Way 17
Make
special time available to her and your children.

"Why does Uncle Steve not get to have the day off for Christmas like you and I do?"

Danny smiles down at Grace, seated at the kitchen table with a laptop open in front of her. The Skype program is open but sitting unused at the moment and Danny glances at the clock on the wall, watching the second hand tick the last thirty seconds down slowly.

"People in the military don't always get to be home with their families on Christmas or other holidays, if the job they're doing is in far from where they live," Danny explains gently. "We're not even sure we're going to get to talk to him today."

"But I thought it was scheduled for ten o'clock."

"It is," Chin speaks up from behind them, and Grace turns to look at him. "But just because the Navy scheduled this as the time for Steve's SEAL team to speak to their family members, doesn't mean they're actually free to do it."

"I don't think I like the Navy," Grace frowns, turning back to look at the laptop screen.

Kono chuckles from Danny's right as he mumbles, "Join the club."

"If he can be here," Chin assures Grace, nodding toward the laptop, "he will."

Kono elbows Danny's arm, sympathetic to the way his entire body is tensed, the way his hands are clenched into tight fists, the rigid line of his back and neck. Danny tries to relax and forces a smile, but it's been four-and-a-half months since Steve was recalled to active duty, and the entire team's been on edge for at least three-quarters of that time.

All they want to do is see that he's alive and breathing. Even something as quick as a thirty-second glimpse will assuage their fears.

And so they wait.

Grace fidgets a little in the chair, staring intently at the screen as though she can will the Skype video phone to ring.

When it does, all four of them flinch a little.

Grace grins and uses the mousepad to accept the incoming call.

The picture is grainy at first, but they can hear some fiddling with something going on and then suddenly it clears.

His face is covered in camo paint.

His hair is cropped short and yet still somehow sticking out everywhere.

His eyes are a little bloodshot.

He's wearing full fatigues including a bulletproof vest that looks like it might've taken a couple of hits.

He looks at them from the screen of the laptop, mouth open a little, because he wasn't expecting to see his entire ohana before him.

When he smiles, his team and adopted niece breathe a collective sigh of relief.

"Mele Kalikimaka," he says, and if his voice is a little raspy and thick with emotion, nobody cares.

Kono and Chin and Grace wave and give him a "Mele Kalikimaka!" in response.

"Merry Christmas," Danny says when their voices die down.

Steve looks him in the eye. "Merry Christmas, Danno." He manages to smile and look apprehensive all at the same time. "I've only got another thirty seconds." He looks off to the side for a split second, then looks at each of them in turn. "I'll see you in two weeks," he whispers.

While Kono, Chin and Grace are cheering, giving high-fives and fist bumps and creating a general ruckus of happiness, Danny crouches next to where his daughter sits in the chair, catches Steve's eye and says, "I'm holding you to that."

Thirty seconds isn't nearly enough after so long.

But, Danny thinks as Steve gives one final wave and catches Grace's hand-blown kiss in mid-air before ending the call, it's a helluva lot better than nothing on Christmas Day.

Steve will be home in two weeks.

Grace hugs Danny tightly, Kono's hand drops to his left shoulder. Chin's hand drops to his right.

Two weeks.

They'll all hold onto that for now.


Author's Note: Way 18 contains spoilers for Season 2.

Way 18
Be trustworthy.

"Men trust their ears less than their eyes."
-Herodotus

He'd never said it.

Hell, neither of them had.

Some would tell you that you could never trust another human being. And while Steve's learned the hard way that he might've been better off following that advice, he's far too aware of the fact that a few rotten apples, as his mother once told him, don't make for an entirely bad barrel.

Still, earning his trust wasn't an easy thing to do.

Which was why his and Danny's partnership – hell, the entirety of their relationship from bow to stern – came as a not-unpleasant surprise to a man who'd made the decision on the turn of a dime to leave the only life he'd ever really known just to find the man who murdered his father.

Even that day in the garage, the underpinning of something larger had been palpable. Steve would never have commandeered the detective and dragged him off to follow leads if his gut had told him the man couldn't be trusted.

It had been in the raw honesty that came from blue eyes.

The belligerent jut of the chin when the shorter man challenged him.

The protectiveness when his daughter was mentioned.

It had been the actions of following him with gun drawn into the fray even as his words made it seem like he'd rather shoot Steve than any perpetrator they might find.

The constant pushing up into the space of someone who could kill him in less than a second.

The blow to his jaw, a retaliatory gesture that earned a man who hated Hawaii respect from one who loved it.

It had been the entirety of what Steve saw in a fiery, mouthy, unexpected package named Danny Williams. The tells were there. All the signs. Steve had gotten good at reading people at Annapolis. In Naval Intelligence. As a SEAL.

He'd allowed his joy over seeing someone who understood intimately who and what he was to overshadow that ability to read, yet Danny had known from Beat One that Nick Taylor wasn't to be trusted.

They'd both been snowed by Jenna.

And yet each and every member of his team had traveled halfway 'round the world without anything near the type of training they should've had before undertaking a mission worthy of a SEAL team.

In those last moments he'd thought for sure the jig was up. That his trusting of the wrong person was going to be the thing that took his life.

He hadn't trusted those who loved him most, enough.

But they had trusted how well they knew him. That hewould have gone to the ends of the Earth to save any one of them had their positions been reversed. They had risked so much to save his life. Risked everything.

He didn't know what to do with that. He couldn't process it. Couldn't equate trusting them to have his backs daily on Five-0 business, with trusting in the love of their ohana enough to maybe leave Malia with a dead fiancée and Grace without a father – to possibly lose a Navy commission, their jobs and livelihoods – all for him.

The knowledge, when it finally sunk into his mind and gripped his heart one night a week later, nearly broke him.

And began to rebuild him.

Under the light of a full moon, on the beach behind his house, Danny finally saw him cry. Knowing as his hand rested lightly between his partner's shoulder blades, that this was one thing Steve would never trust to anyone else.