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***
“Nathan isn’t going to let you go in there.” Duke’s gun was trained on Arla, but his words were meant for Audrey, who stood on the threshold of the barn.
Arla took a step closer to Audrey and Duke’s gun followed her movement. “You can’t go without me!”
“He thinks he loves me… Duke you need to explain that I had to go. James needs me.” Audrey looked at Duke meaningfully, her good bye silent and his stomach dropped when he understood the implications of that look. Her final request. “Now, Duke!”
Arla screamed at Audrey when he pulled the trigger and the door shut with finality. A bright light erupted from the structure and the next thing Duke saw was darkness.
***
Across town, Nathan had been manhandled by two members of the Guard. He had fought them off as long as possible, but when the world turned upside down he’d collapsed under the intensity of sensation. It came at him like a wave and suddenly he felt everything - every ache and pain, stiff joints, and the cold. It was so cold he felt the bite to his skin with every gust of wind.
Both members of the Guard released Nathan the same moment he felt reality tip sideways and they abandoned him on the cold cement without another word. He gasped, the crisp fall air burned his lungs, and struggled to draw the phone from his pocket with clumsy fingers. Six missed calls from Duke. His feeling back. He wanted to be sick when the realization of the situation hit him.
“Duke?” Nathan felt the shudder in his voice when the call clicked through. “Is it over?”
***
The ring of his phone drew Duke back to consciousness. His head throbbed and the light was too bright when he opened his eyes, but he found his phone and pressed it to his ear. Nathan’s voice was like a balm that soothed the worst of the pain in his head. He barely heard the words that were said, but he could hear the chatter of Nathan’s teeth in the cold.
“Jacket,” Duke groaned and threw his free arm across his eyes. “You need to find one.”
“Too cold - everything hurts,” Nathan’s voice dropped as if he was telling Duke a secret. “May need you to come get me.”
Duke only sighed in response and attempted to sit up. It took a moment to get his bearing as the world spun around him, but a few minutes later he was able to open his eyes and look around. There was a huge patch of discolored grass in front of him and one of his guns to his right side, but none of it made sense. When he thought about the day and why he was there it was all blank. “Nate, do you know what I’m doing out at Cutter’s Point?”
“You don’t remember?” There was concern and confusion in Nathan’s voice. “Audrey was with you…”
“Fuck.” Nathan’s words finally sunk in. Everything hurt. Nathan could feel again. “I’m coming to get you. Just stay put.” Duke didn’t remember the barn or seeing Audrey at all. The whole day was a huge black space in his memory, like the morning the Colorado Kid died, but he knew the one thing he needed to do and that was to get to Nathan. He could worry about his memories later.
Finding his truck proved to be more difficult than he expected while he suffered bouts of dizziness every minute or two. By the time he slid into the driver’s seat it had mostly subsided though. Duke headed back towards town, passed sites of both destruction and celebration, until he saw Nathan sitting on the curb in Founder’s Square. He was bruised and bleeding, but alive. Duke’s shoulder’s relaxed just seeing him there. “Nate!” he parked and jumped out to go to his friend. “What happened?”
Nathan let Duke pull him to his feet, but then surprised Duke with a hug as he clung tightly to him. He shook from being out in the fall Maine air and burrowed against Duke’s chest, his arms tucked up the back of his jacket for warmth. It was the first time Nate hugged him like that since they were teenagers.
Duke held him close and let himself get lost in the familiarity of it. For a moment they were seventeen again and the Chief had yelled at Nathan for hanging out with ‘that Crocker boy’. The Chief hadn’t realized yet that trying to keep them apart was what drew them closer together. For how shitty their home lives had been, they were happy with each other back then. Duke was drawn from his thoughts when his hand touched sticky blood in the back of Nathan’s hair. “Nate,” he murmured softly, “we need to get you cleaned up.”
“I forgot how much stuff hurts,” Nathan’s voice was muffled in Duke’s shirt.
“That’s because you look like you lost a fight.” Duke smiled as he peeled Nathan off of him. “You’ll feel better after a shower.”
Nathan followed him to the truck and waited until they were on the road before he asked, “So Audrey is… gone?”
Duke had dreaded the question since he woke up in the field.
“I don’t know what happened… I guess she went back in the barn, but the whole day is gone. I don’t remember anything.” He kept his eyes on the road because he didn’t trust himself to look at Nathan. Not with everything so raw and his emotions too close to the surface.
“Like the Colorado Kid?” Nathan asked quietly after a moment.
“Exactly like that,” Duke replied. IT was the same mental blankness of that morning back in 1983.
“She was supposed to kill me… it would have ended the Troubles forever.” He sounded lost and a little confused, but it wasn’t a conversation for the car. Instead of a reply, Duke moved his hand to Nathan’s knee and left it there until they reached the docks.
The pair were quiet when Duke finally parked the truck and they made their way down to the Cape Rouge. Duke guided Nathan straight into the bathroom for a shower with the strictest instructions to keep the back of his head out of the water. “We don’t know how bad that wound is yet, so don’t open it up until I can look at it.”
“Thanks, Duke.” Nathan whispered before Duke left him to his shower.
***
Nathan stood under the spray from the showerhead, letting the warmth spread through his bones and relax his muscles like a normal human would during a shower. He had gotten accustomed to mechanically going through the motions of a shower, never feeling how hot the water was so always using the cold tap just to be safe that he didn’t accidentally burn himself; he’d forgotten why people take showers after a long day until that moment. Nathan washed carefully, assessing sore spots and washing away dried blood that was caked to his temples and the corner of his mouth from a split lip. When he was sure he’d gotten as clean as he could, he called for his sometimes-friend. “Duke?”
The bathroom door had been left mostly-open when Duke went into the bedroom to find clothes for Nathan, but the other man had to have stayed close because he appeared half a second later with folded clothes in his hands. “Everything okay?” Duke asked, more relaxed now than he had been since he picked Nathan up at the park.
“Do you want to help me with my hair?” Nathan asked carefully. “I tried my best not to get it wet, but it feels pretty bad.” He wasn’t sure exactly what had changed, but it was clear to him something was different now and he didn’t exactly know what was going on with Duke.
He wasn’t the only one choosing his words cautiously, though, because Duke shifted to his left foot in his tell-tale sign of being uncomfortable. No one else had ever caught onto that, not even the observant Audrey. It was a reflex Nathan knew he picked up when they were kids, the after-effect of what used to be a flinch from the times his father would hit him when they were young.
“It’s probably easier if I…if we clean it out in the shower.” Duke stumbled over his words. “Okay?”
“Mmhmm.” The cool air was starting to give him a headache and so he replied with a hum as he drew his head back into the shower to return to the warm spray. His eyes closed as he waited and the headache was soothed away, but a moment later a trickle of cold air slipped into the shower as the curtain opened and closed again. The shower grew warmer when Duke moved in close behind him and laid his hands upon the officer’s shoulders to squeeze gently.
Nathan let himself relax into Duke’s touch, his shoulders sagged, and he leaned back against his chest out of habit. Nathan had assumed such habits were long-forgotten, but when Duke’s arm wrapped around his chest it all felt right. Comfortable. Familiar. Nathan let out a breath he hadn’t known he had been holding.
Duke’s touch was gentle as he used his free hand to carefully rinse the blood from Nathan’s hair, cupping his hand beneath the spray to bring warm water to Nathan’s head until the water ran clear. Long fingers ran through his hair, wetting it beneath the spray and rubbing soothing circles into his scalp. It made Nathan wish for those long-lost days of his teen years, the ones he’d never told anyone about because the only person it mattered too remembered everyone of them just as he did. “Doesn’t look like you’ll need stitches… it was just one of those little cuts that bleeds forever because it’s on your head.”
“Thanks, Duke.” Nathan murmured, silently willing the other man to stay a few minutes longer.
As if Duke had understood his unspoken request, he stayed, both arms wrapped around Nathan’s waist as he pressed close and Nathan could feel the wet fabric of Duke’s boxers were the only thing that separated skin from skin. Someone else’s skin pressed to his was the feeling Nathan had missed desperately over the years; the warm skin of Duke’s chest against his back everything he could have wanted the day he got his feeling back.
Duke’s lips pressed gently against his shoulder and Nathan shuddered in his arms, his skin tingling from the touch and desire shot through his entire being. “This is why Audrey couldn’t kill you, Nate…” he whispered softly as he kissed along Nathan’s shoulder and neck. The officer trembled against him, overwrought by the sense of touch. “Yes, she loved you, but part of you could never love her… part of you was always here. Always mine.”
Duke was right. Nathan loved Audrey, he could have loved Jess, but part of him was always tied to Duke. To the damned Cape Rouge. He had denied it for years, fought against Duke and denied that piece of him that craved the other man’s touch. He blamed that fight with Duke for the reemergence of his Trouble, but it was his own fault. It was his own fault he denied that he needed the sailor’s touch on his skin; it was when he’d moved away when Duke had tried kiss him that day, when he denied himself the need he had felt for the person who had always mattered most, when he refused to hear his apology and assumed the worst of him, that was when his Trouble returned. The day he had gone numb to love was the day he had gone numb to touch.
His breath caught in his throat as his own part in all of this became clear. He had always believed he was in the right, that it was all Duke’s fault, but he’d been so wrong. He’d messed up so badly, but still Duke was here, now. Giving him another chance. It was his move now, Duke had laid all the cards on the table. It was up to him now.
Nathan tilted his head to give himself over to Duke’s mouth, sinking into the only touch that mattered.