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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 oddly fitting that Williams is still biting off words over there, even when one glance over, during his first question, is accompanied with an odd face. Steve's not sure what that is at all. Confusion? Uncertainty? Some kind of dislike for all of it.? Steve, and Steve talking? Like wary suspicious and surprise slamming into something else. Probably the annoyance and ultimate flag waving offense Danny takes at everything that happens anywhere near him.

Closing the bag doesn't actually change what it is, but it causes a distraction. A distortion of white plastic, it's not impossible to see some of the most distinct shape and colors through, to at least create a barrier of some small kind. Letting him blink and lean back in seat, glance out the and back toward Danny, all while he's still nodding. Just let some of those words escape because they are filling up the space in there.

"My Dad would've agreed with you." There's something distant to that. Not really fond. Even while intimate.

"Said it was lucky the local was any good." Especially here. Which he hadn't understood much then. But he did now.

But tossed together with his odd thoughts, has Steve, looking back over at Danny a little speculatively, since this is the oddest small two foot space of strangely not burning common ground, asking a question before he even gets to thinking better of whether he should or shouldn't. "You ever been on the tour?"

[haole_cop]

Oh, this is weird.

He can handle McGarrett being all Super SEAL and closed off, inaccessible. He doesn't like it, but he can handle it.

But this? This is like those few other blips throughout the day, pushing aside the steel outer layer surrounding him, and making Danny realize there's a person underneath, a guy his own age who lost his father, who hasn't been home in far too long. All of which hits a personal button that he really, so much, would rather keep unpressed, because Steve can't be a real person. If Steve is a real person, then those zeroes on his wrist -- their wrists -- might be a real thing, and Danny's pretty sure he can't handle that.

Except he also can't help it. The begrudging step towards actual conversation, like he's been taunting Steve was impossible all day, because Steve is volunteering information for only the second -- maybe third -- time so far, and it's out before Danny can stop himself: "Yeah, well, he was right."

About the beer. Maybe not about anything else, because he's pretty damn sure that isn't a conversation either of them wants to get into here and now, or even could. Maybe after a few of the beers currently in Steve's lap. But not before.

The thing is, an hour ago, Danny would have thought it was impossible to get to that topic at all, but now? He's not so sure.

For now, though, Steve's asking him a question, and the part of him that wants to stubbornly not answer out of sheer spite is a whole lot smaller than he thought it would be. "At the brewery? No. It's not exactly, uh, something that would be a whole lot of of fun just by myself, you know?"

And it's not like anyone was jumping at the chance to go with him. Which is fine. He doesn't need to go see the beer being made, he's happy just drinking it at home, or at the occasional bar with Meka.

Flicks on the blinker, turns off the main road, headed towards the one that runs parallel to the shore, the one John McGarrett's house is on, for the second time today. "But I took a couple other ones when I first got here." There's a pause, as he looks out the window, back of his neck and shoulders tight, before amending. "Grace wanted to go."

Which shouldn't be a surprise. It should be clear by now that it's not a thing he'd do for himself, by himself, that this place is one he's interested in seeing much of. It's just a place. It's not home. It's where he works and lives now, but it's not home. That's all he cares about. "We saw lots of pineapple fields. I'm pretty sure I reached my pineapple-field saturation point about an hour in on the first day."

[thebesteverseen]

"You hate pineapples, too?" There's an odd, irrepressible smirk trying to pull itself out at that one. "Who hates pineapple?"

There's nothing quite sharp about the question. It's about as short and amused by disbelieving as the swimming one was earlier. Like it's a wall of bricks that Steve is making out of Danny's Things. The one that should say it's impossible this man is living on Hawaii. But keeps being true all the same. Danny Williams and paradise island were not a match made in heaven, but he was here, still.

For his kid. For Grace. Which reminded him, absently of those words Danny had said into the phone earlier.

The ones he didn't want to explain, that were during that time when he'd seemed one hundred percent a different person.

"I'd always wanted to see it." It's a stupid kind of thing looking back. He'd wanted it badly as a kid. Just one of those things, you couldn't do, because you were too young. When 'too young' used to seem to come from everywhere, and he'd set his sights on something he couldn't have, but could count down to when he could happen, could wrestle his dad into agreeing about letting him once he was old enough, even with a parent.

Back when he was someone completely else. Back when his Dad was someone completely else. When Mare, and his mom...

Maybe it makes the follow-up a little distant, through a look out the window on his side of the car.

"But I shipped out before there was ever a chance of that." Was shipped out. Sent away.

When his dad had suddenly done a one-eighty, broken every promise, broken maybe completely from it, from saying they'd all make it, together, somehow without her, and suddenly sent them both packing as far from him and each other as possible, decimating whatever had been The McGarrett Family entirely to rare, short phone calls. To barely remembering each other. To the way he kept replaying those words his father said on the phone in Korea, confused and curious, and how he wasn't even a surprise Mary didn't come this morning for the funeral.

[haole_cop]

"Lots of people." Off the cuff, easy, with one hand lifting from the wheel and taking a turn through the air. "I'm thinking of starting a club."

It's a joke. He can joke, sometimes. All the time. Plenty of times. He doesn't always hate everything -- even if, no, really, he truly can't stand pineapple most days. Too sweet, too prickly, too hard to cut, too expensive. "What's wrong with an apple? I ask you. Oranges. Fruit that's easy to eat. But no. They're everywhere, here. They're on tours. In salads -- regular salads, I must clarify, not even those terrible fruit salads you get on buffets that are all pineapple and green grapes and cantalope -- on fish, in salsa, it's insane. It's an epidemic."

And it makes him feel better to ramble about, because Steve's looking out the window, and Danny has to tackle the impulse as it lifts, strangle it back down his throat, but the first few words still slip out: "Well, maybe --"

Because it's actually a perfect opening. Would be. With those numbers on his wrist. The ones he can't see underneath Steve's watch. It would be all too easy to suggest they go. Together. Like a date, if he weren't on the wrong side of thirty-five and unsure about what a date even looks like anymore, or what one with someone like Steve McGarrett could possibly entail.

Or, not even a date. Just to do it. Hang out. Get to know each other. Except he's pretty sure this isn't the moment for either suggestion, and he's also pretty sure he wants to burn the first option to the ground and forget it exists, so he swallows it down in a hard knot and shakes his head, mouth turning down in a why not? sort of shrugged expression. "You could check it out, if you stick around."

He's got no idea if that's the plan or not. They have an office space. Steve called him his partner. Said on the phone he was transferring to the Reserves, and would run the task force for the Governor, whatever that means, but Danny has no idea if that means just for this case, or as a career move.

And if it's just for this case, then that means those zeroes mean absolutely nothing. He can't do that. Not to Grace and not to himself. "I hear it's a good tour."

[thebesteverseen]

The insane thing is -- you know, the one he's never going to admit he thought aloud -- the noise actually helps. Danny not shutting up. Just rambling off over there. About fruit choices and food preferences like it's actually a thing, and even, if a little reluctantly, about the brewery. None of it really catches its nails in the floor, to gouge into the flood, to hold on. But it doesn't. Not on to the floor, or on to him. But it makes him look over. Focus a few seconds more. Away from the pounding door, shivering in the back of his head.

From the world he can't look at over his shoulder. Even when Danny is thrusting it right into his lap.

Something he can look at for a second while pushing it all back. The memories this place wants to dredge up, blood seeping under the cracks of doors, because it is all familiar. And it should be. And he needs to not let it be, and let it be, let it do whatever it has to do that isn't getting in the way of the case. Which for the moment is making the comment and then slamming the door on it. Refusing to go in there. Because it's just an island, and a house, and a pack of beer bottles, too.

They never belonged to his dad. Or his mom. Or to anyone else. They probably weren't even made outside of this last year. It's just his head, and he's been trained on how to handle that. How to put himself aside and just do the job. Not matter what the job entails, or sacrifices he needs to make, personal or professional, to make sure that is never in jeopardy. Snatches of chants and bits of oath slipping in the oily black corners of his head, when he means to nod but doesn't this time.

Just leans back in his chair. "Yeah. Maybe. When this is all over." Words that are too simple for an ongoing five year case.

[haole_cop]

"I'd guess that's probably one of kind of a long list of things."

With another shot glance at Steve, before he turns back to the road, since that's what he should be paying attention to, not getting all bleeding-heart sympathetic for a man who's probably killed more people than Danny's even arrested, but he can't help it. It's messed up, is what it is; it's sad. That Steve can get catapulted into his own head just from looking at a six pack of beer, without even having any yet, and that there's nothing in his head but the job.

Danny gets it. He does. He's been obsessed before, drowned in it before. Every part of him that isn't Grace gets caught up in the chase, certain that if he just worked a little longer, stayed awake, didn't think about anything else, he'd catch the bad guy. He'd win.

But he does have Grace, and she's his savior, because she pulls him back out of it again, reminds him there's today to live for, too, and tomorrow, and things in the world that aren't the job, or his resume, or his record.

Steve doesn't have that. Steve, as far as Danny can tell, doesn't have anyone, and that's as much a reason why he determines all over again to stick around for a beer before heading home for the night.

It's not much, and it won't be long. Besides, the house is right up ahead.

[thebesteverseen]

"Comes with the job," Steve says. Because it's a better answer than the one that came to mind first.

That he doesn't make lists. Doesn't have them. Halfhearted things he might have been drug to by Freddie, before that was never going to happen again. Being badgered into it by that smile, heavy southern drawl that never lost a chance to laugh, and hard slapping on his back. Might see one day with Cath, if. But even those aren't that important. They are if, when, maybes. And even she teases him about whether he had to be forced into leave this time, too, when she sees him.

Because it usually takes the threat of a court martial, being benched, if he doesn't take a break before he's going to take one.

And he's not in the habit of chasing down dreams he once had on this rock. In the long line of them, he made the only one he had here that really mattered, in the long run, come true. Went further than he ever thought he'd go even. Became a SEAL. Became the kind of SEAL other people looked up to, for a pile of ribbons and a lot of black lines. Because he was good at the job. The one out there. Far from places like this. With all the passing cars, and people walking by with flowers in their hair.

It's not even all that hard to admit that if Victor hadn't come here, hadn't chosen his Dad as blackmail and then retribution, he'd still have come home for the funeral if his Dad had died some other way, of some natural cause, but he would have been in and out in the few hours it took to bury him. The way he told Jameson he was planning to. It was only Victor being here, and the strange things he couldn't quite put his fingers on -- that phone call, the tool box -- that was keeping him grounded against the urge to get back to the field already.

[haole_cop]

"Yeah, well, there's always another job, with the job. That's the problem with the job."

Among other things, but he's not here to talk about being a cop or being a SEAL and how it is or isn't anything like being a cop, except part of him wants to, wants to press it a little further, wants to push it, because Steve's back behind that wall again, and it is frustrating beyond belief.

Steve's almost likeable when he puts a toe past the stone-jawed SEAL facade. It turns out there's a human being in there, somewhere, and Danny has to say he was wrong a few minutes ago: he definitely prefers that one to this. He wants to work with a real person, not a robot; even a perfect one. "And eventually you realize you only take a little time when you've gotten shot and the boss makes you."

Or you die doing the job before you get a chance to retire. It's all laughs, all the time, in this business.

There's a shrug, and a motion with one hand. "Or, for you, I guess that would be...when you lose a limb. Or two. I'm pretty sure you could still carry out whatever insane mission you're on only lacking one limb, I mean, how important are arms, really?"

[thebesteverseen]

That problem with the job, as Danny so put it, is one of the things Steve likes about it.

If there was an option not to come in from the field, he wouldn't. Especially right now. Which he knows is bent. Because he sends his own men in all the time. Recommends them for R&R, and relief theraphy, and every other part of the process that the human mind needs after it's seen the horrors they do, every day, in and out, having to shut it down and push on. And he knows he's the same. Knows he's not anymore super human than the next guy on his team, even if he's the lead. But it's there all the same.

But it does get a half-glance when Danny goes on. Saying words Steve had been thinking only half a minute ago, himself. When he shouldn't be surprised, he pegged Danny for only having the job when he didn't have his daughter this morning, but he's surprised to hear Danny put it that way anyway. Even if the reasons they stay in the field are drastically different, Steve isn't filling his time waiting for anything, it's still catches him hearing it put that way.

Steve gave the man a long face, eyebrows raising, even as his mouth and jaw didn't go tight. "Pretty sure I still have 'em all."

Said with a drawn kind of blase something near blacked humor. About those arms and legs that Danny is talking about him needing to lose to get throw out of the game. Not that he's all that wrong either. Not that Steve needs to tell him that. Or really could explain anything surroundings those. When it's easier to take the shit and spin it, like he might anywhere else. "But the lack of one really only slows you down if you let it, which you know they don't really teach you guys here last I checked."

Steve'd done things with any number of broken bones (leg, arm, ribs, fingers) that civilians shouldn't even try thinking about.

[haole_cop]

"What? Some of them might be metal. I don't know. I try not to assume these things about people I just met."

With a glance over, eyebrows raised and pulling together in an overdone martyr of an expression that actually is, Steve, is meant to be a joke, because Danny has already been so obviously sensitive about personal things like that.

Ha. Ha. It's funny, see?

But it's not not funny, either, when Steve's giving him that bland face that Danny's pretty sure is just the expressive equivalent of a drum-and-cymbal sting, a conversational beat. Dry humor. Letting Danny roll along past it, pick it up, add it in, no sweat. "I think it would depend on the one, myself."

A shrug, his hand floating towards his own chest, out to land on the wheel again, just in time for the left one to start moving. "You know, arms? Loosing one might not be too bad. One leg, though, that would be tough. It's hard to run after lowlife scumbags with only one leg -- or so I understand."

Which leads them to the crunch and roll of shells under tires, as he pulls into the driveway, which is still taped off. As the car pulls to a stop, engine purring, he leans forward to peer at the house, deep misgiving in his face, then looks over at Steve.

"Are you a hundred percent sure about this?"

[thebesteverseen]

Steve's cheek and his mouth seemed to be caught somewhere right at the edge before cracking. In a debated war about it. Because Danny is over there being Danny. Talking about limb replacement, like it's both a normal given thing you don't presuppose about, and talking about like it isn't an endgame for a large percentage of every single military force. Especially in the kind of work he does.

Where if it doesn't kill you, and so much does, it's only second likely it's going to be something large out of you to bench you.
Whether it came out of your skin or your head, no one went into this line of work expecting to walk in one piece on the other end.

Like Steve, and his kind, didn't suddenly do a count of all limbs, fingers and toes the moment you woke up from every single newest dirt nap. Especially ones that you started in the field and had you waking up to the smell of sterile bleach and those fluorescent lights that hospitals used to torture everyone. But Danny's joking, like it's nothing, and to most of the rest of the world it was, and those it wasn't, it wasn't something they talked about either.

Which makes it easy to take Danny's words, twist them toward sarcastically disappointed remonstration. "Only if you let it."
Like Danny admitting to being human, and needing more than one leg to defeat an wall of insurgents was the saddest thing ever.
Broken legs, plural, might slow down a SEAL. Singular it was just a reason to think outside of the box in different way than earlier.

But that conversation dwindles while Danny pulls his car into the driveway that still itches something under all of Steve's skin. Just driving into it. Like looking through water at something. The way it ripples and runs. Because it's right, and it's the exact same. How it had been for years. When he should be the one frowning the way Danny is, but he isn't. Because Danny's doing it enough for a legion, and that just makes something in Steve's shoulders tense. Push out everything. Focus.

"It's just a house, Danny." Steve said without looking at it or him, as he was opening the door and getting out in one fast, compact movement. Laptop sliding under one arms, and beers hanging in the other. The words leaving his mouth with rote of repetition no one ever heard, and Steve never missed. It's not like he's been saying it for just a day. He's been saying it for almost two decades.

And at two decades, with no left to live in it or claiming it, he can almost believe it when he looks at it.

Which is why he doesn't. Look. At it. The sharks in the water, that have nothing on the blood on the walls. When it's better to go in hot, guns blazing, that even hesitate to hesitate. Calling back, "Don't forget the box," as he was striding fast for the door, across that wide, green sprawling lawn that, like everything else around these parts, had seen better days.

[haole_cop]

"Sure," he mutters to himself, as the car door slams shut, before pushing himself out the driver's side. "It's just a house. Like this island is totally just an island, and not a still active volcano."

The car door slams, and he's headed to the trunk to retrieve the box, but Steve's already nearly at the door, and he just flaps a hand at him. "Go on, I just want to make a quick call."

Hand already digging in his pocket for the phone snagged from the console, while the trunk creaks open and he looks down at the box, the trailing wires and mess of apparently unrelated junk. The number's still the first one on his phone, and he can feel tension lacing itself up his back as he hits it, lets it ring against his ear.

Which is nothing to the icy plunge of Rachel answering. Already disapproving. He still remembers when that accent was cute, not cold, when it didn't feel like a million boning knives flaying him alive with each disdainful word; remembers when there was a smile in her voice when she answered his call instead of this bricked up, steely distaste.

"I just want to talk to Grace," he says, nudging the phone between his shoulder and ear so he can lift the box with both hands. Snugs it against a hip, reaches to slam the trunk shut. "Yeah, I know I talked to her already today. Look, something's come up, okay?"

The house door shuts, and he looks up, too late to watch Steve go through it, but his eyes stay on it for a long minute, anyway, considering. "Well, it looks like I might get transferred. No. Not out of Honolulu -- look, will you please just put Grace on?"

Shifting his weight, box on the trunk, so he can run his palm over his mouth. "Yeah, I know it's early to transfer. Just -- please? Grace?"

When she finally gives in, he waits, watching the doorway of the house like it might be a snake about to bite him -- until the phone picks up and Danno! sounds like a clear bell in his ear and washes him with warmth. "Hey, Monkey."

[thebesteverseen]

No matter how much he says it isn't odd, it's odd. The door still sticks in the same place, and the place is silent, and full of early evening slanted light and shadows. It's like the place is holding it's breath. Waiting for someone to return to it. And it'll go right on waiting until it gets sold or demolished now. Just like the rest of them. It's a stupid thought, making Steve frown at himself and the wall when he's pushing through the kitchen.

Pulling the fridge door open and shoving the beer on the top shelf. Not paying any more mind to the everything that shoves in every other direction to make that space, than to how everything in these rooms feels like it's stepped right out of one of the photographs he never even had to compare it too, and yet still it was the same. Everything was the same. Twenty years, and he wasn't, but it was. Ramshackle memories playing hopscotch with his focus. Sending him right back out from the kitchen, with a look toward the door and the it's lack of Danny.

For someone who had such a hate on for Hawaii he was moving at the pace of the island.

Unless he decided he was done with this, and wasn't coming in. In which case, Steve still wanted his box.

But laptop still in hand, he headed back to the sterile setup table in the living room. Choosing it over the desk. With its prints and hints still. Or that chair that was always his fathers. The place he paid bills, and went through his papers. One hand on documents, other wrapped around a glass. But this table isn't. It's part of whatever crew did the first sweep. It's as good as place as any, and it's just as much his -- the house and the table -- as the building they just left. All under granted purview.

The rest comes in bursts. Plugging it in. Turning it on. Start working on jury rigging the connection he needed through a backdoor.

[haole_cop]

Grace doesn't sound concerned when he tells her he might have a new job and a new partner -- concerns of never seeing Meka again are easily put to rest -- but that could be because he doesn't tell her got shot today.

And he won't. Possibly not ever. She doesn't need to know, doesn't need to be at the point where she starts worrying about him while he's on the job, and she definitely doesn't need to know because Rachel doesn't need to know, would only use it against him in some inconceivably evil way.

So he doesn't bring it up, just reiterates that they'll have a good time this weekend, that he's sure he'll be done with the new case by then -- only a couple of days away, too soon and too far away, all at once -- and feels bubbles burst champagne joy in his chest when her love you, Danno floats across the line.

"Love you, too, Monkey," he says, and it actually lasts for a second, this feeling, even after he hangs up, even with Steve McGarrett, the fearless, brainless wonder in the house where his father was killed ahead of him and six months alone on this island behind.

Until the phone rings, again, and he glances at it, slides the bar to answer. "Hello?"

It's Chin Ho Kelly with an update, and Danny's nodding into the phone as he gathers up the box of equipment and heads towards the house. The conversation's short, and he drops the phone into his pocket before opening up the door and stepping into the dim, cool, cluttered interior. "Yo."

It looks the same as it did this morning, with the addition of Steve bent over a laptop on the table. "Just spoke to Chin, he's setting up the meet with Sang Min." He proffers the box, letting himself in, walking towards the table. "Got that surveillance equipment you asked for."

Maybe not in so many words. But that's what it is, right?

[thebesteverseen]

Steve is almost, but not entirely, surprised when Danny finally gets in the door. Snapping out of his focus on the screen, by the sound of the door and the sudden flood of Danny's voice, in the empty house that's had nothing but the tapping of a few keys, scrolling of a mouse, and the speed reading of the file. He'd nearly gotten to the point of thinking Danny might have just taken of. Was only momentarily stumped on whether he wanted that at all, when Danny brought up Chin, giving his being here another importance.

Even if it was alternate pans on different burners from where his head was. As was the dig about asking for the box. He hadn't really asked either time. In the car, or in the building. But he let that slide off his shoulders for looking between the SVR record on the computer and barely toward Danny before it's back to that face again, rubbing at his own temple. "You recognize this guy?"

He'd known where to find the first guy. If there was any chance of there being some kind of connection there, too.

He hadn't expected a turn around so fast on the print, but if it worked, too, two leads in one day wasn't something he'd turn down.

[haole_cop]

He pauses next to Steve to lean down and consider the face on the screen. "No, I don't."

But he's only been here six months, and Hesse and Durant were bound to know any number of shady characters on the island.

[thebesteverseen]

"Jovan Etienne." Said the name, sliding off the earlier want like forgotten dust, like he hadn't been going back to those letters every two point five seconds the whole of reading this record. Like he could scare those words into meaning something. Giving him something. More than those letters. More than these sentences and red tape records that didn't say where or how.

"File says he worked for the Russians as a computer programmer in SVR." Back when it was written. Which didn't say how he got here. Being Hesse's newest lackey, and a trespasser in his father's house, more than likely being used to pinpoint Anton than anything to do with his dad. "He was here when my father was murdered."

But that was't a hard question either. The why of the how. Money talked. A lot louder than morals for most of this messed up world. Lines running and re-running in Steve's head as he was dragging Danny into what he knew. The details he's found on the house that hadn't been recorded previous to his own breaking and enterting, or the take over of the whole place. And the case. And Danny.

"I found his palm prints in the study." Steve said looking toward that area, and then this one. "Partial boot prints in here."

[haole_cop]

"Wait a minute."

Face crinkling up in bemusement, as he takes the puzzle pieces Steve is handing him, and tries to fit them into the picture he already know. "How do you know the bootprints don't belong to Hesse?"

Which, okay. Palm prints. There were two people here, at least, but bootprints? It's the kind of theory he would take back to the CSI team and let them figure it out, but Steve says it fast and flawless, without room for argument or leeway, like he's knows it's truth, can see it unfolding in front of him. He's already working on that distant, hyper-focused expression again, like this is any other case, and Danny --

Well, Danny can feel a headache trying to set in.

No. Scratch that. It's the same one that's been knocking ever since this morning. It's just that it might actually win, now.

[thebesteverseen]

"Hesse wears a size eleven. Like me." The words are crisp, nearly expressionless details.

Ones he can't even begin to explain how important to the past few years they've been. It fills files.

"The prints I found were smaller." He knows. Just looking at them, and measuring it right up against his own foot. But he knows. He knows when he's looking at Hesse. He knows when it's the wrong thing, the tingle at the base of head, even if he can't pull the needle out of this haystack yet for right. To catch him. And the deck is catching him up with costs, tensing the muscles in his neck down his shoulders and back.

Details. It's so much easier to spit out the details, and not let the rest sink its claws in. "And Hesse gets his footwear custom-made."

Details. Details. The few he can share. Never forgets. "Direct-injected polyurethane mid-sole with a nitrile rubber outsole."

[haole_cop]

"Huh."

He actually is listening. No. Really. Even if his eyebrows are crawling up his forehead, and his face is sliding into that nonplussed, bland expression, the warning sign everywhere of a man thinking help I am stuck in a room with a crazy person.

Because he is. He is stuck in a room with a crazy person, and that crazy person is stuck in a world where statements like direct-injected poly...whatever make sense. Not only make sense, but are spoken like they should be obvious like it's information everyone should know, and Danny isn't so much having second thoughts about all this as he is having somewhere near his thirtieth.

Or hundredth.

But it backfires, too, because it's so indelibly, offensively wrong. Steve should be able to just grieve his father like any son -- by getting his ass drunk and complaining about all the shit his old man pulled -- but instead, he's standing here in the house his father was murdered in, telling Danny about Victor Hesse's shoe size and preference, like that is a thing literally any sane person in the world would find of any importance, or interest, whatever.

Leaving Danny shaking his head with a bewildered frown pulling at his eyebrows, and resignation in his shoulders, waving it off, because this is not a conversation they, or anyone, ever, should be having. "Your, uh, brain," waving a finger at his own head, "must be a miserable place."

Already turning and leaving the conversation, because this is not a conversation he is going to have. It's not a conversation Steve should have, and, seriously, has Steve even thought about anything other than Victor Hesse at all over the last five years?

Which just sends Danny headed towards the kitchen without waiting to see if Steve is coming, because: "I need a beer."

Hell. After today? He deserves one.

[thebesteverseen]

There's something about that.

Earlier he thinks Danny would have just kept insulting him. Or staring him down. Daring him to contradict it.

Earlier he thinks that somehow it wouldn't have seemed almost like a fitting end cap to Danny's belligerent, non-regard for pertinent information, or the skills of his trade, that he doesn't head for the door. He just heads further into the house. Toward the kitchen that he already knows where is, because it had been his crime scene first. But somehow it is. Even crazy. It's somehow fitting that he rides straight over Steve's sense and just further into the house for a beer.

Making Steve's mouth tug an odd direction, even when he's glancing back toward the computer.

It's almost in his mouth to say,Yeah. Okay. Maybe if he were anywhere else. Danny was anyone else. One of his.
One of his guys pointing out he's all work. He forgets the rest, and Danny did say originally he was coming for a beer.

Steve turned, leaving laptop open on the SVR file, telling himself he'd come back to it not long from this second anyway. Even when his next step is to follow after the direction Danny's gone. Without looking at the trophy's or the wall across from the living room's opening. Where everything is still fresh, even for a few days airing. He doesn't look. Doesn't really even think about. Except as another detail. "They're on the top shelf. Grab me one, too."

[haole_cop]

He lifts a hand over his shoulder in an affirmative gesture as he heads through the doorway, the other shoved in his pocket. "Yeah, yeah."

Which he almost follows up with a crack about whether or not it'll get warm, waiting for Steve to be done studying bootprints, and asking if Hesse also left some detergent residue or forgot a tube of his toothpaste, but he thinks better of it. Strange as it is to consider, it's still Steve's father, Steve's house -- no matter how distanced he might think he is from it, he doesn't need Danny stomping all over either memory with muddy boots, chipping away at it with a jackhammer.

It's actually a pretty nice place, aside from the yellow tape, the bloodstains, the mess created when armed men barged in and hog-tied an innocent old man. The kitchen is big and airy, with old-fashioned valances hanging over the windows above the sink, dark wood, old furniture. It looks like every vacation rental ever -- the kind that haven't been updated since the mid-seventies and have a continual smell of mothballs.

But the fridge is running, still cold, still full of food from whenever John McGarrett's last grocery run was, which strikes Danny as sadder than anything else he's seen yet today. He can handle bloodstains and bodies, yellow tape, paperwork, bullets and funerals; all the immediate ways the world tries to fill itself when a hole is violently made. But this?

This evidence that nobody's ever prepared for it. That you leave behind a fridge of food that'll go bad because there's no one left to eat it, that bills will pile up because no one's there to pay them. That the world keeps moving, and doesn't clean itself up, after. There are still dishes in the dishrack from his last meal. The last dregs of coffee in the coffeemaker.

And Steve is going to stay here. Around all this. Evidence that suggests that his father will walk into the room any second, rather than never again.

He opens the fridge, snags two bottles, and shuts it again, the authoritative thunk feeling like it sounds in his own chest, leaving him to look out the window as he rummages in a drawer for a bottle opener. At the back yard. The beach. The soft and rolling waves. "Looks like there're chairs out back here."

Called out without turning to see where Steve is, or isn't, while popping the top off his bottle. There's no one else here -- Danny's pretty sure he can be heard, even while heading to the sliding back door and porch -- except they call it something else here, right? Lanai. "Yours is on the counter."

[thebesteverseen]

He follows not too far off from Danny, but not just after. Still he's looking for the man when he steps into the kitchen doorway that connects from the living room. He doesn't fit. Like hangnail. Catching. Danny Williams popping the top off a beer on to the kitchen island, where once upon a time orange juice glasses and cereal bowls competed for real estate, and dinner pots and pans would be left cooling on woven palm and bamboo mats.

Where turkey's had rested in the middle of their magical transformation and Sunday pancake stacks were built to leaning towers.

The beer top, and the beers themselves, match well enough with the half-forgotten dishes and stacks of mail sitting there now, looking like they were all abandoned long before that shot rang out all the way to Korea, and Danny stands in there, awkward, but fully solid and just as real. Disjointing the phantoms that try to fill spaces that haven't existed in decades, and don't exist now, really. Not entirely. Not when he's focusing on Danny, and not on him, or the room, and reaching out to take his beer.

Giving a perfunctory edge of a a frown, when he's more focused on grabbing up the bottle opener next and lining it up with the top of his bottle, than looking toward the windows or the dinning room area where Danny's headed off to. Talking about. Like the chairs are a surprise. Or a good idea. Except that he really can't stop himself from looking up either. "Yeah, they've had a pair out there since we were--" But that breaks off from an annoyed sound of surprise, that rolls straight into surprised choice swearing.

Trying to raise the bottle and hook his lips on the glass top rim, to stop it from getting everywhere.

Even after dripping it everywhere in his father's kitchen and on himself already.

[haole_cop]

He glances back, eyebrows lifting with mild interest, to see the beer foaming up and attacking Steve's chin, hand, shirt, and floor in equal measure. "You're gonna wanna watch out for that," he says, helpfully, lifting his own in a rolling gesture. "Bottom musta gotten knocked."

Well. Not purposefully. He thinks.

It actually wouldn't be a surprising thing to do, if Steve were Meka (or...but long practice shuts off the name Peterson before it starts, hitches a hard breath on Grace). Tap the bottom. Wait until the poor sucker tried to open it. Laugh himself sick on the results, while enduring being sworn at and threats of revenge.

It's the kind of thing partners do, when they know each other, when they're buddies. Day in and day out as the most permanent fixture in a life aside from spouse of child (and sometimes more permanent than either of those).

(While the red zeroes on his wrist keep telling him this is somehow supposed to be more.)

So it wasn't on purpose. But that doesn't mean he's not grinning, amused and a little more relaxed at seeing Lieutenant Commander Too-Many-Medals-To-Wear-At-Once getting spattered with beer foam like a regular, fallible human being.

[thebesteverseen]

There's a flash fast wave of annoyed flavored accusation, when his mouth is full of foam and his lips are curved around glass still. Gulping down foam and beer like air isn't a thing he needs. He's held his breath for much more important reasons, and he's not going to start coughing beer everywhere else in the kitchen. His hand is wet with beer, and it's dripping off his forearm and elbow due to gravity.

But he doesn't think Danny didn't it on purpose. At least not more than for about ten percent of considering it.

Because Danny actually looked stumped surprised, before he just started grinning to split the side off the hilarity of it.

Steve doesn't love it. But it's mitigable, and it's just a beer. He can roll his eyes, chagrin by taking it on the chin. He already took a real one from Danny, and it's not like it costs him anything to shake his head and test the bottle. Pulling it out of his mouth, while the beer only goes back down this time, and shifting hands. Once. Twice, to his left, and starting to contort a shoulder. "I'll watch for it with the others."

Already pulling off his overshirt from one shoulder and using the fabric to start dabbing at the beer on his arm, even while he was frowning at the brown splatter on his white one. It'd be good after a wash but it was a mess now.