A/N: One of Angelofjoy's prompts was about your favorite word. I already had "cerulean" in mind. It seemed apt for Hawaii, but ended up inspiring a longer Avengers story. Go figure.
Cerulean Sky
Danny had been annoying Steve all day.
The detective was pissed at being forced to do all Steve's paperwork when Steve "ran off" for a meeting with the governor. It didn't help that, 1, Danny had been bugging Steve for a week about the deadline for the quarterly budget report and, 2, the meeting involved a surf and turf lunch at a luxurious country club.
Retaliating to insult and injury, Danny began inserting words from his word-a-day vocabulary-builder calendar. (Steve was going to get Kono for that joke Christmas gift. As if Danny needed to build his vocabulary!)
It was past quitting time by the time Steve finished reviewing the report, complicated by looking up the unfamiliar words to make sure Danny hadn't (accidentally or on purpose) sabotaged his boss. (He hadn't. He wasn't that mad.)
Nor was he mad enough to decline Steve's invitation to the team for beer and some grilled fish after work. Danny showed up at Steve's with a big bowl of salad, because Steve didn't need a big dinner after his filling lunch. (OK, Danny was still a little mad.)
While Steve lit the charcoal, Danny set down his salad and pulled a beer out of the ice in the cooler. It was time for revenge, the SEAL decided.
"Look at that beautiful cerulean sky," Steve enthused, though he was slyly looking at his partner, not at the sky.
Danny grinned, because he recognized payback when he heard it attempted. "Ehhh." he made a noise like a game show buzzer. "Incorrect, but thanks for playing," he said like a condescending game show host.
"What?" Steve was outraged. "What's wrong with 'cerulean.' It means blue."
"It means 'blue like the sky,'" Danny corrected. "You can say cerulean sea, cerulean eyes ..." He batted his baby blues at Steve, making his partner laugh in spite of himself.
"Sorry, partner, not my type. This is just a 'marriage' of convenience."
Danny ignored the reference to the number of people who asked how long the bickering pair had been married. He finished his sentence, "... But it's redundant to say a cerulean sky."
"Well, what color would you call it?"
Danny looked past his partner, pursed his lips in thought, and answered "Amethyst. And pumpkin."
"Those aren't shades of blue," Steve scoffed, then his words stuttered to a halt when he turned to see the sunset. The sky had shaded to a light — well, amethyst. Ephemeral clouds formed streaks of pumpkin, shading from bright orange to yellow orange, but all shades of Halloween jack-o-lanterns.
"Wow!" Steve said.
Hawaii is known for its spectacular sunsets, but something about this one — maybe just because they paid attention — seemed especially colorful.
Wispy clouds at different levels caught the light at different times, so the colors shifted constantly. Every time the men looked back, the whole color scheme had changed. Once the whole sky seemed shaded in pink.
"What color would you call that?" Steve asked.
Because he had a 12-year-old daughter, Danny was an inadvertent expert in pink.
He pointed at different areas of the sky. "Carnation, fuchsia, salmon, raspberry … um …" He tried to think of a word for pale pink that wasn't "pale pink" and finally settled on "… cotton candy and that edging, there can only be hot pink."
And by the time he'd finished his catalog, the pinks had shaded into lavenders and violets and the sky behind was a dusky indigo.
They watched the light show fade into darkness, though they could still find traces of blue in the highest clouds. Finally the slam of a car door and the voices of Chin and Kono woke them from their color coma.
"I apologize," Danny said as they turned back to their dinner prep.
"For what?"
"Maybe 'cerulean sky' isn't redundant when you say it in Hawaii."
A/N: I know. It's short. I do have an idea for a long story but the Avengers keep cutting in and stealing what little time I have to write. Super soldier seems to trump super SEAL.