'Don't know if you know, but I just want to tell you so
That you're the wisest funny one that I will ever, ever know
A hundred mini dreams and a healing scar—
The secrets of the day are never far.'
"Hugging You (acoustic)" ~ Tom Rosenthal ft. Billie Marten
~OL~
Steve McGarrett is rock solid sure of exactly three constants in the universe:
One—the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
Two—Danny is his favourite person.
Three—Ohana, that love between real families whether blood or otherwise, is the slip stitch holding the world together.
Other things are pretty carved in stone too, facts Steve has learned and that have never failed. But this trio is unchangeable, and in their immutability he finds solace. No amount of shifting in life situation or circumstances will upset the cornerstone balance of these three things.
They comfort his soul on days when the world leaves a funny taste in his mouth.
Number three is one he's always known, intellectually. But number two taught his heart the truth of it with such frightening intimacy and power that it earned a permanent place on the list. No amount of money or success can ever replace family. Nothing. A man can inherit the whole world and still lose his way, his soul. Steve never stops being awed that he found his…or rather his ohana found him.
It's a rush of love that cows Steve sometimes. Like now. Staring down a Hallmark aisle. Which does not crack like an unruly suspect, alas.
A child cries out in the mall, further adding to the headache creeping over Steve's temples. He grits his teeth. Each heartbeat is faster than it should be, coupled with the odd dizziness blanketing his thoughts lately.
"Shopping for that special someone?"
Steve whirls, only to see an elderly man at the end of the aisle. He blinks at Steve through coke bottle glasses.
"Sort of." Steve blows out a messy breath. He would be embarrassed about getting ambushed by a short, mid-eighties senior citizen with a cane if he wasn't floundering so much. "There are only eighteen days until Christmas and I still haven't gotten him anything. I have my nephew's gift all ready to go, but…"
The older man apparently decides Steve needs rescuing. He hustles to Steve's side, hand knit green snowman sweater and all. Freshly wrapped parcels hang in a bag from the handle of his cane.
Adjusting his glasses, he examines Steve's choices, one in each hand.
"A card?" The man asks, incredulous. "You camped out in this spot for twelve minutes and that's what you're going with?"
Steve is amazed to realize that yes, he has been standing here that long. His hands go clammy around the cards. "I figured I could put a gift card in. My partner loves this cafe downtown. At least I know he'll use what I get."
The man studies Steve through narrowed eyes now. He reminds Steve, ever so slightly, of an older Eddie Williams.
"What?" Steve demands. The first stir of defensiveness rears its head.
"Son, that's not a meaningful gift."
Steve's brows shoot up. "Gifts are supposed to be practical. Like socks. We always got socks as kids."
"No, gifts are a message."
Steve feels like an idiot now and he throws the man a flat look to cover it up. "A message."
"Yes." The older man smiles, patting a mall-wrapped box in the bag. "My wife has wanted a lighthouse jigsaw puzzle for months. Is that practical? Not necessarily, but I know she'll be excited to open it. She'll feel loved that I remembered our conversation."
This should not be complicated. Christmas shopping in the past has never, not even once, been complicated. Steve knows how this works—you take note of what people want or use often, like gift cards. You buy it. You hand it to the person on Christmas morning. You delight in seeing them delighted. Done.
Now…now Steve's not so sure.
"My friend, uh." Steve drops the cards back in their slots, half in defeat and half in frustration that they aren't good enough. "He's always been the better gift giver. It's not my thing."
"Is that so?" The man leans back to better size up Steve.
"Yeah, he…" Scratching the back of his neck, Steve looks away. "He bought me a guitar a few years back, just because I confided in him that I got stage fright."
At first Steve thinks, why am I telling a random stranger this? But he already knows the answer, and he begins to see that he's not really shopping for a gift so much as an apology.
The man reads Steve's face in one pass and his own tightens in sympathy. "We're lucky to have people who love us like that, aren't we? No matter what comes?"
A fond wave crashes over Steve. He gestures around the gift shop to encompass how ridiculous and overwhelmed he feels. "I figured this would tell him that, how much I appreciate having him in my life."
"You want some advice, gunny?"
Ah, a Marine. That explains the instant connection, though Steve has no idea how the man could tell that about him so quickly. His Navy tattoo is hidden by half rolled sleeves. "I was never a gunny."
"And I was never a SEAL." The elderly man winks. "Look, he already knows you care about him. That's not what you need to say."
Now Steve is really lost. The words pique both his confusion and curiosity. "Didn't you just defend that as the entire point of gift giving?"
Great, now he's arguing with a random stranger too.
"Sure. But presents can say other things too, on top of that baseline message."
There's a very tempting joke on the tip of Steve's tongue, about how this man is more philosopher than gunny sergeant, but hey. He's too respectful to jab at an elder, especially a veteran, and he needs all the help he can get at this point.
"I don't know what I need to say," Steve admits.
"Of course you do. What's the most important thing to your friend?"
"Family." Steve replies without even thinking about it. Danny would lay down on a railway track for family, even one that's not his own.
The man lights up, tapping Steve's elbow before shuffling off to the cash. "There's your answer. Give him that."
And he's gone.
Steve stares after the man with an absent, "uh…thank you. Merry Christmas," then back to commercialized items on the shelves. How is he supposed to give Danny something he already has? What in the world does family have to do with messages?
In some ways, Steve finds himself more lost than before. Gift giving feels different this year, and not just because it's their first Christmas in the new house. The stakes feel higher, as if this gift counts more.
Steve is terrified he'll come up short.
When he meets with Danny later, munching on a soft pretzel in the food court, he's empty handed too. Texting Tani on his phone.
Steve is instantly suspicious. "You said you were picking up a gift."
"Mhmm. I did. Got a receipt for it and everything." Danny side-eyes Steve, feet up on the opposite seat under the table. "It's your Christmas gift, if you must know."
"What did you get me?"
Danny looks scandalized. "I'm not telling you that! You will wait until Christmas morning just like Charlie and Grace—who, for the record, are being far more patient than you."
"Can't blame a guy for trying." Steve steals a twist of pretzel. Course sea salt cascades down his fingertips.
"How was your shopping trip?"
"A disaster."
"Oh?" Danny cants his head. And then, because he's equally childish—"No luck on my present then?"
"You hypocrite."
Danny grins. "Whatever you got is okay, Steve. You could buy me a soggy towel and I'd be happy."
"Yeah, but you deserve better."
Danny shoots him an affectionate look, though he doesn't push.
"I did meet a former Marine in Hallmark," Steve muses. "That was fun."
Danny waves his hands, short bursts of surprised motion. "Whoa, whoa. Back it up. We only split ways for forty five minutes and you somehow managed to find the one Army man in this entire mall?"
"Navy."
"Gesundheit."
Steve rolls his eyes. "Technically he's retired."
"Did you commiserate about the sharks?"
Steve ignores that particular barb to sit across from Danny, who lifts his feet only to plop them in Steve's lap. "He somehow knew I was a SEAL, even though I didn't tell him."
"It's the stance, babe." Danny pokes his Converse against Steve's stomach. "You guys carry yourselves a certain way."
"You're making that up."
"Uh-uh. I knew Sam was a SEAL the second I laid eyes on him."
Danny offers the last half of his pretzel and Steve pauses to really take that in. The motion is done with Danny barely even looking at him, just a quick brush of fingers and delicious, salty bread. Steve thinks of messages, and it dawns on him all the ways they communicate by handing each other things.
Maybe the retired Marine gunny has a point after all.
Danny still isn't looking when he doesn't take his hand back—it ends up twined around Steve's.
~OL~
If one's emotional defaults are a buffet, then anger constitutes the main course when it comes to Danny Williams.
It is the crowning roast at the center of his table and the first thing most people notice about him. Said anger isn't usually wild, more of a controlled fury and perfectly baked until the moment is right.
Or at least…it used to be.
Steve learned long ago that most of Danny's anger is actually fear. Intense fear. Fear of losing people, fear of being abandoned, fear of good things being snatched away when he is found 'unworthy' of them. Fear of not being enough.
Danny from ten years ago was so scared.
Now that Steve understands the depth of that fear, it blows him away sometimes. He's had more than one moment where old memories hit him and the wisdom of experience makes him teary eyed.
He'll go track down his partner and hug him and Danny hugs back, and it's the only way Steve can remember how to breathe properly.
And even if Danny's anger is real (it's really not) Steve hasn't seen heads or tails of it in a stunningly long time. Danny banters with him, sure; Steve doesn't know if they're fully capable of communicating without it.
But anger or sharp words haven't ghosted the door of their interactions in months, if not years.
Steve is tired from a long session at the VA, just like he's felt tired the last few days. A sludgy, insistent fatigue he can't shake. The sun sets at his back by the time he treks from his car to the door, lugging a pocket full of therapy homework and an information pamphlet on the SEALs camping trip. It's a yearly tradition they only recently told him about, a spring highlight for the group. Steve isn't sure he'll go just yet.
Right now, all he wants is to collapse at the island and stuff his face full of Danny's ravioli. And maybe a beer or three. In that exact order.
So when he comes in the door to see Danny shaking, his whole body jolts.
"Danny?"
His partner stands midway between the kitchen and living room, backlit by three dozen candles because their lights still won't come on properly, decked in one of Steve's hoodies. He's so ashen he competes with the white wax of a coconut candle on the counter, hands clenched into taut fists…
Trembling for all he's worth.
Shaking doesn't even begin to cover it: Danny's frame, from his bare feet to his wide eyes, shudder like he's strapped to a rocket. Even when Mei took him, he didn't look like this.
Steve's heart completely stops and then rebounds double time.
His immediate instinct is to look around for threats, anything that could have spooked Danny this thoroughly. He glances at the dark spot behind the door, around the dim living room.
Walking further into the house, he reaches for a knife on the island cutting board—
Danny is suddenly there. He closes the distance between them at record speed, fist now on Steve's chest.
"Hey, hey." Steve touches Danny's hand briefly, but his eyes are everywhere at once, trying to locate the hostile party. "Talk to me, D. What's wrong? You okay?"
The fist releases enough to uncurl, then wads up in Steve's shirt. He feels the fabric pull at his back towards the front and Danny's steel grip, and the motion refocuses Steve's attention. There's clearly no human threat present, not to mention Danny breathes hard now through his nose.
Steve's heart stops a second time, this time because up close he sees how wrong he is. Danny isn't just scared—
He's fuming.
His brow pulls low, over eyes that are fiery and rock hard and petrified somehow all in one maelstrom. Red creeps around the base of his neck, up into his ears. The only reason he breathes so heavily through his nose is because his lips are pinched shut, into a snowy underscore that looks close to drawing blood.
"Danny?" Steve breathes. If Danny is a book, he feels illiterate in this moment.
And it is then, out of the blue, that Danny honest to God shoves him.
It's a light push at his chest, barely more than a nudge. It still shocks Steve all the way down to his heels to the point that he can only gape at Danny.
If he wasn't trained better, he would have dropped the knife then and there. As it is, he sets the blade back down—slowly, sensing a primal need not to make any sudden movements—and stares hard at his partner.
Danny's eyes are the only part of him that Steve can read properly, and right now they're back to scared.
This in turn frightens Steve and he waits out Danny's clear internal wrestling. He does so with a tender stroke to shuddering skin, the soft spot along the underside of Danny's wrist.
The entire montage is so far removed from the relaxed man in the food court yesterday that Steve almost can't grasp it.
"Danno, hey. Easy…easy. What was that for?"
Danny shoves him again.
It is only then that Steve feels something else against his chest besides Danny's fingers. Car keys. Danny's car keys. Steve knows them by touch alone, a good thing since he refuses to look away from Danny's face.
"You wanna use your words here or are you going to keep pushing me around?"
Wrong thing to say. Steve knows it, and feels like a jerk the minute he snaps it off, but he's just so out to sea that he needs some stability. Some common ground for his spinning head.
Hurt flashes across Danny's face before he tucks it behind a stiff masque.
"You're driving," he says, the growled words like boulders coming out of his mouth.
Steve absently, as if in a dream, reaches up to take the keys when Danny's hand falls away.
"And going where?"
Danny's jaw pops. "Get in the car, Steve."
Steve does, even though he has no idea what's happening.
Since Danny didn't specify where he wants to go and still won't talk, Steve gathers that this is more driving for the sake of driving, that maybe Danny chose this activity to keep himself from doing something rash. Something worse than shoving his best friend in a moment of fury.
They drive until nightfall, just over an hour. Enough time for Steve to wander up the coast and back down a suburban avenue where there's less traffic and he can maintain a brisk clip. It feels a little like the old days, just driving Danny around in his own car.
Steve adores driving people. The practice is cathartic in ways he doesn't want to examine too much.
Danny, for his part, does little more than rest his head against the seat and roll down the window. Feet up on the dash. It works, in that the redness of his features dissipates by the halfway point of Steve turning back home. Briny air and anthurium flower smells calm them both.
Steve checks on Danny, to see if he'll protest this choice of about-face, but Danny's eyes are closed. He doesn't fight it when Steve turns on the radio either, volume flipped way down, to that oldies station that reminds him of working in the garage with his dad.
Nor does Danny fight when Steve squeezes his hand.
Steve feels the need to do it after that same hand touched him out of anger. Danny never lies with his hands, which means this isn't a you-broke-my-favourite-mug angry.
This is serious, something that makes Danny shake for another twenty minutes after they hit the road. Steve is just relieved that Danny squeezes his hand in reply.
His eyes stay closed for the bulk of the jaunt, but Steve knows he's not asleep. Case in point, when they pull into the driveway, Steve doesn't even put the car in park before Danny climbs out. Steve makes it inside a minute after Danny does, only to hear Danny's bedroom door slam.
Steve sighs.
He gives Danny five minutes before encroaching on his space. Steve takes his time snuffing out candles and locking the doors to gather his thoughts. With a few of Isabelle's gingerbread men on a plate, he heads down the hall.
Danny's…their door is still closed.
It doesn't have a lock, but Steve won't try to invade by turning the knob. Respecting Danny's boundaries is hard but he's learning. Steve has had to relearn how to share what he's thinking, let alone ask for what he wants—and to respect what others want. If Danny needs space, a moment to collect himself, then he's getting it.
Steve sits sideways against the door so he can listen and hears a tell-tale sniffle on the other side. It's at chin level, meaning Danny's sitting on the floor too. They're shoulder to shoulder.
"Danny. I'm sorry, alright?"
Silence.
Steve from ten years ago would have exploded at this lack of response, discouraged.
After a decade, he knows better. And he's nothing if not persistent.
"How'd you even find out?" Steve slides his head a little in the knowledge Danny can hear the scrape of his hair on wood. A wordless signal that he's here and not going anywhere.
"You thought I wouldn't?" Danny doesn't sound teary, but he's got that exhausted tone too.
"No," Steve says, even. "I just wanted to find out the results first and break it to you in my own time."
"When would that have been?"
"Danny—"
"I'm…" And now his voice cracks. Just once. Steve's arms throb with a strange ache to hold him. "I never thought about it, but…Steve. I'm your medical consent."
Steve presses his hands into his eyes. He scrubs through sweaty hair, the loud shatter of devastation ringing in his ears. Everything pieces together in reverse slow motion and suddenly he sees what must have happened right before he got home.
"They told you my results."
There's a muted thump when Danny plunks his head against the door. "Yeah. You signed a clause when we moved, that I can know every detail of your medical issues and they don't need your permission first."
Steve remembers signing that, in vivid detail, because the doctor tried to talk him out of it. Steve angrily refused. Anything that important to Steve is important to Danny and vice versa. They don't keep secrets anymore.
At least…not until this week.
"Doctor Nassir called," Danny continues, quiet now. Anger dissipated and replaced with the much more corrosive emotion of sorrow. "The rush order CT results came in."
Steve swallows. "And?"
Another silence, this one much, much heavier. It feels like a millstone, hung by a clumsy knot around Steve's neck. The rope burns and pulls but it never finishes the job, leaving him just enough air to struggle.
"There are, uh." Danny bites off a muffled half-whimper-half-swear-word sound that cuts straight to Steve's heart. "There are three lumps on your liver, Steve. Each one the size of my knuckle."
That millstone gives one almighty yank and then hangs still.
Steve starts to shiver. For one hysterical moment, he hopes Danny doesn't come out, so that he never has to see the haunted look that passes across Steve's face hearing the news.
Some people cry getting a cancer diagnosis. Some live with a manic urgency. Some get furious at God and the world. Some shut everyone out.
Steve does none of those things.
In fact, though the results cannonball around the tenpins of his brain in chaotic thunderclap blasts, Steve doesn't feel much at all for the first minute or two.
Then his nose scrunches, wadding up like a dirty Kleenex, and releases.
You always knew this is how it would end one day. A bullet or rogue cells.
His shivering stops. Abrupt, jilted.
There's a hesitant slide of metal above his head, as if Danny can somehow telepathically sense this impending shock, so Steve shuffles back against the wall.
The knob finishes turning and swings open to reveal Danny's blotchy face. The hood is thrown up halfway over his hair, dishevelled in lace wisps since he's been running his hands through it, like Steve.
For a long moment, the two men just gaze at each other.
Patting the spot next to him, Steve is pleased when Danny doesn't put up a fight. Instead, he sags against the wall and Steve's shoulder. The warmth of him seeps through Steve's T-shirt into queasy skin underneath.
And isn't that a nice sum up of their relationship for the past ten years?
"You brought cookies?" Danny asks.
Steve nods and holds out the plate. "Isabelle's top hat snowmen."
Danny stuffs one in his mouth without another word, icing top hat and all. He barely pauses to chew. Steve can't bring himself to eat, but seeing his partner do so makes him feel better. A little more like this is a normal night and they're talking about something boring like whether to reupholster their living room furniture.
Danny pulls on the hoodie's drawstrings so they cover his eyes. "Sorry I shoved you."
Danny's voice is gentle to match the hand that finds Steve's knee and latches on. Steve pats that too.
Th-thump…th-thump…th-thump—the feel of his partner, shaky and alive and so very present, thaws through some of the numb in Steve's chest.
My partner. He'll never get tired of saying it.
"I should have let you know sooner, and for that I'm sorry."
Danny's brow isn't visible, but even in the shadows of the hood his blue eyes glitter. They aim up at Steve with piercing acumen.
"Why didn't you?"
Unlike the old man in the mall, Steve is incapable of looking away from Danny. Especially when that very specific, very Steve-tailored expression is directed at him. The question is a short one, compared to what Danny usually bombards him with when he's fraught.
Steve grips Danny's hand a little too hard to be comfortable. Danny doesn't flinch.
"I just…do you know what today is, Danny?"
One of the candles lining the hallway splutters, spits out a glob of wax. Danny watches it fizzle, then glances again at Steve. "You got the timing wrong. Our six month anniversary of living here isn't for another two weeks."
Steve shakes his head. "No, today marks six months since you hung up on me when I was in Iceland."
"It is?" Danny blinks. "Why would that matter to you right now?"
"Because that moment was one of the most lurching feelings I've ever had and I didn't want to cause you any more pain."
The droop of Danny's body over his knees, coupled with a complex expression Steve can't read, makes him frown. "Stop it, Steve. Whatever you're dealing with I'm dealing with, you got that?"
Steve isn't sure about anything right now, but he nods just the same.
"I've always known on paper that I'm your medical consent, that I may outlive you. But today…" Danny's eyes narrow in pain. "Today is the first time I've had to stare that down the barrel and I…I can't, Steve."
Steve's heart stutters. "Can't what?"
Danny angles his head so that by some miracle it's half resting on Steve's shoulder but he can still look up at him. "If you go, that's it. That's game over for me."
"Hey. Hey—" Steve sees Danny about to open his mouth again and cuts him off by tossing an arm around his shoulders. He gives them a shake. "This right here is exactly what I was trying to avoid by going to the hospital by myself. I don't want to shatter this peace we've made, not when we're doing so well."
"That's not your call." Danny gives in and leans his head all the way on Steve. His jaw feels tight, even slumped as he is. Steve, in turn, rests his chin on Danny's crown. "Your problems are my problems, remember? I'm your backup."
The idea of smiling seems like an extinct creature in their house tonight, but a tiny one still alights on Steve's face at the memory and those echoed words. How his life changed in ways he never saw coming, that first year of knowing Danny alone.
"Please don't deal with stuff like this on your own," Danny whispers. "What hurts you hurts me, no matter how much you try to shield me from it. Please, Steve."
That pleading tone, how small Danny sounds, is what finally pierces the shock in Steve's mind. He closes his eyes. If Danny feels warm droplets through the hood, he doesn't show it.
"I promise, Danno."
"We'll face this together, like we should have from the beginning."
Younger Steve also could never have fathomed words like this being spoken for his benefit. People never cared about what he needed before, be it his father sending him away or Joe and Doris telling lies.
Then Danny showed up. Steve figures that's as good an autobiography title as anything else.
Then Danny. Steve isn't sure how he lived before that second constant came into orbit.
Danny beats him to it—"I love you, you know?"
Steve lets himself be awkwardly hugged around the middle and smiles at that too, even though his eyes are blurry. "Yeah, I love you too, Danny."
"You're the best thing that's ever happened to me besides the birth of my children."
Plain, bald faced, no hidden agenda of any kind. These words are spoken like a declaration of war, like Danny will personally fight anyone who objects them.
Steve leans down and pecks Danny's nose. He touches the bridge of it, as if there's a mark and he might be able to feel the evidence of this touch. They both smile this time.
And for a moment Steve's world stops moving, at peace. He's still happy with his life underneath the turmoil.
Danny rubs at gritty eyes with his free hand. "So what happens now?"
Steve mushes his trembling lips into the hood, where Danny won't be able to see them. "I don't know."