FIC: Have a Little Faith (1/8)
Oct. 2nd, 2011 02:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stellarmeadowTitle: Have a Little Faith
Fandoms: Hawaii Five-0 and Profiler
Author: stellarmeadow
Pairing: Steve/Danny, Sam/John
Rating: R for language
Summary: How do you handle a threat against your partner when you're juggling work and a new relationshihp?
Notes: First off, this is for the awesome celli, who bought me in the help_japan auction and requested a crossover between Hawaii Five-0 and Profiler. I will forever be grateful, because it reminded me how much I loved that show and those two, and inspired me to rewatch some episodes, and it was so much fun to write.
If you're not familiar, Profiler was a show on NBC from 1996 - 2001, a show that celli TOTALLY hooked me on (I had no intention of watching it until she said the magic words "Julian Mcmahon"). It starred Ally Walker as Samantha "Sam" Waters, a Profiler being tormented by a serial killer who killed her husband, among many other people, Julian McMahon as John Grant, a cop who became an agent working on the Violent Crimes Task Force (VCTF), and some other people. Okay, so the other people were good, but Sam and John were the important ones! Oh, there was also George (played by Peter Frechette), who was their computer guru, and resident guy with a live-in-boyfriend, which was, let's face it, kind of risque for an NBC drama in 1996!
If you are familiar, then you need to know I messed with the timeline of Profiler - I set the events of the show around 2003-2005, kept the older Chloe, and kept Sam with the VCTF.
Also, this story is a sequel of sorts to Hit the Ground Running, but you don't necessarily have to have read it to read this one, I don't think. It refers back to things that happened in the story, but gives enough context to follow. However, if you wanted to know what happened to Steve and Danny after Hit the Ground Running, here you go! :)
Oh, one more note--I started this in July and barely managed to finish it just in time, because the promo for this Monday's episode made me want to get this posted before it aired. Oh show, get out of my head! :)
I lied, still one more note - HUGE thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chelseafrew for a lightning fast and fabulous beta, and to both her and corilannam for pushing me to finish the last 1/4 of the story! It would not have gotten done without you guys - thank you!!!
Steve checked his watch as he flipped through the mail on his desk, hoping to get through the pile before Danny arrived. He never understood how he could get through the mail each day and yet there was a pile just as big waiting on him the next morning. The first month they'd been in business, he'd let the pile grow until Danny had laid into him about paperwork that hadn't gotten done that had led to a whole nightmare involving what Danny assured him was four times the amount of paperwork that he'd have had to fill out if Steve had only opened his damn mail. He'd heard about it every day for a month, and still heard about it occasionally.
Since then he'd found time to open the mail almost daily.
The fourth envelope seemed just like the others until he pulled out the newspaper article inside and froze at the headline 'Navy SEAL Slain.' He swallowed carefully as he read the story, vaguely registering Danny entering the office, complaining about something.
"What's that?" Danny asked, appearing suddenly at Steve's side.
Steve shoved the article back into the envelope. "Sorry. what were you saying?" He tried to play back a few of the words in his head and quickly realized what the problem was. "Oh, the scratch? Sorry. I'll have it fixed."
"Seriously?" Danny frowned down at him. "You're being accommodating about the car? About taking care of having a little scratch fixed?" Danny's frown deepened, his gaze flickering to the envelope, then back to Steve's face. "What was that article?"
"Just a guy I kinda knew in the SEALs." Steve said. "He was murdered last month. I hadn't heard."
"Oh," Danny laid a hand on Steve's shoulder, warm and comforting. "I'm sorry."
Steve shrugged carefully to avoid dislodging Danny's hand. "I didn't know him that well, it's just...." He shook his head. "It's nothing."
"That particular 'nothing' voice usually ends up getting me shot at. Or actually shot. Out with it."
"I've been getting articles for the last week or so," Steve said slowly, wondering why he was even bothering about some crackpot. "First one was about a mission that the sender suggested I might have been involved in."
"Were you?"
Steve raised an eyebrow and smirked. "That's classified."
"Not, apparently, to whoever sent you the article."
"True."
Danny leaned against the desk. "So were the other ones missions?"
"No, the other two were other dead SEALs. This one makes three. All murdered. None of them on active duty."
"You think someone's trying to get you to look into it?"
Steve's hands went up, palms up. "I can't imagine why. They were in three separate states on the mainland. There's no connection to Hawaii."
"But you were all SEALs."
"It's nothing," Steve said again. "Just forget about it."
"Right." Danny gave him the 'you will talk, perp' stare, and Steve tried not to squirm. "It's nothing."
Steve huffed. "Let it go, Danny."
Danny eyed him for a long moment. "Fine," he said, pushing off the desk. "Then did you sign off on all the files I left on your desk yesterday?" he asked, nodding at the pile of folders on the other side of Steve's desk.
Blinking at the sudden change of topic--it wasn't like Danny to just let something go that easily--Steve nodded, looking at the stack. "All done."
"Good. Then you won't mind if I take them."
He leaned across the desk, and Steve tried to ignore how good Danny smelled as his shoulder was mere inches from Steve's nose. When Danny was at a safe distance again, Steve cleared his throat. "I suppose you'll want to get those filed."
Shaking his head as if he could see right through Steve, Danny took a few steps toward the door. "You," Danny said, pointing a finger at Steve, "should get on the phone."
"Phone?"
"Phone. You have a scratch to get fixed on my car."
"Right. I'll get it fixed."
The laugh Danny gave in response was almost unflattering to Steve's ability to keep his word. "You'd better," Danny said, "because your couch? Not so comfy. And I won't be the one sleeping on it."
"I have spare rooms," Steve said, trying unsuccessfully to hide a grin. He knew better than to think Danny would banish him--if only because Steve knew how far he could go before Danny would, and if he was ever going to push that, it wouldn't be over a scratch on a car.
"A bed would not be enough punishment," Danny said, not having any success at hiding his own amusement. "Get it fixed."
When Danny was gone, Steve took a deep breath, trying to ignore the lingering scent of Danny's aftershave. Mind on the case, he told himself, reaching for the mail pile to look at the article again, but it was no longer on top of the pile.
He'd gone through the mail three times before he gave up, sinking back into his chair, eyes closed. Danny had clearly walked out with it, and judging by the close, quiet conversation he was having with Chin in the bullpen, it was too late to stop him from doing anything with it.
Maybe it was for the best. Once Danny found out there was nothing behind it, he'd drop it, and that would be that.
***
Three days later, it had been quiet just long enough that Steve was prepared for all hell to break loose at any time. He was not, however, prepared to walk in late in the afternoon, after spending most of the day getting the Camaro fixed, to find two people, clearly FBI agents, standing in his bullpen with Danny, Chin and Kono.
"New case?" he asked, looking at Danny.
"Sort of," Danny said, scratching his nose, avoiding meeting Steve's eyes directly, which sent off every warning bell in Steve's head.
"Commander," one of the agents, a tall woman with blonde hair down past her shoulders, said, "I'm Samantha Waters, from the FBI's Violent Crimes Task Force in Atlanta." She held out a hand, and Steve shook it automatically. "This is my colleague," she said, waving a hand at the dark-haired man beside her, "John Grant."
Steve shook Grant's hand. "So what does the VCTF want in Hawaii?" Steve asked. "Is there a new serial killer on the loose that we don't know about?"
"We think the next target of a serial killer we've been tracking may be here," Waters said.
"Who's the target?"
Waters glanced at Danny before meeting Steve's gaze, her blue eyes sympathetic, but unwavering, as she said, "You."
Steve glared at Danny. "My office. Right now."
He turned on his heel, not waiting to see if Danny followed, but he didn't need to worry. He'd barely made it through the door of his office before Danny was right there behind him. Steve whirled around to face Danny. "Seriously?" Steve asked. "One newspaper article and you--"
"It wasn't one," Danny said, "it was four. And if you'd bothered to check instead of ignoring it, you'd know that it matches an MO leading to a string of murders."
Steve blinked. Hard. "A few newspaper articles in the mail is an MO?"
"It is for this guy."
"So you just called up the VCTF? We do solve crimes here, Danny."
"I didn't call anybody!" Danny leaned in, lowering his voice, but losing none of his steam. "Chin did the search and found the matches. We'd barely even had a chance to look into it when those two showed up. Apparently the search threw up a red flag in their system as a possible lead on the guy. They've been on his case for six months, since the second murder, and this is the first solid lead they've had, so they flew in as soon as they heard."
Steve took a deep breath. "Without even calling to check?"
"One of their agents emailed Chin yesterday to ask if all the news articles were related to a case, and Chin said yes, but it was just something we were looking into, that no crime had been committed. That was it."
"And you didn't think," Steve said, all attempts at deep breathing gone, "that was a good time to let me in on the fact that you were snooping around on this behind my back?"
"He didn't even mention it until this morning, after you were gone," Danny replied, his voice low and fierce, throwing a look towards the windows where Steve had no doubt the FBI agents were watching with interest. "What was I supposed to do, call and tell you? I didn't know it couldn't wait."
"You're supposed to work with me," Steve said in clipped tones, arms tight across his chest, "not behind my back."
Danny's nostrils flared before he took a step back, hands out, arms open wide. "You know what? I can't even--" His breath came out with something that sounded like a low growl behind it. "If you would cooperate once in a while," he said finally, his voice low as he stepped into Steve's personal space, "instead of insisting that you can handle everything that comes up against you without any of us, then we wouldn't have to work behind your back. We could work with you."
"I don't cooperate?" Steve gripped his shirt under his arms. "I seem to remember us all working as a team to take down Wo Fat."
"Oh, right, and how many months did it take to get you to really let us in?" Danny said with a harsh laugh, his hands flying through the air as he talked. "How many times did you lock up your dad's evidence when I came into the house while you doled out little tiny pieces of information as if they were diamonds? If your own sister hadn't forced her way into it, would you have ever included any of us?"
"Leave Mary out of this," Steve hissed.
"Right, because if you had your way, we'd all be left out of it and you'd, what, go chase the guy down with a pen knife? Because going off on your own worked so well with the Governor, didn't it?
Steve forced himself not to flinch, even if somewhere in the back of his mind a little voice was telling him Danny had a point. "You're the one," he ground out, ignoring the voice, "who ran off to take care of other things that night."
He knew he'd gone too far when Danny stilled completely. "Other things?" Danny said, taking a step back. "If you mean Rachel, just come out and say it, Steven. No point in talking in code--unless, of course, you're so used to it that you don't know any other way to have a conversation."
Fuck. "Danny, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. I'm just..." Steve glanced over his shoulder, and yes, as he thought, the FBI was looking on with interest, despite Chin and Kono's obvious attempts to pull them into a conversation. "I walk in here and find out the FBI thinks I'm being hunted by a serial killer. The FBI. There's no rule book for how to react to that."
Danny took a deep breath, and Steve watched carefully, waiting until he saw that slight softening in Danny's eyes that let him know he was mostly off the hook. "I know, babe," Danny said, stepping closer again, one hand on Steve's arm. "I know. And you need to go cooperate with them so we can find this guy before he makes a move on you."
"What can they do that we can't?"
"You mean besides provide six months of background on the killer and all the other murders. Oh, and then there's the fact that the woman standing out there happens to be the best profiler the FBI has ever seen? I mean, do you even know what she's done in her career? Seriously, she's like the rock star of profiling."
Steve raised an eyebrow. "Does she know you run her fan club?"
"Shut up. She's good, okay? And a lot of her cases were on the east coast. It's hard not to know who she is." Danny squeezed Steve's arm before dropping his hand back to his side, and Steve felt the loss of that warmth. "You want her on this, trust me."
"Okay," Steve said after a moment. "I'll try to play nice."
"Good."
Steve pushed past Danny, only to be caught on the arm by Danny's hand once more. "Just so we're clear, that other conversation isn't over. You know that, right?"
"Yeah," Steve said, nodding without looking back. "I know." He'd hoped maybe he might get a pass, just this once, but he knew better, deep down. Danny wasn't one to just let things go.
"Then let's go find a serial killer," Danny said, releasing Steve's arm and giving him a little push toward the door.
***
Chapter 2
Fandoms: Hawaii Five-0 and Profiler
Author: stellarmeadow
Pairing: Steve/Danny, Sam/John
Rating: R for language
Summary: How do you handle a threat against your partner when you're juggling work and a new relationshihp?
Notes: First off, this is for the awesome celli, who bought me in the help_japan auction and requested a crossover between Hawaii Five-0 and Profiler. I will forever be grateful, because it reminded me how much I loved that show and those two, and inspired me to rewatch some episodes, and it was so much fun to write.
If you're not familiar, Profiler was a show on NBC from 1996 - 2001, a show that celli TOTALLY hooked me on (I had no intention of watching it until she said the magic words "Julian Mcmahon"). It starred Ally Walker as Samantha "Sam" Waters, a Profiler being tormented by a serial killer who killed her husband, among many other people, Julian McMahon as John Grant, a cop who became an agent working on the Violent Crimes Task Force (VCTF), and some other people. Okay, so the other people were good, but Sam and John were the important ones! Oh, there was also George (played by Peter Frechette), who was their computer guru, and resident guy with a live-in-boyfriend, which was, let's face it, kind of risque for an NBC drama in 1996!
If you are familiar, then you need to know I messed with the timeline of Profiler - I set the events of the show around 2003-2005, kept the older Chloe, and kept Sam with the VCTF.
Also, this story is a sequel of sorts to Hit the Ground Running, but you don't necessarily have to have read it to read this one, I don't think. It refers back to things that happened in the story, but gives enough context to follow. However, if you wanted to know what happened to Steve and Danny after Hit the Ground Running, here you go! :)
Oh, one more note--I started this in July and barely managed to finish it just in time, because the promo for this Monday's episode made me want to get this posted before it aired. Oh show, get out of my head! :)
I lied, still one more note - HUGE thanks to
chelseafrew for a lightning fast and fabulous beta, and to both her and corilannam for pushing me to finish the last 1/4 of the story! It would not have gotten done without you guys - thank you!!!Steve checked his watch as he flipped through the mail on his desk, hoping to get through the pile before Danny arrived. He never understood how he could get through the mail each day and yet there was a pile just as big waiting on him the next morning. The first month they'd been in business, he'd let the pile grow until Danny had laid into him about paperwork that hadn't gotten done that had led to a whole nightmare involving what Danny assured him was four times the amount of paperwork that he'd have had to fill out if Steve had only opened his damn mail. He'd heard about it every day for a month, and still heard about it occasionally.
Since then he'd found time to open the mail almost daily.
The fourth envelope seemed just like the others until he pulled out the newspaper article inside and froze at the headline 'Navy SEAL Slain.' He swallowed carefully as he read the story, vaguely registering Danny entering the office, complaining about something.
"What's that?" Danny asked, appearing suddenly at Steve's side.
Steve shoved the article back into the envelope. "Sorry. what were you saying?" He tried to play back a few of the words in his head and quickly realized what the problem was. "Oh, the scratch? Sorry. I'll have it fixed."
"Seriously?" Danny frowned down at him. "You're being accommodating about the car? About taking care of having a little scratch fixed?" Danny's frown deepened, his gaze flickering to the envelope, then back to Steve's face. "What was that article?"
"Just a guy I kinda knew in the SEALs." Steve said. "He was murdered last month. I hadn't heard."
"Oh," Danny laid a hand on Steve's shoulder, warm and comforting. "I'm sorry."
Steve shrugged carefully to avoid dislodging Danny's hand. "I didn't know him that well, it's just...." He shook his head. "It's nothing."
"That particular 'nothing' voice usually ends up getting me shot at. Or actually shot. Out with it."
"I've been getting articles for the last week or so," Steve said slowly, wondering why he was even bothering about some crackpot. "First one was about a mission that the sender suggested I might have been involved in."
"Were you?"
Steve raised an eyebrow and smirked. "That's classified."
"Not, apparently, to whoever sent you the article."
"True."
Danny leaned against the desk. "So were the other ones missions?"
"No, the other two were other dead SEALs. This one makes three. All murdered. None of them on active duty."
"You think someone's trying to get you to look into it?"
Steve's hands went up, palms up. "I can't imagine why. They were in three separate states on the mainland. There's no connection to Hawaii."
"But you were all SEALs."
"It's nothing," Steve said again. "Just forget about it."
"Right." Danny gave him the 'you will talk, perp' stare, and Steve tried not to squirm. "It's nothing."
Steve huffed. "Let it go, Danny."
Danny eyed him for a long moment. "Fine," he said, pushing off the desk. "Then did you sign off on all the files I left on your desk yesterday?" he asked, nodding at the pile of folders on the other side of Steve's desk.
Blinking at the sudden change of topic--it wasn't like Danny to just let something go that easily--Steve nodded, looking at the stack. "All done."
"Good. Then you won't mind if I take them."
He leaned across the desk, and Steve tried to ignore how good Danny smelled as his shoulder was mere inches from Steve's nose. When Danny was at a safe distance again, Steve cleared his throat. "I suppose you'll want to get those filed."
Shaking his head as if he could see right through Steve, Danny took a few steps toward the door. "You," Danny said, pointing a finger at Steve, "should get on the phone."
"Phone?"
"Phone. You have a scratch to get fixed on my car."
"Right. I'll get it fixed."
The laugh Danny gave in response was almost unflattering to Steve's ability to keep his word. "You'd better," Danny said, "because your couch? Not so comfy. And I won't be the one sleeping on it."
"I have spare rooms," Steve said, trying unsuccessfully to hide a grin. He knew better than to think Danny would banish him--if only because Steve knew how far he could go before Danny would, and if he was ever going to push that, it wouldn't be over a scratch on a car.
"A bed would not be enough punishment," Danny said, not having any success at hiding his own amusement. "Get it fixed."
When Danny was gone, Steve took a deep breath, trying to ignore the lingering scent of Danny's aftershave. Mind on the case, he told himself, reaching for the mail pile to look at the article again, but it was no longer on top of the pile.
He'd gone through the mail three times before he gave up, sinking back into his chair, eyes closed. Danny had clearly walked out with it, and judging by the close, quiet conversation he was having with Chin in the bullpen, it was too late to stop him from doing anything with it.
Maybe it was for the best. Once Danny found out there was nothing behind it, he'd drop it, and that would be that.
***
Three days later, it had been quiet just long enough that Steve was prepared for all hell to break loose at any time. He was not, however, prepared to walk in late in the afternoon, after spending most of the day getting the Camaro fixed, to find two people, clearly FBI agents, standing in his bullpen with Danny, Chin and Kono.
"New case?" he asked, looking at Danny.
"Sort of," Danny said, scratching his nose, avoiding meeting Steve's eyes directly, which sent off every warning bell in Steve's head.
"Commander," one of the agents, a tall woman with blonde hair down past her shoulders, said, "I'm Samantha Waters, from the FBI's Violent Crimes Task Force in Atlanta." She held out a hand, and Steve shook it automatically. "This is my colleague," she said, waving a hand at the dark-haired man beside her, "John Grant."
Steve shook Grant's hand. "So what does the VCTF want in Hawaii?" Steve asked. "Is there a new serial killer on the loose that we don't know about?"
"We think the next target of a serial killer we've been tracking may be here," Waters said.
"Who's the target?"
Waters glanced at Danny before meeting Steve's gaze, her blue eyes sympathetic, but unwavering, as she said, "You."
Steve glared at Danny. "My office. Right now."
He turned on his heel, not waiting to see if Danny followed, but he didn't need to worry. He'd barely made it through the door of his office before Danny was right there behind him. Steve whirled around to face Danny. "Seriously?" Steve asked. "One newspaper article and you--"
"It wasn't one," Danny said, "it was four. And if you'd bothered to check instead of ignoring it, you'd know that it matches an MO leading to a string of murders."
Steve blinked. Hard. "A few newspaper articles in the mail is an MO?"
"It is for this guy."
"So you just called up the VCTF? We do solve crimes here, Danny."
"I didn't call anybody!" Danny leaned in, lowering his voice, but losing none of his steam. "Chin did the search and found the matches. We'd barely even had a chance to look into it when those two showed up. Apparently the search threw up a red flag in their system as a possible lead on the guy. They've been on his case for six months, since the second murder, and this is the first solid lead they've had, so they flew in as soon as they heard."
Steve took a deep breath. "Without even calling to check?"
"One of their agents emailed Chin yesterday to ask if all the news articles were related to a case, and Chin said yes, but it was just something we were looking into, that no crime had been committed. That was it."
"And you didn't think," Steve said, all attempts at deep breathing gone, "that was a good time to let me in on the fact that you were snooping around on this behind my back?"
"He didn't even mention it until this morning, after you were gone," Danny replied, his voice low and fierce, throwing a look towards the windows where Steve had no doubt the FBI agents were watching with interest. "What was I supposed to do, call and tell you? I didn't know it couldn't wait."
"You're supposed to work with me," Steve said in clipped tones, arms tight across his chest, "not behind my back."
Danny's nostrils flared before he took a step back, hands out, arms open wide. "You know what? I can't even--" His breath came out with something that sounded like a low growl behind it. "If you would cooperate once in a while," he said finally, his voice low as he stepped into Steve's personal space, "instead of insisting that you can handle everything that comes up against you without any of us, then we wouldn't have to work behind your back. We could work with you."
"I don't cooperate?" Steve gripped his shirt under his arms. "I seem to remember us all working as a team to take down Wo Fat."
"Oh, right, and how many months did it take to get you to really let us in?" Danny said with a harsh laugh, his hands flying through the air as he talked. "How many times did you lock up your dad's evidence when I came into the house while you doled out little tiny pieces of information as if they were diamonds? If your own sister hadn't forced her way into it, would you have ever included any of us?"
"Leave Mary out of this," Steve hissed.
"Right, because if you had your way, we'd all be left out of it and you'd, what, go chase the guy down with a pen knife? Because going off on your own worked so well with the Governor, didn't it?
Steve forced himself not to flinch, even if somewhere in the back of his mind a little voice was telling him Danny had a point. "You're the one," he ground out, ignoring the voice, "who ran off to take care of other things that night."
He knew he'd gone too far when Danny stilled completely. "Other things?" Danny said, taking a step back. "If you mean Rachel, just come out and say it, Steven. No point in talking in code--unless, of course, you're so used to it that you don't know any other way to have a conversation."
Fuck. "Danny, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. I'm just..." Steve glanced over his shoulder, and yes, as he thought, the FBI was looking on with interest, despite Chin and Kono's obvious attempts to pull them into a conversation. "I walk in here and find out the FBI thinks I'm being hunted by a serial killer. The FBI. There's no rule book for how to react to that."
Danny took a deep breath, and Steve watched carefully, waiting until he saw that slight softening in Danny's eyes that let him know he was mostly off the hook. "I know, babe," Danny said, stepping closer again, one hand on Steve's arm. "I know. And you need to go cooperate with them so we can find this guy before he makes a move on you."
"What can they do that we can't?"
"You mean besides provide six months of background on the killer and all the other murders. Oh, and then there's the fact that the woman standing out there happens to be the best profiler the FBI has ever seen? I mean, do you even know what she's done in her career? Seriously, she's like the rock star of profiling."
Steve raised an eyebrow. "Does she know you run her fan club?"
"Shut up. She's good, okay? And a lot of her cases were on the east coast. It's hard not to know who she is." Danny squeezed Steve's arm before dropping his hand back to his side, and Steve felt the loss of that warmth. "You want her on this, trust me."
"Okay," Steve said after a moment. "I'll try to play nice."
"Good."
Steve pushed past Danny, only to be caught on the arm by Danny's hand once more. "Just so we're clear, that other conversation isn't over. You know that, right?"
"Yeah," Steve said, nodding without looking back. "I know." He'd hoped maybe he might get a pass, just this once, but he knew better, deep down. Danny wasn't one to just let things go.
"Then let's go find a serial killer," Danny said, releasing Steve's arm and giving him a little push toward the door.
***
Chapter 2
