hawaii 5-0 fic: totally not a kissing book - chapter one [steve/danny, pg-13]
This is the first chapter of a fucking Princess Bride AU that I am apparently going to post serially, I honestly, I don't even know what else to say, oh my god, this is so ridiculous, this is straight up unmitigated crack, please understand that I mean it only as crack. Crack. Craaaaaack. I DO NOT TAKE THIS STORY SERIOUSLY AT ALL AND NEITHER SHOULD YOU, IS MY POINT.
Also, I've kind of changed. Um. Some things. A lot of things. And the summary is for the overall story even though it's not all actually written yet because the hell if I'm writing a summary for every chapter because I HATE SUMMARIES and oh, god, I'm just going to stop talking now. EXCEPT TO SAY THAT I BLAME iam_space FOR PLANTING THE IDEA AND hermette FOR ENCOURAGING IT AND leupagus FOR DEMANDING I WRITE IT FASTER. Seriously. It's their fault. It's not mine.
Title: Totally Not A Kissing Book - Chapter One
Pairing: Steve/Danny
Rating: PG-13, but really only for language
Summary: Danny's the hottest guy in Florin, Steve's a lunatic, Kono's a bad ass, and Chin doesn't get paid enough for this shit. So really, nothing's changed at all.
Danny is the fourth most attractive guy in all of Florin; he’s behind two schmucks whose names he can’t be fucked to remember and that Stan guy Rachel’s marrying. It’s the kind of thing he tries not to think about too much, because it makes him a little uncomfortable, especially when there are people coming by to have awkward coffee with him all the time. Danny would really like it if he was, say, the 45th most attractive guy in all of Florin--still respectable looking, right, nothing to sneeze at, but not this all the time.
“Are you really complaining?” Rachel says, sipping her tea over dinner. “Most people would kill to be in your shoes, Daniel.”
“Well, I am not most people,” Danny snaps. “I would like to live an anonymous life, okay, this is unbearable, I can’t even go out to get milk anymore because people are all, all, throwing themselves at me! It’s not fair. It’s not right. It has to stop. “
“Well,” Rachel says, because she’s a good friend and everything but kind of lacking in the murmuring-comforting-nonsense department, “you could always just start bringing your farmhand out with you; that might shut people up.”
“My farmhand?” Danny asks, confused, and glances out the window when Rachel gestures. “Wait, wait, you mean Steve?”
“No, I mean the other glistening specimen of manflesh working your fields,” Rachel says, rolling her eyes. “Yes, I mean Steve. Have you ever actually seen Steve, Daniel?”
“Well of course I’ve seen him,” Danny snaps. “I do actually employ him, okay, and he’s just--you know, he’s Steve, he’s a crazy fuck sometimes but he gets his shit done, calls me Danno all the time. What’s there to look at?”
Rachel purses her lips, glances out the window again, and fails to look away. Danny follows her gaze and, yeah, okay, Steve’s out there without a shirt on, he does that sometimes, he’s always taking his shirt off, that’s just what he’s like. And, well, maybe he’s a little on the bronzed side, and sure his cheekbones are all statuesque and shit, that’s fine, Danny can see that, but there’s no reason for Rachel to be looking at him the way she is. Like she’s hungry, and seriously, what the hell, Rachel can’t look at his farmhand like that, Steve is Danny’s farmhand, this is so not okay on so many levels--
“I see you’ve seen my point,” Rachel says, which is when Danny realizes he’s planted himself bodily between her and the window. “Something to consider, at the very least. I’m off, have a lovely day, hmm?”
She kisses him on the cheek and goes, leaving him alone with his thoughts.
And--well, it’s possible that Danny’s gotten a little spoiled over the last couple of years, there’s that chance. As much as he doesn’t particularly enjoy being the fourth most attractive guy in all of Florin, there are certain perks. He never has to worry about rejection, for one thing, not the way he’s worrying now. Because he’d kind of like to go out and talk to Steve, just say hi, no big deal, now that he’s been all illuminated vis a vis his burning hotness, but he’s not...sure...that’s a good idea. He is, now that he thinks about it, recalling some less than friendly behavior towards Steve. Possibly some throwing of some things. Definitely some shouting.
“Ah, well,” he says, swallowing his pride and also a fairly sizeable glass of mead, “no time like the present.”
He leaves the house, goes out around the back, and finds Steve in the stables. He’s covered in horse shit and sweat and oh, god, Danny feels his mouth go all dry, because, seriously, Steve is the most attractive guy in the world. Screw the ranking system; Danny doesn’t care who falls where, there’s no one out there beating Steve, he knows that now. He feels blindsided and blind at once, that he’s been living with this guy around the corner all these years and never seen it.
“Hey, Danno,” Steve says, grinning at him, and Danny feels kind of faint, what the actual fuck.
“Hi,” he says, and then, before he can help himself, “okay, question. Why do you call me Danno?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Steve says, his smile slipping as he turns back to the stall he’s mucking. Danny may have been downplaying the whole less-than-friendly thing to gear himself up for this--the truth is, he and Steve don’t get on at all. They haven’t from the day Steve started working here, when he climbed up the side of the barn instead of using a ladder like a normal person; Danny screamed, Steve ignored him, and things have been tense ever since. He shouldn’t be surprised that Steve’s reacting badly to his admittedly less-than-brilliant overture here, but Danny’s not really that practiced in the art of hitting on people. Generally they throw themselves at him en masse and he just sort of...takes his pick.
“No,” he says, trying to salvage this, “I meant it as like an, an honest question, like as a--I’m trying to talk to you here, that’s what happening, like normal people. Can we do that?”
“Uh,” Steve says. He looks like he’s trying to decide between smiling and running. “You’ve...never wanted to do that before.”
“It’s possible I’ve come to an epiphany,” Danny says. “Or two or three, okay, but at least one of them involves me being a little less...”
“Angry?” Steve suggests. “Acerbic?”
“Acerbic,” Danny repeats, “acerbic, he says, what kind of word is acerbic, what does that even mean--”
“Well,” Steve says, “I’d say you’re demonstrating it pretty well right now.”
“See,” Danny says, “this is the thing about you. I come out here to talk, right, because maybe I’m starting to consider liking you a little--”
“Wait,” Steve says, “really?”
“Yes really,” Danny says, waving a hand, “but maybe I wanted to clear the air a little first, apologize for being, you know, acerbic and whatever, but the first thing you do is call me Danno, even though you know I hate it when you call me that--”
“It’s a term of endearment,” Steve says, closing the distance between them and leering like he thinks he’s--like he thinks he’s smooth or something. Danny swallows, and swallows again. “I say it when I mean--”
“Do not say I love you,” Danny warns. “Do not, Steven, this is not some ridiculous fairy tale, just because I’ve suddenly been alerted to the depth of my passions for you based solely on physical attraction and jealousy does not mean--”
“Danno,” Steve breathes, and Danny says, “Oh, the hell with it,” and kisses him.
Since the invention of the kiss, there have only been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This...is not one of them. Danny’s still kind of annoyed with Steve, and Steve is a little overenthusiastic and also smells a lot like horseshit, and there is some uncomfortable teeth-bumping and some odd hand placement and a fair amount of general embarrassment on both sides. But they get into a rhythm soon enough, leaning into one another and drawing each others’ breath, and yeah, Danny is definitely seeing how this could progress into best kiss territory pretty fucking quickly--
--when Steve pulls back and winces, rubbing his jaw.
“What,” Danny says, “what, out with it, we’ve got kissing to be doing, what’s with the face, come on.”
“I just wish,” Steve says, “that you’d thought to come to your epiphany a couple of days ago. Like, say, maybe last Tuesday. Last Tuesday would have been good.”
“That’s an awful specific timeline,” Danny says, suspicious. “McGarrett, what did you do?”
“Er,” Steve says, “I may have. Uh. Made plans to seek my fortunes overseas. So I could come back and woo you, you understand. My intentions were pure!”
“What?” Danny--well, he kind of screeches it. “What is the matter with you, what kind of person makes plans to woo someone without, I don’t know, mentioning it to them first, what kind of a guy are you anyway--”
“My ticket’s non-refundable,” Steve says. “Also, I leave tomorrow.”
Danny considers the options in front of him for a long minute, for the sake of keeping his life regrets down to a minimum. After careful thought, however, he still can’t come up with a plan of action better than his original instinct.
He hauls back, curls his mouth into a snarl, and punches Steve McGarrett right in his stupid face.
---
Steve leaves.
Danny’s not moping around or anything, because that would be pathetic. He is also, most certainly, not waiting for the stupid bastard--Steve dug his watery grave and he can fucking well lie in it, non-refundable ticket or no. Danny’s not pining or wasting away or doing any of that other bullshit, because he is a human being with thoughts and feelings and he has a life to lead.
He is a little--okay, maybe a lot--angry about it, but that’s only to be expected.
Problem is, the anger--which should be all rights make him uglier, right, that’s only fair, anger is an ugly emotion and should damage his inconveniently attractive facade--actually ages him in a way that increases his overall appeal. There are crinkles around his eyes now, a twist to his mouth that makes him look weathered and serious, and he jumps up to number one on the Hotties of Florin list before he knows what’s happening. The hoards of people that used to follow him around have become mobs, waiting outside his door at night, calling his name like they’re starved for him.
It’s irritating. Danny’s going to have to install a moat.
Worse still is the fact that, for all he tries with a number of them--he has needs, okay, and it’s not wrong, because he never promised Steve shit--none of them do much to fill the itching empty space Steve left behind. It’s ridiculous, because Danny had pretty much hated the guy until the night before he left, but it’s true all the same; nobody gets his blood up like Steve used to, and nobody kisses like Steve did, and nobody else makes Danny want to punch them and fuck them simultaneously the way Steve does.
On the plus side, this leads Danny to conclude that he probably loved Steve in an immature, pigtail-pulling kind of way even before his conversation with Rachel, which does make him feel better about himself as a human being.
The point of all this is, it’s the end of what’s been a pretty shitty year for Danny when a royal carriage pulls up outside his property, handily displacing the mob waiting there. A red carpet is rolled out from the carriage to his door, and Danny blinks as--
“Prince Wo Fat?” he says, staring. “Aren’t you supposed to be off--I don’t know, using my tax dollars for good or something?”
“This is a fourteenth century fiefdom,” Wo Fat says, raising an eyebrow, “and I am an aristocrat. What good? What tax dollars?”
“Goddamn it,” Danny mutters, but he lets the man inside.
Some things he’s expecting out of this little interaction: arrest, maybe, or execution, though he doesn’t think he’s done anything to deserve either. Possibly they’re going to kick him off his land and use it for something else, which would be a bummer, but doesn’t explain Wo Fat’s personal presence. He offers the guy something to drink, out of habit more than anything else, and is relieved when his offer is declined--he’s not exactly sure what the proper beverage is for the royal family, and he’s not all that interested in finding out.
“Er,” he says finally, after they’ve sat in silence for a couple of minutes, “so, your highness, what, uh. Brings you by?”
“You do,” Wo Fat says, looking him up and down. “Surely you are aware, Mr. Williams, that you are currently ranked the Number One Hotty Hot Hot McHottass of Florin?”
“Oh, god,” says Danny, “if we could just, uh, not ever again use the full title again. Ever. Never ever.”
“Your modesty only adds to your radiant beauty,” Wo Fat says, batting his eyelashes, and seriously, how is this Danny’s life. “I have come by today to seek your hand in--”
“Whoa,” Danny says, “whooooa there, slow it down, let’s take it down a couple big notches, okay? Because unless you’re planning on finishing up that sentence with ‘clearing my garden,’ or, or, ‘going over my taxes’ or something, you need to just. You need to just stop, okay, marriage, if that is where you’re going with this, that’s a big deal, alright? I need to get to know a guy a little--”
“I have fifteen minutes now,” Wo Fat says, checking his watch and sighing when Danny gives him an incredulous look. “What do you want from me? I have a country to run!”
“I can’t marry a guy I’ve only known for fifteen minutes!”
“Prince,” Wo Fat corrects, in a tone of voice that suggests he could have Danny beheaded if he wanted. In a tone of voice that suggests it wouldn’t even be hard.
“Prince,” Danny amends hastily, “yes, your Highness, of course, and I’d be very lucky, I’m sure, no question, but I think I’m in the wrong spot on that list, you should check again, that Joe from down the street, he’s something else, and also I’m kind of. Uh. Involved with someone already.”
“You are betrothed?” Wo Fat asked. “And who, may I ask, is your intended?”
“No no,” Danny says, “no, it’s not like that, it’s more...I can’t go getting married to you until Steve gets back, not because I’m waiting around on him or anything--because I’m not doing that, that would be pathetic--but more because I need to be single. When he gets here. So I can murder him in complete peace.”
“That sounds...complicated,” Wo Fat says.
“He’s a complicated man,” Danny says. “And really, really crazy, and stupid, don’t get me started on stupid, and mostly I hate him a lot. It’s just that I want to be able to hate him honestly, you know? See where that leads. With all due respect.”
“Of course,” Wo Fat agrees. He stands, and Danny’s relieved by how easy this whole thing has turned out to be, until he reaches into the satchel slung round his waist and pulls something out. It’s a box, it looks like, square and made of some kind of thick paper material, and it is emitting a smell that Danny would either describe as “unholy” or “delicious.”
“What’s that?” he says, mouth watering.
“My secret ingredient,” Wo Fat says, opening the box, and that’s the last thing Danny remembers for a long time.
---
When he comes to, he’s in a castle, wearing fancy clothes, with an empty plate in front of him. Wo Fat is sitting across the table from him, an indulgent smile on his face.
“Uh,” Danny says, “not to be rude or anything, but where the hell am I?”
“Why, in my castle, of course,” Wo Fat says. “You followed me all the way here, Princess.”
“I’m sorry,” Danny says, “but, back it up, what? I mean, aside from the fact that I am not a princess, we can save that for later, I can’t really deal with that right now, but I definitely did not follow you--”
“Oh, you did,” Wo Fat says, smug. “Muttering something, if I recall correctly, about ‘mutz,’ yes? And then you agreed to marry me if I’d only give you some more pizza, come on, I’m sure you must remember.”
Now that he mentions it, Danny does have some...vague...memories of that. They’re mostly coated over in a haze of cheesy bliss.
“Oh,” he says, feeling like an asshole. “Well. Um.”
“And you’re a princess because I’m already the prince,” Wo Fat continues, “and there can’t be two princes.”
“That...doesn’t seem like sound logic...” Danny says, but is distracted by the reappearance of the pizza. He knows he should resist, but it’s difficult, and it doesn’t really matter anyway; three hours later, stuffed full to bursting, a bag is dropped over his head and he’s kidnapped.
“Awesome,” he says, “this is the best day ever,” and that’s all he’s got time before he’s knocked out.
---
“Tell me,” Danny says, staring at his captors in something that’s either fury or fucking fury, “that I am not on a boat. Tell me that.”
“You want me to lie to you?” the woman says. She’s attractive, in a ‘would be more attractive if she hadn’t just kidnapped me’ kind of way, and there’s an impressively large sword strapped around her waist. “Because I can, but I think the water’s kind of a dead giveaway.”
“Also,” says the guy, who is not wearing a sword, which would make him seem less intimidating if he wasn’t a brick wall of muscle, “even if we tell you you’re not on a boat, it’s not really going to help you very much.”
“Fantastic,” Danny mutters, dropping his head into his hands. It hurts, probably because of the fact that it was recently dealt a serious blow. Or maybe he has a pizza hangover, it’s hard to tell. “I spend ten minutes as a royal--not even a royal, I didn’t even marry the guy, I was just in the castle, maybe you meant to kidnap someone else, why don’t you just turn the boat around and--”
“Oh, brah, trust me,” the guy says, sighing, “we’d love to take you back. You’re the lynchpin of the stupidest war plan ever, this is basically treason we’re committing here, we don’t like it any more than you do. We didn’t really have much of a choice, though.”
“Well,” the woman says, “you could have let me take them out.”
“How many times do I have to tell you that ass kicking is not always the answer?” the guy says. “Because, seriously, the two of us versus the entire Brute Squad--”
“Hey, we could have taken at least half of them, and Kamekona would have helped--”
“Which still left the rest of the Brute Squad--”
“Hey!” Danny says, waving his hands. “Not that this isn’t fascinating, really, wildly entertained here, but you can’t leave me at ‘lynchpin for the stupidest war plan ever,’ okay? It’s been kind of a bad day, so if you could just--maybe shed a little light on the subject--”
“You’re lucky we’re not your average kidnappers,” the guy says, grinning at Danny like he’s hilarious. “You’re kind of demanding, aren’t you?”
Danny shrugs, because there’s no point denying it, and the guy laughs. The woman smiles at both of them, her fingers dancing over the hilt of her sword, and pulls up a crate. She sits on it, crossing her legs, and sighs.
“Right,” she says, “it’s probably the least we can do, telling you what’s going on, especially since I had to hit you and everything. Sorry about that.”
“Yeah,” Danny says, “a little lighter next time, maybe?”
“Oh, don't be a baby, it was a love tap,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Look, I’m Kono, this is my cousin Chin. Kamekona’s up front steering, and we’re really sorry about this--we got caught plotting a revolution, so it was kind of this or the Pit of Despair. You’re, uh, about to be used to start a war between Guilder and Florin.”
“Unless you can come up with a better option,” Chin adds. “Preferably one ousting Wo Fat from power, that would be better for the kingdom at large. And for us.”
“And for you,” Kono says, “since we’re technically supposed to kill you at some point here.”
“We thought you might be okay with hiding in the forest for awhile instead,” Chin says hopefully. “While we get this all sorted out. Which we will--law enforcement was the family business before everything got turned over to Wo Fat’s Brute Squad, we can definitely fix this, it’ll just take a year or two, five tops--”
“And we’ll send someone to bring you food!” Kono says. “Unless we are all heroically killed in battle, in which case you’re probably going to have to fend for yourself.”
“Or you could jump off the boat and try to swim for shore,” Chin says.
“Except for the eels,” Kono says.
“Oh right,” Chin says, “I forgot about the eels. Alright, then, hide in the forest or make one of us kill you, pick your poison, but please pick the forest, this month has been bad enough already without adding ‘having to murder a prince in cold blood’ to the list.”
“Princess,” Kono says, “if we’re going to get technical about it.”
“I’m sorry,” says Danny, “what?”
Kono and Chin both look at him like he’s incredibly slow, which is really not fair, and Danny’s opening his mouth to tell them that when a third voice calls from the front of the deck. Danny assumes this is the Kamekona they mentioned, and is surprised when Chin and Kono haul him to his feet and tell him to follow them.
He’s even more surprised to realize that he’s not bound. At all.
“Wait, seriously?” he says. “What kind of kidnappers are you?”
“The kind that are doing this against their will,” Chin snaps. "For someone who talks so much, you're not a very good listener."
“Also,” Kono says, “for future reference--you wake up kidnapped? You should probably check for bindings yourself. That’s like victim 101, try to keep up. ”
“Thank you so much for the object lesson,” Danny mutters, but he follows them to the front of the boat. There’s a guy--Kamekona, Danny presumes--behind the steering wheel, broadly built and squinting into the distance.
“I hate to say it,” he says, “but it looks like we’ve got company.”
They all peer in the direction he’s pointing, and yeah, that’s definitely a ship on the horizon, black sails, moving faster than it should be. It gets closer as they watch it, coming into focus, and Danny thinks he can see the shape of something hanging from the rigging.
“You think it’s a tourist?” Kamekona says. “Not really the right time of year, but you never know.”
“Don’t think so.” Kono says. “Looks more like a pirate to me.”
“Goddamn it,” says Chin, running his hand over his face, “I really didn’t want to have to climb the Cliffs today.”
Fifteen minutes later Danny’s slung over Chin’s shoulder, being hauled up the side of the Cliffs of Insanity. Kamekona is already at the top, yelling encouragement, and Kono’s below them, telling Chin to hurry it up already.
“I’m sorry,” he says, “did you want to drag the dead weight?”
“I could have climbed it myself,” Danny says, which is a sad and pathetic lie. They’d tried that--he’d made up about half a foot of rope before he fell on his ass, and Kono had laughed so hard they’d lost ten whole minutes of their lead time.
“Shut up and don’t move, Princess,” Chin warns, and Danny sighs and closes his eyes to try and quell the impending headache.
When he opens them again, the pirate ship is close enough that he can make out the shape he’d seen hanging off the rigging before. It’s a man, wearing a half black mask and waving a sword in the hair. Danny can’t hear him, but he’d be willing to bet he’s doing one of those ridiculous, dramatic belly laughs, sticking his face in the sea spray like the asshole he is.
He can’t help the grin that creases his face.
“Hey,” he says, “I think I know that guy."
Also, I've kind of changed. Um. Some things. A lot of things. And the summary is for the overall story even though it's not all actually written yet because the hell if I'm writing a summary for every chapter because I HATE SUMMARIES and oh, god, I'm just going to stop talking now. EXCEPT TO SAY THAT I BLAME iam_space FOR PLANTING THE IDEA AND hermette FOR ENCOURAGING IT AND leupagus FOR DEMANDING I WRITE IT FASTER. Seriously. It's their fault. It's not mine.
Title: Totally Not A Kissing Book - Chapter One
Pairing: Steve/Danny
Rating: PG-13, but really only for language
Summary: Danny's the hottest guy in Florin, Steve's a lunatic, Kono's a bad ass, and Chin doesn't get paid enough for this shit. So really, nothing's changed at all.
Danny is the fourth most attractive guy in all of Florin; he’s behind two schmucks whose names he can’t be fucked to remember and that Stan guy Rachel’s marrying. It’s the kind of thing he tries not to think about too much, because it makes him a little uncomfortable, especially when there are people coming by to have awkward coffee with him all the time. Danny would really like it if he was, say, the 45th most attractive guy in all of Florin--still respectable looking, right, nothing to sneeze at, but not this all the time.
“Are you really complaining?” Rachel says, sipping her tea over dinner. “Most people would kill to be in your shoes, Daniel.”
“Well, I am not most people,” Danny snaps. “I would like to live an anonymous life, okay, this is unbearable, I can’t even go out to get milk anymore because people are all, all, throwing themselves at me! It’s not fair. It’s not right. It has to stop. “
“Well,” Rachel says, because she’s a good friend and everything but kind of lacking in the murmuring-comforting-nonsense department, “you could always just start bringing your farmhand out with you; that might shut people up.”
“My farmhand?” Danny asks, confused, and glances out the window when Rachel gestures. “Wait, wait, you mean Steve?”
“No, I mean the other glistening specimen of manflesh working your fields,” Rachel says, rolling her eyes. “Yes, I mean Steve. Have you ever actually seen Steve, Daniel?”
“Well of course I’ve seen him,” Danny snaps. “I do actually employ him, okay, and he’s just--you know, he’s Steve, he’s a crazy fuck sometimes but he gets his shit done, calls me Danno all the time. What’s there to look at?”
Rachel purses her lips, glances out the window again, and fails to look away. Danny follows her gaze and, yeah, okay, Steve’s out there without a shirt on, he does that sometimes, he’s always taking his shirt off, that’s just what he’s like. And, well, maybe he’s a little on the bronzed side, and sure his cheekbones are all statuesque and shit, that’s fine, Danny can see that, but there’s no reason for Rachel to be looking at him the way she is. Like she’s hungry, and seriously, what the hell, Rachel can’t look at his farmhand like that, Steve is Danny’s farmhand, this is so not okay on so many levels--
“I see you’ve seen my point,” Rachel says, which is when Danny realizes he’s planted himself bodily between her and the window. “Something to consider, at the very least. I’m off, have a lovely day, hmm?”
She kisses him on the cheek and goes, leaving him alone with his thoughts.
And--well, it’s possible that Danny’s gotten a little spoiled over the last couple of years, there’s that chance. As much as he doesn’t particularly enjoy being the fourth most attractive guy in all of Florin, there are certain perks. He never has to worry about rejection, for one thing, not the way he’s worrying now. Because he’d kind of like to go out and talk to Steve, just say hi, no big deal, now that he’s been all illuminated vis a vis his burning hotness, but he’s not...sure...that’s a good idea. He is, now that he thinks about it, recalling some less than friendly behavior towards Steve. Possibly some throwing of some things. Definitely some shouting.
“Ah, well,” he says, swallowing his pride and also a fairly sizeable glass of mead, “no time like the present.”
He leaves the house, goes out around the back, and finds Steve in the stables. He’s covered in horse shit and sweat and oh, god, Danny feels his mouth go all dry, because, seriously, Steve is the most attractive guy in the world. Screw the ranking system; Danny doesn’t care who falls where, there’s no one out there beating Steve, he knows that now. He feels blindsided and blind at once, that he’s been living with this guy around the corner all these years and never seen it.
“Hey, Danno,” Steve says, grinning at him, and Danny feels kind of faint, what the actual fuck.
“Hi,” he says, and then, before he can help himself, “okay, question. Why do you call me Danno?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Steve says, his smile slipping as he turns back to the stall he’s mucking. Danny may have been downplaying the whole less-than-friendly thing to gear himself up for this--the truth is, he and Steve don’t get on at all. They haven’t from the day Steve started working here, when he climbed up the side of the barn instead of using a ladder like a normal person; Danny screamed, Steve ignored him, and things have been tense ever since. He shouldn’t be surprised that Steve’s reacting badly to his admittedly less-than-brilliant overture here, but Danny’s not really that practiced in the art of hitting on people. Generally they throw themselves at him en masse and he just sort of...takes his pick.
“No,” he says, trying to salvage this, “I meant it as like an, an honest question, like as a--I’m trying to talk to you here, that’s what happening, like normal people. Can we do that?”
“Uh,” Steve says. He looks like he’s trying to decide between smiling and running. “You’ve...never wanted to do that before.”
“It’s possible I’ve come to an epiphany,” Danny says. “Or two or three, okay, but at least one of them involves me being a little less...”
“Angry?” Steve suggests. “Acerbic?”
“Acerbic,” Danny repeats, “acerbic, he says, what kind of word is acerbic, what does that even mean--”
“Well,” Steve says, “I’d say you’re demonstrating it pretty well right now.”
“See,” Danny says, “this is the thing about you. I come out here to talk, right, because maybe I’m starting to consider liking you a little--”
“Wait,” Steve says, “really?”
“Yes really,” Danny says, waving a hand, “but maybe I wanted to clear the air a little first, apologize for being, you know, acerbic and whatever, but the first thing you do is call me Danno, even though you know I hate it when you call me that--”
“It’s a term of endearment,” Steve says, closing the distance between them and leering like he thinks he’s--like he thinks he’s smooth or something. Danny swallows, and swallows again. “I say it when I mean--”
“Do not say I love you,” Danny warns. “Do not, Steven, this is not some ridiculous fairy tale, just because I’ve suddenly been alerted to the depth of my passions for you based solely on physical attraction and jealousy does not mean--”
“Danno,” Steve breathes, and Danny says, “Oh, the hell with it,” and kisses him.
Since the invention of the kiss, there have only been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This...is not one of them. Danny’s still kind of annoyed with Steve, and Steve is a little overenthusiastic and also smells a lot like horseshit, and there is some uncomfortable teeth-bumping and some odd hand placement and a fair amount of general embarrassment on both sides. But they get into a rhythm soon enough, leaning into one another and drawing each others’ breath, and yeah, Danny is definitely seeing how this could progress into best kiss territory pretty fucking quickly--
--when Steve pulls back and winces, rubbing his jaw.
“What,” Danny says, “what, out with it, we’ve got kissing to be doing, what’s with the face, come on.”
“I just wish,” Steve says, “that you’d thought to come to your epiphany a couple of days ago. Like, say, maybe last Tuesday. Last Tuesday would have been good.”
“That’s an awful specific timeline,” Danny says, suspicious. “McGarrett, what did you do?”
“Er,” Steve says, “I may have. Uh. Made plans to seek my fortunes overseas. So I could come back and woo you, you understand. My intentions were pure!”
“What?” Danny--well, he kind of screeches it. “What is the matter with you, what kind of person makes plans to woo someone without, I don’t know, mentioning it to them first, what kind of a guy are you anyway--”
“My ticket’s non-refundable,” Steve says. “Also, I leave tomorrow.”
Danny considers the options in front of him for a long minute, for the sake of keeping his life regrets down to a minimum. After careful thought, however, he still can’t come up with a plan of action better than his original instinct.
He hauls back, curls his mouth into a snarl, and punches Steve McGarrett right in his stupid face.
---
Steve leaves.
Danny’s not moping around or anything, because that would be pathetic. He is also, most certainly, not waiting for the stupid bastard--Steve dug his watery grave and he can fucking well lie in it, non-refundable ticket or no. Danny’s not pining or wasting away or doing any of that other bullshit, because he is a human being with thoughts and feelings and he has a life to lead.
He is a little--okay, maybe a lot--angry about it, but that’s only to be expected.
Problem is, the anger--which should be all rights make him uglier, right, that’s only fair, anger is an ugly emotion and should damage his inconveniently attractive facade--actually ages him in a way that increases his overall appeal. There are crinkles around his eyes now, a twist to his mouth that makes him look weathered and serious, and he jumps up to number one on the Hotties of Florin list before he knows what’s happening. The hoards of people that used to follow him around have become mobs, waiting outside his door at night, calling his name like they’re starved for him.
It’s irritating. Danny’s going to have to install a moat.
Worse still is the fact that, for all he tries with a number of them--he has needs, okay, and it’s not wrong, because he never promised Steve shit--none of them do much to fill the itching empty space Steve left behind. It’s ridiculous, because Danny had pretty much hated the guy until the night before he left, but it’s true all the same; nobody gets his blood up like Steve used to, and nobody kisses like Steve did, and nobody else makes Danny want to punch them and fuck them simultaneously the way Steve does.
On the plus side, this leads Danny to conclude that he probably loved Steve in an immature, pigtail-pulling kind of way even before his conversation with Rachel, which does make him feel better about himself as a human being.
The point of all this is, it’s the end of what’s been a pretty shitty year for Danny when a royal carriage pulls up outside his property, handily displacing the mob waiting there. A red carpet is rolled out from the carriage to his door, and Danny blinks as--
“Prince Wo Fat?” he says, staring. “Aren’t you supposed to be off--I don’t know, using my tax dollars for good or something?”
“This is a fourteenth century fiefdom,” Wo Fat says, raising an eyebrow, “and I am an aristocrat. What good? What tax dollars?”
“Goddamn it,” Danny mutters, but he lets the man inside.
Some things he’s expecting out of this little interaction: arrest, maybe, or execution, though he doesn’t think he’s done anything to deserve either. Possibly they’re going to kick him off his land and use it for something else, which would be a bummer, but doesn’t explain Wo Fat’s personal presence. He offers the guy something to drink, out of habit more than anything else, and is relieved when his offer is declined--he’s not exactly sure what the proper beverage is for the royal family, and he’s not all that interested in finding out.
“Er,” he says finally, after they’ve sat in silence for a couple of minutes, “so, your highness, what, uh. Brings you by?”
“You do,” Wo Fat says, looking him up and down. “Surely you are aware, Mr. Williams, that you are currently ranked the Number One Hotty Hot Hot McHottass of Florin?”
“Oh, god,” says Danny, “if we could just, uh, not ever again use the full title again. Ever. Never ever.”
“Your modesty only adds to your radiant beauty,” Wo Fat says, batting his eyelashes, and seriously, how is this Danny’s life. “I have come by today to seek your hand in--”
“Whoa,” Danny says, “whooooa there, slow it down, let’s take it down a couple big notches, okay? Because unless you’re planning on finishing up that sentence with ‘clearing my garden,’ or, or, ‘going over my taxes’ or something, you need to just. You need to just stop, okay, marriage, if that is where you’re going with this, that’s a big deal, alright? I need to get to know a guy a little--”
“I have fifteen minutes now,” Wo Fat says, checking his watch and sighing when Danny gives him an incredulous look. “What do you want from me? I have a country to run!”
“I can’t marry a guy I’ve only known for fifteen minutes!”
“Prince,” Wo Fat corrects, in a tone of voice that suggests he could have Danny beheaded if he wanted. In a tone of voice that suggests it wouldn’t even be hard.
“Prince,” Danny amends hastily, “yes, your Highness, of course, and I’d be very lucky, I’m sure, no question, but I think I’m in the wrong spot on that list, you should check again, that Joe from down the street, he’s something else, and also I’m kind of. Uh. Involved with someone already.”
“You are betrothed?” Wo Fat asked. “And who, may I ask, is your intended?”
“No no,” Danny says, “no, it’s not like that, it’s more...I can’t go getting married to you until Steve gets back, not because I’m waiting around on him or anything--because I’m not doing that, that would be pathetic--but more because I need to be single. When he gets here. So I can murder him in complete peace.”
“That sounds...complicated,” Wo Fat says.
“He’s a complicated man,” Danny says. “And really, really crazy, and stupid, don’t get me started on stupid, and mostly I hate him a lot. It’s just that I want to be able to hate him honestly, you know? See where that leads. With all due respect.”
“Of course,” Wo Fat agrees. He stands, and Danny’s relieved by how easy this whole thing has turned out to be, until he reaches into the satchel slung round his waist and pulls something out. It’s a box, it looks like, square and made of some kind of thick paper material, and it is emitting a smell that Danny would either describe as “unholy” or “delicious.”
“What’s that?” he says, mouth watering.
“My secret ingredient,” Wo Fat says, opening the box, and that’s the last thing Danny remembers for a long time.
---
When he comes to, he’s in a castle, wearing fancy clothes, with an empty plate in front of him. Wo Fat is sitting across the table from him, an indulgent smile on his face.
“Uh,” Danny says, “not to be rude or anything, but where the hell am I?”
“Why, in my castle, of course,” Wo Fat says. “You followed me all the way here, Princess.”
“I’m sorry,” Danny says, “but, back it up, what? I mean, aside from the fact that I am not a princess, we can save that for later, I can’t really deal with that right now, but I definitely did not follow you--”
“Oh, you did,” Wo Fat says, smug. “Muttering something, if I recall correctly, about ‘mutz,’ yes? And then you agreed to marry me if I’d only give you some more pizza, come on, I’m sure you must remember.”
Now that he mentions it, Danny does have some...vague...memories of that. They’re mostly coated over in a haze of cheesy bliss.
“Oh,” he says, feeling like an asshole. “Well. Um.”
“And you’re a princess because I’m already the prince,” Wo Fat continues, “and there can’t be two princes.”
“That...doesn’t seem like sound logic...” Danny says, but is distracted by the reappearance of the pizza. He knows he should resist, but it’s difficult, and it doesn’t really matter anyway; three hours later, stuffed full to bursting, a bag is dropped over his head and he’s kidnapped.
“Awesome,” he says, “this is the best day ever,” and that’s all he’s got time before he’s knocked out.
---
“Tell me,” Danny says, staring at his captors in something that’s either fury or fucking fury, “that I am not on a boat. Tell me that.”
“You want me to lie to you?” the woman says. She’s attractive, in a ‘would be more attractive if she hadn’t just kidnapped me’ kind of way, and there’s an impressively large sword strapped around her waist. “Because I can, but I think the water’s kind of a dead giveaway.”
“Also,” says the guy, who is not wearing a sword, which would make him seem less intimidating if he wasn’t a brick wall of muscle, “even if we tell you you’re not on a boat, it’s not really going to help you very much.”
“Fantastic,” Danny mutters, dropping his head into his hands. It hurts, probably because of the fact that it was recently dealt a serious blow. Or maybe he has a pizza hangover, it’s hard to tell. “I spend ten minutes as a royal--not even a royal, I didn’t even marry the guy, I was just in the castle, maybe you meant to kidnap someone else, why don’t you just turn the boat around and--”
“Oh, brah, trust me,” the guy says, sighing, “we’d love to take you back. You’re the lynchpin of the stupidest war plan ever, this is basically treason we’re committing here, we don’t like it any more than you do. We didn’t really have much of a choice, though.”
“Well,” the woman says, “you could have let me take them out.”
“How many times do I have to tell you that ass kicking is not always the answer?” the guy says. “Because, seriously, the two of us versus the entire Brute Squad--”
“Hey, we could have taken at least half of them, and Kamekona would have helped--”
“Which still left the rest of the Brute Squad--”
“Hey!” Danny says, waving his hands. “Not that this isn’t fascinating, really, wildly entertained here, but you can’t leave me at ‘lynchpin for the stupidest war plan ever,’ okay? It’s been kind of a bad day, so if you could just--maybe shed a little light on the subject--”
“You’re lucky we’re not your average kidnappers,” the guy says, grinning at Danny like he’s hilarious. “You’re kind of demanding, aren’t you?”
Danny shrugs, because there’s no point denying it, and the guy laughs. The woman smiles at both of them, her fingers dancing over the hilt of her sword, and pulls up a crate. She sits on it, crossing her legs, and sighs.
“Right,” she says, “it’s probably the least we can do, telling you what’s going on, especially since I had to hit you and everything. Sorry about that.”
“Yeah,” Danny says, “a little lighter next time, maybe?”
“Oh, don't be a baby, it was a love tap,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Look, I’m Kono, this is my cousin Chin. Kamekona’s up front steering, and we’re really sorry about this--we got caught plotting a revolution, so it was kind of this or the Pit of Despair. You’re, uh, about to be used to start a war between Guilder and Florin.”
“Unless you can come up with a better option,” Chin adds. “Preferably one ousting Wo Fat from power, that would be better for the kingdom at large. And for us.”
“And for you,” Kono says, “since we’re technically supposed to kill you at some point here.”
“We thought you might be okay with hiding in the forest for awhile instead,” Chin says hopefully. “While we get this all sorted out. Which we will--law enforcement was the family business before everything got turned over to Wo Fat’s Brute Squad, we can definitely fix this, it’ll just take a year or two, five tops--”
“And we’ll send someone to bring you food!” Kono says. “Unless we are all heroically killed in battle, in which case you’re probably going to have to fend for yourself.”
“Or you could jump off the boat and try to swim for shore,” Chin says.
“Except for the eels,” Kono says.
“Oh right,” Chin says, “I forgot about the eels. Alright, then, hide in the forest or make one of us kill you, pick your poison, but please pick the forest, this month has been bad enough already without adding ‘having to murder a prince in cold blood’ to the list.”
“Princess,” Kono says, “if we’re going to get technical about it.”
“I’m sorry,” says Danny, “what?”
Kono and Chin both look at him like he’s incredibly slow, which is really not fair, and Danny’s opening his mouth to tell them that when a third voice calls from the front of the deck. Danny assumes this is the Kamekona they mentioned, and is surprised when Chin and Kono haul him to his feet and tell him to follow them.
He’s even more surprised to realize that he’s not bound. At all.
“Wait, seriously?” he says. “What kind of kidnappers are you?”
“The kind that are doing this against their will,” Chin snaps. "For someone who talks so much, you're not a very good listener."
“Also,” Kono says, “for future reference--you wake up kidnapped? You should probably check for bindings yourself. That’s like victim 101, try to keep up. ”
“Thank you so much for the object lesson,” Danny mutters, but he follows them to the front of the boat. There’s a guy--Kamekona, Danny presumes--behind the steering wheel, broadly built and squinting into the distance.
“I hate to say it,” he says, “but it looks like we’ve got company.”
They all peer in the direction he’s pointing, and yeah, that’s definitely a ship on the horizon, black sails, moving faster than it should be. It gets closer as they watch it, coming into focus, and Danny thinks he can see the shape of something hanging from the rigging.
“You think it’s a tourist?” Kamekona says. “Not really the right time of year, but you never know.”
“Don’t think so.” Kono says. “Looks more like a pirate to me.”
“Goddamn it,” says Chin, running his hand over his face, “I really didn’t want to have to climb the Cliffs today.”
Fifteen minutes later Danny’s slung over Chin’s shoulder, being hauled up the side of the Cliffs of Insanity. Kamekona is already at the top, yelling encouragement, and Kono’s below them, telling Chin to hurry it up already.
“I’m sorry,” he says, “did you want to drag the dead weight?”
“I could have climbed it myself,” Danny says, which is a sad and pathetic lie. They’d tried that--he’d made up about half a foot of rope before he fell on his ass, and Kono had laughed so hard they’d lost ten whole minutes of their lead time.
“Shut up and don’t move, Princess,” Chin warns, and Danny sighs and closes his eyes to try and quell the impending headache.
When he opens them again, the pirate ship is close enough that he can make out the shape he’d seen hanging off the rigging before. It’s a man, wearing a half black mask and waving a sword in the hair. Danny can’t hear him, but he’d be willing to bet he’s doing one of those ridiculous, dramatic belly laughs, sticking his face in the sea spray like the asshole he is.
He can’t help the grin that creases his face.
“Hey,” he says, “I think I know that guy."