FIC: The Choice - [Haven] Duke/Dwight, Duke/Nathan (Mature)
Icon has never been more appropriate, given the opening scene.
TITLE: The Choice
AUTHOR: roseveare
RATING: M
PAIRING: Duke Crocker/Nathan Wuornos, Duke Crocker/Dwight Hendrickson
LENGTH: 4,800 words
SUMMARY: Sleeping with the town fixer and the Chief's son was a sweet deal for Duke... until they both found out, along with the Chief and just about everyone else in Haven. Written for dvioletta in Troubled Tales 2015.
NOTES: This is not my usual sort of subject matter, but for some reason this prompt which was pretty much the whole plotline giftwrapped kept coming back to me and one day did a takeover of my brain. I was supposed to be working when the majority of it was written straight through in one morning.
NOTES #2: This is set in some AU where Garland is still around by the time Dwight comes to Our Heroes' attention, otherwise around ~mid season 2.
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, no profit, yadda, yadda, yadda.
The Choice
It's fortunate that Laverne knows exactly when to overstep her authority and call senior members of Haven Police Department at home to drag them in to deal with minor infringements. Because Laverne has such discretion, it's Garland and Audrey who take the call out to deal with the disturbance on the marina, where Nathan, the Chief's son and fellow officer, and Dwight Hendrickson, town handyman and Trouble-Cleaner, are fighting.
Each other. There's property damage.
Duke's there. It's all happening not far from his boat, so that part's not surprising. What's surprising is that he's not trying to drag Dwight off Nathan, or -- probably the easier route -- Nathan off Dwight, he's just standing there like a dope doing absolutely nothing.
"Duke!" Audrey yells at him with a certain amount of rage, because she expects better. He starts and blinks at her, and for a moment his eyes leave the fighting pair -- aaaand Audrey's are drawn right back to them, because somehow, Nathan just almost put Dwight through the side of one of the fishing store sheds, and Dwight's retaliating move is to kind of hurl his whole body into Nathan like some sort of kamikaze battering ram and, oh crap, that looks like it broke ribs. Not that Nathan cares. Audrey forgets about Duke and just focuses on running from her car to the fighting men.
"You get Nathan, I'll get Dwight!" Garland wheezes, and uh-huh, he's got that right.
Nathan's in a rage the likes of which she's never seen, but Audrey cheats, getting inside his reach and then grabbing his face with both hands. Feeling kind of stones him, like it always does, and he makes a few token pushes to get beyond her, but she's broken whatever spell started this violence. He's looking at her, his eyes hurt and dazed. His face is bleeding from a split welt on his cheek and there's blood on his mouth. Given Dwight's moves and his weight, she dreads to think of what damage is lurking unseen beneath his clothes. She belatedly wonders if her touch is making him feel it, but he isn’t trying to get away from her.
"What the fuck, Nathan?" she asks him.
Garland's growling at Dwight, who's yelling things she'd never imagined coming out of Dwight's mouth, who’s always so calm, so in control. "I'll fucking kill you!" and "You son of a bitch!" -- Garland taps him a short, sharp punch in the jaw for that one -- and something that sounds like "Dirty cheating bastard!" that doesn't make much sense to Audrey at the time. Garland's doing amazingly managing to pin Dwight, not just for an old guy but for anyone. Nathan was pissed, but Dwight’s like some angry demon.
She can't imagine why Nathan would dream he could go up against the guy normally, but like this?
"Yeah," Nathan grunts, answering the almost rhetorical question she'd pretty much forgotten she'd asked. "Why the fuck? covers it." He's staring past Dwight, to Duke.
"Nathan!" Garland barks, still struggling to contain Dwight. He's probably fortunate that Dwight's been hit enough times he's sort of punch-drunk and his balance is shot, or maybe he's just tired himself out punching Nathan. "You start speaking sense right now and tell me what the hell happened down here!"
Nathan subsides in Audrey's grip enough that she feels confident letting go of him, and then sits on the floor, as unfelt damage abruptly catches up. His eyes dart around and he looks at Garland, then avoids looking at Garland, and frankly he starts looking absolutely freaking terrified.
There's a small collection of onlookers gathered, the sort of happy local boys that are usually hanging around the marina at ten in the evening, and some of them are clearly very drunk but all of them are very entertained. "Y'see--" one guy starts, chortling and spraying from his voluminous beard. "From the kinda things these two were yelling, we got a pretty neat picture of Crocker's here 'relationship issues' all around..." He airquotes with dirty fingers and dissolves into snickers.
Duke? What does Duke have to do with this? Audrey stares at him blankly. Finds him horrified and... trying to sneak off back into the Cape Rouge. "Duke!" she snaps.
He freezes guiltily. Another dock man who looks like he was born in the nineteen hundreds raises a finger and wheezes asthmatically as he variously gesticulates between and about the three men. "I heard that this one--" Duke "--fucked this one--" Nathan "--and that one--" Dwight "--walked in on it, an' 'pparently that's real bad, 'cause that one's been fucking this one for four months straight--" Duke and Dwight, this time "--an' it's fucking Romeo and Juliet and over again..." He hoots with laughter. "Romeo and Julian."
Audrey gapes, absolutely stunned. It's about all she can do to turn to Nathan for some kind of... She was hoping denial, but his expression says not. Also, he's so boiling red it looks like he's about to have a stroke. "Uh, deep breaths," she manages to croak out, feeling like she needs a few of those herself. She kneels down and puts her hand on Nathan's shoulder and he grabs her wrist.
"God, I'm so stupid," he groans, miserably. Garland's looking at him with this... this face that's just awful, that Audrey would not want to be on the receiving end of. And apparently Nathan's gay, or gay enough to have fucked Duke, and if his dad didn't know that before, he knows it now. If he did know it before, maybe it's just the Duke part, because Garland sure as hell does not like Crocker. No sir.
"Get him to hospital," Garland says tightly. "He'll need goddamn x-rays. Needs his fool head examining either way. Get him to the hospital and take care of him for me, Parker." He shifts his glare to the other two men. Duke's taken a few steps, and he's taken them at least sort of more towards the direction of Dwight. Nathan notices this, and, wow, Nathan's eyes go bitter and nasty and he vibrates under Audrey's fingers and she sucks in air to tell him sharply, "No, Nathan."
"Get him the fuck out of here," Garland says again, and there's fire in his face as he looks at Duke, and Audrey's not wholly sure what he thinks of Dwight's part here.
She wants to know what happened and why and how and what's going to happen next because, whoa. And she also wants to make sure that Duke comes out of this intact, with the way Garland looks right now. But the Chief's right in that Nathan's got to be harbouring injuries of some kind after taking on the man-mountain. So Audrey reluctantly exits the drama to drag her partner off to hospital and get x-rayed all the broken bones that Nathan doesn't care about.
***
"Police in this town are biased as fuck!" Duke hollers as the door clangs shut, still trying to reason with the two officers on night duty that Garland handed him over to, like dirty laundry, with an expression painted in absolute disgust. He tries to grab hold of them through the bars, but then they're out of reach -- turning briefly, one of them waving a dismissive hand over his shoulder as he snorts. Garland didn't even rate Duke enough to walk down to the goddamn cell. "You hear me! You better hear me! Public disturbance?! I was not fighting! I did not fight! I was an innocent bystander! I got rights--"
They're already gone. And Duke's left in a cell for the night, and man he's depressed, he's miserable. He had a good thing. Two good things. Or one good thing and one messed up, occasional, really mind-blowingly hot thing, and really, really he should have made a goddamn choice before now, but he didn't and now he's lost both of them. And it's too late to realise that he and Nathan, that was never, ever going to work as any real thing and he should have let go of it. But he definitely owes Nathan a fucking apology.
--Or he would if Nathan hadn't decided to be a crazy man and suicidal to boot and attack Dwight.
Or attack Dwight back, and in fairness, Nathan's kind of... you couldn't really expect anything from Nathan other than what he did, because if you push Nathan, it's the surest thing in the universe he's going to haul off and push back. More staggering by far is that Dwight was doing the pushing.
Duke's never seen Dwight like that. Terrifying. Terrifying. He hopes like hell he’s alright.
Duke knew when he started hooking up with Dwight -- and it was just a few drinks at first, just friendly guy stuff until he got the hints that Dwight was up for more -- that this guy had a huge, gaping loneliness in him, and a hurt that went deep, that was something you did not screw around with. He knew that, and he's scared now that he's hurt Dwight even more deeply, that he won't get a second chance. Maybe he doesn't deserve one.
It’s not that Nathan doesn't carry his own damage, but Nathan's not looking for forever and always. Nathan doesn't even think with his brain half the time, when their blood's up and an argument turns into something, which is pretty much the way it always goes... and to think Nathan wonders why Duke's always trying so hard to twist the knife, to get under his skin.
Nathan being an idiot is no good reason to let himself go the same way, but the problem is he never could resist Nathan, who's hotter than ever when he's mad, and doesn't ask permission; Duke'll just find himself staggering and falling back, hitting and clinging to the nearest object while Nathan's dragging his pants down, arms clamped around his knees, swallowing Duke like it's just upping the stakes in their fight... and how could Duke be expected to resist that? He'd have to be superhuman to step back and tell Nathan to back the hell off at that point.
He’s had Nathan rough and raw, and in ways he can’t imagine fucking anyone else, things he’d never want to do with Dwight. Mostly on the Cape Rouge but in some damned weird other places besides. It’s Nathan that initiates, always, but Duke can’t claim he resists or that it isn’t like all his Christmasses come at once.
Dwight’s different. Dwight’s gentle and considerate and always wants dinner or a movie or conversation or something first. It never starts with the sex, the whole thing started with the companionship, and it’s nothing Duke’s ever had before with another guy. He knows Dwight wants more… has known it all along, but he’s been scared to jump into that, kind of been on a rut where he’s pretending that they can just keep going as they are and Dwight won’t ever push it further and deliver him some kind of ultimatum if he just pretends that elephant isn’t there.
Dwight wants family.
Nathan wants to feel something, even if he can’t feel.
Duke groans and collapses on the bench in the cell, leans back and feels like he should have been punched in the head. He sucks. Garland called it right tossing him in the cell. Both the guys he loves are hurting, and it's his fault.
Had to be the Chief's son, too, didn't it? He had to fuck Nathan, and now Garland knows and, Christ, the guy never liked him in the first place. He has no clue how long Garland Wuornos intends to keep him here. He could throw away the key and trump up whatever charges he wants. Duke could be malingering here until he rots. Not that he doesn't deserve what he gets, but suddenly the thought that it's Garland who's the law in this town and Garland who exercises all the control over his punishment is absolutely fucking terrifying.
He's just about confident that it's not going to go as far as a short, late journey out of town to a shallow grave in the woods, because Garland's not that guy. But other than that? Just about anything is an open possibility. Might as well stop worrying about Dwight. He'll be a Shawshank lifer or at the very least run out of town by this time tomorrow.
***
He's jarred out of his moping and the sort of miserable trance he's drifted into, slumped upright on the bench, by the rattling at the door. Duke jerks his chin up and--
Nathan Wuornos viewed through the inside of prison cell bars. Joy. Not an unfamiliar sight by any means. The pissed off look on his face has simmered down to about normal, though it's lacking the patina of amusement that usually accompanies it in this situation, when Nathan is on the outside of the bars trying not to smirk and Duke is in a cell because Nathan arrested him for something Nathan damn well knows he did not do. Or knows he can’t prove he did but feels like watching him sit in a cell for a while anyway.
He blinks dozily at Nathan's face, which has been redecorated in shades of black and red over one cheek and almost all his jaw. "You break that?" Duke asks, his curiosity automatically finding voice before his brain kicks in.
Also before he registers that Nathan is actually opening the door.
His instinct is to cringe up on to the seat, pulling his legs in, maybe even heading for standing up on the bench, which is a lousy escape plan for the inevitable oncoming exercise of police brutality. But Nathan snorts at him and asks, like he thinks Duke's plain lost his mind, "What are you doing? And no, it's not broken. Nothing's broken but a couple of ribs -- nice going, Duke. You asshole."
What's startling is he doesn't sound particularly resentful and he doesn't sound particularly surprised. He's definitely back to his usual sour simmer. "You're not--" Duke starts. Then he gets it.
"Why in the blazing hell should I be surprised?" Nathan asks. "If there'd been time to think before Dwight started throwing fists around, I'd have-- Hell, I'd probably have hit you. Except that usually ends in sex, which would be really fucking appropriate in this situation." He slams the door back hard enough that it bounces off the bars, and steps back, leaving a clear run at the open door for Duke. "Get the fuck out of here. And in case you wondered, we're done."
Duke stands up. Feels like his legs have gone numb. Nathan's broken up with him. Nathan doesn't want--
Hell, Nathan never wanted him, except when they were arguing. Feels like all the fun part has gone out of this argument, right now. Maybe that heat's been sapped for good.
"I never trusted you," Nathan says. "Ever. For the record."
"Why--" Duke begins. He can't seem to muster words or sense. Damn, he loves Nathan, he loves Nathan like breathing, but they're like fighting dogs. Never going to settle. "Nate. Why are you doing this?" He sent Nathan to hospital, unleashed Dwight's fucking freaky Thunder-God wrath on him, and now Nathan is standing outside the cell that his father put Duke in, holding open the door and telling him to piss off.
"I'm doing this for the Chief, not you. He's not got a leg to stand on arresting you and throwing you in here. Because his son was involved with a guy? Come on! People talk. He'll realise it when he calms down. And if you even think of making a stink about that, I will come after you."
Garland might not have had a shallow grave in mind, but Duke wouldn't put it beyond Nathan, with that look on his face and that tone in his voice.
"Nathan," Duke says, softly. "I wouldn't go after your dad. This whole disaster is my fault. You let me out of here, I'm gone." It's not going to go easy on Nathan, either, the aftermath of this with the whole town talking, spreading far and wide the fact that Nathan's into guys.
Nathan pulls a face, surprising him. "You don't have to leave town, Duke. Just get the fuck out of my face and keep away from the Chief for, uh, the next decade."
Duke's sidling out of the door and around, and realising with a certain pang that the reason Nathan's not as pissed as he should be is because he never categorized their relationship beyond a certain way. Or at least he's just thinking that when Nathan's fist rises out of nowhere and slams into the side of his face, and then Duke's moving sideways in space and the wall slams the other side of his face and ow, ow, OW!
"Should have done that to start with," Nathan growls, and drags Duke upright by his nearest arm as he starts sliding down the wall, the world all off balance from the force of that punch. Nathan shakes him, and sets him on his feet, arms sort of held out to catch him if he starts to fall again, but he wavers and manages to achieve a moderately upright status for enough time that Nathan backs off. "Come on. You're walking out of here."
It's 6AM according to the clock on the wall. Duke succeeds at putting one foot in front of the other down long corridors, Nathan's presence an ache at his back, a hollow footstep in his wake, a sour shadow. Funny thing is that he really gets this feeling that there's nothing here that's permanently broken. Except that maybe they won't punch each other and fight so much, now it's no longer a pretext for ending up having sex.
"Word in your ear," Nathan adds, speaking up as they're standing in the lobby in front of the main doors, as Duke's about to be released into the wild again, and still kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop, thinking this can't be it. "I am not the part of this mess that you need to worry about." He waits a bit, then adds, "It's not Garland either. Well. I'd worry about Garland, too. Just... seriously, stay out of his way. Til about Christmas 2030."
***
He knows he screwed up unbelievably when he continued with Nathan in the crazy, fucked-up, sporadic way they'd always done whatever they would actually call the Thing they had that wasn't a Relationship, rather than telling Nathan he'd started something steady and serious with Dwight. It's not Nathan's fault, he was even there first, and then Duke had to go and make him the other guy.
Duke supposes he always shrugged it off, figured that since he didn't ever know when it would happen again, or even if it would happen again, there was no need for a real conversation or big declaration. 'Next' time, sure, he'd tell Nathan they were quits. But with Nathan he was always already in the middle of having his cock sucked or being pinned to the deck before he realised it was the next time at all.
So it is Nathan's fault, then, for being such a no-holds-barred blaze of physical passion whenever anger pushes the buttons that pleasurable sensation can't. It's Nathan's damn fault for holding all his conversations with his body instead of... well, honestly his mouth tends to get in on the action a lot, too, even if words don't. Goddamn Nathan.
No matter how much Duke rages at Nathan in his head, that won't change the fact Duke still has to show up and try to fix things with Dwight.
Because. Because that's the choice. Nathan, if anything, let him off easy. Made it clear they were over, pushed him to go and do what he needed to do.
It's 8AM by the time he gets to Dwight's place. He asked Nathan in front of the police station if there was any chance of a lift... since they were being so surprisingly amicable about this, and all. But Nathan laughed at him and turned his back, so he's on foot. Goddamn Nathan. It's about the same distance to the marina as to Dwight's small, rural house, but if he'd gone to the marina first he could've been sure of having his truck and not stuck walking back when Dwight tells him to fuck off. Seems he's not thinking straight.
All he can think is, get to Dwight and fix this. Explain it, because no such explaining happened before -- Dwight found him and Nathan just finishing off, which did mean, yeah, less humiliating than mid-session, because it was just a really aggressive kiss Dwight actually saw, poor guy turning up with a bottle of wine and a bag of food to surprise him on the Rouge. But the state of their clothes still made it clear what they'd been doing.
Duke doesn't know what he expects turning up like this. Dwight's an active guy, bound to be up by eight, right? He even thinks he might have missed him, that he's out covering up after Troubles by now, for sure. Dwight was almost certainly less beat up than Nathan, who is the biggest idiot on the planet for not turning and running for his scrawny fucking life when he saw the juggernaut coming at him with that expression of murder. Dwight clearly went home last night, took it out on some furniture or some manly, aggressive midnight wood-chopping in the yard, or possibly beat the crap out of that punching bag in his shed, then he turned in and he's just fine today.
The idea that Dwight might be heading out makes Duke speed up his walk in anxiety. He can't miss Dwight. He needs to talk this out now.
Dwight's home is all shut up and his truck's still outside. At first that's a relief, but no, fuck, wait, Duke thinks, Dwight should be out. It's way too late for go-to people like Dwight to still be bumming around at home, something's got to be wrong...
It's entirely possible that creeping around trying to see through the windows will provide the excuse Dwight's looking for to shoot him as an intruder. Duke knows he's being (almost) the dumbest fuck he's ever been in his life as he peers his head up over the window, sort of waiting to see Dwight flaked out on the sofa hugging a bottle.
He yelps and falls backward when Dwight's head pokes up on the other side of the glass.
His reflexes are sluggish from the night in a cell with no sleep, and maybe also from Nathan's punch. He's still picking himself up when Dwight rounds the side of the house, his face bleak and his strides long.
Nathan had his shot. Dwight's turn to punch his lights out?
"What are you doing here?" Dwight demands. His voice sounds like there's something up with his throat, and his eyes look... less red than could be accounted for by Nathan's punches, because Nathan's not that much of a reed, and if Nathan had scored there, Duke would expect there to be a mark, not just that sort of reddish, puffy... Ooookay, maybe he's seeing why Garland let Dwight get off scott free last night.
Duke takes his life in his hands and stands his ground. "...Apologizing," he gulps.
Dwight barks something like a laugh. He points at Duke's face. "Nathan, huh?"
"How'd you guess?" That's not what Duke wants to talk about, but before he can move things on, Dwight adds--
"He was here."
"Nathan was here?" Duke repeats stupidly. Fuck, oh fuck.
Is he buried out back?
Apparently he said that aloud. Dwight laughs again, though it's still a crappy attempt at it. He corrects, "Last night. He was here after he sprung himself from the hospital -- midnight, give or take." He adds, consideringly, "Audrey was here too."
So no violence, then. Probably. Duke lets out a long breath he'd not realised he was holding. "Okay. Good. Great. So you two... You talked things out. Are we talking some kind of time-share arrangement, or the both of you heading off to Aruba to fuck each other, or--" That's not what he means to say, either. He needs a zip on his goddamn mouth.
"Said he had to work with me. He apologized. Which considering it's not his fault..." Dwight looks at Duke balefully, and there's pain and then some underneath that glare. "Not like we were advertising what we were doing or, you know, publicly dating." That's a sourness that has nothing to do with last night. He shakes his head. "No, I'll cop to the fight. Shouldn't have started it. The rest--" Duke already knows, yeah, where the blame for that lies.
He shoots off his mouth anyway. "Yeah. Well, Nathan could also have stopped throwing punches." Nathan who's a cop and should know better, and never, ever, ever fucking does. "Sounds like you got things sorted out, anyway."
"He's pissed off about his dad. So am I, point of fact. He shouldn't ought to have found out like that." Shit, Duke thinks, but that's got to work out, right? Garland's not going to be that guy who holds it against Nathan forever that he's gay, or intermittently gay, whatever Nathan actually is. Not forever. He's going to get over it, right? It may even be more because of the Duke part than the gay part, because Garland's never been remotely a fan anyway. But Dwight's moving on. "Nathan said have at it. A clear run."
He waits to see how Duke takes that.
"And you're... trying to decide if you want that," Duke hazards. "With a cheating, lying scumbag like me." He groans. "Look, the thing with Nathan, it's -- it's been going on for years, it was going on when we were teenagers, it jumped right back on when I came back to town, even when we weren't even talking civil, and I know that's -- okay, fucked up -- but it's not--"
"I'm trying to decide if you want it," Dwight interrupts.
What? Words won't come, not even smart-assed ones. Dwight can stand there and say that? And Duke is standing there, shaking his head, looking for a response... Dwight starts to turn, to head back around to his front door.
"Fuck! No! I didn't mean--!" Duke blurts, thinking back over what he said about Nathan wildly. "Listen." His hands are on Dwight's shoulders and he's totally gonna get punched into the next street. "I really regret not telling Nathan right at the start that we couldn't do our thing anymore. That I'd started something serious. Nathan is just a thing that happens, I swear no more than half a dozen times since we started dating. And you try telling Nathan 'No' before he's on you. The guy is -- He is fucking insatiable for a guy with no nerve end--"
Dwight's looking at him with judgement.
"All right, that's not what you want to hear." Duke slumped. His hand which is shortly going to be broken is still on Dwight's shoulder. "I'm a dick. I fucked up, and I will do better, I swear. Nathan's over."
"Because he gave you no choice. I heard that from him." Dwight moves to shrug Duke off, but doesn't quite.
"You're the choice," Duke says quickly. "You were always the choice. Think I'm going to look into the future and think about settling down steady with Nathan?" Like Nathan ever goes for that-- but he bites his tongue hard. "Please." He clutches his hands in Dwight's clothes. "Give me a chance."
"You're sure." Dwight's voice is still a bit flat, his attitude still shy of making it a question. "People know about us now. It's not going to be as easy."
Duke takes a shaky breath. "Yeah, well. That'll just make it easier to do that thing you want anyway. Dating steady. We're already saved the tortuous coming out part, with the whole town talking about me and you and Nathan over breakfast."
For a full thirty seconds they stand in silence, Dwight tapping a hand against his own thigh, face unreadable, before he reaches up to finally touch Duke back, sealing his grip over the wrist of Duke's clutching hand. "Breakfast, huh? You eaten?"
Duke lets out that last breath. A few bright patches float in his vision. "I could eat."
"I guess you should come on in, then."
...It's like the world suddenly starts moving forward again. It makes him stagger a bit.
Might be it's just the oxygen deprivation responsible for the feeling that he could faint right there on the spot.
END
TITLE: The Choice
AUTHOR: roseveare
RATING: M
PAIRING: Duke Crocker/Nathan Wuornos, Duke Crocker/Dwight Hendrickson
LENGTH: 4,800 words
SUMMARY: Sleeping with the town fixer and the Chief's son was a sweet deal for Duke... until they both found out, along with the Chief and just about everyone else in Haven. Written for dvioletta in Troubled Tales 2015.
NOTES: This is not my usual sort of subject matter, but for some reason this prompt which was pretty much the whole plotline giftwrapped kept coming back to me and one day did a takeover of my brain. I was supposed to be working when the majority of it was written straight through in one morning.
NOTES #2: This is set in some AU where Garland is still around by the time Dwight comes to Our Heroes' attention, otherwise around ~mid season 2.
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, no profit, yadda, yadda, yadda.
The Choice
It's fortunate that Laverne knows exactly when to overstep her authority and call senior members of Haven Police Department at home to drag them in to deal with minor infringements. Because Laverne has such discretion, it's Garland and Audrey who take the call out to deal with the disturbance on the marina, where Nathan, the Chief's son and fellow officer, and Dwight Hendrickson, town handyman and Trouble-Cleaner, are fighting.
Each other. There's property damage.
Duke's there. It's all happening not far from his boat, so that part's not surprising. What's surprising is that he's not trying to drag Dwight off Nathan, or -- probably the easier route -- Nathan off Dwight, he's just standing there like a dope doing absolutely nothing.
"Duke!" Audrey yells at him with a certain amount of rage, because she expects better. He starts and blinks at her, and for a moment his eyes leave the fighting pair -- aaaand Audrey's are drawn right back to them, because somehow, Nathan just almost put Dwight through the side of one of the fishing store sheds, and Dwight's retaliating move is to kind of hurl his whole body into Nathan like some sort of kamikaze battering ram and, oh crap, that looks like it broke ribs. Not that Nathan cares. Audrey forgets about Duke and just focuses on running from her car to the fighting men.
"You get Nathan, I'll get Dwight!" Garland wheezes, and uh-huh, he's got that right.
Nathan's in a rage the likes of which she's never seen, but Audrey cheats, getting inside his reach and then grabbing his face with both hands. Feeling kind of stones him, like it always does, and he makes a few token pushes to get beyond her, but she's broken whatever spell started this violence. He's looking at her, his eyes hurt and dazed. His face is bleeding from a split welt on his cheek and there's blood on his mouth. Given Dwight's moves and his weight, she dreads to think of what damage is lurking unseen beneath his clothes. She belatedly wonders if her touch is making him feel it, but he isn’t trying to get away from her.
"What the fuck, Nathan?" she asks him.
Garland's growling at Dwight, who's yelling things she'd never imagined coming out of Dwight's mouth, who’s always so calm, so in control. "I'll fucking kill you!" and "You son of a bitch!" -- Garland taps him a short, sharp punch in the jaw for that one -- and something that sounds like "Dirty cheating bastard!" that doesn't make much sense to Audrey at the time. Garland's doing amazingly managing to pin Dwight, not just for an old guy but for anyone. Nathan was pissed, but Dwight’s like some angry demon.
She can't imagine why Nathan would dream he could go up against the guy normally, but like this?
"Yeah," Nathan grunts, answering the almost rhetorical question she'd pretty much forgotten she'd asked. "Why the fuck? covers it." He's staring past Dwight, to Duke.
"Nathan!" Garland barks, still struggling to contain Dwight. He's probably fortunate that Dwight's been hit enough times he's sort of punch-drunk and his balance is shot, or maybe he's just tired himself out punching Nathan. "You start speaking sense right now and tell me what the hell happened down here!"
Nathan subsides in Audrey's grip enough that she feels confident letting go of him, and then sits on the floor, as unfelt damage abruptly catches up. His eyes dart around and he looks at Garland, then avoids looking at Garland, and frankly he starts looking absolutely freaking terrified.
There's a small collection of onlookers gathered, the sort of happy local boys that are usually hanging around the marina at ten in the evening, and some of them are clearly very drunk but all of them are very entertained. "Y'see--" one guy starts, chortling and spraying from his voluminous beard. "From the kinda things these two were yelling, we got a pretty neat picture of Crocker's here 'relationship issues' all around..." He airquotes with dirty fingers and dissolves into snickers.
Duke? What does Duke have to do with this? Audrey stares at him blankly. Finds him horrified and... trying to sneak off back into the Cape Rouge. "Duke!" she snaps.
He freezes guiltily. Another dock man who looks like he was born in the nineteen hundreds raises a finger and wheezes asthmatically as he variously gesticulates between and about the three men. "I heard that this one--" Duke "--fucked this one--" Nathan "--and that one--" Dwight "--walked in on it, an' 'pparently that's real bad, 'cause that one's been fucking this one for four months straight--" Duke and Dwight, this time "--an' it's fucking Romeo and Juliet and over again..." He hoots with laughter. "Romeo and Julian."
Audrey gapes, absolutely stunned. It's about all she can do to turn to Nathan for some kind of... She was hoping denial, but his expression says not. Also, he's so boiling red it looks like he's about to have a stroke. "Uh, deep breaths," she manages to croak out, feeling like she needs a few of those herself. She kneels down and puts her hand on Nathan's shoulder and he grabs her wrist.
"God, I'm so stupid," he groans, miserably. Garland's looking at him with this... this face that's just awful, that Audrey would not want to be on the receiving end of. And apparently Nathan's gay, or gay enough to have fucked Duke, and if his dad didn't know that before, he knows it now. If he did know it before, maybe it's just the Duke part, because Garland sure as hell does not like Crocker. No sir.
"Get him to hospital," Garland says tightly. "He'll need goddamn x-rays. Needs his fool head examining either way. Get him to the hospital and take care of him for me, Parker." He shifts his glare to the other two men. Duke's taken a few steps, and he's taken them at least sort of more towards the direction of Dwight. Nathan notices this, and, wow, Nathan's eyes go bitter and nasty and he vibrates under Audrey's fingers and she sucks in air to tell him sharply, "No, Nathan."
"Get him the fuck out of here," Garland says again, and there's fire in his face as he looks at Duke, and Audrey's not wholly sure what he thinks of Dwight's part here.
She wants to know what happened and why and how and what's going to happen next because, whoa. And she also wants to make sure that Duke comes out of this intact, with the way Garland looks right now. But the Chief's right in that Nathan's got to be harbouring injuries of some kind after taking on the man-mountain. So Audrey reluctantly exits the drama to drag her partner off to hospital and get x-rayed all the broken bones that Nathan doesn't care about.
***
"Police in this town are biased as fuck!" Duke hollers as the door clangs shut, still trying to reason with the two officers on night duty that Garland handed him over to, like dirty laundry, with an expression painted in absolute disgust. He tries to grab hold of them through the bars, but then they're out of reach -- turning briefly, one of them waving a dismissive hand over his shoulder as he snorts. Garland didn't even rate Duke enough to walk down to the goddamn cell. "You hear me! You better hear me! Public disturbance?! I was not fighting! I did not fight! I was an innocent bystander! I got rights--"
They're already gone. And Duke's left in a cell for the night, and man he's depressed, he's miserable. He had a good thing. Two good things. Or one good thing and one messed up, occasional, really mind-blowingly hot thing, and really, really he should have made a goddamn choice before now, but he didn't and now he's lost both of them. And it's too late to realise that he and Nathan, that was never, ever going to work as any real thing and he should have let go of it. But he definitely owes Nathan a fucking apology.
--Or he would if Nathan hadn't decided to be a crazy man and suicidal to boot and attack Dwight.
Or attack Dwight back, and in fairness, Nathan's kind of... you couldn't really expect anything from Nathan other than what he did, because if you push Nathan, it's the surest thing in the universe he's going to haul off and push back. More staggering by far is that Dwight was doing the pushing.
Duke's never seen Dwight like that. Terrifying. Terrifying. He hopes like hell he’s alright.
Duke knew when he started hooking up with Dwight -- and it was just a few drinks at first, just friendly guy stuff until he got the hints that Dwight was up for more -- that this guy had a huge, gaping loneliness in him, and a hurt that went deep, that was something you did not screw around with. He knew that, and he's scared now that he's hurt Dwight even more deeply, that he won't get a second chance. Maybe he doesn't deserve one.
It’s not that Nathan doesn't carry his own damage, but Nathan's not looking for forever and always. Nathan doesn't even think with his brain half the time, when their blood's up and an argument turns into something, which is pretty much the way it always goes... and to think Nathan wonders why Duke's always trying so hard to twist the knife, to get under his skin.
Nathan being an idiot is no good reason to let himself go the same way, but the problem is he never could resist Nathan, who's hotter than ever when he's mad, and doesn't ask permission; Duke'll just find himself staggering and falling back, hitting and clinging to the nearest object while Nathan's dragging his pants down, arms clamped around his knees, swallowing Duke like it's just upping the stakes in their fight... and how could Duke be expected to resist that? He'd have to be superhuman to step back and tell Nathan to back the hell off at that point.
He’s had Nathan rough and raw, and in ways he can’t imagine fucking anyone else, things he’d never want to do with Dwight. Mostly on the Cape Rouge but in some damned weird other places besides. It’s Nathan that initiates, always, but Duke can’t claim he resists or that it isn’t like all his Christmasses come at once.
Dwight’s different. Dwight’s gentle and considerate and always wants dinner or a movie or conversation or something first. It never starts with the sex, the whole thing started with the companionship, and it’s nothing Duke’s ever had before with another guy. He knows Dwight wants more… has known it all along, but he’s been scared to jump into that, kind of been on a rut where he’s pretending that they can just keep going as they are and Dwight won’t ever push it further and deliver him some kind of ultimatum if he just pretends that elephant isn’t there.
Dwight wants family.
Nathan wants to feel something, even if he can’t feel.
Duke groans and collapses on the bench in the cell, leans back and feels like he should have been punched in the head. He sucks. Garland called it right tossing him in the cell. Both the guys he loves are hurting, and it's his fault.
Had to be the Chief's son, too, didn't it? He had to fuck Nathan, and now Garland knows and, Christ, the guy never liked him in the first place. He has no clue how long Garland Wuornos intends to keep him here. He could throw away the key and trump up whatever charges he wants. Duke could be malingering here until he rots. Not that he doesn't deserve what he gets, but suddenly the thought that it's Garland who's the law in this town and Garland who exercises all the control over his punishment is absolutely fucking terrifying.
He's just about confident that it's not going to go as far as a short, late journey out of town to a shallow grave in the woods, because Garland's not that guy. But other than that? Just about anything is an open possibility. Might as well stop worrying about Dwight. He'll be a Shawshank lifer or at the very least run out of town by this time tomorrow.
***
He's jarred out of his moping and the sort of miserable trance he's drifted into, slumped upright on the bench, by the rattling at the door. Duke jerks his chin up and--
Nathan Wuornos viewed through the inside of prison cell bars. Joy. Not an unfamiliar sight by any means. The pissed off look on his face has simmered down to about normal, though it's lacking the patina of amusement that usually accompanies it in this situation, when Nathan is on the outside of the bars trying not to smirk and Duke is in a cell because Nathan arrested him for something Nathan damn well knows he did not do. Or knows he can’t prove he did but feels like watching him sit in a cell for a while anyway.
He blinks dozily at Nathan's face, which has been redecorated in shades of black and red over one cheek and almost all his jaw. "You break that?" Duke asks, his curiosity automatically finding voice before his brain kicks in.
Also before he registers that Nathan is actually opening the door.
His instinct is to cringe up on to the seat, pulling his legs in, maybe even heading for standing up on the bench, which is a lousy escape plan for the inevitable oncoming exercise of police brutality. But Nathan snorts at him and asks, like he thinks Duke's plain lost his mind, "What are you doing? And no, it's not broken. Nothing's broken but a couple of ribs -- nice going, Duke. You asshole."
What's startling is he doesn't sound particularly resentful and he doesn't sound particularly surprised. He's definitely back to his usual sour simmer. "You're not--" Duke starts. Then he gets it.
"Why in the blazing hell should I be surprised?" Nathan asks. "If there'd been time to think before Dwight started throwing fists around, I'd have-- Hell, I'd probably have hit you. Except that usually ends in sex, which would be really fucking appropriate in this situation." He slams the door back hard enough that it bounces off the bars, and steps back, leaving a clear run at the open door for Duke. "Get the fuck out of here. And in case you wondered, we're done."
Duke stands up. Feels like his legs have gone numb. Nathan's broken up with him. Nathan doesn't want--
Hell, Nathan never wanted him, except when they were arguing. Feels like all the fun part has gone out of this argument, right now. Maybe that heat's been sapped for good.
"I never trusted you," Nathan says. "Ever. For the record."
"Why--" Duke begins. He can't seem to muster words or sense. Damn, he loves Nathan, he loves Nathan like breathing, but they're like fighting dogs. Never going to settle. "Nate. Why are you doing this?" He sent Nathan to hospital, unleashed Dwight's fucking freaky Thunder-God wrath on him, and now Nathan is standing outside the cell that his father put Duke in, holding open the door and telling him to piss off.
"I'm doing this for the Chief, not you. He's not got a leg to stand on arresting you and throwing you in here. Because his son was involved with a guy? Come on! People talk. He'll realise it when he calms down. And if you even think of making a stink about that, I will come after you."
Garland might not have had a shallow grave in mind, but Duke wouldn't put it beyond Nathan, with that look on his face and that tone in his voice.
"Nathan," Duke says, softly. "I wouldn't go after your dad. This whole disaster is my fault. You let me out of here, I'm gone." It's not going to go easy on Nathan, either, the aftermath of this with the whole town talking, spreading far and wide the fact that Nathan's into guys.
Nathan pulls a face, surprising him. "You don't have to leave town, Duke. Just get the fuck out of my face and keep away from the Chief for, uh, the next decade."
Duke's sidling out of the door and around, and realising with a certain pang that the reason Nathan's not as pissed as he should be is because he never categorized their relationship beyond a certain way. Or at least he's just thinking that when Nathan's fist rises out of nowhere and slams into the side of his face, and then Duke's moving sideways in space and the wall slams the other side of his face and ow, ow, OW!
"Should have done that to start with," Nathan growls, and drags Duke upright by his nearest arm as he starts sliding down the wall, the world all off balance from the force of that punch. Nathan shakes him, and sets him on his feet, arms sort of held out to catch him if he starts to fall again, but he wavers and manages to achieve a moderately upright status for enough time that Nathan backs off. "Come on. You're walking out of here."
It's 6AM according to the clock on the wall. Duke succeeds at putting one foot in front of the other down long corridors, Nathan's presence an ache at his back, a hollow footstep in his wake, a sour shadow. Funny thing is that he really gets this feeling that there's nothing here that's permanently broken. Except that maybe they won't punch each other and fight so much, now it's no longer a pretext for ending up having sex.
"Word in your ear," Nathan adds, speaking up as they're standing in the lobby in front of the main doors, as Duke's about to be released into the wild again, and still kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop, thinking this can't be it. "I am not the part of this mess that you need to worry about." He waits a bit, then adds, "It's not Garland either. Well. I'd worry about Garland, too. Just... seriously, stay out of his way. Til about Christmas 2030."
***
He knows he screwed up unbelievably when he continued with Nathan in the crazy, fucked-up, sporadic way they'd always done whatever they would actually call the Thing they had that wasn't a Relationship, rather than telling Nathan he'd started something steady and serious with Dwight. It's not Nathan's fault, he was even there first, and then Duke had to go and make him the other guy.
Duke supposes he always shrugged it off, figured that since he didn't ever know when it would happen again, or even if it would happen again, there was no need for a real conversation or big declaration. 'Next' time, sure, he'd tell Nathan they were quits. But with Nathan he was always already in the middle of having his cock sucked or being pinned to the deck before he realised it was the next time at all.
So it is Nathan's fault, then, for being such a no-holds-barred blaze of physical passion whenever anger pushes the buttons that pleasurable sensation can't. It's Nathan's damn fault for holding all his conversations with his body instead of... well, honestly his mouth tends to get in on the action a lot, too, even if words don't. Goddamn Nathan.
No matter how much Duke rages at Nathan in his head, that won't change the fact Duke still has to show up and try to fix things with Dwight.
Because. Because that's the choice. Nathan, if anything, let him off easy. Made it clear they were over, pushed him to go and do what he needed to do.
It's 8AM by the time he gets to Dwight's place. He asked Nathan in front of the police station if there was any chance of a lift... since they were being so surprisingly amicable about this, and all. But Nathan laughed at him and turned his back, so he's on foot. Goddamn Nathan. It's about the same distance to the marina as to Dwight's small, rural house, but if he'd gone to the marina first he could've been sure of having his truck and not stuck walking back when Dwight tells him to fuck off. Seems he's not thinking straight.
All he can think is, get to Dwight and fix this. Explain it, because no such explaining happened before -- Dwight found him and Nathan just finishing off, which did mean, yeah, less humiliating than mid-session, because it was just a really aggressive kiss Dwight actually saw, poor guy turning up with a bottle of wine and a bag of food to surprise him on the Rouge. But the state of their clothes still made it clear what they'd been doing.
Duke doesn't know what he expects turning up like this. Dwight's an active guy, bound to be up by eight, right? He even thinks he might have missed him, that he's out covering up after Troubles by now, for sure. Dwight was almost certainly less beat up than Nathan, who is the biggest idiot on the planet for not turning and running for his scrawny fucking life when he saw the juggernaut coming at him with that expression of murder. Dwight clearly went home last night, took it out on some furniture or some manly, aggressive midnight wood-chopping in the yard, or possibly beat the crap out of that punching bag in his shed, then he turned in and he's just fine today.
The idea that Dwight might be heading out makes Duke speed up his walk in anxiety. He can't miss Dwight. He needs to talk this out now.
Dwight's home is all shut up and his truck's still outside. At first that's a relief, but no, fuck, wait, Duke thinks, Dwight should be out. It's way too late for go-to people like Dwight to still be bumming around at home, something's got to be wrong...
It's entirely possible that creeping around trying to see through the windows will provide the excuse Dwight's looking for to shoot him as an intruder. Duke knows he's being (almost) the dumbest fuck he's ever been in his life as he peers his head up over the window, sort of waiting to see Dwight flaked out on the sofa hugging a bottle.
He yelps and falls backward when Dwight's head pokes up on the other side of the glass.
His reflexes are sluggish from the night in a cell with no sleep, and maybe also from Nathan's punch. He's still picking himself up when Dwight rounds the side of the house, his face bleak and his strides long.
Nathan had his shot. Dwight's turn to punch his lights out?
"What are you doing here?" Dwight demands. His voice sounds like there's something up with his throat, and his eyes look... less red than could be accounted for by Nathan's punches, because Nathan's not that much of a reed, and if Nathan had scored there, Duke would expect there to be a mark, not just that sort of reddish, puffy... Ooookay, maybe he's seeing why Garland let Dwight get off scott free last night.
Duke takes his life in his hands and stands his ground. "...Apologizing," he gulps.
Dwight barks something like a laugh. He points at Duke's face. "Nathan, huh?"
"How'd you guess?" That's not what Duke wants to talk about, but before he can move things on, Dwight adds--
"He was here."
"Nathan was here?" Duke repeats stupidly. Fuck, oh fuck.
Is he buried out back?
Apparently he said that aloud. Dwight laughs again, though it's still a crappy attempt at it. He corrects, "Last night. He was here after he sprung himself from the hospital -- midnight, give or take." He adds, consideringly, "Audrey was here too."
So no violence, then. Probably. Duke lets out a long breath he'd not realised he was holding. "Okay. Good. Great. So you two... You talked things out. Are we talking some kind of time-share arrangement, or the both of you heading off to Aruba to fuck each other, or--" That's not what he means to say, either. He needs a zip on his goddamn mouth.
"Said he had to work with me. He apologized. Which considering it's not his fault..." Dwight looks at Duke balefully, and there's pain and then some underneath that glare. "Not like we were advertising what we were doing or, you know, publicly dating." That's a sourness that has nothing to do with last night. He shakes his head. "No, I'll cop to the fight. Shouldn't have started it. The rest--" Duke already knows, yeah, where the blame for that lies.
He shoots off his mouth anyway. "Yeah. Well, Nathan could also have stopped throwing punches." Nathan who's a cop and should know better, and never, ever, ever fucking does. "Sounds like you got things sorted out, anyway."
"He's pissed off about his dad. So am I, point of fact. He shouldn't ought to have found out like that." Shit, Duke thinks, but that's got to work out, right? Garland's not going to be that guy who holds it against Nathan forever that he's gay, or intermittently gay, whatever Nathan actually is. Not forever. He's going to get over it, right? It may even be more because of the Duke part than the gay part, because Garland's never been remotely a fan anyway. But Dwight's moving on. "Nathan said have at it. A clear run."
He waits to see how Duke takes that.
"And you're... trying to decide if you want that," Duke hazards. "With a cheating, lying scumbag like me." He groans. "Look, the thing with Nathan, it's -- it's been going on for years, it was going on when we were teenagers, it jumped right back on when I came back to town, even when we weren't even talking civil, and I know that's -- okay, fucked up -- but it's not--"
"I'm trying to decide if you want it," Dwight interrupts.
What? Words won't come, not even smart-assed ones. Dwight can stand there and say that? And Duke is standing there, shaking his head, looking for a response... Dwight starts to turn, to head back around to his front door.
"Fuck! No! I didn't mean--!" Duke blurts, thinking back over what he said about Nathan wildly. "Listen." His hands are on Dwight's shoulders and he's totally gonna get punched into the next street. "I really regret not telling Nathan right at the start that we couldn't do our thing anymore. That I'd started something serious. Nathan is just a thing that happens, I swear no more than half a dozen times since we started dating. And you try telling Nathan 'No' before he's on you. The guy is -- He is fucking insatiable for a guy with no nerve end--"
Dwight's looking at him with judgement.
"All right, that's not what you want to hear." Duke slumped. His hand which is shortly going to be broken is still on Dwight's shoulder. "I'm a dick. I fucked up, and I will do better, I swear. Nathan's over."
"Because he gave you no choice. I heard that from him." Dwight moves to shrug Duke off, but doesn't quite.
"You're the choice," Duke says quickly. "You were always the choice. Think I'm going to look into the future and think about settling down steady with Nathan?" Like Nathan ever goes for that-- but he bites his tongue hard. "Please." He clutches his hands in Dwight's clothes. "Give me a chance."
"You're sure." Dwight's voice is still a bit flat, his attitude still shy of making it a question. "People know about us now. It's not going to be as easy."
Duke takes a shaky breath. "Yeah, well. That'll just make it easier to do that thing you want anyway. Dating steady. We're already saved the tortuous coming out part, with the whole town talking about me and you and Nathan over breakfast."
For a full thirty seconds they stand in silence, Dwight tapping a hand against his own thigh, face unreadable, before he reaches up to finally touch Duke back, sealing his grip over the wrist of Duke's clutching hand. "Breakfast, huh? You eaten?"
Duke lets out that last breath. A few bright patches float in his vision. "I could eat."
"I guess you should come on in, then."
...It's like the world suddenly starts moving forward again. It makes him stagger a bit.
Might be it's just the oxygen deprivation responsible for the feeling that he could faint right there on the spot.
END