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Throughout the years, Danny had seen Steve more days than not. Maybe he was visiting Jersey, or maybe just taking a break from Five-O for a second, but even then Steve would just end up calling him. He’d seen Steve a hundred thousand times, in every stage of their lives, and he just never got tired of it. The man was just this constant beacon in his life, a tall, extremely dangerous man who got him in every bit of trouble he’d ever experienced and got him out of it just as easily.
Not many people who pointed a gun at Danny the first time they met would end up becoming someone he even opened the door for, let alone one of the most important people in his entire life. Danny would take a bullet for any innocent person, but he’d really only take a trip to Afghanistan or Russia for Steve (or his kids, if they ever became as stupid as their Uncle Steve, somehow).
Seeing Steve then, bleeding in the back of a truck, unconscious and covered in filth on the floor of a homemade torture chamber, pale and unresponsive beside him in that helicopter, half-drowned in a sensory deprivation chamber, it always filled him with something he couldn’t describe. Terror didn’t quite cut it. That only described the knot in his stomach, not the emptiness that pulled at the ventricles of his heart and threatened to send him crashing back to where he’d been during the divorce, thinking he was losing his daughter. Except, every time he looked at Steve when he was half dead he realized that there was no light at the end of the tunnel if Steve died. He didn’t know who he’d be if he lost Steve.
As the sack came off his head — and really, a sack? How stereotypical could you be? — Danny caught sight of Steve yet again, but this time he was mostly relieved. When he’d been taken away to be poorly interrogated, he’d been terrified that he might come back to an empty trailer or a pool of blood. Instead, there was Steve, shivering on the floor but very much awake. He was glaring intently at the man who pushed Danny back into the trailer with the look that said he was willing and waiting to have a chance to snap his neck. “Danny, you all right?” His voice had a slight quiver to it that didn’t diminish the anger in his words.
“I’m good, Steve. No reason for us not to kill these guys, though,” Danny stumbled forward as the man behind him gave him one final shove into the trailer and shut the door. Suddenly the sun at his back was gone and he was left with the cold of a refrigerated trailer and a partner bolted down by his wrists. With no one to play strong for, Steve let himself slump a little further against the wall. Shivers racked his body, and he tried to pull himself into as small a ball as possible.
How long had Danny been gone? They’d been taken from the gas station they’d stopped at maybe an hour or an hour and a half ago. Danny’d been in ‘interrogation’ for a little over half an hour. He hadn’t given them anything, not for lack of them trying. He was going to have some very exciting bruises on his ribs. Steve had been in a refrigerated trailer for over an hour. He only had a couple hours left in this damn ice box.
Danny, mercifully, wasn’t tied at all, save for the completely nonsensical hood they put on him when they took him out of the freezer. They probably didn’t see him as much of a threat, which didn’t bother him much if it meant he had a chance to get the upper hand. He moved to sit next to Steve and sighed, noting the slight blue tint of his partner’s lips, the way he held his hands together so they wouldn’t shake as bad. He’d spent almost his entire life in deserts and on the Islands. He wasn’t built for the cold. The cold had at least stopped the bleeding in the gash at Steve’s temple, so Danny took small blessings.
“Hey babe,” Danny brushed his hand over Steve’s, letting it lie over his fingers. They were too cold. The shackles around Steve’s wrists were hurting his blood flow, making his hands even colder. “I’m still warm. Come here.” He moved between Steve and the wall, adjusting his legs until one was under Steve’s knees and the other behind his hips.
It was a testament to how cold Steve was that he leaned against Danny’s chest without so much as an innuendo. His forehead rested against Danny’s shoulder, and Danny rubbed one hand against Steve’s joined hands and one against the back of his neck, trying to keep him as warm as he could. Soon enough, Danny would be just as cold as Steve and the only comfort they’d have would be in each other.
“You’re not actually good, are ya, Danno?” Steve had stopped shivering as much, but the tremble in his voice betrayed his discomfort. His breath played warmly against Danny’s throat. As long as his breath was still warm, Danny was exceptionally good.
Maybe he wasn’t good physically, but bruised ribs didn’t matter so much when Steve was suffering. “I’m good, babe. Some bad bruises, but nothing that can stop me. I’ll kick their asses the second they come back for me. If the team doesn’t get to them first.” Steve had been in the middle of a phone call with Junior while Danny was pumping gas when they’d been ambushed. Their team was coming for them, and their shitty kidnappers had definitely left evidence on the car. It was all a matter of time. A commodity which was very limited for Steve right now.
Danny’d switched to rubbing slow circles into the skin around Steve’s wrists, trying to keep blood flowing so his partner could still be shooting bad guys by the time they got out of here. “What do they want from us? Some personal vendetta or is this related to a case?” Steve the investigator, always trying to figure out the next best move.
The cold was starting to seep into Danny from the floor and he found himself wishing for his big down parka he used to wear in Jersey. He pulled Steve a little closer to him, leaning his head against Steve’s. It was very rare that Danny felt larger than Steve, who always felt larger than life in Danny’s mind. Now his partner felt small in his arms. Every time he was hurt like this he felt small, the power that he held himself with diminished by blood loss or oxygen deprivation or crippling cold. If he got the chance, he’d beat every one of these asshole’s heads in.
“It’s from that case last month. The drug trafficking one. I guess we rooted out the big guys but these schmucks are pissed that their supply and their money’s gone. They’re trying to get me to tell ‘em where their last shipment of heroin is. Apparently HPD evidence lockup just isn’t quite good enough for them.” He smiled into Steve’s hair, and was hearted to feel Steve shake in laughter, rather than cold.
“They never do want to believe us, huh?” Steve’s breath was slower, as was his pulse against Danny’s palm. The cold was gonna kill him soon if they didn’t get some help. Danny’d heard a padlock snap shut after the door had closed, and the electronic controls for the freezer were probably in the cab of the truck.
Leaning back, Danny put enough distance between them to look Steve in the eye. His eyes were still bright, if he seemed to be having a little bit of trouble tracking. That was the head injury, not the cold. His lips were more blue, downturned in a grimace. When he made eye contact with Danny he smiled slightly, trying to project his usual confidence. “You’ve got that sad look in your eyes, Danno. Makes you look old.” He shivered again and Danny pulled him back to his chest, though he would’ve preferred to just look at him.
Looking at the top of his partner’s head and the walls of the freezer that could kill him, not being able to do anything about it made his blood boil. He wished it was a literal thing so he’d be a better heater.
“We’re both old now, babe. And I’m not sad, I’m just angry. It seems like every time we wanna have a nice vacation something like this happens,” Danny pushed his hand into Steve’s hair at the base of his skull, unsure if he was trying to comfort his partner or himself. “After this we’re gonna extend out vacation a couple days. I think I feel like sunbathing for a week straight.”
Steve’s head was getting heavier on his chest. Why did head trauma follow Steve everywhere he went. He squeezed his partner’s hands until he felt a response, a gentle squeeze of his fingers that didn’t let up. Danny twined their fingers together, being very careful to not add any more tension to the shackles. Both of their hands were cold, but Steve’s were almost as cold as the metal around his wrists. His fingertips were almost completely white.
“You gotta stay awake, Steve. You know I’ll go crazy if I don’t have someone to talk to.” He carded his fingers through Steve’s hair and closed his eyes. He was getting colder. He’d probably been in here for about an hour himself, now. Steve had been here for two hours. His breaths were shallow and his pulse beat out a steady, slow rhythm against Danny’s palm.
Steve grunted, which was extremely eloquent for him, and tried to straighten up in Danny’s arms. His cheek rested against Danny’s shoulder, and he pressed his freezing nose into his neck. His fingers worked weakly at Danny’s, seeking comfort and giving it. Their team was coming. He had to believe that. “Tell me about our vacation plans. I wanna know what we were gonna do.” Steve’s lips brushed across his throat and sent a shiver down his spine. He decided to ignore that for later.
“It’s supposed to be a surprise, Steven,” Danny brushed his hand over Steve’s cheek, feeling the low stubble across his jaw. He didn’t like how Steve was starting to feel less cold to him, or how he was shivering with the same intensity as his partner, now. “And since we’re still going to be going as soon as this is over and we’re both checked out, I wanna just be a dick and not tell you. However, in my infinite mercy, I’m going to tell you what we’re gonna be doing.
“I rented this little beach place at Malama-Ki Reserve. Booked us in one of the little cabins. We’re gonna stop at a grocery store and stock up, and then we’re gonna cook all our meals. I think we can alternate who does lunches and who does dinners. There’s some hammocks for me to sit in when I don’t want to get sand in every nook and cranny, and a quiet beach for you to swim at,” he couldn’t quite feel his own fingers anymore, but he could see that Steve’s fingers were still moving against his. Neither of them could feel the touch anymore. “Grace and Charlie are visiting on the weekend for time with us, and you can surf with Gracie while I build sandcastles with Charlie. Sand’s just nature’s glitter, but you know I’d put up with anything for that little guy.”
Danny saw that Steve’s fingers had stopped playing against his. He gave a couple more squeezes, but Steve didn’t respond. “Hey.” He pushed Steve back from his chest, supporting his lolling head with two hands now. His lips were nearing purple and his eyes were closed. “Hey, c’mon, babe.” Danny shook him gently, that feeling he got when he thought this time... this time they might be too late filling him and emptying his heart.
“I gotta tell you about the big surprise, if you’re so damn impatient.” He patted Steve’s face, not having it in him to actually slap his partner. Luckily, Steve’s eyes opened and he worked hard to find and hold Danny’s eye. He quirked his eyebrow in question but didn’t say anything. Looking at him and wondering how much longer they had, Danny felt like crying. He probably would have let himself if he didn’t think he’d have ice cubes on his face by the end of it.
“I think I’ve gone as crazy as you, because I booked us on one of those dumb boat tours that lets you swim with sharks. I knew you’d like that because it’s dangerous and I’d be terrified and you just love that combination.” He was crying now, but the tear tracks were surprisingly warm down his face. It was a good choice. “But I booked it because I’m okay with being a little terrified as long as we’re _safe_. You can have your crazy, dangerous fun and I get to have my terror for the year and watch you pull your Aquaman routine. It is so damn stupid that I would rather be swimming with _sharks_ than be here right now. What have you done to me?”
Steve had a smile on his face, and Danny wanted to cry more because of how all he wanted was for his best friend to be safe, not freezing to death in his arms when they were supposed to be buying steaks and garlic bread for the week. His partner was dying — again, why was this always happening — and all he could do was bundle him back into his arms and pray that he wasn’t imagining sirens. Was he imagining those sirens or not?
“I did the same thing to you that you did to me, partner,” Steve’s voice was barely registering, and he’d stopped shivering. “I loved you.”
In a different world, Danny would’ve felt so completely helpless feeling his partner go limp in his arms, feeling how slow his pulse was and how shallow his breaths had become. But that was the world where Danny was imagining sirens. In this world, with the only person he cared about as much as his kids dying in his arms, Danny wasn’t imagining a single thing.
He pulled away from Steve and peeled off his button up, leaving him with only his undershirt so that he’d have something to put between Steve’s bare skin and the frozen trailer floor. He didn’t want to deprive Steve of what little spare heat he had, but they had to have help. Now.
His muscles protested the short walk to the trailer doors, and he felt like he was going to shake out of his skin. But there were sirens, which meant there was Tani and Junior and Lou. Ambulances. Emergency blankets and heating pads. He squared his feet and started slamming his fists into the doors, unperturbed by how easily the icy doors began to tear into his hands. Blood began to mark where he hit the door, but the combination of adrenaline and exertion made him feel a lot warmer.
“Help! Officer down!” He heard gunfire in the distance, probably in the direction of wherever he’d been interrogated. He really hoped they’d leave at least one person alive for him to beat the shit out of. He started kicking the door, and he refused to look back at Steve. He was going to him with help or to die with him. Those had always been his only options, he just hadn’t realized it. He hadn’t realized a lot of things.
It took five minutes for the shooting to stop and for him to hear voices getting closer. His hands were raw and he thought he might have broken his big toe from kicking, but he kept it up until he heard an answering knock from the outside. Had he stopped crying at some point or had he been crying the whole time? It didn’t matter.
“Steve? Danny?” Junior’s voice, just outside the door.
“Junior! Open the damn door and bring the bolt cutters in with you! Get a bus up here now and tell them that Steve has a concussion and hypothermia. Please, hurry.” He heard Junior yelling out orders and broke away from the door with a last knock. He had to get back to Steve.
The ambulance’s sirens were getting closer, and as he dropped back to his knees next to Steve, he honestly had to wonder if it’d be in time. His fingertips were completely white because of how little blood his hands’ had been getting. His lips were purpled, and though he was still breathing — barely — his breath was cold enough that it didn’t fog in the cold the same way Danny’s did.
Danny was so cold but he had barely even noticed until just now, with help just outside the door and his best friend unconscious in front of him. He was shivering violently, but he breathed as much warmth into his hands as he could and pressed his hands to Steve’s cheeks. He brushed his thumbs along the crests of his cheek bones, feeling the way his skin didn’t want to move normally. There were ice crystals on his eyelashes. It was beautiful in a certain way.
The doors crashed open, and the last of the hot Hawaiian sun spread out across Danny’s back. Before he could even turn to call for him Junior was beside them with bolt cutters in hand and was cutting through the chain that connected Steve to the floor. They’d have to saw the shackles off at the hospital or try to get them off in the ambulance. Junior made short work of the shackles, and Danny guessed that Junior was almost as mad at the world as he was seeing Steve like this. Almost.
As soon as the chain was broken Danny slipped Steve’s arms over his shoulders. He should have been weaker than he was — he was freezing as well, and he still had the bruised ribs he’d almost forgotten about to worry about — but he hoisted Steve to his feet with only a little of Junior’s assistance. Steve, for every single precious cent it was worth, wasn’t dead weight. Though his eyes stayed closed and he didn’t speak, Steve stumble stepped his way with them to the edge of the trailer, where Danny and Junior lowered him down to the EMTs’ stretcher below.
“I need to go too,” Danny slid down after Steve, managing not to stumble as he made his way after them to the ambulance. Lou was yelling somewhere he couldn’t see, and he hoped it was at a living criminal. The second his hands were healed, he was gonna mess them up again just to punch the lights out of even one of the assholes who’d done this. Tani offered him a steadying hand as he stepped into the ambulance. “Junior and I'll follow you to the hospital, boss.” She patted his shoulder and slammed the doors after them.
In the ambulance, Danny sat on the bench and watched as the EMTs worked on his partner. It was too dangerous to cut off the shackles while they were moving, so Danny held Steve’s hands on the way to the hospital, trying to aid the anti-coagulant that the EMT — his name tag read Joshua — had given Steve, and knead warmth back into the still-too-cold hands. Steve was a heater. He wasn’t supposed to be this cold. That Steve didn’t code on the way to the hospital, that his heart rate got stronger the closer they got, was proof enough to Danny of miracles, and of how incredibly, beautifully stubborn Steve was. He’d probably complain about that stubbornness again, but he’d never mean it again.
There wasn’t much they could do for Danny at the hospital. He let them give him an x-ray and a prescription for some extremely potent pain medication when they ruled out cracked ribs and confirmed his suspicion of bruised ribs. While the relief from the pain of his bruises disappearing felt amazing, he didn’t actually stop hurting until he was sat in the chair beside Steve’s bed, watching color return to his lips and him grumble in his sleep. He was asleep, not unconscious. Danny greatly preferred the former.
Still, he wanted to scream. Maybe years of the people he loved being victimized should have desensitized him, but it hadn’t. Each of Steve’s wrists had been wrapped in Saniderm bandages, so he could see the abrasions on each of his wrists. Steve had fought like hell to get out of his restraints when Danny had been taken away, and he'd rubbed his wrists raw. On the positive side, Steve’s doctor had told him that the chances of long-term nerve damage were very low. They’d be out and about shooting people again soon. He didn’t think he’d ever been excited about that before.
Danny had just buried his head in his hands to consider again what Steve had done to him when Steve cleared his throat. “Someone die, Danno?”
“No,” Danny dragged his hands across his face and let them fall to his lap. “But someone’s about to, Steven.” He scooted his chair close enough that he could hear his partners slow, miraculously deep breaths. And sock him in the jaw if he needed to.
“Unfortunately for you, I think I’ve still got a good forty more years in me,” Steve grinned warmly at him, the big dumb smile that made it easier for Danny to believe in good at the end of the day. His teeth weren’t chattering, his lips were warm and pink again, his hands the same. Forty more years with Steve was suddenly something that felt very fortunate indeed. Steve looked at him like he felt the same way. “So when do we get to head out for our vacation?”
“Well, it’s four in the morning and your body temperature is mostly back to normal. Docs said that you might experience tingling, numbness, or pain in your hands because of the short-term nerve damage, but other than that they were amazed at how well you’re doing,” he watched the vitals displayed beside Steve’s bed for a moment, remembering eight hours ago when he could feel Steve’s body slowing. “We can probably strong arm your nurse into releasing you in a couple hours. My car’s getting cleaned right now and it’s gonna be brought over by HPD by noon or so. We can grab some non-hospital lunch and be back on track by one-thirty if we’re lucky.”
Steve seemed placated by this. Danny’d never met someone who hated hospitals more than him, but if Steve was in the hospital for more than a week he’d be liable to jump out a window rather than wait around to be let out. Less than twenty minutes awake so far and he was already ready to go.
“Sounds like a good plan to me, Danno,” Steve watched him with a fondness that he was just finding the confidence to place. His eyes were softer and older than when they had met, when Danny had first laid eyes on the angry, devastated man that Steve had been. How long had Steve been looking at him this exact same way? How long had he been the one to turn away first? Steve was the best man he’d ever known. And the bravest. He turned his hand palm up and his smile turned hesitant. “Y’know, my hands are still kinda cold.”
Danny laughed, because that was the single cheesiest thing he’d ever heard, but also the best. After all, Rachel had hit on him by literally hitting him. It could really only go up from there. He stood and pushed his chair back, knocking Steve’s hip in the universally recognized symbol for ‘move over.’ Steve glanced hesitantly at the door, but Danny just huffed as he eased himself onto the bed and against Steve’s side. “Your nurse thought I was your husband within ten minutes of me making it into your room, Steven. I haven’t gotten to sleep since last night and my pain meds are making me very sleepy, so scootch over and let me hold your stupid hand.”
This got a laugh out of Steve, and they worked for a moment on how best to fit together. Much to Danny’s chagrin and Steve’s immense satisfaction the best fit was Danny pressed against Steve’s chest. Steve had one arm slung over Danny’s waist, the other curled under the pillow they now shared. Steve’s nose was pressed into the hair near Danny’s ear and his breath splayed hot across his skin.
The bed was small, and the steady beep of the vitals monitors irked both of them, but sleep was something they both needed before they made the drive to the Malama-Ki Reserve. Danny could feel himself slipping into sleep, but Steve squeezed his hand and leaned into him. Danny wished he could see the smile he felt pressed against his ear. “What did you do to me, Danny?”
The warmth that spread through him made up for every degree of cold he’d felt in the past day. He lifted Steve’s hand up and pressed his lips to the fingers that had been cold and white such a short time ago. “The same thing you did to me, babe. I love you.”
They fell asleep, Steve considering how lucky he’d gotten and Danny considering the same, but also wondering how he’d fallen so in love — without noticing — that he’d swim with sharks.