Fic: Turn My Sorry Into Treasured Gold (Steve/Danno Rated: PG13)
Title: Turn My Sorrow Into Treasured Gold
Fandom: Hawaii Five-0
Author: wook77
Pairing: Steve/Danno
Wordcount: ~3600
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Steve's been missing for sixteen hours.
Author's Notes: Betad by reddwarfer and djin7. All remaining mistakes are obviously my own. Written for tailoredshirt for help_nz (I hope this fits the bill!). Title stolen shamelessly from a line in "Rolling in the Deep" by Adele.
Steve's been missing for sixteen hours.
For the first few hours, Danny had expected that Steve would MacGyver his ass out of wherever he's been stashed. He doesn't stop looking towards the front door of the office as Chin and Kono work their technical magic. He doesn't stop even after he realizes, logically and in his head, that Steve isn't MacGyvering his way back to them.
They're running out of ideas. Steve's phone is completely offline, as is his truck's GPS. When Danny gets him back (he refuses to think if he gets him back), Danny's putting a frigging microchip-tracking unit into him. Maybe he'll even register it with those lost pet people with Danny's information as Steve's owner. Because, for Christ's sake, this is Steve and he shouldn't be lost out there.
"What've you got?" he asks Kono, for probably the fifteenth time in the past five minutes. Danny's even annoying himself with his incessant need for updates, but instead turns his anger towards Steve for putting him - them - through all of this. .
"Same as it was thirty seconds ago, Danny." He can hear her strained patience for him in her tone and see it in the set of her shoulders.
"Why don't you make some calls we need?" Chin suggests from across the computer table. "And we'll keep working out here?"
"Sure, give 'em to me." Danny knows Chin is giving him busy work to do, more to get him out of their hair while they do the real investigating. He hates that he's so helpless, but is happy for whatever lead he can get. He takes the list and goes to his office to make the calls.
He spends the next hour on the phone (seventeen hours and thirty-two, no thirty-three minutes since Steve went missing) but nothing pans out.
Danny has to get out of there. He passes Kono and Chin, still working frantically on the computer.
"I'm going to go see Kamekona, see if he's got anything for me."
"Sounds good, brah." They wave him away, and Danny goes.
He makes his way to Kamekona's, measuring his steps, so that he's not running through the crowd. He thinks that if he starts running, he may never stop.
Seventeen hours and forty-six minutes.
Kamekona doesn't wait for Danny to say a word before he's answering all the unspoken questions. "Nothing, brah, I get something, I'll let you know. You can count on me."
Danny - at an earlier point in the day - would've snapped something like "You mean when you told me I could count on you for a Santa suit and it was fifty sizes too big". Or, "You mean when you said you'd find out about that informant last week and it ended up with me getting shot at", but he doesn't say any of it. He's too tired and too frazzled and, he'll admit it out here in the sun that's clearly baked his brain, too scared to lose Steve. "Yeah, you come through every time."
Kamekona's eyebrows creep towards his hairline, his surprise evident at Danny's lack of rhetoric. "Count on me."
"Thanks, man. Appreciate it." Danny responds mechanically. He looks around, wondering what he should do, now.
"He's out there. We'll get him back." Kamekona keeps trying to engage him.
Danny tries to straighten up. "He's probably kicking their asses and seeing how long it takes us to figure it out." He doesn't sound as sure as he wants to be.
It must have been a lame attempt because Kamekona offers, "You want an ice? On me?"
"Freebie? How bad do I look right now?"
Kamekona grins. "Naw, it's for Kono. The lady deserves the best, and that's me."
"Sure, sure. Gimme whatever that purple crap is that she eats."
Kamekona makes up the ice and slips Danny a tray containing several, all in 5-0's favorite flavors. Danny reaches for his wallet but the big guy waves it off. "You wear the t-shirt again, we'll call it even."
"Yeah, that'll happen," Danny says, laughing for the first time in eighteen hours and six minutes.
"Brah, anything is better'n your tie."
"Yeah, yeah. Always with the tie.." Danny grabs the ice and waves to Kamekona as he heads back towards Headquarters.
"Got enough ice there?" Chin asks when he walks into the office.
"Kamekona gave me ice for all of us. I'm a little nervous over what favor he's going to want in the future for it."
"Gave?" Chin raises an eyebrow.
"Gave."
"What brought - " Chin's interrupted by the chirp of Danny's phone.
Consider us even.
"The hell?" Danny says as he stares at the text message from an unknown and blocked number.
"What's it say?"
"Consider us even. What the hell does that even - " Danny's phone starts ringing, Steve's picture and number popping up on the screen. Eighteen hours and thirteen minutes. "Track it."
"I'm on it." Chin starts working his magic on the tech table while Danny takes a moment to breath, then answers the phone.
" Steve? You there? Steve, talk to me." There's only the sound of feet on the floor and labored breathing. "Steven?"
"Got it," Chin says. "Warehouse district."
Danny doesn't pause to tell the team to gear up. He just grabs his keys and runs, leaving Chin and Kono to contact HPD. But they follow seconds behind him, and within a minute, they're all leaving the parking lot in multiple vehicles. Danny's puts on his lights and burns through the streets at a breakneck speed towards the address, making Steve's driving look like Grandma Williams on her worst Sunday in a Jersey winter. His phone is still at his ear as he listens to the breathing.
"Steve, if that's you, gimme a sign." There's a tap against the phone.
"Okay, babe, that's good. You tied up?" There's only silence.
"How many guards are there?" Nothing. "Are there guards?" Another tap.
"Almost there. We're almost there."
All Danny gets is the same pained breathing in his ear.
Screaming around a corner, he sees his target, and without a thought for the finish of his paint, he drives through a padlocked gate and then barrels towards a cluster of buildings, zeroing in on the largest as his target, as he continues to listen to Steve while getting closer and closer to him.
"If you're somewhere near a door, can you get away?" he asks. There's a tap. "Good, do it. I'm about to ram the main door."
His insurance company is never going to take him back, he thinks as he bursts through the garage door at the front of the warehouse the GPS system insists that houses Steve. The metal screeches as the Camaro rams through, sliding into the warehouse and then slamming to a stop while glass shatters and sprays everywhere.
Gun out and ready, but phone still glued to his ear. Danny gets out, wary, looking around only to find an eerie silence. Kono and Chin race in behind him on foot, and take up positions. As the silence stretches on, Danny mouths "what the fuck" as they exchange a series of silent signals each taking point in different directions. Danny speaks quietly into the phone, "Steven? Did you hear the crash?"
There's a tap on the other end.
Thank god, he thinks as he continues in his assigned direction. He approaches a door, he puts the phone in the pocket of his vest and then kicks the door in, expecting something to jump out at him. All that greets him is the continued eerie silence, and it follows him into the narrow hallway and in each ensuing room he searches. Danny's always hated this part - the most dangerous thing a cop does, every time he opens a door he either faces possible death or he exposes his back to it.
Not that he'll ever tell Steve this but he takes a moment calm down and practice some of Steve's pseudo-psychic ninja detection skills (yeah, he's heard all about how the rock talks to Steve), and he listens to try and hear something, anything outside of his own hammering heartbeat.
And there, there! He hears a small scuffling noise coming from one of the rooms down the hall.
Just then, the door at the end of the hallway opens and Danny points his gun and prepares to pull the trigger only to see Kono walking through it. Nodding at him, she gestures, and he follows, guarding her back as she goes through the rooms left, but when she checks the last, he's confused.
"Clear."
Well, shit. Where the hell else could Steve be?
"Steve? Where are you?" Danny asks into the phone. He was so sure he'd heard him.
"Danno?" Steve's voice sounds weird, it's not a tone that Danny's ever heard. He sounds like a little boy.
"Keep talking, Steve, if it's safe. We're trying to find you - but it looks like there has to be a hidden door or something. Tell me something that's going on with you."
"Love you, Danno," Steve mumbles into the phone. "I'm over here."
Huh, Danny thinks to himself, his mind stuttering over the first bit, but dismissing it because he must have misheard, Steve's just slurring his words.
"Where's over here?" he asks as they start working through the offices.
"Right here."
"And where's right here, princess?"
"Here, Danno! Here."
"Jesus, Steve, give me something to work with. I never liked hide and go seek with Grace so why would you think that I'd like it with you?"
"I'd like to play hide and go seek with Gracie. I'm really good at it, spent alotta time playing it out in the jungle. If you listen to the jungle, it'll tell you where everyone is."
"Yeah? The rocks talk to you?"
"Yeah, you just have t'know how to speak their language."
"The rocks have their own language." Kono looks up as Danny speaks, her face surprised to the point of being comical. Danny just shakes his head and keeps knocking on walls in the hall, trying to find where they could be hiding him.
"Yep. I'd like to teach it to Gracie. Will you let me teach it to Gracie? I bet she'd be really good at it. She's smart. Gets it from her mother."
"And fuck you kindly for that."
"Kay. We can totally fuck, if you want. Been wanting to for a really long time." Steve pauses, "But not when we're teaching Gracie how to talk to rocks."
"What the hell are you on, Steven? What did they give you? First you can't talk at all, and now you're chattier than Grace at a sleepover." Danny thumps the wall with his head as he listens to Steve babble, saying things that Danny's refused to even contemplate.
"Sodium pentothal - otherwise known as sodium thiopental - and commonly referred to as truth serum."
Well, then. That explains the sudden volunteering of ridiculously personal thoughts.
But wait.
Danny takes a second, forehead pressed hard against the drywall, as he breathes before he blows up at Steve. "Steven. They use that to euthanize people. How much did they give you?" There. He can be calm if he needs to be.
"Danny? What's going on? Euthanasia?" Kono asks as she starts banging on walls harder and faster. "Are they killing him? Shit!"
"Steve, wherever you are, you need to come out if you can, or try to make more noise, or something, babe."
"Dunno if I can. I sort of used up a lot of energy I wasn't supposed to."
"You what?"
"I used up a lot of energy I wasn't supposed to. Trained for this sort of thing- how to resist barbiturates during torture, but I fucked up, and I think I'm saying things I might regret later."
"Steve? How did you fuck up? Do we need to call an ambulance for you?" Kono shoots him a scared look and then moves to another room, banging on the walls. Danny can hear her yelling to Chin as he approaches and they're all banging on walls in various rooms.
"I fucked up when I took them down, using all my energy and now I can't stop telling you things; things I want. Don't call an ambulance, I just wanna play doctor with you. You can ask me to turn and cough when you put your dick in my ass."
"You…"
"I'm thinking that's one of the things I might regret."
"Found it!" Chin yells from down the hall and Danny takes off running, heading towards the furthest office from where he's at. Chin had pulled out a bookcase, sure enough, there was a room beyond it.
"Steven! " Danny races into the room and slides down on the floor to Steven, checking his pulse while Chin checks the pulses of the various bodies strewn about the room. His knee is going to give him hell, later. At first glance, despite his labored breathing and lack of movement, Steven appears to be intact, no major wounds evident, no bullet holes or broken limbs, thank God. "The hell happened? How're you feeling?"
"Danny?" Steve looks up at Danny, eyes glazed and bleary. "Don't feel good. I think I'm going into cardiac and respiratory depression."
"You can't breathe? Chin, he can't breathe, get an ambulance here!"
"Already on it, brah," Kono says from behind him, "Chin called them as soon as we heard they used the drugs. Should be on their way."
God. He has such a great team.
"Danny," Steve says, leaning in towards Danny, pressing up against his shoulder. "Wanna give me CPR?"
Danny suddenly feels incandescent. "You are an asshole, McGarrett! A serious asshole. No, I do not want to give you CPR. I want you to breathe on your own and I want you to survive this so I can kick your ass from here to New Jersey! At least then I'll be at home and you will suffer a small modicum, a modicum, of what you deserve to suffer because of the absolute hell you have put me - us - through."
"You missed me?" Danny looks down, and is trapped by the wounded puppy look Steve gives him, very much like the one Grace gets when she really wants some Barbie or another and knows that Danny will give in, anyways. Of course Steve knows the look because Steve has the impulse control of a seven year old. Danny's rage is gone as suddenly as it arrived, and he just squeezes his hand around Steven's arm to reassure himself that he's safe and alive and they found him.
"It was bad enough that Kamekona gave us all free ice, Boss," Kono says as she finishes helping Chin secure the bodies. "What'd you do to them?"
Danny can hear the sirens in the distance as Steve babbles, "They were questioning me and got my pulse up and I was having trouble resisting. Then Sang Min asked me if I missed you guys and told him how I loved Danny. Then he loosened my wrists, left me my phone, then he left the room." Steve smiled then, and Danny wasn't even going to ask.
"I'll be sure to thank him later, after I find him and arrest him. Again." Danny thinks of the text. "Why the tapping?"
"Had to be quiet, wasn't sure if there was anyone else around here. Had nothing left to fight with, none of them had weapons for me to take."
Just then, he hears the rushing of feet, and looks up to see Chin lead the EMTs in and they swarm Steve, pushing Danny out of the way. As they take Steve away, Danny can only watch them go. Nineteen hours and twenty-two minutes.
"He'll be all right, Danny," Kono says as she steps up next to him. "Sure is amazing that he took out four guys while high on drugs, huh?" Hero worship dripping from every word.
God, between the two of them, he would be taking stress leave within the year. Rolling his eyes, he defaults to sarcasm, "He is a scary, scary man with a lot of scary, scary issues."
"Sounds like he thinks you can solve some of them."
He winces. "I'm sure that it was just the drugs that he's got coursing through his system."
"I wouldn't count on it. It's called 'truth serum' for a reason," Chin says, as he leads Danny and Kono out of the way as HPD starts cataloging the destruction. Huh. When did they get here?
"Rumors and supposition." Danny beggs his teammates with his eyes to drop it.
And God love'em, they do. "Whatever helps you sleep at night," Kono says. "We done here?"
"HPD's got it. I'm done. Going to head to the hospital, see what they have to say about Steve."
"We'll be there shortly," Chin says as he supervises the HPD officers. "We'll get the clean up done and follow shortly."
"Sounds good."
Danny's not sure how he's going to drive to the hospital. His car is trashed; it even has pieces of chain link embedded in it. He's going to need to break this habit of driving into buildings or, at least, not his car. Maybe he should've looked for a forklift or an eighteen-wheeler.
He's kicking the tires when one of the HPD officers comes up, hands him a set of keys, gestures towards his cruiser and then walks away. Huh. Not one to look a gift cruiser in the, err, headlights, Danny gets in and purposefully doesn't think about how awful Steve had looked when they'd taken him away.
"McGarrett," he says to the nurse at the counter, once he gets to the hospital. She gives him directions and, for just a moment, Danny thinks about staying where he is, not going closer. Nineteen hours and fifty-one minutes.
He thinks that maybe he just wanted to test himself.
Steve's lying in bed, tubes sticking out of his arms, oxygen tubes in his nose, but his eyes are clear when Danny enters the curtained area.
"Howzit?" Steve asks while Danny stands in the opening.
"Hey you. How you feeling?" Danny tries to shake off the stress of the last day.
"Fine. You?" Steve averts his eyes. So that's how it going to be.
"Yeah, Superman, you're absolutely fine. Why wouldn't you be? I mean, it's a run-of-the-mill Steven day when it includes being overdosed on barbiturates and being kidnapped. Of course, you're fine. I'm an idiot for thinking you'd be otherwise considering the lovely hospital setting and all of, of, of, this." Danny gestures, turning in a circle, gesturing wildly to encompass the room, hospital, situation and the entirety of pineapple-infested Hawaii.
"Seriously, Danno. I'm fine." Steve's so sheepish and embarrassed.
"Shut up." Danny growls, deep in his throat. He wants to say what the hell did you mean back there or How long have you been feeling that way or even you couldn't have picked a better time so we could've acted on it. He doesn't though. He can't, especially not with the curtain separating them from the rest of the hospital. "You are a complete and total asshole, Steven."
"I like when you call me 'Steven'."
That throws Danny for a loop. It's only temporary, though. "What? Why? It's your name. You still high on the drugs? Huh? "
"No, I am not." Steve sounds angry rather than embarrassed. He's got aneurysm face, too. Danny feels better immediately.
"Yes, I think you are. The crazy things you been saying while high on drugs." Danny pokes his finger into Steve's chest only to have Steve grasp it with one hand and then bring his other hand up to hold on to Danny's forearm. Danny's so grateful for the controlled strength in that grip that he doesn't struggle to get out of it.
"'m not crazy. And it was truth serum."
"Euthanasia drugs. Death penalty drugs. Jesus, Steve, what were you thinking? What the hell happened?"
"I don't know. I was sleeping, heard a noise, I got up, and I felt a pinch on my neck, then I woke up in that warehouse. The rest is what I told you."
"Jesus, Steve. What is wrong with your security system? This is twice that you've been beaten in your own house."
"My house is perfectly safe."
"Bullshit! My apartment, for as much as you make fun of it, has never been broken into, never seen bullet holes in the walls, has never had kidnappers show up! I thought you were some super Ranger guy, why the hell are you constantly getting the shit kicked out of you?"
"SEAL."
"SEAL. Ranger. Tomato, tohmahto. " Danny tugs at his arm, finally, only to find that Steve isn't letting go. Unsure whether he's just tired after the stressful day or if he's tired of fighting the pull of Steve and this thing they have, Danny stops fighting and instead twists his hand until their fingers are laced together. Something that's been fluttering around in him settles at the touch, and he exhales. "When're you going to get a security system that actually works?"
"When're we going to talk about what I said?" Steve squeezes Danny's hand and pulls him closer until Danny sits down on the edge of the bed.
"When you can say it without being drugged and in mortal peril."
"I'll hold you to that." Steve grins, and Danny has no choice but to return it.
"I'm counting on it."
As always, I'd love to hear what you thought.
Fandom: Hawaii Five-0
Author: wook77
Pairing: Steve/Danno
Wordcount: ~3600
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Steve's been missing for sixteen hours.
Author's Notes: Betad by reddwarfer and djin7. All remaining mistakes are obviously my own. Written for tailoredshirt for help_nz (I hope this fits the bill!). Title stolen shamelessly from a line in "Rolling in the Deep" by Adele.
Steve's been missing for sixteen hours.
For the first few hours, Danny had expected that Steve would MacGyver his ass out of wherever he's been stashed. He doesn't stop looking towards the front door of the office as Chin and Kono work their technical magic. He doesn't stop even after he realizes, logically and in his head, that Steve isn't MacGyvering his way back to them.
They're running out of ideas. Steve's phone is completely offline, as is his truck's GPS. When Danny gets him back (he refuses to think if he gets him back), Danny's putting a frigging microchip-tracking unit into him. Maybe he'll even register it with those lost pet people with Danny's information as Steve's owner. Because, for Christ's sake, this is Steve and he shouldn't be lost out there.
"What've you got?" he asks Kono, for probably the fifteenth time in the past five minutes. Danny's even annoying himself with his incessant need for updates, but instead turns his anger towards Steve for putting him - them - through all of this. .
"Same as it was thirty seconds ago, Danny." He can hear her strained patience for him in her tone and see it in the set of her shoulders.
"Why don't you make some calls we need?" Chin suggests from across the computer table. "And we'll keep working out here?"
"Sure, give 'em to me." Danny knows Chin is giving him busy work to do, more to get him out of their hair while they do the real investigating. He hates that he's so helpless, but is happy for whatever lead he can get. He takes the list and goes to his office to make the calls.
He spends the next hour on the phone (seventeen hours and thirty-two, no thirty-three minutes since Steve went missing) but nothing pans out.
Danny has to get out of there. He passes Kono and Chin, still working frantically on the computer.
"I'm going to go see Kamekona, see if he's got anything for me."
"Sounds good, brah." They wave him away, and Danny goes.
He makes his way to Kamekona's, measuring his steps, so that he's not running through the crowd. He thinks that if he starts running, he may never stop.
Seventeen hours and forty-six minutes.
Kamekona doesn't wait for Danny to say a word before he's answering all the unspoken questions. "Nothing, brah, I get something, I'll let you know. You can count on me."
Danny - at an earlier point in the day - would've snapped something like "You mean when you told me I could count on you for a Santa suit and it was fifty sizes too big". Or, "You mean when you said you'd find out about that informant last week and it ended up with me getting shot at", but he doesn't say any of it. He's too tired and too frazzled and, he'll admit it out here in the sun that's clearly baked his brain, too scared to lose Steve. "Yeah, you come through every time."
Kamekona's eyebrows creep towards his hairline, his surprise evident at Danny's lack of rhetoric. "Count on me."
"Thanks, man. Appreciate it." Danny responds mechanically. He looks around, wondering what he should do, now.
"He's out there. We'll get him back." Kamekona keeps trying to engage him.
Danny tries to straighten up. "He's probably kicking their asses and seeing how long it takes us to figure it out." He doesn't sound as sure as he wants to be.
It must have been a lame attempt because Kamekona offers, "You want an ice? On me?"
"Freebie? How bad do I look right now?"
Kamekona grins. "Naw, it's for Kono. The lady deserves the best, and that's me."
"Sure, sure. Gimme whatever that purple crap is that she eats."
Kamekona makes up the ice and slips Danny a tray containing several, all in 5-0's favorite flavors. Danny reaches for his wallet but the big guy waves it off. "You wear the t-shirt again, we'll call it even."
"Yeah, that'll happen," Danny says, laughing for the first time in eighteen hours and six minutes.
"Brah, anything is better'n your tie."
"Yeah, yeah. Always with the tie.." Danny grabs the ice and waves to Kamekona as he heads back towards Headquarters.
"Got enough ice there?" Chin asks when he walks into the office.
"Kamekona gave me ice for all of us. I'm a little nervous over what favor he's going to want in the future for it."
"Gave?" Chin raises an eyebrow.
"Gave."
"What brought - " Chin's interrupted by the chirp of Danny's phone.
Consider us even.
"The hell?" Danny says as he stares at the text message from an unknown and blocked number.
"What's it say?"
"Consider us even. What the hell does that even - " Danny's phone starts ringing, Steve's picture and number popping up on the screen. Eighteen hours and thirteen minutes. "Track it."
"I'm on it." Chin starts working his magic on the tech table while Danny takes a moment to breath, then answers the phone.
" Steve? You there? Steve, talk to me." There's only the sound of feet on the floor and labored breathing. "Steven?"
"Got it," Chin says. "Warehouse district."
Danny doesn't pause to tell the team to gear up. He just grabs his keys and runs, leaving Chin and Kono to contact HPD. But they follow seconds behind him, and within a minute, they're all leaving the parking lot in multiple vehicles. Danny's puts on his lights and burns through the streets at a breakneck speed towards the address, making Steve's driving look like Grandma Williams on her worst Sunday in a Jersey winter. His phone is still at his ear as he listens to the breathing.
"Steve, if that's you, gimme a sign." There's a tap against the phone.
"Okay, babe, that's good. You tied up?" There's only silence.
"How many guards are there?" Nothing. "Are there guards?" Another tap.
"Almost there. We're almost there."
All Danny gets is the same pained breathing in his ear.
Screaming around a corner, he sees his target, and without a thought for the finish of his paint, he drives through a padlocked gate and then barrels towards a cluster of buildings, zeroing in on the largest as his target, as he continues to listen to Steve while getting closer and closer to him.
"If you're somewhere near a door, can you get away?" he asks. There's a tap. "Good, do it. I'm about to ram the main door."
His insurance company is never going to take him back, he thinks as he bursts through the garage door at the front of the warehouse the GPS system insists that houses Steve. The metal screeches as the Camaro rams through, sliding into the warehouse and then slamming to a stop while glass shatters and sprays everywhere.
Gun out and ready, but phone still glued to his ear. Danny gets out, wary, looking around only to find an eerie silence. Kono and Chin race in behind him on foot, and take up positions. As the silence stretches on, Danny mouths "what the fuck" as they exchange a series of silent signals each taking point in different directions. Danny speaks quietly into the phone, "Steven? Did you hear the crash?"
There's a tap on the other end.
Thank god, he thinks as he continues in his assigned direction. He approaches a door, he puts the phone in the pocket of his vest and then kicks the door in, expecting something to jump out at him. All that greets him is the continued eerie silence, and it follows him into the narrow hallway and in each ensuing room he searches. Danny's always hated this part - the most dangerous thing a cop does, every time he opens a door he either faces possible death or he exposes his back to it.
Not that he'll ever tell Steve this but he takes a moment calm down and practice some of Steve's pseudo-psychic ninja detection skills (yeah, he's heard all about how the rock talks to Steve), and he listens to try and hear something, anything outside of his own hammering heartbeat.
And there, there! He hears a small scuffling noise coming from one of the rooms down the hall.
Just then, the door at the end of the hallway opens and Danny points his gun and prepares to pull the trigger only to see Kono walking through it. Nodding at him, she gestures, and he follows, guarding her back as she goes through the rooms left, but when she checks the last, he's confused.
"Clear."
Well, shit. Where the hell else could Steve be?
"Steve? Where are you?" Danny asks into the phone. He was so sure he'd heard him.
"Danno?" Steve's voice sounds weird, it's not a tone that Danny's ever heard. He sounds like a little boy.
"Keep talking, Steve, if it's safe. We're trying to find you - but it looks like there has to be a hidden door or something. Tell me something that's going on with you."
"Love you, Danno," Steve mumbles into the phone. "I'm over here."
Huh, Danny thinks to himself, his mind stuttering over the first bit, but dismissing it because he must have misheard, Steve's just slurring his words.
"Where's over here?" he asks as they start working through the offices.
"Right here."
"And where's right here, princess?"
"Here, Danno! Here."
"Jesus, Steve, give me something to work with. I never liked hide and go seek with Grace so why would you think that I'd like it with you?"
"I'd like to play hide and go seek with Gracie. I'm really good at it, spent alotta time playing it out in the jungle. If you listen to the jungle, it'll tell you where everyone is."
"Yeah? The rocks talk to you?"
"Yeah, you just have t'know how to speak their language."
"The rocks have their own language." Kono looks up as Danny speaks, her face surprised to the point of being comical. Danny just shakes his head and keeps knocking on walls in the hall, trying to find where they could be hiding him.
"Yep. I'd like to teach it to Gracie. Will you let me teach it to Gracie? I bet she'd be really good at it. She's smart. Gets it from her mother."
"And fuck you kindly for that."
"Kay. We can totally fuck, if you want. Been wanting to for a really long time." Steve pauses, "But not when we're teaching Gracie how to talk to rocks."
"What the hell are you on, Steven? What did they give you? First you can't talk at all, and now you're chattier than Grace at a sleepover." Danny thumps the wall with his head as he listens to Steve babble, saying things that Danny's refused to even contemplate.
"Sodium pentothal - otherwise known as sodium thiopental - and commonly referred to as truth serum."
Well, then. That explains the sudden volunteering of ridiculously personal thoughts.
But wait.
Danny takes a second, forehead pressed hard against the drywall, as he breathes before he blows up at Steve. "Steven. They use that to euthanize people. How much did they give you?" There. He can be calm if he needs to be.
"Danny? What's going on? Euthanasia?" Kono asks as she starts banging on walls harder and faster. "Are they killing him? Shit!"
"Steve, wherever you are, you need to come out if you can, or try to make more noise, or something, babe."
"Dunno if I can. I sort of used up a lot of energy I wasn't supposed to."
"You what?"
"I used up a lot of energy I wasn't supposed to. Trained for this sort of thing- how to resist barbiturates during torture, but I fucked up, and I think I'm saying things I might regret later."
"Steve? How did you fuck up? Do we need to call an ambulance for you?" Kono shoots him a scared look and then moves to another room, banging on the walls. Danny can hear her yelling to Chin as he approaches and they're all banging on walls in various rooms.
"I fucked up when I took them down, using all my energy and now I can't stop telling you things; things I want. Don't call an ambulance, I just wanna play doctor with you. You can ask me to turn and cough when you put your dick in my ass."
"You…"
"I'm thinking that's one of the things I might regret."
"Found it!" Chin yells from down the hall and Danny takes off running, heading towards the furthest office from where he's at. Chin had pulled out a bookcase, sure enough, there was a room beyond it.
"Steven! " Danny races into the room and slides down on the floor to Steven, checking his pulse while Chin checks the pulses of the various bodies strewn about the room. His knee is going to give him hell, later. At first glance, despite his labored breathing and lack of movement, Steven appears to be intact, no major wounds evident, no bullet holes or broken limbs, thank God. "The hell happened? How're you feeling?"
"Danny?" Steve looks up at Danny, eyes glazed and bleary. "Don't feel good. I think I'm going into cardiac and respiratory depression."
"You can't breathe? Chin, he can't breathe, get an ambulance here!"
"Already on it, brah," Kono says from behind him, "Chin called them as soon as we heard they used the drugs. Should be on their way."
God. He has such a great team.
"Danny," Steve says, leaning in towards Danny, pressing up against his shoulder. "Wanna give me CPR?"
Danny suddenly feels incandescent. "You are an asshole, McGarrett! A serious asshole. No, I do not want to give you CPR. I want you to breathe on your own and I want you to survive this so I can kick your ass from here to New Jersey! At least then I'll be at home and you will suffer a small modicum, a modicum, of what you deserve to suffer because of the absolute hell you have put me - us - through."
"You missed me?" Danny looks down, and is trapped by the wounded puppy look Steve gives him, very much like the one Grace gets when she really wants some Barbie or another and knows that Danny will give in, anyways. Of course Steve knows the look because Steve has the impulse control of a seven year old. Danny's rage is gone as suddenly as it arrived, and he just squeezes his hand around Steven's arm to reassure himself that he's safe and alive and they found him.
"It was bad enough that Kamekona gave us all free ice, Boss," Kono says as she finishes helping Chin secure the bodies. "What'd you do to them?"
Danny can hear the sirens in the distance as Steve babbles, "They were questioning me and got my pulse up and I was having trouble resisting. Then Sang Min asked me if I missed you guys and told him how I loved Danny. Then he loosened my wrists, left me my phone, then he left the room." Steve smiled then, and Danny wasn't even going to ask.
"I'll be sure to thank him later, after I find him and arrest him. Again." Danny thinks of the text. "Why the tapping?"
"Had to be quiet, wasn't sure if there was anyone else around here. Had nothing left to fight with, none of them had weapons for me to take."
Just then, he hears the rushing of feet, and looks up to see Chin lead the EMTs in and they swarm Steve, pushing Danny out of the way. As they take Steve away, Danny can only watch them go. Nineteen hours and twenty-two minutes.
"He'll be all right, Danny," Kono says as she steps up next to him. "Sure is amazing that he took out four guys while high on drugs, huh?" Hero worship dripping from every word.
God, between the two of them, he would be taking stress leave within the year. Rolling his eyes, he defaults to sarcasm, "He is a scary, scary man with a lot of scary, scary issues."
"Sounds like he thinks you can solve some of them."
He winces. "I'm sure that it was just the drugs that he's got coursing through his system."
"I wouldn't count on it. It's called 'truth serum' for a reason," Chin says, as he leads Danny and Kono out of the way as HPD starts cataloging the destruction. Huh. When did they get here?
"Rumors and supposition." Danny beggs his teammates with his eyes to drop it.
And God love'em, they do. "Whatever helps you sleep at night," Kono says. "We done here?"
"HPD's got it. I'm done. Going to head to the hospital, see what they have to say about Steve."
"We'll be there shortly," Chin says as he supervises the HPD officers. "We'll get the clean up done and follow shortly."
"Sounds good."
Danny's not sure how he's going to drive to the hospital. His car is trashed; it even has pieces of chain link embedded in it. He's going to need to break this habit of driving into buildings or, at least, not his car. Maybe he should've looked for a forklift or an eighteen-wheeler.
He's kicking the tires when one of the HPD officers comes up, hands him a set of keys, gestures towards his cruiser and then walks away. Huh. Not one to look a gift cruiser in the, err, headlights, Danny gets in and purposefully doesn't think about how awful Steve had looked when they'd taken him away.
"McGarrett," he says to the nurse at the counter, once he gets to the hospital. She gives him directions and, for just a moment, Danny thinks about staying where he is, not going closer. Nineteen hours and fifty-one minutes.
He thinks that maybe he just wanted to test himself.
Steve's lying in bed, tubes sticking out of his arms, oxygen tubes in his nose, but his eyes are clear when Danny enters the curtained area.
"Howzit?" Steve asks while Danny stands in the opening.
"Hey you. How you feeling?" Danny tries to shake off the stress of the last day.
"Fine. You?" Steve averts his eyes. So that's how it going to be.
"Yeah, Superman, you're absolutely fine. Why wouldn't you be? I mean, it's a run-of-the-mill Steven day when it includes being overdosed on barbiturates and being kidnapped. Of course, you're fine. I'm an idiot for thinking you'd be otherwise considering the lovely hospital setting and all of, of, of, this." Danny gestures, turning in a circle, gesturing wildly to encompass the room, hospital, situation and the entirety of pineapple-infested Hawaii.
"Seriously, Danno. I'm fine." Steve's so sheepish and embarrassed.
"Shut up." Danny growls, deep in his throat. He wants to say what the hell did you mean back there or How long have you been feeling that way or even you couldn't have picked a better time so we could've acted on it. He doesn't though. He can't, especially not with the curtain separating them from the rest of the hospital. "You are a complete and total asshole, Steven."
"I like when you call me 'Steven'."
That throws Danny for a loop. It's only temporary, though. "What? Why? It's your name. You still high on the drugs? Huh? "
"No, I am not." Steve sounds angry rather than embarrassed. He's got aneurysm face, too. Danny feels better immediately.
"Yes, I think you are. The crazy things you been saying while high on drugs." Danny pokes his finger into Steve's chest only to have Steve grasp it with one hand and then bring his other hand up to hold on to Danny's forearm. Danny's so grateful for the controlled strength in that grip that he doesn't struggle to get out of it.
"'m not crazy. And it was truth serum."
"Euthanasia drugs. Death penalty drugs. Jesus, Steve, what were you thinking? What the hell happened?"
"I don't know. I was sleeping, heard a noise, I got up, and I felt a pinch on my neck, then I woke up in that warehouse. The rest is what I told you."
"Jesus, Steve. What is wrong with your security system? This is twice that you've been beaten in your own house."
"My house is perfectly safe."
"Bullshit! My apartment, for as much as you make fun of it, has never been broken into, never seen bullet holes in the walls, has never had kidnappers show up! I thought you were some super Ranger guy, why the hell are you constantly getting the shit kicked out of you?"
"SEAL."
"SEAL. Ranger. Tomato, tohmahto. " Danny tugs at his arm, finally, only to find that Steve isn't letting go. Unsure whether he's just tired after the stressful day or if he's tired of fighting the pull of Steve and this thing they have, Danny stops fighting and instead twists his hand until their fingers are laced together. Something that's been fluttering around in him settles at the touch, and he exhales. "When're you going to get a security system that actually works?"
"When're we going to talk about what I said?" Steve squeezes Danny's hand and pulls him closer until Danny sits down on the edge of the bed.
"When you can say it without being drugged and in mortal peril."
"I'll hold you to that." Steve grins, and Danny has no choice but to return it.
"I'm counting on it."
As always, I'd love to hear what you thought.