AN: We all know season 10 was a gong show, but it's one of my favourites in terms of how it gave my platonic-cohabitation-loving heart a chance to see that on screen, normalized. It struck me how much of an adjustment that must be for super macho Navy man Steve, the stigma of having another man live in his house.
Or…perhaps not an adjustment. Which was its own can of worms that demanded to be explored. This is a slight AU in that Junior moves out to live with Tani—but if CBS doesn't have the budget for continuity, emotional or otherwise, neither do I.
Each chapter is based around a word Steve comes to terms with. Please enjoy Steve epiphanies and lots of mellow domestic fluff.
Bon appetit!
'There's a room I need to sit in,
Surrounded by my favorite view.
And I need a hand to hold,
Someone to tell the truth—
Would it be okay if I came home to you?'
"Home to You" ~ Sigrid
~OL~
The whole thing starts with a poinsettia.
He's holding the poinsettia, see. In the grocery store lineup.
There are most likely a host of other indicators that someone would latch onto well before now, but for Steve this is how reality claps over his head. Quietly. Without fanfare, which for once feels incredibly rude.
It's a rather nice poinsettia, if Steve is allowed to say so.
The plant is blue with white accents—Steve wasn't even aware poinsettia flowers can be blue—and just so happens to be the only one left on the shelf. Purple foil envelopes the pot, held neatly in place with a strand of creamy ribbon.
Steve knew he had to buy the plant the minute he saw it all alone in the fresh flower section and, delighted, tucked it under one arm.
His other holds a basket stuffed with pizza dough and cheese dip and other unhealthy things he probably shouldn't eat. What his doctor doesn't know won't kill him. (Though he'd say it's killing Steve and then Steve would laugh it off as per usual. Why pay good money when he can re-enact this conversation in his head word for word?)
Steve admires his poinsettia and feels absurdly proud of himself. The flower is proof that he can be sensitive when the occasion calls for it, thank you very much. Plus, he's got good taste. Their state-mandated therapist can suck it.
Now consists of Steve shifting his hold on the plant—
And catching the eye of an older gentleman behind him in line.
The elderly man, complete with sweater vest and cane, is staring at Steve, which. Fair. It's not every day you see a man buying just one blue poinsettia while wearing board shorts and a Waikiki tank.
And two mismatched flip-flops.
One belongs to Danny that Steve threw on in his haste to get the shopping done before Charlie's visit, so it's far too short and his heel hangs off the back. Their shoes always get mixed up on the entryway mat.
Steve prefers taking the initiative in everything, even awkward moments at the grocery store. So he shrugs with a relaxed smile. "Don't get these on the island very often, huh? They're imported."
"It's May," the old man says, canting his head like he can't decipher Steve at all.
"Yeah." Steve hitches the basket higher, handle sweaty in his palm. "But it's not for Christmas. A friend of mine was in a bad car accident last week."
The man's face softens. "That's very kind of you and I hope they feel better."
"He needs the pick-me-up," Steve agrees.
The cash lineup moves another four feet and everyone shuffles ahead. Being Friday on a long weekend, the store is busier than normal. But spirits are high and amiable chatter fills the aisles. Steve's feeling pretty good too, with the uneventful workday that ended early and Charlie's first surfing lesson tomorrow. The weather is forecasted to be scorching.
"They smell nice," the old man says, when Steve moves just the right way for the flowers' scent to permeate surrounding air. "Just make sure pets don't get in them."
Steve turns in surprise. "Are they bad for animals?"
"The pesticides are worse than the poinsettias themselves, but yes." The man waggles a finger at the pot. "They're toxic. Had to take my cat to the vet last year when she chewed on one."
A paper airplane nosedives in Steve's stomach. Eddie's pretty smart, but he's been known to gnaw on furniture sometimes. And dig up thousands of dollars in cash. What if he gets a sudden hankering to try the flowers?
Steve's eyes cloud. "Maybe I shouldn't buy it."
"Why not?" Now the old man looks concerned too. It's a pseudo-paternal look, like Joe used to wear sometimes. Steve's stomach winches. "I'm sure your friend will love it."
"I've got a dog, see," Steve explains.
The man blinks, first at surrounding shoppers and then back to the plant. "Does your friend have a dog too?"
"No, I have a dog." Steve repeats it because, well…this is obvious. He has a dog and therefore he should rethink buying this plant. Eddie might be tempted and hurt himself. The older man said it himself that Steve should beware of potential harm to pets.
The man's lips quirk down on one side. "Is the plant going to be in your house?"
"Yes."
Steve doesn't add the duh, barely. He is many things, but he doesn't disrespect his elders if he can help it.
"Along with your friend," the man says—slowly, like Steve is five years old.
Steve narrows one eye. "…Yeah. That's the idea. Potted flowers usually go inside houses."
"Oh." The man clears his throat. "Oh, I see. Well, uh. Have a nice day."
And then he's off, because two cashiers call out at the same time to help the next customer and Steve parts ways with him at the lane split. His mind muddles through a confused fog while he unloads his basket onto the conveyer belt. The cashier is chipper, a college kid around Grace's age. Steve gives him a quick smile and fishes for his wallet.
He runs through the exchange again while watching his blue poinsettia…
It glides along the belt like a floral ice skater, graceful and simple. Frosted with beauty.
…and suddenly the fog breaks with a lightning bolt.
Corner of his lip worried between tense teeth, Steve hands over a few bills and wanders out to his car in a daze. The fog is replaced by sand, gritty and blown about his thoughts without direction. It chafes at his excitement for the weekend, the thrill of uninterrupted time with Charlie.
By the time he arrives home, Danny is already in full swing.
"Hey, Danno." Steve kicks off their flip-flops and follows the sounds of Danny's flurry up the stairs. "What are you doing?"
"Hey, yourself," says Danny, instead of answering Steve's question.
He finishes wrestling a fitted sheet onto a small guest bed. It's clearly taken some finagling, with not being able to bend very far thanks to the broken ribs.
The upstairs den has been re-converted into a child's bedroom, like it used to be when Mary was little. Accents of pink still linger around the light switch and shelves. It's a bit of a relief that Junior moved in with Tani last month, freeing up three separate bedrooms for them all. They'd never have been able to host Charlie otherwise.
The kitchen is also spotless, when they finish making the bed and head downstairs, though Steve notes that Danny seems pale despite his cleaning fervor—and the very obvious attempt at normalcy.
It highlights lurid green and purple bruises on his temple and the dazzle of gauges along his knuckles.
"Sit down before you fall down." Steve jabs Danny's elbow until he flops into a chair at the dining room table. Assessing Danny's mental state is another matter, much more difficult since he won't make direct eye contact. "You okay?"
"Fine," Danny says in that flippant tone, like he always does.
Steve shakes his head but doesn't push it. "Got you a present."
"Oh yeah?"
Danny reaches for the grocery bag to put away a loaf of bread.
"Aht!" Steve slaps his hand away and pushes him back down. "You're in pain. You shouldn't even be cleaning, let alone hiking up and down stairs."
Despite Danny's mandatory grumbles, curiosity flickers across his face. "I'm feeling better now. A present?"
"I know you are or you wouldn't have invited Charlie in the first place, but you need to take it easy."
"Thank you, doctor."
Danny's chin angles forward.
"Oh for the love of…" Steve rolls his eyes. He heads out to the truck's passenger seat and comes back in with the poinsettia. "I don't know why I bother with the mystery of it. You have no sense of patience."
Shameless, Danny makes grabby hands all the while.
Then he catches sight of the plant.
His arms drop, along with his jaw. It's not an expression Steve gets to see very often, at least not without someone getting shot first or crash landing a plane.
"I'd say get well soon," Steve quips, to cover up those odd nerves the old man sparked in him, "but you're back on your feet sooner than I expected."
He hands the plant to Danny, more reverent than he needs to, and stands back to take in Danny's reaction. He imagined it the whole ride home.
But Danny isn't looking at the flower at all.
He's studying Steve.
"This is really pretty," he says, the last thing Steve expects to come out of his mouth. Especially since Danny still won't, you know, look at the flower.
There's no sarcasm in Danny's words—he's completely sincere and completely taken aback.
Steve almost replies with something mortifying like it's the exact same colour as your eyes before he catches himself and remembers why this threw him off so much in the first place.
"You got me a plant just because?" It hurts a little that Danny even has to ask, that he sounds so shocked.
And Steve has a much meaner but also much more normal thought that stupid questions are making the rounds today.
"No need to write home about it." This jibe flows off Steve's tongue easier than the first. "It was the last one left."
Danny finally shifts his attention to the poinsettia. He turns it around in admiration, just like Steve did. One thumb twirls over the petals before Danny sticks his nose in the center to smell better. A smile fans out from blue flowers.
Something in the tenderness of how he touches them dries out Steve's mouth.
"Thanks, Steve. Why a flower?"
"Guy can't buy his friend a present?"
Danny lifts one perfectly timed eyebrow.
Steve shrugs, as if that will let him crawl inside the nonchalant attitude he's going for. He loves Danny to the point that it makes him ill sometimes but he also hates that his partner doesn't know when to let things go. "Dunno. I know how much…how you've been struggling, physically and…well. I just wanted you in a good mood for when Charlie comes."
This is a lie. This is the lie-i-est of lies. Not because it's far removed from fact, but because Steve is a fool to think it's the only reason. Everything feels topsy turvy, out of place. Like someone shrunk Steve's skin in the wash.
Now is usually when Danny quips back, says something clever and inane that makes them both snit at each other.
But Steve waits for a joke that never comes.
Instead, Danny slowly stands and takes his plant over to the sink. He leaves it there while opening the upper left cupboard. His hand beelines for a plastic pitcher at the back without even needing to look, though he is stretched up on the balls of his feet—part of an ongoing debate about how dishes should be at his height and not Steve's.
Steve puts away groceries and watches him fill the pitcher.
Danny waters the plant trickle by trickle, taking great care to pat the soil down in each spot. It's so agonizingly gentle that Steve almost asks him to stop.
"There." Danny sets his poinsettia on the counter in a direct sunbeam, so it throws turquoise light everywhere. "This really brightens up your kitchen."
Steve thinks about his conversation with the old man.
"Flowers belong in houses."
Danny gives him a funny look. "Did you bump your head on the way in, or is this State Obvious Things Day?"
There's the usual barb, but Steve's too busy trying to figure out the desert in his thoughts to appreciate it.
~OL~
"Where are my keys?" Steve lifts the floor mat. "Where are my keys?"
Danny decided to eat breakfast on the go this morning, his cheeks full of omelet burrito. He sits in the passenger seat of Steve's truck while Steve himself has a minor freak out in the driver's seat.
He never misplaces things. Ever.
Keys go in pockets along with wallets and phones. Just like they always have and just like they always will. Nor does he leave his truck doors unlocked overnight like this.
"You stuck them in the visor last night, babe. After we got home from the debrief."
Steve halts his frantic pants-pocket-patting routine and glances at Danny. He bypasses the sudden record scratch in his brain for the important point. "No way."
"I saw you with my own two eyes, Steven."
"That's just asking to get my car stolen. I never leave my keys there."
"Well, last night you did." Danny reaches up for the visor over Steve's head and sure enough—out tumbles Steve's key ring right onto his face. "You're welcome. Now let's go. We're late for a case update."
Steve swallows, stunned. He holds the keys in his palm like he's never seen them before.
Even with Steve's breathy tone, Danny doesn't miss a beat, though he also takes the coffee from Steve's other hand and replaces it with a power bar from the arm rest that Steve doesn't remember putting there. "A hardy breakfast can mean the difference between catching a criminal in a foot chase and dying, you know that? Probably not, since your army dictators thought MREs are a nutritious meal."
"Navy," Steve corrects on autopilot.
A flock of phrases flitter around his thoughts from this banal conversation. But only one word trips him up. He thinks about the old man and his gaping stare before he hustled away from Steve.
About the flower. About how Danny can navigate Steve's kitchen cupboard blindfolded. About two toothbrushes in the bathroom and shoes in a disorganized heap on the mat.
"You waiting for a signed invitation?" Danny gestures to the driveway. "Let's go, Rambo."
They do, once Steve starts the truck—also on autopilot—and tears free the granola bar from its cellophane puzzle box. He ends up just ripping it open.
"Animal."
"These are good," Steve notes around his own mouthful, raiding the arm rest for seconds.
Danny pretends to look indifferent. "They'd better be. I made them a few days ago."
Steve's eyes widen. "You made these? With what?"
"The oatmeal and honey you bought, plus some of Grace's leftover chocolate chips." Danny licks his finger and works at a stain on his shirt sleeve—all while sipping Steve's coffee. "The ones I put on the fridge list? Remember?"
"Oh yeah."
Steve has completely forgotten about the little whiteboard he hung up on the fridge back when Junior lived with them. They used to take turns purchasing items on the scribbled list and erasing them.
Apparently Steve bought these ingredients on autopilot too.
"'Oh yeah,' he says." Danny smiles in fake exasperation. Hidden amongst the tuck of his dimples is faint affection. "As if he's not a decorated SEAL and yet still can't string more than two words together."
"Better than you, mumbling at the press conference last night."
"I only need one to shut you up," Danny fires back.
The worst part? Danny has no idea how right he is. Steve can't stop thinking about that one word the whole day.
~OL~
To call Danny a human lie detector is a bit generous, no matter how they joke.
Far too generous, some might say, based on how he believed Rachel about his son's paternity. Or how he often loses when the team plays two truths and a lie at the bar. Or how he sometimes doesn't know when a suspect is glossing over the real story with a sort-of truth. (To be fair, half the time neither does Steve, and that's where they balance each other out.)
But Danny has an uncanny ability to read emotional intent behind words, and that's the foreign country Steve is still learning the customs of.
He's honestly horrified to think what their case-closure rate might be—or not be—if they didn't have Danny on the team.
Just the other day, he took one look at a suburban housewife and knew she was hiding their missing cocaine shipment. A quickly drafted warrant and an even quicker search of her house later, they found the drugs under a floorboard in her daughter's bedroom, right where Danny had a hunch they'd be.
"Something about the nervous eyes," he told an incredulous Quinn and Steve. "The lines around peoples' eyes never lie."
Danny might not always know what people are thinking or how to interpret the words coming out of their mouths, but he can almost always tell what they're feeling.
Steve is an idiot, because sometimes he forgets this too.
When he comes home from a late catch-up drink with Nahele, Danny is planted on the couch in front of a documentary about Asian elephants. Folding laundry into neat piles on the coffee table.
Something in Steve's belly hiccups over the sight.
"Thanks." Steve toes off his sneakers. "I've been meaning to do a load."
Danny points to the overflowing basket of clothes at his feet. "More like three. We let it go too long."
"Three?" Steve's tone inches towards incredulous.
"Yup. Just took the third out now."
"Wow." Blowing out a noisy breath, Steve sinks beside Danny. "Duly noted for next time."
Danny snorts. "Hopefully there won't be a next time."
Steve watches the elephant matriarch and her calf for a while, then Danny meticulously flipping the sleeves of a T-shirt with his ring fingers. After tucking them to the back, he folds the shirt in half, with extra care to smooth out wrinkles. Lightly pats it down on top of the others.
It's one of Steve's old Navy T-shirts. Dark blue with faint grey stripes along the hem in a tight barcode pattern. The living room wafts with a funny scent mix of lavender detergent and the half-eaten bowl of chicken stew Danny left sitting on the table next to his pile of socks. It's a comforting cocktail, the smell of childhood sick days and spring lunches on the lanai.
Thinking of childhood and therefore Doris is too much work, so Steve tucks the dangerous association away.
Like Danny can read the shift in mood without looking—he probably can—he says out of nowhere, "Did you know baby elephants suck their trunks like kids suck their thumbs?"
"What is it with you and nature documentaries lately?"
"I appreciate the beauty of life, Einstein. They're soothing." Danny smiles, teeth glittering along with his eyes.
A return of that painful, endearing sensation makes Steve look away. He slides down until the back of the couch cradles his neck. "No, I didn't know that."
"Neither did Grace. I texted her and she sent back a picture of when she was a baby."
Danny shows Steve his phone, a faded photograph of toddler Grace in a romper, sucking on her fingers. Steve smiles too, because it's easy. That little girl, who will always be somewhat of a nine year old in both their minds, is effortless to love. It's like asking Steve if he knows how to breathe.
And sitting here, too, is easy: the bizarrely hypnotic sight of Danny folding laundry. Their knees just barely touching, still enough to send warmth through Steve's pant leg. Dusk fading into nightfall. Neat pyramids of funky socks stacked on top of old issues of Jerry's conspiracy magazines.
"I don't know where you find all those." Steve flaps a hand at the socks. His arm feels heavy, like his ever-so-slightly slurred tongue, tipsy with fatigue.
Danny pauses. It's an out of character pause, until Steve sees that he's holding a positively ancient shirt that Steve should have thrown out years ago. The thing is threadbare. Danny folds it, with an echo of the awed way he touches the flower sometimes when he thinks Steve isn't looking.
The hiccup turns into a choked feeling.
"Whimsy is for all ages," Danny finally says. He triumphantly balls up a pair of geometric sheep socks. "If I can't have fun with my sock collection, then what's the point?"
"Says the man who owns ten different versions of the same blue shirt."
Danny takes this in stride and magnanimously lets Steve get away with the weak tease. In fact, everything about Steve feels weak, tired, too weighted for his spine to hold up. The only payback Steve gets for the comment is a poke to his knee.
But Danny is still Danny and so after a minute he's talking again. "You don't have to be there for everybody all the time, Steve. I know you haven't really…really processed her death much."
They don't do conversations like this often, missing a step in the escalator only to stumble face-flat into emotional territory. It's supposed to be more of a graceful step off. Gradual. Arriving there as if by chance when in reality, it's a cushioned fall.
Steve thought he'd been doing a pretty bang-up job hiding the hollow feeling.
"I wanted to see Nahele," Steve argues, quiet. "Being around family after a loss is healthy, right? That's what they always say."
Danny hums a neutral sound of agreement.
Steve tries out another tease, hoping it will mask how useless he feels slumped on his own couch in the dim lighting because he's too tired to walk up the stairs, enthralled by the sight of Danny folding laundry. "It's why you're my self-mandated house guest."
Only when the words leave Steve's mouth does he hear the double-edged sting of them. Their tectonic emotional underneath, as Danny would call it.
The comment frazzles between their bodies in startled zaps before Danny stops folding altogether. Steve doesn't notice how slouched over his elbows Danny is until he straightens. He twists to meet Steve's eyes head on.
"Thought we had this conversation. That you're good with me being here…"
"We did, and I am. You're always welcome here."
Whap. There Steve goes, face planting off the escalator. He wants to smack himself.
Danny's clocking the lines around Steve's eyes now. It's a velvet soft version of the look he uses on cases. Something about its intensity prickles behind Steve's eyes and he swallows a thick knot in his throat.
Then Danny's own lines spread into a grin. "You're just keeping me around for my superior soup recipes."
"And laundry," says Steve, because he's always liked playing with fire. "Can't forget about the fact I haven't had to do laundry in four months."
"Cheeky bastard." Danny shakes his head around the ghost of a laugh.
Steve almost, almost jokes back that it takes one to know one—but he's not that reckless.
He's just grateful to not come home to a dark house; a boring domestic scene instead of heartbreak. To know that someone would be upset if he didn't make it home at all. The house is quiet and messy, but Steve knows it like a fingerprint.
On screen, the elephant herd family crosses a ford in some gushing river, their hides asphalt-dark with rain. The baby holds its trunk above water to breathe when its mouth goes under.
Two of the older elephants twine their trunks together once they reach the other side, as if in reassurance that they're both okay. One trumpets loudly and swings her ears.
Steve sniffs. That dumb feeling gets worse, because soon the hollow hole in his chest fills up with more painful squeezes.
"Steve?" Danny's voice is oh so carefully level.
"Yeah?"
Danny takes extra time smoothing out the edges of a pillow case, and that's how Steve knows he has his partner's full attention. Probably even more so than if Danny stared him in the face.
"Do you like having me here?"
Steve opens his mouth, not even sure where to start with that.
Danny steamrolls on. "If you feel crowded or want your space back, you know you can ask me. I'd be out of here in a heartbeat. You know that, right?"
At some point the socked pads of his right toes have ended up on top of Steve's bare ones and somehow that's correlated to the chest squeezes. He's not even sure Danny notices. "Of course. But…"
Danny starts in on a pile of sweaters. A tad more aggressive than he needs to. "But?"
"But I don't know what I'd do if you weren't, you know…" Steve struggles to say it, even though this is Danny and the man gave him part of his liver without a second thought. They've seen each other trussed up and messed up. The wonder of that hits Steve afresh. More than enough to say it louder, with confidence—"Here, I mean. I'd hate it if you weren't here."
Just the fleeting image of coming home to a cold, empty house makes Steve balk.
Not only mentally. He pushes back a little into the couch cushions and balls up one fist. It's not hard to imagine—but trudging through the off hours without Danny is.
That's new. That's very new. It too is easy, effortless in the same way holding Grace and Charlie is and irritating Danny on long car rides.
What would the old man say to that?
Steve eyes the poinsettia through the kitchen doorway, still cheery as ever on the counter, and his stomach squirms.
"Good," says Danny. "I wouldn't want to cramp your style. If you had any, that is."
For once it's Steve who doesn't take the bait. "This is just a house—and a sad one at that, given its history—if there aren't people in it. With you here, and when the kids stay over, it feels like home. To be honest, I've thought of selling before this year."
That catches Danny's attention. He looks up, though not really at Steve. "Home?"
It's not the part Steve expected him to latch onto, but there's something gratifying in the role reversal. "Yeah, home."
"Oh." Danny blinks a few times. "Wasn't sure…"
"I am."
"Oh," says Danny again. Staring off at a wall he's not seeing.
He looks a little lost, so Steve reaches over to help fold some of their endless hoodie collection. His contribution is sloppier, like a teenage boy learning to do his own laundry for the first time, but it unwinds the tense line of Danny's shoulders.
Steve folds one of Danny's equally threadbare high school hoodies and tries not to smile at how short the arms are compared to his. So short that he's not sure even Grace would fit into it comfortably—not that he'll ever tell Danny, if he wants to live another day.
Steve places it on top of the pile and pats the cotton fleece. Danny pats it too, right in the hand-shaped depression Steve's fingers made.
And, well. That's that.
Steve pushes away the incessant sandy feeling in his sternum for another day.