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It's been a day, all right; it's been a week, and Danny knows he's not bearing it with anything close to grace. But something's itching under his skin (hot under the collar, Steve said to him this morning, watching Danny instead of the road, and Danny didn't even deign to answer because he's ninety-five percent sure Steve was getting in a dig about his tie), and he can't tell whether he wants to yell and punch or just sit somewhere dark with his head in his hands for a while. He just knows that he feels like he's stuck in a rut, wheels in the mud, spinning and spinning and getting nowhere fast.
It's absurd to say that he has a routine—you'd think that would be impossible, like anything could ever be routine with Steve and Kono and Chin and 5-0 and the ridiculous criminal population that seems to orbit around all of them, and yet here he is: same aches when he wakes up in the morning, same apartment, same clothes, same paperwork, same lunatic driving his car. And what, exactly, does he have to look forward to? His baby girl growing up, more trips to the doctor about his knee and who knows what else, more gray hairs thanks to one Steve McGarrett, and hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands more warm, sunny days, more blue skies, every single goddamn one of them like a present he didn't ask for and doesn't know what to do with.
And maybe that's the problem, right there, because it's April, right? And April in Jersey, you felt like you'd earned it, like it was a reward—the first day it was warm enough to leave the house without his coat, the last of the dirty snow melting away into puddles, his ma's forsythia blooming out back behind the house, a riot of yellow so bright and showy it made everything else look dingier. What's he supposed to do with spring here, when everything's already lush and green, the same way it is every other day? So maybe he wants a little spring fever—maybe he wants a little wild abandon, a little giddy appreciation for a season that's too short, that's maybe mostly mud and rain, when he thinks about it, but whatever, he wants it, all of it—mud and rain and possibility after a long, cold winter.
Apparently he did opt for sitting in the dark, or as good as, because he looks up from the forms he hasn't been filling out and realizes HQ is quiet, looks at his watch and groans because it's after seven and he's pretty sure everyone else left hours ago. Danny opens his desk drawer, drops his pen in and slams it shut, and the noise is loud and satisfying enough that he opens it again just so he can slam it again, and then once more, and then Steve's poking his head and shoulders around the doorjamb and asking, "Everything okay?" which scares the crap out of Danny, though he does his best to hide it. "Yes! Jesus—yeah, I just thought you, I thought everyone was gone." Danny squints at him. "What the hell happened to you?"
Steve shrugs. "'s raining. Came back to spring you. Let's go eat." And okay, all right, so it's April, and there are evidently some showers out there, and Steve's looking damp and rumpled and almost sheepish, something like a blush blooming across his cheeks, lighting up his whole face, making him look younger and happier and goofier, and don't think Danny doesn't recognize a reward when it walks into his office. So maybe Danny's long winter has been a little bit self-imposed—maybe there's been something growing slowly all this time. He grins for the first time all day, feels the stretch in his jaw, watches his own expression reflected on Steve's face. He can almost see what the thing that's new-green and alive and eager unfurling between them looks like, and it's nothing ordinary, nothing boring or routine, nothing he's ever done before, not quite like this, and Danny pushes up out of his chair and moves toward Steve, because the season is changing after all, and he can hardly wait.