(no subject)

[haole_cop]

"All I'm saying is, if we'd stayed on land last week, the chances of us getting boat-jacked and left to die out in the middle of the ocean in a sinking boat -- I'm sorry, dinghy," his hand drops from where it had lifted, preemptively, to stop Steve from arguing, "dinghy, I know, I know -- would have been much more slim.  I'd say that there would easily have been a zero percent chance of that happening.  Mainly because one does not use boats -- or dinghies -- on land.  Don't get me wrong, I fully accept the possibility of something else horrible happening.  It always seems to, every time we leave civilization."

Which is why they are here.  At a bar.  Having a few drinks, while Danny eyes the pool table and the TV with equal amounts of casual interest, catching a few glimpses of the previous week's games and keeping an eye out for the Jets.

More to the point, as great as it is that Steve wants to show him his favorite hiking trails or mountainous drives or fishing spots from when he was a kid, the guy is already surrounded by memories of a life that, all of a sudden, turned out not have been necessary at all.  The thought of Doris McGarrett, hiding out somewhere on the island, unapologetic for doing what she'd called necessary and what Danny counters was cruelty, makes rage spark low in his stomach and burn up through his chest, so they're out of the house that she'd left so miserable and broken twenty years ago and planted solidly in the present.

There are worse ways to wrap up a week.  Actually being around other people, instead of opting for Steve's lanai or living room or kitchen.  When, somehow, miraculously, Danny is still wanted there.  Around.  And they've fallen into something almost like normality.

He hasn't thought about it too hard.  That's how you jinx a good thing, and this is good, a bright light shining somewhere in the cave of bullshit that collapsed around them the day Fryer was murdered and Shelburne turned out to be Steve's not-nearly-as-dead-as-she-had-previously-appeared-to-be mother.  Add it all to the firestorm of a custody battle from hell, and, look, all he wants is a decent night out at a bar before, hopefully, going back tipsy to Steve's house and enjoying the comfort of his couch or bed.  

Is that really so much to ask?

"Best to just resist the impulse to tempt fate, my friend."

Comments

[haole_cop]

"You know, amazingly enough, we had pool tables in Jersey."

Lots of them. Populated by a loyal subset of bar-goers, who couldn't get excited about the prospect of darts. "I used to play on the boardwalk, back in the day. Arcades in Wildwood, bars after hours. No Navy SEAL deathmatches, but it's a hell of a lot less of a hassle than hockey. Not to mention easier to play while drinking." Said with a lift of his bottle, one hand leaving the cue across his shoulders, before he takes a sip, watching Steve eye the table while he thinks back.

Those boardwalk arcades. Full of tilted, rickety tables, the velvet all but rubbed off, cue balls weighted to a sluggish roll so they'd be heavy enough to drop back out if someone scratched. Dinging games pressing immediacy from the sounds of the boardwalk, laughing children, calling gulls, the ever-present shush of waves on sand. Scent of salt water, taffy, kettle corn, pizza drifting in; easy summer days that felt like they stretched for weeks.

And it's almost enough to relax, nostalgia creeping in, along with the faint warmth of being a beer and a half in, a mix of vaguely impressed and vaguely exasperated with Steve and how he just can't stop being a show-off, ever, but it's not so bad, could be worse; at least it's just the two of them ragging on each other like usual, and he's even eased into the beginnings of a grin, a compliment edged in an insult ticking its way out of his mouth, when the bubble is shattered by a piercing whistle.

Getting a blink, and a crane of his neck as he looks to see who it was, where it was directed, because if this is another woman hitting on Steve, so help him, he will...

Continue to stand here, gritting enamel off his teeth, feeling like he could spit bullets, because there is not a single other option to take. Here. In public.

Perfect.

[thebesteverseen]

Steve gives it a glance, mostly because it's a noise. Also. Because of the way it lines up in his head.

His eyes raise as much for the sound, as from the whip of movement of Danny moving to look. His gaze settles on the woman about ten feet off, behind him, them, at the same time as the grip of Danny's hand on his pool cue is evident in front of him. It shouldn't. He shouldn't. But his mouth twitches, half a smile tucking into the corner of his mouth uncontrollably.

When there is. Of course. A woman. This time with jeans that might as well have been painted on under that hand settling on her hip, half in her pocket. Impressed look framed by wealth of black curls, a pair of overly big blue sunglasses pushed up to hold the first back and a pool cue in her other hand. "Nice shot."

Steve gaze didn't flicker much, and there's. It was so hard to justify exactly why. But there was a desperate want, creeping, lightning fast through his skin to want to be able to see Danny's face. Everything. When the sudden scald of it made him look back at the table, between her and it, as though considering his next shot. When even that isn't stopping it.

When he's smug even as he declines the compliment like that isn't worth it, yet, with, "It's been a while. Give it half an hour."

He's done better. This isn't a cut throat game, with stakes, rules, and bets riding on it though. The kind that boredom weeks out from land only make tighter, tenser, and higher with each round. Especially when you're just twiddling your thumbs waiting for anything more to happen that the wind to blow and the waves to rock.

He pointed with the pool cue, just enough. "Three. Corner pocket."

Walk toward the right spot, and start lining it up, paying, it's not even funny, far less attention a pool table than he ever has.

[haole_cop]

It says something for the durability of this cue that it doesn't snap in half, right across the back of his neck, with the sudden pressure exerted on it.

He guesses that's a design point: a barroom pool cue really needs to be able to withstand some heavy handling and bad tempers, but he's got to admit, it would be a satisfying release. Wouldn't it? When Steve glances back, actually almost smiling, with that brush-off that isn't really a brush-off, telling her to stick around and wait for something worth complimenting, which is basically the point where Danny's brain mists into a miserable fog of hatred.

Of everything. He's not picky. The bartender, the brunette with the stupid shoes, this girl and her inviting smile, the bar, the week, the game, and Steve. Maybe especially Steve. Who is lapping this up like some rangy tomcat that just found a dish full of cream.

Shunting Danny's tone straight back into an aggravated snap, that he can't help, like the wind catching a loose sheet and tossing it up into a tree branch.

"What makes you think this is even gonna last half an hour, huh?"

Steve's really? shunting through his head, but he can't stop himself, swings the cue down from his shoulders because he is seriously going to snap it like a twig if he's not careful, braces the butt against the floor and leans on it, doing his best to ignore the way his fingers clench.

There is nothing worse than not being able to do anything, aside from fume. Helpless. Bricked in by too many factors, steam screaming in his ears and impossible to release. Feeling like a catch broken wide open, a door slamming against hinges. "Of course, you might take half an hour just to line up your shot, so what do I know?"

[thebesteverseen]

It's like a stupid damn of warmth shattering any door or wall that was before it.

When he can nearly see the way she shifts, uncertainly as Danny snaps suddenly, throws words at him. Like they are going to stick. Like they might be solid objects. Like Danny could lob it at his head, like the cue he's setting down with far more focus than Steve can ever hope to miss every second of. When that smile, yeah, it's spreading across the rest of his mouth.

"What?" Steve tossed back easily. Warm, sardonic and far too dark-honey-toned pleased for the cold shards of Danny's. "Are you admitting defeat before the end of this one already? I mean, if it was going to be that easy, I should have at least bet you twenty bucks on this thing."

When he doesn't really care that she laughs, except that he does. Christ. He cares because he knows it's going to fall on Danny like a rain of glass shards. Even when he's slams the cue forward, and sends the cue ball flying at the three harder than is necessary. Hard enough it sinks the three and the cue ball. And he really can't even give a damn that he's scratched on getting to have more, when he's standing back up, tall and leisurely straight, looking at the two of them.

[haole_cop]

Great. Danny wants to rip his own face off, and Steve is having the time of his life, checking in with this newest girl to see whether she gets his joke or not (she does, except Danny'd bet ten to one she'd laugh at literally anything that came out of Steve's mouth right now), and it is seriously like needles sticking into every inch of his skin, that laugh.

Totally innocuous, lightly flirtatious, like a knife in his back.

And he can't even be pleased that Steve scratched, because that just means the attention is getting to him, making him more expansive, making him show off, like he needs to do any more of that, right, like Steve's default setting is not already straining at zero restraint.

"Keep scratching like that and it'll be over before you know it," he says, feeling the slow approach of the black-haired girl like stitches tugging loose, one popping with each step.

Jesus. He's got to focus. Plucks the cue ball from the shunt, does his best not to dent the velvet when he puts it down again, surveying the table for his best shot, mouth a square line, a muscle leaping at his jaw.

There. The right side pocket, an easy nudge from here, if he can keep his shoulders from locking up as he leans down, if he can keep his eyes stubbornly on the ball, and not on the way barfly number three comes sashaying slowly up in a way that makes him think her eyes are more on Steve than the game.

He calls it, shoots, and knows it's not looking good when the thirteen wobbles against the lip of the hole before falling in, instead of taking a smooth, straight line there. Too easy a shot to totally miss, but he's in it now, ends up bouncing the ten off the bumper and sending it on a lackadaisical spin, clacking into the others that are left.

At least he didn't scratch, right. Or dig a tear into the pool table velvet. Even if he thinks he'll wear the edges right off his molars by the end of the night.

[thebesteverseen]

"Yeah, you keep telling yourself that," Steve shot back.

If it was in Danny to twitch, Steve's pretty sure he'd be doing it now. Now, when Steve finds it impossible not to smile. Licking his top lip, through nearly bitting into his bottom lip, before he claims his pint glass, because it's horribly outlandish. He shouldn't enjoy this. He shouldn't be catching the way Danny's going to fuck up his shot long before he's shooting even.

The hold of his shoulders, and how tense his arms are. The way he's nearly glowering a hole into the table. While that girl is sidling up not too far away, as Danny's setting up. Setting out, when he's barely cast a glance her direction, and more for the edging into his space than anything else. "I don't think I've seen you two around here before."

Leaving Steve at the impasse of bluffing out now, for the sake of Danny's GP or at least the rant about his GP that will be forthcoming he's sure, later, or just. He could. He could pretend not to notice. Or. He could push it a little ways. Nothing big. As nothing before had been. Nothing that wasn't about as polite as he was to the last girl.

Or he was really to any civilian who stepped in his way and asked a question.

Steve shrugged and took a drink. "Seemed like a good night for it."

Which really did not point whether they'd been here before or planned to be here again. Or that it was on a list of places they came now and again, whenever they felt like it. He was busy mouth tensing a little at the rough shot Danny took, even though it did end up in. The shot was clean. Easy clean. The kind he's aware Danny should have been able to make without much practice even.

Especially with how well he can aim a firearm in one direction at a target right in front of him.

"Oh, man, almost," She breathes, like the game is the point. Not the way she's twisting her cue in her fingers, and adds, listing into his space the half step. "I'm here off and on week nights. It's Ahulani, but you can call me Lani."

There's the faintest shift Steve gives maybe. The consideration that if it were any other night, any other month, he totally knows the words that would have fallen out of his mouth. Made his eyebrows raise. When that's the whole point of the game. The whole point of mentioning her name.

"Oh, you speak Hawaiian?" It's a breath of amused triumph from her, as Danny's second ball goes clack into.

When Steve doesn't feel compelled to toss the line. Easy line about heavenly places, sanctuaries, and shrines, any of them. While Danny is losing control shots that are pathetically easy, with that tense line across his jaw, that is ground against the hold of his teeth, both on some kind of direct circuit line with the muscles in his own cheeks. When he can't stop. Not even for want of trying.

Except he doesn't want to. Try. To Stop. Not when he's giving simply, without answering the question or taking up the bait, beyond the enigmatic smile, "Steve." He's even steps in more than he should, nearly jostling Danny's shoulder and grinning when he passes him. "And this is Danny."

When he's surveying the last two of his own before the eight ball, listening to her tell him, or Danny, It's nice to meet you both, somewhere in the background of all the other things going on with the table. And Danny. Or the table. Or Danny. He calls it, and even though there's two different stripes balls in the way, for across from him, and a third of the table space.

Enough force to send each of the first two into the other, but not have them follow through with the third. When he's bright against the simplicity, against the inability to look up and catch Danny, still rigid and as uninviting as a subzero winter, making him smile even harder as he connects. First to the second. Second to third. Third in. And the second rolls slow toward the pocket, stopping maybe an inch and half out.

He's given Danny a shot, but if he can pull it together fast it won't actually matter.

Not now that he's down to his last before the eight. Not now he's pretty sure he's winning even if he doesn't.

[haole_cop]

He could clear the rest of this table, and it wouldn't help a damn thing. Wouldn't get rid of Little Miss Oh You Speak Hawaiian? and her shining smile, her painted-on jeans, and the way her eyes follow Steve around the table, while Steve introduces them and Danny wishes he wouldn't.

It's so much harder to get rid of people once they know your name.

"Hey," he says, when she looks to him, directing a comment his way before her eyes invariably slide back to Steve, and, for fuck's sake, maybe he should just get out of here and give her the space she so clearly wants and that Steve hardly seems like he'd mind. "Did you say Lanie?"

Worse than ever in his most grating Jersey accent. He even wishes he had the tie, just to prove that he is as non-Hawaiian as they come, while she gives him a look that he knows means she's thinking the word haole even if she isn't saying it, and trying to figure out what the hell a native would be doing, playing pool with a guy like him.

Playing pool, and giving him shots, which earns Steve a dirty look, like he's cheating instead of going easy, which Danny would prefer, alright, he does not need Steve giving him handouts, he just needs to get his head back in the game and play some damn pool without letting the Beach Goddess get under his skin.

Where she already is. Itching like the sand that gets everywhere has managed to get there, too, snagging just deep enough that it can't be scratched, maddening as poison oak or a sunburn.

"That's cute," he says, in regards to the stripe left just a hair outside the pocket. "You do that on purpose?"

Of course he did. Look at that grin, shining out of his face, gleeful, like he can't keep it in, and it sucks, alright? It sucks that Steve is smiling more for this random girl than he has for any of his friends, for Danny, in a month or more. It sucks that he's ramping up to show off, and it sucks that he's enjoying it so much, and it sucks that Danny hates everything almost enough to not appreciate the fact that that smile is even in existence.

Almost.

But it goes deeper than the Lani-sand under his skin, deep into his chest, below the squeezing turmoil that is his last nerve snapping apart. Someplace that still warms, wants that smile. That is helpless in front of it.

Which just makes him hate everything even more. "What is this, a pity play? Go on, clear it out." He takes a sip, vaguely aware that his beer is now a thin scrim over the bottom of the bottle, and that's great, too.

[thebesteverseen]

It's amazing he's managing to martial any control to look at the table. The green felt flattened by over constant use and likely several washing for occasional beer and food spray. The balls, that are laid out all across the area, more stripes than solids, figuring the shortest locations. Between his last ball and each of the closest two pockets. Like it's not running up the underside of his skin.

Hot steel and a want so sharp it feels like his lungs are going to snap his ribcage, like somehow each of those bones is made of twine and connected on a fast coiling reeling between where he's standing and the place where Danny is almost vibrating with annoyance. The way it coats his voice, clear and clean, no two ways about when he mangles her name in the worst possible way he can.

Danny can be horrible at Hawaiian, even worse at getting annoyed when the team uses it, but he's actually good at that part. But not at any of this. Not at the way he's literally snapping at a woman whose only sins are having done nothing more than give her name, compliment their game, stand there a little long enough that she's getting comfortable with the place she's standing, pool cue she's holding.

Maybe being inconveniently in the wrong place at the wrong time, convenient to his purposes that she definitely did sign up for.

Except now, when she's giving Danny an insulted look. The kind he deserves, for mangling what is a nice name, and instead to make it sound like it went through an American Trash compactor. Without the slight edge of authentic concern riding Danny's rephrased question of it. While Steve is trying to get his mouth under any control. Managing just enough to not need to tuck in toward his shoulder before Danny's snapping out a question.

"Why would I be nice to you?" Steve threw back easily. "I'm here to win, not to help you. It got my ball in, didn't it?"

But there, actually, isn't a good shot for the five at the moment, not without sinking one of Danny's balls. Which isn't worth the sacrifice of a step. Instead he shoots the cue ball across the table, aimed for the pile of stripes and and an ending location that isn't actually anywhere near the ball that ended up near the pocket.

"Harsh," Lani says, but she's smiling in his direction still. Eyes nowhere near his face, when he's standing, until a few seconds too late. Before she's asking, "Play the winner?"

[haole_cop]

Yeah, that much is obvious. When the hell has Steve ever decided to make Danny's life easier, exactly? Definitely not tonight, when he'd all but invited Hawaiian Resort Barbie over to hang out for their game, and Danny seriously has to wonder just what the hell, exactly, is going through his head, and considers the actual possibility that he might, for once, get to drive his own car tonight.

Which is about the last thing he wants. Which is sick.

"Thanks, buddy," he says, and he thinks it comes off as passably casual, despite the waves beating against his temples and the low-grade burn of pain lancing up his back from the way his muscles aren't loosening, even a little. "Glad to know you've got my back."

Stupid. It's so stupid. The way he can't focus as he leans to take this shot that Steve has made so annoyingly convoluted for him, how it actually takes him a few seconds to try and find any sort of quiet spot in his mind.

And it should be easy. Clear. Like shooting Peterson in the leg. You aim, pull the trigger. Exist in a second of clarity, while the world screams from outside walls of bulletproof glass. And he can do it. If he can do it on the job, furious and sick with worry and holding back just enough to not put that bullet in someone's head, he can finish a goddamn game of pool, and make this shot.

Almost there. Just about to make his move, when Lani's voice comes from somewhere nearby, and he glances up just in time to trace her line of sight from the middle of Steve's chest back up to his face, and he actually feels gutted. Like a fish, innards spilling everywhere while he flops around, helpless, paralyzed, nerves sliced apart. Followed by a quick glance to Steve, before he's staring at those two stripes by the far pocket again, stubborn, like focusing on the game will mean he won't hear whatever it is Steve has to say, because, come on, it's not like it's his opinion she wants.

Steve, who is almost definitely going to win, even when Danny manages to haul himself back from the brink and make the shot, cue trundling along the green field to bump one into the other, sending them both tipping neatly into the pocket and leaving him with a terrible shot, the cueball nudged right up to the bumper.

Which means it's just about it for him, since it wrecks his chances at getting a decent shot, and that means Steve will win, and Lani will stick around to play him, and Danny will, who knows, go back to the bar and see how many shots it takes to make this feeling float away.

Or stay here and be a dick about it, but whatever, he's not much of a planner, he thinks on the fly, and right now, as the cue ball spins away from the bumper and taps another stripe without sinking it, he'd rather not think about it.

[thebesteverseen]

The last word of Danny's actually lands more to mark than Danny probably intended it, or maybe it smarts right where Danny actually did intend for it to, making Steve try to side step the giddy swing he can't, to focus on Danny's face. Fuming and tense, wondering where exactly it. That place. Somewhere between getting to tap on the glass of this new, glorious, utterly impossible thing -- Danny shoved overboard by an innocuous person, or, well, a few. Whatever.

Like there's any chance. Like he has anything to be concerned about. Like Steve gives a single care about anyone here. (In a way not related to the well being of their ability to continue taking on average seventy-two breaths a minute and sleeping in their beds, live their lives, in a state of relative fearlessness.)

Danny. Sparking like the center of a wildly malfunctioning firework. Because of her. Over him. Not looking at him.

And the point where he might, seriously, turn and rail at Steve. Angry and honest in the center of this place.

When Steve waits a few seconds to see if Danny is going to say anything to her question, deny for him, stake his ground, especially given that he'd been answering every single question fired Steve's way while at the bar, but he doesn't. He's just leaned over the table. That fitted shirt stretching tight across the span of his shoulders, as he focuses on the striped balls, and sinks two more in the same shot. Like he hasn't heard the question at all. Or doesn't care.

Neither of which Steve believes, but he looks back at her, shrugs, nonchalantly as if she asked about the weather. "Sure."

It'll only cost them, what? Ten-fifteen minutes of their night, and he'll win more like than not, and Danny will move back in the same way she is now midway though, and she might deserve something for being the point with which he's testing this insane theory against Danny, right? When he doesn't miss the small movement of Danny looking to her, but he's not sure what the expression on Danny's face is when he looks over here, again, finally.

For a moment, before it's gone. Danny's looking away, again. Steve doesn't know what it's supposed to be, edges pricking warmth.
It's entirely insane, isn't it? That somehow any of this matter at all? That on one level it'll make everything look more normal.

It's only ten or fifteen minutes. They've had dozens od stakeouts and undercover's that went days longer than that.

Steve finished his pint and dropped it back on the table, before walking back to the table, looking at the layout. Called his last ball and shot it from pretty much across the while table. Needing to hit only one side of it, hard enough to make is ricochet along a bumper and clatter into the dark insides of the table. Eyed the table, turned his attention toward the nine. Called it for one of the side pockets, and leaned down.

He connected with the cue ball and it went across hard, aimed easily for the center.

[haole_cop]

There are a lot of responses he could make. Hand out. Ranging from the mildly dismissive to the outright rude, verging on an avalanche of words, all of which he could toss like darts at her head. Or, more likely, Steve's. Who accepts her challenge like he accepts every challenge ever laid across his path -- without question or much in the way of hesitation and, fine. They're at a bar, it's not unheard of, might even be the most normal way for this night to go, right?

What's one game of pool?

One game of pool that could easily turn into two, and drinks, and talking, and -- he is thinking way too hard about this, should just have cut her off like he did before, except that really? is sticking in his gullet like the scraping edge of a popcorn shell, and, fine, he might have been out of line before. It doesn't stop him wanting to shove his way back out there, again, when Lani is smiling at Steve's agreement and her eyes travel lazily over the flat line of his back as he leans to take his shot, and, really, couldn't she have some priors, a DUI, shoplifting, something little that he can call Chin and have him check?

"Your funeral," he tells her, the closest to conversational that he can drag, reluctant, cat claws catching the words along his ribs, and it comes out both flat and sharp, which he can't even feel guilty about, though he probably should. Manners, Daniel, says that voice in his head that still sounds like Rachel after all these years, which only makes him want to be even worse, because of all people to scold him, she has got the least possible amount of leg to stand on, and, Christ, he needs to get some air, or something, because this is all starting to spiral into something he really can't deal with, once Rachel comes into the mix.

"Knock yourself out," he adds, to the table at large, and sets his own cue against the rack, shaking his empty bottle. "I'm getting a refill."

He knows what he's doing. Knows the polite thing would be to point to Lani and ask what she's drinking, grab one for her, too, but he bypasses it, because she's already here, hell if he's giving her a reason to stick around further than the ones Steve is offering, which. It's not like he's exactly inviting, per se. He's not picking up what she's laying down, but he's definitely not pushing it off, either, and it's true. Maybe Danny should be paying more attention. Right? In the spirit of friendly competition, if nothing else, vying for the attention of a pretty girl, which he, seriously, could not care less about. He was never good at this part, anyway: too tongue-tied by the women who whacked him over the head at first glance, too impatient with the game to play it with anyone who didn't.

It would be natural. Acceptable. If he were to bring something back for her and throw himself into the mix. She's probably expecting it, even, it being the normal way of things. Obviously she's got her sights set on Steve, but it's part of the play, isn't it?

When he does. Want to shove his way in, stake a claim, plant his feet stubbornly and refuse to move -- but from the other side. Making it hard enough to peel away and head to the bar, fingers drumming on the slick surface as he waits for the 'tender to come by (without Steve around, she seems to be taking her sweet time), and then again for two more beers. Glancing around to see if Steve's cleared the table yet, before heading back that way, ending up somewhere between Steve and Lani, though she's around the corner from him. Putting Steve's fresh pint -- what? He can drink it or not, whatever, it's not like Danny wasn't going to be paying for his next drink anyway, regardless of what other offers might come in -- down within easy reach, and regarding the table and the two of them with a feeling of heading, once more, into the breach.

Fine. He can deal with this, dammit, but he's not going to make it easy. "So are you going to be a gentleman and let her break, or what? And, for the love of God," he puts his hands together, bottle in the way, but whatever, shakes them, almost close enough to let his fingertips brush Steve's arm.

"Do not make this unfortunate girl cough up seventy-five cents. I know you have at least that in you, right, Steven?"

Hypocritical, after he didn't get her a drink, or offer, or really do anything but reference her, but it's not like he's going to just be a non-entity in all this.

[thebesteverseen]

Claws, sharp and long, scuttle up the back of his neck, not digging in, but dragging, hard and heavy up the nerve and muscles along his spine, when Danny announces he's going back to the bar. When that was never part of it. Danny walking away. Danny being anywhere away from him. Not even after or with his continued line of normal enough, annoyed snappy notes.

When he's casting a glance up as Danny is walking by. The words an announcement not a request, and he's really ending up catch a glance of his back when he'd wanted to see his face. When he has to hold it still, that confusing complaining jolt in his chest, just let his eyebrows rise and fall with a shrug of his shoulders, glancing toward the woman he's been left with, before be starts hitting Danny's balls.

Clear the table. Clean up the excess. Steady the nerves jangling like before any black mission's go mark.

"So, Steve," it comes after the clack of one, while he's already moving to get into the next sot for lining up another. Two left. "What do you do?"

He's sizing up the last one, to cast off bumpers. When he should just sink it and get on. When he wants these minutes to be over, even when his movement are clean. Tight coil of his arm. Wants to look over at Danny. Snap release of his shoulder, elbow wrist. Voice even and pretty lacking in arrogance. Straight forward, ho. "Head up the governor's HPD Task Force."

Not that Denning's got much say in how he ran his ship. Even now.

He doesn't need to look up to catch the surprise. To count the moment before there's a whistle like the one that announced her. When she's re-categorizing him in her head most likely. "Impressive."

Steve is almost tempted to give her a more stern blank look, for the word. It is. Not in the way her voice makes it sound. Like it's something flashy and amazing. It's back breaking hard important and it costs his team a lot in a lot of different ways, especially lately. But Danny appearing at his side completely derails that thought or any words to it. As does the pint that gets dropped not too far away, while Danny's voice runs over everything else. Needles and expression that begs him to complain about that drink or any of his insults.

When Steve is digging in his pocket, looking for the rack, sniping right back with a smirk breaking out, like it never left, like he couldn't for the life of him find any of those words to be holding the insults thrown at him. Not when he can nearly feel the electric charge in the few inches between them. "Don't be a sore loser, Danny. It's not pretty. If you're nicer I might even wipe the table with you, again, next."

He does. Actually. Have five quarters. Even if he's checked three pockets by the time he's gotten to three. Smug toward Danny, when he's plopping them in and starting to rack up. Looking up when he's raising it, saying "Ladies first," before stepping toward the side. Where his newly beading pint glass is. And Danny.

[haole_cop]

"You know, as appealing as that sounds, I sincerely hope she beats you. That would be beautiful."

The dangling promise of a second game doesn't help his mood much, beyond a sullen snap of electricity against thunderous black clouds. He's wishing he'd never thought to come here to begin with; in retrospect, it seems like a terrible idea. Who wants to be surrounded by people, loud music, irritating conversation. Who needs the aggravation?

It doesn't help that Steve is apparently enjoying the hell out of it all, cracking jokes and needling Danny like always, as Lani toys with her cue and tucks a satisfied little smile away at the corner of her mouth, and great. Third wheel is pretty much exactly the place he least wants to be, isn't it bad enough that Cath is still around, seemingly on endless R&R, and keeps popping up when he least expects it? Leading them into awkward standstills of conversation, where he doesn't know what to do or think, and ends up just bypassing it altogether in impatience, citing work as an excuse.

Lani leans in to break, and she's not bad. It's a clean crack, scattering the balls haphazard across the green felt, but though a few bounce off the bumpers, none sink, and she shrugs as she straightens, leaning back on her cue, while Danny struggles with the alternate feelings of being grateful that she's not good enough to be of much note, and annoyed that, if she were better, the game might take less time.

"So," she says, and it takes him a second to realize she's talking to him, which, okay, whatever. Not ignoring him is probably a good tactic, considering the fact he hasn't abandoned Steve to her yet and is thus far part of a package deal, "are you a cop, too?"

Like a hammer hitting his knee. "He's not a cop." Reflexive. Argued over hundreds of times. Steve's not. The whole idea is laughable. Getting better at procedure, yeah. Decent detective, absolutely. But Steve is a sailor, soldier, SEAL. Military through and through.

And because it hits a little sourly, mentioning work. Which chases them everywhere, even out to sea, and that is not the point of tonight, so he doesn't expand on it like he could, like he's tempted to, because, seriously, is one night off too much to ask?

Before he's half-turned towards Steve, gritting through the annoyance of having been made disposable, pasting a grin from somewhere across his face that doesn't feel too strained -- she might not even notice. "Me, definitely. What, isn't it obvious? How many times have people asked if I'm a cop? Too many, and usually the wrong people wanting to know. I'm starting to think it's something in my face. Or maybe I'm just the only person in Hawaii who doesn't dress like they're on vacation and people find that bizarrely suspicious. What are you waiting for?"

To Steve, along with an expansive wave of his hand, that almost feels correct. Weighted a little strangely.

"Shoot."

[thebesteverseen]

Steve's mouth snaps, a hard quirk at the edges of it. Both of them firming in, lifting too fast and easy. Leaving him rolling his eyes, with a clipped shake of his head, while he's setting down his new pint and going to wipe slick fingers on his pants. Only to stop, reach out and wipe it against Danny's shirt sleeve, for his words, for the beer, for being a dick and goof, and someone he couldn't kiss.

But could absolutely aggravate for insulting him. "Thanks, partner."

When he can read the riot act tried to soak straight through those few words.

Words Steve is quite able to say for himself, and does at loud volume. They both do for wholly different reasons.

Like that scandalous mockery thrown all over them, as though putting Steve anywhere near his sacred little brotherhood is hilariously wrong. As though Steve still didn't see all this as a step-down from real work on certain days. Not lately, but sometimes. He'd still never claim to be it. He definitely wasn't a cop. He still hadn't even the slightest want to ever become one of them.

Lani, on the other hand, looks utterly confused. Like someone had thrown her out to sea without any warning. Looking between the two of them as Steve was walking back up, surveying the balls on the table, and really how easy it was going to be to beat her if her game looked like her breaking.

When she's bouncing her pool cue, looking like she's bright-eyedly caught him in a lie of some kind, that she could wield to make him explain why or why not, since this all looked like some rather interesting-in joke. "But I thought you said?"

"I did." He pointed to the twelve not far from the side pocket, like a handful still slumped in the middle due to her break, calling it.

"Then?"

"It's a special assignment." He called for the nine next. Not adding that it was. It had been, he had collected them all.

The original reason was beyond convoluted across two years. But they'd become something far bigger than what it had all started out as. Something worth staying for. Something he really didn't feel the need to point out to a random girl. No more than compelling to her about it, than he felt to tell them about the vast differences of where he came from.

The third isn't as easy. There's nothing specifically lined up. Instead he aims for the center. Breaking the pack of it up more.

[haole_cop]

"Ugh, you Neanderthal."

He makes a disgusted face and brushes at his own sleeve, after Steve's hand lifts, like he might be able to bat away the moisture wiped there, taking refuge in motion and reaction to quell the sudden lurch of his stomach that's got nothing to do with the fact that he's on his third beer in what is probably less than an hour. "Do I look like a napkin to you?"

On purpose, naturally. Danny didn't miss that little shift towards the hip of Steve's cargoes, so now he's just doing it to piss Danny off. So, business as usual, then, with the added bonus of a willing audience to grin every time Steve does something ridiculous, and for a second, all he wants is to warn her off, for her own sake and not his, because Steve is a nightmare, honestly, behind stupid goofy smiles that shine across the room like the sun rose early, behind dark blue eyes that crinkle when he's pleased, like now.

Even when Danny can hear the disinterest in his voice that's she's either ignoring or not getting, pressing her question while Steve slides around the table, eying shots

"Believe me," he says, "it's better not to know. Sometimes I think it's just a bad dream, myself."

A dirty lie. They've done too much good, taken out too many bad guys, saved too many people for him to think that's true, and that's not even counting the ways in which Five-0's become his family, the little, sometimes fragile, always fiercely loyal one he can depend on for anything, anytime, anywhere.

Even if his partner is systematically driving him crazy, tonight.

She shrugs, leans to take a shot, black hair falling over one shoulder in glossy waves. "Fair enough," she says, and the back of Danny;s neck prickles at the tilting smile she shoots at Steve. "Can't say a girl doesn't appreciate a little mystery."

[thebesteverseen]

He snorted into a laugh at the table, as Danny ranted in reaction. When there's no smallest bit of regret for having a reason to rub his hand on Danny's shirt. To watch the disbelief and disgust color his face, without one tiny bit of surprise. When it easy to just smile too much, and watch how his new opponent even chooses to view the table. Like it's mental chess match as much as pool.

His shoulders looser than in the while, when he's reaching up to rub at his neck while listening to Danny disdain the whole thing

Steve flicked a highly pointed, amused and highly disbelieving look at him, before he was tipping forward, leaning on the edge of the table, hands wrapping against bumper edges, without touching balls, leaning across a good bit of the table, and commenting back to Lani. Which might as well be like he's saying it directly to Danny, right?

They were often following and weaving into and out of each other's conversations,"Don't listen to him. That's all lies. He loves it."

Yeah, okay. So he can't really miss the way she's not focusing on her shot even a bit as he's demanding her attention with his half-lowered mock-secretive phrasing, but he still does glance at Danny twice while referencing him. When he can't help it. The challenging quirk of his eyebrows. Deny him. Tell him he's wrong. He'll still be right. Especially when Danny is fighting to keep this life, job, maybe even this.

Besides he'll win either way still. Even if Danny rolls into a rant about it over this suddenly.

Probably this game, without too much effort, when the short is distracted and goes off the wrong direction.

[haole_cop]

"Incorrect."

It's like a hook. Snagging around his sternum, jerking him towards Steve, helpless as a bug caught in a porchlight. When it's all shining off of Steve like sunshine glimmering off water, and he just can't help it, can't stop it, the way it pools miserably in his stomach, ties itself in some stupidly convoluted knot that would earn a Boy Scout a badge. All of it, like a searchlight. Making it impossible to look away. Channeling the attention of the room, enough that Danny can feel it, like a changing current, when a few more people start looking their way.

He can't even fault Lani for screwing up her shot, when Steve's smiling that stupid smirk at her, eyes sparkling like he's got some great joke, like he wants her to pick up on this tease and rag on him about it, but she just blinks, looking a little swamped, while Danny's chest aches like someone's got a half-ton weight on it.

Love it? He hates it. Like he hates everything right now. The bar, the warm, dim lighting. Lani, shaking her hair back. And Steve. Most of all. Hating that stupid face, the joke, the way Steve glances at him, so amused with himself, like getting up under Danny's skin is the best possible thing he could be doing in this moment, while simultaneously charming and confusing the hell out of some poor local girl who has no idea what kind of mess she's walked into. Would look at the wreckage of the last month, and be speechless.

So, no, Steve, he doesn't love it. Like he doesn't love the way he is compelled to keep pushing into the conversation, before she can respond, before Steve asks or tells her anything else.

"That is an entirely erroneous assessment to make, see, this is why you need an actual detective," with a gesture to his own chest, more for the point than for Lani's benefit, but whatever, two birds, one stone, it works. "Around, because you make these statements -- pathetically untrue, by the way, what is there to like? You steal my car, we get shot at on a regular basis, and every now and again someone gets poisoned, kidnapped, or hijacked, just for kicks."

Already waving it off in Lani's direction. "No, I'm kidding, it's all very boring, really. Aside from the near-death experiences, those really have a way of keeping you on your toes."

[thebesteverseen]

"You see what I have to put up with all day?" He's pointing at Danny, hand nearly crossing his chest, pointing toward Danny, with fingers arrange almost like a gun, that drop almost as fact as he's snorting. Skirting to the bottom of the table, and calling another short. Pausing, calling two. In completely separate pockets, half the table apart.

Leaning down, focusing, only to look up again, right before it might have connected. Just to shake his head, catching Danny's eye, when his mouth forms the word erroneously more than him actually saying it. When, even though he looks more distracted than he's been all night, stopping mid shot, he slips right back down, without resizing, calculating for the smaller cue and hits it with barely a second's reset.

Smiling smug as it hits a bumper, knocking the first ball down along that bumper a corner pocket, even as the cue heads for another bumper, before slamming another ball, sending it rolling toward a side pocket. Rolling in slower than the first, but still going in just as true.

When Lani watching it with the same awe that keeps coming and going, a little out of breath the way her small chuckle rattles out.

"You sure you need that whole half hour? I'm beginning to think you, all warmed up, might be something truly-" Except the way she says it, the smile the comes with it, says nothing about backing down at all, with that small pause in there on purpose. "-terrifying."

[haole_cop]

"Shut up," he says, automatically, mouth running on autopilot while the rest of his body goes into mild shock at the glance Steve gives him.

Unfair. Stupid, stupid -- this is ridiculous, why is he even still here? Why stick around and watch Steve light up under the attention of some random stranger?

Why pretend to himself he even has the ability to pull away, huh? So who's the idiot, now? "What you put up with? I could do a rundown for you, of the stresses you have added to my life, but I think we'd run over closing time before I even got to the halfway point."

Easily. Particularly tonight, when he can think of a good ten, twelve, twenty, hundred other things. Like the way Lani, far from getting annoyed that her ass is being handed to her, smiles like this was her plan all along. Like the way his knuckles, when he looks down at them, are white against the brown glass of his beer bottle, hand doing its best to crush the thing. Like that pause she takes, head tipping slightly to the side, filling the air with promises that make Danny want to swat at them like mosquitoes, while it feels like he's breathing lead.

And there are so many things he could say. He doesn't even disagree. But "You have no idea," half grumbled into his beer bottle is the best he can do, feeling sick and annoyed and wishing they would at least put the Series on, or something, so he'd have something to watch other than...this. Flirtation. Whatever it is. Something like a bucket of cold water he can stick his head into, before it, like his bottle, threatens to just shatter.

[thebesteverseen]

Danny's ranting to a ramble he can't make out entirely over another set of words, just the low grumble.

It's wrong that even when he wants to hear it -- knows he's going to hear it whenever it is they get out of this place -- that it contorts across him so fast, burning through everything else. When he's grinning in-spite, and because of the malingering, warm water sloshing around the inside of his chest, and only slightly wanting to step closer. To be able to hear his words, smack them back with his own.

Not without looking like he's ignoring one for the other one thrown at him, when he idly considers choosing the opposite side of the table for more than one strategic reason, even if it cost him a shot. But he doesn't want it to. He doesn't really want to play below his game, or to drag this game out any longer than it has to go being a fair game. Especially when it easier. Slipping through like air, like old hat. When the game matters about as much as it doesn't matter.

But the words that she's saying, as clear cut and pointed as they can be, tug up at a wall of unmoved impatience. Not with her so much as this situation. He's in a good mood, all things considered. Which feels so rare, and easily shatter-able. He simply knows it could be better. Just not here. Not with this conversation. When he's angling for his shot, all sleek, smooth lines, unruffled half smile, and what he says, after he's calls it, is both.

"I'm okay," goldenly, easy dismissive. Like he isn't wiping the floor with her, or it wasn't a true enough compliment to be received as one, while another ball slides in without a hitch. "There were guys I trained with who were so good that giving them the table for more than a single turn meant you might as well hang up your boots."

People worth crashing and burning on dozens of times for that one time. Or second. For the spark of determined respect earned and kept there bleeding into other place. People long gone and dispersed into wind after numerous tours, and terms. People he hardly had a reason to draw back up to memory.

But he's looking up, seeing that question coming before it gets there, and stamps it off, barely breaking from his earlier words, and rolling it straight into a question, when he's barely looking up, at least as directly inquiring as a suspect might get, leaning into the table calling the last shot of of his eight. "What about you? What do you do with your days?"

Claiming that one, while talking, with relative ease, and turning his eyes toward the end shot. Calling it for a long shot.

"I'm a legal secretary," Lani said, shifting gears, determined beyond the shot of almost confused frustration, but seeming quite ready to talk about herself, given the opportunity. Still smiling, as she leaned on the table with hand and shifted her cue stick back and forth with the other. "About two years now. Definitely easier in the second year. Which is what most people say about jobs, right?"

Or not. When the cue ball hits it half an inch from where he needed it to, sending the eight ball sailing straight into the guard and hard back out into the rest of the table and most of the solid balls still scattered there.

[haole_cop]

"Is it?"

He kind of feels like he's just treading water, here, as waves wash over his head, one after another, and he's not sure whether he's more pissed off at Steve for dangling information in front of her like a carrot, or for leading her into further conversation, or just for allowing this to happen at all. "Imagine what that would be like, getting easier as it goes."

Oh, sure. Some parts do. There are some things that only come with time and experience: the ability to sniff out a lie, trust in your own instincts, interrogation techniques. It's a process, and you learn on the job as much or more than in the Academy.

But easier? No. It never gets easier. His ability to deal with it, maybe, improves, but there's still nothing that hits like having to inform the next of kin, nothing that prepares you for the shock of losing a friend or colleague to the vagaries of criminal violence. Years of working homicide in Jersey, two more in Five-0, and some things hit just as hard as they always have.

Not that he particularly wants to get into a discussion of their jobs with this girl, doing her best to keep Steve's attention on her. It's in the pose; the way she leans on her cue, props a hand on her hip, all long legs and dark eyes and flashing smile.

Not that any of that is what makes Steve miss his shot.

Right?

"Lawyers," he says, just to get back in the game, aware that he's scrambling, a little, jumping in where he's not wanted, but he can't. Not. Has this thing, shoving at the inside of his chest, pushing him in, dragging him around like the comically oversized canes used to tug vaudeville performers off a stage. "They're the worst. I can't imagine working for one. No wonder you're out here; they have the tendency to make me want to drink, too."

Especially right now, when he feels like he's bleeding both money and actual blood, both of which are attracting sharks of a less literal sort than the one they ran into out on the water, a thought which simultaneously does nothing to improve his mood and makes him want to check his phone, just in case someone -- Rachel, her lawyer, his lawyer -- called.

Because that would be just about the cherry on top of the sundae of misery that this evening is turning into.

[thebesteverseen]

Lani's giving Danny a wearing look, not quite reaching clear enough to a glare. Which Steve's catching, because he's looking over to as Danny's talking about lawyers with the still, sharp, edge creeping into his voice, and he gets it. Everything thing the single title drags up for him. As well as the fact she doesn't get Danny can complain about nearly anything that comes out of anyone's mouth, even when smiling. It's just him.

The same with the topics it unhelpfully pokes, making him tense-up more and fire off words like her profession offends.

"It's not that bad," Lani said, to Danny. The reproach slipping out more in her voice than the clarity of her face. Though Steve shifted, clearing his throat, drumming fingers on the side rail, maybe a little like he was bored or disinterested in watching where it might go, anything else she might say, "Your shot."

She's allowed to get on Danny's nerves. She's not allowed to start stirring up the water with Grace and the Edwards. There's only so much hell Danny needs to get shoved through, and someone else was not going to blunder into that even frowning at his reactions they had no idea what were based on.

He gives her a generic enough sort of smile, not missing the shift where she almost looks back to Danny, considers better of it, flips her hair instead and changes where she's standing while calling a shot that's rather well set up since the eight break. Which she does get, while Steve is not quite looking directly over at Danny. The second shot bombs though when she hits it too hard and sends it drunkenly seesawing the wrong way.

But she just shrugs with a raise of her hand, like it's silly and funny somehow.

Leaving it back in Steve's corner with a shot that actually isn't all that complicated for the eight. He calls for across the table almost entirely, in a straight line, not too far off the bumper. Just needing to knock one side of the ball and half it fall in, enough force but not too much, so it'll go without scratching behind it. Pull back, compensate for almost foot less stick than he licks, and let it roll.

Which, of course, sinks it in one, letting something between his shoulders shift and rearrange itself a little loser. Just the smallest notch. Even when Lani sounds self-satisfied pleased, like someone she won the game. "See. Terrifying. Another match? Or did you--?" This question does come with looking from Steve back to Danny.

Which is rather mirrored and even when Steve is looking at Danny from behind her, looking up from over the pool stick as he'd moved to hit the solids toward pockets. Something curious but still there, when the question is there even if his eyebrows don't raise. Because really whatever Danny wanted at this point, he'd probably be down for. Wherein probably was a very loose interpretation of a very obvious point.

He wouldn't beat off the option to be very far from this table. But, you know, if Danny wanted to stay and stake his side, he could.

[haole_cop]

She doesn't like him.

Fair enough. The feeling's mutual, and he's happy to get into a discussion of the blood-sucking, bottom-feeding, emotional vampires calling themselves lawyers that he's know. Hell, he can't even stand his.

He'd be fine with that, vent a little of the aggression that's leaking into the air between them, when it's clear she thinks he should clear out so there aren't any more interruptions, but Steve steps in, and she thinks better of it, ends up just shaking her head and tossing back her hair and hitting her first decent shot of the night. It's not enough to save her, and Steve makes short work of that last shot, leaving Danny buzzing and confused and exasperated with the ghost of the glance Steve shot at him, like...what? He thinks Danny's about to lose his head at some annoying paralegal, just for being a little snippy about her job?

Please. She hasn't backed off so far, and she doesn't look like she's about to, either, even when she pauses, and glances at Danny, midway through her offer of another game.

He is, he knows, supposed to wave her off and tell her to go for it. Right? Or, maybe, agree to take the game, but let her stick around so she can concentrate on Steve and compliment him on winning (probably) again.

While his eyes slide over her shoulder, and meet Steve's, with the faint question in them, and, just for now, just for this second, it's like none of tonight happened, and they're across from each other in the war room; counting down outside a suspect's house; out on the lanai and surrounded by silence. Times when they don't actually need to ask questions, or can't, because there's no time or ability for words.

...It doesn't change anything, but at least it's Steve asking, and not her. "You know, I, uh, actually think I'm pretty done for the night." His smile draws tight and wry, and he tips his half-done beer bottle from side to side, free thumb jerking over his shoulder towards the door, and tries not to let his shoulders crack from the strain as she smiles, unable to hide it even when she's half-assing some pasted-on disappointment.

"Too bad," she says, but she's already turning to Steve, smile turned up to eleven, wattage threatening the lighting in the place. "Guess it's just you and me, then."

[thebesteverseen]

He wonders what it is he's hoping will come out of Danny's mouth, when the man hold's his gaze for a few beats before drawing up that tight smile. When he knows some of what's going on up there, but not all of it, and the muscles in the top of his stomach tense, the way they do when he's waiting for an explosion to sound. Because he's giving Danny the free reign to shove this whole thing even higher.

Except he sidesteps, sighting a decision to get out, and Steve feels himself breathe out for the first time in at least an hour. Letting him holding the air in the center as he starts shooting the pieces left on the table in a rather rapid succession trying not to part and parcel that way he'd looked back. When the warmth in his center is more like hot burning embers and less like a fire threatening to burst free.

Especiall when Danny face looks a little pained, and that's a dual edged knife and flood of warmth in his center. Because it looks like Danny thinks he gets to bow out gracefully somehow. Like they didn't come in one car, and wouldn't be leaving that way. The same way. With Danny ranting at the windshield about the newest thing to slice his skin open and pour a gallon of salt in.

When Lani's turning back to him triumphant, and he's wondering if she realizes she really hasn't asked him if he's staying.

Either time. That the assumption there was that, of course Steve would. When he probably shouldn't find a little pressing amusement in the very plain way he says, after the crack of the three, clearing the last ball from the whole table. "Actually that it's for me, too."

"Really?" There's such a surprised, up tilted, flash to a pout to that, as Lani leaned on her cue looking shocked by crestfallen.

[haole_cop]

She doesn't give him the chance to say anything else, which is probably good, because he's really not sure he could manage grinding out you kids have fun with even a passable degree of believability, and he's already considering the bleak outlook of a night alone in his shithole apartment, with no Steve and no Grace. Driving his own car, alone, with the mental image of Lani sidling a little closer to Steve with every shot she takes eat away at the base of his skull, drops of acid burning a hole right through his chest.

Not the way he'd hoped for the evening to go, but, hey, Steve looks a hell of a lot more cheerful now, and that was the point, even if this is so far from -- anything. Everything. He'd just wanted to get some time out of the house. Away from memories, and the heavy weight of them Steve's been carrying around, dragging like Marley's chains. Out, to a bar, for once, where's the harm in that?

Well, here it is, and he should have known better, but he didn't, and now he's going to leave alone, and Steve is going to finish up this game and then go too.










Wait, what?



Lani's surprise has nothing on Danny's. He feels like the floor's disintegrated beneath his shoes, and Steve, that asshole, is just shrugging it all off: her bemusement, Danny's confusion. Like it was a foregone conclusion. "Good timing," is all he says, blank and feeling it, wondering just what the hell is happening, here.