Chapter Text
North Carolina was exactly like Danny remembered it from his college days: humid, hot, and full of mosquitoes.
His shirt was soggy against his skin, and in the three hours necessary to drive from the airport to the hotel, he had already mourned the Hawaii weather seventeen times, and for him, that was insane to think about.
Steve, on the other hand, looked completely at ease driving their Jeep with his Ray-band on and the breeze that gently ruffled his hair.
They didn't talk much during the drive; both of them were too lost in their thoughts.
Steve, regarding the adjustment to the house to make space for another teen, had already instructed Kono, Chin, and Luke to clean the attic back at his place.
But he was already pondering the possibility of building another room.
Danny, on the other hand, was spiraling into the idea of meeting his nephew for the first time, of what kinds of abuse his sister endured when she was married to Luke, and why she left her kid with him.
When they arrived at the hotel, he didn't pay much attention to the instructions the receptionist was giving them, not that he cared either way.
They were only staying for a couple of days, at most.
It'll be a long week, he thought, unloading his bag from the Jeep
-
Standing in the office of the CSP department was somehow nostalgic to Danno, he remembered all the visits he had to endure during his divorce to guarantee that his little girl could still have his father as a constant figure in his life and the ones he had to take when he discovered that Charlie was his son, something that he couldn't bring himself to forgive to Rachel.
The receptionist was a sweet lady in her sixties who smiled at them when he presented himself as JJ's uncle.
"Ah, Jesse James, he is such a sweet boy, he and his friend John always helped my husband with the garden chores when they were kids. I never understood how a horrible man like Luke could raise such a lovable soul, but now I can see where he got that from," she said, looking at him with approval.
Even if he couldn't see him, he knew that Steve was trying very hard not to smirk.
"Ehm, thanks, but I think that it is more my sister's influence than mine, I haven't been around him much in his life or ever, and his mother and I weren't exactly on speaking terms," he awkwardly smiled.
Luckily, he was saved from further embarrassment by Mrs. Gordon. As they swiftly left the reception behind them, Danny tried to avert the receptionist's eyes.
Mrs. Gordon, or Allison, as she asked them to call her, had a small, yellow office packed with plants and drawer units. When they sat, Danny saw some children's drawings hanging on the windows.
"I'm quite surprised to have you here, Mr. Williams. Usually, when we try to contact some Pouge's legal guardian, the response that we receive is a hang-up," she exclaimed, locking her dull brown eyes into Danny's blue ones.
She wasn't interested in JJ's case; it was clear from the flat tone that she was using that she was only calling the guardians because it was her job. What happened to the kids after that was nothing of her concern.
"Pouge's?"
"It's how the people from The Cut, the poorest zone of the archipelago, identify themselves."
He swallows a nasty remark down his throat about how that made it sound like she was talking about some kind of animal breed instead of the people he asked to see JJ's record.
"It's not something major; the boy just needs someone to look after him until his father is out of prison." That was the last straw before all hell broke loose.
"Here it states that JJ's case was brought to your attention by Mr. Heyward last month. Even though there were a lot of reports from his teacher throughout middle school, why haven't I ever been contacted before?" he asked, flipping
through the dossier pages, rage clear in his voice.
"Look, kids like him are wild. If we contacted every legal guardian every time a kid goes to school with a bruise, we would never hear the end of it," She said, trying to grasp a straw to justify herself and her colleagues.
"So let me get this straight, CSP deliberately ignores all these alerts because you believe him to be just some reckless kid?" He could feel Steve's hand on his, trying to calm him down despite feeling angry too.
"It's not like that"
"Okay, lady, this is what we are going to do. I want to meet the boy tomorrow, morning or afternoon; it doesn't matter, and I'm going to take him with me to Hawaii since here it's not safe for him, and it is clear how much you care about his situation."
-
When they got back to their hotel, the first thing Danny did was take a long, cold shower to try to clear his mind, but the mixture of anxiety, anger, and fear wasn't so easy to push away.
It was a mix of emotions that Danny hadn't felt since he had to rescue Steve from North Korea, and even then, he wasn't so stressed.
When he got out of the shower, he quietly accepted Steve's invitation to cuddle.
They stayed in that position for a couple of minutes before the SEAL broke the silence.
"So, from zero to me, how stressed are you?"
"Grace's first date level of anxiety, Rachel hiding that Charlie was my son's level of anger, and you not waking up after Korea's level of fear"
"I didn't expect you to be so honest on the first try. Now I have to rethink my strategy to make you settle down," Steve said, trying to cheer up the mood a little bit, but Danny wasn't taking the bait.
"I'm too worn out to attempt to endure your SEAL's technique," he admitted, making himself comfortable against Steve's side.
He was still dripping water from his shower on the bed, but he decided that he could think about it later when his head wasn't so messed up.
"You know, I always thought that she was going to be a pop star before all the college disasters happened," he said, dodging his partner's eyes
"When we were little, she used to sing me lullabies, she said that it was her form of expressing her love for me. My mom used to say that when she saw me for the first time, Giorgie understood what love meant." From his position, Steve couldn't see the tears, but he could feel them in Danny's voice
"I didn't expect you to be so close to her; you never spoke about her," he said, stroking his hair. His gentle tone was making it difficult not start sobbing right away.
"It hurt to think about her when we were inseparable from the moment that I was born. She was the brightest person on Earth; she made everyone fall in love with her simply by existing." The silence in the room was becoming more bearable—something more vulnerable and deep.
A silence that spoke about loss, grieving, and resentment.
"Then what happened?"
"She met her boyfriend at the time, Justin, who was some sort of modeling agent that filled her head with a bunch of bullshit about her body and that our parents were preventing her from becoming a star. I had to arrest him a couple of years ago. He became a pimp, using girls from the poorest part of South Asia to fund his lavish lifestyle." The hatred in his tone was so strong that you could have almost touched it.
"I hope you made him pay."
"I paralyzed him down the torso"
"Do you want to tell me about Georgie?" he asked, and despite the hesitance, Danny found himself eager to tell Steve about her.
He narrated how she would gather all of their relatives during the holidays and perform a mini-concert using him and their cousins as backup singers; he recounted that she used to call him monkey, and Grace's nickname came from that.
In the end, when his tears were long dry, he found himself grateful to have Steve as a partner in life.
-
"What do you mean, you don't know where he is?"
He shouted, unleashing all the frustration from the night before.
Mrs. Allison tried to hide behind her colleague's back, Mr.Arton,
The man was already present in the room when he and Steve arrived, and when Danny asked where JJ was, the man started trying to make all sorts of excuses.
"I don't think you understand how tricky it is to find a person, Mr. Williams."
"Me? Did he truly say that to me?" he asked, outraged, to an amused Steve.
"How could I understand how hard it is to be a deputy? It is not like I worked for seven years as a police officer in New Jersey; I've worked my ass off before being promoted to detective. Are you telling me that I don't know how complex a deputy job can be?"
The social worker was completely taken aback by his statement. He probably thought that Danny was just some fancy dude from the continent, jokes on him.
"I'm sure that you're a capable Detective in New Jersey, but here in the Outer Banks, things are different; you can't use some fancy technology to find people; it's like living in a jungle." He tried to appease Danny, achieving the exact opposite,
"Then it's a good thing that I'm used to finding people hiding in the jungle," he snapped at him, then turned around and said to the SEAL
"Ask the governor if he can use his influence to let us find the boy; these people are incompetent. If he refused, tell him that I'd quit the Five-0"
Steve's attics were truly growing on him, and judging from the smile his partner was trying to conceal, he thought so too.<
"You can't just decide to take up the Boy case, this is not your jurisdiction"
Mr. Arton tried to interfere,
"We'll see about it," Steve said, leaving the room to call the governor.