We'll Do It All Again, Part IV { 2

[27yrsandwelldoitallagain]

But I'm starting to believe
Oh, I'm starting to believe
That this could be the start
of something good



Audrey isn't paying it any mind when the heavy, night dark shifts

and slips, slowly, softly, sideways.
Into sunlight and hardwood.
A padded chair.

Into the gentle tapping of a pen.
Then, writing. Pausing. More writing.

Impatient nerves, that are edged with a bubble of excitement at every just barely leveled glance toward the door in front of her under her brim. Something about the last few days. It's left her charged. The days all the paperwork on her desk are about. Long days. Confusing Days. Weird days. Complicated families and friendships. Strange things. But it's lead around to this.

This sparking lightness. The necessary levity.

The bouncing need for the right person to come in the door.

Comments

[dont_feel_it]

He's looking down, flipping over the file in his hands when he comes in. No reason to expect anything different.

Except there's a flash of red at the corner of his eye, and when he glances that way, it stops him. Not dead in his tracks, the way the books so often say, but like a motor somewhere suddenly stalled, makes him drift to a halt.

Silently absorbing the sight before him.




Something not quite a smile already working at his mouth. Even as he says nothing at all.

[27yrsandwelldoitallagain]

Nathan finally walks in the door, all business and seriousness toward the file open in his hands, until he looks up.

It's not a double take. He doesn't do those. Everything is understated. At a distance. But it's there. The surprise. When he'd gone to look at her in a cursory fashion and instead ends up just staring full bore at her, and maybe anyone else would call it blank, but she's learning to count everything else, too. The barest shift in those eyes. The way his hands lower the file just as barely. Steps stopped in their direction, an extra one or so just in front of her desk, reorienting his focus from his desk to hers.

Her. Sitting there. Like this.

The singular scene she knew she'd be when she put it all on.
But couldn't help, like she can't help the smile breaking free.


"So." Audrey pops the word like it's a bottle of champagne.
A sentence in itself, even as she has press it further, pull for more.

Shifts her hand to point up at the brow of her hat. "What'd you think?"

[dont_feel_it]

He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. Jaw working, fighting the smile that's threatening to split into a grin.

Audrey Parker, decked out from head to toe in foul weather gear and plaid. Tipping her head at him in a dare.



Audrey Parker, who never met an ante she couldn't up.







"It's a start."

[27yrsandwelldoitallagain]

It takes him a moment, and that is almost worth the whole price of the admission of putting it on. When she has to shift her head, and she's trying her hardest not to laugh, because it's not a double-take, it wasn't, but it's like he's dumbfounded she's actually sitting, having put it all on. The laugh that breaks free when he finally says those three words. At an almost level monotone. Like he hadn't frozen.

But he had. She was incasing that second and a half in gold.

Looking to onside, to keep from not being able to stop laughing, before looking back, as he leaned against the front of his desk, and she reached up to take the black, rubber hat off her head as she shifted back in her own chair. Three words, and it's about as good as she'll get, which absolutely deserves calling on. "Oh, that's high praise from a Wuornos."

That it's that small -- and even more, that she managed to drag it out of him.
Those words. That momentarily, absolutely pinned, flappable silence.

[dont_feel_it]

The threatening grin is breaking like a wave, but he's crossing the room and it keeps mostly to himself. Parker, amused with herself, calling it a win, tying her hair up at the back of her head when he leans, half-sitting, on the edge of his desk.


Falling into conversation with her is like falling off a log. "Saw your car. Parked on the street?"


Setting it up and waiting for her to take the bait, as she winds a pen into her hair and he plays innocent. Butter wouldn't melt in his twitching mouth.

[27yrsandwelldoitallagain]

When he detours to something else, it's not surprising, is it? A few seconds for a cheap laugh, while she's leaning back and pulling her hair into a knot, so she can use the pen still in her hand to make it stick. The shirt will go, too, as soon as she's done that, and probably the rest, too. A moment of humor in the work, before it's all put away.

"Yeah?" An easy, pointless question, as she focused more on trying to get the pen to keep her hair up.

[dont_feel_it]

Nodding along with her, chin tipping up.

Unwilling to give it up so easily, but Parker picks up the thread, effortless, and tosses it right back at him.

"Yeah."

[27yrsandwelldoitallagain]

If there's a look his direction from the side of her visions while she concentrating on holding her hair, having to pull the pen out once when it doesn't go in right and try again, and, of course, there is. That side glance. It's because he's being decidedly slow on explaining why her car could be in the need of being mentioned pretty much ever, especially at such delay. "And?"

[dont_feel_it]

"It took up three spaces."

It's an easy role, the cop. Nailing her on every little detail.

One day, he thinks, he might ticket her for jaywalking, just to see what happens.

[27yrsandwelldoitallagain]

The way her gaze stays on him, it's very much more amused than chagrined, like she should have guessed. Score one point around here, and it was bound to tell you in the next second what you didn't do quite right in some other arena. There's that feeling like it's to be expected around these parts. This room. The city.

Even more, than it's being done on purpose, at this very second.
With the rough edge of something lighter in Nathan that hasn't seen enough air.

(And, what is it that gives her the feeling that's true, and not just true, but unwaveringly so?)

Still. It's just a car. And it's just a few spaces. At the end of a day. "So?"

[dont_feel_it]

He takes a breath in, like this is a conversation they've had a million times before and he's being overly patient. Shakes his head and looks at the papers in his hands, like she's a lost cause. "Gonna take time."


From anyone else in this town, it might not be teasing. Parker getting one thing right isn't enough to make her a local yet, and they're happy enough to let her know it. Writing on her car. Saying nothing, but saying it loudly, at her choice of pastries.

She's still an outsider. To them.


Maybe still to him, too.

The difference is, he sees her trying. It's not a joke to her. Not really.

Even if it's one between them, now. It just means she's starting to trust him. That they're starting to trust each other.

Maybe even getting towards being friends.

(It's not like people are lining up for that opportunity for either of them.)

[27yrsandwelldoitallagain]

"Yeah." There's a chuckle that's becoming more a breath out than the chuckle it starts as, as she peels from the large red flannel shirt, the over warmed skin on her arms prickling as it meets the air conditioning, again. Feeling the more real prick of it all even under the joke. "Yeah, it is."

The patience and determination to drag out more one-and-half-seconds, and more than that to even get to what she needs. The challenge she's taken on. Her unwillingness to be swayed, especially the more that blocks her. She has a reason, and she's not going to let the more real signs of it keep her from it.

Though just what it seems to be slips away as she looks at her desk more seriously, fiddling with another of her pens, before looking back to Nathan sitting there. "You know, I was thinking about how there are two different Haven's. There's the one right beneath the surface, and, then, there's the one right underneath that."

[dont_feel_it]

The air in here has changed, just slightly. It's not really a joke anymore, and they both know it.

But he knows what it means to her. Wanting to belong. And what she says next --



It reminds him of the Rev, working up to a lather at his pulpit. Talking about the sides they have. That they need to take.

Glancing back up at her, face clear, open. The words he's known to say since he was old enough to know they're a lie falling out easy as how's the weather.

"Sounds like every town."

[27yrsandwelldoitallagain]

He does that too easily, too. That suddenly too-careful edge to the patience he's using. At the beginning, she might not have noticed. But, here and now, and after this day, after the cases they've worked? It's impossible. It's that same edge that lines everything else. Everyone else. Sheers it like a cliff break, or a cold breeze. Right at the edge of a glance. A voice. "It's not like every other town."

It's not like any other town she can even think of.
She doesn't look away when she calls him on it, either.

"But you, Nathan," Audrey says turning her chair to face him, and rearranging herself so she can lean on her desk for a moment. "You live in both Haven's, and I think we're going to find that very useful."

[dont_feel_it]

She never pulls punches, and she doesn't now, either, and though the way his mouth presses wry might look like a smile, it isn't.

It's a reasonable enough thing for her to think. Parker. Who even now doesn't know all that there is to know about this place. The Troubled.

Or him.

But because it's a reasonable thing for her to think, he nods, brief, meets her eyes. Unwilling to give away more than the bare minimum.

"Might be."

Or she might find he's a liability. He doesn't know yet how it all might play out.

But it's true. It might be useful. She isn't wrong.

[27yrsandwelldoitallagain]

Maybe it scores. Maybe that's all part of this strange, strange place, and this new partnership she has. A concession on both sides. For not belonging, and for knowing well and clearly where the cards are, even if she doesn't have them. But there's no point beyond the glance of touching it. An acknowledgment in his two words that are as much as her Yeah, it will had been.

Which is maybe, why she decides it. Because it's just that. An acknowledgment from Nathan. Without an additional rebuff, doubled down, or shuffling off to leave her there, with that empty draw, alone. Still the outsider, the intruder, unwelcome even when she's right, or more so because of it. But he doesn't. Move. Leave. Say anything but those two, and maybe it's even at the very least.

Audrey leans back, just enough to get the space to fold and unfold her legs, to cross her far too hot, and far too winter-booted feet on the corner of her unsuspecting desk. Doing her best to try and not let her smile get out too soon, dropping her pen dramatically on the desk as she twists to reach for the college stickered coffee mug on the far side of the desk behind her.

His expression has already started trying either to contort or definitely-not-to, and Audrey adjusts her hold on the coffee mug in her slouched easy, laid-back position, giving him a prim order of that refuses by its middle to be anything but martialed teasing: "This is one of those times where you need to say absolutely nothing."

[dont_feel_it]

She leans back, content with his concession, and punctuates it by dropping one, two booted feet on her desk, one over the other. That he can't help but look at.

And then can't look away from.



Unruly edges already tugging at his mouth when she commands, makes him meet her eyes and face that grin.

Which he does, straight-faced, nodding. "'Kay."

Absolutely serious.





Until it cracks, just a little, at the corner of his mouth.

Because he can't keep from glancing at her feet, and it is ridiculous. Parker. Huge furry winter boots. Gone native.

He can't feel this smile, but that doesn't mean he doesn't know it's there.

[27yrsandwelldoitallagain]

Nathan tries to keep his one word controlled, but almost nothing about it is. His voice, his face, and Audrey finds her own laughter escaping between her and the coffee cup she can't honestly and truly hide behind. Not that she's trying really. It's worth it within the second to watch Nathan go from that rusty, compressed smile, into one full-blown chuff of laugh after she starts giggling and can't find it in herself to stop at all.







Doesn't feel like she does at all stop, except that when her eyelashes flutter closed and open between one second and the next second it's a silent high vaulted bedroom instead of the blinds and windows pouring in light. And Nathan. Nathan isn't there above her. Before her. Anywhere. There's the warm bed, and morning's early defused light around the curtain into the dark, dark bedroom.

Audrey rolled on to her side and the cooler part of her pillow, squishing part of it between her shoulder and her cheek, not so much seeking more sleep as pressing herself into that still ringing echo of the laughter just for a few seconds longer while her smile became a warm, possibly even childish, secret between her and pillowcase.

The silent echo of that laughter seems to get everywhere, tugging at her already to get up.

To find Nathan. To tell him, in the very least, that he had a terrible poker face.






It's that day again.


(It's Nathan.)