Title: By Any Other Name 2

Summary: What could be worse than Danno as a nickname?

Disclaimer: Hawaii Five-0 is not mine. I'm just borrowing the concepts and characters for a little while.

Spoilers: 1.19, Ne Me'e Laua Na Paio; sequel to 'By Any Other Name'.

A/N: I did not ever intend to write a sequel, but once I heard Steve call Danny, 'D', I really couldn't help myself. ;0]

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"What is it with you and nicknames?" Danny asks, breaking up the silence between them as they drive back to HQ.

Steve glances away from the road and says with a furrowed brow, "I don't follow."

Danny emits a frustrated sigh before explaining, "Just now, back at Johnny D's garage when you found that memory card in the snow globe— You said, 'Hey D, check this out.'"

"I did?" he says before Aneurysm Face makes a brief appearance. Danny briefly toys with the idea of calling Steve out on the use of a Face, but decides against it knowing the topic was a button he didn't want to push right now. One argument at a time, he thought to himself.

He nods; then realizes Steve might not have seen it as he was actually paying careful attention to the road for a change so he confirms out loud, "You did."

Steve looks at him and shrugs a shoulder, "I didn't realize. Must have slipped out because of our suspect's name."

That made a certain kind of sense to Danny given the strange way Steve's mind works at times. He was on the verge of dropping the issue when the scene suddenly plays back in his memory. And, when factoring in Steve's reactions during this conversation… Son of a—

"That's crap, my friend, and you know it," he calmly says pointing his finger at Steve.

"What is?"

"You calling me 'D' by accident. There was intent. You purposely called me by that moniker."

"Moniker?" Steve questions with an amused look on his face.

"Yes, moniker, Steven. Why do you insist on constantly butchering my name?" Danny asks genuinely curious and only slightly perturbed.

Steve is silent for a long moment. Stopped at a red light, he turns towards Danny and admits, "I thought it sounded catchy."

"Catchy?" Steve nods and checks to see if the light has turned green yet.

"Yeah, Johnny D is a pretty catchy name for guy who can't tell the Space Needle apart from the Eiffel Tower. So I thought 'D' would be a catchy nickname for you."

"Well, it's not. I don't want a nickname that derives from some shmuck thief's! My name is Danny. Dan—ny. You got that?" The light turns green and Steve turns to continue driving, his hands tightening slightly on the steering wheel as his partner continues to rant. "Not 'Danno', like you spell it, or 'Dano', as Grace spells it even though she's allowed to call me that, and definitely NOT 'D'. Got it now?"

"I got it. Geez, calm down, Danny. I just thought you might like it better since you hate it when I call you Danno."

"Well, I don't. Why can't you just call me Danny like everyone else does? Heck, even calling me Daniel is marginally better than 'D' or 'Danno' – even though only Rachel and my mother call me by that name. Which, OK…" He lifts up his hands in a fending off gesture and shakes his head. "Forget I said that. Don't ever call me Daniel. It would be way too awkward. Even more awkward than Danno for reasons I don't want to talk about right now."

Steve turns onto the final road leading back to HQ. "Fine," he huffs. "I won't call you 'D' again. Happy?"

"Ecstatic," he responds with as much sarcasm as he can muster.

Danny looks out the window and watches the now familiar scenery go by. Suddenly something important occurs to him as Steve is parking the car.

"Hey! Wait a minute," he nearly shouts as Steve opens his car door to get out. He has to grab Steve's arm to stop him from getting away with— "You said you wouldn't call me 'D' again, but you never said you would stop calling me 'Danno'."

Steve jerks his arm out of Danny's grasp and gets out of the car. He then leans back in, smirks, and says, "You're right, I didn't."

Standing up, he shuts the door leaving a sputtering, hand-flailing Danny behind. Steve can hear Danny getting out of the car, mumbling obscenities, and quoting legal reasons why he could shoot his partner right now and not be charged with murder.

Steve smiles inwardly and lengthens his stride. Normally he'd shorten it a bit so Danny could keep up, but he wanted to avoid arguing in front of HQ yet again. It was better to do that in the privacy of their offices.

Besides, he thinks as he enters the building, Danny keeps saying he doesn't like me to call him 'Danno', but he doesn't really protest like he used to since our discussion on how to spell it.

As he heads up the stairs to the Five-0 office, knowing Danny prefers the elevator because of his knee, his thoughts continue. He must either be getting used to it or knows that I really do mean it as a term of endearment, of friendship. And, I always let him get away with calling me Steven.

So, we're even, right?

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Later that day, Steve says "Book 'er, Danno," after Anne Davis admits to killing Lindsey Roberts – and Danny doesn't even bat an eye at the name.

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The end.

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A/N: Is it just me, or is it really weird that there's a scene in a new episode that inspires a sequel to a story that I procrastinated in posting, just one day after publishing it? It's almost like I planned it – which I didn't, by the way! =D

Thanks for reading!