Disclaimer: See initial chapter.

A/N: There are some differences in this version from the original which was posted on lj. Sorry to delay posting, but, if you read, I think perhaps you will understand why. Mahalos.

Steve's stomach roils and it feels like the floor is moving beneath his feet. He shakes his head, trying to clear it and when that doesn't work, he blinks and then wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand. He's hallucinating. There's no other logical explanation for what he's seeing – Danny, very much alive, holding a tub of whipped topping in his hands.

Before he can react, Grace is pushing aside the chair that she'd been using for cover; the sound of the chair legs scraping against the floor is loud and causes Steve to wince. His gun hand wavers, and then falls to his side when Grace throws herself at the Danny-shaped intruder.

"Danno! You're back!" Grace's voice rings in Steve's ears, and the floor is seriously starting to buckle and sway.

When the Danny lookalike turns to him, confusion marring his features, the gun falls from Steve's hand, and clatters to the floor. It chips one of the tiles, and sends a sharp piece of it into his ankle. It doesn't hurt, and Steve tells himself, dispassionately, that he's in shock. It's one of the first things he learned about when he was going through his mandatory training for field medicine.

Shock can take various forms, and right now there is a part of Steve that is calculating his responses with a cool, detachedness that has been drilled into him through his years of service as a Navy SEAL. Sweaty palms, increased heart rate, dry mouth, confusion, and nausea. All of which can be easily dealt with.

The hallucination though, isn't something that can be explained away with a diagnosis of shock. For something to take his mind off of what he is certain is some form of madness setting in, he picks up the gun, toggles the safety and places the weapon in the waistband of his sweatpants.

Danny continues to stare between Grace, who's clinging to her father as though she's afraid to let go of him, and Steve. Confusion is etched on his face, in the furrow of his brows, the downturn of his lips and the look of panic in his stormy, blue eyes. That fevered look of confusion in his partner's eyes pulls Steve from his stupor, and it's then that he realizes that Danny's hurt.

His head's swathed in a white bandage, there are dark circles under his eyes, and there's a pained expression on his face which could mean that Danny has injuries Steve cannot readily see, or that he's got a headache. Steve hopes it's the latter. He hates to think that Danny's got some other hidden injury.

"Danny," Steve breathes out, and he's beside his partner before the final syllable dies out on the spoken name.

He's not sure where to place his hands, because Danny's arms are full of Grace, the pink bunny, and the tub of whipped topping. Danny looks more than a little worse for the wear – like he's been sleeping on the beach, or the street. Steve's got a thousand questions running through his head, but another look at Danny stills the first of them on his tongue before Steve can voice it. He settles, instead, for simply wrapping his arms around Danny, Grace and the pink bunny, and breathing deeply of his partner.

He can smell the ocean – salt and fish – in Danny's hair, and there's another overlying mixture of scents which sting his nose. It takes a few seconds for Steve to place the odor– antiseptic and bleach – and when he does, he wonders how anyone in their right mind, let alone a professional in the medical field, could have let Danny leave a hospital or a clinic in the condition he's in.

"Steve?" Danny's voice is filled with confusion. "I got the whipped topping."

Danny presses the tub into Steve's side, and Steve moves to accept it, even though he doesn't think he'll ever be able to look at whipped topping without feeling panicked and guilty, without remembering the numbness he'd felt when the officer had told him that Danny was dead. He reaches behind him and places the whipped topping blindly on the counter.

"Danny, it's a little late," Steve teases, but he can see by the way that Danny frowns, that his lover doesn't catch onto his tone.

"Sorry, I, I couldn't find my wallet, or my car," Danny says. His eyes grow wide, and he turns his neck to look toward the front door. "I…Steve," his eyes are pleading, "do you mind getting the fare for the cab? I…and I think, I think I maybe stole the whipped topping…"

"It's okay, Danny," Steve says.

He squeezes Danny's arm, and though he too, like Grace, doesn't want to let go of the man, just in case Danny really isn't there, and he's a figment of his imagination, he does let go and quickly runs money out to the cabbie. The cab driver eyes him warily, and Steve assures him that he's a member of Five-0, that he isn't going to rob him or anything.

The man proves to be fairly useless in the information department when Steve asks him a few questions about Danny. All he gets from the cabbie is that someone called a cab for a man they thought had special needs, and that he picked Danny up from Safeway and then delivered him. Steve pays him his fare and gives the man a tip that would've been bigger had he been more informative.

By the time he gets back to the house, Grace is standing on her own two feet, but her hand's in Danny's and she gives Steve a worried look. "Uncle Steve, Danno thinks it's still Christmas."

Steve runs a hand through his hair and decides that, before anything else – making breakfast, calling Kono and Chin, and canceling his appointment with the funeral home director – he's got to get Danny to a hospital.

"Oh no, no, no, Steven, no," Danny says, and he's shaking his head, walking backward, taking Grace, who looks a little frightened, along with him.

Steve follows Danny and Grace back to the kitchen; concerned doesn't even begin to describe the white hot panic that he's feeling. "Danny?"

"I know that look, Steven, and I'm not going back to the hospital." Danny's still shaking his head; the counter stops his backward movement.

Grace dislodges her hand from her fathers and goes to Steve's side. Though Danny looks crestfallen, Steve takes Grace's hand and squeezes it reassuringly. There's a lot of explaining that needs to happen, and it looks like Danny's not going to the hospital, for some inexplicable reason, without a fight.

"How about if we all sit down?"

Steve nods toward the table, and pulls a chair out for Grace, and then another for Danny. He waits until Danny shuffles over to the table and takes the proffered chair before sitting down himself. Danny's not acting at all like the Danno who left on Christmas morning – he's stiff, wary, bordering on paranoid, eyes darting everywhere and landing only for a split second or two on him and Grace before flitting over to the door.

Danny can't seem to sit still. He's tapping his fingers against the tabletop and his left knee's bouncing up and down, hitting the underside of the table. If Steve didn't know any better, he'd say that Danny was on drugs. And, if what Danny had said about being at the hospital was true, then maybe he was.

"Steven," Danny says, his eyes darting over to Steve, "what day is it?"

Danny's fingers don't stop their incessant tapping and Steve thinks that he can finally understand why Mrs. Whitherford, his fourth grade teacher, was always getting on his case about tapping his pencil against the top of his desk. It's nerve-wracking, as is the leg jiggling.

"Danny, it's December 28th." Steve keeps his voice as calm as he can, even though he's panicking on the inside.

"But, when I left it was Christmas day, I went to get some whipped topping for the pie," Danny says, his voice pleading.

Steve reaches across the table, captures Danny's fingers mid-drum and simply holds onto his partner's hand. His heart is still trying to catch up with his mind with the fact that Danny is alive, let alone sitting across from him.

"How…three days?" Danny's eyes are shining with unshed tears.

"What happened?" Steve asks, and he's unsure whether Danny can even give him a coherent answer right now. Danny's clearly not himself. Everything in his being is screaming at Steve to take Danny to the hospital, in spite of the man's insistence that he has already been there, and he doesn't want to go back.

"I…" Danny runs a shaky hand through his hair, revealing a crimson stain that was hidden beneath the dirty locks.

Danny shakes his head and his eyes seem to go out of focus. "I think someone hit me? On the head? I, I'm not sure what happened. I just remember waking up in the hospital, and, and I couldn't remember who I was, and the doctors kept poking and prodding me, and they wanted to send me to a head shrink."

"That's okay Danno," Grace says, patting her father's hand, "you remember who you are now, don't you?"

"Yes, monkey, I do." Danny smiles, but Steve can see that it's strained.

"So, you're okay then," Grace says it like it's a done deal, and then she frowns. "Except for the fact that you still think it's Christmas Day."

"That's what I first remembered," Danny says, "after the doctors left and I could think. I remembered that it was Christmas and there was something I had to do for the two people I love most in this world."

Steve closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. He's replayed his fatal Christmas request over and over in his mind until it no longer makes sense and it seems like something from a surreal dream. He's come up with different ways in which he could have kept Danny with them and alive, yet not one of his imagined scenarios had included this – Danny walking in three days later as though nothing had happened at all.

"Danny," Steve doesn't want to have to say this, but he's got to, so that Danny will understand why he and Grace are so reluctant to let go of him, he clears his throat, and starts again, "Danny, you were, we thought, we thought you were dead. They told us you were dead."

"Who?" Danny's brow furrows, his hand squeezes Steve's back.

"The police," Steve says it softly. "Your car was hit by an oil truck, your body, or at least they said it was your body," Steve chokes a little.

He'd had to go down to the morgue, even though there was not really much of a body for him to identify. He wanted to see it for himself, the proof that Danny was dead. Maybe he'd known all along, at some subconscious level, that Danny wasn't dead.

"Your body was burnt beyond all recognition." Steve pushes through the pain that the memory of seeing what he'd thought was Danny's body on a cold, metallic table, brings to the fore. "All they had left was your wallet; it was on the passenger's seat of the car." His voice sounds detached, and he wonders why Danny's wallet had been on the passenger's seat of the car, rather than in his back pocket.

"I'm sorry, babe," Danny says, and he's blinking back tears.

"Danny, no, you don't have anything to be sorry for," Steve rushes to reassure him, moving to slide onto the chair beside Danny so that he can hold him. "I don't understand what happened, how you came back to us, and I don't know whose body it is that I saw at the morgue, but I can't say that I'm not grateful that it isn't yours."

"I wish I could remember what happened before I woke up at the hospital, but whenever I try to think back, the last thing I remember is leaving to get whipped topping, and," Danny pauses and squeezes his eyes shut tight, "and everything else is just a blank. Like pitch, black night. And," Danny opens his eyes, and seeks out Steve's face, "and in my head it's still Christmas. I've lost three whole days, Steven. I've lost Christmas with you and Grace, and…"

"We can still have Christmas Danno,"Grace interrupts.

She's biting her bottom lip and looking steadfastly at her hands entwined together on the tabletop.

"I mean, if it's okay with you and Uncle Steve."

She looks up and takes a deep breath, as though she's expecting her idea to be shot down. "Couldn't we just have Christmas today?"

There are phone calls which need to be made: Chin and Kono need to be told that Danny's alive before they stop by to take care of Grace; the police need to be informed that reports of Danny's death have been highly exaggerated; and Steve needs to call the one person he'd told of Danny's death, Mary, and let her know that Danny isn't dead after all, that by whichever minstrel of fate had decided to intervene, Danny has been brought back to him alive.

"I don't see why not," Steve says slowly, looking to Danny for confirmation. "But first, I've got to make some phone calls, and I think your daddy here needs to take a shower."

Steve crinkles his nose, and Grace giggles, and that's all that it takes for Danny to smile and shake his head.

"That's all I get for apparently coming back from the dead?" Danny looks from Steve to Grace, who both nod at him as solemnly as they can, though their mouths are twitching as they try not to smile. "Fine how do you do, that is. Man comes back from the dead and you tell him to go take a bath. I guess I should be happy, at least you're offering to let me use the shower rather than hosing me down outside."

"Go shower Danno," Grace says, pinching her nose and waving her other hand in front of it, "you stink."

Steve pushes Danny from the chair they're both occupying, and Danny wobbles a little unsteadily, grasps the table and steadies himself. His smile, however, doesn't falter.

"Fine, fine, I know when I'm not wanted around." Danny laughs.

Before Danny can make it out of the kitchen, Steve, still remembering what it had felt like to wake up without Danny lying beside him – the cold sickness in the pit of his stomach – catches the man around the waist and pulls him into a hug.

It's uncharacteristic of him, Danny's almost always been the first to initiate physical contact, but Steve doesn't care. If he had it his way, he'd never let Danny go.

"Babe," Danny says, craning his neck so that he can look Steve in the eye, "you don't have to hold on quite so tight. I'm not going anywhere, I promise."

"You were dead, Danno," Steve murmurs, lips brushing against Danny's ear. "For three days, you were dead. Three days, Danno."

"But I'm here now," Danny says, "and I'm very much alive."

"I know, it's just that," Steve pauses, shuddering as he breathes deeply of Danny who smells like bleach and the sun and the sand and the ocean, "three days without you felt like a lifetime. I can't go through that again. Danny, promise me that you won't ever die again."

Danny places a kiss on Steve's palm and then extricates himself from his husband's arms. "Believe me, Steven; I hope that whatever happened to me doesn't ever happen ever again. I'm sorry for what you and Grace had to go through."

"C'mon Danno, go shower." Grace pushes her father away from Steve, even as she wraps an arm around his waist and tugs him through the kitchen door. "By the time you're all showered and presentable," Grace looks him up and down as she says this, "everything should be ready, and then we'll be able to celebrate Christmas for real."

"You really are a lot like your mother, you know that, right?"

"No, Danno, I think she gets that bossiness all from you," Steve calls out after the retreating pair.

Danny sneaks a hand behind Grace's back, where she can't see it, and flips Steve the bird. And, it's almost as if the man had never left, never died. Like it really is Christmas, and this is something they've been doing, together, for years. A sense of déjà-vu slams him hard in the chest, leaving him breathless, and he can only stand and stare, listen as Danny and Grace argue all the way up the stairs.

Once the phone calls are made, Steve and Grace go about trying to recreate Christmas as best they can – rewrapping gifts and placing them beneath the tree which had never been taken down. In years to come, this becomes a tradition – celebrating Christmas on the 28th, Danny's homecoming, instead of the twenty-fifth. It means that Grace can spend Christmas with her mother and Step-Stan, and then Danny and Super Step-Steve.

Kono, Ben, Chin, Kamekona and Max hurry over to help, and by the time Danny is heading down the stairs (after having finally given into Steve's demand that he get some sleep because he looked like one of the living dead), everything is ready.

Danny looks a lot less zombie-like when he makes his reappearance. His hair is disheveled and he's stifling a yawn behind a fist, but his eyes are clear and sparkling like the ocean when the sun glints off the waves.

The tub of whipped topping sits in the middle of the counter, Steve's eyes settle on it for just a second, and he can't help but feel some animosity toward it. He grabs the container and glares at it, hating the inanimate object for nearly being the death of Danny – of him – and he tosses it in the garbage. When he looks up, Danny's watching him, his brow's furrowed in question. Steve shakes his head. He's unable to voice what it is that he's feeling.

"C'mere." Danny opens his arms wide and Steve allows himself to be enveloped in them, and this time when he breathes in Danny's scent, it's as it should be – shaving cream, spicy aftershave, and something that smells an awful lot like cinnamon.

"Merry Christmas, Steven," Danny whispers.

"Merry Christmas, Danny," Steve echoes back.

Later that night – after everyone has gone home and Grace has assured herself that her Danno really is here to stay, that everything hadn't been a dream –when it's just the two of them in bed, arms and legs entwined, Steve whispers a prayer against Danny's temple.

"Mhm, what's that?" Danny asks sleepily, his head's pillowed by Steve's chest, and Steve runs his fingers through Danny's hair, enjoying the silky feel of it.

Steve's happy that Max has given his husband a clean bill of health, though he did suggest that Danny go to a doctor to see about his amnesia, and Steve is bound and determined to make that happen. Danny seems more himself than he had when he first walked into the house, but he's still got a long ways to go until he makes a full recovery.

"Nothing Danno, go to sleep."

"Can't," Danny mumbles.

"Why? What's wrong?"

"That's what's wrong with you army people, always jumping to the wrong conclusions before gathering all of the facts."

Steve doesn't correct him, but he sighs, and his fingers still in Danny's hair.

"Well, I was thinking," Danny says around a yawn, "that since you, and Grace, and, well everyone else, claim that today is really December 28th, and not December 25th…"

"Technically it's now the 29th," Steve corrects automatically and immediately bites his tongue.

Danny turns over, props himself up on his elbows, and studies Steve's face for a bit. He almost lazily traces Steve's lips with an index finger and smiles when Steve shivers at the touch.

"That just means we now have four lost days to make up for," Danny says with a decidedly wicked smirk.

"You're a wicked, wicked man," Steve chastises, and his next words, whatever they were going to be, are lost in a haze of incoherency as Danny kisses him.

Words would've been pointless anyway. Their kiss communicates every bit of anguish, loss, fear and horror that Steve had felt over the past three days, plus the utter joy and relief he'd felt when Danny walked into the kitchen very much alive. Steve can sense Danny's confusion and frustration as well, and the way it all just melts away over the course of their kiss.

Their kiss is long and slow – lips lingering on lips; teeth gnashing and nipping; tongues darting and tasting and remapping territory; fingers gripping and digging into flesh, leaving bruises behind; hearts pounding like mad against their rib-cages; and their cocks heavy and swelling, but there will be time for that kind of reunion much, much later. Right now, Steve is content to have Danny here, in his arms, and repeat the kiss, again, and again, and again.

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