A Song For Another Tomorrow 1/1
Jan. 6th, 2011 06:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gilascaveTitle: A Song For Another Tomorrow
Author: james
Rated: R for violence and language
Pairing: Steve/Danny
Word Count: 7,000
Disclaimer: not mine, no profit made, characters returned only slightly soiled
Notes: thanks to embroiderama for the beta!
Summary: Danny tries to keep a secret, but it spirals quickly out of control. Hurt/comfort, angst, happy ending.
Danny walked down the sidewalk on the other side of the street for the third time in as many weeks and wondered if this was the night he was going to finally nut-up and do it.
He didn't think about why this was a bad idea. He didn't think about why this was the least bad of a whole host of bad ideas. He'd made that list already and stuck it to his bathroom mirror -- metaphorically speaking, of course, because a real list would come under the scrutiny of any number of people, including his daughter and Steve, as well as Kono, Chin, Kamekona, and Leon, Grace's driver who sometimes came in to use the facilities when he was dropping Grace off for the weekend. None of those were people Danny wanted asking him why there was a list on his mirror of reasons why he shouldn't have sex with Steve McGarrett.
Why it was that as a divorced man living alone he had less privacy than when he'd been married with a kid, he didn't know. Looking back, maybe that was a big, neon warning sign that his marriage hadn't been all wine and roses for those last couple of years.
But all that was water under the bridge, and now Danny was walking along the sidewalk trying to tell himself he wasn't -- or maybe he was -- going to go inside Club 901.
He'd been in gay bars before. That wasn't really an issue. Granted, it had been easier before he'd become a cop. But even after he hadn't ever really felt guilty about it, a night full of lights and loud music and men all eager to writhe their way into your pants and out into the anonymous night. It hadn't even all been anonymous -- he'd dated David for six months and Carl for a year, which meant that, really, the prospect of walking across the street and into a bar should not have been that difficult.
Danny knew why it was, why he ended up walking along the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street, not even glancing over at the bar as he passed by. Why he didn't pretend he was going to cross over at the next intersection, why he always ducked into the 7-11 at the corner and bought a New York Times and a candy bar and took it back the other way like it was all he had really been after.
It was all on the list, right after "don't have sex with a co-worker" and "Steve McGarrett is a psycho insane lunatic who will get you killed on accident one day." To be fair, that second one was on all the lists, not just the one about not having sex with the man. But Danny knew who he really wanted, and knew why he should never, ever try to get what he wanted and yet he still felt that stomach-crunching guilt whenever he thought about sneaking off to a gay bar to have sex with another man.
As he drew up to the corner and watched the walk light switch over, Danny turned. Without thinking too much about it, he hurried across -- away from the 7-11 and towards the other side of the street. Let the Fates be responsible for it this time because surely the crosswalk wouldn't have....
He knew it was silly and stupid even as his toe hit the curb and he had to jump a little, up onto the sidewalk to avoid tripping and falling flat on his face. His face burned in embarrassment and dear God but he needed a beer.
Good thing there was a bar just ahead that would serve him one. He shoved his hands into his pockets and decided that if he was doing this, then he was doing this and he took a deep breath and just walked.
The door to the bar was closed, there was no sign of a bouncer. Inside, no doubt, and there was only one tiny window facing the street that said "COORS" in green neon. In the corner was a small rainbow sticker, the only outward indication of what sort of place it was.
Danny had found it listed in the Gay Yellow Pages with a two inch ad, so it wasn't like they were trying to fly under the radar. But if you went in, clearly you were here looking for the place and not just wandering the streets in search of a refreshing adult beverage. Danny took a deep breath as he drew closer and told himself it wasn't like Steve would know.
When he heard the shout, he was running even before he registered what he'd heard. Cop's reflexes propelled him forward before he consciously identified the tone and urgency of the cry for help. His hand slapped at his side for the weapon which wasn't there as he rounded the corner and heard the shout again, followed by muffled voices. Danny had enough time to wonder if he should be pulling out his cell and calling for back-up when he reached the parking lot and made his way past the parked cars to find three figures surrounding a fourth.
"Hey!" Danny had to swallow his shout to identify himself as a cop, though he wasn't sure why and wasn't sure why not. No real time to worry about it as only two of the figures looked his way and Danny took another two steps forward. The victim was being held by the arms between two of the assailants, the third had been standing in front of him, clutching the victim's shirt in his hand.
Danny approached the man -- Asian male, thirty-five, five feet three inches, his mind catalogued even as he let go of the vic's shirt and turned to face Danny.
"Ain't your business, brah," the man snarled.
Danny shrugged. "Unfortunately, it is, now." He took another step forward, relieved to see that for the moment, at least, they'd stopped physically attacking their victim. Danny glanced his way, saw the wide-eyed fear and the way he was standing, arms limp, like he had no idea what to do now that he'd gained a reprieve. "You wanna just let him go and we consider this a bad night for everyone?" Danny asked, not really expecting the decency of common sense from thugs.
"Nah, I think maybe we'll just take your wallet, too," said the second of the three -- black, twenty-four, six foot two, scar on the right cheek.
Danny sighed and shook his head. "Sorry, it's not for sale." Then, as he'd expected, two of the men lunged for him. He had a moment to wish he'd called for back-up, and made a note to never tell Steve about the irony.
~~~
The next morning Danny opened his eyes and looked over at the nightstand beside the bed. Far too early in the morning to be awake, much less get out of bed. It didn't help that he felt a hundred years old; he rolled onto his side and paused there, breathing deeply and waiting for the pains to subside. His muscles had tightened up while he'd slept, despite the painkillers he'd taken before falling asleep. He managed to get himself upright and sat on the edge of the bed with his feet on the floor, wondering if he had the strength -- or the absolute need -- to get up and walk to the bathroom.
Had there been a jug handy, he was ashamed to admit even in the silence of his own head, he would have used it. As it was he staggered to his feet, flailing a bit until he leaned forward and got one hand on the wall. Luckily he'd left his cane leaning against the nightstand. He'd used it getting from the bathroom to the bed last night -- early this morning, when he'd finally dragged himself home. His knee throbbed, the victim of a well-placed kick.
His hands hurt, knuckles bruised and sore from being scraped across asphalt, but he gripped the cane and hobbled towards the bathroom. Only the sheer pressure of his bladder kept him going; he gasped with nearly each step, wondering if it would be better to hop on his good foot or possibly get down on the ground and crawl.
But he made it, and pissed in the toilet instead of all over the floor in the hallway. Then he balanced himself against the bathroom counter and took another deep breath. The bottle of ibuprofen was still there; he grabbed it and thumbed off the cap he hadn't tightened on and swallowed three pills right out of the bottle. He cupped his hand under the faucet and scooped up enough water to swallow down the sensation of pills stuck in his throat.
He stood there for a few moments, knowing he couldn't wait until the painkillers kicked in. It would take half an hour, at least, before he felt anything unless he chased them down with a shot of whiskey. The whiskey was in the kitchen, however, and the bed was a good ten feet closer. Weighing his options, Danny hobbled and hopped and forced himself back towards the bed then fell over onto it gratefully, trying to ignore the way sharp pains ripped through his back just below his shoulder as his body hit the mattress.
Rolling himself over, he stretched out and grabbed his cell from the other side of the bed. He stared at it, long and hard before finally putting it back on the table. Danny reached down for the blanket and pulled it up slowly. It was Sunday and no doubt everybody had plans -- either already out on the waves or sound asleep like normal people on a Sunday morning. No one he could reasonably annoy by calling at 6 a.m. There was nothing he needed badly enough that it couldn't wait, and maybe later, after he'd slept again, he'd feel better.
~~~
Monday morning came and Danny had managed to get out of bed and to the bathroom once more the day before. Now the clock was blinking stupidly at him, and he managed to get his hand free of the sheets and blanket and slam down on the snooze button. He lay there, staring at the ceiling and considered his choices. Finally, he set the alarm on his cell phone to wake him at eight o'clock, and went back to sleep.
When his cell went off, he called headquarters. He had just enough time for a quick prayer, then he heard, "Hawai'i Five-0, Officer Kalakaua."
"Kono." Thank God. "Hey, I'm not gonna be in today," Danny said, as casually as he could, but letting just enough tired creep into his voice to allay any suspicions.
"Are you okay?"
It was his cue, if he'd been held at gunpoint, to give her one of a handful of code phrases to let her know just how much trouble he was in. Instead he smiled. "Yeah, I'm just a little tired. You know. Long weekend."
There was a pause, then there was a suspicious tone in her voice. "Playing hooky, Detective?"
With a grin, Danny just said, "Not at all. I'm just.. you know. Ill." He gave a fake-cough and Kono laughed.
"Right. I'll tell the boss that you're sick."
Danny could practically hear the air-quotes. "Thanks, Kono. I owe you one."
"I'll remember that. In fact, I may catch your contagious disease this Friday."
"There's definitely something going around," Danny agreed.
"Feel better, Danny," she said, and from the change in her voice Danny guessed someone else had walked into the office.
"Thanks," he said again, and hung up. He let his hand fall to the mattress, letting go of the cell and losing it in the bed clothes. He needed to get up, work his muscles loose, but everything hurt too much to contemplate moving.
He wished he'd had the brains to bring the painkillers to the nightstand. He closed his eyes and listened to the aches and pains in his body, tracking them each as they reported in. Nothing new since yesterday, but nothing had gone away, either. His back hurt and his knee felt like fire, and he felt like an absolute moron.
That last one wasn't anything new, really, though now and again it took on new shapes. When Rachel had told him she was divorcing him, citing the list of reasons she'd built up, he'd felt like ten kinds of stupid for not having noticed them all. Maybe he had noticed, but he hadn't thought it was so bad -- but then he hadn't been the one to meet someone new and fall in love, real love, and have a reason to call it quits.
He'd felt stupid the first several weeks lying here in this apartment, newly arrived in what felt like another country where the locals didn't want him and he didn't want them, and nothing was like anything he'd ever known. The only thing keeping him sane was the sound of his little girl's voice on the phone -- on the damn phone instead of right in front of him with her face smiling at him and her arms around his neck where they belonged.
He'd felt stupid when he'd aimed his pistol at a man who'd turned out to be a complete nut-case, and his boss. Finding himself transferred to the new elite task force he'd felt out of his depth and all kinds of helpless. Cop work he knew, but what 5-0 did was not exactly police work and the way McGarrett went about it was more Navy SEAL than cop.
There wasn't anything about Steve McGarrett that didn't make Danny feel stupid. Sometimes it was just the sort of stupid when the blood rushed south and he couldn't talk for wanting to stare. But there was also the stupid from watching the man work and wondering where the hell he'd pulled that trick from or this piece of trivia, and how did any normal person do the things McGarrett did without secretly being a mutant with superpowers?
And that was how he mostly felt stupid when it came to Steve McGarrett. Danny had spent his adult life learning how to follow the rules and fill out the paperwork afterwards; McGarrett had learned how to board ships and take out terrorists with a toothbrush. Combine all of that and there was positively nothing new about lying in bed and telling himself he should have known better and finding it no surprise that he hadn't.
Danny rolled himself onto his side, resting his hurt knee on a small mound he made with the blanket. He'd done one thing right, at least. The guy he'd rescued had run away, mostly unhurt and with his wallet, if not his dignity, intact. Danny had watched him go, hoping he'd call the cops, but by the time the thugs were done with Danny nobody had come along. The perps had left him lying on the ground and Danny had spent a good hour getting himself back to his car.
No doubt a Navy SEAL would have kicked their asses in two minutes flat, whispered the voice in his head he'd been trying to ignore. He had to agree that having back-up would have been nice, but Danny had to bite his lip over the embarrassment -- the stupidity -- of losing a fight and knowing that Steve -- hell, or Kono -- wouldn't have had the slightest bit of trouble.
He rubbed his hand over his face, knowing he was indulging in a round of self-pity that would disgust him later. But for now, in pain and stuck in bed with his painkillers too far away to get to, it was all Danny could do. He let it sink in, tugging at him as he remembered all the failures, all the ways in which he simply wasn't good enough. Rachel had thought so, Steve couldn't possibly do anything but. It was exactly why he spent the occasional evening walking along the street trying to psyche himself up to ask for something else: someone to touch him and take him and let him pretend that somebody desired him.
Danny coughed, feeling the twin stabs of pain from his back and his knee as his body shook. He needed to get to the bathroom, but he honestly didn't know if he could make it. He felt down for where he'd left his phone, not finding it at first and telling himself that he shouldn't, that he couldn't. When he found the cell he brought it up and stared at the screen, scrolling through the contacts list as he debated each one.
There was no way he could call Steve. He'd be over in a second, and there would be no way Danny could hide the extent of his injuries from him. He might have been able to call Kono, but he'd lied to her already and he had a feeling she wouldn't take that lightly. He might be able to hide the bruises from her, except the one on his jaw. But explaining to her why he couldn't walk to the bathroom -- or, worse yet, asking her to help him, when he was dressed in nothing but his shorts -- was a thing Danny didn't want to consider.
He finally dialed a number and when the phone picked up, he said, "I need some help."
~~~
Danny had fallen into a sort of not-sleep not-awake doze when he heard the front door open and close. He pried his eyes open and waited for his brain to kick in, trying to remember why he'd been expecting that noise and why he wasn't reaching for his gun.
Well, then he didn't keep it beside the bed, like some people he could name. Too much chance of Grace finding it; he'd been keeping it locked away since she'd been three months old. But the sound of footsteps towards the bed brought him awake enough for his brain to function. He rolled onto his back and blinked. Chin was there, just like he'd expected.
But he hadn't expected Steve. Danny tried to lever himself up onto his elbows, got far enough he could glare respectably, and did so at Chin who had followed McGarrett inside.
Chin shrugged apologetically. "I didn't have keys to your place." He made a gesture at Steve, reminding Danny that he'd given Steve a key to his apartment -- for emergencies, which this...was, but Steve wasn't supposed to know that.
Steve, who was standing at the foot of Danny's bed, hands on his hips and glaring at him in annoyance. "So what did the doctor say about your knee?" he asked, his voice tight with all the tension that was clearly visible in his neck, jaw, even down to his shoulders.
Danny frowned. "What doctor?" Even as the words slipped out, he knew it was a mistake. He opened his mouth, trying to -- what, drag back the words? Replace them with something else before McGarrett could hear?
But Steve was just glaring harder now, his entire body tense like he was going to leap up and yank Danny from the bed and drag him to the bottle of painkillers in the bathroom which Danny had asked Chin to come over and help him reach. Chin, who was supposed to sneak out of work and come over without telling anybody about Danny's predicament.
Danny let go of the blanket with one hand, waving it while he tried to think of how to explain, how to justify, and Steve just stepped forward and yanked on the bedclothes, saying, "If you can't even put weight on your knee to--"
He stopped and stared. Chin, still behind him, stared as well. Danny fought with the urge to pull his arms and legs up, covering himself like he was thirteen years old and in the school locker room, hiding from boys who'd hit growth spurts a year before him.
"Jesus, Danny, what happened?" Steve made a move towards him, hand out-stretched and he stopped. Weirdly, the tension had vanished and his eyes were wide with surprise.
Danny glanced down and, yeah, so the bruises were spectacular and all over his leg; his knee and thigh were dark purple. Only a couple on his stomach, and he was pretty sure there was something gloriously alarming on his back where Steve couldn't see. His hands were still red, the scraped skin scabbing over and leaving a criss-cross of red all over his fingers and palms. "It isn't--" he began, but he had no idea what to say.
"What happened?" Steve was glaring at him now, the shock was gone and Steve was staring at him, eyes narrowed and that face Danny only ever saw when Steve was pissed and someone, usually a bad guy, was about to find himself hanging off the edge of a building screaming for his mother.
Danny had a brief vision of escaping and hiding in his mother's kitchen, only she'd probably scold him for not going to the ER, and he really didn't want to think about his mother siding with Steve McGarrett against him.
"It wasn't...it was just a mugging--"
"You got mugged?" Suddenly Steve was poised to move and Danny couldn't exactly say if he was about to bolt out the door to chase down the muggers on foot, or leap across the bed and strangle Danny.
"No, actually, it was this other guy and I heard it." Danny sighed. "I just went to try to rescue him and...." He gestured at the array of bruises. It was pretty clear he hadn't exactly won the fight.
"Is he okay?" Chin asked, sounding a lot calmer than Steve -- though Danny had to admit that wouldn't be hard. Steve still looked like he was ready to tear Danny a new one.
"Yeah, he's fine, I guess. He took off once they let go of him."
"They?" Steve's jaw was clenching again.
"Three of them," Danny said, and he felt that stupid little pang. Three, not armed, nothing but thugs and he-- No reason to keep going there, he told himself. Too late to do anything about it.
"I wanna see the police report," Steve said, looking at Chin, who nodded, and Danny knew he was going to hate this, but he was already hating it pretty badly.
"I didn't file," he said quietly. Part of him hoped neither of them had heard. But the way Steve's head whipped around to him, eyebrows furled like he thought he'd misheard. He looked so confused that Danny wished, briefly, that he felt like laughing. "There was no point," he tried to explain, but he knew he couldn't. How was he supposed to say he hadn't filed a report because he couldn't bring himself to admit he'd lost the fight? A fight that Steve would have won with one hand tied behind his back and probably blindfolded as well? Not to mention how to explain what he'd been doing in that neighborhood to begin with.
"Didn't you get a look at them?" Chin asked, and after a short hesitation, Danny shook his head.
Hell, he'd lied to Kono, what was lying to the rest of them?
"Well, you can give us what you know and maybe we can find a pattern," Steve said, and Danny hated seeing how calm he'd gotten as he took charge of the non-existent investigation. "Maybe the victim called HPD and we can find him, see if he knows--"
"Does it really matter? It was just a random act of violence that I put myself in the middle of, and lost, by the way. So can we just move on?" Danny was tired, and his knee hurt like a son of a bitch, and his throat was dry and his head was starting to ache.
He realised, somewhat distantly, that he hadn't eaten anything since Saturday. The lack of coffee explained the headache, at least. He rubbed his forehead and wondered if he could derail Steve long enough to get him -- or, no, get Chin to make him a cup. He'd tasted Steve's coffee and he didn't want to make himself feel worse. He reached down and tugged the sheets back into place as he suddenly noticed he was shivering.
Nobody said anything for a second, then Steve jerked his thumb over his shoulder and Chin nodded, and moved away. Danny closed his eyes, not even caring what they were up to, then a few seconds later Steve was a lot closer and saying, "Here, take these."
He opened his eyes to find Steve holding two pills in his hand and Chin was holding out a glass of water. Danny took the pills and drank half a swallow, just enough to get them down.
"You could probably use the rest of that," Steve said. His voice was eerily calm and quiet, and Danny tried to muster the energy to glare at him.
"If I drink all that I'll pee in the bed," he said, because it was true, and one of two very good reasons why he hadn't been drinking the whiskey he'd wanted. The other being he couldn't get to the water, or whiskey, any more than he'd been able to get to the bathroom. Though he'd known when he'd called Chin that asking him to come over to fetch him a glass of water wouldn't have gone over so well.
Because clearly it was going so smoothly as it was, Danny chided himself. Steve was still holding the damn glass out, so Danny sighed and shoved himself upright and couldn't hold back the hiss of pain as his leg half-twisted sideways.
"All right, that's it. Chin, call an ambulance."
"I don't need a fucking ambulance!" Danny snapped. How they'd gone from ibuprofen and water to an ambulance, he had no idea. Probably something to do with the mysterious workings of Steve's brain.
"Then we're hauling you down to my truck with you over my shoulder," Steve retorted, and the look on his face said he would do just exactly that. Possibly with Danny still in only his shorts.
Danny glared, but even as Steve glared back he knew he was going to lose. It didn't make him want to give in -- he wanted to scream and throw Steve and Chin out of his fucking apartment, and go back to sleep until he could drag himself to the airport and fly back to Jersey.
Possibly so he could hide in his mother's kitchen anyway, even if it meant being yelled at worse than Steve could ever dream of doing.
He couldn't do any of that, so he settled for glaring at Steve, and Steve just glared back, and before either of them could start with the shouting Chin just walked over and picked something up, then held it out to Danny. "Put a shirt on," he said.
There was no way he was going to win, Danny knew, and wasn't that just a perfect way to end a horrible, no fucking good weekend. He took the shirt from Chin, and felt grateful when Steve brought over a pair of sweatpants.
Struggling into the sweats wasn't easy, even with Chin and Steve on either side -- neither of them saying a word about how clearly immobilized he was and how stupid he'd been to spend the weekend not asking for help. Not that either said a word out loud, but the expression on Steve's face said volumes, and Danny figured he was in deep shit and Steve was only being polite in leaving it for later.
Hopefully it would be much later, after the doctor had prescribed a truly serious painkiller.
~~~
Later, Danny's knee was in a brace and there were crutches in the back of Steve's truck, and Steve was driving with his hands griping the wheel like he expected to be shot at. Danny really didn't care, because the doctor had given him a prescription for tramadol and Steve had made him take one as soon as he'd walked out of the pharmacy with the bag in his hand. By the time they were pulling into Steve's driveway Danny didn't even care about the fact Steve hadn't taken him home.
When Steve came around to the door and opened it, Danny told him, "I have a mitter." Then he blinked, because he didn't think he was that stoned, but even he didn't know what he'd been trying to say. "My bed," he tried again. "Mine. Own. At home," he said, trying to speak as clearly as he could.
There was a funny sort of look on Steve's face, all tolerance and smiling, without actually smiling at him. Smiling eyes, and Danny told himself to shut up before he said anything else out loud. Danny narrowed his eyes as Steve kept trying to get him out of the truck, but the sun was in them so he couldn't see much anyhow.
"And that's why you're here," Steve said. "So someone can keep an eye on you while you're stoned off your ass."
"My ass," Danny told him, as Steve pulled him out of the truck. Danny tried to help, and it worked a lot better once Steve got one of the crutches under his arm. "My ass," he began again, and he tried to remember his point. Oh, right. "Has not been stoned. It is a very popular ass."
"I'm sure it is," Steve said, and they were getting closer to the front door and Danny wasn't completely certain he was doing any actual walking.
Danny sighed. "You wouldn't know." Because when did Steve ever notice that sort of thing? Not that Danny had done anything to get his ass noticed, by Steve or by any guy since he'd arrived on this island. He hadn't even made it inside the bar, instead getting his ass thoroughly kicked when he'd tried to play the white knight.
He couldn't have ignored it though, even if there had been a dozen of them. Maybe he'd have called for back-up, of course, and probably he should have anyhow. But if he had, it would have gone so much worse than a few bruises and a couple of co-workers who thought he was incompetent at hand-to-hand. Nothing like a few rumors spreading like wildfire through the police department, then suddenly nobody wants to be your partner and nobody hears your calls for back-up and the cases you so carefully filed for the courts get lost and re-routed until your name was mud and your face was regularly broken in all the wrong places.
He'd been lucky, back in Jersey, keeping his secrets. Falling in love with Rachel had helped, until one day it hadn't, and he'd been stuck here in paradise with a partner he'd fallen in love with and a gay bar he couldn't force himself to go into to get some relief, and a whole host of reasons why he should just keep his head down and let it all blow over and maybe he should stop thinking in words that reminded him of all the things he wanted to do.
He didn't think Steve would want Danny on his knees, giving him a blow job, unless he was drunk off his ass and Danny promised never to mention it again.
For half a second he thought about it, as seriously as he could with his head spinning and the room spinning just a little as well. Then he laughed, because he'd met Catherine and he'd seen Steve a thousand times over doing all the things that made him Steve and he knew, deep down to the depths of his soul, that nothing in him could measure up to the kind of person Steve would want.
And there was the real reason he'd kept quiet about the fight. He'd done his best and lost, and been hurt badly enough he'd had to humiliate himself in front of his co-workers to get them to drag him out of his bed because he couldn't get to the bathroom to take a piss and reach the ibuprofen.
Right at that very moment he didn't have to care, because he was lying down, his head on a pillow and a cool sheet draped over his body, a brace around his knee was holding it together and painkillers in his bloodstream were letting everything else go free.
There was a touch on his head but Danny's eyes were already closed, and when he fell asleep he couldn't really be sure he hadn't been asleep already.
~~~
When he woke up, Danny discovered the painkillers had worn off because his knee was hurting. Not as badly as before, but enough he knew he wanted more tramadol. But maybe not the tramadol, because clearly it was causing hallucinations.
Danny closed his eyes then opened them again, and he was still there. Lying in Steve's bed -- which he sort of remembered from the night before -- with Steve lying beside him, one arm draped over Danny's torso. That, he didn't remember. At all. He looked again, and saw that Steve had placed his arm carefully along the line of skin unmarked by bruising, It looked awkward, and not exactly where Danny would have expected to be held -- but held, and bed, and Steve weren't words he'd ever had to worry about happening in proximity before.
Maybe he could take half a tramadol.
He tried to pull away and go searching for the painkillers, and Steve's eyes flew open. Danny froze. There was something to be said for finding yourself in bed with your partner, but he wasn't sure any of those things were relevant when your partner was the one who put you there.
"I'm sorry. Didn't mean to wake you," he began, then he didn't get any further because Steve pressed him backwards, down on the bed and was looming over him. Danny couldn't quite find the words to ask him what the hell he was doing, then he didn't have the ability because Steve was kissing him.
Danny felt his brain sputter to a halt. He checked himself again -- bruises sore, knee painful but not excruciating, hands tender, and Steve on top of him, kissing him.
He honestly couldn't tell if it was the painkillers or not. He'd certainly dreamed about this, the way Steve's hand would come up -- just like that, and cup the side of his face. The way Steve's mouth would taste of mint and coffee, like he'd been up once already that morning and come back to bed.
When Steve pulled away from him, Danny just stared at him. There was something wrong, Danny realised. Steve was looking down at him, and his eyes.... He didn't look happy. Danny reached up and touched one finger to Steve's bottom lip. "S'ok," he said. "It's just a dream."
Steve's head jerked back a tiny bit, just enough to break the contact, but then he shook his head. "This isn't a dream, Danno."
That didn't make sense -- except of course Danny would dream him saying that, wouldn't he? "Yeah, it's okay," he tried to explain. "The painkillers, hallucinations-- ow! Asshole!" He glared at Steve, then down at his arm where Steve had pinched him, hard. "The hell was that for?"
Steve was smiling, with just a touch of smugness, though there was still that strange, sad look in his eyes. "You're not hallucinating."
"Then how come you look so upset to be kissing me? Even strangers in bars are polite enough to act like they're into it--" Danny found himself pinned to the mattress again, Steve crouched over him and really, Danny hadn't been going anywhere so what the hell was he doing?
Steve's eyes had narrowed and Danny wondered if he wasn't about to be dragged away in handcuffs, next, thrown into a patrol car and taken away. But Steve just said, in a taut, strained whisper, "There are not going to be any more strange guys in bars."
Danny just blinked at him. The weight of Steve on his body -- legs pressing against his hips, keeping Steve's weight up off Danny's body, a line of bruising right where he would have been had he lowered himself another inch. Danny could feel Steve's foot against his good knee, and Steve's hands on his shoulders.
It all felt very much not like a hallucination.
He reached up again to touch Steve's face. His fingers rubbed lightly over the stubble on Steve's cheek, felt the warmth of his skin until Danny let his hand drop. It felt...real.
Danny frowned. "Mind if I ask a question? As the one who woke up in your bed being clung to like an oyster -- or whatever it is octopuses eat. Something with tentacles wrapped around its entire body." Danny glanced down pointedly at Steve's arms and legs. "What exactly are you doing?"
There was a pause, then Steve said, "You're thinking of sea stars. Octopuses don't really--"
Danny jabbed him in the chest. "Why are you here? Why am I here? Why are you kissing me?" He hadn't meant for his voice to just stop, right there at the end, broken and whispered, but he got the words out anyway and if he sounded more lost than angry...he could still blame it on the painkillers, maybe.
For a moment Steve just hovered over him, then he kissed Danny again. Dry lips and mouth closed and it felt like Steve was trying to tell him something. One hand let go of Danny's shoulder and worked its way under Danny's head, then he was being held, and Steve was still kissing him gently with a patience Danny was sure he wouldn't have expected from the man.
When Danny could speak again, he said, "I don't understand." He wasn't sure he minded, but his heart was pounding very fast and he was more than ready for the other shoe to drop, so he could get it over with.
Instead of answering, Steve lowered himself to one side, laying back down on the bed but with one arm still draped over Danny and his leg hooked over Danny's foot. He took another moment to get settled, and Danny felt weirdly like he was trapped, with just those few points of contact.
"I never told you why I had you transferred to 5-0," Steve said.
"Because I annoy you and you're a masochist," Danny pointed out.
There was a pause, then Steve half-nodded his head. "Okay, the other reason."
"Is this going to be relevant to how you ended up with me in your bed and you kissing me? I only ask in case I need to take notes, because I still haven't figured out how that brain of yours works."
Steve gave him a dry look, then said, "Yes, if you'll shut up for five seconds and let me-- I asked for you because you're a good cop and you know what you're doing and I don't know shit about it. I'm a Navy SEAL, and yeah it means I can take on terrorists with nothing but a toothbrush, but I couldn't tell you five things about proper procedure and how to make sure the bad guys actually end up in jail once you've arrested them."
Suddenly Danny's heart wasn't pounding at all. He remembered thinking all those things last night about Steve the Navy Superhero, but he'd known he hadn't said a word of it out loud. He couldn't have, because there were all those other things as well.... But Steve kept talking like Danny wasn't trying to form the words to beg him to stop.
Because Steve was looking at him now, right at him and right through him and this was very, very real and not a dream and Steve was here, beside him and half on top of him and saying these things and Steve had kissed him.
"And maybe you don't know hand to hand because you haven't spent the last ten years practising it every day, but you... Jesus, Danny. I see you and I want to be around you, constantly. I want to--" He stopped and looked down at their bodies, pressed up against each other. "I want to be like this, always. Touching you and being with you and even when you drive me nuts and make me think about running away to Takijistan for a nice, sane firefight, what I really want is to be with you."
Danny's heart still wasn't beating. It was stopped and he was dead, and surely if this was a drug-induced hallucination then...something different would have been happening. Penguins flying through the windows or pink dragons or somebody calling him to say he'd won a million dollars.
Danny swallowed once, trying to find a response to all of that. "Tajikistan is a landlocked country," he finally said. "Why would a Navy SEAL be there?"
Steve rolled his eyes. "Oh for God's sake, Danno. I just-- do I need to kiss you again?"
"It wouldn't hurt. I mean, unless you put your hand on my knee or something." He had no idea where the bravado came from, but either he was hallucinating and he could ask for whatever he wanted, or this was real, and Steve had already kissed him, which meant...maybe he could ask for something he wanted.
He expected -- well, a lot of things, including penguins and dragons and Ed McMahon, but top of the list was for Steve to just kiss him again. Which he did, and Danny decided that all the things crowding into his head like what the hell and why was he doing this and what did any of those words really mean, could go stuff it for a moment.
He was awake, and his knee hurt enough that yes, the painkillers had worn off and he'd be begging for another one very soon -- half a painkiller, just half -- but for right now he was going to go with the apparent nonsensical tangent that was his life, and let Steve McGarrett kiss him like he meant it.
Tomorrow would be soon enough to figure out what any of this meant.
Author: james
Rated: R for violence and language
Pairing: Steve/Danny
Word Count: 7,000
Disclaimer: not mine, no profit made, characters returned only slightly soiled
Notes: thanks to embroiderama for the beta!
Summary: Danny tries to keep a secret, but it spirals quickly out of control. Hurt/comfort, angst, happy ending.
Danny walked down the sidewalk on the other side of the street for the third time in as many weeks and wondered if this was the night he was going to finally nut-up and do it.
He didn't think about why this was a bad idea. He didn't think about why this was the least bad of a whole host of bad ideas. He'd made that list already and stuck it to his bathroom mirror -- metaphorically speaking, of course, because a real list would come under the scrutiny of any number of people, including his daughter and Steve, as well as Kono, Chin, Kamekona, and Leon, Grace's driver who sometimes came in to use the facilities when he was dropping Grace off for the weekend. None of those were people Danny wanted asking him why there was a list on his mirror of reasons why he shouldn't have sex with Steve McGarrett.
Why it was that as a divorced man living alone he had less privacy than when he'd been married with a kid, he didn't know. Looking back, maybe that was a big, neon warning sign that his marriage hadn't been all wine and roses for those last couple of years.
But all that was water under the bridge, and now Danny was walking along the sidewalk trying to tell himself he wasn't -- or maybe he was -- going to go inside Club 901.
He'd been in gay bars before. That wasn't really an issue. Granted, it had been easier before he'd become a cop. But even after he hadn't ever really felt guilty about it, a night full of lights and loud music and men all eager to writhe their way into your pants and out into the anonymous night. It hadn't even all been anonymous -- he'd dated David for six months and Carl for a year, which meant that, really, the prospect of walking across the street and into a bar should not have been that difficult.
Danny knew why it was, why he ended up walking along the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street, not even glancing over at the bar as he passed by. Why he didn't pretend he was going to cross over at the next intersection, why he always ducked into the 7-11 at the corner and bought a New York Times and a candy bar and took it back the other way like it was all he had really been after.
It was all on the list, right after "don't have sex with a co-worker" and "Steve McGarrett is a psycho insane lunatic who will get you killed on accident one day." To be fair, that second one was on all the lists, not just the one about not having sex with the man. But Danny knew who he really wanted, and knew why he should never, ever try to get what he wanted and yet he still felt that stomach-crunching guilt whenever he thought about sneaking off to a gay bar to have sex with another man.
As he drew up to the corner and watched the walk light switch over, Danny turned. Without thinking too much about it, he hurried across -- away from the 7-11 and towards the other side of the street. Let the Fates be responsible for it this time because surely the crosswalk wouldn't have....
He knew it was silly and stupid even as his toe hit the curb and he had to jump a little, up onto the sidewalk to avoid tripping and falling flat on his face. His face burned in embarrassment and dear God but he needed a beer.
Good thing there was a bar just ahead that would serve him one. He shoved his hands into his pockets and decided that if he was doing this, then he was doing this and he took a deep breath and just walked.
The door to the bar was closed, there was no sign of a bouncer. Inside, no doubt, and there was only one tiny window facing the street that said "COORS" in green neon. In the corner was a small rainbow sticker, the only outward indication of what sort of place it was.
Danny had found it listed in the Gay Yellow Pages with a two inch ad, so it wasn't like they were trying to fly under the radar. But if you went in, clearly you were here looking for the place and not just wandering the streets in search of a refreshing adult beverage. Danny took a deep breath as he drew closer and told himself it wasn't like Steve would know.
When he heard the shout, he was running even before he registered what he'd heard. Cop's reflexes propelled him forward before he consciously identified the tone and urgency of the cry for help. His hand slapped at his side for the weapon which wasn't there as he rounded the corner and heard the shout again, followed by muffled voices. Danny had enough time to wonder if he should be pulling out his cell and calling for back-up when he reached the parking lot and made his way past the parked cars to find three figures surrounding a fourth.
"Hey!" Danny had to swallow his shout to identify himself as a cop, though he wasn't sure why and wasn't sure why not. No real time to worry about it as only two of the figures looked his way and Danny took another two steps forward. The victim was being held by the arms between two of the assailants, the third had been standing in front of him, clutching the victim's shirt in his hand.
Danny approached the man -- Asian male, thirty-five, five feet three inches, his mind catalogued even as he let go of the vic's shirt and turned to face Danny.
"Ain't your business, brah," the man snarled.
Danny shrugged. "Unfortunately, it is, now." He took another step forward, relieved to see that for the moment, at least, they'd stopped physically attacking their victim. Danny glanced his way, saw the wide-eyed fear and the way he was standing, arms limp, like he had no idea what to do now that he'd gained a reprieve. "You wanna just let him go and we consider this a bad night for everyone?" Danny asked, not really expecting the decency of common sense from thugs.
"Nah, I think maybe we'll just take your wallet, too," said the second of the three -- black, twenty-four, six foot two, scar on the right cheek.
Danny sighed and shook his head. "Sorry, it's not for sale." Then, as he'd expected, two of the men lunged for him. He had a moment to wish he'd called for back-up, and made a note to never tell Steve about the irony.
~~~
The next morning Danny opened his eyes and looked over at the nightstand beside the bed. Far too early in the morning to be awake, much less get out of bed. It didn't help that he felt a hundred years old; he rolled onto his side and paused there, breathing deeply and waiting for the pains to subside. His muscles had tightened up while he'd slept, despite the painkillers he'd taken before falling asleep. He managed to get himself upright and sat on the edge of the bed with his feet on the floor, wondering if he had the strength -- or the absolute need -- to get up and walk to the bathroom.
Had there been a jug handy, he was ashamed to admit even in the silence of his own head, he would have used it. As it was he staggered to his feet, flailing a bit until he leaned forward and got one hand on the wall. Luckily he'd left his cane leaning against the nightstand. He'd used it getting from the bathroom to the bed last night -- early this morning, when he'd finally dragged himself home. His knee throbbed, the victim of a well-placed kick.
His hands hurt, knuckles bruised and sore from being scraped across asphalt, but he gripped the cane and hobbled towards the bathroom. Only the sheer pressure of his bladder kept him going; he gasped with nearly each step, wondering if it would be better to hop on his good foot or possibly get down on the ground and crawl.
But he made it, and pissed in the toilet instead of all over the floor in the hallway. Then he balanced himself against the bathroom counter and took another deep breath. The bottle of ibuprofen was still there; he grabbed it and thumbed off the cap he hadn't tightened on and swallowed three pills right out of the bottle. He cupped his hand under the faucet and scooped up enough water to swallow down the sensation of pills stuck in his throat.
He stood there for a few moments, knowing he couldn't wait until the painkillers kicked in. It would take half an hour, at least, before he felt anything unless he chased them down with a shot of whiskey. The whiskey was in the kitchen, however, and the bed was a good ten feet closer. Weighing his options, Danny hobbled and hopped and forced himself back towards the bed then fell over onto it gratefully, trying to ignore the way sharp pains ripped through his back just below his shoulder as his body hit the mattress.
Rolling himself over, he stretched out and grabbed his cell from the other side of the bed. He stared at it, long and hard before finally putting it back on the table. Danny reached down for the blanket and pulled it up slowly. It was Sunday and no doubt everybody had plans -- either already out on the waves or sound asleep like normal people on a Sunday morning. No one he could reasonably annoy by calling at 6 a.m. There was nothing he needed badly enough that it couldn't wait, and maybe later, after he'd slept again, he'd feel better.
~~~
Monday morning came and Danny had managed to get out of bed and to the bathroom once more the day before. Now the clock was blinking stupidly at him, and he managed to get his hand free of the sheets and blanket and slam down on the snooze button. He lay there, staring at the ceiling and considered his choices. Finally, he set the alarm on his cell phone to wake him at eight o'clock, and went back to sleep.
When his cell went off, he called headquarters. He had just enough time for a quick prayer, then he heard, "Hawai'i Five-0, Officer Kalakaua."
"Kono." Thank God. "Hey, I'm not gonna be in today," Danny said, as casually as he could, but letting just enough tired creep into his voice to allay any suspicions.
"Are you okay?"
It was his cue, if he'd been held at gunpoint, to give her one of a handful of code phrases to let her know just how much trouble he was in. Instead he smiled. "Yeah, I'm just a little tired. You know. Long weekend."
There was a pause, then there was a suspicious tone in her voice. "Playing hooky, Detective?"
With a grin, Danny just said, "Not at all. I'm just.. you know. Ill." He gave a fake-cough and Kono laughed.
"Right. I'll tell the boss that you're sick."
Danny could practically hear the air-quotes. "Thanks, Kono. I owe you one."
"I'll remember that. In fact, I may catch your contagious disease this Friday."
"There's definitely something going around," Danny agreed.
"Feel better, Danny," she said, and from the change in her voice Danny guessed someone else had walked into the office.
"Thanks," he said again, and hung up. He let his hand fall to the mattress, letting go of the cell and losing it in the bed clothes. He needed to get up, work his muscles loose, but everything hurt too much to contemplate moving.
He wished he'd had the brains to bring the painkillers to the nightstand. He closed his eyes and listened to the aches and pains in his body, tracking them each as they reported in. Nothing new since yesterday, but nothing had gone away, either. His back hurt and his knee felt like fire, and he felt like an absolute moron.
That last one wasn't anything new, really, though now and again it took on new shapes. When Rachel had told him she was divorcing him, citing the list of reasons she'd built up, he'd felt like ten kinds of stupid for not having noticed them all. Maybe he had noticed, but he hadn't thought it was so bad -- but then he hadn't been the one to meet someone new and fall in love, real love, and have a reason to call it quits.
He'd felt stupid the first several weeks lying here in this apartment, newly arrived in what felt like another country where the locals didn't want him and he didn't want them, and nothing was like anything he'd ever known. The only thing keeping him sane was the sound of his little girl's voice on the phone -- on the damn phone instead of right in front of him with her face smiling at him and her arms around his neck where they belonged.
He'd felt stupid when he'd aimed his pistol at a man who'd turned out to be a complete nut-case, and his boss. Finding himself transferred to the new elite task force he'd felt out of his depth and all kinds of helpless. Cop work he knew, but what 5-0 did was not exactly police work and the way McGarrett went about it was more Navy SEAL than cop.
There wasn't anything about Steve McGarrett that didn't make Danny feel stupid. Sometimes it was just the sort of stupid when the blood rushed south and he couldn't talk for wanting to stare. But there was also the stupid from watching the man work and wondering where the hell he'd pulled that trick from or this piece of trivia, and how did any normal person do the things McGarrett did without secretly being a mutant with superpowers?
And that was how he mostly felt stupid when it came to Steve McGarrett. Danny had spent his adult life learning how to follow the rules and fill out the paperwork afterwards; McGarrett had learned how to board ships and take out terrorists with a toothbrush. Combine all of that and there was positively nothing new about lying in bed and telling himself he should have known better and finding it no surprise that he hadn't.
Danny rolled himself onto his side, resting his hurt knee on a small mound he made with the blanket. He'd done one thing right, at least. The guy he'd rescued had run away, mostly unhurt and with his wallet, if not his dignity, intact. Danny had watched him go, hoping he'd call the cops, but by the time the thugs were done with Danny nobody had come along. The perps had left him lying on the ground and Danny had spent a good hour getting himself back to his car.
No doubt a Navy SEAL would have kicked their asses in two minutes flat, whispered the voice in his head he'd been trying to ignore. He had to agree that having back-up would have been nice, but Danny had to bite his lip over the embarrassment -- the stupidity -- of losing a fight and knowing that Steve -- hell, or Kono -- wouldn't have had the slightest bit of trouble.
He rubbed his hand over his face, knowing he was indulging in a round of self-pity that would disgust him later. But for now, in pain and stuck in bed with his painkillers too far away to get to, it was all Danny could do. He let it sink in, tugging at him as he remembered all the failures, all the ways in which he simply wasn't good enough. Rachel had thought so, Steve couldn't possibly do anything but. It was exactly why he spent the occasional evening walking along the street trying to psyche himself up to ask for something else: someone to touch him and take him and let him pretend that somebody desired him.
Danny coughed, feeling the twin stabs of pain from his back and his knee as his body shook. He needed to get to the bathroom, but he honestly didn't know if he could make it. He felt down for where he'd left his phone, not finding it at first and telling himself that he shouldn't, that he couldn't. When he found the cell he brought it up and stared at the screen, scrolling through the contacts list as he debated each one.
There was no way he could call Steve. He'd be over in a second, and there would be no way Danny could hide the extent of his injuries from him. He might have been able to call Kono, but he'd lied to her already and he had a feeling she wouldn't take that lightly. He might be able to hide the bruises from her, except the one on his jaw. But explaining to her why he couldn't walk to the bathroom -- or, worse yet, asking her to help him, when he was dressed in nothing but his shorts -- was a thing Danny didn't want to consider.
He finally dialed a number and when the phone picked up, he said, "I need some help."
~~~
Danny had fallen into a sort of not-sleep not-awake doze when he heard the front door open and close. He pried his eyes open and waited for his brain to kick in, trying to remember why he'd been expecting that noise and why he wasn't reaching for his gun.
Well, then he didn't keep it beside the bed, like some people he could name. Too much chance of Grace finding it; he'd been keeping it locked away since she'd been three months old. But the sound of footsteps towards the bed brought him awake enough for his brain to function. He rolled onto his back and blinked. Chin was there, just like he'd expected.
But he hadn't expected Steve. Danny tried to lever himself up onto his elbows, got far enough he could glare respectably, and did so at Chin who had followed McGarrett inside.
Chin shrugged apologetically. "I didn't have keys to your place." He made a gesture at Steve, reminding Danny that he'd given Steve a key to his apartment -- for emergencies, which this...was, but Steve wasn't supposed to know that.
Steve, who was standing at the foot of Danny's bed, hands on his hips and glaring at him in annoyance. "So what did the doctor say about your knee?" he asked, his voice tight with all the tension that was clearly visible in his neck, jaw, even down to his shoulders.
Danny frowned. "What doctor?" Even as the words slipped out, he knew it was a mistake. He opened his mouth, trying to -- what, drag back the words? Replace them with something else before McGarrett could hear?
But Steve was just glaring harder now, his entire body tense like he was going to leap up and yank Danny from the bed and drag him to the bottle of painkillers in the bathroom which Danny had asked Chin to come over and help him reach. Chin, who was supposed to sneak out of work and come over without telling anybody about Danny's predicament.
Danny let go of the blanket with one hand, waving it while he tried to think of how to explain, how to justify, and Steve just stepped forward and yanked on the bedclothes, saying, "If you can't even put weight on your knee to--"
He stopped and stared. Chin, still behind him, stared as well. Danny fought with the urge to pull his arms and legs up, covering himself like he was thirteen years old and in the school locker room, hiding from boys who'd hit growth spurts a year before him.
"Jesus, Danny, what happened?" Steve made a move towards him, hand out-stretched and he stopped. Weirdly, the tension had vanished and his eyes were wide with surprise.
Danny glanced down and, yeah, so the bruises were spectacular and all over his leg; his knee and thigh were dark purple. Only a couple on his stomach, and he was pretty sure there was something gloriously alarming on his back where Steve couldn't see. His hands were still red, the scraped skin scabbing over and leaving a criss-cross of red all over his fingers and palms. "It isn't--" he began, but he had no idea what to say.
"What happened?" Steve was glaring at him now, the shock was gone and Steve was staring at him, eyes narrowed and that face Danny only ever saw when Steve was pissed and someone, usually a bad guy, was about to find himself hanging off the edge of a building screaming for his mother.
Danny had a brief vision of escaping and hiding in his mother's kitchen, only she'd probably scold him for not going to the ER, and he really didn't want to think about his mother siding with Steve McGarrett against him.
"It wasn't...it was just a mugging--"
"You got mugged?" Suddenly Steve was poised to move and Danny couldn't exactly say if he was about to bolt out the door to chase down the muggers on foot, or leap across the bed and strangle Danny.
"No, actually, it was this other guy and I heard it." Danny sighed. "I just went to try to rescue him and...." He gestured at the array of bruises. It was pretty clear he hadn't exactly won the fight.
"Is he okay?" Chin asked, sounding a lot calmer than Steve -- though Danny had to admit that wouldn't be hard. Steve still looked like he was ready to tear Danny a new one.
"Yeah, he's fine, I guess. He took off once they let go of him."
"They?" Steve's jaw was clenching again.
"Three of them," Danny said, and he felt that stupid little pang. Three, not armed, nothing but thugs and he-- No reason to keep going there, he told himself. Too late to do anything about it.
"I wanna see the police report," Steve said, looking at Chin, who nodded, and Danny knew he was going to hate this, but he was already hating it pretty badly.
"I didn't file," he said quietly. Part of him hoped neither of them had heard. But the way Steve's head whipped around to him, eyebrows furled like he thought he'd misheard. He looked so confused that Danny wished, briefly, that he felt like laughing. "There was no point," he tried to explain, but he knew he couldn't. How was he supposed to say he hadn't filed a report because he couldn't bring himself to admit he'd lost the fight? A fight that Steve would have won with one hand tied behind his back and probably blindfolded as well? Not to mention how to explain what he'd been doing in that neighborhood to begin with.
"Didn't you get a look at them?" Chin asked, and after a short hesitation, Danny shook his head.
Hell, he'd lied to Kono, what was lying to the rest of them?
"Well, you can give us what you know and maybe we can find a pattern," Steve said, and Danny hated seeing how calm he'd gotten as he took charge of the non-existent investigation. "Maybe the victim called HPD and we can find him, see if he knows--"
"Does it really matter? It was just a random act of violence that I put myself in the middle of, and lost, by the way. So can we just move on?" Danny was tired, and his knee hurt like a son of a bitch, and his throat was dry and his head was starting to ache.
He realised, somewhat distantly, that he hadn't eaten anything since Saturday. The lack of coffee explained the headache, at least. He rubbed his forehead and wondered if he could derail Steve long enough to get him -- or, no, get Chin to make him a cup. He'd tasted Steve's coffee and he didn't want to make himself feel worse. He reached down and tugged the sheets back into place as he suddenly noticed he was shivering.
Nobody said anything for a second, then Steve jerked his thumb over his shoulder and Chin nodded, and moved away. Danny closed his eyes, not even caring what they were up to, then a few seconds later Steve was a lot closer and saying, "Here, take these."
He opened his eyes to find Steve holding two pills in his hand and Chin was holding out a glass of water. Danny took the pills and drank half a swallow, just enough to get them down.
"You could probably use the rest of that," Steve said. His voice was eerily calm and quiet, and Danny tried to muster the energy to glare at him.
"If I drink all that I'll pee in the bed," he said, because it was true, and one of two very good reasons why he hadn't been drinking the whiskey he'd wanted. The other being he couldn't get to the water, or whiskey, any more than he'd been able to get to the bathroom. Though he'd known when he'd called Chin that asking him to come over to fetch him a glass of water wouldn't have gone over so well.
Because clearly it was going so smoothly as it was, Danny chided himself. Steve was still holding the damn glass out, so Danny sighed and shoved himself upright and couldn't hold back the hiss of pain as his leg half-twisted sideways.
"All right, that's it. Chin, call an ambulance."
"I don't need a fucking ambulance!" Danny snapped. How they'd gone from ibuprofen and water to an ambulance, he had no idea. Probably something to do with the mysterious workings of Steve's brain.
"Then we're hauling you down to my truck with you over my shoulder," Steve retorted, and the look on his face said he would do just exactly that. Possibly with Danny still in only his shorts.
Danny glared, but even as Steve glared back he knew he was going to lose. It didn't make him want to give in -- he wanted to scream and throw Steve and Chin out of his fucking apartment, and go back to sleep until he could drag himself to the airport and fly back to Jersey.
Possibly so he could hide in his mother's kitchen anyway, even if it meant being yelled at worse than Steve could ever dream of doing.
He couldn't do any of that, so he settled for glaring at Steve, and Steve just glared back, and before either of them could start with the shouting Chin just walked over and picked something up, then held it out to Danny. "Put a shirt on," he said.
There was no way he was going to win, Danny knew, and wasn't that just a perfect way to end a horrible, no fucking good weekend. He took the shirt from Chin, and felt grateful when Steve brought over a pair of sweatpants.
Struggling into the sweats wasn't easy, even with Chin and Steve on either side -- neither of them saying a word about how clearly immobilized he was and how stupid he'd been to spend the weekend not asking for help. Not that either said a word out loud, but the expression on Steve's face said volumes, and Danny figured he was in deep shit and Steve was only being polite in leaving it for later.
Hopefully it would be much later, after the doctor had prescribed a truly serious painkiller.
~~~
Later, Danny's knee was in a brace and there were crutches in the back of Steve's truck, and Steve was driving with his hands griping the wheel like he expected to be shot at. Danny really didn't care, because the doctor had given him a prescription for tramadol and Steve had made him take one as soon as he'd walked out of the pharmacy with the bag in his hand. By the time they were pulling into Steve's driveway Danny didn't even care about the fact Steve hadn't taken him home.
When Steve came around to the door and opened it, Danny told him, "I have a mitter." Then he blinked, because he didn't think he was that stoned, but even he didn't know what he'd been trying to say. "My bed," he tried again. "Mine. Own. At home," he said, trying to speak as clearly as he could.
There was a funny sort of look on Steve's face, all tolerance and smiling, without actually smiling at him. Smiling eyes, and Danny told himself to shut up before he said anything else out loud. Danny narrowed his eyes as Steve kept trying to get him out of the truck, but the sun was in them so he couldn't see much anyhow.
"And that's why you're here," Steve said. "So someone can keep an eye on you while you're stoned off your ass."
"My ass," Danny told him, as Steve pulled him out of the truck. Danny tried to help, and it worked a lot better once Steve got one of the crutches under his arm. "My ass," he began again, and he tried to remember his point. Oh, right. "Has not been stoned. It is a very popular ass."
"I'm sure it is," Steve said, and they were getting closer to the front door and Danny wasn't completely certain he was doing any actual walking.
Danny sighed. "You wouldn't know." Because when did Steve ever notice that sort of thing? Not that Danny had done anything to get his ass noticed, by Steve or by any guy since he'd arrived on this island. He hadn't even made it inside the bar, instead getting his ass thoroughly kicked when he'd tried to play the white knight.
He couldn't have ignored it though, even if there had been a dozen of them. Maybe he'd have called for back-up, of course, and probably he should have anyhow. But if he had, it would have gone so much worse than a few bruises and a couple of co-workers who thought he was incompetent at hand-to-hand. Nothing like a few rumors spreading like wildfire through the police department, then suddenly nobody wants to be your partner and nobody hears your calls for back-up and the cases you so carefully filed for the courts get lost and re-routed until your name was mud and your face was regularly broken in all the wrong places.
He'd been lucky, back in Jersey, keeping his secrets. Falling in love with Rachel had helped, until one day it hadn't, and he'd been stuck here in paradise with a partner he'd fallen in love with and a gay bar he couldn't force himself to go into to get some relief, and a whole host of reasons why he should just keep his head down and let it all blow over and maybe he should stop thinking in words that reminded him of all the things he wanted to do.
He didn't think Steve would want Danny on his knees, giving him a blow job, unless he was drunk off his ass and Danny promised never to mention it again.
For half a second he thought about it, as seriously as he could with his head spinning and the room spinning just a little as well. Then he laughed, because he'd met Catherine and he'd seen Steve a thousand times over doing all the things that made him Steve and he knew, deep down to the depths of his soul, that nothing in him could measure up to the kind of person Steve would want.
And there was the real reason he'd kept quiet about the fight. He'd done his best and lost, and been hurt badly enough he'd had to humiliate himself in front of his co-workers to get them to drag him out of his bed because he couldn't get to the bathroom to take a piss and reach the ibuprofen.
Right at that very moment he didn't have to care, because he was lying down, his head on a pillow and a cool sheet draped over his body, a brace around his knee was holding it together and painkillers in his bloodstream were letting everything else go free.
There was a touch on his head but Danny's eyes were already closed, and when he fell asleep he couldn't really be sure he hadn't been asleep already.
~~~
When he woke up, Danny discovered the painkillers had worn off because his knee was hurting. Not as badly as before, but enough he knew he wanted more tramadol. But maybe not the tramadol, because clearly it was causing hallucinations.
Danny closed his eyes then opened them again, and he was still there. Lying in Steve's bed -- which he sort of remembered from the night before -- with Steve lying beside him, one arm draped over Danny's torso. That, he didn't remember. At all. He looked again, and saw that Steve had placed his arm carefully along the line of skin unmarked by bruising, It looked awkward, and not exactly where Danny would have expected to be held -- but held, and bed, and Steve weren't words he'd ever had to worry about happening in proximity before.
Maybe he could take half a tramadol.
He tried to pull away and go searching for the painkillers, and Steve's eyes flew open. Danny froze. There was something to be said for finding yourself in bed with your partner, but he wasn't sure any of those things were relevant when your partner was the one who put you there.
"I'm sorry. Didn't mean to wake you," he began, then he didn't get any further because Steve pressed him backwards, down on the bed and was looming over him. Danny couldn't quite find the words to ask him what the hell he was doing, then he didn't have the ability because Steve was kissing him.
Danny felt his brain sputter to a halt. He checked himself again -- bruises sore, knee painful but not excruciating, hands tender, and Steve on top of him, kissing him.
He honestly couldn't tell if it was the painkillers or not. He'd certainly dreamed about this, the way Steve's hand would come up -- just like that, and cup the side of his face. The way Steve's mouth would taste of mint and coffee, like he'd been up once already that morning and come back to bed.
When Steve pulled away from him, Danny just stared at him. There was something wrong, Danny realised. Steve was looking down at him, and his eyes.... He didn't look happy. Danny reached up and touched one finger to Steve's bottom lip. "S'ok," he said. "It's just a dream."
Steve's head jerked back a tiny bit, just enough to break the contact, but then he shook his head. "This isn't a dream, Danno."
That didn't make sense -- except of course Danny would dream him saying that, wouldn't he? "Yeah, it's okay," he tried to explain. "The painkillers, hallucinations-- ow! Asshole!" He glared at Steve, then down at his arm where Steve had pinched him, hard. "The hell was that for?"
Steve was smiling, with just a touch of smugness, though there was still that strange, sad look in his eyes. "You're not hallucinating."
"Then how come you look so upset to be kissing me? Even strangers in bars are polite enough to act like they're into it--" Danny found himself pinned to the mattress again, Steve crouched over him and really, Danny hadn't been going anywhere so what the hell was he doing?
Steve's eyes had narrowed and Danny wondered if he wasn't about to be dragged away in handcuffs, next, thrown into a patrol car and taken away. But Steve just said, in a taut, strained whisper, "There are not going to be any more strange guys in bars."
Danny just blinked at him. The weight of Steve on his body -- legs pressing against his hips, keeping Steve's weight up off Danny's body, a line of bruising right where he would have been had he lowered himself another inch. Danny could feel Steve's foot against his good knee, and Steve's hands on his shoulders.
It all felt very much not like a hallucination.
He reached up again to touch Steve's face. His fingers rubbed lightly over the stubble on Steve's cheek, felt the warmth of his skin until Danny let his hand drop. It felt...real.
Danny frowned. "Mind if I ask a question? As the one who woke up in your bed being clung to like an oyster -- or whatever it is octopuses eat. Something with tentacles wrapped around its entire body." Danny glanced down pointedly at Steve's arms and legs. "What exactly are you doing?"
There was a pause, then Steve said, "You're thinking of sea stars. Octopuses don't really--"
Danny jabbed him in the chest. "Why are you here? Why am I here? Why are you kissing me?" He hadn't meant for his voice to just stop, right there at the end, broken and whispered, but he got the words out anyway and if he sounded more lost than angry...he could still blame it on the painkillers, maybe.
For a moment Steve just hovered over him, then he kissed Danny again. Dry lips and mouth closed and it felt like Steve was trying to tell him something. One hand let go of Danny's shoulder and worked its way under Danny's head, then he was being held, and Steve was still kissing him gently with a patience Danny was sure he wouldn't have expected from the man.
When Danny could speak again, he said, "I don't understand." He wasn't sure he minded, but his heart was pounding very fast and he was more than ready for the other shoe to drop, so he could get it over with.
Instead of answering, Steve lowered himself to one side, laying back down on the bed but with one arm still draped over Danny and his leg hooked over Danny's foot. He took another moment to get settled, and Danny felt weirdly like he was trapped, with just those few points of contact.
"I never told you why I had you transferred to 5-0," Steve said.
"Because I annoy you and you're a masochist," Danny pointed out.
There was a pause, then Steve half-nodded his head. "Okay, the other reason."
"Is this going to be relevant to how you ended up with me in your bed and you kissing me? I only ask in case I need to take notes, because I still haven't figured out how that brain of yours works."
Steve gave him a dry look, then said, "Yes, if you'll shut up for five seconds and let me-- I asked for you because you're a good cop and you know what you're doing and I don't know shit about it. I'm a Navy SEAL, and yeah it means I can take on terrorists with nothing but a toothbrush, but I couldn't tell you five things about proper procedure and how to make sure the bad guys actually end up in jail once you've arrested them."
Suddenly Danny's heart wasn't pounding at all. He remembered thinking all those things last night about Steve the Navy Superhero, but he'd known he hadn't said a word of it out loud. He couldn't have, because there were all those other things as well.... But Steve kept talking like Danny wasn't trying to form the words to beg him to stop.
Because Steve was looking at him now, right at him and right through him and this was very, very real and not a dream and Steve was here, beside him and half on top of him and saying these things and Steve had kissed him.
"And maybe you don't know hand to hand because you haven't spent the last ten years practising it every day, but you... Jesus, Danny. I see you and I want to be around you, constantly. I want to--" He stopped and looked down at their bodies, pressed up against each other. "I want to be like this, always. Touching you and being with you and even when you drive me nuts and make me think about running away to Takijistan for a nice, sane firefight, what I really want is to be with you."
Danny's heart still wasn't beating. It was stopped and he was dead, and surely if this was a drug-induced hallucination then...something different would have been happening. Penguins flying through the windows or pink dragons or somebody calling him to say he'd won a million dollars.
Danny swallowed once, trying to find a response to all of that. "Tajikistan is a landlocked country," he finally said. "Why would a Navy SEAL be there?"
Steve rolled his eyes. "Oh for God's sake, Danno. I just-- do I need to kiss you again?"
"It wouldn't hurt. I mean, unless you put your hand on my knee or something." He had no idea where the bravado came from, but either he was hallucinating and he could ask for whatever he wanted, or this was real, and Steve had already kissed him, which meant...maybe he could ask for something he wanted.
He expected -- well, a lot of things, including penguins and dragons and Ed McMahon, but top of the list was for Steve to just kiss him again. Which he did, and Danny decided that all the things crowding into his head like what the hell and why was he doing this and what did any of those words really mean, could go stuff it for a moment.
He was awake, and his knee hurt enough that yes, the painkillers had worn off and he'd be begging for another one very soon -- half a painkiller, just half -- but for right now he was going to go with the apparent nonsensical tangent that was his life, and let Steve McGarrett kiss him like he meant it.
Tomorrow would be soon enough to figure out what any of this meant.