Aloha Aku No, Aloha Mai No [NC17] Danny/Steve
This story gets a preface.
A BILLION YEARS AGO (approx.) someone in my public speaking class gave a speech about Hawaiian traditions she'd picked up on while living in Kauai. And I thought OOO, WHAT A LOVELY IDEA, and started writing, not understanding how much this fic would kick my ass.
imkalena was an actual godsend, not even kidding, this fic would have been an absolute wreck without her. She read my first draft and very politely asked me if it was possible for me to make Danny NOT A COMPLETE ASSHOLE KTHNX, and I'd had no idea. Apparently I was in a bad place while writing it? That's the only excuse I can think of. I'M SO SORRY DANNO DD:
So then I rewrote it (like a boss) and dragged it back to her, wailing:
But imkalena tells me fluff is not a dirty word, and as she is basically a Goddess I kind of have to believe her. ALL THE MISTAKES ARE MINE.
ETA: Remember what I said about mistakes? I got the sides mixed up on the flowers. Fixed 3/12/11. *headdesks to death*
Title: Aloha Aku No, Aloha Mai No*
Author: queenklu
Beta by: THE AMAZING imkalena !
Pairing: Steve/Danny
Rating: NC17
Disclaimer: pffffft.
Word Count: 9k
A/N: *I give my love to you, you give your love to me.
Summary: “-so Gracie puts this flower in my hair and she tells me I look pretty and if I love her I’ll wear it all day, and I think, Great, I think, Greatness, because this is my day off and no way would Steve McGarrett show up at my door on my day off, right, Steven?”
“Do not even,” Danny says the moment the door swings open, but it’s his tired, defeated tone of voice, not expecting to be obeyed. He can’t be expecting to be obeyed.
“Flower,” Steve blurts, barely managing to bite back his instinct to-do something else, possibly involving loud and delighted giggling. It’s not SEAL appropriate, and Danny might kill him. He beams instead, as wide as he can because. Because flower.
“Very observant,” Danny drawls, still not angry. “You a detective or something?” He takes a step back, but Steve just cannot stop grinning at the hibiscus tucked over Danny’s right ear long enough to notice. “Hello, gonna stand there all day, you’re letting the lizards in,” Danny shoots off, not quite rapid-fire but gaining speed, and Steve snaps himself out of it and saunters inside.
“It’s my day with Grace,” Danny says as he shuts the door. “I should not have to explain anything flower-related on any days that are Grace-related.”
Steve bites hard on the inside of his cheek before answering, trying to regain some sort of control. “Sorry, did I ask you to explain?”
“All that I want-” And this is great, this is his favorite Danny, because out come the sideways shark-fin hands as he delineates his point, insistence making the hibiscus petals quiver with his righteous indignation. Steve misses about half of what Danny says, and he’s grinning again. “-so Gracie puts this flower in my hair and she tells me I look pretty and if I love her I’ll wear it all day, and I think, Great, I think, Greatness, because this is my day off and no way would Steve McGarrett show up at my door on my day off, right, Steven?"
“Love it when you call me Steven, you know, it makes me happy…on the inside,” Steve says, palm flattening over where his heart is so maybe it’ll take a hint and calm down. This does not mean what Danny thinks it means, this flower. And so Steve should just really take a step back, maybe snap a few pictures so he can look at this later and laugh to his heart’s content. Later, when he can shake this grin that Danny, bless his Jersey heart, is somehow misreading as mocking. Okay, as mostly mocking.
It’s something else, too, but fuck if Steve can figure out what it is.
Danny huffs, rogue hand swiping at his forehead, and it means something that Steve didn’t even notice he’s in casual clothes until now. It’s the heat and the humidity-record highs throughout the islands-and Steve knows it’s been hitting everyone hard but it looks like it’s been pummeling Danny all week. Which is why Steve is here.
Danny isn’t even wearing a tie, how did he miss that? Steve feels really and honestly disappointed in himself.
“Steven,” Danny growls tiredly, not to be dissuaded, “What are you doing in my home.”
“Listen,” Steve says, rubbing his jaw because he can’t give himself a firm punch to get his head back in the game. “So I’ve got this-”
“Steve!” Gracie bounds out of the bathroom down the hall and runs exactly to one foot from the toe of Steve’s boots, right between him and her Danno. She grins up at him as Danny’s hands settle on his shoulders, flicking her pigtails out of the way.
“Hey, kiddo,” Steve grins back, hand out for the secret handshake he taught her the last time Danny brought her along for team bonding time; the barbeque in Chin’s backyard, two weekends ago. She nails it, like he knew she would. “Your dad’s sure looking pretty today. Did you do that?”
“Yes,” she says, sweet and refined as ever. It’s just awesome timing, right over Danny’s stammered displeasure, which cuts off into a faintly annoyed stare. Steve beams at her, ridiculously proud for no reason he can put a name to. “Whatcha doing here?” Grace half sings, holding just the tips of his fingers so she can swing his hand back and forth.
“I got three tickets,” Steve says with a glance up at Danny as he kneels down. He fans them out, trying fiercely not to snort and ruin the moment. “To that thing you love.”
“Oh, you’re the Old Spice Guy, now?” Danny asks, but Grace shrieks in delight and his eyes roll up to the ceiling, defeated.
“Dolphins, Danno, look!”
“Yeah, Danno, dolphins!” Oh, Steve is going to get it. He knows it, he welcomes it, he plans to earn it. But maybe when Danny looks at him he can flash his best sheepish grin just right-
“Yeah,” Danny drawls as Grace clutches the tickets to her chest and bounces right on the balls of her feet-and Danny’s feet, too. The curl of the hibiscus petals against Danny’s cheek are the exact shape of Danny’s mouth curved into mildly pained and exhausted support. “That’s great, baby. Three tickets?”
“Yup,” Grace says before Steve can, holding them out so she can show him. “Three.”
“Third one’s for-whoever,” Steve waves off quickly, nonchalantly even. “I figured maybe Rachel could go, family time, or maybe you’ve been seeing someone after work, I don’t know.”
Steve doesn’t, really, and he, well, he understands that work friends are not always friend-friends. Vaguely mandatory team barbeques aside, he and Danny haven’t really hung out one-on-one without a case budging in on their conversation since…well, since his dad’s car fiasco. And Steve has been trying to give Danny space to go out and make friends and have fun on the island, seeing as he’s decided to stay here for the foreseeable future. So maybe Danny used that time to find some companionship. And maybe she would like to swim with dolphins.
Steve mentally checks, but no, his logic still seems pretty damn sound.
“I’m not seeing anyone,” Danny says, with the strangest expression on his face.
“Okay.” It’s surprisingly easy to smile. Probably because of the hibiscus behind Danny’s ear. Steve really cannot get over it, and he’s going to need to soon; the moment Danny walks out the door the issue of not seeing anyone will get very rapidly resolved.
Steve’s smile slips, unexpectedly. “You’d tell me-if you were, right? I mean,” he clarifies quickly, “for-paperwork reasons, if nothing else.”
Danny’s eyes are so wide Steve is almost afraid they’re going to fall out. “Paperwork,” he starts, sputtering, and Steve grins, decides that this is what he was going for all along, “Paperwork-you don’t do paperwork, I, I do paperwork, and what paperwork would I be doing if I was seeing someone in the first place, background check, witness protection-”
A small hand tugs at the knee of Steve cargo khakis before he can do more than open his mouth to try and talk Danny down. He blinks. “Yes, Grace?”
She smiles up at him, a perfectly guileless fairy princess grin as she says, “Would you like to swim with the dolphins with us, Uncle Steve?”
“Unc-Uncle Steve?” Danny repeats, questioningly, red flush creeping up his cheeks; at this distance Steve can’t tell if it’s anger or heatstroke, but he tenses up in preparation for the latter, probably. And then Danny drags a hand across the nape of his pinked-up neck, and Steve realizes it might be closer to embarrassment. “Gracie, sweetheart, I thought we talked about this.”
Danny’s doing it again-if Steve knew what it was, exactly, he could ask Danny to stop, but sometimes Danny just does things or says things or doesn’t say things and it makes Steve…uncomfortable. The kind of uncomfortable that comes with sustained amounts of torture. He can take it, no problem, he’s a SEAL, but if he could just figure out when to brace for it, if he could just get Danny to give him a hint it was coming, maybe he wouldn’t feel quite so blindsided by it every single time.
“Chin told me to,” Grace chirps, then gasps in such melodramatic shock Steve’s heart rate jumps automatically, barely recovering by the time she runs across the room and picks up a disposable camera bigger than her face. “Hold still,” she orders after scampering back, and then clickFLASH! Danny’s perplexed-bordering-on-homicidal face-complete with hibiscus flower tucked behind his right ear-is immortalized on film.
Chin is getting a raise. Hell, if Grace worked for Steve, he’d give her a raise too.
Danny and the hibiscus are giving him a look when he manages to finally stop beaming quite so fondly at Danny’s little girl. It’s a mostly-serious, considering stare, a go-to standby for Detective Williams when he’s trying to decide whether Steve has, in his words, “had his Crazy Flakes this morning.” Steve solidifies himself into something he doesn’t mind Danny staring at, hiding behind another disarmingly quirked smile.
“Would you like to join my daughter and me in the dolphin pool of the King Kamehameha Hotel, Steven?” Danny asks, formal and dry, and there’s no reason at all for Steve’s heart to go thump. He needs to up his cardio vascular activities.
“I would love to,” Steve says, just as formally, hands clasped behind his back as he gives them both a little heel-click and bow, smiling at Grace because it’s easier to, bent over as he is.
“Alright, monkey, go grab your swimsuit.” Danny is loud when he speaks, when he turns her towards her giant pink travel bag, and whatever was just hanging in the air is petal-thin, getting bruised. But really, if Steve needs a pick-me-up all he has to do is look at that flower, rifle-sight-red and as wide as Grace’s whole hand. His hopeless grin is back before he can stop himself, and Danny’s eyes roll.
“So?” Danny asks gruffly, almost defensive, “Do you need to borrow some trunks, or are we detouring to your place?”
“You don’t have-” Steve starts to laugh, and then chokes off at Danny’s narrow-eyed glare. “I mean. Uh. Kono mentioned your cut-offs.”
“Really,” Danny drawls. “In and amidst the giant fake Tsunami warning, you two managed to have a heart to heart about my surf lessons?”
“No,” Steve scoffs, “We had that conversation way after the Tsunami thing was over. Like, at least a good hour.”
“I can tell when you’re lying,” Danny warns, leveling a finger at him. The hibiscus sways with his movements, almost an accompanying nod. “Your voice goes all surfer-ese.”
“That’s not a-I keep a spare swim suit in the glove box,” Steve says, changing tactics mid-sentence. He’s already itching to go, blood humming with a kind of bubbly adrenaline that doesn’t come around that often; he wants to take somebody dancing, it’s that sort of feeling.
Danny sighs, narrowly missing the flower as he rakes a hand through his hair, muttering, “Of course you do,” like Steve just missed the point.
He’s not even sure where in there Danny even had chance for a point, so this is probably not an accurate observation.
~*~
“Oh wow, just look at your biceps.” The woman gives his arm a squeeze. “You have got to work out.”
Steve’s mood has faltered somewhat since they arrived at the Kamehameha.
“Uh, thanks, yeah,” Danny says, pretty visibly struggling between prying the strange woman’s nails off him one at a time, and-well, not. She’s beautiful, Steve will give her that, with a city-fit body she doesn’t bother to hide under her pretty much non-existent bikini. She keeps brushing her fingertips along the petals of Danny’s hibiscus, and if she doesn’t stop within the next ten seconds Steve will-
…continue to sit here on the private hotel beach furiously building sand castles with Grace. But he will think dismembering thoughts about this woman, who is the fifth to approach Danny today, just another tourist with a pocket guide to Hawaiian culture in her carry-on case. Danny doesn’t need people who can’t spare him more than a week before they’re back on a plane to the mainland. He needs-
“Aloalo,” she says, touching the flower, and Danny laughs (“Isn’t that a British TV show?”) but she smiles and Steve’s body is combat-ready without his conscious decision to tense up. Because that was Hawaiian for hibiscus, and her accent was flawless. Which means she’s not a tourist. She’s just too dumb to realize that Danny is so fresh off the mainland he doesn’t know what kind of signals he’s sending with that goddamned flower.
Grace pats Steve’s knee with the flat of her plastic shovel, and Steve blinks, realizes he’s just accidentally demolished an entire block of their sand metropolis. He braces for an explosion, forgetting for a moment that Grace is neither three years old nor his sister; Grace only levels him with huge Disappointed in Your Character eyes she must have learned from her dad. Possibly while he was practicing in the mirror.
“Must be something in the water today,” Danny says as he settles down beside them, slip of paper with the woman’s number scrawled across it held loosely in the palm of his hand. Steve has a pretty good feeling Danny isn’t going to be able to find that number when he gets home. Shame.
But Danny’s looking…well, kind of bemused, kind of awkward-he keeps slipping Grace uncomfortable glances like she’s never seen women hit on her dad before (impossible, and anyway, Grace is way too cool to be freaked out.)-but he also looks kind of flushed, kind of flattered. He’s been carrying a glow around with him today, or maybe it’s that fucking hibiscus. Steve keeps catching himself staring at Danny’s face long enough to burn a flower-shaped imprint on his retinas, and he can’t have been staring this much before this morning. Somebody would have told him.
“You jealous?” Danny asks, out of the blue, it seems. He’s leaning back on his arms, broad, lightly furred chest soaking up the sun like a sponge. The ocean breeze is enough to fight the humidity, and after the gallon of water Steve made him chug, Danny looks a lot less like he’s two seconds away from a heatstroke. Steve will still feel better once he gets Danny in the water.
He blinks, words just catching up. “Sorry, what?”
Danny’s grinning at Steve, even though he has to squint against the sun to see him. “Is that what that face is? Jealous Hamster?”
“Oh, yeah,” Steve says, tone dripping sarcasm, “Man, I am just so jealous of you. Your height, your hair. No, I get it,” he promises, spitting out the sand Danny just flicked at his face. “Your milkshake brings all the girls to the yard.”
“Damn right,” Danny agrees, gaze cutting away as a smile threatens to creep into the fine lines around his eyes. “It’s better than yours.”
“I want a milkshake,” Grace says, perking up.
Danny sighs and leans over to rub away a smudge of sunscreen on her nose. “Not until you are so much older, monkey, you have no idea.”
Steve shifts to get more comfortable in the sand and accidentally brushes shoulders with Danny as he sits back. Danny blinks, expression open but questioning, but Steve has no idea why they’re sitting so close, either, so he just shrugs. Danny’s lips quirk, and Steve’s eyes focus just to the side of Danny’s head where the cherry-stem of the hibiscus stamen is sticking out, like a long thin tongue going neener neener neener.
“Hey, monkey, you having fun yet?” Danny asks, nudging Grace with his toes and adding, “Yeah?” when she nods. “You wanna go see if the dolphins are off their lunch break?”
“Yeah,” she says, and lets Danny help her up, dusting sand off her neon pink swim suit.
Steve does not get a hand up, nor was he consulted in this vital decision, but it means going in the water so he definitely has no reason to mind. It helps that Grace grasps his fingers and skips along between them both, calm and happy as ever. Danny watches her with this look on his face Steve wants to call familiar, wants to get tattooed somewhere, so he can look at it any time he wants.
“Excuse me, sorry.” The lifeguard trots up to them just as they reach the steps leading back to the hotel, touches Danny’s elbow to get his attention. His hair is spiked, eyes intent. “Aren’t you five-oh?”
Danny goes on alert, but Steve is in defcon one, running through every sort of thing that might be going down within a ten block radius and how they can get Grace to safety before shit goes down, so he jumps the gun on answering before Danny can even open his mouth.
“I’m Commander McGarrett,” he barks, maneuvering himself instantly to shield as much of Danny and Grace as he can. “What’s the problem?”
Private security for the hotel means it’s not something small, means something big they’d risk getting caught for, means heists and drugs and thugs with guns-
“Oh,” the lifeguard blinks. “Oh, uh, no problem. Sir,” he adds hastily, cowering a little over whatever expression is on Steve’s face right now. “I was just, you know.” And he gestures helplessly to the flower.
Steve sees red. “Oh for f-”
“HEY,” Danny barks, reaching to cover Grace’s ears.
He’s already stopped himself from cursing, but not from getting right into the lifeguard’s space and glaring him down. “Does he look like a local to you?”
The guy’s eyes go wide with understanding-fucking finally-and he backs off fast, hands up. “Hey, minimini, brah. Might wanna let your boyfriend know he’s taken, hiki?”
Steve watches him run. 5’9”, black hair, blue eyes, 135lbs if Steve is any guess, blowfish tattoo on his left shoulder. Should be enough for Chin to get a social.
Danny and Grace are staring at him when he finishes filing away the details, their arms crossed, expressions anything but amused. Steve is 93% sure Grace is just copying her dad, but that doesn’t make her any less intimidating.
“Aaaand ladies and gentlemen if you look to your right you’ll see the not-as-elusive-as-one-would-hope Death to the Infidels Face.” Danny drops the bus guide voice and doesn’t do anything else. He looks angry, angry like he should look after he tells Steve not to bash a suspect’s face in, angry like he means it. “Could you please lose the face around my daughter?"
“It’s not at all attractive,” Grace agrees, nodding solemnly.
She sounds so much like her mother Steve’s mind goes blank, derailed by thoughts that Rachel could have only said those words to Danny-more than once, if Grace picked up on it-and Steve can’t for the life of him imagine what Danny could have been doing or wearing or saying that would make that statement in any way true.
Danny’s hand comes up before Steve can do more than choke out a nonsensical string of syllables, as annoyingly effective as if Danny was punching the pause button on a TIVO-ed episode of CHiPs. “Come on, Grace,” he says, eyes not even on Steve anymore as he puts his hands on Grace’s shoulders and turns her toward the hotel. “Let’s go swim with those dolphins.”
“Okay,” Grace says, and proceeds to drag him up the sand-littered steps.
Steve follows with his own hands feeling strangely empty, gaze snagged miserably on the hibiscus petals swaying with Danny’s stride. He’s going to chew Steve out as soon as his daughter can’t hear him use four-letter words, or worse, so much worse, he’ll just let Steve stew the rest of the day, stick to the bare minimum of words required to acknowledge Steve’s presence, and cold-shoulder him until Steve apologizes for what he’s done.
Steve isn’t sure what he just did, except maybe save Danny from fending off awkward passes from some guy. Maybe it came off a little homophobic? Fuck.
Maybe Steve should just leave. Now. While he has a chance.
“You go on ahead, babe,” Danny says, and Steve perks up accidentally before he realizes Danny is talking to Grace, passing her off into the care of a Certified Dolphin Guide who looks only too pleased to do Danny any kind of favor. Steve’s already closed hands clench into fists.
“Can’t go in with the flower, you know?” Danny adds, and Steve’s eye shift to where he’s pointing at the sign that says No Outside Contaminants. He’s pretty sure it means strange perfumes or oils, but seriously-
“You could take it off,” Grace offers with a shrug.
“Yes, you should. Could,” Steve blurts, caught off-guard by Grace’s sheer brilliance. As soon as she turns eighteen he’s recruiting her to the Five-Oh-desk duty only so Danny doesn’t have a coronary-because she’s right, and Steve has let himself get so distracted that he hadn’t thought of it until now.
Danny looks right into his possibly-too-eager-face and snaps, incredulous, “No!” Then, “Uh, no, it’s okay,” to Grace, ruffling her hair, and the flirty blond with the fancy hotel wetsuit giggles and says, “You could leave it in.”
Steve would like to introduce her to some cold water training at his earliest convenience.
“No,” Danny says the same instant his hand locks on Steve’s arm, digging in hard enough for Steve to let out a reflexive Ow. But it’s a squeeze that means hang tight so Steve doesn’t move, not even when Danny lets go and crouches down by the pool where the Dolphin Guide is actually doing a fairly decent job of keeping Grace from floating away in her water wings.
“Hey, could you do me a huge favor?” Danny asks, and Flirty Blond laughs and says Name it and Steve hopes a dolphin crushes her, seriously. “I’ve gotta go talk to this guy for like, five minutes. Can you make sure my daughter doesn’t get eaten by whales? I’d appreciate it.”
“Sure thing,” she says, and then starts talking baby gibberish to Gracie, who gives her dad a baleful look but takes one for the team.
“There are no whales in that pool, Danny,” Steve starts, because it seems pretty relevant.
“Dolphins are a subspecies-No, you know what? Shut up.” Danny grabs his elbow, right at the joint, hauls him away from the pool into the shade of a blooming plumeria tree. The flowers’ fragrance falls around them like a cloud, sweet and tangible and Steve really wants to go home. There’s no possible way this conversation can go anyplace good.
But Danny just stops, crosses his arms, and waits.
This is worse, definitely worse, because Steve is bad with silences and if Danny waits him out Steve doesn’t have a clue what he might say-government secrets, childhood trauma, anything.
“Well, Steven?” Danny prompts.
“I think I hear my phone ringing,” Steve says, as dead serious as he can.
Danny doesn’t even have to unfold his arms to stop Steve from leaving, just twists his wrist and touches Steve’s chest. Why are they standing so close? “That phone? In your pocket?” Danny asks, and Steve hates this expression because he can’t see into Danny’s head; his eyes are too blue. “Tell you what. Why don’t we just be very quiet and listen to it ring?”
The plumeria tree doesn’t even have enough leaves on it to rustle in the breeze. Happy children shrieking sound muffled, like he’s underwater. The huge swell of red petals by Danny’s ear looks like a gunshot wound. Steve has been water-boarded before; this is so much worse.
Danny rocks forward, pointedly. “I don’t hear anything, Steven.”
“Fuck,” Steve breathes. He can’t feel his lips.
“Articulate,” Danny says, right before Steve’s knees give out.
“Whoa, Jesus!” And Danny catches him-Steve wasn’t really going to fall, he’d have stopped himself, probably-but something about the way Danny’s hands dig into Steve’s sides hurts and feels better all at once. Danny manhandles him down onto the low stone wall encircling the damn tree, gets a hand on the back of his neck, tries to push Steve’s head down between his knees and he’s saying things, angry-panicked curse words mostly, but Steve struggles through the rushing sound in his ears just in time to hear, “-fucking sheet white. Did you just pass out in the face of talking about your feelings?”
“Shut up, no,” Steve mumbles, tongue thick, dimly wondering if puking might make him feel better.
“So fucked in the head,” Danny says, sounding strangled, and then he’s gone. Steve isn’t sure what he’s more surprised about-that Danny left, or that when he did he pulled away from Steve’s death-grip on his knee and Steve hadn’t realized he was groping his partner, he definitely hadn’t meant to-and then he hears Danny’s voice saying, “No, no, don’t worry about it, he just got some pretty shocking news. Yeah, thanks,” and if that is another person flirting with Danny Williams-
“Drink this,” Danny orders, pressing a cold, wet water bottle into his hands. Steve blinks, but Danny is crouching down in front of him, like he does with Grace, eyebrows in a tight knot in the middle of his forehead which only eases incrementally when Steve takes an obedient gulp.
“I can’t believe you. No, what am I saying, of course I can believe that you, Mr. Macho Navy Commander Seal, would be nanny-ing me about heatstroke so much and for so long-How many fingers?” Danny breaks off his rant to ask, trying to sound only half serious, but Steve counts them off and watches the relief creep in, one, two, three.
“Alright. This position is no good for my knee, buddy, so we’re going to turn like this-Keep drinking,” he orders, sitting next to Steve on the wall and physically arranging Steve to face him, like Steve doesn’t know how to move his limbs-but then he almost drops the water bottle, and Danny glares, folds Steve’s fingers tight around it. Oh.
Danny doesn’t say anything until Steve has finished the last drop, then he takes the bottle and sets it aside, eyes never leaving Steve’s face.
“Okay,” Danny says, like he’s steeling himself. “Okay, Steve. Would you like to explain your little panic attack?”
Steve shakes his head. He doesn’t know, and talking about it just sounds like a bad idea.
“Tough.” The word is blunt, but Danny has a hand on Steve’s bare shoulder, thumb rubbing lightly over his tattoo, and Steve relaxes against his will, leaning into it. “Alright,” Danny says, eyes just a little wider, “Alright. So, baby steps. Want to start with the flower? Or the way you’ve been glaring death threats at every person who’s so much as said hello to me today?”
“Those are not baby steps,” Steve objects, half a whine. His eyes slam shut. What the fuck is he doing? This is conduct unbecoming if he ever-
“No you don’t,” Danny growls, holding him down with just that one hand, and maybe Steve is getting sick. It’s the only explanation. “Hey. Hey, look at me.” When Steve does, Danny meets his eyes and plucks the flower from behind his ear.
It’s slightly wilted from where it was flush against Danny’s skin in the heat, petals limp and splayed across
Danny’s palm. It looks smaller, now. It’s suddenly-amazingly-much easier to breathe.
“Okay, this is good,” Danny says, “You look a lot less like someone tried to make a cootie-catcher out of somebody’s memorial flag. Can you tell me what this is?”
Steve scowls at him. “Hibiscus, Danny.”
“Very good. You know your botany. So what does it mean when I do this?”
Danny lifts the flower to his ear again and Steve can’t help it, he feels nauseous, grabs Danny’s hand and drags it down. He’s surprised when Danny doesn’t complain, but a little less pleased when Danny doesn’t let him take the flower and tear it into a million little pieces.
“Come on, Steve,” Danny says, his usual veil of mocking so thin it’s all-but translucent. “Use your grown-up words.”
“Fuck you,” Steve says instantly, automatically, fast enough he has to laugh even if it’s quiet and mostly another try at deflecting. He drags a hand over his face, trying to remember a time when he was ever good at this. Not that he’s entirely solid on what ‘this’ is, other than talking to his partner, which. He thought they had built a rapport.
“Don’t think about it like it’s me,” Danny suggests, hands wide, one still absently cradling the hibiscus. “Think about, like-what would it mean if Kono was wearing the flower?”
“She’s available.” The words come out in a rushed mumble, and Steve doesn’t do anything else. If he winces, if he breathes, he’ll be nothing but exposed. Danny could eviscerate him.
“Right side,” Steve adds, because Danny is too quiet, and Steve is bad with silences. “If she’s wearing the flower on her right side she’s single, left side she’s taken.”
“Right side she’s…” Danny repeats, off-center, like he heard wrong, so Steve says it again, easier now that he’s just explaining yet another Hawaiian-custom to his partner.
“Available. It means ‘Come hit on me.’”
“Yeah, I got that, but it would be m-It would be Kono’s choice,” Danny says, flower pinched between thumb and forefinger as the shark-fin hands start creeping out. “If she wants to advertise her availability, why would that make you upset?”
Steve’s shoulders come up in a hard shrug. “It wouldn’t.”
“Well obviously,” Danny points out, “It just did.”
“It’s not-it’s different.”
“Why?”
“Because Kono knows that she’s doing it!” Steve is loud and getting louder, and Danny’s hand clamps down on his arm like he wants to shove it over Steve’s mouth.
“You could’ve told me,” Danny says, gesturing to himself, flower petals skimming his skin. “You could have told me, and then I would have known. And then it would have been my decision to keep the flower in, and you would have still gone ballistic.”
That’s not- Steve huffs his skepticism. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, and you know how I know?”
“Bring it,” Steve dares, notched into the groove of their regular fighting. “Amaze me.”
“Because you don’t want-” Danny stops, lips tight the smallest fraction of a second before he deflates, and Steve thinks No no no that’s the You Gotta Face Facts Sigh, but Danny keeps talking before Steve can do anything more than get a chill down his spine. “You don’t want the flower on my right side,” Danny says, a low, reluctant murmur. “You want it on my left.”
“No, I don’t,” Steve says, blunt, military frank.
Which doesn’t seem to faze Danny in the least. “Yes, okay, you do.”
“What?” And that’s bluster, loud-there’s spit involved to show how much scorn he is feeling at this moment. “I think I would know-”
“Alright, I’m done for right now,” Danny says, calm but completely closed-off as he stands. Steve feels-he flounders. When Danny rakes a hand through his hair he feels like a tuna at the end of a pike. “Come find me when you work it out,” Danny says, and he leaves, walks across the damp concrete and slips into the pool.
He left the flower next to Steve. “Oh, that’s just-” Steve starts when he sees it, and then swallows against absolutely nothing.
The hibiscus petals flutter like a wave.
~*~
He needs a case. Something with a time limit, something so that when he shows up at Danny’s door Danny won’t be able to kick him out because drug smugglers and child prostitution rings are more important than talking about their feelings.
“I’ve got nothing.”
Steve blinks. Frowns at his cellphone, at Chin’s voice on the other end lying to him. “What?”
“Really, brah, there’s no cases.” And Chin sounds sincere, but he always sounds sincere. “Not so much as a speeding ticket with enough priors to land jail time. Criminals are just lying low this week, I guess.”
It clicks. “Danny called you, didn’t he?” Steve bites down on the urge to ask for details, any hint Danny might have given, because god damn it, just. “Bullshit. That is such-”
“You blew up an entire cocaine ring on Friday.”
“That was an accident!” Mostly. Like, a good 85% accident, at least.
“Yeah, well,” Chin says. “Can you really blame them for keeping a low profile?”
“Oh.” Steve’s chest feels like it’s sinking right down to his toes. “I guess that makes sense.”
“So…Danny mentioned the flower,” Chin starts.
Steve bites off a groan, pinching the bridge of his nose. It takes a couple tries, but the words finally form into something coherent; Chin will get this, someone has to, it can’t only make sense when it’s inside Steve’s head. “It just. It just looked ridiculous, man, I don’t even know how to describe it.”
“Start small, brah, how many petals?” Chin asks flatly. Steve is suddenly dead certain Chin is actually photoshopping different flowers on a picture of Danny as they speak. With one hand.
He has no idea why the thought makes him angry enough to want to punch something, he really doesn’t. “Yes, okay, but he-Danny doesn’t have any idea what he’s saying-”
“It’s like the tie thing?” Chin sounds more serious, now, interested. “Shouting ‘Hey hey I’m a haole,’ only this time he’s saying ‘Come hit on me, I’m a local’-and this bugs you?”
Something squirms in Steve’s gut but he ignores it, grinds out, “Yes.”
Chin is so quiet on the other end Steve has to check to see if the call was dropped. Then, finally, “Steve, my friend,” he says, “I say this with the utmost respect and the deepest desire to keep my job, but you’re completely hehena.”
“Yeah,” Steve says, watching the sand settle under his shifting feet. “Yeah, I know.”
~*~
Step Two is getting drunk. Five drinks in, Steve is a huge fan of Step Two.
The bar is just shy of grimy and dimly lit, wood worn smooth by hundreds of hands and thousands of beer bottles. Steve used to come here with a small group of other SEALs years ago, but they’d muscle around a table and shoot the shit over pitchers of Kona’s finest, not hunch in a corner near enough to the bartender that ordering another round only takes a twitch of one finger.
It isn’t that Danny is trying to fit in. Steve loves the idea of Danny’s ties being anonymously donated to charity. He’ll never pass as local, but Steve still gets the occasional flack for not being old Hawaiian blood. It’s just that Danny…Danny didn’t know what he was doing. And now that he knows, he’ll never do it again. That’s not trying to fit in, not at all.
And Steve doesn’t want Danny’s flower on the left side, what the hell? That would be lying. That would be false freaking advertising. Steve would be just as pissed off if a guy took off his wedding ring to go get laid. Yeah. It’s the reverse principle of the thing, and an abuse of Hawaiian culture. He shouldn’t need any more reasons.
Plus, the thought of Danny being taken-in the no-longer-single sense of the word, not any other, Jesus, did they crank the AC in here? A shiver just ran through Steve’s frame so they must have-Anyway, Danny being…belonging to someone, that’s just. Imfeasible. Impossible, unfeasible. It’s not right. Danny Williams is not a guy to belong to anyone, except maybe Grace, who doesn’t count.
But he must have once, right? Once upon a time he was that guy, he was Rachel’s, and she was his, and they were theirs. So it’s possible Danny could be that guy again, and Steve-
Steve has killed people in the line of duty, and there has almost always been mandatory counseling afterward, though his various shrinks seemed to have a weird habit of signing off on his mental health halfway through the first session. Yeah, he doesn’t try to explain it. But he remembers something one of them tried to teach him, something about “I-statements.”
I feel, he starts, and stalls. Okay, no, how about, I am. I am…upset. I want… What does he want? He wants Danny to…not be taken. Wants Danny to not advertise the possibility that he could be. Wants Danny…
Steve rests his head on the bar top, tries to breathe through the dizzying fog of alcohol and something else, and cannot for the life of him finish that sentence.
~*~
Steve wakes up with the smell of his own cotton sheets in his face, his own pillow mashed under neck at an angle it should never be forced into. For one glorious moment he’s not sure why he’s surprised to be in his own bed, and then the hangover sledgehammers into his skull and crushes it into a million splintery pieces. He doesn’t remember leaving the bar. Fuck, he hopes someone got his keys off him. He hopes he didn’t break anyone’s fingers for trying to take his keys.
There is someone in his house.
It’s a clang and a muffled curse from downstairs that does it, but Steve claws to the edge of his mattress and rolls off, flipping into an unsteady crouch. A clammy sweat breaks out across his upper lip, but if he was going to throw up, that maneuver would have done it. Which means that he probably won’t get sick on his intruders as he takes them out.
His intruders…who made him eggs. And too many other smells for Steve to figure out as he pads downstairs as silently as he can manage. Mary? he thinks blearily, but Mary is back on the mainland. Kono burns everything she touches and Chin-Chin is not Danny, who this is, shirtsleeves rolled up and his hair kind of fluffy from the stove heat as he glances up and catches sight of Steve lurking on the bottom stair.
“Hey, it lives.” Danny spatulas a pile of steaming scrambled eggs on top of a mound of bacon nestled in hash browns smothered in gravy. Steve’s arteries start to cry.
“Sit,” he orders when Steve can’t find words. “Drink that.” The water is ice cold, which Steve realizes before he knows he obeyed, hips hitched up on one of the stools surrounding his breakfast bar. It’s déjà vu all over again for last night, only more eggs. Less tequila.
“What are you doing here?” Even with a full 8oz of water his voice still sounds as wrecked as it did ten days into a mission in the middle of the Saudi desert, running low on supplies. Steve isn’t usually self-conscious (in more ways than one), but it’s hard to meet Danny’s eyes knowing how wretched he must look, if it’s half as bad as how he feels and sounds.
Danny’s lips twitch, but Steve is pretty sure it’s not in amusement. “You don’t remember me picking you up?”
Steve quickly takes another sip, wracking his pounding brain. “…No? Not…No, I-”
“Awesome.” Danny braces on the counter, ducking his head down to catch Steve’s gaze and hold it. “Because you called a cab.”
“Oh.” That makes…more sense. He vaguely recalls a red-faced Samoan getting frustrated with Steve’s decision to tap out his address in Morse code. “But then why-”
“Because you also called me. Seven times.”
Steve tries to stare down Danny’s phone from where it’s being held in front of his face and almost winds up cross-eyed, feeling nauseous. “No, I didn’t.”
“Oh, you think so?”
“Danny-” Steve starts, but Danny holds up a hand, and punches a button.
“Heeeeeey Danno,” Steve’s tinny, drunken slur bursts from the speakers, followed by a sad little giggle. “Danno. Um. You. Fuck, I had something to say.” Click.
“That is the least painful,” Danny warns. “Message five you started singing Danny Boy.”
Steve gives in and lets his head hang heavy between his shoulders the way it’s been wanting to since he got up. Jesus Christ, he’d been hoping that had been some sort of awful nightmare. “I’m sorry,” he groans to his knees, heartfelt down to his toes.
“You know what? You should be sorry. I hope you have the hangover from hell right now because you know what, babe? You deserve it. You know why? You wanna know why I’m not being more considerate to your ear drums or your feelings?” he snaps, swatting away Steve’s weak attempts to protect his ears. “Because it should not be this hard to figure out you like someone.”
“Danny,” Steve chokes, begging at the onslaught of noise.
“You like me. You? Like me,” Danny says, punctuating with his hands. “Do I need to go get the Venn diagram in my car? Grace helped, it’s ninety percent glitter, but maybe it could get through your thick skull-”
“I know,” Steve croaks.
“Know. You-know.” Danny’s hands drop to the counter and hold on, blue eyes closed off and suspicious. It’s the first time he’s looked Steve in the eye since his tirade began, and it looks like it’s costing him something. “What is it exactly that you think you know?”
And that’s…harder, but he cobbles something together, pushes it out. “I know that…you’re…right?” But that’s wrong, he knows it’s wrong without looking at Danny’s face, which he can’t, drags a hand through the flattened mess of his hair instead. “I-wait, Danny-”
Because Danny drops the spatula on the counter and starts to leave, and maybe it’s only to get the graph from his car but Steve can’t risk it, he can’t. He grabs at Danny, half lunged across the counter to do it, and barely catches Danny’s sleeve in time to haul him back.
“Wait,” Steve asks, “Just one sec. Wait?”
Danny blinks, slow, at Steve’s ungainly sprawl. But he nods, so Steve has to make himself let go, has to take his hands off Danny and walk outside and hope to god his partner is still there when he comes back. Steve’s palms are sweating, he feels dizzy and ridiculous, but he gets what he needs and lets out a completely shameless sigh of relief when he turns and Danny is watching him from the lanai, hands braced against the porch railing. The soles of Steve’s feet burn against the sand as he jogs back.
Danny doesn’t say anything.
Steve bites back on a wave of panic at the silence, holds out his hands so Danny can get a better look. Twin plumeria blossoms rest in the cradle of his palms, these flowers a soft pink melting into gold at their center, quiet and hopeful and kind of fucked up, kind of probably needing some hardcore therapy, but maybe good enough to give a chance. Maybe. Maybe he is projecting onto the flowers, okay, it’s entirely too possible.
Steve picks up one flower, half-spins it by its stem.
“Babe,” Danny starts, and it’s not impatient, it’s not any of the things Danny has a right to be, but Steve twitches anyway, blurts, “Please, just-” before he makes himself stop and calm down.
“Hey, hey come here,” Danny says, hips snug against the railing as he leans against it, leans toward Steve. Steve goes because Danny asked, and because he’s too focused on getting enough oxygen to keep the grey out of his vision to object. “Look.” Danny’s hand rakes tight through his hair, hard enough to hurt, his blue eyes strong and earnest. “You don’t have to do this for me.”
“Danny-”
“No, listen, alright? Maybe I pushed too hard, I’m always-but Steve, babe, you don’t have to say it. I changed my mind.”
“In two seconds?” Steve demands, incredulous.
“I can change my mind in two seconds! What, you think I can’t? I just did! And don’t you dare take this as a dare, McGarrett, but if you’re not ready-”
“Who says I’m not ready? I’m ready!” It’s some sort of automatic football trigger that he’s all-but jogging in place right now, up on the balls of his feet, shoulders set. “Come on!”
“This is not to psych you up!” Danny bellows. “It should not have to be this hard, but if it is then there’s a reason, and excuse me for not wanting a mental breakdown on my hands!”
“Of course there’s a reason!” Steve yells back, arms wide, realizing a split second too late how ridiculous he looks with a plumeria in each hand. “My nickname was Smooth Dog, you think I got that from a physical incapability to tell people that I care about them?”
“I don’t want you to tell me what I want to hear! In fact, I can tell you it’s the absolute last thing-”
“It’s because you’re more important! Okay?” Steve tries to force his volume down a notch, so he’s not screaming out his personal life loud enough to wake the neighbors. “It’s because. Danny.” And god damn it, he’s still stumbling, and if he wasn’t holding these flowers he’d go punch something, but instead-instead, well, he is holding the flowers, so he takes a deep breath and shoves one plumeria behind his ear. Left side.
Danny’s staring. Then he shoots a quick look down at his hands, like he’s checking left and right and flipping them in his head.
“Taken,” Steve says, pointing, like it’s sign language, like he’s speaking Danny. “I’m taken. With you.”
“…Oh,” Danny says, like a crucial piece of evidence just hit the table. The sweetest sort of flush starts creeping up his neck.
“Look, I, uh,” Steve stammers, because something else just leapt to the forefront of his mind. “I know we haven’t spent that much time together-”
“What are you talking about?” Danny cuts in, vowels as wide and expressive as his hands. “We are together all the time. When I am not with you, I am sleeping. Or with Grace. You took me out on a date yesterday, how is this slipping your mind?”
“I didn’t,” he splutters, then, “Okay, maybe I-but it was- I’ve been giving you space!”
“You mean the last couple weeks when you’ve been letting us go home at reasonable hours?” Danny asks, eyebrows high. “Because that’s not space, McGarrett, that’s obeying union regulations. And anyway, I don’t want space,” he adds, looking pointedly at where Steve is standing, “Could you please come up here, or are you gonna make me lean over the balcony like Romeo and Juliet?”
Steve’s breath catches in his throat quick enough he almost chokes, because somehow, even with everything, he didn’t see this coming. And then, well.
“You have stairs, you Neanderthal, I meant use them-”
Steve ignores him spectacularly, swinging his legs up over the railing as he scales it. It’s a little awkward balancing with one flower still pinched between his fingers, but he manages not to trip, and he manages to make himself stop before he just backs Danny into a wall and kisses him until neither one of them can think straight.
Danny is pinking up all over like he can see into Steve’s head, which is something Steve finds entirely too possible after the last couple of days. Then Danny coughs, pointedly, one brow arched even as he ducks his head. “You, uh, have something of mine, Rambo.”
For a split second Steve doesn’t have a clue, and the plumeria stem rolls between his fingers like an afterthought. Then, “Oh! Um. …right,” Steve fumbles, nearly drops the damn thing as he holds it out, nearly snatches it back when Danny goes to reach for it. “You don’t,” he says, because he has to, this is important, “You don’t have to. Do anything with it. I mean, I get that you might’ve just-”
“Steven,” Danny says, hands together, imploring. “I understand that there have been some people in your past that have severely fucked up your expectations. But I promise you, I promise you, I would not have forced you into this realization if it wasn’t breaking my heart every day, watching you delude yourself out of wanting something that might make you happy. That might make me happy, alright, let’s be honest, my motivations are not entirely unselfish. But I want to make you happy, babe, I do, and I’m trying to tell you…but the truth is I’m not that much better with-feeling feelings than you. So could you…could you please just give me the flower?”
Steve holds it out half on autopilot, his chest constricting tight for reasons he doesn’t think even Danny could explain. It’s bad that his vision is threatening to dim a little at the edges, he knows this, but all he can see is Danny, and all Danny is doing should be mostly ridiculous but it isn’t, it’s taking Steve’s breath away.
“Tada,” Danny says when the flower is behind his ear, left side. His voice breaks, strangely, affectionately, and Steve can breathe again all in a rush. “Oh man, seriously?” Danny says, striding for him like he thinks Steve is going to fall, but that’s fine, that means he can get his hands on Danny, wrap his arms around his partner and just hold on like some little voice has always told him he should every time they made it out of a firefight alive.
Danny goes with it, hugs Steve back so hard his flower almost slips free. Steve catches it, fingertips curling over the shell of Danny’s ear, so close he can smell the coy sweetness of plumeria and the salt of the sea and Danny’s skin.
“Hey,” Danny says, pushing back far enough to nudge his chin up like a dare, blue eyes sparkling like the ocean. “Kiss me.”
Steve does. Steve kisses Danny until he grins into it, then kisses Danny until he pants.
He kisses Danny into a wall, around a couch, up an entire set of stairs, knocking things over and repeatedly stubbing his toes and almost falling off the bed once they crash onto it, and it is still the best, the best everything. Danny is grabby, pushy, stripping Steve faster than he can blink and then perfectly fine with the way Steve clings to him, all limbs, as awkward and needy as his first time.
Steve feels touch-starved, skin-hungry, blankets Danny’s naked body under him and rolls his hips, licks at Danny’s stuttering moans. Danny calls him babe, calls him Steve, groans out McGarrett when his strokes go teasing, shouts out wordlessly when finds that spot with his thumb that makes Danny dig his nails into Steve’s skin like he’s holding on by a thread.
“Come here,” Danny says then, presses his mouth to any part of Steve he can reach, fumbling down a hand between them. Steve can’t think for a second, can’t see a way that they could get any closer without supplies, and then Danny closes his fingers around them both and tugs, and Steve is gone.
“That’s it, got you,” Danny gasps out, thin and desperate, and Steve eats it out of his mouth with a growl that shoves Danny right over the edge, tumbling into Steve’s palm in a wet, beautiful mess.
And later, when they collapse-sweaty and sticky and Steve can’t make himself stop rubbing his come into Danny’s skin with the pad of his thumb-Danny goes, “Ugh,” and “What the…?” and lifts his hip up just enough to paw at the sheets under him, and comes up with a handful of pink-stained sheets and crushed petals. He grunts in surprise when Steve flips him over, mouthing at the patch of flower-sweet skin on Danny’s ass and Danny pillows his head on his arms and shakes with pent-up laughter.
“What,” Steve says between broad, teasing drags of his tongue, “is so very funny, Danno?”
“I just realized-” Danny drags the heels of his palms over his eyes, propped up on his elbows as his laughter turns to hiccups. “God. Anniversaries. Valentine’s Day. I’m going to spend the whole day worrying you’ll pass out. And probably completely forget to say those three words myself in the process.”
Steve hums, sliding up Danny’s body until he can press a kiss to the curve of Danny’s neck. “Love you,” he whispers, half to see if he can do it.
Danny shivers all over, head slipping down between his shoulders even as he leans into Steve. “Shut up,” he groans, begs, “I just have all these preconceived notions-”
“Hey,” Steve says, louder, bizarrely happier, “Did you hear me? I said I love you.”
“Jesus, okay, you’re freaking-better at everything,” Danny mutters, but Steve has a distinct feeling that he isn’t actually hearing a word coming out of his own mouth, the way he’s shuddering as Steve finds the space behind Danny’s ear all petal damp and sets his teeth to it, nibbling and licking until all he can taste is Danny again.
“Danny,” he whispers, right at the curve of it.
“Hnnngh,” Danny says, head hung low.
Steve is pretty sure he doesn’t tense up, but something flips a switch in Danny, something gets Steve held to the bed with his partner pinning his wrists down, climbing on top. He doesn’t struggle, not with Danny looking at him with that face, the one Steve wants engraved on his skin.
“I love you so much,” Danny says, blue eyes burning. He plucks something from the pillow near Steve’s head, folds it carefully over the curve of Steve’s ear. The plumeria flower is wilted and flattened, but it still smells fantastic. Danny keeps fiddling with it, thumb stroking down one petal and over the curve of Steve’s jaw as he turns his face to Danny’s hand, breathing him in as deep as he can. “I love you so much I’m fucking stupid with it, alright?”
“Yeah?” Steve asks, choking back the giddy laugh bubbling up in his throat. “I think I know the feeling.”
THE END
comments are ♥
A BILLION YEARS AGO (approx.) someone in my public speaking class gave a speech about Hawaiian traditions she'd picked up on while living in Kauai. And I thought OOO, WHAT A LOVELY IDEA, and started writing, not understanding how much this fic would kick my ass.
imkalena was an actual godsend, not even kidding, this fic would have been an absolute wreck without her. She read my first draft and very politely asked me if it was possible for me to make Danny NOT A COMPLETE ASSHOLE KTHNX, and I'd had no idea. Apparently I was in a bad place while writing it? That's the only excuse I can think of. I'M SO SORRY DANNO DD:
So then I rewrote it (like a boss) and dragged it back to her, wailing:
But imkalena tells me fluff is not a dirty word, and as she is basically a Goddess I kind of have to believe her. ALL THE MISTAKES ARE MINE.
ETA: Remember what I said about mistakes? I got the sides mixed up on the flowers. Fixed 3/12/11. *headdesks to death*
Title: Aloha Aku No, Aloha Mai No*
Author: queenklu
Beta by: THE AMAZING imkalena !
Pairing: Steve/Danny
Rating: NC17
Disclaimer: pffffft.
Word Count: 9k
A/N: *I give my love to you, you give your love to me.
Summary: “-so Gracie puts this flower in my hair and she tells me I look pretty and if I love her I’ll wear it all day, and I think, Great, I think, Greatness, because this is my day off and no way would Steve McGarrett show up at my door on my day off, right, Steven?”
“Do not even,” Danny says the moment the door swings open, but it’s his tired, defeated tone of voice, not expecting to be obeyed. He can’t be expecting to be obeyed.
“Flower,” Steve blurts, barely managing to bite back his instinct to-do something else, possibly involving loud and delighted giggling. It’s not SEAL appropriate, and Danny might kill him. He beams instead, as wide as he can because. Because flower.
“Very observant,” Danny drawls, still not angry. “You a detective or something?” He takes a step back, but Steve just cannot stop grinning at the hibiscus tucked over Danny’s right ear long enough to notice. “Hello, gonna stand there all day, you’re letting the lizards in,” Danny shoots off, not quite rapid-fire but gaining speed, and Steve snaps himself out of it and saunters inside.
“It’s my day with Grace,” Danny says as he shuts the door. “I should not have to explain anything flower-related on any days that are Grace-related.”
Steve bites hard on the inside of his cheek before answering, trying to regain some sort of control. “Sorry, did I ask you to explain?”
“All that I want-” And this is great, this is his favorite Danny, because out come the sideways shark-fin hands as he delineates his point, insistence making the hibiscus petals quiver with his righteous indignation. Steve misses about half of what Danny says, and he’s grinning again. “-so Gracie puts this flower in my hair and she tells me I look pretty and if I love her I’ll wear it all day, and I think, Great, I think, Greatness, because this is my day off and no way would Steve McGarrett show up at my door on my day off, right, Steven?"
“Love it when you call me Steven, you know, it makes me happy…on the inside,” Steve says, palm flattening over where his heart is so maybe it’ll take a hint and calm down. This does not mean what Danny thinks it means, this flower. And so Steve should just really take a step back, maybe snap a few pictures so he can look at this later and laugh to his heart’s content. Later, when he can shake this grin that Danny, bless his Jersey heart, is somehow misreading as mocking. Okay, as mostly mocking.
It’s something else, too, but fuck if Steve can figure out what it is.
Danny huffs, rogue hand swiping at his forehead, and it means something that Steve didn’t even notice he’s in casual clothes until now. It’s the heat and the humidity-record highs throughout the islands-and Steve knows it’s been hitting everyone hard but it looks like it’s been pummeling Danny all week. Which is why Steve is here.
Danny isn’t even wearing a tie, how did he miss that? Steve feels really and honestly disappointed in himself.
“Steven,” Danny growls tiredly, not to be dissuaded, “What are you doing in my home.”
“Listen,” Steve says, rubbing his jaw because he can’t give himself a firm punch to get his head back in the game. “So I’ve got this-”
“Steve!” Gracie bounds out of the bathroom down the hall and runs exactly to one foot from the toe of Steve’s boots, right between him and her Danno. She grins up at him as Danny’s hands settle on his shoulders, flicking her pigtails out of the way.
“Hey, kiddo,” Steve grins back, hand out for the secret handshake he taught her the last time Danny brought her along for team bonding time; the barbeque in Chin’s backyard, two weekends ago. She nails it, like he knew she would. “Your dad’s sure looking pretty today. Did you do that?”
“Yes,” she says, sweet and refined as ever. It’s just awesome timing, right over Danny’s stammered displeasure, which cuts off into a faintly annoyed stare. Steve beams at her, ridiculously proud for no reason he can put a name to. “Whatcha doing here?” Grace half sings, holding just the tips of his fingers so she can swing his hand back and forth.
“I got three tickets,” Steve says with a glance up at Danny as he kneels down. He fans them out, trying fiercely not to snort and ruin the moment. “To that thing you love.”
“Oh, you’re the Old Spice Guy, now?” Danny asks, but Grace shrieks in delight and his eyes roll up to the ceiling, defeated.
“Dolphins, Danno, look!”
“Yeah, Danno, dolphins!” Oh, Steve is going to get it. He knows it, he welcomes it, he plans to earn it. But maybe when Danny looks at him he can flash his best sheepish grin just right-
“Yeah,” Danny drawls as Grace clutches the tickets to her chest and bounces right on the balls of her feet-and Danny’s feet, too. The curl of the hibiscus petals against Danny’s cheek are the exact shape of Danny’s mouth curved into mildly pained and exhausted support. “That’s great, baby. Three tickets?”
“Yup,” Grace says before Steve can, holding them out so she can show him. “Three.”
“Third one’s for-whoever,” Steve waves off quickly, nonchalantly even. “I figured maybe Rachel could go, family time, or maybe you’ve been seeing someone after work, I don’t know.”
Steve doesn’t, really, and he, well, he understands that work friends are not always friend-friends. Vaguely mandatory team barbeques aside, he and Danny haven’t really hung out one-on-one without a case budging in on their conversation since…well, since his dad’s car fiasco. And Steve has been trying to give Danny space to go out and make friends and have fun on the island, seeing as he’s decided to stay here for the foreseeable future. So maybe Danny used that time to find some companionship. And maybe she would like to swim with dolphins.
Steve mentally checks, but no, his logic still seems pretty damn sound.
“I’m not seeing anyone,” Danny says, with the strangest expression on his face.
“Okay.” It’s surprisingly easy to smile. Probably because of the hibiscus behind Danny’s ear. Steve really cannot get over it, and he’s going to need to soon; the moment Danny walks out the door the issue of not seeing anyone will get very rapidly resolved.
Steve’s smile slips, unexpectedly. “You’d tell me-if you were, right? I mean,” he clarifies quickly, “for-paperwork reasons, if nothing else.”
Danny’s eyes are so wide Steve is almost afraid they’re going to fall out. “Paperwork,” he starts, sputtering, and Steve grins, decides that this is what he was going for all along, “Paperwork-you don’t do paperwork, I, I do paperwork, and what paperwork would I be doing if I was seeing someone in the first place, background check, witness protection-”
A small hand tugs at the knee of Steve cargo khakis before he can do more than open his mouth to try and talk Danny down. He blinks. “Yes, Grace?”
She smiles up at him, a perfectly guileless fairy princess grin as she says, “Would you like to swim with the dolphins with us, Uncle Steve?”
“Unc-Uncle Steve?” Danny repeats, questioningly, red flush creeping up his cheeks; at this distance Steve can’t tell if it’s anger or heatstroke, but he tenses up in preparation for the latter, probably. And then Danny drags a hand across the nape of his pinked-up neck, and Steve realizes it might be closer to embarrassment. “Gracie, sweetheart, I thought we talked about this.”
Danny’s doing it again-if Steve knew what it was, exactly, he could ask Danny to stop, but sometimes Danny just does things or says things or doesn’t say things and it makes Steve…uncomfortable. The kind of uncomfortable that comes with sustained amounts of torture. He can take it, no problem, he’s a SEAL, but if he could just figure out when to brace for it, if he could just get Danny to give him a hint it was coming, maybe he wouldn’t feel quite so blindsided by it every single time.
“Chin told me to,” Grace chirps, then gasps in such melodramatic shock Steve’s heart rate jumps automatically, barely recovering by the time she runs across the room and picks up a disposable camera bigger than her face. “Hold still,” she orders after scampering back, and then clickFLASH! Danny’s perplexed-bordering-on-homicidal face-complete with hibiscus flower tucked behind his right ear-is immortalized on film.
Chin is getting a raise. Hell, if Grace worked for Steve, he’d give her a raise too.
Danny and the hibiscus are giving him a look when he manages to finally stop beaming quite so fondly at Danny’s little girl. It’s a mostly-serious, considering stare, a go-to standby for Detective Williams when he’s trying to decide whether Steve has, in his words, “had his Crazy Flakes this morning.” Steve solidifies himself into something he doesn’t mind Danny staring at, hiding behind another disarmingly quirked smile.
“Would you like to join my daughter and me in the dolphin pool of the King Kamehameha Hotel, Steven?” Danny asks, formal and dry, and there’s no reason at all for Steve’s heart to go thump. He needs to up his cardio vascular activities.
“I would love to,” Steve says, just as formally, hands clasped behind his back as he gives them both a little heel-click and bow, smiling at Grace because it’s easier to, bent over as he is.
“Alright, monkey, go grab your swimsuit.” Danny is loud when he speaks, when he turns her towards her giant pink travel bag, and whatever was just hanging in the air is petal-thin, getting bruised. But really, if Steve needs a pick-me-up all he has to do is look at that flower, rifle-sight-red and as wide as Grace’s whole hand. His hopeless grin is back before he can stop himself, and Danny’s eyes roll.
“So?” Danny asks gruffly, almost defensive, “Do you need to borrow some trunks, or are we detouring to your place?”
“You don’t have-” Steve starts to laugh, and then chokes off at Danny’s narrow-eyed glare. “I mean. Uh. Kono mentioned your cut-offs.”
“Really,” Danny drawls. “In and amidst the giant fake Tsunami warning, you two managed to have a heart to heart about my surf lessons?”
“No,” Steve scoffs, “We had that conversation way after the Tsunami thing was over. Like, at least a good hour.”
“I can tell when you’re lying,” Danny warns, leveling a finger at him. The hibiscus sways with his movements, almost an accompanying nod. “Your voice goes all surfer-ese.”
“That’s not a-I keep a spare swim suit in the glove box,” Steve says, changing tactics mid-sentence. He’s already itching to go, blood humming with a kind of bubbly adrenaline that doesn’t come around that often; he wants to take somebody dancing, it’s that sort of feeling.
Danny sighs, narrowly missing the flower as he rakes a hand through his hair, muttering, “Of course you do,” like Steve just missed the point.
He’s not even sure where in there Danny even had chance for a point, so this is probably not an accurate observation.
~*~
“Oh wow, just look at your biceps.” The woman gives his arm a squeeze. “You have got to work out.”
Steve’s mood has faltered somewhat since they arrived at the Kamehameha.
“Uh, thanks, yeah,” Danny says, pretty visibly struggling between prying the strange woman’s nails off him one at a time, and-well, not. She’s beautiful, Steve will give her that, with a city-fit body she doesn’t bother to hide under her pretty much non-existent bikini. She keeps brushing her fingertips along the petals of Danny’s hibiscus, and if she doesn’t stop within the next ten seconds Steve will-
…continue to sit here on the private hotel beach furiously building sand castles with Grace. But he will think dismembering thoughts about this woman, who is the fifth to approach Danny today, just another tourist with a pocket guide to Hawaiian culture in her carry-on case. Danny doesn’t need people who can’t spare him more than a week before they’re back on a plane to the mainland. He needs-
“Aloalo,” she says, touching the flower, and Danny laughs (“Isn’t that a British TV show?”) but she smiles and Steve’s body is combat-ready without his conscious decision to tense up. Because that was Hawaiian for hibiscus, and her accent was flawless. Which means she’s not a tourist. She’s just too dumb to realize that Danny is so fresh off the mainland he doesn’t know what kind of signals he’s sending with that goddamned flower.
Grace pats Steve’s knee with the flat of her plastic shovel, and Steve blinks, realizes he’s just accidentally demolished an entire block of their sand metropolis. He braces for an explosion, forgetting for a moment that Grace is neither three years old nor his sister; Grace only levels him with huge Disappointed in Your Character eyes she must have learned from her dad. Possibly while he was practicing in the mirror.
“Must be something in the water today,” Danny says as he settles down beside them, slip of paper with the woman’s number scrawled across it held loosely in the palm of his hand. Steve has a pretty good feeling Danny isn’t going to be able to find that number when he gets home. Shame.
But Danny’s looking…well, kind of bemused, kind of awkward-he keeps slipping Grace uncomfortable glances like she’s never seen women hit on her dad before (impossible, and anyway, Grace is way too cool to be freaked out.)-but he also looks kind of flushed, kind of flattered. He’s been carrying a glow around with him today, or maybe it’s that fucking hibiscus. Steve keeps catching himself staring at Danny’s face long enough to burn a flower-shaped imprint on his retinas, and he can’t have been staring this much before this morning. Somebody would have told him.
“You jealous?” Danny asks, out of the blue, it seems. He’s leaning back on his arms, broad, lightly furred chest soaking up the sun like a sponge. The ocean breeze is enough to fight the humidity, and after the gallon of water Steve made him chug, Danny looks a lot less like he’s two seconds away from a heatstroke. Steve will still feel better once he gets Danny in the water.
He blinks, words just catching up. “Sorry, what?”
Danny’s grinning at Steve, even though he has to squint against the sun to see him. “Is that what that face is? Jealous Hamster?”
“Oh, yeah,” Steve says, tone dripping sarcasm, “Man, I am just so jealous of you. Your height, your hair. No, I get it,” he promises, spitting out the sand Danny just flicked at his face. “Your milkshake brings all the girls to the yard.”
“Damn right,” Danny agrees, gaze cutting away as a smile threatens to creep into the fine lines around his eyes. “It’s better than yours.”
“I want a milkshake,” Grace says, perking up.
Danny sighs and leans over to rub away a smudge of sunscreen on her nose. “Not until you are so much older, monkey, you have no idea.”
Steve shifts to get more comfortable in the sand and accidentally brushes shoulders with Danny as he sits back. Danny blinks, expression open but questioning, but Steve has no idea why they’re sitting so close, either, so he just shrugs. Danny’s lips quirk, and Steve’s eyes focus just to the side of Danny’s head where the cherry-stem of the hibiscus stamen is sticking out, like a long thin tongue going neener neener neener.
“Hey, monkey, you having fun yet?” Danny asks, nudging Grace with his toes and adding, “Yeah?” when she nods. “You wanna go see if the dolphins are off their lunch break?”
“Yeah,” she says, and lets Danny help her up, dusting sand off her neon pink swim suit.
Steve does not get a hand up, nor was he consulted in this vital decision, but it means going in the water so he definitely has no reason to mind. It helps that Grace grasps his fingers and skips along between them both, calm and happy as ever. Danny watches her with this look on his face Steve wants to call familiar, wants to get tattooed somewhere, so he can look at it any time he wants.
“Excuse me, sorry.” The lifeguard trots up to them just as they reach the steps leading back to the hotel, touches Danny’s elbow to get his attention. His hair is spiked, eyes intent. “Aren’t you five-oh?”
Danny goes on alert, but Steve is in defcon one, running through every sort of thing that might be going down within a ten block radius and how they can get Grace to safety before shit goes down, so he jumps the gun on answering before Danny can even open his mouth.
“I’m Commander McGarrett,” he barks, maneuvering himself instantly to shield as much of Danny and Grace as he can. “What’s the problem?”
Private security for the hotel means it’s not something small, means something big they’d risk getting caught for, means heists and drugs and thugs with guns-
“Oh,” the lifeguard blinks. “Oh, uh, no problem. Sir,” he adds hastily, cowering a little over whatever expression is on Steve’s face right now. “I was just, you know.” And he gestures helplessly to the flower.
Steve sees red. “Oh for f-”
“HEY,” Danny barks, reaching to cover Grace’s ears.
He’s already stopped himself from cursing, but not from getting right into the lifeguard’s space and glaring him down. “Does he look like a local to you?”
The guy’s eyes go wide with understanding-fucking finally-and he backs off fast, hands up. “Hey, minimini, brah. Might wanna let your boyfriend know he’s taken, hiki?”
Steve watches him run. 5’9”, black hair, blue eyes, 135lbs if Steve is any guess, blowfish tattoo on his left shoulder. Should be enough for Chin to get a social.
Danny and Grace are staring at him when he finishes filing away the details, their arms crossed, expressions anything but amused. Steve is 93% sure Grace is just copying her dad, but that doesn’t make her any less intimidating.
“Aaaand ladies and gentlemen if you look to your right you’ll see the not-as-elusive-as-one-would-hope Death to the Infidels Face.” Danny drops the bus guide voice and doesn’t do anything else. He looks angry, angry like he should look after he tells Steve not to bash a suspect’s face in, angry like he means it. “Could you please lose the face around my daughter?"
“It’s not at all attractive,” Grace agrees, nodding solemnly.
She sounds so much like her mother Steve’s mind goes blank, derailed by thoughts that Rachel could have only said those words to Danny-more than once, if Grace picked up on it-and Steve can’t for the life of him imagine what Danny could have been doing or wearing or saying that would make that statement in any way true.
Danny’s hand comes up before Steve can do more than choke out a nonsensical string of syllables, as annoyingly effective as if Danny was punching the pause button on a TIVO-ed episode of CHiPs. “Come on, Grace,” he says, eyes not even on Steve anymore as he puts his hands on Grace’s shoulders and turns her toward the hotel. “Let’s go swim with those dolphins.”
“Okay,” Grace says, and proceeds to drag him up the sand-littered steps.
Steve follows with his own hands feeling strangely empty, gaze snagged miserably on the hibiscus petals swaying with Danny’s stride. He’s going to chew Steve out as soon as his daughter can’t hear him use four-letter words, or worse, so much worse, he’ll just let Steve stew the rest of the day, stick to the bare minimum of words required to acknowledge Steve’s presence, and cold-shoulder him until Steve apologizes for what he’s done.
Steve isn’t sure what he just did, except maybe save Danny from fending off awkward passes from some guy. Maybe it came off a little homophobic? Fuck.
Maybe Steve should just leave. Now. While he has a chance.
“You go on ahead, babe,” Danny says, and Steve perks up accidentally before he realizes Danny is talking to Grace, passing her off into the care of a Certified Dolphin Guide who looks only too pleased to do Danny any kind of favor. Steve’s already closed hands clench into fists.
“Can’t go in with the flower, you know?” Danny adds, and Steve’s eye shift to where he’s pointing at the sign that says No Outside Contaminants. He’s pretty sure it means strange perfumes or oils, but seriously-
“You could take it off,” Grace offers with a shrug.
“Yes, you should. Could,” Steve blurts, caught off-guard by Grace’s sheer brilliance. As soon as she turns eighteen he’s recruiting her to the Five-Oh-desk duty only so Danny doesn’t have a coronary-because she’s right, and Steve has let himself get so distracted that he hadn’t thought of it until now.
Danny looks right into his possibly-too-eager-face and snaps, incredulous, “No!” Then, “Uh, no, it’s okay,” to Grace, ruffling her hair, and the flirty blond with the fancy hotel wetsuit giggles and says, “You could leave it in.”
Steve would like to introduce her to some cold water training at his earliest convenience.
“No,” Danny says the same instant his hand locks on Steve’s arm, digging in hard enough for Steve to let out a reflexive Ow. But it’s a squeeze that means hang tight so Steve doesn’t move, not even when Danny lets go and crouches down by the pool where the Dolphin Guide is actually doing a fairly decent job of keeping Grace from floating away in her water wings.
“Hey, could you do me a huge favor?” Danny asks, and Flirty Blond laughs and says Name it and Steve hopes a dolphin crushes her, seriously. “I’ve gotta go talk to this guy for like, five minutes. Can you make sure my daughter doesn’t get eaten by whales? I’d appreciate it.”
“Sure thing,” she says, and then starts talking baby gibberish to Gracie, who gives her dad a baleful look but takes one for the team.
“There are no whales in that pool, Danny,” Steve starts, because it seems pretty relevant.
“Dolphins are a subspecies-No, you know what? Shut up.” Danny grabs his elbow, right at the joint, hauls him away from the pool into the shade of a blooming plumeria tree. The flowers’ fragrance falls around them like a cloud, sweet and tangible and Steve really wants to go home. There’s no possible way this conversation can go anyplace good.
But Danny just stops, crosses his arms, and waits.
This is worse, definitely worse, because Steve is bad with silences and if Danny waits him out Steve doesn’t have a clue what he might say-government secrets, childhood trauma, anything.
“Well, Steven?” Danny prompts.
“I think I hear my phone ringing,” Steve says, as dead serious as he can.
Danny doesn’t even have to unfold his arms to stop Steve from leaving, just twists his wrist and touches Steve’s chest. Why are they standing so close? “That phone? In your pocket?” Danny asks, and Steve hates this expression because he can’t see into Danny’s head; his eyes are too blue. “Tell you what. Why don’t we just be very quiet and listen to it ring?”
The plumeria tree doesn’t even have enough leaves on it to rustle in the breeze. Happy children shrieking sound muffled, like he’s underwater. The huge swell of red petals by Danny’s ear looks like a gunshot wound. Steve has been water-boarded before; this is so much worse.
Danny rocks forward, pointedly. “I don’t hear anything, Steven.”
“Fuck,” Steve breathes. He can’t feel his lips.
“Articulate,” Danny says, right before Steve’s knees give out.
“Whoa, Jesus!” And Danny catches him-Steve wasn’t really going to fall, he’d have stopped himself, probably-but something about the way Danny’s hands dig into Steve’s sides hurts and feels better all at once. Danny manhandles him down onto the low stone wall encircling the damn tree, gets a hand on the back of his neck, tries to push Steve’s head down between his knees and he’s saying things, angry-panicked curse words mostly, but Steve struggles through the rushing sound in his ears just in time to hear, “-fucking sheet white. Did you just pass out in the face of talking about your feelings?”
“Shut up, no,” Steve mumbles, tongue thick, dimly wondering if puking might make him feel better.
“So fucked in the head,” Danny says, sounding strangled, and then he’s gone. Steve isn’t sure what he’s more surprised about-that Danny left, or that when he did he pulled away from Steve’s death-grip on his knee and Steve hadn’t realized he was groping his partner, he definitely hadn’t meant to-and then he hears Danny’s voice saying, “No, no, don’t worry about it, he just got some pretty shocking news. Yeah, thanks,” and if that is another person flirting with Danny Williams-
“Drink this,” Danny orders, pressing a cold, wet water bottle into his hands. Steve blinks, but Danny is crouching down in front of him, like he does with Grace, eyebrows in a tight knot in the middle of his forehead which only eases incrementally when Steve takes an obedient gulp.
“I can’t believe you. No, what am I saying, of course I can believe that you, Mr. Macho Navy Commander Seal, would be nanny-ing me about heatstroke so much and for so long-How many fingers?” Danny breaks off his rant to ask, trying to sound only half serious, but Steve counts them off and watches the relief creep in, one, two, three.
“Alright. This position is no good for my knee, buddy, so we’re going to turn like this-Keep drinking,” he orders, sitting next to Steve on the wall and physically arranging Steve to face him, like Steve doesn’t know how to move his limbs-but then he almost drops the water bottle, and Danny glares, folds Steve’s fingers tight around it. Oh.
Danny doesn’t say anything until Steve has finished the last drop, then he takes the bottle and sets it aside, eyes never leaving Steve’s face.
“Okay,” Danny says, like he’s steeling himself. “Okay, Steve. Would you like to explain your little panic attack?”
Steve shakes his head. He doesn’t know, and talking about it just sounds like a bad idea.
“Tough.” The word is blunt, but Danny has a hand on Steve’s bare shoulder, thumb rubbing lightly over his tattoo, and Steve relaxes against his will, leaning into it. “Alright,” Danny says, eyes just a little wider, “Alright. So, baby steps. Want to start with the flower? Or the way you’ve been glaring death threats at every person who’s so much as said hello to me today?”
“Those are not baby steps,” Steve objects, half a whine. His eyes slam shut. What the fuck is he doing? This is conduct unbecoming if he ever-
“No you don’t,” Danny growls, holding him down with just that one hand, and maybe Steve is getting sick. It’s the only explanation. “Hey. Hey, look at me.” When Steve does, Danny meets his eyes and plucks the flower from behind his ear.
It’s slightly wilted from where it was flush against Danny’s skin in the heat, petals limp and splayed across
Danny’s palm. It looks smaller, now. It’s suddenly-amazingly-much easier to breathe.
“Okay, this is good,” Danny says, “You look a lot less like someone tried to make a cootie-catcher out of somebody’s memorial flag. Can you tell me what this is?”
Steve scowls at him. “Hibiscus, Danny.”
“Very good. You know your botany. So what does it mean when I do this?”
Danny lifts the flower to his ear again and Steve can’t help it, he feels nauseous, grabs Danny’s hand and drags it down. He’s surprised when Danny doesn’t complain, but a little less pleased when Danny doesn’t let him take the flower and tear it into a million little pieces.
“Come on, Steve,” Danny says, his usual veil of mocking so thin it’s all-but translucent. “Use your grown-up words.”
“Fuck you,” Steve says instantly, automatically, fast enough he has to laugh even if it’s quiet and mostly another try at deflecting. He drags a hand over his face, trying to remember a time when he was ever good at this. Not that he’s entirely solid on what ‘this’ is, other than talking to his partner, which. He thought they had built a rapport.
“Don’t think about it like it’s me,” Danny suggests, hands wide, one still absently cradling the hibiscus. “Think about, like-what would it mean if Kono was wearing the flower?”
“She’s available.” The words come out in a rushed mumble, and Steve doesn’t do anything else. If he winces, if he breathes, he’ll be nothing but exposed. Danny could eviscerate him.
“Right side,” Steve adds, because Danny is too quiet, and Steve is bad with silences. “If she’s wearing the flower on her right side she’s single, left side she’s taken.”
“Right side she’s…” Danny repeats, off-center, like he heard wrong, so Steve says it again, easier now that he’s just explaining yet another Hawaiian-custom to his partner.
“Available. It means ‘Come hit on me.’”
“Yeah, I got that, but it would be m-It would be Kono’s choice,” Danny says, flower pinched between thumb and forefinger as the shark-fin hands start creeping out. “If she wants to advertise her availability, why would that make you upset?”
Steve’s shoulders come up in a hard shrug. “It wouldn’t.”
“Well obviously,” Danny points out, “It just did.”
“It’s not-it’s different.”
“Why?”
“Because Kono knows that she’s doing it!” Steve is loud and getting louder, and Danny’s hand clamps down on his arm like he wants to shove it over Steve’s mouth.
“You could’ve told me,” Danny says, gesturing to himself, flower petals skimming his skin. “You could have told me, and then I would have known. And then it would have been my decision to keep the flower in, and you would have still gone ballistic.”
That’s not- Steve huffs his skepticism. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, and you know how I know?”
“Bring it,” Steve dares, notched into the groove of their regular fighting. “Amaze me.”
“Because you don’t want-” Danny stops, lips tight the smallest fraction of a second before he deflates, and Steve thinks No no no that’s the You Gotta Face Facts Sigh, but Danny keeps talking before Steve can do anything more than get a chill down his spine. “You don’t want the flower on my right side,” Danny says, a low, reluctant murmur. “You want it on my left.”
“No, I don’t,” Steve says, blunt, military frank.
Which doesn’t seem to faze Danny in the least. “Yes, okay, you do.”
“What?” And that’s bluster, loud-there’s spit involved to show how much scorn he is feeling at this moment. “I think I would know-”
“Alright, I’m done for right now,” Danny says, calm but completely closed-off as he stands. Steve feels-he flounders. When Danny rakes a hand through his hair he feels like a tuna at the end of a pike. “Come find me when you work it out,” Danny says, and he leaves, walks across the damp concrete and slips into the pool.
He left the flower next to Steve. “Oh, that’s just-” Steve starts when he sees it, and then swallows against absolutely nothing.
The hibiscus petals flutter like a wave.
~*~
He needs a case. Something with a time limit, something so that when he shows up at Danny’s door Danny won’t be able to kick him out because drug smugglers and child prostitution rings are more important than talking about their feelings.
“I’ve got nothing.”
Steve blinks. Frowns at his cellphone, at Chin’s voice on the other end lying to him. “What?”
“Really, brah, there’s no cases.” And Chin sounds sincere, but he always sounds sincere. “Not so much as a speeding ticket with enough priors to land jail time. Criminals are just lying low this week, I guess.”
It clicks. “Danny called you, didn’t he?” Steve bites down on the urge to ask for details, any hint Danny might have given, because god damn it, just. “Bullshit. That is such-”
“You blew up an entire cocaine ring on Friday.”
“That was an accident!” Mostly. Like, a good 85% accident, at least.
“Yeah, well,” Chin says. “Can you really blame them for keeping a low profile?”
“Oh.” Steve’s chest feels like it’s sinking right down to his toes. “I guess that makes sense.”
“So…Danny mentioned the flower,” Chin starts.
Steve bites off a groan, pinching the bridge of his nose. It takes a couple tries, but the words finally form into something coherent; Chin will get this, someone has to, it can’t only make sense when it’s inside Steve’s head. “It just. It just looked ridiculous, man, I don’t even know how to describe it.”
“Start small, brah, how many petals?” Chin asks flatly. Steve is suddenly dead certain Chin is actually photoshopping different flowers on a picture of Danny as they speak. With one hand.
He has no idea why the thought makes him angry enough to want to punch something, he really doesn’t. “Yes, okay, but he-Danny doesn’t have any idea what he’s saying-”
“It’s like the tie thing?” Chin sounds more serious, now, interested. “Shouting ‘Hey hey I’m a haole,’ only this time he’s saying ‘Come hit on me, I’m a local’-and this bugs you?”
Something squirms in Steve’s gut but he ignores it, grinds out, “Yes.”
Chin is so quiet on the other end Steve has to check to see if the call was dropped. Then, finally, “Steve, my friend,” he says, “I say this with the utmost respect and the deepest desire to keep my job, but you’re completely hehena.”
“Yeah,” Steve says, watching the sand settle under his shifting feet. “Yeah, I know.”
~*~
Step Two is getting drunk. Five drinks in, Steve is a huge fan of Step Two.
The bar is just shy of grimy and dimly lit, wood worn smooth by hundreds of hands and thousands of beer bottles. Steve used to come here with a small group of other SEALs years ago, but they’d muscle around a table and shoot the shit over pitchers of Kona’s finest, not hunch in a corner near enough to the bartender that ordering another round only takes a twitch of one finger.
It isn’t that Danny is trying to fit in. Steve loves the idea of Danny’s ties being anonymously donated to charity. He’ll never pass as local, but Steve still gets the occasional flack for not being old Hawaiian blood. It’s just that Danny…Danny didn’t know what he was doing. And now that he knows, he’ll never do it again. That’s not trying to fit in, not at all.
And Steve doesn’t want Danny’s flower on the left side, what the hell? That would be lying. That would be false freaking advertising. Steve would be just as pissed off if a guy took off his wedding ring to go get laid. Yeah. It’s the reverse principle of the thing, and an abuse of Hawaiian culture. He shouldn’t need any more reasons.
Plus, the thought of Danny being taken-in the no-longer-single sense of the word, not any other, Jesus, did they crank the AC in here? A shiver just ran through Steve’s frame so they must have-Anyway, Danny being…belonging to someone, that’s just. Imfeasible. Impossible, unfeasible. It’s not right. Danny Williams is not a guy to belong to anyone, except maybe Grace, who doesn’t count.
But he must have once, right? Once upon a time he was that guy, he was Rachel’s, and she was his, and they were theirs. So it’s possible Danny could be that guy again, and Steve-
Steve has killed people in the line of duty, and there has almost always been mandatory counseling afterward, though his various shrinks seemed to have a weird habit of signing off on his mental health halfway through the first session. Yeah, he doesn’t try to explain it. But he remembers something one of them tried to teach him, something about “I-statements.”
I feel, he starts, and stalls. Okay, no, how about, I am. I am…upset. I want… What does he want? He wants Danny to…not be taken. Wants Danny to not advertise the possibility that he could be. Wants Danny…
Steve rests his head on the bar top, tries to breathe through the dizzying fog of alcohol and something else, and cannot for the life of him finish that sentence.
~*~
Steve wakes up with the smell of his own cotton sheets in his face, his own pillow mashed under neck at an angle it should never be forced into. For one glorious moment he’s not sure why he’s surprised to be in his own bed, and then the hangover sledgehammers into his skull and crushes it into a million splintery pieces. He doesn’t remember leaving the bar. Fuck, he hopes someone got his keys off him. He hopes he didn’t break anyone’s fingers for trying to take his keys.
There is someone in his house.
It’s a clang and a muffled curse from downstairs that does it, but Steve claws to the edge of his mattress and rolls off, flipping into an unsteady crouch. A clammy sweat breaks out across his upper lip, but if he was going to throw up, that maneuver would have done it. Which means that he probably won’t get sick on his intruders as he takes them out.
His intruders…who made him eggs. And too many other smells for Steve to figure out as he pads downstairs as silently as he can manage. Mary? he thinks blearily, but Mary is back on the mainland. Kono burns everything she touches and Chin-Chin is not Danny, who this is, shirtsleeves rolled up and his hair kind of fluffy from the stove heat as he glances up and catches sight of Steve lurking on the bottom stair.
“Hey, it lives.” Danny spatulas a pile of steaming scrambled eggs on top of a mound of bacon nestled in hash browns smothered in gravy. Steve’s arteries start to cry.
“Sit,” he orders when Steve can’t find words. “Drink that.” The water is ice cold, which Steve realizes before he knows he obeyed, hips hitched up on one of the stools surrounding his breakfast bar. It’s déjà vu all over again for last night, only more eggs. Less tequila.
“What are you doing here?” Even with a full 8oz of water his voice still sounds as wrecked as it did ten days into a mission in the middle of the Saudi desert, running low on supplies. Steve isn’t usually self-conscious (in more ways than one), but it’s hard to meet Danny’s eyes knowing how wretched he must look, if it’s half as bad as how he feels and sounds.
Danny’s lips twitch, but Steve is pretty sure it’s not in amusement. “You don’t remember me picking you up?”
Steve quickly takes another sip, wracking his pounding brain. “…No? Not…No, I-”
“Awesome.” Danny braces on the counter, ducking his head down to catch Steve’s gaze and hold it. “Because you called a cab.”
“Oh.” That makes…more sense. He vaguely recalls a red-faced Samoan getting frustrated with Steve’s decision to tap out his address in Morse code. “But then why-”
“Because you also called me. Seven times.”
Steve tries to stare down Danny’s phone from where it’s being held in front of his face and almost winds up cross-eyed, feeling nauseous. “No, I didn’t.”
“Oh, you think so?”
“Danny-” Steve starts, but Danny holds up a hand, and punches a button.
“Heeeeeey Danno,” Steve’s tinny, drunken slur bursts from the speakers, followed by a sad little giggle. “Danno. Um. You. Fuck, I had something to say.” Click.
“That is the least painful,” Danny warns. “Message five you started singing Danny Boy.”
Steve gives in and lets his head hang heavy between his shoulders the way it’s been wanting to since he got up. Jesus Christ, he’d been hoping that had been some sort of awful nightmare. “I’m sorry,” he groans to his knees, heartfelt down to his toes.
“You know what? You should be sorry. I hope you have the hangover from hell right now because you know what, babe? You deserve it. You know why? You wanna know why I’m not being more considerate to your ear drums or your feelings?” he snaps, swatting away Steve’s weak attempts to protect his ears. “Because it should not be this hard to figure out you like someone.”
“Danny,” Steve chokes, begging at the onslaught of noise.
“You like me. You? Like me,” Danny says, punctuating with his hands. “Do I need to go get the Venn diagram in my car? Grace helped, it’s ninety percent glitter, but maybe it could get through your thick skull-”
“I know,” Steve croaks.
“Know. You-know.” Danny’s hands drop to the counter and hold on, blue eyes closed off and suspicious. It’s the first time he’s looked Steve in the eye since his tirade began, and it looks like it’s costing him something. “What is it exactly that you think you know?”
And that’s…harder, but he cobbles something together, pushes it out. “I know that…you’re…right?” But that’s wrong, he knows it’s wrong without looking at Danny’s face, which he can’t, drags a hand through the flattened mess of his hair instead. “I-wait, Danny-”
Because Danny drops the spatula on the counter and starts to leave, and maybe it’s only to get the graph from his car but Steve can’t risk it, he can’t. He grabs at Danny, half lunged across the counter to do it, and barely catches Danny’s sleeve in time to haul him back.
“Wait,” Steve asks, “Just one sec. Wait?”
Danny blinks, slow, at Steve’s ungainly sprawl. But he nods, so Steve has to make himself let go, has to take his hands off Danny and walk outside and hope to god his partner is still there when he comes back. Steve’s palms are sweating, he feels dizzy and ridiculous, but he gets what he needs and lets out a completely shameless sigh of relief when he turns and Danny is watching him from the lanai, hands braced against the porch railing. The soles of Steve’s feet burn against the sand as he jogs back.
Danny doesn’t say anything.
Steve bites back on a wave of panic at the silence, holds out his hands so Danny can get a better look. Twin plumeria blossoms rest in the cradle of his palms, these flowers a soft pink melting into gold at their center, quiet and hopeful and kind of fucked up, kind of probably needing some hardcore therapy, but maybe good enough to give a chance. Maybe. Maybe he is projecting onto the flowers, okay, it’s entirely too possible.
Steve picks up one flower, half-spins it by its stem.
“Babe,” Danny starts, and it’s not impatient, it’s not any of the things Danny has a right to be, but Steve twitches anyway, blurts, “Please, just-” before he makes himself stop and calm down.
“Hey, hey come here,” Danny says, hips snug against the railing as he leans against it, leans toward Steve. Steve goes because Danny asked, and because he’s too focused on getting enough oxygen to keep the grey out of his vision to object. “Look.” Danny’s hand rakes tight through his hair, hard enough to hurt, his blue eyes strong and earnest. “You don’t have to do this for me.”
“Danny-”
“No, listen, alright? Maybe I pushed too hard, I’m always-but Steve, babe, you don’t have to say it. I changed my mind.”
“In two seconds?” Steve demands, incredulous.
“I can change my mind in two seconds! What, you think I can’t? I just did! And don’t you dare take this as a dare, McGarrett, but if you’re not ready-”
“Who says I’m not ready? I’m ready!” It’s some sort of automatic football trigger that he’s all-but jogging in place right now, up on the balls of his feet, shoulders set. “Come on!”
“This is not to psych you up!” Danny bellows. “It should not have to be this hard, but if it is then there’s a reason, and excuse me for not wanting a mental breakdown on my hands!”
“Of course there’s a reason!” Steve yells back, arms wide, realizing a split second too late how ridiculous he looks with a plumeria in each hand. “My nickname was Smooth Dog, you think I got that from a physical incapability to tell people that I care about them?”
“I don’t want you to tell me what I want to hear! In fact, I can tell you it’s the absolute last thing-”
“It’s because you’re more important! Okay?” Steve tries to force his volume down a notch, so he’s not screaming out his personal life loud enough to wake the neighbors. “It’s because. Danny.” And god damn it, he’s still stumbling, and if he wasn’t holding these flowers he’d go punch something, but instead-instead, well, he is holding the flowers, so he takes a deep breath and shoves one plumeria behind his ear. Left side.
Danny’s staring. Then he shoots a quick look down at his hands, like he’s checking left and right and flipping them in his head.
“Taken,” Steve says, pointing, like it’s sign language, like he’s speaking Danny. “I’m taken. With you.”
“…Oh,” Danny says, like a crucial piece of evidence just hit the table. The sweetest sort of flush starts creeping up his neck.
“Look, I, uh,” Steve stammers, because something else just leapt to the forefront of his mind. “I know we haven’t spent that much time together-”
“What are you talking about?” Danny cuts in, vowels as wide and expressive as his hands. “We are together all the time. When I am not with you, I am sleeping. Or with Grace. You took me out on a date yesterday, how is this slipping your mind?”
“I didn’t,” he splutters, then, “Okay, maybe I-but it was- I’ve been giving you space!”
“You mean the last couple weeks when you’ve been letting us go home at reasonable hours?” Danny asks, eyebrows high. “Because that’s not space, McGarrett, that’s obeying union regulations. And anyway, I don’t want space,” he adds, looking pointedly at where Steve is standing, “Could you please come up here, or are you gonna make me lean over the balcony like Romeo and Juliet?”
Steve’s breath catches in his throat quick enough he almost chokes, because somehow, even with everything, he didn’t see this coming. And then, well.
“You have stairs, you Neanderthal, I meant use them-”
Steve ignores him spectacularly, swinging his legs up over the railing as he scales it. It’s a little awkward balancing with one flower still pinched between his fingers, but he manages not to trip, and he manages to make himself stop before he just backs Danny into a wall and kisses him until neither one of them can think straight.
Danny is pinking up all over like he can see into Steve’s head, which is something Steve finds entirely too possible after the last couple of days. Then Danny coughs, pointedly, one brow arched even as he ducks his head. “You, uh, have something of mine, Rambo.”
For a split second Steve doesn’t have a clue, and the plumeria stem rolls between his fingers like an afterthought. Then, “Oh! Um. …right,” Steve fumbles, nearly drops the damn thing as he holds it out, nearly snatches it back when Danny goes to reach for it. “You don’t,” he says, because he has to, this is important, “You don’t have to. Do anything with it. I mean, I get that you might’ve just-”
“Steven,” Danny says, hands together, imploring. “I understand that there have been some people in your past that have severely fucked up your expectations. But I promise you, I promise you, I would not have forced you into this realization if it wasn’t breaking my heart every day, watching you delude yourself out of wanting something that might make you happy. That might make me happy, alright, let’s be honest, my motivations are not entirely unselfish. But I want to make you happy, babe, I do, and I’m trying to tell you…but the truth is I’m not that much better with-feeling feelings than you. So could you…could you please just give me the flower?”
Steve holds it out half on autopilot, his chest constricting tight for reasons he doesn’t think even Danny could explain. It’s bad that his vision is threatening to dim a little at the edges, he knows this, but all he can see is Danny, and all Danny is doing should be mostly ridiculous but it isn’t, it’s taking Steve’s breath away.
“Tada,” Danny says when the flower is behind his ear, left side. His voice breaks, strangely, affectionately, and Steve can breathe again all in a rush. “Oh man, seriously?” Danny says, striding for him like he thinks Steve is going to fall, but that’s fine, that means he can get his hands on Danny, wrap his arms around his partner and just hold on like some little voice has always told him he should every time they made it out of a firefight alive.
Danny goes with it, hugs Steve back so hard his flower almost slips free. Steve catches it, fingertips curling over the shell of Danny’s ear, so close he can smell the coy sweetness of plumeria and the salt of the sea and Danny’s skin.
“Hey,” Danny says, pushing back far enough to nudge his chin up like a dare, blue eyes sparkling like the ocean. “Kiss me.”
Steve does. Steve kisses Danny until he grins into it, then kisses Danny until he pants.
He kisses Danny into a wall, around a couch, up an entire set of stairs, knocking things over and repeatedly stubbing his toes and almost falling off the bed once they crash onto it, and it is still the best, the best everything. Danny is grabby, pushy, stripping Steve faster than he can blink and then perfectly fine with the way Steve clings to him, all limbs, as awkward and needy as his first time.
Steve feels touch-starved, skin-hungry, blankets Danny’s naked body under him and rolls his hips, licks at Danny’s stuttering moans. Danny calls him babe, calls him Steve, groans out McGarrett when his strokes go teasing, shouts out wordlessly when finds that spot with his thumb that makes Danny dig his nails into Steve’s skin like he’s holding on by a thread.
“Come here,” Danny says then, presses his mouth to any part of Steve he can reach, fumbling down a hand between them. Steve can’t think for a second, can’t see a way that they could get any closer without supplies, and then Danny closes his fingers around them both and tugs, and Steve is gone.
“That’s it, got you,” Danny gasps out, thin and desperate, and Steve eats it out of his mouth with a growl that shoves Danny right over the edge, tumbling into Steve’s palm in a wet, beautiful mess.
And later, when they collapse-sweaty and sticky and Steve can’t make himself stop rubbing his come into Danny’s skin with the pad of his thumb-Danny goes, “Ugh,” and “What the…?” and lifts his hip up just enough to paw at the sheets under him, and comes up with a handful of pink-stained sheets and crushed petals. He grunts in surprise when Steve flips him over, mouthing at the patch of flower-sweet skin on Danny’s ass and Danny pillows his head on his arms and shakes with pent-up laughter.
“What,” Steve says between broad, teasing drags of his tongue, “is so very funny, Danno?”
“I just realized-” Danny drags the heels of his palms over his eyes, propped up on his elbows as his laughter turns to hiccups. “God. Anniversaries. Valentine’s Day. I’m going to spend the whole day worrying you’ll pass out. And probably completely forget to say those three words myself in the process.”
Steve hums, sliding up Danny’s body until he can press a kiss to the curve of Danny’s neck. “Love you,” he whispers, half to see if he can do it.
Danny shivers all over, head slipping down between his shoulders even as he leans into Steve. “Shut up,” he groans, begs, “I just have all these preconceived notions-”
“Hey,” Steve says, louder, bizarrely happier, “Did you hear me? I said I love you.”
“Jesus, okay, you’re freaking-better at everything,” Danny mutters, but Steve has a distinct feeling that he isn’t actually hearing a word coming out of his own mouth, the way he’s shuddering as Steve finds the space behind Danny’s ear all petal damp and sets his teeth to it, nibbling and licking until all he can taste is Danny again.
“Danny,” he whispers, right at the curve of it.
“Hnnngh,” Danny says, head hung low.
Steve is pretty sure he doesn’t tense up, but something flips a switch in Danny, something gets Steve held to the bed with his partner pinning his wrists down, climbing on top. He doesn’t struggle, not with Danny looking at him with that face, the one Steve wants engraved on his skin.
“I love you so much,” Danny says, blue eyes burning. He plucks something from the pillow near Steve’s head, folds it carefully over the curve of Steve’s ear. The plumeria flower is wilted and flattened, but it still smells fantastic. Danny keeps fiddling with it, thumb stroking down one petal and over the curve of Steve’s jaw as he turns his face to Danny’s hand, breathing him in as deep as he can. “I love you so much I’m fucking stupid with it, alright?”
“Yeah?” Steve asks, choking back the giddy laugh bubbling up in his throat. “I think I know the feeling.”
THE END
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