haole_cop | 00:00:00

"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.

Whether it's actually JC or JZ never will really matter, when he's getting the full face of her shock and that indrawn gasp is like a riot of sound in the suddenly pin drop quiet of the area. And the inside. The inside that is quiet too long right after Danny jerks her back. Long enough it creeps up Steve's spine the wrong way, because whoever the guy was who had been running after her, yelling after not accepting her running away.

He goes dead silent, as does the house. It's only two extra seconds at most. But it's two seconds too many. One long enough for the girl to do something that has Danny grunting in pain, and a second for her to jerk free at hit the door yelling, "Cops!" before the whole front is exploding in a shower of glass and a rain of bullets. Sending the girl to the side and down, and blowing Danny out the window of the porch.

The way he can't even move once he's watching Danny's body vanish beneath the floor of the porch and hearing the solid slam of it hit something, even while the wall is still exploding above him. Glass, wood and bullets flying over him in a shower still. When he's calling out through the maelstrom of noise, the need to move now, when no one else would and that's why he should, warring with the very good possibility of a gunned down HPD officer in his first half hour of requisitioning. "DANNY?"

"Go, go, go, go!"

His arm is burning and his back hurts like hell; he's going to be bruised to here and beyond, but Doran is getting away, the asshole, and right now, Danny wouldn't mind a bit if Steve decided to shoot him, just to even things up.

He hears Steve run up the stairs and make his way into the house, knows he needs to get up, join the chase. He's the backup. There isn't any more, no one who'll be here soon enough to make a difference, and he needs to get up, but he can't catch his breath and his head is spinning.

Fine. He'll give himself three second, count of three, and then he'll get back in the game, go back up his psychopath of a partner, because no matter how much he hates the guy, he doesn't want him shot, unless Danny's the one doing the shooting.

It's a second, and then a deep breath in, a hup exhaled sharply out as he rolls off the car, hits the ground awkwardly, and pauses to listen for the sounds of the fight.

Thank God for small miracles. Literally.

He doesn't need more than the first word, before he's is going. On his feet and up at the screen door, gun at his eye level, taking in the fleeing shape of a person and the room empty aside from that. Maybe more than one today, too. Because that made his odds 100% more likely, as he was flinging the door open and slipping quickly through the house, keeping an eye on every open door and room, for moving shadows and other people.

The sound of more rapid-fire and breaking glass had him wanting to break into a run already, but it was foolish to go running into any large, shadowed space. It was like asking someone to kill you, just in the favor of your own idiocy. But the last room is as empty as the first, and then means he can sprint for the window, and get a good eyeful of outside, and too bright after dark, while he's launching himself out of the window without a pause.

Taking off running after the guy who is definitely Doran, dreadlocks and rastafarian clothes almost. Flatout following, even when the sound of traffic breaks in, with slamming metal and Makes Steve dig deeper, push himself faster, jumped up to slide across the back of a stopped car, just in time not to get slammed between another running into the first. But he can't stop to think about it. Can't stop to even look at the driver and see if they are alright.

That's what cops are for. Steve's gun is still trained on Doran, who somehow got his hands on a small woman and her car, using one to shield him from behind and the other to shield him from in front. Casualties, public casualties, were not something Steve was here for. Doran was jerking her around, and holding her close, yelling at him. "Put your gun down!"

"We don't have to do this, man!" No one had to die. Steve didn't even care about bringing Doran in, as much as getting information from him. "I said put the gun down!"

The words were thrown, vehemently at him, but there was no single release for the tension in his hands. His gun wasn't going anywhere. Not while he had the hostage, not while he had the answers, and Steve had a single memory of all of his training. "You sold a gun to a man named Victor Hesse. I'm not after you, I want him!"

"I'm not talking to you," Doran threw back at him, hiding behind the woman with the bright pink shirt.

"Where is he?" Steve yelled toward him, across the space. No less fierce, no less a demand over being a request. "I said I'm not talking to you! Now put the gun down or I'll kill her!" He seemed to shrink and grow all at once, the high of the chase and fear of capture, making his voice sharper and faster. More erratic. "You don't think I'll do it? I'll do it! I'll kill her right now!"

Steve's eyes didn't leave Doran to look at her. Even if it was less than an inch of movement in vision. He could see her at the edge of his face, even when he didn't look. Public casualties, were very public, and she hadn't done anything to get between them, and maybe he gave up something, he could find a way in. A chink in his erratic behavior, a different tact. A different way to pull the information out of him.

He let go with one hand, and raised his hands, slowly, incredibly so. Ready to toss them back, and fire, at any second.

He's up and going. Everything blurs as soon as he's past it, but it's all headache inducingly sharp before it rolls past, each thought and glance and decision. He hears a crash from around the house, and shouts heading towards the street -- Doran must have made a run for it, and it sounds like Steve's in pursuit.

He runs.

His arm is a dull ache somewhere far behind the adrenaline pushing out the pain, all of it thudding into his temples the way his feet are thudding on the ground, heading for the middle of the little ramshackle village, towards the shriek of breaks and the crash of breaking glass.

There's a few little canopies he's just getting to, when a commotion flurries in front of him: Doran, dragging a woman out of a car and putting her into a headlock, Doran panicking, Doran threatening.

Steve. Who has a gun on him, but is trying to talk him down, even when it's not going to work. Everyone's still, the air strung tight with tension, and then Steve lowers his gun.

It happens in less than a heartbeat. Steve's gun isn't even all the way down before Danny catches the motion: Doran, lifting his, not to the woman he's got hostage, but towards Steve. He doesn't think,: aims, breathes out, squeezes the trigger. Another window shatters. Another woman screams, and Doran goes down like a sack of wet flour, heavy, and when he hits the ground, he doesn't get up again.

Steve's gun goes up, fast, the next second -- but not at Doran, at the window that just blew.

At Danny framed in the glass, breathless and gun-high, and for a second, Steve's only reaction clenching in his gut, and exploding outward like a mortar round with no patience, is the want to squeeze his trigger finger. Sharp, heavy, too bleak to even be anger, it's a dangerously still kind of black and red edged rage, because he doesn't need to look back to know Doran just went down for the count.

His one lead to Victor. And he's in a puddle of his own blood on a dirt road. Because of that haole detective.

Because of that man his father is another step closer to just being another name on Victor's bloody fucking endless list.

It's a good long pause of looking away, jaw and fingers on the gun, clenched before he looks back up. When it might look to anyone around him like shock, or relief, but all it is flooding through him is useless livid realization he is now back to square fucking one on Victor Hesse's location and plan. Without a lead. Unless he can pull one out of the shrapnel of that house, and it's all because he picked that guy who got trigger happy if a gun so much as moved.

It's to Danny's benefit that a wave sirens and then squad cars come speeding into the place just then, and a wave of cops with them, that Steve sure as hell doesn't want to be looking at or dealing with anymore than he wants to have to step a few feet toward his partner now. So he doesn't, go back toward Danny, he goes forward toward the cars. To find the highest ranking person involved there, so he can hand off whatever the hell he needs, and get back to Doran's place without them having anyone touch it first.

Once he's done that, he'll find a way to shove it all back down, in. Do the job, every avenue, no feelings involved.

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