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[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.

Comments

[thebesteverseen]

That is nearly insulting. Of course, he's thought about it. Like any eventuality. Like it doesn't scream in his head all time. Especially after what happened the night he sent Kono and Danny undercover for the K&R case. Of course, he thinks about. Of course, he's aware, he almost blew everything, broke everything open. Right on Danny's head and didn't give a fucking damn.

When the rest of the time he can't stop himself from giving a damn about every single possible fall apart.

"Of course, I have." Comes out sharper and faster this time. More angry that she could think there was a way he wasn't. And, god, it shoots out brutal and a little fuck it all, if they're going to to play this game. The rest of it. Words he has never said to Danny. Barely lets himself think to himself.

"If it happened-" And he hopes it won't, but he won't even let himself cling to the idea it won't. He shook his head, teeth clenching. "I'd do anything to make sure it falls on them as little as possible. I'd offer to stand down, and all that comes with it." Even though the entire idea of show throat to Dennings is like swallowing acid.

The idea of walking away from Danny, even for Danny, is unbearable.
But he'd do it. He'd get down on the ground to protect them, to protect Danny.

"It's not like the have other options." Which is thick, and maybe even sadistic-touched.
He could still go back. Yeah. It might actually end up on his record there, if someone found out.

But they were unrelated. Mostly. In how they weren't. It would stick to his character. But he wasn't working full time for the Navy now. And he could still go back. None of the them had a back to go to. That they wanted or could love doing given enough force of will.Danny definitely didn't. He needed this job a little under how much he couldn't live without Grace.

[gonna_owe_me]

"Don't you snap at me," she says, unfazed by his sudden flare of temper, the sharpness of his tone, cutting words like it should be obvious. She fixes him with a flat, unimpressed look, eyebrows arching skeptically. "If it were of course, it shouldn't have happened at all. I'm just trying to figure out how many feet of shit you've dug yourself into, here, so as much as you hate these questions, you're just going to have to suck it up and swallow them."

Flying blind is her least favorite thing. This is like firebombing a hundred square miles just to hit one hut, when the target might actually be another thousand away. She's got no idea when it started, how serious it is, or how Steve feels about it. Aside from the it's really good he'd admitted right before everything went to hell two weeks ago, he's barely said anything at all.

For now, she shakes her head after watching him for another few seconds, and draws her drink back towards herself. "Then I hope it's up to you, if that happens."

She could tell him not to be stupid, not to be reckless, not to throw himself in the fire to try and save Danny in what would probably be a pointless waste of both their careers, but he's got that iron set to his jaw and the steady glint in his eye that means he's not going to be argued out of this, which leaves her with that, and a faint sigh that's more just like a soft exhale and her eyes dropping to the tabletop and the ahi she hasn't had the desire to eat yet.

Before looking up.

"Is it worth it?"

Another sounding questions, but an important one. She's still got the riot act, rolled up and ready to unfurl across the table, but depending on this answer, it might at least be edited.

[thebesteverseen]

"Why?" It's not even a question. Not the way it comes out his mouth, solid and flat against her sense. Hands settled in a circle around the sweating beer he hasn't even thought about aside from ordering. "So, you can point out it can't be? Or shouldn't be? I've already been there, Cath. I don't need someone else to point that out."

He didn't need anyone for that. He got it in the mirror. He'd said it over and over and over again for a year.

He got it in these sudden moments that came out of nowhere, when he was walking along and suddenly stepped off the fucking cliff. Because he knows he's shitting on nearly everything that mattered. Has gotten fucked, literally and figuratively, so far over the line he's going to need far more than a flash light to get back. That nothing may be enough to do it.

Because at the end of the day, and in the morning when he wakes up, it's wrong, but it doesn't feel wrong.
God. It doesn't. Whether Danny is there, or just the faintest smell of him on a pillow. It's everything he wants.

Everything. Even when it's in conflict with every single bit of who he is, and who he swore to be, and what he should do.

[gonna_owe_me]

"Well, that, and because if you two are willing to possibly ruin your careers, I would hope it's for something better than a fling."

Her shoulders, tense as they are, lift impatiently. "You don't need to defend it to me. My opinion on this whole snafu really comes down to meaning absolutely nothing. But yeah, I want to know, because you might not need someone to point it out, but you're still doing it, and I admit I'm curious as to why. I don't want to see you lose everything you've worked for, Steve. And I still care."

Which is what it boils down to. She cares. If she didn't, she wouldn't have brought him out here, wouldn't have brought it up, wouldn't be trying to make sense of the whole mess, to figure out where she is or might be needed.

She sides with Steve. That part isn't debatable. But it's harder to know where to stand, when Steve is doing something potentially damaging to himself and there's no one else to blame.

As much as she might want to, she's not sure she can blame Danny. Falling for Steve is like walking into a sudden sinkhole: impossible to avoid and possibly life-threatening. She's not sure it'd be possible not to.

But she's not talking to Danny; she's talking to Steve. "What does he think about it all?"

[thebesteverseen]

What's worse? That he can't say it's not going to be a fling. Even when he argued Cath against the first word she used. And he hasn't brooked Danny against his panicked rant, more than once, about how he can't do casual. And how Danny might, honestly, vanish entirely from Hawaii in a few months.

Meaning just as much as their jobs, that it can't be casual, but it's nowhere near being able to be serious.

"Nothing helpfully smart?" That's a dig, but he doesn't even mean it. Even when he does.
Even when he can't force his voice to sound nearly as mad or derisive as it should.

It creases up the space between his eyebrows, when he's finally lifting his drink.
Because he keeps expecting Danny to wise up sometime soon, and he's not.
He can't rely on Danny to drag, shove, push him out of this one.

When he knows he can't shove that responsibility on to him. Doesn't want him to, either.

Because they avoided talking about this, and then they did. Because every time they hit anything like light, like they should stop, they don't. They plow straight through it like a wrecking ball with the gears jammed, fritzing, the whole thing on fire, rolling down hill, picking up speed.

The whole CIA involvement. Cath. The case. Every time something said they should step back, they just held on even tighter. They just couldn't walk that tiny bit more. The way he knows in his skin if Danny wasn't with Grace he'd probably be somewhere nearby. In Steve's space, under his skin. Or when, or how soon until. How predictable it's getting towards being.

That even when that seems claustrophobic. It's something he needs to breathe just as much.

[gonna_owe_me]

She frowns at the dig, pushing ice further into her glass with the straw. "Really? Danny had nothing to say?"

She hardly knows the guy, but she's been around him often enough now to have felt the full force of his complete inability to keep his mouth shut. It's sort of charming, in a mind-boggling sort of way, and something she would have expected Steve to hate.

Except Steve just stands there with this strangely smug, affection smile on his face half the time, and just as Danny slows down, there's Steve to roll a pebble and start another avalanche. She'd chalked it up to his desire to tease winning out over his desire for some peace and quiet, but now?

She's not so sure.

What she is sure of is that Steve's deflection is starting to get on her nerves. This may be his private business, but she's the only one outside the two of them who knows, and whether he likes it or not, it's important to get these things out of his head and into the real world, where he can't box them away and pretend they aren't there.

"So let me recap, just to be sure I've got this clear." She pauses, thinks back, finger tapping on the tabletop. "You know you shouldn't be sleeping with your partner, you have a contingency plan in place in case things go south, and you two haven't stopped yet, which at least answers one question that you didn't. Does that about sum things up? Or am I missing anything else obvious?"

The last a little slice back, because it's not like she thinks he hasn't considered any of this before. But 'considered' and 'acknowledged' can be too very different things.

[thebesteverseen]

There's an annoyed shift of his head, and narrow of his eyes, at her first set of words. He didn't say Danny said nothing. Danny saying nothing, would be like a day in Hawaii without the ocean on all sides. He said the man hadn't said anything helpful or smart toward her whole point. Toward the point of getting Steve to about face and get the hell out of dodge.

With all his still possible's and good, because I only want you's striking matches in Steve's head.

He's actually taking a drink of the beer as she starts sounding off the list, each one landing something like a dart. The thing creepy along his spine, digging those razor sharp claws in against his skin, with each set of words, another push in. Pressing into his skin, threatening to break it the more stiff his muscles go.

"Yeah. Sure." Too rough, too sharp, too still. An answer almost like for an order, even with a beer in his hands, even when he's looking down at her. When this is more than half the reason he didn't want it out, either. Because it isn't defensible. It's just desperate and necessary, and in deeper than any half heart addiction or interest already.

"I never said it was smart. I know that." It's, no, not even that simple. "We both know that."

They had to. Especially after last week. Danny might be throwing it at him like he was just more crazy. But they knew.

[gonna_owe_me]

"Even smart people do stupid things."

They see it all the time. Both of them. They see it in people who make stupid decisions because they can't see the whole picture, they see it in people who don't want to, who are so focused on what's in front of them that they refuse to look around.

She prefers to be the eye in the sky, the one with all the intel.

And Steve -- well, maybe there's a third type of stupid. The kind that has all the information, and bulls right ahead, anyway.

Tap, tap. Ice being pushed down, floating back up, an electric blue drink that seemed like a good idea at the time, that tastes like Blue Raspberry Icee and isn't nearly strong enough for this conversation. "We've established that it's not smart. But is it still good?"

And maybe she shouldn't, because it can only end in a way that's going to be terrible for both of them, even without emotions involved, but, hell. Like she said. She still cares, and she wants him to be happy. Happy like he was when Danny walked through the door, before everything fell apart. Happy like she's not sure she's ever seen him before.

[thebesteverseen]

Isn't that question even more pointless than the last pointed one.

Is it worth it. Is it still good.

When he's not certain what tactic she's trying to take her, and it leaves him staring across the table at her, trying to figure out which way it goes and how that will help her. What next part of it could be turn on it's head and pointed at with a laser to for sensible tearing apart then.

He should say something, but he's already done all of this. Changing the words, won't change the the point. He knows. What it is. How it feels. Where he should be. Where he isn't. What he shouldn't wake up, thinking about first thing. Before Wo Fat and Doris break in, and he can't think straight anymore at all, until he's exhausted his head and his skin and his lungs all to the point they feel like they are going to burst blood cells.

And then half the time, Danny is still waiting with coffee, watching him with that wary, unpleased sympathy that he hides away under bluster and pulling Steve in close. Trying to wipe off whatever is left of the morning, and all his sudden rock sharp edges showing in his face and the way he holds himself. That Danny doesn't run, that he's still there, then. Even then.

When everything is so bare, angry, edged. Still wants him. Still works him over until Steve finds himself laughing and shoving Danny against things, burying himself in something completely other than the people who are alive and shouldn't be, for vastly different reasons.

[gonna_owe_me]

He just stares at her, the muscles of his jaw bunching, eyes flat and hard in a way she hasn't seen aimed at her in...

Ever. Maybe. They never fight, because there's never enough time, and the times they've argued have been few and far between. What's the point of arguing something when it's only going to be gone in a few days, anyway?

So she rolls her eyes at his reticence, adds in a slight tip of her chin upwards, like this should be a barked order instead of a soft question.

"It's not actually a trick question, Steve. Despite what you might think..."

Her eyes go to the hands he's got wrapped around his beer bottle, and on impulse, she reaches out to touch one, curving her fingers over the back of it, protectively. Hers, slim, small, fair; his hand half again as large, if not bigger, and dark from sun, but still familiar under her fingers. "I want to see you happy. I'm worried about you."

[thebesteverseen]

His lips end up pressed looking down at her fingers resting against his. Pale peach-pink, and nowhere near the soft, vague tan Danny has. It's the color of so much time spent in door, surrounded by computers. That color that stretches cool and smooth, solidly, all across her. Not Hawaiian, of Hawaii, in the slightest. So very much, just her, just Cath.

There's a rough breath that presses out of his lips, as he shook his head, shoulders loosening the way boulders break.

"Cath." Is heavy, if straight through a winded sound, too. "It's just --" He doesn't even have words. It's everything. Everything is. Everything it shouldn't be. Tripping up his face, and even more his chest, anytime he tries to pull it apart. To get anywhere past acknowledgement it's fleeting, and it will flee. Because everything does, and the deck is stacked entirely against it.

"It is what it is." He can't change it. He can't make it go away. He tried. He tried every conceivable thing for a year.
And now, now, Danny. Wasn't just this figment. Just this awkward, slapped, cement wall feeling of reading too much.

Danny just looked at him, brushed by his shoulder in the middle of a case, or bumped into him trying to get things in the office kitchen, and anything, everything, that happened once they weren't at work. Danny, with the taste of his lips and his skin. With the way his hair felt through Steve's fingers. The way his hands got everywhere even as he slept, and he sounded like an angry bear every time Steve wasn't quite enough leaving to swim.

The things he kept saying. The way it made Steve want to, willingly, walk off the damn cliff. Even if it killed him.

[gonna_owe_me]

"It doesn't seem like that's all it is."

Gentle, ducking her head slightly to look up at him, frustration bleeding away into sympathy. He looks weary, disheartened, the anger and stubbornness wearing away to reveal this...what is it? Uncertainty? Steve McGarrett, uncertain.

It sends a little thrill of dread down her spine, tightens it like she's on inspection.

So this, the heaviness, the way he sounds like he's been punched, is that because of her, or because of Danny? Because if he's not happy, then why would he risk so much?

Her hand tightens, slightly. "I want to back you up on this. You know that, right? Whatever ends up happening. You looked..." She pauses, eyes drifting towards the window, a faint little smile pulling nostalgic at her mouth before she turns her attention back to him. "Pretty glad to see him, when he showed up. For a few seconds, I mean."

Glad. Like that was a word that could cover the way Steve turned on, like someone hit a switch.

[thebesteverseen]

It's hard not to see it. That weekend, that feels ages more than half a month away, because the week before it was so jammed. Because of everything. Doris. Wo Fat. Danny. Malia. Kono. Delano. Fryer. Joe. Everything all at once. But it doesn't make her wrong either. It's just. He knows he wasn't easy that weekend, but he can remember that moment so clearly, too.

How everything in the world focused a little sharper, a little clearer. Unprepared, but wholly at attention suddenly. Making it impossible that his mouth doesn't shift in smit of him. Tucking, awkwardly toward a corner. Like he can't disagree. Like his body won't let him.

"I-" Steve wanted to push the word was, but it wasn't going, wasn't coming out admitted, wasn't tearing free like a sheet of paper from somewhere. Words he doesn't say, to anyone but Danny, and not even that clearly to Danny. "I hadn't, actually, expected to see him, again, until the next day, at work."

Danny appearing half a day earlier than expected. In those jeans he hasn't seen since. Danny freaking out on the front yard, and then freaking out, again, once Cath was gone, and, again, when Steve said they should keep the jeans.

How when he tore it apart it looked like it should be problematic, but he knows it still ended with Danny in his arms, or him against Danny's shoulder. Both of them sleeping in his bed. When he hadn't been expecting any of that during the weekend, good or bad. Nothing except having to keep Cath from knowing until he actually knew what there was to say.

Not that he wasn't still sure any of his answers were right, or that there was anything else to say than them.

[gonna_owe_me]

"Yeah, I could see that."

That little tuck at the corner of his mouth tugs at her heart in a way that's probably going to be painful, for a little while, before it starts just being a partial ache. She might not be in love with him the way Doris assumed she was, but that doesn't mean she never was, or that she doesn't care, or won't miss waking up to his sleepy smile and warm arms.

But it's just a little pinprick, really, and nothing to the relief that allows her to lift her hand, a half-smile of her own pulling at her mouth, eyes warming. "I'm pretty sure he was surprised, too."

To see her, definitely. But he'd walked in without knocking, like he owned the place, like he was expected, and that same look had been mirrored on his face. The one with the switch. Eyes going directly to Steve. She, and the rest of the house, a complete afterthought.

A traumatic one, sure. But an afterthought none the less.

She wonders if she'd notice anything different in him, if she saw him and Steve together now. If it's written right across his face the way it's emblazoned now across Steve's, no matter how tense he might still be. It's there, softening his eyes, lending a more relaxed edge to his mouth, less steel in his shoulders.

It's a good look, and she finds herself wanting to see more of it.

[thebesteverseen]

"Yeah." Is easy. Maybe almost as easy the accompanying thought. That surprise was not nearly the strongest thing Danny was feeling.

Not in any of those faces, those desperate, terrified, semi-angry, semi-shattering, faces he was making on the lawn. With all those words, most of which blur further as time passes from that night. Only keeping him sure of the intent of them. The feeling behind them. The rutterlessness of Danny unable to leave, unable to come back, just wanting to have it broken on him fast and clean.

When Steve really only considers it a second, "More like sure it was the announcement that everything was over."

Cath sitting on the couch, spitting distance from him, laughing and talking, watching tv. Not close as could be, not as close as they might have been in other circumstances, but close enough to let the floor drop out from Danny's feet and all the color from his face. Close enough that, sure, Steve can admit he'd assume things of anyone else in that position, too.

But it was, you know, them. They had wobbly, grey lines and absolutely no claims on each other at the best of times, and the lines still blurred a bit round the edge of even sturdy high walls neither of them tried to breech once the other had put them up as solid barriers not to cross.

[gonna_owe_me]

"Really?"

Danny might not have just been surprised, but she is, briefly, minorly taken aback in a way that makes her straighten in her seat, coming to attention as she blinks. "Just because I was there?"

It's not like she and Steve had anything defined that should cause other people to worry. She knows that. He knows that. It's simple enough to understand.

And yet she's run into this wall of confusion before, when explaining what she has with Steve to people who want something else with, or from, her. That it's easy. That it's fun. That he's usually on the other side of the world, and they have to pick conversations up after months of radio silence, so half the time it's not really worth trying to figure out where they were and where they are and try to force it to make some kind of cohesion. Sex is recreational. It doesn't mean she doesn't care, it just means Steve isn't competition.

Neither is she, but Danny seems to have missed that memo.

Which leads her to shrugging admittance, because, okay. It probably looked bad, from a position outside the understanding the two of them have, that just because they're not sleeping together, it doesn't mean she's not going to claim half to two-thirds of his couch and possibly steal his clothes.

"I hope you cleared that up for him."

[thebesteverseen]

Steve gave a partial shrug, more one shoulder than the rest while he was taking a pull off his beer, at the first question, which more along the lines of that's Danny. Things with them are only so clear at most given times, which this whole conversation made glaringly clear, again.

Without any option to address without debunking it from existing or throwing it at an exit door.

"At this point," there's a head tip. Sort of toward it being a given. Or toward it not being a subject anymore. Because it's been two weeks. It wasn't something that came up, in among kissing Danny into a wall and him slowly getting back to his feet, then back to work, then back to everything else.

"Though he was pretty adamant about my needing to call you up and inform you something about it all at the beginning," which is given an interesting expression. Something amusing, if half stuck in his thoughts, absent amusement. Toward that whole thing of having to report in to her. About anything, but especially about other people.

Something about being the vague Steve is not going to really look at the fact he actually got tensely insulted about the insinuation. Not the one that he was with Cath, but that he'd cheat on her, or anyone, without caring. Even if he hadn't actually given Danny the chance, with Gabby, for any other option or eventuality or pause, after those words were said in his living room.

[gonna_owe_me]

"Huh."

Her hands come up, fingers lacing slightly together, and she leans her cheek against the back of one, considering that. "I mean, it might have been nice to not wait until the last possible second to tell me, but yeah, no."

Which just confirms for her the suspicion that Danny thought the two of them were together, together. Which sort of explains why he'd turned white as a sheet and bolted from the house. Which wasn't actually accurate, but Danny seems like the kind of guy who's so used to putting pieces of evidence together on the job that he does it continually off the clock, too.

Still. Steve, calling to let her know ahead of time? Steve, considering...this to be more than a casual tussle when it's available?

The whole thought is bizarre in the extreme. She guesses it's possible, but it's been so long since she'd come to accept that what they have can't be defined by the standards of a normal, even purely physical, relationship that the whole idea feels as strange as trying to write with the wrong hand.

[thebesteverseen]

At least her reaction makes sense. A kind of surprised that is so low key it isn't surprise, like sympathy without cloying, closed in edges. Nothing like Danny's. Nothing like the sudden quiet and almost cold that made Steve sure he'd done something else wrong. Something he still wasn't sure wasn't a fault line waiting trap his heel whenever he wasn't expecting it.

Or that maybe Danny was storing each of those moments in a file somewhere until there were too many of them.

"I hadn't really planned on company." Danny had only left a handful of hours earlier. He was still catching up on his team. He was still playing punching bag to the rapid appearance and then disappearance of the mother who died in teens, and set off the whole chain reaction of his life.

All of which was easier than trying to even think of the words he said to Danny, or the fact Danny had stayed.

"Or having to tell anyone that soon." Or ever, is somewhere in his tone. But it's lighter, a tense kind of acceptance.

Like staring down the barrel of another gun pointed right at you. Right along with, "Or there being anything to tell," since the moment he broke it, they broke it down together, even he and Cath, there wasn't and there shouldn't have been.

But he couldn't pull up Danny's face -- Danny's face that was nothing like a gun, but maybe everything better and worse than it at the very same second -- and not feel that insane rush that clenched every muscle deep in his stomach, like he was digging in his heels.

Like he was going press the barrel, blue eyes and pink lips and five million words and sounds, with that crazy endless loyalty and goodness and always moving hands, like a dye splashed around for good measure, burning through his skin, his life, his world, worse than acid or cattle prods or heated knives or volts of electricity, right up against his forehead, right up against his heart, with no single hope the release wouldn't take everything he had left now.

[gonna_owe_me]

His last line gets a slight huff of laughter, as she straightens back up in her seat, and finally reaches for her ahi, eyebrows arching like the sashimi has something to do with this whole situation. "Yeah, I remember you saying. But it looks like it's survived at least a couple more weeks."

Unsaid is what's already known, underlined against the words: that it's survived a few more weeks without anyone else finding out, and without blowing up in their faces.

She's starting to try and wrap her head around it, starting to try and picture it. Steve, tall and debonair; Danny, jaunty and gruff at the best of times. Her mental picture of Danny is probably less than accurate: the most time she's ever spent with him was at that fundraiser, and she doesn't think he normally dresses either in a suit like that one or in the t-shirt and jeans he'd shown up at Steve's door in.

The whole thing is difficult to imagine, to say the least.

She should probably make an effort to get to know him, honestly, especially since Steve is...

Well, looking like that. Relaxing a little, just thinking about him. Mouth quirking into a smile despite himself. Making Cath study him under the guise of a glance towards his face, while her heart twists in confusion between what she's seeing now and what she's never seen, before.

[thebesteverseen]

That's not entirely untrue, and just the thought of that. It not being untrue, even when he knows it doesn't exactly mean much either, still feels like it's this unexplainable force pushing space into his chest. Between his ribs, betwen his lungs and muscles, between the successive breaths of air and beats of his heart.

Something more suspiciously confusing than comforting, but fragile and present. Even when his words are economic and even, maybe even undermining of the significance of her statement. "It's been a crazy few weeks. He's just now coming off a pretty good rough up from an undercover case."

Because forty to sixty hours a week he's still a detective, and Steve's partner. Not the person in his bed.

Except. Somehow he is, also. Was. That person physically present in his bed still, recently, because he made some promise in the dead of the night about just being there if Danny needed him. For beer and to unwind. And. Just to sleep like shit, while Danny laid siege to his bed, hissing when he shifted wrong. Which was, actually, almost entirely gone now.

He grumbled about it all still -- he wouldn't be Danny is he wasn't -- but he was actually back to sleeping. And Steve was there. Waking up. Falling back asleep. As, at times, irritably, annoyed by the constant waking up on night two or three, as confused and at a loss for this first half minute when he was waking up to any sound the house made, to an empty bed, the first time Danny was gone, again.

Whatever that meant. Whatever that wasn't. Whatever that was.

[gonna_owe_me]

It's one thing to tease Steve, it's another to point out in frustration the cliff-edge he and Danny are hurtling toward; it's another entirely, a heartless matter, to do either when a member of his team isn't fighting fit, when they'd come off a rough job. She pulls a mental file card of Danny back to the forefront of her mind, studies it: he'd looked like a fairly capable sort of person. Short, but with blunt strength like a boxer's in his shoulders and back.

She doesn't like the thought of him getting roughed up enough for it to last a few weeks, or what that implies about the case itself. "Is he alright? Nothing that's going to hurt his weekend with his daughter, right?"

Presumably not, or Steve might have mentioned it: at the very least, he must be up and mobile, not still in the hospital. "Speaking of, how's Chin's wife? She must be getting stronger, now."

Possibly still in the hospital, definitely still on bedrest. Getting shot's no laughing matter, no matter where it hits, and Chin's wife -- Malia -- being hit right in the chest, that'll take some serious convalescing.

"It sounds like the team is back on it's feet, at least, if you're running cases that rough again."

[thebesteverseen]

"He's good. They all are." Steve shook his head, pushing away at her sudden wash of concern. The way it was all almost guilt tinged, like she'd walked all over someone hurt. Which was so Cath, and worth fixing fast, even as he sat back for the waitress who reappeared with the plate of his coconut shrimp. "Danny refused time off, but he was stuck in the office until earlier this week."

Something Steve was entirely ready to shove behind him. Stealing the camaro for a single day without him was too many.

"Grace probably won't even know the differences." Or at least Steve assumes Danny's hoping for that, and depending on what they get up to will really inform on whether Grace figures it out or not. She a pretty smart kid when it all comes down to it. But with the court case new, there was a touchiness toward anything effecting his time with Grace, especially now.

Steve picked up a flaking piece of shrimp, dragging it off a skewer. "And Malia's getting better. Chin's talking about moving her home soon, with the help of nurse who'd come by to check on her for the fist week or two, until they've got everything down themselves." Which does and does touch on that point where Chin is gone in the oddest hours, and without warning at times.

Who still both wants to do his job. Not let down the team. And wants to be there in any minute his wife might need him.

[gonna_owe_me]

She nods, toying with a piece of ahi before lifting it to eat. "Glad you're not too short-handed."

Or at all. Five-0 is mind-bogglingly small, the kind of elite task force she's watched and coached from a distance, but never been a part of. One man down on that team would be one man too many, and Steve's already lost too many people in Jenna Kaye and Lori Weston -- only one of whom she'd met, both she'd barely heard about, but it was enough.

They were part of Steve's team: that makes their loss too much of one.

The ahi is phenomenal, the kind of fresh that means it was probably swimming this morning or late last night, and she munches on it thoughtfully, considering Five-0, the way they'd limped to their feet, how badly the team would shatter if Steve and Danny were found out.

It's possible it wouldn't ruin everything. With the repeal of DADT, Steve wouldn't suffer for being with a man, but there's just so much more to it: their jobs and the people they work with, the Governor and HPD. And it's not like old habits don't die hard, if they kick the bucket at all.

But that's neither here nor there. Steve said he knew the risks, he's calculated the possible outcomes. Anything she has to say on the matter is beating a dead horse, which means her role has shifted back to that of support: whatever he needs, whenever he needs it, with the sure knowledge that if she ever turned the tables and called him for help, he'd be there before she put the phone down. "You've got a pretty resilient group."

[thebesteverseen]

"They're not willing to be anything less," Steve says, but there's earned pride, even if it comes out reckless fast. They've earned it. Every single one of them has earned it in the last three years. All the people there and not there. Every single member of Five-0 has pulled their weight, and mattered. Refusing as much as possible to slow down, keeping up to a pace that would unthinkable elsewhere.

When more than not he knows each of them has thrown into to trying to keep up with him.

The way only death, and Wo Fat could take Jenna. And the way Lori's loyalty was the last nail in her coffin.

The way he knows Kono isn't absolutely fine still, but she's keeping it to herself. Drowning isn't a thing that goes away. Neither is blacking out and knowing you were dying. He'd bet she still wakes up to it, even now, weeks later. But she doesn't let it slip. And she doesn't slow down. And she never lets it hold her back from getting right back out there in the waves every time she can. With the kind of fierceness he can read like a fist fight.

Refusing to let it take the ocean from her. The way only someone who's lost it before can.