#mcdanno divorce arc

[trickster-archangel]

After taking cue by the usual keen tags by @teruel-a-witch I dare add my usual two cents...

Reading all of the tags, I honestly find it amusing that no one took notice of the absolute dichotomy in Steve's actions.

On one side, he shows no qualms about suddenly taking off, disappearing to an unknown location, for a probably suicide mission, and of course with absolutely no anticipation about how much time (weeks? months? years?) it'll take him to complete this mission and come back home. After all, he's a SEAL and this is part of the job description, taking off without a warning for some classified mission that could probably kill him and no one will ever know.

He has no family, Mary is just a name on a phone screen for some random, small talk call every four or eight months or so, the grief and time and loss grown like fortress walls between them. If he dies, no one will mourn him because he purposefully refused to get married and have children like many of his buddies did. Also, this is exactly the kind of behaviour he probably sucked in from both of his parents while growing up, by being shown and probably also told. His father was a passing figure in many of his days, too caught up in his job and his job devotion to even make an effort to be present in Steve's life. Sure, he offered the random quality times outings: tinkering with the Marquis, hiking the petroglyphs trail, fishing in their secret spot. That's it. That's all Steve retains of his father. He was taught to cherish those rare, precious moments because his job was too important to be jeopardised, it came before everything, his duty came before everything, and look at Grandfather Steven's sacrifice. Even if Steve missed his father, missed having a father, he surely stopped complaining at some point, sucked it up, manned up, and understood that a greater good always comes first. Here he doesn't know yet the truth about his mother, but I suppose that a woman who manages to cut herself off her own children, without telling her husband either (sorry, that's not the love of her life because she could've planned this with him, in case. Similis cum similibus, so I guess she chose John because it was the convenient, business-mind partner she needed....only she didn't anticipate he could've really loved her his own way, and go crazy over his truth obsession and his revenge), could've been not exactly your average, cookies baker, kiss-booboo-better doting mother.

He breathed this kind of subtle, passive toxicity, since when he was born.

But this doesn't mean he considered it right.

Of course he didn't need to tell Danny. Of course he could've warned the Governor and he would've called the team to deliver the news and assign the leading role to Danny. Of course he could've simply left a sticky note communicating his leave for undisclosed location and for undisclosed time. Of course. That's probably what old Steve would've done. I really don't think before taking off for South Korea with Freddie, he called Cath to warn her and say goodbye. Freddie probably had a last call with Kelly, but Steve? Steve had no need to tell Cath. So what’s changed in him?

Danny. Danny has been the motivation factor. And not only because Steve loves him, mind it: he could've left with no warning and never called him before getting off the plane with Wo Fat. But Danny has spent two years teaching Steve (well, basically YELLING, but it's simply Danny's loud way to say I love you, idiot) how human relationships, healthy human relationships, between people who love each other and are not ashamed of showing vulnerability, work.

My two cents? Steve did know and expect that he would've hurt Danny. He knew Danny cared for him even if after the double Rachel fiasco Steve couldn't afford to hope for something else anymore. But he knew how hurt Danny would've felt, how betrayed, especially knowing how out of the blue the divorce came to him, despite the obvious marriage failure signs...Steve probably feels, unconsciously, that Danny suffers from the same abandonment issues as he does. THAT'S WHY HE BRACES HIMSELF BEFORE ANSWERING. He knows how much it burns that idea that you don't matter enough, that all the words and touches and confessions and laughter and intimacy were not enough to keep that person with you. He felt it with Rachel coming back. Twice.

So he did what he would've wanted Danny to do for him instead of blindsiding him, catching him off guard and throwing him in a pit of self-doubt and pain. HE WARNED HIM. Remember though that Steve doesn't do well with words. Nor with feelings. He's better with buying an ass-expensive suite at a dolphin-pool-equipped hotel, or showing at Meka's vigil, or at court hearings. He goes by I picked you, didn't I? and I know you, and that's the way he can say I love you. And if he had told Danny he needed to go? Duh. We all know, and Steve knows too, that Danny would've probably talked him out of it, or evrn went with him putting himself in danger, especially after the Jenna incident. He knows Danny, and that’s why he left the letter: he couldn’t risk being talked out of it.

His letter wasn't a goodbye letter, nor a please forgive my asshole behaviour letter, nor a dryly communication letter. It's the very opposite, and that's why it's handwritten. It's Steve’s way to say

I'll come back, I'll always fight to come back to my family, to you, but I need to do this, and to do it alone, because I know you'd come with me and I can't risk your life, I can't lose you, like I risked and lost Freddie's life. But if I don't come back, please be aware that I thought about you all the time and that you're the only one who could've made me change my mind, and that's why I can't hear your voice until it's done. I'm helpless when it comes to you. Take care of our family like I'd do, like you'd take care of me if we were fighting here together. If I don't come back and no one will tell you because you're not my spouse, this letter is my last gift to you, because YOU ARE my spouse and I'm sorry I must do this.

I’ll be in touch.  Mahalo.

[trickster-archangel]

Reblogging for @mayberrycryptid and @alea-says 😁

[trickster-archangel]

Starting from @teruel-a-witch tags again bc her brain is galaxy:

All of this!! First thing that hits Steve, though, is not that Danny wants to retire, but that he thought about retirement and made plans and imagined scenarios and he didn't share anything of this with Steve! And of course the trauma, the first trauma provoked by Danny not telling him that he was trying again to make things work with Rachel, is still there on the backburner, because if it hadn't been for that fucking bitch in the hospital bed, Steve would've quite surely confessed his attraction to Danny in the aftermath of him almost dying. But he didn't know, he was blindsided by Danny, he felt hurt and betrayed, even if Danny didn't actively lie to him like Doris or Cath. But he didn't share everything with Steve, and this alone was enough to cut Steve's heart into a million tiny bleeding pieces. And here Danny has done the same. Lying by omission. Cutting Steve's existence out of his single thought or idea, like they were a single unit, a single soul split into two bodies and it was unimaginable to Steve that Danny couldn’t share something, anything, with him.

Now. About the retirement issue itself. You can be best friends and brothers and codependent as you please. But this? This is a bit beyond boundaries. Steve simply cannot imagine a world where he goes to work and Danny isn't beside him. If Danny goes, Steve goes....so why hasn't Danny felt the same, why hasn't Danny asked Steve if he was ready to retire too?! That line was intended by Danny as a sarcastic note (no seriously, he has risked death a bit too many times, and having two kids to see growing up and whom to love and care about, he's probably started thinking about retirement after the liver transplant. Things this huge make you reconsider a lot of things: so if Steve became even more codependent on Danny, but never thought about leaving the job because Danny and the job are the reasons why he's alive, Danny's first thought must be for his kids, and Steve probably didn't consider this enough, or thought his presence was enough to prevent Danny any harm), but to Steve, until this very moment, has been the only reasonable truth. So of course he's devastated and blindsided and betrayed.

It's just like Freddie announcing he's married the girl and they're expecting a baby. It's just like Danny going back to Rachel and probably New Jersey. Same face, same heartbreak, same devastation.

It's just Steve being left behind, never chosen, never picked, never kept. Steve has somehow come to terms with the fact that he'll never found anymore the courage to confess his live to Danny, but he thought that they would've been partners until the end, till end do us part or whatever, and maybe, morbidly, also that they would've died together, never to be divided.

Here, telling Steve that he thought about retirement, about leaving the job Steve has basically made up to stay with Danny 24/7/365, equates to telling him that he's thought about a divorce. Leaving what they've built together. Leaving their unity, their cocoon, their telepathy and synchronization.

Look at the four stages Steve's face goes through. Shock. Anger/hurt. Panic. Denial.

Danny's asking to leave him, and he cannot cope. Because if he cannot have Danny as a lover and a husband, then at least he could have him as a partner, and deceive himself that it was enough, that he was the other kind of partner. He cannot let Danny go, he cannot lose him, but it's probably what's happening now, and he's crushed.

That’s rIght. A nice Italian restaurant. Like a little neighborhood kinda joint.

[trickster-archangel]

As per my previous post (god it's awful, it sounds like one of those work emails), I have strong suspicions that Steve indeed understood Danny's hurt, his feelings of betrayal, and his jilted lover attitude after he came back. After all, Steve himself felt the same when Danny blindsided him with the Rachel affair. But Danny didn't leave. Danny chose Steve, not Rachel. So Danny, who's big on words and loudly-spoken feelings (at least for Steve), chose to act and show where his heart stood instead of talking...and that's why Steve for once chose to use words, even if in his crooked way.

Danny wasn't so much hurt by Steve leaving, as he was by Steve deciding without consulting him first, discussing this thing, maybe allowing Danny to go with Steve and have his back. Which was exactly why Steve left without talking. Danny probably was living again the worst moments of his marriage, with sticky notes and then plain silence instead of healthy communication, with him taking detective job instead of, dunno, a safe and better paid job as a college professor, like Rachel probably wanted? How many times had Rachel been in Danny's place, and how many times Danny had behaved just like Steve? His damn words, that There is no "my own" in a friendship. There is no "my own." Your problems become my problems sound so much like the kind of accusations he threw at Rachel, or Rachel threw at him....just saying....

I guess Steve had some inkling about Danny’s possible cold shoulder when coming back, because he did the same by fucking up his career and breaking into the Governor’s house.

Him calling Danny the second time, though? Dude, that's just a vacation trip, basically. And he's going with Joe, who Danny trusted enough to keep Steve out of troubles to call him in after his imprisonment. He couldn’t risk another fuck up, and he knew by now Danny wasn't likely to try and dissuade him, even if probably he bitched about it. And anyway, he brought Danny to a second, very secluded, very private, second date in the open sea, with only the sky and the seagulls and the sharks as witnesses....poor Steve, he did try to make up for his fuckery, he so much wanted to offer some good make-up sex 😂

remember when Steve left Danny an actual hand-written letter like a soldier shipping off to war who couldn't say goodbye to his secret sweetheart in person?

and Danny called said letter 'dear Danny' – a play on 'dear John' i.e. a letter you send to break up with your military bf, - therefore essentially comparing them to wartorn lovers???

and while Steve was away everyone tiptoed around Danny and threw him sympathetic looks like he'd just lost a spouse?

and after Steve came back none-the-wiser Danny acted like a jilted lover who got broken up with in a text and gave Steve the cold shoulder

(which in his case was just being quiet but Steve can't stand Danny being quiet and not sharing his thoughts and feelings with him)

and that, in turn, made Steve understand how he had made Danny feel left out in the cold by refusing to include him in something so important

— so he course corrected because the prospect of Danny never speaking to him again was unbearable and and ...

these two basically had the shortest divorce arc in history because they really can't stand to be apart. break up to vow renewal speedrun in 3 episodes.

there's no my own in friendship marriage