AN: Y'all. This Jon McLaughlin song is so apt for Steve and Danny, I can't handle it. I heard it over Christmas last year and just kinda melted—then promptly ran to this fic to put it in.

'See I don't need anything, as long as this is true:
That you love me, and I love you.
So lay your head on my shoulder,
Take my hand and go with me
Forever side by side.'

"You and I" ~ Jon McLaughlin

~OL~

Christmas Eve dawns sticky and overcast, with gulls circling overhead. The air is so thick you could eat it. Wind whips the waves into enough of a frenzy that surfers can stay on their boards for longer rides.

Steve only knows this because that's what activity Danny suggests for father-son time, of all things. With their beach in the hollow of a slight C shape along the coast, they normally don't get super high waves unless they swim out to meet them at the reef.

But now the swells crest huge, in pure white fondant at the curl of the breaker. Surf hisses along the sand at Steve's feet while he watches Danny rise up on his board, Charlie on a boogie board beside him. Charlie waits in shallower water while his father catches the peak of the wave, Danny's hand skimming along the pike, then joins him when it shrinks down.

Charlie's giggles carry all the way back to shore, as does the sight of Danny's teeth in a broad smile. He high fives his son.

If Steve is misty eyed, he blames it on the wind.

"We're back in one piece, Stevie!"

Steve swivels at the voice—and a loud crinkle of plastic.

"Look at you!" Steve holds out his arms, both to marvel at the two women laden under enough shopping bags to tour the world, and so Grace can duck into them. She laughs into his shirt at a failed attempt to hug him back around all the packages and tissue paper. "What did you do, steal the whole mall?"

"Just part of it," says Grace with a mischievous grin.

There have to be at least six bags on each of Grace's arms. And more are stuffed in a knapsack on her back. Steve pecks the crown of her head, just because he can. She hums against his chest.

"Girl's gotta spoil her niece somehow." Mary winks at Grace when she steps back. "Cool aunts give shopping sprees for Christmas."

"Ah." Steve nods knowingly.

Grace pulls Mary into quick side hug, taking on a few of her bags too. Steve half worries she's about to tip over. "Thanks for today, Mary. It was a lot of fun—and now I finally have pajamas without holes in them!"

"Good 'ole dorm life." Mary stands beside her brother and drops the bags to stretch. "Gotta love those broke college years."

"You're a softie, Mary McGarrett, you know that?" Steve points to Grace hauling her new clothes up the patio steps. "She's going to remember spending quality time with you more than the stuff."

Mary bumps him with her shoulder. "Birds of a feather, Stevie."

Together, they watch Grace scamper away. A symphony of banging and crushed paper accompanies her hop over the patio lip and inside. Steve smiles, then turns back to the waves.

Mary glances up at him, also knowing. She's got their father's half quirk grin, like a copy and paste image from a past that doesn't exist anymore. "Playing lifeguard?"

Steve's eyes flip again to Danny, now coaching Charlie how to stand on the board while it's moving.

"Something like that."

"Mmm."

Mary rests in silence with Steve for a few long minutes. They're comfortable minutes. Steve feels the warmth of his little sister with the familiarity of countless childhood days; her shoulder comes up just past his elbow. A cloth scarf around her hair flaps against the skin of his bicep where the ties hang loose.

The pair falls into a syncopation of unspoken body language. Like nothing has changed.

Danny falls off his board and Steve only falters for a moment, body alert, before Danny's head pops back up.

With a sniff, Mary crosses her arms over her chest so she can clasp either elbow. Her hair is darker now, Dad's colour, cut to her shoulders but without the usual product or dyes. Soft eyes too watch Danny set Charlie high on his shoulders, once they're in shallower water where Danny can touch the bottom. Charlie squeals out a happy note.

"Do you remember the Christmas after Mom died?" Mary asks, very quiet. Just under the wind.

And Steve thinks what a testament to their cruddy life experience it is that he has to clarify, "Which one?"

This is the second Christmas since their mother died, technically, but it's not. Not even a little bit. Steve knows that for Mary, Mom never really came back at all. She's correct about that in ways Steve doesn't want to examine too closely.

But Mary doesn't miss a beat. "I'd hear you crying in your room some nights, especially when I slept on your floor. When I asked, you'd pretend like you weren't and snap at me to go away."

A brief candle of shame sparks through Steve before he forgives his fifteen year old self. Grace covers a multitude and all that.

"I'm sorry, Mar."

She shakes her head. "On Christmas Eve, you let me crawl in with you and we dozed like that until morning. I remember I felt safe not 'cause you put your arm around me, but because you weren't stoic then. You being a mess gave me permission to be a mess."

Steve does remember. He remembers feeling like nothing in the world would ever be okay again. Crying into his little sister's hair without a sound while she stroked his arm. Up his shoulder and back down to his wrist…up and down…up…and down…

Just them against the world. Dad had been stoic most of the time too, had admonished Steve towards this kind of 'manly' grief. Tears in front of other people set a bad example.

Mary's eyes are full of peace now, and wistful, and just the tiniest bit sad. "Our parents were wrong about a lot of things."

"Most parents are."

Mary looks up at him again, but this time her gaze stays there. "They taught us how to run, Steve. They showed us that keeping those we love at arm's length is the only way to care about and protect them."

Steve doesn't know what to say to that, so he takes a mental photograph of Danny, his favourite sight in perhaps the whole world. Danny's hair is everywhere thanks to the salt and he coughs from a wave to the face, but Steve's never seen anything more vibrant.

"Dad used to say…" Steve swallows, even though he sang on this very beach last night and Mary gets the struggle almost better than he does. Even though Danny is throwing a shaka sign to his son. "Dad used to say caring too much is sentimental."

There's a wordless beat…then Mary reaches down for his hand.

"You never did get stage fright that time, with the guitar."

Steve squeezes their hands. Finally, he says the truth out loud: "No…no I didn't. Well, I mean I did—all those people in the audience freaked me out. But it was four months after Mom died and I saw Dad's eye-rolling when I practiced in the living room. Like singing was stupid."

The real words echo underneath, what Steve doesn't say but Mary can probably hear: that being vulnerable was stupid.

"I loved Mom and Dad." Mary's sniffing picks up speed. "But we're wiser about certain things than they ever were."

Are they? Steve thinks about that, about how he ran away for two months. About how Danny crossed an ocean to be with his family and Mary crossed an ocean to be sent away from hers.

About orbiting stars.

"Mom and Dad gave us a happy home, while it lasted." Mary regains her composure with a sigh. "But I'm not sure they ever opened their hearts to each other. Or us, in the deeper sense."

"They always left us behind," Steve whispers. "I never understood it but I still…"

She leans her head on his shoulder. "Yeah, I miss them too."

Mary and Steve, siblings from an era long gone. He clutches her hand with a desperation to match his fifteen year old self, clinging to his sister on Christmas morning in the dark. He can still feel how tiny she was then, her nose buried in his chest, her knees bent up on top of his. His mind hasn't forgotten how her fingers tangled in his sweater or how their dad had to wake them or they wouldn't have bothered to eat that day. The very first time he was up before them on a Christmas morning.

Legacy.

That word again circles the runway of Steve's thoughts. Bolstered on the winds of a change he's only just now starting see in its entirety.

And suddenly—

Steve's spirit sets down a heavy weight. It's a burden he's been releasing inch by inch these past six months until it all sloughs off him in one heave. Right this instant.

The burden of a family legacy he doesn't want rolls down his back.

Instead, he wants to be better than what he was taught, even if his father didn't explicitly say it. Even if his mother didn't come outright and declare that she enjoyed serving her country more than her family. That her two children weren't worth as much to her as her work. Even if Joe didn't slap him in the face and tell him that duty is more important than heart.

But Steve has an out of body moment where he sees himself turning away from those footsteps, with Danny and his family what he wants most of all, and being brutally honest about how he feels instead of hiding. About what he needs.

He sees himself willing to swim oceans if it means his family comes first.

A better legacy.

Dizziness clouds Steve's eyes for a moment, and Mary slips an arm around his waist as if she can feel it. She steadies his faint sway.

"He's good for you." Mary nods her chin at Danny, taking a break with his elbows on the board.

Steve's still trying to catch his breath. "Oh?"

Mary smiles with her mouth, then her eyes. "I've never seen you so comfortable in your own skin until this move. Danny's given you back a piece of yourself, a little of the way you looked when you were young."

"Not weirded out that your big brother isn't doing the traditional thing?"

"What?" A hint of playfulness narrows Mary's eyes. "You mean no wife, three kids, and a dog?"

Steve nods, because yeah. That's kind of how he figured everybody else sees it.

Mary surprises him with a laugh. "Steve, I adopted a baby as a single mother without so much as a boyfriend. I'm not exactly killing it in the 'normal' category either."

"Birds of a feather," he teases, and sees a little of his glow rub off on Mary, his sister's dimples on full display and still laughing low in her throat. "Are you happy, with your life circumstances?"

"I'm living exactly how I was meant to," she says. "This is where I'm supposed to be, at least for now." Then she ribs him. "How 'bout you?"

Yes. A thousand times yes. I'm so happy it makes me want to throw up sometimes, to sit in a heap and cry and sing and hug everyone all at the same time—

Danny's laugh breaks Steve from his thoughts, and he watches Charlie doggy paddle closer so he can plant a sloppy raspberry on Danny's cheek.

"He's…Danny is…"

What to say? Opinionated? Anal about how to arrange their cupboards? So generous it felt scandalous to Steve at first?

How is he supposed to capture in mere words Danny's sleepy smile in the morning or how he always buys Steve's favourite coffee brand or the way he knows without saying anything that Steve is having a bad day and can comfort him with nothing more than a hand on his knee?

Steve's breathless for a different reason.

"He's the best gift, better than I can wrap my head around some days. I just want to be the best for him in return."

Mary nods. "Take it from a sister's wisdom—I think you already are."

In that weird prescience he has, Danny lifts a weary hand to wave at them right as she says it, and Steve has to fight the sudden, ludicrous impulse and subsequent realization that he quite literally wants to swim out to meet him.

Steve refrains, but barely. He waves back, overwrought with a spaghetti bowl of emotions.

"You doing okay?" Mary hugs his stomach with both arms this time. "Grace got choked up when I asked about you."

Steve leans down and kisses her head too. "Just a false alarm from my doc. I have surgery next week."

Mary sobers at once, but she's still a McGarrett and takes this in stride. They cuddle up close together, and on this particular Christmas Eve…all Steve feels is like he's finally found a home he's been searching for all his life.

He wishes he could go back in time and tell that teenage boy what he'll get to have someday. That it won't all be bad.

You're going to meet someone you can't live without, be handed a family and more love than you know what to do with. Just you wait.

"Mar?"

She lifts her head off his chest.

"I love you."

Her eyes widen, for they don't say it out loud to each other often. Then she laughs in time with a wave crashing onto their toes. "I love you too, Steve. Don't wait for the next fatality scare to call me."

"Deal."

"And you'd better use the Christmas gift I bought you to bake for me sometimes or I'll be ticked. It's in the kitchen."

Steve glances from the house back to her. "You snuck in a gift while I was out here?"

"Yeah well…" Mary too waves at Danny. "You were occupied. I have a feeling I could sneak in a herd of elephants when you're in this gushy mood and you wouldn't even notice."

Steve would love to argue that.

But he knows she's right.

And he wouldn't change it for anything.

~OL~

Steve does end up swimming out to meet them, clothes and all.

Danny offers the board but Steve shakes his head and just splashes around with them until the sun passes its zenith, enjoying the lack of stress or agenda. He swings Charlie around while Danny pretends to grouse and Mary shakes her head at the whole production from the shoreline.

"Do it again, Steve!" Charlie swims back to Steve, arms up. "T'row me!"

Steve does, right towards Danny who catches his son without missing a beat. The two men share a weighted glance and Danny can't even muster the moxie to be upset about the throw—in fact, he tosses Charlie back.

The boy shrieks between giggles.

Steve is coordinated enough to catch him before he hits the water without looking away from Danny. Danny smiles under the attention, mushy and soft.

"You're hopeless!" Mary calls.

It's unclear whether she's talking about Danny or Steve but either way she's right again. They have no grounds to stand on whatsoever.

(Her gift turns out to be a professional stand mixer, gleaming red, dough hook attachment, bow on top, and everything.

Steve whips up a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough before Mary goes, but she and the kids eat it all before he can bake anything.

"Buncha heathens," Danny declares.

Steve doesn't dignify that with a reply save to stick a wad of dough on his nose.)

~OL~

"Danno." Charlie holds his supper closer to candles on the coffee table to see better. "Why is there a frog on my plate?"

Danny rolls his eyes while handing another plate to Grace over the back of the couch. She thanks him and immediately slathers syrup all over her food, bottle in one hand, remote in the other. "Because Uncle Steve is silly."

"You're silly, Steve," Charlie announces, as if Steve didn't overhear this exchange. He smiles while dishing another Kermit pancake out of the mini grill.

"So I've been told." Steve says it with what doesn't quite pass for sardonic humour; it's too tender for that because Danny squeezes his elbow on the way by and it gentles his voice. "But I'm glad the pancakes are good. You're gonna love this movie."

Danny stops his rooting through the kitchen drawers to squawk. "Excuse me! You've never seen A Muppet's Christmas Carol either!"

"We'll both love it, then." Steve throws Charlie a finger gun and he reciprocates, syrup a halo around his mouth.

Danny finally digs out a napkin to wipe his son's face with. He bends over the couch and mops sticky little boy skin before kissing each cheek. A chorus of laughter fills the room.

"Danooooo."

Danny is serene. "Yes?"

"You're silly too!"

"You hear that, Steve?" Danny talks over his son's giggles with mock offense. "You've corrupted me."

Grace snorts. "As if you need any help in that department."

Charlie watches his sister wrap herself in the last waffle throw until only her head and the remote peek out. "Steve, can I have a blanket too?"

"Sure, bud." Steve unplugs the grill—they have enough frog pancakes to feed two families, let alone the four of them—and heads to the downstairs closet. "Fleece or linen?"

"Fleece!"

"Coming right up."

Grace has queued their movie by the time Steve makes it back to the living room. She even had the foresight to cut up Charlie's last two pancakes, helping him with the knife. He pats his sister's cheek and she grins. They're snuggled together, tangled in a way that makes Steve's chest warm.

But it's just them on the couch.

Steve's brow divots. "Where'd Danny go?"

Grace's eyes flick to the windows. She doesn't look as worried as Steve feels, though he spies a sharp glint in her eye. "I think he just needed 'some air.' He said we can start without him."

"Sounds good. We'll join you in a minute."

Steve waits for cheery choir sounds to start up from the movie before sliding open the patio door. He makes sure it's closed behind him…

Then halts.

"You didn't get very far."

Danny looks up from the hammock. He sits perpendicular, feet pushing against the steps to keep it in a slight rock. The side acts as a back rest, and his posture is still. Calm. Not the hysterics or tears or panic episode Steve expected from this odd move.

"Wanted to watch the sunset for a bit." Danny gestures with a loose hand. "Savour it, you know?"

"Sure," Steve replies, though he's a little confused at the choice. It isn't like Danny to go apart by himself when both children are safe and happy inside. His kids enjoying themselves is one of Danny's favourite sights in the world, even more than sunsets.

But Steve knows now better than ever that emotions don't work on a timeline. Especially with Danny's thinner breathing at the moment.

Steve doesn't pry, just softens and points. "Got room for one more?"

Danny shuffles closer to the far palm tree so Steve can lower himself down. Gravity at the base of the hammock pulls their shoulders together, Danny's knee and hip melded to Steve's. Their body heat meets somewhere in the middle, a thaw of hope and tranquility Steve will never tire of.

It's a sunset to rival the one that day he broke down while driving. Sunshine fades with a minty flare through the crowns of each wave. Stars begin to wink on their right, a downy curtain closing the day's production. Not a cloud in sight but for mesh whorls hanging low on the horizon.

They rock for a few minutes, five uncomplicated minutes worth more than both their bank accounts. Knees bend and unbend as they rock together.

Steve knows this is a chance to say something profound, to acknowledge what they're both thinking, but he doesn't have any words.

And that's…that's okay. He's allowed to just sit, to marinate in Danny's feelings with him. It's new. Steve can have and witness emotions out in the open without trying to fix them, without being ashamed.

"We've come a long way, huh? From guns in the garage?"

Danny's words sound calm too.

"Yeah." Steve's nod picks up speed. He thinks of what his parents taught him versus what he's learned, perpetuated cycles he's broken in the last few months alone and how much he's discovered about his partner in that time. "Turns out you can teach an old dog new tricks."

Danny tears hooded eyes away from the sunset only to fix them onto Steve. His lashes shine bright gold at this angle, gilded with the last glimmer of sun.

"We did good…kept an island safe, stopped a few criminals along the way."

"Found a family." The words glide off Steve's tongue light and easy and more exorbitant than diamonds.

"Found a home," Danny murmurs. The rocking pauses, and Steve takes over while Danny's body pauses too. These three simple words seem to unravel his thoughts.

Found you. But this one is so obvious that the thought of pointing it out does make Steve feel a little silly, even though they say it all the time.

Most of the turtle eggshells from back in the fall are gone, washed away by the waves and rain or picked at by animals. But there's one sliver piece from Hau's egg caught in dune grasses. It's been there for weeks, faintly speckled and bone white. Danny looks at it too, his mind far away for a moment.

Then his foot starts to push again.

"I'm used to…I've had to be all things to all people." Danny's eyes shine next, an opaline blue that does funny things to Steve's lungs. "To take care of what everyone needs. I come from an expressive family, where emotion and volume are encouraged, but…"

Danny trails off, also out of character.

Steve waits. He has no idea when they clasped hands, but he's glad for it. Their twined limbs rest on Danny's knee and the world rocks with a silent lullaby. Steve feels it. He feels it, long notes vibrated through the years and into his bones.

"I was always the one to fill whatever gap was left. Brother, confidant, bail for my brother." Danny's mouth twists in silent pain. "Marriage counsellor for my parents. Everybody always…always needed something."

Steve taps the top of Danny's foot with his own. "Liver donor."

A puff of air escapes Danny's lips, more sigh than laugh. "Babe, that one was a privilege. I volunteered. I'd do it again without question."

Steve runs a thumb over his partner's knuckles. He waits, because sitting like this until he's old and gray—decades from now—sounds like paradise. He doesn't want to go out any other way. He'd be quite happy if he died here, or any beach, so long as it's with Danny by his side.

"Now I'm beginning to wonder…" Danny purses his lips. The hesitant speech makes Steve grip his hand tighter.

This time he says it for them both: "You wonder if it's okay to let go of that."

Danny's pale features flush cranberry red and Steve relaxes deeper into his side. The strong cap of Danny's shoulder hedges Steve's and allows his body weight to go ragdoll. It tips their foreheads close, in each other's air.

What a pair they make, Steve afraid to show emotion because it was drilled into him as being wrong and Danny afraid to show emotion because it might mean failing his loved ones.

Might mean that, heaven forbid, he drop his arms so they can't catch everyone else's problems.

"It feels…different," says Danny at length. "But it's the most me I've felt in years. Since I was young."

The statement doesn't make any sense, wouldn't to anyone eavesdropping on this conversation, but Steve gets it perfectly.

"Good different."

"Good different," Danny agrees, with an extra strong nudge of his foot. His breathing slows down, deepens. Steve inhales an exaggerated breath so Danny can mimic it.

The two mini palm trees sway with whispering winds, and there's a unique smell on the breeze, brine and sugar from Steve's cookie dough through the open kitchen window, joined by the citrus smell of orange slices from supper. With nightfall and no lights, the stars gleam brighter than usual to Steve's eye, vied only by candles reflected from inside. Completing it all is an arm pressed against his elbow, a thumb drawing shapes on the back of his hand.

"Happy six months, Danno."

Danny beams, one of those smiles that reaches all the way up to his ears. "Thought maybe you'd forgotten after all."

Lines wrinkle around each eye, more than Danny had when Steve first met him. More gray hidden in the blond than there's ever been. And at the sight—at the evidence of them living longer than either thought they would—Steve's world stops moving.

It's a perfect day, a perfect moment, but this time delight bubbles through Steve instead of heartache or catharsis.

"As if I could."

"Sorry I didn't get us anything special to celebrate it."

Steve closes his eyes into the feel of Danny's pulse through hair on his wrist, the muffled sounds of the TV playing, waves, Grace singing along to the movie, cold sand between his toes, the future stretching unsullied in front of him…

"Yes." He brings Danny's palm to his lips and a reverent whisper falls from them. "Yes, you did. You really did."