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t_veranoThis is part 2 of Bringing It Home -- Notes about the fic and Part 1 are here.
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Checking out the shack didn't take long. The walls were cobbled together mostly from sheets of corrugated metal and panels of that old-fashioned wavy greenish plastic Danny remembered being used for awnings when he was a kid. The doorway was just a missing panel, and the ‘door’ itself was inside, propped against the wall.
And yeah, it still had its roof.
And, for fuck's sake, some left-behind furniture, including an honest to shit cot.
Out of the rain, a place for Steve to lie down that wasn't mud or wet grass? Danny would take it.
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On the other hand…. "It's no Motel 6," Danny muttered.
Steve opened his mouth, an expression on his face that Danny was far too familiar with, and Danny shot him a warning glare. "Please don’t tell me any horror stories about worse places you've had to take shelter in. I’m not knocking the Ritz here, I would just prefer a lower ratio of mutant tropical bugs to people."
He'd dumped Steve's moronic "I'm fine, Danny" ass onto on the shack's lone chair earlier while he tackled the cot, brushing off more than one insect squatter from the underside. The mattress — one of those long, flat cushions from a patio lounge chair, covered in some kind of indoor-outdoor material that was supposed to be mildew-proof but apparently had given up the ghost on that some time ago — he'd taken outside and shaken. Thoroughly.
The insects and spiders hadn't stopped there; the shack was apparently serving as Party Central for half the bugs in the western hemisphere. Danny'd shooed as many of the disgusting creepy-crawlies outside as he could with the half-rotted broom he'd found in a corner. Half of them would probably crawl back inside during the middle of the night, but the temporary decline in insect population made him feel a little better.
Succeeding in bullying Steve into sitting on the cot, even if the idiot wouldn't lie down, had made Danny feel a little better, too. At least this way, when the stubborn jackass finally keeled over he had a good shot of landing prone on the mattress, where he belonged in the first place. And if he missed, the floor was only twelve inches away, and he probably wouldn't break anything vital when he face-planted.
Best of all, the shack's previous owner had left behind a surprising variety of thoughtful parting gifts. The bucket with the rusted-out bottom and the moldering pile of magazines too eaten by damp and insects to reveal whether he and Steve were sharing space with Soldier of Fortune or Playgirl weren't exactly prizes, but Danny was pretty pleased with the big lime-green plastic mixing bowl that was currently sitting out in the 'courtyard' collecting rainwater. He was pleased with the chair, too. It was clearly on its last legs and looked like it couldn't have managed 'comfortable' even in its long-ago prime, but it was a chair and thus a mark of civilization. It was also a way to keep insects from crawling up Danny's ass all night.
But the real winner, aside from the miraculous cot, was the kerosene lantern that was currently sitting on top of a splintery packing crate and filling the shack with its flickering light. Why a freshly filled lantern with a new-looking wick had been left behind was beyond Danny, but they had light. And for bonus points, if anything resembling a helicopter or an airplane flew over tonight, Danny could take the lantern outside and wave it around as a signal.
If, of course, the fucking rain would ever fucking stop.
"Signal mirror in one of my pockets, Danny," Steve said, like his fever had given him freakish mind-reading skills. "You can…" He trailed off and rubbed his forehead with his hands. "You can…"
"I can what?" Danny rolled his eyes. "In case you haven't noticed, it's nearly dark out there and raining like a bitch, and there are no planes flying overhead to notice any kind of signal. Not to mention that signaling would be more effective from an area with a lighter tree canopy — don't look at me like that, I'm not an idiot, you're not the only person here who understands certain basic concepts of survival."
Steve ran his hands down across face then let them drop to his lap. He looked sick and miserable and worn out.
Danny closed his eyes tightly for a moment. Words. You coped with words, which was why Steve sucked at coping with things sometimes. He made himself keep talking. "And in case you're wondering why I'm not out there looking for a spot with a lighter tree canopy," he told Steve as firmly as he could manage at this particular moment, "I would have to be insane to leave you on your own right now. Even if you didn't get it into your fever-addled head that you're on an escape and evade mission somewhere classified and stumble out of our cozy little home away from home, forcing me to chase after you for the third time today — and I really do not want to do that, trust me — even if you stayed put by some miracle, I'd still come back to find you stockpiling insects for us to eat for dinner or doing something else equally lunatic."
Steve made a passable stab at his Patience In The Presence Of Stupidity face. "Dead insects spoil too fast to stockpile, Danno. Especially in the tropics."
Of course Lieutenant Commander Survivalist SEAL would know something so deeply disgusting. Danny groaned. "This conversational topic is now closed, Steven. Permanently. I do not want to hear how you kept yourself alive for three weeks by eating freshly-caught mosquito larvae on some mission somewhere I'm not allowed to know the name of."
"Gotta make use of the environment," Steve said, his voice dropping off tiredly. "How you survive."
"I prefer to survive with the Doritos and the chocolate-peanut-butter granola bars I have in my backpack, if it's all the same to you." Steve didn't react to that, and Danny nudged Steve's leg. "It wouldn't actually hurt you to lie down, you know."
"Yeah," Steve said and didn't budge. He'd been staring at the floor for the past minute, but he looked up after another moment, straight at Danny. The corners of his mouth curved down like he'd just been sucking lemons. "Look, today, the waterfall… all this shit. I'm sorry, man."
Danny's throat suddenly felt thick. Steve apologizing — for this — wasn’t actually something Danny was prepared for. Steve was a sneaky bastard. "You should be sorry," he said, after he'd cleared his throat. "I am never going hiking with you again when you're sick, just so you know."
A corner of Steve's mouth curled up; very, very slightly. "So you admit you'll come hiking with me again."
Danny graced him with a scowl. "No, no, you did not hear me say I would go hiking with you when you weren't sick, either, did you? Because the next time you mention the word 'hike' to me I am scooping up Grace and taking the next flight back to Jersey."
"You keep telling yourself that." The fuck of the matter was that Steve was right. Sooner or later, he'd guilt Danny into going on yet another disaster-doomed hike; there wasn't really anything Danny could do about it.
Anything he even wanted to do about it, maybe.
The almost-not-there smile dropped from Steve's face. "This came out of the blue, Danny, I swear. I felt a little off this morning, but I just thought I was maybe starting to come down with a cold, nothing worse. I didn't know —"
"Yeah, yeah, I know you didn't know you were getting sick, you might be a giant pain in the ass, but I do know you wouldn't have dragged us up here if you knew you were about to turn into the poster boy for ravingly delusional hyperthermia." Danny pulled one of their remaining bottles of water from his daypack and tapped it against Steve's arm. "Here, drink some of this. You've got be getting dehydrated by now."
Steve accepted the bottle of water more from reflex than agreement, as far as Danny could tell. He sighed and tapped the bottle in Steve's hand. "Drink. You realize that if you've got some kind of super-flu, and if I come down with it because I am a decent human being and didn't abandon you to your delirious lost-in-the-jungle fate, you're going to owe me. Not that you don't already owe me for today, mere words aren't enough to convey how much you already owe me for today, but if I catch this crap from you, you're going to owe me so much more."
"Already owe you. A lot, Danny. You think I don't know that?" There was a note in Steve's exhausted voice that made Danny think he wasn't just talking about today.
Danny swallowed past a completely unnecessary lump in his throat. "Okay, great, good, acknowledged; let's not get maudlin here. Drink your water before I pour it down your throat."
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The left half of Danny's butt was numb and the right half felt like he was sitting on a cheese grater. They should take this chair back to civilization with them; it would come in handy as 'persuasion' in the interrogation room at HQ. But at least it was serving to keep Danny wide awake.
Along with worry.
Steve was sleeping again, if fitfully; his breathing too shallow and his head moving in tiny, aborted tremors. Fourteen hours of scarily high fever and stupid amounts of exertion while running said scarily high fever had left him looking gaunt and hollowed out. Bad.
Fuck, Steve looked bad. He looked like he'd looked the first week after they'd gotten him back home last fall, minus the visible marks left over from having been Wo Fat's torture toy.
Danny closed his eyes. It didn't help; those memories were too vivid. Especially the nights, Steve lying there trying to sleep, looking like death warmed over in the moonlight coming in through the windows. Pretending every time he woke up in a cold sweat from a half-doze, with his hands shaking and his eyes haunted, that he was fine. "Fine, Danny. I'm fine, okay? Go back to bed."
Danny never had. He'd kept his ass planted in the chair in the corner of Steve's bedroom and groused, "I'm trying to sleep here, Steven, do you mind?" and refused to budge.
And he'd worried. Steve wasn't telling them shit. It wasn't hard to guess some of it, maybe a lot of it — electrical burns, rope-marks around his neck, the state of his feet, his shoulders, his ribs, his kidneys, his voice — but that didn't make Steve keeping it all bottled up inside any better.
"I'm dealing with it, Danny."
Right. Dealing with it the way he dealt with too many things. Carrying it alone.
The cot creaked slightly. Danny opened his eyes. Steve was still out of it, moving restlessly in his sleep. Danny leaned forward to lay the back of his hand against Steve's forehead. No surprise there, still way too fucking hot. Maybe this time Steve would leave the bandana alone if Danny tried the wet-cloth-on-forehead thing again — not that it could help much, the rainwater Danny'd collected in the green plastic bowl wasn't particularly cool, but it was better than doing nothing.
He'd left the bowl next to the lantern on the crate across the room, where it was out of Steve's path if he decided, like he had twice so far tonight, that he needed to be somewhere besides lying the fuck down. The second time, he'd shoved Danny to the floor and dropped heavily on top of him, sheltering him from what was clearly a nightmare barrage of enemy fire. He'd gotten an elbow into Danny's ribs in the process, and while Danny was still wheezing from that, Steve — Steve's fever, flashback, whatever — had decided he was bleeding out, not just nursing a new, elbow-shaped bruise.
Danny really hoped they wouldn't have a repeat of that particular episode, and not just for the sake of his ribs. Steve had been so… so filled with grief, beneath his controlled calm. Danny had already seen enough of that expression on Steve's face to last a lifetime.
With a grimace, Danny stood up to wet the bandana down again — and okay, so it wasn't just his butt-cheek that was numb, his entire leg was numb, too. He crashed back into the frame of the chair, and the chair tipped backwards and hit the wall behind it, making the poorly fastened metal panels clang from the impact.
Steve's eyes flew open. He flinched as Danny righted the chair, the metal panels protesting again with another sharp clang as the chair back scraped against them. Steve's eyes were wide and staring, but he was gone, looking at something Danny was pretty sure wasn't here and now, looking at that something with an expression that wrapped a coil of ice around Danny's heart.
He knew that expression, too.
"I will kill you," Steve ground out, his voice like broken glass, like death and dying, wrapping even more ice around Danny's heart. "You're a dead man."
"Steve, hey," Danny said. He knew his voice was faltering, couldn't give a fuck. "C'mon, no. You're in Hawaii, with me, Danny, okay? Everything's okay here. Except you being sick as a dog, but it'll be okay. Trust me, all right?"
"You're a dead man."
"Wild guess, you're thinking I'm Wo Fat right now, aren't you?" Danny said, keeping a wary eye on Steve. "Which I'm not, by the way. If you're wondering how I know what you were thinking? Well, see, we're having a rerun here of the first few nights after we got you back from North Korea. Apparently if you missed the first showing, you can catch it in syndication later."
Steve made a wordless sound that Danny absolutely never wanted to hear again, a sound of fury and implacable threat and pain.
Goddammit. "Come on, Steve," he said, "don't do this. Stay with me here."
He could hear Steve's swallow. Steve screwed his eyes shut, clamped his lips together in a thin line, and fucking fought, Danny could see it. "Hey," he said, and kept saying, helplessly. "Hey. Steve, it's okay."
It wasn't. It really fucking wasn't. But at least when Steve opened his eyes again a couple of minutes later, he didn't have North Korea in them, didn't have Wo Fat. Didn't have Jenna — not that Steve had ever said more than, "She gave me a chance to get out," and "Wo Fat killed her."
"Danny?" Steve's voice still sounded like broken glass, and Danny grabbed their last remaining bottle of water.
"Yeah, I'm here," he said, "I'm here. You need to drink this, okay?" and tried very hard to ignore the way he had to keep Steve's hands steady on the plastic bottle as Steve drank two measly swallows.
Then he tried very hard to ignore the way his own hands were shaking as he wrung out the bandana in the rainwater and spread it across Steve's forehead.
Steve's eyes were closed again by then and he was clearly just about out again, but he murmured, "Danny," like it was some kind of magic charm — some kind of magic anti-Wo-Fat charm — as Danny smoothed the cloth down.
So maybe his hand lingered a little on Steve's forehead. It didn't matter. Steve was too far gone to object.
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Danny watched as the smoke from his trash-and-damp-wood fire wound its way up through the thin interlacing of tree branches overhead and still remained visible as smoke against the brightening blue of the sky. Even above the treetops the breeze didn't seem to be dispersing the smoke too quickly, thank fuck.
Now he needed to figure out how long he should give the signal time to work before he had to try something else. Not that he knew what else to try. The barely there path they'd followed yesterday to get here dead-ended at the shack, and they were still lost.
And Steve — Steve's fever was up even higher, and he'd been so out of it this morning that Danny hadn't been able to get him to drink even a single swallow of water for hours. That was almost as worrying as the fever right now, since he hadn't pissed since way too fucking long ago yesterday, and that spelled dehydration, and Jesus fuck they needed civilization today, this morning, now.
At least it wasn't raining — yet — so his signal fire had a chance to work. He headed back across the tiny muddy 'courtyard' towards the shack. Staying put and signaling had to be the smart thing to do, but he could keep one eye on the fire and his other eye on Steve while trying to figure out how to turn the cot into some kind of litter, in case he ended up having to try to drag the stupid jackass out of here himself. Somehow.
Not that he could see how he could make that work. God alone knew where they were and how to get back to civilization. And the jungle here was too dense; trying to drag a litter through it, even just backtracking along the narrow trail they'd followed to get here in the first place, would be a bitch. Danny's aching muscles wanted to seize up at the mere thought of it. He was running on fumes — well, running on zero sleep, a handful of nacho-flavored Doritos, a couple of granola bars, and enough worry to fell an elephant — and it wouldn't be easy.
Of course, nothing with McGarrett was ever, ever easy.
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Except when it — miraculously — was.
He'd only been back inside for half an hour or so — and freaking out a little, maybe, because Steve had started to shiver hard enough to rattle the frame of the cot, and still wouldn't wake the fuck up — when he heard a growing thrum in the air that rapidly turned into the blessed sound of chopper blades. He was outside beside the signal fire, with Steve's signal mirror in hand, faster than he'd maybe ever moved before. The chopper hovered right above him for a minute with the wind from the blades whipping the tree branches aside, and the pilot clearly understood Danny's arm-waved "Fucking help" message before he headed off.
Danny's knees felt a little weak. Thank fuck.
Thank fuck.
Which was pretty much what he was still saying, out loud, not that Steve was with it enough to pay any attention to him saying it, when a voice carried in from outside. "You need help, brah?"
"We need so much help," Danny agreed.
He looked at Steve again before he headed outside to meet their rescuer and get whatever the plan was going to be in gear. Steve looked like a shell of himself, hollowed out and empty and gone, and Danny felt his heart squeeze in his chest. "Hang on, babe," he muttered. "I'm getting you a ride home now, so you just hang on."
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It wasn't exactly the med-evac of Danny's dreams, but Danny's new best buddy Jack had found a clear, almost-level spot to perch his small bird only a few minutes' walk away, and between the two of them they were getting Steve out of there.
No more waiting. Danny was done with waiting. He'd done enough waiting — waiting and worrying — during the past twenty hours to turn his hair white.
And Steve was back with him again, groggy but awake and trying, stumbling along the not-path through the jungle with Danny propping him up under one shoulder while Jack propped him up under the other.
It was a little bit too much like the last time Danny had been part of a three-person stumble towards rescue. But at least this time they weren't illegally in a hostile country. This time they didn't have to worry about evading pissed-off guys with very big guns and trigger-happy fingers.
This time they weren't fresh from untying Steve from the back of one of Wo Fat's transport trucks, and on their way to board an RPG-equipped flying chicken coop piloted by a crazy person who still owned an eight-track.
This time, Steve was just sick. Not goddamn tortured.
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Jack hadn't underestimated too badly; they got to the clearing and got Steve into one of the chopper's back seats before Steve gave out on them entirely.
Danny climbed into the seat next to him and just sat for a moment, breathing. Thank fuck. Thank fuck. They'd made it.
The helicopter engine started up with a whine and Steve lifted his head abruptly, twisting it around. "Joe?" he said. "Gutches? Chin — Danny, where’s Chin?"
Shit. Danny wasn't the only one having a moment here.
"Easy," he said, putting his hand on Steve's shoulder where Joe had kept hold of him, kept him upright, kept him grounded, all those months ago. "Take it easy. This isn't Tangerine, Steve, okay? We're in Hawaii, and this nice helicopter person here is rescuing us from our relaxing little hike. Everything's fine, okay?"
"Where's Wo Fat?" The darkness in Steve's voice cut through the increasing noise of the helicopter like a knife.
Danny closed his eyes. "He's not here," he said.
He wasn't sure it was the truth, though. He was beginning to think Wo Fat would always be right there with them. No matter where the son of a bitch actually was.
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The door to Steve's room was open and Danny paused in the hallway for a moment before walking in. Steve looked better. Not just cleaned-up-by-nurses better, but feeling-better better. He was still hooked up to an IV and still looked like crap, but he no longer looked like half-dead crap. Quarter-dead, maybe.
And he was awake. And looked, as far as Danny could tell from here, lucid.
"You just going to stand out in the hallway? Dengue fever isn't contagious."
Yeah, lucid.
Danny shook his head and walked all the way into the room. "Dengue fever. People do not get weird things like dengue fever in civilized parts of the world, McGarrett."
"Civilization has nothing to do with latitude," Steve said. "I thought we discussed latitude already, anyway."
"Yes, we did, I remember that discussion. Civilization has everything to do with latitude." Danny cleared his throat. "So. How're you feeling?" Not that Steve was likely to actually tell him.
"Fine, Danny."
Of course. Danny didn't even try to keep himself from grimacing at that.
Steve closed his eyes for a moment. "Better," he said, backtracking a little.
He clearly was feeling better. But from what the doctor had told Danny, Steve was probably only feeling better because they'd gotten his fever down to something less likely to flash-fry his brain and were getting fluids back into him and some painkillers. Dengue fever sounded like a bitch to go through.
But Steve was going to be okay. There'd been too many times on their hike from hell that Danny had been worried — more than worried — that Steve wasn't going to be okay at all.
"They figure I picked this up when I was on Kauai last week. Apparently —"
"Yeah, your doctor told me that. A small outbreak, infected mosquitoes, hardly ever happens here," Danny said, "which I sincerely hope is true." He drew in a deep breath. "The funny thing is that when I was checking you in, the nurse asked me if you'd been out of the country during the past year, and all I could think of was that you'd picked up some kind of weird shit last fall that had just been biding its time, waiting to blindside you."
Steve stared at Danny with the kind of intensely focused stare a sick person in a hospital bed shouldn't be able to pull off. "Danny —"
"You know — North Korea, the gift that keeps on giving."
"Do you have a point here?"
"Actually, I do." Danny took in another deep breath. "I just spent the better part of another weekend with you scaring ten years off my life, so yeah, I have a point."
Steve moved his head in a tiny, aborted headshake; denying what exactly, Danny wasn't sure, since this was Steve, but he could make a few solid guesses. "Danny, come on. I'm fine. I'll be fine."
"Yeah, you will be. This time. Last time you almost weren't."
"What are you…" Steve said. A muscle at his jaw line jumped. "Okay, no. If you're talking about what I think you're talking about, it's over and we don't need to talk about it."
Even the awesome, if often sorely tested, Williams' self-control wasn't quite strong enough to let that pass. "You know what? It's not over, and we really do. But right now I'll settle for you promising you won't pull another North Korea on me. On us." Danny stuck his hands in his pockets and hit Steve with a pretty focused stare of his own.
"I had to go," Steve said, his jaw now clenched so tight Danny was surprised he managed to get the words out. "You know I had to go. I tried going through channels first, calling in favors. Going myself was the only thing left to do."
"Because you had to help Jenna, yeah, I know. You would do the same for any friend. I get that. Just… take a break from the Lone Ranger shtick, all right? I'm getting tired of hauling your ass back to safety and civilization."
"I can't promise it won't happen again, Danny. You know I can't."
Danny sighed. "Yeah, but I need you to try harder, Steve. I hate to admit it, but I've gotten used to having you around. And Grace likes you. Why, I don't know, but she does."
The tension Steve had been radiating disappeared like it had never existed. "You know you both love me," he said with a smirk.
"Your fever must still be too high, maybe I should call a nurse," Danny said with a grimace. Steve's smirking grin got wider.
And, it might as well be said, fonder. Not that Danny was going to call him on that.
Still, he was never going hiking with Steve again.
"We didn't make it to the waterfall," Steve said. "You really should see it, Danny. It's beautiful. We should —"
"No. No, we are not — I am never —"
"Sure, you will, Danno."
Danny sighed again. Sure, he would. It was like a curse. "Next time I'm carrying the sat phone."
Steve… Steve just looked smug. Of course he did, the bastard. Then his expression softened, and he said, "Thanks. For hauling my ass back to civilization. And, you know…"
Danny did know.
"You're welcome," he said.
fin
Checking out the shack didn't take long. The walls were cobbled together mostly from sheets of corrugated metal and panels of that old-fashioned wavy greenish plastic Danny remembered being used for awnings when he was a kid. The doorway was just a missing panel, and the ‘door’ itself was inside, propped against the wall.
And yeah, it still had its roof.
And, for fuck's sake, some left-behind furniture, including an honest to shit cot.
Out of the rain, a place for Steve to lie down that wasn't mud or wet grass? Danny would take it.
On the other hand…. "It's no Motel 6," Danny muttered.
Steve opened his mouth, an expression on his face that Danny was far too familiar with, and Danny shot him a warning glare. "Please don’t tell me any horror stories about worse places you've had to take shelter in. I’m not knocking the Ritz here, I would just prefer a lower ratio of mutant tropical bugs to people."
He'd dumped Steve's moronic "I'm fine, Danny" ass onto on the shack's lone chair earlier while he tackled the cot, brushing off more than one insect squatter from the underside. The mattress — one of those long, flat cushions from a patio lounge chair, covered in some kind of indoor-outdoor material that was supposed to be mildew-proof but apparently had given up the ghost on that some time ago — he'd taken outside and shaken. Thoroughly.
The insects and spiders hadn't stopped there; the shack was apparently serving as Party Central for half the bugs in the western hemisphere. Danny'd shooed as many of the disgusting creepy-crawlies outside as he could with the half-rotted broom he'd found in a corner. Half of them would probably crawl back inside during the middle of the night, but the temporary decline in insect population made him feel a little better.
Succeeding in bullying Steve into sitting on the cot, even if the idiot wouldn't lie down, had made Danny feel a little better, too. At least this way, when the stubborn jackass finally keeled over he had a good shot of landing prone on the mattress, where he belonged in the first place. And if he missed, the floor was only twelve inches away, and he probably wouldn't break anything vital when he face-planted.
Best of all, the shack's previous owner had left behind a surprising variety of thoughtful parting gifts. The bucket with the rusted-out bottom and the moldering pile of magazines too eaten by damp and insects to reveal whether he and Steve were sharing space with Soldier of Fortune or Playgirl weren't exactly prizes, but Danny was pretty pleased with the big lime-green plastic mixing bowl that was currently sitting out in the 'courtyard' collecting rainwater. He was pleased with the chair, too. It was clearly on its last legs and looked like it couldn't have managed 'comfortable' even in its long-ago prime, but it was a chair and thus a mark of civilization. It was also a way to keep insects from crawling up Danny's ass all night.
But the real winner, aside from the miraculous cot, was the kerosene lantern that was currently sitting on top of a splintery packing crate and filling the shack with its flickering light. Why a freshly filled lantern with a new-looking wick had been left behind was beyond Danny, but they had light. And for bonus points, if anything resembling a helicopter or an airplane flew over tonight, Danny could take the lantern outside and wave it around as a signal.
If, of course, the fucking rain would ever fucking stop.
"Signal mirror in one of my pockets, Danny," Steve said, like his fever had given him freakish mind-reading skills. "You can…" He trailed off and rubbed his forehead with his hands. "You can…"
"I can what?" Danny rolled his eyes. "In case you haven't noticed, it's nearly dark out there and raining like a bitch, and there are no planes flying overhead to notice any kind of signal. Not to mention that signaling would be more effective from an area with a lighter tree canopy — don't look at me like that, I'm not an idiot, you're not the only person here who understands certain basic concepts of survival."
Steve ran his hands down across face then let them drop to his lap. He looked sick and miserable and worn out.
Danny closed his eyes tightly for a moment. Words. You coped with words, which was why Steve sucked at coping with things sometimes. He made himself keep talking. "And in case you're wondering why I'm not out there looking for a spot with a lighter tree canopy," he told Steve as firmly as he could manage at this particular moment, "I would have to be insane to leave you on your own right now. Even if you didn't get it into your fever-addled head that you're on an escape and evade mission somewhere classified and stumble out of our cozy little home away from home, forcing me to chase after you for the third time today — and I really do not want to do that, trust me — even if you stayed put by some miracle, I'd still come back to find you stockpiling insects for us to eat for dinner or doing something else equally lunatic."
Steve made a passable stab at his Patience In The Presence Of Stupidity face. "Dead insects spoil too fast to stockpile, Danno. Especially in the tropics."
Of course Lieutenant Commander Survivalist SEAL would know something so deeply disgusting. Danny groaned. "This conversational topic is now closed, Steven. Permanently. I do not want to hear how you kept yourself alive for three weeks by eating freshly-caught mosquito larvae on some mission somewhere I'm not allowed to know the name of."
"Gotta make use of the environment," Steve said, his voice dropping off tiredly. "How you survive."
"I prefer to survive with the Doritos and the chocolate-peanut-butter granola bars I have in my backpack, if it's all the same to you." Steve didn't react to that, and Danny nudged Steve's leg. "It wouldn't actually hurt you to lie down, you know."
"Yeah," Steve said and didn't budge. He'd been staring at the floor for the past minute, but he looked up after another moment, straight at Danny. The corners of his mouth curved down like he'd just been sucking lemons. "Look, today, the waterfall… all this shit. I'm sorry, man."
Danny's throat suddenly felt thick. Steve apologizing — for this — wasn’t actually something Danny was prepared for. Steve was a sneaky bastard. "You should be sorry," he said, after he'd cleared his throat. "I am never going hiking with you again when you're sick, just so you know."
A corner of Steve's mouth curled up; very, very slightly. "So you admit you'll come hiking with me again."
Danny graced him with a scowl. "No, no, you did not hear me say I would go hiking with you when you weren't sick, either, did you? Because the next time you mention the word 'hike' to me I am scooping up Grace and taking the next flight back to Jersey."
"You keep telling yourself that." The fuck of the matter was that Steve was right. Sooner or later, he'd guilt Danny into going on yet another disaster-doomed hike; there wasn't really anything Danny could do about it.
Anything he even wanted to do about it, maybe.
The almost-not-there smile dropped from Steve's face. "This came out of the blue, Danny, I swear. I felt a little off this morning, but I just thought I was maybe starting to come down with a cold, nothing worse. I didn't know —"
"Yeah, yeah, I know you didn't know you were getting sick, you might be a giant pain in the ass, but I do know you wouldn't have dragged us up here if you knew you were about to turn into the poster boy for ravingly delusional hyperthermia." Danny pulled one of their remaining bottles of water from his daypack and tapped it against Steve's arm. "Here, drink some of this. You've got be getting dehydrated by now."
Steve accepted the bottle of water more from reflex than agreement, as far as Danny could tell. He sighed and tapped the bottle in Steve's hand. "Drink. You realize that if you've got some kind of super-flu, and if I come down with it because I am a decent human being and didn't abandon you to your delirious lost-in-the-jungle fate, you're going to owe me. Not that you don't already owe me for today, mere words aren't enough to convey how much you already owe me for today, but if I catch this crap from you, you're going to owe me so much more."
"Already owe you. A lot, Danny. You think I don't know that?" There was a note in Steve's exhausted voice that made Danny think he wasn't just talking about today.
Danny swallowed past a completely unnecessary lump in his throat. "Okay, great, good, acknowledged; let's not get maudlin here. Drink your water before I pour it down your throat."
The left half of Danny's butt was numb and the right half felt like he was sitting on a cheese grater. They should take this chair back to civilization with them; it would come in handy as 'persuasion' in the interrogation room at HQ. But at least it was serving to keep Danny wide awake.
Along with worry.
Steve was sleeping again, if fitfully; his breathing too shallow and his head moving in tiny, aborted tremors. Fourteen hours of scarily high fever and stupid amounts of exertion while running said scarily high fever had left him looking gaunt and hollowed out. Bad.
Fuck, Steve looked bad. He looked like he'd looked the first week after they'd gotten him back home last fall, minus the visible marks left over from having been Wo Fat's torture toy.
Danny closed his eyes. It didn't help; those memories were too vivid. Especially the nights, Steve lying there trying to sleep, looking like death warmed over in the moonlight coming in through the windows. Pretending every time he woke up in a cold sweat from a half-doze, with his hands shaking and his eyes haunted, that he was fine. "Fine, Danny. I'm fine, okay? Go back to bed."
Danny never had. He'd kept his ass planted in the chair in the corner of Steve's bedroom and groused, "I'm trying to sleep here, Steven, do you mind?" and refused to budge.
And he'd worried. Steve wasn't telling them shit. It wasn't hard to guess some of it, maybe a lot of it — electrical burns, rope-marks around his neck, the state of his feet, his shoulders, his ribs, his kidneys, his voice — but that didn't make Steve keeping it all bottled up inside any better.
"I'm dealing with it, Danny."
Right. Dealing with it the way he dealt with too many things. Carrying it alone.
The cot creaked slightly. Danny opened his eyes. Steve was still out of it, moving restlessly in his sleep. Danny leaned forward to lay the back of his hand against Steve's forehead. No surprise there, still way too fucking hot. Maybe this time Steve would leave the bandana alone if Danny tried the wet-cloth-on-forehead thing again — not that it could help much, the rainwater Danny'd collected in the green plastic bowl wasn't particularly cool, but it was better than doing nothing.
He'd left the bowl next to the lantern on the crate across the room, where it was out of Steve's path if he decided, like he had twice so far tonight, that he needed to be somewhere besides lying the fuck down. The second time, he'd shoved Danny to the floor and dropped heavily on top of him, sheltering him from what was clearly a nightmare barrage of enemy fire. He'd gotten an elbow into Danny's ribs in the process, and while Danny was still wheezing from that, Steve — Steve's fever, flashback, whatever — had decided he was bleeding out, not just nursing a new, elbow-shaped bruise.
Danny really hoped they wouldn't have a repeat of that particular episode, and not just for the sake of his ribs. Steve had been so… so filled with grief, beneath his controlled calm. Danny had already seen enough of that expression on Steve's face to last a lifetime.
With a grimace, Danny stood up to wet the bandana down again — and okay, so it wasn't just his butt-cheek that was numb, his entire leg was numb, too. He crashed back into the frame of the chair, and the chair tipped backwards and hit the wall behind it, making the poorly fastened metal panels clang from the impact.
Steve's eyes flew open. He flinched as Danny righted the chair, the metal panels protesting again with another sharp clang as the chair back scraped against them. Steve's eyes were wide and staring, but he was gone, looking at something Danny was pretty sure wasn't here and now, looking at that something with an expression that wrapped a coil of ice around Danny's heart.
He knew that expression, too.
"I will kill you," Steve ground out, his voice like broken glass, like death and dying, wrapping even more ice around Danny's heart. "You're a dead man."
"Steve, hey," Danny said. He knew his voice was faltering, couldn't give a fuck. "C'mon, no. You're in Hawaii, with me, Danny, okay? Everything's okay here. Except you being sick as a dog, but it'll be okay. Trust me, all right?"
"You're a dead man."
"Wild guess, you're thinking I'm Wo Fat right now, aren't you?" Danny said, keeping a wary eye on Steve. "Which I'm not, by the way. If you're wondering how I know what you were thinking? Well, see, we're having a rerun here of the first few nights after we got you back from North Korea. Apparently if you missed the first showing, you can catch it in syndication later."
Steve made a wordless sound that Danny absolutely never wanted to hear again, a sound of fury and implacable threat and pain.
Goddammit. "Come on, Steve," he said, "don't do this. Stay with me here."
He could hear Steve's swallow. Steve screwed his eyes shut, clamped his lips together in a thin line, and fucking fought, Danny could see it. "Hey," he said, and kept saying, helplessly. "Hey. Steve, it's okay."
It wasn't. It really fucking wasn't. But at least when Steve opened his eyes again a couple of minutes later, he didn't have North Korea in them, didn't have Wo Fat. Didn't have Jenna — not that Steve had ever said more than, "She gave me a chance to get out," and "Wo Fat killed her."
"Danny?" Steve's voice still sounded like broken glass, and Danny grabbed their last remaining bottle of water.
"Yeah, I'm here," he said, "I'm here. You need to drink this, okay?" and tried very hard to ignore the way he had to keep Steve's hands steady on the plastic bottle as Steve drank two measly swallows.
Then he tried very hard to ignore the way his own hands were shaking as he wrung out the bandana in the rainwater and spread it across Steve's forehead.
Steve's eyes were closed again by then and he was clearly just about out again, but he murmured, "Danny," like it was some kind of magic charm — some kind of magic anti-Wo-Fat charm — as Danny smoothed the cloth down.
So maybe his hand lingered a little on Steve's forehead. It didn't matter. Steve was too far gone to object.
Danny watched as the smoke from his trash-and-damp-wood fire wound its way up through the thin interlacing of tree branches overhead and still remained visible as smoke against the brightening blue of the sky. Even above the treetops the breeze didn't seem to be dispersing the smoke too quickly, thank fuck.
Now he needed to figure out how long he should give the signal time to work before he had to try something else. Not that he knew what else to try. The barely there path they'd followed yesterday to get here dead-ended at the shack, and they were still lost.
And Steve — Steve's fever was up even higher, and he'd been so out of it this morning that Danny hadn't been able to get him to drink even a single swallow of water for hours. That was almost as worrying as the fever right now, since he hadn't pissed since way too fucking long ago yesterday, and that spelled dehydration, and Jesus fuck they needed civilization today, this morning, now.
At least it wasn't raining — yet — so his signal fire had a chance to work. He headed back across the tiny muddy 'courtyard' towards the shack. Staying put and signaling had to be the smart thing to do, but he could keep one eye on the fire and his other eye on Steve while trying to figure out how to turn the cot into some kind of litter, in case he ended up having to try to drag the stupid jackass out of here himself. Somehow.
Not that he could see how he could make that work. God alone knew where they were and how to get back to civilization. And the jungle here was too dense; trying to drag a litter through it, even just backtracking along the narrow trail they'd followed to get here in the first place, would be a bitch. Danny's aching muscles wanted to seize up at the mere thought of it. He was running on fumes — well, running on zero sleep, a handful of nacho-flavored Doritos, a couple of granola bars, and enough worry to fell an elephant — and it wouldn't be easy.
Of course, nothing with McGarrett was ever, ever easy.
Except when it — miraculously — was.
He'd only been back inside for half an hour or so — and freaking out a little, maybe, because Steve had started to shiver hard enough to rattle the frame of the cot, and still wouldn't wake the fuck up — when he heard a growing thrum in the air that rapidly turned into the blessed sound of chopper blades. He was outside beside the signal fire, with Steve's signal mirror in hand, faster than he'd maybe ever moved before. The chopper hovered right above him for a minute with the wind from the blades whipping the tree branches aside, and the pilot clearly understood Danny's arm-waved "Fucking help" message before he headed off.
Danny's knees felt a little weak. Thank fuck.
Thank fuck.
Which was pretty much what he was still saying, out loud, not that Steve was with it enough to pay any attention to him saying it, when a voice carried in from outside. "You need help, brah?"
"We need so much help," Danny agreed.
He looked at Steve again before he headed outside to meet their rescuer and get whatever the plan was going to be in gear. Steve looked like a shell of himself, hollowed out and empty and gone, and Danny felt his heart squeeze in his chest. "Hang on, babe," he muttered. "I'm getting you a ride home now, so you just hang on."
It wasn't exactly the med-evac of Danny's dreams, but Danny's new best buddy Jack had found a clear, almost-level spot to perch his small bird only a few minutes' walk away, and between the two of them they were getting Steve out of there.
No more waiting. Danny was done with waiting. He'd done enough waiting — waiting and worrying — during the past twenty hours to turn his hair white.
And Steve was back with him again, groggy but awake and trying, stumbling along the not-path through the jungle with Danny propping him up under one shoulder while Jack propped him up under the other.
It was a little bit too much like the last time Danny had been part of a three-person stumble towards rescue. But at least this time they weren't illegally in a hostile country. This time they didn't have to worry about evading pissed-off guys with very big guns and trigger-happy fingers.
This time they weren't fresh from untying Steve from the back of one of Wo Fat's transport trucks, and on their way to board an RPG-equipped flying chicken coop piloted by a crazy person who still owned an eight-track.
This time, Steve was just sick. Not goddamn tortured.
Jack hadn't underestimated too badly; they got to the clearing and got Steve into one of the chopper's back seats before Steve gave out on them entirely.
Danny climbed into the seat next to him and just sat for a moment, breathing. Thank fuck. Thank fuck. They'd made it.
The helicopter engine started up with a whine and Steve lifted his head abruptly, twisting it around. "Joe?" he said. "Gutches? Chin — Danny, where’s Chin?"
Shit. Danny wasn't the only one having a moment here.
"Easy," he said, putting his hand on Steve's shoulder where Joe had kept hold of him, kept him upright, kept him grounded, all those months ago. "Take it easy. This isn't Tangerine, Steve, okay? We're in Hawaii, and this nice helicopter person here is rescuing us from our relaxing little hike. Everything's fine, okay?"
"Where's Wo Fat?" The darkness in Steve's voice cut through the increasing noise of the helicopter like a knife.
Danny closed his eyes. "He's not here," he said.
He wasn't sure it was the truth, though. He was beginning to think Wo Fat would always be right there with them. No matter where the son of a bitch actually was.
The door to Steve's room was open and Danny paused in the hallway for a moment before walking in. Steve looked better. Not just cleaned-up-by-nurses better, but feeling-better better. He was still hooked up to an IV and still looked like crap, but he no longer looked like half-dead crap. Quarter-dead, maybe.
And he was awake. And looked, as far as Danny could tell from here, lucid.
"You just going to stand out in the hallway? Dengue fever isn't contagious."
Yeah, lucid.
Danny shook his head and walked all the way into the room. "Dengue fever. People do not get weird things like dengue fever in civilized parts of the world, McGarrett."
"Civilization has nothing to do with latitude," Steve said. "I thought we discussed latitude already, anyway."
"Yes, we did, I remember that discussion. Civilization has everything to do with latitude." Danny cleared his throat. "So. How're you feeling?" Not that Steve was likely to actually tell him.
"Fine, Danny."
Of course. Danny didn't even try to keep himself from grimacing at that.
Steve closed his eyes for a moment. "Better," he said, backtracking a little.
He clearly was feeling better. But from what the doctor had told Danny, Steve was probably only feeling better because they'd gotten his fever down to something less likely to flash-fry his brain and were getting fluids back into him and some painkillers. Dengue fever sounded like a bitch to go through.
But Steve was going to be okay. There'd been too many times on their hike from hell that Danny had been worried — more than worried — that Steve wasn't going to be okay at all.
"They figure I picked this up when I was on Kauai last week. Apparently —"
"Yeah, your doctor told me that. A small outbreak, infected mosquitoes, hardly ever happens here," Danny said, "which I sincerely hope is true." He drew in a deep breath. "The funny thing is that when I was checking you in, the nurse asked me if you'd been out of the country during the past year, and all I could think of was that you'd picked up some kind of weird shit last fall that had just been biding its time, waiting to blindside you."
Steve stared at Danny with the kind of intensely focused stare a sick person in a hospital bed shouldn't be able to pull off. "Danny —"
"You know — North Korea, the gift that keeps on giving."
"Do you have a point here?"
"Actually, I do." Danny took in another deep breath. "I just spent the better part of another weekend with you scaring ten years off my life, so yeah, I have a point."
Steve moved his head in a tiny, aborted headshake; denying what exactly, Danny wasn't sure, since this was Steve, but he could make a few solid guesses. "Danny, come on. I'm fine. I'll be fine."
"Yeah, you will be. This time. Last time you almost weren't."
"What are you…" Steve said. A muscle at his jaw line jumped. "Okay, no. If you're talking about what I think you're talking about, it's over and we don't need to talk about it."
Even the awesome, if often sorely tested, Williams' self-control wasn't quite strong enough to let that pass. "You know what? It's not over, and we really do. But right now I'll settle for you promising you won't pull another North Korea on me. On us." Danny stuck his hands in his pockets and hit Steve with a pretty focused stare of his own.
"I had to go," Steve said, his jaw now clenched so tight Danny was surprised he managed to get the words out. "You know I had to go. I tried going through channels first, calling in favors. Going myself was the only thing left to do."
"Because you had to help Jenna, yeah, I know. You would do the same for any friend. I get that. Just… take a break from the Lone Ranger shtick, all right? I'm getting tired of hauling your ass back to safety and civilization."
"I can't promise it won't happen again, Danny. You know I can't."
Danny sighed. "Yeah, but I need you to try harder, Steve. I hate to admit it, but I've gotten used to having you around. And Grace likes you. Why, I don't know, but she does."
The tension Steve had been radiating disappeared like it had never existed. "You know you both love me," he said with a smirk.
"Your fever must still be too high, maybe I should call a nurse," Danny said with a grimace. Steve's smirking grin got wider.
And, it might as well be said, fonder. Not that Danny was going to call him on that.
Still, he was never going hiking with Steve again.
"We didn't make it to the waterfall," Steve said. "You really should see it, Danny. It's beautiful. We should —"
"No. No, we are not — I am never —"
"Sure, you will, Danno."
Danny sighed again. Sure, he would. It was like a curse. "Next time I'm carrying the sat phone."
Steve… Steve just looked smug. Of course he did, the bastard. Then his expression softened, and he said, "Thanks. For hauling my ass back to civilization. And, you know…"
Danny did know.
"You're welcome," he said.
