Christmas Comment!fics [2011]

[soera]

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Last year, I offered comment!fic in a number of fandoms as a Christmas present to all you lovely folk out there. I got some wonderful prompts and really enjoyed myself writing ficlets for them, so I’ve decided to do the same this year. For those of you who don’t know how this works, let’s go over things:

Comments

[soera]

[Um. Nooot quite sure this is what you were thinking when you requested h/c, but I hope it works for you anyway?]

like children, we never stop hoping

Danny’s always an odd mix of contradictions after Grace goes back to Rachel’s after the weekend. On the one hand, he’s still delighted from the time he recently spent with his daughter; on the other hand, he’s sullen that he won’t see her for another two weeks. He fluctuates wildly between these moods, but Steve’s gotten used to it. Danny being out of sorts on Mondays after Grace-weekends is normal.

This, though. This is strange even for Danny.

All day, Danny’s worked diligently. He hasn’t grumbled once about the paperwork, about having to creatively describe Steve’s less than sedate approach to law-keeping, or about the numerous ways in which Steve is directly responsible for Danny’s reduced life expectancy. He’d let Steve take away his malasadas without complaint and eaten his chicken salad without launching into an anecdote about Grace, even when Steve had given him the perfect lead-in (“You don’t want to make Grace worry about your cholesterol again, do you?”).

Actually, Danny hasn’t mentioned Grace at all today. Normally he can’t shut up about everything they’d done, and every little word that had come out of his princess’s mouth. Steve is suddenly positive that Danny’s Mood is related to Grace in some way or other.

Asking Danny will probably get him exactly nowhere, but Steve’s a SEAL. He’s used to being sneaky.

He kicks everyone out of the office early, accepts the jokes about the approaching apocalypse with grace and magnanimity, ensures that Danny’s going nowhere but home, then makes a call.

Rachel’s happy to talk to Steve, largely because Grace has also been out of sorts since Danny dropped her off. She won’t talk to Rachel or Stan, though, so they don’t know what’s happened. All that’s clear is that something has happened, and Danny and Grace are both miserable about it. It might, Rachel says cautiously, have been something to do with the apartment Danny lives in. Grace had told Rachel on Thursday that she didn’t much like it.

Steve thanks Rachel, hangs up, and thinks of Grace earnestly asking her father why he couldn’t move somewhere nicer. He thinks of how much Danny struggles to make ends meet. Moving to Hawaii hadn’t been easy or cheap, and Steve knows that Danny’s still paying off loans he can ill afford. Danny’s proud, though, and reluctant to accept help from any quarter. It’s only for Grace’s sake that he’ll give up his dignity and accept tickets to a hotel stay and dolphin show, or an invitation to a private beach. It’s been for Grace’s sake that Danny’s done everything he has, these past nine years. For Grace’s sake, Danny would be persuaded to move… except that he genuinely can’t afford to.

Steve finds himself knocking at Danny’s door, with no idea what he’s going to do afterwards. Danny opens the door, takes one look at Steve, then groans. Apparently, Steve’s not very good at hiding anything from Danny.

“Oh, god,” Danny says, but lets Steve in anyway.

“I don’t know what to do,” Steve says.

“Nothing you can do,” Danny says, turning his back on Steve. “I mean, I knew it was coming, okay, it’s not like I didn’t know, how could she possibly be happy here? It’s just -”

Steve wraps his arms around Danny, leans down and drags him backwards until they’re pressed together tightly, and then he holds on until Danny stops trying to get loose and just sinks back into Steve’s hold. “You’re a good dad,” Steve murmurs. “The best I’ve ever known. I didn’t know dads could be like that, like what you are.”

Danny tilts his head back, closes his eyes and breathes out a resigned sigh.

“She’ll see it too,” Steve tells Danny quietly. “Maybe not right off, but she’s a smart kid. She’ll see it.” He doesn’t think before he kisses the side of Danny’s forehead, and then the corner of his eye, and his cheek, and his lips, as Danny twists in his arms and holds on and lets himself forget.