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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.

 

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[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.

[haole_cop]

"You do that."

Grinning into taking a swig of his own beer, standing out here on the planks of the porch, with the sinking sun spreading long, low, melting golden rays across the yard and water behind him, and it's actually, somehow, not terrible. He doesn't feel awful. Or awkward. Or unhappy. Or even all that angry, anymore.

Just, look at the guy. He looks like anyone, standing there, frowning at his shirt and shooting accusatory glares at Danny, like Danny somehow masterminded this whole thing, in a way that just makes Danny snort a laugh and hold up his hands, showcase a lack of weapons, his total innocence that's probably marred by the grin. That finds it's way regardless, because it's funny, okay? It knocks McGarrett down a notch or two, into someone who sometimes does stupid shit like spill beer all over himself, and it's honestly a pretty good look on him. Less robot, more human man. Less distance, more connection. While Danny motions with his bottle at the man, mouth quirking into a half-smile, amusement and the kind of mild sympathy that comes from yeah, I've been there."So this is where our military training tax dollars go. Not a good look, letting carbonation get the drop on you."

Which is a lie. It's actually the most he's liked the guy all day.

[thebesteverseen]

He almost looks real when he does that. Danny. Laughing. It makes something in Steve's brow furrow at the words.

Acting the fool, like he's utterly innocent of the scene that's taking place. Taken place. Leaving Steve, and the floor, dripping. Arm a little sticky, but not wet, when he's trading hand with his bottle again, tugging the dark over shirt off entirely. Dropping a little to mop at the beer on the floor with it, too. Because he might as well. Why dirty a kitchen towel if the shirt already needed washing from cleaning up the beer elsewhere.

"Weren't you getting a seat, or something?" Steve tossed out, shaking his head and standing. A little rigid and little giving, before he's standing back up and headed toward Danny and the lanai. Tossing the ball of wadding of dark blue cloth on the table with a grey-green duffle still resting on it from he snuck in the back door earlier this morning. Setting down his beer next to it, to start digging out a fresh shirt from the little everything else he'd brought with him.

He could do laundry tonight. That would fill another few minutes in the epic wait between evening and morning. Between standing still and waiting for the go mark, to get this guy, and through him Hesse. It wasn't like Steve was planning on getting much sleep until he had Hesse.

[haole_cop]

"What, you mean that seat?"

He half-turns, casts an exaggerated glance at the chairs sitting by the water, a little further onto the actual beach than the wicker set with cushions and an actual table over on the grass, and how big is this property, anyway? "Yeah, found it."

Turning back with a smartass smirk, while Steve rummages through the duffel bag that must have been here since this morning. When Steve first showed up, and tried to remove evidence from the crime scene, and...how the hell did they wind up here, again?

Which just leaves him shaking his head, and actually turning to walk down the gentle slope of the lawn towards the beach and the chairs, one hand holding his bottle, the other tracking a wide, graceless arc to encompass it. "Nice spot. You know, for everything other than hurricanes and tidal waves. Or coastal erosion. But nice."

[thebesteverseen]

He pulled a black shirt out. It could use a wash, itself, too, but it was clean enough for the night. For Danny and just rambling in this place until everything else was clean again. Or he was in another one tomorrow. He's zipping up the bag while throwing Danny a look as the man goes off about a pair of chairs, like they are just that. A pair of chairs. On a beach. Like it was a thing that happened everyday.

Like the world doesn't shiver, while staying perfectly clear, and there aren't two people laughing and drinking coffee.

Because there aren't. There's no one else here. No one in the chairs, and no one else lounging or racing around the backyard.

Leaving the bag, Steve grabbed his beer and the shirt and headed after Danny. There was a nearly a snort for the tragic words falling out of Danny's mouth. Like anyone, anywhere, on the planet agreed with him. Like anyone, anywhere, looked at this beach, golden and glimmering, setting sun, and thought about coastal erosion. Every moment Steve thought there might be a glimmer of something real and sane, he opened his mouth and this came out, too.

It seemed to be his go to when he really wanted to get under someone's skin. Or keep them back. Start listing the things he hated about this place, like it was the best way to build walls between himself and whatever else was going on around him. Like a trigger, or a social mechanism for keeping himself that haole that everyone had reiterated he was, and that Steve was starting to wonder if he wore as much as a badge of pride as a mask over whatever else was under there.

Down in the flickers of reality, when he laughed in the kitchen or when he'd been talking to his daughter in the car.

It is easy to inject, without responding, ignoring or just agressive talking over Danny without any apology or cover for it, after reaching down and peeling the beer splattered shirt off of himself. Put it and his beer down on the chair, before going about searching for the bottom of the black shirt. "You ever gonna tell me what Danno means?"

[haole_cop]

Look, he doesn't deserve this.

He's minding his own business, meandering down to the waterfront in exactly the way treacly vacation commercials have shown happy golden people doing while on their vacation in Hawaii -- minus the happiness, and the gold for anything that isn't beyond his control, the beach lit like a professional photo shoot. What they call the golden hour, that perfect, suffusing natural light, low flooding rays of sunshine that fall heavy as actual bars of gold, shatter over the waves like gold leaf. It's all very pretty, and soothing, and a real slice of Hawaii or whatever, like Elvis Presley might start crooning about the blue evening any second, and then McGarrett goes and shucks his shirt off with the same ease Danny uses for absolutely none of his articles of clothing, because Danny would never so much as take his shoes off in front of someone he only just met. Or had known for less than six months. Or wasn't related or married to.

He will, generously, down the line, tell himself that it's the surprise that makes words die in his throat, but that's not quite it, or even what happens: it's more like they suddenly clench into a fist and go slamming into his vocal cords before gripping his windpipe and dragging it violently back down into his lungs, where it lashes like a dying animal and chokes itself into a knot. Which must be happening, because for a second, he can't breathe. Not like, sappy, romantic, Tom-Cruise-romancing-Kelly-McGillis funny feelings in his stomach that splash up and dissolve the rest of him, but like someone snuck up behind him and wrapped his throat in a rear naked choke, and he's about to black out. It's not fun. It's not romantic. It's not a swell of music or a rush of suddenly clarified emotion.

It's like getting kicked in the stomach, because Steve is -- there's really no other word for it -- perfect. Literally. Danny can not see a single flaw -- not on his skin (suddenly bared and paler than he would have thought, painted thickly with the falling sunset light) or in the suddenly present tattoos (arms and back and he really doesn't want to know about any possible others) -- before he's steadfastly looking out at the water. Like. People do. On Hawaii. They watch the sunset over the ocean and there is nothing romantic or attractive about it and also he wonders how long it would take him to pass out if he decided to just off himself with his tie, right here and right now.

It's not like. Okay. He noticed. That Steve is a good-looking guy. That Steve is downright handsome, in a Clark Gable and Jimmy Stewart kind of way, leading-man looks and carriage. Or that he's immune. He's not. No one ever knows who their numbers will land on, so it's not like he'd never thought it could be a guy.

But this guy. This guy is sculpted. This guy is completely unfair even with his clothes on, and Danny has never felt quite so schlubby or like his shirt is so wrinkled or his five o'clock shadow is more evident. He's not so bad, but he's nowhere near Steve's league.

Which is just another hilarious joke the world's pulling on him, right?

So. Water. Sunset. People keep saying he should pay attention to those things, now that he's here, so. He does. No time like the present, right? "Yeah." Punching right back, even if it lacks heat -- more like sparring, while he steadily looks anywhere but at Steve. "When you tell me what's in the box."

[thebesteverseen]

Yeah. Okay. That's actually fair, is the thought while Steve is pulling the shirt up over his arms. He's not even against quid pro quo, honestly. It's a fair question, and not one he would have answered the guy in his Dad's Garage. But Danny's not That guy anymore. Sure, he's still loud mouthed haole who got set on the case for twisted back politic reasons.

But he's, also, his partner now, and they guy who punched him, and the one who stayed to have a beer.

"Truth is I don't know yet." Steve pulled the shirt over his head, popping his head through and tugging it in a messy, fast swipe down his stomach, so he could go about leaning down to grab his beer, and follow it up with dropping in the chair the bottle had been resting in. "All I know--"

He looked out far into same ocean Danny was looking at. That one that never changed from looking back. That one that no other of the hundred shores he'd seen since would ever feel the way this one did when it appeared in the fucked up tilt-o-whirl of his dreams.

"--is my father wanted me to find it." Which was bent enough. Just that alone. Before the apologies and those three words. Before the blood and Hesse and Anton. (Freddie.) It wasn't like they'd ever been close. Him and his dad. It wasn't like they'd stayed in touch much. After. Or needed to know where the other was or how they were doing. There weren't ever cards and presents, and the rarest of calls had gotten even rarer over the last decade once he was in the field more than he was ever out of it.

Which made it....all odd. Awkward. Impossible to explain. All the history. Important, but not. Which made it even more so.

Making him look toward Danny, before looking away and raising his beer. "Right now, it's just a puzzle."

[haole_cop]

It's not fair. That he should be saddled with an insane person, who looks like that, and is now starting to sound like...

Like a real person. Like he's not just a tin soldier, or robot, or some anonymous someone behind layers of cement walls and DO NOT CROSS lines. Steve actually answers, and it's not mouthing off, and it's not shutting Danny down, and so Danny's looking back over before he can help himself, curious and a little cautiously compelled.

Fortunately, the black shirt is on. Which helps.

(As if that image hasn't been seared into his brain, now, as if he could unsee it, or even wants to, selfishly, somewhere behind the disgust at the universe and this bare, wary olive branch that seems to be extended between them.)

But it's not fair. Because he gets this. The way Steve's slouched in his chair, the confusion that's written clearly on his face, the mystery behind his words. He gets it, and -- worse? better? -- he's getting an invite to get it. To see it, and understand.

He does. Family is complicated. Fathers and sons, parent and child. And maybe he can't relate completely with his own father-son relationship -- they get along fine, they're buddies, sort of, without ever really talking over anything too deep or real -- but he knows what it's like to try to do the best by your kid, and know that, inevitably, you'll just screw up.

"You know, me and Grace, we like puzzles."

It's not a random statement. Not even one brushing off Steve's. It's related. It's. Well. Like holding out a beer. Offering a hand. A small gesture of peace. An offer of his own.

[thebesteverseen]

It's not a response he's expecting, or knows, which makes him look over at Danny again, swallowing down a mouthful of beer that really didn't have the time to get cold enough. But doesn't keep it from being a good momentary distraction from first words, and the looking over.

Danny, standing there in the easy orange-gold light of Hawaiian sunset that is still too slow, mellow and cool to do anything but annoy Steve's general keyed-to-focus state. Danny, with that faint, warm smile of affection that has nothing to do with the fact he's looking at Steve, and everything to do with the fact he's talking about his daughter, again, and....

Steve isn't even really sure what to do with that. This look he's sure his father never had while look at him, or talking to him.

But then Steve's never made any bones about what his father wasn't. That his partner actually is. "You're a good father."

[haole_cop]

"Yeah. Maybe. I don't know."

Said too fast, and too gruff, and back out at the ocean, following a lift of his hand. He tries. He tries all the time, every day, and it means more to him than any other possible thing on this sad, broken planet, and she's the only thing, in the end that really matters to him.

But it's hard, sometimes, talking about it, so maybe it's just as well that Steve's practically a perfect stranger, that Danny could just as easily be talking out loud to himself, or to the water. "You know, there's three ways of looking at it--"

When he actually does look over, because he's moving as he speaks, because words and motion go hand in hand, and it's a faint jolt to see Steve watching him, but not enough of one to slow him down or stop him, because he doesn't look bored, or annoyed, or distant. He actually looks...interested? Or, some other word Danny can't go searching for just yet, so he starts counting them off, back out to the waves.

"One: I could get myself killed chasing some methhead scumbag, and then what kind of father would I be?"

[thebesteverseen]

Danny moves while he talks, even out here. Little steps. Shifts of his shoulders. Hands. That beer. Where he's looking. When Steve has the time to be watching it, for itself, without a distraction, now. Sitting more still, himself, than he's gotten to since pretty much getting off the plane this morning. Before the ball started rolling and didn't stop until he was sitting here, drinking a beer with the man, on the back nine of the last empty echo of his own childhood.

Listening to Danny give the speech that isn't all too unknown even where he comes from. The one about wives and kids.

"I always looked up to my father for that." It had always been true. No matter what flaws and failures the man had. His service and duty. It'd made Steve want to join the police, made him want to do his tour in the Navy, like his dad and his grandfather, set him on the path to being a SEAL. The life he had now, where he hardly had what people, like Danny, would consider a life. Because it all weighed out in the end. The safety of the world worth -- "The sacrifices he made."

Danny tipped up his beer without words, as Steve continued to watch him take slow steps this direction.

"I'm sure Grace is going to feel the same way." He didn't see it as much of any other possibility.

[haole_cop]

"Yeah, maybe."

Which is repeating himself, but it's different, now. It's not shutting that comment down, or arguing against it: it's possible, definitely possible, and this yeah, maybe is almost an agreement. After all, he felt the same way about his own dad.

It's just a response, after a swig of his beer, while finally taking a seat in the empty chair and immediately leaning to rest his elbows on his thighs, squinting against the glare as he looks up, out, toward the water, towards the sky, towards Steve, and away again. "Either that or she might just think I'm a selfish son of a bitch."

Without really looking at any of those, because he's stuck on an internal loop, this hard truth he can't hide from, that Rachel wields like a weapon, that Steve guessed within ten seconds of entering his apartment. His dirty, pitiful little secret. Why he stays, even when he hates this place, and he hates the people he's forced to work with, and he hates himself for always making it that much harder, always swinging first. "Because the truth is -- this is all I got."

Confessed to the sand packed under his shoe soles, but he glances up toward Steve for this, because this, this is his honesty, this is the only thing he's got on offer. Follows it up before it can stop. "I need this."

As close as a confession as he'll ever get, bare, raw honesty. If Steve wants to be partners, if the numbers on his wrist can even hope to have a chance, if he's going to be here without going insane -- this is what he's got. The truth. "I wanna do what I'm good at, I want to be reminded I'm good at what I do."

He is. Has a great record. Glowing references from Newark, and good ones here, even if they're reluctant. Which they are, because he hasn't given this place the chance a lit match would have a in a rainstorm, has punched back as often as he gets kicked down, or before.

But. If Steve's serious about this task force thing, if Steve really wants his help, if Steve's going to let him invite himself in and drink a beer on the beach, instead of telling him to fuck off and keep it cold and professional --

Then maybe this is a chance.

Not has a chance. Is. To prove he's still good. To prove he can do this, solve the case, be the guy Steve needed in order to catch a killer.

This, though. This, he's not great at, which is why he takes a second, a breath, looking up at the sky and gathering himself. "If that means having to put up with your twisted belief that you are never wrong -- "

Which he just can't help, because the guy is a lunatic, all right, and this day has been insane, even without the line of zeroes stamped on the inside of his wrist, but it's not actually sharp or angry or exasperated. It's almost -- along with finally turning back to Steve and a faint touch of amusement at the corners of his mouth -- teasing. The kind of familiar ribbing partners do. Already theatrical weariness, like Steve hasn't actually, at times throughout the day, surprised Danny by being. What. Human. And kind of...

Compelling? Appealing?

Likeable?

" -- then so be it."