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"Now it's my crime scene."

Those could have been, should have been, the last words he heard from McGarrett, and in a kinder world, they might have been, but the world hates Danny Williams, and he's not exactly feeling all that generous towards it, himself, so he's honestly not even a little surprised when the authoritative rap on his door comes attached to a too-tall, too-broad, too-aggressive Navy SEAL with revenge on the mind and Daddy issues from here back to the boardwalks of Wildwood.

He hates him.

Because of this joker, he's home in the middle of the day, instead of at work, work, he might point out, where he's attempting to catch the guy who did this to McGarrett, Sr., which is normally what the child of a murder victim wants, right? They want the cops to do their damn job and haul the dirtbag in for justice.

They don't storm in and take over like it's their goddamn platoon out in fucking Afghanistan.

Except McGarrett, okay, he doesn't seem to have gotten the memo. There's a reason officers don't get involved if the deceased was a family member, and this is exactly why: it makes people angry, irrational.

(He hopes to hell this is McGarrett being irrational.)

It's too close, too personal -- and it's also not his case anymore, so he's got no idea why McGarrett, shirt sticking to his skin from the soaking rain that just hit, because it rains every goddamn day here, what a fucking miracle, Hallelujah, is standing on his doorstep, because it isn't that.

(And it's not that either, he refuses, it's not happening, and there's no possible way this whackjob noticed. It could be he doesn't even have a timer, or got his blown off while single-handedly stopping an insurrection with a couple of grenades and a can-do attidtude.)

So he just stands and waits, with one hand still on the doorknob, ready to slam it shut just as soon as possible.

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Is how to be an obnoxious dick like, Navy SEAL 101? He tosses a glance at the passenger seat, reaches out to take the paper (flash of red light on his wrist, he doesn't look, won't, refuses) and look it over. Nothing new, then. Doran's probably holed up in the same bad little neighborhood well outside the contained sprawl of the city, the shack town they've traced him to before.

If he's not, there are a few other places to try, but Danny shoves the paper back over towards the file Steve's holding without checking to see if Steve's paying attention, takes a hard right towards the highway, out towards where traffic will fall away and the Mustang can eat up miles like inches. Engine opening up, his foot heavy on the gas, mind half on the road and half on the case, with a little niggling corner trying to get him to look at his wrist, to come to terms with the fact that those numbers aren't ever going to move again.

And it's all McGarrett's fault.

(Or Rachel's, for moving them here to begin with, but he already blames her for everything else, just for the sake of variety, he ought to give her a pass on this.)

Steve stared out the front windshield, again, bungling the stillness with how oddly familiar everything was.

Even in not being able to place it all, even in the idea he might not have seen it all even when he was young. There's an air of familiarity to all of it. The way people tie their bathing suit skirts. The cant of their heads when they talk. The loose hold of shoulders and that every present smiling. Even the way the wind blows through the trees as the car is flying past them. It's all eerily, frozen fingertips trailing up his spine, stepped on his grave, familiar.

Or his fathers'. The only thing that could get him out here in the last decade, more dedicated to his work than anything else. Not that either of them had made any bones about needing or wanting that to be anything other than what it had been since he was a kid. But that voice, and all its last words, stuck, like an ear worm dug in, Hey, Champ and Listen to me, Champ. Apologizing for lying to him, about what, Steve still didn't know. Saying that he loved him. When those words were more foreign than any foreign language.

Which was a fitting time for the car to suddenly explode in the small sounds of a horror movie, making Steve look toward that side again. Bypassing the silent radio and looking at Danny looking at his phone, facial features tightened as he hit a button and threw the phone back in the center console. Not that the man was looking for pointers, but Steve always found horror movies the perfect way, back when, to a girl into your lap, more than to be a warning against a person.

Which could be only one person. Given Danny Williams easily broke down on a logic wall. He had had less than a dozen connections here, even for his half a year, but his relationship with his captain, partner and work was effective, even if antagonistic, which only left one person for it to be.

Steve looked back toward the window as Danny did. "Take it your marriage didn't end so well."

His first reaction, unsurprisingly, is a wave of anger.

What is surprising is how hard, sudden, and vicious it is: leaves him feeling a sick twist in his stomach while his hands grip the steering wheel hard enough to whiten knuckles, because he suddenly just wants to haul off and punch Steve McGarrett and his fucking questions and his uncaring theft of Danny's life right in the face.

He wants to yell at Rachel for calling him now, during this, this worst day of his life, for forcing him to come here, for leaving him, for saying she loved him when they both knew it couldn't ever really be true. Not as true as it should have been. He wants to hate her, with a sudden hollowing out of his chest and gut, and he wants to hate McGarrett, too, and that disinterested question.

"No." It's tight, exhaled, relcutant. It didn't end well. It ripped him apart, limb from limb, snacked on his heart and soul and spent long months slowly tearing strips of flesh away from him until he was left this raw, bleeding mess. "She was, quite literally, not the one."

Made all the more obvious by his unbelievably offbase timer, the one that he can't help glancing at now, with a glare. It's responsible for all this, and he's got no one but himself to hold accountable.

So he glares at the timer, the road, Hawaii all spread out around them, while the Mustang accelerates angry down the clear road.

"Which would've been bad enough, but then my ex remarried and dragged my daughter to this pineapple-infested hellhole."

He's expecting all of the rote and repetition answer that most divorcees had, even among the armed forces, even among his own men, but he's not expecting the flippant anger at Hawaii. It was Hawaii. No one hated Hawaii. A good ninety percent of the world dreamed of going there -- while other people, who Steve was not pointing fingers at, or claiming he knew, especially as it existed at him in disturbingly technicolor familiarity, remembered it as a place they'd never get back to.

Especially when they were already there, surrounded with it and its technicolor familiarity.

"You don't like the beach?" The question was so much easier than the hazy thought. Like it was impossible.

Danny needing to be ornery about everything that might exist within a couple miles of him. Or an entire island now.

"I don't like the beach."

Doesn't even allow the thought of used to in his head. Just doesn't like it. Not the sand, not the sun, not the sticky sunscreen that gets sand all over him, not the salt water, not the erosion and storms and flocks of tourists it brings.

And he doesn't exactly feel like discussing it much, either.

"Who doesn't like the beach?"

That one goes fast and crazy. Because that's not even just Hawaii. That's everywhere.

He couldn't even think of more than a handful of places he'd ended up on R&R with Cath that didn't have one.

Everyone in the world loved a good beach. Ocean rolling out. Close as natives got to being lost in the endless blue.

Me.

Like he just said, but McGarrett seems to require some kind of response, just like everyone does when they first hear that Danny doesn't like beaches. "I like cities."

Shrugged, glanced over. The guy's looking at him now, instead of the road, and Danny's not sure he likes it, wishes that attention was focused somewhere else. He looks back at the road. "You know, skyscrapers."

Sidewalks. Little bodegas. Weather that wasn't either five-alarm sunshine pouring over everything or rain threatening to flood the world.

He's getting on a roll now, thinking of Newark, Jersey City, Manhattan. "No tsunamis, no jellyfish..."

God. Did this guy not have excuses pouring out his ass for anything? It was like listening to a list of what was better and therefore only. Steve liked cities the globe across. He, also, liked the remote nowhere of a mission, too. Didn't mean he was bent enough to think the beach was a horrible place just because it was connected to horrible things, people or events.

That was all crap. If Steve went that route he wouldn't have loved beaches after fifteen. Or The Navy.

Steve hedged that next one, accusatively unimpressed, because two could play this game.

He could narrow down the why. "Tell me you can swim."

That question comes out of nowhere. "Can I swim?"

How does he get there from not liking the beach?

It's amusing how much annoyed derision and denial he can shove into three words, isn't?

It gets at something under Steve's cool, making him need to poke it harder.

The way he would with any of his men, "You don't know how to swim."

"I don't --"

What? It's so -- it's not even -- this guy is so far beyond obnoxious it's giving Danny a headache. "I swim."

Look, he might hate swimming. Okay? He might hate the water and avoid it whenever possible, but this is just offensive, the idea that he can't do something, and that's why he doesn't like it. Like McGarrett's just decided his answer is the right one, one that fits into the box he's decided to put Danny in, and nothing Danny says will change his mind.

He hates being ignored, stomps all over that easy lack of curiosity. "I swim for survival, not for fun."

"Alright." Steve says the one word.

Pushing as much bland, blank, leading disbelieve as one can there.

But then the horror music starts again, leaving Steve to glance down, and back out.

Twice might actually mean something. Or it might mean they ignore it for the next five.

Twice, one right after the other, and that might mean she actually wants to talk to him, instead of leaving him a clipped, terse message. He could let it ring, but the alternative is continuing to fume at Steve for his assumptions, so he throws himself in front of the lesser of two evils, picks up the phone, shoves it to his ear. "Yes, dear."

Exhaled and already angling for a fight, until "Hi Danno," comes tinny down the line, and everything changes.

Everything. The world shifts. Anger evaporates like it was never even there, and he's grinning before he realizes it, while his heart makes a painful little sidelong skip. "Hey, Monkey."

She sounds so good. Cheerful and sweet and bright and everything that's good in the world, and it's like all the shit in his head and chest just up and moves out, packs up and leaves, without warning or hesitation. Not Rachel. Just his baby girl, sounding questioning about why he answered the phone like he did. "No, I thought you were your mom."

Steve can't even stop the sudden turn.

Because while he hadn't really been paying attention to the two word salute to the ex-wife, the way you Don't Pay Attention to a lot of things in barracks, bunks, tents, and camps, where you have no choice but to be living right in every other man's boots, but you still wanted to give them their privacy. That wasn't.

After those two words, Danny William's voice hit a brand new register. High, and warm. This vibrating laugh changing that third word almost into two or three, and making Steve's vision swerve from not really looking out the windows to looking over at Danny. Up, down, not quite toward getting into his business. But that was. That was really happening.

"I'm so glad that everyone liked Mr. Hoppy."

Grace is chattering in his ear, his favorite sound, and a movement out of the corner of his eye only warrants a glance at the guy in the passenger seat, and nothing else. His focus is taken, all on her and her childish, innocent delight. He can't even be pissed about the rabbit, she's so cheery and triumphant.

It'll hurt later, he knows, but not now. Right now, he's bulletproof, and when Grace says how excited she is to see him later, he could pretty much just fly. "I'm excited too, baby. We're gonna have so much fun this weekend."

They always do. It's the one good thing that came of his marriage, this little girl, and the only good thing in his life. He'd move to Hawaii all over again, just for this. He'd move to China. He'd go anywhere, just to be able to see her.

And it's starting to slip away again; this is just a short call, he knows, one of the daily ones as she's coming home from school, and she's already saying goodbye in his ear. "Hey. Danno loves you."

He'll remind her every chance he gets, waits to hear love you, too, Danno, before he takes the phone away from his ear again and presses the button, feeling full and empty at the same time, a familiar ache spreading through his chest.

He's not supposed to be paying attention. He knows he's not. None of this is important to the case.

It's not like you can avoid hearing in a car, or any of the other places in his life. But you aren't really supposed to be focused on it. But he is. Paying attention. Listening to him. His words, as much as that sliding shift in his voice. Even if Steve's looking out the front, and not glancing back. At Danny, whose voice if anything just keeps sounding happier and incredibly more sincere. More sincere in each sentence than the man has seemed in the whole time Steve's seen him.

Because there's sincere at your work, and then there is sincere. It just keeps going on. Danny says word after word, and all that reticent, rebellious attacking is gone. There's not even a hint of it hiding in there somewhere. His hand and his head and everything in the world is focused in on that spot of his phone. Steve is almost sure the world ended and the man might be somewhere near smiling if he just turned his head and got a look at the guys face.

The face of the man who looks and sounds not like the Detective Williams he's seen so far.

But he doesn't turn, and doesn't look, just leans his back and asks. "Who's Danno?"

Edited 2014-01-18 19:06 (UTC)

"Don't."

Immediate, but different, too. It's no snapped, or sarcastic, and there's nothing to follow it up with, except: "Just, don't."

It's not for this guy to be part of. He doesn't get to touch this. No one gets to touch this. It's all he's got. The only thing he loves. It's not a fight, he's not starting anything. Just.

This is his. His and Gracie's. No one else needs to be part of it.

It's quiet. It's not that high lilt from seconds ago, and it's not that acid biting scorn from before it. Firm, but quiet. That one word that comes from the other side of the car and get his attention. Makes him prompt with a sound like a question. Because even that response doesn't fit with earlier. Not when all the exaggerated movements and angry faces. But then it's just those two words.

Two. Worn down and pulling back away, in a way Steve almost recognizes too well. The way men are after they get back from leave. A thing he doesn't have to question, even when it's never been one of his problems. Even if it's something he doesn't entirely know if he wants to let go without some kind of better idea about it. This secret compartment Danny Williams keeps the good in himself in called Danno.

"Okay," is easy. Shaking his head. It's not related to Doran, or His Dad, or Hesse. He doesn't have to. Even if he wants to.

"Thank you."

See. He can be reasonable. He can be polite. He's not always yelling, angry, spoiling for a fight. He could be, but not right now, when all he feels is the usual deflation, letdown, emptiness and that lonely ache wrestling to be the thing that takes him down.

It's got nothing to do with the numbers on his wrist, okay, it's just...it's what it is.

"--Danno," rolls off, half like it might have been right after 'Okay,' and half like a puffed murmured repetition.

A moniker he doesn't know quite what to do with. A flag sticking out of a box that definitely isn't a call sign. Not like Smooth Dog or Rawhide or Killer or Red Wolf. It's some derivation of Danny, and even though he's pretty sure that man would hate the comment, it's got a Hawaiian ring to it. It would fit in well with a lot of the names he's sure are still all over this island. But Steve doesn't even need to lay bets to be sure very few people know it. That Danny wished he didn't.

It doesn't fit, but Steve not anywhere new at the game of carrying things that didn't fit in the slightest.

Steve watched the road, instead. They watched the road, and it wound ahead of and behind of them, the car eating it like it was born to. Quiet in the car in a way it hadn't been anywhere between them. But silence was easy enough to manage. Eyes scanning cars, unable to stop looking for Victor in every face that passed them. Especially the closer they got to Doran's place.

Where there was little likelihood he would be, but Steve would rip out the seams of the world for one good lead.

He's happy to drive in silence.

Not always, mind. He doesn't always like the quiet and hates being left alone with his thoughts, but the alternative is to let Steve McGarrett see more of him than he particularly wants to let show. He doesn't give a damn about his timer, and how he knows what he should be doing, how he should be trying to get to know the guy, open him up, see what it is about him that made Danny's numbers slip away to nothing when they pulled their guns on each other, but he doesn't.

Can't. Won't.

Not right now. Rachel wasn't that long ago, and he hasn't dated since, and he's a wreck, okay, and, and, he's not interested. All he wants to do is finish this job, find Doran, find Hesse, solve the case, dispense justice. That's it.

The road unspools in front of the Mustang, leading them further from the city, along a beach, where houses and apartments slowly turn into shacks, tents. Beach bums and homeless, surf camps, makeshift hostels: they're all out here, where no one seems to give a damn about living anywhere more complicated than a parked double-wide or an aluminum shed.

No sooner does he roll up and park than McGarrett, all wiry energy and focus, is up, seatbelt off, door opening, while Danny leans towards him, frowning hard. "Hey, hey. Hey!"

The last one at least gets the guy's attention; he leans back in. "This guy Doran's a shooter," Danny reminds him. "We shouldn't be doing this without backup."

It looks like he remembers. Or more, he knows, it looks like some faded whisp of what he remembers tossed together in a blender with dozens of other things just like it he's seen in dozens of other places he'll never talk about and never forget. Poverty and squalor, and people choosing the life they lead and the places they end. Not always true in third world countries, where these houses could be palaces in comparison to what they had, but it was here. It was with people like Doran.

He's so ready to go, before the mustang is even drawing to a slow. The temptation running like an electric pulse under his skin, high pitched and faster the closer they get. When he's sliding the file between the center console and his chair. Pushing everything else out. Everything. Danno, and HPD, and the funeral. Clear view of the target. Of the man he needs and what he needs to get from him. It's all he's really thinking when that niggling voice invades again.

And there's that rising tone again, even for short, sharp words asking for attention. Making Steve lean back in. In case Danny has more he wants to share on Doran. Something he had mentioned earlier when he was busy being made of hurt feelings over his case and his employment location. And even though Steve can note that he's choosing soft, calmer points in that explanation, the holding him up is only making Steve want to get there even faster.

Especially for something that pointless. Making Steve haul off easy words, "You are the backup."

Which is as honest, as it is entirely trivial a point. It's been a good while since he's needed or considered back-up in a open and shut situation that is this low key, and it's almost hilarious that Danny thinks he's needs anyone to back him up at all for this kind of thing. He ate this kind of thing for breakfast on the way to real danger. At the most, what? The guy has a small posse of armed thugs? Still something Steve barely needed more than one or two other SEALs for.

But those options weren't available here. Only Danny was. So Steve would manage to carry it all. Because he had to. Because the mission needed it, and he didn't blink or balk at parameters. They just told him what to expect and what to factor in. He didn't wait. Slamming the car door, to enunciate his point, and the one where Danny needed to get out already. Then, headed through the rough made houses, checking door numbers, headed toward the right one. Straight and fast.

"I'm the backup."

Said to himself, in the brief quiet of the car. It's not disbelief. On the contrary, it's the only goddamn thing that could possibly happen, right, because the world hates Danny, and this is exactly why he hates the world right back.

And. "I hate him. I hate him so much."

It's honestly perfect, it really is, this culmination of everything that has ever gone wrong in his life, with Rachel, with the divorce, with Hawaii. Of course he's been handed this, on a platter, just to make sure his face really gets rubbed in it, this mud pit he can't seem to crawl out of, that he keeps getting kicked back into.

There's nothing for it; he's got to go after him, this idiot who's just headed straight to Doran's address without looking back or around or calling HPD to let them know they got there, so Danny does, gets out of the car and makes a quick call to dispatch, shoving his phone in his pocket by the time they get there.

(He's never going to depend on a lucky, unrelated and unrequested siren again.)

"Hey," he says, steps quick, catching up to Steve's longer, ground-eating ones. "Hey, slow down, huh?"

Steve does look back over his shoulder, but slow isn't in his vocabulary. Not now that they're on the ground and he's even factored out which house it is, and the house happens to be less than forty feet away. All he has is the go, go, go, go in his head. Readiness. Focus. The answers he wants are inside those walls, behind that door, and he's going to do whatever it takes, under whoever's heading he has to use today, to get them.

For Hesse. But even more, now, for his Dad.

He isn't expecting exactly the several conjunctive crashes that sound as he's taking the first few steps. Flattening against the wall, with a hand waving back to Danny, downward to wait, stand down, pause back, as a woman yells, "You ruined my life!" Followed by a thick, argumentative male voice, which Steve was banking on being Doran. Doran or a flunkie of Doran's he could use to get to Doran.

Steve pulled out his gun, slipping the safety off, as the yelling continued, and gave a small wave to send Danny across.

He pauses, waits. Slips his piece from the holster at his hip, and jogs up the stairs, crouched, on point.

The one good thing about this is he has no time to think, only to react. There's his opinion, and then there's his training, and experience, and no matter what Navy SEAL Steve McGarrett might think, he's no slob when it comes to taking out bad guys.

The ruckus from inside is reaching a fever pitch as he's getting to the far side of the door, listening to the woman yell about someone being full of crap, right before the door swings open, and she comes striding out, a skinny dishwater blonde in a bronze bikini top and red hot pants. He's already moving, because she looks to the stairs to storm down them and her gasp of surprise at seeing Steve there is smothered into a shocked noise against his hand. He's got his palm over her mouth to shush her, wraps an arm around her waist to drag her backwards, but it's too late.

Footsteps head towards the door, the man inside yelling for her to get your ass back in here! and then pausing in a way Danny really doesn't like, right before the girl bites down, hard and sharp, on his hand. He lets her go, swearing, and she makes for the door --

And then there's a sudden explosion of sound and something ripping through his arm, leaving a firey trail of pain as the window in front of him explodes outward and he goes flying off the porch, to land with a crash on top of a parked car, out of breath and stunned.

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