fic: repair: you won't dismantle me; steve/danny

[race_the_ace]

Title: repair: you won’t dismantle me
Disclaimer: I don't own Hawaii 5-0, Buffy the Vampire Slayer or any of its characters or plots. This is for personal benefit only.
Fandom: Hawaii 5-0, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Pairing: Danny/Steve
Word count: 7,989
Rating: PG for content R for language
Summary: Danny’s a Slayer, sort of, and in love with Steve, sort of, and eats a lot of peppermint patties (not sort of).
Warnings: Death of two minor OCs, language

Author’s Notes:
- Some lines are taken directly from Hawaii 5-0. Those definitely do not belong to me.
- Okay, so yeah, I moved S1E12 after S1E13. Oops?


*****

When Danny is nine, a man shows up at his house. His name is Rupert Giles and he’s here for Danny’s sister.

It takes all of twenty minutes for Danny’s life to change forever.

Amy’s a Chosen One. When her time comes, she’ll be The Chosen One. Rupert Giles wants to start training her now. Amy clutches Danny’s hand and says, “Only if my brother can train with me.”

Danny hasn’t been apart from Amy for longer than a day since they were born. He thinks all that time spent in the womb together probably led to their co-dependence. He’s pretty much okay with that, though.

Giles looks flustered for a moment, but nods. “I’m letting a flat down the street,” he says. “How about every day, after school?”

Danny’s parents are still freaking out, so Danny’s the one who answers, “Sounds good.” He’s always been really responsible.

It turns out that Amy is the first potential vampire slayer with a twin. Giles tells them that there have been no other recorded mentions of a twin anywhere in the Watcher’s Diaries. Amy and Danny are fraternal twins, though, so Giles thinks they’ll be like any other Chosen One with a sibling.

They find out later, he’s wrong.

-0-

Amy’s sixteen when the current Slayer dies and she’s activated. It’s a little bit weird, but Danny just works even harder to try and keep up with her.

They patrol at night, train after school, and during the day they attend Sunnydale High. It’s a lonely life sometimes, the few friends they managed to make never seemed to stick around for long, but Danny has Amy and they make it work.

Over time, Danny starts researching a little bit more and working out a little bit less. Sure, Giles is still there, but sometimes they need more than one person working on stuff, and since Amy is usually off fighting whatever they’re looking up, the task is left to Danny. Their parents help when they can, but they aren’t fluent in the twelve dead and/or demon languages that Danny is, so most of the books don’t mean anything to them.

When Danny’s eighteen, it takes four minutes for his life to change.

He and Giles pull up in Danny’s Toyota to find Amy battling down six vampires at once along with three Grumlings, vampires possessed by demons. Danny starts chanting the exorcism and he’s two lines from the end when Amy goes down.

She doesn’t get back up.

Danny chokes out the rest of the words and rushes in headfirst to take care of the vampires that Giles hasn’t managed to kill yet.

Danny falls onto his knees next to his sister and Amy looks up at him with sad eyes. They both knew this would happen, the average life span of a Slayer is seventeen years, three months, but Danny never allowed himself to really think about what that meant.

She holds onto his hand weakly and Danny feels Giles come up behind him. “I love you,” Amy whispers. “I love you, Danno.”

Tears stream down Danny’s face. “I love you, Amy. Please, just…just hold on, okay?”

She smiles sadly at him and everything in Danny starts to hurt. “I love you,” she says again. Her eyes flutter shut and her hand goes limp in Danny’s. He leans forward and doesn’t hold back the tears.

-0-

The day after Amy’s funeral, Danny applies to Princeton in New Jersey. He wants out of California, away from the Hellmouth, and anything to do with slaying.

Giles is saying goodbye, preparing to go back to England, and Danny feels abandoned. Giles was never his Watcher, but Danny spent just as much time with him as Amy did, even more, towards the end.

It takes twelve seconds for his life to change this time, and Danny is really starting to think that these things should take longer.

Danny drops a piece of paper and it flies underneath his car. He sinks to his knees and puts his hand on the bottom of the car, trying to look under it to see where the paper is. The car shifts, and then Danny’s holding it up with one hand.

Giles is staring at him and if Danny could stare at himself, he thinks he would be doing that, too, but he can’t, so he just sits there in shock. Eventually he realizes that he’s holding up half a car in public and gently sets it back down, piece of paper forgotten.

Giles stays.

-0-

Danny becomes the first Slayer De Facto. Amy died, and when she did, another Slayer was called, but somehow, Danny was called, too.

There’s never been two Slayers in the world at once, and the Watcher’s Council isn’t quite sure what to do about that. Danny makes it easy for them.

“Listen,” Danny says into the phone. “I’ll still go out at night, patrol and all that, but I want my life back. There’s another Slayer out there somewhere, use her, and let me get on with my own stuff.” He looks at Giles. “Oh, and I can keep the Watcher I already have, right?”

Giles moves with him to New Jersey, and it should be kind of weird that Danny’s best friend is twenty years older than him, but it’s a link to Amy and a link to the Watcher’s council, and Giles makes a really good cup of tea.

Danny graduates at twenty-three. He walks across the stage with a picture of Amy in his arms, and accepts his degree in theoretical physics.

That night he patrols with Giles, but things are pretty quiet in New Jersey. Sometimes, when Danny feels the itch, he’ll head for New York, where there’s a few more vamps running around.

“Have you any more an idea of what you want to do with your life, Daniel?” Giles asks.

Danny crosses his legs lotus style on top of a stone bench in the local ceremony. “I, uh, thought about checking out the local police academy.”

“Have you decided against grad school then?”

Danny shrugs. There’s a hole the size of Amy in him and he think it gets a little bigger every day. “I thought I wanted this normal life, you know? Meet some new people, make friends, get a girlfriend, but even without the whole Slayer thing, I’m just different, G. I’m not the same kid I was before Amy died.”

“You need to meet some more people your age. Do what other kids are doing these days.”

“Was that a not so subtle hint for me to get laid?” Danny grins.

Giles sputters, “It most certainly wasn’t.”

It was though, and they both know it. Danny’s twenty-three and a virgin. Never even been kissed. Between his studies and his extra-curricular activities, Danny barely has time to sleep, much less woo another person into bed with him. It should maybe, probably, bother him more than it does.

Danny’s been living half a life for years now, and they both know it.

“You know,” Giles begins. “The Council wouldn’t say no if you were to--”

“No,” Danny interrupts.

“I’m just saying you might want to consider it, Daniel.”

The Council’s been after him for the past couple of years to get into slaying full time. Danny’s been resistant because he’s all his parents have left, and he’s not going to risk them losing their only surviving child.

“Giles, if you--” Danny sighs, not quite sure how to say this. “If you want to leave, I won’t be offended, man. I’m sure another potential Slayer would be glad to have you.”

“A Watcher never leaves their Slayer,” Giles says with a frown.

“But you’re not really my Watcher, right? You’re Amy’s. You kinda got pushed on to me, you know?”

Giles reaches out and grabs Danny’s arm, stopping him from walking. Danny meets blue eyes flashing with hurt and anger. “You are my Slayer, Daniel, and I am your Watcher. Just because I was your sister’s does not mean I’m not yours as well.”

Danny swallows the lump in his throat. “Yeah?”

“Yes, of course,” Giles says.

The next day, Danny applies for the police academy and when he graduates, Giles is there as he’s handed his badge.

-0-

Danny’s been a cop for almost ten years when Giles gets word from the Watcher’s Council of something going down in Hawaii. Danny thinks Hawaii is a shitty place for vampires to hang out, but there’s always been nests of them there. And apparently now they’re growing.

The Watcher’s Council occasionally asks Danny to do something for them. For the most part, he says yes. He’s already met the four Slayers that came after Amy, has stopped the apocalypse twice, and taken down more vampires and demons than he can count. But he’s not at their beck and call, and they know it. Danny does his own thing, and sometimes that includes doing their thing.

“Hawaii, Giles?” Danny grimaces. “I have a job here, a life. I can’t just up and leave it because they think something’s happening in Hawaii. Send Alex.”

Alex is the current Slayer, and Danny likes her well enough. She’s impatient, though, and he’s realistic enough to know that that’s what’s going to get her killed.

“They can get you a job with the police department there, Daniel,” Giles says.

Danny appreciates him not pointing out that Danny really doesn’t have a life in New Jersey. He goes through the motions and gets killers off the street, but that’s about it.

The next day, Danny’s parents call to tell him to pack lots of sunscreen, despite Danny’s protests that he’s not going to some pineapple infested hellhole. They ship him the biggest bottle of SPF 100 that Danny has ever seen and that’s when he realizes that he really doesn’t have anything to lose by going. He books a flight for the following week.

-0-

Sure enough, the Watcher’s Council hooks him up with the Hawaii Police Department, and Danny’s back on the job. He’s getting a bit old now to be hanging out in cemeteries and patrolling the streets, but the Slayer thing kind of lasts until you die, so he does it anyway.

If Danny’s old, Giles is ancient, although still really spry for a man his age. They get a three bedroom house somewhere and most of Danny’s colleagues either think Giles is his dad or his lover. Which, ew.

Danny doesn’t really adapt to Hawaii. He wants New Jersey back. He wants pollution and traffic and pizza without fruit on it. He wants to walk around without seeing people mostly naked with their asses hanging out the back of their swim suit. He wants to see more ties. But he’s here and the Council’s right. Something’s brewing in Hawaii and Danny has no idea what it is.

He patrols almost every night, a step up from the once or twice a week he was doing before. There are just vampires everywhere, and for a state that’s filled with beaches and sun, Danny thinks there shouldn’t be this many. And it’s an island, right? So there should only be so many places they can hide out, except apparently not, because they’re coming from somewhere, and fuck if Danny hasn’t gone over the whole freaking island twice. He probably knows Oahu better than people who’ve lived here their whole lives.

So they wait, and Giles reads. Danny spends his days playing detective and his nights playing Slayer and the rest of the time playing someone who didn’t die sixteen years ago.

It gets a little bit harder every day.

-0-

It starts with the death of Jack McGarrett. Jack was an ex-Watcher who came back to Hawaii to work with Danny and Giles on the new big bad in town. Giles refused to name it, so Danny calls it Bob. So, Jack came to help with Bob.

After almost seven months of work, all they have is that Bob is in charge of some kind of underground vampire training grounds, and has a more above surface job of smuggling goods and people (and demons) onto and off of the island.

They don’t know how he does it, where he does it, or why. Danny thinks they’re all failing as vampire detectives.

“Daniel!” Giles yells up the stairs. “We’re going to be late.”

Danny rolls his eyes as he straightens his tie. Jack’s funeral is today and Danny’s only going to stake out who else goes, Bob might have a human connection who attends. As a general rule, Danny doesn’t do funerals anymore--at least not for people he knows. They’re depressing as all fuck and Danny prefers to celebrate their life.

It’s raining when they get there. Surprise. Danny had thought that Hawaii was all sunshine and rainbows, which definitely isn’t how it goes down. There’s so much rain that Danny’s surprised the island isn’t underwater by now.

Danny recognizes most of the people at Jack’s funeral; half of them are Watchers and most of the other half have to do with the supernatural in some way, shape, or form.

Then there’s Jack’s son.

Danny’s not exactly sure which one is Steven McGarrett. He can tell you who he’s not, but he’s never laid eyes on the man and Jack wasn’t the kind of guy to go around flashing pictures. He’s a little bit curious about the son of a Watcher. Most Watchers don’t have families, and the ones who do, well, their kids grow up to be Watchers, too. But not Steven McGarrett.

He mentally reviews what he knows about Jack’s son. Navy SEAL. And that’s it. That’s all Danny knows. He’s not even sure if he’s still in the Navy. Jack didn’t talk about him, which is fine with Danny, but now he wonders if Steven even knows that his dad was a Watcher. A hero. That he’d trained one of the longest living Slayers to date. Danny thinks he probably doesn’t.

-0-

It’s easy enough to get himself assigned to Jack’s case. Danny thinks he probably had a little help from the Watcher’s Council, but he likes to pretend he didn’t. It’s better for the ego and all that.

There’s a truck in the driveway when Danny pulls up to the house. “It’s fine, Giles, I can do this on my own, you know. I have this shiny detective’s badge to prove it,” he says into the phone.

“All I’m saying, Daniel, is you might miss something if it’s the occult. I know that was never your specialty.”

“Hey, I speak like a million dead languages, I think I get to take a pass on creepy witchcraft stuff, alright? I leave the voodoo to you. But see, this? This is my job, okay? And I’m good at my job. If there are little hex bags all over, I’ll call you.”

Giles sighs and Danny can picture him taking off his glances and pinching the bridge of his nose. They’re both too old to still be doing what they’re doing, but there’s not really an off-switch. Once you know that there are things that go bump in the dark, you always know. And even if Danny wasn’t meant to be a Slayer, he still is one. “Just be careful, Daniel.”

“Always am, G-man.”

“And don’t call me G-man,” Giles says before hanging up.

Danny exhales and shoves aside the million thoughts running through his brain. For all he knows Bob isn’t behind this. It could have been a normal, average, everyday sociopath. Danny’s not placing any bets on that though.

He’s alert as he makes his way through the house. Someone’s in there, Danny’s sure of that. He unholsters his gun and quietly makes his way through the bottom floor. Being a Slayer has some perks and Danny uses his heightened sense of hearing to locate the intruder. Garage.

The door’s open and Danny hears a voice, too low to be someone talking. A recording, he decides. It sounds like Jack.

He takes a deep breath and then moves rapidly through the open door, gun raised. “You! Hands up! Don't move!” he yells.

“Who are you?” the other man demands, he has his own gun aimed at Danny. Danny’s never liked guns, and he especially doesn’t like them when they’re aimed at him.

“Who are you?” Danny answers in return. “I am Detective Danny Williams.”

“Lieutenant Commander Steve McGarrett,” he gets in response. “This is my father's house.“

“Put your weapon down right now,” Danny commands.

“No, you put your weapon down right now and show me your I.D.”

“You show me your I.D., right now,” Danny yells.

“I'm not putting my gun down,” McGarrett says.

“Neither am I,” Danny tells him.

“Use your free hand, take out your I.D.,” McGarrett orders.

Danny holds back a laugh. “Please, after you.”

“At the same time?” McGarrett asks.

“At the same time?” Danny repeats.

McGarrett confirms, “Yeah, at the same time.”

“What, like, on the count of three?”

“Sure,“ McGarrett agrees. “Okay, three's good.”

“One…” Danny counts, reaching slowly for his badge. “Two… Three…”

He stares at McGarrett badge while McGarrett stares at his. He’s tense for a moment, unsure if the other man will accept his badge or not, but then McGarrett’s posture softens so Danny closes his badge and lowers his gun. His badge goes back into his pocket and his gun to its holster. “Listen, uh, I'm really sorry about your father, but you can't be here right now. This is an active crime scene.”

“Doesn’t seem that active,” McGarrett retorts.

Danny can already tell it’s going to be a long day.

-0-

“I swear, Giles! The man is insane! One fry short of a Happy Meal! One flew over the cuckoo’s nest!” Danny rants.

Giles is sitting at the dining room table with books spread out all over it, just shaking his head at Danny. “I’m sure he’s not that bad.”

“Not that bad? Did you miss the part where I told you he drove onto a Chinese freighter?! He’s fucking batshit!” Danny huffs as he takes a seat. He sets the beer that he’s holding down on the table, away from manuscripts that are probably older than he is. “He’s going to get in the way,” he says finally.

“Do you think he’ll figure out that his father was a Watcher?” Giles asks.

Danny shakes his head. “I don’t think so. We got all of the Watcher stuff out of there already. And even if Steve does come across it, I doubt he’ll know what it is.”

“Perhaps over time…”

“It’s his dad,” Danny says, defeated. “He’s not going to give up on this.”

“So you want to tell him? Is that what you’re saying?”

“I don’t know,” Danny admits. He traces the outside of one of Giles’s books. “I mean, how do you even tell someone that everything they think is make-believe is actually real? That there are things out there with fangs and claws and fuck. I just… He’s a civilian.”

“He’s a Navy SEAL, Daniel,” Giles says. “Hardly a civilian.”

“He’s a civilian when it comes to this,” Danny says, gesturing to the books on the table and the weapons strewn around. “He’s a complication.”

Giles reaches out and rests his hand on Danny’s arm. It’s nice. Danny can’t remember when the last time he touched someone was. Unless he counts hitting McGarrett. “We’ve dealt with worse and we’ve worked around more.”

“Yeah,” Danny nods. “Yeah. We can do this.”

“And then perhaps we can head back to the States, if you so wish to.”

Danny picks at the label on his beer bottle. “Do you ever want to retire, Giles?” he asks. But Danny knows the answer. Giles can’t retire until Danny does. Or he could, but he won’t. What he wants doesn’t matter, Giles serves the Slayer, and as long as Danny’s still alive, that’s him.

“No one would think less of you if you did,” Giles says softly. “You’ve been a Slayer for longer than any other on record. Fifteen years is a long time, Daniel.”

A long time to be fighting a fight that was never Danny’s to begin with. It was Amy’s, though. And they both know that Danny’s going through the motions, waiting for the day when he makes a mistake he can’t come back from.

“I miss her,” Danny says quietly. “Sometimes I can’t even remember what she sounded like.”

Giles’s hand moves so that it’s squeezing Danny’s. “She’d be proud of you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

-0-

“So what’s the story on Danny Williams?” Steve asks a couple of days after their first case winds down. Danny still isn’t sure what to think of him; he’s a Navy SEAL who’s now Danny’s boss. Danny is now part of a task force that can apparently do whatever it wants to. And oh, yeah, his partner is batshit insane.

“There’s no story,” Danny says as he lifts his Longboard to his mouth. “What’s the Steven McGarrett story?”

Steve shrugs. “Joined the SEALs and here I am.”

Danny snorts. “You’re an amazing storyteller.”

“Better than there is no story,” he retorts, quoting Danny. “But really, man, why’d you move here from Jersey? And what’s with the tie? And the loafers?”

“Needed a change of scenery for a while,” Danny tells him. “And I like the tie, and the shoes. It shows I’m a professional.”

“Change of scenery? You couldn’t just move to California or something? You came all the way out here to Hawaii for a change of scenery?”

“What? Is that a crime now, Steven? I can’t move wherever I want to?”

Steve shrugs. “It’s just a little weird, that’s all. I don’t mean anything by it, Danno.”

Danny freezes at the name. I love you, Danno. Thinking of Amy sends a wave of pain throughout his body and it hurts so fucking bad. Even after all these years it still hurts. “It’s Danny,” he says firmly. “And maybe I’m just a little weird.”

Steve shoots him a look that says he isn’t buying it, but doesn’t say anything. He takes a long swig of his own beer before saying, “Come on, tell me something, Danny. We’re gonna be partners. I should know something about you. Tell me about your, uh, partner guy.”

Danny frowns. “My what? He’s sitting right here,” he says, gesturing to Steve. “Or did you want to know about Reed back in Jersey.”

“Um, look,” Steve begins. “So it’s really not any of my business, and I don’t mind, I really don’t, I just… I heard some of the guys saying you lived with someone? A guy? They sort of implied he was…more than just a friend?”

“Giles?” Danny asks in surprised disgust. “People around here think I’m sleeping with Giles? Oh, now that is just wrong.”

“So you’re not?” Steve asks, sounding just a little bit relieved.

Danny laughs. “Definitely not. He’s like a father to me.”

“So he just…lives…with you then?”

“Or I live with him,” Danny shrugs. It’s definitely one of the two. “But, yeah. He’s a friend, man. I’m sure he’d be delighted to meet the man that almost got me killed, if you want an introduction.”

Steve grins. “Please, Danny, you weren’t even close to dead.”

“Am I the only one who remembers that you got me shot? Then drove me onto a Chinese freighter? Into another gun fight?”

“I knew you could handle it,” Steve says simply.

Danny rolls his eyes. “You barely knew me at all.”

“You have a look.”

“A look? I have a look?”

Steve turns to stare at him for a long moment. Danny forces himself not to move. He’s not uncomfortable, not really, but he hasn’t been scrutinized this much since the first time he met the Watcher’s Council. “Yeah,” Steve says finally. “You have a look.”

As long as it was a look and not a sign that read: Longest Living Slayer Ever, Danny could deal with that. He coughs and takes a drink of his beer. “So, seriously, there’s nothing else to be said in the life story of Steven McGarrett?”

Steve smiles and it goes all the way up to his eyes. “For you, Danno,” he says, stretching his arms. “I’m an open book.”

“It’s Danny,” he grounds out.

“I like Danno better, it suits you.”

“This is going to be one of those things, isn’t it?”

Steve half-smirks, half-smiles. “Oh, yeah.”

-0-

part two