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Steve makes the air marshal the moment they get on the plane: 17D, Sport Fishing, clean-shaven, Sig Sauer P229 under his jacket. He settles in his own seat – 18K; an aisle, with Danny at the window – and takes a moment to calculate the best, second-best, and last-call routes to the marshal and his gun. Glancing up, he checks the overheads for broken hinges, locks, and suspicious packages; he finds the motion-sickness bag in his seat pocket, and assesses which flight attendants have the upper body strength to throw a punch.
"You figure out your escape plan yet?" Danny asks.
"Hmm?"
"Escape plan."
"I – " Steve concentrates, because sometimes he can parse the meaning behind the meaning of what Danny's saying if he gives it his whole attention.
"That, my friend, is your 'Danger, Will Robinson' face."
"My what?"
Danny sighs, stuffs the newspaper he's been worrying into the seat pocket in front of him, and leans in. "You're scoping the exits; you're sizing up the help; I bet you've figured out which bathroom smoke detector you'll disable to cook up a little show and tell for the poor old ladies back in 28E and F if the kid in 30A goes off his meds and makes a run for the in-flight rum. You've probably got a theory about who's got a pair of hose in their carry-on, and you're drawing up mental schematics for, I don't know, a rough-cut catapult which you'll arm with very, very tiny bags of peanuts," he makes pinching motions with his fingers, "doused in the sauce they're going to pour over our overpriced, tasteless, abomination-to-the-carnivorous-nature-of-our-species mystery meat. And yes, I've made the marshal too, would you stop?"
Steve eyes Danny warily. "You're pretty keyed up."
"Yeah, well, forgive me, I'm on a flight with you for the next ten hours, and I can't use any of my usual," he waves his hands, "skills to calm you down. So yes, I'm a little keyed up, because I don't want to arrive in New Jersey with you bloodied or in a body bag. Do I make myself clear?"
Steve has no idea why Danny thinks he'd be the one in a body bag, but he senses now is not the time to ask. "Okay."
"Okay."
"You bring gum?" Steve asks.
"Did I bring . . . no I did not bring . . . what am I, your nanny?"
Steve shrugs, decides to go for broke. "Your mom'll be cool about it."
"Yeah?" Danny sags back against the window. "Hey Ma, guess what, that marriage and kid thing, turns out it was a distraction from how I'm really, really gay."
"Good start," Steve says, and rubs his thumb across Danny's good knee.
If he thinks about it – which he's allowed himself to do once, twice, maybe seven, twenty-six times – Steve can almost, kind of, grudgingly admit he latched onto Danny like a drowning man, day one. He meant, hand to god, you're the back-up as a simple, straight-forward, no-questions directive to a partner who imagined the HPD were necessary when both of them were armed, willing, able, and at the guy's place already. But he can, in retrospect, usually aided by alcohol, sometimes by the warm, liquid drowsiness that follows being blown by Danny and returning the gesture, that his lizard brain was shoving meaning into those words as fast as he could speak them. It makes no sense – and for that, he'll make Danny pay as long as he's able, because sense and order are useful things – but his gut was already sending warning signals that this pre-packaged, loud-mouthed, walking Jersey aneurysm was exactly the shape, size, volume, and composition of the hollow space he worked around most days with an hour's swim and three mile run along the beach. He hates that he was desperate – doesn't think he showed it, at least, not obviously; didn't know it was desperation until Danny shoved him hard, pressed him up against a wall, jabbed a finger at him and told him to get on with it already, what was he waiting for, flowers or something, and they made out like they were dying, fighting for control of it, gasping and biting like this was the last minute they had so they'd better make use of it or call it a day, pack it up, give up the ghost, go home, hand in their badges. He remembers his hands, how they shook, that he had to fill them with Danny's shirt, his skin, the round of his ass, pull him to the floor, because one or the other of them was going to break a leg or their spine if they tried to do this standing. And when Danny worked his belt, got his hand inside his pants, Jesus, he doesn't remember much, just a vague sense of helplessness that he needed this so badly, and Danny's voice saying no, I got you, c'mon, yeah, until he jerked and shuddered, body wrecked, and Danny kissed the skin right beside his eyes.
He got himself together, went to work on Danny until Danny showered him with every curse word in his not inconsiderable vocabulary and came in Steve's hand, panting, trembling, asking "Shit, McGarrett, you had to have my cock too? Not just my whole fucking life?" And he didn't understand until six weeks later when Danny explained it in painstaking detail with a lot of hand gestures, yelling, and wide-mouthed speechlessness every time he tried to get a word in edgwise, but he guesses, yeah, he needed back-up. He needed it until he got it, until Danny saw it too, until Danny made him make a move because Danny was slower on the uptake but once he got there, he was there, and to have him waiting around for Steve to act on something he'd been angling for for months was just dumb.
He gives Danny his bread roll when the flight attendant brings their dinner, takes his pineapple without a word.
The weather's predictably lousy when they land in Jersey, and Danny's thrilled by it, beaming at the cloud cover, the dirty piles of snow, the asphalt as they taxi to the gate. He vibrates with the need to get off the plane, but this is why Steve has the aisle seat – to enforce some manners, to let the people in front of them get their bags and deplane first, and if Danny resorts to pinching Steve hard beneath his ribs, Steve's endured worse.
"I think I should drive," Steve says companionably as they follow a dozen other passengers up the jetbridge.
"What? What?"
"You'll be distracted."
"And how is that different from how you drive every single day of our lives? How is that different – no, I would really like to know this – from you delivering chapter and verse on the proper hops to yeast composition of a good, chilled beer while driving goat trails along cliff faces in pursuit of the Knucklehead of the Day?"
"Knucklehead?"
"Not the word I want to use, but we're in public. I do not want to use words that will scar the general population."
"We're in Jersey."
Danny gesticulates. "And what, there are no old ladies, no kids in Jersey?"
"You mean you didn't come out of the womb with that mouth?"
Danny waves a hand. "Shut up. Just – right now."
They make their way to baggage claim, Steve eyeing the security agents, the coffee vendors, the stain in the carpet right by Gate C107, and if it's thirty minutes before the bags from their flight make it to the carousel, that's time enough for Steve to pull out his phone and check his voicemail, email, and the news.
"Anyone blow up the islands while we were gone?" Danny asks, shifting foot to foot.
"No."
"Well, that's good."
Once he gets his bag, Steve pulls out his coat, shrugs it on against whatever Jersey's got waiting outside the concourse doors, but Danny stares and stares a little longer, until Steve begins to worry he's spilled something, vomited down his pants without noticing, anything to explain the bafflement on Danny's face.
"You have a coat," Danny says eventually.
Steve frowns, confused as usual. "Yeah?"
"I just – I never saw you in a coat before."
"Oh." Steve tugs at the hem. "It's okay, right?"
"Yeah, it's . . ." Danny shrugs in the way that means he's working really hard to seem unaffected by something. "It's good. It's just . . . you're in a coat."
Steve likes it when he figures out what Danny's thinking before Danny can put it into more words than necessary. He steps in closer, tugs at Danny's shirt. "Yeah. I came to New Jersey. Go figure."
Danny – perhaps, Steve thinks, for the first time in his life – risks something that's second-cousin to a blush.
The topic had come up early one morning, both of them lying spent and drowsy in bed, the early sun turning the room pale gold.
"I gotta tell 'em," Danny said, staring at a spot just to the right of Steve's hip, picking at the creases their bodies had left in the sheets.
"Tell who? What?"
"My family." Danny slid a hand under his cheek, glanced at Steve as if it were some big risk to do so. "I gotta tell 'em about us."
Steve wondered if Danny was waiting for him to freak out, to insist there was some island rule about what happened in Hawaii staying in Hawaii. "Whatever you need to do. It's good."
"Yeah, I know, it's just . . ." Danny rolled over, stretched his arms up above his head and arched his back, sagged against the mattress. "Us involves this other thing, you know? This thing where you're a guy?"
"Ah." Steve nodded with the gravity he thought the situation was probably owed, although he wanted to smirk at the idea that he might not have noticed.
"And I don't know if – how – when a person has to . . . " Danny blew out a breath. "Fuck."
Steve rolled onto his stomach, crept on his elbows to where Danny was paying him no attention at all. "Call 'em."
"Are you insane?" Danny asked, dropping a hand to the back of Steve's neck. "You want me to call my Ma, throw that out into conversation, ask her about the weather, that's your big idea?"
Steve honestly couldn't see any flaws in this plan. "Yeah?"
"Look." Danny scratched his fingers up through the back of Steve's hair. "I'll use small words, because I understand, I just melted your brains with my impressive bedroom skills, you're not at your best, I can allow for that. But this is my family we're talking about. You don't tell your family shit like this over the phone, you tell them shit like this face to face."
"You do?" Steve asked.
"Yes, yes you do. It's polite. It's meaningful. It shows respect."
"Huh." Steve set his chin on Danny's chest.
"So, anyway, I was thinking that, since it's polite and all, and meaningful – "
"And respectful."
"Yes, exactly, thank you, it's respectful – you should come home with me. For Thanksgiving."
Which was when Steve blacked out for a second, but somewhere in there he must have said yes.
It takes forty-five minutes to get to Little Falls, thanks to construction on the Parkway and a squabble about Springsteen that ends with Danny driving well below the speed limit while he tries to smack Steve in the head. The journey's not the bumper-to-bumper nightmare Steve had expected, and the heater in the rental means he's content to sit and let Danny drive while he watches the landscape pass, matching landmarks to the mental map he'd constructed from Google's satellite imagery. He smirks when they pass the high school – he's seen photos of the '93 Varsity Baseball team; the shortstop had visible attitude – but says nothing when Danny asks him what the hell he's grinning at, what, has he never seen a school without palm trees before? Jesus.
Danny's childhood home's unassuming – two stories, vinyl siding, a big, bare maple in the small back yard. There's a one-car garage that's seen better days, and a minivan parked in the driveway. "They're here," Danny says, and makes no move to get out of the car.
"Who?" Steve asks.
"My sisters."
"All of them?"
"That's Betsy's," he says, gesturing to the van. "I bet she picked up Emily on the way. Ma would have fetched Molly from the station." He flexes his fingers against the steering wheel.
"So that leaves Lauren."
"Classes today. She'll come in tomorrow."
Steve shifts in his seat, turns his body toward Danny's. "What gives?"
"What?"
"You've been bellyaching about Jersey for a year, and what, you wanted to come here, sit outside your mother's house? That was your plan?"
"Plan? Plan? I need a plan to come back home? Should I have done background checks, run financials, I mean . . . " He pauses. "Tell me you didn't run background checks."
"That would be a misuse of police resources."
"I know how fastidious you are about the rules."
Steve thinks about being affronted. "With suspects."
"Yeah, but my family's from out of town, and you know people who do," he gestures expansively with both hands, "black-ops, whatever. You probably know how much Ma spent on the turkey already."
Steve opens his mouth.
"Do not tell me that's true."
Steve closes his mouth again.
Danny makes a strangled noise. "Okay, look, in deference to your need to always be right, informed, whatever it is you told yourself when you . . . just – approximate. Big bird, medium, small?"
"Big."
"Okay." Danny nods, processing the information. "I like leftovers. I can work with that."
Steve wonders if now's the time to share his opinion on jellied cranberry sauce. "Look, I'm just saying, let's go in there already. Introduce me."
"And let you scare the kids? I got impressionable nieces, okay? We need ground rules. Like – no child leaves here this weekend knowing how to strip and clean a Glock."
Steve arches an eyebrow, waits for the rest of it.
"And you do not mention anything involving flagrant violations of the Geneva convention, or tell anyone that Santa isn't real, and if the Cowboys are playing, you root for the other team, you got that?"
"Or you could walk in and tell them you're gay, and we can talk about that all weekend."
Danny's head drops against the steering wheel. "Oh god, I'm gonna break my streak."
"No, no, see, you are not going to puke." Steve unbuckles his seatbelt, unlocks the door. "I'm going in. You can cover me, or you can sit here."
"You don't get to decide what we're – hey, hey." Danny scrambles to keep up, bouncing out of the car and slamming his door. "Hey, asshole, listen to me, you military-industrial piece of . . . " His voice trails off. "Oh. Hey, Ma," he finishes, and Steve absolutely does not grin, but smiles pleasantly and waves at Mrs. Williams, who's standing on the front step of her house, looking very amused.
"Call me Ellen," Mrs. Williams says, beckoning Steve into the house after Danny's hugged her and had his cheek pinched for the trouble.
Steve smiles and offers her his hand, privately resolving that he'll try not to call her anything at all until she knows he's sleeping with her son. "Steve McGarrett."
"Well, hell-o," someone says from over Ellen's shoulder. "Aren't you hot?" A woman, so clearly related to Danny that Steve feels a brief burst of confusion as to whether he should find her attractive, presses in close and smacks a kiss to his jaw. "Betsy. Pleased to meet you, come in, come in. Let me shut that door behind you, go on, straight back to the kitchen, everyone's in there, some of the kids are – Abigail; come say hi to your Uncle Danno."
"Moo—ooom."
Steve cocks his head to the faint sound of a girl's voice as he's bustled past a staircase and a host of school photographs he wants to inspect more closely.
"Don't you Mom me!" Betsy yells back. "Get down here, he probably brought you pineapples!" She grins at Steve. "Did you bring pineapples?"
Steve has no idea if he's being played. "I, uh . . ." Able hands divest him of his coat and he's pushed bodily into the kitchen, where the decibel level is three times that of the hall, and he looms head and shoulders above everyone in sight. It's hard to pick out Danny in a room full of his family – everyone has blond hair and blue eyes and talks like they're angry – and it takes him a second to resolve the blur into distinct human forms; more sisters, his mother, two toddlers stumbling underfoot, and a baby being pressed into Danny's arms.
"She's so cute," Danny says, grinning wildly, and Steve's stomach lurches – once when Danny looks up at him; a second time, for different reasons, when Danny wades through the sea of humanity that's his kin and thrusts the baby at Steve. "Maddie Elizabeth, seven weeks. God, I remember when Grace was this small," and he grins at Steve, apparently unaware of the way that Steve's holding the baby slightly away from his body because he's not exactly sure what he's supposed to do with such a new human being. "She's Molly's first – hey, Molly, wave – see her? I like her. Betsy, on the other hand, she's always been a pain in my ass." Betsy whaps him upside the head and he grins even wider. "Say hi to Maddie! Maaaaddie. Cutest lil girl since Grace, right Maddie?"
Steve blinks and nods at the baby. "Hey."
Danny plucks her from him and settles her into the crook of his arm without giving the slightest acknowledgement of how terrifying an action that is. "So, let's see, we got Molly, Molly you know, and Betsy, they're two and one respectively; well, three and two, after me, but in terms of girls they're two and one. One and two - quit moving - geez, way to make it complicated, thank you so much. And that's mom, right, you got that, I know you got that, and that's Em – she's fourth, third girl, so smart, so wicked smart, it's ridiculous, she'll get in your face about constitutional law and – forget I said that – and this," he gestures downward to the ambulatory but tiny human chewing at his knee, "is Stephanie and over there under the table is her cousin Meg; Abby's upstairs, she's six, she'll beat your ass at Battleship, don't even try."
Steve nods and smiles at everyone; he thinks this face is probably the one Danny says is his kiss-up face, but it seems appropriate, and there's a small child sitting on his feet. "Good to meet everyone."
"We should eat, you hungry, you gotta be hungry, that long flight!" Ellen says, shooing Meg away when she makes a run for the garbage can. "I can make something, you want something? I got lunch meat."
Steve shakes his head. "Oh, don't go to any trouble, we – "
"Turkey!" Danny says, passing Maddie off to Betsy, rubbing his knuckles over Molly's head. "I haven't had a turkey deluxe in months, hey, hey?"
Molly grabs his hand and makes him punch himself. "What, no grocery stores? You break your hands?"
"Hey, I got work, you know? Odd hours, strange places, I don't have a schedule, per se."
"Per se," Betsy mouths at Steve, who ducks his head and smiles.
April 10, when the rains hit, when Steve struggles up to consciousness from a lackluster couple hours sleep on his office couch, he calls Danny, canʻt reach him; calls Chin, who laughs and called him a lōlō for imagining he'd leave his house; calls Kono, who points out there aren't a lot of crimes you can undertake in a deluge. The rains come so hard that Kamehameha disappears from view and Danny keeps on not answering his phone.
The hospital calls at 3.30, not long after the rain begins to ease, and Steve drives there at speeds Danny would chew him out over, considers himself a model of restraint for not using sirens and lights. He hears Danny before he has time to ask someone where the hell he is, runs hard down the hall to intervene before someone loses a limb, finds Danny trying to put on his pants while yelling and coughing at the same time, and a doctor explaining, again, what it means to have rain water in his lungs, river water in his gut.
"What did you do?" Steve asks, furious at the sight of him, pale and sodden in a hospital gown, a cut on his jaw, abrasions on his arms.
"What did I do?" Danny shoots back, pants in one hand, grasping at empty air with the other. "How about you ask what this godforsaken island did, huh? How about you ask where this weather comes from? How about you ask about the guy I pulled out of his car in a flash flood because he was dumb enough to drive in a freaking monsoon!" He breaks off to cough, wincing as he rubs a hand across his ribs.
Steve takes a moment, forces himself to breathe evenly. "And why were you were out in the same fucking weather?"
"I needed Oreos, okay!" Danny yells, then grimaces, holds up a hand as if to ward off Steve's response. "I thought I had time before the worst of it hit, figured I could get to the ABC before the shit really hit the fan, but no, because the normal rules of weather don't apply here. I would like to know which rules do apply here, because I'm coming up short!"
Steve shakes his head slightly, trying to clear his thoughts. "You needed Oreos?"
"I had a book. I had a book, and it was going to rain, and I wanted Oreos. So shoot me."
"Danno." Steve pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes, catches his breath. "Get back in bed, okay?"
"I still don't have Oreos."
Steve drops his hands. "I will get you fucking Oreos. Get. In. Bed."
Danny sighs, and pitches his pants onto a chair. "You my mother now?"
"I'm . . . I'm something," Steve says, shifts to let the doc out of the room, steps forward and pulls at the sheets and blankets to let Danny climb back into bed. "And you gotta stay here, because that water . . . you swallow that kind of water and you can get sick, okay? Real sick. So just – stay here." He tugs the blankets up over Danny's legs, flicks at the plastic hospital bracelet around Danny's wrist.
"I would like it on the record that I was not being stupid," Danny says. "I would like you to acknowledge that. I understand that your rain, on your island, is ridiculous and dangerous and I want nothing to do with it, be it a shower, or a fine misting, or a total deluge. I wanted a modest dessert item so that I could finish my book, and I ended up – "
"You did good," Steve says, looking up. "I'm sorry."
Danny blinks. "Well, now I know I'm dying."
Steve huffs a breath of laughter. "No. Not on my watch."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
Danny nods, scratches at his nose. "You call my phone like, what, a hundred times?"
"Something like that."
"You got it so bad."
Steve opens his mouth to say something cutting, says, "Yeah, I do," and pulls up a chair.
"So you work with my brother," Em says, flopping down beside Steve on the couch. The last time Steve saw Danny he was carrying a ladder and arguing with Molly about toxic waste disposal and the utility of using cat litter to soak up spilled paint.
"I do," Steve says, and pulls at his beer. It's 8pm, and his bags are stowed in the basement beside a twin bed that's at least a foot too short for him. He just ate his weight in spaghetti and meatballs, and he figures a beer's more than overdue.
"Special task force."
Steve watches her for a second; all her questions are statements, and while Molly and Betsy have accepted him just for showing up, Em's a little more wary. He respects that, nods his head. "Governor's own."
"Hmm." She pulls at her own beer, looks off toward the bookcase. "Why'd you choose him? I mean, you did choose him, right? You got to choose who was your partner."
Steve's had lot of practice being inscrutable, and he puts it all to use, well aware there are a dozen different questions behind her words. "He's a great cop, a good man." She doesn't say anything. "He was chasing my dad's murderer when I met him – he'd done more to track him down than the rest of the detectives on the case combined."
Em's eyes soften a little, and she gives him a half-smile. "Fathers."
He offers her the neck of his bottle and she clinks hers to his. "Amen."
"So you work well? Together?"
Steve waits; that's not her question.
"He's happy?"
Steve half-smiles. "I think so. He misses all of you. Bitches endlessly about the weather." He hesitates for a second while he calculates the risk, then lets his guard down just a little. "He's a really good dad. She's everything to him."
"Hmmmm." She smiles skeptically. "She's a hell of a lot. A whole hell of a lot. Move-across-six-time-zones-and-never-see-your-family – that's a hell of a lot. But I think . . . " Em picks at the label on her bottle. "I think he's got room for other things in his life."
"Work," Steve says blandly.
"Uh huh," she says, amused.
Steve makes small talk for as long as he can stand it, trying not to grill her like a witness, then goes to find Danny and make a better recon of the house. There are no real fire exits (which ought to be standard), and he heaves up the sash in the attic where Danny's stowed, messes with the storm and screen until he can stick his head out into the night, judge the distance to the ground, scan for tree limbs that could help someone escape a flood, a fire, or an international ring of assassins.
"Would you close that? Geez, it's freezing in here, are you out of your mind?" Danny asks, checking Steve with his body, deftly putting screen and storm window back in place. "What the hell are you doing?"
"I'm guessing it's a twenty-five, thirty foot drop to the ground, and there's nothing you can use to cover that – the downspout's coming away from the roof, you grab that, you fall."
Danny watches him, mouth slightly parted, eyebrows raised.
"So if you need to get out – you can drop and roll, but you do that without breaking your legs I'll be surprised."
"What are – " Danny frowns, makes a sweeping gesture with his hand. "You think my family's that bad? I'd need to jump?"
"What?" Steve asks, not following. "I'm talking fire, flood, meteors, gun-runners . . ."
"There is something so wrong with your brain, I'm not even kidding," Danny offers. "I survived eighteen years in this house, and several vacations after that fact, without once dying of fire or famine or locusts or whatever else it is you think that might take me out. Meteors, really?"
"Okay, so meteors is – it'd come through the roof, you'd be – "
"But I do, however, in spite of your absolutely whackadoodle sense of reality, appreciate that you'd like me to live through any number of worst-case scenarios, and I find it almost cute that you do not consider yourself to be such a scenario on an almost daily basis back on the island."
Steve feels a little wounded, sticks his hands in his pockets. "Okay."
"I am trying to pay you a compliment, okay? Which is hard, because you are crazed. But thank you. I will . . . drop and roll."
Steve eyes him warily. "Yeah?"
"Hopefully, no, because there will not be a fire, but – god, just come here would you?" And Danny hooks a hand behind his neck, pulls him down into a warm, searching kiss, keeps at it until Steve's feeling lit up and needy in all kinds places that are not okay when his bed's downstairs.
"We can't," he says breathlessly, pulling back just a little.
Danny looks dazed. It's a good look on him. "You're right."
"Your mom . . ."
"My sisters . . ."
Steve steps away, smoothes his shirt down, tries to shake it off. "I'll – be in the basement."
Danny's smiles widely. "Living the Danny Williams dream; hiding out from the family in a room that lives as a shrine to the tragic '70s trend of fake pine paneling."
Steve ducks his head, wishes he understood why his heart does that thud, ker-thud thing sometimes. "Sounds good."
"Sounds terrible. Sounds like being a teenager again." Danny sits on his bed. "Sounds like you're three floors away and I'm gonna have to sit here for a while before I can meet my mother's eye."
"Yeah, that," Steve says, grinning a little, and heads out the door.
Touch football is, Danny explains, a Thanksgiving Day tradition, and it's downright un-American to play it the day before. He's out-voted – Em and Molly side with Steve – and while Betsy shows an inventive talent at argument, tries to suggest they're tearing the fabric of the family apart, Steve just treats her like he does her brother, smiles happily, and turns his back to huddle with his teammates in the four inches of snow still covering the yard.
He imagined he'd have an advantage, being seven feet taller than the eldest Williams' kids and a record-breaking quarterback at that. But Betsy plays dirty – tackles with her head, right in his belly, lays him out more than once and whacks the breath clean out of his body every single time. Molly, all her hair piled under a woolen cap lest her brother try to pull it to get the ball, makes up for his shortcomings – she runs like hell, trips Danny when she gets a chance, indulges in her own hair pulling if she needs to, and Emily is always there, waiting for the touchdown. It's a rout, an absolute rout, until Molly switches teams and the end zone moves a couple of times, and then it's all the Williams kids on Steve and he's seriously thinking of breaking out the roundhouse kicks.
They're squabbling over whether Emily's 34th touchdown is legitimate when a battered 1993 Chevvy Acclaim pulls up at the curb, wheezing and coughing its way to a standstill. Danny whoops and runs for the car, drags the driver's door wide open, laughs out loud when his kid sister flies at him, makes him stagger back a couple of steps with the force of her hug. "You asshole," she yells, arms and legs wrapped around his body. "You are such a fucking asshole, I have not forgiven you!"
Steve finds himself kind of mesmerized – he hasn't seen that look on Danny's face since the last time Grace gave him a masterpiece of macaroni wall art – and it kills him a little to see how expansively he loves his family. He laughs a little when Lauren throws a half-hearted punch at Danny's chest, sees Danny look up and smile at him, sees Lauren turn around and give him a wave.
"Shit, you two, I swear to god," Em says in a low voice as she passes.
Steve catches her eye, blows out a breath and says, "What, we done here, you amateurs giving up? Huh? What?"
By the time they pile inside – wet and exhausted, Betsy an honorary McGarrett team member for the way she took down Molly, just for the hell of it – Steve's scored 27 points, and the entire Williams clan 132. He has snow in his hair, down the neck of his shirt, and – thanks to Danny – right down his pants, and he demonstrates just how well he fits in by calling shotgun on the shower before anyone else can use the hot water, which gets him cat calls and insults a-plenty as he climbs the stairs.
He sneaks some ibuprofen from the bathroom cabinet and works on his not-wincing face in the mirror for a while.
By dinner Betsy's husband Pete's arrived, Molly's husband, Jim, Em's boyfriend, Mike. The decibel level increases a thousandfold, and the dining table groans under the weight of all the food. It's like nothing Steve's experienced before – even when his family was whole, meals were quiet, Thanksgiving just the four of them, and only then if his dad decided to show. He lets it wash over him, the noise, the insults, the way Betsy kisses Pete on the mouth in front of God and everyone, the easy hand-to-hand passing of children and beer. He talks home renovation with Jim, who's in construction, and realizes he's going to have to rip out the drywall for the second time in a year; picks at Em about Supreme Court cases just for the sport of it; sits Stephanie on his lap for a while since she seems fascinated by his watch.
It passes in a blur, the whole, messy day, and Steve's half-asleep before he's pulled the covers up over his shoulders that night. He hears the creak of floorboards overhead, but he doesn't think anything of it; hears the pad of footsteps down the basement stairs and keeps his eyes closed, hopes whichever sibling's come to torment him will have mercy on his soul if they think he's sleeping.
"Hey. Hey." Danny sits on the bed with a graceless whump. "You awake?"
Steve cracks an eyelid. "Hmmm."
"You okay? This too much?" He weaves a little, like he's anticipating a blow from someone, ready to dodge. "My family, they're a lot, I mean, I knew that when I asked you here, but I think time, distance, it dims the memory just a little, you know? I forgot how Betsy sacks. You seem like you were handling it fine, you've probably been through worse, right? Torture, underwater gunfights, whatever it is you did, I'm just checking." He rests the heels of his hands on the mattress, jiggles both his legs with nervous energy.
Steve opens the other eyelid. "What's the matter?"
"Matter? Nothing. Checkin' on you, my friend. You're the fish out of water here."
Steve eyes him, tries to read his body language. "Just tell them."
Danny sighs, sounding put-upon. "Look, I will, okay? I came here to do that. I will tell every one of them and it will be fine."
"I know."
"They are upstanding, good people – "
"And they love you."
Danny smiles a little. "Yeah. Yeah, there's that."
"So tell them."
"I will, okay? I just gotta – find my in. I'd like to tell Ma first, you know? It seems right. But getting her alone – "
"Go wake her up."
Danny squints at him. "You are deranged. I am not waking my mother to tell her you and I are doing the dirty."
"Well." Steve thinks that over. "We're not doing the dirty while we're here."
Danny arches one eyebrow. "You sure about that?"
"Oh, I see." Steve props himself up on one elbow. "That's what this whole – no. I am not getting you off."
"What?"
"Don't play that. You're wound up, you're figuring on disaster the moment you do what we came here to do, you're looking for distraction."
"I am . . ." Danny scrunches up his face, licks his lips. "Okay, maybe."
"How's Lauren?" asks Steve, trying for a bait and switch.
Danny rolls his eyes; he's not an idiot. "She's fine. She called me some names, gave me a long list of things she thinks I should buy her for Christmas, asked me for help with her American history paper."
"You write papers?"
"What, you think I went to clown school? Yes, I write papers; I wrote a lot of papers; my college degree was earned just like everyone else's, with papers."
"You get good grades on those papers?"
"Nice, nice, so you think I'm illiterate, that it? And to think of all those nice administrative documents I work through on your behalf."
Jesus. It's way too late for this kind of talk, and Danny's shivering. "Get in here." Steve manhandles him under the covers – a tight fit, everything considered, but with Danny on his side and Steve pressed up behind him, they can make it work if nobody breathes. "Just shut up and sleep."
"This bed was not made for two grown men."
"This bed was not made for one grown man," Steve points out, sliding a hand up under Danny's t-shirt and closing his eyes. "We'll make do. It's better than a shipping crate bound for Taiwan."
"Ahhh, that was a good time." Danny sighs and grumbles into his portion of the pillow. "You realize either of us moves, this bed is going to collapse, and we're outed whether or not we experienced a little pleasure before the event."
"Shut up." Steve's drowsy again, the solid warmth of Danny against him the best space heater he could ask for.
Danny breathes quietly for a while. "Yeah, okay. I can do that," he concedes, and covers Steve's hand with his own.
Steve wakes when Ellen starts moving around in the kitchen, hitting creaking floorboards with every step. He lies awake, wrapped around Danny, waits for the moment Danny hears it too, for his muscles to tense and his breathing to quicken.
"Go tell her," he whispers when he knows Danny's awake.
"Shit," Danny says, but he throws back the covers anyway, pads across the room, his 5-for-$10 boxers stark white in the dim light of the basement, so baggy his legs look like a chicken's as he climbs the stairs away from Steve. Steve listens, hears the soft hum of conversation, and one piercing "OW!" before someone talks again. He drifts off – must do, because he starts with surprise when Ellen calls his name, when she picks up his bag that's sitting right at the foot of his bed, says, "take this upstairs, attic, right now. The pair of you, Jesus, tell me you do undercover better than this," and he rubs his eyes, mumbles, "yes, ma'am," does as he's told. He finds Danny standing by the kitchen sink with a gargantuan cup of coffee in his hand, and if anything he looks sheepish, not damaged, so Steve counts that a win.
"She asked what the hell sort of secret I thought I was keeping when I showed up with the hot Navy officer," he says, and rubs at his head. Steve bets it's where Ellen smacked him.
"So that's good." Steve gestures with his free hand. "That I'm hot, I mean."
"Shut it," Danny says, good-naturedly, and Steve grins, takes the stairs to the attic two at a time, does a second recon of the room.
They'd been on comms as they chased down Callahan, Chin and Danny closing in from the east side, Kono and Steve taking point. The docks smelled rank – diesel, old fish, oil, and trash – and the heat had Steve regretting his tac vest, sweat running down the length of his spine and pooling at the base of his back. He swore to himself, wiping his brow on his sleeve, thinking of Danny and his goddamn tie. Predicted high of 90, and the man still insisted on wearing that thing.
"I see him," Chin said over the comm. "He's headed for the crane."
"I have sightlines," said Danny.
Steve looked out from behind a stack of wooden pallets. "No one shoots, we need this guy."
"We always need the guy," said Danny, "and does that stop you? I don't think so."
"Hey," Steve said. "Am I the guy who shot the guy?"
"Which guy?"
"The guy! The first guy!"
Kono cleared her throat – Steve could hear her in stereo, once to his left, once on the comm. "He means his first witness." She sounded amused.
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me . . ." Danny muttered.
Chin laughed. "You know, you're gonna have to let that go sometime, boss."
"Can we focus?" Steve asked. He had eyes on Callahan, which meant the drugs, which meant the case. "Danny, how close are you?"
"Twenty feet."
"Hold position; we're coming in."
That it ended with Steve in the water, pulling Callahan back to the docks after he fell from the boom, meant it was a usual sort of day; that Danny was waiting on the dock, hands on his hips, tie still looped around his neck, meant it was a day when words were going to be said. "Don't," Steve said, passing off Callahan to the EMTs. "Just don't."
"What? I'm just here to remind you that you need to pick up milk."
Steve contemplated punching him. "First, no you're not, and second, how'd you figure?"
"I used the last. And it's your turn."
Steve turned on his heel and headed back to where Kono had his gun. "The fact that you used the last means it's your turn. Those are the rules."
"Rules? Rules? We have rules? Oh, no, we don't have rules – we have a suspect who climbs the boom of a crane and whom I could have justly and respectfully shot in the leg, but whom you pursue, as if cranes were meant for climbing, and when he falls you go in after him because, God knows, there are no sharks or rocks around here, and while I agree, we should care if he drowns, that is not a good reason for you to leap forty feet."
Steve eyed him. "Forty-five."
"Just – don't. Okay?" Danny offered. "Just pick up the milk and try not to talk to me for a while."
"A while? Like, an hour? Two?"
"Like, oh, forever, you numbskull. Jesus. I need shave ice."
Kono smiled pleasantly as Steve watched Danny go. "He's right about the milk thing." She grinned unrepentantly when Steve threw her a glare. "Also about the crane."
"Thank you. I'll take that on notice."
She shrugged, unfazed. "It's best when Mom and Dad don't fight."
Steve picked up the milk.
The Williamses turn out to be the kind of people who join hands at the Thanksgiving table and talk about being grateful. It creeps Steve out, but he knows he has issues; he takes Molly's hand on one side, Lauren's on the other, pointedly does not meet Danny's gaze.
"I'll start!" says Lauren. "Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for the fact that Danny's gay for Steve."
"Hey, hey, whoa!" Danny says. He'd probably be shaking a finger except for the hand-holding thing, and maybe this has its advantages after all. "Not in front of the turkey!"
"Dear God, I'd like to thank you for making Steve gay for Danny," Betsy puts in, "because Jesus knows that had to be the harder task."
"Hey!" Danny splutters.
"Jesus, I give you props, you picked out a real nice one for my boy," puts in Ellen.
"What's gay?" asks Abby, frowning with concentration.
"It's the way your Uncle Danny's been looking at your Uncle Steve since they got here," says Ellen. "It means they love each other and there's a chance your Uncle Danny won't die alone."
Molly snorts appreciatively. "Thank you, God, for the entertainment. No really. This is better than the year Betsy got knocked up while she was on two types of contraception."
"Okay, okay," says Danny. "Now the turkey's blushing. You made the turkey blush. How is this appropriate conversation for the dinner table, huh? We got children, we got Navy SEALs . . . "
"Can you teach me to clean and strip a gun?" Lauren asks Steve, interrupting his close study of the pattern on his empty plate.
Danny's head whips around. "What? Why do you need that information, why? Why would you need a gun?"
"Thank you, Jesus, that I'm no longer the last to marry in," says Jim. "And for that 50 inch HDTV they have on sale at Best Buy tomorrow if you get there at 3am, I'm just saying, a deal like that, you'd be a jerk not to be grateful, am I right?"
"I am grateful that I'm not armed right now," says Danny.
Abby pipes up. "I'm thankful for tuna fish sandwiches."
"I got love in my heart for the fact that I am not Steve," says Mike.
Steve clears his throat, and it's like magic, the way the table falls silent, and Steve relishes that for once it's Danny who has the aneurysm face. "Thank you," he says, smiling, genuinely happy, and Danny mumbles, "Oh, for Christ's sake," while the rest of the table dissolves in a chorus of cooing and applause.
"God, that was terrible," Danny moans, ripping off his tie and throwing it toward his duffel bag. "That was horrible, that was awful, that was me as raw meat and my family as sharks." He falls back across the bed. "Twenty minutes on the phone with Grace, my only respite, and she tells me step-Stan bought her a riding mower. What? What is that? Who buys a kid a riding mower? Why would she need that?"
"Up," Steve says, pulling him back to his feet and herding him to the wall beside the window.
"Come on," Danny whines, "let me die in peace, I'm a wounded man here, I need sleep, more alcohol, what are you – " He shuts up when Steve lowers himself to his knees. "Oh, okay, that. Really?"
Steve smiles and leans in, nuzzling the front of Danny's pants. "I tested."
"Huh?" Danny watches him, wide-eyed.
"The floorboards. I tested. These right here? They don't squeak."
"My boyfriend is a SEAL," Danny says reverently as Steve works at his belt. "Tactical, he has smarts and the . . . " His breath stutters as Steve eases him out of his shorts. "Oh, yeah."
Steve licks his lips and looks up with what he hopes passes for innocence, smiles a little as Danny slides his fingers into his hair. "Yeah?"
"I'm dying here," Danny offers, rocking his hips forward, the head of his cock bumping against Steve's lips. "C'mon, c'mon, . . ."
Steve obliges, rounds his mouth, slides wet lips over the head of Danny's cock and begins to suck, humming a little as Danny makes a small, soft, appreciative noise that rockets straight to Steve's own groin. He tugs at Danny's pants, eases them down over his hips, pulls back just long enough to do the same to Danny's boxers, and grins when Danny whines. It's satisfying, this slow, easy rhythm, the heat from Danny's thighs, the way his stomach muscles leap and tremble as he rocks into Steve's mouth, fingers tracing the line of Steve's stubbled jaw. "God," Danny mumbles. "You just – you know? You just . . ."
His head thuds back against the wall when he comes, and Steve swallows around him, licks him clean before he wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. He leans his forehead against Danny's thigh, noses the skin there making Danny whimper and sink to his knees, pulling Steve into a needy, messy kiss.
"McGarrett," Danny says, and he's smiling fondly, heel of his hand pressed against Steve's crotch. "You glad to see me?"
"Fuck you," Steve manages, laughing, into his mouth.
"When my family's not downstairs, sure, I'm your guy" Danny says, and pushes him to sprawl across floorboards that he hasn't checked for tensile strength. "Right now, I got other business."
"Yeah?" Steve says, rocking up into Danny's hand.
"Yeah," Danny says, "I got this business," and he twists his hand, "and this business," he thumbs the head of Steve's cock, makes Steve's hips arch up off the floor.
"You gonna talk the whole time?" Steve asks, a little breathless.
"What, you can think of better things for me to do with my mouth?" Danny asks, and Steve hates him, he really does, fights him for control of the kiss that Danny offers with a wicked smile, groans when Danny shifts to suck at the skin right behind his jaw.
"Just please – can we . . . later, later, we can – " Steve grits his teeth, because there are sounds in his throat he really can't let free, but Danny's playing the goddamn tease, stroking the skin behind Steve's balls, nosing Steve's t-shirt higher and brushing his lips across his navel, dragging his nails down the angle of Steve's hip. "God, Danny, would you – "
And Danny takes him in, wraps his tongue around the head of Steve's cock, and Steve's coming before he can think to warn him, thigh muscles bunching, hand curved helplessly around the back of Danny's neck.
"You okay, there?" Danny asks eventually, tugging at his shirt. "I break you?"
"Not yet," Steve says, turning his head, and Danny's right there, offer a kiss. Shit, they told his family today. "You want to try again tomorrow?"
"Or when we get back home, when I got a bed that doesn't squeak and walls that have bullet holes, you know, your everyday, usual romantic getaway thing."
Steve smiles – can't help himself; lies there and smiles. "Okay," he says, and maybe Danny did break him just a little; broke a part of him that was waiting to crack open this whole goddamn time.
Tuesday morning's brutal – the jet-lag, the absence of clean clothes, the chronic lack of industrial grade coffee at the house. "Hey," says Kono, beaming at them when they walk into the headquarters, twenty minutes late. "You get married?"
Danny spit-takes, which Steve has the wherewithal to find deeply satisfying even as he's gesturing at Kono and asking, "What the hell?"
Kono shrugs. "I checked. New Jersey has civil partnerships. I figured his family was right there, you could . . ." She grins and wiggles an eyebrow, which could mean any one of seventeen things that Steve doesn't want to contemplate.
"Believe me," Danny says, "you do not want my family involved in any kind of wedding, commitment ceremony, partnership, dog naming, mall opening . . ."
"You really don't," Steve offers.
"There would be bunting, there would be cake – "
"Cake's always good," says Chin, wandering in from Steve's office.
" – they would make him wear a tie, which, as we all know, would mean the end of the world – "
"His dress blues have a tie," Kono offers. "Did you take your dress blues with?"
"Did I – " Steve pulls at the enormous coffee he's holding. "No, I did not take my dress blues with me on my first visit to his family."
"Long flight," Chin says. "Efficient to get it squared away all at once. You can't blame us for wondering."
"Can we please find some bad guys to shoot, now?" Danny asks, voice raised. "Drug dealers, sex traffickers, serial killers, anyone with a parking ticket, I'm open to suggestions. Just please, give me something to do that doesn't involve finishing this conversation."
Kono presses her lips together, altogether failing to hide a smirk. "We got a lead on Callahan's cronies?"
"Thank god," Danny says, and leans against the desk display. And if he bumps his shoulder into Steve's arm when Steve joins them, if they're standing close enough for Steve to elbow him back without it looking too much like someone's angling for a date, then it's just a usual sort of day, the kind that almost always ends with words being said.