I am so sorry for the long delay. I can't even promise it won't happen again but I'm catching up watching the show and writing this. I have scenes planned out for when they get back to Hawaii but I am having too much fun in Jersey.
It had been so long that I needed to go back and re-read the Jersey stuff to check continuity and names and I found so many little errors. I'm sorry, I will go back and fix them but I assume you'd prefer it if I just keep giving you new stuff for the moment...enjoy!

/ / / Confrontation \ \ \

Danny nodded to Hannah who pulled herself away from the family collected in the kitchen. She came over to them biting her lip and looking at Steve apologetically.

"I'm the one you should apologise to," Danny said when she was standing in front of him. "I'm the one who is going to be dealing with your stupid-arse son not Steve."

"We live together," Steve said even as Hannah slumped forward into Danny to hug him.

"Thank you," she pulled away and dragged Steve toward her, and down to her, for a hug. "Thank you so much, Steve. I just don't want him to turn into the same useless man as his father."

Steve looked at Danny and hugged Hannah back with the confused expression. "It's fine, we're happy to help."

"It's a good thing you are marrying this one," Hannah said. "Or I'd try to turn him."

Danny rolled his eyes. "You want to tell him before or after Christmas?"

Hannah frowned and looked back into the kitchen. "Now. He'll be angry but he fucked up…and I'm sending him to an island paradise."

"It's hell," Danny said easily.

Steve looked at Danny and said nothing, stared, silently, until Danny shrugged. "You and Grace, you're the only good things about the entire island."

Danny ignored the beaming grin from Steve to turn back to his sister. She took a deep breath and turned around. She went into the kitchen and collected her son, smiling thinly at Chris.

"He's not going to be happy," Danny said. "You don't need to stick around for this bit, go have some of my mum's…cake. She makes good cake."

"I know," Steve said. "But how bad could it be?"

"What do you want?" Eric asked as he walked next to his mother.

"A little less attitude would be a good start," Danny said almost wanting to shake the insolence out of his nephew. Eric just glared at him in response; the kid obviously knew something was wrong.

"Sit down, Eric," Hannah said crossing her arms over her chest.

"No," Eric said. "Just tell me what you and Danny have decided to do to punish me."

"I'm sending you to Hawaii."

"Cool," Eric said sarcastically. "Gotta love a holiday."

"It's not a holiday," Hannah said. "I don't like your friends and I want you out of New Jersey for a while."

"What's wrong with my friends?"

"They helped you get arrested," Hannah said firmly. "Or do you not remember being in the cell and having your uncle bail you out?"

"It wasn't nothing," Eric said. "Just a bit of fun."

"Fun?" Hannah said. "How is a police record and never being able to go to college or get a good job a bit of fun?"

"Who gives a shit about what kind of job I get?"

"Eric," Danny said stepping up next to his sister. "Do you really want to be a pathetic idiot who can't do anything better with his life than collect unemployment?"

Eric rolled his eyes at Danny and focussed on his mother. "I'm not going with him, even if I can go to Hawaii."

"You don't have a choice," Hannah said. "You're going and hopefully he can talk some sense into you because what you are doing here is not acceptable and you cannot keep doing what you've been doing."

"I don't have a choice?" Eric said. "I'll just go and stay with Dad."

Hannah's face fell as Steve watched her. "Eric…"

"Fine!" Eric said and folded his arms defensively across his chest. "I'll go and stay with one of my friends. Anything has got to be better than staying with you."

"Eric!" Danny said firmly.

"She's a complete nag, she drove Dad off and she complains about what a bastard he is."

"I have never said that."

"Maybe not in front of me," Eric said defiantly. "But I'm not stupid or deaf, Mum. I know what you say about him."

"I'm sorry."

"Maybe you should have been sorrier when you were kicking him out."

Hannah's face crumpled and Steve stepped forward. He grabbed Eric's elbow and began frog marching the teen away from his mother. Danny moved towards Hannah as Steve moved Eric away from them.

"You aren't that stupid are you?" Steve asked sliding into the remembered stance and voice that he had used when he was with Naval Intelligence.

Eric glared up at him.

"Because I assume you are not such an idiot that you want to break your mother's heart."

"She deserves it," Eric said but his voice wasn't as sure as he was pretending he was.

"She does not."

"What the fuck do you know?" Eric asked. "You're just some guy that my uncle is experimenting with."

Steve took a slow breath. "How old are you Eric?"

"Seventeen," Eric said mulishly.

"Older than I was when I mother was killed."

Eric gaped at Steve for a second.

"So, your dad has left your mother, not the other way around, and instead of stepping up and helping her out you are making things harder for her?"

Eric glared at him.

"I was wrong, you are stupid."

Steve turned to walk away only to find Chris standing in the doorway. The older man was watching Steve and Eric. Steve tensed his spine and moved until he was standing at attention.

"I'd like a word with my grandson," Chris said.

Steve nodded sharply and began to walk past Chris. Danny's dad stopped him with a hand on his elbow. "I appreciate what you said to him."

"Pop." Eric's voice was a little whiny and a lot offended.

Chris let go of Steve and stepped closer to Eric. "There is never an excuse to talk to your mother that way. Or for what you just said to Steve."

Steve saw Eric's head drop dejectedly as he walked out of the room.

"You have a choice, you can come and stay with me and your Nan and volunteer at charities on weekends, after school and your holidays or you can go to Hawaii with your uncle."

Steve walked back towards Danny who was entertaining his other three nephews while his mother and nana fed Hannah cake.

As soon as Hannah saw him she waved him over. "Steve, you can change your mind, if you want."

Steve shook his head after looking over at Danny. His partner shrugged at him and went back to building something that looked like the side of a mountain with his nephews. Steve wondered quickly if his knee was going to be sore after sitting on the floor like that.

"No," Steve said turning back to Hannah and looking at her properly. "I think he needs to come more now than I did earlier today."

Hannah frowned at him. "God, I hope you are going to keep trying to impress us for a while longer."

"He's not trying to impress you," Danny called out. "Steve, come and help us build the gates of Erebor."

"What?"

"Boys," he said to his nephews. "You are going to have to introduce Steve to The Hobbit."

"No, Uncle Danny. The Hobbit was only at the movies."

Danny made a face at Steve.

"Next time," Steve said dropping down onto the floor next to Danny. "What are we making?"

"Well…" the youngest of the three boys, Jonathon, started and Steve listened intently as he explained the history of the Hobbit, what changes had been made in the first movie, which lego pieces were not actually from the Hobbit lego set he had received for his birthday, a couple of weeks before, and what Steve had to do to help. Steve nodded and did as he was told.

"I shouldn't have dragged him off, should I?" Steve asked Danny as he built the dwarfish guard for the side of the gate the three boys were building.

Danny shook his head. "He shouldn't have been speaking to his mother like that. So long as he wasn't dangled off a roof or left to swim with sharks you did the right thing."

"I called him stupid."

One of the boys, Toby, turned to him and shook his head. "You're not supposed to call people stupid, it's rude."

"Yes, Steven," Danny said with a grin.

"But," the last of them, Bradley, said. "E making Mum cry is worse."

The brothers nodded in agreement and then went back to playing.

A few minutes later Eric and Chris walked out of the other room and into the kitchen. Steve and Danny watched surreptitiously as Eric stopped in front of his mother.

"I'm sorry, I know he left us," Eric said quietly. "I'll go to Hawaii with Uncle Danny."

Chris poked his grandson in the shoulder. "And I will try not to make things difficult while I'm there."

Hannah stood up and wrapped her son in a hug. He didn't look pleased about the affection but he lifted one hand and patted her on the back. "I only want what's best for you, but it is not acceptable to speak to me like that."

"I know, Mum," Eric said rubbing at the back of his neck.

"Excellent," Danny said very quietly into Steve's ear. "And here I was thinking we were going to get a couple more years before we had a surly teenager living with us."

"Gracie would never act like that."

Danny just rolled his eyes at Steve. They were about to go back to building when Chris poked his grandson in the back again. Eric turned and walked over to Steve. He looked down at the older man for a moment and then let out a sigh.

"I'm sorry for what I said to you, you're going to be family and I shouldn't have said it." Eric's face cleared for a second and he looked at Danny. "It wasn't cool, I don't care if you're gay, Uncle Danny and…I shouldn't have said that to you just because I was in a bad mood."

"It's okay," Steve said. He didn't care if Chris had made the boy say the words. The words weren't important because Steve understood the anger that came with the adults in your life suddenly letting you down and he could ignore and he could forgive what Eric said. He had a feeling he wasn't that bad of a kid anyway.

Eric nodded and turned away from them to go back into the kitchen with his mother.

"What did he say?" Danny asked.

"It really doesn't matter," Steve said with a quick smile and went back to building.

/ / /

Listen, I liked Eric, after the initial few scenes but I am writing something different here and even though he is nice for the most part in the episode he is also a teenager who has been carted off for doing something stupid. I think he would have reacted like this to being told because most teenagers I know would. But that isn't to say I think he's a bad kid but he is hurting and he would lash out. That is my reasoning for Eric's behaviour in this, just so you know.