Danny feels like an ass. He definitely should not have stormed out of Steve's hospital room like that on Friday. But he was tired after the long flight and staying up to watch over Steve as his friend slept. He'd had to leave before one of them said something they would truly regret, they woke up the rest of the ward, or Steve popped his stitches. Probably all three.

But Danny knew they were both worse than injured animals, attacking each other when they were scared or sad or angry. He should have just cooled off in the hall while the nurses checked Steve over and gone back in. Instead, he hadn't seen his friend since then, and then the idiot had checked himself out of the hospital later that day – because of course Danny had to put that idea in his head – and had Lou drive him home. They'd had no leads or new cases over the weekend. Now it was Sunday afternoon and, not hearing from Steve since the hospital, Danny's making the first move by going over to the beach house.

He pulls up in the empty driveway. Danny cuts the engine and walks up to the door, trying the handle. It's unlocked, but when he steps through, the McGarrett home is silent and dim, the drapes in the living room closed. He moves farther into the room and after a few steps, something crunches under his feet.

Danny looks down. Shards of glass litter the floor around several plastic and wooden frames. They still hold onto the familiar photos Danny remembers from every other visit to this house. Photos of the Team, of Danny and Grace, and then Danny and Grace and Charlie. Older photos of the McGarrett family. He looks up to the shelf they had once adorned, sees a hole in the wall next to it about the size of Steve's fist.

His hand flies to his hip in case the intruder is still in the house. Except he hadn't brought his gun with him. Shit. Is Steve all right? Can he not catch a break?

"There's no one else here, Danny."

Danny whirls around toward the familiar, if tired, voice. "Jesus fucking Christ, McGarrett. You wanna gimme a heart attack?"

Steve's stretched out on the couch, an arm covering his eyes, not even turned toward Danny. The blond watchs him for a few moments, but his friend makes no other acknowledgement of his presence. He moves to the window.

"What' s with the dungeon, huh, buddy? I mean, I thought you got all your super powers from our yellow sun or whatever."

He tosses the curtains open, letting the bright Hawaiian sun tumble into the room. Steve grunts even though, when Danny looks over his shoulder, his partner's arm is still covering his eyes. He looks back over at the shelf and sees the finest film of dust where the photos had once been. They hadn't been there for a while. A dirty shirt's tossed over the banister. Books and few broken knick knacks are strewn across the floor on the other side of the room. There's even a fucking knife embedded in the opposite wall, next to another fist hole.

An empty glass sits on the coffee table, next to Steve's anti-rejection med pack. Danny doesn't see the antibiotics or pain meds anywhere that he knows had been prescribed after Steve's latest escapades. A crumpled envelope and a letter on white Naval letterhead lay haphazardly on the floor next to the table. He approaches the couch, crouches down next to Steve's head to pick up the papers and, yeah maybe be a bit rude, figure out what it says.

"Don't," the body on the couch says.

Danny does anyway, skimming enough to get the gist. And maybe he adds a few more creases to the abused papers as he tosses them on the table, closing his eyes and hanging his head for a moment. The letter was dated a week before Danny'd left for Jersey. Enough time for Steve to have told him if he'd wanted to.

"What are you doing here, Danny? Come to check on your liver? It's fine, I promise."

He takes the hand splayed across his friend's stomach. Steve tenses, but doesn't pull away. Danny laces their fingers together and pulls it closer. With his free hand, he runs the tips of his fingers briefly across Steve's jaw. His usual scruff is beginning to morph into a beard. He takes the hand acting as a shield and pulls it away from his face. Steve's eyes are closed but after a moment, he opens them and finally looks at Danny, turning his whole body and wincing as he does so.

"Hey," Danny says, rubbing his thumbs across Steve's knuckles. "Let me get you something to eat. I bet you're overdue on your antibiotics, too, huh?"

"I'm fine Danny. I just needed to rest my eyes for a bit."

"Uh huh."

Steve's grip tightens in his and he makes like he's going to get up. "Nuh uh. Nope. You're gonna stay right there. I'm gonna go make you lunch. You're gonna take your antibiotics and your pain meds. Then you're gonna rest some more and you're gonna take tomorrow off. I, of course, am still on vacation."

Steve doesn't stop, though, sitting up on the couch. "I gotta take a piss, Danny. Mind if I do that?"

Danny narrows his eyes at him, but lets him go and stands up, out of the way. "Fine. But you come right back here. Or better yet. Go to bed."

"Yes, dad."

He watches Steve square his shoulders and head upstairs. Danny sighs and goes to the kitchen. Steve's prescriptions are on the island, still in the stapled bag from the drug store. He gets them out, reads the instructions and then puts the water on for coffee. He's gonna need it. The fridge is a mess. Actually, it's mostly empty and most of what's in there doesn't look edible. He manages to put together a plate of crackers and peanut butter and as much of the fruit that he can salvage. It'll do until get can go to the store. He feels a pain in his gut; a niggling thought in the back of his mind.

He's cutting up an apple when the thought materializes.

How he's feeling now? It's gotta be exactly how Steve felt when he, and the rest of the Team, risked everything to get him out of that Colombian jail. When he'd taken Danny, battered and broken in more ways than one, to see the daughter he never thought he'd see again. When Danny had told him that he'd signed those papers because he'd given up; that he deserved everything they were going to do to him; that he just didn't want to feel that guilt and pain anymore. But that, despite all that, he was happy and grateful that Steve had saved his life, threw him a rope to climb out of the hole. And maybe he wasn't all the way out of it yet, but he was on the way there. Because of Steve.

This is exactly how Steve felt when he realized that he'd completely missed how much pain Danny had been in.

The knife crashes into the sink.