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]

She wrinkles up her face at him, squinting in the sun, unrepentant and unmoved by the lolling sarcasm of his response. "I haven't suddenly decided anything."

Certainly not if the type of 'supervision' she'd have suggested is the kind he needs, and a few misgivings start tapping on the glass, despite her best attempts at ignoring them. Asking that question again. If he cares so much, where is this person? Why aren't they around to be there with him in the hospital, or at home?

Still, she slides her hands out of her pockets and turns back towards the house, walking briskly, shoulders straight and relaxed, calling back over one of them, "don't worry, I'm sure I'll give you some reminders."

And she's not done. Not by a long shot, but Steve has always been close-lipped and difficult to crack when he's got information he doesn't want to share, and she knows she's not going to get a name or details tonight.

That's fine. There's plenty she can ask about that has nothing to do with names or identifying information. He'd said a few weeks, but he was in Japan a few weeks ago. So did it happen right when he got back? And how is it aside from good, and something that can give him that open, vulnerable, unconsciously soft look on his face?

But they've got all night, and right now, there's a hospital to get to.

[thebesteverseen]

It's not, actually. Easy.

The harrowed weariness is everywhere in Chin's face, wire-tight in his shoulders, posture tilted toward the figure quietly sleeping in the bed no matter whether he's talking to them or to the nurse who was there were they arrived. The way he looks barely awake on his feet, but entirely fixated. Steve doesn't blame him. Especially if waking up for a few minutes is happening more than just the once.

But it doesn't mean he backs off of the point, if anything it's an even stronger solvent. If she is waking up more often, even for short durations, things are getting better, and Chin can go take care of himself, knowing that Steve'll be right here, able to call him at a second's notice. That, hey, it's not like he's asking him to go catch the three or four hours it looks like he needs, just a shower, get some real food, bring Malia the clothes, books, blankets, any of the things he knows best she'll like having near her.

Things only he'd known or realize because he knew her best. Because it was their house, and she was his wife.

He did give in the end, saying he'd be back as soon as possible. The words still far more for her ears than either Cath or Steve, but Steve didn't pay that any mind. If anything, boats and mission bunks made them both as equally ready to pretend you weren't standing five to ten feet from another person having a very private moment that was about them, and no one else around. Before it was just them left in the room.

Tripler was as quiet as this ward ever got, really, but being there a good enough reason to request for a status report on the HPD officers that had ended up there, too. A general all around update, without ever venturing far from the Malia's door in the Intensive Care Unit. The way the time slipped quickly enough by, barely hitting an hour by the time Chin was back, carrying a food box that didn't look like it had been opened once yet, but in fresh clothes, with a fully stuffed duffle and a brightly colored, if worn-thin, patchwork quilt.

Relief still palpable on his face when he first saw her, again, like breaking the water and being able to breathe, but he did thank them before they were headed out again.

[gonna_owe_me]

It's quiet, in the hospital. Quiet when Chin's there, and quiet when Steve finally gets him to leave, and he doesn't exactly bodily shove him through the door, but she thinks the threat is there.

There's no question Chin needs it. He looks rough and ragged enough that he's almost unrecognizable as the smiling man secure in his ability to get his wife a good Valentine's Day present, perfectly pressed in his tailored suit and laughing to himself at Steve and Danny's bickering, smugly certain and full of the serene happiness of a man knowing he'll be going back home to the love of his life.

Now, he's polite, but distant; eyes continually tracking back to the still figure in the bed. Cath wishes she'd met Malia before: she's a beautiful woman, but it's hard to see under her ashy complexion and the dark circles under her eyes. She looks exhausted, even asleep, and Chin isn't doing much better, skin translucent from lack of sleep and food, bags under his eyes, clothing wrinkled and worn. A break is sorely needed, but she can't blame him for being reluctant to go, even with Steve offering to stay and keep an eye on her.

There's a brief moment when she considers offering to go, when they get back, but it passes in an easy question from him about dinner that she bats back, and before she knows it, it's well into the evening and he's showing no signs of forgetting why he invited her to stay.

Instead, it's a companionable dinner, the kind of fresh fish and fruit she can only dream about three months into a cruise, a couple of beers each, empty bottles left on surfaces until they get collected and tossed into a bin, and she realizes the air's gone purple and cooler, with the kind of hazy glow that comes from humidity and the reflected light off water.

At that point, it only makes sense to grab another beer each and retreat to the couch, where she sifts through his limited DVD collection and comments idly on each possibility until he looks a little less distracted and it doesn't feel so suddenly strange to be sitting next to each other there, close enough that her knees brush his leg when she's curled up, one elbow balancing on the back of the couch, movie splashing both of them with light and faintly muted sound.

And it's actually not so bad, once they both relax, and it's clear that just touching each other isn't taboo, isn't grounds for panic and pushing away. She's has worse ways to spend a night off, definitely.

[thebesteverseen]

It ends up something they've seen a handful of times, which gets some abuse, but Steve's never been one for dedicated hours to his tv at it is. Except for games, followed by certain types or shows or movies, he'd generally rather be outdoors doing something else. Until a few weeks ago, it would have been sliding back to the desk and the Champ toolbox, turning pieces over and over, puzzling out how they all fit together.

The movie itself isn't half bad, being old and known. There are parts they laugh and cringe and prod each over like it's still the first or second time. That haven't stopped being great or silly or truly, deeply terrible ways to make civilians think that how that's done. When it's proof they still can, jostle each other, throw pillows from one side toward the other. That make it almost is okay. Being in the same, if not for the same reasons.

Or for the same reasons, the reasons that never change, but with a different outcome.

Night does get around to coming, with it being easy to put out there. She can stay, Mary's room was still made up. They could still do breakfast and he could beat her to the cliffs, too. If there was the smallest bit of a pause, for the obvious reasons, she was right back in there that second later with a sharp, sly, witty retort about not being sure of himself. Which was answer enough.

It's disjointed in its strangeness. Everything just a dozen clicks of place, like he's through through a scope someone configured wrong. When Cath is down the hallway in Mary's room, instead of his. And Danny is on the other side of the city, with Grace, instead of where he was this morning. The way he's actually in his own bed, when he'd assumed three days ago he wouldn't be in this bed, staring at this ceiling, hearing these waves for a month or two, at least several weeks.

How the ghosts in the walls and shadows, the never ending loop of a life lived and utterly lost here, seems even louder because the lynch pin. The one pulled. The one that made everything else explode. Thrust across countries, decades, wrecking so much those left behind had to struggle to look at each other, interact at all, even keep in contact. Because that first domino. That first change. It never happened.

Doris is still alive. Doris, who he can't reconcile to calling his mother, for more than a sour blink here or there in his head. Because maybe that's the only way he can differentiate now. Doris is the one who was alive, who left all these words, and even more questions in his head than he'd had at the beginning. Not two years worth of questions, but twenty-two year worth of questions.

His mother was this woman who cared about kids, her family, meatloaf dinners, not having too many shaved ices.

This woman a hairsbreadth from never existing at all. Except that he didn't want her to vanish entirely from his mind, the way she had from his life. He didn't want to obliterate the memories as easily as Doris had drug him into her arms in that doorway. It was twenty two years, two people and three bullets apart, and all the same.

A snake chasing its own tail, when all Steve could do was bury his second pillow on his face -- the one that still smelled like Danny; his shampoo, his skin, the faintest sharp trace of sex right at the edges -- and breathe, wait for all the empty spaces (beside him, inside the house, inside his self) to become either less exhausting than his eyelids or just exhausting enough his world would give into the black finally.

[gonna_owe_me]

Sleeping alone isn't unusual. Sleeping alone, in Steve's house, in the guest room, though...that is. It's weird. Especially after how not weird the movie was, when she got a faceful of pillow after tossing her bottle cap at his head, when it turns out touching each other isn't a crime and nobody gets shocked or hurt if they accidentally brush shoulders or arms or legs.

Maybe they weren't curled up together, maybe they actually watched through to the end of the movie, but it was actually pretty normal, by the end there.

Which just makes the night all that much stranger.

She doesn't know this bed or this room, but knows the walls are thin enough that Mary could hear them, before (which still makes her cheeks feel hot, just thinking about it), and she can imagine she hears Steve, shifting in the sheets on that big comfy bed. Wondering if he's sleeping any more than she is.

Part of her wants to get up and go into his room. It's irrational, and, worse than that, actively destructive, but it's a little fantasy she indulges briefly before shaking aside as both unnecessary and sort of cruel. She doesn't want to come between Steve and someone he cares about. It's the last thing she wants, no matter how curious she is, no matter how concerned.

He still had said barely anything; no details, and no identifiers. Giving her that flat, faintly exasperated look when she snuck in references or questions, but no answers.

Which is worrying. Especially this weekend. Especially the time frame she has to work with. When she can't even hear him talking to anyone, though she listens. Whoever it is, it's someone he doesn't call even on the weekend his mother turned up alive and his team went through the fire and came out fractured on the other side. But someone he doesn't want to screw things up with, by sleeping with her.

And, of course, the reason why this weekend, of all weekends, whoever it is should be here: Doris. She's lying here in Mary's room, wondering if Mary knows yet, if Steve decided to call her after all. Probably not. He's the kind who prefers giving bad news in person, which means Mary might not know for months. If ever. Considering Doris has left again.

It's a long few hours of blinking at the ceiling, listening, and continually rolling over to try and get comfortable, but then there's a moment when she blinks her eyes open and it's light out, again.

Which leads her padding down into the kitchen, hair all mussed and beachy, to prod at the coffee maker until it starts percolating and she can bring a cup to sip, at the kitchen table, looking out at the morning slowly rising.

[thebesteverseen]

Night takes forever, and he wake more than once, with a huff of air every time he realizes he doesn't need to seize in fear of waking someone, stays tense, like somehow looking at that empty space isn't heavier. It shouldn't be. He doesn't absolutely need someone there. Either of them. Not really. He knows how much he can plow through.

Knows better than anyone what he can and can't take, and he's managed this snarl for so long already.




Somehow he still ends up with the pillow, in the crush of his arms, an end tucked under his chin, eyes closed, breathing in.




Maybe ignores, outrightly, the fact he wakes up with it still there, held close and flush, at a late enough pre-dawn hour he's allowed to end up back out of bed. Ruffling his own hair, with no real idea how much sleep he did or didn't get. Checking his phone to be sure, before finding swim trunks, and abandoning the house.

When it's easier. Take it all out there. Throw it into the waves, like it's not his own body he's tossing violently at it all. The things he didn't know. Didn't figure out soon enough. His people hurt, two of them nearly killed, another who is important. Things he should have been there for.

Doris. Doris. Doris, Wo Fat, and Delano. How he should have known better about the last two, too. Wo Fat smug, unfazed serenity, with his tea cup. With his lock-up. Delano's smug face in the interrogation room, taunting about saying hello to Kono, when he was playing chicken with Chin and doing his best to drown her less than twelve hours later.

When he'd had his head so far up his own business, he'd just gone. And he had been. Gone. Gone, when they all needed him most.

And what did he have to show for it now? Three bullets in the floor. More than half of his team ripped up, even as they struggled to carry onward, kept on their feet. Delano in the morgue and Wo Fat melted into the dark. The endless anger, revulsion, necessity that all of that stirred up.

If he thinks about that. About letting them down. About needing to be better, do better, put everything else aside. Shove harder and harder, until his lungs are burning and the side of his ribs is throbbing with the terror of his elevated heart rate each time he goes deeper for longer, pressing beyond words, beyond thoughts, beyond their hallowed eyes, apologies, promises to keep doing the job.

Until it's just an endless tugging tide, lost in the waves, in the lack of air, the fire in his muscles, then maybe he won't think about the rest of it. There won't be a rest of it. He'll just walk out of the waves, and he won't feel like the sight of that house is like have glass shards rubbed all over already lacerated skin. He won't feel so angry that's it a cold that doesn't even feel like anger.

Like a free fall into nothing. Absolutely nothing. Seams already ripped free, pretending they still have some cohesion.

That cohesion is a word that exists in a world where it was made to keep everything else together.




Because if that first thing never happened; did any of the rest of it, was any of it actually real.
The parts before. The things after. The places went. Choices made. Vows made. Himself.

When every single words spoken was as suspect as every year tattered and torn further.



Steve's only narrowly not breathing hard still by the time he makes it back to that house, in through that door, meeting the person who not Danny in his kitchen with a nod, still shaking his head without moving, all the noise and silence in it. Trying to find a space through the din. But it take some time.

A bottle of water. Half a protein shake. Then a coffee cup later. Before he feels less like old, broken metal rust flakes, too loose and too tight, threatening to clench into a fist and come apart at every joint, and more like the half-edge smiles he's been pushing out while describing to Cath, where they'll be headed to for the morning.

A cute little place just outside the state park, where they can get breakfast brought to them.

[gonna_owe_me]

They do end up going to the cliffs.

Breakfast first, after some coffee at the house, even though her leftover loco moco is still sitting there in the fridge. They end up going to the cliffs, and it's actually pretty great: her muscles feel good, stretching after the run up the mountain, faintly complaining in a way that just makes her want to push them further, faster, harder. Out under the bright bow of sky, that clouds suddenly and buckets them with rain until her hair is soaking and Steve's shirt is sticking and everything around them is getting washed clean.

A sudden downpour that vanishes, 'island time' a myth to the weather, which changes when it pleases and usually abruptly and for the very temporary worse, which means that by the time they get back and find lunch, it's beautiful again, and that beach gets put to good use.

She does love it. The beach. The calm swell of water that's nothing like open ocean, or sky. The smell of sand and synthetic coconut, slippery sunscreen getting rubbed into her skin. The sunshine she lounges her in charging her up like a solar battery, until she feels like her skin is hot and glowing with it, and all her muscles are relaxed, grateful for the break after two days of trying to keep up with Steve.

Plenty of time to swim, matching out long smooth strokes that pump her heartrate back up to a steady run. And they could, go someplace. Do something else. But though they both somewhat halfheartedly consider finding waves or another park or leaving the house, they don't. Which is no bad thing. She wonders if it might partly be getting back up on the horse, Steve staying here. Like he needs to prove it'll be fine, even with this weekend, even with the years of tragedy and loneliness soaked into those walls.

But he stays, and he's even good company, even if sometimes his smiles seem a little dimmed and he gets a little lost in his thoughts, now and again.

Her questions have minimized, though, too. Asking the only specific, whether whoever it is is busy this weekend, rather than pointing out her concern that it's been a day, over a day, and there hasn't been a single other person here. She's not even sure he's checked up with anyone aside from Chin and Kono.

[thebesteverseen]

Offering to grill for dinner is easy. Dragging out a little of everything, maybe because she's been good to put up with him, with the moments he just tunes out, with the fact she keeps asking questions he gives the shortest answers to, with how he still hasn't told her everything about the last few days either. So, little of everything. She deserves it, at the very least. For staying, for making the day more than he would have without her.

Fish. Chicken. Shrimp. Sausage. Cherry Tomatoes. Ball onions. Pineapple. Mushrooms. Green, Yellow, Orange Peppers. Smaller amounts, wider variety. All of them sliced and skewered and grilled while the sky was going giving the world the inverse of dawn. Pastel colors woke up, but the evening here sometimes seemed to set the very sky on fire. Like the sun wanted to be remembered. Brilliant and glorious colors stitched across the satin beauty of silver waves.

Giving them ribbons of light when he's got a large plate of kebabs finally finished, yelling across the space to where she wants all of this to go. He could have drug out a table and the lights, again, and the could have ended up in the dinning room, but they end up back on the couch. Plate on the table in front of them, barefoot and loose from the weekend, with something on the tv neither of them are really following.

Or at least he isn't. Even when he's giving her the stink eye for throwing a cherry tomato at his shoulder, for a deservedly crass dig, because really. He could care less about the tv, and tomorrow he's going to miss her when she goes back on shift. For however long that is before Five-0 steals all of his attention and he forgets for a few days. When, where, how long, other people. Even her.

Which made it worth trying to remember the end of these long hours, and the fact she stayed through them all, too.

[haole_cop]

He doesn't even stop at the apartment, after he drops Gracie off.

After sucking up every possible second of the weekend with her, like each drop is the only water he'd have before six months in the desert. Starting with breakfast, where she had French toast and drenched it in coconut syrup and the fake maple that still reminds him of the diners back home (and man, he misses those diners, misses the corned beef special, piled high on rye and stuffed with coleslaw and Thousand Island. The closest thing here is Spam, and that just, really. Doesn't cut it.) and he had sunny-side-up eggs, because, as he explained, this was a sunny-side-up sort of day, getting the be with her.

It's not even one hundred percent a lie. Just picking her up, catching her in a hug she'd run into and feeling her arms go around his neck was enough to improve his outlook on life by about a thousand percent, while simultaneously reminding him why he has to fight this thing, why he has to try and keep her, because she is the single best part of his life, the single best part of him. Smiling and beautiful, looking forward to their weekend together. Rolling her eyes at him when he made that stupid joke about the eggs, but her smile curling and pleased.

It's enough that the ache is manageable, for the day.

A day he spent at the aquarium, and then a park, until blue twilight began falling and it was time to take her out for a nice dinner, dressed up, at a properly adult restaurant, because she's getting to be a young lady now, and this, Grace, this is the sort of place you should hold out for, thirty years from now, when you start dating.

Do you like it?

It's nice, Danno.

Even when it led to questions about Gabby, and the explanation he gave her, sober-eyed over shrimp cocktail and her Shirley Temple, about how he and Gabby decided not to see each other anymore, and it's no one's fault, okay, they just decided they wanted different things, which he does not specify, because Gabby wanted him, and he wanted, well...

Steve.

Which does not come up on the lists of recommended topics for discussion with your pre-teen daughter, none that he's ever seen or considered, so he skated past it, hands folded on the tabletop, against fine white cloth, acutely aware of the phone not ringing in his pocket.

She took it like a champ, disappointment and all, but her wistfulness all but disappeared once they were home and he commanded both of them into pajamas before pulling out the sofa bed and tossing her, shrieking, into a nest of pillows and blankets. Held up DVDs one by one, for appraisal, to be sorted into piles, first, of 'definitely could watch' to 'maybe if we're desperate' to 'never again, why do I own this movie to begin with, are DVDs flammable?'

(The answer to which is a resounding...not really. More melty than anything.)

The process for picking a movie was long and intense, but they agreed on one (Grace's choice), and she curled into him, ice cream and popcorn balanced in the folds of the blankets, and she fell asleep there, too.

He managed to even make it through most of the night without admitting that was his plan all along. Not bad, considering there hadn't been a second of the day where he wasn't wondering about Steve, thinking about Steve, wishing Steve and Steve's ridiculous mass were taking up the entire fucking pullout bed.

But he wasn't. He was alone. In a way that would drive Danny crazy. To drink. Up a wall and over the edge. In a way that Danny wasn't, all weekend. Through Saturday and into Sunday, which turned faintly gray at the edges after lunch, when the countdown to dropping her off started and ended with a last hug and her goodbyes still in his ear.

Leaving him feeling slightly like the sidewalk was tilted under his shoes, before finding his keys, his bearings, the car, and driving away. World in a blur, driving by instinct and memory as much as paying attention, until he snaps out of it, and makes the turn that won't bring him back to his house. Pushing the pedal down with sudden urgency, heart thudding hard and worried in his chest. It's been all weekend, and he's heard nothing, gotten only one brief text. Guilt is shoving itself into the cracks between his ribs, lengthens his steps when he pulls up to the gate, lets himself in.

The lights are on, and he can hear the TV, and, crap, maybe he should have brought some beer, or something, or gone home and changed out of weekend clothes, t-shirt and jeans from going outside and trying to coax Grace into playing catch, but he's here and it's already been way too long, so he just opens the door instead, and strolls in with an acerbic greeting already on his tongue before it dies there and dries to leather.

Steve's there. Yeah.

But Steve is not alone. Not at all. Not like Danny's been thinking he was. Not even a little. Because Steve is sitting on the couch, with Catherine tucked comfortably next to him, smiling at something she's saying. With an empty plate in front of them, scattered with the remnants of, oh, that looks like it was pretty good. Noted, in a daze.

Just like he notes the way Catherine smiles, sudden and bright and beautiful, and, God, she really is. Beautiful. And smart and strong and in the Navy and everything a guy like Steve could want, or any guy, really, she's great, Cath, and she doesn't deserve the way he suddenly hates her like she's actually a swarm of locusts, and he is actually losing it, seriously losing it, right here, half out of Steve's doorway, as she's saying Danny all pleased and how was your weekend with your daughter? and he's got nothing at all. Can't even reach into the gaping hole that was his brain and pull out words.

He thinks he says something like "good" or maybe it's "sorry to interrupt" or maybe it's both, but either way he's backing out the door and closing it soldily before the words hit the floor and shatter this suddenly tissue-thin icicle of a thing that had been racing back here.

[thebesteverseen]

There's not an off section of his day, his week, his head really. Not, especially, this week. When the impulse for the door unlatching to their side is still for Steve's hand to slip toward the piece at his hip. Knowing the safety is off, at the same time as the knowledge that there is only one person on the island of the peace of the mind that his front door is revolving door that doesn't require knocking, as the knowledge it must be late, have gotten late, if Grace is back with Rachel.

So many thoughts and absolutely not a single one is sticking, because Danny is walking through his front door, which he can see straight over Cath's head. Blonde hair and -- yeah. Yeah. Steve can't even help the bewildered, amazed smile that smacks his face suddenly -- and blue jeans. T-shirt, too. But blue jeans. Looking like he came straight from whatever it was he got up to with his daughter.

Which is good, right? They had fun. Steve will just stop considering those pants and drag his eyes back up to Danny's face.

Where all the puddle of warmth that suddenly splattered everywhere like somehow water had started bubbling up, air started coming in, again, freezes on Danny's face. Pale, like he's going to faint, more like he suddenly wants to lose his dinner on the floor of Steve's landing. Mouth twitching like there are words that keep almost, but never finding his voice.

Eyes so wide and so bright it's kicking up Steve's chest, aimed for the dead center, like a sharpened icepick.

As Danny's eyes were focused on Cath, hardly evening moving at all. Any second the gaze moves back in his direction it goes back to her. Cringing just enough Steve thinks it's ratchets off like the bullets that slammed his back this week, when Cath's words hardly seem to touch him, before he's backing away. Panic and desperation, sickened confirmation, denial and something else, something Steve can't even name, but he hates it so much already, skittering wildly on that face.

When Danny's retreating faster than the few steps he came in, scatter-shot words in a tone so sharp and unfocused it could be its own weapon. Before the door was slamming. Only it seemed to keep slamming, the door and his his heart, somewhere up in his throat and his ears, even at the same time as he'd pushed up from the couch, with "Danny--" all at the same time as the door went.

Maybe only just then catching himself, between surging up and the fact Cath was between him and the door.

Making his gaze drop to her, even as he knew he had to go, shoulders suddenly frozen for a half dozen other, newer, reasons.

[gonna_owe_me]

It's impossible not to notice. Any reaction. Starting with the glance she takes at Steve as she smiling, saying hi to Danny, who has popped in out of nowhere. It's nice of him, she's thinking, to stop by, especially since this was just his weekend with his daughter, and she likes Danny, is glad to see him.

But not as glad as Steve is. Steve, who is smiling this helplessly brilliant smile that she's not sure she's ever seen on him before. Who looks suddenly like he can breathe again, like he'd just broken surface and can gulp in fresh air to lungs shrieking for it. She'd thought he was relaxed a second ago, but that's nothing to this, like he's been living in shadow all weekend and the sun finally rose, which makes her take another quick look at Danny, who is stumbling over an answer to her question and some apology that rings strangely painful.

Who isn't smiling. Whose eyes are trained on her, wide and surprised and alarm that isn't alarm so much as it is -- what, what is that? Who is looking like Steve actually pulled that piece at his hip and shot him in the gut. Like he's about to be sick. Before the door closes again after being open for the space of about five seconds, and he's gone.

Just as Steve makes an abrupt, cancelled motion, and she turns back to him, lips wanting to form a question, but then she sees his face and it's like turning a key. Sudden panic and desperation painted over what had been the best smile he'd given all weekend, every inch of him halted in mid-motion, like he's actually sprinting for the door but she'd managed to pause him like she can a movie, just before the spring.

Clues slotting together in her head. Everything he couldn't tell her. No name, no clue whether she knew who it was. Where that person was all weekend and why they weren't here, because that person was, is, Danny, and he had Grace, but he must have come immediately from dropping her off.

The raw look on Steve's face and the belated,reflexive way his name comes out, shortened, interrupted by the door, is all the confirmation she needs.

She's torn, momentarily, between reactions, but one wins out, the one he knew would, so he didn't tell her, but this, this is insane, this is so much worse than just reticence, it's actively damaging, to both of them. Moving on the couch cushion so she can get a better look at him, feeling the need to move, to do something, to smack him in the head and get him to think about what he's doing.

"Are you kidding me? What are you thinking, Steve?"

[thebesteverseen]

What was he thinking? It hits like another bullet, ricochets through his head, his chest, louder and louder and louder.
Just keeps going off. Like a siren and spotlights in a compound break-in or break-out. Loud and blinding.



What was he thinking?



He was thinking that Danny was probably trying to make it back to the camaro as fast as he could. That somehow with one look he'd grabbed Steve's stomach, his lungs, all his vital organs. Caught them clean and fast with a shining sharp hook, and they were jerking further and further from his grasp with each of Danny's steps he couldn't see, but felt like it was tremoring the ground.

He was thinking about that sick shot of sour embarrassment and sharp defensiveness that slammed together in his head, shoulders, everywhere to his edges, like he was slamming the ground in the plane again. Because he can't defend the implication of her words, but he can't stand the notion of anyone implying the there is a downside to Danny aside from ludicrous rants and being as over-protective as he is over-reactive.

He was thinking that the whole world had narrowed down to the wide, disbelief in Cath's eyes, like he'd actively struck her. The shock and -- was that disappointment? there in her face. Making the words come shooting out like everything else she'd ever considered had been rational. Everything except that she just figured out. The he'd chosen Danny over her. That he'd chosen something possibly career blocking, if not tribunal earning over her.

He was thinking that he had to leave, had to go, now now now, even if it was going to make this even more wrong.

Even if it was going to make her even more right. But he couldn't actually lose Danny. He couldn't lose Danny who stood not fifteen feet from this spot and told him, asking just to be fired quietly and left alone. Who took on the CIA, and North Korea. Whose heart was nothing like Steve's: messy, exposed the elements on his shoulder, not less but more for each sucessive beating, fragile enough to be trampled in a glance.

[gonna_owe_me]

"Oh, Steve."

With a breath through her nose and a shake of her head, while her shoulders slump a little.

It's such a bad idea. It's such a bad idea. They've had it drilled into them over and over, and she's willing to bet Danny has, too. It's one of those things that has to be regulated, working in high risk situations, in close quarters, with distinct levels of accountability and clear-cut ranks. It's too easy to make everything personal. To find yourself making the wrong decisions, mistakes. Getting too involved. Too easy for all those rankings to just dissolve outside work, threatening the structure once back in the office, on the field.

He knows all of that. She could list off every reason in the book, but he knows them as well as she does. Fraternization in the ranks. Why it's a bad idea. Why it's frowned upon, to the point of disciplinary action. When they could both be looking down the barrel of a career-ending decision.

And she wants to say all of it. She wants to yell at him, smack him in the head, make him see reason, but he's staring at her with naked panic in his face and she's not sure he's seeing her at all, when it's obvious his heart's gotten jerked outside and slammed behind the closed door, with Danny. The exact opposite of that bewildered, delighted smile of three seconds ago. Of the careful disbelief the other day, admitting that it was actually pretty good. The way it looks like he wouldn't be able to breathe right now even if she slapped an oxygen mask on his face.

There's nothing for it, no other choice to make. Not if she cares, and she does, she wants to see it again, that stupid goofy look, that sudden shining happiness, the way Steve filled in around the edges and suddenly became more himself than he's been all weekend.

It's a bad idea, but they can talk about it later. Right now he needs to: "Go."

Eyebrows up, head tipping towards the door as her hands lift and she starts to get up, because she is definitely not going to want to be here in the next ten minutes or so. A little sharper, faintly resigned, but no less certain that he should get up and go fix this before he winds up with exactly the scenario he was trying to avoid when he pushed her away earlier. "Will you get going? Or do you want him to leave?"

[thebesteverseen]

He knows that face. The one where her lips firm and she looks so put upon, even as she giving. The makes the mess of his stomach even more oiled, sliding, sloshing everywhere, in the center of a vice that won't stop tightening. On his lungs. On his ribs. On the edges of his vision. On the feeling of desperate loss, and the want to reject it. The feeling like he couldn't take losing both of them, either of them, but definitely not both, suddenly.

Except she shoving as much as she isn't touching him at all. Away from her. Toward Danny. A little sharper and louder the second time. Like she can't believe she's doing this. Which tangles up something in the middle of his heart, and forces it out of his mouth. "Cath -- I --"

It's coming at the same time as motion is finding his body. Like the free fall in a roller coaster. Ratcheting the rung going up -- click, click, click -- that moment of sudden, uncontrollable, stomach evaporating free fall -- nothing like skydiving from 30,000 somehow either -- and then the zoom with gravity and force suddenly catches you, spins you, shove you forward, and your body is unable to stop.

Like his feet, and his hands. The way he's making for the door, those two word bumping in his mouth like someone shoved ice cubes it. Freezing and burning his tongue all at once. When the best he can do, three steps, hand almost on the door is throw back an, "I'm sorry."

That he's barely paying attention to falling out of his own mouth. When it's an apology as much as a thank you. When he doesn't know if he's actually sorry. Except that he is. He's sorry he's throwing her under the bus, even for Danny. He's sorry he's running off without an explanation. He's sorry he couldn't give her one before. He's sorry this is how she found out. He's sorry that she's now complicit in this affair.

He's sorry, most of all, that he doesn't give a damn about any of it, for this second, when he's jerking the door open and gone.

Letting the door slam behind him, all forward movement, calling out his name, too loud when he realizes Danny's actually only about twenty-thirty feet away and not at his car even yet. Choking Danny's name half in his throat, when he knows that's what he should be sorriest for.

For the fact the whole world, the whole god damned world, is nothing at all to Danny.

Looking like he got hit by a car so hard that he can't even run away. Sending it slamming right back into Steve.

[haole_cop]

Hands. He has them. He doesn't know what to do with them, when the one on the doorknob jerks off it like the metal expanded into blistering heat under his palm and fingers. Feeling like he is made up hands and feet, none of them touching anything, none of them working like they're supposed to. Like his heart. Not working like it's supposed to. Making one mistake after another, and he'd always read that a heart beats without any effort or consciousness from the person carrying it. That it will just continue to beat, and do what it's supposed to do, without any input from him, which he always found comforting, because he is such an idiot, because he can't be trusted to make the right decisions, but it turns out his heart is just as stupid as the rest of him. Dependent on someone else. And this is what happens when the damn thing doesn't just mind its own business.

Because here it is, limping. Here he is, walking away. Turning on his heel and storming back up to the door, a thousand angry thoughts flooding. How. Why. But. Like all those questions aren't ones he can answer. He's a detective. The answers are always there, if he looks.

Like the fact that Catherine couldn't be here on Friday night, but he could. And the fact that he's noted a number of placeholders for her, in the past two years. And that maybe when Steve said stay it could have been anyone, but it should have been Catherine. And now she's back, so...they can go ahead and find each other again. Because he's usually here. And Cath usually isn't. But Cath is the one who used to stay the night, every time she was around, whenever she could. Who Steve followed to drill on the Enterprise, surrounded by hundreds of sailors just to spend more time with her. Who has known him forever. So much longer than Danny. It makes sense. He even hopes, distantly, that she actually sticks around for a while, because Steve could probably use it and he doesn't think he could handle warming her seat anytime soon. Or again.

He's not even at the car yet. He keeps getting lost, here in Steve's front yard, between turning towards the door, and turning towards the gate, because it turns out losing Steve is like losing a compass, in the woods, in the dark. Like losing a compass, and flashlight, and boots and clothes. Like losing the path right out from under his feet. Like losing gravity. His head is floating somewhere beyond the roof, a balloon lost to vagrant winds, and he probably shouldn't drive like this, but he definitely can't stay here.

Pretending to be glad Cath is back. Pretending to be glad they are so comfortable on the couch, that every smile isn't like a knife in the back of his neck.

Maybe it's better. Have it done with early on. Always going to happen, and now that sword has fallen and it's sticking, halfway sliced through his shoulder and chest, but at least it's down and he doesn't have to worry about it anymore.

Still. He wishes Steve had listened. Or had told him. Or had...Christ. He doesn't even know. There was a second where it seemed like -- but that doesn't happen, isn't what Danny gets, so he blames his heart for getting it mixed up and tells it to just go back to beating like it's supposed to. Starting to get angry with the way it is still. Limping. Like some part of it snapped and is getting dragged, useless.

What an asshole. Him. His heart. This whole situation. Danny. He agrees, but it's said in a totally different tone than the burning, desperate loss blurring every thought. Isn't even his voice.

Steve's. Who is outside now, hurrying, looking alarmed, which he shouldn't, right, who could blame him, Danny knew better, he knew and he ignored it, so this is no one's fault but his. Faintly aggravated with himself for not having gotten to the car yet, but pausing on the path anyway, for whatever it is Steve feels like he needs to say.

Shuffling through flash cards, though the ones he finds feel like they fit wrong. From someone else's mouth. "Look, sorry to barge in on you, okay, I'm just gonna --" Jerking a thumb at what he hopes is the car, before the words dry up and he feels like he's back in front of the door, unable to walk away, unable to go in.

[thebesteverseen]

He's moving too slow, jerky and it hits Steve. Like somehow it hadn't in the seconds before.

Like he'd been too busy with the first wave of surprise and shock to get to the words, the comparison, the knowledge hanging out in the back of his head waiting to be looked at dead-on. This face. He knows this face. And it makes him want to punch himself. Just this face. He knows this face so well he could document for you in picture still how it happens and how long it takes, piece by atomic piece to make it disappear.

When Danny is looking up at his name. Confused, like he hears it but doesn't recognize it. Before his shoulder set.

Steve has seen all of this. For days on end. In every single minute detail of it on Danny. He did. When Rachel left him, again.

When a sickening sort of inverse, like all a gravity-vertigo is slamming into him in less than half a second. Danny, walking in on him and Cath joking. Danny, telling him he had to inform her. Danny, telling him that he'd never seen Steve do anything but easy come, easy go. Danny, staring at him, like Steve's the one who's done this to him. Already now. Done. Past. With her.

Danny words still jumbled and awkward, eyes flitting to him and away just as fast, like looking Steve is going to physically hurt him more, while he rambles through an exit cue. And that vice inside Steve's chest is going to kill anything trying to live, beat, pump, be used, inside the span of his ribs. When he can't even pay attention to the words coming out of Danny's mouth, excuses and direction for having not even gotten to his car, and Steve knows how fast his partner can move.

When he's taking all the steps closer. To get into Danny's space. Hands up, very direct, like he can't even hear the part of his brain shouting that if he moves too fast, talks too loud, reaches out and touches him, Danny might just bolt. He can't. He can't even hear it. He can't. Because he didn't. Because he told her. Stopped her. Stopped them.

He can't hear anything over the desperate denial welling up, demanding he be heard, him, here, over everything else, whatever is going on in Danny's head, whatever it is in there that has made his blue eyes turn into icy, fractured glass under the front yard flood lights, backed by its own wave of silent annoyance that still, that he could ever, to Danny of all people.

"Nothing happened." He can't help feeling it goes off like a gun again. Just like the I can't.

No lead up and absolutely nothing else he can do to stop it or more important to have fall out, fast, hard, direct.

[haole_cop]

The edges of his lips pull up, a horrible hollow smile that's swallowing the horrible hollow feeling in his chest. One hand reaching up, thumbnail scraping lightly just above an eyebrow, leaning back on his heels, glancing away to point that smile and disbelief somewhere else, to some invisible person in on the bad joke that is his life. "Okay."

Hand moving back down, slipping into the too-tight pockets of his jeans, what was he thinking, jeans, his fingers are too square and thick to fit comfortably and it leaves his wrists torqued at too-sharp angles, fingers digging into the pockets up to the second joint.

Because it's almost laughable. Nothing happening. He's not sure he even knows what nothing might be, where the line gets drawn. When Steve had offered to let this, whatever it is, was, be simple. That it could be. Easy. Simple. Forgotten, if needed.

Except it can't, because Danny can't, so he probably should have made something up that first day and let Steve think he was over-reacting about something meaningless and left it at that, because at least he wouldn't be here, now, feeling like a gutted fish.

But it has, literally, never been nothing with Cath. Not since Danny's known him, and noticed that Cath is the only constant in his life. Away for long periods of time, but always back in the end. The idea that there was nothing this weekend -- and how long as she been here? Did Steve call her or did she just show up? -- is preposterous. And he should have figured. Did, even. Hearing her name in the car the other day. Knowing she's back on the island. Just like he should have figured that Rachel picked Stan once, so she would again. A year in Hawaii didn't magically change him into a better option.

Steve has picked Cath dozens of times. It only makes sense.

But Steve is saying nothing anyway, so Danny, from that bizarre floating place, agrees, and he's not even sure it's disbelief or sarcasm. It just is. He can accept it. He just needs to haul his head and heart and lungs and stomach back into place long enough to get through the hours until work, when the badge will do the rest.

[thebesteverseen]

That marionette smile comes out. The one where you can all but see the strings. It pulls across Danny's mouth, like having another rough-shod knife jabbed into his stomach. Danny's hand finding his own face, then his pockets, then pulling out again. Like nothing is working. How Danny says that single word, like it's the most pointless thing to every contain letters or sound.

Like it doesn't matter. No, like it couldn't possibly ever be true. Whether it's a joke, or whether they're just going to pretend Steve said it and meant it, no matter what else totally must have taken place behind that door. And Steve. He might deserve to be called on the fact it almost did. He almost let something happen. He could have. He felt something, regardless, that hadn't been sponged from his system.

But not this. He didn't do this.

He pushed away the one person who would have asked for nothing in return. Who jokes about his tally, and had for as long as he'd known her, and would as long as they knew each other. But would never actively put him on the spot and make him pay up. Would never demand or guilt him. He pushed away any sort of situation without strings.

Strings like these ones, wrapping tighter than snake around his wind pipe and jerking into a hard knot so far back he can't reach.

When the only thing in his mind, his hand, his chest is to step forward, hands finding Danny's shoulder, brows furrowing in an anger, only narrowly overriding his desperation, and only then by a beat or two, jerk him close, demand his attention, that Danny look at him, and forget to even control his face or his voice, how rough it comes out, with the hiss of oil on a burning pan, "I'm serious."

[haole_cop]

That's almost funny, too. Lining up neatly against his it's not a joke from last week. A week ago. Christ, a lot has happened this week, they should all get some kind of overtime or a month off, or something.

But Steve's hands are hard enough to hurt on his shoulders, which at least manages to choke any beginnings that might be the kind of laugh that would make him want to slap himself in the face, just to snap out of it. But he can't. What's the point? Should he be getting angry? He will later, he knows. He did before. Or will this just devolve into begging Steve to give him another chance, like he begged Rachel?

He hopes not. That really would put a crimp in their working days.

Steve tugs at him, makes him take an abrupt half step forward, closer, eyes forced to his face, and he looks pissed off. Frown digging deep, eyes wide and desperate, but it's like he's speaking Latin and it's just not translating, no matter how hard he's trying to communicate, and something tiny and frustrated and stinging pain blinks awake in Danny's chest. How is he supposed to believe it, okay? Already he wants to, and he knows he can't, is trying to pull back on himself, to keep from clambering back onto the cracking ice that just dumped him into this bottomless nothingness, but he's stupid, has always been stupid, it's his own damn fault if he falls off the cliff this time.

But because he's stupid, and because Steve is dragging him in close and his voice is so ragged and because some idiotic, treacherous part of himself wants, wants to believe it, he can feel the scattered pieces trying to press back into some kind of fractured whole. Fingertips clinging to the cliffside. Edging. Carefully. Like a trapdoor might spring any second and drop him again.

"What are you talking about?"

[thebesteverseen]

"What am I talking about?" It's a snap, worse than repeated accusation.

When his jaw wants to snap and the muscles through it, his chin, down his throat, into his shoulder nearly seize and Danny is jerked forward another inch. Because of that terrible emptiness and vast distance and easy, so easy it looks like it's relieving, agony in Danny's eyes, his face. With how it's wanting to look anywhere else but up at him, even when he is.

Because it is the only thing stopping him from shaking him for a moment. Because his hands are on Danny's shoulders, and Danny is only inches away -- and he's not there. He's somewhere far deeper, far further removed. Somewhere Steve's hands can't get. Somewhere his voice is barely reaching. Like he waited two days to realize Danny was already somewhere much further away than half the city and forty-eight to six hours away.

"I'm talking about you, barging into my house," He can't help the way the words fracture. Hard and harsh, like ice or glass shattering on the ground, even when they are getting tight and concise. "--without knocking, again--" Which is not the point, but he needs more words. More seconds. Not to feel like all of them aren't stopping Danny pulling away, more each each. "--and right back out the next second, like it was on fire."

When trying to maintain any decorum is beating on one side of his head. Especially because of Cath's voice still repeating that shocked question. Making him aware of the world outside, and the flood light, and neighbors, and cars, and everything. While the rest of him is fighting violently not to care. About his job, about propriety, about anything that is not Danny staring at him like touching him is even more painful.

"Whatever is going on inside that head of yours, it didn't happen." It didn't. Not last night. Not on the beach. Not at the top of either summit. Not on the couch. Not anywhere. Not anywhen. Not during anytime when they were renegotiating how to even be in the same space together. "Nothing happening." He's reaching, he knows he is when it's the same words. Choking his throat. The ones that didn't matter two seconds ago. and he needs better.

Same too little to cover too much. When it's anything. He needs to shove anything else out, anything else that might even get Danny's attention, make him believe it, that isn't marching in and dragging Cath out, and having her say it. And how much he couldn't do that. To her. "I told her it couldn't. I told her --"

Except so much is coming up blank. Because he hasn't told her much of anything at all.

And Cath, the great intelligence officer she is, she'd tried. Hard. In every situation. Oblique questions. Delicate prying fingers.

[haole_cop]

There's a decently large chunk of him that wishes Steve would just leave it alone. That he would stop trying, and just let it all fall.

It's a part even Danny hates, but he has to admit that it's been more reliable than any other facet of himself, and it wants to pull away as Steve tugs him forward, closer, like proximity is going to make these words make any more sense. They aren't supposed to. They aren't supposed to be happening at all. The most he might expect right now would be an apology, an explanation. Rachel so self-consciously holding herself back from twisting her wedding ring, her elaborate engagement ring, the one that wasn't from him, the single diamond that was all he could afford on his salary.

Nowhere does this scenario play out with Steve's fingers digging into his shoulders and Steve's voice digging into his brain, herding the broken pieces back together despite the way they turn and fight, struggling against the inexorable force trying to get them to believe those words. The ones that mean he's wrong, and everything's fine. As fine as it can be, this week, as fine as it can be with having no idea where they stand with each other, with no definitions and no boundaries. As fine as it can be when he's realizing that there's really nothing to say Steve can't be doing things with Cath, too, because they never actually set any ground rules. Have said nothing other than it's a not-casual thing, which means precisely jack squat.

No matter what words Steve is pushing into the air. And how they drop off, cut like a cord, after I told her it couldn't, that drops like a bomb in Danny's head and explodes in a silent, vicious expansion.

He told her. He told her. Steve did. Drew that line. Nothing happened. Not Steve's fingers in her silky dark hair. Not her mouth on his skin. Not her hands everywhere. Not the low groan deep in his throat, not unlike the sounds Danny feels like his brain is making, confused and almost painful.

It would be so much easier to not believe him, and just let it hurt. To give in to expectation. But he's blinking, and feeling like he's seeing Steve's face for the first time tonight, seeing the furrow in his forehead and the way that anger is masking something so like fear Danny almost gives up on himself again, because Steve is not scared of anything.

Except he's seen that expression before. Last week, right before Steve tattooed angry marks across his body, because Danny had been stupid and almost gotten himself killed, which Danny would like to remind Steve he does on a practically daily basis.

Glass cracking, letting in the howling of the wind, air, motion. "You actually are serious."

Edging towards something that looks terrifyingly like relief, and belief, like he's edging along the outside of a building towards a fire escape that looks rickety and rusted out, but still, maybe, maybe, usable.

[thebesteverseen]

Danny goes rigid, just a little more, Steve can feel it under the fingertips blunting themselves into Danny's shoulders and the back of his biceps, tops of the backs of shoulders. Before he's distracted. With the way Danny swallows, and suddenly he's looking at him. Danny is. Blinking a little and focusing, like maybe somehow he hasn't even been real the last minute.

When things are moving faster than Steve can label them in that blue. A weary desperation that he can't even pinpoint whether is a struggling birth of belief or need for that all, every one of his words, to have been a lie. When he seems to be regaining breathing and maybe seeing any part of the world. And Steve can't even listen to the part of his brain telling telling him they've already stepped off that cliff they're avoiding, and are hurtling in free-fall.

He can't hear anything except the slow, rusty words that leave Danny's throat. Real, but so small it's like he should be able to pick them up off the ground and hold all four, with a massive expanse of room still left, in the palm of his hand. When Danny's voice is in the wind, but it sounds real. The disbelief. The shaky want for belief.

When Steve lessens his grip on Danny's shoulders, but can't seem to make himself let go yet.

Even if Cath might be watching them through the blinds in the living room. Along with the rest of the world.

He just can't let go. Especially if he can't step in. Can't move his hands and capture the sides of his face, fingers in his hair, and just kiss all of this away, like it could. Like it could be. If he wasn't so aware of everything. Everyone. The bright lights. That don't matter. He's not looking away, mouth pursing a moment. Tongue at his bottom lip, trying to find words. Still stinging on several others said, and so not.

"Because right now this seems like such a great reason not to be?" Because there isn't. He couldn't. He'd never. He didn't. Because even at this second. When he really doesn't even stop the slightly sharper edge to his words. Meaning it, and filling a swoop as gravity sets in, without one drop, only one, of painful relief, while the rest is not yet. "Of course, I am."

He hasn't treated this anything but seriously, even if Danny's been gone and busy the whole weekend with other priorities.

It's the first time he's had. With another person in the room he couldn't detail to a job in another room or give half a day off to.

[haole_cop]

"Of course?"

It's not fair if it's not true. He just can't fight with Rachel and watch Chin through Malia's convalescence and lose Steve, too. Not when Steve was already so distant on Friday, when leaving him alone still hits as the worst possible choice to make. "Not that I want to think you're exaggerating, you know, but traditionally there has not really been any 'of course' about it, in my experience."

Because there's no of course about it. There is nothing about any of this that means Steve should choose him, and not Cath. That says Steve is willing to change everything Danny knows about him and his relationships, or lack thereof. And there is nothing in Danny's own past that even whispers that might be a possibility. Rachel left. Twice. And she'd promised a lot more than Steve's even gotten near. When he's made no promises at all, only looked helplessly, achingly happy when Danny told him it's definite possible that first night, all tangled up and naked on the couch. Only told him it's not a joke, but made stupid jokes about wedding bands when Danny told him to take a minute and consider. Re-consider.

But here he is saying it's true, with the sort of tight frustration that makes Danny think he's only barely reining himself in. Saying of course like there shouldn't be any question, like Danny's crazy for even thinking it.

He's not expecting the way something hangs, heavy and sharp, in his chest. Like it got caught on a parachute, and jerked violently back upright, sending the world into a dizzy, imperfect spin that pushes him back to earth with a sudden thudding stop.

He's serious. Steve is. He's wrong. Danny is. Wrong. The way his heart splattered all over the floor, like it slipped on a freshly mopped surface and slid into a wall, is wrong. Steve isn't lost. He's not gone. Whatever this is, that's already so deeply rooted in every inch of skin, slung to desperately by every cell of him, hasn't been taken away. He's not left alone with a voicemail and Steve not picking up at the other end, no matter how long he pleads or how frantically he begs.

The breath that rushes out feels like it deflates him entirely, like a balloon, flat and useless on Steve's lawn. Shaky and cautious. A hand lifting from where it had been hanging by his hip to scrub over his face as it tips down, away from Steve staring at him and about two seconds from carving the words into skin so Danny will believe them.

Fingers rubbing over mouth, eyes, forehead, carding back helplessly through hair, because maybe he's been an asshole and maybe he was wrong, but this catch is so unexpected that it feels like it still managed to break a few bones, even after saving him from splatting on the pavement. Relief so expansive it feels like he's drowning in it.

"Okay." Again. But different. Not like an easy agreement, like he'll pretend to believe Steve. And he's still not totally sure he does believe Steve, but he sure as hell wants to. Thinks even most of him does. "Jesus." He feels like he's been punched all over. "Okay, I believe you."

Because it's as much him being willing as it is Steve being convincing, right?

[thebesteverseen]

The air might be making it back into Danny's body, because color seems to be embarrassingly slinking its way back into Danny's face. When he's batting back more words. Important words, but the racket of noise that is Danny, Danny saying more than four words, more than nothing at all, more than excuses that are just letters given sound, thrown at his head, while running away. It's more important.

Along with the color, and the way he's finally taking breaths in. When the words, okay, they have some merit. It's not like Steve or Danny have an of course to throw at anything. Four days ago, he was leaving. For parts unknown and to take god knows however much time it might take. Had to choose it. Over Five-0. Over Danny. His family legacy. This thing that keeps tearing every shred of him further apart.

It's so bitterly, painfully, ironic. Because it's still an of course.

He had to choose Asia, and the end of this mystery that's been choking him forever. That's just found a new way of decking him with a boulder every time he so much as glances in the direction of that never forgotten face, that didn't need to be forgotten, because it never died. But he wasn't going to just stumble out of bed, with Danny, send him off to his daughter, and fall right into bed with Cath. He wasn't that kind of person.

There wasn't even a world where the concept Danny was certain he was wasn't going to stay, lodged there -- the face he'd made steps into the room, and the one when he got out here, and the sight of him right now, rubbing his hand over his face not even looking up -- here in the flood lights, after even Cath's disbelief that he'd even dare to consider this, no less had gone all in and stopped everything else for it.

When Danny's hands came up to wipe his face, looking down and away, but definitely breathing. His shoulders shifting like he's just figuring out he has bones at all, Steve let his hands fall away. Even if it just added another, different kind of, ache to the complicated tension running his body rigid.

Let them hang at his side only half a second before crossing them in front of him. For too many reasons.

"Good." Even if it was more a punctuation of a word. Of his voice sounding, than the word itself sound good at all. Before Steve was twisting to look back toward the door, irritable, and well aware the roller coaster might not be anywhere near done, with a short glance toward all the windows, too.

Following it up, irritably inviting, with, "Then, can we go back in the house, or are we staying out here for the rest of the night?"

[haole_cop]

"Oh, no, I definitely vote for out here." Hand lifting, to point at the ground, embarrassed color still fighting to flood into his face. Okay. So he's an asshole. But he's an asshole who would like to mitigate this damage, if at all possible.

Outside is nowhere near Catherine. Outside is far away from the vertigo-inducing door. Outside is fine. Outside is great. And it's not like he's scared of Catherine, but, really, he is a little scared of Catherine. "Or, better yet, how about I go home and let you finish your evening in peace, because I clearly do not have my head on straight."

Jumping to conclusions, no matter how justified they might be, isn't a good look. Bolting from Steve's living room in front of Catherine definitely isn't a good look, and the annoyance in Steve's tone isn't convincing him things will exactly be copacetic. What would that even be like? Are he and Catherine going to sit there and make small talk for an hour or so before someone leaves or they are all crushed under a flaming meteor of awkwardness? Or she might be actively angry at him. Them. The situation.

No. There is no good ending to this scenario, so it's better to cut his losses and drag his sorry ass back to the empty apartment, where he can sit down and have a long hard talk with himself about this reaction. That is so much more than a reaction. That still has him feeling flattened and aching. When just the thought that he'd lost Steve, and this, without being there, without being able to put up any kind of fight, was so breathtakingly painful it was like staying conscious through being hit by a car and falling off a roof.

He doesn't want to think about it, which is exactly why he needs to, because if he's going to fall apart over this, he needs to know what he's getting into. Too late to try and pull away, but this is insanity, this is crazy, that felt like dying, like being shot, and he doesn't think there's any coming back from breaking open a third time.