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tli_productionsTitle: The Continuing Adventures of Super SEAL and Detective Jersey
Fandom: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Summary: On the whole, Danny Williams thinks he's supposed to like being a superhero.
Characters: Danny, Meka, Steve, Kono, Chin, Grace; references to others
Rating: PG-13
Length: ~4200
Betas:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
explodedpen and wihluta
Spoilers: Through 1.08.
Warnings: Bad language and some violence.
Author's Notes: Superhero AU! Well, kinda. The universe is partially inspired by that of defunct British sitcom No Heroics, though this is technically not a crossover. The title was a throwaway reference to my WIP folder, and from which this entire story grew in the space of about an afternoon. A small part of this fic also owes itself to Neil Gaiman's "Anansi Boys". With special thanks toexplodedpen whom I'm apparently not allowed to blame for anything, ever, but continues to be awesome anyway.
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
2006
The Persuader walks into the interrogation room and sits down opposite the suspect. He makes a point of reading the files on the table between them. Ricky Giovanni, thirty-nine, had been found literally holding the gun over the still-bleeding body of a traffic cop. There are copious amounts of forensic evidence, as well as the good old-fashioned motive: little Ricky, with his convenient history of violence, did not like receiving parking tickets. The only thing standing between the state and a slam dunk case on this cop killing is a confession.
This is where The Persuader comes in.
He eases into it, gentle questions first. No sense in overwhelming the other person before he can get what he needs out of them.
“Guess you're having a bad day there, huh, Ricky?”
Ricky spits his politeness back at him. “What the hell do you care, cape? Yeah, I'm having a bad day. Been stuck in here all day listening to my life being dealt away by this no good money sucking leech over here.” He elbows his lawyer with a scowl, who just sighs and looks like he'd rather be anywhere but here.
The Persuader hides a smile. So far, so good. “Mr Avery doesn't look like much of a leech to me,” he says. “He's probably just another guy trying to do his job so he can go home to his wife and kids. What about you Ricky? Anyone going to be missing you tonight?”
Ricky's eyes narrow. “Got a girlfriend, baby on the way,” he says. Then his eyes widen. “What the hell you doing to me, cape?”
The Persuader holds his hands up. “Me, I'm not doing anything. Just asking you a few friendly questions. Got a problem with that?”
“Yeah, I got a problem with that! This is coercion, some kind of mind meld!”
“C: none of the above.” The Persuader leans back in his chair. “Like I said, I'm just asking a few, friendly questions.”
Realisation dawns on Ricky's face. “You can't make me 'fess to something I didn't do!”
“Well, actually, you're wrong there,” The Persuader says. “Given enough time to... familiarise myself with you, I could make you say or do anything that I wanted you to. But luckily for you, I am a man of principle, and I firmly believe in only asking the right questions.”
Blood starts draining out of Ricky's face. “Like what?” he asks.
“Tell me honestly, Mr Giovanni. Did you,” The Persuader begins, slowly and clearly enunciating each and every syllable, “kill Officer Angelique Trevell outside of the Starbucks on Broad this morning?”
“Yeah,” Ricky says eventually, “yes, I killed the lady cop.” Instantly his face crumples and he leans back in his chair, defeat oozing out of him. “This can't be admissible, cape.”
Oh, he'd be surprised. The Persuader had been subject to numerous controlled experiments to determine the scope and breadth of his abilities, just like every other cape on the force.
“Who the hell are you, man?” Ricky demands. “Your civilian name. I wanna know who the hell you are so I can take you down!”
The Persuader stands up, and looms over the table and into Ricky's personal space. “My name,” he says, “is Detective Danny Williams, and the only place you're going is prison – for the rest of your life.”
o o o o o
Present day
On the whole, Danny Williams thinks he's supposed to like being a superhero. Well, except for the costumes – he's got one, obviously, being a graduate of the East Coast Cape Program, but he's never seen the point of prancing around in skin-tight Lycra when a shirt and tie are perfectly respectable fare.
The limitations on his superpowers can get frustrating sometimes. Danny had spent far too many nights wondering what the point of being able to persuade anyone about anything was when he couldn't even make Rachel stay – with him, or even in New Jersey. (And if he had been able to make her stay, she'd have only ended up hating him – almost as much as he'd hate himself.) The simple truth is he can't make anyone go against their most basic nature. Also, it's rare but it happens occasionally that perps (and other people) are immune to his abilities, and a lot of the time he has to really work to get the edge on someone, and that can leave him exhausted.
The name he'd picked, back in his first year at the ECCP – The Persuader – that was cool enough, but once he'd decided to channel his powers by enlisting in the Newark Police Department, he'd become subject to every possible variation on his cape name. Some of them were unimaginative and laden with the usual innuendo ('The Mouth', 'Sweet Talker'), and some of them at least showed the beginnings of effort ('Snake Charmer' and 'Short Round'). None of them ever stuck for more than a few weeks, though, which was something.
There's the whole pursuit and enforcement of justice. That's a pretty awesome upside to having superpowers, now that he thinks about it.
Mostly, though, Danny hates Hawaii.
After Rachel had married her precious, dull, unimaginative and all around lousy conversationalist Stanley and taken his daughter to the far side of the country to live, Danny had had no choice but to follow, because having already lost his marriage he wasn't going to lose Grace as well. He'd ended up in the middle of the Honolulu Police Department.
A more apt name for it would be Hell On Earth.
“Hey.” Meka pokes him with the butt end of a pencil. “Whatever it is, it's not that bad, brah.”
Danny lifts his head from his arms and stares at his partner. “It's not that bad?” he repeats. “It's not that bad? Let me explain something to you, okay? I am a highly trained and experienced homicide detective with more than eighty arrests and convictions under my belt. I am also a board certified cape responsible for more convictions than half the state of New Jersey put together. And yet – and yet -”
“Hey, Detective Jersey,” some smart-ass from Narcotics says as he walks past.
Danny gives the man's retreating back the middle finger and turns back to Meka. “That,” he says. “That is not my name. It is not even close to either of my names.” Especially when it was spoken in the derisive tone favoured by so many of HPD's alleged finest.
Meka grins. “That's your biggest problem?”
“It is the one I am choosing to expend most of my energy on,” Danny says. “Because the alternative is to find a nice, jagged surface and beat my head against it repeatedly.”
Meka nods seriously. “You know, you could always ask the kid to take it back,” he suggests. “You know, like Billy and his friends are always doing. Jinxes.”
“This is not a jinx,” Danny moans. “This is a curse. That kid should never have been allowed the power of speech.”
The hacker kid looks up when Danny walks into the interrogation room and sits down opposite him. “Detective Jersey!” the kid declares. “Awesome seeing you again, man. Look,” he continues, leaning forwards across the table. “About the thing with the thing, I -”
“It's fine,” Danny interrupts. “You're not being charged with anything.”
The kid stares at him, eyes comically wide. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. You're a bright kid with a promising future. Try not to do anything like that to the federal servers again and I think you'll be all right.”
“Thank you, man!” The kid grabs Danny's hand and shakes it in a death grip. “I mean, really, really thank you, Detective Jersey.”
There's an edge in the kid's voice that Danny picks up on like a warning note. No, he thinks a moment later when his hand is released. It's nothing.
“So Toast likes to name things.” Meka's still grinning.
“So does my daughter,” Danny retorts. “And last I checked, Grace didn't get a multi-billion dollar defence system sunk because she insulted the server firewalls.”
“Yeah, okay, you're screwed.” When Danny gives him a death glare, Meka shrugs. “What do you want me to say, brah?”
“Anything,” Danny says, “anything you like, so long as it is not preceded with that name.”
The thing is, that's so much easier said than done, especially when the name in question had been given to him by an untrained, undisciplined and mostly stoned cape. Toast did indeed like to name things – and not only did his nicknames stick, they magically spread to everyone and everything and affected every possible perception of the thing or schmuck that had been given said nickname. Like the multi-billion dollar missile interception program that Toast had once been brought in to consult on – within hours of being asked his opinion, even the Joint Chiefs and the President, who had publicly and personally endorsed the project as the latest frontier in national defence were admitting, “It's kinda lame.”
Like Danny Williams, Police Detective. Also known as The Persuader for his semi-telepathic abilities to coax the truth and other responses out of recalcitrant individuals. He'd been a highly decorated and mostly respected cop and cape before moving to this pineapple infested hell hole.
Bad enough that he had to put up with eternal sunshine occasionally broken with balmy monsoon rainfall. Bad enough that despite moving several thousand miles he still only got to see Grace one evening a week and every other weekend. Bad enough that – okay, no, actually, it was awesomely endearing that Grace had told all her classmates that her daddy was an actual superhero while continuing to omit the money-dropping boredom machine that was Step Stan, but the end result was still kids coming up to him on the rare occasion that he was actually allowed to pick his own little girl up from school and asking him for help with things.
After the sixth time he'd rescued a small animal from an improbable location and a classmate of Gracie's had chirped, “Thank you, Detective Jersey!” Danny decided that life pretty much sucked.
In retrospect, his mistake was thinking things couldn't get any worse.
o o o o o
“Okay!” Danny's screaming now. He's screaming and he doesn't care. “Okay, I have officially, irrefutably, one hundred per cent had it! The next person who calls me by that name will get a very stern talking to!”
“Ethical violation, Danny,” Steve says, striding across Danny's field of vision and killing his momentum. “You can't do that.”
“Do not tell me what I can and can't do.” Danny jabs a finger into Steve's chest. “You are not the one living day to day with the ongoing erosion of your sanity by everyone you cross paths with.”
Steve watches him in amusement. “You can ignore it,” he smirks, because of course the madman enjoys rubbing in that he is one of the infinitesimally tiny cut of the population immune to Danny's abilities.
“Come on, De – Danny,” Kono says. “It's not that bad.”
Danny looks over at her, incredulous. “You were about to call me it, weren't you? Weren't you!”
She shrugs. “It's a reflex. Just can't help myself.” She flutters her eyelashes and Danny wonders for the nth time how in the hell this has become his life.
The worst part is, she's not actually lying.
“Steve McGarrett, Danny Williams – this is my cousin, Kono Kalakaua.”
She's hot, is Danny's first thought, and he can't decide whether that's from the bikini body or the way she's just punched out that tourist.
She nods when she shakes Steve's hand, and her face lights up when she sees Danny. “Detective Jersey!” she beams, and pumps his hand a few times.
While Chin's left eyebrow starts a steady climb and even Steve looks like he's about to shit himself laughing, Danny tries not to fall to the ground and cry. At least he doesn't have to worry about being distracted from working alongside Kono at any point ever – because that nickname? Instant mood killer.
Before Danny can come up with a suitably sarcastic but not actually cruel retort, Chin checks in from his stake-out of this week's merry gang of drug traffickers – they're on the move, and back up would be welcome.
Down at the seedy end of town, Danny doesn't bother looking around for Chin when he climbs out of the passenger side of his own car. He could be literally anyone or anything, and obviously blowing his cover at a point like this would rank highly on the scale of Bad Things.
Chin's led them to a warehouse with graffiti decorating one side and wooden boards blocking another. The whole place smells like rotten fish and something else Danny can't quite put his finger on. Probably the criminal element.
At Steve's nod, Kono takes the thick metal chains wrapped around the warehouse's goods entrance and frowns a few times until the metal starts to soften and twist in her grip. Danny's impressed – the last time she'd tried to do that the resulting fire had caused several thousand dollars' worth of damage and Steve had had to make an unscripted apology on the evening news.
He grins at the memory and then brings himself back to task, which is following Steve and Kono inside the warehouse, the acrid smell of burning metal completing the pungent atmosphere. And what do you know, inside the warehouse – and in plain sight to boot – are their three drug traffickers and a partially disassembled laboratory.
“Five-0!” Steve shouts.
“Stay right where you are!” Danny adds, because it's been scientifically proven that they're more likely to obey him over Super SEAL. At least until Steve does something completely bugfuck insane, like use grenades as bowling balls with the traffickers as the pins, or figure out how to compact napalm and use them as bullets. It's worrying that these are plausible options.
One of the drug traffickers stops dead in his tracks, scowling and looking at his colleagues when his legs refuse to co-operate with him. The second and third have higher thresholds, one of them stumbling over himself while the other makes a break for the far end of the warehouse at a full run. Danny grabs and cuffs the one who stopped completely, while Kono makes for the unsteady one and Steve charges straight for the runner, full body tackling him to the ground and rolling over a couple of times before pinning the other guy to the ground and cuffing his arms behind his back.
“Gonna get you for this, Detective Jersey,” the perp in Danny's custody spits.
He snorts. “That's what they all say. And so far it's oh for all of them.”
“Always a first time, cape.”
“Yeah. Whatever. Now shush unless asked a direct question.” Danny's smile widens as the guy duly shuts up, glaring all the while as he's pushed over to where his cohorts are standing, similarly cuffed, and staring at their compatriot like Danny's just made him sprout a second head.
Steve grins, hands on his hips and obviously proud of their little bust. “Book 'em, Danno!”
Kono laughs, while Danny tries not to pull out his weapon and shoot Steve in the face with it. “I've told you about that – what have I told you about calling me that?” he demands.
Steve pauses like he's actually considering the implications of Danny's statement. “It's either Danno or Detective Jersey,” he grins.
“I hate you. I hate you so much.”
The guy Danny cuffed starts to snigger, and Danny turns on him instantly, because this at least he can control. “You! Not a single noise unless prompted, do you hear me?”
The guy instantly shuts up and nods, the picture of contrition except for the look of pure hatred on his face.
So far, so simple. Except... Danny looks around. Chin hasn't yet materialised out of whatever corner he'd blended himself into, which means one of two things. Either Chin isn't here, or Chin isn't here.
Steve and Kono are obviously thinking along the same lines, because Kono whips out her cell and starts dialling and Steve pushes his perp up against the edge of one of the tables. “Where is he?” he demands loudly and with all manner of threat inherent in his tone.
“Where's who, hotshot?” the guy throws back at him. “Hotpants and the Mouth are right there.”
Steve moves his grip to the guy's throat and squeezes. “Apologise to Officer Kalakaua and Detective Je – Williams,” he says quietly. Danny pretends not to notice the hesitation.
“Or what?”
“Or I'll start a fire in your pants,” Kono deadpans. She glances at Steve and shakes her head slightly.
He stiffens and turns his attentions back to the neck muscles still in his death grip. “Tell me where Inspector Kelly is, right now.”
“Which is it?” the guy challenges. “You want me to grovel or tell you what I did to your – ah!”
Yep, Steve's just kneed a handcuffed man in the groin. Danny's not looking forward to that round of paperwork later. He steps forward and jabs Steve's nearest forearm. “Let me,” he says.
“Danny,” Steve grits.
“Steve,” Danny says. “Back off.”
After a few seconds Steve does so, and Danny takes up position in front of the man who'd been able to run when Danny had said stop. He'd have been able to sense the guy's threshold even without that little display of mental resistance, and he braces himself. This is not going to be easy. He doesn't have the time to ease into it, not if the guy's insinuation is correct and he's done something to Chin.
“Tell me where Inspector Chin Ho Kelly is,” he says, mirroring Steve's sentence structure and physical stance, despite the height difference barring him from having quite the same effect.
“No.”
Danny takes a deep breath and focuses on the spot between the other guy's eyes. “Tell me,” he repeats, enunciating each syllable, “where Inspector Chin Ho Kelly is.”
This time the guy hesitates, but he still manages to spit: “No!” into Danny's face.
Danny really focuses this time, concentrates like he hasn't had to in years, not since that time he'd been seconded to Vice back in Newark and had had to deal with some of the toughest pimps the state had ever attempted to convict. “Tell me,” he says again, “where Inspector Kelly is.”
There are spots dancing in front of Danny's eyes now, and the trafficker is just staring dumbly at Danny now, not obeying him but not outright disobeying him either.
Dimly he hears Kono behind him. “Boss, we've got a problem.” But whatever it is, she's not using words, and it can't be that important because Danny's still fixated on the trafficker's nose and while Danny can hear people shouting and noises happening around them, all he can really hear is the trafficker saying quietly, “Out cold behind the warehouse. North-east wall.”
Dazed, Danny steps back, just in time for Steve to grab his arm and say: “This place is set to blow, Danny, come on!”
The last thing he remembers is running for the exit.
o o o o o
Danny wakes up in a hospital bed with the mother of all migraines. He groans and rolls over and is greeted with the sight of Steve sprawled out on one chair, and Grace curled up on another one beside him. As if by magic – but more likely some awesome latent cape ability that won't be detectable until she hits puberty – she stirs when Danny smiles.
“Danno!” she exclaims, and jumps up onto the bed and into Danny's waiting arms. “I was worried about you!”
“Me, Monkey? Naw, I'm fine. Just got a bit of a headache -” Danny checks himself for the first time, just to be sure, “- and some scrapes and minor burns. It'll take more than that to keep me down.”
“You promise?” she asks, wide-eyed and quiet.
“I promise,” he tells her, and pulls her into another hug.
By this point, Steve's awake, and watching the scene with quiet amusement. “You know, I've never actually seen someone nearly pass out from being the one doing the interrogating,” he says softly.
Danny snorts. “Such is my life since moving to this... wondrous place.” Grace is far too young to understand sarcasm, for which he is unbelievably grateful, a point proven when she beams at him.
“Told you you'd like Hawaii someday,” she grins.
“I'm... thawing out,” he tells her – and points a finger at Steve's burgeoning grin. “Not a word, not one word.”
Steve holds his hands up, but keeps grinning.
“Chin,” Danny says suddenly. “Is he okay, did you find him?”
“Yeah, they found me, Danny.”
Danny looks up – and there's a Chin-shaped rainbow standing in the doorway to his room. Danny squints, then checks his head for bumps with one hand, then squints some more.
Chin sighs. “I have a concussion,” he explains.
“I can – I can kinda see that,” Danny admits. “And when does that wear off?”
“Not soon enough,” Chin says darkly.
Grace, predictably, laughs. “You look awesome!”
Chin cracks a smile. “Well, I'm glad you think so,” he says. Then, to Danny, he adds: “Kono's two rooms down – took a nasty blow to the back and the shock affected her own abilities. You're both going to be kept in at least overnight, but from what the nurses say, there's no lasting damage to either of you.”
“See, Monkey?” Danny says gently. “I'm gonna be just fine.”
She beams up at him. Behind her, Chin leaves the room, presumably to go back and keep Kono company.
For the first time since waking up, Danny thinks to take a good look at Steve. Then he frowns. “How is it possible that you got out of that warehouse without so much as a scratch?”
Steve shrugs. “Trained SEAL,” he says. “I have superior reflexes.”
“Oh, you've got superior something, all right,” Danny mutters. “I've seen your file, but no way you're only human – so come on, what is it? Muscle memory? Super speed?” He snaps his fingers. “Accelerated cellular mitosis.”
Steve rolls his eyes. “I don't have advanced healing capabilities, Danny,” he says. “I'm not a cape.”
“No, you just wish you were.” Danny reaches out and jabs Steve in the arm. “Not an exoskeleton or reinforced dermis, then.”
“Ow,” Steve says sarcastically, pulling Constipated Face Number Three. “I'm not a cape! How many times do I have to keep telling you?”
“As many times as it takes until I believe you,” Danny says. Then he remembers where he is. “Or until I can get it proven beyond all reasonable doubt.”
Realisation dawns on Steve's face. “Oh no...” he begins.
“Oh yes,” Danny says. “Don't make me call for the nice nurses, Steven. I'd hate to have to see you manhandled like that.”
Steve's eyes narrow. “You wouldn't dare,” he says confidently.
“Gracie,” Danny says. “Would you go to the nearest nurse's station and tell them I have a headache. His name is Steve McGarrett and he's very persistent and I need some help dealing with it.”
Grace grins but makes no move to get off the bed. Instead she fixes Steve with a stare that rivals his own. “Don't make Danno sad, Steve,” she says. “He's in hospital.”
Steve's resolve starts to crumble and Danny doesn't think he's ever been prouder of his little girl in her entire life.
Two days later Danny is released from hospital. The first thing he does (after swing by Rachel's and negotiate ten minutes to reassure Grace that he really is fine) is head straight to his office at Five-0 and hang the brain scan of one Steven J. McGarrett that one of the nurses has had framed on his behalf on the wall to the side of his desk.
It's not like everyone can claim to have solid proof that at least one thing about Super SEAL is actually, you know, normal.
Fandom: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Summary: On the whole, Danny Williams thinks he's supposed to like being a superhero.
Characters: Danny, Meka, Steve, Kono, Chin, Grace; references to others
Rating: PG-13
Length: ~4200
Betas:
explodedpen and wihlutaSpoilers: Through 1.08.
Warnings: Bad language and some violence.
Author's Notes: Superhero AU! Well, kinda. The universe is partially inspired by that of defunct British sitcom No Heroics, though this is technically not a crossover. The title was a throwaway reference to my WIP folder, and from which this entire story grew in the space of about an afternoon. A small part of this fic also owes itself to Neil Gaiman's "Anansi Boys". With special thanks to
explodedpen whom I'm apparently not allowed to blame for anything, ever, but continues to be awesome anyway.2006
The Persuader walks into the interrogation room and sits down opposite the suspect. He makes a point of reading the files on the table between them. Ricky Giovanni, thirty-nine, had been found literally holding the gun over the still-bleeding body of a traffic cop. There are copious amounts of forensic evidence, as well as the good old-fashioned motive: little Ricky, with his convenient history of violence, did not like receiving parking tickets. The only thing standing between the state and a slam dunk case on this cop killing is a confession.
This is where The Persuader comes in.
He eases into it, gentle questions first. No sense in overwhelming the other person before he can get what he needs out of them.
“Guess you're having a bad day there, huh, Ricky?”
Ricky spits his politeness back at him. “What the hell do you care, cape? Yeah, I'm having a bad day. Been stuck in here all day listening to my life being dealt away by this no good money sucking leech over here.” He elbows his lawyer with a scowl, who just sighs and looks like he'd rather be anywhere but here.
The Persuader hides a smile. So far, so good. “Mr Avery doesn't look like much of a leech to me,” he says. “He's probably just another guy trying to do his job so he can go home to his wife and kids. What about you Ricky? Anyone going to be missing you tonight?”
Ricky's eyes narrow. “Got a girlfriend, baby on the way,” he says. Then his eyes widen. “What the hell you doing to me, cape?”
The Persuader holds his hands up. “Me, I'm not doing anything. Just asking you a few friendly questions. Got a problem with that?”
“Yeah, I got a problem with that! This is coercion, some kind of mind meld!”
“C: none of the above.” The Persuader leans back in his chair. “Like I said, I'm just asking a few, friendly questions.”
Realisation dawns on Ricky's face. “You can't make me 'fess to something I didn't do!”
“Well, actually, you're wrong there,” The Persuader says. “Given enough time to... familiarise myself with you, I could make you say or do anything that I wanted you to. But luckily for you, I am a man of principle, and I firmly believe in only asking the right questions.”
Blood starts draining out of Ricky's face. “Like what?” he asks.
“Tell me honestly, Mr Giovanni. Did you,” The Persuader begins, slowly and clearly enunciating each and every syllable, “kill Officer Angelique Trevell outside of the Starbucks on Broad this morning?”
“Yeah,” Ricky says eventually, “yes, I killed the lady cop.” Instantly his face crumples and he leans back in his chair, defeat oozing out of him. “This can't be admissible, cape.”
Oh, he'd be surprised. The Persuader had been subject to numerous controlled experiments to determine the scope and breadth of his abilities, just like every other cape on the force.
“Who the hell are you, man?” Ricky demands. “Your civilian name. I wanna know who the hell you are so I can take you down!”
The Persuader stands up, and looms over the table and into Ricky's personal space. “My name,” he says, “is Detective Danny Williams, and the only place you're going is prison – for the rest of your life.”
Present day
On the whole, Danny Williams thinks he's supposed to like being a superhero. Well, except for the costumes – he's got one, obviously, being a graduate of the East Coast Cape Program, but he's never seen the point of prancing around in skin-tight Lycra when a shirt and tie are perfectly respectable fare.
The limitations on his superpowers can get frustrating sometimes. Danny had spent far too many nights wondering what the point of being able to persuade anyone about anything was when he couldn't even make Rachel stay – with him, or even in New Jersey. (And if he had been able to make her stay, she'd have only ended up hating him – almost as much as he'd hate himself.) The simple truth is he can't make anyone go against their most basic nature. Also, it's rare but it happens occasionally that perps (and other people) are immune to his abilities, and a lot of the time he has to really work to get the edge on someone, and that can leave him exhausted.
The name he'd picked, back in his first year at the ECCP – The Persuader – that was cool enough, but once he'd decided to channel his powers by enlisting in the Newark Police Department, he'd become subject to every possible variation on his cape name. Some of them were unimaginative and laden with the usual innuendo ('The Mouth', 'Sweet Talker'), and some of them at least showed the beginnings of effort ('Snake Charmer' and 'Short Round'). None of them ever stuck for more than a few weeks, though, which was something.
There's the whole pursuit and enforcement of justice. That's a pretty awesome upside to having superpowers, now that he thinks about it.
Mostly, though, Danny hates Hawaii.
After Rachel had married her precious, dull, unimaginative and all around lousy conversationalist Stanley and taken his daughter to the far side of the country to live, Danny had had no choice but to follow, because having already lost his marriage he wasn't going to lose Grace as well. He'd ended up in the middle of the Honolulu Police Department.
A more apt name for it would be Hell On Earth.
“Hey.” Meka pokes him with the butt end of a pencil. “Whatever it is, it's not that bad, brah.”
Danny lifts his head from his arms and stares at his partner. “It's not that bad?” he repeats. “It's not that bad? Let me explain something to you, okay? I am a highly trained and experienced homicide detective with more than eighty arrests and convictions under my belt. I am also a board certified cape responsible for more convictions than half the state of New Jersey put together. And yet – and yet -”
“Hey, Detective Jersey,” some smart-ass from Narcotics says as he walks past.
Danny gives the man's retreating back the middle finger and turns back to Meka. “That,” he says. “That is not my name. It is not even close to either of my names.” Especially when it was spoken in the derisive tone favoured by so many of HPD's alleged finest.
Meka grins. “That's your biggest problem?”
“It is the one I am choosing to expend most of my energy on,” Danny says. “Because the alternative is to find a nice, jagged surface and beat my head against it repeatedly.”
Meka nods seriously. “You know, you could always ask the kid to take it back,” he suggests. “You know, like Billy and his friends are always doing. Jinxes.”
“This is not a jinx,” Danny moans. “This is a curse. That kid should never have been allowed the power of speech.”
The hacker kid looks up when Danny walks into the interrogation room and sits down opposite him. “Detective Jersey!” the kid declares. “Awesome seeing you again, man. Look,” he continues, leaning forwards across the table. “About the thing with the thing, I -”
“It's fine,” Danny interrupts. “You're not being charged with anything.”
The kid stares at him, eyes comically wide. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. You're a bright kid with a promising future. Try not to do anything like that to the federal servers again and I think you'll be all right.”
“Thank you, man!” The kid grabs Danny's hand and shakes it in a death grip. “I mean, really, really thank you, Detective Jersey.”
There's an edge in the kid's voice that Danny picks up on like a warning note. No, he thinks a moment later when his hand is released. It's nothing.
“So Toast likes to name things.” Meka's still grinning.
“So does my daughter,” Danny retorts. “And last I checked, Grace didn't get a multi-billion dollar defence system sunk because she insulted the server firewalls.”
“Yeah, okay, you're screwed.” When Danny gives him a death glare, Meka shrugs. “What do you want me to say, brah?”
“Anything,” Danny says, “anything you like, so long as it is not preceded with that name.”
The thing is, that's so much easier said than done, especially when the name in question had been given to him by an untrained, undisciplined and mostly stoned cape. Toast did indeed like to name things – and not only did his nicknames stick, they magically spread to everyone and everything and affected every possible perception of the thing or schmuck that had been given said nickname. Like the multi-billion dollar missile interception program that Toast had once been brought in to consult on – within hours of being asked his opinion, even the Joint Chiefs and the President, who had publicly and personally endorsed the project as the latest frontier in national defence were admitting, “It's kinda lame.”
Like Danny Williams, Police Detective. Also known as The Persuader for his semi-telepathic abilities to coax the truth and other responses out of recalcitrant individuals. He'd been a highly decorated and mostly respected cop and cape before moving to this pineapple infested hell hole.
Bad enough that he had to put up with eternal sunshine occasionally broken with balmy monsoon rainfall. Bad enough that despite moving several thousand miles he still only got to see Grace one evening a week and every other weekend. Bad enough that – okay, no, actually, it was awesomely endearing that Grace had told all her classmates that her daddy was an actual superhero while continuing to omit the money-dropping boredom machine that was Step Stan, but the end result was still kids coming up to him on the rare occasion that he was actually allowed to pick his own little girl up from school and asking him for help with things.
After the sixth time he'd rescued a small animal from an improbable location and a classmate of Gracie's had chirped, “Thank you, Detective Jersey!” Danny decided that life pretty much sucked.
In retrospect, his mistake was thinking things couldn't get any worse.
“Okay!” Danny's screaming now. He's screaming and he doesn't care. “Okay, I have officially, irrefutably, one hundred per cent had it! The next person who calls me by that name will get a very stern talking to!”
“Ethical violation, Danny,” Steve says, striding across Danny's field of vision and killing his momentum. “You can't do that.”
“Do not tell me what I can and can't do.” Danny jabs a finger into Steve's chest. “You are not the one living day to day with the ongoing erosion of your sanity by everyone you cross paths with.”
Steve watches him in amusement. “You can ignore it,” he smirks, because of course the madman enjoys rubbing in that he is one of the infinitesimally tiny cut of the population immune to Danny's abilities.
“Come on, De – Danny,” Kono says. “It's not that bad.”
Danny looks over at her, incredulous. “You were about to call me it, weren't you? Weren't you!”
She shrugs. “It's a reflex. Just can't help myself.” She flutters her eyelashes and Danny wonders for the nth time how in the hell this has become his life.
The worst part is, she's not actually lying.
“Steve McGarrett, Danny Williams – this is my cousin, Kono Kalakaua.”
She's hot, is Danny's first thought, and he can't decide whether that's from the bikini body or the way she's just punched out that tourist.
She nods when she shakes Steve's hand, and her face lights up when she sees Danny. “Detective Jersey!” she beams, and pumps his hand a few times.
While Chin's left eyebrow starts a steady climb and even Steve looks like he's about to shit himself laughing, Danny tries not to fall to the ground and cry. At least he doesn't have to worry about being distracted from working alongside Kono at any point ever – because that nickname? Instant mood killer.
Before Danny can come up with a suitably sarcastic but not actually cruel retort, Chin checks in from his stake-out of this week's merry gang of drug traffickers – they're on the move, and back up would be welcome.
Down at the seedy end of town, Danny doesn't bother looking around for Chin when he climbs out of the passenger side of his own car. He could be literally anyone or anything, and obviously blowing his cover at a point like this would rank highly on the scale of Bad Things.
Chin's led them to a warehouse with graffiti decorating one side and wooden boards blocking another. The whole place smells like rotten fish and something else Danny can't quite put his finger on. Probably the criminal element.
At Steve's nod, Kono takes the thick metal chains wrapped around the warehouse's goods entrance and frowns a few times until the metal starts to soften and twist in her grip. Danny's impressed – the last time she'd tried to do that the resulting fire had caused several thousand dollars' worth of damage and Steve had had to make an unscripted apology on the evening news.
He grins at the memory and then brings himself back to task, which is following Steve and Kono inside the warehouse, the acrid smell of burning metal completing the pungent atmosphere. And what do you know, inside the warehouse – and in plain sight to boot – are their three drug traffickers and a partially disassembled laboratory.
“Five-0!” Steve shouts.
“Stay right where you are!” Danny adds, because it's been scientifically proven that they're more likely to obey him over Super SEAL. At least until Steve does something completely bugfuck insane, like use grenades as bowling balls with the traffickers as the pins, or figure out how to compact napalm and use them as bullets. It's worrying that these are plausible options.
One of the drug traffickers stops dead in his tracks, scowling and looking at his colleagues when his legs refuse to co-operate with him. The second and third have higher thresholds, one of them stumbling over himself while the other makes a break for the far end of the warehouse at a full run. Danny grabs and cuffs the one who stopped completely, while Kono makes for the unsteady one and Steve charges straight for the runner, full body tackling him to the ground and rolling over a couple of times before pinning the other guy to the ground and cuffing his arms behind his back.
“Gonna get you for this, Detective Jersey,” the perp in Danny's custody spits.
He snorts. “That's what they all say. And so far it's oh for all of them.”
“Always a first time, cape.”
“Yeah. Whatever. Now shush unless asked a direct question.” Danny's smile widens as the guy duly shuts up, glaring all the while as he's pushed over to where his cohorts are standing, similarly cuffed, and staring at their compatriot like Danny's just made him sprout a second head.
Steve grins, hands on his hips and obviously proud of their little bust. “Book 'em, Danno!”
Kono laughs, while Danny tries not to pull out his weapon and shoot Steve in the face with it. “I've told you about that – what have I told you about calling me that?” he demands.
Steve pauses like he's actually considering the implications of Danny's statement. “It's either Danno or Detective Jersey,” he grins.
“I hate you. I hate you so much.”
The guy Danny cuffed starts to snigger, and Danny turns on him instantly, because this at least he can control. “You! Not a single noise unless prompted, do you hear me?”
The guy instantly shuts up and nods, the picture of contrition except for the look of pure hatred on his face.
So far, so simple. Except... Danny looks around. Chin hasn't yet materialised out of whatever corner he'd blended himself into, which means one of two things. Either Chin isn't here, or Chin isn't here.
Steve and Kono are obviously thinking along the same lines, because Kono whips out her cell and starts dialling and Steve pushes his perp up against the edge of one of the tables. “Where is he?” he demands loudly and with all manner of threat inherent in his tone.
“Where's who, hotshot?” the guy throws back at him. “Hotpants and the Mouth are right there.”
Steve moves his grip to the guy's throat and squeezes. “Apologise to Officer Kalakaua and Detective Je – Williams,” he says quietly. Danny pretends not to notice the hesitation.
“Or what?”
“Or I'll start a fire in your pants,” Kono deadpans. She glances at Steve and shakes her head slightly.
He stiffens and turns his attentions back to the neck muscles still in his death grip. “Tell me where Inspector Kelly is, right now.”
“Which is it?” the guy challenges. “You want me to grovel or tell you what I did to your – ah!”
Yep, Steve's just kneed a handcuffed man in the groin. Danny's not looking forward to that round of paperwork later. He steps forward and jabs Steve's nearest forearm. “Let me,” he says.
“Danny,” Steve grits.
“Steve,” Danny says. “Back off.”
After a few seconds Steve does so, and Danny takes up position in front of the man who'd been able to run when Danny had said stop. He'd have been able to sense the guy's threshold even without that little display of mental resistance, and he braces himself. This is not going to be easy. He doesn't have the time to ease into it, not if the guy's insinuation is correct and he's done something to Chin.
“Tell me where Inspector Chin Ho Kelly is,” he says, mirroring Steve's sentence structure and physical stance, despite the height difference barring him from having quite the same effect.
“No.”
Danny takes a deep breath and focuses on the spot between the other guy's eyes. “Tell me,” he repeats, enunciating each syllable, “where Inspector Chin Ho Kelly is.”
This time the guy hesitates, but he still manages to spit: “No!” into Danny's face.
Danny really focuses this time, concentrates like he hasn't had to in years, not since that time he'd been seconded to Vice back in Newark and had had to deal with some of the toughest pimps the state had ever attempted to convict. “Tell me,” he says again, “where Inspector Kelly is.”
There are spots dancing in front of Danny's eyes now, and the trafficker is just staring dumbly at Danny now, not obeying him but not outright disobeying him either.
Dimly he hears Kono behind him. “Boss, we've got a problem.” But whatever it is, she's not using words, and it can't be that important because Danny's still fixated on the trafficker's nose and while Danny can hear people shouting and noises happening around them, all he can really hear is the trafficker saying quietly, “Out cold behind the warehouse. North-east wall.”
Dazed, Danny steps back, just in time for Steve to grab his arm and say: “This place is set to blow, Danny, come on!”
The last thing he remembers is running for the exit.
Danny wakes up in a hospital bed with the mother of all migraines. He groans and rolls over and is greeted with the sight of Steve sprawled out on one chair, and Grace curled up on another one beside him. As if by magic – but more likely some awesome latent cape ability that won't be detectable until she hits puberty – she stirs when Danny smiles.
“Danno!” she exclaims, and jumps up onto the bed and into Danny's waiting arms. “I was worried about you!”
“Me, Monkey? Naw, I'm fine. Just got a bit of a headache -” Danny checks himself for the first time, just to be sure, “- and some scrapes and minor burns. It'll take more than that to keep me down.”
“You promise?” she asks, wide-eyed and quiet.
“I promise,” he tells her, and pulls her into another hug.
By this point, Steve's awake, and watching the scene with quiet amusement. “You know, I've never actually seen someone nearly pass out from being the one doing the interrogating,” he says softly.
Danny snorts. “Such is my life since moving to this... wondrous place.” Grace is far too young to understand sarcasm, for which he is unbelievably grateful, a point proven when she beams at him.
“Told you you'd like Hawaii someday,” she grins.
“I'm... thawing out,” he tells her – and points a finger at Steve's burgeoning grin. “Not a word, not one word.”
Steve holds his hands up, but keeps grinning.
“Chin,” Danny says suddenly. “Is he okay, did you find him?”
“Yeah, they found me, Danny.”
Danny looks up – and there's a Chin-shaped rainbow standing in the doorway to his room. Danny squints, then checks his head for bumps with one hand, then squints some more.
Chin sighs. “I have a concussion,” he explains.
“I can – I can kinda see that,” Danny admits. “And when does that wear off?”
“Not soon enough,” Chin says darkly.
Grace, predictably, laughs. “You look awesome!”
Chin cracks a smile. “Well, I'm glad you think so,” he says. Then, to Danny, he adds: “Kono's two rooms down – took a nasty blow to the back and the shock affected her own abilities. You're both going to be kept in at least overnight, but from what the nurses say, there's no lasting damage to either of you.”
“See, Monkey?” Danny says gently. “I'm gonna be just fine.”
She beams up at him. Behind her, Chin leaves the room, presumably to go back and keep Kono company.
For the first time since waking up, Danny thinks to take a good look at Steve. Then he frowns. “How is it possible that you got out of that warehouse without so much as a scratch?”
Steve shrugs. “Trained SEAL,” he says. “I have superior reflexes.”
“Oh, you've got superior something, all right,” Danny mutters. “I've seen your file, but no way you're only human – so come on, what is it? Muscle memory? Super speed?” He snaps his fingers. “Accelerated cellular mitosis.”
Steve rolls his eyes. “I don't have advanced healing capabilities, Danny,” he says. “I'm not a cape.”
“No, you just wish you were.” Danny reaches out and jabs Steve in the arm. “Not an exoskeleton or reinforced dermis, then.”
“Ow,” Steve says sarcastically, pulling Constipated Face Number Three. “I'm not a cape! How many times do I have to keep telling you?”
“As many times as it takes until I believe you,” Danny says. Then he remembers where he is. “Or until I can get it proven beyond all reasonable doubt.”
Realisation dawns on Steve's face. “Oh no...” he begins.
“Oh yes,” Danny says. “Don't make me call for the nice nurses, Steven. I'd hate to have to see you manhandled like that.”
Steve's eyes narrow. “You wouldn't dare,” he says confidently.
“Gracie,” Danny says. “Would you go to the nearest nurse's station and tell them I have a headache. His name is Steve McGarrett and he's very persistent and I need some help dealing with it.”
Grace grins but makes no move to get off the bed. Instead she fixes Steve with a stare that rivals his own. “Don't make Danno sad, Steve,” she says. “He's in hospital.”
Steve's resolve starts to crumble and Danny doesn't think he's ever been prouder of his little girl in her entire life.
Two days later Danny is released from hospital. The first thing he does (after swing by Rachel's and negotiate ten minutes to reassure Grace that he really is fine) is head straight to his office at Five-0 and hang the brain scan of one Steven J. McGarrett that one of the nurses has had framed on his behalf on the wall to the side of his desk.
It's not like everyone can claim to have solid proof that at least one thing about Super SEAL is actually, you know, normal.
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Date: 2011-07-14 07:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-15 04:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-15 04:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-15 01:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-15 04:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-15 05:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-15 08:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-16 11:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-16 05:47 am (UTC)The worldbuilding (The Capes, a school for them, being accepted and integrated in society and so on), their powers, that Steve hasn't a power (I love you so much for doing that!), the humor (Chin as a "rainbow" :D), the H/C, the Teamness! ♥ So awesome!
Thank you very much for this fic!
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Date: 2011-07-16 11:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-15 06:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-15 09:48 am (UTC)