Girl's Night (Going, Going, Gone)
Title: Girl's Night (Going, Going, Gone)
Pairing: Jenna/Kono
Rating: NC-17
Length: 3124 words
Spoilers: For 1x19, Na Me e Launa Na Paio
Warnings: Lady sex, angst.
Summary: Jenna thinks not for the first time how fucking unfair it is that the sex isn't working when it's the only good thing about this whole arrangement.
"So," Jenna says, "are you going to tell them about us?"
She means tell Five-0, and she means tell them about this--the crumpled sheets damp under Jenna's back, the long bronze glow of Kono's bare hip and thigh, the panting, the breathing, the sex. The question isn't easy to ask.
Kono's foot kicks restlessly at a tangle of blue cotton. She doesn't say anything. A smell rises from her: sweet, like caramel, and the musk of clean sweat, and over all that coffee rising from the heat of her pores. Jenna is pale and bare and naked, and the bed smells of Kono, the room smells of Kono, the sea air and morning sun are Kono's air, Kono's sun. She feels like an ice chip in a mug of tea: going, going, gone.
"It's complicated," Kono says, absently. "I'm a rookie. I don't--" She trails off. Sunlight shifts hazily across her stubbled shinbone.
"I know," Jenna says. "They're your team."
"He's my cousin," Kono says, carefully casual, "he's family. It's complicated."
"Sure," Jenna says, equally careful. They both lie carefully in the sweat and sleep smells of a long, beautiful fourteen hours in bed. The momentum of that first kiss--slightly drunk, across the bar-style counter of Kono's kitchenette--had carried them pretty far, considering. Jenna should be happy, sated, ready to go home (back to the hotel) and shower (alone) and unwind (watch daytime television by herself). Kono twists onto her side, back to Jenna, stretching her arms and torquing at the waist like an elaborate machine, metal-jointed.
"Getting late," she yawns, all wide flat hips and curving spine.
"Yeah," Jenna says, "where's my t-shirt?" and then she's dressing and then she's dressed and then she's out.
*****
"Gonna be late," Kono's voice says on the other end of the line. Construction noises buzz and clank in the background. "Got a lead on this guy. I'll call you when we're done here, okay?"
"Okay, late's fine," Jenna says. There's a cloth noise, a low wrinkle, and then Kono's voice says more faintly, "...girl's night..." and and the call clicks off. Jenna puts her phone back in her pocket, returns her attention to the blurry tire treads that Steve seems to think are so crucial.
"Was that Kono?" Steve asks, zooming and zooming again, laying each tread pattern template over the image as if this one is going to be the breakthrough. Jenna nods. "Tell her to get her ass over here," he says, "she has a knack for this. I never got trained on this stupid database. This is supposed to be her job."
"Oh," Jenna says, "not late for work." Steve turns, looks at her, a question in his eyes and the way his knuckly hands hang over the screen.
"Uh, girl's night," Jenna says, and ouch, that sounds much more ridiculous in her mouth than in Kono's; Steve's seen her file. He knows she was almost married, and to whom. He knows what happened to Siri. But he doesn't seem to notice anything.
"We tried all the ATVs?" Steve asks. Jenna nods and says "Weight distribution indicates four wheels, so yes, pull the next file please," and tries to ignore the prickle of her skin, the teenaged feeling that she's made of glass, or ice, transparent.
*****
The golden rope of Kono's body twists beneath her. Strung with muscle, it bucks and heaves, until Jenna's afraid that Kono's really trying to flip her. She can't be--not moaning like that. Kono's hands are cuffed--nylon and velcro, not police issue--and strung through the bedframe, her thighs clutch Jenna's hips, the core of her pulses around black silicone. Strapped on Jenna almost feels like she's in control here.
"Oh," Kono moans, "oh, oh, oh," but she doesn't seem to know she's doing it. Her mouth forms a curved space, open. Jenna falls to her elbows and licks inside. Her hips snap at the angle Kono likes, the angle that drags low fluttering noises from Kono's mouth into Jenna's. Sometimes she comes like this just from Jenna's dick inside her and the rub of her clit against the harness. This is one of those times.
She goes still, makes a choking sound, and ripples under Jenna. Her back arches off the bed and crashes back down three separate times before she's done. Then she sucks the soft nub of her upper lip between her teeth, sighs, and shakes her head left to right in a soft graceful arc.
"Okay," Kono says, and for a moment Jenna really, really doesn't want to pull out and take the cuffs off. She puts her head against Kono's breastbone and licks at a swollen purple nipple.
"Jen?" Kono gasps, and shakes her wrists a little. She could get herself unhooked for sure, but she's polite, waiting. Jenna breathes. Kono breathes with her, chest heaving. She sounds like she's got something caught in her throat. Jenna presses her cheek to the curve of Kono's breast and breathes some more.
"Baby?" Kono asks, and okay, Jenna's back together. She has to be. She grabs the harness at the base and slides away from Kono, unsticking their hips and bellies with a weird clammy sensation.
"Mmmm," Kono says, pawing thoughtlessly at Jenna's hips, the straps that bite black against her pale flesh. "What do you want, do you want me to--" and licks her upper lip slow and sensuous.
Jenna's thighs shift sticky against each other and she feels hot, so hot, her own body soaking up Kono's heat, and it feels--she feels betrayed. She flicks the buckles loose and kicks the harness down her legs. There was a woman once, just after college, when the bar scene seemed like a great compromise between the million hours she was putting in at work and her sex drive, which refused to shut up no matter how much porn she threw at it. This woman was stone, which Jenna thought was an old-school thing, but she was young, thirtyish to Jenna's twenty-two. She was hot the way tensed muscles are hot, and Jenna remembers reaching for her fly and then stopping, confused and sticky wet and still panting from one orgasm, when the woman caged Jenna's fingers and called herself stone. Maybe this is what it felt like.
"I'm good," Jenna lies, "I did. Too sensitive now," and then, because it feels like the right thing to say in that moment, "where's my t-shirt?"
*****
They don't have to work together much. Jenna's chained to her databases and not much use in the field anyway, and Kono's always taking off after Steve like an impressionable child, strapping her holster like him, carrying grenades like him, running into danger face first like him. It's kind of disgusting, and also terrible. Jenna finds bruises on Kono: sometimes obvious, ripe on the underside of her jaw, but more often under her clothes, striping her thigh like the rungs of a ladder, spreading green on the flat of her back. Some terrorist asshole drags her by the tac vest one day and leaves raw abraded patches on her shoulders. Jenna kisses them in the gray of four a.m., listening to Kono's gasps.
One day, Chin talks to Steve, and then Steve talks to Jenna. "Kaye," he says, "my office," and Chin is brushing out with his broody face on.
"What's up, McGarrett?" she asks, hoping for new leads, some distraction.
"Shut the door," he says, steepling his fingers. She shuts it and his posture drops a little. He leans forward on his elbows. "Listen," he says, "you haven't been with the team that long, I appreciate that. But have you noticed anything weird with Kalakaua?"
"Uh," Jenna says, hands small and white in her trouser pockets, "was I supposed to?"
"Well, I know you have that girls' night thing," Steve says, and he looks so earnest, it's weird against the gruffness of his face. "I just thought maybe she'd mentioned--if there was something on her mind. You know. Feelings."
"We don't really," Jenna says, slowly, "feelings, no. That's not--what we do."
"Oh," Steve says, "okay." He waves a hand, then lets it flap down to the desk. "Let me know if she mentions anything, okay?"
"Sure," Jenna says, but she's cut off by Kono yelling "Boss! Found the lockbox!" and Danny sniping "For the love of God, Kono, do not jostle that," and then they're all at work again and the weird little conference about whatever that was is over.
*****
The next night they're drinking again, like the first time, Longboards sweating in their hands and feet tucked up on the couch between them. Kono smirks wide and dirty, flicking her tongue at the seam between her own lip and the lip of the bottle.
"Truth or dare," she says, looking Jenna in the eye.
Jenna's belly flutters and the pads of her fingers go warm against the bottle. She throws them back and forth for a moment, in her head; but she lies better with her body than her mouth, always has. "Dare."
"Let me fuck you," Kono says, and there's her tongue again, full and soft in the corner of her mouth. The warm buzz in Jenna's hips and belly disappears. "Come on, it'll be hot. Let me spread your thighs open, pin your hands--"
"No," Jenna says, immediately. "Look--" and then she just drinks her beer because she needs something to do with her mouth so it'll stop not-lying. Her eyes slide off Kono and onto the silent TV: the screen-empty faces of the studio audience, a flash of cold blade in some kitchen contraption.
"Okay," Kono says softly. "I'm sorry, I didn't--"
Jenna's still drinking. Her throat keeps closing and unclosing so she can only get small sips down, one at a time. She thinks not for the first time how fucking unfair it is that the sex isn't working when it's the only good thing about this whole arrangement.
"Do you want to--" Kono says, and her face makes it clear that the end of that sentence is 'talk about it?' She has the controlled poise of someone trying not to throw up. They have that in common, at least, a lifetime of working with the boys and playing with the boys and absorbing the emotional coping strategies of the boys.
"No," Jenna says, shaking her head. "No, I'm sorry," and she lets it fall between them, heavy. She's still fully dressed, so she can't even pretend to be looking for her clothes. She untucks her feet and finds her sneakers halfway under the couch. Her Longboard sweats tall and lonely on the coaster.
"Are you--" Kono says, and you'd think between the two of them they could finish at least one sentence. But Jenna knows what she means. She's just sorry she can't make up a story about having a difficult time at work or something. This would be so much easier. This would be easy, this would be something else.
"I'll see you at work?" Kono says, when it's clear that Jenna's on her way out the door. Kono's knees knock together, her thighs swinging from the cup of her hips. Her face is flushed, her posture is childlike, and there's something about her that makes Jenna want to puke and cry and jump face first into danger. It's an ugly, terrible, sea-rocking feeling.
"Yeah," Jenna says, "sure," going, going, gone.
*****
She makes it two mostly Kono-free days before Chin slides out of nowhere and offers to walk her to her car. "It's on my way," he offers, smiling like she's some dumb soccer mom swooning for his manly attentions.
Halfway there, he breaks in smoothly, "So you're getting pretty close to my cousin, huh?"
"What?" Jenna asks, her voice an incriminating squeal.
"It's good," he assures her, "she spends too much time with the guys. I'm glad she has a friend, you know? She's needed one for a while."
"I'm glad too," Jenna says. She's never in her whole life spent so much time in these stupid, cryptic conversations, wondering what they know and what they know she knows and what she knows they know somebody else might have known, once.
Chin sighs. "She's not talking to me," he says. "Not that she tells me everything, but lately she's really not talking to me. And she's taking risks," he adds, "risks like McGarrett takes, and we don't need more than one McGarrett on this team."
"Right," Jenna says. They round on her garage and Chin stops, rocks back on his heels.
"Thanks," he says, and reaches out to clasp her shoulder. "I'm glad she's got somebody to talk to, anyway." Something about his smile reminds Jenna of her dad and she feels like shit, suddenly, because not only does Kono not have anybody to talk to, she's got something huge to talk about. It's all backwards, and even though Jenna knows it's not her fault, she still feels guilt scuffling shamefaced through her gut.
"Chin," she says, before she can stop herself, "I'll make sure--I'll talk to her. Okay?"
"Thanks," he says again, and smiles wider.
*****
She's clearly woken Kono up. Something rattles on the other side of the door, the chain probably, and the knob clicks and swings open and there's Kono in an oversized t-shirt and lacy tap pants. Her left knee is swollen purple and her bare toes curl against the carpet.
"Come in," she says, a little hoarse, and Jenna realizes all of a sudden that every other time she came here, Kono invited her--that she can't be sure, not really, that Kono's alone. She hangs back, but Kono's waving her in and rubbing the back of her hand against one eye, so Jenna goes.
"What do you want?" Kono asks. Jenna'd been afraid she'd go for sex right off the bat, but then she looks down at her own body language--arms crossed, back straight and weight balanced equally over her hips--and right, it's pretty obvious that's not what this is about.
"They keep asking me about you," she says. "The team. They know you're acting weird, and they keep asking me why."
"What?" Kono says. She turns and walks around the counter to the kitchenette, opens the fridge, takes out a beer.
"They won't stop asking me, Kono. What do I tell them?"
Kono creaks the bottle open and takes a long sip, Adam's apple working under the long bronze of her throat. "Tell them whatever." She puts the bottle down on the countertop. "Why are they asking you, anyway?"
And it's not fair, it's not why she came, but Jenna feels her voice go bitter and cold when she says "Girl's night," when she says "because we're such good friends."
Kono shakes her head, looks out at the dark mirror of a window. Jenna stands on the other side of the counter and thinks, stupid, stupid, stupid, why is it this when it could be something else?
"I'm sorry," Kono says, quietly. Her hand flattens and curls, flattens and curls against the mottled green countertop. She's not even looking at her beer now. "I know you probably think I'm a coward."
"No," Jenna says, but Kono's still talking.
"But it's--big, it's different for me. It's a lot. It's a lot on--us. And he's my cousin, I know that might not mean much to you but he's the closest thing I have to a brother. He's the closest thing I have, Jen."
"They wouldn't care," Jenna says, "you know they wouldn't care."
"I know they'd get used to it." Kono seems to remember her beer, and circles her hand around it but doesn't drink. "But they'd ask. You know they would, they'd ask questions, worse than now. I mean, what do we--" She shrugs, a little manically, and takes a deep breath. "What do we say? What do we even have?"
"Something," Jenna says, wishing it were something better, "we have something."
"Would it still be something after all that?" Kono sips, swallows, and her full sweet lips twist up at the corner. "I'm fucked up, you're fucked up, the woman you loved is dead and I walk into gunfire every other day. That's nothing. That can't be anything. It's already too much."
"It's not enough," Jenna says. She uncrosses her arms and leans forward, elbows on the counter. "You're backwards, okay? You've got it backwards."
Kono shakes her head. Her lip twitches.
"No," Jenna says, "no, I'm serious. We can do this, and if we're going to do this, we have to actually do it. You know what I mean. And you have to stop walking into gunfire, okay? Because if we do this, you've got a reason not to."
Kono's eyebrow twitches now, then her fingers against the cool glass of her bottle. "Okay," she says, looking down at the counter, and Jenna is suddenly drunk with power.
"You have to be careful," she says, "and you have to tell me what you want, when you want it. And you have to listen when I tell you and not be afraid. And you have to tell me to stay when I try to leave," she says, "because I really want to stay, I want to stay here with you and wake up with you and leave my stupid t-shirt on the floor all night."
"Okay," Kono says again, and she's smiling this time. The twitch is gone.
"And you have to keep buying this beer," Jenna adds. "This is good beer. Okay?" She takes Kono's bottle and sips from it, her fearful animal heart thrashing wildly in her chest.
"Okay," Kono says. Jenna leans across the counter and breathes in: beer's yeasty tang, a hint of fabric softener, and the salt-smoke-sweet of Jenna. Their mouths fall together, and when Jenna moves her tongue Kono moves hers too, and when Jenna moans Kono moans too, and when they're flat on the bed with their thighs tangled and Kono's fingers digging into Jenna's ass it's like each movement comes from both of them, each sound is shared. And when Kono's fingers are inside Jenna, spreading heat in a coil through the cold furl of her body, she feels it like a hard shock: going, going, gone.
*****
(Epilogue:
"Oh, you meant girl's night," Danny says, eyebrows lifting. "Right. Okay." He starts to leer, Jenna can see it in the corner of his mouth, and then Steve elbows him sharply and he wrestles his face under control. "Congratulations, I guess."
Steve nods to them both and smiles formally. "Glad to hear it. I'll assume this won't affect your work performance in any way." Then Danny elbows him back, and he grins and says "That's great, really."
And Chin--Chin is apparently a hugger.)
Thought I'd throw this out there before Monday's episode, in case all my Jenna theories get blown out of the water. Also, consider this a P.S., but does anybody have AO3 invites going spare? I should probably open an account over there--all the cool kids seem to have them.