he did not. He, in fact, sat through an entire twenty minutes of La Boheme before he faked an urgent phone call--"
"It was not faked!" Danny cries, and then winces when Gracie shifts a little against him. "It was not faked," he repeats, quieter. "It was a homicide, okay, sometimes there are just murders--"
"In the middle of the opera you'd been trying to get out of for weeks, yes, I'm sure," Rachel says, grinning at him. They'd had this fight a million times when they were married--once it had been enough to get Danny's blood up like nobody's business. Now, though, with their daughter conked out against him, Steve still craning his neck to smile in his direction…well, now he can joke about it. Now he can admit it's kind of funny.
"Okay, okay," he says, "I may have asked the guys at the precinct to, uh, not hesitate to call me if anything came up."
"It was a dog," Rachel says gleefully. "A dog was killed. He left me at the opera for a doggy homicide."
"I am an animal lover!" Danny says, when Steve throws his head back and howls with laughter. "That creature's killer needed to be brought to justice."
"You are a bold man," Chin says. "To run a play like that? Very bold. Stupid, but bold."
"Oh, well," Rachel says, "it's hardly the worst date night we ever had."
"Hey!" says Danny.
"I can only imagine," says Kono.
"Date night?" says Steve.
"Don't look at me like that, Daniel," Rachel says, and turns to Kono. "Don't listen to a thing he says, we were once escorted from a Dave & Buster's and banned for life."
"That was her fault," Danny says, pointing at Grace. "That totally doesn't count."
"I'm sorry," Steve says, "can we go back for a second? Date night?"
"Yeah, man," Kamekona says, looking at Steve like he's crazy. "Do you guys not do that? You're awfully…y'know, lovey-dovey, not to."
"We are not lovey-dovey," Danny sputters.
"You kind of are," says Ben, which, considering the way he has seriously been trailing after Kono like he's seen the light of god, is actually kind of embarrassing.
Steve just laughs, because they apparently remove the embarrassment gene along with the sanity one in the SEALs. Danny means to smack him upside the head, but he's a little drunk and his arm's mostly asleep from Grace, so he kind of ends up petting Steve's hair instead.
Ben gives him a look that very clearly says "See what I mean?" and Danny despairs of his life.
"Seriously, though," Malia says, "you guys don't go on dates? I'd think with the high stress job and everything, you'd have to either make time for that kind of thing or go insane."
"Well, for one thing, he is already insane," Danny says. "And for another, yeah, there is the whole job thing, so we're, you know, a little busy--"
"Chin makes time," Malia points out.
"So does Kono," Ben adds, and okay, Danny's starting to hate Ben a little.
"Not to pile on," Rachel says, "but Stan and I always make time for them, and, Daniel, you know your job was--"
"Oh, god, could we not?" Danny moans. "This is different, Steve and I have the same job, this is not like--this is not a sign of an unhealthy relationship, guys, we're very happy, can we let this go?"
"You should know about this anyway, brother," Kamekona says to Steve, ignoring Danny entirely. "Your sister got me and my girl back together, you know, and she told me date night was an important part of maintaining a healthy relationship. Her words, man. She not talk to you about this kind of thing?"
"You see!" says Danny, because he's feeling control of this situation slipping away from him rapidly. "We can't be taking relationship advice from Mary, Mary is a lovely person and I'm very fond of her, but she doesn't have the best history with--don't look at me like that, Steven, I love Mary, I'm just saying, you, me, date night, I'm not seeing it."
""Might be a good idea," Steve says, in the tones of a man weighing a serious and possibly life-threatening decision, and Jesus Christ, Danny is so fucking fucked.
--
They make it to the next Friday without Steve bringing up the whole dating thing again, and Danny is lulled into a false sense of security by his silence. He must have been too drunk to remember, he decides, even though he knows better. He must have decided it's a stupid idea, he tells himself, even though Steve's never met a stupid idea he didn't like.
Then Friday rolls around, and they're still in the office at 6:45, going over the suspect pool with Kono and Chin for the millionth time, when Steve glances at his watch and says, "Okay, we're done."
"We're done," Danny repeats. "I'm sorry, we're--we are not done, we're halfway through this list, you can't just arbitrarily decide that this is the end of the day, what do we look like here, is this not--"
"If this is going to end up being a 'you're not the boss of me' argument," Steve says, "I'd like to go ahead and point out that right now, in this office, I am actually the boss of you."
"Like hell you are," Danny growls, stalking forward. He means to follow that statement with some, er, particularly pointed proof to back it up, but Chin coughs hastily and reminds Danny that they're not alone.
"Right." Danny says, pausing to giving Chin a sheepish look, "uh, sorry. But, okay, Steven, okay, I understand that you've decided you're ready to be done or whatever, but, I say again, we're only halfway through this list--"
"That we've gone over five times today alone," Kono says.
"Not helping," Danny snaps, because he's got a bad feeling about this. "Why do you want to leave anyway, McGarrett? Since when are you the type to abandon the office on a Friday, who are you, what is this, huh?"
Steve grins at him, slow and dangerous, and oh, man, Danny's gonna die like this one of these days, with Steve making that face at him from the other side of a gunfight.
"We have plans," he says.
"We have plans," Danny repeats, slowly, like maybe that sentence will come to mean something else if he's careful enough about it. "Plans, what plans are these, I don't recall any plans. I think, for us to have plans, that means that you have to have, at some point, mentioned them to me--"
"I'm mentioning them now," Steve says, shrugging. "Come on, it's date night."
"I'm sorry," says Danny, "it's what?"
--
They start with dinner, which actually goes okay. Steve and Danny have eaten together at restaurants before, after all--it's just that it's never officially been a date before, that's never really been something they did. Their relationship had kind of grown out of a mutual passion for blowjobs and crimefighting, and then Danny had turned around one day and realized he was in love with the bastard. Dating had never been part of the equation.
But yeah, dinner's alright. Steve wants to split a meal, which Danny firmly does not allow--Steve's idea of a fair split generally involves him getting a larger share of the food and then bitching that Danny should eat more vegetables--but otherwise it's fine. They argue good-naturedly over their food, and then when Danny doesn't finish his Steve again brings up the splitting thing, and they fight about it mostly for sport as they drive back to the house to drop the leftovers in the fridge.
Then they go to the movie theatre. Things go downhill from there.
"We missed a preview," Steve snaps, settling into the seat next to Danny. "I hate missing the previews."
"Of course you do," Danny says. "Of course you do, even though I know you can find them online--"
"Says the man who insists on ordering things from catalogs even though it's the 21st century."
"Do we need to have the master cylinder conversation again?" Danny says, snatching the popcorn from Steve. "Do we? Because we can, I would be happy to go down that road with you, I will go down that road with you all day long."
"I'm just saying, if we had split the meal we wouldn't have had to go home--"
"Jeez, this again, I didn't want what you were ordering--"
"You just didn't want to share--"
"You do recognize that by having this argument with me you are, in fact, just missing another preview--"
"Shhh!" says the woman sitting behind them, sounding put upon.
"It's just the previews!" Danny cries, because no one on this entire island is sane but him.
Steve and the lady behind them give him identical disappointed looks. Danny sinks low in his chair, irritated, and starts in on the popcorn.
This works for six minutes. Then:
"Jesus, Danny," Steve says, "I thought you weren't hungry."
"That was for steak," Danny says. "This is popcorn, we're in a movie theatre, it's different."
"It's going to give you a heart attack," Steve says, eyeing it. "Seriously, I can feel my arteries clogging from here."
"There is something wrong with you," Danny says.
"Well, I'll tell you what isn't wrong with me, and that's my cardiovascular system."
"You are the one who wanted to come to the movie!" Danny says, maybe a little louder than he intended. "We could be having sex right now!"
The woman behind them makes a noise that indicates she's choked on her soda in horror. Steve, being Steve, takes Danny's comment as a suggestion, and Danny has to spend the next hour and a half batting his hands away and hissing about public indecency, which is not his idea of a good time.
When they leave, the woman they've offended gives them a look that says, clear as day, that she doesn't know what she did to deserve them.
Danny sympathizes.
--
The next week, they manage to wrap up their Friday relatively early. Chin peels off to pick up Malia, Ben shows up with flowers for Kono and says "Well, it's hard to be romantic when compared to your bosses" when she asks what the occasion is (seriously, Danny hates him a lot), and Steve corners Danny in his office.
He's like a tiger. A crazy, crazy tiger.
"What," Danny says, "what is it, please tell me that you just want to have sex in public or something."
"No," Steve says, and then pauses. "Wait, would you be up for that?"
"No," Danny says, "no, we are officers of the law, Steven, how many times do I have to tell you this--"
"Well, that's not what I came in here to talk to you about anyway, so I'll let it go," Steve says, like Danny's the one being unreasonable. "It's Friday, Danny. Date night."
Danny thinks longingly of their house, of the beer in the fridge, of the couch and the hammock and Steve's mouth on his dick. "Or we could just go home," he suggests. "No people to deal with, no previews to miss, no strangers to offend? Sounds pretty great to me."
Steve frowns like he's considering it, and Danny leaps in to push him the rest of the way.
"I'll make it worth your while," he says, raising his eyebrows and looking pointedly down at Steve's crotch. Steve swallows hard, and oh, fuck yes, Danny's definitely going to win this one--
"Oh," Steve says, "that sounds…that sounds great, Danno, it really does, but, uh. I kind of already bought the tickets."
"Tickets for what?" Danny says.
"Well," Steve hedges, "there's this play…"
"Stop," Danny says, "just stop. Stop, because unless I have somehow managed to miss the fact that Gracie is in a play this week--which I doubt, babe, my doubt is vast and extremely sincere--but unless it's for Gracie, I don't do plays. It's for the best, alright, trust me on this, let's just, let's go home, okay, come on, I know you want to go home, secretly, I know you do--"
"Dates are an important part of maintaining a healthy relationship," Steve says, in a tone that indicates very clearly that he's reciting. Danny groans.
"You talked to Mary."
"And Rachel," Steve admits. "Look, Danno, I know this isn't--but everyone says--I just don't want to…"
He trails off, and he's making that face, the one he makes when he genuinely thinks he's fucked something up. Oh, right, Danny thinks, not for the first time, Steve doesn't know normal people relationship rules.
He takes pity. He can't help but take pity.
Then he finds out it's a musical.
"There is a difference," Danny says, standing outside the theatre in a goddamn suit an hour later, "between a play and a musical, Steven. The main difference, I will grant you, is the singing, but there's also the fact that plays only make me want to tear all my hair out, whereas musicals--"
"This isn't a musical," Steve says, peering at the tickets. "Rachel said--"
"Oh," says Danny, "oh, oh, it's all so clear to me now, some detective I am. Rachel hooked you up with these tickets, Rachel who knows exactly how I feel about Sondheim--"
"Wait," Steve says, "you know who wrote it?"
"Yes, I know who wrote it," Danny snaps. "I know you persist in thinking that Jersey is some kind of, I don't know, cultural hellhole, but I do actually have brain cells, okay, working ones, they function--
"I don't think Jersey's a cultural hellhole," Steve says. "Just a hellhole. It's a fine distinction."
Danny is really annoyed to realize he's so used to that kind of thing that it doesn't even bother him. "My point here, okay, my point is that I spent ten years married to a woman who, despite my strenuous urging, would not give up her interest in The Theatre, and also fuck you very much on behalf of the entire state of New Jersey."
The lights flicker, and Steve smirks at him. And, oh, Jesus, Danny's going to have to keep yelling at him because the alternative is going to be jumping him. Steve looks stupidly, painfully good in a suit, so good it makes Danny's throat go a little dry, but the last thing the man needs right now is positive reinforcement.
"The real question," Danny says, "is why you don't know that Sondheim wrote Into the Woods."
"Why would I know that?"
"You're the one who did the whole," Danny waves a hand to indicate that he doesn't quite know how to explain, and Steve raises an eyebrow, so he's forced to continue, "you know, Naval…Intelligence…thing."
"Yes, Danny," Steve says, very dry, "that's what we did in Naval Intelligence. Watch musicals."
"Well, how the hell am I supposed to know what you got up to?" Danny asks, and, oh no, they're at their seats, the lights are dimming, this is actually happening to him. "Okay, Steve, babe, listen to me, we still have time to get out of this, trust me, now is the time to go--"
"We're here," Steve says, "and we're doing this. Now be quiet."
--
"I hate this," Steve whispers, fifteen minutes in.
"You hate this?" Danny hisses incredulously. "You do, really, because if I recall correctly you were the one who insisted--"
"Handjob?" says Steve, shifting a little in his chair.
"You are a deviant," Danny says, "no, really, there is something wrong with you--that wasn't permission, McGarrett, get off me, oh my god, we're in public, what the hell is the matter with--hhhhng, Steve."
The guy sitting next to them notices what they're up to when Danny comes, jerking in his chair, and calls security on them. It's only their badges that keep them from getting arrested for public indecency, and Danny bitches at Steve the whole way home, but doesn't quite manage to remove the smirk from his face.
It's not necessarily the worst musical he's ever been to, is the point.
--
"This is an arcade," Danny says the following Friday. "You told me we were going to interview a suspect."
"Maybe the suspect is in the arcade," Steve says, with shifty eyes. "He could be, you don't know."
"But he's not," Danny guesses, "because it's Friday and it's 5 o'clock, and this is yet another ill-fated attempt at a date."
"Er," says Steve.
"You do recall," Danny says, crowding up into Steve's personal space, "that I have to pick up my daughter in an hour, right? Because Stan and Rachel have that thing with her Sunday, which we talked about yesterday? You do remember that, don't you? The conversation about my daughter? Cute kid, about yay high, goes by Grace? Ringing any bells?"
"Er," says Steve. "I might have, ah. Taken care of that?"
Danny has half a second to run through all the terrible possibilities--sent a helicopter, misappropriated a squad car, or, god forbid, hired a babysitter--before he hears a familiar voice crying "Danno!"
Danny turns; Grace is tearing down the hallway towards him, Rachel walking at a more sedate pace behind her. He crouches and swoops Gracie up into a hug, balancing her on his hip.
"Hi, Monkey," he says. "Did your mom bring you out here to hang with me and Steve, huh? Is that what happened?"
Gracie nods gleefully, and Rachel's caught up now, is smirking at them. "I figured I owed you," she says, "for the Sondheim thing."
"You still owe me," Danny says, but he can't really bring himself to mean it, not when Grace is jumping out of his arms and running over to Steve like that. "That was cruel and unusual."
"But funny!" Rachel says. Danny glares at her, and Rachel sighs, shakes her head, and nods towards Steve, who's bent down next to Gracie. They're talking about something--Grace is pointing towards various games she wants to try and Steve's nodding along, smiling hesitantly in Danny's direction every few seconds.
Danny's heart issues are getting to be a real problem, although this time it's less of a clenching sensation and more like it's going to beat its way out of his chest. He's too young to die of heart failure. He has a daughter.
"He's trying, you know," Rachel says, her voice low. "Maybe you could cut him a little slack, Daniel, he just wants to do things the right."
"There was nothing wrong to begin with," Danny murmurs, unable to tear his eyes from Steve and Grace. When he finally does manage to glance back at Rachel, she looks surprised. "What?"
She shakes her head. "Nothing," she says, smiling at him. "I just--it's nothing. Have fun tonight, yes?"
"Thanks for bringing her," Danny says, because it needs to be said, regardless of the kind of torture Rachel'd indirectly subjected him to the previous week.
"Anytime," Rachel says. "Grace, darling, I'll see you on Sunday, alright?"
"Okay, Mommy!" Grace agrees. "Steve and I are gonna go get corn dogs, Danno, c'mon!"
It goes really well, for awhile. Steve chokes down almost an entire corn dog, to Danny's great amusement, and Grace bounces back and forth between them like a Ping-Pong ball, all crazy excitement and sugar highs. Steve teaches her to cheat the shooting games, which is unsurprising, and she and Danny play pinball together, each of them manning a flipper.
"Yeah, that's right," Danny says, landing a particularly difficult tilt shot and winning them a thousand points. "Take that, you 1980's relic--yeah, that's right, I said it, burn."
"Are you talking to the pinball machine?" Steve asks. He sounds like he's trying hard not to laugh.
"Of course not," Danny says, pausing to let out a whoop as Gracie sinks their ball into the extra turn slot. "You've obviously had one head injury too many, McGarrett, you're losing your mind--oh, no, wait, I take it back, you've always been crazy."
"Oooh," says Steve, completely deadpan, "burn," and Gracie laughs and laughs as Danny smacks him upside the head.
They used to do this back in Jersey, the arcade, just Danny and Grace, their own private thing. Danny's surprised to find that he doesn't mind having Steve with them, can't resent the way Grace holds both of their hands as she drags them from machine to machine. When they've amassed a collection of tickets beyond even the capacity of Steve's cargo pockets, Danny laughs and ruffles her hair.
"Danno," Grace complains, and Danny grins.
"How bout you let Steve take you to trade in some of those tickets, huh?" he says, mostly because of the way Steve's face lights up at the suggestion, but also because Gracie's starting to droop a little, and they'll probably have to head home soon. "Don't let him make you pick out anything weird."
"I don't think Steve would do that," Grace says.
"Then you don't know Steve very well, Monkey," Danny says, and Grace just smirks up at him, nine years old and so fucking smart it's hard to believe. He watches them walk away, Grace grabbing Steve's hand and hauling him along, and Steve looks over his shoulder and catches Danny's eye.
And here's the thing about stumbling into new definitions of family while you're not paying attention--it's kind of blindsiding, kind of overwhelming, when it all hits you at once. Steve's looking at Danny like he's not sure what he did right, but he wants to keep doing it, and that in and of itself puts a knot in Danny's throat; what's worse is the way he's not jealous of Steve, not at all, for the way Grace is holding his hand.
But the middle of an arcade is hardly the place for sweeping sappy revelations, so Danny starts scouting around for a Ms. Pacman machine. He finds one in the back corner, occupied by some kid, about 16, with sickly pale skin and greasy hair. His focus on the screen is absolute. Danny sighs and clears his throat.
"Hey," he says, "when d'you think you're going to be done?"
"Later," the kid says, "fuck off," which, okay, is not ever the best way to get rid of Danny, especially when between him and something he wants to do with his daughter.
"Wrong answer," Danny says cheerfully. "You should wrap it up, take yourself outside, maybe get acquainted with the sun, huh? I've got it on good authority that we got more of that here than most places, you should check it out."
"Was I not clear?" the kid says. "Fuck. Off."
"You know," Danny says, mostly to be irritating, "I got to Triple Banana a couple of times."
"You're still a liar," says Steve, returning from the ticket exchange. He's got Gracie tucked under one arm, a big pink elephant in her hands.
"Danno," she says, "look what I got! Steve said I should get the green one, but I told him pink was better."
"Steve doesn't know what he's talking about, Monkey," Danny says, grinning at her. The kid at the Ms. Pacman machine looks up, rolls his eyes, and snorts.
"So what is this," he says, "some kind of gay thing? You a couple of--"
"Careful," Steve snaps, at the same time Danny says, "You shut your mouth in front of my daughter."
"Then fuck off," the kid says, shrugging.
Danny takes a deep breath and looks at Steve, who shrugs. "My hands are full, he's all yours."
"Right," Danny says, "Grace, baby, I want you to look at Steve, okay? Just look at Steve, everything's fine."
Grace narrows her eyes. "Is this gonna be like the time at Dave and Buster's, Danno? Because I like it here, I want to be able to come back."
"Er," says Danny. He's reconsidering his course of action when Gracie adds, "And what does fuck mean?"
"Christ," says Steve, giving Danny a look that says Kill this asshole. "Okay, Grace, definitely don't look at your Dad, let's go find a new game, alright?"
Danny's got the kid shoved up against the wall three seconds later, his thumb pressed a little harder than it needs to be against his throat.
"Right," he says conversationally, "so I have gathered that you must have a limited amount of human interaction, that's great, I get that, you do that, no judgment here, but you think long and hard before you swear in front of a nine year old again, huh? Because, y'see, you've never had kids, so how would you know this, but I don't really relish having to tell my baby girl what that word means, you know? And also, since we're talking here, since I've got you, homophobia? It's not a classy choice, buddy. D'you understand what I'm saying here?"
The kid nods frantically, and Danny releases him, wipes his hands down on his pants.
"Also," he adds, "in the future, guy like me, carries himself a certain way, holster on his hip--even if it's empty--probably a cop, you know? Better to move when asked."
The kid nods again, and Danny almost feels bad, and then he remembers what this jackass was going to say in front of his daughter and thinks better of it.
"Run along," he says.
The kid doesn't need to be told twice.
--
Grace falls asleep in Steve's arms after the conversation with the manager of the place--who, Danny suspects, only doesn't ban them because he's a father himself--but before they get to the car. Steve stops walking when he realizes she's out, stands stock-still in the middle of the parking lot, like the slightest movement will wake her up.
"Relax," Danny says, taking her from him easily. She shifts a little and then quiets against him, and Steve's arms are waving around a little, like he's not sure what to do with them now that they're free. "She could sleep through an earthquake, you were fine."
Steve laughs. "I'll keep that in mind for the future."
"Yeah," Danny says, and then, "hey, Steve. Thanks."
"For what?"
"For," Danny says, and waves towards the arcade. "that, I guess. It was. It's nice that you're willing to--it was just nice of you, that's all."
"Don't be stupid," Steve says, reaching over to pull Danny's keys from his pocket. Danny gets Grace in the backseat, buckles the seatbelt over her, tucks her new toy under her arm. He's in the passenger side already when Steve cups his jaw, forces Danny to meet his eyes.
"I'm serious, Danno," he says. "Don't be stupid. You have to know that I'm--"
And Danny kisses him, can't help but kiss him, in the hushed quiet of the car. Steve groans very softly into his mouth, his hand tangling in Danny's hair, and if it weren't for Grace in the backseat this would probably get very inappropriate very fast. As it it, Danny pulls back after a few seconds, grinning, and Steve presses their foreheads together for a minute, because he's a stupid sappy goof under that tough-guy SEAL exterior.
"That doesn't really count as a date," Danny points out when they're halfway home.
"Yeah," Steve admits. "I didn't figure you'd mind."
"I don't," Danny says, and grins. They go to the arcade every second Saturday, after that.
--
Danny actually gets a three week respite from the whole date night thing, because they get tangled in a case that barely leaves time for breathing, let alone anything else. He and Steve spend most of their time shooting, researching, or trying to get each other to sleep, with varying degrees of success.
In the middle of the second week, Steve passes out sitting up on their couch, having been awake for four days straight. Danny sighs when he finds him, pulls the file from his hands and nudges him sideways, until he grunts and falls, prone, against the cushions.
"C'mere," Steve mumbles, and Danny's not even sure he's awake enough to mean it, but he strips down to his boxers and goes anyway. He wakes hours later with Steve on top of him, his face tucked into the curve of Danny's neck, his breathing slow and not quite even.
"We should get up," Danny says, because he's never once beaten Steve awake. Even the act of him waking up wakes Steve--it's one of those things he's just gotten used to, one of those things that doesn't even phase him now.
"Yeah," Steve agrees, and doesn't move.
"My back hurts," Danny tries.
"Whiner," Steve mumbles.
"We've got--"
"Jesus, Danny, I know," Steve says, and shifts. "Give a guy a minute, I haven't seen you in a week."
"Has the sleep deprivation started eating braincells?" Danny asks. "You see me every day, you lunatic, sometimes for eighteen, nineteen hours at a time--on runs, in the car, at the office, while you're pistol-whipping suspects against my urgent advice--"
"I thought you were gonna let that go," Steve says, and yawns. "And no, my brain cells are fine."
"Debatable."
"I meant I haven't seen you like this," Steve says, and oh, okay, his hand is in Danny's pants, hello Commander McGarrett. "Which, by the way, is driving me nuts, because I have to look at you all the time, and you need to stop wearing shirts that fit you, I've been meaning to tell you that. I'm starting to see the truth in the expression 'Don't shit where you eat,' is my point."
"You hadn't learned that lesson already, Navy-boy?"
"Not quite this well," Steve says against his jaw.
"Well," Danny says, and his breath is only hitching a little, not so much that it's undignified, definitely not, "I have been told I'm a learning experience."
"Yeah, I bet," Steve laughs, and scoots lower on the couch. It's a tight fit to begin with--two grown men and one of them a giant, this thing was not designed for these kinds of eventualities--so Steve looks ridiculous between Danny's legs. He's bent up all crooked, his feet draped over the arm of the couch, and his face is still heavy with sleep. There are dark smudges under his eyes betraying his exhaustion, and Danny's sure he's got matching ones.
Steve's grinning, though, a soft, lazy thing, as he nudges Danny's dick out from under his boxers and wraps his mouth around it.
"Fuck, babe," Danny breathes, letting his head tip back and closing his eyes. Steve hums some kind of agreement and keeps tonguing at him, his usual technique abandoned in favor of something looser, more casual. Danny reaches down to bury a hand in Steve's hair, grounding himself, and Steve's thumb is rubbing circles on the inside of his thigh.
The sun is just starting to filter in through the window, casting everything in a faint golden glow. There are dust specks in the air, catching in the beams of light landing on the hardwood, and Danny watches them drift with Steve's name caught in his throat. When he comes, it's as quiet and easy as everything else; a sharp intake of breath, an almost anti-climactic release, the sensation of Steve swallowing around him.
"Morning," Steve says, pulling his mouth up and standing up. "We've got to get to the office, so I'll just--"
"The fuck you will," Danny says, and grabs his wrist. Steve lets himself get yanked back down, lets Danny slide a hand under the shorts he'd passed out in, lets Danny lick into his mouth as he pulls him off. He's laughing about something, little gasps of mirth between kisses, but Danny can't quite be bothered to find out.
"What," he says finally, when he's got Steve's come all over his hand, "what, what is it, what's so funny," and Steve smirks at him.
"You've got bedhead," he says, like it's the most hilarious thing in the world.
Danny sighs. "I thought you'd come to terms with the way my hair is in the morning, I really did. This is regression, McGarrett."
Steve kisses him again and ruffles his hair like an asshole before he gets up.
"Could be worse," he says, and yeah, for once he's probably right.
--
Then the case ends.
"A double date?" Danny repeats, staring at Steve from the passenger seat of the Camaro. He'd let himself think that the whole 'date night' thing had fallen by the wayside, which was obviously an error. "What made you think that would be a good idea, given our track record, huh?"
"Well, technically it's a triple date," Steve admits, taking a corner so hard the tires squeal for absolutely no reason at all. "I would have felt weird just asking Chin, or just Kono--I wouldn't want to send the impression of favoritism."
"A triple date," Danny says. "Steven, it may have escaped your attention--and it's not that I don't enjoy spending time with Chin and Kono, please understand that--but you have noticed that the four of us tend to draw trouble, right? Tell me you've noticed that."
"We do not draw trouble," Steve says.
"You are touched in the head," Danny says. "No, no, you are more than touched in the head, touched in the head is not nearly a strong enough--"
"It's just dinner, Danno," Steve says. "What could happen?"
"You've just doomed us all," Danny says morosely. "When the island explodes tonight, I hope you blame yourself."
The island doesn't explode. Dinner actually goes remarkably well, all things considered, until an actual real life gunfight breaks out at the next table while they're eating dessert.
"You see?" Danny cries, nailing the nearest perp in the shoulder.
"This proves nothing!" Steve yells over his shoulder, not breaking stride in his foot pursuit of the original shooter. No doubt he's off to engage in some ill-advised hand to hand combat, but Danny's adjusted to his inability to behave like a normal person by now.
He catches Ben Bass's eye as he's cuffing his perp, and is surprised by the degree of fellow feeling that wells up. Ben's mouth is working silently, and his eyes are wide--Danny's guessing that has something to do with the way Kono had stood up on her chair and vaulted the table to land a kick on that one guy's throat.
"Didn't break his neck," Kono calls, and then, when the guy grunts, adds, "yet, princess, don't even think about it."
"Welcome to the club," Danny says, as Ben blinks like he's trying to clear his head of the madness.
"You get used to it," Malia chimes in. She's still at the table, calmly finishing her mousse while Chin sweeps the last shooter's legs out from under him. "Eventually."
"Danno," Steve calls, coming back in with a body dragging behind him, "does this jackass need to be conscious for you to book him?"
"Date nights are a terrible plague on society," Danny says, mostly to himself, and goes to see how many of the Geneva conventions Steve's broken this time.
--
They go to an informal surf competition the next week, although Steve protests vehemently that it's not a date, it's just an outing, so Danny doesn't need to look at him like that.
"Did you pack dinner?" Danny asks.
"No," Steve says.
Danny looks at him, at the smug, self-satisfied grin, and sighs. "Did you order dinner?"
"We have to eat, Danno," Steve says, and really, he's going to strain his eyes with how often they go all shifty like that. "Be reasonable."
"Reasonable," Danny says, "is not a word you get to use, ever. Remove it from your vocabulary, okay, because it doesn't mean what you think it means, and using words you don't understand can lead to unfortunate confusion. Let's call to mind the time I said 'You can't hit him, it will make the evidence inadmissible,' and you said, 'Sure, Danno, whatever you say--'"
"We got to use his testimony anyway."
"Because you abused your government privileges!" Danny cries, waving his hands. "Again, it's enablement is what it is, you have a disorder and the governor is only aiding and abetting you, I'm going to have to stage an intervention--"
"It's just surfing, Danny," Steve says. "And a little dinner. Kono and Ben are both competing, you want to support them, don't you?"
"I want to support Kono," Danny agrees readily. What goodwill towards Ben he'd managed to build up had evaporated the previous Tuesday, when Ben--who shouldn't even have been in the building--had sided with Steve on the whole 'Eat more vegetables, Danny,' debate. "She is a teammate and a friend, and I want her to succeed. I just don't understand why we can't support her from home, with encouraging text messages and maybe the occasional 'Go team' phonecall."
"You're lucky you have me," Steve says, pulling into the parking lot and cutting the engine. "You'd never leave the house otherwise. I bet you'd get cats."
"I hate cats," Danny mutters. "And you, right at this moment, more than a little."
"Yeah, yeah," Steve says, "I see Chin and Malia, come on."
Danny makes a fatal mistake: he stops to go to the bathroom. If he were a normal guy, in a normal relationship with a regular old human and not a hyped up lunatic SEAL freak, this would not be an issue--normal people, he imagines, go to the bathroom without causing any chaos all the time. He remembers being one of them, those sweet, long lost days when straying from his partner's side for five goddamn minutes wasn't the first step in a chain reaction of crazy.
But that's not his life anymore, and when he gets over to Chin and Malia, Steve's nowhere to be found.
"He entered, didn't he," Danny says. It's not really a question.
Chin gives him one of those looks that Danny has surreptitiously been trying to learn from him--the one that says a combination of 'You know how stupid you sound, right?' and 'Do I look like I have time to answer obvious questions?'
"Do you really have to ask?" he says.
Danny sighs and settles in next to them, and Malia offers him some pity snacks, which Danny takes gratefully. He watches Ben nail his turn; Kono goes after him, shredding a wave so hard Danny's surprised the ocean doesn't just give up and recede. A number of kids he vaguely recognizes from that housewarming party follow them, and most of them manage to stay upright, and then it's Steve's turn.
"You stupid ass," Danny mutters under his breath, trying to ignore the fact that his whole body tenses as Steve gets to his feet on the board. "I can't leave you alone for a second, can I?"
"He can't actually hear you, brah," Chin says, in the long-suffering tones of someone who is used to him.
"He's worried, Chin," Malia chides. "It's okay for him to express himself."
"I am not," Danny starts, but then his eye is drawn back to the water, and oh fuck, oh fuck, Steve is falling. Danny's on his feet before he even realizes he's getting up, and Steve's still under, hasn't surfaced, and all the Navy SEAL training in the world won't save him if he's been shot like Ian Adams was--
--and then it's over, Steve's head is popping up from under the waves, and Danny can breathe again.
"Jesus," Chin says behind him; he sounds distant, like he's talking through water, which is probably fitting. "Danny, maybe you should sit down."
"Your color's not looking good," Malia adds, and this is ridiculous, this is so ridiculous, that he's getting lectures of safety when Steve is the one who nearly drowned. Chin yanks him back down onto the sand, which does effectively stop him from running into the water and bashing Steve to death with his board, but is undignified nonetheless.
"You see," he hears Chin say to Malia, "this is why I don't like to go places with them."
Danny's kind of gratified to know that at least he's not the only one against him and Steve subjecting the world to…well, to Steve. Then he processes the word 'them,' and can't even really bring himself to blame Chin. At all.
Steve runs up the beach a couple minutes later, board--probably borrowed--tucked under his arm, a broad grin on his face. Kono and Ben have both placed, and are accepting the back-pats and bragging rights that this has yielded them, which is for the best--the fewer witnesses around for Steve's murder, the better. There's an angry red mark around his ankle, where his board strap had probably saved him from certain death, and sand in his hair.
He takes one look at Danny's face--and maybe Danny's color is bad, how would he know--and stops smiling.
"Sorry," he says, and it's so fucking hangdog, so genuinely unsure. He's always so ready to go to the worst-case scenario, Steve is, always so sure that this is the fuck-up that's going to be the last straw.
Danny still wants to kill him, but maybe a little less than he did before.
"Can we just go home," Danny says, "before you do anything else idiotic?"
Steve doesn't even argue with him. Hell, Steve lets him drive.
--
Danny steels himself the following Friday, waits for the axe to fall. He waits through breakfast and lunch, through two briefings with HPD, through a high-speed chase and the messy aftermath. He waits through a pile of backlogged paperwork and a phone call with Rachel, through the end of the workday and the drive home.
It's only when they pull into the driveway that he bites the bullet and says, "Okay, what is it, what are you making me do tonight in the name of relationship health, tell me before the suspense actually kills me, I beg of you."
Steve shrugs, the corner of his mouth pulling down. "I'm not making you do anything."
"What?" Danny says. "Wait, really? Nothing? This isn't like--this isn't some kind of cruel ruse, right, McGarrett, you're not just trying to--"
"We're not very good at it," Steve says, clipped. He's out-and-out frowning now, and Danny feels something like guilt stir in the pit of his stomach. "And you don't seem to enjoy it, and that was the whole point, so."
Steve gets out of the car then, leaves Danny behind, walks to the house with a frankly unsettling slump to his shoulders. And oh, shit--Danny had been so caught up in all the ways date nights were a stupid, stupid plan that he'd forgotten to account for Steve's less-than-ideal interpersonal skills. He'd forgotten to consider the concept that Steve might actually think their relationship was on the rocks if they weren't going out on dates every week, because Steve didn't exactly have a normal relationship to compare them too.
"Goddamn it," Danny says, and gets out of the car.
Steve's in the kitchen, rummaging through the cupboards, when Danny gets inside.
"Come on, babe," he says, "I have a plan."
"For dinner? Because we're mostly out of--"
"For a date," Danny says. "Gimme the keys, c'mon, c'mon, I haven't got all night."
Steve follows him outside, climbs back into the car, and really this is a lot of effort Danny's going to to prove a point, but it'll be worth it.
"Right," Danny says, "no questions until we get there, alright?"
"Danny, what--"
"It's a simple directive, Steven, shhh," Danny says, and backs out of the driveway.
He turns right at the first intersection.
He turns right at the second intersection.
He turns right at the third intersection, and Steve draws in a breath like he's going to argue, and Danny says "Nothing, not a word, that's what you said."
"I didn't say that," Steve says.
"Well, you didn't not say it," Danny says.
"That's not a logic based--"
"Just shut up for five minutes, alright?" Danny says, pulling into their driveway and cutting the engine again. "Is that so hard?"
"I'm pretty sure that's my line," Steve says. "And also, what are we--"
"Inside," Danny instructs. "And silence."
Steve actually listens, which is in and of itself the most shocking part of Danny's week. They go back into the house, and Danny grabs two Longboards from the fridge, tosses one to Steve before beckoning him out to the lanai. He settles into one of the chairs close to the water, waits for Steve to do the same, and then smiles.
"Look, babe," he says, "I hate dating."
"I've gathered," Steve starts, his brow furrowing, and Danny flicks him lightly on the arm.
"Talking here, let me finish." He waits for Steve's nod and then sighs and continues. "You don't--okay, so, the first time Rachel and I went out, right, like, outside of the whole she-hit-me-with-the-car thing and the driving lessons, I accidentally set my menu on fire and then blamed it on the waiter. I've never been to a movie I didn't end up talking through, and you can't sit still if your life depends on it--"
"If my life depends on it I can totally sit still," Steve says. "I've been in that situation at least fifteen times, Danny."
"Okay," Danny says, narrowing his eyes, "fine, short of your life depending on it, you can't sit still, and it's not that I don't want to…do shit with you, okay? I just don't want it to be a thing, because you get all weird about pressure, and then I get all weird about pressure, and sometimes after a long week I just want to have a beer and, y'know, relax with you, alright?"
"But," Steve says.
"Look," Danny says, "look, okay, I get it, I get that everyone says this is what you do, and I'm not saying they're wrong, I'm just saying it's maybe not for us, you know? You're not doing anything wrong here, is my point--and do not let that go to your head, Steven, I can see you getting smug from here, you do things wrong all this time, just not, you know, this, okay? Do you understand what I'm saying here?"
"Kind of," Steve says, and he's smiling just a little now, and shit, shit, Danny's so in love with this lunatic it almost hurts to breathe, "but if you could maybe give me the Cliff's Notes version? That was a lot of words to keep track of."
"Stop trying to date me, asshole," Danny says, and kisses him, beer cool between his thighs, Steve's laughter warm against his mouth.