Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of this work of fiction, and no profit, monetary or otherwise, is being made through the writing of this.
A/N: Written for fan_flashworks amnesty challenge - egg was the prompt I chose - and inspired, once again, by a "Mork & Mindy" episode, in which Johnathan Winters plays the part of Mork and Mindy's son; it's entitled, "Mama Mork, Papa Mindy". This is crack, angst, and fluff.
The egg appeared on their doorstep out of nowhere, and might have been sitting there for days before they actually found it, because they'd had a tough case that had kept them away from home for a couple of days.
It was larger than an average egg. Larger than a double large egg. Actually, it was as big as one of those small toy cars that kids who had parents with a lot of money rode around in.
Unsure what to do with it, Danny and Steve had, after making sure that it wasn't ticking, or giving off some sort of radiation, taken it into the house, and secured it in a corner of the living room. Danny - purely to keep the thing under wraps, until they could have Dr. Max Bergman come in and inspect it a little more thoroughly - placed a blue blanket over the thing, and patted it.
Every once in awhile, Danny's attention was drawn over to the egg. He tried to shake off the feeling that the egg was watching him and Steve as they sat on the couch, indulging in a couple of beers and a game that they'd DVR'd.
"Sooner we have Max take a look at that thing, the better," Danny said, waving his beer in the general direction of the egg. He went to take a sip of the beer, but thought better of it, and placed it on the coffee table instead.
An overwhelming urge to go over and check on the egg had Danny moving before his mind actually registered the movement. Steve reached for him, alarmed, but Danny shrugged off Steve's restraining hand and knelt beside the egg, wrapping his arms around it, and pressing his ear up against it to listen.
Tha-thump, tha-thump, tha-thump
The egg was beating out a rhythm like a heartbeat, and, instead of reacting in fear, or at least concern, Danny was fascinated, and, smiling, he reached a hand out toward Steve, beckoning his husband nearer.
"Listen," Danny whispered, grinning like a loon.
He pulled Steve down beside him, and held his breath as Steve, frowning, pressed his ear to the egg and listened through several tha-thumps.
"It's got a heartbeat," Danny said.
Giving Danny a concerned look, Steve nodded slowly. "Uh, Danny, we might want to..."
Steve was cut off by a hand over his mouth as Danny shushed him. "I think it's sleeping," Danny whispered.
"Oookaay," Steve whispered back, eyes wide. "Let's go back to the couch, and let it sleep, then."
"It's not warm enough," Danny said, sensing the truth of his words as soon as he'd spoken them, and he rushed out of the room, up the stairs, and pulled quilts and blankets from the linen closet before Steve could so much as blink let alone protest the action.
Danny raced down the stairs, taking them two at a time, and nearly collided with Steve at the bottom. He skirted around his partner, and ensconced the egg in a veritable nest of blankets, sighing in relief once his work was done. He hugged the egg again, and seemed content to sit beside it, half-draped across the egg.
Steve stood watching, a shell-shocked look on his face when Danny turned to smile at him. It was clear, at least to Steve, that something, or someone, had possessed Danny, and Steve wasn't sure what to do.
If the egg was an incendiary device it would have gone off a long time ago, and if it was something radioactive, both Danny and he would have started feeling sick. It would not have inspired one of them to go batshit crazy while the other stood by, watching.
"Uh, Danny, maybe it's time we got some sleep," Steve said, hoping to lure Danny up to their room. Sleep would do them both some good. Hell, maybe this whole egg thing was a dream, and in the morning Steve would wake up, and everything would be back to normal.
"I think I'll sleep down here tonight," Danny said. "Just to, you know, keep him warm."
"Him?" Steve took a step toward Danny, but stopped when Danny motioned for him not to come any closer.
"Yes, him, Steven," Danny said, eyes lighting up with anger. "Go on upstairs. Sleep. I'll look after the egg."
Steve frowned at his partner, and felt a wave of dizziness. He closed his eyes against it, and when he opened his eyes, he decided that this was nothing but a dream, and that he would, indeed, go upstairs, and get into bed, and that he would sleep this whole thing off, wake in the morning and find Danny lying beside him. Maybe there'd be an egg in bed with them, because crazy dreams like this, inspired by several sleepless nights in a row, and no-doze pills, and non-stop cups of black coffee, had some grounding in reality, right?
"Alright," Steve said, mostly to himself.
He walked over to Danny, dropped a kiss on his lover's head, and then, as though on autopilot, headed up the stairs. He practically fell into bed, and was asleep before his head hit the pillow, though, in his distorted dreams, and in the distorted reality that Steve found himself in, Steve was already asleep before he'd gone upstairs, before he and Danny had found the egg on the doorstep, before they'd left the office that night.
Steve's sleep was filled with disjointed scenes and images, some from the case that had kept him and Danny away from home, and some that were clearly alien in nature. In one scene, a catlike creature spoke to Steve and Danny in a voice that sounded an awful lot like Steve's dad's.
"Take good care of the gift," the catlike creature said. Its eyes were a dark, liquid pool of black. "It is from our people to yours, and contains essence from the both of you. Fine warriors that our people admire. Remember this."
It was unsettling, yet Steve did not wake, and another image from their case took over, dispelling that of the catlike being with his father's voice, and leaving Steve tossing and turning until morning. The sun woke him, its bright tendrils creeping across the bedroom floor and the bed.
Steve reached for Danny, and when he could not feel his partner, he sat up so abruptly that he fell out of bed. "Danny?"
The sound of cracking rent the air, and Steve's heart hammered in his chest. Danny's voice, caught in some kind of strangled sounding cry, reached his ears as Steve plummeted down the stairs, practically flying over them in his haste to get to his partner.
Heart in his throat, and gasping at whole lungfuls of air, Steve stopped, stunned when he reached the living room, unable to believe his eyes. Danny sat in the corner of the room, a goofy looking smile on his face, eyes filled with unshed tears of joy. In his arms, he held what appeared to be a baby swaddled in the worn tee-shirt that Danny had been wearing the night before.
Steve was carried forward on nerveless feet, heart pounding so loudly in his ears that he could not hear anything else. He blinked, trying to make sense of what it was that he was seeing, what Danny was cradling so carefully to his chest.
The haunting strains of his father's voice came to him as he knelt beside his partner and the squirming bundle that Danny cradled to his chest: "Take good care of the gift. It is from our people to yours, and contains essence from the both of you. Fine warriors that our people admire. Remember this."
The baby looked older than a newborn, more aware somehow of the world around him, and he reached out a chubby fist toward Steve's face, gurgling. His little feet were kicking, and, after a few moments of watching the little boy, it was clear to Steve that the baby - his and Danny's if his dream was to be believed - was babbling at him, his little fists moving as he burbled.
"He's got your eyes," Danny said in a voice that was more singsong than anything else. "And your ninja-like grip."
Steve swallowed as he allowed one of the baby's fists to connect with a finger, and he smiled when the little baby proved Danny right by taking hold of his finger, and gripping it tightly. "He's inherited your babble," Steve said, his voice whisper soft.
Though unprepared for the light punch that Danny gave him for his words, it wasn't completely unexpected, and Steve chuckled.
"Hey," Danny said. "I'll have you know that, in addition to having a refined vocabulary, he's got my nose, and your chin, and..."
"And your hair," Steve said, marveling at the blonde ringlets that covered the baby boy's head. They were silky to the touch, and made him look angelic, though the little bubbles of spittle that accompanied his nonsensical babbling quickly dispelled that image.
"He really is a perfect mix of the both of us," Danny said in a voice filled with awe. "Just like the-"
"Cat, with my dad's voice, said," Steve finished, his voice soft in deference to the baby that was still gripping his finger like a vise.
"Cat?" Danny frowned, and shook his head. "Only you could interpret our otherworldly visitor as a cat."
"And what's the supposed to mean?" Steve asked, though in a voice that came out sounding far less irked than it did like he was cooing happily.
Danny shook his head, a besotted look on his face as he regarded Steve and their baby (Steve no longer doubted that the little boy was theirs; he could feel his father's presence, hovering nearby).
"Nevermind, babe," Danny said, holding the baby out for Steve, and not letting go until he was safely ensconced in Steve's arms. "What do you think we should call him?"
Heart thudding in his chest, Steve tore his eyes away from the baby for a moment to stare into Danny's eyes, wondering at the love that he saw reflected there. It never ceased to amaze him how much Danny seemed to love him, and how much he loved Danny in return. It was as terrifying as it was life-affirming, and now Steve could feel his love shifting just a little, to include not only Danny, Grace, and Charlie, but also this little miracle, come straight from the heavens, or some other universe, holding his finger and talking to him in babbles that, in time, Steve knew would rival Danny's rants.
"How about, John, or Matthew?" Steve asked, feeling a ghostly hand on his shoulder, squeezing. He held his breath, and sighed in relief when Danny nodded.
"John Matthew Williams-McGarrett, or McGarrett-Williams?" Danny asked. He was blinking tears from his eyes, his hand resting on the baby's chest.
"How about we officially change our last name to McDanno?" Steve asked, sparking laughter in his partner, and a shake of the head, the spilling of a happy tear down Danny's cheek.
"McDanno," Danny said, shaking his head. "How the hell did you come up with a name like that?"
"C'mon, Danno, it's the perfect blend of our names," Steve said, shrugging, wiggling his finger within John Matthew's iron grip. "Besides, I overheard Kono mention it to Chin in passing the other day. Something about how it's what people have been calling us behind our backs for years now."
"McDanno," Danny repeated with a snort, but he didn't protest, and he bent down to nuzzle their little boy's hair.
There would be blood, and paternity, tests in their near future - discreet, of course - but Steve did not foresee any problems in validating that this little boy was both his and Danny's in DNA.
They'd need to come up with a story that was a little less farfetched than finding an egg from another planet on their front doorstep. A surrogate, maybe even Steve's sister, and a donor's egg. Something told Steve that Mary would be willing to go along with the lie for Steve and Danny, and their little boy.
"I love you," Danny said, and he leaned close, pressing a kiss to Steve's lips, making Steve see stars from a universe that was not their own.
Steve could feel his father slipping away, the whisper of the words - Love both of them, son, never let them go - before it was just him and Danny, and little John Matthew McGarrett-Williams/ Williams-McGarrett/ McDanno.
"I love you, too, Danno," Steve said, resting his forehead against Danny's and enjoying the solid weight, and feel of their son in his arms. "You're the mama," Steve said, never taking his eyes away from Danny's. "And I'm the papa."
Danny chuckled and shook his head. "Alright, Papa Steve, what with the way you went upstairs and crashed while I took care of our little bundle of joy last night, I can see where you might be inclined to think that, but, 'Mork & Mindy' references aside, don't you think that, what with both of being equally masculine -"
"You cried while watching Finding Dory," Steve reminded his partner, and kissed him when Danny sputtered in indignation, no doubt having a whole slew of words in his arsenal with which to defend his masculinity, and the view that only real men cried when cartoon fish faced human dilemmas. "And that's just one of the many reasons why I love you," Steve said, voice husky.
"Still doesn't make me the mama," Danny said, pouting, though the corners of his lips were quirking slightly upward all the same.
Little John Matthew gurgled, drawing both men's attention to him. Steve had a feeling that their lives were never going to be the same, and oddly enough, he was okay with that, especially with the knowledge that he'd have Danny by his side throughout the rest of it.