NOTE: 'Poof' is an offensive British (I write in British English) name for a gay man. 'Nancy' is also a derogatory British name for a gay man. Neither should ever be used to describe someone.
Steve turned the black box over and over in his hands. His mind was racing a mile a minute, and he couldn't seem to get control over his heart, which was burning furiously at the mere thought of marrying Catherine. Everything in him was screaming at him that he was making a terrible mistake. He tried to shake away such feelings, telling himself that it was the only thing left to do. After all, Catherine was a good woman, a great friend, and, although it was a bit shallow of him to list as one of her assets, very good in bed. She loved him, and that alone should be enough for Steve.
Why isn't it?
Steve couldn't help but think that there was something wrong with him. He had a woman who loved him, a woman who would do anything for him, a woman that understood the trials of his job and wouldn't hold it against him, and there he was making a fuss over the notion of proposing to her.
"Hey, Steve, you ready to go?" Steve was jerked out of his thoughts by his partner walking in the front door. Danny Williams stood before him in all his glory, the day's choice of a button-up covering his Chewbacca chest that, despite him saying otherwise, Steve adored.
Steve practically leaped off of the couch, eager to escape the turmoil that he was feeling and replace it with something that required his full attention, such as the case that he and Danny had been called in on.
The Navy SEAL grabbed the keys from Danny's hand and got in the driver's side of Danny's Camaro, waiting until Danny had safely buckled himself up in the passenger's side before starting the engine and speeding off towards the crime scene, where Chin and Kono were waiting.
"Hey, what've we got?" Steve asked when he and Danny arrived. Chin was standing over the body of a young man, talking to Max, while Kono was off to the side, talking to someone who looked to be the victim's girlfriend or sister. It was a rather deserted-looking stretch of road surrounded by several trees and bushes: the perfect place to dump a body.
"Male, early 30's, multiple stab wounds," Chin said when Steve and Danny reached him.
"Cause of death appears to be the last blow, which pierced major organs and killed the victim instantly," Max reported to the Five-0 Commander and his partner. "Estimated time of death is between ten and midnight."
"The victim is also harbouring several bruises and lacerations, but these are not defensive wounds," Max continued. "He appears to have been beaten before he was murdered."
"Girl driving down this road to pick berries for a picnic with her boyfriend found him," Chin informed Steve and Danny. "We already got her statement and sent her home. She didn't know anything. By the time she got here, he was long dead, the guy who killed him in the wind."
"Max says the victim has been moved here," Chin said. "So we still need to find the original crime scene."
Steve pulled Chin and Danny aside, calling Kono over from where she had been talking to the distraught woman looking on at the man's body.
"Vic's name is Justin Miller," Kono told the others. "I spoke to his sister over there. Apparently, he was out late last night for his wedding anniversary. They had dinner at that fancy sushi place downtown. He went to retrieve the car while his partner paid the tab, and that was when he was jumped. I was thinking that's probably the original crime scene."
"Does this seem like it was personal to you?" Steve spoke up. "Max said the victim was beaten before he was killed, and he was also stabbed multiple times. Plus, I don't know, I've got a feeling maybe our killer was waiting for him outside. I'm thinking maybe this wasn't random."
Chin, Danny, and Kono all nodded in agreement.
"Guys!" The Five-0 team looked up to see Max waving them over. They hurried to his side.
"Look at this," Max said, and pointed to something peculiar. On the victim's abdomen, a single word had been crudely carved: POOF.
"Wait," Danny said, and he suddenly looked quite queasy, "I think I know what this is about."
"Yeah, me too," Kono said, and pointed wordlessly to a man, his eyes full of tears, who was rapidly approaching, hurriedly shoving people aside to get to the victim. He kept repeating over and over again, "Where is he? Where is my husband?"
"I think we can officially call this one a hate crime," Chin said gravely.
"Yeah, definitely," Steve muttered in disgust. The very idea of someone murdering someone else because they were gay put a lump in his throat. Never before in his long career of catching criminals had a case personally affected him as much as the case at hand was surely going to.
"Hey, you okay?" Steve looked up to see Danny staring at him, concern in his eyes.
"Yeah, I'm fine," the other man breathed. Danny gave him a 'that's bullshit' look, but chose not to pursue the subject any further.
"Alright, Kono, why don't you run known associates of this guy," Steve said, struggling to keep the shake out of his voice for fear of alerting his team that something was going on, "And then find out everything you can about any anti-gay organisations in the area, and cross-reference his associates with those. We need to find out who did this."
"On it, boss," Kono said, and ran for her vehicle, which was parked nearby.
"Chin, why don't you go to the parking lot where we think Miller was murdered and see if you can find anything. Take someone from the crime lab and some HPD backup with you in case it is the original crime scene."
Chin nodded in assent. "What about you guys?"
"Danny and I will talk to the husband."
"Mr. Miller, we're so sorry for your loss," Danny said as he and Steve sat down with the victim's husband.
"We'd been married for thirteen years," Justin's husband, Brian, revealed. "Last night was our anniversary."
"Yeah, Justin's sister told us that," Danny said gently. "Mr. Miller, we know this is an incredibly difficult time for you, and we're so sorry to bother you right now, but we do have a few questions that we'd like to ask you."
"Yes, of course," Brian answered, visibly trying to reel his emotions in. "Anything I can do to help, please."
"Has your husband received any phone calls, emails, letters, any form of message that was threatening or hateful recently?" Steve's voice, even to him, sounded stretched thin and laced with pain when he spoke. Danny shot him a sidelong glance that most people would have missed.
"No, no, none," Justin Miller's husband responded, shaking his head. "Hawaii is such a wonderful place; we used to live in, uh, in Mississippi."
Steve winced. "Oh. I'm so sorry. That must have been awful for you." Mississippi was well-known for being one of, if not the, worst state in the country for gay people to live in.
"It was," Brian sighed in recollection. "We both grew up there. Neither of us even came out before we moved out, because we knew our parents would disown us for it. I was living on my own, making just enough money to get by, when I met Justin. This schoolteacher from Hawaii with a great-uncle's fortune to live on, back in his awful home state to see the tiny bit of family he has left that doesn't hate him. I'm thinking, how cliche can we be?" The man shook his head sadly. "Cliche indeed. We fell in love, and I moved here to Oahu with Justin when he had to go back. We got married pretty soon after that. Justin is - was - all I had left. I-I don't know how I'm going to go on without him."
"We're so sorry, Mr. Miller," Danny said, his voice soft. The expression on his face was nothing short of heartbroken. The detective from New Jersey felt so harshly for the other man that it physically pained him to know what he had to be going through right then.
Steve appeared to be so overwhelmed that he couldn't even speak, but luckily, his partner spoke up and spared him of the duty. "Mr. Miller, can you think of anyone that would want to hurt your husband? Maybe a student that he didn't get along with, an old flame, a family member, maybe?"
At the words, 'family member', Brian's shoulders seemed to slump. "No, there's no way," he muttered to himself. "He - He couldn't."
"I'm sorry? Who couldn't what?" Danny pressed.
"Uh, J-Justin's brother, Braxton," Brian said, gesturing to a photo on the table beside him. It showed two men, one of whom was a much younger Justin Miller, and the other a man who looked similar to him. Steve concluded that it must be Justin's brother.
"They - they had a horrible argument the last time they saw each other," the newly widowed man revealed to the two Five-0 members. "Braxton moved down here with his wife and kids about ten years ago, and last week, he, um, he saw me and Justin holding hands on the beach. He didn't know that Justin was married. Neither of us invited any of our family to the wedding. We didn't want them to ruin our day. Then, when he came to the island, Justin tried to reconnect with him. He hadn't told him about us yet because he just didn't feel like it was the right time. Braxton - he was so angry. He shouted at Justin and called him a fag and a nancy and said he was a disgrace of a brother. When Justin tried to stop him from leaving, Braxton punched him and swore that he would make him pay for disgracing the family."
"Okay," Steve said, finally finding his voice again, though he felt like he might be sick. "Thank you so much, Mr. Miller. We'll, uh, we'll get out of your way now. If you think of anything else, anything at all, no matter how insignificant it might seem, please give us a call." He handed the man a card and wasted no time in hurrying out of the house.
"Okay, what was all that about?" Steve, who had just turned on the car, turned to glance at his partner, who looked worried.
"What do you mean?" He threw on an innocent look as he backed the car out of the drive and began to make his way back to HQ.
"That," Danny said, gesturing towards the house, which was rapidly disappearing in the rearview mirror. "You completely closed up in there, man. I've never seen you do that while we're on a case before."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Steve lied.
"Yes, you do," Danny replied.
After a moment's pause, he added, "I'm not mad about it. It was hard for me, too. I just want to make sure you're alright."
Steve smiled at his partner in what he hoped was a reassuring manner. "Thanks for the concern, but I'm fine, Danno."
Back at HQ, Chin and Kono were waiting for the pair with news.
"Hey, so the parking lot was definitely the original crime scene," Chin said. "There was blood on the concrete belonging to Justin Miller. No DNA or prints, though. But Kono did find something while she was running known associates. Show them, cuz."
"It looks like our vic's brother, Braxton Kip, is in the system," Kono said, pulling up a picture of the man that Steve and Danny had seen in the picture at Justin's house. "Did five years in Halawa Correctional for felony assault."
"Who'd he assault?" Steve asked.
"That's where this gets interesting," Kono replied, pulling up the police report from Braxton Kip's arrest. "Apparently he injured another guy in a bar and then proceeded to take out the bouncer when he tried to interfere, because the guy was kissing another man."
"That fits right in with what Justin's husband told us," Danny said. He quickly relayed the story that they had gotten from Brian back to the other two members of the Five-0 task force.
"I think it's time we go pay Braxton a visit," Chin said. "Kono, you got an address?"
"Yeah." She quickly pulled it up and said, "It says he's in Waikiki." She relayed the rest of the address to her team members.
"Okay, Danny and I will go see Braxton," Steve said. "Kono, you and Chin canvas both of our crime scenes, see if you can't find a murder weapon."
"You got it."
Steve knocked harshly on the door to the Kip residence. A small girl with dark brown hair in pigtails opened the door, her mother right behind her.
"Hi, can I help you?" the woman asked, picking up the child.
"Yes, I'm Lieutenant Commander Steve McGarrett with Five-0," Steve said, flashing the woman his badge, "And this is my partner, Detective Danny Williams. We need to speak with your husband."
"Oh, of course," she said, and stepped aside to let them in. She set the little girl down at the foot of the spiral staircase leading to the upper floor, and said, "Go play, Annalise."
With a cheerful "Okay, Mommy!" Annalise disappeared upstairs.
"Braxton?" the woman from the door shouted. "Braxton, come here, please!"
"Nicole, what is it?" Braxton Kip appeared from the den, a beer in his hand, his face showing exhaustion and the tiniest bit of remorse. When he caught sight of the two law enforcement officers standing in the front room, he dropped the beverage and bolted for the back door.
Steve sprung into action, sprinting after the suspect. He heard Danny following on his heels. Braxton made it out of the house and threw himself over the wooden fence that went around the entire house in a desperate attempt to escape. Steve, in hot pursuit, scaled the fence as well. Braxton dropped down and made a beeline for the road. With Steve close behind, the fleeing suspect darted in between cars and trucks, trying to make it to the other side. Steve followed as much as he could, throwing himself over a few vehicles in the process.
Meanwhile, Danny had ran back to the street in front of Kip's house and gotten in the Camaro, hoping he could cut Braxton off.
As Braxton successfully made it to the other side of the road, Steve mere feet behind him, Danny pulled up in front of him suddenly, causing the man to fly over the hood of the car. Steve, panting slightly from the chase, tackled him the rest of the way to the ground. Still leaning over Braxton Kip to keep the struggling, protesting man in place, Steve turned to his partner with a wide grin and said, "Book him, Danno."
"Hey," Chin and Kono greeted Danny and Steve when they returned to HQ with Braxton Kip in
handcuffs. They put him in the interrogation room, and then returned to where the other members of their team waited with good news.
"We found the murder weapon," Kono said triumphantly. "Max matched the size and depth of the stab wounds on our vic to the knife we found buried near the dirt road where we found Miller's body. We sent it to Fong in the crime lab. He's analysing it for DNA and prints right now."
"That's great!" Steve exclaimed. He felt a mounting sense of anticipation, and hoped to God that the knife would come back with prints or DNA matching Braxton Kip's. The Navy SEAL just wanted the emotionally draining case to be over and for Brian Miller to have justice for his husband.
"Come on," Danny said, and dragged Steve gently by the arm to the interrogation room where Braxton Kip was waiting, scowling at the wall.
"So, tell me, why did you kill your brother?" Steve asked, leaning against the wall as he spoke to the man in handcuffs.
"I want a lawyer," Braxton mumbled.
"I'm sorry, what was that?" Danny put his hand to his ear. "I didn't quite hear you."
"I said, I want a lawyer!"
"Oh, look at that, Steve, the man wants a lawyer," Danny said, addressing his partner with a chuckle. He stepped closer to Braxton.
"You see, guys like you, they don't get a lawyer," he said. "They don't get a phone call. They don't get anything. Guys like you are cold-blooded killers." He took a moment to let those words sink in, before letting Steve, who had that scary, Navy SEAL persona going for him, take over.
"Is that what you did, huh?" Steve asked, walking closer to the man under arrest. "You murder your brother in cold blood? Your own brother?"
"I didn't mean to!" Braxton Kip shouted. Danny and Steve smirked to themselves.
Ah, there it is.
A confession.
"I swear, I didn't mean to," he repeated. "I was just going to talk to him, try and beat some sense into him. I thought I could, I don't know, beat the gay out of him, maybe. But he just - he just kept defending that awful, wrong lifestyle. He actually said that he had the right to be married to another man! And it just made me so angry, because he was dishonouring our family and going against God!"
"So you pulled out your knife, and you killed him," Steve finished for Braxton. The other man nodded his head slowly.
Just then, Kono poked her head in the room, gesturing them outside. Steve and Danny followed her out, where she said, "Hey, we just heard back from Fong. Braxton Kip's prints and DNA are all over that knife."
"And we just got him to confess," Danny said, jerking his thumb towards the interrogation room, a grin lighting up his features.
"Yes!" Kono high-fived her team members enthusiastically. Chin turned the corner just then and participated in the celebration as well.
A while later, when they had calmed down, Kono shook her head and said, "You know, it's so awful, what that guy did. Murdering his own brother just because he's gay. It's ridiculous."
"I know, cuz," Chin agreed, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and squeezing gently. "It's terrible that some people are so closed-minded that they would do something like that." He sighed and shook his head. "I wish people could just learn that there's nothing wrong with being gay."
"Yeah, exactly," Kono agreed. "I don't see why people get so upset about guys liking guys, or girls liking girls, or someone liking both when there's absolutely nothing wrong with it."
Both Steve and Danny felt a jolt of relief spike through them at the words of their teammates. They were quick to agree with Chin and Kono's comments, happy that the other members of Five-0 felt the way that they did.
Later, after everything had been sorted out at the office, Steve and Danny were driving home in Danny's car, when the latter broached the topic of Steve's reaction to the case again.
"Steve, okay, seriously, I know you were lying to me earlier when you said you were fine," Danny said. "You say I squint? Well, you avoid eye contact, babe."
Steve felt his heart clench at his partner's use of the term of endearment, but he tried not to let it show. "Danny, you're out of your mind."
"No, I'm not," the other man insisted. "I know you, Steven. I know when something is bothering you. Just tell me what it is. What was it about this case that had you so upset?"
Steve sighed. Danny had his I'm-not-letting-this-go-until-you-open-up tone, and he knew there was no getting out of it.
"It was personal," Steve admitted, his hands tightening on the steering wheel. "This case hit home for me."
"Why?" Danny asked. His heart clenched with an almost painful sort of hope. He prayed that Steve couldn't hear how hopeful he was in his voice.
Steve's hand fell to the pocket of his cargo pants, where the box with the ring inside of it was. He traced the outline of it for a minute before sighing and answering, "I-I think I'm gay."
"You think?"
Steve looked over at his partner, surprised by his reaction to the confession. He had expected something else - shock, sadness, anger, caution, something.
"Yeah," Steve said as they pulled into the driveway of his house. He hadn't been thinking about where they were going as they talked, and so they had ended up at his home, even though, now that he thought about it, Danny might have wanted to go back to his apartment.
"You think or you know?" Danny asked as they got out of the Camaro, saying nothing about where they had ended up. Steve unlocked the door and they stepped inside. They settled themselves on the sofa, side by side, before Steve spoke again.
"I know," the Navy SEAL corrected himself. "I've known for awhile, honestly. I was just in denial because it just - it ruins the vision of my life that I thought I had perfectly planned out. I imagined myself as the captain of Five-0, happily married to the perfect person. I just never took the time to consider that the person might not be a woman."
"What made you realise it?" Danny asked softly. His hand had found Steve's, and was now tracing little patterns over it.
"Catherine," Steve replied honestly. "When our relationship started getting serious, I just went through the motions, I guess. I did what was expected of me. But it didn't feel right, it never felt right. It didn't make me feel the way I feel with - "
Steve cut himself off, blushing furiously. What he had almost revealed to the Jersey detective!
"Steve," Danny said, and moved closer to him. He grabbed both of the other man's hands with his own and stared into his eyes. Steve found himself unable to look away from Danny's intense gaze. He was hypnotised by the other's eyes boring into his own.
"Steve," Danny repeated. "With who? It didn't make you feel the way it feels with...who?"
"With you," Steve whispered.
It took Danny all of two seconds to process what his partner had just said, before Steve felt soft lips pressing against his own.
The Navy SEAL sighed in happiness. He had been waiting years for Danny to do that. He reciprocated fiercely, putting every single emotion that he felt for his partner into that one kiss. He worked on Danny with his mouth in ways that he didn't know he could. The world fell away around the two of them, and the only thing that Steve could feel was the still-soft but much more confident set of lips on his own. They were in their own little golden bubble, and Steve couldn't remember ever feeling better than he did then.
When they finally pulled away, gasping for breath, Steve rested his forehead on Danny's and said, "I've been wanting you to do that for years."
"Same here, babe," Danny breathed.
"Danny," Steve said, inspiration and decision suddenly hitting him, so powerfully that it felt almost earth-shattering, "Danny, I have something for you." He dug in his pocket for the ring that he had bought for Catherine, intending to propose. Looking at the glittering ring, he realised for the first time that the small stone embedded in it was Danny's birthstone, not Catherine's.
"Danno," Steve said, bringing the box into his partner's vision, "I've been in love with you for years. I can't believe it took me so long to realise it. Now that I have, I don't ever want to let you go. Please, Danno, will you marry me?"
Danny's eyes met Steve's, and they were full of withheld emotion. "Steve, are you sure?"
"I've never been more sure in my entire life, Danno."
"Then yes. Yes! Yes, yes, yes!" Danny exclaimed, slamming his lips to Steve's again. Steve laughed and reciprocated in full.
When they came up for air, Steve lifted Danny's hand and slid the glittering ring onto his partner's ring finger. Danny looked at it for a few seconds before he began to laugh.
"What's so funny?" Steve asked, confused.
"You know, most people date first," Danny said, grinning.
"We've been dating for years, Danno," Steve replied with a grin of his own. "And I'm beginning to think everyone knew it, too, except for us."
Danny laughed. "I think that's true."
Steve sighed in happiness and pulled Danny into a hug. There were still things that would need to be figured out, like how he was going to break the news to Catherine, how they would tell the rest of Five-0 and how the others would react, wedding plans, and how they were going to tell Rachel and, more importantly, Grace. However, there in his home in Oahu with his Danno, Steve realised that he could care less about all of that. He only cared about the man in his arms right then.
"I love you," Steve whispered.
"I love you, too, babe," Danny whispered back.
Author's Note: What did you think of that? This is my first Hawaii Five-0 fanfiction and my first McDanno fanfiction and I don't know if it was any good. Sorry if the characters were kind of OOC, as I said, it's my first time doing a McDanno fic and a Hawaii Five-0 fic in general. Also, I'm not sure if I have some of the canonical details, such as if Fong was still in the picture at this time, wrong, as I'm currently rewatching Hawaii Five-0 from the beginning and I haven't gotten to the part where Steve almost proposes to Catherine yet. So, therefore, some of these details might be wrong, but I did my best. Feel free to correct me if you notice anything incorrect. Please leave reviews and tell me what you think! I'd love to hear your feedback. On that note, should I do a sequel? I was thinking I might write one about Steve and Danny telling Chin and Kono and the rest of their ohana, like Adam and Max and Kamekona, and the wedding plans and stuff like that. What do you think? Should I write a sequel? Thanks for all of your support!
~ Em