fic: you left a handprint on the door (1/1)
Title: You Left a Handprint on the Door
Fandom: Haven
Pairing: Duke/Audrey
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2579
Spoiler Warnings: AU for post S3, but I did pull some vague facts from season four, mostly names, but some other things as well.
Summary: Suddenly he’s the one falling, falling and falling, and he can’t tell if he’s diving after her or waiting for her to dive in after him.
He slams into the barn and instantly there’s a pressure surrounding him, building up inside of him, making it harder to think, to move.
But the barn is destroying itself, Duke remembers that, and he has to get to Audrey.
He has to find her.
He has to.
--
He’s surrounded by never ending white. It’s so bright it makes him think he’ll come out of this blind (if he comes out of it at all).
It’s never ending hallways and his voice echoes throughout.
Audrey, Audrey, Audrey. Over and over again, but she doesn’t respond.
No one does.
--
The walls shift from pure white and they start displaying memories, his memories. He sees a wounded Nathan begging him to save Audrey. He sees himself shooting Jordan. He sees Audrey pressing a gun in his hands, a kiss on his cheek, and telling him she wishes she never had to forget Colorado.
It’s playing backwards, but it hurts just the same.
He wants the blinding white back.
--
He pushes forward.
The pressure doesn’t stop, the throbbing in his head reminding him he isn’t meant to be there, that this place was built for her, for Audrey and Lucy and Sarah and all of them before her. Duke doesn’t belong.
But he keeps trying. Because he promised. He promised to always look out for her, he promised to fight for her future.
“Audrey, I’d do anything you need me to. Hunt down your past, fight your future.”
His own voice echoes around him, echoing until it hurts, until it aches like he’s forgotten something important. Until he realizes he stopped yelling out for her and never even realized it.
--
The memories keep playing around him, slipping away in the process.
He remembers his mission, remembers Audrey and the barn, he remembers a voice begging him to save her.
But he doesn’t remember who it belongs to. Not anymore.
The pressure increases and sometimes it’s a fight just to keep walking. But he does.
“Audrey, I’d do anything you need me to.”
--
He remembers a storm that shouldn’t have appeared, because he knows the weather. He had to with his boat, with his job.
He remembers a beautiful blonde out of place on the docks (out of place everywhere) and seeing her fall, always falling and falling.
And him diving in after her.
(He thinks she’s always falling and he’s always diving after her, but he doesn’t know if that’s true.)
But he can’t remember her name anymore. He tries, he tries so hard, but the pressure gets to be too much and it makes him crash to the floor, barely catching himself in the process.
He can’t remember her name and he can’t remember who sent him there and he can’t remember where there is.
But he remembers her face.
When everything else disappears, he still remembers that.
--
The memories stop playing around him, stop echoing, and the walls return to their blinding white. He starts to forget what it was like before that.
He can’t remember anything beyond the white and endless hallways and this pressure in his head. He can’t remember what it was like not being there.
He just remembers her face, the woman that keeps falling and falling and he keeps chasing after. He remembers that and a promise.
He’ll do anything she needs him to.
And that’s what keeps him going.
(She’s out there somewhere and she needs him. He can feel it.)
--
When the white halls end, finally lead him to where he was trying to go, he sees her again.
He tries to call out to her, to say her name. But nothing comes out.
She says something and he think it might be his name, but he can’t remember it anymore. All he can remember is her and white walls and his mission.
“Do anything you need me to.”
And then suddenly the pressure gets too intense, driving him to his knees. And suddenly he’s the one falling, falling and falling, and he can’t tell if he’s diving after her or waiting for her to dive in after him.
All he knows is that it hurts.
--
He groans as he comes back to reality. Really, sometimes unconsciousness is just better. Especially when his head feels like this.
“Hey, you okay?”
There’s someone hovering over him, a hand against his cheek trying to keep him awake. He’s sure he’ll appreciate that eventually, but right now he’d prefer unconsciousness.
“That depends, are you the one that hit me? Because it definitely feels like someone hit me.” He says, his eyes blinking open. He sees blue worried eyes staring back at him and they seem familiar somehow, striking.
“No,” The brunette answers, “That would be the big guy who broke a chair over your head.”
“That explains the pain…and possibly the lack of memory of it.” He said forcing himself to sit up.
She laughs a little, whether it was at his words or his pain, he isn’t sure. But it was a nice sound and she was making sure he was okay when the rest of the bar seemed to be ignoring him, so he figured she was a good person. Better than most. And there was something about her, something he couldn’t put his finger on, that made him think it was true.
“There’s a beer and an ice pack with your name on it if you want them.” She tells him.
“Thanks…”
“Lexi.” She says, “I’m Lexi.”
The name seems off somehow, like he almost expected her to say something else. But he shakes that off, thinks maybe he has a concussion, obviously there’s something wrong with his brain. Probably has been for a while though.
“I’m Austin,” He tells her, “Nice to meet you.”
“Well come on, Austin.” Lexi says helping him up, “You get the best seat in the house, where I can look after you, make sure I don’t need to call an ambulance. And that you don't bleed on any of the upholstery.”
“Way to make a guy feel special.”
--
After that night, he starts spending more and more time at bar. He sits in the best seat of the house that he had claimed as his own ever since that first night. (And eventually he stops having to fight or bribe people for it.) It’s a bar stool near the register, where he can chat with Lexi even when it’s busy.
She shakes her head every time she sees him come in, but she says he had tried to protect her from a creepy and intrusive customer the first time he had come in there, so she figured she owed him a couple beers in return.
Eventually the headshakes seem more endearing then discouraging.
Sometimes it feels like she might be his only friend. But he leaves the bar each night, goes to his own job every day, and lives his life.
But he finds himself always coming back to her.
(And so far she hasn’t chased him away.)
--
The first time he sees her outside of the bar and out of her uniform, he tells her she looks nice. She punched him in the arm and it takes him two days to make her believe him that he actually meant it.
She did look nice, she looked beautiful. (She always had.)
--
Sometimes he stays later at the bar than he should, talking to her, getting to know her.
They talk about the future, about the things they want to do, about the crazy things they’ve done in their past. She tells him about past boyfriends and he tells her about the women that hate him that he’s left scattered over the world.
Neither of them really imagined ending up there, can’t imagine this is all life has to offer, and how they sometimes they imagine running away. Only running away was how they had gotten there in the first place.
Sometimes Austin almost promises to take her away on a boat he doesn’t have.
But he stops himself just in time.
--
For her birthday, the date he dragged out of her friend Rhonda with a lot of money and a very expensive bottle of whiskey, he gives her an antique locket. Silver with a blue stone that reminds him of her eyes. The first thing he remembers seeing of her. That reminded him of someone he didn’t even know.
“Wow, this is beautiful.” She says and he thinks it might be the first time she didn’t have a flippy comment at the ready for him.
She makes up for it of course, when she reads the initials on the back, L.R., and asks him if he got their last names confused. Lexi Dewitt and Austin Remington.
“Nope, just came that way. But who knows, maybe it’s a prediction of the future.”
He turns and leaves before she can respond, but he likes to think that she likes the idea of a future for them. Any kind of future after this limbo they’ve been in for so long.
--
They go on a date, and it’s awkward at first, because this means they’re trying, that they’re figuring out the future he talked about. And neither of them really know how to do that. (Neither of them has done that before.)
But this time he says she looks nice in her blue dress and she says thank you. No convincing necessary.
He thinks that means they’re making progress.
--
Their first kiss is in the hotel room she had been staying at since she moved to Colorado.
(“It was never supposed to be permanent.” She had told him.)
She’s talking about all the things she wants to do, tells him she wants to go skydiving, wants to experience free-falling. Duke says he’ll go with her, but she has to dive first. He’s not jumping out of the plane just to be duped.
And then she was kissing him and Duke thought it might just be the most incredible moment of his life.
--
Things seemed to blur after that. No longer following one straight line, but curving into each other. But Lexi was always there and he was always waiting for her on that barstool and somehow it still felt right.
She still didn’t know how to say thank you all that well and he still told inappropriate and sarcastic jokes that got him in trouble. And sometimes she kissed his cheek like it meant more than when they were tangled in bed together and he would cover her with a blanket every time she fell asleep on the couch after promising him she wouldn’t.
But something was different, he could feel it. A pressure in the air, in his body, that hadn’t been there before.
An omen of something to come. He just didn’t know what.
--
“William, we’re fine, I promise.” Lexi says rolling her eyes again and Duke fought back a laugh.
There were some good things to being an only child. You didn’t have older brothers who didn’t understand the concept of a cross country road trip. And you didn’t have to deal with their phone calls.
“Seriously, we’re in some place called Haven, population like two. Does that sound dangerous to you?”
Austin tugs on her long brown hair to get her attention. “I’m starving.” He tells her, “There was a sign on the interstate, something about a blue seagull restaurant or something. I’m going to go find someone to point me in that direction.”
“Okay, I’ll be out as soon as I can get Debby Downer off the line.” She didn’t bother covering the receiver and he thought it made him love her a little more.
His little blunt bartender was more charming than any girl he had met before her, or ever would again.
“Have fun with that.” He said swooping in for a quick kiss before climbing out of the jeep.
“And I’m pretty sure it was called the Grey Gull!” He hears her call after him and honestly, he doesn’t know how that sounds more appetizing, but he’s hungry and, really, they were in Maine, it’s about time they had some lobster.
He sees a man not too far away, leaning against a blue truck just hanging up his cell phone and heads towards him. Austin taps him on the shoulder when he gets there, but that doesn’t seem to work or the guy is just easily offended by friendly shoulder tapping, so he maneuvers himself so the other man can’t ignore him. It’s a skill he’s had for a while now.
“Hey, sorry to…well you’re not actually doing anything as far as I can tell, so I’m not interrupting, but I was wondering if you could point me in the direction of the…Grey Gull? Or possibly the Blue Gull. We know the word Gull was involved and that they serve food. And well, I’m hungry.”
The guy is staring at him like he has three heads, or just one really bad one, which is a little offensive because he knows he’s pretty to look at. And really, this guy hasn’t known him long enough to judge him.
“Look, again, sorry to interrupt…It’s just me and Lexi, we’re hungry.” He tells him.
“Lexi?”
Well at least the guy could speak. When and if he wanted to.
“Yeah, my better half, and I’ll admit the better looking half too. We’re both starving, so if you could just…”
“I don’t understand how you’re…I mean…How did you…”
The guy’s hands were twitching at his sides and his eyes were almost wild as he looked him over, like he was seeing a ghost or cop when he had contraband in his pockets. Either way, he didn’t really like it.
“You know, you might want to change the name of this town. It implies a little more friendliness.” Austin tells him.
“Austin?” Lexi’s voice came, “I finally got William to shut up. Did you find out where the restaurant is?”
The guy whipped around as Lexi appeared behind them, looking at her the same way he had looked at him. Austin didn’t like it when he was doing it to him; he definitely didn’t like it when he had moved on to Lexi.
Austin grabbed her hand, bringing her closer to him, and farther from this new guy who seemed a couple of pancakes short of a stack. He was starting to wonder if this town ever got outsiders.
“You make a friend?” Lexi asks, eyeing them both oddly.
“Do I ever make new friends?” Austin asks.
“Good point,” She says turning back to the stranger, “I apologize for anything my husband might have said to offend you. He has no filter. It’s why I like him, but also why we met when another man broke a chair on his head.”
She shrugged, a smile on her lips completely unapologetic, and the other man follows her movements, kept looking down at their intertwined hands and back up at their faces like something was going on that neither of them knew.
“But if you could point the way to the restaurant, we’ll get out of your hair.”
“Yeah…Yeah, I can help you.” He finally says, “I’m…I’m Nathan by the way.”
“Lexi and Austin.” She says, squeezing Austin’s hand.
Something seemed to shift, though Austin didn’t know what. He just knew that whatever was going on, he wasn’t leaving Lexi’s side.
He had promised in their wedding vows to always keep diving in after her.
Fandom: Haven
Pairing: Duke/Audrey
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2579
Spoiler Warnings: AU for post S3, but I did pull some vague facts from season four, mostly names, but some other things as well.
Summary: Suddenly he’s the one falling, falling and falling, and he can’t tell if he’s diving after her or waiting for her to dive in after him.
He slams into the barn and instantly there’s a pressure surrounding him, building up inside of him, making it harder to think, to move.
But the barn is destroying itself, Duke remembers that, and he has to get to Audrey.
He has to find her.
He has to.
--
He’s surrounded by never ending white. It’s so bright it makes him think he’ll come out of this blind (if he comes out of it at all).
It’s never ending hallways and his voice echoes throughout.
Audrey, Audrey, Audrey. Over and over again, but she doesn’t respond.
No one does.
--
The walls shift from pure white and they start displaying memories, his memories. He sees a wounded Nathan begging him to save Audrey. He sees himself shooting Jordan. He sees Audrey pressing a gun in his hands, a kiss on his cheek, and telling him she wishes she never had to forget Colorado.
It’s playing backwards, but it hurts just the same.
He wants the blinding white back.
--
He pushes forward.
The pressure doesn’t stop, the throbbing in his head reminding him he isn’t meant to be there, that this place was built for her, for Audrey and Lucy and Sarah and all of them before her. Duke doesn’t belong.
But he keeps trying. Because he promised. He promised to always look out for her, he promised to fight for her future.
“Audrey, I’d do anything you need me to. Hunt down your past, fight your future.”
His own voice echoes around him, echoing until it hurts, until it aches like he’s forgotten something important. Until he realizes he stopped yelling out for her and never even realized it.
--
The memories keep playing around him, slipping away in the process.
He remembers his mission, remembers Audrey and the barn, he remembers a voice begging him to save her.
But he doesn’t remember who it belongs to. Not anymore.
The pressure increases and sometimes it’s a fight just to keep walking. But he does.
“Audrey, I’d do anything you need me to.”
--
He remembers a storm that shouldn’t have appeared, because he knows the weather. He had to with his boat, with his job.
He remembers a beautiful blonde out of place on the docks (out of place everywhere) and seeing her fall, always falling and falling.
And him diving in after her.
(He thinks she’s always falling and he’s always diving after her, but he doesn’t know if that’s true.)
But he can’t remember her name anymore. He tries, he tries so hard, but the pressure gets to be too much and it makes him crash to the floor, barely catching himself in the process.
He can’t remember her name and he can’t remember who sent him there and he can’t remember where there is.
But he remembers her face.
When everything else disappears, he still remembers that.
--
The memories stop playing around him, stop echoing, and the walls return to their blinding white. He starts to forget what it was like before that.
He can’t remember anything beyond the white and endless hallways and this pressure in his head. He can’t remember what it was like not being there.
He just remembers her face, the woman that keeps falling and falling and he keeps chasing after. He remembers that and a promise.
He’ll do anything she needs him to.
And that’s what keeps him going.
(She’s out there somewhere and she needs him. He can feel it.)
--
When the white halls end, finally lead him to where he was trying to go, he sees her again.
He tries to call out to her, to say her name. But nothing comes out.
She says something and he think it might be his name, but he can’t remember it anymore. All he can remember is her and white walls and his mission.
“Do anything you need me to.”
And then suddenly the pressure gets too intense, driving him to his knees. And suddenly he’s the one falling, falling and falling, and he can’t tell if he’s diving after her or waiting for her to dive in after him.
All he knows is that it hurts.
--
He groans as he comes back to reality. Really, sometimes unconsciousness is just better. Especially when his head feels like this.
“Hey, you okay?”
There’s someone hovering over him, a hand against his cheek trying to keep him awake. He’s sure he’ll appreciate that eventually, but right now he’d prefer unconsciousness.
“That depends, are you the one that hit me? Because it definitely feels like someone hit me.” He says, his eyes blinking open. He sees blue worried eyes staring back at him and they seem familiar somehow, striking.
“No,” The brunette answers, “That would be the big guy who broke a chair over your head.”
“That explains the pain…and possibly the lack of memory of it.” He said forcing himself to sit up.
She laughs a little, whether it was at his words or his pain, he isn’t sure. But it was a nice sound and she was making sure he was okay when the rest of the bar seemed to be ignoring him, so he figured she was a good person. Better than most. And there was something about her, something he couldn’t put his finger on, that made him think it was true.
“There’s a beer and an ice pack with your name on it if you want them.” She tells him.
“Thanks…”
“Lexi.” She says, “I’m Lexi.”
The name seems off somehow, like he almost expected her to say something else. But he shakes that off, thinks maybe he has a concussion, obviously there’s something wrong with his brain. Probably has been for a while though.
“I’m Austin,” He tells her, “Nice to meet you.”
“Well come on, Austin.” Lexi says helping him up, “You get the best seat in the house, where I can look after you, make sure I don’t need to call an ambulance. And that you don't bleed on any of the upholstery.”
“Way to make a guy feel special.”
--
After that night, he starts spending more and more time at bar. He sits in the best seat of the house that he had claimed as his own ever since that first night. (And eventually he stops having to fight or bribe people for it.) It’s a bar stool near the register, where he can chat with Lexi even when it’s busy.
She shakes her head every time she sees him come in, but she says he had tried to protect her from a creepy and intrusive customer the first time he had come in there, so she figured she owed him a couple beers in return.
Eventually the headshakes seem more endearing then discouraging.
Sometimes it feels like she might be his only friend. But he leaves the bar each night, goes to his own job every day, and lives his life.
But he finds himself always coming back to her.
(And so far she hasn’t chased him away.)
--
The first time he sees her outside of the bar and out of her uniform, he tells her she looks nice. She punched him in the arm and it takes him two days to make her believe him that he actually meant it.
She did look nice, she looked beautiful. (She always had.)
--
Sometimes he stays later at the bar than he should, talking to her, getting to know her.
They talk about the future, about the things they want to do, about the crazy things they’ve done in their past. She tells him about past boyfriends and he tells her about the women that hate him that he’s left scattered over the world.
Neither of them really imagined ending up there, can’t imagine this is all life has to offer, and how they sometimes they imagine running away. Only running away was how they had gotten there in the first place.
Sometimes Austin almost promises to take her away on a boat he doesn’t have.
But he stops himself just in time.
--
For her birthday, the date he dragged out of her friend Rhonda with a lot of money and a very expensive bottle of whiskey, he gives her an antique locket. Silver with a blue stone that reminds him of her eyes. The first thing he remembers seeing of her. That reminded him of someone he didn’t even know.
“Wow, this is beautiful.” She says and he thinks it might be the first time she didn’t have a flippy comment at the ready for him.
She makes up for it of course, when she reads the initials on the back, L.R., and asks him if he got their last names confused. Lexi Dewitt and Austin Remington.
“Nope, just came that way. But who knows, maybe it’s a prediction of the future.”
He turns and leaves before she can respond, but he likes to think that she likes the idea of a future for them. Any kind of future after this limbo they’ve been in for so long.
--
They go on a date, and it’s awkward at first, because this means they’re trying, that they’re figuring out the future he talked about. And neither of them really know how to do that. (Neither of them has done that before.)
But this time he says she looks nice in her blue dress and she says thank you. No convincing necessary.
He thinks that means they’re making progress.
--
Their first kiss is in the hotel room she had been staying at since she moved to Colorado.
(“It was never supposed to be permanent.” She had told him.)
She’s talking about all the things she wants to do, tells him she wants to go skydiving, wants to experience free-falling. Duke says he’ll go with her, but she has to dive first. He’s not jumping out of the plane just to be duped.
And then she was kissing him and Duke thought it might just be the most incredible moment of his life.
--
Things seemed to blur after that. No longer following one straight line, but curving into each other. But Lexi was always there and he was always waiting for her on that barstool and somehow it still felt right.
She still didn’t know how to say thank you all that well and he still told inappropriate and sarcastic jokes that got him in trouble. And sometimes she kissed his cheek like it meant more than when they were tangled in bed together and he would cover her with a blanket every time she fell asleep on the couch after promising him she wouldn’t.
But something was different, he could feel it. A pressure in the air, in his body, that hadn’t been there before.
An omen of something to come. He just didn’t know what.
--
“William, we’re fine, I promise.” Lexi says rolling her eyes again and Duke fought back a laugh.
There were some good things to being an only child. You didn’t have older brothers who didn’t understand the concept of a cross country road trip. And you didn’t have to deal with their phone calls.
“Seriously, we’re in some place called Haven, population like two. Does that sound dangerous to you?”
Austin tugs on her long brown hair to get her attention. “I’m starving.” He tells her, “There was a sign on the interstate, something about a blue seagull restaurant or something. I’m going to go find someone to point me in that direction.”
“Okay, I’ll be out as soon as I can get Debby Downer off the line.” She didn’t bother covering the receiver and he thought it made him love her a little more.
His little blunt bartender was more charming than any girl he had met before her, or ever would again.
“Have fun with that.” He said swooping in for a quick kiss before climbing out of the jeep.
“And I’m pretty sure it was called the Grey Gull!” He hears her call after him and honestly, he doesn’t know how that sounds more appetizing, but he’s hungry and, really, they were in Maine, it’s about time they had some lobster.
He sees a man not too far away, leaning against a blue truck just hanging up his cell phone and heads towards him. Austin taps him on the shoulder when he gets there, but that doesn’t seem to work or the guy is just easily offended by friendly shoulder tapping, so he maneuvers himself so the other man can’t ignore him. It’s a skill he’s had for a while now.
“Hey, sorry to…well you’re not actually doing anything as far as I can tell, so I’m not interrupting, but I was wondering if you could point me in the direction of the…Grey Gull? Or possibly the Blue Gull. We know the word Gull was involved and that they serve food. And well, I’m hungry.”
The guy is staring at him like he has three heads, or just one really bad one, which is a little offensive because he knows he’s pretty to look at. And really, this guy hasn’t known him long enough to judge him.
“Look, again, sorry to interrupt…It’s just me and Lexi, we’re hungry.” He tells him.
“Lexi?”
Well at least the guy could speak. When and if he wanted to.
“Yeah, my better half, and I’ll admit the better looking half too. We’re both starving, so if you could just…”
“I don’t understand how you’re…I mean…How did you…”
The guy’s hands were twitching at his sides and his eyes were almost wild as he looked him over, like he was seeing a ghost or cop when he had contraband in his pockets. Either way, he didn’t really like it.
“You know, you might want to change the name of this town. It implies a little more friendliness.” Austin tells him.
“Austin?” Lexi’s voice came, “I finally got William to shut up. Did you find out where the restaurant is?”
The guy whipped around as Lexi appeared behind them, looking at her the same way he had looked at him. Austin didn’t like it when he was doing it to him; he definitely didn’t like it when he had moved on to Lexi.
Austin grabbed her hand, bringing her closer to him, and farther from this new guy who seemed a couple of pancakes short of a stack. He was starting to wonder if this town ever got outsiders.
“You make a friend?” Lexi asks, eyeing them both oddly.
“Do I ever make new friends?” Austin asks.
“Good point,” She says turning back to the stranger, “I apologize for anything my husband might have said to offend you. He has no filter. It’s why I like him, but also why we met when another man broke a chair on his head.”
She shrugged, a smile on her lips completely unapologetic, and the other man follows her movements, kept looking down at their intertwined hands and back up at their faces like something was going on that neither of them knew.
“But if you could point the way to the restaurant, we’ll get out of your hair.”
“Yeah…Yeah, I can help you.” He finally says, “I’m…I’m Nathan by the way.”
“Lexi and Austin.” She says, squeezing Austin’s hand.
Something seemed to shift, though Austin didn’t know what. He just knew that whatever was going on, he wasn’t leaving Lexi’s side.
He had promised in their wedding vows to always keep diving in after her.