While Danny showered, Steve brought him the small suitcase Danny kept at his house containing a couple changes of clothing and a few toiletries for cases such as this. As Danny let the hot water cascade over his body, he leaned forward, right hand on the tiled wall in front of him to steady himself.

"Left your stuff in my old room, D," called Steve from the partway open bathroom door.

"Thanks," Danny mumbled, unable to make his voice get any louder.

His world. All his worlds. Whatever they were, whether dream or real or truly other lives, were going to shit. Here it was three-thirty in the morning and he was wide awake and in the shower because this particular reality had him as lost and confused as the dreams of Hawaii had when he'd been so sure he was on the Moon.

Everything here felt real. The tile was cool beneath the palm of his hand. The water was as hot as he could stand it as it poured over him, plastering his hair to his head and the sides of his face before sliding down his neck, shoulders, back, chest, arms, ass, legs. It felt real.

When he'd grabbed Steve's arms…when he'd been talking with Steve just now in his old room…he'd been able to smell Steve. That musky sleep-warm scent that was simply his partner had permeated his senses as Steve tried to steady him, ground him, hold him here in this particular reality that could simply be nothing more than yet another figment of Danny's apparently overactive and very fertile imagination.

Yet when he'd been on the Moon it'd felt just as real. He remembered the smell of the coffee when he'd walked into their small bullpen at the Five-0 Moonbase. He remembered the ride in the transport, Steve blasting the Carpenters from his mp3 flash drive. He felt, even now, the arms of his eleven-year old daughter wrapping around him and squeezing tightly.

But the accident in the Camaro had been painfully, horribly real as well. The agony when, upside-down in the car, Steve had reached out and touched his forearm. The blinding white that confronted him in the ambulance, sirens piercing his skull, the voices of Jo and the male medic driving.

Even not feeling anything, as had been the case when he'd awakened in the hospital to find Rachel and Grace there crying, had been tangible. Not being able to tell other than through sight that his little girl was sobbing into his belly, not being able to feel her grasp his hand and kiss the back of it.

Danny shot to a straight-up standing position, eyes wide. He backed out of the spray a bit as the water blasted his face. Grace had kissed the back of his hand.

So had Steve.

Steve.

That's not something Steve would do. Ever. Ever ever ever. Danny didn't care if the two of them were going undercover as gay lovers somewhere, Steve would never pull something like that out and use it. Not on Danny.

His daughter's and his partner's words had been the same, though, with that gesture. There was something Danny was supposed to do. Something he was supposed to stop, or put right. And both of them had said he could do it, that they knew he could.

But what the fuck was it?

Danny balled his hands into fists and pounded one of them on the tiled wall to his right.

This reality he was in now seemed real enough. He remembered renting the little one-bedroom apartment in the complex at the end of Kulawea Street in Halawa that Steve had said he was too tired to drive to last night. He remembered showing it off to Steve three days after moving in, happily reverse-ranting about the fact that there was no black mold, that it had windows and that his neighbors weren't every kind of deadbeat known to man.

He remembered Steve letting him take point on the case that had begun at six yesterday morning wherein the body of a man had been found in the channel not five hundred yards out from the small jut of land that was being leveled for Stan's brand-new fancy office building in Honolulu. The body had been very puffed up and warped from having been in the water for a good two weeks, Max had estimated.

Then as divers searched the channel for any clues as to the body's identity, a second body had turned up, tethered to a metal rung of one of the channel's maintenance ladders just southeast of Stan's land. So they'd gone to Stan's and Rachel's home and asked Stan a bunch of questions and—

Danny swallowed hard. That's exactly what they'd done on the Moon, more or less. Including the fact that the faces were both so distorted they were difficult to identify. One had been tethered to the railing just outside Stan's new offices while the other had been hiding in the back of Steve and Danny's transport, killed by Steve himself after stabbing Danny in the ribs.

They'd gone to Stan's.

And Grace had told them about a rock the head of the construction company had given her. A rock that proved to be laced with an element that was definitely valuable enough to kill for. Could it…could that be similar to this case in the Here and Now? Virgil Gabbana, the damn name was the same, though the company he owned was named slightly differently. And he was on his way here, just as the Gabbana Danny remembered from the Moon was on his way to Hawaii.

He quickly shampooed his hair and scrubbed himself clean with the bar of Bubble Shack Hawaiian Soap company soap Steve had. It smelled like…well, earthy, was the only way he could describe it. At least Steve didn't go for one of those god-awful floral scents or something similarly unmanly.

After toweling himself dry and securing the towel around his waist, he walked the short distance from the bathroom to Steve's childhood bedroom to find his suitcase on the bed waiting for him. He stopped and stared at it, able to recall precisely the day six weeks earlier he'd packed it and thrown it into the trunk of the Camaro, knowing the team was on a case that'd keep them out all hours.

He remembered.

He remembered.

Danny pulled the towel off and opened the suitcase.

He also remembered the day Rachel told him she and Stan were taking the kids to the Moon. His disbelief. His surety that she'd been pulling his leg and fixing to break the other one all at the same time.

Walking into the bullpen, gathering his team together and telling them. Two days later, the team telling him they were coming with him, Max and Kamekona and Malia included.

Just like that.

Your relationship with Grace. You want to be close to her.

And Five-0…they'd followed.

Why wouldn't I follow you, Danny? You're my best friend, and my partner.

But…to the Moon? You didn't follow even your best friend out into space when you had your own life, your own home, your own job! People just didn't do things like that! Danny's own flesh-and-blood relatives hadn't followed him to Hawaii, not even Matt who, before the whole FBI fiasco, he'd been so close to…he hadn't followed Danny.

Best friends and relatives moved away all the time. Yet seven people had followed Daniel Williams to the Moon?

Something inside you is dead, non-functional. Something that has to do with Steve, something no longer working right.

Had Malia been right? Was Danny really and truly belonging here, right where he was in Steve's house, in Steve's old room, working on a murder investigation tied to Stan Edwards, and had only been dreaming about the Moon because something inside him was broken?

The Camaro.

The car accident.

Steve dying.

Danny dying.

Dying without being able to say good-bye.

The Moon.

Steve had followed him and gotten his entire ohana to do the same…all the way to the Moon.

Steve opened his house to him, here and now, giving him a place to crash.

You need to do a better job of picking your friends.

Danny pulled his button-down shirt on and began buttoning it from the third one on down.

Tell me about it. I picked you, didn't I?

"Hey," came a soft voice from the bedroom doorway.

Danny turned around just as he finished buttoning the last one on his shirt, then started tucking the shirt into his still-open dress pants. "Hey," he said, without meeting McGarrett's eyes.

"I ran out and got you a cup of Starbucks," Steve said, holding out a large cup of coffee. "Just the way you like it."

Danny zipped and buttoned his pants, moved forward and reached out to take the cup from Steve's hand. "Thanks, man." Then he stopped, cup halfway to his lips, and looked up at his partner. "You went out and got me coffee."

Steve's eyebrows went up. He glanced at the cup then back at Danny. "Yeah?"

Danny turned and set the cup down on top of the dresser, then faced Steve again. "Tell me something." He rubbed a hand along his jawline. "What would you do if I told you Grace was leaving Hawaii? Going somewhere far away and that I had to follow?"

Steve swallowed hard, folded his arms over his chest. "You, uh…trying to tell me that?"

"No. No, no," Danny replied, waving his hands and noting Steve's face moving from…what the hell kind of Face had that been, anyway?...to what he'd definitely categorize as Relieved Face. "I'm just asking, what would you do?"

Steve leaned against the doorframe, trying – and failing – to appear nonchalant. He shrugged his free shoulder. "What could I do? Where Grace goes, you follow, right?"

"Right, but you wouldn't, uh…" Danny scratched at the stubble on his right cheek. "I don't know, you wouldn't think, I don't know, that you could, uh…" His voice trailed off. He felt his cheeks pink up. He flapped a hand at Steve. "Never mind."

Steve's whole look seemed to soften a little. "You asking me if I'd follow? What are we, married?" But it was a question asked with no hint of teasing or disbelief.

"Never mind, come on, let's get to work."

"At four-thirty in the morning, Danny? You?"

Danny gave him a nasty look, picked up his coffee and followed his partner down the steps and out of the house.

He was halfway to the passenger side of the Camaro when he froze mid-step, nearly falling flat on his face from lack of balance. "No," he said, staring at the car.

Steve was at the driver's side door already, hand poised to open it. "No?"

Danny shook his head, turned to look at his partner as the very first rays of light began peeking up over the eastern horizon. "We can't be in this car, Steve."

"Your nightmares?"

Danny nodded. His hand held the coffee cup tight…too tight. The edges of it began to cave.

Steve's phone rang. He never took his eyes off Danny as he pulled it out, frowned at the face of it, and thumbed the call open. "McGarrett." He listened, then said, "Yes, Mr. Gabbana, my partner and I can swing by and pick you up outside the terminal." He paused, stared at Danny a few more seconds. "We'll be in a dark blue full-sized pickup."

With that, Steve ended the call, pocketed Danny's keys and pivoted to head for his truck. Danny hurried after him. "You believe me?" he asked, no longer squeezing the cup too tight.

Steve stopped on the other side of the truck's hood. He leaned his elbows on it and looked thoughtfully at Danny. "I honestly don't know. But there's no reason to tempt Fate, is there?" He grinned, winked and got into the driver's seat.

He started the truck just as Danny opened the passenger side door.

That is why all the girls in town
Follow you all around

"Jesus Christ, what is it with you and that goddamn song?" Danny groused. "You even played it in our transport on the Moon!" he finished as he climbed into the passenger seat.

"The Moon, Danny?" Steve shifted the truck into Drive as Danny closed the door and buckled his seatbelt. Then it was like a light bulb went on over his head. So brightly Danny almost swore he could see it. "Is that why you asked me what I'd do if you said you had to leave? Did you dream that Grace went to the Moon, you had to follow her and I followed you?"

Heat rose from Danny's chest straight up his neck until it flushed his face crimson. Christ, when you put it that way it sounded really fucking stupid. Like they were…lovers or something, rather than work partners and best friends and…oh, God, did he feel like a dumbass.

Steve, with that silly little sideways half-smile he often enjoyed pulling out, waited until Danny finally looked him in the eye before morphing the thing into an all-out grin. "Sounds like fun. You let me know when Grace tells you she's moving to the Moon." He took his foot off the brake and hit the gas.

"Sounds like fun, he says. Steven, there is no air on the Moon! There are no beaches! There's no surf or sand! There's only goddamn Moondust and let me tell you, my friend, that gets into way more places than sand could ever reach."

Steve laughed out loud as he pulled onto Piikoi Street. "You really okay?"

"I don't know," Danny sighed, then took a sip of his coffee and put the cup down in the cup holder. "I'm just really glad we're not in the Camaro right now."

The responding smile from Steve was wiped clean from his face within a handful of seconds…replaced by a look of horror and honest-to-God fear. Danny had just enough time to look forward out the windshield before it struck and he felt the truck spinning out of control.

Ah-ah-ah-ah-ahhhhhh Close to you

"No!" Danny yelled.

Ah-ah-ah-ah-ahhhhhh Close to you

But this time he wasn't going down without a goddamn fight. Danny unbuckled his seatbelt, reached across the center console, grabbed the steering wheel with his right hand and Steve's forearm with his left as Steve pumped the brakes.

It worked. Danny's grip helped Steve steady the truck. It stopped.

The flipped gasoline-carrying semi that had sideswiped their front bumper was still twirling on the street and headed directly for the truck.

"Out!" Danny yelled. "Now!"

He didn't have time to look and make sure Steve had gotten out. All he could do was fling his door open, jump out and run like a bat out of Hell. He heard the semi hit Steve's truck. He heard and felt the heat of the resulting explosion on his back.

He screeched to a halt in the damp grass on the side of the road, pivoted and saw a giant fireball leap into the air. Then a second explosion. The truck was completely engulfed in flames. Danny ran toward it.

"Steve!"

He skirted around to the left, hoping…praying. There was no sign of his partner.

"No, no, noSteve!"