First off, a huge thank you to everyone who took the time to leave a review or feedback! It's very appreciated, as are all the favorites and follows. And, as always, thanks to all my guest reviewers who I don't get to thank personally.
**VERY IMPORTANT A/N: Alrighty, so I lied to you guys just a tiny bit in the last chapter. Part of the reason that the last chapter ended so abruptly is because I decided to use this story to finish it up! This is the ONLY time I'll be doing a two-parter for this series, unless something drastically changes in my plans, so no worries if you prefer everything to be standalone.
ALSO, I know that some of you weren't huge fans of how I characterized Danny in the last chapter and probably just groaned when you read the A/N above. Hopefully this is a bit more palatable to those of you, but either way no worries-we'll be off to a blank slate next chapter.
Standard disclaimers apply, and any and all reviews are appreciated and welcome. I sincerely hope y'all like this one!
"Statues and empires are all at your hands,
Water to wine and the finest of sands.
When all that you have is turning stale and it's cold,
Oh you'll no longer feel when your heart's turned to gold."
Despite what Danny had said sitting in that hospital room, everything hadn't been okay.
Sure, Steve had healed physically from his wounds, though his broken leg had taken both more time and energy that Steve had wanted to give it, being able to return home on crutches sooner than Danny had thought the doctors would allow. He'd worked his way through six to eight long weeks of physical therapy and had eventually been cleared for light duty only a few days before.
But the Jersey detective hadn't really been around for it.
He'd come home with Steve when he was released from the hospital, had all but moved in with him for the first little bit to help his partner adjust to his temporary one-legged life, had constantly reassured Steve every time the SEAL apologized again and again for everything that yes, they were fine, had helped him through nightmares that had left him shaky and pale.
Danny had asked what had happened at those times, and Steve would always respond that it was classified, that he couldn't give him details, that he could only say that he'd had to take down a high-value target in an location he knew well, that'd he'd almost been captured on the way out, that he didn't know if he'd be able to make it out.
And then, one night, Steve had added that he'd wished it had never happened.
Danny objectively knew the confession for what it was: a nightmare-fueled, PTSD-induced weakness that Steve would have never shown in the light of day. But for some reason, the whispered admission didn't make Danny sympathize, didn't make him help like it usually would have. He wasn't happy that Steve had opened up, hadn't felt anything at all except for an instant confused anger that he didn't tamp down soon enough. And so Danny had looked at his partner, his best friend, and said plainly, "It didn't have to. You chose this."
Instantly, Steve had pulled himself away from Danny, both physically and mentally, leaning away from his the detective as far as his injured body would allow, face carefully neutral and all sign of emotion or weakness wiped away. "Excuse me? You know why I did it. All of your lives and futures were in danger. I was protecting all of you."
Danny had heard himself speaking but didn't seem to have any control over his words, even as he knew that he was being a dick, breaking his promise that he had made so recently. "I think maybe you were protecting yourself too, Steve, because you couldn't handle the idea of having to hand Five-0 over to someone else and report to them." He'd known it wasn't fair, wasn't okay to say those things especially at that moment, but all the emotion and anger that he'd been pushing away since Steve had come home was suddenly all clamoring inside his head for recognition, and it felt like the only thing he could do was finally get it off his chest, that little sliver of petty anger that he'd been walking around with. They weren't event things he thought actively, but he was itching for a fight and his brain was supplying just the right words to get him what he wanted.
Danny had expected Steve to fight back, to defend himself, had wanted anger to match his own, had wanted a fight that would help burn off and burn through all his volatile emotions, had wanted a trigger to bring them back to what they were. But he was too harsh, said too much he didn't meant, and, instead of giving into Danny's twisted need, Steve had just shut down even further. With stiff movements, the SEAL had settled himself back down on his bed and then said in the flattest voice, "You can go, Danny."
And Danny had gone without a word, full of pride and resentment. Steve had thought he'd been through hell, but so had all of them here, and in that moment all of McGarrett's apologies didn't seem enough to soothe the ugly feelings inside of him. He'd stayed the night, sense of duty keeping him there, and while he'd cooled down quite a bit over the course of the night, he wasn't quite ready to apologize when Steve had gotten up. So they had awkwardly exchanged good mornings, and Danny had helped Steve with his breakfast and then he'd made an excuse to leave.
And then he didn't go back for almost a week.
The ever-loyal Chin had stepped up to help out, something that grated on Danny in a way he would never admit to, something that irked him for all those times Chin hadn't supported Steve when he'd really needed it. But while Steve couldn't drive, couldn't walk, he'd had a revolving door of Chin, Kono, and Lou there to help out, Jerry even stopping by once in a while.
Eventually, Danny had gone back, but there was a distance between the two of them now, one that everyone else could clearly feel but wasn't commenting on, obviously hoping that they'd work it out on their own. Sometimes, when the rest of the team would be out of the house, leaving the partners alone together in completely unsubtle attempts at forced reconciliation, Steve would open his mouth as if to say something, but then close it again, like he couldn't get the words out. Danny, for his part, felt both guilty and self-righteous, but couldn't even find the words to begin to heal this rift that had formed between them.
So they had continued to drift. Chin would drive Steve to physical therapy, disappearing during the work day to help out, returning with stories of how the SEAL was doing that Danny knew should be his. They had gone back to working cases, but were almost on light duty until Steve had come back, and Danny had been dreading the days until that happened. Because he knew that if they were going to make it as partners, if this team was going to work, they were going to have to put what Steve had done behind them, had to get past what Danny had said. But now, after over a month of strained silence between them, he didn't know where to begin.
And now, here he was, sitting in his office with the door closed, glancing occasionally at Chin and Kono speaking at the table, feeling like shit. He glanced down at his cell phone for some distraction, and then looked up in surprise as his door opened and Chin came in. The Hawaiian man pushed the door closed, and then sat down deliberately in the chair across from Danny, arms folded over his chest. "Alright, Danny, this is getting ridiculous. What the hell is going on between the two of you?"
Danny's eyebrows went up in surprise. "What, in all your special bonding time you've had McGarrett didn't tell you?"
Chin frowned, ignoring the jab. "He hasn't said anything, except that he screwed things up irrevocably, but from the way the man groveled to all of us when he got back, I have a hard time believing that. So no, I don't know what's going on, but I'm sure as hell getting sick of it. Whatever this is, it's clearly eating away at him, and I know part of the reason he's not healing as well as he wants is because his heart isn't in it."
"Not healing?" Despite everything, Danny couldn't help but feel a sudden stab of worry at that, and Chin's carefully, measuredly, blank look in response certainly didn't help.
"Danny."
He knew Chin wasn't going to drop it, and at this point, after so long, he was bursting with the need to just talk about it, to get advice, so he let himself get distracted from his question. "Steve didn't screw up, Chin, I did. Badly" He sighed, and then dropped his head into his hands. "We were doing fine and then one night he had a nightmare, and he told me that he wished that all of it had never happened, and I was…less than sympathetic."
"What did you say?"
Danny let out a mirthless laugh. "Oh you know, the best thing I could have said: that none of this had to happen and he'd basically brought on all this shit himself because he chose to leave. Oh, and also that he was doing it to save his own skin, not ours."
Chin sucked in a quick breath. "That's messed up, Danny."
The blonde looked up sharply. "You think I don't know that now? I just…he said that and I got mad. I got stupid mad and I'm not even sure why! It was like someone had flipped a switch, and everything that I had felt since he'd left that I hadn't been able to process or, I don't know, yell in his general direction, came back right at that moment and I was petty and mean. We were all so mad at him. I was so mad at him because it was so much easier to be mad and believe the worst than recognize he hadn't betrayed us and process the idea of him being gone forever. I had so much that I was feeling and deliberately not-feeling, all bottled up inside me.
"And then he came back and he was hurt and so sorry, and we forgave him. I yelled at him and told him I forgave him too, but I guess I didn't say everything I needed to, or something. I don't know. I was just mad all of a sudden, because it seemed like every time he apologized, he said he was sorry for all the pain that he'd caused, not sorry that he'd done it in the first place. Which wouldn't have made me mad had I just done a little more soul searching before he came home, but I didn't and so it did. Then when he said he'd wished it'd never happened, it was like I just wanted to shake another apology out of him, or make him feel as bad as we all had."
"I'm pretty sure he did apologize for doing it in the first place in his letter," Chin replied quietly.
"Yeah, but I wasn't really thinking about that at 2am," Danny retorted. "Look, I realized the next morning that I'd messed up, but I also was acting like a child and wanted him to apologize first so that I didn't look like the idiot that I knew I was being. But he didn't, of course, and so I left, and I didn't know how to come back and make things better. I sat there and told him that first night in the hospital that I wasn't mad, that we were totally fine, that things would go back to normal, that I was just glad he was home—which was all true—and then I make the exact opposite happen. We're barely talking and when we do, I feel like I can't even read him. He won't let me in, and then I get discouraged—and annoyed—and won't be honest with him, and now we're just in this messed up cycle."
"Danny, just apologize, tell him what you told me. Tell him that you were dumb, and believe me, if you just start trying to make things better, he's not going to stay mad. He misses you, but he's too hurt to try to force you into any sort of conversation. And I know he feels like guilty about everything too, and thinks it's his fault, so he's just being stoic and bearing it."
"Did he tell you that?"
"What? No. I told you, he hasn't said anything, but I've spent enough time with him through rough situations to sort of get a read on what's going on in his head. You've been with him through more—you know this too. And it's not hard to tell he's miserable, you know? I could say the same thing about you, I might add."
"I don't know—"
"He's coming back to work tomorrow. You've got to fix this."
"It's been weeks, Chin. How can I just fix that?"
Chin shrugged his shoulders, a sympathetic look on his face. "I'm not saying it's easy, but I'm saying it has to be done. You are sorry, right?"
Danny nodded vehemently and he could feel tears prick at his eyes. "God, Chin, I know I fucked up, okay? I feel like shit about what I said, and I feel like shit about the fact that I was too proud to just say I was sorry and fix this when I had the chance. Don't you think I miss him too? I feel like I have this gaping hole in my life where my best friend used to be, and I hate myself every day for what I did."
"Then just tell him exactly that. He needs you."
Danny nodded once, once more. "You make it sound so easy, but I'll try, I promise."
"Don't try, do it. The both of you are depressing to be around when you're like this."
And he did try to do it.
Danny made sure he got to the office early the next morning, knew he'd be there even before Steve was thanks to Chin's text, and came prepared with the SEAL's favorite coffee blend and malasadas. He sat in his partner's office and waited for the other man to show up, anxious and antsy.
When Steve finally arrived, walking with only a slight limp, he didn't look surprised to see Danny sitting in his office, but the detective wasn't sure if that was because Chin had warned him or if Steve's poker face was just that good. Either way, McGarrett said something quietly to the cousins and made his way to the office that he hadn't been inside of for so long. The SEAL carefully put his stuff down carefully before turning to face Danny. His face was neutral, his tone nonchalant. "What's up?"
His partner's calm mannerisms did nothing to help Danny nerves, but he swallowed against his dry throat and pushed the coffee across the desk. "I was hoping we could talk, Steve."
"About what?"
Danny felt a flash of irritation at his partner's willful obtuseness, but tried to force it down. "Well, I think that's fairly obvious. Look, I know I completely and totally screwed up and I'm so—" He stopped as Steve's phone started ringing, and the other man picked it up almost immediately.
"This is Commander McGarrett." Danny waited for the phone call to end, stubbornly waiting as Steve hadn't asked him to leave, wanting to get all of this over with and behind them. But Steve was apparently going to use the call to avoid the emotionally charged conversation before them.
He waited through all the mmhmms and of courses, trying to be as patient as he knew that he should and needed to be, and the moment that Steve hung up the phone, Danny pounced. "Steve, can we please just talk real quick? Before we get sucked into whatever's happening, can we please just talk? I have things that I need to say, that you need to hear, and we need to just deal with this if we're ever going to be okay."
Steve looked at him for a moment with such emotion that it took Danny's breath away, and he thought that he'd broken through, that he'd have a chacne, but it was just for a second. The emotion was locked immediately away and Steve's face was carefully neutral once more. "We've got a case, Danny. Let's go."
And with that, Steve was brushing past him, out of the office and then out of headquarters, sharing a car with Lou on the way to the scene. It hurt Danny more than he cared to admit, though he could see the pitying looks that Kono through his way as he climbed into the car beside her; he knew that his misery must be radiating off of pretty clearly, because before they were even halfway there, Kono asked, "How're you doing?"
He snorted sarcastically. "Well, let's see, I feel like if I left right now and threw myself off a bridge, I might be doing more good for my best friend than I have been in the entire month and am only really starting to realize how majorly I fucked up, so I don't know, Kono, how am I?"
"Well, he'd probably jump off after you, so I don't think that'd really achieve what you wanted," she replied with a small smile.
Her smile worked to thaw him just a bit though, and this time when he spoke, the irritation was no longer present. "You probably all hate me."
Kono shook her head quickly. "First of all, I don't pick sides between family members—it never ends well. Secondly, the past few months have been bad, Danny. He may have come back physically damaged, but you were hurt too. Having fallout from everything that happened, that's to be expected. I don't think anyone has come out of all this feeling like a winner. I'm here for the both of you."
Danny choked down the emotion in his throat that feeling supported had brought on, saying roughly, "Thank you," before taking a moment to compose himself. When he felt that he could speak clearly again, he asked a question that had been bugging him for a while. "Do you know something about Steve not healing well?"
Kono glanced at him quickly, concern all over her face. "What? No. Why?"
"I thought Chin said something along those lines earlier, but maybe I misheard."
"I know he's been frustrated with physical therapy, but that's it. He'd tell us if something was going on, right?"
Danny wasn't sure if the he that Kono referred to was Steve or Chin and so didn't respond, but he knew that either way, he'd be the last to know if something was happening with his best friend right now. And he knew entirely whose fault it was, which didn't help make his mood any better.
Danny sighed and looked up from his paperwork for the first time in what felt like hours. Their case had turned out to be incredibly simple, a true open-and-shut case that they'd wrapped up neatly within twenty-four hours. But after all being on a case together for the first time in months, the backlog of paperwork was nearly unbelievable and Danny and felt like this was the perfect time to catch up, and give Steve the space he was so clearly craving.
He stretched in his chair and looked through the glass walls of his office to see where the other members of his team were. He could see Kono at work in what amounted to their small armory, Lou and Chin standing against the table, and Steve… Steve was nowhere to be found.
Danny tried to push down the interest that had piqued at this realization, knowing he had no right to question where their team leader was, but his curiosity wasn't easily assuaged. With a sigh, knowing that he wasn't likely to get the sort of answer that he wanted but probably the answer he deserved, he reluctantly opened his door and met Chin's eye. "Where's Steve?"
To Chin's credit, he didn't exchange knowing glances with Lou, didn't do anything that made it seem like Danny was the only one out of the loop, but something about his expression primed Danny to think that whatever came out of the Hawaiian man's mouth was going to be a lie. "He's at physical therapy."
"Huh. Wasn't he there this morning?"
Chin didn't miss a beat, making Danny doubt himself for just a moment. "Since it was a slow day, he figured he'd get two sessions in."
"He was gone for a few hours yesterday too. Also physical therapy?"
"Yep," Chin responded unhurriedly.
There wasn't anything that he could point to other than the feeling in his gut that something wasn't right, so Danny just nodded, not wanting to push the issue. "Any idea when he'll be back? We, uh, still need to have that talk."
Chin's mouth pulled down slightly in disappointment, but Danny wasn't sure whether it was with him in particular or because of the news he was about to deliver. "I'm picking him up afterwards and taking him home."
"Oh. I guess I'll check in with him later."
Chin offered a small, slightly sad smile. "You'll get back to what you were, Danny. You just need to talk to him."
"I—" Whatever Danny, both annoyed and comforted by Chin's slightly patronizing tone, was going to say was cut off as his phone rang. Looking down, he saw his daughter's name on the caller ID. "I've got to take this."
Chin nodded, and then right before Danny answered the phone, he opened his mouth again. "I was going to go pick him up in about five minutes, but I could probably get caught up with paperwork and he could probably need a ride from someone else."
Danny let the phone drop down, and brought his eyes back up to Chin's face. "I know we need to—I need to—fix things, but earlier you said it might help him heal. Please, Chin, just tell me if he's okay or not. Whatever is going on right now, I love him and he's my best friend. He's the only brother I've got left. Please just tell me if he's okay."
The other man sighed and rubbed at his forehead tiredly. "Look, it's not my story to tell, but knowing McGarrett and knowing that he might be more fragile now with a new liver, you might be able to figure out that not all his disappearances are to therapy."
Danny could almost feel the color drain from his face. "Rejection?"
Chin's poker face was good, and Danny couldn't read anything from his entirely neutral expression. "You should probably head out—wouldn't want to be late."
Danny nodded, trying to process what Chin had implied and push it away at the same time. "Right. And thanks, Chin. Seriously." He stepped forward and hugged him without inhibition, suddenly overwhelmingly grateful for the steady presence of the Hawaiian man. Then, without waiting for a response, he stepped back and quickly made his way back to his office to grab his car keys, shooting a text to Grace on the way letting her know that he would call her later.
He fretted his whole way to the hospital, the sun feeling out of place with his mood. He parked in the shadiest spot that he could and then fidgeted in his seat for the next ten minutes, waiting for Steve to come out and wondering exactly what to say when he did. He started practicing things to say, rehearsing his opening statement and feeling like a lawyer, trying to find the exact right words to express what he wanted to say, when finally Steve walked out of the main doors of the hospital.
Suspecting what he did, Danny took a moment to look at Steve while the SEAL looked for Chin's car. In the moment that it took for Steve to search the lot and then lay eyes on the familiar and unwelcome Camaro, the Jersey detective was able to put his skills to good use and detect a few things. Steve looked tired, more tired than usual, and even with the distance between them, Danny could see the weary set to his shoulders that seemed to be mental as much as physical. He still looked like he was in pain, though he did his best to hide it the moment he'd realized it wasn't Chin there to pick him up. He looked, Danny thought, like shit.
Danny wasn't sure if Steve was actually going to even come over to the car or completely ignore him, and Danny couldn't help but let out a massive sigh of relief as McGarrett finally started to slowly, laboriously, make his way over. In response, Danny jumped out of his seat and ran around the car, opening the door and waiting with helping hand outstretched to help the other man into the seat if he chose to take it.
He knew that the very future of their partnership could hinge on that simple gesture, could be decided on if Steve was willing to take Danny's outstretched hand, his metaphorical and literal help, or not.
So Danny waited, hand outstretched as Steve stopped before him, barely daring to breathe, barely daring to make eye contact, just waiting to see if perhaps this was the time that he had done irrevocable damage to their friendship. His eyes slid closed as he awkwardly, silently, stood there for half a beat and then a longer one, heart in his throat, and then suddenly, he felt a hand meet his; and his eyes sprung open to see Steve's eyes, guarded and weary, meet his own as the SEAL took his hand and nodded in thanks, using the support to slip into the seat.
Danny exhaled loudly, feeling like he'd just run a marathon, and silently said a word of thanks to whomever out there was looking out for him, and then jogged back to his side of the car. As he slid into his own seat, he went to start the car, and then let his hands drop away from the ignition. Initially he'd wanted to wait, drive McGarrett home and get him into familiar territory before saying anything meaningful, but now he knew that he couldn't wait. Steve's acceptance of Danny even being here was enough to spur Danny into action now, and he knew that the moment couldn't be wasted.
So with his hands in his lap and his eyes on his hands, Danny finally said the words to his partner that he should have said weeks ago. "I'm sorry, Steve. I'm so, so sorry. I can't even begin to properly say how sorry I am, and I can't even make a joke about me being at a loss for words because I know that I've screwed up so badly to joke. And I'm going to keep on apologizing, but I just need to know this first: are you in rejection? Because if you are, I'll give you more of my liver. I don't know if I can do that, but I will because it might be the only thing I can do to make up for what an ass I've been, and so I'll find a way. I just need to know—what I mean to say is that I realize I'm in no position to make demands or expect you to tell me anything, but I would really like to know if you're okay or if you're in rejection and I need to start making phone calls."
A carefully neutral voice responded, but Danny was just grateful Steve responded at all. "You really don't have a right to know, but that's never really stopped you before when it comes to my health." Danny nodded, staying silent and not protesting Steve's apparent withholding, but then he glanced up in surprise as Steve's tone suddenly became just a shade lighter. "But since it's technically your liver, I guess you have a vested interest in knowing how it's doing."
"I…" Danny stopped, not even sure what to say.
"I'm not in rejection, Danny. They thought for a while that I might be, but I've had a series of post-op infections that are unrelated. Your liver is fine."
Danny let himself collapse against the steering wheel, not consciously realizing until that moment that the very idea that Steve could have been so sick, could have been dying and suffering by himself, was like a physical weight that only now was lifted. "Thank God," he breathed out, and then looked up quickly as he realized that might not have sounded like he had intended. "I don't care about my liver, Steve, I'm just really, really glad that you're okay. Not that having another infection is okay but I'm assuming that's easier to treat than needing a new organ so—"
Thankfully Steve cut him off and saved him from his endless rambling. "I knew what you meant."
"Good." Silence descended for a moment, not quite comfortable, but not quite as strained as before. "Listen, Steve, I want you to know that I am so sorry. Chin may have let slip to me that you somehow have managed to think that this entire mess is your fault, and it's not. It's just not. I opened my big mouth and said something I didn't even really mean and turned something great and golden into this—this mess. Honestly, I didn't feel that way, not truly. I never truly thought you were being selfish or that you had betrayed us—but it was so much easier to hold onto those feelings than think about what your decision would have meant, especially if you had died. I couldn't face that, couldn't imagine a life where you just disappeared like that, and it was easier for me to pretend to think the worst of you than face the possibility of mourning you. And when you came back—I don't know, maybe I hadn't processed all of that completely, or maybe I can only really show affection to your through fighting—I let my mouth get way ahead of my brain."
He paused for a second, trying to reel himself in, trying to contain himself before he let himself come apart. "I can completely understand if you want me out of your life, and I'll hate it, but I'll respect your choice. I hate myself for saying what I did, and I hate myself more for not being a better friend and saying sorry as soon as I realized I was acting like a three year old. I—"
Steve cut in once more. "Danny, take a breath and just stop. No, don't look panicked, I'm not about to tell you to transfer to HPD, don't worry. Right now, there's a lot that we could say and that maybe we should say, but I don't want to. I'm tired of fighting, tired of missing you, tired of trying to convince myself that space is better for both of us. I thought maybe you were still mad for a while and I thought maybe I was too, but…" He trailed off with a shrug. "But I'm sorry too. So sorry. But I know you, Danno. I know that you say things in the heat of the moment that you don't mean, and I also know that you're proud and pride gets in the way sometimes. Yours, and mine. I'm tired, I've been running a fever for three days, and I really just want to be able to have a cold beer with my best friend and bitch about the fact that my chest hurts and anything else I want. After all that we've been through together, I'm not willing to let all of that wither away just because we're both too dumb and too proud to play nice sometimes. Does that work for you?"
Danny met his best friend's strong gaze with a unblinking stare of his own, cheeks wet with tears he wasn't ashamed of. "You're a great man, Steven."
Steve nodded once, taking the compliment for once. "So are you, Danno. I know it wasn't easy coming here today and, to be honest, I'm really glad you broke down first because I'm really sick of being sick, and fighting you was taking all my energy. Also, I love Chin, but you're my best friend and I would like to have you around."
Danny cracked a small smile. "You're being very frank about your health all of a sudden. I should have given you an organ a long time ago and saved myself the stress of wondering how you were feeling."
Steve shrugged, a small grin playing along his lips. "I get honest when I'm irritable, apparently." For a moment, something akin to uncertainty flashed across Steve's face, and then he said quietly, "Look, I'm being completely serious about wanting things to be fixed and just moving forward to do that, but if you want to sit and talk about everything, I will. I've missed you and I don't want anything to go unsaid if it's going to hold us back, okay?"
Danny reached out and grabbed Steve's hand, feeling certain that the connection would hold even when he hadn't been only minutes before. It had felt like ages since they had been this open and honest with each other, embarrassment over revealing emotions stripped away by necessity. "Hey, listen to me. You know me, and how much I usually love to enjoy talking and making a point, usually in your general direction, but this time, I'm fine. Because realizing that there could be something seriously wrong with you and I had so stupidly and stubbornly let a rift form so widely between us that you couldn't even tell me about it was not a good feeling. This past month, I've sort of felt like everything I touch breaks, and I'd really like to stop feeling like that. So let's say fuck it all, let's go get a drink to celebrate being back on track, yeah?" He squeezed Steve's hand for emphasis.
Steve nodded, and squeezed Danny's hand back, the gesture saying more than any of their words could have. "Sounds golden. Let's go."
Almost a month had passed, Danny thought as he looked across the Camaro's center console at his partner, and it had been a good month.
There'd been a time not too long ago that he would have been certain, would have been absolute in the fact that he would have never have a good month again, as he had wrecked something precious. But now? Now it was he who was sitting next to Steve while they drove to a crime scene, not Chin, and it had been he who had started staying over at Steve's house while he healed, not anyone else.
Though it seemed crazy, it felt as though his relationship with Steve was almost stronger than before. It wasn't something he could explain to anyone else, knowing that they would look at him like he was nuts, like he was trying to overcompensate. But the truth of the matter was that it seemed like they had been strengthened by the hell they'd put each other through, not weakened by it. Danny knew he'd said some awful things to his partner, but he'd also allowed himself to be more open and caring than he had for a long time, too long, and they were more in sync than ever before. So, he amended in his head, I could tell Steve and he would know exactly what I meant.
It had been a good month. Sure, they'd almost broken themselves, but they hadn't. They'd almost taken something wonderful and let it rust, but they'd saved it. They'd almost lost everything, but they didn't. And they'd moved on, with plenty of beer and a few more deep talks.
Danny thought back to Steve's words that day in the car, "Sounds golden", and smiled, almost without knowing it as he thought of how applicable that was.
"You good, Danno?" Steve asked, breaking through Danny's reverie, catching the small grin on his partner's face.
The blonde met his best friend's gaze right before Steve looked back at the road. He knew that at some point in the future, he'd have a snarky response, ready to bicker and fight like always. But right now, right in this moment he was still massively content with their happy state. "Yep, it's great."
Because despite what Danny had thought a month before, waiting for Steve to take his hand, everything had turned out okay.
I know I promised last time that the next installment would be up quickly and then that turned into two weeks (real life got a bit hellish for a while), but I honestly do swear that the next chapter will be up soon!
I would love to hear your thoughts on this one, as I'm unsure (as always).
Charlotte