How Is This My Life, Seriously?
I don't know how I talked myself into writing snippets of that H50/Burn Notice crossover I'm always talking about, but I can't blame anyone but myself. Clearly, being bored at work is detrimental to my free time because I wrote more of this, despite lacking anything resembling a plot or an idea of where this is going. I am so sorry.
This is totally not a story, by the way. This is just going to be a series of unbeta'd, self-indulgent scenes that I am writing because I am helpless when it comes to this fandom. Feel free to skip if Burn Notice is not your thing.
For rike_tikki_tavi because she encouraged this.
Steve meets Michael for the first time in a shitty-looking warehouse apartment that's almost as tragic as Danny's hole-in-the-wall apartment, and they're staring at each other over guns. It feels a little familiar and Steve has enough of a sense of humor to appreciate the absurd patterns that his life has started playing out since he's met Danny.
What happens is that they're on a case from hell that crosses at least three states and involves enough inter-departmental cooperation to make Steve want to punch someone from all the playing-nice that he's doing. Danny has been yelling non-stop since they'd caught the case, Chin has started deep-breathing whenever they have to talk to the local PD, and Kono grinds her teeth so much, Steve's starting to worry that she'll crack enamel. So when a lead takes them to Miami, he just follows Chin's example and breathes until the urge to shoot someone passes, although his trigger finger twitches a little when the lead detective at Miami PD starts in with the usual dick-waving about jurisdiction and sharing credit and everything else that Steve can't be bothered to deal with because he loathes office politics.
"You just never had the knack for it," Chin tells him softly while Danny goes head to head with the detective, who is a full foot taller than him, although you couldn't tell from the way he's backing down in the face of Danny's ferocity. "You're terrible at playing nice with people in charge," he adds, a faint grin following when Steve scowls at him.
"I can play nice," Steve says defensively, and Chin actually laughs, distracting the detective long enough for Danny to shove his face up to the guy and try to bulldog his way into getting the department to back off long enough to let 5-0 do their job.
"You and nice." Chin shakes his head, his mouth twitching like he's trying to stop himself from laughing again. "I'd pay to see that."
"Fuck you, brah," Steve says, sotto voce, biting back a smile when Chin lets out an undignified snort. "You just see how nice I can be."
And then they both settle back in their seats and watch Danny politely thank the captain and the lead detective for their cooperation in this urgent police matter while the other men try to pretend that they didn't just get fucked on the whole deal.
Three hot, sweaty days and four false starts later, Steve is in this empty, near-gutted warehouse, looking for a mystery man named Michael Westen, ex-CIA spook, because he apparently has all the answers Steve's looking for.
Steve had poked around the place for a bit -- the fridge has four beers and eight yogurts, blueberry being the predominant flavor, and what this says about this Westen guy, Steve doesn't want to know, there's barely any furniture, and everything has that spartan look that Steve remembers from his service days when you didn't leave anything behind in case the information fell into the wrong hands -- and was starting to think that he'd been sent on a wild goose chase when he hears the slight creak that means someone's coming up the stairs.
He goes on high alert, his gun drawn and held in front of him before he even thinks about it, and he's not at all surprised when a tall, dark-haired man comes through the door with a loose, careless grace that belies how tightly strung he is, his gun aimed squarely at Steve's head. Because Steve has been trained to notice these things, he notes that the man's gun is a SIG-Sauer P228, his stance practically screams military, and he holds the gun with an ease that says he's used it many times and plans on using it a lot more.
Steve really fucking hates this case, and now he has another reason.
"Who are you?" he almost barks out, hoping to catch the other man off-guard if he hammers at him right away.
Instead, the man smiles politely, like they're being introduced to each other at a social engagement, and if Steve weren't paying close attention, he wouldn't have noticed how that smile never reached the man's eyes, how his finger tightens ever so slightly on the trigger. "I'm Michael Westen," he says calmly. He nods his head toward Steve. "And you are?"
"Commander Steve McGarrett of Hawaii 5-0." Steve's gratified to see Michael blink once, like that hadn't been the answer he was expecting.
"Kind of a long way from your jurisdiction, aren't you?"
Steve shrugs, his voice mild as he says, "I keep telling criminals to keep it close to home, just for convenience's sake, but you know how it goes."
Michael's smile is a little more genuine this time. "You just can't depend on the predictability of felons anymore," he sighs, and Steve has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from responding to that smile. There's something wrong with him that he's always being charmed by smartasses holding guns on him; it's a problem, and he's thinking that he really should take Danny up on his numerous offers to refer him to a good shrink. "So, Commander McGarrett," Michael says in that calm, measured tone that Steve's starting to think is his default setting, no matter how crazy the situation gets, "what can I do for you?"
Steve tilts his head a little to regard Michael, noting all the little details that add up to a fuller picture of the man: he's wearing a tan suit with no tie and glossy, black shoes, looking like the very picture of casual elegance, but Steve can see the scrapes and scratches at his knuckles that say he had been fighting recently, sees the way Michael favors his left side with the way he stands, and notices the shadow of a bruise under Michael's right eye. Someone had tried to take a chunk out of Westen recently, and Steve's willing to bet that Michael's the kind of guy to give as good as he gets.
"I have this case," Steve says carefully, slowly, deciding that just this once, caution was the better part of valor. He usually throws himself at any kind of danger as a matter of course, but Michael's an ex-spook, and those guys don't deal well with sudden movements anywhere near them. Steve doesn't want to take a bullet to the chest because of an itchy trigger finger and a misunderstanding. "It involves you somehow. I just want to talk."
Michael's face goes tight and hard, his eyes blank as he looks at Steve over his gun, and Steve senses an emotional landmine ahead. "Your mouth says 'talk'," he tells Steve lightly, "but your gun says 'no'." For all the joviality in his tone, there's a furious undercurrent to his words, which worries Steve. He wishes Danny were here; Danny's good at reading these kinds of situations and figuring out how to defuse them with just the right words. Steve's good with cyphers and languages, but he hasn't yet figured out how to read the emotional terrain of a pissed-off ex-spy with a Sig Sauer aimed at his head.
Fuck it, Steve decides as he carefully starts to lower his gun, he has to take a chance on this. Westen might know something and he's not going to find out anything by staying locked in this stalemate. Besides, his gut is telling him that Michael won't just shoot him out of hand, not unless Steve gives him a reason to, so he puts his gun on the ground and backs up a few steps, trying not to hear Danny in his head asking, "Are you literally insane?" in his usual disbelieving tones because Steve is going with his gut and not empirical evidence, like Danny's been trying to teach him.
"I just want to talk," Steve says, his voice quiet as Michael gives him a curious look, a slight tilt of his head and a raised eyebrow, which seems like a double-take on someone as deliberate as Michael.
There is a long, nerve-wracking pause as Michael seems to consider his options, his hands steady as the gun stays pointed at Steve and nothing in his body language giving the game away. Finally, he nods once and slowly lowers his gun, clicking the safety on almost as an afterthought. "Can I get you a yogurt?" he offers politely, and Steve makes a face as he remembers the contents of the fridge.
"What is the deal with you and yogurt anyway?"
Michael grins, an honest reaction that drops about ten years off his face. "No big deal, I just love yogurt."
"Beer," Steve sighs, bending down to grab his gun and holster it, each movement done slowly so that Michael can see exactly what he's doing. "Please."
Michael heads toward the fridge, walking backward so that Steve is never out of his line of sight. "So polite." He flutters his lashes like some smitten schoolgirl, and Steve laughs softly, despite himself and despite the fact that he's pretty sure that Michael could've taken him out without any hesitation if he'd really wanted to.
It's kind of fucked that he's more intrigued than freaked by that fact.
By the time Danny comes bursting through the door, his gun raised and his voice preceding him, with a tall, paunchy, middle-aged guy in a truly eye-watering Hawaiian shirt and a Glock 9 in tow, Steve and Michael have already shared two beers, a yogurt each, and their life stories in ten words or less.
"Hey, Danny," Steve says cheerfully, enjoying the way that Danny looks murderous as he takes in the friendly tableau in front of him. "Want a beer?"
"I," Danny says on a slow exhale, "am going to beat you to death. With my gun. When we finally leave this godforsaken, swampy hellhole of a city that you dragged me to because you really don't know how to show a guy a good time."
Michael leans out a little so he can get a closer look at Danny. "You're right," he says, a smile in his eyes, "he does overreact to every little thing."
"Hey, Mikey," the paunchy guy says with a brilliant smile, "got another one of those beers for me?"
"I fucking hate Miami," Danny sighs, and clicks the safety on his gun before holstering it and grabbing a seat at the table next to Steve. "Nothing good ever happens in Miami. It's like Hawaii, but with alligators and gunrunners. It is hell, Steven."
Steve nods because he completely understands that. "I agree, Daniel."
And they're just getting started too.
I'm going to go back to watching Burn Notice with a hot pad on my stomach. Ugh, sometimes, I hate my reproductive system.
This is totally not a story, by the way. This is just going to be a series of unbeta'd, self-indulgent scenes that I am writing because I am helpless when it comes to this fandom. Feel free to skip if Burn Notice is not your thing.
For rike_tikki_tavi because she encouraged this.
Steve meets Michael for the first time in a shitty-looking warehouse apartment that's almost as tragic as Danny's hole-in-the-wall apartment, and they're staring at each other over guns. It feels a little familiar and Steve has enough of a sense of humor to appreciate the absurd patterns that his life has started playing out since he's met Danny.
What happens is that they're on a case from hell that crosses at least three states and involves enough inter-departmental cooperation to make Steve want to punch someone from all the playing-nice that he's doing. Danny has been yelling non-stop since they'd caught the case, Chin has started deep-breathing whenever they have to talk to the local PD, and Kono grinds her teeth so much, Steve's starting to worry that she'll crack enamel. So when a lead takes them to Miami, he just follows Chin's example and breathes until the urge to shoot someone passes, although his trigger finger twitches a little when the lead detective at Miami PD starts in with the usual dick-waving about jurisdiction and sharing credit and everything else that Steve can't be bothered to deal with because he loathes office politics.
"You just never had the knack for it," Chin tells him softly while Danny goes head to head with the detective, who is a full foot taller than him, although you couldn't tell from the way he's backing down in the face of Danny's ferocity. "You're terrible at playing nice with people in charge," he adds, a faint grin following when Steve scowls at him.
"I can play nice," Steve says defensively, and Chin actually laughs, distracting the detective long enough for Danny to shove his face up to the guy and try to bulldog his way into getting the department to back off long enough to let 5-0 do their job.
"You and nice." Chin shakes his head, his mouth twitching like he's trying to stop himself from laughing again. "I'd pay to see that."
"Fuck you, brah," Steve says, sotto voce, biting back a smile when Chin lets out an undignified snort. "You just see how nice I can be."
And then they both settle back in their seats and watch Danny politely thank the captain and the lead detective for their cooperation in this urgent police matter while the other men try to pretend that they didn't just get fucked on the whole deal.
Three hot, sweaty days and four false starts later, Steve is in this empty, near-gutted warehouse, looking for a mystery man named Michael Westen, ex-CIA spook, because he apparently has all the answers Steve's looking for.
Steve had poked around the place for a bit -- the fridge has four beers and eight yogurts, blueberry being the predominant flavor, and what this says about this Westen guy, Steve doesn't want to know, there's barely any furniture, and everything has that spartan look that Steve remembers from his service days when you didn't leave anything behind in case the information fell into the wrong hands -- and was starting to think that he'd been sent on a wild goose chase when he hears the slight creak that means someone's coming up the stairs.
He goes on high alert, his gun drawn and held in front of him before he even thinks about it, and he's not at all surprised when a tall, dark-haired man comes through the door with a loose, careless grace that belies how tightly strung he is, his gun aimed squarely at Steve's head. Because Steve has been trained to notice these things, he notes that the man's gun is a SIG-Sauer P228, his stance practically screams military, and he holds the gun with an ease that says he's used it many times and plans on using it a lot more.
Steve really fucking hates this case, and now he has another reason.
"Who are you?" he almost barks out, hoping to catch the other man off-guard if he hammers at him right away.
Instead, the man smiles politely, like they're being introduced to each other at a social engagement, and if Steve weren't paying close attention, he wouldn't have noticed how that smile never reached the man's eyes, how his finger tightens ever so slightly on the trigger. "I'm Michael Westen," he says calmly. He nods his head toward Steve. "And you are?"
"Commander Steve McGarrett of Hawaii 5-0." Steve's gratified to see Michael blink once, like that hadn't been the answer he was expecting.
"Kind of a long way from your jurisdiction, aren't you?"
Steve shrugs, his voice mild as he says, "I keep telling criminals to keep it close to home, just for convenience's sake, but you know how it goes."
Michael's smile is a little more genuine this time. "You just can't depend on the predictability of felons anymore," he sighs, and Steve has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from responding to that smile. There's something wrong with him that he's always being charmed by smartasses holding guns on him; it's a problem, and he's thinking that he really should take Danny up on his numerous offers to refer him to a good shrink. "So, Commander McGarrett," Michael says in that calm, measured tone that Steve's starting to think is his default setting, no matter how crazy the situation gets, "what can I do for you?"
Steve tilts his head a little to regard Michael, noting all the little details that add up to a fuller picture of the man: he's wearing a tan suit with no tie and glossy, black shoes, looking like the very picture of casual elegance, but Steve can see the scrapes and scratches at his knuckles that say he had been fighting recently, sees the way Michael favors his left side with the way he stands, and notices the shadow of a bruise under Michael's right eye. Someone had tried to take a chunk out of Westen recently, and Steve's willing to bet that Michael's the kind of guy to give as good as he gets.
"I have this case," Steve says carefully, slowly, deciding that just this once, caution was the better part of valor. He usually throws himself at any kind of danger as a matter of course, but Michael's an ex-spook, and those guys don't deal well with sudden movements anywhere near them. Steve doesn't want to take a bullet to the chest because of an itchy trigger finger and a misunderstanding. "It involves you somehow. I just want to talk."
Michael's face goes tight and hard, his eyes blank as he looks at Steve over his gun, and Steve senses an emotional landmine ahead. "Your mouth says 'talk'," he tells Steve lightly, "but your gun says 'no'." For all the joviality in his tone, there's a furious undercurrent to his words, which worries Steve. He wishes Danny were here; Danny's good at reading these kinds of situations and figuring out how to defuse them with just the right words. Steve's good with cyphers and languages, but he hasn't yet figured out how to read the emotional terrain of a pissed-off ex-spy with a Sig Sauer aimed at his head.
Fuck it, Steve decides as he carefully starts to lower his gun, he has to take a chance on this. Westen might know something and he's not going to find out anything by staying locked in this stalemate. Besides, his gut is telling him that Michael won't just shoot him out of hand, not unless Steve gives him a reason to, so he puts his gun on the ground and backs up a few steps, trying not to hear Danny in his head asking, "Are you literally insane?" in his usual disbelieving tones because Steve is going with his gut and not empirical evidence, like Danny's been trying to teach him.
"I just want to talk," Steve says, his voice quiet as Michael gives him a curious look, a slight tilt of his head and a raised eyebrow, which seems like a double-take on someone as deliberate as Michael.
There is a long, nerve-wracking pause as Michael seems to consider his options, his hands steady as the gun stays pointed at Steve and nothing in his body language giving the game away. Finally, he nods once and slowly lowers his gun, clicking the safety on almost as an afterthought. "Can I get you a yogurt?" he offers politely, and Steve makes a face as he remembers the contents of the fridge.
"What is the deal with you and yogurt anyway?"
Michael grins, an honest reaction that drops about ten years off his face. "No big deal, I just love yogurt."
"Beer," Steve sighs, bending down to grab his gun and holster it, each movement done slowly so that Michael can see exactly what he's doing. "Please."
Michael heads toward the fridge, walking backward so that Steve is never out of his line of sight. "So polite." He flutters his lashes like some smitten schoolgirl, and Steve laughs softly, despite himself and despite the fact that he's pretty sure that Michael could've taken him out without any hesitation if he'd really wanted to.
It's kind of fucked that he's more intrigued than freaked by that fact.
By the time Danny comes bursting through the door, his gun raised and his voice preceding him, with a tall, paunchy, middle-aged guy in a truly eye-watering Hawaiian shirt and a Glock 9 in tow, Steve and Michael have already shared two beers, a yogurt each, and their life stories in ten words or less.
"Hey, Danny," Steve says cheerfully, enjoying the way that Danny looks murderous as he takes in the friendly tableau in front of him. "Want a beer?"
"I," Danny says on a slow exhale, "am going to beat you to death. With my gun. When we finally leave this godforsaken, swampy hellhole of a city that you dragged me to because you really don't know how to show a guy a good time."
Michael leans out a little so he can get a closer look at Danny. "You're right," he says, a smile in his eyes, "he does overreact to every little thing."
"Hey, Mikey," the paunchy guy says with a brilliant smile, "got another one of those beers for me?"
"I fucking hate Miami," Danny sighs, and clicks the safety on his gun before holstering it and grabbing a seat at the table next to Steve. "Nothing good ever happens in Miami. It's like Hawaii, but with alligators and gunrunners. It is hell, Steven."
Steve nods because he completely understands that. "I agree, Daniel."
And they're just getting started too.
I'm going to go back to watching Burn Notice with a hot pad on my stomach. Ugh, sometimes, I hate my reproductive system.