haolehothead | (no subject)

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If Danny's honest, there are few joys in life that really exceed the love of one's family, a good meal, and watching the game when the day is done. Ever since he got to the island, he's had no lack of the first two, but the last has been a little antiquated. Look, it's not like he's up with technology, seeing as they're both in that ever-long fight, but he'd appreciate not having to queue up a film reel every time he wants to see a game.

It's why he practically started drooling when he woke up, the weather was back to normal, and he had gifts a-plenty. He's out searching for someone to share it with and Kate's one of the first he goes to because he thinks, just possibly, she might appreciate a good football game.

He knocks on the door, leaning on his foot as he hopes to God that Steve's got the connection up while he's gone. "Hey!" he calls out. "Tell me you like football, cuz I got this thing. You're gonna love it."

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"I like... shirtless dudes playing football," Kate answers as she comes to the door, adjusting her totally normal -- and bright orange -- tank top on the way. She's so glad that shit has gone back to normal, that all her clothes have returned and that the photo album is exactly what it's supposed to be. She might not admit it, but she definitely missed it while it was gone.

"Does that count?" she asks, opening the door to find Danny there. "I think it totally counts."

"I seriously don't think that counts," Danny says dryly, giving her a cursory look before deeming the clothes acceptable. He grabs at her hand and pulls her out. "C'mon, Steve's almost done, we're going to watch some sports and you're gonna like it."

"Steve's almost done what?" Kate asks, but she follows along willingly enough. It's not like she's doing anything particularly exciting and, whatever, if Danny wants her to watch sports with him, she'll sit there and probably make fun of him for most of it, but it'll be entertaining. They'll bond over it.

"And it does so count," she protests. "It's practically the same thing. Just... shirtless. And I don't do that anymore. I have a boyfriend, remember?" She never did it, actually, but it sounds funny.

"He's almost done with the hookup. Seriously, you wouldn't believe how complicated it is to hook up a normal DVD player to island electricity. Totally possible," he insists, "but something I'll let Steve swear over instead of me. And you and me? We're going to laze."

"Oh, I'm a champion lazer," Kate says, then frowns, realizing how that sounds. "Not a laser, but... whatever, I'm good at being lazy." She was even better at time wasting activities.

"Wait, so the island gave you a DVD player?" she asks as they walk, hands pushed into the pockets of her shorts. "Did it give you an XBox, too? 'Cause that would be awesome. We could play video games. I'm great at beating people up, as long as they're not real."

"TV and DVD player," he confirms with a smug smile on his lips. "And, you know, sports. Not all the sports I need, but a lot of the sports I want. At least it'll give me a month or two of new entertainment before I get bored out of my mind again."

"So no XBox," she said with a sigh, only a little disappointed. Sports weren't exactly her thing -- she'd grown up with parents who were pretty much artists more than anything -- but she'd deal with it. Danny seemed way too excited for her to burst his bubble anyway.

"I mean, that's pretty cool, though," she continued. "That you got that."

"What? What is with you and the XBox, you got a thing for one of them?" he asks, shoulders raising as he wonders what the big deal with this thing is. "I mean, come on, it's not like I'm my kid. Grace probably got the variety pack from StepStan, but I'll never know, will I?"

"Grand Theft Auto," Kate answers, as if that explains everything, which, as far as she's concerned, it should. She has fond memories of that game, especially when she tried to play it with Marshall, which always resulted in her beating people up in the game for money while he looked on with a totally skeptical expression.

"What the hell is StepStan?" she asks a moment later.

Danny scowls thickly as he gestures for her to follow him. "A StepStan is the man my ex-wife married before dragging my daughter from civilization and sticking her in a hellhole of a Hawaiian island. He's the competition as far as fathering is concerned and he's got more money than God, sometimes."

As far as Kate can tell, being rich and taking someone to Hawaii sounds like they're both pretty awesome things, but she's not about to say that to Danny. It's probably not the money or the Hawaii thing that really bother him.

"Yeah, well, you're still her dad," she points out. "Not some other dude. I mean, if my parents ever got divorced, my dad would always be my dad."

"Yeah, only because I moved," he says, a sober sense of panic clawing at him like it always does when he thinks about this. "If I'd stayed in Jersey and she'd grown up out there with him? I don't think she'd really remember the difference."

"But you didn't stay," Kate answered simply. He hadn't stayed and it was pretty obvious to her that he wouldn't have stayed, not if his kid was going. Maybe his daughter wouldn't realize it now, maybe it would take her a long time to get there, but eventually she'd reach that place that all kids reached. That place Kate had only recently reached herself, where you were suddenly, painfully aware of all your parents had done for you.

"So that's pretty much what counts," she continued. "My dad... he would've done the same. Sometimes I even think that if he ever left my mom, because of the crazy, he would've taken us with him. No way he would have left us."

"No, I didn't. I left behind my job, my family, and everything I held dear just so I could live in a rat-infested hellhole of an apartment," he says with a weak smile. "I'd do it again for her, I would, but now that I'm on yet another island, I can't help but feel like it's all worthless."

"Why? You're still there, still being her dad and I know that like, doesn't help you at all, but at least you know she still has you in a weird time travel, alternate reality sort of way," Kate said. Marshall had been on the island for months before she'd come along, but he'd been back home, too, she was sure of that. Which meant Danny was still back home.

"Yeah, limited custody and all," he says, trying not to get too defeated. Today is supposed to be a victorious day. Today is supposed to be about sports and televisions and DVD players and suddenly all he can think about is how he hasn't seen his daughter in months and months -- nearly a year.

Crap. This isn't how he wanted the day to go.

"Well, whatever. You drive me totally insane half the time, just like my dad, and you're sort of ridiculous, just like my dad, but my dad is pretty much... awesome. So you're doing something right. Limited custody and all, or whatever."

That wasn't something she normally said much about. Tara was easy to talk about, easy to explain, but talking about Max just made Kate think about how much she missed them both.

"What, so I'm not awesome? Is that what we're saying here?" Danny asks, slightly affronted, but mostly teasing her about it. "Yeah, I see how this is. I'm just the old coot teaching you how to be a cop, there's nothing awesome about that."

"You're seriously all about missing the point, aren't you?" Kate says as she rolls her eyes. That's not what she's saying at all, but she's also not good with sappy, comforting stuff, so she isn't going to push it any further.

"So what games are we watching?" she asks. "Are they new or like, football games from the eighties?"

"Hey, you just called me not-awesome. Was there actually any other point?" he says defensively in what he's acutely aware is something close to whining -- still, it's not like Danny's ever been the most level-headed of guys when it comes to feeling like he needs validation. "We're watching greatest hits, right up until this year."

"Actually, I'm pretty sure I said that you're exactly like my dad in a lot of ways and that my dad is awesome. Jumping to being not-awesome is pretty much like, a gigantic stretch," she says, making a face at him. And she has no idea what greatest hits are when it comes to football -- isn't that something that's related to music? -- but she'll let him show her whatever he needs.

Even if he doesn't understand it when she speaks, apparently.

"Okay, yeah, I get it," Danny says. He's grinning like a fool because he is a little bit pleased that he's been given such a high compliment. It's not his fault that he's easy, that way. "So, is this a thing? This gift thing? Because next year, I want a massage chair, if that's the case."

"Yeah, but I don't think you get to put in requests," she answers, reaching up to tie her hair back. There's a big part of her that's glad to have the heat and the sun back, but she's also started to remember how freaking sweaty it makes her.

"Hey, you know that German guy who makes air conditioners, right?" she asks suddenly. "I heard about him. Can you get him to make me one? That's my gift request."

"What, Mattie-boy? Yeah, he can do you up an air-conditioner, but you better ask real nice. He's a good friend," Danny says, a hint of worry lurking on his face. He's not sure, exactly, whether he's okay or whether that incident with the plants is taking its sweet time to dissipate. "I put my request through the building crew way, way back when, though. Is the heat wilting you?"

"Yeah, I think I got used to the snow," Kate admits, even though that's not totally true either. She's just tired of it being so hot all the time. It used to be that back home she could escape the heat when she needed to, but not, on the island, there's only the Compound and she doesn't want to always have to go there to get out of the heat.

"I guess I'll get used to it being hot again," she says. "But right now, I just want some sweet A/C."

"How about we make a visit together? I haven't seen him a while, I'll give 'em the old Williams nudge, see if we can't put you in a nice climate," he says, gesturing for her to enter when they reach the hut. "You're okay with dogs, right?"

"Dogs? I mean, I guess so. I'm not really a dog person," Kate said thoughtfully. "I guess I'm not really much of a pet person. We never had any growing up."

They weren't essential to her well being like they seemed to be for other people. She could get along just fine without something shedding all over her clothes.

"Fair warning, then, you're about to have a puppy treat you like you're heaven on earth," Danny says as he opens the door and, as expected, Zulu comes bounding out with whining yips, forcibly jamming his nose against Kate's leg. "I like to blame this on Steve's neediness."

"Holy Jesus, cold nose," Kate says, jumping away from the dog a little. It's nice that he's friendly, but now her leg is all wet and cold.

"Okay, puppy, try not to soak me this time, alright?" she asks before holding her hands out to it. Definitely not as funny looking as Jeff's dog.

"You can't blame him for being an idiot," Danny says. "Steve's taken on the majority of the training. I mean, I've had dogs my whole life, but Steve's got that stern SEAL-voice. I'm pretty sure even I stop and pay attention when he uses it."

"So, what? He trained the dog to stick its nose on people?" she asks, but she still pets the dog anyway. And, as dogs go, he's pretty cute. She likes Golden Retrievers more than most dogs, mostly because the ones she's seen are calm.

"What's his name again?" she asks, rubbing his ears carefully. Making sure he isn't going to put his nose all over her again.

"Zulu," Danny replies, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Please, don't ask. I don't even know why I allowed it to stick, but here we are, almost a year later," he says, shaking his head as he leads the way into the living room. "You hungry? We keep a bunch of food in our little ice box thing."

"I'm pretty much always in the mood for food," she answers, giving the dog another pat before she follows Danny. She might not be into football so much, but if he's going to offer her food, then she's happy to take it.

"I mean, I guess it won't be a handful of Doritos, but whatever," she says with a grin.

Danny crouches over to dig out some pizza-dough out of the fridge, popping it into the oven before he heads back to join Kate. "So, when we're done with the sports, you wanna talk about a private syllabus for the new year?"

"Like, the training we're going to do together?" she asks and although she knows they'll have to talk about it eventually, she hasn't given it much thought just yet.

"Do I get to learn how to use handcuffs soon?" she asks. "And like, one of those clubs?" There's learning how to use a gun, too, but she isn't sure when she's going to get to learn that, if Danny will let her use his.

"Yeah, like that," he agrees, sitting down on the couch and getting comfortable. "And no handcuffs. We're going to use zip-ties. There's a lot less chance of an injury when you're using ties instead of cuffs and I want to make sure you're getting the most up-to-date stuff. But there's inspecting the scene of the crime, there's interrogation, there's procedure, and there's all sorts of rules to learn before shooting the gun."

"Wait, wait, wait," Kate says, holding her hands up, but she's grinning as she speaks. "So you're telling me I get to learn how to interrogate people? Do I have to like, learn it out of a book or are you gonna let me really interrogate someone?" Because that will be amazing, she thinks. Even if she sucks at it, it'll be a lot of fun to learn how to do it in the process.

"I'm gonna teach you out of a book and from my experience and then you're going to interrogate people. Maybe even more than one person, depending on who I can get to volunteer, but I'd like for you to learn a variety of techniques and see a number of cases."

"Okay, let's do that," she agrees, sounding pleased. That's the sort of thing she's been waiting to do since the beginning, but she knows that she's not allowed to just jump straight into it. All the stuff they've been doing out of books is necessary, she gets that, but this is the exciting stuff. This is the sort of stuff that Kate thinks she's going to be really good at.

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