'What's so amazing that keeps us stargazing,
And what do we think we might see?
Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection:
The lovers, the dreamers, and me.'

"Rainbow Connection" ~ Sleeping At Last

~OL~

"Did you find it?"

"No, Danny." Steve rifles through the beach bag, then a drawer. Chagrin creeps into his rising flush.

"Steve." Some of Danny's aggravation slips out. He too races around the kitchen and living room, flinging open cupboards. "The kids shouldn't be outside without—"

"I know, okay? I'll find it. I'm sure I set it down around here somewhere…"

Charlie bounds inside, decked in his new lime green board shorts, and beelines for his father's hand. "Can we go play, Danno? Brady wants to show me the crabs he found."

"Just a sec." Danny's hand passes briefly over Charlie's head before he dips behind a couch cushion. "Aha! Here we are."

Emerging victorious with the elusive sunscreen, he hands the bottle to Steve just as Grace comes through the front door—and his cellphone rings. Steve's is dead upstairs and he thinks perhaps this is a mercy.

"Dad, can I borrow your car to see some university friends?"

"Sure, baby." Danny hands Grace the keys with one hand while stretching for his phone on the counter with the other. "Make sure to be back for supper."

Grace brightens. "Thanks, Danno."

Watching Danny juggle everything is hilarious, and Steve would nab a photo of it if he didn't have his hands full with two dollops of sunscreen and a wriggly little boy.

"Make sure to get his ears."

Steve rolls his eyes. "Yes, Sir Daniel."

Charlie giggles. Steve starts in on Charlie's neck first, then his ears.

"Danny's a worry wart, isn't he, Charlie?"

"Hello? Yes, this is Mr. Williams—Ey!" Danny snaps his fingers at Steve, phone still at his ear. "Don't teach my son new insults."

"The biggest worry wart," Charlie agrees with a squirm.

"The sooner you hold still, the sooner you can go play," Steve advises, but they're both smiling and Steve knows he's not fooling anybody. He slathers sunscreen on Charlie's shoulders last, which just barely gets rubbed in before he jitters to be let loose.

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and apparently this has turned their house into free for all. Steve thinks even that might be generous.

Case in point—

A soccer balls rolls into the living room, followed by Brady and Rose. They retrieve it amidst devilish laughter and fly back out the patio door before Steve can call a warning. Somewhere on the beach, a dog barks. Steve's not even sure whose dog it is.

"S'eve?" Mina's tiny legs one-two climb the lip from the wooden patio to the living room with great effort. She bunches her fingers in the knee of his shorts. "I fink my nose is burning."

Now Steve's the one juggling everything. He raises his arms so as not get sunscreen in her hair, though his smile widens at her finally feeling safe enough to touch him and get within arm's reach. It's a new development this last week, one he's still riding the high of.

"Anybody else need some?"

"Jason's got a hat," Mina says.

Steve didn't even know Jason was at this little beach party.

Grace swoops to the rescue. "I've got her, Steve. Come on, Mina. Let's do this outside so Danny can hear."

She takes the petite girl's hand in one and Charlie in the other.

Steve blows out a huge breath. "Thanks, Grace. We're a bit of a zoo today."

"What, like your house isn't always organized chaos?" Grace winks. "I've been wanting to get to know the kids anyway."

Watching her slow each step so Mina can keep up is too adorable to slip by, and this Steve does take a photo of. The circus noise level drops enough for Steve to hear his own thoughts again. Danny too, apparently, who removes his hand from plugging his other ear.

Steve wipes sticky hands on one of their spare towels. He takes a moment just to watch the six kids through the window—yes, Grace will always be a child for them, in a tucked away part of their minds.

She creases sunscreen on Mina's button nose. Steve grins.

Jason sticks his white cane in the sand and sits in the shallows. He holds out his hands for Rose to keep putting crabs in, penny sized crustaceans he can run his fingers over. The dog, a chocolate lab, chases the waves. Charlie builds a towering sandcastle with Brady and they're laughing about something Grace said.

A deep, sunny heat sears inside Steve's stomach.

This is what we fought for.

This messy ataraxis is the prize he most wanted at the end of it all.

It takes Steve a full extra minute to wonder why the sudden quiet of the living room isn't just serene…but a little eerie.

"Danny? Who was that on the phone?"

No answer, and the repetition of that sleepwalking episode yesterday freaks him out a little.

"Danny?"

When Steve turns around, his whole body locks up—

Danny's eyes are huge, blown too wide just like the day this all started. His hand hovers out from his body and he's tipped forward slightly, as if someone on the other end of the line pushed him. Sweat pounces along his brow.

"Danno?" Steve whips around the couch so he can grip Danny's elbow.

Danny listens hard to someone's long spiel. Ghost white, he mumbles a garbled thanks and nods. "Yeah we'll…we'll be there."

Steve waits until Danny hangs up. "Well? What was that all abo—"

The phone slips from Danny's lax fingers in a strident clatter on the hardwood. His legs do a funny sideways wobble. He opens his mouth to answer.

And promptly falls to his knees.

"Whoa! Hey!" A fist sucker punches all the air out of Steve's chest. His grip on Danny tightens to brace his weight, joined by the other hand. Steve goes right down with him. "Danny, what…?"

Danny's cried a lot over the years, sure. Steve has seen his partner bright eyed and at his wit's end more times than he can recall. It's a two way street in some ways, though Steve doesn't always like being witnessed when he breaks down.

Danny's first choice for processing large emotions is typically anger. Or fear. Or anxiety-fear-anger, which is a rare cocktail that Danny manages beautifully. Steve has been on the receiving end of that one a few times.

Danny usually cries out of guilt, or because he couldn't be enough in a given situation. His tears are a shattered thing, a quiet squish of his heart's sponge when the action is over. Retroactive.

But Steve can't for the life of him remember the last time he saw Danny have a full on meltdown like this.

Harsh sobs wrench from Danny's throat. He hiccups over them in a stammer. "The doctors…they…you…"

Tears pour from his eyes so fast that his skin can't absorb them all, pooling on his shirt. Danny's eyes scrunch, release, scrunch, release. Red floods the apples of his face.

There's a shuttered stillness blossoming inside Steve's belly. He pats Danny's flushed cheek. "It's okay, Danno. Whatever they said, we'll—"

"You're not dying!"

For the first time in three weeks, Steve takes a full breath. It reaches all the way down past his diaphragm to his toes, a fresh gust of air in a dusty room.

Steve whisks Danny closer at once, so that his knees skid across the floor. He's warm and shaking. Bundled tight by Steve's arms, by a neon firework burn in his chest.

Hope. Hope.

"I was never dying, Danny."

"The spots aren't terminal though," Danny gasps out between sobs. Relief drips from his voice with an almost drunken inflection, so deep Steve could happily drown in it.

"I mean that I was living. Until the end, I'd have lived."

Danny's fingers flex in the shoulder of Steve's shirt. It's a paroxysmal action, prompted by the manic heartbeat Steve feels at the back of Danny's neck where his hand landed.

Danny buries his face, right at the top of Steve's liver scar. "You're such a sap."

"And whose fault is that?"

An almighty, fledged noise bubbles in Danny's throat. It's a sound Steve feels first, under the fingertips of his left hand around Danny's spine. Low in Danny's chest, the noise fizzes up from something tumultuous and wild into something higher.

This is also something Steve doesn't get to hear very often.

The laugh bursts out of Danny's mouth directly into Steve's wet shirt and he doesn't even have to look to know they're both smiling. A gorgeous mess.

Steve rests his chin on top of Danny's head.

"You're healthy, you bastard." Danny's hiccups push at Steve's hands. Then he swishes his face against Steve's chest. "You're going to live a long life and annoy me for decades to come."

The firework pops into a starburst. "That's the idea, Danno. The tumours are easily removed?"

"Benign as a toadstool, though they'll keep an eye on your liver in case more grow. You have surgery booked for New Year's Eve."

"Oh joy," Steve says. And even trying to make it sound dry, sarcastic, he doesn't succeed.

"Yeah. It is."

Danny's dead serious too.

They tremble and cry and hold each other until Steve feels he's clicking back together instead of falling apart. Danny's fingers reach up for Steve's hair, threading through it, backstitching the hem of his soul into something strong enough to handle the yank and tear of the outside world.

Pit-pat, pit-pat, pit-pat…

Steve glances over to see wide eyes.

"I came in for a freezie," says Rose. Her gaze flits between them and this novel scene.

At first Steve is worried about the kids witnessing this, frightened by the sight of the two men bawling on their knees. Of all days to hear this news and lose their composure…

But Rose lights up once she takes it in, petting the meager inches of Danny's head not cupped by Steve's hand. "I cry too sometimes. Mommy says that life is a lot to handle some days."

Danny lets out another laugh-sob-snort sound that goes straight to the back of Steve's eyes. He extends an arm and Rose pit-pats over to the offered hug with gusto.

Steve pulls the girl close. "It really is, Rosie."

Rose's tiny hand pets Steve too, like a puppy's nose or the soft wings of a butterfly near the crown of his head. And then there's another one along the back of Steve's shoulders from behind and Grace's lanky arm overtop both of theirs, raining kisses on her father's temple.

More feet pit-pat toward their huddle.

Charlie's laughter rings around the room in a carbon copy of Danny's, and it's noisy as all hell with the kids chatting over each other as they come inside, and whoever's dog that is tries to lick everyone in this group hug, and Jason's cool, dark fingers thumb at their puffy eyes and one of those miniature crabs is definitely crawling on Steve's arm now and…and…and…

And Steve can say with one hundred percent certainty that he's never been this happy in his entire life.

He's not dying.

He never was.

Grace doesn't know what the context is for this hullabaloo, but when Steve finally looks up from the tiny cosmos that is he and Danny wrapped up together, she's weeping too. Smiling, beaming, eyes pooled with affection for the two men.

"I love you guys," she whispers.

Danny's free arm has long since wrapped around her and she snuggles into his wrist. Steve kisses her overtop of Danny's head, murmuring it against the skin between her brows—

"We love you too."

"So much," Danny finishes, a little less muffled since his head's lifted a smidgen from its repose on Steve's chest.

Serenity is one word. But joy is quite another.

One that Steve isn't sure he ever understood until this very minute, tangled up in a pile of children and wet towels and smelly dog and Danny and home. Life lies ahead of him, it always has—but now it lies in people instead of opportunities, a job, or places.

It's the first time Steve has ever been able to say that without any hesitation. He's not loved for what he can do or who he protects…

But for who he is. Nothing more.

Fresh tears fall from his eyes, warmer somehow than the first batch, and Danny tenderly palms them away.

The dog licks a few too—it's Brady's new dog, as evidenced when he tugs it off Steve—and breaks the moment.

Steve laughs, then looks down at Danny in delayed surprise. "Did you just wipe your nose on my shirt?"

~OL~

Stars are perfect too.

Stars are the way to navigate when you're lost at sea, the very first thing John McGarrett taught him all those years ago when they first went fishing together. You're never without a compass if you can recognize the stars. Doris would tell him stories about the mythology of each shape.

Constellations guide people home.

Steve sniffs, nose wet. He stares up at the stars and ponders how the whirling supernovas of Danny's heart helped him chart a course back to shore.

Arms propped on his knees, Steve sits in the sand by the afternoon's earlier sandcastle, a fresco of child footprints, and the nest of flattop crabs. They're down for the night too, like Charlie and Grace upstairs. The air smells of seaweed and fulfillment.

Lost in thought, he almost misses it when a figure appears at his side. Steve notices the bare feet first, then Danny's tired eyes. He sits down much closer than normal, hip-to-hip.

"I couldn't fall asleep, after I tucked everybody in," Danny confesses.

"Not sad." Steve feels the need to clarify the thin line in his eyes. His runny nose. He's far from sad, still wrangling a bull of happiness fresh out of its cage. "Just…"

"Just processing it all, I get it."

Steve keeps his eyes on the stars, on the barely-there waves in this windless night. "Did Charlie wheedle you into reading a second chapter?"

"And three and then four. Kid's got me whipped." Danny's wry tone doesn't mask his warmth a lick. "I'm just glad we bought those solar powered lamps for the guest rooms."

"Has Grace figured it out?"

"A bit. I didn't explain it to her yet but I will before your surgery next week."

Steve nods, his stomach light and airy.

"You overthinking again, Rambo?"

Steve nudges Danny's knee with his own. "That's your job."

"So don't wear it out."

Danny then folds himself as only Danny can do, legs pretzel twisted and head landing on Steve's shoulder. He looks a bit overwhelmed too. Any sleepiness is overridden by the same emotions Steve is feeling.

Wonder. Jubilance. An aborted kind of heartache.

They are silent for a long time, in a way they never used to achieve. It's more common now though, these wordless spells of just being in each other's presence. Danny breathes against Steve and he sighs in reply.

"I thought…" A hitch overtakes Steve. He can't go on, suddenly.

Danny's hand slithers across so it's wrapped around Steve's wrist. "You thought the finish line was closer. Months away."

"Yeah," Steve rasps. "I suppose I did."

"Congratulations, Steve." And now Danny sounds wry. "I diagnose you with normal human emotions. You were scared of dying, leaving us behind. The shock will take a while to wear off."

Steve nods. "Of missing out on Grace's wedding and Charlie learning to drive and seeing you get old and gray and giving you more terrible presents and…"

Steve supposes that if he had a day for every grain of sand around his toes, he could live long enough to see his head become snowy white and wrinkles overtake his face. To maybe meet Grace's grandbabies and be there when Charlie graduates from college.

They're not enough. A whole beach of sand won't ever be enough.

He refuses to take any of it for granted again.

Danny whaps Steve's chest in mock offense. "Who are you calling old?"

"I didn't say you're old, not yet. Someday."

"Mhmm. Try looking in the mirror, tough guy."

Steve is about to banter back…but he realizes that Danny hasn't removed his right hand. It's still sitting on Steve's chest—

Too motionless for him to ignore.

They touch each other all the time. Casual affection is so commonplace in the McGarrett and Williams household now that it's as obvious as breathing. Forehead kisses, hugs, elbow jabs, hand holding, adjusting clothes. They seldom fall asleep without an arm around each other anymore.

Because of this, Steve is much more fluent with touch and what the different types mean.

This anxious standstill of Danny's fingers immediately raises hairs on Steve's arms.

Danny's hands are always moving. Always.

Even when they cuddle, up until the moment Danny falls asleep, he tends to stroke rather than just sit his hand somewhere. He'll circle a palm on Steve's sternum or squeeze his shoulder or worry the T-shirt material between his fingers.

Steve is about to open his mouth.

He thinks better of it when Danny's hand drifts lower.

Danny is holding his breath, Steve feels with their ribs so tightly pressed. Danny's cheeks are pale and there's an ever-so-slight quiver in his other hand.

His right is still rock-solid calm.

It pauses at the bottom of Steve's shirt hem…then slips underneath.

Now Steve's holding his breath too. He forces himself not to make any sudden motions, not even with facial expressions. His eyes are laser focused on Danny. Danny isn't quite looking at him, more at the liver scar hidden by fabric.

His hand shies away once, only once.

Steve resists the urge to grab at Danny's wrist to keep the heat of his hand there.

Small fingers brush the dead middle of the scar, so warm and soothing that Steve puts his hand over Danny's this time. He doesn't grab, just fishes under the shirt to set his hand on top.

Danny's fingers splay from the bear claw shape until the pancake of his palm rests over Steve's scar in perfect symmetry. Fizz shoots up Steve's back. It flies behind his temples in a heady sensation.

There's something womb-like about it, the hushed intimacy of Danny's pulse on his scar. That pulse saved Steve's life and he'll never get over it. Not a day goes by that he isn't struck dumb by the sacrifice.

Danny's heartbeats are a gummy thing. Each one causes swells in Steve's soul, rocking the boat of his heart until it is soothed beyond disruption.

Steve breathes deeply so that it prompts Danny to do the same. His diaphragm lifts their joined hands.

"I was furious for a while," says Danny. It comes out all breath, faint. "Mad that yet another thing I'd chosen to love was dying. Slipping away."

Steve rubs a thumb along the peaks of Danny's knuckles. His bpm, at last, slows down.

"It wasn't fair. I thought…I thought maybe I'd done something wrong to have this happen."

Steve's hand tenses along with his jaw.

"I realized I didn't regret it though." Danny's fingers undulate against the scar tissue. "Even if your cancer diagnosis had been terminal, even if it meant I only got six months—I'd still do it all over again."

The stars blur into a smear of melted gems. Steve sniffs some more.

"Cliché as it sounds, love was worth the loss." Danny spares a moment to look out over the water, their beach chairs, the sliver moon. "I can't control what happens next, neither can you, and that's okay. We don't need to."

And then Danny finally meets Steve's eyes head on.

Steve thinks the McGarretts might have been deluded after all. There are few sights in the world more mesmerizing or grounding than Danny's undivided attention. It's oxygen. Steve loves it more than constellations, more than sunsets, more than Christmas, more than swimming in the ocean at dawn.

A cavern-low hum starts in Steve's chest, right under Danny's hand. He couldn't stop it if he tried, and he doesn't.

Startled delight flashes over Danny's face before he schools it back to neutral. He does keep looking at Steve, though. That's all he needs to keep going.

The tune is an old one, to the point that Steve can't even remember the name. Something about writing a song for someone who saved them. He knows that's why it's stirring in him now.

His fear of Danny making fun of him for this is long gone. Singing is about control too, Steve understands now, helplessness in giving something of yourself away that you have no say over. Fighting with the memory of his parents—his father especially—and this instinct they beat out of him.

The last time he actually sang in front of someone else was on this very beach at this same time of night.

Danny closes his eyes while Steve hums, open mouthed, not with formed words but committing to the lilting song in a way that's not playful or half hearted.

Steve has a hazy memory of Aunt Deb singing along to this on vinyl, dancing around the kitchen with a glass of sherry in hand. The memory thaws his extremities.

Danny spreads his fingers even farther, as if to soak up every last rumbled note in Steve's chest. The tick of Danny's pulse against the scar, combined with how he sways slightly to the song's time signature, heals some last wounded pocket inside Steve.

He's also never felt this complete in his life.

When the song finishes, Danny says nothing about it. No jokes, no 'not too bad for a SEAL' or 'did that kill your pride?'

The two men just sit. Watch the stars. Huddle together, breathing around twin smiles.

"Love you, Steve."

Steve lets Danny's hand go when it slides back out into open air—not before a quick peck to his fingers. "Love you too."

"No better time to give you this, I think."

Surprise clangs through Steve's thoughts.

Danny digs in his pocket for an envelope and, after fiddling with it for a moment, hands it to Steve. "Merry Christmas. This is the first part and I'll give you the rest on Christmas morning."

"Oh it's a two-parter, is it?" Steve's eyes gleam. "Did you steal my idea?"

Danny whaps his bicep this time. "I'll have you know I thought of this joint-gift thing way before you did."

Iridescent spritzes flute up through Steve in a delicious storm. His smile stretches all the way up to lines around his eyes. The envelope is a simple square, crème manilla, with a blue seal at the back.

It…

It has the NASA logo on the front.

It's officially stamped.

Steve's head whips up. "Danno—what did you even do?"

Danny pretends he's not smug by picking sand off his pants. "I annoyed a certain board of people at a very important institution. I've been told I have a knack for that."

Steve knows he should be careful and cherish even the envelope based on how much work clearly went into whatever is inside. But he can't help his excited urgency, tearing open the paper. It crackles with a very expensive kind of wax.

Danny seems to enjoy the childish move more, head flopping for a minute on Steve's shoulder again while he rips a thick cardstock note free.

Tucked inside the note is a strange black polaroid.

No, not a polaroid…

Steve has to read the small note—signed in actual ink by the CEO of NASA holy—five times before the words make it from his eyes to his brain. Even longer for it to reach his heart.

"You…" Steve blinks. Shakes his head around a ringing in both ears. "You actually…it…hell, Danno, how?"

Danny laughs, long and free, and it's the exact same colour as Steve's joy. "At least I thought of a present you'd never guess. It took a heap of cajoling, trust me. But they needed a 'meaningful American' name for the new dwarf star they discovered anyway."

Steve still hasn't computed this. His hands start to shake.

Danny shrugs, like it's no big deal and Steve's not having a minor stroke. "I just happened to catch the board before they reached a decision and made the case for a decorated Navy veteran who should probably get first dibs on that, considering how much your family loved stargazing. And I may have also, uh…played the 'my partner might be dying' card."

Running his fingers over the specially typed words, Steve worries he might cry again. He says it out loud: "McGarrett 092010."

"The number is a date," Danny explains, super quiet almost like he doesn't want to be heard.

Steve does anyway. He'll always hear Danny. He runs it through his mind and now he's really trying not to cry.

His voice cracks. "The month and year we met."

Danny gives a content little hum. "Yeah."

"Now who's the sap?"

"Still you," Danny fires back.

Steve huffs, tugging Danny under his arm for a side hug. "This is—no joke—the nicest gift I've ever received. Thank you. I feel kind of lame about what I got you now."

"Oh. Well." Danny's flush betrays his nonchalance. "I'm sure I'll love it. Can't be worse than Grace's gift."

"She got me an ugly Christmas sweater, didn't she?"

Danny snickers. "I hope you enjoy pompom reindeer."

"I'm serious—thank you. You should have submitted your own name too, not just my family's."

A flame of mischief dances across Danny's lips and flash of teeth. "Look at the photo."

Steve does, and sees now that it's a grainy, composite Hubble shot of the dwarf star, all reds and powder blue.

Wait a minute.

"There's two," he says. A second star hovers just around the first, nearly the same size, only this one is white and gold.

"I couldn't believe it." Danny's cheek grows warm on Steve's shoulder. "Just three days ago they sent me that update. Get this—the gravitational readings and wavelengths looked and sounded like one star, but when footage was finally sent back, it's actually two that have started to orbit each other."

A slow grin of muted euphoria creeps over Steve's face. The sand, the waves, his heartbeat, all of it feels like it's singing. "What name did you convince them to go with?"

Danny lifts his head off Steve and announces proudly—"Danno, 062020."

The month and year Steve came back to Hawaii, drawn home by Danny's gravity. The year they moved here. The year Steve found peace.

The end of his running.

The end of Danny's wandering search.

"We're going to be alright," Steve decides, and instantly another universal constant is added to the list, no matter what life throws at them. It'll always be true from now on. "And I love you, more than I have words for."

"We've done this today already."

"Can't say it often enough," Steve counters, and means it.

Danny looks up at the night sky. "I think you're right. We're just fine and we're going to stay that way."

Steve leans over and kisses Danny's temple, first with a bump of his nose, then his mouth. Danny pretends to shove him off, but he's leaning into it and another little spurt of happy laughter escapes his mouth.

Sappy. Maybe that's not such a bad thing.

They're going to be fine, not because circumstances are—but because they are. So long as Danny is whole and by his side, Steve feels impenetrable. It reminds him of how Chin looked at the barbecue.

He's starting to get it.

"I, uh." Danny fidgets with the digits of Steve's left hand. "I wrote this really long letter to go into the national archives, a story of why the stars have those names, just so you know. Read it aloud for this huge panel of astronomers and NASA executives about your life and how we made it through to the other side."

Steve's eyes prickle after all, with a quick tear escaping the corner and down his nose.

"Was an interesting video call, let me tell you," Danny adds, the words unable to defuse even an ounce of what a monumental weight this is. "The reading took almost thirty minutes and a bunch of those hotshots were sniffling by the end."

"Immortalized forever, huh?" Steve too squints up at the stars, where somewhere out there is a matching set bearing their names.

"Don't need stars for that."

Danny's eyes burn, and at the determined sight, Steve knows that even if the diagnosis was terminal and he had less than a year to live, as tumours of that size and rate of growth usually are—he would have been remembered. Steve understands for the first time how ready Danny was to make sure no one ever forgot the McGarrett family.

Danny's next words prove it:

"We've left a better legacy than they ever can."

AN: I took almost a four month hiatus from writing this story in the spring - then got the news that a loved one of my own wasn't dying and penned this chapter in about an hour flat, especially as my reaction was pretty much identical to Danny's. :')

The song Steve sings on the beach is "Kathy's Song," which always reminds me of the boys. Eva Cassidy's version is my favourite.