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Notes

H5O* H5O* H5O* H5O* H5O

Steve was going to kill him.

He'd gone through all phases of melancholy, dangerous, angry and confused with Danny. But this version was by far the worst and Steve was sure, without the shadow of a doubt, that he'd have to kill his partner if he didn't shut up.

"I'm going to die. Just ... admit it."

"You're not going to die, Danny," Steve said for the umpteenth time. He was gruff and curt after having gone down this particular road far too long in as many minutes. "You're just totally worn out and sick. Lay down and go to sleep. You need your rest. Everything seems five times worse when you don't feel well."

"No, I'm dying," Danny moaned, his face burrowed into Steve's chest. "I am. Just shoot me." His voice was hoarse, muffled and full of misery.

Never questioning why they were in Steve's own house, Danny believed that Steve had taken care of all of their attackers. He didn't ask what Steve might have done to them, and Steve didn't offer any explanations. In short, Danny didn't remember anything more and Steve preferred to keep it that way. He didn't ask about his hand or the bandage on Steve's side, but Steve had prudently put on a t-shirt to prevent that subject from resuming. However, as time wore on and his fever began to rise again, Danny had become fidgety, anxious and only able to catnap on the sofa while the storm persisted outside.

He'd also become incredibly verbose; the theme of his single-minded thread stuck on one relentless and unhealthy subject. Dying.

"Danny, stop it. I'm not going to shoot you," Steve replied distractedly. Yet. He chided himself for the thought before sighing loudly as he checked the time and glanced towards a window. There was no light. Nothing. Nearing five o'clock in the morning and it was still pitch as the darkest night outside. The storm was raging on and reports claimed the ceiling had stalled; the hurricane stubborn in dissipating or moving out to sea. He was anxious to get Danny proper care and on the lip of deciding to chance the trip to the hospital in his truck.

"Please ... just shoot me," Danny's muffled voice begged. "Do it."

"Well," Steve chuffed disgustedly as he forcibly untangled his partner from his body, mindful of the bandaged hand, and wholly softening at the glassy fevered shine of his friend's eyes.

Shit, Danny. Completely distraught about what to do, Steve roughly rubbed his hands over his face. He'd run out of ice an hour earlier; the small plastic baggies he'd forced Danny to agree to were now filled with plain water. If not the hospital, Steve saw another cool dousing in the shower on their near horizon and dreaded the very thought even if Danny remained a bit more on the right side of lucid.

"No. I won't do it, Danny. You're going to be fine."

He was positive that Danny had the flu now; rundown yes, and perhaps the very reason he'd opened himself to being this sick. The symptoms were persistent and more flu-like as he considered them. Still mulling the idea of trying for the hospital despite the obvious danger, Steve growled deeply in his throat as Danny batted at his hands for another hug. Whiny and clingy were new and this Danny, he certainly could do without. Those things, added to the negative, mouthy King of Doom, were just too much to contend with. Shooting him seemed like an excellent option to free himself from an overly clingy Williams-gone-mad-with-fever, but Steve fought the illogical urge as Danny re-wrapped his arms around his waist, brushing painfully against the bandaged knife wound.

"Please," the watery voice murmured, swallowed up by the material of his t-shirt. "I'm dying anyway." He shivered incessantly, voice wracked and broken by sickness, fevered heat leeching into Steve non-stop. Truth be told, the situation remained frightening for the both of them and Steve simply didn't want to dwell on the 'what ifs' of his partner's ongoing pleas. Plaintive entreaties that brought with them doubt and so much more fearful indecision.

"No! I am not going to shoot you, Danno!" Steve said adamantly over the top of Danny's head, his hands settling soothingly on his friend's shoulders. They were standing together in the middle of the living room by that point. He'd intercepted Danny's erratic stagger up from the sofa. Unable to explain where he thought he'd be going, he was bereft of his senses, miserable and reluctant to rest.

"Besides, you can't die yet," Steve added as the muffled complaints continued on. 'Though, yeah, maybe I would like to shoot you right about now,' he kidded himself silently.

"Why ... not?" He almost didn't hear the query. And Steve was sure that Danny was just talking to talk now. Based on his tone of voice alone, Steve knew that this endless circle of questions and answers was just going to be that ... endless. He could almost place a sure bet that Danny had stopped listening to him a long time ago.

"Because Charlie needs you," he stated blandly. "You can't die because Charlie needs you. All right? Not to mention Gracie. So let me go, lay the hell down and just shut up. Please."

Over-tired and stressed about what he could do next, Steve said it all without thinking and much too blandly, but he was at wits-end. He was wrong, too, because Danny was most certainly listening. In fact, his partner was hanging on to every syllable he uttered. The error of his off-hand comments was immediately apparent as Danny stiffened in his arms.

Shit. What Steve had managed to do with that not-so-simple, raw barrage of words was to open an entirely different can of worms.

"Danny, I didn't mean it that way," he quickly insisted. But the damage had been done and Danny was off and running down a new path of the same, tired road.

"Charlie. Oh God, Steve," Danny bemoaned into his chest. "What am I going to do? I can't die now! Charlie ... he needs me. I'm the only one who can fix him. I can't die yet!"

"Daniel! You. Are. Not. Going. To. Die! You're not!" Steve practically shouted, his moment of empathy briefly fading as Danny escalated all over again. He argued his flare of frustrated temper, appeasing himself with the fact that Danny simply wasn't himself. He was barely in his right mind and so Steve managed to get his voice back under control as Danny stared beseechingly up at him.

"Just ... please, Danno," he said after a steadying breath or two. "Trust me. Things are going to be okay. I'm going to get you to the hospital and they'll fix you up. You'll feel better in no time."

"Are you sure? Suppose they can't ... suppose I'm just too sick?" This time, Danny didn't mention Charlie by name. He let his fear hang right out there in the open and Steve uselessly shook his head, at a loss of what to do or say.

God, - sick or not - he was really going to have to kill him after all. Even if Steve took the full blame for instigating this latest rant; even if he hadn't meant to sound so churlish and insensitive, the King of Doom was back in all its gloomy, melodramatic glory.

"Danno, please," Steve whispered again as he dragged in a lungful of air that bespoke of all his own weary frustrations and silent fears.

Suppose Danny was right and not exaggerating his fevered demons?

The heat emanating from his friend's body compounded just how very sick he was - truly sick and incredibly worried about his son. Too many things had been piled up on Danny and still, he forged on to spite himself. The evidence of that very fact was right there in front of both of them and Steve changed gears entirely.

"I'm sorry," Steve apologized softly. "I'm sorry ... I am ... I didn't mean it, Danny." He rubbed circles over Danny's back while he bent his head down to whisper one lasting promise in his ear. A promise that Steve took very seriously and which was whispered in its absolute truth. "I know that you're not going to die because I'm not going to let you. I'd never let you."

~ to be continued ~