(To people reading Friendship Spreads Worse Than Infection: I have about one third left to finish and then it will be posted.)
So, life can really kick you in the teeth sometimes and some of mine are missing (metaphorically, of course) after the past few weeks. So, one day I sat down and started watching Hawaii Five-0 all over again from the beginning because it is one of my favorite shows and it makes me happy, yada yada yada, you all know. So I sat down and wrote this because writing also makes me happy.
* "Time slips away, Danny," is a quote from Steve to Danny in the episode Hookman.
"Time slips away, Danny."
It does like sand through nimble fingers, and Danny is reminded of it when Grace jumps in the car every Friday afternoon from school a little bit taller, a little bit wiser, and a little bit older, but there are moments when it doesn't.
Sometimes the clock gives McGarrett a run for his money in the stubborn department and every ounce of Jersey coursing through Danny makes him want to punch the damn thing until it decides to cooperate and do its job. He never does, though. He just settles on cracking his knuckles while grinding his teeth where the second hand of the clock should tick.
He paces, too. Rocks, even, if he's having to sit in a hard plastic chair only suitable for people in a world where time is teetering between standing still or slipping away. The minute hand twitches and the muscles in Danny's back jerk with the anticipation of finding out if that minute slipped or just mocked him. His muscles finish quivering with the jolt at the bottom of his spine and race down into legs causing him to stand.
People stare, they always do. Steve would swear it's due to the tie, but it's not, because Danny's not even wearing one. He ripped it from around his neck hours ago knowing that he shouldn't be dressed like a man from Jersey when he feels like a man obligated to Hawaii, but he keeps that hometown flare of his shinning bright in an irritated glare and directs it towards the other occupants of the waiting room that find his grievance with the clock entertaining. They quickly cast their eyes elsewhere and he lets his fall back on the clock, but the minute hand twitches unexpectedly and he can almost feel the room tilt with it as it moves. He braces himself back into the chair he stood from, but before he can even rest his elbows on the arm rests the minute hand twitches again as if holding up a middle finger to a man who can't decide if he wants it to move forwards, backwards, or not at all.
Danny stands again, this time kicking the leg of his chair for good measure and grabs his tie up from where it was wadded on the floor and rushes out of the room.
If he was anybody else, the smell of the Hawaiian air would have put him somewhat at ease, but instead he almost chokes on it as a big gust of night air engulfs him as he steps out of the hospital. He leans forward, feels his lungs deflate, and slides down the concrete exterior of the building. He greedily sucks in the island air as he watches tourists in ugly palm tree printed shirts and bloody island natives with surfing injuries enter and exit the building. He wants to distance himself from it all, wants to feel like that guy from Jersey with a wife and daughter, in a pre-9/11 world again and he struggles with shaking hands to put his tie back on to be just that.
He's tugging on it like a restraint by the time someone calls his name, and he tries to tie it one more time before pulling it from around his neck when he fails to do so, because he knows he can never be that man again.
"You okay," Chin asks, as he slides down the wall next to him.
"Me? Oh, yeah. I'm fantastic, you wanna know why? Because I was right in hating this stupid, pineapple infested, hot as hell island!"
"Well, to be fair, it's not the island's fault," Chin tests, trying to find a balance between baiting Danny into a characteristic rant and pissing him off, while wondering how Steve found it so quickly.
"No? No, I think it is! You see, raised anywhere else, Steve may have had a chance to be a bit more cautious, a bit more," Danny trails off and shakes his hands in the air as if trying to catch the right word, "un...Steven-ish."
"Un-Stevenish?" Chin raises an eyebrow, before tilting his head in a knowing manner. "And if he was raised in Jersey-"
"God. Please, stop with that awful sentence," Danny replies, but his voice wavers in a bit of a delirious laugh causing Chin to chuckle as well.
"On the plus side, you probably wouldn't have had to move down here," the Lieutenant says after silence settles between them.
"How's that?"
"He would've called the Governor and had Rachel on lock down in Jersey."
Danny genuinely lets his head fall back in laughter and lets it rest against the building. "Yeah, yeah you're probably right, that crazy son of a bitch."
Silence falls between them again, and it's heavy enough that Danny's mind drifts to the thought of the clock again and he sags with it against the building, deflating his already defeated posture.
"He'll be fine, Danny," Chin says just when the detective feels a twinge in his back complaining of the way he's sitting.
Danny just fiddles with the tie before shoving it into his pocket, because while he knows he can't ever just be that guy from Jersey, there's a chance that he'll have to pretend to be.
He's wearing it again by the time he walks into Steve's room in the ICU. The tie is a bit sloppy like Steve's the time he showed up at Grace's custody hearing in his dress blues, but the urge to fix it just isn't there. He's trying to be Danno in every sense of the word for his daughter in the waiting room who loves her Uncle Steve, and that very Uncle in the hospital bed in front of him, but Danno doesn't wear crooked ties.
The room looks exactly like it always does, feels the way movies make it seem, but when he sits down in the chair beside the bed he notices the damn clock on the wall in front of him before anything else, even before Steve. The clock hand appears to almost shake as if to taunt him before moving to the next minute, and Danny finds himself staring at a man that should never appear so incapable of living so he doesn't have to look at a clock that makes him feel like his partner is capable of dying.
He sits there, taking in the sounds of the machines, the tube down Steve's throat, the wires connected all over him, but none of it gets to him like the clock does.
He'll sit there for days, watch as Steve struggles against the breathing tube, show signs of progress, then vomit and spike a fever to prove that a McGarrett doesn't do anything by the book that Danny reads. He'll stand by the bed and press the nurse call button better than the buttons on the Pac-Man game the time he made it to Triple Banana level until one of them appears and pumps drugs through Steve's IV to get the pain to ease enough so the man can sleep, and Danny, too.
He'll even squat down next to the bed, but disagree with Grace later when she says it's exactly how he kneels next to her bed when she has a nightmare, and talk to him in a slow, even tone until the heart monitor regains a normal rhythm. He'll do all of it, but it won't bother him, not like the clock anyway. Because every time he looks at the clock, on one side of the hands, he's looking at hours he can't remember, minutes he's taken for granted, and seconds he's wished away. On the other side, he might be looking at time he's yelled about but never actually planned for, time where Steve was his partner and his daughter's statement of 'I miss Uncle Steve' can't be fixed with a car ride or phone call.
"Daddy," Grace's voice calls from the doorway, reminding him of his piss-poor job at pretending to be Danno.
"Yeah, Monkey," he replies, pulling himself up into a proper seated position in his chair so that she can sit on his lap.
"How's Uncle Steve?" She asks, as she wiggles onto his legs with a book in between her fingers.
"He sleeps all day and still drives me crazy, so how do you think he's doing?" Danny grins at her, causing her to laugh. "What's this you got?"
"I brought a book to read to Uncle Steve to make him feel better," she says while holding up the book in her hands. "Do you think he'll like it?"
"Do I think he'll like it? He'll regret it, if he doesn't," Danny replies and winks at her in jest.
She begins to shuffle off his lap, "Can I sit up there with him while I read it to him?"
"Uh, sure, but be careful. Here let me help you," he says and moves to lift her onto the edge of the sleeping man's bed so she doesn't move any of the tubes or wires connected to Steve. He sits back down in his chair and watches his daughter open the book as she reads the title, "I Need My Monster."
He bites his bottom lip to keep from grinning, but pretty soon he doesn't need to because he's so captivated with how she reads the story about a boy whose monster goes missing and how no other monsters can replace him, because he just needs his monster, just like she needs her Uncle Steve and Danno needs his partner. So when she tells him exactly that while closing the book and leaning forward to kiss him on the cheek, Danny glances back at the clock, wondering if time can still slip away even from a girl like Grace.
The hand twitches forward and Danny finally yanks the clock off the wall.
"Time slips away, Danny."
"Danny? Hey. Danno!"
Danny shakes his head to bring himself back to the present by the sound of his name being called.
"Is something wrong?," Steve asks, standing beside him in a posture meant for a man much less stoic than the Navy SEAL. Maybe it's the hospital issued attire, the IV pole Steve's white-knuckling to keep himself upright, or maybe it's the way his partner's legs quiver just enough that both of them take the short way around the hospital wing without ever having discussed it that cause Danny to muster up a reassuring grin, wiggle the tie around his neck, and take hold of Steve's elbow to guide him back to the room instead of ranting freely with flapping arms about a stupid, poisoned, Super SEAL asking him if something was wrong when he should be asking what was right.
He says nothing and guides them both back to the confinement of a small room with machines Steve doesn't want, but needs and a newly replaced clock.
Steve's back in bed, half asleep by the time the nurse comes in and checks his vitals, and completely out of it when she turns to Danny and says, "He's doing really good," and Danny looks to his partner to make sure he's sitting in the right room, because nothing about McGarrett only capable of making one lap around the hospital wing, or waking up in the middle of the night with the mumble of 'Don't feel so good' before vomiting either over the side of the bed next to Danny's shoes, or, on some heart-shattering occasions, down the front of his hospital gown, is considered "really good" in Danny's book.
He shrugs and catches a glimpse of the clock on the way back to look at her.
"Don't worry about time," she says, like he's actually voiced his beef with the clock to her out loud at some point during their week and a half relationship.
Danny runs a hand down his face, slowing when he gets to the stubble on his jawline and scratches. "With this guy, time is all you have to worry about."
"That's what makes you family," she replies, but he watches her look at Steve like Doris should have all those missing years. "But if you spend your time worrying about it, you don't enjoy the time that you're given."
Danny nods, sure he's read that on some Hallmark card somewhere and lets his eyebrows lift because it's his silent way of telling her that his life doesn't fit into one of those perfectly written poems about life.
She smiles anyway, though, not faltered for a second that he doesn't believe in the world she lives in of faultlessly written sentences and mastered time. "You know, he only asked for Danno."
"What?" It throws him for a loop, because he fully expected her to be out the door by the time he let his eyebrows fall back down to normal level and she's calling him Danno like she understands what it means, but she doesn't answer him. Instead, she leaves him with partner and a clock he doesn't know what to do with.
Two weeks time finds them sitting on the beach, hot weather sweating their skin, sand sticking to them, and Danny complaining about all of it. Kono's out in the water teaching Grace to surf and Chin's sitting just a few feet away being patient with Kamekona as he tries to market his business to passersby. Steve's sat in the middle, taking it all in, still not feeling one hundred percent, but well enough to convince Danny that he could make this little venture. Danny stops comparing his beloved Jersey to the island though when Steve knuckles his eye, "You alright?"
"I'm fine, Danny," he replies, dropping his hand away from his peaked face, but brings it right back up when suddenly he feels his body go flush. He rubs at his forehead and holds a hand out, "Will you hand me a water?"
Danny watches him with a cautious eye as he feels around in the cooler a moment. He feels the plastic bottle under his hand but doesn't grab it. "I, uh, think we're fresh out, Babe. We can go get some from the house though. Come on."
Steve turns his head to peek at Danny from around his hand, silently telling him that he knows what he's doing, but grateful for it. He nods his head even though Danny's already stood and told Chin they're going for more water and would be back in a bit.
Steve manages to stand on his own, but Danny pretends to brush sand off of him in order to help him keep his balance as he gains his bearings.
They make their way up towards the house, the sand being a perfect excuse for the jagged path Steve manages to walk on his own without assistance. Once they're inside, Steve plops down on the couch while listening as Danny fishes in the cabinet for a glass. He can hear the water as it fills the cup and suddenly he jerks awake to the feeling of a cool glass being pressed into one hand and pill in the other.
Steve blinks at it, but doesn't argue, and Danny sits down beside him without a word knowing he'll get him to take it eventually.
"I...," McGarrett starts to say, but settles on taking a sip of water instead. He catches Danny's patient, yet expectant gaze, and takes another sip before continuing. "Thank you."
It's Danny turn to blink before he screws up his face into one of mock disbelief, "To quote you, my friend, one near death experience and you go all warm and cuddly on me?"
"If I hadn't said thank you, you'd be quoting yourself which is much worse," Steve grins at him in true satisfied McGarrett fashion.
Danny nods, just lets that slide and doesn't rise to the bait, because while he's fully prepared to bicker, he knows Steve will work him up into a rant to drive this conversation anywhere but where it needs to go.
"You gonna take that," Danny motion towards the pill in McGarrett's hand, and watches Steve dry swallow it for show.
"Happy?"
"No. I could be watching my daughter learn how to surf, instead I'm making sure you take your medicine. I mean, come on, I gotta wear a nurse uniform, too?" Danny chides at him with no real heat.
"Please, don't say things like that, Danno," Steve counters with a disgusted expression, and lets his head fall back onto the cushion behind him, already falling asleep.
Danny searches for the clock to know if he'll be able to go back out on the beach with his daughter before the sun sets, but he can't find one.
"Time slips away, Danny."
It does like sand through nimble fingers, and Danny is reminded of it when Grace jumps in the car every Friday afternoon from school a little bit taller, a little bit wiser, and a little bit older, but there are moments when it doesn't.
There are moments when he's Danno, and not just the Danno that dedicates his whole life to being the best father he can be, but the Danno that's committed to making sure that the world doesn't take advantage of Steve's invincible conviction of himself, and in those moments, like the one right now where he's sliding a slipping glass from McGarrett's hand with such practiced ease so as not to wake him, time doesn't slip away.
It passes by, creating the memories that build their imperfectly perfect family and the moments that make him Danno.