Disclaimer: Hawaii Five-0 and its characters do not belong to me.
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Danny wasn't sure how or really when he'd fallen asleep but he must have because he was rudely awakened by the ear-splitting sound of alarms filling every inch of the room. The sound that disrupted what little bit of peace his soul could grasp, disorienting him. His initial frustration over the interruption at the ungodly hour of 2 a.m. quickly faded when he remembered exactly where he was. Fear had immediately gripped him as the chilling sound bellowed on, causing his head to spin and stomach to churn. He sat up as fast as his battered body allowed him to, agony stabbing through his chest and abdomen where his stitched-up flesh was still too raw. He ignored the pain twisting his insides along with the nausea that clung obsessively onto him. It was too small and insignificant in comparison to the burgeoning fear taking over his body. The piercing noise that erupted the silence could only mean one thing. That something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
Please, please don't let it be Steve. Please don't let anything be wrong with Steve. Please. God please. He couldn't do this again. He couldn't see Steve fighting for his life again. He just couldn't.
Danny neither afforded time for his eyes to adjust to the dimness of the room nor did he allow the pounding in the back of his head to settle as he slung his feet over the side of the bed and stood up shakily. He winced as the IV needle embedded in his arm shifted in his haste. But he didn't allow it to slow his movement.
"S..teve.." He stuttered nervously, praying to god his partner was alright. Pulling open the curtain that he had closed to hide his disappointment and hurt just a few hours ago, he gripped it tightly for support as he tried his best to keep his feet firmly planted on the ground that seemed to be spinning erroneously faster than usual.
"St..eve.." He heaved, his heart beating so painfully loud in his ears that he could almost hear the rush of blood in his head. Eyes landing on his partner, his heart soldiered on as though it was trying it's hardest to break out of his ribs. "Steve?" His voice came out a mere timid whisper as his fuzzled brain tried to keep up with what was going on.
Steve seemed... fine? Not what his overdriven mind had expected but he was definitely thankful to see that his partner remained peacefully undisturbed in his sleep. His eyes roved over to the monitors his friend was still attached to, quickly analyzing the numbers. To his utter confusion but relief, everything seemed normal. He had committed to memory what the normal vital stats were and consequently, he had been hyper aware of every single abnormal beep or reading that came from the machines, much to Steve's annoyance and everyone else's amusement. But he had to do whatever it was to make sure Steve was okay (because Steve was sure terrible at doing that himself) and that he remained that way. Just in case. But at the moment none of the alarms were going off. Yet, for some reason they were still roaring in his head.
"I'm gonna die, Danny.." Steve's slurred voice played above the alarm which were becoming louder and beeping even more rapidly.
"Do not die! You stubborn SOB, do not die!" His breath left him at the sound of his own strangled voice and he felt like he was suspended in an unrelenting riptide. Or rather, it felt more like he was free falling from the sky with neither a parachute to control his descent nor a surface to cushion his fall.
He swayed on his feet, the only two things keeping him upright were his sheer determination to not collapse onto the ground for a second time in the span of four days and his strong hold on the flimsy curtain.
"I'm go..nna die." Steve's ghostly pale face appeared in front of him when he shut his eyes in an attempt to quell his nausea. Steve's voice choked the same words out repeatedly, tearing him apart.
It took a torturous amount of time for him to realise what was happening. He was reliving his worst nightmare. The nightmare that somehow refused to leave him even as he stood fully awake next to his partner. Maybe because it wasn't a nightmare but a vivid memory. A vivid memory of the most horrific thing he had had to go through.
You're not dying. Not today.
He inched closer to Steve, the tips of his rough, icy fingers curling cautiously over his partner's warm and disturbingly, still too pale face, if only to confirm for himself that his partner was indeed lying there. Breathing and alive. He allowed his hand to gently linger over Steve's forehead, mirroring what he always used to do to Grace when she was younger, and now to Charlie, whenever he got a chance to put them to bed. He watched for a few long seconds, the slow rise and fall of Steve's chest which was a stark contrast to his insanely pounding chest putting his mind at ease.
"You're okay." He whispered, his voice wavering while the memory slowly retreated somewhere in his head. "You..you're fine now." He tried to match his breathing with his partner's, aware that he needed to calm himself down before he either alarmed the nurses or worse, woke Steve up.
Except he was a tad too late. The door to the room opened, a sliver of light pouring into the room as their nurse appeared at the doorway. "Detective Wiliams, why are you out of your bed? Is everything okay?"
He nodded, offering what he hoped was a reassuring look. "Yeah." He swallowed, not exactly recognizing his own voice. Judging from the frown on her face, he doubted she believed him. Well, he wouldn't believe himself if he were her either. It was clear as day that he was far from okay. Beads of cold sweat decorated his forehead and he was hunched in an odd angle as he tried to bury the ache hammering in his chest.
"Your heart rate was a little too high, sent an alarm to the nurse's station." She explained. "Let's get you back in bed." She approached him, holding on to his arm and back, not missing the tremor circulating his tightly-packed muscles.
"I..I'm fine. I'm sorry.. I just.." I thought something was wrong. With Steve.. I thought I was going to lose him. Again. "It was just.. I thought I heard something beeping from him, panicked a little. But I'm okay." Danny rambled on as he returned to his own bed with the help of the nurse.
She nodded. 'Panicked a little' seemed to be an understatement, she thought to herself. "Alright, let's see. Are you in any pain?" She asked the obvious question with an even more obvious answer.
"No. I'm fine." He said. "Is he okay?" Danny asked, his head tilted towards Steve. Even if he had already seen the monitors himself. Even if Steve seemed to be just sound asleep. He couldn't be too sure after everything that had happened, could he? Danny had foolishly thought that everything would be fine after his partner had woken up from the surgery. He had allowed himself to hope that things would go back to the way it used to in no time at all. But that hope had been short-lived, at best, coming to a quick end when the doctors had explained to Steve the complications that he might still face. He had been right there next to his partner to hear the words that were a hundred times scarier than any hardened criminals he had faced. At the very least, he knew what to do to fight those criminals, he had his vest and weapons. But these terms the doctors threw at them, he had no idea how to fight or if he even could fight them.
Rejection, graft failure, kidney dysfunction, infection...Those were just a few of the things that had rattled him to his core. But somehow Steve had seemed a little too nonchalant about it, brushing it all aside like he was invincible. Danny too wished Steve was invincible and for a while, he maybe believed it too. But he realised now, that his partner was just as mortal as he was.
"Let me check you over first, alright?" The nurse said because her sleeping patient seemed fine. It was the one sitting at the edge of his bed and shivering like a leaf that concerned her.
"No, please. Just see if everything's okay." Even his voice shook as he pleaded with her. "I'm fine."
Typical, she sighed inwardly.
This was the very detective that had landed a plane in the middle of Waikiki Beach (making front-page news on 'Honolulu Star-Adviser') to save his partner's life while simultaneously spoiling the plans of hundreds of tourists. What hadn't made the news was how the same man had then all but fought his way with the surgeon to donate his organ to his best friend. The whole general surgery department (if not the whole hospital) was aware of that. She wouldn't expect anything less from her patient, he wasn't going to rest till he knew that his partner was fine.
"Alright, just lie down. I'll be right back." She said.
After ensuring that her most difficult patient was safely lying on his back, she went on to check on her second most difficult patient. Boy, god knew how much she couldn't wait for them both to be fit for discharge! Because despite the warnings she had received from her colleagues who are experienced in dealing with the two ER regulars, she had never anticipated the amount of excitement the partners brought to the hospital. And she didn't mean the good kind of excitement.
"Nothing worrying, Detective." She said, returning to Danny's side once she had checked Steve over. "The commander is fine. Now let me take a look at you."
Danny finally sunk onto his pillow and allowed his eyes to close.
"Your bp is a little lower than I'd like." Her soft voice sounded concerned. He opened his eyes to assure her he was actually fine. "And you're shivering quite a bit." She continued, adjusting his IV while her eyes held laser focus on his monitors.
Danny hadn't actually noticed the cold chilling him to the bone till she had mentioned it. "Hmm.. yeah..can I get another blanket."
"Sure. I'll get it for you." She said. "You don't have a temperature but I'll keep an eye on it for now and page Dr Cornett. Is there anything else you need?"
He shook his head. As the nurse left to get him the blanket, he was finally left alone with his partner. He turned to look at Steve. Strange, he thought. The heaviness in his chest should be lifted with the knowledge that Steve was fine, yet, it wasn't. It remained lodged in the nook of his heart, constricting his every breath.
"You're okay." Danny whispered to himself. "I wouldn't know..what to do if I.. if I had lost you.."
It was the truth, he couldn't imagine what life would be like without his reckless partner by his side. He didn't think he would survive the loss. So maybe giving Steve a piece of his liver had been for selfish reasons after all. So he could continue living. So they both could.
He wanted to tell Steve how glad he was that he was alright. He wanted to give his best friend a hug. He wanted to unleash those tears that had been held prisoner. He wanted his best friend to know just how afraid he was that he was going to lose him forever. That even now, he was still afraid beyond reason. He wanted to break the barrier standing between them and tell Steve just how important he was to him. He wanted to tell Steve how much it scared him each time he did something reckless. Because he wouldn't know how to continue without his best friend by his side.
But for some reason, that was just too difficult to do. Maybe because he was convinced that Steve didn't want to hear it. Or maybe because he was afraid that.. that Steve would trample all over his brittle heart and trivialise his feelings. He didn't want that. So he had tucked it somewhere within him, so only he knew just how truly grateful he was for his best friend's second shot at life. Even if Steve himself didn't seem so.
Miles away in his thoughts, he hadn't realised the nurse returning to the room and wrapping him with the extra blanket till he felt warmth spreading over him. The tremor in his body finally eased though not completely. But the dull ache in his chest refused to leave him. He looked up at the nurse with a final request to dial up his pain meds which he hoped would make him forget the existence of both his physical wounds and the ones inflicted on his soul.
But as the night seemed to stretch on into a never-ending vessel of emptiness and torment, he came to realise that nothing could heal the latter.
While, the painkillers had worked like a charm in magically healing the ache in his chest and abdomen, they did nothing to soothe his heart which had not known rest since the moment he'd seen the pool of blood between Steve's feet. He wanted nothing more than to succumb to blissful unawareness but even that seemed too much to ask for. Each time he was close to attaining the tranquility that his soul craved, a force so powerful yanked him back to his harsh reality. The reality that condemned him to spending the rest of the miserable night alone.
He had been so afraid of losing his partner. So afraid that Steve would die. But he hadn't. Against all odds, Steve had lived. Steve was right next to him. Why then, did the distance between them seem so insurmountable? Why did it feel like he'd lost Steve anyway? Why was his partner right next to him, yet he'd never felt more alone as he did at that moment?
The time he first stepped foot onto Hawaii, that godawful day when he felt like an alien from outer space that had suddenly crashed onto earth, that was a close second. Back then he had had no one besides his daughter. Only on alternate weekends, no less. But that had been enough for him. The thought of seeing his daughter's face for several hours every two weeks was enough motivation for him to get through the rest of the time on the pineapple-infested hellhole.
That was right up until Steve hijacked his life and manhandled him onto the team. Everything had changed since. He had accepted the offer then. Not that he had much of a choice but he had nothing to lose either. As it turned out, that was the best decision he'd made in his life (well besides marrying Rachel, if only for the fact that it had given him his two precious children).
Maybe you're not as alone as you think, Steve had told him a little later. He had never forgotten those words. Because it had come at a time when he needed to hear it the most. Those words had meant the world to him as he navigated a life he never imagined nor desired. And those words had held truth too. He had found, no, he'd been gifted this weird little makeshift family of misfits. He must have done something right once in his life to have them in it.
One day he had no one, completely alone and hating his life and the next an uncivilized neanderthal soldier had made him family. Because of that giraffe of a man, he was finally living a life again, not just passively passing time between visits to his daughter. He actually had people he cared about and would willingly spend time with, which was a surprise considering how much he hated, well, people. He had found a group of human beings that he would risk his life for (reluctantly of course, because he would rather nobody had to die). But he also knew with full conviction that they would do the exact same for him. Chin, Kono. And Steve. Definitely Steve.
But that was before... Now, well, now he wasn't so sure anymore. What changed, and when it did, he wasn't sure either.
"Maybe you're not as alone as you think." He needed to hear those words again because he was beginning to doubt that they were still true. He needed to hear it just as much as he did the first time Steve had said it. Even more, maybe.
Steve's voice echoed in his head. But it wasn't that reassuring voice, nor was it the words he wanted to hear. Something else was ricocheting across the confines of his skull. Something he so desperately wanted to erase, to pretend never existed, but the marks were permanently and irreversibly etched on him.
"You give him time. He'll hate you just as much as I do." That was it. Time. The realisation dawned on him without mercy. How could he have been so blind when the answer was right in front of him the whole time.
Swallowing the renewed ache in his chest, he shut his eyes and willed the darkness to take him away. To take him somewhere it would no longer hurt.
…
A/N: Hey everyone! Thanks for reading till the end! First of all, thank you so much to all who reviewed and were keen on reading more. You guys are awesome and this one's for you. Hopefully you will like this chapter just as much.. I'm sorry for yet another angsty chapter. Conversations will be had..but a while more before we get there. I hope you guys are still enjoying. See you in the next chapter and take care, wonderful people :)