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Honestly, death isn’t something Danny wonders often about.
Sure, he’s seen plenty of it in his life, even too much. But in all his years of service he’s learned that being more than a passive bystander doesn’t necessarily mean that you ought to be empathetic or all that shit that his supervisor liked to ramble about when he’d still been a recruit.
Life had been so simple when he was still in his twenties. Things had been exciting and magnificent in Jersey. Each day represented a new challenge, each morning a new battle about to begin. Everything had been defined, and everything had had its place.
At the time Danny had felt like nothing could stop him, he’d pushed his body through hard gym workouts, trying to compensate for his short stature with extra pounds of muscles and rapidity. As a bullet flying straight to the target, trapped in his ribcage, a wild animal had kept snarling and biting at his insides.
Run. Aim. Shoot.
These three words perfectly fit the description of Danny’s life during his first years on the force. Careless and hot-headed, always putting himself on the first line, Danny had gotten used to being the first on a crime scene and the last to leave. He’d let that kind of life-style swallow him whole bit by bit, chewing at him over time, cuts and burns not enough to break him but still enough to render him quiet for a couple days.
And yes, at the time Danny had briefly wondered when he would end up spat away by his own life, but the dangerous merry-go-round that he’d been riding - again and again and again, you won’t never get down, not until you are dead – had never given him time to think about it too seriously.
“You are like a raging fire, Danny,” his mom had told him one evening, clear blue eyes easily reading into him. “I wonder if someday you’ll find someone crazy enough to try and tame you.”
It’d been around that time that he’d meet Rachel. Smart, crazy, amazing Rachel, who loved life with as much passion as Danny; who was as perfectly mannered as an English woman could’ve been, but still able to be louder then Danny during their fights; who had been willing to hit a police car just to get Danny’s attention. Rachel, who’d gifted him with Grace.
Danny almost can’t remember life without Grace. The carefree days when he used to wake up at noon after a night spent out with a bunch of colleagues, drinking and hitting on girls and laughing almost to the point of choking. Colorless days, lined one after the other as if wanting to show off their once charming and appealing glow, but ending up just looking like an old, sad prostitute walking down the street that she once considered her own Broadway stage.
Before Gracie’s birth, Danny had felt like he was living life at the fullest, but after he’d felt as if it’d started burning him from the inside, flowing into his veins in an endless series of warm, bright days.
Since the start, Gracie had represented everything that Danny had always wanted. Seeing her for the first time, being able to hold her, this adorable, tiny creature, his baby girl, it’d done something inside Danny. His heart had exploded and melted at the same time, the world stopping to crazily spinning around him and finally settling into revolving quietly around the most beautiful baby that Danny had ever seen.
A home, someone to come back to at nights, happy smiles, Danny had started to believe that maybe, just maybe, he could have all of that. Maybe that was how life was supposed to be.
So he’d started dancing along. Back and forth. Back and forth. Carefully, like a kid riding a swing for the first time.
Slowly, Danny had found himself walking on the edge of something unknown, trying to balance private life and work, family and carrier. But that fire was still alive in him, he could still feel it clawing at his heart, pumping blood and adrenaline, howling and fighting to take control.
Dangerous.
Day by day, Gracie had filled his heart with love and tenderness, a delicate petal surrounded by flames. And Danny had learned that kind sentiments are hardly scared by rage, and the confusion of a human mind is something they live comfortably in. Hope, something Danny had never thought to need in his life, had started to change his days along with something else.
A knife wound once, a black eye another time, Danny had started to come home at night with those kind of souvenirs, the kind that made Rachel’s eye darken and her hands shake, the kind that made Gracie’s toothless smile vanish like the horizon in the fog. But the fire in his chest hadn’t stopped crackling, low and mischievous.
The more Danny had tried to shut it down, to lock it in the darkest corners of his mind, the more the rage, the blind hunger of living, had come back to him. Slowly destroying and conquering all the places that Grace’s sweet, joyful smile had filled. Like the edges of a scorched parchment, his heart had kept folding in itself and bleeding, torn between the person Danny once had been and the man that he’d wanted to become for Grace, for his daughter.
It should have been an easy choice – Just jump, don’t be afraid. I’m not afraid. Yes, you are. You are fucking terrified, Danny. But why? What is it that you fear so much? Just jump. Jump, I’ll catch you – but it hadn’t been. Danny had kept living in that limbo, waiting for something, anything, to show him the right path. For the first time in his life, Detective Williams had waited for life to unfold its many mysteries, instead of taking it in his hands and destroying – rebuilding – it from its foundations.
Losing everything, it was something that Danny hadn’t really planned. But Rachel had always been too smart to let herself be fooled by a sham and her rage – you are doing this to us! Shut up, shut up, I don’t want to hear your excuses anymore! Get out of this house, get out of my life! – had turned Danny’s world upside down. Like sand in a hourglass, grain by grain, Danny had watched his life slipping slowly away through his fingers.
Letting Rachel go hadn’t been easy. They’d shouted at each other for long, tiring days, arguing and fighting and then ending up fucking, until one night Danny had came back to an empty house, the divorce papers scattered on the kitchen table the only witnesses of what they had once been. And yes, it’d been hard, but nothing could've been compared to Grace being gone from their home, from Danny’s side. It’d been heart-breaking beyond words.
Thinking about it, it’d been almost natural for him to move to Hawaii. Because life without Grace wasn’t an acceptable alternative – Are you sure that you won’t change your mind? Hawaii’s not Jersey. You’ll lose everything you’ve worked so hard for. I will still have my child. That isn’t your world, Danny. Gracie is my world now - even if that had meant that he’d have to follow the ghost of his once happy marriage, the ashes of what it’d once been still hot in his chest.
So he’d rented a shitty apartment that could’ve been barely qualified as livable and followed Rachel to this place forgotten by God, where Christmas had nothing to do with snow and fucking pineapples were put on pizza.
And if now Danny’s standing by the door in the dark, listening to Gracie’s quiet, peaceful breathing, it isn’t because he’s worried that she could vanish like a mirage in a desert, but just because he likes to know that Grace is safe, far away from the hard world that Danny knows too well, far away from anything that could hurt her.
Because slowly, like a tender flower blooming in a dry land, making its silent way through life, Grace has become Danny’s fire. Not a wild force anymore, not something threatening to devour Danny from the inside, but something strong that keeps him going even when life seems too hard.
Grace is the pretty, vain rose living on Danny’s asteroid, the one he puts in a glass-case at night, the one he treats with reverence, quietly lulling her into sleep and carefully guiding her first steps into life. She’s Danny’s precious one.
And tomorrow, when she’ll come down to breakfast and she’ll kiss him on the cheek, Danny will smile – Good morning, monkey. Danno loves you, Gracie. What would you like for breakfast, hm? Let’s cook something while Steve’s still swimming, shall we? Oh, you look so cute in that apron. My little princess, we should get you one with that funny kitty on it –, because that’s how life’s supposed to be.
There are a millions reasons why Danny had been a bad husband. Now, with the cold eye of someone who’s moved forward, he can clearly see his faults, can clearly hear the long, loud silences that had filled Rachel’s and his days back in Jersey. They are even clearer now that he’s starting to look at the world with new eyes.
And then there is Steve. Steve who is like a thousand storms trapped in a human body. Steve who’s alive, careless and free like no one Danny has ever met, and he gets so easily under Danny’s skin like no one ever has – or will, since Steve has ruined Danny for every other human being – that is almost unbelievable.
Steve is the wind able to keep Danny’s fire under control, he’s the only one able to channel it into dedication and pure energy. Steve who fucks Danny deep, slow and dirty, and then holds him in his arms, whispers words of hope and love into Danny’s ears. It makes Danny feel like the smallest of the islands, surrounded by nothing but calm, peaceful water. A quiet ocean ready to keep Danny and Grace safe at any cost. Kauhale.
Not that there aren’t risks included in their equation. They are perfectly conscious of the dangerous life they are living, of the dangerous things that they keep doing for the sake of justice. Things that normal people with normal – ordinary, boring, tedious – lives won’t ever dream about. Things that would make anyone fear – are you scared? Why aren’t you scared anymore, Danno? – for their own life. But not Steve. Not Danny.
Like crazy, fearless tightrope walkers, they keep on dancing on a sword’s edge, sometimes staggering but never falling. The feel of adrenaline dense in their veins, a bond that no one understands, that no one will ever be able to break.
What a twisted kind of family they must seem, with their little Gracie – yes, she is Steve’s as much as she’s mine. Don’t you fear for her, Danny? Steve will keep her safe. Steve will keep us safe. And what about you, Danny? What is your place? Them. I’ll always stand by them. –, their little flower made of fire, tucked under their dark, protective wings.
But, one day, when I won’t be here.
Here, this is the thought that keeps him awake at times. Hard, dangerous words; they manage to sneak easily into Danny’s mind, spreading venom all around, making him falter, making him afraid of all the ‘what ifs’ of an uncertain and obscure tomorrow. Leave Grace behind, alone.
“Danny?” Steve’s voice sounds like velvet inside his ears, and slowly Danny turns his gaze away from his daughter, meets Steve’s eyes in the dark. He’s standing two feet away, a pair of worn pajama bottom hanging low on his tanned hips, hair still ruffled from bed and looking far too awake for someone who’s just woken up.
Danny briefly wonders for how long he’s been observed. The thought of Steve spying on him should probably make him angry, or at least annoyed, but he can’t bring himself to do anything except submit to this strange warm feeling that starts bubbling in his chest.
Keeping an eye on Danny, making sure that he knows that he’s not alone in this, whatever dark thought or preoccupation he might have, Steve is always right there, exactly where Danny needs him. No matter how deep the waters, no matter how dark the nights, Steve will always reach out to Danny like he is doing now.
A bird starts singing not too far away, as Danny takes Steve’s hand, lets his palm slide easily into his partner’s, interlocking their fingers together.
The dawn is finally approaching, but Gracie isn’t aware of it, happily lost in a world full of colorful dreams. And, while timid rays of sun start to poke out at the edge of the horizon, Danny and Steve keep watching over her. Just for a few more minutes. Just- Together.