Phew! I'm finally back online. I know when I replied to all of the wonderful feedback, I told people the chapter would be up in a week or so, and it has been a lot longer. You wanna know why? Our internet connection imploded and then our landline went dead and the damn phone company spent their sweet time getting around to the root of the problem. You never realize how much the 'net dominates your life until your network breaks. It was PAINFUL.

Anyway, I'm back online and back with a new chapter. For now, this is the end, although I wouldn't be surprised if an epilogue popped up at some point. Let me know what you think. And thanks again for all of your support and your patience.

Chapter 6

Steve couldn't remember the last time anyone had taken care of him. He had girlfriends over the years—a single mother who waitressed at a bar near Annapolis; a break-dancer during his time in Japan; and Catherine at various ports of call after SEALS training. The women were all vastly different, except that the relationships were temporary in nature. Steve had never stayed anywhere longer than a year or two, but never long enough for them to disarm his defenses and let them in to ice his bad shoulder or rub his sore back.

It was weird and kind of wonderful to watch Mary in the kitchen, framed by the thick amber light tumbling in from the kitchen. Mary fumbled through the plastic bags, a smile tugging at her lips. Steve shifted in the chair where Mary had left him. "What are you doing?"

"I bought you something."

He rolled his eyes, or at least tried too. The last time Mary had bought him was a chain wallet. He'd loathed it, but wore it anyway, because it would make a nice garrote in a pinch. She plucked something from the depths of the double-bagged grocery sacks and bounded over to him barely buttoning in her laughter. Steve squinted at the object she placed in his hand, irritated that his vision was still blurrily limited.

It was a pair of Batman sunglasses. With the classic Batman insignia on the sides, frosted lenses in telltale Ray Band frames. He smiled, lopsidedly and looked to his sister for an explanation.

"I thought they'd help, ya know, since the light bothers your eyes."

Usually such a gesture probably wouldn't have flooded his body with warmth (or his eyes with tears), but these days were anything but normal, and he slid the glasses on, feeling like a beloved big brother and a little boy. Mary sat down on the coffee table, admiring them and Steve placed his hand on the crown of her head, like he'd done when Mary was little girl and he wanted to keep her close, reassure himself that she was there.

"Mary…"

"I know, Steve. I know you don't want me here, but…"

Steve shook his head, hating the uncertainty in her eyes. "Actually, I was going to say that…that I'm glad you're here. Thank you…for coming."

Mary's small face lit up like a sunrise, and she nodded curtly. "So you want some soup? I found a do-able recipe."

"You learned to cook?" Steve asked as Mary pushed him back onto the sofa and slid the remote within reach. He would have balked if she produced a summoning bell.

"I can't make some fancy French quiche or whatever, but I can follow an easy recipe," she explained as she bounded into the kitchen. "I've changed since I moved to LA, Steve, since we found out the truth about Mom."

"I can see that," he admitted as he listened to Mary tinkering in the kitchen. "It's awesome, Mary."

He fell asleep to the sounds of companionship and compassion, and awoke to a steaming bowl of soup being carried into the living room. He wasn't remotely hungry, but hadn't had more than little cups of Jello and ice chips since being admitted to the hospital, and knew he needed to eat. The soup was delicious, over-peppered just like he liked it. The broth settled his stomach and chicken offered some fortification that he'd missed over the past three days.

"This is delicious, really." Steve said when he was done. "And I'm not just saying that because I haven't had food in three days, either."

"Don't sound so surprised. I can do things, ya know. I might not be able to fly helicopters or hold my breath for nine minutes, but I can follow simple directions."

Steve chewed carefully on the left side of his face. "Of course you can."

Mary sat the bowl on the table, and sat down next to Steve, casually close with her head resting on his shoulder. It was summoned up flashes of how they were as kids—when they got along at least. They would almost huddled together, under blankets or in tents, with flashlights and secrets.

It had been too long since he felt his sister's hair fuzzing under his chin.

"I want to see Danny," Steve whispered, minutes later.

Mary nodded against his shoulder, and spread a blanket over her brother as he yawned with a hiss. "You need to rest and so does he."

Steve shook his head, closing his eyes when the room lurched and bobbled. "He saved my life, and he's in a hospital room all alone. Don't you get how screwed up that is? "

"He's not alone. Your team is checking up on him and so is the British lady…Rachel, and that doctor who kept visiting. You were exhausted just from the trip home. We'll give it some more time."

"Tomorrow," Steve said fiercely.

Mary's voice was thin and tremulous when she spoke. Somehow Steve's eyes had closed again, but he found it was easier and less painful to keep them closed. "How many times have you been hurt somewhere with no one there to take care of you?"

There were, of course, far too many instances to count, too many memories of waking up bandaged and broken with no one there to hold his hand or make him soup or reassure him that he was okay. He'd choked on the smell of antiseptic with the bombs thudding in the distance. He draped his arm around his sister, and turned on the television and never answered.

-5-0-

Danny was pretty sure his innocent crush on Kono would always remain just that after his recent hospital stay. She had witnessed her senior detective rambling deliriously, nearly choke on his own phlegm, and whimper piteously from pain in his shoulder and lungs. Sure, he had saved Steve's life, but the aftermath had completely demolished the smooth operator image he'd worked so hard to maintain.

Even so, he pushed his drooping eyes open to fully appreciate Kono's lithe form as she leaned over at the waist, taking the cushions off the creeky couch to fold out the bed. The Five-0 rookie was wearing purple board shorts, the strings of her metallic gold bikini poking out at the hips. She had an old tattered t-shirt on over the green bikini top. With her hair piled on top of her head and glittered flip-flops, she looked young, harried and somehow impossibly beautiful in the half-light of Danny's pathetic, unclean apartment.

He leaned against the kitchen counter, breathing hard and rumbly, and counting the seconds until he could take his drugs and go to sleep. Kono made the bed with care, making a welcoming nest of blankets and helped him ease into it. Danno moved to lay back, feeling beads of perspiration oozing through his pores, but Kono snagged his shirt with one hand and plucked his discharge papers out the bag of supplies from the hospital. "Hang on, Danny, one minute. It says…yeah, I have to hit you."

"…like I haven't been through enough?" Danny groaned, delighted by Kono's breathy laughter.

Kono nearly straddled him on the mattress and leaned him forward in a loose sort of hug. Distantly, he felt him untie the hospital gown he was still wearing and lightly pummel his back and sides as the doctor had demonstrated before his release. It was supposed to break up the remaining gunk in his lungs and aid in his recovery from pneumonia. And Danny had done all of this before, the sickness and the drugs and the pain. At least this time, there was a good reason, and not just his body betraying him.

Kono smelled like the ocean, like salt and seaweed and perpetual bobbing blue. It was too close, too soon and too painful. Danny hadn't had time to process any of it, barely remembered seeing some black-and-blue, weepy version of his partner in the hospital. And he was almost certain he'd hallucinated that. He sniffled, hissing at the dull stab of pain in his lungs as he tried to breathe deeply, and shrank away.

"What's going on? Did I hit your shoulder?"

Danny blinked the wetness away, feeling both claustrophobic and clingy. "You surfed this morning?"

"Before I picked you up…oh…shoot, I didn't think this through…" her face fell and she bit her lip a little guilty. "I smell, don't I?"

"Like a spring meadow," Danny said, averting his eyes.

Kono pulled back out of his space, and even with his fever, Danny missed the warmth of having her nearby. "It must have been horrible," Kono breathed.

Danny closed his eyes, feeling Steve's weight pressed against him, smelling fetid blood and hearing the rush of the water. "No, it was fabulous. I plan on doing it again tomorrow."

"Don't do that. Don't deflect. You can talk to me if you want."

Danny scoffed, forcing his eyes open and his lips into a soft smile. "You've been hovering at my bedside for nearly a week…don't need to be my shrink too. You've already done too much."

She rolled her eyes and traveled the three steps into the kitchen. "You save Steve's life and somehow me reading magazines while you slept and taking you home from the hospital is too much. Shut up, Danny."

He bit his lip, feeling his body aching for sleep, but knowing that nightmares would greet him with a lurid smile and a hellacious grip. Kono brought him a pitcher of water, a fully charged cell phone, a stack of magazines, the remote control, and a bucket in case he felt queasy (as he suspected the green pills made him). "I gotta go shower and check in at work. Rachel said she'd bring you dinner, and Chin's going to stay with you tonight. I'll see you tomorrow. Oh, Dr. Jensen said you can call her if you need anything. Her number's already in the new phone. I think she likes you, brah."

Danny scoffed as he settled into his pillows, flexing the fingers of his bad arm. "Nah, doc has her latex-lovin' heart set on SuperSeal. I'm just a means to an end."

Kono brushed back his mussy hair, and pinned him with those expressive eyes. "Some people like you, Danny. You just need to open your eyes and notice it."

-5-0-

Danny was treading water again, struggling in a sea of cotton waves and dry water.

He opened his eyes to amber light cutting stripes on his scuffed, neglected wood floors. He pulled in a deep breath, ignoring the cutting pain in his lungs and tried to blow it out, but instead he coughed, gunky and wet. Danny was drowning, in his own living room, in liquid terror and mucous and vomit. He leaned over the bed, on his inflamed, immobilized shoulder, and threw up in the perfectly placed bucket. With a strangled grunt, he blindly reached for the phone, dialing not the doctor Kono had placed on speed-dial, but the only voice that would calm his racing heart and silence the nightmare-induced scream in his head.

But there was no answer. And this time, it was Danny who was stranded.

He braced his good arm against the mattress and pushed upward, hard. He was still alarmingly weak and his arm shook as he levered himself off the mattress just enough to flip over. In the half-light of the room, Danny laboriously untangled himself from the sheets and blankets and gingerly placed his feet on the floor.

The trauma of what he endured was settling in, putting down roots. And Danny couldn't fight it. In the hospital, he'd been drugged to his eyeballs, too out of it to dream or to think. And now that the good hospital drugs were out of his system, and he could do nothing but think and analyze and obsess.

There was an impatient knock at the door, and Danny struggled to his feet to answer it. He didn't care who it was, even if it was the annoying neighbor next door who kept trying to give him one of her cats. The door rattled thunderously, wood splintered. He watched, unflinchingly, as the deadbolt and the wood attached to the doorjamb seemingly exploded in a tail of dust and impatience. The now thoroughly-ruined door swung open. Steve clamored in, breathing hard, half his face painted in eggplant purple and covered in…Batman sunglasses.

Danny couldn't summon the energy to laugh, but he felt it there, blooming in his belly. He smiled, unworried about the broken door or his diminishing dignity.

"Your superhero complex is really bad for doors."

"When someone knocks," Steve said, panting a little, you answer the damn door."

Danny gestured to his immobilized arm. "Little tied up here, Steven."

Steve leaned against the jamb for a minute before he ventured inside. He floundered for several seconds, trying to wedge the bits of door and wood shut. Relenting, he angled a chair under the door knob to keep it shut.

He turned around stared at his partner for a long moment, silent and appraising. Danny nearly blushed, nearly broke eye contact. He signed up to save the lives of strangers, and now he felt profound honor in rescuing some like Steve—a Navy man, and someone who would probably go on to save hundreds others. He was proud that he could return the favor.

The silence spread between them until Danny's lungs seized and his chest burned and rattled with hacking coughs. It was disgusting and embarrassing, but there nautical exploits had obliterated the normal boundaries of partners. Steve gently took Danny's arm and led him into his own horrendous nook of a bathroom, all avocado tile and sun-faded linoleum. Steve helped Danny sit on the toilet and turned on the shower. He nudged the door shut and sat on the rim of the tub.

Steam wafted from the shower, fogging the mirror. It was close in the bathroom, Danny's knees inches away from Steve's.

His partner was staring at the bandage on his arm, stark white against the peeling crimson of his skin. "How'd you hurt your arm?"

Danny cleared his throat with effort and tried not to think too much. "Which one?"

"Cute, Danno. The bandaged one."

"Cut it on something," he said vaguely.

Steve plucked off his ridiculous sunglasses, and Danny was relieved to see that the swelling had drastically gone down in his face, even if the color had worsened. But both of Steve's blue eyes pinned him, and he was both elated and terrified.

"Danny, tell me what happened. It'll be better…if we…"

"What talk about it? I'm sorry, but this isn't an episode of Dr. Phil. And I'm not layin' on any couch."

Steve's lip curled. "But you sleep on the couch."

"Shut up." The steam rendered the room murky and humid, and it was helping. He found it easier to draw breath and to think. "You don't remember it, do you?"

"Nope. I have two days gone," his hands ghosted over his battered face. "They don't think it'll come back."

Danny's skin was sticky from the humidity, and the crackle of the shower was stirring up too close memories of hours in the water, the fluid uncertainty, and agony of drowning. Idly, he wondered how he'd live on an island surrounded by water, and if it would always be a trigger for him now. He wondered if five years from now he'd be able to shower or wash dishes without thinking about that day he'd spent adrift at sea.

"I cut it."

"Yeah, we know that, but how?"

"I cut it myself, with your butterfly knife. I was fading and we were drowning, and I needed the adrenaline," Danny shook his head. "It sounds like insane, but it made perfect sense then. I was delirious or something, wasn't thinking right. I did everything wrong."

Steve placed a hand on Danny's shoulder. "We're both sitting here, alive, so I think you did pretty good, especially considering I didn't even think you could swim."

"Proved you wrong, huh? I used to be a lifeguard in high school. I just never liked the ocean. And now I have about 500 reasons to hate it even more."

"You know I can't ever begin to thank you, Danny. You saved my life…and…"

He waved away the gratitude with the flick of a hand and a smile. "Last time you tried to do this, your started bawling like a girl at a Bieber concert. We'll just say you owe me one." He shifted on the edge of the tub and levered himself up.

The air on the other side of the door was dry and felt chilly on his feverish skin. Steve was quiet as he smoothed out the covers on the bed. Before Danny could climb in, though, Steve leaned down and pulled Danny into a loose, wooden facsimile of a hug. Like Danny was made of glass. He huffed and looped an arm around Steve's neck with a breathless fierceness that had nothing to do with his pneumonia. They were okay, and Danny needed to remember that.

"Thank you, Danny."

"Heh, thank the dolphins."

At Steve's bewildered expression, Danny burst into hoarse laughter.