I ka pau ʻole a ma hope loa aku

by elfinblue

Author's Note: If you're reading The Steve Exchange, don't worry! I'm still going to finish it. This story just kind of crept up and smacked me in the back of the head and demanded to be written. It's an actual case story with a genuine, honest-to-goodness plot, which I know in its entirety. I've got several chapters written already and I'll update daily until I either finish it or catch up to myself. There's a lot of bromance and a little bit of Danny-whump. It's set sometime after the end of season 7 and after Chin and Kono have left. I hated to write it without them, but because I know they're not going to be there it just felt wrong to write them in. :( I'm so sorry!

There's no real point to this but I thought the title was kind of funny. I'll put the English translation at the end of the story but if you're terribly curious you can run it through Google translate (which is how I got the Hawaiian version). I do not, of course, own anything to do with Hawaii Five-0. If I owned it, I'd pay Grace and Daniel and keep the ohana together.

Chapter One: Greys' Anatomy

Commander Steven McGarrett of the Hawai'ian governor's Five-0 task force rubbed one hand across reddened eyes and spoke with tears in his voice.

"A dead soldier is still a soldier," he said sorrowfully. "I took a vow to leave no man behind, so I've brought you home like I promised I would."

Across the car, sitting (for once) behind the wheel of his black Camaro, Detective Danny Williams slapped himself in the forehead and dragged his hand down, splayed fingers raking across his face. He got out and circled the vehicle quickly, but by the time he reached the passenger door his partner was already out and leaning at a precarious angle against the bumper.

"Danno," he said, wide-eyed and breathless with alarm, "Danno! My house is falling down!"

"Maybe I can fix it," Danny said. He slid in beside his best friend, put his right shoulder under Steve's left arm and wrestled him upright. "Is that better?"

"Is what better?" Steve asked.

"Oh. My. God." Danny sighed. He dragged his friend towards the front door, taking at least half his weight and trying to keep his stumbling walk from turning into a tumble. "Steven, I know you don't want to talk to me about this, which really hurts my feelings, actually, though I know there's no point in pointing that out right now, but you're really going to have to address the fact that your radiation poisoning is affecting your liver."

Steven lurched around in sudden alarm, nearly upsetting them both, and shushed Danny, poking him in the nose with his finger in the process and clanking the dead soldier-a nearly-empty bottle of Long Board-against his nose and chin. "Shh! Shh! Don't talk about that! Danny might hear you!"

Danny pressed his lips together and balanced Steve against the door frame as he dug out his own set of keys to unlock the McGarrett house. A rising wind heralded the imminent arrival of a summer storm and he wanted them both safely inside before the rain hit.

"I don't even know what to say to that," he decided, dragging Steve inside and closing the door behind them. "Okay, so I know it's wrong of me to take advantage of your current, compromised intellect, but I have to ask. Why don't you want me-er, Danny-to hear?"

"I don't want him to know I broke his liver," Steve said sorrowfully.

Danny's eyes softened. "I think he knows, Babe."

"He doesn't know," Steve insisted angrily. "How does he know? I didn't tell him. Did you tell him?"

Danny pulled Steve towards the kitchen and attempted to push him down into a chair at the table but the taller man resisted and wound up rebounding off the counter and leaning up against the refrigerator.

"He's a detective. He figured it out. He's not mad, you know?" Danny said gently.

"He's not mad?"

"He's not mad."

Steve smiled blissfully. "That's nice. Who's not mad about what?"

"Oh for the love of Pete. Never mind."

Steve cuddled his almost-empty beer bottle and then held it up as if he were thinking about finishing the last dregs of alcohol in the bottom.

"Why don't you give that to me?" Danny said.

"No! It's mine! It's my dead soldier! I promised him I'd bring him home!"

"And you did, all right? You did. Look around. Where are you?"

Steve looked around. "Home?"

"Right. So you brought him home. And now you need to give him to me and I'll arrange a burial for him."

"With full honors?"

"Absolutely."

Steve relinquished the empty bottle and Danny carried it out to the lanai to drop it into the trash out there. "Now I'm anthropomorphizing empty beer bottles," he muttered to himself. He returned to the kitchen just in time to discover that Steve had retrieved a new Long Board out of the refrigerator. Steve managed to get the cap off but he was far from at his best and Danny was able to wrestle it away from him before he drank any more.

"That's mine!" Steven protested. "I want that."

"You have had enough! This is my point," Danny said. "I have known you for seven years now, Steven, and I have seen you drink much-MUCH-more than you managed to put away tonight. But I have NEVER seen you get this drunk."

Steve peered at him balefully. "I'm not drunk."

"You are."

"I'm not."

"You are."

"I'm not."

"You are."

"I'm not."

"Okay, but do you realize you're wearing your buddy Jacobson's jacket?"

Steve glanced down and hugged the Navy dress blue jacket tighter around his torso. "It's mine now. He can't have it back. I won it fair and square in hon- hon- honorab-able combat."

"Babe. You took it off his chair while he was in the john."

"That counts."

"Okay, whatever. You can explain it to his CO when he reports without it tomorrow. The point is-" Danny broke off and sighed. "I don't know why I'm even bothering. We have to be at work in," he checked his watch, "just under five hours. Knowing you, you'll be perfectly sober again by then and you can go back to avoiding me on purpose instead of by dint of alcohol poisoning. Just do me a favor right now, okay?" He got a glass from the cupboard and filled it with water, then set it on the counter next to his friend. "Drink this before you go to bed. And take these," he fetched a couple of ibuprofen and a vitamin tablet from the medicine chest in the downstairs bathroom. "It'll keep you from feeling quite so wretched in the morning."

Steve obediently swallowed the pills and washed them down with the water. As he was drinking, though, he pointed at the open beer. "I'd rather drink that," he said.

"No, you wouldn't," Danny said. "Trust me. you've drunk enough of those."

When Steve had finished the water, Danny took the empty glass and helped Steve upstairs to his room. He helped him pull off his shoes and remove his belt and pushed him down on the bed, thankful that he wasn't wearing cargo pants. Danny wouldn't dare let Steve sleep in cargo pants. There was too much chance he'd have something dangerous in the pockets, like knives or hand grenades or surface-to-air missiles.

He closed the bedroom window nearly all the way, just leaving it open a crack so fresh air could come in and so Steve could hear the surf. As much as he, Danny, hated the sound, he knew his best friend found it soothing. Then he went back to the bed, pulled the top sheet over Steve and tucked it around his shoulders, tucking him in the way he would Charlie. The way he had done for Grace, until she got too old.

"Danno?" Steve said.

"Yeah, buddy?"

"I had fun tonight."

Danny smiled. "Yeah. I thought you did. I'm glad you got to see your old SEAL team friends again."

"Me too. They're good friends. They're not my best friend, though. You know who is my best friend?"

"Who's that, Babe?"

"It's you, stupid!"

"Aww. Thanks. I'm touched," Danny said, meaning it even though he spoke lightly.

"Thanks for being my designated driver tonight."

"You're welcome."

"You're a good DD, D...D...D...D...D..."

"Stop! You sound like a broken record. Just shut up and go to sleep, you mook. Late as it is, I'm just going to crash on your sofa. If you need anything, I'll be right downstairs, okay?"

Steve sat up suddenly, wrapped both arms around Danny's head, hugged him fiercely and planted a kiss half on his forehead and half on his ear. It was like being cuddled by an octopus.

"Okay, enough. Stop. Thank you, big guy. I love you too. Now lay down and go to sleep already."

"Okay," Steve said. He let go of Danny, flopped back onto the bed, and started snoring.

Danny shook his head. He had brought the glass upstairs and he took it to the upstairs bathroom and filled it with water, then took it back and set it on the bedside table. Then he turned the light off and made his way downstairs. He snagged the open bottle of Long Board when he went in to turn off the kitchen light. Normally he wouldn't drink this late when he had to be up early, but he'd spent the entire evening chaperoning half a dozen drunk Navy SEALS and he felt he was entitled.

The only light in the whole house now was a lamp on the end table beside the sofa. He gathered up a few throw pillows to cushion his head, then turned the lamp off and drank his beer by the flash of lightning coming in the window. Once that soldier had joined its fallen comrade, he kicked off his own shoes, made himself comfortable on his best friend's familiar sofa, and drifted off to sleep.

5-0 5-0 5-0 5-0 5-0

The storm that had been grumbling on the horizon when they left the bar was only the first in a long line of squalls. It rolled over the beach, rumbled its way across the McGarrett house, and left, leaving, in its wake, a pensive calm. The next storm was already on its way in, but it was still far enough out that the lightning shooting through its thunderheads was silent.

Into this odd calm, a new sound inserted itself, rousing Steve McGarrett from his sleep. There was an odd hum in his room, a mechanical vibration and the sense that he was not alone. He opened his eyes, dazed and disoriented, and perceived a blue light filling the chamber. A movement drew his attention and he realized there were four figures outlined against the glow. It was a situation that, normally, would have had him jumping up and drawing weapons. Now, though, he felt oddly disconnected, as if he were outside his body, watching something that was happening to someone else.

The figures came closer, surrounding his bed, and he studied them. They were humanoid, tall and oddly put together. Their arms and legs seemed too spindly for their bodies and their heads were huge, with rounded skulls and tiny, pointed chins. They had neither ears nor noses, just slits where each would be, and their mouths were simply short, thin lines.

A voice, soft and echoing, filled the room. "Do not be afraid, Commander. We mean you no harm."

Steve blinked. "How are you talking without moving your mouths?"

"We are using telepathy. You can hear us in your mind."

"Oh." Steve considered. "Cool."

One of the beings made a motion with his hand and an object rose up beside the bed. It was a long platform with circular structures under each end. It was floating on a bevy of whirling propellers.

"Don't resist us," one of the creatures said. "You are meant to come with us tonight. We will not hurt you." It flipped back the sheet. It and another of the beings stepped forward and together they rolled Steve over, off the bed and onto the platform. It dipped slightly under his weight, then steadied.

He watched, detached, as they fastened straps across his chest and legs, trapping his arms at his side. The one who seemed to be controlling the platform gestured towards the door and the platform floated away from the bed and moved out into the hallway and down the stairs. With two beings in front of it and two behind, all steadying it, they made their way down the stairs and through the living room.

5-0 5-0 5-0 5-0 5-0

The storm sounds had lulled Danny to sleep, a welcome reprieve from the incessant roar of surf. With them gone, his slumber lightened and became troubled. He was barely even asleep, floating in a grey twilight on the edge of waking. A faint murmur of voices drew him back to full awareness and he lay in the darkness, senses alert.

There were no more voices and no footsteps, but Danny was familiar enough with Steve's house to be able to read the creaks and groans of old floorboards being stepped on. Someone was on the second floor, headed for the stairs. His first thought was that Steve was up wandering around and he should go make sure he didn't fall and hurt himself. But there was too much movement. There were intruders in the house. Multiple intruders.

A low, mechanical hum made itself known, approaching down the stairs. The interlopers turned towards the living room, where he lay in darkness. Danny tensed and waited. When they were behind him, halfway across the room and headed for the door, he raised himself up and looked over the back of the sofa.

Four bizarre creatures were guiding a long, floating platform towards the door. Steve McGarrett, still asleep, was strapped to that platform.

Danny wished he had his gun, but it was locked in the trunk of the Camaro so he went with his voice and attitude instead.

"Hey!" he bellowed. He snapped on the lamp on the end table. None of the beings blinked. "What the hell do you think you're doing with my partner?"

The voice that answered him was odd and had an echoing quality. "This is not real. You are dreaming. Go back to sleep."

"Bullshit!" He rolled over the back of the sofa and got a hand on Steve's arm. "Get away and let go of him!"

One of the aliens said, "shit!"

Another circled behind him. The light and shadows in the room danced crazily as it snatched up the lamp. Danny felt a burst of pain and saw a flash of bright light, bright as a supernova, as it brought the lamp down over his head. He slipped into darkness and knew no more.