haole_cop | 00:00:00

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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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's easy to give a lowdown on what happened, given that it did all happen in the last barely five minutes. If they were pressing it. Telling them to keep the men from the place, aside from an evidence guy or two. Follow that up with a description the accessory, the girl with a bad blonde shade and a even bigger mouth, tight pants and a bikini, that should be somewhere on these premises still, too.

It doesn't hurt that Danny, when Steve forces himself to get eyes on erstwhile partner, is actually doing his job.

He's got the victim over with the EMTs. Some whom are helping her, and another who looks like he's getting Danny's attention. Which is good. Its fine. He doesn't need Williams to canvas a house. It's not like he'd know one of Victor's calling cards if it was staring him in the face, and Steve wasn't feeling all that charitable toward even pretending he needed help anymore. Not after he needed him for the lead Danny then erased from the board. He can go on doing that while Steve walks back to Doran's place.

A world of shot out broken glass and wood. No holes in anything, because nothing was solid enough to really keep its one piece once it'd been shot through. Another of those why anyone chose to live there by choice things, that came and just went, as he was coming up the stairs. He pulled a small flashlight out of one of his many pockets and started a room by room search of the place from the entryway. Looking for anything that pinged as familiar.

Anything like all the flats he'd seen in the last five years chasing the Hesse brothers. It wasn't theirs, but he'd best the eyes, the only eyes, on this island, that could recognize something of theirs if there was anything to be found. And something needed to be found. He had to find something. Between this place and the mockery of his Dad's place, covered in blood and prints, he had to find something. There was no prayer or wishing it. He had to, so he would. Somewhere. Somehow. He'd find it.

He's gotten shepherded up onto the kick of the ambulance himself, and he's okay with it, honestly. The uniforms are taping off the area, and Steve's checking out the house, so he's fine with taking a breather, unbuttoning his shirt so the EMT can slide it down his shoulder and clean out the bullet wound there.

A scuffle erupts in front of him: the girl, JC or whatever her name was, getting hauled off to a cruiser, dragged right by him by an HPD officer who doesn't actually bother to check in with him, but hey. Who's surprised by that?

She snaps a glare as she stumbles by, spits: "I hope it hurts!" right before she gets walked on by, while Danny watches with mild interest.

"Careful," he calls after them. "She bites."

A couple officers glance over, and go back to their conversation, sliding looks like he might possibly not see them every now and again, and he rolls his eyes, tries to focus on anything but the sting of stitches and antiseptic in his bicep, the dull burning throb aching in his muscle.

He doesn't have anything against this part. It's nice to have a second to think -- or it would be, if his thumb weren't rubbing back and forth across the plastic screen sunk into his inner wrist, if he'd realized he was doing it before the EMT slapped on a bandage and pronounced him done.

If he had something more pleasant to think about than this case. Or the guy currently picking through the shack in front of him. But he doesn't, because this is his life, this is, poetically enough, the hand he's been dealt.

Getting shot today was just the icing on the goddamn cake.

The room front room has nothing, and the side room has a lot more nothing. The flash of his light, and he's skimming desks, and shelves, ratty piles on the floor and the few things on tables. Some of it legal, some of it entirely not, but no unexpected. None of screaming international terrorist. It's all two bit thug. Everywhere. Lowlife. Desperate. Bottom feeder in a small goldfish pond even.

But somehow this place is linked. He just needs how.

Even if each rooms turns up more nothing than the room before it.

Steve made it to the back room, again, shining a light on the bed pile on the floor. Wanting, but not expecting anything spectacularly new in the last room. Eyes open, assumptions back. Also. Not expecting the sudden clang of movement that had him turning to his side and shining a light on a door. Banged in. Taped to hell. Locked with a screwdriver of all crude things. Definitely not expecting the terrified little girl, under a waterfall of black, stringy hair when the door opened.

On a mission, sure. Not in Doran's bedroom. He was barely to the breath of surprise in before she was shaking and shuddering away, trying to crawl into the wall she was tied to, like there was any possible way to make herself smaller, tiny whimpering noises of fear rising up helplessly as Steve raised his hands. Trying to keep them open, to show her he wasn't here to hurt her. "It's okay."

"It's okay." He was reaching up to get the scissors kept so much higher than the low vantage point she been tied at. Like freedom was always within reach, but nothing she she could actually reach to. Or even see in the dark of that tiny locked closet. He was kneeling down, moving slow and steady toward her ties. "What's your name?"

Which was when he noticed she was still staring at him, eyes blow like saucers still made all of fear and absolutely with nothing like understanding that she'd been found, saved, rescued, was anything like safe. That she was going to be taken from this place, even if he and anyone after him couldn't take from her whatever had been done to her.

He tries a different tactic. Quiet, focused, "Ni zhao shenme mingzi?"

Watches her stir with a kind of recognition that is both fear and almost even more terrifying, hope, before she's saying her name quietly back. With the kind of face Steve could recognize world over, and hates seeing on kids. It's the first moment he's actually glad Doran is on the dirt, dead and bleeding. Because no one who does anything like this to kids should be breathing.

"Chen Chi," he repeats quiet and firm still. No sudden movements for himself or her. Saying her name again, and adding, "Gen wo lai." Only to see it flash, again. That sudden terrifying horror at her eyes. Like those words might mean something entirely else, and for another, second second, dead in the dust, bleeding out, really isn't good enough. Not for the possible things this little girl has been through right here. Possibly in this little room, or on that bed.

And as much as he hates that Danny killed him, he's glad with fierce briefness, too. It doesn't help him, but it might help her.

Which is better than nothing when he's repeating it once more, and reaching in to help her stand, keeping his hands on her arms and shoulders only. Treating her with the clear and plain, open movements. Careful to not do more than end up with a hand at her shoulders once she's standing, shivering as shes looking around but only too glad to start making for the broken front of the house and its door.

When he's gotten her halfway down the stairs, before he's calling out, "I need a medic over here."

He's finishing up buttoning his shirt and rolling his sleeve back up when the door to the bungalow opens and Steve comes out, walking a step behind a fragile looking girl who has her arms wrapped around her torso and is glancing around the scene with huge, terrified eyes, and Danny gives himself time for a half a second of what the hell before heading towards them.

A crooked finger brings two of the EMTs over; they jog up, slowing as the girl startles, recoils, looks back at Steve, who, to his credit, is actually pulling off reassuring slightly more than homicidal. "Cheng de," he's saying, "ta men pengyou, ta men bang bang," which Danny doesn't understand, because of course Steve speaks whatever the hell this is, but it relaxes the girl enough to allow the medics to take her away to the ambulance, even if she's shaking like a leaf the whole time.

She'll be taken care of; Danny reaches to grab Steve's elbow, tip his head towards the side of the house that isn't crawling with HPD cops. "Who's that?"

He waits until she's going. Nodding a time or two more, as she glances back, like she's hooked being safe on him. Which it can't stay on, but he can do his best at that for the few seconds he's left standing there. She'll go to better hands, before she can figure out his aren't good for any of the things she might think they are. He's good at pulling them out, at asking the right questions to get the answer he needs, and keeping going, down the rabbit hole into every level of hell.

It helps there's the sudden unexpected assault of a set of fingers on his arm, making him lift it fast and confused, snap reflexes and a look of surprise over at Danny who is suddenly, incredibly, close to his side. But he's shaking off the hand on himself, and holding up his to stop Danny another second, while pulling out his phone and focusing on her face while the medics are talking to her. "Wait."

Because finding her might not be for nothing on his end, as well. It's something at least. It's another avenue. Once it clicks, and he's sure it's clear enough, he can follow over toward the direction Danny went in. Starting with the points he's at now, the lines he's connecting, the possible new directions they might be able to follow this vein to the source and not have lost everything in the few minutes they were here. All facts, all clear and defined definitions of where they can and will be going from here.

The timetable even lines up well. It's too good to overlook, or set aside. They need to get more information on this racket and soon. Because it might be the way Hesse could leave the island, too. "Okay, so she was smuggled in four days ago on a cargo ship, from China, with her parents, a couple hundred refugees. She gets here and she's traded to Doran-"

That's not an answer.

And when they move away from the others, that's not an answer, either. It's Steve, striding ahead, working on his own thought processes without pausing to consider whether anyone else may need to be brought up to speed, and, you know what? Danny's getting pretty damn sick of it.

He's sick of it all. He's sick of Steve's total disregard for anyone but himself, or for his own safety. He's sick of Steve's obsession with Victor Hesse, that must have started years ago, well before a gunshot echoed in the McGarrett family home and wiped John out of existence. He's sick of this pain in his arm, and how it matches the pain in his neck that is Steve McGarrett, Navy SEAL extraordinaire and all around cold-blooded jackass. He's sick of the HPD officers, and the way none of them have bothered to come check up on a wounded colleague, but he almost expects it from them.

From Steve, though? Steve, who went in without backup and got himself into a situation where he could've gotten himself and a bunch of innocent bystanders killed, who is why Danny's here without a tac vest. He's goddamn lucky nothing worse than a bullet to the bicep happened. It would've been all too easy for a bullet to fly just wrong, and for Grace to be getting a very different kind of phone call later today.

He's not asking for much. One question, that's all it would take. How's the arm? would be just ducky. Sorry about the arm, even better.

Or some acknowledgement that Danny kept a crazed gun-wielding maniac from blowing off his head, that would be good, too.

No backup. Fuck that.

But, no. Steve doesn't do any of those things. Steve leaps straight into theorizing, and Danny's had just about enough of his talking for one day. "Okay, excuse me, I'm sorry. This is typically where you would say 'thank you' for saving your life."

Seriously? Did he actually just say those words?

Did he actually look like Steve was going to thank him for anything?

The irrational idioticness of it all smacks straight through Steve's entire aim to keep this professional, to keep doing the job ad maybe give the man a begrudging pass because there might be another lead, right now, in the manner of a very battered, smuggled little girl, but no. Danny wants his gratitude. For Doran being in a pile of muscles, bones, and meat on the ground, that can't answer a single question about Victor Hesse. Who never even admitted he'd seen the man.

"You just shot my only lead," are the only words that come flying out of Steve's mouth, hard and high. Before he turns to walk steps away. Because arguing about the dead body, and whose fault that dead body is won't save anyone. Won't bring back his dad, and will take up minutes he could be getting closer to Hesse, who needed so little time to get in and out of places.

He didn't have time for this crap. He needed to put together. He needed to have a name, a face, a place. He started talking the details out loud to drown out the crap still spouting behind his back. "These are the same guys who are getting people out of Asia. They could have smuggled Hesse into Hawaii." It had to be. The timeframe was too good. But where were they now. How to find them, when the main link to that was dead on the ground or in the form of a very battered little girl, too.

Edited 2014-01-19 05:46 (UTC)

Jesus Christ.

There is nothing, nothing he hates more than this, than getting a back turned on him, than someone talking over him. It makes him feel like less than an ant, like maybe he's not even speaking English anymore, like maybe he's a ghost, shouting into the void, because he's saying are you kidding me? are you kidding me? and McGarrett, that son of a bitch, doesn't even notice.

He is fucking sick and tired of not being noticed. Of being stepped on. He was right. They needed backup. There were guns and there was shooting and he took a bullet in his arm that could easily been to the throat or chest instead, and it is all this asshole's fault, because he didn't listen, because no one ever listens to Danny, no matter how loudly he yells, no matter how big he tries to make himself. They just roll right over him like he's not even there, and McGarrett, okay, McGarrett is the worst of the bunch. He's the divorce court and HPD's bigoted silence, he's every check Danny sends to Rachel that's an insignificant drop in the barrel of Stan's millions but that he sends anyway because he's damned if he's not going to help pay for his daughter's upbringing.

He's Peterson and he's Billy saying a knight without armor and he's the helplessness of being tied to a chair, unable to stop a bullet.

And he's not listening.

"You just took a stupid risk!" His hands are up, and so is his volume, but he doesn't give a damn, all he sees is red. "Okay? Understand that. I am not getting myself killed for your vendetta. I have a daughter."

The only thing to live for, the thing he has to live for, and this jackass almost cost him everything, because he thinks he's too good for backup, too good for policework, too good for Danny, who wants to rip the timer out of his wrist and snap it in two, because there's no way, okay. It's not happening. It'll never happen.

He is obnoxiously in Steve's face.

Demanding Steve's attention, making his jaw clench as well as all the muscles down his back tighten. Because he's being every single word his Captain used and more. In the way. Insubordinate. Ranting. Like he's the only person lost something or almost lost something. Like his concern doesn't apply to anyone else in the world but himself.

When Steve feels like he's having to parent a grown man on how to give a damn about anyone else in the world, leaning down toward that screaming face, and pointing off toward the ambulance, disgust touching his tone when he has to educate him about the fact -- "Yeah, that girl is someone's daughter, too."

Someone who didn't know where she was, didn't know what the hell she was sold in to, made to do, might not even be alive to find out what had happened to her, or might be in the same situations somewhere else, breaking all of them, all at once, for the desperate dream of being alive and free in America.

"You don't get it."

That's quieter, but no less soaked in disbelief, because he's just had an epiphany, and this is it. "You don't get it."

Steve McGarrett, Navy SEAL and Commander of god knows how many black ops missions, at home with chasing terrorists and taking the kind of orders that result in people being killed in violent, terrible ways, just doesn't get it. He doesn't see it. That it's all the same. That Danny's point has nothing to do with the girl Steve just found in the cellar or in a closet or wherever she was, that this argument is beyond superfluous, because he doesn't get it. None of it. "You know, for a guy who just lost his father, you're pretty dense."

He's not doing this to Grace. Steve should know that, because Steve is living it right now, but Steve doesn't, so Danny will explain, by way of thumbscrews, if he has to. He'd take that bullet all over again to make sure it didn't happen to that girl's father, either, but that's not the point, and McGarrett is missing it completely, because he is still. Not. Listening.

Edited 2014-01-19 15:48 (UTC)

The color drains from Steve's vision at the edges. It's not even red. It's hazing grey. And the words are fast, and dangerous, like he can't believe Danny would even dare dream of touching his father. That he's just boiling for trying to make this laughable joke of him as a cop, as anything worth noticing, a fight. "What did you say to me?"

Because it's like he blew the thermometer. Stepped up with the need to smack Steve in the face, with the one thing that explodes out in glass fragments and rage, layered with guilt, ownership, and every damn need of his to see this done right. Like the five years he gave up to this bastard wasn't enough, wasn't even the beginning. All those bodies and case files. Because no his father is on the top of the heap. And he's still doing it.

Because it's his damn job. Because no matter how fucked up their family is that's his dad.

With the blood all over the damn walls, that still hasn't left his nose. Saying he loved Steve, and he never said it enough.

Which is not for anyone to put their hands on. Especially not this fucking screw up of a cop, with less going for him that shack that would blow down by a sneeze and not a single coworker at his back, who even blinked an eye at the idea of him being taken off their hands. "What Did you Just Say To Me??"

Because he's being a sick, selfish bastard. His daughter, above every other person's little girl in the world. They can all rot, so long as his monkey and her Mr. Hoppy are in one piece. And it's so sick. This is why he hates natives, and their closed minds, and self serving everything.

"What if she was yours?" He yelled. Locked up, cringing from even the light and terrified of a man telling her to come with him. "Huh? Is there anything you would not do to track down the son of a bitch who did that to her and kill him?"

"Do not."

He went too far. He doesn't give a shit.

This is the first time it's even seemed like McGarrett was connected to this plane of existence, and Danny is fresh out of fucks to give, for hurting his feelings, for rubbing salt in those raw and bleeding wounds that the guy keeps pretending aren't there.

He's sorry about his dad. He is. Too soon, too little, too quick, too messy. But that doesn't give Steve the right to come in here and start pushing him around like everyone fucking does, to not listen, to live out his stupid goddamn deathwish and drag Danny into it behind him.

And he doesn't get to say a single damn word about Grace. Not ever. "Question my resolve --"

He's up in Steve's space now, and he doesn't care that the guy's got a solid seven inches and probably another fifty pounds on him, that he's gone quiet and dangerous, like a snake about to strike, Danny doesn't care. He's in his face, finger pointing, stabbing, and he'd be just fine with taking out an eye if he had to.

It's winnowing down. All of it. The location. The space. The air.
Steve isn't even looking at him as the tight shake to his head happens.

Because that reign on his hold. The one that's been holding since the phone rang.
In Korea, before the whole damn landslide, happened, is thrumming wire tight.

"I'm warning you." It's remote and blank laugh. "Take your finger out of my face."

No.

There's nothing at all, just the fire in his head and the red haze in his vision, finger poking solid at Steve's chest, and Steve, stupid smirking McGarrett, laughing, like he thinks this is funny, like he thinks Danny is funny, and he hates it, hates him, hates being laughed at.

He is not nothing.

"Listen to me, you son of a bitch --"

Edited 2014-01-19 16:17 (UTC)

It's a choice. He'll never lie and say it isn't. He's trained to react. But he's trained to choose to react. Faster than a thought. Faster than a consideration. The pro's and con's, the sacrifices and the gains. Trained to go when other men would hold. And sometimes?

You just have to treat a sick bastard who is only a means to an end like a sick bastard who is only a means to an end, and show them the winning hand has always been yours.

Which happens in less than a second, when Danny takes his warning for a joke. Like Steve hasn't killed more people than Danny has possibly ever met, run into more situation with people pointing several guns at him than Danny could dream of, watched men, better and brighter than he'll ever be, bleed out because the cost of the oaths they take is higher than anything this man has ever chosen, too.

That finger hits his shoulder, forcing his hand, and Steve's hand snaps up wrapping his wrist. Followed by his other hand grabbing the forearm and his twists, hard behind his back, shoving Danny toward the ground. Knowing the human body will cave and follow. The harder you twist the more certain it is. When he's shoving the man down, sliding the further hand up his wrist, and the other to flatten his palm back as far a possible and using that, too.

But refusing to let himself, let his pumping heart and snapping nerves move any further, do any more damage.

"What did I tell you?" He talks down. Like it's to any squid. New frogman with his rocks too hard up with the though of being elite and not focused. "I warned you." He did. He tried to keep it professional. He tried to keep his mind on the case, and not the fuck ups and dead bodies. Tried not to get mired in making it personal and not the job. The chances, the new lead. Not this crap.

Edited 2014-01-19 16:52 (UTC)

It happens in less than a second.

One hand, two, an iron grip on his wrist, and then he's down, forced into a twist to stare at the ground, while humiliation floods in an angry rush through him. "Ow."

The psychopath is saying something, talking down to him like he's a kid, like he's the one out of line, and Danny can't move, because if he does, this asshole will probably break his arm. "What are you, a ninja? Let go!"

"In front of all these nice people," Steve continued on, right over the man's surprise and complaints. Unruffled, like this is nothing. Because it is nothing to Steve. The aborted struggle that teaching Danny each time, under Steve's hold and pressure, that struggling only makes the pain worse right now.

While he's watching the way there are two HPD officers looking at them, one with raised hands asking the question.

"It's fine." Making Steve give a tight lipped, all clear kind of, smile that isn't ever really a smile. "Go back to work. It's fine."
He's got this under his control. Just like he would have had Doran under his control if Danny hadn't gotten trigger happy.

It doesn't escape Steve's notice that they don't come any closer after his words. One of them has the blank, sort of deserving look, that looks straight through the man under his hands, nodding as he just walks back. While the other actually gives the kind of grimacing smile that makes it clear there's no pity or defense, like he's been waiting for someone to do just this to Danny.

Because Danny might be good at his job, but this is what his backup is. Men who came out of protocol. But not loyalty.

"Now, you don't have to like me," Steve twisted just enough to make sure he still had Danny's full attention. "But there's no one else to do this job."

"Okay."

Sullen, ground out through his teeth, and the little breath he can snag. It tastes like humiliation and fury, but he can be calm. He can let Steve have this one, because he's in no position to do anything else. Steve could hold this all day, and it's not like anyone's going to be rushing to his rescue. "Let me go."

Steve let go, tossing his hold, and taking short steps back to give Danny his room to get up. But, also, because there was that tender second of wondering whether Danny would be of any use to him for the rest of the day, or this case at all. If this was how bad it could be in the first house. But he pushed through it. Because Danny gave, again, like each of the times before. Because he needed someone on the ground here.

"Alright." Steve laid out. "We need to find this human tracker."

And he even had an idea of where to start, from back at the beginning of today.

Steve doesn't recognize the danger in his tone, how that quiet acquiescence is more furious than any of the shouting or swearing from before, because Steve doesn't think anyone that isn't just like him could possibly be a threat.

No one thinks Danny's a threat. They never do. And they're always wrong.

The pressure lets up, and he sinks to one knee, mouth and jaw tight enough to ache, lifts his freed hand to smooth back his hair. McGarrett's saying something, but it's just so much buzzing in his ears, a warning sign; he can't hear words, just an angry hum.

He can't do that to him. No one is allowed to do that to him, to shove him down, twist his arm, conquer, order, punish him. He's a cop, not a dog, and Steve McGarrett's about to get what's coming to him for assuming he's so much better than Danny Williams.

He's still talking when Danny turns around, already looking away, mind somewhere else, because he doesn't care, because Danny's not worth the thought, or the gratitude, or the effort; never has been, never will be, and it all. Just. Snaps.

Becomes one step forward, and a punch with all his weight behind it, straight to McGarrett's face. It's solid, and vicious, the kind of hit that would lay out anybody smaller, and fuck it. Just, fuck it.

Now he's the one turning his back, because he gives absolutely not one single damn about whatever Steve McGarrett might choose to do with that, okay? He's done. This game is over, and Danny's the one who's ending it.

"You're right. I don't like you."

Punctuation, before he's headed towards the Mustang, stretching the abused muscles of his arm.

Edited 2014-01-19 19:55 (UTC)

He's not expecting it, and that he would actually cite as his first mistake.

He's thinking about Chin Ho Kelly. Wide smile, and calm demeanor, working his day away at a spot not far off the landmark. Who is another person who fits on Steve's under the radar that hasn't been doing him well, but Chin Ho Kelly he at least already trusts the work of. It's not blind faith asking for even blinder aptitude. He only sees it, mid-thought, the half second before solid knuckles are connecting with his jaw.

Sending a wave of pain through his head, down his neck and into his spine. Sending him spiraled with the movement, toward the car. A riot of the only reaction that every comes at both connect and pain. The one that is slamming his head, at least as hard as the punch when his hand lands on the hood of the car that had been behind him and suddenly was right in front. The one screaming, through the flare of every synapse in his jaw to turn back. Hit harder. Faster. Every soft spot on the human body. Before another blow can be landed.

It's a staggered half step, because that doesn't even take a thought. That is trained deeper than any reaction. Never fall; if you do get back up fast. Never falter; if you do go right back in harder. Never listen to the pain. Never. Which is why he goes back down on the heel of his hand, only to pivot up with hand going to his jaw, not even the full second later, because he can't not have his eyes on the target at least, to know what's coming next and decide what this is going to be now. But it's only to catch the watered blur of blonde hair and set shoulders walking quickly away.

Which is for the best on Steve not following through on every screaming impulse he knows he shouldn't. Cant. Danny isn't. You don't turn a loaded gun on a person asking for it, like it's just a bat or a hand. You don't turn SEALs loose on civilians. Not after all they've been trained to do. Lived doing. Even ones who seem to have been hiding a fucking good arm somewhere under everything.

Sending him turning back toward the car, swearing, as the pain pulsed through his jaw, spotting his vision.

Edited 2014-01-19 23:37 (UTC)

It doesn't matter. None of it. Not the glares he gets from the officers busy cleaning up the mess he and Steve created, not the soft swearing drifting behind him. He's walking away. Will lay out the consequences of treating him like a stray dog that needs to be trained, and walk away.

Even if every instinct is screaming at him to go back.

To get into it. To beat senseless, or be beaten senseless. To just let it all go, all this anger and frustration and embarrassment that dogs his every step, this constant refrain of not good enough that's continually simmering fury in his blood and sharpening every thought.

He knows Steve isn't the world. That Steve had nothing to do with Rachel leaving, and that Steve wouldn't have picked him to come to Hawaii, and that Steve isn't every member of HPD who never, once, in six months, accepted him.

(He's not Meka, either, Danny's actual partner, the one guy here he feels like he can relax around, who laughs instead of frowns at his arguments, who takes him out for beers and tells him it'll just take a little time.)

But he is, all of those things, all of those people. Steve is the world that's been dragging Danny for too long, he's the people who have it all, those golden people who get recognized as the best, who command respect, who will always be better. He's not Danny, shabby khakis and button downs and ties and hangs up religiously every night, washes by hand and irons on his own so he can look somewhere near professional but never quite makes it past rumpled.

(But he lost his father. And he lost his mother, years ago. Danny read the file, and there's a tiny voice in his brain, itching, one he wants to smack away but can't quite, saying Steve doesn't exactly have it easy, either.)

Whatever. He doesn't actually want to get beaten to a pulp, so he just heads back towards the scene, glaring at the officers who step back away from him, like he's a drop of oil running across a thin scrim of water, daring them to make something of it.

They don't. And that's fine by him.

It's turns into a low grade hum fast. Pain is only pain. If there's no more coming he can get his hands on it.

Shove it to the side, like the low blunt force trauma it is. Force focus to stays center and test his jaw through closed lips. It was a good punch. Not one to take his teeth, so much as rattle them, and there's no dislocation in his jaw going on, even if it's going to be tender the rest of the day. It's the kind of pain that's manageable. It's a pain he'd choose over the last few days. One he can point the beginning and end and control over. It's sharper, sweeter, than anything else mucking up his insides.

One making him look toward those fleeing shoulders with a oddly different squint to his obvious annoyance. He might be able to take a fucking ton. It didn't mean he enjoyed being clocked out of nowhere. It does mean there's things refitting in his head, not so much because of the punch, as because that means that punch and whatever was in the man's head somewhere buried under his taking crap, didn't always. Something worth adding to the uncertain pile.

It's probably the first truly unexpected thing Danny's done since he set eyes on the man over a gun in his garage.

It's nice to know somewhere under that yapping demeanor is a limit people can't cross. Maybe.

Even if it's sore, it's still his jaw and not his pride. Pride has no place between him and the mission, unless he's looking for things to slow him down. If he looks at it the way he would with anyone in his platoon just the fact it happened might depress the air, and make work easier for the explosion. Which Danny isn't a SEAL, not by any stretch, not even for a really good right hook. But it leaves Steve wondering when he starts walking that way.

Because he has no reason not to be here any longer. Doran's dead. Chen Chi's in good hands, and her picture might get him a lead. And Danny Williams, with that arm, and that posture like he was just beginning for even more of a fight, even after that, was still his ride. Unless he wanted to choose a more above the board route. Which, casting a glance at the officers who hadn't gotten involved, he really didn't. So that meant heading toward the angry blonde man stalking directly to his car.

No one stops him between Steve and the Mustang. One rookie comes hustling up, saying "Detective --?" but backpeddles so fast when Danny stabs a glare at him that he almost trips.

He's not needed here. HPD, Steve, Rachel -- they've all made it amply clear. He's not needed here, and he's probably not needed anywhere else, either, so he just finds his car keys, ignores the burn in his shot arm when he opens the car door, and drops inside.

When he closes the door, it's blessed, perfect silence. All around him, like being in an egg, and he can take a deep breath, feeling like he hasn't been breathing at all, all day, from Mr. Hoppy to the garage to staring at those numbers to now. Smooths a hand down his tie, feeling his pulse start to settle, and glances down. Turns his wrist.

Those numbers. Six perfect zeros, that haven't blinked once since they hit the end. There must have been a beep, some kind of notification sound or buzz that he missed because he and Steve were too busy shouting at each other, guns up, to notice. He knows there was, though. People have said so.

They've said it's life-changing. Most, with smug arms around each other or comfortable hands entwined, said it was life-changing. That the numbers counted down, and they knew right away.

Like he knew when Rachel's rental car smashed into the back bumper of his black-and-white. Like he knew when she came down the aisle, blushing and beaming and the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen until the day Grace was born.

He wonders if every one of those people are liars.

Steve's steps are swift and direct toward the car. Where Danny has folded himself into the driver's seat and he's staring at the steering wheel and his hands. Like everything is draining out of his skin, even without losing the hypertension of the way he's holding himself. Making Steve's eyes narrow and him nearly pause. But only nearly. They still have so much to do. And hey.

If getting a shot in will have made it better, maybe Steve would have even opted for it an hour ago.

It's out of step with assumptions for 'real people.' It's more like His Boys. But he might have. Not that he wanted another now.

He pulled the door open, letting it go wide, like it's a warning that he's coming. Letting Danny pull himself the hell back together, if that's what he wants to do, or start yelling. But he hadn't said anything about quitting when he punched Steve. Not yet. Just about not liking him. And that was fine. That was pretty mutual at this second. He slid into his seat, pulling the door closed with him, one fluid movement, and started working on his seat belt, only casting Danny a Well? sort of look, like they should just get going now if he was done.

Punching people, and wanting to do more of it or feeling sorry for himself about it. It was over and done, already.

You couldn't put it back in the box. It didn't belong in the job. And the job still needed doing. Hesse was still out there.

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