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[haole_cop]

 "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.

 

Comments

[thebesteverseen]

It's windy and still empty. There's something sad about that. He'd thought it was more how early it was this morning, but it looks to have the about the same number of people, again. Maybe different ones, but not many people milling about really at all. At least it means that they probably won't have to wait to talk to him.

Steve looked over the people present, at Danny's question, without looking back at the man. A vague narrow of his eyes, skimming height and build and color. But none of them pinged right. None of them was the person he was looking for. (And none of them, though he wouldn't be there at all, by any means, was Victor Hesse.)

Steve started walking across the lot, assuming Danny would follow him, the way he'd come around the car.

"There should be a Security Office." He hadn't looked earlier, but it was a historical site.

[haole_cop]

"Yeah."

He's looking around, steps quick to keep up with Steve, arms swinging at his sides, but taking it in. "Looks like over there, in the visitors center." Lifting a hand, to point, where a few tourists are trickling out of a breezy building. "I think I remember seeing it before. Me and Grace, we came here one time, pretty early on. She likes historical stuff."

It's an aside. Barely anything at all, certainly nothing like everything he could say about Grace, if he wanted to. Just a few casually dropped words, because he can't help it, because they did come here, and he can't help but remember it.

Yellow-shirted security guards are dotted around the premises, but he's not sure which one's Chin Ho Kelly. "Think he's still on shift?"

[thebesteverseen]

Steve's as good with that as a starting place as anything else, nodding even as he's walking. Even if Danny does unexpectedly veer into suddenly talking about his daughter, again, and Steve can note the way it makes his voice change again. It wraps itself in this almost unknowing, and unrecognized, warmth. Just for a second, while he's gesturing to the place in front of them.

There's almost a second where he tries to see it. How anyone else must. Without a relative down in the deep. Without a childhood full of events out here, paying homage to that memory, respect to a legacy, planning to grow up and do it justice. Someone who was just young, just seeing it as some historical place. He can't really. He can't without losing the meaning, and he can't do that any more than he can really like at all that its empty. Half like it's forgotten, half like maybe its only remembered by children who like historical things.

He's walking quickly, even though he's not trying to outpace Danny this time. Direct, but it's actually comparable.

"If not, we can ask for his personnel file. Find where he is now." Skipped step up the sidewalk and continuing straight on.

[haole_cop]

Part of him is shouting that he shouldn't just be rolling along with all of this, that Steve is still quite possibly unhinged and definitely dangerous and that he should just head back to HPD and swallow his pride for a job, but it's surprisingly easy to quell, because he's not sure he wants to do any of that.

Instead, he's running through child-trafficking cases in the six months since he's been here, wondering if any of them might be the guy they're looking for. It's not that HPD has caught any, recently, but they know it's happening. Hawaii is in too good a spot to pass up, between mainland USA and Japan, China, countries where visas take too long and might never come through anyway. Nothing's coming to mind, but who knows? Maybe Chin Ho Kelly will know something he doesn't.

The visitor center is of the kind recognizable the world over: men checking purses and bags, asking tourists to turn out their pockets. It's all fairly low-key, and Danny grimaces.

Nothing wrong with being a security guard, but he's pretty sure he'd be dead of boredom in less than a day.

[thebesteverseen]

Steve's glancing over all these people, too. But they aren't Chin.

Some of them have the right coloring, but it's still the wrong person. Wrong colored shirts. It's really only about those two seconds before Steve done with the looking, while arriving and having arrived. Danny's at his side, in his peripheral, waiting and Steve just goes for forward. Straight shot, straight line, heads for the guy closest. Checking bags. Waits only long enough to get through the two people in line.

Before he can be tipping his head in a nod, and his hand with coming straight out the gate.

"We're looking for Chin Ho Kelly. He was here this morning. He still around?"

The kid, because the one in here, has to be a kid, he can't be even half past twenty, gives them both a look, up and down like he's got some ability to tell anything just by their clothes and them standing there. But Steve can pinpoint the second his eyes pass over Danny's badge, stop, retrack on it, and then he's looking back at Steve. "Yeah, brah. He took a kid to office not five back. You want me to go get him?"

Steve doesn't want more people, so there's a fast, easy shake of his head. "We've got it. If you'll just point the way."

[haole_cop]

The badge is still good for something, seems like, even if HPD isn't all that thrilled to call him one of their own. The security guy just nods to Steve's request, points back over his shoulder.

He wonders, as they head past, what exactly would necessitate getting hauled into the security office, here. Did some kid try to smuggle a water bottle past the security line? Maybe a can of paint?

Sure, the Arizona memorial is an important spot, but like the Liberty Bell, or the Washington Monument, not like it's a library full of state secrets. "You think maybe there's a bunch of criminal lowlifes hanging around a national monument?"

All he's saying is, it can't be the world's most stimulating job.

[thebesteverseen]

Steve's giving that question a crazy look that actually involves looking over his shoulder, wondering where the words Danny throws out actually come from and whether the man ever actually vet's them before they just come rolling out of his mouth. It's hardly the place. Not that he has any idea, aside from the earlier spot, where lowlife's clung to in Hawaii anymore, but still.

The Arizona wasn't it. The Arizona was a dust bowl.

But at least its office stood out. With that helpful small sign next to the door telling you exactly what it was, like there was some other barrage of doors everyone was missing back here, that might be mistaken for it. Which there wasn't. He pressed forward for it with direct, quick steps, reaching up to knock with one hand, while his other was already going for the doorknob and pushing the whole thing open.

Standing in the doorway, taking Danny's tiny criminal in the shape of a small kid at the table and Chin standing off to one side of the table. Whatever this was, their thing was still far more important on any scale anywhere. Besides, the kid already looked like he was ready to piss himself as it was. Steve tipped a nod toward behind them, somewhere away from this place and that kid. "You got a minute?"

"Sure," Chin nodded, looking surprised at the interruption. But maybe even relieved for it. Since he turned back to the kid, making a gesture toward the toward door. "Go on back to your parents. Just don't do it again, 'eh?"

[haole_cop]

Chin Ho Kelly doesn't look like a dirty cop.

Not that they've got a look, exactly, but there's nothing shifty, suspicious, or unnerving about the guy. He's clear-eyed and clean-shaven, and even in his horrible rent-a-cop uniform, he looks relaxed and authoritative.

Danny wonders if maybe HPD is just crap at picking out the good ones from the bad.

Still, he was interrogating a small child, who nods, looking terrified, and breaks for the door, barely giving Danny time to step aside, lift his hands out of the way. "Hey, he looks like a real criminal mastermind," he jokes, but Chin Ho Kelly gives him a flat look, and he holds his hands up in surrender, gestures for Steve to go on, seeing as he's the one who brought them here.

[thebesteverseen]

Steve didn't try to explain or excuse the words that came out of Danny's mouth. He was just barely at any understanding of them himself. It wasn't an insult, and Chin was scooting them out the same as the kid, and Steve was fast to step back, making sure it wasn't straight into Danny.

Heading back toward the place they'd come from, with little more than passing a hand through the air between them saying, "Chin Ho Kelly, Detective Danny Williams." And vice-versa, at least because it got that out of the way, before they started. Cards and introductions. "Can we grab a table? This shouldn't take too long."

Barely the space of a minute or two if the answer was no. A little longer if the answer was yes and they could get a lead on the smugglers. If Chin could point them toward anyone, even a shallow hint of a lead of the guys who did this.

"The canteen should have a few of those open. Over here," Chin said as he lead them toward a different area than where they'd just come from. A small, what looked far more touristy than Hawaiian little coffee bistro attached. The kind of place that looked like it didn't even remember what the dream of a lunch rush was anymore.

[haole_cop]

Fine, so no one wants to lighten the mood, it's okay by him. He'll follow along after Steve and Chin, one hand in his pocket, the other swinging at his side, glancing around the little tourist area. It's kitschy and cheerful, but nearly empty, and he's not surprised Chin's trying to fill his day.

The canteen has more than a few open tables: it's more like every table, and Danny slides onto the bench of the one Chin leads them to, flexing his left arm idly, feeling the pull of torn muscle and the strange sensation of tape tugging at his skin. It's not too bad, but it still aches; so does his right shoulder, but he won't give in and stretch that where Steve can see it.

He does, however, notice with some satisfaction that a pretty solid shiner is starting to bloom on Steve's cheek.

[thebesteverseen]

"Alright, what can I do for you?" Chin asked, as they dropped into chairs.

Steve dug his phone out, flipping to the picture of the girl, shattered and shaken looking, even in the pressed stillness of the single picture, and holding it out toward Chin. "Her name is Chen Chi."

"Where'd you find her?"

Steve pulled his phone back, looking at it even as he was tuning it off. "Locked in a house." That wasn't even a house. It was a cupboard. A detail that mattered even if he didn't say it, setting the phone down on the table under her hands. "She came here to start a new life. They drugged her and turned her into a prostitute."

Chin leaned back, a huff of sudden awareness of what Steve was getting at, but it only made him pushed harder. More facts and as much as he could before there could be anything like an excuse or a no. He had to have the whole thing out there before there was any chance of it getting off the table. "The guy we're looking for is high profile. Victor Hesse. CIA. FBI. Interpol. He's on everyone's radar. Which means he didn't land here and get his passport stamped. He back-channeled in."

"Right," Chin was nodding, but he wasn't maintaining eye contact anymore. His shoulders drawing in and his gaze sliding to the sides and back. "So you think the same network that brought this girl to the island, smuggled Hesse in."

"Well, he made a fortune trafficking kids out of Malaysia." It's blank, bland and true. The numbers are horrorfic, and it wouldn't surprise Steve to find him up to anything he'd done before, here in Hawaii. Especially just the convenience of proving a point, trying to blackmail him into freeing Anton, killing Steve's dad as payback.

"You're looking for a snakehead, then," Chin supplied, not looking all that optimistic, even as Steve suddenly felt it. Finally getting toward looking in the direction of Danny, again. Like it was something Steve probably could have gotten even without asking him, given his friend there. "Local Chinese gangs the specialize in human smuggling."

[haole_cop]

He's been listening with his arms crossed on the table, but now he interjects. "Okay, well, we need a name."

That's why they're here, because he's too new and Steve's too out of touch to have any idea who might be running this kind of racket on the island, but Chin Ho Kelly just laughs. It's not bitter, but it is self-effacing, and Danny's eyebrows furrow as he watches him.

"What, are you kidding?" The humor doesn't last long, as Chin spreads his hands beneath the table, glances down at himself, sardonic. "Look at me -- I'm a rubber gun, now."

"Come on." Danny's reaching a little across the table, coaxing and disbelieving all at once. "You were on the force for fifteen years."

So he must know someone. Must know the patterns, the people, the names. Meka, in that brief conversation, had said Chin Ho Kelly was one of the best they'd had, before everything went to hell for him, and Danny's not in the habit of calling Meka a liar.

Chin's laughter is gone; he's looking away, expression closed off and distant, but he wants to help. Danny knows it, can feel it, because it's the same thing he'd do, if he were kicked off the force. It wouldn't change wanting to be a force for good in the world, to save the kids like Chen Chi and put down the dogs who think they can make the rules. "Okay, look," he says, finally, reluctant. "I know a guy who's got ties to that world."

[thebesteverseen]

"Great." Steve tossed his hands out, glad to finally seeing something work and Danny's mouth doing some good on this case, right there, too. As the man started opening up, and Danny, himself, filled in that he hadn't just meant Chin's family name earlier in the car. "Get us an intro."

"Forget it." It was flat and fast, but there was nothing in Chin's face that mad Steve think it was easy or decided. Reluctance and inability, sidelined longing, and something a little too desperately wary. "He's a former confidential informant. He trusts no one." Chin shifted, only a little, looking at both of them. "Especially haole's."

"You talk to him," Steve threw it out, letting the always half expected, side-ways blanket, bigotry fly right over his head, like what it was. Nothing. Nothing that could ever touch him. His focused directly on the next route that it could be, if it couldn't be there, or them. Especially if he had the name, and it wasn't up for discussion their getting it, but someone had to.

"I'm busy," Chin snapped back too fast.

[haole_cop]

"You're busy?"

That haole crack rolls right off Steve, but it lodges and festers in Danny's chest along with all the other times that word has been slung at him. "What, you expecting a crime wave in the gift shop this afternoon?"

He gestures to the room, the emptiness of it, the quiet mid-afternoon lull that he guesses is probably a lot like the mid-morning lull, or the all-freaking-day lull.

Kelly sits back, reconsiders his position, tries another tactic. When he leans forward again, his voice is quiet, but firm. "Look, I can't be a cop anymore."

[thebesteverseen]

"Why not?" Steve got back in there, louder than the raise of Chin's voice.

"Because I can't be," Chin through back, with the kind of logic fit for children and things too sore for being talked about in any kind of logical calm. All of which had drained from Chin's face in a mix of anger than looked a whole lot more like bitter pain to Steve. "You understand?!"

He leaned in, voice going tight and vicious, though not aimed at them. "HPD accused me of taking payoffs, so I'm the last person the department wants to see wearing a badge." The hands came off the table, as the chair slid back scraping the floor, and Chin threw down his last words, as he was reworking the tie on his low slung apron. "I gotta go."

[haole_cop]

"This is going really well."

It's mostly to himself, though, quiet, because he gets it. Okay? He does. He knows exactly what it must be like to be forced out of the force, accused. Whether Kelly did it or not isn't the point. When the people who are supposed to have your back against everything and anything accuse you of betraying their trust and the trust of everyone you protect, it's gotta hurt.

He remembers Peterson, the denials, the bargaining, the attempts to coax Danny onto his side. There's none of any of that, here: just a man who desperately wants a chance to do exactly the thing he can't do anymore.

So, yeah. Really well.

[thebesteverseen]

That aside isn't to him. But it might as well be. It smacks just as hard as the squeal of the chair had. The gnawing, exploding thing in his gut that can't have another dead end. He can't. He needs this too much, and the person with the skills and contacts to make this happen is two steps away. And there has to be a way through the maze of his bitterness and the HPD's hovering judgement.

Which really only makes one thing important, if this is the very last second of a chance he has, and he lets it fall.

"Did you take the money?"

He can hear the way Chin's voice went iced with surprise, like he just stomped on a grave without hesitating. And he did. It's part of why he holds. Fingers laced a long second, to not look too desperate. As desperate as he really is. As everything crawling up his spine is. It's a decided turn, starting the question, without even looking at Chin yet.

"Did you--" He pressed on the word as his eyes slide to Chin's face suddenly. "-take the money."

Chin took a step back, face gone to a shattered spot beyond certain, and voice rough, headed toward cracking, when he said, "No."

Steve shoved out of his chair, leaning on it, the impulse that said this was right. "Then come with us." That nothing about anything Chin had said or done since this morning had given him a second of doubt. "And we don't need to talk about this again." Not today. Not at any point that he'd met and interacted with Chin when he was younger either. "Ever." He wouldn't drag it out to trip Chin up. He wouldn't let Danny.

The fact Chin stood, eyes shining, squinting at him, trying to make sense of Steve or what Steve was saying, made him push right on, too, even as he kept his voice steady. "This is your ticket back into the game. Call it payback. Call it whatever you want. I don't care. But I need you." And he did, and he wouldn't lie about that. Not when the man looked like this, had been raked over so completely already, and the offer had come out of realizing what a resource he could be.

"How do you know you can trust me?"

Because he had to, and, when it came down to it -- "Because my old man did."

Because, even Chin said earlier this morning, his dad had always stuck by him. Even after HPD's decision.
His dad was a lot of things, but generous beyond reason was nowhere in the list where it came to family or coworkers.

[haole_cop]

He wonders if Steve actually, truly, in his heart, believes that if he says something with enough conviction, other people will start believing it, too. He wonders if Steve honestly thinks he can make things happen, just by wanting them hard enough.

The thing is, he's not sure he can come up with any solid proof that it isn't working.

He's only known the guy for a few hours, but this is the second time he's seen him railroad someone into working with him; pinpointing their motivation and skewering them with it. It worked on Danny, and it's working on Chin Ho Kelly.

Who does, actually, have a choice that Danny didn't have, but who is standing there, struck, staring at Steve, and Danny can't say he can blame the guy, right? Like, is he for real?

Just dropping the stigma of an inquiry into Chin's character and morals and job performance. Saying it doesn't matter, when Danny knows it's the reason the man left his fifteen-year, stellar career, is the thing behind the hunger and the calm desperation in his face, the bitterness in his laughter. Standing there, straight-shouldered and easy, the solution to everyone's problems. Snapping his fingers and just making it happen.

Making the world shift.

He wonder if that's a usual thing around Steve McGarrett, the complete uprooting of reality. Steve striding in and changing the whole game, lifting the players, breaking all the rules. He should hate it. It should unsettle the hell out of him.

So how come he's finding himself starting to feel some begrudging respect?

It's not like any of this is going to stay, is it? Maybe Steve said he'd transfer to the Reserves and take on this...what, task force, but once they've got Hesse, he'll go back and so will Danny and Chin, right? How far does this ticket actually take them? It's not actually enough to hope for anything, is it? Just because Steve says so, just because Steve is calling it a way back into the game, that doesn't make it one.

Right?

Chin seems wary, too, but unlike Danny, he seems to know when a fight's been lost, and breaks eye contact first, shaking his head in something like wry disbelief. "Okay," he says, after a second. "I'll talk to him for you. But I warn you: the man knows how to bargain, and information won't come cheap."

[thebesteverseen]

"When does it ever," Steve says, letting something of a bare curve touch his mouth even if it couldn't be called a smile.

The kind of thing here, and then gone, like a flash of light on water or metal. Relief and triumph and gratitude here and then, gone. Because it means that they have a direction. Another person to slide into Danny's car, or follow them. But a possible solid direction, too. Someone who might know where the Snakeheads that brought in the kid and Hesse could be found. They've got Chin, and Chin's got the next step up the ladder.

Besides it's not like every agency out there wouldn't slap down a handful to find Hesse.

If that was all it took. Which it won't be. But it's one more step in the right direction of finding the bastard and bringing him in. Here, on American soil, even though they've played chase around the entire world for five years and an endless score of horrors better left between the untouched sides of another folder somewhere. Costs money couldn't even touch.

"Let's go, then." Steve said, barely looking away from Chin's face, while the man still seemed to be testing if this was real.

"I need to tell them I'll need the rest of the day." Certain, even in that way that makes his uncertainty clear. He's not rocking the boat on what he has for the thing he's not positive is even possible, even with Steve standing there, waiting, unmoving, mind made up and not about to change for anything. "I'll meet you two out front."

[haole_cop]

Chin gives Steve a tight, almost curt nod, and slides a glance at Danny, but before Danny can define it or start translating it, the man's headed past him, back to the security office they found him in, shoulders tense and hands fisting at his sides.

Danny's getting up as he heads past, and he watches him for a second, eyebrows raised, while he wanders his way over to Steve, one hand in his pocket, the other swinging idly at his side. "That is a man with zero job satisfaction."

It would be a bad idea to question Steve's decision, right now. He knows it, and, honestly, he's not sure he wants to try. Sure, it's a bad story -- it always is, when a cop is accused and drummed out of the force -- but it's not like HPD's given Danny much reason for loyalty or blind, close-minded belief. Maybe Chin didn't take the money. Maybe he's on the outs with HPD, just like Danny is, for no good reason at all, other than that they're a bunch of bigoted, close-minded assholes with a talent for banding together against anyone who doesn't march in step with the rest of them.

So he doesn't argue it, or bring it up. He's got his own suspicions, but there's no instinct screaming red lights and sirens in his brain and gut that Chin's a bad egg, and they do need him. "You have anymore misfit toys to pick up today, or are we done? Because I have to warn you, my car only seats so many, and you already take up about a third of the available cab space."

[thebesteverseen]

Danny's talking to himself, or Steve, and Steve lets him ramble.

It's starting to be a common denominator background noise whenever there is a pause in the world. Like being able to to hear the waves no matter where he is. Danny Williams. Talking. Too. The first comment doesn't really have to be answered. Not when they're watching Chin walk away, and Steve's not promising any of them that either. But Danny is sidling up toward him, from a corner, and getting Steve to look over, saying those words that are to him.

Just proving once again he really has no idea where the things that come out of Danny's mouth do, and it almost makes him want to throw something back. Banter the way he might have with any of his men when not in the middle of a mission hot seat. That sideways consideration, near amusement, raking up residence in the odd once over he gives Danny, and the way his mouth curves crookedly up on one side.

Because the real answer is as many as it takes. To bring Hesse to justice. To bring his Father to justice.

"Don't worry about it," Steve tossed out, too dry for light or silly, but there was a snap of wit in it as he was nodding the direction he started walking. Out of the cantina, with its large, block letters of Remember Pearl Harbor, headed back toward the parking lot they'd just come from. "If we run out of space, you're small enough you could fit in the trunk. Easy."

[haole_cop]

He laughs.

It's almost a reflex, it feels so natural, until he remembers after a second that he hates Steve, and that Steve is actively trying to ruin his life and/or get him killed, and hasn't shown any signs of a sense of humor or any human feelings at all, but he can't help it. He does laugh.

It's short and amused by way of sarcastic and dry, but it's there, hand shoving first into his pocket as they walk before it lifts out again and swings through the air, fingertips brushing the sleeve of Steve's shirt. "Don't think for even one second that you are going to get anywhere near the driver's seat of my car, McGarrett. You can get out and walk, if it gets too crowded."

[thebesteverseen]

There's that laugh again. The second time. Surprising enough, it makes Steve look back toward him, connecting that sound to the car, and his daughter, and then again to this moment. When it's short and sarcastic, but it's actually there for a moment, and it makes Danny something like...human. Warmer. Less like a rabid piranha attacking at the slightest hint of provocation for any bit of skin on a hand held out toward him.

Steve's not really even entirely through the thought when Danny is digging in his pocket and then reaching out to smack his arm. Giving him an unexpected view of a long set of zeroes on Danny's wrist, even while his own mouth is curving more freely this time. Because Danny actually took a god forsaken joke as a god forsaken joke, and he can wonder if Danny is one those cases that proved Fates' promise crumbles to dust like everything else on this small, swiftly spinning, planet.

But he doesn't entirely want to lose the slippery step toward whatever this is.

It wasn't like he'd shove Danny into the back of the actual car except under dire circumstances.

But dire circumstances had a whole lot less rules and options attached to them. And they weren't anywhere near there yet.

"What?" Steve tipped his head upward, quick fast like a question. Mouth pulling tight, even as his eyes glinted with the smile his mouth didn't step near. "You afraid I'll show it how it's meant to be driven, and it'll never come back again. It's a sweet car." Which is something like a compliment. To the type of car. Of course. "Deserves to be used how it was designed to be used."

[haole_cop]

"I realize you probably got to play with all the really great toys while being all Black Hawk Down on the far side of the world, but, please, believe me when I say this: you don't get to touch my car. And I am an excellent driver."

He fishes his keys out of of his pocket, lets them jingle as they walk back down the blacktop to the parking lot, steps jaunty, and he's actually feeling a little less like murdering everyone on sight, which is a definite step up for him today.

And Steve -- Steve is actually loosening up. A little. A very little, okay, it's still basically like trying to bend a steel pipe into a pretzel shape, but every now and then, like just now, a slight crack in the facade appears. So maybe he's not just a tin soldier, then. Maybe he actually is human, with thoughts beyond revenge and how to most efficiently clear a jammed gun.

Danny's still not sure he's buying the line of zeros on his wrist, but it's a start.

[thebesteverseen]

"Already touched it," slides out of Steve's mouth faster than even he was expecting.

He rolls, the hell, with it. Because he's not about to be caught flat footed by his own mouth.

But it happened about on par with the second when he was having the thought itself. Just another volley to send over the wall, toward those keys being shaken in the air. Like he doesn't take in Danny's height and steps for a second, like an actual consideration, in the back of his mind, of how easy to would be to reach out, and snap then. Like a quick strike. He doesn't. But the assessment still plays out in his head.

Yeah, sure, maybe its grade school appropriate as responses go, but for a moment what it does is actually make him miss his men. Pokes the door so unexpectedly where that festering black stone in black of his heart and the back of his gut hides. Makes him miss Freddie. Wide smiling, always joking, son of a bitch. But that's too close, too real, too recent, too. Everything going still and cold the next second. Making him look back toward the buildings, for any sight of Chin, for the promise they can get rolling, keep rolling, back on schedule, staying on task, on the job, rolling toward Hesse.