Post 3.01 - The McGarrett Family Home

[gonna_owe_me]

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.

Comments

[gonna_owe_me]

"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.

[thebesteverseen]

"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.

[gonna_owe_me]

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.

[thebesteverseen]

"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.

[gonna_owe_me]

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.

[thebesteverseen]

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.

[gonna_owe_me]

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."

[thebesteverseen]

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?"

[gonna_owe_me]

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.

[thebesteverseen]

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.

[gonna_owe_me]

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.

[thebesteverseen]

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."

[gonna_owe_me]

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?"

[thebesteverseen]

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.

[gonna_owe_me]

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."

[thebesteverseen]

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.

[gonna_owe_me]

"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?"

[thebesteverseen]

Danny. Danny. Danny. Danny. Danny. Danny. Danny. Danny. Danny. Danny. Danny. Danny. Danny. Danny. Danny.

There's a fierce repetition of his name taking up residence pounding the edges of Steve's head, and the rush of his blood. When he isn't breathing hard, but it feels like his pulse is running away with itself on that question alone. Because it's every answer in his mouth, under his tongue, on his lips, clogging up his throat.

He feels like it should be stitched on his skin, as obvious as ever line of a tattoo. Still fading bruises, and that cracked rib.

But they didn't tell the other two, or if there was something to. Steve's pretty sure Grace won't be told. Still has to be told about Gabby.

He doesn't even know if Danny wants anyone aware of it, swagger and bruise on his collarbone last weekend not withstanding. It's one thing to be shameless about having a mark, from someone no one knows, making it like this great, endless secret you have. It'd be another to realize it's from the guy are the other end, the person ninety-percent of them look up to as their boss.

The guy who gives the orders. The person who sign off on their decisions, their files, their court date testimonies, their pay checks, everything. His partner for over two years, fond of bending the rules and seeing them more as equal, equal footing, this match between The Navy, The Police, and the Government of Hawaii. But that's not how it would look on paper. Not to anyone else.

A litany of reasons he knows.That are stamped on his head, but can't wash Danny out of his skin. Can't even touch that last firm kiss before he vanished. Like he was placing a mark on Steve, that Steve couldn't brush away or wash off, no matter the number of times he considered rubbing his mouth with the side of his hand.

Like chasing a phantom that wasn't actually solidly there, but never left.

When his hand stays where it is, and he wonders how he and the room both aren't screaming the same answer. The one that isn't the too unhelpful words that come, slow and specifically chosen, and not a lie, but not any help to her question, "A friend."

[gonna_owe_me]

A friend?

Like a friend, friend? The kind his sister said he didn't seem to have? The kind she's never known him to have? An outside of work, entirely new person, friend?

"Obviously they're more than that."

Not to be vain, but she doesn't think he'd throw her over for a new friend, even one he's hooking up with. They've had each other for years, her and Steve, and she follows his eyes as they glance around the room, wondering why he looks half guilty and half wretched and not at all like someone who has somebody special in their life. Which is maybe -- well, she just isn't sure she can picture Steve, newly in, whatever this is, like or lust or infatuation or. It can't be love. Right? She would have known about it. Wouldn't he have said something? Wouldn't it have come up beforehand, when she was asking about the news from the island? Isn't this person, whoever it is, someone who deserves to at least be noted, along with his team-members?

She folds her arms, more over her stomach than over her chest, not to be defensive, just because she literally has no idea what to do with her hands right now, and softens her tone, her eyes, the edges of her mouth, as much as she can, because this is not an interrogation, Steve is her friend, and he clearly has something going on that's going to be difficult to work through.

Why not give her a name? Why not offer any details? What's holding him back and making him look so reluctant? It's not like she hasn't done the same thing to him, now and again, and he'd always respected it, backed off to just friends and ignored the benefits until whatever it was fell through. One hand lifts, off her elbow.

"Well, do I know them?"

[thebesteverseen]

The look that question gets is more exasperated tension going the wrong way, veering way from any sort of softness and very heavily almost toward a seriousness that vying toward a blankness. Less than welcome, the questions, these things bouncing hard and sharp inside his head, and overly ready to defend it. With absolutely no idea what to say. Because she does.

She's met Danny, along with every other Five-0 member. If he says no, it's a lie. If he says yes, it's a dangerously small pool.

He doesn't lie. He might hedge. He might deflect. He's incredibly good at telling Danny, and Kono, the only line he can about files and missions and facts from his past. He's good at can neither confirm or deny, or smirking, lopsided, and telling them if he said anything he'd have to kill them. But he doesn't lie.

Honesty. Integrity. Loyalty. Service. They mean something to him. In every single part of his life, of who he's sworn to be.

It says too much the he just presses his mouth, and goes with, "Cath." Lets a breath leave his nose on the second passing the last syllables. It's not apology or a request or a warning, he knows her too well for those, and maybe it's still is, all of them, because they know each other so well.

"You should get your shower. I'll get mine after." It can wait. He's pretty sure he just signed up for a hell of a lot more of this.

But what else was he supposed to do. He's pretty sure if he hadn't stopped it, he'd feel as sharp and sour-sick as he does now, too.

[gonna_owe_me]

"What?"

In reply to her name, the breath out, the resignation, like he doesn't want to talk about it, and he doesn't answer her question. All of which do nothing but flip a blinking warning light on in her head, because there isn't any reason he wouldn't tell her, is there? No reason at all. If this person is a good thing. If there were nothing to question about whatever this liaison is.

But he's not saying anything, and, worse, he's changing the subject entirely, switching gears with the grace of a derailing train, and that makes her suspicions worse.

There must be something wrong. Maybe she's married. Maybe she's someone he works with, in the court system or HPD. Maybe she...he? is in trouble somehow.

Her one word question still just quizzical, rather than barked. "You can't be surprised if I'm curious, Steve. I would sort of have hoped you might have mentioned that earlier. No offense, but it's never come up before."

Steve's always been...Steve. Autonomous. Never staying in one place for too long. Prone to flings, once in a while, maybe, but mainly seemingly content with being by himself, or with comrades in arms.

This is totally new, and she's going to need a second to readjust her thinking, so the shower can just go ahead and wait.

[thebesteverseen]

Hoped he would have mentioned it earlier, when? In with every other thing he said in the kitchen? Like somehow he could have just slipped that in between the updates of the last week to two months, and a bite of food?

Hey, he and Danny fell into bed together, after this encounter in a diner with another woman and well-accosted coffee cup, and all the lines that made sense, before he left, before those voicemails and Wo Fat and Doris, seem less like lines and more like faded smudged he either can't, or doesn't want, make out in the pitch dark anymore?

That the only defense he has is that Danny is the best cop, father, person he's ever known and he's known a lot of people. Hundreds of the best of the best out there. That sometimes it feels like Danny, there somewhere within twenty feet of him, is the only reason he still remembers to do more than keep breathing and walking in a straight line, doing his job. Reminds him there's more to a day than that.

"I know." Is frustrated, pinpointed by the transparency of it. Of the fact Danny can allude to not knowing, but Cath does.

And. He does. He knows that he should have told her earlier, somewhere, somehow, maybe when he'd been thinking about it on the drive, it like he knows each of the three things he never got around to telling her. All three of those, walking into and out of each other, for vastly different reasons. Kept, and silent both. All. In case. He's always been the best lock box. There's so much in here no one's here or heard of.

"But I can't--" His hand comes of his neck, with a gesture in the air. "--tell you either of those."

A hard can't, more solid than earlier, more like. More like the black lined in his missions. Because there are other lives it might effect now. There are whole court cases that anything attached to Danny's life and work and world could be effected now. Tip anything and everything that means anything to him, from Five-0 all the way down to Grace, could be hit as a domino.

When it matters, it all matters, and he's trying to think of anything he can say, about the whole thing. Abjectly. For her.

"It's new." If, also, has been there forever. Been knocking Steve stomach out and burning him for over a year at this point.

But with Danny -- with Danny looking at him like that, with Danny knocking out CIA agents, with Danny kissing him good morning and staying in his bed, and having a fucking clue what it means when Steve can't look away, might rather be set on fire and chained to bomb, rather than look away from him. "A few weeks only. It might not--"

Those words come out in a tumble, because they are so linked in his head. And even when he presses his lips together, he knows it's, also, because really there's not much he keeps from her on certain lines. Because this whole space has always been theirs. Fun. Free. Easy. No rules. No requirements.

He shook his head, and finished it, even if it feels like stabbing himself, quick and true. "It might not even last the next few."

He wants it to. He can feel that, clinging to his words and the inside of his entire chest. He can't shake it, anymore than the calls.

And if it doesn't, that was even more reason not to rock the boat, or muddy the waters around it. So that if it goes South or Danny, and that still caught, trapped in amber expression of such shocked and embarrassed almost fear, suddenly does run away from this whole new upended world, thing, sexuality, Steve, then maybe it's better not to have it all out there. Out where it would be like weights on his feet anytime he looked at anyone.

[gonna_owe_me]

"Hey --"

There are a lot of sharp shards of everything in her head right now, but they all get locked away at the tone in Steve's voice, the way he looks at her, almost helpless, gagged by something far harder to loose than a rag or a towel or tape. "Why would you say that? That's hardly optimistic."

Gently sympathetic, with a side helping of the kind of support she's rusty at doling out, at least like this, and not at a bar over some tequila or in someone's bunk. And, everything else aside, her own jealousy and surprise and bafflement, she hates the look that camps across his face, like it's already over, the ax has already fallen. Like he's already bracing himself for the end, even if it only just got started.

So it means something, whatever this is with whoever it's with. More than just pushing her away. It's something he's already afraid of losing, already sure will be lost, and he's still trying to make sure he doesn't actively screw it up. Which makes her feel a little bad about assuming -- about trying -- but she didn't know, and he hasn't been acting any differently towards her. So there's a touch of wryness in her smile, but it's gentle, all the same. "You know, usually I don't worry too much when you can't tell me things, but I have to say, I worry a little when you can't give me a name or a clue."

The only reason she can think of for that is that she does know who it is, and Steve has a reason for trying to keep it from her, which means he probably thinks she'd disapprove, in some way, and she's teasing, a little, now, but she's also more serious than she'd admit as she goes on.

"It's not blackmail or anything, right? Classified, government secret?"

Just tell her it's nothing bad. That his reticence isn't due to some kind of career-ending mishap, or international incident. That no one's putting pressure on him from the outside, and it's half a joke, because the idiot who would try that on Steve is the idiot about to lose use of his fingers, or lungs.

But if it's not from the outside, then it's from the inside, and that...that is a ballpark she's not sure she wants to look too closely at.

[thebesteverseen]

Hardly optimistic. He could point at his week and the level of sheer shock, voiced impossibility, on her own lips as the irony to that statement alone. But he doesn't. He's watching her face, trying not to think that even this much feels dangerous, too. Even if he isn't backing away from it. And her. And the words that already fell out his mouth, prized like splinters from this too-big thing inside of him.

Never said to Danny except the morning after the BBQ, when Danny had simply refuted, saying he didn't want to go anywhere.

"No." Steve shook his head. "It's nothing like that."

Nothing that simple. Nothing he could charge at and body slam into submission.

The problems between here and there, between him and Danny, the ones they eradicate for attention with every inch. Every single reason he repeated, gouged into the walls of his head and backs of his eyes, every time he could help it. With Rachel or Gabby or Peterson, or just Danny being amazing. Leaning too close, being too bright, getting caught in his head, under his skin.

"It's actually-" This one isn't a pause, so much as like a swallow, this momentary check in with all the things that are not Steve. Grounded and settled in this whole idea, his home and bed and people, well, person, one person, and more than
half the days of the week. "-really good."

Which he gets almost quiet on the last two words of. Like saying it. Admitting that is worse. Especially after the last few days, when even impossibly found a way to heart-rending and jacked up. Because even if saying it means it's cruising for a crash next, it still is. There are so many seconds that flood his head when he's torn between trying to swallow that he said those words, while there's too much in his head. Pulling quiet and very slightly at the edge of his mouth.

From Danny on the a tarmac, to him not leaving that whole morning, to the yelling on his lawn, and that second report. Putting all those marks on his skin, and the way Danny, in a voice like blackened lava, told him don't stop. The expression, all warm and nervous on his face, this morning, when Steve first opened his eyes. The way he fits, somehow, perfectly, inside his arms. And how his voice, rattling into a sleepy murmured rant, as the last noise in the dark, make him sleep better somehow.

The way that no matter how he feels -- and how right now it would be five or ten or twenty steps up to even get to feeling like all of his skin exploded into a million pieces that was only being held together by super glue, stitch staples, and a grim determination to keep going until he literally, physically, can't -- that Danny still manages to make him laugh, or smile, or bury his face in his skin and breathe in, really breathe, air, the world, himself, Danny.

Dragging it from that dark, rusty place so far beneath everything else more important and pulling it out. Like it's important, too.

[gonna_owe_me]

So maybe it could be. Love. She doesn't know, because she has literally never seen this look on Steve's face before; this mix of happy and hopeful, of wary disbelief. And a sudden shine that comes over him like sunlight skating across water. When four words, it's actually really good, with no embellishments, no further explanation, come like a confession, and she's suddenly looking at the barest she's ever seen him. Even aside from Doris, where there had been a wall around everything he did, every motion and muffling every word.

But, just for a second, he shines.

It doesn't take away from the worry, or the resignation. Doesn't smooth the taut line of his shoulders or the thrum of tension between them. And it lands with a splash in her stomach, in her head, where that mean little voice is whispering that he'd never once looked at her the way he's looking right now about someone he can't even tell her about. Dragging up memories of when she'd wanted that, wanted Steve to be hers, exclusively, before she came to the realization that Steve belongs to no one exclusively, that he gives himself to the Navy and now Five-0 with the kind of dedication other people save for lovers. His scope is larger than that, and she'd learned to be fine with it, learned to appreciate it, love him for it, love what they have, because it keeps her from being forgotten like any other dalliance. Because there's something in their friendship that means more, that she now thinks she prefers.

And she doesn't even want him for herself like that, but she used to, and sometimes those memories are hard to dislodge.

Still, that voice is tiny, and it's nothing to the warm wash of affection and near wistfulness that floods her chest as she watches him, his face open and honest, four words ringing true. A good thing, in a week when nothing has been good.

She can't begrudge him that. And in the end, she's not here to sleep with him. She's here to just be with him, try to cheer him up, pull him out of his house and into the world, and she can do that without falling into bed with him, no matter how she might regret or miss those moments later.

Which makes her smile, because he's still tense and defensive, and he's still cagey as hell, but there's something about this that's good, and he needs that, more than anything else, more than her, even. Her whole reason to be here is to give him that, isn't it?

"Good." A funny little tug pulling at her smile, but it's warm and, you know, she gets it. Past the surprise, past the worry. That look on his face tells her what she needs to know, and exactly how she should take this information.

"Then I hope it works out longer than a few more weeks." As long as it makes him soften like that, as long as he gets that look in his eyes, like he doesn't even know what to hope for, but is hoping anyway.

Her lips press together, thoughtfully, and she nods, like she's agreeing, a tactical retreat, though this is not over, Steve. Still, it's an olive branch. "What were you saying about me getting first shower?"