'I have been made whole
Yet the world has torn me apart.
I walked a million miles
But honey, I don't know where to start.'
"Heaven (All Around You)" ~ Apollo Ltd.
~OL~
The fact that this biopsy got rushed through proper channels both reassures and terrifies Danny. In exactly equivalent proportions.
They're taking it seriously, that's the bright side.
And Grace is always telling her father to see the bright side. That he's too pessimistic and it'll impede his health one of these days. Danny would be lying if he said hoping for the best comes naturally, but for his daughter he'll try anything.
Somehow this offers no comfort when he enters the outpatient wing of the hospital after parking the car and other families waiting for procedures notice his arrival. This is normal; people look around when they're bored and someone as frazzled in appearance as Danny power walks his way inside.
But then the noticing becomes grimacing. Many glance up and offer sympathetic looks. Some outright whisper. One puts down her magazine and gives him a wet-eyed nod. A not so far off cousin to the look Steve's SEAL support group buddies give him sometimes.
Danny has no idea what the reason is for this attention, but it makes his neck flush while he hurries for Steve's exam room at the end of the hall.
They spent hours at 'Steve's spot' on the bench, quietly chatting about their hopes for the future, whatever it brings, and then sitting in comfortable silence. A good silence. A silence that they could recline in like a cozy pillow.
They watched the stars disappear one by one, replaced by a buttery slice of risen sun.
Steve had looked at Danny for a long minute, and when Danny asked what he was thinking, all he said was, "you shine bright, Danno."
Some backburner part of Danny's thoughts is still trying to figure out if this is a compliment or not.
Both men decided to forgo temptation—it was a near miss when Steve seriously debated walking into the hospital in his pajamas—and head home to change before coming to Steve's appointment.
"It doesn't matter anyway," he argued the whole way. "They're just going to put me in a gown once I get there. May as well be comfy."
"It's the principle of the thing. You want to look like you care." Danny squeezed Steve's knee while, for once, driving.
He finds Steve right where he left him, that sterile white room, only now he is indeed wearing that 'itchy monstrosity' underneath a soft blue blanket. Steve notices Danny's puzzled expression when he opens the door.
Steve shrugs from his supine position on the bed. "The nurse said I looked cold."
He doesn't, but one pass of Danny's eyes and he knows why she threw the blanket over Steve. The Johnny gown is laced in the front instead of the back, to allow Dr. Nassir access to the dart of pink scar tissue peeking at the base of Steve's pectorals. He's still wearing the sweatpants he came in.
It's not cold making him shiver.
No matter how much time goes by, Danny can't bring himself to touch the incision site. Last time he did, four years ago in the passenger seat of a plane, it was to staunch heavy bleeding. Bleeding that by all accounts and statistics should have been fatal. Sometimes he patted Steve on the chest through his bulletproof vest during a case, sure. He'll rest his ear or his forehead on it.
But he can't bear to feel the scar tissue under his fingertips.
"You want me in here for this or privacy?" Danny asks.
Steve's brow hunkers low.
"Alright, alright." Danny waves a hand to erase the betrayed expression. He eases into the seat by Steve's bed. "I'm not leaving. Calm down, John Wick."
A lilt sinks around the edge of Steve's mouth, discomfort. Probably from being in such a vulnerable position for something he has absolutely zero control over. Hence the blanket.
"How are you feeling about all this?" Steve asks it without prompt, not even looking in Danny's direction but rather the door.
"That's my line." Danny snorts. "Though I do wish I knew why everyone out in the waiting room looked like I was about to be eaten."
Steve tears his eyes from the apparently enthralling view of the door. He's got a matching lilt on the other side of his mouth now. "Oh, the doc and I got talking about the bomb, how I was injured in the line of duty. Radiation and all that, which she wanted to know the story of just in case. The people out there probably overheard."
It's not a novelty, not even a little bit after how much Danny's been thinking about that day in the jungle. But it still donkey kicks him in the teeth.
Danny stands again, ready to pace a hole in the floor. His feet carry him to a surgical tray and back. It's full of sharp, pointy things and long needles that remind him of the bone marrow extraction.
His pulse skips a few more beats.
"Hey, you're making me dizzy."
"Sorry," says Danny, though he doesn't stop pacing.
"Would you relax?"
"That's also my line." Some emotional support he is. Disgusted with himself, Danny drops back down in the chair. "It might be fine, right? This could just be one big misunderstanding and you're totally fine."
Steve's eyes recenter on the door. There's something flinty in them, something Danny used to see in the midst of dangerous cases.
Abruptly, it clicks.
"Steve." Danny laces his fingers through Steve's. The bedrail is in the way, but if he slides his hand through the metal bars at just the right angle, it fits. Both of their hands are cold, as if Danny's got a sympathy case of the shivers. "We're okay. Nobody is doing anything you don't want. To you…to us."
Danny might be an anxious mess on these types of days, but Steve's not immune to nerves. His tend to manifest as defensiveness or the need to control every variable. At best, Danny used to get an arm thrown across his chest in Steve's manic quest of using protective behaviour to satiate fear.
At worst, well. They wear the scars to show Steve's worst use of that coping mechanism.
Steve finally stops guarding the door through sheer force of will and eye contact.
"Nothing," Danny reiterates. "If you're uncomfortable with something during the procedure, tell her to stop and she will."
"It's not just that."
Danny almost makes a jab about soap opera heart-to-hearts in hospitals, but Steve's eyes are on his face now, too earnest for a joke. They've had a lot of bedside confessionals in hospitals over the years, too many.
"Okay." Danny jostles their hands a little. "What's up?"
"I want…"
This mewled admission, tiny and aborted as it is, wrenches at Danny's insides. And he's not the one lying on a bed about to be biopsied. Three times.
The tender whisper falls from Danny's lips almost without his consent. "Want what, baby?"
Steve wrinkles his nose, swallowing. They've danced around really talking about the diagnosis; Danny knows this, knows all those counsellors say it's not healthy. Today, they don't have the luxury of pretending it doesn't exist or keeping themselves busy and distracted.
The extended eye contact isn't a new thing for Steve, as a man who spent and continues to spend a lot of time gazing at people he loves, but how broken open he looks is.
Danny leans forward on his elbows.
"Huh? What's going on in that head of yours?"
Steve's lips twist in perfect sync with Danny's stomach. "I want to spend Christmas with you."
"Oh Steve." The twist ends in a spectacular wringing out of all the affection inside Danny, mingling with heartache in a caustic rosé. His fingers tighten. "No matter what today's results show—you're going to live until Christmas."
"No, I mean…"
Danny's not on his game today and thus it takes two more blinks of Steve's ridiculously long eyelashes for him to understand.
When he does—that tsunami slams into Danny's body, every inch of it. He vibrates with the utter need to reach out and connect with Steve, even though they're already holding hands and he lost any shred of playacting he's tougher than he is years ago, at least with Steve. There's no bravado between them anymore.
This is the reason he stands. Takes in the shiny cast of Steve's eyes. And bends down to kiss him on that stupid, messy head of his.
"I want to spend more Christmases with you too," Danny whispers against Steve's hair.
A long arm loops around his back and tugs him closer, so that Danny's essentially hiding his face in Steve's hair. He hasn't bothered to shower, so it smells like sweat and motor oil. It's the most comforting thing Danny can imagine right now. The arm at his back is rebar tight, so tight that Danny would have to fight hard to free himself, but he doesn't.
"I just don't get it." Steve is still in the bargaining stage of this. "If the cancer's spread so far, why wouldn't I have more symptoms? Felt nauseous, something."
Danny taps at the arm around his ribs and with reluctance it slithers away. He doesn't release Steve's hand when he moves back a bit, thinking about those vomiting episodes over the summer. Maybe they missed the writing on the wall.
"Are you tired?"
Steve splutters, then goes quiet. "Yeah, actually. These last few weeks I've felt…fat."
Danny's can't help a small laugh. "Fat? You?"
"Fat like I weigh more than I should. Like I'm dragging around weights tied to my whole body." Steve drops his arm with a flop, as if to demonstrate.
Fingernails bite the skin of Danny's other hand, clenched into a hidden fist.
A partnership means carrying your person when they can't carry themselves. Danny refuses to drop his partner, even if optimism isn't in his wheelhouse.
"Steve?"
Baleful eyes track back to Danny's face.
Danny makes sure he has Steve's full attention before saying what he needs to. "We don't know that this is terminal. Okay? In a way, I don't care what this biopsy shows."
"You don't?" Steve sounds beaten and they haven't even started.
"No. Because it doesn't change the fact that we are going to have the best Christmas either of us has experienced and enjoy time with family. That was the plan before and that's the plan now."
"The plan, huh?" That lilt relaxes, flipping back up where it's supposed to be. "I thought you didn't like my plans."
"Well." Danny sits back down. "This one is your best yet, so I can't fault a good holiday schedule."
The banter is wonky and stiff by their standards but its familiarity, along with Steve's smile, allows Danny enough leeway to let go of his fist. His palm throbs.
A local anaesthetic takes longer to affect Steve's tissue than it should. Much longer than it's ever taken. When Dr. Nassir herself comes in to administer it, along with oncology specialist Dr. Pallini, they exchange a quick look that does nothing for Danny's blood pressure.
"You're his medical consent," Nassir says to Danny, upon seeing the two men's clasped fingers and hesitant glances. "I actually prefer that you're in the room while we do this."
The assurance flies right over Danny's head. His eyes are all for Steve at first, then the trio of long needles they prep inside miniscule pipets. Pallini also preps three petri dishes and labels them in his neat print.
"Are you ready to begin, Commander? I can also give you a sedative if you'd be more comfortable asleep for this."
Danny glances at Steve. He says nothing, even though he normally would in a moment like this. Decision making is Steve's right, and Danny would sooner cut off his hand than deny this basic dignity. Despite his own opinions about what might be best, this is his partner's choice.
Steve just sighs—also doing nothing for Danny's blood pressure. "I'd rather be awake. Let's get it over with. Thanks, Doc."
Of course Steve would thank a doctor who's about to cause him pain. Nassir grins behind her mask, wrinkling the corners of her eyes, and swabs the incision site. Danny is oddly jealous that she has no qualms about touching it with such glib ease. They leave the blanket on, and that tiny act of humanity seems to relax Steve.
A senseless urge washes over Danny when they insert the first needle. Steve stops breathing for a split second and Danny's hand twitches in response to the sound, itching to grab Nassir's wrist and pull her away. It's pure instinct, knee-jerk.
Thankfully he doesn't indulge the motion, but it's there. Under his tissue. A deep, festered need to snatch away from Steve whatever hurts him.
Steve's hand cinches around Danny but otherwise his face remains impassive. He uncoils after a moment. Danny must not do a good enough job hiding the tension as he thinks, for after they pull the first needle out, Steve runs a thumb over Danny's knuckles.
He smirks when Danny jumps. "Now who's being a Neanderthal?"
~OL~
"The prognosis doesn't look promising."
Five words manage to completely unravel the tapestry of their thoughts in one fell swoop. Five words. So innocuous by themselves…until they're strung together.
Well, the words unravel Danny's thoughts. He has no idea what Steve thinks of all this.
Nassir and Pallini prefaced this parting word at their appointment with lots of we can't be sure statements and no sense jumping to conclusions, but Danny knows a grim medical professional when he sees one. Now it's a waiting game, and they were promised results within the next ten days.
Stealing a look over at Steve in the passenger's seat, Danny's face softens.
Steve has long since closed his eyes, sitting at a left-favoured angle to avoid putting pressure on the new bandage hidden under his sweater. This places him near the center console and Danny's elbow, which he moves to straighten a spot where Steve's shirt rides up. The fingers that smooth it down are careful to avoid the incision site.
Steve dozes between red lights, pale and nonverbal.
Potentially dying, Danny thinks.
That festering from earlier has puffed up into something electric, coating each fingertip. It's a strange sensation he gets sometimes, like he could leap a skyscraper or tear it down.
Right now he wants to do both, simultaneously.
When they get home, a crock pot of chicken noodle soup and bagged rolls sit on the stoop beside a note from Isabelle with lots of hearts on it. Danny gazes at them through the car window after he shuts off the engine, gazes at the waves, at their eclectic garden, at Steve's skateboard against the house. He doesn't move to get out right away, just staring. Wondering about it all.
Home.
But this isn't really true, is it? Danny knows that if Steve does have…if Danny ends up alone in this house, it'll become a tomb. Boxing him in with no life left to speak of.
Home will be gone.
The thought sends a current down his limbs and he opens the door in a heated rush, jogging around to Steve's side.
Steve must be more exhausted than he lets on—he doesn't wake until Danny reaches across him to unbuckle his seatbelt.
"H'me?"
"Yeah, Steve. We're home. Come on, let's get you someplace comfier than my car."
Steve sits up, still looking at Danny. Always looking at Danny. Steve's eyes are muffled at the edges, like a frayed sweater. Dull but soft.
"Is this a body tired or…" Danny lightly raps on Steve's temple with his knuckles.
"Brain tired," Steve confirms quietly, with a strange inflection Danny's never heard before. It restarts his pulse at an unwelcome pace, too fast to pass as calm and too slow to be real anxiety.
It's something else, something sticky between their eye contact that Danny doesn't have a name for.
He hums. "That's alright, babe. We'll get through it, yeah?"
Steve wrangles his feet into cooperation, which is good because Danny isn't sure he can prop up a former SEAL's weight all the way to the bedroom. They make it through the door with stumbling steps.
Danny lets Steve flop down on his side of the bed, unmade since they left at an ungodly hour this morning, eyes closed again before he hits the mattress, then removes his shoes and throws the duvet over him. He seems to be burrowing into Danny's pillow, pulling the bulk of it to his sternum.
"Too hot."
"Princess and the pea over here," says Danny. He smiles, however, and slides off the duvet to tug a waffle blanket over his partner instead.
"Better."
"Good, sweetheart."
"Danny?"
Danny turns back not because of Steve's voice but in deference to the hand that fishes out to grab his sleeve. And the fact Steve somehow managed to get his eyes halfway open. "Thanks for being there today."
"Hey." Danny kneels so he's at eye level. "You don't ever have to thank me for that. I would have busted down the hospitals doors even if you told me not to come."
Steve just watches Danny's face for a beat. "You worry so much, and yet you never complain when it costs you. Want to take care of you too."
You've taken care of me from the day we met, Steve. They owe each other so much that to try and tally it is blasphemy. Love doesn't keep score and it never will.
Danny covers up the sting behind his eyes with a snort. "Sure. Next time you can give me a foot massage and we're even."
The joke goes over Steve's head. His voice slurs in time with heavy eyes closing for good. "I would. 'N a heartbeat. You're the best gift too, you know that?"
Danny isn't sure he does. He clears his throat and decides to bypass the heartfelt words entirely, though he can't stop a quick brush of his fingers through Steve's hair. "Want some soup?"
"Maybe later."
"Any pain? Has the prescription Naproxen they gave you worn off?"
"M'good."
"Right. As if you can barely string a coherent thought together." Steve is almost asleep, but a faint grin peeks out from the covers. Danny rests a palm on his forehead. The heat of him makes Danny want to cry, for reasons he refuses to think about. He pecks the warm cheek and then retreats. "Sleep, Chatty Cathy. Call if you need anything."
When the bedroom door clicks shut, it's a lighter for Danny's insides.
The ripping current inside him stutters, throwing up a hot burst of sparks. He puts some distance between himself and the bedroom in an absolutely wasted attempt to snuff them out. It's as if he could power their busted lights with this energy alone, if only someone plugged him into the wall.
As if he's feeling all the emotion Steve can't. Taking on the burden of both their psyches inside himself.
Alone in the kitchen, his face scrunches. Hands begin to quiver.
Somehow autopilot lasts for a ridiculous stretch, far longer than even Danny expects: he boils water. Pulls out his dad's old fire department mug. Tears open a bag of Steve's lemongrass tea, looping the string around the handle. Pours the water when it pops.
Stares out the window. Sniffs. Watches Rose retrieve a ball that rolled into their yard.
Squints at the sun, how it shines clear despite it all.
Everything is normal in the world, cogs spinning in their rightful gears. None of it is fair, that they have bought their postage stamp of peace and one organ, complete with rogue cells, is about to send it away.
I found him. Danny doesn't understand the passionate thought at first. I found Steve.
His brain repeats it with a vengeance, that same tone he used in front of the judge at the court hearing where he fought, tooth and claw, to retain rights with his daughter. This feels similar and wildly different at the same time.
I found Steve. My Steve.
After Rachel left, Danny didn't have the will to seek hope for himself, to try for anything. But then Steve drew a gun on him in that fateful garage and filled up the crannies of Danny's empty well heart.
Steve is a piece of coral, his edges sharp and porous somehow seamlessly working together. Steve crumbled himself down into something safe and strong, a home for the last of Danny's love, a vault built with the utmost attention to detail, even though Danny had only pennies to give at first.
Has it really only been ten years? It seems like the flashing seconds of a dream and a lifetime all at once.
And Danny…Danny terraformed Steve's barren reef terrain of a soul into something with shape, something that belonged to a family and always would, as long as he wants it.
With detached surprise, Danny looks down at his hand to see that steaming tea has sloshed over the side of the mug. He doesn't feel it at first, studying a blotch of pink as it burns his skin.
I'm shaking. Danny observes it with the mild interest reserved for talking about the traffic report.
Steve shook during his biopsy too.
The fuse box inside Danny's chest shorts out for one almighty burst. He doesn't remember throwing the mug down and finds that he never does, even years later—
But the sound of it shattering against the floor sticks with him for life.
Jagged white and red pieces fly halfway across the kitchen floor in a shower of ceramic and green shards of lemongrass. The teabag has burst too, a portrait of some recently mowed lawn in the rain.
Danny shakes and grits his teeth and wants to tear the universe apart at the seams if it will get him behind the curtain.
Where is the stitching that dictates this has to happen? Where is the order to it all?
He lost his family once, just like Steve.
But this isn't something he can fight. He can't go tête-à-tête with a judge or criminal and demand Steve's life. If God is listening, he isn't giving a positive answer.
It's not fair, Danny thinks again, a petulant child in the face of a hurricane. About as effective too. He deserves better.
That thought arrests him for a long minute. Danny stands there amidst the wreckage and doesn't move a muscle, save his incessant quivering.
"Danny?"
He flinches.
As if summoned, Steve appears at the entryway with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. His eyes are wide with concern, first on Danny, then the disarray. "You hurt? What happened?"
"I…" Danny swallows. Fights with the last of the feral electricity whipping around his nerve endings. "Just, uh…just dropped my tea. Sorry to wake you."
Steve grabs a paper towel and wets it under the tap. He gently—but firmly—guides Danny away from the sharp pieces with a hand around his bicep, then starts picking up the small shards. "That's okay. Accidents happen, right?"
Another one of those visceral, knee jerk urges sings through Danny, to lie down right here on this floor and never get up again.
But Steve deserves the best, so Danny knows he can't do it, nor can he tell the truth. "…Right."
~OL~
"Do you uh…" Danny looks up from drying dishes later that night. "I realize we never talked about it…do you want to tell our family? Not the kids, but your sister or those back in Hawaii?"
Up to his elbows in suds, Steve just blinks. Their voices are level, as if they're discussing what cereal to buy instead of whether their ohana has the right to know that Steve might be sick. "No. Let's not scare them."
"Scare them." Danny starts in on a soup pot with more force than necessary.
"I vote we see the results of the biopsy first."
"There is no vote—this is your decision."
Steve spins around to better see his partner. "Danny, you're the one who insisted this involves both of us. All of it. Be it hospital trips or making decisions about what we keep a secret and what we tell. Okay?"
Danny picks up a cutting board next, toweling off the pointy edges.
"Okay?" Steve insists. He won't let Danny off the hook on this one.
Danny sets the board down very softly.
"Okay," he says, equally soft.
And that's all there is to it. They don't discuss the diagnosis or biopsy anymore.
They haven't told Hetty, especially with regards to not sending more agents their way for a while, but she probably already knows. She's got her own prescience like that.
(Steve's theory is confirmed when a fruit basket and a note offering to pay for all medical bills shows up on their doorstep one morning.)
Neither of them cry or have meltdowns at random moments. Steve lays beside Danny sometimes, when they both fall asleep in the hammock on lazy afternoons, and knows that to the untrained eye this makes no sense.
They live as if nothing has changed.
Danny seems to be watching in case Steve does something wild, like punching holes in the drywall out of sheer hurt and anger, but he feels like a zombie of pent up emotion.
Yet Steve doesn't say anything about it mainly because he already knows what runs through Danny's mind at night—that there's a macabre vindication in the fact that the other shoe finally dropped and all his negative thoughts were proven correct—just like Danny probably knows what Steve is thinking:
Which is he's living on borrowed time and lucky to have what he's enjoyed so far at all.
His liver should have killed him almost five years ago. He doesn't feel like he has a right to complain. There are no guarantees and since a bullet didn't do it…Steve is relieved he gets to die during a time of peace and not in conflict or war. So relieved.
"You gave me the time," he whispers to Danny one night when he's safely asleep, hair askew and feathering at Steve's nose. Steve has an iron grip around his waist. "I wouldn't be alive at all if it weren't for you. And I…I'm not sure I'll ever be able to give that back, but for you I'll try."
Whatever time I have left—it's yours, Danno.