fic: Trust (1/1)
Title: Trust
Author: stellarmeadow
Fandom: Hawaii Five-0
Paring: Steve/Danny
Rating: PG
Summary: Steve's trust issues are bone deep.
Notes: Set before, during and after episode 418, so spoilers ahoy!
Part of the S4 Coda Series - if you've missed any, visit the master post.
Danny hated the drive back from Rachel's without Grace in the car. It was a little easier now that he had her half the time, but a little harder at the same time. He was more used to having her around, and he felt a little like he was missing a limb without her, especially just after dropping her off.
Not long ago, he'd have gone to Steve's and watched a game, or just sat out on the beach drinking and talking. But that wasn't the best idea. They had managed to regain their footing as friends, thank God, and he hadn't even screwed that up with his stupid, stupid move the other night at Steve's house, but the easiest way to fuck it all up again was to spend too much time alone together.
Because Danny might be able to control himself, but his body had a mind of its own, and it was below the belt, and where Steve was concerned, it had exactly one track these days. He could control it most of the time, but lack of sleep, lack of distraction, and alcohol combined with Steve's presence was a recipe for disaster.
One that he needed to get his guard up against, he realized, as he turned the corner onto his street and saw Steve's truck parked in front of his house.
Danny pulled into the driveway and shut off the car, taking a deep breath before he got out and went into the house. Steve was sitting on the couch, twisting around to look as Danny opened the door. "We catch a case?" Danny asked, knowing better, because Steve hadn't called, hadn't asked to be picked up, he'd driven over here.
"I'm going to Cambodia."
Which in Steve's head, Danny was sure, made perfect sense. "That's great. So for those of us who just tuned into this channel, you maybe wanna explain why you're going to Cambodia?"
"The grave, Danny." Steve stood up, pacing between the couch and the kitchen door and back again. "I have to know what's in it."
"That grave is years old, Steven, you really think there's still something there?"
"Why else would Sam have told me about it?"
"I don't know--he's CIA, why the hell do they do anything?"
Steve stopped pacing and let out a long, hard breath. "I have to go. I have to find out."
"And what if you don't like what you find out?"
"Then at least I'll know. But I have to go, because--"
You'll never get another night's sleep again? But Danny didn't let on. "Okay," he said, moving closer to Steve, stepping carefully like he would with an injured animal. "Okay, so you go, and you find out."
Steve swallowed, giving Danny a jerky nod, and this close Danny could see how red Steve's eyes were. He wondered just how many hours of sleep Steve had had in the last week, and if any of them were consecutive. "I arranged for a cargo jet," Steve said. "Whatever's in there, I'm bringing it back."
Danny wondered how many favors that had cost him. Not that it mattered. "Okay," Danny said again. "So when do we leave?"
"We?"
"You came all the way over here to tell me this in person instead of in a text or a letter or a voicemail and you weren't going to invite me along?"
He could see the answer to that in Steve's face--no, he was not, in fact going to ask. Didn't know how. Didn't even know he could. But somewhere inside he'd been hoping Danny would offer, because his relief was clear as day. "It's a long flight."
"I am aware of where Cambodia is, Steven. I took geography. I repeat, when do we leave?"
Steve licked his lips, and Danny told his downstairs brain to go curl up in a corner and die. "Oh-six-hundred."
"Great, we're not even on the plane yet and you're already back to GI Joe jargon."
"GI Joe was--"
"Army. I know," Danny said tiredly, pushing past Steve towards his own room. "Just come tell me what to pack."
***
Danny, at least, was not surprised to find the coffin empty. Hell, he was surprised to find a coffin, especially one with a big piece of DNA in it. But then he was familiar with how the CIA sometimes missed small holes in their operations--it was why he'd been the one to shove Wo Fat into a police car.
Steve was clinging to the hair--metaphorically speaking, the actual hair being sealed up tight in a bag in his pocket--like a lifeline. It was a lead, and he desperately needed that right now. Danny didn't bother to mention the possibility that it was more of a carrot that had a big huge stick following right behind.
If there was a stick, it would hit Steve over the head soon enough.
Besides, if he had a lead, maybe he'd sleep. Because every time Danny had woken up on the plane, Steve had been wide awake, staring into the darkness, and he sure as hell hadn't slept much when Danny was awake. And what sleep he had gotten had clearly been interrupted by nightmares that Danny was almost afraid to ask about.
An hour into the flight back, though, Danny realized it was going to be much the same. Steve was staring at nothing, but Danny had no doubt he was seeing a never-ending parade of evidence that led to a big fat nothing after four years of searching.
"You're an amazing travel companion," Danny said, falling back on banter to try to draw Steve's attention away from the disappointment, "anybody ever tell you that? I mean, the time's just flying by here. Maybe I'll go see if the co-pilot wants to play backgammon or something."
"I'm sorry, okay? I-I appreciate you coming, Danny, I do. I'm-I-I'm just-"
"You're disappointed," Danny finished for him, unable to watch him flounder, "I understand. It's a really long way to fly to find an empty coffin--which, by the way, there is zero chance the CIA did not know that whoever occupying that coffin meant something to you."
"Yeah, or Doris. 'Cause that's what this is all about, I'm telling you. I guarantee my mother is linked to that missing body somehow."
"Either that, or she's responsible for the body being in the ground in the first place," Danny said. Steve leaned back in the chair, looking like Danny had just pulled out one of his nightmares for inspection. "But you don't wanna go down that road."
Steve nodded, eyeing Danny for a moment before leaning back and closing his eyes. "I'm gonna take a nap," he said. "I promise I'll be a better travel companion if you let me sleep for twenty minutes."
Danny would let him sleep for twenty hours, but he knew Steve would be lucky to last twenty minutes. "Go for it."
Danny was just dozing himself when he heard Steve's mumblings, and opened his eyes to see him making jerky little movements in his sleep, just like he'd been doing in Danny's office on the couch the other night. He hesitated, because even fitful sleep was better than no sleep at all, but when he heard Steve mutter "Danny" a few times, and not in any way that suggested anything like a good way, Danny called out Steve's name.
It took a few tries, but Steve finally woke. "What?" he said, rubbing his eyes, which did nothing to get rid of the haunted look in them.
"Your twenty minutes are up," Danny said.
Steve rubbed at his eyes again. "Sorry. I just..."
Danny took pity on him. "Go ahead, take another twenty if you want."
"Thanks."
He didn't sound particularly grateful, which Danny could understand. If he was having dreams like that, he wouldn't either. But Steve closed his eyes and settled into the chair again.
Danny didn't doze this time. He watched Steve closely, taking in the way his body never seemed to fully relax into sleep. It was a wonder the guy's muscles hadn't petrified or something by now. It was so different from the boneless way Steve had practically melted into him when they'd been sleeping together, and Danny wanted that Steve back, the one with at least some respite from the hell that was the rest of his life.
Then again, maybe he was just as boneless when he slept with Catherine.
But it wasn't Catherine on the plane. Catherine didn't actually know where they were--he'd been standing there, silent and staring at anything but his friends when Steve had told them he and Danny were going to look for something related to his mother. That was it.
His one glimpse at Catherine had him wondering if she'd thought it was cover for something totally different.
Of course, if she did, and she was still with Steve, then she was a bigger fool than Danny.
"Said the guy taking an overnight trip to Cambodia," Danny muttered to himself.
He didn't have much else to look at but Steve, so he noticed when Steve tensed--not that he'd been that relaxed to begin with. He saw the movements start, like muscle memory with no follow through, could tell that whatever Steve was going through in the dream was some kind of hellish torment.
His muttered words were hard to hear over the rattling of the plane, but Danny occasionally caught name s that made sense. He heard Freddie a couple of times, and Danny once again--which made no sense, but then dreams rarely did.
It didn't take Freud to figure out that Steve's nightmares included losing friends, past and present. He had so few of them to begin with--if you included the ones he fully trusted enough to tell them about this trip, then the count stopped at one.
He kept his secrets as compartmentalized in the outside world as they were inside his head. Everything was on a need to know basis, and if you weren't helping him with it, you didn't need to know.
Danny didn't kid himself--he knew Steve trusted their team, their friends, even some acquaintances to a point. But the less he told any of them, the less he put them in danger--or so he thought. Danny thought ignorance was a little more dangerous, at least to a point. People stumbling around in the dark were far more likely to trip over something and get hurt.
But it wasn't his story to tell.
Danny was into the second chorus of "I'd Die For You" while mentally singing his way through the Slippery When Wet album when the next dream started. He caught the word "insurgents"--and he didn't want to know what that said about him that he had no trouble making that word out when Steve mumbled it--and Freddie again, but everything else was lost in the rattling of the plane.
By the time the third nightmare started, Danny had run out of Bon Jovi songs and was working his way through his mom's favorite Sinatra songs. After a couple of times of hearing his own name, Danny couldn't take it anymore. "Steven!"
Steve's eyes snapped open. "Danny?"
"Yeah, who else did you think it would be?"
Steve looked around, clearing the last cobwebs of the dream away. "I, uh...nobody."
"Yeah, you know why? Because there's nobody else back here but you and me, babe."
"Right. Yeah." Steve scrubbed a hand across his face. "So I take it my other twenty minutes are up?"
Danny almost let him off the hook, was about to agree, but he could see the hint of fear still lingering in Steve's eyes. And if it was still showing after he was fully awake, then maybe it was time for a little tough love. "Not exactly."
"What, did you decide I could only have ten?"
"No, but I figured after the third nightmare you had maybe you should wake up for a while before a fourth one started."
The fear looked like it was going to claw its way out of Steve's eyes for about half a second before he blinked, and his face went blank. "Nightmares?" he said with a shrug. "Funny, I don't remember a thing."
"You know," Danny said conversationally, as if he wasn't clenching his fists so hard he thought his knuckles might pop, "I thought we'd finally made it past the stage where you have to lie to me until I drag the truth out of you."
Guilt made its way past Steve's blank mask for a moment before Steve's shoulders slumped a little. "I don't want to talk about it," he said flatly.
"And I don't want to take Grace back to Rachel's twice a week. But I do it. Because I have to."
"I didn't know there'd been a court ruling on me discussing my nightmares."
"Steve."
"Danny, it's just a couple of nightmares. There's nothing wrong."
Danny raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me? I am flying around the world three times with you--"
"It's not around the world, Danny, it's only one-fourth of the circumference of--"
"Stop trying to derail me, Steven! I'm flying to fucking Cambodia and back with you on the strength of some numbers a conspiracy theorist found on the bottom of a tool box. I think I have more than earned your trust. So do not lie to me."
After four years, Danny knew every one of Steve's buttons, and he knew this one was one of the most painful, but it was also the most effective. And Steve needed to talk. Danny didn't care what his mother said about waiting until Steve was ready. Danny knew Steve, and there was every chance the self-sacrificing idiot would take his pain to an early grave rather than open up without being forced. So if this was the only way to get him to open up, so be it.
"I'm sorry," Steve said, at last, his voice small in the large, rattling plane.
"Don't be sorry," Danny said, leaning forward, elbows pressing into his thighs. "Just talk to me."
Steve closed his eyes for a long moment before meeting Danny's eyes. "I've been having nightmares for a while."
"No shit." At Steve's surprise, Danny gave a harsh laugh. "You think I'm an idiot?"
"How long have you known?"
"Known?" Since last night--no, wait, what day is it? Fuck, whatever, the other night in my office. You were having one when I came in."
The guilt flashed across Steve's face, like he felt bad that he'd upset Danny, or let him see a weakness, or whatever. "Sorry. I didn't mean for you to see--"
"Don't give me that," Danny snapped. "You think I haven't suspected this for a while?"
Steve's surprise was almost insulting. "Suspected?"
"You think I don't know what the past few months have been like, on top of the last four years? Everything that's been going on? Hell, that mess with Parrish was a whole Pandora's Box of your nightmares thrown into a blender just in one day."
Steve's mouth was hanging open, and Danny didn't know whether to be annoyed that Steve thought he was that unobservant or uncaring, or amused that Steve thought he was that hard to read. He might be to someone else.
But Danny wasn't someone else.
"Look," Danny said, taking it slow and careful, because Steve was spooked enough just by realizing how much Danny had figured out. "We all have nightmares with this job, right? But whenever it's a case with kids, it's harder for me. Not just because of Grace--though God knows that's the biggest part of it, but because it's like that case in Jersey all over again. Those kids, mixed with whatever the latest tragedy is, with a nice little scoop of Grace added in just for extra torture. I don't even want to go home after a case like that because I already know what's waiting for me when I fall asleep."
Steve cleared his throat, his tongue wetting his lips before he asked, "How do you combat it?"
"You don't," Danny said. "You can't. You just have to deal with it."
"But I'm trained to--"
"I know all about your training," Danny said, waving a hand. "You think cops don't know how to compartmentalize? Firemen, EMTs, doctors, nurses--none of us could do our jobs if we didn't. When you're on the job, you shove it down into one of those little lock boxes and you do your job."
Danny leaned in a little more, intent, making sure Steve got this next point. "But once you get through the fire, babe, you gotta stop and take care of the burns. If you don't, hey'll slowly eat at your flesh until there's nothing left to protect you."
Steve's face was this odd mix of confusion and fear that just looked so foreign there Danny wanted to say never mind, forget it. Because Steve should never look like that.
Danny swallowed hard against everything that rose inside him, holding his hands as tightly as he could under his arms to keep from getting up and going over there, despite the presence of two pilots just on the other side of a cockpit door. This wasn't the time or place.
There was no time or place, he reminded himself. Because they both had other people to consider, and despite what his mother said, Danny wasn't sure Steve had come to any kind of realization. That he ever would figure out what he wanted, or at least make up his mind to go after it properly.
"What?" Steve said.
"What?"
Steve nodded at him. "That look. What's wrong?"
Danny shrugged. He'd given Steve enough to think about. Time to let him actually think. "Nothing. Just tired. I'm gonna get some shuteye."
He closed his eyes and pretended to sleep, but he could feel Steve's gaze on him for a long time.
***
"You did what?" Danny yelled, turning halfway around in the passenger seat to face Steve as best he could across the console. "I'm sorry, I must still be deaf from the plane ride. I know you didn't just say you handed your loaded gun to a CIA agent hell bent on keeping you from finding out what was in that coffin."
"Danny, I had to--"
"Had to what, get someone to kill you? What the hell is the matter with you?"
"You keep asking me that question."
"And I'm going to keep on asking it until you either tell me or stop being a complete moron!"
Steve glanced at him nervously. "Look, you...on the plane, you were right. I trust you. Completely." He glanced at Danny again. "But you have to trust that I know what I'm doing."
"Not when you're handing loaded guns to people who'd love to kill you!"
"He didn't! I knew he wouldn't. Not there. Too public. But he had to know how serious I was about this. It's the only way I'm going to get answers."
Danny reined in his temper. "You," he said after a moment, his voice low, "are a menace to your own safety."
One corner of Steve's mouth hinted that he might be a little amused at that statement. "I thought I was a menace to your safety."
"You are. But the one doesn't negate the other." Danny sighed. "All right, so you gave the spook your loaded gun--which, by the way, we are not done talking about--and he said what?"
"He told me to be at his office at 20:00."
"Again with the GI Jargon," Danny muttered, shaking his head. "So we're going to his office at eight?"
"No, I'm going to his office at eight. Alone."
Danny's laugh was anything but amused. "Why, so he can shoot you in the dark with an untraceable gun? Brilliant!"
"He's not going to shoot me, Danny. I wouldn't have handed him the gun if I thought he would."
"At least you showed half a grain of sanity, though that's kind of negated by the fact that you didn't think he would shoot you."
"He won't."
"Whatever. So please, explain to me, why you going in there alone will keep him from shooting you?"
Steve's glance was a little less nervous, but only a little. "If you go in with me, I've played all my cards. I need you to be away from the situation, like when I met him at Tantalus. If you're there, and it's a trap--"
"See! You admit it could be a trap!"
"Of course it might be at trap, but I don't think it is. He knows I'm careful--he knows I wore a wire, he has to know I'm not going in there without some kind of back up. But if he can see you, and he really does want to take me out, he'll just take you out with me."
"And if he can't see me, I can't see him, and there'll be no proof."
Steve made an impatient sound, which was combined with increasing the Camaro's speed. "If he can't see you, he doesn't know who's going to be looking into this if he does shoot me. He won't do anything, because he knows it'll only create a bigger mess. He might even give me another lead I can follow."
Danny looked for holes in that argument, cursing silently when he couldn't find any. "Okay," he said, "so then what's the plan."
"I'm going to meet him at his office at eight," Steve said. "If I haven't checked in with you by eight-thirty, then that's where you start looking."
"Half an hour? He could shoot and incinerate you by then."
"Don't be ridiculous, it would take him at least half an hour to get me to an incinerator."
Danny rolled his eyes. "Excuse me for not having the location of every incinerator in Honolulu memorized," he said, before he took a long breath and let it out slowly. "Okay, so, you go in, I back you up from outside. I can do that."
Steve blinked at him a few times. "You're not arguing with me," he said. "Why does this worry me?"
"I get it, okay? It's safer to have me on the outside, so if something goes wrong, I'm able to do something about it."
"Why do I feel like this was too easy?"
"Because for once, Steven, you used your logic instead of your Commander McGarrett voice that you seem to think everyone on the planet has to obey."
Steve blinked again. "Four years and now you tell me all I had to do was explain things?"
"You know, I could just shoot you myself and save your buddy Sam the trouble."
Danny absolutely did not smile at the way Steve's mouth quirked up this time. There was just something on the wing mirror, that was all.
***
Danny was leaning against the side of Steve's truck when Steve came storming down the stairs outside the building. He stopped short when he saw Danny. "What are you doing here? You were supposed to wait for me."
"I am waiting for you. You said that you needed me on the outside so I could do something if things went wrong." Danny held his arms out. "This is outside. This is me waiting."
"I said to wait, and if I didn't check in with you by eight-thirty--"
"Yes, and I am waiting. You didn't say where I had to wait." He gave Steve a grin. "If you're gonna save Steve McGarrett, you've gotta play by his rules."
Steve pressed his lips together for a long moment. "If Sam had seen you--"
"Sam's not even here, is he?"
"How the hell did you--"
"Because I have had my own run ins with the CIA, and I know how they work. And being outside the situation, I may have seen it a little clearer. Also, there are no other cars here and I didn't hear a gunshot, and you're out here pissed off at five minutes after eight. Me being the excellent detective that I am, I am able to deduce that your buddy Sam stood you up."
Steve sighed, joining Danny in leaning against the truck. "He didn't just stand me up. He's gone. His whole office is empty except for furniture and a phone."
"So why were you in there for five minutes? Were you searching for him?"
"No. The phone rang at eight."
Danny shifted to get a better look at Steve's face, clear in the moonlight. "Who was calling?"
"I don't know. But they wanted me to walk away from this."
"Which I'm sure you told them you would do so that you could let them think they'd won while we continue to investigate."
Steve shifted, his eyes dropping to his feet. "I, uh...I might've told them that none of this was going to stop me."
"Of course you did." Danny dropped his head back against the truck and stared at the sky for a moment. "What happened to playing by their rules?"
"If they know I'm not going to quit, maybe they'll just tell me what's going on."
"Right. That's always the way the government works, Steven. They never do things like, oh, make people disappear or kill them and bury them six thousand miles away."
Steve sighed, but after a moment he turned to look at Danny. "I'm not giving up on this, Danny."
"Who do you think you're talking to? They may not know you, but I do." Danny pushed off the truck. "Come on. Let's have a beer and figure out what to do next."
Steve didn't move right away. "You're still going to help me?"
"I can help you, or I can fly to Cambodia in a few months and dig up your grave," Danny said. "Which one do you think I'd rather do?"
And of course that would be what would make Steve smile. "Okay then," he said. "Drinks are on me. And yes," he said, as Danny turned around, mouth open, "I have my wallet."
"Maybe you can be taught after all."
---
END
Author: stellarmeadow
Fandom: Hawaii Five-0
Paring: Steve/Danny
Rating: PG
Summary: Steve's trust issues are bone deep.
Notes: Set before, during and after episode 418, so spoilers ahoy!
Part of the S4 Coda Series - if you've missed any, visit the master post.
Danny hated the drive back from Rachel's without Grace in the car. It was a little easier now that he had her half the time, but a little harder at the same time. He was more used to having her around, and he felt a little like he was missing a limb without her, especially just after dropping her off.
Not long ago, he'd have gone to Steve's and watched a game, or just sat out on the beach drinking and talking. But that wasn't the best idea. They had managed to regain their footing as friends, thank God, and he hadn't even screwed that up with his stupid, stupid move the other night at Steve's house, but the easiest way to fuck it all up again was to spend too much time alone together.
Because Danny might be able to control himself, but his body had a mind of its own, and it was below the belt, and where Steve was concerned, it had exactly one track these days. He could control it most of the time, but lack of sleep, lack of distraction, and alcohol combined with Steve's presence was a recipe for disaster.
One that he needed to get his guard up against, he realized, as he turned the corner onto his street and saw Steve's truck parked in front of his house.
Danny pulled into the driveway and shut off the car, taking a deep breath before he got out and went into the house. Steve was sitting on the couch, twisting around to look as Danny opened the door. "We catch a case?" Danny asked, knowing better, because Steve hadn't called, hadn't asked to be picked up, he'd driven over here.
"I'm going to Cambodia."
Which in Steve's head, Danny was sure, made perfect sense. "That's great. So for those of us who just tuned into this channel, you maybe wanna explain why you're going to Cambodia?"
"The grave, Danny." Steve stood up, pacing between the couch and the kitchen door and back again. "I have to know what's in it."
"That grave is years old, Steven, you really think there's still something there?"
"Why else would Sam have told me about it?"
"I don't know--he's CIA, why the hell do they do anything?"
Steve stopped pacing and let out a long, hard breath. "I have to go. I have to find out."
"And what if you don't like what you find out?"
"Then at least I'll know. But I have to go, because--"
You'll never get another night's sleep again? But Danny didn't let on. "Okay," he said, moving closer to Steve, stepping carefully like he would with an injured animal. "Okay, so you go, and you find out."
Steve swallowed, giving Danny a jerky nod, and this close Danny could see how red Steve's eyes were. He wondered just how many hours of sleep Steve had had in the last week, and if any of them were consecutive. "I arranged for a cargo jet," Steve said. "Whatever's in there, I'm bringing it back."
Danny wondered how many favors that had cost him. Not that it mattered. "Okay," Danny said again. "So when do we leave?"
"We?"
"You came all the way over here to tell me this in person instead of in a text or a letter or a voicemail and you weren't going to invite me along?"
He could see the answer to that in Steve's face--no, he was not, in fact going to ask. Didn't know how. Didn't even know he could. But somewhere inside he'd been hoping Danny would offer, because his relief was clear as day. "It's a long flight."
"I am aware of where Cambodia is, Steven. I took geography. I repeat, when do we leave?"
Steve licked his lips, and Danny told his downstairs brain to go curl up in a corner and die. "Oh-six-hundred."
"Great, we're not even on the plane yet and you're already back to GI Joe jargon."
"GI Joe was--"
"Army. I know," Danny said tiredly, pushing past Steve towards his own room. "Just come tell me what to pack."
***
Danny, at least, was not surprised to find the coffin empty. Hell, he was surprised to find a coffin, especially one with a big piece of DNA in it. But then he was familiar with how the CIA sometimes missed small holes in their operations--it was why he'd been the one to shove Wo Fat into a police car.
Steve was clinging to the hair--metaphorically speaking, the actual hair being sealed up tight in a bag in his pocket--like a lifeline. It was a lead, and he desperately needed that right now. Danny didn't bother to mention the possibility that it was more of a carrot that had a big huge stick following right behind.
If there was a stick, it would hit Steve over the head soon enough.
Besides, if he had a lead, maybe he'd sleep. Because every time Danny had woken up on the plane, Steve had been wide awake, staring into the darkness, and he sure as hell hadn't slept much when Danny was awake. And what sleep he had gotten had clearly been interrupted by nightmares that Danny was almost afraid to ask about.
An hour into the flight back, though, Danny realized it was going to be much the same. Steve was staring at nothing, but Danny had no doubt he was seeing a never-ending parade of evidence that led to a big fat nothing after four years of searching.
"You're an amazing travel companion," Danny said, falling back on banter to try to draw Steve's attention away from the disappointment, "anybody ever tell you that? I mean, the time's just flying by here. Maybe I'll go see if the co-pilot wants to play backgammon or something."
"I'm sorry, okay? I-I appreciate you coming, Danny, I do. I'm-I-I'm just-"
"You're disappointed," Danny finished for him, unable to watch him flounder, "I understand. It's a really long way to fly to find an empty coffin--which, by the way, there is zero chance the CIA did not know that whoever occupying that coffin meant something to you."
"Yeah, or Doris. 'Cause that's what this is all about, I'm telling you. I guarantee my mother is linked to that missing body somehow."
"Either that, or she's responsible for the body being in the ground in the first place," Danny said. Steve leaned back in the chair, looking like Danny had just pulled out one of his nightmares for inspection. "But you don't wanna go down that road."
Steve nodded, eyeing Danny for a moment before leaning back and closing his eyes. "I'm gonna take a nap," he said. "I promise I'll be a better travel companion if you let me sleep for twenty minutes."
Danny would let him sleep for twenty hours, but he knew Steve would be lucky to last twenty minutes. "Go for it."
Danny was just dozing himself when he heard Steve's mumblings, and opened his eyes to see him making jerky little movements in his sleep, just like he'd been doing in Danny's office on the couch the other night. He hesitated, because even fitful sleep was better than no sleep at all, but when he heard Steve mutter "Danny" a few times, and not in any way that suggested anything like a good way, Danny called out Steve's name.
It took a few tries, but Steve finally woke. "What?" he said, rubbing his eyes, which did nothing to get rid of the haunted look in them.
"Your twenty minutes are up," Danny said.
Steve rubbed at his eyes again. "Sorry. I just..."
Danny took pity on him. "Go ahead, take another twenty if you want."
"Thanks."
He didn't sound particularly grateful, which Danny could understand. If he was having dreams like that, he wouldn't either. But Steve closed his eyes and settled into the chair again.
Danny didn't doze this time. He watched Steve closely, taking in the way his body never seemed to fully relax into sleep. It was a wonder the guy's muscles hadn't petrified or something by now. It was so different from the boneless way Steve had practically melted into him when they'd been sleeping together, and Danny wanted that Steve back, the one with at least some respite from the hell that was the rest of his life.
Then again, maybe he was just as boneless when he slept with Catherine.
But it wasn't Catherine on the plane. Catherine didn't actually know where they were--he'd been standing there, silent and staring at anything but his friends when Steve had told them he and Danny were going to look for something related to his mother. That was it.
His one glimpse at Catherine had him wondering if she'd thought it was cover for something totally different.
Of course, if she did, and she was still with Steve, then she was a bigger fool than Danny.
"Said the guy taking an overnight trip to Cambodia," Danny muttered to himself.
He didn't have much else to look at but Steve, so he noticed when Steve tensed--not that he'd been that relaxed to begin with. He saw the movements start, like muscle memory with no follow through, could tell that whatever Steve was going through in the dream was some kind of hellish torment.
His muttered words were hard to hear over the rattling of the plane, but Danny occasionally caught name s that made sense. He heard Freddie a couple of times, and Danny once again--which made no sense, but then dreams rarely did.
It didn't take Freud to figure out that Steve's nightmares included losing friends, past and present. He had so few of them to begin with--if you included the ones he fully trusted enough to tell them about this trip, then the count stopped at one.
He kept his secrets as compartmentalized in the outside world as they were inside his head. Everything was on a need to know basis, and if you weren't helping him with it, you didn't need to know.
Danny didn't kid himself--he knew Steve trusted their team, their friends, even some acquaintances to a point. But the less he told any of them, the less he put them in danger--or so he thought. Danny thought ignorance was a little more dangerous, at least to a point. People stumbling around in the dark were far more likely to trip over something and get hurt.
But it wasn't his story to tell.
Danny was into the second chorus of "I'd Die For You" while mentally singing his way through the Slippery When Wet album when the next dream started. He caught the word "insurgents"--and he didn't want to know what that said about him that he had no trouble making that word out when Steve mumbled it--and Freddie again, but everything else was lost in the rattling of the plane.
By the time the third nightmare started, Danny had run out of Bon Jovi songs and was working his way through his mom's favorite Sinatra songs. After a couple of times of hearing his own name, Danny couldn't take it anymore. "Steven!"
Steve's eyes snapped open. "Danny?"
"Yeah, who else did you think it would be?"
Steve looked around, clearing the last cobwebs of the dream away. "I, uh...nobody."
"Yeah, you know why? Because there's nobody else back here but you and me, babe."
"Right. Yeah." Steve scrubbed a hand across his face. "So I take it my other twenty minutes are up?"
Danny almost let him off the hook, was about to agree, but he could see the hint of fear still lingering in Steve's eyes. And if it was still showing after he was fully awake, then maybe it was time for a little tough love. "Not exactly."
"What, did you decide I could only have ten?"
"No, but I figured after the third nightmare you had maybe you should wake up for a while before a fourth one started."
The fear looked like it was going to claw its way out of Steve's eyes for about half a second before he blinked, and his face went blank. "Nightmares?" he said with a shrug. "Funny, I don't remember a thing."
"You know," Danny said conversationally, as if he wasn't clenching his fists so hard he thought his knuckles might pop, "I thought we'd finally made it past the stage where you have to lie to me until I drag the truth out of you."
Guilt made its way past Steve's blank mask for a moment before Steve's shoulders slumped a little. "I don't want to talk about it," he said flatly.
"And I don't want to take Grace back to Rachel's twice a week. But I do it. Because I have to."
"I didn't know there'd been a court ruling on me discussing my nightmares."
"Steve."
"Danny, it's just a couple of nightmares. There's nothing wrong."
Danny raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me? I am flying around the world three times with you--"
"It's not around the world, Danny, it's only one-fourth of the circumference of--"
"Stop trying to derail me, Steven! I'm flying to fucking Cambodia and back with you on the strength of some numbers a conspiracy theorist found on the bottom of a tool box. I think I have more than earned your trust. So do not lie to me."
After four years, Danny knew every one of Steve's buttons, and he knew this one was one of the most painful, but it was also the most effective. And Steve needed to talk. Danny didn't care what his mother said about waiting until Steve was ready. Danny knew Steve, and there was every chance the self-sacrificing idiot would take his pain to an early grave rather than open up without being forced. So if this was the only way to get him to open up, so be it.
"I'm sorry," Steve said, at last, his voice small in the large, rattling plane.
"Don't be sorry," Danny said, leaning forward, elbows pressing into his thighs. "Just talk to me."
Steve closed his eyes for a long moment before meeting Danny's eyes. "I've been having nightmares for a while."
"No shit." At Steve's surprise, Danny gave a harsh laugh. "You think I'm an idiot?"
"How long have you known?"
"Known?" Since last night--no, wait, what day is it? Fuck, whatever, the other night in my office. You were having one when I came in."
The guilt flashed across Steve's face, like he felt bad that he'd upset Danny, or let him see a weakness, or whatever. "Sorry. I didn't mean for you to see--"
"Don't give me that," Danny snapped. "You think I haven't suspected this for a while?"
Steve's surprise was almost insulting. "Suspected?"
"You think I don't know what the past few months have been like, on top of the last four years? Everything that's been going on? Hell, that mess with Parrish was a whole Pandora's Box of your nightmares thrown into a blender just in one day."
Steve's mouth was hanging open, and Danny didn't know whether to be annoyed that Steve thought he was that unobservant or uncaring, or amused that Steve thought he was that hard to read. He might be to someone else.
But Danny wasn't someone else.
"Look," Danny said, taking it slow and careful, because Steve was spooked enough just by realizing how much Danny had figured out. "We all have nightmares with this job, right? But whenever it's a case with kids, it's harder for me. Not just because of Grace--though God knows that's the biggest part of it, but because it's like that case in Jersey all over again. Those kids, mixed with whatever the latest tragedy is, with a nice little scoop of Grace added in just for extra torture. I don't even want to go home after a case like that because I already know what's waiting for me when I fall asleep."
Steve cleared his throat, his tongue wetting his lips before he asked, "How do you combat it?"
"You don't," Danny said. "You can't. You just have to deal with it."
"But I'm trained to--"
"I know all about your training," Danny said, waving a hand. "You think cops don't know how to compartmentalize? Firemen, EMTs, doctors, nurses--none of us could do our jobs if we didn't. When you're on the job, you shove it down into one of those little lock boxes and you do your job."
Danny leaned in a little more, intent, making sure Steve got this next point. "But once you get through the fire, babe, you gotta stop and take care of the burns. If you don't, hey'll slowly eat at your flesh until there's nothing left to protect you."
Steve's face was this odd mix of confusion and fear that just looked so foreign there Danny wanted to say never mind, forget it. Because Steve should never look like that.
Danny swallowed hard against everything that rose inside him, holding his hands as tightly as he could under his arms to keep from getting up and going over there, despite the presence of two pilots just on the other side of a cockpit door. This wasn't the time or place.
There was no time or place, he reminded himself. Because they both had other people to consider, and despite what his mother said, Danny wasn't sure Steve had come to any kind of realization. That he ever would figure out what he wanted, or at least make up his mind to go after it properly.
"What?" Steve said.
"What?"
Steve nodded at him. "That look. What's wrong?"
Danny shrugged. He'd given Steve enough to think about. Time to let him actually think. "Nothing. Just tired. I'm gonna get some shuteye."
He closed his eyes and pretended to sleep, but he could feel Steve's gaze on him for a long time.
***
"You did what?" Danny yelled, turning halfway around in the passenger seat to face Steve as best he could across the console. "I'm sorry, I must still be deaf from the plane ride. I know you didn't just say you handed your loaded gun to a CIA agent hell bent on keeping you from finding out what was in that coffin."
"Danny, I had to--"
"Had to what, get someone to kill you? What the hell is the matter with you?"
"You keep asking me that question."
"And I'm going to keep on asking it until you either tell me or stop being a complete moron!"
Steve glanced at him nervously. "Look, you...on the plane, you were right. I trust you. Completely." He glanced at Danny again. "But you have to trust that I know what I'm doing."
"Not when you're handing loaded guns to people who'd love to kill you!"
"He didn't! I knew he wouldn't. Not there. Too public. But he had to know how serious I was about this. It's the only way I'm going to get answers."
Danny reined in his temper. "You," he said after a moment, his voice low, "are a menace to your own safety."
One corner of Steve's mouth hinted that he might be a little amused at that statement. "I thought I was a menace to your safety."
"You are. But the one doesn't negate the other." Danny sighed. "All right, so you gave the spook your loaded gun--which, by the way, we are not done talking about--and he said what?"
"He told me to be at his office at 20:00."
"Again with the GI Jargon," Danny muttered, shaking his head. "So we're going to his office at eight?"
"No, I'm going to his office at eight. Alone."
Danny's laugh was anything but amused. "Why, so he can shoot you in the dark with an untraceable gun? Brilliant!"
"He's not going to shoot me, Danny. I wouldn't have handed him the gun if I thought he would."
"At least you showed half a grain of sanity, though that's kind of negated by the fact that you didn't think he would shoot you."
"He won't."
"Whatever. So please, explain to me, why you going in there alone will keep him from shooting you?"
Steve's glance was a little less nervous, but only a little. "If you go in with me, I've played all my cards. I need you to be away from the situation, like when I met him at Tantalus. If you're there, and it's a trap--"
"See! You admit it could be a trap!"
"Of course it might be at trap, but I don't think it is. He knows I'm careful--he knows I wore a wire, he has to know I'm not going in there without some kind of back up. But if he can see you, and he really does want to take me out, he'll just take you out with me."
"And if he can't see me, I can't see him, and there'll be no proof."
Steve made an impatient sound, which was combined with increasing the Camaro's speed. "If he can't see you, he doesn't know who's going to be looking into this if he does shoot me. He won't do anything, because he knows it'll only create a bigger mess. He might even give me another lead I can follow."
Danny looked for holes in that argument, cursing silently when he couldn't find any. "Okay," he said, "so then what's the plan."
"I'm going to meet him at his office at eight," Steve said. "If I haven't checked in with you by eight-thirty, then that's where you start looking."
"Half an hour? He could shoot and incinerate you by then."
"Don't be ridiculous, it would take him at least half an hour to get me to an incinerator."
Danny rolled his eyes. "Excuse me for not having the location of every incinerator in Honolulu memorized," he said, before he took a long breath and let it out slowly. "Okay, so, you go in, I back you up from outside. I can do that."
Steve blinked at him a few times. "You're not arguing with me," he said. "Why does this worry me?"
"I get it, okay? It's safer to have me on the outside, so if something goes wrong, I'm able to do something about it."
"Why do I feel like this was too easy?"
"Because for once, Steven, you used your logic instead of your Commander McGarrett voice that you seem to think everyone on the planet has to obey."
Steve blinked again. "Four years and now you tell me all I had to do was explain things?"
"You know, I could just shoot you myself and save your buddy Sam the trouble."
Danny absolutely did not smile at the way Steve's mouth quirked up this time. There was just something on the wing mirror, that was all.
***
Danny was leaning against the side of Steve's truck when Steve came storming down the stairs outside the building. He stopped short when he saw Danny. "What are you doing here? You were supposed to wait for me."
"I am waiting for you. You said that you needed me on the outside so I could do something if things went wrong." Danny held his arms out. "This is outside. This is me waiting."
"I said to wait, and if I didn't check in with you by eight-thirty--"
"Yes, and I am waiting. You didn't say where I had to wait." He gave Steve a grin. "If you're gonna save Steve McGarrett, you've gotta play by his rules."
Steve pressed his lips together for a long moment. "If Sam had seen you--"
"Sam's not even here, is he?"
"How the hell did you--"
"Because I have had my own run ins with the CIA, and I know how they work. And being outside the situation, I may have seen it a little clearer. Also, there are no other cars here and I didn't hear a gunshot, and you're out here pissed off at five minutes after eight. Me being the excellent detective that I am, I am able to deduce that your buddy Sam stood you up."
Steve sighed, joining Danny in leaning against the truck. "He didn't just stand me up. He's gone. His whole office is empty except for furniture and a phone."
"So why were you in there for five minutes? Were you searching for him?"
"No. The phone rang at eight."
Danny shifted to get a better look at Steve's face, clear in the moonlight. "Who was calling?"
"I don't know. But they wanted me to walk away from this."
"Which I'm sure you told them you would do so that you could let them think they'd won while we continue to investigate."
Steve shifted, his eyes dropping to his feet. "I, uh...I might've told them that none of this was going to stop me."
"Of course you did." Danny dropped his head back against the truck and stared at the sky for a moment. "What happened to playing by their rules?"
"If they know I'm not going to quit, maybe they'll just tell me what's going on."
"Right. That's always the way the government works, Steven. They never do things like, oh, make people disappear or kill them and bury them six thousand miles away."
Steve sighed, but after a moment he turned to look at Danny. "I'm not giving up on this, Danny."
"Who do you think you're talking to? They may not know you, but I do." Danny pushed off the truck. "Come on. Let's have a beer and figure out what to do next."
Steve didn't move right away. "You're still going to help me?"
"I can help you, or I can fly to Cambodia in a few months and dig up your grave," Danny said. "Which one do you think I'd rather do?"
And of course that would be what would make Steve smile. "Okay then," he said. "Drinks are on me. And yes," he said, as Danny turned around, mouth open, "I have my wallet."
"Maybe you can be taught after all."
---
END