Pehea wau i ʻike ai i kou makuahine

Based on the characters and stories of Hawaii Five-0.

Hawaii Five-0 is owned by CBS and their respective creators.


"Did anyone else listen to the chatter that got sent over from intel?" Decker asked as he, Caroline, and Catherine poured over files spread across a conference room table. "Word is that Asad is planning on moving his operations from Afghanistan to Syria."

Catherine leaned back and groaned as she rubbed her eyes. They had been going at it for hours. If the three of them together were Captain Ahab, Asad Al-Laja was their Moby Dick. "If he gets out of Afghanistan, there's no way the DOD will greenlight an op that crosses the Syrian border."

"Well, there's no intel that supports greenlighting an op in Afghanistan either. If we can't find out where his compound is, we can't get operators in to wrap him up." Caroline argued.

Jude sauntered in and dropped a fresh stack of files to their growing pile. Catherine looked up at him, "Please tell me you have good news."

He just shook his head and took a seat beside Decker, "Wish I did, Princess. But without a lock on Asad's location or at least an idea of where the compound is, we can't go in."

"What about a drone? Get aerials? Use a satellite?"

Decker piped up, "You're talking about flying a drone over two hundred and fifty thousand square miles of terrain and hoping we catch something that looks even remotely like Asad's operation. Even using a satellite- someone would have to go through all that footage manually. It would take years."

Caroline stabbed her pen into her mess of curls and sighed, "Looks like we're back to the drawing board. How do we smoke him out?"

"Excuse me, I'm looking for Lieutenant Rollins."

Four heads turned towards the scrawny intern standing in the doorway. Catherine rolled her chair away from the conference table, "What can I do for you?"

"These are from Senator Taylor's office, ma'am." The boy handed over an excessively big bouquet of roses that was wider than his shoulders.

Catherine laughed nervously as she tried to hide the embarrassment creeping across her face. "Um, thank you." She scribbled her name across the delivery notice and handed it back to him. The team waited until the conference room door was shut to berate her with their taunts.

Jude and Decker immediately exploded into a rousing rendition of "Catherine and the Senator sitting in a tree" while Caroline snatched the card out of the bouquet and read it aloud as if she were reading a sonnet by The Bard, "Catherine- The beauty of these roses pales in comparison to you. In case it wasn't clear, this is me hitting on you. Still hoping you'll call. Donovan."

Her face matched the deep red of the roses as she grabbed the card out of Caroline's hand and shoved it in her purse. "You three have no sense of boundaries."

"C'mon, Rollins. Give him a shot." Decker grinned, "What's the harm?"

Catherine rolled her eyes, "The harm is that I'm not interested and I don't want to get involved with someone like that!"

"Someone like what?" Caroline chimed in.

She threw her hands in the air, "He's a sexy bachelor-Senator with a degree from Harvard. He's probably got a new girl on his arm every night of the week. He seems like the kind of man who would talk you into dropping your panties in a coat closet at a party and dole out orgasms like dinner mints."

Caroline raised her hand, "I don't think you're making the discouraging point that you think you are because from your description, he seems like he'd be a hell of a lot of fun. Hell, I might go after him."

Catherine shoved the bouquet towards her, "Be my guest."

"At least give the poor guy a call." Jude reasoned, "You pulled a Cinderella and disappeared on him at the meet and greet. Least you can do is prop up his fragile ego and say thank you."

"Fragile ego my ass…" She grumbled, "Why do I have to call him? I didn't call you after you brought me flowers to my house."

Jude grinned, "Yeah, but I got mine."

Decker's chocolate complexion turned ghostly white and Caroline smacked her hands on the table, "YOU FINALLY DID IT?!" She exclaimed.

"NO!" Catherine shouted as she leveled Jude a look so hot it could sear a steak, "Shut your mouth, Beckett."

Jude snickered and leaned over, placing a smacking kiss on her mouth, "There you go, Princess. My lips are sealed." He winked.

Catherine smacked his chest and shoved him away. Just by looking at them, Decker and Caroline could tell that the fight was more foreplay than fury. "Jude and I did NOT sleep together." She clarified as she fished her phone out of her bag. She rummaged around the bottom of the bag until she found the business card Donovan had given her. Glaring at the three stooges around the table, she stabbed the number into her phone and waited.

Caroline mouthed, "Put it on speaker!" Catherine rolled her eyes, but complied.

"Senator Taylor."

Catherine bit back a smirk. Foregoing the polite 'hello', she opted for, "I thought you said Senator Taylor made you sound stuffy."

Donovan chuckled, "Catherine Rollins, to what do I owe the pleasure?"

"I just got an obnoxious bouquet of roses delivered to me at work. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you, Donovan?"

"There's more where that came from, Sweetheart. Besides, if I kept having them delivered to your house, you would have just continued ignoring me."

Catherine caught a glimpse of Jude's raised eyebrow, "You're a hard man to ignore, Taylor."

"And you're incredibly stubborn." He chuckled, "Has anyone ever told you that?"

Steve's face flashed through her mind, "More than a few times." She smiled.

"At the risk of sounding like a complete asshole, I do have a meeting to get to. But if I called you back at this number, would you answer?"

A flirtatious smile flickered at the corner of her mouth, "Depends how stubborn I'm feeling."

"If you're planning on being stubborn, just know that I'm planning on being relentless." He warned. Donovan was firm, but his words were laced with playfulness.

"Goodbye, Senator." She smiled as she ended the call.


"So, um… That trip you went on…" Lynn began as she settled onto the couch beside Steve, "How did everything turn out?"

He stretched his arm across her shoulders and flipped through the TV, "Fine."

"Just fine?"

Steve glanced down at her, "Yeah. Fine."

Lynn looked down at her hands, "How was Catherine? Must've been important if she left the Red Cross and flew all the way from Asia just to come and get you."

"She's fine."

His one word answers were poking at her last nerve. "Steve, I told you I don't want to be a rebound. I made that clear."

He sighed, "You're not a rebound. She and I… we haven't been together for a long time now." Steve looked down and studied the lines around her eyes. He kicked himself for lying to her, but the truth would hurt more than the lie. "C'mere." He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her into his side, "Hey. You know I'm glad we're giving this a shot, right?"

"Are you?" She looked up at him, "Because ever since you got back, you've been really closed off."

His lopsided grin eased the tension between them, "Don't go all shrink on me, Downey."

Lynn giggled, "You're the only man I've ever met that would call a woman by her last name."

Steve offered a sheepish shrug, "Military."

"I'm your girlfriend. Not your SEAL buddy." She reminded him.

"Yes, ma'am." He chuckled and lifted her chin until his lips were closing in on hers, "Trust me, Lynn. You're a hell of a lot prettier than the boys in Teams."


Catherine slid the lock back on her equipment cage and twisted the combination dial. She grabbed her bag and made a beeline for the door. Her brain was fried and it was only Tuesday.

Leftover ragu and then a glass of wine and chapter of a book while soaking her troubles away in a bubble bath - that was the plan. Decker had corralled Jude into a boys night and for that, she was grateful. A quiet night in was exactly what she wanted. Maybe after more than five hours of sleep she'd have an epiphany of how to catch Asad Al-Laja. One could only hope, right?

She swung the locker room door open and ran straight into a suit. "Fuck!"

Donovan chuckled, "We meet again." He offered her a paper cup with a lid, "For you."

Catherine stammered, "Oh, I, um, it's late…."

"It's decaf."

Cautiously, she took it out of his hand, "Thank you."

Donovan fell in line beside her as they walked through the quiet halls of Langley, "Heading home for the night?"

She glanced behind her, checking for a tail, "If I can make it out of the building without running into my handler, that is."

He chuckled, "You don't sound like you're a fan."

"You ever met Andrew Coen?"

Donovan sputtered on his own coffee and laughed, "I have had the misfortune, yes." He glanced around to make sure they were out of earshot before adding on, "He's an asshole."

Somehow, hearing him call Coen an asshole made her tensed shoulders relax, "He is, isn't he?" Warm pressure met her back and she realized it had originated from Donovan's hand. "So, let me guess. You just happened to be here and had an extra coffee?"

He flashed his campaign trail smile at her, "I told you I was going to be relentless. And I figured it'd erase the whole spilling coffee on you debacle from my record." He paused and held a door open for her, "How am I doing?"

Catherine took another sip as they walked through the parking garage, "You may be redeeming yourself."

"Had to get creative since you refuse to call me or answer my calls."

"I'm a busy woman, Senator."

He gave her space as she unlocked her Corvette and tossed her bags in the passenger's seat. "Catherine, I'd like to take you on a date." She leaned on the open car door and hesitated to acknowledge his request. Donovan continued, "One date. Let me wow you."

"Donovan, I'm flattered, really…." She sighed with a smile, "But I'm not interested."

"Then you have nothing to lose." He countered. "One date. Either I sweep you off your feet or I will take a hint and leave you alone."

With a breathy sigh and a smile, she folded, "Alright, Donovan. One date."

He smiled and almost looked nervous. It was endearing, "How's Friday? Seven 'o clock?"

"Friday at seven." She confirmed as she slid into the driver's seat.

Donovan gripped the top of the door, "I'll send a car."


Jude sat on Catherine's couch and propped his feet up on the coffee table. "What kind of dick sends a car rather than picking up his date in person?"

"The very rich kind." She hollered from her bedroom as she wiggled into the blue dress she had worn to Kono's wedding. "Are you really going to stay here all night and wait for me to get back?"

"Yep."

Heels in hand, her bare feet padded down the hallway, "You know I'm a grown woman, right? Not sixteen."

He stood up when she entered the room, "You look nice."

Catherine pointed to her back as she awkwardly asked, "Do you mind?"

Jude stood behind her and slowly dragged the zipper up the back of her dress. Notes of vanilla and coconut wafted into his senses. His hand was warm and strong against her waist as the other smoothed back down the back of the dress, landing just above the curve of her ass. "You're gonna knock his very expensive socks off." She didn't move. Something about his hands on her felt so right. Jude brushed her loose waves to one side and placed his hands on her shoulders, "You're something else, Catherine."

She closed her eyes and leaned back against him, "Remind me why I'm going out with him again?" Jude's thumbs pressed into her shoulders and worked at the knots that had her muscles strained. A quiet moan escaped her mouth as the tension began to lift.

He leaned down so that his mouth was against her ear, "You keep making sounds like that and I don't think I'll be able to let you leave." His hands slid down from her shoulders to her hips and he pressed himself against her back.

"Then why are you letting me leave?"

Jude craned his head to the side and kissed her neck, "One day... One day you'll thank me for this." Another whimper escaped her lips and he tightened his grip.

Headlights flashed through the windows as a car pulled down the driveway. Catherine took a deep breath and put distance between her and Jude. "Are you actually gonna stay here until I get back?"

He grinned, "You said no to wearing a wire and a tracker or letting Decker tail you, so yeah. I'll be here."

Catherine stretched up on her tiptoes and placed a kiss on his cheek, "Thanks, Jude." She grabbed her clutch off the kitchen table and headed towards the waiting car.


Jude wandered restlessly through Catherine's house. It wasn't that he hated the Senator, it was just that he wouldn't lose a wink of sleep if he met an untimely demise. Regardless, Donovan was a safe date. Did he like watching Catherine leave the house to be wined and dined by another man? Hell no. Did she deserve to spread her wings? Hell yes.

If he was honest with himself, she had him pegged from the moment she stepped foot in his cabin. He did want to be a family man. Get married. Have a couple kids. Slow down and retire from the cloak and dagger life. Could Catherine be that woman? Maybe mixing business and pleasure wasn't such a bad idea.

He spooned coffee grounds into a filter and shoved it into the coffee maker. The clock read a quarter 'til midnight and if he was at the house any longer, he was going to need a big hit of caffeine to make the hour drive back to his cabin. Jude dug around in the fridge until he found a bottle of creamer and kicked the door closed.

That caught his eye.

Jude topped off his mug and cleaned up the mess. He sat down at the kitchen table and opened the leather bound journal. He pushed the bookmark aside and began to read.


Journal #8
Manassas, VA

I have a date with Donovan Taylor tonight. After my string of horrid online dating encounters, this one shouldn't make me as nervous as it does. After all, I've blown him off more times than I can count now. I have the upper hand here.

But, he's taking me to dinner and drinks. Sending a car. He had another bouquet delivered to my house this morning. I think I've received more flowers in the last two weeks than I have in my entire life and it feels good.

It feels good to have someone look at me like a woman. Not as Lieutenant Rollins, Naval Intelligence officer. Not as a combat veteran. Not as an agent in the CIA. A woman.

A long time ago, I told Steve that I figured he would just always see me as one of the boys. I mean, that's just how it goes in the military. You're there to do a job. It doesn't (or shouldn't) matter what genitalia you have.

He told me that he never saw me that way. That I was his.

Him and I? I don't think our relationship ever fell into the "romance" category. I think we had a solid relationship built on friendship and trust and love, but was there romance? He has it in him- I know it. The time he showed up at Kamekona's before Christmas in a tux and very literally swept me off my feet? Romance out the wazoo. But that wasn't the norm. Not our norm, at least. When I interrupted his date with Lynn it looked like he was trying. Like really trying. Maybe that's why it hurt so much.

I loved him. Love him. Hell, I still don't know how I feel about him now. All I know now is that when we were together, we were in love. But was there romance? Maybe. Is it so bad for a girl to want flowers once in a while? Or a dinner date that doesn't get cancelled because of a call from HPD or because we fell into bed? (Don't get me wrong- I miss the sex. Oh my God, do I miss the sex.)

But tonight I'm going to go on a date with a Senator and I'm going to enjoy every fucking minute of it. A girl deserves a little romance once in a while, right?


Catherine waited until the car turned around and headed back down the driveway before slipping her heels off and walking barefoot into the house.

"So how was it?"

She clutched her shoes to her chest and braced herself against the doorframe, "Holy shit, Jude. You scared me!"

Jude shoved his hands in his pocket and walked towards her, "Told you I was gonna stick around." He gave her a sheepish smile, "I just wanted to make sure you got home okay."

Catherine took a deep breath as deja vu hit her like a tsunami. It was like Billy dropping her off at Steve's all over again.

"You okay, Princess?" His brows furrowed as he studied her blank expression.

"Yeah." She nodded. "Yeah, I'm great." Catherine set her clutch on the table and left her shoes at the door.

"So, how was the date with the Senator?"

A smile flickered across her mouth and he hated that. Catherine let out a nervous laugh, "It was good. We had a great time. We, um… We had drinks at this little cocktail bar and then dinner and dessert. And yes, I know what your next question is. He was a complete gentleman the whole time."

The corner of Jude's mouth quirked in a smile, "Good. You deserve to have a little fun every once in a while." He leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms, "So you gonna quit on us and become a Senator's wife? Throw garden parties and schmooze people into donating obscene amounts of money to a campaign?"

Catherine laughed so hard she snorted, causing Jude to laugh. "I'm not trophy wife material. I own too many guns for that." Her laughter died down and her smile turned wistful. "I dunno. It was really nice to go out with someone who knows what I do but doesn't know all the shit of the last two years. He was a great listener. Honestly, I was expecting him to talk about himself the whole time. Senate this. Congress that. Ivy League contacts, yadda yadda ya." She waved her hand dismissively as she poured herself a cup of coffee, "He was great. Asked about my time in the Navy and the CIA. Asked about my parents and what it was like growing up as a Navy brat. Asked about what I like to do for fun and what I like about living near D.C."

"Sounds like an interview." Jude countered.

"Maybe a little." She shrugged, "But it was a good step for me. I think you were right earlier. I'm… I'm thankful you made me go."

Jude glanced at the clock and cursed the fact that he was going to have to drive an hour back to his cabin. "Did he kiss you?"

"Surprisingly, no." Catherine thought back to the meet and greet at the Capitol. He had been a little cavalier with how handsy he was that night. "He was a perfect gentleman."

He took a step forward and zeroed in on her eyes, "A gentleman would've kissed you goodnight." Jude tilted her chin up and brushed his lips against hers. His hand cupped her jaw as if she were a precious thing to be treasured. After a second, he pulled away. "Goodnight, Princess."


"Where are we going?" Catherine watched Honolulu fly by as they rumbled down the highway.

Steve grinned from behind the wheel. "I told you. It's a surprise." He took her hand and pulled it to his mouth, pressing a kiss to her knuckles.

First, it had been the flowers delivered to the house that morning. Then, it was Steve calling from work, telling her to be dressed and ready to go by seven and that Grace would be coming over by six to watch the kids. Butterflies flitted in her stomach as he shot her a mischievous grin and maneuvered the truck through the parking lot of the South Shore Sailing Club.

"I may have had a little help pulling this off." He admitted as he hopped out of the cab and offered her his hand, helping her down. Steve laced their fingers together and led her across the docks and on board a private yacht.

"Steve…." She looked around, eyes wide.

He chuckled, "Don't question it. Just enjoy it." Leading the way, he turned a corner on the deck and revealed a table set for two. Twinkling lights hung overhead and soft music played through a hidden speaker. He pulled out her chair and helped her get seated. "Now, we have a captain, but we'll have to make do without a server." He grinned as he popped the champagne and filled her glass.

Catherine was speechless. Steve reached over the table and removed the dome cover from her dinner plate. Her stomach rumbled at the mere sight of food and suddenly she remembered that all she had for lunch was a couple Goldfish and a handful of Cheerios. "Morimoto?"

Steve nodded, "He just dropped it off a few minutes ago."

She sat awestruck at his grand gesture. The boat pulled away from the dock and began to cut through the glassy water. "Steve, this is… This is too much." Tears welled up in her eyes as she pressed her fingers to her mouth. "I just… I can't believe you did all this."

Steve dug around in his pocket, "One more thing." He reached out and winked as he dropped a bottle of Dramamine in her hand.


AUTHOR'S NOTE

Y'all. It's finally the weekend. Can I get a witness that this week has felt like a year? Goodness gracious...

Leave your thoughts and comments in the reviews!

Weekend Fun Facts:

1. I'm afraid of ducks and geese.

2. Some of my biggest pet peeves include people who don't return shopping carts to the cart return, littering, and when people mix up Five-0 and Five-O.

3. Romance novels have been getting me through 2020. Happy endings for all!

4. I don't drink coffee, but I basically live off of sweet tea.

5. Movies I've never seen: Dirty Dancing and Titanic.

6. My husband is really thankful for all of you because it means he doesn't have to hear my constant show theories and rants about plot holes.

Have a wonderful weekend, lovely people! Turn off the news and get at least twenty minutes of fresh air!

XO,

-Mags-


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