A/N: This one was inspired by a couple of things: 1) Gabrielle Day's Because You're Always Right features a chapter where Danny gets sick, and I sort of put my own spin on that idea with Kono instead of Steve helping out, and 2) Scott Caan actually knows how to surf and was a skater b/c they were individual sports and it pissed off his dad (although I would honestly do my dead-level best to avoid pissing off James Caan. The man is freaking terrifying!) and I kind of integrated some of that into Danny's character here. Thanks for the reviews and sorry for the long wait, school has been insane. I just finished a big exam and I've started a project where I'm not speaking for a month, which actually makes writing a little harder. Enjoy!
"Holy crap," Kono breathed as she pulled up to Danny's apartment building. The place looked as though it might collapse at any moment. She suddenly felt grateful her dad made her save all that money when she was on the pro tour. She could at least afford a studio apartment with actual air conditioning.
She climbed the moldy stairs to the second story and walked around until she found Danny's apartment. She peered through the screens and saw a mound on the couch covered with a mint green afghan.
"Danny?" she called through the screens.
A low grumble was all the reply she received.
"Grace told me you were sick at her lesson today," she continued. "Are you okay?"
"I have the flu. Go away!" the mint green mass replied gruffly.
"How do you have the flu? Didn't you get vaccinated?"
He groaned loudly and rolled over to look at her from the couch. "No."
"Danny, we're around criminals all the time. They're not exactly the most health conscious people. And germs incubate more quickly in a tropical climate."
"Enough with the biology lesson, Kono! I don't—" He cut himself off running to his tiny bathroom.
Kono's face scrunched up in disgust when she heard him wretch followed by a fit of deep-chested coughs. She smirked to herself and pulled her cell phone out of her pocket.
He rested his bare back against the cool porcelain of his tub. His stomach was restless, his chest felt like a brick was sitting on it, his head was pounding, and he ached all over. He heard someone moving around outside the bathroom door. He silently hoped it was Kono because he knew he couldn't fight off a home invader.
"What are you doing?" he asked as he shuffled toward his couch.
"I'm looking for a bag—Oh. My. God."
"What?" Danny asked, twisting around to look at her.
"You have a skateboard?" she asked, holding up the battered piece of shaped wood.
"So?"
"The idea of surfing horrifies you," she reminded him. "They're related sports!"
Danny covered his head with his afghan and said, "Go away, Kono."
He heard her walk to the other side of his apartment and then shuffle through more of his stuff. He felt her tugging at his afghan as she said, "Come on, Danny. Put this shirt on."
"No," he replied with a child-like defiance that surprised even him.
"Danny, you cannot sleep off the flu. People die from the flu. You have a daughter!"
He started to reply when his lungs seized and violent coughs wracked his body. As Kono looked at him, she wasn't sure what bothered her more: the violence of his coughing fit, or the uneven, jagged scars on his right shoulder blade.
Danny breathed in raggedly and took the t-shirt from her hands. "I'm not going to the hospital," he said, pulling the shirt over his head.
Kono released a sigh of relief and handed him a pair of Converse she found on opposite sides of the apartment. "I'm not taking you to the hospital," she assured him. "I'm taking you to my parents' house."
"Uh…why?"
"My mom is an R.N. She'll make sure you're okay."
Danny shrugged and slowly stood to his feet, grabbing his afghan. Kono vehemently shook her head and said, "You are not taking that with you. It's full of germs and it's disgusting."
"My gran made this for me when I had chicken pox," Danny protested, his eyes wide with hurt.
"Okay, fine," Kono relented, taking the afghan from his hands, "but I am going to wash this."
"Wow."
"What?"
"You just looked like my mom right there."
Her mouth formed into a frown and her gaze toward him narrowed. He weakly grinned and said, "Now you look like Steve."
Kono rolled her eyes and took comfort in the fact that he was at least smiling. "Come on," she said as she gently pulled on his elbow.
"I have the flu. I can still walk," Danny said, shaking off her arm.
Kono groaned and shook her head. Danny was asleep in the passenger seat by the time she pulled up to her parents' house. He only stirred when she opened the passenger side door.
"Don't even think about helping me out of this car," he told her groggily.
Kono responded with more eye rolling.
When they reached the entryway inside the house, Danny was met by a smaller version of Kono with shorter hair and a few minor wrinkles around her eyes.
"Danny, this is my mom, Iolani. Mom, this is my partner, Danny Williams."
Iolani Kalakaua unceremoniously placed the back of her hand on Danny's forehead, startling him visibly. "When was the last time you bathed?" she asked frankly.
"Uh…"
"Go take a hot shower; so hot it almost burns," Iolani ordered. "Kono, give him his things."
Kono shrugged the bag off her shoulder and passed it to him.
"Where'd you find my duffel?" Danny asked, having not really noticed it before.
"In your kitchen," she replied, grinning sardonically, "which is where most people keep their duffel bags."
"Smart ass," he muttered, eliciting a sharp glare from Iolani, which just made Kono grin even wider.
As her mother led Danny to the bathroom, Kono took the afghan draped over one arm through the house and onto the lanai where the deep washbasin was located. She ran just enough lukewarm water into it to cover the afghan before she found the gentle detergent. She poured some in and let it all soak as she took off her watch and pushed up her sleeves. She was suddenly grateful Aunty May had shown her how to gently hand wash an item when she was nine. She'd hate to destroy something Danny obviously loved so much.
She felt a presence watching her and smiled up at her mother standing in the back doorway.
"So…the first man you bring home in five years is a sick haole," Iolani said, smiling as she leaned against the doorframe.
"I didn't 'bring him home,'" Kono protested, gently wringing the dirty water of the afghan. "He's sick. He lives alone. You're a nurse, and you actually like taking care of sick cops. That's how you met Dad, after all."
"He wasn't sick. He had a bullet in his arm," her mother reminded her. "Though I suppose for a cop, it's really not that different."
Kono shrugged and smiled, pulling the plug on the washbasin. Her mother watched her as she wrung out the last of the dirty water from the afghan. She ran the water for the rinse as her daughter replaced the plug.
"What's the story with this old thing?"
"His gran made it for him when he had the chicken pox, so I'm guessing it's close to thirty years old," Kono explained, taking a closer look at the afghan in her hands. It was actually a pleasing spearmint color and the crocheted details were intricate. Kono could only imagine the hours Danny's grandmother spent making it.
"Men like to think they're not sentimental, but they're worse than any woman I've ever known," Iolani mused.
Kono nodded her agreement as she and her mother hung the afghan on the line to dry.
"There's a good breeze today," Iolani said. "It should dry quickly."
"Good. He'll probably want to sleep with it. Big baby," Kono said, sitting down in one of the chairs on the lanai.
The house always had an interesting view. From the front yard, you could see down to the beach. Ko'olau looked like it rose right out of the backyard from a distance. Kono stared up at the cliffs as her mother brought her a bottle of water and sat down next to her in the other chair.
"You like him, don't you?"
"Well, yeah," Kono replied hesitantly, knowing that question was loaded.
"Is he a good man?"
"Yes, Mom, he's a very good man," Kono assured her. "He moved five thousand miles just so he could be with his daughter a few hours a week. I can't even imagine doing that."
"You've been farther away from home than five thousand miles."
"Yeah, but I never gave up everything I'd ever known, pulled up my roots, and moved to what must seem like a foreign country."
"It was a foreign country, you know."
"I'm aware, Mom," Kono said, rolling her eyes and shaking her head. "I just think he made an amazing sacrifice, and I don't think I could do it."
"You really like him, don't you?" her mother said suggestively.
"I look up to him," Kono corrected to which Iolani chuckled. "What?" she asked.
"You can't look up to him. He's shorter than you."
"Mom!" Kono exclaimed, trying to sound affronted though she laughed right along with her mother.
Danny didn't know how long he stayed in the shower. His lungs and head felt almost clear and the muscles that had grown tense from all the coughing and heaving started to relax. He finally got out of the shower and toweled off the excess water. He wiped the steam from the mirror and blinked at his reflection. He was ghostly pale and just a little red around the edges. He took a deep breath and was more than a little relieved when he didn't have to cough it up. He pulled on the sweatpants and t-shirt Kono packed in his duffel. He figured he should feel weird about the whole thing, but he was really too tired to care.
He shuffled out of the bathroom and into the bedroom to which it was connected. Kono's mom had closed the drapes and cracked the windows to let in the breeze. She'd also turned down the sheets and quilt on the old, iron-frame bed. He just climbed in when a soft knock sounded on the bedroom door before it opened just a crack.
"You still awake?" Kono asked, poking her head into the room.
"Yeah, I just got out of the shower."
"Good," Kono said, coming in with a steaming mug in her hands. "Mom made you her own special get-well tea."
Danny took the mug from her as she sat down at the foot of the bed. He was a little suspicious since she was smirking at him like she had a secret, but the warmth of the tea was far too inviting. The bitterness of the tea and the tang of the lemon juice were overshadowed by a sweet, biting, burning taste. He was proud that the surprise didn't make him gag and spit up the beverage.
"Uh, is there rum in this?"
"Yep," she replied, giggling slightly.
"You put rum in your tea, but you can't handle more than a couple of shots of Irish whiskey?"
"Mom put rum in your tea, not mine."
Danny was glad he could finally laugh without wanting to cough up his lungs. He shook his head and continued sipping his tea. Kono rested her back against the footboard and pulled her feet up onto the bed. After a few minutes of comfortable silence, she took in a deep breath and said, "Okay, this is killing me: why do you have a skateboard?"
"I am a thirty-five-year-old man. Why is it so weird that I have a skateboard? Everybody had a skateboard when I was a kid," he explained between sips. "We didn't have much surf in Jersey, but we had a hell of a lot of concrete. I haven't skated since I was about fifteen, though."
"Then why did you keep the board? Why did you bring it with you from Jersey?" Kono asked, her brow furrowed in curiosity.
"Um…" Danny began, resting his head against the wall.
"Come on, spill," Kono ordered brightly.
"I guess I was going through a phase, and I hated my parents for no good reason, and I skated because it wasn't a team sport, which totally pissed off my dad, and it's a part of me," he replied. "I can't really let it go."
Kono smiled in understanding. "Were you any good?"
"I only broke my arm twice, so I guess I wasn't terrible."
"You'd probably be a pretty good surfer."
"Don't even think about it, Kono."
"Think about what?"
"Getting me in the water, because it's never going to happen voluntarily," he told her, setting the empty mug aside.
"Chicken."
"That is so not even going to work right now," he replied, settling down into the covers.
"Hey, Danny," she said more quietly, "how did you get those scars on the back of your shoulder?"
His blue eyes looked back at her with an emotion she could only identify as sorrow. "Ask me again sometime," he said, barely above a whisper.
"Okay," she replied with equal volume as she stood up from the bed. She picked up the mug and quietly slipped out of the room. She put the cup in the sink and went out onto the lanai to check on Danny's afghan. The breeze left it dry and smelling of the sweet, Hawaiian air. She took it down and gently crept back into Danny's room. His breathing had already taken on the steady rhythm of sleep. Kono gently draped the afghan over his shoulders and Danny pulled it up around his neck. Kono had to cover her mouth with her hand to keep from giggling. She pulled her cell phone out of her back pocket and took a picture. She could use it to blackmail him later if she ever needed to.
"Are you gonna sleep in your old room tonight?" her mother asked her quietly when Kono was once again in the hall.
"No, I need to go home and walk my dog," she answered. "Give Daddy a kiss for me when he gets home, okay?"
"Okay," Iolani said, pulling her daughter into a tight hug. "Don't forget to take care of yourself while you're taking care of everyone else."
"I love you, too, Mom," Kono said, smiling.
