Communing With Nature and Other Overused Cliches
Summary: In which Drake attempts to impart his own love of camping to one of the special women in his life, and Wendy, hopeless city-girl that she is, takes exception. Loudly. Drake/Wendy, lemon-scented fluff. Post-TV, AU.
"How did you manage to pick the most sickeningly hot weekend all summer to do this?" Wendy asked pettishly, tossing her backpack to the ground under a tree, beside Drake's, and glowering as darkly as such a cute little face would let her when the muscular blond laughed ringingly.
"Are you kidding? This is perfect camping weather."
"And that is why I hate camping," she muttered, nevertheless moving to help him as he began to pull the disjointed fragments of their tent free of the nylon carrying bag, and then sighing in annoyance as a strand of short, sweat-damp hair fell forward to tickle her cheek.
He looked up from the task of fitting two steel poles together and smirked, leaning forward over the heap of would-be tent to brush her hair back behind her ear.
"I thought you hated camping because 'there are no showers, and no soft beds, and everything tastes horrid when you cook it over a campfire, and the bug bites itch for weeks, and there are always a pack of rowdy drunken prats hanging about to ruin it'," he mimicked dolefully.
Since that morning, when they had set out for the secluded little campsite far too early for her liking – after Drake had ruthlessly lightened her pack of several articles that he had disapprovingly called luxuries, and which she had pleadingly termed necessities or I'm staying home – she had been nursing one hell of a grudge towards anyone and anything that had ever been associated with this ghastly business of camping. Aside, of course, from Drake, who looked every bit as tempting in that snug, half-transparent white wife-beater, glistening with sweat, as she had imagined he might – she was just being a little grouchy with him.
Nevertheless, her husband speaking in a girlish falsetto was not something she heard often, and despite herself and her emphatic hatred of camping, she collapsed into a pile of sweaty clothes, insect repellent, and helpless giggles.
He watched for a moment, mildly astonished, and then chuckled.
"Just so you know, it sounds just as stupid coming from you."
Straightening up and brushing the dirt from her knees and the seat of her little khaki shorts, Wendy sighed.
"I'm sorry, Drake. I know how much you love this, but I'm really not much of a nature girl. My idea of camping involves a motel in a tiny little town somewhere, within easy walking distance of a café that serves flavoured coffee and pastries."
"What, no biscotti? Yeah, that's roughing it, alright," he grumbled good-naturedly, before fixing her with a stern eye. "You said you'd give it a chance."
"I know," she whimpered, inching away as a large spider crawled dangerously close to the thick rubber sole of her hiking boot. "I think I might have been drunk."
A heavy thud filled the air, and she peered reproachfully up at Drake, whose much larger boot had stirred up a cloud of dust in its effort to become more closely acquainted with her spidery friend.
"That didn't seem very nature-friendly."
"What can I say?" he shrugged, hiding a grin. "I'm getting back to my caveman instincts; protecting my woman."
"From a spider," she groaned. "God, if anyone ever finds out about this…"
"Maggie would sympathize. She hates spiders, too."
"I remember. Poor thing; after she sat through our Saw marathon without blinking, I didn't imagine that ten lousy minutes of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets would give her nightmares."
He grinned.
"At least she managed to get to sleep. I seem to remember someone else spending the whole night freaking out every time the blanket moved."
She rolled her eyes, blushing faintly.
"Oh, hush up and let's finish the tent. Maybe then you can show me where the fun is supposed to come in."
He watched her for a long moment, paying particularly close attention to her shapely little rear in those shorts, a hell of a lot more revealing than anything he could get her to wear in the city, outside of the bedroom. Then, smirking at the memory of the two-person sleeping bag he'd packed in place of the two singles he usually used when he went with someone, he crouched down to help her with their weekend accommodations - after taking a quick glance down her top.
I think I know where the fun comes in.
-- --
"Ack!" Wendy shrieked about an hour later as a burst of sparks sent her scrambling back from the camp grill.
Drake looked up, alarmed, from the cooler he was in the process of opening.
"What happened?" he demanded, sprinting over. "Did you burn yourself? Let me see."
"No, no, I'm fine," she said impatiently, tugging her hand back. "But I swear, this isn't safe."
He chuckled.
"Why don't I finish the burgers, and you finish unpacking?"
She peered over his shoulder.
"It looks like you've already got everything unpacked."
"Then just take it easy. After you bring me a beer," he added, swatting her firmly on the backside as she started over to the cooler.
"Fine," she pouted, glaring playfully. "But if you call me woman, I'll pack you in this thing."
He chuckled.
"I'd pay good money to see you try."
She straightened up, leaping immediately into a defensive pose.
"Oh, really! Is that a challenge?"
"C'mon, Wendy, my nephew beat you up."
She crossed her arms and pouted again.
"So?"
"Matt's four," he reminded her.
After considering this for a long moment, she turned away with an irritated sigh, and fished out two distinctly dented cans of beer.
"You're just lucky it's so hot out," she called over her shoulder before placing the two dented cans back in the remains of the ice and grabbing two less battle damaged drinks. "If I could move without passing out from the heat, you'd get your arse handed to you."
"Sure," he grinned. "You can show me when the sun goes down."
"Drink your beer," she ordered, shoving the can at him.
He chuckled at her sour expression, running one finger over her cheek, petalsoft and flushed with heat.
"I think you need the alcohol worse than I do."
"That's what I said: take your beer so I can open mine."
Laughing, he took both cans, cracked one open, and handed it to her.
"I could have done that myself," she pouted.
"Just trying to be a gentleman."
"Mmm," she said eloquently, taking a long sip. "Can you go back to being a caveman? Gentlemen don't generally look that good in sweaty white tee-shirts."
Caught off guard, his laugh resounded off the trees edging the little clearing that would have been pure serendipity to find, if he hadn't been coming here for years and all but bought it from the owner.
"See?" he said when he could speak again. "You're having fun; admit it."
"Fine," she said grudgingly. "But for God's sake, Drake, don't tell anyone."
"Sure," he agreed pleasantly, draping one muscular, sweaty arm over her shoulder. "I can be bribed."
She shot him a hopeful sideways glance.
"I'll make dessert."
He smirked.
"You ever made s'mores over a campfire before?"
"I don't suppose the time that the microwave burst into flames because my little brother put them on a metal plate counts, does it?"
"Afraid not."
"Then no."
"You're going to get filthy; you'll be covered in chocolate and marshmallow before you're finished one." He halted abruptly as the image flashed into his mind of the grumpy little blonde before him covered in warm, creamy melted chocolate and dotted with melted marshmallow, entreating him to help her clean up. Although inwardly grinning hugely, he kept his expression carefully noncommittal. "Yeah, okay; you can do the s'mores. You might as well learn."
A more observant young lady might have noticed his struggle not to crack a smile, but Wendy, purpose set firmly in her mind, was absorbed completely in the task of hunting up the graham crackers, marshmallows, and chocolate.
"Don't worry," she said reassuringly, standing and scooping up an armful of supplies. "These'll be fantastic. If there's no oven, stove, toaster oven, or microwave involved, I can probably handle it."
"Yeah, well, we'll see," he called after her as she trotted off toward the fire pit. He looked down at his watch and smirked. "Five…four…three…two…one…"
"Drake," Wendy called, sweetly and pleadingly. "Can you help me build a fire?"
-- --
"They aren't that bad," the little blonde said defensively approximately twenty minutes later, running a hand through her hair and wincing as one finger caught on a sticky patch of marshmallow. "They might look a little strange, but they taste alright."
Drake examined the glob of marshmallow, chocolate, and cracker bits in the middle of his paper plate dubiously.
"A little strange? They look like they've been in a fight. And judging from how you look," he added, chuckling as she swiped at a streak of chocolate extending across her cheek, "they won, too."
"Right, because camping is such a tidy pastime for everyone else," she groused.
Drake snickered.
"I don't see too many campers walking around with chocolate in their hair. Okay, cut it out," he added sternly, catching two small flying fists in his and yanking her closer.
She sighed blissfully, snuggling against his chest.
"Only you could make cuddling on a bloody log, in the middle of nowhere, covered in dirt and grime, seem romantic."
"It's only fair," he shrugged. "Only you could make a big glob of marshmallow in your hair look sexy."
"Alright, I'll go wash it out," she pouted. "Just point me to the showers."
"Sure," he shrugged. "Go straight until you hit the highway, then head north for fifteen minutes until you hit the campground. If anyone asks, you're with me. They'll understand."
She stared at him, aghast.
"You want me to walk down the highway, in the dark, to a campground I've never seen, and wheedle until the owners let me use their shower?"
"Unless you want to use the lake."
"I can't use the lake, because someone told me I wouldn't need a swimsuit!" she shot back, half-annoyed and half-frantic.
His eyes flickered from her, to the densely growing wall of trees beyond which this mysterious lake presumably lay, and back to her again.
"Sure you can."
"I don't have a suit," she repeated through gritted teeth.
He grinned.
"I won't tell if you won't."
Her expression was pure sternness. He smothered a laugh and resisted the urge to hold out his hand for the strict schoolteacher's strap.
"There is no way in this, or any other world, that I will go swimming, in a relatively public place, without a swimsuit."
"Oh, come on. What's the worst that could happen? You cool down a bit and don't pass out from heat stroke?"
"The worst that could happen is a group of rowdy, drunken idiots showing up and making off with our clothes, or worse!"
"There's no one up here this weekend!"
"You hope."
"Look, we'll leave our clothes in the tent. If someone shows up, we stay in the water until they're gone. If they're idiots and swipe our towels, we run to the tent. And hell, I'm not shy; I'll beat the hell out of them with or without pants."
"Really," Wendy said, cheeks growing pink, breath growing a little rapid as her imagination conjured up numerous mental images of a dripping wet, completely nude Drake running through the trees, waving a large bat to scare of a crowd of drunken young men, and then returning victorious, giving her ample time to leap on him and take advantage of the lack of any clothes. "Alright, but I'm only going in if you come, too."
He snorted.
"You think I'd watch you splashing around in there without a suit and just keep watching?"
"Well, then. What are you waiting for?"
"Not a thing," he replied innocently, nevertheless grinning wickedly as he stalked towards her.
Shrieks of laughter echoed through the clearing as he caught her by the waist and pulled at her clothes, leaving them in a pile by the tent; and then a tremendous splash and more laughter as she found herself dumped unceremoniously in the lake.
She had to hand it to him; when he was right, he was right, she admitted with only minor reluctance, sighing blissfully at the sensation of beautifully clear, cool water brushing over her skin like silk.
Particularly wet, see-through silk, of course. With the occasional fish rampaging through it.
Or maybe not.
Maybe she just needed to stop drinking for the evening, if she was waxing poetic already.
Either way, poetry or no, camping was a lot more enjoyable without clothes. Not to mention, without a large clump of marshmallow in her hair.
Once he had dumped her in the water, Drake had gone back to the tent and returned with a comb, and then, crouched at the edge of the lake, he had carefully and gently pried apart wet, sticky strands of pale hair. It had taken several minutes and as many yelps of pain from her, but eventually her hair fell as smoothly and tangle-free as it ever had.
With an ecstatic hug, she had asked curiously how he had gotten so good at prying out sticky substances that had no business being in human hair, and he had shot her a look of disbelief, his patented I-can't-believe-you-have-to-ask look.
Ah, right, she had sighed fondly. Maggie.
She started on her fourth lap of the lake, sending a playful splash of water at Drake as she passed him, and darting away with a yelp of delighted fear as he growled and lunged at her.
"Where'd you learn to swim like that, anyway?" he asked, watching admiringly as her slim, tanned shape rippled through the water.
"My grandpa," she called back cheerfully, whirling gracefully about and then splashing in quick little loops and circles and generally showing off. "He was a born sailor, you know, and he insisted that all his little grandbabies learn to swim almost before we could crawl."
Drake chuckled, crossing his arms.
"So, you can swim like a fish, you drive like a professional stunt driver, but you can't take two steps without tripping over something?"
"If you think I'm a good swimmer, you should see my older brother sometime," she said, sending another splash of water at him for good measure for the tripping-over-things comment. "Mum must have dallied with a merman, because I swear, Johnny's part fish. And not only because he's ugly as sin and all his girlfriends say he's a dreadful kisser."
He shook his head again, holding back a laugh and making a mental note to keep her out of the beer for the rest of the night. If one had gotten her rambling like the giggling, bouncing little girl she hadn't been for years, any more might leave him with a hungover camping partner for the rest of the weekend.
Not that it wasn't nice to have the giggling, bouncing little girl for a while; it was a nice way to forget that she'd ever had to go through something that turned her withdrawn, cynical, and suspicious of everyone.
Not to mention, that she'd brought enough of it on herself that he'd spent the first few months of their tentative friendship wondering uneasily if this was a trick or something.
Nevertheless, Friday night coffee had become a ritual from the time he found her in that airport a couple years or so back, trying to carry about half a dozen suitcases too big for her scrawny little arms.
More than once, he'd cursed his incurable soft spot for big, pretty, sad blue eyes, and she'd done the same, assuring him coldly that she didn't need or want his pity, despite the half-crazy loneliness and terror he could sense just beneath a calm exterior.
But by then it was a lot more than pity that had him calling mid-week to make sure Friday was still happening, and the first time they took a week off, he spent the night craving coffee no matter how much he drank.
Just as well that she'd hunted up his - unlisted - phone number with a skill and swiftness that both impressed and worried him and phoned Saturday for a real date.
Of course this wasn't going to go anywhere, he had told himself with a philisophical shrug, even as he had accepted her shyly offered invitation to come in for a cup of coffee, despite the three each they'd just finished before the coffee shop owner kicked them out.
Alright, so I was wrong, he thought now, nearly two years and a wedding later, with a warm chuckle. Sue me.
"I thought you were going to come play, not just stand there and laugh at me," she was meanwhile pouting.
With a compliant shrug and a wolfish grin, he waded towards her, grinning as she flitted about, unaware, and then lunged at her, one arm wrapping firmly around her waist and dragging her back against his chest.
"Drake!" she exclaimed, annoyed.
"What?"
She shivered as he pulled her back against him and relaxed from a tight grip to a light caress over her breast, stirring the water with the gentle movement and causing it to lap in tiny waves against her skin, only intensifying the sensation that she might melt into a helpless little puddle any second.
"You know you're grabbing somewhere a little uncomfortable, right?"
"Really?" he chuckled into her hair, wet and plastered back against her head. His fingers found dark rosy nipples and rolled gently, drawing a long, shuddering gasp from the little blonde in his arms. "What am I doing now?"
"Mmm...do I get to choose?"
She felt his grin against her shoulder
"Why, you got some ideas?"
"One or two," she replied cheerfully, squirming in his grip until they were face to face.
"Maybe we should go back to the tent," he might have suggested, but as his words were abruptly muffled by a decidedly damp kiss.
Groaning against her hot little mouth as a pair of arms just on the right side of skinny clinging around his neck and legs far past gorgeous clinging around his waist, the dim corner of his mind not happily making noises when she rubbed affectionately against him was hoping frantically that he'd been right with his previous assessment that there would be no one up here this weekend. They could get in trouble for something like this, couldn't they? Was this all just a ploy, to make sure she'd never have to go camping again?
Then, as her mouth brushed her ear, as she murmured a shy, blushing, but distinctly demanding request, the plan became, once again, to let someone have a free show if they really wanted it, and all thought of wifely conspiracy vanished rapidly from his mind.
Nodding his assent, he waded quickly over to the little stretch of shore, an eager little shadow flitting several feet ahead of him at all times, lifted her out of the water, and leaned carefully over her, their impromptu little evening tryst lit only by the dim light of the stars and the glowing embers of the campfire.
"Hey; you falling asleep on me?" he asked softly, close to an hour later, after approximately five minutes with not a fidget or a squirm from the girl in his arms - pretty much a first for her.
She lifted her head and shot him a sleepy smile as he pushed a lock of hair, dampish and slightly wavy from their swim, out of her eyes.
"No, I was just thinking."
"Hmm. What about?"
"Well, I was just thinking that maybe you were a little bit right."
He blinked.
"Uh, okay. How so?"
"I think camping is beginning to grow on me," she finally admitted with an impish smile and a faint blush. "Although, I have to ask: do you intend to do this every time I complain that I don't like something? If so, I must tell you, I've never been particularly fond of cars, buses, grocery stores, or leaving the house."
"Brat," he said flatly, nevertheless cuddling her close and grinning into her hair.
Nuzzling his shoulder contentedly, she tried to hold back a yawn, and he pulled away and looked at her oddly.
"Tired?"
"No, just trying to improve my lung capacity," she replied pleasantly.
He snorted, then stood and helped her up.
"Alright, you smartass, let's get some sleep."
She cuddled against his arm.
"Drake?"
"Yeah?"
"Can we go swimming tomorrow night, too?"
He looked from the lake, mirror-smooth surface gleaming in the moonlight, to the shore, a patch of flattened grass the only testament to their camping games, to the little blonde at his side, dishevelled and decidedly lacking in clothes.
"Yeah," he shrugged casually. "I think I could handle that."
-- --
End Notes: Hehe...all just an excuse to imagine Wendy in tiny little shorts and hiking boots, and Drake in a sweaty white tanktop. Mmm...