(no subject)

[gonna_owe_me]

Steve is really good at avoiding her.

Normally, she probably wouldn't even call it "avoiding."  Normally, she would call it his usual M.O. and chalk it up to being a side effect of being halfway around the world from each other.  There are times they've gone for months with no contact, and two weeks is barely the blink of an eye, particularly when she's busy and he keeps getting high-profile, high-priority cases.

At least, that's what she hears, when she hears anything at all.

But those weeks and months of zero contact, running silent, off the grid: those days aren't exactly applicable when there are extenuating circumstances such as A. they are living on the same island and B. she knows there's something he really doesn't want to talk to her about.

Ergo, avoidance.

She's not an impatient or nosy person, though, so she lets it slide, for a little while.  He clearly needs to get used to the idea himself, and, frankly, so does she.  It's not that they haven't stumbled across a situation where one or the other of them was out of commission for their normal arrangement, but in general, those interrupting factors were not potentially career-threatening.  Not to the extent of sleeping with a subordinate.  Not to the extent of sleeping with a partner.  Not seriously.

And it is serious, whether Steve is admitting to it, or not.  It's splashed across him like someone doused him in paint and sticky sunlight, in the way he'd magnetized towards the door, the way he'd run out after Danny.  Maybe even more because he didn't bring it up until he absolutely had to.

So Steve is avoiding her, and she can sympathize, because this is not a conversation she particularly wants to sit through, either, but it still needs to happen, because, knowing Steve, he hasn't told anyone else and is shutting it back into compartments poorly designed for a situation of this magnitude and complexity.  

Which is why, when she called him on the next weekend inferred to be Danny's weekend with Grace, she's given him the benefit of both giving her the slip for two weeks and the peace offering of meeting at a place with really excellent drinks, one of which she has in hand as she sits at a table by an open window, chin in her hand, looking out at the quietly rolling ocean.  It's early evening, and she's come off a twelve hour shift, so it's nice to sit, let her thoughts unhinge, ebb and flow with the waves and mild breeze.  Wrangling an affirmative had proved to be difficult, but she'd managed it, pointing out that they might as well meet out, seeing as they're definitely going to make it to the restaurant this time.

It strips him of the home field advantage, too, but he's not the only one who knows how to keep a wall at his back and a few tricks up his sleeve.

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[thebesteverseen]

He waits long enough it's pushing it. Not quite to the point where he'd stared at his phone wondering if it might ring, and something might come up. From her, or from anyone on the team. But enough that he found himself prowling back and forth in the house, getting more and more picky about what he was working on, at pictures that hadn't moved since before he was born.

Enough that there is good reason for why he's sliding the truck through traffic on the way to meet her.

It had to happen at some point, but some point kept not being any of the times a message would roll across during a case. Or when they were heavy on a case, blotting out the world. Or he'd find a short voicemail while headed home, driving or picking up yet another case of beer, already expecting company. Or in the morning, when he was headed in to work.

And he hadn't missed all of them. There were the few times he'd been able to pick up. Usually in the office, when the only reason for the odd hour had to be some kind of shift differential on her end, which just pricked the edge of the growing cloud over the entire thing, the longer it drug out, making him answer. Even if his mouth was suddenly full of reasons he was, they were, justifiably, busy.

More than justifiably. But, also, suddenly like it needed to be there, so he couldn't be anywhere else. With anyone else.

Except now it was the weekend. Now he was out of his truck and looking at a place he hasn't seen in a good handful of months, maybe verging on half a year almost, on a weekend when Danny's got Grace and the Five-0's not needed. He'd called to check in with Chin and Malia, but opted out from Kono's invitation. It had somehow turned to evening. In one of those days where every moment drug through each second like a knife on skin.

Yet somehow the whole day was a strict sort of blur, like none of it had stood still, all of it tilting until just now and just here.

Steve doesn't give the parking lot any room or time, though. He's walked head on into worse. Right? If usually loaded full bear and with the kind of mood that didn't care what else was lost in the crossfire. Which this isn't. It's Cath. Which means all that's left is really to face it. To walk in, and slide past the hostess with a comment about meeting someone, after catching sight of Cath watching the ocean.