Don't own Haven. Do own an apartment approximately 50 minutes from where it's filmed.
First story in a LOOONG time. But I couldn't go another day without writing something about my favourite TV couple.
Inspired by a somewhat, sort of if you squint, true event in my own childhood.
Enjoy!
It was the second time they ended up at his house before she complained.
"You need a new mattress Nathan, there's probably a whole extended Irish-sized family of mice living in that thing. Also, there's holes." She pointed out by lifting his pillow and poking the orange-size dent in the sheet that was under it.
"Hole. There's only one hole." He corrected and threw her t-shirt at her (it had been hanging haphazardly from the highest corner of the dusty antique bureau since the night before). "Besides, it's comfortable."
She snorted loudly. "You can't feel it. It's got springs that stick into my tender back all night long."
He quirked a brow. "You can't feel it either, you sleep pretty much on top of me." She gave a sheepish smile and bit her lip. Feeling triumphant at her defeat, he continued "you're like… a… cuddly starfish or something."
His blonde partner shook with laughter, and he never lived that one down.
It was the fifth time it happened before she nagged him again. And it was then when he explained the hole under his pillow to her.
He told her the origins of that hole.
How it had seemed like such a good idea to have a safe place to hide stuff. Secret 8-year-old boy sort of stuff. He remembered how he had stuck out his tongue when he was cutting into the fabric and foam of the mattress. He remembered being so proud of his handiwork that he forgot about the kitchen knife laying discarded on the floor and didn't notice the trail of bloody footprints he left in his wake. He remembered the confusion and worry he felt for his mother when he heard the smash of dropped dishes and her terrified shriek of the Chief's name.
"Just another trip to emergency." he shrugged nonchalantly at Audrey's worried expression. She smacked him lightly.
"Your poor mother." She whispered, then smacked him again, harder this time. "Poor me! You are not allowed to ever do stuff like that to me!"
He smiled and grabbed her and kissed her. "Try not to." He mumbled out, muffled by the skin of her neck.
It was another time entirely when she had asked him about the hole in his mattress again. They had been sitting in the Causeway diner in companionable silence, having just cleaned up a platter of pancakes each, and were finishing up their third refill of coffee. It was an early morning on a summer saturday and there were only a few others up at this hour. Audrey had taken off her shoes and looped her bare feet around his ankles (he had been puzzled by the gift of short socks she had given him soon after they had started dating, it turned out to be one of his favourite gifts ever).
"What sort of stuff did you hid in that hole anyway?" She said with genuine curiosity and a mischievous glint in her eye.
"Hmm?" He said with brows knit in confusion.
"Your mattress hole." She said and he stifled a smile and her tone and phrasing.
"Oh. Just normal stuff… money, candy, pictures…" He trailed off, remembering, "a picture of me, and my mom and the Chief… My dad. He… For a while he couldn't stand to have pictures from before she… he didn't like having pictures around for a while. So I kept some in there."
Then to cure her frown, he told her of the classic hidden stuff he kept there during his crazy wild teen and college years. It had been just the right size for a fairly large bottle of cheap alcohol if you put it in upside down. Audrey had a hard time believing he had ever been rebellious. He didn't tell her about keeping the lock of hair Hannah Driscoll had given him in there, that part of his life felt like someone else had lived it. Or that he really hadn't been alive until he had met Audrey.
It was her casual admittance one day that had resulted in what was currently hidden in that hole in his mattress. They were sitting lazily on the couch, watching jeopardy. She was wearing an obnoxiously yellow tank top and his tattered collage sweatpants, the legs rolled up unevenly, foam separators between her freshly painted toes.
He was getting used to her indecision in toenail polish colours, how many she had for a woman who barely ever wore sandals, and how he always found bottles in the strangest of places around his house. He was even getting used to the way she didn't care that her feet were perched precariously close to platter of homemade cupcakes on the coffee table (he had learned that trading hobbies, decoupage for baking, would get him decidedly further with his partner).
He hoped he wouldn't, and didn't think he would, get used to the way his usually deadened nerves sent furiously alive signals up and down the side of his arm where she was cuddled up against him.
She stuffed another cupcake in her mouth, moaning with delight. He smelled the sugar on her breath as she mumbled with her mouth full, "I'll probably marry you someday."
He tried not to let her know how that sent his pulse racing and caught his breath before it audibly hitched. He managed to sputter out a casual "I know." without sounding too affected.
It was a week later before he had worked up the courage to 'need to go to town' and 'no, you don't need to come.'
Nathan Wuornos was a huge advocate of buying from local business and supporting local economies. But considering this was Haven, he knew better than to go ring shopping at the Jewelry Plus on Water Street and have the whole town know within 45 minutes. He went to Portland and did his shopping there. He bought her a dress with matching nail polish to cover up why he was really went there. It was a bonus that she looked perfect in it.
It was a month after she had officially moved in and had given up her apartment over the Gull that he was cooking breakfast (pancakes) for his still sleeping partner, girlfriend, best friend, world.
He had just put together a breakfast tray to take to her when he heard a squeal from upstairs. It took him a whole ten seconds to figure out what the noise had been, it was so uncharacteristic coming from the former FBI agent. Then he worried and bolted up the stairs, coming to a stop in his-their bedroom doorway.
The blankets and sheets were askew and partway puddled on the floorboards. Audrey was half-dressed in a button up shirt that just covered the top of her lace underwear. She was on all fours on the bed and looking in the hole in his mattress. She looked up and blushed when she saw that he was there. He could hardly be mad with that adorable caught-red-handed look on her face.
"You… it… the hole… um…" She sputtered and plopped down cross-legged on the bed with little grace, another uncharacteristic moment. He grinned at her stunned, happy, expression and walked over and pulled the velvet box out of the hole he had made all those years ago.
She tackled him before he could even open it and show her the ring.
"Yes. Yes yes yes. Yes." She said between planting kisses all over his face, her voice steadying with each repetition.
Breakfast was cold by the time they made it downstairs, Audrey joked about it being the reason microwaves were invented.
They'd had to warm it up twice, because she'd ended up sitting on the counter, which had ended up with her face at just the right level for him to kiss her.
Audrey was worn out when she got home from work. The funny thing was that it had been a slow day for police work. But her face hurt from smiling all day. And it seemed like the whole town dropped by to congratulate their chief and his sprightly blonde partner. She had never felt so loved and so much part of a community, but she was still glad to get home and cuddle on the couch and watch Jeopardy with Nathan… her fiance. She liked the sound of that. He squeezed her shoulders as she looked at the glittering stone on her hand for the millionth time that day, he thought the sparkle in her eyes beat a diamond any day.
"I think I like that old, worn-out mattress." She said after a length, mulling it over in her mind. "I guess we can just get one of those memory foam mattress topper things."