A/N: All right, y'all. This is my first attempt at anything H5-0. I'm only doing this because my muse kept yelling at me in Danny's voice "you need serious help!" because this plot was driving me absolutely crazy! It needed to be written, or at least started. Whether it's quality remains to be seen. So, here we go. Good luck, to you as the reader and to me as the writer. And mahalo for giving it a shot!

TANGLED WEBS

It was a stunning evening as the sun set over the ocean. A postcard setting, as many sunsets were in Hawaii… and it had been a good day for the Five-0. They'd gotten the bad guy, given a family some much needed closure and they'd had the joy of adding a new member to their family.

Chin Ho Kelly's wedding had been beautiful and had gone off without a hitch. Now, among the party goers, the man who had been haunted for so long finally looked insanely happy, and Kono couldn't have been happier for her cousin that he got his happy ending with Malia after all of these years.

"So…" Steve's voice interrupted her musing. "You're a cousin-in-law."

She chuckled before turning to give him a wry look. "You do realize that I've been a cousin-in-law at least five times over already, right?"

He chuckled too as he came to stand next to her, looking out at the ocean. "Yeah, yeah."

"You realize that makes you a boss-in-law, right?" she teased. He raised an eyebrow at her.

"I've never heard of that before," he said. She just grinned and gave him a wink.

"It's a Five-0 thing." He grinned back for a moment before looking out at the water. She turned as well.

"Despite the happiness of the day, I'm sensing a bit of angst from you, Boss. You gonna tell me what's on your mind?" she probed, not really expecting much in return. At least she could say she tried. It was quiet for a long moment. A moment where she was sure her suspicion was confirmed. But then he sighed, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

"Joe's in the wind," he said softly. She frowned.

"He was just here…" she said, confused. He smiled before looking at her.

"Yeah…" he said. "Yeah. That's how it works sometimes."

Silence again. But she'd known him long enough. She knew what the silence meant.

"You're going after him," she sighed, rubbing her arms in order to ward off the evening ocean breeze. Before she knew it, she had a suit jacket draped over her shoulders. When she looked over at him, he had his hands back in his pockets and he was looking out at the water again. There were words out there that she knew he was trying to gather. And when he finally had some semblance of them, she saw him swallow hard.

"Kono, I need to ask you to do something for me." He turned to look her in the eye. She saw it immediately. This was going to be personal. And after all that had happened over the past year or so, it felt good to have that trust.

She nodded, keeping his gaze. "Sure, Boss. Name it…"

If she'd known where that particular exchange was going to take her, Kono Kalakaua may have thought twice about agreeing so readily to the very rare request. But Steve McGarrett had never steered her wrong. And he'd looked so uncomfortable when asking without actually asking… it had been like he'd been afraid she'd say no AND afraid that she'd say yes. It was a look that was so foreign on the Navy SEAL that she couldn't do anything BUT say yes. The actual "why" in that scenario wasn't something she was patient enough to really dwell on, so she didn't.

She had said yes. Didn't even hesitate, like he had. Now granted, in Steve's absence, she'd taken a bit of artistic license in the course of accomplishing her mission… probably an artistic sort of license that he never would have imagined. Kono knew she'd painted Steve's "any means" with more of an abstract brush than he probably intended. "Any means" in the Navy SEAL handbook likely read as more straight-forward tactics. But if it got them what they needed in the end, who was a man who usually paved his own investigative trails to complain? Especially after he'd left them to go barreling after his mentor with barely an explanation.

She sat back on the plush sofa and smiled to herself as she picked up one of room service's strawberries. And who was she to turn down a prime opportunity when it unexpectedly showed itself? Especially when there were so many side benefits to the arrangement.

Kono frowned slightly as she took a bite of the fruit. The only problem with this plan was that now… it didn't quite feel like an "arrangement" anymore.

She knew that she'd exchange a potential problem with a slightly larger, slightly more concrete problem. A problem that had the potential for many smaller problems following in its wake.

Adam Noshimuri walked into the spacious room wearing only a towel around his freshly showered body. He grabbed a strawberry for himself before leaning down to give her a quick, thorough good morning kiss.

"Good call," he murmured against her lips with a smile. She smiled back.

She was beginning to wonder if this whole arrangement had been a good call as her heart suddenly felt the need to skip a beat.

To be continued…