(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.

Comments

[gonna_owe_me]

"Great."

She watches him casually over the mouth of her longneck, tips the bottle up for a sip. "Next week, sometime? I'll still be on days for a while, so just let me know some night you don't have a case."

It's not just a test, even. She's curious, now, and the best way to collect information is to have them both there at the same time, so she can see if she imagined the look on Steve's face when Danny opened that door, or if it's something that's going to be permanently parked there, as long as Danny doesn't follow it up with another attempt at rabbiting.

[thebesteverseen]

"Good." Is firm, unwavering. The whole thing so preposterous. "I will."

Danny was nutty and emotional as a wet dishrag in reactions at times, the entire world was aware just how loud and mouthy he could get, but he was capable of being an adult. Making a mistake, getting over it The imposition toward any other kind of insinuation needled at Steve's skin.

He might cut down the man for sport on a daily basis, but that was them.

They knew how much of it was hot air and what wasn't.

Steve let his challenged look turn toward a pointedly poking smirk. "I need to lock you two in a room and see who comes out least bloody? Or d' you mind if I invite the rest of Five-0? Malia could probably use the excuse to see friendly faces now that she's more mobile."

[gonna_owe_me]

"Good," she fires back, leaning away from the table as the server returns with their plates. She can smell the steak and the sweet-tangy citrus burst of the fruit salsa garnish; even after the ahi, it makes her stomach growl.

Napkin goes on her lap, knife and fork picked up and poised as she gives him an overly agreeable look.

Lord knows she's never been able to resist stepping up the plate, no matter what kind of curveballs are being thrown.

"Go ahead," she says, sweetly. "That way, when Danny cancels, there'll still be someone to talk to."

Besides, she likes the rest of the team, too. Kono, with her enthusiasm and dedication to the cause of justice; Chin with his deadpan humor, and Malia, who's turned out to be one tough fighter. She'd have to be, with her job and her home life, but that doesn't make Cath respect her any less.

[thebesteverseen]

Steve's laughing, even when he rolls his eyes, because he really doesn't get this anywhere else. Kono may for a second or two, until she think she might have stepped a toe too far over the line. Danny. Sometimes. But in a completely different way that is just him.

The way this is just Cath. Fresh and fearless, ready to go toe to toe for whatever she believes in. Not about to cower toward someone bigger, faster, stronger, potentially with more background when she's sure. The way it's razor sharp, but sassy and sweet all at once.

That's all her. All something he's really never found rolled up into another person the same way ever.
Even when he's sure she's going to go down and explode in a pile of flames, he misses the hell out of this.

"Yeah. You know what? Just for that you get to bring pineapple, too." Because that would serve her, too. He can just leave them, while Danny is busy giving his newest round about how it is the most godforsaken thing on the planet. Once their plates are both, which he leaned back for, he nodded, asking for another beer on their next pass back.

[gonna_owe_me]

That's better -- Steve laughing, meeting her blow for blow, prodding right back, and she's still pretty sure he's wrong about Danny being fine with her, but it doesn't really matter. Danny can be fine with her or not, she doesn't really care, it's his prerogative.

It's Steve being fine with her that she's worried about, and as long as that -- this -- is still good, then she's okay with whatever's happening, and whatever will happen next, because she doesn't mind Danny taking over and putting that look on Steve's face, but she'd sure mind a hell of a lot if he got taken away completely.

She's loved him and cared about him and had his back too long to let go now, and she's not going anywhere, so as long as everyone involved is cool with that, she's fine with not being the person in his bed anymore.

In some ways, it might actually be beneficial, because Steve knows this island like the back of his hand, and she might actually get a chance to see some more of it with him if they aren't continually trying to make up for lost time between sheets. "Are you kidding? I'm not bringing anything. If he wants pineapple, I'm sure he can get it someplace else."

Cutting into her steak and punctuating that with a bite, and another when that one's done, and, yeah, they do it pretty well here, but then, she's not someone to argue with red meat, pretty much ever.

[thebesteverseen]

It doesn't really feel like dinner. It just feels normal really. The way they're edging at each other, no more circling or not circling, than when they'd been running up the steps.

"You can't come, if you're not bringing anything-" And, yes, Steve really is gesturing with a piece of meat on the end of this fork. Looking all too pleased with himself, rather than at all like he's having a problem with how this is going. "-and then you lose by default."

He shrugged, still smiling, daring her to hit back, and knowing already that she'd find someway. That was Cath for you. Some people didn't like it, but he really couldn't get enough of it. "It's my house. I can totally dictate what people bring. I could even get the big man to guard the door until you people show up with the right things. On a list."

[gonna_owe_me]

"Who said anything about going to your house?"

She's challenging, waving a fork of her own, eyes sparkling and light, brows arching in coy amusement. "Are you kidding? You're such a cheapskate. I'm onto you, Steve. You and you're ' you have to bring something.' Are we in college? Did I miss BYOBs becoming a thing again?"

When the truth is, she's delighted to even be invited. It's like a tacit agreement that things are back to they way they should be, back to friendship and having each others' back, and that's a good thing. If it comes with some time spent with his team, all the better -- she could use a few friends who are used to a different kind of uniform.

"Besides, that would never work. Kamekona is putty in my hands. All I have to do is smile."

And try not to laugh too hard at the over-the-top flirting he lays on, thick as cement with a trowel, but she likes the big guy, and he never means any harm.

Neither does Steve, and it's nice to be sure of that, to feel the evening slipping away under a dusky sky, steaks and beers going down without a hitch, leaving her too full even for shave ice or coffee.

And it's good to walk back out with him, towards her little 'vette and his truck parked nearby; to wrap her arms around his neck and press into him, feel his warmth and solidity and it's good, yeah. Maybe not the flash and bang of before, but still something to treasure, the way she can kiss his cheek and eye him until he gets the picture and opens the car door for her.

Besides. Getting him more often is better than just getting him in bed, isn't it?

[thebesteverseen]

It's not a bad way to close out the evening, and if he dawdles a bit toward the end, stretching the last half hour to it's really about as simple as the facts. This dinner and Cath might be the last great parts of his night. When everything after this is about going back to that place that slides, oiled slick and sour, through his head and his stomach as those two words.

It is everything but home. And it's been there only a few years. Back on the island. In that place every day.
So no one would hold it against him if he held on an extra half hour to something that been with him much longer.

But the night still comes to end and he still follows her out. There's still a hug that reminds him that she light and whip-cord fit, soft and smells familiar. Safe and simple absolutely nothing has been since he got back to this island from across the world. For all the good and bad ways that thought can go.

Even while he's rolling his eyes and hamming it up, insinuating an insult about preferential treatment for the sexes and how it's supposed to be null and void. Where they work. Like they are, like everything in the world is. And maybe it always is in some part of his head. But he's saying it, and getting her to smile, even as he's getting the door and seeing her off.

Before there are all the last second words, about calling if he needs anything, and not to forget to send her the details for the dinner. Before's he's watching the blue car drive away with Cath leaving him standing in the parking lot, feeling his mood from dinner evaporate from him the way air conditioning is eradicated from the skin, both by pieces and all at once, when you step out into the sun.

Standing there only the half minute of watching her car vanish before heading for his truck.

[haole_cop]

It's been kind of a hellish couple of weeks.

Mostly due to the bruises that have only just in the last few days given over to his normal skin color, replacing sick green and purple like he'd tie-dyed himself with kelp, allowing muscles to bunch and relax without shocks of pain or wincing. Not enough to keep from coaxing Grace away from the beach so she wouldn't see what's left of the patchwork, but enough that it doesn't make an unconscious stretch of his back and sides into a sudden misery.

Mostly, it's the concussion that's been dragging him along, leaving him in a constant state of exhaustion for the first week and truncating his ability to focus for what has felt like years. Writing reports, checking emails, wrapping his head around a case: it's all felt like rolling a boulder uphill, and he doesn't like it, hates feeling like anything less than sharp and on top of his game. He's sick of walking into rooms and not remembering why he decided to go there, and the third time he came back from the store without milk, it was a real effort not to just dropkick his bowl of dry cereal through the window.

But it's fading, that confusion, the fuzziness and inability to remember, and he guesses he's pretty lucky -- with the amount of time he was out in the trunk, it could have been a lot worse. So he pops Advil when his prescription runs out, and grumbles through the headaches, and actually managed to put on a pretty good face for the whole time Grace was here.

She'd been delighted at the idea of house-hunting, and had spent hours searching through real estate ads, pointing out this house or that, carefully noting pros and cons like a little secretary, discussing them with Danny with the kind of precision and solemnity that makes him wonder if she's already aware that she's probably smarter than he is. Follow that up with a night of board games and a movie, and it made for a pretty good Saturday. Sunday, Grace wanted to go to the Arizona Memorial, pointing out they should call Steve so he can give them a real tour, but he'd gently side-stepped the issue, telling her Steve was busy.

He might be. You never know. They couldn't spend every weekend together, and though the invitation to bring Grace over to use the beach and house is still standing, silently, they hadn't talked about it and Danny had made the executive decision to let it sit for a little while longer.

At least, until they've had a chance to talk about it. This thing. The one that keeps happening.

So they end up with a picnic at a park instead, and before he knows it, it's dinner time and Grace has spent the afternoon doing homework, and he's dropping her off in front of that graceful mansion, with Rachel nowhere to be seen and his little girl's hug still warm around his neck. It makes the first few moments without her worse than ever: he's never used to it, but this sudden absence is always like losing a hand, or a leg, or being chopped in half. The car is too quiet without her chatter, so he turns on the radio, glances at the clock.

When he reaches for the phone and hits the second name on that list, it's almost reflex.

[thebesteverseen]

It's still there, of course. Not that he expects it not to be. Given it was there through his childhood. And it was mockingly fine when he returned to the scene of his father's murder, after his funeral, finding it entirely the same for all the other changes the world had undergone in all those years.

It had gotten under his skin like a breaking splinter. Not that day, but more the next one. After he'd taken over the case, commandeered a command and people to suit his purposes. It'd been his, and Mary's so there wasn't really anywhere to go. He could have gone to Pearl for base housing, but it was standing there and it was his responsibility, too.

He'd fixed it up, the way it should have been at least ten years earlier. Did the kind of weekly upkeep houses that old had to have. Had gone from it every morning only to come back to him every night. Somewhere along the way it had gotten even more under his skin. Without his knowing. The kind of under his skin that made him feel the tension in his forehead and around his eyes the only awareness almost every time he looked at it he was glaring.

Like it had gotten in. He'd let it. Get inside him and, somehow, it had betrayed him. Them. All of them.
Like it should have known. They should have known. It should have been written on the walls.
She was alive, fine, somewhere else. While the whole world here fell apart over her death.

While it was standing there, fine. Past, present, future. Untouchable. Grating like those slivers of splinters can find a way to gouge into most of his skin. Every time he parks the truck and makes his way through that lawn, made of flowers and shadows. Tables and gently level, soft, green grass. Idyllic and untouched. Except by the lawn mower. Except by too many childhood memories of living out here.

Every one of them a lie that didn't know what was coming. Every one of them a lie that never knew what happened.
The way he still didn't feel he had any idea what happened. Aside from to him, to his father, to his sister.

Mary, who he couldn't even talk to and who it kept turning over and over that he needed to.

It's easier when the place isn't empty. When Danny is here, or the rest of the team, and there's too much noise. Too much noise to drown out the memories clogging up every single square foot of space with over thirty years of history. He shouldn't be using them for that. Or him. And if Cath's words about the cost of that come back, standing in a ruin that looks pristinely organized, it's not to her detriment.

He looked around the living room only a few second before heading for the kitchen and grabbing another beer, uncertain if it was because he needed it or was about to. Taking it and leaving the house the opposite direction, straight through. Watching the ocean roll in and out, as the bottle sung by it's neck from between his first two fingers, next to his leg.

Blue and endless. Except for the shore. Which picked at the part of him that never could let go entirely of the shore being there. The way water should be in every direction. That he pushed at, trying to find the thread that he knew had been him laughing only twenty or thirty minutes ago, but it's fallen through the grits of sand and it seems only further away the more he tried to find it.

Giving him a chair to drop in to, and glance at his watch for how many hours there are until work again.

He set the Longboard by the front leg of the chair and watched the waves. Not moving from them. The endless in and out, the way every part of the water was always moving on the top, no matter how still, serene, and static it could feel deep under water, here, the waves ran into each other, swallowed and eaten and endlessly rippling.

Light and shadows, caught and thrown everywhere. The end of the sun shattered and splintered and held by them. Every color from orange to white, to silvers and golds, blacks and grey even in that blue when night played on it better than any piece of music or art could capture. Building him up. Filling him slow, as it was coming closer. The whole reason.

The things he does not actually want to think about anymore than he already has. Thought of, or defend that he had thought of. When his shoulders are rising and falling, not incredibly loosely against the back of one of his chairs, still put out as a set, showcasing the empty space he can no more not think of than find himself tripping over everywhere. But doesn't want to.

Because he already knows what the answer should be. And what they both said last time.
And how this topic is entirely different. It's the end game of every single other one out there.

So maybe he's taking his time, trying not to picture Grace and Kono shrieking in the gentle waves of the tiny beach, with one long surf board and another, small and pink, and Danny watching them. Complaining the whole time, but smiling and bragging like it was winning The Cup when Grace could stand up for whole half minutes before falling down, again.

Trying not to think, not to see Cath points, the one he's never blinded himself to the truth of, when he phone rang in his pocket, vibrating the cloth, and dragging him, thankfully, gratefully, out out. Making him twist and dig in a pocket for it, wondering if it's work, even vaguely hoping. Then, almost shake his head when it's got Danny William in thick block letters. Because where else would Danny be when Steve is trying not to think of him and failing already.

He tapped the button with a finger, and leaned back more, stretching the muscles between his shoulders across his neck and the bottom of his head harder. "McGarrett."

[haole_cop]

Steve doesn't pick up immediately, which is probably a good thing. It at least means he wasn't sitting staring at his phone, waiting for it to ring, like Danny feels like he must do sometimes, the way he hops to, hoping for a case or something.

Not that he can blame the guy. He wouldn't want to be alone with his thoughts in Steve's situation, either, and Steve's brain is miserable enough without adding circuitous thinking and sinkholes, gluey impossible to avoid traps, opening up beyond those DANGER marked fences and guard dogs, the mines he puts down in a paranoid pattern. "Hey," he says, tucking the phone between cheek and shoulder so he can turn down the radio, other hand curling around the top of the steering wheel, black rubber still warm from the day's sun. "What are you up to?"

Maybe he shouldn't. Steve isn't a stop-gap. He's not a substitution, or someone who's just there and is around to keep Danny from going crazy with loneliness. It shouldn't be something anyone could look at and consider as an option.

But is it better or worse to just gravitate naturally towards Steve's house, to pick up the phone and call him, even knowing he'll see him in a few hours, anyway? Maybe he should cool it. Maybe he should give Steve some space.

Maybe he should stop thinking like he's back in junior high and call the guy if he feels like it. It's not like Steve won't tell him not to come if he's busy or doesn't feel like it; not like Danny would be crushed to hear it.

So he's calling, okay. No big deal. Just wondering, what Steve's up to, because he's a little leery of just showing up and heading into the house. Catherine's still on the island, and even if they aren't -- even if she knows, that's one awkward conversation he's not really sure he wants to have, just yet.

"I could use a beer. You want some company?"

[thebesteverseen]

He kind of hates the way his shoulders drop and he breathes in through his nose, intimately knowing he doesn't actually have to say anything to Danny right away. That the man will toss out his greeting, and question, and keep rolling on into something else. The way Steve feels like that voice yanks a string and all the hard lines of cement between his ribs collapsed, leaving him dropping against the wood with a silent huff.

And still holding on to his voice. Like he's fifteen somehow, and it hasn't only been two days at the most, and only, really, if he counts the hours from when Danny left work to get Grace on Friday. In any other context it hasn't even been two full days. And. He's not supposed to be thinking about that. He's supposed to be thinking about the other part. Grace. Who is the entire reason Danny sounds as light and as down as he sounds, all at once.

It's a familiar tone. It's a tone that usually lasts through a good half of Monday, if not all of it. That comes out for hours, again, if someone forgets to ask about how the weekend was until later in the week. When he becomes lighter, lights up, getting to talk about her, and, also, more distant, because it's over, and it's done. He's back to having to wait to see her, again. Until the next time she calls to even hear her voice again.

"Yeah. Sure." The words fall out, more common and heavy rote than chosen, or even thought about.

When he's half listening to himself and half wondering if he should have said no. If he should start saying no a lot more. Should start putting space between them. He has all the reasons. They are the right reasons. Even if when he's rubbing his mouth, his chin, his cheeks with long fingers and a broad palm, looking at that empty chair? They don't feel like the right ones.

Maybe he's just a selfish bastard. Maybe he just wants Danny here. Maybe he just wants Danny somewhere he can see him, before he's actually considering it. He doesn't even have to be within reach. It's not like Danny'll have much more on his mind but Grace and the weekend with her, and maybe Steve needs that, too. A reminder of what actually is important in Danny's world.

The most important thing. The one thing he could actually damage and would have no way to put right.
The way Danny would have every single right to hate him if that did happened. If he lost every single chance.

"I've already got most of pack here." Because why not, shove your hand in the fire, to think about not getting burned.

[haole_cop]

"Okay, see you in a few."

Easy. Just like that. Like there's no question, and even though they see each other all the freaking time, Steve still wants him to come over...or, at least, is okay with him being there, which. Danny will take what he can get, and that mention of the mostly-full six pack is about as close to an engraved invitation as McGarrett gets.

So he swings into the turning lane, hits the blinker, takes the next left that will take him to Steve's place instead of his own, and tries not to think too hard about how the car suddenly feels less close, how the radio is a friendly white noise instead of a disembodied and lonely voice. He puts the phone down in the console, and doesn't feel the need to immediately pick it back up, call Steve, call Grace, call Kono or Chin or Kamekona, because at least he's not headed back to his shoebox apartment to pick at leftover take-out and hate his ex-wife a little more with every cold lo mein noodle.

It's only been a month. But it's not...this, that he's going for. Not only. Right? He's spent plenty of evenings with Steve, always had, well before this got started, well before any of it happened at all, and this is just an extension of it. A chance to unwind, before their 9-to-5 gets shot to hell, like it does every week, and the entire concept of a weekend goes out the window. And there's nothing wrong with that, with just wanting to see him, talk to him. Find out what he did with himself. Pry him out of the dead airspace that is wondering about Doris, about Wo Fat, because Steve's been by himself, presumably, and frankly, having time to sit and think is maybe not the best thing for him, in this particular instance, with this particular situation.

He's about ten minutes out, turns the radio up and lowers the AC; the sun's going down, smearing the skyline with bonfire shades, and the temperature is dropping to something almost like hospitable, and it's quiet as he heads through town, towards the water, towards the quiet street with the houses set so far back, lining the beach and the little shell-curves of coves. Fingers tapping on the wheel. Foot carefully not pressing too hard on the gas.

There's no rush. He tells himself that, every time he makes a turn and something clutches gently in his stomach, telling him to go faster. He ignores it.

(Mostly.)

So it's turning to thick dusk by the time he pulls up, gets out, jangle of keys loud in the quiet, and he doesn't bother going inside, just heads around the house to the back, the lanai and the curving stretch of lawn, shoes soft on the grass, hands pushing into his pockets. "Yo."

Steve's there, in his chair, and Danny stands for a second, considering, before jerking a thumb at the house, heading in to grab a bottle of his own. "One sec, and I'll get on the same page."

[thebesteverseen]

Steve's sure he said some word or made some affirmative noise, or at least that Danny got the gist already, before the phone was resting in his hand. Call clicked off, staring at the water, second guessing whether that had been wise. Whether he should have given more time and more thought to Cath's words. Instead he spend far too long going over it, in a circuit.

Trying to turn it outward or invert it, but it doesn't work much. He's still staring at the ocean waves lit on fire with the sunset. Turning deeper oranges and heavier goldenrod, that diffuses at the edges to muddier blues and purples, darker and darker at the edges. That remind him of bruises more than skylines. But not yet. It's not taking over just yet. The faintest frame heralding the end of the day. But it's got time. He's got time. To figure it out.

Or he doesn't, when Danny's steps make him still and then his voice is breaking on the lawn. Sending a zip up and down Steve's spine, ending in that clutching of all the muscles in his center tight, like he should sit straighter, but also like everything in his stomach vanished for a second, before steadying. When he takes the second to breathe in and turn his head, slow, maybe like it's all distraction, over reluctance.

Getting there when Danny's already jerking a thumb, waving a hand, turning away and walking off toward the house, a world of color and retreating movement, jerking something out of Steve's chest with a hard, sharp sensation as he does. Goes. Just. Just to get a beer. And that's not something that actually needed a response from him, either, was it, really?

Nor is the way his brain actually supplies those aren't blue jeans. Not that there was any reason they would be. Steve reached a hand up and rubbed at his jaw, before reaching down for his beer, again. Palming the top, popping it and pocketing. Before he's letting out a breath, taking a drink, and waiting. Again. A minute, a few at most, and that chair will stop annoying him at least. And Danny ranted that he couldn't be positive.

[haole_cop]

The house is quiet, clean, comfortable in that old-fashioned way it always has been, with the little curtain-thing over the kitchen window that Steve can't possibly like, must just be used to, and the counters wiped down, the sink empty, because God Forbid the Navy should ever show up out of the blue and glove-test the place for dust or dirt.

Which is mumbled out loud to himself and the silent kitchen as he relieves the pack in the fridge of another beer, swinging the door shut and blinking in the lack of light as he finds a bottle opener, snapping the cap off and tossing it in the trash.

And maybe his eyes track back towards the lanai, the yard, the stretch of calm, open ocean which Steve is watching -- not intently, if the set of his shoulders is anything to go by, but with absorption. He'd barely glanced over when Danny first arrived, and that's not so weird, but maybe the quiet of the house isn't the only thing that feels too settled, around here.

He heads back out, stride swinging, easy and firm, meanders his way to the empty chair, to sit down and take a sip, cold bubbles bursting on his tongue, citrusy and with a faint warm wash of spice, leans back, and lets himself take an idle glance over his shoulder.

At Steve.

Steve, who hasn't moved, or said anything. Sitting there staring out at the water like he expects it to do -- who knows. Something. Vomit the sun back up into the sky, or suddenly freeze over. But like it wouldn't surprise him, anyway, because he's not there. Watching the water. Right now. It might as well be a screensaver for all the interest it seems to hold, and Steve's got that pre-occupied, inward look to his eyes that's an invitation for warning bells to start ringing, for that tiny needling voice to start whispering.

"Hey," he says, shifting, bottle landing on his thigh, where he holds it, light. "Don't talk my ear off, okay, I can only take in so much at any one time."

[thebesteverseen]

He returns and settles. From footsteps to the edge of his vision, and Steve doesn't know which count he's actually more curious about. How many seconds it will take before the next thing Danny says or how many seconds he'll last before he has to turn his head and look at Danny. Take in the face he's here, at the house, on his beach, at his side, end of the days, the weekend, at his side, again.

It wasn't unheard of before, but maybe it wasn't the first impulse, especially on these Sunday nights, unless they were really bad, before things changed. Before --

-- And Danny wins. He's so surprised.

Even if Danny talking means his gaze flicks that direction and his head turns, like it's fine to forfeit.

Or like if Danny gets his, that Steve gets his as well. The wry tug at the edge of his mouth and the gentler curve to his eyes, that never quite becomes a smile but the amusement is there. Quietly apparently through the distance. When he's taking in the wrinkled up expression and the pointed point.

The way the wind is trying to toy with parts of Danny's hair, already. The way he's already poured himself into that chair like he owns it. No longer empty. Claimed. Like it's his, more than like he's borrowing it, and Steve wonders if that's just him. Not Danny. Him, trying to figure where he, or they, lost the line. No, not lost. Buried in. In among their fuck this and that, that pertained to every topic but the one in his hands.

"If you wanted some quiet," Steve says, like he's only going right off what Danny said, like there was anything before it, the mirage of something long winded and worthwhile, that wasn't the topic pressing in on Steve's ribs only steal through like air that couldn't be kept out by chain link fence.

There was the turn toward half a smirk, about as present as the smile ever had been, as he gestured toward the endless waves, and Danny's eternal nemesis, with his bottle. "This probably wasn't the spot."

[haole_cop]

"Yeah, it's a real party over here."

He looks, an exaggerated sweep of eyes across the quiet lawn, and holds still for long enough to make the soft rush of waves, the unfurling cry of some seabird, obvious as the only sounds around. It's quiet, and still, and Steve's at least smiling enough to probably not be totally mechanical, though there's a slightly robotic quality to it that's enough to supplement those still whirling warning lights, add a low hum of sirens.

Because there is something. Something that makes Steve's smile come a half-second too late, that takes the words he's springboarding off Danny's comment and makes them sound strangely distant, like Steve's pulling out the "RETORT" stamp and checking off boxes with it.

While he's still sitting there. Motionless. Relaxed, but in a way that feels like he's just checked out, isn't just enjoying himself or taking in the view like a normal person would, at a normal backyard, one that isn't thick with the ghosts of betrayed McGarretts past. He's calm. Is it too calm?

Or is Danny just looking for the things he knows should be wrong, when Steve's whole world is cracking and it wasn't exactly ever that solid to begin with?

How long has he been sitting here? Was it from before Danny's call?

The glass is wet and cool and slick under his fingers; he rolls it gently around itself. "What's up? You look like you accidentally swallowed the key to wherever you lock up all the really dangerous weapons."

[thebesteverseen]

Danny watches the ocean -- exaggerated movement for exaggerated words, letting the silence slip in, except this time like it's a third person, with it's own sound and presence, filling up all the spaces, all that air -- but Steve finds himself watching Danny. The loose catch of his own fingers on the neck of his bottle like the loose catch of some other hold on his chest, his lungs, his thoughts watching him.

The dusting of day's stubble, and the confused tension in his posture. The blue of his eyes, that out does Steve's ocean too easily for there being so much less of it. Press of his lips, pink, dry, and certain even in uncertainty. Steve can almost see Danny trying to figure out. Well, whatever he's trying to figure out. He's not sure Danny will want to know really. Even when Danny is looking back over at him, again. Checking him over, like a through and through. Like he could find it.

Written on Steve's skin. Like so much else that is. Written on Steve's skin, and indecipherable. Stories trapped in secrets.

He's not sure that would ever be a good idea. A spot on his body he could look at and basically see initialed Danny Williams was here. Like the scars that said this case, or that tour, this fight, or that bout of capture, or holding out for reinforcements. All the rest of it. Not if it all should go. End. Not if moments like this might go with it, too. Not if everything except what had been there before went with it.

Steve gave him an exasperated look, all pointed eyebrows and the press of lips, canted one odd direction for Danny's example there. When he's giving an inch for one, but not quite for the other. Doing what he does best, of course. Pulling apart the things Danny says, that he thinks make any sense and don't stand up next to it. "Heavy artillery and ordinance weaponry needs a better security system than a key."

Because that's totally the point, Right? "Pin tumblers can always be picked, and cracked, too easily."

[haole_cop]

"Oh, good, so that's not the reason."

Steve doesn't deflect well. It's a little like watching him tossing a grenade at a mini-golf course, just to keep the ball from going in the hole, because he'll slide straight past whatever the actual pertinent point is, and -- what, assume he can just distract Danny by mocking him?

If that were true, they'd never get anything done, though Danny would be the first to admit that there are times when, heavy-handed a tactic as it is, it actually works.

But those are times when they have other things to concentrate on: cases, or immediate personal tragedy of the kind Steve has actively avoided talking about. It's anyone's bet what happened between Doris and Wo Fat in that room, but even a month without her isn't long enough for even the most stable of people to wrap their heads around the idea that their mother, dead for twenty years, has actually been alive and well the whole time. And Steve -- Steve doesn't deal with things. He locks them up in neat little boxes and stores them in his bunker, and keeps going, and that was probably all well and good for the SEALs, but he's in a messier world, now, and Danny's not sure those boxes are doing such a bang-up job of staying airtight and sealed away.

Or if they should be, at all.

"So there's another reason why you're stoically contemplating the waves on this fine Sunday evening? You know they probably won't spontaneously evaporate into steam under the force of your stare, right?"

The hand that's not holding his beer gestures towards the water instead, and he leans forward, getting a better angle to watch Steve's face, because he's not wrong, there's something there, he knew it even before Steve tried any attempt at entirely transparent deflection. It's written in the line of his shoulders, the easy blasé regard, bland non-interest. "What's on your mind?"

[thebesteverseen]

"You do know most everyone else on the planet actually likes the ocean, right?"

Steve batted it back, droll unimpressed rise that actually makes his mouth tug a little tauntingly crooked and edgily expectant. "That they consider it calming? Rolls in and out. Rhythmically. Looks nice. It's actually suggested as a meditation technique. To help with breathing. Relaxing. Several types of therapy."

Not that Steve would count it as one himself. And he's had enough mandatory therapy to last a long, long while.

That he's not about to go near with a ten foot pole where it comes to Doris, or Danny, at this point. The ocean isn't that to him. It's too many others things. It calls to him in a way that house doesn't. Maybe in a way he thinks the house, and Hawaii, should, but doesn't. Especially not after Doris turned out to be alive.

It has less weight, less history, attached to it, even if it drags heavier the long he's grounded.

Which is another thing he really doesn't think Danny understands. Anyone understands. Except Cath.

Cath who has the thanks for everything else going on in his head, and who, probably, isn't wrong either.

[haole_cop]

"Steve, I say this with affection: the level of therapy watching the water can provide you would be like someone blowing on a forest fire to put it out."

It's barely even exaggeration, and it's not like he thinks it doesn't, in some way, help, but Steve's got kind of a twisted relationship with even the inanimate objects in his life. Just look at the house, how it hasn't changed, aside from being cleaned up, from when Danny first saw it during his sweep of the crime scene years ago. Look at the way he attacks the water every morning, like he's still got to beat some personal best. Look at how he keeps trying to will that monster of a Marquis into compliance, even though it burns through gas and oil like it's single-handedly trying to raise the global temperature by ten degrees.

And Steve doesn't really go in for that kind of thing. Sure. He relaxes, from time to time. He even relaxes on the beach, or in the water. It might be that he finds the sound and sight of the waves therapeutic. It's possible. Danny is willing to admit to the possibility.

He just doesn't think it's likely.

"So what you're saying is there's nothing rattling around that barbed-wire trap you call a brain? Nothing bugging you? You're just sitting here enjoying the sunset and watching the water, because this is a totally normal Sunday night and that's what people do in Hawaii on Sunday nights, is that it?"

[thebesteverseen]

Steve screwed up his face, hard, almost instantly, at last a click or two above the necessity of the offense from Danny's first statement. His belligerent, assuming, misunderstanding of Steve's track record there standing out like a spotlight against the night. That even if that hadn't been his point, Danny missed that some days it was the only thing keeping him in check.

From a reign of rage so thick there were mornings he didn't know how he was going to get behind or beyond the red to get his work done. To even get to work. To even stay on this island. To not go after the twin forces dominating his head when it wouldn't clear: Doris and Wo Fat. To clear the books and set things straight, the way they still weren't. Hadn't been. He failed down.

The way acknowledging it as such was tightening up every muscle in his body. Making him settle back in his seat, tenser, staring out at the ocean harder this time. Like his vision could drill holes in it. Like the holes this whole thought process, the whole weight of the house behind suddenly dug into his bones. The things he owed, the way he'd so far only gotten this close to solving before it slipped out of his hands, again.

The way his jaw aches and he needs to unclench. Lifting his bottle of beer and taking a long drink. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe there'd be more than this one needed, even after earlier. Especially if Danny kept on like that. Prodding fingers, and those words that were still going on, that he finally lets out with some annoyance, when his lips released the top of the glass.

"That is what people do around here." Everyone, tourists and residents, who was not Danny. Steve would be hard pressed to say if he stayed here another hour, two, three that he wouldn't be calmer, even from the endless loops of thoughts. That he didn't come back in the morning's again razor edges of sharply manageable instead of about to explode. Even he couldn't fight the pull of the ocean.

The only person who did that was Danny. Danny who he continue to toss words out at like pennies, without looking away from the water now. "I haven't been here that long." Long enough to be cool and calm and mellow. An extension of the rolling waves. "I only got in from dinner with Cath a little before your call."

[haole_cop]

He considers it a positive sign when Steve gets irritated enough to snap at him, self-defeating as it might seem. He's always done it; poked and prodded until Steve dropped the robot act and lashed out like a human, angry at being dragged out from under his safe walls, reluctant and pissed off from his bunker, every time it was obvious to everyone but him that he was making something personal, still trying to save his father and never able to get back to that moment, so saving other fathers, instead, rescuing kids, salvaging families.

And coming back here, by himself, to drink beers and look out at the waves and have to stay afloat in a world that killed his father and hid his mother for years.

Danny isn't unsympathetic. He feels for Steve, aches for him, hurts for him in a way he's not sure Steve is fully capable of allowing himself to feel. He doesn't want to make things worse, wants to fix what he can, but when there's nothing to do that can fix, the best he can do is to try and draw out as much poison as he can, be there for whatever might help.

So he's unfazed by Steve's tone or words, because it means he's getting closer, wearing down the walls Steve keeps stubbornly adding bricks to almost as quickly as Danny kicks them back down, and he'd comment on it, but Steve actually keeps going, and Danny has to take a second to tamp down on the sudden kick of worry that's decided to use him for punting practice.

Cath. With whom there is nothing happening. Because Steve stopped things with her. Cath. Who knows about them. Who Danny has happily managed not to think about, too much, since two weeks ago, for this exact reason: the filtering sense of dread that's starting to shade his thoughts, the clutch of nerves in his chest.

"And how is Lieutenant Rollins?"

One finger is tapping against the side of his beer bottle; stopping it just starts a bounce of one knee that gets smothered when he leans his weight onto it, forearms barring thighs. And if he sounds a little more cautious, well -- Cath knows. About them. She's the only one who does, and Danny can put two and two together, alright, that's his job, and he doesn't think it's a coincidence that Steve had dinner with Cath and then came back here to stare moodily out at the ocean like someone on the other side of it owes him money.

[thebesteverseen]

The rate gets the smallest shift of a glance, when Steve does actually question it, standing among the shards Danny already stepped on and woke up, again. Whether he's trying to see that's just Danny being roundabout or if it's actually distancing. Doesn't like the idea he's playing one of their opinions off the other, or that he should believe one over the other.

Still it gets the flash of a look, before there's a rough roll of his shoulders back, out, stretching muscles rolling and popping, resettling himself with a absent sort of frown toward the sea, and Danny's hate of it, and Cath's loss of it. "As well as any sailor docked interminably, while waiting for their ship to be decommissioned."

And if that sounds a little pointed, and entirely applicable to himself, that's fine. That's good, even. It's still true. It's one of those things that will never stop being true as far as he's considered. It hasn't really in three years. It didn't entirely ever leave during missions abroad for years. Which is where SEALs were, just as much as the water. It just settles like a bruise a little further under. Taking special skill to hit just right.

Which Danny has always had a speciality for. "She says it's giving her a chance to see more of the island."

Alright. That one. Wasn't exactly true. She may have implied that about this whole situation more than hers with the Navy.

[haole_cop]

That seems like it could be a really involved metaphor, but Danny's not going to try wrapping his head around it just now, as regards Steve, because he's frankly never been all that excited about Steve's drill weekends or the possibility that he'll get called back into full time service, and that's what Reserves means, isn't it? That they call, and Steve goes?

Why would he want to think about that, right now? Isn't all this complicated enough?

But he can't miss the pointed tone, or the lack of specificity in Steve's other comment. He bets she never got to see much of it before, aside from the view from Steve's bedroom window, but that's actually cruel and unjust and not fair to Catherine, who has always been nice enough to him. He can't pretend to completely understand whatever it was the two of them had, but Steve said it was done, so that's good enough. Right?

Which still doesn't explain the way Steve is still eying the water speculatively, conversation still just skimming the surface of whatever's going through his messed-up head, that he won't tell Danny.

Which only makes Danny want to know more.

"Is that what she says?" He shifts in his chair, shrugs, turns to look at the water with an air of I guess this isn't so bad, if you like that kind of thing, waves one hand towards the long open stretch of rippling waves.

"Is that why you're stuck on watching the waves with that look on your face, or was it something else she said?"