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Audrey taps the book where it’s lying on the bar. “Good reading?”
Jennifer looks around the Gull to check that they are actually alone, though Duke closed up shop a while ago and is now pacing around out front having an argument with Nathan. “No more clues, sorry. I even read it the whole way through again, just in case I was missing something in the actual text, but it’s just a book. All true love and doom and destiny and, seriously, I have read all of the Twilights because of the six months thinking I was crazy thing, just for something to do, and this is worse than those.” She pauses. “Oh God, you liked it, didn’t you?”
Audrey smiles. “I did, actually. At least I think I did. I read it a while ago.” She purses her mouth. “Or I remember reading it, anyway.”
Jennifer doesn’t push her on that one, although she wants to, a little. She wants to know if those memories feel different, if there’s anything Jennifer should be wondering about her own. Howard had a hand in both of their pasts. But she’s not sure if she wants to know that right now this minute, so she changes the subject. “Have you ever - I can’t believe I’m asking this – ever had a vampire Trouble here? Not counting the sentient blood thing, needs to have teeth.”
“Still waiting on that one.” Audrey laughs. “I thought we had a werewolf, once. We did have shape-changers a little later. We’ve had ghosts. And mermen.”
“Oh! I heard about them. The Glendowers, right?”
Audrey smiles some more, a little sadder. “Yeah.” She shakes it off. “But no, no vampires that I know of. And I think I would have noticed. I used to be pretty into that kind of thing.”
“Vampires? Or freaky love stories?” Jennifer cuts herself off before she can get closer to that particular conversational tripwire, but Audrey seems to pick it up anyway.
“Just that whole scene. The weirdness. Think that’s one of the things that’s actually... me.” She tugs on the end of her ponytail. “Love of weird. Because that’s a trait you want to be following you around.” She rolls her eyes.
“It’s not so bad,” Jennifer offers. “I mean, I came here...”
“For Duke?” Audrey fills in, when Jennifer has trailed off. Jennifer doesn’t know how much of the details Duke told everybody.
“No?” Jennifer says. “I mean, a little, because he was so sure what I was hearing was important, but it was also that he was so sure that I was hearing something real, and I thought if I came here maybe I could actually figure that out, get my normal life back.”
“And instead you found out a little more than you wanted.”
“Yes,” Jennifer admits. She gets why people tell Audrey things. “But... that’s okay. Because that’s not why I’m- bad things are happening here, and I could have left, I was going to leave, if Duke hadn’t- and if I can help here, help him and you and everybody- I need to do that. That’s important.”
Audrey taps the bar beside Jennifer’s hand. “Welcome to the club. Want a drink?”
Jennifer is surprised into laughter, moreso when Audrey just slips behind the bar to get them one.
Audrey pulls down two glasses. “I remember being a bartender too. Sometimes that’s at least as useful a talent. What can I get you?”
“A margarita?” Jennifer asks.
Audrey makes a face but turns to find the bottle of tequila. She mixes Jennifer’s drink as easily as any professional bartender Jennifer has ever known, and slides it across the bar before pouring herself a shot of something dark. Audrey shrugs. “If Duke doesn’t want us stealing his alcohol, he shouldn’t have left us alone in here.”
Jennifer looks outside again, to where Duke is now sitting down and Nathan is standing on the other side of the table. It doesn’t look like a happy conversation. “Do you know what they’re...?” she asks.
“I can take a guess,” Audrey answers. She sighs. “I’m sorry if Nathan was- he forgets sometimes that other people aren’t cops, haven’t had as long with this as we have. It makes him forget how to ask questions nicely.”
“He’s... intense.” Jennifer amends that with, “Pretty intense,” like that’ll make it better, make Nathan less intense or make it sound like less of an insult to the guy who is apparently the love of Audrey’s life but who is, Jennifer will swear, the most single-minded person she’s ever met.
Audrey frowns. “He wasn’t always.” She coughs. “Well, I don’t know, he was always kind of focussed, or at least as long as I’ve known him which is- hard to count straight, I guess. But it’s been worse lately. He's not good with things he can't protect me from. Even when that's me.”
“Duke's not great with that either,” Jennifer says. In truth, she doesn't think Audrey copes too well with that herself. And maybe it’s how people deal with being in Haven, this fixation on being able to control who gets hurt, because Jennifer watched Duke kill his brother to save her, and she would do just about anything to make sure that look is never on his face again. She understands the impulse to make not-smart choices to protect people, is feeling it clearer every day she stays. After all, the smart choice would be not to stay.
But she doesn’t think that’s the same as what Nathan is doing, as what Duke has tipped towards since Wade. She thinks Nathan's been in the middle of this too long, can only see his own bad choices and how they affect other people, not the way the other people are making choices all of their own. And Duke can't see the way that he ought to have choices better than these. Her and Audrey, she thinks they're a little more distant, most of the time. A little closer to a world where it doesn’t look like this all of the time. They can see the gaps where other choices have to be or how would anyone survive here? They just can't see what the choices are yet. Jennifer is really hoping the answer to that is in this book somewhere.
Audrey is still trying to explain Nathan. “But he can be- he can be funny, I swear, and granted he’s as awkward as hell but he’s not... he hasn’t coped well. Lately. He’s a good person, it’s just been a lot for him to deal with.”
Jennifer stares at her. “A lot for you to deal with too.”
Audrey shrugs. “Well, apparently I deserve it.”
“Audrey.”
She bites down on her lip. “Sorry. Still getting my head around all of that.” She takes a long drink. “Apparently I’m not a good person. Or I wasn’t.”
Jennifer’s pretty sure that’s not true. Even before she met Audrey, it was kind of easy to tell what kind of person she must be, to see the shape her absence had left on the town. It’s easier to admit tonight that Jennifer had felt a little jealous of that, now that she can see all the ways she doesn’t want Audrey’s destiny at all. Though she might have her own to deal with. But that reminds her: “I’m- you know, I’m sorry about what I said. About you wanting all the guys for yourself.”
Audrey’s eyes go wide. “When did you-?”
Jennifer twists her hand by her ear, trying to indicate paranoia hallucination ink-blots they never did get a name for. “With the...”
Audrey relaxes. “The day William came back?” She shrugs. “It was a Trouble. Sort of. We try not to fixate too much on what they make people say. Or do. Most of the time, anyway.”
“Well, yes, but it was stupid, I was just- you three are so- and he- he does love you. And Nathan loves you, and I get why they do I just don’t know... I didn’t know what I was doing here.”
“But now you do?” Audrey asks.
“No,” Jennifer says. “But I know I have to do it, whatever it is. So it seems kind of stupid to have spent all that time wondering about whether Duke likes you more than me.” She taps the book, still lying on the bar. “Like one of these women, you know?”
“It’s not stupid,” Audrey says. Then: “Duke cares about you a lot.”
“I care a lot about him,” Jennifer answers, because it’s true even if she doesn’t know where this is going.
“I love Nathan,” Audrey says, after a moment. “And I do- I love Duke, it’s different but I- I do love him. It’s just... complicated.”
Jennifer says, “You know, that’s what Duke said about him and Nathan right before we picked him up.”
Audrey hums at that and nods. “Well, he’s not wrong. Though they’ve been managing to be less complicated recently. They’re just still pretty-”
They look outside to where Duke is gesticulating fiercely towards Nathan. Nathan catches one of the flailing hands, curls his own fingers around Duke’s fist, and pushes it back to Duke’s chest, eyes fixed on Duke the whole time. Duke gives it a moment before he carefully uncurls Nathan’s hand and lowers it back to the table between them.
“-weird about each other,” Jennifer finishes.
“Yeah,” Audrey agrees.
Jennifer waits until she has another drink in her hand before she asks, “Okay, I know that you and Nathan are, you know, and you and Duke have at least- yeah?” She doesn’t wait for Audrey’s answer before finishing, “So did they ever? Do you know?” She can’t help it, she’s aware that she’s just said that personal things shouldn’t be their focus right now, but she really wants to know. She’s a journalist - an overabundance of curiosity is practically in her blood.
Audrey doesn’t need her to spell it out. “I always assumed they had, yeah.”
“But you never asked?”
“Sometimes it’s better not to draw their attention to it. They get weirder.”
Jennifer feels her eyebrows shoot up. “How do they get weirder?”
There is an ominous pause. This being Haven, she thinks both of them are expecting something awful to happen then, like Nathan and Duke actually do turn into vampires or worse, Jennifer doesn’t know. But all that happens is they hear the door open. “How does who get weirder?” Duke asks.
Audrey laughs, Jennifer joining in when Duke stares, and then Nathan’s walking through the door and staring too.
Duke looks at the glasses on the bar. “Oh, I see what’s going on here. Leave the two of you alone for an hour and there goes all my good liquor.”
Nathan asks, “Well, who else were you saving it for?”
Duke looks between Jennifer and Audrey and shrugs. “I’m observing, not complaining. Pour me a drink, Audrey, since you’re already on the wrong side of the bar.”
“Who says it’s the wrong side?” Audrey asks with a challenging expression. She pours a round anyway.
She slides Jennifer another margarita, adding the lime at the last moment with a ‘ta-da!’ flourish. Jennifer says, because she didn’t before, “I don’t think you’re a bad person.”
Audrey tilts her head and smiles, that one that makes Nathan confused and Duke nervous, but just makes Jennifer not completely surprised when Audrey leans over the bar and plants a kiss on the corner of her mouth. “You really taste of margarita. And thank you. I don’t think you’re bad person either.”
And maybe this is Haven too, the way Duke just shakes his head and say, “So we’re on margaritas tonight. Good. Fitting.”
And Nathan ignores the smile and the kiss, focussed on the ‘good person’ part, asking, “Was somebody saying different?” sort of dark tones to his voice like he might go riding off into the night to fix it. He really is way too intense. Vampire romance novel intense, maybe, and Jennifer finds that a little worrying but she also knows that both Duke and Audrey love him, and they know what they’re doing. Nathan is looking at Jennifer now, keeps looking at her the whole time he asks, “Are you all right? Did somebody...?”
His hand goes to his belt; she doesn’t know if he’s looking for a radio or a gun. That strikes her as sad. It does also occur to her that if she kissed Nathan now, probably everybody here would have kissed everybody. But she won’t, partially because he wouldn’t feel it and partially he’s still a little unnerving even if he is apparently willing to go out into the dark fighting things for her as well. She pats his hand instead, which is something she’s seen Duke do, Nathan’s Trouble notwithstanding. “We’re good,” she reassures him.
Nathan blinks at her. “All right.” He exchanges a glance with Audrey across the bar and then spots the novel sitting between them. Jennifer can see him open his mouth to ask a question and then put it aside.
Audrey echoes, “Good.” She turns back to Jennifer. “We can look at it again tomorrow. All four of us.”