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Steve doesn’t bother turning on the light when he comes back from his morning run. It’s still dark out, but he knows his way around. There’s something uniquely peaceful about the familiar house shrouded in darkness just before dawn, something that can’t be replicated at any other point during the day.
Something that’s fragile and easily broken by the harsh buzz of his phone on the dinner table. He glances at the caller ID on the flashing screen. It’s Danny, so he takes the phone with him to the kitchen, because Danny isn’t usually awake at this hour, but every once in a while insomnia grabs him so bad he invites Steve over for breakfast. The lure of pancakes is too great to ignore the call, whether it interrupts his quiet morning routine or not.
Also, once, memorably, Danny had drunk called him after a late night out with an old college buddy and told him he had very vexing eyes. He still thinks about that from time to time.
“What’s up?” he asks when he picks up.
“So, hypothetically,” Danny says, tone clipped, “you’d totally help me get rid of a body, right?”
Steve, still living in a state of blissful ignorance at this time, laughs and shifts the phone to his other ear the better to rummage through the fridge. “Who’d you kill, Danno?”
“I’m taking that as a yes,” Danny informs him. “I’m at Stan’s. I’ll expect you here in eight minutes.” There’s a click when the line shuts off.
Steve forgets all about his quest for a mango smoothie in favor of staring at his phone in the stark light of the refrigerator. He shudders, shuts the fridge and does a speed run for his keys, wallet, shoes, and the front door.
*
He has the entire 480-second car ride to work himself into a tizzy. Danny would never kill someone unprovoked – a burglar would be Steve’s best bet, but if that’s all it is, Danny could have called HPD and gone through the official channels.
It’s a good thing there isn’t a lot of traffic around at this hour. Steve has a hard time seeing the road past the images that bubble up of Stan, probably drunk or drugged up but either way getting so violent that Danny needs to step in, with the result that one of them is now lying on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood.
He exerts a little more pressure on the gas pedal and prays Grace isn’t up yet and tries not to think about what he’ll do if this actually is about Rachel’s new husband.
*
When Steve gets to the Edwards’ mansion, the wrought-iron gate is wide open, so he drives the Chevy right up to the completely dark house. Danny is already there, wearing jeans and a plain T-shirt, vibrating with energy but waiting for him. As soon as Steve slams the car door shut – quiet as possible, because he’s totally unsure what the situation is and already regretting that he didn’t think to bring his gun – Danny is grabbing Steve’s elbow and dragging him away from the front door. Apparently they’re going around the house instead of inside it.
“I’ve changed my mind,” Danny says, not letting go of Steve’s elbow, even though Steve is very capable of walking on his own. The grounds are as dark as the house, but there are a handful of working lamps scattered along the path that indicate it’s not a total electric blackout. “Getting rid of the body isn’t the problem. I can just take it home and put it in a plastic bag in the trash, right, it’s not like Rachel is going to come over and stick her hands in there. What I need is a dealer. Do you know anyone? Does Kamekona do this kind of thing?”
Physically, Steve is perfectly fine, but mentally, he struggles to catch up. “What kind of thing?”
“You smell,” Danny says, accusatory. He gives one last tug on Steve’s arm before he finally lets go, like he’s only now paying attention to the way Steve looks.
Steve doesn’t have to glance down at himself to know he’s still wearing his running shorts and the shirt with Captain America’s shield on it that Kono gave him last Christmas. He feels defensive enough as it is. “I was just coming back from a run when you called me.”
They’re fully behind the house now, where there’s a massive lawn with some expensive gardenscaping. Steve got a much better look at it all from a window that time they staked out Rachel and Stan’s bedroom to watch the neighbors, so he has a rough idea of the lay-out. Danny is leading them over to a small enclosure built against one of the garden walls.
“Here’s our victim,” Danny announces gravely.
The enclosure is an outdoor rabbit run, one of the ones that look like an actual tiny house but with a large cage attached to it so the occupant can take a stroll through the grass whenever it wants. One part of the gable roof of the main structure is flipped open, allowing for a good look inside. There, on a bed of straw, rests something fluffy, white and unmoving.
Steve has to grab onto the walls of the tiny house when he’s hit with realization. “This is about a bunny.”
“Obviously. Rachel and Stan dragged Grace to a rented summerhouse on the other side of the island, so I’ve been bunnysitting and when I came by one last time this morning, because I couldn’t sleep and had a bad feeling, it was just-” Danny waves a hand at the ball of white eiderdown on the straw.
“Oh,” Steve says, heroically holding back on a crack about giving Grace’s pet rabbit mouth to mouth.
“Yeah. Well, let’s just say Mr. Hoppy wasn’t hopping so much no more, and there was nothing I could do about it, so now I need one that’s still breathing so my ex-wife can’t accuse me of being into animal cruelty and bunny murder next time she wants to take my daughter away from me.” Danny takes a better look at Steve and his eyes bug out. “Wait a second, what did you think this was about?”
“No, nothing,” Steve says, very unconvincingly, because he’s still reeling from the euphoric rush of relief.
“Jesus Christ,” Danny says. “I would yell at you for that if I could, so consider yourself lucky that right now I need your help. My girl comes home at noon. Your kama’aina roots wouldn’t happen to extend to connections with bunny dealers on the island who’d be willing to get me one on a Sunday morning, would they?”
“Like that’s not going to come with a lot of getting yelled at by you anyway,” Steve points out, but he does so while reaching for his phone. “But yeah, Kamekona might know someone.”
“Shut up, you love it.”
Steve takes great delight in putting his finger to his lips to shush Danny. “I’m on the phone,” he mouths, for which Danny cheerfully flips him off.
*
After some negotiation and the promise that Five-0 will be having shrimp lunches for the rest of the month, Kamekona comes through, as he always does. He texts Steve the address of his cousin’s wife’s former neighbor’s son’s best friend, who runs a most likely illegal bunny farm on his grandmother’s land as a side hustle. It shouldn’t be too far away – twenty minutes, tops.
“Let’s go,” Danny says, once he’s seen the address. He’s pressed up to Steve’s side, one hand hooked on Steve’s shoulder, like he thinks Steve would have kept the knowledge that’s hopefully going to save Danny’s ass to himself if Danny hadn’t butted into Steve’s personal space to watch the text come in firsthand. Apparently his stench isn’t bad enough yet to completely deter Danny from touching him.
“You stay, I’ll go,” he offers. “You don’t know what killed Mr. Hoppy, so you need to thoroughly scrub every inch of his cage with disinfectant before we put another animal in there.”
Predictably, Danny finds something in this plan that he considers offensive to his person. “We’re not at work here, babe,” he says, which Steve is both already keenly aware of, and still pretty damn thankful for, because it means that they don’t have an actual human body to deal with. “You don’t get to just dole out orders. Why am I getting stuck on cleaning duty?”
Steve waggles his phone at Danny’s nose one last time before he slips it in his shorts pocket. “Because I’m doing you a favor and I know how to find this address.”
Danny plants his hands in his side, like he’s about to argue further, but then he huffs. “Fine. Just get Grace the right rabbit, okay? Make sure it’s like, this big-” Danny cups both hands in front of him. “-and that it has, you know, large ears, but not too large, and see that black eyeliner Mr. Hoppy had? He’s like a goth kid or something. I don’t even want to know what dear Stan’s into.”
“Avril Lavigne bunny, got it.” Steve nods, and then turns on his heel, hoping to avoid the inevitable questions about how he knows to reference the third-best-selling Canadian female artist of all time.
“Hey, wait,” Danny says, so Steve slowly turns back. What he sees is Danny offering up a set of car keys. “Take the Camaro. It’s faster.”
“You’re willingly giving me access to your car when I have mine here?” It’s a good question, Steve thinks, but it’s also mostly rhetorical, because he doesn’t really want Danny to reconsider this. He grabs the keys before Danny can change his mind and presses the back of his other hand to Danny’s forehead. “Are we sure you’re not dying?”
“Oh, funny. You’re a regular comedian. Keep your hands to yourself, would you?” When Steve doesn’t, Danny bats his hand away with some force.
It probably would have devolved into a slap fight if Steve hadn’t taken a step back. He grins winningly at Danny. “Shut up, you love it.”
He sloppily salutes Danny with the hand holding the keys and then marches off to get Grace a breathing pet, leaving Danny to grumble about whatever he’s decided annoys him most about Steve right that second. Steve is still grinning when he gets behind the wheel of Danny’s car.
*
Kamekona’s cousin’s wife’s former neighbor’s son’s best friend’s grandmother’s property is exactly twenty minutes away according to the GPS, so Steve does it in sixteen now that he has better transportation. In the brittle light of dawn, it takes six to get from Rachel and Stan’s mansion in the suburbs to the very edge of town, and then another ten to drive down increasingly smaller and more winding roads. He ends up at a small cottage that’s surrounded by pineapple fields on all sides, and hey, there’s another reason why it’s best Danny didn’t go. He would have skipped the hellos to go straight for something insulting about pineapples and would have been turned away at the door.
There’s no doorbell, so Steve knocks. The answer comes so quickly that he suspects the ancient, tiny lady that opens the door must have been standing there, waiting for him. She has to be the grandmother from Kamekona’s tale.
“Hi,” Steve tells her, affecting his best charming smile. “I’m Lieutenant Commander Steve McGarrett.”
She doesn’t seem impressed. She squints at him like he’s a bug and she’s considering whether to mercifully trap him under a glass and throw him out, or just squish him outright. “My grandson called to tell me you want an animal. You have the money?”
He tries not to let the fact that she didn’t specify what kind of animal worry him. Kamekona’s connections are good. He’s relatively certain he won’t end up having to glue felt ears to a hamster. “Yes, I do,” he assures her. Kamekona’s text had included a link to a pricing list, which had told him that he carries more than enough cash that he should be fine.
She keeps squinting at him.
He gets out his wallet. “You want me to pay you now?”
All she does in response is hold out a knobbly hand, palm up, so he interprets that as a yes. Usually he wouldn’t be getting out any bills before he’s at least seen the goods, but she intimidates him a little and there’s nobody around to laugh at him for that, so he takes the easy way out and just goes with it.
Once he’s handed over the right sum, she counts the bills, rolls them up and tucks them away in a fold of her flowy, ankle-length dress. Then she turns and moves deeper into the house. She has already vanished through a door in the hallway when she seems to realize he’s not coming after her, because she calls, “Come! What are you waiting for?”
He goes inside and pulls the door shut behind him. She went into the living room and when he catches up, she leads him through a back room – both cluttered and dark, with lots of wood and so many framed pictures of what are probably her grandchildren at all kinds of graduation ceremonies that there’s barely any wallpaper left – and out a back door, back into the open.
The garden is large, but that’s the only similarity to Rachel and Stan’s yard. This place has a thin strip of cheap gray tile furnished with some formerly-white garden chairs that have seen too much, and the rest of it is overgrown bushes and grass that’s divided up into squares by three foot high fence. It all gives off the vibe of a place that has never been touched by anyone who even knows what the word gardenscaping means.
Not that Steve gives a shit – the important part is that there are animals with ears of sufficient length sitting in some of the fence squares. One of the squares at the very front has white bunnies who could have been Mr. Hoppy’s twin brothers for all Steve knows. There’s a point he should maybe inform her of, he realizes. “I need a male rabbit, if you have one.”
She scoffs. “They all behave like boys. Fucking and fighting and fucking. One of these, yes?”
She’s pointing at the square that he’s been looking at, so he swallows his shock and amusement at hearing her curse twice in a row. “Yeah, those are perfect. Thanks.” There’s just one slight hitch, and it’s that the fence is very high and the woman very small and old, and he can’t see an obvious point of entrance where an elderly lady could pass through. “Should I get one?”
The bug squint from earlier returns. “Why? Are you trying to tell me I’m too old to catch a rabbit with my bare hands?”
“Of course not,” he says, feebly. The fact that he’s never known any of his grandparents is really coming back to haunt him. Is this what all old people are like?
“No, most people wouldn’t say it,” she says, which almost sounds like she’s letting him off the hook.
Then she vaults the fence in a way that he frankly expects to land her in the hospital for a hot second. He starts forward, but he doesn’t get in more than a single step before she’s snatched a tiny, white rabbit from the retreating sea of them around her feet.
“But they think it,” she adds, sharply. She thrusts the rabbit at him and he only barely manages to grab it before she lets go to tap two fingers to her forehead in illustration.
He nods, in the vain hope that being as inoffensive as possible will get him through the rest of this unscathed. The bunny struggles in his hands, legs kicking until he shifts his grip to keep it still and it freezes. “Could I, uh, get a box with this?”
*
The ride back is pretty uneventful. He has a medium sized cardboard box in the passenger seat and every once in a while there are some scrabbling noises, but on the whole this Mr. Hoppy impersonator is a quiet passenger. It’s only when he’s parked the Camaro and wants to pick up the box that he realizes it’s suspiciously wet on the underside.
Yet another reason why it’s good Danny didn’t come along.
He ditches the ruined box next to Stan and Rachel’s front door, wipes the bunny’s butt dry with a tissue from Danny’s glove compartment, and dabs at the seat a little, though it’s probably too late for that. After he’s done all he can, he retraces his steps around the house, holding the bunny in his hands, for lack of better transport options. It’s not so bad – it’s very soft, and it seems to have calmed down a little bit since he folded a hand over its eyes and started petting it. He feels like they’ve come to a mutually beneficial agreement.
Danny is approaching from the opposite end, even further back in the garden, where there’s presumably a shed with supplies that he needed for his cleaning operation. Hoppy’s house appears spotless, with fresh bedding and a lot of wonderfully fluffy straw. The thing that catches most of Steve’s attention, however, is on the grass outside of the cage. It takes him a moment to realize it has the exact size of what he’s holding.
“You got it?” Danny asks, when he reaches Steve, New Hoppy and the cage.
Steve thinks the answer is pretty obvious, so he nods at the bundle on the floor instead. “You wrapped the dead body in newspaper? What are you trying to do, mummify him?”
Danny throws up his arms and rolls his eyes mightily. “You’re holding yours in your bare hands!”
“This one’s not dead.”
“Let me see it,” Danny demands, stepping closer. He doesn’t drape himself over Steve’s shoulder again, which is a bit of a missed opportunity, Steve thinks.
He eases the bunny away from his chest for inspection. “Look, eyeliner, as requested. Didn’t even have to apply it myself.”
Danny carefully touches the bunny, runs his fingers along the back, brushes a thumb over the black eye ring and inspects an ear, before he seems to realize that he probably has no idea what he’d even be looking for, if he knows as much about bunny health as Steve does. “Good,” he snarks back. “You’d be terrible at applying eyeliner.”
Steve bristles. “I’m an expert sharpshooter. I have two different medals to prove it.”
“So? I don’t want you to shoot any bunnies for me. The goal is to do the opposite of making Grace hate me forever.”
“The point was that I have a steady hand.”
“Oh, you’re horrible,” Danny laments for no good reason whatsoever, so Steve already has his mouth open to respond when Danny reels him in with a firm hand on the back of his head and kisses him.
He needs about half a second to recognize what’s happening and start to kiss Danny back. It’s a surprise, yes, but it’s not that much of a surprise.
It’s also pretty damn wonderful, magical, and all kinds of other sappy, sparkly Disney princess shit, right up until the point where Steve feels something wriggle free from his hands. “Bunny,” he mumbles against Danny’s lips, barely intelligible.
Danny seems to have picked up on it anyway, because his grip on Steve’s bicep tightens to just before the point of pain. “What the fuck? I’m not your-”
“No,” Steve says, finally regaining enough usable brain power to pull away from Danny, because what they have here is an emergency. “The bunny! It escaped.”
So they hop around Stan’s garden in the ever-brightening morning sun for a while, trying to outwit a bunny that demonstrates a surprisingly thorough knowledge of tactical maneuvers. It doesn’t seem to understand that the freedom it’s vying for will almost certainly mean death for a domesticated animal like itself, but it might also not be super helpful that while they’re chasing it, they keep yelling things at each other like “I take it back! You’re a moron and I take back that kiss!” and “You can’t take back a kiss, Danny! I’m keeping it!” and “If you’d held on to the bunny as tightly as you’re clutching the incorporeal memory of that kiss, we wouldn’t be having any of these problems right now!” and “Great! Next time we make out, you hold the opportunistic rabbit, and see how well you do!”
In all fairness, if Steve were a bunny, he probably wouldn’t be running into the arms of the two bipedal giants loudly having their very first relationship crisis either.
In the end, he manages to corner it against a low wall that features some no doubt very tasteful stonework. He feints left and then dives right, and the bunny must not have a keen interest in football, because his ploy works. “Got it!” he announces, scrambling back upright without use of his hands. He lifts the bunny up like he’s the monkey presenting Simba in the Lion King, before he realizes that’s an unnecessary risk and clutches it to his chest instead, where he can hold it more securely.
“Oh, thank God,” Danny huffs and puffs. He braces his hands on his knees, breathing as hard as Steve is. Chasing a bunny as slippery as this one takes a lot out of a person. “If I didn’t know exactly how it was going to end, I’d kiss you again right now.”
Steve makes very, very sure not to let go of the bunny a second time.
*
They get Mr. Hoppy the Second installed and watch him do justice to his name by hopping around the new environment. Steve is not sure what Danny is thinking, but he stays mostly to make sure this bunny doesn’t fall over on the spot. It’s nice and companionable and quiet, if you discount Danny’s ranting about cleaning out the cage and about Steve possibly traumatizing this new bunny somehow and about Stan’s audacity in gifting Grace with a live bunny without consulting Danny in the first place.
Then, before they even have a chance to get out of there, the patio doors that open the massive house to the backyard swing open, and Grace comes flying out. “Danno!” she yells across the lawn, delighted, as she’s already barreling their way. “Uncle Steve!”
Steve suspects that the only reason Danny isn’t putting on the same kind of rush to get to her as quickly as possible is that Rachel has emerged from the house as well.
Danny and Grace meet up and epic hugs are exchanged. When Grace lets go of Danny, she jumps Steve with a nearly equal amount of exuberance, and Jesus Christ, Steve is once again reminded that he wouldn’t be strong enough to be a father. He’d be buying her all the bunnies he could get his hands on if she only turned pleading eyes towards him once. He’s tempted to jump in his truck and brave the scary lady’s bug looks right now, and Grace hasn’t even done anything aside from existing.
Eventually, Rachel also makes it across the grass, and her reaction to finding half of Five-0 in her garden is a little more subdued. “Hello, Daniel, Commander.”
Steve gives her a nod and does his best to pretend his presence here is in no way awkward, and that there is definitely, absolutely not a dead bunny wrapped in newspaper just to the right of where they’re standing.
Danny straightens up from the crouch that he went into to be eye level with Grace. “Rachel,” he responds. The politeness sounds a little strained on both of their parts, but it’s there, which is a good start at least. “You’re back way earlier than expected. Noon is hours away.”
“Yes, well, our plans changed slightly. Stan has a conference call at ten.”
“On a Sunday? Remember when you used to call me a workaholic?”
Rachel gracefully ignores that. “I didn’t expect to find you here right now either, I must say.” Steve catches Rachel giving his somewhat questionable attire a quick scan, and for the first time ever, he thinks it might be a good idea to start doing his morning run in a button-down and freshly pressed cargo pants, at the very least. “And Commander McGarrett, what a pleasant surprise,” Rachel says, in a tone that makes it sound like “explain yourself” rather than “hey, nice to see you”.
He grins at her and points a thumb over his own shoulder, though he’s not entirely sure at what. “I’m just, uh-”
“Visiting Mr. Hoppy,” Danny finishes for him. “Steve loves bunnies. He’s crazy about them.”
Steve’s first instinct is to shoot Danny a glare, but that would give the game away. “Yup,” he’s forced to say. “Love ‘em.”
“Me too!” Grace pipes up, which instantly makes it all a lot more bearable. “Do you want to pet Mr. Hoppy?”
He turns his grin to her, which feels a lot more natural. “Do I want to pet Mr. Hoppy?” he repeats, in a way that makes it clear that yes, absolutely, he would love nothing more. If, over the next half an hour that he spends with Grace and Danny and Hoppy, with Rachel hovering nearby for a while before giving up, he completely neglects to mention that he has probably petted this Hoppy more than Grace has, well, then that must have simply slipped his mind.
*
By the time Steve and Danny are making their way back around to the front of the house, where their cars are still parked, the sun is high up in the sky above them. Neither of them is carrying ex-Hoppy. When Rachel left them alone for a while, Danny managed to make all the newspaper and its alleged contents disappear to the same place the rest of the stuff he took out of the cage went.
“How much do I owe you for the bunny?” Danny asks. He’s still smiling a bit, and he sounds relaxed in that way he only does when he’s just had a dose of Grace. It’s a good look on him.
Steve can feel a tug at the corners of his own mouth. “Nothing.”
“Huh.” Danny cuffs Steve on the shoulder without missing a step. It’s a thank you and something teasing rolled into one gesture that Steve isn’t even sure Danny knows he made. “So this is the way to get you to pull your wallet? A rodent emergency?”
“Don’t get used to it,” Steve warns. He feels he should, even if the fact that Danny called him at ass ‘o clock in the morning and that he dropped everything to respond probably proves it’s already too late for both of them. “And just so you know, rabbits aren’t rodents.”
“And your last name isn’t Irwin, Steve.” They’ve reached the cars. Danny opens the driver’s side of the Camaro, but lingers, his arms folded on top of the door. “Wanna come over? I’ll make you thanks-for-saving-my-ass pancakes.”
Steve is more relieved at the offer than he cares to admit, and it’s not even about getting some food for his troubles. He stops trying to fight the anti-gravity tendencies of the corners of his mouth. “Can we go to mine? I’ve been reliably informed I reek, so I need a shower.”
“Sure.” Danny makes a complicated hand motion that’s probably meant to wave him on. “You go ahead, I’ll make a stop for supplies on the way.”
Steve wants to protest that he has everything needed for pancakes – eggs and oatmeal flour and water from the tap, a pinch of sweetener, a banana if he’s feeling wild – but then he realizes that they’re talking about Danny’s pancakes, and that he definitely doesn’t have full fat milk or chocolate chips, two of the key ingredients. His stomach rumbles at the thought.
“You’ve got a deal,” he says, and for the first time in his life, chooses flight over fight by slipping into the cabin of the Chevy before Danny has a chance to respond. It serves the double purpose of evading any ribbing about his stomach’s talkativeness and making sure he’s already gone if Danny discovers there’s still a wet spot in the Camaro’s passenger seat.
*
The pancakes are, of course, the best Steve has ever had. He and Danny do the washing up together, occasionally bumping elbows, and then they move out onto the lanai with a giant pitcher of lemon juice that Danny whipped up together with the pancakes.
For a while, Steve gets to just enjoy it all, the sum total of it – the dappled sunlight playing over the deck, the slight breeze on his recently showered skin, the sour-sweetness of the lemonade and, perhaps most of all, Danny’s impassioned monologue about the superiority of Meyer lemons over all other types of lemon. Steve doesn’t have many strong opinions on the subject, so he’s content to let it wash over him, only interjecting something on behalf of randomly chosen other types of citrus every once in a while, purely to keep Danny going.
Eventually though, even Danny’s enthusiasm for the Meyer seems to have run its course. They lapse into a brief, easy silence, until Steve breaks it with something that’s been on a loop in the back of his mind ever since they got caught in the Edwards’ garden. There’s really no way around it; it’ll have to come up at some point, so better to bite the bullet now.
“So Rachel definitely thinks we’re sleeping together after this morning.”
“Eh,” Danny says, dismissively. “Let her.”
That’s just about the opposite reaction Steve expected Danny to have to this subject. He raises his eyebrows at Danny’s complete lack of theatrics. “Really?”
“Look, if you want to go back and tell her we aren’t, feel free, but it seems a little redundant to me. It’s where we were headed anyway, isn’t it?”
“I suppose.”
Steve doesn’t know what else to say to that, so he sits there, wondering if he just officially became Danny’s boyfriend in the most casual, underwhelming way possible. The thought fills his stomach with a strange kind of itch, but it’s one that he doesn’t really mind, because it’s largely pleasant. Like bubbles. Like, oh God, butterflies.
As if ‘boyfriend’ didn’t make this sound teenage enough.
“So,” Danny says, before Steve can blurt out something stupid, “earlier we had a fight, right? About the escaped bunny?”
Steve puts his half empty lemonade glass down on the lanai floor and wipes his hand on his clean, not-meant-for-running shorts. The condensation is a good excuse. “I don’t know if I would classify that as a fight.”
Danny hums, like he doesn’t agree, but is considering it. “Well, we could have a fight right now about whether we had a fight, if need be.”
“Why do you want us to have a fight?” Steve feels a stab of hurt. In a flash of insight, he realizes that that’s his answer on whether he wants to be Danny’s boyfriend or not. Wow.
Danny grins at him, which is also worthy of a wow, but differently. “Make up sex,” Danny says.
Steve has the best boyfriend ever.
*
About three weeks later, Danny’s phone starts to ring. Steve is still half asleep and dives for the phone with his eyes mostly closed, so he doesn’t realize it’s not his own until after he’s already picked up. At that point, there’s nothing for it but to announce who’s speaking with a gruff, “McGarrett.”
“Ah, Commander,” Rachel says, and suddenly, Steve’s eyes are wide open and he’s sitting up in Danny’s bed. “Is Danny available?”
“Uh, not as such, at the moment, no.” He darts a glance at the bathroom. The door is wide open, which was fine until a moment ago, but now he’s paranoid that Rachel can hear the shower run. Not that it probably matters all that much – Rachel doesn’t sound particularly surprised that he’s answering Danny’s phone at seven in the morning on a Monday.
“Very well. Then maybe you would like to explain to me how on earth Mr. Hoppy, Grace’s male pet rabbit, gave birth to three baby bunnies last night.”
They all behave like boys, the old woman had said. Fucking and fighting and fucking. “Wow,” Steve says, doing his very best to sound genuinely surprised. It’s a shame he was too busy playing football to take drama in high school. “That uh, that sounds like a real miracle.”
“Oh yes,” Rachel agrees primly. “A miraculous sex change and immaculate conception. Wonders never cease.”
“It would seem so.”
“Commander, are you trying to convince me I have Mary of Nazareth in the shape of a transgender bunny frolicking through my garden?”
He wants to say that would definitely be the Second nobody-saw-it-Coming, but he has a gut feeling she wouldn’t appreciate the pun. “I really don’t know what else to tell you,” he says honestly.
There’s a heavy, sharp sigh on Rachel’s side of the line. “I’ll call back when Danny’s done grooming.”
“Please don’t,” he says, but he makes sure to wait until after the click of the line disconnecting. He drops the phone on the bed, far enough away that he feels somewhat safer. Then he gets up anyway, because there’s no way he can go back to lazily dozing after all of this.
Besides, the shower is still running. It might be worth investigating some of that, before Rachel decides whether a free biblical baby bunny or three is really worth ruining everyone’s day over.