Black Widow

The Five-0 officers, along with Chin's wife, Malia, and Danny's girlfriend, Gabby, had gathered to watch the new Avengers on DVD on the big screen at headquarters. (It was after hours!)

Kono had laid a bet with Malia that the guys would start an argument about who was which character. Now the credits were rolling toward the shawarma scene and she wasn't sure whether she'd won or not, because Danny was arguing that Steve was all of them.

"Super SEAL is as good as the whole team," Danny teased.

"Thanks for the flattery, but I'm still not authorized to grant pay raises," Steve said dryly. "That's up to the governor."

Danny, being Danny, wouldn't back down from his position, even if it meant complimenting his partner.

"Look, you've got to give me Captain America," Danny begged the others. "He's named Steve!"

"Patriotic military man. Served his country," Chin said judiciously.

"And super buff," Kono added with a twinkle in her eye.

"OK, we'll give you that one," Chin decided.

"Then Hawkeye — sniper. Hello!" Danny said.

The other officers nodded. Steve was damned good with a rifle; they all knew that.

"That's a given," Kono agreed.

"And Hulk, that's obvious," said Danny, who was half a foot shorter than his partner.

"Only to you," Steve retorted, but Malia and Gabby — who weren't tall either — shook their heads emphatically. "We agree with Danny," Gabby said firmly.

"They've got you there, boss," Kono giggled.

Steve gave them a mock Hulk scowl, which made them all laugh.

"I don't know about Iron Man, Danny," Kono said. "Although Steve is awfully good with high tech and pretty inventive." She remembered Steve using dust from a vacuum cleaner to expose a latent fingerprint.

"And he's rich," Danny said, trying to not sound sour about it.

Steve had a house he'd inherited, two cars and two incomes from the Navy and Five-0. To Danny, who'd been taken to the cleaners by his ex-wife and was fighting an uphill battle to start over in overpriced Oahu, his partner seemed to be rolling in it.

None of his friends would argue this point with Danny. It would be too cruel.

"And I so deserve that raise," Danny muttered. (And Steve agreed, but state budget cuts meant the governor wasn't giving raises to anyone.)

Steve gripped his partner's shoulder. "Genius, playboy, billionaire, philanthropist — I can live with that."

"How about Thor?" Malia asked.

"Super buff again," Kono said.

"And overfond of thunderous explosions," Danny insisted.

Chin remembered deafening explosions in a cramped bunker and voted with Danny. He wiggled his finger in his ear and cracked. "I still get ringing in my ears."

"OK, OK, but I just can't give you the last one. I can't be Black Widow. She's a girl," Steve argued.

"You say that as if it's a bad thing," Kono said in ominous tones.

"No," Steve said hastily. "I'm just saying I don't qualify."

Danny slapped his partner on his flat, muscular chest. "He's underqualified," Danny joked, getting a groan from the rest of the party and punch in the shoulder from Gabby.

"But Steve is deadly," Kono pointed out. "He knows all those martial arts moves."

"And he's been on secret missions, maybe even assassinations," Danny said.

"I can neither confirm nor deny," Steve smirked.

"And, heaven knows, he wears a lot of black," Danny added, gesturing at Steve's current ensemble, black shirt open over a black tank top with dark gray pants and black boots.

"Black Widow," Gabby and Malia agreed.

Steve shook his head. "Still don't qualify," he said adamantly.

"Black Widow-Maker," Chin joked, then realized that wasn't really funny, when you thought about it.

Steve kept his eyes focused on the end credits, refusing to meet anyone else's gaze.

"I can neither confirm nor deny," he said somberly.

Danny couldn't let the evening end on a downer.

"OK, Steve wins this point," he conceded. "But I win the argument. One Super SEAL equals the whole team of Avengers."

Like a flash, Steve argued back that he won because "all" means "all," not five-sixths of the Avengers. The partners wrangled cheerfully while their friends laughed.

"You gotta admit, Steve would totally rock the Black Widow outfit," Danny said with mischief in his eyes.

Kono was willing to play straight man, er, woman. "You mean, a black shirt and tight black pants," she said with a lascivious grin, overtly eying her boss' butt and making everyone laugh.

"No," Danny answered. "I was thinking about the high heels and low cut dress."

And then he ran for it.