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[milfweed]

The weather kept Nancy in the Compound most of the time these days. She wasn't really sure what to do with herself. Mostly, she read romance novels and made brownies (the normal sort) and kept the coffee brewing. She thought about asking someone to teach her to play the piano (she could remember very little from the year of lessons she took as a

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[wayward_dad]

John had been doing a hell of a lot of reading lately. Well, a hell of a lot of reading when he wasn't busy making really shitty coffee or hiding from everyone. He mostly did the latter, though in the past few days he had been more visible.

Two days ago the bookshelf had given him a copy of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. While he'd looked at the title and snorted derisively when it had, John had walked off with the book just the same. It took him a few hours off and on to read it. For a guy who studied Latin and all sorts of ancient cultural aspects as part of the job, it sure was hard to read a book shock full of long, unwieldy Russian names

[wayward_dad]

Then this was either progress or she was still in shock. John preferred to take it as progress. Today was a glass-half-full kinda day. For John, they were few and far between, so he was gonna hold onto it like hell in the meantime.

"You're not on the floor doing that now. So that's something, right?"

[milfweed]

She laughed weakly. "I guess so. At least that was... private." She covered her face with her hands. "I'm so embarrassed."

[wayward_dad]

John didn't even realize that he'd reached out to touch the back of her hands before he felt the warm softness of her skin against the pads of his fingers. Quickly, but not too quickly, he withdrew his hand and waited to speak until she looked over at him again.

"Don't be embarrassed. It's just the island screwing with you. Anyone else would have understood." Taking a quick glance around, he then added, "I'm not going to say a damned word about any of this."

[milfweed]

"Easy for you to say," Nancy murmured, "I didn't just see you naked." She dropped her hands into her lap, fingertips brushing against his knees. "Or, er - "

... did he look the same naked as Judah?

She should so not be thinking about this.

[wayward_dad]

His gaze shifted from her face to his knees, watching carefully as the tips of her fingers just brushed against the denim of his jeans. Her not-quite-asked question was so weird and yet not at the same time, and John laughed, a rumbling sound from deep within his chest, because he didn't know what the hell else he'd do otherwise.

"This is definitely getting a little out there," he said dryly. Killing evil sonsofbitches without batting an eye? No problem. But when it came to weirdness with actual humans? Made John tetchy.

[milfweed]

"It's just so bizarre," Nancy said quietly, and found herself picking up one of his hands, turning it over, running a fingertip down his palm. "Like, your hands... they're just the same, except... I don't know, rougher, maybe..."

[wayward_dad]

If it were any other woman, John would have pulled his hands away, stood up, shoved them in his pockets, politely dismissed himself, and promptly hauled ass. But it was Nancy and, because of the situation and their commonalities, he couldn't do that to her.

So John grunted slightly as she took his hand, trying like hell to hold still. The only woman who touched him in a familiar way like that was Ellen, though she hadn't ever taken his hand and done what Nancy was doing. Ellen could take his shit. She could have dealt with it if he'd told her to back the hell off and sassed back at him ten times worse than he'd given her, but Nancy wasn't like that.

"What else is different?" Maybe just getting her to talk things out would take her mind off of what she'd seen, so John had to at least give it a try.

[milfweed]

It was easy to concentrate on his hand, calling up the memory of Judah. "Well, the beard of course," she murmured, "and you have scars..." Her fingertips moved up his arm, tracing a light one. "Your voice is the same but your speech patterns are slightly different... oh, and you kiss... different..."

[wayward_dad]

The more she talked, the more John got to feeling that he'd started leading her down the wrong damned path. Whether she was tracing that scar because she was thinking about Judah or trying to convince herself that John wasn't or something else entirely was unclear. What was clear was that John should put his foot down and diverge the conversation from its present path.

"What else?"

That probably wouldn't do the trick. Only John realized that a second or two too late.

[milfweed]

"Aside from kissing? Well I'm not sure, but you saw the tape..."

Then her face flushed, and she said quickly, "I'm sorry, I don't mean to - "

Well, maybe she did, just a little.

[wayward_dad]

If this were a con, of which John had pulled many, he probably would have seized the moment to charm the hell outta her, distract her with a bit of Winchester magic, gotten whatever it was that he'd really come after, and been on his way as though nothing had happened and without thinking about Mary one damned bit.

This was probably the furtherest thing from a con as he could get, though, and so John just stared at a spot on her cheek, watching pink bloom under the pale skin, until actual, real words came to him.

When they did, his eyes flickered up to hers unyieldingly. "I don't do apologies, Nancy, and neither should you."

[milfweed]

He really did need to stop looking at her like that...

"Can I, ah, be frank for a moment?"

[wayward_dad]

As if he'd tell her she couldn't be.

Rubbing at the back of his neck with one hand, John nodded mutely in response to her question. Dropping his hand back to his lap, he murmured, "Of course."

[milfweed]

Nancy took a breath and then met his eyes again. "You've been... really really great to me. I mean, you are being... And you seem to understand a lot about what I'm going through, and there's just something really... I don't know, interesting about you, mysterious, dangerous maybe. And all of those things are - "

She clasped her hands in her lap to keep from touching him again. "Right, so you keep giving me all these reasons to like you, and I can't tell how much of this is me liking you and how much is you looking like him."

[wayward_dad]

He should have left the moment he figured out what that projector was showing. John could have kicked his own ass for not doing that now. As much as he liked Nancy, he wasn't helping her get rid of any ghosts. Because he looked like her dead husband, he was a constant reminder no matter how damned hard he tried not to be.

This wasn't good for her, not at all. If anything, John was only making things more difficult for her. A good man would walk away and not turn back right about now.

But he wasn't all that good, so John only managed to stand.

"I do understand. I do. Not a damned day goes by without me thinking about Mary but I--" Not wanting to continue that thought, John cut himself off, hands clenching into fists and then free again. "I'm not the kind of guy women like you oughta like."