Okay guys this one is for Jenevieve with a bit being for Amanda, who asked me while watching the "I don't love you" scenes to write a fic where John asks Nat why she didn't just shoot him back then. LOL My muse apparently loved this idea because I sat down last night and it just flowed perfectly. I also owe a thank you to everyone involved with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the episode "What's My Line Part 1" in particular, for helping inspire me. Hope ya'll enjoy!
Disclaimer: I own nothing; don't sue!
Author's Note: Jenn's Christmas present based on her idea of Natalie taking John ice-skating. I tried to work in the part with her nursing him but it didn't quite fit. Hope you enjoy!
Dedication: For my Jenn! I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and an awesome New Year! Thank you for being such so awesome!
Title: On the Ice
On first glance Natalie Buchanan was not the type of woman one might associate with ice-skating. That was the first thing that went through John McBain's mind when he saw her walk out of the ice-skating rink a few miles outside of Llanview, ice skates in hand.
He wasn't sure why Natalie and ice-skating seemed to be so removed from each other; perhaps it was her hair that was red as fire—one doesn't usually make a connection between fire and ice after all.
Watching as Natalie held the door open and laughed as she made her parting comments John was taken aback by how different she seemed. Gone was the carefully guarded woman he was used to, her place taken by a youthful carefree spirit that made her even more beautiful in his eyes.
"You uh, you come here often?" John asked casually as Natalie finally let the door to the rink fall shut and turned to leave, almost running into him as his arms instinctively reached out and grabbed her arms, steadying her.
"Oh god, John." She closed her eyes for a moment, concentrating on slowing her breathing and racing heart and relishing just how good his warm hands felt on her skin which was cool despite the jacket she had been wearing indoors and was now tied around her waist.
"You all right?" he asked after a moment and her eyes opened.
"Mmm, yeah. Sorry, I was just kind of lost in the moment," she replied with a grin.
"So, you didn't answer my question."
"What question might that be?" Natalie asked innocently, groaning when his gaze ticked past her to the rink. "Oh yeah, I ice-skate a little."
"You? You ice-skate?"
"Yeah, why?" Natalie asked, his incredulous response putting her on the defensive.
"Nah, it's just—I don't know, you just don't seem like the ice-skating type."
"What, you mean tiny?"
John saw the minefield he was heading into and quickly backtracked. "No, no I just meant—"
"That I'm not graceful?" she interrupted, her eyes burning with fire as she glared at him.
"Hey am I on trial here or what?" he asked in desperation.
The fire faded from Natalie's eyes and she laughed, shaking her head. "I'm sorry. I just—I get that reaction all the time and it annoys the hell out of me."
"I can understand that," he replied with an inner sigh of relief. "So want to tell me how you got into ice-skating?"
"I was nine years old," Natalie began from her perch on the bed as John rattled around the small kitchen of the apartment they'd rented together a few months after his release from the hospital.
"I don't know if Roxanne knew what was going on—she must not have or I'm pretty sure she would've been a stop to it. She was very big that nobody was going to pay for anything where me or Rex were concerned, never mind that she never did anything for us."
Natalie paused for a long moment, the ghosts of the past luminous in her eyes as she struggled to free herself from them. "My best friend at the time was Samantha Morrison—she started to take ice-skating one year. Looking back, her mom probably felt sorry for me because I practically lived over there and she knew what the situation with Roxy was, but whatever the reason she asked me if I'd like to take lessons too.
"Ice-skating was the first sport I'd ever tried and I fell in love with it. I skated with one of the best instructors money could buy until I was thirteen and everyone was sure that I would go pro."
"What happened?" John asked gently.
"Samantha and her parents moved away. Her mom felt horrible but she had to get them out of AC—Samantha's father had just gotten out of prison and was coming after them. She offered to let me come with them but I knew what Roxy would do to me if I even suggested it—or worse yet if she suggested it—so I just let them go. I never saw them again," she said with a sigh.
"And what happened with the skating?"
"The last thing Samantha's mom ever did for me was buy me my very own skates. Top of the line and oh they were beautiful. I would sneak off whenever I could and go to the rink—I knew the managers by then and they'd always let me skate for free." Natalie's eyes were soft and her smile dreamy as she recalled some of the best times of her life.
"Then a couple of months later Roxy was going through my room for some reason and she found where I had them hidden. I got home and found my room destroyed the box was lying on my bed open and the skates were gone. I found out later that she pawned them and used the money for alcohol and gambling."
John shook his head and gave her hand a gentle squeeze. "I'm sorry," he said softly. He could see the pain in her eyes just from the memory and he didn't even want to imagine the anguish she had felt to come home and find her most precious possessions stolen away from her.
Returning the squeeze Natalie forced a weak smile as she looked at John through a haze of tears. "It wasn't only the skates that I loved so much. It was the freedom they represented—whenever I was on the ice it was like everything bad that happened to me just fell away and I was free of all that for a little while."
"So do you always skate alone?"
"I've had a few partners but uh, they mostly slow me down," Natalie laughed, the tears in her eyes making them glitter like rare sapphires.
"Oh yeah?" John asked with a smile.
"Yeah but it does get kind of lonely sometimes," Natalie admitted. "It sucks not having anyone I can skate with." Suddenly her eyes lit up and John grew instantly wary—he'd learned that things didn't bode well for him when she got that look in her eyes.
"What?"
"I was just thinking that maybe you and me should go ice-skating one night," she suggested with her sweetest smile.
"Me, ice-skating?" John shook his head in disbelief. "Natalie, I love you and I would do anything for you—except ice-skate," he hurried to add when she opened her mouth to say something.
"Please John?" she pleaded. "One night—come on, you never know you might like it."
"No," he said firmly, looking all around the room except at her. He knew all too well the look she would have on her face—her lower lip would be stuck out, her eyes widened innocently and he also knew that she knew that he could only withstand looking at the pout for thirty seconds before he would give in. So he wouldn't look at her.
"Please John?"
"It's not gonna work this time Natalie."
A beat passed and then Natalie straddled his lap, forcing her face into his line of vision and John felt the first crack in his resolve. "Please?" she asked, leaning forward to press a kiss just at the corner of his mouth.
"No," he groaned as she kissed the other corner and then nipped at his earlobe. "This isn't going to work," he insisted weakly as her teeth caught on his earlobe and gently pulled at it with her teeth.
"Please?" she whispered, her hot breath in his ear doing such things to him that he knew there was no way he was winning this one.
"All right," he whispered as he slid his hands into her hair and pulled her into a bruising kiss.
John had never seen anything more beautiful than the sight he beheld upon entering the small ice rink in Atlantic City where Natalie had fallen in love with the sport. Natalie had arrived ahead of him and she was already out on the ice, skating gracefully with a peaceful smile on her face that grew wider with every spin and jump she executed with perfection.
He didn't know how long he'd been watching Natalie when suddenly she came out a turn and skated directly over to where he stood. "Hey," she greeted him with a smile, leaning over the wall to give him a quick kiss.
"You know how to put those on or what?" she asked with a mischevious twinkle in her eye as she nodded towards the pair of ice skates in his hands.
"Oh. Yeah—"
"You're not a spectator tonight Detective so I suggest you get those skates on," she ordered in a firm voice, the love in her eyes taking any sting out of the words.
"Fine," he sighed, sitting down and unlacing his shoes. "How did you manage to get them to let us in so late?"
"The Buchanan name carries a lot of weight—and this is the rink where I skated for those four years. The current owner put in a call to his grandmother and he said she practically threatened to disown him if he didn't do what I was asking." Her tone was nonchalant but John could hear the underlying emotion and he knew it came from realizing just how much someone had cared about the thirteen-year old girl she had once been.
"All right," he said a few moments later, bringing Natalie skating back over to the wall. "We gonna skate or what?"
Natalie grinned as she skated over to the small space between the walls the provided entry to the ice and reached out her hands. Taking both of John's hands into her own she slowly led him out onto the ice.
"See this isn't so bad is it?" she asked in a distracted voice, still trying to concentrate on skating backward—which was a lot harder than it might seem—and not letting his weight upset her balance.
"Nah, I guess not," he answered with the smallest hint of a smile as he looked at her. "So how am I doing?"
"Pretty well for a beginner. Your balance is obviously nothing we need to work on or you would've pulled me over as soon as you stepped out onto the ice."
"I could get the hang of this," he admitted a few moments later. They'd circled the rink only once because of their slow pace but John was surprised to discover that he actually meant what he had said.
Skating with Natalie was like nothing he'd ever done before—mainly because he had to give her all of his faith and trust that she wouldn't let him fall. He hadn't trusted anyone that much since his father had died.
"You ready to try it on your own?"
John hesitated for a moment but then nodded. "Yeah, I think I am."
"Okay." Natalie released his hands slowly and continued to skate backwards, watching him carefully as he took his first few steps on his own. She had to bite back a laugh when her mind compared him to a wobbly colt but then his arms were flailing and he had fallen face-first onto the ice. Luckily his arms had gone out in time to save his face from scraping but his hands had taken the punishment instead.
"You okay?" she asked in concern, grabbing his hands and helping him to his feet.
"I'm fine," he insisted, gently brushing her hands away. "I promise."
"Good. Then you can try again." He gave her a look and she shook her head. "No sympathy here. Do you know how many times I went home with scraped hands and had to tell Roxy that I'd fallen onto the pavement only to hear her tell me what a klutz I was? That's part of the sacrifice to become a good skater."
"Who knew you were so good at pep talks?" John asked dryly as he slowly straightened and let go of the wall.
Natalie grinned. "It's one of my many charms," she told him with a toss of her hair. "Now come on, let's see some forward movement."
Half an hour later John had fallen down three more times but he was finally able to skate on his own without incident—as long as he went slowly.
"It'll probably be a while before you're able to skate fast," Natalie told John when he complained about his snail-like pace. "But you're making better progress than anyone I've ever seen—it normally takes at least three training sessions before a first-time skater can even skate the length of a rink without help. Hey you're not lying about this being your first time are you?"
John shook his head. "Nah we never had the money for ice-skating growing up—and my old man was more into getting me and Mikey into boxing anyway."
"So is that why you go to Rourke's so much?" she asked quietly as she led him off the rink to sit at a table for a break. "It reminds you of your dad?"
"In a way. It's more like a way to let all my emotions out—especially before." He didn't say before what but he didn't have to. Natalie knew he was referring to before he'd found the man who had killed his father and before that man had fallen to his death from the roof of Wingdale Psychiatric Center, forever escaping all punishment for the pain he'd inflicted on Eve, John and Michael McBain.
It had taken John a long while to get over that but she had given him his space and his time and then when he finally asked her to marry him she had accepted graciously, and to this day she hadn't complained once about the way he had treated her. He knew that she understood why he had acted the way that he had. And throughout the ordeal all he'd had to do was look into her eyes and he'd see the unwavering faith of a woman who loved him enough to know that he would get past it one day and then she would be waiting for him when he did.
"What are you thinking about?" Natalie asked softly as she saw his eyes cloud over.
"I was just thinking about how horrible I've been to you over the years… I pushed you away every way I knew how and still you wouldn't go. Hell I even told you once that I wanted Evangeline back and that I didn't love you and still you stayed. Why?"
"Because I knew you were lying," she revealed with a small smile.
"Well I meant why didn't you shoot me but I can see why you were misled by the question." He grinned as Natalie's laughter echoed throughout the rink and he knew that would always be the most beautiful sound in the world to him.
"So that wasn't too awful right?" Natalie asked on the train ride back to Llanview later that evening. Her head was on his chest and his arm was around her, pressing her securely against him, their position echoing that of their first train ride back from AC together a few years earlier.
Kissing the top of her head gently John smiled against her hair. "No, I liked it."
"Would you go with me again?" she asked drowsily.
"Anytime you want me to," he promised as he felt her breathing slowly even out as she drifted into a peaceful sleep—skating always wore her out like nothing else could. "Anytime."
FIN