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Danny's in the middle of a pleasant dream involving Grace, his Camaro and a New Jersey highway blessedly free of traffic so they can cruise with the windows open, and Grace's hair whipping back and forth in the breeze while they sing along to a ridiculous song. He's just about to tell Grace to stop catching the air with her hand as it glides up and down in the wind when his cell phone rings.
"Mrmph." He'd tried to say 'hello' or 'what the hell, it's in the middle of the night' but, in the end, all that comes out is gibberish as he's yanked out of one of the greatest dreams he's ever had.
"He's my mother."
"The dog jumped over the moon?" Danny tries to blink the sleep from his brain but all it does is slightly clear the fog from pea-soup thickness to a good Jersey rain.
"Joe, Danny, Joe, my mother."
"Joe is your mother? I had no idea. That's crazy Junior shit. He also Mary's mother, too? Someone should call Arnold and tell him that it was done many, many moons ago. And where the hell are you? I've been calling you all night." Danny asks the last as his brain catches up to the fact that it's Steve on the other end and that it's three o'clock in the morning. He's been asleep for about an hour, dammit, and he's not ready for this shit.
"Danny, will you shut up and listen to me?" Danny hears the frustration in Steve's voice. Normally, that would be enough to keep Danny going because he's ornery like that (and he's always liked the word ornery). The thing that makes him bite his tongue is the pain he hears along with that frustration. "Shelburne is my mother."
"Your mother's dead."
"Joe and my dad faked her death. She's here. I just saw her. She had cookies."
"Let me get this straight." Danny sits up, fumbling for the light before deciding that a light wasn't particularly needed right now. Propping himself against the headboard, he took another moment to rub at his temple and then across his scalp before massaging the back of his neck. "Your mother is alive and she baked you cookies. She didn't actually get killed by Wo Fat. Even more, your mother is some mastermind person codenamed Shelburne."
"That's what I'm saying."
"I used to think my family was fucked up but my criminal mastermind accountant brother is nothing on your mastermind mother that faked her own death."
"Danny, I'm having a bit of an existential crisis here. I could do without the color commentary, please." If Danny closes his eyes, he can picture the way that Steve rubs his hands across his face, can imagine the exasperation and the ache that he's got to be feeling. Danny wants to make it better and he could, if Steve were a small girl that's just skinned her knee or lost a tennis match. As it is, Danny's never really known how to fix Steve when he's like this because it's happened so rarely. Steve's the rock, the even plain that Danny blows across, like a thunderstorm or a tornado in the Midwest. He's the emotionally volatile one, the one constantly in need of shoring up. He's not so good at being a rock to anyone over the age of ten.
It takes him an embarrassingly long time to come up with, "Babe. This is good news."
"Yeah? How so, Daniel? My mother's been alive all these years and never once tried to get in contact with me. In fact, she's been running all around the world to avoid me and you think that's a good thing? My father lied to me all these years. Joe lied to me all these years. Everyone's been lying and…" Steve's voice trails off, leaving Danny in the pained silence that follows. Just as he's about to say something ridiculous, anything to break the mood building, Steve speaks again. "I just don't know who to trust now. My whole life's been a lie."
"Bullshit."
"Excuse me?" There's the offended Steve that Danny's much more used to, knows how to talk down and work with. A quiet Steve is a Steve that pulls a grenade out of the glovebox where he's been storing it for a rainy day, just waiting to decimate Danny in a thousand ways. Danny's never been good at avoiding Steve's blows, not the physical ones, not the mental ones and certainly not the emotional ones, hasn't been since they'd grappled that first time. Danny'd question his inability to deal with a Steve that's hurting but that would require introspection and that's another thing that Danny's not good at. He's much better at avoiding thinking about his damned feelings, as Rachel likes to point out, continuously and ad nauseum until Danny's ready to scream the world down but normally just storms out of wherever they're at and slams himself into his vehicle before peeling out and running. Avoiding. He doesn't run, he just avoids.
"So your parents lied to you. You think you're the first kid to have that happen to them? Our parents all lie to us, from the beginning. Little white lies. Hell, I do it to Grace all the time, too. They start out small, to protect us or to make us happy. Shit like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny when we all know damned well it's Creepy Uncle Greg in a fake beard and his flask of rum hidden in his red flannel suit somewhere. If our parents love us a lot, the lies get bigger and bigger. Things like 'she's not good enough for you' or 'parenthood is wonderful and trouble free' or even things like 'your mother's dead because I had to get her out of here to save your life'. Sometimes, our parents do everything they can to save us and that involves lying."
There's another silence on the other end of the phone that stretches on so long that Danny fears the call's been dropped so he pulls it away from his ear, relieved when it lights up with an active connection. "Steve?"
"That was amazingly profound. Who are you and what have you done with my Danno?"
Danny likes the sound of that rolling off Steve's lips, that little spot of possessiveness that sometimes makes its way into Steve's treatment of Danny, the way that Steve will put himself between Danny and anyone that might be interested in him, even Gabby.
"Your Danno," and he stresses the words, because there's another thrill for him in the dark, he'll take what he can get, "has been busy fishing Kono out of the ocean, investigating who attacked Malia, dealing with the fallout of Chin letting Delano out of jail to try to save Kono and not calling any of us. Not that any of us could've called you because you're wherever the hell you're at and, so yeah, it's been a busy night so I sound like a fortune cookie when I'm tired. I've had like an hour of sleep."
"What. Tell me everything." Steve sounds worried about everyone else and if that takes his mind away from how Shelburne's his long-dead mother that just so happened to bake cookies for their reunion, well, Danny's going to leap at it with both arms. It's better to avoid the way that Steve had sounded so lost, like a little boy losing his mother all over again, like he'd been sent from the island. Danny can picture it clearly; the way that Steve's face is all twisted up, the way that his stomach is clenched, maybe a hand braced over it, made all the more pronounced by the fact that Steve's trying his damnedest to force his back into a rigid line, standing straight and tall. Danny wants to know what those ridges feel like under his hand so he doesn't think about it, doesn't think about anything other than telling Steve everything.
"I'm on my way back."
"Stay there. Get to know your mother better. Find out what's going on with Shelburne and Wo Fat. We can take care of things back here."
"Bullshit. I'll be back in a few hours. Don't mess anything else up."
"Steve, don't. Seriously. Spend the time with your mother. We'll be here when you get back." Danny rubs at his chest, up and down as he thinks about how much of a mistake it would be for Steve to leave his mother right now.
"I need to be there."
"You need to be with your mother. Come on, babe, you know you need to figure out what's going on there." Danny knows that Steve's going to regret coming back and losing a chance to be with his mother, with Shelburne, before she has to move to another safe house.
"But – "
"No buts. We'll be here when you get back. Promise. You stay there. You eat cookies with the woman that gave birth to you and you find out what the hell is going on with that whole mess. I've got this mess."
"All right."
This time, the silence isn't oppressive or tense. Danny lets it slide around him in the dark as he listens to Steve breathing on the other end of the phone. He closes his eyes and pretends that Steve's in the room with him, that they're not just partners but partners and it's a good fantasy, one filled with mouths and hands and lips and tongues. His hand's on his cock, rubbing it through his underwear as he listens to Steve's breath.
"So…" Steve finally says as the silence drags on. For some reason, Danny wants to crow 'I won, I won' at the silence game, something that every parent has played with a child during a car ride. He'd always lost as a child and now he's found someone that he can beat at it. "What're you wearing?" Steve's voice is low, deep and sultry. It's a voice Danny's only heard around Catherine and it hits him in his gut, makes his cock twitch as he hears it turned on him.
"Seriously?"
"Yeah, seriously." Steve sounds innocent, far too innocent to be believed. "Tell me what you're wearing right now."
"I'm in bed, Steven, what do you think I'm wearing?"
"Nothing?"
"I cannot believe you're hitting me up for phone sex. You're that lonely since Catherine got shipped out?"
"Maybe you're just that sexy."
Danny's pissed in about two seconds flat. It's like Steve's decided to torment Danny for some imagined past sin. "Ha. Now I'm really smelling the bullshit."
"So that's a no on the phone sex?" Steve sounds pissed. Which is good considering how fucking pissed off Danny is right now. Here he is, trying to be considerate and supportive to a friend that's across the ocean and learning all sorts of awful family secrets right now and that fucker wants to pretend phone sex? Oh, hell no.
"Correct. That would a big 'no' on the phone sex. You want sex, you hit me up when you get back to Hawaii. In fact, you want sex with me, you come off that plane, turn in a circle three times, pat your head, rub your belly and then fall on your knees in front of me. I'll believe it then but until then, you keep your perverted phone sex fantasies to yourself. Jesus, you just heard about the day I've had and you think this is a hilarious joke? I know you think this is helping with the day you've had but what if I had Grace here and you were talking like this?"
"Danny – "
"No. No. No. We are not doing this. It's too late and I haven't had nearly enough sleep to deal with you. I'll talk to you tomorrow, later today, whatever. Goodnight, Steve." With that, Danny hangs up the phone.
Over the next few days, as Danny helps Chin clean up the mess he's made of everyone's lives while also trying to help Steve through his mother's re-emergence, Danny forgets about the phone sex except when he's touching himself. Then he imagines Steve going low and asking him what he's wearing, telling him to take it all off, bare his cock and trap his balls in his underwear. Danny can hear Steve in that low and slow voice telling him exactly what he should and shouldn't be doing to himself as they sit in the dark, on different continents, touching themselves to the sound of panting breath through a phone. Danny's heard the panting from Steve countless times and that bit of realism always sends him over the edge. At least Steve hadn't said his name in that voice.
A week after the phone call, Kono's out of the hospital and Malia seems to be on the road to recovery from her injuries. Chin's still shaken up at the choices he's made and Danny's spending more time in the governor's office than any other person than the governor himself. He's quite happy Steve's coming back because this sort of political crap is not what he became a police officer for.
With everything else going on, he's the only one standing on the tarmac as Steve's plane lands and he steps out of the private jet he'd never expected. Steve walks out with a small, older woman next to him. The wave he gets as Steve trots down the steps lightens his load. "Bout time you got back, do you know what all I've had to do to get the governor off our – Steve, what the hell are you doing?"
Steve's turning in a circle, counting out loud, one two three before patting his head, rubbing his belly and then dropping to his knees right in front of Danny and the woman that's watching them.
Oh. Oh. Danny doesn't quite know what to do with this as Steve gets to his feet, not taking his eyes off Danny. Steve's wearing his serious face, the one with his lips just short of the "what the hell did Kamekona put in this shrimp" twist and a little bit more than the "Danny, you have to stop taking everything so seriously" half-smirk. Danny's brilliant at avoiding though, so he doesn't acknowledge what Steve just did. Instead, he steps around Steve and holds out his hand to the woman. "I'm Danny Williams, this guy's partner."
"Pleased to meet you, Danny. I've heard a lot about you."
"If it came from Steve, don't believe a word of it."
"Danny, this is my mother."
"I figured that out what with the whole looking like each other thing." Danny shoots a sarcastic look to Steve but his face is polite as he greets Steve's mother.
Danny would like to pretend that he paid attention to the trip to Steve's house, the conversations that they had and any sort of dangers but that's just what it would be. Pretending. He doesn't remember a damned thing they talked about or anything that might've cropped up on the trip. Hell, he can't remember if all of the lights were green when he went through them because all he can see is Steve's half-smile, teasing and tormenting at him, as Steve rubbed his belly and patted his head. He's got that serious face of Steve's in his head as he drives to his own place, blindly walking in and dropping onto the sofa. The picture of Steve on his knees in front of Danny is going to fuel all sorts of wank fantasies for weeks.
Danny's pulled out of his contemplations by his phone ringing. Still not thinking, he picks it up.
"So what are you wearing, Danny?"