Like a Friendship Caught on Fire
Title: Like a Friendship Caught on Fire
Summary: Ferret!verse. Written for siehn for the h50_holidayswap. Danny gets the flu, but after Steve drives him home so he can get some much-needed sleep, his day gets a whole lot worse when his apartment building catches fire. When Danny goes missing in the aftermath, it's up to Steve and the team to find him, their search made all the harder because, well, sometimes Danny is a ferret.
Characters: Steve/Danny, Kono, Chin Ho, Jenna
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: ~10,000
Disclaimer: Everything recognizable belongs to CBS. The ferret stuff is mine, though.
Warnings: Crack. Minimal swearing. Implied established relationship.
Neurotic Author's Note #1: I managed to get a teeny window of time at work in which to post this, but my internet at home is still not working. :( I'm sorry this is so late!
Neurotic Author's Note #2: This is actually a sequel to Nearly Always Your Own Fault, but it stands on its own. All you really need to know is that, sometimes, Danny is a ferret.
Neurotic Author's Note #3: So, um, siehn mentioned that she liked AUs in which some of the team weren't human, and also expressed a desire for a kidnapping story in which the team rescued a kidnapped team member. My brain saw this and decided: "Clearly she means that Danny is a ferret and gets kidnapped!" IDK, okay?
Neurotic Author's Note #4: Also, because I am the God of my teeny-tiny corner of the world, I have decided that in this AU Jenna gets to live and stay part of Five-0, okay? Okay.
Neurotic Author's Note #Oh My God Shut Up Already ratherastory:All of my ferret information comes from the internet, so please be lenient about my inaccuracies.
It's been months and Steve still hasn't really gotten used to everything about his partner. Sure, there are lots of things he's more than used to now: the temper, the ranting, the hand-flailing that he does at a moment's notice when he's upset. These things are par for the course, have been part of Danny's personality since as long as he can remember knowing him. In fact, though he'll never admit it to Danny himself, he kind of likes all those things about him: the way he never backs down, the fierce devotion to his kid and his job and his friends, the unwavering loyalty, all of it.
And hell, Steve has even sort of started getting used to the idea that, some of the time, Danny's actually a ferret. An honest-to-God ferret, complete with fur and pointy teeth and attitude. Mostly. It's not like having a were-ferret as a partner is your run-of-the-mill occurrence, not even for someone with Steve's admittedly extensive and eclectic experience serving in the Navy for all these years. He can almost hear Danny correcting him, tone unexpectedly pedantic, informing him that the technical term is 'therianthrope.' Whatever, he still turns into a ferret, and it's kind of strange, sue Steve for feeling a little unbalanced about the whole thing.
It's only been a couple of weeks since he found out, and he's still not entirely sure what he thinks of it. It's not like it's a problem, per se. Danny is still Danny, five feet five inches of indignation and love of junk food, and that's not going to change. And Steve does get why Danny kept it a secret all this time: therianthropes are few and far-between, ferrets even moreso. According to Danny there's only a hundred or so of them in all of the Eastern Seaboard, and fewer still the farther west in the U.S. you venture. There's a small community of selkies and dolphin-folk in Hawaii, but Danny doesn't associate with them at all -something to do with how they're all kind of snooty about the therianthropes who don't swim, and the idea that there are politics involved makes Steve's head spin. It's not like there's any official material out there on these people that Steve can use for research to get a handle on any of this. All he has is Danny's word and experience, and that will just have to be enough.
So far he's learned that ferrets, even when they're human part of the time, are the most high-energy creatures of all time. Danny in ferret form is even more hyper than Grace on a sugar rush, and it takes everything Steve has to keep up with him, following him as he explores every single nook and cranny in Steve's house, wedging himself into cracks that look like a woodlouse wouldn't fit in there, let alone a five-pound hob, and generally giving Steve a lot more grey hair than he planned on having at his age.
That's mostly why Steve is worried now, staring at Danny through the glass wall of their office. Danny's a pretty high-energy guy himself, ferret or not, and the last day or two he's been noticeably off, slower to wake up in the morning than usual, and slower even to change to human form after that. That Danny reverts to his 'natural' ferret form when he sleeps -when he's relaxed and unguarded- is something Steve found out the hard way, but it's not like it bothers him. Most of the time he's a little baffled and more than a little pleased that Danny has chosen to honour him with his trust like this, and it makes warmth blossom in his chest just thinking about it. It's just that, well, the first few times Danny made changing forms look effortless, and now -not that Steve's an expert or anything- he could swear that Danny's been having trouble with it. It's not something Steve feels particularly comfortable discussing, because he has no idea if this is normal, or if he's going to offend Danny by bringing it up, or what. So he's been keeping to his own office, thankful at least that they haven't been overwhelmed with urgent cases.
Unsurprisingly, it's Chin who sets Steve straight, coming into his office and perching on the edge of his desk, file folder from an older case in hand. "You got a minute?"
Steve pauses just long enough to save the changes he's been making to his latest report -Danny can say what he wants, but he always fills out his paperwork- and nods. "Of course. Something on your mind about the case?"
"Oh, no. The case is fine, I just got this back for some minor revisions. No, I wanted to talk about Danny. Is everything okay with him? Normally I'd just ask him, but you've been acting a little off, and I was wondering if something had happened."
Steve barely knows how to begin answering that. Of course something has happened. So much has happened that it feels like years have gone by instead of a couple of weeks. "Not exactly. I mean, I don't know. So you think something is off too, right?"
Chin nods, glancing over his shoulder at Danny. "Definitely. He's not himself. So... are you going to talk to him, or would you like me to?"
It would be an easy out, but Steve's never been that kind of guy, so he shakes his head. "No, no. Thanks, Chin, but I got this one. I'll talk to him. If you're seeing it too, it means I'm not imagining things. Thanks, though."
"No problem. You know I'm here if you need me, anytime."
Steve smiles softly at that, knows that he's wearing the kind of expression that makes Danny sock him in the shoulder and call him a goofball. "Thanks."
He leaves Chin to his file, makes a point of strolling casually over to Danny's office and raps gently on the doorframe to the open door. Danny glances up from his computer screen, rolls his eyes, but smiles anyway. "Door's open, you goof. If I needed you to knock, I would have closed it."
Steve grins and shrugs, lets himself drop into the chair across from Danny's desk, then reaches over and nudges the door closed. "Duly noted."
Danny's eyebrows creep toward his hairline as he watches the door close. "Something wrong?"
Steve leans forward. "You tell me. Everything okay?"
"Why wouldn't it be?" Danny narrows his eyes a little at that, but Steve can see there's definitely something else at play behind his expression, something a little uncertain. He's sweating a little, Steve notes, his shirt damp, perspiration beading at his hairline in spite of the air conditioning going full-blast. He wonders how he never noticed how pale Danny is, the circles under his eyes as deep as when he was still trying to keep his true nature a secret even while they were sleeping together.
"You haven't really been acting normal the past couple of days. Not like yourself. Just... should I be worried?"
Danny sighs softly, then wipes at his forehead with the back of his hand. "No, you don't need to worry. You're more observant than I gave you credit for, though," he tries for a smile, but Steve isn't buying it. "Yeah, okay, okay," he raises his hands in a gesture of surrender. "It's not serious, I promise. I'm just not feeling that great."
Steve blinks a little, taken aback. "What?"
That gets him a shrug. "It's just what it sounds like. I think it's probably the strain of 'flu that's been going around Grace's school. She had it last week, and I probably got it from her. The symptoms are all the same, anyway: headache, light sensitivity, muscle aches, fever, all that."
"Fever?" Steve could kick himself. "Why didn't you stay home?"
"I didn't think it was that bad," Danny admits. "But that was this morning, and I have to admit I was about five minutes away from asking for the rest of the day off."
"Of course. You want me to give you a lift? No offense, Danno, but you really kind of look like shit."
Danny snorts, but rubs both hands over his face. "Kind of feel like shit, too, to be perfectly honest. No, I don't need a lift, I'll be fine... and you're not really making this a choice, are you?" he asks, noting Steve's expression.
"Not really. I was just letting you save face, there. You honestly think you should be driving?"
"Yeah, okay, you have a point. Just let me save what I've got here, and I'm all yours."
Steve would much rather Danny stay at his place where there's a big comfy bed and, more importantly, where Steve will be there later tonight to check on him, but Danny insists on going back to his own crappy little apartment complex. Maybe it's a familiarity thing, Steve reasons. After all, there's nowhere he likes more than his own bed when he's sick, so maybe it stands to reason that his partner would yearn for his shitty little pull-out bed, or something. Danny is uncharacteristically quiet on the drive back, just leans his head against his seat and lets his eyes closed, hands folded in his lap. He doesn't even once comment on Steve's driving, which is a definite sign that something is very, very wrong.
"You okay?" Steve asks as Danny unlocks his door, even though it's a stupid question and it's patently obvious that he's not okay in the slightest.
Danny shrugs, lets them both inside, and immediately sheds most of his clothes, dropping them in the laundry hamper he keeps next to the bathroom door. "It's just harder when I'm sick, you know?" he says finally.
"What, staying in human form?"
Danny nods. "I have to concentrate harder, and... yeah. So mostly I'm just going to try to sleep it off."
Steve bites his lip. "Uh, is there anything I should, um, watch for? If you're, you know, changed? Can ferrets even get the flu?"
Danny huffs a laugh, rummages through the medicine cabinet and pulls out a bottle of NyQuil. "Yes, ferrets get the flu. It's one of the few bugs that crosses species. Figures, too. So, yeah, I'll still be sick when I change, I just won't be expending unnecessary energy on staying in human form. Unfortunately, they don't make NyQuil for ferrets, so this part I'm going to do now," he waggles the bottle in Steve's general direction before measuring out a dose in the tiny plastic cup that comes with it.
He rinses it out, puts the bottle back, and a moment later, before Steve has had the time do anything more than blink, Danny is gone from view, replaced by a tiny, tawny-furred animal nosing its way along the floor toward him. Steve has already had Danny try to crawl up his pants leg before, and even if he loves him there are limits to what he'll put up with, so he bends down and scoops Danny into his arms, ignoring the way he squirms with indignation.
"Come on, Danno, don't be like that. You know how cuddly you look," he teases gently, and after a moment Danny relaxes, eyes closing blissfully when Steve strokes him just behind his ears with two fingers.
He's wheezing slightly, Steve notes, realizing that, in spite of it all, Danny really is sick, and being manhandled is probably not going to help him get better. As much as he wants to sit somewhere and let Danny sleep in his lap, the way he's taken to lately, he figures Danny will do better in the little nest he's built for himself in the bottom drawer of his dresser, filled with scraps of cloth and batting that he got God knows where. Steve has yet to ask him, and has no plans of doing so anytime soon, although he's pretty sure that he recognized some of the darker material as belonging to a Navy t-shirt of his that went missing a few months ago. Still holding Danny close to his chest he nudges the drawer a little further open and deposits the ferret among the scraps of cloth, watching with a fond smile as Danny pokes sleepily at all of it and then curls up into a tight ball, tiny ribcage rising and falling steadily.
He takes a moment to plug in Danny's phone and set it on his night table, pets Danny's sleeping form very gently before taking his leave. "Sleep well, Danno. Call me if you need anything, okay?" he says from the doorway, locks the door on the way out, and tries not to feel like the shittiest person on the planet for leaving his partner behind while he's sick.
~*~
There are few things in the world that Danny hates more than getting sick. Luckily for him, he's got an iron constitution and therefore doesn't get sick often, but when he does it inevitably flattens him like a possum being hit by a Mac truck. This time is no different. He'd hoped, two days ago when he first started feeling a little off his game, that it was just a passing malaise and nothing more, but by the time the second day rolled around and it felt like the entire world had been replaced by a sauna, it was obvious that he was going to have to roll over and concede defeat in the face of the flu.
Explaining things to McGarrett wasn't quite as hard as he'd thought it might be, which is a relief. Steve, for all that he's a straight-laced Navy officer (penchant for blowing things up and chucking suspects into shark cages notwithstanding), is taking the revelation that he's a therianthrope remarkably well. A lot better than Danny ever gave him credit for, to be perfectly honest, which is worrisome in and of itself. After all, it's no walk in the park to be involved with someone whose preferred form is pretty much physiologically incompatible with one's own, which is why, in the end, things had never worked out with Rachel. She'd loved his human side, but not his cop side, and while she'd tolerated the ferret side, she kept acting hurt whenever he changed, as though he was deliberately shutting her out, when he was really trying to do the exact opposite. In short, as shitty as it sounds, he's still waiting for the other shoe to drop with Steve, even though he and Rachel aren't the same person at all.
So Steve is kind of surprisingly understanding about the whole flu thing, which, okay, everyone gets the flu and a couple of days off work to get over it is not all that much to ask, Danny knows. It's just that he's really not used to this sort of thing not being a big deal. When he'd been sick at home, Rachel had usually made it clear that he should try to stay in human form, making out like he should do it for Grace's sake, even though Grace doesn't care what form he's in -he's Danno, no matter what, and that alone is enough to make him adore his baby girl even if he didn't adore her for a million other reasons. Being alone after the divorce meant that he could curl up in his preferred form and wait it out, but now, with Steve... well, it's just hard to tell. So far, it seems like it's working out, but sometimes Steve can be just as hard to read as Rachel.
Danny curls up more tightly on himself, feeling the tip of his tail twitch in response to all the conflicting thoughts swirling around in his head. He figures it's got to be the fever doing this to him -normally the ferret instincts take the lead when he's in this form, even though his thought processes are left intact. Being in this form is easier, usually, but right now he feels like utter crap, and that's apparently enough of an opening for his thoughts to become increasingly muddy and confused, especially when it comes to Steve. Maybe he shouldn't have taken that NyQuil after all, or maybe at least waited a while before changing back after taking it, but it's too late now.
At least his nest is comfortable. It smells of himself and Grace and Steve -a nice addition when he snagged one of his partner's spare shirts a few months ago. He doesn't think Steve has noticed yet, and hopes he won't mind once he does. It's not like he hasn't once or twice made a temporary nest for himself in Steve's sock drawer already, much to Steve's dismay. The guy is way too OCD about colour-coding his socks, anyway. Danny nestles a little further into the soft material, wishing he could just shut his brain off and go to sleep already. Being sick always feels a little different when he's in his natural form, and having to fight against the urge to just crawl off to find a small spot to curl up in and wait to either die or get better gets harder and harder to resist as time goes by. Maybe now, at least, if Steve doesn't end up freaking out about this, he won't have to resist it anymore.
Eventually he does doze off, drifting quietly in the dark, dreamless sleep that being a ferret sometimes affords him. When he's awake and listening to other people talk about their dreams he sometimes wonders if he's not missing out on something, because his own dreams are never remotely as complex as regular humans' dreams seem to be. Then again, having slept beside Steve once during what seemed like a particularly bad nightmare, Danny thinks he might have lucked out after all. His own dreams are simple, straightforward, and usually involve bright colours and shiny things, and frolicking in the grass or in gaily-decorated tunnels with ladders. The same thing he likes to do when he's awake, really, and he wouldn't have it any other way.
When he wakens, he's instantly on alert, whiskers quivering, heart pattering frantically against his ribcage. He has no idea what awoke him, but all his instincts are screaming danger at him, and that by itself has him scrabbling to get out of his nest and into the middle of the room so he can identify what the threat is. He all but falls over the edge of the drawer, landing with an uncomfortable thump on the floor, still woozy from the flu he managed to forget about while he was asleep. He wriggles until he's upright again, twitching his nose, and that's when he smells it -the acrid stench of smoke coming in through the vent in the wall. Fire, his mind registers, and after that it's nothing but blind panic taking over. He takes off at a run, all his thoughts screaming at him to get out get out get out, out-out-out, forgetting the phone on his night table, forgetting everything except the overwhelming urge to get away from heat and flame and danger.
Danny squeezes under the front door, finds himself surrounded suddenly by what seems like a thousand pairs of legs and feet threatening to trample him. Above him voices are yelling and screaming, no one bothering to look where they're stepping, and flames are pouring out of the window of the apartment next door to his, licking their way along the wall. Danny freezes, casting about for an escape route that will avoid getting him stepped on, finally settles on the fire escape as the least of all the possible evils here. He ends up scurrying down the stairs at breakneck speed, losing his footing several times and tumbling ungracefully to the bottom, where he lands hard on the asphalt, completely winded. For a moment he just lies there on his side, panting, blood roaring in his ears, staring up the stairs at the soles of all those feet tromping toward him, and that is enough to galvanize him into action. He scrambles out of the way again, into the grass next to the walkway, taking refuge under a huge plant whose name Steve would probably know.
He crouches there, trying vainly to catch his breath, and watches as flames begin to burst from one window after the other in the building, as the roof slowly begins to collapse even as the fire department arrives, sirens blaring so loudly they drown out all the other sound in the vicinity. Danny shivers, huddled on himself, his mind not quite processing what he's seeing, as his entire life goes up in smoke before his eyes. The building was never all that sound to begin with, he reminds himself, was probably ready to go up like a tinder box at the slightest provocation. It was probably Mrs. Onakea next door, he thinks distractedly, smoking in bed again. That's where the flames and smoke were coming from when he first got out. There's no way of knowing right now if she got out, no one to ask, even if he was in a position to be asking anyone anything at all.
It takes hours for the firefighters to even begin mastering the blaze, and by that time the entire property is crawling with people, with fire trucks and ambulances, paramedics administering treatment to people on stretchers, strapping oxygen masks over people's faces. He was lucky, Danny thinks, that he was already so low to the ground that the smoke never reached him at all. He's pretty sure that if it had, he'd be dead already. He watches from his vantage point, still safe enough where he is, far enough out of the way that no one has given this patch of shrubbery a second thought. He thinks he spots Mrs. Onakea sitting on a stretcher behind an ambulance, a blanket over her shoulder, and feels a surge of relief at the thought that she did get rescued after all.
He should be helping, he thinks, not for the first time that day. He should be helping out, doing crowd control or at least making sure there's a proper headcount of everyone who lives in the building, but he stays right where he is, shivering and miserable, every single muscle in his body aching too much for him to do anything other than lie down in the dirt. He curls in on himself, keeps watching the proceedings even with his tail wrapped around his nose. There's nothing left of his own apartment, and he thinks he should probably be more worried than he is that all his clothes, everything he owns is in there, except for his car and the keys. He's pretty sure Steve took the Camaro when he dropped him off, so there's always that. At least, he tells himself, if worse comes to worst he'll be able to sleep in his car.
He shakes himself at that, because of course he won't have to sleep in his car. There's Steve, and he doesn't know why it didn't occur to him that Steve would take him in. Even if it's not permanent, even if Steve doesn't want him living there, there's no reason to suppose that he won't let Danny crash there until he finds a new place. After all, Steve's already made it clear that he wants Danny to spend the night whenever he wants to -that's how Steve ended up finding out about the whole ferret thing, after all. So all Danny has to do now is find Steve and explain what's happened, and they'll figure out the rest later.
Of course, finding Steve means getting out from under this bush, and not staying here curled up like a sick animal. Which, okay, Danny is sick, and technically ferrets are animals, but whatever, that's not the point. He knows where Steve lives, and it's not all that far, even as the ferret scampers. He takes a moment to groom himself, carefully licking his fur where it's sticking up in the wrong direction, rubbing his paws over his muzzle, then cautiously pokes his nose out from under the plant. When nothing happens he creeps forward, scenting the air, freezes in place when he's completely in the open, exposed and vulnerable, and waits for something to nab him. When still nothing happens he takes a couple of fortifying breaths, then ventures forth toward the street, still keeping as much cover between himself and the outside world as possible. Even if nothing bad is happening to him right now, it doesn't mean he should be inviting danger to rain down upon his head.
After a few minutes he figures he's making pretty good time, all in all. As ferrets go, Danny is pretty spry, flu or no flu. He kind of wishes he could reach around to pat himself on the back, but he can always do that later, once he's found Steve. Yeah, for all that this definitely ranks in the top three worst days of Danny's life, it's not so bad right now. At least, that's what he tells himself right up until the moment he feels himself being grabbed and lifted right off the ground.
~*~
It's kind of hard to go back to the office without Danny. Steve always feels Danny's absence when he's not there, like a void behind his desk where he should be. It's not like this is the first time Danny's not been there, of course. There were the couple of times that he went back to Jersey to visit his family, and a few times when he took time off to be with Grace, and the really nerve-wracking few days when Danny was recovering from being exposed to sarin, but it doesn't mean Steve is used to it, nor that he has to like it in any way, shape or form. Danny's a fixture at Five-0, and when he's not in the office Steve can't help but feel that he's missing a limb. He's become used to having Danny around, filling up all the empty spaces in his life with his voice, his constantly-moving hands, his whole personality.
Steve does manage to put aside his thoughts long enough to sit down at his desk and start his own work. For once he's all caught up on his paperwork -Danny would be proud if he were here to see him- but there's a fair bit of groundwork to be done on a current smuggling case. Steve really dislikes the part of his job that requires him to just sit and make phone calls and send emails and set up appointments to talk to potential witnesses, but he does recognize that it's a necessary evil. Not every case happens over the course of hours, sometimes it takes weeks of careful preparation to make sure all your ducks are in a row, to make sure that the bad guys will go to jail for their crimes. After years of being almost a law onto himself, it's been a bit of an adjustment, and he realises that he owes a lot of his new skills to Danny, even if his approach to teaching resembles browbeating more than anything else. Steve chuckles to himself, has to take a moment to make sure he's not laughing when he picks up the phone for his next call.
The afternoon passes excruciatingly slowly. Chin and Kono are huddled together in front of Chin's computer screen, presumably going over the new decryption software that Chin just acquired, and that means they're both effectively ignoring him. Jenna has curled herself into a large chair with a file folder on one of Wo Fat's known associates, glasses sliding down her nose, hair tousled, feet tucked under her. Steve can't figure out for the life of him how she manages to twist herself into positions like that, nor how it can possibly be comfortable, but it works for her, so he doesn't bother questioning it too hard.
He debates calling Danny when he leaves the office, loses the argument quickly and ends up speed-dialling his number as he gets into the Camaro to drive it home. The line rings three times and goes to voicemail both times he tries it, and he tries to swallow his pang of disappointment. He decides Danny must still be sleeping and just didn't hear his cell phone. Or maybe he did hear it but for some reason or other didn't answer. Danny did say it's harder to go from his ferret form to his human form after all, and if he's sick it stands to reason that it would take even more of his energy to change. Steve tucks his phone away, feeling a little guilty at the idea that he might have inadvertently forced Danny out of his bed to answer the phone just because Steve was feeling a little lonely.
He deliberately leaves the phone alone for the rest of the evening, putting it on the kitchen counter while he broils some fish in the oven and sautés a bunch of vegetables in olive oil and a dash of soy sauce, glancing at it every now and then just in case it rings and he misses it. It stays stubbornly silent, though, until he grabs it with a sigh and heads into his living room to turn on the television. It's a habit he picked up from Danny, who seems to like having it on as background noise and for some benighted reason doesn't like the sound of the ocean at night. Then again, Danny hasn't complained about that ever since his secret came out and he's been able to sleep over at Steve's in his preferred form, so maybe it had more to do with that than with the sound of the ocean itself. Steve feels kind of stupid for not realizing it before.
Steve almost comes out of his skin a couple of hours later when his phone does buzz loudly in his pocket, waking him out of the light doze he'd slipped into. It's not Danny's ringtone, but he finds that a small part of him is secretly hoping that it's Danny anyway, calling from some other phone. Instead, Chin's voice comes over the line, tone urgent.
"You'd better get down to Danny's apartment building, Steve. There's been a fire, and he's not answering his cell."
"On my way."
Steve is already up and moving before he's even hung up the phone, grabbing the car keys from the table by the door and sprinting back to the Camaro. He takes off in a squeal of tires that would have had Danny bitching at the top of his lungs, performs several more manoeuvres designed to elevate Danny's blood pressure, and arrives at the scene a good ten minutes faster than usual. Even before he gets there he can see the smoke rising in a thick column into the sky, the acrid smell filling the air, the sound of trucks and men shouting instructions and the patter of water from the fire hose hitting the building coming in through the open window of the car. There's nothing left of the apartment complex by the time he arrives but a charred hull, firefighters still working hard to extinguish the remnants of the fire and get the property cool enough for search and rescue to go in and look for survivors -or remains, he thinks with a shudder. Danny's cell phone goes straight to voicemail when he tries calling again.
He catches sight of the company lieutenant, recognizing him from a previous case, and jogs over. "Hey, Randy, got a minute?"
The lieutenant turns to him, gives him a nod of recognition and a grim smile. "Sure. It's mostly under control right now. Can't say I'm pleased to see you, since Five-0 usually means trouble. What brings you to my blaze? Any reason I should be worried, here?"
Steve shakes his head. "Nothing like that. My partner lives here, I came to look for him, he's not answering his cell phone and he was home sick today."
That gets him a sympathetic grimace. "Damn, I'm sorry. I got a list of residents who made it out, but things are a little chaotic right now. Everyone who needed treatment for burns or smoke inhalation have been taken to Queen's, if you want to check with them. No one identified themselves as Five-0, but we did get a few who lost consciousness, so maybe your partner was among them."
Steve is already on the phone to Chin, relaying the information, hangs up almost without so much as thanking him. "Right, thanks. When do you think we'll be able to go in and take a look?"
The lieutenant shrugs. "It's still pretty hot. Probably not until the morning. To be honest, you probably won't find anything in there. From the looks of it, the fire started in one of the apartments, but the whole place was a tinder box waiting to go up. Fire marshal will have to make an official report, but I'm honestly not surprised by this result. It's a shame, really."
"Right. Thanks."
Steve turns away from the smouldering remains of the building, paces next to the car. It's not like this is a case that he can work on: there aren't any bad guys, no leads to chase down, nothing. Just a fire and a missing partner who won't -or more likely can't- answer his cell phone. Steve doesn't look back, refuses to contemplate the idea that Danny, sick and even more vulnerable in his animal form, might just not have made it out. No one will know to look for the remains of a ferret, if the fire didn't burn so hot as to completely consume them… He isn't even surprised when Kono calls back to let him know that even though she, Jenna and Chin are still checking the hospital, there's been no sign of Danny. He leans against the car and stares at the smoke still coiling up into the evening sky, and finds himself wondering just what the hell he's supposed to do next.
~*~
In all his life, Danny has never actually found himself in the unfortunate position of being shoved into a bag, not even in his ferret form. Until now, that is. Right now he is stuck inside what he thinks is a backpack, a kid's backpack judging by the contents, which is an empty Tupperware container that smells of peanut butter sandwich, a Barbie doll and a plastic jump rope judging by the feel of it. None of it is particularly comfortable, and the Barbie's plastic fingers keep jabbing him in the ribs, but he's otherwise unharmed, which is a plus. He's also pretty happy, in retrospect, that he didn't succeed in biting his captor, because the toys in here indicate that he's dealing with a little girl about Gracie's age, and he'd feel really bad if he'd ended up biting her.
Still, being shoved into a little girl's backpack was not on the agenda. Even more frustrating is the fact that he can't figure a way out of here. It's a pretty sturdy pack, the zipper held in place by some sort of locking mechanism, and the inside is lined with thick plastic that he can't quite get a purchase on with his teeth to gnaw through. It's a small space, too, and he spends most of what feels like a very long trip being jostled from side to side, poked by the Barbie and battered by the Tupperware box and getting tangled up in the jump rope. Finally, though, the bag gets set down with a very hard thump, and Danny sags with relief. His whole body is aching, his bad leg throbbing from where it collided painfully with the Tupperware box.
"What've you got in there?" a child's voice asks. Another girl, he thinks, but he can't be sure of her age just by the voice.
"A bunny!"
If Danny could roll his eyes he would. Must be a young child, he thinks, if she doesn't know what sort of animal he is. Then again, ferrets are illegal to have as pets in Hawaii, so a small child wouldn't know better. The zipper opens and the next thing he knows small hands are scooping him up again and hauling him out onto a carpeted surface, pinning him to the floor even as he tries to wriggle free.
"I found him outside the place where the fire was."
"That's not a rabbit," the older child says. She's definitely a girl, maybe a bit younger than Grace, with a round, solemn face. "That looks more like a weasel. Mom is going to flip out if she sees it. Be careful, Ano, or it'll bite you."
"No he won't, he's a nice bunny, aren't you, Mr. Whiskers?"
Mr. Whiskers? Danny wriggles harder, but Ano is strong for a little kid, and keeps him firmly pinned to the carpet until he subsides, resigned to staying put at least until she releases him. His tail twitches anyway, and the older girl snorts.
"You can't keep him. Mom is going to be so mad. Besides, it's a wild animal and it probably has rabies."
"Mr. Whiskers does not have rabies, Ipo!" Ano shrieks, and Danny's ears flatten against his skull in response. Good set of lungs on her, anyway. She snatches him up into her arms and clutches him hard to her chest, and he doesn't have the energy to struggle anymore. "See? He likes me!"
"He looks sick or something. He probably belongs to someone in the building and we should give him back."
Yeah, Danny thinks, you should definitely give me back. Now that he's not trying to run or find an escape route, the whole day is catching up to him, and all he wants to do is curl up into a ball and sleep until he feels better. He doesn't have that luxury, he reminds himself. He has to get out of here and find Steve and the rest of Five-0 and let them know he's not dead, for one thing. They'll all be worried once they hear about the fire, and knowing how small the law enforcement and firefighting communities are in Honolulu, the odds are good they've already been alerted. What he has to do, he tells himself, is come up with a plan. Preferably a plan that involves a phone and him no longer being half-choked by an overexcited five-year-old.
If there's one thing he's learned from playing with Grace for years, it's how to make an excited little girl loosen her hold. He goes limp in Ano's arms and noses in a friendly fashion at the buttons of her frilly pink blouse. She giggles and shifts in order to pet him -a bit more roughly than he would have liked, but whatever, he'll take it- and he lets his eyes close with a sigh.
"I told you he likes me. I'm going to keep him, and you better not tell Mom!"
Ipo sits back on her heels. "Okay, but he still looks sick. Or tired, or something. We should make him a bed. Come on," she hauls her sister up by one hand and pulls a battered shoebox out of a closet. "We can use this and one of your t-shirts that doesn't fit anymore, so he can sleep."
Sleep is sounding really appealing right about now. From his new vantage point in Ano's arms he can see two beds made up in matching pink covers, and decides he must be in the girls' shared bedroom. The wall on one side is covered in crayon drawings that are all signed 'Ano' in uneven lettering, while the other wall reflects the tastes of a girl Ipo's age, with posters of Taylor Swift and Hannah Montana and, God help him, Justin Bieber all smiling back at him from the glossy paper. Ipo is busy lining the box with a grey t-shirt and handfuls of tissues, and at her prompting Ano deposits him unceremoniously into the whole makeshift nest. He dutifully pokes his nose in the folds of the t-shirt, tries to ignore how deliciously soft and nice the little set-up feels, and tries to climb back out of the box, only to be shoved back in by Ano.
"No, no, Mr. Whiskers, it's bedtime. You need to go to sleep."
"Maybe he's hungry. I'll go get an apple from the kitchen."
Danny sighs quietly. It's too much to hope for that she'll bring back whatever raw meat her mother's got stashed in the fridge, but at least he'll be able to ignore the apple. What's more difficult to ignore, however, is when Ano makes another sudden grab for him and hauls him into her lap.
"Ipo is going to bring you food, but it's almost bedtime, so we should get you ready. You're kind of smelly, so you should take a bath, but just this once I'm going to let you take your bath in the morning. Now be a good bunny and hold still while I put on your nightgown."
There is no way in Heaven or on Earth that Danny is going to put up with that. Not even Grace ever had the poor judgment to ever try to dress him up in anything. Really, how is their mother raising these girls? Ano has a tight grip on the back of his neck with one hand, the other holding what looks like a pink doll's dress, and Danny hates to do it, but really, she's left him no choice. He twists in her grasp and nips her on the wrist, hard enough to hurt but not break skin, the kind of nip he'd deliver to Gracie whenever she needed correcting as a little girl. Ano shrieks and drops him, and that's Danny's opening. He lands hard on the carpeted floor, scrambles to get his footing, and takes off as fast as he can toward the closed door, easily squeezing through the crack between the bottom of the door and the floor, even though his hind leg protests the harsh treatment. Ipo is right outside the door, presumably coming back with the apple she went off to fetch before, and she lets out a shriek remarkably similar to her sister's as he darts between her legs.
It's difficult, navigating a strange place while only a few inches off the ground, but Danny thinks he manages well enough, managing to leave the two girls in his wake, at least for now. He can't quite figure out where the front door is, but a couple of twists and turns land him on what is definitely the linoleum floor of a kitchen, and where there's a kitchen, there's usually a phone. He makes a leap for the nearest chair, scrambles up onto the kitchen table, whiskers quivering, ignoring the stabbing pain the movement causes in his leg, looking around frantically for the phone until he spots it sitting on the counter not two feet away. Another jump and he's there, nudging the receiver off the cradle and thanking every god he can think of that it's not a cordless phone, which would make what he's about to attempt nearly impossible. He knows Steve's phone number by heart, but by no means does that mean it's in any way easy to dial a telephone when your entire paw is about the size of one of the buttons and your heart is hammering against your ribcage.
It feels like it takes forever. All Danny can hear after that is the line ringing endlessly, and all he can think is please pick up, please pick up, please… until finally he hear's Steve's voice, tinny and distorted at the end of the line.
"Steve! Steve it's me, I'm okay but you have to come get me. I don't know where this is but you can trace the call, right? Steve?"
There's silence at the other end for a few moments, then Steve says: "Hello?" Like he's not sure what he's hearing, and Danny kind of wants to smack himself in the head as hard as he can.
It's obvious now, but because Danny's been so distracted and feeling sick and being kidnapped by well-intentioned but ignorant children that damned well forgot that Steve doesn't understand ferret at all and probably can't even hear him, and now Danny is screwed because he's exhausted and Ipo and Ano are going to catch up and he just doesn't have the energy or the time or the luxury of concentration it would take to change into human form now so that he can talk properly to Steve. Not to mention that he doesn't at all feel like explaining to the girls' mother why there's suddenly a naked man in her kitchen.
He lets out one last, slightly desperate squeak just as he hears Ano come up behind him. "Mr. Whiskers! Bad bunny!"
~*~
Even with no significant leads to chase down, it's not like Steve can just sit there and do nothing. So he and Chin and Kono and even Jenna have been tracking down all the residents of Danny's apartment building to ask them if they saw him or anything at all that might help. Of course, only Steve knows that he needs to ask them if they happened to see a ferret anywhere on the premises while the whole place was going up in flames, but even so, none of their questions yield the desired results.
At Jenna's suggestion they split up and start searching in a methodical grid pattern starting at Danny's apartment -or, rather, where Danny's apartment used to be- and moving outward steadily. Kono goes with Chin and Jenna sticks to Steve's side like a very anxious, slightly spastic limpet, and keeps up a steady stream of what he assumes she must think is reassuring chatter.
"I mean, statistically speaking the odds of anything bad happening to him are actually not as high as you'd think they'd be. So as long as he got out of the fire there's no reason to believe that we won't find him. Of course, the longer he's missing the worse it is, but it's only been a few hours, so we're actually-"
"Jenna, you need to stop being supportive now."
She ducks her head. "Was I babbling? I was babbling, wasn't I?"
"A little bit, yeah," he says, not unkindly. "Just keep your eyes open and your mouth a little more shut, okay?"
"Okay, I can do that. I should have brought a better flashlight," she whacks the butt of the aforementioned flashlight against the palm of her hand. "Yours okay?"
"It's fine. We're in the streets anyway, there's enough light for you to see by."
"I know, I just don't want to miss anything, you know? I'd hate for Danny to go missing forever and it be all my fault just because I didn't have the right kind of batteries in my flashlight or something. Does it matter what kind of batteries I put in here? They're alkaline but maybe I should have read the user's manual a little more carefully, because-"
"Jenna."
"Right. Babbling. I don't see anything, though, do you?"
Steve shakes his head. He doesn't even know what he's looking for anymore. Danny in human form or in ferret form, or some sort of clue about how the rug just got pulled out from under him for the third time in less than two years. He clenches his teeth, presses on, ignoring the latest round of prattle from Jenna, and all but tears the fabric of his cargo pants in his attempt to get to his cell phone when it goes off. He doesn't recognize the number that comes up on the display, immediately puts it on speaker phone.
"McGarrett."
The line stays silent, save for a quiet scuffling noise in the background. Jenna crowds close to his elbow, her forehead furrowed in concentration. She gets up on her tiptoes a moment later, leaning in to stage whisper, "Is that person squeaking?"
Steve strains to listen. "Hello?" he repeats, and this time he hears it as clearly as Jenna. It's definitely squeaking. He turns to her and grins so hard he thinks his face might split in two. "It's him! Danny?" he says into the phone, but the call has dropped. "Shit, okay, we have to trace this call." He fumbles with the phone, trying to commit the number to memory while dialling Chin, ignoring Jenna's confused questions about how he knows that the squeaking was coming from Danny. "It's me, Danny just called but the call dropped and I need you to trace the number, can you do that?"
"Not from here," Chin says, calmly enough that Steve sort of wants to punch him through the phone line. "Give me the number and Kono and I will head back to HQ. You want to come with us or keep looking on your own in the meantime?"
Every fibre of Steve's being wants to just keep moving, keep searching until he finds Danny himself, but even he can tell just how irrational that is. The number is the best lead they've got, HQ isn't all that far away, and the best use of their resources is to regroup, trace the number, and go get Danny once they're sure where he is. Chin's voice breaks through his thoughts.
"You try calling the number back?"
Steve refrains from smacking himself in the forehead. "No, not yet, I wanted to make sure you had the number first. I'll do that now and meet you back at the office."
"Um," Jenna ventures almost timidly once he's hung up. "If I could make a suggestion? I saw a name come up on the call display. It looked like a residential number, and if the name came up, that means it's listed. Why don't you just do a reverse lookup on the number? Here," she takes out her phone and pulls up the web browser app. "What's the number?" Thirty seconds later her face lights up. "Got it, it's practically next door. Five blocks away, we can -"
Steve is already moving, all but ignoring her cry of protest that he's going too fast for her to keep up. The thought that Danny has been this close by the whole time practically makes him light-headed. He arrives at the front door just as a woman of about his age opens the door, garbage bag in hand. She stops short, obviously startled, and takes a step back, reaching to close the screen door.
"Can I help you?"
He fishes at his belt for his badge. "Steve McGarrett, Five-0. Do you have a moment, ma'am?"
"Okay, but I was about to go put my girls to bed, so I can't stay long."
There were children's voices in the background of the call, Steve remembers. "Actually, I need to talk to them. I think they might have something that they're not supposed to have."
The woman's eyes narrow. "What do you mean?"
"Look, Mrs. -"
"Natua."
"Mrs. Natua. I realize this is inconvenient, but if I could just speak to your daughters for a few moments, I promise I'll be out of your hair in -"
He's interrupted by a loud crashing noise and a muted shriek from one of the back rooms. Mrs. Natua blows out her cheeks in exasperation, drops the garbage bag and turns her back to him. "Girls! I told you to stop running in the house while I'm trying to tidy! Do not make me come back there, do you hear?"
Before the girls have time to answer, there's a blur of movement in the hallway behind her, and Steve can't help but grin when the blur resolves itself into a tawny-furred ferret scampering at top speed along the polished floor.
"Mr. Whiskers!" comes the plaintive cry from just beyond the hallway, and a moment later two little girls come racing around the corner on the ferret's heels.
They come skidding to a halt as they realize that they're not alone, and Danny lunges desperately at Steve's feet and scrambles unceremoniously up his leg, digging his claws first into Steve's cargo pants and then into the hem of his shirt before trying his damnedest to burrow right under it. Steve catches him easily and bites hard on his lip in order not to laugh, because the girls, maybe in some misguided attempt at playing dolls, have dressed the poor thing up in the frilliest pink dolly dress Steve has ever seen in his life.
Mrs. Natua is currently staring down her girls. "Ipo, Ano, what is that?"
"It's Mr. Whiskers," the youngest of the two volunteers, even though she's currently trying to duck behind her older sister. "I found him. Can we keep him? I promise we'll feed him and clean out his cage and everything!"
Steve clears his throat even as he's liberating a very indignant-looking Danny from the confines of the dress. "I'm afraid that's out of the question. Ferrets are illegal in Hawaii, as you may or may not know. I will have to take him with me."
"Aw!"
"I'm sorry, but Danny here already has a family," Steve tells the little girl as seriously as he can. "And they miss him very much. You don't want him to be sad because he can't be with his family, do you?"
She droops visibly. "I guess not. His name isn't Mr. Whiskers?"
"No, it's not."
"Can we come visit, then?"
"Maybe," he hedges, just as Danny burrows back into his shirt and curls up tightly before letting just the tip of his nose poke out of the V of his collar, whiskers twitching. "That will depend on a lot of things, not least the length of time your mother decides to ground you for this."
"Oh, it's going to be a while," Mrs. Natua says grimly, and both girls blanch a little.
"Uh, Steve?" Jenna pipes up breathlessly from behind him. He's not at all sure when she managed to catch up to him.
"Later," he promises. "Thank you for your time, ma'am. Oh, and I believe this is yours."
He hands the dress back to Mrs. Natua, who takes it with a bemused look and doesn't even bother to ask questions before shutting the door behind them.
~*~
Steve deflects all of Jenna's questions before dropping her off near her own car, promising that they'll deal with all of it later. Really, he'd rather not have to answer any of the questions the team will doubtless have, because he's pretty sure Danny never intended to have any of them know his secret. At least, not this soon in the game. As far as Steve knows, less than a handful of people outside of Danny's immediate family know about his true nature, and now, like it or not, they're going to have to come up with something to tell Chin, Kono and Jenna. It's not Steve's secret, though, and as much as he's convinced that none of the team are going to react badly, the way Danny seems to think they will, he knows enough to figure that Danny needs to do this on his own terms. As much as possible, anyway.
Danny resists all of Steve's attempts to dislodge him from his shirt, not that Steve tries very hard after about a minute. Danny's shivering and obviously stressed and miserable, and if he wants to stay safe inside Steve's shirt, well, then, so be it. If Steve is honest with himself, after tonight's scare, having the proof that Danny is alive and whole this close to hand is pretty reassuring, so he just lets him be until they get home, breathing in the now-familiar musky scent that's so particular to Danny. He heads into the living room, settles on his sofa and pulls the throw blanket over himself in an attempt to get Danny warmed up after his ordeal.
"How you doing, Danno?" he asks softly, and is rewarded with a faint squeak. It's not a contented sound, not like the dooking noises Danny makes when he's really happy, but he's pretty sure it's not a bad noise, either. Carefully he reaches into his shirt in order to stroke Danny carefully behind the ears. "So I'm guessing you had an even shittier day than I did. I was worried, you know," he confides to the ferret. Somehow, it's easier to talk to Danny when he's like this. Maybe it's because he knows that no matter what he says, Danny's not going to say anything back right away. Danny's always more mellow when he's in ferret form, anyway. "I honestly thought you'd maybe gotten caught in the fire and we'd never find you because no one would know to look for a ferret."
Danny makes a quiet chuckling sound, and Steve huffs a laugh in spite of himself. "Hey, come on, it's not all that far-fetched." He rubs just a little harder behind Danny's ears, smiles when the ferret relaxes further against his chest, although he can still feel Danny's tiny ribcage rising and falling a little too fast for his liking. "I guess you're still sick, huh?" Danny doesn't answer, just shoves at him with a hot, dry nose. "Yeah, that's what I thought. I read up about the flu on the internet this afternoon, but if you're up to changing back, I can take you to a clinic. Or we could risk a vet, if you want, but since there aren't any legal ferrets in Hawaii I don't know if a vet would know what to do. And you're not really listening to me, are you?"
Danny just sneezes against his chest, chirps softly and creeps up to nestle under Steve's chin. It's moot right now, Steve decides. They'll figure out in the morning if Danny needs extra medical attention. For now he's home and safe, and that's the main thing. He cups a hand under Danny's rear, supporting him while he gets up from the sofa and carries him up the stairs to bed. Danny grudgingly lets Steve put him down on the bed while he changes out of his clothes, then immediately wraps himself around Steve's neck the moment he's lying down again.
"You comfortable, Danno?" Steve asks, not that he's expecting an answer.
Danny's already drowsing, and Steve isn't too far behind him. Everyone is safe, Rachel and Grace won't even know about the fire until tomorrow, and they'll deal with the fact that Danny's apartment went up in flames when Danny's feeling better. He strokes Danny's fur with one hand, enjoying how soft it feels under his fingertips. If part of him wishes that Danny were in human form right now so that he could hold onto him more tightly, reassure himself properly that he's all right, the rest of him is even happier to have all of Danny's trust manifested like this.
"You know, Danno, you look really fetching in pink," he tells Danny, and doesn't blame him in the slightest when Danny casually turns his head and bites him hard on the finger.
Summary: Ferret!verse. Written for siehn for the h50_holidayswap. Danny gets the flu, but after Steve drives him home so he can get some much-needed sleep, his day gets a whole lot worse when his apartment building catches fire. When Danny goes missing in the aftermath, it's up to Steve and the team to find him, their search made all the harder because, well, sometimes Danny is a ferret.
Characters: Steve/Danny, Kono, Chin Ho, Jenna
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: ~10,000
Disclaimer: Everything recognizable belongs to CBS. The ferret stuff is mine, though.
Warnings: Crack. Minimal swearing. Implied established relationship.
Neurotic Author's Note #1: I managed to get a teeny window of time at work in which to post this, but my internet at home is still not working. :( I'm sorry this is so late!
Neurotic Author's Note #2: This is actually a sequel to Nearly Always Your Own Fault, but it stands on its own. All you really need to know is that, sometimes, Danny is a ferret.
Neurotic Author's Note #3: So, um, siehn mentioned that she liked AUs in which some of the team weren't human, and also expressed a desire for a kidnapping story in which the team rescued a kidnapped team member. My brain saw this and decided: "Clearly she means that Danny is a ferret and gets kidnapped!" IDK, okay?
Neurotic Author's Note #4: Also, because I am the God of my teeny-tiny corner of the world, I have decided that in this AU Jenna gets to live and stay part of Five-0, okay? Okay.
Neurotic Author's Note #Oh My God Shut Up Already ratherastory:All of my ferret information comes from the internet, so please be lenient about my inaccuracies.
It's been months and Steve still hasn't really gotten used to everything about his partner. Sure, there are lots of things he's more than used to now: the temper, the ranting, the hand-flailing that he does at a moment's notice when he's upset. These things are par for the course, have been part of Danny's personality since as long as he can remember knowing him. In fact, though he'll never admit it to Danny himself, he kind of likes all those things about him: the way he never backs down, the fierce devotion to his kid and his job and his friends, the unwavering loyalty, all of it.
And hell, Steve has even sort of started getting used to the idea that, some of the time, Danny's actually a ferret. An honest-to-God ferret, complete with fur and pointy teeth and attitude. Mostly. It's not like having a were-ferret as a partner is your run-of-the-mill occurrence, not even for someone with Steve's admittedly extensive and eclectic experience serving in the Navy for all these years. He can almost hear Danny correcting him, tone unexpectedly pedantic, informing him that the technical term is 'therianthrope.' Whatever, he still turns into a ferret, and it's kind of strange, sue Steve for feeling a little unbalanced about the whole thing.
It's only been a couple of weeks since he found out, and he's still not entirely sure what he thinks of it. It's not like it's a problem, per se. Danny is still Danny, five feet five inches of indignation and love of junk food, and that's not going to change. And Steve does get why Danny kept it a secret all this time: therianthropes are few and far-between, ferrets even moreso. According to Danny there's only a hundred or so of them in all of the Eastern Seaboard, and fewer still the farther west in the U.S. you venture. There's a small community of selkies and dolphin-folk in Hawaii, but Danny doesn't associate with them at all -something to do with how they're all kind of snooty about the therianthropes who don't swim, and the idea that there are politics involved makes Steve's head spin. It's not like there's any official material out there on these people that Steve can use for research to get a handle on any of this. All he has is Danny's word and experience, and that will just have to be enough.
So far he's learned that ferrets, even when they're human part of the time, are the most high-energy creatures of all time. Danny in ferret form is even more hyper than Grace on a sugar rush, and it takes everything Steve has to keep up with him, following him as he explores every single nook and cranny in Steve's house, wedging himself into cracks that look like a woodlouse wouldn't fit in there, let alone a five-pound hob, and generally giving Steve a lot more grey hair than he planned on having at his age.
That's mostly why Steve is worried now, staring at Danny through the glass wall of their office. Danny's a pretty high-energy guy himself, ferret or not, and the last day or two he's been noticeably off, slower to wake up in the morning than usual, and slower even to change to human form after that. That Danny reverts to his 'natural' ferret form when he sleeps -when he's relaxed and unguarded- is something Steve found out the hard way, but it's not like it bothers him. Most of the time he's a little baffled and more than a little pleased that Danny has chosen to honour him with his trust like this, and it makes warmth blossom in his chest just thinking about it. It's just that, well, the first few times Danny made changing forms look effortless, and now -not that Steve's an expert or anything- he could swear that Danny's been having trouble with it. It's not something Steve feels particularly comfortable discussing, because he has no idea if this is normal, or if he's going to offend Danny by bringing it up, or what. So he's been keeping to his own office, thankful at least that they haven't been overwhelmed with urgent cases.
Unsurprisingly, it's Chin who sets Steve straight, coming into his office and perching on the edge of his desk, file folder from an older case in hand. "You got a minute?"
Steve pauses just long enough to save the changes he's been making to his latest report -Danny can say what he wants, but he always fills out his paperwork- and nods. "Of course. Something on your mind about the case?"
"Oh, no. The case is fine, I just got this back for some minor revisions. No, I wanted to talk about Danny. Is everything okay with him? Normally I'd just ask him, but you've been acting a little off, and I was wondering if something had happened."
Steve barely knows how to begin answering that. Of course something has happened. So much has happened that it feels like years have gone by instead of a couple of weeks. "Not exactly. I mean, I don't know. So you think something is off too, right?"
Chin nods, glancing over his shoulder at Danny. "Definitely. He's not himself. So... are you going to talk to him, or would you like me to?"
It would be an easy out, but Steve's never been that kind of guy, so he shakes his head. "No, no. Thanks, Chin, but I got this one. I'll talk to him. If you're seeing it too, it means I'm not imagining things. Thanks, though."
"No problem. You know I'm here if you need me, anytime."
Steve smiles softly at that, knows that he's wearing the kind of expression that makes Danny sock him in the shoulder and call him a goofball. "Thanks."
He leaves Chin to his file, makes a point of strolling casually over to Danny's office and raps gently on the doorframe to the open door. Danny glances up from his computer screen, rolls his eyes, but smiles anyway. "Door's open, you goof. If I needed you to knock, I would have closed it."
Steve grins and shrugs, lets himself drop into the chair across from Danny's desk, then reaches over and nudges the door closed. "Duly noted."
Danny's eyebrows creep toward his hairline as he watches the door close. "Something wrong?"
Steve leans forward. "You tell me. Everything okay?"
"Why wouldn't it be?" Danny narrows his eyes a little at that, but Steve can see there's definitely something else at play behind his expression, something a little uncertain. He's sweating a little, Steve notes, his shirt damp, perspiration beading at his hairline in spite of the air conditioning going full-blast. He wonders how he never noticed how pale Danny is, the circles under his eyes as deep as when he was still trying to keep his true nature a secret even while they were sleeping together.
"You haven't really been acting normal the past couple of days. Not like yourself. Just... should I be worried?"
Danny sighs softly, then wipes at his forehead with the back of his hand. "No, you don't need to worry. You're more observant than I gave you credit for, though," he tries for a smile, but Steve isn't buying it. "Yeah, okay, okay," he raises his hands in a gesture of surrender. "It's not serious, I promise. I'm just not feeling that great."
Steve blinks a little, taken aback. "What?"
That gets him a shrug. "It's just what it sounds like. I think it's probably the strain of 'flu that's been going around Grace's school. She had it last week, and I probably got it from her. The symptoms are all the same, anyway: headache, light sensitivity, muscle aches, fever, all that."
"Fever?" Steve could kick himself. "Why didn't you stay home?"
"I didn't think it was that bad," Danny admits. "But that was this morning, and I have to admit I was about five minutes away from asking for the rest of the day off."
"Of course. You want me to give you a lift? No offense, Danno, but you really kind of look like shit."
Danny snorts, but rubs both hands over his face. "Kind of feel like shit, too, to be perfectly honest. No, I don't need a lift, I'll be fine... and you're not really making this a choice, are you?" he asks, noting Steve's expression.
"Not really. I was just letting you save face, there. You honestly think you should be driving?"
"Yeah, okay, you have a point. Just let me save what I've got here, and I'm all yours."
Steve would much rather Danny stay at his place where there's a big comfy bed and, more importantly, where Steve will be there later tonight to check on him, but Danny insists on going back to his own crappy little apartment complex. Maybe it's a familiarity thing, Steve reasons. After all, there's nowhere he likes more than his own bed when he's sick, so maybe it stands to reason that his partner would yearn for his shitty little pull-out bed, or something. Danny is uncharacteristically quiet on the drive back, just leans his head against his seat and lets his eyes closed, hands folded in his lap. He doesn't even once comment on Steve's driving, which is a definite sign that something is very, very wrong.
"You okay?" Steve asks as Danny unlocks his door, even though it's a stupid question and it's patently obvious that he's not okay in the slightest.
Danny shrugs, lets them both inside, and immediately sheds most of his clothes, dropping them in the laundry hamper he keeps next to the bathroom door. "It's just harder when I'm sick, you know?" he says finally.
"What, staying in human form?"
Danny nods. "I have to concentrate harder, and... yeah. So mostly I'm just going to try to sleep it off."
Steve bites his lip. "Uh, is there anything I should, um, watch for? If you're, you know, changed? Can ferrets even get the flu?"
Danny huffs a laugh, rummages through the medicine cabinet and pulls out a bottle of NyQuil. "Yes, ferrets get the flu. It's one of the few bugs that crosses species. Figures, too. So, yeah, I'll still be sick when I change, I just won't be expending unnecessary energy on staying in human form. Unfortunately, they don't make NyQuil for ferrets, so this part I'm going to do now," he waggles the bottle in Steve's general direction before measuring out a dose in the tiny plastic cup that comes with it.
He rinses it out, puts the bottle back, and a moment later, before Steve has had the time do anything more than blink, Danny is gone from view, replaced by a tiny, tawny-furred animal nosing its way along the floor toward him. Steve has already had Danny try to crawl up his pants leg before, and even if he loves him there are limits to what he'll put up with, so he bends down and scoops Danny into his arms, ignoring the way he squirms with indignation.
"Come on, Danno, don't be like that. You know how cuddly you look," he teases gently, and after a moment Danny relaxes, eyes closing blissfully when Steve strokes him just behind his ears with two fingers.
He's wheezing slightly, Steve notes, realizing that, in spite of it all, Danny really is sick, and being manhandled is probably not going to help him get better. As much as he wants to sit somewhere and let Danny sleep in his lap, the way he's taken to lately, he figures Danny will do better in the little nest he's built for himself in the bottom drawer of his dresser, filled with scraps of cloth and batting that he got God knows where. Steve has yet to ask him, and has no plans of doing so anytime soon, although he's pretty sure that he recognized some of the darker material as belonging to a Navy t-shirt of his that went missing a few months ago. Still holding Danny close to his chest he nudges the drawer a little further open and deposits the ferret among the scraps of cloth, watching with a fond smile as Danny pokes sleepily at all of it and then curls up into a tight ball, tiny ribcage rising and falling steadily.
He takes a moment to plug in Danny's phone and set it on his night table, pets Danny's sleeping form very gently before taking his leave. "Sleep well, Danno. Call me if you need anything, okay?" he says from the doorway, locks the door on the way out, and tries not to feel like the shittiest person on the planet for leaving his partner behind while he's sick.
~*~
There are few things in the world that Danny hates more than getting sick. Luckily for him, he's got an iron constitution and therefore doesn't get sick often, but when he does it inevitably flattens him like a possum being hit by a Mac truck. This time is no different. He'd hoped, two days ago when he first started feeling a little off his game, that it was just a passing malaise and nothing more, but by the time the second day rolled around and it felt like the entire world had been replaced by a sauna, it was obvious that he was going to have to roll over and concede defeat in the face of the flu.
Explaining things to McGarrett wasn't quite as hard as he'd thought it might be, which is a relief. Steve, for all that he's a straight-laced Navy officer (penchant for blowing things up and chucking suspects into shark cages notwithstanding), is taking the revelation that he's a therianthrope remarkably well. A lot better than Danny ever gave him credit for, to be perfectly honest, which is worrisome in and of itself. After all, it's no walk in the park to be involved with someone whose preferred form is pretty much physiologically incompatible with one's own, which is why, in the end, things had never worked out with Rachel. She'd loved his human side, but not his cop side, and while she'd tolerated the ferret side, she kept acting hurt whenever he changed, as though he was deliberately shutting her out, when he was really trying to do the exact opposite. In short, as shitty as it sounds, he's still waiting for the other shoe to drop with Steve, even though he and Rachel aren't the same person at all.
So Steve is kind of surprisingly understanding about the whole flu thing, which, okay, everyone gets the flu and a couple of days off work to get over it is not all that much to ask, Danny knows. It's just that he's really not used to this sort of thing not being a big deal. When he'd been sick at home, Rachel had usually made it clear that he should try to stay in human form, making out like he should do it for Grace's sake, even though Grace doesn't care what form he's in -he's Danno, no matter what, and that alone is enough to make him adore his baby girl even if he didn't adore her for a million other reasons. Being alone after the divorce meant that he could curl up in his preferred form and wait it out, but now, with Steve... well, it's just hard to tell. So far, it seems like it's working out, but sometimes Steve can be just as hard to read as Rachel.
Danny curls up more tightly on himself, feeling the tip of his tail twitch in response to all the conflicting thoughts swirling around in his head. He figures it's got to be the fever doing this to him -normally the ferret instincts take the lead when he's in this form, even though his thought processes are left intact. Being in this form is easier, usually, but right now he feels like utter crap, and that's apparently enough of an opening for his thoughts to become increasingly muddy and confused, especially when it comes to Steve. Maybe he shouldn't have taken that NyQuil after all, or maybe at least waited a while before changing back after taking it, but it's too late now.
At least his nest is comfortable. It smells of himself and Grace and Steve -a nice addition when he snagged one of his partner's spare shirts a few months ago. He doesn't think Steve has noticed yet, and hopes he won't mind once he does. It's not like he hasn't once or twice made a temporary nest for himself in Steve's sock drawer already, much to Steve's dismay. The guy is way too OCD about colour-coding his socks, anyway. Danny nestles a little further into the soft material, wishing he could just shut his brain off and go to sleep already. Being sick always feels a little different when he's in his natural form, and having to fight against the urge to just crawl off to find a small spot to curl up in and wait to either die or get better gets harder and harder to resist as time goes by. Maybe now, at least, if Steve doesn't end up freaking out about this, he won't have to resist it anymore.
Eventually he does doze off, drifting quietly in the dark, dreamless sleep that being a ferret sometimes affords him. When he's awake and listening to other people talk about their dreams he sometimes wonders if he's not missing out on something, because his own dreams are never remotely as complex as regular humans' dreams seem to be. Then again, having slept beside Steve once during what seemed like a particularly bad nightmare, Danny thinks he might have lucked out after all. His own dreams are simple, straightforward, and usually involve bright colours and shiny things, and frolicking in the grass or in gaily-decorated tunnels with ladders. The same thing he likes to do when he's awake, really, and he wouldn't have it any other way.
When he wakens, he's instantly on alert, whiskers quivering, heart pattering frantically against his ribcage. He has no idea what awoke him, but all his instincts are screaming danger at him, and that by itself has him scrabbling to get out of his nest and into the middle of the room so he can identify what the threat is. He all but falls over the edge of the drawer, landing with an uncomfortable thump on the floor, still woozy from the flu he managed to forget about while he was asleep. He wriggles until he's upright again, twitching his nose, and that's when he smells it -the acrid stench of smoke coming in through the vent in the wall. Fire, his mind registers, and after that it's nothing but blind panic taking over. He takes off at a run, all his thoughts screaming at him to get out get out get out, out-out-out, forgetting the phone on his night table, forgetting everything except the overwhelming urge to get away from heat and flame and danger.
Danny squeezes under the front door, finds himself surrounded suddenly by what seems like a thousand pairs of legs and feet threatening to trample him. Above him voices are yelling and screaming, no one bothering to look where they're stepping, and flames are pouring out of the window of the apartment next door to his, licking their way along the wall. Danny freezes, casting about for an escape route that will avoid getting him stepped on, finally settles on the fire escape as the least of all the possible evils here. He ends up scurrying down the stairs at breakneck speed, losing his footing several times and tumbling ungracefully to the bottom, where he lands hard on the asphalt, completely winded. For a moment he just lies there on his side, panting, blood roaring in his ears, staring up the stairs at the soles of all those feet tromping toward him, and that is enough to galvanize him into action. He scrambles out of the way again, into the grass next to the walkway, taking refuge under a huge plant whose name Steve would probably know.
He crouches there, trying vainly to catch his breath, and watches as flames begin to burst from one window after the other in the building, as the roof slowly begins to collapse even as the fire department arrives, sirens blaring so loudly they drown out all the other sound in the vicinity. Danny shivers, huddled on himself, his mind not quite processing what he's seeing, as his entire life goes up in smoke before his eyes. The building was never all that sound to begin with, he reminds himself, was probably ready to go up like a tinder box at the slightest provocation. It was probably Mrs. Onakea next door, he thinks distractedly, smoking in bed again. That's where the flames and smoke were coming from when he first got out. There's no way of knowing right now if she got out, no one to ask, even if he was in a position to be asking anyone anything at all.
It takes hours for the firefighters to even begin mastering the blaze, and by that time the entire property is crawling with people, with fire trucks and ambulances, paramedics administering treatment to people on stretchers, strapping oxygen masks over people's faces. He was lucky, Danny thinks, that he was already so low to the ground that the smoke never reached him at all. He's pretty sure that if it had, he'd be dead already. He watches from his vantage point, still safe enough where he is, far enough out of the way that no one has given this patch of shrubbery a second thought. He thinks he spots Mrs. Onakea sitting on a stretcher behind an ambulance, a blanket over her shoulder, and feels a surge of relief at the thought that she did get rescued after all.
He should be helping, he thinks, not for the first time that day. He should be helping out, doing crowd control or at least making sure there's a proper headcount of everyone who lives in the building, but he stays right where he is, shivering and miserable, every single muscle in his body aching too much for him to do anything other than lie down in the dirt. He curls in on himself, keeps watching the proceedings even with his tail wrapped around his nose. There's nothing left of his own apartment, and he thinks he should probably be more worried than he is that all his clothes, everything he owns is in there, except for his car and the keys. He's pretty sure Steve took the Camaro when he dropped him off, so there's always that. At least, he tells himself, if worse comes to worst he'll be able to sleep in his car.
He shakes himself at that, because of course he won't have to sleep in his car. There's Steve, and he doesn't know why it didn't occur to him that Steve would take him in. Even if it's not permanent, even if Steve doesn't want him living there, there's no reason to suppose that he won't let Danny crash there until he finds a new place. After all, Steve's already made it clear that he wants Danny to spend the night whenever he wants to -that's how Steve ended up finding out about the whole ferret thing, after all. So all Danny has to do now is find Steve and explain what's happened, and they'll figure out the rest later.
Of course, finding Steve means getting out from under this bush, and not staying here curled up like a sick animal. Which, okay, Danny is sick, and technically ferrets are animals, but whatever, that's not the point. He knows where Steve lives, and it's not all that far, even as the ferret scampers. He takes a moment to groom himself, carefully licking his fur where it's sticking up in the wrong direction, rubbing his paws over his muzzle, then cautiously pokes his nose out from under the plant. When nothing happens he creeps forward, scenting the air, freezes in place when he's completely in the open, exposed and vulnerable, and waits for something to nab him. When still nothing happens he takes a couple of fortifying breaths, then ventures forth toward the street, still keeping as much cover between himself and the outside world as possible. Even if nothing bad is happening to him right now, it doesn't mean he should be inviting danger to rain down upon his head.
After a few minutes he figures he's making pretty good time, all in all. As ferrets go, Danny is pretty spry, flu or no flu. He kind of wishes he could reach around to pat himself on the back, but he can always do that later, once he's found Steve. Yeah, for all that this definitely ranks in the top three worst days of Danny's life, it's not so bad right now. At least, that's what he tells himself right up until the moment he feels himself being grabbed and lifted right off the ground.
~*~
It's kind of hard to go back to the office without Danny. Steve always feels Danny's absence when he's not there, like a void behind his desk where he should be. It's not like this is the first time Danny's not been there, of course. There were the couple of times that he went back to Jersey to visit his family, and a few times when he took time off to be with Grace, and the really nerve-wracking few days when Danny was recovering from being exposed to sarin, but it doesn't mean Steve is used to it, nor that he has to like it in any way, shape or form. Danny's a fixture at Five-0, and when he's not in the office Steve can't help but feel that he's missing a limb. He's become used to having Danny around, filling up all the empty spaces in his life with his voice, his constantly-moving hands, his whole personality.
Steve does manage to put aside his thoughts long enough to sit down at his desk and start his own work. For once he's all caught up on his paperwork -Danny would be proud if he were here to see him- but there's a fair bit of groundwork to be done on a current smuggling case. Steve really dislikes the part of his job that requires him to just sit and make phone calls and send emails and set up appointments to talk to potential witnesses, but he does recognize that it's a necessary evil. Not every case happens over the course of hours, sometimes it takes weeks of careful preparation to make sure all your ducks are in a row, to make sure that the bad guys will go to jail for their crimes. After years of being almost a law onto himself, it's been a bit of an adjustment, and he realises that he owes a lot of his new skills to Danny, even if his approach to teaching resembles browbeating more than anything else. Steve chuckles to himself, has to take a moment to make sure he's not laughing when he picks up the phone for his next call.
The afternoon passes excruciatingly slowly. Chin and Kono are huddled together in front of Chin's computer screen, presumably going over the new decryption software that Chin just acquired, and that means they're both effectively ignoring him. Jenna has curled herself into a large chair with a file folder on one of Wo Fat's known associates, glasses sliding down her nose, hair tousled, feet tucked under her. Steve can't figure out for the life of him how she manages to twist herself into positions like that, nor how it can possibly be comfortable, but it works for her, so he doesn't bother questioning it too hard.
He debates calling Danny when he leaves the office, loses the argument quickly and ends up speed-dialling his number as he gets into the Camaro to drive it home. The line rings three times and goes to voicemail both times he tries it, and he tries to swallow his pang of disappointment. He decides Danny must still be sleeping and just didn't hear his cell phone. Or maybe he did hear it but for some reason or other didn't answer. Danny did say it's harder to go from his ferret form to his human form after all, and if he's sick it stands to reason that it would take even more of his energy to change. Steve tucks his phone away, feeling a little guilty at the idea that he might have inadvertently forced Danny out of his bed to answer the phone just because Steve was feeling a little lonely.
He deliberately leaves the phone alone for the rest of the evening, putting it on the kitchen counter while he broils some fish in the oven and sautés a bunch of vegetables in olive oil and a dash of soy sauce, glancing at it every now and then just in case it rings and he misses it. It stays stubbornly silent, though, until he grabs it with a sigh and heads into his living room to turn on the television. It's a habit he picked up from Danny, who seems to like having it on as background noise and for some benighted reason doesn't like the sound of the ocean at night. Then again, Danny hasn't complained about that ever since his secret came out and he's been able to sleep over at Steve's in his preferred form, so maybe it had more to do with that than with the sound of the ocean itself. Steve feels kind of stupid for not realizing it before.
Steve almost comes out of his skin a couple of hours later when his phone does buzz loudly in his pocket, waking him out of the light doze he'd slipped into. It's not Danny's ringtone, but he finds that a small part of him is secretly hoping that it's Danny anyway, calling from some other phone. Instead, Chin's voice comes over the line, tone urgent.
"You'd better get down to Danny's apartment building, Steve. There's been a fire, and he's not answering his cell."
"On my way."
Steve is already up and moving before he's even hung up the phone, grabbing the car keys from the table by the door and sprinting back to the Camaro. He takes off in a squeal of tires that would have had Danny bitching at the top of his lungs, performs several more manoeuvres designed to elevate Danny's blood pressure, and arrives at the scene a good ten minutes faster than usual. Even before he gets there he can see the smoke rising in a thick column into the sky, the acrid smell filling the air, the sound of trucks and men shouting instructions and the patter of water from the fire hose hitting the building coming in through the open window of the car. There's nothing left of the apartment complex by the time he arrives but a charred hull, firefighters still working hard to extinguish the remnants of the fire and get the property cool enough for search and rescue to go in and look for survivors -or remains, he thinks with a shudder. Danny's cell phone goes straight to voicemail when he tries calling again.
He catches sight of the company lieutenant, recognizing him from a previous case, and jogs over. "Hey, Randy, got a minute?"
The lieutenant turns to him, gives him a nod of recognition and a grim smile. "Sure. It's mostly under control right now. Can't say I'm pleased to see you, since Five-0 usually means trouble. What brings you to my blaze? Any reason I should be worried, here?"
Steve shakes his head. "Nothing like that. My partner lives here, I came to look for him, he's not answering his cell phone and he was home sick today."
That gets him a sympathetic grimace. "Damn, I'm sorry. I got a list of residents who made it out, but things are a little chaotic right now. Everyone who needed treatment for burns or smoke inhalation have been taken to Queen's, if you want to check with them. No one identified themselves as Five-0, but we did get a few who lost consciousness, so maybe your partner was among them."
Steve is already on the phone to Chin, relaying the information, hangs up almost without so much as thanking him. "Right, thanks. When do you think we'll be able to go in and take a look?"
The lieutenant shrugs. "It's still pretty hot. Probably not until the morning. To be honest, you probably won't find anything in there. From the looks of it, the fire started in one of the apartments, but the whole place was a tinder box waiting to go up. Fire marshal will have to make an official report, but I'm honestly not surprised by this result. It's a shame, really."
"Right. Thanks."
Steve turns away from the smouldering remains of the building, paces next to the car. It's not like this is a case that he can work on: there aren't any bad guys, no leads to chase down, nothing. Just a fire and a missing partner who won't -or more likely can't- answer his cell phone. Steve doesn't look back, refuses to contemplate the idea that Danny, sick and even more vulnerable in his animal form, might just not have made it out. No one will know to look for the remains of a ferret, if the fire didn't burn so hot as to completely consume them… He isn't even surprised when Kono calls back to let him know that even though she, Jenna and Chin are still checking the hospital, there's been no sign of Danny. He leans against the car and stares at the smoke still coiling up into the evening sky, and finds himself wondering just what the hell he's supposed to do next.
~*~
In all his life, Danny has never actually found himself in the unfortunate position of being shoved into a bag, not even in his ferret form. Until now, that is. Right now he is stuck inside what he thinks is a backpack, a kid's backpack judging by the contents, which is an empty Tupperware container that smells of peanut butter sandwich, a Barbie doll and a plastic jump rope judging by the feel of it. None of it is particularly comfortable, and the Barbie's plastic fingers keep jabbing him in the ribs, but he's otherwise unharmed, which is a plus. He's also pretty happy, in retrospect, that he didn't succeed in biting his captor, because the toys in here indicate that he's dealing with a little girl about Gracie's age, and he'd feel really bad if he'd ended up biting her.
Still, being shoved into a little girl's backpack was not on the agenda. Even more frustrating is the fact that he can't figure a way out of here. It's a pretty sturdy pack, the zipper held in place by some sort of locking mechanism, and the inside is lined with thick plastic that he can't quite get a purchase on with his teeth to gnaw through. It's a small space, too, and he spends most of what feels like a very long trip being jostled from side to side, poked by the Barbie and battered by the Tupperware box and getting tangled up in the jump rope. Finally, though, the bag gets set down with a very hard thump, and Danny sags with relief. His whole body is aching, his bad leg throbbing from where it collided painfully with the Tupperware box.
"What've you got in there?" a child's voice asks. Another girl, he thinks, but he can't be sure of her age just by the voice.
"A bunny!"
If Danny could roll his eyes he would. Must be a young child, he thinks, if she doesn't know what sort of animal he is. Then again, ferrets are illegal to have as pets in Hawaii, so a small child wouldn't know better. The zipper opens and the next thing he knows small hands are scooping him up again and hauling him out onto a carpeted surface, pinning him to the floor even as he tries to wriggle free.
"I found him outside the place where the fire was."
"That's not a rabbit," the older child says. She's definitely a girl, maybe a bit younger than Grace, with a round, solemn face. "That looks more like a weasel. Mom is going to flip out if she sees it. Be careful, Ano, or it'll bite you."
"No he won't, he's a nice bunny, aren't you, Mr. Whiskers?"
Mr. Whiskers? Danny wriggles harder, but Ano is strong for a little kid, and keeps him firmly pinned to the carpet until he subsides, resigned to staying put at least until she releases him. His tail twitches anyway, and the older girl snorts.
"You can't keep him. Mom is going to be so mad. Besides, it's a wild animal and it probably has rabies."
"Mr. Whiskers does not have rabies, Ipo!" Ano shrieks, and Danny's ears flatten against his skull in response. Good set of lungs on her, anyway. She snatches him up into her arms and clutches him hard to her chest, and he doesn't have the energy to struggle anymore. "See? He likes me!"
"He looks sick or something. He probably belongs to someone in the building and we should give him back."
Yeah, Danny thinks, you should definitely give me back. Now that he's not trying to run or find an escape route, the whole day is catching up to him, and all he wants to do is curl up into a ball and sleep until he feels better. He doesn't have that luxury, he reminds himself. He has to get out of here and find Steve and the rest of Five-0 and let them know he's not dead, for one thing. They'll all be worried once they hear about the fire, and knowing how small the law enforcement and firefighting communities are in Honolulu, the odds are good they've already been alerted. What he has to do, he tells himself, is come up with a plan. Preferably a plan that involves a phone and him no longer being half-choked by an overexcited five-year-old.
If there's one thing he's learned from playing with Grace for years, it's how to make an excited little girl loosen her hold. He goes limp in Ano's arms and noses in a friendly fashion at the buttons of her frilly pink blouse. She giggles and shifts in order to pet him -a bit more roughly than he would have liked, but whatever, he'll take it- and he lets his eyes close with a sigh.
"I told you he likes me. I'm going to keep him, and you better not tell Mom!"
Ipo sits back on her heels. "Okay, but he still looks sick. Or tired, or something. We should make him a bed. Come on," she hauls her sister up by one hand and pulls a battered shoebox out of a closet. "We can use this and one of your t-shirts that doesn't fit anymore, so he can sleep."
Sleep is sounding really appealing right about now. From his new vantage point in Ano's arms he can see two beds made up in matching pink covers, and decides he must be in the girls' shared bedroom. The wall on one side is covered in crayon drawings that are all signed 'Ano' in uneven lettering, while the other wall reflects the tastes of a girl Ipo's age, with posters of Taylor Swift and Hannah Montana and, God help him, Justin Bieber all smiling back at him from the glossy paper. Ipo is busy lining the box with a grey t-shirt and handfuls of tissues, and at her prompting Ano deposits him unceremoniously into the whole makeshift nest. He dutifully pokes his nose in the folds of the t-shirt, tries to ignore how deliciously soft and nice the little set-up feels, and tries to climb back out of the box, only to be shoved back in by Ano.
"No, no, Mr. Whiskers, it's bedtime. You need to go to sleep."
"Maybe he's hungry. I'll go get an apple from the kitchen."
Danny sighs quietly. It's too much to hope for that she'll bring back whatever raw meat her mother's got stashed in the fridge, but at least he'll be able to ignore the apple. What's more difficult to ignore, however, is when Ano makes another sudden grab for him and hauls him into her lap.
"Ipo is going to bring you food, but it's almost bedtime, so we should get you ready. You're kind of smelly, so you should take a bath, but just this once I'm going to let you take your bath in the morning. Now be a good bunny and hold still while I put on your nightgown."
There is no way in Heaven or on Earth that Danny is going to put up with that. Not even Grace ever had the poor judgment to ever try to dress him up in anything. Really, how is their mother raising these girls? Ano has a tight grip on the back of his neck with one hand, the other holding what looks like a pink doll's dress, and Danny hates to do it, but really, she's left him no choice. He twists in her grasp and nips her on the wrist, hard enough to hurt but not break skin, the kind of nip he'd deliver to Gracie whenever she needed correcting as a little girl. Ano shrieks and drops him, and that's Danny's opening. He lands hard on the carpeted floor, scrambles to get his footing, and takes off as fast as he can toward the closed door, easily squeezing through the crack between the bottom of the door and the floor, even though his hind leg protests the harsh treatment. Ipo is right outside the door, presumably coming back with the apple she went off to fetch before, and she lets out a shriek remarkably similar to her sister's as he darts between her legs.
It's difficult, navigating a strange place while only a few inches off the ground, but Danny thinks he manages well enough, managing to leave the two girls in his wake, at least for now. He can't quite figure out where the front door is, but a couple of twists and turns land him on what is definitely the linoleum floor of a kitchen, and where there's a kitchen, there's usually a phone. He makes a leap for the nearest chair, scrambles up onto the kitchen table, whiskers quivering, ignoring the stabbing pain the movement causes in his leg, looking around frantically for the phone until he spots it sitting on the counter not two feet away. Another jump and he's there, nudging the receiver off the cradle and thanking every god he can think of that it's not a cordless phone, which would make what he's about to attempt nearly impossible. He knows Steve's phone number by heart, but by no means does that mean it's in any way easy to dial a telephone when your entire paw is about the size of one of the buttons and your heart is hammering against your ribcage.
It feels like it takes forever. All Danny can hear after that is the line ringing endlessly, and all he can think is please pick up, please pick up, please… until finally he hear's Steve's voice, tinny and distorted at the end of the line.
"Steve! Steve it's me, I'm okay but you have to come get me. I don't know where this is but you can trace the call, right? Steve?"
There's silence at the other end for a few moments, then Steve says: "Hello?" Like he's not sure what he's hearing, and Danny kind of wants to smack himself in the head as hard as he can.
It's obvious now, but because Danny's been so distracted and feeling sick and being kidnapped by well-intentioned but ignorant children that damned well forgot that Steve doesn't understand ferret at all and probably can't even hear him, and now Danny is screwed because he's exhausted and Ipo and Ano are going to catch up and he just doesn't have the energy or the time or the luxury of concentration it would take to change into human form now so that he can talk properly to Steve. Not to mention that he doesn't at all feel like explaining to the girls' mother why there's suddenly a naked man in her kitchen.
He lets out one last, slightly desperate squeak just as he hears Ano come up behind him. "Mr. Whiskers! Bad bunny!"
~*~
Even with no significant leads to chase down, it's not like Steve can just sit there and do nothing. So he and Chin and Kono and even Jenna have been tracking down all the residents of Danny's apartment building to ask them if they saw him or anything at all that might help. Of course, only Steve knows that he needs to ask them if they happened to see a ferret anywhere on the premises while the whole place was going up in flames, but even so, none of their questions yield the desired results.
At Jenna's suggestion they split up and start searching in a methodical grid pattern starting at Danny's apartment -or, rather, where Danny's apartment used to be- and moving outward steadily. Kono goes with Chin and Jenna sticks to Steve's side like a very anxious, slightly spastic limpet, and keeps up a steady stream of what he assumes she must think is reassuring chatter.
"I mean, statistically speaking the odds of anything bad happening to him are actually not as high as you'd think they'd be. So as long as he got out of the fire there's no reason to believe that we won't find him. Of course, the longer he's missing the worse it is, but it's only been a few hours, so we're actually-"
"Jenna, you need to stop being supportive now."
She ducks her head. "Was I babbling? I was babbling, wasn't I?"
"A little bit, yeah," he says, not unkindly. "Just keep your eyes open and your mouth a little more shut, okay?"
"Okay, I can do that. I should have brought a better flashlight," she whacks the butt of the aforementioned flashlight against the palm of her hand. "Yours okay?"
"It's fine. We're in the streets anyway, there's enough light for you to see by."
"I know, I just don't want to miss anything, you know? I'd hate for Danny to go missing forever and it be all my fault just because I didn't have the right kind of batteries in my flashlight or something. Does it matter what kind of batteries I put in here? They're alkaline but maybe I should have read the user's manual a little more carefully, because-"
"Jenna."
"Right. Babbling. I don't see anything, though, do you?"
Steve shakes his head. He doesn't even know what he's looking for anymore. Danny in human form or in ferret form, or some sort of clue about how the rug just got pulled out from under him for the third time in less than two years. He clenches his teeth, presses on, ignoring the latest round of prattle from Jenna, and all but tears the fabric of his cargo pants in his attempt to get to his cell phone when it goes off. He doesn't recognize the number that comes up on the display, immediately puts it on speaker phone.
"McGarrett."
The line stays silent, save for a quiet scuffling noise in the background. Jenna crowds close to his elbow, her forehead furrowed in concentration. She gets up on her tiptoes a moment later, leaning in to stage whisper, "Is that person squeaking?"
Steve strains to listen. "Hello?" he repeats, and this time he hears it as clearly as Jenna. It's definitely squeaking. He turns to her and grins so hard he thinks his face might split in two. "It's him! Danny?" he says into the phone, but the call has dropped. "Shit, okay, we have to trace this call." He fumbles with the phone, trying to commit the number to memory while dialling Chin, ignoring Jenna's confused questions about how he knows that the squeaking was coming from Danny. "It's me, Danny just called but the call dropped and I need you to trace the number, can you do that?"
"Not from here," Chin says, calmly enough that Steve sort of wants to punch him through the phone line. "Give me the number and Kono and I will head back to HQ. You want to come with us or keep looking on your own in the meantime?"
Every fibre of Steve's being wants to just keep moving, keep searching until he finds Danny himself, but even he can tell just how irrational that is. The number is the best lead they've got, HQ isn't all that far away, and the best use of their resources is to regroup, trace the number, and go get Danny once they're sure where he is. Chin's voice breaks through his thoughts.
"You try calling the number back?"
Steve refrains from smacking himself in the forehead. "No, not yet, I wanted to make sure you had the number first. I'll do that now and meet you back at the office."
"Um," Jenna ventures almost timidly once he's hung up. "If I could make a suggestion? I saw a name come up on the call display. It looked like a residential number, and if the name came up, that means it's listed. Why don't you just do a reverse lookup on the number? Here," she takes out her phone and pulls up the web browser app. "What's the number?" Thirty seconds later her face lights up. "Got it, it's practically next door. Five blocks away, we can -"
Steve is already moving, all but ignoring her cry of protest that he's going too fast for her to keep up. The thought that Danny has been this close by the whole time practically makes him light-headed. He arrives at the front door just as a woman of about his age opens the door, garbage bag in hand. She stops short, obviously startled, and takes a step back, reaching to close the screen door.
"Can I help you?"
He fishes at his belt for his badge. "Steve McGarrett, Five-0. Do you have a moment, ma'am?"
"Okay, but I was about to go put my girls to bed, so I can't stay long."
There were children's voices in the background of the call, Steve remembers. "Actually, I need to talk to them. I think they might have something that they're not supposed to have."
The woman's eyes narrow. "What do you mean?"
"Look, Mrs. -"
"Natua."
"Mrs. Natua. I realize this is inconvenient, but if I could just speak to your daughters for a few moments, I promise I'll be out of your hair in -"
He's interrupted by a loud crashing noise and a muted shriek from one of the back rooms. Mrs. Natua blows out her cheeks in exasperation, drops the garbage bag and turns her back to him. "Girls! I told you to stop running in the house while I'm trying to tidy! Do not make me come back there, do you hear?"
Before the girls have time to answer, there's a blur of movement in the hallway behind her, and Steve can't help but grin when the blur resolves itself into a tawny-furred ferret scampering at top speed along the polished floor.
"Mr. Whiskers!" comes the plaintive cry from just beyond the hallway, and a moment later two little girls come racing around the corner on the ferret's heels.
They come skidding to a halt as they realize that they're not alone, and Danny lunges desperately at Steve's feet and scrambles unceremoniously up his leg, digging his claws first into Steve's cargo pants and then into the hem of his shirt before trying his damnedest to burrow right under it. Steve catches him easily and bites hard on his lip in order not to laugh, because the girls, maybe in some misguided attempt at playing dolls, have dressed the poor thing up in the frilliest pink dolly dress Steve has ever seen in his life.
Mrs. Natua is currently staring down her girls. "Ipo, Ano, what is that?"
"It's Mr. Whiskers," the youngest of the two volunteers, even though she's currently trying to duck behind her older sister. "I found him. Can we keep him? I promise we'll feed him and clean out his cage and everything!"
Steve clears his throat even as he's liberating a very indignant-looking Danny from the confines of the dress. "I'm afraid that's out of the question. Ferrets are illegal in Hawaii, as you may or may not know. I will have to take him with me."
"Aw!"
"I'm sorry, but Danny here already has a family," Steve tells the little girl as seriously as he can. "And they miss him very much. You don't want him to be sad because he can't be with his family, do you?"
She droops visibly. "I guess not. His name isn't Mr. Whiskers?"
"No, it's not."
"Can we come visit, then?"
"Maybe," he hedges, just as Danny burrows back into his shirt and curls up tightly before letting just the tip of his nose poke out of the V of his collar, whiskers twitching. "That will depend on a lot of things, not least the length of time your mother decides to ground you for this."
"Oh, it's going to be a while," Mrs. Natua says grimly, and both girls blanch a little.
"Uh, Steve?" Jenna pipes up breathlessly from behind him. He's not at all sure when she managed to catch up to him.
"Later," he promises. "Thank you for your time, ma'am. Oh, and I believe this is yours."
He hands the dress back to Mrs. Natua, who takes it with a bemused look and doesn't even bother to ask questions before shutting the door behind them.
~*~
Steve deflects all of Jenna's questions before dropping her off near her own car, promising that they'll deal with all of it later. Really, he'd rather not have to answer any of the questions the team will doubtless have, because he's pretty sure Danny never intended to have any of them know his secret. At least, not this soon in the game. As far as Steve knows, less than a handful of people outside of Danny's immediate family know about his true nature, and now, like it or not, they're going to have to come up with something to tell Chin, Kono and Jenna. It's not Steve's secret, though, and as much as he's convinced that none of the team are going to react badly, the way Danny seems to think they will, he knows enough to figure that Danny needs to do this on his own terms. As much as possible, anyway.
Danny resists all of Steve's attempts to dislodge him from his shirt, not that Steve tries very hard after about a minute. Danny's shivering and obviously stressed and miserable, and if he wants to stay safe inside Steve's shirt, well, then, so be it. If Steve is honest with himself, after tonight's scare, having the proof that Danny is alive and whole this close to hand is pretty reassuring, so he just lets him be until they get home, breathing in the now-familiar musky scent that's so particular to Danny. He heads into the living room, settles on his sofa and pulls the throw blanket over himself in an attempt to get Danny warmed up after his ordeal.
"How you doing, Danno?" he asks softly, and is rewarded with a faint squeak. It's not a contented sound, not like the dooking noises Danny makes when he's really happy, but he's pretty sure it's not a bad noise, either. Carefully he reaches into his shirt in order to stroke Danny carefully behind the ears. "So I'm guessing you had an even shittier day than I did. I was worried, you know," he confides to the ferret. Somehow, it's easier to talk to Danny when he's like this. Maybe it's because he knows that no matter what he says, Danny's not going to say anything back right away. Danny's always more mellow when he's in ferret form, anyway. "I honestly thought you'd maybe gotten caught in the fire and we'd never find you because no one would know to look for a ferret."
Danny makes a quiet chuckling sound, and Steve huffs a laugh in spite of himself. "Hey, come on, it's not all that far-fetched." He rubs just a little harder behind Danny's ears, smiles when the ferret relaxes further against his chest, although he can still feel Danny's tiny ribcage rising and falling a little too fast for his liking. "I guess you're still sick, huh?" Danny doesn't answer, just shoves at him with a hot, dry nose. "Yeah, that's what I thought. I read up about the flu on the internet this afternoon, but if you're up to changing back, I can take you to a clinic. Or we could risk a vet, if you want, but since there aren't any legal ferrets in Hawaii I don't know if a vet would know what to do. And you're not really listening to me, are you?"
Danny just sneezes against his chest, chirps softly and creeps up to nestle under Steve's chin. It's moot right now, Steve decides. They'll figure out in the morning if Danny needs extra medical attention. For now he's home and safe, and that's the main thing. He cups a hand under Danny's rear, supporting him while he gets up from the sofa and carries him up the stairs to bed. Danny grudgingly lets Steve put him down on the bed while he changes out of his clothes, then immediately wraps himself around Steve's neck the moment he's lying down again.
"You comfortable, Danno?" Steve asks, not that he's expecting an answer.
Danny's already drowsing, and Steve isn't too far behind him. Everyone is safe, Rachel and Grace won't even know about the fire until tomorrow, and they'll deal with the fact that Danny's apartment went up in flames when Danny's feeling better. He strokes Danny's fur with one hand, enjoying how soft it feels under his fingertips. If part of him wishes that Danny were in human form right now so that he could hold onto him more tightly, reassure himself properly that he's all right, the rest of him is even happier to have all of Danny's trust manifested like this.
"You know, Danno, you look really fetching in pink," he tells Danny, and doesn't blame him in the slightest when Danny casually turns his head and bites him hard on the finger.