Not Myself Today, Part 3/5
Master Post
Part 1 || Part 2
Steve’s alarm goes off at the usual time Tuesday morning, but he wakes up just enough to hit the button, text Danny that he’s coming in late, and go back to sleep. Getting up means he has to deal with what happened last night because he knows that he won’t be as effective at work until he sorts through whatever the hell it is and settles his brain back onto more important things.
It’s full-on daylight when he finally wakes up for keeps, but he doesn’t look at the clock because it’ll just add to the guilt complex he has over sleeping past sunrise in the first place. He throws on some clothes, picks up the discarded pieces he’d left on the floor last night and tosses them in the laundry basket before finally going downstairs to make some coffee.
When he sees that there’s someone sitting at his dining room table, he reaches for his gun, only to realize that he left it upstairs, that the plant on the table at the bottom of the stairs is a poor weapon, and that it’s Kono at the table so why is he trying to kill her?
Kono doesn’t move when she sees him, just says, “I made coffee,” and continues drinking her own cup.
“What are you doing here?” Steve asks, moving towards the coffee maker. It smells heavenly, and he takes a deep breath as he pours his first cup of the day. He has a feeling there will be many more.
“I dropped by to get my shoes,” she says, nonchalantly. As if getting her shoes was actually a big deal, as if she doesn’t have the ability to bug him non-stop at work about it anyway.
“They’re upstairs,” Steve says. “let me go get them.”
“Not a chance,” Kono says. “Sit down, drink your coffee, and tell me what happened last night.”
“It was --” Steve trails off, not knowing how to finish that sentence. Because it had been really, really good right up until it went really, really bad.
“Start from the beginning.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Steve says. “We need to get to work. You know, that place where we catch bad guys, where I’m the boss and I can fire you arbitrarily?”
“Yes, you are the boss, which means that occasionally you can show up late. I already told Chin I was going to swing by before work, and I can just as easily call him back and say that you’re going to be late, too.”
Steve remembers texting Danny before sunrise and looks away, sheepishly.
“OK, so that’s taken care of,” Kono says, “since you obviously already got a message out to Danny. No more excuses. Spill.”
Steve wonders when she learned to read him that well, and whether it was before or after last Sunday. The former is a scary thought, so instead he starts talking, because he knows that she’ll keep him here until he does. And even if he doesn’t want to admit it out loud, it’s nice to be able to share with someone.
His coffee is cold and Kono’s coffee is gone by the time he finishes.
“I’m starting to see why Danny keeps mentioning how willing he is to find you professional help. I think he’s done half the research already.”
“Can we not bring him into it?” Steve says, putting his elbows on the table and cradling his face in his hands.
“Let me get this straight,” Kono says, “You went out with Justin, had a fantastic time, went skinny dipping in the ocean, made out with him then had a panic attack because he touched you while you were making out while skinny dipping in the ocean.”
When Steve looks up she’s giving him a face. “Will you stop it with the face?”
“And now you sound like --” she cuts herself off, even though Steve knows full well what she’s about to say.
“-- he who must not be named,” she finishes.
Steve just glares.
”Anyway, you need to call him.”
“Who?” Steve asks, and Kono just gives him another look. “Right. Justin. I doubt he wants to see me again.”
“This can go two ways, Steve. Either you call him right now, and apologize, or you don’t. If you do, he’ll most likely agree to meet you for at least coffee. Otherwise, you’ll still be freaking out over this in ten years. And, I’ll tell Danny.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“No, I wouldn’t. But you probably will, eventually.” She sounds like she’s not just talking about it slipping out during an argument, and again Steve wonders when she got so good at reading his subconscious, because he’s barely thought about anything beyond how much he actually likes arguing with Danny. So he takes the easy way out, fishes in his pocket for his phone and dials Justin’s number.
The conversation is short; Steve keeps it that way by design, given that Kono is openly watching him and obviously taking careful note of everything he’s saying. By the end he’s gotten Justin to agree to another date Wednesday night. Only then does Kono actually cooperate when he repeats that they need to go to work.
When they get to the office, Danny gives Steve a look that he can’t identify, then goes back into his office to work. Steve has no idea what it means, and isn’t sure he wants to ask, so he gets Chin to catch him up quickly and retreats to his office as well.
Without Kono over his shoulder, Steve is starting to regret making the second date. He had wanted it to go well, but he should have stopped before going out to the beach. Spending time with someone and allowing yourself to find them attractive is different from actually doing anything, or so Steve tries to tell himself. But the excuse feels thin and brittle and he knows he’s trying to justify something, but he still feels like he needs to. After all, he was the one who kissed Justin first, and that wasn't a move he ever expected to make.
It was freeing, yes, but given his circumstances it just set off a whole other chain of issues, because now he’s not sure what to do about the whole situation. He likes Justin, but Justin’s been out with a person who doesn’t really exist, and who - hopefully - eventually will just be an amusing story in Steve’s history. And it’s not fair to either of them, because it had been so nice, but what the hell else is there to do except enjoy the ride on the way down and hope that it doesn’t go on for too long and that neither of them end up breaking anything.
Well, if Steve breaks anything it will be Danny inflicting the injury, and speak of the devil because there he is standing in Steve’s door.
“What?” he asks.
“I expected more spring in your step this morning,” Danny says. “Don’t think I can’t still recognize your ‘I just got laid’ face. But you just look like ten kinds of hell.” He sounds genuinely concerned, which is not at all what Steve was expecting from him.
“Thanks for that,” Steve says. Danny’s trying to rebuild some bridge that Steve didn’t know had collapsed, and he’d appreciate the effort more if he knew what it was really about.
There’s an awkward pause, and Steve watches as Danny settles in to a slouch against the door frame, evidently seeing this being a long conversation.
“So, how was it?” Danny finally asks. “I can guess based on the 5:00am text and those bags under your eyes that something happened. And knowing you, it was probably you lobbing a grenade into whatever restaurant and scaring off the tourists and the few locals who aren’t used to you yet. Just tell me you didn’t take a gun on a date.”
Steve ignores the jab about his various weapons, and instead blurts out, “He thinks I’m a tourist.”
Danny doesn’t speak right away, and Steve wants to avoid more awkward pauses to keep himself from saying things before he totally thinks it through, so he starts again. “It was --”
“You are not allowed to speak until I decide if telling him that you’re a tourist, a tourist, just one more in those mobs of people that you can’t stand, is either too stupid to think about or a stroke of genius.”
“Danno --”
“Did I or did I not give you permission to speak yet?”
Steve feels the need to say something, but Danny is standing there in the door giving Steve a very speculative look, and blocking the way out, so that Steve can’t take the other easy avenue to end the conversation.
“I can’t leave you alone for five minutes, can I?” Danny finally asks. “Are you going to see him again?”
Which Steve is thankfully spared from answering by Kono walking up behind Danny and slapping him upside the head.
“What was that for?” Danny asks. “Civilized people do not go around slapping their partners.”
“Steve’s your partner,” Kono says, “and he didn’t slap you. I did.”
“Savage.” Danny rubs the back of his head and smooths his hair again. Whatever tension was between them is gone. Steve turns back to the file he was reading and Danny gives him one last look before turning away to go talk to Chin. Once Danny is gone Steve lets out a shaky breath, feeling like he’s just walked through an explosion without really knowing why.
When he gets home he goes for a longer run than normal to make up for skipping his morning routine. By the time he gets back to his house, he’s exceedingly glad that neither Kono nor Danny are at his house, and that he can have one night to himself.
Once he’s cooked and eaten dinner and washed the dishes he goes out to the garage to work on his father’s car, deliberately leaving his phone in the house. If there’s a true emergency, Danny will come and get him, and after what happened last night and their brief conversation this morning Steve highly doubts that Justin will call. They’ve made plans for tomorrow night anyway.
After the weekend (and Steve is including Monday night in the broad term) he really needs a night off where he doesn’t have to deal with the dissonance between who he is and who the world sees these days.
Then there’s Danny, and Steve doesn’t know what to even think about that situation now, because Danny should have been giving him shit this morning about being out late and sleeping past dawn for the first time in seven years, maybe eight, and welcome to normal life. He’d tried, but something was off about it, and while things had eventually gone back to almost-normal at the office, the key word there was almost, and it’s driving Steve insane trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
Maybe there’s something more going on with Rachel and Gracie and Steve had just been too wrapped up in his own shit this last week to notice it. There had been an early end to Danny’s weekend with Gracie, which has never been a good sign. He knew things had been in a bit of a holding pattern since Rachel had had the baby, but maybe something had happened in the last two weeks.
Of course, Danny has never been shy in his venting about Rachel, but it could be something worse than the usual custody disputes. And now Steve wants to go shoot something because there is definitely something wrong in Danno’s life and he missed it because his own is so fucked right now. What the hell is he doing dating Justin when Danny could lose Grace?
That thought is enough to bring him up short, wondering what the hell would happen to Danno without his daughter, then stopping that train wreck before it starts, even theoretically. Instead, he goes inside and sends Danny a quick everything OK over there? text before he can stop to think about it.
He can’t go back to calmly working on the Marquis after that epiphany. Instead, Steve grabs two beers and goes out to the lanai, downing one quickly while he tries to relax and figure out what to do. Danny hasn’t texted him back yet, and maybe the beer is going to his head faster than normal because Steve is considering calling just in case things are not OK with Danny and Grace.
But he doesn’t, and instead settles into his chair for the evening, this time making sure he has the phone in his hand. With nothing to do but sit there and force himself not to call Danny he fiddles with his phone, taking random pictures of the light bouncing off the ocean and deleting them right away. He answers another email from Catherine, telling her that he misses her, and can’t wait for her to be in port again because it’s been far too long since they’ve seen each other.
Beer number two is long gone and Steve is nearly through beer number three when there’s a flash of headlights in the driveway followed closely by the sound of a door slamming shut.
“Out here!” Steve calls, after waiting enough time so that whoever it is, (Danny) is probably inside the house and can hear him.
“What is wrong with you?” Danny demands. Steve can’t see him yet, but he’s happy that Danny decided to come over. “Did no one in your life teach you manners? You cannot send a text like that out of the blue.”
“You’re overreacting,” Steve says, finishing off his beer.
“I am not overreacting. If anything I am not reacting enough, because who does this? Who sends cryptic messages like that?”
“You could have called,” Steve points out. “You didn’t have to come over here.”
“And leave you alone when you seem to be on the edge of a nervous breakdown? I had to come over here to be sure you weren’t going to blow up the house.”
“You were acting weird all day,” Steve says with a shrug.
“I’ve been acting weird. I’ve been acting weird. Me. I get that you’re having some sort of crisis here, but even in context, I’m not the one acting weird. You, my friend, are losing it.”
“Just because I go on one date --”
“It’s not the date. It’s really not the date.” Danny pauses for half a second. “OK, so it’s partly the date, but it’s mostly the fact that you have not blown anything up all week. You have shot at nothing but a paper target, you have nearly flattened a guy for hitting on you, and then you are going on dates with men you’ve barely spoken to.”
“Date. Singular.”
“Not the point, Steven.” Danny stops moving, stops talking. He’s deflated some, shoulders hunched a bit forward.
“I just wanted to make sure everything was OK,” Steve says.
“You are going to stop drinking,” Danny says, snatching the bottle out of Steve’s hand. “you are going to drink a glass of water, and you are going to go sleep. In the morning you will wake up at a god-awful hour of the morning and go swimming or running or sit on your living room floor and do situps or pushups or whatever else you feel the need to do to get your adrenaline rush while normal people are still in bed. I can only hope that whatever fit of crazy has taken you over tonight will be gone by the time you get to work tomorrow morning. On time, and with a box of malasadas because you owe me.”
Steve doesn’t have anything to say to that, so he just stares up at Danny until Danny takes the initiative, by downing what little is left of Steve's beer and taking Steve’s arm, heaving him out of the chair.
“This is so much easier now,” he remarks, wrapping his arm around Steve’s waist and propelling him towards the stairs. When they get close Danny unhooks his arm and shoves at Steve’s back. “I think you know the way to your own bedroom.”
Steve stops at the bottom of the stairs and turns back to look at Danny. The ghost of the touch is still lingering, both from where his arm rested for some amount of time that wasn’t nearly long enough and then the clear outline of Danny’s fingers as they’d shoved him away. He meets Danny’s eyes for a second and just knows what happened today. What’s been happening for the last week, and maybe longer, maybe since they went hiking and Danny pulled him back up the cliff or maybe since that first beer on the beach. It’s big, and it’s threatening to swallow him and so he looks away, down at his feet, which don’t look like his but give him something else to focus on so that he can keep breathing normally.
“Thanks, Danno,” he says, fleeing upstairs before Danny can reply.
He listens for the sounds of the car starting and Danny driving away before he changes for bed. He fills the glass on the bathroom sink with water and downs it, drinking steadily while he tries to clear his head so that he’ll be able to sleep without the aid of medications. He most definitely does not need the extra layer of complications in his life, and so he does his best to forget what just happened. Instead, he focuses on his date with Justin tomorrow. They planned to meet up at a local beach bar that Justin says was recommended to him. Low key, no club scene. Steve’s been there before, and he hopes that it’ll be comfortable enough for him not to have a repeat performance.
This thing with Justin is a good distraction, he muses, just on the edge of sleep. But he refuses
to answer the lingering question of from what?
***
Steve doesn’t really get a chance to think about it because they get a drug smuggling case mid-morning, and spend the rest of the day furiously compiling information and tracking down more leads until Chin suggests going out for dinner and coming back in an hour with fresh eyes and Steve realizes that he’s about to be late for coffee with Justin.
“I have other plans,” Steve says. “But go ahead. I’ll see you when you get back.”
Chin looks a him quizzically, Kono gives him a smile and a quick thumbs up, and Danny is pointedly still staring at the monitors. Steve decides that he needs to get out now before he changes his mind. He makes it out the door, but only barely, and what the fuck, when did coffee become such a big deal?
He’s not even all the way to the car when he gets a text from Kono. Want me to come with you?
Steve’s first instinct is to say no, he can handle one coffee date, but then he thinks that it might be good to have reinforcements. But this really is just coffee and he’s already got a ready made excuse to leave early, and so he texts back a quick No.
By the time he gets there he’s nearly 10 minutes late, which he hates, but couldn’t be helped because he’d had to cross town in rush hour traffic, and even with his driving he couldn’t make it. He just hopes that Justin hasn’t stood him up because he hadn’t called or sent a text.
He walks inside to see a decent sized line at the counter, but he avoids getting in it right away, scanning the room instead. He notices the locations of all the fire exits, figures out the weak points if someone were to walk through the front door with a gun (other than himself, and shit, he really should have left those in the car), and then spots Justin reading a newspaper on one of the low couches in the corner. There’s space next to him on the couch, but there’s also an empty chair across the table, which Steve takes.
“Hi,” he says quietly.
“I was starting to think you weren’t coming,” Justin says.
“I got held up in traffic,” Steve says. “I’m glad you’re still here.”
“Let me get you a drink,” Justin offers.
“Triple non-fat latte,” Steve recites, automatically, pulling out his wallet to give Justin some cash.
Justin waves him off. “That’s a lot of caffeine for dinner time.”
“It’s going to be a long night,” Steve says without thinking. “Something came up at -- “ he catches himself just in time. “ --home. I can’t stay long, but I wanted to see you.”
Justin smiles at that, and gets up to get in line for the coffee. Steve settles back in the chair and waits. He pulls out his phone and fiddles with it while waiting. He makes his move in his scrabble marathon with Chin, (he’s one letter short of firearm, but settles for armor instead,) checks his email to see if there’s been anything new in the last twenty minutes (nope, nothing, they must still be having dinner,) and pulls up his latest text-war with Danny and contemplates throwing something at him out of the blue. He’s contemplating a picture of the emergency exit sign (he expects that Danny would text back asking what local business he blew up this time) when Justin comes back and hands Steve his coffee.
“So,” Steve says. He knows he needs to start this conversation, but he’s never had to do this before, so he has no idea how. “I’m sorry. About the other night.” He looks down at his cup and takes a gulp. It burns his throat going down, but he does his best to keep a straight face and not let on.
“I don’t want to push you,” Justin says. “Are you OK now?”
He sounds genuinely concerned, and Steve doesn’t know what to do with that. He’d expected more questions, something to give him an opportunity to explain just why this can’t work, except that Justin is more concerned for Steve’s well being than angry about the sudden end to what they were doing.
“I -- yeah,” Steve gets out. He is, really, but he can’t really say more than that without getting into an even more uncomfortable conversation, and one that will probably make Justin leave and block his number.
“I know you’re busy tonight, but how about dinner tomorrow?”
Again, Steve’s not sure of what he wants to say, so he bites his lip and tries to come up with something, anything.
“Look, if you don’t want to, that’s fine.” He sounds hurt, and that’s the last thing Steve wants.
“It’s not that,” he says quickly. “It’s that I promised my friend that I’d see her before I left, and tomorrow night is her first free night in a while.” Steve hopes that Kono will play along with this part, because the only thing he can think to get out of this is, “If you don’t mind tagging along with us for a few drinks, you’re welcome to join.”
This time it’s Justin who hesitates, and Steve can see that it’s not what he was hoping for, but he replies quickly. “Sure. That sounds nice.”
“I’ll call you with the details,” Steve says, standing. “I have to get back.”
Justin stands, too, waiting, and now Steve really doesn’t know what to do. A handshake feels too formal, but a kiss or a hug would be weird, and besides, there’s a table in the way. Of course, Justin fixes that by coming around, and placing a hand on Steve’s shoulder, squeezing gently. Steve momentarily flashes back to Monday night, when Justin’s hands were all over him, without the protective layer of fabric on his shirt. A few days out, he can remember more than just the panic that followed, and he suppresses a shiver.
Acting on impulse, Steve leans in and kisses Justin on the cheek before breaking away with a quick, “I’ll call you in the morning.”
He calls Kono on the way back to HQ. “I hope you’re not busy tomorrow night,” he starts, and explains the situation to her. Even over the phone he can tell that she’s disappointed in him.
“You get one night to use me as a shield. Three hours, tops, before I invent an excuse and leave.”
“Kono,” Steve says, starting to protest.
“Not a chance, brah. I am happy to provide moral support from behind the scenes, but that’s it. You’ve got to do this on your own.”
Steve knows she’s right, so he changes the subject and they talk for the last few minutes until he pulls into the parking lot. “I just pulled up. Can we not talk about this in front of --”
“Danny, yeah, I know.” She hangs up without saying another word, and Steve is too annoyed to think about why he doesn’t want Danny to know that he’s seeing Justin again tomorrow night. Besides, they have work to do.
It takes seven hours of all of them working straight through to hit the next dead end. They’ve been talking at each other all night, compiling information and they have a stack of new profiles to look into now, but that’s it.
“I’m calling it,” Chin says. “We should go home. We’ll have fresh eyes after a few hours of sleep.”
This is the part of the work that Steve hates, putting it down when they’re getting somewhere. Or were, earlier.
“Agreed. You too, super SEAL,” Danny says. Steve wants to protest, because he’s not tired, they’re not really at a dead end (or rather, they won’t be anymore if he keeps going,) and besides, there’s a perfectly comfortable couch here. Well, mostly comfortable. Good enough for a few hours, anyway.
It’s Kono who tosses him his keys and gently shoves him out the door while Danny locks it behind them.
“I will check the security footage in the morning,” Danny says. “Don’t think I won’t.” He’s using his Father-Knows-Best tone, and Steve can’t argue with that one, so he goes.
There’s hardly anyone on the road at this hour, and Steve’s makes it home pretty fast. He stops in the kitchen for a glass of water, then heads straight to bed. He’s still too keyed up to sleep, but maybe he can calm down enough to sleep if he stays still for long enough and keeps his eyes closed. Which is what he does, right after setting the alarm for his normal time, even though he’s planning on skipping his morning swim to go straight back to the office.
***
At noon on Thursday Steve goes back out to the firing range, with Kono this time, and they spend their lunch hour punching holes in paper targets and making bets on who can make the best patterns. Steve gives up when Kono presents a near-perfect Plumeria blossom carved in the target’s chest. It pales in comparison to his slightly lopsided star.
They stop to pick up lunch on the way back, greasy pulled pork sandwiches that Steve shouldn’t like as much as he does, and they eat in the car on the way back through town. Kono is in the middle of a huge bite when Steve finally asks what he’s been needing to ask all day.
“Can I borrow some clothes for tonight?”
“You gonna let me put makeup on you again?” Kono asks once she swallows her mouthful of sandwich.
Steve wants to fight her on it, just to have a fight, but decides that he’s got better ways to get into that one. “If that’s what it takes.”
“We’ll head back to my place after work,” She says. “You need to call Justin and tell him where we’re going. And I’m driving.” Kono suggests one of her favorite places, and Steve makes the call, putting the phone on speaker while he finishes his sandwich.
The conversation is awkward and uncomfortable, made even more so by the fact that Kono refuses to speak, even when he looks at her and mouths “help?” They eventually settle for one of the bars over by the base that Justin is familiar with, and make plans to meet at 8:00, which will give Kono plenty of time to fix Steve before they go out. Well, she can at least fix the way he looks.
Kono is grinning like she’s been handed the keys to -- well, something, at any rate. Something good, and Steve wishes he could back away slowly, except that they’re still in the car and oh yeah, he roped her into going out with him tonight.
This can’t end well, he thinks. But then again, maybe it will end slightly better than the last date he went on.
Kono insists that they leave work at 5:00 on the dot, and doesn’t give Steve any room to protest as she’s literally pushing him out the door and into her car. As they’re driving she’s sizing him up.
“I have a skirt I think you’d look great in,” Kono says.
“I’m not wearing a skirt.”
Kono changes the topic, but now that they’ve done this a few times, Steve recognizes the tactic. “No skirts, no dresses,” he says. “But I’m willing to go as far as leggings again.”
“And makeup.”
“No heels.”
“Deal.”
They shake on it.
When they get to Kono’s apartment, she goes straight for her wardrobe and Steve goes straight for a beer.
She doesn’t even try to keep him from drinking before they go out. “You’re replacing every drop,” she says. “With something of equal or greater value.”
“And if I don’t?” Steve asks, even though he’d already been planning to do it, and then some, because he’d be lost without her right now.
“You know that new shop over by the Coral Prince house that’s selling custom boards?”
“Yeah, I hear they’re -- Oh.” Steve makes a mental note to replace the contents of the entire fridge, pantry and liquor cabinet, because as nice as a custom board is, they’re expensive and going grocery shopping is clearly the easier end of the deal.
Kono comes out of her bedroom carrying five shirts and a few pairs of pants. “Here,” she says, shoving them into his chest. “Go try these on.”
Somewhere in the middle of getting ready it he asks, “Is this why it always takes girls so long to get ready?”
Kono hits him in the shoulder, hard. Then runs back to the bedroom to grab another shirt that she thinks Steve will look good in.
“Fill me in on the way there,” she says, once they're both dressed and ready. “What is your name, why are you in Hawaii, since you’re obviously visiting, and what have you been doing the last week?”
Steve fills her in, telling her about visiting his “brother,” and even though he doesn’t give any of the details about said brother, she gives him a sideways look that says she definitely knows what’s going on, but she doesn’t say anything. Steve doesn’t know what questions to ask to get at the information he wants from her, so he stays silent, even though he has a sinking feeling that it’s going to come back to haunt him.
Kono parks the car, and suddenly Steve is incredibly uncomfortable. This is a prime military hangout, and Steve’s here to meet a guy. A military guy. Same as him. And everyone is going to see.
Except... well, except that no one will care because A, it’s unlikely that any of the guys here will know him because he hasn’t been stationed anywhere near Hawaii for a long time, and B, there’s the whole bodyswap thing to consider. He’s not Lt. Commander Steve McGarrett tonight. He’s Jaime, and he’s here to meet the guy he’s been dating.
Kono knocks on the window, startling Steve out of his internal panic, and he gets out of the car. Because Kono insisted on leaving her house on time, they’re actually there before Justin, and so they order drinks and find a table to wait.
They’re not there for very long when Steve spots Justin and stands up greet him as he walks over to the table. He claps Justin on the back and sits back down, neatly avoiding any more intimate contact without being rude. Justin sits down in the chair next to Steve, leaving Kono on her own on the other side of the table.
“Justin, this is Kono. Kono, this is Justin.”
“It’s so nice to meet you,” Justin says. He sounds sincere, for all that he didn’t seem too receptive to having a third person tag along.
“You too. Jaime’s told me so much about you,” she says, and Steve cringes at the wicked gleam in her eyes.
“How do you two know each other?” Justin asks.
It’s a perfectly reasonable question, and Justin is being polite in asking it, but now Steve finds out why he was right to dread Kono’s involvement in the story he’s cooked up for himself.
“I work with his brother,” she says. “We’re part of the Five-0 task force.”
Steve wants to kick her for that, under the table, but that really wouldn’t accomplish anything other than opening the door for her to retaliate at a later date. And he’s seen the revenge stunts she constantly pulls on Chin, so instead he opts to keep his feet to himself and just go with it.
Justin’s apparently heard of the Five-0, and he and Kono strike up a conversation that Steve desperately wants to take part in, not least because Kono is insulting him to his face and he can’t do anything about it. He zones out a bit and starts plotting his own revenge. He can get Danny to help him, probably. Except that Danny probably agrees with what Kono’s saying about his driving and his penchant for explosions. Chin, maybe, though he probably has more sense than to get between Kono and her pranks.
By now, Kono’s moved on to telling Jaime about the shark cage, which Steve desperately wants to point out that she wasn’t there for. Instead, he interrupts with, “You know, I get enough about the crazy boss from my brother.”
“But there are so many stories!” Kono protests.
Luckily, Justin takes his side, and moves on to telling a story about his first tour out on a ship. It makes Steve ache to jump in with his own stories of the same thing, but again he can’t, so he sits back and orders another drink and just listens.
Time passes pretty quickly, and before Steve realizes that it’s that late Kono is standing and excusing herself, saying that she’s got to get home and get some sleep or her boss will have her head.
You have no idea, Steve thinks, He will figure out how to get her back for this. Eventually. Once he moves from his spot at Justin’s side, which is very comfortable at the moment.
“You can find your own way home, Jaime?” she asks, very insincerely. Steve knows that she’s not actually offering a ride back.
He looks over at Justin, not needing to actually ask the question, because Justin’s already answering it for him.
“Yeah,” Justin says. “Thanks for coming out, Kono. It was nice to meet you. I hope I’ll see you around.”
Kono nods, and turns to head out, leaving Steve and Justin on their own.
“Want to get out of here?” Justin asks.
Steve nods, grateful because suddenly there are too many people and the music’s too loud and he can’t breathe. Justin signals for someone to come and close out the tab, and within a few minutes they’re escaping outside. They’re too far from the beach to walk down to the water, but Justin leads Steve back to his car.
“I can take you home now,” he says quietly. “Or ---” The question is open for Steve to fill in with whatever he wants, and the only thing he knows is that he doesn’t want this night to be over quite yet.
“The beach,” Steve says. “Let’s go back.”
Justin purses his lips, and Steve’s not sure what Justin’s reaction is, and Steve starts to panic that he’s said the wrong thing, and that maybe he should just ask Justin to take him home.
“Are you sure?” Justin asks.
Steve takes a minute to consider the question instead of just automatically answering yes and paving over his own emotions later. Surprisingly, he finds that yeah, he is OK, and he wants to go back there, even though it ended so badly last time. “Yes,” he finally says, and climbs into the car, letting Justin close the door and walk around to the driver’s side.
Steve doesn’t say much during the drive, but as soon as they clear the city he rolls down the window and lets the cool air wash over him. While he’s watching the land roll by outside the car, he feels Justin reach over and take one of Steve’s hands in his, fingers gently twining with Steve’s own, asking without saying anything. Steve’s the one who closes his fingers on Justin’s, saying yes to that much without having to say a word. Justin strokes his thumb over Steve’s every so often, and keeps their hands together until they get all the way out to the beach and have to break apart to get out of the car. Steve misses the contact when it’s gone, so he hurries out and meets Justin at the back of the car, where he’s fumbling in the trunk, and eventually pulls out a blanket.
“I see you came prepared,” Steve teases, taking Justin’s hand again.
Justin laughs, and it’s a nice sound. “I was a boy scout.”
Steve bites back the automatic me too, and settles for tucking his shoulder into Justin’s side as the walk. It takes longer than it should to get down to the beach, but Steve is perfectly fine with this from where he’s tucked under Justin’s arm. They stumble quite a bit in the dark and Steve ends of on his ass more than once, but where he’d normally be annoyed by his own clumsiness he just takes Justin’s hand and levers himself back up until they eventually make it all the way down the dunes.
The tide is in, and Steve lets Justin move away long enough set up the blanket just above the line of wet sand so that they won’t end up soaked. While Justin fusses with the blanket, Steve kicks off his shoes and walks down to the water, getting his feet wet. He stands there and lets three or four waves wash over his feet before turning back to where Justin is sitting on the blanket and clearly laughing at him.
“I had to,” Steve says by way of an explanation for his actions, even though he’s well aware that it doesn’t explain anything at all. It would be impossible for him to explain just how connected he is to this beach and this ocean, even though he’s been around the world by sea. It seems that Justin’s accepted that Steve is just quirky, and he pats the blanket next to him in a universal come sit down gesture, which Steve accepts, crossing his ankles and looping his arms around his knees. Justin scoots a bit closer and puts his arm back around Steve’s shoulders.
It’s a clear night, and the water is reflecting what little moonlight there is, the light spread out in a long, line, broken in places by the movement of the swells as they come towards shore and break. Unlike the other night, though, Steve feels no impulse to go swimming, for all that he needed to feel the water on his skin. Tonight, the smell of the saltwater and the breeze from the ocean is enough. They talk while they’re sitting there, but parts of their conversation are few and far between as they mostly just enjoy the silence while Steve feels comfortable in his skin again.
Even so, his heart is pounding when he finally turns his head and kisses Justin lightly on the lips. He lingers there for a moment before pulling back and resuming the position he’d been in before while he waits for his pulse to return to normal again. Except that it doesn’t; it’s still racing pleasantly, spreading warmth from his stomach out to his fingertips, pooling in his shoulders, just under Justin’s arm, and especially on the back of his neck where there’s no protective layer of clothing between them. And so he kisses Justin again, putting slightly more pressure behind his lips, and he feels Justin respond in kind. Justin is very clearly letting him take the lead, and he’s thankful for that. Right now, this feels good, and he’s in no hurry to change that. Justin’s lips are warm and soft under his own, and the gentle scrape of Justin’s stubble on his cheeks adds to the tingling that is spreading through him.
Leaning closer in is both inevitable and incredibly difficult, given the way they’re sitting. Steve attempts to untangle his legs, but his limbs don’t quite feel like his own right now and he makes a hash of it, falling onto his back and dragging Justin down with him, and they break apart. Steve can’t help laughing at himself, and Justin does too. It gives Steve a chance to settle more comfortably into the sand and catch his breath, which is refusing to be caught, no matter how many tricks he uses.
At the edges of his vision Steve can see the tops of the trees moving, and he closes his eyes against it, preferring to feel everything tonight instead of seeing it. Eventually, when his heart rate is back somewhere in the resting range (only barely, even though he’s lying perfectly still) he rolls over to his side and hooks a leg over Justin’s and leans in to kiss him again. Justin is levering himself up on one elbow to meet him, and Steve pushes even harder this time, opening his mouth and licking at Justin’s lips, feeling them part beneath him. Justin meets his every move, but it’s still Steve in charge.
He moves one hand down to Justin’s waist and slips his hand under Justin’s shirt, resting it on his hip, feeling Justin’s muscles tense under his touch, especially when he swipes his thumb over Justin’s hipbone, pressing slightly on the pressure point under his skin.
Justin shifts a bit and brings one of his arms up to rest gently on Steve’s hip, mirroring what Steve is doing to him, but making no move to seek out more intimate contact. Every so often Steve has to pull away from Justin’s mouth to breathe, but these breaks are few and far between.
Eventually, Steve rolls onto his back, tugging Justin with him. He moves them until Justin is settled half on top of him, and Steve can feel Justin’s hardness between them, even though he makes no move to touch. He’s carefully moving his hands further up underneath Justin’s shirt and teasing his fingers at the tip of Justin’s belt, pushing an inch or so underneath without any real purpose other than to just feel his skin. Justin makes one attempt to do the same, but Steve quickly captures his hands and moves them back to more comfortable territory. Justin’s touch is electric, and Steve’s not ready for it quite yet.
By the time they break apart to go back to the car, Steve is feeling flushed and warm from arousal, but the climb to the top of the dunes clears his head enough that he realizes what a bad idea it would be to do anything but ask Justin to drive him home. And it’s a good thing too, because when he finally looks at a clock it’s nearly 2:00am and they’ve been on beach for several hours. Steve still has work in the morning, and he’s betting Justin has the same. He has Justin park on the street instead of pulling into the driveway, and Steve gives him a quick peck on the cheek and a whispered promise of Tomorrow before walking quickly up the driveway and disappearing into his house. He watches as Justin drives off down the road before going upstairs and falling easily into sleep.
Part 4 || Part 5
Part 1 || Part 2
Steve’s alarm goes off at the usual time Tuesday morning, but he wakes up just enough to hit the button, text Danny that he’s coming in late, and go back to sleep. Getting up means he has to deal with what happened last night because he knows that he won’t be as effective at work until he sorts through whatever the hell it is and settles his brain back onto more important things.
It’s full-on daylight when he finally wakes up for keeps, but he doesn’t look at the clock because it’ll just add to the guilt complex he has over sleeping past sunrise in the first place. He throws on some clothes, picks up the discarded pieces he’d left on the floor last night and tosses them in the laundry basket before finally going downstairs to make some coffee.
When he sees that there’s someone sitting at his dining room table, he reaches for his gun, only to realize that he left it upstairs, that the plant on the table at the bottom of the stairs is a poor weapon, and that it’s Kono at the table so why is he trying to kill her?
Kono doesn’t move when she sees him, just says, “I made coffee,” and continues drinking her own cup.
“What are you doing here?” Steve asks, moving towards the coffee maker. It smells heavenly, and he takes a deep breath as he pours his first cup of the day. He has a feeling there will be many more.
“I dropped by to get my shoes,” she says, nonchalantly. As if getting her shoes was actually a big deal, as if she doesn’t have the ability to bug him non-stop at work about it anyway.
“They’re upstairs,” Steve says. “let me go get them.”
“Not a chance,” Kono says. “Sit down, drink your coffee, and tell me what happened last night.”
“It was --” Steve trails off, not knowing how to finish that sentence. Because it had been really, really good right up until it went really, really bad.
“Start from the beginning.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Steve says. “We need to get to work. You know, that place where we catch bad guys, where I’m the boss and I can fire you arbitrarily?”
“Yes, you are the boss, which means that occasionally you can show up late. I already told Chin I was going to swing by before work, and I can just as easily call him back and say that you’re going to be late, too.”
Steve remembers texting Danny before sunrise and looks away, sheepishly.
“OK, so that’s taken care of,” Kono says, “since you obviously already got a message out to Danny. No more excuses. Spill.”
Steve wonders when she learned to read him that well, and whether it was before or after last Sunday. The former is a scary thought, so instead he starts talking, because he knows that she’ll keep him here until he does. And even if he doesn’t want to admit it out loud, it’s nice to be able to share with someone.
His coffee is cold and Kono’s coffee is gone by the time he finishes.
“I’m starting to see why Danny keeps mentioning how willing he is to find you professional help. I think he’s done half the research already.”
“Can we not bring him into it?” Steve says, putting his elbows on the table and cradling his face in his hands.
“Let me get this straight,” Kono says, “You went out with Justin, had a fantastic time, went skinny dipping in the ocean, made out with him then had a panic attack because he touched you while you were making out while skinny dipping in the ocean.”
When Steve looks up she’s giving him a face. “Will you stop it with the face?”
“And now you sound like --” she cuts herself off, even though Steve knows full well what she’s about to say.
“-- he who must not be named,” she finishes.
Steve just glares.
”Anyway, you need to call him.”
“Who?” Steve asks, and Kono just gives him another look. “Right. Justin. I doubt he wants to see me again.”
“This can go two ways, Steve. Either you call him right now, and apologize, or you don’t. If you do, he’ll most likely agree to meet you for at least coffee. Otherwise, you’ll still be freaking out over this in ten years. And, I’ll tell Danny.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“No, I wouldn’t. But you probably will, eventually.” She sounds like she’s not just talking about it slipping out during an argument, and again Steve wonders when she got so good at reading his subconscious, because he’s barely thought about anything beyond how much he actually likes arguing with Danny. So he takes the easy way out, fishes in his pocket for his phone and dials Justin’s number.
The conversation is short; Steve keeps it that way by design, given that Kono is openly watching him and obviously taking careful note of everything he’s saying. By the end he’s gotten Justin to agree to another date Wednesday night. Only then does Kono actually cooperate when he repeats that they need to go to work.
When they get to the office, Danny gives Steve a look that he can’t identify, then goes back into his office to work. Steve has no idea what it means, and isn’t sure he wants to ask, so he gets Chin to catch him up quickly and retreats to his office as well.
Without Kono over his shoulder, Steve is starting to regret making the second date. He had wanted it to go well, but he should have stopped before going out to the beach. Spending time with someone and allowing yourself to find them attractive is different from actually doing anything, or so Steve tries to tell himself. But the excuse feels thin and brittle and he knows he’s trying to justify something, but he still feels like he needs to. After all, he was the one who kissed Justin first, and that wasn't a move he ever expected to make.
It was freeing, yes, but given his circumstances it just set off a whole other chain of issues, because now he’s not sure what to do about the whole situation. He likes Justin, but Justin’s been out with a person who doesn’t really exist, and who - hopefully - eventually will just be an amusing story in Steve’s history. And it’s not fair to either of them, because it had been so nice, but what the hell else is there to do except enjoy the ride on the way down and hope that it doesn’t go on for too long and that neither of them end up breaking anything.
Well, if Steve breaks anything it will be Danny inflicting the injury, and speak of the devil because there he is standing in Steve’s door.
“What?” he asks.
“I expected more spring in your step this morning,” Danny says. “Don’t think I can’t still recognize your ‘I just got laid’ face. But you just look like ten kinds of hell.” He sounds genuinely concerned, which is not at all what Steve was expecting from him.
“Thanks for that,” Steve says. Danny’s trying to rebuild some bridge that Steve didn’t know had collapsed, and he’d appreciate the effort more if he knew what it was really about.
There’s an awkward pause, and Steve watches as Danny settles in to a slouch against the door frame, evidently seeing this being a long conversation.
“So, how was it?” Danny finally asks. “I can guess based on the 5:00am text and those bags under your eyes that something happened. And knowing you, it was probably you lobbing a grenade into whatever restaurant and scaring off the tourists and the few locals who aren’t used to you yet. Just tell me you didn’t take a gun on a date.”
Steve ignores the jab about his various weapons, and instead blurts out, “He thinks I’m a tourist.”
Danny doesn’t speak right away, and Steve wants to avoid more awkward pauses to keep himself from saying things before he totally thinks it through, so he starts again. “It was --”
“You are not allowed to speak until I decide if telling him that you’re a tourist, a tourist, just one more in those mobs of people that you can’t stand, is either too stupid to think about or a stroke of genius.”
“Danno --”
“Did I or did I not give you permission to speak yet?”
Steve feels the need to say something, but Danny is standing there in the door giving Steve a very speculative look, and blocking the way out, so that Steve can’t take the other easy avenue to end the conversation.
“I can’t leave you alone for five minutes, can I?” Danny finally asks. “Are you going to see him again?”
Which Steve is thankfully spared from answering by Kono walking up behind Danny and slapping him upside the head.
“What was that for?” Danny asks. “Civilized people do not go around slapping their partners.”
“Steve’s your partner,” Kono says, “and he didn’t slap you. I did.”
“Savage.” Danny rubs the back of his head and smooths his hair again. Whatever tension was between them is gone. Steve turns back to the file he was reading and Danny gives him one last look before turning away to go talk to Chin. Once Danny is gone Steve lets out a shaky breath, feeling like he’s just walked through an explosion without really knowing why.
When he gets home he goes for a longer run than normal to make up for skipping his morning routine. By the time he gets back to his house, he’s exceedingly glad that neither Kono nor Danny are at his house, and that he can have one night to himself.
Once he’s cooked and eaten dinner and washed the dishes he goes out to the garage to work on his father’s car, deliberately leaving his phone in the house. If there’s a true emergency, Danny will come and get him, and after what happened last night and their brief conversation this morning Steve highly doubts that Justin will call. They’ve made plans for tomorrow night anyway.
After the weekend (and Steve is including Monday night in the broad term) he really needs a night off where he doesn’t have to deal with the dissonance between who he is and who the world sees these days.
Then there’s Danny, and Steve doesn’t know what to even think about that situation now, because Danny should have been giving him shit this morning about being out late and sleeping past dawn for the first time in seven years, maybe eight, and welcome to normal life. He’d tried, but something was off about it, and while things had eventually gone back to almost-normal at the office, the key word there was almost, and it’s driving Steve insane trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
Maybe there’s something more going on with Rachel and Gracie and Steve had just been too wrapped up in his own shit this last week to notice it. There had been an early end to Danny’s weekend with Gracie, which has never been a good sign. He knew things had been in a bit of a holding pattern since Rachel had had the baby, but maybe something had happened in the last two weeks.
Of course, Danny has never been shy in his venting about Rachel, but it could be something worse than the usual custody disputes. And now Steve wants to go shoot something because there is definitely something wrong in Danno’s life and he missed it because his own is so fucked right now. What the hell is he doing dating Justin when Danny could lose Grace?
That thought is enough to bring him up short, wondering what the hell would happen to Danno without his daughter, then stopping that train wreck before it starts, even theoretically. Instead, he goes inside and sends Danny a quick everything OK over there? text before he can stop to think about it.
He can’t go back to calmly working on the Marquis after that epiphany. Instead, Steve grabs two beers and goes out to the lanai, downing one quickly while he tries to relax and figure out what to do. Danny hasn’t texted him back yet, and maybe the beer is going to his head faster than normal because Steve is considering calling just in case things are not OK with Danny and Grace.
But he doesn’t, and instead settles into his chair for the evening, this time making sure he has the phone in his hand. With nothing to do but sit there and force himself not to call Danny he fiddles with his phone, taking random pictures of the light bouncing off the ocean and deleting them right away. He answers another email from Catherine, telling her that he misses her, and can’t wait for her to be in port again because it’s been far too long since they’ve seen each other.
Beer number two is long gone and Steve is nearly through beer number three when there’s a flash of headlights in the driveway followed closely by the sound of a door slamming shut.
“Out here!” Steve calls, after waiting enough time so that whoever it is, (Danny) is probably inside the house and can hear him.
“What is wrong with you?” Danny demands. Steve can’t see him yet, but he’s happy that Danny decided to come over. “Did no one in your life teach you manners? You cannot send a text like that out of the blue.”
“You’re overreacting,” Steve says, finishing off his beer.
“I am not overreacting. If anything I am not reacting enough, because who does this? Who sends cryptic messages like that?”
“You could have called,” Steve points out. “You didn’t have to come over here.”
“And leave you alone when you seem to be on the edge of a nervous breakdown? I had to come over here to be sure you weren’t going to blow up the house.”
“You were acting weird all day,” Steve says with a shrug.
“I’ve been acting weird. I’ve been acting weird. Me. I get that you’re having some sort of crisis here, but even in context, I’m not the one acting weird. You, my friend, are losing it.”
“Just because I go on one date --”
“It’s not the date. It’s really not the date.” Danny pauses for half a second. “OK, so it’s partly the date, but it’s mostly the fact that you have not blown anything up all week. You have shot at nothing but a paper target, you have nearly flattened a guy for hitting on you, and then you are going on dates with men you’ve barely spoken to.”
“Date. Singular.”
“Not the point, Steven.” Danny stops moving, stops talking. He’s deflated some, shoulders hunched a bit forward.
“I just wanted to make sure everything was OK,” Steve says.
“You are going to stop drinking,” Danny says, snatching the bottle out of Steve’s hand. “you are going to drink a glass of water, and you are going to go sleep. In the morning you will wake up at a god-awful hour of the morning and go swimming or running or sit on your living room floor and do situps or pushups or whatever else you feel the need to do to get your adrenaline rush while normal people are still in bed. I can only hope that whatever fit of crazy has taken you over tonight will be gone by the time you get to work tomorrow morning. On time, and with a box of malasadas because you owe me.”
Steve doesn’t have anything to say to that, so he just stares up at Danny until Danny takes the initiative, by downing what little is left of Steve's beer and taking Steve’s arm, heaving him out of the chair.
“This is so much easier now,” he remarks, wrapping his arm around Steve’s waist and propelling him towards the stairs. When they get close Danny unhooks his arm and shoves at Steve’s back. “I think you know the way to your own bedroom.”
Steve stops at the bottom of the stairs and turns back to look at Danny. The ghost of the touch is still lingering, both from where his arm rested for some amount of time that wasn’t nearly long enough and then the clear outline of Danny’s fingers as they’d shoved him away. He meets Danny’s eyes for a second and just knows what happened today. What’s been happening for the last week, and maybe longer, maybe since they went hiking and Danny pulled him back up the cliff or maybe since that first beer on the beach. It’s big, and it’s threatening to swallow him and so he looks away, down at his feet, which don’t look like his but give him something else to focus on so that he can keep breathing normally.
“Thanks, Danno,” he says, fleeing upstairs before Danny can reply.
He listens for the sounds of the car starting and Danny driving away before he changes for bed. He fills the glass on the bathroom sink with water and downs it, drinking steadily while he tries to clear his head so that he’ll be able to sleep without the aid of medications. He most definitely does not need the extra layer of complications in his life, and so he does his best to forget what just happened. Instead, he focuses on his date with Justin tomorrow. They planned to meet up at a local beach bar that Justin says was recommended to him. Low key, no club scene. Steve’s been there before, and he hopes that it’ll be comfortable enough for him not to have a repeat performance.
This thing with Justin is a good distraction, he muses, just on the edge of sleep. But he refuses
to answer the lingering question of from what?
***
Steve doesn’t really get a chance to think about it because they get a drug smuggling case mid-morning, and spend the rest of the day furiously compiling information and tracking down more leads until Chin suggests going out for dinner and coming back in an hour with fresh eyes and Steve realizes that he’s about to be late for coffee with Justin.
“I have other plans,” Steve says. “But go ahead. I’ll see you when you get back.”
Chin looks a him quizzically, Kono gives him a smile and a quick thumbs up, and Danny is pointedly still staring at the monitors. Steve decides that he needs to get out now before he changes his mind. He makes it out the door, but only barely, and what the fuck, when did coffee become such a big deal?
He’s not even all the way to the car when he gets a text from Kono. Want me to come with you?
Steve’s first instinct is to say no, he can handle one coffee date, but then he thinks that it might be good to have reinforcements. But this really is just coffee and he’s already got a ready made excuse to leave early, and so he texts back a quick No.
By the time he gets there he’s nearly 10 minutes late, which he hates, but couldn’t be helped because he’d had to cross town in rush hour traffic, and even with his driving he couldn’t make it. He just hopes that Justin hasn’t stood him up because he hadn’t called or sent a text.
He walks inside to see a decent sized line at the counter, but he avoids getting in it right away, scanning the room instead. He notices the locations of all the fire exits, figures out the weak points if someone were to walk through the front door with a gun (other than himself, and shit, he really should have left those in the car), and then spots Justin reading a newspaper on one of the low couches in the corner. There’s space next to him on the couch, but there’s also an empty chair across the table, which Steve takes.
“Hi,” he says quietly.
“I was starting to think you weren’t coming,” Justin says.
“I got held up in traffic,” Steve says. “I’m glad you’re still here.”
“Let me get you a drink,” Justin offers.
“Triple non-fat latte,” Steve recites, automatically, pulling out his wallet to give Justin some cash.
Justin waves him off. “That’s a lot of caffeine for dinner time.”
“It’s going to be a long night,” Steve says without thinking. “Something came up at -- “ he catches himself just in time. “ --home. I can’t stay long, but I wanted to see you.”
Justin smiles at that, and gets up to get in line for the coffee. Steve settles back in the chair and waits. He pulls out his phone and fiddles with it while waiting. He makes his move in his scrabble marathon with Chin, (he’s one letter short of firearm, but settles for armor instead,) checks his email to see if there’s been anything new in the last twenty minutes (nope, nothing, they must still be having dinner,) and pulls up his latest text-war with Danny and contemplates throwing something at him out of the blue. He’s contemplating a picture of the emergency exit sign (he expects that Danny would text back asking what local business he blew up this time) when Justin comes back and hands Steve his coffee.
“So,” Steve says. He knows he needs to start this conversation, but he’s never had to do this before, so he has no idea how. “I’m sorry. About the other night.” He looks down at his cup and takes a gulp. It burns his throat going down, but he does his best to keep a straight face and not let on.
“I don’t want to push you,” Justin says. “Are you OK now?”
He sounds genuinely concerned, and Steve doesn’t know what to do with that. He’d expected more questions, something to give him an opportunity to explain just why this can’t work, except that Justin is more concerned for Steve’s well being than angry about the sudden end to what they were doing.
“I -- yeah,” Steve gets out. He is, really, but he can’t really say more than that without getting into an even more uncomfortable conversation, and one that will probably make Justin leave and block his number.
“I know you’re busy tonight, but how about dinner tomorrow?”
Again, Steve’s not sure of what he wants to say, so he bites his lip and tries to come up with something, anything.
“Look, if you don’t want to, that’s fine.” He sounds hurt, and that’s the last thing Steve wants.
“It’s not that,” he says quickly. “It’s that I promised my friend that I’d see her before I left, and tomorrow night is her first free night in a while.” Steve hopes that Kono will play along with this part, because the only thing he can think to get out of this is, “If you don’t mind tagging along with us for a few drinks, you’re welcome to join.”
This time it’s Justin who hesitates, and Steve can see that it’s not what he was hoping for, but he replies quickly. “Sure. That sounds nice.”
“I’ll call you with the details,” Steve says, standing. “I have to get back.”
Justin stands, too, waiting, and now Steve really doesn’t know what to do. A handshake feels too formal, but a kiss or a hug would be weird, and besides, there’s a table in the way. Of course, Justin fixes that by coming around, and placing a hand on Steve’s shoulder, squeezing gently. Steve momentarily flashes back to Monday night, when Justin’s hands were all over him, without the protective layer of fabric on his shirt. A few days out, he can remember more than just the panic that followed, and he suppresses a shiver.
Acting on impulse, Steve leans in and kisses Justin on the cheek before breaking away with a quick, “I’ll call you in the morning.”
He calls Kono on the way back to HQ. “I hope you’re not busy tomorrow night,” he starts, and explains the situation to her. Even over the phone he can tell that she’s disappointed in him.
“You get one night to use me as a shield. Three hours, tops, before I invent an excuse and leave.”
“Kono,” Steve says, starting to protest.
“Not a chance, brah. I am happy to provide moral support from behind the scenes, but that’s it. You’ve got to do this on your own.”
Steve knows she’s right, so he changes the subject and they talk for the last few minutes until he pulls into the parking lot. “I just pulled up. Can we not talk about this in front of --”
“Danny, yeah, I know.” She hangs up without saying another word, and Steve is too annoyed to think about why he doesn’t want Danny to know that he’s seeing Justin again tomorrow night. Besides, they have work to do.
It takes seven hours of all of them working straight through to hit the next dead end. They’ve been talking at each other all night, compiling information and they have a stack of new profiles to look into now, but that’s it.
“I’m calling it,” Chin says. “We should go home. We’ll have fresh eyes after a few hours of sleep.”
This is the part of the work that Steve hates, putting it down when they’re getting somewhere. Or were, earlier.
“Agreed. You too, super SEAL,” Danny says. Steve wants to protest, because he’s not tired, they’re not really at a dead end (or rather, they won’t be anymore if he keeps going,) and besides, there’s a perfectly comfortable couch here. Well, mostly comfortable. Good enough for a few hours, anyway.
It’s Kono who tosses him his keys and gently shoves him out the door while Danny locks it behind them.
“I will check the security footage in the morning,” Danny says. “Don’t think I won’t.” He’s using his Father-Knows-Best tone, and Steve can’t argue with that one, so he goes.
There’s hardly anyone on the road at this hour, and Steve’s makes it home pretty fast. He stops in the kitchen for a glass of water, then heads straight to bed. He’s still too keyed up to sleep, but maybe he can calm down enough to sleep if he stays still for long enough and keeps his eyes closed. Which is what he does, right after setting the alarm for his normal time, even though he’s planning on skipping his morning swim to go straight back to the office.
***
At noon on Thursday Steve goes back out to the firing range, with Kono this time, and they spend their lunch hour punching holes in paper targets and making bets on who can make the best patterns. Steve gives up when Kono presents a near-perfect Plumeria blossom carved in the target’s chest. It pales in comparison to his slightly lopsided star.
They stop to pick up lunch on the way back, greasy pulled pork sandwiches that Steve shouldn’t like as much as he does, and they eat in the car on the way back through town. Kono is in the middle of a huge bite when Steve finally asks what he’s been needing to ask all day.
“Can I borrow some clothes for tonight?”
“You gonna let me put makeup on you again?” Kono asks once she swallows her mouthful of sandwich.
Steve wants to fight her on it, just to have a fight, but decides that he’s got better ways to get into that one. “If that’s what it takes.”
“We’ll head back to my place after work,” She says. “You need to call Justin and tell him where we’re going. And I’m driving.” Kono suggests one of her favorite places, and Steve makes the call, putting the phone on speaker while he finishes his sandwich.
The conversation is awkward and uncomfortable, made even more so by the fact that Kono refuses to speak, even when he looks at her and mouths “help?” They eventually settle for one of the bars over by the base that Justin is familiar with, and make plans to meet at 8:00, which will give Kono plenty of time to fix Steve before they go out. Well, she can at least fix the way he looks.
Kono is grinning like she’s been handed the keys to -- well, something, at any rate. Something good, and Steve wishes he could back away slowly, except that they’re still in the car and oh yeah, he roped her into going out with him tonight.
This can’t end well, he thinks. But then again, maybe it will end slightly better than the last date he went on.
Kono insists that they leave work at 5:00 on the dot, and doesn’t give Steve any room to protest as she’s literally pushing him out the door and into her car. As they’re driving she’s sizing him up.
“I have a skirt I think you’d look great in,” Kono says.
“I’m not wearing a skirt.”
Kono changes the topic, but now that they’ve done this a few times, Steve recognizes the tactic. “No skirts, no dresses,” he says. “But I’m willing to go as far as leggings again.”
“And makeup.”
“No heels.”
“Deal.”
They shake on it.
When they get to Kono’s apartment, she goes straight for her wardrobe and Steve goes straight for a beer.
She doesn’t even try to keep him from drinking before they go out. “You’re replacing every drop,” she says. “With something of equal or greater value.”
“And if I don’t?” Steve asks, even though he’d already been planning to do it, and then some, because he’d be lost without her right now.
“You know that new shop over by the Coral Prince house that’s selling custom boards?”
“Yeah, I hear they’re -- Oh.” Steve makes a mental note to replace the contents of the entire fridge, pantry and liquor cabinet, because as nice as a custom board is, they’re expensive and going grocery shopping is clearly the easier end of the deal.
Kono comes out of her bedroom carrying five shirts and a few pairs of pants. “Here,” she says, shoving them into his chest. “Go try these on.”
Somewhere in the middle of getting ready it he asks, “Is this why it always takes girls so long to get ready?”
Kono hits him in the shoulder, hard. Then runs back to the bedroom to grab another shirt that she thinks Steve will look good in.
“Fill me in on the way there,” she says, once they're both dressed and ready. “What is your name, why are you in Hawaii, since you’re obviously visiting, and what have you been doing the last week?”
Steve fills her in, telling her about visiting his “brother,” and even though he doesn’t give any of the details about said brother, she gives him a sideways look that says she definitely knows what’s going on, but she doesn’t say anything. Steve doesn’t know what questions to ask to get at the information he wants from her, so he stays silent, even though he has a sinking feeling that it’s going to come back to haunt him.
Kono parks the car, and suddenly Steve is incredibly uncomfortable. This is a prime military hangout, and Steve’s here to meet a guy. A military guy. Same as him. And everyone is going to see.
Except... well, except that no one will care because A, it’s unlikely that any of the guys here will know him because he hasn’t been stationed anywhere near Hawaii for a long time, and B, there’s the whole bodyswap thing to consider. He’s not Lt. Commander Steve McGarrett tonight. He’s Jaime, and he’s here to meet the guy he’s been dating.
Kono knocks on the window, startling Steve out of his internal panic, and he gets out of the car. Because Kono insisted on leaving her house on time, they’re actually there before Justin, and so they order drinks and find a table to wait.
They’re not there for very long when Steve spots Justin and stands up greet him as he walks over to the table. He claps Justin on the back and sits back down, neatly avoiding any more intimate contact without being rude. Justin sits down in the chair next to Steve, leaving Kono on her own on the other side of the table.
“Justin, this is Kono. Kono, this is Justin.”
“It’s so nice to meet you,” Justin says. He sounds sincere, for all that he didn’t seem too receptive to having a third person tag along.
“You too. Jaime’s told me so much about you,” she says, and Steve cringes at the wicked gleam in her eyes.
“How do you two know each other?” Justin asks.
It’s a perfectly reasonable question, and Justin is being polite in asking it, but now Steve finds out why he was right to dread Kono’s involvement in the story he’s cooked up for himself.
“I work with his brother,” she says. “We’re part of the Five-0 task force.”
Steve wants to kick her for that, under the table, but that really wouldn’t accomplish anything other than opening the door for her to retaliate at a later date. And he’s seen the revenge stunts she constantly pulls on Chin, so instead he opts to keep his feet to himself and just go with it.
Justin’s apparently heard of the Five-0, and he and Kono strike up a conversation that Steve desperately wants to take part in, not least because Kono is insulting him to his face and he can’t do anything about it. He zones out a bit and starts plotting his own revenge. He can get Danny to help him, probably. Except that Danny probably agrees with what Kono’s saying about his driving and his penchant for explosions. Chin, maybe, though he probably has more sense than to get between Kono and her pranks.
By now, Kono’s moved on to telling Jaime about the shark cage, which Steve desperately wants to point out that she wasn’t there for. Instead, he interrupts with, “You know, I get enough about the crazy boss from my brother.”
“But there are so many stories!” Kono protests.
Luckily, Justin takes his side, and moves on to telling a story about his first tour out on a ship. It makes Steve ache to jump in with his own stories of the same thing, but again he can’t, so he sits back and orders another drink and just listens.
Time passes pretty quickly, and before Steve realizes that it’s that late Kono is standing and excusing herself, saying that she’s got to get home and get some sleep or her boss will have her head.
You have no idea, Steve thinks, He will figure out how to get her back for this. Eventually. Once he moves from his spot at Justin’s side, which is very comfortable at the moment.
“You can find your own way home, Jaime?” she asks, very insincerely. Steve knows that she’s not actually offering a ride back.
He looks over at Justin, not needing to actually ask the question, because Justin’s already answering it for him.
“Yeah,” Justin says. “Thanks for coming out, Kono. It was nice to meet you. I hope I’ll see you around.”
Kono nods, and turns to head out, leaving Steve and Justin on their own.
“Want to get out of here?” Justin asks.
Steve nods, grateful because suddenly there are too many people and the music’s too loud and he can’t breathe. Justin signals for someone to come and close out the tab, and within a few minutes they’re escaping outside. They’re too far from the beach to walk down to the water, but Justin leads Steve back to his car.
“I can take you home now,” he says quietly. “Or ---” The question is open for Steve to fill in with whatever he wants, and the only thing he knows is that he doesn’t want this night to be over quite yet.
“The beach,” Steve says. “Let’s go back.”
Justin purses his lips, and Steve’s not sure what Justin’s reaction is, and Steve starts to panic that he’s said the wrong thing, and that maybe he should just ask Justin to take him home.
“Are you sure?” Justin asks.
Steve takes a minute to consider the question instead of just automatically answering yes and paving over his own emotions later. Surprisingly, he finds that yeah, he is OK, and he wants to go back there, even though it ended so badly last time. “Yes,” he finally says, and climbs into the car, letting Justin close the door and walk around to the driver’s side.
Steve doesn’t say much during the drive, but as soon as they clear the city he rolls down the window and lets the cool air wash over him. While he’s watching the land roll by outside the car, he feels Justin reach over and take one of Steve’s hands in his, fingers gently twining with Steve’s own, asking without saying anything. Steve’s the one who closes his fingers on Justin’s, saying yes to that much without having to say a word. Justin strokes his thumb over Steve’s every so often, and keeps their hands together until they get all the way out to the beach and have to break apart to get out of the car. Steve misses the contact when it’s gone, so he hurries out and meets Justin at the back of the car, where he’s fumbling in the trunk, and eventually pulls out a blanket.
“I see you came prepared,” Steve teases, taking Justin’s hand again.
Justin laughs, and it’s a nice sound. “I was a boy scout.”
Steve bites back the automatic me too, and settles for tucking his shoulder into Justin’s side as the walk. It takes longer than it should to get down to the beach, but Steve is perfectly fine with this from where he’s tucked under Justin’s arm. They stumble quite a bit in the dark and Steve ends of on his ass more than once, but where he’d normally be annoyed by his own clumsiness he just takes Justin’s hand and levers himself back up until they eventually make it all the way down the dunes.
The tide is in, and Steve lets Justin move away long enough set up the blanket just above the line of wet sand so that they won’t end up soaked. While Justin fusses with the blanket, Steve kicks off his shoes and walks down to the water, getting his feet wet. He stands there and lets three or four waves wash over his feet before turning back to where Justin is sitting on the blanket and clearly laughing at him.
“I had to,” Steve says by way of an explanation for his actions, even though he’s well aware that it doesn’t explain anything at all. It would be impossible for him to explain just how connected he is to this beach and this ocean, even though he’s been around the world by sea. It seems that Justin’s accepted that Steve is just quirky, and he pats the blanket next to him in a universal come sit down gesture, which Steve accepts, crossing his ankles and looping his arms around his knees. Justin scoots a bit closer and puts his arm back around Steve’s shoulders.
It’s a clear night, and the water is reflecting what little moonlight there is, the light spread out in a long, line, broken in places by the movement of the swells as they come towards shore and break. Unlike the other night, though, Steve feels no impulse to go swimming, for all that he needed to feel the water on his skin. Tonight, the smell of the saltwater and the breeze from the ocean is enough. They talk while they’re sitting there, but parts of their conversation are few and far between as they mostly just enjoy the silence while Steve feels comfortable in his skin again.
Even so, his heart is pounding when he finally turns his head and kisses Justin lightly on the lips. He lingers there for a moment before pulling back and resuming the position he’d been in before while he waits for his pulse to return to normal again. Except that it doesn’t; it’s still racing pleasantly, spreading warmth from his stomach out to his fingertips, pooling in his shoulders, just under Justin’s arm, and especially on the back of his neck where there’s no protective layer of clothing between them. And so he kisses Justin again, putting slightly more pressure behind his lips, and he feels Justin respond in kind. Justin is very clearly letting him take the lead, and he’s thankful for that. Right now, this feels good, and he’s in no hurry to change that. Justin’s lips are warm and soft under his own, and the gentle scrape of Justin’s stubble on his cheeks adds to the tingling that is spreading through him.
Leaning closer in is both inevitable and incredibly difficult, given the way they’re sitting. Steve attempts to untangle his legs, but his limbs don’t quite feel like his own right now and he makes a hash of it, falling onto his back and dragging Justin down with him, and they break apart. Steve can’t help laughing at himself, and Justin does too. It gives Steve a chance to settle more comfortably into the sand and catch his breath, which is refusing to be caught, no matter how many tricks he uses.
At the edges of his vision Steve can see the tops of the trees moving, and he closes his eyes against it, preferring to feel everything tonight instead of seeing it. Eventually, when his heart rate is back somewhere in the resting range (only barely, even though he’s lying perfectly still) he rolls over to his side and hooks a leg over Justin’s and leans in to kiss him again. Justin is levering himself up on one elbow to meet him, and Steve pushes even harder this time, opening his mouth and licking at Justin’s lips, feeling them part beneath him. Justin meets his every move, but it’s still Steve in charge.
He moves one hand down to Justin’s waist and slips his hand under Justin’s shirt, resting it on his hip, feeling Justin’s muscles tense under his touch, especially when he swipes his thumb over Justin’s hipbone, pressing slightly on the pressure point under his skin.
Justin shifts a bit and brings one of his arms up to rest gently on Steve’s hip, mirroring what Steve is doing to him, but making no move to seek out more intimate contact. Every so often Steve has to pull away from Justin’s mouth to breathe, but these breaks are few and far between.
Eventually, Steve rolls onto his back, tugging Justin with him. He moves them until Justin is settled half on top of him, and Steve can feel Justin’s hardness between them, even though he makes no move to touch. He’s carefully moving his hands further up underneath Justin’s shirt and teasing his fingers at the tip of Justin’s belt, pushing an inch or so underneath without any real purpose other than to just feel his skin. Justin makes one attempt to do the same, but Steve quickly captures his hands and moves them back to more comfortable territory. Justin’s touch is electric, and Steve’s not ready for it quite yet.
By the time they break apart to go back to the car, Steve is feeling flushed and warm from arousal, but the climb to the top of the dunes clears his head enough that he realizes what a bad idea it would be to do anything but ask Justin to drive him home. And it’s a good thing too, because when he finally looks at a clock it’s nearly 2:00am and they’ve been on beach for several hours. Steve still has work in the morning, and he’s betting Justin has the same. He has Justin park on the street instead of pulling into the driveway, and Steve gives him a quick peck on the cheek and a whispered promise of Tomorrow before walking quickly up the driveway and disappearing into his house. He watches as Justin drives off down the road before going upstairs and falling easily into sleep.
Part 4 || Part 5