Archive of Our Own ^beta

Steve McGarrett didn’t come awake gradually. In his experience, it never worked the way it did in movies and TV. Consciousness came suddenly, confusing and painful, and for several moments he had no idea which direction was up. It was black as pitch. He had no idea of anything except pain and the strange smell of chalk. He couldn’t see a thing, couldn’t remember where he was or why. It was impossible to completely quell panic, which was compounded by the feelings of compressed lungs and immobility. He refused to let the panic overcome him, chose instead to focus his senses beyond sight on determining where he was and how he’d gotten there.

The sound of groaning was loud and filled the dark air all around him. It took Steve a few moments to realize it wasn’t a human sound, but that of a building settling; a building that had apparently settled on him. Intense pressure held him in place, unyielding from above and not quite as bad from below. He could breathe fairly well, like he was trapped in a pocket. He felt something soft beneath him, but trying to remove it resulted in resistance from the heavy weight on top of him and also sharpened the stab that started somewhere near or maybe through the ribcage on his left side. He had an extremely limited range of motion, but instinctively tried to snake a hand to where the pain was sharpest. He needed to know if the wound was through and through or not, blindly gauge potential for internal bleeding. The act of moving his left shoulder to attempt exploration of the wound was enough to jar the point of injury, sent agony rocketing through him.

“Damn,” Steve said, with a gasp.

He choked on the dust he only realized was in the air all around him once it was in his mouth, down the back of his throat and threatening to suffocate him. Steve coughed and gagged a little, reflex action. The pain in his chest ratcheted up to the point he felt himself passing out. Good, that was probably for the –

The next time he woke, the groaning sound was different. The building settling was accompanied by a closer sound, human. Steve knew that instantly, but he couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Far away and right in his ear at the same time, which wasn’t possible but was anyway. He couldn’t tell who it was, still didn’t know where he, they, were. He blinked, dust clung to his eyelids, scratchy, and he couldn’t stop the tears from rolling down his face if he tried. He didn’t want to try. He wanted to see, but it was too dark anyway and it didn’t matter if the whole of Waikiki Beach was in his eyes at the moment except for the fact it stung and burned. He didn’t think he was going to see anything anytime soon. It was disconcerting to say the least, but not the worst situation he’d ever been in.

“Hello?” Steve said, voice rough but paper thin.

The softness beneath him moved, or had been moving. Steve noticed it only when it stopped at his voice. Oh. Person, it was a person and he tried to remember how that was even possible, who was with him in this place he couldn’t quite recall. A firm point of pressure began from below, nothing like that weighting him down, hand, it was a hand low on his chest on the right side, shoving weakly but insistently. It didn’t seem to matter that the pushing didn’t move him more than a millimeter. Whatever had him pierced on the left felt like it was tearing him in half. Oh, so not good.

“Nurg,” he said and if he could see anything, Steve knew his vision would be greying out from the sudden, bursting white hot agony that made him hiss. That something, whatever it was, had him impaled pretty good. Shit, shit, “Shit, don’t.”

“Suh, Steve,” the person said, choked and tight and recognizable but wrong. “Move, can’t. Off me.”

Danny. Steve closed his watering eyes, suddenly remembered they’d been on the second floor of a small, vacant business complex, and the unexpected muffled boom from below. Maybe above as well, he didn’t know. The instinct to get out fast hit him now as it had then, his breaths quickening. They obviously hadn’t been fast enough.

In his mind’s eye, Steve saw Danny now as he had in the chaos of the moment, too many steps behind Steve as he hit the door to the stairs they had to chance were passable. Heard shouting from his earbud, as Chin and Kono had been outside searching the building perimeters, and heard Danny yelling again as the floor beneath him buckled as if in slow motion. He’d moved without conscious thought, sprawled across the weakened floor to grab Danny’s arms as he’d fallen, shaken his head in horrified, determined denial when Danny ordered Steve to let him the fuck go. Remembered he’d actually managed to inch Danny upward when the floor gave way completely, sent them both down into a gaping black maw.

“Off.” Danny groaned, piteous and soft. “Please. Please.”

They’d fallen together, were buried together, and Steve could do nothing about Danny’s pleas for him to move. There was nothing he’d like more than to stop being part of the massive weight crushing Danny, actually. It killed him to realize that he was contributing to Danny’s pain in any way and that he hadn’t been able to stop this from happening.

“Pinned,” Steve said. “I’m sorry, Danny. I can’t.”

But Steve tried anyway, because Danny’s wheezing alarmed the shit out of him and Danny didn’t stop flailing at Steve’s ribs with one weak hand. Steve was almost glad he couldn’t see his partner. He thought hearing the ragged breathing was bad enough, worse than a rebar or whatever sticking him in place like a butterfly in a collector’s box. He was definitely glad Danny couldn’t see him. The less Danny knew about his injuries, the less he’d fret. Fretting did no good for Danny on a good day. When they were covered in the weight of an entire building, fretting could be disastrous.

The problem was that his efforts to give Danny some relief only exacerbated both of their distress. The smallest of movements caused pain to rocket through his impalement, and he swore he felt warm, fresh blood seeping from it. That was just him; he had no idea if Danny was injured, except he must be because every time Steve tried to move, Danny flailed harder against him. It was a vicious cycle he ended quickly.

Head spinning from the pain of shifting around, it took Steve too long to realize his legs were bent under him, and he thought maybe he was curled almost into a ball. The nearest he could figure, he was crossways at an angle over Danny, knees bent up uncomfortably tight into Danny’s side or, no, actually he felt the give of muscle under his knees. Oh, shit, he knelt on top of Danny’s stomach and chest. He had no idea how his body had contorted into that position, couldn’t do anything to unpretzel himself. While it sucked for him wholesale to try shifting off his partner, any movement he made also pressed his knees further into Danny.

Steve knew a lose/lose situation when he was in one.

“Sorry,” he whispered again.

Danny’s breathing seemed to ease even if Steve couldn’t get off of him. It was probably the instant burst of panic leveling into a lower grade baseline of dread, which he knew from his own reactions. He knew Danny would understand nothing good would come from maintaining panic; he was an excellent cop, and an excellent cop had to keep his head when it counted. There was nothing they could do here but wait, hope rescue would come for them before the remains of the building collapsed and destroyed the pocket they were trapped in.

“It’s not your fault,” Danny said. He sounded better. Not great, but better. “For once. Ohh, shit.”

“Danny?”

“I’m all right. Just … shit … feels like I … ‘m getting punched in the lungs.”

“Know what you mean,” Steve said, and tried to pretend one of his own lungs wasn’t likely punctured and any wrong move would kill him fast. Aside from that, though, he thought he must have gotten lucky and was surrounded by a bubble of sorts. There was pressure, but it wasn’t debilitating the way it seemed to be for Danny. He cringed. “You hurt?”

“Steven, there’s a … three story building on top of us,” Danny said, as if Steve was the thickest brick in the pile of debris.

“Heh.” Steve regretted the half-laugh immensely. He hissed and tried hard not to cough again, didn’t want to pass out. “I meant, other than that.”

Danny didn’t answer right away, which Steve tried not to worry over. His imagination immediately began filling in blanks, coming up with a multitude of injuries Danny could have sustained that he’d have to catalogue before mentioning. Even with Steve partially covering him, Danny’s head and shoulders were exposed, and so were most of his legs. Steve felt and heard Danny’s stilted breaths, short, shallow bursts that couldn’t be giving his partner adequate oxygen. Staying calm in situations like this was paramount, and Danny wasn’t the calmest man on the planet.

“Well, your knees are bony as … oof … hell and that kind of sucks. I’m pretty sure my left arm’s busted.” Danny fumbled against him again with his right hand, not pushing so much as gripping, seeking contact and perhaps comfort. “Head hurts a bitch. Shit in my eyes. And I … I can’t … feel much or anything, actually, below the waist. Otherwise … never better.”

Blood started rushing in Steve’s ears at the barest, casual implication that Danny could maybe possibly very likely be paralyzed. Calm, he had to stay calm, as much for himself as for Danny. The thought of his spitfire of a partner confined to a wheelchair wasn’t pleasant at first thought, or second, and not even the third, but if he had to choose between Danny paralyzed and Danny dead, it was an absolute no brainer.

“What ‘bout you?” Danny asked, then choked a little before he cleared his throat. “Steve, you … okay?”

Steve considered his answer carefully, before saying, “I’m okay, I think, just stuck pretty good.”

Not a lie, not at all. He was simply stuck in a more literal way than he wanted Danny to know about at this moment. Once they were out and safe, Danny could know. He’d need plenty of oxygen for all the yelling he was going to do, which wasn’t possible here. Steve knew how much Danny enjoyed a good shouting match, wouldn’t want to rob him of that. If Danny suspected he was lying by omission, he didn’t say so. That was fine by Steve. The intermittent hitches in Danny’s speech were almost as painful to him as the ache in his own side.

“If that was … supposed to be a pun of some kind, McGarrett,” Danny said but he didn’t finish the thought. He paused, to breathe, to think, to do who knew what. He sounded different, a subtle tonal shift most wouldn’t be able to discern in their current condition or ever, when he finally spoke again. “The others weren’t in the building, right?”

“No, they weren’t.” Steve frowned, though. “You don’t remember?”

“Ah, I do, yeah, the same way … dream. Bits and pieces.” Danny’s voice was thin now, more strained again. “Huh. Speakin’ of dream. Sleep, need a nap. A nap would … be nice.”

Whoa, wait. No. That wasn’t a good idea, he knew that much. Steve’s head ached. It stood to reason Danny’s did too, and he was fairly sure they’d both had loss of consciousness for a significant enough amount of time to be concerned about it. He had limited mobility of his right arm, but automatically reached out as if he could grab Danny. To his surprise, his fingers brushed against something soft, relative to the wreckage pushing at them from three directions. He latched on with as much strength as he could muster. Danny. That was Danny, right there.

“Mmm, what?”

“Don’t go to sleep, Danny. I know that it’d feel really great right now, but you can’t, huh?” Steve prodded at the softness under his fingers gently, thought it might be Danny’s right bicep. He squeezed it. “We have to stay awake so we’ll hear when they come to dig us out.”

“Okay. I’m awake.” Danny took a few shallow breaths. “You think … can … they hear us?”

Steve frowned, confused. Somewhere in the distance, he heard horns. Tinny, persistent horns that meant, no, no, no, he was not going to pass out. He took a careful breath, felt the cold sweat popping on his forehead. The skin under his arms itched.

“What?” Steve asked.

“I don’t think my earpiece is in my ear, is yours? Can you hear them?” Danny said, then let out a gasp, a high-pitched whine of distress and started weakly shoving at Steve again in a panic.

Fucking A. First, he hadn’t even considered the comms, but he couldn’t really tell if he still had his. Even if he did have a bud in his ear, he’d have heard from Chin and Kono by now if that were viable. Second, Danny sounded like hell. Steve didn’t know how he was going to keep Danny awake and talking if talking deflated his partner’s lungs of oxygen like a balloon losing air. Danny pushed his hand into Steve’s gut, with decent enough force to make him see bright pain spots amid all the darkness. No, what Steve actually didn’t know was how he was going to keep Danny awake if he couldn’t keep himself from pass –

Oh. Steve’s head felt foggy, but his eyes were clearer. He blinked a few times, remembered where he was when he couldn’t see anything from his somewhat refreshed eyes. He might have moaned. A little.

“You lying asshole,” Danny said with a subsequent gasp that also managed, like his voice, to sound angry.

Not that Danny’s voice wasn’t the sweetest music in the world to wake up to on a good day, but Steve was disappointed they were still trapped under an office building. He was not fond of waking up in this place, in this kind of pain, no matter whose magnificent grousing pulled him out of unconsciousness. He still had his hand wrapped around Danny’s upper arm, and he didn’t think he’d been out for more than a few minutes. It was hard to tell. Slowly, he acclimated to the trapped feeling again, felt the warm press of Danny’s palm on his stomach, not pushing, still just resting. The touch grounded him, something steady where everything around them could crumble at any moment. He moved his own hand up, or maybe down, he couldn’t tell, in very slow increments, until he had an awkward grasp on Danny’s wrist. The thrum of a heartbeat under his fingertips reassured him.

“Uhm,” Steve said with his own gasp that didn’t sound angry, only pained.

“You passed out.” Danny took shallow breaths, coughed at the dust and groaned. “Okay, we both did.”

“You okay?”

“Stop. Stop … asking me. You. Steve, I felt … you’ve got … something skewering you.”

“I’m all right.”

“Stop fucking lying, you … jackass.”

Steve weighed his options. The cat was well and truly out of the bag regarding his injury, but that didn’t mean he had to give all the gory details. He didn’t even know the gory details himself, since he couldn’t see what had him pinned or how bad it was. It must be through and through, if Danny had found it while he was out. He thought about maneuvering his hand down there, but it would require too much twist in his torso. Nope. Not worth upsetting Danny by passing out again.

“I didn’t want to worry you,” Steve said faintly, and even in his own slightly buzzing ears (he couldn’t think about blood loss right now), the explanation sounded stupid. “Nothing to be done about it, anyway, and I really don’t think it’s that bad.”

Danny remained silent, until Steve started to become disconcerted by the quiet. For too long, all he heard were muffled crashes of the building still folding in on itself and Danny breathing stressed and uneven.

“You’re an idiot. ‘s bad,” Danny said at last. “No more lies.”

“Okay.”

Steve squeezed Danny’s wrist, now wished like hell he could see his partner’s face. It would make waiting for help so much more bearable, but he guessed he was lucky just to have the physical contact. He didn’t want to think how much worse this might be, if he could hear Danny but not see or touch him to make sure neither of them went anywhere. Danny’s arm moved, his palm coming off Steve’s stomach to fumble for his hand until he found it and clasped it.

“Danny,” he whispered, and held on tight.

Steve was well aware of the relative fluidity of time. Logically, a minute was a minute and there was no changing that outside of much, much higher levels of physics laws than he wanted to or could understand. Emotionally, a minute could feel like an hour and an hour a minute. He’d prefer the latter, but was stuck with the former. He had no true idea how long he and Danny had been trapped down there, but it seemed like days. If it seemed so, then it might as well have been. The only saving grace for it not actually having been that long was that both of them were still alive. Steve knew he didn’t have days. He was fairly sure by now that he had an internal bleed at the very least, and shock was a relentless monster dogging him.

Worse, as far as Steve was concerned, he didn’t think Danny had days either. Their hands were still clasped together, and had long ago become cold, from shock or loss of circulation or both. In the twisted position he was in, he couldn’t feel his legs anymore. He tried not to think about how Danny had woken up the first time already unable to feel his. He tried not to think about the blood probably spilling inside his own body. He tried not to think about another building shift flattening them. He tried not to think about much except rescue, which was coming if only because it had to be. None of the distant muffled creaks and booms sounded like anything other than the building dying its agonizing death to him.

Danny’s cold fingers contracted around his, a barely-there sensation.

“Still here,” Steve said.

“Good,” Danny whispered. “That’s good.”

Conversation was difficult to sustain; it had never been all that easy, especially for Danny. Steve couldn’t remember what they’d been talking about last, supposed it didn’t matter all that much as long as it didn’t involve asking how many hours they’d been there, how many more they’d be stuck. He rubbed his thumb across the back of Danny’s hand, an absent gesture he couldn’t quite feel as much as he needed. Not being able to feel Danny, even while maintaining that contact, terrified him to the very core. He couldn’t let that leak through into his voice, which was almost as shaky as Danny’s by now.

“When Grace was four, she had this thing for blanket forts,” Danny said, words coming slow, forced and without his usual flair. “New spot in the house, every day.”

Steve smiled at the idea of Danny playing fort with his little girl. It was a better thing to focus on than how terrible Danny sounded. Without trying too hard, he could see Danny ducking under blankets strewn over furniture, draped over tables and chairs, tucked away from the world in a secret little cave with Grace. He’d done the same thing with Mary, before … long before they had nothing but the memory of their mother’s laughter and their father’s smile. And suddenly, Danny’s happy memory made Steve melancholy.

Or maybe it was just that if Danny had finally turned to stories of Grace, it meant he was entertaining the thought of them not surviving this. Steve had started with those kinds of thoughts a while ago, struggled not to give them credence. If Danny started, then he didn’t know how he could hold steady.

“Kids,” Steve said, like he knew that much about children.

“Yeah. I wasn’t, ah, around much. The job. You know. But when I was, Grace and I, we drove Rachel crazy with those forts.”

An uncharitable thought that everything had seemed to drive Rachel crazy after a certain point flitted through Steve’s head. He could admit his bias was and would always be for Danny there, whether that was right or wrong. It was probably wrong to rely on Danny’s point of view, but it was Danny, so how could he not?

“How?”

“Her favorite duvet … collateral damage on a pirate ship adventure.” Despite the ragged quality to Danny’s voice, there was also a smile in it now. “Whoops.”

Steve smiled again, himself, imagined Danny with an eye patch and peg leg, a devilish look in his one eye.

“You ruined it on purpose,” he said.

“It was seriously,” Danny said, and stopped too long to breathe shallowly before he continued, “the ugliest thing I have ever seen in my life.”

“Heh. Let me guess, flowers?”

“Paisley. Why does anyone like paisley?”

“Yech, I don’t know.”

“Her taste has since … refined.”

Steve couldn’t help but hear the bitterness and underlying insinuation that Danny wasn’t talking about bedcovers so much anymore. He wanted to shake the guy, really, because he didn’t need Rachel’s love or approval or whatever; Danny’s tastes had also refined. He smiled smugly at that and ignored the faint tang of salt and metal on his tongue.

“When did Grace outgrow the forts?” Steve asked, at once hating to have Danny keep talking about her and half needing it as well.

“The divorce. It changed her like it changed us, I suppose. It’s the thing I regret the most.”

“Danny.”

“No, it’s okay.” It was Danny’s turn to rub his cold thumb against the back of Steve’s hand. “Let’s not.”

Steve went silent then and Danny didn’t say anything more either. It was pretty customary for Danny to need a recovery time after he strung more than three or four words together. The problem for Steve during the quiet times was it allowed his brain to think about something other than the inane distractions from reality their conversations were. Things like how he was kneeling on Danny’s diaphragm, how he could tell the building still settled around them and was slowly pushing his knees down and down. Gravity couldn’t be fought. Steve wanted like hell to move so Danny might be able to breathe and talk easier, and he had to admit that wasn’t one hundred percent selfless. Besides their hands being locked together, Danny’s voice was the only thing keeping him tethered or pulling him back those times he inadvertently, inevitably, gave in to unconsciousness.

Danny shifted his hand as if he’d been privy to Steve’s thoughts and didn’t like them, pried his fingers free for a moment. Steve tried not to clutch, or express his relief when Danny simply changed his grip to forearm instead of hand, fingers wiggling and then settling down into a gentle hold. Steve could wrap his whole hand around Danny’s forearm, which he did, but loosely to keep his fingers from cramping.

“Anyway, Grace,” Danny said. He stopped, cleared his throat. Breathed, choked. “If for some reason you get out of this and I –”

“No,” Steve said. Practically shouted, or what passed as shouting for him now. He did not want to hear the end of Danny’s sentence. No. “Don’t you fucking say it.”

Danny fell abruptly quiet and stayed that way for so long Steve had a terrifying thought that in his dread and terror, he’d somehow accidentally compressed the air out of Danny’s lungs and killed him. The weight of the physical building was bad, but the fear of being the cause for Danny’s death was worse and getting more so with every passing immeasurable minute.

“Steve, denial is an unattractive quality,” Danny said at last, alive, alive.

“No is your favorite one syllable word, but me saying it is a bad thing? No, Danny. We are not talking about either of us dying down here.” Especially if it was Danny. “Just, no.”

He knew that Danny would have heaved a sigh under normal circumstances. Danny would have burst out into a rant of epic proportions and volume. It was ridiculous how much Steve missed those things in the minuteshoursdays they’d been buried.

“I only want Grace to know that I –”

“Jesus, Danny, please. Please don’t.”

The words didn’t have to be said. Steve knew exactly what Danny wanted Grace to know. Grace knew exactly what Danny wanted her to know, because Danny said the words often, lived and breathed them, and Grace was a smart little girl who loved her daddy just as fiercely as she was loved herself. Steve also knew that it was Danny who’d say those three words to her, when they got unburied. That was plain and simple fact. He needed to get Danny out of this line of thought; nothing good could come of it and he didn’t have the fortitude to handle it. He barely had it in him to keep himself conscious to keep Danny conscious. Thinking about not making it out, no. Not a good idea. That road only led to one place. He tightened his grasp on Danny’s forearm.

“Hey, okay,” Danny said. “It wasn’t … I’m not giving up.”

Steve didn’t think he’d believed otherwise, but the way his whole body seemed to relax without him ever knowing it’d tensed told him otherwise. Somewhere deep in his gut, where his own lifeblood was pooling, he’d thought Danny was saying goodbye in his own stupid and lopsided way. Steve had lost his mother with no goodbye and his father with a poor excuse for one and he could not deal with Danny trying to do the same. No, it wasn’t needed. They lived their lives knowing it could happen at any time, everything out in the open so no verbal closure was needed. If only it actually worked that way, Steve might find some comfort there.

“You’d better not,” Steve said. “We’re getting out of here.”

“I know that.”

“Good.”

Steve chewed at his lip, got grit in his teeth and he realized he could taste blood on his tongue more. He hoped he was right about their position as he spat weakly. It cleared his mouth, but only increased the blood flavor. He cringed, knew exactly what that meant. Like hell if he was going to tell Danny about it, though.

“What was that?”

“Dust in my mouth,” Steve said.

“Dust everywhere,” Danny sighed. “This is not … the textbook definition of a good time.”

“Hey, now.” Steve squeezed Danny’s forearm. It distressed him that his hand didn’t want to cooperate fully, and he hoped that at least some of the comfort he intended carried through. “Are you implying this is a bad date?”

“No, it’s fantastic. Great ambience, excellent scenery.” Danny coughed, a more and more frequent event and one that grew weaker and weaker. “But if you wanted to be on top so bad today, there were easier ways to go about it. We coulda, I dunno, flipped a coin.”

Steve tried to stop it, but the bit of levity after the dark turn this last conversation had taken was unexpected and so Danny. One brief snort of amusement had him seeing bright spots as the thing in his chest jostled ever so slightly. Ever so slightly was ever so not good. The buzzing whine in his ears grew louder and higher in pitch to the point he blanked everything else, also a more and more frequent event. The bright spots winked out as he slithered into a semiconscious stupor and tried to float away.

“Oh, fuck,” Danny said. “Steve, Steve. I’m sorry. Come on, babe, stay with me here.”

As it always did, Danny’s voice kept Steve from fainting, aided by touch when Danny returned his cold hand to Steve’s, threaded their fingers together. Steve took shallow breaths, concentrated on the edge of panic in Danny’s tone and the desperation of his grasp and wanting them both gone. Fainting would make things worse for Danny, therefore Steve could not faint.

“You’re all right, you’re all right,” he heard Danny saying, hitching breaths punctuating each panicked, repeated word and holy hell, that had to stop. “You’re all right.”

“I’m okay,” Steve said after a bit, his own voice sounding distant.

Except the blood. The blood on his tongue, at his lips, and filling his lung. An icy trail of it snaking out from the wound’s entry point, probably exit too. Steve couldn’t tell if that sensation was real or in his head, figured it didn’t make a difference. He did the only thing he could and hung onto Danny for dear life as the worst of it passed. That whole time relativity came into play again; it seemed to take hours. It took forever until everything relaxed into numbness except his hand where Danny touched him.

“I’m okay,” Steve said and thought he sounded a tad more convincing.

If time was relative, how long was a golden hour anyway? Steve did not want to know the answer.

“We agreed. No lies.”

“I’m okay for having a rebar or whatever in my chest. I’m … not dead,” Steve’s head still spun with the need to pass out or puke or something, and he had a difficult time catching his breath. “So, relatively okay. How’s that?”

“Fair … enough.”

“Just don’t make me laugh.”

“Sorry,” Danny whispered.

It was amazing how through his own compromised hearing and Danny’s compromised speech, Steve could still hear the worry. Shit. That was precisely what he hadn’t wanted. Danny fretting would have been bad from the get go, but after several hours of being trapped and growing weaker, it was a mortal wound. As much as he didn’t want to say that out loud, he knew it to be true.

“Don’t be. Your point about me being on top is taken,” Steve said and tried to put as much smile into his words as he could, “and definitely being considered. Maybe not today, though. I’ve got a headache.”

The thought of Danny being unable to feel anything from the waist down occurred to him after the flip words were out of his mouth. The frequent injury status checks he’d spattered throughout their stilted conversations had intentionally steered away from that. Steve was no stranger to permanent injuries, had known many men and women survive with them. It wasn’t the same, here. He couldn’t leave and never think that much about it again. It was the Danny factor that made him, selfishly, want to pretend that once he wasn’t kneeling on Danny’s chest anymore, Danny would be instantly fine. Steve squeezed his eyes shut and waited for some kind of reaction.

None came.

“Danny?”

“Painting … mental picture,” Danny said. “I think we should invest in floor to … ceiling mirrors.”

Steve’s laugh this time was controlled, more of a fond exhalation than anything. He was not going to consider how much more difficult it seemed to get air into his lungs again, because he didn’t want to go down the grim path Danny just had. They were getting out of this. Period. He could not think otherwise, or it was already over. They lulled into a quiet phase, and Steve relied solely on the feel of Danny’s fingers wrapped in his to know they were both okay.

A few years ago, it never would have occurred to him that a simple touch could have as much strength as a team of SEALs. As far as Steve was concerned, right here and now, it was stronger. So sue him, he had a slight glorification thing going on with Danny’s touch. He wasn’t going to lie to himself and say all he needed was Danny’s hand in his to know everything would be okay in the end, but the strength in the connection was undeniable. Not to put too fine a point on it, it was everything he had down here.

“So,” Steve said after a few minutes. “You think it’ll be Chin or Kono who goes all batshit on the assholes that collapsed a building on us?”

“Hmm. Tough call. They’re both scary sometimes.”

Danny paused, panted short, loud, uncomfortable sounding bursts, impossibly worse than they’d been up to this point.

Steve winced, almost told Danny to stop, just stop talking. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t lose Danny’s voice and didn’t that make him a selfish bastard.

“I gotta go with Kono, because she’d kick my ass if she found out I bet aga –”

Danny’s words cut off, turned abruptly into harsh gagging and groaning that had Steve’s heart in his throat. Before he could so much as shout or squeeze Danny’s hand, one of those faraway settling sounds got suddenly close, louder than he remembered any of them since the walls came tumbling down around them. Cold, stark fear set in his belly. He knew what this was. Danny was choking to death, and there was nothing he could do to prevent it. Danny’s right hand flailed from his grip, shoved up into his sternum, a natural reaction to whatever was happening to him. It jarred Steve enough it made him see stars again, sent him plummeting toward unconsciousness. His last thoughts were of Danny, dying horrible and messy.

He wasn’t dead.

The problem was that Steve couldn’t immediately decide if that was a good thing or bad. Physically, he felt like death might be the better option at the moment than what he was experiencing. But, no. No. He self-corrected that reaction. He couldn’t die because that would make him a giant hypocrite and Danny would never let him … Danny. Oh, shit, Danny. He realized he didn’t have Danny’s hand in his anymore.

“Danny?” he called, not too surprised to hear he sounded like fifteen shades of hell.

The space around him had gotten smaller. Steve didn’t know how he knew that, but he did. He felt the broken walls encroaching ever closer, though again he didn’t know how he knew. He still couldn’t see, couldn’t feel anything but the pain in his chest and, and, and the only thing he didn’t know intrinsically was Danny, where was Danny’s hand?

“Danny.”

Steve coughed, and as it was impossible to do that and not move, he may have blacked out for another few seconds. Okay, he definitely had. It might have even been minutes. This was fucking shit. He was not dying and Danny was not already dead. He inched his right hand along, seeking the softness of cloth, the warmth of muscle. Anything. He knew Danny couldn’t have gone anywhere physically, but he needed the confirmation.

“Please, come on, please.”

It took too long for his liking, but Steve finally found Danny. He held onto Danny’s forearm for a moment, squeezing it out of relief and possibly in the hopes of provoking a response. When he got no reaction and Danny continued to remain silent, he shakily traced his fingertips down to Danny’s wrist. His own heart beat way too fast for it to be healthy, but he couldn’t control that. He was flat out terrified at what he might or might not find, and almost lost it when he couldn’t feel a pulse. He let out a garbled groan, feeling like his heart had gone from racing to a full halt, a cold, hard lump in his chest. He couldn’t breathe for a moment, in a different way to which he’d become accustomed. No. There was a pulse. He just couldn’t feel it because his fingers were too cold. He pulled his hand back, shook it to get circulation going.

And was right. If Steve had room and nothing stabbing him in the chest, he would have slumped in total relief. There Danny was, heart rate a little slow but it was there and that was all that mattered for now.

“Shit,” Steve muttered. “Don’t do that to me, man.”

He shifted his hand, curling his fingers through Danny’s while maintaining contact on the pulse point with his thumb. There were advantages to having much, much larger hands than his partner’s. Steve held Danny’s hand loosely, but every once in a while tightened the grip, waited for the time Danny would wake up and return the gesture because that was absolutely going to happen.

Without Danny to carry on even sporadic conversation, there was too much quiet. It filled his ears, suffocated him as surely as the blood collecting in his lung was. Steve had hoped by now they’d be able to hear their rescuers digging. He should be able to hear something besides the whoosh of blood in his ears, his distressed breathing. Faced with an indeterminate amount of time with neither Danny’s voice nor his grasp returned, Steve did the only thing he could do. He talked. Not fast and not without gasping for breath half the time, but he talked and it helped.

He spoke about the things Danny had asked him about but that he couldn’t share, like where and how he’d gotten some of his scars. Steve talked about things he didn’t really want Danny to know about him, the dark and uglies no one ever wanted to reveal about themselves; the way apples of any variety made him fart, how he still sometimes came awake in a cold sweat from dreaming of his mother’s death. He talked about things he did want Danny to know and would repeat again once they were out of this; when he first accepted that he liked men and women, that Danny was on a very short list of people with whom Steve had ever contemplated cheesy, rom-com style couplehood. That Danny was the only one with whom he’d ever moved from contemplation into reality.

“I didn’t know,” Steve said, almost done telling Danny about how he and Catherine had met, fallen in convenient like-not-love, all sexual chemistry and mutual respect, and how it ended. “I thought she was the one for me, the closest I’d get to the real thing, you know? I really did, and for a while I thought that it was the real thing. Then a certain five foot five stubborn pain in my ass came along, and I knew. Within hours, D, I …”

Steve paused, and not merely because he had run out of energy and air once again. Even if he hadn’t run out of air on his own, he would have stopped breathing anyway. Like the quiet enveloping him wasn’t quite quiet enough, like quiet had anything to do with what made his breath hitch painfully. There. He’d felt something, he was certain. He squeezed Danny’s hand with his own numb fingers.

“Danny? Hey, you with me?”

If Danny was he didn’t say as much, but Steve swore he again felt pressure around his fingers. That wasn’t the kind of answer he wanted. Beggars, though, couldn’t be choosers. Whether he was projecting the whole thing or Danny was awake and holding onto him, he’d take it. But he would probably go nuts if it wasn’t the latter.

“Danno,” Steve said. “You have no idea how much I need to hear your voice about now. Bet you never thought I’d say that.”

Danny’s hand definitely moved at the teasing, clutched at Steve in an almost spastic manner.

“There you are.” Steve smiled as he spoke. Though it was to himself, he knew Danny could hear it in his tone. Danny knew him. “You had me worried.”

Still, Danny said nothing but his hand continued to move within Steve’s and somehow the happiness at knowing his partner was awake and alive diminished by the strange silence. He wanted Danny to let out a string of words that managed to be bombastic even in these conditions. He wanted to hear Danny say he’d always known that deep down Steve loved to hear him talk. It finally dawned on him that Danny’s increasingly frantic hand movements were trying to tell him something, explain the lack of verbal response.

“Oh,” Steve said. “What’s wrong?”

Danny dug his thumb into the back of Steve’s hand and kept it there, as if willing the answer to transfer through the touch by osmosis. Harsh wheezing filled the air where silence had been, awful and familiar. In the silent cave of their existence, Danny’s breathing was strident, abrasive. It sounded all wrong, worse wrong than it had been before. In his head, Steve relived the moments before they’d both passed out for a long period, the sound of Danny strangling as if something had cut into his throat. Something had to have compressed onto Danny’s neck. The thought made him cringe in sympathetic horror.

“Shit. You can’t.” He swallowed thickly, because he needed to hear Danny. “You can’t talk. Something’s happened?”

The thumb let up, then Danny squeezed his hand again just once.

“Are you okay?”

Two squeezes. Steve didn’t have to be a cipher to know one was yes and two was no and the no set him even more on edge. Of course Danny wasn’t okay; neither of them were. But whatever had happened to rob Danny of his voice and, by the sound of it now, most of his already compromised respiratory system … Steve shut his eyes tight. He imagined approximately ninety-nine worst case scenarios, again embraced the double edged sword of wishing he could see what had happened and being glad he couldn’t.

“You’re going to be okay, all right?” Steve said. “You are.”

Danny traced a finger along one of the lines on Steve’s palm, which had once been numb but had somehow become hypersensitive. He thought Danny was highlighting the life line. He half smiled. For being a practical, New Jersey street smart kind of guy, the idea that Danny believed in palm reading enough to know what the lines meant was pretty ironic. Then again, it could be Danny didn’t intend anything in the gesture but to get Steve’s attention.

“You’re right. We both are. Not giving up.”

Danny patted his hand, then gave it one clench. Steve could lie to himself and say the warmth flooding through him, figurative he was sure, was due to adrenaline and relief and countless other things, but deep down he knew it was the ridiculous amount of fondness he had for Danny. Love, actually. He wanted to weep with it, and that was adrenaline and the release of fear. McGarretts didn’t cry. Their hearts were on their sleeves, but they didn’t bleed, except when they did.

“I suppose you heard all of my real life confessions there, huh?” Steve asked.

There was a pause before three quick squeezes. Steve frowned, coughed a little. The dust seemed to be getting worse. It wasn’t that he was bleeding slow and steady into his chest cavity. Nope, not that.

“Okay, I don’t know what three means. Yes, one. No, two.” Steve smiled, because duh. “Maybe, three? It’s maybe?”

One squeeze.

“Come on, don’t be coy. It’s no maybe. You did hear.” Steve could have lived without Danny knowing some things. Oh. Shit. “Even the … classified stuff?”

Two squeezes.

Good, that was good. He trusted Danny implicitly, but that was a can of worms best left unopened. For both of them, he thought, and remembered some of the damned distasteful things he had done in the name of patriotism. Steve opened his mouth to say as much, except he decided the dust was picking up when he had to tamp down on a sudden urge to sneeze. There was only one way the dust would stir that he could think of with his shocky brain, and that was airflow. Increased airflow meant honest to goodness progress was being made somewhere out in the world, where there was sunshine and warmth and hospitals with doctors and help.

“You feel that, D?” Steve couldn’t keep the agony out of his tone, didn’t bother trying. “We got air. I think we’re gonna get out of here soon.”

Danny didn’t yes, no or maybe to that, he simply held on as they’d done since the beginning. The strength in the grip had weakened, naturally, but to Steve it was still everything. As long as he had their fingers twined together, he could hold on. It was a ridiculously large and loaded burden to put on either of them at this point, maintaining that connection. He knew that. He also knew that if he could see, the edges of his vision would be tunneling and he was afraid that if he went out he wouldn’t wake up this time. Steve couldn’t do that to Danny, he could not, not anymore than Danny could do it to him.

“We’re hanging on. We’re doing this,” Steve said, didn’t care how desperate and stupid he sounded.

After that, he didn’t continue his one-sided conversation. Though they both could probably use the comfort and support of words filling the dark space, somehow he couldn’t. Knowing Danny couldn’t answer him back was far different from expecting an eventual voice. Also, Steve couldn’t spare the energy of talking anymore if he wanted to make good on his vow not to die here. He had to bank some in reserve to help the searchers find them when the time came. Soon. The dust plumes made it impossible to do anything but try to project comfort to Danny anyway. In response to the dust, Danny began making distressed, high-pitched squeaks and his fingers scrabbled within Steve’s faster and more furiously than ever.

It was excruciating to listen to Danny sound like that and to know that no matter how strong their wills were, both of them were probably on the very last minutes of their proverbial golden hours. Wouldn’t it be a kicker if the rescue efforts were what killed them? He didn’t want to think about it. As always, he couldn’t allow himself to, wished like hell he could tell Danny not to give in to those grim thoughts in some other way besides clinging to his hand and trying not to cough up one of his lungs. It went that way for a long, long time. Minutes or hours. Days. That whole time thing again, it was a bitch.

Until, suddenly, Steve felt something cold and wet sprinkle against the back of his neck, his arms. It confused him for a bit, wondered if someone up there was crying. Stupid, no. He was the only one with tears streaming. The first responders must have begun hosing it down as they picked through the rubble, or they were just now getting close enough for the water to trickle down. He strained to hear them, hear anything but the blood swooshing in his ears and Danny’s weak wheezes getting somehow fainter. The relief of the dust settling was negated by the pervading sense of dread. He thought he could see outlines of debris now, blinked to clear his gray-tinged tunnel vision. Light was encroaching into their cave, but he still couldn’t see Danny. There was too much of the building’s remains between them, his vision too blurred from dust and tears and lightheadedness and he just really needed to see Danny right now.

He glanced down instead, tilted his aching head until he could see their hands, and locked his fading vision on that.

At some point, who knew how much later, Steve realized he was hearing voices. Real voices, not hallucinations and dreams, but none of them belonged to Danny. He couldn’t discern any of the words the not-Danny voices said, but he heard them nonetheless. He also heard the scrape of heavy objects moving, close to him. Hope flared and his body reacted before his brain could tell it not to, jerking slightly as the pressure on his back increased. The effect was instant, on him and on Danny as well. Steve shouted, barely audible, at the whitehot burst that tore through him.

And Danny. Danny’s hand squeezed him, no longer trying to code words but all Steve could think was yesnomaybeyesnono maybe yes no. The soundtrack of Danny again asphyxiating while right there next to him was vivid, clear as day and so awful Steve wanted to vomit. Steve did vomit, blood and bile and oh shit, help. Someone had to help them. Voices, the voices were louder but they were still a backdrop to Danny up and dying on him. Through it all, Steve kept his hand firmly around Danny’s, kept himself awake and alive for that one purpose only.

“Danny,” Steve choked. “Don’t you dare.”

That one purpose ignored him, faltered in his grip, and Danny’s fingers lost tension. It happened neither slowly nor quickly, just an eternity of Danny letting go. Steve panicked, shook Danny as if that could make him stay, keep his fingers, small and strong, around Steve’s own. Another ugly scraping sound, loud, too loud. Shouts, agitated and urgent. For a time, he couldn’t hear anything else. He could no longer hear that horrendous rattle of breath coming from Danny and it took him a moment to realize why and no. No. The hand in his was completely limp now.

“We’ve got ‘em,” someone shouted, right in his ear. “Holy shit, look at how this …”

Steve couldn’t see who was speaking. He didn’t care and didn’t listen to the words tossed around above. Danny. He was untethered without Danny’s hand making sure he stuck to the Earth. All he could taste and smell and see was blood and all he could hear was nothing he wanted to.

“How are they … ? Never mind, we’re gonna have to figure this shit out fast,” another voice said, quiet, calm. “I need another EMT down here.”

Steve barely felt it when a hand thumped his right shoulder gently. Danny was … oh, shit, Grace.

“Commander, hang on for a few more minutes. We need to stabilize this thing before we can move you.”

“No. Danny. Danny first,” Steve said, words a jumble. “Legs. Spinal precautions. Danny can’t breathe, he’s not breathing. Him first.”

“Your friend’s going to be fine, but you really have to go before he can, buddy,” the guy said. “Just take it easy.”

“He’s right, I’ve got no breath sounds on this one.”

It was nothing Steve didn’t already know deep in his gut, but the sheer brutal honesty of the words being spoken aloud did him in. He tried to buck against the hands holding him steady, helping him when they should be helping Danny because Danny wasn’t breathing and Danny was dead and he couldn’t draw his own breath from the panic and pain and his body couldn’t sustain this. Déjà vu. Danny was not breathing (dead) and Steve, he didn’t care about staying alive anymore if that were true. Hands pulled, bracketed and lifted him. The pain in his chest was electric, violent. Black ink puddles spread across his limited field of vision, smaller pools turning into one large gulf of dark.

His fingers curled around a hand much smaller than his own, squeezed gently. Steve wanted to smile, knew it had to be Danny, but the vestiges of a long sleep were slow to dissipate for a change. He couldn’t seem to garner the energy to do anything but enjoy the touch of that hand. This was new, waking up holding hands. Spooned up together playing a game of dueling morning wood, sure, daily. Danny, despite complaining incessantly about Hawaii’s hot weather, also managed to sprawl on top of Steve like a small man-shaped heater quite often, using Steve as a pillow. Holding hands was cute. Schlocky, perhaps, but Steve settled easily into the comfortable adorableness of it.

It took several minutes of hazy and perhaps a little goofy (Danny’s definition) contentment before Steve’s brain kicked in and he realized something wasn’t quite right. Danny slept on his right side, but the hand in his was on the left. There was no sound of waves lapping against the shore, but there was a mechanical whoosh.

“Commander,” someone said. It definitely wasn’t Danny. “Commander McGarrett? Can you hear me?”

The formal address threw some kind of a switch. All of a sudden, Steve could tell without moving that every muscle in his body had that lax, elastic feeling of being long disused, weakened by illness or injury. The sense that he had woken up like this before, more than once, was strong and he focused on remembering why he felt so awful, and why it wasn’t Danny camped at his bedside, holding his hand. That was … Danny not being there was important, maybe more important than his own ill health. He wasn’t quite sure why, but he knew that it was.

Steve opened his eyes and found a blurry person was leaning over him. He didn’t recognize the man, but even an unfocused look read doctor. The brightness of the room and slight medicinal smell confirmed it. Kono stood just behind the man. Her hand was in his, warm and soft and strong. He blinked a few times, until he could see both of his bedside visitors more clearly. There was no one else in the room and that continued to be wrong.

“Commander, I’m Doctor Jackson. It’s good to have you awake again.” The doctor turned and looked at Kono with a nod before returning his attention to Steve. “I’m going to just check your injuries and vitals, okay?”

The question was rhetorical. Cool hands skimmed along Steve’s arm, pulled back the sheet that covered him. Confusion lingered as to what had happened, but he didn’t have the energy to care about details. As long as he was alive, it didn’t matter. He ignored the doctor and squinted at Kono. Where Kono’s grip on his hand conveyed strength, her face reflected uncharacteristic fragility. She looked years older and yet also like a small child, exhausted with dark circles under her eyes and a tooth-shaped worry scab cut into her lower lip. For some reason, it struck a chord of fear deep within him, only, no, not some reason. It was a very key reason that was missing from his room right now.

“Kono,” Steve whispered, all he could muster, really. His throat was dry, voice rough like he’d spent hours shouting or breathing toxic air. “Where’s Danny?”

And the look was what did it. The wide-eyed, wounded expression on her face only lasted a second, but even as it faded into something more controlled, neutral, Kono couldn’t maintain eye contact with Steve. With sudden precision, he knew. Oh shit, he remembered. The explosion, the minuteshoursdays trapped. Steve remembered the last thing he had heard and known before he’d woken up here was that Danny had stopped breathing. It hit him like a blow.

Danny wasn’t here with him now because Danny was dead. Steve felt like his chest was caving in and if the doctor’s strident call for assistance was anything to go by, his body was demonstrating something akin to exactly that.

“Is he okay? What’s wrong?” Kono asked, small, scared and angry as well.

“Miss, I need you to leave the room for a few minutes,” the doctor said, tone kind but firm. “Please.”

“But …”

If Kono said more, it was lost to the rush of static in Steve’s ears as he struggled to breathe, or not breathe. There didn’t seem to be much difference between the two. Kono stepped or was pulled back and took what little comfort Steve had gleaned from her touch away with her. It was never going to be enough anyway, and so he lay there in an increasingly numb fog while Doctor Jackson and his staff changed dressings and checked his lungs which were apparently clunky and delivered a dose of sedative or some other medication. That was more than all right with him. Whatever flowed into his veins and mingled with his blood made him feel warm, deadened, dead, Danny was dead. Steve’s heart started to slow from its pounding pace, become unfeeling like he needed it to be so he could come to terms with this.

As if that could ever happen.

His hand scrabbled against the thin hospital mattress, fingers tangled in the stiff sheet, seeking contact he was never going to have again. Steve knew this, and tried to find Danny anyway because what else could he do? His fingers gradually lost coordination, but he kept trying until he couldn’t take it anymore and simply let himself slip into grey emptiness, not awake and not asleep. Just there. Steve stayed just there while the doctor informed him of his punctured lung, broken ribs, concussion, additional internal bleeding from a slightly lacerated liver, the expected prognosis for recovery time, how he’d come perilously close to dying. He stayed just there until Kono came back to him.

“Steve?” Kono whispered. She didn’t look any less worried and sad than before. “You all right?”

“I’m okay, Kono,” Steve said, the need to reassure her automatic even though his voice sounded dull in his own ears. “I just need some rest, huh?”

“Don’t you want to know about…”

Steve turned his head away from her and closed his eyes. Time. He needed time to get his head around this, he told himself again. He wasn’t ready for life without Danny. He wasn’t even prepared to be this unprepared for the hollow ache in his gut that had nothing to do with physical injury. He knew Danny would ream him a new one for being overdramatic, except he didn’t think he was being overdramatic at all. He needed a week, a month, five years. That was all.

So, Steve stayed just there while the world carried on around him. He responded to the doctors and nurses like he was supposed to. Chatted with Chin and Kono about everything but Danny, a subject which sent him mentally tailspinning if it was ever even hinted at. He ignored the looks of dismay and consternation on his refusal to say Danny’s name, let alone talk about him. Mostly, though, he drifted hazily while people around him discussed for hours and days his puzzling recovery stagnation, of how he wasn’t getting worse but also wasn’t getting better.

And Danny, always it came back to Danny with Chin or Kono, even if he feigned sleep when he heard them arriving. Like now, on Day Whatever.

“I’m telling you, something’s not right, cuz,” Kono whispered.

Of course it wasn’t.

“He hasn’t asked about Danny once. He shuts us down and then shuts down himself when we mention him. You’d think he’d want to know…”

“I think what he needs is Danny and since Danny obviously can’t be here, we need to be patient,” Chin said.

“But he should be getting better by now.”

“I know, Kono. I know, but you were there. You saw how we found them. Maybe that was too traumatic, even for someone like Steve.”

Since Danny obviously can’t be here. Steve quietly clicked his patient controlled analgesic button, though it would do nothing to ease the kind of pain he was in. The device was hard, angular and unyielding against his fingers, nothing like that ghost of Danny’s hand he missed so much. Steve clicked for drugs over and over, like a compulsive hitting the elevator button as if that would make the cab arrive sooner. He hoped he hadn’t already pressed it too many times that day. He hadn’t. He let the drugs take him away, knew this kind of escape was short-term. He couldn’t keep it up forever. It wasn’t healthy and Danny would kick his ass. Except Danny couldn’t … he slid into sleep with the image of Danny’s face on his mind and tomorrow, maybe tomorrow he’d be able to stop thinking about how he’d heard and felt Danny slip away.

“Are you all right with this, sweetheart?” a soft voice said, from far away outside of his dreamless sleep.

Steve didn’t think that question was directed to him, but he couldn’t fade back to just there. Not this time. He heard footsteps, slightly shuffling and light, as they approached his bed and he braced himself for another visit he wasn’t ready for. Intellectually, he knew that wanting to be alone wasn’t helping him. Intellectually, he also knew nothing else would help either. A tiny hand slipped into his left one, and his heart seemed like it would explode at any moment. Grace.

“Uncle Steve needs me. I’m okay,” Grace said. “Uncle Steve?”

He didn’t have a choice. If for some reason you get out of this and I don’t… Oh, shit, Danny. Steve turned, opened his eyes to look at Grace’s little face. That she looked completely adjusted compared to his own clearly wrecked state was a proverbial stab to the gut. He flicked his gaze to the door, where Rachel stood. She looked exhausted and met his eyes briefly, then backed out of the room without a word. She wouldn’t go far, but he was grateful for the privacy.

“Grace,” Steve said, but his voice broke on just that one word. He cleared his throat. “Hi, what’re you doing here?”

“Uncle Chin and Auntie Kono said you weren’t doing good.”

“I’m okay.” He shifted on the bed, conscious of the pull of tubes and bandages. “How’re you doing, keiki?”

“I came here to ask you that.” Grace smiled and her thumb slid against Steve’s palm in a move eerily similar to how Danny used to… “Danno always said someone had to make sure you stayed okay.”

“Oh.” Steve swallowed. “Honey, it’s not your job to look after me, no matter what your Danno said. In fact, he told me to say he loves you and he wanted me to watch out for you.”

“You saw him? When did you see him?” Grace said, her eyes huge. “He could talk?”

Oh, hell. It didn’t matter what he’d never openly had to promise Danny, Steve couldn’t do this. He couldn’t, yet he had to. He gave Grace a smile he knew wavered on just this side of a grimace and shook his head.

“Gracie, you know I didn’t. You know I can’t see him anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Well,” Steve said, confused as hell and not sure how to navigate through. Surely, Grace was old enough to understand what had happened. Why hadn’t anyone told her? “I was right there when he, when Danno stopped breathing.”

Grace’s eyes got impossibly wider and her face went pale. She let out a little shriek, and Steve hated so much that he was the one who provoked that noise. Rachel rushed into the room and toward the bed, her own eyes wide and wild, but before she got more than a few steps in, Grace had clambered up on the bed next to Steve. Her sobs tore at him, as did the broken chant of Danno as she beat her little fist against a shoulder in yesnomaybeyesnono maybe yes no.

“Grace, honey,” Rachel said. “Commander McGarrett, what…?”

Grace wrapped her arms around Steve, her tears hot against his neck. An elbow or maybe a knee jarred against the wound in his chest, had him seeing stars and then there were loud shouts and tugging hands and eventually it all winked into nothing at all.

Steve didn’t come awake any less gradually than he’d passed out. His fingers curled around a hand much smaller than his own, squeezed gently. It was the same as when he’d woken that first time to find himself without Danny, but as different as Navy and Army. His body still felt too weak, too beaten to hell, but within him he felt peace. He just didn’t know how that was possible, because the only way he ever felt that kind of peace was when Danny was with him. He opened his eyes.

Danny was there, holding his hand as if he hadn’t been dead for days and staring at him with a strange expression on his face.

Steve’s heart began to pound, in panicked hope. Danny looked pale, thin and unshaven. A deep purple set of bruises poked from underneath a large white square of gauze on his neck. His left arm was in a cast with childish stick figures, hearts and rainbows drawn on it. He sat in a wheelchair, and his hair was atrocious and adorable. He looked real, alive, not a hallucination or a ghost.

“You’re here,” Steve said and could not hold back a smile so big it made his head hurt. “You’re not dead.”

Danny’s reaction was to yank his hand free, fumble with something in his lap and hold it up. It was a whiteboard, like an old school iPad with a message that had obviously been pre-written.

I wanted you to tell Grace I love her, not throw her into heartbroken hysterics, you animal.

“I thought you were … I heard and felt you die.” Steve closed his eyes for a brief moment, relived that as he’d done too often since waking up in the hospital without Danny. “I didn’t know. I didn’t mean to do that to her. I am so, so sorry.”

Danny’s expression softened. He swiped at the whiteboard with the butt of his right hand, scribbled, You came closer to dying than me. You’re a jerk for that, btw. Also, you didn’t think to ask someone?

Steve blinked. He hadn’t, and he had no idea why.

Of course not, because you’re an idiot. Danny smirked and smudged those words out. Scrawled some more. Even voiceless, the ranting was rapid fire. Apology noted, acceptance … immediate. But you’re making it up to Grace.

“I’ll do anything you want,” Steve murmured, more to himself than to Danny. “You’re alive.”

Rumors of my demise were greatly exaggerated. That one was flashed with a half-smile.

“It’s not a joke, Danny. I really thought … you stopped breathing and I couldn’t … you died on me. I was right there and I couldn’t stop it.”

Not dead. It was a temporary impediment of oxygen intake. Danny shook his head, winced, pursed his lips and tossed the whiteboard on the bed by Steve’s feet. He took Steve’s hand again before, voice sounding like he had gargled gravel and razor blades, he said, “I’m okay now.”

It was Steve’s turn to wince. Danny wasn’t okay, that much was clear, and if those words were meant to be reassuring, then they failed hard.

“You lying asshole,” Steve said fondly.

“I’m … not dead. So, I’m relatively okay. How’s that?”

“Touché.”

He laced his fingers through Danny’s, and that was reassuring. It was everything, even if they weren’t buried under a building. Steve needed this, and maybe Danny did too. They sat, quiet, for a few minutes. Their peace was short lived, though. In the corridor, foot traffic increased at the announcement of a Code Brown over the hospital PA system. Steve would have wondered what that was all about, except for the fact he had Danny there with him and nothing else mattered. After a few minutes, he realized Danny appeared slightly flustered and kept furtively glancing out to the corridor. He raised his eyebrows.

“What?” Steve asked.

“Nothing,” Danny said, cringed at the sound of his own voice this time. It had to hurt as bad as it sounded. “Not a –”

“Detective Williams, there you are,” a petite, frazzled-looking woman called from his doorway. “I should have known. You are … how did you get out of bed unassisted? No, don’t answer that.”

The woman stuck her head back into the corridor, and a few seconds later the Code Brown was canceled. Code Angry Diminutive Doctor was in full effect, though. She spun on them. Danny let go of Steve to reach for the whiteboard, wrote fast and furious and a flood of nurses and orderlies entered the room and swarmed. Steve watched in mute horror as Danny held up the whiteboard like it was a flag of surrender. The doctor scowled.

“I told you before, it’s not your place to determine where you do your healing, Detective,” she said. She glanced at Steve. “Doctor Mahikoa. I wish I could say it was nice to meet you. Your friend here might have compromised his spinal stability for you.”

“What?” Steve asked and remembered how Danny couldn’t feel his legs, back there, when they’d been buried. He fought the urge to launch himself off the bed to help his partner, knew it would likely result in him passing out so he stayed put. “What?”

Danny growled, then choked and gagged in pain. He tried to write even as two nurses struggled to wheel him away. It was only then Steve noticed the IV bag in Danny’s lap, and that Danny’s legs weren’t moving at all.

Temporary. Also temporary! Danny’s board read. He gave the tiny doctor a giant glare and said, “Jesus, doc.”

“Not a word. You are on strict no vocalization orders as well, unless you’d like to permanently lose the use of your voice,” Doctor Mahikoa said. She flicked her attention around the room, the empty bed, picked up Steve’s chart and scanned it. She held up a hand to the staff fighting with a weak Danny. “Wait.”

Danny’s face was ashen, a fine sheen of sweat slicking his forehead. His breaths came in short bursts. Steve had to admit he wasn’t faring all that much better. The thought of Danny being taken away was painful. Even knowing now that Danny was alive wasn’t enough. Now he’d fully cop to being overdramatic.

”Very well, Detective Williams. I capitulate. You’ve already done enough damage coming down here, taking you back would only exacerbate it.”

Despite the pallor and obvious ill health, Danny beamed.

“You were right; you should have been given a shared room with Commander McGarrett here some time ago.” Mahikoa made several more hand gestures and may or may not have also muttered something about pain in the ass, codependent patients. “It will probably aid in both of your recoveries.”

Danny was rolled closer to his bed again, where he promptly grasped Steve’s hand. Still half stunned and with a spinning head, Steve watched as the bed next to his was wheeled out and a few minutes later a different bed was wheeled in. This one was obviously meant for someone in partial traction. His eyebrows shot up. Broken arm, obvious breathing, tracheal and larynx issues and paralysis, yet Danny had gotten out of that medieval torture device and wheeled himself to Steve’s room? Steve was a little alarmed, and a lot charmed.

“And you call me insane,” Steve said. He couldn’t keep the awe out of his voice.

Danny squeezed his hand.