H5-0 FIC: Gonna Make It Mine (Danny/Steve, PG)

[bachlava]

Also at AO3.

A/N: As of this posting, it's expected to be four to six weeks before the Supreme Court (potentially) rules on marriage equality. This fic in some way comes from a cautious optimism, or at least the hope, that they'll get with the program and rule in favor of it. If that hope is disappointed... well, there will be far bigger issues than a fic's degree of realism. But if it matters, this version of Steve and Danny live in a universe where things have gone right.

Thanks to zelda_zee for beta reading, haldoor_honey for backstory help, and JiM and kalena for further inspiration.

***

Steve’s idea of popping the question is about the least romantic one that’s humanly possible, which isn’t surprising, given the his complete lack of social skills. Seriously, the man has probably used ordnance that has a higher emotional IQ than he does. No, what surprises Danny is that he asks at all. Danny wasn’t expecting it, for one thing, and for another, it’s probably just short of a miracle that Steve’s progressed beyond the level of hitting someone over the head with his mammoth-hunting club and dragging them back to his cave.

Apparently he has, though. Danny finds this out on a weekend when he doesn’t have Grace: the worst kind of weekend known to man, as far as he’s concerned. Granted, the new custody arrangement means he’s seeing a lot more of Grace than he used to, but weekends without her still suck. He at least gets a long chat with her on the phone, it’s better than nothing, and at the end of it she asks to talk to Uncle Steve, who is not-so-secretly plotting with her to do something new and dangerous with the Aloha Girls, the ten best approaches to wrestling a tiger shark, something like that. Danny doesn’t even want to know but also knows full well that he’s going to be finding out a lot more than he’d like.

After they’ve hung up, Steve gives Danny one of those goofy expressions that means he’s enthusiastic about something and trying to look sympathetic to Danny at the same time. “Three more days, man,” he says, “just hang on ’til Wednesday afternoon, think you can wait that long to see her?”

“If I have to, yeah,” says Danny, “assuming you don’t get me killed in twenty-seven different ways before then, it’s what, less than twelve hours before the Monday morning deranged driving exercise -- ”

“I promise I’ll keep it below eighty miles an hour, how’s that?”

“Unlikely to be kept, is what it is. Seriously, Five-0 should have its own designated hospital bed.”

“Like you don’t already have two designated beds here.”

That’s kind of true: there’s the master bed, where Danny has claimed the right side by default, although he tends to be kind of grabby when he’s asleep and Steve does too, denials aside, so claiming sides or covers or any kind of personal space whatsoever is pretty nominal. Then there’s Steve’s old bed, which Danny uses on Grace’s weekends. “Hey, man, you can use your old bed instead of me,” Danny says. “I’ll sleep in the master bedroom, no complaints.”

“See, I don’t get this whole separate-beds-when-Grace-is-here thing,” Steve says. “I mean, she knows that, and I quote, ‘Your Uncle Steve and me, we like each other, you know, kind of boyfriend-like each other -- ’”

“Hey, I was being age-appropriate -- ”

“I’m just saying, the different-bedrooms charade is going to get transparent pretty soon, if it hasn’t already.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Danny asks. “You think I have no memory or experience of what eleven-year-olds do and don’t think about what grown-ups are getting up to? See, you may have just suspected that your parents were secretly mixing extra-cool explosives that you were mad about not being allowed to play with, but ordinary kids that age, Steve, mid-size human beings in training, they can both remain in denial about what their parents are up to through thick and thin, but also be ridiculously nosy and speculative about everyone else’s parents. So no, I do not think there’s any pretense or charade that’s going on here.”

Steve looks incredibly confused here, like he’s a stoned alpaca that Danny’s trying to explain advanced trigonometry to. “Then what’s the point of it?”

“The point of it? Propriety, for one thing, is the point of it. Basic human standards, if you can comprehend such a thing. The other point of it is that Grace has already been through way too much instability because of her Danno’s post-divorce personal life, and after that whole clusterfuck of impropriety and beyond with Rachel and me not actually getting back together, Grace does not need to adjust to assimilating more new information about her dad’s sleeping arrangements.”

“Sleeping arrangements? You practically live here, Danny, I don’t why you even hold on to that apartment.”

“Yes, I practically live here, ‘practically’ being the key word. Meaning that I don’t sit here pining on your reserve weekends because this is, you know, a general pattern, not a set-in-stone, official kind of thing where Grace never sees my place and I don’t spend some nights there on my own.”

“So its not being official, that’s the issue?” Steve says, immediately seizing on the least relevant part of what Danny is saying.

“What? Wait, how are you even getting -- ”

“Because if that’s the problem, then we can make it official. In fact, why don’t we?”

“Like when my lease is up? We’d have to have some kind of agreement, because I don’t want to mooch, but, no offense, I do not want you as my landlord.”

Steve slips into his mission face, the one that says he’s about to apply a ridiculous amount of determination and effort into an extremely simple task. “No, I -- ”

And then it hits Danny. “Holy shit, Steve, did you just ask me to marry you?”

“Um...”

“‘Um’? What the hell do you mean, ‘um’?”

“Um, yes?” Steve says, sounding -- and here’s a new one -- almost tentative, or as close to it as Steve McGarrett can get.

“‘Um, yes?’ That’s your idea of how to propose?”

“Well -- I -- look, I wasn’t planning -- ”

“Right, because if you were, it would be at a romantic flare-lit MRE dinner, and you’d have a diamond ring resting on your grenade launcher -- ”

“Where would you rest a diamond ring on a grenade launcher?” says Steve, now looking like a stoned alpaca that apparently finds basic rhetoric even more challenging than trigonometry. “I mean, you could attach one if -- ”

Danny wants to shake him. “We are not talking about grenade launchers, Steven!”

Steve looks like he wants to dispute that, but then, remarkably -- for once in his life! -- he shakes his head and lets it go. “Okay, we’re not. But -- well, do you?”

“What, you can’t even say it? Do I what?”

“Want to. You know. Get hitched?”

Danny makes himself take an extremely deep, slow breath, the way the marriage counselor always used to tell him to. “Okay, you know what? Right now I am too blindsided to even see straight. What I need is for you to go for a nice long triathlon while I sit down with my head between my knees and figure out if I’m hallucinating. If I’m not, when you get back, we can discuss your current brand of insanity.”

Steve looks disappointed at that, Danny sort of knew he would, but right now he doesn’t have the mental resources to let it bother him. “Go. Swim. Run. Practice invading Singapore. We’ll talk about your ingenious master plan afterwards, okay?”

Steve nods, and Danny goes to the refrigerator and gets himself a beer before he goes over to the couch. Seriously, back in Jersey... No, scratch that, even back in Jersey, Danny doesn’t know what the hell all this would be. He should’ve grabbed something stronger than a beer. It still takes him a good while to get confident that, no, he isn’t hallucinating and, yes, Steve McGarrett actually asked -- sweet mother of Springsteen, McGarrett proposed to him. How is this his life?

He opens the beer and gulps it like he’s dying of thirst. But insane as this whole situation is, by the time Danny’s finished the bottle, he knows his answer.

***

Grace takes the news incredibly well, actually, which is a relief to Danny, not only after the whole debacle with Rachel and him, but also considering how profoundly she had despised Step-Stan at the beginning of things. Danny will admit, he’s not exactly proud of it, but he will concede that that gave him more than a little rush of satisfaction, back in the day. Of course, “back in the day” was half a lifetime ago from Grace’s point of view, never mind that to Danny, that half a lifetime ago could be yesterday.

So he tells Grace on Wednesday night, over spaghetti dinner at his place, just the two of them. He got the whole ridiculously awkward conversation with Rachel out of the way the night before (“And you’re telling me this over the phone, Daniel?”) and now he’s focused just on Grace, trying to be ready for however she reacts. But he’s not actually totally surprised, even if he is still relieved, when Grace squeals, “You and Uncle Steve are getting married!” with the high-pitched glee that Danny so, so rarely gets to hear anymore. Grace is an eleven-year-old girl, but she still hugs him hard enough that he thinks he’ll have bruises, and he hugs her back as tight as he can. “I love you, Monkey.”

“Love you too, Danno,” she says, and then after a minute she asks, “Can Uncle Steve come over?”

“Like right now?”

Grace nods.

“Of course he can come over, he’s probably sad and lonely in his house, why don’t you set a place for him while I give him a call?” He dials and Steve picks up practically before the phone even rings, curt military greeting as usual, and when Danny says, “McGarrett, get your ass over here, there’s a plate of homemade pasta with your name on it,” he can almost see Steve’s grin.

And he’s right, Steve’s wearing it, that big, goofy grin, when he shows up at the door a short enough time later that he probably has the remains of half a dozen old ladies drying on his fender. Grace has barely had time to change into her shiny pink father-daughter dance dress, which she now rushes to put on for anything that vaguely resembles a special occasion, before she’s flinging the door open. “Uncle Steve!” she shrieks, that same high-pitched squeal that she’s going to grow out of way too soon, and if a Navy SEAL never got knocked over being hugged by a kid, Steve would definitely win the prize for coming closest, and he’s tall enough that he normally looms over her, too. Even so, Danny notices, the dress is shorter on Grace than it was just six months ago (and he remembers exactly how she’d looked in that overpriced frock that, for some of the worst hours of his life, he did not expect he would ever get to see her wear).

Eventually Grace releases Steve from her violently pink clutches. “Hey, Grace,” Steve says, once he’s recovered his balance. “How’re you doing?”

“Really good!” She’s practically bouncing on the balls of her feet.

“Yeah, me too,” Steve says. He’s grinning even wider but still looking kind of stunned at the same time. “Am I allowed to tell you I love you, now that I’m marrying your dad?”

Grace nods solemnly. “I love you too, Uncle Steve.” She hugs him again. “Come on, I set a place for you.”

Steve obediently follows her to the table and lets her serve him a plate of pomodoro -- how is Grace better with spaghetti tongs that are still too big for her hands than Danny is as a grown man? She’s ridiculously careful not to spill on her dress, although it looks like her dog’s drooled on it a time or two. “When is the wedding going to be?” she asks, barely remembering not to talk with her mouth full.

Danny and Steve exchange a quick glance. “We haven’t really figured that out yet,” Danny says, practically at the same time as Steve answers, “I thought we’d just go down to the courthouse and get it done without all the fuss.”

Oh, this is going to be good. Danny puts his fork down and leans in in anticipation as Grace wails, “You aren’t going to have a wedding?”

Steve looks like he’s suddenly realized that he just inadvertently kicked a puppy down the stairwell of a hospital for orphans. “Well, the point of getting married -- ”

“Of course we’re going to have a wedding, sweetheart,” Danny says. “I am a civilized person, a social animal, I am not going to do something like go and marry someone without having my nearest and dearest be there to embarrass me with a speech or two before they dig in to their cake. Not to mention what my folks would do to me if I didn’t, and rightly so.” Grace looks expectant; Steve looks totally confused. “Not a big fancy wedding like your mom and I had,” Danny hurries to clarify, “but definitely a little something, you know, with the people we care about the most. Which means that you are going to be the most important person there, my flower girl and best man all rolled into one, best flower girl in the world is what that makes you.”

Grace appears mollified. “Does that mean I get to choose your leis?” she asks, after a moment’s reflection.

“Choose our leis?”

She nods with an air of great importance. “You have to wear a lei. The people getting married are supposed to exchange them.”

Danny looks to the heavens. “Hawaii has brainwashed my daughter.”

“You like Hawaii now,” Grace says.

“Hawaii is your home now,” Danny concedes. “New Jersey is the heartland, now and forever, but if the flower girl wants to do the flowers the Hawaii way, then that’s what we’ll do. Because who else but her knows what she’s talking about, am I right? Leis will be exchanged.”

“The thing is,” says Steve, who’s finally reached enough comprehension of the conversation to attempt to join it, “you can’t wear anything else with a uniform, no flowers or anything.”

“What, so it doesn’t cover up all the the pieces of flair soldered onto your dress blues?” Steve looks confused. “Don’t tell me you haven’t seen Office Space. Your bling.”

“They’re decorations, Danny.”

“Which a normal cultural repertoire would inform you is the very definition of ‘pieces of flair.’”

There’s a vein pulsing in Steve’s forehead now. “No additional articles are to be worn,” he says, as if it’s taking all his patience not to argue the point about decorations. “That’s regs.”

“It’s okay -- ” Grace begins, but Danny cuts her off before she can finish that thought. He goes straight for Steve. “Oh no, my friend. If I am wearing flowers, and I am, because Grace, as we have already established, is my best flower girl, then you, Steven J. McGarrett, are also wearing flowers at your wedding. And if that means that you have to wear civilian clothes, by which I mean the kind nicer than cargo pants, then that is what you’re going to do. Furthermore -- ” he raises his voice to drown out Steve’s protest -- “furthermore, Steve, you are going to like wearing them, you are going to love wearing whatever lei my little girl picks out for you.”

Steve grins. “Well, that part I can live with.”

“Glad to hear it,” Danny says. “And let me reinforce: no cargo pants. My parents are invited to this thing.”

“Grandma and Grandpa!” Grace says, delighted.

“Yeah, they don’t get out here enough, do they?”

Grace shakes her head. “They’ve never even met Uncle Steve.”

Damn. She’s right. His mom got out here by herself one time when Danny was practically just off the boat, before Five-0, when Steve was still in a redacted location, blowing things with a paperclip. The one time his mom and pop have been able to come together happened while Steve was off for annual reserves training, probably practicing new ways to blow things up with a thumbtack in countries that don’t officially exist.

“We’ve talked on Skype a few times,” Steve offers.

Grace says, “It’s not the same, though,” at the same time that Danny says, “But that doesn’t really count.” Of course, Steve is probably too socially impaired to know the difference, and wow, meeting the parents is not going to be a simple undertaking, is it? At least his parents are both semi-retired now and have a little flexibility in their lives, ideally they can probably show up enough in advance that they’ll be prepared for any actual wedding day combustions. Or else Steve will scare them home for good before that, which is a distinct possibility.

All that, of course, is assuming that the whole aftermath of their son’s colossal fuck-up of trying to reconstitute his first marriage hasn’t soured them to the whole prospect. But no, they’ll turn up, come hell or high water; Danny mentally calls himself out being ridiculous. He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “Just try to limit your use of incendiary devices around them, okay?” he pleads, and Steve agrees to try not to with a worrying lack of sincerity.

***

At least there won’t be much to blow up, Danny reminds himself; he wasn’t kidding when he told Grace it would be nothing big or fancy. Still, there are some people to invite (by e-mail; Danny has maintained for the last thirteen years that whoever invented the formal invitation needs to be arrested for extortion and thrown to the mutant alligators that inhabit the sewers of New York). All the inviting raises issues of its own, of course, comes with its own baggage. There are some people Danny might’ve liked to have on hand to wish him luck the second time around who he’s buried in the intervening years, Grace’s own namesake maybe first among them, and God, some part of that one is never going to stop bleeding. It’s exactly the opposite of a comfort that the same kind of thing goes for Steve, and the fact that maybe those deaths were less unexpected -- the special forces are not exactly a lower-risk employer than the cops -- doesn’t make it hurt any less. Not that missing them at the wedding could really make the loss hurt more than it does every day.

And they deal with that, yeah, carry it with them like they always do, because life does not come with time-outs. There are other people who Danny will miss too: cousins, in-laws, old partners and old friends, that kind of thing. New Jersey is a long way away, Navy postings are a long way away, and airplane tickets don’t grow on trees. Danny’s still extremely grateful that he doesn’t have to go through a huge goddamned circus again, don’t get him wrong, but a lot of those people, yeah, he might have liked at least to have the option of them being there. Just because Steve’s used to life consisting of crazed postings in remote, classified corners of the world that keep friends absent does not mean that that’s a positive situation for actual human beings.

But, right, this is a happy occasion, and besides, Grace is still ready to burst with excitement just at the prospect of her Danno and Uncle Steve getting married, and there’s no way in hell Danny’s going to bust her bubble. He focuses on her glee and on the quickly established fact that his entire family will indeed be in attendance (except Matty, who was the best man at Danny’s first wedding, who could be anywhere or be dead and they might not ever know, Danny wants to break Matt’s face and to curl up and sob). Telling his Ma and Pop about the whole thing was kind of weird, Danny will admit that; he’d never talked with them directly about him and Steve, hadn’t really with anyone but Grace, didn’t see the need to because everyone just assumed. So, yeah, it was a little weird, but it’s the twenty-first century and they’re good people, and nobody was too surprised.

Of course, it eats Steve up that his own dad won’t be there -- not that he says anything about it, but it’s easy enough to tell by the way he doesn’t say anything. Eventually, when Steve is ready, he’ll make some guarded allusion to that whole set of issues, in the way that he occasionally does. He won’t talk about them, exactly, because he’s Steve McGarrett, but it will happen the way it does on those rare moments on quiet evenings when he’s in the right frame of mind and will say as much as he feels up to articulating. Danny will put an arm around Steve’s shoulders and try to tell him, for the millionth time, what a fucking amazing human being he is, despite or underneath or maybe even a little bit (or, okay, a lot) because of being a Neanderthal Rambo wannabe out of Danny’s worst nightmares, that he always has been, that he always will be. Believing that probably makes Danny as crazy as Steve is, sure, he’ll admit that, but it’s the truth, which means that he’s doomed, but all things considered, there are a lot of worse ways to be doomed, and Danny knows how ridiculously, insanely lucky he is to have stumbled into this one, and he’s going to keep hammering it home as many times as it takes until Steve knows it too, and if it takes forever -- well, that’s what he’s signing up for, isn’t it? Danny can be a patient man when he needs to be.

In the mean time, he thinks Steve will probably survive joining the Williams clan, even if it takes him a decade or so to figure out what’s hit him. The man hasn’t even seen the aunt and uncle he lived with after his mother’s death since he left for Annapolis, Christ almighty. No wonder he looks flummoxed just at the list of people in New Jersey that Danny’s cousin Jimmy is demanding, on pain of mortal injury, attend a party at his place to watch the wedding on Skype. Not that some of Steve’s enlisted friends won’t be doing the same thing, but that’s just a very different thing from an extended-Williams-clan celebration, and Danny’s furthest and dearest, unlike Steve’s, will not be constrained by the supervision of commanding officers. Danny’s just praying that his nephew Eric really has turned over a new leaf and will refrain from bringing any inappropriate refreshments.

Of course, there are bound be inappropriate refreshments at the wedding itself: Danny actually agrees with Steve that Mary Ann McGarrett, at the very least, will manage to sneak something in. Danny’s planning on being too amused by the look on Steve’s face to mind very much. He can already see the smirk on Mary’s face, too. And, hey, whatever problems Mary’s had in her life, at least she got the recessive version of the McGarrett family gene for anti-social personality disorder. When Steve tells her about the engagement -- a week after they’ve told Grace, seriously, what happened to naval efficiency? -- she squeals at a register only slightly lower than Grace’s; Danny can actually hear it through Steve’s phone. Before Steve can even get together a protest at the display of normal behavior, she’s announced plans to come to Hawaii on her next weekend off and hang out with Grace -- “I’m gonna be a... step-aunt!” -- and generally help Steve with things that he doesn’t know he needs help with and Danny has given up trying.

***

Grace and Mary hit it off immediately, to Steve’s dismay -- “She’s a bad influence, Danny” -- and Danny’s delight, because Mary is a known quantity of bad influence who at least can be counted on to not store grenades in a car that Grace rides in. When a storm cuts short their surfing session (which Danny was supervising very closely, he hasn’t lost his mind completely), Mary digs her old Barbie’s Slut Princess Dream Hotel out of a box in her closet, and Grace, who is very close to outgrowing dolls (when did that happen, time just disappears), still delights in it. At dinner (Grace having once again changed into her assertively magenta party dress), Mary mixes Grace a virgin Slut Princess Barbie cocktail and, Danny is fairly sure, plays an escalating game of kicking Steve under the table while he stoically pretends not to notice. “So I hope you’re going to give Grace my old room,” she says.

Steve looks around awkwardly. “You don’t want it? There’s mine -- ”

Mary rolls her eyes. “Steve, this place is like a mausoleum.”

“What’s a mausoleum?” asks Grace.

“I’ll tell you later, Monkey,” Danny says, cutting off the explanation and doubtless the mausoleum-blasting story he can see Steve about to launch into.

“Yeah, I think somebody should enjoy actually living in that room,” Mary says, “as opposed to dusting something that Mom decorated for a baby girl back when Reagan was president. I bet Grace could do a good job redecorating it.”

“Well -- ”

“In fact, we’re going on a girls’ outing to the home renovation store tomorrow. We can pick out some paint and stuff. It’s my wedding present.”

“And I suppose you’re actually going to paint the room, too?” Steve asks.

“No,” says Mary, taking a theatrical slurp of her drink, “you are. And we should at least get color samples for your old room, because when you can make time for it that one could definitely stand to get redone.”

“We’re going to paint Danno’s room too?” asks Grace.

Danny grins. “I think Steve and I are going to share the big bedroom after the wedding, Grace-Face.”

“Like Mum and Stan used to?”

For ten seconds there’s a horrible pause as the grown-ups all just look at each other. Then Mary jumps in. “Yeah, they’ll share. But Steve’s old room -- I mean, we can work the memorabilia into the decoration, but that place seriously needs a makeover.”

“If you’re going to redecorate, you might as well get rid of that stuff. I don’t want all the high school trophies.”

“Are you serious? High school football is like a religion here, Steve,” Mary reminds him. “You have to keep at least a few things. For posterity.”

“You know the word ‘posterity’?”

Mary glares at her brother. “Also ‘pompous,’ ‘condescending,’ and ‘needs to have his a... asinine grin wiped off his face.’ I think yellow might work, what do you think, Grace?”

Grace nods. “Light yellow, though, not chartreuse.”

“You’ve building up a nice vocabulary there,” says Steve.

“Which we can only hope rubs off on you, you grunting Neanderthal.”

“Don’t think you’re going to get out of helping me paint, Danny.”

“See, only a Neanderthal would think I’d even want to.”

So Grace and Mary help each other pick out paint for ridiculously complicated decorative schemes -- Steve looks at the plans for his old bedroom and says, “Don’t I at least get a say about what I’m going to do with my own house?” which, Danny’s no sexist, but where there are women involved, the answer to that question is always no. Mary even takes over the job of explaining to Steve exactly how stupid a question that is, not that it does much good, but a break is always nice. Then she drags the two of them out shopping for wedding bands, an errand that Danny has had a lifetime’s fill of already but can’t really avoid because Mary is going to be his sister-in-law and insists that she knows someone who does really nice, personal rings, you guys and will cut them a better deal than anyone else would even on what Danny and Steve both would have chosen, namely completely plain bands that required no thought or effort to select.

“Please tell me this isn’t someone I’m going to have to bust for counterfeiting,” Steve groans.

That earns him another glare from Mary. “You think I don’t have standards?”

Danny is extremely confident that what’s about to come out of Steve’s mouth is the word “no.” Less with the stoned alpaca this time, but he still doesn’t get the idea of rhetoric. Danny cuts in: “C’mon, babe, we let HPD handle counterfeiting. And I, for one, am eager for your sister to introduce us to these talented artisans who are so fortunate as to have her acquaintance.”

That provokes a face from Steve that is almost enough by itself to make ring shopping worth enduring. Almost. Not that it makes Danny inherently less suspicious of Mary’s jewelry-and-God-knows-what-else supplier: “Nothing fancy, not one penny over this budget, which is non-negotiable,” he says, trying to convey without words the fact that just the smell from the back room constitutes probable cause for a search. “And preferably something that can’t be used as a connector in an explosive device.”

The jewelry-designing-whatever looks hesitant at that. “Thing is, uncle, any metal will conduct electricity -- ”

Danny rests his head on counter. “I’m doomed, aren’t I?”

***

It turns out, though, that Steve is just as doomed, because Grace, who is very eager to spend time bonding with her stepdad-to-be, quickly transforms into a full-on eleven-year-old amateur wedding planner. Steve blames Mary for giving her ideas; Danny is more inclined to credit the fact that Grace is a pre-teen girl, although he suspects that Kono has a hand in it as well. He also suspects that Rachel and Stan are not enforcing the wedding-television ban at all, on purpose, but he doesn’t have enough evidence to get a search warrant for that one.

He’ll admit that he’d assumed, foolishly, that sticking to a shoestring budget would rule out that kind of thing -- Danny’s been through the inferno of a big fancy wedding once and wouldn’t do it again even if the whole thing could be debited to Wo Fat’s account and save the dolphins at the same time. But, no, Grace still had ideas, which are only reinforced by the fact that her whole troop of Aloha Girls will be showing up. Danny is thrilled about that, Grace loves her friends and those girls are amazing, he’s just not reassured by the fact that the parents of Honolulu are willing to allow their daughters within a hundred miles of the two cops who, last time they got together, managed to get them held hostage and locked in a metal shed by a gun-wielding maniac.

But there’s no common sense at all here, and said parents are all sufficiently sun-addled to endorse their tweens’ assessment that Steve and Danny are Big Damn Heroes whose wedding the whole troop is absolutely required to attend. Grace volunteers Lucy as the assistant flower girl, which is apparently a thing. “What, I thought she wanted to marry Steve when she grew up,” Danny says.

“She did, but then she decided that it was too long to wait, so it’s okay that you’re going to marry him instead.”

“She did? That’s very mature of her.”

Grace nods. “Now she wants to marry Zayn from One Direction.”

“Well, that settles it, then,” Danny says, and it pretty much does. Grace has apparently become best friends for life with Lucy since the whole camping debacle -- it’s funny what brings people together -- so now Danny and Steve are dealing with two girls, bless them, who are still young enough to believe that weddings are magical events as opposed to a form of torture. In a few years, in no time at all, really, the blink of an eye, Grace will be in the throes of adolescence and too cool for anything, determined to act bored by everything in the world, so right now Danny is going to cherish her enthusiasm and not let any of it slip by him. He watches with, he won’t even try to feign annoyance, more with happy amusement and a perfectly reasonable helping of delight, as Grace’s delusions are reinforced by the rest of the troop (more new BFFLs, and when did Danny start thinking in text-speak, Five-0 has corrupted him). They’ve been holding off on the camping a little bit recently, not like they’ll be put off it for the long term but just like a brief hiatus might be in everyone’s mental-health interest, doing closer-to-home kinds of things that sometimes involve a lot of arts and crafts, and therefore have a large number of very firm ideas about what can and must be done at a wedding that require nothing more than origami paper and glitter glue. Steve is going to be scraping pink sparkles out of his couch for decades.

And Steve maybe has some vague inkling that he’s along for the ride, but has no real idea of what’s actually going on, poor lucky bastard. He just points out, with the special furrow in his brow that indicates that he’s slightly unclear but incredibly focused, that it’s important that Grace feel secure and valued in her new family situation. Danny would bet good money that that’s a line he’s word-for-word memorized from his recently purchased copy of what Danny absolutely does not secretly think of as Big Gay Al’s Big Gay Aloha Rainbow Step-Parent Book for Psychos, which Steve has been studying like an ops manual. Steve’s not wrong, though, and he winds up being charmed (by Grace et al.) and guilted (by Danny) into helping with the unending plans, exactly zero of which can be vetoed even on grounds of cost or legality. But hey, it’s good for the girls, bonding and all, and good for Steve, much-needed socialization, and Danny will forever cherish the memory of Steve coming home after a florist appointment that he’d honestly had no idea would take longer than ten minutes, tops. He’d actually had to lie down before his evening swim. Danny didn’t even try to resist following Steve upstairs and cuddling up next to him, the big goof. There are times when Steve is ridiculously easy to be in love with.

So, yeah, Steve spends a lot of time being co-opted by little girls he hasn’t learned how to say no to, or else by Mary, who sometimes refuses to take it for an answer even when she’s thousands of miles away, and he winds up being painfully adorable so often that it’s dangerous. Danny feels no guilt whatsoever over letting that state of circumstances continue and contents himself with a more supervisory level of wedding-arrangement responsibility that mostly involves thanking the girls profusely and cuing Steve in to the fact that it’s considered polite to provide guests with refreshments, as opposed to having them hunt their own boar and pineapple. Then it’s a whole separate undertaking to get across that having the couple of Navy buddies who will be able to make it to the wedding help Steve hunt boar and pineapple for the out-of-town guests is not an acceptable compromise.

But Danny does eventually get that established to his satisfaction, Steve’s high adorability quotient proving just sufficient to dissuade him from homicide on a couple of occasions. Then Danny’s left with the much easier task of finalizing the arrangements for his family. He tries not to think about how a few years earlier, Matt would’ve just reserved seats and hotels for everyone before they could stop him and called it a wedding gift. Money’s not the issue; the Williamses are far from rolling in money, but with a few months’ notice they can all put together the airfare for something like a wedding in the immediate family. Matthew’s largesse was often something they accepted because refusing it tended to wind up making things even more uncomfortable. It’s just that now Matty’s gone, and Danny’s never wished more that none of that had happened.

It did happen, though, so Danny tries not to think about the possible sources of that largesse, or about Matty at all, right now, more than he can absolutely force himself not to. He spends more time than usual abusing a punching bag and gives profuse thanks to some neighbors of his who have travel plans and will lend Danny’s mainland ohana their apartments for a fraction of the price of a hotel. There are going to be Williams family meet-ups with Steve before the wedding, which Danny will bet good money will wind up being crazier than even he can imagine.

In the mean time, he tells Grace that she can have a horse-drawn carriage, on someone other sap’s dime, when she gets married, and he tries not to despair past enduring while Steve hunts down an officiant. That should involve finding a justice of the peace, an undertaking that is normally -- normally -- for any remotely functional person on the planet -- about the easiest possible thing to do. Of course it’s different for Five-0. What else could it be? Criminal judges are right out, conflict of interest, and the civil ones are too, on the theory that the team’s antics are bound to cause a major lawsuit sooner or later. “Miranda is a constitutional requirement,” Danny explains for the millionth time, “not one of your surfing buddies, Kono, or some cocktail waitress Steve banged in the Philippines.”

“What, I’ve never even been to the Philippines, and -- ”

“Could you prove any more completely that you’re missing the point -- ”

Chin Ho breaks in: “A few of the small-claims people will do weddings sometimes. My buddy’s stepbrother is married to Susan Lum, I can ask about her.”

Danny winces. “Remember that fruit stand a certain nameless someone creatively rearranged during a completely unnecessary confrontation with a suspect?” Kono tries to look innocent, and Steve says, “That wasn’t unnecessary, Danny, it -- ” Danny holds up a hand. “Well, she’s hearing that one.”

“Wilson on traffic court surfs up at the North Shore sometimes. He’s pretty easy-going,” Kono offers.

“Conflict of interest, cuz,” Chin reiterates way too calmly, “it’s not just a catchphrase.”

“Okay, maybe not Wilson,” Steve says, “but I know Judge Davis -- ”

“Yeah, because you ran over her car.”

“Come on, I didn’t run it over -- ”

“Close enough for government work, which is in fact what you were doing at the time.”

The issue finally gets settled when Steve tracks down an ex-Navy chaplain who has either moved past any Steve-induced trauma that prompted him into retirement or else is too afraid of Steve to do anything but agree to perform the ceremony. Danny seriously cannot imagine how Steve even knows the minister, unless he ever sought spiritual counsel about what kind of armored assault vehicles to requisition. Granted, Danny only really believes in anything maybe five or six days a year and gets to Mass maybe half that often, but he’s very confident that Steve’s main article of faith is the idea that if he’s a really good solider on earth, he’ll get to blow up a lot of stuff in heaven, which is probably not a belief that most major religions would endorse. Then again, Steve’s general addiction to chaos in all forms has Danny praying a lot more often than he would be otherwise, which at least his Nana would approve of. That thought gives him another little pang, because his Nana, yeah, she had a long and terrific life, but she was a hell of a lady and he still misses having her around.

She would’ve gotten a good laugh, too, out of Steve’s being surprised when a few wedding presents start turning up in the mail. “Didn’t we specifically ask for no gifts?” he says, with an extremely puzzled look on his face as he examines... something; it came pre-wrapped from some online store.

“Here, let me see.” Danny examines the whatever-it-is and concludes that it’s a banana holder. “I bet that’s from my Aunt Barbara.”

Steve looks at the card. “It is, yeah. She doesn’t like following directions?”

“She’s the kind of person who would send a banana holder. You didn’t think people would actually not send things, did you?”

“I thought ‘No gifts, please,’ made it pretty clear, yeah.”

Danny sighs. “Okay, let me explain something to you, Steve. Normal people, ones who can function in day-to-day society -- they sometimes feel bound by rules of that society which, while unstated, are very familiar to its mentally stable members. And one of those rules is that when someone you care about is getting married and you’re happy for them, you feel irrationally obliged to give them a gift, and you wind up giving in to that impulse if you are not flat broke. ‘No gifts’ is a polite way of saying, ‘We understand that, unless you are facing dire financial woes, you are going to get us a gift regardless, so please just give money in our name to some worthy cause, a modest contribution, well within your means, or if you feel absolutely unable to resist buying some physical object, at least don’t make it an expensive one or anything you’d really mind getting broken.’” He sifts through the rest of the mail and pulls out a few gift notifications from charities. “See? My old friend Josh gave an unspecified generous contribution to the First Responders Benevolent Association, and it looks like one of the other Lone Rangers -- ”

“SEALs, Danny. Navy SEALs and Army Rangers.”

“ -- made one to the Hawaii Nature Trust. Keeping the islands safe for sharks and jellyfish since 1961.”

Again with the look of intense concentration that indicates Steve’s attempting to get it. Danny runs a hand over his head. “Look at it this way, Steve. Sometimes regulations do not get followed. You of all people should understand that.”

He doesn’t, of course; Danny was not ridiculously optimistic enough to expect that he actually would. He is at least amused by some Navy buddies’ sending a little risqué gift box that, among other things, contains pineapple-flavored condoms, of all the abominations known to man. Danny makes it very clear that if he ever sees one of those anywhere except the trash can, he will not only call off the engagement but also move back to New Jersey, never again to darken the beaches of the Aloha State, he’s completely serious.

***

So time flies by, like it always does, and then Steve’s standing at full attention in front of the arrivals screen, staring at it as if the safe and not-too-much-more-delayed-than-it-already-is arrival of Danny’s parents’ flight depends on his remaining eyes-front toward the monitor. Danny (who does not deny that his own stomach is harboring a few small butterflies; given the circumstances, whose wouldn’t be?) would imagine that the position is starting to get really uncomfortable. ETA is now a good two hours behind what was scheduled, and full-attention parade stance, frankly, looks, a little bit ridiculous when it’s held by someone who’s in civilian clothes, as Steve currently is. Steve, in fact, for once actually looks less than content in his natural pose of extreme military rigidity, which is probably due in large part to the fact that he’s wearing a tie.

Yeah, Steve McGarrett in a tie, Danny is still pinching himself to make sure he’s not hallucinating. He would’ve told Steve to take it off, it looks ridiculous, doesn’t he know how to wear any civvies apart from cargo pants, except that the tie was a present from Grace. It has a seal pattern on it, and Danny’s pretty sure it came from a Hideous Polyester Tie Emporium that must exist in some corner of the universe -- he’d say that Grace bought it there, meaning that Rachel bought it, except that even the Hideous Polyester Tie Emporium was probably willing to pay someone to take it off their hands. Danny’s already got at least a hundred pictures to document the historic occurrence of Steve’s actually looking more haole than Danny has ever managed in all of his time here. He’s pretty sure he actually looked less haole in New Jersey on most days.

Grace, being the more sensible party where Steve’s neckwear is not concerned, has long since beaten the latest smartphone game and fallen asleep with her shiny pink dress tucked around her knees. That dress is looking like a pretty well-loved garment at this point, and Grace is growing so fast that it really doesn’t fit anymore, but she insists on wearing it. Danny’s pretty sure that his mother, who almost never gets a chance to dote on her grand-Gracie these days, will at least try to get her a new one before the wedding, maybe talk her into a shopping trip with the aunts, because the Jersey ones still need to meet Mary and Kono. And his Ma’s worked in the clothing department of Mason’s for forty-plus years; even Grace’s resistance might not be able to withstand her sales pitch. Danny bets -- hopes -- that Grace will want to hold onto the pink dress as a memento, and if her unrepentant sap of a daddy wants to pull it out of the closet once in a while just to have the fabric under his hands and remember how it felt to hug his little princess who looked so beautiful in her dress when he thought he’d never see her in it, never hug her again -- well, who’s gonna hold it against him?

Grace shifts in her sleep, and a lei box, balancing precariously on her knees, threatens to topple. Danny lifts it from her lap and brings it over to Steve. “At ease, soldier.”

Steve takes the box. “You do know that ‘at ease’ doesn’t actually mean you can relax.”

“It does when I say it to you. I am not your C.O., and we’ve got another half-hour at least before they show up.” He rubs a little circle with his fingertips on Steve’s back. “C’mon, let’s go sit with Grace.”

“I like standing.”

“I know you do, but you’re making people nervous. Besides, if you stare at that monitor much longer, it’ll get burned on your retinas.”

Steve actually obliges him -- who says miracles don’t happen? -- and sits down on one side of Grace, Danny on the other. Steve runs his fingers over her hair, lightly, so as not to disturb her sleep. He’s getting to the point of being able to do that spontaneously, without second-guessing whether he’s somehow doing it wrong or contravening some regulation that he’s supposed to know about. Right now he still looks nervous and out of place, but there are times when a guy is going to be, no matter what. Even so, Danny offers words of reassurance, because that’s what you do and it probably can’t hurt: “Hey. My parents are not ogres, I promise you.”

Steve forces something that’s probably supposed to be a smile. “That’s what I’m worried about. Ogres I’m qualified to deal with.”

“Of course you are, babe,” Danny says. “But hey, at least you’ve practiced on Skype, right? I have every confidence that you’ll handle the real thing well enough to earn a bunch of really shiny new pieces of flair for your uniform, if they gave them out for that kind of thing.”

“Decorations, Danny,” Steve reminds him, this time with a hint of a real smile. “Decorations.”

“Decorations, whatever. I’m sure Ma and Pop would be proud to pin them to your chest themselves.”

“I hope so,” says Steve. He rests one arm very lightly on the back of Grace’s seat, his fingers outstretched, and Danny takes the hint and extends his own hand to hold Steve’s. They sit there like that, fingers laced together, not saying anything, Danny occasionally giving Steve’s hand a squeeze, while Grace dozes between them. Danny’s about ready to drift off himself when the PA system crackles to life: “Passengers arriving on Eagle Airlines flight 808 are now exiting agricultural inspections.”

Danny nudges Grace awake, and she’s barely had time to yawn before she’s standing on her seat, which she’s known better than to do for several years now. Danny’s about to give her a gentle reminder that she needs to be setting a good example for Steve when she shrieks, “I see Grandma and Grandpa!” and goes bouncing off to greet them before Danny can even track with her.

“It’s okay, I’ve got eyes,” Steve says, getting to his feet. “They’re at your two.”

They are indeed, the pink glare of Grace’s dress not quite disappearing into the three-person hug. She wiggles out of it after a minute and speed-walks back over to Danny and Steve. “I forgot the leis!” Steve hands her the box and she’s halfway back to her grandparents before she remembers to thank him for holding it, which she does by turning around and shouting “Thank you, Uncle Steve!” loudly enough that Danny can hear her clearly even over all the airport noise. He wonders if it’s possible to smile and wince at the same time, and then Steve yells back, “You’re welcome, Grace!” at a volume that reflects habituation to needing to be heard over the artillery.

People are now definitely giving them some looks, yeah, but mostly they’re indulgent looks, definitely very few of them are worse than bemused, and Danny gives Steve’s hand another squeeze. “You just got in good with my parents, McGarrett.”

Steve doesn’t look quite sure what to make of that statement, but before he can start asking questions, or trying to draw some totally insane conclusion from it, there winds up being a messy five-way bear-hug/handshake/back-clap/peck-on-the-cheek kind of huddle, and yeah, the leis that have just been placed so carefully around Danny’s parents’ shoulders get at least a little bit smushed.

Eventually they get all their respective limbs straightened out, though, catch their breath enough to say how good everyone’s looking, how much Grace has grown, and has Danny actually gotten a tan? Joseph Williams gets a full look at Steve’s tie and cracks a smile. “I’ll bet my stake in the championship ticket lottery that my granddaughter picked out that tie.”

Steve manages to return the smile. “I can’t bet against you on that one, sir. She has excellent taste.”

“Call me Joe. She sure does.” He catches Danny’s eyes, and Danny is instantly certain that he’s thinking of the dalmatian-and-helmet-print tie that Grace proudly gave her grandpa for Christmas four years ago. It’d be a very difficult tie to forget, hell, it makes Steve’s look like something in wild silk from a high-end designer by comparison, it probably drove the staff of a Hideous Polyester Tie Emporium to suicide. Danny finds himself hoping that the thing made its way into his dad’s luggage. He’s pretty optimistic that it might have, given the twinkle in Pop’s eye, and he’d put even odds on there being a plan to wear it to the wedding. If that actually happens, Danny is going to be laughing so hard he’ll rupture his spleen, probably everyone there will, and okay, now he’s fighting like hell just to keep it together in the middle of the arrivals terminal. So is his dad, and Steve, even though he doesn’t know the whole joke yet, looks like he can guess at it well enough to be seriously amused. Ma is still kind of teary, but her lips are also twitching the way they do when they’re losing the fight to restrain a belly-deep laugh. Then the four of them all crack up at about the same instant, and seriously, it’s just about impossible to stop laughing.

Grace just looks confused -- happy, but confused, and maybe a little bit concerned that the grown-ups really are every bit as insane as she’s suspected. “What’s so funny?” she asks, more than once, during lulls in which they variously and utterly fail at composing themselves.

“Nothing, Monkey,” Danny finally manages to say, when his sides ache, seriously, they’re approaching the threshold of intense pain. He still gets down to Grace’s level, despite the fact that it hurts a little, although it wasn’t very long ago that her level was a lot lower and it would’ve hurt a lot more. “We’re just happy, that’s all. So happy that we get a little bit silly about it.”

“Really?”

“What do you mean, ‘really’? Of course we are. Your grandma and grandpa are here, your aunts from Jersey are going to be here, we’ve got the best mom and dad there are, and they’ve got the best grandkids.” Grace still looks skeptical. “Not to mention, next week I’m getting married to my best friend in the whole wide world, and you know what I’m the most excited about?”

“No.”

“Well, I’m excited about a lot of things, because there are a lot of really terrific things coming up that are definitely worth getting excited about. But the absolute best of them, if I had to pick, is that next week, when I marry my best friend who’s completely out of his mind but so amazing that I actually kind of love how crazy he is, I’m going to have my best flower girl of honor there with me, and she’s the only one in the world. She’s one of a kind.” Okay, now Danny’s tearing up, he will admit that, he is man enough to feel secure about getting misty-eyed over his kid. He squeezes Grace’s hand, and Steve squeezes his. “My best flower girl of honor. I love her so much, you can’t even begin to imagine.”

Now Grace is tearing up a little too, happy tears, the only kind a parent ever likes to see on their child’s face. Christ, at this rate Steve is going to start looking misty-eyed, which will probably bring about the end of the world. “Look,” Danny chokes out, smiling, because somebody’s got to try and keep order here. “It’s almost midnight, it’s way too late to be standing around in airport, am I right?” Grace nods. “Of course I’m right. Come on, let’s you and me and Steve help Grandma and Grandpa with their suitcases, and then we’ll go home.”

(Companion piece: Wear It On Your Hand [ LJ | AO3])

I can feel your face;
gonna make it mine.
I can be the man
I see in your eyes.   --James, "Five-O" (Laid, 1995)