A/N: I hope this isn't horrible…
"Can we talk?" he asks when Linda has finished putting away the groceries.
She sits down in his empty wheelchair, facing him, and palpates his foot gently. "That's usually my line. Have you been staying off this? It's swollen."
He stares at his hands. He may have put his foot on the ground a few times while he was crutching around the living room earlier…
"You told me why you left—because you were mad—but you never gave me a chance to say how that made me feel."
"Because you talk about your feelings so often," she scoffs.
He scrubs his face. "Dammit, Linda, I'm trying here! I've been trying, ever since you got shot…hell, ever since I started talking with Doc after Corporal Russell…"
He still can't say the words.
She puts an ice pack on his ankle. "You're right. I'm sorry. I'm listening now. Why didn't you say anything Friday?"
He blows out a breath. "Because I was in pain, I was humiliated after you left me in the shower…and I was exhausted after Doc did his level best to make me have a flashback!"
"What do you mean Doc was trying to make you have a flashback?"
"He was…asking tough questions about Fallujah."
He wiggles his toes.
The movement sends a shooting pain through his leg, and he does it again, glad for the distraction.
Before he has found the word to talk about his feelings, she asks quietly, "How was me leaving any different than you leaving a few years back, when you were pissed because I wouldn't let you talk to your suspect and then he died?"
He wasn't expecting that, and he jerks away from her hands on his leg.
"I…I came back," he says lamely.
"So did I."
He shrugs. "I didn't leave you helpless and naked in the bathtub."
"Danny, I'm sorry about that! I told you—I was afraid I'd say something I'd regret! And you weren't so helpless after all—you got all the way back in bed by yourself!"
He scrubs his face. This is getting a little more into his feelings than he wants, but maybe she'll get his point.
"Linda, you know how important partners are—both in the Corps, and in the NYPD."
She nods, looking confused.
"You're my partner. You're the best partner a cop—any cop, but especially me—could have. And the one thing you never do—and I'm sorry I did it a few years ago—is you never leave your partner alone in a firefight. And that's what you did Friday. And…"
He stares at the cast—which might as well be a bucket of cement—on his foot/leg. "After you left, I hit my leg on the edge of the tub until the pain was so bad it pushed me straight into a flashback to that night in Fallujah."
She gasps, but he still doesn't look at her. "Why, Danny?"
"Because if I was having a flashback, then I couldn't think about the fact that my partner—my wife—left me with a broken ankle in the tub. Do you know how many falls happen in bathrooms? I could've slipped, broken a hip or something!"
He knows he's being a bit melodramatic, but maybe she'll get the point—without him having to discuss his fears of abandonment—the ones he's never told anyone, even Linda or Doc, about.
She pulls him close and kisses him. "I'm sorry I left. I won't do it again. I promise."
He leans into the kiss until he's no longer aware of his throbbing cement-bound ankle. "I love you."