Chapter Text
Kai would have never thought he'd be walking out of his dads restaurant with Jesse Boone of all people. Sure they've been working together for a couple months at this point, he's no longer referred to as 'New Guy' which is definitely a step in the right direction. But he was still hesitant to share more than he needed to. The teams not the problem as much as it is him.
Hawaii comes with baggage, baggage he hasn't even remotely begun to unpack and it turns out he wasn't doing as good a job as he thought he was at hiding that fact.
So when Jesse winds up calling him out on said fact, he figured it was time to extend the olive branch in the best way he knew how. Which is how it ended with Kai going out on a limb and inviting the older out to dinner, his treat. Jesse's face when Kai had asked him was kind of priceless. But to be fair, the ride back to the office, after all the commotion on the cliffs, had been mostly silent. So a dinner invitation out of the blue was probably a shock. Seeing your friend and fellow agent getting tackled by a psycho will do that to you, knowing Lucy was going to be okay, bruised up but okay, had helped the last of the tension leave and Kai to remember what he was going to ask, before they got the call from Tenant.
"Hey, you busy tonight?"
"Heather and Doug are taking the kids to a movie, I was just gonna grill up some Salmon and watch a game. Why?" The amount of skepticism in his tone was a little unnecessary in Kai's
opinion but he soldiered on.
"Lemme take you to dinner?"
Jesse put the car in park, before turning to face Kai, his eyebrows raised ,"You're serious?" His tone was distrusting but there was this glint of hope in his eye that the younger wasn't just being a little shit.
" Hey I'm serious, you helped me out today, lemme return the kindness ,hm?" Kai says huffing out a laugh and shaking his head. This guy.
Jesse's still side eyed him as they walked back in to the office, hamming it up in a way he knows will bug Kai just enough.
Idiot.
The first 5 minutes of them getting to his dads restaurant and sitting down, were affirming to Kai why his professional and private lives shouldn't mix, but surprisingly (just to him ) the dinner turns out better than he had even hoped for. Even if half the time Jesse and his Dad were just bonding over clowning on him. It was still nice to see his dad laughing, he couldn't even find it in himself to be properly annoying. Plus he likes to thing he gave back as good as he got.
It's past 9:30 when they leave. With promises that they'll both coming back, and Kai agreeing to bring Inoki by his dads place more often.
"I swear he loves that dog more than me," Kai jokes, as they slowly make their way down the street to where their cars were parked,
"You should just be grateful he's not harassing you about his yard work" Jesse says smiling down at his shoes, slowing down his steps, their cars only a couple feet away at this point.
Kai matches his pace and shaking his head, chuckling," No he's definitely doing that too."
Jesse halts his walking entirely to lean against a giant mural of a Cartoon oceans scene, his head resting on against a giant sea turtle with sunglasses on.
Kai takes it the pause in stride, stopping to lean against the mural as well.
Their shoulders brush, but neither makes a move to widen the gap.
Jesse rolls his head back, looking up at the night sky, they can only see a couple stars and a the a sliver of the moon, but the breeze is cooling and brings along with it the feeling that the world is capable of quiet and calm.
"Thank you " Jesse says, low but not mumbled. "it- it was cool, getting to see you so, relaxed. You and your dad, you're funny together. "
"We're not funny, he just likes to exaggerate in front of new people, if I don't call him out on it, he'd have you thinking he invented the root beer float!" Kai's trying to be serious, he's pinching his eye brows and doing his best unimpressed look.
But as he glares ,Jesses smile just gets bigger and bigger, like he's enjoying watching Kai fight to prevent a matching grin on his own face.
Kai breaks.
He starts laughing, which only makes Jesse lose it too, and then they're both laughing at truly nothing that funny at all. He's wiping his eyes and trying to catch his breath,as he looks up to see brown eyes looking backat him, Kai's not sure how they ended up standing so close, how he wound up standing in front of Jesse, or why he can now feel the warm puffs of air coming from Jesse's tapered off laughs.
They should back away now. Call it a successful night of 'Partner Bonding', and leave on a good note.
Kai should be walking to his car right now, but instead he can't seem to tear his eyes away from his partners lips. Which is why his tongue peaking out and then swiping over his plump bottom lip rattles something loose in Kai's brain.
That must be it, because he doesn't have another explanation for why his feet are moving him impossibly closer to the dark haired man in front of him.
Neither of them are laughing now.
The air feels charged with something that wasn't there a second ago.
Jesse's eyes dart all over his face, looking for something.
Kai lets him search, not having a clue at what he'll find, since he's pretty sure he's losing his mind at this point.
Whatever he was searching for he must have found it. When Jesse's eyes find his again, it should feel weird( all of this is the literal definition of weird) but it just..isn't. It feels like the most
natural thing in the world when a warm hand tugs on his waist, pulling him in until there's no space left at all between the two.
He can hear Jesse swallow, and his breath quicken, then a breathy " Can i-?"
Kai's kissed a good amount of people in his life. But not a single kiss, has felt like this.
This kiss, the one happening a block down the road from his dads restaurant, at 9:45 pm on a Wednesday, has single handedly rewritten his brain chemistry.
As soon as their lips met, Jesse was threading his fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck, the other hand cupping the side of Kai's face, tilting his head for the perfect angle.
The hand in his hair gently tugs, Kai whimpers and melts resting even more of his body weight on to Jesse, Pressing him fully in to the wall behind them.
When the two pull away, lips spit slick and kissed red, Kai notes that neither has attempted to pull away, both content with not having any space between them just yet.
Jesse's hand brushes down to the small of his back then glides both hands to his waist and squeezes before he looking at him.
Kai's distracted by the simple fact that his lips are still tingling, his fingers brush against them of their own accord, before he notices Jesse looking at him,
"Um." Amazing start. Eloquent as always.
"Yeah" Jesse says not doing much better.
"That was.."
"Really fucking good?"
"No. Well..yes. But no that's not what I was going to say.."
"Ah, what were you going to say "
"I honestly have no idea, this wasn't part of the New Agent Training Manual." Kai jokes, mostly to relieve some of the tension building up.
Jesse laughs and does that thing where he tries to hide his smile by looking down and away again.
Cute.
"No, I guess NCIS didn't make a pamphlet for this specific situation, seems like an oversight now that we're talking about it though." Jesse is has a softer smile on now,as he squeezes his hips before pulling away entirely.
Kai takes a couple steps back, he feels colder all of a sudden, the breeze almost chilly now.
"Listen I like you Kai. I know I gave you shit when you started, but you're a good agent man, and an incredible asset for this team..."
Kai nods, "It's a bad idea." he says softly.
"Oh god such a bad idea" Jesse ruffles the nape of his name, looking shy and a little embarrassed
"Friends?"
"Yeah friends sounds nice."
They hug. Friends hug, and if that hug lasted a little longer than the social norm would have you believe, that wasn't anyone else's concern .
This time they did walk the 4 feet to his car, keys in hand, Kai goes to open the driver side door when Jesse runs back over to him, putting his hand on top of his own,
"Come to family dinner next week night?" he was smirking, if Kai wasn't hyper aware of every action since they kissed, he might have missed the nervousness around the edges of Jesse's eyes.
Kai makes a show out of sighing dramatically, to show that nobody has every suffered more than him.
Jesse is showing nothing but an eager nervous energy like there was ever the possibility of Kai turning him down.
"It's rude to come empty handed, what should I bring?"