fic: Running (1/1)
Title: Running
Author: stellarmeadow
Fandom: Hawaii Five-0
Paring: Steve/Danny
Rating: PG
Summary:Coping, McGarrett and Williams style.
Notes: Sorry for the delay, been working my ass off the entire weekend at my real job (which is, sadly, not writing fic). Part of the Season 4 coda series.
Spoilers for 416! You have been warned!
Steve kicked the seat into the recliner position, watching the channels go by on the TV as he clicked the remote. It was just as well that he wasn't looking to watch anything, since there didn't seem to be anything on worth watching.
He heard the creak at the top of the stairs, knew that it was Catherine, looking down to see if he was showing any sign of coming up to bed. She'd been walking on eggshells since she'd returned from her latest Reserve assignment three days ago, like she thought it was somehow her fault that he'd fallen asleep on the chair every night. It wasn't, but he didn't know how to explain it to her.
He didn't look up.
After a minute, he heard the creak again, and he let out a breath. He didn't want to explain, not to anyone. And even if he did want to, he couldn't. It wasn't the kind of thing you could explain. It wasn't even the thing you normally talked about. The Navy would tell you to walk it off, or whatever the equivalent was. Send you to some bullshit counselor who signed off on returning you to duty and that was that.
Fuck the Navy.
He'd told Grover he'd left the Navy because it wasn't the same after Freddie's death, but the truth of it was that he wasn't the same after Freddie's death. The Navy hadn't changed. He had. His whole career he'd followed the rules, even if it was a somewhat fast and loose version of them. When he'd had to leave Freddie behind, let him die, the rules had seemed stupid and insignificant in the face of the loss of someone's husband and father, someone who was like a brother to him.
Such a stupid, pointless loss.
So yeah, fuck the Navy. Or fuck its senseless bureaucracy, anyway, at least when it kept him from doing what was right in favor of what was ordered. He'd kept his command, because it had its uses, especially in his current job, but he was done with that life.
He'd told Grover he'd run away from the Navy, but that wasn't entirely accurate. He'd run to something. To the promise of his own team, the chance to run things the way he thought they should be run instead of marching to someone else's beat. To the promise of Chin and Kono and their strong bond in spite of all the shit their family put them through.
To Danny.
His head had been so totally fucked when he'd run into Danny in the garage. He'd been reeling from losing Freddie and his father and from Hesse winning, beating Steve at his own game, using family to get to his target.
He knew everyone thought he must've been relieved after finding out that his battle with Hesse wasn't to blame for his father's death. Like it mattered. Dead was dead. And he might've been able to prevent it anyway, if he'd been a little smarter with Hesse. If he'd realized that Wo Fat was pulling Hesse's strings sooner.
The thought of how many people might have lived if he'd managed that was staggering. His father, Josh, Jenna, the list was long and too painful to spell out. So much loss, so much pain, all because he didn't put the pieces together.
But then he might not have met Danny.
He tried to imagine meeting Danny differently. If Steve had been visiting his father, free of baggage he'd been lugging around since the day he and Danny had met, how might it have gone? Would he have dismissed Danny if he hadn't seen him in action that first time? Would he have bothered to even get to know the angry guy with the loud mouth if he'd been anything other than angry himself? Or would he have just made some snarky remarks and forgotten about him after.
No, he couldn't imagine ever forgetting about Danny. Something about him had made Steve take him regardless of what Danny said he wanted, or what any sane person would have said was wise. Most people didn't look past Danny's bitching to see what was behind it, but when you did, it was impossible to forget.
Even if it would be better for everyone involved if Steve could.
Of course, he might never have known his mother was alive without all this either. Though the jury was still out on whether that would be better or worse.
Regardless, though, he couldn't imagine a universe where he and Danny didn't meet. They clicked, no matter what, as if their separate lives had been built to fit together at some point. Though when they would actually fit was the question, since it seemed like every time they got close they managed to fuck it up.
Okay, so Steve fucked it up. He was man enough to admit it. One more in the long line of things he'd broken and didn't know how to fix.
He'd thought he might lose that chance last year, when Danny had triggered that bomb. The mere memory of that day was like a shot to the gut all over again. Danny had wanted him to leave, but he couldn't, wouldn't. There was no way. He'd left the Navy to avoid ever having to make that choice again, to leave someone he cared about behind to die.
And he'd rather die alongside Danny than live with leaving him behind.
The channel he'd stopped on went dark and silent, and Steve heard the creak at the top of the stairs, the noise as loud as gunfire in his head.
He flipped up to the next station, resuming his surfing, until long after he heard Catherine go back into the room.
***
Danny was almost to the office when the idiot in the purple Scion cut him off. He blew his horn and cursed, but the damage was done, his coffee covering the bottom of his shirt and half his lap.
At least the moron at Starbucks hadn't been able to figure out how to make the coffee anything other than lukewarm.
He pulled into the parking lot and was about to get out of the car when he remembered his spare set of clothing had been a victim of Steve's inability to so much as go to lunch without finding a drug deal or arms purchase going on.
Red sauce was a bitch to get out of clothes.
He closed his eyes, silently cursing Steve for everything from being a danger magnet to being the reason Danny was in this position in the first place. Because if Steve hadn't called last minute to say he had something to do and would see Danny at the office, then Danny would have gotten good coffee by the Starbucks closer to Steve. And Steve would have been driving while Danny had two solid hands on his coffee instead of one. And Danny would have been cursing Steve's driving instead of the idiot in the Scion.
He turned the car back on and headed for home, frowning as he neared the house and saw Steve's truck in the drive. Steve hadn't mentioned that his 'something to do' had included Danny's mom.
If Steve was giving her grenade launcher lessons or something, Danny was going to shoot him in the face. No judge in Honolulu would convict him--they all knew Steve too well.
The improbable chance Steve had actually decided to teach Danny's mother about grenade launchers aside--despite Steve's interference with the ride along, Danny was pretty sure he wouldn't do that--Danny couldn't imagine what Steve was doing there. Alone. With Danny's mother.
Then again, given their recent...situation, Danny could suddenly imagine all kinds of things Steve might give away to Danny's mother without even meaning to. But Danny couldn't exactly barge through the front door and interrupt--his mother was way too shrewd for that. She'd know something was up in three seconds flat.
He'd go around back. If they were in the living room, Danny could get clothes from the laundry room and they'd never know he was there.
Danny parked around the corner, taking the alley on foot to come in through the back hedge. He was almost to the back door when he heard voices through the open kitchen window.
"He's always been like that," Clara was saying, "even when he was a kid."
"Did he have that haircut as a kid, too?" Steve asked.
Clara's laughter made Danny frown. There was nothing funny about his hair. His hair was class."That's the Jersey in him," she said. "Don't knock it."
"I wouldn't dare," Steve said, his voice serious. "His inability to give in to the laid back attitude here has its uses."
"Don't let him hear you say that," Clara said.
Steve laughed. "I wouldn't. He'd never let me hear the end of it." There was a pause in which Danny wished he could see what the hell was going on, given Steve's tone as he continued. "He calls me on my bullshit when I need it, though," Steve said. "I wouldn't tell him that either, but I count on it."
"He's good at that," Clara said.
"He is."
"So," Clara said, her tone setting off warning bells in Danny's head, "tell me more about what he's like here."
Oh shit. "What do you mean?" Steve asked.
Danny could've told him what she meant, would have dragged Steve away from this conversation in seconds if he'd been part of it, as opposed to eavesdropping. Because he'd heard that voice a handful of times, always when he'd had a girl around that his mother had wanted to size up and see if she was worthy of her son.
"I hear about this place from him," she said, so innocently that Steve could have no idea he was being handed rope by the inch. "I hear about his work, his friends, Grace and her friends...and I hear about you. But I don't really get to see what he's like when he's not putting on a show for me."
"Hm...." Steve paused to consider his answer, and Danny willed that almost telepathic connection they had to reach Steve and tell him to abort. Make up some flip comment, steer the conversation elsewhere, but do not engage. "He's loud," Steve said, at last, getting a laugh from Clara. "But it's all bluster. If something really gets to him, then he gets quiet and I have to drag it out of him."
"But you get him to confess?"
Steve laughed. "Yeah, and sometimes it's harder than actual criminals. But it's not good for him to bottle all that up."
"It's not, but he's never figured that out."
Clara's voice was considering, and Danny balled up his fists to keep from running in the back door and ending this conversation, because Steve was giving away more than enough for her to make the connections already. Danny didn't need to make it worse.
"He's getting better, though," Steve said. "It's less like pulling teeth and more like getting a small child to go to bed."
Clara's laugh trailed off, and her tone was more thoughtful when she said, "Sounds like you're having a positive effect on my son."
Oh Danny definitely did not like that tone at all. "Oh good--maybe by the time he's 50 I'll get him to stop bitching about my driving."
"It's interesting that he lets you drive," she said.
"I don't really give him a lot of choice," Steve said with a laugh.
"Still...he hated for Rachel to drive."
Steve clearly missed the obvious comparison there, or at least Danny hoped he did. "Considering he met her when she hit him with her car, I'm not surprised."
"He told you about that?"
"Yeah."
God help him, Danny even knew that breath his mom took the second before she said, "Does he talk about Matt?"
"Sometimes. Not a lot. I think he's okay with the way it went down--or at least he's made his peace with it. He did everything he could."
"I was right," Clara said, and Danny really didn't want to know what was coming next. "You're definitely a good influence."
Steve laughed. "Be sure to tell him that."
"I will." She paused for a moment. "I get the feeling he's been a good influence on you, too."
Danny could picture the look on Steve's face without having to see it. "He...I...um...yeah," Steve said softly, and Danny had to swallow a sudden lump in his throat. "I think so. Or he's working on it anyway."
"We're all just works in progress waiting for our next sculptor to come along."
"Who said that?"
"No idea," Clara said. "But it fits."
"Yeah." Seriously, Steve's tone was going to kill Danny. "It does."
Danny couldn't listen anymore. He crept silently away, and went back to his car to drive to the store.
He could use some new clothes anyway.
***
By the time Steve showed up at HQ, Danny was in new clothes and settled at his desk. Danny's questions about this mysterious 'thing' Steve had to do that morning got nothing but deflection and finally a terse, "It's classified."
Danny gave up. Steve seemed slightly less ready to strangle the first person who looked at him wrong today, so if that's what talking to Danny's mom did for him, then fine. Danny could share--despite what his mother thought.
It was a rare quiet day, and Steve shooed Danny off to go spend time with his mom a little early. Danny thought about inviting Steve to join them, but the memory of that conversation he'd overheard that morning made him reconsider.
He needed time to deal with any ideas his mother had gotten into her head before she and Steve were in the same room again.
She was waiting for him with a smile. "You're early!"
Danny didn't trust that smile. "It was quiet. Steve suggested I come spend time with you."
"That was sweet of him," Clara said. "He's very thoughtful."
Here we go. "Since when did you become an expert on Steve McGarrett?"
She shrugged. "I've been listening to you talk about him for years."
"You haven't been listening that closely if you think he's thoughtful," Danny said, even though Steve could be very thoughtful. But he couldn't admit that to her right now. She'd see right through it.
Though he thought maybe that ship had sailed. Because he could tell by the look on her face she'd figured out more than enough already. "Sweetheart--"
"Ma, don't."
"What?"
"Whatever it is, I know that tone." Danny dropped onto the couch, sinking back into the seat and closing his eyes. "Just don't, okay?"
She went around to the other side of the couch and sat down next to him. "Daniel."
"Mom."
She made that clicking sound with her tongue that had never failed to annoy him as a kid. "That tone didn't work with me when you were twelve," she said. "It won't work now."
Danny opened his eyes and fixed her with a look he hoped conveyed how little he wanted to talk about this. "Can we please not do this?"
She studied him for a long moment. "I think we have to."
Fuck. "No, we don't. We don't gotta do anything. We can just sit here and watch TV, how about that, huh?" She kept looking at him. "What?" he asked finally.
"Steve came by this morning."
No kidding. "Oh, so you're the 'classified' thing he had to do this morning?"
He didn't like that look on her face. "I thought the two of you were friends," she said after a moment.
"We are."
"Really? Because you sound like there's something else going on there."
"Well clearly the jet lag has finally caught up with you, because there is nothing going on," Danny said, aware that he was reverting back to his 13-year-old 'I forgot to take out the trash' hyper babble, but unable to stop it. "Absolutely nothing. I don't even know why you would think that. I mean, where is he now? I'm here with you, and he's at home with his fucking perfect girlfriend--"
He stopped, horrified at what he'd just given away, though the lack of surprise on his mother's face confirmed that she'd figured it all out already. "Oh, sweetheart...."
"Don't. Don't look at me like that."
"Like what?"
"Like I'm 15 and Janine Barducci just dumped me. Just don't, okay? I'm fine."
She put her hand on his knee, her kind smile somehow painful when it should have been comforting. "You're not fine."
Fuck. Danny took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Why was he even trying? If there was anyone in the world he could talk to, it was his mother. "No...I'm not fine."
"I know," she said soothingly, that voice that had done its best to fix everything in his life making his eyes sting. "What happened?"
Danny considered the past few months, trying to figure out how to explain it all. "I don't know, "he said finally. "I gave it my best shot, and it didn't work."
Clara frowned. "It didn't work?"
"Nope." Danny stared at her hand where it still lay on his knee. "I...we...we had a...thing." He could hear the word in Steve's voice and it was like someone was sitting on his chest. "But he can't seem to leave Catherine, and, as you pointed out recently, I don't like to share. So...."
"Have you told him this thing is over? Because I don't think he got the message."
"That's the problem with Steve McGarrett. He just ignores anything that bothers him. Stuffs it away somewhere on a shelf until his shelves get so heavy they all fall on his head."
She nodded. "He did seem kind of bruised this morning."
"Yeah, well, what else is new? The guy has a death wish, I swear. I'm constantly having to save him, but it seems like the only person I can't save him from is himself."
He could tell she was choosing her words carefully, and he hated making her feel like she had to. "Did it occur to you that he doesn't need you to save him, but just to be there when he figures out how to save himself?"
"What?"
She was silent for a moment. "When I came out here determined to ask your father for a divorce," she said, "I told five friends back home before I left. I had a long conversation about it with a total stranger on the plane. The words were easy enough to say. But when I had to tell you...I tried to avoid it as long as I could."
"So, what, I'm scary?"
Her laugh was reassuring. "No," she said slowly. "But you're one of the most important people in the world to me, Danny. And it's always harder to admit our failures to the people we care about the most."
"I still don't see what this has to do with Steve and his inability to face reality."
She made that huffing noise he knew meant she was annoyed with him, but he couldn't help it if he didn't understand. "Okay, then. Let's try this. After 9/11, your father had some trouble dealing with everything. Losing friends, seeing the damage, having an idea what the people who died went through, knowing you were so close to it...it was a lot. He didn't deal with it so well, and he ended up seeing a counselor before it got better."
His dad went to counseling? Seriously? "He never said anything to me."
"Of course not. You look up to him. You think he doesn't know that he's half the reason you became a cop, to help people the way he did?" She shook her head. "He could be brutally honest with a counselor, a total stranger, but he could only get bits and pieces out to me, and he never wanted to tell you kids."
As if Danny needed his whole image of his parents blown any more to hell this month. "But we wouldn't have thought any less of him for it."
"You don't get it," she said. "It's not that you would think less of him. It's the way he sees himself through your eyes that he'd lose forever."
Danny thought about Grace, and the conversation a couple of weeks ago, where she'd admitted to hearing him cry after telling her about the divorce. It was clear that had only served to build up her image of him and his strength, but at the time all it had done was upset him. He'd been so mad at himself for letting her down, for letting her know he was human, when he was supposed to be her superhero.
"Fuck." He stared at his mom for a moment. "There's nothing I can do, is there?"
"Sure there is. Be there when he's ready."
Danny's laugh was harsh. "Ready? With his avoidance skills that'll be about twenty years after we're dead."
Clara shook her head. "You didn't see him this morning. I think he's ready. I think he might even realize it."
The first glimmer of hope Danny had seen in a while reared its head, but he pushed it back down. "I'll believe that when I see it."
"I've been where you are, Daniel. Trust me, things will change soon."
He didn't even question her comparing his relationship with Steve to hers with his father. "So all I have to do is be patient and wait?" he said, almost managing his normal sarcastic tone. "Well that's great. I have all the patience in the world."
Clara laughed. "Then it'll be a growth opportunity for you, too," she said.
"I hope you're right."
"I'm your mother. I'm always right."
He could come up with some examples that said otherwise, but on the whole her track record was good enough that he wasn't going to argue the point. Because he appreciated her caring and her prying--if Steve had had more of that growing up, he might not be so fucked up now.
"Hey, Mom?"
"Hm?"
"Thank you."
"It's my job, honey." She ruffled his hair, and he didn't even complain. "So what do you say we watch a movie and then take Grace for dinner?"
He settled into the couch, leaning against her. "Sounds good," he said. "I'll even let you choose the movie."
"See? Look at that. You're growing already."
___
END
Author: stellarmeadow
Fandom: Hawaii Five-0
Paring: Steve/Danny
Rating: PG
Summary:Coping, McGarrett and Williams style.
Notes: Sorry for the delay, been working my ass off the entire weekend at my real job (which is, sadly, not writing fic). Part of the Season 4 coda series.
Spoilers for 416! You have been warned!
Steve kicked the seat into the recliner position, watching the channels go by on the TV as he clicked the remote. It was just as well that he wasn't looking to watch anything, since there didn't seem to be anything on worth watching.
He heard the creak at the top of the stairs, knew that it was Catherine, looking down to see if he was showing any sign of coming up to bed. She'd been walking on eggshells since she'd returned from her latest Reserve assignment three days ago, like she thought it was somehow her fault that he'd fallen asleep on the chair every night. It wasn't, but he didn't know how to explain it to her.
He didn't look up.
After a minute, he heard the creak again, and he let out a breath. He didn't want to explain, not to anyone. And even if he did want to, he couldn't. It wasn't the kind of thing you could explain. It wasn't even the thing you normally talked about. The Navy would tell you to walk it off, or whatever the equivalent was. Send you to some bullshit counselor who signed off on returning you to duty and that was that.
Fuck the Navy.
He'd told Grover he'd left the Navy because it wasn't the same after Freddie's death, but the truth of it was that he wasn't the same after Freddie's death. The Navy hadn't changed. He had. His whole career he'd followed the rules, even if it was a somewhat fast and loose version of them. When he'd had to leave Freddie behind, let him die, the rules had seemed stupid and insignificant in the face of the loss of someone's husband and father, someone who was like a brother to him.
Such a stupid, pointless loss.
So yeah, fuck the Navy. Or fuck its senseless bureaucracy, anyway, at least when it kept him from doing what was right in favor of what was ordered. He'd kept his command, because it had its uses, especially in his current job, but he was done with that life.
He'd told Grover he'd run away from the Navy, but that wasn't entirely accurate. He'd run to something. To the promise of his own team, the chance to run things the way he thought they should be run instead of marching to someone else's beat. To the promise of Chin and Kono and their strong bond in spite of all the shit their family put them through.
To Danny.
His head had been so totally fucked when he'd run into Danny in the garage. He'd been reeling from losing Freddie and his father and from Hesse winning, beating Steve at his own game, using family to get to his target.
He knew everyone thought he must've been relieved after finding out that his battle with Hesse wasn't to blame for his father's death. Like it mattered. Dead was dead. And he might've been able to prevent it anyway, if he'd been a little smarter with Hesse. If he'd realized that Wo Fat was pulling Hesse's strings sooner.
The thought of how many people might have lived if he'd managed that was staggering. His father, Josh, Jenna, the list was long and too painful to spell out. So much loss, so much pain, all because he didn't put the pieces together.
But then he might not have met Danny.
He tried to imagine meeting Danny differently. If Steve had been visiting his father, free of baggage he'd been lugging around since the day he and Danny had met, how might it have gone? Would he have dismissed Danny if he hadn't seen him in action that first time? Would he have bothered to even get to know the angry guy with the loud mouth if he'd been anything other than angry himself? Or would he have just made some snarky remarks and forgotten about him after.
No, he couldn't imagine ever forgetting about Danny. Something about him had made Steve take him regardless of what Danny said he wanted, or what any sane person would have said was wise. Most people didn't look past Danny's bitching to see what was behind it, but when you did, it was impossible to forget.
Even if it would be better for everyone involved if Steve could.
Of course, he might never have known his mother was alive without all this either. Though the jury was still out on whether that would be better or worse.
Regardless, though, he couldn't imagine a universe where he and Danny didn't meet. They clicked, no matter what, as if their separate lives had been built to fit together at some point. Though when they would actually fit was the question, since it seemed like every time they got close they managed to fuck it up.
Okay, so Steve fucked it up. He was man enough to admit it. One more in the long line of things he'd broken and didn't know how to fix.
He'd thought he might lose that chance last year, when Danny had triggered that bomb. The mere memory of that day was like a shot to the gut all over again. Danny had wanted him to leave, but he couldn't, wouldn't. There was no way. He'd left the Navy to avoid ever having to make that choice again, to leave someone he cared about behind to die.
And he'd rather die alongside Danny than live with leaving him behind.
The channel he'd stopped on went dark and silent, and Steve heard the creak at the top of the stairs, the noise as loud as gunfire in his head.
He flipped up to the next station, resuming his surfing, until long after he heard Catherine go back into the room.
***
Danny was almost to the office when the idiot in the purple Scion cut him off. He blew his horn and cursed, but the damage was done, his coffee covering the bottom of his shirt and half his lap.
At least the moron at Starbucks hadn't been able to figure out how to make the coffee anything other than lukewarm.
He pulled into the parking lot and was about to get out of the car when he remembered his spare set of clothing had been a victim of Steve's inability to so much as go to lunch without finding a drug deal or arms purchase going on.
Red sauce was a bitch to get out of clothes.
He closed his eyes, silently cursing Steve for everything from being a danger magnet to being the reason Danny was in this position in the first place. Because if Steve hadn't called last minute to say he had something to do and would see Danny at the office, then Danny would have gotten good coffee by the Starbucks closer to Steve. And Steve would have been driving while Danny had two solid hands on his coffee instead of one. And Danny would have been cursing Steve's driving instead of the idiot in the Scion.
He turned the car back on and headed for home, frowning as he neared the house and saw Steve's truck in the drive. Steve hadn't mentioned that his 'something to do' had included Danny's mom.
If Steve was giving her grenade launcher lessons or something, Danny was going to shoot him in the face. No judge in Honolulu would convict him--they all knew Steve too well.
The improbable chance Steve had actually decided to teach Danny's mother about grenade launchers aside--despite Steve's interference with the ride along, Danny was pretty sure he wouldn't do that--Danny couldn't imagine what Steve was doing there. Alone. With Danny's mother.
Then again, given their recent...situation, Danny could suddenly imagine all kinds of things Steve might give away to Danny's mother without even meaning to. But Danny couldn't exactly barge through the front door and interrupt--his mother was way too shrewd for that. She'd know something was up in three seconds flat.
He'd go around back. If they were in the living room, Danny could get clothes from the laundry room and they'd never know he was there.
Danny parked around the corner, taking the alley on foot to come in through the back hedge. He was almost to the back door when he heard voices through the open kitchen window.
"He's always been like that," Clara was saying, "even when he was a kid."
"Did he have that haircut as a kid, too?" Steve asked.
Clara's laughter made Danny frown. There was nothing funny about his hair. His hair was class."That's the Jersey in him," she said. "Don't knock it."
"I wouldn't dare," Steve said, his voice serious. "His inability to give in to the laid back attitude here has its uses."
"Don't let him hear you say that," Clara said.
Steve laughed. "I wouldn't. He'd never let me hear the end of it." There was a pause in which Danny wished he could see what the hell was going on, given Steve's tone as he continued. "He calls me on my bullshit when I need it, though," Steve said. "I wouldn't tell him that either, but I count on it."
"He's good at that," Clara said.
"He is."
"So," Clara said, her tone setting off warning bells in Danny's head, "tell me more about what he's like here."
Oh shit. "What do you mean?" Steve asked.
Danny could've told him what she meant, would have dragged Steve away from this conversation in seconds if he'd been part of it, as opposed to eavesdropping. Because he'd heard that voice a handful of times, always when he'd had a girl around that his mother had wanted to size up and see if she was worthy of her son.
"I hear about this place from him," she said, so innocently that Steve could have no idea he was being handed rope by the inch. "I hear about his work, his friends, Grace and her friends...and I hear about you. But I don't really get to see what he's like when he's not putting on a show for me."
"Hm...." Steve paused to consider his answer, and Danny willed that almost telepathic connection they had to reach Steve and tell him to abort. Make up some flip comment, steer the conversation elsewhere, but do not engage. "He's loud," Steve said, at last, getting a laugh from Clara. "But it's all bluster. If something really gets to him, then he gets quiet and I have to drag it out of him."
"But you get him to confess?"
Steve laughed. "Yeah, and sometimes it's harder than actual criminals. But it's not good for him to bottle all that up."
"It's not, but he's never figured that out."
Clara's voice was considering, and Danny balled up his fists to keep from running in the back door and ending this conversation, because Steve was giving away more than enough for her to make the connections already. Danny didn't need to make it worse.
"He's getting better, though," Steve said. "It's less like pulling teeth and more like getting a small child to go to bed."
Clara's laugh trailed off, and her tone was more thoughtful when she said, "Sounds like you're having a positive effect on my son."
Oh Danny definitely did not like that tone at all. "Oh good--maybe by the time he's 50 I'll get him to stop bitching about my driving."
"It's interesting that he lets you drive," she said.
"I don't really give him a lot of choice," Steve said with a laugh.
"Still...he hated for Rachel to drive."
Steve clearly missed the obvious comparison there, or at least Danny hoped he did. "Considering he met her when she hit him with her car, I'm not surprised."
"He told you about that?"
"Yeah."
God help him, Danny even knew that breath his mom took the second before she said, "Does he talk about Matt?"
"Sometimes. Not a lot. I think he's okay with the way it went down--or at least he's made his peace with it. He did everything he could."
"I was right," Clara said, and Danny really didn't want to know what was coming next. "You're definitely a good influence."
Steve laughed. "Be sure to tell him that."
"I will." She paused for a moment. "I get the feeling he's been a good influence on you, too."
Danny could picture the look on Steve's face without having to see it. "He...I...um...yeah," Steve said softly, and Danny had to swallow a sudden lump in his throat. "I think so. Or he's working on it anyway."
"We're all just works in progress waiting for our next sculptor to come along."
"Who said that?"
"No idea," Clara said. "But it fits."
"Yeah." Seriously, Steve's tone was going to kill Danny. "It does."
Danny couldn't listen anymore. He crept silently away, and went back to his car to drive to the store.
He could use some new clothes anyway.
***
By the time Steve showed up at HQ, Danny was in new clothes and settled at his desk. Danny's questions about this mysterious 'thing' Steve had to do that morning got nothing but deflection and finally a terse, "It's classified."
Danny gave up. Steve seemed slightly less ready to strangle the first person who looked at him wrong today, so if that's what talking to Danny's mom did for him, then fine. Danny could share--despite what his mother thought.
It was a rare quiet day, and Steve shooed Danny off to go spend time with his mom a little early. Danny thought about inviting Steve to join them, but the memory of that conversation he'd overheard that morning made him reconsider.
He needed time to deal with any ideas his mother had gotten into her head before she and Steve were in the same room again.
She was waiting for him with a smile. "You're early!"
Danny didn't trust that smile. "It was quiet. Steve suggested I come spend time with you."
"That was sweet of him," Clara said. "He's very thoughtful."
Here we go. "Since when did you become an expert on Steve McGarrett?"
She shrugged. "I've been listening to you talk about him for years."
"You haven't been listening that closely if you think he's thoughtful," Danny said, even though Steve could be very thoughtful. But he couldn't admit that to her right now. She'd see right through it.
Though he thought maybe that ship had sailed. Because he could tell by the look on her face she'd figured out more than enough already. "Sweetheart--"
"Ma, don't."
"What?"
"Whatever it is, I know that tone." Danny dropped onto the couch, sinking back into the seat and closing his eyes. "Just don't, okay?"
She went around to the other side of the couch and sat down next to him. "Daniel."
"Mom."
She made that clicking sound with her tongue that had never failed to annoy him as a kid. "That tone didn't work with me when you were twelve," she said. "It won't work now."
Danny opened his eyes and fixed her with a look he hoped conveyed how little he wanted to talk about this. "Can we please not do this?"
She studied him for a long moment. "I think we have to."
Fuck. "No, we don't. We don't gotta do anything. We can just sit here and watch TV, how about that, huh?" She kept looking at him. "What?" he asked finally.
"Steve came by this morning."
No kidding. "Oh, so you're the 'classified' thing he had to do this morning?"
He didn't like that look on her face. "I thought the two of you were friends," she said after a moment.
"We are."
"Really? Because you sound like there's something else going on there."
"Well clearly the jet lag has finally caught up with you, because there is nothing going on," Danny said, aware that he was reverting back to his 13-year-old 'I forgot to take out the trash' hyper babble, but unable to stop it. "Absolutely nothing. I don't even know why you would think that. I mean, where is he now? I'm here with you, and he's at home with his fucking perfect girlfriend--"
He stopped, horrified at what he'd just given away, though the lack of surprise on his mother's face confirmed that she'd figured it all out already. "Oh, sweetheart...."
"Don't. Don't look at me like that."
"Like what?"
"Like I'm 15 and Janine Barducci just dumped me. Just don't, okay? I'm fine."
She put her hand on his knee, her kind smile somehow painful when it should have been comforting. "You're not fine."
Fuck. Danny took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Why was he even trying? If there was anyone in the world he could talk to, it was his mother. "No...I'm not fine."
"I know," she said soothingly, that voice that had done its best to fix everything in his life making his eyes sting. "What happened?"
Danny considered the past few months, trying to figure out how to explain it all. "I don't know, "he said finally. "I gave it my best shot, and it didn't work."
Clara frowned. "It didn't work?"
"Nope." Danny stared at her hand where it still lay on his knee. "I...we...we had a...thing." He could hear the word in Steve's voice and it was like someone was sitting on his chest. "But he can't seem to leave Catherine, and, as you pointed out recently, I don't like to share. So...."
"Have you told him this thing is over? Because I don't think he got the message."
"That's the problem with Steve McGarrett. He just ignores anything that bothers him. Stuffs it away somewhere on a shelf until his shelves get so heavy they all fall on his head."
She nodded. "He did seem kind of bruised this morning."
"Yeah, well, what else is new? The guy has a death wish, I swear. I'm constantly having to save him, but it seems like the only person I can't save him from is himself."
He could tell she was choosing her words carefully, and he hated making her feel like she had to. "Did it occur to you that he doesn't need you to save him, but just to be there when he figures out how to save himself?"
"What?"
She was silent for a moment. "When I came out here determined to ask your father for a divorce," she said, "I told five friends back home before I left. I had a long conversation about it with a total stranger on the plane. The words were easy enough to say. But when I had to tell you...I tried to avoid it as long as I could."
"So, what, I'm scary?"
Her laugh was reassuring. "No," she said slowly. "But you're one of the most important people in the world to me, Danny. And it's always harder to admit our failures to the people we care about the most."
"I still don't see what this has to do with Steve and his inability to face reality."
She made that huffing noise he knew meant she was annoyed with him, but he couldn't help it if he didn't understand. "Okay, then. Let's try this. After 9/11, your father had some trouble dealing with everything. Losing friends, seeing the damage, having an idea what the people who died went through, knowing you were so close to it...it was a lot. He didn't deal with it so well, and he ended up seeing a counselor before it got better."
His dad went to counseling? Seriously? "He never said anything to me."
"Of course not. You look up to him. You think he doesn't know that he's half the reason you became a cop, to help people the way he did?" She shook her head. "He could be brutally honest with a counselor, a total stranger, but he could only get bits and pieces out to me, and he never wanted to tell you kids."
As if Danny needed his whole image of his parents blown any more to hell this month. "But we wouldn't have thought any less of him for it."
"You don't get it," she said. "It's not that you would think less of him. It's the way he sees himself through your eyes that he'd lose forever."
Danny thought about Grace, and the conversation a couple of weeks ago, where she'd admitted to hearing him cry after telling her about the divorce. It was clear that had only served to build up her image of him and his strength, but at the time all it had done was upset him. He'd been so mad at himself for letting her down, for letting her know he was human, when he was supposed to be her superhero.
"Fuck." He stared at his mom for a moment. "There's nothing I can do, is there?"
"Sure there is. Be there when he's ready."
Danny's laugh was harsh. "Ready? With his avoidance skills that'll be about twenty years after we're dead."
Clara shook her head. "You didn't see him this morning. I think he's ready. I think he might even realize it."
The first glimmer of hope Danny had seen in a while reared its head, but he pushed it back down. "I'll believe that when I see it."
"I've been where you are, Daniel. Trust me, things will change soon."
He didn't even question her comparing his relationship with Steve to hers with his father. "So all I have to do is be patient and wait?" he said, almost managing his normal sarcastic tone. "Well that's great. I have all the patience in the world."
Clara laughed. "Then it'll be a growth opportunity for you, too," she said.
"I hope you're right."
"I'm your mother. I'm always right."
He could come up with some examples that said otherwise, but on the whole her track record was good enough that he wasn't going to argue the point. Because he appreciated her caring and her prying--if Steve had had more of that growing up, he might not be so fucked up now.
"Hey, Mom?"
"Hm?"
"Thank you."
"It's my job, honey." She ruffled his hair, and he didn't even complain. "So what do you say we watch a movie and then take Grace for dinner?"
He settled into the couch, leaning against her. "Sounds good," he said. "I'll even let you choose the movie."
"See? Look at that. You're growing already."
___
END