Aw yeah, I've actually got something to post. :D

This will be a collection of tales and tidbits from an AU I've been toying around with since last year but hadn't actually gotten around to putting pen to paper to until a few weeks ago. Summary pretty much covers it as does this first chapter, but if you have any questions please feel free to review or PM me and I'll try to answer them so long as it doesn't involve a spoiler in a later story.

Each chapter is its own story, so it's not like one continuous single minded fic. Everything just happens to take place in the same AU. I currently have a backlog of chapters and am adding more when I have time to write, so I will try to post regularly on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Hawaii Five-0, its characters, and concepts belong to CBS, Peter Lenkov, Leonard Freeman, and whoever else has a say in that. I am making zero monies from this and am merely borrowing the characters purely for fun.

The concepts of these particular dragons and such do belong to me, though.

Shout out to Phoebe Miller for beta reading!

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy. :)

Fact #1: Dragons get sick just like humans, though their ailments tend to be more…exotic.

Season: Midway through Season 1

Dragons came with their own unique set of problems. It was inherent, considering that you were dealing with a nearly completely separate species. It didn't help that humans outnumbered dragons by a lot. As in, dragons made up a little less than one percent of the total population at any one given time. So that meant that when one dragon started having an issue the chances of receiving the kind of help they needed were slim.

Of course, Danny had never in his wildest dreams expected to be on a taskforce where everyone on the team was a dragon or at least had dragon blood running in their veins. He hadn't known for the first while that he had been on the taskforce. Dragons typically were not forthcoming with their species and he was no different. They weren't exactly easy to nose out even to trained investigators, either.

Apparently, Steve had known right from the get go or very near to it. It kind of explained why he sought Danny out later, that and his link to his father's case. It took Danny another two weeks to figure out he was a dragon as was Kono, and as far as he knew Chin was at least fireproof which meant he had dragon mixed in his already culturally diverse bloodline.

How all this came to light was a story for another time. Right now, all Danny could do was focus on the papers on the desk in front of him and let his mind wander to the possibility that he might be sick. He was debating whether or not he wanted to get up from his chair to make a journey to the bathroom to empty his stomach. He still hadn't hurled since May of 1996, and he stubbornly refused to let a stupid stomach bug make him break that streak.

Dragons got illnesses and diseases like humans did. Caught the common cold, got the twenty-four hour flu, suffered migraines, fought cancer, some had even managed to inflict themselves with a hangover. Granted, the percentage of dragons infected with said ailments was much lower than that of the human populace, but it still happened.

And Danny wondered if he had picked up the stomach bug from Grace. She had said that it was going around at school. Luckily she hadn't caught it yet, but germs could ride home on a backpack easily.

He wiped his brow with the back of his hand. Glancing across the bullpen and seeing Steve working in his office, he guiltily contemplated going over there to tell him he was taking the rest of the day off. Then again, they had finished up a case yesterday and he still had a mountain of paperwork to tend to.

Danny leaned back in his chair, wincing as his stomach roiled against the movement. He swallowed thickly and closed his eyes. It was the cramping that was killing him more than anything. Sure, his joints ached and he felt like crap and he was nauseas, but the rolling cramps in his abdomen were awful. They came and went along with the nausea, starting after he had eaten this morning and persisting until now. His forehead creased as a particularly strong one made him taste bile.

His eyes snapped open.

Heat was starting to radiate from his chest and he could feel organs shifting, organs he shouldn't have in human form.

"No, no, no, no, no," he muttered. He sat forward slightly doubled over and pressed a hand to his mouth.

The heat in his chest grew in intensity. Smoke slithered up his throat and out his nostrils, bitter and acrid. A familiar burn started to make its way from the base of his ribcage to his collarbone.

Abruptly he shot his hands out in front of him, scales and claws appearing as he did so. A small amount of molten slag spewed from his mouth into his cupped hands.

Danny groaned. Sometimes being one of the few dragons that could breathe fire really, really sucked. Vomiting up the leftover remains from what was appropriately deemed his stoking chamber was never fun. Despite being mostly fireproof it still burned his mouth and tongue and throat, especially in human form.

"Why? Why me?" he questioned lowly. The molten mess in his palms started to dim now that it was in contact with the cool air in his office, but he could still feel its heat soaking through his scales.

Steve hated paperwork. Absolutely despised it. Normally he would shuffle most of it off onto Danny if he could, but recently his partner was having none of that. Now he had his fair share of papers to fill out after each case. He supposed that after running this taskforce for eight months he would have gotten used to it.

But nope.

Everyone always said he had laser focus, except when it came to paperwork. His mind was always jumping around while he filled out all the mundane details pertaining to whatever situation they had just wrapped up.

He sat back in his chair and scrubbed his face with his hands. Maybe he could convince Danny to take a trip down to the coffee shop around the corner to get some decent Kona brew rather than the sludge that their coffeepot had been putting out the last couple of days.

He swiveled in his chair so he could glimpse into his partner's office. Danny ducked down abruptly from staring at the ceiling. Steve's brows furrowed.

"You okay there, bud?" he questioned quietly.

When he didn't reappear he pushed away from his desk and made his way out of his office, striding across the bullpen to the smaller space the detective occupied.

"Yo, Danny, you okay in here?" he rapped his knuckles on the glass door while pushing it open.

"Peachy."

Steve took two more steps so he could see around the desk. His frown deepened.

"Are you sick?" he asked.

Danny glared up at him. He was pale and sweaty, his hair falling from its neatly kept style, and his eyes were glassy. The most telling sign was the fact that he had partially shifted his hands to where they were scaled and clawed, he assumed so that what looked to be molten slag didn't burn him.

"It's like you're some kind of detective," he said. His face pinched in pain and he doubled over again.

"Woah, easy there," Steve placed a hand uncertainly on his back. "You need to go home."

Danny inhaled softly. "Well, you know Steven, I would like to but I've got my hands full of cooling slag and me pulling over on my way home to puke more of this crud up is not an option."

"I'll drive you home," Steve volunteered instantly.

This was a new one on him. Being a more amphibious type of dragon, he was unfamiliar with whatever this was. He personally hadn't been around many other dragon types, especially fire breathers. Danny was the first one he had befriended and actually gotten to know.

"Don't know if I want to deal with your driving feeling like this," Danny said.

"Danny, it's either I drive you home or you accidentally burn the office down," Steve pointed to the now mostly solid substance in his hands.

Danny didn't look at him again. Instead he kept staring at the ground, starting to crumble the slag up between his fingers. Steve didn't know how quickly that stuff cooled, but apparently quick enough that his partner wasn't too worried about letting it fall into his wastebasket. Now it just looked like ashes and bits of charcoal.

"Danno?"

"Yeah, fine," slowly he sat up from his chair, retracting the claws and scales before running a hand over his hair to put it back in place. "Just go the speed limit, huh? I don't want to leave scorch marks in the Camaro."

"We'll crack the window," Steve held the door open for him.

He kept close to his side as they navigated out of their headquarters upstairs and over to the elevators. The whole time they walked Steve wondered what exactly he would do should Danny get sick again. Something that literally looked like lava coming out of someone's mouth was sure to turn heads. So far the team had yet to have a public incident that caused the knowledge of their dragon lineages to become widespread. And they would like to keep it that way. People got too nosy when it came to dragons.

Once they were outside he felt safer. At least the chances of something catching fire were slimmer due to the fact that it had just rained. The air was fresh, a light breeze keeping the mugginess to a manageable level. Danny seemed to calm a little bit as well.

"You need anything from the store or….?" Steve asked as he took the car keys from his pocket.

Danny shook his head subtly, pressing his fingers against his mouth and nose with a grimace. Hurriedly, Steve unlocked the car and jumped in the driver's seat. He had his seatbelt already latched when his partner eased in and shut the door. Taking his hand from his face he leaned his head back and sighed heavily, smoke drifting from his mouth.

Steve started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot. As he drove he shot glances his partner's way, taking note of how he stayed very still and spat out tendrils of smoke every so often.

"So, what exactly is this?" he asked after a while.

"Hmm?"

"You. What's wrong with you? Is it like a flu for fire breathers or something?"

Danny shifted uncomfortably. "Something like that."

Steve nodded, wishing for once that he would elaborate more. "What was that stuff you coughed up?"

"What is this? Twenty questions?"

"I'm just curious, man. What if I actually need to know this one day when you're in trouble?"

"With you as my partner that's a much higher probability than I care to think about."

"You signed up for the job."

"One, no I didn't. I got shanghaied into this position. Two, I was never shot at this much back home. Three, you're an animal that thinks he's invincible and I inevitably have to go in behind you to provide the backup to your boneheaded plans," Danny retorted. He drew a breath in sharply and dug the heel of his palm into his sternum.

"What's wrong? You need me to pull over?" Steve dropped whatever argument he had prepared at his partner's actions.

"No, I'm fine," Danny ground out.

Steve watched him out of the corner of his eye as he started to relax from his hunched position, but kept his hand on his chest. Seeing him like this did help him make up his mind on where he was taking him, though. He definitely wasn't letting him stay home alone in this condition.

"It was from my stoking chamber."

"What?"

"That stuff from earlier," Danny clarified. "It's molten leftovers."

"But I thought that you mainly fed your fire with wood? That looked like melted metal."

"Bits of melted down rocks, but mostly wood. It was all ashy when it cooled, remember?"

"Okay," he said, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. It was in all actuality intriguing and he wanted to keep asking more questions, but could see that Danny was losing whatever energy he had found to banter with him.

"Hey, Steve?"

"Yeah?"

"You do realize that this isn't the way to my place?" Danny gestured towards the street they had turned down.

"We're not going to your place. We're going to my place," Steve answered.

"Why? Contrary to what you think, I can take care of my-"

Steve snapped his head to the side at the odd choking sound his partner made. Scales had flashed into existence again as he cupped his hands over his mouth. Smoke trailed out of his nose, smelling kind of caustic. It made Steve wince in sympathy. He couldn't even imagine what that felt like. The worst thing that happened to him was salt build up on his teeth from the steam he could make but that was a completely different story.

Apparently it had either been a false alarm or Danny had swallowed it back down, because he took his hands away from his mouth. His claws shifted back to regular fingernails and his scales back to smooth skin.

Releasing a calculated exhale, Danny pinched the bridge of his nose and said, "Wherever I can ride this out in peace."

Steve knew his place was more peaceful, anyway. It was bigger and separated from the other houses by lots of foliage. He also had a firepit out on his private beach where there was less risk of setting something ablaze. He had a spare bedroom and of course the couch if Danny wound up staying the night. He might also have a can of chicken noodle soup somewhere in his cupboards, though he was unsure if that would help this. He probably needed something closer to a fire extinguisher.

Either way, he thought as he cast a sidelong glance at his partner, he felt better knowing he would be able to keep an eye on him.

"Steve?"

"Yeah, Danny?"

"Thanks."

He smirked. "No problem, man, no problem."

Thanks for reading! Also, I wanted to let you know to feel free to make prompt or fact suggestions. Everything will be taken under advisement and may appear in later chapters.