AN: Read with self care and caution, friends. Thanks to everyone who's reviewed and DM'ed me lovely notes of encouragement! :)
'I still remember that long drive
Through the cold of winter there burned a fire, a fire so wild and new.
And a deep red painted across the sky made you catch your breath
Your heartbeat, it moved to rhythm of mine.'
"First Light" ~ Cinematic Pop ft. Spencer Jones
~OL~
What happens next, it turns out, is a lot of cold coffee.
Steve makes himself a rather nice, expensive Italian brew one morning and just…forgets about it. Only to walk in an hour later and see it sitting on the counter.
He does drink it, but only because he hates wasting such good coffee. It's lukewarm, no matter how many times he microwaves it.
He forgets about a lot of things. Things that shouldn't be an issue but they are. Things like laundry in the drier, where he put his car keys, how long he's been in the ocean…
(Danny panics on this particular occasion, swimming out to 'rescue' a confused Steve while swearing at him and spitting like an alley cat. Turns out Steve spent over four hours in the water without realizing and Danny thought he was about to drown.
If he's overdoing it a little in the mother hen department, Steve doesn't call him on it. Instead, he apologizes profusely while they lock arms and lets Danny drag him back to shore.)
Danny, on the other hand, doesn't bother covering his blunders. He dumps out the coffee he forgets and makes a new batch. At this point, they have to stand at the French press until it's done steeping or they never drink it hot.
This isn't even mentioning the times Steve forgets what he's doing while doing it.
One morning he retrieves an empty Tupperware box and stops in the middle of the living room, utterly flummoxed about how he plans on using it. He still doesn't know.
And for three days, both men exist in this expanse of fog. Thick. Relentless. With no magnetic north to navigate out of it.
It gets to the point where Steve thinks to himself, are the tumours on my brain? Did they get that wrong? Am I going crazy?
Steve read all the medical articles they threw at him. He knows how the process works.
'Shock,' Dr. Nassir called this fog.
'Intense mental strain,' the counsellor's pamphlet says.
Or, Steve's personal favourite from the VA support group, because it's quite frankly ridiculous, 'depression borne out of denial.'
Steve would give a thousand bucks just to feel anything, let alone denial.
Danny's version of coping is to throw himself into Christmas mind, soul, and needle-stabbed body. He buys the biggest artificial tree Steve's ever seen.
No hyperbole. Steve honestly had no idea they even made twelve-foot-tall Christmas trees.
And with their house's higher ceilings, it somehow fits like it was designed just for them. Danny may be five foot and change of pent up anxiety, but that doesn't stop him from buying a step stool to go with that monster of a tree and wrapping glittery red ribbon around it until midnight, until his arms are scratched to the point of bleeding.
He does it all with an intense look on his face, as if this is a test of mettle and he can't be found lacking.
Steve comes home from the grocery store later that day to see the new additions of tinsel, fairy lights (unlit with the continued lack of proper electrical wiring, sadly), and glass snowflakes strung up around the living room. Their first floor twinkles like a disco ball in the sunlight.
It's only been a few hours since he left Danny wrestling with the tree decorations and he somehow managed…this.
Steve stands in the doorway. Stares. Wonders if Danny lost his mind too.
"You like it?" Danny asks, straining, because he's on tiptoes to get the star on top of the tree and even with the stool he's still not tall enough. He sounds rather chuffed with himself.
Steve opens his mouth. Closes it. Tries again, "Did Santa's Village throw up on our house?"
"I'm covered in plastic pine needles and glitter." Danny gives him a deadpan look. "Don't go there."
"It sure is…festive. The kids will love it. You want some help?"
"No."
"Let me rephrase that: do you need some help?"
Danny fights with the top bough in an attempt to tug it lower for his arms to reach. "Rude. Lording your giraffe legs over me."
"Gimme that." Steve hustles Danny off the stool. Steve's the perfect height to snuggle down their star on the top bough, with enough arm room left to fluff up the branches Danny couldn't reach. "There. You happy?"
This sobers Danny for a moment. "You're here and my children are joining us for Christmas. Right now…yes, I am."
Steve runs a hand over his mouth and doesn't fight it when Danny grips his forearm. His fingers are smooth and callous free, full of battered hope, full of a promise Steve isn't sure he can keep anymore.
Danny's hand twitches and so Steve does the only natural thing, which is to grab it while he climbs down.
"The doc called." Danny clears his throat. "You have a biopsy in two days. They're taking a sample from each lump."
He won't let go of Steve's hand. Probably can't, like Steve. They're glued together now, in more ways than one.
Steve still doesn't know how to feel about it all. He hopes he doesn't forget that appointment, but in glancing at the fridge he sees Danny already wrote it in clear block letters—Dr. N, hospital, 8:30. "Okay. You can hang out here while I—"
"Nope. Let me stop you right there."
The words precursor one of Danny's harmless rants, but they don't match his eyes. They're unblinking on Steve, simmered like cracked brimstone.
Danny holds up an index finger. "Anywhere you go in this, I'm going too. You understand?"
Steve's mouth is dry. After a minute, for he owes Danny that much, he nods.
"Good. Because I've already made arrangements with Isabelle."
"What arrangements?"
Danny scratches at his already very scratched arm until Steve pulls his hand away. "We worked it out when she came by with our crossword. She's cooking us lunch that day—I doubt either of us will feel up for it."
"What'd you tell her?"
"Just that you have tests at the hospital that will make you tired."
Steve knuckles a strange throb in his chest. "Okay."
Danny narrows his eyes at the repeated word, Steve's go-to lately. It's the best way to say that he doesn't know what to say. "Okay? Just okay?"
"As long as you're with me, it'll be good, right?"
"Of course." Danny bobs his head. "Nothing to be worried about."
They're both exceptional liars.
~OL~
LA's morning sky shines the colour of day-old soup, bronzed and hazy and floating with swampy shapes. Danny feels pretty soupy too.
He wanders out from his bedroom, where he's spent the last two hours on his laptop researching treatments, if this turns out to be something aggressive. Rubbing his eyes, he notes with absent disinterest that he hasn't dressed yet, still in flannel bottoms and a Queen T-shirt.
Bare feet drag across the hardwood towards the French press. Steve has already made a cup, a small cup—there's enough cold coffee left in the press for Danny to have a generous mugful. Steve must still be nauseous.
On that note, where is…
Danny heats up cold coffee in the microwave and proceeds to round the couch.
And nearly drops the mug. He keeps his grip on it even though some spills onto the floor. "Steve?"
"Morning, Danny!"
Mouth ajar, Danny gawps at Steve—seated on the floor in the middle of the living room and a sink hole of wrapping paper.
Tape litters every available surface, the arm of the couch and their TV and coffee table. A piece of it is stuck to the shoulder of Steve's shirt, cargo shorts swathed in glossy, striped paper, and a line of dollar store ribbon covers over and behind his ear, like green confetti. Steve's big hazel eyes peer up at his partner like this is all perfectly normal. Like he's not a one-man festive disaster.
Danny's off laughing before he can stop himself. It bursts out of him, a touch manic with the stressful week and hours of staring at discouraging statistics. He bends over his knees.
Steve echoes it at once, despite clearly not understanding what's so funny. Crow's feet wrinkle around the scroll of his eyes. He watches Danny lose it and the infectious sound gets him going.
But this is the first time he's smiled since the doctor's phone call, that horrid night Danny got angry with him, let alone laugh, so Danny takes it as a win. Right now Steve's answering smile is the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.
Danny flails a hand in between giggles. "And you call me Santa's Village? Babe, what are you trying to do, open your own gift wrapping business?"
Which looks like a very bad idea, for the record.
Steve goes red faced. "At least I'm ahead of the game. You do most of your wrapping on Christmas Eve. That's insane, Danno."
"Beats this holiday carnage, not to mention hiding shiny objects from my kids." Danny shrugs while wiping his cheeks. They hurt. "And you, apparently."
Steve rolls his eyes, but he blushes even further. Danny smirks and sits on the edge of the couch. This puts his knees near Steve's back, the heat of him nestling into achy place under Danny's skin.
"What are you wrapping? Or, what are you trying to wrap?"
"Grace's present." Steve holds up a midsized box—a hairdryer. "She's been using the one in her dorm bathroom, but it's shared and pretty crappy."
Danny nods with a sympathetic hum. "They're like the ones in hotels, attached to the wall by a cord. Not very effective."
Steve approaches wrapping just like any other mission. His brows draw low in furious concentration over how to fold the corners with military precision. A failed mission, in Danny's opinion. Overlapping sections sit lopsided, the tape barely covers holes along the edges, and two of the four corners are a crumpled molehill.
After years of being handed mishmashed packages from Steve, Danny realizes he's never had the privilege of seeing them constructed in real time. Rather than rescue Steve, Danny just sips and watches Steve struggle. The mug hides a fond grin. Steve doesn't notice, intent on the task of figuring out how to wrap the corners without ripping the paper.
Danny picks the line of glittery ribbon off his partner's ear. "Speaking of hair…"
Lazy fingers comb through Steve's mop, longer than it's been in a while. A far cry from the chic shaved look in their quarantine quarters. Danny loses a beat remembering the pain of that particular shooting before he shakes himself. Steve leans back a few inches at the impromptu head massage.
When Danny folds back a shank of brunette near Steve's temple—
He finds a patch of lattice silver.
Soft hairs trickle in a gray minnow stream to thicker sections of russet brown at the back of his head. Easy enough to hide, nowhere near overtaking his natural hair colour.
But far more prolific than they were last time Danny checked.
His fingers flex, knuckles paused on the argent white inches behind Steve's left ear. It feels like a baby's hair, velvet and napped. Danny knows for a fact that Steve doesn't bother dyeing it, that his hair is graying at an average pace for his age. Maybe a little faster thanks to the radiation, but not by much.
The silver hairs still might as well be a bullet straight to Danny's larynx. He tries to swallow and fails.
"…Danny?"
Will Danny have to bury a Steve who never got to grow old? He deserves better. To age and have grandkids hang off his arm, to see Grace reach the age he was when he met her.
Tart jolts of agony and love shoot through Danny at light speed. It zings up behind his eyes, the pan sizzle in his chest, the lemon taste of bittersweet happiness at the back of his tongue…
"Danno?"
Danny comes back to himself only to see his hand frozen in Steve's hair. The head of which is slightly turned to eye Danny with a concerned frown.
Oh.
Lashes blink fast against his cheeks.
After a moment, Danny can't resist a fast nuzzle of his nose on those same hairs when he leans forward to wrap both arms around Steve's chest from behind. They overlap, clasped on his shoulders. Stubble tickles his jaw.
A zip of surprise runs through Steve's muscles before he relaxes into the affection. He reciprocates with a hand on both wrists.
"Sorry, I was just thinking you need a haircut," says Danny, to retrieve a smile for Steve's face.
No matter how much time Steve has, he should enjoy it. Were such a quest to cost all of Danny's life savings, he would gladly hand it over to see Steve happy. It's the rock solid truth keeping Danny going.
The sun rises every day and Steve deserves to enjoy life. End of story.
Sure enough, Steve flicks Danny's toes. "I'm not that bad. You should see the beach bums who surf a few houses down."
"I have. They could teach even you a thing or two." Danny offers the mug and Steve takes a generous gulp. "Have you wrapped my gift yet? Does it look this bad?"
Steve's eyes glint with mischief. "It's all ready to go…but what about mine?"
"I can't."
Steve twists around to look at Danny, who grudgingly releases him and sits back. "What do you mean you can't?"
"What I mean is…" Danny enunciates slow, just to annoy Steve. "Your gift is physically impossible to wrap."
"Impossible." Doubt creeps into Steve's tone. "Are you sure?"
"You're seriously questioning my judgement of the gift I got you?"
"Yes."
"I'm positive, Steven. Your gift is bigger than me and you combined." And oh how true these words are in more ways than one.
That gets him an eyebrow raise. "What on earth did you buy me, a car?"
"Better," Danny insists, and gets excited about it all over again.
Turning back around, Steve resumes his Herculean efforts to tie the green ribbon around Grace's gift. At least Charlie's present from Steve, a new remote control race car waiting on the coffee table to be wrapped, doesn't need fancy presentation. The boy will tear it open in two seconds flat, guaranteed. He'll scream with excitement and thank Steve and kiss their cheeks in thanks and insist on a race all in the same minute.
No mystery needed.
"Besides." Danny lifts a tacky neon blue bow off the pile—also slathered in tape—and plops it on top of Steve's head. It sticks to wavy strands framing his crown. "What more do I need?"
Though Steve rolls his eyes again, they both grin.
His other hand, the one not taping that disaster of a ribbon bow, grips Danny's ankle. The fingers are big and warm, full of peace for this one bubble of time in the living room, watching Steve's atrocity of a wrapping job that will probably still make Grace cry anyway.
Danny props his chin on Steve's head next to the bow.
The best gift he's ever been given.
~OL~
Steve wakes up sometime around three the next morning, his dreams a milky gumbo of moonlit skies and someone yelling from very far down a shaft.
Yelling for help.
The voice sounds familiar, so familiar that for one lurching second Steve would swear it's a hybrid of his and Danny's voices.
Then the voice shrieks.
Steve's eyes whisk open to escape the sound, and he breathes in a concerted effort through his mouth and not his nose so Danny won't be disturbed by the sound of him panting. Sweat pools near his tailbone. The harsh thump of a distressed pulse shakes his temples.
It turns out there's no need for the precaution: Danny is already awake and staring at the ceiling.
In an off sight, he's on his back instead of his side, right arm slung over his waist. The other, closest to Steve, rests on his elbow. The only time Danny looks like this is when he's in a hospital bed, certainly not the image Steve needs right now.
Danny's fingers don't move an inch in a similar, endearing quest not to wake Steve, but Steve knows the feel of that heartbeat anywhere. It's on the underside of Danny's left palm, strong and quiet and heavy against Steve's skin.
It's home.
Lying on his side facing Danny, Steve digs his cheek into the pillow's cool spot and plants a hand on top of Danny's right. Their palms up, up, down from the hitch in Danny's stomach. His diaphragm carries the passenger of their fingers back up…down…up-up…down…
Steve studies Danny's face, red rimmed eyes and all. Other than a tight curl at the corner of his mouth, he wears a neutral expression.
"Can't sleep either?" Steve whispers.
"Didn't even fall asleep. Been awake since we went to bed."
In a fitting paradox, Danny exhales through his nose. It's a harsh sound in the cloister of their bedroom, owing to what looks like an earlier crying fit, but the hand that pats Steve, on his chest, is taffeta soft. Despite the T-shirt layer between their skin, Danny's heartbeat continues its palpable chatter.
No, not Steve's chest—
He notices a beat later that Danny's hand strokes at the top of his incision scar. However, it doesn't quite make contact. Danny brushes too low for a second and the heel of his hand shies away.
Steve captures it on the retreat.
Danny freezes for an octane moment, with the sound of another low sigh. Then he rolls over on his side and the golden field of his head tips forward against Steve's chest. Steve cups a hand around it at once.
He just holds Danny there for a few minutes, both of them breathing together. Gripping each other's hands. Steve exaggerates his inhales so Danny can feel it better. It seems to help, Danny's post-weepy breaths evened out into something approaching normal.
Then inspiration strikes in the way only middle-of-the-night ideas can.
"Up for a drive?"
Danny lifts his head. Blue eyes flash in the dark, instantly putting Steve at ease. He knows this sight like a prayer. "You sure?"
"You know we're not going back to sleep."
"The biopsy isn't for another five hours."
Steve loops his fingers through wisps of hair that have tangled behind Danny's right ear. He thumbs at smooth skin. "Come on. I know a great spot."
~OL~
Maybe ten years truly is the sweet spot of a relationship after all. A whole decade, two digit number, countless sorrows lived and overcome.
"Dr. John? Really? This is your choice of pre-dawn car ride music?"
Steve throws Danny that patented, debonair smirk. "You know you love it."
And dang, he's the tiniest bit right.
Danny can't stop smiling, even half awake and defeated as he feels right now. Steve knows him almost better than he knows himself sometimes. Case in point being that Steve tapping out the inane bass line in 'Right Place, Wrong Time' on the steering wheel does mushy things to Danny's heart. He immediately feels better.
Steve from even three years ago wouldn't have had such an attentive, polygraph read on Danny. This wordless intimacy of hearing the words underneath audible words wouldn't have been possible.
But then Danny from ten years ago couldn't fathom letting someone driving his car all the time, let alone enjoying it.
"It's a nice song."
"That's what I just said." Steve takes one hand off the stick to poke Danny's knee. "You falling asleep on me?"
Danny tosses that comment aside to snuggle down further, feet up on the seat. His body huddles into itself like a cozy turtle. "How can I fall asleep when you drive like a maniac?"
That's slightly unfair—since retiring from active police work, Steve's driving could almost be considered normal. He doesn't speed or go on reckless passing rampages anymore. He hasn't rammed anybody off the road or done a donut drift to corner another car.
Still, the assertion levels of his driving persist in being borderline unhealthy. If nothing else, he fits in great with LA traffic.
"Ha!" Steve wags an imperious finger. "I'll remember that and quote it back to you the next time I get us to Delano's in half the time."
"Assuming we don't get pulled over."
"Pulled over?" Steve puts an innocent hand to chest. "Me? I've never been pulled over."
"Yeah right. I can just see it: 'Sorry, officer—my partner is a deranged former SEAL who misses police chases.' That'll be the day."
Even at three thirty in the morning there's some congestion, but nothing like the usual press of exhaust fumes and tired humanity that will appear in a few hours.
"You know what most people do when they hear a song they really like?" Danny wheedles.
Steve scoffs. "Not this again. You and your insistence that I don't sing."
"That's because you don't." Danny lays his head back, at an angle where he can watch streetlamps go by and Steve's goofy face in tandem. He's putting on an Oscar-worthy performance of being unbothered by today's upcoming appointment, Danny will give him that. "I've only heard you sing because you wanted to once—once—in ten years. And that was six months ago."
"Ever consider that maybe I sing only when you're not around? Maybe I'm a regular karaoke star and you're just blissfully unaware." Steve's smirk grows. He turns onto a narrow service road and shifts the car into all wheel drive. Gravel whirs in the wheel wells.
"Hogwash," Danny snipes back. One of Rachel's favourite expressions he's never been able to kick. "I'd know if you did."
And now Steve's outright laughing. "How?"
"I just would." Danny knows he's right like he knows the alphabet. It's just fact. He folds his arms, adding to the warm buffer he's built between the borders of his knees, sweater, seat, and Steve's arm on the center console. Then, quieter, "Thanks, Steve."
"Hey, I wasn't sleeping either. I just gotta remember where the road stops…ah! Here we are."
Steve has been steadily driving them up a steep incline and now Danny sees why:
Far from the main roads and civilization, the road levels onto a little lookout that doesn't appear to be the usual tourist-trap, selfie hotspot Danny associates with LA. Steve shuts off the engine and Danny blinks at the unassuming lot. This sandy patch of earth, not even paved, is equipped with only one rickety bench and some scraggly shrubs on either side.
It's pathetic, as sight seeing spots go.
But with no buildings or people around for two miles…
"The stars." Danny unfurls from his cocoon of warmth to step outside and his jaw drops. There aren't many stars or planets visible, not by middle-of-nowhere-Hawaiian-jungle standards with the outer space feel to its night sky vista, but for LA this is practically a lightshow. "How did you find this place?"
"By accident," says Steve, with a note of smug satisfaction. "Just like…well, just like you did with your lookout spot back on Oahu."
Danny tears his gaze away from the icing sugar dust overhead to take a good look at Steve. The bright speckles in his eyes. Hair a mess of bedhead that's only further ruffled by driving with the window down. The loose tone to his biceps because he doesn't keep himself on that militaristic workout regiment anymore.
His head is craned upwards too, hands in his flannel pajama pants pockets. Neither really bothered to get dressed before hopping in the car, and something about the rumpled sight of Steve makes Danny's lungs hurt.
"Who needs therapy when you can drive around in the middle of the night?"
Steve glances askance at Danny. "Who needs a couples retreat when you've got bombs in the jungle?"
Danny laughs, even though it's not really a laugh at all, one that Steve in a magnanimous twist pretends he doesn't hear. Then Danny thinks of the Christmas gift he bought for Steve and the sound cuts off.
What if it's all he'll have left of Steve? What if this is the last gift they'll be able to give each other?
"I care about you. So much it makes me sick." Danny chokes out the words around a sandy taste in his mouth. Sweat congeals in pasty layers along his neck.
He's not sure how many times he'll have left to say it. How many more nights with Steve's octopus arms. How finite their chances to just be really are. Steve is a greater magnality any day, no matter what he's compared against. Danny would have named him the eighth wonder of the world years ago if he could get away with it.
A funny hiccup sails across Steve's breathing too. He scuffs one flip flop in the dirt while his jaw works, rolls around, tightens and unwinds.
Finally, he nods up at the stars. "At least they're singing."