H50: Fix the Sky a Little (Steve/Danny)
Title: Fix the Sky a Little
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Steve/Danny
Summary: A failed case leaves the team reeling and Danny more protective than ever.
Author's Note: There's a story to this one that involves a moronic history teacher showing pictures of genocide, with no warning, and I decided I was going to write instead of paying attention, and I was going to write about Danny wanting to protect Grace from the world's horrors. That, my friends, was almost a month ago. This is my second (posted) fic for H50, with others in the works. All my beta is belong to quoththewriter , who's amazing and awesome and thought it was funny to blast Sexy Eyes in a place where I couldn't laugh without looking like a lunatic. I'll get you back one day.
“Rachel, just put her on. What do you think I’m going to do, poison her through the damn phone line? No. Watching TV today. That’s what will do that. Put her on.”
Danny’s voice is more strained now than it has been all day. It’s saying something when this is said about a man who’s broken down at least once today, if not more. What really concerns Steve is his own urge to step over, take the phone, and yell at Rachel himself. It would be overstepping boundaries, but he’s not sure he can find it in himself to care at this point in time.
Today? Wasn’t good. Steven McGarrett is no stranger to bad days, but somehow this is different. He’d hought the burden would be less when shared with someone, but he’s found that nothing is further from the truth. It is worse to know that someone else had to go through this. It is worse to know that, somewhere, Chin is driving home a drunken Kono. It is worse to see Danny breaking down in front of him.
It was so much easier when he didn’t have to share the burden.
And he doesn’t know what to do, besides lean against the car and half watch as Danny paces. He hadn’t known what to do today except to place a hand on Kono’s shoulder and promise that it hadn’t been her fault, or nod when he saw the pain on Chin’s face, and all the while he feared it wasn’t enough. He still does.
“Thank you,” Danny says, the words clipped, as though he’s restraining himself, and there’s a pause as he waits. He knows there’s something wrong, really wrong, when Danny doesn’t even comment on the face he’s making, only continues to stare blindly in his direction, squinting into the sun. He looks numb, void, as though something has stripped him of his usual fire. It’s unsettling, more-so than Kono’s red-rimmed eyes or Chin’s unusually quick temper.
He wonders if he should say something, do something, but this isn’t something he knows how to fix. He’d take a needle and thread to stitch a wound over this, any day. Steve has lost men before, of course: it is inevitable, a part of duty. The difference is that he was trained for that. He was trained to be loyal but to not get attached, and maybe that’s why he’s handling this better. He knows how to steel himself for loss. They don’t.
(He tries not to think about loss in the terms of anything other than civilians, and by trying not to think, he knows he’s broken a cardinal rule. He’s attached. And no matter what Daniel Williams might say to him about no longer being a SEAL, he knows how much easier it would have been.
But, somehow, he finds himself not quiet caring, and that maybe that’s all right. Because he’s not thinking about how he might have to deal with that someday. Steve McGarrett tries not to think.)
Seven year old Kaloe was 60 pounds of pig-tailed, Narnia-carrying diplomat’s daughter, but with her mother and father dead, 5-0 was all that stood between her and gunfire.
They’d failed.
Kaloe had slipped out underneath Kono’s nose when the gunfire had started. When it had stopped, their shooter wasn’t the only one dead.
It’s not their first body, certainly not their first victim. It’s not the first time that they’ve lost somebody. What it is is too close to home. They spent days with the girl, they knew her. To lose her under their own watch, a girl that they’d already failed not to make an orphan… some things, they’d learned, were bigger than five-0. It’s not that he didn’t know this. He did. Despite being trained for loss, close, personal, loss, Steve finds himself not quite able to handle this in the company of others.
It’s them.
It’s the way that, when the hail of gunfire ends, when the proverbial smoke clears, Kono stands wide-eyed and trembling with her gun still pointed outwards, and the killer dead at her feet. It’s how she doesn’t move until Chin steps forward and takes the gun from her, speaking quietly, moving slowly, how she crumbles when she sees Kaloe’s body and Chin looks both of them in the eye and says he’ll take her home.
It’s Danny’s face, how Steve can see every single thought in it. He can read every thought the man is having behind his eyes, and when he speaks, his voice is all but dead.
They are trembling, they are a mess, and so is he, but he keeps it inside because they’re a mess and it seems like the right thing to do. He’s going to put them before himself. It isn’t a question.
He offered to drive Danny home. Whatever they have between them isn’t of consequence tonight. Nothing can fix what they witnessed tonight, certainly nothing he has to offer. Danny had stopped by the car and asked for a moment to call Grace.
It was a high-profile case. There’s no doubt in his mind that Rachel already knew the outcome, and the side of the conversation he hears confirms it. She knows.
Whether or not she truly blames him is another matter.
“Hey, monkey,” is all Steve hears him say before he walks a little further away, to give him the privacy. Danny is talking on the phone, but Steve is trying not to hear him when he talks to his daughter and tells her how much Danno loves her. He tries not to hear but he feels sick because he knows how much this is going to kill Danny. Sooner or later, Grace will know of their failure today. The island knows. Somebody will talk.
Daddy caught the bad guys. Just not soon enough.
Steve wants nothing more than to go place a hand on Danny’s back, to let it rest there as Danny sighs and releases some of the tension he’s holding in. He wants to stop the tears before they fall, which is something new for him. He can’t stand to see the man upset. It turns something in him, to see the vibrant detective close to tears. Steve would endure all the torture in the world. He’d stand there and weather it if it would somehow fix things. He would take the blame for Kaloe if it could make Danny stop fearing today’s events would lessen his daughter’s love for him.
(Doesn’t Danny know that nothing could do that? He followed her to Hawaii, he left everything. Grace knows that. He loves her unconditionally, as much as Danny tries to hide it from him. Steve can see right past it, but no matter how many times he tells him it’s cute, he doesn’t think Danny understands that his love for his daughter endears Steve to him even more.)
“Let’s go.” Danny says to him, a sentence that’s surprisingly short. Steve can’t help but raise a brow. “What?” Danny questions with a bite to the word.
“You can’t…” Steve pauses, because Danny’s eyes are so wide, so earnest, that it momentarily stops the words in his throat. “You can’t protect her from knowing everything.” He wants to reach out, put a hand on his partner’s shoulder, because he’s visibly trembling.
“I can try.” Three short words, the shortest sentence that he’s ever heard him speak.
“She goes to school, Danny.” Steve says, watching Danny’s face fall, feeling instantly bad for what he’s said, as though Danny hasn’t considered it yet.
“I will have someone home school her. From this point on. Do you understand me?” Danny says, and there’s his anger again, blue eyes flashing with it. “I will put her in a fucking bubble. Because my daughter does not need to know just how shit-filled this world is. Or how people on this island seem to be dropping dead, and hey, her Dad can’t stop it, he can only find out who did it!” Danny is fuming, breathing fast, eyes wide.
“Danny.” He says, so much meaning in the name, and the man in question stops pacing, arms dropping to his sides before he pinches the bridge of his nose.
“I know.” He says, quietly, which is something Danny never is.
“You do,” Steve says, even though it’s more of a question than an actual statement, one that has him raising his brow.
“Yeah, Steven, I do. It doesn’t mean I can’t pretend she’ll never know that the world is cruel.” He catches his eye, briefly. “Let me have my delusions, please.”
“She already knows what’s important.”
When Danny looks up, Steve shrugs a shoulder.
“What, you don’t remember?”
He takes in the wild, confused look in Danny’s eyes. He looks captive, almost afraid, like someone who’s been running and has been suddenly asked to stand still.
“You tell her all the time.” He continues. “I asked you about it.”
Maybe Danny understands, and maybe he doesn’t, but he’s going to make Steve say it.
“Danno loves her.” He says it and Danny shifts from foot to foot. His partner’s face constricts, and then relaxes. Steve wants to say, ‘It makes a difference, it matters, why don’t you see that?’ because he knows firsthand exactly how much it means, but suddenly Danny is speaking, and Steve is grateful that he doesn’t have to explain.
He doesn’t know if he could.
“You, my friend, are not half bad. Sometimes.”
Steve’s mouth quirks. “Is this one of those times?”
“I can almost believe you are human and not animal.”
“Almost.” Steve mocks, raising a brow. Danny starts making his way towards the car and he follows, waiting. The familiar banter feels good.
“Yes, almost.” Danny unlocks the door, and Steve gets in the driver’s seat. “This!” He says, gesturing, making his partner grin. “This, Steven, is why I say almost. In normal society, when you get into a friend’s car, you get in the passenger seat. Not the driver’s seat. And for another matter entirely, and most people wouldn’t even have to bring this up, you do not, I repeat, do not play Sexy Eyes.”
But Danny gets in the passenger seat even as he complains, and Steve puts on the music, presses his foot to the gas, and lets Danny’s words fill the car.
He’d have it no other way.