Archive of Our Own

“No, no, no,” Danny Williams said as he tried to lock his knees, buck against strong arms and hands pulling him in the absolutely wrong direction. “You don’t want to do this. This is a very bad idea. Think about it for one millisecond. You don’t…”

“Shut your fucking puka, haole,” someone hissed.

“We should just cap him.”

All training aside, Danny couldn’t help reacting to that. The words made him struggle harder, but his not-inconsiderable strength was laughable here. Too many of them, all of them giants, and he’d already taken a hit or two to the ribs, kidneys. His brain raced for a way out. There was none. The hands gripping his biceps constricted hard enough to hurt.

“Too easy, brah, no fun. And he and that mouth of his made us suffer all afternoon. Now it’s his turn.”

Something blunt and heavy impacted the right side of his head, a fist, probably. Dark stars blossomed over his vision and there was a wayward thought that was a better last image than goddamned ugly, murdering faces. And Steve. Steve was going to absolutely kill him for this, except he’d already be dead. Danny slumped from the blow, couldn’t resist strength greater than his as two men dragged and one prodded him from behind. It was this or a shot to the back of the head, and he didn’t know which would be worse.

Wind whipped against his face through the open door, robbed him of breath. A sturdy push came right between his shoulder blades and his feet were suddenly not on anything solid. He lunged to grab hold of the skids, knowing even if he caught them it would be a temporary reprieve. He was going to fucking die. His fingers glanced off the metal bar, thumb jammed hard. Gravity pulled him down so fast after that, yet he might have been freefalling forever. He hit the surface at an awkward angle. Stunned into semi-consciousness, he didn’t know which way was up. There was no way up, or down. It was all the same.

For a few moments, Danny felt suspended, trapped. It was a remembered sensation, unwelcome and horrible.

Danny’s skin was toasty warm from the bright sun and his tummy was full and fat from the ice cream cone he wasn’t supposed to tell Mommy about. Sand stuck to his fingers as he scooped some into his bucket. It was his job and jobs were important to have a good life and he wanted to do this one right. Summer babysitter Amy from the cabin next door said he was her best little helper of all time. He liked Amy a lot. She was nice and pretty and smelled like coconut, beach and goodness.

After Danny got the bucket all filled up as much as he could carry, he was going to do the tower. He really hoped so, anyway. Amy said they were gonna make it taller ‘n he was, pointy at the top, with a flag and everything, so he might need help, but it was still going to be his job. That was the part everyone liked to look at, and he wanted Mommy and Daddy to see how good he was at buildin’. He ventured deeper into the water, because the sand out there was wetter and looked better. He waded up to his knees in the lake.

“Daniel, what did I say?” Amy called, stern.

Danny halted in his tracks and almost dropped the pail. He raced out of the warm beach water, guiltily looking over his shoulder at his babysitter. He wasn’t supposed to go in without telling her first, even just a little way. He stared at Amy with big eyes.

“Sorry,” he said, and squished his wet toes into hot sand, liked the gritty but soft feeling. “I’m sorry. Don’t be mad.”

“I’m not mad, sweetie, but there’s a reason for the rules and why we all have to follow them. There’s no lifeguard on duty at this beach, and you’re too small to swim by yourself.”

“I’m almost five. I’m not small.”

“Oh, honey.” Amy laughed. “You’re a squirt, even though your attitude is enormous. You don’t even know. Just trust me, okay?”

Rules were dumb and he hated being called small. He hated being small. It was dumb too. And Amy was dumb, because she never let him do anything he wanted to do, not ever. Everything was dumb. He thought about dumping the sand he had into the water and refuse to help anymore. Amy smiled, walked over to him and held out her hand, and he suddenly remembered how nice and pretty she was. The sun shone behind her, like she was an angel. He took her hand.

“You’ve got a great bucketful of wet sand. Let’s go finish this thing up, huh? We’ll even make a moat if you want.”

“What’s a moat?” Danny asked, curious.

“It’s like a river in a big circle all the way around the castle.”

“Oh, one of those.” He’d seen it in pictures. “What’s it for?”

“Well, to keep the dragons out, for one thing.”

Dragons. Okay. Dragons sounded all right, maybe not that dumb. He maybe thought he liked dragons, because they were almost like dinosaurs with wings and fire breath. Actually, they might be better than dinosaurs. They were definitely better than a moat. Danny squinted his eyes and thought real hard for a minute. He chewed his lip too, because Daddy always looked very serious when he crunched up his eyes and bit his lip. Amy would know this was important if he showed her.

“Can we make a sand dragon too?”

“I’m not sure we’ll have time today. Let’s take it one proj… ” Amy stopped, distracted by something. She gripped Danny by one shoulder and squatted in front of him, lifting her sunglasses up to look him right in the eyes. “I have to go yell at your sister for a second. You stay right here and we’ll talk about a dragon when I get back, okay?”

Danny nodded, swung around to find what naughty thing Julie was doing. He liked it when Jule got into trouble better ‘en when he did, and Matty too, and Matty was always getting in more trouble than any of them. That was why he was stuck inside instead of at the beach. Well, and Mommy said Matty was too little to skip his nap. Maybe in a minute, Danny would have Amy all to himself. He saw something white and skinny in his sister’s and her friends’ hands, swirls of gray coming out of them. He saw it all, even from way far away. He knew how bad what she was doing was, or maybe he’d have shouted to her that Amy was going to yell. Julie shouldn’t be doing grown-up stuff like smoking.

“Julie Marie Williams,” Amy shouted as she trotted away from Danny. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Danny studied the castle. He wanted to do the big tower, and now he had the chance to get it done before Amy got back. She’d be so proud of him. So far, it was up to his shoulder and he could pack his sand bucket real good and lift it up that high. Scooping more dry sand in with the wet, he slapped his hands down on top of the sand until it looked hard. The bucket was heavier when he tried to lift it again, but he could do it. He could!

He almost had it, except when Danny lifted the bucket, he tipped to the side too far. He didn’t know how he ended up falling down, but he did and the whole tower got broken. Panicked, all he thought about was fixing it before Amy could see what he’d done. He scrambled out of the sand pile and ran to the water’s edge, for the wettest sand. He had his first bucket full when a sparkle of bright light from the water caught his attention. He stepped into the water to see it better. It looked like gold, and gold was perfect for inside a castle. Every castle had treasures, and maybe the dragon they were gonna build wanted the gold. That was why it was attacking. Danny smiled. He liked that story.

Danny didn’t think the glittering thing looked too far out. He glanced down the beach, saw Amy leaning over and shaking a finger at Julie. He wasn’t a baby. He’d get the treasure, and be back and have the tower fixed before Julie stopped being in trouble, and Amy would tell him how smart and good he was. Danny waded deeper, till water was at his belly button. He poked at the shiny thing with his toe, disappointed to realize it was no treasure. It was just a soda can.

He kicked the can, mad at it even though that was silly. The next thing he knew the bucket in his hand got really heavy, pulled at his arm and he fell again. Under the water, without a splash that he could hear. He … his feet couldn’t touch all of a sudden and Danny couldn’t remember anything from his swimming lessons. He’d only had seven of them. He let go of the bucket, moved his legs. He was supposed to move his legs and arms. Nothing happened. He hung there, like the lake pulled at his arms and legs and made them heavy and light at the same time. Water in his eyes, everything blurry, ripply. He breathed. Burning in his nose, his eyes.

Danny went to sleep.

Loud screaming, not screaming but something like it, too noisy, stop, stop. It wouldn’t and it woke him up and there were men, strangers. He couldn’t see their faces, they had no faces. Danny couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe right. He was sick, he was going to throw up, he wanted mom, mom, mommy. He smelled smoke, felt something tickle his face, long hair, and Julie was there and then she went away. He was confused, tired, he hurt, he didn’t know…

The cold pressure of water pulled Danny out of the dazed memory. He wasn’t five anymore, nearly dying in a lake. He kicked to the surface, his clothes heavy and constricting. He broke free of the watery grave, heaving in gasping breaths. His head throbbed, stomach churned. Aside from his own breathing and retching, all he heard was the distant hum of a motor. He couldn’t spot the source, eyes blinded by sun and salt water. It was all he could do to keep his head above water, arms flailed, panic momentarily robbing him of control. A faint, remembered taste of seaweed had him retch harder and if he didn’t get a handle on it he was going to pass out.

It felt like it took him too long to establish a proper tread, arms and legs shaky from the trauma of being tossed out of a damned helicopter and also the blow to the head. Danny shivered from the surprising cool of the water and shock, adding another complication to the plate. He could do it. He could. He was not five, there was no one around to pull him out of the water. Oh shit, oh God. There was no one. He willed himself to not think about that for the moment. He had to focus on moving his arms and legs. Once he started treading okay, his breathing settled as well. A few minutes later his vision finally cleared, that was when he realized not only could he not see the helicopter flying away, he couldn’t see land. He spun a quick circle. In any direction.

“Fuck,” Danny whispered and it sounded like the shout he’d intended for it to be amid the silence of the sea. “Fuck, fuck.”

Danny considered himself a guy who could think fast on his feet, come up with a way out of situations that would leave others huddled in a corner and crying. If he hadn’t been before Five-O, then he definitely was now, since being roped into the most frustrating, rewarding job in his long career. But here he didn’t know what to do. His mind went completely empty, as blank as the horizon. He took several deep breaths. Okay. First things first. He, and he would never, ever admit this, wondered what Steve might do if he were the one stuck in the middle of the ocean. Steve didn’t need the ego boost.

He awkwardly fumbled free of the vest, sodden and weighting him already, tried to stay afloat all the while, which was easier said than done. Next he toed his shoes off, didn’t need that extra weight pulling him down either. Pants then. Though the water was a helluva lot colder out here than off the beaches he hated (but would love to be on at that moment), the threat of tangling up and getting too heavy seemed a bigger one to his overall health. He kept the shirt, insignificant protection against the sun. If the sleeves got too restrictive, he might be able to fashion some sort of headscarf out of it later.

All clothing modifications done, he spun another slow circle, in case he’d missed obvious signs of land in his first and admittedly panicked search. He stared for long seconds all the way around, felt that fear burbling back up his throat. There was nothing. He was nowhere and had nowhere to go. Danny’s instinct, though, was to swim, save himself. He started out without a thought, a few quick strokes which turned into furious churning. For maybe ten minutes, that was all he could do. Swim as if he could see land. In his head, Steve chided him for wasting energy. What would Steve do? Tread. Keep treading. Stay put, let someone find him. Danny wanted to throw up again, and tried very hard not to think about the depth of water beneath him.

It hit him hard. Time was not on his side. Even if … when, when Steve caught up with those assholes, he doubted they would have the first real clue where to look for him or the inclination to share that information if they had it. By the time Steve got it out of them, and he would, it would be too late.

Danny was already a dead man.

Steve signaled Danny to take the right, while he went left. He knew Chin and Kono had already snaked around and had the other side covered. Their perps would be effectively boxed in. He lost visual on Danny, but that didn’t make him uneasy. He had every confidence his team could stop them from making it to the only helicopter of Blue Hawaiian Tours’ fleet that was on the ground. It was a stupid move for the Boys, backtracking into their only exit. For Five-O, this was a cakewalk.

Until it wasn’t.

“Danny, you in position?” he murmured.

The answer he got wasn’t the one he wanted or expected. Steve’s head snapped up at the angry shouts and the distinctive sound of flesh hitting flesh followed by a hollow thump of solid object to the head. He didn’t break cover, though instinct wanted him to. Danny might be in trouble. Steve moved quickly to get a better line of sight. He didn’t like what he saw any more than he’d liked what he heard. Danny was in trouble all right, held up by two very large guys, disarmed and clearly unsteady on his feet.

“Boss,” Kono’s voice whispered in his ear. “I got…”

“Don’t any of you think of it,” the leader, Akamu Kaumeheiwa shouted, as if he had heard Kono. “Or the tiny haole here gets it in the neck. None of you ain’t fast enough to stop it.”

Danny bucked, face awash with too many emotions, the main being anger. Steve couldn’t tell if Danny’s current ire was directed toward himself or the guy with the gun pressed firmly into the side of his neck who’d just insulted his stature and butchered the English language in practically the same breath. Those, of course, were the least of the transgressions and Steve had no intention of letting him get away with any of it. He could take the guy. His finger twitched on the trigger, but before he, Chin or Kono got off a shot the whole group closed ranks, circled Danny and Kaumeheiwa so that they’d have to go first and by then, well, by then Danny would have a gaping, mortal hole in his neck.

“Hey,” Steve shouted.

Steve had no words to follow that with, so he stood there like a moron while the cluster ran for the helicopter. Through the throng of gang members, Danny caught his eye. His expression was a horrible mix of regret, fear and worst of all, goodbye.

“You follow us, brah, he still bites it.”

Kaumeheiwa grinned like he enjoyed the shit pot he’d just tossed himself into elevating their crime. If they got away, the cred would be high, high, very high. Hell, even if they didn’t, their standings would be greatly improved.

“Do not doubt that.”

“Danny,” Steve shouted, took a step, halted when he saw the barrel of the gun dig into Danny’s flesh, heard the choked grunt.

Then the cluster of gangbangers and Danny hopped aboard. The helo engine turned over, the blades rotated and it lifted from the ground. Steve stood there for a second, rooted to the spot. Then he ran, jamming his SIG into its holster as he moved forward, as if he could keep the copter from taking off. At the very least, he could grab onto a skid and go along for the ride. He approached the craft and leaped as high as he could, fueled by adrenaline and ohshitDanny, and his fingertips slapped into a skid but he couldn’t stick it. He came down in a somersault, back on his feet a second later and shouting instructions to Chin and Kono, words that meant things but he had no idea what. He’d missed. He’d missed and this was fucked up. He’d fucked up. He’d sent Danny right into them, and he should have seen it coming.

Steve raced to the office, where found the cashier crouched behind the counter. He slapped his palm on it, hard. He would be sorry for making the kid flinch like that later. Later, when Danny was back on the ground and back with Five-O.

“You got GPS on all your birds?”

The clerk nodded.

“I need you to track that helicopter,” he snapped. Behind him, he heard Chin calling it in with a voice nearly as terse as his own. This couldn’t wait for them to get back to HQ, and he knew the tour company had to have the capability to monitor their own birds. “Do it now.”

The cashier nodded, got to her feet and started clacking away on her computer. It should have only taken a few seconds, but she kept clacking away and her expression grew confused and worried. After a few minutes, she crinkled her eyebrows and looked at Steve, wide-eyed.

“I can’t,” she said.

“What do you mean, you can’t?” Steve ignored the lip tremble his tone provoked. He did not have time for niceties. In his head he heard Danny haranguing him for being an insensitive jerk to this poor woman who had endured a traumatic event and was obviously in shock. It had been mere minutes, and Steve missed that inevitable diatribe. “We’ve got a man on that helo.”

“It’s, it’s not…” The girl looked ready to swallow her tongue. “There’s nothing…”

Steve clenched his jaw so hard he was surprised not to hear the crack of his molars.

“Boss,” Kono said softly, touched him on the elbow. “Let me talk to her for a second.”

Anger boiled in Steve’s blood, and the rational bit left of his brain knew he was being unreasonable. There was nothing the girl – and she was a girl, not more than nineteen – could do for them. He knew this, but irrationality was running the show at the moment. He wanted to inflict damage on something. A chair, the glass doors. Hands bunched into fist, he reined it in. They were wasting precious minutes. He couldn’t stop seeing the look in Danny’s eyes, the apology and fear and the tell Gracie… Steve could not bear to contemplate yet couldn’t stop doing just that.

He refused. He absolutely refused to tell Gracie anything but that her Danno was fine.

Steve pinched the bridge of his nose, roaring in his ears fuzzed out the conversation around him. He had to step away, just for a second, alarmed by his own inability to pull it together. All he knew was that he wished he could have just stolen his own helicopter and given chase. The threat of a gun to Danny’s head had frozen his feet and heart in his chest. It’d been real, Steve knew a bluff, it still was real. It had to still be a threat because Danny was still alive, and he was going to stay that way. Steve paced to the small plastic palm trees in the waiting area, cheesy tourist trap shit, and tipped one over because he could and it wasn’t destructive in the way he needed, but it was something. Assholes couldn’t even arrange for a more suitable evacuation site than a touring business, or maybe that was what made it so perfect. The Hawaii Boys were lightweights, innocuous until now.

“Hey, brah,” Chin said as he righted the fake plastic tree. “Take it easy.”

Take it easy. Steve didn’t think he had ever once wanted to punch Chin Ho Kelly square in the jaw before, but suddenly it was a very real possibility. They’d been standing around while Danny was… He took a step back, forced rationality to overcome violent urges. He needed the rest of his team, in one piece and not alienated. Just like it wasn’t the girl’s fault what happened, it wasn’t Chin’s fault he was such a damned steady presence it was aggravating at the moment. Steve didn’t hold back the glare, though it tempered just a little when he read dark anger and concern in Chin’s eyes as well.

“Take it easy?” Steve said at last. “I can’t take it easy. Maybe you can be calm, but you’re not the one whose partner is … you’re not the one who let your partner get taken hostage. I just stood there and let them grab Danny.”

“You didn’t let anything happen, Steve.” Chin stared at him hard. “We were all there. From my angle, there was nothing you could have done. It wasn’t your fault.”

His partner. His fault. Steve shook his head.

“These guys have nothing to lose now. They have my partner. They have Danny, Chin.”

“We’ll find him.” Chin had a hand on Steve’s bicep, held tightly, which was a pretty dangerous move at that point. “One way or another, we’ll get him back. And this is not the place to lose it in the meantime. Okay?”

Over at the counter, the cashier stared openly with those wide eyes of hers. Kono had a comforting hand on the girl’s forearm while she tried to not witness what she was witnessing by staring at the leg of a chair instead. She patted counter girl’s arm and moved toward Steve and Chin. The expression on her face was not a good one, a cross between similar anger to what Steve displayed and worry.

“The perps disabled the tracking before takeoff,” Kono told them grimly. “They knew what they were doing, had it planned. They probably had this in place as a safety measure in case we got too close, or maybe this was their front all along. Looks like that worked. No one at Blue Hawaiian is going to be able to give us an easy way to find that helo.”

“Fuck.” Steve ran a hand through his hair. “No way to track it, and you can bet they’re not going back to anyplace they’ve already been. Where does that leave us?”

Where did it leave Danny? Steve didn’t allow himself to think about the possibilities. There were too many of them, and all of them ended one way. He knew as well as anyone as soon as the fucking bastards didn’t need Danny as a hostage anymore, he was useless cargo. If they were idiots, and they were, they’d get rid of him. They might have already. No.

“They had an inside man here, so we’ll cross reference the employee roster and see if anything more shakes out,” Chin said. “We can also start tracking the GPS on Danny’s phone. That might be our best bet.”

“We can get HPD to send out a copter,” Kono suggested. “Maybe they can spot it.”

Blue Hawaiian had every single one of their birds in the air at the moment, high tourist season, flying all over Oahu. The likelihood of finding the right one was slim, and they couldn’t exactly do flybys of every helicopter without upsetting the tourist trade and therefore the governor. Circumstances might buy them some leeway but not enough. Danny was worth the headache. If something didn’t pan out and soon, Steve was not above buzzing every helicopter on every island.

“We’ll also monitor the radar for any blips that might look like they’re on an unusual flight path. Don’t worry, Boss. We’ll get them.” Kono gave him a knowing, sad smile, saying wordlessly she knew how much Danny meant to him. “Hey, he’ll be fine. It’s Danny. He’s probably talked them into a coma already.”

Despite the horrible ache in his bones and muscles that wanted to collapse him in a heap, Steve laughed. If there was anything to say about Danny, it was that the guy was a spitfire and fifteen kinds of aggravating to people who didn’t have the proper filter. Which was almost everyone.

“Yeah,” Steve said. “We’ll need to put an alert out to every airport. They’re not getting far by helicopter and you can bet they’re not going to stick around now they know we’re on their asses. Not with assault and kidnap of a police officer in their list of charges. Fuck, I don’t even care what else we had them on anymore.”

“Got it,” Chin said.

“Go. Make it happen.” Steve didn’t have to say anything. The cousins were already running. He called, “I’ll meet you at HQ.”

Considering they already knew with whom they were dealing, lowlife Hawaii Boys breaking their MO by getting involved in illegal arms, the employee roster barely even registered with Steve. He didn’t care who so much as where to find them. Instead of heading to the Palace, he steered toward the beach. The trip was short, but it took forever, lengthened by silence. Being alone gave him the opportunity to replay the whole fucked up mess. It wouldn’t stop playing. He needed to get a grip. For Danny.

Sometimes thinking too much only brought grief. Deep in his gut, Steve thought this wasn’t going to end well. He didn’t want to let those feelings anywhere near the light of day. That look of Danny’s, it wasn’t the last Steve was ever going to see. One way or another, Danny Williams had wormed his way deep into Steve’s life. And his heart, if he was going to go maudlin about it, admit to himself fully what his partner meant to him. Now that the immediate, reeling moments were over and being alone in the car, maudlin was damned near impossible to avoid. The smiling picture of Grace in the visor made him want to puke.

Steve pulled up in front of Wailoa Shave Ice. HPD had a good line on the Boys’ known places of business and hangouts, but he doubted the gang unit knew it all. Not with a group so lightweight, there hadn’t been any need for detailed work. Yakuza, Triad. Those were heavily monitored groups, which made the Boys being the ones to pull this shit all the worse. Steve needed to know everything about them. He needed every rock overturned. Kamekona saw him coming, his face broke into his customary smile.

“White boy, howzit,” Kamekona said.

Steve didn’t answer so much as glower and Kamekona’s good cheer faltered slightly as he got closer. He usually had a few minutes of amused tolerance in him. The clock was ticking. Idle chitchat was not on the menu. He’d order whatever the guy wanted, after. He’d make up for it another time, when Danny was there to exchange fond barbs with the big guy.

“I need your help,” Steve said, “and I need it now.”

“Where’s Jers…” Kamekona’s eyebrows shot up at almost the exact same time as his smile turned to a frown, quickly reading Steve’s expression and urgency. “Oh, brah.”

There were a lot of things about Hawaii that Danny would never get used to, mostly because he didn’t want to get used to them. The way no one was on time, for anything, ever. Pineapple everywhere. Dolphins in hotel pools. Goddamned pidgin making it impossible to understand people he couldn’t understand anyway just on principle. Sunsets. Sunsets were no exception, and the most obvious of discomfiting things he could not get used to at the moment.

The sun, often huge and stunningly beautiful, virtually dove into the horizon around here. One minute there was sunshine, the next dark. Rarely was there a gradual change of hues from saffron to burnt sienna to fiery scarlet, like the picture show sunsets of New Jersey. He’d never really thought about it much before, but out here in the silence of the ocean, it was the only thing to focus on. If he could, he would swim to the sun and tug at it, keep it from sinking away and taking all its heat and light with it. An hour ago, he had wished the sun would stop brutalizing him. Irony. He licked at his cracked lips with a grimace; the saltwater had accelerated the blistering.

For an hour or two there, Danny had gone to a mental safe haven. Not a happy place, per se, but a place he allowed himself to believe there’d be a plane or boat or something magically appear and pull him out of this fresh hell. It was all he could do as he treaded along, that or let himself descend to the depths; accept that he was a dead man swimming. In some ways, that would be the easiest thing to do.

To Danny, it wasn’t tempting at all. He couldn’t. He could not give up, for Grace. He couldn’t succumb to the water on the very, very off chance that if he just kept going long enough, someone would find him and his baby girl wouldn’t end up fatherless. Never mind the absolute ridiculousness of dying in the fucking ocean instead of on the wrong end of a bullet. He wanted neither, but the former was far and away worse as far as he was concerned.

His arms were beyond tired. He didn’t know for sure how long he’d actually been treading and, more disturbing, he didn’t know how much longer he could keep it up. The will was there, but the strength, maybe not so much. He wasn’t a swimmer. He was in shape, but casual, not for endurance. Danny stared with desperation at the deep orange sliver of sun as it disappeared. It shocked him, though he’d known the vanishing was coming. He hated the water. Hated it in broad daylight. In the sudden, claustrophobic twilight dark, it was oppressive and terrifying. And knowing it was only going to get darker as the night progressed made him gasp slightly for air. He quelled panic again, and knew each time he had a mini attack like this it sapped energy he needed.

The fire crackled and popped, orange light making all of them look demonic. Danny stared at it, mesmerized. He was a sheet and a half to the wind, possibly more. It was difficult to tell at the moment. He knew he felt warm and wobbly and good. He knew, deep down, what a shitty ass excuse of a role model he was being to his kid brother. But, hey, better they get drunk together than have Matty, whom he loved dearly but thought was not the brightest bulb, go out on his own and do something characteristically stupid.

The problem came to him too late: his own IQ dropped quite a few points after a certain amount of booze was in his system. Danny blinked slowly as Galen tossed a full, unopened beer can into the flames, then skittered a few feet back with the rest of them to wait for the explosion. When it came, the night sky was alight with sparks, like their own miniature fireworks display. He hooted and hollered with the rest of them, because, yeah, IQ dimming.

“That is a waste of good beer,” Dave said. “You morons.”

There was a point, Danny thought. He stumbled to one of their three coolers and snagged another brew. He blearily looked at his friends, sought out his baby brother. Matty had the goofiest grin on his face at something Galen just said that Danny didn’t catch. He noticed Galen’s leer and followed his finger pointed toward Veronica and Deb. Oh hell no. Danny liked women. He liked to treat women as they should be treated and it was well known that Galen was a grade-A pig. Matty did not need that asshole rubbing off on him when it came to the ladies. Danny stood and walked an almost straight line over to his brother.

“Hey,” Danny said. “Jackasses.”

“Daniel, my brother. You are older than me… Hey, this is just like the old days,” Matty said back, sweeping his hand over Lake Hopatcong. “Isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

“Not really.” Danny belched. Their summertime trips as kids had not included drunken beach parties, for one. He stared uneasily at the water, black in the night. He shuddered. He wondered why he thought this trip was such a good idea. He didn’t remember liking their family weeks at the lake. “Not a bit, Little Matty.”

“Aw, man.” Matty rubbed a hand through his unruly hair. “I’m eighteen and I’m, like, twice your size. Don’t call me that.”

Danny didn’t appreciate the reminder of his runt status. It was difficult to come to terms with his brother (and one of his sisters) outgrowing him. Life was so not fair. Danny liked to think he made up for his lack of height with charm and charisma and no Napoleon Syndrome tendencies at all. Well, maybe.

“Shuddup, punk,” Danny said. He clapped a hand on the back of Matt’s neck, squeezed and drew him closer so Galen couldn’t hear. “And you don’t ever, ever look at or speak about women the way Gale just did, huh? You respect women, treat them right.”

Matty nodded and took another long swig of beer, gave no indication anything Danny had just said would stick. Like Danny said, his brother was a dope sometimes. He’d reiterate the words of wisdom in the cold, sober light of day. Repeatedly. The Williams brothers were not cads. No, sirree. They could talk the talk without walking the walk, and only talk when not in actual earshot of women.

“Hey, I got a great idea,” Matty said after a minute. “Lesss take a pontoon out. What ya say, big brother?”

What Danny said was no, but mob mentality took over. Deb and Veronica thought it was a great idea. So did Dave and Galen and like hell Danny was going to let his drunken, underage brother (it didn’t matter they were all underage, Matty was the most underage) float out into the middle of a lake without being there to watch out for him. The whole thing sobered him up quite a bit, his buzz morphing into a strange feeling of discomfort.

“Don’t be a buzzkill, Danny,” Matty said. “Lighten up, man.”

It was fun, Danny thought after another beer and another half an hour. He sat on the edge of the pontoon. He swished his feet in the night-cool water, listening to the soft splashing instead of Gale’s dickish laughter. He didn’t really like that guy so much anymore, and he didn’t know why. The moon was a slice in the sky, a bare smile or frown, depending on the point of view. He jerked slightly when someone stumbled over and sat next to him. She smelled like strawberries.

“Hey, cutie,” Veronica said.

A thrill shot through his belly, low and deep. Ronnie was a beautiful girl, wholesome and sexy all at once. Danny had liked her for a while, but she was out of his league by a long shot. Admiring from a distance was safe for his ego with girls like Veronica. Besides, if a woman wanted him, he liked it when they took the lead. It was a pretty big turn on.

“Cutie?” Danny murmured. “You are clearly a very drunk person right now.”

“Maybe.” Veronica shrugged and bumped closer to him. “Or definitely not.”

And then they were kissing. Danny didn’t quite know how it happened, but he wasn’t going to object to Ronnie’s tongue, soft and sure in his mouth, or her arms wrapping around his shoulders. It would be disrespectful to rebuff her, after all. She tasted like beer and breath mints, but it was nice. Very nice, if he were going to be honest. For a minute or two, he actually forgot he was in the middle of a deep lake with a bunch of drunken yahoos, too revved up and cued in to every move Veronica’s hands made on his body.

The loud splash followed by raucous laughter brought him back to earth. Danny pulled free of the mindblowingly fantastic kiss with an aggravated moan, staring slightly cross-eyed at Veronica for a moment before turning to their companions. Dave, Galen and Deb all leaned over the pontoon handrail, pointing and laughing into the dark, murky recesses of water. Matt must have fallen in, Danny thought. He started to grin, except he heard Veronica gasp.

“Where is he?” she asked, tugging at Danny’s elbow. “Shouldn’t he be coming up?”

Oh shit, Matty. Danny half crawled, half slid to the far end of the pontoon. Matt still hadn’t burst from beneath the water and Danny wanted to puke at how the others, too drunk to get it, just stood there giggling. He shoved at Dave’s legs to slip off the boat into the cool water. He submerged, but he couldn’t see. He couldn’t see a damned thing, the water cloudy and dark, the tiny splinter of moon no help. He popped back up, and the others had stopped laughing.

“Oh my God, Matt,” Galen said, made to join Danny in the water.

“Don’t,” Danny said. “I don’t need two of you to fish out, you drunk asshole.”

Veronica jumped into the water. Her motor skills had been just fine as she’d been groping his ass. He nodded at her, a quick tilt of his head only, before going under again. Matty couldn’t have drifted far to the side, but down was another story. Danny wasn’t a terribly strong swimmer, had never liked water that much, but he was fueled by fear and panic and Matty, Matty. Something brushed against him, causing him to start until he squinted and saw it was Ronnie. She gestured, but he couldn’t tell what she was trying to say. Then she kind of vanished into the dark and Danny had never been so damned scared in his life. Matty was going to die and it would be all his fault.

Danny’s lungs forced him up again. He exhaled on the way and when he broke the surface he gasped in great lungfuls of air. He glanced about wildly for any sign of anything, seeing only rippling waves and Veronica coming up for air.

“Anything?” he asked raggedly.

“No.” She spun a slow circle. “No.”

“Fuck.”

Danny went back under. He wasn’t going to let his dumbass brother die in this godforsaken lake, he wasn’t. This time, almost two minutes down, his fingertips brushed into something silky soft, seaweed-like, but not. Hair. It was Matt. Danny could see him, just floating there, but only in his mind’s eye. That was bad enough. He twisted his fingers in that hair and pulled up, maneuvered his big little brother into a rescue hold and kicked toward the surface. He wanted to sob with how motionless Matty was, limp and heavy.

He pulled both their faces free from the cloying grip of water, stroked awkwardly toward the pontoon and uttered curses that would peel paint. His muscles strained with exhaustion, his own lingering drunkenness and shock. Beside him, he was vaguely aware of Veronica trying to assist him. All his thoughts were on Matt. Matty was not dying on him, he was not, not, not. Panic swelled the longer it took to get his pain in the ass brother to the pontoon and breathe air back into him.

As God as his witness, Danny would swim forever if it meant the difference between life and death.

Danny took deep, steadying breaths. He could do this. He was not going to be swallowed by the darkness above or the abyss below. Now was not the time to panic (again). The dark hadn’t been his childhood fear, so he had no idea why it was hitting him so hard. The occasional soft splashes his arms made when his treading became unsteady were the only sounds. It was as if the sun setting had sucked everything away, not just the light. His ears rang with the silence and he knew he would have to endure hours of it. No one would search for him, none of the unrealistic hopes he had of rescue would help keep him going. Oh, that might be why the dark was so daunting.

“For Grace,” Danny said, needing to hear the affirmation.

It startled him how scratchy and hoarse his voice sounded, and also somehow loud amid the absence of other sound. He hadn’t spoken, for what, four or five hours. Steve would never believe it, would laugh and say there was something wrong with him. Yeah, well, that was difficult to dispute, and in this situation he imagined Steve would tell him talking also took too much energy, maybe even robbed him of hydration. For once, he would concede to Steve being right, even though Steve wasn’t actually there; Danny wished he were. Danny wished he weren’t alone, suffocating in darkness and silence.

“Grace,” he said again.

Grace wouldn’t believe his quiet streak either, Grace who had at the ripe old age of five learned that her Danno trying to have a Silent Contest with her was hopeless and always something she’d win. That had nothing to do with him being a softie and letting her, mind. He simply and genuinely liked to talk. Except, he found, not out in the middle of the ocean. Nothing to say out there, and anyway, on top of imaginary Steve’s point about conserving energy, Danny felt like if he jabbered to himself he’d just go crazy faster. He couldn’t go crazy, because going crazy might mean he’d forget to keep his head above water and this was life or death. He’d go on forever, treading as if his arms did not feel like rubber. He had to.

For Grace. And maybe a little bit for Steve too.

Five hours and change.

Five hours of dead ends, spinning wheels, and unearthly quiet. Five hours Dannyless. Steve couldn’t remember if he’d ever come right out and teased Danny about wanting a minute’s peace now and again, but he did know he’d often thought it during the course of their partnership. Usually in the car. Whether he had said it out loud or not, he took the very idea of wanting Danny to shut up all back. Five hours with not one unnecessarily wordy comment from Danny was a hell of a miserable time. Steve was sick with dread, a feeling he didn’t experience often and hated with the fire of a thousand suns. If this were a normal case, the amount of time it was taking would not be as big an issue. This was not a normal case. This was Danny.

Kamekona had made good on fact-finding within fifteen minutes. Steve hadn’t even made it back to HQ when their informant had called him with every last Hawaii Boys location on Oahu, and an hour and a half after that HPD had conducted searches. None of those places turned up Danny. Nothing obvious showed on the radar, or if it did, turned out to be legitimate, not their stolen helicopter filled with low level gangbangers (and Danny). None of the airports had reported seeing the gang or one short, loudmouthed Jersey cop. Danny’s phone was either off or busted.

Three and a half hours after Danny had been taken, his cell finally turned back on (Steve did not think about why it took that long, or what happened during that empty time), and pointed Five-O to Molokai. Fifteen miles east of the Molokai Airport sat what looked like an old junkyard, but it served the Hawaii Boys as a strip shop for one branch of their “business” – stolen boats, mostly, but also street vehicles. Steve pressed against the fence. He could see the Blue Hawaiian helicopter. No one was visible, which would make it easy to surround and take them down, even as daylight was turning hazy and night falling.

Steve crouched low and signaled Chin to the right, experiencing a bit of déjà vu. He shook it off. Danny was in the large, rough shed in the middle of the property, no other place he could be except somewhere amid the scrap metal and vehicle frames. There was no way in hell this was going south. Steve was not screwing up twice in one rapidly-ending day. He couldn’t wait to hear Danny railing at him for taking so long to come for him. Kono shifted around him, circling to the back. In a twenty count, they’d make their moves in a smooth, coordinated op.

After hours, twenty seconds should have been a cakewalk. Steve’s skin felt itchy. He had to force himself to ignore the worst-case scenarios, which was not like him at all. That was the effect Danny had on him, and he wasn’t sure it was a good one. He needed to be in control at all times. Danny made him feel relaxed and wild both on a daily basis, and the absence of Danny threw him so far off kilter he wasn’t confident in his ability to do the job. When this was over, he needed to have a good, long think.

“Go, go,” Steve whispered and made his way to the building.

He leaned against the wall next to the door and gave it another five count before swinging through it to the interior of the shed. It took him two seconds to get the lay of the building, and where all the players were. Kono had already breached the back, two Maui County officers at her back. There were six of them, all recognizable from their encounter earlier. They scattered the second they caught sight of one of the uniforms. There wasn’t anywhere to go. Steve took perhaps a bit too much pleasure in stopping Kaumeheiwa himself with the wrong end of his weapon.

After the chaos settled and all the Boys were flat on their bellies, cuffed, Steve realized with sharp, cruel clarity that Danny was nowhere to be found. No one had found him and brought him out. He nodded to Chin and Kono to conduct another thorough search, and to the uniforms to watch the Boys. He wasn’t about to stand around not looking for his partner.

“Danny?” he heard Kono call from out back.

Steve hadn’t made it to the door when Kaumeheiwa, still flat on the ground, started chuckling. He didn’t think. He moved. He was at the gang’s side in a flash and had hauled Kaumeheiwa to his feet, all in the span of a few blinks. Danny would tell him proper police procedure would be to book the guy and interview him in a specially designed room for just such a thing. Danny would object to how roughly he tossed Kaumehaeiwa first into a piece of machinery, then onto the table where he and his buddies had been playing fucking poker when Five-O had busted in.

“You think this is funny?”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Kaumeheiwa said, voice easy, relaxed, like nothing could faze him. “Police brutality, bruddah.”

“Oh, that was nothing like brutality,” Steve said with ice in his tone

Steve stuck a finger in the guy’s face, ignoring the bullshit amusement smiling back at him. Danny isn’t here, Danny isn’t here roared in his ears, louder than waves crashing on the shore. He didn’t know what it meant, but he thought he knew exactly what it meant. It meant the hole in his gut might as well be real. Before he could continue with Kaumeheiwa, Kono ran back in with Chin at her heels. Kono’s hand was in the air, something black and rectangular in it. It was Danny’s cell.

“Called it,” she said. “It was jammed in the helicopter seat, and that must have turned it on. Or Danny stuffed it down there before … If Danny’s out in the yard, he’s tucked away good.”

That horrible feeling, the one he’d had since minute one, ratcheted up ten more notches. Danny isn’t here, his new mantra, would not stop playing, threatening to drown all reason. Steve turned to Kaumeheiwa.

“You’re going to tell me where Detective Danny Williams is. Right now.”

“The bitchy little haole? That what you’re looking for?”

“That’s the one,” Steve said. He clenched his hands into fists, so hard he thought he heard his knuckles crack. “Tell me. Tell us.”

Kaumeheiwa’s smile grew wider and he didn't say anything for a good long minute, during which there was nothing but silence. Then he sniffed and awkwardly tried to sit up straighter.

“I can’t say I know,” Kaumeheiwa said.

Steve surged forward a step, stopped only when Chin wrapped a strong hand around his right forearm.

“You’re already looking at the assault and kidnapping charges. You’ll do nothing but help yourself by cooperating now,” Chin said, using that calm, rational persona of his. “Kono, get ‘em up. If he won’t talk, maybe they will.”

“Naw, brah,” Kaumeheiwa said. “They know bettah.”

That was it. Steve jerked from Chin’s hold, grabbed Kaumeheiwa by the front of his shirt, yanked him up and headed for the nearest wall. He slammed the gang leader hard enough to rattle his teeth, which provoked more laughter. Sick of hearing the laughing, Steve pushed his arm against the guy’s throat, made him choke. Steve didn’t care what made this guy tick, what made him arrogant and stupid enough to think it was funny he was going away for a long, long time. For all he knew, this was all about Kaumeheiwa wanting to put the Hawaii Boys on the map. Job done.

“Tell. Me. Where. He. Is.”

“Uh, Boss, I don’t think he can talk when you’ve got him pinned liked that,” Kono said, sounding not alarmed so much as faintly amused and approving.

Steve noticed Kaumeheiwa’s lips were tinged in blue. Oops. Maybe Danny was right. Maybe he was an animal. Maybe if Danny were here, he wouldn’t be choking a guy out. He released the other man’s throat, a little surprised the guy slid down the wall an inch or two.

“I’d talk if I were you,” Chin said.

Kaumeheiwa wheezed, and his eyes bulged out. For the first time, he looked something other than cocky. Then he opened his mouth.

“Mano mea’ai,” Kaumeheiwa said. “Little haole was dying to go for a swim.”

All six gang members started laughing at that, like they were all sharing the memory and enjoying the hell out of it. Steve? Steve hadn’t felt such rage since Victor Hesse murdered his father, taunted him with it from thousands of miles away where he could do nothing. Inches were not miles, and his anger had an obvious outlet here. The first punch broke Kaumeheiwa’s nose, the second doubled him over. The third, much as he didn’t want to, Steve punched the wall next to the guy’s head instead, hard. He might have phased out for a bit after that, pain rocketing up his forearm, because the next thing he knew, Chin was hauling him from the building. Apparently he looked like he might actually flip his shit. Because punching the guy only twice? So not flipping shit.

Outside, darkness had almost completely taken over. Steve gave Chin a look, but they said nothing. He couldn’t have taken any form of reassurance at this point. He would have been totally grateful for the silence except that it left him plenty of time to imagine Danny being dumped like so much garbage. He tried to formulate a plan of action. They needed to find out where they’d left Danny. One of those bastards had flown, had to have some idea. Chin would have the name.

“Danny doesn’t like the ocean,” Steve said when he finally managed to speak. He blinked, not sure how that had come out of his mouth. “Uh.”

“Well, he’s not going to like it any better after this,” Chin said.

Bless Chin for using the present tense. Steve stared at the ground. He wanted to laugh because that was so true, but he was afraid if he started he wouldn’t be able to stop. No one wanted a team leader who couldn’t keep his emotions in check. He couldn’t think about Danny being sent to a watery death and function at a reasonable level. His hand throbbed with each heartbeat. He caught the tail end of Chin’s assessing gaze. He shook his head, just once. Whether or not Chin would have pushed remained an unknown when Kono slipped from the shed, followed by the uniforms guiding the gang members out.

“He was … I got out of them that Danny was still alive when they dropped him from the helicopter,” Kono said as she approached them.

It was good news, yet somehow it made Steve’s legs feel like buckling. Danny had potentially been in the water for nearly six hours now. There was a better than good chance Danny was dead, and just the thought of it hurt more than should be possible. Steve gave Kono what he hoped was a reassuring smile. He had to remember he wasn’t the only one reeling over Danny getting taken right from under their noses. He wasn’t the only one it had to be hurting. This wasn’t news, but it was what he needed to focus on instead of his own regret and heartache.

Kono’s face noticeably paled even in the fading light, and she continued, “They also said they didn’t stick around to watch the feeding frenzy.”

Just when he thought his rage couldn’t get any ragier. Those pieces of shit. Steve swore to make it his personal mission to end the Boys before this incident rocketed them to a power position within the hierarchy of gangs in Hawaii. It would be his mission if Danny were alive or dead, and every single last Boys member had better hope for the former. Steve honestly couldn’t say what he’d do if Danny were dead. His life had been a cruel one, but he didn’t think he could take it if he never got to tell Danny how he felt. He didn’t even care how cheesy and cliché that was.

“I need the name of the asshole who flew that helicopter,” Steve said. He balled his hands into fists, hissing slightly at the reintroduction of pain from his right. “And if the tour company can give us an odometer reading we can compare with what it’s at now, we can try to narrow a search grid.”

Steve started moving toward the gang. He only made it two steps.

“That’s all well and good,” Chin said grimly. “We can haul these mokes back to HQ and get all the information we can, but the sun just set. How’re we going to search possibly hundreds of miles of ocean in the dark?”

“It’s Danny,” Kono whispered.

“Don’t you think I know that, cuz?” Chin sounded implacable, rational, and yet somehow also right there on the edge. He was as angry and heartsick as Kono. “And Steve, I know what you’re feeling, I do, but you also need to get that hand looked at. I think you might have busted something.”

Chin seemed like he really did know what was going on in Steve’s head and heart, but that was impossible since he hadn’t even known it himself until days, okay, maybe weeks … months ago. He shot Chin an angry glare, because there was not one bit of what he’d said that was untrue. He glanced down at his now swollen hand. But Danny was out there somewhere in the middle of a vast ocean and darkness. Alone. Alive (Steve had to believe that). Danny was in good shape, but he wasn’t built for endurance. He hadn’t trained to swim for his life. Fuck Steve’s hand. Fuck not searching at night.

“I’m sorry, but you don’t know how I feel, Chin,” Steve said. “And you can bet your ass I’ll think of something, because I’m not leaving Danny out there all night.”

The sting of saltwater up his nose was what clued him in to the fact he’d fallen asleep or, more likely, passed out. The awakening was rude, sudden and painful. Spluttering, Danny launched up and out, arms flapping like a cartoon bird. The rush of adrenaline and coughing fit woke him completely, heart practically pounding out of his chest, skipping a beat now and then. Great, he needed a coronary on top of everything else. His breathing hitched at the thought, but he absolutely refused to give in to the urge to claw at his chest.

He settled back into what was now a consistently shaky tread, which was somewhat oxymoronic. He wanted to sob with exhaustion and stone cold fear. Danny was starting to believe once more that he couldn’t do this, and that no one, truly, not even his partner who could do pretty much anything, would find him in time. It was stupid, really, because he’d known he was dead minutes after being dumped. Hours later, in the dark, God would the sun never rise again, he was having this brilliant, disturbing revelation like it was the first time all over. Multiple times he’d done this, his brain stuck in an unpleasant loop. He thought maybe he had gone nuts in spite of every intention not to.

And here he’d thought that Steve was the insane one in their partnership. All it had taken to get Danny across the border to Crazyland was endless hours on the open sea. Of course there was crazy, and then there was crazy. He’d defy even Steve to maintain a positive attitude while waiting for the deep blue ocean to devour him. Some people were built to swim. Like Steve, who he thought sometimes made up cockamamie reasons to strip off and dive into the water. Danny wasn’t built for it. He didn’t like it. He didn’t belong in the water, and it honest to God offended him that this was how he was going to bite it.

“Whoa, whoa,” Danny said, gripping the Oh Shit Handle tight and bracing against the dash as his partner drove almost as erratically as the guy manning the vehicle they were in pursuit of. “Watch it, man.”

“Calm down, boot,” Rick Peterson said. “You’re a bit of a pansy, D, if a little car chase makes you lose your balls.”

Danny glared at his training officer as if he were out of his mind. In the past few months, that had become a more frequent look. He didn’t know if there was a god or not, but if there was, it obviously had a sick sense of humor for sticking him with the most insane TO in the precinct. On the plus side, he had already learned precisely why procedure should be followed. Maybe reverse psychology was the name of the game, because Peterson was reckless, ruthless and probably had no business teaching young impressionables such as himself. He figured the only way he was staying afloat was because he was a levelheaded, street-smart individual who’d seen a fair share of bullshit in his short life. He shuddered to think of trainees with less moral fortitude.

“I’m not losing my balls. In fact, I’m clutching at them, hoping like hell they stay in place and do not end up on the side of the road somewhere.”

The point would have been better made had his voice not risen an octave halfway through the assertion, as Peterson barely missed clipping the round bumper of an old VW Bug. It wasn’t simply his own safety with which Danny was concerned. Peterson was going to put civilians in danger if he didn’t watch it. Danny hadn’t memorized the handbook or anything, but he felt certain plowing over bystanders wasn’t an approved procedure for either a car or a foot chase. Neither was whipping out a service piece and shooting into a crowd. That kind of shit, this kind of shit right here, right now, was not supposed to happen outside of Hollywood. It sure wasn’t supposed to happen in Newark.

“Get your panties untwisted, kid. We’re almost… oh, fuck!”

Danny stared openmouthed for a moment or two before fumbling for the mic. This was about to become way, way bigger than he and Peterson could handle. The perps’ car skidded off another vehicle, smacked into a wall and kept on careening. Danny watched a minivan (what in hell was a minivan doing here of all places?) plow through the barricades, head straight for the water. He screamed at dispatch as the perps finally lost control, and lost contact with the ground. Their vehicle hit the minivan, and if Danny didn’t believe in miracles before, he did now. The minivan had been heading for a dip in the Hudson, but was now knocked off that course.

He threw his door open before Peterson had come to a complete stop, tossed himself from the car as the minivan skidded to an awkward balance. It still wasn’t out of danger (oh shit, he saw tiny little child faces in the back, mouths open in screams), and he headed there even as the perps sailed into the water and started sinking. He and Peterson both grabbed at the minivan like their sheer determination would keep it from tipping over. It didn’t work, and the vehicle slid out of their hands and hell, oh hell no.

Danny went in after it without a second’s thought, heedless of anything or anyone else. He was not letting babies die in front of him. Filthy Hudson water splashed up his nose, in his mouth and eyes as he churned forward. He headed for the driver’s side. The van was tipping forward, but there was no way he was risking opening the van doors and flooding it faster. A woman, blonde, big hair, sat there as if paralyzed, her hands gripping the steering wheel. Danny clung to the side mirror and tapped the window.

“Roll it down,” he shouted. On the other side of the car, he saw Peterson trying to bust out the passenger window. “Ma’am, I need you to roll the window down, unhook your seatbelt and let me help you.”

“My babies,” she said, turned around like she was going to climb to the interior of the van instead.

Peterson broke through, the shattering glass shocking both the woman and him into action. She fumbled with her seatbelt while he gave up on getting her assistance. He wouldn’t risk breaking the window with her right there and clearly too shocked to do much of anything. By the time he got around to the passenger window, Peterson had the woman, bucking and screaming for her kids, and was pulling her out of the window.

“The kids,” he said, and in his eyes was nothing but seriousness that explained how he got the TO gig. Peterson handed the woman to Danny and wriggled through broken glass into the sinking van. “Get her out of here.”

Though he was smaller and an easier fit through the van window, not to mention had a burning need in his gut to protect those children, Danny did as instructed. He struggled to get the woman to shore. She was his size or maybe a little larger, and she had a parent’s instinct and adrenaline going for her. By the time he got her to safety, Peterson was hauling the kids out of the water, one under each arm somehow, like some big damn hero. For the first time, Danny actually thought he might be.

In the river, the perps’ car went under with a glugging sound. No one was in the water near it, so Danny assumed they were going down with the car. The woman tore from his arms, headed for Peterson and the kids and he … he headed back in.

“Williams, get your ass back here,” Peterson shouted at him.

He was a boot. He was supposed to follow his TO’s lead and directives, but Danny couldn’t let anyone – not even criminals – die if he could help it. He didn’t stop or look back, just slipped under the murky surface where he thought the car had gone down. He tried very hard not to think of how filthy the river was. Visibility was low, very low, but he spotted the wake of water and then the car. He kicked toward it, taken aback to see panicked faces instead of hardened criminals. They were just kids. He was maybe five years older than the three punks fumbling inside the vehicle to stay in the shrinking pocket of air.

One of them kicked at the back window. Danny waved his hands, but either they couldn’t see him or they were too in the grips of life-and-death fear to pay any attention. Suddenly, the glass shattered. If he weren’t underwater, he’d have shouted. Actually, moron that he apparently was, he opened his mouth to do that and shut it quickly before he lost all his air and sucked in a lungful of filth. The passengers in the car fell back in a swirl of sucking water. He had no idea if he could do anything, his lungs burning, but he grabbed the back window and tore at the fragmented glass. The car shifted one way and he shifted the other, the back of his head hitting something hard. Everything went even foggier, but he saw pale faces and they looked like they were at the bottom of a well and getting smaller.

He broke the surface, heaving out gasps and choking air in automatically. A tight band around his chest prevented him from getting a full breath in. Confused, Danny twisted to get free and realized the band was Peterson’s arm. Everything was muffled, his ears filled with water, but he heard sirens and shouting and his head swirled with it. And he couldn’t stop seeing those kids in the car down there, all their badness washed away with terror and death. He let Peterson hoist him around, and lay on his side where he was dropped, coughing.

“They,” he said, but couldn’t manage anything else. Instead, he puked and shook violently.

“You couldn’t have saved them. You can’t save everyone, no matter how much you want to,” Peterson said, voice dispassionate but when Danny stared at him, his eyes were bleak.

Danny rolled onto his back, numbly saw EMTs hover above him. He turned his head, saw the woman and her children huddled under blankets. Lifted his neck and looked at the Hudson. Cars did not belong in the water. Those kids, criminals, they didn’t deserve to die that way. No one did.

“Someone else’s fate is not your responsibility to bear. Remember that, or the street will eat you alive,” Peterson told him.

Fingers probed the back of his head, someone asked him a question but he couldn’t answer. He drifted into a haze.

Fate. Fate was a cruel son of a bitch and Danny was not going to let his be this. He had things to do. He wanted to watch Grace grow into a beautiful woman. He wanted to be that corny overprotective dad who pulled stupid shit like running background checks on every single date his little girl brought to meet him, and the ones she didn’t. In order for that to all come about, he had to tell fate to suck it. He couldn’t control anyone else’s destiny, but his own was another story.

He was not going to die out here, not if he had everything to do with it. He ignored the fact that he didn’t have everything to do with it, really. He barely had anything to do with it, because his body had its limits and he was reaching them, he was beyond reaching them and it was so, so fucked up that he was again coming to the bitter conclusion that he was dead, dead, dead and alone and how fast he had gone from confident to despairing this time. His brain whirled with it. He wasn’t going to die, fat and happy at ninety-five, and not alone.

And Grace wasn’t going to have a Danno anymore.

“You’re not alone, Danny,” Steve said.

Holy … Danny squinted up at the apparition. He knew he had to be hallucinating, but the image of Steve standing there with his arms crossed looked very real. And didn’t it just figure that his goddamned brain had not only conjured Steve in all his glory, but also had him walking on water? Jesus. That was all kinds of wrong. If there was anyone he should have imagined there, then it was Grace. He wanted Grace, not Steve, except he wanted Steve too. Steve had to be coming, Steve was coming.

Steve crouched, elbows on knees, hands clasped in front of him. Still walking on water. He gave Danny one of those looks of his, but it wasn’t quite right. Danny could apparently conjure everything about Steve with dead accuracy, except the face, which was weird because he had an entire mental catalog of Steve’s expressions.

“You can do this.”

Steve stood again, paced a little. On water, had he mentioned that? It was so dark the top half of him was indistinct and Danny could only focus on long legs and … other bits he had no idea why he found fascinating at a time like this, or why Steve was barefoot.

“What do you know?” Danny croaked. “You’re not here. Why haven’t you come?”

“I know you. And of course I’m not here, but you’re still not all by yourself. I’ll get here, Danny. You just have to hang on.”

With that, the figment of his imagination vanished and left Danny alone as he’d ever been. He had to admit, when he went crazy, he really went full on. He stopped moving his arms for a second, immediately began sinking. Water hit his chin and he started treading again, boosting himself up as far as he could. It was growing more and more difficult, he didn’t know how that was possible, and he couldn’t breathe with the feeling of dread and the dark night both pushing on him. Yet, seeing Steve there, even a fake Steve, made it less horrible. That didn’t make sense, but Danny wasn’t too busy worrying about making sense anymore.

Behind him, something swished in the water. The sound was ominous, it repeated several times, closer with each one, and Danny did not want to think about what it was. What they were. He did not imagine rough sharkskin bumping into his legs, or he didn’t think he did. He couldn’t tell for sure if it was in his head or real.

“Oh, shit, Steve, where are you?” Danny whispered.

Steve stood in the middle of the room, arms across his chest. He was about ten seconds away from maiming the guy, truly. Chin stepped closer, reading his body language almost as deftly as Danny always did. Of course, given the circumstances and his precarious state of mind, he was pretty sure he wasn’t pulling his anger even a little. He raised a hand to let Chin know he was okay, then took a deep breath and tried to be okay. In the back of his mind, he heard a loud tick-tick of every second it was taking them to get what they needed to find Danny.

The only one Steve’s murderous attitude didn’t seem to bother was Al Hookano, their Blue Hawaiian Tours employee slash Hawaiian Boys gang member. He was a measly little puke, but had taken an unsubtle cue from Kaumeheiwa and was stonewalling them more effectively than Steve would have expected by looking at him. If he were going to be honest, he didn’t think they’d have had to interrogate him. He’d expected answers on the way back to Oahu. It occurred to him that dropping either Hookano or Kaumeheiwa in the water somewhere between Molokai and Honolulu would have been both satisfying and fitting, considering what they’d done to his partner. It also would have involved retrieval, been time wasted.

“What patience I had with you is gone,” Steve said. “You’re accomplishing nothing by withholding information.”

“What does it matter?” Hookano asked. “Your li’ili’i kane is long gone anyway.”

“It matters because there’s a chance he’s still alive,” Chin said, cool and collected. He leaned closer to Hookano. “If he is, then you’re not looking at accessory to murder charges anymore.”

“That’s true, hey.” Hookano sniffed, then smirked directly at Steve. “But it’s been real fun to watch how pihoihoi you are about your little boyfriend. I can see why, though, really. Nice papakole. Too bad we never got the chance to play with him first, make a real wahine out of him.”

Steve made no conscious decision to pound the shit out of Hookano’s face, but somehow he found himself being hauled backward and the gang member sprawled on the dank floor with blood streaming from a broken nose and multiple gashes on his chin and forehead. He reeled, spun out of Chin’s firm hold and slammed his right fist into the concrete wall, felt it when his finger gave under pressure.

“Shit,” Steve muttered. “Damn. Fuck.”

“Leave,” Chin said under his breath. “Get out of this room. I’ll handle Hookano and be out in a minute.”

Some team leader he was. Steve acquiesced, stalked out of interrogation, barely keeping from going for round two when Hookano, somehow still conscious, started making kissy noises. He made it five steps, then had to find something to lean on. He ended up sprawled on his ass in the corridor instead, cradling his throbbing right hand and wrist. His hearing went a little fuzzy. As far as injuries went it wasn’t much, but it wasn’t just the injury.

“I should have made you go to the damned hospital before.” Chin was suddenly there, crouched in front of him. “You got some problems, Boss.”

Problems, yes. He had those aplenty, and most of them were mental. Just like Danny always told him. Chin kept talking beyond his opening, potentially insubordinate salvo, but Steve didn’t hear much beyond a few scattered words that floated to him, “Kono” and “X-ray” and “Danny”, until it dawned on him that he was being kind of an asshole. He knew he was done dealing with Hookano himself, knew he had no choice but to have his hand tended to, knew he had to not let his shit keep slipping like this. Knew he hadn’t the first clue how to do that last one.

“…but don’t worry,” Chin said. “I’ll keep working on him without working him over. By the time you get back, we’ll have Hookano’s full cooperation.”

Steve nodded. He had to trust Chin to deal with Hookano because it was pretty obvious his buttons were too easily pushed. He should feel disgrace at that. He was a SEAL, damn it, but all he felt was that same dread he’d been feeling for hours. It had set upon him like a sharp-toothed monster and wouldn’t let go no matter how he tried to shake it. He glanced at the hand Chin was extending, then up to a face with understanding, maybe even pitying eyes.

“Chin, I think Danny might be …” Steve said, but Kono rounded the corner and he couldn’t finish the sentence in front of the rookie. He didn’t know why, because behind her tired eyes he could see that thought forming all on its own.

“Your chauffeur service has arrived,” Kono said quietly. “I hope you’re not going to be pigheaded about this.”

Steve shook his head. First things first. He could not find Danny (alive) until he had his hand sorted. He could multitask, though. As he calmly but shakily followed Kono to her car, he pulled out his cell and placed a call. The rescue would normally be led by the Coast Guard, but he was sure he could pull a string or two. Get the ball rolling. He was not leaving Danny out there. He hit four voicemails by the time they arrived at the emergency room, and stupidly banged his hand against the dash in frustration. All it accomplished was a spike in pain and slight haziness in his vision.

He counted the haze as rest and allowed himself to stay in it while they tromped to the admissions desk and Kono helped get the paperwork done. He had to take rest when he could get it, but that sharp-toothed monster in his belly wouldn’t relent for a second the whole time he was poked, X-rayed and his finger splinted. He was with it enough to refuse a sling, and to know that not once had a return call come in regarding his request for Naval assistance.

When he emerged all patched up and ready to go, Kono leaped to her feet. The square of her shoulder and firm set in her jaw told him she had news before she told him Chin had worked his calm, sensible magic on Hookano.

“We’ve got a rough flight path. According to Hookano, those psychopaths zigzagged all over the place. Chin said they had the idea to dump Danny almost as soon as they took off,” Kono said. She looked at Steve cautiously. “You know Danny’s tough, Boss. He’s going to be out there, and he’s going to be all right.”

Steve didn’t say anything to that. He couldn’t. Even if his jaw weren’t tight in a permanent clench, she’d said it like a question and he could not answer it without choking. It seemed like he’d been in there for days when they left the hospital, but it had only been an hour. Time was slowest when there was nothing to do but wait. He thought of Danny out there (alive), waiting for them to find him. Steve fiddled with his phone, no messages, no return calls. He didn’t need Kono hearing him desperately try to finagle some sort of response out of his contacts, so he gazed out the window and tried not to think about anything at all.

The ride to HQ was silent and grim and that was his fault. When they arrived, Steve gave Kono a half smile he knew didn’t fool her. It wouldn’t fool anyone. He glanced at his watch, wincing at the hour. It was too early and too late at the same time. Too early if they were going to wait till sunrise to search for Danny, too late to do what he knew he had to. He headed for his office, shut the door and scrolled for the number he’d put in a month or so ago, never expecting to have to call.

It rang five times before a slightly disgruntled female voice came on, “Yes, hello?”

“May I speak with Mrs. Edwards?” Steve asked, because he hadn’t listened for her accent to know if it was her or a housekeeper or something, and damn, he hadn’t meant to sound quite so hoarse. He cleared his throat. “Rachel. May I speak with Rachel?”

“This is she.”

“Rachel, it’s Steve McGarrett.” He swallowed as he heard a sharp intake of breath. “From Five-O.”

“Oh my God.”

“Please don’t panic,” Steve said.

“Don’t panic. It’s nearly midnight. What is it, what’s happened? Danny?” Rachel asked, before Steve could say another word and already well on the way to panic. “Oh, God.”

Steve took his own deep breath before he told her everything and hated every single second of it.

Danny couldn’t stop shaking and he wasn’t sure if it was because he was cold, terrified or because his muscles were hitting that proverbial wall at last and meant it this time. Giving up on him. In reality, it was probably a combination of all three. Of course, he wasn’t sure what reality was anymore, so he clung to the idea that the worst of it was the first two and not the last one. He didn’t … he couldn’t die, not after making it this far. He felt the change in the air, knew he was minutes away from making it through the night.

That was both a monumental victory and a hugely scary thing, because once it was light enough to see more than two feet around him he was going to see the things in the water. The things that he didn’t want to name. Naming things made them real, wasn’t that how the stories went, and if they were real then they would attack and rob him of the arms and legs he was still making work for him. No, monsters like that couldn’t be named.

“Here’s an idea, Danno,” the figment of Steve said, back again after abandoning him to the waves for most of the night.

“Oh, you decided to grace me with your presence?” Danny croaked. “And don’t call me Danno.”

His head dunked under the water. His muscles contracted in spasm and cramped more and more frequently, painfully. He didn’t want to think about that. He didn’t want to think about anything, really, let alone have an argument with fake Steve. Fake Steve looked alarmed by his going under. Yeah, well, he invited the guy to try it from this end.

“Don’t talk, man. You know I’m all in your head.” Steve crouched in front of him. “Ignore the things out there. Pretend they’re not real. They’re not real. There. Focus on me, okay? Just keep looking at me and keep treading. You can do it.”

Like that was supposed to help.

“You got it,” Danny said. “You’re doing great.”

Danny would rather be anywhere than at the pool with his baby girl. Truth be told, as soon as the subject of Grace learning to swim came up, his palms got sweaty and that parental oh-hell-no-my-kid-is-not-[insert-dangerous-thing-here] feeling he’d only half believed in kicked him in the balls and had yet to cease. But he wasn’t a fool. He knew it was important for Gracie to know how to swim, and anyway, she loved the water. It was inexplicable to him, but she did and he was not going to be the one to break her heart because of his very big, very understandable issues.

So help him, though, Danny was going to make sure Grace was safe and that she knew what to do in a multitude of situations that most would scoff at but he’d lived through, thanks so much, and he wanted his daughter to live through too if, God forbid, they ever came up. Everyone thought it was sweet the way he and Grace stayed for some extra time.

“How long, Danno?” Gracie said, her voice high-pitched and sweet, but also tired.

“Three minutes. Just two more, baby.”

“Enh.” Grace’s little chin bobbed into the water. “I dunno if I can.”

Danny’s heart leaped into his throat, but he could not let his terror show to his little munchkin. She’d learned to tread water weeks ago. He just wanted to make sure she could really do it, in case she had to when it counted. Did that make him a paranoid bastard that some (Rachel) might think was going too far? Probably.

“You can, Grace. You just focus on me, okay? Just look at me, and time will melt away like the ice cream we’ll get when we’re done, if you don’t eat it fast enough. Hey, what do you know, it’s already half over. You’re almost there.”

“Really?” Grace asked, plaintive and tired.

“I promise, Monkey.”

“It worked for her,” Steve said in that way he had that sounded reasonable but was, in fact, ninety percent batshit. “Keep your head above water, Danny, that’s all you have to do.”

Yeah, that was all. So easy. He’d been doing it for hours now, or maybe days. It felt like it could have been days and how much was one man supposed to take? There was no timer here, no edge of the pool to swim for once he hit a certain marker. That was the problem with thinking it was almost over. Danny didn’t know what it even meant, over, except capital O over. That was all he could imagine anymore, which he supposed meant something big. His inability to think of anything but death, yeah, that meant something all right.

“Hey, you’re not dying today,” Steve said. “Get that thought out of your head.”

Freakshow mirage read minds now. Danny thought that probably made sense, considering at the root of it, water-walking Steve was he himself. Funny how he was annoyed with a Steve that was actually him. That wasn’t right. That was very wrong, he couldn’t annoy himself. Truthfully, even real Steve didn’t annoy him all that much. He’d probably hug the shit out of real Steve if he were to show up about now, if he could get his arms to work. He slipped under the surface again, just for a second. His brain must be melted, because it almost felt like someone grabbed him and pulled him up and that was not possible.

“Hey.” Steve snapped his fingers in front of Danny’s face. “Hey, babe, look at me. Keep looking at me.”

Danny didn’t know why he couldn’t have come up with a better fantasy cheerleader.

“Hawaii, Rachel, really? You can’t do this,” Danny said, hated the whining quality to his voice. The panic was like a living beast in his stomach, eating its way out. “You cannot.”

There were rules against it, surely. He had rights as Grace’s father. His head and his heart were sick with the thought that Stan’s money could pay the way for this to happen. His little girl was being yanked five thousand miles away from him, and he knew. He knew there was not a damned thing he could do about it, not that he wouldn’t try. He’d try and try and try, but for every David against Goliath winning, there were a billion Daniels to fall under the giant’s powers. His connections on this side of the law were too far down.

“Danny,” Rachel said, “please believe me when I say that I am not intentionally being cruel. Stan’s work is not something I can control.”

It was a tough sell. This woman whom he had loved so much, still did, damn it, had turned into someone else while Danny had been too busy chasing bad guys on the street. He hadn’t even noticed the bad guy stealing his wife and giving his daughter stability he himself would never be able to provide. Even before the divorce.

“Right. Right, you think moving my daughter, my life, away from me isn’t intentionally cruel? You gotta get an updated dictionary.” Danny paced, gripping the phone tight against his ear. “Not only that, but you’re taking her to an island. All that water, Rachel. In the middle of the ocean. You know how I feel…”

“Now you’re just being ridiculous, Daniel. I am going to hang up now. Perhaps we can talk later, when you’re a bit more rational.”

She did it, then. She hung up on him and Danny couldn’t take any more of his world spinning out of control. He dialed his lawyer, all the while thinking there was going to be only one way he was going to be able to see his daughter and the only one compromising was still going to be him.

And he’d do it. He’d move to a rock in the middle of the ocean, surround himself with water, for Grace.

“Good, good. That’s good,” Steve said. “Remember what kept you going at the beginning of all this. Grace, Danny.”

Then again, who else did Danny have, really, to be the pep squad captain besides Steve? Kono and Chin, yeah, but they’d joined the team after Steve conscripted him into service. Before Steve’s ill-handled and strangely instant vote of confidence, Meka Hanamoa had been the only one on the island to give him any kind of support. The only adult person. There was always Grace. If this was it for him, then he wanted to see her, even in hallucination form.

“No. No, you don’t.” Steve knelt now, put his non-hand out like he was reaching for Danny’s shoulder. “She’s not here because you’re not dying. You can see her in real time, Danno.”

Danny nodded. Sure, that worked. Maybe he wasn’t losing his marbles as bad as he thought. He concentrated on Steve’s bare feet, and on keeping his arms and legs moving. It was mind over matter. The sun had only been up an hour and it was already hot. Danny had managed to forget the sunburn and bleeding lips during the night, and after a time they started making themselves known again. Behind him, the things swished and Steve hissed at him to keep him from turning around. He didn’t know what it mattered. One way or another, he was fish food.

“Nope. Not happening, Danny.”

Danny wanted Steve to shut up and leave him alone. He opened his mouth to say as much, shot the guy a squinty glare and nearly choked. Steve was now naked as a jaybird, all lean lines of muscle and golden brown. All over, no tan lines. What in the everloving fuck? Steve smiled and suddenly lay in front of him, arms behind his head, floating like he was on a raft. The strangest part of this whole new distraction was that Danny didn’t not like what he saw, and that he wasn’t freaked out about that. Surely, the sun had fried his brain.

“Why aren’t you wearing clothes?” Danny tried to say. His voice was all but gone, reduced to a whisper. “Put some pants on, you exhibitionist.”

“Nah. You don’t want me to,” Steve said. “Not deep down where you don’t want to think about most days.”

He couldn’t argue that, so Danny enjoyed the view while his harried brain tried to figure out what it all meant. On a good day, it wouldn’t have taken an hour or more to connect life-changing, he-liked-Steve dots. Of course on a good day, he wouldn’t be slowly succumbing to the deep blue sea.

“It’s okay now.”

Steve made to cup the side of his face with a fake hand for a brief moment, and then it got weirder. Steve drew back, stood and started clapping his hands in a steady beat. Danny tried to make him stop. He should be able to do that, if Steve was him. Instead, Steve simply vanished and then Danny started hallucinating a helicopter instead and he’d really rather have a naked Steve, which was so not right. Helicopter good. He wished it was real. It surprised him that it had taken so long for him to imagine rescue, that hallucinating Steve came first. It surprised him enough his muscles gave out and he went under.

He’d left Danny out in the middle of the ocean all night.

Steve told himself it wasn’t his fault and so did everyone else, but he still felt like it was. He hadn’t had his partner’s back at the very beginning. If he had, then none of it would have happened. And all of his connections, all of the strings he thought he could pull had done nothing to speed up the rescue efforts. Too many resources to expend for expected sub-optimal results. That was what he’d been told about a night search, more than once, and it felt like he was the only person on the planet that knew it was worth moving mountains for this. Danny was worth everything, more. Full immunity and means apparently didn’t have the same definition it used to.

That wasn’t strictly true. He wasn’t the only one who cared. He couldn’t forget his call to Rachel, or stop his thoughts from wandering frequently to Grace. Once Rachel had heard the story and that Five-O was stuck playing a waiting game, she had been almost as up in arms with waiting all night to search as him. Steve didn’t know how to deal with that. He didn’t know how to deal with Rachel, period. He had a horrible, petty feeling that somewhere deep down Danny still loved her and she him, and he resented the hell out of it. He had no right to, really. He was putting carts before horses that probably didn’t even exist. He was too smart to do that, usually, but the idea of Danny and him now planted in his brain seemed to lower his IQ.

The sun’s morning rays glinted off the water, made his eyes tear slightly. Steve squinted, then rubbed the moisture away. He didn’t like losing even the second’s visual it took to do that, which he knew wasn’t rational. Just looking wasn’t even their best means of search. The heavy lifting was happening up front, where he’d insisted he should be but had lost that battle as well. There’d been too much losing since this all started and he was tired of it. He wasn’t used to losing, and he didn’t like feeling unbalanced. He’d honestly not realized how Danny, with his arm waving and lecturing and procedures helped keep him on an even keel. He didn’t know how he’d let it happen, or what it meant if they didn’t … he swallowed. But they would. They would find Danny.

SEALs were supposed to carry themselves with a certain comportment. He’d failed that consistently for most of this, and he couldn’t bring himself to care. Steve might have finally gotten himself under control on the exterior, but with every passing minute of not finding Danny, he was crumbling more and more on the inside. He’d blame it on the lack of rest if he could. It had nothing to do with not sleeping, of course. The chances of finding his partner, alive or dead, were now astronomical. Steve knew this and was sick with that knowledge.

He’d lost people under his command before; he was something of an expert at loss in general. The thing was, Steve wasn’t ready to lose someone he’d never had the chance to have and who he might not ever have had the way he wanted anyway. Just because he had an interest in Danny that went beyond a working partnership did not mean the street he was on was a two way. It was probably a one way. Another thing was, those feelings he had didn’t matter. It wasn’t or shouldn’t be about him. It was about Danny, and Steve was not the only one who cared about the guy. He didn’t know why he found that so hard to remember. All he should have to do was imagine Grace’s face, or look at Kono’s right now.

“We’ve got about half an hour before we have to turn this bird around to refuel,” the pilot said, voice abrupt in the headphones. “Keep your eyes peeled, folks.”

They’d been at it for nearly four hours, had started out just before dawn, and none of them had had any sleep. It made it challenging to say the least, but then he thought how that meant Danny had been in the water for almost eighteen hours, some of those in the brutal sun. Steve hung his head for a moment, wished that he could somehow make the fuel tanks full again without having to fly all the way back to a cutter, or the base. A hand clamped on his shoulder and squeezed briefly. He turned to look. Chin, looking grim and resolute. On the other side of the helicopter, Kono had her attention on the water, her expression fierce but somehow also heartbroken. Yeah, that face definitely reminded him that what was at stake was bigger than him and his unrequited feelings.

“I don’t know if he’s…” Steve started, but stopped. He still couldn’t say it.

Chin just nodded once, looked across the water, and narrowed his eyes.

Steve’s wrist and hand ached. He didn’t regret beating the shit out of Hookano, though he probably should. Despite their fast-and-loose interpretation of regulations, Five-O wasn’t in the habit of abusing prisoners. Steve couldn’t spare the energy thinking of how he was going to dismantle the Boys, the ones not directly involved in the kidnapping and probable murder (shitshit) of a police officer, and all of their operations and known affiliates. After. That was for after. He had to survive this part first. So did Danny.

“Any word from the others?” Steve asked, knew even as he did that they would have been told news as it came in.

“Negative. Sorry. We’ve got a broad swath of water to cover yet.”

The copilot turned in his seat to look back at Steve. He had a name. Steve couldn’t remember it, which was another tangible sign of how messed up his head was. At least the Coast Guard commander had the courtesy to not finish that up with some bullshit about keeping the faith. Steve knew their search and rescue crew had already prepared for a search and recovery, or not even that. He knew that didn’t mean they weren’t looking just as hard as he and his team was scouring the water like they could call Danny up through sheer will. It was one of those situations where time stood still and moved too fast at once.

“All right, I gotta bring her around,” the pilot said. “It’ll be a quicker trip, straight shot instead of this search grid formation.”

Steve’s gut twisted. What if Danny was down there right now and heard them coming, only to have to hear them fly away? He could almost feel the horror of that himself, as if he were the one down there. Not dead. In the water, but not dead. Danny was not dead.

“It hasn’t been half an hour yet,” Kono said, sounding all of fifteen all of a sudden. “You can’t.”

“Officer Kalakaua, I understand your concern, but this is our operation. We are good at what we do and what we do now is refuel.”

The helicopter began its turn, angling the side Steve perched on up slightly. He stared blankly out the door, entertained the admittedly crazy thought of jumping out, conducting his own search, swimming for it. It wasn’t an actual thought, a dream. Fantasy, maybe, that he’d hit the water and magically, Danny would be there yelling at him for doing something so dangerous and stupid. He almost smiled at the thought, but now was not a time for smiling. They were about to lose more time Danny didn’t have. Steve started to look down at his feet. His head jerked up at the last second. He couldn’t say why he knew a glare of light beaming directly into his eyes once the helicopter regained a normal pitch was different to the reflection of sun off waves.

But it was.

“Hey, wait. Wait,” Steve said. “I see something.”

Chin and Kono crowded his space, peered the direction Steve was looking. With one hand, he grasped Kono’s elbow as she leaned too close to the edge for his liking. With the other, he pointed at what he now had niggling doubt was anything more than wishful thinking.

“I don’t see anything,” Chin said, disappointed rather than unsupportive. He lifted his binoculars. “We’re not close enough.”

The helicopter righted out of the turn and continued straight, in the wrong direction. He, Chin and Kono all scrabbled over Coast Guard personnel to the other side of the craft, heedless of safety harnesses. It wouldn’t matter. None of them would be able to spot Danny (it was Danny, had to be) as soon as the pilots steered the right direction. Steve knew it was as illogical as anything else illogical running through his tired, worried head, but he felt like if he lost visual track of that spot, then it wouldn’t be Danny. Even knowing that didn’t make sense didn’t keep him from thinking it.

“South.” Steve hadn’t meant to shout that. He swallowed. “Southeast.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I don’t know how you saw anything at this range, but there’s something,” the pilot said after a few seconds. He sounded surprised.

“Something glinted. Face of a watch, maybe?”

“But Danny doesn’t wear a watch,” Kono said, then gasped and appeared like she wanted to take that back. Like she’d just killed the hope.

“FLIR’s got it now, but it’s indistinct.” The pilot huffed something unintelligible, then, “Can’t determine if it’s human from this. If that’s him, he is one lucky son of a bitch.”

“Take us closer, then,” Steve ordered. “And don’t tell me we need fuel.”

“Easy,” the copilot said. “We’ve got a window. If that is him, we’re not leaving him. That’s not what we came out here to do.”

The cabin bustled around them, the crew preparing in the event they’d be needed. Steve reluctantly backed into a jumpseat. There was nothing he wanted more than to be in on the actual rescue, if … when it came to that, but he’d agreed that Five-O would let the professionals handle it and that hadn’t been easy for him. He still wanted to be leading this operation. The rotor blades and engine noise, muffled in his ears, became louder, until he realized most of the roaring in his ears was internal, blood rushing. They flew for one, maybe two minutes, but it felt like forever to him.

“Holy shit on toast,” the pilot said. “We got ‘im, people.”

The helicopter swooped closer to the water’s surface. Steve stayed out of the way, but he had to see for himself. He reached the edge of the cabin, latched onto the open frame, and peered down just in time to see a blond head submerge. He ripped his headphones off and then, despite best intentions, he readied himself to jump in. The only thing that stopped him was Chin and Kono latching onto both his arms. He fought briefly, but saw the rescuers, properly equipped and dressed, one of them lowered into the ocean. A few seconds after he went under, Danny came up again, and even from this distance, Steve could see he looked awful, barely like himself.

“Shit,” Steve said.

“They got him, brah,” Chin said directly in his ear. “The worst is over.”

Steve didn’t know if that was true. A body wasn’t meant to sustain that level of activity for that length of time. He knew the basic possible ramifications. Electrolyte and glucose imbalance. Hypothermia. Muscle damage. He didn’t want to think about any of it, because thinking of it meant he had to think about how it took them too long to find Danny. He wanted to think that this was a flat-out miracle and he should be grateful. He was. He was so damned grateful what remained of his brain function hit a wall and all he could do was concentrate on breathing through the rescue he wanted to lead, not watch from the sidelines.

The next few minutes were a blur of activity and shouts, as the Coast Guardsmen wrestled with a weakly combative Danny before finally getting him restrained and situated for transport. The line winched up, too slowly, until there they were. The first up close and personal look at Danny made all the attempts to breathe before wasted effort. They’d found him. His partner was alive, but didn’t look to Steve like he was ready to stay that way. He didn’t know how many virtual punches to the gut he could take before he started bleeding internally.

Danny was very obviously out of it, eyes open but not tracking, mouth moving but saying nothing any of them could hear. His mostly naked body was badly sunburned, lips cracked and bleeding, hair wet and unruly. Worse than any of it, Danny looked … depleted, like a shell of himself only. Steve realized Kono was holding onto his left hand tightly when he slid from his seat and his hand tugged backward. He looked back as Kono released him, gave him a wide-eyed, near-panicked glance. He wanted to tell her everything would be okay, but of all the unkind yet fond things Danny accused him of daily, one of them wasn’t of being a liar.

Steve leaned into the fray of the rescue crew to get to Danny. Through the heavy noise filling the chopper, he thought he heard Danny mumbling. The only thing he thought he heard was Danny call for Grace as his hands tried to move, but that might have been him projecting what he knew Danny would say if he weren’t so delirious and sick. Steve grabbed hold of Danny’s icy fingers, hated how they felt clammy and wrinkled and small in his hand.

“Danny,” he said, though he doubted Danny was registering anything. “We’ve got you. I’ve got you now.”

For one bright, shining moment, Danny looked straight at him with those bleary eyes of his. Steve would swear on a stack of Bibles that his partner also squeezed his hand. It wasn’t muscle spasms.

“I know you’re not here,” Danny said, words slurring and hardly understandable, painfully hoarse but coherent. “But I have to… you have to take care of my baby anyway, ‘kay? I can’t … I can’t.”

“Danny?” Steve said.

Danny’s eyes rolled back and he went sickeningly limp. Steve felt himself shoved aside, helpless to do anything but watch strangers try to keep Danny alive until they touched ground.

Danny smelled lake water in his hair. He liked how at night after a long day swimming, it still felt like he was in the waves, but something didn’t seem right. He heard a strange beeping noise, and someone sniffling and talking quietly. He tasted seaweed and his bed felt wrong. He opened his eyes and he wasn’t in his top bunk in his and Matty’s room. He didn’t know what that meant, or why he felt so tired.

“Mom,” he said.

“Oh! Oh, Danny, sweetheart,” Mommy said, and she was at his side with a warm hand on his forehead the way she always did when he was sick. “Danny.”

Mommy looked upset and he didn’t know why. That made him upset too, and he tried not to be a baby but suddenly he had hot tears in his eyes that wouldn’t go away. Mommy made a weird noise and scooped him into a big hug. Her hand cupped the back of his head as she rocked back and forth, and it made him feel safe and scared.

“M-mommy?”

“You’re okay now. You’re okay,” Mommy whispered into his hair and then pulled away, held him by his arms and looked at him like he was going to run away.

Danny still didn’t understand where he was and what was wrong. He did know that he wanted Mommy to stop looking at him like that. Behind her with his hands on her shoulders, Daddy stood and looked not right too. Not mad, but not not mad either, but Danny couldn’t tell that good because he couldn’t stop crying. He remembered being at the beach. That was all. He must have done something bad.

“I’m sorry,” Danny said and hiccupped.

“It’s okay, you’re okay. That’s all that matters.” Mommy smiled at him, but it didn’t look like she meant it all the way. She was still sad. She tweaked his nose. “But no more trips into the water by yourself, huh?”

He nodded. He was confused, but if not going in the water would make Mommy stop being so worried, then he’d stay out. He still felt like he floated and bobbed with the waves, but now Danny didn’t think he liked that so much.

His hair hurt, so did his eyelashes. Everything hurt. Every single muscle, everything down to the cellular level. Danny wanted nothing more than to sink back into sleep, but he floated to the surface anyway. His body gave him no choice. It hardly seemed fair. He never got to sleep in anymore, and it felt as if he’d earned it. His brain was a fog, too thick for him to remember what he’d done last night to deserve feeling like so much shit. He hoped it was something fun, suspected it was the opposite. He had odd flashes of waves and sun, sharks and Steve. Steve was always there. Barefoot. Smiling. Frowning. Naked. Weird. The whir of machines around him, the muffled voices at a distance, the roughness of the sheet covering him all pointed to him being in the hospital.

“Mmmph,” Danny said.

Another noise came at his first foray into the real world, a rustle of cloth and slight squeak of rubber soled shoes on a tiled floor. He knew it was Steve without opening his eyes. He frowned. Why would he know that?

“Danny?” Steve’s gruff voice said. It was his worry voice. “Come on, man. Time to wake up. You’ve been out long enough.”

Danny supposed he could do that since Steve asked so nicely and all, even though he’d rather not. He cracked his eyes open, vision blurry. He knew right away he wasn’t going to last more than a minute or two, had an incredible sense of déjà vu. He wondered how many times he’d tried to wake up, how many hours he’d slept. He finally got a bead on Steve, and he looked different than he expected.

“Why are you wearing clothes?” Danny mumbled. His eyes crossed and he closed them again.

Steve shouted for a doctor. What seemed to him like fourteen billion members of the medical profession arrived, invaded his personal space and Danny decided he might just as well sleep through that rigmarole. He did his best to reestablish unconsciousness, but the prodding and talking to and about him prevented him from getting any deeper in than a dull haze. None of the words they used held any meaning. He wasn’t even sure they were speaking English, but none of it sounded good. Oliguria and oxidative damage and oh, too many things for his muzzy head to attempt to make sense, make less scary.

“Detective Williams, are you with us?” someone said.

Danny supposed he should open his eyes and face the world, but amid all the medicalese and examination, he’d started feeling even worse than when he’d woken up. He wouldn’t have imagined it possible. He found he wanted to answer, truly, it surprised him how much he thought that was a good idea, if for no other reason so that he could get answers himself, understand the full picture of how he’d ended up flat on his back feeling like they’d scraped him off the Turnpike. Unfortunately, he also found that he couldn’t. That whole drifting back to sleep thing took over, his body apparently exercising its right to preserve itself.

It was nighttime when Danny woke, and the room was dark and empty. He thought there should have been someone there, but he didn’t know who. He still didn’t know what had happened to him, was too tired to think much about it. It seemed it was all he could to do to breathe. There was a machine next to him, big and noisy in the relative quiet of the late hours. He squinted at it, moved a bit (couldn’t do more than that, muscles weak and limp) and regretted it when the dull ache he’d barely registered in his lower back turned into something much sharper and realer and it brought a screaming alarm, rushing feet and hands. Someone told him he was fine. A cool sensation slipped into his veins and sleep pulled him gently under.

The fits and bursts kind of waking aggravated Danny. It took a monumental effort to open his eyes, but he did so this time knowing he’d done it over and over again. The problem was he couldn’t seem to keep his eyes open, and he really wanted to. He had no concept of how many times or how long went between surfacing events, couldn’t even raise an arm to check his stubble. He looked like a raging madman with a full beard, so he hoped like hell it hadn’t been that long. There was movement to his right. He managed to tip his head that way.

“Hey, brah,” Chin said, a sorta smile on his face.

Chin was difficult to read sometimes, usually even keeled and steady; when he smiled he meant it, which made the not-quite-a-smile just plain confusing. Kono was there too, standing behind Chin. Danny felt her soft hand take his. He blinked, vision blurry, and who had stuck tiny little razor blades into his eyelids anyway? He cleared his throat, startled at the sharp touch of a straw against his lips. He opened his mouth and pretended it wasn’t embarrassing when he had to be helped to figure out how the straw worked. He didn’t manage more than two sips when it was taken away. It hardly seemed fair, but he was too damned exhausted anyway.

“You back with us for good this time?” Kono said.

Danny couldn’t see her face clearly enough, but she sounded different. Scared, he thought.

“Sure,” Danny said, because he wanted to make her feel better. Then he closed his eyes.

Danny dreamed of the sea, of calm and terrible water filled with sharks and the inevitable promise of death. He dreamed of his skin peeling away, burned from the too-bright sun and also somehow desiccated from the briny water he couldn’t escape no matter how hard he tried. He dreamed of Steve’s stupid, smiling face and long legs and Jesus-walking-on-water-impression. He also dreamed of Steve, naked with muscles glistening wet and salty, eyes serious and clear as the sea that surrounded both of them. He dreamed that it was Steve’s eyes he’d rather swim in, those naked muscles he wanted to cling to.

It was the last dream that catapulted him out of sleep with a racing heart and a potentially serious existential crisis of his own identity. Especially since, when he could see straight, the first thing he saw was Steve slouched in chair and in a position that had to be uncomfortable as hell, eyes closed, head tilted back. The faintest of snores could be heard over normal hospital sounds.

Danny shifted on the bed, felt like he hadn’t moved in twenty years. He was a modern day Rip Van Winkle. He fumbled a hand up, scratched at a decent amount of stubble. Not twenty years’ worth. Not even more than a couple of days. He focused on Steve again. Even in sleep, when most people looked younger, Steve looked like he’d aged quite a few years. Danny frowned. What if it had been years, and someone had been shaving him periodically? Did a guy’s hair stop growing if he was in a coma? These were questions Danny wanted answered, eventually.

“Hey,” he said. His voice was next to nothing, barely audible. He tried again, “Hey. Steve.”

It was almost comical the way Steve floundered to consciousness, ridiculously long limbs flying all over the place until he almost fell off the chair. Army training or whatever took over after only a second of that, as Danny watched Steve’s movements turn fluid and graceful as ever. Danny’s own compact power got the job done, but every once in a while he wanted what he could never have. Steve stood by the side of his bed, leaning to rest his knuckles on the mattress, hands brushing against Danny’s side.

“Danny,” Steve said quietly. His eyes were intense, searching, and focused on Danny’s face like he was afraid it would disappear. “You’re awake.”

“You’re a genius, babe.” That was more mumbly than usual, but he couldn’t seem to open his mouth very wide. Or his eyes, but Danny saw the way Steve relaxed and lost some of the years aging him so badly and it told him that he’d been understood. Score one for the hospitalized guy. “Has Mensa called you yet?”

Steve smiled then, relief so evident it was actually almost painful to witness. Oh. It’d been that kind of bad. For being a badass military type, sometimes Steve’s emotions were right out there. Usually, it was the unhappy emotions. He felt he couldn’t really bring up anger management with the guy, given his own propensity to lash out.

“It was … you’ve been ….” Steve straightened, gestured toward what Danny assumed was the door. “I should get your doctor if you’re going to stick around this time. You are sticking, right?”

He thought he remembered doctors, in that jumbled way he couldn’t be sure if was real or dream. Danny swallowed, hated how thick his tongue felt. He thought about Rip Van Winkle again. He thought he was suffering some hefty cognitive dissonance.

“Wait, wait,” Danny said. He coughed dryly. “Just give me a minute before people start poking me where I don’t want to get poked, huh? What happened?”

“You don’t remember?”

Steve pulled his confused hamster face, then scowled as he apparently relived whatever experience Danny couldn’t quite recall. Watching Steve’s face tripped something. He didn’t know what and couldn’t explain why, but Danny suddenly remembered it all in a riot of images and feelings and it was overwhelming to his weak body. His lungs threatened to wither and render him breathless, his arm and leg muscles went limp as wet noodles. He wasn’t panicking; it was simply a lot to take in all at once.

Or, maybe he was panicking. There was a machine somewhere really much too close to him that made this swishing noise Danny was sure meant it wasn’t a machine at all and something cold-blooded and dead-eyed that waited for him to descend below the surface of water that surrounded him as far as the eye could see. Something strong and sure gripped his hand, kept him from sinking, and it took him a second to realize it was Steve. It took him a second after that to be embarrassed and weakly pull free.

“You’re okay,” Steve said, sounded like he had been saying repeatedly. “It’s over, you made it through.”

Jesus, when had Danny Williams become a trembling victim flying apart at the seams? He tried to regulate his breathing, and didn’t pull away when Steve’s hand once again found his. For some reason, he thought maybe the guy needed the contact more than he did himself.

“Yeah, okay,” Danny said, voice still too froggy and he felt like the jury was still out about him making it through. “How long was I out there and how long are you gonna hold my hand?”

“Eighteen hours.” Steve looked vaguely ill and not so vaguely angry for a flash, then something else cropped onto his face. Relief. “You’re goddamned lucky to be alive. Even after we finally found you, you … Danny, we almost lost you, and I’m going to hold your hand as long as I feel like it.”

“Oh, that’s how it’s gonna be?” Danny blinked slowly. Now he didn’t just sound mumbly, but he had a slight drunken slurring thing going on.

“Yeah, pretty much.”

Steve chewed on his lip, frowned at Danny for a moment. He apparently didn’t like what he saw, as he grasped Danny’s hand more tightly, but he kept it gentle. All of a sudden he bent, pressed a long kiss at the corner of Danny’s right eye, as if that were something they always did, a custom shared.

Danny should have pulled away from that the same way he had pulled his hand free … the first time. That was his thought, his only clear thought. So it was inexplicable to him that instead, he leaned into the kiss, like he wanted it, wanted more. All that did was prompt two things: Steve froze and Steve withdrew to gawp at him with wide, alarmed eyes.

“I’m getting the doctor,” Steve announced in a rush after a beat of awkward silence.

Then he left Danny alone, with the ghost trace of the warmth of Steve’s lips at his temple and uncertainty about what the hell had just happened and if it might possibly be connected to the existential mini-crisis that had woken him up a few minutes earlier.

“It seems Detective Williams has turned a significant corner at last,” Doctor Rothman said to him as he exited Danny’s room. He gave Steve a smile. “We’ll continue to monitor his kidney function and output for a few days, but I’d say the worst is over there. The damage inflicted to them prior to his exposure to and duration in the water made it touch and go for longer than usual, given his overall health and fitness. We’ll also need to get working on muscle recovery as soon as we can, I’ll get in touch with a colleague, but overall it’s very good news.”

Steve slumped against the wall, the days of high octane fear letting go of its hold in one giant release. It surprised him how shaky he felt; he hadn’t quite realized how much he’d been relying on adrenaline to keep him upright and moving. He blinked at the doctor’s concerned face, waved his hand. He didn’t want to be the wilting lily, swooning at the first bit of happy news. Didn’t want to be … wasn’t, damn it.

“Relieved,” he said. “That’s all.”

“It’s been an ordeal.” The doctor nodded, but the concerned expression didn’t exactly disappear. “Your friend’s recovery is the closest thing I’ve ever come to witnessing a miracle.”

If that was meant to add more assurance, then it didn’t work exactly right. All it did was hit home yet again how close they’d come to losing Danny. Steve wasn’t sure how his partner had managed to survive that long in the water, didn’t want to think too much about how it should have gone the wrong way for all of them. He had at least one solid idea about Danny’s survival instinct, and she was about three and a half feet tall with long, light brown hair.

“I need to call his ex and his daughter.” So far, Danny’s health had been too precarious for Grace to come see him. Steve knew Rachel had explained to the little girl that her daddy was sick, but that was all. He felt a pang of guilt for not really thinking too much about them as he conducted his bedside vigil. “They’ll want to know. They’ll want to come down. Danny’ll want to see his little girl.”

“There’s no rush for visitors.” The doctor smiled, and this time he was the one who waved a hand. “He’s already sleeping again. He’s still going to be doing quite a lot of that for the next day or two, so don’t be alarmed.”

He was a little relieved by that too. Steve hadn’t meant to kiss Danny like he had, or run away immediately afterward like a scared kid. It wasn’t like it was a full on-the-mouth-with-tongue kind of thing (oh, shit, he wished), but it was still going to be a thing. After all, a kiss to the temple was not a … not whatever he … not.

He was mainly concerned about how Danny might take it, because Steve was very aware that he’d spent a fair amount of time with certain feelings for Danny and eighteen hours with gut wrenching fear and a sense of loss for something he’d never had. Steve also was very aware he had no real idea if anything could come of it. He had little hope there was any reciprocation, and he didn’t know if he was ready to risk one of the closest friendships he’d ever had to find out, without having some clue first. He had to move cautiously.

“I know you’re not under my care,” Rothman continued, “but I strongly urge you to go get some sleep yourself. Don’t take this personally, Commander McGarrett, but you look awful and I’d like to not make it an order.”

“I will, doc,” Steve said. Maybe it was the power of suggestion, but at that moment he felt a huge yawn come on and he didn’t try to hide it. When he came out of it, he grinned at Rothman’s knowing look. “I swear.”

The doctor walked away. Rather than leave as he’d said he would, Steve turned and went into Danny’s room. He stood at Danny’s side for a few moments, but didn’t sit. If he sat, he knew he wouldn’t leave and he really was tired. Knowing Danny was on the right side of recovery now made him look better even though he appeared wan beneath the nasty sunburn and depleted as ever. Danny looked tiny, and younger than he did when he was awake.

“You’re gonna be all right, Danny,” Steve said stupidly, more for himself than his slumbering partner. “You hear me?”

He resisted the urge to smooth Danny’s hair, touch him at all, and left the room reluctantly. Steve was bone weary, and he had people to give status updates to before he collapsed for a few hours, not just Rachel and Grace. Chin and Kono had spent almost as much time sitting with Danny as he had, though he knew they’d also stepped up to keep Five-O running smoothly. As it turned out, dismantling a low level gang required a high level of paperwork, and as much as he enjoyed dismantling the Boys, he did not love paperwork. He wasn’t sure whom to thank for the lack of new cases that would pull him away. Considering the task force was very much a the-show-must-go-on kind of team, that was a bonus he couldn’t take for granted.

Steve made the calls as he drove home in a slight daze, more effects of the adrenaline and fear fading from his system. The smart thing to do, he realized as he parked the truck crookedly at his house, would have been to get someone to drive him. Hindsight and all. Didn’t matter, he’d made it and the closer he got to his bed, the more tired he became. He managed to get out of his clothes before he fell onto the bed, asleep almost before his head hit the pillow, relaxed in the knowledge Danny wasn’t going to up and die on him while he was out.

It startled him to look at the time when he awoke and realize he’d been asleep for a full fifteen hours. Tomorrow had arrived, and by the look of it was bright with sunshine. Steve’s first task was to check in with Chin.

“Seriously, brah,” Chin said, and his tone spoke of that understanding he’d alluded to once upon a time. “Kono and I have HQ covered. We had some face time with Danny this morning. He’s looking much better already, and I know you want to see that for yourself.”

“Thanks, Chin,” Steve said, because there wasn’t really anything else to say. “I’ll probably be in later this afternoon.”

Chin let out an amused snort and hung up on him, but not before he mumbled something under his breath about crazy people. The truth was, though, they were all due for a return to normal patterns. Not that they’d achieve it until Danny was actually recovered and out of a hospital bed, but Steve knew he couldn’t hang around watching Danny heal for as long as he wanted to without looking like a complete, sappy fool. He just … he just needed to see Danny awake and hear him speak in more than confused, hoarse, awful mumbles.

He showered and dressed in record time, headed for the hospital with an overripe banana grabbed as an afterthought kind of breakfast. Feminine voices floated from Danny’s room as Steve approached, one with a British lilt and the other pure and sweet. He smiled, but slowed his pace, didn’t want to interrupt family time. It was a little awkward hanging out in the corridor for too long, so he sucked in a deep breath and entered the room. Three heads turned his direction, and he regretted intruding right away.

“Commander McGarrett,” Rachel said with a smile.

Grace, though. Grace let out a squeal and raced for him, arms wrapping around his back, face pressed against his abdomen. Her hot breath warmed his stomach, words muffled too much to decipher. His hands went instinctively to Grace’s shoulders as he looked helplessly at Rachel, first and then at Danny, who stared back at him with such fondness Steve nearly lost his breath.

“Grace has it in her head that you saved my life,” Danny said, hoarse as ever but not as mumblemouthed as yesterday. He shrugged. “That’s a pretty big deal.”

“Oh,” Steve said. He swallowed before he pried Grace back far enough he could see her beaming face. “Don’t let Danno fool you, Gracie. He saved himself at least as much as I did.”

“I know,” she whispered, “but he pretends he doesn’t like to brag.”

Steve laughed at that and gave her a wink. He planted a hand on the top of her head, wiggled it. He barely knew this little girl, but he thought he might love her. If he told Danny that, he’d get a lecture on how that was one of the ways that made him insane. The thought made him want to smile, and he would have if he’d been alone.

“We were actually just going to be on our way,” Rachel said. “I’m so glad that we at least got to bump into you, Commander.”

“Please, call me Steve.”

“Yes, well. Steve.” Rachel crossed over to him, took him by the forearm as she planted a kiss on his cheek. She whispered, “Thank you, again, for all you’ve done. I don’t know if Grace could handle it if something happened to her father.”

Steve shifted on his feet, uncomfortable with feeling both pleased and jealous at the same time. He counted himself lucky that he didn’t have to see Rachel all that much, because liking someone and also resenting the hell out of her was exhausting.

“Come, Grace, let’s let your father get some rest. We’ll come back again soon.”

“But Uncle Steve just got here,” Grace said.

“Monkey,” Danny said. “Listen to your mom.”

“Okay.” Grace didn’t look happy, but she dutifully went to Danny and stretched to plant a kiss on his sun-reddened cheek. “Love you, Danno.”

“Love you too.”

“I’ll bring you a shave ice for your sore throat next time we come,” Grace said conspiratorially, like no one else had heard her.

“Who’s my girl?”

There was hustle and bustle and it took another few minutes for Rachel and Grace to actually leave the room, during which time Steve stood consciously out of the way. It was nice to watch, and seeing Danny light up every single time he looked at Grace went a long way in confirming Steve’s theory that she was how his partner had survived what would have killed most. After the women in Danny’s life departed, Steve continued to lean against the wall. He straightened only when Danny looked over to him, eyes sharp and clear. Beautiful.

“You’re looking, uh,” Steve said. Good wasn’t the word. Truthfully, Danny looked pretty rotten and pretty alive. It was all he could do not to launch himself over there and hug the shit out of the guy, but he had to be careful. Proceed with caution. “Better.”

Danny blinked at him, but said nothing. Steve felt nervous all of a sudden. He stepped closer without encroaching on the space immediately next to the bed. He glanced at the IV drips and the collection bag, grossed out but happy to see yellow fluid in it.

“Steve, I…,” Danny stopped, looked perplexed for a moment. “Just, thank you.”

“Danny, what you did, hanging on for so long.” Steve shook his head, tried to get the tremor out of his voice. “It was you. I wasn’t lying when I told Grace you saved yourself.”

“Steve, in polite society, the proper response to a thank you is you’re welcome. Am I ever going to have to stop coaching you about the finer points of human interaction?” Danny chided gently. “Now sit down, stay for a bit. I’m getting a crick in my neck looking all the way up at you, you freakishly tall individual.”

Steve sat and tried not to squirm. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but some kind of teasing about the handholding and temple kissing wasn’t outside the realm of possibilities. Yet, nothing. A whole lot of nothing. After a full minute of nothing, he found himself chattering about the whole story of the search and busting the Hawaii Boys out of existence and the rescue out to Danny unprompted, because he knew he’d want details like that if he woke up in a hospital with wasted muscles, barely functioning kidneys and massive sunburn. He trailed off eventually and glanced up to find Danny looking at him with that same fondness he’d used before, with Grace.

“What?” Steve asked.

“When I was out there, all I could think about was my little girl, you know, how I had to keep going for her,” Danny said. He chewed at a piece of his scabby lip. “And you, if I’m going to be honest.”

“What?” Steve asked again.

“Maybe it’ll clue you in faster if I told you I also have hazy recollections of hallucinating you. You were an annoying, persistent, aggravating pain in the ass ordering me to stay afloat. Oh, and for part of it you were very naked."

Danny talked like this was all one hundred percent reasonable, but it wasn’t. He wondered if this was what it felt like to Danny whenever he claimed Steve was crazy, an animal, a Neanderthal or damaged in some other major way. Danny picturing him naked wasn’t usual and customary, as far as he knew. His palms started sweating. He rubbed them down his thighs.

“What?” Steve asked a third time.

“You kissed me yesterday. I remember that too.” Danny shrugged. “You figure it out.”

At that, Steve’s heart began to pound and he thanked the stars that he wasn’t the one hooked up to machines. Danny’s heart rate seemed to be plugging along, all non-nonplussed by the random bits of hope he was tossing about like they were no big deal.

“Naked,” Steve said at last. “You saw me naked.”

“Imagined. And imagine how I felt, but I had a lot of time to think about it, what it might mean. I arrived at some conclusions.” Danny held up his right hand, jiggled his fingers. “I don’t want this to be a dragged out thing we do, a will-they or won’t-they cliché. If I’m not wrong about you clutching my hand like you were trying to give me your life essence and kissing my head in a way that denoted more than friendship, you will take my hand again and kiss me like you mean it. Right here, right now. On the mouth, to be specific, and don’t worry, they brushed my teeth this morning. And if I am wrong about this entirely, then we will chalk it up to my fragile mental and physical health and be on our merry way, saving people and blowing things up unnecessarily just like always.”

Okay, this was not how Steve had anticipated things going at all, but he really should have. Danny was bossy to the core. It was one of the first things Steve loved about him, not that he’d ever make that public knowledge. So, what could he do? He grabbed onto Danny’s hand with his left while he reached with his right to cup the side of Danny’s face, careful not to jab the guy with his splinted finger. He rubbed his thumb along scratchy stubble. Danny looked like a bit of a madman with that much growth. A weird, stunning madman.

“Don’t ever almost die on me again,” Steve said.

“I will try extremely hard not to,” Danny said. He tipped his head. “The thing is, I work with an insane person and chances are he’s going to be a problem making that an absolute guarantee.”

“You talk a lot.”

“You’re tall.” Danny blinked a few times, managed to look innocent. “Oh, were we not making statements that could only be deemed obvi…”

Steve gently kissed Danny quiet, mindful of the sore, chapped lips beneath his, smiled when Danny growled in the back of his throat and refused to take a tender kiss. Their tongues met, warm and smooth and better than anything. Danny’s mouth tasted somehow of the sea and of the promise of things to come.