E Malama Maikai
by Sammie

DISCLAIMER: Not mine. If they were, Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park would be used far more than they are.

RATING: K

SUMMARY: The protective, big brother side of Chin Ho has a strong hankering to haul off his boss and to punch him.

AUTHOR'S NOTES:
- not related to "E Malama", as FANTASTIC as that episode was (especially compared to this week's snoozer).

- an after-the-fact thank you to Merl Laurence and her story on "Mana'o" (right now, my favorite of her stories) who (1) first pointed out the similarities between Steve and Kono in their "laser-focus" thinking and their tendency to steamroll and (2) listed chocolate haupia as Kono's favorite food. (The latter, in particular - the chocolate haupia is SUCH an in-character thing for Kono. Hawaiian dessert? Chocolate? What could be a better combination?)
My apologies to Merl for not crediting her earlier, even though she's been very sweet and gracious about it all. To be honest, I'd already mentally taken her observations as fanon, right along with the canon we get on Mondays.

- Some of the references in the tenth paragraph come from photos which can be found in the links below (remove spaces). I won't attempt to list all the promo photos which have Steve looking at Kono, who's laughing/smiling.
1) i53. tinypic. com/ 2149tev. jpg
2) and-ed. livejournal. com/ 256461. html (There isn't anything adult in the post - at least not in the pictures. Can't vouch for the text. Scroll to about the 15th, 16th pictures and then down to comments.)

He wonders if he should be mad about it, but he can't drum up enough irritation to be truly furious. He thinks it's because of his affection for the McGarrett family: to the father, for teaching him, and to the son, for giving him a second chance.

Well, that and the fact that he has a remarkable sense of self-preservation.

Yes, Chin Ho Kelly has survived the islands (and his corruption scandal) intact because he knows when to stick his nose in people's business and when not to, and the little voice which sings a bad rendition of "Stayin' Alive" is reminding him that, despite the fact that he's trained in martial arts and even has a set of weapons in his office, it's quite a bad idea to take on a former Navy SEAL and a former professional surfer - both of whom are younger than he is. (He doesn't care to dwell on the age part.)

But the protective, big brother side of him, which has cared for his cherished cousin since she was a toddler, still has a strong hankering to haul off his boss and to punch him.

He catches his boss occasionally watching his baby cousin. (Correction - his now adult, policewoman cousin. Perhaps he'll feel less protective and less punchy if he continues to remind himself that Kono Kalakaua is a full cop with a mean right hook rather than a wide-eyed five-year-old with a shave-ice-induced purple tongue.) He noticed when Steve watched Kono wandering among those reunited teens and their parents; he noticed the look of amusement, surprise, and admiration when Kono cleaned the clock of the cleaner after Julie Masters. (He'll try not to think too much about how Kono managed to make it to the courthouse room faster than he and Steve did.)

Most often, Steve watches Baby Cousin - Adult Cop Cousin - when she's smiling or laughing at something. She might be sweetly oblivious to it, her attention focused elsewhere, but Chin doesn't miss Steve's look - a softened expression (not the Danny-coined "aneurysm face") with a small, side smile - and a look in his eyes Chin does NOT want to think about.

It makes Chin want to grind his teeth to a powder. But it doesn't stop there.

For a Navy SEAL, Steve McGarrett's rather touchy-feely. Or perhaps he's just touchy-feely with Baby Cousin. It's not anything gross, but it's the tiny things: he holds doors for her, he touches her on the shoulder as he leaves her, he occasionally hovers a hand over her back as if guiding her somewhere.

It would be one thing if McGarrett did this to other people, but Chin's never seen it. And Steve ought to know better - he's been through sensitivity training in the Navy, and the governor made all four of her task force members sit through their own private version of the Honolulu Police Department's annual sexual harassment training after they "conveniently" managed - or worked very hard - to get out of the first four regularly scheduled sessions. ("Oh, a dead body! Thank God!" "Governor, OF COURSE I think a panhandler at Wong's is an urgent matter for us. Lilikoi pie is a state treasure.")

At the modern art exhibit while they were on Ochoa's trail, he saw Steve's light bump against Kono as she slipped him the swiped card. A close, playful hug in the parking lot after one of their busts. A brief rest of her head on his shoulder. His grinning invitation for her to hop on the back of his bike - and her doing so. (Sorry, but as an avid lover of bikes, Chin Ho knows that offer to somebody of the opposite gender has all kinds of things potentially written over it. Riding everywhere and anywhere with Malia on the back of his bike had been one of his favorite things to do.) An impromptu dance in the parking lot not long after arresting Reggie Cole: her in a blue plaid shirt, her left arm around her boss's neck, her right hand clasped in his larger left; him in his usual dark-colored tee-shirt, his right hand at the small of her back, his left hand swallowing her smaller right hand.

What freaks Chin out is that he wasn't even trying to watch his boss with his cousin until it just became too obvious. What about all the things he's missed? Seriously, how long has this been going on? If he didn't keep Kono with him so often, would this all be worse?

Perhaps, the veteran cop thinks, his boss doesn't think he'll notice since Danny was so much more obvious in his admiration of Kono at their first meeting - but then Danny's just more obvious in his admiration of everything, from all gorgeous women (including Kono) to Liliha coco puffs. That, and Chin knows a complicated relationship when he sees one. He's never even met Gracie's mother, but from the way Danny talks about her, the New Jersey transplant still measures all women he meets against Rachel Williams Edwards and inexplicably finds them wanting. Chin has never been so pleased that a man has unconsciously found Kono...well...lacking. It would explain why Danny's interest has seemingly cooled.

Even worse are the increasing similarities his boss and his cousin share. Kono is developing the McGarrett laser focus; when she gets an idea she charges forward with it. Of course Chin's proud that she can, after just a few months, follow all the rabbit trails her three older partners make. He's already seen times when Danny doesn't follow Steve's train of thought but Kono does, and Danny's already commented on the similarity of their turns of mind. Chin just hopes sincerely she won't pick up Steve's tendency to bulldoze over things. Even Danny was more sensitive than Kono to how the corruption accusations against Meka would affect Chin (something for which Kono had earnestly and sincerely apologized for later).

Steve and Kono share the same reckless spirit of adventure. Both don't seem to understand that road signs and lanes are rules, not suggestions, and Chin finds Kono's tendency towards the outrageous - not hesitating in the slightest to steal ten million dollars, for example - troublesome, especially in that she has backup in Steve McGarrett. (Or does he have backup in Kono Kalakaua?) Sometimes he feels as though he and Danny are the only voices of reason and restraint - scary thought, indeed.

And, Chin swears to himself, he's going to start keeping a tally of how many cases result in Steve taking his shirt off or Kono surfing in a bikini and or going undercover in a skimpy outfit. If he had a dime for every time either happened, he could take an early retirement in comfort, pension or not. (At a dime per instance, who'd need the HPD's $200,000?) Seriously, he's starting to think Steve assigns Kono these undercover assignments on purpose. Conversely, Boss has disturbing tendency to end up shirtless - at work, too (sexual harassment!). Even Ben Bass - a surfer - knew enough to stay shirt-ful. This shirtless tendency reminds Chin of his third-grade lesson on male peacocks displaying the vibrant colors in order to attract - no. That thought needs to stop right there.

Of course the former cop is aware that Kono has been of age for a long time and is old enough to make her own decisions. It doesn't stop his own protective instincts; if she were to grow up to be a mother and a grandmother and the governor of Hawaii she'd still be his baby cousin. She was cheerful and sparky and a generally well-behaved child; even as a young teenage boy with no desire to hang out with a kindergartner, he'd came to cherish the little girl for herself...and not just for her inveterate ability to attract teenage girls.

Chin knows instinctively that at some point that he will have to give up his role as her older cousin protector to whatever guy she eventually chooses to marry. He's held the role long enough simply because, while Kono has a doting father, she has no brothers, and so he's slipped into that protector role. Still, one day she's going to pick some guy and get hitched, and hopefully this guy will cherish her and protect her (and if he doesn't, Chin'll help his uncle beat him up).

He just was hoping for somebody safer and less...tattooed. Like an accountant. A tailor. A cook. A...writer...of...children's fiction. His uncle and his aunt asked him to watch out for her when she first joined the task force, and they would be ALL over his case if Kono took Steve to meet them - and Chin can't blame them. It was hard enough to convince them that letting their baby girl surf for a living was a good idea, and then the Kalakauas only gave in because Ian Adams personally came and personally promised to look out for her. Becoming a cop was even more of a fight, even if it was the family business. If the Kalakauas' baby girl were to bring home a tattooed former SEAL with a penchant for bad driving and explosives...

At least, Chin sighs to himself in relief (small relief though it be), Steve could be counted as kama'aina (he counts that as seven years), with three generations of McGarretts here. That has to count for something. Kono, with her love for the beach and the surf and chocolate haupia, would never be happy with a haole who hated the islands, and the Kalakauas would never be happy with anybody who took their daughter more than an hour away.

And Steve, of course, understands family and loyalty and devotion; THAT was never the problem with Steve McGarrett. One would be hard pressed to find somebody whose protective instincts (physical and emotional) are as honed as McGarrett's; Chin has no reason to think he'd ever have to beat up Steve for cheating in a relationship, like he did Kono's first boyfriend. Steve McGarrett cherishes family.

Still...!

Chin groans to himself. When he introduced Kono to Steve, he was scrambling for a way to help her. For her loyalty to him, Kono would suffer in the Honolulu police force; she'd be a meter maid her entire career. Steve was willing to offer Baby Cousin the same way out that he'd offered the disgraced cop. It would eliminate the handicap Kono had saddled herself with by being related and loyal to Chin Ho Kelly and give her a huge advantage career-wise. A rookie cop gaining her experience on the governor's task force? Seriously, was there even a downside to that for Kono? What could possibly go wrong?

"Finishing each other's sentences?" He can hear Danny's irritated tone, cutting over Kono and Steve's voices. "What, you two married now?"

What, indeed.

end