Passing Chord

[coffeebuddha]

Title: Passing Chord
Author: coffeebuddha
Rating: PG-13/FRT
Characters/Pairing: Chin Ho Kelly/Max Bergman
Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me.
Word Count: 545
Summary: In which Steve is too busy being a Michael Bay movie to call ahead, Max is too busy thinking about music to pay attention to what's happening around him, and no one really knows what Chin's thinking.
Notes: Originally posted as a comment fic here.

 

***

Max is curved over his computer, tired from the double homicide that had come in earlier that afternoon. The sun's sinking, melting into the horizon, but he isn't even tempted to leave. It's quiet here, comfortable and more homey than his tiny, sterile apartment. He likes the mess of his office, the clutter of papers and files, the thin, musty layer of dust that tickles at his nose. It makes him feel jumbled up inside, like a well used blues chord.

It's more intimate than the autopsy room, more lived in than his apartment, which are both bright and sterile, autotuned into perfection.

Max isn't a fan of autotuning. It's always so inorganic and harsh in his ear.

He's browsing through a forum on cold cases when Chin Ho Kelly walks in, a thin manila folder tucked under his arm and an almost sheepish half smile on his lips. Max hadn't been expecting him, but even he's noticed the way McGarrett runs his team, frantic and demanding, and sometimes the little things like calling ahead slip through the cracks. McGarrett is an action movie soundtrack, Max thinks as he takes the folder from Kelly, only half listening to his explanation as he flips through the pages. Something brash and loud with explosive timpani swells and crashing cymbals, occasionally turning hot and sultry. The man's a walking Michael Bay movie, and he should just give in and carry around a speaker blasting the music from one of his films already.

Kelly's looking at him strangely and Max forces himself to focus on the file. There's something not right about the body in the picture, a minor chord stuck awkwardly into a major progression, and it jars him, uncomfortable and discordant. His eyes narrow and he flips on his desk light, the small circle of light illuminating the picture well enough that he's able to figure out what's wrong, and when he points it out to Kelly, the other man shakes his head and grins like he doesn't know how he missed it.

Max likes Kelly. He likes the way he moves and feels, casual and complex, like jazz. He's heat and dark shadows and little smoke filled music clubs mixed with laughter and unexpected quirks and capable of evolving into something even bigger and better. Max likes jazz and the way it always challenges and teases his ears, and when he looks at Chin, solid and smiling and still standing there even though he has the information he came for, he hears Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith.

The kiss, when it comes, is unexpected. One second Kelly's standing there, just looking at him with an unreadable look in his eyes, and the next he's pushing past Max's personal space barriers like they're nothing-which, okay, physically they are, but still-and bending, pausing for a second with his hands on Max's neck, thumbs brushing his jawline, and his breath on his lips. Max doesn't move, is too startled to really even consider that option, and Kelly must take that as permission, because he closes that last tiny distance.

And when the tip of Kelly's tongue touches his lower lip, he opens to him like it's inevitable and it's a passing chord moving them into something new.

***

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