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The blood churns in the water around them, the surface calm yards above. Up there, the air is clear and the waves are choppy, blue waters serene and welcoming, lapping at the shore and the docks. Down here, it’s a flurry of activity, sounds echoing loudly off of everything they touch. Fins and flippers clash and everything moves at a heightened pace.
Danny yells and smacks Mahelona hard with his flukes, looking to get some distance on him. The skin is rough, miniscule serrated teeth grabbing and dragging along the smooth flesh of his tail, and Danny bites down a hiss, needs as much air as he can spare. His opponent can breathe underwater, after all.
He’d known immediately that they were dealing with something outside of his caliber the moment he saw the guy’s mugshot. Skin gnarled and twisted, too many teeth in his mouth, a sort of hunch in his stance – he looked like he’d been pulled out of a cement truck. Paired with the three women found dead at the North Shore, and Danny’s hair was standing on end before Steve could finish the briefing.
They all noticed, of course, but Danny waved them off, blaming a stomach ache but rushing to Steve’s office as soon as he got a chance.
“This guy, Steve, I know what he is,” he’d said.
Steve had been confused, then dubious, but Danny hadn’t relented. “No, look. He’s different from me – I’m an air breather, right? Cetaceans, we luck out, we get to stay nice and pretty. It’s thanks to our similar evolutionary track and the fact that we have big boy lungs. But these guys? They’re rare, and they’re really dangerous. I’ve never seen one in person before.”
“And what, exactly, is he?”
“Ma used to call them brutto pesce, but I think that was mostly just her being rude. They normally can’t get their glamour to cover themselves that well. Plus, you know, they have gills, so.”
“So,” Steve said, face pinched. Danny could see him physically trying to get on board with him. “You’re saying this guy is some sort of big bad mermaid?”
“Well, no, but,” Danny huffed. “Not going into politics with you here, McGarrett, but these people? They’re bad news.” His own gut churned unpleasantly at the notion of being involved with one at all.
Steve still looked skeptical, but nodded along, willing to let Danny take the lead.
Danny wonders if Steve believes him now, or if it’ll only be after he emerges from the ocean covered in literal bloody proof.
Mahelona flashes his teeth, bladed fins bared at him, and Danny brings up his own knife, a weak contrast to the man’s own natural armor. He’s bleeding from several hits Danny was able to land, half his face an open wound and a long jag down his ventral side. Danny’s not fairing much better, though, a sizeable ragged bite on his side, right above where human skin meets dolphin. He’d manage to wedge his hands in Mahelona’s mouth the second he’d bitten down, so no skin is actually missing (though his hands are none too pleased at being subjected to three rows of teeth), but it's deep and open and still trickling blood. He thinks there’s a cut down his back too, but he’s too busy trying not to get his head ripped off to really notice.
They slam together again, shoulder to shoulder, and Danny's playing dirty, going for the eyes and gills. He wants to porp, wants to leap out of the water, gain the high ground; a longing quick glance to the surface reminds him he can’t, he’s much too close to prying eyes. An idea comes to mind though, and he breaks away and dashes off, hoping the guy will give chase. He does, the smell of Danny’s blood overpowering most of his senses, as sharks are wont to do. Good, Danny’s counting on that.
Peduncle pumping hard through the water, Danny’s got speed and cleverness as his only advantage – he’s smaller, built for this, this bob and weave and mad dashes. The rough rocks are being replaced by smoother shells and dead corals, and he chases the slope upwards, an eye on the incoming shoreline. Ignoring the burn in his side, skin pulling with every sweep of his tail, Danny puts on an extra burst of speed when he sees the pier’s supports beams. He can’t turn and look, it’ll break the slipstream and make him lose his edge, but Danny knows he’s got at least a body’s length of lead ahead of Mahelona, and it’s enough.
First came speed, now comes maneuverability. He dodges around one of the supports, quick as anything, then zips to another one. He knows sharks can’t make these turns, they’re not built for it, and he hopes the guy’s as clumsy as sharks are rumored to be.
Danny dares to glance, and there Mahelona is, mouth wide and gills open three meters back, all fins raised and ready for take down. Danny watches his caudal fin clip the pier’s support, an impact that sends him careening for a moment, but his arms and fins right his balance a moment later and, with a burst of speed that surprises Danny, they’re slamming into one another again. The water’s shallower here, and Danny feels his flukes break the surface as he goes upside down, an effort to dodge that great gaping mouth that’s going for his throat. The skin is rough beneath his hands as they close over the man’s gills, and he feels one of the sharp fins hit his stomach. A stream of bubbles bursts from his mouth, and that’s it, he’s almost out of time.
Giving one more hard kick, he manages to separate them, and he casts around quickly for one of the beams. Finding one, he swims to it in a rush, hoping that Mahelona is still mad enough to follow. He does, wrapping webbed hands around Danny’s flukes, and Danny pulls with everything he’s got. The man goes careening through the water and slams face first into the support beam. Clearly dazed, he floats for a moment, and Danny takes the opportunity to press his hands over his gills. The man struggles slightly, still stunned, until he finally stills.
Danny’s own lungs are burning, everything going a bit spotty, so he kicks with his last energy reserves, eyes on the glassy surface only a couple of yards above. He breaks it with a loud gasp, taking in a deep breath before sagging beneath the surface again, no longer as panicked. He needs to get out of the water before his adrenaline really wears off – now that he’s not fighting for his life, his side feels much worse.
He peeks above the surface and lists out from under the pier, casting around for a familiar face. He hears Chin first, the nicest sound in years.
“Ho, Danny! Steve, I got eyes!” Chin goes from looking to his side to looking back down, and he looks more alarmed than Danny’s seen in a while. Danny gives a feeble wave. “Hang in there brah,” Chin says, hunching his back and disappearing beneath the pier’s fence for a moment. He’s taking off his shoes, Danny realizes, and he opens his mouth to protest, but they die on his lips as Steve comes out of nowhere, hurtling over the side of the pier and landing a couple of yards away with a splash.
“Danny,” is the first word out of his mouth, and it sounds equal parts pissed and terrified.
Danny has enough sense to shift them back beneath the dock, pulling his heavy and listless cargo behind him. “He’s not dead, I put him in a sleeper, but we might wanna get him to the shore soon so the glamor can kick in and he can breathe properly,” Danny says by way of greeting, ignoring Steve’s piercing look. Steve seems to spot how exhausted he is and yanks Danny up without a word, one hand under his armpit and the other still hovering just beside his neck.
Danny feels a bit guilty, he really does. Steve knew the moment Danny jumped in the water what his plan was, knew that they both knew the danger of going after a creature like him, so naturally in his own element (even though Danny knew more about that than Steve did). But through the guilt is a sense of accomplishment too – Mahelona would have gotten away if it wasn’t for him. The families of Tiffany, Keahi, and Lea wouldn’t have the face of their daughters’ murderer, wouldn’t know justice if it wasn’t for him.
“Danny,” Steve says again, eyes steely and fierce. “Are you okay?” He sounds angry that he even has to ask.
“I think so?” Danny says after a pause. “I mean, I’m bleeding, but.”
“Show me,” Steve demands, and suddenly Danny doesn’t want him here, wants him out of the water so he can nurse his wounds in isolation.
“After we get to shore?” He settles on, and damn it, that wasn’t supposed to sound like a question, but a demand of his own. “Glamour won’t work here, that’s kind of the point.”
“You can’t control it?”
“No, and neither can he, and he’s gonna drown soon, so can we,” and he makes a shooing motion, because this is a public beach, and he can hear Kono loudly demanding where they are from above. Moving his arm pulls at his side and back, and he can feel his face tighten with the pain of it.
“Yeah, okay,” Steve says, eyes going down to the water, where the rest of Danny is, but makes no move to forcibly lift Danny from the water, so Danny counts his blessings.
In a move that Danny doesn’t expect, he slides a hand behind Danny’s head, pressing their foreheads together. Danny breathes a sigh that matches Steve’s own. “You scared the hell out of me, Danno,” Steve says, voice rough and raw.
“Sorry,” Danny says, because Steve deserves that at least. They breathe each other’s air for a moment, Danny calming his still heavy beating heart, Steve seeming to calm by being in Danny’s space. “Sorry,” he repeats, a low murmur.
Steve pulls back first, but not before pressing a chaste kiss to the corner of Danny’s mouth. His gaze is unreadable and intense, and Danny wants to look away, avoid that level of emotion, but he holds fast. Something in Steve seems to soften, and he looks less chiseled, less starved, before learning away. “Kono,” he calls, and Danny hisses at the unexpected volume. “Can you get to the trunk of the Camaro and toss down the clothes back there?”
“Of course you stashed clothes in my car, wouldn’t a normal day unless Steve McGarrett isn’t invading every corner of my life,” Danny grumbles. Steve has the gall to look smug, doesn’t even have to say ‘worked in your favor, didn’t it?’ out loud, he says it all with his face. The clothes were probably in there as a ploy to get Danny in the water sometime, and he finds it a mix of annoying and endearing.
Its evidence to how close they’ve gotten that Kono doesn’t even ask why, only demands a confirmation that “your idiot partner isn’t full of urchins”. Steve grins, assuring their teammates that Danny can, if fact, swim, and that Chin owes him ten bucks. He accepts the shoulder shove with grace.
Swimming the couple of yards out to sunlit water, Steve grabs the clothes that come tumbling over the pier. He passes Danny a pair of board shorts then takes their unconscious charge in his arms. “Can you put the board shorts on him if I lift his legs out of the water?”
Danny wrinkles his nose but nods. Steve casts around, making sure no one can see them behind the pillar they’re tucked behind, then lifts Mahelona half out of the water, tail splitting like a zipper once it hits the air. Danny slides the shorts on easily enough, though the effort leaves him groaning by the end of it. Steve looks outwardly concerned now, practically dumping Mahelona in his urgency to inspect Danny. “You still bleeding?” He asks, and Danny’s surprised he actually bothered asking; he expects different behavior from Steve, something along the lines of immediately throwing him in a fireman’s carry and plugging his ear to any protests from other parties. Now, he’s considering Danny with narrowed eyes, daring him to lie.
Danny supposes he should reward such good behavior. “I don’t think so,” he says. In actuality, he has no clue, and won’t know until he can get his ass out of the water. “Can we,” and his hands are wiggling. “I’m starting to prune.”
“You can’t prune,” Steve says, sliding a sneaky arm behind Danny’s back, all the while dragging Mahelona, fingers in his gills like he’s a particularly large catch they’ll be asking Kamekona to serve up cold later.
“You don’t know that,” Danny says, just for the sake of being difficult.
“Yeah, yeah.”
Not thrilled at the prospect of being outed to all of Hawaii, Danny smacks Steve’s shoulder. “Just lift me up like you did him, I don’t need to be the next face on the boxcar of a travelling circus.”
Steve’s pursed lips and disapproving stare bring Danny a small amount of amusement, but it’s short-lived as hands are on him, lifting him slowly out of the water. Ever gentle, Steve is holding him like he’s made of glass, and he tampers down his irritation and focuses on not groaning at the pull and tug of the angry skin at his side.
Levied up so his tail is out of the water, Danny grits his teeth and looks away – he’s never been fond of watching. Steve, for his part, is staring at it in open fascination, and Danny wants to snap that he should be looking around for snoops, genius, but he can’t tear his gaze away from Steve’s face.
The hard pressure overwhelms his senses for a moment, familiar but still just this side of painful, and he watches Steve’s expression fluctuate to keep from groaning at the pull and tug of skin, the distant burn of muscles reknitting.
“Gross,” Danny says when it’s done, flexing his toes and wishing Steve would stop looking at him like that.
“Not gross,” Steve says, voice thick, and now he’s staring at Danny’s face, but they’ve been here before, and they are not allowed to have a moment when he’s pretty sure his side is bleeding into the Pacific again.
“Come on, babe,” Danny says, using Steve’s shoulder to pull himself from his arms. “I’m beyond ready to blow this popsicle stand.”
Toes touch soft sand and it feels weird for a moment, always does, but he’s ready to leave. Some, he knows, find it an uphill battle every time they try to move from water to land, like brushing your hair against the grain. For a few, it’s almost impossible, the drag of the tide too tempting to say refuse. It had happened to his mother a couple of times, but she came back each time in the end.
Now bearing his full weight, Danny, slides his own board shorts on and walks up the shore, moving from the shade of the pier and into the open sun. Steve’s hand is still on his arm, helping him walk, and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t appreciate it. He stops, feet still in the water, and Steve lets go to better hoist Mahelona up, fingers no longer in his gills. Hunching a bit, he watches Steve manhandle the murderer, now looking entirely fleshy and grotesque as before (if not a bit bloodier). He’s dropped in the sand like a sack of potatoes, and Danny doesn’t feel the least bit sorry for him.
Back straight and shoulders rigid, Steve turns back to Danny. He’s all scowl, eyebrows furrowed and lips taut and hands clenched at his sides. “Careful, that’ll stick,” Danny says, because he isn’t sure what else to say, he only knows he needs to say something besides ‘it should be made illegal for you to wear wet clothing in public, I can seriously count your abs’ or ‘ow ow fucking ow’. Instead, he bravely avoids eye contact and looks around for the rest of their team.
“I, uhh. Do Chin and Kono…?”
“No,” Steve says briskly. “But you’re going to tell them.” There’s no room for argument, and Danny doesn’t have it in him to try.
“Yeah, okay.”
Steve’s in his space again at the blink of an eye, hands hovering right over the angry red injury on his side. “Jesus, Danny.”
“It was clean,” Danny says quickly, resisting the urge to step back. “Got his teeth out before there was any tearing. Straighten your bonnet, I’m fine.”
Steve grabs one of his hands and oww, okay, he’d forgotten about that. “This how you got him off you?”
“Uh.”
“Dammit, Danny.”
“Look, you of all people are not allowed to stand there and be angry with me about me doing my job, okay?” And if he’s talking a bit louder than he should be, well, he can’t be held accountable. “If anything I thought you’d be proud, Steve - I’m finally turning into you.”
Steve’s mouth his handing open. Danny shuts his with a clacking of teeth. “That came out wrong. That’s not allowed to go to your - no, don’t look at me like that, Jesus you’re impossible.” He waves a hand in Steve’s face because the guy’s surprise melted away and now he just looks fond, eyes crinkled in the way that will never not be adorable.
“Yeah, well, as much as I like the thought of you finally becoming, well,” and he spreads his arms, putting his body on display. Danny shoots him the middle finger before he can continue. “We still need to get you checked out. And for the record,” he sticks a finger in Danny’s face for emphasis, “I would not stick my hands in a shark’s mouth to get it off me.”
“Oh shut up, you totally would.”
“You’re right, I would. Still doesn’t mean you should.”
“Don’t make me hit you. Ho, hey, don’t touch me with those grubby paws,” Danny hollers, taking a shaky step back and away from Steve’s probing fingers. “It’s gonna be enough of a picnic to clean without the doctors having to dig sand out too.”
Steve hits his hands on his sopping cargo pants, spraying sand everywhere, then looks over Danny’s shoulder at something. Danny turns to follow his gaze, can’t help but feel a small jolt of anxiety when he sees Chin and Kono walking briskly toward them. They look concerned, and Danny appreciates it, appreciates them, as he always does, but –
But what if they don’t accept this as easily as Steve did?
“There you are,” Chin says. “Had us worried.” A firm hand is on his shoulder, eyes trying to communicate something, but Danny doesn’t have much time to consider it, because something slams into him and he stumbles back a step with little grace.
Kono is practically draped over his as she delivers maybe the tightest hug of his life. “Asshole,” she says, and he laughs, then hugs her back gingerly with his arms, hands hovering awkwardly above her back. Chin sees them and hisses, and she steps back, graceful as anything even in the uneven sand. She quickly joins the frown party, one hand on the butt of her gun and the other waving in the air.
“Danny Williams, I let you out of my sight for two minutes, and what – is that a shark bite?!”
He manfully avoids pouting. “It is, in fact, so can I just, you know, have a nice quiet visit to the hospital, where they will undoubtedly give me some of the best pain meds on the island?”
“It’s a date,” Chin says. “At least you have enough sense; Steve here would probably have refused it and gone home.”
“And stitched it up with dental floss? I’m aware. He may be infecting me, but I’ve not gone off the deep end yet.”
“I’m right here, you know,” Steve says, and is effectively ignored.
“You’ve been touched by the ocean, brah. Practically kama’aina now.” Kono’s hands are on her hips, smiling bright as Chin leans over to help Steve with Mahelona, who is still miraculously unconscious.
“Oh, great, being mauled by a giant fish is some sort of induction on this ass-backwards island, that’s great,” Danny says.
Kono sticks her tongue out at him but gives him a shoulder to lean on anyway. “Yeah, well, don’t let this push you even further away from the ocean, yeah? It really is beautiful if you open up to it.”
A snotty comment dies on his tongue as Danny looks down at his feet. He’d decided not to lie, hadn’t he?
“Yeah, we’ll see.”