I do not own Hawaii Five-0 or any characters. No copyright infringement intended.

Notes: this story just happened ... hope it's at least a bit interesting! My thanks to CinderH and Fifilla for beta help. Any other mistakes are my own!

H5O* H5O* H5O* H5O* H5O*

Chapter One

It didn't take long to be bored of looking at the shed's rusted aluminum ceiling. It also didn't take long for his lower back to start to ache, nor for more than just his legs to get antsy. He sighed when he courageously lifted his hand to glare at his watch … again … for the tenth time in as many minutes. When it had first happened, a spike of initial shock had led to a bout of very real laughter. But now he wasn't laughing.

His accidental predicament at the hands of his own Marquis had him settled on angry.

Steve levered himself up onto his elbows to stare mutely at his right leg; or at least what he could see of it. Everything from his knee down disappeared beneath the awkwardly canted undercarriage of the large car. His left leg similarly disappeared from view, however it wasn't snagged or stuck the way his right seemed to be. Steve purposefully wiggled his body on the creeper and literally got nowhere. The Craftsman forty-inch rolling padded mechanics board was a blessing to use when working on the Marquis. With its six rollers, he could move back and forth or from side to side under his car with incredible ease. In seconds, he could scoot out and grab the tool he'd left on the ground and resume work with a flick of his heels.

Danny had given the board to him for his birthday and Steve loved the thing on sight. In a big way, he loved it even more at the moment for its fully padded backrest and the way it conformed to his upper body to reduce stress. But in the next breath, he also distinctly hated it.

A cocky and much too thoughtless flick of an errant heel to push his upper body clear of the car's undercarriage to grab a different wrench had accidentally knocked the metal frame of his creeper into the ratcheted car jack. As the two connected, something in the metal teeth of the ratchet had shifted loose. There was a shuddering and a rapid fire clacking as the metallic tooth let go with an astonishing speed and the jack had crashed down to its fourteen inch base height.

At fourteen inches, Steve still could have continued his rapid slide out from under the Marquis and escaped entrapment - if he had simply been flat out on the dirt floor of his shed. But with the Marquis now canted at on odd angle and with Steve elevated on the comfortable low-slung creeper, those extra valuable inches had been consumed to trap his right leg just enough where he was aptly stuck in place.

"God. Damn. It!" Steve cursed at his ridiculous mess, once more using both hands on his jeans in an attempt to wrench his right right leg out from where it remained pinned. Other than the sting of his injured pride, he wasn't physically hurt. In fact, though his right ankle was twisted a bit, he likely hadn't even torn his pants. But he was incredibly stuck beyond all reasonable measure.

There was a small amount of light emanating from under the car. The light was from his LED rechargeable work lamp which miraculously hadn't broken during the freak accident. However, the light did him no good since he couldn't see the right side of the creeper or the base of the jack for the heavy shadows and how the Marquis had come to rest on such a one-sided tight slant.

In his half seated position, Steve studied the car's undercarriage and gave up on his leg to attempt moving the creeper out from under his body. "Just … a few inches," he muttered as he tried to shift off the long padded backboard. But the frame was long to accommodate his equally long body. With a portion of it under the car, part of its metal frame was also wedged under some invisible portion of the car where it completely refused to budge.

"Oh, come on!" Steve panted as he alternately tried to move his body off the padded frame and then force the creeper to move either from side to side or even backwards. A frustrated thought had him attempting a weird shimmy forward to get more of his body under the car, but even that resulted in nothing except skinned hands. No matter his efforts, the comfortable backboard refused to dislodge itself even an inch in any direction.

Flopping back down, Steve clenched his jaw stubbornly as he opted to dig and kick at the frame with his left booted heel. His hands clenched around the sides of the creeper, turning white at the knuckles as he vainly forced his left heel to bang into the metal frame or scrape along its lower wheels. But the angle was bad and he had no momentum to gain.

"Shit, shit, shit!" Steve yelled now. Shouting to no one and directly up into his shed's aluminum roof, he kicked harder and winced as his left knee knocked painfully into the metal undercarriage. He missed the frame entirely to slam his knee again, growling in frustration when his left calf muscle joined to object his furious abuse. Sweat dripped down his face to sting his eyes as he regained a semblance of self-control. He glared at his father's red and battered Champ box which lay casually off to his side. It was within easy reach, but its meager contents gave him nothing to work with.

With an aggravated sigh he reached out instead to roll the bar from the jack into his palm where he hefted it. As the jack let go, the bar had popped out when the jack's base had simultaneously disappeared under the car's frame. He couldn't see the base and then if he might, he had no room to even wend the bar in to try to lift the car again. He also had his doubts as to the condition of the base and how much of the car it was holding up on his behalf. He was tempted to force the bar under the Marquis to investigate other options, but something warned him that if the base or something else was not exactly the way it should be, he'd inadvertently do more damage than good. So instead, he held the bar in a state of indecision on how to best proceed until his anger perked to the surface.

"This isn't happening!" Steve bellowed again in absolute frustration as he dropped the bar to try one more mighty yank on his right leg, only stopping when an uncomfortable cramp in his thigh muscle advised him of the ill movements. He stopped and forced himself to a near-seated position again, gasping at the unexpected ache in his thigh.

"Fine," he muttered, opting to institute another plan which hadn't precisely worked the first time. His palm rubbed the wounded muscle until the tension released itself and then he retrieved the long metal bar. A tiny shift allowed him to peer uncomfortably over his right shoulder where he could see the elevated workman's table which ran the length of the shed's wall. Other than a few typical mechanic's tools, this was his best option to at least reach his cell phone which was perched on the workman's table. Laying himself flat again on the creeper, Steve awkwardly cocked his head backwards on the creeper's padded headrest to eye his now upside down cell phone and the bottle of water sitting so resolutely next to it. He had already tried this stupendous idea and failed miserably, but he needed to try again. With two hands, Steve tried to hyper-extend his torso backwards along his padded bed. He gained an inch or two as he hefted the bar over his head with both hands in an attempt to knock his cell phone or even the water bottle down off the table.

"Come on, come on, …" Steve chanted as he wriggled his body and waggled the bar which missed the workman's table by a decent five inches of open air. "Hit ... something! Damn it!" In frustration, he reached and swept the bar in a wide arc over his head and at a lower angle, hoping to connect with at least the metal legs of the long table.

"Really? Really? Just give me … something! Anything!" Steve begged the aluminum ceiling as the bar met zero resistance because he was just far enough away from anything of value in the shed. Panting from exertion, he stopped when the burn from his shoulders and painful kink in his neck demanded that he cease the stupidity of his actions.

"This isn't happening," he muttered in disbelief. With his hands still over his head, he allowed the bar to sink to the hard-packed dirt floor of the shed where he finally let it go to roll loosely from his fingers.

"Think. Think … what can you do?" Steve dismally clutched his hair while shaking his head incredulously. No one was going to miss him until Monday. Danny had Grace for the weekend and both cousins were helping some other cousin move from an apartment to a newly purchased house somewhere near Punchbowl. His own plans had been rather boringly mundane, at least up until the jack had slipped.

Pulling back up into to his half-seated position, Steve looked around his immediate area in a vain attempt to gain more ideas. Over an hour of his imprisonment had gone by on this otherwise peaceful Friday evening and he'd already made a stockpile of available tools. His issue was that not one of them was going to be useful. Another search was going to be fruitless, and he well knew that fact. But in all reality, he couldn't accept it since he was becoming more and more disconcerted by his sheer lack of options. And as night fell in earnest, an odd sense of desperation was slowly sinking in.

"Danno," Steve sighed out as he rubbed an oil-stained hand over his face. A small smile flit across his lips because no matter how this story wound up, he would never … ever … hear the end of it.

"Danny," he sighed again, tapping his hand rhythmically against the study frame of the six-wheeled cushioned mechanic's creeper cart he was currently forced to lay upon. It was a pretty piece of equipment with its shiny black frame and deep red padding. It contoured comfortably to his body and included an adjustable padded head rest which made him smirk before a giggle escaped his mouth. Though it did him absolutely no good, he could actually raise his head and shoulders.

"You just had to get me the cadillac of creepers, buddy?" He chuffed the giggle down, but for a time, an amused smile remained plastered on his lips. He envisioned hearing his partner's very first words and this time had to agree: "Trouble magnet, Steven!"

"Yeah, this time you'd be right, Danno," Steve smirked softly until his smile lost its warmth. "Trouble times two." With nothing constructive to do, Steve forced himself to lay back down on his unfortunate bed.

"Could be worse," Steve groused to the ceiling. His gift was long and fit his body like a glove from head to well past the backs of his thighs. Despite not being able to move, he was currently fairly comfortable. However, laying on it wasn't how he wanted to spend any number of long hours while wedged so firmly under his car. He wasn't happy at all, yet he had to resolve himself to eventually being found.

Someone would miss him.

Someone.

Sometime soon. Right?

~ to be continued ~