Author's note:

When 8.18 came out, I was excited!

Finally we would get to know who shot Danny back in 8.10, and why! And then the episode came... and Danny's storyline left me with more questions than it had answered. It just didn't sit right with me, so my mind came up with this little story. There were just so many gaps that I felt needed to be closed, and this is my try on it. I am aware that this might not be what you, my dear readers, felt when you watched the episode, but I just - I needed to get it out. Please be patient with me. :)

I'm not a native English speaker; the story is not beta-read (yes, there are reasons for that, but I don't discuss this stuff in public). I hope you still give it a try!

The story is finished and consists of 5 chapters.

P.S.: Thanks, Nade, for always supporting me! :*

P.P.S.: The story title is based on the song title "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" by Queen

P.P.S.: The usual - I do not own anything related to Hawaii-Five-0, just using it as a playground!

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Denial: Refusal to acknowledge an unacceptable truth or emotion or to admit it into consciousness, used as a defence mechanism. [Oxford Dictionary]

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Today

Steve leaned against the computer table in the middle of the room, arms crossed, eyes fixed on Danny. His best friend and partner was sitting in his office, one hand playing absentmindedly with a pencil, while the other was clamped so hard around the receiver of his desk phone that the knuckles were white.

They were low on cases at the moment; perhaps after all the years since Governor Jameson had set up the Five-0 task force, the criminals had finally accepted that they would always pull the shorter straw against them, and gave Hawaii a wide berth. This thought was supposed to comfort and satisfy Steve, but he had been an active man all his life, and being without a proper case left him restless.

Especially restless now, after Danny's Uncle Vito had, literally by accident, given them a lead on the guy that had shot and almost killed Danny some months ago. A week had passed since they got the tip, and although every fiber in Steve demanded to jump onto the next plane to New Jersey and tear down the whole city until he found the reason why the guy had shot Danny, he had to keep his feet still.

Danny had asked him to, and, as hard as that was for Steve, he had to agree that Danny should try the legal way first. So, Danny had been busy all week calling old colleagues, pulling favors, and, finally, even contacted some not-so-legal sources. Of course the name Uncle Vito had given them had been an alias, just like the one the man used to check in to his hotel. All week, it had been as if the man had never existed, although the physical evidence was still stored in the morgue.

It was frustrating, and they argued more than ever. What had looked like finally, finally a breakthrough had only burned down the last remains of countenance they had, until Grover talked some sense into them. Lou had been insisting that they should pass the case over to the Newark police, even though he had committed the crime in Hawaii, since the guy was originally from there, and because they both were personally too involved to see anything in the right perspective. This one call that Danny now made was the last one he would do before he would send everything they had so far, and that was embarrassingly sparse, on to the Newark police.

Steve sighed silently and tensed when Danny finally hung up. He tried to make eye-contact with his partner, but Danny, although he obviously knew Steve was standing there, watching him, didn't lift his head to look at him. Instead, he leaned back in his chair and stared at the framed picture of the Brooklyn Bridge to his left, before suddenly startling and rubbing hard with both hands over his face.

"Hey. How'd it go?" Steve couldn't stand the tension any longer and stalked over to Danny's office, leaning against the door frame now, arms still crossed to hide his twitching fingers. "Did you get a name?"

"Huh?" Danny startled again and blinked at Steve, visibly pulling himself together. Steve frowned. "Yeah, yeah. I got the name. I got it." Danny's voice trailed off, and Steve had to muster all his zen to resist the urge and simply pull Danny up from his chair and shake the answer out of him, when Danny eventually continued. "It's Ray Gardner. The guy was Ray Gardner."

That didn't ring a bell in Steve, and the frown deepened. He tried to connect the name to something, anything Danny had told him or he had discovered personally in the last eight years about Danny's past in New Jersey, but came up with nothing.

"Ray Gardner?"

Danny nodded minutely, slowly rubbing over the bridge of his nose. "Yeah. Why didn't I recognize him? How could I forget his face?" The rubbing was getting more frantic, until Danny suddenly stopped and looked at Steve. "You've been right all along. He was someone I once booked, but that was such a long time ago, I simply forgot about him! And Brooke…" There it was again, that pensive look that Steve didn't like, because he couldn't follow where his friend's thoughts were heading to. No matter how deep he had dug into Danny's past to get to know all about him, some things were always elusive. And this? This obviously was part of that, and Steve couldn't help but feel guilty. His obvious failure in finding that information about Danny had almost cost Danny his life. He wouldn't let anything like this happen again. Ever.

"Danny, stop talking in riddles. Who is Ray Gardner? And who is Brooke?" Steve's fingers were itching to feed the computer the names and finally find out what this all had been about.

"Ray Gardner is — was — God, I never thought he was able to kill someone." Danny sucked at his upper lip and started playing with the pencil again. "He was violent, yes, sure, but outright planning to kill someone?"

"Danny…!"

At the sharp tone of Steve's voice, Danny sat up and breathed through. "You might want to sit down," he gestured toward the visitor's chair opposite of his desk. "This will take a little while. And it's all my fault."

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19 years ago

"Hey, Danny, Danny-boy, are you asleep?" A sharp knock at the window on the driver's side of the police car, and then Rick Peterson's amused voice tore Danny out of the stupor he had fallen into and made him blink sheepishly at the older officer. He yawned and wound down the window. Working double-shifts always got to him at the end of those long hours, and although he followed Rick's advice: loads of coffee, going to bed early before the double-days, he still felt wrung out and cranky.

Well, at least Rick knew how to lift his spirits, Danny mused when he grabbed the steaming cup of coffee and the bag with donuts Rick offered him through the now open window. "Thanks, man," Danny groaned and rolled his shoulders a bit to ease the tension from sitting too long in the car, but to no avail.

"Just two more hours, D, and we're on our way home and allowed to sleep as long as we want. Well, at least you can." Rick chuckled when he got into the car. "For me, there's a lively six-year-old waiting at home that wants to spend time with his Daddy. And you know what? I wouldn't change a single thing in my life. Not even these lousy double-shifts. They'll make the money I need to send the kid to college one day. May I give you some advice?"

Danny yawned again, but nodded. He had just turned 22, had moved out from his parents' house not even three months ago, and a fatherly friend like Rick meant a lot to him. Rick always made sure to give advice off duty, no commands or orders, something he had probably learned was best after being Danny's mentor in the academy and first partner after graduation. He wasn't smothering or demanding and it worked for them.

"Start putting money aside. For your future wife, your future house, your future children. It's important you start now when you don't need much for yourself. Because one day, you'll need all the money you can get your hands on to feed hungry mouths and pay the mortgage on a house you never knew you even wanted. If I had done that before," Rick lifted his index finger and wagged it in front of Danny's face, "then I wouldn't have to work in these ungodly hours and sit here with a rookie who can barely keep his eyes open!"

They both laughed about this old joke, but got serious again when the dispatcher's voice crackled over the radio. "Patrols around Harrison, we have a 4-0-0 Ann Street and Manor Avenue, please come in."

Rick sighed and rolled his eyes. He stuffed the donut back into the bag, and wiped his sugary fingers on the upholstery of the seat, grinning about Danny's disapproving huff. He grabbed the radio. "Patrol Car 3963, Officer Peterson here. We're two blocks away, we'll cover it." He nodded at Danny to get the car moving, and Danny obeyed with a sigh of his own, turning the car one-handed while his other hand still held the coffee cup.

They arrived five minutes later at the small, white house, and while Rick checked in with the dispatcher, Danny left the car and strode over to the front door, waiting for Rick to join him before he would knock. As far as he could see in the relative darkness of the night, the house looked tidy; the garden that flanked the gravel approach was taken care of and neat.

Danny shrugged, wondering if they were at the wrong house when from inside came the clatter of breaking glass, and then an angry male voice, accompanied by the loud sound of a slap was audible. Danny's right hand instinctively went to his holstered gun while he motioned with his left to Rick who finally had joined him. He arched his eyebrows, widening his stance a little bit when Rick's face became serious at once. Rick nodded, and then knocked at the door with a sharp rap. "Police! Open the door, sir, ma'am!"

They could hear the shuffling of feet, hushed voices — of the man and a woman — and then the door was opened, just as Rick was about to knock again. A man loomed in the door frame, taller than Rick, with a thick mop of black, unruly hair and a full beard. His dark eyes were burning with barely restrained anger, and Danny nervously flipped the safety off his weapon, ready to pull the gun if the guy so much as twitched the wrong way. Rick stepped forward, making a soothing gesture at Danny and motioning with the other hand at the guy. "Sir, we have a complaint about noise coming from your house. Is everything okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, s'all right. Just a heated argument. Couple stuff, you know?" The man eased his stance visibly, his eyes never leaving Rick's face, his curled hands opening up. He mustered a big fake smile at Rick, then at Danny, and shrugged. "You married, Officer?" When Rick did not make a move, the guy just shrugged again. "If you are, you know that sometimes an argument gets loud. And when I gestured a little bit too much, I knocked the glass off the table. That's all."

Danny craned his neck to try and see beyond the man, tried to make out the woman behind him, but to no avail. The tall, big form of the man blocked his view into the back of the house effectively. "I promise we'll be nice and silent now, Officers." There was something in the man's voice that made Danny's skin crawl, and obviously Rick felt the same, as he stepped aside and motioned at the man. "Please, Sir, would you step outside? I want to talk to your wife for a second."

The man seemed willing to protest, to object, but then obeyed and came down, standing on the same step as Danny did, and towering almost a foot over him. Danny kept his hand on his gun. He might be small, but he was fast, and he was determined. The man grinned at him, his now cold eyes focused on Danny, his expression one of put-on boredom.

Danny didn't move. He heard how Rick talked to someone in the house — the woman they'd heard, most certainly, but he couldn't say it for real since he didn't hear or see her. After a minute or two, Rick came back. He nodded stiffly at the man, whose bored grin now morphed into triumph when Rick started to speak. "Well, Sir, I hope we don't have to come here again. Please mind your neighbors and don't make too much noise at this time of the night. Good night, Sir. Ma'am." He looked beyond the man at the woman Danny still hadn't seen yet.

Rick nudged Danny and once back in the car, Danny frowned at Rick. "Why are we just leaving? He hit her, right? God, I can't stand these assholes. We could've-"

"No." Rick raised a hand to stop Danny. "We could not. I wish we could, but we can't, okay? Don't go there, Danny. Yes, I saw her face, and I saw his fingerprints on her cheek. But she said 'no'. She said it's alright. So we have no authority to intervene. As much as we want to. No." He took a deep breath and grabbed his now cold cup of coffee. "We can only act when she reports him."

"Or when something happens in front of our very eyes." Danny sighed and made a face when he pulled the car out of the driveway. "It just doesn't feel right. Why doesn't she ask for help? We are here at her door, we could have taken that asshole with us."

"Okay." Rick put a hand on Danny's arm and indicated him to stop the car at the curb. He waited, until Danny had cut the engine and turned to him, a curious look in his blue eyes. "Listen, D. It's not that easy. Let's assume, yeah, okay, we would have convinced her to tell us he'd hit her. And then? We would have taken him with us, processed him, put him into a cell for a night or two, until a judge is having time for him — and then what? He would swear it was just an accident, that he'd never done this before, and that he had been a little bit drunk and lost control — maybe his cat had died the day before blah blah blah. And the judge would wag his finger at him and simply set him free. You know what happens then? He goes home and beats the shit out of that poor woman for causing so much trouble.

"We can't keep him away from her, and she's so cowed by him she won't leave him. Sometimes, D., sometimes, doing the right thing is the wrong way. I've seen these situations before. If she doesn't speak up for herself, if she doesn't want a change, we can't help her. Tough, but that's life."

Danny chewed on Rick's words. He opened his mouth, closed it again, curled his fingers into fists, and opened them again. "But it's, it's… I became a police officer because I wanted to help, Rick! I wanted to make things better for people! I wanted to bring them justice! This is — this is a travesty of justice." He spat the words out, slapping a hand against the steering wheel.

Rick pursed his lips. "We all did once upon a time, D. They don't prepare you rookies for that in the Police Academy. All they give you is a set of regulations and expectations, a gun, a pair of shiny new handcuffs and a likewise shiny badge, but they don't prepare you for this. Welcome to reality."