I do not own Hawaii Five-0 or any characters. No copyright infringement intended.

Notes: thank you to the guests and to everyone leaving such great comments!

H5O* H5O* H5O* H5O* H5O*

Chapter Two

"What do you mean you're not coming in? I need you here, Danny," Steve's overly loud sigh was not understanding as he listened to his partner's much too brief and extremely poorly timed announcement of needing a day off. The case the team was focused on, in conjunction with the FBI, required all-hands on deck and they were at a critical juncture.

"We're meeting in ten and you decide to return my calls now? The entire morning is gone and you call me now?" Rapping his fist distractedly on his desk, he sighed again entirely for Danny's benefit to leave no doubt that the next question would be almost obligatory. Steve couldn't help shaking his head in the privacy of his office. Planning meetings were ramping up with their counterparts in the FBI and no one had time for a respite or any kind of distraction.

"Are you sick or is this about what happened yesterday?" Steve asked.

The resulting silence was deafening, causing Steve to refocus his attention and quaff the rise in a feeling of defensive irritation. His partner had been in a foul stench of a mood the prior day. Snappy and ill-tempered, Danny had been jumpy from the start to eventually bring on what almost had seemed like a partner-ending confrontation in the war room. Sarcasm had soon become a series of nasty remarks leading to a defensive parry of words with voices rising like an unstoppable tidal wave. Before anyone could properly react, Danny had stormed from the offices returning scarcely an hour later. He had sequestered himself in his office until Chin had intervened to insist upon a casual dinner.

Now overly quiet though, Danny's abrupt change in attitude coupled with an out of character tardiness, caused Steve to virtually drill the phone to his ear. He couldn't hear anything though; not even a soft puff of breath into the phone.

"Danny? There's nothing wrong with Grace, is there?" Rising to his feet behind his office desk, an illogical concern mounted. A niggling oddity that something had happened between the prior evening's half-assed attempt at dinner and that very morning's scheduled team meeting.

"Danny, are you still there?" Steve prodded, nervous when he finally more sensed an awkward fidget versus received an intelligible, verbal answer.

"Yeah," Danny eventually muttered. He was most definitely still on the call as he fingered the square card in his fingers, but he'd barely heard a single word. The black lines merged together as he zoned out because with only an appointment to see the doctor, he wasn't quite able to answer the first key question as to if he might be sick. He had no way to really explain that he'd sat alone for hours in the middle of a storm not knowing what to do until he thought of his friend, Doctor Alphonse Ramirez.

Once the thought had clicked home, Danny had spontaneously gone to visit the doctor's office that very morning seeking help, only to learn that Ramirez was returning from a trip to the Big Island. His office hours were staggered to start in the late afternoon and to carry on into the evening. Sensing the desperate urgency and knowing that the Five-0 officer was a personal friend of the Ramirez family, the receptionist had juggled heaven and earth to find time on the doctor's booked schedule.

Completely in a world of his own, Danny hadn't found the time to return Steve's urgent voice mails. He had meant to do many things - none of which actually occurred. Instead, he was late for work, hadn't managed to call in with a valid explanation, ignored anxious calls from his partner, and was now about to miss a critical meeting with the FBI leads.

His excuses about being sick though ran thin in his own mind. He'd skipped dinner, worked too many hours nonstop without a break. Too much coffee or even not enough…. definitely not nearly enough sleep based on their current workload. Yet it all sounded thin and cheap even to his own ears because they were all suffering in the same way and under identical stressors. Working a tough case was nothing he hadn't personally done before. So why now? Why now of all times, was he dreaming, sleep-walking and most inconceivably of all, waking in strange places in the darkest hours of the night after driving in what could only be described as a state of zombie-like behavior?

"Yeah," Danny repeated, frowning when a shadowed movement caught his eye. It came from the direction of the living room, but as he walked forward, there was nothing to be found. He forgot to add seeing things to his laundry list of current woes and made a mental note to tell Ramirez. Sharply pinching the bridge of his nose both in disgust and against another dull headache, he inhaled deeply before speaking.

"Listen, I know the timing stinks but I need the day off. And no Steven, it has nothing to do with what happened yesterday... or Grace, she's fine." Stifling the very distracted feelings of annoyance which darkened his face, Danny bit his tongue from saying more. He desperately needed to take a few hours off to see Ramirez in an attempt to regroup and gain perspective. Yet he'd been more than moody the day before with the smallest of things rubbing him the wrong way. His negativity had slowly worked away at each member of his team, resulting in a mouthy confrontation between himself and Steve over something of which he could now barely recall. All of it had been uncalled for and entirely his fault.

"Listen, Steve…," he was about to apologize when another glimmering shift of darkness and light caught his eye and he did a double-take. Scowling, he stared into the living room, bending down to peer into corners. As before though, nothing was there and his preoccupied pause allowed Steve time to interrupt.

"The timing more than stinks, Danno. So then... you are sick? What's wrong?" Leave it to Steve to push but Danny could hardy blame the man due to his own evasive behavior.

"I don't know," Danny unexpectedly replied carrying a tone softer than he would have liked and he soundly kicked himself. An accidental tone which leaked out and couldn't hide his confusion, worry and even perhaps included just a bit of very real fear. After forcing himself to act down on the docks, it had taken him a good twenty minutes to figure out where he was after getting to a main road. With the heat on high, it still had taken a long time for him to physically warm up in the car. But the painful blast of weather he endured on his exposed skin to get to his front door upon arriving home had destroyed that false sense entirely.

Drenched and chilled by hard pellets of wind-driven rain, he had been stunned to find his front door unlocked. He had staggered into his dark house slamming on lights and skidding on wet bare feet across the wooden floors. By then, Danny was so distressed, he didn't care if he was unarmed as he anxiously cleared each room on the way to his bedroom. He remained unarmed until he retrieved his weapon from the bedside table cursing even more loudly when he realized that he really didn't remember coming home the prior evening.

The clues that he must have were obvious because everything was in its rightful place. His badge and wallet were neatly stacked on the dresser. His holstered weapon lay in its usual spot nested inside the table's top drawer. Safety on and clip discharged by its side. His teeth had been clenched as his stress escalated and he'd finished the job room by room, once more shivering and shaking as cold rainwater dripped relentlessly from his hair to mingle with that streaking down his body. Leaving long wet veins and uneven puddles of water on his haphazard journey, his home was distressingly as empty as his mind.

Bolting the doors and dragging himself into the hottest shower he could stand, Danny had searched the tiniest recesses of his brain for a reason. But despite his best efforts, he didn't remember anything after having had a late dinner with his team.

"You don't know if you're sick?" The sound of Steve's voice jolted him back to present. "What does that mean, Danny? How can you not know if you're sick?" The tone was dry but intent to prove to Danny that he had his partner's rapt attention now. Certainly now as Danny eyed the late hour which approached afternoon and he continued to waffle on each and every word which suddenly seemed a chore to force from his mouth.

"Danny, what are you talking about? What's going on?"

"I don't know." Exasperated and bone-weary from a long, stressful morning, Danny rubbed one hand over his face. "I … uh … have a doctor's appointment," he offered lamely. "With Ponch."

The only reason he had the doctor's appointment for that very day was because of his friendship with Doctor Alphonse 'Ponch' Ramirez. Running what was considered a simple pedestrian medical clinic or not, Ponch was a busy man and Danny was also craving privacy; a healthy dose of anonymity. It was why he'd picked the older physician from the start once he'd settled on the idea. So, appointments had been shuffled, hours had been duly shifted, and he'd been fit in as a courtesy.

"What?" Faced with silence again, Steve was on an uncomfortable edge. The case was forgotten, as was the meeting which included a side bar conference call with the Governor. Standing in his office, Steve forgot everything as he honed in on the implications which Danny's voice communicated. Everyone had the occasional doctor's appointment however this was different and Steve was almost afraid to ask. "What kind of appointment? Why Ponch? What's going on with you, Danno?"

"That's just it … I don't know." Heaving in a sigh fraught with worry, he grimaced unhappily before resigning himself to speaking the whole truth. It was too late to turn back and he'd gone down the bumpy path with Steve entirely the wrong way. Danny paused and then stammered inanely when a dark flicker entered his spatial periphery, but once more was gone before he could place it. "Steve, I have an appointment with Ponch because …. because, I lost a few hours and I need his opinion. I don't know what happened …. or, how I wound up …. where I did … and it's not the first time."

It was Steve's turn to be silent. Clearly upset and very flustered, Danny was stammering over his words in discordant spurts. The team trusted Doctor Ramirez, but besides voluntarily looking for help, what Danny was saying seemed impossible and he wasn't sure he heard correctly.

"How exactly do you mean that you lost hours, Danno?" Turning to sink onto the corner of his desk, Steve was baffled. The reverberation of understanding that whatever had happened had occurred at least another time established a strongly worrisome undercurrent tantamount to what he heard in his partner's voice. It was more than easy to hear that Danny was upset and acting completely off his game.

"I was with you last night. We ate at that lousy dive and then went home," Steve cautiously prompted once more. "What happened after that?"

'Yeah," Danny's third mumble of the same tired word had Steve shaking his head in exasperation. His next partial sentence had him stonewalled though when the hollow tone trailed off to nothing. "The last thing I remember is paying the bill at the restaurant… until… well…"

Stunned by the admission and attempting to digest sketchy details, Steve prodded for more information. "Until what, Danno?" Unconsciously whispering, Steve stared blindly out the office window. It had rained all night and the skies were still darkly overcast. He felt the change through the phone even though silence once more reigned for far too long a time.

"Until what?" Steve repeated over an unintelligible mumble eking faintly over the line. Even without seeing his partner, the rise in stress was excruciatingly palpable. But he never anticipated the next words.

"I woke up in my car down by the docks well before dawn. I don't know how long I was there or even how I got there... not really. And don't you dare ask me why," Danny finally ground out. His voice was strained and rife with an angry sense of bewilderment. "Don't ask because I sure as hell don't know."

~ to be continued ~