tanaquific (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tanaquific) wrote2013-09-12 06:01 pm
tanaquific) wrote2013-09-12 06:01 pm
Entry tags:
Ficlets x 3: Haven - General - Duke, Nathan
These were all written for ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fic_promptly prompts. They're (respectively) around 400, 175 and 280 words long.
Prompt: Any, any, love is an excuse to get hurt.
High Stakes
Duke's only been in love three times.
Oh, he's had plenty of flings. Plenty of one-night stands. One of his rules—apart from the one about not talking to cops—is to never turn down a beautiful woman with an appetite. Or a beautiful man. But only three people have had the power to break his heart.
One of them loved him back, after her own fashion. From time to time, he thinks, she even loved him a little more than her own self: doing something for him where there was nothing in it for her to set against the risk—unless it was the pleasure of making him fall for her again so she could break his heart again. In the end, that's what killed her—caring more about him than about being careful about what she was getting herself into. He mostly blames Reverend Driscoll for Evi's death, but a little bit of him blames himself, for not trying harder to send her away. But, God, when times were good between them, they were good.
The second has always hated him. No, that's not true. But they've been at odds most of the years they've known each other, butting heads, rubbing each other the wrong way. Yet there are moments, more than moments, when he sees past the distrust and contempt to something that's more that just a temporary truce and a reluctant friendship. It'd kill Nathan to admit it, of course: perhaps as much to admit that he's not completely straight as to admit that his not-straight feelings are for Duke. Doesn't stop the attraction crackling in the air between them, or Duke hoping that one day Nathan will accept it and surrender.
The last—the last he found too late. Always too late. There was a spark there from the start, but she was busy, distracted, looking somewhere else, looking at someone else. Yet he treasures the little time they've had: treasures what Fate has allowed him to be for her and the memory of that single kiss, in a motel room in the middle of nowhere on the trail of a mystery. And maybe there's still time. Maybe he can make time: for her, if not for them.
As he 'borrows' a boat so he and Nathan can follow Audrey and try save her from her fate, he reflects wryly that his track record means he really should be a heck of a lot luckier at cards.
oOo
Prompt: Any, Any, The third wheel
Alienated
Audrey is still gasping for breath. Duke holds her lightly, feeling her tremble. She is so alive under his hands, so warm. He's shaking himself, with relief and the memory of the fear he felt in her—fear of him—as he caught hold of her and disarmed her. But what else was he to do? Step out and hope she recognized him before she swung that rusty old sickle, or run the risk of her crying out and bringing her kidnapper down on them?
"Audrey!"
She turns at the sound of her name, breaks away from Duke. Hurries across the room to throw herself into Nathan's arms. Duke watches the way she pulls him close, like there's no one else in the world....
For her, for both of them, he guesses that's true. He was only along for the ride, to keep Nathan safe and sane, to help him search, until he could deliver them to each other.
He feels as deflated as a flat tire, as if someone's stuck in a knife and twisted. Well, not as if they need a third wheel now they're together again.
oOo
Prompt: Author's choice, Author's choice, Withholding evidence.
Holding back
Nathan pulled another blank form toward him and, with a weary sigh, began making a copy of the one he'd filled out earlier. The time-consuming part wasn't writing it all out again; it was deciding what to leave out—and how to gloss over the gaps.
There needed to be a record, though: a full record, as well as the official one. Because in twenty seven years' time, his successor might need to know these things. What Troubles they'd seen this time around and how they'd dealt with them. Just as, once or twice, he'd gone back through the files his father had kept, looking for clues or insights.
Looking for the man his father had been—when he hadn't been butting heads with the son who wasn't really his.
Nathan blinked, the form in front of him suddenly hard to see. He groped blindly with one hand for the desk lamp, the papers in front of him springing back into clarity as he switched it on. Yeah, it had just been the light fading that had made it hard to read his own writing.
He finished the form, reworked the other records, squared away the real truth and the official truth into their separate files. Dropping the official version into the file clerk's in-tray, he headed back to the Chief's office to tidy away the second file in the cabinet there.
Pushing the file drawer closed, he thought again about his father, about how the evidence he'd thought his father had been withholding—not the facts pressed between these brown covers, but what his father thought, what he cared about, what he felt—was all around him once he started to look.
fic_promptly prompts. They're (respectively) around 400, 175 and 280 words long.Prompt: Any, any, love is an excuse to get hurt.
High Stakes
Duke's only been in love three times.
Oh, he's had plenty of flings. Plenty of one-night stands. One of his rules—apart from the one about not talking to cops—is to never turn down a beautiful woman with an appetite. Or a beautiful man. But only three people have had the power to break his heart.
One of them loved him back, after her own fashion. From time to time, he thinks, she even loved him a little more than her own self: doing something for him where there was nothing in it for her to set against the risk—unless it was the pleasure of making him fall for her again so she could break his heart again. In the end, that's what killed her—caring more about him than about being careful about what she was getting herself into. He mostly blames Reverend Driscoll for Evi's death, but a little bit of him blames himself, for not trying harder to send her away. But, God, when times were good between them, they were good.
The second has always hated him. No, that's not true. But they've been at odds most of the years they've known each other, butting heads, rubbing each other the wrong way. Yet there are moments, more than moments, when he sees past the distrust and contempt to something that's more that just a temporary truce and a reluctant friendship. It'd kill Nathan to admit it, of course: perhaps as much to admit that he's not completely straight as to admit that his not-straight feelings are for Duke. Doesn't stop the attraction crackling in the air between them, or Duke hoping that one day Nathan will accept it and surrender.
The last—the last he found too late. Always too late. There was a spark there from the start, but she was busy, distracted, looking somewhere else, looking at someone else. Yet he treasures the little time they've had: treasures what Fate has allowed him to be for her and the memory of that single kiss, in a motel room in the middle of nowhere on the trail of a mystery. And maybe there's still time. Maybe he can make time: for her, if not for them.
As he 'borrows' a boat so he and Nathan can follow Audrey and try save her from her fate, he reflects wryly that his track record means he really should be a heck of a lot luckier at cards.
Prompt: Any, Any, The third wheel
Alienated
Audrey is still gasping for breath. Duke holds her lightly, feeling her tremble. She is so alive under his hands, so warm. He's shaking himself, with relief and the memory of the fear he felt in her—fear of him—as he caught hold of her and disarmed her. But what else was he to do? Step out and hope she recognized him before she swung that rusty old sickle, or run the risk of her crying out and bringing her kidnapper down on them?
"Audrey!"
She turns at the sound of her name, breaks away from Duke. Hurries across the room to throw herself into Nathan's arms. Duke watches the way she pulls him close, like there's no one else in the world....
For her, for both of them, he guesses that's true. He was only along for the ride, to keep Nathan safe and sane, to help him search, until he could deliver them to each other.
He feels as deflated as a flat tire, as if someone's stuck in a knife and twisted. Well, not as if they need a third wheel now they're together again.
Prompt: Author's choice, Author's choice, Withholding evidence.
Holding back
Nathan pulled another blank form toward him and, with a weary sigh, began making a copy of the one he'd filled out earlier. The time-consuming part wasn't writing it all out again; it was deciding what to leave out—and how to gloss over the gaps.
There needed to be a record, though: a full record, as well as the official one. Because in twenty seven years' time, his successor might need to know these things. What Troubles they'd seen this time around and how they'd dealt with them. Just as, once or twice, he'd gone back through the files his father had kept, looking for clues or insights.
Looking for the man his father had been—when he hadn't been butting heads with the son who wasn't really his.
Nathan blinked, the form in front of him suddenly hard to see. He groped blindly with one hand for the desk lamp, the papers in front of him springing back into clarity as he switched it on. Yeah, it had just been the light fading that had made it hard to read his own writing.
He finished the form, reworked the other records, squared away the real truth and the official truth into their separate files. Dropping the official version into the file clerk's in-tray, he headed back to the Chief's office to tidy away the second file in the cabinet there.
Pushing the file drawer closed, he thought again about his father, about how the evidence he'd thought his father had been withholding—not the facts pressed between these brown covers, but what his father thought, what he cared about, what he felt—was all around him once he started to look.