#sensitive flower

The first thing Danny does when he gets close enough is pull Steve into a hug, which is good, because otherwise Steve would've had to do it. And you can never tell whether Danny's going to just return a hug, or return it and then shove you in the chest for the privilege.

Of course, he can still do that if he's the one to initiate the hug, and promptly does. There's strong arms around Steve, then a half-curled hand forceful over his heart, then the same hand resting half of Danny's weight against his shoulder. Steve's pretty much fine with all of it, because it all means Danny's touching him and the world has clicked back into place.

The first actual words Danny says to him are, "You look terrible."

Steve grins, giddy with delight, and tells him, "You don't look so hot yourself."

"No, I'm serious," Danny says. "I say this with all the love in my heart, but you look like shit. Have you slept since you left Hawaii? For that matter, have you eaten? And army coffee and MREs don't count."

"Navy coffee."

“Still doesn’t count.” Danny’s straightened up a little, but the hand is still on Steve’s shoulder, running up and down and squeezing and loosening, a point of heat in the infinitely temperate Honolulu evening air. “I repeat, have you eaten?”

“Depends what you’ve got at home, Danno.”

“I have uncooked pasta and too many takeout boxes, because I’m not your housewife and in case you’ve forgotten, I’ve been running the whole damn mission from this end.”

Steve wasn’t entirely lying - Danny doesn’t look great, in the grand scheme of Dannyness. There’s dark circles under his eyes, a face that’s a little too pale under the grimly Hawaiian-borne tan, and a certain lax dullness to the gelled hair that altogether speak to too little sleep and too much worry. “Mission’s over,” Steve says, and slings an arm around his shoulders.

Given they’re still facing each other, it’s a little like hugging him again, but within the realm of deniability.

“I’ll believe that when you don’t look like you’ve spent five days down a hole.”

Steve doesn’t explicitly point out that he kind of has spent five days down a hole, albeit a reasonably well kitted-out one. He does say, “Hey, my hole had Navy coffee. What did yours have?”

“Malasadas,” Danny immediately returns. 

“Okay, you win.”

“That was easier than normal.”

“Yeah, well. I haven’t slept since I left Hawaii.”

Danny glares at him, which is immensely comforting, and curls the hand that’s never left Steve’s arm tight above his elbow, which is slightly ominous. Then he starts bodily pulling Steve out of the hangar, which brings it back to comforting.

Steve takes a few stumbles after him before finally asking, “Where are we going?”

“I’m taking you to bed.”

“And we haven’t even had dinner.”

Danny’s only response to Steve’s sterling wit is, “I said I had uncooked pasta. You’re capable of filling up a pot.”

“I’m touched by the faith you have in me.”

“Touched, sure. That’s the word.”

He is still quite literally touched, all the way to the car, where Danny drags him forcefully to the passenger side and blocks him in until he gives up and opens the door. He’s honestly sleep-deprived enough that he probably wouldn’t be safe to drive, not that Danny looks much better. 

They sit in a comfortable, if exhausted, silence until Danny backs the Camaro out of its haphazardly parked spot and they’re on the way home. Then Danny says, eyes still on the road, with the kind of grumpiness whose girders and foundations could only be built out of years’ worth of comfort and love, “Stop smiling at me. It’s not making you look any better.”

“Careful,” Steve says lazily, entirely failing to comply with instructions. “If you insult my looks any more, I’ll start thinking you like me for my brain.”

“God forbid.”

It's not anyone unusual, is the thing that gets him. It's a nameless, almost-faceless drug smuggler that he didn't even mean to kill, but he shot with intent to disable and a little too much carelessness in a rush to stop the ship they came in on, and when he finally loops back around there's a pool of blood and a corpse with a busted femoral artery.

He's kneeling down, checking a pulse even though it's clearly absent, removing weapons even though he'll clearly have no use for them, when his fingers brush against a thin edge in the inside pocket of the off-the-rack grey suit jacket the guy's wearing.

When he pulls it out, it's a photo. He has to look down to check that it's the same guy in it, partially because death rictus changes a face, especially when your comparison is smiling and happy, and partially because he just hasn't looked at his face properly. It's the same guy, his arm around a similarly smiling woman shoulder-height to him and so close in features she has to be his sister, with a chubby-cheeked frizzy-haired kid straddling his shoulders and holding onto the woman's hand.

One of the first things the military teaches you, explicitly or not, is to erase personhood. Your own, and your enemy's. Numbers, statistics, body parts and targets and usefulness.

He puts the photo back into the dead man's jacket and moves away. A tech comes at some point, body-bags him, and Duke is there and the rest of his team have it well in hand, so he goes back to where their cars are parked, boosts himself onto the hood of the truck, and waits.

Kono walks past at some point, but they're still in the midst of cleanup and HPD handover, so even though she does slow and ask, "You okay, boss?", when he replies in the affirmative she nods and keeps moving.

He remembers himself before. He remembers when it would never would have occurred to him not to think that every person with a bullet in them is a person with a family. A person with a life, at least before they were a person with a death.

He doesn't bother trying to count. The impulse washes over him, but it would take hours with military records and Five-0 reports to calculate anything even close to accuracy.

Himself before was decades ago, but also not that long ago. It was target practice at the Academy and work behind computers in Military Intelligence and crawling through mud with a similarly young Freddie by his side.

Himself after, apparently, is sitting on his own truck at the edge of his own city watching his family and his family's family and his friends and his friends' friends move efficiently through shipping containers and body bags.

Eventually, Danny finds him. He takes one look at Steve's face; he doesn't say anything, just leans against the hood next to Steve and waits.

Eventually, Steve finds the words. "I don't think the military would like me anymore, Danny."

It's not all that new a state of affairs; he got driven by revenge and tattoos in non-regulation places and too many personal attachments and he remembered how to have fun in quiet spaces and how to love in loud ones. He started caring again.

"Good," Danny says, harsh and definite, and Steve realises with a start that the things that would debase him in the eyes of his country are probably exactly the same reasons Danny - not just Danny, his whole family - would cite for loving him. Except the tattoos, maybe.