The house is dark and quiet and still despite the crash of waves on the shore and the crack of thunder and flash of lightning of the storm outside.
Steve sits awake on his couch, his legs laid in front of him across the cushions like he's going to be sleeping there.
But he isn't.
He isn't sleeping and he won't be sleeping.
Everything is wrong.
-x-
The funeral is wet. The rainfall heavier than usual, thick drops that pelt down a steady stream across his shoulders, drip down his drenched hair into his face. He doesn't bother with an umbrella, though Kono hesitantly tips hers over him when she can.
He doesn't care though.
At the end of the day, an umbrella might help him avoid a cold or a sickness.
But an umbrella cannot bring back the dead and he does not care otherwise.
-x-
He doesn't do much thinking the first few days after it happens, not about anything but The Case. Capital letters and all.
He refuses to think about anything else until the funeral, at least.
After that... after that? It's all he is not to fall apart.
He's lost people before. He knows the ache of it. Losing his mother, losing his father... losing teammates and friends? It's hard, so hard.
But somehow, all he's lost still has him unprepared for this.
For losing... this.
-x-
Steve has never had a lot of close friends. On the periphery, yes. But people who were truly close to him? After his mother died, after his father shipped him away, what little close friends he had faded.
And then it was him and the Navy.
The longer he spent with the same crew, the closer they became. But sometimes Steve felt like he was broken, maybe.
Steve and other people just didn't connect the way they used to.
So he had resigned himself to keeping them at arm's length, letting them in without sharing anything real, letting them tell him their secrets without truly revealing any of his own.
Keeping everything he thought and felt bottled up, letting it out with every strike and shot but never aloud.
And then there was Danny... It was impossible to feel broken around him. Danny was like wildfire, he burned and spread until there was nothing but ash where all his walls and barriers once stood. He was, he brought, he made something more to Steve's life. He filled something in Steve that Steve hadn't realised was missing until...
Until Danny was gone.
Until Danny was gone.
And Steve felt more broken than he ever had before, and not even the friends that Danny had opened Steve into taking in could seem to mend those cracks.
Perhaps it was better this way.
Steve stares down at the reactivation paperwork and wonders if it's time to move on.
-x-
Some nights, when he sits alone in his big empty house, he calls Danny's cell phone. It goes immediately to his voicemail and Steve just listens to the recording of his voice.
He leaves a message only once.
Danno... I can't do this without you.
He hopes no one ever hears it.
-x-
Two weeks after the fire, Steve finds himself parked in front of Grace's school. He just sits there, watching as she walks out into Rachel's open arms.
He wants to comfort her, to support her, to be there for her since Danny... since Danny can't.
But he can't make himself get out of the car. He can't make himself press the button to make the call connect when he tries to call her cell phone, or Rachel's.
He feels like he's failing... failing Danny, failing his promises to him. The ones spoken and unspoken, the ones Steve made to himself about Danny and the ones he made to Danny.
He should have been able to save Danny... He always has before.
But in the end he wasn't enough.
How could he be enough for Grace when he failed at that?
-x-
They're not officially on The Case. They can't be. It hasn't stopped them from trying to figure it out and Steve isn't sure that anything could.
Danny was a part of their family, an important part. Without him, everything feels too serious. Too heady. Too heavy.
Which isn't to say that Danny was never serious, because he was. He loved his job, thrived on being a cop, being a detective. He was born for it.
And it showed.
It had showed.
They would keep investigating the case if it were anyone, but for Danny? For Danny, they'd never stop until they put the man who started the fire into the ground.
-x-
Twenty three days after the fire, the news breaks. The arsonist is arrested in a cheap motel by a couple members of the FBI. He admits to everything in front of a television crew outside HPD, laughing as he tells how it looked to watch Danny's house burn brightly, how it felt to finally get his revenge on the last of the men who put him in prison eight years ago.
He's watching guard at Grace's school when Kono calls to tell him the news.
It takes three HPD officers and Lukela to hold him back from breaking into the interrogation room and beating the man to death.
Chin Ho and Kono don't even attempt to help them.
-x-
Steve goes back to his office when he leaves HPD and locks himself inside.
He sits at his desk for hours, until long after the office goes dark with the setting sun.
When he leaves, it's nearly four in the morning and half his desk is spread haphazardly across the room.
-x-
The sun is bright as it streams through the windows of the house, casting everything in a pale yellow glow.
Steve still hasn't slept. Instead, he sits across his couch like he had every night since the fire, silent and still. He knows it's unhealthy, to sleep so little for so long.
He misses Danny. He misses Danny with a ferocity that terrifies him.
He almost doesn't answer his phone when it goes off a quarter to eleven in the morning, but Grace's name is across the display and he can't let her down. Not again.
"Uncle Steve?"
Her voice doesn't sound sad. She sounds almost happy.
Steve doesn't know what that means.
"Yeah, Gracie?" His voice cracks a little around her name, but he doesn't think she notices.
"Danno's gonna come home soon! Have you seen him yet?"
Steve suddenly feels like he's just taken an unexpected cold shower in the middle of a roller coaster ride.
"Gracie," Steve manages to get out, before he starts to lose it entirely.
Because she thinks Danny is alive, she thinks he's coming home and he...
And Danny is dead.
Danny is dead.
"Are you okay, Uncle Steve?"
No. No, Steve is not okay.
-x-
He nearly gets in an accident twice on the drive to the Edwards' house. By the time he pulls his truck over to park, his hands are shaking in a way they haven't since the first time... the first time someone died at his hands.
He doesn't want to be the one to tell Grace that Danny's not coming back, that he can't come back.
But he doesn't think Rachel and Stan seem to be able to get her to understand and he doesn't know what else to do.
"Commander McGarrett? What are you doing here?" Rachel asks in surprise when she opens the door.
"Grace... Grace called me," he starts, well aware of what his wavering voice and shaking hands portray.
"Oh. She must have been excited. We just heard the news about that man's arrest. She's missed her father-Steve, what's wrong? Did something happen..."
Steve doesn't say anything. Steve doesn't understand.
Grace? Grace, he gets. He understands why she might think he's coming back.
But Rachel?
"Oh, Steve... He didn't tell you?" she asks him, carefully putting a hand on his shoulder. He nearly flinches at the contact.
"Saving me a trip, are you Steve?"
And that's Danny's voice. That's Danny's voice coming from behind him, and Steve doesn't understand.
He turns out of Rachel's grasp and Danny is standing a few feet behind him, flanked on either side by two men in black suits. It's Danny standing there, dressed in a t-shirt and shorts and looking like he's on vacation and not in a box six feet under.
Steve knows he's staring, knows he should say something, but he can't. He feels like he's hallucinating, feels like it's been one too many nights with too little sleep and he's imagining that Danny's not really dead.
"McGarrett, what's with the face? Case is closed, I get ta come home now, what's the deal with you?"
"You should have told me," Steve finally manages, though his mouth suddenly feels like he's been choking on ashes. He still doesn't believe he's actually seeing Danny, but it doesn't seem to matter anymore.
If he's going to lose it, he might as well say everything he's always meant to.
"Should have told you what? Wait, are you saying you thought I was dead the whole time?" Danny's voice is progressively louder as he says it, and Steve can't help the thrumming of hope in his gut at it.
"You're not dead," Steve says, and Danny gets that look on his face like he does when he's upset and Steve doesn't ever want to see that look on Danny's face again and if this is real...
If this is real, how could Danny do this to him? How could Danny not tell him? After... after everything they've been through, after his mom...
"Of course, I'm not dead you big lug," Danny says, stepping into Steve's space and Steve is suddenly angry. He's suddenly angry and he hasn't let himself be pissed at Danny for dying but Danny's not dead and Danny didn't tell him and Steve.
Steve couldn't let himself believe that Danny might not be dead, and it turns out he could have in the end.
It's a terrible swing, hardly enough force hitting to do even enough damage to bruise, but it's all Steve has right then.
Because Steve is so tired, and he can't even hold on to that pissed off feeling of Danny faking his death, because Danny is alive and Steve has missed him for more than he knows he should have.
"Fuck, McGarrett," Danny says but then he's right back in Steve's space and he's squeezing him in a hug and Steve just lets go.
Danny lets him go and Steve feels like his head is full of cotton and he's so damn tired. Everything else feels like white noise in his head, and he knows Rachel is saying something to him, she must be because she's leading him to sit down and he doesn't even remember going inside.
And then Steve looks up again, and there's Danny. There's Danny and one of the men he'd been with is holding his face, streaks of blood dripping from his hands.
Because Danny has punched the man and Steve doesn't know why.
"...said you would tell him, you bastard!" Danny snarls at the man, loud and angry.
"We didn't think it was necessary, Detective Williams. Commander McGarrett is just your partner, and we already allowed you to tell your daughter-"
"Didn't think it was necessary?! Did neither one of you even bother to ask why your superior agreed to my request? Of course it was necessary!"
"We've been working these kinds of cases for years, and it's never been-"
"Well that's your problem then, you freaking idiots! This ain't like your other cases, McGarrett ain't like one of those assigned partners from the mainland who you might get a beer with every few weeks. And even if he was, you obey your freaking orders when you're told to inform him that his partner ain't dead!"
"Danno!" Grace's voice interrupts, and Steve turns to see her racing down the stairs towards her father.
"Are you going to be all right, Steve?" Rachel asks him, and Steve looks away from Danny and Grace and the agents who must've been protecting Danny.
"I will be," he manages, and for the first time in weeks he thinks it might be true.
But right now, he knows he isn't. He needs to leave, needs to get out of here. Out of Rachel's stuffy house, back to somewhere safe and quiet where he doesn't have a million eyes on him.
He's never been one to show his emotion in front of people, not even those he cares about. And he can't do this here.
He takes advantage of Danny's distraction to bolt out of the house and is in his truck before he even realizes he's moved at all.
-x-
He thinks about going home briefly, before the ghosts of his past remind him of his mother and his father both. He ends up at the office again, the lights still switched off from the night before.
It's silent as he walks towards his office, only the buzzing of the air conditioning system awake. He doesn't turn on any lights until he gets inside his own four walls.
There's broken glass from a picture frame that he doesn't notice until he crushes it under his feet, the floor a mess of scattered papers and broken things.
Only a few bits of paper and other items are left unscathed on his desk-only things that Danny had given him-including the last report that Steve had yet to file.
Steve collects the papers, shaking broken glass and plastic into the trash can when he can. He doesn't look at any of them as he stacks them back on the corner of his desk, doesn't organize them at all.
He doesn't want to think, not now.
Danny isn't dead and Steve... Steve doesn't know what the hell he's doing now anymore than he had before.
-x-
Danny shows up just as Steve is sweeping the last of the trash into a dustpan, and he's quiet.
He's quiet and Danny is rarely quiet.
Steve doesn't speak though. He isn't sure what he would say if he wanted to.
"You know, they gave me a new phone after I saw Gracie. It was all set up and charged, ready to go with all my contacts and everything."
Steve pauses for just a second before dumping the last of the glass into the trash can.
"I can tell, you know," Danny says, "You look like shit."
Steve doesn't know what he's talking about. But he doesn't doubt he looks like shit.
"They wanted me to choose between you and Gracie, pick who I got to tell. Just one person, they said. I had to tell her, you know. I couldn't let her think Danno was gone. But I made a deal with them, Steve. I made a deal that I would do everything else they asked but they had to tell you too. I wouldn't do that to you on purpose, you gotta know that."
And Steve does know that. He knows that Danny would never hurt him like that on purpose. Danny knows Steve better than anyone. Steve is closer to Danny than he's probably ever been to anyone.
"Steve, you got to talk to me here. I can't... I don't know how to fix us unless you talk to me," Danny admits and Steve finally looks at him, finally meets his eyes.
"When I thought you were dead..." he starts, but he can't make himself finish it. When he thought Danny was dead, Steve stopped living. He stopped living, stopped caring. He wanted to return to active duty and the occasional mindlessness of violence it could bring.
Hawaii wasn't home without Danny.
He didn't have a home without Danny, not anymore.
Danny seems to pick up on his trouble, just like he always has, and starts to speak again, "I was going to give you a little more time, give you a few more hours to deal with this mess of me not being dead... But then I heard your voicemail. And I... God, Steve. I was so afraid that..."
"I wasn't... It wasn't that bad," Steve lies, and he knows Danny sees right through it before he even finishes speaking.
"Steven, you..." Danny starts, but then he stops. He stops and puts his hand on Steve's desk and there's the reactivation paperwork underneath his fingers.
There's his reactivation paperwork in Danny's hands and the only thing it's missing is his signature.
"What's this... You were going to leave? Just like that?" Danny says it more than asks it, and there's an uncomfortable edge to his voice.
Steve watches Danny, tries to form the right words in the right order. He wants, he doesn't know what he wants to come of this moment. He just knows it's important.
Knows that Danny is important.
"I filled it out after the funeral. Wasn't going to turn it in until... until after your case was closed."
"You... Steve," Danny says and something about the way he says his name feels like more than that.
"Danno, I..." Steve tries, but he can't figure out what he means to say.
He looks at Danny again, looks at the papers in his hands and then back up to his face.
And he kisses him, right there.
Steve kisses Danny and he doesn't know how Danny feels but he hopes, he wants, he needs.
And Danny kisses him back and Steve finally knows that Danny is there. That it's real.
When they break apart, Steve smiles for the first time since he got a phone call in the middle of the night that told him that Danny was gone.
"Are you still going to leave?" Danny asks a minute later. Steve shakes his head.
"I'm not going anywhere."
There's a lot that Steve still has to say, a lot that Danny needs to explain. But for the moment, Steve doesn't care.
He's finally home again.