FIC: Halfway There (H50, Chin Ho/Danny)
Title: Halfway There
Fandom: Hawaii Five-0
Pairing: Chin Ho/Danny
Rating: NC-17 Disclaimer: H5-0 is all CBS’; no claim, commerce, or ownership here.
Word Count: ~5,900
Spoilers: Through 1x08, “Mana’o”
Summary: After Meka’s memorial service, Chin and Danny don’t don’t share their sorrows, exactly.
Author’s Note: Special thanks to my beta, zelda_zee, whose advice was tremendously helpful. Any remaining errors are my own.
Comments, feedback, and criticism are always welcome.
***
It was good to see so many cops in uniform at Meka’s memorial, mostly. It was a show of support for his integrity, something that was good for Amy to see even if she did already know his name had been cleared. Reality could be miles away from the official line, and the least she deserved was evidence of their congruity in this case. It was the least Meka deserved. Danny just wondered whether he’d still be alive if all of them hadn’t knuckled under to IA’s bullying so quickly, or if they’d bothered applying their investigative skills to the botched cases that had plagued their office for months. Maybe Meka wouldn’t have been left to take on Emilio Ochoa all by himself if they had. And if he’d had any kind of backup, he might still be alive.
Danny wasn’t going to think about it now, though. He wasn’t going to stop thinking about it, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let it go, but he had enough self-discipline not to create a scene by getting angry when that was the last thing Amy needed or Meka deserved. Amy was angry too, but this wasn’t the time or place. So he gave his eulogy and made the rounds, and he couldn’t say he wasn’t relieved when the chaplain started urging people out of the Hanamoas’ house. He lingered toward the back of the crowd and managed to work in another hug for Billy. “You’ve got to be strong now for your mom, okay?” Billy nodded. Danny pulled out a business card and scrawled down his private line. “I know that’s asking a lot. If you need to cry or just talk to someone, you call me anytime, day or night, you understand?”
“Why don’t you put this on the fridge, under your badge magnet?” Amy said. “That way you’ll always know where it is.”
Billy nodded again and headed for the kitchen. “Thank you, Danny,” Amy said.
“It’s a privilege. And all that goes for you too. Anytime, anything at all.”
“I’ll call you,” Amy promised.
Outside the house, people were handling the practicalities of raising some glasses in Meka’s honor - choosing a bar, hashing out transportation and designated drivers. Danny saw Detective Ahuna start to move toward him, so he made a beeline for Steve. “Listen, I am not ready to go play drinking buddies with these incompetent assholes,” he said. “I don’t want to dump this on you, but - ”
“But somebody’s got to represent Five-O. I get it,” Steve assured him. “Let me grab Kono, and you can make your escape.”
“Thanks, buddy. I owe you one.”
“No, you really don’t, Danny. Not for this.” Steve squeezed his arm. “Take care of yourself, okay?”
“I will.”
There was already a huge clusterfuck of people trying to get out and move their cars, which was another fight Danny thought he should avoid today. He would win - he was from New Jersey; he could outdo a bunch of tropical hillbillies any day of the week - but it would generate way more bad will than it was worth. He took cover by the neighbor’s giant plants until the last of the other attendees was gone, then made for his own car, parked five blocks away. He was surprised to catch up to Chin Ho a block shy of it. “Hey. I thought you’d already made your break.”
“No, I didn’t want to be the first one out,” Chin said.
“Don’t tell me you hid behind another hibiscus out of Little Shop of Horrors.”
“The ma’o hau hele? I was next to it, not behind.” Chin gave an apologetic smile. “Actually, I was hoping I could grab a ride. I came with Kono, but she’s already gone.”
“Sure, no problem.”
“Thanks. I would walk to a bus stop, but dressed like this...”
“You get used to it if you make a habit out of it.”
“Let me know when you get used to it, brah.” Chin settled into the passenger seat. “Shotgun’s not bad. I should find a way to call dibs on it when you drive.”
“That’s simple. You just wait for McGarrett and Kono to kill each other over it, and then it’s yours.”
“I’ll consider it. In the mean time, do you know the way to my place?”
“No, I don’t.”
“It’s in Kalihi, just west of downtown.”
Chin Ho directed him there easily enough. There wasn’t much traffic at this time on a weekend, but Danny could see why Chin preferred a motorcycle for getting around. More of a risk of getting killed, but Hawaiians, he’d discovered, set the bar absurdly low for traffic jams to which death was preferable.
“It’s the third left after this light, two-story blue building,” Chin said.
“Which side of the street?”
“Right side. You going straight home?”
“Yeah, I was planning on it.”
“If you want to drink to Meka’s memory, I could offer you some company. There’s a bar here that’s not bad, if you don’t mind doing things the aloha way for your old partner’s sake.”
“No, that’d be good. You’re going to have to show me the ‘aloha way,’ though.”
“Not a problem. We’ll have to change clothes, though. You can’t wear black.”
“This is navy blue.”
“Too close for comfort. You keep an extra set of clothes in the trunk, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Come on up and you can change.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
Danny parked by the building, a commercial/residential one with a hardware store on street level, and followed Chin up the stairs. The apartment itself was a neat but shabby studio that made his own place look like luxury real estate. “Cops don’t get paid much,” Chin said, “but the money’s good compared to what you make in gift shop security.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“I didn’t think you were. Anyway, I’ll stay in this place until...”
That was a blank not meant to be filled in, Danny thought. “You want to talk about it?”
“No, I don’t.” Chin changed quickly, into a white t-shirt and chinos that made Danny’s spare work clothes look overly formal even without a tie. They left him sweating on the few blocks’ walk to the bar into which Chin showed him, a bar whose name, as Danny pronounced it, elicited a wince. “Pa-HOU-nu-i,” Chin said carefully.
“Pahounui.”
“Better.”
“Does it mean something?”
“It was the name of a fishpond nearby, until some haole developer filled it in in the fifties.”
It was Danny’s turn to wince. “Sorry, man.”
Chin shrugged. “Not your fault. At least we got a bar out of it.”
It wasn’t a halfway bad place, either, not fancy but decently kept, Hawaiian in a subtle, unselfconscious way that wouldn’t register with a typical tourist. They took seats at the uncrowded bar, and Chin signaled the bartender. The two had a quick exchange in creole; Danny caught haole and a sudden, somber tone. Soon he was faced with a fruity-looking, disturbingly yellow drink, on the rocks. “Kai swizzle,” Chin explained, raising his glass. “To Meka?”
“To Meka,” Danny agreed, and drunk in something full of rum and spices and everything else he hated in a drink. He nursed it quietly nonetheless for a few minutes. “You want to talk about this?” Chin asked eventually.
“About Meka? No.” He swirled his drink. “When I figure out what I need to say, I’ll talk to a shrink. They’ll probably make me do that anyway.”
There was another interval of silence, Chin Ho looking contemplative, Danny wishing for circumstances in which he could just think about the bizarreness of his drink instead of all the other things on his mind. He knew he needed to try and push them aside at least temporarily, give himself a break so he could stay sane. “So I don’t want to offend you,” he said, “but I can’t stop wondering how you wound up with the same last name as my mother.”
“My grandfather was stationed in Zhijiang in World War II and married a local. Dad was born here in ‘46.”
Danny nodded. “‘Williams’ is a tricky too. That side’s Irish, but somebody married a Williams in 1870 or something.”
“And the other side?”
“Grandpa’s parents were from Galway, and Grandma’s were farmers from backwater Sicily.”
“Hence the -” Chin gestured broadly.
“Hence the talking hands, yeah.” He finished his drink. “So what’s the family connection with you and Kono?”
“My grandpa died early, and Tutu Lin married Kono’s grandpa later on. Auntie Lou is their youngest kid.”
“That’s Kono’s mom?”
Chin nodded. “She married Akamu Kalakaua, and the rest is history.”
That still left Danny wondering how, exactly, Chin and Kono were related to Sid, but he was way too sober to dare. Instead, he caught the barman’s eye and nodded toward the empty glasses. “Two of Jameson, neat.” When the drinks came, Danny raised his reflexively, then realized he didn’t have anything to say. “To Amy and Billy,” Chin supplied.
“L’chaim.”
“That another Jersey thing?”
“Kind of.” Danny took another sip of the scotch. “You know, I think this stuff’s better back home, like the warm climate doesn’t suit it.”
“Or it’s not suited to the warm climate.”
“Point taken. At least it’s still worth drinking here.”
“Hmmm.”
“Worth drinking fast, in one gulp.” Danny was as good as his words, and for a few minutes he just felt the burn. “You know, I can already visualize Grace’s twenty-first birthday,” he said. “There’ll be all kinds of bright-colored girly things with pineapples on swizzle sticks.”
“And the maraschino cherries. Got to have those.”
“Don’t remind me... And of course it’ll be some lavish affair that Step-Stan hosts just to show off how much money he’s got.” He signaled for the beer on tap. “You know, it’s not that I mind his having the money. Everybody wants money, and at least Stan earned his. He wasn’t born rich.”
“Maybe that’s what Rachel sees in him.”
“I should’ve gone to business school.”
“No, you were born to be a cop. You couldn’t have done anything else.”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” Danny sniffed at his beer. “Hinano?”
“Tahitian. It’s good.”
Danny couldn’t disagree - not what he was used to, maybe, but it wasn’t bad. “Like I said, I don’t blame Rachel for wanting some money. I wouldn’t have blamed her for marrying a guy who earned enough that she didn’t have to work full-time. Hell, if she wanted to be a full-time mom.”
“She isn’t one now?”
“What she is now is a rich housewife who has the help do about eighty percent of the parenting for her. You know her maid actually calls her Miss Rachel?”
“Miss Rachel?”
“Like fucking Gone with the Wind. Hiring a cleaning service to come in if you can afford it is one thing, but a fucking staff of people who call you Miss Rachel?”
“I hear you.”
“So I get to be the bad guy who forces Grace to have actual chores. Step-Stan just showers her with purebred rabbits.”
“I didn’t know there were purebred rabbits.”
“Oh, there are. Purebred rabbits that the maid also has to take care of, while the unpleasant fact that life involves responsibilities is only my responsibility to convey. Raising a little girl to feel good about herself is hard enough when you don’t also have to teach her that that cleaning up her toys is not, in fact, beneath her.”
“Kids never want to clean up their toys.”
“And to respect herself for more than all the designer clothes Mommy buys her. And believe me, Mommy buys a lot of designer clothes.” Danny realized suddenly that he was close to tears. He blinked them back frantically and slammed his glass on the counter. “Sometimes I just hate Rachel’s guts.”
Chin rubbed his shoulders. “Well, if Step-Stan ever dumps her for someone younger, I’ll set her up with Cage, how’s that?”
“Sometimes I think if he did, I’d take her back in a heartbeat.”
“Oh?”
“I bet there’s still a hell of a lot of good in Rachel, somewhere. And let’s face it, I was not the perfect husband.”
“I wasn’t the perfect cop.”
“No, but you were clean, and you did your job.” Chin didn’t reply to that. “I don’t get any commendations. Didn’t step out behind her back? Congratulations. Like I really deserve a fucking medal for it.”
“It’s a start.”
“Don’t cut me any slack, man.” Some part of Danny’s brain was aware that he was being maudlin, and he took a deep breath. “Okay, you’ve heard enough of me bitching. I’m stopping. Right now.”
“Who else have you talked to about this?” Chin asked quietly.
“Who else have I talked to?”
“Yeah.”
“Back in Jersey, a marriage counselor and then my goddamned attorney.”
“Hmmm.”
“Who knows? Maybe I’ll drag it back up with whatever shrink they sic me on.”
“It might not be a bad idea.”
“For me or the shrink?”
“Shrinks get paid to do their job, you know. But speaking of good ideas, I think you’ve had enough to drink.”
“Shit, I’m sorry - ”
“Whereas I need a little more. Same as him,” he said to the bartender, pointing to Danny’s glass, “and the check.”
“What do I owe you?”
“Nothing. You’re buying next time.”
“I’m probably not buying Jameson next time.”
“All right, company watching the game, too.”
They wound up on the fold-out couch back at Chin’s shoebox apartment, watching the Cardinals get their asses handed to them on a plate. Chin could get into a game too, Danny discovered; he surmised that he just didn’t try to keep up with Kono when they were both watching. Nobody in Honolulu could keep up with Kono, as far as Danny was concerned, although he knew a few guys back in Jersey who could give her a run for her money.
The postmortem commentary was over by the time Danny was sober for the drive home. “Thanks, man,” he said to Chin. “I owe you one.”
“Anything for my favorite haole.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Hey, you’re on your own on Saturdays, right?”
“Yeah, Sunday’s my weekend day with Grace.”
“Have you taken her around at all, shown her all the kiddie sites?”
“Not really,” Danny admitted. “I’ve been too busy to scope them out. And I’ve got Step-Stan to compete with.”
“Has he taken her to the zoo, or the aquarium?”
“Rachel’s driver took her to the zoo once, over the summer. Grace lasted thirty minutes in the heat.”
“It’s better this time of year. Why don’t we head there tomorrow, let you check it out?” Seeing Danny’s expression, he added, “Believe me, you definitely want to map an itinerary that will keep you away from the reptile house.”
“I’m okay with snakes in a reptile house.”
Chin smiled. “You should make Steve go with you sometime. Everyone in his ninth grade class still talks about his Burmese python report.”
“Oh?”
“The final for Mr. Salem’s biology class was a report on the life history of one species in the Honolulu Zoo that you delivered on the field trip.”
“And Steve chose the grossest, scariest animal on the list.”
“Right in one. Of course he’d been too cool to go to the zoo since he was about seven, so he had no idea what he was getting into.”
“What happened?”
“He was so freaked out, he ran out of the reptile house and took the F instead of going back in.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. Ask him about it.”
“No, I value my life. But now I’ve got to see this thing,” he said. A day at the zoo wasn’t how he’d have chosen to spend a Saturday, but it wouldn’t be so bad. “We have a time and place to meet?”
“It’s better to take the bus from ‘Iolani Palace than look for parking. Meet up at the stop at South King and Punchbowl at ten o’clock?”
“Sure. Dumb question, but which bus?”
“B toward Waikiki.”
“I’ll see you there. Sweet dreams in the meantime.”
“Visions of sugarplums, Williams.”
“All the way.”
***
Morning couldn’t come soon enough, with Danny dreaming of West Orange, and of Rachel. He got out of bed an hour before his alarm and did a punishing strength routine in the apartment’s gym. Some cardio might take the edge off, but he didn’t want to strain the knee by doing it before he spent the day walking around on concrete. Half of him was tempted to back out, but he told himself to get a grip. He’d promised Chin, and it really wouldn’t be a bad idea to scope the place out for a future visit with Grace. Instead of going back to bed, he had an extra cup of coffee in place of orange juice at breakfast. His mother would have killed him for that, but she was six thousand miles away, and the orange juice here sucked anyway. He sang Sinatra in the shower and slathered on what felt like a whole pint of sunblock.
He made it to the bus stop with time to spare, but Chin had beaten him. Danny heard Chin before he saw him: “Aloha kakahiaka aku! You barely look like a haole in those clothes!”
“Don’t get used to it. There’s no way I’m wearing professional attire to the zoo.”
“That’s a good move.”
Their bus arrived, and they found seats near the back. “I know the route by heart, took it all the time as a kid,” Chin said. “It was depressing zoo back then, but they’ve cleaned it up.”
And it had cleaned up nicely, Danny had to admit. He wasn’t sure how they’d funded the refurbishment, since his and Chin’s admittance was what Grace’s would have been at a West Orange zoo that had ten percent of the acreage. He amused himself by imagining that some yakuza boss had underwritten the whole project, which he didn’t think he could bring himself to resent even if it were true. There were decent-sized, naturalistic habitats and all kinds of information on the zoo’s participation in something called the Species Survival Plan. “You know, this is a lot better than the Bronx Zoo,” Danny said. “I hear it’s better now too, but back in the eighties, half the kids would be crying at the end of the school trip.”
“I won’t ask which half you were in,” Chin said. “Now, the question is, are you brave enough to walk past the Komodo dragon?”
“Under general circumstances, yes. If it’s feeding time, no.” Chin gave him a quizzical look. “Animal Planet, man. Those things eat, what, twice a month? Like a snake. I’m guessing they weren’t here when Steve was in ninth grade.”
“No. But when Kono was little, she would beg to come here on their feeding days, and I’d get roped into taking her. They bring in half of a pig carcass, and the dragons just rip huge chunks of it off with their teeth.”
“I bet Kono loved that.”
“Like nothing else in the world. She liked to watch them puke up the inedible parts, too.”
“You know, somehow, that’s way less disgusting when owls do it.”
“Owls, man. They just work their magic... Come on, let’s go see the golden lion tamarins.”
“What are those?”
“Come have a look.”
Golden lion tamarins, it materialized, were tiny, fluffy monkeys with shiny fur and absurdly long tails. They were willing to entertain visitors, too, with a parent/offspring dispute over playtime and bath time. “Okay, I am officially going to kidnap one of those things,” Danny said.
“They’re cute, aren’t they?”
“If they got any cuter, I think it would actually constitute a health hazard. Grace is going to want to spend the whole day watching them.”
“Which you’ll endure in the service of being a good parent.”
“Parenting involves sacrifices.”
“So I hear.”
They went that way through a good part of the zoo, letting Danny get familiar with the place but leaving some surprises to share with Grace. By then, his knee was bothering him a little. He didn’t say anything, but Chin picked up on it anyway, steering them back the way they’d come. This time they had a longer wait at the bus station, and Danny wasn’t willing to displace a young mother to get a seat. By the time they got off at ‘Iolani, he couldn’t hide the limp, although not for lack of trying. “Is it your ACL again?” Chin asked.
“No, it feels completely different from that. I just strained where it’s healing.”
“And that hurts more.”
“You’re too good a detective, you know that.”
Chin smiled and ducked his head. “Come on, I’ll drive you home.” He didn’t apologize for the knee strain, and Danny was grateful for it.
The traffic was heavier than it had been, and they wound up in a jam on Vineyard. “I have to ask,” Chin said, “how did you get HPD to approve a Camaro?”
“I impressed them with my restraint and modesty by asking for a silver one instead of red.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“It’s good for my mental health, too. Rachel’s always had a thing for red cars.”
“Fast little cars?”
“Exactly.”
“So next time, you’ll look for a girl who likes boring cars?”
“Next time. Right.”
Chin looked over, and Danny suppressed a sigh. He’d walked into this. “I haven’t dated much since I got divorced,” he admitted.
“Since you got divorced or since you got to Hawai’i?”
“Both, I guess. The first year after the divorce, I didn’t have much interest in it. Eventually I started thinking about getting back into the game, and then Step-Stan showed up and swept Rachel off her feet.”
“And you came here.”
“I came here, and I spend every spare minute trying to figure out what the hell is going on around me. It’s crazy, and it’s even crazier for Grace. She needs some stability in her life, not for me to be adding possible stepmothers into the mix.” Picking up the occasional badge-bunny tourist, with no strings attached, was as far it went. It wasn’t far enough to be worth mentioning to Chin Ho, if he didn’t already know about it. “Anyway. The dating territory of transplanted divorced-cop dads remains poorly charted for a reason.” Softer, he added, “I know it hasn’t been easy for you lately, either.”
“No. It hasn’t.” Chin kept his eyes on the crawl of traffic and his attention, Danny was sure, somewhere far away.
They got to Danny’s apartment eventually, and Chin found a good parking space almost without trying. “Hey, why don’t you come on in, grab a beer?” Danny said.
“If you promise to get off your knee and let me get the beer, yes.”
“I promise.”
It felt good to lie down. Danny flipped on the television; the Raiders were putting up a hell of a defense. He was completely lost in the game when Chin returned with a still-pristine six-pack of Sam Adams. “It’s on hand for company. I don’t drink alone,” Danny explained.
“I figured.” Chin pulled a chair up and handed a bottle to Danny. “You like lager?”
“Yeah, but I’m not a connoisseur - oh, man, look at that fumble, my grandma wouldn’t have done that!”
“Looks like a move he got from Lane Kiffin.”
They laughed and clinked bottles. Soon they were debating the relative merits of the Raiders’ current quarterbacks and opening new bottles, reminiscing about their own high school sports careers. Chin Ho had set one or two records that hadn’t been broken until after Steve’s day, and Danny wished aloud for the age when knee injuries had healed in next to no time. “Probably a good idea to put some ice on it now,” he admitted.
“Stay where you are. You have ice in the freezer?”
“I’ve got an ice pack.”
“Even better.” Chin disappeared momentarily, and Danny struggled to get his trouser leg past his knee so that the fabric wouldn’t get in the way. That was ridiculous, he realized: it would just get wet, and it wasn’t like he and Chin Ho didn’t share a locker room already. He congratulated himself mentally for remembering to put his wallet and phone in the bedside drawer before tossing the trousers on top of the hamper. “That was a three-pointer there,” Chin said, returning with the ice pack and a towel. “Do you want this right on your knee or with a washcloth?”
“Right on the knee. It’ll do more good that way... Here, I’ll get it.”
“Your coach didn't tell you that you never do as good a job putting it on yourself?”
“He did, but he also told me the Communists were going to invade New Jersey at any second and that fluorinated water caused liver cirrhosis.”
“Well, everybody’s bound to be right once in a while.” Chin wrapped the ice pack around the sore knee with one hand and used the other to massage the good one. It was an old trick, using a temperature contrast to convince the brain that nothing was uncomfortably cold. In Danny’s experience it was completely useless, but he let Chin go ahead. “You haven’t been letting the bad knee stop your workouts,” Chin said, somewhere between teasing and admiring.
“Not if I can help it. But you wouldn’t let a shark attack get in the way of yours.”
“There aren’t enough shark attacks to worry about.”
Danny opened his mouth to dispute that - any shark attack, anywhere, was enough to worry about - but the commercial break ended and Samson Satele blocked a run impressively enough to drive sharks out of mind. “Relax a little,” Chin urged.
“Okay.” Danny smiled, figuring it was good for him. It was nice in his apartment, warm but not hot, and there was a good game and an occasion for beer and a little leg massage that, if it wasn’t really therapeutic, at least felt nice. During slow moments in the game, Chin told a few tales that circulated as urban legends among surfers, and Danny tried to guess which ones Chin had believed as a kid. “You know, I can’t even imagine what teenagers can get away with in Hawaii,” Danny said. “When I was fifteen, I got caught sneaking into the pool after hours, and my dad almost killed me.”
“For swimming after hours? That’s harsh.”
“Well, there was a girl there. Theresa Esser. And we’d forgotten our bathing suits.”
“Bad thing to forget,” Chin said. “Was it worth almost getting murdered?”
“I thought so at the time.” They both laughed, at least until Danny had to clear his throat quickly. “Hey, um. I think my leg’s had enough massaging.”
“Oh, sorry.”
“No problem.” Danny reached for his trousers, which of course weren’t there. Concentrating on football stats probably wouldn’t help right now. He was going to apologize, say the thing had a mind of its own sometimes, when Chin slid a hand onto his thigh. That was all he did for a minute, like he was giving Danny time to push it off. When that didn’t happen, he said, “We gonna do this, brah?”
Danny swallowed and thought, barely. Thought about his lack of the surprise, about admitting he’d known what was going on as soon as Chin offered to drive him home. Not that Chin wouldn’t have done that anyway, but he’d known. He thought about how much they both missed their home PDs, and about how, with Chin, you never had to spell out anything. “Yeah, we can do this,” he said. After a second, he added, “Buying drinks you can take turns on, but...”
“All right.” Chin unbuckled his own belt, and that one gesture pushed Danny into the territory of being able to pitch a circus tent. “Hey, shirts off too,” Danny said.
Chin Ho smiled and complied. “You’ve lent a hand before, yeah?”
“Who hasn’t?”
The smile widened. “I didn’t know if things were different back on the mainland, that’s all.”
“Us haoles, we’ve got tiny dicks and we come in no time.”
“That goes without saying.”
They were both grinning as they worked themselves into positions that wouldn’t jar Danny’s knee. He had the presence of mind to retrieve lube from the nightstand. It would make things messier, but they were going to be messy anyway. Chin smiled again, but he didn’t seem any more inclined to chatter in bed than he was out of it. He did at least sigh faintly at contact, and he took hold of Danny’s cock and balls with an unmistakable air of satisfaction. “I’ve been looking forward to getting my hands on these.”
“Do they meet your expectations?”
“Absolutely.”
Danny had been less anticipatory, maybe, but he liked what he got. It wasn’t exactly a surprise - Chin was a shower, but he firmed up nicely, and there was something about that that seemed exactly right for Chin’s fucking taut, perfect body, something that made everything burn a little hotter. They were both sweating already in the heat. Chin Ho was pretty smooth as nature made him, and suddenly Danny wanted to fill his hands with it, skin against skin.
It was not a time for wine and roses and every other trick on the book, although they’d both put too much into this to settle for a functional, quick-and-dirty jerk-off. They stayed away from each other’s nipples and didn’t kiss, but Chin rested a hand on Danny’s hip, touching his side, and Danny varied his grip, trying to figure out how Chin liked to be handled. Strokes that were long and not too hurried seemed to work well, especially when Danny put the pad of his thumb to use against the head. For his own part, he didn’t leave much to inference, just moaned when the hand that had been on his side moved to brush his balls. Chin stepped the brush up to a full-scale game, playing the weight of them against his hand. “Oh, fuck, man,” Danny heard himself pant. “Like that.”
“Like that?”
“Yeah. Fuck, don’t tease - ”
Chin came without warning, spurting hot over Danny’s wrist in a final push. “You want me to talk dirty, Officer Kelly?” Danny said. “That get you off?”
Chin didn’t reply, just sped up his stroke. Danny found himself writhing toward Chin without even meaning to, and he let out a laugh. “You like making me do this?” he gasped out. “Shove my hips like a slut?”
Chin laughed contentedly and ran his thumb hard down the bulb artery, pressing it where the shaft met the head, and after a few times of that, Danny was coming too, squeezing Chin’s arm hard enough to hurt his own hand and grinning like a fool.
Neither one of them said anything right after, just moved apart for the descent back to earth. They were breathing hard, and Danny turned up the TV’s volume so they could catch the post-game commentary. The best orgasm he’d had in way too long was not an excuse for missing anything Satele might have to say about that play he’d made in the third quarter. He did at least improvise a wipe-down for the two of them with a stray towel and last night’s bedside water. Replacing the now-empty cup, it occurred to him that this was a perfectly good set of circumstances to open up the two beers that had their names on them. He handed one to Chin. “To - whatever,” Danny said, and they tilted their glasses together. He’d chosen a good moment to remember the beers, which were just on the verge of getting too warm.
The post-game commentary gave way to a golf tournament, which Danny turned off. “Okay, so tennis is at least an activity, but golf...”
“Golf is a good walk spoiled.”
“Who said that?”
“Mark Twain.” Chin shifted toward Danny, and something squished. “I think that was your icepack.”
“Don’t worry, it’s indestructible. I’ll put it back in the freezer.”
“I will. Rest your knee a little more.” Before Danny could protest, Chin’s phone rang, and he dove for his jeans to retrieve it. “Aloha, Tutu! Lin Kelly,” he mouthed to Danny.
“Kono’s grandma?”
“She’s having the grandkids over for dinner,” Chin whispered.
“Go ahead, that’s great.”
“E hele mai ana au... If you want, I can pick up zhongzi on the way over. You like Da Huan’s best, right? ...Probably about an hour... He mea iki.”
“Heading out?”
“Yeah. Could I use your shower?”
“Go ahead. I’ve got a shirt that’ll fit you, if you want to change.”
“That’d be great. Mahalo.”
“No problem.”
Chin was out of the shower and in a blue t-shirt that only looked slightly odd on him within five minutes. “Want a cloth to wash up?” he asked Danny.
“No, I’ll shower soon. My knee’s a lot better.”
“As long as you’re ready to run around with Grace tomorrow.”
“I’ll be a hundred percent by then.”
“Glad to hear it. See you on Monday, then?”
“See you at work.” He watched Chin gather up his phone and t-shirt and check that his wallet was in his pocket, the whole little routine. Nothing noteworthy, but he liked it anyway. He cleared his throat when Chin was at the door. “So the Italian food here sucks, but there’s a little place off Dillingham near Liliha that’s supposed to be all right,” he said. “If you’re up for a taste of the mainland, we could check it out sometime.”
Chin gave Danny one of his grins, the ones that were no weaker for being relatively common. “I like that idea. Some night this week, maybe next weekend?”
“Yeah. Let’s work out the details when we see how the week’s shaping up.”
“Good plan. Take care of yourself until Monday, brah. And tell Grace hi for me and Kono.”
“Will do. Maybe I’ll take her to the zoo tomorrow.”
“Hands off the tamarins, though. Even the governor won’t let you off for kidnapping one.”
“I’ll do my best,” he promised. As heists went, it would be pretty impractical, but he thought, as he stripped the sheets to wash them, that maybe he’d buy a plush one for Grace.
Fandom: Hawaii Five-0
Pairing: Chin Ho/Danny
Rating: NC-17 Disclaimer: H5-0 is all CBS’; no claim, commerce, or ownership here.
Word Count: ~5,900
Spoilers: Through 1x08, “Mana’o”
Summary: After Meka’s memorial service, Chin and Danny don’t don’t share their sorrows, exactly.
Author’s Note: Special thanks to my beta, zelda_zee, whose advice was tremendously helpful. Any remaining errors are my own.
Comments, feedback, and criticism are always welcome.
***
It was good to see so many cops in uniform at Meka’s memorial, mostly. It was a show of support for his integrity, something that was good for Amy to see even if she did already know his name had been cleared. Reality could be miles away from the official line, and the least she deserved was evidence of their congruity in this case. It was the least Meka deserved. Danny just wondered whether he’d still be alive if all of them hadn’t knuckled under to IA’s bullying so quickly, or if they’d bothered applying their investigative skills to the botched cases that had plagued their office for months. Maybe Meka wouldn’t have been left to take on Emilio Ochoa all by himself if they had. And if he’d had any kind of backup, he might still be alive.
Danny wasn’t going to think about it now, though. He wasn’t going to stop thinking about it, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let it go, but he had enough self-discipline not to create a scene by getting angry when that was the last thing Amy needed or Meka deserved. Amy was angry too, but this wasn’t the time or place. So he gave his eulogy and made the rounds, and he couldn’t say he wasn’t relieved when the chaplain started urging people out of the Hanamoas’ house. He lingered toward the back of the crowd and managed to work in another hug for Billy. “You’ve got to be strong now for your mom, okay?” Billy nodded. Danny pulled out a business card and scrawled down his private line. “I know that’s asking a lot. If you need to cry or just talk to someone, you call me anytime, day or night, you understand?”
“Why don’t you put this on the fridge, under your badge magnet?” Amy said. “That way you’ll always know where it is.”
Billy nodded again and headed for the kitchen. “Thank you, Danny,” Amy said.
“It’s a privilege. And all that goes for you too. Anytime, anything at all.”
“I’ll call you,” Amy promised.
Outside the house, people were handling the practicalities of raising some glasses in Meka’s honor - choosing a bar, hashing out transportation and designated drivers. Danny saw Detective Ahuna start to move toward him, so he made a beeline for Steve. “Listen, I am not ready to go play drinking buddies with these incompetent assholes,” he said. “I don’t want to dump this on you, but - ”
“But somebody’s got to represent Five-O. I get it,” Steve assured him. “Let me grab Kono, and you can make your escape.”
“Thanks, buddy. I owe you one.”
“No, you really don’t, Danny. Not for this.” Steve squeezed his arm. “Take care of yourself, okay?”
“I will.”
There was already a huge clusterfuck of people trying to get out and move their cars, which was another fight Danny thought he should avoid today. He would win - he was from New Jersey; he could outdo a bunch of tropical hillbillies any day of the week - but it would generate way more bad will than it was worth. He took cover by the neighbor’s giant plants until the last of the other attendees was gone, then made for his own car, parked five blocks away. He was surprised to catch up to Chin Ho a block shy of it. “Hey. I thought you’d already made your break.”
“No, I didn’t want to be the first one out,” Chin said.
“Don’t tell me you hid behind another hibiscus out of Little Shop of Horrors.”
“The ma’o hau hele? I was next to it, not behind.” Chin gave an apologetic smile. “Actually, I was hoping I could grab a ride. I came with Kono, but she’s already gone.”
“Sure, no problem.”
“Thanks. I would walk to a bus stop, but dressed like this...”
“You get used to it if you make a habit out of it.”
“Let me know when you get used to it, brah.” Chin settled into the passenger seat. “Shotgun’s not bad. I should find a way to call dibs on it when you drive.”
“That’s simple. You just wait for McGarrett and Kono to kill each other over it, and then it’s yours.”
“I’ll consider it. In the mean time, do you know the way to my place?”
“No, I don’t.”
“It’s in Kalihi, just west of downtown.”
Chin Ho directed him there easily enough. There wasn’t much traffic at this time on a weekend, but Danny could see why Chin preferred a motorcycle for getting around. More of a risk of getting killed, but Hawaiians, he’d discovered, set the bar absurdly low for traffic jams to which death was preferable.
“It’s the third left after this light, two-story blue building,” Chin said.
“Which side of the street?”
“Right side. You going straight home?”
“Yeah, I was planning on it.”
“If you want to drink to Meka’s memory, I could offer you some company. There’s a bar here that’s not bad, if you don’t mind doing things the aloha way for your old partner’s sake.”
“No, that’d be good. You’re going to have to show me the ‘aloha way,’ though.”
“Not a problem. We’ll have to change clothes, though. You can’t wear black.”
“This is navy blue.”
“Too close for comfort. You keep an extra set of clothes in the trunk, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Come on up and you can change.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
Danny parked by the building, a commercial/residential one with a hardware store on street level, and followed Chin up the stairs. The apartment itself was a neat but shabby studio that made his own place look like luxury real estate. “Cops don’t get paid much,” Chin said, “but the money’s good compared to what you make in gift shop security.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“I didn’t think you were. Anyway, I’ll stay in this place until...”
That was a blank not meant to be filled in, Danny thought. “You want to talk about it?”
“No, I don’t.” Chin changed quickly, into a white t-shirt and chinos that made Danny’s spare work clothes look overly formal even without a tie. They left him sweating on the few blocks’ walk to the bar into which Chin showed him, a bar whose name, as Danny pronounced it, elicited a wince. “Pa-HOU-nu-i,” Chin said carefully.
“Pahounui.”
“Better.”
“Does it mean something?”
“It was the name of a fishpond nearby, until some haole developer filled it in in the fifties.”
It was Danny’s turn to wince. “Sorry, man.”
Chin shrugged. “Not your fault. At least we got a bar out of it.”
It wasn’t a halfway bad place, either, not fancy but decently kept, Hawaiian in a subtle, unselfconscious way that wouldn’t register with a typical tourist. They took seats at the uncrowded bar, and Chin signaled the bartender. The two had a quick exchange in creole; Danny caught haole and a sudden, somber tone. Soon he was faced with a fruity-looking, disturbingly yellow drink, on the rocks. “Kai swizzle,” Chin explained, raising his glass. “To Meka?”
“To Meka,” Danny agreed, and drunk in something full of rum and spices and everything else he hated in a drink. He nursed it quietly nonetheless for a few minutes. “You want to talk about this?” Chin asked eventually.
“About Meka? No.” He swirled his drink. “When I figure out what I need to say, I’ll talk to a shrink. They’ll probably make me do that anyway.”
There was another interval of silence, Chin Ho looking contemplative, Danny wishing for circumstances in which he could just think about the bizarreness of his drink instead of all the other things on his mind. He knew he needed to try and push them aside at least temporarily, give himself a break so he could stay sane. “So I don’t want to offend you,” he said, “but I can’t stop wondering how you wound up with the same last name as my mother.”
“My grandfather was stationed in Zhijiang in World War II and married a local. Dad was born here in ‘46.”
Danny nodded. “‘Williams’ is a tricky too. That side’s Irish, but somebody married a Williams in 1870 or something.”
“And the other side?”
“Grandpa’s parents were from Galway, and Grandma’s were farmers from backwater Sicily.”
“Hence the -” Chin gestured broadly.
“Hence the talking hands, yeah.” He finished his drink. “So what’s the family connection with you and Kono?”
“My grandpa died early, and Tutu Lin married Kono’s grandpa later on. Auntie Lou is their youngest kid.”
“That’s Kono’s mom?”
Chin nodded. “She married Akamu Kalakaua, and the rest is history.”
That still left Danny wondering how, exactly, Chin and Kono were related to Sid, but he was way too sober to dare. Instead, he caught the barman’s eye and nodded toward the empty glasses. “Two of Jameson, neat.” When the drinks came, Danny raised his reflexively, then realized he didn’t have anything to say. “To Amy and Billy,” Chin supplied.
“L’chaim.”
“That another Jersey thing?”
“Kind of.” Danny took another sip of the scotch. “You know, I think this stuff’s better back home, like the warm climate doesn’t suit it.”
“Or it’s not suited to the warm climate.”
“Point taken. At least it’s still worth drinking here.”
“Hmmm.”
“Worth drinking fast, in one gulp.” Danny was as good as his words, and for a few minutes he just felt the burn. “You know, I can already visualize Grace’s twenty-first birthday,” he said. “There’ll be all kinds of bright-colored girly things with pineapples on swizzle sticks.”
“And the maraschino cherries. Got to have those.”
“Don’t remind me... And of course it’ll be some lavish affair that Step-Stan hosts just to show off how much money he’s got.” He signaled for the beer on tap. “You know, it’s not that I mind his having the money. Everybody wants money, and at least Stan earned his. He wasn’t born rich.”
“Maybe that’s what Rachel sees in him.”
“I should’ve gone to business school.”
“No, you were born to be a cop. You couldn’t have done anything else.”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” Danny sniffed at his beer. “Hinano?”
“Tahitian. It’s good.”
Danny couldn’t disagree - not what he was used to, maybe, but it wasn’t bad. “Like I said, I don’t blame Rachel for wanting some money. I wouldn’t have blamed her for marrying a guy who earned enough that she didn’t have to work full-time. Hell, if she wanted to be a full-time mom.”
“She isn’t one now?”
“What she is now is a rich housewife who has the help do about eighty percent of the parenting for her. You know her maid actually calls her Miss Rachel?”
“Miss Rachel?”
“Like fucking Gone with the Wind. Hiring a cleaning service to come in if you can afford it is one thing, but a fucking staff of people who call you Miss Rachel?”
“I hear you.”
“So I get to be the bad guy who forces Grace to have actual chores. Step-Stan just showers her with purebred rabbits.”
“I didn’t know there were purebred rabbits.”
“Oh, there are. Purebred rabbits that the maid also has to take care of, while the unpleasant fact that life involves responsibilities is only my responsibility to convey. Raising a little girl to feel good about herself is hard enough when you don’t also have to teach her that that cleaning up her toys is not, in fact, beneath her.”
“Kids never want to clean up their toys.”
“And to respect herself for more than all the designer clothes Mommy buys her. And believe me, Mommy buys a lot of designer clothes.” Danny realized suddenly that he was close to tears. He blinked them back frantically and slammed his glass on the counter. “Sometimes I just hate Rachel’s guts.”
Chin rubbed his shoulders. “Well, if Step-Stan ever dumps her for someone younger, I’ll set her up with Cage, how’s that?”
“Sometimes I think if he did, I’d take her back in a heartbeat.”
“Oh?”
“I bet there’s still a hell of a lot of good in Rachel, somewhere. And let’s face it, I was not the perfect husband.”
“I wasn’t the perfect cop.”
“No, but you were clean, and you did your job.” Chin didn’t reply to that. “I don’t get any commendations. Didn’t step out behind her back? Congratulations. Like I really deserve a fucking medal for it.”
“It’s a start.”
“Don’t cut me any slack, man.” Some part of Danny’s brain was aware that he was being maudlin, and he took a deep breath. “Okay, you’ve heard enough of me bitching. I’m stopping. Right now.”
“Who else have you talked to about this?” Chin asked quietly.
“Who else have I talked to?”
“Yeah.”
“Back in Jersey, a marriage counselor and then my goddamned attorney.”
“Hmmm.”
“Who knows? Maybe I’ll drag it back up with whatever shrink they sic me on.”
“It might not be a bad idea.”
“For me or the shrink?”
“Shrinks get paid to do their job, you know. But speaking of good ideas, I think you’ve had enough to drink.”
“Shit, I’m sorry - ”
“Whereas I need a little more. Same as him,” he said to the bartender, pointing to Danny’s glass, “and the check.”
“What do I owe you?”
“Nothing. You’re buying next time.”
“I’m probably not buying Jameson next time.”
“All right, company watching the game, too.”
They wound up on the fold-out couch back at Chin’s shoebox apartment, watching the Cardinals get their asses handed to them on a plate. Chin could get into a game too, Danny discovered; he surmised that he just didn’t try to keep up with Kono when they were both watching. Nobody in Honolulu could keep up with Kono, as far as Danny was concerned, although he knew a few guys back in Jersey who could give her a run for her money.
The postmortem commentary was over by the time Danny was sober for the drive home. “Thanks, man,” he said to Chin. “I owe you one.”
“Anything for my favorite haole.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Hey, you’re on your own on Saturdays, right?”
“Yeah, Sunday’s my weekend day with Grace.”
“Have you taken her around at all, shown her all the kiddie sites?”
“Not really,” Danny admitted. “I’ve been too busy to scope them out. And I’ve got Step-Stan to compete with.”
“Has he taken her to the zoo, or the aquarium?”
“Rachel’s driver took her to the zoo once, over the summer. Grace lasted thirty minutes in the heat.”
“It’s better this time of year. Why don’t we head there tomorrow, let you check it out?” Seeing Danny’s expression, he added, “Believe me, you definitely want to map an itinerary that will keep you away from the reptile house.”
“I’m okay with snakes in a reptile house.”
Chin smiled. “You should make Steve go with you sometime. Everyone in his ninth grade class still talks about his Burmese python report.”
“Oh?”
“The final for Mr. Salem’s biology class was a report on the life history of one species in the Honolulu Zoo that you delivered on the field trip.”
“And Steve chose the grossest, scariest animal on the list.”
“Right in one. Of course he’d been too cool to go to the zoo since he was about seven, so he had no idea what he was getting into.”
“What happened?”
“He was so freaked out, he ran out of the reptile house and took the F instead of going back in.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. Ask him about it.”
“No, I value my life. But now I’ve got to see this thing,” he said. A day at the zoo wasn’t how he’d have chosen to spend a Saturday, but it wouldn’t be so bad. “We have a time and place to meet?”
“It’s better to take the bus from ‘Iolani Palace than look for parking. Meet up at the stop at South King and Punchbowl at ten o’clock?”
“Sure. Dumb question, but which bus?”
“B toward Waikiki.”
“I’ll see you there. Sweet dreams in the meantime.”
“Visions of sugarplums, Williams.”
“All the way.”
***
Morning couldn’t come soon enough, with Danny dreaming of West Orange, and of Rachel. He got out of bed an hour before his alarm and did a punishing strength routine in the apartment’s gym. Some cardio might take the edge off, but he didn’t want to strain the knee by doing it before he spent the day walking around on concrete. Half of him was tempted to back out, but he told himself to get a grip. He’d promised Chin, and it really wouldn’t be a bad idea to scope the place out for a future visit with Grace. Instead of going back to bed, he had an extra cup of coffee in place of orange juice at breakfast. His mother would have killed him for that, but she was six thousand miles away, and the orange juice here sucked anyway. He sang Sinatra in the shower and slathered on what felt like a whole pint of sunblock.
He made it to the bus stop with time to spare, but Chin had beaten him. Danny heard Chin before he saw him: “Aloha kakahiaka aku! You barely look like a haole in those clothes!”
“Don’t get used to it. There’s no way I’m wearing professional attire to the zoo.”
“That’s a good move.”
Their bus arrived, and they found seats near the back. “I know the route by heart, took it all the time as a kid,” Chin said. “It was depressing zoo back then, but they’ve cleaned it up.”
And it had cleaned up nicely, Danny had to admit. He wasn’t sure how they’d funded the refurbishment, since his and Chin’s admittance was what Grace’s would have been at a West Orange zoo that had ten percent of the acreage. He amused himself by imagining that some yakuza boss had underwritten the whole project, which he didn’t think he could bring himself to resent even if it were true. There were decent-sized, naturalistic habitats and all kinds of information on the zoo’s participation in something called the Species Survival Plan. “You know, this is a lot better than the Bronx Zoo,” Danny said. “I hear it’s better now too, but back in the eighties, half the kids would be crying at the end of the school trip.”
“I won’t ask which half you were in,” Chin said. “Now, the question is, are you brave enough to walk past the Komodo dragon?”
“Under general circumstances, yes. If it’s feeding time, no.” Chin gave him a quizzical look. “Animal Planet, man. Those things eat, what, twice a month? Like a snake. I’m guessing they weren’t here when Steve was in ninth grade.”
“No. But when Kono was little, she would beg to come here on their feeding days, and I’d get roped into taking her. They bring in half of a pig carcass, and the dragons just rip huge chunks of it off with their teeth.”
“I bet Kono loved that.”
“Like nothing else in the world. She liked to watch them puke up the inedible parts, too.”
“You know, somehow, that’s way less disgusting when owls do it.”
“Owls, man. They just work their magic... Come on, let’s go see the golden lion tamarins.”
“What are those?”
“Come have a look.”
Golden lion tamarins, it materialized, were tiny, fluffy monkeys with shiny fur and absurdly long tails. They were willing to entertain visitors, too, with a parent/offspring dispute over playtime and bath time. “Okay, I am officially going to kidnap one of those things,” Danny said.
“They’re cute, aren’t they?”
“If they got any cuter, I think it would actually constitute a health hazard. Grace is going to want to spend the whole day watching them.”
“Which you’ll endure in the service of being a good parent.”
“Parenting involves sacrifices.”
“So I hear.”
They went that way through a good part of the zoo, letting Danny get familiar with the place but leaving some surprises to share with Grace. By then, his knee was bothering him a little. He didn’t say anything, but Chin picked up on it anyway, steering them back the way they’d come. This time they had a longer wait at the bus station, and Danny wasn’t willing to displace a young mother to get a seat. By the time they got off at ‘Iolani, he couldn’t hide the limp, although not for lack of trying. “Is it your ACL again?” Chin asked.
“No, it feels completely different from that. I just strained where it’s healing.”
“And that hurts more.”
“You’re too good a detective, you know that.”
Chin smiled and ducked his head. “Come on, I’ll drive you home.” He didn’t apologize for the knee strain, and Danny was grateful for it.
The traffic was heavier than it had been, and they wound up in a jam on Vineyard. “I have to ask,” Chin said, “how did you get HPD to approve a Camaro?”
“I impressed them with my restraint and modesty by asking for a silver one instead of red.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“It’s good for my mental health, too. Rachel’s always had a thing for red cars.”
“Fast little cars?”
“Exactly.”
“So next time, you’ll look for a girl who likes boring cars?”
“Next time. Right.”
Chin looked over, and Danny suppressed a sigh. He’d walked into this. “I haven’t dated much since I got divorced,” he admitted.
“Since you got divorced or since you got to Hawai’i?”
“Both, I guess. The first year after the divorce, I didn’t have much interest in it. Eventually I started thinking about getting back into the game, and then Step-Stan showed up and swept Rachel off her feet.”
“And you came here.”
“I came here, and I spend every spare minute trying to figure out what the hell is going on around me. It’s crazy, and it’s even crazier for Grace. She needs some stability in her life, not for me to be adding possible stepmothers into the mix.” Picking up the occasional badge-bunny tourist, with no strings attached, was as far it went. It wasn’t far enough to be worth mentioning to Chin Ho, if he didn’t already know about it. “Anyway. The dating territory of transplanted divorced-cop dads remains poorly charted for a reason.” Softer, he added, “I know it hasn’t been easy for you lately, either.”
“No. It hasn’t.” Chin kept his eyes on the crawl of traffic and his attention, Danny was sure, somewhere far away.
They got to Danny’s apartment eventually, and Chin found a good parking space almost without trying. “Hey, why don’t you come on in, grab a beer?” Danny said.
“If you promise to get off your knee and let me get the beer, yes.”
“I promise.”
It felt good to lie down. Danny flipped on the television; the Raiders were putting up a hell of a defense. He was completely lost in the game when Chin returned with a still-pristine six-pack of Sam Adams. “It’s on hand for company. I don’t drink alone,” Danny explained.
“I figured.” Chin pulled a chair up and handed a bottle to Danny. “You like lager?”
“Yeah, but I’m not a connoisseur - oh, man, look at that fumble, my grandma wouldn’t have done that!”
“Looks like a move he got from Lane Kiffin.”
They laughed and clinked bottles. Soon they were debating the relative merits of the Raiders’ current quarterbacks and opening new bottles, reminiscing about their own high school sports careers. Chin Ho had set one or two records that hadn’t been broken until after Steve’s day, and Danny wished aloud for the age when knee injuries had healed in next to no time. “Probably a good idea to put some ice on it now,” he admitted.
“Stay where you are. You have ice in the freezer?”
“I’ve got an ice pack.”
“Even better.” Chin disappeared momentarily, and Danny struggled to get his trouser leg past his knee so that the fabric wouldn’t get in the way. That was ridiculous, he realized: it would just get wet, and it wasn’t like he and Chin Ho didn’t share a locker room already. He congratulated himself mentally for remembering to put his wallet and phone in the bedside drawer before tossing the trousers on top of the hamper. “That was a three-pointer there,” Chin said, returning with the ice pack and a towel. “Do you want this right on your knee or with a washcloth?”
“Right on the knee. It’ll do more good that way... Here, I’ll get it.”
“Your coach didn't tell you that you never do as good a job putting it on yourself?”
“He did, but he also told me the Communists were going to invade New Jersey at any second and that fluorinated water caused liver cirrhosis.”
“Well, everybody’s bound to be right once in a while.” Chin wrapped the ice pack around the sore knee with one hand and used the other to massage the good one. It was an old trick, using a temperature contrast to convince the brain that nothing was uncomfortably cold. In Danny’s experience it was completely useless, but he let Chin go ahead. “You haven’t been letting the bad knee stop your workouts,” Chin said, somewhere between teasing and admiring.
“Not if I can help it. But you wouldn’t let a shark attack get in the way of yours.”
“There aren’t enough shark attacks to worry about.”
Danny opened his mouth to dispute that - any shark attack, anywhere, was enough to worry about - but the commercial break ended and Samson Satele blocked a run impressively enough to drive sharks out of mind. “Relax a little,” Chin urged.
“Okay.” Danny smiled, figuring it was good for him. It was nice in his apartment, warm but not hot, and there was a good game and an occasion for beer and a little leg massage that, if it wasn’t really therapeutic, at least felt nice. During slow moments in the game, Chin told a few tales that circulated as urban legends among surfers, and Danny tried to guess which ones Chin had believed as a kid. “You know, I can’t even imagine what teenagers can get away with in Hawaii,” Danny said. “When I was fifteen, I got caught sneaking into the pool after hours, and my dad almost killed me.”
“For swimming after hours? That’s harsh.”
“Well, there was a girl there. Theresa Esser. And we’d forgotten our bathing suits.”
“Bad thing to forget,” Chin said. “Was it worth almost getting murdered?”
“I thought so at the time.” They both laughed, at least until Danny had to clear his throat quickly. “Hey, um. I think my leg’s had enough massaging.”
“Oh, sorry.”
“No problem.” Danny reached for his trousers, which of course weren’t there. Concentrating on football stats probably wouldn’t help right now. He was going to apologize, say the thing had a mind of its own sometimes, when Chin slid a hand onto his thigh. That was all he did for a minute, like he was giving Danny time to push it off. When that didn’t happen, he said, “We gonna do this, brah?”
Danny swallowed and thought, barely. Thought about his lack of the surprise, about admitting he’d known what was going on as soon as Chin offered to drive him home. Not that Chin wouldn’t have done that anyway, but he’d known. He thought about how much they both missed their home PDs, and about how, with Chin, you never had to spell out anything. “Yeah, we can do this,” he said. After a second, he added, “Buying drinks you can take turns on, but...”
“All right.” Chin unbuckled his own belt, and that one gesture pushed Danny into the territory of being able to pitch a circus tent. “Hey, shirts off too,” Danny said.
Chin Ho smiled and complied. “You’ve lent a hand before, yeah?”
“Who hasn’t?”
The smile widened. “I didn’t know if things were different back on the mainland, that’s all.”
“Us haoles, we’ve got tiny dicks and we come in no time.”
“That goes without saying.”
They were both grinning as they worked themselves into positions that wouldn’t jar Danny’s knee. He had the presence of mind to retrieve lube from the nightstand. It would make things messier, but they were going to be messy anyway. Chin smiled again, but he didn’t seem any more inclined to chatter in bed than he was out of it. He did at least sigh faintly at contact, and he took hold of Danny’s cock and balls with an unmistakable air of satisfaction. “I’ve been looking forward to getting my hands on these.”
“Do they meet your expectations?”
“Absolutely.”
Danny had been less anticipatory, maybe, but he liked what he got. It wasn’t exactly a surprise - Chin was a shower, but he firmed up nicely, and there was something about that that seemed exactly right for Chin’s fucking taut, perfect body, something that made everything burn a little hotter. They were both sweating already in the heat. Chin Ho was pretty smooth as nature made him, and suddenly Danny wanted to fill his hands with it, skin against skin.
It was not a time for wine and roses and every other trick on the book, although they’d both put too much into this to settle for a functional, quick-and-dirty jerk-off. They stayed away from each other’s nipples and didn’t kiss, but Chin rested a hand on Danny’s hip, touching his side, and Danny varied his grip, trying to figure out how Chin liked to be handled. Strokes that were long and not too hurried seemed to work well, especially when Danny put the pad of his thumb to use against the head. For his own part, he didn’t leave much to inference, just moaned when the hand that had been on his side moved to brush his balls. Chin stepped the brush up to a full-scale game, playing the weight of them against his hand. “Oh, fuck, man,” Danny heard himself pant. “Like that.”
“Like that?”
“Yeah. Fuck, don’t tease - ”
Chin came without warning, spurting hot over Danny’s wrist in a final push. “You want me to talk dirty, Officer Kelly?” Danny said. “That get you off?”
Chin didn’t reply, just sped up his stroke. Danny found himself writhing toward Chin without even meaning to, and he let out a laugh. “You like making me do this?” he gasped out. “Shove my hips like a slut?”
Chin laughed contentedly and ran his thumb hard down the bulb artery, pressing it where the shaft met the head, and after a few times of that, Danny was coming too, squeezing Chin’s arm hard enough to hurt his own hand and grinning like a fool.
Neither one of them said anything right after, just moved apart for the descent back to earth. They were breathing hard, and Danny turned up the TV’s volume so they could catch the post-game commentary. The best orgasm he’d had in way too long was not an excuse for missing anything Satele might have to say about that play he’d made in the third quarter. He did at least improvise a wipe-down for the two of them with a stray towel and last night’s bedside water. Replacing the now-empty cup, it occurred to him that this was a perfectly good set of circumstances to open up the two beers that had their names on them. He handed one to Chin. “To - whatever,” Danny said, and they tilted their glasses together. He’d chosen a good moment to remember the beers, which were just on the verge of getting too warm.
The post-game commentary gave way to a golf tournament, which Danny turned off. “Okay, so tennis is at least an activity, but golf...”
“Golf is a good walk spoiled.”
“Who said that?”
“Mark Twain.” Chin shifted toward Danny, and something squished. “I think that was your icepack.”
“Don’t worry, it’s indestructible. I’ll put it back in the freezer.”
“I will. Rest your knee a little more.” Before Danny could protest, Chin’s phone rang, and he dove for his jeans to retrieve it. “Aloha, Tutu! Lin Kelly,” he mouthed to Danny.
“Kono’s grandma?”
“She’s having the grandkids over for dinner,” Chin whispered.
“Go ahead, that’s great.”
“E hele mai ana au... If you want, I can pick up zhongzi on the way over. You like Da Huan’s best, right? ...Probably about an hour... He mea iki.”
“Heading out?”
“Yeah. Could I use your shower?”
“Go ahead. I’ve got a shirt that’ll fit you, if you want to change.”
“That’d be great. Mahalo.”
“No problem.”
Chin was out of the shower and in a blue t-shirt that only looked slightly odd on him within five minutes. “Want a cloth to wash up?” he asked Danny.
“No, I’ll shower soon. My knee’s a lot better.”
“As long as you’re ready to run around with Grace tomorrow.”
“I’ll be a hundred percent by then.”
“Glad to hear it. See you on Monday, then?”
“See you at work.” He watched Chin gather up his phone and t-shirt and check that his wallet was in his pocket, the whole little routine. Nothing noteworthy, but he liked it anyway. He cleared his throat when Chin was at the door. “So the Italian food here sucks, but there’s a little place off Dillingham near Liliha that’s supposed to be all right,” he said. “If you’re up for a taste of the mainland, we could check it out sometime.”
Chin gave Danny one of his grins, the ones that were no weaker for being relatively common. “I like that idea. Some night this week, maybe next weekend?”
“Yeah. Let’s work out the details when we see how the week’s shaping up.”
“Good plan. Take care of yourself until Monday, brah. And tell Grace hi for me and Kono.”
“Will do. Maybe I’ll take her to the zoo tomorrow.”
“Hands off the tamarins, though. Even the governor won’t let you off for kidnapping one.”
“I’ll do my best,” he promised. As heists went, it would be pretty impractical, but he thought, as he stripped the sheets to wash them, that maybe he’d buy a plush one for Grace.