Author's Note: So the incredibly talented, devoted, and unbelievably disciplined Stellarmeadow posted a photo of a shirt ( dp/B015G0F25Q/ref=strm_sub_193_nad_4_1) that Danny might get Steve, a shirt which is so perfect for Steve that I demand to know why we have not yet seen him in it on the show. I decided to turn this into a fluffy, adorable, heartwarming Christmas fic (one of many, I am sure, as I love this time of year), and while this will be one of my shorter fictions, I hope you enjoy it all the same. Merry Christmas to everyone (I don't care if it's a month early either)!
Disclaimer: Hawaii Five-O, as well as the characters found within the series, are owned by CBS Productions, K/O Paper Products, and 101st Street Productions. No profit is being made off of this work.
Hawaii Five-0
"A new beach towel."
"No."
"Gift card to the firing range."
"We go to HPD's firing range and you steal the Navy's training range with Joe whenever you have the chance, so no." Danny leaned back in his office chair and propped his feet up on his desk, crossing them at the ankle and slotting his fingers together comfortably on his stomach. Steve had been trying to guess what Danny had gotten him for Christmas for the better part of the day. So far, his partner was zero for…well, Danny had stopped counting sometime around lunch.
"Golf club?"
"What, so that you can beat me with it? No, you putz."
"Danny!" It was so funny when Steve whined. Danny often times compared him to Charlie when he did, and this time was no exception. "Babe, I have two kids. The puppy eyes, the whining, the pleading isn't going to get you anywhere. You'll just have to wait until Christmas." He watched as Steve planted his hands on his hips and breathed harshly through his nose. "What if I tell you what I got you?"
"Nope."
"…Danny, you're forcing me to consider drastic measures."
"You're so impatient, you're like a child! Jeez, Steve, Charlie and Grace aren't nearly as bad as you are! I'll give your present to you on Christmas Day and you'll find out then!" He watched as Steve pulled out his phone and began tapping away. "Now what are you doing?"
Instead of answering, Steve continued to tap away at the screen, and Danny heard the notification of a text being sent. "This isn't an episode of 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire', Steven; you don't get to phone a friend on this one." He uncrossed his ankles and then crossed them again, changing up which leg was on top and which one on the bottom, and heard his own phone notification go off as he did so. Leaning forward and picking it up, he saw a text from Grace and swiped right.
"You text my daughter to find out what I got you!?" Danny turned the phone towards Steve so that he could plainly see a screencap of the text his partner had sent to Grace. "And you tried to bribe her with Taylor Swift tickets?"
"Not anymore," Steve grumbled, looking slightly betrayed.
"Oh no, you're buying her those tickets Steve. Floor seats, babe."
"Danny!"
"Steven," Danny's feet hit the ground and he stood up. "Two days, Steven. Two measly days, 48 hours until Christmas. I bet you've had to wait longer for a target to pop his head out of a cave before you could shoot him. So, for your trouble, and for trying to turn my daughter against me – which, by the way, you had to know I'd already taken care of that since I knew you'd go ask her what it is that I got you – Grace gets floor seats to the Taylor Swift concert in January."
His partner heaved a heavy, dramatic sigh, but it was all for show. Of course, Steve would get the tickets no problem, and of course he would wait until Christmas and not be angry; such was their relationship. And perhaps Danny giving in just a little bit was also their relationship. "Come by tomorrow night," he relented quietly, "you and me, we'll exchange gifts then."
Steve grinned. "I was supposed to get you something too?"
"Get out, you menace."
Hawaii Five-0
Even after all his years in Hawaii, Danny still couldn't get one hundred percent behind Hawaiian Christmases. The state had its own unique holiday fanfare, of course; the annual parade in Honolulu was interesting and the pineapple, coconut, and beach themed Christmas ornaments were certainly new. But Danny missed the traditional seasonal surroundings he'd grown up with. He missed decorated Christmas trees that could be seen through every snow lined window of each and every house he passed, and walking through downtown Newark and smelling foods and desserts that were only made during the holiday season. He missed hearing Christmas music everywhere he went and driving through the snow, watching his breath at the same time as he watched the road while waiting patiently for his old, beat up four door sedan to heat up. It was strange walking through downtown Honolulu or Waikiki and not seeing wreaths or holly or tinsel strung up through the railings and doors, not feeling the crunch and cold of ice beneath his feet or even feeling a chilly breeze break through his coat.
It was the one time of year where Danny's heart, sometimes for the day, sometimes for just a few hours, longed for his birth home.
But never when he was with his kids, and, eventually over the years, never when he was with Steve, and that was a good thing, because this year, Rachel had the kids for Christmas and that may have been the reason why Danny had softened the previous day and asked for Steve to come by. He had the gag gift all wrapped and ready to go alongside his 'real' gift. He and Steve had done this for years now – a silly gift, one that usually poked fun at the other for their many idiosyncrasies, and then the true gift, the one that had heart and thought put into it. All that was missing now was his oddly late partner-
Who, it sounded like, was putting his key in the door at that very moment. Sure enough, a few seconds later, Danny's front door swung open and Steve entered carrying a gift bag with him. Danny smirked over his shoulder, taking in the site of his tardy partner. "Late night shopping?"
"Only for bags. I didn't have any, so I had to run out and get one – tissue paper too, so that I could wrap Charlie and Gracie's gifts." Steve lugged his gifts around the couch and set them next to the tree before taking a seat next to Danny. He looked around for a few moments, as though searching for something. Danny furrowed his eyebrows. "What?"
"Cookies?" Steve's look of hope could have been compared to any child swearing on a bible they'd heard Santa Clause on the roof.
"Cook- My God," Danny shook his head. "You're as bad as Charlie."
"Do you have any?"
Danny gave a long suffering eyeroll but none the less got up and headed towards the kitchen. When he came back, he had a plate filled with his famous Christmas Cookies and two glasses of milk, and he was willing to swear in a court of law that he heard Steve moan happily when he took the first bite. Danny could only shake his head. "You're ridiculous," he muttered, but there was a fond look on his face.
"Ridiculously in love with these cookies," Steve returned without missing a beat – or a bite. "Kids get off okay?"
"Yea," Danny sighed, leaning back against the couch and propping his feet up on the coffee table. "They'll be back January 5th. It's Charlie's first trip to London." He worried his lip with his teeth, willing himself not to finish his thought. It may have been years since he'd found out that Charlie was his, but every now and then, Danny felt that sharp pain of anger return when Charlie was having a 'first' that he wasn't a part of. He'd missed so many of them because of Rachel's lie. He felt a nudge against his foot and looked at his partner.
"So, you take him on his first trip some place else," Steve looked at him. "Maui, Disney World - hey, has he been to New York City yet? You take him to New York?"
"Have I taken my kid to New York City?" Danny almost looked insulted. "Of course I've taken my son to New York City, what kind of a father do you take me for?"
"The best." Steve smiled and sat up, reaching over towards the tree to grab a bag and handed it to Danny. "I don't know if this is so much a present for you as it is for the rest of us, but I guess we'll see." He watched Danny reach into the bag and pull out a large mason jar with a piece of tape stuck to one side of it.
"Talking Jar," Danny turned his gift this way and that in his hands before looking at his best friend. "I'm stumped."
"You know how there are swearing jars? You know, every time you swear, you gotta put money in the jar?"
"Yea."
"Well, this is a talking jar that we'll set up at work."
"Uh-huh," Danny dead panned, sucking his bottom lip in between his teeth.
"Every time you talk at work when I tell you not to, you put money in the jar." Steve grinned. He was clearly pleased with himself.
"What happens with the money?"
"Sidestreet, Tropics, beers," Steve shrugged. "See? Benefits everyone in the end."
"You're hilarious," Danny grumbled, reaching forward to grab his gag gift and tossing it at Steve. "I tell you what, if I ever put my own money in that jar – which I won't by the way, but if I ever do – you can wear this when we go out." He watched Steve tear at the paper and dig out a grey shirt, unfolding it and laying it out over his lap to read the print on the front.
"'I'm fine'" he muttered, taking note of the large, blood red splotch of color on the lower right quarter of the t-shirt.
"You break your arm, get shot, get a concussion, lose a limb, what do you always say? 'I'm fine, Danno!'" Danny's hands mimicked Steve speaking. "Got a slug to the gut, but I'm okay, Danno; going swimming now."
"Yea, yea, yea, alright," Steve shook his head, grinning from ear to ear as he stood up and pulled off his shirt and slipped his new one on. Danny smirked.
"Wow, you must really like it, babe."
"Nah, I'm just hoping if I put it on, show some good faith towards the gift that you got me that, in return, you'll do the same when I say you can't talk anymore, and we can start to put that jar to use," Steve grinned and dug an envelope out of his back pocket. He held it up just out of Danny's reach for a moment. "Before I give this to you, and before you open it, I want your solemn promise that you'll just accept it."
Danny pursed his lips. "What'd you do?"
"Nothing."
"What'd you do, Steve?"
"I got you a Christmas present, Danny, that's all. I swear." Steve handed the envelope to Danny and crossed his arms, the latter not missing the flicker of nervousness in his partner's eyes as he took it and slid a finger underneath the fixed adhesive to open it. Once he flipped the flap open, he stuck his hand in and pulled it back out.
"These are uh, these are plane tickets."
"Yes."
"These are plane tickets for New Jersey, two of them, dated for December 28th and returning January 4th."
"Correct." Steve appeared calm, but in reality, he was waiting for the shock to wear off of his partner. He cleared his throat. "I know how you get when you don't have the kids for the holidays. Christmas is the worst time for you. So, I called your mom and told her I wanted to get you out to Jersey for the New Year. She suggested I come along. Since I sprung for the tickets, your parents paid for the hotel." He bit his lip, anxiety rising; Danny hadn't said anything yet. It seemed he was still in shock. "Danno?" He nudged the man with his foot. "The tickets are refundable, so if you don't want to go or if it's too much travel-"
Danny cut him off with that quiet, yet firm way he had when there was too much emotion in his throat for his voice to do much more than that. "Work? I mean, both us being gone for a week? On the Mainland?"
Steve smiled. "Lou will be here. He'll watch the kids, take them through the day to day tasks you and I both do; I'm pretty sure there's a New Year's conference call with the Governor on January 2nd. It'll be good for them. They'll need to know this stuff when the time comes, y'know? And I happen to know your boss, so getting the time off wasn't a problem."
Danny laughed. "Well that's good to know. Usually he's a drill sergeant about asking for time off at the last minute – gets it from his Army days."
"Pretty sure he was in the Navy, Danno." Steve grinned.
"Thanks for this, babe," Danny stuffed the tickets back into the envelope and leaned forward to place it on the coffee table. "I promise I won't say anything about knowing how insanely expensive those tickets were since I've flown round trip from Honolulu to Jersey many times before during the holidays, and I won't tell you how you could have spent your money on something much better, or-"
"Nothing better to spend money on than you or the kids, Danny."
Quiet reigned for nearly a full half minute while Danny absorbed what Steve had said, and Steve absorbed that he'd actually said it. Finally, Danny cleared his throat and reached for his 'real' gift for Steve. "Didn't cost nearly as much as those tickets but I think it's worth just as much," he slid a tall, thin, rectangular shaped object wrapped in Christmas paper towards Steve, watching as his friend sat down, muttering something about the gift having to be some kind of portrait. Danny rolled his eyes. "Oh, would you please not play the 'Guess the Gift' game? Huh? Just open it."
"Alright, alright, fine," Steve grumbled, tearing the paper at the edges carefully, just in case there was something valuable beneath the wrap, and once it had all been cleared away, Steve stared at it in awe. Looking back at him behind the glass was a four-foot-tall cacophony of photos; pictures of himself, Danny, and the kids; a few of the rest of his ohana; even a picture of Eddie, but mostly of just the four of them. Some were on the beach behind Steve's house, others were at the restaurant when Steve and Danny had been working on it, still thinking they were going to open it up, a few others were at Kamekona's shrimp truck, and Steve recognized one of him and Charlie taken during the boy's 'Bring Your Parents to School Day' event. Danny hadn't been able to make it due to being stuck in court and had asked Steve to cover for him, and the SEAL had, gladly so. Rachel had snapped the photo of Charlie sitting on Steve's lap watching one of the other parent's speak in front of the class and had sent it to Danny, along with a rather interesting line of questioning involving the two Five-O officers' relationship status.
That had been a fun conversation.
"Time to update the walls in your house, babe." Danny watched Steve take in every photo one by one, watched as he traced callused fingers reverently over both Grace and Charlie's faces. "I remember this one," he stopped suddenly over one of him and Grace, a silly grin on his face. "This was the first time you brought Grace over to the house and she saw my surf boards. She was fascinated by them."
Danny chuckled, low and deep. "Yea, I'm very, very thankful she grew out of that fascination. I don't think I could have stood the multiple, massive coronaries I would have had every time seeing her on a board."
"Danny, you know she surfs now, right?"
"She's older now," Danny replied, a little wistfully, as if that explained everything. He hated admitting that annoying fact, that his little girl, his first born, wasn't so little anymore but a young lady coming into her own. And God knew he was fiercely proud of the woman she was becoming, but he didn't hide the fact that it scared the hell out of him too.
"Charlie wants to learn too. I forgot to tell ya." Steve sat up a little straighter and leaned back, looking at Danny who was still hunched forward just a bit, but he did look over his shoulder at Steve. "Yea, I know. He's been begging me to let you give him lessons," he smiled softly. "I was wondering how long it was going to take before he just asked you himself."
"Mamo's got a friend who's running a good deal on beginner boards for kids. I figured after Charlie and Grace get back from London, I'd take him down there, let him find one he likes."
Danny leaned back against the couch, wondering why he was even going to protest, but he was. "That's a lot of money, Steve. You don't even know if he'll like it. And you just spent over three thousand dollars on First-Class round-trip airline tickets for both of us-"
"And I have so much money saved up from multiple deployments when I was younger that neither the plane tickets, nor the surf board will make a dent. If he doesn't like it, he doesn't like it," Steve shrugged. "No harm, no foul."
Danny shifted on his right side just a bit, arm to arm with his partner. "It's hundreds of dollars down the toilet, Steve. It's not just the board you're gonna buy him, I know you. It's gonna be all the surfing accessories like a wet suit or new swimming trunks or slippahs. Why don't you just rent a board for him the first few times and see how he likes it and save yourself some money?"
"Because rented boards are horrible in the water, Danny; they're used and worn down, sometimes they're not properly waxed, and I don't want him to not like surfing right off the bat because he got a crappy board on his first try." Steve narrowed his eyes, looking at Danny. "And did you just say slippahs?"
Danny blinked. "When?"
"Just now, when you were talking about what I'd buy Charlie. You said 'slippahs' instead of 'flip flops'." Steve grinned and lifted his left arm to wrap around Danny in a hug. "I feel like I just got another Christmas present."
"Stupid," Danny muttered, shaking his head. He made no move to wiggle out from under Steve's arm though and simply settled against the couch and his friend. "Slowly but surely, Danno. Slowly but surely," the SEAL murmured against his head.
"Slowly but surely what?"
"It's taken you eight years, but you're finally coming around to Island lingo. I might get you to recite some Pidgin next, who knows?"
"I know, and the answer to that question is absolutely not. That's not even a language, its like a secret code made out of three or four different actual languages that crazy people on this island use when they want to confuse or hustle visitors and tourists for a little fun."
Steve snickered quietly next to him, his body shaking as he tried to contain his laughter through Danny's rant, and once he'd done so, he leaned back fully, arm still around Danny's shoulders and sighed happily. "I love my gift, Danny; thanks."
"Yea, well." The other man shrugged. "I figured what was one more t-shirt, especially when it so perfectly described you in an injured state."
Steve rolled his eyes. "Not that gift, the other gift."
"Ohhh, the pictures," Danny lifted his head just a bit so that he could see Steve's face. "You're welcome, babe. Figured you needed some more family photos. And it looks like we both had the same idea for each other's present. You bought tickets for me to see my family in Jersey-"
"And you gave me a family," Steve finished, tightening his arm just a little around Danny's shoulders. Quiet settled around them, the kind of peaceful silence that only came the night of Christmas Eve, when children were snug in their beds and the night seemed to stretch on forever, longer than any other night of the year. Steve almost hated to break that peace. "Hey Danny?"
"Hm."
"I was thinking, you know, when we get to New Jersey and you're done failing at trying to convince me why Jersey is better than Hawaii, do you think we can talk? Maybe?"
"Talk about what?"
The only answer Steve had for Danny was turning his face towards his partner and lightly, discreetly, nervously pressing his lips against the shaved side of his head. It couldn't even qualify as a kiss. It was more of a nuzzle, but the message was well and truly received when Danny took a deep breath and then relaxed more fully against Steve.
"Yea, babe. We can talk."
Content for the moment, Steve settled back and closed his eyes, happy to simply bask in the Christmas quiet with Danny, daring to hope that perhaps by next Christmas they might be just a little bit more than friends. It had taken both of them a long while to pull their heads out of their respective asses, to indulge in longer looks and softer words and more time spent together rather than with the rest of the team, but they'd done it.
Slowly but surely, they'd done it.