AndreaLyn

"So, what you're saying is that lost in the jungle is some kind of waterfall..." Steve attempts this for the third time and abandons all hope when he stares at Kono and Danny and tries to reconcile Danny with the tiny blonde woman standing in front of him. "And because it was cold water..."

"Boss, just, accept that cold water did this to Danny and let's get back to the job."

Because like Chin said, 'the good guys know the bad guys' and if Danny looks like this, then they can pull the vice-job that HPD and Five-O has had to keep pushing away since all of their people had been identified. It's the only reason, supposedly, that Danny didn't just take a dive into the warm-waterfall-pool right next to the cold one and Steve isn't going to think about this logically anymore.

"Next time, when the suspect goes running off a cliff..."

"Yeah, I got it, don't follow him," Danny replies idly, waving a hand. He looks too small to take seriously and Steve has been keeping his fair distance. It's to the point that everyone starts to notice and halfway through their tactics meeting about the op, Danny calls him on it.

"I'm gonna get dinner," Chin says, pulling Kono with him to get out of the way.

Danny folds his arms over his chest, upper lip curling towards his nose in disgust. "Do I look contagious or something? Do I disgust you, McGarrett? Cuz you won't even look at me and I know you like these parts cuz you like them just fine on Catherine. So what's the deal, here?"

It's hard to explain and Steve's not a master of words at the best of times. He owes Danny an attempt, though. He tears his gaze away from the wall and manages to look as level as possible into Danny's gaze.

"You're just not you," is what he has to say. "And I don't like it."

Danny blushes a color of pink that Steve isn't sure is deserved, but he isn't about to complain. It's better than being called a 'schmuck' and smacked in the arm, after all. "C'mon, you goof, let's pull this job and I'll go back to being the me you like. Deal?"

"Deal."

Danny was well aware that finding out the news that he did should render him shocked, speechless, and unable to deal. The full moon out in the sky, he could have ignored the fact that come dawn, Steve tumbled into headquarters with leaves in his hair, his clothes ripped, and dirt smeared all over his body.

He could have ignored all of it, if Steve hadn't sleepily stalked across the office and wordlessly sniffed Danny from shoulder to ear, letting out a sated growl when he was through.

"Language?" Danny suggested mildly.

Steve looked primal, there was no better word for it. He had a keen look in his eye and grabbed hold of Danny's wrists, sniffing at the radial pulse and letting out a pleased whimper when he apparently found something he liked.

So when you put it together, Danny came to the conclusion that either the full moon turned Steve into an absolute freak or his partner was a werewolf.

Danny would probably be more shocked, but really, at least this explained the territorial bullshit. Without it, Steve was actually stranger for it. "Okay," Danny exhaled, watching as Steve rounded the office, sniffing out every corner. "We'll talk about this later. In detail," he said, processing how very not-shocked he was.

The mechanics of their relationship is not something he puts much thought to. Not in the beginning. He avoids the nuts and bolts, so to speak. It's too easy to get caught up in the realization that she really is joints and hinges and ball-bearings made by coltane to create a perfect killing machine that was originally designed to stop him.

He'd thrown a wrench in those plans by existing and with the skills at his fingertips.

Now she's here. She. She, like there's a sex to assign to the strange creature that's wandered into their lives to save him from death. That he sent to protect himself from death. He tries not to think too much about that, not since the first time he tried to put logic to Kyle Reese being his father and how that came to pass.

He stares at her too often. He knows that. His eyes linger over her and he can see his mother watching him warily. He can see the thinly-veiled disgust on Derek's face.

He doesn't care, though.

In the future, he figures out how to turn something terrible into a force to be reckoned with, into something to protect him and fight for him. He's turned her from a monster into a guardian angel. She's beautiful. Allison Young, Cameron, no matter what or who she is, she's beautiful, right down to the nuts and bolts of it.

Steve isn't sure why everyone looks so surprised.

With Grace at thirteen and Rachel out of town, there are questions that she's brought with her to the office. Danny lets her sit in and learn about protocol ("This," Danny insists, "is the best way for her to understand what kind of scumbags exist.") and she asks the team for advice. She's learnt about simple car mechanics from Chin, surfing from Kono, and today is Steve's turn.

"Could everyone stop looking at me like that," Steve says, his left eye twitching slightly. "It's really unnerving."

"And he has a sharp pencil close to his eye," Grace adds with worry.

"Pardon your team for wondering why you're so talented at eyeliner application that you can teach my teenaged daughter about it," Danny says incredulously. "But go on, Superfabulous. You keep on showing us how it's done."

Steve really wishes they'd lay off.

For one, it's just an application of fine motor skills.

...and for another, it's not like they were ever that specific about how to apply camo paint in the jungle. Steve had been top of his class and had excelled in exceeding. This was just another step.

"Don't worry, Steve," Danny says later with a sympathetic smile and a proffered beer in hand. "We still think you're the manliest SEAL at the ball. You just have the best makeup, too."

Positano is rife with possibilities for complaint -- even if McCoy really could find fit to seek out (and usually successfully) fault in anything. Hell, Jim thinks he could even manage to find something wrong in the garden of Eden before the sin came down. McCoy could have complained about the drive down the terrifying Amalfi coast that Jim suspects Bones had been comatose during, judging by the lack of noise he made). He could have complained about the presence of jellyfish lurking in the waters or even the deafening fireworks the locals set off at dusk.

But, no. The issue of the day turns out to be sunscreen.

"Bones, seriously, I'm just playing volleyball, I'm not walking on any suns here," Jim complains as he stands firmly still so Bones can smother suntan lotion all over his face. "It's beach volleyball. Getting a tan is practically expected!"

"It's possible melanoma," is Bones' immediate response -- the man has an answer for everything. "Besides, once you and the boys start sweating, god knows your brain's only going to be fixated on aesthetics and hardly on the medical."

And, well, man's got a mild point because Jim has seen the caliber of the men he's playing with. They tend to overrule all other thoughts, including how to protect against unsexy things like melanomas.

Bones should have been finished lathering him up ages ago, but his broads palms skim over Jim's bare chest with such constancy that Jim starts to wonder if this is really all about a potential life-threatening disease or whether Bones is maybe worrying about other things he's not coming clean with.

"Bones, it's one game of volleyball," Jim insists. "We can go explore the streets after and I won't even wink at a single local."

That seems to do it. Bones pulls his hands away, looking at Jim warily. "Are you sure?"

Jim smirks, tapping his sunscreen coated fingers over Bones' nose, rubbing it in. "Why do I need to ogle other guys when I've got you, right?"

She’s several feet taller than she used to be and yet when she reaches out to grab her hair like he’s still in wolf-form, he can’t help the whimpered yowl that escapes him before he cranes his neck back to glare at her. It still takes him slightly by surprise to see her as she is, a vast array of skin and eyes that bear into him and fiery-red hair that is so easy to card his fingers through.

“Stop it,” Link demands when she tugs again.

She giggles, that condescending and infuriating little sound of hers. And then instead of tugging again, she clasps on lightly and leans in to kiss him softly, with such familiarity that sometimes he forgets how much time they spent together.

“You may not be my pup anymore,” she murmurs against his ear, her voice low and sultry in a way that he’s still not used to, “but I can still tell you what to do and get away with it.”

And it’s a shame that Link knows she’s got that dead right.

All men must come to their hour of death. For some men, they come to this stroke of the clock more than once in their life. Jack Sparrow pries one eye open to take a peek and looks straight up into the almost-angelic and far-too-pleased face of Commodore Norrington, out of his constant uniform.

“Oh, bugger it all, I’m in hell, aren’t I?” Jack complains sharply.

“They haven’t really given me a name for this place,” Norrington admits, extending a hand out to Jack. “Come on, then. I’m supposed to take you around.”

And that, that right there, is a bloody laughing fit. Jack raises a brow and listens to the echoing sound of silence all about them. The charms in his hair still jangle, his sword still makes a clanking noise as he moves, and the fabric of well-worn clothes shuffles along with him. Norrington is all in white and looks rather serene.

“…oh no. No, no, no…”

“Yes, Captain Sparrow,” Norrington announces with great delight and smug pride. “I’m to be your angel.” His hand is still extended out and Jack takes it and holds hard. “You won’t be seeing the back of me anytime soon.”

Which, Jack supposes, is a shame. Of all things, the Commodore had always possessed a lovely arse.

The day that life and death convene to open a new door all-together to Daisy Adair comes later than she might have liked. She’s forgotten what it’s like to be a human, she’s almost forgotten how to relate to mortals. It’s all endless to her. She goes on, she feels no pain, she exists to take souls (like a monster from under the bed).

And then one day, the lights are for her.

She stares into the brightness and the misshapen shapes that are supposed to coalesce to form something, anything…but nothing comes. They simply swirl and beam and blind her intensely, as if she isn’t due an explanation.

“Is this it?” she asks against the howling winds, covering her eyes against the pureness of the white.

She isn’t given an answer. It figures that after all this time, there’s no answer for why anything. It just is.

So Daisy Adair puts on a brave face and not knowing what the world after holds for her, she steps forward into the light and for a moment that she fears is only fleeting, she feels surrounded and embraced with a powerful, overwhelming sense of love.

It’s all it takes to make her feel like she’s home.

Addison Montgomery is not sure that she likes being fifty. Sure, there’s respect, and yes, it’s nice to not have to worry about working now that she’s retired. She still has grey hairs, gravity is starting to weigh down on her, and every morning proves to give her a new wrinkle.

At least, though, a former pain in her ass has become a shining beacon of light. “Doctor Alex Karev,” she notes with great pleasure, leaning against the door to his office. “Head of Pediatrics.” She wanders inside, heels clicking against the wood floors as she looks him up and down. “You’re not the boy I remember.”

“I’ve learned some lessons in my time,” Karev admits and invites her to sit down. “One failed marriage and a couple bad relationships kinda put me into an obsessive career path. And, hey, guess it worked out, huh.”

She can’t help but smile, shaking her head in disbelief. “I told you that you have a talent for it,” she praises.

“How’s your kid?”

“She’s good, she’s good,” Addison assures him, distracted. “I came to visit you, though. Let’s talk about you.”

Karev is busy closing the door behind him, though, and there’s a glint in his eye that Addison hasn’t seen since one of her visits years ago. She watches him with eyes that have crows’ feet all about them, smiling slowly as she figures out his intent. “I really didn’t think about talking,” he says bluntly. “We do that every week in our calls, but I never get to see you because you insist on living in LA,” he accuses.

“Karev, you always did have a mouth on you,” Addison breathes out. “Now, come on, Head of Pediatrics, I know I’m not your specialty, but I need a little doctoring.”

“It’ll be my pleasure.”

They’re well met, here, in this place where the years have fallen away. Neither of them are the same person. Merlin has watched a kingdom rise and Morgana has been soothed by whispered lies of Morgause until her heart was struck of sympathy and she only thought of revenge against Uther.

Merlin would never say that they’re old, but he doesn’t feel so young any longer. He rests his weight on his staff and studies her across the short distance.

“I came to tell you that Gaius is dead,” Merlin announced. “And that I want to put aside our differences. Uther is gone, Morgana. The kingdom knows of our magic. We can be honest with the world.”

She had become regal in her time away, somehow being away from the palace had managed to make her even more queenly in stature, though Guinevere possesses her crown. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she offered. “I know how much he meant to you.”

“Thank you,” Merlin accepted with a bow of his head. “I also came to tell you that I miss you and I made a grave mistake in not telling you the truth. What happened was a necessary evil, but I never meant you any harm. Morgause…”

“I’m a grown woman, Merlin, I can make my own judgments,” Morgana said sharply. “And in this case…perhaps I’ve reflected on what happened. Stay…Stay a while with me. I know that you feel excluded at the palace what with Arthur’s new marriage taking up his time and I have all the time in the world.”

Morgause no longer abided the halls, no longer tainted anyone’s heart. And, Merlin reflected, it would be good to stay away for a time, to simply be with someone of like-mind.

He missed Gaius so much some days, these the worst.

“I’ll stay, if you promise to come visit,” Merlin bartered.

“We’ll see.”