TITLE: How Danny Fought the Groove Back
AUTHOR: Paradoqz
SHOW: Hawaii 5-O
ARCHIVE: Please ask.
DISCLAIMER: Main characters mentioned belong to CBS. No profit is being made.
The only thing that feels normal about Hawaii, to Danny, is Chin. There is no weather, everybody dresses like a skater and he's trapped working for a lunatic who treats the job as if he was still clearing the Taliban out of Kabul.
The irony of a New Jersey cop complaining about anyone approaching policing in a manner of occupying army is not lost on Danny. But it's all just so… retarded. This is not how police work is done. Carte blanche from the Governor, latest tech on demand, everything done under the wire, gunplay and fucking car chases every other day – Danny has bulled his way to Detective from a beat cop over the better part of two decades. He hasn't been in a single fucking car chase until he met Steve motherfucking McGarrett.
Everything about this island is shiny and insane.
Kona is a rookie. Ridiculously hot, alarmingly talented - but still a rookie.
Steve (who is one more 'Danno' away from being re-christened Steverino) is stuck in a job slot for which he is not equipped and he doesn't even realize it. He is probably very good at doing whatever the hell it was he was trained to do at the secret hollowed out volcano in a shape of a skull base where they made him from the spare parts of Marines and mutant shark-octopi.
But they are not chasing down mass-murdering lunatics with a suitcase nuke or a canister of poison gas through the backyards of Baghdad. They are building cases. Catching bad guys is barely half of the job. Steve still doesn't get that.
Governor's helping hand will only stretch so far, and one day soon a gun-runner, or a dope-peddler or some sicko rapist is going to walk, after the jury hears about witnesses being thrown to the sharks to get the information. Or dangled from a roof. Or slow-roasted with a blow-torch, or whatever the fuck else his maniac boss is going to pull next. And after a few more convictions fall apart, the DA office (whose boss is angling for the Governor's job anyway) will simply stop bothering prosecuting cases they don't think they'll be able to win.
At which point Steve is going to get dropped-kicked back to the Navy and Danny will be utterly fucked. He has to stay in Hawaii, to stay near Gracie. But no cop in Honolulu will ever work with him. Not after his little sojourn with H50 put the Mark of fucking Cain on his ass.
And Danny knows all about the length of cop memories. He gives it half a year – tops - after the team is disbanded and he has to apply for a transfer back to the mainland. It's one of the reasons he is wary at best about all the cool toys. Frankly, he's afraid to get used to them. And also… well, he's sort of homesick.
A year ago, when (in the middle of the snowstorm icing the Holland into a freezing hell) the idea of moving to Hawaii seemed like a no-lose proposition, if anyone would have told him that he was going to miss the overcrowded precinct, the indescribable miasma of sweat, caffeine, vomit and depression, the cramped room full of overworked alpha personalities, and enough backlog paperwork to bury a small elephant… Well, he probably would have believed them.
Still, he misses Jersey. Real pizza. Watching the Nets lose. Cursing out the tourists lost on the way to the City – although, actually, the lack of love for the visitors is pretty strong on the island too. Except, of course, he is the tourist now.
Being the tourist blows.
But Danny is never giving up his tie and the rest of them can just go fuck themselves.
Chin is the only one who truly understands the situation. He's the only real cop in the crew, after all. Almost from the start he's been quietly backing Danny up, as they paper over the cracks, beg, steal, lie and generally exploit every shortcut of the system to cover for Steve. Both understand that it won't work forever, of course.
They don't talk about it.
But on Thursday nights, they bail on Kona and Steve, go down to a small Irish pub that Danny stumbled over his second week on the island (when he was hopelessly lost and ended up circling half the city looking for his hotel). And they drink Guinness, eat bad wings and swap old cop stories.
"Enjoy it while it lasts," Chin tells him. Just once and seemingly out of the blue.
But it doesn't work like that, not for Danny. Not for Gracie's Dad. He can't really do shit about the avalanche that he sees nearing them all every day, but he can't really tune it out either. So he stresses. Because that's how he copes.
And in between of it all he slowly begins to get used to the madness. Maybe Kona was right – it all kind of began to gel after they got labeled. Although the jokes about H50 and the amount of water surrounding the island get old fast.
Still, life happens, while he is not paying attention. Grace makes friends. His ex-wife drains another part of his soul every day. He hangs out with Mary Ann, whom he likes quite a bit, even after he realizes in the middle of her download on her brother that shes trying to give him advice on asking out her brother.
Kona actually laughs herself off the barstool when he finally groks it. And then she takes him home. And that too feels right.