AN – mahalo nui loa to my fantabulous friend and the wonderful beta extraordinaire traw for all her wonderful work with this.
We're shouting the scene where
I swallow your heart and you make me
spit it up again. I swallow your heart and it crawls
right out of my mouth.
-Dirty Valentine, Richard Siken
Five-0 were in hot pursuit of Ken Nakamura, first lieutenant to the Oahu Branch of the Hawaiian Yakuza. Their target was cutting through the dense mid-afternoon shopping crowd like a hot knife through butter and his small and compact stature meant he could squeeze through nooks and crannies like the best of them, like a ninja. He had just rounded a corner on the shopping plaza and was bounding up the escalator, pushing past people. Steve raised his gun and aimed it at Ken's back but he was too agile and quick that Steve was more likely to hit an innocent bystander than Ken himself. The Navy SEAL gnashed his teeth as he sprinted up the stairs alongside the elevator with Danny a few paces short of him. Chin and Kono were running on the bottom alongside the water feature, scanning the scene for any sign of the diminutive man.
McGarrett was trying to regain his breath and he slammed his fist against the stone railing, wincing as his bone hit the stone hard. His breaths were rushed and ragged and it was only then that he noticed that Danny was no longer beside him. He quickly looked around, seeing no sign of the familiar head of blonde hair. He leaned over the edge to scan the scene below them, but it was unlikely, as he clearly remembered that Danny had been right alongside him as he sprinted up the stairs after Ken. The midday sun was beating relentlessly down on them, choking off all the air and Steve lifted a hand to his forehead to wipe the sweat off.
"Danno?" he shouted out, causing some people below to look up at him, confusion in their faces.
"What?" the familiar voice replied, "And before you say anything, yes I know that I should have had your back, should have told you where I was going to satisfy your secret dominatrix fetish over me, but here." He soon felt the press of cool condensation in his hand as Danny handed him an icy cold bottle of water with something remarkably like fondness on his face. "I thought you Navy SEALS lived in water - can't have you dying on me now, can I?" the detective grinned.
Steve should really be giving Danny bitchy face #27 right now but it was too hot, the heat seeping down to his very bones. He twisted the top off and sculled half of it in one go - it really was one of those days. The cotton of his shirt clung to his back and sweat beaded down his back as the heat approached unbearable.
"Thanks." He watched as Danny mirrored him, taking a deep swig of cold water before replacing the cap, "And for the record, it's going to take a lot more than that to kill a Navy SEAL."
"Yeah, of course,' Danny reasoned. "Your humility is very attractive, a fucking turn on, in fact."
"It worked for you, didn't it, eh partner?" The Lt Commander shot back, not missing a beat and grinning as a pissed off look crossed the ex Jersey native's face. "Anyway, I want this rock sealed up tight until we catch this son of a bitch – APBs to all the PDs on the Islands and HPD surveillance at all the major points of entry and exit." He paused before adding, "And tell Duke to have a car parked out at the front of his Waialua house, I want 24 hour surveillance." He instructed as he turned around to survey the crowd milling around on the plaza below. Where was Ken Nakamura?
Danny had just whipped out his mobile to call Duke when a lone gunshot rang out and people started screaming below. Before Steve knew it Danny was behind him, scrabbling madly down the stairs following him as they ran towards the sound of the gunshot. Chin and Kono rounded the corner of the fountain again and people instinctively parted ways for the Five-0 Team as they ran down the stairs and spilled out onto the car park where there was traffic chaos as everyone had stopped to look around to see where the shot had come from. Young children started crying as their parents ushered them into the relative safety of the shopping complex, car doors left ajar.
"Up there!" Chin shouted, pointing to a black Jeep careening around a corner where they could see Ken's face before he whipped the car around and they could make out the sole bullet hole lodged in the driver's door. Steve switched the safety off his gun and aimed but could get a clear shot as the car was moving too rapidly.
"Got it." Kono put on an additional spurt of speed and jumped clean over the handrail onto the ground below and sprinted in pursuit of Hiro, her gun drawn.
Steve had just stepped down onto the ground with Chin by his side and was thrown against the railing as Danny roughly pushed him to the side mere seconds before a second shot rang out. He was flung backwards, colliding painfully with the stairs as his head slammed hard against them. The last thing he remembered before losing consciousness was being covered by something warm and sticky as the distinctive coppery odour of blood filled his nostrils.
When Steve reopened his eyes he found himself in the hospital, the familiar scent of antiseptic and sickness overwhelming him. He had always hated coming here but long had accepted it as one of the 'perks' of the job, much like the foregone possibility of having a social life. His head throbbed very much as if someone had tried to split it open with a hammer. He groaned as a wave of dizziness washed over him when he tried to sit up.
Rubbing the exhaustion from his eyes as he stretched a bit, he eased the kinks out of his muscles as he tried to remember why he was here. In the process he knocked something to the floor. It clattered loudly and rolled around under his chair, so he leaned over to pick it up, swallowing back the hot bile as the world lurched violently.
It was a water bottle, half empty. He picked it up and put it back on the bedside table.
The longer he stared at the bottle the memories flooded back, clear and sharp as if they were unfolding right before his eyes again.
They had been chasing Ken Nakamura at the Ala Moana Shopping Complex. He and Danny had managed to corner the man inside a men's bathroom but he had come out holding a gun to the hostage's head snarling for them to back off until he was well away from here. They had let the tether a little loose until Nakamura shoved the hostage at them and ran at breakneck speed through the crowds, weaving in and out of the sparse crowd.
He shook his head and turned to look at the chair, which was empty. Panic bubbled like acid in his throat when he scanned the surrounding of the room, quickly looking for any sign of anyone being here. The chair was very cold when he reached out to run his hand along the worn plastic. His partner had always been there when he woke up, rain, hail or shine. The huge Danny shaped hole in his consciousness was deeply troubling – it meant something was very, very wrong.
His eyes widened at the implications – had the detective been hurt?
"Brah, you're awake," Chin spoke softly from the doorway and Steve could see that he looked like he had aged a hundred years since the last time he saw his Korean friend with a haunted expression in his eyes and a defeated slump to his shoulders.
"Where's Danny?" Steve asked.
A frown marred the angular planes of his friend's face as his eyes softened. Shit, whatever it was, it was really bad. Steve swallowed hard, his throat clicking as the blood rushing past his ears became almost deafening as Chin murmured softly. "I'm sorry, Steve. We've called Rachel and Grace, they'll be here any moment."
Before Steve could get anything else out of him a doctor walked into the room past Chin and came face to face with McGarrett. Her features were grim as she went to sit down on the chair next to the bed. The ruffle of her white coat as she extracted a pen from her breast pocket and the click of the pen as she pressed the top were like claps of thunder, piercing through the foreboding silence that had settled over them.
"Commander McGarrett," the lady doctor said softly. "We need your signature on this form." She handed him a clipboard with a sheaf of papers and a blue pen. He glanced down at the words on the page as a white fog entered his mind the longer he stared at the pages in front of him. Words like 'gun shot wound' and 'haemorrhage' jumped out at him but they weren't enough to pierce through the fog. He tried to make sense of the words on the form but they would not register with the processing centre of his brain as the synapses refused to light up. He read through the contents over and over again but he didn't understand, couldn't understand.
"What am I signing for?" he asked gently, dreading her answer. His stomach churned as he fought back the sick feeling as a dead weight settled in his stomach.
"As his medical proxy, we need your consent to release the body from the morgue for burial," she replied. "I'm very sorry for your loss, Commander."
He signed the form and she thanked him before exiting the room as quickly as she could. Chin finally came in and sat down on the lone chair but he turned his head to the side, away from his friend's concerned gaze. He stared blankly at the small window, where the sun was shining overhead brightly, the leaves of the spiky palm tree lapping lazily in the breeze. The warmth of the afternoon should have been comforting but he was far away from its reach as he closed his eyes and sighed. He wrapped his arms around his arms as he rubbed them in a desperate attempt to ward off the cold numbness that overwhelmed him. He closed his eyes but there was no escape as disjointed images flooded into his periphery. The smooth sliver of skin hidden behind increasingly ridiculous ties… crow's feet that wrinkled as those clear blue eyes shone radiantly like the rarest of topaz gems… those hands, waving about in vigorous arcs as passion bled into that voice, the voice that he had grown accustomed to…
The voice that he was never going to hear again, that was going to tear him apart in memories.
Suddenly he couldn't stand it, couldn't bear to be in this small cramped space, amongst the stench of disinfectant, the melancholy and hopelessness that clung like a thick velvet curtain around him. It was so thick that he felt like he was going to choke and die. Steve had to get away from here, as far as he possibly could.
He opened his eyes to stare blankly into the window and out past the palm trees, unblinkingly as he tried his hardest to crush the overbearing sense of hopelessness and grief that threatened to pull him under and ignore the stagnant silence that followed. Even though his eyes pricked and stung, when he lifted his hand away, his fingers were still dry.
Life had continued on grudgingly unrelentingly and Steve could no more put returning to work off than a mere mortal could stop the sun rising from the east or the ebb and swell of the waves from breaking against the shore. It ground on, uncaring and utterly unconcerned with the sort of earnestness that he would have held in high regard in different circumstances.
Five-0 had solved a few cases since then. Steve threw himself into his work. Every single moment of consciousness was devoted to catching the people who saw the islands as their chance to enter into notoriety in the criminal world. It was paying off - Hawaii was a safer place as the cells of Oahu State Prison slowly filled and Hawaii, despite its laid back people and friendly culture recorded the highest conviction rates out of all the American states. Word had spread amongst the hoods on the coconut wireless that 'Steve McGarrett was not to be reckoned with.'
He should have been happy but why wasn't he?
By Christmas he had dropped 2 stone and everyone was beginning to get worried. He refused the governor's arrangement for him to see a psychiatrist, blowing it off as 'unwarranted concern.' The Navy SEAL resolutely ignored Jenna's homemade lunches and her increasingly desperate and vocal requests for him to eat more. He blew Kono off every Friday when she offered to go surfing with him.
The worst thing, however, was having to meet Grace and explain to her exactly why Danno couldn't come to see her anymore. It nearly ripped everything he had tried so hard to suppress back out into the open but through sheer self-control he managed to avoid a catastrophic breakdown. He knew that once the pieces fell there was no hope of putting it all back together again. Everyone had enough on their plate and he had to be strong because men didn't fall apart. When the tough got going, the going got tough. It nearly killed him but he managed to keep his voice level and soft as he reminded her that no matter what, Danno would always love her. After that Rachel had seized Grace's hand then asked Steve to excuse himself out of the house. That was the last he ever saw of them again. A few days later a quick check of the flight digest revealed that Stan, Rachel and Grace had headed out on the first available flight headed to New York.
Chin knew enough to leave him well alone but Steve was getting really sick and tired of the pitied glances that he kept shooting him, wishing that the Detective would just leave him alone already.
Everything came to a head on yet another sunny day as he pulled into his parking space outside the Iolani Palace. He had been doing okay until then, when the sense of loss was so strong and acute that he nearly rammed the Silverado into the stonewall as he couldn't breathe under the weight on his chest. He was going to die at this stage and he could feel his hands shaking, mirroring the tremors coursing through his body. He sat there for a few moments blinking back the tears that threatened to fall as he kept reminding himself that grown men didn't cry. He went to wipe at his eyes and was pleased to find that they were still dry.
When McGarrett felt calm enough he stepped out of the Silverado and staggered up the steps. People stared at him as pushed roughly past them and headed up the koa wood staircase. Relief flooded him when entered into the Five-0 offices. At the sight he presented Kono and Chin were up out of their seats and approaching him, their hands outstretched.
"Steve…" Kono began.
"Enough!" he roared, moving towards his office. "Everyone, go back to what you were doing, right now! We have a lot of paperwork to get on top of and several interviews to do today. I am not to be disturbed at all costs, is that understood?" He glared at them until they couldn't meet his eyes.
"Yes, boss." came the collective reply. The door shut with a resounding slam that caused all the glass panels in the office to rattle. The cousins turned to look at each other.
"This can't go on," Kono whispered after a few moments of silence. "Cuz, he hasn't been the same since-"
"Don't Kono." Chin interrupted, stopping her in her tracks. "Just don't."
The cousins stared at the wooden door with 'S. McGarrett' on it, wishing that they could break it down and reach out to the man who desperately needed their help right now, right before he went off the deep end.
Which was only a matter of time.
The time came after a particularly traumatizing case that the Governor had refused to let the Five-0 team near until Steve had burst into her office bristling with anger. Chin and Kono had known by now to give him a wide berth. After Steve had returned from the crime scene Kono had prepared a cup of calming chamomile tea for him. It was still steaming when he entered his office.
The victim was a young police officer fresh out of the Academy who had taken his supervising officer out for some drinks upon graduation from the academy. He had taken a bullet meant for his lieutenant commander. And the sight of blood, so much blood and those unseeing blue eyes as clear as the sky on a sunny day and the mop of delicate golden curls had been too bloody much and before he knew it Steve was throwing up, throwing up the measly breakfast of a square of toast he had managed to keep down that morning, leaving him feeling wrung out and bone dry.
He was still seething when he entered his office and the door's hinges were lucidly loose with all the times the door had been slammed that he really didn't need to put that much effort into it before he locked it. The sight of the cup of steaming tea mortally offended him and he lifted it up and threw it at the wall, savouring the burn of the hot liquid as it trickled down onto his hand, hot enough to burn. The shattering of china against the wall and the shards of glass on the carpet left him feeling somewhat vindicated.
He went to sit down at his desk and pulled open the drawer where he had taken to keeping a silver flask of scotch in his office. When the exhaustion was too much to bear and he needed a quick sharp something to snap himself out of it, he headed to the scotch for reprieve.
It was becoming increasingly frequent. He resolutely ignored the dented and half empty bottle of water that rolled out from the depths of the drawer with the force he used to pull the drawer open.
The scotch was exactly what he needed and he needed it now. In the back of his mind as he lifted the flask to his mouth the soft white noise that was the concern of his colleagues replayed itself in Steve's mind, their voices a cacophony of pleas for him to speak to somebody, for him to stop drinking. Chin had even gone as far as alleging that Steve was becoming an alcoholic. For him to just stop this, stop everything that he was doing to himself.
To just stop, because it was the last thing that Danny would have wanted.
Danny.
That name, those two syllables which hurt more than any bullet could, that had somehow become something significant and wonderful, yet horrible in the sense that they were driving him to the very edges of despair.
He savoured the burn of the alcohol as he took a deep drink, doing his damned best to ignore those reproachful blue eyes that he knew would be staring at him and the quirky mouth that would be turned down into a frown at him right now, only if they were here to see him.
Which they weren't.
Steven, what the fuck is wrong with you? Hey, don't be like that babe...
He threw the empty flask at the wall with all his strength, feeling vicious satisfaction as it bounced on the wall, leaving a sizeable dent in the gyprock and landed close to the shattered remnants of the cup of tea. The Navy SEAL buried his head in his hands as he fought off the urge to hyperventilate as the world squeezed down on him and pain, fresh and raw as that fateful afternoon, came back to the fore, flooding his senses.
I don't know Danno, I really don't.
Steve stood on the precipice, staring down at the water churning past the jagged rocks below. The sun was setting over the magnificent waters of the ocean shimmering iridescently in the late afternoon sun. The half-empty water bottle was clutched in his hand, the last tie he had to Danny, his last act of kindness.
His last act before death.
Steve finally felt at ease as he took in the familiar scenery and breathed in the fresh air of the ocean breeze then made his decision. He savoured the way the ocean breeze felt excellent on his heated skin as he closed his eyes and savoured everything, from the feel of the ragged rocks beneath his feet and the sounds of the waves as they crashed into the rocks below.
He loved the way the sting of the salted ocean water was like heaven on his face, numbing all his hands and feet and the skin on his belly as all sound cut out and the coolness seeped into his lungs, making him feel at one with ocean. The blessed silence, where he didn't have to think or feel or hurt anymore.
But most of all, he loved the way that the water streamed past his eyes, until he couldn't tell whether his eyes were stinging because of the salt, or because of the tears that he had finally allowed himself to cry as he let himself go off the deep end.
You swallow my heart and flee, but I want it back now, baby. I want it back.
Lying on the sofa with my eyes closed, I didn't want to see it this way,
everything eating everything in the end.
PAU
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