/ / / Surveillance \ \ \ s03e16 – Kekoa (Warrior)

Danny huffed in a breath and stared at Steve.

"Problem?"

"No."

"Then why are you staring at me?"

"You hired someone to run surveillance on your mother."

Steve turned and looked out of the window – this was exactly why he hadn't told Danny about this before he'd gone to see Mick.

"Okay, I know what you're going to say."

"What am I going to say?"

"That hiring someone to spy on their mother is the act of a crazy person."

"Yeah," Danny said, "I would have used different words like whackjob or psychopath, crazy words."

"I had no choice."

Danny sucked in a deep breath. "Why?"

"She's been going dark and her odometer is run up well past where it should be."

Danny squeezed his eyes shut and made a face before he looked at Steve. "You've been monitoring her mileage?"

"I don't trust her, Danny."

"Did you think about asking her?"

"She keeps lying to me."

"But, when she finds out that you hired someone else to watch her she's going to be angry."

"You don't know Mick, he wrote the book on covert surveillance, she won't know he's even there."

"When this blows up in your face, and it will, Steven, you're going to have to talk to her. Why don't you talk to her now, she might lie to you again but she might not and at least you'd have an answer."

"Why on Earth are you, of all people, defending her?"

"I'm not defending her," Danny said. "She…she hasn't done anything to make me want to defend her but she's your mother so if you want answers you need to look at all of the possibilities and one of them is talking to her. Talking would be the non-crazy thing to do."

"I'm not being crazy."

"I'm going to marry a crazy man." Danny said, resigned.

Steve smiled, like he always did when they were talking about the wedding. "Not unless we start to organise it."

"It's organised, Kamekona offered to officiate, everything's happening at your house, and Nana's making the cake with the homosexual cake topper."

"Don't I deserve more than that?" Steve asked. "Wait, the what cake topper?"

"It's what Nana told me her friends are calling it, apparently you're still their main topic of conversation."

"I am the hottest grandson-in-law." Steve tried not to be proud of that.

"Like that's a thing."

"Are you going to tell them that it isn't a thing?" Steve asked.

Danny shook his head emphatically. "I'm not."

Steve was silent for a few minutes trying to work out how to get Danny to actually talk about this, to actually get started planning the wedding.

Danny rolled his eyes. "Just say it, Steven."

"This is my only wedding."

Danny's face softened and he smiled at Steve. "We can recreate Kim Kardashian's wedding if you like."

"Who?" Steve asked.

"I love you," Danny said, wrapping his hand around Steve's wrist and squeezing.

-)(-)(-

"I'm not even going to bother asking why you're eating an MRE," Danny said, when he walked into the house, Grace trailing behind him.

"I had a craving." Steve explained, grinning at Grace.

"What is that," Grace asked, sidling over to Steve.

"Would you like to try it?"

"I'm going to go and make a reasonable dinner," Danny said, shaking his head at both of them and heading for the kitchen.

When Grace was in bed, Danny watched Steve drinking out of a canteen.

"Are you planning to go native?" Danny asked, throwing his legs into Steve's lap.

Steve looked down at the canteen and then shrugged.

"What's happening, Steven?"

Steve shrugged and drank some water.

"Is the lack of peeing in the bush and killing your own food getting to you?" Danny asked, wriggling down into the couch. "Do we need to drop you in the jungle for a few days?"

"Are you coming with me?"

Danny laughed.

"Then I'm fine."

"I suppose," Danny said, watching Steve sip more water out of the canteen, "Grace would enjoy going camping again."

Steve twisted around and looked at him sharply. "Really?"

"We've got her next weekend – if nothing comes up then we can go, maybe even find a nice beach."

Steve smiled and put the canteen down. "We can go snorkelling."

Danny looked pained but then nodded. "I suppose."

Steve yanked Danny closer and kissed him. "I'll get the stuff out tomorrow night to check it."

"Of course you will."

"Now, we were supposed to start planning the wedding."

Danny pulled him closer for another kiss. "Or we could just watch a movie."

"Are you trying to distract me?"

Danny smiled. "We can watch Das Boot or Under Siege."

Steve groaned. "We will plan."

"I know," Danny said, pulling away. "I do want to, I just know it's going to be a headache and I just want to lay here and make out with you for a while."

Steve caved and slid down into Danny's arms. "We're watching Das Boot."

"I can make out to a foreign language," Danny said, pulling Steve into a kiss.

/ / /