haole_cop | When the clock hits zero (Reply)

In a universe where everyone is born with numbers on their wrists counting down to when they’ll meet their soulmate, send me 00:00:00 for my muses reaction to their numbers hitting zero when they meet yours.

The world hates him.

Danny has proof, conclusive proof. He has lists. He has file upon file of evidence, neatly bagged and alphabetized, and it all points to one grim conclusion:

The world hates him.

He's known it for a while now. It just happens to some people, you know, some people are just pinatas for everyone else to beat on, some people are the muddied and jagged unexpectedly stepped-in, sock-soaking puddles of the world. Some people are golden, and some people get punched in the face when they go to shake hands. It happens.

After a while, Danny started punching first, just to save time.

The worst of it is, he knows. Okay? You knew, said his mother, not without sympathy, when he called to tell her he and Rachel split up. He knew when her clock ticked down in the middle of their marriage that it was all over, knew it was never going to be him, that they'd made a mistake. He knew. He remembers staying up, listening to her quiet breathing, as her clock ticked down the hours. She swore it didn't matter.

He knew it did.

Of course it did. They were young and stubborn enough to scoff at the numbers, that there were years left to go for both of them, well past the day they met, well past the day they tried to run off and get married in Atlantic City, well past the day they actually got married, on a sweltering day in August. The numbers lie, they told each other. This is love, they said. This is all there is.

But it wasn't. Because the world hates him.

Exhibit A: his apartment. It is not the apartment of a man for whom things are going well, okay? His apartment building is the sort of complex police won't raid without backup. The apartment itself is a study in architectural misery. It's a cluttered, dingy shoebox of a room, for his cluttered and dingy shoebox of a soul.

And it's a fucking racket, okay, he is not a tenant, he is a serf. This place is one step above living in an alley in a rain-soaked cardboard box, but for the rent he pays, you'd think it'd be a three bedroom with an ocean view and marble counters. Okay? He pays by check but he's reasonably sure his landlord would accept blood drawn straight from his arm, or perhaps the arm itself. But he would be nice about it, because everyone is so oppressively nice here, with the sun and the surfing and that weird little hand wiggle and their brahs and breezy howzits, which isn't even a word, which leads him to --

Exhibit B: Hawaii.

He's aware, on a dim level, that most people like Hawaii. That people come from all over the world to vacation here, to look out at the water and frolic in the sand and waves, to eat the fresh fruit and buy pineapples for eight dollars a pop, because tourism is a racket here, too, just like gambling is in AC. He knows they think he's the crazy one for hating it, that in six months here he hasn't made any friends aside from Meka and has probably made more than a few enemies, all because he won't fawn over their stupid coral reefs and active volcanos.

It's all bitter to him. Nothing but bitter. All it does is make his apartment look smaller, dingier. All it does is make his work clothes uncomfortable, when they never were before.

He's not going to be beaten by a fucking island, but because he's not some hippie-surfer-flower child, he's viewed with deep suspicion wherever he goes.

He's starting to think he should get that haole cop put on his license plate, or monogrammed on his towels.

Assuming he can ever afford monogramming again.

Assuming he can ever afford towels again.

So, the world fucking hates Danny Williams, and Danny Williams fucking hates the world right back, and Danny Williams goes down swinging, if he goes down at all. He doesn't mind, doesn't care. There's one bright spot on this miserable spit of sand, and if she's not there, he's plenty happy to give exactly no fucks at all. He sometimes gets a pang of guilt for the thoughtful, pained look Meka sometimes gets when Danny's arguing not just with people but with Hawaii itself, but Meka doesn't get it. Hawaii has fucked up, just. Everything.

See, his numbers run out in Hawaii.

He figured it out sitting on a crappy motel bed in Jersey, hangover coating his tongue and thudding carpeted fists into his temples, while Matt snored on the pullout under the window. Rachel's numbers had run out, but his still had nearly a year to go, and they were going to go in Hawaii, which is perfect, right, which is nearly goddamn poetic, because everything else that's going wrong with his life will be in Hawaii, too.

(Part of him knows, rationally, that it's not actually Hawaii's fault that his numbers run out there. Rachel didn't leave him for Hawaii. Hawaii didn't end his marriage or make Peterson into fucking dick, a dirty cop, or kill Grace. But Hawaii can't hit back, aside from that one first fist embedding itself deep in his gut when he stepped out of the terminal into seriously brilliant fucking sunlight, the kind that sears all the way back through your head like a bullet, and hasn't dislodged since.)

So, his numbers run out in Hawaii, and, because the world hates him, they ran out today, because, okay, because.

Because Exhibit C: Steve Fucking McGarrett.

Fine. Danny can be reasonable, Danny can even be generous, so Danny can use his full goddamn title: Lieutenant Commander Steve Fucking McGarrett.

(He sees no reason why he should accept any possible other middle name).

Lieutenant Commander Steve Fucking McGarrett showed up where he had no goddamn right to be, but, fine, the world works that way for some people, those golden people, fawns all over them and lets them ignore yellow DO NOT CROSS tape, just gives them what they want while taking from Danny the following, in order: his crime scene, his temper, and the last ticking number on his wrist.

There's no doubting it. No mistaking it. He knew it would be today, knew it would be sometime mid-morning, after dropping Grace off at school, knew it would be during the course of his work, but he still stands in that dusty garage for a few seconds, staring at the dust void left behind by that goddamn tool box and wondering just what he'd done in a past life to make sure the world just keeps gunning for him, because McGarrett? McGarrett is not Danny's idea of a soulmate. He's obnoxious and arrogant, with a steel-edged glint in his eye that pings just on the wrong side of crazy. He stole Danny's crime scene.

And his number's up.

He hates Hawaii. He hates Hawaii, and he hates Rachel, and he hates the flawed justice system that allowed her to steal Grace away to this miserable tropical paradise, and he hates Governor Jameson for letting an asshole like that off the leash, and he hates Steve McGarrett most of all, almost as much as he hates the six static zeros on the inside of his wrist, taunting him with all the things he's messed up, that led him right here, to this dingy and dark garage, to this dingy and cluttered apartment, to this house with blood on the walls and this man with blood on his hands and it is enough, all right, it is well past the last straw and the breaking point. He's a nail the tire of the world rolls over, rusty and dangerous and almost entirely inconsequential, just sticking there, trying to do some damage when all that happens is he keeps getting flattened, slowly and irrevocably crushed.

And Steve McGarrett might as well be driving the whole thing.

So he hates it. He hates it all, because the alternative is to think maybe the world doesn't hate him at all, that maybe he's too small and insignificant a thing to be hated, because hate requires notice, and who notices a piece of gum stuck to the sole of their shoe?

Maybe the world doesn't hate him, but he hates it, the world and McGarrett and Hawaii and Rachel and most of all, he hates himself, right down to a furious molten ball of lead in his stomach, because he has six zeros.

He counted down. It happened. He has six zeros, and he hates himself, because he can't quiet that faintest, worst, of words. Hears it in the garage. In his car. Alone in his apartment, while he sits on his ass and has a beer in the middle of the day because his Captain is pissed that he lost the crime scene and because his number ran out and because why the hell not --

He hears it. And he can't stop it. That one, terrible, awful word.

Maybe.