Ma’ane’i No Ke Aloha - Continued
Present
Danny takes a seat at the bar and lets his defenses melt into the floor as swiftly and smoothly as the scotch sluices warmly down the back of his throat.
Relaxation. He seems to recall that it felt something kind of like this. It’s been awhile since he’s had it, so he might be mistaken.
He’ll never be glad that he doesn’t have Gracie for the weekend, but he has to admit that sleeping in ‘til well after noon tomorrow holds a distinct appeal. Peace and quiet and nothing to disturb him; it’s a rarity that he’s going to appreciate with every bone-tired, worn-down fiber of his being.
Danny had thought a slow few days at the office would be a blessing - Steve could recuperate, he could catch up on the endless amount of paperwork Steve’s shenanigans pile up on his desk - but it turns out that Mary, despite having the outward appearance of being more personable and humane than Steve, is a lot more like her brother than one first imagines. In that she drives him nuts.
He could sleep for years, Rip Van Winkle style. He doesn’t think he’ll even mind the uncomfortable spring right smack in the center of his fold out bed that jabs him in the back at all ungodly hours of the night.
“Damn, that’s good.” Danny murmurs to himself as he polishes off his tumbler and signals the bartender for a second.
“Make that one for me too,” a deep voice comes from behind him. Danny turns and finds David, Steve’s SEAL buddy, taking the seat next to him without waiting for an invitation.
“Well hello,” Danny greets him. He can only manage to get his hackles slightly raised. “You…are still in town. How ‘bout that.”
“Got a few more days here, have some things to wrap up. How are you doin’, Danny.”
“A couple of these and I’ll be doin’ fine.” Danny thanks the bartender and picks up his glass, fingers kissing the rim. “I have the day off tomorrow and I plan to sleep, eat, and then sleep some more.” He ticks off his list of activities on the fingers of his other hand.
“That sounds like a very nice day.”
“Huh. Do SEALs sleep? ‘Cause sometimes I think you must just plug in somewhere and recharge. You know, bleep-bleep-bloop, ching-chang, off you go.”
David looks at him and his lips quirk into a small smile of amusement. Danny has to wonder if they teach that expression at basic training or if it’s something they all pick up along the way.
“You’re a funny little man, Dan.”
“Steve told me that you were one of his instructors. He pick up the lovely attitude from you then?” Danny narrows his eyes at the older man, not that entertained. It’s one thing when Steve pokes fun, but this guy barely knows him.
Of course, Steve was taking pot shots the second they met, but now it seems like every single criticism or complaint he launches at Danny, there’s an undercurrent of real affection that cuts the venom completely. Nothing stings in the slightest; hurts less than any zingers his brother used to send his way. Sometimes Steve’s little jibes actually make him feel warm inside, happy even - not that Steve needs to know that.
There’s no affection coming from David. Just a kind of contemptuous amusement, like Danny’s a court jester sent in to please the king and his men.
“Let me ask you this,” Danny starts, feeling his muscles start to go rigid again the way they do when something’s got him worked up. “I thought the military was all about codes and regulations and honor, about taking orders and following instructions. So how is it that Steve, Mr. Fly-Off-the-Handle, Leap-Before-I-Look, Hey, Let-Me-Hang-This-Guy-Off-a-Rooftop McGarrett did not get his ass kicked out of your prestigious military organization, let alone be considered your best and brightest? Because I cannot believe that you all let his devil-may-care bullshit fly over there.”
David looks at him intently for a long moment, his eyes flicking over Danny’s face.
Danny waits. He may have just gone too far but he’s okay with that.
“The Steve McGarrett I know is more than capable of following orders. He knows the rules, Williams, and he can certainly play by them. The U.S. Naval Academy doesn’t accept anything less. Hundreds of candidates don’t even make it through the first year.”
“Yeah, okay - I don’t think we’re talking about the same Steve McGarrett here. Tall, tattoos, likes to stare at things like he can kill them with his eyes?”
“Fact is, Steve was always an exemplary candidate. He fell in line straight and steady and he stayed there as long as he was needed to. High academic marks, captain of the football team, unanimously recommended for entry into the SEALs. I don’t believe he was ever docked for insubordination of any kind before coming under my training, if I am remembering his file correctly.”
“Really.” Danny can’t quite imagine it, Steve shouting “Yes Sir!” and “No Sir!” and doing things one way when surely Steve had a better, far more aggressive and possibly illegal idea about how it should be done.
“Yes, really.” David replies, disbelieving of Danny’s disbelief. “But we don’t create followers. We create leaders. Steve is a leader. And to be a leader, you do have to know how to follow orders, but more importantly, you have to know how to give them. You have to be able to take other men’s lives in your hands and keep them safe. You have to know when rules need to be bent and broken and you need to be able to do what needs to be done. Being in the SEALs, you’ve got to think on your feet and be ready for anything.”
David looks Danny square in the eyes and if Danny wasn’t vaguely threatened by the intensity he found in David’s gaze, he’d swear the man was reading from a teleprompter for a recruitment video.
“McGarrett kept his men safe.” David is defiant, a bit angry that Danny dare impugn Steve’s good name by showing any doubt of his competency. “He got the job done. There’s not a man I know that wouldn’t be willing to serve under him again at a moment’s notice, and that’s saying something.”
Danny knows this already. Despite Steve’s constant setting to full power, fire on all cylinders, in a dire situation there’s no one he could imagine more capable of saving the day. It’s just that not every day, every case, every situation, needs that kind of desperate call to action. Not every day requires gung-ho full-on ninja attack mode.
Some days you want to question a suspect in a by-the-books fashion, solve the case and go home. Some days that’s really all that’s needed to do a good job.
And some days you want to lay in a hammock, eat malasadas and watch the sun go down. Instead of say, waking up at the ass crack of dawn to swim five miles before spending all one’s free time investigating the cold case one’s dead father left behind, like he’s sure Steve does.
“While I appreciate the ad campaign, I really do,” Danny puts his hands up in surrender, like David’s won this battle. But not the war. “You’ve only proven my point. Which is that you guys can not turn it off. Everything is life and death to you, whether it’s catching bad guys or going for a hamburger. This is Hawaii, this isn’t the ‘stan!” His voice is rising, lifting, and there goes his hope for relaxation. He’ll be winding down from this the rest of the night. Steve should really sign a contract with the pharmaceutical companies, they could make a fortune having Steve send people’s blood pressure through the roof and then selling meds to bring it back down.
“The ‘stan?”
“Afghanistan. That’s what you people call it, right? I mean, I lost my special SEAL decoder ring but I think I remember that one.”
David shakes his head at him and picks up his drink. He takes a short sip and then shakes his head again, laughing at some joke only he knows is funny.
“Tell me something, Detective Williams. Do you consider yourself to be good at your job?”
“As a matter of fact I do.”
“And do you consider Steve McGarrett to be good at his job?”
“Despite the amount of crazy I deal with on a regular basis, yes, I do.”
“Then what, precisely, is your issue?”
“My issue is that he’s constantly putting himself in danger for absolutely no good reason.”
“Ah.” David smiles a kind of smile that is all too self-satisfied for Danny’s liking. If he wasn’t sure that David could wipe the floor with him twice over, he might have been tempted to try and smack it off his face.
“’Ah.’ Ah, what? What does that mean?” Forget the odds. He’s punched Steve before; it might not be so bad to punch this guy. It’d probably even be better.
“I means that there are some emotions you take with you on the job, and some you leave at home where they belong. Best you figure out what baggage you’re carrying with you before it drags you and everyone else down.”
David polishes off his drink and stands up.
“You’re all such cryptic bastards. I thought you were all trained in communication but I’m thinking that’s a big lie.” Danny holds up his hands far apart to show exactly how big he thinks that lie is.
David pats the wooden bar top once and then backs away.
“Enjoy your day off, Williams.”
He leaves Danny sitting there alone, confused and riled. Not two things he likes to be.
It doesn’t hit him until David’s already out the door that the man didn’t even bother to pay.
“God damn Navy shitheads can’t pay for their own god damn drinks,” he mutters angrily under his breath. He slams the last of his second scotch fast enough that it burns and asks for another while he digs his cell phone out of his pocket.
“Yeah, Danny?” Steve greets him brusquely; voice husky and a little breathless like he just chain-smoked his way through a pack and drank a fifth of whiskey to follow it up. Which means he either fell asleep early, the rat bastard, or he just successfully kicked someone’s ass in a way usually only acceptable in a UFC ring. Given that it’s Friday night and as far as Danny knows, no danger has befallen the island, he guesses it’s the sleeping option. Though with Steve, you never know.
“Just wanted you to know that I despise you and you’ve made my life nothing but hell since the second you walked into it, that’s all. I’m hanging up now.”
“Danno, you talk so sweet.” Steve replies, voice dropping low and sensuous and it makes Danny want to punch a hole through the wall. Because he wants Steve to keep talking just like that, enough that he can’t follow through on his threat to hang up.
“Call Chin and Kono, meet me down here.” He doesn’t bother saying where here is, he knows Steve knows. Because Steve has probably picked up on all the background noises and deciphered exactly where he’s at, probably even where he’s standing in relation to the door. And if he hasn’t, he’s activating the GPS chip in his phone and tracking his position as they speak. “If I can’t relax, I’m getting hammered and I’m taking you down with me.”
“Way to make an offer I can totally refuse.” Steve chuckles deeply. Danny wants to throttle him. That might be the first thing he does when Steve gets here, forget the fact that Steve’s ribs aren’t healed yet and he still cringes whenever he stands up and thinks that no one notices. Danny lets him have that, doesn’t pierce the armor by pointing out that no, Steve is not actually a superhero.
But he stands close by in case Steve stops pretending and needs Danny there to catch him if he falls.
So maybe he doesn’t want to throttle Steve at all, and that only makes him want to throttle Steve more.
“You can refuse it, but you won’t. Because I’m telling you I need your ass down here. There’s a bottle of booze with our names on it. I actually have a Sharpie right here and I am writing as we speak.”
He can hear Steve’s hesitation buzz over the phone line and he sighs.
“What, you in your p.j.’s? Throw on some pants, get in the truck.” Danny hears the squeak of mattress springs and through his vague surprise that Steve actually was in bed already, he feels victorious. “There ya go, babe.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll be there in fifteen, let me get dressed.” There’s a huff over the line as Steve must be getting up from bed, and the jangle of a belt buckle.
The image of Steve standing half-naked in the center of Danny’s own living room, pulling on a pair of well-worn jeans in the dim half-light of morning, invades Danny’s imagination unbidden and Danny stammers out something unintelligible into the phone and fumbles it back into his pocket.
“I hate that guy.” Danny says to himself, well aware that it’s beginning to sound less like an insult these days and more like a self-help mantra.
“Then why’d you call him?” The bartender asks as he fills Danny’s glass a fourth time.
“Please don’t be one of those bartenders who offers their opinion, man. Don’t be that guy.” Danny pleads and the man backs off quickly.
At least that’s proof that there’s some people on this island who know what boundaries shouldn’t be broken.
Danny’s beginning to think he’s not one of them.
*******
September, 2010
Danny stares at the open case file in front of him, flipping one of the photos up at the corner to peek at the autopsy report underneath.
Not that there’d been much need for an autopsy. The damage of the gunshot blast told the story pretty plainly.
He looks at the portrait of the man in uniform that supposedly matches the mess of a face on the corpse of the picture underneath. It’s hard to believe that it’s the same guy.
McGarrett was one of the HPD’s own. For years and years - assumed to be a lifer until he’d grabbed retirement the split second the option was up. He’d heard some boys in the break room expressing their surprise McGarrett went out the way he did, murdered in his own living room. They’d all figured he’d drop dead on the job some day, not end up a victim of the kind of horrible crime he’d spent his whole life trying to stop.
Danny sighs and runs his hands through his hair, glances at the clock. He has to go pick up Grace for school, steal a precious few minutes with her that will have to last him until the weekend.
He flips the manila file folder closed and shoves a few loose papers back into it. Damn this case. He doesn’t know how he ended up with it. A guy with blood this blue, he’d have thought all the cops on the force would be vying to get their hands on the asshole who did this to Jack McGarrett.
Instead everyone looks at him like he drew the short straw.
Of course, it’s hard to tell the looks of pity from the ones of derision and suspicion. Screw this island and the people on it. And damn Rachel for dragging their daughter to this tropical hellhole, knowing he’d have no choice but to follow if he ever wanted to see Grace for more than a few days a year.
He’s in the process of looking for his car keys when one of the clerks unceremoniously drops a new report onto his desktop.
“Here’re the ballistic results you were looking for.” The clerk is off again without so much as a smile. People can say what they want about Jersey, but he’s never gotten a colder shoulder than he has here. Guys keep calling him a howlie or some Hawaiian shit like that, and he has no idea what they mean.
“Thank you ever so much, lovely to see you too!” Danny calls after the clerk with overdone politeness, his loudness earning him a couple of sideways looks from across the room. He doesn’t care. Let them look at the loudmouth from the mainland, cause this loudmouth’s gonna bust Victor Hesse while they’re all sitting around with their thumbs up their asses.
If he ever catches a break, that is.
He takes a peek at the report, expecting to find nothing helpful. That’s the kind of day he’s having, so he doesn’t bother to hope it will change.
Yet it does.
“Fred Doran, who might you be?” He enters the name into the police database and up comes a rap sheet that requires scrolling and scrolling and even more scrolling downward. The gun that killed McGarrett has certainly been used before on the island, and by this lowlife scum to do some serious damage. He looks at the photo. “Looks like we have a winner.”
This guy’s gotta be connected to Hesse somehow for his gun to wind up in Hesse’s hands.
His cell phone rings out with the theme from COPS and he answers the call with a smile.
“Meka, you sonofabitch, how’s narcotics treatin’ ya?”
“Miss you, bro. Life isn’t the same without my pale shadow followin’ me around.”
“Well hey man, you’re the one who left-“
“Got transferred, got transferred, brah. Weren’t no choice.”
“So you say. You probably just didn’t want to be stuck with the only white boy on the force.”
“You ain’t the only one.”
“Only one they keep calling a howlie or whatever. You ever gonna fill me in on that one?”
“Don’t listen to ‘em, dude. Haole’s just a word.”
“You are aware that’s not an answer, right?”
Meka only laughs in response.
“Look, hate to cut this short, but what’s up? I’m on my way out the door to get Grace.” Danny stands and starts collecting the things he needs to hit the road, finally finding his keys in his top desk drawer. He glances at the clock again, seconds ticking by.
“No worries, man. I understand. Just wanted to give you the heads up, McGarrett’s son is back in town for the funeral.”
“Oh, that’s today, isn’t it.” Danny runs a hand over his face. Days are blurring together now, punctuated by brief bursts of clarity that are his times with his daughter. “Well, shit. Guess I’ll have to bring him in while he’s here, see what other light he can shed on this whole mess.”
Meka laughs again and Danny is flabbergasted.
“You’re laughing - why are you laughing? Something I should know about?” He asks as he heads for the door, brushing past a few officers who seem pretty comfortable taking up the whole hallway as they drink their morning coffee.
“Just…be careful with Steve McGarrett, man.”
“You know the guy?” He walks outside the heat hits him like he’s walked into a wall. Some paradise - it’s an endless monotony of perfect days and perpetual headaches from squinting into the sunlight. He crosses the parking lot to the Camaro he’d bought with his half of the proceeds from selling his and Rachel’s house. The only good thing to come out of the whole shitty divorce, he feels like he’s driving an elaborate fuck you billboard up to Rachel’s front gate whenever he picks Grace up.
“Know of him.”
“You’re being infuriatingly vague, Meka man.” Danny unlocks his car and tosses all his paperwork across to the passenger’s side seat. The bright pink and white stuffed bunny is in the back seat, luckily inanimate and therefore unaffected by the suffocating hot box his car has become in the grand total of an hour he’s spent inside the station. He’s already sweating and he hates it. There’s not a deodorant in the world that can deal with Hawaii. “Doesn’t matter. I can handle McGarrett’s son, believe me.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Warn me? You’ve warned me of nothing but to be careful, which I always am, so this whole conversation seems like an exercise in futility.” Danny climbs into the Camaro and balances his phone between his shoulder and his ear as he slides the key into the ignition.
“From what I’ve heard, the dude’s basically Captain America - “
“He wears tights? Spandex tights?”
Meka lets out a frustrated sigh and Danny chuckles gleefully.
“You know, it’s hard to believe we’ve only been apart a week. It’s been so peaceful, it’s felt like months.”
“Ha ha. You miss this mouth, Hanamoa.” He backs out of his parking spot, thinking he should maybe hang up and drive already. But he likes messing with Meka, it reminds him of trading barbs with his brother back home. Meka’s the only person on this godforsaken island who feels like a real friend.
“I feel badly for whoever your next partner is, Danny. I really do.”
“You’re just worried I’m gonna love him more than you.”
“Maybe he’ll drive you up the wall instead. That’d be a nice change of pace.”
“I somehow doubt that’s gonna happen.” Danny turns out onto the main road and heads toward Rachel’s neighborhood, where the houses are bigger than his entire apartment complex. “So listen, I gotta go, but maybe we can meet up for a beer later?”
“Sure thing man. You can let me know how it goes with the Lieutenant Commander.”
“With who?”
“Steve McGarrett.” Meka waits a beat, and then clarifies some more like Danny needs it. He doesn’t. “Jack’s son.”
“Lieutenant Commander, eh? Impressive. Ten bucks says he’s a schmuck.”
“I’ll take that bet.”
“All right then. See ya tonight, you’re buyin’.”
“We’ll see, braddah.”
Danny ends the call and tosses his phone on top of his file folders. He’ll get to Rachel’s with some time to spare, maybe he can squeeze in a phone call about getting surveillance set up on Doran’s place. Then he can drop Grace at school and swing by the McGarrett place and go over the crime scene again. Maybe Doran was there, maybe there’s something he missed.
But somewhere between his stuffed rabbit being upstaged by the real Mr. Hoppy and finding the broken crime scene seal on the McGarrett back door, Danny realizes that despite the hit on Doran’s gun, he’d been right the first time. Today is not going to be easy.
*******
Present
“The only easy day was yesterday.”
Chin watches Steve lean in close to Danny to speak into his ear. The music’s not even that loud, but it doesn’t stop Steve’s lips from almost brushing Danny’s skin as he talks.
“That’s the SEAL’s motto.”
“What an optimistic lot you all are,” Danny retorts flatly, taking another drink of beer. He’s got his free hand in his pocket and his eyes focused out on the crowd, but his entire body is angled toward Steve in a way that speaks volumes, like Danny doesn’t even know how needlessly close they’re always standing to one another or how his body language is giving away everything between them.
“If that’s your excuse for only being on your second beer of the night, McGarrett, you’re going to need to find something better.”
“Just sayin’, you never know what’s around the corner.” Steve doesn’t really care; he’s needling Danny. Danny had asked them all out to let off steam and he and Kono had obliged. It’d been welcome.
Steve showed up. And that’s pretty much all that can be said on his account.
He’s still on the far side of sober, kicking back and watching them all stumble toward shit-faced.
“You gotta be ready, Danno.”
“What does it matter? You could probably shotgun a six-pack and still be okay to fight off a pack of ninjas.”
“Ninjas?”
“Loosen up, and take your pick of any of the hundreds of ladies who have mentally undressed you as we’ve been standing here.” He gestures out to the bar as if it’s filled with women clamoring to get closer.
In truth, most everyone has given Steve and Danny an unexpectedly wide berth. Despite Danny’s words it’s like he’s unconsciously sending out some protective barrier to keep admirers at bay. Hands off, he’s mine.
“How do you know they weren’t undressing you?” Steve counters, turning entirely to face Danny and resting his arm on the bar. Danny raises an eyebrow in disbelief.
“Me?” He scoffs, pointing to himself and then Steve. Chin’s not sure how he does it, but he manages not to spill his beer all over the floor as his hands gesticulate wildly back and forth between them. “I’m standing next to you. No woman is going to be picturing me naked when I am standing next to you. It’s that simple, my friend.”
“Oh, is that true?” Steve smirks good-naturedly like he thinks Danny’s full of shit but isn’t going to argue. The thing about Steve is, he never quite understands why other guys have a hard time with women, especially if the guy’s a friend. If Steve likes him, why wouldn’t everyone? Chin knows that right now, Steve truly and honestly believes that Danny could get any girl if he wanted to if he only tried.
“You’re the biggest cock block I’ve ever met,” Danny complains.
“I sincerely doubt that.” Steve lifts his beer bottle to his lips and takes a long drink. Danny watches him, hooded eyes trained on Steve’s throat as he swallows.
“They’re actually getting kind of ridiculous.” Chin states, startling Kono beside him. She’d thought she’d been quiet, coming to stand at his side, but he’s known she was there since the second she walked up. He tilts his head toward her, mouth quirking up in a small smile.
“Yeah, they are.” Kono sighs, and crosses her arms over her chest. Ice cubes clink in her empty glass. “It’s kind of sad to see that much going unsaid between two people.”
Chin knows that tone of voice. And he knows that look, that one that says subtext, cousin, subtext.
“Kono,” he begins warningly, but it’s too late for that. He could ignore her, but it would only delay the conversation, not stop it.
“Chin, come on. It’s me.” She sets a hand on his shoulder, giving it a small squeeze. “And you’ve been staring at him all night.”
Chin’s first instinct is to deny it but the words fail him. His eyes flick toward Steve and Danny guiltily - their shoulders are touching, arms brushing, Steve’s smiling - and it’s not in him to keep up the façade. His whole body slumps and Kono reaches down, takes his hand.
She doesn’t let go until they are outside.
He takes a seat beside her on the stone wall that separates the bar from the beach and draws in a deep breath. The air is cool and salty and feels good on his skin after the cramped heat from the bar. The water and the sky stretch out forever and both are so dark it’s hard to tell where one begins and the other ends.
“So.” Kono starts, pushing her hair behind her ear. The light from the neon signs in the bar windows are enough for him to clearly see the earnestness in her gaze. “This thing with Steve, whatever it is…how long has it been going on?”
“It’s not going on.”
“Well, when did it end then?”
“Kono…” Chin swings his legs over the side of the wall and faces the ocean, wishing he didn’t have to do this. He wants to jump down to the sand and keep walking until he hits water. “Steve and I…to talk about the end, I mean…we barely even started. We were kids. We were stupid. He didn’t know any better and I…well I should have.”
“What does that even mean?” Chin frowns, tensing as she reaches out to touch him, and Kono eases back. “I’m only trying to understand.”
“It means that Jack McGarrett was there for me in every way he should have been there for Steve. I looked up to the man like a father, Kono. And I saw how things were, with him and Steve, and I wanted to make them better.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad, Chin.”
“Sometimes I think my feelings, and my intentions, and my admiration for Jack became jumbled. Confused. I worked my way into Steve’s life because I was curious. And…that curiosity turned into interest, and that interest turned into infatuation.”
“It’s hardly a punishable offense,” Kono excuses him easily. She doesn’t really get it. “I don’t see why you’re beating yourself up over it all these years later.”
“Because he was 18 years old!” Chin exclaims. “He was my boss’ kid. He’d lost his mom and his dad couldn’t deal with it. All Steve wanted was some piece of his father’s life and I took advantage of that.”
“You. Took advantage of Steve.” Kono shakes her head like the notion is an impossibility. She only sees Steve as he is now, her tough, sexy boss who takes no prisoners and shows no fear. She doesn’t know what it’s like to see him vulnerable. She idolizes him as more than a man, the way that only rookies can.
“I was five years his senior. A police officer. No matter what I felt, it was my responsibility not to act on it.”
“But you did.”
“And I did.” Saying it out loud is somewhat of a relief. He’d never admitted the sin to anyone; he’s been carrying it around all these years, the memory of those few months that had been both perfect and awful at the same time. “We would hang out…like buddies. Like friends. Friends who were sometimes…” He coughs uncomfortably. “More than friends.”
Chin sucks in a deep breath and waits for Kono to press for details. She thankfully remains silent.
“It kept on going like that until he left for summer at the Naval Academy. He went off to his life, and I went back to mine. We never talked about it, or decided to go our own ways. It just happened. And that’s the way it should have been.”
“Did Jack know?” Kono asks quietly, edging closer to him. Chin faces her again, meeting her questioning gaze.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so, but sometimes I wonder. I wonder why, when he had this entire investigation into the police department and his wife’s death going on, he never breathed a word to me about it.”
“He didn’t trust anyone with that, Chin.”
“I’d like to think he could’ve trusted me. But maybe he didn’t. Maybe he knew I’d been with Steve behind his back. Or maybe he started to believe what they were saying about me down at the precinct. All I know for sure is that when he retired and set to work full time on this thing, he didn’t want me to know about it.”
“He stuck with you even when IA was breathing down your neck, Chin. The thing with the investigation, it might not have been personal.”
“But it may have been.”
Kono lets him hang on to his doubt. There’s no way for her to prove the truth one way or another. She tucks her legs underneath her and sits Indian-style on the wall, letting the ocean breeze blow her long hair out of her face.
She’s quiet for a moment and Chin has just enough time to wonder what she’s thinking - if she’s judging him, if her image of him has finally been tarnished after all this time - when she purses her lips and heaves another sigh.
“I remember Steve being at your apartment. I mean, I didn’t know it was Steve at the time, obviously, but it was, wasn’t it? That time I almost walked in on you?”
Chin rubs his sweaty palm over the knee of his jeans.
“If I remember it, then you have to. You know what I’m talking about.”
“I do,” he admits reluctantly.
“And you weren’t some rookie then, Chin. That was later, a lot later. So this thing with Steve didn’t just end, did it? It kept going.”
“No, it didn’t keep going.” Chin lets his fingers trace the edges of the rough stone underneath where they sit. The surface is uneven and jagged. He shifts position, the rock digging into his thighs. He draws his legs in close and folds his arms over his knees. “He was gone for a long time…I hadn’t seen him in…five years? Then his grandmother died and he was given leave to come home. I saw him there, at the funeral. I gave him my condolences but apart from that we didn’t even speak.”
Chin pauses, his mind going back to that night.
“But later he showed up at my place. That was…” Chin’s not sure he wants to be this honest, but since he’s already come this far he may as well leave it all out there on the table. “That was the first, last, and only time Steve and I ever slept together. He left the next day.”
“That was it?”
“Didn’t see him again until I ran into him at the Missouri five months ago.”
“And you’ve never talked about it? Not once?” Kono’s eyes are wide and she nearly laughs at the ludicrousness of it all.
“Why would we? There’s no need.”
“No need? You and Steve sleep together and you don’t see a need to talk about it?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, what?”
Kono and Chin both twist around at the sound of Danny’s stunned voice. He’s standing with his hand still on the door, having stepped outside just in time to hear Kono’s last sentence.
Kono’s mouth opens and closes a few times like a floundering fish but she’s unable to find her voice. Chin closes his eyes and makes a silent wish that there’s some way around this one.
But Steve comes out after Danny only a second later, clapping a hand on Danny’s shoulder and nodding his head toward his truck.
“C’mon, I’ll give your drunk ass a ride home.” Chin feels a brief moment of pity for Steve and his obliviousness; he has no idea what he just walked into.
“Hold up hold up hold up.” Danny raises both his hands and Steve stops, that quizzical impatient look on his face that he gets when he point blank does not understand what the hell Danny is on about. “You…and Chin?”
“Me and Chin what.” Steve asks, hands out and begging clarification. Danny sputters for a moment, nothing but garbled nonsense managing to make its way from his mouth. Steve looks past Danny to where he and Kono sit, waiting for an explanation of any kind.
“You and Chin slept together? What the ever-living fuck, Steve? When did this happen?” It all spews out of Danny’s mouth like the explosion of a volcano.
“What is he talking about?” One hand on his hip and one gesturing to Danny, Steve brow furrows like he can’t imagine how Danny ever latched on to this obscure piece of information.
“He’s a little drunk, I think he misheard-“ Kono attempts heroically. Chin shakes his head at her, telling her not even to try. It’s a lost cause.
“I’m not so drunk that I’ve lost my understanding of the English language, Kono, so unless there’s some strange definition of ‘slept together’ that I don’t know about…” He’s waving his hands about now, letting them fly around everywhere as he struggles to get his point across.
“It’s not what you think,” Chin starts and even from where he sits, he can see every muscle in Steve’s body tense. Steve rests both hands on his hips and sets his jaw, locking his gaze on Danny.
“It’s not what I think?” Danny snaps.
“It’s really none of your business, Danny.” Steve says and Chin cringes. If there is a correct way to handle this situation, telling Danny that is the exact opposite.
“It’s none of my…It’s none of my business. It’s none of my business? Is that right? It’s none of my business! Okay. Well, good to know. I’ll file that away for future use. Go fuck yourself, McGarrett.”
Danny storms off toward the parking lot, muttering under his breath and feet pounding gravel like he’s trying to smash the tiny pieces of rock into the dirt.
“Uh, we need to stop him. He can’t drive like that.” Kono speaks up when Danny’s halfway to his car and Steve huffs, digging something out of his pocket.
“I have his keys.” He looks at Chin, confident that Danny won’t get far. “What happened out here? Danny was out of my sight for less than a minute.”
“It’s a long story.” Chin mumbles.
“I’ll bet.” Steve rubs his temple and glances over to where Danny is at his car, tugging at the door handle and then kicking his front tire in frustration when he realizes he’s locked out. “Fuck.”
“It’s been a long time coming,” Kono says, and Chin figures she means him and Steve, but it could just as easily apply to Danny and Steve. “You guys need to talk about this. It’s not going away just because-“
“Kono.” Steve barks out her name the same time he does. She bites her tongue but not happily.
“I gotta go deal with this.” Steve gestures toward Danny and then turns and points to Chin. “You and I…we’re gonna sit down later and you’re going to tell me how the hell this even happened.”
Chin swallows the surge of bitter resentment that swells in his throat. He grits his teeth and glares at Steve.
“Fine.” He spits out. Steve’s face changes then: anger fading and a flash of vulnerability slackening his expression. He’s panicked, maybe betrayed. Chin’s broken their unspoken agreement to never bring it up and now they have to face what they’ve buried for ten years.
Steve hesitates before going after Danny. His eyes, those beautiful eyes that got Chin into this trouble in the first place, meet Chin’s with a silent question.
“Just…go talk to him. This can wait.” Chin tells him, trying not to be hurt by how quickly Steve takes him at his word, or by the relief he sees in that first step toward Danny.
*******
June, 1999
It’s late, 3am, which is why the fanning of headlights across his living room wall as a car pulls into the drive wakes Chin from the half-asleep state of staring absently at a late night infomercial.
The engine cuts off and a door slams. Footsteps on the walk, a sharp rap on the door. There’s just one knock, like whoever it is knows he’s awake and can patiently wait for him to come to the door.
Chin turns off the television but he doesn’t bother to switch on a lamp. The front porch light is on and is casting enough faint glow through the curtains that he can see where he’s going pretty clearly. The empty beer bottles at his feet clink together as he stands up.
He already knows, deep in his gut, who it’s going to be. In truth, he’s been hoping for this all along.
He’d seen him earlier today, standing stoic with jaw clenched beside his grandmother’s grave, mourning the woman who cared for him for two years while his father focused on his own grief. Two inches taller, twenty pounds heavier with pure muscle, Steve McGarrett had looked like a stranger in his uniform. He’d looked like a man; a man Chin didn’t recognize except in the way he’d kept blinking those long eyelashes of his, refusing to cry.
They shook hands like they’d never met - never touched, never kissed, never anything - and Chin left. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath since then. He hadn’t even bothered to go through the motions of his usual arrival home; the day was already too different for routine. He’d merely pulled a six-pack from the fridge, sat down on the couch, drank his way through it, and he hadn’t moved since. Until now.
He opens the door. Steve is still in his full service dress blues, rigid and tense and on the verge of breaking like so much glass.
Chin reaches forward and pushes open the screen door.
He backs up to let Steve in, but barely. Steve’s warm and he smells the same, somehow, even after all these years and everything that’s changed. Chin thought he’d smell of cherry blossoms and black-eyed susans; but the scent of ilima and plumeria and ocean air clings to his skin. They’re standing close when Chin shoves the door closed behind them. The latch catching is loud in the quiet of the room, like the cocking of a rifle before a shot.
Steve puts his hands on Chin’s shoulders and turns him easily. Backs him against the unforgiving wood of the door.
They stare at one another for a long moment and Chin wonders what Steve is waiting for.
Then Steve’s lips are on his and it’s different than he remembers. There’s no playful give and take - only dominance. Steve holds him in place with the weight of his body, Steve’s hands on either side of his face, and Steve’s tongue invading his mouth like he’s trying to say five years worth of something with one kiss.
Chin tries to push back to see if Steve will let him. He does, quite easily, and Chin is satisfied. He knocks the white service cap from Steve’s head and it lands on the floor with a thud. It gets kicked somewhere as his hands run over Steve’s close cropped hair. Chin finds it surprisingly soft under his fingertips. But it’s barely there, not even the short strands he remembers running his fingers through five years before, holding and tugging and pulling as Steve eagerly sucked him to completion in this very same room.
It all comes back to Chin in a sudden rush - mornings spent surfing, afternoons spent tossing around the football on the beach, evenings watching the sun go down over the flicker of a bonfire, nights when Steve would kiss him good-night and end up staying another hour. After Steve left for school, Chin had kept finding things he’d left behind - flip-flops, t-shirts, video games, surf wax - and he’d hung onto them for months before finally throwing them out.
It’d been a brief, bright period where Steve was the sunniest thing in his life. Everything then had been about exploration, and he’d mapped out Steve’s body like he’d learned the back roads of Hawaii - by instinct, and by repetition. He’d discovered where Steve was soft and where he was sharp, followed each line and each dip and each shadowed valley. He came to know what made Steve smile playfully, what made his eyes roll back into his head with pleasure, what made his face turn dark with lust.
Tonight they’re going to go into unexplored territory, farther than they’ve gone before. They’d never conquered each other completely and Chin knows that by tomorrow, that will no longer be true. He could fight it, but instead he gives into it and lets Steve take him over.
He doesn’t need to think, he just moves. It’s not the same - Steve’s hard and forceful and angrily desperate - but it’s close enough.
Steve’s the same age now as Chin was when this all began, and somehow it seems strangely fitting that it’s come back around to this.
Steve is unbuttoning his shirt, bottom to top, hands stopping at his shirt collar and holding firm. Their kiss only skips a beat when Steve breaks to strip the fabric from Chin’s shoulders and down his arms. He tosses it as soon as Chin pulls free and it knocks the lampshade askew before finishing its journey to the floor.
They fumble their way to the bedroom and once there, Chin lets Steve do whatever he wants. It’s never been his call where Steve’s concerned; if it had been, this never would’ve started. He’d have been able to walk away before nothing became a kiss, before a kiss became more.
At eighteen, Steve had seemed confident, in the way the star quarterback and bright shining star of the high school should be, but he’d let the confidence slip sometimes. He’d given voice to his fears, told things to Chin that even now Chin suspects he’s never told anyone else. But he’d never felt unsure; there’d never been any doubt or worry in between them, as if Steve knew Chin was a safe harbor for him to drop anchor.
Now, Steve has a confidence that probably comes from having perfection drilled into his bones, from living a life where failure is not an option. But his confidence is cold. It’s inhuman. It feels as much a mask as Steve’s winning high school smile did.
Yet in his kiss there’s something dangerous and sincere. Steve is still sharing his fear, but this time it’s with his body and not his words. Chin welcomes it, not caring how Steve speaks because it means he’s not silent.
Steve’s a vast expanse of firm muscle, ripped and hard all over, and he feels so good against him as they move together. Chin lets his hands discover the tight curve of Steve’s ass, the taut line of his abs, the flex of his biceps. The swirls of black and green he finds inked where Steve’s skin used to be bare are surprising, and he traces the tattoos with his tongue like that will somehow give him the answer to why they’re there.
Steve groans against him as he does so, cock riding his hip. Their naked bodies fit together almost as well as he always thought they would. It’s near enough to perfect that it throws each remaining flaw into stark relief; they’re a puzzle with one piece missing, forever lost, never complete. Chin shoves the thought aside and concentrates on the way his hands feel against the cut lines of Steve’s hips. He could get lost in Steve’s intense beauty. It’s powerful enough to make him forget everything else he’s feeling.
When Steve turns him over and finally pushes into him from behind, it may be a bit too rough, too hard, but it doesn’t matter. The pain is real, this is actually happening, and the accidental bruises Steve is leaving on his hips will remind him of that long after every other sensation has faded.
It’s over as suddenly as it began, Steve coming with a cry that seems ripped right out of his chest. Chin follows him over, unable to stop himself as he feels Steve release deep and warm inside of him. He whispers Steve’s name and a few things in Bird that he hopes Steve has forgotten the meaning of during his time away.
Steve’s wet and sticky hands, dripping with Chin’s own release, cling to him, not letting him go. He pants hotly against Chin’s neck and his heartbeat thuds recklessly hard against Chin’s back. Chin breathes in the scent of sweat and come and Steve and can only try and pull the man closer.
They must fall asleep in a tangled heap because that’s precisely how he wakes up, with Steve encircling him and Kono’s voice loud and cheery from somewhere inside the house.
He doesn’t know how he manages to climb out of bed, find a pair of underwear and get to the door without waking Steve, but he’s still snoring softly, face buried in the pillow, when Chin returns.
He leans against the closed bedroom door and looks at Steve’s naked form, the long line of him stretching across white sheets. He’s gorgeous and perfect and Chin wants to crawl back into bed and make love in the way they hadn’t last night. He wants to look into Steve’s eyes as he makes him come.
Like he can tell he’s being watched even through the veil of sleep, Steve stirs. He shifts, long lashes fluttering as his eyes slowly open.
“Hey,” Chin says softly. He moves back to the bed and sits down, reaching out to touch Steve’s side. Steve lets Chin’s hand linger on his stomach for a long enough moment that Chin starts to relax, but then Steve pulls away.
He rolls over to the opposite side of the bed and sits up, reaching for his boxer briefs and pulling them on.
“I need to go.” Steve’s voice is thick with sleep. It’s the first thing he’s said since arriving last night and Chin wishes he’d remained silent. Chin nods instead of replying, trying to hide his disappointment by focusing on a random point in the pattern of his rumpled bedspread.
Steve stands up, sending the mattress shifting under Chin’s weight.
When Chin has the nerve to look at him, Steve already has his pants on. Chin watches silently as he zips up and does his belt with thoughtless efficiency.
“My dad’s expecting me.”
“Yeah.” Chin says and he hears how broken it sounds. He clears his throat. “I understand.”
“I don’t know when I’ll be back in Hawaii again.” It sounds kind of like an apology, kind of like an excuse. Chin forces a weak smile.
“I understand, Steve. It’s okay.”
Steve looks at him, his expression unreadable, and then he licks his lips and nods.
“Yeah. Okay.” He throws on his undershirt and gathers the rest of his clothes in his hands, then lets himself out of Chin’s bedroom. Chin doesn’t know if he’s supposed to follow, but he does.
Steve’s sitting on the arm of the couch and pulling his shoes on. Chin stoops to pick up his white hat from where it lays by the door.
“Don’t forget this.”
“Thanks.”
“So. I’ll see you.” He’s letting himself out. Chin is meeting him at the door. He doesn’t know what he’s hoping for. It’s not a kiss goodbye; he’s not that delusional. He just wants anything besides this detached and awkward farewell.
“Sure. See you.”
When the door closes, Chin turns away and deliberately avoids watching Steve go. So it’s all the more surprising when there’s a knock on the door only a minute later.
He opens it and tries to keep hope from choking up in his throat.
“The car won’t start.” Steve says quickly, pointing to his father’s Marquis that sits in the driveway, and Chin swallows, nods. “It’s probably the carburetor, it does that.”
“I’ll call city impound and get a tow back to your place. I know a guy.”
Steve smiles faintly, a flicker of warmth in his eyes.
“You always know a guy.”
“Suppose I do. You need a ride home?”
“Naw, I’ll just…it’s a good morning to walk I think.”
“Okay,” Chin imagines Steve walking home half-clothed in his rumpled dress blues, stinking of sex, but he figures Honolulu has seen stranger things where military men are concerned.
“Okay.” Steve nods once in return and steps down one stair at a time until he reaches the walk, still looking at Chin as he does so. “Bye, Chin.”
“Bye, Steve.” Chin replies. Out here, faced with Steve’s impending retreat, it’s impossible not to watch him leave. He looks until Steve’s long gone, and then stares at his empty yard for a while longer.
CONTINUED...
Danny takes a seat at the bar and lets his defenses melt into the floor as swiftly and smoothly as the scotch sluices warmly down the back of his throat.
Relaxation. He seems to recall that it felt something kind of like this. It’s been awhile since he’s had it, so he might be mistaken.
He’ll never be glad that he doesn’t have Gracie for the weekend, but he has to admit that sleeping in ‘til well after noon tomorrow holds a distinct appeal. Peace and quiet and nothing to disturb him; it’s a rarity that he’s going to appreciate with every bone-tired, worn-down fiber of his being.
Danny had thought a slow few days at the office would be a blessing - Steve could recuperate, he could catch up on the endless amount of paperwork Steve’s shenanigans pile up on his desk - but it turns out that Mary, despite having the outward appearance of being more personable and humane than Steve, is a lot more like her brother than one first imagines. In that she drives him nuts.
He could sleep for years, Rip Van Winkle style. He doesn’t think he’ll even mind the uncomfortable spring right smack in the center of his fold out bed that jabs him in the back at all ungodly hours of the night.
“Damn, that’s good.” Danny murmurs to himself as he polishes off his tumbler and signals the bartender for a second.
“Make that one for me too,” a deep voice comes from behind him. Danny turns and finds David, Steve’s SEAL buddy, taking the seat next to him without waiting for an invitation.
“Well hello,” Danny greets him. He can only manage to get his hackles slightly raised. “You…are still in town. How ‘bout that.”
“Got a few more days here, have some things to wrap up. How are you doin’, Danny.”
“A couple of these and I’ll be doin’ fine.” Danny thanks the bartender and picks up his glass, fingers kissing the rim. “I have the day off tomorrow and I plan to sleep, eat, and then sleep some more.” He ticks off his list of activities on the fingers of his other hand.
“That sounds like a very nice day.”
“Huh. Do SEALs sleep? ‘Cause sometimes I think you must just plug in somewhere and recharge. You know, bleep-bleep-bloop, ching-chang, off you go.”
David looks at him and his lips quirk into a small smile of amusement. Danny has to wonder if they teach that expression at basic training or if it’s something they all pick up along the way.
“You’re a funny little man, Dan.”
“Steve told me that you were one of his instructors. He pick up the lovely attitude from you then?” Danny narrows his eyes at the older man, not that entertained. It’s one thing when Steve pokes fun, but this guy barely knows him.
Of course, Steve was taking pot shots the second they met, but now it seems like every single criticism or complaint he launches at Danny, there’s an undercurrent of real affection that cuts the venom completely. Nothing stings in the slightest; hurts less than any zingers his brother used to send his way. Sometimes Steve’s little jibes actually make him feel warm inside, happy even - not that Steve needs to know that.
There’s no affection coming from David. Just a kind of contemptuous amusement, like Danny’s a court jester sent in to please the king and his men.
“Let me ask you this,” Danny starts, feeling his muscles start to go rigid again the way they do when something’s got him worked up. “I thought the military was all about codes and regulations and honor, about taking orders and following instructions. So how is it that Steve, Mr. Fly-Off-the-Handle, Leap-Before-I-Look, Hey, Let-Me-Hang-This-Guy-Off-a-Rooftop McGarrett did not get his ass kicked out of your prestigious military organization, let alone be considered your best and brightest? Because I cannot believe that you all let his devil-may-care bullshit fly over there.”
David looks at him intently for a long moment, his eyes flicking over Danny’s face.
Danny waits. He may have just gone too far but he’s okay with that.
“The Steve McGarrett I know is more than capable of following orders. He knows the rules, Williams, and he can certainly play by them. The U.S. Naval Academy doesn’t accept anything less. Hundreds of candidates don’t even make it through the first year.”
“Yeah, okay - I don’t think we’re talking about the same Steve McGarrett here. Tall, tattoos, likes to stare at things like he can kill them with his eyes?”
“Fact is, Steve was always an exemplary candidate. He fell in line straight and steady and he stayed there as long as he was needed to. High academic marks, captain of the football team, unanimously recommended for entry into the SEALs. I don’t believe he was ever docked for insubordination of any kind before coming under my training, if I am remembering his file correctly.”
“Really.” Danny can’t quite imagine it, Steve shouting “Yes Sir!” and “No Sir!” and doing things one way when surely Steve had a better, far more aggressive and possibly illegal idea about how it should be done.
“Yes, really.” David replies, disbelieving of Danny’s disbelief. “But we don’t create followers. We create leaders. Steve is a leader. And to be a leader, you do have to know how to follow orders, but more importantly, you have to know how to give them. You have to be able to take other men’s lives in your hands and keep them safe. You have to know when rules need to be bent and broken and you need to be able to do what needs to be done. Being in the SEALs, you’ve got to think on your feet and be ready for anything.”
David looks Danny square in the eyes and if Danny wasn’t vaguely threatened by the intensity he found in David’s gaze, he’d swear the man was reading from a teleprompter for a recruitment video.
“McGarrett kept his men safe.” David is defiant, a bit angry that Danny dare impugn Steve’s good name by showing any doubt of his competency. “He got the job done. There’s not a man I know that wouldn’t be willing to serve under him again at a moment’s notice, and that’s saying something.”
Danny knows this already. Despite Steve’s constant setting to full power, fire on all cylinders, in a dire situation there’s no one he could imagine more capable of saving the day. It’s just that not every day, every case, every situation, needs that kind of desperate call to action. Not every day requires gung-ho full-on ninja attack mode.
Some days you want to question a suspect in a by-the-books fashion, solve the case and go home. Some days that’s really all that’s needed to do a good job.
And some days you want to lay in a hammock, eat malasadas and watch the sun go down. Instead of say, waking up at the ass crack of dawn to swim five miles before spending all one’s free time investigating the cold case one’s dead father left behind, like he’s sure Steve does.
“While I appreciate the ad campaign, I really do,” Danny puts his hands up in surrender, like David’s won this battle. But not the war. “You’ve only proven my point. Which is that you guys can not turn it off. Everything is life and death to you, whether it’s catching bad guys or going for a hamburger. This is Hawaii, this isn’t the ‘stan!” His voice is rising, lifting, and there goes his hope for relaxation. He’ll be winding down from this the rest of the night. Steve should really sign a contract with the pharmaceutical companies, they could make a fortune having Steve send people’s blood pressure through the roof and then selling meds to bring it back down.
“The ‘stan?”
“Afghanistan. That’s what you people call it, right? I mean, I lost my special SEAL decoder ring but I think I remember that one.”
David shakes his head at him and picks up his drink. He takes a short sip and then shakes his head again, laughing at some joke only he knows is funny.
“Tell me something, Detective Williams. Do you consider yourself to be good at your job?”
“As a matter of fact I do.”
“And do you consider Steve McGarrett to be good at his job?”
“Despite the amount of crazy I deal with on a regular basis, yes, I do.”
“Then what, precisely, is your issue?”
“My issue is that he’s constantly putting himself in danger for absolutely no good reason.”
“Ah.” David smiles a kind of smile that is all too self-satisfied for Danny’s liking. If he wasn’t sure that David could wipe the floor with him twice over, he might have been tempted to try and smack it off his face.
“’Ah.’ Ah, what? What does that mean?” Forget the odds. He’s punched Steve before; it might not be so bad to punch this guy. It’d probably even be better.
“I means that there are some emotions you take with you on the job, and some you leave at home where they belong. Best you figure out what baggage you’re carrying with you before it drags you and everyone else down.”
David polishes off his drink and stands up.
“You’re all such cryptic bastards. I thought you were all trained in communication but I’m thinking that’s a big lie.” Danny holds up his hands far apart to show exactly how big he thinks that lie is.
David pats the wooden bar top once and then backs away.
“Enjoy your day off, Williams.”
He leaves Danny sitting there alone, confused and riled. Not two things he likes to be.
It doesn’t hit him until David’s already out the door that the man didn’t even bother to pay.
“God damn Navy shitheads can’t pay for their own god damn drinks,” he mutters angrily under his breath. He slams the last of his second scotch fast enough that it burns and asks for another while he digs his cell phone out of his pocket.
“Yeah, Danny?” Steve greets him brusquely; voice husky and a little breathless like he just chain-smoked his way through a pack and drank a fifth of whiskey to follow it up. Which means he either fell asleep early, the rat bastard, or he just successfully kicked someone’s ass in a way usually only acceptable in a UFC ring. Given that it’s Friday night and as far as Danny knows, no danger has befallen the island, he guesses it’s the sleeping option. Though with Steve, you never know.
“Just wanted you to know that I despise you and you’ve made my life nothing but hell since the second you walked into it, that’s all. I’m hanging up now.”
“Danno, you talk so sweet.” Steve replies, voice dropping low and sensuous and it makes Danny want to punch a hole through the wall. Because he wants Steve to keep talking just like that, enough that he can’t follow through on his threat to hang up.
“Call Chin and Kono, meet me down here.” He doesn’t bother saying where here is, he knows Steve knows. Because Steve has probably picked up on all the background noises and deciphered exactly where he’s at, probably even where he’s standing in relation to the door. And if he hasn’t, he’s activating the GPS chip in his phone and tracking his position as they speak. “If I can’t relax, I’m getting hammered and I’m taking you down with me.”
“Way to make an offer I can totally refuse.” Steve chuckles deeply. Danny wants to throttle him. That might be the first thing he does when Steve gets here, forget the fact that Steve’s ribs aren’t healed yet and he still cringes whenever he stands up and thinks that no one notices. Danny lets him have that, doesn’t pierce the armor by pointing out that no, Steve is not actually a superhero.
But he stands close by in case Steve stops pretending and needs Danny there to catch him if he falls.
So maybe he doesn’t want to throttle Steve at all, and that only makes him want to throttle Steve more.
“You can refuse it, but you won’t. Because I’m telling you I need your ass down here. There’s a bottle of booze with our names on it. I actually have a Sharpie right here and I am writing as we speak.”
He can hear Steve’s hesitation buzz over the phone line and he sighs.
“What, you in your p.j.’s? Throw on some pants, get in the truck.” Danny hears the squeak of mattress springs and through his vague surprise that Steve actually was in bed already, he feels victorious. “There ya go, babe.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll be there in fifteen, let me get dressed.” There’s a huff over the line as Steve must be getting up from bed, and the jangle of a belt buckle.
The image of Steve standing half-naked in the center of Danny’s own living room, pulling on a pair of well-worn jeans in the dim half-light of morning, invades Danny’s imagination unbidden and Danny stammers out something unintelligible into the phone and fumbles it back into his pocket.
“I hate that guy.” Danny says to himself, well aware that it’s beginning to sound less like an insult these days and more like a self-help mantra.
“Then why’d you call him?” The bartender asks as he fills Danny’s glass a fourth time.
“Please don’t be one of those bartenders who offers their opinion, man. Don’t be that guy.” Danny pleads and the man backs off quickly.
At least that’s proof that there’s some people on this island who know what boundaries shouldn’t be broken.
Danny’s beginning to think he’s not one of them.
*******
September, 2010
Danny stares at the open case file in front of him, flipping one of the photos up at the corner to peek at the autopsy report underneath.
Not that there’d been much need for an autopsy. The damage of the gunshot blast told the story pretty plainly.
He looks at the portrait of the man in uniform that supposedly matches the mess of a face on the corpse of the picture underneath. It’s hard to believe that it’s the same guy.
McGarrett was one of the HPD’s own. For years and years - assumed to be a lifer until he’d grabbed retirement the split second the option was up. He’d heard some boys in the break room expressing their surprise McGarrett went out the way he did, murdered in his own living room. They’d all figured he’d drop dead on the job some day, not end up a victim of the kind of horrible crime he’d spent his whole life trying to stop.
Danny sighs and runs his hands through his hair, glances at the clock. He has to go pick up Grace for school, steal a precious few minutes with her that will have to last him until the weekend.
He flips the manila file folder closed and shoves a few loose papers back into it. Damn this case. He doesn’t know how he ended up with it. A guy with blood this blue, he’d have thought all the cops on the force would be vying to get their hands on the asshole who did this to Jack McGarrett.
Instead everyone looks at him like he drew the short straw.
Of course, it’s hard to tell the looks of pity from the ones of derision and suspicion. Screw this island and the people on it. And damn Rachel for dragging their daughter to this tropical hellhole, knowing he’d have no choice but to follow if he ever wanted to see Grace for more than a few days a year.
He’s in the process of looking for his car keys when one of the clerks unceremoniously drops a new report onto his desktop.
“Here’re the ballistic results you were looking for.” The clerk is off again without so much as a smile. People can say what they want about Jersey, but he’s never gotten a colder shoulder than he has here. Guys keep calling him a howlie or some Hawaiian shit like that, and he has no idea what they mean.
“Thank you ever so much, lovely to see you too!” Danny calls after the clerk with overdone politeness, his loudness earning him a couple of sideways looks from across the room. He doesn’t care. Let them look at the loudmouth from the mainland, cause this loudmouth’s gonna bust Victor Hesse while they’re all sitting around with their thumbs up their asses.
If he ever catches a break, that is.
He takes a peek at the report, expecting to find nothing helpful. That’s the kind of day he’s having, so he doesn’t bother to hope it will change.
Yet it does.
“Fred Doran, who might you be?” He enters the name into the police database and up comes a rap sheet that requires scrolling and scrolling and even more scrolling downward. The gun that killed McGarrett has certainly been used before on the island, and by this lowlife scum to do some serious damage. He looks at the photo. “Looks like we have a winner.”
This guy’s gotta be connected to Hesse somehow for his gun to wind up in Hesse’s hands.
His cell phone rings out with the theme from COPS and he answers the call with a smile.
“Meka, you sonofabitch, how’s narcotics treatin’ ya?”
“Miss you, bro. Life isn’t the same without my pale shadow followin’ me around.”
“Well hey man, you’re the one who left-“
“Got transferred, got transferred, brah. Weren’t no choice.”
“So you say. You probably just didn’t want to be stuck with the only white boy on the force.”
“You ain’t the only one.”
“Only one they keep calling a howlie or whatever. You ever gonna fill me in on that one?”
“Don’t listen to ‘em, dude. Haole’s just a word.”
“You are aware that’s not an answer, right?”
Meka only laughs in response.
“Look, hate to cut this short, but what’s up? I’m on my way out the door to get Grace.” Danny stands and starts collecting the things he needs to hit the road, finally finding his keys in his top desk drawer. He glances at the clock again, seconds ticking by.
“No worries, man. I understand. Just wanted to give you the heads up, McGarrett’s son is back in town for the funeral.”
“Oh, that’s today, isn’t it.” Danny runs a hand over his face. Days are blurring together now, punctuated by brief bursts of clarity that are his times with his daughter. “Well, shit. Guess I’ll have to bring him in while he’s here, see what other light he can shed on this whole mess.”
Meka laughs again and Danny is flabbergasted.
“You’re laughing - why are you laughing? Something I should know about?” He asks as he heads for the door, brushing past a few officers who seem pretty comfortable taking up the whole hallway as they drink their morning coffee.
“Just…be careful with Steve McGarrett, man.”
“You know the guy?” He walks outside the heat hits him like he’s walked into a wall. Some paradise - it’s an endless monotony of perfect days and perpetual headaches from squinting into the sunlight. He crosses the parking lot to the Camaro he’d bought with his half of the proceeds from selling his and Rachel’s house. The only good thing to come out of the whole shitty divorce, he feels like he’s driving an elaborate fuck you billboard up to Rachel’s front gate whenever he picks Grace up.
“Know of him.”
“You’re being infuriatingly vague, Meka man.” Danny unlocks his car and tosses all his paperwork across to the passenger’s side seat. The bright pink and white stuffed bunny is in the back seat, luckily inanimate and therefore unaffected by the suffocating hot box his car has become in the grand total of an hour he’s spent inside the station. He’s already sweating and he hates it. There’s not a deodorant in the world that can deal with Hawaii. “Doesn’t matter. I can handle McGarrett’s son, believe me.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Warn me? You’ve warned me of nothing but to be careful, which I always am, so this whole conversation seems like an exercise in futility.” Danny climbs into the Camaro and balances his phone between his shoulder and his ear as he slides the key into the ignition.
“From what I’ve heard, the dude’s basically Captain America - “
“He wears tights? Spandex tights?”
Meka lets out a frustrated sigh and Danny chuckles gleefully.
“You know, it’s hard to believe we’ve only been apart a week. It’s been so peaceful, it’s felt like months.”
“Ha ha. You miss this mouth, Hanamoa.” He backs out of his parking spot, thinking he should maybe hang up and drive already. But he likes messing with Meka, it reminds him of trading barbs with his brother back home. Meka’s the only person on this godforsaken island who feels like a real friend.
“I feel badly for whoever your next partner is, Danny. I really do.”
“You’re just worried I’m gonna love him more than you.”
“Maybe he’ll drive you up the wall instead. That’d be a nice change of pace.”
“I somehow doubt that’s gonna happen.” Danny turns out onto the main road and heads toward Rachel’s neighborhood, where the houses are bigger than his entire apartment complex. “So listen, I gotta go, but maybe we can meet up for a beer later?”
“Sure thing man. You can let me know how it goes with the Lieutenant Commander.”
“With who?”
“Steve McGarrett.” Meka waits a beat, and then clarifies some more like Danny needs it. He doesn’t. “Jack’s son.”
“Lieutenant Commander, eh? Impressive. Ten bucks says he’s a schmuck.”
“I’ll take that bet.”
“All right then. See ya tonight, you’re buyin’.”
“We’ll see, braddah.”
Danny ends the call and tosses his phone on top of his file folders. He’ll get to Rachel’s with some time to spare, maybe he can squeeze in a phone call about getting surveillance set up on Doran’s place. Then he can drop Grace at school and swing by the McGarrett place and go over the crime scene again. Maybe Doran was there, maybe there’s something he missed.
But somewhere between his stuffed rabbit being upstaged by the real Mr. Hoppy and finding the broken crime scene seal on the McGarrett back door, Danny realizes that despite the hit on Doran’s gun, he’d been right the first time. Today is not going to be easy.
*******
Present
“The only easy day was yesterday.”
Chin watches Steve lean in close to Danny to speak into his ear. The music’s not even that loud, but it doesn’t stop Steve’s lips from almost brushing Danny’s skin as he talks.
“That’s the SEAL’s motto.”
“What an optimistic lot you all are,” Danny retorts flatly, taking another drink of beer. He’s got his free hand in his pocket and his eyes focused out on the crowd, but his entire body is angled toward Steve in a way that speaks volumes, like Danny doesn’t even know how needlessly close they’re always standing to one another or how his body language is giving away everything between them.
“If that’s your excuse for only being on your second beer of the night, McGarrett, you’re going to need to find something better.”
“Just sayin’, you never know what’s around the corner.” Steve doesn’t really care; he’s needling Danny. Danny had asked them all out to let off steam and he and Kono had obliged. It’d been welcome.
Steve showed up. And that’s pretty much all that can be said on his account.
He’s still on the far side of sober, kicking back and watching them all stumble toward shit-faced.
“You gotta be ready, Danno.”
“What does it matter? You could probably shotgun a six-pack and still be okay to fight off a pack of ninjas.”
“Ninjas?”
“Loosen up, and take your pick of any of the hundreds of ladies who have mentally undressed you as we’ve been standing here.” He gestures out to the bar as if it’s filled with women clamoring to get closer.
In truth, most everyone has given Steve and Danny an unexpectedly wide berth. Despite Danny’s words it’s like he’s unconsciously sending out some protective barrier to keep admirers at bay. Hands off, he’s mine.
“How do you know they weren’t undressing you?” Steve counters, turning entirely to face Danny and resting his arm on the bar. Danny raises an eyebrow in disbelief.
“Me?” He scoffs, pointing to himself and then Steve. Chin’s not sure how he does it, but he manages not to spill his beer all over the floor as his hands gesticulate wildly back and forth between them. “I’m standing next to you. No woman is going to be picturing me naked when I am standing next to you. It’s that simple, my friend.”
“Oh, is that true?” Steve smirks good-naturedly like he thinks Danny’s full of shit but isn’t going to argue. The thing about Steve is, he never quite understands why other guys have a hard time with women, especially if the guy’s a friend. If Steve likes him, why wouldn’t everyone? Chin knows that right now, Steve truly and honestly believes that Danny could get any girl if he wanted to if he only tried.
“You’re the biggest cock block I’ve ever met,” Danny complains.
“I sincerely doubt that.” Steve lifts his beer bottle to his lips and takes a long drink. Danny watches him, hooded eyes trained on Steve’s throat as he swallows.
“They’re actually getting kind of ridiculous.” Chin states, startling Kono beside him. She’d thought she’d been quiet, coming to stand at his side, but he’s known she was there since the second she walked up. He tilts his head toward her, mouth quirking up in a small smile.
“Yeah, they are.” Kono sighs, and crosses her arms over her chest. Ice cubes clink in her empty glass. “It’s kind of sad to see that much going unsaid between two people.”
Chin knows that tone of voice. And he knows that look, that one that says subtext, cousin, subtext.
“Kono,” he begins warningly, but it’s too late for that. He could ignore her, but it would only delay the conversation, not stop it.
“Chin, come on. It’s me.” She sets a hand on his shoulder, giving it a small squeeze. “And you’ve been staring at him all night.”
Chin’s first instinct is to deny it but the words fail him. His eyes flick toward Steve and Danny guiltily - their shoulders are touching, arms brushing, Steve’s smiling - and it’s not in him to keep up the façade. His whole body slumps and Kono reaches down, takes his hand.
She doesn’t let go until they are outside.
He takes a seat beside her on the stone wall that separates the bar from the beach and draws in a deep breath. The air is cool and salty and feels good on his skin after the cramped heat from the bar. The water and the sky stretch out forever and both are so dark it’s hard to tell where one begins and the other ends.
“So.” Kono starts, pushing her hair behind her ear. The light from the neon signs in the bar windows are enough for him to clearly see the earnestness in her gaze. “This thing with Steve, whatever it is…how long has it been going on?”
“It’s not going on.”
“Well, when did it end then?”
“Kono…” Chin swings his legs over the side of the wall and faces the ocean, wishing he didn’t have to do this. He wants to jump down to the sand and keep walking until he hits water. “Steve and I…to talk about the end, I mean…we barely even started. We were kids. We were stupid. He didn’t know any better and I…well I should have.”
“What does that even mean?” Chin frowns, tensing as she reaches out to touch him, and Kono eases back. “I’m only trying to understand.”
“It means that Jack McGarrett was there for me in every way he should have been there for Steve. I looked up to the man like a father, Kono. And I saw how things were, with him and Steve, and I wanted to make them better.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad, Chin.”
“Sometimes I think my feelings, and my intentions, and my admiration for Jack became jumbled. Confused. I worked my way into Steve’s life because I was curious. And…that curiosity turned into interest, and that interest turned into infatuation.”
“It’s hardly a punishable offense,” Kono excuses him easily. She doesn’t really get it. “I don’t see why you’re beating yourself up over it all these years later.”
“Because he was 18 years old!” Chin exclaims. “He was my boss’ kid. He’d lost his mom and his dad couldn’t deal with it. All Steve wanted was some piece of his father’s life and I took advantage of that.”
“You. Took advantage of Steve.” Kono shakes her head like the notion is an impossibility. She only sees Steve as he is now, her tough, sexy boss who takes no prisoners and shows no fear. She doesn’t know what it’s like to see him vulnerable. She idolizes him as more than a man, the way that only rookies can.
“I was five years his senior. A police officer. No matter what I felt, it was my responsibility not to act on it.”
“But you did.”
“And I did.” Saying it out loud is somewhat of a relief. He’d never admitted the sin to anyone; he’s been carrying it around all these years, the memory of those few months that had been both perfect and awful at the same time. “We would hang out…like buddies. Like friends. Friends who were sometimes…” He coughs uncomfortably. “More than friends.”
Chin sucks in a deep breath and waits for Kono to press for details. She thankfully remains silent.
“It kept on going like that until he left for summer at the Naval Academy. He went off to his life, and I went back to mine. We never talked about it, or decided to go our own ways. It just happened. And that’s the way it should have been.”
“Did Jack know?” Kono asks quietly, edging closer to him. Chin faces her again, meeting her questioning gaze.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so, but sometimes I wonder. I wonder why, when he had this entire investigation into the police department and his wife’s death going on, he never breathed a word to me about it.”
“He didn’t trust anyone with that, Chin.”
“I’d like to think he could’ve trusted me. But maybe he didn’t. Maybe he knew I’d been with Steve behind his back. Or maybe he started to believe what they were saying about me down at the precinct. All I know for sure is that when he retired and set to work full time on this thing, he didn’t want me to know about it.”
“He stuck with you even when IA was breathing down your neck, Chin. The thing with the investigation, it might not have been personal.”
“But it may have been.”
Kono lets him hang on to his doubt. There’s no way for her to prove the truth one way or another. She tucks her legs underneath her and sits Indian-style on the wall, letting the ocean breeze blow her long hair out of her face.
She’s quiet for a moment and Chin has just enough time to wonder what she’s thinking - if she’s judging him, if her image of him has finally been tarnished after all this time - when she purses her lips and heaves another sigh.
“I remember Steve being at your apartment. I mean, I didn’t know it was Steve at the time, obviously, but it was, wasn’t it? That time I almost walked in on you?”
Chin rubs his sweaty palm over the knee of his jeans.
“If I remember it, then you have to. You know what I’m talking about.”
“I do,” he admits reluctantly.
“And you weren’t some rookie then, Chin. That was later, a lot later. So this thing with Steve didn’t just end, did it? It kept going.”
“No, it didn’t keep going.” Chin lets his fingers trace the edges of the rough stone underneath where they sit. The surface is uneven and jagged. He shifts position, the rock digging into his thighs. He draws his legs in close and folds his arms over his knees. “He was gone for a long time…I hadn’t seen him in…five years? Then his grandmother died and he was given leave to come home. I saw him there, at the funeral. I gave him my condolences but apart from that we didn’t even speak.”
Chin pauses, his mind going back to that night.
“But later he showed up at my place. That was…” Chin’s not sure he wants to be this honest, but since he’s already come this far he may as well leave it all out there on the table. “That was the first, last, and only time Steve and I ever slept together. He left the next day.”
“That was it?”
“Didn’t see him again until I ran into him at the Missouri five months ago.”
“And you’ve never talked about it? Not once?” Kono’s eyes are wide and she nearly laughs at the ludicrousness of it all.
“Why would we? There’s no need.”
“No need? You and Steve sleep together and you don’t see a need to talk about it?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, what?”
Kono and Chin both twist around at the sound of Danny’s stunned voice. He’s standing with his hand still on the door, having stepped outside just in time to hear Kono’s last sentence.
Kono’s mouth opens and closes a few times like a floundering fish but she’s unable to find her voice. Chin closes his eyes and makes a silent wish that there’s some way around this one.
But Steve comes out after Danny only a second later, clapping a hand on Danny’s shoulder and nodding his head toward his truck.
“C’mon, I’ll give your drunk ass a ride home.” Chin feels a brief moment of pity for Steve and his obliviousness; he has no idea what he just walked into.
“Hold up hold up hold up.” Danny raises both his hands and Steve stops, that quizzical impatient look on his face that he gets when he point blank does not understand what the hell Danny is on about. “You…and Chin?”
“Me and Chin what.” Steve asks, hands out and begging clarification. Danny sputters for a moment, nothing but garbled nonsense managing to make its way from his mouth. Steve looks past Danny to where he and Kono sit, waiting for an explanation of any kind.
“You and Chin slept together? What the ever-living fuck, Steve? When did this happen?” It all spews out of Danny’s mouth like the explosion of a volcano.
“What is he talking about?” One hand on his hip and one gesturing to Danny, Steve brow furrows like he can’t imagine how Danny ever latched on to this obscure piece of information.
“He’s a little drunk, I think he misheard-“ Kono attempts heroically. Chin shakes his head at her, telling her not even to try. It’s a lost cause.
“I’m not so drunk that I’ve lost my understanding of the English language, Kono, so unless there’s some strange definition of ‘slept together’ that I don’t know about…” He’s waving his hands about now, letting them fly around everywhere as he struggles to get his point across.
“It’s not what you think,” Chin starts and even from where he sits, he can see every muscle in Steve’s body tense. Steve rests both hands on his hips and sets his jaw, locking his gaze on Danny.
“It’s not what I think?” Danny snaps.
“It’s really none of your business, Danny.” Steve says and Chin cringes. If there is a correct way to handle this situation, telling Danny that is the exact opposite.
“It’s none of my…It’s none of my business. It’s none of my business? Is that right? It’s none of my business! Okay. Well, good to know. I’ll file that away for future use. Go fuck yourself, McGarrett.”
Danny storms off toward the parking lot, muttering under his breath and feet pounding gravel like he’s trying to smash the tiny pieces of rock into the dirt.
“Uh, we need to stop him. He can’t drive like that.” Kono speaks up when Danny’s halfway to his car and Steve huffs, digging something out of his pocket.
“I have his keys.” He looks at Chin, confident that Danny won’t get far. “What happened out here? Danny was out of my sight for less than a minute.”
“It’s a long story.” Chin mumbles.
“I’ll bet.” Steve rubs his temple and glances over to where Danny is at his car, tugging at the door handle and then kicking his front tire in frustration when he realizes he’s locked out. “Fuck.”
“It’s been a long time coming,” Kono says, and Chin figures she means him and Steve, but it could just as easily apply to Danny and Steve. “You guys need to talk about this. It’s not going away just because-“
“Kono.” Steve barks out her name the same time he does. She bites her tongue but not happily.
“I gotta go deal with this.” Steve gestures toward Danny and then turns and points to Chin. “You and I…we’re gonna sit down later and you’re going to tell me how the hell this even happened.”
Chin swallows the surge of bitter resentment that swells in his throat. He grits his teeth and glares at Steve.
“Fine.” He spits out. Steve’s face changes then: anger fading and a flash of vulnerability slackening his expression. He’s panicked, maybe betrayed. Chin’s broken their unspoken agreement to never bring it up and now they have to face what they’ve buried for ten years.
Steve hesitates before going after Danny. His eyes, those beautiful eyes that got Chin into this trouble in the first place, meet Chin’s with a silent question.
“Just…go talk to him. This can wait.” Chin tells him, trying not to be hurt by how quickly Steve takes him at his word, or by the relief he sees in that first step toward Danny.
*******
June, 1999
It’s late, 3am, which is why the fanning of headlights across his living room wall as a car pulls into the drive wakes Chin from the half-asleep state of staring absently at a late night infomercial.
The engine cuts off and a door slams. Footsteps on the walk, a sharp rap on the door. There’s just one knock, like whoever it is knows he’s awake and can patiently wait for him to come to the door.
Chin turns off the television but he doesn’t bother to switch on a lamp. The front porch light is on and is casting enough faint glow through the curtains that he can see where he’s going pretty clearly. The empty beer bottles at his feet clink together as he stands up.
He already knows, deep in his gut, who it’s going to be. In truth, he’s been hoping for this all along.
He’d seen him earlier today, standing stoic with jaw clenched beside his grandmother’s grave, mourning the woman who cared for him for two years while his father focused on his own grief. Two inches taller, twenty pounds heavier with pure muscle, Steve McGarrett had looked like a stranger in his uniform. He’d looked like a man; a man Chin didn’t recognize except in the way he’d kept blinking those long eyelashes of his, refusing to cry.
They shook hands like they’d never met - never touched, never kissed, never anything - and Chin left. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath since then. He hadn’t even bothered to go through the motions of his usual arrival home; the day was already too different for routine. He’d merely pulled a six-pack from the fridge, sat down on the couch, drank his way through it, and he hadn’t moved since. Until now.
He opens the door. Steve is still in his full service dress blues, rigid and tense and on the verge of breaking like so much glass.
Chin reaches forward and pushes open the screen door.
He backs up to let Steve in, but barely. Steve’s warm and he smells the same, somehow, even after all these years and everything that’s changed. Chin thought he’d smell of cherry blossoms and black-eyed susans; but the scent of ilima and plumeria and ocean air clings to his skin. They’re standing close when Chin shoves the door closed behind them. The latch catching is loud in the quiet of the room, like the cocking of a rifle before a shot.
Steve puts his hands on Chin’s shoulders and turns him easily. Backs him against the unforgiving wood of the door.
They stare at one another for a long moment and Chin wonders what Steve is waiting for.
Then Steve’s lips are on his and it’s different than he remembers. There’s no playful give and take - only dominance. Steve holds him in place with the weight of his body, Steve’s hands on either side of his face, and Steve’s tongue invading his mouth like he’s trying to say five years worth of something with one kiss.
Chin tries to push back to see if Steve will let him. He does, quite easily, and Chin is satisfied. He knocks the white service cap from Steve’s head and it lands on the floor with a thud. It gets kicked somewhere as his hands run over Steve’s close cropped hair. Chin finds it surprisingly soft under his fingertips. But it’s barely there, not even the short strands he remembers running his fingers through five years before, holding and tugging and pulling as Steve eagerly sucked him to completion in this very same room.
It all comes back to Chin in a sudden rush - mornings spent surfing, afternoons spent tossing around the football on the beach, evenings watching the sun go down over the flicker of a bonfire, nights when Steve would kiss him good-night and end up staying another hour. After Steve left for school, Chin had kept finding things he’d left behind - flip-flops, t-shirts, video games, surf wax - and he’d hung onto them for months before finally throwing them out.
It’d been a brief, bright period where Steve was the sunniest thing in his life. Everything then had been about exploration, and he’d mapped out Steve’s body like he’d learned the back roads of Hawaii - by instinct, and by repetition. He’d discovered where Steve was soft and where he was sharp, followed each line and each dip and each shadowed valley. He came to know what made Steve smile playfully, what made his eyes roll back into his head with pleasure, what made his face turn dark with lust.
Tonight they’re going to go into unexplored territory, farther than they’ve gone before. They’d never conquered each other completely and Chin knows that by tomorrow, that will no longer be true. He could fight it, but instead he gives into it and lets Steve take him over.
He doesn’t need to think, he just moves. It’s not the same - Steve’s hard and forceful and angrily desperate - but it’s close enough.
Steve’s the same age now as Chin was when this all began, and somehow it seems strangely fitting that it’s come back around to this.
Steve is unbuttoning his shirt, bottom to top, hands stopping at his shirt collar and holding firm. Their kiss only skips a beat when Steve breaks to strip the fabric from Chin’s shoulders and down his arms. He tosses it as soon as Chin pulls free and it knocks the lampshade askew before finishing its journey to the floor.
They fumble their way to the bedroom and once there, Chin lets Steve do whatever he wants. It’s never been his call where Steve’s concerned; if it had been, this never would’ve started. He’d have been able to walk away before nothing became a kiss, before a kiss became more.
At eighteen, Steve had seemed confident, in the way the star quarterback and bright shining star of the high school should be, but he’d let the confidence slip sometimes. He’d given voice to his fears, told things to Chin that even now Chin suspects he’s never told anyone else. But he’d never felt unsure; there’d never been any doubt or worry in between them, as if Steve knew Chin was a safe harbor for him to drop anchor.
Now, Steve has a confidence that probably comes from having perfection drilled into his bones, from living a life where failure is not an option. But his confidence is cold. It’s inhuman. It feels as much a mask as Steve’s winning high school smile did.
Yet in his kiss there’s something dangerous and sincere. Steve is still sharing his fear, but this time it’s with his body and not his words. Chin welcomes it, not caring how Steve speaks because it means he’s not silent.
Steve’s a vast expanse of firm muscle, ripped and hard all over, and he feels so good against him as they move together. Chin lets his hands discover the tight curve of Steve’s ass, the taut line of his abs, the flex of his biceps. The swirls of black and green he finds inked where Steve’s skin used to be bare are surprising, and he traces the tattoos with his tongue like that will somehow give him the answer to why they’re there.
Steve groans against him as he does so, cock riding his hip. Their naked bodies fit together almost as well as he always thought they would. It’s near enough to perfect that it throws each remaining flaw into stark relief; they’re a puzzle with one piece missing, forever lost, never complete. Chin shoves the thought aside and concentrates on the way his hands feel against the cut lines of Steve’s hips. He could get lost in Steve’s intense beauty. It’s powerful enough to make him forget everything else he’s feeling.
When Steve turns him over and finally pushes into him from behind, it may be a bit too rough, too hard, but it doesn’t matter. The pain is real, this is actually happening, and the accidental bruises Steve is leaving on his hips will remind him of that long after every other sensation has faded.
It’s over as suddenly as it began, Steve coming with a cry that seems ripped right out of his chest. Chin follows him over, unable to stop himself as he feels Steve release deep and warm inside of him. He whispers Steve’s name and a few things in Bird that he hopes Steve has forgotten the meaning of during his time away.
Steve’s wet and sticky hands, dripping with Chin’s own release, cling to him, not letting him go. He pants hotly against Chin’s neck and his heartbeat thuds recklessly hard against Chin’s back. Chin breathes in the scent of sweat and come and Steve and can only try and pull the man closer.
They must fall asleep in a tangled heap because that’s precisely how he wakes up, with Steve encircling him and Kono’s voice loud and cheery from somewhere inside the house.
He doesn’t know how he manages to climb out of bed, find a pair of underwear and get to the door without waking Steve, but he’s still snoring softly, face buried in the pillow, when Chin returns.
He leans against the closed bedroom door and looks at Steve’s naked form, the long line of him stretching across white sheets. He’s gorgeous and perfect and Chin wants to crawl back into bed and make love in the way they hadn’t last night. He wants to look into Steve’s eyes as he makes him come.
Like he can tell he’s being watched even through the veil of sleep, Steve stirs. He shifts, long lashes fluttering as his eyes slowly open.
“Hey,” Chin says softly. He moves back to the bed and sits down, reaching out to touch Steve’s side. Steve lets Chin’s hand linger on his stomach for a long enough moment that Chin starts to relax, but then Steve pulls away.
He rolls over to the opposite side of the bed and sits up, reaching for his boxer briefs and pulling them on.
“I need to go.” Steve’s voice is thick with sleep. It’s the first thing he’s said since arriving last night and Chin wishes he’d remained silent. Chin nods instead of replying, trying to hide his disappointment by focusing on a random point in the pattern of his rumpled bedspread.
Steve stands up, sending the mattress shifting under Chin’s weight.
When Chin has the nerve to look at him, Steve already has his pants on. Chin watches silently as he zips up and does his belt with thoughtless efficiency.
“My dad’s expecting me.”
“Yeah.” Chin says and he hears how broken it sounds. He clears his throat. “I understand.”
“I don’t know when I’ll be back in Hawaii again.” It sounds kind of like an apology, kind of like an excuse. Chin forces a weak smile.
“I understand, Steve. It’s okay.”
Steve looks at him, his expression unreadable, and then he licks his lips and nods.
“Yeah. Okay.” He throws on his undershirt and gathers the rest of his clothes in his hands, then lets himself out of Chin’s bedroom. Chin doesn’t know if he’s supposed to follow, but he does.
Steve’s sitting on the arm of the couch and pulling his shoes on. Chin stoops to pick up his white hat from where it lays by the door.
“Don’t forget this.”
“Thanks.”
“So. I’ll see you.” He’s letting himself out. Chin is meeting him at the door. He doesn’t know what he’s hoping for. It’s not a kiss goodbye; he’s not that delusional. He just wants anything besides this detached and awkward farewell.
“Sure. See you.”
When the door closes, Chin turns away and deliberately avoids watching Steve go. So it’s all the more surprising when there’s a knock on the door only a minute later.
He opens it and tries to keep hope from choking up in his throat.
“The car won’t start.” Steve says quickly, pointing to his father’s Marquis that sits in the driveway, and Chin swallows, nods. “It’s probably the carburetor, it does that.”
“I’ll call city impound and get a tow back to your place. I know a guy.”
Steve smiles faintly, a flicker of warmth in his eyes.
“You always know a guy.”
“Suppose I do. You need a ride home?”
“Naw, I’ll just…it’s a good morning to walk I think.”
“Okay,” Chin imagines Steve walking home half-clothed in his rumpled dress blues, stinking of sex, but he figures Honolulu has seen stranger things where military men are concerned.
“Okay.” Steve nods once in return and steps down one stair at a time until he reaches the walk, still looking at Chin as he does so. “Bye, Chin.”
“Bye, Steve.” Chin replies. Out here, faced with Steve’s impending retreat, it’s impossible not to watch him leave. He looks until Steve’s long gone, and then stares at his empty yard for a while longer.
CONTINUED...