FIC: [Haven} Grin and Bare It, Audrey/Duke/Nathan (OT3)
Audrey wasn't sure how she was supposed to keep it a secret that this Trouble had its benefits. She was sure, as her eyes kept darting to each of the men, that there was no secret there at all.
"Come on, think, Nathan." They were sitting in the Bronco, Nathan with a road map over his lap, Duke sprawled legs-wide and proud. "Who did you see this morning that might have a Trouble like this? Who was also in the park?"
Nathan leaned back against the headrest and planted both hands over his face. His movements were big and loose and relaxed in the kind of way that came from just being too exhausted with everything. Audrey didn't exactly like to say that there was something sexier about seeing him without every muscle tense and wound up, but... there was. "Ngh... Marion's Troubled already... saw the Pattersons, can't be them... and Hilda and Barney..." Whoever they were, the thought of it made him snort with laughter. "Wait... Wait, there was the baby."
"Which baby?" Audrey pounced on that excitedly.
"Toddler... no, maybe older, three or four. Acted younger. Non-verbal. Mother couldn't control him and was getting mad because he... he kept pulling at.... kept pulling at his clothes!" Nathan uncovered his eyes and sat up sharply. "They were out in the street... kid in a stroller... as I came up to the station with the coffees this morning."
Audrey thought she remembered that kid, though she hadn't seen him earlier in the morning. "Rebecca tried to put a cardigan on a kid like that, and he tossed it away again, so she gave it to someone else. When we sent them home from the park, that kid was laughing like he was literally the only person who enjoyed being naked." She threw a grin over her shoulder and amended. "Well, there's Duke. He enjoys being naked."
"It's not 'enjoying' so much as I appreciate the natural human condition and I know there's nothing wrong with the sight of skin, Audrey. I prefer it in private... with a bit of mood music... and a good wine... How about you both?"
Audrey raised her eyebrows at him. "Not the time, Duke."
"I prefer it in private," Nathan said.
"And you're both lovely," Duke added, with a wicked gleam. "Though I could stand to see a bit more flesh from you, Audrey Parker."
"Duke," Nathan said warningly.
"I am just pushing for equality and pointing out the inherent unfairness..." He gestured to Nathan's long, nude form, but it seemed Nathan was all tapped out on reacting.
"Okay, well, I'll admit it hasn't been too much of a hardship for me," Audrey said. "Except for the part where it's been running us ragged all day. If not for that, the view... would be allowed to stick around as acceptable."
Duke made a 'you see' gesture at Nathan, who shot her a betrayed glance.
"The kid," Nathan said, with dour focus.
"Yeah..." Audrey winced. "I was not so much taking names and addresses. I don't suppose you have any idea where they might live?"
"I don't know them," Nathan said. "But they left on foot with the stroller not much more than ten minutes ago." He turned back and forth a few times, gauging, then pointed. "That way. If we drive around we might just catch them."
"Alright!" Duke cheered, bouncing his fist off the back of Nathan's seat. "Let's hear it for the Naked Detective!"
Nathan ignored him and turned the key in the engine. He pulled out and headed down the street, careful to avoid any semi-clad stragglers on the way. Audrey tried valiantly to focus on scanning the people on the street and not on the two fine examples of the male body sitting within arm's reach.
They happened across the woman with the too-old child in the stroller after five minutes driving. Nathan drew the Bronco up alongside her for Audrey to lean out of the window and display her badge. "Excuse me! Ma'am!"
The woman looked at the three of them and her face turned even redder. She was wearing a picnic blanket affixed with a safety pin, and had been walking in quick steps with a single-minded purpose. Her happily naked child giggled and squirmed and poked at his toes.
"Oh, no, no," the woman said. "If I need to give a statement about... that..." she shuddered "...back there, then I'll come in to the station to do it later. Can't you see I need to change?" She scowled at Nathan, who tried to cover up further in the driver's seat under the force of her gaze. "And clearly, officer, so do you."
"He's fine," Audrey said, and tried to control her urge to smile at the double meaning. "Let him be. I don't need an official statement, but I do need to know if this is the first time this has happened to you today."
The woman looked horrified. "How could you guess that? It's -- I was only glad I'd already been clothes shopping! And then, then the second time, to replace -- I was in the changing room, thank goodness. But how... how did you know? I hear what they say about this town! They can do this to you on purpose! Do you know who's doing this?!"
Audrey got out of the car, trying to place her body to shield the view of Nathan. "I'm sorry, but I'm pretty sure I've just found Patient Zero." She glanced behind her and with a kind of double-take, left the door open, because Nathan was leaning over rather than hiding away.
"I helped you carry the stroller down the steps outside Maxine's, this morning."
The woman's lips tightened, whatever gratitude she'd had for the assistance clearly having evaporated in this situation. "I remember."
"Yeah?" Duke, leaning out of his window at the back, made it evident he didn't appreciate her lack of appreciation. "Well, Nathan here has been paying for his helpful attitude with guerilla attacks of striptease all day, so you'd better remember."
"I'm not the one doing this." The woman tightened her grip on the handles of the stroller and started to pull off. "My family aren't..."
Audrey stepped on the nearest wheel and halted progress, and pointed wordlessly at the child.
"No." It was almost a moan. "Don't say he's Troubled as well..."
"As well?" Duke asked. He wound the window down further and leaned right out, displaying all his bare chest and making faces at the toddler, who stuck his foot in his mouth a blew a huge raspberry around it, then tried to repeat the sound as hard and loud and long as possible, several times in succession.
"Alfie's autistic.... and he doesn't like anything." Her face blanked. "He doesn't like wearing clothes properly. He hates seams. They drive him wild. He screams and scratches and it's... unbelievable. Jack always lets him wear everything inside-out. I tell him and tell him that we need to teach him to act more normal, but I got him back this morning and sure enough, everything was on backwards again. Jack let him have his own way all week." She looked sick, abruptly.
"Lady," Duke said, "I think if you want to wear clothes normally again, you're gonna have to let your kid wear his clothes however the hell he likes."
"I hate to break it to you," Audrey said, not hating it at all, but managing to keep the grin from her face, "but I think Duke's right. I think once Alfie realises he's not going to be put back into things that itch and hurt and that..." She raised her eyebrows at Duke and Nathan. "That he feels are attacking him all the time. Well, then this problem will clear up completely."
"Can I suggest you go home and demonstrate that with some haste," Nathan added, with a particularly heartfelt lack of any humour whatsoever.
Audrey took the woman's name and address before they parted ways, then Nathan drove them back to the police station. He parked, but didn't move from the driver's seat, just looked across at the steps up to the entrance and declared, "I'm not going back in."
Audrey looked them both over -- any excuse -- and nodded. The thrift shop had been closed due to a stock crisis and they had not passed anywhere else they could pick up spare clothes. "I'll go. You both stay here." She couldn't really inflict this on the rest of the police station, she thought. Women -- and a few men -- would have meltdowns. It was far safer if she handled it herself.
She went in and checked in with Laverne, catching up on the rest of the crisis. No-one had been seriously hurt in the Great Undressing, and the incidents around town seemed to have lulled. It was anyone's guess whether that was just a lull in the pattern or if Liz Graves had somehow made it home and managed to calm down her child already. But Audrey thought it more likely the former because Liz Graves had not been very calming.
Probably the station could still use their presence, but on balance, Nathan's day had been particularly straining and he was just as much a victim of this as the people they'd been sending home with warnings to stay in. Anyway, now it was just a matter of mopping up the tail end of things until the Trouble was fixed at source. Audrey made a decision. "I'm going to take Nathan home. Call us if anyone starts shooting or dying, but I think leave the non-urgent stuff in other hands?" She smiled a winning smile.
"Okay, poppet," Laverne said. "You go see that boy's okay. He always was a shy one." There was a bit of a knowing gleam in her eye.
"I," Audrey said, with a great emphasis on her purely altruistic commitment in this course of action, "will do that. Yes."
Laverne snorted, and Audrey turned and walked briskly out of the station, smiling to herself.
***
They went to the Gull.
"Why are we here first?" Nathan implored -- at least somewhat half-hearted given he had already caved to pressure and driven them there. "You're covered. Duke or I could at least lend each other clothes, and you a shirt."
"I wasn't planning on doing much that involved needing a change of clothes," Audrey mused. "In fact, I was considering granting Duke his wish... behind closed doors." She shifted her eyes back to garner the reactions of both of them, in turn. "You know... even out the situation?" She presumed that she had not read that scene wrong, in the park, but then they were probably all in a rather surreal brain-space by now and it could be that the giddy, chanting voice in the back of her brain telling her she could simply take both of these different men without the agony of choice (and they could have each other) was a voice that Should Not Be Listened To.
If the whispering doubts were the voice of common sense, though, she had little use for it.
"Strictly speaking, that would still not be even," Duke said, like he doggedly pursued a gross injustice, "because we -- in public -- aaand I have just caught up and let me rephrase that to 'You have no argument from me, Officer Parker.'"
Nathan looked like he might strangle on his indignation, and she had not, after all, been overly worried on the question of where Duke would stand. When she reached for Nathan, concerned, he made a sharp noise and moved away from her touch. "Not while we're--!"
"He can feel you," Duke leaned between the seats. "I saw that much earlier. Because you're immune to the Troubles, right? Hey, Nathan, exactly how... intense... is it, when you feel her?"
Nathan glared and his complexion glowed.
Audrey hid her mirth behind a cough. She'd only thought she'd already seen every possible shade of red Nathan Wuornos could turn. "You are going to come in and at least... talk... about this? I've seen you both checking each other out today." She tried to stare them into an admission.
"I -- no. What? No."
"You weren't doing that good a job of covering it up," Duke leaned forward and stage-whispered that with his mouth pressed next to Nathan's ear, making him jump and causing a weird squeaky noise to escape his throat. "On either count."
Audrey volunteered with laughing commiseration, "I might have peeked, too. Sorry, Wuornos. For all I knew that was a one time opportunity that I could not possibly allow to slide by."
"You didn't know you'd be bringing him home like a stray... naked... cat," Duke said, smirking and, Audrey thought, no, no, not at all trying to cover up for the fear behind his own eyes by deflecting the attention onto Nathan.
"Two naked strays here, Crocker," Nathan said, sounding like the rejoinder was powered by habit. He shifted uneasily. "Parker. I'll come in and talk," he established with fierce emphasis.
"Well, good. That only leaves the question of whether the two of you naked strays are going to sit in the car and wait for me to come back with blankets, or we all just go for it and streak across the lot on a count of three?"
"Blankets," Nathan said.
Duke was already hauling bare ass out of the car. "Hell with it, it's my parking lot."
"...Screw it," Nathan said, and followed.
The boys were faster, and that meant that Audrey got to watch their butts bounce pleasingly in sync as they sprinted ahead of her, and also that they had to wait quivering in the sea breeze outside on her balcony while she caught up with the keys to unlock the door.
They fell inside, Duke laughing along with Audrey's giggles, and Nathan's expression of shock was so endearing that Audrey caught his shoulder and hugged onto him along with Duke on her other arm, still near-incoherent from laughing, forgetting he'd asked her not to. He sort of melted under her touch, and that was so weird and adorable that the temptation there was to do it more.
"Hey." Duke peeled Nathan from her, though, and picked up his face in both palms. "Stay with us. In all seriousness, we should have the conversation, and not just end up doing this because you're drunk on her touch and high on all the fucked-up-ed-ness of today."
Nathan's face settled back into a scowl as he caught Duke's hands and moved to shove them away. "I'm not compromised or insensible, Duke, I--" He looked at the wrists in the circles of his hands, the closeness of the other man, and the large lump of his Adam's apple made a jump.
"See?" Duke said. "Talk."
Nathan bared his teeth. "I am perfectly able--"
Audrey turned back to them and heaved a steadying breath. The door was shut, and now that she had gone around and closed the drapes, turning on soft lights, the outside could no longer intrude. No more danger of being left naked before the world for any one of them: they had that priviledge all to themselves. "Okay, so we need to talk. We've seen a lot of each other, today, but on the one hand, that was just skin. Intimacy isn't the same as being... stripped, but... we can't say we didn't learn a few things."
"I was looking," Duke said, pushing in closer to Nathan again. "I know you know that much. Were you looking? Or, when I thought that you were looking, was that just for comparison purposes?"
"About that," Nathan said, and even if his cheeks found yet another new shade of red, Audrey grinned, because Nathan Wuornos was actually stepping up to the my-dick-is-bigger debate.
Duke put a finger on his lips. "It's how you use it, Nate. You been using it much at all lately?"
Nathan's face went thunderous.
"You two have been dancing around this forever," Audrey said, pressing up between them, sliding her hand onto Duke's breastbone, but this time remembering to respect the unique sensitivity of Nathan's skin. "You've always wanted him looking at you. I bet that's why you stole his lunches and pulled his hair in school." She flexed her fingernails lightly over Duke's chest, making him shudder. "Isn't it, Mister Crocker?" For the first time that day, Duke pulled out a blush. "Jostle him in the gym showers? Make up excuses to fight, just to get your hands on that booty? Write love poetry under the desk?"
Nathan spluttered.
"Come on," Audrey urged, delighted by the confirmation in both their guilty reactions. "After a day spent around you guys in various stages of undress, you have to know I am a boiling mass of sexual frustration, and my suggestion for the two of you is that we all fix that together. What I need to know is the acceptability of this as a plan?"
Nathan squeezed his eyes shut with a tortured noise. "Trouble. This is a Trouble. Or a... a side effect of... of the naked Trouble."
"If it hadn't been a kid behind the naked Trouble, I might be wondering that." Duke grinned. "But the Trouble was non-sexual, and so, astounding as this may seem, I do believe you stand on the brink of a three-way by virtue of your own peculiar charm, Detective Wuornos." He made a show of shaking his head as if stumped. "How did that happen?"
Nathan said, "Excuse me, Parker. Need to sit down." Before she could say anything, he'd stumbled across to deposit himself on her couch, pulling a throw blanket to cover himself from shoulder to thigh.
Duke threw a shrug back at Audrey, disappointment assailing the edges of his own expression, and went to flop next to Nathan. Audrey felt her hopes dwindling. Duke was game, but she could not... would not... do this without Nathan. And this was not fair, to push upon a Nathan who had already been stripped down and left vulnerable enough by the events of the day.
Duke reached a hand to pat Nathan's knee. Nathan caught it before it could connect and put it down on the cushion between them. The effect was to leaving them holding hands rather than Duke holding Nathan's knee and was... rather surreal. Nathan frowned down at the fingers twined between his.
"We don't have to do anything now," Duke said. "Okay, yeah. Weird place at the moment. It's okay if you're... still feeling a bit... exposed."
"Duke," Nathan said, still looking at their hands with judgment. He shook it off and made a noise through his teeth and pressed-together lips. "If I'm going to be exposed, I guess you might as well be the ones to see it, but... I can't think like this." He pressed his knuckles to his forehead.
"Maybe this is a situation better approached without too much thinking," Audrey suggested, sinking to her knees between them. She rested her elbows on Nathan's blanket, and Duke's thigh, and propped her head on her arms, gazing up at them. "Do you want it, Nathan?"
She could see the indecision and reticence churned in him. She'd seen him stumble helplessly over the prospect of dating one person, and now he was being asked to take on two. "You want this?" he retaliated by asking instead.
"Very much." She swallowed a glib answer. "Maybe it's not... conventional... but what part of our lives is?" She eyed that hand, between them, still connecting the two men.
Nathan said slowly. "It's not... not dull to keep going as we are. As friends. I'm not being--"
Duke moved his hand further up Nathan's arm soothingly. "No, friends is great, Nathan."
Audrey knew that Duke had given up all hope of friends until she had appeared on the scene and re-opened the possibility.
"Friends is great, but I'll take more." She rose up, reaching behind her back, and unclipped her bra and let it fall to the floor. Then she unfastened and dropped her jeans. "Also, I believe I made a promise, and promises should be kept." She stepped out of the jeans, pouting as she had to put some effort into kicking off her shoes.
"Audrey." The protest was mildly shocking, because it came from Duke. Pretty ironic that now she was naked, Duke and Nathan were practically clinging to each other with anxiety. She surely hadn't anticipated complaints from Duke Crocker when she actually embraced his suggestion to level the playing field.
"Guys, chill." She frowned and asked, "Are you afraid that this will just be a one-time event, after all the stresses of today? Or are you afraid that it won't be?"
Duke flinched -- from the first question -- and to her surprise, Nathan answered. "Both. Things -- we're -- it's--" He looked at Duke and his face took on such perplexity. Yet it was Duke he was clinging to, and not her. He grit his teeth and mechanically forced out, as if reluctantly accepting the fact that he did need words, could only do this by coaxing and employing those unfamiliar tools, "Everything will change and the Chief will have apoplexy."
"Considering your relationship with your dad, I'd have thought that counted as a plus," Duke commented.
"Duke's a petty crook, besides."
Duke opened his mouth to object to that, but Nathan shook his head firmly. "No. Too fast. It's not okay, it's not simple, it'll never be just about-- Too much happened today, and Duke's right. I'm sort of high off it in some weird way. I already almost..." He ground his teeth together and said, starkly, "It wouldn't happen in a normal situation. It won't happen if we leave it until tomorrow. I know that."
Audrey winced at the declaration, unadorned and naked.
She nodded and set her hands on her naked hips, dropping her head in resignation. "All right. All right, Nathan." She gave her pile of clothes a nudge with her foot, and felt slightly silly standing in front of them like this now. Still, fair was fair, and this was nothing like what Nathan, in particular, had endured. She let herself accept the idea that nothing was going to happen. They were all just silly and naked and ridiculous together in her apartment, and alcohol hadn't even been involved yet.
Nathan's face relaxed as he fell back, letting tiredness taking over and his body ease now the pressure was off. He'd removed his hands from Duke -- or Duke's hands from him -- but they were still much in each other's space, the way they always seemed comfortable even when they were at odds.
Audrey handed Duke another throw-blanket from her armchair, and padded over to pick her dressing gown up from the bed. She pulled it over her shoulders as she went to the kitchen area. "I'll put on some coffee,"and then we can talk about what we're going to do for dinner, unless you'd rather head home, in which case... I have to go find you something from somewhere to wear."
"Chef's whites, in the kitchens of the Gull," Duke called back. "Whenever they're needed. Don't worry about it."
"I can manage dinner," Nathan said, his voice lighter, cracking with relief. "I go home now, all I'll be thinking about is being in the middle of the police station naked. Or being in the middle of the street naked."
"But you wouldn't be worrying about being with us, naked," Audrey prompted, intently, "would you? Because you'd never have to worry about that with us. You can be yourself with us. You can be... without defences. And it's okay."
"Nothing to worry about on the rest. You're gorgeous, Nathan, and all those people will have been thinking today is 'damn'..." Duke's laugh had a small bitter edge to it, for all that he was trying hard to be comforting, but it was a small one, as he too assimilated how things were going to be, and from the new hope in his eyes, he was far more inclined to value that Nathan had accepted the description of him as friend, unchallenged.
When Audrey turned aside to attend to the coffee, Duke's hand was on Nathan's shoulder again, and she allowed herself to smile. Nathan thought that if it didn't happen now, it wouldn't ever happen. But given he'd specified 'in a normal situation', and this was Haven she hardly thought all their chances were at an end.
...When she turned back, Duke and Nathan were kissing on her couch, and she couldn't help but give a little startled yelp and drop the cup that she was holding. It bounced rather than broke, inasmuch as she cared to notice that as she watched the two men pull apart.
"Okay," Nathan said, rough, with new vigour. "If today is the only time this will happen, maybe I can get behind this happening today." His blanket had mostly deserted, leaving him naked again. Duke's fingers spread stars against his hips and groped further back to cup his ass.
"Nathan," Duke said, clinging like he'd been offered a lifeline. And she'd thought he'd been okay seconds ago. What comfort had been in his eyes then was nothing to the need there now. Widened and dark, they drifted over her, then back to Nathan. "We can take this for a spin tonight, and if it doesn't fit, we will still be us in the morning. All the Trouble-related crap we've all been through together, everything we've seen of each other... Sex is not going to change us in some way we can never come back from. You've seen me aged almost to death. Seen me dying. I've seen you crazy. There are worse ways to be naked than just being unclothed."
"A pact," said Audrey. "If this is the product of tired minds and a stressful day, we can still go back." She saw contradiction in his eyes as he angled his head, and maybe he was right, maybe it never would be the same, but... "Even if I'm wrong, maybe it's worth the risk."
Duke had never bothered to cover up with the blanket she'd given him, and Nathan's blanket wasn't actually doing a lot any more, but Duke watched the reaction in Nathan's eyes as he curled his fingers in it and slowly cast it aside. "No need for this, not with us..."
Nathan rolled up from the couch onto his feet in a smooth, keen move, hands on Duke's arm and elbow and shoulder, taking Duke to lead him to Audrey's bed. Duke seemed to have lost words. He lifted a hand and wove it into Nathan's hair. Audrey drew in breath as Nathan moved in closer to her and his hand and his lips hovered over her skin without touching. His throat jumped. There was liquid in his eyes as he raised them.
She understood. Touching her, he'd be more naked before the two of them than he had been at any stage during the day. His reactions couldn't be expected to be normal, after years spent unfeeling. "This makes you vulnerable," she whispered, "and we'll see it. But that's okay."
Audrey curled her fingers just shy of his, in invitation. Waiting for him to take her hand, Duke took it instead. "Remember in the park, earlier, before I was savagely attacked by my pants? Touch her, Nate. Don't tell me it isn't worth it."
Nathan, of course, never, ever did what Duke told him to.
"...Oh." The low, low groan from him was the sexiest thing Audrey had ever heard, and Duke's hand between their bodies did something that made it lower still. Audrey transferred her grip, stretching her arms to hold them both, and Duke made a noise almost as needful as Nathan's, as he realised that he could and then rose up to kiss Nathan again. Audrey witnessed them feel it and moved in. Nathan fell into the kiss clumsy with the lack of practice and the fact that he still couldn't feel, could only feel her -- and, when they were all three of them touching, apparently Duke.
She moved back; turning, caught up Duke's lips with her own, and Duke Crocker had never had any doubts about his body or his ability to apply it. Audrey asked, "It's what you do with it, huh?" as they finally parted and her lips and belly and toes all tingled from the aftermath of the kiss. It was no wonder Nathan looked so stoned.
"Just tell me what you want me to do with it," Duke purred, and gently tucked a stray strand of her hair back behind her ear. Duke beckoned Nathan in from where he had backed off to recover himself away from the intensity of touch. "How about we have the most fun we can figuring out which parts of this are going to work?"
END
"Come on, think, Nathan." They were sitting in the Bronco, Nathan with a road map over his lap, Duke sprawled legs-wide and proud. "Who did you see this morning that might have a Trouble like this? Who was also in the park?"
Nathan leaned back against the headrest and planted both hands over his face. His movements were big and loose and relaxed in the kind of way that came from just being too exhausted with everything. Audrey didn't exactly like to say that there was something sexier about seeing him without every muscle tense and wound up, but... there was. "Ngh... Marion's Troubled already... saw the Pattersons, can't be them... and Hilda and Barney..." Whoever they were, the thought of it made him snort with laughter. "Wait... Wait, there was the baby."
"Which baby?" Audrey pounced on that excitedly.
"Toddler... no, maybe older, three or four. Acted younger. Non-verbal. Mother couldn't control him and was getting mad because he... he kept pulling at.... kept pulling at his clothes!" Nathan uncovered his eyes and sat up sharply. "They were out in the street... kid in a stroller... as I came up to the station with the coffees this morning."
Audrey thought she remembered that kid, though she hadn't seen him earlier in the morning. "Rebecca tried to put a cardigan on a kid like that, and he tossed it away again, so she gave it to someone else. When we sent them home from the park, that kid was laughing like he was literally the only person who enjoyed being naked." She threw a grin over her shoulder and amended. "Well, there's Duke. He enjoys being naked."
"It's not 'enjoying' so much as I appreciate the natural human condition and I know there's nothing wrong with the sight of skin, Audrey. I prefer it in private... with a bit of mood music... and a good wine... How about you both?"
Audrey raised her eyebrows at him. "Not the time, Duke."
"I prefer it in private," Nathan said.
"And you're both lovely," Duke added, with a wicked gleam. "Though I could stand to see a bit more flesh from you, Audrey Parker."
"Duke," Nathan said warningly.
"I am just pushing for equality and pointing out the inherent unfairness..." He gestured to Nathan's long, nude form, but it seemed Nathan was all tapped out on reacting.
"Okay, well, I'll admit it hasn't been too much of a hardship for me," Audrey said. "Except for the part where it's been running us ragged all day. If not for that, the view... would be allowed to stick around as acceptable."
Duke made a 'you see' gesture at Nathan, who shot her a betrayed glance.
"The kid," Nathan said, with dour focus.
"Yeah..." Audrey winced. "I was not so much taking names and addresses. I don't suppose you have any idea where they might live?"
"I don't know them," Nathan said. "But they left on foot with the stroller not much more than ten minutes ago." He turned back and forth a few times, gauging, then pointed. "That way. If we drive around we might just catch them."
"Alright!" Duke cheered, bouncing his fist off the back of Nathan's seat. "Let's hear it for the Naked Detective!"
Nathan ignored him and turned the key in the engine. He pulled out and headed down the street, careful to avoid any semi-clad stragglers on the way. Audrey tried valiantly to focus on scanning the people on the street and not on the two fine examples of the male body sitting within arm's reach.
They happened across the woman with the too-old child in the stroller after five minutes driving. Nathan drew the Bronco up alongside her for Audrey to lean out of the window and display her badge. "Excuse me! Ma'am!"
The woman looked at the three of them and her face turned even redder. She was wearing a picnic blanket affixed with a safety pin, and had been walking in quick steps with a single-minded purpose. Her happily naked child giggled and squirmed and poked at his toes.
"Oh, no, no," the woman said. "If I need to give a statement about... that..." she shuddered "...back there, then I'll come in to the station to do it later. Can't you see I need to change?" She scowled at Nathan, who tried to cover up further in the driver's seat under the force of her gaze. "And clearly, officer, so do you."
"He's fine," Audrey said, and tried to control her urge to smile at the double meaning. "Let him be. I don't need an official statement, but I do need to know if this is the first time this has happened to you today."
The woman looked horrified. "How could you guess that? It's -- I was only glad I'd already been clothes shopping! And then, then the second time, to replace -- I was in the changing room, thank goodness. But how... how did you know? I hear what they say about this town! They can do this to you on purpose! Do you know who's doing this?!"
Audrey got out of the car, trying to place her body to shield the view of Nathan. "I'm sorry, but I'm pretty sure I've just found Patient Zero." She glanced behind her and with a kind of double-take, left the door open, because Nathan was leaning over rather than hiding away.
"I helped you carry the stroller down the steps outside Maxine's, this morning."
The woman's lips tightened, whatever gratitude she'd had for the assistance clearly having evaporated in this situation. "I remember."
"Yeah?" Duke, leaning out of his window at the back, made it evident he didn't appreciate her lack of appreciation. "Well, Nathan here has been paying for his helpful attitude with guerilla attacks of striptease all day, so you'd better remember."
"I'm not the one doing this." The woman tightened her grip on the handles of the stroller and started to pull off. "My family aren't..."
Audrey stepped on the nearest wheel and halted progress, and pointed wordlessly at the child.
"No." It was almost a moan. "Don't say he's Troubled as well..."
"As well?" Duke asked. He wound the window down further and leaned right out, displaying all his bare chest and making faces at the toddler, who stuck his foot in his mouth a blew a huge raspberry around it, then tried to repeat the sound as hard and loud and long as possible, several times in succession.
"Alfie's autistic.... and he doesn't like anything." Her face blanked. "He doesn't like wearing clothes properly. He hates seams. They drive him wild. He screams and scratches and it's... unbelievable. Jack always lets him wear everything inside-out. I tell him and tell him that we need to teach him to act more normal, but I got him back this morning and sure enough, everything was on backwards again. Jack let him have his own way all week." She looked sick, abruptly.
"Lady," Duke said, "I think if you want to wear clothes normally again, you're gonna have to let your kid wear his clothes however the hell he likes."
"I hate to break it to you," Audrey said, not hating it at all, but managing to keep the grin from her face, "but I think Duke's right. I think once Alfie realises he's not going to be put back into things that itch and hurt and that..." She raised her eyebrows at Duke and Nathan. "That he feels are attacking him all the time. Well, then this problem will clear up completely."
"Can I suggest you go home and demonstrate that with some haste," Nathan added, with a particularly heartfelt lack of any humour whatsoever.
Audrey took the woman's name and address before they parted ways, then Nathan drove them back to the police station. He parked, but didn't move from the driver's seat, just looked across at the steps up to the entrance and declared, "I'm not going back in."
Audrey looked them both over -- any excuse -- and nodded. The thrift shop had been closed due to a stock crisis and they had not passed anywhere else they could pick up spare clothes. "I'll go. You both stay here." She couldn't really inflict this on the rest of the police station, she thought. Women -- and a few men -- would have meltdowns. It was far safer if she handled it herself.
She went in and checked in with Laverne, catching up on the rest of the crisis. No-one had been seriously hurt in the Great Undressing, and the incidents around town seemed to have lulled. It was anyone's guess whether that was just a lull in the pattern or if Liz Graves had somehow made it home and managed to calm down her child already. But Audrey thought it more likely the former because Liz Graves had not been very calming.
Probably the station could still use their presence, but on balance, Nathan's day had been particularly straining and he was just as much a victim of this as the people they'd been sending home with warnings to stay in. Anyway, now it was just a matter of mopping up the tail end of things until the Trouble was fixed at source. Audrey made a decision. "I'm going to take Nathan home. Call us if anyone starts shooting or dying, but I think leave the non-urgent stuff in other hands?" She smiled a winning smile.
"Okay, poppet," Laverne said. "You go see that boy's okay. He always was a shy one." There was a bit of a knowing gleam in her eye.
"I," Audrey said, with a great emphasis on her purely altruistic commitment in this course of action, "will do that. Yes."
Laverne snorted, and Audrey turned and walked briskly out of the station, smiling to herself.
***
They went to the Gull.
"Why are we here first?" Nathan implored -- at least somewhat half-hearted given he had already caved to pressure and driven them there. "You're covered. Duke or I could at least lend each other clothes, and you a shirt."
"I wasn't planning on doing much that involved needing a change of clothes," Audrey mused. "In fact, I was considering granting Duke his wish... behind closed doors." She shifted her eyes back to garner the reactions of both of them, in turn. "You know... even out the situation?" She presumed that she had not read that scene wrong, in the park, but then they were probably all in a rather surreal brain-space by now and it could be that the giddy, chanting voice in the back of her brain telling her she could simply take both of these different men without the agony of choice (and they could have each other) was a voice that Should Not Be Listened To.
If the whispering doubts were the voice of common sense, though, she had little use for it.
"Strictly speaking, that would still not be even," Duke said, like he doggedly pursued a gross injustice, "because we -- in public -- aaand I have just caught up and let me rephrase that to 'You have no argument from me, Officer Parker.'"
Nathan looked like he might strangle on his indignation, and she had not, after all, been overly worried on the question of where Duke would stand. When she reached for Nathan, concerned, he made a sharp noise and moved away from her touch. "Not while we're--!"
"He can feel you," Duke leaned between the seats. "I saw that much earlier. Because you're immune to the Troubles, right? Hey, Nathan, exactly how... intense... is it, when you feel her?"
Nathan glared and his complexion glowed.
Audrey hid her mirth behind a cough. She'd only thought she'd already seen every possible shade of red Nathan Wuornos could turn. "You are going to come in and at least... talk... about this? I've seen you both checking each other out today." She tried to stare them into an admission.
"I -- no. What? No."
"You weren't doing that good a job of covering it up," Duke leaned forward and stage-whispered that with his mouth pressed next to Nathan's ear, making him jump and causing a weird squeaky noise to escape his throat. "On either count."
Audrey volunteered with laughing commiseration, "I might have peeked, too. Sorry, Wuornos. For all I knew that was a one time opportunity that I could not possibly allow to slide by."
"You didn't know you'd be bringing him home like a stray... naked... cat," Duke said, smirking and, Audrey thought, no, no, not at all trying to cover up for the fear behind his own eyes by deflecting the attention onto Nathan.
"Two naked strays here, Crocker," Nathan said, sounding like the rejoinder was powered by habit. He shifted uneasily. "Parker. I'll come in and talk," he established with fierce emphasis.
"Well, good. That only leaves the question of whether the two of you naked strays are going to sit in the car and wait for me to come back with blankets, or we all just go for it and streak across the lot on a count of three?"
"Blankets," Nathan said.
Duke was already hauling bare ass out of the car. "Hell with it, it's my parking lot."
"...Screw it," Nathan said, and followed.
The boys were faster, and that meant that Audrey got to watch their butts bounce pleasingly in sync as they sprinted ahead of her, and also that they had to wait quivering in the sea breeze outside on her balcony while she caught up with the keys to unlock the door.
They fell inside, Duke laughing along with Audrey's giggles, and Nathan's expression of shock was so endearing that Audrey caught his shoulder and hugged onto him along with Duke on her other arm, still near-incoherent from laughing, forgetting he'd asked her not to. He sort of melted under her touch, and that was so weird and adorable that the temptation there was to do it more.
"Hey." Duke peeled Nathan from her, though, and picked up his face in both palms. "Stay with us. In all seriousness, we should have the conversation, and not just end up doing this because you're drunk on her touch and high on all the fucked-up-ed-ness of today."
Nathan's face settled back into a scowl as he caught Duke's hands and moved to shove them away. "I'm not compromised or insensible, Duke, I--" He looked at the wrists in the circles of his hands, the closeness of the other man, and the large lump of his Adam's apple made a jump.
"See?" Duke said. "Talk."
Nathan bared his teeth. "I am perfectly able--"
Audrey turned back to them and heaved a steadying breath. The door was shut, and now that she had gone around and closed the drapes, turning on soft lights, the outside could no longer intrude. No more danger of being left naked before the world for any one of them: they had that priviledge all to themselves. "Okay, so we need to talk. We've seen a lot of each other, today, but on the one hand, that was just skin. Intimacy isn't the same as being... stripped, but... we can't say we didn't learn a few things."
"I was looking," Duke said, pushing in closer to Nathan again. "I know you know that much. Were you looking? Or, when I thought that you were looking, was that just for comparison purposes?"
"About that," Nathan said, and even if his cheeks found yet another new shade of red, Audrey grinned, because Nathan Wuornos was actually stepping up to the my-dick-is-bigger debate.
Duke put a finger on his lips. "It's how you use it, Nate. You been using it much at all lately?"
Nathan's face went thunderous.
"You two have been dancing around this forever," Audrey said, pressing up between them, sliding her hand onto Duke's breastbone, but this time remembering to respect the unique sensitivity of Nathan's skin. "You've always wanted him looking at you. I bet that's why you stole his lunches and pulled his hair in school." She flexed her fingernails lightly over Duke's chest, making him shudder. "Isn't it, Mister Crocker?" For the first time that day, Duke pulled out a blush. "Jostle him in the gym showers? Make up excuses to fight, just to get your hands on that booty? Write love poetry under the desk?"
Nathan spluttered.
"Come on," Audrey urged, delighted by the confirmation in both their guilty reactions. "After a day spent around you guys in various stages of undress, you have to know I am a boiling mass of sexual frustration, and my suggestion for the two of you is that we all fix that together. What I need to know is the acceptability of this as a plan?"
Nathan squeezed his eyes shut with a tortured noise. "Trouble. This is a Trouble. Or a... a side effect of... of the naked Trouble."
"If it hadn't been a kid behind the naked Trouble, I might be wondering that." Duke grinned. "But the Trouble was non-sexual, and so, astounding as this may seem, I do believe you stand on the brink of a three-way by virtue of your own peculiar charm, Detective Wuornos." He made a show of shaking his head as if stumped. "How did that happen?"
Nathan said, "Excuse me, Parker. Need to sit down." Before she could say anything, he'd stumbled across to deposit himself on her couch, pulling a throw blanket to cover himself from shoulder to thigh.
Duke threw a shrug back at Audrey, disappointment assailing the edges of his own expression, and went to flop next to Nathan. Audrey felt her hopes dwindling. Duke was game, but she could not... would not... do this without Nathan. And this was not fair, to push upon a Nathan who had already been stripped down and left vulnerable enough by the events of the day.
Duke reached a hand to pat Nathan's knee. Nathan caught it before it could connect and put it down on the cushion between them. The effect was to leaving them holding hands rather than Duke holding Nathan's knee and was... rather surreal. Nathan frowned down at the fingers twined between his.
"We don't have to do anything now," Duke said. "Okay, yeah. Weird place at the moment. It's okay if you're... still feeling a bit... exposed."
"Duke," Nathan said, still looking at their hands with judgment. He shook it off and made a noise through his teeth and pressed-together lips. "If I'm going to be exposed, I guess you might as well be the ones to see it, but... I can't think like this." He pressed his knuckles to his forehead.
"Maybe this is a situation better approached without too much thinking," Audrey suggested, sinking to her knees between them. She rested her elbows on Nathan's blanket, and Duke's thigh, and propped her head on her arms, gazing up at them. "Do you want it, Nathan?"
She could see the indecision and reticence churned in him. She'd seen him stumble helplessly over the prospect of dating one person, and now he was being asked to take on two. "You want this?" he retaliated by asking instead.
"Very much." She swallowed a glib answer. "Maybe it's not... conventional... but what part of our lives is?" She eyed that hand, between them, still connecting the two men.
Nathan said slowly. "It's not... not dull to keep going as we are. As friends. I'm not being--"
Duke moved his hand further up Nathan's arm soothingly. "No, friends is great, Nathan."
Audrey knew that Duke had given up all hope of friends until she had appeared on the scene and re-opened the possibility.
"Friends is great, but I'll take more." She rose up, reaching behind her back, and unclipped her bra and let it fall to the floor. Then she unfastened and dropped her jeans. "Also, I believe I made a promise, and promises should be kept." She stepped out of the jeans, pouting as she had to put some effort into kicking off her shoes.
"Audrey." The protest was mildly shocking, because it came from Duke. Pretty ironic that now she was naked, Duke and Nathan were practically clinging to each other with anxiety. She surely hadn't anticipated complaints from Duke Crocker when she actually embraced his suggestion to level the playing field.
"Guys, chill." She frowned and asked, "Are you afraid that this will just be a one-time event, after all the stresses of today? Or are you afraid that it won't be?"
Duke flinched -- from the first question -- and to her surprise, Nathan answered. "Both. Things -- we're -- it's--" He looked at Duke and his face took on such perplexity. Yet it was Duke he was clinging to, and not her. He grit his teeth and mechanically forced out, as if reluctantly accepting the fact that he did need words, could only do this by coaxing and employing those unfamiliar tools, "Everything will change and the Chief will have apoplexy."
"Considering your relationship with your dad, I'd have thought that counted as a plus," Duke commented.
"Duke's a petty crook, besides."
Duke opened his mouth to object to that, but Nathan shook his head firmly. "No. Too fast. It's not okay, it's not simple, it'll never be just about-- Too much happened today, and Duke's right. I'm sort of high off it in some weird way. I already almost..." He ground his teeth together and said, starkly, "It wouldn't happen in a normal situation. It won't happen if we leave it until tomorrow. I know that."
Audrey winced at the declaration, unadorned and naked.
She nodded and set her hands on her naked hips, dropping her head in resignation. "All right. All right, Nathan." She gave her pile of clothes a nudge with her foot, and felt slightly silly standing in front of them like this now. Still, fair was fair, and this was nothing like what Nathan, in particular, had endured. She let herself accept the idea that nothing was going to happen. They were all just silly and naked and ridiculous together in her apartment, and alcohol hadn't even been involved yet.
Nathan's face relaxed as he fell back, letting tiredness taking over and his body ease now the pressure was off. He'd removed his hands from Duke -- or Duke's hands from him -- but they were still much in each other's space, the way they always seemed comfortable even when they were at odds.
Audrey handed Duke another throw-blanket from her armchair, and padded over to pick her dressing gown up from the bed. She pulled it over her shoulders as she went to the kitchen area. "I'll put on some coffee,"and then we can talk about what we're going to do for dinner, unless you'd rather head home, in which case... I have to go find you something from somewhere to wear."
"Chef's whites, in the kitchens of the Gull," Duke called back. "Whenever they're needed. Don't worry about it."
"I can manage dinner," Nathan said, his voice lighter, cracking with relief. "I go home now, all I'll be thinking about is being in the middle of the police station naked. Or being in the middle of the street naked."
"But you wouldn't be worrying about being with us, naked," Audrey prompted, intently, "would you? Because you'd never have to worry about that with us. You can be yourself with us. You can be... without defences. And it's okay."
"Nothing to worry about on the rest. You're gorgeous, Nathan, and all those people will have been thinking today is 'damn'..." Duke's laugh had a small bitter edge to it, for all that he was trying hard to be comforting, but it was a small one, as he too assimilated how things were going to be, and from the new hope in his eyes, he was far more inclined to value that Nathan had accepted the description of him as friend, unchallenged.
When Audrey turned aside to attend to the coffee, Duke's hand was on Nathan's shoulder again, and she allowed herself to smile. Nathan thought that if it didn't happen now, it wouldn't ever happen. But given he'd specified 'in a normal situation', and this was Haven she hardly thought all their chances were at an end.
...When she turned back, Duke and Nathan were kissing on her couch, and she couldn't help but give a little startled yelp and drop the cup that she was holding. It bounced rather than broke, inasmuch as she cared to notice that as she watched the two men pull apart.
"Okay," Nathan said, rough, with new vigour. "If today is the only time this will happen, maybe I can get behind this happening today." His blanket had mostly deserted, leaving him naked again. Duke's fingers spread stars against his hips and groped further back to cup his ass.
"Nathan," Duke said, clinging like he'd been offered a lifeline. And she'd thought he'd been okay seconds ago. What comfort had been in his eyes then was nothing to the need there now. Widened and dark, they drifted over her, then back to Nathan. "We can take this for a spin tonight, and if it doesn't fit, we will still be us in the morning. All the Trouble-related crap we've all been through together, everything we've seen of each other... Sex is not going to change us in some way we can never come back from. You've seen me aged almost to death. Seen me dying. I've seen you crazy. There are worse ways to be naked than just being unclothed."
"A pact," said Audrey. "If this is the product of tired minds and a stressful day, we can still go back." She saw contradiction in his eyes as he angled his head, and maybe he was right, maybe it never would be the same, but... "Even if I'm wrong, maybe it's worth the risk."
Duke had never bothered to cover up with the blanket she'd given him, and Nathan's blanket wasn't actually doing a lot any more, but Duke watched the reaction in Nathan's eyes as he curled his fingers in it and slowly cast it aside. "No need for this, not with us..."
Nathan rolled up from the couch onto his feet in a smooth, keen move, hands on Duke's arm and elbow and shoulder, taking Duke to lead him to Audrey's bed. Duke seemed to have lost words. He lifted a hand and wove it into Nathan's hair. Audrey drew in breath as Nathan moved in closer to her and his hand and his lips hovered over her skin without touching. His throat jumped. There was liquid in his eyes as he raised them.
She understood. Touching her, he'd be more naked before the two of them than he had been at any stage during the day. His reactions couldn't be expected to be normal, after years spent unfeeling. "This makes you vulnerable," she whispered, "and we'll see it. But that's okay."
Audrey curled her fingers just shy of his, in invitation. Waiting for him to take her hand, Duke took it instead. "Remember in the park, earlier, before I was savagely attacked by my pants? Touch her, Nate. Don't tell me it isn't worth it."
Nathan, of course, never, ever did what Duke told him to.
"...Oh." The low, low groan from him was the sexiest thing Audrey had ever heard, and Duke's hand between their bodies did something that made it lower still. Audrey transferred her grip, stretching her arms to hold them both, and Duke made a noise almost as needful as Nathan's, as he realised that he could and then rose up to kiss Nathan again. Audrey witnessed them feel it and moved in. Nathan fell into the kiss clumsy with the lack of practice and the fact that he still couldn't feel, could only feel her -- and, when they were all three of them touching, apparently Duke.
She moved back; turning, caught up Duke's lips with her own, and Duke Crocker had never had any doubts about his body or his ability to apply it. Audrey asked, "It's what you do with it, huh?" as they finally parted and her lips and belly and toes all tingled from the aftermath of the kiss. It was no wonder Nathan looked so stoned.
"Just tell me what you want me to do with it," Duke purred, and gently tucked a stray strand of her hair back behind her ear. Duke beckoned Nathan in from where he had backed off to recover himself away from the intensity of touch. "How about we have the most fun we can figuring out which parts of this are going to work?"
END