In which I write disjointedly
SO there was this Hawaii Five-0 cliche meme thing (WHICH entirely unrelated but I got my sister into H50 yesterday which makes me happy in my soul) that gyzym turned me onto, and some really nifty stuff showed up in the comments, and then it occurred to me; HIGH SCHOOL AU. RITE!?!
They act like teenagers a lot of the time ANYHOW, it really wasn't much of a stretch to imagine Steve as the intensely crazy quarterback, and Kono as the BAMF-y Captain of the Field Hockey team, and Chin as the silent but deadly head of the Debate team and also PROM KING, because he is so fly, and Danny is a transfer from New Jersey who loathes in his soul that he's now living in a state that has never even heard of REAL HOCKEY.
And then somebody mentioned him getting into arguments with Kono about the One True Hockey, and there was talk of handcuffs, and then this happened. So unfinished and poorly drafted.
When Danny first moved to Hawaii with his mom, the circumstances of his arrival already meant that he wanted to hate the place. When his parents had sat him down in that way which he's sure was meant to be reassuring but turned out to be kind of scary and uncomfortable and told him they were separating, he knew that it was over. His life would be different forever. He'd tried to believe that his mom and dad would get back together, but two years of sniping and hissed arguments and too many closed doors meant that he hadn't borne out much hope, even from the start.
So, given his reasons for being there, Hawaii was pretty much the suckiest place on earth. The sunshine as they deplaned that made him curse and shade his eyes with his hand because they'd come from New Jersey in March? Sucky. The not unreasonably but still definitely hot weather that caused his shirt to stick to his back beneath his apparently not so reasonable denim jacket? Sucky. But the absolute pinnacle on the pile of suck that his life had become came when he and his mother went to his new school to enroll and set up his schedule and he discovered that while the school had a football team, and a baseball team, and a motherfucking golf team, they did not have a men's hockey team. When the registrar shot him a puzzled glance and told him the news, he felt his spine crumple, and he lost whatever small ounces of will to live that had remained from the whole sucky, hot, sticky, bright, not-New-Jersey mess of events that he had suffered through so far.
Understandably, Danny's enthusiasm for the first day of school could have been characterized as sub-par.
The day started with a sniping argument between himself and his beleaguered mother when he tried to leave the house wearing his favorite jeans and long sleeved t-shirt. She claimed that he would have heat-stroke by noon, Danny claimed that surely (please god) they would have air-conditioning in the school buildings themselves and since there was no Hockey, which would have been indoors anyways, and since he refused to stoop to a lesser sport like football, and since he was 17 for Christ's sake and he could dress himself, that he was going to wear his favorite clothes so he didn't end up curled in a ball sobbing in the janitor's closet at the end of the day. His mom retorted with a "go change or so help me god" and threw in a "why? because I said so" for good measure and Danny ended up in the compromised position of wearing his favorite shirt with the sleeves rolled up his forearms and his new (only) pair of cargo shorts with pockets on the thighs. He felt like a dork going to school in shorts in March, but he knew that it was going to be at least 75 out that day, he wasn't an idiot, and anyways he couldn't be bothered to care about the opinions of people who did not now nor ever would probably play hockey.
The sun was shining obnoxiously as he got off the school bus, which like all buses lacked air conditioning, a state of being which he had never had cause to truly despair of before. He was secretly glad he hadn't worn his jeans, if only because it was entirely possible that they might have literally melted into his flesh from the heat radiating off the sun-baked black vinyl seats on the wrong side of the bus that he wrongly chose to sit on. How was he supposed to know that there could be an actual hazard to his life in making the choice between left and right hand sides? Clearly Hawaii was a worse place than even he had come to believe.
He stumbled up onto the sidewalk and stood for a moment, eyes smarting and watering at the piercing morning sun as it rose rather inconveniently above the spindly palm trees that lined the green in front of the main school building. He therefore had the excuse of tears in his eyes and light refracting off of them to explain the halo which seemed to surround the boy that nearly cut him down at the knees with his arm as he screamed by, crouched low on what might have been a skateboard if it hadn't been about two feet too long. Danny choked back the curses he would have shouted back in New Jersey, reasoning that if things hadn't improved by tomorrow he would stop self-censoring, but that his mother would probably kill him with her favorite cleaver if he presented such a poor first impression on his first day of school in the first new place he had lived since he was three.
He caught a glimpse of dark messy hair and the ugliest tan boots he had ever seen, and the curve of a rather spectacular ass, actually, before the boy caromed around the corner of the building and out of sight. Danny didn't know what the hell was up with the mutant skateboard, but he took a second to pray that he might see its rider again, if only to provide a solitary glimmer of hope and sexy that might carry him through to tomorrow, so he could say he had survived his first day, and he could carry that one day in his heart as proof that he could survive all the days that would follow.
In homeroom, Danny met the hottest girl he had ever seen in real life, whose name was Kono, and who won his heart for all of five seconds by bringing up hockey in conversation before he realized she was talking about the wrong kind.
"No, I'm sorry, Kono, you seem awesome and everything but even your powers good cheer cannot convince me that any hockey that takes place in a FIELD instead of a RINK as god intended is the right kind of hockey."
"I'm sorry to break it to YOU, Danny, but I'm pretty sure that my version existed before yours did. Also we play without all that stupid gear, which, seriously, who needs that many shoulder pads?"
"WE need the padding because WE have skates and we play on ice and we go very, very fast, and therefore when we check somebody it is entirely possible that we could remove their spine from their bodies from the sheer velocity. Its a scientific fact, look it up. Go ahead, I'll wait." Kono laughed as Danny set his cheek on his fist and tapped his finger against the desk, and Danny couldn't help but smile back, and that's probably where he lost the argument, but he was having so much fun trying to get her to laugh again, he couldn't really bring himself to care. As the school morning news program, named something with more vowels than was strictly necessary, wrapped up and the students started packing up their last-minute homework and various time-wasting electronic devices, Kono invited Danny to join her and her friends for lunch, which Danny agreed to with what he felt was pretty remarkable cool considering the way she flicked her hair as she slid the strap of her messenger bag onto her shoulder. He waved goodbye to her as they took off in opposite directions down the hallway outside the classroom, and he couldn't help feeling a tiny sliver of hope that maybe he might not hate it in Hawaii, that is until he tried to take what appeared to be a shortcut across the football field at the center of the cluster of school buildings and ran across what he could only assume was some kind of gang initiation, given the number of tattoos on display, all belonging to unsavory looking upperclassmen who had surrounded another boy in front of the utility building.
Danny contemplated, for a very short moment, just passing by and continuing on his way but he heard the echo of his mother's voice in his head and like any good New Jersey boy he cursed and did what she told him to do, which was stand at a safe distance and say "Hey, is this a private party or can anybody crash?"
Ok, maybe that wasn't verbatim, but the spirit of the thing was there. All five of the hooligans (the only word that really fit the tattoos and the hair and the general air of surliness) turned to face him, and in the process a space opened between him and the other innocent party, and he saw that it was the same boy with the halo and the mutant-board, which he only knew for sure when he glanced down and saw those same stupid boots. Danny figured only one person at any given time within a ten mile radius would be caught dead wearing those boots.
The other kid didn't have the halo anymore, obviously, but Danny was equally dazzled by the stubborn look on his face, or more accurately the stupidly perfect jawline that it accentuated as he stuck out his chin.
"Who the fuck are you? Get lost."
Danny waited for a moment, then spread his hands and cocked an eyebrow.
"That it? I dunno what I was expecting but that's pretty caveman even for a bunch of schmucks like you. Would you like to go fetch a thesaurus? Maybe a dictionary? I don't mind hanging out here, the sun's growing on me, although I wouldn't go spreading that around, I have a reputation to uphold."
Danny was babbling, his heart beat suddenly ratcheting up as he absorbed the truly horrifying number of veiny forearms crossed over weirdly-broad-for-high-schooler's chests, and then he saw that one of them had an honest to god five o'clock shadow and he began to suspect they weren't students after all.
He slid a hand surreptitiously into his bag, hanging off one shoulder, and rooted around as inconspicuously as he could for a weapon, any weapon, or at least his cell phone so he could either call the police or take pictures of his murderers before his untimely demise depending on how much shit he had gotten himself into. He didn't back away, though, since not only did he suspect that retreat would be chumming the waters for this lot, but he also was more determined than ever not to abandon the other boy, whose name Danny might tragically never know if either of them ended up dead from all of this.
"Hey, you, what's your name? I only ask so that I can tell the authorities who to call to corroborate my charges of criminal menacing and... trespassing on state property. And... and assault, unless you decide to leave quietly now?" His voice betrayed him by squeaking upwards and making his last statement into a question against his will. The lead hood smirked and took another step in his direction, the others ranging out behind him like some twisted wolf pack, except wolves didn't live in Hawaii, and he was weirdly regretful that he didn't know more about the island so he could come up with a better simile.
The other boy unclenched his jaw. "Steve, my name's Steve, and you should really get out of here, whoever you are. This isn't your problem, I can take care of myself."
"Danny, I'm Danny, I'd tell you my last name but I'm afraid if I did somebody would show up at my house in the middle of the night and strangle my dog with piano wire or something." Danny finally felt something metal down at the bottom of his bag, and as he moved his weight onto the balls of his feet, he yanked the object out of his bag, hoping for his metal compass which at least had a very pointy tip but he instead found himself brandishing a set of cheap looking handcuffs. He choked out a startled laugh, and felt his heart drop into his shoes.
"These! These are... my father's handcuffs! My father is a police officer and...he's a sergeant, and if you hurt me or my new friend here I swear on these handcuffs that he'll know who did it because I've been trained to remember details at a crime scene and I'll describe every last one of your stupid ass tattoos and he'll find you and put you in jail for.. well, for long enough for me to graduate and get off this fucking island." Danny suspected that last part of his threatening rant hadn't struck quite the right note, but he could see that something he'd said had caused the men to turn and look at each other, eyebrows raised.
The one in front, who wore a truly disgusting looking leather vest that must smell like the underside of a roadkill cat given the already soaring temperatures, glanced back over his shoulder at the kid still pressed up against the cinder block of the building, hands clenched into fists.
"Well. We've said what we came here to say, I suppose we should just leave you two to get to know each other. You seem to have a lot in common."
With that cryptic statement, they broke away to the left, towards the far end of the field where it dissolved into ragged greenery and a chain link fence that they scaled with seemingly little effort, probably assisted by the riot of kudzu vines that tumbled down towards the end zone.
Danny stood frozen for a moment before letting out a whistling breath and bending at the waist, his hands going down to brace against his knees. The handcuffs dropped to the grass, flashing sunlight painfully into his eyes, which gave him a reason other than ball-tingling fear to close them. He breathed carefully in through his nose and out through his mouth, trying to subdue the vague nausea that he felt as the adrenaline surge receded.
He heard a rustle of footsteps on the grass and jerked upright, skipping back a few steps in what he would swear to his grave was ninja-like grace and preparedness but ended up looking more like a zombie shamble as he got a head rush and almost passed out. He swore as he saw it was only the other kid, Steve, who looked pretty composed himself, and Danny noticed too late what Steve was looking at as he stooped down to pick up the handcuffs from where they'd fallen.
"These..."
He trailed off, holding one cuff and letting the other one dangle. Danny winced and held out a hand, wiggling his fingers impatiently.
"Yes, yes, those are mine, I'll just take them back now..."
The corner of Steve's mouth quirked upwards and he swung the cuffs around one finger, looking at Danny as he broke out into a full on smirk.
"These are way too light to be real handcuffs. Where did you get these?"
Danny had gotten them from his now ex-girlfriend who had given them to him as some sort of sad going-away present just before she broke up with him because she claimed she just wasn't ready for a long distance relationship. They had used them once or twice, just from boredom after he found out she wouldn't go past second base and she found out that he wouldn't sleep with her anyhow unless she made some sort of commitment to him. She had called him a girl and pulled out the cuffs, which his weak, hormonal teenage boy brain had somehow interpreted as a positive sign and he'd found himself later shirtless and almost screaming with frustration as she teased everything north of his waist and south of the hem of his boxers with a feather. He'd never felt so keenly like the true expression of teenage stupidity.
"None of your damn business, those fake handcuffs just saved your life so would you please stop *twirling* them and give them back? Please?"
Steve grinned through his teeth.
"Nah, I think I'll keep these. They might come in handy someday, and since your dad is a cop you can just get a pair from him... right?"
Danny winced even harder, and he thought at this point that his eyes might just get stuck that way, given the path his day had taken so far.
"Well, actually, and in all fairness I think it was understandable under the circumstances, but I might have been... well, ok, outright lying just then."
Steve's grin shifted to something a little friendlier as he tucked the handcuffs into his back pocket. "Oh, I know. My dad really is a cop, and I would know if HPD had hired some new sergeant from out of state."
Danny finally flashed a small smile of his own. "Hey, cool. I wish my dad honestly was a cop, actually, instead of just a deadbeat vendor from down the shore." He knew Steve probably had no idea what he was talking about but he felt some weird sense of connection in that moment all the same.
Aaand that's all I had time for as it turned into 4 o'clock in the morning and I decided maybe sleep was a good plan. grimcognito added on an epic bit to the end but that's not mine so I won't put it here.
In conclusion, Danny and Steve are the teenagery-est teenagers who ever were dumb in High School, and there's nothing anybody can say to convince me otherwise.
They act like teenagers a lot of the time ANYHOW, it really wasn't much of a stretch to imagine Steve as the intensely crazy quarterback, and Kono as the BAMF-y Captain of the Field Hockey team, and Chin as the silent but deadly head of the Debate team and also PROM KING, because he is so fly, and Danny is a transfer from New Jersey who loathes in his soul that he's now living in a state that has never even heard of REAL HOCKEY.
And then somebody mentioned him getting into arguments with Kono about the One True Hockey, and there was talk of handcuffs, and then this happened. So unfinished and poorly drafted.
When Danny first moved to Hawaii with his mom, the circumstances of his arrival already meant that he wanted to hate the place. When his parents had sat him down in that way which he's sure was meant to be reassuring but turned out to be kind of scary and uncomfortable and told him they were separating, he knew that it was over. His life would be different forever. He'd tried to believe that his mom and dad would get back together, but two years of sniping and hissed arguments and too many closed doors meant that he hadn't borne out much hope, even from the start.
So, given his reasons for being there, Hawaii was pretty much the suckiest place on earth. The sunshine as they deplaned that made him curse and shade his eyes with his hand because they'd come from New Jersey in March? Sucky. The not unreasonably but still definitely hot weather that caused his shirt to stick to his back beneath his apparently not so reasonable denim jacket? Sucky. But the absolute pinnacle on the pile of suck that his life had become came when he and his mother went to his new school to enroll and set up his schedule and he discovered that while the school had a football team, and a baseball team, and a motherfucking golf team, they did not have a men's hockey team. When the registrar shot him a puzzled glance and told him the news, he felt his spine crumple, and he lost whatever small ounces of will to live that had remained from the whole sucky, hot, sticky, bright, not-New-Jersey mess of events that he had suffered through so far.
Understandably, Danny's enthusiasm for the first day of school could have been characterized as sub-par.
The day started with a sniping argument between himself and his beleaguered mother when he tried to leave the house wearing his favorite jeans and long sleeved t-shirt. She claimed that he would have heat-stroke by noon, Danny claimed that surely (please god) they would have air-conditioning in the school buildings themselves and since there was no Hockey, which would have been indoors anyways, and since he refused to stoop to a lesser sport like football, and since he was 17 for Christ's sake and he could dress himself, that he was going to wear his favorite clothes so he didn't end up curled in a ball sobbing in the janitor's closet at the end of the day. His mom retorted with a "go change or so help me god" and threw in a "why? because I said so" for good measure and Danny ended up in the compromised position of wearing his favorite shirt with the sleeves rolled up his forearms and his new (only) pair of cargo shorts with pockets on the thighs. He felt like a dork going to school in shorts in March, but he knew that it was going to be at least 75 out that day, he wasn't an idiot, and anyways he couldn't be bothered to care about the opinions of people who did not now nor ever would probably play hockey.
The sun was shining obnoxiously as he got off the school bus, which like all buses lacked air conditioning, a state of being which he had never had cause to truly despair of before. He was secretly glad he hadn't worn his jeans, if only because it was entirely possible that they might have literally melted into his flesh from the heat radiating off the sun-baked black vinyl seats on the wrong side of the bus that he wrongly chose to sit on. How was he supposed to know that there could be an actual hazard to his life in making the choice between left and right hand sides? Clearly Hawaii was a worse place than even he had come to believe.
He stumbled up onto the sidewalk and stood for a moment, eyes smarting and watering at the piercing morning sun as it rose rather inconveniently above the spindly palm trees that lined the green in front of the main school building. He therefore had the excuse of tears in his eyes and light refracting off of them to explain the halo which seemed to surround the boy that nearly cut him down at the knees with his arm as he screamed by, crouched low on what might have been a skateboard if it hadn't been about two feet too long. Danny choked back the curses he would have shouted back in New Jersey, reasoning that if things hadn't improved by tomorrow he would stop self-censoring, but that his mother would probably kill him with her favorite cleaver if he presented such a poor first impression on his first day of school in the first new place he had lived since he was three.
He caught a glimpse of dark messy hair and the ugliest tan boots he had ever seen, and the curve of a rather spectacular ass, actually, before the boy caromed around the corner of the building and out of sight. Danny didn't know what the hell was up with the mutant skateboard, but he took a second to pray that he might see its rider again, if only to provide a solitary glimmer of hope and sexy that might carry him through to tomorrow, so he could say he had survived his first day, and he could carry that one day in his heart as proof that he could survive all the days that would follow.
In homeroom, Danny met the hottest girl he had ever seen in real life, whose name was Kono, and who won his heart for all of five seconds by bringing up hockey in conversation before he realized she was talking about the wrong kind.
"No, I'm sorry, Kono, you seem awesome and everything but even your powers good cheer cannot convince me that any hockey that takes place in a FIELD instead of a RINK as god intended is the right kind of hockey."
"I'm sorry to break it to YOU, Danny, but I'm pretty sure that my version existed before yours did. Also we play without all that stupid gear, which, seriously, who needs that many shoulder pads?"
"WE need the padding because WE have skates and we play on ice and we go very, very fast, and therefore when we check somebody it is entirely possible that we could remove their spine from their bodies from the sheer velocity. Its a scientific fact, look it up. Go ahead, I'll wait." Kono laughed as Danny set his cheek on his fist and tapped his finger against the desk, and Danny couldn't help but smile back, and that's probably where he lost the argument, but he was having so much fun trying to get her to laugh again, he couldn't really bring himself to care. As the school morning news program, named something with more vowels than was strictly necessary, wrapped up and the students started packing up their last-minute homework and various time-wasting electronic devices, Kono invited Danny to join her and her friends for lunch, which Danny agreed to with what he felt was pretty remarkable cool considering the way she flicked her hair as she slid the strap of her messenger bag onto her shoulder. He waved goodbye to her as they took off in opposite directions down the hallway outside the classroom, and he couldn't help feeling a tiny sliver of hope that maybe he might not hate it in Hawaii, that is until he tried to take what appeared to be a shortcut across the football field at the center of the cluster of school buildings and ran across what he could only assume was some kind of gang initiation, given the number of tattoos on display, all belonging to unsavory looking upperclassmen who had surrounded another boy in front of the utility building.
Danny contemplated, for a very short moment, just passing by and continuing on his way but he heard the echo of his mother's voice in his head and like any good New Jersey boy he cursed and did what she told him to do, which was stand at a safe distance and say "Hey, is this a private party or can anybody crash?"
Ok, maybe that wasn't verbatim, but the spirit of the thing was there. All five of the hooligans (the only word that really fit the tattoos and the hair and the general air of surliness) turned to face him, and in the process a space opened between him and the other innocent party, and he saw that it was the same boy with the halo and the mutant-board, which he only knew for sure when he glanced down and saw those same stupid boots. Danny figured only one person at any given time within a ten mile radius would be caught dead wearing those boots.
The other kid didn't have the halo anymore, obviously, but Danny was equally dazzled by the stubborn look on his face, or more accurately the stupidly perfect jawline that it accentuated as he stuck out his chin.
"Who the fuck are you? Get lost."
Danny waited for a moment, then spread his hands and cocked an eyebrow.
"That it? I dunno what I was expecting but that's pretty caveman even for a bunch of schmucks like you. Would you like to go fetch a thesaurus? Maybe a dictionary? I don't mind hanging out here, the sun's growing on me, although I wouldn't go spreading that around, I have a reputation to uphold."
Danny was babbling, his heart beat suddenly ratcheting up as he absorbed the truly horrifying number of veiny forearms crossed over weirdly-broad-for-high-schooler's chests, and then he saw that one of them had an honest to god five o'clock shadow and he began to suspect they weren't students after all.
He slid a hand surreptitiously into his bag, hanging off one shoulder, and rooted around as inconspicuously as he could for a weapon, any weapon, or at least his cell phone so he could either call the police or take pictures of his murderers before his untimely demise depending on how much shit he had gotten himself into. He didn't back away, though, since not only did he suspect that retreat would be chumming the waters for this lot, but he also was more determined than ever not to abandon the other boy, whose name Danny might tragically never know if either of them ended up dead from all of this.
"Hey, you, what's your name? I only ask so that I can tell the authorities who to call to corroborate my charges of criminal menacing and... trespassing on state property. And... and assault, unless you decide to leave quietly now?" His voice betrayed him by squeaking upwards and making his last statement into a question against his will. The lead hood smirked and took another step in his direction, the others ranging out behind him like some twisted wolf pack, except wolves didn't live in Hawaii, and he was weirdly regretful that he didn't know more about the island so he could come up with a better simile.
The other boy unclenched his jaw. "Steve, my name's Steve, and you should really get out of here, whoever you are. This isn't your problem, I can take care of myself."
"Danny, I'm Danny, I'd tell you my last name but I'm afraid if I did somebody would show up at my house in the middle of the night and strangle my dog with piano wire or something." Danny finally felt something metal down at the bottom of his bag, and as he moved his weight onto the balls of his feet, he yanked the object out of his bag, hoping for his metal compass which at least had a very pointy tip but he instead found himself brandishing a set of cheap looking handcuffs. He choked out a startled laugh, and felt his heart drop into his shoes.
"These! These are... my father's handcuffs! My father is a police officer and...he's a sergeant, and if you hurt me or my new friend here I swear on these handcuffs that he'll know who did it because I've been trained to remember details at a crime scene and I'll describe every last one of your stupid ass tattoos and he'll find you and put you in jail for.. well, for long enough for me to graduate and get off this fucking island." Danny suspected that last part of his threatening rant hadn't struck quite the right note, but he could see that something he'd said had caused the men to turn and look at each other, eyebrows raised.
The one in front, who wore a truly disgusting looking leather vest that must smell like the underside of a roadkill cat given the already soaring temperatures, glanced back over his shoulder at the kid still pressed up against the cinder block of the building, hands clenched into fists.
"Well. We've said what we came here to say, I suppose we should just leave you two to get to know each other. You seem to have a lot in common."
With that cryptic statement, they broke away to the left, towards the far end of the field where it dissolved into ragged greenery and a chain link fence that they scaled with seemingly little effort, probably assisted by the riot of kudzu vines that tumbled down towards the end zone.
Danny stood frozen for a moment before letting out a whistling breath and bending at the waist, his hands going down to brace against his knees. The handcuffs dropped to the grass, flashing sunlight painfully into his eyes, which gave him a reason other than ball-tingling fear to close them. He breathed carefully in through his nose and out through his mouth, trying to subdue the vague nausea that he felt as the adrenaline surge receded.
He heard a rustle of footsteps on the grass and jerked upright, skipping back a few steps in what he would swear to his grave was ninja-like grace and preparedness but ended up looking more like a zombie shamble as he got a head rush and almost passed out. He swore as he saw it was only the other kid, Steve, who looked pretty composed himself, and Danny noticed too late what Steve was looking at as he stooped down to pick up the handcuffs from where they'd fallen.
"These..."
He trailed off, holding one cuff and letting the other one dangle. Danny winced and held out a hand, wiggling his fingers impatiently.
"Yes, yes, those are mine, I'll just take them back now..."
The corner of Steve's mouth quirked upwards and he swung the cuffs around one finger, looking at Danny as he broke out into a full on smirk.
"These are way too light to be real handcuffs. Where did you get these?"
Danny had gotten them from his now ex-girlfriend who had given them to him as some sort of sad going-away present just before she broke up with him because she claimed she just wasn't ready for a long distance relationship. They had used them once or twice, just from boredom after he found out she wouldn't go past second base and she found out that he wouldn't sleep with her anyhow unless she made some sort of commitment to him. She had called him a girl and pulled out the cuffs, which his weak, hormonal teenage boy brain had somehow interpreted as a positive sign and he'd found himself later shirtless and almost screaming with frustration as she teased everything north of his waist and south of the hem of his boxers with a feather. He'd never felt so keenly like the true expression of teenage stupidity.
"None of your damn business, those fake handcuffs just saved your life so would you please stop *twirling* them and give them back? Please?"
Steve grinned through his teeth.
"Nah, I think I'll keep these. They might come in handy someday, and since your dad is a cop you can just get a pair from him... right?"
Danny winced even harder, and he thought at this point that his eyes might just get stuck that way, given the path his day had taken so far.
"Well, actually, and in all fairness I think it was understandable under the circumstances, but I might have been... well, ok, outright lying just then."
Steve's grin shifted to something a little friendlier as he tucked the handcuffs into his back pocket. "Oh, I know. My dad really is a cop, and I would know if HPD had hired some new sergeant from out of state."
Danny finally flashed a small smile of his own. "Hey, cool. I wish my dad honestly was a cop, actually, instead of just a deadbeat vendor from down the shore." He knew Steve probably had no idea what he was talking about but he felt some weird sense of connection in that moment all the same.
Aaand that's all I had time for as it turned into 4 o'clock in the morning and I decided maybe sleep was a good plan. grimcognito added on an epic bit to the end but that's not mine so I won't put it here.
In conclusion, Danny and Steve are the teenagery-est teenagers who ever were dumb in High School, and there's nothing anybody can say to convince me otherwise.