The Sound of the Ocean is Dead

by Portraitofafool

Summary:

It's terrible the way fifty eight hours can feel like forever. Like it will never end.

Notes:

This fic deals with the after-effects of a violent act and is in no way written with the intention of titillating or arousing anyone. This is not a kink fic and if, for some reason, you find anything mentioned herein sexy, please keep it to yourself. This is a tough subject that many people are not at all comfortable with and I understand that, so if you think this may upset you, don't read any further. I made myself cringe a couple of times while writing this, but this is one of those stories that demanded to be written. I put it off for months on end, but I finally did it because the idea wouldn't leave me alone.

Days like this,
I don't know what to do with myself
All day and all night
I wander the halls along the walls
And under my breath I say to myself,
I need fuel to take flight
And there's too much going on,
But it's calm under the waves
In the blue of my oblivion

— Fiona Apple
“Sullen Girl”

Steve hits the ground with a thud and puff of dust before rolling down into the ditch partway. His head and shoulders are pillowed on the coarse, tickling weeds. He keeps his eyes closed, lashes sticky with the adhesive left behind from the duct tape ripped off them a few seconds before he was thrown out of the vehicle. There is the sound of tires crunching on gravel with little gritty pops and then the noise of an engine as it fades away and accelerates. Still, he lays there, breathing and not doing much else for awhile. He’s really not even sure he’s still alive because something inside of him, something fundamental, feels dead. He feels it though, so most of him must still be on this Earth.

Somehow that doesn’t feel like much of a blessing; if only he could sort through the tidal roar of noise in his head to figure out why. His mind though, it rebels at the mere suggestion and as a fat, lazy beetle starts to climb up his scraped forearm, Steve pushes himself to his feet with a pained grunt. He needs to go home. He needs to bathe. He feels very dirty and tired.

As he walks, Steve is aware of the gravel under his feet and stumbles when a sharp rock slices deeply into the sole of his right one, but he doesn’t stop. He stares straight ahead into the darkness that’s so thick it makes his eyes hurt to look at it. Soon dirt cakes into the cut, turns to thick mud and seals off the worst of the bleeding. Steve doesn’t mind the pain anyway, he can barely feel it.

His left shoulder jerks and twitches as he walks, pulling itself sharply forward and then slamming back like a broken marionette. Steve kind of wishes it would stop doing that, tries to make it hold still, but that only spreads the trembling across both of his shoulders and so he lets it do what it wants. It’s his body’s choice, he’s not really the one in control there; hasn’t been for ages. He can still make it move forward though, which is the right direction and that’s good enough. Steve will take what he can get.

He keeps his back straight and neck rigid, his posture is excellent even with the ache low in his gut, churning and throbbing. There’s wetness between his legs, cooled by the night breeze and he doesn’t know why that is and he wants to know where his pants are. He wants to know why he’s naked because that’s not right, he could’ve sworn he had on clothes.

The echoing ting-rattle-cling of the loose change in his pockets hitting concrete and flying every which way as his cargoes are yanked down his kicking legs slams into his numb daze and Steve stumbles again. Sore muscles protest the sudden way his knees give out under him and he grits his teeth, forces his knees to unbuckle and pushes himself straight again. Blinking rapidly, he sees the glint of a dime spinning-spinning-spinning from the corner of his eye and he stumbles again, going to the ground this time and crawls on the gravel, another rock digging into the heel of his left palm, rolling a deep bruise into it. Steve drags himself forward and as he does, he hears laughter then feels pain—so much pain searing into him.

He retches once, making a small, soft sound in the back of his throat and then he gags. He throws up all over the dry and dusty road, bile splattering up onto his naked skin as he pulls himself along. Steve shakes his head, tries to shut away all of the horrible things—lies, they’re lies—crowding into his mind. He remembers that he could—he could—

He could smell his own blood.

He could hear his own blood as it smeared (smack-slide) on—

With a cry, Steve shakes his head and pushes himself up onto his knees again, rocks and dirt burning the raw and scraped places. He’s got bruises shaped like hands on his hips, he can feel them, every finger burning into his skin and marking him like he’s some thing.

That did not happen.

This is not happening.

These things do not happen. Not to men. Not to Navy SEALs. Not to the head of 5-0.

Not to Steve McGarrett.

No.

Forty seven times, he said, “No.” Forty seven times before he lost count completely. They just laughed. They covered his eyes, but never his mouth and he’d sworn to himself he wouldn’t scream, he could at least do that even though he could do nothing else. A boot to the ribs and another… another—

Breath hitching in his chest, Steve struggles to push himself up from the road and onto his feet again. His shoulder is still jittering away, worse now than before, like a broken wing flopping uselessly and he can’t catch his breath. It’s not going in far enough to do him any good. He’s sweating and still, he’s cold. There’s a mountain sitting on his chest that shouldn’t be there and he cannot breathe.

Steve really needs to get home, Danny will be worried and he will most definitely be annoyed. Steve was supposed to meet him at some restaurant, the name of which escapes him. He’d gone home to take a—

That’s right, Steve needs to get home and take a shower. He’s late, but maybe he can still salvage something with Danny. He can grill them a steak and spring for some of that mainland beer Danny likes so much. He can do that.

He just needs to—wants to—go home.

Steve gets to his feet again, breathing rough, ragged and raw, but coming easier now because he knows what he needs to be doing—knows what he should be doing—knows where he’s going. Knows that he’s okay.

He’s okay. He’s okay. He’s okay. He’s okay. He’s okay. He’s—

He walks and he pictures the calm blue ocean with clouds billowing white over it. The water glints in the sunlight and shatters into diamonds like every postcard-from-paradise cliché there is. It’s a lovely thing to picture and it makes it much easier to tune out the night sky and the shadows from the encroaching forest leaning into the road like looming giants.

Steve focuses on the picture in his mind and little blue sailboats appear on all of that glassy, beautiful water. If he works really hard, he can see that there are pictures painted on the sails of those little blue sailboats and when he tries even harder, he can tell what those pictures are.

They are of nice things, of things that are pleasant to look at and think about. They have nothing to do with the wetness still leaking from inside of him between and down his legs or of the way he feels torn wide open. They are not of change hitting a concrete floor and they are not of a voice whispering, “Shh, that’s it. That’s it. Take it,” in his ear right before teeth clamp onto it and bite a bloody crescent into the cartilage.

He will not scream. He will not.

The little blue sailboats float serenely on the darker blue water and Steve smiles as he stumbles his way down the road.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Steve follows those blue sailboats all the way home and right up his doorsteps to his front door. It’s locked, but a couple of hard hits with his shoulder takes care of that. When it’s done, he pads on inside, eyes darting around and trying to adjust to the even darker interior of the house. After his eyes adjust he can make out shapes and silhouettes. He notes that his house is a mess and wants to know what the hell happened as he steps around a glittering little pile of broken glass.

Steve stops and turns around to look at it with a frown creasing his forehead. That glass should not be on the floor like that. That was one of his mother’s glasses, there’s a set of them that she got from her mother whose mother had given them to her. It’s one of the few things of her Steve has. Those are his favorite drinking glasses and even after all these years, the set was complete. Now it’s not; now part of it is twinkling up at him from the gloom.

Steve should not have set it so close to the edge of the end table when he came in here to empty the change from his pockets, meaning to put it all in the old glass ashtray he uses for that. He had just sat it down when the first one hit him; came at him from the side. They were already in the house, waiting for who knew how long; waiting for Steve to come home so they could take him. There’d been five of them, but the very first one is the reason his mother’s glass is lying on the floor broken and the table he’d sat it on is overturned.

It glimmers like change spinning by his head and they’d all hit him practically at once and even with his training, he is still only one man. He’d been handling it though; had been thinking maybe and I just got the damned walls fixed when the fifth one had come out of nowhere and hit him with something heavy and hard.

Then he hadn’t been able to fight back anymore.

Then he had woken up with his hands zip-tied behind him and they were dragging him out of the back of a van. Then they had shoved him down on the floor and someone had a knee in his chest and another had pinned his shoulders and they’d all been wearing masks. Masks like demons and masks like angels, a mask like a brown moo-cow and a mask like Michael Myers. So many masks.

Then he had kicked and cursed as they stripped him of his clothing; cutting his shirt off and nicking him with the blade because he was fighting—and because they had wanted to see him bleed. Then his change had been flying everywhere because he hadn’t gotten a chance to empty it from his pockets and he’d heard the unmistakable sound of tape ripping. Then he had seen a dime spinning-spinning-spinning from the corner of his eye. Then they had slapped the sticky tape over his eyes that would later pull out some of his eyelashes and eyebrows.

Then he had been flipped over roughly onto his stomach and someone had kicked him hard in the side. It had made him gasp at the pain of it and had made it difficult for him to catch his breath. Then his legs had been forced apart and there were fingers biting cruelly into his ankles as they’d parted his thighs and tied him to something with coarse rope to keep his legs spread.

Then someone had said, “Your ass is ours now.”

Then the world had exploded and he had jerked at the force of the—

Then after awhile he had stopped fighting and let himself go away; he had become nothing more than a sack of skin and blood. He was only a straw-man made of meat and muscle while he’d waited for it to be over because straw-men made of meat and muscle couldn’t be hurt that way and because the first time wasn’t the only time. He’d thought there were five, but after awhile he’d started to think it was fifty.

Steve blinks, rubs at his face, feels the gummy residue of duct tape and hisses in a breath at the sharp pain of touching his mouth. His lips are split in several places, bitten in others. His jaw is throbbing and there were fingers there, too, pinching hard and forcing his mouth open and his head back and—

Steve does not know who this he is. It’s not him. It can’t be because he’s at home and he’s stiff and sore, tired, but he’s not that man. Steve wishes that man’s memories would stop cluttering up his head.

Steve is already late and he’s still standing in the living room like he doesn’t have anything better to do.

Steve closes his eyes, takes a slow, deep breath and catches a ride on one of his little blue sailboats all the way upstairs.

His twitching shoulder casts strange shadows on the wall at his passing.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Steve takes a hot shower, he doesn’t even bother diluting the stream with cold water and it scalds his skin with the hot-needle spray. It feels wonderful as it beats against his bruised, scraped skin and he scrubs at himself with the bar of Dial soap in the little dish on the tub ledge and a washcloth with Dora the Explorer on it—it’s one Grace left the last time she slept over with Danny. When he realizes it, he tosses it aside with a sound of disgust; the idea he used her washcloth at all for… for… After— Makes Steve feel sick all over again.

There’s another washcloth though, a plain white one and he snatches that up with shaking fingers and lathers it instead. He scrubs until his skin is bright, sunburn red and the washcloth is stained pink from his blood. It still feels so good though to scrub the filth off of himself that Steve doesn’t even mind. He’s actually starting to feel a little better for it, more like himself and not like he’s stuck in some weird dream.

Then he washes between his legs and further back and his eyes fly wide at the horrible ache of it. He almost falls down from the sudden and vicious pain and has to grab the top of the shower to keep from doing so. A bottle of shampoo falls off the narrow ledge above him and thunks onto his head. It would’ve hurt a little any other time, but not now, not when he’s still got—when he can still feel them over and over and over and over and—

Steve rocks back in the shower, his shoulders hit the wall and he slides down it, leaning forward until he’s on his knees, back bowed beneath the shower spray. They had—it had—

He had thought it would never stop.

He swears he can still feel them. Inside. Moving. Inside. His. Bleeding. Body. And he was—he is—a straw-man, not a real person. Only an object to be turned and moved and hurt and used.

Steve still does not know who he is, but he’s tired, so tired of thinking his thoughts. With a sharply painful inhalation that sends his ribs into a throbbing fit, Steve shoves back to his feet again for the third time that night and really, if he keeps falling like this he’s going to need to see a doctor about a possible inner ear infection; it’s getting kind of ridiculous.

He turns the shower off at last, blinking against the now rapidly cooling spray and steps out of the shower. Grabbing his towel off the bar, Steve begins drying himself off quickly, efficiently, but being careful when he dries there. He blots gingerly and with gritted teeth as his whole body trembles. When he’s done, he goes to hang the towel back up to dry only to stop. The towel has blood on it, red, red blood and all he can do is stare at it with this awful sound rising up in his throat that he swallows back.

His breath hitch-hitch-hitches and his shoulder twitch-twitch-twitches as he wads the towel up and bends down to stuff it under the sink behind all the other towels so he doesn’t have to see it. He doesn’t want to see that and later, he thinks, he will burn it so he never has to see it again.

As he starts to straighten up, Steve’s eyes land on a blue box in the other corner of the cabinet and he pauses to think for a moment. It’s kind of hard to do, but he processes and reaches out to pick up the box Mary left behind. It says Stayfree Extra Long Regular. Okay then, Steve thinks, because he’s still bleeding and he needs to put on clothes and he doesn’t want the blood to soak through them. If it does then everyone will see and worse than that, everyone will know. Not that there’s really anything to know because no (forty seven times, no).

He takes one of the girly things out of the box and then puts it back in the cabinet. He can do this, it’s no big deal and besides, he’s never been one of those guys to freak out about feminine products—he’s always thought that was kind of stupid, actually. He left them under the sink in case someone happened to be there one day—he has female friends—and had an emergency and nothing for it. It was considerate, really.

Steve never thought he’d be the one to wind up with the “emergency” though. He keeps a death-grip on the thing as he walks out of the bathroom and goes into his bedroom to get dressed. He doesn’t actually realize that he’s never turned on a single light and had showered by the glow of the butterfly nightlight they leave in there for Grace. He dresses in the dark as well, he knows exactly where everything is and thankfully, his bedroom hasn’t been ransacked. He fumbles with the little paper strip on the back of the girl-thing and then gets it off and into his boxer-briefs.

Steve pulls them up and frowns at how weird it feels, but it’ll keep the blood from showing everyone that he was—What? Nothing. That’s what. Yes (never, not once, did he say that). He puts on his cargoes, black ones, he can tell from the way he could hardly see them in his closet; the grey and khaki shows up better in the bad light. Then a shirt. Then socks and a spare pair of boots, older than the ones he seems to have lost—torn off his feet hard enough even that had hurt, the way they’d caught against his heels—but comfortable. Except the sole of his right foot is killing him.

Oh. That’s right. He should get that seen to as soon as he can, but he needs to call Danny and apologize for being wea—for ruining the evening by being so late.

He wants Danny to be here with him badly enough that it’s kind of embarrassing, Steve realizes. He wants to talk to Danny and hear his voice. He really wants Danny to tell him it’s alright (he’s late). He’s also afraid that Danny will take one look at him and even without blood on his pants now, he will still know because Steve thinks it is written all over his body. Like it is written on his forehead in big, block letters. Danny will look at him and he will know that they made Steve come. No matter how hard he’d tried not to; no matter how much he hadn’t wanted to; his body—his Judas—had betrayed him. More than once. And everything that had hurt had for a moment or two felt good and that had been the absolute worst part of it. The most terrible part of being—

Steve gives his head a vicious shake and reaches for the cordless phone on his nightstand. Clicking it on, he dials Danny’s number quickly, refusing anymore intrusive thoughts from that other man, from that victim, as he presses the phone to his ear and listens to it ringing.

Danny picks up on the second ring and Steve’s legs go watery on him again and he sits down heavily on the side of his bed. He bites into his swollen bottom lip to choke off the cry of pain that runs up his throat on ugly little feet when he does so.

“Steve? Please tell me it’s you,” Danny asks, snapping it out, voice anxious and tense.

“Hey,” Steve says and licks his lips, the bottom one of which he’s gotten to bleeding again. “Hey,” he says again and his voice fucking cracks before he can catch it.

“Thank fucking God,” Danny says. “We’ve been looking all over for you. Are you okay? Where are you? Nevermind, you’re at home, it’s your landline number. Stupid thing to ask. I’m coming over there now. Are you hurt? What happened? Steve? Steve?”

Steve closes his eyes and smiles at the sound of his voice as he listens to Danny bustling around. He hasn’t really heard much of what he’s said, he’s just glad that Danny isn’t screaming in his ear about how he’s an inconsiderate asshole or some such. He seems happy to hear from him. Kind of funny, too, but overall, glad. That’s good; it means Steve has managed to keep himself out of the doghouse by some miracle.

“Hey,” Steve says for the third time and then makes himself stop that. “Look, Danny, I just want you to know I’m sorry for being so late and leaving you waiting. I guess I lost track of time, but I can grill us a couple of steaks and I’ll buy you some of that Samuel Adams shit you like so much.”

The other end of the line goes silent and Steve thinks, Fuck, because now he’s going to get it. The beginning of this was just a reprieve and yeah, sometimes they’d taken breaks. Steve had actually dozed off once into a fitful sleep only to be woken up by—

“Steve… you’ve been missing for fifty eight hours,” Danny finally says. His voice is soft, gentle even as he tells Steve that. “I think steaks are off the menu.”

“I… That can’t be right. I was only a couple… Fifty eight hours?” Steve asks and frowns. No wonder it felt like it was such a long time. It wasn’t a couple of hours. It was a goddamned eternity. That weird sound comes up in his throat again and Steve swallows it down very calmly because he will not. “Danny, can you come over?” Steve asks without thinking about it. It’s the one thing he wants right now because nothing is fucking real.

“I’m already on my way, babe,” Danny says. “I’ll be there in ten.”

“Okay,” Steve says and clicks the off button on the cordless. His shoulder has started up with that jerk-twitch jig it’s got going on and Steve digs his fingers into his skinned knees and shakes all over as he sits there. He can’t make it stop no matter how hard he tries to. He can’t make it stop, just like he couldn’t make them—

Stop.

Raping.

Him.

“Fuck,” Steve gasps when the word finally worms its slimy way to the front of his mind. “No.”

That word—no—means next to nothing and less than shit and if anyone should know it then it’s him. He tries to wish the sailboats back, but for the longest time they will not come. Steve is starting to think he will break the promise he made to himself after all when the first one glides serenely across his mind’s eye and he slumps down with relaxation as outside the rumble of the Camaro’s engine adds to the soothing landscape.

It’s easy to disappear into himself, to draw the curtain down over the rest of the world and leave his aching body behind. Here in his head he can drift with his little blue boats and nothing bad ever happened to him. No one wrapped an arm around his waist and yanked him back against them as they—

The sun comes out from behind the serene clouds and it’s glaringly bright, making Steve flinch against the glow and pull away from it, blinking owlishly at the white of his bedroom wall. For a moment, he’s disoriented and doesn’t know how or why he’s sitting here like this when he was just on the water, watching the boats.

“Holy fuck.”

Steve turns his head and finds Danny standing there and okay, that’s it—the light is on. He didn’t know it had been off and Danny is here and that’s good because he wants Danny here even though he feels small for that want. Incompetent. Like a little kid, not a grown man who is more than capable of taking care of himself (usually, but not always, look what happened).

“Danny, I’m—” sorry, Steve starts to say, but stops himself.

He’s not trying to apologize for being late this time, but he keeps wanting to say it anyway. He keeps wanting to beg Danny to forgive him for letting this awful thing happen to him. He’s no good for Danny anymore and Steve realizes that with a sick, sick, sick feeling of loss. And still, he wants him more than anything, he wants to reach out and drag Danny over to him and wrap himself around him for a hundred and one days and maybe they can watch the sailboats together. With Danny there, it wouldn’t be so goddamned lonesome.

“You’re beat all to hell is what you are,” Danny says with a deep frown as he breaks out of his shock at seeing Steve like this and walks further into the room.

He’s been beat up before, but never quite so bad and his skin looks raw all over, abraded and red. It’s his expression that really gets Danny though. Beneath the bruises, it’s nothing but a blank mask. His eyes are hollowed out holes; these sad, sad pits in Steve’s face and why he should be sad, Danny doesn’t know. His coply intuition hints at him that he’s seen this look before, but where and when, he’s not sure.

Danny reaches for Steve, meaning to tilt his head back so he can get a better look at his swollen, cut up mouth, but Steve jerks away from him, eyes walling as he scoots over and away.

“Whoa, okay,” Danny says and steps back with his hands raised in placation, feeling unsettled down to his bones. Steve may protest, but he’s never actually recoiled from him before and Danny doesn’t think that’s such a good thing. There are answers to be had here for sure because Steve, to put it nicely, is fucked up right now. “If you’re not going to let me look you over then come downstairs, I’ll get you some ice for your face and then we can talk. Do you need a doctor?”

Steve’s eyes fly wide at that and he does look at Danny then. “No,” he says, his faint voice suddenly growing stronger.

He’s got cracked ribs, but none are broken and he can tape them up himself to keep them stable. He’s also got three cigarette burns on his back and another on his left ass cheek. They had blown the smoke over his face before they’d burned him; he’d felt it tickle his ear and had smelled the tang of a menthol cigarette. There’s another bite mark on the back of his right arm to go with the one on his ear. He’s got ligature marks on his wrists and ankles. He has handprints on his hips.

He’s got a Stayfree Extra Long Regular in his boxer-briefs doing its job and sponging up blood. The thought turns Steve’s stomach and even though it’s empty, he thinks he could vomit anyway. Maybe just puke up his innards that seem to be shaking and coming loose from their moorings inside him.

So no. Definitely no because if anyone sees anything then the whole fucking world will know and they will look at him like he… like he’s… Just no and for this, this he can say no and someone will goddamned well listen this time.

Steve’s breath catches lightly in his throat and that mountain is growing back on his chest, settling its weight in good and solid and he can’t let it do that anymore than he can stand to meet Danny’s eyes for another second. Swallowing hard, he glances away and looks down at the floor, staring at it with all his will so he doesn’t have to look up and see the worry in Danny’s blue (like sailboats) eyes again.

“Are you sure because you really look like—” Danny starts to say and Steve gives a quick shake of his head.

“I said no, Danny,” Steve tells him. He means for it to come out forceful and authoritative. Instead it sounds like a confession.

Danny hesitates for a moment, studying the back of Steve’s bowed head, wanting to stroke his hand over his damp hair, but he remembers the way Steve flinched from him and decides to give him his space for now. Then he nods and walks out of the room only to stop halfway down the hall when he realizes he’s alone. He frowns again and goes back to the bedroom to find Steve still sitting there, staring at the floor.

“Steven, what are you doing, babe?” he asks gently as he walks into the room again. His skin is prickling with unease because something is definitely off here. He doesn’t know what, but Steve’s behavior is like a gigantic blinking neon sign as far as clues go.

He crouches down beside Steve and tilts his head to look up into his downturned face. Steve blinks back at him and then slides his eyes away to the side. “Ice, remember? C’mon,” Danny says.

“Ice, right,” Steve says and flexes his fingers against his knees so hard his knuckles turn white. “My mom’s glass got broken.”

“Yeah, I saw that,” Danny says. “We would’ve cleaned up for you, you know, but it was still an active scene and we could’ve disturbed evidence. Steve… What happened?”

“Nothing,” Steve answers after a few seconds. “Just. Nothing.”

“Ah, no, something definitely happened,” Danny says, finger going in the air to wave around as he tries to cover his growing concern. “I got worried—and a little annoyed, I can’t lie—and I came over here to see what the hell was taking you so long and why you weren’t answering your phone. I walk into the house and find it looking like Taz threw a rager in it, but no Steve. Blood on the floor, holes in the walls—yeah, something happened. You’ve been missing nearly two and a half days and I want to know what the fuck because I’ve been going out of my mind.”

“I thought we were getting ice,” Steve says.

His eyes are clearer; he’s acting more like himself, focusing on Danny’s face for a moment before he stands up suddenly. His voice is completely flat though, dead and that, too, makes Danny frown as he straightens up as well.

“Yeah, yeah we are,” Danny says as his worry increases tenfold. He glances at Steve again and then turns and walks slowly out of the room, listening carefully to see if Steve follows this time. He hears the scuff of his boots on the floor as he takes a step and then another and another, trailing along behind Danny silently.

As they walk down the hall towards the stairs, Steve watches Danny’s back and swallows again. He still wants to grab him and hold on tight because maybe Danny wouldn’t mind; maybe Danny wouldn’t think he was weak and disgusting. He reaches out a hand to touch Danny’s shoulder; he means to curl his fingers around that solid piece of muscle and stop him so he can tug Danny to him and just hang onto him. He sees it clearly in his head, imagines how nice it would feel; how comforting to have Danny tell him it’s alright—he keeps coming back to that. He wants to hear that so very badly; wants to beg Danny to lie to him and tell him that.

Then he remembers the prickling heat of a cigarette cherry rolling down his ribs and the sticky slide of a nasty tongue behind his ear. He remembers a hand slapping his ass, coming down with a smack right over the fresh burn there. He remembers the one who stroked his back and kept his touch gentle as he pressed against and into his body. Steve remembers all of that and his fingers clench closed spasmodically and he snatches his hand back, stuffing both hands in his pockets instead of touching Danny’s dove grey dress shirt. His shoulder gives a hard jerk and Steve grits his teeth, wills it to stop—he’s been wanting it to stop for hours, but now especially because he doesn’t want Danny to see that either. This time it seems to listen and that’s a first all night. It’s not much and it’s not enough, but it’ll do for now.

Once they’re downstairs, Danny goes to fix him an icepack and Steve stands in his living room, looking around at the mess in the bright light from the overhead fixture. His eyes keep wandering back to the pile of glass again and again with a kind of grief-stricken remorse. He wishes that glass hadn’t gotten broken so damned bad it hurts right along with his body. Steve’s not materialistic by any means, but that glass meant something to him; he’s not so much mourning an object as he is what that object represented to him.

“Icepack, sit,” Danny says suddenly, intruding on his thoughts.

Steve jumps and tenses automatically at the sound of his voice and then blinks hard to clear his mind. It’s just Danny, it’s nothing bad and everything is fine. He needs to relax. That… that is kind of like a cruel joke. “Relax McGarrett, you know you like it” and a finger smearing through the mess they’d caused him to make and he—

He—

He had wanted to cry. God help him, he fucking had.

“Steve!” Danny says, voice cracking in the room as he tries to get Steve’s attention. He jumps again at the sound and whips his head around to look right at Danny.

That thousand yard stare of his is eerie and Danny’s little suspicious itch swims around in his head like a goldfish in a bowl. Standing here, looking at Steve like this, Danny is glad he didn’t call Chin and Kono right away. He’d thought about it—it’s what they do, they can’t function as a team otherwise—but for some reason he hadn’t done it; something about Steve’s voice had made him hold off. He thinks he made the right decision, too.

“What?” Steve asks him and that flat plywood voice of his makes him sound like he’s drugged.

“Sit down so I can give you this icepack; my fingers are going numb,” Danny tells him, voice gentling once again. He feels like he should be whispering and tiptoeing around the house right now. Like if he’s not careful, he’s going to speak too loudly or step too hard and Steve is going to shatter like that glass sparkling on the area rug.

“Okay,” Steve says and moves toward the couch like he’s on autopilot.

It’s the first time Danny’s seen him moving though and he watches the stiff, careful way he carries himself with a slithering sense of horrified disbelief. But when Steve sits down, being so, so careful when he does and he still makes a low, pained sound, bruised face twisting into a grimace, that horror coils up inside of Danny and hisses at him. He can’t believe it; he won’t believe it, he’s seeing things and besides, Steve’s been beaten pretty badly. His back is surely hurting him, he’s bound to have strained and pulled muscles, there are a thousand explanations for what he just saw. However, there aren’t very many that can explain anything else he’s seen tonight—the flinching from his touch, the dazed way Steve is acting, the blankness of his expression and the awful sadness in his eyes.

Gillian Bates—that’s where he knows that look and that spaced out, zoned out, disconnected way of being un-present. She was a fifteen year old runaway and Danny was a rookie patrolman at the time. She’d sat in the open backdoor of his cruiser while they’d waited for the ambulance to arrive and shook like a leaf, wrapped up in his coat because she was naked otherwise. He’d found her wandering aimlessly around the parking lot of a small family grocery store. She hadn’t even know she was on the planet though for all of that. He’d been flying solo that night because his partner had a bad case of the flu; AKA, a hangover, Danny had reckoned. So it had just been him and that poor girl. He’d stood in front of her to keep the worst of the wind off her bruised skin and she had looked at him exactly like Steve.

Still, he’s got to be wrong because it’s Steve and he’s not some fifteen year old runaway. He’s a highly trained military specialist capable of killing a man barehanded a hundred ways. Give him a spoon and some twine and well, Steve is probably more than well equipped to be one hell of a lethal MacGyver. There is just no way. None. Zip. Nada.

With a quick shake of his head, Danny snaps himself out of it and hands Steve the icepack. He takes it automatically and then sits there holding it, ice water soaking into the leg of his pants. Danny sits down on the coffee table to the side a bit so their knees aren’t knocking into each other—don’t touch him; he keeps reminding himself even though he wants to. That disbelief is assertive, but what Danny knows is even pushier and he’s starting to believe it even though he really, really fucking doesn’t want to. It makes him sick to even think about something like that happening to anyone, but it happening to someone he loves is even more terrible.

“Tell me what happened,” Danny says and then falls silent, waiting.

Steve doesn’t answer him for a long time and Danny listens to the sound of the ice water dripping onto the floor where it’s running off the side of Steve’s leg.

Finally, Steve’s tongue darts out and touches the cracked corner of his mouth, running along the dark scab in the crease. “There were five of them,” he says slowly, voice dull and still scarily flat. “They were waiting for me when I got home. I got a glass of water—my broken glass of water, my mother’s glass, broken with no water—”

He stops and blinks and Danny’s heart gives a painful twist in his chest.

Steve takes a deep breath and starts over, “I got a glass of water and then came in the living room to empty the change out of my pockets—You know, in that ashtray? Yeah. And one of them hit me, knocked me into the table and the glass it— I barely had time to react before three others hit me and I thought that was it; that was all and I was handling it. I think. Maybe. But then the fifth one came up behind me, hit me with something and knocked me out cold.”

He shivers a little and feels his shoulder tremble, wanting to twitch and he presses himself hard into the back of the sofa, hoping that if it does then it won’t show that much. He cannot tell Danny what they did to him, what they kept doing to him, forty seven times no or not because what he said didn’t matter. He wasn’t a person, he was just a hole.

He almost gags again, but he manages not to and then says, “They took me… somewhere… I don’t know where. I didn’t come to until they dragged me out of the van. They had on masks; had them on from the get-go and I tried to see, I did, I tried, but I couldn’t and then they—”

Steve’s breath is hitching in his chest, his breathing growing quicker and he’s starting to sweat. He just wants it to be over. He has to make it be over.

“And then they tied me up and kicked the shit out of me, Danny,” Steve says in a rush. His voice is shaky and he can’t hear that, but he can feel how the lie sticks in his throat like a wad of rotten hamburger. Thinks that Danny can hear it, too and waits for him to call him on it. For him to point out the fib and to tell Steve what really happened and Steve does not want to hear it, no sir and no thank you.

Danny listens to Steve’s recounting of what happened with dread lining his insides like powdered glass, working its way in and cutting him up in tiny, tiny pieces so that he’s bleeding from a million miniscule wounds. Steve just lied to him, flat out fucking lied and that’s what finally makes everything he’s been thinking ring true. And oh, no, no, no, not his Steve. That pain slowly starts to mutate and turn into rage so overwhelming Danny thinks it will suffocate him, but he must not let on. He has to be here for Steve, be what he needs right now and a ranting, raving lunatic is not it.

“You have any idea who may’ve been behind it?” Danny asks him. He says it through his teeth a little, he’s having a hard time unclenching his jaw, but it comes out okay.

“Not a clue,” Steve says and his voice rattles it’s shaking so bad. “No idea.”

“Okay,” Danny says and forces himself to breathe through the anger clogging up his lungs. “We can worry about that later then. Right now I think you’re probably exhausted, huh?”

“No…,” Steve says and then nods. “Yeah.” He is, too, right down to the bone, but he’s afraid to sleep; afraid he’s going to wake up to someone taking what doesn’t belong to them with brutal force.

“Let’s get you to bed then,” Danny says.

“Okay,” Steve says and after a moment, he stands up just as carefully as he sat down. “Okay.”

Danny wishes he knew what to say to make this better, but he has no clue, just like he’d had no clue with Gillian all those years ago. He’d told her, “Everything’s going to be alright.” and she’d looked up at him with the most twisted expression of bitterness contorting her young face that only moments before had been scarily blank; placid. She’d looked at him with her haunted, haunted eyes and said, “You’re a fucking liar.” It was the first thing she’d said the whole time that had carried any kind of emotion or inflection. It had hit Danny like a backhanded slap to the face.

Steve heads for the stairs like a zombie and then stops at the foot of them to look back at Danny who’s still sitting on the coffee table. “Danny?” he asks and Danny raises an eyebrow at him in question. “Will you stay?”

“Of course I will,” Danny says and smiles at him. It feels rubbery and fake, but Steve seems to buy it and that’s what matters.

Steve tries to return the smile, but feels how it falters and pulls uncomfortably at his sore mouth, so he nods instead and makes his slow way back upstairs to try and sleep.

Danny waits until Steve is out of sight and he can hear him moving around upstairs as he takes his boots off. He would be willing to bet money that other than that, Steve sleeps fully clothed tonight. He wants to go up and lay down beside him like he normally would, but he doesn’t think Steve would welcome it and besides, there is nothing normal about this. This is, in fact, the polar opposite of normal and it’s killing Danny now that he knows—he doesn’t have to be told. He can see and yeah—he’s dying and he’s so fucking angry he’s actually starting to quake with it a little bit.

With a heavy, shaking exhalation, Danny braces his elbows on his knees and buries his face in his cupped palms as he listens to the silence filling the house.

After awhile, he gets up and goes to grab the broom and dust pan so he can sweep up the glass and get started cleaning Steve’s place up the best he can. It’s the least he can do, but if he’s being honest, Danny has never felt more useless in his life.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Steve wakes up the next morning to the sound of laughter in his ears and the heavy, metallic stink of his own blood thick in his nostrils. His eyes pop open and he fights the hands that are grabbing at him as he comes up off the bed with a low sound of disgust and anger; fear. He fell asleep curled around himself in the middle of the bed and when he uncoils his long body to shoot to his feet, he nearly falls over as his stiff muscles cringe at the sudden movement. Every single ache and pain in his body flares to life as well and Steve stands there blinking the cold sweat out of his eyes and breathing so hard and rough that he actually starts to cough.

Slowly, his bedroom comes into focus and the night before rains down around him as his tension gives way to fine tremors running through his body. His shoulder has started up its tic again, lightly for now and Steve reaches up with his opposite hand and clamps his fingers around it hard.

“Stop it,” he growls as it twitches under his grip.

He’s still fully clothed from the night before aside from his boots and his right sock is glued to the bottom of his foot he realizes and then remembers the cut there. He can take care of that and he needs to tape up his screaming ribs, too. It’s a goal, something easily accomplished and taken care of that he can focus on so that maybe that laughter will stop crashing around in his head like thunder.

Steve moves around his bedroom carefully, every twinge making him grit his teeth as it brings more terrible memories with it. At last he has clean socks and his boots in hand and he moves out of the bedroom to go into the bathroom and tend his wounds.

He has to soak his foot in warm water to get the sock off and when he tries to sit on the edge of the tub, he whimpers and jerks back to his feet. He ends up standing there, watching blue sailboats float calmly across his vision while he waits for it to be over. The sound of a car horn out on the street that runs in front of his house startles Steve away from his ocean view and then he remembers his foot. He’s standing in a good three inches of water that has gone cold, pants rolled up to mid-calf. When he bends down with a hissed in breath to check his sock, he feels that it has come loose from the cut and there are fine streamers of blood filtering into the water.

Once that’s done, it doesn’t take him long to clean and bandage the wound. It could’ve stood a couple of stitches and it’s going to leave a short, but wicked, scar on his foot. However, he determines that it should heal fine so long as he keeps it clean and well bandaged for extra cushioning. His ribs come next and that’s a snap even though he does it blindly. One look at the mottled bruises and scrapes covering his body was enough to have Steve opening the medicine cabinet so he didn’t have to see his reflection at all.

When all of that’s done, Steve reaches under the sink for the blue box there and takes care of that as well. The sight of the first girl-thing makes him shudder, it’s not that bad; he’s not in danger of death, but there’s still too much blood, too much of his blood there that he—

He wants out of the house. He has to do something. He cannot stand around here like this and let all of these thoughts wander around his head. He thinks about going for a swim and then thinks about how much the saltwater would sting and burn all of his wounds and changes his mind about that. Then he thinks about going for a run, his mind racing like a rat in a maze as he tries to think of something, anything to do and that makes the most sense. The fact his ribs are cracked and his foot is cut doesn’t even register when he latches onto that idea. He can get out and he can move instead of being in this house with his thoughts.

Steve goes back into the bedroom to get his running shoes and fresh socks, not bothering to change out of his cargoes and blue t-shirt. The idea of wearing shorts where anyone could see his scraped, skinned, bruised legs or taking his shirt off where people might see the burns or bites is unbearable. He tugs his shoes on, laces them up good and tight and then goes down the stairs two at a time, itching to get out the door and into the fresh air so he can run.

He stops at the foot of the stairs and takes a deep breath, smells lemon Mr. Clean heavy in the air and original Pledge; sees that the floor is clean now, all the overturned things righted and his mother’s broken glass gone from the rug. Danny is sprawled out on the sofa in his undershirt and pants, socks and shoes tucked under the edge of it, dress shirt folded on the back of the couch. He’s got his tie laid over his eyes to most likely keep the sun out of them and Steve wants to go to him, snatch it away and tell him that it’s a hundred times worse when you can’t see what’s going to happen next.

Steve wants to go to Danny, bump his shoulder and tell him to scoot over so he can cram himself onto the sofa and lay there with him where it’s maybe not so scary. He almost does it, too, almost, but he can’t. He actually can’t do it because the idea of someone’s hands on him is a revolting proposition. Even Danny’s hands; hands that Steve knows won’t hurt him, seem to promise pain and torment now.

That makes Steve angry-sad to realize, to look at Danny and know that those bastards took his hands away from him. They grabbed and pulled and pushed (inside, no three times then as they twisted and prodded while he’d still tried to fight them and they’d laughed) and stolen this away, too. He swallows hard, feels like he’s choking on something and moves through the living room quietly while Danny snores on, oblivious to Steve being there.

Once he’s out his broken front door, Steve starts running, right across the porch and down the doorsteps. Every pounding step jars pain through his body, making it practically sing with it as he crosses the lawn and hits the driveway. The more it hurts, the harder Steve runs until it becomes a static roar of protesting nerves and muscles; until it drowns out every single thought in his head. The pain focuses him like this, makes him sharp and alive. It makes him exist again and he pushes himself to go faster, looking straight ahead as he goes, the sun bright in his eyes.

The sailboats skate across the water in his mind and even they move faster, the pain egging them on as fresh blood from Steve’s foot starts to squelch in his shoe and still he goes. He can outrun this, he thinks, the words of his thought painted gaily on a bright blue sail. He can go and go and go and go and then nothing will have ever happened. It won’t even be a bad dream, it will just cease to be and then maybe Steve can curl up beside Danny like he wants to; like he misses already. He hates what his life is starting to seem like it has become; some whittled down, walled in world of terrible memories where he’s alone.

He did not ask for this, but he got it. Repeatedly. He almost laughs at that, but the sound twists into something else entirely, something a lot like a sob that he won’t give voice to anymore than he will that scream that’s still slamming around against his ribcage and humming in his vocal chords. He will not cry, he will not scream, but he will run until everything really is okay again. Until there is not someone saying, “Look at this sonofabitch, he’s a real fighter, ain’t he?”

Not someone saying low and cold in his ear, “Go ahead and squirm, McGarrett, I like the friction.”

Not him going limp and doll-boned at those words and trying not to feel the way his body rocked-shoved along the floor with every single—

The toe of Steve’s shoe catches on a buckle in the sidewalk and he nearly goes sailing headfirst into the concrete. He does an awkward, hopping little type of dance as he tries to keep his balance because if he hits the ground given his rate of speed, he can kiss his front teeth goodbye and most of the skin on his face as well. He’s already lost enough skin on the rest of his body, he’s already had his jaw squeezed so hard he could’ve sworn he heard the bone creak in protest and he doesn’t want anything else thick and wet in his mouth. So he does his clumsy ballet until he falls into the side of a parked car, hitting it hard on his right side, making himself gasp and leaving the car rocking gently on its shocks.

Now that he’s stopped, the world slows down again and time reasserts itself. He can’t outrun what was anymore than he can run away from what is. He can’t do a goddamned thing, seems like, despite his best efforts. The sense of helplessness he feels is like having water in his veins instead of blood and his muscles all feel like worn out elastic as he slumps against the side of the car, panting hard. He can hear the blood pounding in his temples and he’s drenched with sweat and everything is just as it was before. The sky is blue, the birds are singing, there’s a little old man out walking his little old dog and giving Steve a curious look. The world is not ending; it’s only Steve who is.

He slaps the side of the car with a sudden flare of anger that’s there and gone as soon as it came. He pushes away from the vehicle with his eyes on the pavement and the muscles in his legs trembling and burning from the exertion of how he’d been running. Sweat burns in all his open sores, but it’s the worst in the burns that are like tiny banshees set into his flesh with the pain they bring. With each one he’d heard the sizzle and had smelled the stink of his flesh; much like burnt chicken skin and he’d bucked under the pain because nothing hurts like a burn does. Well, almost nothing.

Steve limps toward home, slightly hunched over on himself now and blood still squishing in his shoe that he can hear since he’s more aware. If he listens carefully, there’s a rhythm to the sound that he can zero in on and pay attention to—step, squish, step, squish. Eventually it becomes the soft susurration of waves and Steve follows the sound all the way home.

When he gets home, Danny is still conked out on the sofa and Steve eases by him as quietly as he can; tiptoe, squish, tiptoe, squish. Up the stairs he creeps and into the bathroom where he turns on the shower and doesn’t bother with cold water again. He goes to get clean clothes once the shower is running and then heads back. He stays there until the water is icy cold on his scalded skin and he feels a little queasy from so much heat. The air outside the shower is frigid in comparison and Steve shivers as he tends to all of his necessaries and then goes downstairs to make coffee. He supposes he needs to eat, too, but damned if he actually feels like it. Still, he forces himself to eat an orange and a small bowl of oatmeal. It all tastes like cardboard in his mouth.

He’s washed his bowl and thrown away the orange peel by the time the coffee is ready and he fixes himself a cup and inhales the steam. That’s good, that feels like normal, Steve thinks and breathes deeply again; chasing that elusive myth of a thing. He catches it again and five minutes pass with him just breathing deeply of the coffee scented steam before he blinks, a slow dip and rise of his lashes and finally takes a sip.

Steve is aware that he’s not doing so hot, the realization comes to him slowly and he fights against it for a bit, convinced he’s doing perfectly fine. He knows better though, deep down where the dark water runs, he knows. He’s not sure what to do about it though because he doesn’t know how to pretend things are fine when they’re so, so not.

He tilts his head consideringly and it occurs to him that people do it everyday, even people like him. People who don’t even have the training necessary to fake their way through anything still somehow manage and Steve’s got the market cornered on soldiering through things even if that does mean faking it; he’s a Navy SEAL. Not like that did him a damned bit of good when—

He can do this. He has to do this. He doesn’t want anyone to know and if he can’t fucking act like he’s… he’s… whole then he may as well pack it in and go somewhere that he’s a stranger to everyone around him. Funny thing is, Steve feels like a stranger to himself, like he’s in someone else’s body thinking someone else’s thoughts and living someone else’s nightmare where a laughing voice is calling him a come—

(catcher.)

His coffee mug slips out of his hand and lands in the sink with a clatter, but it doesn’t shatter, which is a nice change. Steve shakes his head viciously, realizes he has a headache already, probably from running like he did and he needs water more than he needs coffee. He gets a bottle out of the fridge and looks down at the linoleum that’s been so well mopped he can see distorted reflections in it and knows that Danny was in here, too. No wonder he’s sleeping so heavily. Danny sleeps like a log anyway, but this is above and beyond even for him. Steve wonders how long he was up cleaning the house the night before. He really should thank him because he doesn’t know if he would’ve been able to do it. The least he can do is fix Danny a cup of a coffee and take it to him.

There. There. He knew he could do this.

He just wishes his insides would quit shaking; he doesn’t think they’ve stopped for days.

But inside doesn’t matter as long as what’s on the outside can pass muster.

Steve nods slowly to himself and turns to get Danny’s coffee mug out of the cabinet and fix him a cup to leave on the table for him. He can do this, he really, really can.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Danny wakes up slowly with the smell of coffee wafting into his nose and blinks his eyes open. For a moment he almost panics because he thinks he’s gone blind then he remembers he’s got his tie flopped over his face and snatches it away with an irritated grunt. Turning his head he sees a mug of coffee sitting on the table, little curls of steam twisting into the air and knows that it hasn’t been sitting there for long. He also wonders how long Steve’s been up and how he’s doing.

That thought has Danny sitting up on the sofa and then rising, intent on going to check on him. He grabs his coffee without even thinking, taking a big swallow of the hot, but not scalding, liquid. It kind of surprises him that Steve actually put sugar in it since lately he’s been on another kick about how Danny eats too much processed sugars and that he’s a walking advertisement for early onset diabetes or something like that. Danny tends to tune him out when he gets really wound up. Then again, right about now, he’d have been tickled had Steve woken him up with a lengthy diatribe about how certain chemical compounds react to pine sap or whatever.

He was up cleaning until the sun started to inch up over the horizon and by the time he’d sat down, he’d barely been able to keep his eyes open. He did call Chin though and the man had sounded annoyingly alert for such an hour when he’d answered his phone. When he’d told him that Steve was back, Chin had asked why Danny hadn’t called them and to that… Danny really hadn’t had a good answer. He couldn’t—and wouldn’t—tell him what was going on with Steve, so he’d just said something along the lines of, “He’s banged up, but he’s okay. I should’ve called, but he just wanted to get some Zs and I let him. I got his statement though, so we’re good.”

Chin had sounded doubtful and irked with Danny and Steve both upon hearing the lame story, but he’d let it slide. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow then or does Steve need to rest up?”

“I think he needs to rest up,” Danny had told him, dreading what it would be like to take Steve in to work—what it would be like for Steve to have to face everyone—like he was. He didn’t think Steve could work and he didn’t think it would be right to throw him back into the mix so soon after… what had happened to him.

“Okay then I’ll drop by with Kono later,” Chin had offered.

Danny had been shaking his head, wanting to hide Steve away from prying eyes. Wanting to protect him from his own friends. He hadn’t really known what to make of such ideas, but he’d wanted to do it anyway. So he’d said, “He’s pretty banged up, maybe give him a couple of days.”

Chin had been slow to respond; Danny could practically hear his bullshit detector beeping away as it scanned. Then he’d said, “If you think that’s best. But, Danny?”

“Yeah?” Danny had asked.

“Don’t ever do something like this to us again, I don’t care how much Steve complains, you call us,” Chin had said.

“I will,” Danny had promised and silently prayed that something like this never happened again.

“Alright,” Chin had said and that time he’d sounded like he believed Danny completely. “Get some sleep, you sound exhausted.”

“You don’t even know,” Danny had said. “I’ll catch you later.”

He’d ended the call and laid out on the couch, his thoughts like a tornado after he’d stopped moving, after he’d stopped doing. He’d chased them around his tired head until sleep had sneaked up on him and snatched him under.

Now it’s a new day and nothing has changed. Danny wonders if he’s really that stupid to think he would wake up and have it all be a dream. He guesses it’s a normal reaction to things of this nature. He can’t say one way or another because nothing like this has ever hit him so close to home, where it hurts and has anger churning up acid in his gut as he takes another swallow of coffee.

Steve’s standing by the kitchen sink when he comes into the room, leaning against the counter with a bottle of water beside him. His hands are in his pockets and he’s looking down at the floor again, but when Danny walks in, he looks up. The sight is startling in broad daylight, his black eyes and his mouth—how many times did they fucking hit him? What else did they do? And oh, Danny’s pretty sure he knows and he wishes like hell he didn’t, but he does.

He doesn’t let on though, he can’t let on—this is not his story to tell and Steve damn sure doesn’t want him to know, so he pretends that he doesn’t. He will go on pretending right up until he can’t anymore or Steve tells him. As much as he would recoil at the details, Danny does kind of wish Steve would talk to him; that Steve felt like he could. Danny doesn’t know what he’d do if the situation was reversed, but he thinks he would tell—that he’d have to tell because it would eat him up inside not to and Steve would be the person he’d go to. But Danny isn’t Steve and he knows very well that they do not operate the same way at all.

“Morning,” he says and raises his cup of coffee at Steve who is looking over his head and to the left a bit. Anyone not really paying attention would think Steve was looking right at them. It kills Danny to see him trying so hard when the look in his eyes is still like ten miles of bad road in the dark and he knows he’s not sitting down because it probably hurts too much.

“Morning,” Steve says back a beat too slow, but he’s tracking better today. Much better.

Danny can practically hear the strained creak of Steve pulling himself back together the best he can and holding on like hell while he waits for the bubblegum patching to set. He can give him this, too; thinks that maybe Steve needs this, needs to stand up straight and try to look like he’s moving on. Honestly, Danny could buy it, too, if he didn’t know him so well and couldn’t see the stiff way he’s holding himself or the distance in his gaze that’s not precisely front and center. Everything is off-kilter with Steve, a whole of lot of almost, but not quite, right.

“If you’re going to shower then you need to head on up,” Steve says, sidling away when Danny draws a little too close to him.

Danny doesn’t even think Steve’s fully aware he’s doing it and that hurts, too. He doesn’t know if he’s hurting for himself—and on that front he has no right Danny thinks with uncommon self-directed viciousness—or for Steve.

“Why?” Danny asks him and stops where he’s at, giving Steve his space, his room to breathe.

Steve gives him an echo of his old pointed look and says, “Because we’re going to be late for work, that’s why.”

“Work? We? You’re telling me that you intend to go to work after… After two days of being kidnapped and beaten up?”

“Yes,” Steve says, going a little tense across his shoulders at the mention of those two days. “What else am I going to do, Danny? It’s not like I’ve never been. I’ve never been. Beaten up before.”

There it is, skipping like an old record and Danny knows what he almost said, but can’t actually say yet, if ever. His fingers itch to touch Steve and draw him down and close, but he knows better than to try. At the least, Steve would probably pull away from him so fast he’d likely hurt himself. At the worst, Steve’s likely to overreact and try to rip his throat out with his fingertips, a la Roadhouse.

“Steve, babe, listen to me, you need to rest and recuperate, not go charging off to work so you can get us shot at before the day’s out,” Danny tries, but Steve’s already shaking his head.

“I have to go to work,” he insists and Danny gets it, he does, but damn because no, Steve really doesn’t. Danny can’t even get within two feet of him, what the hell is he going to do with other people? How well can Steve’s hard won control hold out in the face of that?

The look Steve is giving him—technically the wall just over his right shoulder—tells Danny that they’re going to find out. “Okay then,” he says and he can pretend like everything’s normal if that’s what it takes. “I’m going to go shower then. Can you fix me a go-mug of Joe while I’m doing that?”

“Sure,” Steve says and actually seems relieved to have something, even such a small task, to do.

“Excellent,” Danny says and then reaches in his pocket to pull out his car keys. “You’ll be wanting these, too, I presume.”

Steve almost smiles at that and Danny counts it as a small, itty-bitty win and then tosses them carefully to Steve, who catches them easy as pie and sticks them in his own pocket.

“I’ll be down in a few,” Danny says and goes to get his shower, drinking from his now cold cup of coffee as he goes.

Danny takes his shower, notes the tiny smears and splats of blood on the walls and ends up washing them down before he ever gets around to washing his body. He rubs his thumb across the now clean, white tile and wonders at how awful it had to’ve been for Steve, standing here alone with the water beating down on him. Danny hasn’t seen the rest of his body, but he’s almost certain that it gives his poor face a run for its money and it makes him sick, coffee bubbling up in his throat at the thought. Then he realizes exactly why Steve’s skin was so red the night before and was a faded pink this morning. That realization is solidly confirmed when Danny runs out of hot water ten minutes into his shower and washes his hair while his teeth click together under the cold spray.

When Danny gets out of the shower, he opens the cabinet under the sink to grab a towel and pauses. He reaches back further and grabs the pinkish corner of the still wet washcloth that peeks out from behind the stack and along with it, partially drags out the bloody towel Steve stuffed behind the others. He manages to knock over the whole pile of towels in the process, but is only paying attention to the one in his hand. He pulls it out with shaking fingers and stares at it while he swallows around the lump in his throat.

“Chop-chop, Danny,” Steve calls from downstairs and he jumps at the sudden noise, dropping the towel.

“Shit,” Danny says under his breath and starts to stack the other towels again. When he’s done, he shoves the washrag and bloody towel back behind them, hiding them better than Steve had in his dazed state.

As he closes the cabinet door, he notices the blue box on the other side is open and his stomach curdles as a cold wave washes over him. That box, until now, has always been closed.

“Dear sweet mother,” Danny says and braces his hands on the sink ledge as he tries to catch his breath. “Dear sweet mother,” he says again.

Then he sucks it up, gets dressed in yesterday’s clothes, closes the cabinet and brushes his hair back. It’s not the way he likes it, not exactly, but it’s good enough. Then he straightens his tie, uses the toothbrush that he keeps there and when he’s done, he straightens his tie again. Then he smoothes his hair a bit.

Then he’s ready to go and ready to pretend like he didn’t see anything he’s just seen. After all, people do it everyday.

Steve’s already in the car when he comes downstairs and that doesn’t surprise him, he has no doubt that Steve doesn’t want Danny to see how much merely sitting down hurts. His go-mug of coffee is waiting in the cup holder, too. He slides in the passenger seat, gives Steve a smirk and waves a hand before picking up his fresh coffee.

“Drive on, Miss. Daisy,” Danny says.

“Miss. Daisy isn’t the one who did the driving,” Steve says.

The fact it takes Steve a mile and a half to reply with that doesn’t escape Danny’s notice at all.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Work goes about like Danny expected and Steve hoped it wouldn’t. Kono spots them the second they get off the elevator and the first words out of her mouth are, “Holy shit, Boss, who kicked your ass?”

She’s all wide smiles and dimples, happy to see him even if her dark eyes are concerned because he looks like crap; there’s no getting around that. He freezes though, only for a moment, but he feels his feet catch on the tile and his legs tense in preparation to catapult himself back towards the elevator doors. He thinks if he’s fast enough, he’ll slip inside of them before they close completely.

Then he makes himself stop, twists his face up into what feels like a smile—the way it pulls at his lips tells him that yes, he’s got the approximation correct. He’s not thinking about the box cutter blade in the corner of his mouth where it’s tugging the worst. He’s not thinking about the remarks about how he’d look good with Joker Grin just before the blade bit in a little bit, right at the corner and blood had welled up around it.

“You’ll look like him if you try to bite again, got it?”

It hadn’t been vanity that’d made Steve compliant, it had been knowing that if they cut his face like that then they’d cut all the way through and he would be not only scarred, but disfigured as well.

“Steve,” Danny hisses out of the corner of his mouth to get his attention.

Steve’s lost the thread again, he’s staring blankly at the way the light is hitting Kono’s hair and her smile is starting to falter a little, morphing into something else. He realizes it though and coughs, shifts his weight a little and then starts walking again, following along behind Danny who he’s using like a shield. Because he’s a fucking coward. Because Kono looks like she’s going to hug him. Because he—

Because he—

Because he does not want to be here after all. It’s too bright and too loud; it’s too everyday and normal and what they’ve always done except Steve doesn’t feel like he belongs here or anywhere else anymore. He’s drifting in a sea of noise and he has nowhere safe to go; no place he can go to ground and hide from this because it’s all inside of him.

“You feeling okay?” Kono asks, her smile totally gone now.

Steve licks his lips, blinks, one-two-(buckle my shoe) and says, “Yeah, I’m good. You think I look like I got my ass—”

(…is ours… then—)

“—handed to me, you should see the other guys,” Steve says as he cuts his eyes down and away.

They’re going to know. They really are, they can probably smell it on him (like sweat and spent—) and they’re all going to figure it out. He looks up again and towards his office door, wanting desperately to go in there and get away from all of their eyes. Chin’s come around now, Kono’s moving closer and she’s starting to smile again. Danny just looks worried and like he may yell in a moment for, well… Steve’s not sure.

He needs to get away.

“I’m going to go… and… do…” Steve tries, talking so low that the only one that hears him is Danny.

“You need to go back home,” Danny tells him, all concern and worry.

Home is the last place Steve needs right now; being alone in that empty house with all of its memories and his own thoughts. He has knives in that house. Guns. Hell, he’s got grenades there and Steve… Does… Not… Trust… Himself…

That is an affirmative.

Then he thinks: What if? What if they come back? What if they’re waiting for him again? What if they want more of him? They’ve taken just about all he’s got and he can’t—he’s barely alive right now. Breathing, walking, talking and dying every second it feels like sometimes when he can’t catch his breath.

He doesn’t want to be here and he doesn’t want to go home alone. He has nowhere, but he’s thought that already, hasn’t he?

That, too, is an affirmative.

“I’m going in my office,” Steve says abruptly right as Kono draws near them.

Danny takes her arm and steers her away, talking too loud and ignoring her, “Hey, man, what’s your deal?”

“Did I ever tell you that you look lovely first thing in the morning, Officer Kalakaua?” Danny says as he lets go of her to sling an arm around her shoulders. “And you smell great. What is that you’re wearing?”

“It’s called soap, now let me go,” Kono says and then elbows him none too gently in the gut.

He hears the click of Steve’s office door closing and does release her to step away. Kono’s giving him a bemused look that’s wanting to be downright irritated and Danny just smiles at her. He feels like he’s about to puke on his shoes. This is not good. This is, in fact, very fucking bad. Especially given Chin’s eerie silence and there goes that bullshit detector beep-beep-beeping away. He’s confident Chin doesn’t know exactly what is up, but Danny has no doubt he’s onto the fact that something is.

He bows his head, mouths, Fuck all, to himself and then gives them all his best smile. “Well, we got work to do, you heard the man,” Danny says, hoping like hell no one points out that Steve said nothing about work. He’s trying here, he really is, but this is short notice and Danny’s only a good liar when his head doesn’t feel like it’s about to explode as soon as his heart gets done breaking.

So he takes the smart man’s way out and heads for the safety of his own office before anyone can say anything to contradict him.

“Fuck,” Danny says once he’s in his office. He wipes at his mouth, wishing for a drink all of a sudden. “Congratulations, you’re a cliché,” he tells himself and then goes to sit behind his desk and pretend that he’s doing Important Cop Things in the continuing hope no one bothers him.

He risks a glance out into the bullpen just in time to catch Chin looking at him. He raises a speculative eyebrow at Danny then turns away. This is not going to go well, Chin has more experience even than Danny when it comes to this; he was on the force when Danny was still in high school. Add to that Chin isn’t a stupid man at all and yeah, if he’s around Steve for too long with the way he’s acting right now, the proverbial cat is going to get let out of the metaphorical bag.

Kono, he’s not too worried about her. She’s a smart cookie, too, but she has nowhere near the experience to peg what it is about Steve that’s off. She’s never seen—thankfully for now, but her time will come, Danny has no doubt—the real damage rape can cause, not just to a person’s body, but to everything about them. She’ll pick up that something isn’t right with Steve—she probably already has—but she won’t pick up what it is. At least that’s where Danny’s putting his money with grimly optimistic hopes.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lunchtime rolls around and Steve is still in his office. He’s been staring at his blank computer screen for the better part of two hours watching his sailboats. He’s learned that once he sits down if he’s still, so, so still then it doesn’t hurt as much. All of the pain settles down and he has to keep it calm or else it’ll start to bite at him again. So, yes, he found his little porthole out of reality and the pain of moving for awhile.

Sometimes his boats flicker though, like bad 35mm projector film and he’s stuck behind the taped up blackness of his eyelids and he can feel. Everything. Like it’s happening all over again and why—

Why him? That’s what he wants to know. What did he do so bad to deserve what happened? He chases that thought around and around and never finds a suitable answer; he can’t. All he can think is that it must’ve been something awful, he must’ve done something beyond terrible because no one deserves that kind of punishment unless they’re a really bad person.

Steve. Is a really bad person.

That’s the conclusion he comes to and it makes him sad-sad way down low and all over. It makes him sick again and he doesn’t want to deal with that. Nope. And he doesn’t have to, if he breathes real slow and doesn’t blink then he can have his boats back where all is calm; all is quiet.

Like a carol. Or a nursery rhyme. Maybe a fairytale.

His shoulder tics out a soft beat where it softly taps against the back of his desk chair

He’s thinking about climbing aboard one of those jaunty blue sailboats when his door opens. He hears it like an echo in a long tunnel and barely even registers it. He needs to pick which boat he wants to get on, he’s got a whole fleet of them to choose from, blue sails against the blue sky and all of it on the calm ocean, waves lapping gently at the hulls and rocking them to and fro—rock a bye, baby, in the sailboat—but there is no troubled wind here to blow and rock his boats. Just the smooth currents of the ocean to drag him under and maybe he should do that instead, slip beneath the wet skin of the water and sink into the deeper shades of blue there.

“Hey, you comin’ to lunch?”

Steve jerks and blinks, snaps his head to the side to look at who’s intruded on him. He was caught unawares, he had no idea (they were in his house waiting for him) anyone was even there. He meets Danny’s anxious eyes and his gaze slides away again as the shaking inside of him starts again. His fingers scrape gently against his knee as they curl into a loose fist that wants to be a hand that reaches for Danny so he can lean in close and tell him, It hurts.

“What?” Steve says instead.

“I asked if you’re coming to lunch,” Danny says. “Kono and Chin want to see you, you know and you’ve been hiding in here all day. I got nominated to come get you. They think you’re pissed at them or something.”

“I’m not mad,” Steve says and blinks rapidly to clear away the little boat hovering at the edge of his vision.

“That’s what I told them,” Danny says and tilts his head back towards the open door. “Come eat with us.”

“Sure,” Steve says.

He pushes back from his desk and grits his teeth when he moves all of his quieted pains again. A soft sound escapes his throat, but he pushes past it and rises, making himself stand up straight and tall like he’s supposed to even though with the way he aches down low, he wants to hunch over on himself some.

He doesn’t want to eat and he doesn’t want to see his friends, but this is what he does. This is normal this is more of people do it everyday, so that’s what he’s going to do. He’s got this.

“What’s for lunch?” he asks Danny.

“Cheeseburgers from Honcho’s,” Danny tells him.

Steve knows Danny’s watching him and wants to tell him to quit it, but Danny always watches him. To say something about it now would look suspicious. Steve bears the heavy weight of his eyes on him the best he can even though he can feel his skin crawling. He’s never minded Danny looking at him before, but now… now he does and he hates that, too. Very much he hates that. He can’t even look him in the eye(s that are crawling over his naked body) and that’s wrong. Wrong.

Of course, that’s the awesome thing about wrong, it’s always there to fill in when nothing’s right.

Steve thinks that makes excellent sense. He goes into the break room with Danny, thinking that little thought like a worm on a hook dipping into the warm-cool waters of the Pacific.

“I set your grub on the counter,” Danny tells him. He doesn’t go sit down though, he stands about five feet back from Steve, keeping an eye on him to make sure he actually goes and gets his food.

It takes him a second; it’s like this weird delay between hearing and reacting, Danny’s noticed, but he goes. He looks down at his bag and his fingers twitch a little, like he’s going to pick it up and then he doesn’t do anything at all. Danny presses his lips into a thin line and waits, hoping and giving Steve another ten seconds to do it on his own before he says something to… wake him up. That’s it. Steve’s like a sleepwalker, he realizes.

He also understands that maybe letting him drive wasn’t the smartest move, but he’d done fine with that. He’d been so intently focused on the road in front of him that he’d actually driven better than usual. But that’s neither here nor there and Danny will be letting him drive home again this evening, too, because Steve needs to have that control right now. And when the hell did he get so smart? Maybe never, but he knows Steve and that counts for a lot right now.

“Crap, I didn’t get any ketchup packets,” Kono says.

Danny looks over at her, watches her stand up and then goes rigid when she moves towards the counter towards Steve and the bottle of Heinz sitting just behind the bag with his burger in it that Steve’s finally moving to pick up.

It’s like watching in slow motion and Danny has never felt such dread seeing someone move. He knows what’s going to happen and he’s already moving to stop Kono, mouth open to say something—to flat out bellow it if need be—but he’s too late.

She lays her hand flat on Steve’s shoulder—something she’s done a hundred times before in passing or to get his attention without jabbing at him with her finger—and says, “Scootch over a—”

That’s all she gets out before Steve makes this scared-angry sound in the back of his throat and jumps like he’s been burned. Then he’s whipping around, one hand going for Kono’s throat as he draws his other fist back to punch her.

“Steve!” Danny and Chin yell at the same time.

Kono’s eyes fly wide and she throws herself backwards hard, landing on the floor with a grunt as Steve’s movement sends him reeling forward before he seems to focus. Before he seems to see what he almost did and then he throws himself back against the counter, eyes wide and expression horrified.

“Kono, I’m sorry,” he says and moves like he’s going to help her up. He wants to, he wants to pick her up off the floor and apologize over and over. All he felt was a hand on him, right over one of the burns and it hurt and it wasn’t supposed to be there and it wasn’t her touching him. It wasn’t. But it was her that he almost attacked, that he almost choked one-handed and punched in the face.

Chin’s there now, looking at him with an angry expression as he helps Kono up where Steve couldn’t and he backs away on shaky legs. “I’m sorry, I am so, so sorry. I didn’t know it was you. I thought—”

“That’s enough,” Danny says as he steps in front of him, hands up. “It was a mistake, an honest mistake, that’s all.”

“I didn’t mean it. She… It wasn’t… I’m sorry,” Steve says again. He shrugs his shoulder, trying to shake off the lingering feeling of her warm hand on his sore skin. He doesn’t mean to do that either, but he wants it off just as much as he wants to take back what he did. The potential for what he could’ve done.

“Go back to your office and we’ll worry about it later,” Danny is telling him. He reaches back and picks up Steve’s lunch before he resumes herding him out of the break room. “Come on, you can eat your lunch in there. She’s okay, no harm, no foul. It was just a mistake. You’re okay, right, Kono?”

“Yeah, I’m okay, but…” Kono is rubbing at her lower back and looking at Steve like she’s never seen him before.

“Good. See? Everything is hunky-dory,” Danny tells Steve.

Danny gets Steve out of the break room and walks beside him once they’re in the hall. “I’m going to put your lunch on your desk and you eat, okay? Don’t worry about that back there, it’s not your fault.”

“I didn’t—” Steve tries and hunches his shoulders in as he stuffs his hands into his pockets where they can’t hurt anyone.

“I know you didn’t, babe, no one’s mad at you here,” Danny says. That may very well be a lie, but Steve doesn’t need to know any of that right now.

They walk back into his office and Danny puts his food down on the desk like he said he was going to and then he smiles at Steve. He looks so fucking sad and worn down that Danny doesn’t know what to do. He knows what he’d like to do, but given what happened with Kono, he’s thoroughly certain now that it’s a bad idea to try and touch Steve.

“Go on, eat,” Danny tells him. “I’ll come get you when it’s time to clock out.”

“Danny… I…” Steve says and his face looks like it’s on the verge of crumpling.

“You’re okay, everything’s okay,” Danny tells him with another smile.

He feels his hand start to lift to touch anyway, but stops it in time. Instead he watches helplessly as Steve sags all over then turns away to move towards his desk in that slow, careful-stiff way that hurts Danny to look at.

Danny rakes a hand through his hair and turns reluctantly to go back to the break room and check on Kono and do damage control if he has to. He hears the crumple of paper as Steve opens the bag with his lunch inside as he’s pulling the door closed and is thankful for small favors.

~*~*~*~*~*~

After the disaster that was lunch and Danny spending most of the time fussing over Kono until she’d glared at him and told him it was fine and that shit happens, the day goes quietly. He’d almost say that it goes solemnly, but maybe that last part is just him. Steve stays shut up in his office and Danny stays shut up in his. Kono and Chin do the same thing. The place is silent, so silent Danny can hear the buzzing of the fly that’s managed to get into his office until he takes his shoe off and gives it a too-hard wallop when it lands on the edge of his desk. The sound of that booms in the room, startling even him and he’s the one who was wielding the footwear-cum-impromptu-flyswatter. It’s the most work he’s done all day, really and he finds some small bit of satisfaction in turning the little housefly into bug jam on the heel of his sensible loafer.

There isn’t much work to be done, the only case they’ve had the past few days was Steve’s kidnapping and now that one is solved—mostly, not really, but he’s present (kind of) and accounted for (sort of) at least in body. To fill the time he types up Steve’s statement about his kidnapping from the disjointed bit he told him. Danny fills in the blanks the best he can, bullshitting his way through some of the form and he calls it good; no one’s going to know. Danny excelled at creative writing in school, he likes words a lot, so that part comes easily.

He does not list all of Steve’s injuries that he can see. He does not type “the blue box under the sink was open this morning”.

He does not tell the truth: He does not say: “They hurt him so fucking bad and if I find them, I will kill them.”

When he’s done, he prints it out and dutifully files it away. He marks the case as an ongoing investigation, but knows that unofficially at least, this is one that they’re going to be leaving alone. He doesn’t need Steve to tell him to drop it to know that’s exactly what he plans to do. Some things are better left forgotten—or with an attempt at forgetting. So far that doesn’t seem to be working for Steve and he’d think maybe Steve would want revenge, but he’s not getting that vibe. This is not like Hesse or Wo Fat, this is something else entirely and Steve seems to be operating under the idea of this being a thing that’s better put down and left to squirm untouched, winding its way through everything with its silent-secretive presence.

Danny can understand the reasoning, if there’s any reasoning at all beyond not wanting to relive it. He’s seen and heard in every unspoken word that Steve doesn’t want anyone to know. Danny thinks it’s shame. Maybe even guilt.

He cannot bear the thought of the bastards getting away. He cannot do it. He cannot stand to see that look in Steve’s eyes and know there are people responsible for putting it there and getting away with it.

Steve may not want revenge, but Danny does. He wants to avenge.

With a tired-bored-worried-angry sigh—such a small sound to carry so much feeling—Danny turns off his computer monitor and rubs at his eyes. He’s thinking in an not-thinking way, letting his thoughts come and go as they please in little bubbles and streams. He needs a plan, a place to start and he has no idea because this case does seem kind of hopeless. Steve didn’t get a look at any of them, said they were wearing masks and so he’s got nothing to go on, not really. He needs something though and he knows that he’s not going to get any kind of usable answer from their victim only witness.

He feels helpless to do anything when that’s all he wants to do. That feeling is twisting through him like a tiger in his gut, churning itself to butter with the mad circles it is running. He does not think he can outsmart this beast, however. He is not a folktale hero. He’s just a haole cop without a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of.

It’s the kind of thing that can drive a man mad.

“Coffee, I need coffee,” Danny says to himself and gets up from behind his desk where he’s been sitting for over two hours straight.

His back is aching from the uncomfortable chair and the remnants of his night spent on the couch. When he stretches and then bends backwards the sound of his back popping sounds like a loud cap gun going off, pop-pop-pop-poppitypoppop. With a grimace, Danny straightens back up and heads to the break room to see if there’s any coffee made already, likely burnt and tasting more like old motor oil than coffee, but anything will do.

Danny’s tiny dream is dashed when he finds the pot cold and empty and has to make a fresh pot. He tells himself it’ll be better this way anyway, fresh and hot without that sludgy texture that comes from coffee sitting on a burner for hours.

When he comes back a few minutes later, mug of coffee hot and steaming in his hand, he finds Chin waiting for him in the chair across from his desk. Danny nearly drops his mug and then steels himself for what he’s pretty sure is coming next. He shuts the door behind himself then turns back to face Chin who is looking at him with his “the world is a grim and serious place” expression firmly affixed.

Fuck. He knew though, didn’t he? Yes, yes he certainly did and now here’s the proof right here. Steve should’ve stayed at home until he was able to at least project the image of being more okay than he obviously is. But no, he had to be a stubborn jackass and come to work. Danny wonders, belatedly, if maybe he didn’t so much want to come to work as he didn’t want to stay at home alone and feels instantly guilty for thinking of him as a jackass.

“To what do I owe the honor?” Danny asks casually as he slides back behind his desk to face Chin.

“What really happened to him?” Chin asks. Leave it to him to cut straight to the.

“He got kidnapped,” Danny lies. “They beat the crap out of him—as you have well seen—and then turned him loose.”

“Bullshit,” Chin says with uncommon anger. His voice is still level and low, but there’s a bite to the words; a sharpness not usually there. “I checked up on him a little while ago and it’s like he’s not even here, Danny. It’s like talking to a—”

Puppet, Danny supplies silently. A puppet with no ventriloquist to make its mouth move.

“—wall,” Chin finishes. “He won’t look at me and it takes him way too long to answer even simple questions. That is not what Steve is like after a fight. He’s trained for that. So, I want answers and I want them now or I’m going to go ask Steve myself.”

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Danny says, his own temper flaring and he forces it back down. This is not Chin’s fault and he’s got the experience to see, Danny’s known that all along and Steve’s like a walking advertisement for trauma right now.

“Then tell me,” Chin says, his eyes actually softening at Danny’s biting remark. “Tell me what I already think I know.”

Thing is, Danny doesn’t want to say it. If he says it then it makes what he knows already real for real. If he utters that one hateful word then he can never take it back and he’s telling a secret he’s not even technically supposed to know.

He takes a deep breath and pinches the bridge of his nose hard enough that he can feel the trimmed crescents of his fingernails biting into it and hurting. It’s a tiny little pain that distracts him from the throbbing ache of his pulse beating in his temples.

“They… Chin, they, the guys that snatched Steve, they…” Danny gives him a helpless look and flaps his hands uselessly. “They hurt him.”

“You mean they raped him,” Chin says after a few minutes that Danny has listened to tick out on the clock sitting on his desk.

He can’t speak, so he nods instead. Finally, he says, “Yeah. Steve… I’m—we’re—not supposed to know about it. He thinks he’s hiding it.”

Chin shakes his head and Danny can see the muscle in his jaw jumping. He’s gone stiff sitting there, shoulders back and bowstring taut. Again, he doesn’t speak for a long time, lost in thought and anger and Danny can dig that. Oh, he can dig that very well.

More minutes tick by and Danny fills them up with thoughts of Steve sitting alone in his office, staring at empty space. He wonders if he can even hear the ticking of the similar clock sitting on his own desk or if he’s so far removed from everything present that even that sound is lost on him.

When Chin does speak again, all he says is, “We’ll get the bastards.”

He stands up then and nods at Danny and Danny wants to hug him because he thinks maybe they can do it. Instead, he says, “I think Steve wants this one left alone.”

“Then Steve doesn’t have to know,” Chin says calmly and Danny can hear a different edge to his voice now. That, too, he can dig very much.

“No he doesn’t,” Danny says.

Chin nods again and then turns and leaves, pulling the door shut behind him.

The rest of the day passes in the same silence as before.

~*~*~*~*~*~

When the day finally ends, Danny goes and gets Steve out of his office, tells him it’s time to go. Steve blinks at him and Danny’s about to repeat himself when he slowly levers himself up out of his chair with a wince.

Danny follows along behind Steve, keeping his eye on him like he can do anything at all to protect Steve in this brittle state. As they walk, Steve touches the wall from time to time with just the tips of his fingers, like he’s not sure it’s really even there. Or maybe he’s reassuring himself that it is.

That one little act though makes Danny want more than anything to put Steve in his pocket and keep him safe until he’s better, until he’s back with the rest of the world. But Steve’s too big, he would never fit in a million years and no matter how much Danny wants to, he cannot fix this.

So instead of doing anything sweepingly heroic and grandiose, Danny lets Steve drive them back home. He fixes them supper while Steve’s in the shower that Steve hardly touches. He doesn’t comment on the tender looking redness of Steve’s skin afterward while he eats what little he does hunched over his plate, conversation an impossible thing.

When Steve thanks him for cooking almost absently, Danny only smiles his best smile and says, “You’re welcome.”

He sleeps on the couch again and doesn’t even try to go to bed with Steve like he would otherwise. He misses the heat of Steve’s body and the way he would wrap around him in his sleep until he was actually in danger of rolling right over Danny. He wonders if Steve is sleeping at all and if he is, if he’s having nightmares. He hopes like hell he isn’t because he can’t soothe away any terrors that may come; he simply is not allowed to right now. Eventually he sleeps and dreams his own uneasy dreams where he can never be there when he’s needed, not for anyone, but most of all not for Steve.

When he wakes up sometime in the wee hours of the morning to Steve moving around upstairs then the shower kicking on, Danny rolls onto his side and shivers. He imagines scalding water pouring over all of that beautiful skin that no one ever had any right to bruise like that.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Day by day, Steve gradually starts to come back to himself on the outside. He does it by shutting off the inside. It’s not intentional, not exactly and it starts without him having any say in it at all. Once he realizes it’s working though, he fosters it and lets it grow. He’s a man made of circuitry and blinking lights, the hum of a motor in his head, moving him forward with a skeleton made of titanium alloy; muscles naught but wires and he feels no pain.

Underneath the façade he’s taken to wearing like a new outfit, the days still feel too long and the lights are still too bright. He’s like an alien in his own life and he feels nothing except empty because of it or at least in part. He hates that aspect as much as he welcomes it, but he keeps telling himself that it’s okay because it works. It works and if he can’t be alive then he can at least be functional. Mostly that reasoning gets him through, too, except for when it doesn’t, which is when he’s alone and all his walls seem to fall down around his ears and leave him a raw, bloody thing all over again. When he’s alone he’s not a machine, he’s not even a person, he is still just a hole.

Space grows between him and his friends like weeds; choking, choking weeds or a hand on his throat pressing against his windpipe. He tries to be who he was before with them, but to function at all means that he cannot be that man anymore. He grows distant and aloof, always on task, but never in the mood for conversation. When they aren’t at a scene or working with evidence in the bullpen, Steve stays in his office with the door shut and locked so no one interrupts him. In there he can stare blankly at the wall, watching his sailboats without anyone bothering him or expecting something. He stands apart from them when they’re all together and from Kono especially; who he takes great pains to keep as much distance between himself and her as he possibly can lest he nearly hurt her again. Lest she touch him again. The very idea of anything like that happening frightens Steve, but even then he still doesn’t miss the bewildered hurt in her eyes that are gradually becoming as cool and distant as his own when they’re turned on him.

Of all of them, he keeps Danny close—as close as he can keep anyone these days. He holds onto him with as much might as he can muster. Steve needs him in a way that he would’ve found hard to define even when he was better; when he was real. Danny’s there, too and Steve is so thankful for that that it chokes him sometimes when he tries to find the words to tell Danny how much it means to him to still be able to see his face in the morning sun even if he can’t bring himself to touch it.

Danny’s taken to cooking supper in the evenings; recipes he’s called and gotten from his mother (which has improved Danny’s culinary skills immensely). It’s good, home-cooked food, pot roast and turkey tetrazzini; lasagna and chicken noodle soup with big hunks of breast meat floating amongst the egg noodles and carrots. Steve can barely eat any of it, he feels sick to his stomach most of the time; a vaguely queasy and roiling sensation that he’s afraid of upsetting. That and well, he really doesn’t want to eat. It’s getting easy to tell food no over and over again and food, unlike people, listens to what he says.

He’s learning to smile at Danny’s jokes again even though he sees the humor in almost nothing anymore and he nods at the appropriate intervals while he picks at his food. When Danny tells him he’s going to meet the others for a beer, Steve does not scream at him to, Stay. He never asks Steve if he wants to come with him and Steve thinks that is because Danny knows he’d decline the invitation.

Instead, he waits up until Danny comes home again and only then does he put his gun back on the nightstand, turn out the lamp and a lay down. Lying in the darkness, Steve’s hands reach for nothing, wanting something to hold onto and feeling so very empty. As his fingers twist uselessly into the sheets he listens to Danny moving around the house, getting ready for another night on the couch. Steve wants to tell him how much he loves him for all of the little things, but if he did that then he’d have to tell Danny the rest and he can’t.

His life is starting to be constructed from many things he can’t do, won’t do and wishes he could do. It’s another way of dying while still being alive. It eats away at Steve, but no matter what he does, he still can’t do anything. He has become a prisoner in his own life, walling himself in to keep everything else out. It’s a terribly lonely way to go on with things; the thought like a suicide note banging around in the silent house: The sadness will last forever.

He’s really starting to believe that’s true, too.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Danny goes back to the office every evening and has started staying later and later every night, but he doesn’t tell Steve that’s what he’s doing. He tells Steve he’s going out to grab a beer with Chin or Kono after work. He always goes home with Steve at the end of the day and sits at the table with him, watching him pick at his dinner. It’s only been a few days, but Danny would already swear that Steve’s getting thinner, his cheeks hollowing out and eyes sinking into shadowy sockets. It’s probably only his imagination for now because he watches how much Steve doesn’t eat like a hawk. If he keeps going like this though, it won’t be in Danny’s head any longer; it’ll start to show.

Meals remain mostly silent—Steve picking and Danny watching him pick while trying to get him to eat more in as subtle of a way as he can swing—even as Steve seems to be getting himself back together. Danny knows it’s a bullshit front because he sees all of Steve’s tells—his prolonged silences, the way it still sometimes takes him way too long to respond to a simple question. The way he keeps a table or desk or counter between them and when none of that’s available; the invisible barrier is still there.

There’s an ever-widening gulf opening up between them that Danny is helpless to span. It doesn’t make him love Steve any less, but it makes him grieve and ache for everything that has been stolen and it doesn’t seem like it will get any better. Still in love with Steve or not, he can see the inevitable outcome of this if things keep on this way and no matter how he looks at it, he is always the bad guy.

Steve clings to him in different ways though he never touches him. He holds on with his anxious eyes when Danny makes his excuses of going to get a beer or have a game of pool with the others. Worse than that, he looks afraid at the idea of Danny being gone or of being left alone at any rate. The man who Chin said had been born without a fear gene is terrified of being left alone in his own home now. It leaves Danny cold with rage that runs so deep it has started to sink into his very marrow.

It doesn’t matter how late it is when Danny comes back to the house, there is always a light on upstairs in Steve’s bedroom and he knows he’s waited up, listening for the sound of the Camaro. That same light winks out around the time Danny shuts the car door and Steve never says a word about the late hours Danny is keeping these days. It’s for the best, as long as Steve believes the lies—which are for his own good, given what he’s really up to—then Danny won’t have to pad them.

Danny’s taken up the mantle of playing Steve’s very own Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, standing between Steve and people who don’t know any better and may try to touch him. When he’s not doing that then he’s working at night with Chin. Between all of that and spending what time he has left with Grace, Danny’s exhaustion is almost as deep as his rage, but not quite. His anger gets him through when his tired body would otherwise shut down on him and make him sleep more. It shows though, around the tight set of his mouth and in the bruised circles under his eyes, the slight shaking in his hands from too much caffeine. In the silences that he’s starting to let stretch out longer and longer between him and Steve.

His back aches all the time from sleeping on the couch, which is actually very comfortable for a couch; more comfortable than the pull-out in his apartment. Danny’s starting to think it has less to do with the couch itself than it does the fact he is never relaxed now, muscles knotted tight under his skin. He’s stopped even entertaining ideas of crawling into bed beside Steve and has determined that when—if—Steve wants him back upstairs with him then it has to be his call; Danny will not force the issue, it’s not his place or his right.

One of the things that keeps Danny going though, that keeps Danny hoping, is that every morning when he wakes up there is a cup of coffee waiting for him on the table. Sometimes there’s buttered toast and sausage, too. He knows that Steve hasn’t forgotten about him; that Steve still gives a damn even if he is a mess right now.

Danny holds onto that like a talisman.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Steve can’t sleep much anymore and he’s running himself half to death every morning. The rest of the day is spent focusing on the muscle twinges and the throbbing in the soles of his feet from pounding the ground without mercy. He does it as a way to anchor himself, the pain is a tether that keeps Steve attached to the world instead of floating away; it feeds his machinery.

The cut on his foot gets infected and he’s almost glad of it because tending it gives him one more thing to occupy himself with in the small hours of the morning before he goes running. When it does finally start to heal in earnest, despite the abuse he heaps on it, Steve almost cuts it open again because when it’s gone for good then he’s got one less thing to do.

Mostly though, he’s still numb aside from the constant shaking of his insides that sometimes feels more like scurrying; like insect legs scratching around in his belly. He imagines cockroaches nesting in his guts and teeming within him. He thinks about how cockroaches like nasty places and rotten, ruined things and he makes a fine home for their skitter-scratch-scrabbling hordes. He remembers the gentle, almost coaxing way one nudged at the blood-crusted corner of his mouth while he laid there in the dark right before it started to eat the scab. He thinks about how even more crawled over his body and feasted on his sores, on the filth covering him; how he became an insect buffet when they would leave him alone.

It’s enough to have him hastily rolling out of bed to go throw up the meager little bit of food he forced himself to eat for supper. The still healing (cockroach-nibbled) cut burns and cracks open with the force of it and later, after he’s brushed his teeth and gargled, Steve sits in his bed and picks the scab off completely. Then he digs his fingers into it until his mouth and fingertips are wet with blood. It distracts him wonderfully and all he has to think about is the pain of it. It’s actually kind of soothing.

When the sun finally starts to rise, Steve gets out of bed and pulls on his running shoes. He still isn’t running in shorts or a tank top; it’s another one of those things he can’t do yet. Maybe never again because the burns will leave scars and people will still be able to see. People will know that Steve was a human ashtray, that he’d shook from the pain of it as they’d ground the cigarettes out on his back and ass while they’d taunted him, told him that 5-0 couldn’t do shit.

“Look at you, all laid out like a fuck-doll. Man, you ain’t shit and neither is 5-0. You think we can’t hold down that pretty bitch you got working for you, too? Huh? How about that, what if we take her for a test drive next?”

He cups cold water in his hands and wonders how he got from his bedroom to the bathroom without realizing it. Then he splashes the water on his face, carefully washes away the blood from his fingers and mouth, blots it all dry and heads downstairs.

Danny is laid out on the couch in his usual position, tie over his eyes and snoring. Steve watches him in the dim early dawn light and frowns as he inches closer. This is a mean-spirited game he plays with himself, seeing how close he can draw to Danny, hand reaching out with the desire to touch, before the quaking inside of him grows unbearable.

He never gets very close and this morning is no exception. Steve cups his hands over his eyes and presses the heels of his palms against them until he sees spots. Then with a shaking exhalation, he takes his hands away again and creeps on by Danny and out his newly fixed front door.

He’s running as soon as hears the latch catch and doesn’t stop again until his sides are heaving and burning, his muscles verging on cramping and his clothes are soaked through with sweat.

It still doesn’t feel like enough and he limps home feeling like if he could only go one more mile. One more then maybe he could make it all go away.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Danny and Chin are next to nowhere with laps full of nothing in their investigation. All they’ve really got to work with is a call from Kamekona.

“Say it’s not so,” Kamekona had said to Danny when he’d answered his phone. He’d sounded stricken and disbelieving. “Say nobody really took McGarrett and did him dirty-wrong.”

Danny had gone still at the sound of those words, jaw clamping down hard. Of course the assholes were bragging about it; telling anyone in the underground that would listen about what they had done. Then he’d snapped back to reality and said, “You think anyone’s gonna take Steve and do that to him? What kind of bullshit are you listening to, man?”

“I dunno, lotsa rumors floatin’ around though,” Kamekona had said, but Danny had heard the relief in his voice. “I keep hearin’ through all kinds of grapevines that the guys that took McGarrett did a lot more than knock him around. I’m not wantin’ to believe that either because who could take down He-Man, you know? But people keep talkin’ and me, I’m sorry, I started listenin’. I had to call and find out.”

“He’s fine, they punched him up some, but nothing like what these sources of yours are saying,” Danny had said. “Someone’s floating an ugly rumor about Super SEAL. You know who it was started this nonsense?”

He’d felt like he was standing outside of himself as he was talking; thinking, fuck, fuck, fuck over and over. This was a chance though, if Kamekona knew who had started talking then maybe he and Chin could start closing in.

“Nah, I don’t got no individual names or nothin’,” Kamekona had told him. “All I got is a gang, group callin’ themselves The Crooked Spoons. They started up here a few months back, supplyin’ dope to tourists mostly, college kids on break and stuff like that. Deal in smack and coke, I think.”

Danny had nodded, filing the name away for research. Until then he hadn’t heard a whisper about any gang called that, so that did mean they were fairly new, but they were also goddamned ambitious and interested in making a name for themselves. Pity for them, Danny had thought as that cold rage had grown into frost beneath his skin.

“Thanks for the info,” Danny had told him and he’d meant it from the bottom of his heart, too. Kamekona was great for gossip like that. He’d hated that he hadn’t even thought about the doers talking about it though; bragging and letting people know that they’d taken on the head of 5-0 and beat him down until they’d damn near broken him.

“Not a problem,” Kamekona had said. “For this, I’m happy to cooperate; you don’t joke about that kind of thing. It’s not cool at all. You want me to tell people comes totin’ tales to me that it’s all a pile of crap?”

“You’re damn straight I do,” Danny had said and he’d been having that problem with talking through his teeth again. He’d been doing it so much lately that his jaw had started to hurt a bit.

“Can do and tell the big man I’m glad he’s okay,” Kamekona had said.

“I’ll do that, you take it easy,” Danny had told him.

“Always, brah, always,” Kamekona had responded with a laugh before hanging up.

Danny had gone to get Chin the moment the call ended.

It’s the lead they try to follow up on that night and find a lot of frustration for their troubles. Chin’s starting to look as worn out as Danny, but he’s also as determined. The problem with this new lead is that sure, people have heard of The Crooked Spoons, but so far there’ve been no arrests made associated with the gang and no one knows names—at least not real names. They’ve got one street name, Maggot, but when they look into that, they discover that a disturbing amount of criminals fancy that particular nickname. Over 80 in the greater Honolulu area alone. It’s more than a little disgusting when Danny thinks about it.

“Damnit!” Danny says after looking over the list for about the fourteenth time. “What are these assholes, fucking ghosts?”

“They’re sneaky bastards, I give them that,” Chin says. “Careful.”

“How can you say they’re careful after what they did?” Danny asks, too mad and tired to think straight at the moment.

“They don’t tell anyone their real names for one thing,” Chin says. “For another, they wore masks.”

“Fuck them,” Danny snarls and paces back and forth, hands fisted in his hair. “They’re going to fucking get away with this, aren’t they? No matter what we do or how hard we try, they are.”

“Hey, don’t talk like that,” Chin says. “They’re careful, but they’re also arrogant and that’ll trip them up if nothing else does. Especially right now, they’ve got to be so full of themselves they’re nearly exploding with it.”

Danny comes damn close to hitting the wall at those words; at knowing why they’re so proud right now. He knows Chin is right though and that eventually their cockiness is going to be their downfall. The name of this game is Patience and he’s got to have more of that because he needs it. Even though he doesn’t want to wait, he can, for this he could wait a thousand years just so the day finally comes when he can pin their asses to the fucking wall.

That calms him and he nods. “Yeah, you’re right and I know it. I’m not thinking too straight here right now.”

“I think we should probably call it a night,” Chin says by way of agreement. “We’re not going to get much sleep as it is.”

“What time is it?” Danny asks. He’s been here for hours now, but he’s started to lose any really solid concept of time he once possessed. He knows “light” and “dark” and that’s pretty much it lately.

“After three,” Chin says after a glance at his watch. “We definitely need to clear all this up and get things back to normal then call it quits for now.”

Danny only nods again, hearing the time seems to have made his exhaustion settle over him like a blanket. He yawns and then sets about clearing their search history the way Chin showed him to while he does other, more complicated things. Something about backtracking Danny’s deletions and clearing out cookies or some shit like that.

By the time they’re done setting everything back to rights and hiding the fact they were up here at all, it’s closer to four in the morning and Danny groans when Chin tells him that. “Forget I asked,” he says around another yawn.

Chin laughs softly and claps him on the back. “It’s forgotten.”

“You are a kind and generous man, Chin Ho Kelly,” Danny tells him as they shuffle their tired way to the elevator.

They ride down and exit the building together in silence, branching off in opposite directions once they’re outside with little farewell waves. Danny gets in the Camaro, rests his forehead against the steering wheel and punches the seat beside his thigh twice to vent some of his frustration. Then he cranks the car and drives slowly and very carefully back to Steve’s.

The light upstairs is on as usual and Danny sighs as he looks up at it before getting out of the car. He makes sure he shuts the door hard enough Steve can hear the faint echo and sure enough, a couple of seconds later the light goes out. Danny looks up at the dark rectangle left behind until he dozes off on his feet and nearly falls over.

He takes that as his cue to go inside and make his way in the dark to the couch that has become his bed. He lies down with a heavy, pained sigh and only then realizes there’s a pillow from the bed upstairs there instead of the skinny little square thing he’s been using that’s killing his neck.

Thank you, he mouths into the dark, knowing it for the consideration and small apology it was meant to be. His hope breathes softly inside of him as Danny drifts into a thankfully dreamless sleep.

~*~*~*~*~*~

One night six days after Steve came back he does go out with the team. Kono’s birthday is on the Saturday coming up and they all take her out as a pre-birthday celebration—medium-sized due to the fact the next day is a work day. Steve sits in the noisy restaurant with his back to the wall and his eyes on the crowd while he half-listens to the others talking back and forth. They all seem so happy, they’re smiling and laughing like nothing’s changed. Steve doesn’t get it, but he laughs along, too, when he thinks about it. He’s usually a beat too slow or half an octave too loud, but no one seems to notice.

He shoves his food around his plate and uses his fork to mash his baked potato’s innards into what could probably make a fairly sturdy temporary adhesive. He wants to pick at his mouth, but he keeps his hands away, promising himself that he can do that later. It’ll be a reward for making it through dinner and conversation without running out of the room like the pussy he’s apparently become. The raucous laughter from the next table seeps under his skin like poison and his shoulder gives a hard and sudden jerk at the sound. He only grits his teeth and works harder at tuning it out.

Danny sits to Steve’s right, chair scooted a hair closer than anyone else’s and drinks coffee after coffee. He shoots the shit with Chin and Kono, who tried to include Steve in the conversation at first, but soon gave up because it wasn’t happening. Chin doesn’t force the issue because he knows what’s really going on and Kono doesn’t for just the opposite reason; she has no idea and is only hurt because of the way Steve’s taken to treating her since the day he nearly attacked her. Danny knows what Steve’s doing as well as he can understand Kono’s hurt confusion. With that situation, he doesn’t know what to do at all. Which is basically the story of his life these days: Danny Williams; useless and ineffectual.

He can tell that Steve is trying, he’s always trying now when everything used to seem so effortless for him. A week ago, he’d have been right in the middle of their bull session, laughing and joking along with them; focusing mainly on giving Danny grief to see how long it took him to go off on a rant that would last for the remainder of the meal. Now though, he shoves his food around his plate and hardly ever takes an actual bite of it as his eyes scan the room, looking for any possible threat. He always did that, but before it was more subtle and once the situation had been assessed, noted and filed away then he’d relax. Now he’s sitting as rigid as a statue, trying to smile and pretend he’s fine.

Danny wants to grab him and shake him until he really is. He wants to hug him, kiss the fading bruises on his jaw that Danny’s realized are from fingers. He wants to tell him, It’s alright, but he’s never forgotten what Gillian Bates said to him, so he holds his tongue.

He blinks away all those thoughts, looks at Kono and says, “So when are you going to tell us about these big, secret plans you have with your girlfriends for your birthday that us lowly schlubs aren’t invited to?”

Kono gives him a big grin and turns her beer up for a swig. “It’s not a secret if I tell you.” She leans on the table with her elbows, voice lowering to a pseudo-conspiratorial whisper. “But if you must know, we intend to get a bottle of tequila and some strippers and have ourselves a no boys allowed party.”

“I should just cover my ears right now,” Chin says as he pulls a face.

“I concur, but instead, why not let the lady tell us more so that she may talk herself right into a hole, thus revealing her true intentions of having her friends over to sip very ladylike at wine coolers and watch Must Love Dogs,” Danny says, making a “go on” gesture at Kono who’s smirking at him.

“You wish, Williams,” she says back. “Must Love Dogs may be your favorite movie, but I’m more of a Die Hard kind of lady. And wine coolers are for wusses.”

Danny does laugh at that and shakes his head. “I keep forgetting, you’re not the average chick.”

“Damn straight I’m not,” Kono says and offers her fist to Danny for a bump.

Danny does so with another laugh and then cuts his eyes to look at Steve again. He’s intently focused on the mangled remains of his baked potato, mashing it down and down some more, packing it tightly within its aluminum foil wrapped skin.

“I think it’s dead,” Danny says to him and Steve looks up like he’s been slapped.

“What?” he asks and blinks rapidly.

“The potato, I think you’ve killed it, now let it rest in gooey peace, huh?” Danny says, smiling to let him know he’s teasing, his voice low so maybe the others won’t hear him.

Steve grins, a flickering thing and huffs out a laugh that’s not actually real. “Yeah, I… yeah.”

He lays his fork aside and folds his hands in his lap, not sure what to do with them now. Danny smiles at him again, the expression genuine, but touched with something Steve can’t put a name to. After another few minutes, he conjures up his sailboats and watches them while around him, life goes on as before. Steve thinks he should resent that and in a way he does, but mostly he’s interested in his boats and what’s painted on their sails today.

~*~*~*~*~*~

They end up sitting in the restaurant until half an hour before the place closes for the night, talking and eating the cake they had the waitress bring out to surprise Kono with. By the time they leave, Danny is wired to the gills on sugar and caffeine, practically bouncing out of the restaurant. He’s got the jitters really bad right now and vows to cut back on the stuff tomorrow, but he’s pretty sure he’s setting himself up for failure.

They all tell Kono goodnight in the parking lot, Danny and Chin grumping about how she got the last parking space in the lot. She grins at them. “I’m blessed with good luck, what can I say?” she says, biting back her laughter and trying to look serious. “You all enjoy your walk back to the pay lot across the street, okay?”

“What? You’re not even going to offer to shuttle us over there?” Danny squawks at her.

“Hey, you walked here and now you can walk back,” she tells him, shoulders starting to shake a little. “You could use the exercise, those malasadas are starting to show, man.”

“Heartless!” Danny declares and throws his hands in the air. Lowering them, he waves her off. “Go on then, you cruel siren and leave us hiking back to our cars that we drove here for your birthday.”

She does crack up at that and gives him a nod. “Suit yourself, but if you’d asked a little nicer I’d have totally drove you guys back. Too late now.”

With one last laugh, she gets in her car, cranks it and backs out of the slot with a quick toot of her horn that makes Steve nearly come out of his skin where he’s standing next to Danny.

“Meanie!” Danny yells after her receding headlights.

Kono’s hand appears out her window and she waves a shaka sign at them as she turns into the street, disappearing towards her apartment.

“Can you believe what just happened here?” Danny says to anyone who happens to be listening. “That woman is a ball-buster, I tell you this now.”

“I can totally believe it,” Chin says, grinning fondly and shaking his head. “I’m related to her after all. We saw this coming by the time she was four years old and we pegged it for sure.”

“Spankings, you all should’ve taken turns giving her spankings as a child to break her of those evil habits,” Danny says as they start walking.

“Right, she’d have decked us even then,” Chin says. “I think it may’ve made her worse, tell you the truth.”

“Probably,” Danny says with a sigh. He glances over to see if Steve’s coming and he is, walking beside Danny with about a three foot gap between them.

He looks back at Chin to see him watching Steve, too, dark eyes even darker with worry. He and Danny share a look and Chin nods at him as they walk across the street: We’ll make this right, that nod seems to say. They’ve decided to take a break for tonight though to try and get some sleep so they can start all over again tomorrow, a little fresher and more alert.

Tonight will be the first time in days Danny has spent any real time with Steve alone. He doesn’t know what to do to fill all of those silent hours to come. He’s thinking maybe he’ll put on a movie. Grace left Tangled in the car last time he picked her up from school, she’d brought it for her class to watch the day before summer vacation began and he hasn’t had a chance to give it back to her yet. It’s a kids’ movie, but Danny doesn’t mind and he doubts Steve will even watch it. It’ll be a good excuse for the silence to go unfilled though.

They step up onto the opposite curb and turn right to head to the pay lot about a block down the street from the restaurant. Danny’s already tallying up how much he’s going to have to pay the attendant and mentally cringing at the cost. It’s not too expensive, but he thinks it’s still too much to have to pay to park his car. Pay lots and parking meters are a whole lot of bullshit in his opinion. He’s certain he’s not alone in that department either. No one likes those things.

They’re about halfway there, drawing even with the alley that runs between some posh hotel and a flashy, overpriced boutique when they hear voices. Danny stops first and cocks his head, listening to the sound of two people talking and echoing its way back to him. Chin stands beside him and Steve wanders on ahead a couple of steps before he seems to notice and stops, too.

“Man, this better be worth what I just paid you,” says Voice One.

“It’s worth every penny, brah, every penny,” says Voice Two. “Why are you bitching anyway? You got curbside service.”

“We’re in an alley,” Voice One says.

“The fuck ever, enjoy your shit and let me get on with my business,” Voice Two tells Voice One.

Steve’s gone rigid standing there and Danny and Chin are inching closer to the mouth of the alley, hands on their weapons and never has Danny been so glad to’ve gone straight from work to another function. He’s damn sure they’ve just walked right up on a drug deal going down and as officers of the law it’s their sovereign duty to bust both the buyer and the seller. Too bad there’s not an extra charge they can slap on there for pure stupidity because talking this loudly is like begging to get arrested.

He stops though and looks at Steve who’s biting his bottom lip and staring at the alley that’s barely lit by the light from an exit sign over a door in the hotel and another a little farther up on the boutique. He’s shaking so hard that Danny can practically hear him humming with it and his shoulder has started up that weird tic he’s noticed a time or thirty lately.

“Steve?” Danny says softly to try and get his attention, thinking he’s blanked out on them again and if ever there was a worse time for that.

He misses what’s going on in the alley, but someone must’ve said something funny because Voice Two calls out, “You bet your ass!” Then he laughs, the sound loud and delighted, rolling up the alley to them.

“Brown moo-cow,” Steve says and grinds his teeth.

“What?” Danny asks and stares at Steve who’s unraveling right in front of him.

“Brown moo-cow,” Steve says again, breath hitching in his chest and hands balling into fists at his sides.

“Babe, I don’t know what—” Danny starts to say, but he doesn’t get to finish because Steve’s off down the alley like a shot and for a split second, all Danny can do is stare at the space he was just occupying.

Then everything falls into place and Danny gets it, he’s pretty sure he does because they wore masks, but Steve would’ve heard their voices. He would’ve heard their laughter and oh, no.

“Steve!” Danny yells and tears off down the alley after him with Chin right behind him.

~*~*~*~*~*~

They had laughed about their masks, all of them thinking it was just the funniest thing ever after they’d smoked a joint that first night. “Damn, I can’t believe I got stuck with the cow,” one had said and he’d laughed about it.

Steve had known then with the scent of pot smoke curling into his nose that he had been the brown moo-cow. The mask had been a smiling mask and now that smiling moo-cow face is in the alley laughing. He hears that laugh in his sleep, when he’s awake, when he’s nowhere and everywhere in between. That laugh rolls around in his head like a swarm of locusts, stripping everything away again and again and again until one day, Steve will simply cease to exist. He’ll just be a shell and it’s because of that laughter and the sound of four others cackling over his abused body.

They took turns.

They took bets on who could force him to come.

Steve was one big fuck-hole of a joke to them.

At the sound, Steve feels something else inside of him break. He hears it shatter like his mother’s glass and he’s furious all of a sudden. It hits him so quickly and so hard that it almost hurts, leaving his chest feeling tight and muscles thrumming. He wants the brown moo-cow to hurt as much as he does every single day because of what they did to him. He wants to take away all that he holds dear and smash it, crush it, grind it under his boot heels and then hold up what’s left; scream in his face, “Look at what you’ve done!”

There’s a dim outline of a man in the alley, turning and heading for the opposite end of it and Steve locks his eyes on him as he runs. The guy hears his pounding footsteps on the concrete coming up behind him and turns just as Steve leaps at him, tackling him to the ground with a low sound of rage.

“What the fu—” Brown Moo-Cow tries to say, but Steve slams a fist into his mouth, effectively cutting him off.

Then he hits him again and again and again and he’s yelling, but he can’t hear a damned thing he’s saying as he draws back and drives his fist into Brown Moo-Cow’s laughing mouth again. There’s a hurricane blowing over the ocean in his mind, black storm clouds heavy with spitting rain and lightning that strikes the sails of his little blue boats and turns them to cinders and ash. The thunder sounds like more glass shattering inside of Steve and he should be spitting up blood the way it’s cutting him to smithereens.

They had no right, no right to do what they did. They came into his house and took his whole fucking life away from him. No one ever told Steve he’d grow up, have a decorated career in the military only to come home and be so horribly terrorized. He lives everyday since curled up inside of himself because he’s forgotten how to be safe because they used their cocks like weapons and cored out what made him who he was. Steve doesn’t know how to get that back either. But he can have this, he can make Brown Moo-Cow pay for what they did; for what they took. For how they shoved inside of him and made him bleed.

He’ll make him hurt. He will make him hurt. He hurts all the time. He will make Brown Moo-Cow dead for that. He will—

“Steve, stop, please stop,” Danny’s voice cuts into Steve’s maelstrom of thoughts and he shakes his head, fist poised and shaking above Brown Moo-Cow’s bloody face.

“Danny, they—” Steve chokes out. “He has to pay.”

Danny’s right beside him, crouched down next to him in the dark in Steve’s peripheral vision. He can see him well enough to see Danny nod.

“He does need to pay, but not like this, do you hear me?” Danny says. “You beat this guy to death and you will go to prison for the rest of your life for murder. Don’t let them do that to you. They’re not worth it.”

“I have to—” Steve’s breath catches and he can’t breathe again, that old familiar mountain is back and sitting on his chest.

“If you kill this asshole now then they’ve won,” Danny says and his voice is low, soft; kind. “Don’t let them beat you. Don’t let them take you away from me.”

Doesn’t Danny understand that they already have done that though, Steve wonders. They’ve taken away everything that he loves and they’ve even taken Steve away from himself. Can’t he see that?

“No, they haven’t,” Danny murmurs.

Steve blinks and shakes his head, he didn’t know he was saying that out loud. “Yes they have,” Steve bites out.

“No, Steven,” Danny says. “No they haven’t, not yet, but if you do this the only place I’ll ever see you again is from the other side of a prison cell.”

It takes a second for Danny’s words to filter through all of Steve’s sorrow and rage, but they do and he realizes he’s right. If he kills Brown Moo-Cow right now like he was thinking of doing then he’ll never get to see Danny again the way he wants to. He’ll never get to leave him another cup of coffee in the mornings. They will grow old together on opposite sides of a plexiglass visitation booth. He will never walk on the beach again or see the sun rising over the ocean or setting over the jungle. He won’t see Chin and Kono anymore or Mary or Grace. They’ve taken a lot from him, but not everything. If he does this though, if he jams his fist into Brown Moo-Cow’s face enough times to kill him then they will have finally stolen every last scrap of his life.

This time Steve can say no and he does, rising up from above one of the men who hurt him so badly and stumbling back on shaking legs, Steve says, “No.”

Danny smiles up at him, the expression mostly teeth and his eyes are icy in the bad light, but he still seems happy as he reaches down and hauls Brown Moo-Cow up from the pavement. “You’re damn right, no,” Danny tells him, his smile taking on a warmer cast.

Then he looks at the man swaying and spitting blood out the side of his mouth and glances to the side at Chin who’s standing by like a sentinel. “Go wait for us at the end of the alley,” he tells Steve. “You don’t need to be here and we’ve got some questions for this asshole.”

“What are you gonna do?” Steve asks him.

“We’re gonna ask this nice gentleman what the hell he’s doing selling drugs to tourists right out in public like this,” Danny asks. “Then we’re going to ask him why he assaulted a police officer when we tried to bust him.”

“Hey, I didn’t assault nobody,” Brown Moo-Cow says, piping up at last in his own defense.

“Shut up,” Danny tells him calmly. Looking back at Steve, he says, “You’re obviously upset right now and it’s best if Officer Kelly and myself conduct the interview.”

“Okay,” Steve says slowly. Something’s not right here, he can’t put his finger on it exactly because his head’s such a fucking wreck, but yeah, something is definitely off. It’s something about the look in Danny’s eyes and too-calm voice.

“Just give us a couple of minutes to ask this punk some questions and cuff him then we’ll be all set to call HPD in to come haul him off to jail,” Danny says.

Steve finally nods and turns to go back down the alley and wait. Everything Danny is saying is standard and it makes perfect sense, but it’s the way that he’s saying it. Steve can’t shake that off, but he can’t get much in the way of a clear thought either. He needs to calm down, take a breath and watch his boats, which are sailing peacefully again under clear skies. He feels calmer than he has in days now and that’s good, that’s real good.

~*~*~*~*~*~

When Steve’s gone back down the alley, Danny turns the guy and slams him hard into the cinderblock wall. “Did you really think you’d get away with it? Did you really think no one would find out what you did?” he asks, spitting the words out low and harsh.

The guy blinks at him the best he can with one of his eyes already swelling shut and for a half second, Danny thinks he’s going to deny it. Then he smirks, the expression grotesque on his bloody mouth as it twitches upwards. “It was worth a shot,” he says with a mouthful of blood, the words mushy and soft with it.

“You sick fucking coward,” Danny snarls at him. “You had to knock him out and tie him down to even be able to take him and there were five of you. You little fucking boys.”

“It got the job done,” the guy says with a shrug. His eyes are flat and cold, glittering with a kind of sick amusement and Danny realizes that he’s kind of enjoying this. Well, that’ll never do.

“Officer Kelly, would you please frisk the suspect,” Danny says as he jerks him away from the wall.

“Of course, Officer Williams,” Chin says, cool as a cucumber.

“Thank you,” Danny says and watches as Chin does just that.

“Looks like we’ve got several baggies of cocaine here,” Chin says after feeling through the man’s pockets after asking if he had any needles or sharp objects in them. He opens his hand and shows Danny what he got and Danny nods.

“I think that’s enough for a good twenty years on possession with intent to go with assaulting a police officer,” Danny say and whistles low. “You’re going away for a long time, asshole.”

“That you are,” Chin tells him as he continues the body search lower to his ankles. “And would you look at this? It’s a boot knife.”

“Oh, no, carrying a concealed weapon, too?” Danny asks with mock surprise. “That’s just terrible. Cuff him up, Officer Kelly.”

“Sure thing, Officer Williams,” Chin says.

The man is starting to look a little uneasy now, their brightly cheerful manner is setting him on edge and that’s good. That’s very, very good.

“Hey, look, guys maybe we can work something out,” he says as Chin snaps the cuffs on him. “Let’s talk about this, huh?”

Danny thinks about it for a moment, tilting his head side to side as he does so and finally he nods and says, “Yeah, alright. There’s something you can do for us.”

“Sure, yeah, whatever you need, I’m your guy,” the man says.

He’s a fucking coward just like Danny knew he was. That arrogant exterior was just hiding the little bitch beneath.

“I want the names—real names—of your other four friends and I want to know where they live,” Danny says. “You’ve got ten seconds to start talking or the deal is off.”

It only takes the guy three seconds to start rattling off names like a good little snitch and when he’s done, Danny tears that piece of paper out of his notebook and folds it up. Then he bends down, takes his shoe off and rolls down his sock and slips it in there. When he’s pulled his shoe back on and straightened up again, he motions at Chin.

“Take off his cuffs and give him his knife back,” Danny says.

Chin does and then comes to stand beside Danny. The guy is looking at them a little wild-eyed, holding the knife out to the side like it may bite him any second. “What the fuck, man?”

Danny shrugs. “You were resisting arrest.”

What he’s implying sinks in and the guy shakes his head. “No, no, no, I helped you. You can’t do this, no way.”

“Yes, I can,” Danny tells him with a little smile and wonders how many times Steve said no as he draws his weapon and starts backing away to put some distance between them.

“Stop or I’ll shoot!” he yells as the guy backs up a step, not sure if he wants to make a run for it or not. “I mean it, stop!”

Then he shoots the guy right in the head and watches him fall, that rage that became frost now like a sheet of ice under his skin. “I told him to stop,” he tells Chin.

“That you did,” Chin says with a nod as he takes out his phone to call it in.

Danny looks up and sees Steve standing at the mouth of the alley, wonders how much he’s just seen and thinks maybe not enough to really know what happened for sure. He holsters his weapon and walks down the alley towards him as Chin starts talking to dispatch.

“Hey,” he says to Steve when he draws as close to him as he knows he’s allowed to.

“Danny,” Steve says, his voice cracking on that one word. He shuffles from foot to foot, licking his lips anxiously. Then he says, “Danny,” again and closes the gap between them.

Steve leans down and presses his forehead to Danny’s in another silent, Thank you. Danny goes stiff with surprise at the gesture for a split second and then he presses back against Steve saying, I’ve got your back.

Steve didn’t see anything, didn’t look into the alleyway until after he heard the shot, but he knows what Danny just did. Maybe Danny doesn’t know why Steve wanted him dead, but he understood enough that he was willing to do it for him and that should feel wrong in many, many ways. Instead it feels like relief.

Danny’s skin is warm against his own and Steve has missed this so much and so hard that it’s like a dam breaking inside of him now that he’s closed the distance and actually touched Danny. He lifts his hands up to place them on Danny’s shoulders and slide them up his neck as he breathes his shaking breaths and trembles all over. When Danny’s arms wrap around him, Steve gasps at the electric shock feel of it and presses even closer as in the distance sirens start to howl and wail ever closer.

He doesn’t ever want to let go of Danny again and he digs his fingers in tighter to try and hold onto him. Danny makes a comforting sound in the back of his throat and then slowly, reluctantly, extricates himself from Steve until only their foreheads are touching again.

“I gotta go give a statement and make a report on the incident,” he tells Steve, hating that he has to do this now.

“Don’t,” Steve says even as he sags; he knows it’s true.

“I don’t want to, but I have to,” Danny says. “I’ll be home as soon as I can though, okay?”

“Okay,” Steve says and finally steps completely away as the concrete and glass of the buildings are splashed with red and blue.

His hands feels empty again as he looks at Danny who’s smiling at him, warmth back in his eyes. “Soon,” he promises.

Steve nods, aching to reach out and touch him again as he turns to walk away, but he lets him go.

He stays behind long enough to claim his ignorance and Chin and Danny corroborate what he’s saying. When that’s done, Steve is free to go and he walks to the pay lot with legs made out of rubber, gets in the Camaro, pays the fee and drives home, all without really being aware of any of it.

~*~*~*~*~*~

It’s after two in the morning by the time Danny gets everything cleared up and him and Chin are free to go. There’ll be the usual investigation, but it’s nothing to worry about. Everything is clean as can be on their end. They even wore gloves when they searched the asshole.

Every light in the house is blazing when Danny pulls up. He gets out of the car and goes up the doorsteps, into the house and finds Steve sitting on the next to last riser of the staircase with his head in his hands. The light in this part of the house is beyond bad and with the shadows thrown by the lamps, Steve’s healing bruises look as bad as they did the first night Danny saw them. They’re mostly faded to an ugly yellowish green, the worst of them a bright purplish red now, but in this light they look black all over again. He can just make out the healed bite on Steve’s ear from the way he’s got his head turned and there were so many scrapes, scratches, bruises and cuts that it had taken Danny two days to even notice that. He still has not seen the rest of Steve’s body and he wonders how bad it is under the clothes Steve wears like a suit of armor now.

“Hey, you,” Danny says and only then does Steve look up at him. He’s wide-eyed and half dazed looking, he’d been lost wherever it is he goes off to these days, but the sound of Danny’s voice seems to have drawn him back.

“Is everything okay?” Steve asks and Danny nods as he moves closer.

“It’s fine, there’ll be an investigation, but it’s just basic stuff, nothing to worry about,” Danny assures him.

Then he reaches out to touch Steve and Steve starts at the movement, pulling himself away from Danny’s outstretched hand. Danny snatches his hand back and curls his fingers into a hard fist as he nods, the pain of it like a sharp stick stabbing at his heart.

“Sorry, I thought it was… Sorry,” Danny says and licks his lips. He thought it was okay to touch Steve now after what happened after the shooting, but he guesses that was just fluke and nods to himself. He can deal with this, too. “I’m gonna grab a beer and head outside for some fresh air. I’ve been cooped up for hours, I think I could use it.

He gives Steve a weak smile and walks away to get his beer and head out onto the porch. Steve says something behind him, but Danny can’t catch what it is he’s saying, so he just keeps walking, right back out the front door with his beer in hand. He sits on the top doorstep and takes a long, shuddering breath and rubs a hand over his face.

“Fuck,” he says with a bitter laugh, wondering what kind of idiot he is for thinking that everything would magically be okay now. A pretty damned big one. Danny snuffs softly and gives a sad shake of his head then twists off the cap on his beer and takes a long swallow.

He’s only been outside for a few minutes when the front door opens behind him and he hears Steve walk softly across the porch. He sits down beside Danny and clasps his hands between his knees. “I didn’t mean to,” he says. “Back there, I didn’t mean to pull away from you like that. I didn’t want to, it’s just… lately…”

It’s become an automatic reaction to the threat of being touched: Get away and outmaneuver it. Don’t let them get too close.

Danny though, he thinks he’s ready to let Danny touch him and he’s never stopped wanting to touch Danny. He just couldn’t, but he thinks that now he can. If only he can stop pulling away from him every time he tries.

“It’s not a big deal, don’t worry yourself,” Danny says. “It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not,” Steve says and then makes himself stop.

Honestly, Danny can’t argue with that, so he just nods and sips his beer as Steve stares down at the board between his feet.

They lapse into silence and even for someone like Danny whose life is defined by talking, he’d gotten used to quietness with Steve; it had become comfortable. It’s not anymore, there is a dim uneasiness to the silence around them now and it’s all he can do not to fidget. Steve is inches away from him, but they may as well be miles apart.

It’s breaking Danny’s heart more and more with every bit of distance that opens up between them, but he’ll take it. For Steve, he will stand it.

He’s considering getting up for another beer when Steve clears his throat beside him, catching Danny’s attention. He waits and waits, time stretching out into infinity around them and the air feeling heavy. After a couple of minutes, Danny’s skin starts to prickle and he doesn’t know why.

Then, softly, so very softly, Steve says, “There were five of them.”

And yeah, Danny knows that and he’s not sure where this is going, but he’s willing to wait it out to see. Steve makes a terrible sound after another moment, a smothered scream Danny thinks and then slams his mouth shut.

“What is it?” Danny asks him, worried now and Steve shakes his head for him to wait.

He wants to tell Danny, he thinks he has to tell Danny because this eating him up inside, it’s killing him a little more each day and it’s destroying them, which is a thought he cannot bear. The words are hard to find though, stuck in his throat and banging around inside of him, lacing into that unvoiced scream of his that strains through the slats in his ribs until it has started to suffocate him.

Steve is afraid that if he says it out loud then someone will hear. The breeze will record his words and blow them into the ears of everyone on the island and then they will all know. But if he’s careful, if he’s quiet then maybe…

With a deep breath that doesn’t quite seem to fill his lungs, Steve reaches for Danny and grabs his shoulder. He makes another strangled sound in his throat, breathes through it and then leans in close to whisper his most awful secret into Danny’s ear.

He starts from the beginning once more, breathing the words softly and brokenly. “There were five of them,” he says again and then the rest comes tumbling after.

The more he talks, the closer he moves to Danny until he’s got both arms around him and is practically sitting in his lap. Until he’s no longer whispering in Danny’s ear, but instead saying it into the side of Danny’s neck that is becoming slippery and wet as he talks.

Danny holds onto him tight-tight, like he’s promising he’ll never let him go again and finally, finally Danny tells Steve the one thing he’s wanted to hear all this time.

Danny draws him close and whispers in his own wet sounding voice, “It’s alright.”

At long last, even as he keeps talking, Steve finally allows himself to believe that maybe it’s not a lie after all.

“Leave the lights on. Keep talking. I'll
keep walking toward the sound of your voice.”

—Richard Siken
“You Are Jeff ”