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Clenching his teeth, his jaw still not clamping as he intended, in eight days still the best he could manage was that his bottom jaw briefly up to meet his top jaw. His voice was still slurred but at least now he didn’t sound like a sleepy five year old. He could feel his mouth curling up at the corners and a gentle poke from Danny for moving as he thought to himself that he must still look like shit. They still steered him away from reflective surfaces and he hadn’t missed that there were no mirrors in the room he had been moved into.
“If you don’t stay still I’ll cut your face.” Danny murmured, his brow furrowed in concentration as he drew a razor over Steve’s shaving cream coated stubble.
Steve pressed his lips together without a word.
“Not that anyone would notice, look at all the nicks and scratches. Safety glass my ass it still hurt you. Granted though, I was sick of the mountain man look. You looked like you were dragged through rugged bushes. Backwards.” Danny rambled on as he carefully shaved Steve, stopping every stroke to clean the blade in the basin of water that rested on the table he had pulled up close so he could work.
Steve let his eyes drift closed, listening but not hearing Danny’s soft words. He woke as Danny gently patted leftover moisture from his face, the towel carefully missed divots of broken skin as he worked.
“You should go.” Steve spoke slowly. His tongue still didn’t feel quite right, and his recently dislocated jaw still protested speaking, and eating. He was so sick of drinking yogurt.
“I’m tired of this argument, Steven.” It’s the same one we’ve been having for two days and like you’ve been told. I. Am. Not. Going. Anywhere.” Danny pulled a tube of lip gloss from his pocket and swiped it carefully across Steve’s cracked lips.
“Grace.” Steve started.
“Don’t.” Danny pointed a finger at him as he moved his attention to Steve’s hands, his eyes never meeting Steve’s. “Her condition hasn’t changed in eight days. Steven. Eight whole days. Not even so much as a temperature spike. So I am still in the same building. I can be by her side in two minutes. Until then I am your shadow. I owe you.”
“So you’re here as penance? For Gracie?” Steve managed to clench his teeth this time, sending a jolt of pain through his jaw and down his neck, reminding him why he was supposed to be careful.
“You saved my little girl from something worse than anyone needs to endure.” Danny shrugged.
“Yeah I saved her.” Steve tried to shuffle up in the bed, tried to get him upright enough to at least look pissed.
“You know that you did. You’ve seen the scumbag’s jacket. He does horrendous things to beautiful little girls.”
“And I put your beautiful little girl in a coma.” Steve ducked his head, his eyes closing briefly as he struggled with the knowledge that he had been the one to put Grace in a hospital bed.
“You didn’t know she was in the back of the truck. How could you?” Danny pressed a hand to the side of Steve’s face. “She’s going to wake up and the worst that she will remember is being scared and her uncle Steve coming to her rescue. She won’t have to remember some filthy bastard touching her. You didn’t just save her life, you saved the rest of her life. There’s a fucking big difference.”
“Not from where I’m sitting.” Steve murmured, finally looking up into Danny’s face.
Ignoring the petulant mumbling, Danny leaned in to press a soft kiss to Steve’s lips. “So yes, Commander, I might owe you, but I also love you and I will spend the rest of my life repaying you for what you did for Grace and for me.” Danny hitched a hip onto the side of the bed and carefully lifted Steve’s braced arm onto his lap, taking lotion from the table he gently rubbed it into the split skin on Steve’s still swollen fingers.
“Could you knock off the TLC stuff?” Steve muttered trying in vain to pull his arm away from Danny. Danny’s gentle ministrations were tweaking the pain in his wrist but his own movements were sending a lightning bolt of agony down his arm.
“Why?” Danny looked up at Steve’s face.
“Because it’s creepy…” Steve spoke. “I’m not an invalid.”
Danny rolled his eyes at that statement, and continued to rub lotion into the skin on the back of Steve’s hand.
“Fine, alright maybe I am, but I’m also not Grace. I don’t need lotion. I don’t need you cleaning my teeth. I don’t need you bathing me. I certainly don’t need you on bedpan duty.” Steve’s face flushed his embarrassment evident.
“You think I’m mistaking you for my baby girl?” Danny frowned, stepping away from the bed.
“You know what I mean, D.” Steve sighed, letting his head drop back against the pillow, mentally discomfited by his perceived failure.
“You don’t want me to care for you?”
“That’s not what I said at all.” Steve responded, wincing as he lifted his hand out to reach for Danny.
“Sounded like it to me.” Danny pouted lifted his fingers to brush them against Steve’s fingertips.
“We haven’t been doing this long right?” Steve started to explain. “I don’t want you doing all this stuff for me.” He shrugged with a wince. “Can’t I have some secrets?”
“It’s a modesty thing?” Danny quirked an eyebrow with a grin that he couldn't quite conceal.
“Can we drop this now?” Steve’s skin flushed pinkly. “Have Chin and Kono found him yet?”
“No.” Danny shook his head. “ We've got alerts out everywhere. All we know is that he is still on the island. It’s widely reported that you survived and that you saw his face.”
“I should never have told Grace to hide.” Steve shook his head with a frown.
“And if you hadn’t he could have gone in the other direction with her. You weren't to know that she would climb in the back of a truck.”
“If she hadn’t hidden the coffee shop woman would have stopped him from taking her.”
“And you already know that he had told her that Grace and Alohi was his girl and would do anything to stop him taking her home because she hated her step mother. She said he was very convincing.”
“I should have known.” Steve sank into the pillows tiring rapidly, both his head and his body starting to ache, badly.
“Not even you are omniscient, Steven.” Danny stepped forward and stroked his face softly. “Speaking of which you’re supposed to be resting, which does not mean running the investigation from your sick bed.”
“I didn’t hurt my head Danny.” Steve sighed turning his head towards Danny’s touch. “I can still think and plan.”
“I beg to differ; you had a dislocated jaw, facial lacerations and a severe concussion. You need to rest your head as much as you need to rest your body.”
“What I need to do is get off my ass and find this bastard.” Steve murmured as his eyes drifted closed.
“Yeah. You just do that, Superman.” Danny whispered.