Wake Me Up Before You Go
Title: Wake Me Up Before You Go
Summary: Danny's torn ACL is hurting a lot more than he lets on, which leads to serious unforeseen consequences. Written for 10_hurt_comfort for the prompt “overdose.”
Characters: Steve/Danny, with brief appearances by Chin and Kono. This is pre-slash as far as I'm concerned, but really, nothing happens in that department. So, you know, YMMV.
Rating: PG-13 for swearing
Wordcount: 5, 550
Disclaimer: Alas, not mine. If they were... well, let's just say I probably wouldn't be writing fic about them right now.
Warnings: Swearing, non-graphic description of a drug overdose.
Neurotic Author's Note #1: The muse decreed: “Thou shalt sit down and write more h/c for H50!” I have learned not to argue with her. She fights dirty. I still have scars.
Neurotic Author's Note #2: Unbeta'd, more shameless h/c. This time I decided to beat up on Danno for a while, since I hadn't done that since my first H50 fic. Stop looking at me like that, okay? H/c is my thing, I own it proudly! *cough*
Neurotic Author's Note #3: I owe endless and undying thanks to pkwench, who puts up with my endless pestering and questioning and treating of her like my personal medical encyclopedia. She is a rockstar! Mistakes made in medical fact are all to be attributed to me and my ignorance as well as my inability to properly understand what the aforementioned lovely medical professional has told me.
“Of all the witnesses you could have found, it had to be the one who lives in a fourth-floor walk-up. Not only that, but it was a complete wash. A terrified housewife with too many cats and a serious persecution complex, which means I climbed up and down one hundred and forty-four steps -and yes, I counted. It’s like you have fun in finding new and wacky ways to make our lives harder. Why am I even surprised?”
Danny’s in full-blown rant mode, having already made his displeasure known as vocally as possible all the way up the stairs to the fourth floor and now all the way back down, and Steve’s ears are still ringing from the slight echo in the stairwell. At least now that they’re outside his voice isn’t as loud, muted by the sound of the wind and the outdoors, the call of sea birds and the dull rumble of cars on the street.
“Seriously, why does everything with you have to be difficult?” he demands, limping behind Steve as they make their way back toward the car, leaning heavily on his cane.
“I could ask you the same question, Danno.”
“I asked first.”
“That’s not how it works.”
“You’re going to pull rank on me for a rhetorical question?” Danny winces visibly as he opens the passenger-side door and eases himself into the seat, and Steve sees him fish his prescription out of his pocket, shake two pills in to the palm of his hand and dry-swallow them.
“How’s the leg?”
“I was thinking of taking up tap dancing. How do you think it is?” Danny snaps, and Steve raises both hands in a gesture of surrender.
“Sorry I asked.” And it’s true, mostly. He’s not really sorry he asked, but he is sorry that his partner is in pain and that there’s really very little anyone can do about it. He’s not about to say that where anyone can hear him, though.
Danny seems to run out of steam after that, for once. That’s not to say that he doesn’t talk at all on the way back to the office, but he limits himself to the case, arguing the merits back and forth with himself, which Steve still finds to be an endless source of amusement. It’s like watching one of those puppet shows that used to take place on the street, and he always half-expects Danny to whip out one of those toy bats and start hitting something with it.
“I still don’t get what the connection is,” Danny says, rubbing absently at his knee. “We’ve got a dead prostitute and a known smuggler on the run, and on the surface this should all tie up neatly with a big red bow and a Hallmark card, except that the present turned out to be a live Bengal tiger which clawed its way out of the box and now all we’ve got is some shredded ribbon and an empty box.”
“Do you even understand your own metaphors?”
“Of course. You mean you don’t? What do they teach you in the army, anyway?”
“It’s the navy,” Steve sighs. He knows Danny does it just to get his goat, but the reflex is there nonetheless. It’s Pavlovian. Good thing he likes his partner, otherwise he might have throttled him a long time ago.
“Too busy learning to kill people with an oyster shell and half a set of chopsticks, I guess,” Danny continues blithely, as though he hasn’t said a word. “I vote we go back to the drawing board, see if we can’t trace something back to the original shipment of weapons. Maybe Kono was able to put together something from the last crime scene.”
“Not much to go on.”
“No, but it’s better than what we’ve got right now, which is diddly-squat.”
Kono, as it turns out, has found a damaged phone SIM card, from which Chin Ho then manages to salvage a list of phone numbers. Most of them are for other cell phones, but one leads them back to what’s meant to be an empty warehouse. Of course, empty warehouses are never as empty as they ought to be, especially not in their line of work, and by the end of their preliminary investigation they’re pinned down at one end of the warehouse and Danny is using the most colourful language he can come up with to describe this latest epic clusterfuck.
“Cover me,” Steve interrupts, leaving Danny sputtering in his wake.
Luckily Danny can sputter indignantly and shoot straight at the same time, and so Steve has no trouble sprinting to the other side of the warehouse to take down the remaining bad guys. He doesn’t get shot, and as far as he can tell Danny’s still swearing and providing cover fire, so that’s a really good sign too. Five minutes later, and their opponents are either fled, in cuffs or unconscious, and he counts that entirely as a win. Danny’s still cursing a blue streak, kneeling on his good leg right on the spine of a hapless gunman who got too close.
“Goddammit, McGarrett, is it too much to ask that for once we wait for back-up? One of these days I won’t be able to cover you, and then HPD will be mourning the loss of one of its finest and you, and where will we be then?”
“Dead, according to your theory.”
Danny grimaces as he hauls the scumbag off the ground. “That’s right. Talk about leaving my kid an orphan like it’s some huge joke. That’s real classy, Steve. Just fantastic. You want to maybe take this piece of garbage and give him to the boys outside? I thought I heard sirens. Ten minutes too late, as usual.”
“You don’t want to book ‘em, Danno?”
“You know, that wasn’t even funny the first time you used it. Please take the fucking suspect and book him before I fall over, McGarrett,” Danny snarls, and that’s when Steve notices that he’s putting almost no weight at all on his bad leg.
He nods, steps forward and grabs the guy roughly enough that he might -with a wrong move- accidentally dislocate his shoulder. “You okay?” he directs the question at his partner.
“Give me a second and I’ll be turning cartwheels,” Danny hobbles painfully past a pile of machine parts, scoops up his cane from where he dropped it, then gestures theatrically. “After you, please.”
“You need a hand?”
“I’m a big girl, McGarrett, I think I can make it to the car on my own steam while you wrangle Billy the Kid, there.”
Danny submits with ill-grace to the paramedics who show up on scene and insist on giving him a once-over, but once it’s obvious that the only thing wrong with him is a slightly aggravated ACL injury they reluctantly agree to let him be. He dry-swallows another couple of painkillers as Steve drives them back to the office, irritably points out that they’re not in a race and that he’d rather not be killed after the bad guys have been put away, thank you very much, and does a very creditable imitation of a wounded badger for the rest of the car ride back. Steve can understand it, though. He tore his ACL a few years back on a mission, and it hurts like a son of a bitch even with complete rest, which Danny assuredly hasn’t been getting. So he doesn’t say anything when Danny drags over a spare chair on which to prop his leg while they do paperwork, but he pulls a chemical cold pack out of the first aid kit he keeps under his desk and wordlessly hands it to his partner.
“Thank you,” Danny looks surprised and not a little touched, and Steve grins and ducks his head, absurdly pleased at being the one to break his partner of his foul mood.
“Don’t mention it. Why don’t you take off early today? Go home, rest up, take proper care of that knee for a little while…”
Danny looks as though he’s about to protest, but a wrong movement has him wincing and hissing in pain, and his shoulders slump in defeat. “Yeah, okay. I guess I can take a lot of this home with me, fill it out there,” he flicks a hand in the direction of the stack of files in front of him.
“I didn’t mean work from home, Danno. I meant take the afternoon off.”
He gets a disdainful look as Danny pushes himself painfully to his feet. “Like I’m going to trust you to get the paperwork done. I know that as soon as I turn my back you’ll be bungee jumping off the roof of a nearby building in some misguided attempt to bring a criminal to justice without so much as a proper arrest warrant to your name,” he says, making a wide sweep with one arm by way of illustration.
“Bungee jumping?”
“Or something,” Danny throws a hand up in the air, presumably to denote his own cluelessness when it comes to the particular mad antics of Steve McGarrett in his absence. “Whatever it is, I’m sure it would be dramatic and involve multiple explosions and maybe a marching band, but definitely no paperwork.”
“How well you know me,” Steve rejoins drily. “You want a lift home?”
“I can manage.” Danny pockets the bottle of prescription painkillers he’s been keeping in the top drawer of his desk -a spare to the one he keeps in his jacket pocket, Steve realizes- and limps toward the door. “I feel like I shouldn’t be encouraging you to drive my car, anyway.”
Steve shrugs, a little stung, not that there’s any real reason to be. Danny’s like this all the time. “Suit yourself.”
“See you tomorrow.”
He nods, goes back to his desk, and just to prove to Danny how wrong he is, he makes a point of carefully filling out all his forms. By the end of the evening he has a splitting headache, and the only thing he wants is to be out of the office and to sit somewhere comfortable with a beer. Luckily Kono and Chin appear to be of exactly the same mind, and it has become something of a tradition to go out and celebrate the end of a case with beers, even when the case hasn’t gone to court yet. Their part of the job is done, and celebrating is only natural. He pulls out his cell phone, hesitates over Danny’s name in the speed dial list.
“Go ahead and call him, boss,” Kono smiles slyly when she sees his hesitation. “I know he bitches about it, but he likes this. He’ll want to come. Besides, you’ll spend the next week kicking yourself if you don’t at least invite him.”
He considers glaring at her, then thinks better of it. Kono’s been dropping not-so-subtle hints for weeks now, and obviously thinks she’s very very clever, and right now he feels like drop-kicking her clever and admittedly attractive behind down the nearest flight of stairs. He settles for shrugging and hitting ‘dial’ on his phone. There’s a ring, a second, a third, and then the phone goes to voicemail. He frowns, hangs up, dials again, and gets the same result.
“Hey, Danno, it’s Steve. Me, Kono and Chin are heading to the usual place for beers, and, uh, I was hoping -well, wondering… Anyway, if you get this and you want to join us, you know where to find us. Uh, talk to you later, I guess.”
He flips the phone shut, and finds Kono grinning at him. “What?” he snaps.
“Nothing,” she keeps grinning, then leans back in her chair and takes a long pull from her beer. Chin Ho is grinning too, and Steve feels a surge of irritation.
“No, seriously, what?”¸
Chin shrugs, but keeps the smug expression. “It’s too bad he won’t be joining us. It’s not the same without him.”
Steve is beginning to have the distinct impression that there’s a big joke being had at his expense. “I gave him the rest of the day off. He can do whatever he wants with it.”
“Of course,” Kono agrees.
He pointedly drops the whole conversation, orders another beer, and spends the rest of the evening getting pleasantly buzzed in the company of his friends.
The next morning, Danny isn’t at work. Chin and Kono arrive well before him, which is highly unusual, because typically the only member of their team who ever arrives before Danny is Steve himself, and that’s only because he can’t seem to rid himself of the habits ingrained in him by years in the Navy.
“Maybe he’s just running late,” Kono says, trying to be the voice of reason, but he can see she’s worried. People not showing up when they’re supposed to, in their particular line of work, is never a good sign.
Steve shrugs, dials Danny’s cell phone anyway. It rings three times and goes to voicemail. “Danny, it’s Steve. Where are you? Call me when you get this.” He flips his phone shut. “Chin, his phone’s on, wherever it is. Get me a twenty on it, would you?”
Chin nods, fingers flying over his keyboard. “Already on it.” He types for a few seconds more. “Got it. Looks like he’s at home. Or his phone is, anyway.”
“He wouldn’t leave his phone behind, though,” Kono points out. “Not unless the battery was dead.”
“He keeps a spare on the charger,” Steve reminds her. Danny is a little OCD like that, not that Steve can blame him. There’s nothing like having your phone crap out on you in the middle of a case to put a damper on your day, and Danny doesn’t have a land line at home. He clips his phone back onto his belt. “I’m going to check on him. Call me if he shows up?”
“Of course.”
He makes record time, trying not to run down the list of worst-case scenarios in his mind -Danny dead, Danny taken hostage, Danny lying injured somewhere and unable to call for help- and failing miserably. Danny would be incoherent with rage at the way Steve negotiates the streets on the way to his house, but then, Danny’s not here, and is in fact the direct reason for the extra speed this time. The irony isn’t lost on Steve as he pulls up outside the apartment building and runs up the stairs, hammering on the door.
“Danny! Danny it’s me, you in there?”
There’s no answer, but the door is locked, which at the very least means that no one unauthorized got in there. The lock itself is laughable, and it takes him less than thirty seconds to pick it and shoulder the door open.
“Danny?”
The sofa-bed is still pulled out, and there’s a familiar shape under the blanket. Danny’s curled on his side, turned three-quarters of the way into his pillow, but he doesn’t so much as twitch at the sound of the intrusion, and Steve doesn’t know whether to be relieved that he hasn’t been dragged out of his bed to be murdered somewhere they’d never find him, or panic-stricken because he’s apparently sick enough that not even the sound of someone breaking in can rouse him. It’s a matter of three steps to get to the bed -Steve still doesn’t understand how he can stand to live like this- and Steve puts a knee on the thin mattress, bends over to shake him by the shoulder.
“Hey, Danno, you okay?”
Still nothing. Danny’s warm to the touch, but his pulse flutters erratically under Steve’s fingers, his breathing shallow, far too slow for Steve’s liking. Steve shakes him harder, and after another anxious minute he does rouse a bit, eyelids fluttering.
“Danny! What the hell?”
But all he gets is a slightly incoherent mumble, and Danny just shifts a bit and sinks back into the same lethargic sleep as before. Steve swears under his breath, pulls out his cell phone and dials 911, barking the address as well as his own identification at the operator, who, bless her competent soul, doesn’t let his tone ruffle her in the slightest.
“I have an ambulance on the way, Commander. Can you tell me if he’s taken anything? Any kind of drugs?”
“Danny doesn’t do -shit!” his eyes land on the bottle of painkillers, standing innocently next to the lamp on the bedside table. “Painkillers. He tore his ACL and he’s been taking them for a while.” He reaches for the bottle. “Oxycodone.”
“Can you tell how many he took?”
He checks the label, pries open the lid and tries a quick count. “I can’t tell. There’s only a few left, but he’s had them for a while.”
“Okay. ETA is another five minutes, I just need you to monitor his breathing, make sure he doesn’t go into respiratory arrest.”
“Right.”
It’s some of the worst few minutes of his life, ranking right up there with listening to his father’s last words over the phone. He switches the phone over to speaker, sits on the bed next to his partner and rolls him onto his back, checks his airways, and waits for him to stop breathing. The paperwork is sitting on a chair nearby, untouched, and something twists unpleasantly in his chest at the sight.
“Jesus, Danno, what did you do?” he asks quietly.
He’s never been so relieved at the arrival of paramedics before, is all too glad to step back and let them do their jobs, and agrees to follow the ambulance to the hospital. He has to force himself not to tailgate them all the way there, dialing the office one-handed as he drives to update Chin and Kono on the situation.
They’re already working on Danny by the time he’s able to park and sprint toward the door, and he finds himself caught behind the emergency room doors, watching through the glass as a nurse starts hooking his friend up to a monitor. There’s surprisingly little activity for what struck him as a pretty dire situation. He somehow expected there to be a flurry of activity around Danny’s bed, but there’s only a handful of people, working methodically to check his vital signs, strapping an oxygen mask to his face, taking notes. He kind of wishes they’d panic a bit, which is ridiculous, he tells himself sharply. Panicking is bad.
He ends up pacing in front of the doors, trying to stay out of people's way and earning himself more than a few glares before a doctor finally emerges from the room, looking more than a little startled when he all but throws himself at her. She raises an eyebrow, checks her notes.
“You must be Commander McGarrett, I take it?”
“Yes.” Strangling Danny's attending physician for stating the obvious would be very, very bad, he reminds himself. “How is he? What's happening?”
She makes a show of checking her notes again, and he forces himself to take an 'at ease' stance if only to keep himself calm and not do something they'd both regret. “The original diagnosis appears to have been correct. Your, uh, friend-”
“Partner.”
“Partner,” she tilts her head in acknowledgment, “overdosed on his prescription pain medication. He's lucky -his breathing doesn't appear badly compromised, and so we're treating this as non-aggressively as we can. We'll be monitoring him closely for the next few hours until he wakes up, and we'll have some tests to run then, but for now I'd say things are looking up.”
Steve lets out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. “So he's going to be okay?”
“It looks like it.” She smiles at him, looking genuinely pleased, and he decides that he definitely likes her. “Tell me,” her expression sobers. “Have you noticed any changes in his behaviour lately? Mood swings? Depression?”
He makes a face that he's pretty sure Danny would have a colourful name for. “Danny's whole personality is a mood swing. No,” he hastens to add. “I mean, nothing different. He's always been kind of... mercurial.”
She nods, jots down a note. “Has anything happened lately that you know of, either personally or professionally, that would explain why he would do something like this?”
“What?” That's when he realizes what she's driving at. “No! Of course not. He's... he wouldn't. I mean... I don't know. He never said...” his stomach twists at the thought. “No, I don't think it's that. I... he said he was coming in today. He said 'See you tomorrow.' He wouldn't have said that if he wasn't planning to come in. Besides, wouldn't he have taken all the pills if he wanted...” he can't bring himself to finish the thought. “I just think his knee was hurting,” he says lamely.
“All right,” the doctor gives him a sympathetic look. “We'll keep an eye on him for now, and we'll try to get to the bottom of the why's of the situation later, when he's awake and can talk to us. You can go in if you'd like, but he won't be waking up for a couple of hours at least.”
He doesn't have to be told twice, just pushes right past her and through the doors. There's a chair by one of the walls, and he drags it over to the bed, sits as close to Danny as he can manage without actually being physically on the bed. He doesn't remember ever seeing Danny still, not for this long. He's always in motion, always doing something, his hands always gesturing -pointing, waving, windmilling, chopping at the air to emphasize what he's saying. Seeing him like this feels wrong, alien even. Steve reaches over and takes the hand not currently hooked up to the monitors, feels its weight in his palm, limp and unresisting, and tries to take some comfort from the warmth he can still feel in Danny's fingers.
“Come on, Danno, wake up,” he whispers, even though he knows it's going to take longer than that. Part of him is sort of hoping that Danny will just pull a Snow White, that now that they know what's wrong, he'll just sit up and declare it all a mistake, and they'll all live happily ever after. Of course, Snow White married her prince, and they can't exactly... he nips that thought neatly in the bud, scrubs at his face with his free hand. “You're driving me nuts,” he tells the still figure on the bed. “I'm losing my mind, and it's your fault.”
He stops talking after that. It feels too weird, like Danny's in a coma or dying, and he can't stomach the notion. Once today was enough, he thinks. Once too many. He hangs onto Danny's hand, figuring his partner won't remember this anyway, and the contact is reassuring, reminding him that Danny's still here, still present, even if he's not aware of his surroundings. The minutes go by, agonizingly slowly, and nothing changes. The machines whirr and beep quietly, and nurses come and go without much comment. Every now and then someone will suggest he take a break, go and get himself a coffee, but the idea that Danny might wake up in a strange place without so much as a familiar face to show him that everything is okay is simply untenable. Kono makes a brief appearance in the early afternoon, just long enough to get an update on Danny's condition -no change yet- and brings him a cup of coffee and a muffin before going back to the office, a quick squeeze of his shoulder the only outward indication of everything that's going through her mind.
An hour and a half later, Danny's breathing and heart rate speed up, just a little, and Steve feels his fingers twitch, ever so slightly.
“Danny?” He stands up, leaning forward in anticipation as Danny moves, just shifting his weight a little, eyelids fluttering in earnest. “Come on, Danno, open your eyes for me. That's it.”
A moment later a pair of very confused-looking blue eyes is staring at him over the oxygen mask, and Steve comes perilously close to weeping for sheer joy for the first time in his life. Instead he pats his partner's knee.
“Welcome back, Danno. Jesus Christ, you scared the living hell out of me. What the hell were you thinking?”
Danny just blinks at him, then reaches up with a shaky hand to pull at the oxygen mask, and Steve has to grab his wrist hastily.
“No! No no, none of that. That stays on until the doctors say it can come off. You can tell me later. Start thinking about your answer, because it had better be damned good. Christ,” he sinks back into his chair, still holding onto Danny's wrist, lets his head drop. When he looks up again, he sees that Danny's eyes have closed again.
The oxygen mask gets replaced with a nasal cannula, and eventually the drugs begin to wear off in earnest. The doctor makes a reappearance when Danny's able to do more than just blink dazedly, and starts questioning, jotting down notes without so much as looking at her patient.
“Do you remember taking the pills, Mr. Williams?”
Danny's eyes slide over to Steve. “I guess. Yeah.”
“You guess?”
He shrugs. “I dunno. It's kind of fuzzy.”
She nods. “That can happen, sometimes. Can you tell me how you were feeling yesterday?”
Another shrug. “I dunno. I was tired. My knee hurt... What kind of question is that?”
Steve should bite his tongue, but he can't. “She wants to know if you did it on purpose, Danno.”
“What?”
The doctor glares at Steve, but he doesn't care. “It's procedure, Mr. Williams. I have to make sure you're not in any further danger.”
“Suicide?” Danny says, his expression horrified.
“It wasn't, then?”
“No!” Danny struggles to sit up, settles back when Steve puts a hand on his shoulder. “No, I... I don't remember. My knee was killing me, and I've had this stuff before, and last time the doctor said I could double up on the pills if they weren't working properly, and it was fine. It was fine the last time...” he concludes faintly. Steve squeezes his hand, and the grateful look he gets in return gives him the same unpleasant clenching feeling in his chest as before.
The doctor is nodding, though, apparently satisfied. “I'd have to see your prescriptions to be sure, but it sounds as though you were given a stronger dosage this time around, and didn't realize it. I cannot stress enough, though, that it's never good to alter your own dosage without consulting a doctor first.”
“Obviously,” Danny says a bit drily, and Steve kind of wants to kiss him in that moment, except for how they're in a hospital and there's someone else in the room and Danny almost died, and Danny obviously doesn't feel that way about him at all. He has an ex-wife and a kid which are a definite, physical testimony to that.
“All right. I think it's safe to say you'll probably be able to go home in another few hours. Someone from psych will be coming to talk to you, just as a matter of protocol, and we have to run a few more tests, just to make sure there won't be any unpleasant surprises following today.”
“Wouldn't want that,” Danny murmurs as she takes her leave. He looks over at Steve once they're alone. “You okay?”
Abruptly Steve pushes away from the bed, gets up, whirls, and stops just short of throwing the hardest punch he can manage at the closest wall. He paces to the door, comes back, and wishes there were something in here apart from delicate electronic equipment that he could kick.
“Am I okay?”
Danny nods. “Yes”
“You nearly died from an overdose, and you want to know if I'm okay? Jesus fucking Christ, Danno!” He feels his voice rise to a yell, can't help it, doesn't really want to help it if he's honest with himself. “You stop answering your phone, won't answer your door... I thought you'd been kidnapped, or murdered or... God. You were practically in a coma when I found you. I thought you were dead!”
Danny pushes himself up onto his elbows, then reaches out tentatively with one hand. “Sorry.”
“Sorry?” For all he wants to bolt back out of the room, he finds himself taking Danny's hand in his, interlocking their fingers. “This has been one of the worst days of my life, and all you have is sorry?” He laughs mirthlessly, chokes, and comes really damned close to losing it entirely when Danny squeezes his hand.
“It's sort of the best I can do on short notice,” he manages a weak smile. “But for what it's worth, I am really sorry. I didn't... I wanted it to stop hurting, and I just lost track, you know? It's never happened before.”
“God.” The conversation is taking a turn for the surreal. Danny shouldn't be the one apologizing. “I... shit, I shouldn't even be making you apologize at all. I pushed you, and you never complained -or, yeah, you complained, but I didn't take it seriously, didn't realize how much you...” he rubs his free hand over his mouth, looks away. “I am so fucking sorry, Danno. I can't even tell you.”
There's a moment of silence, then to his surprise Danny throws back his head and laughs. Full-out laughs, as though he's heard the best joke in history. For a second Steve just stares, flummoxed, then feels his face break out into a smile in spite of himself.
“What? I spill my guts out here, and you laugh at me?” he swats Danny's knee, smile turning into a full-blown grin. “What is wrong with you?”
Still chortling, Danny pulls himself together. “McGarrett, if I didn't have doubts about you before, I would definitely have them now. I don't know if you noticed, but I am a grown man. A policeman and a father, no less. I even have my very own Diner's Club card. I am fully capable of taking responsibility for my own damned mistakes, and I certainly don't need you to shoulder the burden for me,” he jabs a finger at Steve's chest for emphasis, and Steve is pretty sure it's the most beautiful gesture he's ever seen. “You, my friend, need serious help. When I get home, I will give you the card of a very good therapist.”
“You can't read the label on a prescription, and I need therapy?”
Danny makes a show of wincing, and mimes being stabbed through the heart. “Ouch, McGarrett. That was a very low blow.”
“Yeah, well, you deserve it,” Steve bites his lip, the enormity of the situation coming over him like a cold wave again. “Don't do it again, okay?”
“Does this mean I get the week off?”
Steve rolls his eyes. “Yes. As much time off until your knee is in perfect working condition. And you're going to be spending it at my house, where I can keep an eye on you.”
“I'm not the one who needs supervision.”
“Being rushed to the ER in an ambulance says different.”
“It was a one-time thing.”
“This isn't negotiable,” Steve states flatly, and then follows Danny's gaze downward to where he's still got his fingers laced with his partners'. He swallows, figures that if he's faced down terrorists in the worst hell-holes of the world, he can damned well say this once, even if it come out more like a really strangled whisper. “I can't lose you too.”
He's staring at the bed, at the worn hospital sheet, because he can't -won't- look to see what kind of expression he's just put on Danny's face. There's a tug on his hand, which he ignores, then a second, more insistent one, because apparently Danny Williams is a force to be ignored at one's peril. He raises his head carefully, steals a glance, and for once, Danny doesn't say a word.
But one look at the bright blue eyes staring right back at him suggests that everything he wants is right here, his for the asking.
Summary: Danny's torn ACL is hurting a lot more than he lets on, which leads to serious unforeseen consequences. Written for 10_hurt_comfort for the prompt “overdose.”
Characters: Steve/Danny, with brief appearances by Chin and Kono. This is pre-slash as far as I'm concerned, but really, nothing happens in that department. So, you know, YMMV.
Rating: PG-13 for swearing
Wordcount: 5, 550
Disclaimer: Alas, not mine. If they were... well, let's just say I probably wouldn't be writing fic about them right now.
Warnings: Swearing, non-graphic description of a drug overdose.
Neurotic Author's Note #1: The muse decreed: “Thou shalt sit down and write more h/c for H50!” I have learned not to argue with her. She fights dirty. I still have scars.
Neurotic Author's Note #2: Unbeta'd, more shameless h/c. This time I decided to beat up on Danno for a while, since I hadn't done that since my first H50 fic. Stop looking at me like that, okay? H/c is my thing, I own it proudly! *cough*
Neurotic Author's Note #3: I owe endless and undying thanks to pkwench, who puts up with my endless pestering and questioning and treating of her like my personal medical encyclopedia. She is a rockstar! Mistakes made in medical fact are all to be attributed to me and my ignorance as well as my inability to properly understand what the aforementioned lovely medical professional has told me.
“Of all the witnesses you could have found, it had to be the one who lives in a fourth-floor walk-up. Not only that, but it was a complete wash. A terrified housewife with too many cats and a serious persecution complex, which means I climbed up and down one hundred and forty-four steps -and yes, I counted. It’s like you have fun in finding new and wacky ways to make our lives harder. Why am I even surprised?”
Danny’s in full-blown rant mode, having already made his displeasure known as vocally as possible all the way up the stairs to the fourth floor and now all the way back down, and Steve’s ears are still ringing from the slight echo in the stairwell. At least now that they’re outside his voice isn’t as loud, muted by the sound of the wind and the outdoors, the call of sea birds and the dull rumble of cars on the street.
“Seriously, why does everything with you have to be difficult?” he demands, limping behind Steve as they make their way back toward the car, leaning heavily on his cane.
“I could ask you the same question, Danno.”
“I asked first.”
“That’s not how it works.”
“You’re going to pull rank on me for a rhetorical question?” Danny winces visibly as he opens the passenger-side door and eases himself into the seat, and Steve sees him fish his prescription out of his pocket, shake two pills in to the palm of his hand and dry-swallow them.
“How’s the leg?”
“I was thinking of taking up tap dancing. How do you think it is?” Danny snaps, and Steve raises both hands in a gesture of surrender.
“Sorry I asked.” And it’s true, mostly. He’s not really sorry he asked, but he is sorry that his partner is in pain and that there’s really very little anyone can do about it. He’s not about to say that where anyone can hear him, though.
Danny seems to run out of steam after that, for once. That’s not to say that he doesn’t talk at all on the way back to the office, but he limits himself to the case, arguing the merits back and forth with himself, which Steve still finds to be an endless source of amusement. It’s like watching one of those puppet shows that used to take place on the street, and he always half-expects Danny to whip out one of those toy bats and start hitting something with it.
“I still don’t get what the connection is,” Danny says, rubbing absently at his knee. “We’ve got a dead prostitute and a known smuggler on the run, and on the surface this should all tie up neatly with a big red bow and a Hallmark card, except that the present turned out to be a live Bengal tiger which clawed its way out of the box and now all we’ve got is some shredded ribbon and an empty box.”
“Do you even understand your own metaphors?”
“Of course. You mean you don’t? What do they teach you in the army, anyway?”
“It’s the navy,” Steve sighs. He knows Danny does it just to get his goat, but the reflex is there nonetheless. It’s Pavlovian. Good thing he likes his partner, otherwise he might have throttled him a long time ago.
“Too busy learning to kill people with an oyster shell and half a set of chopsticks, I guess,” Danny continues blithely, as though he hasn’t said a word. “I vote we go back to the drawing board, see if we can’t trace something back to the original shipment of weapons. Maybe Kono was able to put together something from the last crime scene.”
“Not much to go on.”
“No, but it’s better than what we’ve got right now, which is diddly-squat.”
Kono, as it turns out, has found a damaged phone SIM card, from which Chin Ho then manages to salvage a list of phone numbers. Most of them are for other cell phones, but one leads them back to what’s meant to be an empty warehouse. Of course, empty warehouses are never as empty as they ought to be, especially not in their line of work, and by the end of their preliminary investigation they’re pinned down at one end of the warehouse and Danny is using the most colourful language he can come up with to describe this latest epic clusterfuck.
“Cover me,” Steve interrupts, leaving Danny sputtering in his wake.
Luckily Danny can sputter indignantly and shoot straight at the same time, and so Steve has no trouble sprinting to the other side of the warehouse to take down the remaining bad guys. He doesn’t get shot, and as far as he can tell Danny’s still swearing and providing cover fire, so that’s a really good sign too. Five minutes later, and their opponents are either fled, in cuffs or unconscious, and he counts that entirely as a win. Danny’s still cursing a blue streak, kneeling on his good leg right on the spine of a hapless gunman who got too close.
“Goddammit, McGarrett, is it too much to ask that for once we wait for back-up? One of these days I won’t be able to cover you, and then HPD will be mourning the loss of one of its finest and you, and where will we be then?”
“Dead, according to your theory.”
Danny grimaces as he hauls the scumbag off the ground. “That’s right. Talk about leaving my kid an orphan like it’s some huge joke. That’s real classy, Steve. Just fantastic. You want to maybe take this piece of garbage and give him to the boys outside? I thought I heard sirens. Ten minutes too late, as usual.”
“You don’t want to book ‘em, Danno?”
“You know, that wasn’t even funny the first time you used it. Please take the fucking suspect and book him before I fall over, McGarrett,” Danny snarls, and that’s when Steve notices that he’s putting almost no weight at all on his bad leg.
He nods, steps forward and grabs the guy roughly enough that he might -with a wrong move- accidentally dislocate his shoulder. “You okay?” he directs the question at his partner.
“Give me a second and I’ll be turning cartwheels,” Danny hobbles painfully past a pile of machine parts, scoops up his cane from where he dropped it, then gestures theatrically. “After you, please.”
“You need a hand?”
“I’m a big girl, McGarrett, I think I can make it to the car on my own steam while you wrangle Billy the Kid, there.”
Danny submits with ill-grace to the paramedics who show up on scene and insist on giving him a once-over, but once it’s obvious that the only thing wrong with him is a slightly aggravated ACL injury they reluctantly agree to let him be. He dry-swallows another couple of painkillers as Steve drives them back to the office, irritably points out that they’re not in a race and that he’d rather not be killed after the bad guys have been put away, thank you very much, and does a very creditable imitation of a wounded badger for the rest of the car ride back. Steve can understand it, though. He tore his ACL a few years back on a mission, and it hurts like a son of a bitch even with complete rest, which Danny assuredly hasn’t been getting. So he doesn’t say anything when Danny drags over a spare chair on which to prop his leg while they do paperwork, but he pulls a chemical cold pack out of the first aid kit he keeps under his desk and wordlessly hands it to his partner.
“Thank you,” Danny looks surprised and not a little touched, and Steve grins and ducks his head, absurdly pleased at being the one to break his partner of his foul mood.
“Don’t mention it. Why don’t you take off early today? Go home, rest up, take proper care of that knee for a little while…”
Danny looks as though he’s about to protest, but a wrong movement has him wincing and hissing in pain, and his shoulders slump in defeat. “Yeah, okay. I guess I can take a lot of this home with me, fill it out there,” he flicks a hand in the direction of the stack of files in front of him.
“I didn’t mean work from home, Danno. I meant take the afternoon off.”
He gets a disdainful look as Danny pushes himself painfully to his feet. “Like I’m going to trust you to get the paperwork done. I know that as soon as I turn my back you’ll be bungee jumping off the roof of a nearby building in some misguided attempt to bring a criminal to justice without so much as a proper arrest warrant to your name,” he says, making a wide sweep with one arm by way of illustration.
“Bungee jumping?”
“Or something,” Danny throws a hand up in the air, presumably to denote his own cluelessness when it comes to the particular mad antics of Steve McGarrett in his absence. “Whatever it is, I’m sure it would be dramatic and involve multiple explosions and maybe a marching band, but definitely no paperwork.”
“How well you know me,” Steve rejoins drily. “You want a lift home?”
“I can manage.” Danny pockets the bottle of prescription painkillers he’s been keeping in the top drawer of his desk -a spare to the one he keeps in his jacket pocket, Steve realizes- and limps toward the door. “I feel like I shouldn’t be encouraging you to drive my car, anyway.”
Steve shrugs, a little stung, not that there’s any real reason to be. Danny’s like this all the time. “Suit yourself.”
“See you tomorrow.”
He nods, goes back to his desk, and just to prove to Danny how wrong he is, he makes a point of carefully filling out all his forms. By the end of the evening he has a splitting headache, and the only thing he wants is to be out of the office and to sit somewhere comfortable with a beer. Luckily Kono and Chin appear to be of exactly the same mind, and it has become something of a tradition to go out and celebrate the end of a case with beers, even when the case hasn’t gone to court yet. Their part of the job is done, and celebrating is only natural. He pulls out his cell phone, hesitates over Danny’s name in the speed dial list.
“Go ahead and call him, boss,” Kono smiles slyly when she sees his hesitation. “I know he bitches about it, but he likes this. He’ll want to come. Besides, you’ll spend the next week kicking yourself if you don’t at least invite him.”
He considers glaring at her, then thinks better of it. Kono’s been dropping not-so-subtle hints for weeks now, and obviously thinks she’s very very clever, and right now he feels like drop-kicking her clever and admittedly attractive behind down the nearest flight of stairs. He settles for shrugging and hitting ‘dial’ on his phone. There’s a ring, a second, a third, and then the phone goes to voicemail. He frowns, hangs up, dials again, and gets the same result.
“Hey, Danno, it’s Steve. Me, Kono and Chin are heading to the usual place for beers, and, uh, I was hoping -well, wondering… Anyway, if you get this and you want to join us, you know where to find us. Uh, talk to you later, I guess.”
He flips the phone shut, and finds Kono grinning at him. “What?” he snaps.
“Nothing,” she keeps grinning, then leans back in her chair and takes a long pull from her beer. Chin Ho is grinning too, and Steve feels a surge of irritation.
“No, seriously, what?”¸
Chin shrugs, but keeps the smug expression. “It’s too bad he won’t be joining us. It’s not the same without him.”
Steve is beginning to have the distinct impression that there’s a big joke being had at his expense. “I gave him the rest of the day off. He can do whatever he wants with it.”
“Of course,” Kono agrees.
He pointedly drops the whole conversation, orders another beer, and spends the rest of the evening getting pleasantly buzzed in the company of his friends.
The next morning, Danny isn’t at work. Chin and Kono arrive well before him, which is highly unusual, because typically the only member of their team who ever arrives before Danny is Steve himself, and that’s only because he can’t seem to rid himself of the habits ingrained in him by years in the Navy.
“Maybe he’s just running late,” Kono says, trying to be the voice of reason, but he can see she’s worried. People not showing up when they’re supposed to, in their particular line of work, is never a good sign.
Steve shrugs, dials Danny’s cell phone anyway. It rings three times and goes to voicemail. “Danny, it’s Steve. Where are you? Call me when you get this.” He flips his phone shut. “Chin, his phone’s on, wherever it is. Get me a twenty on it, would you?”
Chin nods, fingers flying over his keyboard. “Already on it.” He types for a few seconds more. “Got it. Looks like he’s at home. Or his phone is, anyway.”
“He wouldn’t leave his phone behind, though,” Kono points out. “Not unless the battery was dead.”
“He keeps a spare on the charger,” Steve reminds her. Danny is a little OCD like that, not that Steve can blame him. There’s nothing like having your phone crap out on you in the middle of a case to put a damper on your day, and Danny doesn’t have a land line at home. He clips his phone back onto his belt. “I’m going to check on him. Call me if he shows up?”
“Of course.”
He makes record time, trying not to run down the list of worst-case scenarios in his mind -Danny dead, Danny taken hostage, Danny lying injured somewhere and unable to call for help- and failing miserably. Danny would be incoherent with rage at the way Steve negotiates the streets on the way to his house, but then, Danny’s not here, and is in fact the direct reason for the extra speed this time. The irony isn’t lost on Steve as he pulls up outside the apartment building and runs up the stairs, hammering on the door.
“Danny! Danny it’s me, you in there?”
There’s no answer, but the door is locked, which at the very least means that no one unauthorized got in there. The lock itself is laughable, and it takes him less than thirty seconds to pick it and shoulder the door open.
“Danny?”
The sofa-bed is still pulled out, and there’s a familiar shape under the blanket. Danny’s curled on his side, turned three-quarters of the way into his pillow, but he doesn’t so much as twitch at the sound of the intrusion, and Steve doesn’t know whether to be relieved that he hasn’t been dragged out of his bed to be murdered somewhere they’d never find him, or panic-stricken because he’s apparently sick enough that not even the sound of someone breaking in can rouse him. It’s a matter of three steps to get to the bed -Steve still doesn’t understand how he can stand to live like this- and Steve puts a knee on the thin mattress, bends over to shake him by the shoulder.
“Hey, Danno, you okay?”
Still nothing. Danny’s warm to the touch, but his pulse flutters erratically under Steve’s fingers, his breathing shallow, far too slow for Steve’s liking. Steve shakes him harder, and after another anxious minute he does rouse a bit, eyelids fluttering.
“Danny! What the hell?”
But all he gets is a slightly incoherent mumble, and Danny just shifts a bit and sinks back into the same lethargic sleep as before. Steve swears under his breath, pulls out his cell phone and dials 911, barking the address as well as his own identification at the operator, who, bless her competent soul, doesn’t let his tone ruffle her in the slightest.
“I have an ambulance on the way, Commander. Can you tell me if he’s taken anything? Any kind of drugs?”
“Danny doesn’t do -shit!” his eyes land on the bottle of painkillers, standing innocently next to the lamp on the bedside table. “Painkillers. He tore his ACL and he’s been taking them for a while.” He reaches for the bottle. “Oxycodone.”
“Can you tell how many he took?”
He checks the label, pries open the lid and tries a quick count. “I can’t tell. There’s only a few left, but he’s had them for a while.”
“Okay. ETA is another five minutes, I just need you to monitor his breathing, make sure he doesn’t go into respiratory arrest.”
“Right.”
It’s some of the worst few minutes of his life, ranking right up there with listening to his father’s last words over the phone. He switches the phone over to speaker, sits on the bed next to his partner and rolls him onto his back, checks his airways, and waits for him to stop breathing. The paperwork is sitting on a chair nearby, untouched, and something twists unpleasantly in his chest at the sight.
“Jesus, Danno, what did you do?” he asks quietly.
He’s never been so relieved at the arrival of paramedics before, is all too glad to step back and let them do their jobs, and agrees to follow the ambulance to the hospital. He has to force himself not to tailgate them all the way there, dialing the office one-handed as he drives to update Chin and Kono on the situation.
They’re already working on Danny by the time he’s able to park and sprint toward the door, and he finds himself caught behind the emergency room doors, watching through the glass as a nurse starts hooking his friend up to a monitor. There’s surprisingly little activity for what struck him as a pretty dire situation. He somehow expected there to be a flurry of activity around Danny’s bed, but there’s only a handful of people, working methodically to check his vital signs, strapping an oxygen mask to his face, taking notes. He kind of wishes they’d panic a bit, which is ridiculous, he tells himself sharply. Panicking is bad.
He ends up pacing in front of the doors, trying to stay out of people's way and earning himself more than a few glares before a doctor finally emerges from the room, looking more than a little startled when he all but throws himself at her. She raises an eyebrow, checks her notes.
“You must be Commander McGarrett, I take it?”
“Yes.” Strangling Danny's attending physician for stating the obvious would be very, very bad, he reminds himself. “How is he? What's happening?”
She makes a show of checking her notes again, and he forces himself to take an 'at ease' stance if only to keep himself calm and not do something they'd both regret. “The original diagnosis appears to have been correct. Your, uh, friend-”
“Partner.”
“Partner,” she tilts her head in acknowledgment, “overdosed on his prescription pain medication. He's lucky -his breathing doesn't appear badly compromised, and so we're treating this as non-aggressively as we can. We'll be monitoring him closely for the next few hours until he wakes up, and we'll have some tests to run then, but for now I'd say things are looking up.”
Steve lets out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. “So he's going to be okay?”
“It looks like it.” She smiles at him, looking genuinely pleased, and he decides that he definitely likes her. “Tell me,” her expression sobers. “Have you noticed any changes in his behaviour lately? Mood swings? Depression?”
He makes a face that he's pretty sure Danny would have a colourful name for. “Danny's whole personality is a mood swing. No,” he hastens to add. “I mean, nothing different. He's always been kind of... mercurial.”
She nods, jots down a note. “Has anything happened lately that you know of, either personally or professionally, that would explain why he would do something like this?”
“What?” That's when he realizes what she's driving at. “No! Of course not. He's... he wouldn't. I mean... I don't know. He never said...” his stomach twists at the thought. “No, I don't think it's that. I... he said he was coming in today. He said 'See you tomorrow.' He wouldn't have said that if he wasn't planning to come in. Besides, wouldn't he have taken all the pills if he wanted...” he can't bring himself to finish the thought. “I just think his knee was hurting,” he says lamely.
“All right,” the doctor gives him a sympathetic look. “We'll keep an eye on him for now, and we'll try to get to the bottom of the why's of the situation later, when he's awake and can talk to us. You can go in if you'd like, but he won't be waking up for a couple of hours at least.”
He doesn't have to be told twice, just pushes right past her and through the doors. There's a chair by one of the walls, and he drags it over to the bed, sits as close to Danny as he can manage without actually being physically on the bed. He doesn't remember ever seeing Danny still, not for this long. He's always in motion, always doing something, his hands always gesturing -pointing, waving, windmilling, chopping at the air to emphasize what he's saying. Seeing him like this feels wrong, alien even. Steve reaches over and takes the hand not currently hooked up to the monitors, feels its weight in his palm, limp and unresisting, and tries to take some comfort from the warmth he can still feel in Danny's fingers.
“Come on, Danno, wake up,” he whispers, even though he knows it's going to take longer than that. Part of him is sort of hoping that Danny will just pull a Snow White, that now that they know what's wrong, he'll just sit up and declare it all a mistake, and they'll all live happily ever after. Of course, Snow White married her prince, and they can't exactly... he nips that thought neatly in the bud, scrubs at his face with his free hand. “You're driving me nuts,” he tells the still figure on the bed. “I'm losing my mind, and it's your fault.”
He stops talking after that. It feels too weird, like Danny's in a coma or dying, and he can't stomach the notion. Once today was enough, he thinks. Once too many. He hangs onto Danny's hand, figuring his partner won't remember this anyway, and the contact is reassuring, reminding him that Danny's still here, still present, even if he's not aware of his surroundings. The minutes go by, agonizingly slowly, and nothing changes. The machines whirr and beep quietly, and nurses come and go without much comment. Every now and then someone will suggest he take a break, go and get himself a coffee, but the idea that Danny might wake up in a strange place without so much as a familiar face to show him that everything is okay is simply untenable. Kono makes a brief appearance in the early afternoon, just long enough to get an update on Danny's condition -no change yet- and brings him a cup of coffee and a muffin before going back to the office, a quick squeeze of his shoulder the only outward indication of everything that's going through her mind.
An hour and a half later, Danny's breathing and heart rate speed up, just a little, and Steve feels his fingers twitch, ever so slightly.
“Danny?” He stands up, leaning forward in anticipation as Danny moves, just shifting his weight a little, eyelids fluttering in earnest. “Come on, Danno, open your eyes for me. That's it.”
A moment later a pair of very confused-looking blue eyes is staring at him over the oxygen mask, and Steve comes perilously close to weeping for sheer joy for the first time in his life. Instead he pats his partner's knee.
“Welcome back, Danno. Jesus Christ, you scared the living hell out of me. What the hell were you thinking?”
Danny just blinks at him, then reaches up with a shaky hand to pull at the oxygen mask, and Steve has to grab his wrist hastily.
“No! No no, none of that. That stays on until the doctors say it can come off. You can tell me later. Start thinking about your answer, because it had better be damned good. Christ,” he sinks back into his chair, still holding onto Danny's wrist, lets his head drop. When he looks up again, he sees that Danny's eyes have closed again.
The oxygen mask gets replaced with a nasal cannula, and eventually the drugs begin to wear off in earnest. The doctor makes a reappearance when Danny's able to do more than just blink dazedly, and starts questioning, jotting down notes without so much as looking at her patient.
“Do you remember taking the pills, Mr. Williams?”
Danny's eyes slide over to Steve. “I guess. Yeah.”
“You guess?”
He shrugs. “I dunno. It's kind of fuzzy.”
She nods. “That can happen, sometimes. Can you tell me how you were feeling yesterday?”
Another shrug. “I dunno. I was tired. My knee hurt... What kind of question is that?”
Steve should bite his tongue, but he can't. “She wants to know if you did it on purpose, Danno.”
“What?”
The doctor glares at Steve, but he doesn't care. “It's procedure, Mr. Williams. I have to make sure you're not in any further danger.”
“Suicide?” Danny says, his expression horrified.
“It wasn't, then?”
“No!” Danny struggles to sit up, settles back when Steve puts a hand on his shoulder. “No, I... I don't remember. My knee was killing me, and I've had this stuff before, and last time the doctor said I could double up on the pills if they weren't working properly, and it was fine. It was fine the last time...” he concludes faintly. Steve squeezes his hand, and the grateful look he gets in return gives him the same unpleasant clenching feeling in his chest as before.
The doctor is nodding, though, apparently satisfied. “I'd have to see your prescriptions to be sure, but it sounds as though you were given a stronger dosage this time around, and didn't realize it. I cannot stress enough, though, that it's never good to alter your own dosage without consulting a doctor first.”
“Obviously,” Danny says a bit drily, and Steve kind of wants to kiss him in that moment, except for how they're in a hospital and there's someone else in the room and Danny almost died, and Danny obviously doesn't feel that way about him at all. He has an ex-wife and a kid which are a definite, physical testimony to that.
“All right. I think it's safe to say you'll probably be able to go home in another few hours. Someone from psych will be coming to talk to you, just as a matter of protocol, and we have to run a few more tests, just to make sure there won't be any unpleasant surprises following today.”
“Wouldn't want that,” Danny murmurs as she takes her leave. He looks over at Steve once they're alone. “You okay?”
Abruptly Steve pushes away from the bed, gets up, whirls, and stops just short of throwing the hardest punch he can manage at the closest wall. He paces to the door, comes back, and wishes there were something in here apart from delicate electronic equipment that he could kick.
“Am I okay?”
Danny nods. “Yes”
“You nearly died from an overdose, and you want to know if I'm okay? Jesus fucking Christ, Danno!” He feels his voice rise to a yell, can't help it, doesn't really want to help it if he's honest with himself. “You stop answering your phone, won't answer your door... I thought you'd been kidnapped, or murdered or... God. You were practically in a coma when I found you. I thought you were dead!”
Danny pushes himself up onto his elbows, then reaches out tentatively with one hand. “Sorry.”
“Sorry?” For all he wants to bolt back out of the room, he finds himself taking Danny's hand in his, interlocking their fingers. “This has been one of the worst days of my life, and all you have is sorry?” He laughs mirthlessly, chokes, and comes really damned close to losing it entirely when Danny squeezes his hand.
“It's sort of the best I can do on short notice,” he manages a weak smile. “But for what it's worth, I am really sorry. I didn't... I wanted it to stop hurting, and I just lost track, you know? It's never happened before.”
“God.” The conversation is taking a turn for the surreal. Danny shouldn't be the one apologizing. “I... shit, I shouldn't even be making you apologize at all. I pushed you, and you never complained -or, yeah, you complained, but I didn't take it seriously, didn't realize how much you...” he rubs his free hand over his mouth, looks away. “I am so fucking sorry, Danno. I can't even tell you.”
There's a moment of silence, then to his surprise Danny throws back his head and laughs. Full-out laughs, as though he's heard the best joke in history. For a second Steve just stares, flummoxed, then feels his face break out into a smile in spite of himself.
“What? I spill my guts out here, and you laugh at me?” he swats Danny's knee, smile turning into a full-blown grin. “What is wrong with you?”
Still chortling, Danny pulls himself together. “McGarrett, if I didn't have doubts about you before, I would definitely have them now. I don't know if you noticed, but I am a grown man. A policeman and a father, no less. I even have my very own Diner's Club card. I am fully capable of taking responsibility for my own damned mistakes, and I certainly don't need you to shoulder the burden for me,” he jabs a finger at Steve's chest for emphasis, and Steve is pretty sure it's the most beautiful gesture he's ever seen. “You, my friend, need serious help. When I get home, I will give you the card of a very good therapist.”
“You can't read the label on a prescription, and I need therapy?”
Danny makes a show of wincing, and mimes being stabbed through the heart. “Ouch, McGarrett. That was a very low blow.”
“Yeah, well, you deserve it,” Steve bites his lip, the enormity of the situation coming over him like a cold wave again. “Don't do it again, okay?”
“Does this mean I get the week off?”
Steve rolls his eyes. “Yes. As much time off until your knee is in perfect working condition. And you're going to be spending it at my house, where I can keep an eye on you.”
“I'm not the one who needs supervision.”
“Being rushed to the ER in an ambulance says different.”
“It was a one-time thing.”
“This isn't negotiable,” Steve states flatly, and then follows Danny's gaze downward to where he's still got his fingers laced with his partners'. He swallows, figures that if he's faced down terrorists in the worst hell-holes of the world, he can damned well say this once, even if it come out more like a really strangled whisper. “I can't lose you too.”
He's staring at the bed, at the worn hospital sheet, because he can't -won't- look to see what kind of expression he's just put on Danny's face. There's a tug on his hand, which he ignores, then a second, more insistent one, because apparently Danny Williams is a force to be ignored at one's peril. He raises his head carefully, steals a glance, and for once, Danny doesn't say a word.
But one look at the bright blue eyes staring right back at him suggests that everything he wants is right here, his for the asking.