Chapter 72 "Musings"

A/N: (16 November 2017) Hi all. I'm really sorry I've been so slow in updating recently. I went to the doctor, and had all these wretched tests done, and more to come because some got fouled up, and long story short, my body is being really mean to me, and now I've got to cut out even more stuff, and normally I roll fairly well (after an initial snit) with more NO NO NO in my life, but this time….I just feel down. You don't know how often I get that word, "No!" SINCE I WAS BORN! Well, now I'm the one shouting it. I'm sick of hearing NO NO NO. I know I shouldn't feel sorry for myself, but I do. I hit my NO limit. So I'm depressed. I've still got more tests ahead, which I'm scared of, stress has skyrocketed ... so I haven't written. It's for the best. I apologize for complaining, and being depressed. I'm sorry. This is not my normal. Nothing about this is my normal.

But this is a pensive chapter, so I thought I'd give it a go. It was originally not going to be a pensive chapter, but it does fit, and so let's see what happens. If it's horrible, I won't post it.

The usual disclaimer: CBS owns Hawaii Five-0 and we just play with it.

Chapter 72 "Musings"

(Saturday, 11 February 2017, 11 p.m.)

Danny Williams was sitting alone on the cot mattress he had brought over to the new house he had bought with Becca Cornett. It had been full of people helping him paint until a couple of hours ago when everyone had left, and the house settled into a contented silence.

He was bone tired, but knew he wouldn't sleep yet. He was happy, and he wanted to think about his life, his loved ones, and how much would change in a very short time, how much had already changed. He could see the proof of change in the colors of the walls in the rooms behind him, since he had the lights on and the doors flung wide open to let out the smell of fresh paint. No longer were lights bouncing of a riot of neon. The house seemed relieved to no longer be garish, to be contemplating the happiness of the family the walls would now protect and see thrive.

The cot was outside, under the covered part of the lower lanai, with a fluffy pillow and a fairly warm but light fleece blanket waiting for him to crawl under it, for the night was chilly and damp from the light rain that had been falling all day. The blanket was, incongruously, patterned with bright tropical fish on an 'it-made-sense' surf blue background. He would feel like he was sleeping in an aquarium when he finally snuggled under it. Angel was staying with Becca tonight, paying a visit to her sweetheart, Becca's older kitten, Clarence. He wondered what the two kittens would do when they saw his aquarium blanket. He had a feeling it would become their blanket and toy once they saw all those fish.

He missed his kitten, and he missed his children, but he hadn't wanted them to be in on the painting mayhem. Becca and Hannah were looking after them tonight, so Steve could have a quiet night too. Steve also had some practicing to do, which did not need an audience.

Danny had spent a large part of the day painting, with lots of help. He and Steve had gotten into a paintbrush flicking war, with the expected results, enticing Lou, Adam and Jerry to join in, until they all needed scrubbing from head to paint-splotched clothes. Luckily, it had happened in a room not already painted, and the drop cloths had been down on the floor, shielding it from the mess. Everyone had headed home to shower and change. They'd paint some more tomorrow.

Before the painting had been another session for their secret, with almost the same results as the day before, although Danny gave Steve due credit for really trying. They had one more session tomorrow. Steve had promised to practice, and Danny knew Doc would too, and he had, so he figured they would be ready when it was time to spring the surprise.

Danny's blond hair was still drying from the hot shower he had taken. His muscles still ached, so he worked his shoulders especially to loosen them up, and then draped part of the blanket over them to keep them warm. He was wearing a new white T-shirt and navy pajama pants, since he didn't have any 'old' clothes anymore. He was nursing a fresh mug of tea, and had just eaten a piled-high ham, cheese and appropriate condiments sandwich, and a pint of burstingly juicy, flavorful strawberries, and about 8 Oreo Doublestuff cookies, which, with the tea, would definitely send him back later to brush his teeth, especially since there was that one strawberry seed still lodged between two teeth, feeling like a boulder, not a teeny little seed. His tongue was working away at that seed, but it wasn't getting anywhere. But he was too tired and comfortable to get up and find the floss.

What a day it had been. Two days, he corrected himself. Yesterday had been one for the memory tome. Charlie and his now disinterest in knowing where babies came from after Dr. Cornett had explained the process to him. The Doc wouldn't say whether he'd mangled the words Charlie had repeated, or if that was Charlie's doing because the subject went way over his head. Danny figured it was a little of both.

But after the picnic, and the baptism the house had received with laughter and that first happy time with loved ones, good food, and nice weather, had come the sneaky thing he and Steve had planned, aided and abetted by their soon-to-be father-in-law. They had all met up and by the end of their session, Danny was sore from exercise and howling with laughter. Today had been the second session, and wow he was sore, but it would all be worth it. He and his co-conspirators were all scheduled for a massage after tomorrow's session, which they would need. Three days in a row of working muscles unused to being worked would take their toll.

Danny finally stopped fighting the strawberry seed and went in search of the floss. The house smelled of drying paint, and strategic windows were open. The smell was fresh but growing fainter every hour. Danny entered the bathroom freshly painted a beautiful pale lagoon blue, and smiled because he had looked at the one paint chip Becca had shown him, when he had been expecting to see her hand him a deck of paint chips in almost identical blues. "Honey, you didn't like any of the other blues?"

Becca had turned him into a 150-watt bulb with her 150-watt smile. "Oh, I loved lots of them, but this is the one." Danny had nevertheless wanted to see the other colors, because he was picky. He'd looked at approximately 5 billion light blue paint chips, shrugged as he turned to Becca, and said, "Yup, that's the one!"

Choosing colors had been easy after that. Becca –which didn't surprise Danny one bit—had a fine eye for color. There had been only one room they had "discussed". It was the master bedroom. He was used to white. Just plain white. But Becca had her heart set on pale sage-mint green, with only the lower walls and ceiling being white. When she showed him the paint chip for the sage-mint, he had thought it too dark, but she really knew what she was doing, so he gave in. Once the walls were painted, he loved the color. The room was so light and airy from the windows that the color was much lighter than he had thought it would be, and not at all too sage or too mint.

Once the strawberry seed was flossed away, and the Oreo cookie crumbs no longer scaring his toothbrush, he returned to the cot on the lanai. The rain was falling softly, but he was dry, even his hair. He decided to wrap in the blanket, and write in his journal. He felt content, and surprised at how relaxed he felt about the future.

No one, he reflected, would have described him as having a predominately positive outlook, since he considered the potential bad things and definitely tended to over-protect and prepare for the worst. He'd grown up that way, was probably in his DNA, and been perfected by a life as an eldest child looking after siblings who would fall down if there was an ion to trip on, who he had grown up keeping from burning their fingers on hot stoves, falling through thin ice on ponds not yet frozen enough to walk on. He was the big brother, and from a very young age had taken sharp-eyed care of his siblings. If he failed to keep them safe on his watch, he had heard, "But you were supposed to keep them out of trouble!" about 40 billion times. Then he had become a cop, and if that hadn't brought out the overprotective in him, nothing could have. Since he already was, it had taken the trait to a whole new level.

Then had come marriage to Rachel, and then the birth of Grace, his little monkey. If he had not already been a 150 out of 100 on the protective scale, having a tiny daughter to protect raised the level even more.

But, Danny reflected, it had come at a price, one which had also had a profound impact on him: there was all too seldom someone to watch out after him. Not that his parents had left him to his own devices, but they had seen his natural tendency to be responsible, and since they were busy, had too often left him to take care of himself.

The result was a hyer-vigilant, lonely kid who hid the lonely part behind a personality bigger than most. He'd learned early on that expressing feelings was something his family did, so he did, but he also learned that he had a lot of competition for being heard, and thus had turned communication into a fine art, including vocabulary, gestures, body language, and an expressive face. The older he got, the more those traits became fine-tuned and further ingrained, until now they were his "bones", the things that held everything else together.

Then his marriage had fallen apart, he had had to move to Hawaii, and had met Steve McGarrett, his approximately polar opposite in all things on earth. Oil had met water, and the two had not exactly become dearest friends overnight. In any other circumstance, and with any other two people, their immediate near-hatred of each other would have stayed as it was, and they would never have become friends, let alone best friends, brothers, and confidants.

But the circumstances had forced them to get to know each other on a deeper level. And fate had given them both exactly what they needed. Steve had been too long on his own, with no one to care strongly about him. He was used to taking care of himself, following his own impulses, with no one to rant at him if his ways were on the unorthodox, dangerous side.

Steve had made Danny his partner, and that was a word and job Danny took very very seriously. When Steve constantly ran along the sharpened knife's edge of insane, barely-do-able risks, taking Danny right along with him, Danny perfected his rants with motivation based on not wanting to get killed or maimed for life, and not wanting to see Steve suffer that fate either. Steve had minded at first, until he came to understand that Danny had come to care about whether or not Steve lived or died. It surprised Danny (in a way) that he did care about this foolish risk taker control freak hell-bent on getting his partner killed or shot or drowned or stabbed or exploded or squashed to jelly in a car crash or dead from a blood-pressure-OMG-induced old fashioned heart attack. It surprised Steve that this over-cautious bundle of in-your-face verbal emotions whose middle name was "Backup!" didn't seem to trust his SEAL abilities to push himself to extremes, forgetting almost 100% of the time that Danny was not a SEAL, until it finally worked its way into his awareness that Danny "Backup" Williams really didn't want to see him get killed.

When the dust settled from their rocky beginning, they discovered a most unlikely, soul-deep friendship that had become brotherhood somewhere along the way, until now they could not define a happy life that did not include the other in it.

Seven years later, they were on the verge of becoming brothers-in-law and could not be happier about it. The paint war had been all-too-typical of their interactions now. It had ended when Steve got the bathroom blue paint up his nose because Danny had amazing luck with that paintbrush flick, and Danny hit the floor laughing, along with Lou, Adam and Jerry, and finally Steve.

Danny considered that Steve had changed him. He had changed Steve, but probably not as much in a really visible way. Danny wasn't surprised. Steve held a lot inside from most people, and Danny let a lot out to almost everyone. Each had tempered those traits somewhat. And while Steve had somehow managed to get through life without getting himself killed, trusting too much that his skills and luck would see him through, he now realized that the dangers he took also put others, especially Danny, in constant and unnecessary danger. If he actually took that into account even 5 percent of the time, that was an improvement Danny was only too happy to acknowledge and give credit to Steve.

Danny, on the other hand, found someone who actually did listen to him, and cared what he felt, even if Danny still sometimes had to vocalize more than most of the population did. He now had someone who was there for him, who didn't expect him to go through everything on his own, who wanted to know what he had to say, what he thought, and cared about him personally so he had come to read the smallest signals Danny gave that something within his psyche was amiss, who Danny knew how long his timer was before he opened up to Steve about it before Steve would begin to prod and prod and prod until Danny told him. Steve had started out not wanting to know, and now he not only wanted to know, he needed to know, because he cared that much.

Their friendship worked. Now and then Steve broke out the competition two-alpha-male thing, and gave Danny due credit when Danny came out on top, as Danny understood Steve's need for his grousing when Danny did not come out on top. Complaints, especially well-intentioned, were now something Steve needed, rather than minded. Oil and water remained oil and water, but could no longer live happily without the other.

Danny thought about all of this for a long time before he finally crawled under his aquarium blanket and snuggled into the pillow, and felt only contentment. Life was good. Life was getting better all the time. He was happy.

H50H50H50

A/N: Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed this. Reviews and comments are always welcome.