Closing his eyes, Danny pretended to be asleep as he heard the nurse enter the room. Lying as still as he could, he heard the nurse announce, "Okay Commander, time's up," as she crossed to the side of Steve's bed and place something down on the bedside table. He waited, forcing himself to breath as slowly and as deeply as he could before he finally heard the nurse softly admonish Steve with, "Detective Williams needs to rest and so do you!"
He was unable to stop himself from tensing up as he heard the nurse's footsteps draw nearer to his bed a heartbeat before the nurse picked up the oxygen mask and gently lifted his head, gently slipping it back onto his face. "You need to keep this on, Danny, it's helping you breathe." She told him before glancing up at the monitor above the bed. Frowning, she glanced across at Steve whose eyes had slowly drifted shut before she looked back down at him and adding softly, "Look, I know that you're not asleep, is everything okay? I mean do you need something to help you sleep or something for the pain? Or maybe just someone to talk to?"
Danny sighed and shook his head, not willing to speak or even open his eyes.
Lightly squeezing his arm, the nurse whispered, "Okay," before she reached up and grabbed the nurse call button and placed it on the bed near his hand. "But if you change your mind, just press the call button and I will be right in."
Waiting until he heard the nurse's footsteps fade away as she left the room, Danny reopened his eyes. Weakly pulling the oxygen mask, that made him feel like he was suffocating, free from his face, he stared at the wall. He could feel his heart racing in his chest. Steve had just said that he loved him!
He had been shocked, when he had realized himself that his own feelings towards Steve had also slowly morphed over the years from friendship to something much, much deeper. He had tried to deny the feelings, continually reminding himself when his thoughts drifted to Steve that he was a heterosexual male who had been married, fathered two children and dated several women after his divorce from Rachel. Deep down he knew that, no matter just how much he had tried to deny it to himself, he had fallen in love with Steve.
But accompanying the denial had always been the terrifying fear, that even though he knew that he and Steve were close, what if one day he did work up the courage to tell Steve how he truly felt about him, that the man he loved with all his heart, who had once been a Navy SEAL, who tended to rush into dangerous situations without a second thought, would not want to have anything more to do with him. It was a fear that he knew was not justified, Steve would never do that, it was not in the man's nature.
But after Matty's death, even more so, since he had discovered that Rachel had lied to him and that Charlie was his son, and then after the bone marrow donation to save Charlie's life, something had changed, not only between he and Steve but also between him and the rest of the Five 0 ohana. He had slowly begun to feel that he was being pushed aside. The once fun little comments and digs at each other and the carguments, as he liked to mentally call their 'discussions' in the car, had slowly morphed from light-hearted and fun to having an almost nasty and mean-spirited element about them. And more and more, every time he said anything, he was made to feel by the other members of the team, … his friends,… that he was just complaining again.
Then slowly he had noticed the rest of the team and Steve slowly pull away, especially after the bone marrow operation. The visits in the days after the operation dwindled to a trickle and then stopped dead in the days after he and Charlie had been released from hospital. Then when he did return to work, Steve seemed to prefer partnering with Lou, Chin or Kono than him.
A tear trickled down his face as he rolled over and stared at the sleeping man in the other bed. And now, just like Rachel had done so often through the years whenever she wanted to be forgiven, after everything that had happened between them during the last few months, the ignoring, the snide hurtful remarks, Steve was claiming he loved him, that he felt the same way about him as he felt about Steve.
Closing his eyes, Danny swallowed a sob, unsure if Steve really meant what he had just said or just like Rachel, he was just saying the words to get him to forgive him and stay.