One Thing

AvalonReeseFanFics

A/N: Wow, it's been a hot minute hasn't it my wonderful readers? I know I kinda left you hanging there last chapter, and I'm going to be leaving you hanging for this chapter too. Well in the sense that I wrote a cliffhanger, I fully intend to post next week. Whether or not I actually get it up is something else entirely. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter, cause some... exciting things are going to be happen, and hopefully next week we'll have the next chapter.

Chapter 23

Everyone was calling him stupid and maybe this was stupid, but Steve didn't care.

Everyone else went home before him, only he and Joe White remained. He said it was because he wanted to be sure that Steve got back to Hawaii, but Steve knew it was because he didn't trust Rowan.

He, like everyone else, was convinced that Rowan was still working with Wo Fat, and that this was all a trap. They'd leave him in Korea with Rowan in that hospital and they'd never get him back.

But Steve knew better.

Rowan's eyes had finally been opened. She knew what Wo Fat was now. Her loyalty was up for grabs and he was going to prove to her that she could give it to him and he wouldn't hurt her the way Wo Fat had.

Rowan was okayed to fly a week later. By then her bruises had faded to purple welts, no longer swollen but they colored most of her face. Steve's cuts had scabbed, his bruises had gone purple and were now fading into sickly yellows and greens.

Rowan had medicine for her fractures, as they weren't just in her skull, but in her ribs. Pain meds to keep the pain at bay, so she wasn't always in discomfort. They also gave him a sedative to give her once they were on the plane so she'd sleep through it. They weren't entirely sure her head could handle the pressure change, and they figured it would be better if she was out for the trip.

And she was.

With her head on his shoulder the whole time. He didn't even care. He loved that she was cuddled into his side for the entire flight.

When they got off the airline was kind enough to give them a wheelchair as Rowan was still too out of it to actually walk when they landed.

Because she was in that wheelchair they got fast tracked through customs, and since neither of them had a bag they didn't have to wait for their luggage.

When they got out to the arrivals section Steve found his dad waiting for them, and the glare on his face told him all he needed to know about how he felt about Steve bringing Rowan home with him.

Luckily his dad didn't say anything to him then and there. Nor did he say anything on the drive home.

He very kindly helped Steve get Rowan into the house, helped him tuck her in the room she had borrowed the last time she had been in the house.

His dad waited until they were back in the living room to hug him, to check him over to make sure with his own two eyes that he could see that Steve was fine.

And then the lecture started.

He got the How could you be so fucking stupid? lecture from his dad as well. He went off a mile a minute about everything Joe White had told him, the snitch. And yes, yes the trick and the torture it had been Rowan's idea, but she had wanted it to look bad, not actually be bad.

Wo Fat had made the plan his own and done it wrong.

And she had tried to save him.

And she had clearly been punished for that.

But that didn't appease his dad, he had looked Steve up and down with cold appraising eyes and asked him one question.

"Do you love her, son?"

And Steve's whole body had slipped into a frozen shock. Firstly because those words did something to him. They clenched his heart in an icy grip of fear and held him in place. Secondly because they rung true.

Those words could very much explain what the hell was going on with him, but he just… he couldn't bring himself to admit that to himself let alone his father.

So he had scoffed those damning words away and told his dad that he owed her. She had tried to save his life, she had gotten hurt because of him, she had no one else and no where else to go, the least he could do is help her out.

But his dad hadn't believed him and Steve didn't believe himself either.

Luckily his dad let it go. Lucky because if he pressed Steve might have had to admit how real those words were, long before he was ready to admit it. He knew if he did, if he let that sink in, everything between he and Rowan would get worse and she already had a power over him, he didn't want her to have any more.

Not when he still didn't know how she felt for him, or if she actually had married Wo Fat. She still hadn't given him a straight answer about that yet, but she also wasn't very coherent when she was on morphine.

Wo Fat had mentioned that morphine put her on her own little planet, Steve hadn't known what that meant, but now, now that he had spent time with a Rowan on a morphine high, he knew. And he once again was confused as to how that man had managed to manage her in that state. In any state.

He had a remarkable amount of patience for her. Too bad it had run out when it had.

His dad made him dinner, and the two of them shared a beer out on the beach watching the sun set.

John admitted that he was worried, when Danny had told him what happened, that he wasn't going to see his son again. Steve admitted that he was worried he wasn't going to come home that time either, but he was fine, and that was what was important.

It was about as emotional as the two men could have gotten, and honestly, Steve had almost cried. He blamed his own more minor pain medicines for that.

Steve had been tired. He went to bed early, fully planning on getting a good night's sleep. But as soon as his head hit the pillow he was no longer tired.

He was suddenly wide awake, his body burning with the knowledge that Rowan was across the hall. That all he had to do was take less than 10 steps and he'd be in her room, he could get in her bed. He could cover her in kisses, hold her close… do so much more than that if she wasn't in a drugged oblivion.

But he refused to move.

Firstly because his dad was in the house, secondly because he didn't want to take advantage of her. But mostly it was because he was worried she'd say no to him.

If she actually told him she loved Wo Fat and had married him, he might just actually die.

So he lay there, his eyes burning in the dark, fighting all of the impulse firing off in him demanding that he march into her room for at the very least a cuddle. Trying to will himself to sleep. Trying to ignore the twitch in his fingers and the ache in his chest.

But then his door opened and he knew right away who it was.

"Steve?" Rowan's soft voice called out to him and he turned to her, watching as she darkened his doorway. "Are you sleeping?"

"No," he whispered back because it was true. "What's the matter, you okay?"

"I… I am… I think," she said as she moved towards the bed. "I… I just… I… I don't want to be alone… can I… can I stay with you?"

The yes flew out of him before she could even finish the question. Even in the dark he could feel that smile on her face and then she was scampering around the bed to join him.

She hopped up onto that bed and then slid underneath the covers.

"You're not hungry, are you?"

Steve rolled onto his side to face her and Rowan did the same.

"No," she whispered. "We… we're in Hawaii, right?"

"Yes, you don't recognize the house?"

"No, I do, but… I unno, I thought I might have been dreaming, I just…"

"You wanted to be sure," he finished for her.

She nodded and then scooted a little closer to him. "I… I heard you and your dad arguing… about me being here…"

Ah shit. What else had she heard?

"I think… maybe I should…"

"No," Steve said before she could offer to leave. "No, it's fine, it'll be fine. He's just… don't even worry about it, it's fine."

"But it's not Steven," she says. His eyes adjusted to the darkness, which meant that he could see that tears were brimming in her eyes. His hand lifted to her face, his thumbs softly brushing against her cheek in that soothing way he had seen Wo Fat do in the hospital.

"I shouldn't be here. If you're dad's mad… I don't even want to know how mad your friends are…"

"They don't matter. None of that matters. What matters is I'm here, and you're with me, and I'm going to take care of you, okay?"

She lowered her eyes from him and that desire to kiss her returned, god it never really left him did it? It was honestly super pathetic.

"I'm really glad you're not mad at me," she whispered.

Was he mad at her? Yeah, kind of. But he also understood that she had been manipulated by Wo Fat.

"You loved him, didn't you?" he asked softly.

"Yes."

His heart fractured in his chest at that admission.

Before he can stop himself he finds himself whispering: "More than me?"

It's a pathetic question. He literally can't believe he let those words leave his mouth.

"It's a completely different thing," she said and a little bit of hope flared up in his chest. "How I feel for him is completely different from how I feel for you."

"But how?"

God why did he have to constantly question her? Why couldn't he take it at face value? It was the detective in him, he couldn't stop himself from asking.

"Well for starters I always want to kiss you, I never want to kiss him."

"Then why did you marry him?"

That earned him a huff from Rowan. "We're not married. He just said that to piss you off."

"Oh."

"And we're not engaged either."

"Oh," he said a little more happily. "Oh great."

Rowan shook her head at him. "I mean, really Steven. The two of you are total jealous alpha males."

"He was jealous of me?"

"Course, you have everything he wanted," she said with a shrug.

Yes but what did that mean? What the hell did he have that Wo Fat wanted?

He almost opened his mouth to ask her when she slid a little closer to him. "I think it's my turn to ask some questions."

Right that was only fair.

"You made me admit that I like you… so… I think it's your turn to admit it. Do you like me back?"

Steve almost chuckled at her. "Of course I do, I mean… why else would I go to these lengths to take care of you? Hmm?"

"I unno, maybe you're just super nice."

"No, Ro, I happen to really like you."

"Oh good, that's going to make the next question easier," she said. Now that piqued Steve's interested. "Do you want to kiss me?"

He answered by moving to her, his lips covering hers. What started as a chaste kiss quickly and wildly spun out of control. His tongue delved into her mouth, her hands went into his hair, and he was suddenly over top of her.

She went for his shirt and he pulled away. "No… wait… you're hurt…"

"Steve… I want to get laid… and I want you to be the one who… lays me…"

She stuck her tongue out of her mouth in that playful way or hers and his heart lit up. Oh yes, yes he wanted that too. He really, really wanted that too.

"Your ribs…"

"I have pain meds," she whispered against his lips. "I'm starting to think you don't want to…"

Steve slid his lips overs hers again, silencing that utter lie.

"Any chance you can be quiet?" she asked him.

"Oh yes, yes I can, the real question is, can you?"

"Oh if I get too… excited… I'll just sink my teeth into this shoulder tatt," she whispered, her fingers dancing along his arms. "I've been wanting to bite into it since I met you."

There were no words he had to explain how badly her wanted her teeth in him. He kissed her again, ready to get lost in that make out again, ready to let this go as far as she wanted it to.

Starting first by peeling the layers off of one another so he could feel every inch of her against him, and vice versa.

He found out, that night, that their sex was everything he had ever thought it would be.

Fucking phenomenal.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

When Steve woke up the following morning he was expecting his bed mate to still be curled up beside him.

That was not what he got.

He woke up to an empty bed and a lurching fear that Rowan had run off again. But then he heard noise in the kitchen and the smell of pancakes were wafting in the air and he felt a little better.

That pancake smell was sweet, a sort of cinnamon sweet, and since he dad couldn't make pancakes sweet, he knew that it was the only other person in the house.

Rowan hadn't run off, she had gone to make them breakfast.

Steve slowly stretched himself out, popping out the kinks in his body before he got up and got dressed. As he skipped down the steps his mind was filled with visions of making out in the quiet of the kitchen. Of propping her up on that counter, of getting between those thighs of hers again.

Maybe have some morning sex before his dad woke up.

But when he got down there he found that Rowan was is in the kitchen, in one of his sweaters, an overly large grey one and the pair of the velour grey shorts with the white lace trim around the cuffs. She was standing over by the stove just like he thought she'd be, but she wasn't alone. His dad was sitting at the kitchen table, already flipping through the paper.

John looked up to him, and look of disappointment on his face so dark that Steve knew his dad had definitely heard them last night.

"Morning, Son."

Steve nodded to him, and Rowan turned around right away to shoot a coy little smile at him.

"Morning Steve!"

She turned back to the pancake she had in her pan, she got it cooked, then she was turning around again. When she did turn there were two mugs in her hands, one that she put in front of his dad and one that she put in front of Steve.

"I made coffee," she said almost sheepishly. "Made with butter the way the two of you like… cause you guys are freaks."

Well it was glad to see that she got her teasing personality back basically right away.

Steve took his coffee and took a quick sip of it, while his dad just stared at the cup, he lifted his eyes back up to Rowan who was now wincing.

"There isn't anything else in it this time. I promise."

See, that right there, that look from his dad, that was why she thought no one trusted her. Yes no one in his friend or family group trusted her, but did they have to make it so obvious?

John then turned to Steve. "Right, if I drop, at least catch me."

Steve opened his mouth to argue but his dad suddenly broke out in a playful smirk. Oh… OH! He was teasing her back.

This was great progress!

Steve glanced at Rowan to see her smiling. She turned around grabbed the platter of pancakes she had made and then brought it back to the table.

She put it in the middle, before heading off for plates and the bowls of sides that she had prepared that Steve hadn't even noticed.

When she had everything on the table and she too had sat down she pinned his dad with a bit of a playful glare.

"I gave you a pillow and a blanket. And I cleaned up the coffee you spilled," she reminded him. "It wasn't all that bad."

John shook his head and just turned his attention towards setting up the pancakes and Steve did the same.

"You slept in this morning," John said after a moment. "Shouldn't have stayed up so late."

Steve's face colored, oh, his dad had heard them last night. Which sucked cause they had been mostly quiet. A few moans escaped then and there, but mostly they had limited their noises to their heavy breathing and soft exclamations of their names. They had been so close there was not a single space between them, they had lived on that friction, skin to skin. He was surprised they hadn't set the bed on fire, but then again they had been slick with sweat when it was all said and done.

And yes, she had sunk her teeth in the tatt on his shoulder. And yes, she did leave marks. And yes, that had set him off more than anything else she had done last night.

Steve said nothing, but he did glance at Rowan who was biting her lip in a nervous fashion. When they linked eyes a sort of giggle escaped her, and Steve found a breathy sort of chuckle escaping him too.

It felt a little like they had an inside joke and… well… that was a step in the right direction… right?

"Sorry, I'll uh… I'll be more considerate tonight," he told his dad. "Make sure I don't keep you up or nothing…"

And then he shot Rowan a wink. Another low giggle escaped her that she disguised with a fake cough. She then quickly covered her smile up by taking a sip of the tea she had made.

His dad didn't come right out and tell them not to fuck under his roof, but he figured that talk was going to happen sooner or later. And if it did Steve was going to move them out of the McGarrett homestead like… that day.

He was not going to go back to an existence where he couldn't have sex with Rowan, not now that he knew it was so good.

Like literally the best sex of his life.

They were quiet together for a moment before his phone rang. Both Rowan and his dad turned to him, each silently asking the same question with their eyes.

Work is calling you now?

Steve had said that he wanted to be off, he was still healing after all. Both of them knew that.

"One second," he told them as he stood up. "I'll take this quickly and be right back."

The plan was to answer, to tell them off and then go back to breakfast. But it wasn't Danny or Chin calling him in, it was the Governor himself.

Steve tried to argue, he did, but the Governor was clear. Steve had had almost two weeks off in Korea healing and waiting for Rowan to be good to travel. He had eaten up all his sick time, and now the Governor needed him in charge of his team again.

Steve had been forced to agree, to say he'd come in. Then he aggressively clicked the hang up button, wishing that it was a landline he could slam as that would have felt more satisfying.

But no, now he was going to have to figure out what to do with Rowan. Cause he couldn't take her with him.

Steve came back into the kitchen to where Rowan and his dad were busy tucking into their meals. He glanced at Rowan and then turned to his dad.

"So they called me in and I have to go… so can you watch her for me?"

John put down his cutlery and pinned a dry glare onto Steve. "No, I have plans."

"What she can't go with you?"

"Why can't she go with you?" his dad shot back.

Because his friends didn't trust her, and they definitely wouldn't want to leave her in the Palace by herself. And he wasn't going to admit it but he didn't quite trust her by herself either.

He didn't want to take with him on the case either because his friends were going to be lukewarm with her, and who knows what Danny was going to do to her if he saw her. He didn't want to her to be bombarded with their distrust when she was already so worried and self conscious about it.

"Because I can't," he said. "Come on dad. What are you even doing?"

"I'm going over to Keoki's to help him put together a tree house for his grandkids," he said and then he glanced to Rowan. "And I'm not trusting her around power tools."

Steve opened his mouth to argue that having her around weapons and a computer with access to all sorts of restricted files was worse, but he was cut off by Rowan saying: "You know, I can stay here by myself."

Both John and Steve stared at her, and then turned back to one another. He could tell by the look on his dad's face that just like Steve, there was no way that they were going to let her stay there by herself.

Steve turned back to his dad. "Maybe she can just sit and watch?"

"No seriously," Rowan said before John could say anything. "I promise, I promise I won't cause any trouble, to be honest I was just going to go back to sleep."

The two men exchanged glances and Rowan winced heavily.

"Look… I know… I know I'm not the most trustworthy person… but… I just… I don't know how to prove to you that I can't be trustworthy if you don't… you don't trust me," she whispered. "Please? Can we give me a chance?"

Steve sighed, god he wanted to trust her but… honestly… he wasn't sure if he could. She hadn't really been all that trustworthy up until this point. He still wasn't 100 percent certain that she and Wo Fat were really out of contact.

Yes he hadn't seen her talking to anyone else. There were no sneaky phone calls. She wasn't even acting all that shifty that he had noticed.

She had basically just been sleeping, she hadn't really been all that mobile with her fractured ribs. But she was stronger now, more coherent, more mobile actually, which meant more of a chance for her to get into some kind of mischief.

John took a good long look at his son and then turned back to Rowan. "Alright, we're going to trust you. But I need you to know that I'll be down the block, I'll be able to see the house from where I am, so if it goes up in flames… I'll know."

Rowan perked up right away and then she turned to Steven with a large grin and he knew he couldn't crush her.

"Fine, but seriously, Rowan, if you do fuck up, that'll be the last time I trust you… okay?"

Rowan nodded happily. "I promise. Best behaviour." She then raised a hand in a mock salute. "Scouts honor."

"That's not the right-hand gesture," Steve said right away and Rowan looked to her hand.

"Really? Cause he said…" she started and then she went quiet and suddenly lowered her hand, placing them in her lap. He knew right away that she was twisting her fingers in her lap, as she was just staring at her hands.

It was a nervous tick of hers.

"I mean… he was never a scout… why did I believe him?"

She seemed to be talking to herself, but Steve understood what had happened. She clearly had been lied to about a lot. It seemed Wo Fat didn't ever tell her the truth. Kinda… sucks for her.

"I'll show you the right one when I get home, do you wanna come upstairs with me?"

He didn't mean for it to sound so suggestive, but she clearly found it to be, because a playful grin reached that beautiful face of hers. She jumped up right away to rush around the table to join him.

But Rowan wasn't the only person to have caught the suggestiveness of that comment because his dad suddenly just sighed.

"Jesus, it's like having teenagers in the house again."

"Oh you never had teenagers in the house," Steve snapped, taking Rowan's hand in his and leading her towards the stairs.

The least he could do was at least kiss some of their worries away.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

Rowan was starting to feel bad.

And not in the sense that she her pain meds were wearing off and the ache of her injuries were starting to return.

In the same, plain old guilty, kind of feel bad.

Because… well… she was there for a reason, and as much as she loved the sex with Steve… or well… anything to do with Steve, the fact of the matter was she was here to betray him. All over again.

Normally she had no issue doing something like this, but Steven had such faith in her and for some reason he saw something in her that no one else had ever seen. He saw a good in her that, up until this moment, she hadn't realized was there.

But now that he had brought attention to it, it seemed to have all but taken over. Making her heart hurt with guilt.

It didn't change the fact that she was there and she was looking for something and she needed to find it. Because the longer she stayed her the more at risk her heart was.

She would go as far as to say that her heart was already in peril. She was altogether too attached to Steven McGarrett and staying there with him would just make it worse.

So as soon as Steve and John were both out of the house she went back to looking.

The last time she had been in this house she had checked all the walls for hidden safes, went through all the hidden spaces she could find, but still hadn't found it.

She knew it was here, she could feel it, could see it in the strings but she couldn't tell where it was. As soon as she got into the house she could no longer read the strings, it was like Steve's mere presence, the lingering aura messed with her abilities. No one had ever affected her like that, except well… her brother.

He had always been able to block her strings, to stop her powers, but he usually used his abilities to hype her up, to make her stronger.

Steve was just a straight up dampening field.

So she wandered around that house, again, tapping on walls trying to find what she was looking for. She ended up in the main floor between the living room and John's office space as that's where the impression was strongest, but there was nothing there for her to find.

She had already looked, it was just, every time she walked away she'd be pulled back.

It had to be there.

She had to be missing something.

"What are you doing?"

Rowan whirled around, finding John McGarrett behind her at the front door. She had been pressed against a wall knocking her knuckles lightly against the wood. She was waiting for a different sound to signify something other then normal wall and insulation was behind it and had yet to find it.

But to John, she probably just looked crazy.

"I… uhm… I was just… I thought I heard something in the walls."

John blinked his eyes clearly deciding if he was going to believe her. They stared at one another for altogether too long before he just sighed and clearly gave up on trying to figure out what it was she was doing.

"Do you think you could come here? Maybe sit down and have a chat with me."

Oh god.

She wanted to do literally anything else but that. She couldn't quite say no though so she joined him or she tried to.

She sat down on the couch assuming that that was where he was going to sit with her, but he moved to his La-Z-boy chair. Both he and Steven had one, sat right beside one another for those days they wanted to watch a game, recline and drink beer. John's was the one closest to the couch and the most worn as Steve's was brand new.

He, however, did not recline his chair, he sat forward in it, knees spread and hands clasped between them.

"So… uh… what's up?"

"I think it's fair to assume that you've probably noticed?" he asked her. Rowan wasn't sure what it was she was supposed to notice, so she just cocked her head to the side in her confusion. "You know… about my son's feelings for you?"

His son had feelings for her? Did he have more than one son that she didn't know about? And if so how did the other son know her well enough to have feelings for her. Because… yeah Steven said he liked her, but she had assumed that was just lust.

"I… uh…"

"It's painfully obvious that my son's in love with you," John continued. "It's the only explanation for why he would trust you as blindly as he has."

Rowan flushed red, heat seeped into her face and up to her scalp. Oh my god. Love? Lust for sure, but John thought Steve was in love with her?

Really?

"I… I'm not sure…"

"Well even if you haven't noticed, everyone else sure as hell has," John snapped.

"I'm not sure… what… what do you want me to say?"

"I want to know what your intentions are."

"Intentions?" she echoed.

"Look, I'm going to be frank." That wasn't him being frank before? "When you left the last time, it broke my son. In fact every time you've left has broken him. I need to know if you're here to stay, or if this is another one of those ruses your famous for."

Rowan's heart stopped in her chest, because that was very much what this was. It was another ruse and once she found what she was looking for she was supposed to leave again.

"I… I'm not trying to hurt Steve…"

"That doesn't answer my question though, does it," John said. "And I don't think you understand how bad it was for him. First thinking you were dead for as long as he did, only to find out that you were alive. Then when you went missing a second time when you were badly hurt. He may have played it off like he didn't care but I can tell you that he was inconsolable. If your intention is to leave, you tell him now so he doesn't get his hopes up, or better yet, leave now before he gets anymore attached to you."

Rowan frowned. She couldn't leave, not until she found what she wanted and… if she was being honest… she didn't want to leave Steve either.

"I'm not leaving," she said softly. "I don't want to leave… and I don't want to hurt him… I'm not trying to hurt him… I didn't… I didn't know that he…"

"My son is very guarded with his heart, but for some reason he's given it to you. I'd just like to see him be happy. If that's with you then wonderful, but… well… given your track record you have to understand while I'm concerned."

She nodded because she got it, but that didn't mean that this made it easier. In fact this seemed to have complicated things entirely, especially since her heart was clearly just an intertwined as Steve's apparently was.

"Well thank you for talking to me," John said sitting up. "I can't imagine this was fun for you. But thank you for your honesty."

"You're welcome," she said softly, though he had basically thrown her whole life and heart into turmoil.

"I'm going to get started on lunch, any requests?"

Rowan shook her head. Words were lost to her now. She was in a panic, a complete and utter blind panic. Not for the first time in her life, she felt monstrous, like she was the worst person in the world.

So Rowan did what she did best when the emotions inside her got too hard to handle.

She opened herself up a portal and vanished.