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Everything ached. The incision site, his gut, his ribs, his muscles, his head. His heart. More than anything else, maybe, his stupid, idiotic heart. Trapped in a hospital bed for a couple of weeks, sequestered with his own thoughts and Steve, Danny had had plenty of time to map it all out in his mind, trace the steps backward until he understood where it had gone so wrong. He might have doubts about himself, but he knew he was a good detective and he wasn’t ignorant.
It was his own fault, really. He’d known it was happening and he’d let it go on, let the worst of it roll off his back or, and to be fair this was more common, fight fire with fire – tactics that had been drummed into him since childhood. He wasn’t unaccustomed to being the butt of the joke. He was, after all, a small-statured man and when push came to shove, people could always be counted on to distill their insults to the basest level. He’d heard every short joke in the world, for example, usually after he’d achieved something. The way he’d coped with that was to make sure his ego made it through every door before he entered a room. Never let them see it when a barb hit and stung. Be even better at whatever it was that had made them try to cut him down.
He should have been able to do the same here, except this was different. He’d gotten too close, trusted too much that this great thing would last. The shift had started after the garage collapse. He was positive. Danny knew it was a bit pathetic, but he could remember nearly every single banter session he and Steve had ever engaged in – the good, bad and now the ugly. After that day, the ugly started outweighing everything else.
He’d handed Steve the perfect weapon when he’d revealed how intense his worst case scenario fears were, how ingrained they were into his very being, and Steve was Steve; he knew how to use weapons to their maximum capability. Danny had trusted Steve because he’d thought he could. He wasn’t sure Steve knew he was twisting everything back around on him, at least not consciously, but over the last couple of weeks, Danny had come to realize that intent didn’t matter. What mattered was his own reactions to Steve turning his weakness against him, which were increasingly caustic, angry. Sometimes irrational.
He was the one who was feeding right into it. This was on him, not anyone else.
Every time Steve reduced him to his negative nature, all of his own validity was stripped. It happened to the point Danny now went into most exchanges all wrong, on the defensive from the word go. Certain no matter what he said, he was going to be disregarded or proven wrong, he’d started rising to the bait before it was put down. He saw it all now. The longer this toxicity between them went on, the more everyone else bought into it, too, because all of the evidence pointed that way.
He couldn’t blame them. If the same thing was reinforced over and over, then eventually it was simply the truth. All of the negative stuck to him like glue. That corrosive nature became who he was, too, and he became the thing that everyone believed him to be. He hated himself for it, and he was starting to hate Steve too. He placed a hand over his side, pressed ever so slightly on the still-tender scar. He needed to fix this, fix himself, and he could only think of one way to do it. He knew what he was about to do wasn’t going to go over well, but also that it was best for both of them.
Danny was getting out of the hospital today, a full week before Steve, naturally, as he wasn’t the one who’d nearly died. He still didn’t feel anywhere close to normal, physically, himself. The thought of what Steve had gone, was still going through, made him even queasier and more unsteady. It had been close, too close this time. That made what he was about to do all the more difficult, but really hammered home to him how important it was. He only had about fifteen minutes before Eric came to collect him. He stood next to Steve’s bed, too conscious that this was going to be a lot like cutting and running. He rested his hand on Steve’s left knee, gave it a squeeze and a little shake.
Steve roused slowly, turned his face Danny’s direction. His eyebrows furrowed and he looked ridiculous, rumpled and alive. So much was going to have to change for him now as a transplant recipient, adding one more thing to that daunting list made Danny’s resolve waver. He glanced at the abundance of cards, flowers and balloons, most for Steve but not all. He knew, too, that the ongoing gag about him not meriting any well wishes had been just that – an attempt at levity. He still didn’t have the right frame of mind to find it all that funny.
“Danny,” Steve said, croaky though he’d only just dozed for a few minutes. “You leavin’?”
“In a little while,” Danny said. “Eric’s on his way. He’ll probably hit on every female he sees on the way up here, so it could be a bit.”
Steve snorted.
Danny tilted his head, gave a shrug. Eric was growing up slowly, a trait the Williams men all shared, not that he was about to tell anyone that. He figured they’d already come to that conclusion anyway. Good ol’ Danny, ample flaws to highlight. See, there. That was the biggest part of his problem along with the accompanying pit in his gut he couldn’t fully blame on being a recent organ donor.
“How’re you feeling?”
“Better than yesterday, worse than tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” Danny said. He perched on the edge of the bed, bumped Steve’s leg until his partner scooched over to make room.
“I know that look,” Steve said. “Where has that head of yours taken you now?”
Careful. He had to be careful here. Danny looked at the ceiling, then scrubbed a hand down his face, wincing at the residual pain. Wincing at all of it.
“I’ve been thinking about a lot of things.” Danny chewed on his lip for a second. “Steve, I … I know it’s going to be at least six weeks before either of us are cleared for duty. Maybe a lot longer than that, depending on whether or not your body decides to reject the liver.”
“Yeah, I know the stats already. Unless this thing really did come with your bad attitude, I’m banking on it being fine,” Steve said, trying to sit up gingerly.
Danny ignored the jibe. He had to get this started off the right way.
“Jeez, don’t. Don’t do that.” Danny reached for the bed’s controls, raised the head to just the point before he knew gravity would put pressure on Steve’s insides. He knew pretty well by now how to read every cue Steve gave. “You’ve still got a long way to go, pal, just rest easy, okay?”
And that cue there, was what Danny had always fondly thought of as Steve’s constipation face. There was little Steve hated more than being in less than optimal form, except maybe being reminded of that fact. Or challenged in any way. Danny would swear it hadn’t always been that way, but what his partner had gone through in the relatively short span they’d known each other had made an impact. He knew how that went, too. He got it. That was why it was so important that he figure his own head out, make it so he didn’t hate Steve for being Steve the way it sometimes felt Steve hated him.
“I’m fine. It’s no big deal.”
“It is a big deal,” Danny said. They’d attempted this part of the conversation multiple times over the last couple of weeks. Once more couldn’t hurt, though he hoped Steve wouldn’t think of it as a parting shot. “You’re not going to bounce back from this like you just got winged.”
“I know that, Danny,” Steve said, testily. He took a shaky breath. “But hey, at least we’re both on the injured list together, right?”
Danny took a similarly shaky breath. He rested his hand on Steve’s leg again, above the knee now. Best to just let it all out.
“Yeah, that’s what I’ve been thinking about. I need you to not say anything until I can get this out. Please. Being cooped up in here together, it’s been … it’s like we’ve been in a fishbowl of how we are out there as partners these days. It feels like sometimes we’re terrible together, terrible to each other and I can’t figure out how to make that stop if we’re always in this death spiral of headbutting and angry jabs.”
Steve’s constipation face was switching to that one right before he was set to unleash some degrading comment, so Danny squeezed his leg again and held up his other hand.
“No. You know we’ve been in this pattern for a couple of years now. I mean, for shit’s sake, the governor mandated counseling for us and what good has it done? Huh? Does any of this sound familiar? I say something you don’t like, you dismiss me outright. I whine, you lash out. I try to make a point, you take it as a personal attack and take me out at the knees. I call you out on your recklessness, you tell me I’m the most negative person in the universe.”
“Danny.” Steve shook his head. “That’s just what we do. I mean, it’s our thing. Don’t tell me you’re going to turn this into something it isn’t.”
That sounded an awful lot like the beginning of a dismissive argument to Danny. He let go of Steve, slid carefully off of the bed.
“Well, then I guess I don’t like our thing so much anymore,” Danny said, careful to keep his tone quiet. He wanted to rant as instantly as Steve apparently wanted to refute his point. “See, I don’t like feeling like I don’t matter. I don’t need it that often, but I need it sometimes. Just some glimmer as to why I’m here.”
“Oh my God, is this about the cards and gifts again? We’ve gone over that. It was a joke, Danny. I thought you could take a joke.”
“It’s not about that. I don’t begrudge you well wishes. You almost died. We almost lost you, man. I don’t think it was particularly funny or clever, but it was very you. I know you felt like you needed to do that.”
“It was very me,” Steve said flatly.
“Yes, it was.”
“And apparently to you that means I’m not funny or clever. Maybe it says more about you that you keep bringing it up.”
“I didn’t bring it up, you did. Before you go there, I can take a joke, Steve. What I can’t take anymore is being the joke. I seem to be the joke a lot lately. And no matter how you shake our “thing”, it’s not healthy for either of us. I would literally do anything for you, yet I’m miserable. The thing is, I don’t know how much more of it I can take. I don’t like how you and I always going at it makes me feel. I don’t like what it makes others think of me.”
Steve virtually reared back at that, his eyes sparking angrily.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that when we started this six years ago, I felt like my input meant something to you. I don’t anymore. I feel like someone can call me the weak link, everyone agrees and isn’t it just so funny. I feel like you have thrown my very nature back at me so much that I am not worth listening to anyway, so I overreact and escalate to the point even I don’t like me anymore. I feel like I have kids and Chin chooses you to talk with about adopting that little girl. It’s stupid and petty and I know this, I know it, but I feel like I don’t know if I have a place anymore, feeling the way I do.”
Steve, for a change, didn’t have an immediate rejoinder. He stared at Danny, his face pale and his eyes dark. He continued to look angry and sullen, but there was something else there too.
“This is all because your feelings are hurt,” Steve said at last.
Danny sat again. Beside him, Steve sat rigid, every muscle tense, which couldn’t be good for him. This wasn’t going like Danny had wanted it to. He wanted to shake Steve so hard right now, wanted to yell at him for being purposely obtuse.
“I guess if you want to see it that way, I can’t stop you. It’s been a long time since I’ve ever been able to influence you, right?”
None of this was going well. No matter how hard he tried, he sounded like an asshole. Hell, he was an asshole. Danny sighed.
“Look, it’s like this. The fact that a part of me honestly believes that you wouldn’t donate a part of yourself to me – and I know you would, please try to understand that statement is more about the value I place on myself than it is any indictment of you – that’s a problem. It’s a big problem. The reason I say shit like that is that I’m not sure if I’d deserve it.”
“Jesus, Danny. How can you even think that? You deserve that and more.”
Danny wanted to believe that, but he couldn’t. He didn’t know how to, anymore.
“You know I’m a fucked-up individual, Steve. That feeling never fully went away after Matty, I guess, and I’m just worn down, man. I can’t explain this to you in a way that won’t make it seem like I’m blaming you, and that’s part of the problem, too. I am not … this is about me. The point I’ve been trying to make is that I think this recovery time we both have to go through is something we need to do on our own. I need to get my head on straight again.”
“I could help.”
“No, you couldn’t. Haven’t you been listening to a thing I said? This might be me, but it’s you too. It’s us together. We feed off of each other in the worst ways lately. I can hear myself, you know, when I pick, pick, pick. And you, my friend, you seem to twist around the simplest of suggestions – if they come from me – into some kind of disparagement on your abilities. I’m not accusing you, babe, it’s just what it is. We aren’t good right now, and I think you know that.”
“Danny.”
“So,” Danny said, ignoring Steve, “the timing might suck, but it’s also a good opportunity. For the next six weeks, I will heal and you will heal and then maybe at the end of it, you’ll call me up and we can talk like we’re friends again. Work together again. Or maybe you’ll find you haven’t missed me at all. That your life really doesn’t need me in it.”
Damn it, Steve’s eyes were wet now and Danny felt as low as he’d ever done. He was an absolute, selfish bastard, but at the end of the day Steve had a ton of people who would help him get through this. He would be okay. He would. Danny had to believe that much was true.
“I don’t know how you could say that to me. To me, Danny. I really thought we were good.”
“Sometimes we are.” Danny shrugged. “Sometimes we’re not.”
“How can we work on the not if you leave? Please don’t walk away right now. I’m asking. I’m saying please.”
“I have to,” Danny said.
Steve reached out his left hand and grasped Danny’s forearm tightly, preventing him from moving though he knew they’d both heard Eric’s voice floating down the corridor. The grip was just this side of painful.
“Then tell me why.”
“I just did.”
“No, not that. Why, if you’ve felt this way, why would you stick around so long? Why would you save me if I’m the one who’s made you so miserable all this time?” Steve asked. “Can you at least tell me why you’d apparently punish yourself this way? Is it all my fault?”
Of course, Steve would think that. Danny almost smiled.
“Seriously, why? I don’t get it.”
“Because I love you, you idiot.” Danny’s filter broke, just like that. He didn’t want to dump this at Steve’s feet also, but he couldn’t stop. He sounded wrecked to his own ears. “Like, actually love you with every fiber of my being. I would lay my life down for you, no questions asked, despite being terrified daily that you’ll get me killed. No hesitation. What other motivation could there ever be for that kind of blind devotion? It’s because I love you and I don’t want to hate you. I’m afraid the more I say that instead of how I really feel, it will be how I really feel and I can’t have that, Steve. I can’t.”
Steve closed his eyes, and his breaths came sharp and loud.
“Please try to understand where I’m coming from here,” Danny whispered. “Please try to forgive me.”
And then Danny left his aching heart in the room before he could make things any worse, wondering if he’d ever speak to Steve again.
H50H50H50
Exactly forty-two days later, Danny’s phone rang.