Written for Steve/Danno Slash Spring Fling
Prompt, Anon,
Steve for whatever reason, has an argument with Danny that leaves both men wounded and feeling all kinds of bad. All of this leads to Steve disappearing into the mountains of the island for a few days with clearing his head in mind. But what happens when Steve doesn't come back after the couple of days he told Chin he'd be up there. Cue Danny charging head first into the mountains to find his crazy Navy Seal, wherever he is and whatever state he may be. Humor and Angst together would be perfect.
-H-H-H-
I couldn't imagine what the boys could argue about that could cause this to happen, but, the scenario I did come up with grew and grew and grew. I was terrified the show might josh me before I could get to post, but I've been lucky. We've got angst a plenty. Humor, not so much. I hope the prompter likes it anyway.
An enormous thanks to my beta/Americanism checker Ellie_Pierson. Thanks hon.
Part One
It was Thursday. A dull, boring, dreary Thursday. For once Five 0 had no outstanding cases, their paper work was up to date and there really was… nothing… to… do. Chin and Kono had somehow managed to quietly disappear mid-morning and Danny hadn't even missed them until lunch time. Steve was ensconced in his office doing something on his lap top. From the flickers of light and the very limited view Danny had of his screen (the top left hand corner) it did appear he was actually researching or looking something up, rather than playing games.
There was no real reason for Danny to still be here, other than a vague feeling that because Steve was here he should be too. A bored Steve McGarrett with time on his hands was a potential for disaster. He was probably studying the schematics of a bomb that could be built from baking powder and the innards of a TV set. The citizens of Hawaii needed to be protected from such things and that protecting was what Danny was doing. So he told himself.
The sad thing was he had nothing else to do and nowhere else to be. Danny was watching Steve and playing Mine Sweeper.
He was deep in concentration with only three mines to find while a full ten seconds ahead of his best time in the advanced level when a crash and a shout made him look up. Steve had shoved his chair violently backwards, colliding with the wall. He scrambled up, staring at the desk as though it had suddenly morphed into an anaconda. Danny's heart leapt as with no warning, Steve drew his weapon and proceeded to shoot the crap out of the laptop and the desk it was sitting on, screaming blue murder.
"Jesus!" Danny was in the doorway to Steve's office before he could think, before his rational brain could scream, 'mad-man-with-a-gun-shooting-up-the-office-take-co ver.'
"Steve. Fuck. Steve. Stop."
Steve stopped, but that may just have been because the clip was empty. He was sucking in air like he'd run a mile, his face white, eyes wild. He hadn't given up on destruction. Grabbing the desk chair by its back he swung it, crashing the wheels into the book shelves and cases. The sound of crashing glass drowned out the roaring in Danny's ears as he stood there gob smacked, watching Steve go completely berserk, trashing the office with single minded determination.
Danny held out his hands, but it was as much about putting some distance between them as it was about trying to soothe Steve. 'Put it down. Come on Steve, put it down.' Steve kept on smashing, swinging hard, the chair little more than twisted metal and plastic now. There was no glass left in any of the cabinets, the precious ship models destroyed. Danny had no idea what was behind the rampage and had no idea how to stop it. The noises tearing out of Steve's throat were more wounded animal than human.
"Babe," Danny beseeched, helplessly.
Steve was tiring, the rush of destructive energy slowing. Danny crept closer. With a hoarse scream Steve turned and hurled what was left of the chair at the window. Danny instinctively tensed, waiting for the crash of shattering glass, but these windows were storm proofed acrylic. It didn't break and the chair bounced back into the room.
And that derailed things. "Fuck." Steve stood in the middle of the chaos, breathing hard, fists curled, body tense. Danny had seen something like this before, back when he was a kid, on the New Jersey turnpike. There'd been a horse trailer with a steer inside it. Why someone was taking a big cattle beast on a ride in a horse float he had no idea, but on the New Jersey turnpike, about as far from a cattle ranch as you could imagine, some truck had T boned the horse float and the whole thing had rolled and the steer got free. When Danny and his Dad drove past, the animal was standing in the middle of three lanes of stopped traffic, absolutely terrified, hurt and furious. Its eyes had shown white all the way around the edges, its breath snorted out through its nostrils in gusts of steam. It had been wild and frightened and incredibly dangerous. He'd heard later on the news, that it had damaged a good dozen cars before animal welfare officers shot it.
Steve looked just like that steer.
"Hey babe." Danny edged forward.
Steve pushed past him and raced out of the room.
"Shit."
H50H50H50H50H50
Danny was on Steve's tail as he roared down the stairs. Steve's legs were long but the stairs slowed him enough that Danny thought he had him. Right up until he was racing through the foyer and he saw the frightened face of Keiko, the building's receptionist, peering up from behind her desk and heard the police scanner radio announcing a SWAT team en route to the Iolani Palace.
"Shit."
He stuck his head around the office door, hating having to stop when Steve was fleeing as if the hounds of hell were after him. "Tell them to stand down. HPD. It's all right." Keiko's kohl rimmed eyes were huge. "The ah… incident. Shots fired… Upstairs. It's ahh… It's okay. It's resolved. No harm done. Back up not required. HPD doesn't need to come." Steve was out the front door and disappearing into the parking lot. "Dammit. I have to go."
By the time Danny made the outside door Steve was nearly at the Camaro. No way Danny could catch him. He grabbed his phone and dialed Steve's number. Moments later he saw Steve's hand reach into his pocket, come out again. Without even looking at it, he heaved the phone as far away from him as he could. The next moment he was in the car and peeling out of the parking lot, turning right and merging with the traffic. Two blocks down, there was an intersection accessing all the major routes through Honolulu. Steve could be heading anywhere and Danny didn't have a clue where he was going.
"Fuck." Danny doubled over, fear making him weak. "Fuck. Fuck Fuck."
He glared at the Silverado, lonely in the lot. He had keys for it but they were back in his desk, not on his ring, like Steve had the Camaro keys on his.
"Chin?" he stabbed at his phone.
"Yo Brah." Chin sounded relaxed and happy.
"Are you near a computer?"
Danny's voice obviously registered with him and Chin sounded all business. "I can be. What's up?"
"Good." Danny charged back up the stairs. "I need you to access our servers. I need to know what Steve was looking at on his computer. I need…" His eyes were drawn to the destruction in Steve's office.
"Danny. What's wrong?"
Sick dread churned in Danny's stomach. "Steve's lost it Chin. He shot the shit out of his computer."
"What?" The shock in Chin's voice wasn't surprising.
Danny sank into his chair, yanked out drawers looking for the truck keys. "Something triggered him Chin. Something shocked him so much he shot the shit out of the laptop, trashed the room and took off out of Dodge. I've never seen anything like it. He was … it was like…" God Danny didn't know what it was like. "He was completely checked out. He was so angry and he was hurt and… he was so lost. It was bad. And scary. He took the Camaro Chin. He left the Silverado in the parking lot."
Chin got it instantly. "So he's loaded for bear?"
"Exactly. There's a whole arsenal in that car because that's the vehicle we take on call outs. We need to know where he's going. He's tossed his phone."
"And who he's going after," Chin said soberly
"Yeah. That's the scary bit."
"You have tried the car's GPS?"
"Fuck." Danny grabbed for the computer mouse. And that, right there, was an indication of how freaked out Danny was by Steve's break down. Steve might have tossed his phone, but the car still had its GPS and Danny had forgotten.
Danny's hands were shaking enough to make it difficult pulling up the trace. The only good thing with Steve being so out of it was that he wouldn't have thought to disable it. "He's on the Punchbowl, could be heading for the freeway. He could be going anywhere. I'm going after him." Movement caught his eye and suddenly an entire SWAT team in full tactical gear was storming through the doors. His heart sunk. "Oh fuck." He wasn't going anywhere in a hurry.
"Danny?" Chin asked anxiously as Danny put the phone down.
"Just hold on," he told Chin. "Bit of bother here to sort out."
Danny put his hands up. "Five Oh," he shouted at the guys with the guns. "Stand down." Hands up and open he waited for the assault team to approach. "Whoa. Whoa. Stand down." Moving slow and steady he turned to show his badge on his hip. "Detective Danny Williams, Five Oh. There's no threat. Stand down." The guns lowered but were still at the ready. "Didn't I tell Keiko that there was no threat?"
The leader, a large well-muscled guy pulled his hood up. "Is that the receptionist?"
Danny nodded, shook the guy's proffered hand.
"She said you looked stressed, maybe under duress. You and Commander McGarrett." He looked at Danny sideways. "Are you under duress Detective?"
"No. Yes." Danny couldn't help running his hands through his hair. "Yes I'm under duress. I've got a case going down, things are time critical and I need to be out of here. If you'll excuse me?"
"What happened here?"
Danny cursed glass walled offices. "What happened here?" The need to move, to follow that dot on the screen was making Danny itch. Steve was now on the Lunalilo freeway heading east. "Yes. Yes we did have an incident. Okay? Commander McGarrett was demonstrating how to… how to…Fuck... Fireworks. How to kill people with fireworks. Okay?"
The leader wasn't buying it. "Where is the rest of your team Detective?"
"The rest of my team?" He swung his laptop around, stabbed at the screen. "That dot there, that's Commander McGarrett. He's expecting me to be following right behind him, backing him up when he arrives." He turned and stabbed at the phone he'd placed on the desk before putting his hands up. "Chin Ho Kelly is on the other end of that phone. Say hello, Chin."
"Hello," Chin said cheerily over the speaker.
"And Kono Kala…"
"Is right here Boss," Kono's voice came over the phone's speaker too, cutting him off, "Working on that search you asked for," and there was something in her voice that made Danny's blood freeze. "We got it. We know what he was looking at."
"Hang on a minute," he told Kono. "It's a case," Danny told the SWAT leader. Trying to maintain a calm exterior he turned off the speaker and tucked the phone against his ear. "I have to go. Sorry for the bother, but you know, thanks for coming." He pocketed the Silverado keys, pushed through the crowd and walked out the door.
He waited until he was on the stairs and alone. "Tell me." He picked up speed, the sense of urgency increasing with every step.
"Jesus Danny," and it wasn't like Chin to swear. Ever. "I'm not surprised Steve freaked out. This is bad Danny. Really bad."
"What? For god's sake, tell me." He fumbled the key into the big blue truck's lock, yanked open the door.
"Steve was looking into Wo Fat," Chin said ominously.
"Nothing new there." He had the phone back on speaker as he reached down to wrestle the seat forward.
"He called up his DNA profile; then ran a search for a familial trace."
Danny didn't know why Steve would do that, but it didn't seem too off the wall so far. Unless… "He found a match? Someone related to Wo Fat?"
"Yes." Chin seemed reluctant to tell him.
"Who? Who is it? Someone we know." That last part wasn't a question.
"Oh god, yes," Kono breathed.
Jesus, and now Danny got it. "It's Adam isn't it?" Adam's fancy house was on the eastward side of the island and Steve had never trusted Adam's turn away from the dark side. "Oh Kono I'm so sorry."
"It isn't Adam." Chin's voice was gravelly. "Steve didn't just look through the criminal data bases, he did a wider search."
"Chin, you're killing me here." He was reluctant to start the truck until he'd heard what this was all about. "Just come out and say it. Whatever it is."
"He found himself."
"What?" He couldn't have heard right.
"Danny, that's what Steve found out. Steve is related to Wo Fat. Closely related. They share fifty percent of their DNA."
Danny felt like all the breath had been punched out of him. "Fifty…? Oh fuck." Steve's response suddenly made so much sense. He cranked the starter motor and wrenched the vehicle into gear. "Doris?"
"Yeah," Chin agreed.
"He's heading for Doris." Danny knew it with absolute certainty. "The state he's in…" Danny wanted to drive across the obstacles between him and the exit to the street. Forced himself to steer the huge vehicle through the rows of cars before hitting the lights and siren and gunning it as he got onto the road. "Doris has been staying at Steve's since the break in at her place. I won't make it in time."
"I'm getting my bike," Chin told him. "I'll head across the waste land on the point. Call her; tell her to get out now. Don't say why. Just get her out. Tell her to head up the beach and I'll pick her up at the point. Steve's just made the Kalanianoale highway. Call her now." Chin hung up.
Danny hit the freeway and with lights and sirens going, took off. The Silverado was surprisingly responsive and easy to drive for such a large vehicle.
Doris picked up on the fourth ring. "Danny?" She sounded cautious and surprised to hear from him. It was probably the second time he'd rung her ever, so that wasn't surprising. "Do you need something?"
"Your life is in danger and I need you to get out of the house." Now he was finally moving, finally acting, he felt surprisingly calm. "You need to leave now. Drop what you're doing and head to the beach. Head along the beach to the point and Chin will pick you up there."
"What?"
"Now Doris."
"Okay. How long have I got?" God, they kept forgetting that this woman was a professional.
"Minutes," he said tersely.
"Lucky I've got my trainers on then," she joked. "Keep talking. What's going on?" He heard a door open. "I'm out and on the beach." Her voice wasn't so steady, she was running. "Why are you calling? Where's Steve? Is Steve okay?"
Something in Danny broke. "No. Steve is not okay. Steve,' he hissed, "is who you're running from."
"What?" He knew she stopped. "What the hell are you playing at? What's happened?"
"Steve has just found out about his brother," Danny told her, "And he did not take it well." He felt completely cold. He executed a crazy passing maneuver around three slow trucks, and nudged the accelerator closer to the floor, desperate to get to his partner. "He's hurting Doris, really hurting and he's crazy like I've never seen. I'm thinking matricide." Danny's jaw was clenched so tight he could barely speak. "I'm not doing this for you. I don't care if you rot in hell, but Steve and prison aren't a good mix."
"Danny?"
"Run Doris. For fuck sake, run."
H50H50H50H50H50
The Camaro was sideways across the end of the driveway, front fender tight in against the flowery creeper on the fence. The trunk was open and as Danny jerked to a stop behind it he could see that the lock box in the trunk was open too. That was all he needed to know.
"Steve!"
He was fifteen minutes at the most behind Steve. The front door was open and Danny dreaded what he was going to find when he got through that door. For everyone's sakes he hoped Doris was miles up the beach and Steve was trashing the house inside. He wanted to charge in, screaming for Steve, but just in case he and Doris were in there having an armed standoff, he needed to go in quiet and slow. He didn't want to startle anyone.
He knew as soon as he got inside that there was no one there. It was too quiet, too still. Even so Danny rapidly cleared the ground floor. Creeping through the garage gun drawn gave him an incredible feeling of déjà vu. An acrid scent of vomit in the kitchen momentarily brought him up short.
Upstairs or outside?
Since he was close to the door onto the lanai he went outside. He couldn't see anyone on the lawn. Down on the beach he couldn't see anyone either, not close anyway. There were people miles up the beach, too far away to see who they were. He had no way of telling if one of them was Steve, tracking Doris along the sand. If he wasn't though, where was he? As far as he could tell, there was no-one swimming in the bay anywhere either.
He ran back inside, hastily checked the upstairs rooms, checked the nasty damp storm cellar and still came up blank. There was a half empty coffee cup on the desk in the study next to a laptop that had put itself on standby, evidence of Doris' hurried leaving. And only one sign of Steve.
Danny found himself staring at the disgusting mess in the kitchen sink and trying to think like Steve. He turned on the water. He assumed Steve would have entered the house, cleared it as Danny had done and realized that Doris wasn't here. Danny had no idea what would have gone down if she had been. He hoped Steve wouldn't have shot her outright, if only because he'd have wanted answers from her first. But she wasn't here and he'd probably relaxed just enough for his stress response to catch up with his stomach. He was wired, shocked, his entire world turned upside – again, and the fight he'd been girding for hadn't happened, leaving him at a loss.
He'd stood right here, shocked, distressed. Or had he been out in the lounge, racing back to the sink when he realized he was going to be sick? Danny grabbed a wooden spoon out of a container on the bench and forced some of the chunks down the drain, trying not to gag himself. His heart broke a little bit.
But after that, what had he done then? Where the hell was he? "Steve?" he yelled at the top of his lungs, but there was no reply.
So, Danny mused, off his head, but highly trained. Steve had to realize that Doris had been tipped off, had only just left ahead of him. He wouldn't know where she'd gone, except that it had to have been on foot.
Had the fight left him or was he still on the trail?
He heard a car pull up, then moments later the tip of Kono's rifle preceded her through the front door. "Chin's got Doris," Kono said when she saw him. "She's fine. Where's Steve?"
"Not here," Danny said tersely. "Your guess is as good as mine." He nodded at the weapon "You want to take your scope and see if you can see if he's trying to track her up the beach? Because that's really not a good idea. He's packing more weapons than Rambo."
"Danny. Why's the water on?" Kono jerked it off, narrowly averting a major flood. "Oh yuck." Chunky bits had blocked the drain. Goo was swirling in the sink like a revolting soup. This time Danny retched, is own adrenaline dump making him queasy without any added stimulation.
The sudden roar of an engine made them both jump.
"Son of a bitch."
"Did you check the garage?" Kono shouted.
"Yes, I checked the fucking garage?"
The door to which was now locked. "Shit." He barreled into Kono as he backtracked and then they tore through the house and out the front door in time to see the Marquis fish tailing out the gate. Danny raced for the Silverado, then changed direction. Kono's car was blocking them all in. That was when he noticed her driver's door was open and… "Fuck! Steve you fucker," he yelled at the already long gone muscle car. The ignition of Kono's car had been yanked out of the panel and the wiring slashed, probably with that nasty hunting knife Steve kept strapped to his leg.
"Oh Jesus." Despair and fright were making his legs tremble and he sank down onto the gravel, leaning back against the car.
Kono was staring at her dashboard, aghast. "Why would he do that?"
"He doesn't want to be followed," Danny dropped his head into his hands. He wanted more than anything for the day to reset to lunch time and he'd suggest that he and Steve follow Chin and Kono's example and head off surfing or something. He was never going to leave a bored Steve alone with the internet ever again.
"Not even by us?" Kono sounded lost.
"Obviously."
H50H50H50H50H50
