A/N: Again, thank you for all your wonderful support and reviews; they are much appreciated :)

Also, a note about Yocon: yes, I realize it is not a PTSD medication, but yes, it does have purpose and I do have a plan. Hold your horses, I'm getting there.

By 10 o'clock Monday morning, Danny was very, very uneasy. His gaze kept darting to the clock, hoping that somehow, the next minute might reveal that Steve was, in fact, alive, and maybe just stuck in traffic or fixing a flat tire or cleaning his grenades or some equally-excusable reason as to why he was three hours late to work.

This was Steve the SEAL, Steve the Navy officer, Steve the routine-as-hell-three-minute-shower-leader. If he was ever late, it was by ten minutes, at the absolute maximum.

Something was wrong. Danny was sure of it.

When no phone call, text, or other form of message came from Steve by noon-and really? Was it too much to ask that he just call and let someone know he was still breathing?-Danny decided to use his lunch break in the best way possible: driving (at completely legal speeds) over to Steve's house to make sure the Neanderthal hadn't fallen down the stairs and broken his neck, or something like that.

At least Danny was a decent person, and extended that kind of common courtesy to other human beings.

Then again, Danny wasn't 100% sure Steve was human. He was definitely 50% SEAL, and the other 50% was probably made up of some strange amalgamation of robot, psychopath, and machine gun.

There was probably a little bit of shark in there, too.

"Steve?" Danny knocked once, twice, on the ex-SEAL's door, to no answer, "Steven? What, are you dead in there, or are you just screwing with us?"

No one answered.

Frowning, Danny reached into his pocket, fiddling around with his key chain until he found the spare key to Steve's house. He'd needed it after the whole North Korea incident, because for a couple days after the rescue Steve hadn't been really able to move, much less get out of bed and feed himself, and after that whole ordeal was over, Steve had never asked for the key back.

Besides, the house was basically half-Danny's already. He'd lived there for about 3 months of his life, so that gave him partial ownership, right?

"Steve?" The house was dead-silent, and as Danny pushed the front door shut behind him, he unholstered his gun.

Just a precaution.

The kitchen, living room, and study were all empty, though they too showed signs that something was amiss: dirty dishes piled in the sink, pillows scattered on the floor. Three months of living with the guy had taught Danny Steve-language, and right now everything about the house was screaming WRONG.

"Steve, are you home? Answer me."

Wait, was that a sound?

Cautiously, gun raised, Danny moved towards and up the stairs.

Then sighed and holstered his weapon when he recognized a distinctly Steve-sized mass of blankets through the open bedroom door at the end of the hall.

Maybe Steve was sick. Maybe he'd just forgotten to set his alarm and decided to take another day of weekend.

Either way, Danny was ready to shoot him.

Maybe he shouldn't have put his gun away.

"Steve?" Danny paused at the threshold to the master bedroom, debating whether it was worth it to try and wake an evidently-exhausted-6-foot-2-Navy-SEAL. "Steven."

"Gwehdnn."

Danny shook his head. "I'm sorry, would you like to try that again?"

The Steve-sized blanket monster shifted, groaning. "Go 'way, D'nny."

Ahh, that was better.

"What, are you sick or something?"

"Or something," Steve mumbled from somewhere amid the bedclothes.

Danny snorted. "I thought you Army guys didn't get sick. Is that against the rules?"

There was a long pause in which Danny thought Steve might have fallen asleep—and wow, rude—before Steve muttered, "What?"

"You're supposed to say 'It's the Navy,' or something." Danny frowned. Steve was usually quicker on the uptake, and it wasn't like that was an unusual jibe. And the way Steve was slurring, so different from his normal speech…"Are you feeling alright, Steve?"

"'m fine," the other man grumbled, slightly muffled by blankets, "be back t'm'rr'w."

"What is it like a 24-hour flu thing?" Danny walked a couple steps into the room, approaching the bed, "because if it is then by all means stay home; we don't need your germs floating—"

"Stay back!" All of a sudden, Steve was upright in bed, hand upraised in warning, his glazed-over eyes wide and locked on Danny. He looked like absolute hell.

Danny froze, bringing his hands up in a placating gesture. "Okay, relax, I won't come any closer. Geez, if you were contagious, why didn't you say so?"

Steve just grunted miserably, his face communicating that his stomach had decided that sitting up quickly was a very, very bad idea. He flopped back down on the bed, limbs bouncing lifelessly off the mattress, as Danny stepped back a bit.

"Okay, well then I guess I'll leave you to it. That is, whatever you're doing, lying there swamped in blankets. Have fun, or whatever." He took a few more steps towards the door before he remembered something.

"I told you to call me if something happened, you big ape. Why didn't you tell me you were going to be sick?"

Steve let out a great whoosh of air. "Phon's d'wnstr's," he murmured, sounding like he was rapidly approaching the other side of consciousness.

Danny sighed, went downstairs, and brought the cell phone back up, but by the time he returned to Steve's room, the ex-SEAL was already asleep. "Lazy," Danny muttered, placing the phone on the dresser and briefly taking note of the orange bottle on the table's surface.

"The one weekend we get off, you would get sick…"