Fic: You're Changing Your Heart; or Five Times Ned Wanted to Touch Chuck (Ned/Chuck)
Title: You're Changing Your Heart; or Five Times Ned Wanted to Touch Chuck
Rating: PG
Summary: Chuck is the neatest eater that Ned has ever seen. Sometimes, he just watches her, in rapt fascination, as she eats pie after pie.
Disclaimer: I do not own Pushing Daisies. At all. I wish but alas...
Author's Note: For cmonkatiekatie, who suggested the theme. Which...I kinda reversed. Sorry, but I hope you like it anyway.
5.
When Ned’s head connects with the lid of the coffin, the throbbing pain in his head moves him to momentarily consider reaching out to take hold of Chuck’s hand.
Then he sees her and he immediately banishes the notion from his mind.
4.
Chuck is the neatest eater that Ned has ever seen. Sometimes, he just watches her, in rapt fascination, as she eats pie after pie. He keeps baking them and she keeps eating them. It’s a cycle that they’re stuck in that neither of them have any desire to get out of.
Ned turns around with a freshly backed Pumpkin Pie in his mitten covered hands and sees her, staring down at an empty tin, with a very satisfied look on her face. There’s a small spot on the corner of her mouth. Blueberry.
His fingers clench inside of the gloves as he struggles to get a hold of the desire to reach out and brush the spot away.
It’s only when he has set the pie down in front of her and gone to wash his hands that he remembers he was wearing gloves. Nice, thick, cotton gloves.
He curses when the cold water hits his bare hands.
3.
Ned hasn’t had the opportunity to (nor the interest in) watch a woman sleep very often. That fact notwithstanding, he finds himself turning over from time to time, finding this attempts to sleep fruitless, and gazing at Chuck across the space that separates their beds.
There is a piece of hair hanging in front of her face, tickling her nose. A clumpy strand that he can see illuminated by the light from the streetlamps outside of the window. He is filled with the desire to climb swiftly from his bed and affectionately brush it away.
But he can’t and he doesn’t. Instead, he stays in his bed, a smile on his face, and keeps his eyes on that strand of hair and on her face.
2.
Ned feels incredibly uncomfortable with his hand over Olive’s heart. With his hand on Olive at all. Because even though she’s sweet, and even though she’s beautiful, he can’t let go of the part of him that thinks of her like a sister, like a good friend and nothing more.
But he also can’t get over how easy it is to pretend it’s Chuck’s heart that he’s feeling. And he can’t get over the fact that it’s not.
1.
Ned is well aware that he could possibly be considered a jealous man. That is, now that he’s had something to be jealous over. Having secluded himself in his kitchen, with his pies, for so long, he had never been interested in having what you might call a date. Or what you might call a girlfriend.
Not until the woman he had loved, the woman he still loved, the woman he couldn’t touch. Not until Chuck.
He can’t hold her hand. Not like fake-Conrad. Not like any other man. Ned was jealous of Conrad because he was there to be jealous of. It was a lot harder to be jealous of all the other men in the world. The ones that could touch Chuck in every way he couldn’t without losing her forever. He’s jealous of them because that’s all he wants to do, every minute of every day is hold her and touch her and have her as close to him as she can possibly be.
All he wants is the one thing he can never have.
Rating: PG
Summary: Chuck is the neatest eater that Ned has ever seen. Sometimes, he just watches her, in rapt fascination, as she eats pie after pie.
Disclaimer: I do not own Pushing Daisies. At all. I wish but alas...
Author's Note: For cmonkatiekatie, who suggested the theme. Which...I kinda reversed. Sorry, but I hope you like it anyway.
5.
When Ned’s head connects with the lid of the coffin, the throbbing pain in his head moves him to momentarily consider reaching out to take hold of Chuck’s hand.
Then he sees her and he immediately banishes the notion from his mind.
4.
Chuck is the neatest eater that Ned has ever seen. Sometimes, he just watches her, in rapt fascination, as she eats pie after pie. He keeps baking them and she keeps eating them. It’s a cycle that they’re stuck in that neither of them have any desire to get out of.
Ned turns around with a freshly backed Pumpkin Pie in his mitten covered hands and sees her, staring down at an empty tin, with a very satisfied look on her face. There’s a small spot on the corner of her mouth. Blueberry.
His fingers clench inside of the gloves as he struggles to get a hold of the desire to reach out and brush the spot away.
It’s only when he has set the pie down in front of her and gone to wash his hands that he remembers he was wearing gloves. Nice, thick, cotton gloves.
He curses when the cold water hits his bare hands.
3.
Ned hasn’t had the opportunity to (nor the interest in) watch a woman sleep very often. That fact notwithstanding, he finds himself turning over from time to time, finding this attempts to sleep fruitless, and gazing at Chuck across the space that separates their beds.
There is a piece of hair hanging in front of her face, tickling her nose. A clumpy strand that he can see illuminated by the light from the streetlamps outside of the window. He is filled with the desire to climb swiftly from his bed and affectionately brush it away.
But he can’t and he doesn’t. Instead, he stays in his bed, a smile on his face, and keeps his eyes on that strand of hair and on her face.
2.
Ned feels incredibly uncomfortable with his hand over Olive’s heart. With his hand on Olive at all. Because even though she’s sweet, and even though she’s beautiful, he can’t let go of the part of him that thinks of her like a sister, like a good friend and nothing more.
But he also can’t get over how easy it is to pretend it’s Chuck’s heart that he’s feeling. And he can’t get over the fact that it’s not.
1.
Ned is well aware that he could possibly be considered a jealous man. That is, now that he’s had something to be jealous over. Having secluded himself in his kitchen, with his pies, for so long, he had never been interested in having what you might call a date. Or what you might call a girlfriend.
Not until the woman he had loved, the woman he still loved, the woman he couldn’t touch. Not until Chuck.
He can’t hold her hand. Not like fake-Conrad. Not like any other man. Ned was jealous of Conrad because he was there to be jealous of. It was a lot harder to be jealous of all the other men in the world. The ones that could touch Chuck in every way he couldn’t without losing her forever. He’s jealous of them because that’s all he wants to do, every minute of every day is hold her and touch her and have her as close to him as she can possibly be.
All he wants is the one thing he can never have.