H50 fic, Small In The Space Of All The Silence, 15
Title: Small In the Space of All The Silence
Author: quoththewriter
Rating: 15
Characters/Pairings: Steve/Danny, mentions of Wo fat and Sang Min
Word Count: 2,847
Warnings: angst and copious amounts of ranting?
Disclaimer: I don't own Hawaii Five-0 or it's characters and I make no claims or money in any way, shape or form.
Summary: Steve is an idiot, and Danny has a few things to say about it.
A/N: Finally done with this! I was beginning to think it would never be done, and though I'm not 100% sure it's completely finished, it's getting to the point where I'm almost sick of looking at it, so I figure I might as well get it posted. Thanks to starlit_cities and ssw_loved for looking it over for me. Any remaining mistakes are my own!
&&
“What the hell, man?”
“What? What ‘what the hell’?” Steve asks as if he doesn’t know perfectly well. Then again, this is Steve he’s talking about, and Danny knows that sometimes you need to spell things out with big neon letters for Steve to understand.
“Don’t give me that!” Danny yells to cover the hammering of his heart, the roar of blood in his ears and the quick, pounding pulse behind his temples that tells him just how fucked up this whole situation is, tells him just how close he came to losing Steve, losing everything, and he tries hard to think of anything but that. But Steve doesn’t make that task easy, no, he makes it damn near impossible.
They happened across Sang Min on a bust; an unforeseen stroke of luck that had, with some coaxing from Steve and an earful afterwards from Danny on proper procedure, yielded positive results. Sang Min’s intel had been, shockingly, reliable, and after a three-day stake-out which led to a raid and a bag-and-tag complete with forty-eight hours of terrorizing street punks in the name of interrogation, they finally had a lead.
All of which led them here, to this warehouse
Wo Fat had a base of operations right here in Oahu.
The dingy exterior housed an impressive collection of military-grade computers with satellites and wires to at least two dozen places on Oahu alone. A few minutes with the computers and some remote-access techie magic from Chin gave them unrestricted access to Wo Fat’s files.
Steve had spent hours pouring over every document he could reach and by the end had dug up more ghosts than he cared to count. There was intel on his father and his connection to Wo Fat, and one grainy recording of the car bomb that had killed his mother; all of which left Danny to return from his watch to find a look on Steve’s face that he had never seen before and never cared to see again.
When Wo Fat had stepped in to greet them, Steve had gone postal.
From then on out it was a mess of flashes and metal and smoke, and at some point someone must have pulled out a grenade or a land-mine or something because the next thing Danny knew he was opening his eyes to find himself laying on a bed of rubble twenty feet from the smoldering remains of Wo Fat's secret base.
He had struggled to his feet and made his way inside to find Steve with his hands clasped around Wo Fat’s neck, the two of them locked in a sinister embrace, oblivious to the flames and smoke closing in around them.
By the time Danny convinced Steve to release his chokehold on Wo Fat, the Chinese diplomat was long-gone and Steve was well on his way to bleeding out from the knife gouged deep in his side, not to mention all the smoke he inhaled from the fire.
The worst part was that Danny had no doubt that he would have continued to stand there, choking the life out of a corpse, until the building literally collapsed on top of him.
Which is why Danny is left standing in the wreckage of an old warehouse with blood in his mouth and the shirt off his back, with the flashing lights from the blue and whites turning the blood on his partner's skin a ghoulish shade of black.
Steve continues avoiding his eyes and Danny, fed up, pushes closer; invading his space; livid, angry, powerful; an explosion of emotion bubbling over like lava. He thinks that maybe, just maybe, if he gets close enough, angry enough he can - he can what? Pull the stupid, stubborn, suicidal jackass from his funk or something?
Ignoring his lack of sound reasoning (when has anything to do with McGarrett involved sound reasoning?), he pushes onward because he can feel the anger churning white-hot in his blood and knows he needs to get this off his chest or he’ll explode.
“Leaving aside your obvious, undisputed claim to insanity - because, my friend, you and I both know that if insanity were a kingdom you, Steven J. McGarrett, would be the king - can we talk about your apparent suicidal tendencies for a second here?”
He holds up a hand to ward off the protests he knows are only seconds away.
“No, that wasn’t a question. Look at me-” Danny hisses, breaks off the steady stream of words when Steve turns his head away and reaches out to grab his chin, forcing Steve to look him in the eyes.
“Look at me, McGarrett. Just what the fuck were you thinking, huh? Because so help me," he seethes, stabbing an angry finger none too gently into Steve’s chest and can’t find it in him to apologize when he flinches. He deserves it. Steve needs to know just how angry he is.
“So help me, Steven, if you’re under some misguided impression that it is not only okay, but perfectly acceptable, to sacrifice yourself for the ‘greater good’,” he stabs the air angrily for emphasis. “Or some other military mind-set bullshit let me remind you that you are no longer in the Navy, my friend. Your SEAL has lost his flippers. So whatever farcical obligation you are operating under that tells you that it you, as in you personally, had to take down Wo Fat single-handedly is wrong. You, my friend, did not have to do anything-”
“Danno-”
“Don’t ‘Danno’ me, McGarrett, I’m not done.” He pauses and waits for Steve to catch up, waits until he knows Steve is following him and he knows by the way his body is angled, the way his arms tighten just a bit at the shoulders that Steve is listening even if he isn’t looking.
“We,” Danny says the word slowly and carefully, “are a team. A team which does not, anywhere in the word, include the letter ‘i’-”
“Actually-” Steve starts, but Danny steadily ignores him.
“-Which means you can’t just go throwing yourself under the proverbial bus and wave it off with some Machivellian “the end justifies the means” philosophical bullshit when you accidentally go and get yourself killed!”
Danny pulls on Steve’s chin again, waits for his eyes to find him because god forbid he at least has the decency to stare Danny in the face when he’s getting yelled at.
“You are not a Navy SEAL anymore, okay, and you might say “I get that”, but, babe, the thing is? You don’t."
“I-” Steve attempts to interrupt again but Danny isn’t done, not by a long shot.
“Were you or were you not completely prepared to go down fighting if you took Wo Fat down with you?” His voice is clipped, to the point, and his tone indicates that he is only asking out of courtesy to drive his point home.
Bingo. Steve‘s jaw goes slack and the words halt on his tongue. Danny takes the chance to plunge in with both feet.
“I might not be a ninja SEAL or whatever, so I don’t know how you did things out there in the mighty jungle where you were skinning natives and killing tigers with your bare hands or whatever it was you did - no, listen to me, I am not done - whatever you did then, whatever the mindset was, you are not there anymore, you hear me?”
“I hear you, Danny,” Steve mumbles. “But-”
“No buts! As you keep reminding me, we are in Hawaii; the fiftieth state of the good ol’ U, S, of A, and this means, aside from the no tie policy and the pineapple on pizza, that you need to reevaluate your thinking strategies, okay, because whatever brothers-in-arms suicide pact you had back in SEAL school isn’t going to cut it here, pal.”
Danny takes a breath and backs up a step, suddenly needing the distance. He feels light-headed and he doesn’t know if it’s the talking or the adrenaline or the aftershock of watching his partner ready and willing to forfeit his life, something he thinks is burned permanently on the inside of his eyelids, thank you very much. He mentally adds insomnia to the growing list of problems Steve McGarrett has introduced to his life and waits for the dizziness to subside. Once it does he steps forward again and raises a finger to emphasize his next point.
“In case you somehow failed to notice - and honestly that wouldn’t surprise me because this is you we’re talking about here and with all due respect, you have all the social grace of a rock, but- you have friends here, you schmuck. Friends who, believe it or not, would rather have you alive. You have Chin and Kono and Grace, and you have me, okay, and I’m not going anywhere.”
Danny turns away, looks out over the cars and watches the HPD guys as they scour over what’s left of the building for anything they can tag as evidence. There’s not much left but dust and ash. Danny sighs, feeling a shudder tremble between his shoulders and slide down into his gut, bringing with it the inevitable chill of escaping death. Pinching the bridge of his nose and telling himself to pull it together man, no one died, McGarrett’s a stubborn bastard, he’ll live, he turns back to his partner.
“You picked me and now you’re stuck with me. For better or for worse, just like we’re married - except if we were married I’d demand some kind of compensation, alimony or life-insurance or something because the amount of times you get into life-threatening situations is above and beyond me and my pay grade.”
The words tumble from his mouth in a steady stream that breaks the silence and the familiar rhythm of words on his tongue is calming, something familiar because he’s always ranting at McGarrett and so long as he’s ranting it means McGarrett is around for him to rant at and that, at least, is something to focus on.
“And damned if I let you get yourself killed for some stupid misguided sense of justice or debt or whatever it is your twisted brain considered this, but just so you know?”
He picks up speed now, ranting in full with his hands flying in broad strokes and gestures because he can’t hold them still and if he doesn’t move his hands they’ll shake and if he lets it get to him, get under his skin here in this darkened parking lot with his partner’s blood staining the ground a hundred feet away, he isn’t exactly sure what he’ll do and he’s only certain he would rather not find out.
“I am not going to be the one who has to explain to Grace why her Uncle Steve doesn’t take her out for shaved ice anymore because he got this stupid idea in his head that he had to be a big damn hero and-”
Steve cuts him off. “If you wouldn’t tell her, who would?”
Relief raises his voice an octave because it’s the first time Steve’s said more than monosyllables and Danny seizes the chance at familiarity with both hands.
“Who would tell- That’s not the point! That is so not the point I am trying to make here-”
“Then what is the point, Danny?”
“The point- the point, Steven J. McGarrett, you heartless animal, is that you might not understand the rules of regular, civilized society and these scary, complicated things people in the real, non-militant world have called 'emotions',” Danny pauses, swallows and his tone turns serious. He knows Steve picks up on it from the way he straightens just a bit, tenses like he’s about to take a bullet or, god, like he’s being stabbed all over again, but his face gives nothing away.
“But it means that we care, all right? You did it, you got your revenge. Wo Fat is dead. But that doesn’t mean you get to give up now that it’s over.”
And Steve shifts a bit, rearranges his face, and Danny thinks it might have been comical if he wasn't covered in blood and bruises and looking for all the world like a little boy lost.
“What,” He continues when Steve doesn’t answer because god dammit, there are some things he just can’t stand and his partner doing his best imitation of his daughter’s kicked-puppy face is one of them. “Do you need some kind of mission, is that it? As if I wasn’t already 99.9% convinced you were a robot, super SEAL, now I am upping my percentage to 100, and you, my friend, if you need a mission, fine.”
He spreads his arms wide and gives his partner a pointed look.
“How about protecting the state of Hawaii like the Governor hired you to do? The bad guys don’t stop just because Wo Fat is dead, you know.” Hands drop to his side and then lift up again because damn it all, it’s like he has to explain all this to Steve in pictograms or something.
“Or!” he says triumphantly, and gestures to the building. “For something a little more mundane, you can go around and offer to repay all the doors you kicked in in the last week.”
Steve gives him a look that's somewhere between Aneurism Face and They-Have-Their-Own-Money-They-Can-Pay-For-The-Doors-Themselves, and the fact that Steve even has a face for that is a testament to how crazy his life is.
“And if you still need something to do after that, you can weed my garden.”
“You don’t have a garden, Danny. You practically live in a box.”
Danny bristles at the familiar jibe and he bites back a smile.
“My apartment is not a box. I’ll have you know, a fair amount of my paycheck goes into paying for that ‘box’, so don’t you go calling it a - hey, are you even listening to me?”
“Truthfully?”
“You-” Danny groans. “I don’t even know why I put up with you! You’re impossible!”
He’s gesturing wildly again, completely absorbed in this argument they’ve had a thousand times and he doesn’t even try to hide the smile this time. But then Steve shuts down, his eyes darken and slide away and Danny falters, clears his throat and sobers because he knows when it's time to be serious.
“Alright then, What?" Steve murmurs and his quiet voice compels Danny to look at him, really look at him. "What does it mean?”
And maybe it just sort of kind of steals his breath away that Steve is looking at him for the answer, like he honestly believes Danny is the only one who can give it to him. He falters a bit, scratches at his cheek and the back of his neck and shifts from foot to foot before he clears his throat and opens his mouth to fill the void with words and prays, just prays that they’re the right ones.
“It means - it means you have all the more reason to continue living.” The words tumble from his mouth and after a hesitant start he seems to find his feet.
“Not to quote you to you or anything, but you’re not as alone around here as you think. You’ve got Five-0 and your sister and Gracie and me and we aren’t going to leave you alone just because you think it’s over and done with.”
Danny pinches the bridge of his nose in frustration at the blank look he gets in return, like Steve is still processing everything he’s heard and doesn’t know how to make sense of it.
“You’re going to make me say it, aren't you?” he asks, but the question is rhetorical and it almost breaks his heart to see the blank look on Steve’s face, like he honest to god doesn’t know and Jesus Christ, Danny can’t have that.
He breathes deeply, pulls himself together and looks Steve in the eyes.
“I love you, you giant goof. So just...stop with the melodramatic martyr routine, okay?”
Steve stares at him for what seems like eternity, and then slowly, slowly, slower than Danny would have liked, all the shadows clear from his eyes, from the dips and hollows in his face where they were lurking just around the edges until he finally looks something like his old self again. There’s a furrow in his brow and a slight pout on his lips that remind Danny of Anuerism Face, only it’s not a face he’s ever seen before on Steve, so he can only assume that Steve is thinking over his words and suddenly, inexplicably, Danny feels nervous.
But then Steve smiles, that fond, goofy smile; the one Steve breaks out when Danny does something funny like insist on keeping his tie even when the weather is on the high side of ninety, or when he‘s driving Danny’s car or, especially, whenever he says “Book ‘em, Danno.”
And then Steve blinks at him, furrow gone and raises one of his eyebrows in a gesture that clearly states he’s about to say something stupid.
“I’m being melodramatic?” he says, gruff and a little incredulous, and suddenly Danny wants to throttle him, to punch him in that smug, stupid mouth and tell him that he takes it back, that he doesn’t love him, could never love such a psycho because seriously? Seriously?
And then, bastard that he is, Steve has the gall to chuckle.
“Now who has Aneurism Face?” Steve asks and whoa, Danny swallows, because when did Steve get so close? But he doesn’t have time to answer because the hulking six-foot mass of control freak that for some reason Danny cannot seem to function without leans down and kisses him.
Danny wants to say it is the best kiss he’s ever had, but in reality it’s clumsy and messy and a touch too desperate because though it’s a shock, it isn’t, not really, and the touch of their lips is like a spark on dry kindling that lights a fire in Danny’s blood until he’s clutching at Steve so hard he’s sure Steve’s skin will be marked forever.
When they break apart, Steve looks more like his old self for the first time since this whole thing started and something calms inside him; the hurricane blows over, stills, stops and he laughs as he tightens his hands in Steve’s shirt.
And Steve smiles that stupid, goofy smile he has, the one that blinds Danny and brightens his world at the same time.
Danny sighs and rests his forehead against Steve’s collarbone, tucked just beneath his chin, breathing into the hollow of Steve’s neck as he collects himself. Steve hums low and contently in his throat and Danny can feel the vibrations thrum against his temples.
“What?” is all he can manage. The word sounds small in the space of all the silence.
Steve shifts and Danny can feel the nervousness under his fingers, a flutter of emotion that shocks him into stillness.
“You’re right,” Steve’s nose brushes over his cheek and skims the sensitive skin just below his ear.
“And,” Steve’s voice scrapes roughly against his ear and he squeezes Danny tightly as though afraid he’ll lose him if he lets go.
Danny stills, can feel the world narrowing its focus, setting him and Steve in its crosshairs for just a moment and he feels everything crawl to a stop as he waits for Steve to continue.
“And?”
Steve lets go with a sigh. “I love you, too, Danno.”
And for once, Danny is at a loss for words.
Author: quoththewriter
Rating: 15
Characters/Pairings: Steve/Danny, mentions of Wo fat and Sang Min
Word Count: 2,847
Warnings: angst and copious amounts of ranting?
Disclaimer: I don't own Hawaii Five-0 or it's characters and I make no claims or money in any way, shape or form.
Summary: Steve is an idiot, and Danny has a few things to say about it.
A/N: Finally done with this! I was beginning to think it would never be done, and though I'm not 100% sure it's completely finished, it's getting to the point where I'm almost sick of looking at it, so I figure I might as well get it posted. Thanks to starlit_cities and ssw_loved for looking it over for me. Any remaining mistakes are my own!
&&
“What the hell, man?”
“What? What ‘what the hell’?” Steve asks as if he doesn’t know perfectly well. Then again, this is Steve he’s talking about, and Danny knows that sometimes you need to spell things out with big neon letters for Steve to understand.
“Don’t give me that!” Danny yells to cover the hammering of his heart, the roar of blood in his ears and the quick, pounding pulse behind his temples that tells him just how fucked up this whole situation is, tells him just how close he came to losing Steve, losing everything, and he tries hard to think of anything but that. But Steve doesn’t make that task easy, no, he makes it damn near impossible.
They happened across Sang Min on a bust; an unforeseen stroke of luck that had, with some coaxing from Steve and an earful afterwards from Danny on proper procedure, yielded positive results. Sang Min’s intel had been, shockingly, reliable, and after a three-day stake-out which led to a raid and a bag-and-tag complete with forty-eight hours of terrorizing street punks in the name of interrogation, they finally had a lead.
All of which led them here, to this warehouse
Wo Fat had a base of operations right here in Oahu.
The dingy exterior housed an impressive collection of military-grade computers with satellites and wires to at least two dozen places on Oahu alone. A few minutes with the computers and some remote-access techie magic from Chin gave them unrestricted access to Wo Fat’s files.
Steve had spent hours pouring over every document he could reach and by the end had dug up more ghosts than he cared to count. There was intel on his father and his connection to Wo Fat, and one grainy recording of the car bomb that had killed his mother; all of which left Danny to return from his watch to find a look on Steve’s face that he had never seen before and never cared to see again.
When Wo Fat had stepped in to greet them, Steve had gone postal.
From then on out it was a mess of flashes and metal and smoke, and at some point someone must have pulled out a grenade or a land-mine or something because the next thing Danny knew he was opening his eyes to find himself laying on a bed of rubble twenty feet from the smoldering remains of Wo Fat's secret base.
He had struggled to his feet and made his way inside to find Steve with his hands clasped around Wo Fat’s neck, the two of them locked in a sinister embrace, oblivious to the flames and smoke closing in around them.
By the time Danny convinced Steve to release his chokehold on Wo Fat, the Chinese diplomat was long-gone and Steve was well on his way to bleeding out from the knife gouged deep in his side, not to mention all the smoke he inhaled from the fire.
The worst part was that Danny had no doubt that he would have continued to stand there, choking the life out of a corpse, until the building literally collapsed on top of him.
Which is why Danny is left standing in the wreckage of an old warehouse with blood in his mouth and the shirt off his back, with the flashing lights from the blue and whites turning the blood on his partner's skin a ghoulish shade of black.
Steve continues avoiding his eyes and Danny, fed up, pushes closer; invading his space; livid, angry, powerful; an explosion of emotion bubbling over like lava. He thinks that maybe, just maybe, if he gets close enough, angry enough he can - he can what? Pull the stupid, stubborn, suicidal jackass from his funk or something?
Ignoring his lack of sound reasoning (when has anything to do with McGarrett involved sound reasoning?), he pushes onward because he can feel the anger churning white-hot in his blood and knows he needs to get this off his chest or he’ll explode.
“Leaving aside your obvious, undisputed claim to insanity - because, my friend, you and I both know that if insanity were a kingdom you, Steven J. McGarrett, would be the king - can we talk about your apparent suicidal tendencies for a second here?”
He holds up a hand to ward off the protests he knows are only seconds away.
“No, that wasn’t a question. Look at me-” Danny hisses, breaks off the steady stream of words when Steve turns his head away and reaches out to grab his chin, forcing Steve to look him in the eyes.
“Look at me, McGarrett. Just what the fuck were you thinking, huh? Because so help me," he seethes, stabbing an angry finger none too gently into Steve’s chest and can’t find it in him to apologize when he flinches. He deserves it. Steve needs to know just how angry he is.
“So help me, Steven, if you’re under some misguided impression that it is not only okay, but perfectly acceptable, to sacrifice yourself for the ‘greater good’,” he stabs the air angrily for emphasis. “Or some other military mind-set bullshit let me remind you that you are no longer in the Navy, my friend. Your SEAL has lost his flippers. So whatever farcical obligation you are operating under that tells you that it you, as in you personally, had to take down Wo Fat single-handedly is wrong. You, my friend, did not have to do anything-”
“Danno-”
“Don’t ‘Danno’ me, McGarrett, I’m not done.” He pauses and waits for Steve to catch up, waits until he knows Steve is following him and he knows by the way his body is angled, the way his arms tighten just a bit at the shoulders that Steve is listening even if he isn’t looking.
“We,” Danny says the word slowly and carefully, “are a team. A team which does not, anywhere in the word, include the letter ‘i’-”
“Actually-” Steve starts, but Danny steadily ignores him.
“-Which means you can’t just go throwing yourself under the proverbial bus and wave it off with some Machivellian “the end justifies the means” philosophical bullshit when you accidentally go and get yourself killed!”
Danny pulls on Steve’s chin again, waits for his eyes to find him because god forbid he at least has the decency to stare Danny in the face when he’s getting yelled at.
“You are not a Navy SEAL anymore, okay, and you might say “I get that”, but, babe, the thing is? You don’t."
“I-” Steve attempts to interrupt again but Danny isn’t done, not by a long shot.
“Were you or were you not completely prepared to go down fighting if you took Wo Fat down with you?” His voice is clipped, to the point, and his tone indicates that he is only asking out of courtesy to drive his point home.
Bingo. Steve‘s jaw goes slack and the words halt on his tongue. Danny takes the chance to plunge in with both feet.
“I might not be a ninja SEAL or whatever, so I don’t know how you did things out there in the mighty jungle where you were skinning natives and killing tigers with your bare hands or whatever it was you did - no, listen to me, I am not done - whatever you did then, whatever the mindset was, you are not there anymore, you hear me?”
“I hear you, Danny,” Steve mumbles. “But-”
“No buts! As you keep reminding me, we are in Hawaii; the fiftieth state of the good ol’ U, S, of A, and this means, aside from the no tie policy and the pineapple on pizza, that you need to reevaluate your thinking strategies, okay, because whatever brothers-in-arms suicide pact you had back in SEAL school isn’t going to cut it here, pal.”
Danny takes a breath and backs up a step, suddenly needing the distance. He feels light-headed and he doesn’t know if it’s the talking or the adrenaline or the aftershock of watching his partner ready and willing to forfeit his life, something he thinks is burned permanently on the inside of his eyelids, thank you very much. He mentally adds insomnia to the growing list of problems Steve McGarrett has introduced to his life and waits for the dizziness to subside. Once it does he steps forward again and raises a finger to emphasize his next point.
“In case you somehow failed to notice - and honestly that wouldn’t surprise me because this is you we’re talking about here and with all due respect, you have all the social grace of a rock, but- you have friends here, you schmuck. Friends who, believe it or not, would rather have you alive. You have Chin and Kono and Grace, and you have me, okay, and I’m not going anywhere.”
Danny turns away, looks out over the cars and watches the HPD guys as they scour over what’s left of the building for anything they can tag as evidence. There’s not much left but dust and ash. Danny sighs, feeling a shudder tremble between his shoulders and slide down into his gut, bringing with it the inevitable chill of escaping death. Pinching the bridge of his nose and telling himself to pull it together man, no one died, McGarrett’s a stubborn bastard, he’ll live, he turns back to his partner.
“You picked me and now you’re stuck with me. For better or for worse, just like we’re married - except if we were married I’d demand some kind of compensation, alimony or life-insurance or something because the amount of times you get into life-threatening situations is above and beyond me and my pay grade.”
The words tumble from his mouth in a steady stream that breaks the silence and the familiar rhythm of words on his tongue is calming, something familiar because he’s always ranting at McGarrett and so long as he’s ranting it means McGarrett is around for him to rant at and that, at least, is something to focus on.
“And damned if I let you get yourself killed for some stupid misguided sense of justice or debt or whatever it is your twisted brain considered this, but just so you know?”
He picks up speed now, ranting in full with his hands flying in broad strokes and gestures because he can’t hold them still and if he doesn’t move his hands they’ll shake and if he lets it get to him, get under his skin here in this darkened parking lot with his partner’s blood staining the ground a hundred feet away, he isn’t exactly sure what he’ll do and he’s only certain he would rather not find out.
“I am not going to be the one who has to explain to Grace why her Uncle Steve doesn’t take her out for shaved ice anymore because he got this stupid idea in his head that he had to be a big damn hero and-”
Steve cuts him off. “If you wouldn’t tell her, who would?”
Relief raises his voice an octave because it’s the first time Steve’s said more than monosyllables and Danny seizes the chance at familiarity with both hands.
“Who would tell- That’s not the point! That is so not the point I am trying to make here-”
“Then what is the point, Danny?”
“The point- the point, Steven J. McGarrett, you heartless animal, is that you might not understand the rules of regular, civilized society and these scary, complicated things people in the real, non-militant world have called 'emotions',” Danny pauses, swallows and his tone turns serious. He knows Steve picks up on it from the way he straightens just a bit, tenses like he’s about to take a bullet or, god, like he’s being stabbed all over again, but his face gives nothing away.
“But it means that we care, all right? You did it, you got your revenge. Wo Fat is dead. But that doesn’t mean you get to give up now that it’s over.”
And Steve shifts a bit, rearranges his face, and Danny thinks it might have been comical if he wasn't covered in blood and bruises and looking for all the world like a little boy lost.
“What,” He continues when Steve doesn’t answer because god dammit, there are some things he just can’t stand and his partner doing his best imitation of his daughter’s kicked-puppy face is one of them. “Do you need some kind of mission, is that it? As if I wasn’t already 99.9% convinced you were a robot, super SEAL, now I am upping my percentage to 100, and you, my friend, if you need a mission, fine.”
He spreads his arms wide and gives his partner a pointed look.
“How about protecting the state of Hawaii like the Governor hired you to do? The bad guys don’t stop just because Wo Fat is dead, you know.” Hands drop to his side and then lift up again because damn it all, it’s like he has to explain all this to Steve in pictograms or something.
“Or!” he says triumphantly, and gestures to the building. “For something a little more mundane, you can go around and offer to repay all the doors you kicked in in the last week.”
Steve gives him a look that's somewhere between Aneurism Face and They-Have-Their-Own-Money-They-Can-Pay-For-The-Doors-Themselves, and the fact that Steve even has a face for that is a testament to how crazy his life is.
“And if you still need something to do after that, you can weed my garden.”
“You don’t have a garden, Danny. You practically live in a box.”
Danny bristles at the familiar jibe and he bites back a smile.
“My apartment is not a box. I’ll have you know, a fair amount of my paycheck goes into paying for that ‘box’, so don’t you go calling it a - hey, are you even listening to me?”
“Truthfully?”
“You-” Danny groans. “I don’t even know why I put up with you! You’re impossible!”
He’s gesturing wildly again, completely absorbed in this argument they’ve had a thousand times and he doesn’t even try to hide the smile this time. But then Steve shuts down, his eyes darken and slide away and Danny falters, clears his throat and sobers because he knows when it's time to be serious.
“Alright then, What?" Steve murmurs and his quiet voice compels Danny to look at him, really look at him. "What does it mean?”
And maybe it just sort of kind of steals his breath away that Steve is looking at him for the answer, like he honestly believes Danny is the only one who can give it to him. He falters a bit, scratches at his cheek and the back of his neck and shifts from foot to foot before he clears his throat and opens his mouth to fill the void with words and prays, just prays that they’re the right ones.
“It means - it means you have all the more reason to continue living.” The words tumble from his mouth and after a hesitant start he seems to find his feet.
“Not to quote you to you or anything, but you’re not as alone around here as you think. You’ve got Five-0 and your sister and Gracie and me and we aren’t going to leave you alone just because you think it’s over and done with.”
Danny pinches the bridge of his nose in frustration at the blank look he gets in return, like Steve is still processing everything he’s heard and doesn’t know how to make sense of it.
“You’re going to make me say it, aren't you?” he asks, but the question is rhetorical and it almost breaks his heart to see the blank look on Steve’s face, like he honest to god doesn’t know and Jesus Christ, Danny can’t have that.
He breathes deeply, pulls himself together and looks Steve in the eyes.
“I love you, you giant goof. So just...stop with the melodramatic martyr routine, okay?”
Steve stares at him for what seems like eternity, and then slowly, slowly, slower than Danny would have liked, all the shadows clear from his eyes, from the dips and hollows in his face where they were lurking just around the edges until he finally looks something like his old self again. There’s a furrow in his brow and a slight pout on his lips that remind Danny of Anuerism Face, only it’s not a face he’s ever seen before on Steve, so he can only assume that Steve is thinking over his words and suddenly, inexplicably, Danny feels nervous.
But then Steve smiles, that fond, goofy smile; the one Steve breaks out when Danny does something funny like insist on keeping his tie even when the weather is on the high side of ninety, or when he‘s driving Danny’s car or, especially, whenever he says “Book ‘em, Danno.”
And then Steve blinks at him, furrow gone and raises one of his eyebrows in a gesture that clearly states he’s about to say something stupid.
“I’m being melodramatic?” he says, gruff and a little incredulous, and suddenly Danny wants to throttle him, to punch him in that smug, stupid mouth and tell him that he takes it back, that he doesn’t love him, could never love such a psycho because seriously? Seriously?
And then, bastard that he is, Steve has the gall to chuckle.
“Now who has Aneurism Face?” Steve asks and whoa, Danny swallows, because when did Steve get so close? But he doesn’t have time to answer because the hulking six-foot mass of control freak that for some reason Danny cannot seem to function without leans down and kisses him.
Danny wants to say it is the best kiss he’s ever had, but in reality it’s clumsy and messy and a touch too desperate because though it’s a shock, it isn’t, not really, and the touch of their lips is like a spark on dry kindling that lights a fire in Danny’s blood until he’s clutching at Steve so hard he’s sure Steve’s skin will be marked forever.
When they break apart, Steve looks more like his old self for the first time since this whole thing started and something calms inside him; the hurricane blows over, stills, stops and he laughs as he tightens his hands in Steve’s shirt.
And Steve smiles that stupid, goofy smile he has, the one that blinds Danny and brightens his world at the same time.
Danny sighs and rests his forehead against Steve’s collarbone, tucked just beneath his chin, breathing into the hollow of Steve’s neck as he collects himself. Steve hums low and contently in his throat and Danny can feel the vibrations thrum against his temples.
“What?” is all he can manage. The word sounds small in the space of all the silence.
Steve shifts and Danny can feel the nervousness under his fingers, a flutter of emotion that shocks him into stillness.
“You’re right,” Steve’s nose brushes over his cheek and skims the sensitive skin just below his ear.
“And,” Steve’s voice scrapes roughly against his ear and he squeezes Danny tightly as though afraid he’ll lose him if he lets go.
Danny stills, can feel the world narrowing its focus, setting him and Steve in its crosshairs for just a moment and he feels everything crawl to a stop as he waits for Steve to continue.
“And?”
Steve lets go with a sigh. “I love you, too, Danno.”
And for once, Danny is at a loss for words.