Fic: Visible by Taste_is_Sweet (PG-13; Angst; AU; Danny/Steve)

[taste_is_sweet]

Title: Visible
Paring: McGarrett/Williams (Pre-Slash)
Genre: AU; Episode Related; Angst; H/C
Rating: PG-13 (for language)
Warnings: None
Word Count: 4,702
Spoilers: 1x 20 (Ma Ke Kahakai)

Author's Notes: First and foremost, hello, everyone! Some of you may remember me from Stargate: Atlantis fandom, but this is my first H50 story. Thank you for reading and I hope you all enjoy it.

Secondly, this story is set in an AU where 10 percent of the population has superhuman abilities, known as Gifts. Not everyone would agree that 'Gift' is an appropriate term.

If you're interested in the other stories in the Gifts 'verse, you can find them here at the wraithbait.com archive (Aegis, Enthrall and Stricken were co-written).

ETA: Now you can find the entire series at Archive of Our Own.

All the other Gifts stories take place in the Stargate: Atlantis universe, but don't need to be read to understand this one. However, Visible can be taken as a prologue to a much (much, much) longer Hawaii 5-0/Stargate: Atlantis crossover that I've almost finished and should have up before the end of January.

And finally, this story fills the prompt of 'Hospital Stay' in my hc_bingo card. (the bingo card can be found here.) Many, many thanks to squeakyoflight for the suggestion.

Summary: "You disappeared. Again. What did you want me to do? Play patty-cake with every piece of furniture in the room?"


Steve wasn't there when Danny came through the front door of Steve's house, hands full of the paper bag of takeout and his duffel, even though Steve had said on the phone that he'd be waiting for him. Danny's eyes searched the dim, silent living room and for a moment all he could think about was tasers and ninja assassins and lousy home security, and then he remembered Steve's particular Gift and just bellowed, "HEY, STEVEN!" into the apparently empty room.

Danny didn't hear anything of course, but the TV remote went flying off the coffee table and then Steve was right there on the couch, perfectly audible and visible and looking pained and a little wild-eyed and exactly like he'd just been woken roughly from the kind of accidentally deep sleep that only came from painkillers and injury-induced exhaustion. There was a deep pink groove like a paper fold on the unhurt side of his face from where he'd mashed it into the arm of the couch. The hurt side of his face looked miserably swollen and red from smashing against the cliff, his broken arm looked stiff and miserably painful in the plaster cast, and Steve just looked miserable. Miserable and pissed off.

"What the hell did you do that for?" Steve demanded. He wiped his mouth and Danny smiled inwardly at the thought of Steve slumped over and drooling.

Danny was too much of a nice guy to mention it, though. Instead he just shrugged as he kicked off his shoes. "You disappeared. Again. What did you want me to do? Play patty-cake with every piece of furniture in the room?"

"It didn't occur to you to just check the couch?" Steve said, watching as Danny dropped his bag next to the couch and walked into his kitchen. "I'm not hungry," he added.

"I did check the couch, and the rest of the room at the same time. I was being efficient," Danny said. He refused to feel the least bit guilty about apparently startling the super ninja-SEAL half to death in his own living room. He grabbed a bowl out of one of the cupboards, freed the container of soup from the bag then emptied the soup into the bowl. "And I'm afraid you're going to have to be hungry, babe, because Kamekona made this chicken soup specially for you and I promised him you'd eat it." Danny smiled at the soft curls of steam still rising from the bowl then carefully carried it back into the living room.

"I'm not sick," Steve said. He eyed the bowl dubiously as Danny put it on the coffee table, like it was going to leap up and strangle him.

"I realize that," Danny said. Steve looked sick, but Danny didn't think there was any point in telling him. "But you did stress your body by falling off a cliff, and I have it under good authority that stress weakens the immune system. So eat it."

Steve left off eyeing the soup to eye Danny. "Good authority?"

"Grace. She learned it at school." Danny jerked his chin at the now-barely steaming bowl. "Eat it already."

Steve wrinkled his nose, but at least he picked up the spoon. He stared down at the bowl, holding his spoon like he expected to see an animal he'd have to beat to death with it. Maybe a teeny soup-shark. "He didn't put Spam in it, did he?"

"Not a single over-processed pink chunk," Danny affirmed, then rolled his eyes as Steve started poking at the soup with his spoon anyway. "Your lack of trust is absolutely appalling, do you know that? Really, you hurt my soul."

Predictably Steve didn't answer that, but he did start eating the soup instead of mauling it, so Danny counted it as a win. He went back to the kitchen long enough to steal a beer out of the fridge then plopped down on the other side of Steve's couch and swiped the remote off the floor. "Anything good on?" he asked, already flipping through the channels.

"I wouldn't know. I didn't get that far," Steve said dryly.

"Guess not." Danny settled on a baseball game and lowered the volume, only really wanting it as background noise. He settled comfortably into the backrest and looked at Steve. "You okay?"

Steve shrugged with the shoulder not attached to an arm in a cast. A little soup spilled off the spoon and back into the bowl. "I've had worse."

Danny let his head thunk back against the couch with an annoyed sigh. "Of course you have. I'm sure you SEAL guys throw each other off cliffs for fun. That's not what I asked you, Steven."

"I'm fine, Danny," Steve said, though apparently the now half-full bowl of Spamless chicken soup was so interesting Steve couldn't meet Danny's eyes.

"Sure," Danny said, taking in Steve's pallor and bruises and how hard he was trying not to move his hurt arm at all. Danny put his hand over his eyes, and then yanked it away so he could glare at him. "Sure you're fine. That's why I couldn't find you when I walked in here, because you were so 'fine' you couldn't even stay awake for ten minutes after I called you!" He stood up, too antsy with frustration to stay still. "Seriously, why do I even bother with you?"

Steve blinked up at him, looking confused and annoyed. "What's gotten into you?"

"You! You have!" Danny blurted. Then he realized how it sounded but brazened on anyway, hoping there wasn't enough light in the living room for Steve to notice his face pinking. He gestured helplessly at Steve. "You! With being 'fine'! You fell off a cliff, Steven! You fell off a cliff and you broke your arm and cracked your head open! It's okay to admit you might be in a little bit of pain!"

"I'm fine, Danny," Steve said, then showed that for the lie it totally was by wincing as soon as he moved. "I know you think I'm in agony here, but I'm not. Believe me. I've had worse and I can handle it." He slid his gaze over to the duffel on the floor. "And I don't need a babysitter, either. You can go home."

"Nope. Sorry." Danny shook his head. "You haven't been out of the hospital all that long and I promised Chin and Kono that I'd look out for you tonight." He crossed his arms when he saw Steve glowering. "I'll sleep on the couch. You won't even know I'm here. But this way if you pass out at the top of the stairs you won't have to wait until we come over to find out why you're not answering your phone and trip over your crumpled body on the landing."

Steve glowered more fiercely. "I'm not going to pass out, Danny! Jesus, where do you get this stuff?" He ran the fingers of his useful hand through his hair. "Yeah, I'm in pain, okay? But it's not too bad and I was just about to take a painkiller and go to bed anyway. I'm not helpless and I'm not going to fade out accidentally. So you don't have to stay and watch over me, all right?"

"Sorry," Danny said again, not sorry at all. "No can do, babe. I made a promise, remember?" He shrugged at Steve's wordless grunt of anger. "You team cares about you. Deal with it."

"If they cared about me, they'd leave me alone," Steve growled. But then he looked at Danny and Danny's crossed arms, and abruptly let out a breath and slumped a little like he'd given up the fight. "Fine. Whatever. You do what you want. I'm going to bed." He heaved himself off the couch, looking more defeated than angry now and Danny felt a little bad about that, except for how Steve was acting like they were sending him to prison instead of just looking out for him.

Danny stood back and watched as Steve hobbled up the stairs, moving like every one of his abused muscles was screaming at him. Danny clenched his jaw and his fists so he wouldn't run over to help.

"You'd better take your meds!" Danny called to him, just to be a pain in the ass. He wasn't surprised when Steve completely ignored him. "Yeah, fuck you, too," he muttered and flopped down on the couch again. He picked up the remote to turn up the volume of the ballgame but realized he didn't even know what teams were playing and just ended up leaving it as it was.

He got up again and brought the bowl and spoon into the kitchen and washed them. He placed them both neatly in the dish rack, and then purposely made the dish crooked and put the spoon upside down just because he knew it'd make Steve crazy. "Take that, asshole," he muttered.

Danny started to leave the room, then sighed and went back and straightened the bowl and spoon again. He almost left the kitchen a second time, then went back again, grabbed a dishtowel and dried the two things and put them away, cursing himself silently as an idiot the whole time.

He came out of the kitchen for the third time and flopped despondently onto the couch again. The ballgame was still going on and he saw it was the Red Sox playing one of the newer teams he didn't give a damn about. But it was too early for uninjured people to go to bed and Danny was too weary and too pissed off with Steve and just maybe a little too worried about him to do anything else. So that didn't leave much except the game. He left the volume low and sort-of watched it, all the time listening for a request for help he knew would never come.

***

Danny woke up suddenly, bolting upright and halfway to his feet before he truly realized he was even awake, let alone what had woken him. Something falling to the floor, heavy enough to reverberate through the large house like the echo of an explosion.

Steve, Danny thought and raced up the stairs.

It was fully dark now so he threw on the lights, squinting through the sudden glare. There was nothing in the hallway and on instinct Danny checked the bedroom first and didn't see Steve. He'd expected that this time, though, and instead of looking for Steve Danny looked for the things that might show where he was, like the ugly off-white lamp on the floor and the sheet that was half pulled off the bed and obviously crushed under the weight of a body.

"Steve!" Danny sank to his knees, moving slowly in case he landed on any part of him. He patted along the floor until his hand hit the damp cloth of Steve's tee-shirt. Steve's back moved under his hand like he was awake but Danny wasn't sure. He could feel him but Steve was still inaudible and invisible; a solid ghost. "Steven?" Danny felt his way to the angle of Steve's shoulder and shook it a little, trying to be careful and not hurt him. "Steve, are you awake?"

Stupid question but at least you could count on an answer most of the time, except that Steve would have to turn his Gift off for Danny to hear him speak. Danny glanced at the nightstand and the floor near where he estimated Steve's head had to be. There was no blood, though that didn't necessarily mean he hadn't cracked his skull again.

Danny swallowed, trying not to think of how Steve had cracked his skull the first time. "You're on the floor, buddy," he said to Steve, voice a little louder now, shaking less gently, "can you hear me?"

He thought maybe Steve nodded. The body under Danny's hand moved with purpose and Danny fumbled back to Steve's arm and helped him sit up. "You know you're still ghosted, right? I can't see or hear you."

He felt Steve's arm go stalk-still under his hands and then Steve was there again at last, breathing hard and dotted with sweat and looking at Danny like Danny had been the ghost in the room.

"You okay?" Danny asked him.

"You can see me," Steve said, a statement and a question all at once. His voice sounded like chipped stone.

"Yeah, sure," Danny said, nodding. "I can hear you, too. You're right here."

Steve nodded. He lifted his good hand and rubbed his face and Danny saw it shaking. Then Steve pulled his knees up and rested his forearm on them, leaving his cast-heavy arm dangling.

"You okay?" Danny asked him again. He was still holding onto Steve's hurt arm and figured he should probably let go, give Steve his space. He couldn't quite make himself do it.

Steve swallowed. "Yeah. Bad dream." He made a vague gesture with his fingers by his head. "I think it's the pills. Giving me nightmares."

"Must've been a doozy, to make you thrash so hard you ended up on the floor." Danny did a quick eyeball for blood on Steve's head but he couldn't see any new damage. "You didn't hurt your arm, did you?"

"Just some more bruises," Steve said. He was looking at the wall but there was so much distance in his eyes that he could've been seeing anything. It didn't seem like anything good.

"Maybe we should get off the floor," Danny said.

Steve just nodded.

Danny thought about all the pissiness downstairs and finally released his arm to let Steve get up on his own. It was painful, watching Steve gather his limbs so he could sit on the bed. It was obvious he was aching. "Can you take more medicine?"

"Not yet. It hasn't been six hours," Steve said.

Danny stood up as well and looked at his watch, surprised to see that it'd been barely two. "Wow. I thought it was later than that." He picked the lamp off the floor and put it back on the nightstand. It seemed to be all right. "You probably want to go back to sleep."

"Yeah, sure," Steve said. He gave Danny a thin smile. "Sorry if I woke you."

"Don't worry about it." Danny aimed for a casual smirk and just about hit it. "I'm a parent--I'm used to this kind of stuff."

"I'll pretend that came out less weird than it sounded," Steve said, which was almost normal enough for Danny to roll his eyes and leave, turn out the hall light behind him and go back to the couch. Almost, except that Steve didn't look like he was going to lie down; he looked like he was going to bolt as soon as Danny's back was turned.

"You're not planning on sneaking out of here and going on a hundred-mile hike or anything, are you?" Danny asked him. "Because when people say they're going to sleep they usually, you know, lie down. And relax." He tilted his head and blinked a few times, trying to decide if what he was seeing was real or a trick of his own tired eyes. "Or maybe you are relaxed? Because it looks like you're blurring around the edges."

Steve's head snapped up, completely alert. "What?" He swung his head back and forth, looking at his body even though Steve could always see and hear himself despite what his Gift was doing. But the blur was even more obvious now with Steve moving: the edges of his body were faded out like a badly-done photo, pixels bleeding into nothing. "No. No. Not again. Fuck." Steve spit the words out through his teeth. He closed his eyes and clenched his hands into hard fists around the edges of the mattress, teeth gritting as he concentrated. All of him reappeared.

"Is it…am I there?" Steve asked. His hands were still clenched, expression more close to terrified than Danny had ever seen.

"Yeah." Danny nodded quickly. "Yeah. You're completely back. It's all right."

Steve let out a breath, swiped new sweat off his forehead and carded his fingers through his hair. "Thank God."

"What happened?" Danny said, because Steve looked like he'd escaped death, the same kind of profound relief.

"I don't know," Steve said. He wrapped his arms around his torso like he was cold, even though the air in the room was barely cool enough to be pleasant. "I haven't lost control of my Gift like that in years. At least not when I wasn't badly injured or unconscious."

Like when he'd fallen off the cliff, and then of course it was impossible not to think about it: Steve falling and the awful, awful, end-of-the-world crack as he hit, and then the even worse moment right afterwards, when Steve had vanished like he'd never existed.

Danny gave his head a shake. Steve was right there and he didn't need Danny freaking out over nothing. "Is it the meds?" he asked, but his voice was so thick he had to clear his throat and say the words again. "Is it the medication?"

"I don't know," Steve said again.

"Do you want me to go check the bottle?" Danny hooked a thumb vaguely towards the bathroom. All the pain meds he'd ever had to take had special warnings for people with Gifts, urging them to consult with their physicians first, especially if the Gift had the potential to cause harm.

Those were the exact words: Especially if the Gift has the potential to cause harm. Danny had to consult with his physician every damn time.

Steve shook his head. "No, that's fine."

Danny watched him for a moment, sitting on the edge of the bed with his bare feet flat and vulnerable on the floor and his arms tight around himself like he'd break if he let go. It was obvious that this was anything but fine.

"What made you…ghost out when you didn't want to before? Maybe it was the same kind of thing," Danny said, fumbling for an answer, an easy solution that would wipe the dull horror off his friend's face.

"It wasn't the same thing," Steve snapped. He looked up at Danny, angry now. "It wasn't anything like this."

"What was it like, then?" Danny snapped right back at him. He crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe. "Why are you so worked up? You just got a little blurry around the edges for a moment there. It's not like you disappeared--"

"What if I do?" Steve's demand cut him off. "What if I fade out and I can't stop it? What'll I do then?"

Danny blinked then raised his hands, palm out. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up, here. Who says anything like that's going to happen? You're right here, Steven. I can see you, I can hear you…I could even smell that stuff you insist is shampoo when I was scraping you off the floor."

"Because it happened before!" Steve barked. "It happened all the time!" He breathed deeply, calming himself down. "It happened all the time, when I was a kid. For a while I could barely control my Gift at all."

"Oh," Danny said. He tried to imagine Steve as a kid and could only come up with a male version of Grace. A male version of Grace who no one could hear or see. "That must've sucked."

Steve nodded. "Yeah." He swallowed then looked away. "The first time my Gift kicked in was after my mom died. It was at the funeral."

Danny sucked in a breath. Steve had told him about his mother's death, how quickly his life went to shit afterwards. "Fuck."

"Yeah, pretty much," Steve said quietly. "I didn't even know anything had happened until the graveside service was over and everyone was heading back to their cars. My dad…" Danny could see the muscles bunch as Steve tightened his jaw. "My dad got in the car with Mary and drove away. I was right behind them, but they didn't know that. He told me later that Mary had begged him to wait, but Dad was sure I'd gone home with one of my friends. I thought they just left without me."

Your dad did just leave without you, Danny thought. If it'd been Grace…he knew it wouldn't matter if she was sixteen or twenty-six or sixty. If she was supposed to come with him he would've waited until the end of time. He couldn't see how any parent would do anything else.

But the last thing Steve needed right now was Danny saying his dead father was an asshole. "How'd you get home?" he asked.

"I didn't," Steve said. "I tried, but it didn't take long to realize that no one could see me or hear me. It was pretty scary for awhile. I kind of thought I'd died too, or something. And even when I realized it was my Gift coming out, I couldn't turn it off."

It was hard to think of Steve as a kid, but it was awful how easily Danny could imagine this: A shorter, skinnier, gawkier version of Steve; devastated by grief only to be lost to everyone around him. Completely, utterly alone. The mildness of Steve's description only made it worse, because that let Danny fill in the details. It was pretty scary. Steve must've been terrified out of his mind.

"What did you do?" Danny asked him.

"I tried to get home, but it was too far to walk and none of the bus routes went that way. And I couldn't hitchhike when no one could see me." Steve shrugged. "I thought about sneaking into a hotel but that would be stealing, so I ended up in a hospital emergency room. I slept in one of the chairs all night, and when I woke up I was visible again." His mouth moved in a way that might be smiling if Danny were generous about it. "I nearly gave an orderly a heart attack, appearing out of nowhere."

"It must've been terrible, going through that," Danny said.

"It was a long time ago," Steve said, like that could possibly make anything better. "But I did it a lot after that. Faded out for no reason. It made the last couple years of high school pretty interesting."

"And by 'interesting', you mean 'hell on earth', right?"

It came out glib even though Danny meant it completely seriously. It made Steve look at him again at least, though this time Danny couldn't even be generous about his smile. "It wasn't that bad, really."

"I guess that explains why you're such a stubborn son of a bitch," Danny said in place of all the things he couldn't. I'm sorry. I wish your mother hadn't died. I wish I'd been here to help you. I wish your father was a better man.

Steve smirked and then grimaced when it pulled at his bruises. "I'm pretty sure I've always been stubborn."

"No doubt," Danny said.

"That's what I was dreaming about," Steve said, serious again. "Not being able to control it. It's…I can't go through that again." The emptiness of his voice did nothing to hide the fear behind it.

"You won't," Danny said. "I can prove it," he added when Steve looked unconvinced. "Stay there. I'll be right back."

He went down the hall into Steve's bathroom, flicked on the light and opened the medicine cabinet. It was easy to find the painkillers the hospital had prescribed in their little white bottle. Danny checked the label then smiled when he read exactly what he thought he would.

"Look," Danny said when he came back into Steve's room. "Wait." He turned on the lamp.

"Ow!" Steve squinted painfully. "There was enough light already!"

"Not if you want to read the fine print, which you do." Danny took Steve's good hand and triumphantly slapped the bottle into it. "It specifically says it might be harder to control Gifts while taking this stuff. Right there on the label."

Steve read the label. A smile broke over his face, small but real. "I didn't know that."

"Yeah, well, you know. I'm a detective--I detect things. Like fine print." It was a completely asinine statement but Steve grinned at him anyway. Danny grinned back.

Steve held out the bottle to Danny, still grinning in relief. "Here."

"Let me guess," Danny said on a sigh as he accepted it. "You're not going to take any more--despite how much pain you going to pretend you're not in--because it'll make you lose control of your Gift. Even though you'll be sleeping and have no control over your Gift anyway."

"Yup," Steve said.

Danny rolled his eyes. "'Yup', he says." He shook his head, trying to project long-suffering and sure he could only manage fond. "What am I going to do with you?"

"Put the sheet back on the bed and bring me a glass of water," Steve said happily. He lay down on the bed.

"Of course, your majesty," Danny said as he stooped to grab the sheet off the floor. "Would you like me to fan you with palm fronds? Peel you a grape?"

"Peeled grapes sound--" Danny muffled Steve by dropping the sheet on his head.

"I'm bringing you some Tylenol," Danny said. He trotted downstairs while Steve was still clawing the sheet off his face.

"Hey," Danny said a little while later. Steve had sat up to finish the glass of water, along with the Tylenol he'd grudgingly taken.

"What?" Steve asked, putting the empty glass on the nightstand.

He looked like he was expecting Danny to start ribbing him, but there was no way Danny was kidding about this. "I just want…" he hesitated, unsure of the words. "You should know…damn it." He huffed out a frustrated breath even though Steve was just looking at him curiously, not saying anything. "I'd look for you, okay?" Danny blurted finally. "I mean, if you disappeared. Like at a funeral or anything. Anywhere. If I couldn't find you I'd look for you. We all would," he added, because he knew Chin and Kono would do the same thing. There was no question. "We'd tear the whole damn island apart until we found you." Danny knew he'd tear apart the whole world. "It wouldn't matter if you stayed ghosted for the rest of your life. We'd still find you."

Steve blinked. "Oh," he said.

Danny shrugged, unsure what to make of Steve's expression. "That's all. I thought you should know."

"No one's ever told me that before, that they'd look for me," Steve said quietly, and Danny realized that look on his face was awe. "I… That means a lot. Thank you."

"Well, it's true," Danny said, feeling awkward in the face of something so obviously heartfelt. The air between them felt charged, tense with something he didn't want to name. He took a step back. "And you're welcome." He aimed a thumb over his shoulder at the hallway. "And now I'm going back to bed."

He hit the light switch before Steve could say goodnight, stupidly grateful for the darkness that hid him from the other man's eyes. Danny took enough time to grab a spare pillow and blanket, trying not to make too much noise.

The living room was silver with moonlight when Danny came down the stairs. All he could hear in the night's silence was the tinny chatter of the television, and beyond that the muted roar of the waves.

Steve had grown up in this house. With a mother who loved him and died and a father who loved him and sent him away. And no one had ever told Steve they would try to find him.

Danny wondered if Steve would ever really believe it.

He took off his pants and socks and lay down on the couch and tried to sleep. He was tired enough, but he kept thinking of Steven at his mother's funeral, watching his father drive away without him.

Sleep was a long time in coming

END