All the Earth Awaits Thee - R - Steve/Danny - Part II
Part I
When Steve walks out of Doctor Miles’s office an hour later, he’s calm and steady as he goes back to his truck. There’s an irritating buzzing sound in his ears, but he’s cool; fuck, he’s golden, yes indeed. Bits and pieces of phrases like, starting treatment immediately is recommended and I can refer you to an oncologist here on the island that’s excellent are competing with that buzzing in his ears as he climbs back in his truck.
Steve just sits there once he’s in the truck, little sheets of paper with prescriptions clenched in his left hand. He stares out the windshield and across the blacktop parking lot, not really seeing it or the glint and gleam off the metal of the other cars there. He stares until the sun beating down cheerfully on the macadam turns the whole world into a fuzzy yellow-white glow.
Finally, he blinks and says, “Well.” Just like that, nothing more because there’s nothing more he can think to say. He’s not going to sit down and cry about it or rant to the heavens.
He calls in to the office and when he gets Kono he tells her that he’s taking the day off to do something. It’s all very vague and he dodges her questions easily. When he hangs up he just looks out the windshield once more.
“Well,” he says again and then punches the dash hard enough he skins his knuckles on the hard, molded plastic. It’s really a wonder that the airbag doesn’t pop out, he thinks in a detached way. Maybe it’s a factory defect. He should probably have that checked out.
Then he very calmly cranks his truck and at last pulls away from the doctor’s office, headed home because he can’t think of anywhere else to go right then.
Danny calls while he’s on his way and Steve doesn’t answer the phone, he can’t deal with talking to anyone right now. Mostly because he doesn’t want to, if he’s being honest.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
When Danny shows up that night, Steve is in the living room and has been for about an hour. He tried to sit and watch television and had instead ended up on the internet, reading up on this newest enemy popping out bad cells like champagne bubbles. It hasn’t calmed him down at all-he doesn’t need to be calm, he is calm, he keeps telling himself. The information he found read like shit out of a nightmare and he hadn’t messed around for long because it was making him feel… weird.
He’d gone out to the garage for a while after that and messed around and then he’d walked around the yard, just trying to keep himself occupied. He can’t sit down and he’s been pacing in a crooked line from the couch to the doorway and back for who knows how long. He’s in pain still and worn out on top of that, the tiredness he’s been feeling so acute it’s almost tangible, but he doesn’t want to sleep and he doesn’t want to rest. Most of all he doesn’t want to be sick, but he is and it’s got him keyed up, moving around his own home like a penned up animal.
The familiar sound of the Camaro’s engine rumbling in the front yard makes him stop his pacing so quickly he sways. He’s panting, breath catching uncomfortably in his throat and he forces himself to even out his breathing. He knows about doing this, too and he’s fine, he’s fine. It occurs to him as he makes a beeline for the front door that he really was right-he doesn’t have arthritis and he laughs once, the sound brittle and sharp in the otherwise silent house.
He meets Danny at the door as he’s letting himself in and grabs him, not thinking at all and that’s even better-not thinking. Thinking is bad, which sounds insane, but he doesn’t care right now, he just kisses Danny and feels his questions on his tongue as he licks into his mouth. Steve makes a sound of negation in the back of his throat when they break apart and Danny opens his mouth to speak.
“Danny,” Steve says and he doesn’t need to say the rest; doesn’t need to add please. It’s in his eyes and on his face and Danny’s nod is barely perceptible as he pulls Steve down to kiss him again.
They make it to the bedroom and Steve straddles Danny’s hips, looking down at him; looking him in the eye as he lowers himself down. They don’t do it like this much because of the height difference, but Steve wants it this way right now and he really isn’t interested in questioning the why of it at the moment and maybe never because he knows anyway.
He moves and he’s so intent on the task at hand (distraction) that he doesn’t feel his pained joints or hear the way his voice cracks softly on even softer moans. He’s focused on feeling everything because he doesn’t want to hurt right now or think about being sick; he just wants to feel good. It’s so fucked up, desperate and like begging without words, but Danny’s hands smoothing over his ribs and bringing his face down to kiss him makes it a little more alright.
Later when they’re lying side by side, Danny turns his head and looks at him in the dark, his face a mass of Danny-ish shadows cast from the three-quarter moon filtering its light through the windows.
“So how bad is it?” he asks.
“Pretty bad,” Steve says.
“On a scale of one to ten how bad is pretty bad?” Danny asks.
“On a scale of leukemia,” Steve says and the sentence doesn’t even make that much sense, but Danny gets what he means.
“Shit,” he says and lets out a shaky breath.
“Pretty much,” is all Steve can think to respond with.
Danny scoots over closer, loops an arm around Steve’s waist and kisses him. When he pulls back a little, he says, “We’ll get through this.”
Steve knows he means it, too, that he means we and that makes him feel better, but only marginally so. Danny’s not the one with fucking cancer, but at least he isn’t running for the hills and he should’ve known he wouldn’t do that anyway.
All he says is, “Yep,” while he wishes for something else to punch. He moves closer to Danny instead, pressing up against him even more and Danny runs his hand down Steve’s arm, but leaves him to his silence for now; sharing it with him.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Steve goes in for his consult with the oncologist the following week. He goes alone, refusing Danny’s offer to go with him because they can’t both be running all over hell and back doing this shit. They have responsibilities after all. He hasn’t told Chin and Kono yet, has almost decided that he’s not going to say a thing about it, but hiding it forever isn’t an option either. It’s just not a conversation he wants to have.
How does he set the other two members of his team down and tell them, I have cancer and I may die? Steve doesn’t know and he turns that question over in his mind as he sits in the oncologist’s warmly decorated office and listens to his soothing voice telling him just how sick he really is and what his options are.
When he leaves, he has more prescriptions and a handful of pamphlets on the disease, the treatments; all of them loaded with helpful charts, diagrams and illustrations showing the disease-bearing cells in cheerful primary colors. He also has an appointment for his first chemotherapy treatment that Friday and Steve thinks at this rate he may start to really hate Fridays.
He takes his brightly colored pamphlets and little booklets home with him and starts reading them that night. He almost stops reading when he comes across a mention of mouth ulcers being caused by chemotherapy in a booklet entitled, Chemotherapy and You, but he plows ever onward through the wealth of information stacked on his tabletop. It’s like gathering intel on an enemy camp to Steve and this is a fucking war, no matter how it may seem to some people. Steve is a soldier and they like to know what it is they’re fighting; it makes the enemy easier to target and kill.
The whole time he’s reading, Danny’s sitting at the table with him doing the same thing. Steve finishes a pamphlet or booklet and it gets passed on to Danny. They do it all in silence, just the sound of slick pages with their glaring charts and graphs turning and turning and turning in the room.
When they’re finished, Steve gathers all of that handy-dandy information into a neat stack, picks it up and rises from the table. He gets a few more things he needs then goes outside and down to the beach, not even bothering to hide his stiff way of moving from Danny now because he knows and there’s no use in keeping up the pretense.
Once he’s out on the beach he starts a fire using those same pamphlets and booklets for kindling and additional fuel. He stands back and watches the flames eat up all the words and pictures that tell him his hair is going to fall out and he’s going to be eating pills like Skittles and puking for what could be months to come. He wanted it out of his house.
Danny comes out while he’s standing there and stands beside him, watching the flames crackle, too. He passes Steve a barbecue fork with a marshmallow speared on the end of it and holds out his own over the flames.
“Where are you hiding these?” Steve asks, the first words either of them have spoken in hours, which isn’t so strange for him, but it is for Danny.
“It’s not a hiding spot if I tell you,” Danny says and turns his marshmallow, watching as it blackens and starts to slightly droop off the two sharp tines it’s speared on.
“I guess not,” Steve says and holds his own marshmallow over the flames.
“No guessing necessary, it’s just not,” Danny says. After a while, sometime around his third marshmallow and Steve’s second, he adds, “I keep them in the bottom dresser drawer on the right.”
Steve laughs at that and takes a bite of his marshmallow as they stand side by side, leaning into one another without consciously realizing it. When they kiss in the dying light of the small fire, it’s gooey-sticky and their sugar-glazed mouths stick together a bit. The air swirling around them on the soft breeze smells like burning paper and the ocean.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Steve goes in on Friday as scheduled for his chemo treatment and he goes alone for it, too.
He sits in the chaise lounge-like chair and lets them hook him up to the machine. The chair is thickly padded though and it’s comfortable to his dully aching bones. He’s taking his painkillers, but not as prescribed; he’s taking them only when he can’t stand it anymore. Steve thinks as this goes on-in whatever direction it ends up heading-he’ll probably be taking them as directed. He doesn’t like that thought at all.
He makes himself relax back into his seat or at least presents the image of being so. Lazy and sprawling is a look he’s perfected over the years even if he’s wound tight as a clock spring inside. He keeps his eyes pinned to the clock on the far wall, counting the seconds down until he can leave. Steve wants to go back to work, but he can bide his time and this is necessary, he knows that. He breathes in and out; feels his lungs working and the way his chest is rising and falling in a smooth, calm rhythm.
Outwardly, Steve is still, but in his mind he is pacing around in circles, in straight lines and hexagons until he’s dizzy from so much thinking. He’s caged up in his head, moving like he did that first night in his living room. He thinks he can feel the medicine leaking through him, new and alien as it brings itself into the battlefield his traitorous fucking body has become.
He won’t let himself think about how utterly blind-rage angry he is about this happening to him though; the indignity of it that has him sitting here with a needle in his arm that may or may not carry the medicine needed for his survival. Fear is the background to all of it, but it’s not stronger than his rage, it is the sound of faraway thunder booming in his head; an undercurrent to the other feelings and feeding them.
On the far wall, the clock he has fixed his eyes on goes, Tick-tick-TICK. Steve can’t help it: he flinches at last from the sound and closes his eyes to finish his waiting.
The surprising thing-or maybe not so surprising given his fatigue lately-is that he dozes off once he closes his eyes, only waking up when a nurse comes to unchain him from the I.V. line.
~*~*~*~*~*~
He makes it back to 5-0 headquarters about two hours after he went in for his treatment and he’s just in time for lunch. Steve actually isn’t hungry, but he knows he has to eat and when he walks into the break room, it hits him-the combined odors of the others lunches.
Up until this point he’s been silently hopeful that maybe the chemo wouldn’t make him nauseous after all. He only fit about half of the criteria for being at high risk for it according to those hateful pamphlets he’d been given and he took one of the little pills they handed him like an after-dinner mint before he left the treatment center.
It still hits him like a kick and he gasps before swallowing thickly against the rush of saliva in his mouth when his stomach churns and then flips violently. Kono has sushi and he can smell the raw, sea-heavy smell of the fish, Chin’s eating what looks like a chicken salad sandwich and Danny’s got… well… Steve’s not sure because he doesn’t take the time to look. He turns before he’s even in the door good and walks out of the room, slowly breathing through his nose and telling himself not to puke on the floor; not to puke at all. He’s just going to get himself some water from the cooler to sip on and he’ll be okay, he just can’t handle the strong odors right now.
Which, he thinks as he goes for the cooler, how the fuck is he supposed to deal with crime scenes if this is going to be a problem after all? The rush of images and olfactory memories that come with that makes him heave slightly before he can stop himself.
“Shit,” he chokes out under his breath and swallows again.
He keeps walking though even as his stomach threatens to spill its contents all over the floor. Steve is focused on getting the water, any little task that he can use to keep him from thinking about how his gut is roiling will do and that’s the one most easily at hand.
Steve catches a whiff of something rich and meaty just before he hears, “Hey,” and Danny touches his arm lightly.
Steve turns to look at him and he doesn’t so much see Danny as he sees that Danny’s brought his lunch out with him-a meatball sub on a paper plate, oozing marinara and mozzarella like a hemorrhage streaked with pus. He stomach clench-flip-lurches and Steve tries to push past Danny, but it’s too late.
He hears himself say, “Fu-” Then that’s it; he’s puking all over Danny and his bloody sore of a sandwich.
Danny’s cursing and yelling, but he still reaches for Steve and grabs his arms, ruined sandwich hitting the floor, when he stumbles, still retching.
~*~*~*~*~*~
The rest of the day and most of the night, Danny spends looking after Steve. After the third trip to the bathroom, he gets a bucket and places it next to Steve’s side of the bed.
He drove Steve back to the house after the incident in the bullpen, minus a side trip to the bathroom about thirty seconds later. He had stood outside of the stall listening to Steve dry heave and make awful, urk, urk sounds and felt his own stomach turn. But it had nothing to do with Steve throwing up and everything to do with why he was throwing up.
Chin drove Steve’s truck back and Kono drove her own car so she could give Chin a lift after they were all done. Danny had needed to pull over about halfway there and Steve had barely gotten the door open to throw up again. There they had all sat; their own little convoy while their fearless leader puked up nothing but bile and little strings of bloody drool from ruptured vessels in his throat. Danny had held onto the steering wheel so hard his hands had cramped around it.
Now Steve finally seems about all puked out and it has been slacking off for hours after the first rush of it. Still though, Danny can’t remember ever making so many trips to the bathroom for cool cloths and cups of tepid tap water. He’s run his legs off even after getting the bucket for Steve to hurl into, but he doesn’t mind so much, it gives him something to do instead of sitting around and feeling helpless to do anything.
Steve’s sleeping now, laid out on his side with his cheek on the edge of the mattress, hovering above the bucket. He looks pale, drawn and he’s sticky with sick-sweat when Danny reaches out to touch his naked back because he can’t not touch him.
He feels like by not telling Chin and Kono still they’re doing something very wrong, but he knows that they’re really not. Steve doesn’t want the sympathy it would bring, all of the concerned looks and too-careful way of moving around him they’d unconsciously pick up if they knew. They’re going to have to know though, but… Danny just can’t think about them right now, not really; not the way he perhaps should. He can’t even think of himself here lately, all he can think about is, On a scale of leukemia and how it kills him to have to imagine what could happen.
He can’t stop thinking about it though and he’s worried he’ll say something out loud about it. He doesn’t want Steve to hear the things going on his mind, all of the, What if?s and How could I stand it?s. Because they don’t talk about it and Danny can at least be quiet and not offer hollow sympathy. He can buy a new shirt or wash the puke out of the one Steve barfed on and he’ll let him do it again and again if that’s what it takes.
Danny moves closer to Steve, thinks he feels feverish, which is to be expected. He wishes Steve would reconsider allowing himself to be hospitalized for this first round of chemo treatments, but he knows he won’t and if he’s being honest, Danny wouldn’t do it either. He’d still mentioned it and Steve had said, “No, Danny,” just before he’d gagged again, nearly losing the little bit of water he’d kept down.
“I know, babe, I know,” Danny had said because he did-does-know. Steve won’t do it if he doesn’t have to and he actually isn’t required to be there at all for this. The least he can do is be sick as a dog and feel like shit in the comfort of his own home.
There’s a light on in the hall and moonlight streaming through the open blinds when Danny lies down beside Steve, finally convinced that he’s done with vomiting for the night. He’s sleeping peacefully, snoring so, so softly every now and then and Danny kisses the back of his neck before he rests his own head.
A few hours later Steve comes to with a harsh retch and jerks so hard he would’ve fallen off the bed if Danny didn’t grab him. All he can do is murmur, “Shh, you’ll be okay, you’ll be okay,” while he holds on.
When Steve finally collapses back on the bed, he’s shaking and Danny’s shaking with him, just on the inside. He holds him until they fall asleep again and in the morning, Steve feels like eating and Danny thinks that’s a good sign; that it’s over for now. Then Steve gags at the smell of the scrambled eggs and Danny makes a note to throw the eggs out altogether. Steve does eat his bacon and pancakes though and he keeps them down. There is that at least.
They spend most of the day in bed together, talking and shooting the shit. Danny knows it’s because Steve feels too bad to get up and do anything, just like he knows Steve can’t really stand that at all, but is making the best he can of a fucked up situation.
Steve only throws up once, after lunch. Danny isn’t sure he can call it progress, but it is one hell of a step up from yesterday.
~*~*~*~*~*~
That evening he leaves Steve to go to a play Grace is in at her school. It’s why he doesn’t have her this weekend because, much as it galls him all the way down to the depths of his pride, Danny would not be any good at hustling his daughter around in a starfish costume that he wouldn’t have the first idea of how to get her into in the first place and he knows it. Rachel has kindly promised him two weekends in a row if he wants them and of course he does.
He doesn’t know what to tell Gracie about Steve though because he’s not up to being quite the rambunctious-sometimes too rambunctious, in Danny’s opinion-human jungle gym Grace has grown used to. He can’t very well see himself telling Grace to stop hanging on Steve because she may bruise him or something. And Steve, well, it’s a solidly established fact that he’s a pigheaded asshole and would still let Grace clamber all over him and maybe bounce on his head if she really wanted to. Long story short, Danny thinks he needs to work out how to handle this part of their new equation. Grace will understand, he’s got a lot of confidence in his kid, but he doesn’t know if she’ll like listening to Steve blowing chunks all night if he has another episode like the first treatment caused.
It gives him a headache just thinking about it, but none of it can be skirted around or stepped over, so he’ll work something out. Danny’s a resourceful guy and he knows that.
He gets to Grace’s school, parks and meets her and Rachel at the backstage entrance of the auditorium. Danny tells Rachel hello and then asks where Step-Stan is.
“Business trip,” Rachel says and Danny rolls his eyes.
“I saw that,” Rachel says and then lets it drop; there’s no real heat to her words anyway.
Grace looks remarkably cute and awkward in her starfish costume and she’s beaming at him between her little foam starfish legs… tentacles… Danny’s not sure about the anatomy of starfish; though he is pretty sure none of them are violently purple like Grace is. Then again, maybe so because he’s not a marine biologist and wouldn’t really know, would he?
Fuck, it is nice to be distracted by her smiling face.
“Where’s Steve?” she asks him and Danny kneels down in front of her, listens to his knee make a gross pop-crunch sound and then settles.
“Steve’s really busy tonight, Monkey,” Danny tells her. “But he asked me to take pictures and we can call him after your big debut.”
“Okay,” Grace says and cocks her head. “Debut,” she repeats. “I like that word.”
“It’s a good word,” Danny agrees as he stands up again.
Grace’s teacher calls her back to get ready to go on stage and she gives him a starfish costume-squishy hug and then squeezes Rachel, too, before she flounce-waddles off to join her classmates.
When he looks back, he finds Rachel watching him with one eyebrow raised. “What?” Danny asks.
“Don’t do that,” Rachel says and tilts her head a little bit. “Something’s not right.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Danny says, waving a hand and his tone is pitch-perfect, but his answer is too swift and Rachel was married to him for a long time. She knows things, like a former spouse spidey-sense or some such.
“Mhmm,” Rachel says and makes a little tick sound with her tongue against the back of her teeth. “You can come in for some coffee when we’re done here and tell me all about it. If you’d like.”
Danny opens his mouth to say something, maybe even pick a fight because hell, it’s not that hard to do even now. However, like Chin, Kono and Grace, Rachel needs to know about this and he does trust the woman quite a lot still, so he’s left flailing for some kind of comeback.
“Right,” Rachel says with a decisive nod even as Danny continues to flounder. “Come along, Daniel, I believe we need to take our seats in the auditorium for now.” She starts to walk off and stops to look at him over her shoulder, a little smile pulling at her mouth. “If you think of some way to respond to me anytime soon, feel free to whisper it in my ear, I’d love to hear it.”
“Shit,” Danny says, cursing the fact that she can still fuck with him like this, but he’s smiling a little, too. He follows along behind her, listening to her heels click-clicking on the concrete as they go for the main entrance to the auditorium.
~*~*~*~*~*~
After Grace’s play, somewhere between the parentally obligated standing ovation she and her classmates receive and the three of them going out to the parking lot to leave, Grace asks if she can spend the night with her friend, Tracy. Grace informs them that Tracy’s mom already said it was okay, so pleeeeaaase. All Danny can do is wonder when the hell they had time to make these plans.
Rachel purses her lips and exchanges a look with Danny then says, “It’s alright with me as long as your father says it is.”
“Please, Danno?” Grace asks and turns pleading brown eyes up at him.
“Hmm…,” Danny says, fighting a smile as she squirms a little and continues to give him puppy dog eyes, hands clasped under her chin like she’s praying. “Well, okay,” he finally relents.
She hugs his legs, exclaiming, “Thank you, thank you!” before she makes to sprint off.
Rachel stops her with a hand on her arm. “Oh, no, young lady. They can follow us back home so you can at least get some pajamas and your toothbrush.”
Grace pouts and then nods. “Okay.”
“I should think so, yes,” Rachel says and bites her bottom lip, fighting her own smile as she releases Grace to the custody of Tracy and her parents “I mean it!” Rachel calls after her and Danny watches her meet up with a little blonde girl with a braid as thick as his fist hanging down her back.
“She was the octopus wasn’t she?” he asks Rachel.
“Squid,” Rachel corrects him. “Let’s go, shall we? I’ll make the coffee while Grace packs her things and then we can have grown up conversation.”
“I look forward to it,” Danny says blandly and Rachel gives him that head-tilted, narrow-eyed look again; assessing.
“Liar,” she informs him and walks away, not waiting for Danny to get in his car and follow her, just automatically assuming he will. He’s tempted to just leave, God help him, but he is. He’s left Steve alone for hours and crap he forgot to let Grace call him, too. He did take some pictures though and Rachel has even more and video, so he guesses that will have to do.
He stands in the parking lot as all the other parents begin to leave, shifting from foot to foot, wondering at his strange urge to just bolt and go back to Steve even though he’s half afraid of what he may find. Which wouldn’t be anything, he tells himself, insistent that he will not go home to find Steve’s corpse because he’s not that sick. He’s sick though, yes he is and Danny is once again struck by the feeling of choking on a salty wad of dread because… because… he can’t. But how many times can he think that without it becoming redundant? Danny figures he can do it as many times as he fucking well pleases because this has nothing to do with redundancy and everything to do with hanging onto hope.
They should put that on a greeting card.
Danny startles a laugh out of himself with that then shakes his head and goes to his car. As he looks over the roof while unlocking the door he notices that Rachel is still there, waiting on him and he realizes that at this rate, Grace and her friend will most likely make it back to the house before them. He raises a hand and then opens his door, sliding into the seat with a huff of breath. He cranks up and then takes his phone out, pulls up Steve’s number and hits SEND. Only when the phone begins to ring does Danny put the car in reverse and back out of the parking slot.
And only when Steve answers does Danny actually relax and say, “Hey.” His voice doesn’t betray even the slightest tremor of worry and he’s getting really good at this shit. Like, he’s excelling at it and Danny never thought he would ever be this good-and so quickly-at hiding his feelings about things.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Grace is gone and has been for about fifteen minutes, but Danny can still smell her cherry Chap Stick where she gave him a quick smack on the cheek with a, “Later, Danno, I love you, bye!”
Now he’s sitting on Rachel’s pristine white couch with a cup of Irish coffee that he’s drinking too fast and well aware of the fact it’s a bit more Irish than it is coffee. Rachel is sitting across from him, dunking her teabag in a fine porcelain cup with little purple and yellow flowers on it. That set belonged to her great grandmother, Danny recalls as he sips his coffee again and keeps his eye on the bag of tea going up and down. It’s almost hypnotic watching it move and he keeps his eyes on it, not on Rachel’s keen gaze.
The spacious room is claustrophobic and hot to Danny as he sits there, feeling like he’s dirtying up the pretty white couch that Stan’s money bought. He thinks that when he stands up there may be a perfect outline of his ass on the soft fabric and he’s half tempted to scrub against the cushion to make sure. While they may be divorced and nothing but friends now, so far past anything else that it doesn’t even bear considering, that does not mean Danny can’t still be petty and annoyed with Stan for missing his baby’s play tonight. As well as unwittingly leaving him at the mercy of Rachel’s shrewdly observant nature.
“Are you going to tell me or am I going to have to pour more whisky down your throat in an effort to loosen your tongue?” Rachel asks, breaking the silence.
Danny chokes on his sip of coffee and takes the mug away from his lips, wiping the spilled droplets of whisky-spiked coffee away with the back of his hand. “So you’re trying to get me drunk, that it?” he asks and winks at her.
Rachel is unimpressed with his diversionary tactics. “Don’t try to change the topic,” she says, all brusque, Englishwoman-on-a-mission. Polite, but definitely to the point. “I know you, remember and your attempts at deflection don’t fool me, Daniel.”
Danny sighs and finally leans back on the sofa. He takes another sip of coffee and meets Rachel’s frank gaze over the rim. When he lowers the cup, he makes some feeble gestures with his free hand and it looks like he’s winding an invisible crank as he fumbles for the right way to say this. The direct approach has always worked best for him, so with his arm still waving, more agitated now, he says, “Steve has leukemia.”
Rachel clears her throat and her eyes widen a bit, but she doesn’t say anything for a moment as she tries to process that. “Come again?” she says, like she can’t believe she’s heard him right.
“Steve… he’s sick, Rachel,” Danny says and feels himself sag into the couch, holding onto his ceramic coffee mug so hard he’s a little worried it may break in his hand.
“When did this happen?” Rachel asks, eyebrows drawing together in a concerned frown. “My God, I am so sorry to hear that. How is he doing?”
“He’s been kinda… off for about a month now and he went to the doctor because of this nasty bruise he had and it all… just went from there,” Danny says and rubs at his forehead. “He’s doing okay, I guess. He went for his first chemo treatment Friday and he-Okay, I’m lying. He threw up all over me after he came back from the treatment and I spent half the night just trying to keep a sip of water in him. He seems like he’s taking it well, but between you and me-he’s full of shit and I know it.”
“Well,” Rachel says after his outburst and takes a moment to remove her teabag and set it aside on her saucer. “Neither are you. Taking it well, I mean. But you’re trying aren’t you? That’s what the brave face is all about?”
“Brave face? What are you…? I am not seven years old with a skinned knee,” Danny says, latching onto the first thing he can.
“No, you’re a grown man who just found out his partner is very ill,” Rachel says simply, summing it up nice and neat as she sets her tea aside and crosses the room. “I’ll get you some more coffee.”
She takes his mug and leaves him alone for a minute to re-gather himself and Danny calls, “Thank you,” after her so softly he almost thinks she won’t hear.
But she answers with, “You’re welcome. After all, that’s what friends are for.”
And that, that makes him smile.
~*~*~*~*~*~
When Danny leaves Rachel’s he feels a little better and he’s not sure if it was being able to talk about this with someone or the four cups of mostly-Irish-Irish-coffee. He thinks it was probably a mix, actually and knows that as a responsible officer of the law, he should not be driving after consuming so much whisky, but he also knows his limit and he’s far from drunk. He may be a small guy, but Danny Williams is no lightweight.
He drives back to Steve’s with the Camaro’s windows down, breathing in the scent of the island and the traces of Rachel’s expensive perfume whipping in the wind. Danny likes the scent, always has, but just like always there is something in it that leaves his nose itching with the faint urge to sneeze. She’s been wearing it for years, he’d spent a wad on a bottle of it for her birthday one year way back in The Days of Jersey and so he knows it won’t actually make him sneeze.
She’d hugged him before he left and said, “Call me if you need to talk.” She had punctuated it with a gentle shake and a stern look. “I mean it.”
Then she had let him go and stood in doorway to make sure he made it out to the car okay.
By the time he pulls into Steve’s driveway, most of his slight whisky-buzz has faded, but he’s still wired on Rachel’s coffee-she knows how to make it good and strong. He parks the car and looks up at the house, lights blazing all over and spies the garage light on. That’s the one he aims his attention to as he gets out of the car and goes that way.
He finds Steve sitting on the trunk of his dad’s old car and while he’s breathing a little heavier than normal and looks a little too pale for Danny’s tastes; he thinks it is okay overall. There are tools scattered around and Steve’s obviously been up and about more since he left, which makes Danny think he really must be feeling more up to par.
“Hey,” Danny says and goes to lean against the trunk beside Steve.
“Hey,” Steve says back and Danny watches him lick the little beads of sweat from his upper lip.
“How much did you get accomplished on this heap?”
“Not much,” Steve admits.
“Well, look at this way: At least you can’t break it more,” Danny says and Steve makes a scoffing sound in the back of his throat. “Face it, Superman, you’re not much of a mechanic and never have been.”
Steve cuts his eyes to the side and glares at Danny.
“If you’d just take it to a shop like a sane human being capable of admitting their shortcomings, they could fix it for you,” Danny says.
“I can do it,” Steve insists.
“You’ve been “doing it” for ages now and have managed to get it more than half a mile a grand total of twice,” Danny says.
“Shut up,” Steve says and clears his throat.
“Sure, just remember: Danno knows best and what Danno knows best right now is that you’re a lousy mechanic.”
“Asshole.”
“Yeah, but I’m honest,” Danny says and smiles at Steve. Steve glares at him again and pushes against his side with his leg.
“I can fix the car,” Steve says.
“Alright, alright, you can fix the car,” Danny says and throws his hands up.
“You know, if I had someone to help me it may go faster,” Steve says and he’s doing his hedging thing, trying to talk someone into doing what he wants them to do without saying it. Danny is hip to this game; he’s had years of experience.
“Are you asking me to assist you in this endeavor?”
“You could say that,” Steve says, tilting his head, feigning consideration.
“I think I may be able to do that,” Danny says and pushes away from the car. He yanks at the cuff of Steve’s shorts to get him to come on. “Have you eaten anything else today?”
Steve doesn’t say anything at first and then he sighs. “No. I didn’t feel like it.”
“Worried about a repeat of lunch?” Danny asks.
“No, I mean… You know what I mean.”
And yeah, Danny knows what he means. He means he doesn’t have any appetite and somehow that seems worse to him than the nausea does. “So how about we eat something now?”
“Sure,” Steve says and casts a sidelong glance at Danny.
Danny just gives him a big smile as he backs toward the kitchen. “Did I ever tell you how much I love it when you’re cooperative, Steven?”
“You may’ve mentioned it,” Steve says and now he’s finally smiling as well. He’s got some color back in his cheeks and his breathing is regular. Danny takes note of all that before he turns around to go on into the kitchen and find something for them to eat.
They end up sharing a bowl of original Cheerios; nice and plain, nothing in that straw-flavored bowl of yumminess to make Steve sick to his stomach again. He dutifully eats his half of the bowl, but by the time he’s nearly done, Danny can tell he’s forcing himself to eat them. It makes him frown, but he just ducks his head and starts a spoon war with Steve until they slosh milk all over their wrists. They are, after all, responsible adults.
It makes them laugh and it’s just one more thing that feels normal to them both now that things are starting to go pear-shaped. It’s a slow progression, but Danny can already feel the enormity of it bearing down on him and knows that Steve can feel it, too.
They finish their cereal and Danny takes the bowl into the kitchen and dumps it in the sink. Then he goes back and sits down beside Steve, both of them leaning slightly into one another in a way that’s so familiar and comfortable Danny feels something twist unpleasantly inside his chest as his annoying, mean little thoughts want to trample back through his brain.
Instead of letting those thoughts have their way; Danny puts his hand on Steve’s knee and says, “I told Rachel.”
“Danny,” Steve says, tone sharp as he turns his head to look at him. His eyes are narrowed and he’s annoyed, Danny knows he is, but damnit, this is one secret that cannot be kept.
“She needed to know,” Danny says. “I needed to tell her about it so she’s prepared and can help me with Grace.”
“What about Grace? It’s not contagious,” Steve says and shit, yeah, that came out wrong.
Licking his lips and wishing there was a different way to tell Steve what he already knows, Danny says, “You’re going to lose your hair, babe, you’re probably going to lose some weight, too. The chemo makes you sick and Grace spends time here. We can’t hide that from her, no matter what we do and if she doesn’t know then all it’s going to do is scare her.”
Steve’s quiet for a long time, so long that Danny figures when he next speaks, it will be at top volume. He’s got his hands fisted beside his hips and he’s staring straight ahead; the muscle in his jaw jumping. Danny watches him and thinks he’s maybe not so mad that he told Rachel, but because it had needed telling at all.
“When are you going to talk to her?” Steve asks after a while and Danny squeezes his knee.
“We’re going to talk to her next week sometime,” he says and Steve lets out a harsh breath. “Me, you and Rachel are going to sit her down and explain what’s going on. She’s a smart girl, you know that and if she understands then she’ll be fine. She was fine after we explained to her about… about how we’re more than friends and she’ll be fine about this.”
“This is a little different and you know it,” Steve says.
“Maybe so, but she’s still a smart girl and she’ll get this, too,” Danny assures him.
“Yeah,” Steve says and leans back against the cushion. “She is a smart girl.”
“She takes after her dad, after all,” Danny says and Steve smirks.
“I think she gets it from her mom, actually,” he says and Danny squawks in outrage.
“Hey, Rachel’s no slouch in the brains department, but Grace obviously got her genius from me,” Danny says.
“She at least got her mouth from you,” Steve concedes and covers Danny’s hand with his own.
Danny allows that, he’s feeling generous after all and leans back next to Steve. They fall quiet for a while and then Steve shifts a little and says, “We need to tell Chin and Kono, too. They’re not going to buy food poisoning as an excuse every time I throw up and especially not when… when…”
He gestures at his head and Danny gets what he means. “I know,” he says.
Steve presses his lips into a thin line and finally just says, “This fucking sucks.”
“Well said,” Danny agrees.
They lapse into silence again, the air heavy with their thoughts and worries, all left unspoken. To anyone looking in at them, they would look like two overgrown and sad children sitting on the sofa together. That is until Danny turns into Steve and kisses him. And kisses him. And kisses him some more as he laces their fingers together, careful not to squeeze too tight and cause more bruises.
They rise from the couch, stumble-fumbling, still kissing as they disappear into the dark upstairs and into the room at the end of the hall. Because sometimes, sometimes sex can be about forgetting for a little while, too, just as much as it can be about holding on at the same time.
Part III
When Steve walks out of Doctor Miles’s office an hour later, he’s calm and steady as he goes back to his truck. There’s an irritating buzzing sound in his ears, but he’s cool; fuck, he’s golden, yes indeed. Bits and pieces of phrases like, starting treatment immediately is recommended and I can refer you to an oncologist here on the island that’s excellent are competing with that buzzing in his ears as he climbs back in his truck.
Steve just sits there once he’s in the truck, little sheets of paper with prescriptions clenched in his left hand. He stares out the windshield and across the blacktop parking lot, not really seeing it or the glint and gleam off the metal of the other cars there. He stares until the sun beating down cheerfully on the macadam turns the whole world into a fuzzy yellow-white glow.
Finally, he blinks and says, “Well.” Just like that, nothing more because there’s nothing more he can think to say. He’s not going to sit down and cry about it or rant to the heavens.
He calls in to the office and when he gets Kono he tells her that he’s taking the day off to do something. It’s all very vague and he dodges her questions easily. When he hangs up he just looks out the windshield once more.
“Well,” he says again and then punches the dash hard enough he skins his knuckles on the hard, molded plastic. It’s really a wonder that the airbag doesn’t pop out, he thinks in a detached way. Maybe it’s a factory defect. He should probably have that checked out.
Then he very calmly cranks his truck and at last pulls away from the doctor’s office, headed home because he can’t think of anywhere else to go right then.
Danny calls while he’s on his way and Steve doesn’t answer the phone, he can’t deal with talking to anyone right now. Mostly because he doesn’t want to, if he’s being honest.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
When Danny shows up that night, Steve is in the living room and has been for about an hour. He tried to sit and watch television and had instead ended up on the internet, reading up on this newest enemy popping out bad cells like champagne bubbles. It hasn’t calmed him down at all-he doesn’t need to be calm, he is calm, he keeps telling himself. The information he found read like shit out of a nightmare and he hadn’t messed around for long because it was making him feel… weird.
He’d gone out to the garage for a while after that and messed around and then he’d walked around the yard, just trying to keep himself occupied. He can’t sit down and he’s been pacing in a crooked line from the couch to the doorway and back for who knows how long. He’s in pain still and worn out on top of that, the tiredness he’s been feeling so acute it’s almost tangible, but he doesn’t want to sleep and he doesn’t want to rest. Most of all he doesn’t want to be sick, but he is and it’s got him keyed up, moving around his own home like a penned up animal.
The familiar sound of the Camaro’s engine rumbling in the front yard makes him stop his pacing so quickly he sways. He’s panting, breath catching uncomfortably in his throat and he forces himself to even out his breathing. He knows about doing this, too and he’s fine, he’s fine. It occurs to him as he makes a beeline for the front door that he really was right-he doesn’t have arthritis and he laughs once, the sound brittle and sharp in the otherwise silent house.
He meets Danny at the door as he’s letting himself in and grabs him, not thinking at all and that’s even better-not thinking. Thinking is bad, which sounds insane, but he doesn’t care right now, he just kisses Danny and feels his questions on his tongue as he licks into his mouth. Steve makes a sound of negation in the back of his throat when they break apart and Danny opens his mouth to speak.
“Danny,” Steve says and he doesn’t need to say the rest; doesn’t need to add please. It’s in his eyes and on his face and Danny’s nod is barely perceptible as he pulls Steve down to kiss him again.
They make it to the bedroom and Steve straddles Danny’s hips, looking down at him; looking him in the eye as he lowers himself down. They don’t do it like this much because of the height difference, but Steve wants it this way right now and he really isn’t interested in questioning the why of it at the moment and maybe never because he knows anyway.
He moves and he’s so intent on the task at hand (distraction) that he doesn’t feel his pained joints or hear the way his voice cracks softly on even softer moans. He’s focused on feeling everything because he doesn’t want to hurt right now or think about being sick; he just wants to feel good. It’s so fucked up, desperate and like begging without words, but Danny’s hands smoothing over his ribs and bringing his face down to kiss him makes it a little more alright.
Later when they’re lying side by side, Danny turns his head and looks at him in the dark, his face a mass of Danny-ish shadows cast from the three-quarter moon filtering its light through the windows.
“So how bad is it?” he asks.
“Pretty bad,” Steve says.
“On a scale of one to ten how bad is pretty bad?” Danny asks.
“On a scale of leukemia,” Steve says and the sentence doesn’t even make that much sense, but Danny gets what he means.
“Shit,” he says and lets out a shaky breath.
“Pretty much,” is all Steve can think to respond with.
Danny scoots over closer, loops an arm around Steve’s waist and kisses him. When he pulls back a little, he says, “We’ll get through this.”
Steve knows he means it, too, that he means we and that makes him feel better, but only marginally so. Danny’s not the one with fucking cancer, but at least he isn’t running for the hills and he should’ve known he wouldn’t do that anyway.
All he says is, “Yep,” while he wishes for something else to punch. He moves closer to Danny instead, pressing up against him even more and Danny runs his hand down Steve’s arm, but leaves him to his silence for now; sharing it with him.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Steve goes in for his consult with the oncologist the following week. He goes alone, refusing Danny’s offer to go with him because they can’t both be running all over hell and back doing this shit. They have responsibilities after all. He hasn’t told Chin and Kono yet, has almost decided that he’s not going to say a thing about it, but hiding it forever isn’t an option either. It’s just not a conversation he wants to have.
How does he set the other two members of his team down and tell them, I have cancer and I may die? Steve doesn’t know and he turns that question over in his mind as he sits in the oncologist’s warmly decorated office and listens to his soothing voice telling him just how sick he really is and what his options are.
When he leaves, he has more prescriptions and a handful of pamphlets on the disease, the treatments; all of them loaded with helpful charts, diagrams and illustrations showing the disease-bearing cells in cheerful primary colors. He also has an appointment for his first chemotherapy treatment that Friday and Steve thinks at this rate he may start to really hate Fridays.
He takes his brightly colored pamphlets and little booklets home with him and starts reading them that night. He almost stops reading when he comes across a mention of mouth ulcers being caused by chemotherapy in a booklet entitled, Chemotherapy and You, but he plows ever onward through the wealth of information stacked on his tabletop. It’s like gathering intel on an enemy camp to Steve and this is a fucking war, no matter how it may seem to some people. Steve is a soldier and they like to know what it is they’re fighting; it makes the enemy easier to target and kill.
The whole time he’s reading, Danny’s sitting at the table with him doing the same thing. Steve finishes a pamphlet or booklet and it gets passed on to Danny. They do it all in silence, just the sound of slick pages with their glaring charts and graphs turning and turning and turning in the room.
When they’re finished, Steve gathers all of that handy-dandy information into a neat stack, picks it up and rises from the table. He gets a few more things he needs then goes outside and down to the beach, not even bothering to hide his stiff way of moving from Danny now because he knows and there’s no use in keeping up the pretense.
Once he’s out on the beach he starts a fire using those same pamphlets and booklets for kindling and additional fuel. He stands back and watches the flames eat up all the words and pictures that tell him his hair is going to fall out and he’s going to be eating pills like Skittles and puking for what could be months to come. He wanted it out of his house.
Danny comes out while he’s standing there and stands beside him, watching the flames crackle, too. He passes Steve a barbecue fork with a marshmallow speared on the end of it and holds out his own over the flames.
“Where are you hiding these?” Steve asks, the first words either of them have spoken in hours, which isn’t so strange for him, but it is for Danny.
“It’s not a hiding spot if I tell you,” Danny says and turns his marshmallow, watching as it blackens and starts to slightly droop off the two sharp tines it’s speared on.
“I guess not,” Steve says and holds his own marshmallow over the flames.
“No guessing necessary, it’s just not,” Danny says. After a while, sometime around his third marshmallow and Steve’s second, he adds, “I keep them in the bottom dresser drawer on the right.”
Steve laughs at that and takes a bite of his marshmallow as they stand side by side, leaning into one another without consciously realizing it. When they kiss in the dying light of the small fire, it’s gooey-sticky and their sugar-glazed mouths stick together a bit. The air swirling around them on the soft breeze smells like burning paper and the ocean.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Steve goes in on Friday as scheduled for his chemo treatment and he goes alone for it, too.
He sits in the chaise lounge-like chair and lets them hook him up to the machine. The chair is thickly padded though and it’s comfortable to his dully aching bones. He’s taking his painkillers, but not as prescribed; he’s taking them only when he can’t stand it anymore. Steve thinks as this goes on-in whatever direction it ends up heading-he’ll probably be taking them as directed. He doesn’t like that thought at all.
He makes himself relax back into his seat or at least presents the image of being so. Lazy and sprawling is a look he’s perfected over the years even if he’s wound tight as a clock spring inside. He keeps his eyes pinned to the clock on the far wall, counting the seconds down until he can leave. Steve wants to go back to work, but he can bide his time and this is necessary, he knows that. He breathes in and out; feels his lungs working and the way his chest is rising and falling in a smooth, calm rhythm.
Outwardly, Steve is still, but in his mind he is pacing around in circles, in straight lines and hexagons until he’s dizzy from so much thinking. He’s caged up in his head, moving like he did that first night in his living room. He thinks he can feel the medicine leaking through him, new and alien as it brings itself into the battlefield his traitorous fucking body has become.
He won’t let himself think about how utterly blind-rage angry he is about this happening to him though; the indignity of it that has him sitting here with a needle in his arm that may or may not carry the medicine needed for his survival. Fear is the background to all of it, but it’s not stronger than his rage, it is the sound of faraway thunder booming in his head; an undercurrent to the other feelings and feeding them.
On the far wall, the clock he has fixed his eyes on goes, Tick-tick-TICK. Steve can’t help it: he flinches at last from the sound and closes his eyes to finish his waiting.
The surprising thing-or maybe not so surprising given his fatigue lately-is that he dozes off once he closes his eyes, only waking up when a nurse comes to unchain him from the I.V. line.
~*~*~*~*~*~
He makes it back to 5-0 headquarters about two hours after he went in for his treatment and he’s just in time for lunch. Steve actually isn’t hungry, but he knows he has to eat and when he walks into the break room, it hits him-the combined odors of the others lunches.
Up until this point he’s been silently hopeful that maybe the chemo wouldn’t make him nauseous after all. He only fit about half of the criteria for being at high risk for it according to those hateful pamphlets he’d been given and he took one of the little pills they handed him like an after-dinner mint before he left the treatment center.
It still hits him like a kick and he gasps before swallowing thickly against the rush of saliva in his mouth when his stomach churns and then flips violently. Kono has sushi and he can smell the raw, sea-heavy smell of the fish, Chin’s eating what looks like a chicken salad sandwich and Danny’s got… well… Steve’s not sure because he doesn’t take the time to look. He turns before he’s even in the door good and walks out of the room, slowly breathing through his nose and telling himself not to puke on the floor; not to puke at all. He’s just going to get himself some water from the cooler to sip on and he’ll be okay, he just can’t handle the strong odors right now.
Which, he thinks as he goes for the cooler, how the fuck is he supposed to deal with crime scenes if this is going to be a problem after all? The rush of images and olfactory memories that come with that makes him heave slightly before he can stop himself.
“Shit,” he chokes out under his breath and swallows again.
He keeps walking though even as his stomach threatens to spill its contents all over the floor. Steve is focused on getting the water, any little task that he can use to keep him from thinking about how his gut is roiling will do and that’s the one most easily at hand.
Steve catches a whiff of something rich and meaty just before he hears, “Hey,” and Danny touches his arm lightly.
Steve turns to look at him and he doesn’t so much see Danny as he sees that Danny’s brought his lunch out with him-a meatball sub on a paper plate, oozing marinara and mozzarella like a hemorrhage streaked with pus. He stomach clench-flip-lurches and Steve tries to push past Danny, but it’s too late.
He hears himself say, “Fu-” Then that’s it; he’s puking all over Danny and his bloody sore of a sandwich.
Danny’s cursing and yelling, but he still reaches for Steve and grabs his arms, ruined sandwich hitting the floor, when he stumbles, still retching.
~*~*~*~*~*~
The rest of the day and most of the night, Danny spends looking after Steve. After the third trip to the bathroom, he gets a bucket and places it next to Steve’s side of the bed.
He drove Steve back to the house after the incident in the bullpen, minus a side trip to the bathroom about thirty seconds later. He had stood outside of the stall listening to Steve dry heave and make awful, urk, urk sounds and felt his own stomach turn. But it had nothing to do with Steve throwing up and everything to do with why he was throwing up.
Chin drove Steve’s truck back and Kono drove her own car so she could give Chin a lift after they were all done. Danny had needed to pull over about halfway there and Steve had barely gotten the door open to throw up again. There they had all sat; their own little convoy while their fearless leader puked up nothing but bile and little strings of bloody drool from ruptured vessels in his throat. Danny had held onto the steering wheel so hard his hands had cramped around it.
Now Steve finally seems about all puked out and it has been slacking off for hours after the first rush of it. Still though, Danny can’t remember ever making so many trips to the bathroom for cool cloths and cups of tepid tap water. He’s run his legs off even after getting the bucket for Steve to hurl into, but he doesn’t mind so much, it gives him something to do instead of sitting around and feeling helpless to do anything.
Steve’s sleeping now, laid out on his side with his cheek on the edge of the mattress, hovering above the bucket. He looks pale, drawn and he’s sticky with sick-sweat when Danny reaches out to touch his naked back because he can’t not touch him.
He feels like by not telling Chin and Kono still they’re doing something very wrong, but he knows that they’re really not. Steve doesn’t want the sympathy it would bring, all of the concerned looks and too-careful way of moving around him they’d unconsciously pick up if they knew. They’re going to have to know though, but… Danny just can’t think about them right now, not really; not the way he perhaps should. He can’t even think of himself here lately, all he can think about is, On a scale of leukemia and how it kills him to have to imagine what could happen.
He can’t stop thinking about it though and he’s worried he’ll say something out loud about it. He doesn’t want Steve to hear the things going on his mind, all of the, What if?s and How could I stand it?s. Because they don’t talk about it and Danny can at least be quiet and not offer hollow sympathy. He can buy a new shirt or wash the puke out of the one Steve barfed on and he’ll let him do it again and again if that’s what it takes.
Danny moves closer to Steve, thinks he feels feverish, which is to be expected. He wishes Steve would reconsider allowing himself to be hospitalized for this first round of chemo treatments, but he knows he won’t and if he’s being honest, Danny wouldn’t do it either. He’d still mentioned it and Steve had said, “No, Danny,” just before he’d gagged again, nearly losing the little bit of water he’d kept down.
“I know, babe, I know,” Danny had said because he did-does-know. Steve won’t do it if he doesn’t have to and he actually isn’t required to be there at all for this. The least he can do is be sick as a dog and feel like shit in the comfort of his own home.
There’s a light on in the hall and moonlight streaming through the open blinds when Danny lies down beside Steve, finally convinced that he’s done with vomiting for the night. He’s sleeping peacefully, snoring so, so softly every now and then and Danny kisses the back of his neck before he rests his own head.
A few hours later Steve comes to with a harsh retch and jerks so hard he would’ve fallen off the bed if Danny didn’t grab him. All he can do is murmur, “Shh, you’ll be okay, you’ll be okay,” while he holds on.
When Steve finally collapses back on the bed, he’s shaking and Danny’s shaking with him, just on the inside. He holds him until they fall asleep again and in the morning, Steve feels like eating and Danny thinks that’s a good sign; that it’s over for now. Then Steve gags at the smell of the scrambled eggs and Danny makes a note to throw the eggs out altogether. Steve does eat his bacon and pancakes though and he keeps them down. There is that at least.
They spend most of the day in bed together, talking and shooting the shit. Danny knows it’s because Steve feels too bad to get up and do anything, just like he knows Steve can’t really stand that at all, but is making the best he can of a fucked up situation.
Steve only throws up once, after lunch. Danny isn’t sure he can call it progress, but it is one hell of a step up from yesterday.
~*~*~*~*~*~
That evening he leaves Steve to go to a play Grace is in at her school. It’s why he doesn’t have her this weekend because, much as it galls him all the way down to the depths of his pride, Danny would not be any good at hustling his daughter around in a starfish costume that he wouldn’t have the first idea of how to get her into in the first place and he knows it. Rachel has kindly promised him two weekends in a row if he wants them and of course he does.
He doesn’t know what to tell Gracie about Steve though because he’s not up to being quite the rambunctious-sometimes too rambunctious, in Danny’s opinion-human jungle gym Grace has grown used to. He can’t very well see himself telling Grace to stop hanging on Steve because she may bruise him or something. And Steve, well, it’s a solidly established fact that he’s a pigheaded asshole and would still let Grace clamber all over him and maybe bounce on his head if she really wanted to. Long story short, Danny thinks he needs to work out how to handle this part of their new equation. Grace will understand, he’s got a lot of confidence in his kid, but he doesn’t know if she’ll like listening to Steve blowing chunks all night if he has another episode like the first treatment caused.
It gives him a headache just thinking about it, but none of it can be skirted around or stepped over, so he’ll work something out. Danny’s a resourceful guy and he knows that.
He gets to Grace’s school, parks and meets her and Rachel at the backstage entrance of the auditorium. Danny tells Rachel hello and then asks where Step-Stan is.
“Business trip,” Rachel says and Danny rolls his eyes.
“I saw that,” Rachel says and then lets it drop; there’s no real heat to her words anyway.
Grace looks remarkably cute and awkward in her starfish costume and she’s beaming at him between her little foam starfish legs… tentacles… Danny’s not sure about the anatomy of starfish; though he is pretty sure none of them are violently purple like Grace is. Then again, maybe so because he’s not a marine biologist and wouldn’t really know, would he?
Fuck, it is nice to be distracted by her smiling face.
“Where’s Steve?” she asks him and Danny kneels down in front of her, listens to his knee make a gross pop-crunch sound and then settles.
“Steve’s really busy tonight, Monkey,” Danny tells her. “But he asked me to take pictures and we can call him after your big debut.”
“Okay,” Grace says and cocks her head. “Debut,” she repeats. “I like that word.”
“It’s a good word,” Danny agrees as he stands up again.
Grace’s teacher calls her back to get ready to go on stage and she gives him a starfish costume-squishy hug and then squeezes Rachel, too, before she flounce-waddles off to join her classmates.
When he looks back, he finds Rachel watching him with one eyebrow raised. “What?” Danny asks.
“Don’t do that,” Rachel says and tilts her head a little bit. “Something’s not right.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Danny says, waving a hand and his tone is pitch-perfect, but his answer is too swift and Rachel was married to him for a long time. She knows things, like a former spouse spidey-sense or some such.
“Mhmm,” Rachel says and makes a little tick sound with her tongue against the back of her teeth. “You can come in for some coffee when we’re done here and tell me all about it. If you’d like.”
Danny opens his mouth to say something, maybe even pick a fight because hell, it’s not that hard to do even now. However, like Chin, Kono and Grace, Rachel needs to know about this and he does trust the woman quite a lot still, so he’s left flailing for some kind of comeback.
“Right,” Rachel says with a decisive nod even as Danny continues to flounder. “Come along, Daniel, I believe we need to take our seats in the auditorium for now.” She starts to walk off and stops to look at him over her shoulder, a little smile pulling at her mouth. “If you think of some way to respond to me anytime soon, feel free to whisper it in my ear, I’d love to hear it.”
“Shit,” Danny says, cursing the fact that she can still fuck with him like this, but he’s smiling a little, too. He follows along behind her, listening to her heels click-clicking on the concrete as they go for the main entrance to the auditorium.
~*~*~*~*~*~
After Grace’s play, somewhere between the parentally obligated standing ovation she and her classmates receive and the three of them going out to the parking lot to leave, Grace asks if she can spend the night with her friend, Tracy. Grace informs them that Tracy’s mom already said it was okay, so pleeeeaaase. All Danny can do is wonder when the hell they had time to make these plans.
Rachel purses her lips and exchanges a look with Danny then says, “It’s alright with me as long as your father says it is.”
“Please, Danno?” Grace asks and turns pleading brown eyes up at him.
“Hmm…,” Danny says, fighting a smile as she squirms a little and continues to give him puppy dog eyes, hands clasped under her chin like she’s praying. “Well, okay,” he finally relents.
She hugs his legs, exclaiming, “Thank you, thank you!” before she makes to sprint off.
Rachel stops her with a hand on her arm. “Oh, no, young lady. They can follow us back home so you can at least get some pajamas and your toothbrush.”
Grace pouts and then nods. “Okay.”
“I should think so, yes,” Rachel says and bites her bottom lip, fighting her own smile as she releases Grace to the custody of Tracy and her parents “I mean it!” Rachel calls after her and Danny watches her meet up with a little blonde girl with a braid as thick as his fist hanging down her back.
“She was the octopus wasn’t she?” he asks Rachel.
“Squid,” Rachel corrects him. “Let’s go, shall we? I’ll make the coffee while Grace packs her things and then we can have grown up conversation.”
“I look forward to it,” Danny says blandly and Rachel gives him that head-tilted, narrow-eyed look again; assessing.
“Liar,” she informs him and walks away, not waiting for Danny to get in his car and follow her, just automatically assuming he will. He’s tempted to just leave, God help him, but he is. He’s left Steve alone for hours and crap he forgot to let Grace call him, too. He did take some pictures though and Rachel has even more and video, so he guesses that will have to do.
He stands in the parking lot as all the other parents begin to leave, shifting from foot to foot, wondering at his strange urge to just bolt and go back to Steve even though he’s half afraid of what he may find. Which wouldn’t be anything, he tells himself, insistent that he will not go home to find Steve’s corpse because he’s not that sick. He’s sick though, yes he is and Danny is once again struck by the feeling of choking on a salty wad of dread because… because… he can’t. But how many times can he think that without it becoming redundant? Danny figures he can do it as many times as he fucking well pleases because this has nothing to do with redundancy and everything to do with hanging onto hope.
They should put that on a greeting card.
Danny startles a laugh out of himself with that then shakes his head and goes to his car. As he looks over the roof while unlocking the door he notices that Rachel is still there, waiting on him and he realizes that at this rate, Grace and her friend will most likely make it back to the house before them. He raises a hand and then opens his door, sliding into the seat with a huff of breath. He cranks up and then takes his phone out, pulls up Steve’s number and hits SEND. Only when the phone begins to ring does Danny put the car in reverse and back out of the parking slot.
And only when Steve answers does Danny actually relax and say, “Hey.” His voice doesn’t betray even the slightest tremor of worry and he’s getting really good at this shit. Like, he’s excelling at it and Danny never thought he would ever be this good-and so quickly-at hiding his feelings about things.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Grace is gone and has been for about fifteen minutes, but Danny can still smell her cherry Chap Stick where she gave him a quick smack on the cheek with a, “Later, Danno, I love you, bye!”
Now he’s sitting on Rachel’s pristine white couch with a cup of Irish coffee that he’s drinking too fast and well aware of the fact it’s a bit more Irish than it is coffee. Rachel is sitting across from him, dunking her teabag in a fine porcelain cup with little purple and yellow flowers on it. That set belonged to her great grandmother, Danny recalls as he sips his coffee again and keeps his eye on the bag of tea going up and down. It’s almost hypnotic watching it move and he keeps his eyes on it, not on Rachel’s keen gaze.
The spacious room is claustrophobic and hot to Danny as he sits there, feeling like he’s dirtying up the pretty white couch that Stan’s money bought. He thinks that when he stands up there may be a perfect outline of his ass on the soft fabric and he’s half tempted to scrub against the cushion to make sure. While they may be divorced and nothing but friends now, so far past anything else that it doesn’t even bear considering, that does not mean Danny can’t still be petty and annoyed with Stan for missing his baby’s play tonight. As well as unwittingly leaving him at the mercy of Rachel’s shrewdly observant nature.
“Are you going to tell me or am I going to have to pour more whisky down your throat in an effort to loosen your tongue?” Rachel asks, breaking the silence.
Danny chokes on his sip of coffee and takes the mug away from his lips, wiping the spilled droplets of whisky-spiked coffee away with the back of his hand. “So you’re trying to get me drunk, that it?” he asks and winks at her.
Rachel is unimpressed with his diversionary tactics. “Don’t try to change the topic,” she says, all brusque, Englishwoman-on-a-mission. Polite, but definitely to the point. “I know you, remember and your attempts at deflection don’t fool me, Daniel.”
Danny sighs and finally leans back on the sofa. He takes another sip of coffee and meets Rachel’s frank gaze over the rim. When he lowers the cup, he makes some feeble gestures with his free hand and it looks like he’s winding an invisible crank as he fumbles for the right way to say this. The direct approach has always worked best for him, so with his arm still waving, more agitated now, he says, “Steve has leukemia.”
Rachel clears her throat and her eyes widen a bit, but she doesn’t say anything for a moment as she tries to process that. “Come again?” she says, like she can’t believe she’s heard him right.
“Steve… he’s sick, Rachel,” Danny says and feels himself sag into the couch, holding onto his ceramic coffee mug so hard he’s a little worried it may break in his hand.
“When did this happen?” Rachel asks, eyebrows drawing together in a concerned frown. “My God, I am so sorry to hear that. How is he doing?”
“He’s been kinda… off for about a month now and he went to the doctor because of this nasty bruise he had and it all… just went from there,” Danny says and rubs at his forehead. “He’s doing okay, I guess. He went for his first chemo treatment Friday and he-Okay, I’m lying. He threw up all over me after he came back from the treatment and I spent half the night just trying to keep a sip of water in him. He seems like he’s taking it well, but between you and me-he’s full of shit and I know it.”
“Well,” Rachel says after his outburst and takes a moment to remove her teabag and set it aside on her saucer. “Neither are you. Taking it well, I mean. But you’re trying aren’t you? That’s what the brave face is all about?”
“Brave face? What are you…? I am not seven years old with a skinned knee,” Danny says, latching onto the first thing he can.
“No, you’re a grown man who just found out his partner is very ill,” Rachel says simply, summing it up nice and neat as she sets her tea aside and crosses the room. “I’ll get you some more coffee.”
She takes his mug and leaves him alone for a minute to re-gather himself and Danny calls, “Thank you,” after her so softly he almost thinks she won’t hear.
But she answers with, “You’re welcome. After all, that’s what friends are for.”
And that, that makes him smile.
~*~*~*~*~*~
When Danny leaves Rachel’s he feels a little better and he’s not sure if it was being able to talk about this with someone or the four cups of mostly-Irish-Irish-coffee. He thinks it was probably a mix, actually and knows that as a responsible officer of the law, he should not be driving after consuming so much whisky, but he also knows his limit and he’s far from drunk. He may be a small guy, but Danny Williams is no lightweight.
He drives back to Steve’s with the Camaro’s windows down, breathing in the scent of the island and the traces of Rachel’s expensive perfume whipping in the wind. Danny likes the scent, always has, but just like always there is something in it that leaves his nose itching with the faint urge to sneeze. She’s been wearing it for years, he’d spent a wad on a bottle of it for her birthday one year way back in The Days of Jersey and so he knows it won’t actually make him sneeze.
She’d hugged him before he left and said, “Call me if you need to talk.” She had punctuated it with a gentle shake and a stern look. “I mean it.”
Then she had let him go and stood in doorway to make sure he made it out to the car okay.
By the time he pulls into Steve’s driveway, most of his slight whisky-buzz has faded, but he’s still wired on Rachel’s coffee-she knows how to make it good and strong. He parks the car and looks up at the house, lights blazing all over and spies the garage light on. That’s the one he aims his attention to as he gets out of the car and goes that way.
He finds Steve sitting on the trunk of his dad’s old car and while he’s breathing a little heavier than normal and looks a little too pale for Danny’s tastes; he thinks it is okay overall. There are tools scattered around and Steve’s obviously been up and about more since he left, which makes Danny think he really must be feeling more up to par.
“Hey,” Danny says and goes to lean against the trunk beside Steve.
“Hey,” Steve says back and Danny watches him lick the little beads of sweat from his upper lip.
“How much did you get accomplished on this heap?”
“Not much,” Steve admits.
“Well, look at this way: At least you can’t break it more,” Danny says and Steve makes a scoffing sound in the back of his throat. “Face it, Superman, you’re not much of a mechanic and never have been.”
Steve cuts his eyes to the side and glares at Danny.
“If you’d just take it to a shop like a sane human being capable of admitting their shortcomings, they could fix it for you,” Danny says.
“I can do it,” Steve insists.
“You’ve been “doing it” for ages now and have managed to get it more than half a mile a grand total of twice,” Danny says.
“Shut up,” Steve says and clears his throat.
“Sure, just remember: Danno knows best and what Danno knows best right now is that you’re a lousy mechanic.”
“Asshole.”
“Yeah, but I’m honest,” Danny says and smiles at Steve. Steve glares at him again and pushes against his side with his leg.
“I can fix the car,” Steve says.
“Alright, alright, you can fix the car,” Danny says and throws his hands up.
“You know, if I had someone to help me it may go faster,” Steve says and he’s doing his hedging thing, trying to talk someone into doing what he wants them to do without saying it. Danny is hip to this game; he’s had years of experience.
“Are you asking me to assist you in this endeavor?”
“You could say that,” Steve says, tilting his head, feigning consideration.
“I think I may be able to do that,” Danny says and pushes away from the car. He yanks at the cuff of Steve’s shorts to get him to come on. “Have you eaten anything else today?”
Steve doesn’t say anything at first and then he sighs. “No. I didn’t feel like it.”
“Worried about a repeat of lunch?” Danny asks.
“No, I mean… You know what I mean.”
And yeah, Danny knows what he means. He means he doesn’t have any appetite and somehow that seems worse to him than the nausea does. “So how about we eat something now?”
“Sure,” Steve says and casts a sidelong glance at Danny.
Danny just gives him a big smile as he backs toward the kitchen. “Did I ever tell you how much I love it when you’re cooperative, Steven?”
“You may’ve mentioned it,” Steve says and now he’s finally smiling as well. He’s got some color back in his cheeks and his breathing is regular. Danny takes note of all that before he turns around to go on into the kitchen and find something for them to eat.
They end up sharing a bowl of original Cheerios; nice and plain, nothing in that straw-flavored bowl of yumminess to make Steve sick to his stomach again. He dutifully eats his half of the bowl, but by the time he’s nearly done, Danny can tell he’s forcing himself to eat them. It makes him frown, but he just ducks his head and starts a spoon war with Steve until they slosh milk all over their wrists. They are, after all, responsible adults.
It makes them laugh and it’s just one more thing that feels normal to them both now that things are starting to go pear-shaped. It’s a slow progression, but Danny can already feel the enormity of it bearing down on him and knows that Steve can feel it, too.
They finish their cereal and Danny takes the bowl into the kitchen and dumps it in the sink. Then he goes back and sits down beside Steve, both of them leaning slightly into one another in a way that’s so familiar and comfortable Danny feels something twist unpleasantly inside his chest as his annoying, mean little thoughts want to trample back through his brain.
Instead of letting those thoughts have their way; Danny puts his hand on Steve’s knee and says, “I told Rachel.”
“Danny,” Steve says, tone sharp as he turns his head to look at him. His eyes are narrowed and he’s annoyed, Danny knows he is, but damnit, this is one secret that cannot be kept.
“She needed to know,” Danny says. “I needed to tell her about it so she’s prepared and can help me with Grace.”
“What about Grace? It’s not contagious,” Steve says and shit, yeah, that came out wrong.
Licking his lips and wishing there was a different way to tell Steve what he already knows, Danny says, “You’re going to lose your hair, babe, you’re probably going to lose some weight, too. The chemo makes you sick and Grace spends time here. We can’t hide that from her, no matter what we do and if she doesn’t know then all it’s going to do is scare her.”
Steve’s quiet for a long time, so long that Danny figures when he next speaks, it will be at top volume. He’s got his hands fisted beside his hips and he’s staring straight ahead; the muscle in his jaw jumping. Danny watches him and thinks he’s maybe not so mad that he told Rachel, but because it had needed telling at all.
“When are you going to talk to her?” Steve asks after a while and Danny squeezes his knee.
“We’re going to talk to her next week sometime,” he says and Steve lets out a harsh breath. “Me, you and Rachel are going to sit her down and explain what’s going on. She’s a smart girl, you know that and if she understands then she’ll be fine. She was fine after we explained to her about… about how we’re more than friends and she’ll be fine about this.”
“This is a little different and you know it,” Steve says.
“Maybe so, but she’s still a smart girl and she’ll get this, too,” Danny assures him.
“Yeah,” Steve says and leans back against the cushion. “She is a smart girl.”
“She takes after her dad, after all,” Danny says and Steve smirks.
“I think she gets it from her mom, actually,” he says and Danny squawks in outrage.
“Hey, Rachel’s no slouch in the brains department, but Grace obviously got her genius from me,” Danny says.
“She at least got her mouth from you,” Steve concedes and covers Danny’s hand with his own.
Danny allows that, he’s feeling generous after all and leans back next to Steve. They fall quiet for a while and then Steve shifts a little and says, “We need to tell Chin and Kono, too. They’re not going to buy food poisoning as an excuse every time I throw up and especially not when… when…”
He gestures at his head and Danny gets what he means. “I know,” he says.
Steve presses his lips into a thin line and finally just says, “This fucking sucks.”
“Well said,” Danny agrees.
They lapse into silence again, the air heavy with their thoughts and worries, all left unspoken. To anyone looking in at them, they would look like two overgrown and sad children sitting on the sofa together. That is until Danny turns into Steve and kisses him. And kisses him. And kisses him some more as he laces their fingers together, careful not to squeeze too tight and cause more bruises.
They rise from the couch, stumble-fumbling, still kissing as they disappear into the dark upstairs and into the room at the end of the hall. Because sometimes, sometimes sex can be about forgetting for a little while, too, just as much as it can be about holding on at the same time.
Part III