Fic: Pineapples Are Not The Only Fruit (H50, Steve/Danny, M) Part 6
For introduction and warnings, see Part 1
Part 6
Steve's interrogation of Sang Min went very quickly indeed. Unhampered by police regulations or any regard for the Geneva Convention (not that it applied here, strictly speaking but Danny was beyond considering such niceties), he managed to extract information with a speed that impressed Danny as much as it appalled him.
"Would it kill you to stick to the rules for once?" asked Danny, as Steve wiped the blood from his hands.
"It might," was Steve's terse reply. "And it might kill my men, so don't ask me to tiptoe around some criminal's hurt feelings when there's a terrorist to catch."
Danny threw up his hands in defeat and went in search of more coffee. It had been six hours since the shoot-out at the warehouse, and he still hadn't had anything that approximated a decent meal. He hadn't been home -- his bag was still in the back of Chin's SUV -- and if things continued the way they were headed he might not even get home tonight. He poured himself a cup of coffee and swallowed half of it down in one gulp. It was bitter and burned, as usual, but at least it had caffeine.
He had to admit that Steve's methods produced results. Faced with a demonstration of how direct pressure affected bullet wounds, followed by a laundry list of charges, (starting with human trafficking and going all the way down to operating a place of business without a sprinkler system), Sang Min had jumped at the chance to spill everything he knew about Victor Hesse in return for a reduced sentence. Unfortunately he didn't know Hesse's whereabouts, but he did know that one of the options he had arranged for Hesse included boarding a Chinese freighter that was due to arrive in Honolulu the next day.
Steve was already heading out the door when Danny caught up to him.
"Where are you going?"
"Where do you think?"
"You can't just board a foreign ship and search it."
"I can if it's in American waters."
"Do you want to start a diplomatic incident?"
"No, but I don't want a terrorist getting away if I can stop him, either."
"Can we at least liaise with the Coast Guard and Customs people? It's all right for you, but I still have to work with them once you're gone. Don’t make my life any more difficult than it has to be."
Steve looked taken aback, and Danny wondered if he'd given any thought at all to what would happen when the case was over.
"OK. I'll call the governor, see what she can set up."
"Thank you." He tried to make it sounds sincere rather than sarcastic, but he wasn't sure he succeeded.
* * *
Two hours later Danny was in a meeting with representatives from the Honolulu Harbor Authority, the Coast Guard, Customs, FBI and Homeland Security. It was a surprising demonstration of how quickly things could move given a stern gubernatorial directive. The emergency task force was briefed by Steve on Victor Hesse's background and crimes to date, including several terrorist incidents in his native Ireland and around the world and culminating in the murder of Jack McGarrett. The federal agencies, unsurprisingly, had their own files on him, but were unable to add much to Steve's presentation in spite of trying, volubly and at length.
It wasn't an easy meeting -- there were too many differences in the way each agency worked -- but eventually they had worked out a rough plan. The freighter would be allowed to berth as normal, but would be diverted to a neighboring pier that had better lines of sight from neighboring buildings. Lookouts and snipers would be posted from dawn, a SWAT team would be on standby, and there would be several pursuit vehicles and two Coast Guard vessels available if needed.
Rosetti and Gray had turned up at some stage and Steve had been reunited with his favorite toys. He sent them to pre-position some spy-eyes around the dock and scout out the best locations for snipers, while he loaded his tac vest and backpack with a variety of munitions.
"Are you planning on taking out the whole waterfront?" asked Danny in a deceptively casual tone.
"Maybe," was Steve's answer. "I don't know what I'll need until the shooting starts, but the last thing I want is to need something and not have it."
"I get that, but the amount of stuff you're carrying is seriously disturbing."
"So is Hesse."
Well, when you looked at it that way ... Danny sighed and ambled over. "What do you want me to carry?"
Steve glanced up at him. "What are you comfortable carrying?"
"Truthfully, I don't know. Usually I carry cable ties and spare ammo, that's about it."
"Here," Steve handed him some blocks of C4. "I'll carry all the detonators, so this stuff is just plasticene, OK? It won't blow up without a detonator."
"OK, I can cope with that." He loaded it into his vest, making sure that the his spare ammo clips were as far away as possible. Flashlight, nitrile gloves, evidence bags, and a couple of bandages filled the rest of the pockets, and he figured that was about as much preparation as he could cope with.
* * *
They assembled at 6am the next morning. The freighter was due in at eight, and the pilot was heading out now, with the new pier allocation and a glib story about a broken crane. Lookouts had been in position since before dawn, and the rest of the teams would filter in piecemeal over the next hour or so, trying to avoid alerting any spies in the dockyard.
Steve and Danny drove there in Danny's car, while Gray and Rosetti took yet another van. They stationed themselves close to the pier but shielded by a wall of containers, and waited. And waited.
Finally, Kono, who had been stationed as lookout, broke radio silence. "I think we may have something," her voice was soft but the excitement came through all the same.
"Talk to me."
"Car just pulled up at the dock. I have a guy who looks a lot like Hesse getting out of it … yes, he's headed up the ramp. There's a bit of a discussion, some handwaving. I think Hesse is trying to get them to sail early."
"Oh, that's just what I need," groaned Danny.
Steve stood up. "OK, people, let's move in."
Things became a bit of a blur after that. One thing that was clear to Danny though, it was an ambush. A fucking ambush. The minute they got on board, they were confronted with machine guns, and if it hadn't been for the Kevlar vests they'd all have been dead.
Danny hunkered down behind a container and wished they had thought of something useful, like team shoelaces. He had no idea if the feet he could see through the gap belonged to a bad guy or not, and he couldn't radio anyone to see if they had visual because that would give his position away.
Thankfully, before the dilemma became unbearable, the guy spoke into his own radio, and it wasn't in English. Danny took his shot, then scrambled out from behind the container. The guy on the ground took a wild shot but missed, and in less than ten seconds Danny had him disarmed, prone and immobilized with cable ties.
"Kono, where's McGarrett? Do you see him?"
"He's on top of a block of containers, with Hesse."
Shit, that wasn't going to end well. "Can you take the shot?"
"No, they're moving too fast. I'd be just as likely to hit McGarrett."
"OK, which direction?"
"Forward."
After a moment's thought he turned to his right and sprinted in between containers and vehicles and ladders until he saw them both silhouetted against the late morning sun. Neither of them was holding a weapon; they were fighting hand to hand, and from this angle it looked like they were evenly matched.
The next thing he knew, there was a sound of shot from his left and Steve was down.
He turned and emptied his clip into the crewmember, thankful that the man wasn't wearing a vest, watching the center-of-mass shots bloom in red on his shirt. Then there were more shots from up above, but he couldn't see what was happening. He took a moment to reload, because if Hesse had killed Steve then Hesse was going to die, and then hauled himself up over the containers as fast as he possibly could.
Hesse was nowhere in sight, but Steve was down and there was blood everywhere. Danny ran as fast as he could, and hunkered down over him, protecting him as best he could. He hoped that Kono had seen what had happened because he didn't have time to call 911 -- Steve was bleeding to death before his very eyes.
He had to stop the bleeding. It was bright and pulsing, spilling over the container in an ever-expanding pool of red. Danny pulled off his belt and ran it under Steve's leg. The leg was floppy, telling Danny that the bullet had fracture the bone as well, which made him nauseated but didn't stop him getting his improvised tourniquet in place. He tightened it until the bleeding slowed to a trickle, then sat back on his heels, wondering what to do next. He was feeling a bit light-headed himself, probably from the adrenaline.
Steve groaned and coughed. Danny scooped him up and sat behind him, supporting him.
"Danny?"
"Steve!" Danny choked. "Don't you dare die on me."
"Not going to die," whispered Steve, struggling up.
"Good. Where's Hesse?"
"Shot him. Went overboard. I didn't see him shoot me."
"He didn't, it was someone else. I got him though."
"Good for you. You got my back." Danny couldn't see Steve's face, but the gentle pat on his arm told him more than words ever could.
"Yeah, I have your back. Always," he whispered.
Steve subsided into unconsciousness then, and Danny held him until the ambulance came roaring up. Good old Kono, he thought, before he passed out.
* * *
He woke in the ER, where he answered a barrage of questions, submitted to an onslaught of tests and was finally told that he had concussion -- well, duh, he thought -- and they were going to keep him overnight for observation.
He asked about Steve, but information was sketchy. He'd been taken straight to resus and then up to theatre, but no one had heard anything since then. Thankfully, Kono turned up before he went completely mad, and he sent her on a fact-finding mission with orders not to come back until she had something concrete.
"How is he?" he asked, as she parted the curtains on her return.
"He's still in surgery," said Kono. "He took a heavy-caliber bullet in the thigh, it fractured the femur and nicked an artery." She looked serious. "He's very lucky you were there. He could have bled out if you hadn't put that tourniquet on him."
He felt sick all over again at the thought of losing Steve, especially losing him the same way he lost Rachel -- he couldn't have survived that. "Is he going to be OK?"
"I think so. The people I spoke to were fairly confident anyway. He's going to be off-duty for a while, though."
Danny thought about that. If Steve were on sick leave, he might stay in Hawaii a bit longer, and he liked that idea a lot. On the other hand, he was still going to leave one day, and that was going to hurt like a bitch, no matter whether they consummated their bond or not.
"Did we get Hesse?"
Kono's face fell. "We don't know. LtCdr McGarrett shot him, and he fell in the water, but we haven't found the body."
He grimaced. That was bad news. "We still have Sang Min, right?"
"Right," Kono's voice was a little puzzled.
"Get Chin to talk to him again, get the names of anyone Hesse might have mentioned, anyone Sang Min would normally call on to help someone like that. Make sure we keep an eye on anyone he would go to if he makes it ashore."
"Sure."
"And could someone call my brother? I can't find my phone."
"I'll do that. You should rest. That concussion isn't going to heal if you keep moving around."
"It's just a headache," he said with an attempt at a grin. Thankfully, Kono took it at face value and wandered off to find a phone, leaving him with his thoughts.
He talked them into letting him go a couple of hours later -- after surviving a profoundly unsettling encounter with the governor, who had decided to visit all the wounded -- and set about finding out where Steve would be taken once the surgery was finished. He was waiting in the ward when Steve was finally brought down from the recovery room. The orderlies and nurses bustled about making sure that all his drips were running and his observations were stable before letting Danny back in, but then, thankfully, they left them alone for a while.
Danny stood by the bed, looking down at the man he loved. Steve was lying absolutely still against the raised head of the bed, his leg in a complicated traction arrangement and a bulky dressing on his thigh, with a drain running down to a container hooked over the side of the bed. A catheter was draining into a bag on the other side. He had an IV in each arm, one for blood and one for fluids. His face was pale where it wasn’t bruised, and the pallor highlighted how thin he was. Danny felt an overwhelming urge to take him in his arms and make sure that nothing ever harmed him again.
He gently stroked Steve's forehead, murmuring words of comfort and love, and was rewarded by an infinitesimal relaxation of features and the deep, even breaths of true sleep.
He stayed there all night, refusing all suggestions that he leave. He didn't actually say that Steve was his bonded sentinel, but he did remind them of regulations concerning sentinel-guide relationships and the necessity of keeping the partners close if either was injured. That and his police badge seemed to do the trick, and one of the nurses even found a recliner chair for him so that he wouldn't cripple himself overnight.
His arm ached and his head ached and he was sore all over from the pounding he'd taken, but Hesse was dead and Steve was alive and that was enough to make it a good day.
* * *
The hospital started coming to life again around 6am the next morning. Danny groaned and rubbed his gritty eyes. It had been a grueling twenty-four hours and he really needed a shower and a meal (when was the last time he'd eaten more than vending machine food? He couldn't remember) and coffee. Definitely coffee.
After being shooed out of the room while the morning shift looked at Steve's dressings and drains, he went in search of breakfast. Unfortunately Kono was lying in wait for him with a new phone and a bunch of paperwork. He talked to Matty and Grace, reassured them he would be home that afternoon, and then set about writing his statement.
When he got back to Steve's room, he found his sentinel sitting up with a piece of paper in one hand and a phone in the other.
"Danny!" he exclaimed with relief. "I've been trying to call you."
"Yeah, no idea where my phone is. I think it might have fallen overboard yesterday."
"I was worried."
"I'm OK. A bit dinged up but OK." He cast a glance over the traction frame and put his hand tentatively on Steve's. "Better than you, anyway. Kono says you're going to be off duty for a while."
Steve grimaced. "Yeah. They're going to try and nail the femur next week if the artery heals up, that will make things a lot easier. If not, they'll put in an external fixateur." He shrugged. "Either way it's going to be months before I'm fit for duty again."
"I guess you'll be going back to Virginia for rehab," said Danny slowly.
"Well ..." Steve hesitated. "That's one option."
"There are other options?" Danny asked.
"Erm, the governor came to see me this morning," Steve began.
"Yeah, she visited me yesterday. Said congratulations on a job well done and please don't ever do it again."
Steve laughed. "Yes, that more or less. But the thing it, she said that she had been considering what I said about jurisdictional boundaries the other day, and that she was happy with the way the task force came together yesterday. She wants to raise a permanent task force that can do everything when a major case calls for it, with authority across the whole state so we don't have to go through the hoops like we did for this mission."
"Sounds great, if she can make it work. So who's leading, FBI or Homeland Security?"
Steve turned slightly red. "Well, no, she wanted someone who would answer to her, not to Washington."
"So who is it then? Not Aguinaldo, please, I couldn't cope."
"Erm ... she offered me the job."
"She what?" Danny's eyes widened, his brain instantly running ahead with all the possibilities that could mean.
"She said she wants me to set up and head the task force."
"That's ... very courageous of her." He paused. "So, are you going to take it?"
McGarrett nodded. "I thought about turning her down, but then I realized that if I stayed here … well, that you might consider a job with the task-force too. So I said yes."
"You're really going to stay here?"
Steve nodded.
"Are you sure about this? I had you figured for a life-long military career man."
"I'm sure. I spent a long time thinking about it. I love my job, but it's getting harder and harder for me to be a sentinel without a guide. I didn't realize how bad it was getting until I met you and actually felt well for the first time in months … years, maybe." He shrugged. "I thought about asking you to be my permanent guide after the first night in Lihue, but I figured you wouldn't leave your daughter."
"I’d never leave Gracie."
"I know. So I thought there was no way to make it work for us. And … it hurt."
"I know." Danny had been thinking of nothing else the last few days, and he knew exactly how much it hurt.
"And then this offer came out of the blue, and I realized that maybe I could have it all - a job, and a home, and … you. If you want."
Danny thought about it and looked at the man who was his sentinel, his partner, his other half. This was a completely different McGarrett from the gung-ho special operative Danny had met only a week ago. He was quiet, almost shy as he looked up at Danny under his lashes. He sounded so unsure and hesitant that Danny had leaned over and hugged him before he even realized he was moving. "Idiot," he whispered. "I want."
The kiss that followed was clumsy and awkward and made Danny's back ache from leaning over the bed, but it was perfect because it was their first kiss, and nothing could ever be more perfect than a first kiss.
"My guide," Steve said in wonder when they finally broke apart.
"Yes, I am. And you are my sentinel, so no more batting those ridiculously long eyelashes at people when you want favors."
"I do not!"
"You do. Shamelessly," he added, grinning at Steve. "But no more, understand? Those eyelashes are mine, like every other part of you."
"Yours," whispered Steve, and the longing in his voice just made Danny hold him even tighter.
"And I'm yours, babe," he confirmed. "Yours for as long as you'll have me."
"For life, then."
"For life."
They smiled at each other, and Danny thought about how crazy the world was, and how much his life had changed in one short week.
THE END
If you would like to leave feedback, you are welcome to do so at the SteveDannoSlash community or at Dreamwidth (using openID).
Part 6
Steve's interrogation of Sang Min went very quickly indeed. Unhampered by police regulations or any regard for the Geneva Convention (not that it applied here, strictly speaking but Danny was beyond considering such niceties), he managed to extract information with a speed that impressed Danny as much as it appalled him.
"Would it kill you to stick to the rules for once?" asked Danny, as Steve wiped the blood from his hands.
"It might," was Steve's terse reply. "And it might kill my men, so don't ask me to tiptoe around some criminal's hurt feelings when there's a terrorist to catch."
Danny threw up his hands in defeat and went in search of more coffee. It had been six hours since the shoot-out at the warehouse, and he still hadn't had anything that approximated a decent meal. He hadn't been home -- his bag was still in the back of Chin's SUV -- and if things continued the way they were headed he might not even get home tonight. He poured himself a cup of coffee and swallowed half of it down in one gulp. It was bitter and burned, as usual, but at least it had caffeine.
He had to admit that Steve's methods produced results. Faced with a demonstration of how direct pressure affected bullet wounds, followed by a laundry list of charges, (starting with human trafficking and going all the way down to operating a place of business without a sprinkler system), Sang Min had jumped at the chance to spill everything he knew about Victor Hesse in return for a reduced sentence. Unfortunately he didn't know Hesse's whereabouts, but he did know that one of the options he had arranged for Hesse included boarding a Chinese freighter that was due to arrive in Honolulu the next day.
Steve was already heading out the door when Danny caught up to him.
"Where are you going?"
"Where do you think?"
"You can't just board a foreign ship and search it."
"I can if it's in American waters."
"Do you want to start a diplomatic incident?"
"No, but I don't want a terrorist getting away if I can stop him, either."
"Can we at least liaise with the Coast Guard and Customs people? It's all right for you, but I still have to work with them once you're gone. Don’t make my life any more difficult than it has to be."
Steve looked taken aback, and Danny wondered if he'd given any thought at all to what would happen when the case was over.
"OK. I'll call the governor, see what she can set up."
"Thank you." He tried to make it sounds sincere rather than sarcastic, but he wasn't sure he succeeded.
* * *
Two hours later Danny was in a meeting with representatives from the Honolulu Harbor Authority, the Coast Guard, Customs, FBI and Homeland Security. It was a surprising demonstration of how quickly things could move given a stern gubernatorial directive. The emergency task force was briefed by Steve on Victor Hesse's background and crimes to date, including several terrorist incidents in his native Ireland and around the world and culminating in the murder of Jack McGarrett. The federal agencies, unsurprisingly, had their own files on him, but were unable to add much to Steve's presentation in spite of trying, volubly and at length.
It wasn't an easy meeting -- there were too many differences in the way each agency worked -- but eventually they had worked out a rough plan. The freighter would be allowed to berth as normal, but would be diverted to a neighboring pier that had better lines of sight from neighboring buildings. Lookouts and snipers would be posted from dawn, a SWAT team would be on standby, and there would be several pursuit vehicles and two Coast Guard vessels available if needed.
Rosetti and Gray had turned up at some stage and Steve had been reunited with his favorite toys. He sent them to pre-position some spy-eyes around the dock and scout out the best locations for snipers, while he loaded his tac vest and backpack with a variety of munitions.
"Are you planning on taking out the whole waterfront?" asked Danny in a deceptively casual tone.
"Maybe," was Steve's answer. "I don't know what I'll need until the shooting starts, but the last thing I want is to need something and not have it."
"I get that, but the amount of stuff you're carrying is seriously disturbing."
"So is Hesse."
Well, when you looked at it that way ... Danny sighed and ambled over. "What do you want me to carry?"
Steve glanced up at him. "What are you comfortable carrying?"
"Truthfully, I don't know. Usually I carry cable ties and spare ammo, that's about it."
"Here," Steve handed him some blocks of C4. "I'll carry all the detonators, so this stuff is just plasticene, OK? It won't blow up without a detonator."
"OK, I can cope with that." He loaded it into his vest, making sure that the his spare ammo clips were as far away as possible. Flashlight, nitrile gloves, evidence bags, and a couple of bandages filled the rest of the pockets, and he figured that was about as much preparation as he could cope with.
* * *
They assembled at 6am the next morning. The freighter was due in at eight, and the pilot was heading out now, with the new pier allocation and a glib story about a broken crane. Lookouts had been in position since before dawn, and the rest of the teams would filter in piecemeal over the next hour or so, trying to avoid alerting any spies in the dockyard.
Steve and Danny drove there in Danny's car, while Gray and Rosetti took yet another van. They stationed themselves close to the pier but shielded by a wall of containers, and waited. And waited.
Finally, Kono, who had been stationed as lookout, broke radio silence. "I think we may have something," her voice was soft but the excitement came through all the same.
"Talk to me."
"Car just pulled up at the dock. I have a guy who looks a lot like Hesse getting out of it … yes, he's headed up the ramp. There's a bit of a discussion, some handwaving. I think Hesse is trying to get them to sail early."
"Oh, that's just what I need," groaned Danny.
Steve stood up. "OK, people, let's move in."
Things became a bit of a blur after that. One thing that was clear to Danny though, it was an ambush. A fucking ambush. The minute they got on board, they were confronted with machine guns, and if it hadn't been for the Kevlar vests they'd all have been dead.
Danny hunkered down behind a container and wished they had thought of something useful, like team shoelaces. He had no idea if the feet he could see through the gap belonged to a bad guy or not, and he couldn't radio anyone to see if they had visual because that would give his position away.
Thankfully, before the dilemma became unbearable, the guy spoke into his own radio, and it wasn't in English. Danny took his shot, then scrambled out from behind the container. The guy on the ground took a wild shot but missed, and in less than ten seconds Danny had him disarmed, prone and immobilized with cable ties.
"Kono, where's McGarrett? Do you see him?"
"He's on top of a block of containers, with Hesse."
Shit, that wasn't going to end well. "Can you take the shot?"
"No, they're moving too fast. I'd be just as likely to hit McGarrett."
"OK, which direction?"
"Forward."
After a moment's thought he turned to his right and sprinted in between containers and vehicles and ladders until he saw them both silhouetted against the late morning sun. Neither of them was holding a weapon; they were fighting hand to hand, and from this angle it looked like they were evenly matched.
The next thing he knew, there was a sound of shot from his left and Steve was down.
He turned and emptied his clip into the crewmember, thankful that the man wasn't wearing a vest, watching the center-of-mass shots bloom in red on his shirt. Then there were more shots from up above, but he couldn't see what was happening. He took a moment to reload, because if Hesse had killed Steve then Hesse was going to die, and then hauled himself up over the containers as fast as he possibly could.
Hesse was nowhere in sight, but Steve was down and there was blood everywhere. Danny ran as fast as he could, and hunkered down over him, protecting him as best he could. He hoped that Kono had seen what had happened because he didn't have time to call 911 -- Steve was bleeding to death before his very eyes.
He had to stop the bleeding. It was bright and pulsing, spilling over the container in an ever-expanding pool of red. Danny pulled off his belt and ran it under Steve's leg. The leg was floppy, telling Danny that the bullet had fracture the bone as well, which made him nauseated but didn't stop him getting his improvised tourniquet in place. He tightened it until the bleeding slowed to a trickle, then sat back on his heels, wondering what to do next. He was feeling a bit light-headed himself, probably from the adrenaline.
Steve groaned and coughed. Danny scooped him up and sat behind him, supporting him.
"Danny?"
"Steve!" Danny choked. "Don't you dare die on me."
"Not going to die," whispered Steve, struggling up.
"Good. Where's Hesse?"
"Shot him. Went overboard. I didn't see him shoot me."
"He didn't, it was someone else. I got him though."
"Good for you. You got my back." Danny couldn't see Steve's face, but the gentle pat on his arm told him more than words ever could.
"Yeah, I have your back. Always," he whispered.
Steve subsided into unconsciousness then, and Danny held him until the ambulance came roaring up. Good old Kono, he thought, before he passed out.
* * *
He woke in the ER, where he answered a barrage of questions, submitted to an onslaught of tests and was finally told that he had concussion -- well, duh, he thought -- and they were going to keep him overnight for observation.
He asked about Steve, but information was sketchy. He'd been taken straight to resus and then up to theatre, but no one had heard anything since then. Thankfully, Kono turned up before he went completely mad, and he sent her on a fact-finding mission with orders not to come back until she had something concrete.
"How is he?" he asked, as she parted the curtains on her return.
"He's still in surgery," said Kono. "He took a heavy-caliber bullet in the thigh, it fractured the femur and nicked an artery." She looked serious. "He's very lucky you were there. He could have bled out if you hadn't put that tourniquet on him."
He felt sick all over again at the thought of losing Steve, especially losing him the same way he lost Rachel -- he couldn't have survived that. "Is he going to be OK?"
"I think so. The people I spoke to were fairly confident anyway. He's going to be off-duty for a while, though."
Danny thought about that. If Steve were on sick leave, he might stay in Hawaii a bit longer, and he liked that idea a lot. On the other hand, he was still going to leave one day, and that was going to hurt like a bitch, no matter whether they consummated their bond or not.
"Did we get Hesse?"
Kono's face fell. "We don't know. LtCdr McGarrett shot him, and he fell in the water, but we haven't found the body."
He grimaced. That was bad news. "We still have Sang Min, right?"
"Right," Kono's voice was a little puzzled.
"Get Chin to talk to him again, get the names of anyone Hesse might have mentioned, anyone Sang Min would normally call on to help someone like that. Make sure we keep an eye on anyone he would go to if he makes it ashore."
"Sure."
"And could someone call my brother? I can't find my phone."
"I'll do that. You should rest. That concussion isn't going to heal if you keep moving around."
"It's just a headache," he said with an attempt at a grin. Thankfully, Kono took it at face value and wandered off to find a phone, leaving him with his thoughts.
He talked them into letting him go a couple of hours later -- after surviving a profoundly unsettling encounter with the governor, who had decided to visit all the wounded -- and set about finding out where Steve would be taken once the surgery was finished. He was waiting in the ward when Steve was finally brought down from the recovery room. The orderlies and nurses bustled about making sure that all his drips were running and his observations were stable before letting Danny back in, but then, thankfully, they left them alone for a while.
Danny stood by the bed, looking down at the man he loved. Steve was lying absolutely still against the raised head of the bed, his leg in a complicated traction arrangement and a bulky dressing on his thigh, with a drain running down to a container hooked over the side of the bed. A catheter was draining into a bag on the other side. He had an IV in each arm, one for blood and one for fluids. His face was pale where it wasn’t bruised, and the pallor highlighted how thin he was. Danny felt an overwhelming urge to take him in his arms and make sure that nothing ever harmed him again.
He gently stroked Steve's forehead, murmuring words of comfort and love, and was rewarded by an infinitesimal relaxation of features and the deep, even breaths of true sleep.
He stayed there all night, refusing all suggestions that he leave. He didn't actually say that Steve was his bonded sentinel, but he did remind them of regulations concerning sentinel-guide relationships and the necessity of keeping the partners close if either was injured. That and his police badge seemed to do the trick, and one of the nurses even found a recliner chair for him so that he wouldn't cripple himself overnight.
His arm ached and his head ached and he was sore all over from the pounding he'd taken, but Hesse was dead and Steve was alive and that was enough to make it a good day.
* * *
The hospital started coming to life again around 6am the next morning. Danny groaned and rubbed his gritty eyes. It had been a grueling twenty-four hours and he really needed a shower and a meal (when was the last time he'd eaten more than vending machine food? He couldn't remember) and coffee. Definitely coffee.
After being shooed out of the room while the morning shift looked at Steve's dressings and drains, he went in search of breakfast. Unfortunately Kono was lying in wait for him with a new phone and a bunch of paperwork. He talked to Matty and Grace, reassured them he would be home that afternoon, and then set about writing his statement.
When he got back to Steve's room, he found his sentinel sitting up with a piece of paper in one hand and a phone in the other.
"Danny!" he exclaimed with relief. "I've been trying to call you."
"Yeah, no idea where my phone is. I think it might have fallen overboard yesterday."
"I was worried."
"I'm OK. A bit dinged up but OK." He cast a glance over the traction frame and put his hand tentatively on Steve's. "Better than you, anyway. Kono says you're going to be off duty for a while."
Steve grimaced. "Yeah. They're going to try and nail the femur next week if the artery heals up, that will make things a lot easier. If not, they'll put in an external fixateur." He shrugged. "Either way it's going to be months before I'm fit for duty again."
"I guess you'll be going back to Virginia for rehab," said Danny slowly.
"Well ..." Steve hesitated. "That's one option."
"There are other options?" Danny asked.
"Erm, the governor came to see me this morning," Steve began.
"Yeah, she visited me yesterday. Said congratulations on a job well done and please don't ever do it again."
Steve laughed. "Yes, that more or less. But the thing it, she said that she had been considering what I said about jurisdictional boundaries the other day, and that she was happy with the way the task force came together yesterday. She wants to raise a permanent task force that can do everything when a major case calls for it, with authority across the whole state so we don't have to go through the hoops like we did for this mission."
"Sounds great, if she can make it work. So who's leading, FBI or Homeland Security?"
Steve turned slightly red. "Well, no, she wanted someone who would answer to her, not to Washington."
"So who is it then? Not Aguinaldo, please, I couldn't cope."
"Erm ... she offered me the job."
"She what?" Danny's eyes widened, his brain instantly running ahead with all the possibilities that could mean.
"She said she wants me to set up and head the task force."
"That's ... very courageous of her." He paused. "So, are you going to take it?"
McGarrett nodded. "I thought about turning her down, but then I realized that if I stayed here … well, that you might consider a job with the task-force too. So I said yes."
"You're really going to stay here?"
Steve nodded.
"Are you sure about this? I had you figured for a life-long military career man."
"I'm sure. I spent a long time thinking about it. I love my job, but it's getting harder and harder for me to be a sentinel without a guide. I didn't realize how bad it was getting until I met you and actually felt well for the first time in months … years, maybe." He shrugged. "I thought about asking you to be my permanent guide after the first night in Lihue, but I figured you wouldn't leave your daughter."
"I’d never leave Gracie."
"I know. So I thought there was no way to make it work for us. And … it hurt."
"I know." Danny had been thinking of nothing else the last few days, and he knew exactly how much it hurt.
"And then this offer came out of the blue, and I realized that maybe I could have it all - a job, and a home, and … you. If you want."
Danny thought about it and looked at the man who was his sentinel, his partner, his other half. This was a completely different McGarrett from the gung-ho special operative Danny had met only a week ago. He was quiet, almost shy as he looked up at Danny under his lashes. He sounded so unsure and hesitant that Danny had leaned over and hugged him before he even realized he was moving. "Idiot," he whispered. "I want."
The kiss that followed was clumsy and awkward and made Danny's back ache from leaning over the bed, but it was perfect because it was their first kiss, and nothing could ever be more perfect than a first kiss.
"My guide," Steve said in wonder when they finally broke apart.
"Yes, I am. And you are my sentinel, so no more batting those ridiculously long eyelashes at people when you want favors."
"I do not!"
"You do. Shamelessly," he added, grinning at Steve. "But no more, understand? Those eyelashes are mine, like every other part of you."
"Yours," whispered Steve, and the longing in his voice just made Danny hold him even tighter.
"And I'm yours, babe," he confirmed. "Yours for as long as you'll have me."
"For life, then."
"For life."
They smiled at each other, and Danny thought about how crazy the world was, and how much his life had changed in one short week.
THE END
If you would like to leave feedback, you are welcome to do so at the SteveDannoSlash community or at Dreamwidth (using openID).