But World Enough, and Time - NC-17 - Steve/Kono
Part II
PART TWO
Life in the Moment
June 15th, 2004: Steve is 28, Kono is 21
"You looking for a prime board? You want McGarrett, over there. Look for the tent with the yellow patch, he's probably still there, this time of day."
Steve recognises Mamo's voice and silently curses the old guy under his breath. He's either still drunk or just starting to get hungover, and he's not sure which one it is, and either way that means it's way too early in the morning to deal with what's likely to be some idiot who wouldn't know a good surf board if it cracked his skull open. Still, he owes Mamo more than he'll ever be able to repay in three lifetimes, and even if it doesn't cost much to live out here in the tent city, he still needs to be able to feed and clothe himself, and the only way to do that is to sell surfboards in the odd times that he's not being jerked around from decade to decade. He crawls out from under his blankets, runs his fingers through his hair in a half-hearted attempt to make it look a little less like he's trying to sleep off a bender, shoves back the flap of his tent and finds himself squinting painfully at what might very well be the most beautiful woman he has ever seen in his whole life.
The woman is younger than he, a saffron sarong wrapped about her hips, her yellow bikini top outlined starkly against naturally dark skin made even darker by days spend in the sun. Her hair is loose about her shoulders, wind-swept and slightly briny from the ocean, and it's falling forward into her face now as she bends forward to drop a very broken surfboard onto the sand at his feet.
"Some lolo smashed my board," she starts, not looking at him just yet. "Mamo tells me that you're the best―oh." Her face lights up as though someone has told her that it's Christmas and her birthday all rolled into one, and Steve finds himself blushing hotly under her stare. "Oh my God, it's you!"
He can do nothing but stare at her, because obviously this vision before him has met him before, seems to know him intimately, going by the way she throws her arms around him and hugs him so hard she threatens to cut off all his air, murmuring his name reverently under her breath. What little was left this morning of his rational thought processes has long since vanished, and when she pulls away he finds himself still gawking, as though he's a teenager meeting his favourite movie star for the first time, utterly tongue-tied. She's laughing now, brown eyes dancing with merriment.
"You told me this would happen."
He takes a breath, tries to marshall his thoughts.
"Do I know you?"
"Not yet," she says. "But I've known you my entire life."
He's met her before, then. Or, rather, sometimes in the future he travels back to meet her, and the whole thing is already starting to make his head hurt. "I'm sorry, I know this is awkward and weird, but―you understand why I've... why I don't―"
"Oh, yes. I mean, I know why," she hastens to reassure him, her tone dropping to conspiratorial levels. She's still grinning like a kid at Christmas. "God, you look so much younger than I remember. But then, you've always been older when you visited, and I suppose when I was really little you might have been younger but all grown-ups look impossibly old when you're a kid. Oh, Steve, I'm confusing the hell out of you, aren't I?" she says, looking unrepentant and so beautiful that he's tempted to pinch himself to make sure he's not really dreaming.
He brings up a hand to rub at the back of his neck. "No more than I usually am, I guess. This is going to sound awful, but... I don't even know your name."
"My name is Kono Kalakaua. Today is my twenty-first birthday, and I want you to take me to dinner."
~*~
June 15th, 2004: Steve is 28, Kono is 21
It's the strangest thing. She's staring at Steve, younger than she's ever seen him and looking tired and hungover but wearing clothes he chose himself, and he's staring back at her without a trace of recognition in his eyes. She's looking at the man with whom she's been in love for nearly six years now, and he doesn't have a clue who she is, though she knows with the certainty of one who's already lived through some of it, that this will change soon enough.
She invites him to dinner, sets a date at Lucy's and hopes she hasn't frightened him away. This man is not the Steve she knows, though he will be someday. This man, though he's older than she is―28, he'd answered when she remembered to ask―is young and unsure, like a skittish horse that needs gentle but firm handling.
"Be gentle, Kono," he begged her jokingly the last time she saw him. "Be gentle with me, because I won't have the first notion of how to handle you."
It had been a joke, but she's beginning to think there might be some truth to it, too. There was too much, too fast, and she thinks that she may have frightened him. She perches carefully on her chair in the courtyard of Lucy's Grill 'n' Bar and stares at the people around her who are already well into their second drink of the evening and just starting to get a little louder as the alcohol hits their systems. Inside the noise is already growing to levels that will make conversation impossible, which is why she chose a table in the courtyard and even deliberately chose one that's a little out of the way, because she's pretty sure that anything too close to the bustle and press of people will make Steve freak out and flee for the hills. The thought makes her smile, even though it's already five minutes past the time that he said that he would meet her here. He seemed nervous this morning, and she knows by now that stress is one of his worst triggers, that might even now be visiting her younger self in their secluded little cove, or be shivering naked in someone's back yard five years in the future. He could be anywhere but here, and she wipes suddenly sweaty palms on the hem of the cream-coloured dress she wore tonight to impress him.
She's about to give up and try again another day when he appears in the doorway to the courtyard, dressed in dark jeans and a blue shirt and sky blue tie, hair washed and combed, completely clean-shaven. He cleans up nice, is her first thought. It's rare that she sees him at his best: usually he lands right in the water by the beach, and coughing up seawater is not exactly conducive to looking calm and composed. He looks nervous now, scanning the area anxiously, looking for her. He has a bouquet of flowers clutched so tightly that the knuckles of his left hand are slowly turning white. He relaxes a fraction when he sees her, threads his way through the tables and stops by her chair.
"These are for you," he says, thrusting the bouquet at her, and she feels her face break into a beaming smile.
"You've never brought me flowers before."
He clears his throat. "I, uh, wouldn't have been able to, before. I mean, I can't take―"
"―Anything with you," she completes his sentence, nodding her head. "I know. I never expected flowers, either, or anything else. It's just a lovely surprise. They're beautiful," she adds, tracing a finger over the delicate petals of an orchid. There are bougainvilleas in the bouquet as well, and a scattering of pincushion proteas. "Thank you."
He slides into the chair across from her, immediately reaches for the water glass and drains it. There are beads of sweat forming along his hairline, and she takes pity on him.
"You don't have to be nervous," she says, leaning across the table and placing a hand on his wrist. She presses against his pulse point with her thumb, feels his heart beat racing just beneath the skin.
"No, it's not―it's just... here you are," he says, smiling a little incredulously, "and―and I can tell that you're going to be this huge part of my future, and you're probably going to be the best thing that's ever happened to me, but I don't know anything about you. I want you to tell me everything."
She doesn't know where to begin, but she's saved by the arrival of the waiter to take their orders. By the time their drinks have arrived they're both grinning at each other now, like they can't help it, and she wants to bury her face in the bouquet of flowers while simultaneously climbing right into his lap and holding onto him and never letting go now that she's got him back. She settles instead for pulling out her little red notebook and sliding it across the table.
"I brought this for you. It's all the times we met before today."
He opens the notebook with a look of reverence on his face that might not be misplaced if she's just handed him the first ever copy of the Gutenberg Bible. "This is my handwriting."
"You wrote it. The first time we met at our beach you asked me to bring this to you the next time, and you wrote down all the times that you were going to come."
"Our beach?" Steve asks, tracing a finger down along each page, registering each date as though it's the best news he's had in his entire life.
Kono finds herself blushing a bit. "Oh, it's not really our beach. It's just what I called it in my head when I was little and it kind of stuck. It's just this tiny little inlet, a strip of beach that's surrounded by trees near my parents' house in La'ie Point. I used to go there when my older cousins ditched me to go surfing, and one day I was playing on the beach and suddenly there you were, in the water."
"Naked as a jaybird and probably puking."
"Naked, yeah, but that first time you weren't sick. I loaned you my beach towel and you told me you were from the future, and we talked for a few minutes and then you disappeared like something from a movie. It felt like magic to me," she confesses. "After that, I sort of took it for granted that this magical guy was going to appear and disappear on the beach near my house all the time."
"So what did we do together?" he seems fascinated. It occurs to her for the first time that he may never have met anyone from his future before, and she's tempted to refuse to say anything just so he'll have a taste of the frustration she's experienced all these years. He's looking at her with this strange mixture of hope and terror, though, and she doesn't have the heart to deny him. Not when she's waited to talk to him properly for so many years.
She tilts her head in a noncommittal gesture. "Lots of things. It depended a lot on my age―I think you were really worried about warping me," she tells him, enjoying the way he ducks his head and blushes hard. "The first day we really spent any time together you taught me all about beach combing, and we found a tiger cowrie, which I still keep in a jar on my desk at home. You helped me with my homework and we went swimming a lot, and... sometimes you told me about yourself. Bit and pieces of how the time travel worked, or didn't work. You visited a lot toward the end of the 2000s," she says, and she knows her tone is wistful, in spite of her attempt to keep it neutral.
He looks a little stricken. "I'm sorry. It's not fair to put that on a kid."
"Don't be sorry. I was just sad because I could tell something was bothering you and I couldn't fix it, return the favour, you know? You taught me so much... When I was eight I brought my first surf board to you because I couldn't figure out how to balance properly, and you taught me everything you knew."
He looks at her appraisingly. "I bet you got better than me in no time."
"You bet. I was all set to become a pro," she tries not to let herself be bitter. She's long since moved past that disappointment, or so she hopes, "but I blew out my knee when I was eighteen. It was a stupid accident―some newbie dropped in on my wave and rammed his board right into my knee. Ripped all the ligaments and tendons and tore my ACL all to shreds."
"I'm so sorry." His hand is on hers now, surprisingly warm, but the calluses are as familiar to her now as they were three years ago. Now that she knows what he does for a living, she understands why they're there.
"It's okay. It's been three years, and I'm going to be a cop now, like my cousin Chin. I got accepted to the Academy, and I start in a few weeks. Tonight is a double celebration."
He starts at that, eyes growing wide. "Oh my God. You must have had other plans tonight? I forgot that―I mean, I didn't know you―"
"Steve, relax," she laughs. "I cancelled with my friends. We'll make it up some other time. I know it's hard for you to believe, but I've been looking forward to this day for nearly three years, and I wasn't about to let anything get in the way of that."
~*~
June 15th, 2004: Steve is 28, Kono is 21
"So I was thinking we should take this somewhere more private," Kono says, watching him hungrily over the lip of her glass.
For the first time in his life Steve finds himself hesitating as a beautiful woman tries to invite herself over to spend the night. This isn't like any of the other random hook-ups he's had over the years, and he hasn't had nearly enough to drink to quiet the butterflies in his stomach. He wipes suddenly clammy hands on his pants, clears his throat.
"Um, I'm not exactly... used to having company at my place."
She grins wickedly. "I live with my very traditional parents in my old bedroom with nothing but a single bed and all my childhood toys. I've seen your tent, and I don't care about that, if that's what you're worried about."
They end up walking slowly along the beach, stop after about three minutes so that Kono can kick off her entirely impractical shoes and walk barefoot in the sand. He makes her wait outside his tent for a minute so he can at least make the bed―if you can call an air mattress with semi-clean sheets sitting atop a makeshift wooden frame a bed―and shove his dirty laundry into the bag it should have been in to begin with. When he pokes his head out through the tent flaps she's grinning at him, and he blushes.
"You're a lot less self-possessed," she tells him as though the very notion fills her with glee. She takes him by the shirt and pushes him backward, right back into his tent. The backs of his calves hit the bed and he falls back awkwardly, but she doesn't miss a beat, clambering onto his lap and straddling his thighs. Her legs are well-muscled, thighs pressing warmly against him, and if he wasn't hard before he definitely is now, dick straining against the zipper of his cargoes.
"Poor Steve," she laughs, licking her way up his neck.
"Poor Steve?" He's the luckiest man in the universe, if only he could get his brain kick-started again. He's overwhelmed, but he's never been this happy in his life to be entirely out of his depth, not if it means he gets to have this bright, beautiful woman all over him as though he's the only thing she's ever wanted in her entire life.
"I keep dropping all these anvils on you, you must feel like Wile E. Coyote," she moves around to nibble at his bottom lip, "but you have no idea, no idea how long I've been waiting for this. I've been waiting for years to know more than your first name and the fact that you have a weirdly profound knowledge of Hawaiian seashells and that your handwriting is really nice.
"You like my handwriting?" It's really hard to focus with her thrusting her hips against him.
"Men's handwriting is notoriously ugly, whereas yours isn't. I've always wanted to know your last name, Mr. McGarrett, and what you do for a living and where you live."
He's known her for all of eight hours, but the first kiss is familiar and easy, one born of long acquaintance. "Now you know," he says a little breathlessly. "Disappointed?"
"Never. It's not what I expected, but then if you'd turned out to be a genie who lived inside a lamp I wouldn't have been altogether surprised, either."
"Incredible cosmic power, itty-bitty living space," he agrees, biting back a groan as her hands move down to undo the top button of his pants, and she laughs. She seems to find everything he says a source of amusement, which he doesn't know to take as an insult or a compliment. "It's just―it's easier, living here."
"You don't have to explain why you disappear sometimes, or why sometimes you end up naked and far away from your tent?" she guesses shrewdly, tugging at his shirt until he lifts his arms, then runs both her hands down his stomach, tracing the outline of his abs. "Fuck, you're even hotter now than three years ago, and I didn't think that was possible. You're so... young."
"So I take it you don't want to take this slowly? You know, build the anticipation, or..." he trails off.
"Fuck, no. You may have just met me, but I've been anticipating this for years, and if you don't do something about that right this minute, I may just have to hurt you, and not in a way you'd enjoy."
Steve thanks every god he can think of that the dress she's wearing isn't complicated, just a couple of clasps in the back that he's careful not to catch in her hair. She lets him slide the straps over her shoulders and the whole garment slithers to the ground, revealing a cream-coloured bra and panties that he makes very short work of before pulling her onto the bed and rolling them both over until he's on top of her. There's nothing submissive in her posture, though―everything about her suggests that she knows exactly what she's doing, and more importantly that she knows everything he's doing, too, and the thought is enough to make his dick throb almost painfully. If she keeps on that way, it's going to be a damned short night, he thinks.
"Stop thinking," she props herself up onto her elbows, spreading her knees a little bit in obvious invitation, and that takes away the last of his hesitation.
He captures her mouth in a kiss, licking away the remnants of salt from her drink, moves to kiss and lick and nip his way down her neck and toward her breasts, cupping one of them in his hand and enjoying the way her nipple hardens to a bud under the touch of his fingers. She's incredibly responsive, already shifting under him, breath coming faster, and she digs her fingers into his hair and pushes, urging him lower.
"This what you want?" he asks, moving lower, mouthing at her stomach, and she curses under her breath. She tastes of salt and apricot soap, and she gasps and swears a lot more loudly when he applies his tongue to her clit.
"Fuck! God, you're good at this..."
He's not exactly in a position to say anything back, so he contents himself with letting his actions speak more loudly than he could anyway, licking and sucking until she's writhing on the bed, pulling on his hair so hard it's almost painful, and his mouth and chin are sopping wet with her juices and his own saliva. Her skin is buttery soft under his fingertips, yielding under his grip, and he worries that he might bruise her, but she's too focused on his mouth to appear to care much about that. He speeds up a little when the movement of her hips becomes just a little more urgent, a little more desperate, can feel the change in her breathing when he takes one hand off her thigh in order to add a finger, then two, to what he's doing. She comes with a hoarse yell, head thrown back against the mattress, hips coming off the bed entirely, and a moment later she's pulling at him insistently until he moves up again to kiss her. She moans happily into the kiss, apparently enjoying her own taste in his mouth, and Steve is pretty sure he's never heard anything hotter in his life.
"Fuck me," she says in his ear, and promptly shoves him onto his back. She's still so wet that she's dripping, thighs sticky against his stomach, and for what feels like a really long time he can't marshal his thoughts enough to do anything except lie there and stare at her. "C'mon, where are your condoms?"
They're in a box right next to his bed, for which he has never been more grateful in his entire life. She tears open the packet with her teeth, uses her mouth to roll it down over his cock with an ease that speaks of long practice, and for a split-second he's incredibly, overwhelmingly jealous of all the men who've had the privilege of knowing Kono before him, right up until she looks up at him with half-lidded eyes that are so dark they look like pools of ink in her face, and licks her lips.
"Enjoying the fruits of your teachings?" she asks teasingly, and he realises with a rush that makes him feel positively dizzy that this, this is his, that there isn't anyone else of consequence, that he's always had her, even when he didn't know that he did, and then all logical thought is driven right from his mind as she slides down smoothly on his dick without a moment's hesitation.
It's almost too much, and Steve has to distract himself by letting his hands travel up her body, fingers pressing against her ribcage, exploring her breasts, the jut of her hipbones as she moves in deep, even thrusts against him, the delicate outline of her clavicles. There is nothing about her that isn't beautiful, not even the litany of curses and encouragement and barely-coherent praise that spills from her lips. She's braced against his shoulders with both hands, urging him on as though they're running behind schedule for something important until she throws her head back and lets him take over, clamping her muscles tightly around his dick and shuddering her way through another orgasm. Steve manages to hang on just long enough, follows her over the edge seconds later, only to have her collapse on top of him with a breathless, satisfied-sounding laugh.
"Wow," he manages after a moment, trying to disentangle himself from her so he can at least dispose of the condom in the small plastic bag he keeps for garbage.
"Not bad," she agrees, propping her head up on one hand. He's almost sure she's teasing.
"Count yourself lucky. I'm amazed I didn't come in about thirty seconds," he lies back down on the bed next to her, slides a hand up over her hip and lets it rest at her waist.
"I'll take that as a compliment," she curls in closer, pressing an ear to his chest.
He's not used to having anyone stay in his tent, but she obviously has no intention of leaving, and he finds that he doesn't really want to let her go, either. He pulls the sheet up to cover them both, lies back down with his head pillowed on his arm, watches the rise and fall of her breasts as her breath evens out into sleep almost immediately. There are still a thousand questions he wants to ask, but they'll keep until morning, he tells himself.
After all, now he has the rest of their lives together to look forward to.
~*~
September 15th, 2004: Steve is 29, Kono is 21
"You sure this is a good idea?" Steve asks, probably for the eleventh or twelfth time this evening.
He's fidgeting, sweating in his second-best shirt. He spent about an hour trying to figure out if he should dress up or dress down, if he should go against everything the island stands for and maybe wear a tie, or if that would just get him laughed at. He settled on not wearing a tie, mostly because he doesn't own one and doesn't know from whom he might borrow one that doesn't look ridiculous.
"Relax," Kono tells him. "My friends want to meet you. You look fine, stop pulling at your collar like you're suffocating. Your shirt isn't even done up all the way."
He pulls at the cuffs, tries not to fidget as she drives easily along the Honolulu streets, one hand draped casually over the steering wheel. "What if they hate me?"
"They won't hate you."
"I'm not good with people, Kono. I make surfboards for a living."
"So long as you don't sell drugs, you're fine. My cousin Chin would have to arrest you otherwise."
He shakes his head tugs at his cuffs again, feels his stomach lurch a little bit when she takes a corner a little too fast for his liking. "Oh, God," he mutters, softly enough that he hopes she hasn't heard him, but no such luck.
"I can't believe you're freaking out about meeting my friends. You'll like Chin and Malia, don't be a baby, and the rest don't matter at all. It's just that they've all been dying to meet you for, like, a month and more. They all want to meet the guy I've been waiting for all my life."
His head jerks up at that. "What? You didn't―"
"No, I didn't tell them," she assures him. "They're just not idiots."
As it turns out, she's right. Steve gets introduced to a roomful of people, all of whom seem to know Kono to varying degrees. Most of them are her friends from the Academy, but a handful are introduced as cousins and old friends from school. Utterly overwhelmed by the sudden influx of people, Steve backs up hurriedly until he hits a wall, plasters what he hopes is a sincere-looking smile on his face while he racks his brain in order to make small talk with all these people he doesn't know. Eventually he manages to escape onto a balcony while Kono moves easily from person to person, chatting and smiling and generally looking like a vision in a blue and white dress. He licks his lips, tries to take some deep breaths so he doesn't accidentally vanish and leave all his clothes behind, because that would just be the perfect way to meet everybody Kono knows for the first time.
The glass door behind him slides open, and a slim man only an inch or two shorter than him slips out to stand on the balcony next to him. He's dressed in well-fitted jeans and a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and exudes an air of quiet confidence. Steve likes him already. "Air's fresher out here, isn't it?" he asks, and Steve nods.
"Chin Ho Kelly. You probably don't remember after having all those names thrown at you in there."
Steve knows the name, though. "Kukui High School. You held all the football records there."
Chin is obviously pleased to be recognised. "I'm also Kono's cousin. As I recall, you were poised to beat all of my old records," he reaches out to shake Steve's hand. "I used to go watch all your games with your father. He was my training officer, you know."
"I didn't know that, no. I was still a kid, and he didn't talk much about work back then." Not ever, he amends silently, but Chin doesn't need to know that. That's between Steve and his father, and no one else.
"Yeah. I'm sorry about your mother. It was a bad time, a terrible thing," Chin says, and Steve has seen enough lies in his life to know that the sympathy in his eyes is genuine. He shrugs, uncomfortable.
"It was a long time ago, now."
"I suppose it was. How do you know Kono, anyway?"
It's a loaded question. Steve doesn't know Kono, not really, but he will, and they're going to know each other all their lives. He drums his fingers on the balcony railing, stares out into the night. Behind them, the music inside begins to swell to some dance beat or other, and the smell of roasting pork wafts through the open door.
"I make surf boards. Custom designs. Hers got broken a couple of months ago, and someone directed her to me. I made her a new one," he says simply, as though he and Kono hadn't spent the night together long before he considered making her a new surfboard. "She's a great surfer."
Chin nods as though that makes perfect sense. "She was on the pro circuit for a couple of years, you know, before she blew out her knee. I thought you might have met her then, if you were in the business already. She started young, but she had a real promising career."
"No, I was... well, I only work as much as I have to to keep body and soul together," Steve confesses hesitantly, unsure what Chin will make of that.
It makes him sound like a ne'er-do-well, the type of man Kono would do well to steer away from. The kind of guy who spends all day surfing or doing drugs and only makes a board every so often just so he won't starve to death. There's no explaining, of course, that he can't manage to make more than a few boards at any given time because he never knows for how long he'll be gone, or when he'll be gone at all. He glances up to find Chin looking at him speculatively, but obviously reserving judgement for now.
"Well, whatever it is, Kono is clearly crazy about you. I will take this moment to point out that I do have a weapon that I am entirely licensed to use."
"Is this the hurt-her-and-I'll-kill-you speech?"
Chin smiles thinly. "Actually, it's the hurt-her-and-I'll-wait-until-she-maims-you-before-I-kill-you speech. Kono can take care of herself, but that doesn't mean I won't be there to stomp on your remains when she's done with you."
"Got it," Steve nods. He doesn't know that in six hours everything between him and Chin is going to change. Right now it seems easy enough to promise that he won't deliberately try to hurt Kono, which he figures is the best anyone can do.
Chin is staring at him, though. "Are you sure we've never met? I could have sworn I've seen you before somewhere."
It's possible, of course. Chin is a police officer, and Steve has landed on the wrong side of the law often enough. More often than not he's been naked and puking, and in one memorable case he had been already moving wrong and fell over when he landed, skinning both knees and his palms on the carpet of some apartment hallway and cracking his skull sharply against the wall. He doesn't think Chin was the arresting officer in any of those cases, but some of his memories are already a little hazy because he's usually too desperate to get away from whomever's trying to get their hands on him.
"I don't think so."
Chin shrugs. "Whatever you say, brah. It was just a feeling. Sometimes they're wrong, you know?"
"I guess. I get the feeling―forgive the pun―that your feelings are usually pretty accurate."
"Usually they are, but I can't have a 100 percent success rate. You want a drink? I was going to get myself a Longboard, and you look like you could use one, to be honest."
Steve manages a wry grin. "I'm not really all that good with large groups of people."
"I figured. Tell you what―come back inside, and Kono and I will run interference a little for you, make sure no one pins you in a corner and grills you for every single detail about your life. Sound good?"
The very idea of going back in among the press of people is enough to make Steve's stomach twist itself into knots, but he's pretty sure it would be really rude to refuse to mingle at all. "Yeah, okay."
To his relief, Kono spots him the moment he steps back through the door, and moves over to link their arms together. "You freaking out?" she asks him, a smile playing on her lips.
He swallows, throat suddenly dry again. "A little," he admits, and she gives him a reassuring nudge in the ribs.
"It's kind of fun seeing you like this. In the past you were always so self-possessed."
"It's all an act," he assures her. "I don't like people. I just like you."
"Aw, Steve, that's so sweet," she gets up on her tiptoes to kiss him, quickly and chastely, on the lips. "Bear with me. We'll be out of here soon, and I promise that I will make every minute you spent here worth your while." Her grin is lascivious, and he can't help but smile back.
"In that case, I will suffer very stoically for you."
~*~
September 16th, 2004: Steve is 34
The second time Chin meets Steve is not the second time Steve meets Chin, though it's been not quite eight hours after they both met for the first time. Steve doesn't usually bother trying to explain how this works to most people because their eyes glaze over or they get this tense, pained look on their faces, and most of the time everyone just ends up frustrated.
This time Steve is in the middle of delivering the most efficiently brutal beating he can manage to a very large guy who's only slightly less muscular than he, whose name he doesn't even know. This is survival, though, and if that means this guy needs to go down with his skull caved in, well, Steve is okay with that. Especially since the guy thought Steve would be an easy target for violence. It'll serve him right, teach him not to judge a book by its cover. Steve has him down on the ground now, trying in vain to curl into a ball while Steve aims kick after vicious kick right at the guy's kidneys. When he hears Chin voice calling out he doesn't stop, but instead tries to stomp on the guy's neck, missing by a bare inch or so.
"Hey, Steve, hold up!"
Chin is running down the alleyway toward him, though he's not going all-out. Steve knows just how fast Chin can run when he's properly motivated, and right now he's not even close to his top speed. Steve supposes he should be glad that Chin is off-duty and had drinks with him and Kono at that party earlier this evening, because that means he doesn't have his service weapon with him. He's fairly sure Chin wouldn't shoot him, but he's not really willing to test his luck right now. After all, right now he and Chin aren't friends yet. Chin comes to an abrupt halt maybe two feet away, and shoves his hands into his pockets.
"Howzit, brah?" he asks conversationally, his tone deceptively nonchalant. "You want to tell me what you think you're doing, here?"
Steve aims another kick at the guy's head. "What I think I'm doing is beating the living crap out of this homophobic asshole who thought that it would be a good idea to get his buddies to help beat me up first."
Chin catches his arm and hauls on it, pulling Steve back. For all that he's a little shorter than Steve he's solidly built, all compact muscle, and he's a lot stronger than most people give him credit for. Steve knows this because he's known Chin for five years now, and considers him one of his best friends. Chin doesn't know that, however.
"All right, brah, I think he's done. You," he says to the guy, who's still lying prone on the ground and moaning and sobbing a little under his breath. "You're going to do us both a favour and make yourself scarce, yeah?"
"The guy's a fucking loon!" is the only response he gets. Chin puts out an arm to keep Steve from lunging at him again, then shrugs.
"Here's the thing. It sounds to me like you are a righteous asshole, yeah? Beating up on homosexuals makes you feel like a big man?" he asks, clearly not requiring an answer. "Your story isn't going to go over so well at HPD, my friend. You try telling them you and your friends tried to beat up a guy just because he was dressed funny, and that he kicked your ass for it and now you want to press charges? See if you don't end up in lock-up overnight after a story like that. So, like I said, you do us both a favour, and you get the fuck out of here and don't come back!"
The guy scrambles to his feet, left eye already swelling shut from where he caught Steve's elbow with it early in the game, and heeds Chin's advice. Steve is moving away by then, gently extricating his arm from Chin's grasp, but if Steve thought he was going to get away without being questioned, then he was labouring under a delusion. Chin is nobody's fool, and after only a couple of years on the force he's one of HPD's rising stars. Besides, Steve already knows how this night is supposed to play out, more or less, even though he's only heard the story second-hand.
"Hey, McGarrett, where do you think you're going?" Chin catches up to him in two graceful steps. "You know, I'm not usually one to judge the way anyone chooses to dress, but..." he gestures to Steve's outfit. "Forgive me, this isn't really, you, brah. Besides, I can't help but note this isn't at all what you were wearing earlier tonight. You want to tell me what's going on, here?"
Steve has been doing this long enough that he's able to figure out just when it is. Six hours ago, his 29-year-old self was meeting Chin for the first time, which is going to make this whole situation a whole lot more awkward if he sticks around. So he keeps walking, and barely spares a glance at the too-small jeans shorts and cut off tank top he's wearing. It's off-white, now with added bloodstains. "It's the only set of clothes I could get my hands on in this neighbourhood."
"What happened to the other ones? Whoa, hey," Chin exclaims, his composure finally rattled as Steve tests the handle of the back door to a shop and lets himself in with one good shove that serves to break the flimsy lock keeping him out. "You're adding breaking and entering to tonight's list of aggravated assault and what looks like clothing theft? You do realise I'm a cop, right? I should be arresting you on the spot. Or at least I should be making sure you never come near my cousin again."
Steve looks back over his shoulder in time to see Chin standing with his arms folded across his chest, feet spread a little, clearly waiting for Steve to give him a reason to break him apart with his bare hands. He grins. "Take it easy, Chin."
Chin purses his lips. "I'll be more inclined to take it easy if you can come up with a really good explanation for this. You have one minute, after which I will subdue you, cuff you with whatever materials I can find to hand, and dragging you down to headquarters for questioning. You feel me, brah?"
"Yeah, okay, I got it," Steve tells him, raising both hands in a gesture of surrender. "Here's the deal. I'm going to explain this to you because one day we're going to be really good friends and we're going to look back on this and laugh. I'm a time traveler. I'm not the same version of me you met earlier today, I'm actually about five years older than that. If you look closer, you'll be able to tell that my hair is longer and that I have a scar I didn't have before on my arm. You won't believe me right now, but you will in a couple of minutes. Hang on," he holds up a hand to forestall whatever Chin's about to say. "I swear, it's true. But when I travel I can't take anything with me, including clothes. So I have to find whatever I can, and most of the time that means stealing clothes and breaking into places so I'm not caught outside stark naked. And sometimes it means that I attract unwanted attention, the cops or maybe some asshole who thinks it's his God-given right to beat on faggots because they don't dress the way he likes. So yeah, I've done almost everything in the books: I've stolen, I've broken into places, I've been guilty of public indecency more times than I can count, and I've mugged people on occasion to take some of their clothes and enough money to get me through the time I'm stuck until I can get back. Clear enough for you?"
Chin doesn't move, arms still folded over his chest. "You realise how crazy that sounds, right?"
"Every single word. But you should ask Kono, she'll tell you I'm not crazy."
"Okay, no. You're in the middle of committing a felony, and what you're doing is talking delusion, or maybe even psychosis. You on any kind of medication, Steve? Anything I should let the guys down at HQ know about? Because I'm going to take you in, now. You're not going anywhere near Kono again, either. She doesn't need this sort of bullshit in her life. Plenty of good, stable men who are actually worth her time out there."
Steve shakes his head. "You won't take me in."
"How's that, my friend?"
Steve grins at him. "Because I'm going now. I'll see you later, Chin."
And he's gone.
~*~
September 16th, 2004: Steve is 29, Kono is 21
If she didn't know any better, Kono would say she was an idiot for standing outside on her parents' lanai, waiting for her cousin to come find her. But Steve told her this would happen, a long time ago, when she was younger and he was older, and she'd rather not have this conversation inside her parents' house. She wonders just how long it's going to take, and is in the process of checking her watch for the fourth time when she hears the tell-tale sound of Chin's motorcycle coming up along the street. He dismounts, comes striding up the path, and stops short when he sees her standing there.
"What are you doing here?" he asks, obviously discomfitted.
She grins. "I live here, Chin. Had you forgotten? Or were you here to see Mama and Papa at five o'clock in the morning?"
He's clearly rattled, and she shouldn't be so amused, but she resigns herself to the thought that she's probably a really bad person at heart. "No," he sputters. "I mean, I thought you'd be inside. Asleep," he adds, almost accusingly, as though well-bred young women shouldn't be up outside waiting for their cousins at all hours of the night. "I just saw Steve."
She nods. "Only Steve just dropped me off here about two hours ago and then went home."
"Right. He beat a guy half to death before I stopped him."
She can't find it in herself to be surprised. "Did he say why?"
Chin looks a little uncomfortable. "It sounds like the guy brought it on himself. Steve was, I don't know, dressed like he'd fit in really well at Fusion Waikiki." Kono snorts at that in spite of herself―poor Steve―before Chin completes his sentence, "and this guy and a bunch of his friends decided to try to rough him up. And then he gives me this whole story about time travel, and tells me that you already know all about it, and just when I'm about to improvise some handcuffs because your boyfriend is clearly out of his mind―"
"He disappeared into thin air," Kono finishes for him. "Yeah, he does that." Chin just stands there looking stunned, and so she takes pity on him. "Come in, I'll make some tea. I'll explain everything."
~*~
June 24th, 2005: Steve is 34 and 29, Kono is 21
Kono is in the middle of a kata, silhouetted starkly against the rising sun on the beach. Steve loves to watch her in the early morning when it's just the two of them like this. He's never practiced a martial art in his life―his fights are always quick and rough and dirty, and have nothing of the simple elegance of what Kono is doing now. It doesn't make her any less deadly, in fact he's pretty sure that in a fair fight she could easily take him out these days. He's entirely self-taught, relies on his size, his strength and mostly his speed to get him out of any trouble he gets himself into these days, and when he joined the kapu―another necessary step in ensuring his own survival―they encouraged him to fight to win, to get in and get out fast and with as few casualties as possible on their side. So there's no finesse to what he does, nothing like the precision and skill that's present in every one of Kono's movements. It's a joy to watch her, and he takes advantage of every moment.
She finishes her kata, pauses before beginning the next in order to turn her head and look at him with a quiet smile. Sometimes there are other people on the beach at this hour, early risers or people who just haven't gone to bed yet, but today they're entirely alone with just the murmur of the ocean for company. Steve closes his eyes for a moment, taking in the tang of the salt air, the feel of the breeze on his face, the sand damp and soft under the soles of his bare feet.
He's startled out of his reverie by a sharp cry from Kono. His eyes snap open in time to see her stumble backward in order to avoid stepping on the prone form of a naked man. He scrambles to his feet, sprints over to the edge of the water where the waves are just beginning to creep up along the beach. In a few hours the tide will have come in several more feet, covering all this sand in water, but he's not thinking about that.
It's himself, of course, but older, his face pulled into a rictus of pain. He's curled in the foetal position, both hands clasped over his stomach, blood welling through his fingers. Steve kneels as close to him as he can, puts a hand on his shoulder.
"Get some cloths," he tells Kono, who nods and runs back the way he came, kicking up a spray of sand in her wake. "Hey, Steve," he says gently. "You with me?"
The older version of himself moans quietly, but he uncurls a little and turns his head up, forcing his eyes open. "Steve..." he rasps.
"Yeah, it's me. We're going to take care of you, okay? I just need you to stick with me, here." He pulls at Steve's hand, has to swallow convulsively in order not to throw up when he sees the bullet wound concealed beneath Steve's fingers. "Stay with me, Steve."
Steve shakes his head. "Hurts," he says hoarsely. "Don't worry. It's a good memory. Not staying."
He can hear Kono running back toward them, and he bites his lip. "Okay. Okay, Steve. You just hang onto my hand, okay? I got you, I won't let go."
He laces their fingers together as Steve's eyes close again. There's a lot of blood, blood flowing from the bullet wound in his gut, blood bubbling at the corners of his mouth, pink and frothy. Kono is already folding clean gauze from her first aid kit together, presses them to the injury, but she shoots him a worried look, and he shakes his head.
"Steve," Kono strokes the cheek of the man lying on the ground, the one she doesn't know yet. "Steve, I need you to stay with me, okay?"
Steve opens his eyes again, but they're glazed with pain, not focusing on her at all. "Kono?" His tone is filled with warmth, with love. Steve wonders if that's how he sounds every time he says her name. He watches himself grope for Kono's hand with his free one. "Don't cry, it's okay," the other Steve says, though Kono is dry-eyed. Steve wonders just what the hell is happening in the future, but he knows better than to ask.
"Shh," Kono hushes him. "We're here, Steve, it's okay. Do you want a hospital?"
Steve shakes his head. "I'm sorry. Going now..." he murmurs, and then he's gone again.
Kono gets up a moment later. "I'm going to go change," she says softly, and she can't meet his eyes at all.
Steve finds he can't blame her in the slightest.
~*~
August 15th, 2006: Kono is 22, Steve is 29
"Kono, your boyfriend is here!" Her roommate is rapping on the door.
Jennifer is the latest in a series of roommates, each more disastrous than the last. It makes Kono almost wish she were back home with her parents. Almost, but not quite. At least her roommates don't glare at Steve every time he dares to darken their doorsteps. It's a little difficult to explain to them that, actually, her boyfriend suffers from this condition that no one else in the world seems to have, and that's the reason he lives in a tent and can't hold down a steady job and doesn't have a driver's license.
"What about that nice boy you dated a few years ago?" her mother asked not too long ago. "I saw him the other day. He's cut his hair and he is a marine biologist now. You liked him, didn't you?"
"Ben has a girlfriend, Mama. I'm not going to leave Steve for him."
"When is Steve going to get a job?"
"Steve has a job."
Mama had sniffed disdainfully. "Making surfboards is not a real job. It's a hobby."
Kono sticks out her tongue at her reflection in the mirror, annoyed with herself for having an imaginary argument in her head with her mother, yet again, even if it's only the memory of one this time. She opens the door to her bedroom to find Steve waiting right there outside, practically bouncing on his toes. She smiles, a little bemused.
"You look excited."
He reaches out, takes her by the hand. "Come on," he pulls her into the tiny shared living room and flicks on the TV. "I want you to watch something. It should be on in a few minutes," he says, turning to frown at the clock mounted on the wall. Steve doesn't wear a watch, because they only end up breaking whenever he time travels.
"Steve, what are you―are you sure you should be watching this?" she asks.
Television is one of his triggers, something about the flickering images setting off whatever it is in his brain or his body that makes him travel. Sometimes she wonders if time travel isn't weirdly related to epilepsy in some way, because it seems to have all of the same triggers: flashing lights, stress, a blow to the head. Of course, there's no way to be sure, not without bringing him to a doctor, and he's refused to seek any kind of professional help for all the years she's known him, because the one time he did try to ask for help the medical community tried to treat him for paranoid schizophrenia instead.
He shakes his head. "I'll take the risk, just this once. It's important, and I need you to watch. I just won't look directly at the screen. Look, Kono."
Steve is giddy like a kid being allowed to stay up until midnight on New Year's Eve. She stares at the TV screen, feels her face scrunch up in confusion when all that comes on is the state lotto draw, an attractive girl reading off the numbers as they come up.
"Steve, what―?" she starts, stops as she sees him holding out a piece of paper, offering it to her. "Oh, my God. You didn't."
He nods. "I did."
The girl on the television reads out the fourth number, but Kono doesn't need to listen anymore to know that they're all going to match. "Steve, you... I... we can't. I mean, this is cheating!"
He shrugs. "Says who? There's no rule against time travel, is there?"
"No, but... Why on Earth would you do this?"
Steve seems honestly perplexed by her reaction, by the fact that she's not thrilled beyond words. "I wanted us to have a place. I'm never going to make much money, and you're just starting out, we can't live on your salary. Besides, your parents already think I'm a wastrel."
"Unless you're a surgeon, my parents will always think you're a wastrel," she says automatically. Steve's expression is quickly going from perplexed to outright hurt. He always looks a little like a puppy that's been kicked around and doesn't quite understand why the universe is being cruel, and sometimes it makes her want to shake him. The rest of the time it makes her want to wrap him around in a blanket so the world can't get to him anymore, and she hates that, this time, she's the one that put that look on his face.
"I thought it was kind of a neat trick, but..." he shrugs again. "It doesn't matter. We could win every week for the next year, Kono, and it wouldn't matter. You can cash the winnings and give them to the homeless, if you want. I just... I guess we can wait, find another way to get us an apartment."
She stares at him, utterly overwhelmed. It never occurred to her before that of course Steve can do this. He could have won the lottery every week of his life and just never bothered to do it because he never needed to before. If it was just him, there'd be no need―he did it all for her. He did it so that she wouldn't have to put up with her stupid roommate or be forced to go and stay with him in his tent by the beach, because he believes with every fibre of his being that she deserves better, deserves more, and she doesn't know if she should laugh or cry at the terrible sincerity of it all. Especially since she'd happily live in a tent with him for the rest of their lives.
He pulls the paper back, holds it up between both hands, poised to tear it. "It doesn't matter," he repeats. "Say the word, and it's toast. No one wins this week, and that's that."
She snatches at it, suddenly laughing. "Okay, okay, I take it back! You win, I am weak, oh my God, Steve!" She plucks the ticket from his hands and he grins back, grabs her around the waist and swings her around, threatening the sanctity of all the breakables in the apartment. She shrieks a little. "Put me down!"
Ever obedient, he sets her down, just as Jennifer comes out of her room demanding to know what the fuss is about. Kono turns to grin at her from ear to ear.
"I'm moving out."
~*~
December 20th, 2006: Steve is 30, Kono is 22
Steve is well into his fourth drink by the time Kono comes home from work, laden down with bags full of Christmas decorations. He's already told her in no uncertain terms that he wants nothing to do with the celebrations. He'll help her decorate if she wants, he'll let her drag him to her family's Christmas party, but there is nothing about Christmas that he will ever like.
She drops her bags on the floor and eyes the rapidly dwindling bottle of Ocean Vodka next to him on the floor. He's sitting cross-legged with his back to the wall, still making an attempt at respectability by using a glass, but he's about one or maybe two drinks away from just tilting the bottle directly into his mouth.
"Do you really think you should be drinking this much?"
"Yup."
"You're already drunk."
"Yup."
She sighs. "You said you'd help me with the decorations. Come on, Steve. Christmas comes once a year, it won't kill you to at least pretend to enjoy it, for my sake. I don't get people who hate Christmas," she adds a little petulantly. "I mean, just because it's a little cheesy that makes it terrible? What's wrong with wanting people to be happy and enjoy being with their families?"
Steve pours himself another drink, tosses back the shot of vodka like he's swallowing a mouthful of water after brushing his teeth. "Nothing wrong with that."
"So enlighten me," she challenges. And, okay, maybe he owes her that much, at least. "Steve, stop," she says, trying to slip her hand between him and the bottle."
"Did I ever tell you about my mother?" he asks, and she shakes her head, comes to sit next to him on the floor. She's always avid for trivia about his life. Loves hearing about his coloured past. "Well, once upon a time, I had a mother. Both parents, and a baby sister, and we all lived very happily together in a big house right on a private beach."
She smiles. "Sounds nice. Your sister's name is Mary, right? The one who lives in L.A.?"
"That's the one." Steve takes another drink, and wonders if he's too drunk or too sober to be telling her any of this. "So on the morning of Christmas Eve, when I was eleven years old, my mother took me in the car to go fetch Mary who was playing at a friend's house. It was a Mercury Marquis, a '74."
"What's that?"
"Built like a tank. Look it up at some point, when you're at a computer. Anyway, my parents loved that car. They drove it when they got married. It had a lot of history for them. I never had much appreciation for them, but whatever. I wasn't feeling good, I was in a bad mood, and my mother was singing that Christmas song about 'All I Want For Christmas is My Two Front Teeth,' you know it?"
"Not by heart, but yeah."
"So I was half-lying down in the back, and my head hurt, and I whined at her about singing that stupid song because it made my head hurt. And then there was this weird clicking noise, and the next thing I knew I was watching the car―and my mother inside―go up in a ball of flames."
Kono's eyes are wide. She puts a hand on his knee―it's warm and soft and comes closer to making him lose what little composure he last left than anything he's been doing to himself today. "You time traveled?"
"I time-traveled," he confirms. "I hadn't done it much by then, and... I don't know, all I knew was that I was watching my car, and I could see my mother, just the back of her head, and it veered off the road and just exploded."
"How... why do you think it happened?"
"Stress―pure fear. I think my body did the only trick it could."
Kono keeps looking at his face, her hand tightening its grip on his knee. "So..."
"So. Mom died, and I didn't. I was gone from the scene for precisely eight minutes and twenty-three seconds, but I was also there the whole time. Nobody saw me go or come back. I have no idea where I went, no idea how long I stayed there. It might have been only a couple of seconds, for all I know. I was on the shoulder of the road, naked and in shock, and half of my life was on fire in our family car."
The bottle of vodka is reaching the halfway mark. There's no sign at all that he's going to go anywhere, travel to a happier, safer time than now. It's just him and the vodka and Kono's hand, warm on his thigh.
"Traffic came to a halt. There were cars everywhere, people getting out of their vehicles and yelling. It took ambulances forever to get to us, because of all the cars left in the middle of the street. It was too late, anyway, she was dead the minute the car exploded. One of the paramedics threw up. The cops who got there first were friends of my dad's, and it hit them as hard as it did me, in some ways. We used to have barbecues with them."
"But..." Kono is frowning, and Steve thinks he knows why. "You said you were gone―that you don't remember. How can you know the exact time you were missing for? How do you know all these things?"
He hesitates for a long time, trying to figure out how to explain it. "You know how there are moments in our lives that―that are so big, they define everything else? How you always look back at that handful of times in your life, you dream about those moments, those events, revisit them again and again in your mind?"
She nods. "Yeah."
"My mom's death... it was pivotal. It was the moment everything changed, and I was there. I dream about it, and I time travel to it, all the time. If you were able to go back and, say, film it, from all the angles, you'll see me. I'm there on the road, I'm the one who finds a payphone and makes the first call to report the accident. I'm lurking right behind the ambulance as the paramedic tries to ask eleven-year-old me what happened. I'm listening in while the cops try to get my father on the radio."
"Oh my God," Kono says quietly, and Steve pushes on, because if he stops now he'll never start again, and he owes her the end of this story, at least.
"I'm there in the aftermath, too. I'm sitting in the hospital waiting room while my father paces outside the pediatrics ward, and I want to maybe say something, tell him that it's going to be okay, but I know it's not. He looks grey, like all the blood's been drained from his body. I'm the one who borrows a blanket from someone in a nearby car and wraps it around my own shoulders because I'm naked and shivering on the side of the road. I'm the one who looked into that eleven-year-old's eyes and told what to say. I told him he'd―he'd be fine," Steve's voice breaks, "I told him he'd be fine because that's―that's what he needed to hear even though it was a lie. I looked into his face and lied and all the time I was―I was thinking..." Tears are pouring down his face now, and no matter how he scrubs at his eyes with the back of his wrist, they won't stop. Kono slides over on the floor and pulls him into her arms, lets him sob against her thin cotton shirt.
"What?" she whispers. "Tell me."
"I was thinking I should have died too."
Kono holds him until he stops crying, although it takes a long time, and her shirt is a mess and her legs must be cramping up long before he's done. She kisses his temple. "For what it's worth, I am so glad you're here. I am glad you're here and that you're alive and spending Christmas with me. And I'm sorry if I hurt you, because I didn't know, okay? We don't have to do anything, or go anywhere, or see anyone. It can be just you and me, if that's what you need."
He shakes his head, and she gets up to fetch him a glass of water from the sink. He drains it when she hands it to him. "No, I want to. I don't want to ruin your Christmas. I just... it's just hard."
She kisses his lips, then, carefully. "I know that, now. But if you'll let me, we can try to make it less hard for you."
Kono tastes of the ocean and of hyacinths on his lips. "I'd like that."
~*~
May 17th, 2007: Steve is 30, Kono is 23
"Do you travel to the future, sometimes?" Kono asks him one day.
He's half-asleep, worn out from running the whole night to get away from the cops after an overzealous octogenarian called 911 after seeing a naked man in her back yard. She's probably dead now, Steve thinks, and he wonders if he should feel something―sadness, satisfaction, anything at all. He's been gone a week in the present, although it was less than twenty-four hours for him. He doesn't know if he's aged a week or a day. Kono strokes his hair, tries to tuck the too-short ends behind his ear.
"Sometimes."
"What do you do when you see what's going to happen?"
He rolls over to curl up against her thigh. She's warm and he's freezing, because he never did find any real clothes. He thinks he might be getting sick, which is going to suck. "I never stay long, when it's the future. Barely have time to see anything, and I'm usually running like hell."
"Have you ever seen yourself?" Her voice is quiet, and it's her tone that gives him pause.
"No, not in the future. Why?" He cranes his neck to look up at her.
She shrugs, hair falling in her face. "It's just, you've been coming to see me all my life, and you and I have known each other for a few months, but... I've never seen you any older than 34."
~*~
Part IV
PART TWO
Life in the Moment
June 15th, 2004: Steve is 28, Kono is 21
"You looking for a prime board? You want McGarrett, over there. Look for the tent with the yellow patch, he's probably still there, this time of day."
Steve recognises Mamo's voice and silently curses the old guy under his breath. He's either still drunk or just starting to get hungover, and he's not sure which one it is, and either way that means it's way too early in the morning to deal with what's likely to be some idiot who wouldn't know a good surf board if it cracked his skull open. Still, he owes Mamo more than he'll ever be able to repay in three lifetimes, and even if it doesn't cost much to live out here in the tent city, he still needs to be able to feed and clothe himself, and the only way to do that is to sell surfboards in the odd times that he's not being jerked around from decade to decade. He crawls out from under his blankets, runs his fingers through his hair in a half-hearted attempt to make it look a little less like he's trying to sleep off a bender, shoves back the flap of his tent and finds himself squinting painfully at what might very well be the most beautiful woman he has ever seen in his whole life.
The woman is younger than he, a saffron sarong wrapped about her hips, her yellow bikini top outlined starkly against naturally dark skin made even darker by days spend in the sun. Her hair is loose about her shoulders, wind-swept and slightly briny from the ocean, and it's falling forward into her face now as she bends forward to drop a very broken surfboard onto the sand at his feet.
"Some lolo smashed my board," she starts, not looking at him just yet. "Mamo tells me that you're the best―oh." Her face lights up as though someone has told her that it's Christmas and her birthday all rolled into one, and Steve finds himself blushing hotly under her stare. "Oh my God, it's you!"
He can do nothing but stare at her, because obviously this vision before him has met him before, seems to know him intimately, going by the way she throws her arms around him and hugs him so hard she threatens to cut off all his air, murmuring his name reverently under her breath. What little was left this morning of his rational thought processes has long since vanished, and when she pulls away he finds himself still gawking, as though he's a teenager meeting his favourite movie star for the first time, utterly tongue-tied. She's laughing now, brown eyes dancing with merriment.
"You told me this would happen."
He takes a breath, tries to marshall his thoughts.
"Do I know you?"
"Not yet," she says. "But I've known you my entire life."
He's met her before, then. Or, rather, sometimes in the future he travels back to meet her, and the whole thing is already starting to make his head hurt. "I'm sorry, I know this is awkward and weird, but―you understand why I've... why I don't―"
"Oh, yes. I mean, I know why," she hastens to reassure him, her tone dropping to conspiratorial levels. She's still grinning like a kid at Christmas. "God, you look so much younger than I remember. But then, you've always been older when you visited, and I suppose when I was really little you might have been younger but all grown-ups look impossibly old when you're a kid. Oh, Steve, I'm confusing the hell out of you, aren't I?" she says, looking unrepentant and so beautiful that he's tempted to pinch himself to make sure he's not really dreaming.
He brings up a hand to rub at the back of his neck. "No more than I usually am, I guess. This is going to sound awful, but... I don't even know your name."
"My name is Kono Kalakaua. Today is my twenty-first birthday, and I want you to take me to dinner."
~*~
June 15th, 2004: Steve is 28, Kono is 21
It's the strangest thing. She's staring at Steve, younger than she's ever seen him and looking tired and hungover but wearing clothes he chose himself, and he's staring back at her without a trace of recognition in his eyes. She's looking at the man with whom she's been in love for nearly six years now, and he doesn't have a clue who she is, though she knows with the certainty of one who's already lived through some of it, that this will change soon enough.
She invites him to dinner, sets a date at Lucy's and hopes she hasn't frightened him away. This man is not the Steve she knows, though he will be someday. This man, though he's older than she is―28, he'd answered when she remembered to ask―is young and unsure, like a skittish horse that needs gentle but firm handling.
"Be gentle, Kono," he begged her jokingly the last time she saw him. "Be gentle with me, because I won't have the first notion of how to handle you."
It had been a joke, but she's beginning to think there might be some truth to it, too. There was too much, too fast, and she thinks that she may have frightened him. She perches carefully on her chair in the courtyard of Lucy's Grill 'n' Bar and stares at the people around her who are already well into their second drink of the evening and just starting to get a little louder as the alcohol hits their systems. Inside the noise is already growing to levels that will make conversation impossible, which is why she chose a table in the courtyard and even deliberately chose one that's a little out of the way, because she's pretty sure that anything too close to the bustle and press of people will make Steve freak out and flee for the hills. The thought makes her smile, even though it's already five minutes past the time that he said that he would meet her here. He seemed nervous this morning, and she knows by now that stress is one of his worst triggers, that might even now be visiting her younger self in their secluded little cove, or be shivering naked in someone's back yard five years in the future. He could be anywhere but here, and she wipes suddenly sweaty palms on the hem of the cream-coloured dress she wore tonight to impress him.
She's about to give up and try again another day when he appears in the doorway to the courtyard, dressed in dark jeans and a blue shirt and sky blue tie, hair washed and combed, completely clean-shaven. He cleans up nice, is her first thought. It's rare that she sees him at his best: usually he lands right in the water by the beach, and coughing up seawater is not exactly conducive to looking calm and composed. He looks nervous now, scanning the area anxiously, looking for her. He has a bouquet of flowers clutched so tightly that the knuckles of his left hand are slowly turning white. He relaxes a fraction when he sees her, threads his way through the tables and stops by her chair.
"These are for you," he says, thrusting the bouquet at her, and she feels her face break into a beaming smile.
"You've never brought me flowers before."
He clears his throat. "I, uh, wouldn't have been able to, before. I mean, I can't take―"
"―Anything with you," she completes his sentence, nodding her head. "I know. I never expected flowers, either, or anything else. It's just a lovely surprise. They're beautiful," she adds, tracing a finger over the delicate petals of an orchid. There are bougainvilleas in the bouquet as well, and a scattering of pincushion proteas. "Thank you."
He slides into the chair across from her, immediately reaches for the water glass and drains it. There are beads of sweat forming along his hairline, and she takes pity on him.
"You don't have to be nervous," she says, leaning across the table and placing a hand on his wrist. She presses against his pulse point with her thumb, feels his heart beat racing just beneath the skin.
"No, it's not―it's just... here you are," he says, smiling a little incredulously, "and―and I can tell that you're going to be this huge part of my future, and you're probably going to be the best thing that's ever happened to me, but I don't know anything about you. I want you to tell me everything."
She doesn't know where to begin, but she's saved by the arrival of the waiter to take their orders. By the time their drinks have arrived they're both grinning at each other now, like they can't help it, and she wants to bury her face in the bouquet of flowers while simultaneously climbing right into his lap and holding onto him and never letting go now that she's got him back. She settles instead for pulling out her little red notebook and sliding it across the table.
"I brought this for you. It's all the times we met before today."
He opens the notebook with a look of reverence on his face that might not be misplaced if she's just handed him the first ever copy of the Gutenberg Bible. "This is my handwriting."
"You wrote it. The first time we met at our beach you asked me to bring this to you the next time, and you wrote down all the times that you were going to come."
"Our beach?" Steve asks, tracing a finger down along each page, registering each date as though it's the best news he's had in his entire life.
Kono finds herself blushing a bit. "Oh, it's not really our beach. It's just what I called it in my head when I was little and it kind of stuck. It's just this tiny little inlet, a strip of beach that's surrounded by trees near my parents' house in La'ie Point. I used to go there when my older cousins ditched me to go surfing, and one day I was playing on the beach and suddenly there you were, in the water."
"Naked as a jaybird and probably puking."
"Naked, yeah, but that first time you weren't sick. I loaned you my beach towel and you told me you were from the future, and we talked for a few minutes and then you disappeared like something from a movie. It felt like magic to me," she confesses. "After that, I sort of took it for granted that this magical guy was going to appear and disappear on the beach near my house all the time."
"So what did we do together?" he seems fascinated. It occurs to her for the first time that he may never have met anyone from his future before, and she's tempted to refuse to say anything just so he'll have a taste of the frustration she's experienced all these years. He's looking at her with this strange mixture of hope and terror, though, and she doesn't have the heart to deny him. Not when she's waited to talk to him properly for so many years.
She tilts her head in a noncommittal gesture. "Lots of things. It depended a lot on my age―I think you were really worried about warping me," she tells him, enjoying the way he ducks his head and blushes hard. "The first day we really spent any time together you taught me all about beach combing, and we found a tiger cowrie, which I still keep in a jar on my desk at home. You helped me with my homework and we went swimming a lot, and... sometimes you told me about yourself. Bit and pieces of how the time travel worked, or didn't work. You visited a lot toward the end of the 2000s," she says, and she knows her tone is wistful, in spite of her attempt to keep it neutral.
He looks a little stricken. "I'm sorry. It's not fair to put that on a kid."
"Don't be sorry. I was just sad because I could tell something was bothering you and I couldn't fix it, return the favour, you know? You taught me so much... When I was eight I brought my first surf board to you because I couldn't figure out how to balance properly, and you taught me everything you knew."
He looks at her appraisingly. "I bet you got better than me in no time."
"You bet. I was all set to become a pro," she tries not to let herself be bitter. She's long since moved past that disappointment, or so she hopes, "but I blew out my knee when I was eighteen. It was a stupid accident―some newbie dropped in on my wave and rammed his board right into my knee. Ripped all the ligaments and tendons and tore my ACL all to shreds."
"I'm so sorry." His hand is on hers now, surprisingly warm, but the calluses are as familiar to her now as they were three years ago. Now that she knows what he does for a living, she understands why they're there.
"It's okay. It's been three years, and I'm going to be a cop now, like my cousin Chin. I got accepted to the Academy, and I start in a few weeks. Tonight is a double celebration."
He starts at that, eyes growing wide. "Oh my God. You must have had other plans tonight? I forgot that―I mean, I didn't know you―"
"Steve, relax," she laughs. "I cancelled with my friends. We'll make it up some other time. I know it's hard for you to believe, but I've been looking forward to this day for nearly three years, and I wasn't about to let anything get in the way of that."
~*~
June 15th, 2004: Steve is 28, Kono is 21
"So I was thinking we should take this somewhere more private," Kono says, watching him hungrily over the lip of her glass.
For the first time in his life Steve finds himself hesitating as a beautiful woman tries to invite herself over to spend the night. This isn't like any of the other random hook-ups he's had over the years, and he hasn't had nearly enough to drink to quiet the butterflies in his stomach. He wipes suddenly clammy hands on his pants, clears his throat.
"Um, I'm not exactly... used to having company at my place."
She grins wickedly. "I live with my very traditional parents in my old bedroom with nothing but a single bed and all my childhood toys. I've seen your tent, and I don't care about that, if that's what you're worried about."
They end up walking slowly along the beach, stop after about three minutes so that Kono can kick off her entirely impractical shoes and walk barefoot in the sand. He makes her wait outside his tent for a minute so he can at least make the bed―if you can call an air mattress with semi-clean sheets sitting atop a makeshift wooden frame a bed―and shove his dirty laundry into the bag it should have been in to begin with. When he pokes his head out through the tent flaps she's grinning at him, and he blushes.
"You're a lot less self-possessed," she tells him as though the very notion fills her with glee. She takes him by the shirt and pushes him backward, right back into his tent. The backs of his calves hit the bed and he falls back awkwardly, but she doesn't miss a beat, clambering onto his lap and straddling his thighs. Her legs are well-muscled, thighs pressing warmly against him, and if he wasn't hard before he definitely is now, dick straining against the zipper of his cargoes.
"Poor Steve," she laughs, licking her way up his neck.
"Poor Steve?" He's the luckiest man in the universe, if only he could get his brain kick-started again. He's overwhelmed, but he's never been this happy in his life to be entirely out of his depth, not if it means he gets to have this bright, beautiful woman all over him as though he's the only thing she's ever wanted in her entire life.
"I keep dropping all these anvils on you, you must feel like Wile E. Coyote," she moves around to nibble at his bottom lip, "but you have no idea, no idea how long I've been waiting for this. I've been waiting for years to know more than your first name and the fact that you have a weirdly profound knowledge of Hawaiian seashells and that your handwriting is really nice.
"You like my handwriting?" It's really hard to focus with her thrusting her hips against him.
"Men's handwriting is notoriously ugly, whereas yours isn't. I've always wanted to know your last name, Mr. McGarrett, and what you do for a living and where you live."
He's known her for all of eight hours, but the first kiss is familiar and easy, one born of long acquaintance. "Now you know," he says a little breathlessly. "Disappointed?"
"Never. It's not what I expected, but then if you'd turned out to be a genie who lived inside a lamp I wouldn't have been altogether surprised, either."
"Incredible cosmic power, itty-bitty living space," he agrees, biting back a groan as her hands move down to undo the top button of his pants, and she laughs. She seems to find everything he says a source of amusement, which he doesn't know to take as an insult or a compliment. "It's just―it's easier, living here."
"You don't have to explain why you disappear sometimes, or why sometimes you end up naked and far away from your tent?" she guesses shrewdly, tugging at his shirt until he lifts his arms, then runs both her hands down his stomach, tracing the outline of his abs. "Fuck, you're even hotter now than three years ago, and I didn't think that was possible. You're so... young."
"So I take it you don't want to take this slowly? You know, build the anticipation, or..." he trails off.
"Fuck, no. You may have just met me, but I've been anticipating this for years, and if you don't do something about that right this minute, I may just have to hurt you, and not in a way you'd enjoy."
Steve thanks every god he can think of that the dress she's wearing isn't complicated, just a couple of clasps in the back that he's careful not to catch in her hair. She lets him slide the straps over her shoulders and the whole garment slithers to the ground, revealing a cream-coloured bra and panties that he makes very short work of before pulling her onto the bed and rolling them both over until he's on top of her. There's nothing submissive in her posture, though―everything about her suggests that she knows exactly what she's doing, and more importantly that she knows everything he's doing, too, and the thought is enough to make his dick throb almost painfully. If she keeps on that way, it's going to be a damned short night, he thinks.
"Stop thinking," she props herself up onto her elbows, spreading her knees a little bit in obvious invitation, and that takes away the last of his hesitation.
He captures her mouth in a kiss, licking away the remnants of salt from her drink, moves to kiss and lick and nip his way down her neck and toward her breasts, cupping one of them in his hand and enjoying the way her nipple hardens to a bud under the touch of his fingers. She's incredibly responsive, already shifting under him, breath coming faster, and she digs her fingers into his hair and pushes, urging him lower.
"This what you want?" he asks, moving lower, mouthing at her stomach, and she curses under her breath. She tastes of salt and apricot soap, and she gasps and swears a lot more loudly when he applies his tongue to her clit.
"Fuck! God, you're good at this..."
He's not exactly in a position to say anything back, so he contents himself with letting his actions speak more loudly than he could anyway, licking and sucking until she's writhing on the bed, pulling on his hair so hard it's almost painful, and his mouth and chin are sopping wet with her juices and his own saliva. Her skin is buttery soft under his fingertips, yielding under his grip, and he worries that he might bruise her, but she's too focused on his mouth to appear to care much about that. He speeds up a little when the movement of her hips becomes just a little more urgent, a little more desperate, can feel the change in her breathing when he takes one hand off her thigh in order to add a finger, then two, to what he's doing. She comes with a hoarse yell, head thrown back against the mattress, hips coming off the bed entirely, and a moment later she's pulling at him insistently until he moves up again to kiss her. She moans happily into the kiss, apparently enjoying her own taste in his mouth, and Steve is pretty sure he's never heard anything hotter in his life.
"Fuck me," she says in his ear, and promptly shoves him onto his back. She's still so wet that she's dripping, thighs sticky against his stomach, and for what feels like a really long time he can't marshal his thoughts enough to do anything except lie there and stare at her. "C'mon, where are your condoms?"
They're in a box right next to his bed, for which he has never been more grateful in his entire life. She tears open the packet with her teeth, uses her mouth to roll it down over his cock with an ease that speaks of long practice, and for a split-second he's incredibly, overwhelmingly jealous of all the men who've had the privilege of knowing Kono before him, right up until she looks up at him with half-lidded eyes that are so dark they look like pools of ink in her face, and licks her lips.
"Enjoying the fruits of your teachings?" she asks teasingly, and he realises with a rush that makes him feel positively dizzy that this, this is his, that there isn't anyone else of consequence, that he's always had her, even when he didn't know that he did, and then all logical thought is driven right from his mind as she slides down smoothly on his dick without a moment's hesitation.
It's almost too much, and Steve has to distract himself by letting his hands travel up her body, fingers pressing against her ribcage, exploring her breasts, the jut of her hipbones as she moves in deep, even thrusts against him, the delicate outline of her clavicles. There is nothing about her that isn't beautiful, not even the litany of curses and encouragement and barely-coherent praise that spills from her lips. She's braced against his shoulders with both hands, urging him on as though they're running behind schedule for something important until she throws her head back and lets him take over, clamping her muscles tightly around his dick and shuddering her way through another orgasm. Steve manages to hang on just long enough, follows her over the edge seconds later, only to have her collapse on top of him with a breathless, satisfied-sounding laugh.
"Wow," he manages after a moment, trying to disentangle himself from her so he can at least dispose of the condom in the small plastic bag he keeps for garbage.
"Not bad," she agrees, propping her head up on one hand. He's almost sure she's teasing.
"Count yourself lucky. I'm amazed I didn't come in about thirty seconds," he lies back down on the bed next to her, slides a hand up over her hip and lets it rest at her waist.
"I'll take that as a compliment," she curls in closer, pressing an ear to his chest.
He's not used to having anyone stay in his tent, but she obviously has no intention of leaving, and he finds that he doesn't really want to let her go, either. He pulls the sheet up to cover them both, lies back down with his head pillowed on his arm, watches the rise and fall of her breasts as her breath evens out into sleep almost immediately. There are still a thousand questions he wants to ask, but they'll keep until morning, he tells himself.
After all, now he has the rest of their lives together to look forward to.
~*~
September 15th, 2004: Steve is 29, Kono is 21
"You sure this is a good idea?" Steve asks, probably for the eleventh or twelfth time this evening.
He's fidgeting, sweating in his second-best shirt. He spent about an hour trying to figure out if he should dress up or dress down, if he should go against everything the island stands for and maybe wear a tie, or if that would just get him laughed at. He settled on not wearing a tie, mostly because he doesn't own one and doesn't know from whom he might borrow one that doesn't look ridiculous.
"Relax," Kono tells him. "My friends want to meet you. You look fine, stop pulling at your collar like you're suffocating. Your shirt isn't even done up all the way."
He pulls at the cuffs, tries not to fidget as she drives easily along the Honolulu streets, one hand draped casually over the steering wheel. "What if they hate me?"
"They won't hate you."
"I'm not good with people, Kono. I make surfboards for a living."
"So long as you don't sell drugs, you're fine. My cousin Chin would have to arrest you otherwise."
He shakes his head tugs at his cuffs again, feels his stomach lurch a little bit when she takes a corner a little too fast for his liking. "Oh, God," he mutters, softly enough that he hopes she hasn't heard him, but no such luck.
"I can't believe you're freaking out about meeting my friends. You'll like Chin and Malia, don't be a baby, and the rest don't matter at all. It's just that they've all been dying to meet you for, like, a month and more. They all want to meet the guy I've been waiting for all my life."
His head jerks up at that. "What? You didn't―"
"No, I didn't tell them," she assures him. "They're just not idiots."
As it turns out, she's right. Steve gets introduced to a roomful of people, all of whom seem to know Kono to varying degrees. Most of them are her friends from the Academy, but a handful are introduced as cousins and old friends from school. Utterly overwhelmed by the sudden influx of people, Steve backs up hurriedly until he hits a wall, plasters what he hopes is a sincere-looking smile on his face while he racks his brain in order to make small talk with all these people he doesn't know. Eventually he manages to escape onto a balcony while Kono moves easily from person to person, chatting and smiling and generally looking like a vision in a blue and white dress. He licks his lips, tries to take some deep breaths so he doesn't accidentally vanish and leave all his clothes behind, because that would just be the perfect way to meet everybody Kono knows for the first time.
The glass door behind him slides open, and a slim man only an inch or two shorter than him slips out to stand on the balcony next to him. He's dressed in well-fitted jeans and a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and exudes an air of quiet confidence. Steve likes him already. "Air's fresher out here, isn't it?" he asks, and Steve nods.
"Chin Ho Kelly. You probably don't remember after having all those names thrown at you in there."
Steve knows the name, though. "Kukui High School. You held all the football records there."
Chin is obviously pleased to be recognised. "I'm also Kono's cousin. As I recall, you were poised to beat all of my old records," he reaches out to shake Steve's hand. "I used to go watch all your games with your father. He was my training officer, you know."
"I didn't know that, no. I was still a kid, and he didn't talk much about work back then." Not ever, he amends silently, but Chin doesn't need to know that. That's between Steve and his father, and no one else.
"Yeah. I'm sorry about your mother. It was a bad time, a terrible thing," Chin says, and Steve has seen enough lies in his life to know that the sympathy in his eyes is genuine. He shrugs, uncomfortable.
"It was a long time ago, now."
"I suppose it was. How do you know Kono, anyway?"
It's a loaded question. Steve doesn't know Kono, not really, but he will, and they're going to know each other all their lives. He drums his fingers on the balcony railing, stares out into the night. Behind them, the music inside begins to swell to some dance beat or other, and the smell of roasting pork wafts through the open door.
"I make surf boards. Custom designs. Hers got broken a couple of months ago, and someone directed her to me. I made her a new one," he says simply, as though he and Kono hadn't spent the night together long before he considered making her a new surfboard. "She's a great surfer."
Chin nods as though that makes perfect sense. "She was on the pro circuit for a couple of years, you know, before she blew out her knee. I thought you might have met her then, if you were in the business already. She started young, but she had a real promising career."
"No, I was... well, I only work as much as I have to to keep body and soul together," Steve confesses hesitantly, unsure what Chin will make of that.
It makes him sound like a ne'er-do-well, the type of man Kono would do well to steer away from. The kind of guy who spends all day surfing or doing drugs and only makes a board every so often just so he won't starve to death. There's no explaining, of course, that he can't manage to make more than a few boards at any given time because he never knows for how long he'll be gone, or when he'll be gone at all. He glances up to find Chin looking at him speculatively, but obviously reserving judgement for now.
"Well, whatever it is, Kono is clearly crazy about you. I will take this moment to point out that I do have a weapon that I am entirely licensed to use."
"Is this the hurt-her-and-I'll-kill-you speech?"
Chin smiles thinly. "Actually, it's the hurt-her-and-I'll-wait-until-she-maims-you-before-I-kill-you speech. Kono can take care of herself, but that doesn't mean I won't be there to stomp on your remains when she's done with you."
"Got it," Steve nods. He doesn't know that in six hours everything between him and Chin is going to change. Right now it seems easy enough to promise that he won't deliberately try to hurt Kono, which he figures is the best anyone can do.
Chin is staring at him, though. "Are you sure we've never met? I could have sworn I've seen you before somewhere."
It's possible, of course. Chin is a police officer, and Steve has landed on the wrong side of the law often enough. More often than not he's been naked and puking, and in one memorable case he had been already moving wrong and fell over when he landed, skinning both knees and his palms on the carpet of some apartment hallway and cracking his skull sharply against the wall. He doesn't think Chin was the arresting officer in any of those cases, but some of his memories are already a little hazy because he's usually too desperate to get away from whomever's trying to get their hands on him.
"I don't think so."
Chin shrugs. "Whatever you say, brah. It was just a feeling. Sometimes they're wrong, you know?"
"I guess. I get the feeling―forgive the pun―that your feelings are usually pretty accurate."
"Usually they are, but I can't have a 100 percent success rate. You want a drink? I was going to get myself a Longboard, and you look like you could use one, to be honest."
Steve manages a wry grin. "I'm not really all that good with large groups of people."
"I figured. Tell you what―come back inside, and Kono and I will run interference a little for you, make sure no one pins you in a corner and grills you for every single detail about your life. Sound good?"
The very idea of going back in among the press of people is enough to make Steve's stomach twist itself into knots, but he's pretty sure it would be really rude to refuse to mingle at all. "Yeah, okay."
To his relief, Kono spots him the moment he steps back through the door, and moves over to link their arms together. "You freaking out?" she asks him, a smile playing on her lips.
He swallows, throat suddenly dry again. "A little," he admits, and she gives him a reassuring nudge in the ribs.
"It's kind of fun seeing you like this. In the past you were always so self-possessed."
"It's all an act," he assures her. "I don't like people. I just like you."
"Aw, Steve, that's so sweet," she gets up on her tiptoes to kiss him, quickly and chastely, on the lips. "Bear with me. We'll be out of here soon, and I promise that I will make every minute you spent here worth your while." Her grin is lascivious, and he can't help but smile back.
"In that case, I will suffer very stoically for you."
~*~
September 16th, 2004: Steve is 34
The second time Chin meets Steve is not the second time Steve meets Chin, though it's been not quite eight hours after they both met for the first time. Steve doesn't usually bother trying to explain how this works to most people because their eyes glaze over or they get this tense, pained look on their faces, and most of the time everyone just ends up frustrated.
This time Steve is in the middle of delivering the most efficiently brutal beating he can manage to a very large guy who's only slightly less muscular than he, whose name he doesn't even know. This is survival, though, and if that means this guy needs to go down with his skull caved in, well, Steve is okay with that. Especially since the guy thought Steve would be an easy target for violence. It'll serve him right, teach him not to judge a book by its cover. Steve has him down on the ground now, trying in vain to curl into a ball while Steve aims kick after vicious kick right at the guy's kidneys. When he hears Chin voice calling out he doesn't stop, but instead tries to stomp on the guy's neck, missing by a bare inch or so.
"Hey, Steve, hold up!"
Chin is running down the alleyway toward him, though he's not going all-out. Steve knows just how fast Chin can run when he's properly motivated, and right now he's not even close to his top speed. Steve supposes he should be glad that Chin is off-duty and had drinks with him and Kono at that party earlier this evening, because that means he doesn't have his service weapon with him. He's fairly sure Chin wouldn't shoot him, but he's not really willing to test his luck right now. After all, right now he and Chin aren't friends yet. Chin comes to an abrupt halt maybe two feet away, and shoves his hands into his pockets.
"Howzit, brah?" he asks conversationally, his tone deceptively nonchalant. "You want to tell me what you think you're doing, here?"
Steve aims another kick at the guy's head. "What I think I'm doing is beating the living crap out of this homophobic asshole who thought that it would be a good idea to get his buddies to help beat me up first."
Chin catches his arm and hauls on it, pulling Steve back. For all that he's a little shorter than Steve he's solidly built, all compact muscle, and he's a lot stronger than most people give him credit for. Steve knows this because he's known Chin for five years now, and considers him one of his best friends. Chin doesn't know that, however.
"All right, brah, I think he's done. You," he says to the guy, who's still lying prone on the ground and moaning and sobbing a little under his breath. "You're going to do us both a favour and make yourself scarce, yeah?"
"The guy's a fucking loon!" is the only response he gets. Chin puts out an arm to keep Steve from lunging at him again, then shrugs.
"Here's the thing. It sounds to me like you are a righteous asshole, yeah? Beating up on homosexuals makes you feel like a big man?" he asks, clearly not requiring an answer. "Your story isn't going to go over so well at HPD, my friend. You try telling them you and your friends tried to beat up a guy just because he was dressed funny, and that he kicked your ass for it and now you want to press charges? See if you don't end up in lock-up overnight after a story like that. So, like I said, you do us both a favour, and you get the fuck out of here and don't come back!"
The guy scrambles to his feet, left eye already swelling shut from where he caught Steve's elbow with it early in the game, and heeds Chin's advice. Steve is moving away by then, gently extricating his arm from Chin's grasp, but if Steve thought he was going to get away without being questioned, then he was labouring under a delusion. Chin is nobody's fool, and after only a couple of years on the force he's one of HPD's rising stars. Besides, Steve already knows how this night is supposed to play out, more or less, even though he's only heard the story second-hand.
"Hey, McGarrett, where do you think you're going?" Chin catches up to him in two graceful steps. "You know, I'm not usually one to judge the way anyone chooses to dress, but..." he gestures to Steve's outfit. "Forgive me, this isn't really, you, brah. Besides, I can't help but note this isn't at all what you were wearing earlier tonight. You want to tell me what's going on, here?"
Steve has been doing this long enough that he's able to figure out just when it is. Six hours ago, his 29-year-old self was meeting Chin for the first time, which is going to make this whole situation a whole lot more awkward if he sticks around. So he keeps walking, and barely spares a glance at the too-small jeans shorts and cut off tank top he's wearing. It's off-white, now with added bloodstains. "It's the only set of clothes I could get my hands on in this neighbourhood."
"What happened to the other ones? Whoa, hey," Chin exclaims, his composure finally rattled as Steve tests the handle of the back door to a shop and lets himself in with one good shove that serves to break the flimsy lock keeping him out. "You're adding breaking and entering to tonight's list of aggravated assault and what looks like clothing theft? You do realise I'm a cop, right? I should be arresting you on the spot. Or at least I should be making sure you never come near my cousin again."
Steve looks back over his shoulder in time to see Chin standing with his arms folded across his chest, feet spread a little, clearly waiting for Steve to give him a reason to break him apart with his bare hands. He grins. "Take it easy, Chin."
Chin purses his lips. "I'll be more inclined to take it easy if you can come up with a really good explanation for this. You have one minute, after which I will subdue you, cuff you with whatever materials I can find to hand, and dragging you down to headquarters for questioning. You feel me, brah?"
"Yeah, okay, I got it," Steve tells him, raising both hands in a gesture of surrender. "Here's the deal. I'm going to explain this to you because one day we're going to be really good friends and we're going to look back on this and laugh. I'm a time traveler. I'm not the same version of me you met earlier today, I'm actually about five years older than that. If you look closer, you'll be able to tell that my hair is longer and that I have a scar I didn't have before on my arm. You won't believe me right now, but you will in a couple of minutes. Hang on," he holds up a hand to forestall whatever Chin's about to say. "I swear, it's true. But when I travel I can't take anything with me, including clothes. So I have to find whatever I can, and most of the time that means stealing clothes and breaking into places so I'm not caught outside stark naked. And sometimes it means that I attract unwanted attention, the cops or maybe some asshole who thinks it's his God-given right to beat on faggots because they don't dress the way he likes. So yeah, I've done almost everything in the books: I've stolen, I've broken into places, I've been guilty of public indecency more times than I can count, and I've mugged people on occasion to take some of their clothes and enough money to get me through the time I'm stuck until I can get back. Clear enough for you?"
Chin doesn't move, arms still folded over his chest. "You realise how crazy that sounds, right?"
"Every single word. But you should ask Kono, she'll tell you I'm not crazy."
"Okay, no. You're in the middle of committing a felony, and what you're doing is talking delusion, or maybe even psychosis. You on any kind of medication, Steve? Anything I should let the guys down at HQ know about? Because I'm going to take you in, now. You're not going anywhere near Kono again, either. She doesn't need this sort of bullshit in her life. Plenty of good, stable men who are actually worth her time out there."
Steve shakes his head. "You won't take me in."
"How's that, my friend?"
Steve grins at him. "Because I'm going now. I'll see you later, Chin."
And he's gone.
~*~
September 16th, 2004: Steve is 29, Kono is 21
If she didn't know any better, Kono would say she was an idiot for standing outside on her parents' lanai, waiting for her cousin to come find her. But Steve told her this would happen, a long time ago, when she was younger and he was older, and she'd rather not have this conversation inside her parents' house. She wonders just how long it's going to take, and is in the process of checking her watch for the fourth time when she hears the tell-tale sound of Chin's motorcycle coming up along the street. He dismounts, comes striding up the path, and stops short when he sees her standing there.
"What are you doing here?" he asks, obviously discomfitted.
She grins. "I live here, Chin. Had you forgotten? Or were you here to see Mama and Papa at five o'clock in the morning?"
He's clearly rattled, and she shouldn't be so amused, but she resigns herself to the thought that she's probably a really bad person at heart. "No," he sputters. "I mean, I thought you'd be inside. Asleep," he adds, almost accusingly, as though well-bred young women shouldn't be up outside waiting for their cousins at all hours of the night. "I just saw Steve."
She nods. "Only Steve just dropped me off here about two hours ago and then went home."
"Right. He beat a guy half to death before I stopped him."
She can't find it in herself to be surprised. "Did he say why?"
Chin looks a little uncomfortable. "It sounds like the guy brought it on himself. Steve was, I don't know, dressed like he'd fit in really well at Fusion Waikiki." Kono snorts at that in spite of herself―poor Steve―before Chin completes his sentence, "and this guy and a bunch of his friends decided to try to rough him up. And then he gives me this whole story about time travel, and tells me that you already know all about it, and just when I'm about to improvise some handcuffs because your boyfriend is clearly out of his mind―"
"He disappeared into thin air," Kono finishes for him. "Yeah, he does that." Chin just stands there looking stunned, and so she takes pity on him. "Come in, I'll make some tea. I'll explain everything."
~*~
June 24th, 2005: Steve is 34 and 29, Kono is 21
Kono is in the middle of a kata, silhouetted starkly against the rising sun on the beach. Steve loves to watch her in the early morning when it's just the two of them like this. He's never practiced a martial art in his life―his fights are always quick and rough and dirty, and have nothing of the simple elegance of what Kono is doing now. It doesn't make her any less deadly, in fact he's pretty sure that in a fair fight she could easily take him out these days. He's entirely self-taught, relies on his size, his strength and mostly his speed to get him out of any trouble he gets himself into these days, and when he joined the kapu―another necessary step in ensuring his own survival―they encouraged him to fight to win, to get in and get out fast and with as few casualties as possible on their side. So there's no finesse to what he does, nothing like the precision and skill that's present in every one of Kono's movements. It's a joy to watch her, and he takes advantage of every moment.
She finishes her kata, pauses before beginning the next in order to turn her head and look at him with a quiet smile. Sometimes there are other people on the beach at this hour, early risers or people who just haven't gone to bed yet, but today they're entirely alone with just the murmur of the ocean for company. Steve closes his eyes for a moment, taking in the tang of the salt air, the feel of the breeze on his face, the sand damp and soft under the soles of his bare feet.
He's startled out of his reverie by a sharp cry from Kono. His eyes snap open in time to see her stumble backward in order to avoid stepping on the prone form of a naked man. He scrambles to his feet, sprints over to the edge of the water where the waves are just beginning to creep up along the beach. In a few hours the tide will have come in several more feet, covering all this sand in water, but he's not thinking about that.
It's himself, of course, but older, his face pulled into a rictus of pain. He's curled in the foetal position, both hands clasped over his stomach, blood welling through his fingers. Steve kneels as close to him as he can, puts a hand on his shoulder.
"Get some cloths," he tells Kono, who nods and runs back the way he came, kicking up a spray of sand in her wake. "Hey, Steve," he says gently. "You with me?"
The older version of himself moans quietly, but he uncurls a little and turns his head up, forcing his eyes open. "Steve..." he rasps.
"Yeah, it's me. We're going to take care of you, okay? I just need you to stick with me, here." He pulls at Steve's hand, has to swallow convulsively in order not to throw up when he sees the bullet wound concealed beneath Steve's fingers. "Stay with me, Steve."
Steve shakes his head. "Hurts," he says hoarsely. "Don't worry. It's a good memory. Not staying."
He can hear Kono running back toward them, and he bites his lip. "Okay. Okay, Steve. You just hang onto my hand, okay? I got you, I won't let go."
He laces their fingers together as Steve's eyes close again. There's a lot of blood, blood flowing from the bullet wound in his gut, blood bubbling at the corners of his mouth, pink and frothy. Kono is already folding clean gauze from her first aid kit together, presses them to the injury, but she shoots him a worried look, and he shakes his head.
"Steve," Kono strokes the cheek of the man lying on the ground, the one she doesn't know yet. "Steve, I need you to stay with me, okay?"
Steve opens his eyes again, but they're glazed with pain, not focusing on her at all. "Kono?" His tone is filled with warmth, with love. Steve wonders if that's how he sounds every time he says her name. He watches himself grope for Kono's hand with his free one. "Don't cry, it's okay," the other Steve says, though Kono is dry-eyed. Steve wonders just what the hell is happening in the future, but he knows better than to ask.
"Shh," Kono hushes him. "We're here, Steve, it's okay. Do you want a hospital?"
Steve shakes his head. "I'm sorry. Going now..." he murmurs, and then he's gone again.
Kono gets up a moment later. "I'm going to go change," she says softly, and she can't meet his eyes at all.
Steve finds he can't blame her in the slightest.
~*~
August 15th, 2006: Kono is 22, Steve is 29
"Kono, your boyfriend is here!" Her roommate is rapping on the door.
Jennifer is the latest in a series of roommates, each more disastrous than the last. It makes Kono almost wish she were back home with her parents. Almost, but not quite. At least her roommates don't glare at Steve every time he dares to darken their doorsteps. It's a little difficult to explain to them that, actually, her boyfriend suffers from this condition that no one else in the world seems to have, and that's the reason he lives in a tent and can't hold down a steady job and doesn't have a driver's license.
"What about that nice boy you dated a few years ago?" her mother asked not too long ago. "I saw him the other day. He's cut his hair and he is a marine biologist now. You liked him, didn't you?"
"Ben has a girlfriend, Mama. I'm not going to leave Steve for him."
"When is Steve going to get a job?"
"Steve has a job."
Mama had sniffed disdainfully. "Making surfboards is not a real job. It's a hobby."
Kono sticks out her tongue at her reflection in the mirror, annoyed with herself for having an imaginary argument in her head with her mother, yet again, even if it's only the memory of one this time. She opens the door to her bedroom to find Steve waiting right there outside, practically bouncing on his toes. She smiles, a little bemused.
"You look excited."
He reaches out, takes her by the hand. "Come on," he pulls her into the tiny shared living room and flicks on the TV. "I want you to watch something. It should be on in a few minutes," he says, turning to frown at the clock mounted on the wall. Steve doesn't wear a watch, because they only end up breaking whenever he time travels.
"Steve, what are you―are you sure you should be watching this?" she asks.
Television is one of his triggers, something about the flickering images setting off whatever it is in his brain or his body that makes him travel. Sometimes she wonders if time travel isn't weirdly related to epilepsy in some way, because it seems to have all of the same triggers: flashing lights, stress, a blow to the head. Of course, there's no way to be sure, not without bringing him to a doctor, and he's refused to seek any kind of professional help for all the years she's known him, because the one time he did try to ask for help the medical community tried to treat him for paranoid schizophrenia instead.
He shakes his head. "I'll take the risk, just this once. It's important, and I need you to watch. I just won't look directly at the screen. Look, Kono."
Steve is giddy like a kid being allowed to stay up until midnight on New Year's Eve. She stares at the TV screen, feels her face scrunch up in confusion when all that comes on is the state lotto draw, an attractive girl reading off the numbers as they come up.
"Steve, what―?" she starts, stops as she sees him holding out a piece of paper, offering it to her. "Oh, my God. You didn't."
He nods. "I did."
The girl on the television reads out the fourth number, but Kono doesn't need to listen anymore to know that they're all going to match. "Steve, you... I... we can't. I mean, this is cheating!"
He shrugs. "Says who? There's no rule against time travel, is there?"
"No, but... Why on Earth would you do this?"
Steve seems honestly perplexed by her reaction, by the fact that she's not thrilled beyond words. "I wanted us to have a place. I'm never going to make much money, and you're just starting out, we can't live on your salary. Besides, your parents already think I'm a wastrel."
"Unless you're a surgeon, my parents will always think you're a wastrel," she says automatically. Steve's expression is quickly going from perplexed to outright hurt. He always looks a little like a puppy that's been kicked around and doesn't quite understand why the universe is being cruel, and sometimes it makes her want to shake him. The rest of the time it makes her want to wrap him around in a blanket so the world can't get to him anymore, and she hates that, this time, she's the one that put that look on his face.
"I thought it was kind of a neat trick, but..." he shrugs again. "It doesn't matter. We could win every week for the next year, Kono, and it wouldn't matter. You can cash the winnings and give them to the homeless, if you want. I just... I guess we can wait, find another way to get us an apartment."
She stares at him, utterly overwhelmed. It never occurred to her before that of course Steve can do this. He could have won the lottery every week of his life and just never bothered to do it because he never needed to before. If it was just him, there'd be no need―he did it all for her. He did it so that she wouldn't have to put up with her stupid roommate or be forced to go and stay with him in his tent by the beach, because he believes with every fibre of his being that she deserves better, deserves more, and she doesn't know if she should laugh or cry at the terrible sincerity of it all. Especially since she'd happily live in a tent with him for the rest of their lives.
He pulls the paper back, holds it up between both hands, poised to tear it. "It doesn't matter," he repeats. "Say the word, and it's toast. No one wins this week, and that's that."
She snatches at it, suddenly laughing. "Okay, okay, I take it back! You win, I am weak, oh my God, Steve!" She plucks the ticket from his hands and he grins back, grabs her around the waist and swings her around, threatening the sanctity of all the breakables in the apartment. She shrieks a little. "Put me down!"
Ever obedient, he sets her down, just as Jennifer comes out of her room demanding to know what the fuss is about. Kono turns to grin at her from ear to ear.
"I'm moving out."
~*~
December 20th, 2006: Steve is 30, Kono is 22
Steve is well into his fourth drink by the time Kono comes home from work, laden down with bags full of Christmas decorations. He's already told her in no uncertain terms that he wants nothing to do with the celebrations. He'll help her decorate if she wants, he'll let her drag him to her family's Christmas party, but there is nothing about Christmas that he will ever like.
She drops her bags on the floor and eyes the rapidly dwindling bottle of Ocean Vodka next to him on the floor. He's sitting cross-legged with his back to the wall, still making an attempt at respectability by using a glass, but he's about one or maybe two drinks away from just tilting the bottle directly into his mouth.
"Do you really think you should be drinking this much?"
"Yup."
"You're already drunk."
"Yup."
She sighs. "You said you'd help me with the decorations. Come on, Steve. Christmas comes once a year, it won't kill you to at least pretend to enjoy it, for my sake. I don't get people who hate Christmas," she adds a little petulantly. "I mean, just because it's a little cheesy that makes it terrible? What's wrong with wanting people to be happy and enjoy being with their families?"
Steve pours himself another drink, tosses back the shot of vodka like he's swallowing a mouthful of water after brushing his teeth. "Nothing wrong with that."
"So enlighten me," she challenges. And, okay, maybe he owes her that much, at least. "Steve, stop," she says, trying to slip her hand between him and the bottle."
"Did I ever tell you about my mother?" he asks, and she shakes her head, comes to sit next to him on the floor. She's always avid for trivia about his life. Loves hearing about his coloured past. "Well, once upon a time, I had a mother. Both parents, and a baby sister, and we all lived very happily together in a big house right on a private beach."
She smiles. "Sounds nice. Your sister's name is Mary, right? The one who lives in L.A.?"
"That's the one." Steve takes another drink, and wonders if he's too drunk or too sober to be telling her any of this. "So on the morning of Christmas Eve, when I was eleven years old, my mother took me in the car to go fetch Mary who was playing at a friend's house. It was a Mercury Marquis, a '74."
"What's that?"
"Built like a tank. Look it up at some point, when you're at a computer. Anyway, my parents loved that car. They drove it when they got married. It had a lot of history for them. I never had much appreciation for them, but whatever. I wasn't feeling good, I was in a bad mood, and my mother was singing that Christmas song about 'All I Want For Christmas is My Two Front Teeth,' you know it?"
"Not by heart, but yeah."
"So I was half-lying down in the back, and my head hurt, and I whined at her about singing that stupid song because it made my head hurt. And then there was this weird clicking noise, and the next thing I knew I was watching the car―and my mother inside―go up in a ball of flames."
Kono's eyes are wide. She puts a hand on his knee―it's warm and soft and comes closer to making him lose what little composure he last left than anything he's been doing to himself today. "You time traveled?"
"I time-traveled," he confirms. "I hadn't done it much by then, and... I don't know, all I knew was that I was watching my car, and I could see my mother, just the back of her head, and it veered off the road and just exploded."
"How... why do you think it happened?"
"Stress―pure fear. I think my body did the only trick it could."
Kono keeps looking at his face, her hand tightening its grip on his knee. "So..."
"So. Mom died, and I didn't. I was gone from the scene for precisely eight minutes and twenty-three seconds, but I was also there the whole time. Nobody saw me go or come back. I have no idea where I went, no idea how long I stayed there. It might have been only a couple of seconds, for all I know. I was on the shoulder of the road, naked and in shock, and half of my life was on fire in our family car."
The bottle of vodka is reaching the halfway mark. There's no sign at all that he's going to go anywhere, travel to a happier, safer time than now. It's just him and the vodka and Kono's hand, warm on his thigh.
"Traffic came to a halt. There were cars everywhere, people getting out of their vehicles and yelling. It took ambulances forever to get to us, because of all the cars left in the middle of the street. It was too late, anyway, she was dead the minute the car exploded. One of the paramedics threw up. The cops who got there first were friends of my dad's, and it hit them as hard as it did me, in some ways. We used to have barbecues with them."
"But..." Kono is frowning, and Steve thinks he knows why. "You said you were gone―that you don't remember. How can you know the exact time you were missing for? How do you know all these things?"
He hesitates for a long time, trying to figure out how to explain it. "You know how there are moments in our lives that―that are so big, they define everything else? How you always look back at that handful of times in your life, you dream about those moments, those events, revisit them again and again in your mind?"
She nods. "Yeah."
"My mom's death... it was pivotal. It was the moment everything changed, and I was there. I dream about it, and I time travel to it, all the time. If you were able to go back and, say, film it, from all the angles, you'll see me. I'm there on the road, I'm the one who finds a payphone and makes the first call to report the accident. I'm lurking right behind the ambulance as the paramedic tries to ask eleven-year-old me what happened. I'm listening in while the cops try to get my father on the radio."
"Oh my God," Kono says quietly, and Steve pushes on, because if he stops now he'll never start again, and he owes her the end of this story, at least.
"I'm there in the aftermath, too. I'm sitting in the hospital waiting room while my father paces outside the pediatrics ward, and I want to maybe say something, tell him that it's going to be okay, but I know it's not. He looks grey, like all the blood's been drained from his body. I'm the one who borrows a blanket from someone in a nearby car and wraps it around my own shoulders because I'm naked and shivering on the side of the road. I'm the one who looked into that eleven-year-old's eyes and told what to say. I told him he'd―he'd be fine," Steve's voice breaks, "I told him he'd be fine because that's―that's what he needed to hear even though it was a lie. I looked into his face and lied and all the time I was―I was thinking..." Tears are pouring down his face now, and no matter how he scrubs at his eyes with the back of his wrist, they won't stop. Kono slides over on the floor and pulls him into her arms, lets him sob against her thin cotton shirt.
"What?" she whispers. "Tell me."
"I was thinking I should have died too."
Kono holds him until he stops crying, although it takes a long time, and her shirt is a mess and her legs must be cramping up long before he's done. She kisses his temple. "For what it's worth, I am so glad you're here. I am glad you're here and that you're alive and spending Christmas with me. And I'm sorry if I hurt you, because I didn't know, okay? We don't have to do anything, or go anywhere, or see anyone. It can be just you and me, if that's what you need."
He shakes his head, and she gets up to fetch him a glass of water from the sink. He drains it when she hands it to him. "No, I want to. I don't want to ruin your Christmas. I just... it's just hard."
She kisses his lips, then, carefully. "I know that, now. But if you'll let me, we can try to make it less hard for you."
Kono tastes of the ocean and of hyacinths on his lips. "I'd like that."
~*~
May 17th, 2007: Steve is 30, Kono is 23
"Do you travel to the future, sometimes?" Kono asks him one day.
He's half-asleep, worn out from running the whole night to get away from the cops after an overzealous octogenarian called 911 after seeing a naked man in her back yard. She's probably dead now, Steve thinks, and he wonders if he should feel something―sadness, satisfaction, anything at all. He's been gone a week in the present, although it was less than twenty-four hours for him. He doesn't know if he's aged a week or a day. Kono strokes his hair, tries to tuck the too-short ends behind his ear.
"Sometimes."
"What do you do when you see what's going to happen?"
He rolls over to curl up against her thigh. She's warm and he's freezing, because he never did find any real clothes. He thinks he might be getting sick, which is going to suck. "I never stay long, when it's the future. Barely have time to see anything, and I'm usually running like hell."
"Have you ever seen yourself?" Her voice is quiet, and it's her tone that gives him pause.
"No, not in the future. Why?" He cranes his neck to look up at her.
She shrugs, hair falling in her face. "It's just, you've been coming to see me all my life, and you and I have known each other for a few months, but... I've never seen you any older than 34."
~*~
Part IV