haole_cop | 00:00:00

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00:00:00

"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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It's questionable whether any reaction really touches his face at the first outburst from Danny. A return to that commentary in the form of insults that does cause Steve to at least keep looking in that direction. Because he totally just gave him information. About what he was asking about before Steve made the call.

But Danny decides to leave his megaphone peanut gallery heckling for even more questions, which just leaves Steve staring at him wondering what the hell. Just seriously what the hell. Danny is railing about him not talking, but just watching Danny talk is like watching a human puzzle box exist at him. Every new breath has another slew of words in a different hue of emotion from the one before it. And. It. Just. Never. Stops.

He never shuts up. He's never at a loss for words. He never needs to take a breather.

Which, of course, has nothing to do with Steve's inability to answer the question in the middle there. He was everything on himself he needs until he needs another few mags of bullets. He doesn't even want the equipment he has. They're more details to a promise made that has a terminally short end date with Hesse. Right? But food. When was the last time he ate? When was the last time he felt hungry?

He doesn't want to think about why he knows he didn't eat earlier. He really doesn't want to detour and pause the case for it now. Even and close to shoulder still for his thoughts at least gets -- "Coffee might not be a bad idea."

It isn't. It's the shortwire, but he's run on less. He knows he'll be fine. He's still got days in himself. But he's got them, too.

"We have no idea how long we'll all be looking at files once Chin gives us the information on this guy."

"Okay, we'll get food."

That's not precisely what Steve said, but, for one, Danny is starving, being shot really jumpstarts a guy's appetite, and for two, that hesitation is pure robotic bullshit. It's heading well into the afternoon, and Danny seriously doubts that Steve bothered to stop and get something after running around the island stealing crime scenes from hardworking cops such as himself, because the guy had to actually stop and think about it. "Anything to get that shave ice flavor out of my mouth. If I've gotta have flavored ice, okay, first of all, it better be cherry," lifting his thumb from his finger, followed by his index finger -- one, two, "-- and it better be from Rita's. Anything else?"

All the fingers flatten out, and he sweeps his hand out, like he might possibly erase the menu of thirty-odd flavors and flavor combinations Kamekona had been accosting the beachgoers with. "Overkill. Just not natural. I will make an exception for lemon, but either way, okay, that was not food, so we are getting food, I'm starving, and I bet even SEALs need to eat sometime, or have they just started genetically modifying you all into actual robots, now?"

None of it particularly matters, he's just pouring words out into the air because he's got nothing better to do, while steadfastly ignoring the flash of red that blinks at him now and again as his hand waves.

It won't kill them to stop for a second. The office is still getting set up, and it wouldn't hurt to offer Chin something to eat, too, bridge a little of that gap.

Besides. He caught the way Steve hesitated, thought about it, waved it off again, and there's just no need for that here, today. It's not the middle of the freaking Serbian desert, all right, they can pause to grab a tuna sandwich, or something.

That wasn't what he said, but Danny does seem to give a rat's ass.

Goes on for nearly half a minute about shave ice and some place Steve hasn't a clue where is. It doesn't sound familiar, but then a lot of things neither look and read familiar, even when they feel it. For all he knows it could be some new place downtown that man only likes because it's his daughters favorite. Though maybe he doesn't have the worst taste. Steve likes those two. He likes tropical flavors, too. Or he did as a kid. Like them in drinks, especially once he was too gone to care.

But, of course, he comes round to his point. Round like he needed to circle Diamond Head before he could get back to why he decided that what Steve said about coffee totally somewhere equalled getting food in Danny's head. Which was that Danny wanted food. But couldn't say that, had to ask, like Steve somehow would have known. And Steve, and all SEALs, must be broken because he wasn't dying of hunger yet. Making Steve furrow his eyebrows, but toss out with something like annoyed perversion.

Because it still smarts as an annoyance that the man is insulting Navy SEALs, like their training was ever a problem.

"It's classified." Pretty much like every single thing he ever really did, said, was. He was a ghost with a gun.

"I could tell you, but--" This a head tip toward the window. Everyone knew how that one went.

And he'd hate to deprive another little girl of her dad in just shortly under two weeks.

"Really?"

It's heavily slanted towards disbelief and exasperation, just like the furrows digging themselves between Danny's brows as he glances over. "You're actually going to pull that card? Is that what passes for humor among you strong and silent types? Or, no, wait, I bet that's classified, too. Why did the chicken cross the road? I don't know, that information doesn't pertain to this mission and has been redacted."

He's just a barrel of laughs, this guy, with his monosyllabic answers, or lack of vocalization at all, and Danny's shaking his head even as he's signaling his turn.

(Not that he's all that interested. SEAL training seems about as appealing as getting a pillowcase full of nails slammed into his temple.)

There's another glance over. "Any place you haven't been in a while you might want to grab something from?" And, okay, he's leading. He is. If this were his first trip back to his hometown, he'd want to hit all his favorite spots: grab a corned beef special and cup of coffee from J's diner down the street, maybe a slice from that one dingy pizza place on the corner, and you never know. Lieutenant Commander Steve McGarrett might have missed a place or two while he was gone.

The guy has to be at least part human, right?

Anyplace he hasn't been in while...

Yeah. Everywhere. All eight islands.

Sure, there are a handful of places he knows won't have closed, but only because they were old before he even knew they existed, or existed to know they existed. Ones he doesn't want to know if have folded under in the past. And some here and there, mom and pop's hiding in holes, coming and going with the wind and the waves, like their owners and customers. All of those are there for the first time when he hits land and gone the next time with half decades or more between.

"Wherever's good." He just gives a tight, clipped shake of his head, like he can't really even shake it fully to either direction.

"An L&L, maybe." It was cheap, easy, and greasy. Local enough, and it's not like he cares enough to feel anything about faster food. Other than it is will be fast, and that's helpful for getting on to The Palace sooner rather than later.

"They've got plates to go." If he's going to insist on this nonsense and keep asking questions, like somehow Steve should want to wander down Hawaii's memory lane. "And whatever we get for Chin will probably work."

He wouldn't mind wandering Hawaii. Taking in a sight or two he remembers too well, gorgeous and more technicolor than technicolor, never fading with time, and never being less bright when he's here. Maybe even those places in those persistent dreams now and again that don't leave him alone. But there's nothing down memory lane for him here. A house covered in dust and blood and ghosts of people no one saw enough, half an island and half a breath away, that underneath it isn't covered in anything but more dust and blood and ghosts no one ever acknowledged either.

"Look at that, he makes a decision. L&L it is; I think there's one on the way."

Truthfully, he still can't quite adjust to the Hawaiian version of fast food. Instead of hoagies from a truck, or gyro, or anything else you could easily eat while walking, they're all about caloric mounds called plate lunches: white rice and charbroiled meats swimming in barbecue sauce or gravy, sometimes with an egg thrown on top, usually with something fried. How the hell Honolulu isn't the most obese city in America he's got no clue; everyone seems to be able to put them away without too much difficulty, whereas Danny feels like he's actively swallowing cement, like he might sink in water after one of them, if he were so foolish as to try and swim.

Which is not to say he isn't routinely foolish, okay, because he is, and this is all just another example of it, because he just can't leave well enough alone, can he? No matter who those numbers had stopped on, he would've found himself involved somehow, because he just can't stop himself, has, apparently, not yet had enough of the world blowing down his house of cards, stomping all over his pathetic sandcastles. No, he just keeps building them, then waits for someone to come along and burn them to the ground, hands them the matches and gasoline to do it.

Whatever. He's not doing this for some damn numbers on his wrist, he's doing it because it's his job, and he's good at his job, and because no one should have to hear their father die over the phone and then be forced to hunt down his murderer alone.

Steve watched the scenery blow by, still more stuck on those words than he wanted to be. More annoying than gnats circulating near his ears and dragging his focus away, they just kept returning. Or maybe it was, they just kept not leaving.

While he made light of it. Like Steve had named anything other than a place one could pass two or three of between the airport and wherever you were ending up. Maybe he's exaggerating, maybe Danny even means well, but it grates down against his skin, and those words, and the words they are dragging up. His Dad's voice, and all those words, he keeps replaying and rearranging, like somehow, if he scrambled them, and then made a cypher out of them, that last conversation would make more sense.

Steve just gave him a look, like it wasn't all coalescing as a bruise he kept punching purposefully, "You talk a lot."

Steve let it crinkle up his face, making it hard to tell if that was bland amusement or blank insult, or somehow combination of both wrapped up in the conundrum of watching Danny, and reporting back to him on all the things he sighted, from the roll of his head against the head rest. "You know that, right?"

It needed to go down in the book. Talks nonstop chatter like the silence had to be kept back with a swinging bat. Right under the line about being sensitive about everything under the sun. Was probably going to take this as the next right to do that, again. Which maybe that should have been a reason for Steve to keep his own mouth shut. But, hell, why would he start now. Danny was the one keeping them from just getting straight on with the job as it was.

"You know, I'm sure you'll be amazed to hear this, what with your stunning powers of deduction and all -- seriously, it's practically Holmesian, I should turn in my badge in disgrace -- but you are not the first person to say that to me. You're not even the first person to say that to me this week, although I admit you've dashed across that finish line first today. Of course I know that. Anything else would be unforgivably self-ignorant and I've already got enough problems."

It doesn't quite sting, though it's not exactly his favorite thing to hear, right? And especially not in that dry, bland tone, like Steve doesn't really care, but he's just pointing it out because he feels like he should. Danny knows. He knows he's loud. He knows he talks a lot, too much, all the time. Knows he's always saying and doing the wrong thing, all right? He was married. He knows. Like he knows he's short, comparatively speaking, and wears ties despite everyone on this miserable excuse for a landmass hating them.

Fine, they all hate him, too, he's okay with it. "Any more thrilling observations you planning to make today? I'm just curious." Hand leaving the wheel to wave in a loose circle in the air. "I mean, hey, you got me all figured out in thirty seconds, right?"

Steve's not surprised, he isn't. That the guy goes off. Loud, and sensitive, about this.

But, maybe, at the same time, there's something in the way Steve's eyes stay focused on him while Danny is driving the car, waving a hand, like it's helping him enunciate his points, and says more at this point after Steve had made his. Just keeps going on, talking about talking, for the love of God. The words just keep rolling out, and the extra information Steve never asked for, but Danny slathers on, history and opinions, in on, decking them out.

He's all pink and soft when you hit him with any direct comment. But any time Steve tries to box him, he remembers the shock and surprise. The red, the jar of his teeth. Shifts his teeth just barely, just the very few millimeters it takes to be able to feel that soreness on his face where Danny decked him. Trying to line those into one person and one score of sensible lined reactions. This with the hand waving and thin skin, and that with the knuckles connecting with his cheekbone.

But he isn't going to say anything about any of that at all. He doesn't have it put together yet. Disparate pieces.

Steve just crinkled his brow, before raising one eye, laying on thick with only singularly, "Holmesian? Really?"

"You got something against classic literature?"

Droll and dry, said over his shoulder, with his eyebrows cocking like he might actually be spoiling for a fight if Steve says he doesn't enjoy the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as if he cares what Steve reads, or if Steve reads, as if he ever has time to even glance at a book these days.

Well, okay, he does. Have time. He's got spades of time, tons of time, more time than he knows what to do with, which is why he normally takes weekend shifts on the weeks he doesn't have Gracie, just stays at the office, going through papers or filing reports. There's plenty to do, if he puts his mind to it, and it's only kind of the mind-numbing boredom that would have made him want to jump off a cliff before a year was up.

But that's all neither here nor there, right, what he chooses to do with his free time, even if it's to make it anything other than free. The point is, he's not sure he likes Steve's attitude. At all.

But how is that anything new?

The center of Steve's brows pinch oddly, nearly matching a smug tug at the edge of his mouth.
Eyebrows raising at the center, because, seriously, there's no way Danny is a book-beater.

He's seen that 'house.' It's not like there were piles of books hiding anywhere.

Not that Steve doesn have a problem with books. Even ones he hasn't read or considered, with good reason, especially since being sent away from Hawaii. Not that he'd ever been interested in Doyle much growing up, but he'd been even less interested in most of the things his father had an interest in pretty shortly thereafter. And most things Sherlock Holmes related, aside from the odd one-off sideways joke, landed squarely in that box.

Which Danny just happened to trod on, unrelated, like his leg was in front of the mustang to roll over. The oddest memories coming from nowhere. Dusty and unused, as impotent today as they were unimportant the two decades of time spent not looking at them. But it was worth it to see Danny take it a little personally. From his comment on four million words, to his focus on just one of them, and not a single other.

He takes quick little glances over, hitting the blinker and taking a turn at the next intersection. Steve McGarrett, mystery. Suddenly brought to life out of the pages of bare text and the single photograph in Danny's file that looks like basically every other military personnel headshot he's ever seen: American flag, white cap, neat uniform, deadpan expression that's nothing like the faint -- is that amusement?

He almost wants to squint, and look closer, would, if doing exactly that wouldn't mean he'd probably ram his Mustang straight into a fire hydrant or telephone pole.

It couldn't be. This guy doesn't have a sense of humor, right? It must be one of those things they stopped handing out at boot camp.

But it does kind of look like it. Amusement. Or something like it, perched there in the furrow between his eyebrows, and the way one corner of his mouth is looking a little softer, like the shadow of a smile that's existing in some other universe, on some other Steve McGarrett's face.

Whaddya know.

He sneaks one more quick, exasperated glance. "Anyone ever tell you people normally use words to communicate, not just steely glares and judo moves?"

"Pretty sure that's just what the people without them say."

Sure. Okay. He could say nothing, or he could let a few words roll off his shoulder.

Not that he was saying, as Danny just naively put it, 'steely glares and judo moves' hasn't gotten him several things, several times, but it's not like he's needed to rely on that with a guy sitting next to him in a long time either. It's odd, he can admit that, being somewhere his rank and skills mattered enough to be the fire behind the movement of this whole day, but also nearly non-existent where it came to individual people. Like the man sitting next to him. Talking to him about talking.

Both like he doesn't know how to, and like it was anything even remotely important in what Steve consider necessary communication, or necessary interactions, in a normal day. Not that today was normal in any part. Not that anything has felt it since Anton mentioned not talking to his dad enough, but even if that snowball hasn't stopped he's maybe still looking at Danny like this is almost entertaining. Like he's debating whether it is, or Danny having opinions is.

Since he seems to have one, and feelings on it, on every single thing that crosses his path.

Just to punch it in, he adds with a nod out the front, "Don't miss the turn in."

"You know, there's nothing wrong with my eyes."

As in, he can see the upcoming turn just fine, thanks, doesn't need some Navy SEAL sniper-vision to see a giant fast food sign on the side of the road, just like he's never needed jiu-jitsu or whatever the hell it was Steve pulled on him back at Doran's, okay, he's always been fine fighting quick and dirty, whenever it's come up. And steely-eyed looks are a dime a dozen.

He might not give a damn if people like him, but at least he reacts to them like a human.

One flick of the blinker and lane change, and he's making that turn Steve was so thoughtful as to remind him of and pulling into a parking spot before putting the car in park and switching the engine off. "Anything else you'd like to help me improve on, or are you done?"

Steve doesn't even know where to start. Seriously.

Which might be conveyed in the look that last a beat too long in the direction of the driver.

But it happens, and then Steve just reaches for the door handle, opening the door. "I'll let you know."

Nearly the same words as the ones he'd tossed about the promise that wasn't either accepted or rejected. It wasn't like Danny actually wanted his commentary either. But it wasn't like he was lacking in places where pointers weren't obvious and glaringly needed. Like, for say, knowing how to drive sports car. Even an old one. But it's not like Danny was asking. Not with the tone he had going. Not like he was one of Steve's men he could shoot the shit with in any fire-free second.

He hadn't been hungry when he was talking about coffee and Danny was talking about getting food, but there was something of a stumbled jump from his stomach once he was out and looking to, then head toward, the L & L, able to smell the long days' cooking and cooked food from a distance. Maybe the food idea wasn't a terrible one. If it didn't slow them down any. He still wanted to know more about the name Chin got, but he hazily admit that he was, absently, curious to see what the place was offering.

"Yeah, you let me know."

Grumbled as he gets out of the car and slams the door, and it's such a fucking joke, right? It just be, just like the rest of his miserable damn life. "I'll just be waiting with bated breath for that, so you can tell me how to live my life."

Like everyone else on this glorified sandbar keeps doing. Telling him to relax. Telling him he'd like the beaches here, because everyone likes the beaches here, they're the best in the world. Telling him to get out more. Telling him to drop the attitude and just calm down, because it's so damn easy to look in the shuttered and barred windows of his life and find the ways to fix it, right?

Well, they can go to hell, because his life is a joke, just like the numbers on his wrist that mean he's destined to land face first in a steaming pile of bullshit. It was bad enough they went off when a gun got shoved in his face and his crime scene was taken away; bad enough they blinked into zeros for someone he already, unequivocally, entirely, hates, like he hates Nazis and sunburn and never getting to see another Yankees game from the stadium seating, but now? They're partners.

Which means, even if by some insane chance he hits his head or has a stroke and forgets he hates Steve, or Steve gets a complete personality makeover and starts acting like he enjoys human company, nothing can happen.

So it's just a joke. The way his left hand closes briefly, like a cuff, over his right wrist and those hilarious, laughable numbers, before he swings them apart and heads for the restaurant door.

He won't. But that's not the point. It's not really a conversation.

Just like Danny doesn't really want his opinion, and Steve isn't all that inclined to give it.

Partners, it's all they have to be. Steve requisition a person. Team mate. Partner. Out of a cop no one wanted. Well, two specifically. But there's only one catching up with him to walk into the place. It's all this has to be though. Partners. Not a friend. Not another brother in arms. Just a man who's willing to get the job done, bring in the bastard who shot his dad, kidnapped that girl and very likely her family and so many others.

Not to mention the dirty laundry list Steve can't share that the Hesse's had washed the world in chains and blood doing.

More reasons, nipping at his heels like dogs, to open the door to the place and go striding towards the crowds and counter like a man on a mission. This is just a box of food and whatever Chin has to tell them will be more important than anything in these five minutes, now. He can pick something. Anything. While an eager, far too young kid, with perfectly tanned skin and hair swept back after her shoulders, the kind of smile untroubled by winds, water, or life.

Piped up fast with, "Aloha. Welcome to L & L. What can I get for you two?"

Steve glanced back at the board, singling in on a certain picture which didn't look so bad, something leaf steamed, pork, rice. A soda. "The Lau Lau. And--" His voice drug as his eyes darted across the offerings, aimed for something safe, that he could easily guess would be passable for someone who'd lived here, and actually appreciated real Hawaiian food enough to tolerate the fast food equivalent of it. "And a Loco Moco."

Not the best, but he bet Chin would be grateful for surprise early dinner or late lunch as it was.

Before his gaze shot over to Danny, taking a step away to let him do his thing, hands staying on the counter.

Steve steps back, which is one more courtesy than Danny expected from him, after actually ordering food, which is probably a good thing, too. Not that the guy can't take care of himself -- although Danny's not convinced he can, it's not like Navy SEALs are exactly famous for having real world skills and being able to cope with life outside black ops missions and orders -- but it settles something in his chest, mollifies that instinct he's never quite been able to quell. The one that makes him cut the crusts off Grace's sandwiches, the one that made him call his parents when they were out later than they said they'd be, to see where they were, the one that always made him step in between Matt and whatever schoolyard bully was giving him a hard time.

He knows people don't need him. The world has made that crystal clear, and it's a lesson he's learned the hard way over the last few years, but he can't quite stop the impulse to try. He's a cop and a dad. Telling people they need to eat as as instinctive to him as loving his daughter.

So he'll chalk Steve's order up as a small triumph in a life that has almost none, even as he steps up to the counter himself, orders the closest thing he can find to chicken cutlets. Katsu, whatever it is -- it's not bad, he's had it before, is basically chicken tenders and rice and some kind of sweet dipping sauce, and it'll hold him over fine until later. He's digging in his pocket for his wallet while the smiling girl rattles off their total -- no big deal, Steve already shelled out all the cash he had for those awful shirts, earlier, so Danny can step up and buy lunch. Especially if it was his idea.

"Mahalo," she says, taking the money with another bright smile. "Your order will be right up."

"Yeah, thanks." He waits for his change, glances at Steve to tip his head towards the waiting area, and heads that way himself, drumming his fingers on the counter and mulling over the day so far.

Garage. Getting kicked off the case. Getting pulled back in. Doran. His sore arm, and Steve's sore jaw. The open gap in his shirtsleeve, over a white bandage and torn muscle. Chin Ho Kelly.

And those zeros, flat and unchanging, inside his wrist.

It's not much effort to move toward where two or three people are already milling, holding receipts, purses, looking toward the counter in a combination of anxious, impatient and bored. Waiting. Not pointing out that Danny Williams brilliant plan is knocking more minutes off the afternoon. Sure. Food probably isn't a world eradicating concept, but he didn't choose it, wouldn't choose, over the alternative, and he'd rather it took less time than it was already.

When he's standing in an open spot, arms crossed, waiting there for it.

Trying to tune out Danny drumming his fingers. Because the man never stops moving.

It's not much. The bare room, with it's normal cliche number of small tables and smaller chairs.

The kind that every fast food chain on the face of the planet, countries over, must order from the same place, just in different colors and textures, types of wood and plastic. Where kids are sitting, swinging their feet, with frazzled parents telling them to stop playing with their toys, or their food, and eat. Couples and groups together, packing away whatever their plates are, passing words between bites, and the occasional loner who snagged a table, buried in their phone or laptop.

No one in this place is a threat. Even the concept is laughable, and the barest few seconds it takes to know that doesn't actually eradicate the waiting time either. Leaving Steve irritably longing to moving, to get everything moving, to get way from this innocuously inconvenient pause, even though he stands there perfectly still. Like he could under any circumstance, no matter how inconvenient to his person. Going over the last things. Hoping that whatever lead Chin Ho has just laughed about at them before getting on his bike was a good one.

That whatever it was would be an actual lead, to the leader of the Snakeheads, and not just another small fish that might have another name, who have another name, along with a list of superficial demands that, again, were more cheatingly cumbersome than actually taxing. Someone they could roll on to put them in the right direction for Hesse, and soon. Soon. Before time ran out, in their increasingly closing window closed. The clock that was closing for Hesse, and even more for them, because he wouldn't be anywhere waiting for them to catch up and there was good money he could be even less predictable because of Anton.

Leaving Steve glancing at his kobold, and the kids behind the counter, willing them to just call the number so they could get going.

There were more important things to do with this evening, and he wanted to be back doing them already. Not standing here.

The best thing about fast food? It's fast. Danny doesn't think it's more than three minutes from when they order to when the smiling girl behind the counter calls out their number and presents a large brown paper bag with the L&L symbol stamped on the side, by by God he feels each and every one of them like the seconds are actual grains of sand trying to drown him. McGarrett -- somewhere in the last hour or so, he'd started to think of the guy next to him as Steve, and that seems like one of those bad decisions he's always making that bite him in the ass, so he's trying to cut that shit out -- looks relaxed enough to the casual eye, but he's strung tight as a garrotting wire. How he hasn't collapsed yet of a stress-induced stroke is beyond Danny, but maybe it's more that McGarrett prefers instigating those in others.

But he's impatient, and it shows: the way he keeps glancing from his watch to the counter, the way he cases the restaurant interior like he thinks a suicide bomber might stroll in any second. Just standing next to him is making Danny's blood pressure rise, from sheer proximity, and it's not like it was low to begin with.

His own nervous tics escalate in response: while Steve grows more still, he feels edgier than ever, fidgety and impatient, fingers tapping against the counter until he glances down at them, twists his wrist just enough to see the first curves of two zeros.

Which just makes him purse his lips in annoyance, and go back to tapping.

So, all in all, it's good that the L&L staff are efficient and fast, and that maybe a grand total of five minutes have elapsed before he's grabbed the bag containing their lunches, and headed back for the door, checking his phone for the time and -- though it's not something he'll admit, not out loud and definitely not to McGarrett -- just in case Grace texted or called again.

She didn't, and it's just another weight that decides to sit on his stomach, along with the hunger gnawing there. "Okay," he says, brushing past it, sliding the phone back in his pocket, and pushing open the glass door. "Next stop, the Palave."

It's annoying. Standing. Waiting. Even knowing the minutes will pass, and the food will come to them, and then they'll be out of this place. Even if, and he's not acknowledging this to Danny standing over there, still drumming his fingers, like he can't manage to bear with five minutes without moving or making some noise, the standing here is making him aware he might be hungry.

It's shot through with a lot of everything else going on, but the constant food smells, tugging and tucking themselves into him as familiar, even old familiar, more than foreign, start his gut churning a little bit. Tightening. Maybe it's not the worst idea. If Danny can manage to get them back to The Palace without another pitstop it'll have been worth it, and there can be food while they're decompressing whatever this new information is.

Steve can will, while not giving in to the urge to reach up and rub at his neck, that Chin Ho won't need any distractions first.

He heads for the doors nearly the moment he watches Danny's hand go connecting with the bag, even if it makes that churning in his stomach a little more present. But it's not like he hasn't ignored far worse for far longer when he needed to, and he'll have his next meal within the next twenty minutes. He doesn't want it now, regardless of what his body is saying. He wants to be in The Palace. Wants to see if Jameson's quick outfit is good enough. Wants to be hearing what this lead is.

Once that's happening he can see to the rest of it. Because he'll have a direction finally. A name. A head to stomp on, and with that will come a location to a storm. Everything will go back in a center point. One he'll keep from being shot before he has the information on Hesse this time. Even if that thought only comes with a half glance toward the other side of the car, when he's grabbing his door and sliding back into the passenger seat.

Steve slides back in and slams the door, and Danny does the same, only he finishes his off by tossing the bag of food unceremoniously into Steve's lap as the door's still closing. "Here, hang onto this."

A quick snap of the buckle, key in the ignition, and his hand on the back of the passenger seat to lever himself so he can see out the back window, and he's backing out, fast enough that the tires squeal, which is actually a nice break from McGarrett's stone-cold silence. He'd almost thought they were starting to get along, like maybe there was a human underneath the killing machine, but a glance towards the passenger seat makes him shake his head at that clear misstep of a theory. McGarrett's back in his own head again, got that thousand-yard stare of his, like he doesn't have the same damn zeroes lining his wrist that keep glaring up at Danny every time he twists his hand, like it wouldn't have given him that same brief jolt Danny got in the garage, the one he thought was adrenaline until he looked down and saw the single line of red curves.

He really is a cold fish, isn't he?

Except the problem is that Danny's sort of hooked, now. He's in this enough to need to see it to the logical conclusion: catching Victor Hesse at the very least, figuring out what the hell to do with the new information his timer keeps calmly reminding him of at the most. He can't just walk away, go back to his lonely island of a desk at HPD and ignore McGarrett making him his partner: the Chief wouldn't let it fly, and he'd get ostracized even further for dropping a hometown hero, the son of an HPD legend, in the drink and letting him wash away.

Nope. He's stuck here, like he's been stuck ever since he got here, but at least this case has the faint tang of freedom to it, like a window just barely open in an otherwise sealed room, like if he could just crack it, he'd be out, free, able to live his own goddamn life again, and not the one he's had to scrape off the leavings of everyone around him.

Of everything else, that might be the thing he hates most about this whole scenario -- about McGarrett himself: that he can see this sliver of light, this crack in the door, and it's only going to come slamming shut on him as soon as he thinks he can make a break for it. This asshole is playing with lives and careers he'll probably just leave in the lurch once Hesse is caught, and still, still, Danny is enough of an idiot to think there might actually be some hope.

So who's the real asshole, here?

At least Iolani Palace isn't far: a few intersections later, and they're turning in towards the city, buildings piling up around them, and the white facade of the palace looming ahead.

Steve doesn't actually balk much at the food shoved at him. Mostly likely because he's already having to catch it before it hits his lap and the seat between his legs before he can really be making much noise about it, and he really doesn't care that much about it. Holding it. Danny is driving, and Danny's already shown he's just as incapable of talking without his hands in the car as he does anywhere else he was talking.

The Palace is a lot like he remembers it from his early teens. At least for the outside. Towering. Stately. Historically picturesque. He'd never given the inside much thought, and returning it's an odd feeling to have that completely reversed. The outside is nice. Like a paint coat is nice. Like a golden statue is nice. But he doesn't care about it at all. He wants to know where his offices are, and wants to be in there already. The rest is just details.

Like the minutes between the getting the food shoved at him and parking, between the parking lot and pushing into the building, into a sudden cloud of office could air. Stopping one person to get directions to the area Jameson had said now belonged to him. Upstairs wasn't far, and it was better, by far, than the worst he'd managed in the past. Empty offices, empty furniture everywhere else, gear wrapped in plastic, and one space in the center that had been cobbled together in n obvious hurry. But one that looked like it worked.

Chin Ho Kelly was already eyes deep in a laptop as they walked in, and had half-filled a suspect board behind him self.
Both of those, by themselves, without his father, anchored a little more respect for the man, himself, in Steve's eyes. At least topically.

Even if it didn't cross much of his demeanor as he lifted a bag, saying they'd gotten food, while he was grabbing the back of a chair to drag over to that roughshod make-shift command center of the moment at the same time. If Kelly looked surprised to have a plate box pushed across the table at him, even after that announcement, it's just another thing Steve could pretend not to notice, too, while gesturing to the laptop and saying he better have something. Again.

Edited 2014-08-05 00:16 (UTC)

If it weren't obvious from his own experience today, it would have been clear to Danny from the second they walked into the jury-rigged set up that McGarrett is a man who gets things to move, and, not for the first or (he suspects) the last time today, Danny hates him a little more for it. Guy lands back on the island for the first time in years, and he's handed free rein and all the space and equipment he could possibly need or want, without even asking for it. He'd accepted it, like putting together a team to bring Hesse down and being handed the resources necessary to do it on a silver platter was something he did out of the goodness of his own heart, because the Governor wanted him to, and not because he needed it. Nobody's standing in his way, barring the door, slowing him down, needling him with snide remarks and laughing at him to his face as well as behind his back. No one's even tried to give him a runaround.

And the thing that Danny hates most? Is that he sort of respects it.

Which is all just academic, really, while he's keeping step next to McGarrett as they head into the hastily-assembled office space, whistling low. "Anything else you think you mighta forgotten? Just, while they're at it, you know. This looks like better equipment than my precinct, where've they been hiding it all, huh?"

Dragging out a chair and reaching for the bag to pull out his own box of food, before tipping his chin to Kelly, cardboard unfolding under his fingers. "So? What've we got?"

Turns out they've got something, definitely something. Sang Min, who looks like a snake and a weasel had some kind of bastard child, and that child never cut or washed its hair, is the lead suspect: human trafficking, and fingers in a lot of pies. Which means a sting, which means he's out, and Chin's out, and no one in their right mind would think Steve was a man without means or the ability to get himself off this fucking rock if he wanted to.

The profile doesn't look much better or worse than any of the hundreds of thousands of flatback pictures of scum Steve's seen over the last decade and half. Or the full and half faces that flicked through his minds at times, the ones left littered on a floor who never had a picture before the necessity of putting them down popped up front and center under acceptable casualty in the purpose of the mission.

But it's the way Chin starts telling them how much none of them would be good for the job Steve wants, putting pressure on this newest piece of lower-level dirt, that leaves him feeling certain, even flatfooted through the speech, about this being a lead-up. "I take it you have the perfect guy in mind?" Rolls off, with the flat tug of one side of his mouth, pleased to have something working still, while Chin says he does.

"Make the call," Steve said with a wave of fork, before he was pushing it back into his plate, and digging in his own pocket.

Dragging his own phone out, and tapping it for the last call, again, before shoving it between his ear and his shoulder while it was ringing. Hand going back to his fork, while he made two to three steps away. Swallowing hard on a bite of food when she answered before he'd finished chewing even. "Yes, Governor."

Rolling straight past anything that sounded like needed an explanation, aside from the barest answer that he had something. Willed it all to be something. To work. To be connected to Hesse. She said free reign, and he was going to take it until she finally decided to push back. "I'm going to need a mobile surveillance unit. Top end as you can free up by tonight. Tomorrow morning, wheels up, at the latest."

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