Of Course Back Then, If A Fight Lasted Less Than Fifty Rounds, We Demanded Our Nickel Back.
I made it through today! I wasn't very productive, I'll admit, but today's finally over with and my vacation starts. Tomorrow we go to Toronto to spend a day with my parents, Sunday we spend with the brother-in-law's family, Monday we drive out to Buffalo and catch a plane to Miami and then a shuttle to Fort Lauderdale, and we'll finally arrive at the big fucking boat where I'll be living for a week.
I'm nervous and excited, you guys! I haven't traveled anywhere for at least seven years and I miss it so much. Hopefully, I'll be able to do a little more traveling in my future. I want to see more of the world, dammit.
Right, so before I leave, here's what I've been doing for the past two days that wasn't work. Based on this prompt, which is probably nothing like what the OP wanted, and I'm so sorry for that, 3,234 gen words about dire situations, phobias, and team bonding, 5-0 style.
Many thanks to alexandriabrown for having a serious text discussion with me on whether Kono and Chin have cousin fights in front of the team and then giving me all the brilliant phone-related bits in here. Kisses to charliehey who is the only one who knows my dirty little secret: all my comedy springs from an incurable love of Mel Brooks movies. I apologize in advance if you don't find this funny. I usually only amuse myself.
Stop Me If You've Heard This One
It's another one of those life-or-death situations that seems to have become a normal part of their lives. Usually, it's gunfire and choppers and Bazooka Joe over there hanging off buildings by his fingertips and firing, like, rocket launchers and shit; not fighting crime the normal way, but the Hawaiian way, with more water and sand than Danny ever wants to see in his life. It'd make for a great story if it weren't Danny's actual life.
This time, it's being locked in a tiny cell in some underground bunker by a bunch of hard-eyed men with big guns and even bigger plans. The place is barely big enough to hold one person, so Steve being in here with him is just making a bad situation that much more intolerable. They're practically in each other's laps trying to find some room to sit, bumping elbows and arms and heads trying to move without actually touching each other.
Finally, they have to sit back-to-back just to be able to breathe different air, their knees coming close to pressing into the walls on either side as they try to get comfortable and figure a way out of here. This is going to damage Danny's knee even more, but hey, that's the price of working with Steve McGarrett.
At least he isn't dead. Yet.
"So," he says conversationally, "I have a question." Steve holds up his hand near Danny's face like he doesn't want to hear it, but Danny's never been one to let that stop him before. "Is there anyone that you cannot piss off in under a minute?"
"So you're saying this is my fault?" Steve has that irritated tone of voice that always seems to get under Danny's skin and scrapes at him until he snaps.
"Of course this is your fault," Danny says like Steve's an idiot for even doubting it. "When is it not your fault? When have we ever been in a situation like this that you didn't start?" God, he doesn't even have enough room to move his hands like he wants, expansive gestures being a luxury he apparently can't afford right now. He hates Steve a little for this.
"I was following a lead," Steve says testily, and Danny can feel him shift as he tries to adjust his long legs to the cramped cell. He'd feel sorry for him, but hey, it's not his fault that Steve's freakishly tall and bone-headed enough to pull this kind of shit without any back-up.
"Straight to the bad guys' doors? Yeah, brilliant plan there, Ace. How exactly were you planning on Ramboing your way out of here anyway?"
There's a few minutes of silence, like Steve is casting around for an answer to shut Danny down, and then he reluctantly admits, "I don't know."
Danny sighs and drops his head back, wincing when it bumps into Steve's. "This is your problem: you rush into everything, and I have to follow you, and then we end up as someone's hostages. Or in a gunfight. Or jumping out of exploding buildings. Every time."
"It's not every time," Steve argues, but there's no confidence in it because he knows it's true.
"Every time," Danny says firmly, clenching his jaw when his knee starts protesting the lack of movement or space. "Every single time. I've kept track."
"You've kept track?" Steve sounds torn between amusement and incredulity. "Of every time something like this has happened? In the five months you've been on the team?"
"Yup," Danny says, digging his fingers into his knee and trying to massage away the pain. "In the five months I've been on this team, we've been shot at forty-two times--"
"We're cops," Steve argues, his shoulder digging into Danny's head as he moves his hand in a gesture Danny can't see. "We're supposed to get shot at."
"Forty-two is excessive, pal, even for me." Danny holds his hand back for Steve to see the fingers he's counting off. "We've been held hostage at least eight times--"
"Okay, three of those times were not my fault--"
"We've been beaten up on a pretty regular basis--"
"Again," Steve says with a sigh, "we're cops. Getting beaten up and shot at is kind of part of the job description."
"Where?" Danny asks incredulously. "Show me where in the manual it says that I have to get the shit kicked out of me by drug lords and arsonists every single fucking day."
"I'll show you a manual," Steve mutters and Danny rolls his eyes and says, "That doesn't even make sense."
There's a tense silence that lasts about five minutes while Danny ponders all the ways he's going to yell at Steve if they get out of this and Steve is probably measuring out every inch of this cell and trying to figure out if he can squeeze his size 30 ass through the tiny barred opening at the very top of the wall. Finally, Danny can't take the lack of talking anymore and says, "Hey, question."
"What?" Steve sounds tired and frustrated, but that could just be because he hasn't had a chance to shoot someone yet.
"What are you afraid of?" Danny pauses. "And you can't say fear itself because FDR already did that bit."
"What?" Steve's voice is flat and unamused, and Danny feels like he's been corrupted somehow by the sun and the sand and the craziness of this island and this team because he enjoys pissing Steve off way too much. It's a sickness, he knows that, but he bets ten to one, he couldn't find anyone who's met Steve who would fault him for it.
"We might die in here," Danny helpfully points out, smiling to himself when Steve digs his shoulder back into Danny's in an aggravated nudge.
"We're not gonna die," Steve says irritably, like Danny's letting him down by even thinking that.
"I'm just saying," Danny says, forgetting that he can't move his hands to talk when his elbow hits Steve's back, "we could die in here--"
"But we're not going to."
"And if we do, I'd like to know a little more about the guy I'm working with."
Steve's quiet for a moment. "Is this a Jersey bonding ritual?" he asks curiously, and the fact that he's serious about it makes Danny really wish he'd shot the guy when he first met him in his dad's garage.
"It's not a-- can you just answer the goddamn question?" he yells, jabbing his elbow into Steve's back, purposely this time, just to let out a little bit of his frustration.
Steve doesn't even acknowledge the elbow. "What am I afraid of? Seriously, this is what you want your last words to be?"
"My last words are gonna be 'fuck you, asshole' if you don't answer my question."
"They're not going to print that in your obituary, you know, language" Steve says casually, and Danny holds his hands up to the ceiling and asks, "Why me?" in an exasperated tone of voice.
Steve sighs, shaking his head. "I'm not afraid of anything."
"Oh, oh." Danny has to take a moment to breathe from the sheer macho idiocy of that answer. "Really? Really? No fear? None at all? Not even a smidge? Did they teach you that in SEAL school?"
"Actually--"
"It's part of the human condition to feel fear," he yells, thinking that this cell is way too small to contain all his rage at everything that's happened so far, in this cell, in his life, in the past year. "You can't not feel it, you psycho."
"You just used a double negative there," Steve points out mildly, sounding too much like he's enjoying himself for Danny's peace of mind.
"I swear to God," he groans, leaning forward to rest his forehead on his knees, "I will give up football and go to church every Sunday if we get out of here and I get to punch you just once."
He can feel Steve cock his head to the side, like he's considering something. "What are you scared of?" Steve asks curiously, his voice sounding hushed in the gloom of the cell.
"Losing Grace," Danny says without hesitation. "She's my life, and if I lost her…" He shakes his head, the thought too awful to even contemplate.
"What else?"
Danny finds it in himself to laugh. "What else, he says," he sighs, thinking that he's never had more excitement and danger in his life than when he'd met Steve, and he doesn't entirely dislike it either. Not that he likes being trapped in this hellhole with a man who possibly eats bullets for breakfast and literally laughs in the face of danger, but at least Danny can legitimately say his life isn't boring. "Uh," he runs his fingers over his hair, hating the way it flops into his face after hours of sweat and heat and non-fatal beatings, "squid freaks me out pretty bad."
"So no sushi for you?" Steve asks, a smile in his voice, pressing his back into Danny's in some sort of gesture that Danny thinks might be him expressing sympathy. Or some kind of human emotion anyway.
Danny shudders. "Hell, no. Really, any kind of seafood is not high on my list of Things I Like."
Steve shifts against Danny, his head tilted toward Danny's. "But actual fear?"
Danny turns his head a little, his head brushing against Steve's nape. "Have you seen what lives in the ocean? It's like Jurassic Park down there, but with fish."
"God, I could terrify you with a tuna fish," Steve says delightedly, clearly laughing at Danny's pain because he's a dick like that. "I could make you cry with a prawn."
"You're sick in the head," Danny says, aggravated, looking up at the tiny window at the top of the cell and wondering if his size 30 ass would find through the bars. Was anyone even looking for them? Chin and Kono should've been here by now with the entire police force, medical personnel, and enough firepower to level this shitty, ugly building. They're professional like that. Danny can count on them not to be crazy and reckless around people with guns.
"Sorry," Steve says, not sounding sorry at all, sounding, in fact, like he's muffling his laughter. "I just-- it's fish. I never would've thought--"
"It's a legitimate phobia, okay?"
"If it's so legitimate, what's it called?"
Danny pauses. "Shut up," he says grouchily. "And you still haven't told me yours. Pony up, GI Joe."
Steve makes a rude sound. "I'm not--"
"You're telling me," Danny says firmly, pushing with his knees and shoving into Steve. "Or I will crush you into the wall."
"You and which army, shorty?" Steve snorts.
Danny jabs him with his elbow, feeling satisfied when Steve grunts and shifts away from him. "Me and my elbows. Now start talking."
Steve sighs like he's so put-upon and Danny rolls his eyes at the theatrics, completely unimpressed. "Fine," he says grudgingly when Danny doesn't buy his act. "If you have to know-"
"And I do." Steve mumbles something under his breath, and Danny asks "What?" in a loud, strident voice.
"Jesus," Steve says, irritated, "clowns, okay? I'm terrified of clowns."
Danny starts laughing and keeps laughing, even when Steve uses his freakishly long legs to shove himself back into Danny and press him closer to the wall. "Oh my God," he cries, thinking that he's possibly on the verge of hysteria, but mostly just too damn amused at the embarrassed tone of Steve's voice. He even feels embarrassed against the spread of Danny's back. "Clowns, oh my God."
"It's a legitimate fear," Steve yells over Danny's howls of laughter, jabbing his elbow into Danny's side when Danny refuses to stop.
"If it's so legitimate, what's it called?" Danny asks mockingly.
"Coulrophobia," Steve says immediately, shuddering as he says it. "They just-- they freak me out. Ever since I was a kid."
"Clowns are supposed to make you laugh," Danny huffs, still trying to catch his breath.
"Clowns are evil and want to kill you," Steve counters, totally serious, and Danny feels the laughter bubble up inside him again.
"You've met many killer clowns, have you?"
"Actually," Steve says, and Danny holds up his hand, saying, "Never mind, I don't wanna know."
There's more silence as they wait for something to happen, shoulders touching, heads bowed, backs pressed against each other like they're bracing the other for whatever comes. Danny wonders if this is going to be his last moment on earth and wishes his last words weren't all about mocking Steve. No, wait, he lied. If he's going to die now, he's glad his last words are going to be about mocking Steve. He's lived a good life if there's some kind of record of him getting in a shot or two at Steve.
As they wait, there's a series of loud thumping sounds echoing outside the cell, sounding like boots on concrete, and Danny and Steve have time to raise their heads just as the cell door is kicked open. Kono and Chin come running in, their guns drawn and vaguely anxious, irritated looks on their faces. "Found them," Chin calls to the men outside, reaching out to grab Steve's hand and yank him to his feet.
Danny breathes a sigh of relief as the pressure against his chest eases, and gratefully takes Kono's hand as she helps him get to his feet. His knee is in agony, and his doctor's going to kill him, but at least they're safe. "What took you so long?" he asks Kono.
She shrugs, looking a little shame-faced as she leads him out of the cell. "We, uh, we got lost."
"It was not my fault," Chin says in a biting tone, sounding harassed, and it sounds like this argument's been going on for a while. "We lost the tracking signal and this place isn't on any GPS I could find--"
"And there was no one around to ask for directions," Kono says, annoyance and distaste written on her face as she looks around at the building they're in, "So he had to check Google Maps on his iPhone--" She says 'iPhone' like it's a dirty word, her nose turned up in a moue of irritation, and Danny spares a moment to think that she's really goddamn cute when she's pissed and then remembers that both cousins would have no problems dropkicking his ass into the next time zone if they even got a hint of what he was thinking.
"Not this again," Chin groans, interrupting Danny's thoughts, and Kono's arm tightens around Danny as she says, "You're on it all the time. You're on it while you eat, you use it for policework, I think you even sleep with it--"
"I do not," Chin says crossly, but Danny can see his hand briefly slide into his pocket and he's willing to bet his ridiculous taskforce paycheck that Chin was just making sure his phone was still in his pocket.
"So," he asks carefully, leaning a little more heavily against Kono as his knee twinges, "just to be clear, is this about an all-encompassing, unreasonable hatred for Steve Jobs or just Chin's addiction to the phone?"
"Can't it be both?" Kono asks plaintively, and Danny grins at her, trying really hard to suppress the urge to lean over and kiss her. It's suicidal because Kono would kill him and then Chin would kill him, and he just got out of one dangerous situation already, but he's really goddamn tempted.
Chin sighs, and Danny knows he's not winning this one. "She threatened to throw it out the window," he tells Steve in a low, scandalized voice, leaning his head into Steve's, but Danny can hear him and so can Kono.
"And back over it with my car," she says, her arm firm and strong around Danny's waist as they get to the EMTs waiting outside the squat building they were just in, "repeatedly."
Even Steve looks amused by that, his face breaking out into one of those half-smiles that comes out only when he's trying not to laugh about something. "You should do it," he says lazily, ignoring the positively filthy look Chin aims at him. "You should tape it too. Put it up on YouTube."
"Right," Chin rolls his eyes. "Because the Governor will be so pleased that random people from all over the world can watch her elite taskforce act like destructive teenagers."
Danny acknowledges that point with a head tilt. "True, but I bet we'd get a million hits on the first day alone."
"Do not," Chin says sternly, "encourage her. Or do you want to find out how forgiving the Governor is when she's in a mood?" All four of them shudder in contemplation, and Danny lets the EMT look him over as he checks to make sure that nothing is broken, patching up the few cuts and bruises Danny had sustained in his earlier beating.
As the EMT swabs the cut at his temple, Danny holds up a hand. "I have a question." Kono looks at him, waiting. "What's the official term for fish phobia?"
"Fish?" Kono asks, her eyebrows raised in surprise, and Danny really doesn't want to explain the genesis of this question. It would involve admitting that he's afraid of fish and Steve's already made fun of him for that today; he just doesn't know if he can take mocking from Kono and Chin, especially since they're the sane ones in this group.
"Ichthyophobia," Chin says shortly, glancing up from his phone to give Kono a vaguely guilty look.
"I fucking told you it was a real phobia." Danny grins at Steve who's getting the bruise on his cheek looked at and ignores Steve's dismissive hand wave. "Dick," he adds because that statement needed some kind of emotional punctuation, and since he can't move to make the proper hand gesture right now because he's getting patched up, insulting Steve will just have to.
Kono glares at Chin. "Okay, seriously, I'm taking away your phone if you don't put it away."
"You can try," Chin says warningly, and Danny raises his hand again, trying to stop whatever cousin fight is about to break out because he's kind of in the middle of it and he doesn't want to almost die. Again. "Okay," he says mildly, "before you guys get all Dynasty on me--"
Chin and Kono both stop to look at him. "Really?" they say together, and wow, stereo derision. That's new.
"It plays on TV all the time," Danny explains with an eyeroll, "and sometimes, I can't sleep. Anyway," he adds, smiling at the both of them, "guess what I found out about our fearless leader while we were waiting for you to show up?"
Steve groans, looking betrayed and humiliated and like he's going to kill Danny when they're alone once again, but whatever, Danny can take him. He's pretty sure. And even so, Chin and Kono will protect him because they like him well enough. Besides, revenge is sweet and totally worth whatever metaphorical ass-kicking Steve's going to hand out to him.
Danny grins at Steve and his aggravated face and decides to mark this day in the calendar as the best day of his life.
p.s. - Gus, I will get started on that ridiculous H50/Las Vegas idea when I get back. I'm taking a notebook with me so I can plot it all out and write it when I get back. I still blame you for EVERYTHING.
Sigh, I am so easy for James Caan-related crossovers.
I probably won't be able to respond to anything for the next ten days, so I hope all you have wonderful weekends and calm work weeks starting on Monday. I will be back with stories and pictures in a week or so. Mwah, you guys. I'll miss you!
I'm nervous and excited, you guys! I haven't traveled anywhere for at least seven years and I miss it so much. Hopefully, I'll be able to do a little more traveling in my future. I want to see more of the world, dammit.
Right, so before I leave, here's what I've been doing for the past two days that wasn't work. Based on this prompt, which is probably nothing like what the OP wanted, and I'm so sorry for that, 3,234 gen words about dire situations, phobias, and team bonding, 5-0 style.
Many thanks to alexandriabrown for having a serious text discussion with me on whether Kono and Chin have cousin fights in front of the team and then giving me all the brilliant phone-related bits in here. Kisses to charliehey who is the only one who knows my dirty little secret: all my comedy springs from an incurable love of Mel Brooks movies. I apologize in advance if you don't find this funny. I usually only amuse myself.
Stop Me If You've Heard This One
It's another one of those life-or-death situations that seems to have become a normal part of their lives. Usually, it's gunfire and choppers and Bazooka Joe over there hanging off buildings by his fingertips and firing, like, rocket launchers and shit; not fighting crime the normal way, but the Hawaiian way, with more water and sand than Danny ever wants to see in his life. It'd make for a great story if it weren't Danny's actual life.
This time, it's being locked in a tiny cell in some underground bunker by a bunch of hard-eyed men with big guns and even bigger plans. The place is barely big enough to hold one person, so Steve being in here with him is just making a bad situation that much more intolerable. They're practically in each other's laps trying to find some room to sit, bumping elbows and arms and heads trying to move without actually touching each other.
Finally, they have to sit back-to-back just to be able to breathe different air, their knees coming close to pressing into the walls on either side as they try to get comfortable and figure a way out of here. This is going to damage Danny's knee even more, but hey, that's the price of working with Steve McGarrett.
At least he isn't dead. Yet.
"So," he says conversationally, "I have a question." Steve holds up his hand near Danny's face like he doesn't want to hear it, but Danny's never been one to let that stop him before. "Is there anyone that you cannot piss off in under a minute?"
"So you're saying this is my fault?" Steve has that irritated tone of voice that always seems to get under Danny's skin and scrapes at him until he snaps.
"Of course this is your fault," Danny says like Steve's an idiot for even doubting it. "When is it not your fault? When have we ever been in a situation like this that you didn't start?" God, he doesn't even have enough room to move his hands like he wants, expansive gestures being a luxury he apparently can't afford right now. He hates Steve a little for this.
"I was following a lead," Steve says testily, and Danny can feel him shift as he tries to adjust his long legs to the cramped cell. He'd feel sorry for him, but hey, it's not his fault that Steve's freakishly tall and bone-headed enough to pull this kind of shit without any back-up.
"Straight to the bad guys' doors? Yeah, brilliant plan there, Ace. How exactly were you planning on Ramboing your way out of here anyway?"
There's a few minutes of silence, like Steve is casting around for an answer to shut Danny down, and then he reluctantly admits, "I don't know."
Danny sighs and drops his head back, wincing when it bumps into Steve's. "This is your problem: you rush into everything, and I have to follow you, and then we end up as someone's hostages. Or in a gunfight. Or jumping out of exploding buildings. Every time."
"It's not every time," Steve argues, but there's no confidence in it because he knows it's true.
"Every time," Danny says firmly, clenching his jaw when his knee starts protesting the lack of movement or space. "Every single time. I've kept track."
"You've kept track?" Steve sounds torn between amusement and incredulity. "Of every time something like this has happened? In the five months you've been on the team?"
"Yup," Danny says, digging his fingers into his knee and trying to massage away the pain. "In the five months I've been on this team, we've been shot at forty-two times--"
"We're cops," Steve argues, his shoulder digging into Danny's head as he moves his hand in a gesture Danny can't see. "We're supposed to get shot at."
"Forty-two is excessive, pal, even for me." Danny holds his hand back for Steve to see the fingers he's counting off. "We've been held hostage at least eight times--"
"Okay, three of those times were not my fault--"
"We've been beaten up on a pretty regular basis--"
"Again," Steve says with a sigh, "we're cops. Getting beaten up and shot at is kind of part of the job description."
"Where?" Danny asks incredulously. "Show me where in the manual it says that I have to get the shit kicked out of me by drug lords and arsonists every single fucking day."
"I'll show you a manual," Steve mutters and Danny rolls his eyes and says, "That doesn't even make sense."
There's a tense silence that lasts about five minutes while Danny ponders all the ways he's going to yell at Steve if they get out of this and Steve is probably measuring out every inch of this cell and trying to figure out if he can squeeze his size 30 ass through the tiny barred opening at the very top of the wall. Finally, Danny can't take the lack of talking anymore and says, "Hey, question."
"What?" Steve sounds tired and frustrated, but that could just be because he hasn't had a chance to shoot someone yet.
"What are you afraid of?" Danny pauses. "And you can't say fear itself because FDR already did that bit."
"What?" Steve's voice is flat and unamused, and Danny feels like he's been corrupted somehow by the sun and the sand and the craziness of this island and this team because he enjoys pissing Steve off way too much. It's a sickness, he knows that, but he bets ten to one, he couldn't find anyone who's met Steve who would fault him for it.
"We might die in here," Danny helpfully points out, smiling to himself when Steve digs his shoulder back into Danny's in an aggravated nudge.
"We're not gonna die," Steve says irritably, like Danny's letting him down by even thinking that.
"I'm just saying," Danny says, forgetting that he can't move his hands to talk when his elbow hits Steve's back, "we could die in here--"
"But we're not going to."
"And if we do, I'd like to know a little more about the guy I'm working with."
Steve's quiet for a moment. "Is this a Jersey bonding ritual?" he asks curiously, and the fact that he's serious about it makes Danny really wish he'd shot the guy when he first met him in his dad's garage.
"It's not a-- can you just answer the goddamn question?" he yells, jabbing his elbow into Steve's back, purposely this time, just to let out a little bit of his frustration.
Steve doesn't even acknowledge the elbow. "What am I afraid of? Seriously, this is what you want your last words to be?"
"My last words are gonna be 'fuck you, asshole' if you don't answer my question."
"They're not going to print that in your obituary, you know, language" Steve says casually, and Danny holds his hands up to the ceiling and asks, "Why me?" in an exasperated tone of voice.
Steve sighs, shaking his head. "I'm not afraid of anything."
"Oh, oh." Danny has to take a moment to breathe from the sheer macho idiocy of that answer. "Really? Really? No fear? None at all? Not even a smidge? Did they teach you that in SEAL school?"
"Actually--"
"It's part of the human condition to feel fear," he yells, thinking that this cell is way too small to contain all his rage at everything that's happened so far, in this cell, in his life, in the past year. "You can't not feel it, you psycho."
"You just used a double negative there," Steve points out mildly, sounding too much like he's enjoying himself for Danny's peace of mind.
"I swear to God," he groans, leaning forward to rest his forehead on his knees, "I will give up football and go to church every Sunday if we get out of here and I get to punch you just once."
He can feel Steve cock his head to the side, like he's considering something. "What are you scared of?" Steve asks curiously, his voice sounding hushed in the gloom of the cell.
"Losing Grace," Danny says without hesitation. "She's my life, and if I lost her…" He shakes his head, the thought too awful to even contemplate.
"What else?"
Danny finds it in himself to laugh. "What else, he says," he sighs, thinking that he's never had more excitement and danger in his life than when he'd met Steve, and he doesn't entirely dislike it either. Not that he likes being trapped in this hellhole with a man who possibly eats bullets for breakfast and literally laughs in the face of danger, but at least Danny can legitimately say his life isn't boring. "Uh," he runs his fingers over his hair, hating the way it flops into his face after hours of sweat and heat and non-fatal beatings, "squid freaks me out pretty bad."
"So no sushi for you?" Steve asks, a smile in his voice, pressing his back into Danny's in some sort of gesture that Danny thinks might be him expressing sympathy. Or some kind of human emotion anyway.
Danny shudders. "Hell, no. Really, any kind of seafood is not high on my list of Things I Like."
Steve shifts against Danny, his head tilted toward Danny's. "But actual fear?"
Danny turns his head a little, his head brushing against Steve's nape. "Have you seen what lives in the ocean? It's like Jurassic Park down there, but with fish."
"God, I could terrify you with a tuna fish," Steve says delightedly, clearly laughing at Danny's pain because he's a dick like that. "I could make you cry with a prawn."
"You're sick in the head," Danny says, aggravated, looking up at the tiny window at the top of the cell and wondering if his size 30 ass would find through the bars. Was anyone even looking for them? Chin and Kono should've been here by now with the entire police force, medical personnel, and enough firepower to level this shitty, ugly building. They're professional like that. Danny can count on them not to be crazy and reckless around people with guns.
"Sorry," Steve says, not sounding sorry at all, sounding, in fact, like he's muffling his laughter. "I just-- it's fish. I never would've thought--"
"It's a legitimate phobia, okay?"
"If it's so legitimate, what's it called?"
Danny pauses. "Shut up," he says grouchily. "And you still haven't told me yours. Pony up, GI Joe."
Steve makes a rude sound. "I'm not--"
"You're telling me," Danny says firmly, pushing with his knees and shoving into Steve. "Or I will crush you into the wall."
"You and which army, shorty?" Steve snorts.
Danny jabs him with his elbow, feeling satisfied when Steve grunts and shifts away from him. "Me and my elbows. Now start talking."
Steve sighs like he's so put-upon and Danny rolls his eyes at the theatrics, completely unimpressed. "Fine," he says grudgingly when Danny doesn't buy his act. "If you have to know-"
"And I do." Steve mumbles something under his breath, and Danny asks "What?" in a loud, strident voice.
"Jesus," Steve says, irritated, "clowns, okay? I'm terrified of clowns."
Danny starts laughing and keeps laughing, even when Steve uses his freakishly long legs to shove himself back into Danny and press him closer to the wall. "Oh my God," he cries, thinking that he's possibly on the verge of hysteria, but mostly just too damn amused at the embarrassed tone of Steve's voice. He even feels embarrassed against the spread of Danny's back. "Clowns, oh my God."
"It's a legitimate fear," Steve yells over Danny's howls of laughter, jabbing his elbow into Danny's side when Danny refuses to stop.
"If it's so legitimate, what's it called?" Danny asks mockingly.
"Coulrophobia," Steve says immediately, shuddering as he says it. "They just-- they freak me out. Ever since I was a kid."
"Clowns are supposed to make you laugh," Danny huffs, still trying to catch his breath.
"Clowns are evil and want to kill you," Steve counters, totally serious, and Danny feels the laughter bubble up inside him again.
"You've met many killer clowns, have you?"
"Actually," Steve says, and Danny holds up his hand, saying, "Never mind, I don't wanna know."
There's more silence as they wait for something to happen, shoulders touching, heads bowed, backs pressed against each other like they're bracing the other for whatever comes. Danny wonders if this is going to be his last moment on earth and wishes his last words weren't all about mocking Steve. No, wait, he lied. If he's going to die now, he's glad his last words are going to be about mocking Steve. He's lived a good life if there's some kind of record of him getting in a shot or two at Steve.
As they wait, there's a series of loud thumping sounds echoing outside the cell, sounding like boots on concrete, and Danny and Steve have time to raise their heads just as the cell door is kicked open. Kono and Chin come running in, their guns drawn and vaguely anxious, irritated looks on their faces. "Found them," Chin calls to the men outside, reaching out to grab Steve's hand and yank him to his feet.
Danny breathes a sigh of relief as the pressure against his chest eases, and gratefully takes Kono's hand as she helps him get to his feet. His knee is in agony, and his doctor's going to kill him, but at least they're safe. "What took you so long?" he asks Kono.
She shrugs, looking a little shame-faced as she leads him out of the cell. "We, uh, we got lost."
"It was not my fault," Chin says in a biting tone, sounding harassed, and it sounds like this argument's been going on for a while. "We lost the tracking signal and this place isn't on any GPS I could find--"
"And there was no one around to ask for directions," Kono says, annoyance and distaste written on her face as she looks around at the building they're in, "So he had to check Google Maps on his iPhone--" She says 'iPhone' like it's a dirty word, her nose turned up in a moue of irritation, and Danny spares a moment to think that she's really goddamn cute when she's pissed and then remembers that both cousins would have no problems dropkicking his ass into the next time zone if they even got a hint of what he was thinking.
"Not this again," Chin groans, interrupting Danny's thoughts, and Kono's arm tightens around Danny as she says, "You're on it all the time. You're on it while you eat, you use it for policework, I think you even sleep with it--"
"I do not," Chin says crossly, but Danny can see his hand briefly slide into his pocket and he's willing to bet his ridiculous taskforce paycheck that Chin was just making sure his phone was still in his pocket.
"So," he asks carefully, leaning a little more heavily against Kono as his knee twinges, "just to be clear, is this about an all-encompassing, unreasonable hatred for Steve Jobs or just Chin's addiction to the phone?"
"Can't it be both?" Kono asks plaintively, and Danny grins at her, trying really hard to suppress the urge to lean over and kiss her. It's suicidal because Kono would kill him and then Chin would kill him, and he just got out of one dangerous situation already, but he's really goddamn tempted.
Chin sighs, and Danny knows he's not winning this one. "She threatened to throw it out the window," he tells Steve in a low, scandalized voice, leaning his head into Steve's, but Danny can hear him and so can Kono.
"And back over it with my car," she says, her arm firm and strong around Danny's waist as they get to the EMTs waiting outside the squat building they were just in, "repeatedly."
Even Steve looks amused by that, his face breaking out into one of those half-smiles that comes out only when he's trying not to laugh about something. "You should do it," he says lazily, ignoring the positively filthy look Chin aims at him. "You should tape it too. Put it up on YouTube."
"Right," Chin rolls his eyes. "Because the Governor will be so pleased that random people from all over the world can watch her elite taskforce act like destructive teenagers."
Danny acknowledges that point with a head tilt. "True, but I bet we'd get a million hits on the first day alone."
"Do not," Chin says sternly, "encourage her. Or do you want to find out how forgiving the Governor is when she's in a mood?" All four of them shudder in contemplation, and Danny lets the EMT look him over as he checks to make sure that nothing is broken, patching up the few cuts and bruises Danny had sustained in his earlier beating.
As the EMT swabs the cut at his temple, Danny holds up a hand. "I have a question." Kono looks at him, waiting. "What's the official term for fish phobia?"
"Fish?" Kono asks, her eyebrows raised in surprise, and Danny really doesn't want to explain the genesis of this question. It would involve admitting that he's afraid of fish and Steve's already made fun of him for that today; he just doesn't know if he can take mocking from Kono and Chin, especially since they're the sane ones in this group.
"Ichthyophobia," Chin says shortly, glancing up from his phone to give Kono a vaguely guilty look.
"I fucking told you it was a real phobia." Danny grins at Steve who's getting the bruise on his cheek looked at and ignores Steve's dismissive hand wave. "Dick," he adds because that statement needed some kind of emotional punctuation, and since he can't move to make the proper hand gesture right now because he's getting patched up, insulting Steve will just have to.
Kono glares at Chin. "Okay, seriously, I'm taking away your phone if you don't put it away."
"You can try," Chin says warningly, and Danny raises his hand again, trying to stop whatever cousin fight is about to break out because he's kind of in the middle of it and he doesn't want to almost die. Again. "Okay," he says mildly, "before you guys get all Dynasty on me--"
Chin and Kono both stop to look at him. "Really?" they say together, and wow, stereo derision. That's new.
"It plays on TV all the time," Danny explains with an eyeroll, "and sometimes, I can't sleep. Anyway," he adds, smiling at the both of them, "guess what I found out about our fearless leader while we were waiting for you to show up?"
Steve groans, looking betrayed and humiliated and like he's going to kill Danny when they're alone once again, but whatever, Danny can take him. He's pretty sure. And even so, Chin and Kono will protect him because they like him well enough. Besides, revenge is sweet and totally worth whatever metaphorical ass-kicking Steve's going to hand out to him.
Danny grins at Steve and his aggravated face and decides to mark this day in the calendar as the best day of his life.
p.s. - Gus, I will get started on that ridiculous H50/Las Vegas idea when I get back. I'm taking a notebook with me so I can plot it all out and write it when I get back. I still blame you for EVERYTHING.
Sigh, I am so easy for James Caan-related crossovers.
I probably won't be able to respond to anything for the next ten days, so I hope all you have wonderful weekends and calm work weeks starting on Monday. I will be back with stories and pictures in a week or so. Mwah, you guys. I'll miss you!