Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of this work of fiction, and am making no profit, monetary or otherwise, though the writing of this.

A/N: This features the aftermath of an explosion. There is mention of hearing loss, scarring, and loss of voice. This also contains angst, though it ends on what I think is a hopeful note.

Danny talks with his hands. Always has.

It doesn't make any of this easier, though. Maybe even makes it harder in some respects. Chin doesn't know how to handle a silent, withdrawn Danny who refuses, for once, to use his hands to communicate even the simplest of things.

I'm hungry.

Coffee, please?

Wanna make love tonight?

He misses Danny's chicken scratch. The way ink, or lead scrawls across the paper like a drunken sailor who doesn't have his land legs yet. Misses the way Danny's fingers peck at the keys on the laptop, the way they trace old scars on Chin's skin as though Danny's a blind man reading braille.

He's not blind, though. Just deaf, and until his vocal cords heal (if they heal), voiceless.

He'd switch places with Danny in a heartbeat. Take the brunt of the explosion, and lose his career, his hearing, his voice, in something that could have, should have, been avoidable.

There's a small, bordering on large, part of Chin that hates Steve for this. Blames the ex Navy SEAL for the explosion that cost Danny - him - everything.

Chin won't let Steve see Danny. Because Steve is living proof that, this time, he and Danny didn't walk away from an explosion unscathed, that it would've been a good choice to wait for backup. And Danny doesn't need the man's guilt, misplaced or otherwise, hanging over him. Doesn't need the visible reminder of what happened.

Steve has injuries of his own, skin grafts that, right now, make him look hideous - like he's wearing a mask that only covers a third of his face. The left half of his body is testament to the fact that, at the last minute (too late), he threw himself between Danny and the blast in an effort to take the brunt of it. It hadn't worked. Instead, both men had been hit equally hard, though Danny doesn't have as much outwardly physical proof of it as Steve does.

Chin won't let the man apologize either, because he knows that, right now, Danny will close his eyes and refuse to listen. Because, if he did listen, then that would make what had happened to him, to Steve, real. Would mean that the deafness, the damage to his larynx, his shoulder and chest, is permanent. That he'll never work with Five-0, or as a police detective, ever again. At least not in the same capacity.

Neither will Steve.

Both men's careers are over. Neither of them is ready to move on, though, and Chin wonders if either man will ever be ready to move on. He's not sure that he's ready to move on, though he's stepped up as leader of their unit, Grover and Kono have taken up most of the slack, and the governor, with Chin's input, is seeking to place a fourth member on their team. Trying to replace the irreplaceable.

Chin fills out the disability paperwork for Danny, calls Danny's mom for the pieces of information that he doesn't yet know, though they've been together for almost a year now, and he thinks that he should know things, like whether or not Danny spent nearly three months in the hospital recovering from a ruptured appendix when he was thirteen.

It isn't a lot of information, but it's enough to make Chin feel a little off-kilter and wonder if Danny's mother hadn't been right after all. That Danny should return home, to Jersey, because there are things about Danny that he doesn't know, and there's no life for him in Hawaii anymore. No way for him to provide for himself, yet, let alone Grace and the son he barely knows.

Chin - the life they'd started to build together - isn't enough of a reason for Danny to stay. Not now, when he's lost everything else that matters to him.

But Chin refuses to think about that right now. It's selfish, and not what Danny needs, and Danny's refused to go home, whether from shame, or the desire not to be a burden on his family, Chin doesn't know, because Danny refuses to tell him. Refuses to even look at him sometimes.

What Danny does need is for him to be strong and present and everything that the man can't be right now.

His ears.

His voice.

His desire to live, and eventually move on from this.

Kono helps out when she can, but she's got her hands full with work, and problems of her own to deal with, and Chin doesn't want to be a burden. Doesn't like the looks of pity, though she tries to disguise them as something else, that she casts at Danny, or him, whenever she thinks neither of them is looking.

Pity isn't what he needs. Not what Danny needs. Not what any of them need. But it's easy, and convenient, and Chin can't really fault Kono for it. He's not sure that, if their roles were reversed, he wouldn't do the same. Likes to think he wouldn't.

There are no guarantees in life. Chin knows this better than most. He's had his fair share of the unfairness of life. He'd lost his family. His career. The first love of his life. And now, he's losing Danny.

"I love you, Danny," Chin says, snaking his arms around Danny's torso, meeting his eyes in the mirror, signing the only words he's bothered to learn for now, hoping that Danny won't turn away, that he will try, for him. For them.

Danny closes his eyes, grasps Chin's fingers in his own, and brushes his lips over the worn knuckles, forming the words, Love you, too.

It's not much, but it's a start, Chin thinks, closing his eyes and enjoying the feel of Danny's lips on the palm of his hand, the inside of his wrist, the way Danny finally lets go and allows Chin to hold him through the first of his tears.