Work Text:
--one--
It's been less than an hour since they took Audrey into one of the examination rooms and he knows her wound isn't that serious, but Nathan still feels a lot better when he's allowed in to see her. He's gotten so used to her being immune to the Troubles that sometimes he forgets that she can be hurt by the more mundane dangers that come with being a police detective. As he sits by her bed and takes in her pale face and the dark line of stitches along her upper arm, Nathan knows he won't be making that mistake ever again.
He's not quite sure what to do now. Audrey was asleep before he was even allowed in, knocked out by a combination of crashing from an adrenaline high and the painkillers he knows they gave her just before they stitched up the knife wound. He's not sure if he's supposed to wait until she wakes or head back to the station to start on the paperwork about her attack, until she's ready to go home.
Audrey makes the decision for him by stirring, followed immediately by a moan. He slides to the edge of the chair and takes her hand in his, afraid she'll tear her stitches if she moves around too much before she's awake enough to remember what happened.
In only a few minutes she's fully awake and asking about their suspect and witnesses, and something in him relaxes when he sees that she's really all right. It wasn't nearly as serious as it could have been – she'd managed to take Sanders down before Nathan even noticed she was injured – but from the moment he saw the blood he's been on edge.
"Nathan?"
From the look on her face, he's been zoned out for a while now. "Sorry," he says with a half-smile of apology. "You were saying?"
She tilts her head at him in that way that usually means she has questions, but she doesn't press for the reason behind his wandering attention. "Take me home?" is all she says.
His eyes immediately move to her stitches, only then realizing that his fingers are still wrapped around her wrist. "Are you sure that's a good idea?" he asks, pulling his hand away and crossing his arms over his chest.
Her eyes narrow in an all too familiar obstinate expression and he relents before she can say anything. "I'll go get the discharge papers," he tells her, hands held up in mock surrender as he backs out of the room.
It's not long before they're headed out the door, and Audrey's still a little unsteady on her feet as she moves for the hospital exit. Though he doesn't touch her – she's much too stubborn to accept his help – Nathan's hand hovers by her elbow the entire way to the truck, ready to catch her if she stumbles.
***
--two--
He finds her in, of all places, the library.
He knows Audrey's a reader – he's seen the books scattered about her apartment, knows that when the weather's nice and there's nothing more pressing than paperwork demanding her attention she spends her lunch breaks down at the park with a book – but somehow, Nathan never pictured her settling down to read in the library.
He finds her in one of the oversized chairs in the middle of the room. At first he thinks she's reading one of those teen supernatural books she pretends she doesn't own – if it's that one with the vampires and the werewolves, he's never letting her live it down – but as he gets closer he can make out the informative, if uninspiring, title of A History of Haven, Maine: 1850 to 1910.
She's so focussed on the book that she doesn't notice him. "Parker," he says, and she jumps a little in her seat before her attention switches to him. "Been looking for you."
"Nathan." She blinks a few times, like she's trying to bring herself back. "I didn't see you come in."
He sits in one of the chairs across from her. "I called. You weren't picking up."
She smiles and points to a sign near the check-out desk thanking visitors for turning off their cell phones. "You see that librarian over there, by the entrance display?"
His eyes flick over and then back. He nods.
Her voice drops to an exaggerated whisper. "I'm pretty sure she's Troubled. Whenever anyone talks too loudly, all she does is glare at them and they instantly lose their voice."
He nods gravely. "We should look into that immediately."
"I've already started a file."
He chuckles, then tilts his head at her book. "So, what are you reading?"
Audrey turns serious again. "I found it by accident. I just meant to flip through it, to see if it might mention anything about the Troubles, but...." She cracks the book open to the page she was reading when he came in and holds it out so he can take it.
It's a picture; more specifically, a reprint of an old black-and-white photograph. Turning the book right side up, his eyes are immediately drawn to a young woman among a group seated around a table at what seems to be a formal event.
"That's me," she says, before he can figure out how to respond.
"Looks like," he agrees, studying the image carefully before checking the caption underneath. Anna Paulson, 1902. His eyes return to the picture and Nathan finds himself thinking, not for the first time, that no matter the incarnation or the circumstance she always looks so sad.
"That photograph is over a hundred years old." Audrey's voice is taking on that tone he recognizes from when she's on the verge of being overloaded about her past, and he closes the book to focus on her. "How long has this been happening? How old am I?"
"Parker—"
"How many people have I been, Nathan? How many lives have I lived, how many friends have I left behind, just forgotten and—"
"Audrey." Her voice is rising, attracting the attention of some of the other patrons in the small library. "Not here," Nathan murmurs. "C'mon." He stands, one hand grasping the book and the other stretched out toward her.
Her eyes dart between his face and his hand a couple of times before she wraps her fingers around his and lets him pull her to her feet. Once standing, she doesn't let go right away, just closes her eyes and squeezes his hand.
He doesn't rush her, understanding that she needs a minute to process. There's a point, he thinks, where he shouldn't be surprised at anything that happens in this town, but so far he hasn't found it.
"Okay?" he asks when her eyes open and her grip loosens, and she nods and lets go entirely.
"Okay," she murmurs, then adds, "Thanks, Nathan."
Not sure what he's supposed to do with the book, he holds it up in her direction, eyebrows raised in question. Audrey starts to reach for it but stops with her hand in mid-air. "Should we sign it out?" she asks.
"Depends."
"On?"
"You up to facing the Troubled librarian?"
She smiles at that, which was what he was going for and the best he expected to get out of her after the curveball she's just been thrown. "C'mon," she says, taking the book from him and heading for the check-out desk. "You can tell me why you were looking for me on the way back to the station."
***
--three--
He takes her golfing.
Audrey's not much of a morning person and seems determined to take her early start to the day out on him. Granted, he didn't have to make her get up before dawn, but that part's mostly payback for teasing him about his hobbies. Again. He figures she deserves it, at least a little.
At least he brings her coffee. That has to count for something, even if she finishes it before they're even a quarter of the way to their destination.
There's a nine-hole course not far from Haven. The sun's barely up but already there are a few people on the green; it promises to be a warm, sunny day and the enthusiasts are taking advantage. He hands her the clubs he borrowed for her from Officer Hendricks, grabs his own set, and leads her over to the first hole, where he sets up the tee and ball.
"So I just swing and hit the ball, right?"
Nathan looks over and chokes back a laugh. "First," he says, clearing his throat, "you might find it a little easier to use this." He takes her putter and exchanges it for a driver. "Second, it's a golf club, Parker, not a hockey stick." She gives him a look that promises retribution if he dares to laugh so he does nothing more than reposition her grip on the club, but he finds it interesting that her cheeks have turned pink.
Half an hour later, they've barely started on the second hole and he can see her increasing frustration. It's mostly his fault – he knows better than to take someone who's never even held a golf club before straight to a golf course, and Audrey doesn't have the patience for the game anyway – so he feels a little guilty for dragging her out here when she looks like she's about to hurl her club as hard as she can. Possibly in his direction. "I think I'm more cut out for mini-golf," she says. "You know, with the little bridges and the windmills?"
"In Maine, they're lighthouses." He takes pity on her. "I think there's a mini-golf course not too far from here."
She looks longingly in the direction of his truck. "Do they sell coffee?"
"There's a place on the way," he assures her.
"So you really do that for fun?" she asks as they're headed away from the course.
"Yup." Nathan finds himself adding, "When I was a kid, I couldn't play contact sports because my mom was afraid I'd hurt myself and not know it. The chief taught me how to play. It's the only time I remember him telling me I was good at something."
The silence is weighty, and he wonders why he told her that. Then again, he's told her all kinds of things about himself he's never really told anyone else.
Her response is not quite what he expects. "I really can't picture the chief playing golf."
When he glances over at her, she's grinning. Nathan starts to smile. "He hadn't played in years," he admits. "But when I was a kid, he used to go out almost every weekend that the courses were open. I don't think we ever got along as well as we did the time I spent learning how to play."
From the corner of his eye he sees Audrey reach out, her fingers glancing over the back of his forearm. He can't feel her through his shirt but the intent behind the gesture's not lost on him. "I'm glad you have that memory."
"Me too." He hasn't thought of playing golf with the chief in years. Between the arguments at work and the personal baggage straining everything else, it helps having a good memory of his father to look back on.
They stop at a roadside diner to pick up coffee before continuing on to the mini-golf course. It turns out to be a surprising amount of fun, though he maintains for weeks after that she cheated because there's no way she beat him by playing fair.
***
--four--
They make it about a half-mile offshore in pursuit of Schmidt before the engine of their borrowed speedboat sputters and then dies. A quick look at the gauge shows that they're out of fuel, and Nathan curses their luck at commandeering what was probably the one boat in the entire marina that's out of gas. Knowing he's going to be hearing about this from the guys at the precinct for weeks, he gets on the radio to call Beatrice Mitchell.
He signs off with the harbourmaster and stares out to sea. There's no sign of the boat they'd been chasing; he's alerted the department and instructed them to get the word out to the state police, but there's no telling where Schmidt will end up when there's so much coastline where he can come ashore. "Beattie says they'll have someone out here within an hour."
It's only when Audrey doesn't respond that Nathan realizes that it's been a few minutes since she's said anything. He turns to look at her and finds her sitting on the deck, back braced against the side of the boat and as pale as he's ever seen her. "What's wrong?"
Audrey's mouth twists into something that he thinks is supposed to be a smile but isn't anything close. "I get seasick?"
He blinks at her. "But I've seen you on boats before. Carpenter's Knot, Kick'em Jenny Neck, the Cape Rouge."
"Dramamine," she tells him. "And Duke's boat is big enough that it doesn't bother me much, as long as the weather's okay and we're not too far out." The waves swell just then, tossing them up and then dropping them just as quickly, and Audrey turns a little green. She puts her head on her knees with a low groan.
"Oh." He watches her, shifting his weight, not quite sure what to do. It's not like he carries motion sickness medication with him and he doesn't know what else might work. Even if he did, it's doubtful that there's anything useful on this little speedboat.
In the end, he just sits beside her and rubs his hand along her back, hoping to at least offer a bit of comfort even if he can't make it better. She leans into him with a little sigh and he wraps his arm around her, holding her tight against his side. "Just warn me if you're going to throw up so I can get out of the way, okay?" he says, and she makes a sound that's part laugh, part moan.
"I hate you," she mutters, but he figures by the way she's pressing closer that she doesn't really mean it, so he continues to hold her until Beattie arrives to take them back to shore.
***
--five--
Audrey plays her flashlight over the walls and ceiling of the narrow dirt tunnel. "Can you imagine how dark it must be in here without lights?"
The words are barely out of her mouth when the flashlight flickers, strengthens again, browns out, then fails altogether. She gives it a useless shake. "Well, crap."
"You had to say that, didn't you?"
She strains her eyes but there isn't so much as a glimmer of light in either direction of the long-abandoned mineshaft. "I guess we have to go back." They don't know where this tunnel leads, assuming it ends up anywhere; they can't very well go stumbling along after a potentially dangerous person in the dark.
She turns and squeezes past Nathan, facing the direction from which they came with a hand on the wall to guide her, and makes it a few steps before he calls after her. "Parker?"
"Yeah?"
There's a beat before he speaks. "It's pitch black," he starts, and she's about to make a statement that essentially amounts to duh when he adds, "and I can't feel the walls."
Stupid. It's not that she forgets about his condition, exactly, but sometimes the implications of his inability to feel don't quite occur to her.
"Oh," she says. "Right." If he can't see and he can't use the walls as guidance.... Audrey can't even imagine how awful that must be.
The pathway is narrow; leading him by the hand or wrist would be uncomfortable. Besides, with Mason still down here somewhere, she'd rather have both her hands free.
"Can you feel me through clothes?" she asks, coming up with another option.
"No."
She figured as much, even though they've never talked about it; if her immunity, or whatever it is, could work through clothing it wouldn't have taken him so many months to figure out he can feel her. It's not like they touch all that often, but at the very least he should have realized it when he pulled her out of the car that first day, or when she'd tackled him out of the way of that truck just a few hours later.
"Okay," she tells him. "Hang on."
Audrey shucks her jacket, tying it around her waist, then unbuttons her shirt and does the same with it. It's cool down here in just her tank top, enough that she's got goosebumps from the chill, but it won't be too long before they're back at the entrance.
"Hold out your hand." She reaches out her own, searching blindly until her fingers find his arm. She slides her hand down until she's holding his fingers, turns back around so she's facing the right direction, and puts his hand on her shoulder. "Okay?"
He squeezes her shoulder, his thumb brushing the back of her neck. If he notices her shiver at the unexpected touch, he doesn't react. "Yeah."
Audrey pats his hand before letting go.
As they make their way back to the entrance, Nathan shares horror stories about the local mining history. She's not sure if he's trying to take her mind off the fact that they lost their suspect or if he's deliberately trying to provoke her – which Audrey knows he likes to do, however much he denies it – but either way the already close walls and ceiling of the mineshaft are suddenly feeling a whole lot closer.
There's no logical reason why Nathan's hand on her shoulder makes her feel like she's safe from the entire tunnel coming down on their heads, especially when he's the one who put the idea in her head in the first place, but somehow it does. When they finally see daylight ahead and he lets go, Audrey misses the warm weight of his hand more than she would have guessed.
***
--plus one--
It isn't until after they have Jacobson in cuffs that she notices the blood. "Nathan," she says, unable to tear her gaze away from his wound. "You're bleeding."
He follows her gaze to his shoulder and makes a dismissive sound. "It's nothing." He throws her a half-smile. "I can't even feel it."
His indifferent attitude toward his own health has always driven her nuts, but that day she lived five times over isn't that long ago and holding him as he died is still all too clear in her mind. "You should get that checked out."
"It's just a scratch, Parker. It'll be fine." He starts to turn away.
"Nathan." The tone of her voice must catch his attention because he turns back to face her. "Either let me take a look at it or I'm taking you to the clinic."
He eyes her, glances at the man in the back of her car, and sighs. "Let's get Jacobson back to the precinct," he says. "You can put a Band-Aid on it there."
**
Once they get Jacobson squared away, Audrey grabs the first aid kit, corners Nathan in the office, closes the door, and makes him take off his shirt so she can get a look at his wound.
It takes some effort to get the blood cleared away but Nathan turns out to be right; it's a shallow cut, already scabbed over. It doesn't even need the Band-Aid.
Her eyes are drawn to a handful of scars scattered across his chest and arms. Most she doesn't recognize, of course, but there's a pale patch of skin by his right shoulder she thinks might be from their first case together, when he'd been shot.
She looks down to where, not so long ago, there was a length of wood as wide as her forearm piercing his flesh. Even though it never happened for him, part of her still expects there to be a scar. How could something that hurt her so badly not leave a mark on him?
Without thinking, she rests her hand on his side near where he once suffered a fatal wound. His twitch, mild as it is, is enough to bring her out of her thoughts.
"Sorry," she murmurs, looking up to find him watching her. She looks back down. "It's just... that time loop where you died, this is where you were injured." Audrey runs her fingers over the unblemished skin. Nathan's breath catches at her touch, but he doesn't say anything.
When she looks up again it's to find that his eyes are closed, an expression of concentration on his face that makes her think he's trying to memorize the sensation of her fingers against his skin. One hand still on his stomach, she lifts her other hand to touch his face.
When he opens his eyes, he's looking at her the same way he always has except more so. Before she has time to figure out what to do with that, Nathan leans forward and kisses her.
It's brief, so much so that all she really has time to understand is that it happened – and that she wants more. But that's enough for her to make a decision, so when he starts to pull back she slides her hand from his cheek to the back of his neck and follows.
She feels his surprise in his sudden stillness. Then his fingers are sliding against her jaw, drawing her just that little bit closer as she kisses him back.
It's a quiet kiss, careful, testing the waters and figuring out how they fit. This is new, unexpected; Audrey's wondered before – of course she has – but it was mostly idle speculation. He's her partner, her friend, and – once her connection to Haven shifted from kind of weird to downright impossible – the only person who keeps her grounded when she feels like everything's crumbling under her feet. She wasn't willing to risk that for what amounted to half-guilty daydreams.
But now, well... he started it. And part of her is worried about the fallout of this, about what could happen if this goes wrong, but the rest of her just wants to continue it.
With her on a desk chair and Nathan on the couch, the angle is awkward. Audrey shifts forward, the hand she forgot was on his stomach sliding to his side to help keep her balance, and Nathan groans. And then suddenly this is real, this is happening, and her mouth is opening against his, his tongue tangling with hers even as his hand smooths up her leg, over her hip, finding the bare skin of her lower back where her shirt has come free from her jeans.
His fingers against her skin are warm and slightly rough. Her body's tingling and her thoughts are scattered and her breathing's erratic and she thinks that a first kiss has never quite felt like this before.
Nathan's hands are in her hair, on her back, urging her closer; she goes, abandoning her chair altogether in favour of the couch, her knees on either side of him and her weight settled on his thighs. Then she has to break their kiss because for a moment it's a lot, too much, not just the feel of him against her like this but the whole idea of what they're doing; it's enough to leave her momentarily breathless.
He murmurs her name when she pulls back, his lips moving along her jaw, her ear, her neck, and at first it's all she can do just to breathe. Eyes closed, she lets her hands travel his shoulders and chest before bringing them up to his face, bringing his lips back to hers.
Both of his hands are under her shirt now, fingers tracing along her spine, heels of his hands skimming her sides and making her shiver. He cups her shoulder blades and twists and for a moment she's dizzy, the world spinning around her as he presses her onto her back, and the two of them really shouldn't fit on this tiny little couch in her office but somehow they do.
Her body arches up instinctively and she knows he can't feel her, not the way she can feel him, but her shirt has ridden up and his is gone and she's not sure, exactly, what happened with Jess all those months ago, but Audrey's dead certain that this is the most skin he's felt against his own in years. It seems to be too much for him. Nathan drops his forehead against her shoulder with a strangled curse, and all at once Audrey finds herself laughing.
It's ridiculous. It's amazing and scary and incredible and just altogether nuts, and she wouldn't have it any other way.
Nathan lifts his head to look at her, one corner of his mouth quirking up in a half-smile in response to her laughter even as his eyes betray his confusion. "What?" he asks.
She quiets, threading one hand through his hair simply because she feels like it. "Nothing," she says, not sure she has the words to explain her sudden humour. And then because her brain is, for better or worse, starting to function again, she puts both hands on his shoulders and gives him a little push. "We should stop," she tells him. "The door isn't even locked."
She sees it in his face as he processes her words, the realization and embarrassment and disappointment. He leans closer and kisses her again, hard enough that her breath hitches in her chest, before he pulls away.
The office is quiet as they straighten their clothes, both of them sneaking looks at each other from the corner of their eyes. Audrey's not quite sure what comes next and for a moment, just a moment, she considers that it might not be too late to pretend that this never happened. It would be awkward for a while, but she's sure they'd get through it, and some days his steadfast friendship is the only thing keeping her going.
But then she remembers the way he looked at her, the way he touched her, and she knows there's no ignoring that. "Take me home, Nathan."
He stares at her with wide eyes. "Who—" He pauses, swallows, clears his throat. Tries again. "Whose home?"
She gives him a slow smile before turning away. "I believe your place is closer," she says over her shoulder, and saunters toward the door.
He catches up to her before she reaches the door, and his hand doesn't leave the small of her back until they reach the truck.
--end--