Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of this work of fiction, and no profit, monetary or otherwise, is being made through the writing of this.

A/N: Crack, kind of. Inspired by a word of the day that I get delivered via email. This is rather ridiculous.

"Formication."

Danny did a double take, frowned at the doctor, then toward Steve, who was strapped down to the hospital bed, a wild look in his eyes, lips moving almost soundlessly. He kept saying the same thing,over and over again, begging Danny to save him from the 'ants' that were plaguing him. The ants, as far as Danny could tell, were nonexistent, and the doctor wasn't helping matters at all. Danny waved his hands in the air, as though trying to make sense of everything.

"Excuse me?" Danny sputtered, blinking, face turning red as Steve continued to attempt to scratch frenziedly at his skin, insisting that there were ants crawling beneath it.

"Are you... Did you actually...Forni-really?" Danny gave the doctor an incredulous look, and took a step away from the doctor, and his partner.

"Are you...really?" Danny asked, eyes bugging out, ears growing red.

"Fornication? That's what caused this?" Danny whispered, waving a hand in Steve's general direction, and leaning close to the doctor. His mouth was suddenly dry.

The doctor frowned at Danny, and then burst into laughter. Tears of mirth gathering in the corners of his eyes, he shook his head.

"No, no, Mr. Williams, fornication didn't cause this." He stifled a snigger when Danny cast a worried look in his partner's direction, and then narrowed his eyes at the doctor.

"Isn't that what you just said?" Danny asked, arms crossed defensively over his chest as he recalled what he and Steve had been doing, in the back of Steve's truck, while on a stakeout, just a couple of hours ago. The quick hand jobs should not have caused something like this. Danny blushed at the memory and cleared his throat.

The doctor had an amused look on his face as he shook his head. He gestured toward his patient, Steve McGarrett, who was staring at the skin on his arm as though terrified of it. It wasn't funny. Not at all. Nor was the cause of it, an hallucinogenic drug that had been slipped into the man's water bottle.

"I'm sorry, sir," the doctor sobered up and apologized.

"Detective," Danny corrected. He grabbed one of Steve's hands and held it, pressed a quick kiss to his partner's lips.

The doctor swallowed, watched the way that the detective redirected his patient's attention, and felt something tender well up in his chest.

"Please tell me what's wrong with my partner. If... I mean...if it's something I did, something we did, I need to know." Danny was at a complete loss, and didn't like the thought of never touching Steve, or being touched by the man again, but, if it was what the doctor ordered, he'd do it. For Steve.

It was the doctor's turn to blush. He looked away from the couple, fully understanding that they were involved in something more than just a working partnership.

"It's nothing you did," he quickly reassured the detective. "His water was spiked with an hallucinogen, and right now he's experiencing what's called formication," the doctor placed extra emphasis on the first syllable of the word, and added a little more oomph to the letter m, differentiating the word from fornication, and hopefully clearing up the confusion on the detective's part.

Danny, hands still gripping his partner's tightly, frowned at the doctor. "For-mi-ca-tion? He sounded the word out, brow furrowing as he tried to place the word.

The doctor nodded. "Yes, formication. A tactile hallucination involving the belief that something is crawling on the body or under the skin. Your partner seems to be suffering from that."

"Well then do something about it," Danny ordered, rubbing his thumb over his partner's knuckles, and quietly assuring Steve that he was alright, that there wasn't an army, or Navy, of ants crawling under his skin, that it would be over soon, that he wouldn't leave him.

"I'm afraid that I've done all that I can until the drug has run its course. You're what he needs now, detective," the doctor said. "Just keep his mind on other things." He gave the detective a pointed look, and, without a backward glance, walked out the door.

Had he turned around, he would have seen that the detective had taken him at his word, and was sitting on the edge of Steve's hospital bed, doing a little more than just talking to the man, keeping his patient's mind off of the invisible ants that he could feel crawling beneath his skin.

\fawr-mi-KEY-shuhn\noun
1. a tactile hallucination involving the belief that something is crawling on the body or under the skin.