Title: 'Ohana 101
Author: hardboiledbaby
Fandom: Hawaii Five-O
Characters: Danny, Kono, Chin, Steve
Rating: PG
Length: 810
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for the "win or lose" challenge. Silly fluff is silly. And fluffy. Also, my first H50 fic :)
Summary: Danny had known it'd be different, living on an island in the middle of the ocean, but he hadn't expected the culture shock to include a full-on language barrier. Still, in any language, food is love, right?

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Kono's hand reached into the box at the same time as Danny's.

"Hey!" Danny said indignantly, "That's mine!"

"No, it's not," Kono protested, equally indignant. "I've only had one so far."

"Not true. I'm sure you've eaten these coco puffs all your life, whereas I've only recently discovered these mouthfuls of heaven—"

"Today," Kono interrupted. "I've only had one so far today."

"Me too," Danny said, pasting a wide-eyed innocent look on his face. Unfortunately, Danny had the kind of face that just didn't do "innocent." Kono frowned stubbornly. Kono's face, on the other hand, did "stubborn" really, really well.

"This box held a dozen pastries this morning. Now there's only one left. I've only had one, so someone else"—her pointed glare made it perfectly clear who she thought that someone was—"has had more than their share. This is mine," she stated flatly.

"But I've touched it already," Danny said, not taking his hand off the puff. He toyed with the idea of squeezing it hard enough to squish out the chocolate filling, but thought better of it. That would be cheating, and Kono's face did "pissed off" even better than it did "stubborn." Besides, she had her hand on the puff as well.

Kono made a sound, something between a huff and a growl, and said, "Fine, let's jan-ken-po."

"What the hell is that?" Danny asked suspiciously. It sounded like some kind of secret martial art thing, and there was no way he was going to let Kono go all Bruce Lee on him. Nothing, not even the luscious morsel he held between his fingertips, was worth that.

A chuckle from the doorway made him look up. Chin and Steve were watching the epic tug-of-war with huge grins on their faces. Danny shot them a dirty look: at least one of them was just as guilty of coco puff gluttony as he was, and it wasn't fair that he was the only one catching hell for it.

As they walked into the room, Chin held out his fist. "Jan-ken-po," he said, bouncing it in the air three times. "Rock, paper, scissors."

Oh. Danny turned back to Kono. "Well, why didn't you just say so?"

"I did. That's what we call it here."

That phrase came up a lot. Weird, Danny had thought when he'd first arrived, considering they were still in the US of A, not a foreign country.

He'd been, of course, operating under something of a false premise at the time.

The state of Hawaii had two official languages: English and Hawaiian. Never mind that only a small fraction of the 1.3 million people actually spoke Hawaiian, it was still official. But unofficially? Take a stroll down Waikiki's Beachwalk or through a Chinatown alleyway and you'd hear a regular babel of languages, only some of which Danny was beginning to recognize, if not actually comprehend: Chinese, Japanese, Ilocano, Samoan, Korean, the local pidgin. Others, he hadn't the first clue.

Danny had known it'd be different, living on an island in the middle of the ocean. Different for a lot of reasons, but he hadn't expected the culture shock to include a full-on language barrier, for chrissake. It had been frustrating, to put it mildly.

Fortunately, things had gotten better. For the most part, the locals were gracious and helpful, even the ones who laughed at him for being a malihini, a newcomer. Being able to laugh at himself as well made otherwise awkward situations less stressful, too. But he'd really lucked out when it came to his job; or, more to the point, his co-workers, his friends. He looked at them now, all standing around the almost-empty pastry box.

Somehow, in what seemed to be an amazingly short time, these people had become more than just colleagues. They'd become 'ohana. Family. That acceptance, the sense of belonging, had made all the difference.

Danny still had a lot to learn, had a long, long way to go before he would be considered a kama'āina, but he'd gotten the basics down. The rest of it would come, he figured. His 'ohana would take care of that.

"Okay," he said aloud. "Let's jan-po-ken."

"Jan-ken-po," Kono corrected.

Danny rolled his eyes. "Whatever." They studied each other thoughtfully for a moment.

Danny tried to suppress a grin. He was usually pretty good at this game. Plus, he could easily make a case for going two out of three if he lost the first round, not that Kono needed to know that yet. One way or another, he was going to win. He could almost taste his chocolate-and-buttercream-flavored victory. He nodded and they both raised their hands.

"Jan, ken—"

And in that unguarded moment, Steve snatched up the hapless coco puff and shoved it into his mouth.

A simultaneous, outraged "Hey!" and Chin's laughter could be heard all the way down the hall.



A/N: No coco puffs were harmed in the writing of this fic. Unfortunately.