I do not own Hawaii Five-0 or any characters. No copyright infringement intended.
Notes: now let's get down to some business, shall we? ***evil grin***
H5O* H5O* H5O* H5O* H5O
"So?" Danny asked as he slyly pushed Steve up against the kitchen counter after dropping the empty pizza boxes on the floor near the over-full garbage pail. He scooted closer, his arms now on either side of Steve, trapping him in place out of view of where the boys were playing in the living room. He looked up into Steve's face, his grin infectious enough for Steve to place a kiss on his forehead.
"How does it feel to hear your son's first words? It's a beautiful thing, isn't it?"
It was actually ... incredible. Steve wasn't sure where to land though. His smile wavered. Stuck between a smile and a confusing feeling of sadness, he scrubbed hard at his face. Suddenly, he was in an emotional turmoil as his fingers wound up mired in his hair. As his expression changed, Steve looked down at Danny, easily reading the worry which had quickly replaced that gleeful grin.
"What? What's wrong?" Danny asked. "You were just over the moon about your kid's first words ... six years old or not ... your son called you daddy, Steven! Now you look like you got hit by a truck. What gives?"
"That's the thing though," Steve interrupted the tirade he could sense growing. As things slowly clicked into place, Steve realized why he was so damned upset by Danny's simple question. He could finally put words to the confusion inside his mind ... and his heart.
"What is wrong with you?" Danny persisted, frowning now.
"He's not legally my son, Danny," Steve explained slowly and very softly in case Charlie might hear him. "He's not ... he should be and I want him to be ... but he's not legally mine and I think he's scared to death that anyone can come and take him away. Hell, and maybe I am, too."
Instead of soothing him or even offering him an argument though, Danny sucked in an audible breath over his teeth and then nodded.
"Okay. Yeah," Danny replied thoughtfully. He paused before shrugging as if what he'd suggest next would solve the whole dilemma. "So, we fix it. We call Emily and we ask her ... that little man needs to take your name and know he's yours and that this is his home. Good and proper. I don't know what she'll say though. I couldn't even hazard a guess so we'll need to retain a lawyer and prepare; learn up on adoption and what you'd need to do in a case like this."
Steve felt his heart thud right up into his mouth. Adoption. Never in his life had Steve considered having a kid like C.J., let alone formalizing an adoption. Sure he'd thought he'd be a father someday, but this scenario had never crossed his mind. However, now that Billy Travers might have reared his ugly head, prompting such a visceral response from the little boy, Steve knew that this had to be the logical next step. For him and especially for C.J. A proper adoption would resolve so much anxiety for the both of them. Yet, there was the Gardiner family to contend with and nothing was ever as easy as it should be. More so when the family in question had unlimited funds and probably felt as if they'd permitted so much already by allowing Steve and Danny guardianship rights.
"Conor James McGarrett?" Steve said out loud. The name rolled off his tongue sounding so very right and Steve rediscovered his smile. He knew he sounded wistful as Danny's smile also returned in spades. He leaned down at the same time Danny craned his neck upwards, their lips parting as they kissed deeply, sharing that private moment.
"Sure. Why not," Danny whispered as he mouthed Steve's lips with a gentle tease. "Makes sense in all the right ways."
"Something else does, too. In all of the same right ways," Steve whispered back. "You know what mean and if we're talking adoption, then it should be the both of us. Together."
Steve's challenge was clear. But to pound his point home, he pulled Danny in tight, his arms tucked firmly around the smaller man. "Me and you ... we make sense. We always have and we need to talk, Danno. C.J. wants you as his dad too and ...Charlie? They need to be real brothers … and what about Grace? She loves him just as much. So I say: Conor James Williams-McGarrett. It has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?""
"Call Lou while I take the garbage out," Danny interrupted as he pulled out of Steve's embrace. Steve scowled as he reluctantly released his partner.
They'd been down this particular path before; well before C.J. had come into their lives. Oddly enough, it was Steve always in pursuit and Danny the one with the reservations. In fact, Danny was quite comfortable with how things were between them and his single worded excuse easy enough to understand.
Rachel.
It didn't matter if Steve felt that they would be different together. Danny had been badly burned and was now ambivalent about the topic of marriage. He was perfectly fine with their current living arrangements and he wasn't the only one content which had made Steve's earlier arguments almost to easy to negate. As Danny always calmly pointed out, both Charlie and Grace were equally at ease with their Danno and Uncle Steve merely living together.
Steve wholly disagreed though. For him, their arrangement had merely been a litmus test which they'd passed with flying colors. He'd wanted more since almost losing Danny to a bullet inside the confines of a hospital quarantine ward. He absolutely needed more now that C.J. was in their life.
With this special little boy in their midst, Steve was determined to talk some sense into his partner.
"Danny," Steve tried to stop Danny as he scooped up the empty pizza boxes and grabbed the full trash bag out of the pail with his free hand. "We need to talk. Things are different now."
"Maybe they are," Danny replied evenly though he was holding the boxes in front of himself like a paper shield. "But we'll discuss this later. Not while the kids are in the house, plus C.J.'s already on edge. Later, okay? I'm willing to talk about it again ... but later."
"He wants you to be his father, too," Steve saw fit to add anyway. "You're his Danno and as much his father as I am! He'll never understand why we aren't a real family." His voice was louder now and maybe his tone a bit more sharp. He made a face when his cell phone chirped at the same time and Danny took the opportunity of this new interruption to scoot backwards towards the door to the breeze-way.
A glance told Steve it was Lou Grover and he sighed in aggravation, knowing that he needed to take the call.
"Lou?" Danny asked even though he'd likely guessed it.
"Yeah," Steve muttered, still aggravated. They stared at each other for a moment though, each of them warring with different emotions until Danny could only shrug, almost helplessly.
"Steve, I promise, we'll discuss it later," Danny said as he motioned to the cell phone with his chin. "Talk to Lou before that thing goes to voicemail. See what he's found out about Billy Travers. We need to know ... and we sure as hell need to deal with this insanity first. Take the call; I'll be right back."
"Sure," Steve said as he all but slammed his finger on the accept button to accept Lou's call. He was equal measures disappointed and angry as he watched Danny leave the kitchen. Annoyed as hell all over again as he watched Danny disappear out the side door and into the dusky evening. He cleared his throat and tried to clear his mind as he refocused on Lou Grover who was already saying something into the phone. Talking fast and breathless, Steve realized quickly that the older man was on high alert.
Shit, Steve practically growled as he focused on what Lou was saying, the tone bad enough. Lou had something and it wasn't good. It wasn't good at all.
"Steve? You hearing me? You there?"
"No. Not all of it ...Lou? Slow down ... start over. What do you have?"
H5O* H5O
Danny used his shoulder to open the door the rest of the way, sobered by Steve's question. Or actually, not a question, more of a needy demand to talk about a very touchy subject. Danny shouldn't have been confused by the timing of it, and yet he was. C.J. was an important part of their lives and adoption made so much sense. However, their current comfortable circumstances would likely not yield a positive outcome, forcing only Steve to pursue the legal route.
"Damn it," Danny groused under his breath. "We are a real family." He loved Steve unconditionally but for Danny, marriage had been firmly off the table. Up until that day, he hadn't seen the necessity of it. So where Steve had been the one most interestingly pressing the matter, Danny had gently shut down Steve's proposal time and again. But as Steve had just so wisely pointed out, things were very different now.
Still, did adopting C.J. have to equate to marriage? Danny made a face at his own stupidity of even thinking about such a question. Of course it did unless Steve adopted the little boy on his own and Danny immediately resented that as an option. It felt downright wrong in too many ways that counted not only for himself and for Steve, but for two little boys who considered themselves full brothers without a court-order piece of paper confirming it.
Lost in his thoughts about how to juggle Steve, revisit the prospect of marriage after his own failures, and now balance C.J.'s formal adoption along with those things, Danny fumbled the empty pizza boxes as he tried to slide open the lid to the outside garbage bin.
"Shit," he cursed under his breath as he accidentally dropped the hard plastic lid. It bounced away from the bin. He wasn't thinking about the task at hand as he started to do some serious soul-searching because one of Steve's pointed comments stayed stuck in his head and Danny sniffed a rueful sound because his argument was weakening, and weakening fast.
"We are a real family … dammit, Steven," Danny muttered to himself as a smile crept over his mouth. Conor James Williams-McGarrett. He was going to have to marry his overbearing, over-achieving, lovable Neanderthal of a partner after all.
Preoccupied by all of those thoughts, Danny never sensed the dark shadow looming just out of sight. So he was completely taken by surprise when a hot stabbing pain lanced across the side of his skull. The pain took away his equilibrium and sent him reeling. With a stunned grunt of sound, the remaining empty boxes slipped from his hands. Danny stumbled to a knee, his eyes closing as the rest of his body collapsed in upon itself to slump lifelessly to the concrete of the breeze-way.
Danny never felt Billy Travers grab his arm to roughly drag him into the small copse of greenery, just out of sight of the door and kitchen window, leaving a thin trail of blood in his wake.
~ to be continued ~
