Chapter 70 "Morning"
A/N: (6 September 2017) You are all soooo wonderful and patient, and I have to thank you for those qualities and so many more! I'm woefully late on updating. But there is a reason! Every year the month of August has it in for me, it really does. This one was one lead pipe after another, and right now I'm fighting a bad relapse of my two auto-immune disorders which are just so fun I can't even tell you! Plus, brace on right wrist, smaller brace on left pointer finger. Typing is sllowwwwwwwww. And I can't seem to get enough sleep.
But it could be worse! :D
So here is a shortened version of this chapter, with the next part coming in 71, which will happen much sooner! Pinky swear!
Thank you so much for hanging in here with me! And if you feel inclined, let me know what you think of this chapter.
CBS owns all things Hawaii Five-0.
Chapter 70 "Morning"
(Friday, 10 February 2017, 5:00 a.m.)
It was a very small sound which had awakened Danny, sleeping on his right side on the couch with Angel gazing up at him where she was curled in his arms. He knew that sound by heart now: Steve, returning to his room after checking on his houseguest/brother. Danny smiled, yawned, and settled against his pillow, and tweaked the blue, white, and pale yellow crocheted afghan over his shoulder, and gave Angel a few pets and a kiss on her pink nose while she purred softly, well on her way back to sleep. Angel had a way now of daring him to try to get up, so he didn't try. He was comfortable, and content.
It was comforting to know that Steve checked up on him. He knew it had been very hard on his partner to go through everything he had to rescue him, and then try to be patient while he recovered. Had their positions been reversed, as they had been on several occasions, Danny knew the hell he had gone through watching Steve heal after what Wo Fat had done to him, which had ended with Wo Fat dead and Steve lying on a cold, wet concrete floor liberally splattered with his own blood, an oozing bullet crease on the left side of his head. Danny had thought he was dead. It was one of the worst moments of his entire life. Then there was the whole thing in Afghanistan, when he'd thought he'd lost Steve. Plus all the other times. He didn't dwell on the details anymore. He didn't need to. Eyes blackened and swollen shut, bullet holes and blood. He'd seen so many on Steve, and Steve had seen a few on him. They were images they would never forget, emotions that would be there as long as they lived. Even the plane being shot up, that had resulted in Danny donating half his liver to give Steve a chance to survive – how could either of them ever forget that? They had these matching scars down the center of each man's abdomen. They literally shared a liver, Danny's liver. Sometimes it would cross his mind that he had Steve's back if he ever needed a kidney, since he still had two, one to keep, one to donate. And he bet Steve thought about it too. Steve couldn't donate organs now that he was on the anti-rejection meds, but Danny knew he would if he could.
Yeah, Danny and Steve both knew how hard it was to watch someone you loved fighting to survive, physically and emotionally, because some wounds were not physical, or not entirely. Sometimes the physical ones were the easier to recover from. How well each man knew that, and knew the other knew, too.
They always had someone they could talk to about what they were going through.
Angel opened one blue eye and chirped a soft meow at Danny. He petted her gently, and whispered, "I guess you are right, Angel Girl. If it isn't time to feed you yet, I should be sleeping."
Danny snuggled into the pillow and afghan, and within ten minutes was asleep.
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Danny woke at 6:30 without any alarm clock but his hungry kitten, and Steve sneaking through the study on his way to the back door. He was in swim shorts and a rash guard neoprene long sleeved shirt. Danny sat up and yawned hugely while Angel crawled all over him asking (for the time being, politely) for her breakfast.
"Danny, hey, I'm sorry to wake you. I was just heading out for a swim." He pointed at Angel. "I see your alarm clock went off."
"Yup, she did." Danny yawned again and sat up. "How's your arm feel without the cast?" Steve had gotten it off the day before.
"Wimpy. I'm going to have to build up the muscles again. How's your leg?"
Danny grinned. "Wimpy." He glanced down at his left leg, the shiny deep red scar on the middle of his thigh, knowing there was a shiny round second scar on the outer part where the bullet had gone right in and managed to do minimal damage. "But it's healed. I'll join you for your swim. Start without me. I'll catch up. Gotta feed Miss I Have Claws and see how the kids are doing."
"Grace is in the shower," Steve informed him. "She said she'll get Charlie up when she gets out. And she said she'd make breakfast."
Danny gaped. "Who is this person pretending to be my daughter? Miss Teenage I Need My Sleep got up without me having to threaten to cancel her phone for a month? Will wonders never cease! On the downside, there goes any chance either of us has of getting a hot shower."
Steve grinned his special grin, saved for the news he shared next. "Hannah and Becca are coming by to take the kids to school, and I know Gracie and Becca have been planning something secretive. You and Becca still going to see the house?"
Danny felt that fluttery happy feeling he always did at mention of or thought of Becca. "Yes. At 11 o'clock, and if all goes according to plan, we sign the papers and get the keys this afternoon. So, Steve, you ready for our secret thing at 7 tonight? We can't put it off any longer, or it will be an epic fiasco. Remember, our cover is a work thing."
"Right. A work thing." He huffed, because he was sure their secret would end in disaster anyway. "Danny, are you sure about this thing? I mean, you know I can't -"
Charlie padded out into the study, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "I don't feel good, Daddy. Can I stay home from school?"
Danny felt his forehead and cheek, and didn't feel any fever. "What hurts, Buddy?" Steve had come over to check out Charlie for himself.
Charlie flopped over onto Danny's lap and pouted. "Art class. We have to make cards for our classmates and Lexi expects me to put a big heart on her card and use glitter because she wants me to be her boyfriend."
"Ohhhhhh," Steve said, pouting dramatically in commiseration with Charlie. "Is there a girl you want to make a special card for?"
"Ewwwww! No! Love is gross!"
Danny and Steve exchanged huge bright grins. "Oh it is, Buddy? Well, you like Becca and Hannah, right? You know I love Becca and Steve loves Hannah, right? Is that gross?"
"It is sometimes," said the innocent Charlie. "Bobby told me how babies are made and I think you and Aunt Becca have been trying to make babies, and Uncle Steve and Aunt Hannah have too, and then we'll be overrun with babies, and I don't ever want to do that, make a baby, but I think Lexi does."
Steve harrumphed. "Charlie, you are in kindergarten. You can't make a baby yet. Not until you are a lot older."
Danny rumpled Charlie's hair until he sat up again and tried to straighten out the mess. "So you think me and Becca are trying? What did Bobby tell you, anyway? Because we're not trying to make a baby yet."
Very dramatically, Charlie rolled his eyes and sighed for at least five seconds. "Ohhhhhhhh Daddy. You just told a fib."
Danny looked confused and stricken. "No I didn't, Charlie."
Another five second sigh of sadness. "Bobby said when you kiss and stick your tongues in the other person's mouth like you and Aunt Becca do all the time, you are making butterflies in Becca's tummy and they turn into babies. Sometimes. And I've seen Uncle Steve trying to put butterflies in Aunt Hannah's tummy, I've seen it soooo many times. I just can't take it no more. I'm the baby, and I wanna keep it that way." Charlie sighed again and flopped back into Danny's lap and started to suck his thumb. Out of habit, Danny moved Charlie's thumb and said, "Too old, remember, Buddy?"
The two men exchanged wordless blushes that said, as clear as if words were used, "I have no clue what to say right now." Finally, Steve blurted, "Danny, he's your kid! You fix it!"
Danny cleared his throat and sat Charlie up again, looking him in the eyes. "Uhm, Charlie. Tongues don't make butterflies and butterflies don't make babies. Bobby got his facts a bit skewed there."
"What's 'ski-ew'?"
"Wrong. Inaccurate. Scrambled."
Charlie was not feeling patient. "Okay, if Bobby is wrong, what does make babies? How do they get in the tummies? And why? And how do they get out? It's so confusing!"
Danny's brows furrowed, and he pursed his lips.
Steve put on his most innocent expression and looked up at Danny, now that he was sitting cross legged on the floor in front of Charlie and his father. "I never quite understood that part myself, Danny. How do babies happen?"
Danny's brows came down into his "I am not amused" face, and he leaned forward and shoved Steve over so he rolled onto his back on the floor, laughing. "I just wanna know how you get out of this one! Seriously, I may need this lesson someday!"
"Shut up and go swimming, Steve, and try not to -"
"Uncle Steve is going swimming?" Charlie looked up at his Daddy. "I want to go too!"
Realizing his reprieve from Parental Nightmare Discussion of Not Old Enough Topic Number 4129, he didn't blink as he complained, "But I was just about to tell you how babies -"
"Oh, you can do that later. Can I go swimming with Uncle Steve? Pweeeeeeeez?"
"No," said Grace, entering as if on cue, wearing a grownup kimono-style satin bathrobe which made Danny gulp and realize how much she had grown up. "You need to get ready for school, and I need to get breakfast started. I filled the tub, so in you go for your bath, and make sure you wash behind your ears!" Danny wondered when this Mother Hen thing had begun?
Steve picked himself up, then Charlie, and on his way past Grace he planted a kiss on her forehead. "Morning, Gracie. I'm going to help Charlie with his bath, and then -"
"Tell me where babies come from?" finished an excited, giggling Charlie, arms out like an airplane, Steve providing the plane's sound effects. Danny smiled and kept silent.
Steve hesitated, but then continued "flying" Charlie toward the bathroom. "No, I thought you might rather hear about submarines and Naval battles. You have those new toys, right?"
"Oh fun! I want to blow up everything!"
"Copy that, Charlie! But all the water has to stay in the tub this time."
After they had vanished into the bathroom, and splashing was heard after the approximate minute and a half it took to get Charlie out of his pajamas, Danny went over to Grace and gave her a hug and a kiss, missing his little baby daughter, but very proud of the woman she had suddenly become. She said, after her, "Good morning, Daddy," very clearly, "You just dodged a bullet."
He nodded. Angel was suddenly sitting on his feet, looking straight up at him, her tail twitching. "I'm dodging another if I make this little lady wait any longer for her nomnoms."
"Meow," agreed Angel, beginning her love circling of Danny's ankles now that she knew food was imminent.
Grace giggled quietly like a kid, for just a moment, and Danny heard her say, on the phone ten seconds later, probably to Will Grover, "Dad just called Angel's food 'nomnoms'!"
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