Howdy! Happy Labor Day Weekend to all my US readers!
First off, a huge thanks to all the reviewers for the last chapter, and thank you especially to all the Guest reviewers out there! I always hate that I can't reply to your reviews, but I hope you all know how much I appreciate the feedback and comments. Oh! And to the guest reviewer who requested more hurt!Danny stories-this one skirts around the edges of that, but don't worry, I plan on trying to do at least one real Danny-whump story.
And now, PLEASE READ THIS.
I AM SERIOUS. READ THIS AUTHOR'S NOTE:
Read this story the whole way through. I promise you, PLEASE READ IT ALL THE WAY THROUGH before making any judgments. If this story needed appropriate warnings I would give them, so trust me.
And now, onwards.
"Now remember when I told you tat's the last you'll see of me,
Remember when I broke you down to tears.
I know I took the path that you would never want for me,
I gave you hell through all the years"
They'd had a disagreement.
That's what started it, Danny thought. The huge, end all, blow up of a blow out fight that they were currently engaged in had started with a disagreement over how to handle their latest case and their latest dangerous suspect.
For once, Steve was the one that was arguing to follow the rules, call in SWAT, have plenty of men outside for the takedown, have as large of presence as possible. Danny was the one arguing against it, against the massive show, arguing for a smaller, subtler, softer. They couldn't agree, Danny couldn't stop pushing Steve's buttons, and then things got heated. And here they were now, sitting in the Camaro outside the Palace, yelling.
It was ridiculous, Danny knew. They weren't even fighting about what they had originally disagreed on now, and Danny could see every person who walked into the Palace give them sidelong glances, as their voices grew louder and louder. It was utterly embarrassing and so insane, and one woman's face had been so scandalized, that, finally, Danny broke.
He broke with a laugh, stopping Steve short with raised eyebrows. "Did you just laugh?"
"That woman," Danny said, chuckling a little more, "Did you see that woman?"
"What woman?" Steve still sounded more than a little pissed, though slightly more confused than before.
"I'm pretty sure that woman just crossed herself after hearing us," Danny replied, another giggle escaping his mouth. "I know we've been loud but I didn't think we were loud enough to seriously scare another human being from twenty feet away." This time, Steve laughed a little bit with his partner, and Danny could see a little bit of the tension drain from the other man's shoulders. "I love you, you know that right? I love you, but god, you're frustrating sometimes. Did they teach you to be an obnoxious asshole in the Navy, or was that just naturally your personality?" The words held no heat in them, though, and Danny was happy to see the rest of the strain leave his partner's body as their argument completely ran out of steam.
"At least I can blame it on the Navy, but there's nothing to blame for you."
"Har har," Danny responded quickly, before turning more serious. "Agree to disagree?"
"At least until you agree that I'm right because I'm the boss," responded Steve with a smile. Then, "Well, now that you've made me famished from this mental workout, let's grab dinner, yeah?"
Danny nodded, and they made their way back to the McGarrett household peacefully. It had been a while since they had had the time to spend the evening together, work and childcare cutting their extracurricular bonding time to a meal here or there, and Danny was grateful just to be able to sit by the ocean with a beer and his best friend.
Their luck held, and there were no interruptions, leaving them free to catch up on all they needed to, somehow not having run out of things to say to each other even after spending all day at work together. It was, Danny mused, one of the nicer things of having your brother be your coworker. Danny commented such to Steve, earning back a snarky, "I'll remind you of that next time you disagree with me." It was a good enough evening, with a day off ahead of them tomorrow that Danny ended up drinking more than he had intended, so in the wee hours of the morning, he settled comfortably onto Steve's couch, a blanket lightly wrapped around him.
He woke up a few hours later, the sun just starting to rise, breathing heavily, anxious. He couldn't figure out what had woken him at first, why he felt so shaken, until he realized the blanket was tightly coiled around him, pressing too tightly and making him feel trapped. In the same moment that he was telling himself it was absurd to feel claustrophobic from a blanket, he was moving quickly to untangle his legs from their bind.
Just as he sat back in relief at getting himself free, Danny heard the quiet murmurings of Steve's voice upstairs. "What the fuck? It's like five am, Steve," Danny mumbled as the floorboards creaked above him with Steve's footsteps. With a glare above him, Danny reached for his phone, wanting to see exactly what time it was so he could give Steve shit for it later. As he picked it up, the bright light tore into his dilated eyes, and he had to blink a few times to let his vision clear and see the screen.
When he could finally see, he immediately wished that he had remained blind for a moment longer. Had remained un-alerted to the multiple alerts crowding his screen.
War.
An attack on an American city by a foreign power. An unknown number of dead, wounded, or missing. Flashbacks and comparisons to a decade and a half before. A promise for justice from the government, with appropriate declarations made.
Suddenly, Steve's phone call upstairs took on a whole new meaning, and Danny felt like he was going to be sick.
He sat upright on the sofa, phone and blanket forgotten as he stared blankly out the back windows, his brain not being fully able to comprehend the momentous changes that were coming. After a while, it could have been minutes, hours, or days, Steve came downstairs, face already carefully constructed to be calm.
When he saw Danny awake, McGarrett immediately came and sat across from the blonde. "I didn't mean to wake you."
Danny didn't look at him, didn't want to see the perversely calm face of the soldier next to him. "You didn't, not exactly. Checking my phone certainly woke me up more." They were both silent for a moment, the air around them heavy with the weight of the world, and then finally Danny looked at his best friend. "You're going, aren't you? That's what the phone call was, right? To sign back up for whatever the hell we've been dropped in."
Steve nodded, and for an instant, there was a flash of emotion in the SEAL's eyes, both acceptance and fear. "I can do a lot for the effort, Danny, with my skills and background."
"You can do a lot here, too," Danny retorted quietly, desperately, willing to say or do anything to keep his partner here. It was too much to even imagine Steve going where he was unable to follow.
"It's not the same. And I don't have a choice, not really. This is bigger than what I want, Danny. It's about what's needed and what can be done."
His tone was placating, but Danny wasn't placated. "You can do the selfish thing for once," his voice so full of emotion that it was almost a whisper. "This won't be a quick mission or reserve training—you'll be gone, but we'll need you here."
The cool and collected veneer was firmly in place this time, no cracks in the perfect armor. "It won't be quick, no, but it's for the greater good."
"Bullshit," Danny responded morose, belligerent, brokenhearted. "What if it kills you? Who's going to fight crime with me from the nursing home?"
"Then I'm sure you'd find someone else to annoy. But try not to worry, I'm going to do my best to come home."
Danny nodded, but what his body wanted to do instead was pull his partner, his best friend, into a hug and never let go. "I'm never going to be okay with this."
"I know. I don't expect you to be, I just expect you to be there to send me off."
And Danny was. Although he wasn't waving at a departing aircraft carrier, a few weeks later he still sent his partner off into the unknown, waving as long as he could see the SEAL walking down the jet way to the plane that would take him back to DC. He was in his blue fatigues, already technically back on active duty, and ready to report.
Danny hated it. He wasn't ashamed to admit that he'd been crying when Steve walked away for what could be the last time, wasn't going to lie about the fact that his heart felt like it was in a vice, squeezing so hard that there was nothing but fear and pain left inside. The world was in bad shape at the moment, but Danny couldn't find it in his heart to care about of that when he was having to prepare for this separation that Steve had always promised wouldn't come. So at that moment, watching Steve's camo-wearing figure disappear around the bend at last, Danny didn't care about the war, the bleakness of the world, the implications for the future; instead, he wallowed in the feeling of being so very alone.
Much as he tried, that feeling of isolation didn't leave him. Not in the beginning, when Steve called home frequently, his time on base in the States being extended for various reasons. Not later, when Steve got shipped out to halfway around the world and the calls became infrequent, an all too rare and special gift.
Not when year one rounded into year two and even though Five-0 had found its way without its leader, Danny still couldn't get comfortable. Not when year two became year three when Steve signed on for another tour, the little bit of time he'd had on leave not being nearly enough.
Not when Danny looked up one day from helping Grace with her college applications and realized that he'd only seen the man who had become a brother to him a few times in the past four years.
And he knew that that sense of isolation and loneliness that had seemed to descend on him all those years ago at the airport would never leave when two immaculately dressed men showed up at his house early one morning.
Steve had made Danny his next of kin before shipping out, determining that it was both less stressful for Mary and also simpler as Danny was also named as the executor of Steve's will. It wasn't a job Danny wanted, hadn't wanted to face the fact that this new war had suddenly made this all possible, all necessary. And deep down, he hadn't wanted to be the first one to get the bad news, should that instance ever arrive.
And now, now it looked that it had arrived. Danny had vomited into the bushes on the side of his house as soon as he had opened the door and seen who was there. He could have ignored the implications of why there were two men clearly from the Navy on his doorstep except for the fact that one of them was clearly a chaplain.
He spoke to them, but couldn't hear what they were saying once they said the words 'killed in action.' He could see their lips moving, but it was like a fog had settled over his senses and he'd blocked everything out. It left him in a daze that he didn't come out of until weeks later, after the funeral, after everyone had left, after he was left alone in an empty house and forever without the other person in the world who had seemed to share a part of his soul.
And, finally, Danny broke.
He cried ugly tears, heaved painful sobs that felt like they could rip his body apart. He stayed in his house, on the floor, barely moving from grief for two days until his daughter came to find him, tearstains on her cheeks
He finally started pulling himself out of his quagmire of sorrow for the sake of his kids, trying to find normalcy in a world that felt so hellish it couldn't be real. He went back to work, but couldn't bear the glass walls that constantly let him see who wasn't and would never be there again, and he found himself transferring back to HPD after a time. He worked cases, got assigned a new partner, but never let himself get so close the way he once had.
He eventually started dating again, having broken up with Melissa not too long after the funeral. He couldn't stand how she reminded him of happier times, couldn't stand himself for blaming her for any of it. He met a woman in a support group that was a good person, good for him, and didn't make him think of his dead best friend every time he saw her face. They'd both lost brothers to this war and she understood what it was like to not be able to move on, despite everyone else seeming to find a way. They grew older, together, and she doted on Grace and Charlie as though they were her own. It took Danny years to want to make their relationship legal, not able to stomach the idea of getting married and not having his best man there.
Steve had left a SEAL-shaped hole in Danny's life that he really wasn't ever able to fully fill. It'd been like this after Matt, but Steve had gotten him through that, through the pain and loss. But now, Danny had no brothers left and there was a hollowness inside his heart now that he didn't know how to fix.
He grew older still, enjoying in his children's lives, in their children's lives, and he wouldn't say that it was unfulfilling but there had always been a piece missing. He hadn't pictured his life turning out this way, he thought as he noticed one day that the last of the blonde had fade from his hair. He'd found peace, after a while, but he'd imagined his children being cousins to the children McGarrett eventually would have had, of large family gatherings with all of them there, of their families growing old together, of staying together through the end. He was grateful for everyone in his life now, but there were still days that it ached that Steve had missed out on all of this.
It was one of those days where Danny could feel the echoes of his best friend all around him as he lay in his hospital bed, could almost hear the joke Steve would have made if he'd been there to hear Danny's liver was failing. He was an old man, now, and wouldn't have taken a transplant even given the opportunity, but he knew that Steve would have made some smartass comment that would have caused a round of bickering if he had been in his rightful place by Danny's side. And he felt Steve's absence so profoundly that it was like a physical pain, and for one traitorous moment, Danny was almost glad that he was dying so that he could see Steve again.
Finally, Danny closed his eyes to the family around him, drawing his last breaths and thinking about the family he would see on the other side with a smile, as he let the darkness take him.
"Danny, can you hear me? Just squeeze my hand, okay? Please, just wake up."
There was a familiar, worried voice next to his ear, but that didn't make sense, because he was dying, they all knew he was dying, he was old so they should just let him go…
"Come on, Danno, I know you're just resting your eyes to annoy me."
Suddenly, the voice and the nickname clicked something inside Danny and he struggled to open his eyes, needing to see, needing to verify for himself. Finally, finally, after what felt like a momentous struggle, Danny peeled his eyes open, and looked up to see Steve's tired face looking down at him.
Steve. Young, healthy, here Steve.
"Steve?" He hadn't realized how dry his voice was until he tried to speak, and his partner's name came out more like a croak. He gratefully took the ice chip Steve offered into his mouth and sucked on it for a few seconds, trying to use the time to sort out his confusion. "You're here. How?"
Though Danny's mind was still trying to process what was happening when he vividly remembered another reality, Steve answered the question he'd assumed to be implied. "We were trying to find Frank Stewart, remember? We'd tracked him to a hotel down by the beach, and we'd argued about how to handle him-in the car, right?. I finally agreed that your approach would best because of his propensity for surprise bombs when threatened, and so we went in small. You and I split up when we got there. Do you remember any of that?" Danny's wide, confused gaze must have clearly indicated that he did not, because Steve continued. "I heard something through the comms, but when I found you, you'd already taken a bad hit to the head. We got him, eventually, but I couldn't get you to wake up, even after everything."
"Everything?" Danny asked, and then realized for the first time that Steve was sitting in a wheelchair, an IV hooked up to his arm, looking pale and tired. "You're hurt."
"Says the man with a skull fracture."
"Skull fracture?" Danny's attention was immediately drawn away to what he was noticing was a truly awful headache. He didn't quite understand what was going on yet, how and why Heaven, his next life, the final hallucinations of a dying brain, whatever it was, seemed to be his best friend and he injured, in a hospital.
"Yeah," Steve confirmed, his mouth turning down into a frown as he clearly remembered details Danny could still only grasp at. "Stewart hit you really hard with a pipe, and it cracked your skull, which led to some really bad intracranial pressure. They've been watching you, trying to evaluate if you'd need surgery or not, but the pressure went down earlier this morning and you started to wake up. By all accounts, you're mostly out of the woods by this point. I'm sure your head still feels awful, though."
"It does," Danny replied, dazed at everything. "But Steve, how are you here? You died, I got the letter, you went to war and you died…" Danny trailed off, realizing at the same time that he was both rambling and crying. "You died and I got old without you. I-I was dying as an old man and now I'm here, and I don't get it. You can't be real." He forced a sob down his throat, not able to stop the emotion.
Steve immediately moved stiffly out of the wheelchair, standing up and stepping forward to grab Danny's hand in his. His eyes tightening in pain at the movement, his brown furrowing in confusion, but he didn't sit back down. "Danno, you've been unconscious for two days, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm real, this is real." He squeezed Danny's hand tightly, almost painfully so as if he could try to squeeze understanding into his partner by force. "Your brain got more than a bit scrambled from the fracture and concussion, and they've had you on some heavy drugs to keep you sedated. So whatever you thought happened was just a dream. Or some sort of hallucination, but it wasn't real."
Danny's head hurt and it felt like he couldn't handle the emotional whiplash paired with so much confusion. "But they came to the house, they told me you had died."
"I didn't die, I'm right here." Steve leaned a bit more forward and pressed Danny's fingers into the pulse at his wrist. "Feel that? You can't get more alive than a heartbeat."
"Promise?" He wanted so desperately to believe but that other life had felt so real, so awfully real.
"I promise." He moved to sit back down in the wheelchair, pausing when he seemed to sense the brief flash of anxiety Danny felt when he'd moved away. "I'm just sitting back down, okay? I'm not going anywhere."
Danny nodded, unwanted emotion seeming to rise within him again. He forced himself to focus, to try to clear his head and concentrate on what was apparently real. After a moment, Danny lashed onto something that escaped his attention until now, and he felt a rush of irritated concern that seemed to carry over into his tone. "What happened to you?"
Steve signed, clearly sensing that he wasn't going to be able to avoid the question. "Stewart decided to use you as a bit of bait for me, thought he could take out the both of us and make his escape. It was a pot shot, but it still did a bit more damage than I originally thought, hence the fact that I am still officially a patient, and not sitting by your bedside as a free man."
"What kind of damage?"
"Just a bit of bleeding."
"That's a bit vague," Danny responded, suddenly feeling much more grounded in this reality as he latched onto a familiar fight. "If you're still here after two days, I'm guessing it was more than just bit of bleeding."
"It's nothing you need to concern yourself with," Steve retorted, clearly not willing to say anything more.
But Danny needed him to say more, needed to hear the exact words describing the hurt and then the healing, needed to hear exactly how his best friend had been fixed so that he knew that this whole fucking lifetime that he remembered living alone wasn't real. So he continued to press, continue to fight, instinctively knowing that the accustomed banter would ground him. "It really fucking is."
The SEAL's eyes narrowed for a moment, but it was such a familiar expression that Danny couldn't be bothered to be annoyed in response, not when some part of him was still saying that he hadn't seen that look for decades. Danny was still relishing this when Steve finally responded. "Considering all the trauma you've endured the past few days, I don't think recounting my time on an operating table is going to help any. So let's just go with I'm fine now, I'm alive, and this is real, okay?" By the end of his comment, McGarrett's voice had returned to the calming and soothing tone that he had started the conversation with. "Chin and Kono should be here any minute, so then we can talk with the doctor, and then we can fill you in on the rest. Sound good?" Then, after a moment, concernedly, "Danny? Are you okay? Can you hear me?"
Danny's gaze zeroed in on the face of his partner, his concern poorly concealed. "Yeah, sorry, I just realized something. About my dream, hallucination, whatever."
Steve's face smoothed back out as soon as Danny responded, and he said cautiously, "Yeah, you want to tell me about it?" Then, as if sensing they were both in need of a little physical contact, Steve moved forward so that he could clasp Danny's hand in his own.
The contact helped, but for a moment, Danny was terrified of retelling the whole thing, terrified of reliving those emotions. But then he pushed forward, using Steve's hand as an anchor. "There was a war, and you went to fight it. Only, you didn't come back. You were killed on a mission and I lived my whole life without you. I met someone and got married, had children and a whole family, but there was always this missing piece and I grew old without my best friend. It was hell, and it felt so real. But while we've been talking, I've been thinking about it and everything that I remember, and I started to realize that there were weeks, months, years, where I just didn't recall anything about that life. Like it was just vague nothingness, which logic says if I had died and this was some sort of heaven, not only would I definitely not be stuck in a hospital bed, but also surely I could remember my wife's name.
"But just now, with part of me wanting to swear up and down those years were real, I realized Chin and Kono weren't there. Which means it couldn't have been real, because even if I'd changed jobs, grown apart for a while, they'd still have been around." He stopped speaking suddenly as he was overtaken by a huge yawn. He always hated this feeling, the sudden and inescapable fatigue that followed an injury. But he still couldn't stop himself from adding, "I missed you," quietly.
Steve squeezed Danny's hand tightly for a moment, the forcefulness of his grip clearly conveying his emotions. It told Danny that Steve had missed him too, even if it had only been two days. Two tense days of worrying and silence. After a beat, Steve released the pressure, but maintained a loose hold on Danny's hand. "You should rest for a while, while I get the doctor."
Danny nodded, but as soon as he had given his acquiescence, doubt started to creep into the back of his mind. That he'd go to sleep and wake up back in the reality where Steve was dead. That he'd wake up to a terrible world of loss. That doubt, that fear, made all his pride wash away, and he asked softly. "You'll still be here when I wake up? Still alive?"
"You can bet on it." Steve replied with a gentle smile. "I know what it's like to wake up from living a whole other life, and you can't tell fact from fiction. But this, right here, right now—it's not some wild dream. Yes, I'm going to walk out those doors, but I promise I'll walk back in them. Well, wheel, I suppose. But the fact remains: I'll be here. And I'll keep reminding you until you're healed and you are so sick of me and all the stupid things that I do that you'll wish you were in a different reality."
The strength, the sincerity, the certainty in Steve's words help calm Danny's lingering fears, letting him relax enough that sleep started to pull him back under. "Not gonna happen…" he slurred slightly, for once not caring that he was being overly nice to the man to whom his standard setting was snarky.
Steve said something in response, but Danny's eyes had already slid closed, a relaxed smile on his face.
Bet all of y'all thought I was going to spring a deathfic on you, but I told you to trust me! I learned my lesson the first time around ;)
Anyway, I hope you liked it and I would love any and all feedback! No promises on when the next one will be up (since I seem to be good at breaking them), but hopefully soon-ish!
Charlotte