New: It's Just What Is, Steve/Danny
Title: It's Just What Is
Author: giddygeek
Pairing: Steve/Danny
Spoilers: General H50 S1
Notes: 7200 words. Not terribly adult. Many thanks to misspamela and drunktuesdays for beta!
This started out as a prompt request ficlet for celli back in, um, December, and I've been writing it and rewriting it ever since. *grins* Celli, sorry it's late, I hope you like it! :D
"Judy Lui." Danny says as he answers his phone, then smiles, tucking it against his shoulder. From the driver's seat, Steve gives him a look and Danny rolls his eyes, gesturing out the window; watch the road, watch it--it, not me. He says, "How's it, Judy? Did you get the mud out of that--oh, sorry, I'm sorry to hear that. Can I, uh, can I make it up to you? Say, dinner at--you like Duke's?--okay, tonight, seven. I'll pick you up."
Steve looks at him again, crinkling his brow, displeased. "Thing tonight at 5," he says. "With the governor and that guy, the one with the velvet."
Danny ignores him. "Wear something a little easier to dry clean, huh?" he teases Judy, turning away when Steve flaps a hand at him, all urgently the governor and that guy like Danny doesn't already know they have that meeting, or like he should care more about it than he cares about getting a date.
If the guy had something good, if he was an arms guy or a mob guy or an illegally imported apes guy, okay, that'd be one thing, but no. He's a guy who keeps losing shipments of velvet, velvet; it is 2011 and Danny didn't even know they made velvet anymore and certainly doesn't see a big market for it in Hawaii.
He tells Judy, "I promise that unlike my partner, I have no plans to trip you into--okay. All right. I'll see you then--yeah, looking forward to it." He disconnects, then twirls his phone between his hands, and he knows he's smiling at it like it did him a favor but knowing doesn't stop him.
A date. It's been a while, what with the divorce, and the move to Hawaii, and Grace, and how much freaking time he spends working. 5-0 is the job of a lifetime, but it's a black hole, too. All the light and energy in Danny's life that doesn't go to his relationship with his daughter goes into their investigations--the keeping his team alive and sane parts of their investigations, anyway. The actual police work is easy, a breeze, a dream with a team as smart as this one. It's everything else that's a challenge.
"Dinner with Judy Lui," he says, contemplating it. "I am a happy man. I am a happy man today, Steve, because a very lovely woman with a great sense of humor has consented to go to dinner with me. Will I ruin this happiness, this newfound joy, by hanging out with you, the governor, and a guy with a velvet problem? No. Head for my place."
Steve looks at him, quick, sidelong, then at the road. His jaw is working like he's gritting his teeth. "Danny, this meeting could be important."
"Or it could be a waste of time. It could be, it could be this or that," Danny weighs out the possibilities with his hands, the scale tipped to not important. "And I promise, I swear to you that I will care tomorrow. But tonight I have a date, and that is important, okay. Head to my place or so help me, I will gut you where you sit."
Steve darts another glance at him and Danny raises his eyebrows, crossing his arms over his chest. "I will do it. I've got a dull pocketknife, and I'm not afraid to use it."
For a moment, he thinks Steve is going to risk it. Steve likes risks, Steve likes getting his way, Steve especially likes aggravating Danny; he might go for it. Danny watches and Steve considers, and outside the air conditioned world of the Camaro, another beautiful day in hot, sunny Hawaii flashes by.
After a minute Steve nods, smiles a little, the smirky one that usually means trouble for Danny. He says, confident and easy, "You wouldn't gut me. You hate getting blood in the car." Which is true. Danny loves his car and he hates bloodstains; absolutely true. "Gut wounds bleed, Danny. They're messy." Also true. Still, Danny raises his eyebrows, flaps his hands at Steve, your point?
Steve shrugs. "But hey, yeah, all right, okay. Dinner with Judy Lui is more important than work, I get that--" and he pulls a U-turn smooth as a Jersey hoodrat making a score, heading back towards Danny's place.
"Thank you--" Danny says, throwing his hands out with a dramatic little flourish, all gratitude, oh yes.
"But make a habit of this and you'll find out how little I care about getting blood stains on the upholstery," Steve says. He's gone from relaxed to dangerous in less than a second, voice flat and steady, flicking Danny a look out of narrowed eyes.
Danny scoffs at him, unintimidated. "I already know how little you care, okay? You had no problem bleeding in here last week when you got that splinter."
"That splinter was an antique harpoon that missed taking my hand off by like, a hair," Steve snaps, holding up his hand with the faint red line still scraped across the joint of his wrist.
Danny ignores that. "Or that time you stabbed yourself with a spear, that day we picked up Grace--"
Steve gapes at him. "Which was an actual splinter!"
"Look at the road, the road the road the road, Jesus, I don't even want to know how many moving violations your dad cleared off your record, do I." Danny says. "What about that time you cut yourself on that part for the Mercury--actually, you know what, if I gutted you, I bet it wouldn't even make that big a mess. You have practically bled yourself out in here already which means less splatter right now, so don't tempt me, okay, just take me home, all right?"
"First off, my dad never cleared me of a ticket, because then how would I have learned about duty, justice, and responsibility," Steve says, ignoring the road again as he stares at Danny with that wide-eyed, clearly-you-didn't-know-him, McGarrett's-son face. "Also, if you miss something exciting tonight, okay, because you are busy on your date, you don't get to bitch about it later."
"Cross my heart, I will not bitch, I won't at all, about any fun that you might have with Chin, the governor, and that velvet guy, while I am on my date," Danny says, actually crossing his heart for good measure. "Okay?"
Steve grunts.
"All right then," Danny says, satisfied, and they don't say another word until the Camaro is parked in front of Danny's place and he's meeting Steve around the front to grab his keys.
"Listen, be good tonight," he says, teasing, like a peace offering. Steve doesn't let go of the keys right away, looking down at Danny with one of those faces he sometimes gets when he's trying not to show whatever crazy-ass thing it is that he's thinking. Danny tugs the keys from his hand and jingles them. "Be careful, have fun but not too much fun, as in don't do anything I wouldn't do, you hear me?"
He's expecting Steve to play along, to smile and say, "Yeah, same goes," but Steve just stares at Danny for a long, silent moment, and walks away.
"Huh." Danny watches him leave. Normally, Steve can be counted on to get over his temper tantrums as quick as he gets into them, mercurial but easy-going by nature. Weird, he thinks, but he shrugs it off and goes inside to shower and dress for his dinner with Judy Lui.
~~~
Dinner with Judy Lui is nice. Danny hasn't had a more relaxed and sort of blandly pleasant date since before Rachel--his ex-wife hadn't really gone in for nice. They'd had dinner at one of Danny's favorite local spots, a drink at a club Rachel liked, and then they'd gone back to Rachel's pleasant, airy apartment and fallen straight into her bed, staying there for hours, fucking until they were sore, making out until it all felt good again. A great night, one of the best of Danny's life, but not nice.
He can't stop checking his phone, though. "I'm sorry," he says, when Judy raises her eyebrows the third time he drags it out of his pocket. "It's just--my team's working tonight, and you, I know you know Kono, okay, so mayhem is all I'm saying, and I'm sure you get it."
Judy stares at him for a long, quiet moment, running her finger along the rim of her wine glass. She has wide, dark, serious eyes that all but disappear when she smiles because she puts her whole face into the expression, and those dark eyes don't seem to miss a trick. She's considering him, and Danny waits her out; if she objects to the phone, the date is over. His daughter, his team, he would be there for them whenever and wherever, no questions asked.
"Leave your phone on the table," Judy says eventually, when the silence is just starting to get awkward. She raises her glass to sip her wine, and she smiles at him a little; not one of those big, face-crinkling smiles that had caught his attention whenever he passed her in the lobby of HQ, but a smaller, sincere kind of expression that says she gets it. "You can never predict when Kono's going to get into trouble. And I hear McGarrett's son isn't much better?"
Danny grins and says, "Imagine Kono, but six feet tall, okay, and covered in tattoos--" and they're off and running with Kono stories, and Steve stories, and stories about stupid shit they've done themselves, and stupider shit they did as kids and all right. It's nice. It's really nice, and Danny likes her but damn it, not in a sparking kind of way, just not the way he likes people he wants to take to bed.
Damn it.
~~~
He's on his way home when he gives in to the urge to check on the team. Steve picks up and says, "Danny, everything is fine," before Danny even says hello.
"What did you do?" he asks, immediately suspicious.
There's a guilty silence, and Danny strains his ears, thinks--is that fire roaring in the background? It's either fire or a waterfall, and neither of those things plus Steve sounds fine to him.
"Steve." Danny pinches the bridge of his nose, lets his breath out slowly. Anger management, anger management, anger management. "Just tell me that you are all okay, that you are fine, and that nothing's been leveled."
"Okay, there's a fire, but it's not our fault. That warehouse was just waiting to go up." Steve sighs, and in the background, something crashes to the ground. "We're fine, the guy is fine, but--the, uh, the stolen velvet?"
"Not fine?"
"Not fine," Steve agrees. "We caught the thieves, though. The guy's manager, he's got this hookers and blow thing going on--shouldn't criminals be smarter, or something?" He sounds frustrated, like easy cases and stupid criminals are a personal attack on his crime-fighting abilities.
"It's so hard to find a really good mastermind these days." Danny sighs. "All right. Well, if you are okay over there, if you've got it under control, I am going home and getting some sleep. You need me?"
"You're not still out on your date?" Steve asks, casual.
Danny grimaces, rubs a hand over the back of his neck. He had kissed Judy Lui on the cheek at her door, and she hadn't even bothered to look surprised. "Yeah, well, my coach turns into a pumpkin at midnight, so--"
"So you better hurry home, Cinderella," Steve says. He's smiling now, Danny can hear it in his voice. Behind him, something pops loudly, a little wetly. Danny wonders what velvet smells like when it burns. When he was a cop in Jersey, he was at a fire scene at an old warehouse, and it had taken him days to get the smell of soot and grease and cardboard out of his hair.
"Stop watching movies with my kid, you're getting warped like a parent," Danny says. "You'll be singing the songs soon, I'm just saying. Oh, and hey, are you gonna smell like Velvet Elvis's ashtray in the morning? Because if you are, I'm going to need Chin to whip something up that can photograph a smell, and send it to your sister--"
"You'll find out tomorrow," Steve says. There's something in his voice that has Danny glancing at his phone like it's going to show him the look on Steve's face, like seeing his face would help Danny figure out what that voice means, what Steve is thinking when he's going all murmuring and a little raspy.
Smooth Dog, Danny thinks, and Steve chuckles; maybe that was a little less thinking and a little more saying out loud.
"Something like that," Steve says, and even with the fire roaring behind him and the sound of the fire crew at work, Kono shouting something authoritatively, it sounds like Steve is in the car with him. Steve might as well be sitting next to him, smiling at him; fond and a little impatient, like Danny's two steps behind and catching up slow. "G'night, Danno."
"Night," Danny says, on automatic pilot. Steve hangs up abruptly, leaving Danny alone in his car with the silence, so loud after the chaos and the, what, the familiarity of Steve's voice. Danny catches the tip of his tongue between his teeth, says, "Ooookay," and spends the rest of the ride home wondering if Steve took his shirt off and got all sooty and sweaty, like beefcake waiting for his calendar shoot, and whether or not Kono got a picture.
For blackmail, that's all. Danny has his priorities.
~~~
In the morning, Danny rolls out of bed and pads into the shower, dresses, wears a nice shirt and a good tie, and talks to Gracie for a minute while he waits for Steve.
Steve is right on time, parking the truck and getting out to lean against Danny's Camaro. He's wearing jeans for once, and a black t-shirt under a dark button-down; he looks dressed up, for him.
"What's the occasion?" Danny asks, tipping his chin up as he slips his phone into his pocket. "You got court today or something?"
"Nah," Steve says. "Just gonna do a thing. Later." He's wearing his sunglasses, and the smile on his lips is pure cocky bullshit. He looks like every hotshot military asshole Danny's ever seen in a movie, and it makes Danny want to puff up his chest and strut past him, every bit as much of a ridiculous badass as he is, Jersey to his core and hard to intimidate. Except then Steve holds his hand out for Danny's keys and Danny tosses them automatically, crossing to the passenger side of his own vehicle as Steve slides behind the wheel; it might be routine, but it's a little less than maximum tough guy to just hand over control of the car.
"I need coffee," Danny says, throwing himself into the seat and giving up; this is just the kind of day it's going to be, apparently. "I need a lot of coffee, Steve. Stop on the way, stop soon, stop now--"
"You got it," Steve says, smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. He peels out of Danny's parking lot like getting coffee is the same as heading for the hospital when someone is bleeding out, which, for the record, is a coffee-getting pace that Danny is down with.
~~~
They don't talk on the ride over. Steve sprawls out, knees everywhere, hands loose on the wheel and the stick, smile playing across his mouth that gets more and more cocky the longer Danny looks at it. He doesn't smell like Velvet Elvis's ashtray. He smells good, like he just got out of the shower, all soap and the light cologne he likes.
Danny sits quiet, loosens his tie, loosens it more because it still feels a little tight, he still feels hemmed in and cramped in the same space he usually fills with no problem. He says, "Could you maybe drive a little faster, Grandma? I'd like to get out of this car today, c'mon, chop-chop."
"Relax, Danno," Steve says. He turns that smile on Danny, smug and brilliant. "I'll get you there."
~~~
"Jimmy Hale," Danny says, leaning on the counter at the shop, splaying his hands across the cool glass. "Gimme your largest coffee, black, and like, a pound of those, those right there with the chocolate."
Jimmy usually has a smile for Danny, a smile and flirty eyelashes for Steve, but this morning he just raises an eyebrow and looks over Danny's shoulder. Danny follows his gaze and finds Steve smiling at Jimmy, a reassuring kind of look. Danny frowns at him and Steve drops a hand on his shoulder, squeezes.
"This haole lolo?" Jimmy asks, and just like that, Danny's ramping up for a rant about slang he has heard before, thank you, he knows Jimmy is asking Steve if he's a moron which, considering that Jimmy was Danny's pal yesterday is kind of a thing Danny would like to answer with his fist--
"It's cool, brah," Steve says to Jimmy. "Give him the coffee," and Jimmy turns away from the counter with a slightly disbelieving look, but he's getting Danny's coffee, so Danny spares his life.
He turns on Steve, though, says, "What was that about?"
Steve smiles at him, still wearing his goddamned sunglasses. "What was what about?" he says, innocent as Grace haunting the kitchen for a glass of milk, no hands in the cookie jar at all, and Danny has a finger raised and ready to jab him right in the sternum when there's a thud and a slosh behind him.
He turns, distracted, and Jimmy Hale is looking at him. Not just looking at him but with a look, a look, and Danny's super mega enormous coffee cup is sitting in a puddle that smells suspiciously like vanilla.
"Oh, I do not think so," Danny says, and he's leaning his weight forward on the counter to get right in Jimmy's face, his tie too close to the puddle of vanilla but fuck it. "You got beef, Jimmy Hale?" he asks. "You got it? You tell me about it and maybe we can get to the bottom of it," which is a threat, which is pretty obvious to Jimmy and Steve, apparently, because his partner leans around him to toss some money on the counter and get his hand on Danny's arm.
"Not my beef, brah," Jimmy says, looking at Steve again, and Steve is tugging Danny back, saying to Jimmy, "No beef, Jimmy, everything's cool--c'mon, Danny, let's get out of here before you lose your temper."
"Lose my temper?" Danny says, because he has found it, it is right there and ready to go, but he lets Steve haul him out of the coffee shop without fighting his grip; he's not stupid. Jimmy does a nice dark roast like nobody else on the goddamn island knows, and the threat of being entirely without it is a serious one. Danny will take the silent treatment from his coffee dealer for a year before he'll go through withdrawal.
"What is even going on with that guy what an--is he usually that big an asshole, or did he get hit with the nasty stick today?" he bitches at Steve as they head back for the Camaro, Steve's hand tight on his arm.
"Maybe that's not the thing you should be asking," Steve says, handing him his coffee and opening the door; Danny half-expects Steve to cup his head and guide him into the passenger seat like he's a criminal being loaded into a blue and white, except that Steve doesn't bother using the niceties like that on criminals. "Maybe you should ask yourself what's going on with you."
He closes the door and Danny sits, his coffee hot in his hands and smelling sweet, sugary, exactly how he doesn't like it when he's eating pastries. Steve is sliding behind the wheel, sitting with his hands at ten and two, frowning a little.
For a long moment, they're both quiet. Danny shifts, restless in his seat. He's a good detective, he knows it. He's solid and smart and he can read people, and Steve is no goddamned sphinx, he isn't exactly a cipher, but Danny's missing something here anyway. He's off just enough to be lost, he needs to figure out where his head is at, where's Steve's head is at, he needs--
"Oh, fuck," Danny says, heartfelt with realization, and Steve turns to him, mouth softening. "I didn't get my chocolate croissants."
Steve freezes. He looks at Danny over the shades of his sunglasses; it is, Danny realizes, the first time Steve has looked him in the eye all day.
"Deal with it," is all Steve says, curt and cold, and he puts the car in gear and pulls out of the coffee shop's parking lot so fast that Danny's shoved back in his seat like they're pulling Gs.
~~~
At HQ, Steve disappears into his office and gets on the phone, shaking his head at Chin when he puts a hand on the door knob; Chin looks at Danny like he thinks Danny's got reason to know what's up, then just sighs and disappears when Danny shrugs at him.
"I hate everyone today," Danny announces to the closed doors. "Just so you all know? Everyone."
~~~
The governor comes in for a meeting with Steve before lunch. It goes a little long, and Steve orders pizza; at first, Danny thinks he's just being an ass, kind of insolent the way he sometimes gets with authority figures, but then he sees the way she tucks into the pie and oh, okay, he can respect that.
He's a little impressed, actually.
Danny keeps the notes. Kono might be the rookie, and note-taking might be a rookie job, but Kono doesn't do dictation, and the one time Steve had given it a shot, the file he emailed the rest of the team said Good job on the Inger case, show up at the Ball w/out visible bruises, Cortua warehouse :( which, no.
"Detective Williams," she says, at the end of the meeting. She's downed the last of her beer and worked her way though a significant helping of double pepperoni. Danny wishes he could've voted for her twice.
He looks up from his laptop, where he's already working on cleaning up his notes--no racecar driving, Steve becomes, HPD sent the governor a message about how many times they've spotted various members of the taskforce speeding and more LB means stock up on Longboards for next meeting. "Yes ma'am?"
She's eyeing him a little coldly, like he just stole her last slice. She leans back in her chair and raises an eyebrow at him. "Detective, when I approved your transfer to this team, I did so because I expected good things from you. I expected you to bring a bit of balance, a sense of perspective, a commitment to partnership and people that would work well with Commander McGarrett's drive and devotion."
She stands, and Danny tries to figure out whether he's just been complimented or not, and she says, "Don't disappoint me."
Then she sweeps out of the room, trailing pepperoni and perfume smells behind her.
Danny stares after her for a long, silent moment, then turns to his partner. "What the hell just happened here?"
Steve has his head in his hands. He shakes it, not looking up. "I don't know," he says, muffled. "I can't--I don't know, I can't tell if she wants to be my boss, or my mom, or--"
Danny holds a hand up, stop, and Steve does, although he doesn't look like he should have been able to see the gesture, with his long fingers covering his eyes like that. Danny says, "Don't--listen, I don't know if that's disturbing or awesome, but I'd, listen, I'd rather not have to think about it right now, okay?"
"Disturbingly awesome?" Steve says, and then they sit for a moment in silence, contemplating it.
Steve shakes it off first, pushes back from the conference table. He rests his hand on Danny's back, then urges him out of his seat. "Let's go req some ordnance before she forgets how much she okayed."
Danny follows him, already spouting arguments against half of what Steve wants, because no one who keeps hand grenades in the car should be given more ammo, and it's his job to be the sane half of this partnership--and if that's how he chooses to interpret the governor's words, who's going to argue it--and no, he doesn't want to disappoint her.
~~~
Max comes into the office at two, bringing a folder of autopsy reports Chin had requested for the case with the apparent clusterfuck of gangland friendly fire.
He pops his head into Danny's office on the way out and stares at him, blank-faced and silent.
"Max, listen, I didn't send that last piano tuner, I already, I promised you that I had nothing to do with that," Danny says, when the silence and Max's unwavering stare have gotten creepy.
Max sniffs at him, pushes his glasses up his nose. "I am disappointed in you, Detective Williams," he says. "Very. Very disappointed. I thought your level of social intelligence was much higher than this--well." And he disappears again, minus his files, but carrying the slices of pizza he'd apparently liberated from their fridge on his way through.
"What even is this day?" Danny says. "Like, no--what is this?" but there's no one there to answer him; thankfully, right, because he'd probably have brained the first person who tried.
~~~
He hides out in his office for the rest of the day, only emerging for more pizza or to wave incorrectly-filed forms in Steve's face; Steve has been in a better mood since the ordnance requisition went through, even though Danny had talked him out of eight pairs of night vision goggles, "We got eyes in the backs of our heads now, what do we need eight pairs for?" but. It still seemed safer to just put his head down, slog through his paperwork, and wait for a better day.
When he comes out of his office for one last cup of coffee, though, Kono gives Danny a cold, dead-eyed stare over the pistol she's got disassembled on the table.
He cracks like an egg against the edge of a bowl. "Okay, oh my God, fine," Danny says loudly, clapping his hands together, pointing at Kono with both index fingers. "I give, I'm giving in, you win, everybody wins. What did I do?"
Kono raises an eyebrow at him, and doesn't stop cleaning her weapon.
"No no," Danny says, shaking his head. "I know the silence of a woman with something to say, Kono. Marriage, I have been there and done that. C'mon, give; out with it already."
"Don't know what you mean," Kono says, with a one-shouldered shrug. She's cleaning her weapon in an entirely pointed way, showy and too thorough; Danny calls bullshit.
He stalks toward her, leans over the table, bracing his weight on his knuckles. He gets right in her face about it. "Blatant lies, Kalakua," he says, chiding, just so goddamned tired of everyone today. "Incredibly, unsubtly, rudely blatant lies; who taught you that, huh? Was it Steve? I bet it was Steve. For a, a freakishly well-trained commando warrior princess, the guy can't lie for shit."
Kono tips her head back and stares at him. Danny stares back. Silent treatment, pointed weapon cleaning; he doesn't remember kicking her puppy, but he must've, he must have done something bad to earn this kind of shit from Kono, who isn't like Steve, or Jimmy Hale; she's got a temper, but she's not--
"You took Judy Lui to Duke's," Kono says abruptly, caving in, and Danny leans back, blinks at her, tilts his head like that'll make her look less crazy.
"You got a problem with Judy Lui?" he says. "Because I thought you liked her, that was part of why I asked her out. I figured if she comes with bona fides like that, like you giggling whenever you talk to her--wait, no, you like her, nevermind. Is it Duke's? You don't like Duke's?"
Kono curls her lip. "Duke's is fine," she says. "For tourists."
Danny pushes back and puts his hands on his hips. "I," he says, with pride, "am a tourist. A haole, as I am so often reminded. I'm an unrepentent mainlander, I'm from the East Coast, I will never give up my tie, you understand me? So I like Duke's, I love Duke's. Maybe I will take Judy Lui back to Duke's tonight."
Kono snorts at him, shaking her head, dark hair falling over her shoulder as she leans back over her gun. "Don't take her out again, Danny. I like her. Me and Judy, we've been friends a long time, and I don't want her run off the island because she was poaching--listen, just don't, okay?"
"Poaching," Danny crosses his arms over his chest and shifts his weight. "Poaching implies you think Judy Lui was hunting on someone else's territory. I gotta tell you, Kono, that's bullshit. This is neutral, this is unclaimed territory," he says, motioning towards himself, "this is the untamed Wild West, okay? Poaching."
Kono raises an eyebrow at him, doesn't look away as she calls out, "Chin!"
Chin pokes his head out from their tiny galley kitchen, where he's probably concocting some ridiculously healthy, appetizing snack out of the almost-nothing they've got in there. Chin's fucking magic with snacks. And ass-kicking. Danny's a little worried that he's in for more of one than the other when Chin says, "What's up, cuz?" without even looking at him.
Kono looks at her cousin, tilts her head, mouth pursed; where she learned judgmental, that's another thing Danny wants to know. "Is Danny the untamed Wild West?"
Chin finally looks at Danny, who does his best to look ferocious and unclaimed, which, he thinks, is probably pretty good; his best is pretty fucking ferocious.
"Sorry, brah," Chin says, with an amused smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "You're an atlas of mapped territory."
Danny makes a frustrated noise. "If my hair wasn't so goddamned important to me, I'd be pulling it out," he says. "You have just thrown me over the edge, which, congratulations to you because McGarrett's been trying to get me to this point for months."
"Yeah, actually, maybe go talk to him about it," Chin says, before heading back into the kitchen. At the table, Kono nods and begins reassembling her gun.
"Steve. What's Steve got--" Danny pauses, the glimmer of an idea beginning to take shape in his mind. A crazy idea, one that makes his heart start racing in his chest; fight or flight, he thinks wildly. "No, I don't want to know, do I?"
Kono shrugs and finishes reassembling her pistol; she's fucking fast. Sometimes Danny thinks Steve's been waiting for a protege like Kono forever. Mostly, that's fucking terrifying. But she's picked up a few useful skills from him, along with the piss-poor lying. Field-stripping a weapon is one of them.
"I changed my mind," Danny says, menacing. "What's he said now?"
Kono stands, slots her gun into the holster on her shoulder. She shrugs again and says, "It's not what he said," she says, cocking her hip, thumbs in her belt loops. "It's just what is, brah."
Danny stares at her for a long, silent moment, until her eyebrows start rising and she looks concerned.
"Gimme your gun," Danny says abruptly, snapping his fingers at her. "C'mon, give it to me--I have mine, but I'm going to need more bullets."
"Danny--"
"No, you know what, screw that," Danny says, and heads for Steve's office. "I'll just go with my fists when I run out of ammo."
~~~
Steve looks up when Danny pushes through his office door, wishing it wasn't glass so he could give it a good, satisfying slam. "You," he says, pointing at Steve, who tilts his head at him, cold and questioning. "You, just. You get your ass up and you get out there, and you tell Chin and Kono that I am no one's territory." He gives it three seconds and when Steve just stares at him, going from curious to amused, he takes a few steps forward and growls, "Get. Up."
Steve gets up, nice and slow like it was his idea all along and not something Danny told him to do; he's a military boy who always makes it seem like he must have thought up his own orders. How he ever got promoted instead of kicked out is something Danny will probably never understand, although having met a few of Steve's former friends and fellow soldiers, well. Okay, so maybe military discipline isn't exactly the brainless thing Danny used to think it was.
Of course, that means when guys like Steve go bad, they go bad creatively, but that's not something Danny worries about with Steve. Is he going to cause bodily harm, property damage, international incidents? Sure. Is he going to darken up Danny's gray areas, trample on his sense of right and wrong, ignore justice for the sake of convenience? No. Never.
That just doesn't mean he's not an asshole.
Danny crosses his arms over his chest and watches as Steve comes around his desk to lean on the edge of it. He's all long and lean, biceps bulging as he crosses his arms over his chest to mirror Danny; he took off his button-down at some point, and the black t-shirt is a little too tight to be wearing to the office without it. Beefcake, Danny thinks wildly. Calendar shoot part a million.
"They found out about Judy Lui, huh?" Steve says, watching Danny watching him.
"They found out?" Danny holds his hands out, starts pacing. "Let me tell you something. There was nothing to find out, you don't find out someone went on a date when they're not attached, they're not sneaking around, they're taking a woman--a very nice, attractive woman, for the record--to a popular local restaurant--"
"Chin and Kono may think you're attached," Steve says, shrugging a little.
Danny stops prowling the tile in front of Steve's desk, turns and stares at him. "Chin and Kono may what?"
"And the governor," Steve says, nodding. He holds up a hand and counts off on his fingers. "And Toast, and Jimmy Hale over at the coffee shop, and Rachel; actually, she brought it up first--"
Danny's dying, he's absolutely sure of it.
"Judy Lui probably thinks so too, by now," Steve says, helpfully. "I mean, these things get around."
Danny pinches the bridge of his nose, takes a deep breath. "You--" he says, trying to stay calm, "You tell me why you'd be going around, going to everyone we have ever met in our time as a team, and telling them, telling them that I am, we are something we are not--"
Steve smirks at him a little, slouches down against his desk like this is a nice chat they're having, a calm, relaxing conversation, after which no one is going to get murdered; Danny would be fooled, except he's seen Steve pull that slouch out before. That's just one of his many annoying-bastard moves, the ones he likes to use when he is being an annoying bastard.
"I didn't tell anyone that," he says, raising his eyebrows. "People just assumed."
"And?" Danny says, rolling his hand; there's an unspoken and in there if he ever heard one.
Steve looks at him. There's something going on in his eyes, in the way his mouth curves; a new look, one Danny hasn't named, hasn't seen before. He lifts one shoulder, half a shrug. He says, "And...I may not have told them otherwise."
Danny freezes. Steve smiles at him a little more widely and waits, waits, patient like he could stare at Danny all day, until he finally either says something or rabbits.
For a second, Danny's not sure which way he's going to go, which way he wants to go. There's danger either way, he thinks, there are no safe choices left, no easy outs, no escape that doesn't leave them both a little bit wounded.
So Danny takes a slow, deep breath and says, "Do you know a good orthodontist?" He points at his jaw. "Because I have picked up this habit of grinding my teeth, lately, who knows why, right? I mean, could not have anything to do with my partner, who is nominally my boss and sort of my team leader and apparently kind of my jealous wife, cockblocking me across the islands and causing untold amounts of sexual frustration--"
"Yeah, he's no specialist, but I know a guy who'd be willing to help you with that," Steve says, easy and confident, and then he's on the move. He's slouching across his office, all slinky and smooth, a nuisance, a menace, a blight on Danny's life, and also stupidly, stupidly hot. Danny finally gives himself permission to notice it, to see Steve, every inch from his messy hair to his junked up boots, with the broad shoulders, narrow hips, strong thighs in between, with his hot, confident eyes and that bullshit smile.
This is the thing that Steve was going to do today, Danny realizes. The thing he dressed for, the thing he smirked for, the thing he reassured Jimmy Hale of over Danny's shoulder. This.
And it doesn't make sense, because Danny didn't even know he was waiting for it, that he was looking for it, but he thinks, finally. Fucking finally.
Steve stops so close to him that they're practically sharing the space, a tiny amount of square footage in a big, ridiculous world where things like this actually happen. Danny tips his head back to look up at him and Steve meets his gaze, says, "I could give you a name, you want a name right now?"
Danny rolls his eyes. "No, actually, no--not right now--right now, I want you to kiss me," but he's the one who takes the last step forward, who rests a hand on Steve's cheek to urge him down, and kisses him.
~~~
Okay, Danny can admit that he's maybe given Steve some signals that this is where they're going. Possibly his urge to strut and prod and rant has a little bit of something to do with preening, all peacock clamor; he could have been using that to get Steve's attention, to hold Steve's attention.
He doesn't need to kiss Steve to know that it worked. To feel on some gut-deep level that it was worth the effort. Steve's been focused on him since the day they met, since he surprised Steve by not backing down from him, since Steve saw him standing there instead of an easily intimidated, too stupid for his own good haole cop.
Danny might have thought that kissing him would feel the same way, be powered by the same driving urgency, if he'd let himself think about it instead of just doing it. Action and reaction, friction and spark and showing off; look at me.
It goes down too easy for that, though. Like they can take a break from the constant push and pull between them for this, like they don't need to fight each other on it. Danny's got Steve's attention, the laser focus of it, can feel it in the slide of Steve's fingers through his hair, the way he cups the back of Danny's head, and the way Steve crowds against him. But holding it is nothing, no effort at all; it's just the slick slide of their tongues together, a catch of teeth against Steve's upper lip, the flex and tension of Steve's muscles under his palms.
Heat sparks low in Danny's belly, has him groaning and pushing his hips into Steve's in slow, restless pulses; Steve spreads his thighs and meets him thrust for thrust, steady and hard. It's easy, so easy, and it's so goddamned hot that it whites out Danny's brain a little bit, turns him into a goof, the kind of goof who smiles and pants and shivers just from kissing.
"Don't take Judy Lui out again," Steve says, pulling back after a long while. Danny's hands have slid down his back to settle against the curve of his ass, and Danny's lips feel hot and swollen from the press of Steve's against them. He licks them. Steve breathes words softly against his cheek. "Take me out. I'll even go to Duke's if you wanna go to Duke's--just don't. Don't, okay?"
Danny stares at the hollow of Steve's throat, the tan skin and shadow of stubble, the pulse beating there. Steve's heart is racing.
"No," he says, and he looks up when Steve swallows hard, holds on when Steve tries to step away. "You take me to Duke's. You're taking me out, Commander, and you're buying me dinner, and a beer, and then maybe a couple more beers, and then you're going to take me home."
Steve stares down at him, expressionless SEAL face on, uncertainty lurking underneath it.
"You," Danny says, and he twists one hand in the belt loops of Steve's jeans, pokes him in the chest with two fingers of the other hand. "Your stupid caveman antics have been keeping me from getting laid and you may not have noticed but they also pissed me off today, real bad, so you owe me. You owe me, okay, and you know I'm damn well going to collect. You knew that all along, right? Don't even give me that stupid look, I know you knew--"
"I didn't know, actually." Steve captures Danny's poking hand, folds it into his. He isn't slouching anymore so much as he's curling into Danny, curling around him, holding onto him. He's starting to grin again, just a little. "I wasn't sure. I could have been reading you wrong."
Danny scoffs at him. "Oh, you are such a shitty liar. You're the worst liar I have ever met, and I knew a toddler who once tried to tell me she didn't eat the pudding while she was wearing half of it all over her little face. You knew I was a sure thing from--from when?"
"Yeah, okay, I knew--I had you from hello," Steve says, grinning all out now, stupid and delighted with it. Danny smacks him on the back with the palm of his hand, half-laughing, saying, "You're a cocky bastard. You're the worst, you don't even know," until Steve bends down and Danny reaches up and they're kissing again, wet and messy now; kissing like they're making claims, or maybe just finally acknowledging them.
Author: giddygeek
Pairing: Steve/Danny
Spoilers: General H50 S1
Notes: 7200 words. Not terribly adult. Many thanks to misspamela and drunktuesdays for beta!
This started out as a prompt request ficlet for celli back in, um, December, and I've been writing it and rewriting it ever since. *grins* Celli, sorry it's late, I hope you like it! :D
"Judy Lui." Danny says as he answers his phone, then smiles, tucking it against his shoulder. From the driver's seat, Steve gives him a look and Danny rolls his eyes, gesturing out the window; watch the road, watch it--it, not me. He says, "How's it, Judy? Did you get the mud out of that--oh, sorry, I'm sorry to hear that. Can I, uh, can I make it up to you? Say, dinner at--you like Duke's?--okay, tonight, seven. I'll pick you up."
Steve looks at him again, crinkling his brow, displeased. "Thing tonight at 5," he says. "With the governor and that guy, the one with the velvet."
Danny ignores him. "Wear something a little easier to dry clean, huh?" he teases Judy, turning away when Steve flaps a hand at him, all urgently the governor and that guy like Danny doesn't already know they have that meeting, or like he should care more about it than he cares about getting a date.
If the guy had something good, if he was an arms guy or a mob guy or an illegally imported apes guy, okay, that'd be one thing, but no. He's a guy who keeps losing shipments of velvet, velvet; it is 2011 and Danny didn't even know they made velvet anymore and certainly doesn't see a big market for it in Hawaii.
He tells Judy, "I promise that unlike my partner, I have no plans to trip you into--okay. All right. I'll see you then--yeah, looking forward to it." He disconnects, then twirls his phone between his hands, and he knows he's smiling at it like it did him a favor but knowing doesn't stop him.
A date. It's been a while, what with the divorce, and the move to Hawaii, and Grace, and how much freaking time he spends working. 5-0 is the job of a lifetime, but it's a black hole, too. All the light and energy in Danny's life that doesn't go to his relationship with his daughter goes into their investigations--the keeping his team alive and sane parts of their investigations, anyway. The actual police work is easy, a breeze, a dream with a team as smart as this one. It's everything else that's a challenge.
"Dinner with Judy Lui," he says, contemplating it. "I am a happy man. I am a happy man today, Steve, because a very lovely woman with a great sense of humor has consented to go to dinner with me. Will I ruin this happiness, this newfound joy, by hanging out with you, the governor, and a guy with a velvet problem? No. Head for my place."
Steve looks at him, quick, sidelong, then at the road. His jaw is working like he's gritting his teeth. "Danny, this meeting could be important."
"Or it could be a waste of time. It could be, it could be this or that," Danny weighs out the possibilities with his hands, the scale tipped to not important. "And I promise, I swear to you that I will care tomorrow. But tonight I have a date, and that is important, okay. Head to my place or so help me, I will gut you where you sit."
Steve darts another glance at him and Danny raises his eyebrows, crossing his arms over his chest. "I will do it. I've got a dull pocketknife, and I'm not afraid to use it."
For a moment, he thinks Steve is going to risk it. Steve likes risks, Steve likes getting his way, Steve especially likes aggravating Danny; he might go for it. Danny watches and Steve considers, and outside the air conditioned world of the Camaro, another beautiful day in hot, sunny Hawaii flashes by.
After a minute Steve nods, smiles a little, the smirky one that usually means trouble for Danny. He says, confident and easy, "You wouldn't gut me. You hate getting blood in the car." Which is true. Danny loves his car and he hates bloodstains; absolutely true. "Gut wounds bleed, Danny. They're messy." Also true. Still, Danny raises his eyebrows, flaps his hands at Steve, your point?
Steve shrugs. "But hey, yeah, all right, okay. Dinner with Judy Lui is more important than work, I get that--" and he pulls a U-turn smooth as a Jersey hoodrat making a score, heading back towards Danny's place.
"Thank you--" Danny says, throwing his hands out with a dramatic little flourish, all gratitude, oh yes.
"But make a habit of this and you'll find out how little I care about getting blood stains on the upholstery," Steve says. He's gone from relaxed to dangerous in less than a second, voice flat and steady, flicking Danny a look out of narrowed eyes.
Danny scoffs at him, unintimidated. "I already know how little you care, okay? You had no problem bleeding in here last week when you got that splinter."
"That splinter was an antique harpoon that missed taking my hand off by like, a hair," Steve snaps, holding up his hand with the faint red line still scraped across the joint of his wrist.
Danny ignores that. "Or that time you stabbed yourself with a spear, that day we picked up Grace--"
Steve gapes at him. "Which was an actual splinter!"
"Look at the road, the road the road the road, Jesus, I don't even want to know how many moving violations your dad cleared off your record, do I." Danny says. "What about that time you cut yourself on that part for the Mercury--actually, you know what, if I gutted you, I bet it wouldn't even make that big a mess. You have practically bled yourself out in here already which means less splatter right now, so don't tempt me, okay, just take me home, all right?"
"First off, my dad never cleared me of a ticket, because then how would I have learned about duty, justice, and responsibility," Steve says, ignoring the road again as he stares at Danny with that wide-eyed, clearly-you-didn't-know-him, McGarrett's-son face. "Also, if you miss something exciting tonight, okay, because you are busy on your date, you don't get to bitch about it later."
"Cross my heart, I will not bitch, I won't at all, about any fun that you might have with Chin, the governor, and that velvet guy, while I am on my date," Danny says, actually crossing his heart for good measure. "Okay?"
Steve grunts.
"All right then," Danny says, satisfied, and they don't say another word until the Camaro is parked in front of Danny's place and he's meeting Steve around the front to grab his keys.
"Listen, be good tonight," he says, teasing, like a peace offering. Steve doesn't let go of the keys right away, looking down at Danny with one of those faces he sometimes gets when he's trying not to show whatever crazy-ass thing it is that he's thinking. Danny tugs the keys from his hand and jingles them. "Be careful, have fun but not too much fun, as in don't do anything I wouldn't do, you hear me?"
He's expecting Steve to play along, to smile and say, "Yeah, same goes," but Steve just stares at Danny for a long, silent moment, and walks away.
"Huh." Danny watches him leave. Normally, Steve can be counted on to get over his temper tantrums as quick as he gets into them, mercurial but easy-going by nature. Weird, he thinks, but he shrugs it off and goes inside to shower and dress for his dinner with Judy Lui.
~~~
Dinner with Judy Lui is nice. Danny hasn't had a more relaxed and sort of blandly pleasant date since before Rachel--his ex-wife hadn't really gone in for nice. They'd had dinner at one of Danny's favorite local spots, a drink at a club Rachel liked, and then they'd gone back to Rachel's pleasant, airy apartment and fallen straight into her bed, staying there for hours, fucking until they were sore, making out until it all felt good again. A great night, one of the best of Danny's life, but not nice.
He can't stop checking his phone, though. "I'm sorry," he says, when Judy raises her eyebrows the third time he drags it out of his pocket. "It's just--my team's working tonight, and you, I know you know Kono, okay, so mayhem is all I'm saying, and I'm sure you get it."
Judy stares at him for a long, quiet moment, running her finger along the rim of her wine glass. She has wide, dark, serious eyes that all but disappear when she smiles because she puts her whole face into the expression, and those dark eyes don't seem to miss a trick. She's considering him, and Danny waits her out; if she objects to the phone, the date is over. His daughter, his team, he would be there for them whenever and wherever, no questions asked.
"Leave your phone on the table," Judy says eventually, when the silence is just starting to get awkward. She raises her glass to sip her wine, and she smiles at him a little; not one of those big, face-crinkling smiles that had caught his attention whenever he passed her in the lobby of HQ, but a smaller, sincere kind of expression that says she gets it. "You can never predict when Kono's going to get into trouble. And I hear McGarrett's son isn't much better?"
Danny grins and says, "Imagine Kono, but six feet tall, okay, and covered in tattoos--" and they're off and running with Kono stories, and Steve stories, and stories about stupid shit they've done themselves, and stupider shit they did as kids and all right. It's nice. It's really nice, and Danny likes her but damn it, not in a sparking kind of way, just not the way he likes people he wants to take to bed.
Damn it.
~~~
He's on his way home when he gives in to the urge to check on the team. Steve picks up and says, "Danny, everything is fine," before Danny even says hello.
"What did you do?" he asks, immediately suspicious.
There's a guilty silence, and Danny strains his ears, thinks--is that fire roaring in the background? It's either fire or a waterfall, and neither of those things plus Steve sounds fine to him.
"Steve." Danny pinches the bridge of his nose, lets his breath out slowly. Anger management, anger management, anger management. "Just tell me that you are all okay, that you are fine, and that nothing's been leveled."
"Okay, there's a fire, but it's not our fault. That warehouse was just waiting to go up." Steve sighs, and in the background, something crashes to the ground. "We're fine, the guy is fine, but--the, uh, the stolen velvet?"
"Not fine?"
"Not fine," Steve agrees. "We caught the thieves, though. The guy's manager, he's got this hookers and blow thing going on--shouldn't criminals be smarter, or something?" He sounds frustrated, like easy cases and stupid criminals are a personal attack on his crime-fighting abilities.
"It's so hard to find a really good mastermind these days." Danny sighs. "All right. Well, if you are okay over there, if you've got it under control, I am going home and getting some sleep. You need me?"
"You're not still out on your date?" Steve asks, casual.
Danny grimaces, rubs a hand over the back of his neck. He had kissed Judy Lui on the cheek at her door, and she hadn't even bothered to look surprised. "Yeah, well, my coach turns into a pumpkin at midnight, so--"
"So you better hurry home, Cinderella," Steve says. He's smiling now, Danny can hear it in his voice. Behind him, something pops loudly, a little wetly. Danny wonders what velvet smells like when it burns. When he was a cop in Jersey, he was at a fire scene at an old warehouse, and it had taken him days to get the smell of soot and grease and cardboard out of his hair.
"Stop watching movies with my kid, you're getting warped like a parent," Danny says. "You'll be singing the songs soon, I'm just saying. Oh, and hey, are you gonna smell like Velvet Elvis's ashtray in the morning? Because if you are, I'm going to need Chin to whip something up that can photograph a smell, and send it to your sister--"
"You'll find out tomorrow," Steve says. There's something in his voice that has Danny glancing at his phone like it's going to show him the look on Steve's face, like seeing his face would help Danny figure out what that voice means, what Steve is thinking when he's going all murmuring and a little raspy.
Smooth Dog, Danny thinks, and Steve chuckles; maybe that was a little less thinking and a little more saying out loud.
"Something like that," Steve says, and even with the fire roaring behind him and the sound of the fire crew at work, Kono shouting something authoritatively, it sounds like Steve is in the car with him. Steve might as well be sitting next to him, smiling at him; fond and a little impatient, like Danny's two steps behind and catching up slow. "G'night, Danno."
"Night," Danny says, on automatic pilot. Steve hangs up abruptly, leaving Danny alone in his car with the silence, so loud after the chaos and the, what, the familiarity of Steve's voice. Danny catches the tip of his tongue between his teeth, says, "Ooookay," and spends the rest of the ride home wondering if Steve took his shirt off and got all sooty and sweaty, like beefcake waiting for his calendar shoot, and whether or not Kono got a picture.
For blackmail, that's all. Danny has his priorities.
~~~
In the morning, Danny rolls out of bed and pads into the shower, dresses, wears a nice shirt and a good tie, and talks to Gracie for a minute while he waits for Steve.
Steve is right on time, parking the truck and getting out to lean against Danny's Camaro. He's wearing jeans for once, and a black t-shirt under a dark button-down; he looks dressed up, for him.
"What's the occasion?" Danny asks, tipping his chin up as he slips his phone into his pocket. "You got court today or something?"
"Nah," Steve says. "Just gonna do a thing. Later." He's wearing his sunglasses, and the smile on his lips is pure cocky bullshit. He looks like every hotshot military asshole Danny's ever seen in a movie, and it makes Danny want to puff up his chest and strut past him, every bit as much of a ridiculous badass as he is, Jersey to his core and hard to intimidate. Except then Steve holds his hand out for Danny's keys and Danny tosses them automatically, crossing to the passenger side of his own vehicle as Steve slides behind the wheel; it might be routine, but it's a little less than maximum tough guy to just hand over control of the car.
"I need coffee," Danny says, throwing himself into the seat and giving up; this is just the kind of day it's going to be, apparently. "I need a lot of coffee, Steve. Stop on the way, stop soon, stop now--"
"You got it," Steve says, smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. He peels out of Danny's parking lot like getting coffee is the same as heading for the hospital when someone is bleeding out, which, for the record, is a coffee-getting pace that Danny is down with.
~~~
They don't talk on the ride over. Steve sprawls out, knees everywhere, hands loose on the wheel and the stick, smile playing across his mouth that gets more and more cocky the longer Danny looks at it. He doesn't smell like Velvet Elvis's ashtray. He smells good, like he just got out of the shower, all soap and the light cologne he likes.
Danny sits quiet, loosens his tie, loosens it more because it still feels a little tight, he still feels hemmed in and cramped in the same space he usually fills with no problem. He says, "Could you maybe drive a little faster, Grandma? I'd like to get out of this car today, c'mon, chop-chop."
"Relax, Danno," Steve says. He turns that smile on Danny, smug and brilliant. "I'll get you there."
~~~
"Jimmy Hale," Danny says, leaning on the counter at the shop, splaying his hands across the cool glass. "Gimme your largest coffee, black, and like, a pound of those, those right there with the chocolate."
Jimmy usually has a smile for Danny, a smile and flirty eyelashes for Steve, but this morning he just raises an eyebrow and looks over Danny's shoulder. Danny follows his gaze and finds Steve smiling at Jimmy, a reassuring kind of look. Danny frowns at him and Steve drops a hand on his shoulder, squeezes.
"This haole lolo?" Jimmy asks, and just like that, Danny's ramping up for a rant about slang he has heard before, thank you, he knows Jimmy is asking Steve if he's a moron which, considering that Jimmy was Danny's pal yesterday is kind of a thing Danny would like to answer with his fist--
"It's cool, brah," Steve says to Jimmy. "Give him the coffee," and Jimmy turns away from the counter with a slightly disbelieving look, but he's getting Danny's coffee, so Danny spares his life.
He turns on Steve, though, says, "What was that about?"
Steve smiles at him, still wearing his goddamned sunglasses. "What was what about?" he says, innocent as Grace haunting the kitchen for a glass of milk, no hands in the cookie jar at all, and Danny has a finger raised and ready to jab him right in the sternum when there's a thud and a slosh behind him.
He turns, distracted, and Jimmy Hale is looking at him. Not just looking at him but with a look, a look, and Danny's super mega enormous coffee cup is sitting in a puddle that smells suspiciously like vanilla.
"Oh, I do not think so," Danny says, and he's leaning his weight forward on the counter to get right in Jimmy's face, his tie too close to the puddle of vanilla but fuck it. "You got beef, Jimmy Hale?" he asks. "You got it? You tell me about it and maybe we can get to the bottom of it," which is a threat, which is pretty obvious to Jimmy and Steve, apparently, because his partner leans around him to toss some money on the counter and get his hand on Danny's arm.
"Not my beef, brah," Jimmy says, looking at Steve again, and Steve is tugging Danny back, saying to Jimmy, "No beef, Jimmy, everything's cool--c'mon, Danny, let's get out of here before you lose your temper."
"Lose my temper?" Danny says, because he has found it, it is right there and ready to go, but he lets Steve haul him out of the coffee shop without fighting his grip; he's not stupid. Jimmy does a nice dark roast like nobody else on the goddamn island knows, and the threat of being entirely without it is a serious one. Danny will take the silent treatment from his coffee dealer for a year before he'll go through withdrawal.
"What is even going on with that guy what an--is he usually that big an asshole, or did he get hit with the nasty stick today?" he bitches at Steve as they head back for the Camaro, Steve's hand tight on his arm.
"Maybe that's not the thing you should be asking," Steve says, handing him his coffee and opening the door; Danny half-expects Steve to cup his head and guide him into the passenger seat like he's a criminal being loaded into a blue and white, except that Steve doesn't bother using the niceties like that on criminals. "Maybe you should ask yourself what's going on with you."
He closes the door and Danny sits, his coffee hot in his hands and smelling sweet, sugary, exactly how he doesn't like it when he's eating pastries. Steve is sliding behind the wheel, sitting with his hands at ten and two, frowning a little.
For a long moment, they're both quiet. Danny shifts, restless in his seat. He's a good detective, he knows it. He's solid and smart and he can read people, and Steve is no goddamned sphinx, he isn't exactly a cipher, but Danny's missing something here anyway. He's off just enough to be lost, he needs to figure out where his head is at, where's Steve's head is at, he needs--
"Oh, fuck," Danny says, heartfelt with realization, and Steve turns to him, mouth softening. "I didn't get my chocolate croissants."
Steve freezes. He looks at Danny over the shades of his sunglasses; it is, Danny realizes, the first time Steve has looked him in the eye all day.
"Deal with it," is all Steve says, curt and cold, and he puts the car in gear and pulls out of the coffee shop's parking lot so fast that Danny's shoved back in his seat like they're pulling Gs.
~~~
At HQ, Steve disappears into his office and gets on the phone, shaking his head at Chin when he puts a hand on the door knob; Chin looks at Danny like he thinks Danny's got reason to know what's up, then just sighs and disappears when Danny shrugs at him.
"I hate everyone today," Danny announces to the closed doors. "Just so you all know? Everyone."
~~~
The governor comes in for a meeting with Steve before lunch. It goes a little long, and Steve orders pizza; at first, Danny thinks he's just being an ass, kind of insolent the way he sometimes gets with authority figures, but then he sees the way she tucks into the pie and oh, okay, he can respect that.
He's a little impressed, actually.
Danny keeps the notes. Kono might be the rookie, and note-taking might be a rookie job, but Kono doesn't do dictation, and the one time Steve had given it a shot, the file he emailed the rest of the team said Good job on the Inger case, show up at the Ball w/out visible bruises, Cortua warehouse :( which, no.
"Detective Williams," she says, at the end of the meeting. She's downed the last of her beer and worked her way though a significant helping of double pepperoni. Danny wishes he could've voted for her twice.
He looks up from his laptop, where he's already working on cleaning up his notes--no racecar driving, Steve becomes, HPD sent the governor a message about how many times they've spotted various members of the taskforce speeding and more LB means stock up on Longboards for next meeting. "Yes ma'am?"
She's eyeing him a little coldly, like he just stole her last slice. She leans back in her chair and raises an eyebrow at him. "Detective, when I approved your transfer to this team, I did so because I expected good things from you. I expected you to bring a bit of balance, a sense of perspective, a commitment to partnership and people that would work well with Commander McGarrett's drive and devotion."
She stands, and Danny tries to figure out whether he's just been complimented or not, and she says, "Don't disappoint me."
Then she sweeps out of the room, trailing pepperoni and perfume smells behind her.
Danny stares after her for a long, silent moment, then turns to his partner. "What the hell just happened here?"
Steve has his head in his hands. He shakes it, not looking up. "I don't know," he says, muffled. "I can't--I don't know, I can't tell if she wants to be my boss, or my mom, or--"
Danny holds a hand up, stop, and Steve does, although he doesn't look like he should have been able to see the gesture, with his long fingers covering his eyes like that. Danny says, "Don't--listen, I don't know if that's disturbing or awesome, but I'd, listen, I'd rather not have to think about it right now, okay?"
"Disturbingly awesome?" Steve says, and then they sit for a moment in silence, contemplating it.
Steve shakes it off first, pushes back from the conference table. He rests his hand on Danny's back, then urges him out of his seat. "Let's go req some ordnance before she forgets how much she okayed."
Danny follows him, already spouting arguments against half of what Steve wants, because no one who keeps hand grenades in the car should be given more ammo, and it's his job to be the sane half of this partnership--and if that's how he chooses to interpret the governor's words, who's going to argue it--and no, he doesn't want to disappoint her.
~~~
Max comes into the office at two, bringing a folder of autopsy reports Chin had requested for the case with the apparent clusterfuck of gangland friendly fire.
He pops his head into Danny's office on the way out and stares at him, blank-faced and silent.
"Max, listen, I didn't send that last piano tuner, I already, I promised you that I had nothing to do with that," Danny says, when the silence and Max's unwavering stare have gotten creepy.
Max sniffs at him, pushes his glasses up his nose. "I am disappointed in you, Detective Williams," he says. "Very. Very disappointed. I thought your level of social intelligence was much higher than this--well." And he disappears again, minus his files, but carrying the slices of pizza he'd apparently liberated from their fridge on his way through.
"What even is this day?" Danny says. "Like, no--what is this?" but there's no one there to answer him; thankfully, right, because he'd probably have brained the first person who tried.
~~~
He hides out in his office for the rest of the day, only emerging for more pizza or to wave incorrectly-filed forms in Steve's face; Steve has been in a better mood since the ordnance requisition went through, even though Danny had talked him out of eight pairs of night vision goggles, "We got eyes in the backs of our heads now, what do we need eight pairs for?" but. It still seemed safer to just put his head down, slog through his paperwork, and wait for a better day.
When he comes out of his office for one last cup of coffee, though, Kono gives Danny a cold, dead-eyed stare over the pistol she's got disassembled on the table.
He cracks like an egg against the edge of a bowl. "Okay, oh my God, fine," Danny says loudly, clapping his hands together, pointing at Kono with both index fingers. "I give, I'm giving in, you win, everybody wins. What did I do?"
Kono raises an eyebrow at him, and doesn't stop cleaning her weapon.
"No no," Danny says, shaking his head. "I know the silence of a woman with something to say, Kono. Marriage, I have been there and done that. C'mon, give; out with it already."
"Don't know what you mean," Kono says, with a one-shouldered shrug. She's cleaning her weapon in an entirely pointed way, showy and too thorough; Danny calls bullshit.
He stalks toward her, leans over the table, bracing his weight on his knuckles. He gets right in her face about it. "Blatant lies, Kalakua," he says, chiding, just so goddamned tired of everyone today. "Incredibly, unsubtly, rudely blatant lies; who taught you that, huh? Was it Steve? I bet it was Steve. For a, a freakishly well-trained commando warrior princess, the guy can't lie for shit."
Kono tips her head back and stares at him. Danny stares back. Silent treatment, pointed weapon cleaning; he doesn't remember kicking her puppy, but he must've, he must have done something bad to earn this kind of shit from Kono, who isn't like Steve, or Jimmy Hale; she's got a temper, but she's not--
"You took Judy Lui to Duke's," Kono says abruptly, caving in, and Danny leans back, blinks at her, tilts his head like that'll make her look less crazy.
"You got a problem with Judy Lui?" he says. "Because I thought you liked her, that was part of why I asked her out. I figured if she comes with bona fides like that, like you giggling whenever you talk to her--wait, no, you like her, nevermind. Is it Duke's? You don't like Duke's?"
Kono curls her lip. "Duke's is fine," she says. "For tourists."
Danny pushes back and puts his hands on his hips. "I," he says, with pride, "am a tourist. A haole, as I am so often reminded. I'm an unrepentent mainlander, I'm from the East Coast, I will never give up my tie, you understand me? So I like Duke's, I love Duke's. Maybe I will take Judy Lui back to Duke's tonight."
Kono snorts at him, shaking her head, dark hair falling over her shoulder as she leans back over her gun. "Don't take her out again, Danny. I like her. Me and Judy, we've been friends a long time, and I don't want her run off the island because she was poaching--listen, just don't, okay?"
"Poaching," Danny crosses his arms over his chest and shifts his weight. "Poaching implies you think Judy Lui was hunting on someone else's territory. I gotta tell you, Kono, that's bullshit. This is neutral, this is unclaimed territory," he says, motioning towards himself, "this is the untamed Wild West, okay? Poaching."
Kono raises an eyebrow at him, doesn't look away as she calls out, "Chin!"
Chin pokes his head out from their tiny galley kitchen, where he's probably concocting some ridiculously healthy, appetizing snack out of the almost-nothing they've got in there. Chin's fucking magic with snacks. And ass-kicking. Danny's a little worried that he's in for more of one than the other when Chin says, "What's up, cuz?" without even looking at him.
Kono looks at her cousin, tilts her head, mouth pursed; where she learned judgmental, that's another thing Danny wants to know. "Is Danny the untamed Wild West?"
Chin finally looks at Danny, who does his best to look ferocious and unclaimed, which, he thinks, is probably pretty good; his best is pretty fucking ferocious.
"Sorry, brah," Chin says, with an amused smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "You're an atlas of mapped territory."
Danny makes a frustrated noise. "If my hair wasn't so goddamned important to me, I'd be pulling it out," he says. "You have just thrown me over the edge, which, congratulations to you because McGarrett's been trying to get me to this point for months."
"Yeah, actually, maybe go talk to him about it," Chin says, before heading back into the kitchen. At the table, Kono nods and begins reassembling her gun.
"Steve. What's Steve got--" Danny pauses, the glimmer of an idea beginning to take shape in his mind. A crazy idea, one that makes his heart start racing in his chest; fight or flight, he thinks wildly. "No, I don't want to know, do I?"
Kono shrugs and finishes reassembling her pistol; she's fucking fast. Sometimes Danny thinks Steve's been waiting for a protege like Kono forever. Mostly, that's fucking terrifying. But she's picked up a few useful skills from him, along with the piss-poor lying. Field-stripping a weapon is one of them.
"I changed my mind," Danny says, menacing. "What's he said now?"
Kono stands, slots her gun into the holster on her shoulder. She shrugs again and says, "It's not what he said," she says, cocking her hip, thumbs in her belt loops. "It's just what is, brah."
Danny stares at her for a long, silent moment, until her eyebrows start rising and she looks concerned.
"Gimme your gun," Danny says abruptly, snapping his fingers at her. "C'mon, give it to me--I have mine, but I'm going to need more bullets."
"Danny--"
"No, you know what, screw that," Danny says, and heads for Steve's office. "I'll just go with my fists when I run out of ammo."
~~~
Steve looks up when Danny pushes through his office door, wishing it wasn't glass so he could give it a good, satisfying slam. "You," he says, pointing at Steve, who tilts his head at him, cold and questioning. "You, just. You get your ass up and you get out there, and you tell Chin and Kono that I am no one's territory." He gives it three seconds and when Steve just stares at him, going from curious to amused, he takes a few steps forward and growls, "Get. Up."
Steve gets up, nice and slow like it was his idea all along and not something Danny told him to do; he's a military boy who always makes it seem like he must have thought up his own orders. How he ever got promoted instead of kicked out is something Danny will probably never understand, although having met a few of Steve's former friends and fellow soldiers, well. Okay, so maybe military discipline isn't exactly the brainless thing Danny used to think it was.
Of course, that means when guys like Steve go bad, they go bad creatively, but that's not something Danny worries about with Steve. Is he going to cause bodily harm, property damage, international incidents? Sure. Is he going to darken up Danny's gray areas, trample on his sense of right and wrong, ignore justice for the sake of convenience? No. Never.
That just doesn't mean he's not an asshole.
Danny crosses his arms over his chest and watches as Steve comes around his desk to lean on the edge of it. He's all long and lean, biceps bulging as he crosses his arms over his chest to mirror Danny; he took off his button-down at some point, and the black t-shirt is a little too tight to be wearing to the office without it. Beefcake, Danny thinks wildly. Calendar shoot part a million.
"They found out about Judy Lui, huh?" Steve says, watching Danny watching him.
"They found out?" Danny holds his hands out, starts pacing. "Let me tell you something. There was nothing to find out, you don't find out someone went on a date when they're not attached, they're not sneaking around, they're taking a woman--a very nice, attractive woman, for the record--to a popular local restaurant--"
"Chin and Kono may think you're attached," Steve says, shrugging a little.
Danny stops prowling the tile in front of Steve's desk, turns and stares at him. "Chin and Kono may what?"
"And the governor," Steve says, nodding. He holds up a hand and counts off on his fingers. "And Toast, and Jimmy Hale over at the coffee shop, and Rachel; actually, she brought it up first--"
Danny's dying, he's absolutely sure of it.
"Judy Lui probably thinks so too, by now," Steve says, helpfully. "I mean, these things get around."
Danny pinches the bridge of his nose, takes a deep breath. "You--" he says, trying to stay calm, "You tell me why you'd be going around, going to everyone we have ever met in our time as a team, and telling them, telling them that I am, we are something we are not--"
Steve smirks at him a little, slouches down against his desk like this is a nice chat they're having, a calm, relaxing conversation, after which no one is going to get murdered; Danny would be fooled, except he's seen Steve pull that slouch out before. That's just one of his many annoying-bastard moves, the ones he likes to use when he is being an annoying bastard.
"I didn't tell anyone that," he says, raising his eyebrows. "People just assumed."
"And?" Danny says, rolling his hand; there's an unspoken and in there if he ever heard one.
Steve looks at him. There's something going on in his eyes, in the way his mouth curves; a new look, one Danny hasn't named, hasn't seen before. He lifts one shoulder, half a shrug. He says, "And...I may not have told them otherwise."
Danny freezes. Steve smiles at him a little more widely and waits, waits, patient like he could stare at Danny all day, until he finally either says something or rabbits.
For a second, Danny's not sure which way he's going to go, which way he wants to go. There's danger either way, he thinks, there are no safe choices left, no easy outs, no escape that doesn't leave them both a little bit wounded.
So Danny takes a slow, deep breath and says, "Do you know a good orthodontist?" He points at his jaw. "Because I have picked up this habit of grinding my teeth, lately, who knows why, right? I mean, could not have anything to do with my partner, who is nominally my boss and sort of my team leader and apparently kind of my jealous wife, cockblocking me across the islands and causing untold amounts of sexual frustration--"
"Yeah, he's no specialist, but I know a guy who'd be willing to help you with that," Steve says, easy and confident, and then he's on the move. He's slouching across his office, all slinky and smooth, a nuisance, a menace, a blight on Danny's life, and also stupidly, stupidly hot. Danny finally gives himself permission to notice it, to see Steve, every inch from his messy hair to his junked up boots, with the broad shoulders, narrow hips, strong thighs in between, with his hot, confident eyes and that bullshit smile.
This is the thing that Steve was going to do today, Danny realizes. The thing he dressed for, the thing he smirked for, the thing he reassured Jimmy Hale of over Danny's shoulder. This.
And it doesn't make sense, because Danny didn't even know he was waiting for it, that he was looking for it, but he thinks, finally. Fucking finally.
Steve stops so close to him that they're practically sharing the space, a tiny amount of square footage in a big, ridiculous world where things like this actually happen. Danny tips his head back to look up at him and Steve meets his gaze, says, "I could give you a name, you want a name right now?"
Danny rolls his eyes. "No, actually, no--not right now--right now, I want you to kiss me," but he's the one who takes the last step forward, who rests a hand on Steve's cheek to urge him down, and kisses him.
~~~
Okay, Danny can admit that he's maybe given Steve some signals that this is where they're going. Possibly his urge to strut and prod and rant has a little bit of something to do with preening, all peacock clamor; he could have been using that to get Steve's attention, to hold Steve's attention.
He doesn't need to kiss Steve to know that it worked. To feel on some gut-deep level that it was worth the effort. Steve's been focused on him since the day they met, since he surprised Steve by not backing down from him, since Steve saw him standing there instead of an easily intimidated, too stupid for his own good haole cop.
Danny might have thought that kissing him would feel the same way, be powered by the same driving urgency, if he'd let himself think about it instead of just doing it. Action and reaction, friction and spark and showing off; look at me.
It goes down too easy for that, though. Like they can take a break from the constant push and pull between them for this, like they don't need to fight each other on it. Danny's got Steve's attention, the laser focus of it, can feel it in the slide of Steve's fingers through his hair, the way he cups the back of Danny's head, and the way Steve crowds against him. But holding it is nothing, no effort at all; it's just the slick slide of their tongues together, a catch of teeth against Steve's upper lip, the flex and tension of Steve's muscles under his palms.
Heat sparks low in Danny's belly, has him groaning and pushing his hips into Steve's in slow, restless pulses; Steve spreads his thighs and meets him thrust for thrust, steady and hard. It's easy, so easy, and it's so goddamned hot that it whites out Danny's brain a little bit, turns him into a goof, the kind of goof who smiles and pants and shivers just from kissing.
"Don't take Judy Lui out again," Steve says, pulling back after a long while. Danny's hands have slid down his back to settle against the curve of his ass, and Danny's lips feel hot and swollen from the press of Steve's against them. He licks them. Steve breathes words softly against his cheek. "Take me out. I'll even go to Duke's if you wanna go to Duke's--just don't. Don't, okay?"
Danny stares at the hollow of Steve's throat, the tan skin and shadow of stubble, the pulse beating there. Steve's heart is racing.
"No," he says, and he looks up when Steve swallows hard, holds on when Steve tries to step away. "You take me to Duke's. You're taking me out, Commander, and you're buying me dinner, and a beer, and then maybe a couple more beers, and then you're going to take me home."
Steve stares down at him, expressionless SEAL face on, uncertainty lurking underneath it.
"You," Danny says, and he twists one hand in the belt loops of Steve's jeans, pokes him in the chest with two fingers of the other hand. "Your stupid caveman antics have been keeping me from getting laid and you may not have noticed but they also pissed me off today, real bad, so you owe me. You owe me, okay, and you know I'm damn well going to collect. You knew that all along, right? Don't even give me that stupid look, I know you knew--"
"I didn't know, actually." Steve captures Danny's poking hand, folds it into his. He isn't slouching anymore so much as he's curling into Danny, curling around him, holding onto him. He's starting to grin again, just a little. "I wasn't sure. I could have been reading you wrong."
Danny scoffs at him. "Oh, you are such a shitty liar. You're the worst liar I have ever met, and I knew a toddler who once tried to tell me she didn't eat the pudding while she was wearing half of it all over her little face. You knew I was a sure thing from--from when?"
"Yeah, okay, I knew--I had you from hello," Steve says, grinning all out now, stupid and delighted with it. Danny smacks him on the back with the palm of his hand, half-laughing, saying, "You're a cocky bastard. You're the worst, you don't even know," until Steve bends down and Danny reaches up and they're kissing again, wet and messy now; kissing like they're making claims, or maybe just finally acknowledging them.