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whatevermortallike running with a blindfold
Duke Crocker/Nathan Wuornos | Haven | teen+ | ~700 words | AO3 link
Dru tries not to mess with him, she does, but Nathan’s temper always brings out the worst in her. She can never quite help the smirk that curls her lips upward or the tease that turns her tone flirtingly mean. “Nathan,” she acknowledges, with a little tip of her trucker cap. “I came back for the funeral.”
This was a rough fic to post as abandoned, because I want to finish it SO BADLY. I might eventually come back to it, but I need to let it go for now & having it sitting in my wip folder is so distracting.
I messed with the canon timeline a little I think. Or, at least, I didn't bother to check when Simon Crocker died and I'm sure he died long before Duke/Dru and Nathan's fight. (...Though tbh what I've read more recently says canon doesn't even know when Simon Crocker died so who fucking knows)
Title comes from "Tightrope" by Illy, which obviously reminds me of Duke/Nathan quite a lot
Dru rolls back into town on a clear Wednesday morning. She passes the sign—WELCOME TO HAVEN, in cheerful, serif caps—just after eleven, with one hand curled loosely around the head of the gearstick, the rusting steering wheel caught between her knees, and her forearm resting along the frame of the open window. She hasn’t been home in four months, not since the fight with Nathan, and she still isn’t sure she should be back at all.
Only a few miles down the road, where it curves around the edge of a cliff, a familiar blue utility van pulls up behind her and flashes its headlights. She thinks about driving the whole way back to her boat with Nathan on her tail, but it’s not worth the trouble of dragging it out. Might as well get this first fight out of the way now.
She flicks on her hazards and pulls onto the shoulder: a narrow strip of gravel between the road and guard rail, just barely wide enough for a car. She watches in the review mirror as Nathan pulls in behind her.
He takes his time turning off the engine and getting out. He strolls over and leans into the window; the silver of his badge glints in the sunlight. It isn’t until he sees Dru in the driver’s seat that his smile curdles and his shoulders stiffen.
“Dru,” he says. “Didn’t think you’d be back so soon.”
Dru tries not to mess with him, she does, but Nathan’s temper always brings out the worst in her. She can never quite help the smirk that curls her lips upward or the tease that turns her tone flirtingly mean. “Nathan,” she acknowledges, with a little tip of her trucker cap. “I came back for the funeral.”
Simon Crocker died a week ago, while Dru was out at sea up near Halifax helping a friend with one of those not strictly-speaking legal things she doesn’t tell Nathan about. She knows that, on some level, she should be sad, that she should be in mourning right now, but the world is no worse off without her dad in it.
Nathan knows how she feels about her dad—he knows most of her, so much more of her than he thinks he does. He doesn’t say he’s sorry. He isn’t, and he knows she isn’t either.
Dru wants to ask how he’s been. She wants, with the self-destructive intensity she’s always been capable of, to find a way to patch up the latest rift between them and carry on as they ever have.
But she still remembers, vividly, their fight on her boat four months ago. The black eye already forming, the trickle of blood from his nose and how he’d carelessly wiped it away. She’d railed on him, but all he’d do was talk shit and grab at her wrists to stop her from hitting him again and again and again and again.
She’d come up with nasty bruises anyway. Dark, uneven rings around her wrists and patches on rough, bloodied knuckles that people stared at for weeks, trapping her with their pity.
Now that Dru is caught in the memory, all she can hear is Nathan’s voice, shouting, “All you ever do is lie,” as if he was rewriting their history until she was made only of the parts of herself he didn’t like. As if she hadn’t proven herself a thousand times, as if she hadn’t shared a thousand secrets with him and nobody else.
And Nathan just stands there, hovers uncertainly, and does nothing to take it back.
Dru feels resentment roll through her gut, but he doesn’t deserve to know how he affects her, how he has always affected her, and she refuses to give him the satisfaction of dragging her down to the station. She smirks, leans against the car door in a way that gives him a clean sightline down the front of her tank top to the swell of breasts under butter-yellow lace, and she says, as if he is any other cop, “What can I do for you, officer?”
Nathan’s gaze flickers down and then abruptly away; his expression turns fierce. “One of your brake lights is out,” he says. “If I see it again, I’ll give you a ticket.”
He stalks back to his truck and slams the door behind him. Dru waits until he’s driven off before she takes a deep, calming breath and starts her engine.
Duke Crocker/Nathan Wuornos | Haven | teen+ | ~700 words | AO3 link
Dru tries not to mess with him, she does, but Nathan’s temper always brings out the worst in her. She can never quite help the smirk that curls her lips upward or the tease that turns her tone flirtingly mean. “Nathan,” she acknowledges, with a little tip of her trucker cap. “I came back for the funeral.”
This was a rough fic to post as abandoned, because I want to finish it SO BADLY. I might eventually come back to it, but I need to let it go for now & having it sitting in my wip folder is so distracting.
I messed with the canon timeline a little I think. Or, at least, I didn't bother to check when Simon Crocker died and I'm sure he died long before Duke/Dru and Nathan's fight. (...Though tbh what I've read more recently says canon doesn't even know when Simon Crocker died so who fucking knows)
Title comes from "Tightrope" by Illy, which obviously reminds me of Duke/Nathan quite a lot
Dru rolls back into town on a clear Wednesday morning. She passes the sign—WELCOME TO HAVEN, in cheerful, serif caps—just after eleven, with one hand curled loosely around the head of the gearstick, the rusting steering wheel caught between her knees, and her forearm resting along the frame of the open window. She hasn’t been home in four months, not since the fight with Nathan, and she still isn’t sure she should be back at all.
Only a few miles down the road, where it curves around the edge of a cliff, a familiar blue utility van pulls up behind her and flashes its headlights. She thinks about driving the whole way back to her boat with Nathan on her tail, but it’s not worth the trouble of dragging it out. Might as well get this first fight out of the way now.
She flicks on her hazards and pulls onto the shoulder: a narrow strip of gravel between the road and guard rail, just barely wide enough for a car. She watches in the review mirror as Nathan pulls in behind her.
He takes his time turning off the engine and getting out. He strolls over and leans into the window; the silver of his badge glints in the sunlight. It isn’t until he sees Dru in the driver’s seat that his smile curdles and his shoulders stiffen.
“Dru,” he says. “Didn’t think you’d be back so soon.”
Dru tries not to mess with him, she does, but Nathan’s temper always brings out the worst in her. She can never quite help the smirk that curls her lips upward or the tease that turns her tone flirtingly mean. “Nathan,” she acknowledges, with a little tip of her trucker cap. “I came back for the funeral.”
Simon Crocker died a week ago, while Dru was out at sea up near Halifax helping a friend with one of those not strictly-speaking legal things she doesn’t tell Nathan about. She knows that, on some level, she should be sad, that she should be in mourning right now, but the world is no worse off without her dad in it.
Nathan knows how she feels about her dad—he knows most of her, so much more of her than he thinks he does. He doesn’t say he’s sorry. He isn’t, and he knows she isn’t either.
Dru wants to ask how he’s been. She wants, with the self-destructive intensity she’s always been capable of, to find a way to patch up the latest rift between them and carry on as they ever have.
But she still remembers, vividly, their fight on her boat four months ago. The black eye already forming, the trickle of blood from his nose and how he’d carelessly wiped it away. She’d railed on him, but all he’d do was talk shit and grab at her wrists to stop her from hitting him again and again and again and again.
She’d come up with nasty bruises anyway. Dark, uneven rings around her wrists and patches on rough, bloodied knuckles that people stared at for weeks, trapping her with their pity.
Now that Dru is caught in the memory, all she can hear is Nathan’s voice, shouting, “All you ever do is lie,” as if he was rewriting their history until she was made only of the parts of herself he didn’t like. As if she hadn’t proven herself a thousand times, as if she hadn’t shared a thousand secrets with him and nobody else.
And Nathan just stands there, hovers uncertainly, and does nothing to take it back.
Dru feels resentment roll through her gut, but he doesn’t deserve to know how he affects her, how he has always affected her, and she refuses to give him the satisfaction of dragging her down to the station. She smirks, leans against the car door in a way that gives him a clean sightline down the front of her tank top to the swell of breasts under butter-yellow lace, and she says, as if he is any other cop, “What can I do for you, officer?”
Nathan’s gaze flickers down and then abruptly away; his expression turns fierce. “One of your brake lights is out,” he says. “If I see it again, I’ll give you a ticket.”
He stalks back to his truck and slams the door behind him. Dru waits until he’s driven off before she takes a deep, calming breath and starts her engine.
