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Entry tags:
kopalu mano, 1/3, H5-0, Steve, Kono
Title: kopalu mano (1/3)
Fandom: Hawaii Five-0
Pairing: gen, Steve/Kono partnership
Rating: Adult
Length: ~5300
Disclaimer: Not mine
Notes/Warnings: Spoilers for the entire first season. General warnings for violence (to show levels, take that as you might); and to be extra safe, allusions to possible dubious consent issues that are right now very minor but will probably become more explicit as we go along. Please feel free to PM/email me if you'd like more specifics. This is the start of what I would have written for a Big Bang (if I hadn't gone insane and signed up for two others.) The title means shark bait/chum, and also the taboo breakers who were thrown in the ocean and left for dead.
Summary: "We are perfect for this cover, and I don't mean for it to be a suicide run." Kono looked up, straight at Steve then. "I don't, and I don't mean for my partner to go into it looking to check out, so if that's what you're thinking, you let me go in alone, McGarrett."
Also on AO3, here.
It only takes Kono a week before she realizes how little she'd known before she started. The physical part is okay--good, even. It's been a long time since she's had the hours to devote to surfing, and even with her knee needing a brace, she can feel herself getting stronger and better every day. Hanging out and teaching Kiana to surf--that's the easy part. It's everything else that's draining.
Her stateroom on the yacht is nice--pretty plush for the hired help, but like everybody knew, Kono's special. Kiana is the boss's little princess, and Kono has what the princess wants, so some of that sparkly glitter rubs off on her. That's the first bit of luck--Kono has her own place, and that gives her a break, gives her a place to be just her, even if it isn't all that many hours in the day. Kono doesn't know that she'd have been able to keep up with being OtherKono if she hadn't had the room. Or, no, that isn't quite true--she would have kept up the act, because that's what she has to do, but she thinks she might have completely lost herself in it. She's a little freaked by how much she actually has lost, but she thinks she can get herself back once she's done.
The sun isn't quite up yet, but the shower's already going in the tiny attached bathroom. Kono crawls out of bed and finds a bikini that isn't still damp and hunts around until she comes across board shorts that don't clash horribly with it. Her good sunglasses are slung by their leash over the edge of the mirror and she's never been someone who pays a ton of attention to clothes and shit, but that's about all she needs to be fully dressed these days.
She brushes her teeth in the tiny corner sink, and runs a comb through her hair, staring at her reflection in the mirror thoughtfully. She's lost weight out here; her cheekbones are sharper, more prominent and her collarbones press against the skin like they're trying to break free. Her arms are leaner, too, more toned from the all the time she's been spending in the water as opposed to time bulking up in the gym
The water shuts off in the bathroom and Steve comes out, still mostly wet, a towel slung low on his hips.
"You ready?" His eyes sweep over her, assessing, and it's a Steve-her-boss look, gauging his team and how ready they are. She knows the next time, he'll still be watching out for her, but it'll be masked under a layer of danger thick enough that she won't even bother looking for the Steve who took a chance on the academy cadet, only return it in kind. Right now, though, she can smile at him and luxuriate in the last few seconds of being seen for herself.
"Just waiting on you," Kono tells him. She sweeps her hair over to one side of her shoulders, baring her neck, and arches an eyebrow at him in the mirror. He still looks pained, like it's the first time they've done this and not something that gives them a little extra breathing room, but he crosses the room and comes up behind close behind her. She tilts her head a little, gives him some more room to work, and meets his eyes as he bends down and bites a kiss into the curve of her neck and shoulder. There's already a mark there, a fading bruise; this will bring it back out, and remind everyone else on the yacht exactly who they have to go through to get to Kono. There's a half-healed scratch down the back of Steve's arm, and more on his back that serve the same purpose on Kono's behalf. It's surprising how well it works, which is the only reason Steve's still agreeing to it.
"Animal," Kono deadpans, and smiles when the tension breaks. Steve mock growls and she laughs and dodges out the door just ahead of the snap of his towel.
***
It took Danny a week to talk Steve into taking the meeting with HPD and DEA, and even then the level of antagonism in the room was so high, Kono wasn't sure how any of them were breathing. Steve hadn't endeared himself to HPD in the weeks it had taken for Danny and Chin to clear him of Jameson's murder, and it was going to take Steve at least a decade to let go of being railroaded in the first place. Looking at how every muscle was poised to start dishing out punishment, Kono revised her estimate to twenty years, and more probably, never. Chin was there, though, and he managed to keep the police representatives quiet and let the DEA agents do the talking, and they got through the presentation without Steve physically assaulting anyone.
After the feds were done, it was HPD's turn, and Kono listened to the offer they were making with as little emotion as possible. The chief was really working the hard sell, but in the end it came down to them, Kono and Steve, or either one of them individually, nobody much cared, going in undercover for as long as it took DEA to bring down the drug cartel, with the end result that they'd be reinstated without censure. Kono might have been a rookie, but she'd lived her whole life around cops; it didn't take much to figure out that it was far more likely that their cover would be blown long before they got what they needed. HPD was throwing them to the wolves to keep on DEA's good side. Kono couldn't even look at Steve, but from the look on Chin's face, and Danny's, too, they knew it just as well.
"Everybody out," Steve said, in what had become his default tone, little more than a snarl, staring down every single person in the room until they collected their papers and shuffled out, leaving just the four of them.
"You don't have to do this," Steve said to Kono. "It doesn't matter what they say; I took the money, you were just following orders."
Kono looked past him to Chin, who didn't have to say a word to communicate just how much he didn't want her to do this, and again past Chin to Danny, who was as stone-faced as she'd ever seen him. They were both, at least in theory, in the clear about the money, but Kono knew life in the precinct had to be grating on them.
"You're our handlers," Kono said to Chin and Danny. "We don't talk to anyone but you two, and we don't take orders from anybody else. Nobody but the four of us knows anything about what's going down, and if DEA doesn't like it, they can go find themselves two other cops they can blackmail into doing this and see how long it takes to come up with a better cover story than we already have."
"Honey," Danny started, but Kono shook her head and turned to Chin.
"Being a cop is about making things right," she said, holding Chin's eyes. "Making our world a better place. You taught me that. You lived it."
"Not when it's a suicide run," Chin said. "If I taught you that, I was wrong."
Kono looked down at her hands for a second, struggling to keep her center, her calm. "This will take down some very bad guys." She waited them out, but nobody could argue with that. It was a vicious, nasty group, one that DEA had been tracking for years, one that had at least a dozen cop kills to its credit. "We are perfect for this cover, and I don't mean for it to be a suicide run." She looked up, straight at Steve then. "I don't, and I don't mean for my partner to go into it looking to check out, so if that's what you're thinking, you let me go in alone, McGarrett."
Steve looked at her for a long time before he turned to Chin and said, "Tell HPD we're not going for it. Better yet, let me tell the scum-sucking dirty cops what I think of them, while you and Danny set things up with DEA. If we're going to walk out of this one alive, we do like the lady said and we only talk to you and Danny."
***
It's a little scary how quickly Kono can get her game-face on, how easy it is to shift from a cop working UC to this character she's created, still Kono, but not a cop, not anymore. This other woman shares a lot with Kono--family, surfing, HPD and Five-0, and of course, she shares that hideous night of having her badge taken away, of looking up and seeing Steve being booked for the murder of the governor. After that, they split, but it's easy to plot out how this Kono's life twisted down a darker path. All Kono has to do is take a mental step sideways and she's in a place where she has no job, and no money, and her family, even Chin, isn't a part of her life. Once she gets there, it's easy to be her. She, the other woman, might have been scared once, but now she just doesn't give a shit.
It's not really morning--nobody but the crew moves much before noon out on this yacht, and even then the drugs and booze from the days and nights before are still mostly in control--but people are stumbling around, waking up to another day of having nothing to do but make the boss and his pretty girl happy. Kono puts her sunglasses on and slides all the way into character.
Kiana's in her usual place on the aft deck, party girls and boys around her, and already into her second or third de Brignac, the gold bottle sitting on the deck next to her head. They're still drinking it by the glass, but Kono knows that won't last long.
"Chica," Kiana greets Kono as Kono drops into the lounge chair next to her. She tips her sunglasses up and eyes the mark on Kono's neck as she reaches for the bottle. "At least somebody had fun last night."
Kono shrugs and tilts her head back to the sun. Kiana's sulking and pouting this morning, a continuation of the tantrum that had started the night before when the boss wouldn't hear of his precious little girl making a trip off the yacht and through the clubs. Kono knows security's been amped up; Steve's always armed on-board, but now he's packing an arsenal that'd give Danny a stroke. Late during the night, while they were supposedly having "fun," she and Steve had talked through about a dozen scenarios of who might be making Antreasian nervous and whether or not they're going to have to speed up their own agenda. Kono's pretty sure she knows which computer she needs to access, and the main reason she wears board shorts with her bikini tops is so she can always have the flash drive Chin got for her ready to go.
From the way everybody jumps when Kiana drops the bottle of champagne and it booms down on the deck, Kono doesn't think anyone's told the crew or any of the bully boys with guns to stand down. They're a little on a hair-trigger normally, but now, there's extra tension floating around. Even though they generally stay away from her--she broke one guy's finger on her second day on the boat for a little bit of grab-ass, and then Steve was there with a truly scary look in his eyes--she knows Steve would be a lot happier if she could carry the knife he got for her, but even with the boardshorts she's barely wearing any clothes. It doesn't bother her too much; she figures if anything goes down, she can probably manage to lay her hands on something lethal.
"We going out this morning?" Kono asks. She doesn't have to fake the indifference in her voice; she really doesn't give a good goddamn whether Kiana gets over herself enough to go surf, but that's why she's here, so she at least has to put a good face on it. It helps that the Kono she's playing doesn't really care about anything. It's almost a little freeing, when it's doesn't feel like she's killing off everything she's fought to keep alive during this whole fucked-up scenario. "We should probably go if we're going; the weather looks shitty for later today."
"No, Jesus, chill," Kiana says. "I know you're all about showing off how good you are, but you really don't have it anymore. Take something and come down off that attitude."
"Fine." Kono swallows down the rage that boils through her at the dismissive attitude, because that's what the other Kono would have to do. After months on suspension, this would be it for her--no money, no job, no family. She has to keep this hustle going, or she's looking at turning tricks just to keep food coming in. Kiana's smug little smirk says she knows that, too, and whatever compassion Kono has for her--she was born into this and has no way out--is tried by the mean-spirited pleasure she takes in making sure everyone knows their place around her.
Kono would stalk off, but there's a little something off about the activity on the deck this morning. Too few of the guys it takes to sail the yacht, and too many of the ones who like to walk around with the latest in semi-automatic weaponry. Steve comes up on deck and from the set of his shoulders and the way his eyes sweep the deck, they're at Defcon 4, gunning for 5, so Kono lets Kiana think she's going to stay around and try to win points. She lays her head back against the lounge chair and watches from behind her sunglasses.
***
Sadly enough, it was way too easy to pick a monumental fight with the family, uncles and cousins flushed and furious, and her mom and the aunties shrill and in a fair number of cases, utterly sanctimonious. Kono left her parents house actually pretty angry at how good everyone was at judging her, slamming the front door behind her hard enough to rattle the windows and throwing herself into Steve's truck. The fact that Steve had been there had been an added goad: she hadn't quite realized how much her family was blaming him for her--and by extension, their--shame.
"I have no idea how Chin didn't just firebomb the whole lot of them," she muttered, and then smiled at the eyebrow Steve was arching at her. "Okay, fine, Chin's a better person than me. I think we all knew that already."
"Don't sell yourself short," Steve said, getting that shuttered look in his eyes that said he was blaming himself with even more vigor than was coming from the collective bad mojo of her family.
"Stop it," Kono said, smacking him in the shoulder. Hard, because she was already pretty mad and she really fucking hated it when he got like that. "Grown-up person, remember? Clearly capable of saying no to you. In fact, I'm the one who told you about the money in the first place." He didn't say anything, only stared out at the street, and she smacked him again. "Got it?"
"Got it."
Steve drove her straight to her apartment and waited while she packed a bag, and they put the next part of the plan in motion. Kono had no real attachment to the apartment--it was just a place, not like Chin's house, or Steve's, where there was history and a sense of home--but it was still harder than hell to walk out of it, leaving everything but the bag of clothes she held and the surfboard they loaded into Steve's truck.
"Chin's got it covered," Steve said as they drove away and Kono could barely swallow past the fist that was sitting on her chest. She nodded blindly, and Steve took one hand off the steering wheel and brushed her hair back. "You sure about this? We can still tell DEA to fuck off."
"Yes. Yes." Kono took a deep breath and got her shit together. "It's just--been a long day."
Steve nodded, and they drove the rest of the way out to the leeward coast, to the tent city that stretched along the beach for miles. The tent Steve had for her was military surplus, light enough that she could pack it in her duffle but big enough that she could fit her shortboard in it while she slept. Steve walked through the encampment until he found a group of families, an enclave of semi-respectability away from the scarier fringes, and the set of his jaw told Kono not to bother with how she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. He stayed through the night, too, camped out in front of the tent, making damn sure everyone knew Kono wasn ‘t entirely alone. She thought the bayonet stuck into the ground in front of him was a little bit much, but otherwise, she was a little touched that he gave up a night's sleep for her.
Kamekona came by a couple of days later to give her the keys to a beat-up old Chevelle to take the place of the car that HPD took back.
"Wahine," he called down the beach, visibly upset and covering everything with cheer so forced it made her want to cry. "Howizit?" Kono wanted to tell him even more than she wanted to be able to tell her family. It didn't help that telling her family would mostly be about vindicating her character in their eyes, but telling Kamekona would be only so he wouldn't worry.
"I'm okay, brah," Kono assured him, patting him on the shoulder and reaching up to give him a kiss. "Great view, time to go-out every day. Could be worse."
Kamekona nodded eagerly, but he was a terrible actor. He wouldn't let her not take the bag of teri-burgers from W&M he claimed he didn't want, but she didn't feel quite as guilty after she shared them with the kids who hung around.
Steve could come by, but she had to pretend to be estranged from Chin and Danny. Chin stayed away, but Danny being Danny, they had a blast staging a fight out on the beach, one that ended with Kono slapping him and stalking off and then having to hide in her tent to keep anyone from seeing her laugh at his that all you got rookie? weak--i still got teeth in my head text.
She settled in and played her part, homeless and mostly alone, and after a week, Steve came by to tell her that Danny and Chin had relayed that the agent DEA already had circling around Antreasian was ready to start easing her in.
"Still have a chance to turn them down," Steve said, but she could tell he was only saying it because he thought he should and he wasn't surprised when she told him to fuck off. After all that, though, it turned out that Steve went in first. Apparently, Antreasian had a fetish about his security team and the chance to bag an ex-SEAL was too exciting for him to pass by. Steve had just enough time to text Kono and then he was gone.
Kono didn't tell anyone, but that was the part that made it all real. She was on her own.
***
Steve circles around to where Kono's stretched out on the deck. He generally manages to do that any time she's in public, so nobody even blinks now. He drops down to sit on his heels next to her, his eyes flickering indifferently over the bikini top she's tossed aside. The first couple of times she'd stripped down like the rest of the girls on the yacht, he'd spent ten minutes back in the stateroom apologizing for not averting his eyes or something. She'd finally cracked up and pointed out that the entire yacht thought they were in there fucking, that that was the point. The Steve he is in public sure as hell isn't going to look away, any more than the Kono she is is going to care. He still has a thing about it, but at least they've gotten past the apologies.
"Big doings this afternoon." He leans close and murmurs very softly, one hand tightening around Kono's arm, showing everyone the possessive son-of-a-bitch they think he is, sleight of hand to cover what he's telling her. "Big business. Somebody else's party but everyone important is invited."
Kono yanks her arm free as though he's pissing her off, but that's just so she she can nod that she understands. He lets her go and heads back across the deck to lean against the rail. Kono can't decide if she's impressed with how easily he blends in with the rest of the mercenaries Antreasian uses for security or if it's just fucking scary. Mostly, she acknowledges that she's even wondering just because her brain is racing in circles with the implications of what he's just told her and lieing there watching Steve makes for a reasonable thing to be doing for her alter-ego. For more than a month, she's been waiting and watching for the chance at the records she knows are here, and she knows she's only going to get one chance. To be honest, she doesn't think she really believed she'd even get even that much. For the first time, there's a glimmer of hope that she and Steve are going to really and truly get out of this and get back to some kind of normal life.
Someone must be looking out for her--before she has to figure out some kind of reasonable excuse to get herself off the deck, another round of mercs floods out from below, followed by all the people who do the work, and Antreasian himself comes out to join them.
"Kiana, inside." He barely flicks a glance at her, and Kono's reminded again of how very constricted her life is. Kono rolls to her feet, too, pulling a t-shirt on and pretending not to notice that Kiana is looking at her father as though she's afraid--not of him, but for him. Kono's never seen her be sent away like this, and while she's acting cool about it, Kono can see that fear remains.
"So what's up?" Kono asks, playing like she's pretending to be indifferent.
"Some meeting or another." Kiana shrugs. "Can't have any distractions." Kiana stalks off toward her own room, and the other girls, the ones who are there to party with her, flutter off after her, more or less ignoring Kono, the weird freak who's only there because Kiana wants to think she's really a surfer. Keeping up appearances, Kono shrugs, and goes off toward a lounge, but then circles back to her own room. She debates with herself, but then decides that a neoprene vest and a pair of Vibrams won't look too out of place. She can rig the vest to hold a sheath, custom-fit to the knife Steve got for her, and the Vibrams will give her a little extra traction if she has to move fast.
Everything's quiet when she eases open the door to her room and slips out. As she passes through the lounge, she can see another yacht, just as big, maybe not quite as luxe, alongside. There's a ton of black Kevlar on deck over there; she looks but she can't quite ID Steve in the middle of it. He can take care of himself, though; she can't waste brain cells on worrying about him. The best thing to do is get into the system and start dumping data.
The door to the office is locked, but she's not half-bad with a set of lockpicks if she does say so herself. Normally, there'd be at least one guy watching the door, but Antreasian had taken everyone with him. Show of force, Kono supposes. Or possibly a giant pissing match. She doesn't much care which, she's just happy it's happening.
The other thing's she's happy about is that Antreasian is a fucking moron who relies on guns and muscles and doesn't pay a tenth of that attention to the security of his data. Of course, given that said guns and muscle have no qualms about shooting first and asking questions only after they've dumped the bodies, it's more or less worked out well for him. Nobody's ever gotten this close before. Kono's hands are shaking as she slots the flash drive into the office computer and boots a new system from that. It works just like Chin had promised, the operating system on the flash drive treating the network drives like its own and backdooring right into the files there. She doesn't bother to look for anything specific or pick and choose, just starts copying anything and everything she can see. Her drive is huge, yet more surplus mil-spec that Steve swears can hold more data than most companies ever dream of accessing. It's also shock-proof, crush-proof, and, in its nifty carrying case, waterproof. The only bad thing about it is that it can't do anything about the data-transfer rate. It is what it is, and there's nothing she can do about it, even if it does feel like she's got a target painted on her back.
"Come on, come on," Kono whispers, as if that's going to make things move quicker. She can hear some shouting, which happens often enough on this boat, but generally isn't good, and then a couple quick cracks of gunfire, and that's never good. She hesitates for a second, not wanting to stop before she has to, but the pops are turning into more sustained riffs, semi-automatic bursts, and whatever the hell it is, Kono isn't sticking around to find out. She grabs the drive, sliding it back into its case and books on out the door. Outside the office, the noise is louder, and she can hear the girls back in Kiana's stateroom. They sound seriously freaked, not just fussing because the sun is up and the sky is blue, like normal, but really, really terrified.
Kono loops back toward the stateroom before she can talk herself out of it, moving as quickly as she can. She can tell the goon with the gun doesn't see anything but another girl who's going to start screaming, right up until she elbows him in the face. She's lucky and hits him exactly right--never a given in a real-world situation, especially on a boat that's pitching a little--and feels his nose break as he goes down.
The noise from inside the stateroom reaches a crescendo and the door flies open, Kiana kicking and screaming at the guy dragging her out. It's enough of a distraction that Kono can get her knife out and get set before the guy really knows what's happening. His buddy down and bleeding on the floor is helpful, because Kono isn't quite as good with the knife as she'd like. She at least knows how to hold it like she means it, and with the fight Kiana's putting up--and seriously, good for her, at least she's not fainting dead away, but Kono would think somebody might have taught the only daughter of one of the biggest drug runners in the Pacific a little self-defence--the guy isn't completely focused when Kono comes at him.
She tries to remember everything Steve's been teaching her, and manages to get a couple of quick cuts in without hurting Kiana. Hell, maybe the guy doesn't know anything about knife-fighting either; the gun he's carrying is certainly big enough to be compensating for all kinds of inadequacies, but Kono's really pissed him off now. She can see it in his eyes and she gets herself set to deal with whatever he's going to come back at her, wishing Kiana would shut up already, when a gun goes off behind her--a big one, the noise is like a thunderclap--and Kiana's usual bodyguard comes charging in to finish off both of the strangers.
"Come on, come on," he's yelling, desperate panic in his voice, and it's hot and steamy in the room, even worse under the neoprene Kono's wearing, but that, the panic, sends pure ice thorugh Kono's veins. The guys who work for Antreasian do not freak out. They don't do normal human emotions, and nothing gets to them. "Go," he screams at Kono, as he pulls Kiana past her and it jolts Kono into moving, too.
"Steve," she yells. "McGarrett--where is he?"
"Aft--laying down covering fire, move," he snarls at the girls, and Kono knows he doesn't really care about them, he just has to get Kiana out or Antreasian will make sure every person he's so much as spoken to in his life is going to die an ugly death.
Kono shoves past the mob and gets up and on deck, ducking behind a console and keeping her head down. The gunfire is constant, and she can see people down across the decks of both yachts, and she might be a little loco, but all she can hear in her head is Danny bitching about how much paperwork is gonna end up coming out of this. It's comforting in a way, as though she's not even doubting she's going to get clear. She works her way aft, dodging and diving from one piece of cover to the next, getting about halfway before she sees Steve, prone on the deck. Her heart skips a couple of beats before she can tell it that he's not down, he's just flat-out on his belly so he can get as much stability through the scope on his rifle as he can. He's pinned down, though, no cover in either direction, and Kono doesn't fool herself that any of the other guys he works with care enough to make sure he gets out.
There's a Beretta on the deck, a little too far out in the open to be an easy grab, and not particularly helpful at the longer distances they're talking about, but it's better than nothing, so Kono lunges for it, tucking her shoulder and rolling as she hits the deck, firing toward the other yacht as she comes back up.
"Steve," she yells, and he flashes her a handsign that he's heard her, never looking up from his scope. Kono's going to leave it at that, crouching down to check her ammo, but there's a quick bloom of light at the edge of her vision, along the back of the other boat, and when she whips back up, the flames are already reaching for the sky. "Steve," she screams. "Steve."
HIs head jerks up at that, and he catches sight of the fire, racing across the deck, heading straight for their yacht, people bailing off the other ship left and right.
"Go," he yells, motioning toward the rail behind Kono, throwing himself in the opposite direction, toward the portside rails. "Go, go, go!"
Kono can't get a whole lot of momentum in the short distance, but she gets an extra step on the middle rail and pushes off hard. Just before her other foot finds the top rail for the final jump, she catches sight of Steve out of the corner of her eye, throwing himself off the other side of the ship. Then she's over and off herself, diving as deep as she can go as the world explodes behind her.
Fandom: Hawaii Five-0
Pairing: gen, Steve/Kono partnership
Rating: Adult
Length: ~5300
Disclaimer: Not mine
Notes/Warnings: Spoilers for the entire first season. General warnings for violence (to show levels, take that as you might); and to be extra safe, allusions to possible dubious consent issues that are right now very minor but will probably become more explicit as we go along. Please feel free to PM/email me if you'd like more specifics. This is the start of what I would have written for a Big Bang (if I hadn't gone insane and signed up for two others.) The title means shark bait/chum, and also the taboo breakers who were thrown in the ocean and left for dead.
Summary: "We are perfect for this cover, and I don't mean for it to be a suicide run." Kono looked up, straight at Steve then. "I don't, and I don't mean for my partner to go into it looking to check out, so if that's what you're thinking, you let me go in alone, McGarrett."
Also on AO3, here.
It only takes Kono a week before she realizes how little she'd known before she started. The physical part is okay--good, even. It's been a long time since she's had the hours to devote to surfing, and even with her knee needing a brace, she can feel herself getting stronger and better every day. Hanging out and teaching Kiana to surf--that's the easy part. It's everything else that's draining.
Her stateroom on the yacht is nice--pretty plush for the hired help, but like everybody knew, Kono's special. Kiana is the boss's little princess, and Kono has what the princess wants, so some of that sparkly glitter rubs off on her. That's the first bit of luck--Kono has her own place, and that gives her a break, gives her a place to be just her, even if it isn't all that many hours in the day. Kono doesn't know that she'd have been able to keep up with being OtherKono if she hadn't had the room. Or, no, that isn't quite true--she would have kept up the act, because that's what she has to do, but she thinks she might have completely lost herself in it. She's a little freaked by how much she actually has lost, but she thinks she can get herself back once she's done.
The sun isn't quite up yet, but the shower's already going in the tiny attached bathroom. Kono crawls out of bed and finds a bikini that isn't still damp and hunts around until she comes across board shorts that don't clash horribly with it. Her good sunglasses are slung by their leash over the edge of the mirror and she's never been someone who pays a ton of attention to clothes and shit, but that's about all she needs to be fully dressed these days.
She brushes her teeth in the tiny corner sink, and runs a comb through her hair, staring at her reflection in the mirror thoughtfully. She's lost weight out here; her cheekbones are sharper, more prominent and her collarbones press against the skin like they're trying to break free. Her arms are leaner, too, more toned from the all the time she's been spending in the water as opposed to time bulking up in the gym
The water shuts off in the bathroom and Steve comes out, still mostly wet, a towel slung low on his hips.
"You ready?" His eyes sweep over her, assessing, and it's a Steve-her-boss look, gauging his team and how ready they are. She knows the next time, he'll still be watching out for her, but it'll be masked under a layer of danger thick enough that she won't even bother looking for the Steve who took a chance on the academy cadet, only return it in kind. Right now, though, she can smile at him and luxuriate in the last few seconds of being seen for herself.
"Just waiting on you," Kono tells him. She sweeps her hair over to one side of her shoulders, baring her neck, and arches an eyebrow at him in the mirror. He still looks pained, like it's the first time they've done this and not something that gives them a little extra breathing room, but he crosses the room and comes up behind close behind her. She tilts her head a little, gives him some more room to work, and meets his eyes as he bends down and bites a kiss into the curve of her neck and shoulder. There's already a mark there, a fading bruise; this will bring it back out, and remind everyone else on the yacht exactly who they have to go through to get to Kono. There's a half-healed scratch down the back of Steve's arm, and more on his back that serve the same purpose on Kono's behalf. It's surprising how well it works, which is the only reason Steve's still agreeing to it.
"Animal," Kono deadpans, and smiles when the tension breaks. Steve mock growls and she laughs and dodges out the door just ahead of the snap of his towel.
It took Danny a week to talk Steve into taking the meeting with HPD and DEA, and even then the level of antagonism in the room was so high, Kono wasn't sure how any of them were breathing. Steve hadn't endeared himself to HPD in the weeks it had taken for Danny and Chin to clear him of Jameson's murder, and it was going to take Steve at least a decade to let go of being railroaded in the first place. Looking at how every muscle was poised to start dishing out punishment, Kono revised her estimate to twenty years, and more probably, never. Chin was there, though, and he managed to keep the police representatives quiet and let the DEA agents do the talking, and they got through the presentation without Steve physically assaulting anyone.
After the feds were done, it was HPD's turn, and Kono listened to the offer they were making with as little emotion as possible. The chief was really working the hard sell, but in the end it came down to them, Kono and Steve, or either one of them individually, nobody much cared, going in undercover for as long as it took DEA to bring down the drug cartel, with the end result that they'd be reinstated without censure. Kono might have been a rookie, but she'd lived her whole life around cops; it didn't take much to figure out that it was far more likely that their cover would be blown long before they got what they needed. HPD was throwing them to the wolves to keep on DEA's good side. Kono couldn't even look at Steve, but from the look on Chin's face, and Danny's, too, they knew it just as well.
"Everybody out," Steve said, in what had become his default tone, little more than a snarl, staring down every single person in the room until they collected their papers and shuffled out, leaving just the four of them.
"You don't have to do this," Steve said to Kono. "It doesn't matter what they say; I took the money, you were just following orders."
Kono looked past him to Chin, who didn't have to say a word to communicate just how much he didn't want her to do this, and again past Chin to Danny, who was as stone-faced as she'd ever seen him. They were both, at least in theory, in the clear about the money, but Kono knew life in the precinct had to be grating on them.
"You're our handlers," Kono said to Chin and Danny. "We don't talk to anyone but you two, and we don't take orders from anybody else. Nobody but the four of us knows anything about what's going down, and if DEA doesn't like it, they can go find themselves two other cops they can blackmail into doing this and see how long it takes to come up with a better cover story than we already have."
"Honey," Danny started, but Kono shook her head and turned to Chin.
"Being a cop is about making things right," she said, holding Chin's eyes. "Making our world a better place. You taught me that. You lived it."
"Not when it's a suicide run," Chin said. "If I taught you that, I was wrong."
Kono looked down at her hands for a second, struggling to keep her center, her calm. "This will take down some very bad guys." She waited them out, but nobody could argue with that. It was a vicious, nasty group, one that DEA had been tracking for years, one that had at least a dozen cop kills to its credit. "We are perfect for this cover, and I don't mean for it to be a suicide run." She looked up, straight at Steve then. "I don't, and I don't mean for my partner to go into it looking to check out, so if that's what you're thinking, you let me go in alone, McGarrett."
Steve looked at her for a long time before he turned to Chin and said, "Tell HPD we're not going for it. Better yet, let me tell the scum-sucking dirty cops what I think of them, while you and Danny set things up with DEA. If we're going to walk out of this one alive, we do like the lady said and we only talk to you and Danny."
It's a little scary how quickly Kono can get her game-face on, how easy it is to shift from a cop working UC to this character she's created, still Kono, but not a cop, not anymore. This other woman shares a lot with Kono--family, surfing, HPD and Five-0, and of course, she shares that hideous night of having her badge taken away, of looking up and seeing Steve being booked for the murder of the governor. After that, they split, but it's easy to plot out how this Kono's life twisted down a darker path. All Kono has to do is take a mental step sideways and she's in a place where she has no job, and no money, and her family, even Chin, isn't a part of her life. Once she gets there, it's easy to be her. She, the other woman, might have been scared once, but now she just doesn't give a shit.
It's not really morning--nobody but the crew moves much before noon out on this yacht, and even then the drugs and booze from the days and nights before are still mostly in control--but people are stumbling around, waking up to another day of having nothing to do but make the boss and his pretty girl happy. Kono puts her sunglasses on and slides all the way into character.
Kiana's in her usual place on the aft deck, party girls and boys around her, and already into her second or third de Brignac, the gold bottle sitting on the deck next to her head. They're still drinking it by the glass, but Kono knows that won't last long.
"Chica," Kiana greets Kono as Kono drops into the lounge chair next to her. She tips her sunglasses up and eyes the mark on Kono's neck as she reaches for the bottle. "At least somebody had fun last night."
Kono shrugs and tilts her head back to the sun. Kiana's sulking and pouting this morning, a continuation of the tantrum that had started the night before when the boss wouldn't hear of his precious little girl making a trip off the yacht and through the clubs. Kono knows security's been amped up; Steve's always armed on-board, but now he's packing an arsenal that'd give Danny a stroke. Late during the night, while they were supposedly having "fun," she and Steve had talked through about a dozen scenarios of who might be making Antreasian nervous and whether or not they're going to have to speed up their own agenda. Kono's pretty sure she knows which computer she needs to access, and the main reason she wears board shorts with her bikini tops is so she can always have the flash drive Chin got for her ready to go.
From the way everybody jumps when Kiana drops the bottle of champagne and it booms down on the deck, Kono doesn't think anyone's told the crew or any of the bully boys with guns to stand down. They're a little on a hair-trigger normally, but now, there's extra tension floating around. Even though they generally stay away from her--she broke one guy's finger on her second day on the boat for a little bit of grab-ass, and then Steve was there with a truly scary look in his eyes--she knows Steve would be a lot happier if she could carry the knife he got for her, but even with the boardshorts she's barely wearing any clothes. It doesn't bother her too much; she figures if anything goes down, she can probably manage to lay her hands on something lethal.
"We going out this morning?" Kono asks. She doesn't have to fake the indifference in her voice; she really doesn't give a good goddamn whether Kiana gets over herself enough to go surf, but that's why she's here, so she at least has to put a good face on it. It helps that the Kono she's playing doesn't really care about anything. It's almost a little freeing, when it's doesn't feel like she's killing off everything she's fought to keep alive during this whole fucked-up scenario. "We should probably go if we're going; the weather looks shitty for later today."
"No, Jesus, chill," Kiana says. "I know you're all about showing off how good you are, but you really don't have it anymore. Take something and come down off that attitude."
"Fine." Kono swallows down the rage that boils through her at the dismissive attitude, because that's what the other Kono would have to do. After months on suspension, this would be it for her--no money, no job, no family. She has to keep this hustle going, or she's looking at turning tricks just to keep food coming in. Kiana's smug little smirk says she knows that, too, and whatever compassion Kono has for her--she was born into this and has no way out--is tried by the mean-spirited pleasure she takes in making sure everyone knows their place around her.
Kono would stalk off, but there's a little something off about the activity on the deck this morning. Too few of the guys it takes to sail the yacht, and too many of the ones who like to walk around with the latest in semi-automatic weaponry. Steve comes up on deck and from the set of his shoulders and the way his eyes sweep the deck, they're at Defcon 4, gunning for 5, so Kono lets Kiana think she's going to stay around and try to win points. She lays her head back against the lounge chair and watches from behind her sunglasses.
Sadly enough, it was way too easy to pick a monumental fight with the family, uncles and cousins flushed and furious, and her mom and the aunties shrill and in a fair number of cases, utterly sanctimonious. Kono left her parents house actually pretty angry at how good everyone was at judging her, slamming the front door behind her hard enough to rattle the windows and throwing herself into Steve's truck. The fact that Steve had been there had been an added goad: she hadn't quite realized how much her family was blaming him for her--and by extension, their--shame.
"I have no idea how Chin didn't just firebomb the whole lot of them," she muttered, and then smiled at the eyebrow Steve was arching at her. "Okay, fine, Chin's a better person than me. I think we all knew that already."
"Don't sell yourself short," Steve said, getting that shuttered look in his eyes that said he was blaming himself with even more vigor than was coming from the collective bad mojo of her family.
"Stop it," Kono said, smacking him in the shoulder. Hard, because she was already pretty mad and she really fucking hated it when he got like that. "Grown-up person, remember? Clearly capable of saying no to you. In fact, I'm the one who told you about the money in the first place." He didn't say anything, only stared out at the street, and she smacked him again. "Got it?"
"Got it."
Steve drove her straight to her apartment and waited while she packed a bag, and they put the next part of the plan in motion. Kono had no real attachment to the apartment--it was just a place, not like Chin's house, or Steve's, where there was history and a sense of home--but it was still harder than hell to walk out of it, leaving everything but the bag of clothes she held and the surfboard they loaded into Steve's truck.
"Chin's got it covered," Steve said as they drove away and Kono could barely swallow past the fist that was sitting on her chest. She nodded blindly, and Steve took one hand off the steering wheel and brushed her hair back. "You sure about this? We can still tell DEA to fuck off."
"Yes. Yes." Kono took a deep breath and got her shit together. "It's just--been a long day."
Steve nodded, and they drove the rest of the way out to the leeward coast, to the tent city that stretched along the beach for miles. The tent Steve had for her was military surplus, light enough that she could pack it in her duffle but big enough that she could fit her shortboard in it while she slept. Steve walked through the encampment until he found a group of families, an enclave of semi-respectability away from the scarier fringes, and the set of his jaw told Kono not to bother with how she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. He stayed through the night, too, camped out in front of the tent, making damn sure everyone knew Kono wasn ‘t entirely alone. She thought the bayonet stuck into the ground in front of him was a little bit much, but otherwise, she was a little touched that he gave up a night's sleep for her.
Kamekona came by a couple of days later to give her the keys to a beat-up old Chevelle to take the place of the car that HPD took back.
"Wahine," he called down the beach, visibly upset and covering everything with cheer so forced it made her want to cry. "Howizit?" Kono wanted to tell him even more than she wanted to be able to tell her family. It didn't help that telling her family would mostly be about vindicating her character in their eyes, but telling Kamekona would be only so he wouldn't worry.
"I'm okay, brah," Kono assured him, patting him on the shoulder and reaching up to give him a kiss. "Great view, time to go-out every day. Could be worse."
Kamekona nodded eagerly, but he was a terrible actor. He wouldn't let her not take the bag of teri-burgers from W&M he claimed he didn't want, but she didn't feel quite as guilty after she shared them with the kids who hung around.
Steve could come by, but she had to pretend to be estranged from Chin and Danny. Chin stayed away, but Danny being Danny, they had a blast staging a fight out on the beach, one that ended with Kono slapping him and stalking off and then having to hide in her tent to keep anyone from seeing her laugh at his that all you got rookie? weak--i still got teeth in my head text.
She settled in and played her part, homeless and mostly alone, and after a week, Steve came by to tell her that Danny and Chin had relayed that the agent DEA already had circling around Antreasian was ready to start easing her in.
"Still have a chance to turn them down," Steve said, but she could tell he was only saying it because he thought he should and he wasn't surprised when she told him to fuck off. After all that, though, it turned out that Steve went in first. Apparently, Antreasian had a fetish about his security team and the chance to bag an ex-SEAL was too exciting for him to pass by. Steve had just enough time to text Kono and then he was gone.
Kono didn't tell anyone, but that was the part that made it all real. She was on her own.
Steve circles around to where Kono's stretched out on the deck. He generally manages to do that any time she's in public, so nobody even blinks now. He drops down to sit on his heels next to her, his eyes flickering indifferently over the bikini top she's tossed aside. The first couple of times she'd stripped down like the rest of the girls on the yacht, he'd spent ten minutes back in the stateroom apologizing for not averting his eyes or something. She'd finally cracked up and pointed out that the entire yacht thought they were in there fucking, that that was the point. The Steve he is in public sure as hell isn't going to look away, any more than the Kono she is is going to care. He still has a thing about it, but at least they've gotten past the apologies.
"Big doings this afternoon." He leans close and murmurs very softly, one hand tightening around Kono's arm, showing everyone the possessive son-of-a-bitch they think he is, sleight of hand to cover what he's telling her. "Big business. Somebody else's party but everyone important is invited."
Kono yanks her arm free as though he's pissing her off, but that's just so she she can nod that she understands. He lets her go and heads back across the deck to lean against the rail. Kono can't decide if she's impressed with how easily he blends in with the rest of the mercenaries Antreasian uses for security or if it's just fucking scary. Mostly, she acknowledges that she's even wondering just because her brain is racing in circles with the implications of what he's just told her and lieing there watching Steve makes for a reasonable thing to be doing for her alter-ego. For more than a month, she's been waiting and watching for the chance at the records she knows are here, and she knows she's only going to get one chance. To be honest, she doesn't think she really believed she'd even get even that much. For the first time, there's a glimmer of hope that she and Steve are going to really and truly get out of this and get back to some kind of normal life.
Someone must be looking out for her--before she has to figure out some kind of reasonable excuse to get herself off the deck, another round of mercs floods out from below, followed by all the people who do the work, and Antreasian himself comes out to join them.
"Kiana, inside." He barely flicks a glance at her, and Kono's reminded again of how very constricted her life is. Kono rolls to her feet, too, pulling a t-shirt on and pretending not to notice that Kiana is looking at her father as though she's afraid--not of him, but for him. Kono's never seen her be sent away like this, and while she's acting cool about it, Kono can see that fear remains.
"So what's up?" Kono asks, playing like she's pretending to be indifferent.
"Some meeting or another." Kiana shrugs. "Can't have any distractions." Kiana stalks off toward her own room, and the other girls, the ones who are there to party with her, flutter off after her, more or less ignoring Kono, the weird freak who's only there because Kiana wants to think she's really a surfer. Keeping up appearances, Kono shrugs, and goes off toward a lounge, but then circles back to her own room. She debates with herself, but then decides that a neoprene vest and a pair of Vibrams won't look too out of place. She can rig the vest to hold a sheath, custom-fit to the knife Steve got for her, and the Vibrams will give her a little extra traction if she has to move fast.
Everything's quiet when she eases open the door to her room and slips out. As she passes through the lounge, she can see another yacht, just as big, maybe not quite as luxe, alongside. There's a ton of black Kevlar on deck over there; she looks but she can't quite ID Steve in the middle of it. He can take care of himself, though; she can't waste brain cells on worrying about him. The best thing to do is get into the system and start dumping data.
The door to the office is locked, but she's not half-bad with a set of lockpicks if she does say so herself. Normally, there'd be at least one guy watching the door, but Antreasian had taken everyone with him. Show of force, Kono supposes. Or possibly a giant pissing match. She doesn't much care which, she's just happy it's happening.
The other thing's she's happy about is that Antreasian is a fucking moron who relies on guns and muscles and doesn't pay a tenth of that attention to the security of his data. Of course, given that said guns and muscle have no qualms about shooting first and asking questions only after they've dumped the bodies, it's more or less worked out well for him. Nobody's ever gotten this close before. Kono's hands are shaking as she slots the flash drive into the office computer and boots a new system from that. It works just like Chin had promised, the operating system on the flash drive treating the network drives like its own and backdooring right into the files there. She doesn't bother to look for anything specific or pick and choose, just starts copying anything and everything she can see. Her drive is huge, yet more surplus mil-spec that Steve swears can hold more data than most companies ever dream of accessing. It's also shock-proof, crush-proof, and, in its nifty carrying case, waterproof. The only bad thing about it is that it can't do anything about the data-transfer rate. It is what it is, and there's nothing she can do about it, even if it does feel like she's got a target painted on her back.
"Come on, come on," Kono whispers, as if that's going to make things move quicker. She can hear some shouting, which happens often enough on this boat, but generally isn't good, and then a couple quick cracks of gunfire, and that's never good. She hesitates for a second, not wanting to stop before she has to, but the pops are turning into more sustained riffs, semi-automatic bursts, and whatever the hell it is, Kono isn't sticking around to find out. She grabs the drive, sliding it back into its case and books on out the door. Outside the office, the noise is louder, and she can hear the girls back in Kiana's stateroom. They sound seriously freaked, not just fussing because the sun is up and the sky is blue, like normal, but really, really terrified.
Kono loops back toward the stateroom before she can talk herself out of it, moving as quickly as she can. She can tell the goon with the gun doesn't see anything but another girl who's going to start screaming, right up until she elbows him in the face. She's lucky and hits him exactly right--never a given in a real-world situation, especially on a boat that's pitching a little--and feels his nose break as he goes down.
The noise from inside the stateroom reaches a crescendo and the door flies open, Kiana kicking and screaming at the guy dragging her out. It's enough of a distraction that Kono can get her knife out and get set before the guy really knows what's happening. His buddy down and bleeding on the floor is helpful, because Kono isn't quite as good with the knife as she'd like. She at least knows how to hold it like she means it, and with the fight Kiana's putting up--and seriously, good for her, at least she's not fainting dead away, but Kono would think somebody might have taught the only daughter of one of the biggest drug runners in the Pacific a little self-defence--the guy isn't completely focused when Kono comes at him.
She tries to remember everything Steve's been teaching her, and manages to get a couple of quick cuts in without hurting Kiana. Hell, maybe the guy doesn't know anything about knife-fighting either; the gun he's carrying is certainly big enough to be compensating for all kinds of inadequacies, but Kono's really pissed him off now. She can see it in his eyes and she gets herself set to deal with whatever he's going to come back at her, wishing Kiana would shut up already, when a gun goes off behind her--a big one, the noise is like a thunderclap--and Kiana's usual bodyguard comes charging in to finish off both of the strangers.
"Come on, come on," he's yelling, desperate panic in his voice, and it's hot and steamy in the room, even worse under the neoprene Kono's wearing, but that, the panic, sends pure ice thorugh Kono's veins. The guys who work for Antreasian do not freak out. They don't do normal human emotions, and nothing gets to them. "Go," he screams at Kono, as he pulls Kiana past her and it jolts Kono into moving, too.
"Steve," she yells. "McGarrett--where is he?"
"Aft--laying down covering fire, move," he snarls at the girls, and Kono knows he doesn't really care about them, he just has to get Kiana out or Antreasian will make sure every person he's so much as spoken to in his life is going to die an ugly death.
Kono shoves past the mob and gets up and on deck, ducking behind a console and keeping her head down. The gunfire is constant, and she can see people down across the decks of both yachts, and she might be a little loco, but all she can hear in her head is Danny bitching about how much paperwork is gonna end up coming out of this. It's comforting in a way, as though she's not even doubting she's going to get clear. She works her way aft, dodging and diving from one piece of cover to the next, getting about halfway before she sees Steve, prone on the deck. Her heart skips a couple of beats before she can tell it that he's not down, he's just flat-out on his belly so he can get as much stability through the scope on his rifle as he can. He's pinned down, though, no cover in either direction, and Kono doesn't fool herself that any of the other guys he works with care enough to make sure he gets out.
There's a Beretta on the deck, a little too far out in the open to be an easy grab, and not particularly helpful at the longer distances they're talking about, but it's better than nothing, so Kono lunges for it, tucking her shoulder and rolling as she hits the deck, firing toward the other yacht as she comes back up.
"Steve," she yells, and he flashes her a handsign that he's heard her, never looking up from his scope. Kono's going to leave it at that, crouching down to check her ammo, but there's a quick bloom of light at the edge of her vision, along the back of the other boat, and when she whips back up, the flames are already reaching for the sky. "Steve," she screams. "Steve."
HIs head jerks up at that, and he catches sight of the fire, racing across the deck, heading straight for their yacht, people bailing off the other ship left and right.
"Go," he yells, motioning toward the rail behind Kono, throwing himself in the opposite direction, toward the portside rails. "Go, go, go!"
Kono can't get a whole lot of momentum in the short distance, but she gets an extra step on the middle rail and pushes off hard. Just before her other foot finds the top rail for the final jump, she catches sight of Steve out of the corner of her eye, throwing himself off the other side of the ship. Then she's over and off herself, diving as deep as she can go as the world explodes behind her.
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Nicely done!
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more!
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Now I'm really looking forward to see more of this story.
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