Title: it started with a whisper (and that was when i kissed her)
Author's Note: Thanks so much for your comments. :) Hope everyone's doing wonderful!
She remembers the date and drives to Chin's house to find him passed out on the couch, a bottle of bourbon on the coffee table as she expected. He doesn't drink often, but when he does, it's always the hard stuff. She sighs and does nothing more than sit next to him, stroking his hair and reassuring herself that he's still breathing, even if he's nearly passed out.
The mantle above the fireplace has the pictures still up - Chin and Malia at the beach, Chin and Malia at their wedding, a group shot of the wedding party, Malia with her parents... so much Malia, her smile so radiant in the pictures that Kono has to force herself to look away. Her bag is still in the corner, a pair of her heels underneath the couch, her folders neatly organized on the table as she'd watch the evening news while reviewing patient files.
Kono sighs as she sees Chin struggle to sit up and open his eyes. "You really need to move, cuz."
Chin only nods and closes his eyes again.
"Where's Chin?" Danny asks the next morning when she arrives at the crime scene alone.
"He's not feeling well," Kono says feebly and Danny looks like he doesn't believe her for a second. Because, seriously? A common cold keeping the great Chin Ho Kelly in bed for a day?
Yeah, it sounds pretty stupid even to her.
"Yesterday was Malia's birthday," she elaborates sadly.
Danny merely nods, the empathy on his face so clear that it takes all of Kono's strength not to hug him and let herself cry on his shoulder.
He exchanges a quick glance with Steve, the two of them communicating without words in that way that they do. Although, Kono and Chin do it too, so it's an even playing field. "You two start on the case, I'll drop by his place with some breakfast."
"Thanks, Danny," Kono calls after him as he walks to his car, waving away her gratitude because that's just who Danny is. She turns to look at Steve, the two of them lost for words as the reminder of tragedy hits them in the middle of an ordinary Monday morning. It's ninety degrees outside but she suddenly feels so eerily cold.
"You okay?" Steve asks, his gaze roaming over her face, at the loss of light in her eyes, at the way her hair blows in the wind.
"I'm fine," she answers but she can't seem to make herself turn away from him. This is a man who understands about loss all too well. "It just doesn't make sense. He made the right choice, he went to her, but he lost her anyway." Sometimes the injustice of it makes her feel so empty inside.
"He made a choice, Kono," Steve emphasizes, and she watches as a spark flares in his eyes. "It was the right one for him, but I don't think choosing to save you could ever be wrong."
She tells herself it's due to a particularly bright ray of sunshine that causes the tears to form in her eyes.
"Thanks, Boss," she whispers.
They're at Steve's place for a team barbeque when Kono glances up from the Bourne movie on TV to realize everyone seems to have left. She hears the sound of Steve's voice and gets up from the couch to follow it to the deck outside.
"Yes, Mary Ann, I'm fine. Glad you liked your birthday present," he's saying into the phone as Kono sneaks up behind him. Well, tries to. He hears her footsteps before she can even step onto the deck and turns to face her with a raised eyebrow as if to say, really? "Tell Mom I'll pick her up at the airport on Wednesday if I don't have a case."
"Where is everyone?" she asks once he's exchanged goodbyes with his sister.
"Gone. Chin got tired of you saying 'five more minutes' for the movie to end, and Danny had to drop Grace off."
"It's a trilogy, I had to watch them all," she says, defending the last four hours of her life.
"You know the job is nothing like that in real life, right?" Steve tells her in that patronizing tone he uses when he knows more about top secret missions and issues of national security than he can let on. It pisses her and Danny off so much.
"You mean, Matt Damon's portrayal of chasing bad guys around the world and embarking on secret missions is too sexy to be true? How is it in real life?" she questions curiously.
"Sexier," he says with a wink.
"That was your mom?" she asks quickly, trying to squash the bolt of lust that runs through her veins. Mothers are definitely near the top on the list of topics on How to Kill the Sexual Tension With Your Boss and Kill It Quick.
"Yeah. She flew to LA to be with Mary for a week."
"She's just calling to make sure you ate all your dinner," Kono teases as she leans against the railing to take in the breathtaking ocean view. It's a ridiculous thought, but it's as if he owns his own piece of the beach; it's not tainted by tourists or litter or half-built sandcastles that are abandoned midway when children become bored. There's just the sun and the sand, the waves free to flirt with the shoreline without beach chairs and plastic toys getting in the way.
"Cute."
"She wants to make sure you go to bed on time. It's a school night, after all," Kono adds with a smirk.
He comes to stand beside her and she struggles not to notice how vividly the color of his eyes match the ocean behind him.
She fails and notices anyway.
"You know, the living with your mom teasing is really getting old," Steve grumbles as he elbows her playfully in the side.
"Not for Danny and I."
Steve rolls his eyes at that. "Of course. You meet up and pick your lines for the week?"
"Every Sunday. He brings the donuts, I make the coffee."
Steve grins. "That I believe cause he makes shit coffee."
Kono drops the line of conversation as the sudden sound of a wave crashing fills the air. "You have an amazing view," she tells him.
"Yeah, I know." He's staring right at her and she knows the smart thing to do right now would be to head to the front door and leave without looking back.
But only if she can manage to pull herself away from his eyes. Only if he would stop taking steps closer to her, so close now that she can clearly see the beautiful angle of his jawline, the way his long lashes touch the skin of his cheek. She inhales the scent of him; it's a mix of the ocean, his aftershave, and the promise of great passion.
"What are you doing?" she asks, breathless as she stands fixed in her spot, unable to move, unable to do anything but look at him.
"I don't know," he answers honestly, his hands clenching, then relaxing as if to physically stop himself from reaching for her. "What are you doing?"
"I don't know," she says with a shrug.
When he pulls her to him and their lips finally meet, she thinks to herself about time, then she stops thinking at all.
She wakes up the next morning cuddled next to Steve, his breathing heavy as he sleeps. The exhale of his breath brushing her bare shoulder feels so intimate that goosebumps erupt on her skin at the sensation.
It makes her feel ready for a round two, which is completely out of the question.
And she can't blame it on alcohol because she only had soda to drink last night.
Kono takes one second (well, maybe four) to enjoy the view of a disheveled Steve, his hair standing every which way, the stubble on his jaw seeming darker than usual against the contrast of white pillows. She remembers the way it had felt last night brushing against the curve of her jaw, the sensitive skin of of her neck... and those thoughts have to stop right there because she had slept with her boss and this is not going to end well.
Not that anything's even started in the first place.
Holding her breath, she climbs out of bed and reaches for her shorts and shirt on the floor, the clothes thrown off frantically as they had made their way upstairs. She's desperately running her fingers through her hair when she turns to find him awake and staring at her, merely lifting an eyebrow as she jumps in surprise.
The silence is deafening so she breaks it first.
"I'm gonna go. Cause this is bad. We shouldn't have... I mean, we work together and it'll just mess everything up. And..." He hasn't added anything to the conversation yet so she continues to babble aimlessly. "I don't know what I was thinking. I must have been drunk or something."
"You weren't drunk."
"Then you were drunk."
"I wasn't drunk," he counters smoothly.
"Well, it was still a bad idea!" she cries as she heads for the door, the panic in her rising and threatening to spill over.
What is she going to tell Chin? Of course she's not going to tell Chin. And he's not going to tell Danny. He better not. And what if things are awkward at work? What if every time she looks at her boss, all she can see is the way he'd kissed her with ease, the way he pushed her hair back with something similar to reverence on his face, the moan he'd let out when she nibbled on his ear.
"Let's forget all about this and not tell anyone," she orders.
"Kono..." He makes a move as if to leave the bed and approach her, but she puts up a hand to stop him.
"Don't. I'm going to go home and you're going to stay here, and we'll go back to normal and pretend it never happened, got it?"
She leaves the room before he can answer.
It's really hard to pretend it never happened when he keeps looking at her like he's seen her naked.
Which, technically, he has.
"So, Steve and I will talk to the wife and I guess you two had better do your computer whiz thing and pull up his bank activity. In my experience, there's only one good reason to rob a bank and that's if you need the cash," Danny declares.
"You know that from your experience robbing banks?" Kono asks with a grin.
"Ha, ha, the rookie's feeling funny today," Danny says back.
"Actually, Danno, I have a meeting with the Governor so I need to go back to the office. I'll go with Kono, and you and Chin meet us once you've talked to the family," Steve announces.
Kono tries not to show her annoyance at his change of plans, especially not in front of Chin and Danny. She follows him like the professional she is, but she may have slammed the car door harder than necessary.
"This isn't suspicious at all," she says sarcastically as they pull away from the crime scene.
"Relax, Kono. It's not suspicious, we work together."
"My point exactly," she emphasizes as she turns to look at him. He is looking way too damn smug and relaxed about this whole situation unlike her and her jumbled nerves and rising panic.
Good to know the mind-blowing sex from a few nights ago has brightened his mood even if it's sent her into anxiety mode.
"I don't get the big deal," Steve says with a shrug.
"The big deal is that I don't want anyone to think I got the job by sleeping with my boss," she says testily.
"Oh, come on, Kono, that's bullshit. You got the job cause we needed you and you're damn good at it. That was years ago and that's not the real reason you're freaking out," he says looking straight at her so she can't escape his gaze.
"Let's not do this, okay?"
"I want to know what you're thinking, Kono," Steve demands. "We can at least talk about this instead of-"
"Look, Steve, I don't know what you want from me-"
"I just want you."
She stares at him in silence and she's so tempted to reach across the aisle and grab him by the shirt, to pull him in for another of those breathless kisses she remembers from the other night, to make a dirty innuendo, to run her fingers through his hair and down his cheek, to answer with I want you too.
But all she can think of is how awkward it's going to be when this inevitably ends. How they won't be able to laugh the same way at work or roll their eyes at Danny and his comments, how she sucks at relationships and they won't be able to stand each other after the fallout, and how she'd rather have Steve be a part of her life in some limited capacity than not have him in it at all.
"I can't. I'm sorry, but I can't."
He nods and looks away from her, clenching his jaw as he turns his attention back to the road and they continue the drive to HQ in silence.
"Thought you had a meeting with the Governor," Chin comments later when he and Danny walk in.
Steve looks startled for a second then quickly hides his expression with the wave of a hand. "Oh, right. That's tomorrow, I got the days mixed up," he lies as he avoids Kono's gaze.
It's not awkward around Steve now, but it's certainly not back to normal either.
Before, Kono never paid much attention to the little things. She saw how involved he'd get in cases, but she never noticed the wrinkle between his brows that would appear after he'd stare at the smart screen for too long, or how his eyes would fill with sadness and when he went to deliver news of loss after they'd IDed a victim. She never noticed the way his face would light up when Mary sent him a text during the day, or how he'd rub his hands over his face when he was tired but he would never admit it to Danny.
Well, maybe she had always noticed but she had never truly appreciated those things like she did now.
She noticed the lean muscles of his shoulder under his t-shirt, and she'd remember the way his chest had cradled her head at night when she'd fallen asleep. Their fingertips would graze as she handed him paperwork, and she'd remember how loudly she'd moaned and how he'd muttered her name as her legs wrapped around him, how her hands had clutched his neck to hold him in place.
She didn't want to remember, but she didn't want to forget either.
The problem was that as much as she wanted to give in, she saw the problems down the line. She had to look ahead. Work would get messy, Chin would be pissed, Danny would choose his side, she wouldn't be able to see Grace anymore, Mary Ann wouldn't talk to her, Kamekona would ask questions. She'd have to find a new family. They've allowed this group of people around them to become a part of their lives. Kono's the first to admit she never saw it coming when she met the guys on the beach that first day, but it works for them and she doesn't want to do anything to jeopardize that.
So, yeah, sure, she's having visions of him above her and the way he'd cradled her chin as he kissed her, and how his fingers had run through her hair, and the way his mouth had lingered at the side of her neck just to hear her moan again.
Him, on the other hand? He seems to be doing perfectly fine.
That bastard.