Why Danny Williams Stopped Wearing Ties and Started Wearing Something Else
Danny got the first hint that something was up at 8:25 a.m. He'd stopped to worship the coffee machine on the second floor, and was heading for the office, when he passing a clerk he knew he knew slightly from Records.
"Nice tie," the guy said.
"Thanks, Huff," Danny said. He'd gone to a little extra effort that morning and the comment affirmed he had a right to feel good about it. The silver blue birthday tie was a perfect match for the short short-sleeve polished cotton shirt. It never hurt to show a little class, or a little muscle.
That would have been it, but those two uniforms, Kanē and Migella, standing next to him in the elevator, had kept glancing at his tie.
"Birthday present," Danny said. You could die of scurvy on that elevator. "From my mother," he added.
"She must be proud," Kanē said, as the doors opened.
Danny stepped out; the doors swooshed behind him; the car gave off a low drone as it ascended. Danny turned around and looked at the closed doors. Then he looked down and flipped the tale of his tie. Yes, it was his mother's birthday present; he hadn't accidently put on the vintage hand-painted ukulele-playing topless hula dancer. There was no reason those two should have been sniggering like pigs.
The third clue was folded and stuffed in an interdepartmental envelope on the seat of his chair. Sender unidentified.
"Uh…guys?" Chin, Kono and Jenna all looked up from what they were doing. Danny held up the tie. Dark blue with yellow spots, it was entirely unexceptional, unless you happened to notice the spots were little yellow canaries. "Is this supposed to be some kind of joke?"
"Did you forget and leave it somewhere?" Kono said.
"It's not mine."
"There when I got in." Chin couldn't have been less interested.
"Your birthday was two weeks ago," Jenna said. "Maybe someone felt bad they forgot."
"So bad they forgot the wrapping paper, the ribbon and the card, too?"
She made It's a mystery eyes, and went back to work.
Danny dropped the envelope in a desk drawer, and forgot about it; there were bad guys to catch.
Actually there was the evidence in the Raines case to go over. It was a big case, and a lot of the evidence was technical; consistency in testimony would be crucial.
They were all working on it when Kono got a call on her iPhone. She'd been laying out a point about gunshots echoing in the alley when the phone chimed and she fished it out her pocket. Her fingers slid over the screen. Frowning slightly, she said, "Can we come back to me, later? I need to…check something. " No problem. She hot-footed it to her desk. Chin started passing the photos of where the bullet casings had been found.
A few minutes later, Kono said, "Jenna and come look at this."
Jenna went and leaned over Kono's shoulder, stared at the computer for a few minutes, and then recoiled wide-eyed.
It was the moment Danny should have said, "Something wrong?" but McGarrett blew in from a meeting with the State's Attorney, waving the file in his hand as if it were the Olympic torch. "We got the subpoena!"
It was a coup worthy of applause, and he got it. Looking at him, Danny realized a flock of butterflies was taking residence in his stomach.
"Danno! My office!"
"Go," Chin said. "We can finish this later."
"Close the door, and come over here." McGarrett hitched his chair close to his desk.
Danny closed the door, and checked to see if anyone was paying attention. Jenna was still behind Kono, talking on the phone, but Chin was bending over Kono's other shoulder, looking closely at her laptop. It occurred to Danny to wonder why, if it wasn't girl-type stuff, she hadn't put it on the main screen for them all to see.
"Take a look at this, and tell me if you think it's a plan," McGarrett said.
"You mean there's a chance we'll do it by the book this time?"
"Very funny," McGarrett said, tapping on his keyboard.
Suddenly there were Danger signs on the road ahead. "I didn't mean…"
"What?" McGarrett looked up, innocence shining in his eyes.
"Nothing," Danny said. "Words. Landmines. No difference, really. Missed you this weekend."
McGarrett's smile was a sunrise and Danny caught his breath, wishing guiltily, and not for the first time, that they'd had even one chance to talk since Friday. Any other weekend, but his weekend with Grace.
He went around to the other side of the desk, and took a station where he could see the computer screen clearly. By necessity, this involved being close enough to be ambushed by the smell of Old Spice Lime. Danny found himself swallowing a lot of saliva.
He could feel the heat of McGarrett's bare arm. It moved just a tiny bit closer, ruffling the hair, and a spark jumped, skin to skin; in that instant, Danny's capacity for rational thought was obliterated. Thrills of energy went zinging up the backs of his legs, and all the blood in his body rushed to a central location.
"Whoa," he said, bracing himself with a hand on the desk top. "Think I've just come over queer, all of a sudden."
One of McGarrett's hands gripped the back of a thigh, rejecting any pretense of being there to steady him by crawling up the inseam of his chinos.
"Yeah. I see what you mean."
"That is not fair. Stop that."
"Make me," McGarrett said.
The hand flexed. Danny groaned.
"If you don't stop, I will have to walk out here backwards."
"Yeah?" McGarrett said. "Ain't Payback a bitch."
"Steven, have mercy. Please." Danny begged.
"No. I had a dream last night where I had you ass up on this desk top. I was screwing you through the floor, and you were…" McGarrett wiggled his butt as if he were trying to drill it through the chair seat. "But some of us try to exercise what's known as self-control, and wait for appropriate occasions."
"Couldn't prove it by me," Danny said, and regretted it instantly.
When he got his breath back, he checked to make doubly sure that no one had been looking in their direction. Nope, everyone was totally engrossed at Kono's desk. He leaned closer, and whispered in McGarrett's ear, "I know what you're trying to do, and I concede that there are reasons you may feel justified in…taking those steps. But I'm warning you, I survived Catholic school. All I have to do is keep repeating 'Holy Mary Mother of… God damn it!"
Unfortunately by leaning closer, he'd put temptation in the form of his tie less than an inch from McGarrett's mouth. Danny flipped it out of danger, and danced away flapping at the mouth-shaped wet spots on the silk, as the desk phone shrilled with an in-house call.
"Want to have dinner at my place tonight?" McGarrett said, reaching for the handset.
"I'll bring the beer." Danny said, suddenly bubbling with happiness, even though it was going to be hard—and he didn't regret the pun in the slightest—getting through the rest of the day.
"McGarrett here." McGarrett was cocking back like the stiff hammer on a new pistol. "Yeah, Fryer, what can I do for you?" If there was ever an erection killer, it was everyone's least favorite IA. "What? No!" McGarrett snapped. "When would I have had time? I just got in." He groped for the laser mouse, caught it and launched Outlook, reducing it to an icon in the bottom right corner of the screen. "Why should I pay attention to some…?" An email alert popped up waving a red flag.
The three in the outer office must have sensed the disturbance in the force. Danny noticed heads turning but, just then, his phone pinged to let him know that he had a text message coming in. He took a quick look, and recognized Kamekona's number. The text line said, "don't mean 2 rune ur day brah bu…"
There was more, but McGarrett's ears were turning dark purple. That was a very bad sign.
"Half an hour, Fryer, if you're shitting me…" The tone McGarrett was using meant someone was shortly going to be suffering gross bodily harm. Whatever Fryer said in return caused him to slap the phone down hard in its cradle.
"What's up?" Danny said.
McGarrett's mobile picked that moment to ring. McGarrett tucked it to his ear, while he was clicking on the flagged notice. "Cath? Can I call you back; I've got a situation… Yeah?" The email opened. McGarrett clicked on the link in the body. "Oh, you have."
Something in McGarrett's voice sent shivers up Danny's spine. And not in a good way.
"Someone, please, tell me what's going on," Danny said, as his own phone rang to tell him that the Wicked Witch of the West was on the line. Normally, he would have answered it; except, at that moment, he realized what was playing on McGarrett's computer screen.
It was a YouTube video. The picture quality was poor—pixilated as if it had been taken at a great distance by a phone camera, and blown up—but it was clear enough to see a white Impala pulling off to the side of a four-lane highway…
While Danny stared at the screen open-mouthed, the call went to voicemail.
…and roll to a stop. A tall, dark-haired man in a green tee-shirt got out, slammed the door, and began stamping back and forth along the shoulder of the highway. You didn't have to be fluent in body language to tell he was pissed. Then another man, a short blond guy, got out and chased him. The blond guy obviously had a point to make, and meant to make it, because was he screaming over the noise of the cars whizzing by. And every time Tall-dark-and-pissed turned around, there was Blondie jabbing a finger at his chest, like a wasp trying to sting…
As Danny watched, unconsciously he stuck the knuckle of his index finger in his mouth, and started sucking on it.
…whatever Blondie was saying had got through to Tall-dark-and-pissed, or else TD&P had got tired of being poked, because suddenly he whipped around, grabbed hold of Blondie's tie, and wound it around his fist until he had him body-checked hard against the trunk of the car…
Danny remembered how hot the metal had been.
…Blondie tried to slide away, but TD&P was right up in his face, slamming him back and forth. And then you could tell TD&P really snapped. He hoisted Blondie by the tie. The two just hung there, staring at each other. And then TD&P opened the car door and, using the grip he had on that tie, like an animal trainer, shoved Blondie into the back seat.
After that, it was a lot of shadows that might have been heads and shoulders working around each other, or a knee over the front seat, pretty impossible to tell, until TD&P half backed out of the car, and you could see his pants were down. Flashes of white had to be his buttocks. It didn't need Einstein to figure out what was going on in that car.
And, then YouTube presented them with the opportunity to play it again.
Danny wrapped his arms around himself and moaned.
McGarrett just slumped in his chair with his hand over his mouth.
For the better part of a minute neither of them said a word.
Then Danny said, "Dear God, please, let me get eaten by sharks before Rachel sees that."
McGarrett uncovered his mouth, and started gesturing with both hands, as if he were screwing in opposite light bulbs at the same time. His lips were moving.
"Babe," Danny said. "Stop. There are no words coming out of your mouth."
McGarrett choked and coughed, trying to clear his throat. Finally he husked, "Maybe that will teach you not to go around poking people in the sternum." There was gesturing with the hands. "You can't make out the license plates, or the faces."
"It's had 5,782 hits since 7 o'clock! Get out of the way, and let me see…"
"Stop gibbering. It's my…"
McGarrett retained control of the mouse.
He scrolled quickly through the comments. There were titters about getting a room; remarks about the comfort, or lack thereof, of the backseats of modern cars; backseat puns; backdoor puns; bottom jokes; general homophobic outrage; personal testimonies to the joy of al fresco sex. But, on the first page, the fourth comment, from someone named qute_nerd, said: "Hawaii's Finest shows its finest side.'
McGarrett finished was the list, and started to scroll back again, more slowly. "Could be worse."
"I don't really see how."
"Someone recognized us, but didn't name names."
Then McGarrett stopped scrolling, and highlighted a comment.
Danny made out the words 'unequal', 'power-tripping,' and 'abusive'…someone had been convinced that the video they'd seen had captured a rape.
"Someone's a dick," Danny said. McGarrett didn't answer. Danny put his hand on his shoulder and, regardless of who might be looking, leaned over far enough to see if there were red spots in McGarrett's cheeks. They were the most infallible sign Danny of knew to tell how deeply distressed McGarrett was. Storm signals were flying.
"You knew I'd been trying to get you to make a move for months," he said, squeezing until he felt the quiver of resistant muscle easing. "Tell me that you know that," he ordered.
"I knew. I still shouldn't have let…shouldn't have snapped like that. Danny, you're my subordinate."
"What I am is a grown man, and your partner. And nobody's going to accuse anybody of anything, except me when I catch the jerk that posted that crap."
At that moment, the computer screen suddenly flickered, and the video was replaced by a message saying, "This video content has been removed by YouTube."
"Whoa!" Danny said. "Did you see that? We've been TOS'd."
A second later everything was gone, including the comments. There was nothing on the screen, except an error message.
In the outer office Jenna let a whoop that was quickly suppressed.
"Hope she doesn't get in trouble for that," Danny said.
McGarrett had looked up, pointing like a bird dog, but all heads were down.
"I guess that answers a question that I hadn't gotten around to asking," he said, slumping back, and raking his hand through his hair. "You think everyone in HPD saw that?"
"Probably." Danny, remembering the comments about his tie, was actually certain. "Huff records, Kanē, and Migella…yeah, everyone in the department." He took a quick look at Kamekona's text. "Everyone in Hawaii, too."
"That's ridiculous." McGarrett objected. "The hit count hadn't even reached 6000."
"That doesn't mean there can't be a whole new level of hell." Danny's phone was ringing to tell him that the Wicked Witch of the West was on the line, again. "Excuse me," he said, "I have to take this. And then I may have to go kill myself.
Yes, dear?" He turned away to take the call, but he could feel McGarrett's eyes watching him the entire time. When it was over, he turned around, and said, "That was a reprieve from the governor. Rachel wanted to know if I can pick up Grace after school."
"So, at least one person hasn't seen it."
"Yes. And it's the one that makes me feel 100% less awful about the rest. The rest I can deal with."
McGarrett was looking past him.
"I hope you're telling the truth, because the shit's about to hit the fan."
Fryer was coming through the outer office, cruising like a great white.
"I thought I could feel my thumbs prickling," Danny said, and backed against the wall
Without even a pretense of a knock, Fryer opened the door and walked in.
"Commander McGarrett and Detective Williams. I was hoping to catch you two boys together."
Danny turned the corners of his mouth up. McGarrett said, "I'm sure you were. What is it you had to come all this way to ask me, Fryer?"
Fryer said, looking from one them to the other. "What do two wrongs make?"
"A right!" Danny said. "No. I remember, that's wrong."
"Shut your mouth, Williams," Fryer said, "and you might keep your job."
Danny shut his mouth.
"I'm not in the mood for games," McGarrett said. "So why don't you just tell us?"
"A deal, is what it makes. You watched the vid?"
"Yes."
"What did you think?"
"Hard to tell. Very bad picture quality. Might be a case of indecent exposure, but that's a Class 1 misdemeanor, at best. Have any complaints been filed?"
Danny was impressed. McGarrett must have been boning up on the criminal code. And, other than still being croaky as a frog, he sounded as calm as a clam at high tide; totally in Active Operations Analytical Mode. But, keeping cool in a crisis is what being a Navy SEAL is all about.
"No complaints have been filed." Fryer looked expectant. They looked back. "Ask me where it came from."
McGarrett sighed. "Where did it come from?"
"Downstairs."
There was a moment and McGarrett started to smile. "I see."
"I don't," said Danny said.
"Then get lost," Fryer said. "Or go do some work. Work is the only true panacea there is, and I expect you've had a rough morning." He must have thought Danny was looking at him funny. Danny was. "I read it in a fortune cookie. Want to make something of it?"
"No!"
"Then get out! I have some horse-trading to do with your boss."
Danny got.
The door blinds snapped shut behind him.
In front of him three pairs of sympathetic eyes looked up from the main screen. They were waiting for him. It was his call. He put his hands up wide open. "Do I own the intarwebs, or what?"
"Or what!"
"Not even close!"
"Come on, brah! The one-legged Chihuahua got over 12 million hits!"
On the way to his desk, he kept his hands up and bowed left and right, most deeply to Jenna. Kono and Chin both hugged him. It was still hard to get back to work.
Twenty minutes later, Fryer and McGarrett walked out of McGarrett's office, and left together. Wherever they were going, McGarrett didn't look happy about, but at least the storm flags were down.
The rest of the day sucked almost as hard. It was bearable because he knew he had friends at his back and, for a change, it was a peaceful day in Paradise. 5-0 went to lunch together, presenting a united front. But when they got, there were eight ties looped over the doorknob.
Chin gripped him by the elbow. "Don't let the assholes see they're getting to you. They'll give it up eventually. Trust me, I'm speaking from experience."
"How long?"
"Six months. A year."
"You're kidding me."
"Some of them are flirting," Kono said, removing the ties and unlocking the door.
"Now I know you're kidding me."
"Nope." She handed him the ties. "I'd say the spoils are yours, but don't wear them to work, unless you're seriously looking for a date."
"Why don't they pick on McGarrett?"
"He's no surprise. Around here, everyone knows about sailors, and SEALs are even more so. But you've always seemed so…."
"Straight?"
"Yes."
"And," Jenna added, "look how well picking on McGarrett worked out for you."
He stared at her shocked. The smile she gave him was compassionate, and the wink that went with it reminded him that everyone—everyone—in Hawaii 5-0 had a past. He realized that he'd misplaced his equilibrium; suddenly everything, and everybody was suspect.
And, the truth was, she had a point.
If he had shut his mouth at any time before McGarrett had slammed him against that trunk. Or opened it any time after, before the zippers came down, and said something like, "Wouldn't this be more fun in bed?" the world as he knew it would not be ending. Part of it had been being , seeing McGarrett make that insane jump…but, nonetheless, maybe he needed to reconsider which one of them was the hotheaded idiot.
McGarrett didn't call. There was a one word text. It said later.
Driving to pick up Grace from school, Danny took his tie off and shoved it in the glove compartment. Grace made no objection when he suggested going to Ferrell's for ice cream. She had a hot-fudge sundae with extra cherries; he had two scoops of black raspberry. He did it because it was fun. He did it because he loved his daughter. He did it because he knew how very much it would annoy Rachel; it was a petty thing to do; he was in a petty mood.
After dropping Grace off, the rest of the evening was his to do with whatever he liked.
That turned out to be sitting on the fold-out sofa in the dark, with a half-eaten pizza in an open box on the coffee table, drinking beer, and trying to come to terms with the fact that something he'd desperately wanted had probably died before it had even had a chance to take a breath.
So what if he hadn't been sure the attraction was mutual. All he would have had to do was say, "Wanna fuck?" McGarrett would have said, "No. Did you file for a search warrant on that warehouse?" And life, with a slight adjustment to his masturbatory fantasies, would have gone on.
Instead, he'd nagged, and pushed, and prodded, until McGarrett had been driven to violate what Danny knew was a very personal, but profoundly felt, sense of order and righteousness. There would have been a price to pay, even if they hadn't been caught on video. But they might have worked it out. Not now. Now everything was going down in flame and ashes, with two free sides of public humiliation and professional embarrassment.
At 9:20 there was a knock on the door.
When he opened it, McGarrett was leaning against the frame, wiping his face with the hem of his sweat-stained tee-shirt. The streetlight's sodium glare didn't help, but whatever the man had been doing had involved dirt. A lot of dirt.
"You look like you've been to hell and back," Danny said.
"That's about it. You look like you've been crying."
"No. Seriously. Just sitting around in the dark, feeling sorry for myself, and sniveling a little."
"Good," McGarrett said. That was all. They stood there; McGarrett outside; Danny inside. McGarrett scratched a mosquito bite on his arm. "I could use a beer."
"Come on."
While McGarrett threw himself on of the couch, and put his feet up on the coffee table, Danny got a couple of Long Boards out of the fridge. He popped the tops and sat down at the other end of the couch. He handed a bottle to McGarrett, who inhaled half of it in one gulp, and then began rubbing the chilled glass over his face and neck.
Danny sat at the other end and watched until he let his head drop on the back of the couch. "You okay?"
"No. That was hell."
"Tell me the worst."
"Fryer grabbed my ass."
"Don't joke," Danny said. "Tell me the worst."
"That was the worst."
"Oh!" Danny looked sideways at McGarrett. "You didn't have to…?"
"No. Don't. I wouldn't do that. That was the worst."
"So what's the deal?"
"Friday night, Narcotics takes down a pot farm. It was in the woods on the other side of that field by the highway. Big deal. Practically agribusiness. The video we saw was on a phone seized as evidence. Someone reviews it, identifies you, and me, and shows it to this rookie tech on whom he has a huge crush. Rookie tech, now fired tech, by the way, thinks it's cute to post."
"Thus compromising the whole chain of evidence," Danny finished for him.
"Uh-uh. There wasn't else much else on the phone, so the deal is, if we don't say anything, Narcotics will see it stays buried."
"Mutually assured destruction, in other words."
"Exactly. Anybody hassles anybody, Fryer audits them."
"Why would Fryer, of all people, broker a deal like that?"
McGarrett didn't bother lifting his head off the couch, just turned it and squinted at Danny. "Who's in charge of Narco?
"Kalama. The Incredible Hulk."
"Do I have to spell it out?"
"No, don't spell it out. I've learned a lot of things today, but I'd appreciate if you didn't spell it out. Save it for another day." Danny surveyed McGarrett sitting in the orange glow coming in the window. The tee-shirt and cargos were plastered to his skin. "Pardon me for mentioning, but you know you smell like you've been running a marathon? What have you been doing?"
"Defusing IEDs around the perimeter of the pot farm."
"Kalama's not going to drag Five-0 into all his dirty jobs from now on, is he?"
"No," McGarrett said. "But, Danny, I can't be in that position again. Can't ever let you do that to me."
"I know." Here it was; pretty much what he'd expected.
McGarrett reached over. The index finger of his left hand was pointing at Danny. Since it was going to be the last time, Danny reached back. Their fingers touched; something warm and heavy slid off of McGarrett's and on to his. He held it up close so he could see. It was a ring. It looked like a brushed steel band with a tiny carbon fiber rope set in a groove around the middle.
"Is this…?
"Yes."
"Are you…?"
"Yes."
The earth suddenly tilted on its axis.
Danny took the ring off of his index finger and pushed it firmly onto the third finger of his left hand.
McGarrett sat up, scooted over, pulled his legs up on the couch and snuggled into Danny's arms, as if he had a perfect right to impose his stinky self anywhere he wanted to. "Got any arguments?" he murmured sleepily into Danny's shoulder.
"No arguments." Danny kissed the top of his head.
It would take some getting used to but, despite the tilt, the earth was still spinning.
TAZ: 03/24/2012