secretly a reef rat

Fanfiction
Title:	secretly a reef rat
Author(s):	templemarker
Date(s):	16 June 2011
Length:	27,000 words
Genre(s):	slash fanfiction
Fandom(s):	Hawaii Five-0
Relationship(s):
External Links:	secretly a reef rat (Dreamwidth) secretly a reef rat (LJ) secretly a reef rat (author's site)
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secretly a reef rat is a Hawaii Five-0/Inception crossover story by templemarker. The pairings are Steve/Danny and Arthur/Eames.

Summary: for a prompt on inception_kink, Inception/Hawaii 5-0 crossover, “Arthur is Steve’s brother.”

Author's notes:

This story came from loverly’s prompt on inception_kink for an Inception/Hawaii 5-0 crossover, “Arthur is Steve’s brother.” I genuinely thought, when I answered this prompt, that it was going to be an amusing one-off crossover that would take me an afternoon to write. 27,000 words later, I was clearly, flatly wrong. Having been written on the kink meme, there were many–many!–tense shifts. I have tried to correct most of them, but I may not have gotten them all. Apologies for such errors. Thank you so much to all the folks that followed along and expressed their joy on the kink meme; and to pandarus for helping me to clean it up a bit for posting outside the meme. Special thanks to chaoticallyclev for the lovely banner. To all the people I pimped into Hawaii 5-0 through this story: you’re welcome.

Recs and Reviews

Why You Should Read This: They might be a dysfunctional one, but they are family.

Why this must be read: Because Arthur's from Hawaii ... which comes as a tremendous surprise to Eames. When Arthur gets a call to come home because his older brother Steve's been hurt (and is resisting staying in the hospital - how typical!), Eames offers to tag along and in doing so learns a great deal about Arthur and Arthur's terrifyingly competent (and somewhat messed-up) family.

What I really like about this story is that we're shown two very different versions of Arthur: the one Eames knows in the film, and the one who's at home in Hawaii with a surfboard and wet curls and a family in law enforcement. Steve in this story is every bit the over-protective, suspicious, one-man-army (Navy!) he is in H50, and Danny's the wise-cracking voice of "stop interrogating Arthur's boyfriend!" It's by turns funny and heart-tugging, and it gives a lovely window into not only Steve and Danny's banter-driven relationship, but also that Arthur and Eames are both heavily invested in their own relationship, even if they've never articulated the fact.

This take on Arthur and his family makes sense to me given the Hawaii 5-0 back story: mother killed in an "accident", father obsessed with a case and murdered by a criminal, the siblings sent away to become under- or over-achievers who don't play by the book, and yet can't quite escape the need to be part of something, a family.

There are spot-on appearances by Kono, Chin, Grace, and a fantastic Mary McGarrett, and I think the character dialogue is terrific, especially Danny. His rants are priceless and the way he "manages" Steve is much like the show. Plus getting to see Arthur in a setting so far removed from Inception allows both Eames and the reader to get to know the character in a whole new, and completely believable, way.

This should appeal to fans of either the film or the new television series and I think the writer's provided sufficient background to fill in the blanks if you're only familiar with one of the sources. Aloha!