Standard Disclaimer: I don't own the characters. They, however, totally own me. ::grins:: This is all for fun, not for profit. This fic is firmly entrenched in ep 2.10 Ki'ilua, so if you haven't seen it you can decide for yourself whether or not you want to give this a read.

Been Thinkin' 'Bout You

Exhaustion wars with pain, but the rhythmic swaying of the truck gives exhaustion the edge. Steve fades in and out of consciousness, lying on the bed of the truck like a sack of potatoes, hands tied in front of him. He is grateful not to be hanging by his arms anymore, grateful his guards don't feel the need to inflict more pain on him during the trip because everything hurts and throbs and he just needs a little respite. His eyes close and he drifts away.

It wasn't for nothing. Jenna's last words follow him back to consciousness and he blinks blearily at his guard. She'd been wrong. The pin she'd passed him had facilitated his escape and, God, he'd tasted fresh air for all of ten seconds before he got clocked in the head, because Wo Fat was smarter and he'd been waiting. Now Steve is certain he'll never see home again. He blew his one chance and the adrenalin that had been keeping him upright is long gone. The truck sways and his eyes close.

Steve and Danny sit out on the lanai, watching Gracie build a sand castle. He likes to pretend, on days like this, that they're a real family, and Gracie calls him Dad instead of Uncle Steve. It's something he feels he'll never have, not on his own, not with the way things are in his life right now. So he never says no when Danny offers to share his precious visitation time, and when Gracie pulls him down the beach to help her jump waves, he goes with a big, goofy grin on his face. He never talks about it with Danny, but he suspects his partner already knows. He usually does, for the important things anyway.

"Wake up, Steve."

Steve feels a little nauseous when he opens his eyes again, and it takes his pain-hazed mind a long minute to realize that the truck is driving backwards. He struggles to put some meaning to this, but the best he can figure is that there must've been something blocking the road.

He has no idea where Wo Fat is taking him. He wishes he knows who or what Shelburne is so that at least he'll die protecting the information. The way things are looking right now, he'll be dying for nothing and his body will be left to rot in the jungle. Danny will never know what happened to him. That should be enough to motivate him, to get him looking for a moment when he can slip away, but apathy has settled over him like shroud.

Wo Fat planned this all too well, has anticipated Steve's every move. And Steve is smart enough to know there'll be no rescue. He's on an unsanctioned mission in a hostile foreign country and no-one knows for sure where he is. Danny will go through the proper channels, of course, but despite his best efforts no-one will help him create an international incident just to rescue one rogue reservist who suffered a fatal lack of judgment.

Steve wishes he had time to say a proper farewell to his partner. I'll think about you the whole time was supposed to have been a joke, but it was the truth. Thoughts of Danny fill his head, memories of moments that he should've appreciated more while they were happening. He'd give anything for one of Danny's rants right now, just to hear the sound of his voice.

"Why does it always have to be you? Why do you have to put on the cape and go to North Korea? Do you even know what happens to people there? Stuff that's not good, I can tell you that. I can't believe you fell for Jenna's line of bullshit. Don't you have some SEAL sixth sense for stuff like this? Did you even check her story out before you hopped on a plane? No, you did not. I swear, you're like a marshmallow on the inside, you melt for a pair of puppy eyes and a sad tale of woe. Yes, I said woe.

"Honest to God, Steven, if you die over there I'll never forgive you. You think I want to be stuck in this pineapple-infested hell hole without you? Did you even give that a thought before you agreed to this crazy-ass plan? No, you did not. Just once, could you not be the big action hero? I don't care what righteous intentions you think you had, this is unacceptable McGarrett.

"And for God's sake, wake the fuck up!"

Steve snaps awake and notices immediately that the truck has stopped moving. He registers the sound of automatic weapons and wonders what fresh new hell this is. Are Wo Fat's men turning on him, or have they been attacked by a rival militant group?

If death is coming, he isn't going to face it lying here like a landed trout. Steve pushes himself upright, grunting at the pain that lances through him as he moves. By the time he's semi-upright he's having trouble breathing and he's sweating like a pig. His guard is gone and it would be an opportune time to slip out of the truck and disappear into the jungle. But he knows in his condition he won't make it five feet before collapsing. Wo Fat has beaten him, both literally and figuratively, and even a rueful chuckle hurts.

All too soon the firing stops and Steve waits. If Wo Fat's men were taken out, the new guys will search the vehicles. They'll find him, sooner or later, and he doubts they'll see much use for him. He wishes he could apologize to Danny, and the rest of his team. They stuck by him through all the crazy shit he'd done and are as much his family now as Mary.

Mary. What will happen to her now? She'll be all alone. Well, no. Danny will keep an eye on her because that's the kind of guy he is. Maybe his partner will have better luck keeping her out of trouble. And isn't it funny how just the knowledge that Danny will take care of things makes him relax?

Steve can hear someone approaching the back of the truck, and knows this is it for him. The flap lifts and he closes his eyes against the sudden flash of sunlight, but not before he sees the gun. Maybe he should just keep his eyes closed; just this one time he doesn't have to man up, because who will know anyway? He's confused when he hears Danny's voice, wonders if he's hallucinating.

"Hey, Steve! I've got Steve, he's alive!"

Steve looks up, incredulous, and there's his partner dressed uncharacteristically in black and carrying an automatic weapon. Danny, here in North Korea, pulling off an improbable rescue. There's a lot he wants to say at that moment, while his partner goes to work on the knots around his wrists, but what comes out is, "Danny. Where's Wo Fat?"

Because Wo Fat is still a threat, if he hasn't already been neutralized. He so casually killed Jenna, and surely he knows how much more important Danny is to him. Steve can survive a lot, but Danny being killed like that, like it was nothing, would end him.

"Just shut up, would ya?" Danny says roughly, all his focus on those knots like he's afraid to look Steve in the eye.

Before Steve can comment, the truck flap is lifted again and two more familiar faces are looking in at him; Chin and Joe, beaming happily. His own feelings kind of overwhelm him then and he can only stare at them blankly. And then he has to move and the pain reasserts itself, swamping him and blocking out everything else. He has flashes of being dragged through the jungle, his brutalized shoulders painfully stretched between the friends who support him, but mostly he just floats in a haze of unrelenting agony until suddenly he's sitting on the floor of an old Huey, holding a gun and surrounded by friends and members of SEAL Team Nine.

He looks up at Danny, back braced against Joe's legs, and wants to tell him so much. Wants Danny to touch him, the way Joe keeps patting his shoulder, or yell at him, or something. But his partner just looks at him, face shuttered, and looks away. "No, don't. You can thank me when we get back to Oahu."

He's a little hurt and confused by that, not sure what it means that Danny is acting this way. Then Chin makes his wedding announcement and Danny gives him grief and everyone is laughing and it's all so normal. Despite his pain and exhaustion and confusion, despite the fact that Wo Fat got away again, he can't help the grin that spreads across his face. He's going home.

*o*o*o*

Steve has a hard time believing he's in his bed, in his house, with the achingly familiar sound of the waves on the beach drifting through his open window. It's all a little surreal, and he knows it's not just from the painkillers they gave him at the hospital. Less than twenty-four hours ago he was certain he was going to die. Now he's curled up between clean sheets and feeling more than a little afraid to fall asleep just in case this is all a pain-induced hallucination.

"Hey, Superman. How are you even still conscious?" Danny asks from the doorway. He's wearing a pair of dark blue sweat pants, presumably from the suitcase of clothes he brought over and dumped in the spare room. He's personally taken charge of Steve, refusing to go back to his place, and Steve can't help but be incredibly thankful. His laundry list of injuries is long and varied, and he'd never be able to manage on his own. How Danny was even able to get him out of a lengthy hospital stay he can't even begin to guess, though he suspects the Governor might have been involved.

"Dunno," he replies, and his speech sounds as sluggish as he feels. "Never got to say thanks."

Danny runs a hand over his face and Steve can see how tired he is. His partner must've run himself ragged trying to get him help and putting together a rescue so quickly. A simple thank you will never be enough.

"Wouldn't be much of a partner if I just left you out there, now would I?" He comes over and sits on the other side of the bed, propped up against the headboard. "Admittedly, I had to assemble a team and you probably could've just parachuted in with nothing but a pen knife and saved the day, but hey. Not all of us have super powers."

Danny tries for light banter but even in his sleep-deprived and medicated state Steve can hear the fear beneath the words, and the self-recrimination; as if what he did was any less heroic because he didn't do it alone.

"You did good," he says, wincing a little as he shifts position. "It was a good rescue."

"If we'd gotten there sooner, we could've saved Jenna. And caught Wo Fat."

Steve reaches over and puts his hand on Danny's knee, something he can only accomplish thanks to a judicious application of muscle relaxants. "Don't start with the what-ifs, Danny. Jenna was dead the second she agreed to help Wo Fat."

"I wanted to kill her myself," his partner says, voice flat and eyes staring at the far wall. "When we realized what she'd done, I wanted to kill her."

Steve silently commiserates; he'd been pissed off and disappointed in her too, but watching her die in front of him had been horrible. Still, all he feels for her now is pity. Such a waste.

"She asked me what I'd have done in her place," he says.

Danny looks down at him, his expression stormy. "You wouldn't have done what she did and don't try to tell me otherwise. You'd have found another way, sacrificed yourself before you used someone like that. And just for the record, if you ever do something like that I will personally feed you to hungry sharks."

Steve's lips quirk up in a half smile but he nods dutifully, and silence stretches between them. He doesn't point out that Danny nearly sacrificed himself, put himself in a situation that very well could've left Gracie without her father. That he'd done that for Steve is so completely overwhelming that he knows he can never speak of it. But he'll never forget it, just as he'll never forget the memory of Danny at the back of that truck, calling his name.

"I thought I'd never see you again," Steve whispers.

"Hey, now, none of that." Danny puts his hand over Steve's, still on his knee; his own voice is thick with emotion. "You're safe, I'm safe, and we both need to get some sleep."

Steve wants to ask him to stay, and not just because of the dreams he's afraid may come, but he can't bring himself to say the words. Danny has already done so much, gone above and beyond for him. Not to mention that he's so dopey and messed up right now that he's feeling a little like the girl in their partnership and not in a funny ha-ha way.

Danny, though, has his six like always. He gets up to turn out the light and then slides right back in Steve's bed, stretching out on his side so they're facing each other.

"I'm right here in case you need anything, okay?" he says. Steve suddenly thinks that maybe Danny needs the closeness as much as he does.

Using darkness to cover the flush on his cheeks, Steve scoots a little closer to his partner. His fractured ribs protest but he studiously ignores the pain; he excels at that.

"Thanks, Danno," he murmurs.

"Go to sleep you big goof," Danny replies. He gently strokes the side of Steve's face, a hairline to chin motion that he's used on Gracie to help her fall asleep. Steve decides it feels a thousand times better than it looked, and soon his eyes droop shut. He can sleep now, knowing Danny is here to watch over him.

"I really did think about you the whole time."

"Me too," Danny says softly. "Now will you please go to sleep, or do I have to get a tranquilizer gun? Because honestly? After what you've put me through it would be very satisfying to shoot you."

And even on the edge of oblivion Steve can hear the warm affection in his tone. It's a good feeling, knowing someone else cares enough about him to risk their own life to save his, and he resolves to cut back on some of his more reckless behavior.

Steve takes a breath and without meaning to "love you" slips out on the exhale. He falls asleep in the next second, missing the kiss his partner presses to his forehead.

"Danno loves you too. Sweet dreams."

AN: I have recently become a big Hawaii Five-0 fangirl. I fall firmly in the McDanno camp – love the relationship between those two characters and how well they play off each other. This is my first fic for the fandom and it just kind of popped into my head fully-formed and refused to be ignored.

Loved this ep when I saw it, which was just this week. I could probably write a slew of fics just from everything that happened in it, but I won't. ::grins::

So, this was going to be a oneshot and then I was going to get back to my regularly scheduled Sentinel programming. But then another bunny popped in, and I was too tired to argue with it. So now I'll have a little place to put all these random H50 fics. Can't promise how many there'll be though.

Reviews are always appreciated, and thank you for reading!