I tried to explain it
So you would understand
The second day in the hospital, a distinctly crumpled Steve walked into Danny's small room in the ICU, his who-the-heck-cares-th coffee gripped in one hand, to find Danny's eyes open, his mouth working conclusively around the clear tube between his teeth.
"Hey, Danno," Steve almost whispered as he rushed to set his cooling coffee down on the table beside Danny's bed and grabbed his partner's hand, "hey, I don't think you're supposed to be up yet, buddy."
He leaned across Danny's prone body to press the call button before backtracking to look into Danny's eyes.
Seeing the question in them and knowing what Danny needed to hear, Steve tried to say everything was fine, that he was fine, but all that came out was a strangled mutter.
He watched in broken horror as silent tears started to streak down his best friend's face, his eyes wide with terror.
"Hey, hey, I'm sorry buddy, everything is fine, the team is fine, okay? You're fine," all coming out in a rush, doing nothing to stem the flood from Danny's eyes.
Taking a deep breath in an attempt to recenter himself, Steve took Danny's face between his palms, "Listen to me," he said, slowly and clearly to force the words through his panic, "you are alive. The team is alive. You might not be batting a hundred right now, but you. Will. Be. Fine. You trust me, right?"
Danny nodded his head weakly, his tears slowing and his eyelids drooping from exhaustion. Steve sighed heavily, slumping backwards into the stiff chair that he had called a bed more nights than he was willing to admit. Moving one of his hands to gently stroke Danny's sweat soaked hair back from his friend's forehead, he made a mental note to ask Chin or Kono to bring a comb next time they visited.
As he resolved to hold that thought in his mind, a nurse walked briskly into the room and started taking Danny's vitals.
It was the first of many days that Steve would prefer to forget.
In the next few, Danny was weaned off his highest doses of pain medication, extubated, and downgraded from the ICU to the floor.
Through all of it, he never said a single word.