Synopsis: The road to recovery isn't as easy as Danny Williams thought it would be. Steve McGarrett is hiding inside his mile-high emotional wall and, without meaning to; he has started blocking Danny out. But when gun smugglers come searching for payback, will Steve be there for Danny? Or will his Jersey partner be forever silenced. DANNY!WHUMP and STEVE!ANGST. NO SLASH. Friendship only.

Disclaimer: I don't own Hawaii Five-0 and am not getting any monetary gain for this story, just playing in CBS's sandbox for a while. These characters and storylines remain the property of CBS. No disrespect intended, just great characters that inspire their own stories.

Rated: T for violence and injuries. Not a Death-Fic.

Notes: Angst and Hurt/Comfort are kinda my thing and I opened a can of worms in the first story, 'Words can Kill'. Here's the sequel.

Chapter Four:

Haloes' and Ohana

The storm was increasing in both intensity and ferocity and the booming thunder was sending Danny's anxiety through the roof. Flashes of white electricity were cutting across the black sky in increasing streaks of brilliant light. Debris was being blown over the top of Danny's scary-ass little hole and into it, when the winds suddenly shifted direction. Several large branches and even a few palm fronds had been tossed in on him. In fact a damn coconut had even made it over the side. That had actually hit him in the shoulder. The injured man was pretty sure he'd have a hell of a bruise…if he made it out alive.

Danny had barely managed to miss having the sprawling limbs of the body crash into him as he'd thrown himself out of the way.

"Hello?" Danny called as he tried to see what the hell had just been surreptitiously chucked into his own personal graveyard. There was no movement and he forced himself to ignore the bouncing slashes of pain and check out what the object was. Or worse, who it was.

It all happened in the flash of a few microseconds. Lightning lit up the night sky and Danny managed to focus his eyes just enough to catch the metallic glint of a gold badge. "Shit…no, no, no…" He repeated softly over and over as he reached out and pulled, what he now suspected was a human body, toward him. His right arm was clutched against his body and it was hell using only his left. Danny had never been particularly ambidextrous and that hadn't changed just because he'd managed to break his right arm…again. He didn't know if it was sweat rolling down his face or rain as he struggled.

Rolling the uncooperative human form over and ignoring the biting slices of pain that were now making Danny groan, was like trying to ignore Rachel when she was angry. He almost couldn't do it, but he tried like hell. There was another flash and the air seemed to freeze inside the tiny area. Never mind that the detective was already shivering from the cold water he was standing waist deep in. A shock of brunette hair and a quick glimpse of tattoos was all the confirmation that Danny needed. And in a terrifying instant the cop realized 'who' had been dropped in with him and the air was stolen from his lungs, as he was frantically trying to check his friend for signs of life.

"Oh god, no. Come on…" He ignored the mounting limitations of his own body and wrapped his broken arm around the taller man's chest. Danny bit through his own lip in and effort to control the misery he was in. "Steve, your heart better be beating babe or I'm gonna kill you." He whispered softly before reaching over to check for a pulse. His hands were shaking so bad that he wasn't completely sure he'd even recognize a pulse if he found one. No, I'm not thinking like that. You're alive, you stupid, self-sacrificing, irritatingly tall, ninja-SEAL. He couldn't bring himself to even breathe the words out loud; so all that came out was a soft begging whine. It sounded pathetic, even to his own ears. And at this point, Danny didn't care.

"Come on, buddy. Talk to me. Please…Steve, don't do this." It might have been begging and unmanly, but Danny found that he didn't give a rat's ass about appearances. The Jersey native couldn't take another breath until he felt the steady, if too fast, thrum of the other man's pulse beneath the gentle, probing fingers of his left hand. Danny was forced to keep his back up against the wall, using it as leverage to keep Steve's head and heavy body above the slowly rising water. The detective side of Danny's brain started kicking in and he figured out a few important details. If you're here, then Chin and Kono can't be too far away. So maybe there was hope for them. The violent crashing of thunder undermined his confidence a bit and he frowned. His cheek pulled painfully and constant burn of his slowly rising fever kept reminding him that he didn't have long before his injuries pulled him under.

Danny forced himself to look up and he couldn't help the tendrils of fear that stated to scurry through him when he saw the increasing flashes of light and the deafening howl of the wind echoed through the circular lava tube.

"Help?!" He called hoarsely. Nothing…no answer.

The all-encompassing fear that always accompanied small spaces was ever present and he swallowed the intensity of his own reaction as the walls felt like they were closing in. Danny knew that more likely than not, his words were being ripped away by the storm. Or worse, their friends had been forced to abandon the search in which case, it was highly likely that both Danny and Steve were going to die down here. The heart-breaking image of Grace in the cemetery assaulted Danny again and he pulled his lower lip between his teeth in anguish.

A soft groan from the larger man pulled his attention back and some of the fear settled like a stone in Danny's gut. Steve's eyelids fluttered and then he moaned before immediately starting to struggle. He accidentally slammed Danny in the ribs with a flailing elbow; only the pained cry stopped him for going further.

"Ouch! Shit…Steve, would you just stop." The Jersey cop's side lit up in a sharp gnawing pain and he struggled to maintain his hold on the thrashing form of the larger man.

Confused blue-green eyes finally connected with Danny's slate blue and the detective forced a smile past his chapped lips. Steve stared up at his friend, huh, that's a new one, Danny's blonde hair was hanging in his eyes and the gash on his cheek was swollen and red, but he was very much alive. Steve blinked a few times as he tried to clear the cobwebs from his head. He didn't want this to be a dream, something that his concussed mind had concocted to keep him going.

"Danny?" There was an unnatural pause before Steve continued with a slight slur to his speech. "You okay?"

Danny debated on lying, but decided that honesty would be more useful at this point. "No. Not really. And I can think of better ways to spend time together, Steven." He answered and shook his head when another wave of water rushed over the edge above him and he tried to protect Steve using his own body. The moment it hit his back he nearly buckled under the weight. But somehow, he managed to keep his legs under him. The grievous wound in the detective's side was burning and Danny was doing his level best to ignore the nightmare that seemed to be his life.

Steve managed to shove his uncooperative feet down and take his own weight and Danny couldn't help the wave of relief. There was a large gash on Steve's forehead, but other than that, he seemed okay. "Can you get these off?" Steve held up his bound hands and for the first time Danny realized that his partner had been tied up and thrown into a watery grave.

The SEAL took a good look, in the limited light of the lava tube, at the other man and he didn't like what he was seeing. Even if his partner was a little blurry around the edges. Danny looked like he was barely holding it together. The injuries were every bit as severe in person as they'd appeared on the video feed and now they were trapped with a tropical storm raging outside their watery prison.

The smaller blonde man was now holding his injured right arm tightly against his stomach and Steve's gaze dropped when Danny shivered violently. "Danny? Danny, you okay?"

A sick feeling rolled through his gut and the detective bit back the intense feelings of nausea and the dizziness that were now threatening to overwhelm him. It was almost like his body recognized that Steve was here now and it was okay for it to start shutting down. "I don't feel so good." Danny stammered just as his eyes rolled around the cave. He looked disoriented and that didn't' make Steve feel any better about their chances. If they were going to get out of this hole, he needed Danny alert.

"You don't look so good either." Steve shot back.

Danny's face lit up with a lightening strike. And he shook his head, furrowing his forehead in irritation. "That's not nice, Steven." And then he was falling, his head disappearing beneath the gathering water.

"Danny?!" Steve cried. Fear washed through him and sloshed forward, ignoring the pounding inside his own skull.

H50 H50

Chin couldn't see his own hand in front of his face at this point. The storm had literally come out of nowhere. The rain was coming down in thick impenetrable sheets of water and the winds were blinding him as they crashed around the search party. He'd finally made the heart-wrenching call to pull back the search teams until the tropical storm weakened. They'd pushed until it became too dangerous.

It had taken Kono slipping in the mud and splitting her leg open on a hidden rock for him to make the call. Now as he stared at his cousin's pained expression and then watching as the beach disappeared into the darkness when they drove away, he'd never felt like more of a fraud.

Steve had never abandoned any of them, not once. And Danny? That damn Haole had never left any of them hanging and he never would. It wasn't in the Jersey man's DNA, he didn't know how to quit. Not when Steve had taken off with Jenna Kaye and gotten himself captured in North Korea or when Chin had found himself locked inside Halawa prison. Danny had always believed that the members of the Five-0 task force were above reproach. And that belief never waivered not in the almost five years that Chin had known the snarky blonde.

If Lt. Kelly had learned anything from the members of his team, it was loyalty. And Daniel Williams had that in spades. For a team with only one woman on it, one would have thought that Kono was the heart of the their team. Chin knew that this wasn't the case. Hell, everyone on the Five-0 task force knew it. Danny 'Danno' Williams was the heart and the glue that held the elite force together.

Chin would do anything for his team. He loved them like family…hell they were family. Ohana. The safety of the men and women that had come to help search for Danny, and not Steve, had to come first and there was nothing Chin could do to change that. Neither of the men they were searching for would want it any other way.

Steve had flat out disappeared while they'd been searching and neither Chin nor Kono had been able to find any clues leading a potential location for the Jersey detective or their missing team leader. It was like he'd just vanished from the Cliffside.

"It's not your fault, Chin." Kono's soft words pulled him out of his self-recrimination and he raised haunted eyes to meet her concerned gaze. She could see her cousin dropping into a very bad place. This whole thing was a series of unfortunate events. Nothing that had happened to either Danny or Steve could be laid at the feet of anyone else. Except the men that had taken them. Kono knew that Chin would take all the blame on himself if she didn't stop the shame-spiral before it got out of hand.

Chin shook his head; his dark eyes haunted before wiping his hand down his face. "I lost him."

"Lost who? Steve?" She tilted her head. "Chin, you couldn't have stopped him from going after Danny. We all thought this was where he was being kept." She dropped her head onto her chest. "If it's anyone's fault that he's lost out there…it's mine. I led everyone out here on my hunch." She pulled in a shaky breath. "And it proved to be a goose chase."

The cruiser they were riding in weaved back and forth as the officer tried to avoid downed trees on the tiny road.

TBC…

Author's Note: This is a short one, but rest assured I'm already working ahead. Thinking that I'll get the next one up tomorrow. Thanks for all the fantastic reviews. I'm so glad you guys liked (if that's the right word) the scene with Grace in the cemetery. Sometimes I wonder what Danny thinks every time he's about to die or goes racing in after Steve on a case.

Also, no promises on how long this one will be. I have no clue. But plan on longer, rather than shorter.

PLEASE REVIEW: Your fantastic response has kept at the keyboard. Please keep it up.