A Secret's Burden
Danny couldn't contain the irritated squawk that burst out of his mouth as the idiots, tainted meth selling idiots, sent a large shelf in the warehouse to topple on top of him.
He cussed in several languages, though mostly Cajun and proper French, and tried to lift himself out from under the broken bits and pieces and twisted metal when he felt a sharp hot pain sear its way up his leg. Cussing even more vehemently, he looked up through the mangled mess to spot his teammates.
He could hear the pants and snarled threats of both Kono and Steve as they took the idiots down and could just barely see Chin standing guard with the shot gun while they roughed them up.
Danny clenched his teeth together as another sharp pain flared from his leg as he scouted the area around him, making sure he was clear of everyone's line of sight.
Then, without warning, he disappeared, fading in a shift between color and grayscale.
He couldn't help the sigh of relief as he shifted free of the fallen shelf and looked at his thigh, the wounds weren’t horrible just several deep puncture wounds through his trouser leg.
This place wasn't completely grayscale, though everything was muted save the color of blood, and he was slightly disgruntled at the sight of the warehouse in the Fade, saddened and angry at the amount of recently deceased and now confused people there.
With a growl he moved to an area away from where the fallen shelf lay back with his teammates and looked through the Fade to make sure the coast was clear and shifted back from the grayscale to color once more. He limped towards his comrades, thankful no one had noticed his short disappearance, and stood watch as Kono finished reading them their rights and wondered slightly at her slightly more than violent manner.
“Good job, Kono,” He grinned at her in praise before it shifted to show off his teeth in a vaguely predatory manner at the guys in cuffs causing them to shift closer to Steve. “Now if only we could get the boss to do that.”
Steve turned to pout and disagree with Danny when he saw the damage to his partner, "I have you for tha--Christ Danny, your leg, sit down before you hurt it further."
Danny couldn't help but roll his eyes as they finally noticed he was injured, "I'm fine, just a couple of scrapes and minor stab wounds from the dusty shelf they pushed over, nothing I haven't lived through before."
He kept that he'd been stabbed by a dead, demon possessed, serial killer to himself and that the wounds on his leg were nothing compared to being hurt in the Fade. They didn't know and if he had a choice they never would.
He sighed as they became mother hens and Steve forcibly bustled him off to the paramedics that had been called when the pursuit had begun.
He watched as they finished processing the scene, Kono and Chin following HPD back to the precinct and Steve standing guard as the paramedics gave him a tetanus shot and stitched him up. He grinned at the EMT in thanks and moved to the Camaro, Steve flanking him protectively.
He couldn't help but roll his eyes as he settled and the SEAL checked him over before moving to the driver's side. They drove back to HQ bickering over the radio and whether or not Danny needed help getting to his office.
He would be up and about in a few hours-he could already feel his skin stitching itself back together with bits of the Grey, something that had taken him years to learn to control without it going out of control and causing even more damage, like his knee. Steve didn't know that his calf and thigh were almost perfectly alright.
He could never know, just like Rachel could never know.
The matters between Life and Death were complicated, especially with beings like him and Grace. The lines tended to blur until sometimes you could never tell. When he was young one of his best friends had been Miss Lowe, a woman who had been transplanted from Louisiana to New Jersey when she’d been merely twenty only to be murdered in her own home not months later in early 1837. Grace seemed to follow in his footsteps when she became friends with a little girl in their neighborhood who’d been killed by her father in a drunken tirade three years before, a little girl that Rachel was led to believe Grace had imagined up on her own.
It was hard living out amongst normal people, hiding the odd cravings for food from the Fade, not being able to share stories about friends whom have long since passed even though you can still talk with them, explaining your whereabouts when no one can get a hold of you because there is no cell reception there.
It made life . . . Complicated. Messy. It was the reason why most stuck to themselves, took jobs where people wanted to avoid you, like working in a morgue for example, though that job also had its drawbacks. Some even chose to just live in the Fade instead of amongst the living.
Danny looked through the blinds of his office at his teammates.
Sometimes though, there were reasons for staying here, for all that it made life harder. His eyes zeroed in on his partner and his heart tried to beat its way out of his chest and he felt the unmistakable feelings of longing, desire, and . . . love rush through him.
Yes there were definitely reasons for staying here, even if he couldn’t be completely truthful those he loved, even if it hurt that he couldn’t.
He sighed and made plans to go flying around the island for a few hours, making a note to directly tell them all he was going to stay in tonight and ignore the world outside. He knew it would sting them slightly, that he wanted to hole himself up for the night with no communication or company, but sometimes he needed the freedom.
Besides, he would be near even if they couldn’t tell it was him.