Hawaii 5-0 fic: Eff the Ineffable 4/5
Nov. 28th, 2015 05:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sealieComments:
1) British English spelling
2) Sentinel AU fusion
3) Spoilers: none
4) Disclaimer: writing for fun not for profit.
Springwoof betaed with the finest of toothed combs, and it is much, much, much appreciated – thank you, Babe.
‘Eff the ineffable,’ Danny thought darkly. “Guides.”
Eff the Ineffable
By Sealie
Part Four
“Danny!”
“What?” Danny hollered back at Steve standing before him squalling at the heavens, fists clenched and head tipped back. What the Hell is happening? “Holy--”
“Danny?” Steve’s yelling switched from angry demand to rife with joy in the space of a spoken vowel and consonant.
“Steven! What the Hell did you do now?” Danny was back on the damnable beach. And the sun was shining with a weird blue tinge. He spun around in the tightest circle ever spun, taking it all in at once. “We were in the portacabin.”
“Nothin’,” Steve said defensively.
Lowering his chin, Danny pinned him with a stare.
“I didn’t mean to,” Steve said, backtracking like a toddler caught with a marker before a formally pristine wall. He slumped, fractionally. “I just wanted you.”
Those words soothed like a quaff of honeyed bourbon.
“Babe,” Danny said with a soupçon of affection. Steve was a goof, but he was Danny’s goof.
Danny was a sentinel and he catalogued twenty-four/seven. He already knew that Steve had a cut on his forearm wrapped in something vegetative and astringent. Steve was a golden-tanned god standing in the summer sun, not freezing to death under the onslaught of a glowering, evil tropical storm. There wasn’t a sound of anything overtly human other than a small collection of people four hundred yards to North West. There was also an interloper in very close proximity.
“What. Why. How. Who?” Danny demanded. “What is that stench? Why is this happening? How is this happening? And who is the guy in the diaper?”
“Geez.” Steve hung his head. “I can’t take you anywhere.”
“And was I asked?” Danny slung his arms out wide. “What. Is. Going. On?”
“The smell is Akoko plants. They normally smell like that. I don’t know why this is happening. I don’t know, yet, how this happened. And this is Kawai, he’s a kahuna.”
“Right.” Danny narrowed his eyes at the shorter guy. PIMA, his cop brain summarised. Threat assessment: low. Circa fifty-five to sixty years of age. Sentinel senses told him that this Kawai guy was healthy.
Kawai met Danny’s gaze with his own interested contemplation. Plainly amused he crossed his arms over his barrel chest.
“What kind of kahuna? The Lappy one or the evil sorcerer one that steals your soul?” Danny asked.
“La'au Lapa'au,” Steve corrected automatically. “I don’t know. Kawai hasn’t said. He’s not evil, though. He’s good.”
Steve primarily thought in black and white. It was endearing, but an exploitable vulnerability.
“Did you ask?” Danny took a deep breath, because, while he didn’t want to contemplate the actual spirit world that he had been dumped in, there was an unmistakable, unavoidable faint blue tint to everything. The colours were all stretched and wrong, as if filtered. Sentinel training pretty much conclusively said that blue visions meant the unbelievably, preposterous advent of actually having a vision. “Did this kahuna bring us here? Is it his dreamscape?”
“I’m kind of guessing from the vein throbbing in your forehead that you’ve got a headache,” Steve said. “Do you normally get headaches when you’re dreaming?”
“I’m not dreaming. It’s a vision; altered state. Didn’t the blue give that away?”
“Blue?” Steve asked.
“Yeah, it’s like wearing hippy shades, everything’s got a funky blue tint.”
“Really?” Steve turned on his heel, scanning the horizon. “It just looks like normal. Home. A thousand years ago but home. People look like people.”
“No blue tint?” Danny double checked.
“No blue tint,” Steve confirmed.
Danny focused all of his considerable attention on Kawai the Kahuna. They might be in a vision but his senses provided tangible, measurable information, as if they were in their own backyard. The stranger was waiting with a surprising amount of amused patience.
“Danny, Kawai.” Steve opened his palm towards the kahuna. “Kawai, Danny. Sentinel.”
“Hey, Kawai,” Danny finally greeted. “So, what type of kahuna are you?”
“Kawai’s kānaka, there’s no reason why he should speak English,” Steve said.
“Yeah, right. Well, in my vision everyone speaks English.”
“I don’t think that this is a vision, Danny,” Steve said. “It feels real.”
“Have you pinged this guy? “ Danny asked. “Did you? Did he feel real?”
“Yeah, I pinged him. I pinged him when I got here. He only wants to help us, me, the guide-spirit walker that’s accidently visited his ko`a.”
“What about feelers?” Danny asked suspiciously, referring to the spider web of emotional attachment between people that Steve could mentally map. “Did you check for feelers?”
Steve shook his head. He shifted foot to foot.
“Go on then.” Danny pointed at the kahuna. He didn’t care that he could hear the soft susurrus of a beating heart or the rush of breath. Steve was such a reluctant guide.
“No, Danny. I trust him. We’re really here.”
“Define real,” Danny said.
“Kanne, kaimat’iira panua,” Kawai finally spoke. He held his hand palm face down at chest height and looked expectantly at Steve. “O keia ao.”
“Kaimat’iira panua?” Steve got the pronunciation so bad that even Danny winced.
“’Uhane ē ta tautangata.” Kawai made a step towards Steve, and stopped when Danny growled. “Kaimat’iira panua.”
“Oh,” Steve said, voice rife with understanding. “Sentinel.”
“What?” Danny leaned forward.
“It’s just a guess. Kaimat’iira panua is sentinel? I know that ‘uhane, or as Kawai says it ‘uhaaneey,” Steve drawled out all the vowels especially the last one, making it sound only vaguely like the Hawaiian word for guide. “I figure tautangata means different or white or alien, or something like that.”
“He doesn’t speak Hawaiian?” Danny said suspiciously. This wasn’t like any sort of vision that had been described to him in training. Admittedly, it was only one lecture in a whole semester, but it was compulsory, and they had had a test afterwards. No sentinel who Danny had ever met had had a vision or admitted to it.
“It’s not Kawai’s role to be our teacher,” Steve said seriously. “He’s a friend who is trying to help. He’s a good guy.”
Danny heaved out the mother of all sighs. Why was his life so complicated? In Jersey he had been a simple sentinel, utilising his gifts in the prescribed and expert manner to which he had been trained, despite the fact that he had not had a guide. His life had been uncomplicated.
Coming to Hawaii had been the advent of freakin’ weirdness from day one -- along with the infernal weather and the giant ocean.
Guides, Danny thought darkly.
“So, one, you came here,” Danny said, “two, you dragged me here, three, how do we get home?”
Steve’s gaze slid sideways. Danny tracked his line of sight. A tall pyramid of bleached, hollow coral skeletons and weird cut stones sat atop of the rocks. The triangular spit of rocks was cut with a jet black crack leading deep under the reef.
“What’s that?” Danny made a step and Kawaii moved right, breaking his line of sight between them and the cave.
“Danny, no.” Steve’s arm came out. “That’s a ko`a; it’s an important shrine.”
“Really,” Danny drawled.
“Danny,” Steve said warningly. “Don’t treat it like you treated the heiau.”
“Or?” Danny eyed Steve sassily, because Steve wouldn’t be able to stop him, if he decided to go check out that freakin’ cave.
“Look at it,” Steve said emphasising look.
Danny pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled. He stretched out his skin as if shrugging off a fitted coat.
Sight had to follow sound, one of the more ridiculous directions ever uttered, but it worked. Steve had a lot to say in response to sentinels seeing around corners. But, as Danny knew, Steve was a scientist at heart, and questioned -- it was part of the reason why he struggled with guiding. The cave mouth was a narrow gullet, a stomach like hollow widened at the back. Matching the coral monument on the top of the rocky outcrop, in the centre of the cave sat another offering on top of a slate black boulder. Bones, mossy-green coated bones, were stacked neatly. A skull coated with the patina of age sat on top of the pyre. The chitter of a black crab sitting in the eye socket of the skull made Danny shudder.
“Okay, creepy,” Danny summarised. “There’s a dude in there.”
“What?” Steve crouched, squinting and failing to pierce the depths.
“Tall guy judging by the length of the femurs.”
“Skeleton?” Steve asked.
“Yep. Bones. In a neat little pile.” Danny stepped forwards, and wasn’t surprised that Steve’s large hand wrapped around his wrist.
“Danny.”
“What. What. What?” Danny lifted his wrist up between them, dragging Steve’s arm. “Why not?”
“Because it’s not disturbed.” Steve’s changeable eyes were a washed out grey matching a stormy ocean elsewhere. “Not here, any rate.”
“But it’s disturbed--” Danny jabbed his thumb over his shoulder, “--back at the building site?”
“You tell me, Danny.” Steve lifted his chin. “You’re the sentinel.”
“Nel, ka noho nei te Turehu pō,” Kawai said.
“Did you understand that? I didn’t understand that,” Danny said, giving Steve’s arm a little shake.
“I don’t know,” Steve grimaced. Taking a deep breath, he said with deliberation, “`Aumākua, Kawai?”
Kawai made the head-tilt of I kind of get what you mean; but you’re not saying it right.
“`Aumākua?” Kawai tested the word on his tongue.
“Shark?” Steve tried, and then shook his head.
“It’s a person in there, Steven,” Danny said. “Not shark bones. No shark skull. Why are you thinking sharks?”
“Sharks have a cartilaginous skeleton, they wouldn’t survive very long,” Steve corrected.
“Science Steve.” Danny rolled his eyes. “Seriously, sharks? Why sharks?”
“Manō.” Steve’s attention was on Kawai. He tapped his own chest indirectly indicating the shark tattoo on Kawai’s broad chest, and then pointed to the cave.
“Nama.” Kawai stomped his foot into the sand. A frustrated torrent rushed from his lips, words like water scattering into the sand. He mashed clawed fingers together.
“I get it. I get it.” Steve released Danny’s wrist and held his hands up as if at gun point. “No cave. And I won’t let Danny go in there either.”
“Well, I don’t get it. The cave is the interesting thing here, yes? Why shouldn’t we go and have a looksee?”
“Because….”
“Oh, that’s helpful. That didn’t work when I was six and it won’t work when I’m thirty six.”
“Danny,” Steve said sharply. “You don’t have the right to go into that shrine. Wanting to, doesn’t give you the right. Kawai is saying it as clear as day that he doesn’t want us to go into the cave -- that it is dangerous.”
“Danger’s your middle name,” Danny said. “You are the veritable definition of a danger magnet!”
Steve drew in a slow, deep breath.
“If I have to go in the cave, I will go in the cave. But it’s not necessary at this time.”
“And what if I say it is?”
“And what are you basing that on?” Steve leaned forwards, slightly.
“You’ve been unconscious for over an hour. You’re freezing cold, going hypothermic. There’s a massive storm on top of us,” Danny failed to stop speaking louder and louder. “And I can barely feel your pulse!”
Steve froze.
Danny went for the freakin’ cave.
Movement always galvanised Steve. He grabbed at Danny, catching his sleeve.
“No!”
“We’ve got to get out of here!” Danny said, dragging them towards his goal. “You’ve tried everything else, haven’t you?”
Steve went still.
“You’ve tried everything else, haven’t you?” Danny spun right into Steve’s face. “You have, haven’t you? Meditation? Even clicking your heels together, Dorothy?”
Steve was a statue.
“You haven’t tried anything have you?” Danny realised. Typical, freaking Steve! “You’ve been too busy exploring this fascinating, whole new world.”
“It never occurred to me,” Steve said sheepishly.
“Of course, it didn’t. You went looking for the external solution instead of the internal solution, didn’t you?” Danny shook off Steve’s grip. “Well, go on then.”
“And do what?” Steve lifted his hands, shoulders riding high.
“Focus.” Danny tapped hard on Steve’s sternum with a fingertip. “I know. I know. Action. Reaction. Define objective, decide strategy, and execute. This is outside your skillset. But you are a guide. Meditation, whatever, concentrate on that weird sensation that you were picking up on that brought you here.”
Strangely, Steve glanced at Kawai for reassurance. But he was listening to Danny.
“Okay.” Steve stood taller. His nostrils flared as he took in a deep slow breath and released it through his mouth. Involuntarily, his eyes closed.
Danny flicked a glance over his shoulder at the older guy, and nodded his thanks.
Steve was humming some composition under his breath, very lightly and intermittently. Danny didn’t think that he was even aware that he was humming. The music had a rhythmic and measured beat.
Danny slid further into Steve’s orbit. He didn’t know how this was going to work. But he had faith in Steve. Resting the palm of his hand over Steve’s heart, he concentrated on the reassuring lub-bub, lub-bub….
~*~
tbc
1) British English spelling
2) Sentinel AU fusion
3) Spoilers: none
4) Disclaimer: writing for fun not for profit.
Springwoof betaed with the finest of toothed combs, and it is much, much, much appreciated – thank you, Babe.
Eff the Ineffable
By Sealie
Part Four
“Danny!”
“What?” Danny hollered back at Steve standing before him squalling at the heavens, fists clenched and head tipped back. What the Hell is happening? “Holy--”
“Danny?” Steve’s yelling switched from angry demand to rife with joy in the space of a spoken vowel and consonant.
“Steven! What the Hell did you do now?” Danny was back on the damnable beach. And the sun was shining with a weird blue tinge. He spun around in the tightest circle ever spun, taking it all in at once. “We were in the portacabin.”
“Nothin’,” Steve said defensively.
Lowering his chin, Danny pinned him with a stare.
“I didn’t mean to,” Steve said, backtracking like a toddler caught with a marker before a formally pristine wall. He slumped, fractionally. “I just wanted you.”
Those words soothed like a quaff of honeyed bourbon.
“Babe,” Danny said with a soupçon of affection. Steve was a goof, but he was Danny’s goof.
Danny was a sentinel and he catalogued twenty-four/seven. He already knew that Steve had a cut on his forearm wrapped in something vegetative and astringent. Steve was a golden-tanned god standing in the summer sun, not freezing to death under the onslaught of a glowering, evil tropical storm. There wasn’t a sound of anything overtly human other than a small collection of people four hundred yards to North West. There was also an interloper in very close proximity.
“What. Why. How. Who?” Danny demanded. “What is that stench? Why is this happening? How is this happening? And who is the guy in the diaper?”
“Geez.” Steve hung his head. “I can’t take you anywhere.”
“And was I asked?” Danny slung his arms out wide. “What. Is. Going. On?”
“The smell is Akoko plants. They normally smell like that. I don’t know why this is happening. I don’t know, yet, how this happened. And this is Kawai, he’s a kahuna.”
“Right.” Danny narrowed his eyes at the shorter guy. PIMA, his cop brain summarised. Threat assessment: low. Circa fifty-five to sixty years of age. Sentinel senses told him that this Kawai guy was healthy.
Kawai met Danny’s gaze with his own interested contemplation. Plainly amused he crossed his arms over his barrel chest.
“What kind of kahuna? The Lappy one or the evil sorcerer one that steals your soul?” Danny asked.
“La'au Lapa'au,” Steve corrected automatically. “I don’t know. Kawai hasn’t said. He’s not evil, though. He’s good.”
Steve primarily thought in black and white. It was endearing, but an exploitable vulnerability.
“Did you ask?” Danny took a deep breath, because, while he didn’t want to contemplate the actual spirit world that he had been dumped in, there was an unmistakable, unavoidable faint blue tint to everything. The colours were all stretched and wrong, as if filtered. Sentinel training pretty much conclusively said that blue visions meant the unbelievably, preposterous advent of actually having a vision. “Did this kahuna bring us here? Is it his dreamscape?”
“I’m kind of guessing from the vein throbbing in your forehead that you’ve got a headache,” Steve said. “Do you normally get headaches when you’re dreaming?”
“I’m not dreaming. It’s a vision; altered state. Didn’t the blue give that away?”
“Blue?” Steve asked.
“Yeah, it’s like wearing hippy shades, everything’s got a funky blue tint.”
“Really?” Steve turned on his heel, scanning the horizon. “It just looks like normal. Home. A thousand years ago but home. People look like people.”
“No blue tint?” Danny double checked.
“No blue tint,” Steve confirmed.
Danny focused all of his considerable attention on Kawai the Kahuna. They might be in a vision but his senses provided tangible, measurable information, as if they were in their own backyard. The stranger was waiting with a surprising amount of amused patience.
“Danny, Kawai.” Steve opened his palm towards the kahuna. “Kawai, Danny. Sentinel.”
“Hey, Kawai,” Danny finally greeted. “So, what type of kahuna are you?”
“Kawai’s kānaka, there’s no reason why he should speak English,” Steve said.
“Yeah, right. Well, in my vision everyone speaks English.”
“I don’t think that this is a vision, Danny,” Steve said. “It feels real.”
“Have you pinged this guy? “ Danny asked. “Did you? Did he feel real?”
“Yeah, I pinged him. I pinged him when I got here. He only wants to help us, me, the guide-spirit walker that’s accidently visited his ko`a.”
“What about feelers?” Danny asked suspiciously, referring to the spider web of emotional attachment between people that Steve could mentally map. “Did you check for feelers?”
Steve shook his head. He shifted foot to foot.
“Go on then.” Danny pointed at the kahuna. He didn’t care that he could hear the soft susurrus of a beating heart or the rush of breath. Steve was such a reluctant guide.
“No, Danny. I trust him. We’re really here.”
“Define real,” Danny said.
“Kanne, kaimat’iira panua,” Kawai finally spoke. He held his hand palm face down at chest height and looked expectantly at Steve. “O keia ao.”
“Kaimat’iira panua?” Steve got the pronunciation so bad that even Danny winced.
“’Uhane ē ta tautangata.” Kawai made a step towards Steve, and stopped when Danny growled. “Kaimat’iira panua.”
“Oh,” Steve said, voice rife with understanding. “Sentinel.”
“What?” Danny leaned forward.
“It’s just a guess. Kaimat’iira panua is sentinel? I know that ‘uhane, or as Kawai says it ‘uhaaneey,” Steve drawled out all the vowels especially the last one, making it sound only vaguely like the Hawaiian word for guide. “I figure tautangata means different or white or alien, or something like that.”
“He doesn’t speak Hawaiian?” Danny said suspiciously. This wasn’t like any sort of vision that had been described to him in training. Admittedly, it was only one lecture in a whole semester, but it was compulsory, and they had had a test afterwards. No sentinel who Danny had ever met had had a vision or admitted to it.
“It’s not Kawai’s role to be our teacher,” Steve said seriously. “He’s a friend who is trying to help. He’s a good guy.”
Danny heaved out the mother of all sighs. Why was his life so complicated? In Jersey he had been a simple sentinel, utilising his gifts in the prescribed and expert manner to which he had been trained, despite the fact that he had not had a guide. His life had been uncomplicated.
Coming to Hawaii had been the advent of freakin’ weirdness from day one -- along with the infernal weather and the giant ocean.
Guides, Danny thought darkly.
“So, one, you came here,” Danny said, “two, you dragged me here, three, how do we get home?”
Steve’s gaze slid sideways. Danny tracked his line of sight. A tall pyramid of bleached, hollow coral skeletons and weird cut stones sat atop of the rocks. The triangular spit of rocks was cut with a jet black crack leading deep under the reef.
“What’s that?” Danny made a step and Kawaii moved right, breaking his line of sight between them and the cave.
“Danny, no.” Steve’s arm came out. “That’s a ko`a; it’s an important shrine.”
“Really,” Danny drawled.
“Danny,” Steve said warningly. “Don’t treat it like you treated the heiau.”
“Or?” Danny eyed Steve sassily, because Steve wouldn’t be able to stop him, if he decided to go check out that freakin’ cave.
“Look at it,” Steve said emphasising look.
Danny pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled. He stretched out his skin as if shrugging off a fitted coat.
Sight had to follow sound, one of the more ridiculous directions ever uttered, but it worked. Steve had a lot to say in response to sentinels seeing around corners. But, as Danny knew, Steve was a scientist at heart, and questioned -- it was part of the reason why he struggled with guiding. The cave mouth was a narrow gullet, a stomach like hollow widened at the back. Matching the coral monument on the top of the rocky outcrop, in the centre of the cave sat another offering on top of a slate black boulder. Bones, mossy-green coated bones, were stacked neatly. A skull coated with the patina of age sat on top of the pyre. The chitter of a black crab sitting in the eye socket of the skull made Danny shudder.
“Okay, creepy,” Danny summarised. “There’s a dude in there.”
“What?” Steve crouched, squinting and failing to pierce the depths.
“Tall guy judging by the length of the femurs.”
“Skeleton?” Steve asked.
“Yep. Bones. In a neat little pile.” Danny stepped forwards, and wasn’t surprised that Steve’s large hand wrapped around his wrist.
“Danny.”
“What. What. What?” Danny lifted his wrist up between them, dragging Steve’s arm. “Why not?”
“Because it’s not disturbed.” Steve’s changeable eyes were a washed out grey matching a stormy ocean elsewhere. “Not here, any rate.”
“But it’s disturbed--” Danny jabbed his thumb over his shoulder, “--back at the building site?”
“You tell me, Danny.” Steve lifted his chin. “You’re the sentinel.”
“Nel, ka noho nei te Turehu pō,” Kawai said.
“Did you understand that? I didn’t understand that,” Danny said, giving Steve’s arm a little shake.
“I don’t know,” Steve grimaced. Taking a deep breath, he said with deliberation, “`Aumākua, Kawai?”
Kawai made the head-tilt of I kind of get what you mean; but you’re not saying it right.
“`Aumākua?” Kawai tested the word on his tongue.
“Shark?” Steve tried, and then shook his head.
“It’s a person in there, Steven,” Danny said. “Not shark bones. No shark skull. Why are you thinking sharks?”
“Sharks have a cartilaginous skeleton, they wouldn’t survive very long,” Steve corrected.
“Science Steve.” Danny rolled his eyes. “Seriously, sharks? Why sharks?”
“Manō.” Steve’s attention was on Kawai. He tapped his own chest indirectly indicating the shark tattoo on Kawai’s broad chest, and then pointed to the cave.
“Nama.” Kawai stomped his foot into the sand. A frustrated torrent rushed from his lips, words like water scattering into the sand. He mashed clawed fingers together.
“I get it. I get it.” Steve released Danny’s wrist and held his hands up as if at gun point. “No cave. And I won’t let Danny go in there either.”
“Well, I don’t get it. The cave is the interesting thing here, yes? Why shouldn’t we go and have a looksee?”
“Because….”
“Oh, that’s helpful. That didn’t work when I was six and it won’t work when I’m thirty six.”
“Danny,” Steve said sharply. “You don’t have the right to go into that shrine. Wanting to, doesn’t give you the right. Kawai is saying it as clear as day that he doesn’t want us to go into the cave -- that it is dangerous.”
“Danger’s your middle name,” Danny said. “You are the veritable definition of a danger magnet!”
Steve drew in a slow, deep breath.
“If I have to go in the cave, I will go in the cave. But it’s not necessary at this time.”
“And what if I say it is?”
“And what are you basing that on?” Steve leaned forwards, slightly.
“You’ve been unconscious for over an hour. You’re freezing cold, going hypothermic. There’s a massive storm on top of us,” Danny failed to stop speaking louder and louder. “And I can barely feel your pulse!”
Steve froze.
Danny went for the freakin’ cave.
Movement always galvanised Steve. He grabbed at Danny, catching his sleeve.
“No!”
“We’ve got to get out of here!” Danny said, dragging them towards his goal. “You’ve tried everything else, haven’t you?”
Steve went still.
“You’ve tried everything else, haven’t you?” Danny spun right into Steve’s face. “You have, haven’t you? Meditation? Even clicking your heels together, Dorothy?”
Steve was a statue.
“You haven’t tried anything have you?” Danny realised. Typical, freaking Steve! “You’ve been too busy exploring this fascinating, whole new world.”
“It never occurred to me,” Steve said sheepishly.
“Of course, it didn’t. You went looking for the external solution instead of the internal solution, didn’t you?” Danny shook off Steve’s grip. “Well, go on then.”
“And do what?” Steve lifted his hands, shoulders riding high.
“Focus.” Danny tapped hard on Steve’s sternum with a fingertip. “I know. I know. Action. Reaction. Define objective, decide strategy, and execute. This is outside your skillset. But you are a guide. Meditation, whatever, concentrate on that weird sensation that you were picking up on that brought you here.”
Strangely, Steve glanced at Kawai for reassurance. But he was listening to Danny.
“Okay.” Steve stood taller. His nostrils flared as he took in a deep slow breath and released it through his mouth. Involuntarily, his eyes closed.
Danny flicked a glance over his shoulder at the older guy, and nodded his thanks.
Steve was humming some composition under his breath, very lightly and intermittently. Danny didn’t think that he was even aware that he was humming. The music had a rhythmic and measured beat.
Danny slid further into Steve’s orbit. He didn’t know how this was going to work. But he had faith in Steve. Resting the palm of his hand over Steve’s heart, he concentrated on the reassuring lub-bub, lub-bub….
~*~
tbc
