I do not own Hawaii Five-0 or any characters. No copyright infringement intended.
Notes: sorry for the delay. I actually have the flu and the muse is not cooperating at all.
H5O* H5O* H5O* H5O* H5O
The diffused sparkle of sunlight woke Danny from a sound sleep as it wafted across his face. The light came and went through the window, controlled by remnants of thick, black storm clouds and affected by the shrubbery which was still being buffeted by high winds. Behind it all lay a bright blue sky. Every so often, the light was bright enough to hurt his eyes but it was a very welcome change. He lay on his back on the sofa with his eyes partly opened, blankets half on as the other half puddled to the floor. He listened for a moment, only hearing the wind which gusted outside. No rain or thunder though. Nothing except the wind and the few limbs of trees which continued to slap and scatter into the side of the house.
A glance to his right confirmed that Steve was sleeping in his leather side chair, blanket up to his chin and completely out for the count in a more darkened corner of the room. Squirreling up his low reserves of energy, Danny pushed the rest of the blankets to the floor. He'd slept longer than he had in a while, yet it never seemed to be enough. Not feeling up to par, but determined to let Steve sleep, he pushed himself to his feet and stumbled to the bathroom still weak and off-balance. Without too much initial thought, he kicked his way through a pile of towels towards the sink before closing the door. He toed another one or two towels under the sink to avoid tripping while he rested his injured hand on the basin's edge and studied his face.
He looked the way he felt; sick. Exhausted. Dark smudges ruined his eyes. And he needed a shave. Badly. But he was distracted by the deep ache in his bandaged palm as he made a half-hearted and one-handed attempt of at least washing his face. Tiny memories pestered his mind. The same, small untidy snippets were the same old glimmers which he'd had once before. More like ruined black and white newspaper cuttings, they really meant nothing. They wouldn't ever mean anything even if he could splice them back together.
Cold, barren tile. Water ... and a struggle. A fight ... then ... Steve.
Danny swallowed hard and shook his head, water dripping down his face. The memories were more feelings than anything tangible. A breeze tickled his left shoulder and he shivered, suddenly cold. It blew in from the window which had been left open a few inches. A frown slowly marred his originally much calmer expression. A weird sense of déjà vu made him really try to look at his reflection in the mirror - really see what he'd been missing. It was then that he stared beyond his own image into the shower stall itself, his eyes considering the pile of damp towels. He had only half registered them at first, completely discounting the reason for their existence. Only now though did he bother to think about what it all could mean.
"Steve?" He whispered, his head cocked in consternation as he considered one glimpse into a possible past. He turned to face the shower stall after a few minutes, staring harder at the pile of towels as if they held some sort of secret, his frown deepening at a feeling which rankled his calm and made him wonder even more. That feeling of déjà vu grew stronger and yet, he couldn't quite put his finger on what was beginning to bother him so very much. The ghost of a voice teased him and if he tried hard enough, that voice almost sounded like Steve talking to him. A voice that was full of apology, nonetheless unrelenting and determined.
'I wish ...'
The memory stopped dead right there. I wish. I wish ... what? Danny blinked rapidly at the echo in his head, but couldn't discount it because Steve's voice was stuck in his head. His mind couldn't play such a trick on him as that. Could it? He sucked in a breath of air to clear his head before blowing it out through his mouth long and loud. No, he had to be wrong; there was no way that those two words had been said in Steve's voice. He'd been sick, but surely not that sick. With his one good hand, Danny scrubbed at his face until his vision blackened while he replayed the two syllables over and over.
'I wish ...' He couldn't escape this particular feeling though. He'd heard Steve's voice and one of his last, more coherent moments hadn't been in some obscure room somewhere. It had been here ... in this exact bathroom ... and on the ... floor.
"Shit," Danny whispered as he gauged the dry towels which he'd kicked out of the way. He didn't remember. In fact, the conclusion he was coming to was downright frightening for someone who couldn't remember a great many of the last few hours. Nonetheless, his budding theory absolutely made sense in every possible way. Cursing under his breath with every step he took, Danny left the bathroom for the kitchen. He was on edge now, off guard and fighting to reconcile the remainder of his vague story. But what he first saw, stopped him in his tracks with a shock he hadn't anticipated feeling.
"No way. It's not true," Danny muttered as he stared dumbly at the knife. If he'd needed a missing link or the proverbial smoking gun, he'd just discovered it. The knife had his name written all over it and it tied all of his mental loose ends together with a painful snap.
The steak knife was still on the kitchen table where Steve had tossed it. He hadn't had the time to clean the bathroom or the kitchen from their inconceivably wild night. So the knife lay there, its point looking sullied by dried blood, seemingly waiting for Danny to simply pick it up again. He was drawn to it with a sickly unease, his fingers almost sneaking out to stroke the handle before he hefted it into his right hand.
It was familiar in all the wrong ways. Confused, yet very pensive, Danny poised the sharp tip on the edge of his bandaged hand and slowly twirled the hilt while he forced himself to think.
Untouchable shadows and threats taunted him. Things without substance. Lost in thought as more and more uneasy feelings toyed with his subconscious, his eyes fell to the floor by the corner of the cabinets where he could quite easily see the few droplets and smears of dried blood. What he thought he could recall didn't make sense and he knew it never would. His fever had been high and he'd apparently been hallucinating.
"What the hell did I do?" Danny mumbled softly. He sniggered then, the sarcastic sound irritating his throat to make him cough. It bespoke of his embarrassment because this theory didn't need a decorated detective for any kind of validation. A rookie could figure it out. Hell. Even a fourth-grader could read the writing on the wall.
He remembered the sensation of being watched. Of a threat and being on guard. He remembered wanting to wake up and ... hurting himself to prove that he was ... awake. But Steve. There was never anyone in the house and that fact left only one credible explanation for his partner's knife wound.
"That did not happen," he whispered under his breath wanting to deny what he knew to be the truth. Even as he argued his own case out loud, Danny knew it was true - all of it. "I couldn't have stabbed him." He rapped the flat cheek of the knife gently against his bandaged palm, confused as he battled the evidence with what he couldn't quite remember. The tapping worsened the ache in his palm and the knife blurred as he zoned out and tried to come up with other possible options. But there weren't any and his alarm grew as the one and only answer percolated to the top time and again.
He'd attacked his best friend. With a knife.
There hadn't been a threat at all. He had been in Steve's house the entire time ... with Steve. No one else had ever been there. And if someone else had been there, where were they now? Why was there no evidence of that?
"You're a fool, Williams," Danny chastised himself angrily. "What the hell did you do?"
"Danny?" Steve's voice cut through his reverie. Though the tone was low and cautious, Danny still jolted as if he'd been electrocuted.
"What!" Eyes wide, he whirled around, his balance an issue as a sickly vertigo got the better of him. "God ... Steve!" He bobbled the knife before saving it from a fall, his fingers grasping the handle firmly.
"You okay? What are you doing?" Steve asked. He'd woken up and immediately gone looking for his friend. Finding him in the kitchen was one thing. That would have been fine if not for what he was holding in his hand and Steve groaned softly for what he should have taken care of hours earlier.
"You want to put that down, buddy?" His eyes were as wary as his careful words, while his hands slowly came up. Palms up, fingers splayed wide.
Danny took it all in. More clues to corroborate his conclusion. Making matter worse, it was Steve's stance which provided Danny with all the remaining proof he might ever need. He'd done it. He'd done all of it. There never had been an attack and no one had ever been inside Steve's house. Fractured beliefs were completely nullified as Steve seemingly prepared for a fight; round two of a fight where he'd been the attacker and Danny's shoulders sagged forlornly.
"I did do it then," Danny stated. His tone was flat, emotionless. On the inside though, his gut was churning. "There was never anybody here. Just me ... and you."
"You did," Steve replied soothingly. "But it's okay now. Everything's fine."
"Fine? There was never anybody here, Steven. I could have killed you!" Danny said. He'd forgotten about the knife as he talked, his fingers wrapped around the handle as he tapped its side erratically into his palm. He almost liked the pain he was causing himself; it was helping keep him grounded as he glared at the outline of the bandage under his friend's t-shirt. The feelings were right, muddled as they were because his fiction was founded in some decent bits of factoid.
"Nothing about what I thought ... or what I did is fine!" Now upset for something he knew he'd never remember completely, but which was now easily substantiated by all the evidence at his disposal, Danny barked out a cutting laugh. "I could have killed you," he repeated inanely.
"Never happen," Steve argued gently as he entered the kitchen to stand directly in front of his friend. "You were sick, Danny. Out of your head with fever and convinced that I was someone else. You got in a lucky shot." He was watching Danny like a hawk, his own unease growing as Danny's emotions came to the fore. Gauging awareness and mood, Steve was sure that his partner was indeed coherent. However, he didn't like the knife. Not one bit and he couldn't prevent himself from glancing towards it.
"A lucky shot?" Danny said incredulously as he followed Steve's eyes for the split second they dropped to his hand and he laughed again, loud and choked. "That's why you're so freaked out now, right? Because I got in a lucky shot whenever the hell this happened?"
"You hurt yourself first," Steve replied matter of factly. "That scared me more than anything if you want to know the whole truth." He shrugged and smiled, his hands held out wide before he covered Danny's with them. "So yeah ... I'm a bit freaked out now because I don't want you to hurt yourself again, Danno."
"The hell with me," Danny argued back. "I hurt you, okay?"
Steve shrugged again as he gently replaced Danny's fingers with his own around the knife. He took the one time weapon away, only to put it in the sink, one hand still firmly planted on Danny's wrist. "It's just a scratch, Danno," Steve said. "It wasn't your fault."
"Fault? Of course it was." Danny shook his head to disagree, wanting to argue more but knowing it was a lost cause. He failed at disengaging his wrist too from Steve's grip. He was disturbed on so many levels, he didn't know where to land with his feelings or his thoughts. But it was Steve who closed that loop, too. His reasoning was so very valid, that it left Danny with no where to go and no need to complain.
"You were sick Danny and I don't blame you. Not one bit," Steve began simply. "And before you ask ... as far as that shower goes ... I had to get your temperature down and that was the only way I could do it. You didn't much approve at the time, but it worked well enough."
There was an embarrassing memory of being touched and of another struggle. Some argument or other where he thought he might be drowned or ... touched ... of fingers running through his hair. Steve had done all of that and on one level it didn't matter that it was because he'd been so damnably sick. He glanced down at the new pair of over-sized sweatpants and reddened even more. They were different and he hadn't noticed.
"Seriously, Steven?" Danny mumbled self-consciously as he yanked his wrist from Steve's hand, unable to look him directly in the eye. "Is nothing sacred? My ... pants?" Evidently nothing had been off limits during the height of his fever. Shit. Cradling his bandaged hand to his chest as an excuse, Danny brushed past his friend to escape to the supposed sanctity of his sofa.
"Yup, you left me no choice, Danno, Steve replied, one side of his mouth lifting into an easy grin. "They did get a little ... wet."
The back-handed innuendo wasn't at all lost on his friend. "I hate you so much right now," Danny moaned as he sank into his corner of the sofa, Steve hot on his heels, his amusement now plastered over his face. "None of this leaves this house. Ever."
~ to be continued ~