A Gift - gen - Hawaii-Five-O
The prompts were:
Genre/Cliché: AU
Prompt: Ruler
Word Count: Up to 300
what I made of it:
Title: A gift
Author: germanjj
Warning(s): none
Summary: Steve only wants to help.
Steve's palms are sweaty. The little package in his hand gets all wet and wrinkled and Steve sees he has black smudges on his hands from the newspaper he's wrapped it in. Mommy had said that you always wrap a present.
He glances over to the table on the left. The classroom is still almost empty this early in the morning.
He takes a deep breath.
Danny looks up when he reaches his desk. "Yeah?"
Steve puts his gift on the table and it looks all weird and dirty and Steve suddenly thinks that Danny might not even like it. "For you," he adds and wipes his clammy fingers on his pants.
Steve smiles when Danny has the ruler in his hands, bright blue with a big dolphin on one end.
"It's from Hawaii," Steve explains proudly. "My granny sent it to us. I mean to Mary and me, Mary is my little sister and she got a pink one. But I saw you in class and you're not using one so I thought maybe you don't have one and Mrs. Johnson told you twice that you should use a real ruler and not a book and that she will not give you a good grade if you don't use one and..." Steve is out of breath. "I want you to have it," he finishes and blushes.
Danny only stares at him and Steve is sure he hates it and he turns around and goes back to his table, his face burning.
But the next day, he finds a matchbox car on his table, one of the ones he's seen Danny play with during lunch break and he takes it home and doesn't show it to anyone, only plays with it when he's alone. That is an even better gift.