gonna_owe_me | Post 3.01 - The McGarrett Family Home

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Post 3.01 - The McGarrett Family Home

It doesn't come as any kind of surprise to her that she hasn't been able to stop thinking about Steve.

Neither does the fact that those thoughts come with a hefty side-helping of guilt. She should have known those trees were too close to the window. She should have been faster, more alert. Maybe they could have caught him, if she'd been doing the damn job Steve told her to do, if she'd done it the way he thought she could.

No surprise there: like she told him, she's not a bodyguard. She's a long way from basic, or doing anything that isn't in a gym or in front of a computer, and he doesn't blame her, but in some ways that just makes it worse.

So she puts in her request for leave right away, requests the weekend, and it's granted without too many hoops to jump through, but she's got to give up her Friday night and part of Saturday morning, which is fine, too. All she needs is to change, find a pair of shorts and a breezy, teal-colored top that hangs loose off her shoulders. Slides a pair of sandals on, brushes out her hair, washes her face, puts on a little makeup. She skips the gym, but throws running shoes, shorts, and a sports bra into the little bag she packs, along with a swimsuit, before slinging it over a shoulder and hitting the pavement.

The sun is high and hot, and she stops at a food truck, first, grabs two cardboard boxes, steaming with a scent that makes her stomach rumble and curl in on itself, before hailing a cab and sliding into the too-warm, hot polyester scented backseat, and giving the address.

It's been a while since she's been here. Cab rolling off in a faint crunch of gravel, leaving her with the tote over her arm, the food in her hand, looking up at the house with eyes squinting in the sun.

Doris left last night. Right? That gives Steve last evening, all night, and this morning to do his thing, be alone, brood if he wants to, deal with the admittedly ridiculous hand he's been given, and she'd have respected that, even if she didn't have to work, which is why she didn't call or text, just let him be, but it's daylight now, and it's gorgeous out, and there's only so much alone time Steve can really take. No matter what he might think.

Leading her up the path to the door, to knock, adjusting the slippery straps of her shirt, brushing hair out of her eyes as she waits. Rearranging her expression just like she does her makeup, or her clothes, so that when the door opens, she's got nothing there but a smile and the usual pleased light at seeing him.

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"That's for sure."

It's like Steve to say it could be worse, because she's never known him to think this is as bad as it gets.

Maybe that's what happens when a childhood tragedy winds up a springboard into a career where going to hell means things are proceeding pretty much as expected.

Newly-released hairs tugs across her face, and she pushes it back, tucking it behind her ears without minding that it just slips straight out again. It feels good to have it loose in the breeze, even if it's in the way. It's been worse, and it's not like she's in a combat zone where she needs all lines of sight clear and uninterrupted.

"So I can cross Koko Head off the list. Maybe I will spend some time checking the island out. There's got to be a first time for everything, right?"

Her smile across the cab at him is amused, bright. "Any other favorites I should know about? Maybe I can wheedle invites to those, too."

She gets a glance, off from the road, when her words are nothing but agreeing at the first. There nothing but smoothness there, and for a moment it wrinkles. Like he might have expected something else. Except not from her. She'd get it, and did, the same way everyone else who wore the uniform did. Even if he saw it more an extreme and long term way than most people seemed to take it.

Nothing but smooth agreement, tugged up into teasing and pushing for more opinions and invitations. Smile bright and clear on her face, where the warm glow from the run hasn't faded entirely yet. Her hair being tugged this way and that by the wind coming in from her window.

Beautiful and just a little wild, ready to meet any challenge after some water and few minutes to catch her breath.

"You could give Nuuanu Pali a chance," Steve said, choosing off the top of his head. Reckless and amusing. "So, long as you don't fall off the cliff."

Her smile tugs a little further on one corner than the other. "I think I can manage."

To tell the truth, she wouldn't mind another visit out, another path to run, another test of balance and control. Chasing Steve up and down the mountain, that reckless run to the parking lot, the speed and bounce and arbitrary glee in running like a kid, all abandon and stretching out her stride to its furthest. A coltish gallop along with gravity.

But more than that, she's looking forward to getting back, to stripping out of sweaty shorts and sports bra, ditching her running shoes and socks (thinking fondly of bare feet on the grass of Steve's backyard, the slope down to the sandy beach). Looking forward to a shower, looking forward to the look in his eyes when she wraps her arms around his neck and lets him spill her onto the couch or carry her upstairs like she's barely anything. Her pulse is up and it can only add to the ease of the day, prove a good distraction and a good time, something familiar to lose themselves both in.

That, and he's awfully cute after a run, even all sweaty and dusty, with that little-boy smile and the way it makes him shine.

"Maybe tomorrow," Steve shot back, eyebrows raising and falling. "I don't have anything on it yet."

He could do the drive today, and keep pushing himself. He wouldn't mind, probably would love it, honestly. But she'd already stipulated a shower, and he'd already been clear about needing to get out to the hospital today. The latter of which crossed out the hours available to get out and back and hike up to the windy cliffs. Fun, but not enough to let down his people. Nothing ever was. Chin might not be expecting him, but that didn't matter.

The man could probably use a meal and a shower himself, and if Steve was lucky, he'd convince him to take even thirty.

Which he'd complain about, but he wasn't going to stand for anything less than that. Some space, some breathing, someone to stand by on stand by in case anything happened in each of those seconds that would matter to Chin, in case he needed to be called. It was important. It was how the team was a family, and they looked out for each other.

Today was no different. What happened this week didn't change it. Which was important point to make, too.

The drive curved back through the highway, heading them closer and closer to where they started.

"Sounds like fun. I like this whole being able to stretch my legs on land part of being on land."

And this part, too, where they swing back through the highway, sliding through traffic, big blue truck eating up the miles between the mountain and the beach house. The air smells like flowers and jungle plants and salt and steaming hot blacktop and metal, the sky has that burnished brassiness of a day that's too hot for it's own good, and it'll be good to get inside, out of the sun. She's no wilting flower, but even she prefers to avoid sunburn when she can.

Steve's challenge doesn't go unmet, though, and she lifts her own eyebrows back at him, daring, resting her elbow on the window and propping index, middle finger, and thumb against her cheek and jaw.

"Maybe I'll just steal you for the weekend, if you don't have to go in. Aside from the hospital, of course."

She'd like that. It's what they do; take a few days here and there, live out of time and away from missions for a few hours or a night. Nothing she'd want for too long -- they both get antsy when they're too inactive -- but it's sure as hell a great break.

Edited 2013-02-02 00:34 (UTC)

That's good, right? That she does still like it. It's definitely something.

Something attached to a line of thought he isn't following down yet. In a few minutes, or a few hours. When he has to.

Especially because she's raising her delicate eyebrows right back, and staking her claim on the time. With obvious proviso's, that makes him nod. Because it's, really, not actually impossible. He'd consider it good time on shitty events in any other space and time. He really would have. She'd have been a saving grace.

"Aside from those two--" Duke, and Malia. "--it's probably set to be quiet. Chin's going to be at Malia's side. Kono's already back to being po'okela--" there's a wave of a hand, lifting from the wheel, with something like begrudged pride for this, even when he knows she won't know the word, or that he shifts his voice, making sure the inflection is always correct in the pronunciation. "-- in the water, showing them who's boss."

And, yeah. Because no list is complete without. "And Danny's got Grace this weekend, at some aquarium. First time he's seen her since Rachel delivered him with a custody modification. In the middle of the week, and all of that."

The world falling down around HPD and Five-0's ears, and Rachel just had scarily good timing, even she hadn't meant to match up at the same time as every one of Delano and Wo Fat's moves.

She makes a face at him for using Hawaiian, but the gist is coming across loud and clear: Kono's on the water, Chin's in the hospital. The team is scattered this weekend, and maybe that's no bad thing, especially when he goes on to tell her the last piece of news. Less tragic than the others, maybe, but it's another blow, and she's starting to wonder if maybe everyone in Five-0 is ever going to be able to to so much as walk around a corner without being suspicious of it again.

That gets her eyebrows arching again, in a totally different way, surprise and concern, if the latter just slightly vague. She doesn't know Danny that well, but she's heard about his daughter, remembers something about an ex-wife, and it doesn't matter how little she knows the man, that has to hit hard, this week of all weeks. Or ever. "Wow. She really has spectactularly bad timing."

It seems like nobody on Steve's team escaped unscathed this week, even if not everyone was attacked, or had a previously-thought-to-be-dead relative turn up, and her mouth thins, sympathetic. "I'm sure he and his daughter are hoping for a quiet weekend, too."

"Yeah, probably." It's not careful, or near it. His mouth is closer to a pressing line, watching out the window.

It takes him a long second, trying to pull too many lines. Grace and Danny, Rachel and Stan. Vegas, and just how far away that is. How much sometime in his chest is already tightening again. About his lungs like it might smother them. How that doesn't even change his thoughts about Grace. About the whole hypocritical situation, he's least suited to be impartial to.

There are so many reasons he's not impartial right now. At least three, to five, different people's lives worth of reasons he's the last person who should be asked for an opinion on the whole situation, and at least one solid reason he'll probably be the person who hears the most about it. When, or if, Danny has to let it out. When, and if, Danny will have to be off the clock for court.

When, and if, Danny has to turn in his letter of resignation. Just like Lori. Gone somewhere too far, like Lori and Jenna.

"There's no telling if Grace knows yet, but Rachel's vying for full custody to move her to Vegas, where Stan's new job contract is. Which Danny decided to contest," The last of which is complicated. Thick, almost stacked with too many thoughts that muddle and blur the emotions that might want to come out in it.

"Vegas?"

That hardly seems like a great place to raise a kid, but what does she know? The possibility of moving is hardly a specter to her, especially these days, when being on the move, having no real set address, is the norm.

Still. She's not sure Steve or Danny would appreciate that Vegas isn't too far, as the globe goes. She's been on the other side often enough to have a skewed idea of distance, but then, she's not exactly a poster family girl, has no roots and doesn't really mind being far away for months at a time. "That's pretty rough."

And maybe not just on Danny. This is not a weekend Steve needs to be thinking about fractured families, or parents being taken away or left behind. And this is making him tense up. Throws a shadow across his face, and under the tone of his voice. "How's it look?"

Custody arrangements, what little she knows about them, seem to be pretty nasty things, and they've got to be worse when moving is involved.

"It hasn't started--" Is clear enough really, when it only was delivered and contested three-four days ago. When those whole three days have been filled with the worst of the worst being thrown at Five-0, HPD, Hawala and Hawaii than they've seen put together all at once before.

Steve's never been through one of these, but he knows enough to know waffling and kindness won't help Danny. He can't tell his face is getting more focused on some point between the couple on the bike weaves in between him and a small red hatchback. Because there are worse problems than losing a war.

Like heading into one both unprepared to fight and unwilling to consider the option of it.

"But he doesn't want to drag Rachel through the mud, which is not a problem her lawyers have ever had."

Nor has Rachel ever had the problem of calling on them, and sending Danny over the hill, about losing in more of his time with her. Because the money is there, and the fear of the danger of his job getting in the way, before. When the problem of Danny being too good, into the marrow of his bones, not willing to shut it off and tunnel focus and do whatever it takes to win Grace, might be just as bad for him.

It's starting to work on him; there's a spot ahead in the middle distance somewhere that he's focusing on, and he's driving with a little more deliberation, and she gets it. This loyalty Steve's got for the people on his team, his people, who he'd go to bat for again and again, whenever's necessary, whatever's needed. And Five-0, the people on it, they're hand-picked. Tighter than tight. Backing each other up on everything, aside from being there at the other door at work.

And Danny's Steve's partner. The first one picked up for Five-0, and the fact that it was more than half by accident doesn't make a difference. The two of them bicker and argue like an old married couple, but Danny's always got Steve in his sights and Steve's always got Danny in his, and half the time at that fundraiser it looked like whatever words they were using to prod at each other weren't even the ones that were the real conversation.

It made her laugh, at the time. It was good to see Steve like that, if faintly surprising.

So the idea of anyone going after Danny, even an ex-wife, is bound to hit hard, to rub the wrong way against that loyalty and the thick streak of determination that turns the impossible into 'probable, if you know what you're doing.'

Steve's team got thrown to the sharks this week, didn't it.

"Then I'm sure he's grateful to have her this weekend. Maybe it'll be a push in the right direction."

Or maybe not. She doesn't know, but she knows Steve would be miserable if some outside force he couldn't attack managed to take one of his people away. No criminal to hunt down, no revenge to exact or mission to rescue -- courts are insidious and tough to work around.

It really is a mess, everywhere, here.

"If there is one." It shoves out of his mouth with more force than necessary, like the crack of a gun, even low. Like his body is begrudging letting it out of his mouth. Because he is loyal, and he never wants Danny to lose, and not, especially to lose Grace, because he never will. But he'd lose everything else, he walks around saying vehemently that he hates.

Because the last time he tried to have an honest opinion, to warn Danny about what this was doing he was yelled at. And the yelling, sure, he doesn't give a damn. Danny yells about everything. It's his default setting. But that didn't make it any less true. This situation had several doors on each end and none of the outcomes were stellar. Either way someone lost, with and without counting that every single way Grace lost.

Which would kill Danny, even more than the rest of the situation was already hanging him out to dry. Even angry, even with that stupid ring tone striking its beats for a second in his blood and his bones, remembering it, he knew. Danny would even hate himself for taking Grace from Rachel. Because Danny was that good, and he might talk a big game, but he'd hate hurting Rachel, or Grace.

Maybe even more than he hated that this was being done to him already. That anyone dared take his daughter from him, again.

It was a situation with absolutely no end game that won out for everyone. It was like watching the cars in front of you, aimed for each other and a terrible crash, with the feeling like you were powerless to get in the middle of it and make it stop before that moment happened.

There's not a lot she can say to that. It sure doesn't sound like there's a good way out of this mess, but people move on all the time, and she didn't think Danny seemed like he liked Hawaii all that much, anyway. "I guess Vegas could always use good cops."

It's a clumsy sort of attempt at finding a silver lining, because it's true and she's sure he'd do fine there, with Five-0 behind him and his daughter there, but she's not exactly looking forward to Steve losing his partner to something as arbitrary as the family court system.

And Steve is down about it. There's no mistaking that; it punches out of him like he'd rather be taking it out on a heavy bag, just like the news about Chin and his wife and cousin, added to the confusion of Doris, and she feels a little lost, unsure how to help, aside from sympathizing. "But like you said, it only just got started. Maybe it'll work out."

And maybe it won't, but the words are a gentle reminder that there's no use worrying about something that hasn't happened yet, when it's not Steve's problem to worry about. Not that Steve would ever see it that way, and she loves that about him, but it's worrying, too. He'd take a bullet for any of these people, but he can't help Malia in the hospital and he can't fix Danny's custody problems any more than he can go back in time and convince his mother to stay, or to stop lying.

It's how he is, how he'll always be, and she can't wish he'd be otherwise, but she can at least try to be someone outside it all, on the other side of his life, not mixed up in it and with her only bias working in his favor.

Those first few words sear like a bullet. Or maybe bullets. Even if knows rationally, it's not far off of what he said to Danny. There are worse places than Vegas, to raise a kid. It's not stellar, but it wasn't other countries. Or war zones. Or places where children were never safe. But tilted this way, he hates the thought, even when it's not wrong either. Because no matter where Danny ended up, he'd be stellar.

The same cop he'd been before Grace was born, and through the whole time he'd known Steve. Plucked out of anything but anonymity, which is what happens when you box yourself off from everyone in the Force and the island by hating them, and slammed into Steve's way by the sheer, stupid, luck of the draw with who got the McGarrett case and who didn't. That Steve had liked his background.

Liked his choice of living in that squalid little all-window place he first found him, if it was for his kid. Before he even knew a good eighty percent of who Danny was and what he did was for Grace. He'd still be that guy, amazing father and the best cop that Steven had personally ever known, during all the time, not just the best of times. He'd still be that guy, if he wasn't with Five-0.

Or Steve.

It shouldn't feel like Five-0, too, might be dissolving in his hands, a handful of beach sand grabbed up in a fist, falling through his fingers, with no way to keep it all together, all in one piece. Unbroken, and untainted, and untampered with and uninjured. There was nothing about this job, being called in for the worst of the worst, ending up on those people's radars, that could make it that way.

Steve couldn't break it away, tossing it into driving but not a response. The draining feelings, that he was right, that she was right, that everything that happened this week was still his responsibility to have been there, and stopped, at least even caught onto before it had all come spinning down around their heads. Before the shock of his life, had wiped that nearly off the map, even.

Except he can't. All he can do is push the truck a little harder and watch the short distance to home evaporate before him.

Edited 2013-02-03 02:23 (UTC)

Steve doesn't reply, and she's sort of exhausted her limited trove of appropriately sympathetic responses, so she doesn't add anything, either, just watches the road unroll in front of and around them, bleeding into a familiar neighborhood, with plants and a street and houses she knows.

She hopes Danny doesn't have to go, but her hope really has no place here, when she's so disengaged from Five-0 as anything other than updates from Steve and one evening of black tie formal wear that gave her a skewed mental image of what they all look like on a daily basis. Trying to reconcile Kono, in her slinky silver gown and elegant hair, with the reckless, near-fanatical surfer, the next best hand-to-hand combatant in Five-0 after Steve. Or Danny and Chin, with their suits.

She barely knows them, which makes it hard to have an opinion that isn't entirely informed by the effects their lives have on Steve's, and easy to have one that boils down to not wanting to see Steve run on the edge of the rails, left without a team, or with one falling apart. He'd keep them together by sheer willpower if he could, she's sure.

And if anyone could, it's Steve.

But there's not much else to say that hasn't been said, so she lets it lie, watches as the house comes into view, the driveway that will crunch under the tired, before glancing over at him. "Seems like a weekend off will be good for everybody. Even though I know you're allergic to free time."

It matters more than it should; or is that as much as it should, given? People come and go, orders come and go, even the people in SEAL teams come and go. He's seen more people than he could even count come and go, between boats, assignments, missions, and teams. More than he could count, though he could probably still name three-fourths of them if he sat down and thought about it hard enough.

He never viewed them as exchangeable, but he never viewed them as something he needed to keep at the end either. Rather the same as how he viewed all the places he'd been or the apartments he'd kept, none of it mattered, even if it could be detailed out like facts. And this. Danny. Which brings him right back to that, as the truck is crunching up gravel and he's looking at that house, heavy and impending still.

With too many memories of people who don't exist. Officially. That he'll never forget are alive. Shouting it, loudly.

When he's still stuck back at that first thought. It matters more than it should; or is that as much as it should. Now.

Which is only shaken from his head, by Cath trying to drag out hopeful words. He almost feels bad, for a wash there, that she's someone thrown her lot in with him today. When he can't be the best of company. Not with all of this, everywhere. If the house looks pristine, and the car does, and he isn't bandaged up, it doesn't change the everything, everywhere, tripping up his feet every five or ten minutes, is a mess.

The last words, can't a snort that's more a breath out his nose, when he's tossing her a look and pushing his door open, getting out. "Didn't I just give you, like-" There's a wave of hand, fingers together, hand slicing the air once as he looked upward, like he has to consider, think about it at all. Which would help if he weren't dragging out a half rusted edge toward a smirk. Trying for her sake. "-two? hours of it? Are you going to tell me that wasn't enough?"

It doesn't quite fit as easily across his face as Steve might like it to look, but she lets it slide, because dragging all of this stuff up from the depths is about as far from her intentions today as possible. She's here to try and lighten his mood, which is why she tips her head thoughtfully to the side, eyes tracking like she's following a thought process, before shaking her head, firm and knowing.

"Nope. I'm going to have to barter for more."

Arch and winsome, falling into step back towards the house. Steve's not the only one with a forceful will, here, and she'll cheer him up if it takes her all day.

Which it won't. Even now, Steve seems better than when she first arrived, even if it's just physical, the result of exertion and adrenaline and endorphins, biology that can't be denied, even if it can be somewhat ignored. Steve will keep circling back to it all, tripping over it with every other thought, if he's not distracted, and that's no way to spend a free weekend.

Even if it's raw and rubbing, all those thoughts, and the front of the house getting closer and closer, he's still glad she's actually there. Pushing and prodding, about as involved as she isn't at all. Caring enough to ask, but not enough to give any of the situations twenty questions. So he doesn't have to bang around in his head, with the lights off, over all these sudden stairs and pitfalls.

"It might be a steep price," Steve shot back, without much thought to it. He was lucky that she was. There. That she didn't mind at all getting out of the way, or falling in line with his other plans, that are so much more like work than they are like anything near leave-vacation this time.

He walks up stairs he walked up all his life -- except it wasn't all his life, because of -- and unlocks the door, only marginally give half a glance at the unused security system. That really should be used more. It's the whole reasons it's actually there. But, then, the house stood here for over thirty years before it had a system, too.

Tries a little not to pay attention to how much it would be so much easier to get into a physical altercation. How like running, he could throw his all into it, and he might be able to forget. To feel like he was doing something more useful that turning over ghosts. Delano dead in the morgue. Doris, gone, somewhere not far enough away she stopped being real. Wo Fat, and three bullets at his feet, but not his head.

There's always some variation on this. Like flirtation, if they didn't both know where it was going to go already. Easy banter that sounds and feels the same after all these years, no matter how different the words might be. Who might give in first. Who's going to take the first, familiar step.

If it even is a first step, now, or if it's just a continuation, something that they both know and expect and might not be the best part of being together, but is absolutely right up there. "Isn't it always?"

Teasing, because he's the one who owes her, because his tally is yards long and hers, if not squeaky clean, can't even be a fraction of it. If either of them is paying anything, it ought to be him, but her mind's not on that, not now, when the door's opening and they're headed into the cool open living room, door still closing behind her by the time she's stepped smoothly up close, arms reaching to circle his neck like they have a thousand times before. Smile all promises and warmth, when she's looking up into his eyes and lifting up onto her toes. "But you know..." Considering. As if it might be a brand-new idea. Something unexpected, instead of the next known and familiar step. "I think I've got just the thing to offer."

Spoken a breath closer, eyes dropping to his mouth before her hand slides into his hair, fingers gentle and comfortable, and she reaches up. Smells sweat, salt, the sunshine on his skin, feeling the old familiar ripples, the echos of the butterflies she used to get, when this was new, when he was unreachable but still let her reach for him, when she went to sleep dreaming about those blue eyes and the boyish smile that appeared all too rarely.

Her own tugging her lips into a curve, the fingers threading in his hair, curving around the back of his head to pull him down for a kiss.

It's easy as breathing, really. As opening his eyes. As sliding Five-0 to back pocket, except off of shit, when he goes on Reserve Weekends or Extended Mission make-ups. It's like waking up, and falling asleep, and knowing how it feels to give over to the rocking of the ocean, every morning, how it's always the same, even when every set of waves is always different from the last or the next. As known as the feeling of his gun.

The way his hands find the skin on her sides, slide into the curve of her waist, without a single thought taking place, when she moves in close. Dark eyes bright with such uncomplicated promise and warm willingness that the first impulse is easily to just fall into it. Roll out. To barely hear how the door closed behind her, for the way her voice dips low and familiar, untainted by every single other thing outside that door, or inside this room.

When he doesn't have to look at any of it, because he's arching against the finger tips and military regulations filed nails of one hand, threading into his hair, pushing against his scalp, curving into a quiet demand as much as invitation and dragging him close. Gentle enough it's not actually a demand, it's just a firm offer. The way she knows works. Has always worked. Fingers on his skin, promise of so many days and years unchangeable in her tone, breath beating out against his lips.

The whisper of warmth, tugging up an ache across the entire inside of his chest. One he's gotten used to lately.

And it's that second that his chest seizes on the perfect opportunity, his head filled with Danny's face suddenly.

The moment on the porch as he sputtered out things like Look, shut up. Just, shut up. Stop joking. I figure, you know, you might appreciate a minute to consider, or reconsider. Which is definitely not to say that I want that, okay, that is pretty much the exact opposite of what I want, but, you know, I am not really good with casual sex -- the whole 'keeping it casual' factor.

Right down into that blurry moment in the dark when Danny had said Steve had to tell Cath, like he needed to inform his girlfriend of a change of adress. Or whatever it was. Whatever was happening. Whatever was happening so much that the center of his was seizing like ice, angry and sad and desperate in such waring clashes, as his hands had slid up to her shoulders in the second of sensation and realizing.

Grabbing the edges of them too hard and pulling her feet back, fast and sudden. At the same time as his head and shoulders jerked back from being near her face. The words almost as damning, and hated, and confusing to every other sensation in him, as they fell out, wretchedly fast, "I can't." Desperately grasping for a solid answer he doesn't even have. "There's-" Because he doesn't know. He doesn't know at all, okay?

But he knows Danny stayed last night. And he knows that he fucked up whatever his answer was about Cath the first time.

And he knows that whatever he just wanted, consider doing, still feels in the tumbling race of his heart, between warmth and panic, trained so easily to making him even higher into hyper wired, toward exact focus, never loss of it, would take whatever it is and decimate it even quicker than it's already going to go. Because even if it does, if it's minutes or months, it's true.

It's always been true. It'd just never been real. And that pale imitation of reality, more fragile than glass shards in an already bombed house, decimating this, even taking this from him, too, he can't let go of it. Still. Even when he can feel the edges of it cutting through the his skin of the hand grasping it suddenly, taking the last untouched thing, with that one breath and repeat.

"There's someone else."

She's settling into his hands, warm and large on her waist, and smiling sweet and bright and flirtatious as he's bending down to her, and then he's a breath away and the world is tightening close, right before it comes to a screeching halt like the a needle ripping across the surface of a spinning record, or like a car crashing.

Steve doesn't. Hasn't. The times he's pushed her away -- there must have been some right, though she's shuffling through the deck of cards scattered across the floor of her memory and is coming up blank -- have never been so sharp. Like he has to distance himself so he doesn't...what. Fall into a pit? Like he's jumping back from a cliff edge, Steve, who has never done anything but dive off without even looking to see if he's being followed.

And the sudden shrinking, sick feeling that she, somehow, is this mysterious cliff he can't topple over.

Can't doesn't make sense. None of it makes sense, and she's staring at him in outright surprise, feeling blank, like an interruption made human, the space between, white noise and static. And if can't doesn't make sense, the last words don't even register as English. She has to shake herself a little, just to be sure she heard them.

"There's..." Blinking. Befuddled. Dropped suddenly into cold water, sparking, electric flirtation smothered with a damp rag. "What?"

Too baffled even to be hurt. There's never been someone else. Never. Not a someone else who leads to can't. There have been people, over the years. Here and there. She doesn't ask a lot of questions, and neither does he, but there are months or sometimes a year or more where they don't see each other, and it's not like they spend that time in solitary confinement. There are men and women. There's companionship and good times. There has, occasionally, even been a boyfriend or two serious enough that she's called things off, though usually gone by the next time they meet.

But Steve? Steve has never. Not since she's known him. Not even her, back when that was what she wanted from him, and that's a mean, jealous little dig that's beneath her, twisting there in her stomach, so she ignores it, in favor of staring at Steve like him sprouting a second head or a third arm would be less surprising, because it is. "You are..." Floundering, picking up words like pebbles and dropping them through numb fingers again.

"You're seeing someone? Like actually, seriously, seeing someone?"

Steve hates this face. The one where suddenly the words you've said are too big. Suffocating reasons and logic, even when they were so small, and desperate chosen. This face, he hates, and has catalogs of. Not on Cath. But other people. That's swooping drop right before reality sets in, when you go relay to a soldier's family, a cop's, a civillian's that their loved one is never returning.

And. It's. He's not dead. He's not even sure this thing, this thing with Danny, will last to the end of the month, no less the end of another week, when it's not even two weeks out the gate, and a lot of it has been spent on their toes, doing their jobs, or falling the hell right into each other, like they are going to burn each other's skin off.

Then, last night. He can't even. He didn't. He did say that, and Danny did stay. Didn't even argue or throw it back at him.

But she's staring at him in shock, and all he can think to do finally is get his hands off her shoulders. Put them somewhere at his sides. Guilt about as dense as the uncertainty of every answer flooding his head, helping his heart beat continue to pound away in his chest and his ears. Are they seriously seeing each other?

Yes?

No?

Maybe?

What does that even, seriously, look like? When no one knows. Not really. Not clearly. Neither Cath or Kono. When the last conversation they had about it was some six days ago, and ended with Steve parroting Danny's words back to him? When the closest to something he got to saying himself was none of this is a joke to me. Before the rest was Danny's words, uncertain and forever imprinted on his mind.

I don't want to go anywhere. Words so stuck in this house, where Danny is a spectre of the last week, too. Layered over years of Doris, when he's suddenly everywhere. The shouting, shoving, couch, desk, chairs. Impossible that it wasn't so loud seconds ago. When he's looking at it and back to her, and he's not sure he has any more of serious answer for Cath than he did for Danny.

He knows what he doesn't want it to be, he knows how terminal the whole arrangement is, but he doesn't know what it is.

Which goes down hard on too many other layers and guilt and frustration, twisted and twined several ways here already.

Edited 2013-02-03 05:17 (UTC)

He looses her shoulders, which makes the hands that had been floating sort of awkwardly in the space between them, like she'd paused in reaching for his neck, shoulder, head, fall back to her sides, and she feels suddenly and strangely chilled, out of the sun and with her skin so bare. The physical space is good, though, lets her stilted mind try and reboot, recover, while she knows she's probably blinking at him with surprise so deep it couldn't have been any greater if he'd told her he was quitting the military for good.

Not that there's anything wrong with it -- not that she's -- but it's Steve, which is the thing that keeps tripping her up. Steve has never. Not in all the years she's known him. Not where he'd push her away like she was about to burn him. Nobody else has ever cared, before. He'd never cared, before. The thing the two of them have has never gotten in the way of anything else, but nothing's ever gotten in the way of them, either.

It's a little like being out to sea for the first time, the slid-slide of her stomach, working on the threads of her spine, slipping around in faintly nauseating motion until she got used to it. Pinned by a mean little thought that she wishes she didn't have, but can't escape once it appears: if this person is so important that he'll push her away, where exactly are they this weekend, when Steve could really use them? She has no misguided opinions on how important she might be to Steve. It's Steve. They're connected, have been for years. Are the exception to each others' sliding out of touch with people from the past.

Still, she's pretty sure he'd never pushed anyone away because of her, just like she'd never shot anyone down because of him.

"Wow."

Her eyebrows are almost painfully arching, and she shakes herself back into control of her expression, awkward and tongue-tied and that same mean little twist rising in her chest that she's trying to swallow away. Like Steve needs that. Like she has any reason to be jealous, when none of this has ever been serious and never would have been.

It's just a slap to have it so suddenly taken away. "Steve, that's --"

There are a thousand questions, each climbing over each other. Is it good? Is he happy? Who is it, does she know them? Steve McGarrett, boyfriend. The thought is almost too weird to contemplate. He still hasn't said anything, but that's as much of an answer as words might have been. He's not saying he isn't, not brushing it aside like he normally might, so, whether he says it or not, her answer's there. "Good?" she hazards, finally. "I have to say I'm a little surprised, though."

She's still all but gaping at him, struggling to put words even together into sentences. Struggling to put them, and her face, and her reaction into any specific box. Making the muscles in his shoulders, between his shoulder blades and down his back, stay at fiercely tensed. Making it too easy, and too pointless. Dropping his keys not far from the door, and looking at the house.

The house that he'd almost let himself forget for a second there, and what did that say about him? What did any of it?

When Cath is tripping on words, like good, and he's not even sure she'd keep that word if she knew it was Danny. Rules are rules. Even if the concept of turning back now, even if it would easier to run through a burning building while it was falling. Rules are still rules. He's pretty sure that glaring confusion would spike rather suddenly sharp if that came up. When? If?

He walked further into the room, raising a hand and rubbing his mouther, before it slid back across his jaw, wrapped at his neck, hard, holding for a second, fingers curled over locked muscles. "It wasn't, exactly, planned."

Danny. Nothing about Danny from twisting the man's arm behind his back, to these feelings, to the things he'd done because of it that he was never going to admit to anyone, to doing everything anything for him if it was needed even if the rest was never seen, to Danny suddenly saying all those things.

Right here. In this room. And everything that exploded in a chain of reactions from there. One that kept going.

It wasn't like he knew this would happen either. This morning. Cath being here, and everything feeling....normal. Normal for a few minutes, even when bricks of thought tripped up his feet every few minutes. Normal in the way he wanted to push everything out and get lost in. Just for an hour or five or a day and half. Before there had to be hospitals, and back to Headquarters.

But even that is slipping away, second by second, heart beat by heart beat, when he's looking back toward her, because if anything he doesn't know how to avoid the glaring crashes coming right for his life. Doesn't know how not to keep adding each new one to his hands, like they aren't already full and overflowing. Like this subject, this situation with Danny, wasn't headed for three or four hard collisions with reality.

Anymore than the whole world focusing on Danny, again, makes Steve feel like something else is missing from here. Him.

"I bet."

It's making her dizzy. The echo of Steve's mother's question in her ears -- do you love my son? -- and the obvious answer that probably would never have been the one Doris expected, wanted. Not when she'd been nudging at both of them, sly and with more glee than Cath had found exactly appropriate, given the situation. All the way back to Kono and Lori asking about Valentine's Day plans last year.

But this is so new, and so unexpected. She hasn't even heard him talking about anyone other than his team. Where did they meet? When? How long has it been going on?

Answers she could get from Steve, once wrapping her tongue around the words, but there are so many questions that she's stymied by the number, silent under all her curiosity until she can prioritize them. Most important, to idle curiosity that would be idle for anyone other than the person in front of her, gripping the back of his neck like something awful is happening, the way he does when things go wrong and people start dying.

But nobody's dying here. He's -- seeing someone. Someone else. There is someone so important in Steve's life that he can, won't, slide back into the easy familiarity of sleeping with her.

Maybe it shouldn't be as baffling as it is, but, well, really. Would anyone who knows Steve not be surprised?

She gathers herself, takes a breath, sorts out the first, most important piece of information, and it's obvious, this question, because she genuinely has no idea. Who does he even know, aside from his team? And it's not -- her stomach clenches, uncomfortable. It could be. Kono. Like him in so many ways, native Hawaiian, forever connected to the land and water he loves so much. Always up for a challenge.

So there's a faint thread of trepidation when she asks, even as she's trying to make it as casual as it would be, over a beer, with any of the guys or girls she might normally shoot the breeze with.

"So who is this mystery person?"

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