Title: Welcome to Five-0
Pairing: Jenna/Kono pre-slash
Rating: PG-13
Length: 1707 words
Spoilers: For 1x19, Na Me e Launa Na Paio
Warnings: Language, rampant homoeroticism.
Disclaimer: None of these people belong to me!
Summary: In which Jenna did actually volunteer for this, and Kono is hot.
Jenna did not volunteer for this, no way; she may be a rogue agent on a mission but she's a brainiac, a numbers nerd, not a field agent. Even just a ride-along--nothing is ever a routine visit, no matter what Kalakaua says, no matter that McGarrett assures her that everything will be fine. It's a couple weeks now that she's worked with (not for) Five-0. She's become very familiar with Kono and Steve's particular brand of crazy.
For example: earlier today, Jenna was fighting her way through a chain of sources, trying to get in touch with a guy who knew a guy who could maybe make a recognizable human language out of one of the Yakuza's coded transmissions, when the two of them burst in each with an elbow crammed under the arm of an unconscious perp. One of his shoulders rode higher than the other, because of the height difference.
You just had to look closely to put the picture together: he was skinny but nasty looking, white and bald, with an obviously broken nose and what looked like glass abrasions across the right side of his face. From the way his foot was dragging, a broken ankle too, maybe. Kono had a fist-sized bruise coming up on her jaw and her tank top was ripped from neckline to navel. She and Steve wore identical expressions: jaw clenched, nostrils flared, rage hovering behind the tense muscles of their temples. They slammed into one of the interrogation rooms and Jenna heard the distinctive sound of an average-sized man dropping flat on a cement floor.
"Oh, Jesus Christ," Danny said, hanging in the doorway of his office. Jenna looked down, realized she'd dropped her phone onto the surface of the computer. It froze for a moment, then began to flicker madly, attempting to upload four pre-set ringtones and a picture of her mom's cat. Shit like this always, always happened when Chin was out chasing a lead or working on his bike or whatever his mysterious errands even were. Although he might have been more inclined to mock her than fix the stupid tech; he had that kind of face sometimes, underneath the nice, helpful smiles.
"Should we do something?" she hissed, swiping her phone up and tucking it back in her pocket. "Is this, like, police brutality?"
"Please," Danny said, "you don't even know. Please do not ask me these questions. Okay? I just, I try not to listen. In fact, I am going out for lunch. Now." He smiled wryly at her. "I would suggest you do the same."
"No," she said, "no, my sources--I'm in the middle of something, I can't."
"Sure," he said, and she had this weird feeling, like she was lying.
*****
It was almost an hour before Kono marched out and stopped smack in the center of the office. Her eyes drifted around the room, weirdly blank and intent, until they landed on Jenna--and wow, that was intense, that was fury sweating directly out of this taut powerful woman and all directed at her, at Jenna Kaye, desk jockey.
"Kaye," she said. "Listen, we got a lead out of him. I'm going to his sister's place now. Want to come?"
"Kono!" Steve's voice echoed out of the interrogation room, "wait for backup, have you learned nothing--"
"I've got backup," Kono shouted back, eyes still on Jenna, mouth tilted up in a mad, mad, crazy grin. "Come on, Kaye. Wanna see some action?"
And Jenna may be a numbers nerd but she's not numb, she feels things and right then she was feeling a wild rush of adrenaline that may have been clouding her judgment. That and Kono's tank was still half-off, and her bra was plain and black and utilitarian, and sweat glistened on the muscles of her upper abdomen. So Jenna said yes.
*****
Hence the ride-along. The first thing that happens is Kono speeds. It's a long stretch of highway to the suspect's sister's house, and Kono drives like the car is an extension of her body, another lean muscle to be taxed to its limit. Well, that's the second thing that happens, really--the first is that, as Jenna is climbing into the passenger seat, Kono strips off her shirt. She grabs the neckline behind her head and just strips it off, guy-style, then throws it into the back of the car like a rag. Jenna lands in the seat before she's realized she's falling.
"Glovebox," Kono says, then reaches across her, opens it, and pulls out a soft gray t-shirt. Her bicep flexes barely three inches from Jenna's nose. Either Jenna is starting to get that weird fuzzy vision that means she's about to pass out, or the heat of Kono's skin is fogging her glasses. By the time she recovers, Kono is dressed and peeling out of the parking garage.
So, that happens, and then Kono speeds, and then they're off the highway and pulling up to a depressing cement block of an apartment building, made worse somehow by the technicolor glow of all the natural growth around it. Off to the side is a dilapidated little playground, just a busted swingset and a couple of sun-bleached plastic tricycles lying on their sides.
"One forty-one," Kono says, "around the corner. Follow my lead," and then she's out of the car and Jenna has to hustle to keep up. She goes to a calm place in her head--it's not like she can't handle herself in a crisis, she would have picked a different line of work if that were the case. She would never have walked into Lieutenant Commander Steve McGarrett's office and thrown down the most laughably arrogant line of bullshit she could dream up. By the time she gets to apartment 141 she's got this shit under control.
Then the sister opens the door. It is not an attractive family, basically--she's got stringy bangs and a thin nasty mouth and her crop top shows off prominent hipbones and a possibly infected naval piercing. "What?" she says. Then she registers Kono's badge. These apartments only have one exit, a fact which passes quickly across her pinched face before she slips around Jenna's left side and just runs. It's the dumbest escape attempt ever. She's not even wearing shoes. Jenna lunges on instinct, but the fucker is slippery, just a slide of cool flesh under Jenna's fingertips. She hopes against hope, as she overbalances and her left hip crashes hard into the grass, that she did not touch anything anywhere near that disgusting piercing.
Kono doesn't miss a beat. She doesn't draw her gun, either, just runs after the woman, yelling "Stop! Five-0!" like she has no question the perp will know who they are and throw up her hands in surrender. This does not happen. The perp is still booking it even though it's clear she's hurt her foot somehow, she's limping a little, and Kono doesn't even seem to be breathing hard as they round on the playground and veer toward the road. Jenna finally picks herself up and jogs after them; Kono's gaining on the perp like a very fierce, very muscular train. Then the woman swears, and Kono takes her down hard with a shoulder to the back. It's a painful-looking tackle.
"--arrest for the murder of Mark Hekekia," Kono is saying as Jenna catches up. She's got the sole of one boot planted between the woman's shoulderblades and she's whipping her cuffs off her belt and snapping them open. Jenna feels herself flush, her heart spike, even as the adrenaline is draining out of her system.
"Fuck you," the woman says. It's muffled by the dirt she's face-down in.
"Wait," Jenna says. "We were just going to ask her some questions. Routine visit."
"Eh," Kono says, "my main question was going to be 'did you kill Mark Hekekia,' but then she ran, so."
"Routine visit," Jenna repeats. She can hear her own voice getting louder. She feels a vague sense of shame for not making herself more useful, but then a voice at the back of her head says 'Ride-along! Routine visit!' and she remembers that this is not her job, her job is analysis, information, not chasing people and tackling them and showing no signs of exertion except two muggy sweat spots under the arms of her t-shirt.
Kono punches Jenna on the shoulder. It's possible that she intends it to be gentle. "Routine, brah," she says, "this is routine. Welcome to Five-0." Her eyes flick down over Jenna's body, the grass stains on her jeans and the strawberry scrape coming up on the heel of her palm and maybe, maybe some other things too. "We should get you some training," she says. "You've got instincts."
"Yeah, sure," Jenna says, watching Kono watch her. She's older than she looks, clearly. The tender skin under her eyes is slightly puffy and the humidity is not doing her hair any favors. She's still, somehow, magically, not even breathing hard. "Sure. Yeah."
Then Kono's phone buzzes and Jenna realizes it's been ringing for a while. Kono looks away, pulls it out of her pocket and swipes something on the screen, still pinning the cuffed perp with one boot.
"Steve," she says to Jenna, looking embarrassed. "Maybe you should--listen, I think he's going to be mad. I was supposed to wait for Chin, but, um."
"Call him back later," Jenna says. "I'll tell him you were busy kicking ass."
Kono smiles. "Just a sec," she says, and ducks her head to make a call. She asks for uniforms to come pick up their suspect, so it's clearly HPD, but Jenna isn't really listening. Kono's hair falls wild over her forehead.
When she hangs up, she looks pleased. "Help me with this?" she says, gesturing to Mark Hekekia's killer, who is shaking with rage or fear or both. They each take an arm and haul her back to the parking lot, to wait for the blue-and-whites. They're almost the same height, Jenna realizes, only Kono is a little taller. Just the right amount taller. The perp's skin under her hands is sweaty and cold, and Jenna watches the ground in front of her and thinks: oh. Oh, shit.