fic: jersey city, new jersey
Title: Jersey City, New Jersey
Fandom: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~4.5K
Summary: Prompted by
leupagus, who wanted Steve and Danny in New Jersey. And. I couldn't refuse. Because it's NEW JERSEY. Pre-slash if you tilt your head and squint and love jokes about how they're totally married, yo. (AO3)
Notes: If you had told me at any time in my life that the first thing I did when I turned last thing I would do before turning 25 (HA HA I AM SO QUICK WITH THE POSTING) was post Hawaii Five-0 fan fiction... I don't even know.
Danny's made his peace with probably never being a normal cop again.
It just means he relishes those stretches at work when it's kind of like being back at The Station and there should be stereotypes heaped up on their sleek touchscreen tables -- a box from Dunkin Donuts, maybe an Irish cop or five swearing up a storm, a mean as fuck supervisor summoning him into his presence and then sending him out to get killed (either by a gunshot or paperwork-induced boredom).
Danny looks up over his laptop screen and sees his mean as fuck supervisor right now. They're at either ends of their long supercomputer/table on their gubernatorial-funded laptops, but Steve is practically on the table, draped languorously, one arm stretched out impossibly long, his head resting on his bicep as he looks at his screen . He taps listlessly at his touchpad, eyes glazed over, and Danny wonders if he should check his breathing.
Nope, there are little puffs forming on the table by his mouth. He's alive, barely.
"Get on gchat," Danny says.
Steve mumbles into his arm, something like "Fuck off" or… no, it was probably "Fuck off."
"Got something that'll amuse you," Danny says.
"I could just get up and look at it," Steve says.
Danny raises his eyebrows and Steve rolls his eyes up slowly to look.
"Would you?"
Steve looks to his computer again and in a moment, a small window pops up on the right hand corner of Danny's inbox.
Steveo: k
Danny pastes a link into the window, sends it, and arches past his screen to watch Steve's reaction.
Steve makes a sound into his arm and rolls his eyes up at Danny again.
"Never seen a dolphin do that?" he asks.
"No, Steve, I'm from New Jersey, I didn't know dolphins could blow bubbles."
"Bubble rings, not bubbles," Steve corrects.
"Dickhead."
He's pretty sure Steve calls him something in Hawaiian, but he couldn't give less of a fuck if he tried.
The monitor at the center of the table lights up and Chin's voice starts addressing them. Suddenly, Steve the Navy SEAL is back and Danny wonders that Steve doesn't leap on the table to start furiously humping it in a twisted prayer of thanks for progress on their case.
"You've gotta go on a little road trip," Chin informs them.
Danny stands next to Steve and tilts his head at Chin's face on the screen while Steve rests his knuckles on the table and tries to give his best crazy eyes.
"What are you talking about? Where are we going?"
"Sending you coordinates," Chin says as a map pops up.
Danny -- it's Christmas, Danny decides, right then and there, it is fucking Christmas, it's come early, he might start humping the table himself and crying a little because -- oh god, things -- they can't get better right now, they just can't.
"EWR, baby!" Danny yells triumphantly as he closes his laptop.
"This isn't happening," Steve informs the table, which is transferring data on the case and doesn't give a fuck about what Steve feels, the heartless bitch.
"I'm calling my mom," Danny says.
"How long do you think we're staying?" Steve asks. "We're not gonna be there long enough for a family reunion."
"Dinner with my family, you heartless bastard," Danny replies. "She'll make you food that has never touched a can."
"In New Jersey?" Steve scoffs.
"I'll pick you up at your place in an hour," Danny says, and he can't help himself as he runs out the door and yells, "JERSEY, BABY."
Steve calls Chin back, just to yell, "Why aren't you coming?! Danny's happy, I can't catch bad guys and… he's happy!"
"Sorry, I can't get 3G here, that's weird, I'll talk to you when you're off the plane," Chin says crisply before he hangs up.
*
"So let's review --"
"Shut up," Danny says an hour later at the airport. "Ma, yeah, I'll be in at 6:30 tomorrow -- AM, Ma, AM -- and with traffic --"
"Traffic?" Steve winces. "What the --"
"Shut up -- not you, Ma, my partner -- no, my cop partner -- at the station -- Ma, seriously, I'm telling you I'm not -- I thought you guys voted Republican."
"The fuck?" Steve asks no one.
"Excuse me if a lifetime of casual homophobia is suddenly -- Ma, Rachel's a bitch. She's the bitchiest bitch to have ever -- of course we're -- Ma, you're killing me, I'll see you tomorrow, okay? We've got stuff to do -- we have work, Ma --"
"Please, say 'Ma' a few more times," Steve says as he rubs at his jawline.
"Okay, I think they're calling our gate now so I'll call you when we're on our way over for dinner, okay? Okay, love you. Bye. I will, bye."
"So is there a woman on this planet who doesn't have you by the short ones?" Steve asks when Danny hangs up.
"You don't," Danny says.
"Do, too."
"You do not!" He thinks about it for a moment and then clarifies, "Outside the office, you don't. Hell, I'm not even sure if inside the office you call the shots."
"What the --"
"I'm still wearing my tie," Danny says. "Were I truly your bitch -- if you really had me by the short ones -- I'd spend 9000% more of my non-cop time at American Apparel or where ever you shop."
"Eddie Bauer," Steve says, a little offended.
"Oh. Me, too."
They look in opposite directions, occasionally glancing at the other from the periphery, reeling from the betrayal of their clothing franchise.
*
"You've got balls," Danny informs Steve. "Charging a beer to the governor's tab."
"It's a little deal I've secretly made with her -- so secret, even she doesn't know about it," Steve says as he sips his beer and, yeah, Danny is a little jealous he apparently doesn't have the sack for it. "Every bullet I take for her and the great state of Hawaii -- I get an in-flight alcoholic drink."
"Grazing count?"
"Fuck you, grazing counts. Of course it counts." Steve looks at the drink cart and motions to it. "You've clearly, clearly earned at least one. Remember that time you knew me for five minutes and took a bullet?"
Danny sighs and looks out the window, and when he turns back, he finds a beer poured out for him, the rest of the bottle waiting for him on his tray table.
"Okay," he sighs again.
"Short ones. You're mine," Steve says as he drinks.
*
Steve's confidence kind of plummets from there, because for all of Steve's training and his jumping on the roofs of planes, trains, and automobiles, and the countless moronically macho things he does day in and day out for his job, his vocation --
They've landed in New Jersey, and baby's just not ready for that sort of thing.
*
They check in with their counterparts at the Jersey City Police Department, harass them as per usual, and then find out their criminals have gone off a grid.
"You lost them?" Steve asks. "No. You just -- where's your computer?"
The sergeant looks pissed as hell and Danny is kind of torn -- he crosses his arms over chest because he's technically on Steve's side, but at the same time -- who the fuck loses drug smugglers?
(Then again, it's New Jersey, and that can happen -- losing drug smugglers among other drug smugglers and human traffickers and all that jazz.)
"There's a free computer in that third cubicle over there," the sergeant finally says. "Should be logged in."
Steve makes motions with his hands.
"No, not a -- like, where's your computer with access to the city mainframe, airport schedules and flight patterns --"
"What? Isn't that on Google?" the sergeant asks.
"The e-mail people?" Steve asks.
"Oh, honey," Danny says involuntarily, which earns him raised eyebrows from everyone in a five-foot radius, but -- Steve. "I need to talk to you for a sec," Danny finally says.
"You can use that office, sweetie," the sergeant suggests.
They glare back at him and Danny pulls him over to the office.
"Have you never worked in like… a real police station?"
"…Sure I have."
"One using an operating system that wasn't custom-built by government nerds."
"What are you talking about? WindowPayne is a totally valid --"
Danny has to stop himself from cooing again when he sees the realization break across Steve's face.
"Have you ever used Microsoft Word?" Danny asks.
"Look, I told you, typing as a skill isn't going to last much longer, not with voice --"
"Oh my God, you don't talk anymore. New rule: when we're on this coast, you don't talk. In fact, if we're on the mainland -- you don't talk."
"I don't like that rule," Steve says. "Do they at least have coffee in these 'real police stations'? And I don't mean any of that Kona shit, I mean --"
"Kona shit?!" Danny shrieks. "What -- what planet are you from?! This is some fucking X-Files shit right here!"
Danny leaves the office, barely suppressing his incredulity at a native Hawaiian calling the best coffee on the planet "shit" -- just. What.
"My partner," Danny says to the sergeant, "Seems to have forgotten that we brought our own computers, so would you mind if we just set up in that office and stayed out of your hair until we find our guys and call for back up?"
"Best idea you've had all day, Detective," he says. "You boys hungry? We're getting pizza from down the street."
"We would love some pizza," Danny replies. He looks at Steve and calls out, "I bet they have pineapple!"
"What did I tell you about food from a can?" Steve asks.
"Only in a war zone," Danny sighs, but he looks to the sergeant and says, "We'd love some pizza. Let us check in on our stuff and we'll be right with you."
Steve rests his head against the door frame of their new office and tries not to whimper.
"Pineapple from a can," he says when Danny unzips his bag and pulls out their tablet. "How do you people live?"
"Canned pineapple is not the end of the world."
"Canned pineapple shouldn't even be in the world!"
*
"I like pepperoni," Steve says. "I mean, it's not like it is on the island, but --"
"Just. Shut up. Let's treasure this, and not think about how you've never had real pepperoni before today. God."
"You know," Steve begins, "You keep being a dick about shit I haven't done and I am never going to let you off the hook when we get back."
"Oh, like my tie? Like how you let me off the hook about the tie?"
"It's a thousand degrees in Hawaii! Why the fuck do you wear a tie? My complaints are valid."
"Why do you put pineapple on everything? Be a bigger stereotype!"
"Says the guy who hasn't stopped yelling since we got here and can't drive!"
"I got us here just fine --"
"Yeah, we only dodged death about --"
"We dodged other assholes, which by the way, is a skill I honed while I lived here and you should be grateful that I didn't let you drive because you'd be dead now. New Jersey doesn't do correct driving, so you adopt, adapt --"
"Hey, the game's on," one of the lieutenants said.
"-- Improve --"
"The game's on!" the sergeant repeated, which shut them up, finally.
No one really cared about the game, but they cared about the first five minutes of silence they'd had all day.
*
When they're back in the office they commandeered, Danny ends his thirtieth phone call of the day and glances at Steve, who is happily (happily?) tracking their drug smugglers on the custom-made tablet computer Danny brought with them.
"How many countries have you been to?" Danny asks.
"My passport's classified," Steve replies.
"…the fuck?"
"I think I've been to all of them, but Africa and Eastern Europe keep shifting their borders, so it's hard to keep track," Steve muses. "But I've probably been to all of them. I mean, just going to Antarctica puts you in 46 different countries' territories, but they're 46 countries you'd probably go to anyway."
"Uzbekistan?"
"Had a year-long tour of all the 'stans -- not joking! They're important! National security and all that."
"Cameroon?"
"Great coffee." Steve glances up and grins at Danny. "I bet you can't name all these rare countries you think I've never been to."
"Qatar -- Middle East, stupid question."
"Big soccer tournament there next year -- we should go. You'd… probably hate it."
"And yet," Danny says. "Have you ever used Internet Explorer?"
"…maybe in like 1994? When I was in college? And then the Navy ate me."
"So fucking cute," Danny sighs.
"I totally am," Steve agrees.
*
They get their guys and Danny's a little sad when Steve announces (40 seconds after cuffing the last smuggler and passing them off to the U.S. Marshals) that he's going to order their tickets back to Hawaii.
Then he calls his mom, tells her they're dropping by for dinner and maybe to spend the night (depending on Steve's sadism in flight arrangements), and things feel a little lighter.
"Got a midnight flight to LAX, then a two-hour layover before we're back to Honolulu," Steve announces.
"Great," Danny says. "Now get in the car, we're going to my parents' house."
"Wait, why? Oh God. That phone call." Steve rubs his hands down his face and groans, "I'm gonna get that in stereo this time."
"Yeah, and a home-cooked meal, so --"
"I cook, you know, I don't know if you noticed but --"
"You don't fucking cook -- microwaving is not cooking."
"If I have to do something to the package it comes in, that's cooking."
"What happened to all this 'food in a can, anathema' --"
"My can, my rules!"
"Wow, you're worse than Grace."
"And I didn't say all food in cans --"
"Yes you did! You --"
"Okay, maybe I did, but pineapple is the worst --"
"How did you survive in those 400 countries you've been to --"
"Wait, what," Steve laughs. "How many countries do you think are in the world?"
"Shut up and get in the car, we're going to my mother's and that's the end of it!" Danny yells.
The semi-conscious smugglers and U.S. Marshals are looking at him as he leans against the driver's side of the rental car, and Danny gives a little wave. "Thanks for your help!" he calls out.
"My husband's the same way," a heavily mustached marshal replies.
Danny tilts his head, sighs, and climbs into his car, where Steve is already buckled up and sulking.
*
During a bout of stop-and-go traffic on the Turnpike to Danny's parents' house, Danny looks over and notices Steve's posture. He pulled his seat up a little in the already compact car, so his legs are huge and folded in front of him, and his hands are quietly folded in his lap as he stares out the window.
"You look like the fucking Queen of England," Danny remarks.
"What?"
"Why are you so quiet? What are you staring at?"
"Those trees," Steve says slowly, staring past the guardrails at the trees everywhere. "They're… they're so unsettling."
Danny brakes and looks where Steve is looking.
"They're pine trees. Or fir. Or whatever. They're trees, Steve."
"But they're so -- God, they're so angry. Is this why horror movies always take place around here?"
"Name one horror movie set in New Jersey."
"Name one that couldn't have been set in New Jersey."
"You've been in war zones, caravans with terrorists, uncharted rainforests, but the trees off the New Jersey Turnpike freak you out?"
"They're not natural, Danny, I am so creeped out."
And Danny wants to laugh, but he sees Steve peering through the trees at the houses beyond, and he thinks Steve flinches when a kid runs out the back door of a house to the trampoline in the backyard.
That's when he laughs and makes a mental note to explain to his parents that his partner is, actually, this really adorable giant pussy who's been bred into a tactical killing machine but can't use the bookmarks toolbar in a web browser.
*
Steve doesn't think he's a big mouth, but he's been told that (lately) he's become one. For whatever reason.
For whatever 5'5" Jersey boy with blond highlights reason.
And Steve began to believe that before they left, mostly every time he caught himself yelling at Danny at completely inappropriate times and for no reason except that -- it was fun.
Anyway, he has to reevaluate everything again, because he spends dinner sitting silently at the table while the Williamses shriek at each other.
In a strangely loving kind of way, but it's still shrieking.
"So who'd you catch today?" Danny's mother, Lisa, asks.
"Drug smugglers, the usual. Caught them by the train tracks in Hoboken, on the way to Newport?"
"Oh, I know that! We drive there all the time, don't we, Nick?" she asks Danny's father.
"Didn't know those trains actually ran," he comments.
"Yes you do! We always hear them rumbling when we're driving around there to that mall!"
"Why the fuck do you go to that shitty fucking mall?" Danny asks.
"Language," she scolds. "And we go there because they have all my stores in one place, and it's cheaper than Willowbrook."
"Willowbrook is five seconds away on 23 but you'll go how many miles out of your way for --"
"We're retired, Danny, what do we have to do but go to a mall that's --"
"I don't know, what does anyone do when they're retired? Start a business? Raise --"
"Their grandchildren?" Nick asks, and Steve glances up from his lasagna from the corner of his eye, because he didn't expect that the person most upset by the transplant to Hawaii was Grace's grandfather.
"Dad, for the --"
"Not in front of company," Nick replies.
"Steve's not company, he's my partner," Danny replies. "And look, Rachel and I already worked out that for Christmas --"
"Christmas in Hawaii is awesome," Steve says randomly and why did he say that he is going to be mauled alive.
Danny seems to be wondering the same thing as he stares at Steve incredulously before he looks to his parent and says, "Steve was raised in Hawaii."
"I don't think it's really Christmas without snow," Lisa sighs.
"Way to invalidate the experiences maybe half the people in the world who celebrate Christmas, Ma," Danny says as he stabs at his lasagna a little too roughly against the porcelain. "Including Steve."
"I don't mind," Steve says. "My dad said the same thing all the time, but it was still fun."
"Ever had a white Christmas, Steve?" Nick asks.
"Uh, one year when I was working in Russia," Steve says, except then he thinks about it and remembers, "Right, not working, but uh, I was hiding out from some terrorists while the rest of my group tracked them down. Sad Christmas, but it wasn't bad."
"That sounds awful," Lisa says, and she looks to Danny. "You invite him for Christmas, do you hear me?"
"That's all right, Mrs. Wi --"
"How's Hawaii, Danny?" Lisa interrupts.
Steve glances at all their plates and wonders how they could have all eaten as much as they have when they haven't shut up long enough to eat.
"Is Grace making friends? Are you? This boy seems nice. Are you seeing anyone?"
"Jeez, Ma, I've only been in Hawaii for what, a month? Give me a break, I'm barely unpacked!"
"You haven't unpacked? Baby, if you need help because you're off killing people --"
"I'm not killing people, Ma! Shoot to temporarily incapacitate and even that's rare! Steve and I are pretty good at our jobs!"
"I'm awesome," Steve comments.
"I'm just saying, between this super secret job of yours that takes up so much time you can't even call once a week --"
"I call! Just because you're off at the mall when I call because our timezones are fucked beyond --"
"Language!"
"Any kids, Steve?" Nick asks through the roar of conversation between Danny and his mother.
"Uh, none that I've been sued about," Steve says. "Why did I say that? No, no kids, sir."
"Danny says you were a Navy SEAL."
"I was! Yeah!"
Their conversation ends with a nod of Nick's head and his attention turning back to his dinner, which has to be growing cold like Steve's, since they're all talking and listening and bickering and everything.
"Steven, are you finished? You eat so slowly! I thought you were a big important spy, eating on the go all the time! Danny, are you eating?"
"Of course I'm eating!"
"Do they have Chinese food in Hawaii? This boy, Steven, you wouldn't --"
"Actually, it's just Steve," Steve says.
Lisa looks at him hard for a moment and then continues. "This boy of mine, all he would eat was Chinese food, three or four times a week when he was going through the divorce, and I thought --"
"Hey, let me take these dishes, huh, and you stop talking about my eating habits with my partner," Danny says as he sweeps over and grabs all the plates.
"Someone has to look out for you, and who's going to do it if not your mother and your partner!"
"Ma, he's my police partner, my detective partner, my co-worker, not my wife."
"I'm just saying," Lisa sighs as she sits down again next to Steve. "When I worked, we looked out for each other, and Danny thinks he doesn't need that, and then he's --"
"Ma, we're not --"
"You're not what?" she asks sharply. "Not a bunch of stupid women who talk about these things? Or something more insulting to your partner who can let you take that next bullet?"
"So my mom was the Newark Police Commissioner," Danny calls out from the kitchen as he dumps all the dishes in and begins rinsing them off. "When she says 'we all looked out for each other', she means the entire Newark police department."
"Fuck, you're Commissioner Williams who took out a whole arm of that big crime family --?"
"The Salvos," Danny sighs from the kitchen.
"Hey, we just crashed their party a few weeks back," Steve says.
"Danny mentioned that!" Lisa says. "That son of a bitch Salvo, I swear." She sighs deeply, a lot like her son, and then smiles widely at Steve. "Don't mind me, just regret I didn't dismember him for threatening my baby every day I was on the job!"
Danny comes back in, wiping his hands on a dish towel, and grins at Steve. "My mom's a bad ass."
"But enough about me," Lisa says as she smooths out the table cloth beneath her hands and takes her husband's hand, since Nick's been so quiet and everything this whole time. "Are you seeing anyone, Danny? Are you at least taking care of yourself? Did you get that bottle of multivitamins I sent you?"
"Oh my God, Ma! Really! Really!"
"If you tell me the brand, I'll sneak a bottle into his desk," Steve says a little too quietly to be fucking with Danny, and a little too sincere to be getting much sadistic pleasure out of it.
*
As they wait for their red-eye back west, Danny drumming on his thighs annoyingly and Steve drinking some kind of health fruit crap shake he found in the last open Hudson News in the airport, they simultaneously turn to each other and laugh.
"How many states you been to?" Danny asks.
"Uh… I think I skipped a bunch of the big ones in the West," Steve says. "And I haven't been to a lot of Canada. Me and my buddies once took a trip through Mexico and Central America in a Jeep -- man, we were idiots."
"No, that sounds pretty awesome," Danny says. "What did you think of Jersey?"
"The trees are still scary," Steve notes with a tiny shudder. "But other than that? Not bad. Everyone was nice. Criminals continued to be stupid, we continued to be awesome and no one got shot this time!"
"Yeah, isn't that great?" Danny reflects. "A week without getting shot, knock on wood. I'm excited."
"And your mother's a legend," Steve says. "You know, among New Jersey officials for not dying in office or getting caught in a huge corruption scandal." Steve adds, "And that other stuff. About the mobsters."
"See why I like visiting my mom?" Danny asks. "And she's a mean cook."
"Yeah," Steve agrees.
"In more than one sense of the word," Danny muses.
"Yeah, that was a lot of verbal abuse in the kitchen."
"That t-shirt doesn't make you look fat."
"Of course it doesn't. I have like, negative ten percent body fat."
"If that were true, you'd be a Barbie. A titless Barbie, and what's the point of that?"
"What's the point of Barbie at all?"
"I think we're too penile-oriented to consider that question." Danny laughs and claws at his hair momentarily. "Dammit, Steve, way to ruin every tea party I ever had with Grace when she was young."
"You're the one who coined the phrase 'titless Barbie'."
"I'd google it but I'm afraid."
"You should be," Steve says. He wraps his arms a little tighter around himself and leans back in his chair.
"You're gonna sleep before you sleep on your five-hour overnight flight?" Danny asks just as he's about to nod off.
"Well, you're obviously going to be doing something responsible like not sleeping and making sure we don't miss our flight," Steve says through a yawn. "So, yeah. That's my plan. Then I'm going to sleep on the flight from LAX, too."
"I'm gonna play Bejeweled on my phone," Danny says. "Kono got me a free version."
"Free as in free or free as in the Hawaiian taxpayers paid for it free?"
"I don't know," Danny says.
And Steve thinks it's painfully unfair of his brain to decide that sleep is for the weak and what he really wants to do is watch Danny try to figure out the new games on his smartphone until their flight arrives.
"Wake up," Danny says.
"Did you win Boggle?" Steve asks.
"Yeah, only like sixteen times while you were asleep on my shoulder," Danny replies. "By the way, stop talking about my mother and pineapples in your sleep. It's creepy."
"I talk in my sleep?"
"I'd sue you for sexual harassment if I wasn't so flattered."
"I… I got nothing," Steve admits.
"Home court advantage! Yeah! It's not just an urban legend!"
As Danny trots off/dances down the corridor to the plane, Steve hands his boarding pass to be scanned. The guy doing the scanning glances down the corridor and gives Steve a look.
"My partner's a freak, and I don't know what I did to deserve this," Steve says. "I think I served my country too well, you know?"
"My husband's the same way," the guy says. "Have a good flight."
Steve hopes his glare speaks volumes, but gives up after a few seconds and trudges down the corridor after Danny.
Fandom: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~4.5K
Summary: Prompted by
leupagus, who wanted Steve and Danny in New Jersey. And. I couldn't refuse. Because it's NEW JERSEY. Pre-slash if you tilt your head and squint and love jokes about how they're totally married, yo. (AO3)
Notes: If you had told me at any time in my life that the first thing I did when I turned last thing I would do before turning 25 (HA HA I AM SO QUICK WITH THE POSTING) was post Hawaii Five-0 fan fiction... I don't even know.
Danny's made his peace with probably never being a normal cop again.
It just means he relishes those stretches at work when it's kind of like being back at The Station and there should be stereotypes heaped up on their sleek touchscreen tables -- a box from Dunkin Donuts, maybe an Irish cop or five swearing up a storm, a mean as fuck supervisor summoning him into his presence and then sending him out to get killed (either by a gunshot or paperwork-induced boredom).
Danny looks up over his laptop screen and sees his mean as fuck supervisor right now. They're at either ends of their long supercomputer/table on their gubernatorial-funded laptops, but Steve is practically on the table, draped languorously, one arm stretched out impossibly long, his head resting on his bicep as he looks at his screen . He taps listlessly at his touchpad, eyes glazed over, and Danny wonders if he should check his breathing.
Nope, there are little puffs forming on the table by his mouth. He's alive, barely.
"Get on gchat," Danny says.
Steve mumbles into his arm, something like "Fuck off" or… no, it was probably "Fuck off."
"Got something that'll amuse you," Danny says.
"I could just get up and look at it," Steve says.
Danny raises his eyebrows and Steve rolls his eyes up slowly to look.
"Would you?"
Steve looks to his computer again and in a moment, a small window pops up on the right hand corner of Danny's inbox.
Steveo: k
Danny pastes a link into the window, sends it, and arches past his screen to watch Steve's reaction.
Steve makes a sound into his arm and rolls his eyes up at Danny again.
"Never seen a dolphin do that?" he asks.
"No, Steve, I'm from New Jersey, I didn't know dolphins could blow bubbles."
"Bubble rings, not bubbles," Steve corrects.
"Dickhead."
He's pretty sure Steve calls him something in Hawaiian, but he couldn't give less of a fuck if he tried.
The monitor at the center of the table lights up and Chin's voice starts addressing them. Suddenly, Steve the Navy SEAL is back and Danny wonders that Steve doesn't leap on the table to start furiously humping it in a twisted prayer of thanks for progress on their case.
"You've gotta go on a little road trip," Chin informs them.
Danny stands next to Steve and tilts his head at Chin's face on the screen while Steve rests his knuckles on the table and tries to give his best crazy eyes.
"What are you talking about? Where are we going?"
"Sending you coordinates," Chin says as a map pops up.
Danny -- it's Christmas, Danny decides, right then and there, it is fucking Christmas, it's come early, he might start humping the table himself and crying a little because -- oh god, things -- they can't get better right now, they just can't.
"EWR, baby!" Danny yells triumphantly as he closes his laptop.
"This isn't happening," Steve informs the table, which is transferring data on the case and doesn't give a fuck about what Steve feels, the heartless bitch.
"I'm calling my mom," Danny says.
"How long do you think we're staying?" Steve asks. "We're not gonna be there long enough for a family reunion."
"Dinner with my family, you heartless bastard," Danny replies. "She'll make you food that has never touched a can."
"In New Jersey?" Steve scoffs.
"I'll pick you up at your place in an hour," Danny says, and he can't help himself as he runs out the door and yells, "JERSEY, BABY."
Steve calls Chin back, just to yell, "Why aren't you coming?! Danny's happy, I can't catch bad guys and… he's happy!"
"Sorry, I can't get 3G here, that's weird, I'll talk to you when you're off the plane," Chin says crisply before he hangs up.
*
"So let's review --"
"Shut up," Danny says an hour later at the airport. "Ma, yeah, I'll be in at 6:30 tomorrow -- AM, Ma, AM -- and with traffic --"
"Traffic?" Steve winces. "What the --"
"Shut up -- not you, Ma, my partner -- no, my cop partner -- at the station -- Ma, seriously, I'm telling you I'm not -- I thought you guys voted Republican."
"The fuck?" Steve asks no one.
"Excuse me if a lifetime of casual homophobia is suddenly -- Ma, Rachel's a bitch. She's the bitchiest bitch to have ever -- of course we're -- Ma, you're killing me, I'll see you tomorrow, okay? We've got stuff to do -- we have work, Ma --"
"Please, say 'Ma' a few more times," Steve says as he rubs at his jawline.
"Okay, I think they're calling our gate now so I'll call you when we're on our way over for dinner, okay? Okay, love you. Bye. I will, bye."
"So is there a woman on this planet who doesn't have you by the short ones?" Steve asks when Danny hangs up.
"You don't," Danny says.
"Do, too."
"You do not!" He thinks about it for a moment and then clarifies, "Outside the office, you don't. Hell, I'm not even sure if inside the office you call the shots."
"What the --"
"I'm still wearing my tie," Danny says. "Were I truly your bitch -- if you really had me by the short ones -- I'd spend 9000% more of my non-cop time at American Apparel or where ever you shop."
"Eddie Bauer," Steve says, a little offended.
"Oh. Me, too."
They look in opposite directions, occasionally glancing at the other from the periphery, reeling from the betrayal of their clothing franchise.
*
"You've got balls," Danny informs Steve. "Charging a beer to the governor's tab."
"It's a little deal I've secretly made with her -- so secret, even she doesn't know about it," Steve says as he sips his beer and, yeah, Danny is a little jealous he apparently doesn't have the sack for it. "Every bullet I take for her and the great state of Hawaii -- I get an in-flight alcoholic drink."
"Grazing count?"
"Fuck you, grazing counts. Of course it counts." Steve looks at the drink cart and motions to it. "You've clearly, clearly earned at least one. Remember that time you knew me for five minutes and took a bullet?"
Danny sighs and looks out the window, and when he turns back, he finds a beer poured out for him, the rest of the bottle waiting for him on his tray table.
"Okay," he sighs again.
"Short ones. You're mine," Steve says as he drinks.
*
Steve's confidence kind of plummets from there, because for all of Steve's training and his jumping on the roofs of planes, trains, and automobiles, and the countless moronically macho things he does day in and day out for his job, his vocation --
They've landed in New Jersey, and baby's just not ready for that sort of thing.
*
They check in with their counterparts at the Jersey City Police Department, harass them as per usual, and then find out their criminals have gone off a grid.
"You lost them?" Steve asks. "No. You just -- where's your computer?"
The sergeant looks pissed as hell and Danny is kind of torn -- he crosses his arms over chest because he's technically on Steve's side, but at the same time -- who the fuck loses drug smugglers?
(Then again, it's New Jersey, and that can happen -- losing drug smugglers among other drug smugglers and human traffickers and all that jazz.)
"There's a free computer in that third cubicle over there," the sergeant finally says. "Should be logged in."
Steve makes motions with his hands.
"No, not a -- like, where's your computer with access to the city mainframe, airport schedules and flight patterns --"
"What? Isn't that on Google?" the sergeant asks.
"The e-mail people?" Steve asks.
"Oh, honey," Danny says involuntarily, which earns him raised eyebrows from everyone in a five-foot radius, but -- Steve. "I need to talk to you for a sec," Danny finally says.
"You can use that office, sweetie," the sergeant suggests.
They glare back at him and Danny pulls him over to the office.
"Have you never worked in like… a real police station?"
"…Sure I have."
"One using an operating system that wasn't custom-built by government nerds."
"What are you talking about? WindowPayne is a totally valid --"
Danny has to stop himself from cooing again when he sees the realization break across Steve's face.
"Have you ever used Microsoft Word?" Danny asks.
"Look, I told you, typing as a skill isn't going to last much longer, not with voice --"
"Oh my God, you don't talk anymore. New rule: when we're on this coast, you don't talk. In fact, if we're on the mainland -- you don't talk."
"I don't like that rule," Steve says. "Do they at least have coffee in these 'real police stations'? And I don't mean any of that Kona shit, I mean --"
"Kona shit?!" Danny shrieks. "What -- what planet are you from?! This is some fucking X-Files shit right here!"
Danny leaves the office, barely suppressing his incredulity at a native Hawaiian calling the best coffee on the planet "shit" -- just. What.
"My partner," Danny says to the sergeant, "Seems to have forgotten that we brought our own computers, so would you mind if we just set up in that office and stayed out of your hair until we find our guys and call for back up?"
"Best idea you've had all day, Detective," he says. "You boys hungry? We're getting pizza from down the street."
"We would love some pizza," Danny replies. He looks at Steve and calls out, "I bet they have pineapple!"
"What did I tell you about food from a can?" Steve asks.
"Only in a war zone," Danny sighs, but he looks to the sergeant and says, "We'd love some pizza. Let us check in on our stuff and we'll be right with you."
Steve rests his head against the door frame of their new office and tries not to whimper.
"Pineapple from a can," he says when Danny unzips his bag and pulls out their tablet. "How do you people live?"
"Canned pineapple is not the end of the world."
"Canned pineapple shouldn't even be in the world!"
*
"I like pepperoni," Steve says. "I mean, it's not like it is on the island, but --"
"Just. Shut up. Let's treasure this, and not think about how you've never had real pepperoni before today. God."
"You know," Steve begins, "You keep being a dick about shit I haven't done and I am never going to let you off the hook when we get back."
"Oh, like my tie? Like how you let me off the hook about the tie?"
"It's a thousand degrees in Hawaii! Why the fuck do you wear a tie? My complaints are valid."
"Why do you put pineapple on everything? Be a bigger stereotype!"
"Says the guy who hasn't stopped yelling since we got here and can't drive!"
"I got us here just fine --"
"Yeah, we only dodged death about --"
"We dodged other assholes, which by the way, is a skill I honed while I lived here and you should be grateful that I didn't let you drive because you'd be dead now. New Jersey doesn't do correct driving, so you adopt, adapt --"
"Hey, the game's on," one of the lieutenants said.
"-- Improve --"
"The game's on!" the sergeant repeated, which shut them up, finally.
No one really cared about the game, but they cared about the first five minutes of silence they'd had all day.
*
When they're back in the office they commandeered, Danny ends his thirtieth phone call of the day and glances at Steve, who is happily (happily?) tracking their drug smugglers on the custom-made tablet computer Danny brought with them.
"How many countries have you been to?" Danny asks.
"My passport's classified," Steve replies.
"…the fuck?"
"I think I've been to all of them, but Africa and Eastern Europe keep shifting their borders, so it's hard to keep track," Steve muses. "But I've probably been to all of them. I mean, just going to Antarctica puts you in 46 different countries' territories, but they're 46 countries you'd probably go to anyway."
"Uzbekistan?"
"Had a year-long tour of all the 'stans -- not joking! They're important! National security and all that."
"Cameroon?"
"Great coffee." Steve glances up and grins at Danny. "I bet you can't name all these rare countries you think I've never been to."
"Qatar -- Middle East, stupid question."
"Big soccer tournament there next year -- we should go. You'd… probably hate it."
"And yet," Danny says. "Have you ever used Internet Explorer?"
"…maybe in like 1994? When I was in college? And then the Navy ate me."
"So fucking cute," Danny sighs.
"I totally am," Steve agrees.
*
They get their guys and Danny's a little sad when Steve announces (40 seconds after cuffing the last smuggler and passing them off to the U.S. Marshals) that he's going to order their tickets back to Hawaii.
Then he calls his mom, tells her they're dropping by for dinner and maybe to spend the night (depending on Steve's sadism in flight arrangements), and things feel a little lighter.
"Got a midnight flight to LAX, then a two-hour layover before we're back to Honolulu," Steve announces.
"Great," Danny says. "Now get in the car, we're going to my parents' house."
"Wait, why? Oh God. That phone call." Steve rubs his hands down his face and groans, "I'm gonna get that in stereo this time."
"Yeah, and a home-cooked meal, so --"
"I cook, you know, I don't know if you noticed but --"
"You don't fucking cook -- microwaving is not cooking."
"If I have to do something to the package it comes in, that's cooking."
"What happened to all this 'food in a can, anathema' --"
"My can, my rules!"
"Wow, you're worse than Grace."
"And I didn't say all food in cans --"
"Yes you did! You --"
"Okay, maybe I did, but pineapple is the worst --"
"How did you survive in those 400 countries you've been to --"
"Wait, what," Steve laughs. "How many countries do you think are in the world?"
"Shut up and get in the car, we're going to my mother's and that's the end of it!" Danny yells.
The semi-conscious smugglers and U.S. Marshals are looking at him as he leans against the driver's side of the rental car, and Danny gives a little wave. "Thanks for your help!" he calls out.
"My husband's the same way," a heavily mustached marshal replies.
Danny tilts his head, sighs, and climbs into his car, where Steve is already buckled up and sulking.
*
During a bout of stop-and-go traffic on the Turnpike to Danny's parents' house, Danny looks over and notices Steve's posture. He pulled his seat up a little in the already compact car, so his legs are huge and folded in front of him, and his hands are quietly folded in his lap as he stares out the window.
"You look like the fucking Queen of England," Danny remarks.
"What?"
"Why are you so quiet? What are you staring at?"
"Those trees," Steve says slowly, staring past the guardrails at the trees everywhere. "They're… they're so unsettling."
Danny brakes and looks where Steve is looking.
"They're pine trees. Or fir. Or whatever. They're trees, Steve."
"But they're so -- God, they're so angry. Is this why horror movies always take place around here?"
"Name one horror movie set in New Jersey."
"Name one that couldn't have been set in New Jersey."
"You've been in war zones, caravans with terrorists, uncharted rainforests, but the trees off the New Jersey Turnpike freak you out?"
"They're not natural, Danny, I am so creeped out."
And Danny wants to laugh, but he sees Steve peering through the trees at the houses beyond, and he thinks Steve flinches when a kid runs out the back door of a house to the trampoline in the backyard.
That's when he laughs and makes a mental note to explain to his parents that his partner is, actually, this really adorable giant pussy who's been bred into a tactical killing machine but can't use the bookmarks toolbar in a web browser.
*
Steve doesn't think he's a big mouth, but he's been told that (lately) he's become one. For whatever reason.
For whatever 5'5" Jersey boy with blond highlights reason.
And Steve began to believe that before they left, mostly every time he caught himself yelling at Danny at completely inappropriate times and for no reason except that -- it was fun.
Anyway, he has to reevaluate everything again, because he spends dinner sitting silently at the table while the Williamses shriek at each other.
In a strangely loving kind of way, but it's still shrieking.
"So who'd you catch today?" Danny's mother, Lisa, asks.
"Drug smugglers, the usual. Caught them by the train tracks in Hoboken, on the way to Newport?"
"Oh, I know that! We drive there all the time, don't we, Nick?" she asks Danny's father.
"Didn't know those trains actually ran," he comments.
"Yes you do! We always hear them rumbling when we're driving around there to that mall!"
"Why the fuck do you go to that shitty fucking mall?" Danny asks.
"Language," she scolds. "And we go there because they have all my stores in one place, and it's cheaper than Willowbrook."
"Willowbrook is five seconds away on 23 but you'll go how many miles out of your way for --"
"We're retired, Danny, what do we have to do but go to a mall that's --"
"I don't know, what does anyone do when they're retired? Start a business? Raise --"
"Their grandchildren?" Nick asks, and Steve glances up from his lasagna from the corner of his eye, because he didn't expect that the person most upset by the transplant to Hawaii was Grace's grandfather.
"Dad, for the --"
"Not in front of company," Nick replies.
"Steve's not company, he's my partner," Danny replies. "And look, Rachel and I already worked out that for Christmas --"
"Christmas in Hawaii is awesome," Steve says randomly and why did he say that he is going to be mauled alive.
Danny seems to be wondering the same thing as he stares at Steve incredulously before he looks to his parent and says, "Steve was raised in Hawaii."
"I don't think it's really Christmas without snow," Lisa sighs.
"Way to invalidate the experiences maybe half the people in the world who celebrate Christmas, Ma," Danny says as he stabs at his lasagna a little too roughly against the porcelain. "Including Steve."
"I don't mind," Steve says. "My dad said the same thing all the time, but it was still fun."
"Ever had a white Christmas, Steve?" Nick asks.
"Uh, one year when I was working in Russia," Steve says, except then he thinks about it and remembers, "Right, not working, but uh, I was hiding out from some terrorists while the rest of my group tracked them down. Sad Christmas, but it wasn't bad."
"That sounds awful," Lisa says, and she looks to Danny. "You invite him for Christmas, do you hear me?"
"That's all right, Mrs. Wi --"
"How's Hawaii, Danny?" Lisa interrupts.
Steve glances at all their plates and wonders how they could have all eaten as much as they have when they haven't shut up long enough to eat.
"Is Grace making friends? Are you? This boy seems nice. Are you seeing anyone?"
"Jeez, Ma, I've only been in Hawaii for what, a month? Give me a break, I'm barely unpacked!"
"You haven't unpacked? Baby, if you need help because you're off killing people --"
"I'm not killing people, Ma! Shoot to temporarily incapacitate and even that's rare! Steve and I are pretty good at our jobs!"
"I'm awesome," Steve comments.
"I'm just saying, between this super secret job of yours that takes up so much time you can't even call once a week --"
"I call! Just because you're off at the mall when I call because our timezones are fucked beyond --"
"Language!"
"Any kids, Steve?" Nick asks through the roar of conversation between Danny and his mother.
"Uh, none that I've been sued about," Steve says. "Why did I say that? No, no kids, sir."
"Danny says you were a Navy SEAL."
"I was! Yeah!"
Their conversation ends with a nod of Nick's head and his attention turning back to his dinner, which has to be growing cold like Steve's, since they're all talking and listening and bickering and everything.
"Steven, are you finished? You eat so slowly! I thought you were a big important spy, eating on the go all the time! Danny, are you eating?"
"Of course I'm eating!"
"Do they have Chinese food in Hawaii? This boy, Steven, you wouldn't --"
"Actually, it's just Steve," Steve says.
Lisa looks at him hard for a moment and then continues. "This boy of mine, all he would eat was Chinese food, three or four times a week when he was going through the divorce, and I thought --"
"Hey, let me take these dishes, huh, and you stop talking about my eating habits with my partner," Danny says as he sweeps over and grabs all the plates.
"Someone has to look out for you, and who's going to do it if not your mother and your partner!"
"Ma, he's my police partner, my detective partner, my co-worker, not my wife."
"I'm just saying," Lisa sighs as she sits down again next to Steve. "When I worked, we looked out for each other, and Danny thinks he doesn't need that, and then he's --"
"Ma, we're not --"
"You're not what?" she asks sharply. "Not a bunch of stupid women who talk about these things? Or something more insulting to your partner who can let you take that next bullet?"
"So my mom was the Newark Police Commissioner," Danny calls out from the kitchen as he dumps all the dishes in and begins rinsing them off. "When she says 'we all looked out for each other', she means the entire Newark police department."
"Fuck, you're Commissioner Williams who took out a whole arm of that big crime family --?"
"The Salvos," Danny sighs from the kitchen.
"Hey, we just crashed their party a few weeks back," Steve says.
"Danny mentioned that!" Lisa says. "That son of a bitch Salvo, I swear." She sighs deeply, a lot like her son, and then smiles widely at Steve. "Don't mind me, just regret I didn't dismember him for threatening my baby every day I was on the job!"
Danny comes back in, wiping his hands on a dish towel, and grins at Steve. "My mom's a bad ass."
"But enough about me," Lisa says as she smooths out the table cloth beneath her hands and takes her husband's hand, since Nick's been so quiet and everything this whole time. "Are you seeing anyone, Danny? Are you at least taking care of yourself? Did you get that bottle of multivitamins I sent you?"
"Oh my God, Ma! Really! Really!"
"If you tell me the brand, I'll sneak a bottle into his desk," Steve says a little too quietly to be fucking with Danny, and a little too sincere to be getting much sadistic pleasure out of it.
*
As they wait for their red-eye back west, Danny drumming on his thighs annoyingly and Steve drinking some kind of health fruit crap shake he found in the last open Hudson News in the airport, they simultaneously turn to each other and laugh.
"How many states you been to?" Danny asks.
"Uh… I think I skipped a bunch of the big ones in the West," Steve says. "And I haven't been to a lot of Canada. Me and my buddies once took a trip through Mexico and Central America in a Jeep -- man, we were idiots."
"No, that sounds pretty awesome," Danny says. "What did you think of Jersey?"
"The trees are still scary," Steve notes with a tiny shudder. "But other than that? Not bad. Everyone was nice. Criminals continued to be stupid, we continued to be awesome and no one got shot this time!"
"Yeah, isn't that great?" Danny reflects. "A week without getting shot, knock on wood. I'm excited."
"And your mother's a legend," Steve says. "You know, among New Jersey officials for not dying in office or getting caught in a huge corruption scandal." Steve adds, "And that other stuff. About the mobsters."
"See why I like visiting my mom?" Danny asks. "And she's a mean cook."
"Yeah," Steve agrees.
"In more than one sense of the word," Danny muses.
"Yeah, that was a lot of verbal abuse in the kitchen."
"That t-shirt doesn't make you look fat."
"Of course it doesn't. I have like, negative ten percent body fat."
"If that were true, you'd be a Barbie. A titless Barbie, and what's the point of that?"
"What's the point of Barbie at all?"
"I think we're too penile-oriented to consider that question." Danny laughs and claws at his hair momentarily. "Dammit, Steve, way to ruin every tea party I ever had with Grace when she was young."
"You're the one who coined the phrase 'titless Barbie'."
"I'd google it but I'm afraid."
"You should be," Steve says. He wraps his arms a little tighter around himself and leans back in his chair.
"You're gonna sleep before you sleep on your five-hour overnight flight?" Danny asks just as he's about to nod off.
"Well, you're obviously going to be doing something responsible like not sleeping and making sure we don't miss our flight," Steve says through a yawn. "So, yeah. That's my plan. Then I'm going to sleep on the flight from LAX, too."
"I'm gonna play Bejeweled on my phone," Danny says. "Kono got me a free version."
"Free as in free or free as in the Hawaiian taxpayers paid for it free?"
"I don't know," Danny says.
And Steve thinks it's painfully unfair of his brain to decide that sleep is for the weak and what he really wants to do is watch Danny try to figure out the new games on his smartphone until their flight arrives.
"Wake up," Danny says.
"Did you win Boggle?" Steve asks.
"Yeah, only like sixteen times while you were asleep on my shoulder," Danny replies. "By the way, stop talking about my mother and pineapples in your sleep. It's creepy."
"I talk in my sleep?"
"I'd sue you for sexual harassment if I wasn't so flattered."
"I… I got nothing," Steve admits.
"Home court advantage! Yeah! It's not just an urban legend!"
As Danny trots off/dances down the corridor to the plane, Steve hands his boarding pass to be scanned. The guy doing the scanning glances down the corridor and gives Steve a look.
"My partner's a freak, and I don't know what I did to deserve this," Steve says. "I think I served my country too well, you know?"
"My husband's the same way," the guy says. "Have a good flight."
Steve hopes his glare speaks volumes, but gives up after a few seconds and trudges down the corridor after Danny.