Summary: Danny takes a hard fall and gets a pretty bad bump on the head. Unfortunately, this is not the worst part of his day, and Steve, well…he's not sure what to do about any of it.

Author's Note: Takes place after Season 2 Episode 16 "I Helu Pu," so there could be a smattering of spoilers for everything up 'til then. Because I doubt H50 will actually DO this, consider the story AU.

FUTURE PERFECT

Really, this was not a big deal. Sure, walk-ups were a pain-in-the-ass for when you were trying to carry groceries inside…which was precisely what Danny was doing at this very moment…but overall, he never minded the exercise of hiking up three stories to get to an apartment any more than he minded running like a bat out of hell to catch a suspect.

It'd been nice to let go and feel the adrenaline pumping through his veins. It'd been twice as nice to prove that McGarrett wasn't the only one who could run down a bad guy, thanks much. Because seriously, the guy was a Topper to end all Toppers and needed to be put in his place once in a while.

Danny smirked as he balanced the five plastic grocery bags hanging from his left hand up against the railing while he tried to dig in his pocket for his keys.

The other sorta nice thing that had happened was that once he'd found out Lori had left (without even saying good-bye to him and what was that about, anyway?), and that she'd outbid both him and Steve on the season tickets and won them…and then given them to the Neanderthal, like…whatever anyway, but…the nice thing to come out of that was Steve giving him half the tickets and then grinning like a loon and saying hell, they'd probably wind up attending most of the games together anyway, right?

"Not if I decide to take my daughter," had been Danny's acidic retort. Steve had pulled Aneurysm Face and that had made Danny's day complete. So all in all, he was in a seriously good mood. Grace was his this weekend, and after the scare a few weeks ago with his ex-partner kidnapping her, Danny was in dire need of Grace Time.

Hence the eight bags of groceries on the flight of stairs and the litany of curses as one of the bags broke just as he managed to get his keys out of his right front pocket. Well, there went the oranges, the apples and the pineapple.

Yes. Pineapple.

What? Grace likes it.

(That's his story and he's sticking to it.)

Except now the pineapple was trying to go AWOL and the oranges and apples were making a break for it, so now he had to run down fruit instead of a perpetrator, and how was this his life again?

There was just one thing he forgot as he turned to high-tail it back down the steps, and that was the loose end of the torn grocery bag, and the fact that plastic's clingy even in eighty percent humidity, and he was wearing his good work shoes with the thick rubber soles, and rubber and plastic, well, they sort of…stick, and…

Shit.

He knew the second before it happened that he was going down. Tucking himself into as tight a ball as possible, he just rode out the fall, felt himself hit the third step up from the landing, and then felt nothing at all.

Steve had just returned home from his week of Reserves training on board the U.S.S. Enterprise. He was good for the next little while as far as the U.S. Navy was concerned, he felt tired but damn good from the intensity of the training, and he'd managed to get Catherine alone way more than she'd anticipated, which did wonders for his mood.

Hey, he's a guy, what do you expect?

He'd left Danny in charge of Five-0 during his stint away, and was eager to catch up with his friend and second-in-command to find out how the week had gone, if there'd been any action, if Denning had waited until Steve was out-of-town to take the team down a couple of pegs for the Russian Incident.

His face fell out of its smile a bit when he thought of the fact that Lori wouldn't be there in the office come Monday morning. Sure, she'd been forced on the team, and he'd never really been quite sure whether he trusted her or not, truth be told. But you kind of get used to people being there, like he had with Jenna (and look how spectacularly that had turned out, he reminded himself).

And Lori was a nice enough woman, if not a bit…odd…for someone who was supposed to be a profiler. Her confession about having feelings for him wasn't the first time that'd happened to Steve in his life, and he supposed it wouldn't be the last. Many people had passed through the revolving door that was Steve McGarrett's world, some almost stalkerish in a way – and even some men, who knew Navy guys could be so obsessive? He snorted, imagining Danny's reaction to that thought.

But only Catherine had actually gotten stuck there, stopping that revolving door in its tracks, and Steve? Yeah, he was okay with that. Way okay.

Now Jenna was dead and Lori was gone from Hawaii, and Steve was still the leader of the task force (assuming Denning hadn't given them all pink slips while he was away), and he was surrounded there by three people he could trust with anything and everything and Wo Fat hadn't surfaced in a while and Steve had gotten laid (Hooyah!) for a whole week, so overall, life was damn good.

Then he pulled into the small parking lot of Danny's new apartment building. Parked in one of only two visitor parking spaces, turned the truck off, got out, flipped his keys around his index finger as he shut the truck's door, puckered his lips to whistle, turned and—

"Oh, my God! Danny!"