A/N: Yeah, I'm back! The characters of Frank & Joe Hardy, their dad Fenton and Aunt Gertrude, Nancy Drew, and her father Carson all belong to Simon & Schuster. Those characters as portrayed here are from the 1970s TV show, "The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries", created by Glen A. Larson and starring Parker Stevenson & Shaun Cassidy as Frank & Joe Hardy, and Pamela Sue Martin as Nancy Drew, twisted through my own AU. This tale takes on the episode "Arson & Old Lace", original teleplay by Michael Sloan & Christopher Crowe; the characters of Robert Coleman, Weldon Rathbone, & Harry Hammond are from that episode, though the re-interpretation is my own. This tale is part of my ongoing series (see my profile for the full list & the story order); it takes place about a month-and-half after "The San Francisco Vampire". And as far as I'm concerned, that Other Actor for Nancy doesn't exist.

Quick tour for those not familiar with the show: it sets River Heights in New York and Bayport in Massachusetts, Laura Hardy is dead, Aunt Gertrude lives with the Hardys to help raise the boys, Joe never dated Iola, and the '70s show started the whole Frank/Nancy-ship. Oh, and the supernatural is very, very real.

San Francisco: June 1978

"Frank! Phone!"

Not that he could respond — Frank Hardy was in deep trouble, surrounded and blocked by screaming, screeching people. Then — there! Frank grabbed the soccer ball and held it out of reach.

"Hey!" Kris Mountainhawk yelled. "You're not supposed to use your hands!"

Frank couldn't answer. He was fending off three kids who kept trying to grab the ball. Finally Frank tossed it to Joshua, and the soccer game briefly devolved into keep-away as Joshua flung the ball to Angel. "Big brother prerogative," Frank called to Kris as he left the field.

"Is that in the rules?" Kris said to Joe.

Joe was grinning. "It is now."

It was a cook-out and pool party for the Wings' kids, the runaway shelter sponsored by Bay Area Center, and someone had decided that an impromptu soccer game with shrieking kids and teens of various ages was a good idea. That someone was Frank's younger brother, Joe, who'd staked out a goalie position as a "cushy job" that didn't require much movement. Since Joe used a crutch, it'd been decided to make the goals smaller so he'd have less ground to cover.

Of course, with Frank playing center for the opposing team, he'd made Joe work for that "easy" position — until Joe retaliated with psychological warfare and drafted little Rita to help him. Between the giggling Hispanic five-year-old with a bad limp, her nine-year-old brother Emelio playing her scowling, over-protective sweeper, and Joe ramping up his pathetic act, Frank's adult teammates didn't stand a chance.

Even without the scars and the crutch, Joe didn't have to act much. He and Frank had the same golden-brown hair, but Joe was smaller and leaner, bohemian-casual to Frank's prep-school-jock, and Joe's hazel eyes fit right in with his "lost puppy" act, unlike Frank's piercing blue. Not that Frank minded: if Joe wanted girls who would mother him like a forlorn puppy, Joe was welcome to them.

"Hurry up, Frank," Mar Mountainhawk called from the deck; she was a calm, weathered woman with grey-streaked black hair and dried-apple face, wiry-tough despite her age. "It's long-distance."

"Dad," Joe groaned. "Figures." He grabbed up his crutch from behind the goalpost and started to follow Frank.

"No, Joe, not you," Mar said as the brothers came closer. "Just Frank. Someone named Nancy."

Frank sighed. Mar would say that out loud.

"Nancy?" Joe said.

"Hey, Josh," Frank called towards the field, "Joe's bragging we're too easy."

"Hey!"

"Oh, really?" Joshua mock-snarled as everyone burst into laughter and cat-calls. The commander of the Association's Blades, Joshua Thomas was a lean, muscled, Black man with rainbow-colored fimo beads in his short dreads and a penchant for bright colors; today he wore an eye-watering, neon-yellow t-shirt that probably could be seen all the way across the Bay. "Get your gorgeous butt back over here, Hardy. You need more mud in your face."

"Worm," Joe growled at Frank.

"Have fun," Frank said, smiling, and headed up the porch stairs.

Mar only raised an eyebrow, but headed outside, leaving Frank alone in the kitchen of the suite that he and Joe shared with Mar and Kris. Mar had been the Hardys' next door neighbor for years back in Bayport until she'd moved back to San Francisco; her adopted daughter, Kris (a runty, plain blonde about Joe's age) had been the brothers' tagalong shadow as they'd grown up. Frank and Joe were currently their summer guests out on Yerba Buena island in the middle of San Francisco Bay, before starting fall semester at SFSU. At least, as far as their dad Fenton knew, anyway.

The real story still gave Frank nightmares.

He and Joe had been recruited into the Association's Blades — guardians for an organization of the psychically Gifted — following a near-fatal encounter with two Gifted serial killers at Mardi Gras. That encounter had also been responsible for Joe's crutch and too many scars, both mental and physical, for both brothers.

Finding out that the spooky stuff was real had been a huge shock that Frank hadn't entirely settled with. Finding out that Joe was one of those Gifted on top of that…

Frank picked up the phone. "Hello?"

"You know how to keep a girl waiting, don't you?" said Nancy Drew's dry voice. "Please tell me that brother of yours isn't anywhere around."

Frank glanced out the patio doors — it looked as if little Rita and Emelio had been persuaded to betray their team. Both had tackled Joe, allowing the other side to score goals with ease, despite a spirited defense. "We're safe. He's face-down in the dirt at the moment."

"Good. Feel like playing tour guide?"

"You're coming out here?"

There was a pause. "I thought that was what I just said."

It couldn't be a social call, not from New York to California. "You're working a case." Please be wrong, please…

Nancy sighed. "You have a way of taking all the fun out of things, you know that?"

"You are working a case."

"Fine, be that way. Just something Dad took on that's turned out to have bigger scope than his client thought." Nancy's voice turned decidedly testy. "Nothing for you to get involved with, believe me. It's my case."

"Don't worry. I won't." Frank didn't believe her, though. Every time he and Joe had run into her, they'd gotten dragged in on the it's-my-case anyway. "So you're calling just to tell me to keep out of it."

"Look, put your brother on the phone. At least he can take a hint without me dropping it on him from twenty stories up."

"At least he can tell me things straight up without playing twenty questions."

Silence.

"Sorry." Nancy didn't sound it, though. "Okay. Yes. I'm coming out to San Francisco. I'm running some information down for one of Dad's clients. Your father told my father that you two were out there for school. I just want a local guide and a friendly face, that's it."

"Now who's taking all the fun out of things?"

That got an even longer silence. "Frank Hardy…"

Something about the way Nancy said his name… "Sorry," Frank said, and meant it.

A hint of a smile warmed her voice. "You want my flight information or not?"

Three slips of scrawled post-it-notes and a bit more small talk later, Frank hung up and went back outside onto the deck. Suddenly it was a gorgeous day: bright blue sky, no fog, and the charcoal smell of grilled hamburgers and hot dogs smoking up from the café. Oh, yeah, and the phone call. Almost perfect.

The soccer game had broken up; Kris had scooped little Rita up into a piggy-back ride. Joe was brushing all the dirt off as Drake (the Blade's tough survival trainer and secret softie-towards-the-kids) gave him a hand up.

"Hey, Rockford." One of the kids from Wings, Rico, a Black teen with puppy-dog eyes, a lopsided smile, and waxy-looking burn scars on his face. He'd tagged Frank with the nickname after finding out that Frank and Joe's dad was a detective. "You look totally discombobulated."

It was easy to smile around most of the kids from Wings, despite their personal stories; Rico was no exception. "That's your word for today?" Frank said.

Rico nodded. "Got three of 'em. Discombobulated, discomfited, and interrobang. No one'll tell me what interrobang means, so I'm guessing it's something dirty."

"Let me guess. Joe gave you that one."

"Nah, Conan did." That was kids' code-name for Harold Downs, one of the Blades who made an extremely convincing sword-and-sorcery-barbarian model for the art sessions at Wings, and who was a constant pain-in-the-neck to Frank and Joe. "I couldn't find it in the dictionary."

Smiling, Frank shook his head.

"Aw, c'mon, man, please?"

But Frank had been spotted; Joe had limped close enough to overhear. "Forget it, Rico," Joe rasped. While the past couple months had brought some healing to Joe's voice, it still sounded as if Joe had been breathing smoke all his life. "He's got his own interrobang going on."

"Bait, you don't even know what that means," Downs drawled. He was drowned out by little Rita squealing "¡Ángel! ¡Ángel!" as she wiggled off Kris's back and limped-ran towards Frank, who caught Rita and swung her up onto his shoulders. She was almost too heavy for that perch, but Frank wasn't about to deny her.

"Ángel" wasn't Angel, who was still on the playing field and flirting with any woman nearby. After everything that had happened last month, little Rita had decided Frank and Joe were angels and nothing Frank, Joe, or anyone else said could disabuse her of the idea.

"Cool it in front of the kids, Harold," Joshua growled, but Joe had ignored the taunt.

"I know enough." Joe went into an annoying-little-brother sing-song, all the more obnoxious because Joe was 18. "Frank's got a girlfriend, Frank's got a girlfriend…"

Nancy was just a friend, but trying to convince Joe of that was pointless. But before Frank could come up with a retort, Kris had chimed in with her own off-key sing-song behind Joe. "Joe and Jamie sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g…"

To Frank's delight, it got picked up by the kids nearby — including Rita — and several of the adults. At that point, Frank could've hugged Kris; his and Joe's little tagalong had just earned herself a pizza.

"I don't need to sit in a tree to do that," Joe said, with dignity.

A willowy blonde with a blue paint smear on her nose had come over and slipped her arm around Joe's waist: Joe's girlfriend, Jamie Hollis. An art grad student on a NEA grant with SFSU, she'd had the kids who hadn't been in the game drawing the various players. "Oooo, that sounds like fun. I'll have to work that into my plot to take over the world." She grinned into Joe's face, but Joe only pulled her into a long kiss that resulted in whoops from both kids and adults.

"Nancy's coming out here," Frank said to Joe. Rita squirmed, and Frank swung her back down to set her gently on the ground. She went running off with Emelio towards the food tables.

Joe broke the suction with Jamie with a squelch. "Did you really just admit that to your younger brother?"

Frank gave Joe his best blank look. "So?"

"Get popcorn ready, Tag," Joe said to Kris. "You'll get to see Frank's technique in action. Everything not to do."

"Like yours is any better," Frank said.

"Um…this is the girl you were telling me about?" Kris said. No smile, as usual. "The one he flipped for?"

Great, Joe had infected their tagalong with his Nancy-is-Frank's-girlfriend delusion, too.

"Let me guess." Jamie gave Frank one of her dazzling smiles. "Karate throw."

"Judo," Joe said. "Flat on his back and totally speechless. It was love at first flight."

"Someone threw Frank?" Joshua said as he came over. "You're joking, Beautiful."

"Nancy Drew," Joe said. "A detective friend of ours from New York. Frank's girlfriend."

"Part-time investigator." Nancy had pounded that phrase into Frank's head, and he didn't dare call her anything else. "She does investigative work for her father. He's a lawyer in NYC." Frank kept his voice casual; anything else would just add fuel to Joe's delusion. "She's just a friend."

"A detective and a daughter of a lawyer." Joshua shook his head. "You really do like trouble, Handsome."

"She wants me to play tour guide." Frank was starting to panic, just a little. "It'll look odd if I keep her away from this place — she knows me and Joe are living out here."

Joshua shrugged. "Bring her out. We have normals visiting all the time, ché. It won't hurt. We live in the world. We don't separate."

"You don't know her," Joe said. "She's worse than me and Frank were."

"Are," Kris said.

"What she said," Joshua said, grinning. "Seriously, bring her out if she wants, ché. Just give us a heads-up, so we can move any training into the closed-rooms."

"Oh, good, someone to pair with you for my next project," Jamie said to Frank. "Strong independent woman, strong good-looking guy. Maybe I can convince her to get you —"

"No," Frank cut her off firmly. "She's just a friend. That's all."

That got muffled snickers from the Center folk within earshot. Jamie's art projects had notoriety throughout the Center, though Frank couldn't get anyone to say exactly why. It involved a lot of hem-hawing on Joe's part, and lately, Jamie had been getting persistent in her attempts to get Frank to model for her, much to Joe's amusement.

"You and Nancy together," Joe said. "Yeah. I can see that."

"Pervert," Kris muttered.

"If any of you say 'how much trouble can she be', I'll hurt you," Frank said.

Joe's mouth quirked. "Well, you just said it. So the jinx is now officially all your fault, brother."

Shaking his head, Frank headed back upstairs. Since the soccer game had broken up, he wanted to sneak a fast shower before the burgers were served.

Perversity had other ideas, though. Joe followed him back up.

"Don't start," Frank said. "You can save all your wisecracks until I'm back outside. I'm getting a shower."

Joe raised an eyebrow. "That kind of phone call. Nancy doesn't seem the type."

Nothing to throw. Towels weren't wet yet, so rat-tailing Little Brother was out, for the moment. And the last time Frank had tried a water balloon, it'd resulted in a quiet reminder from Mar about the wood floors. With the lack of anything at hand for immediate revenge, Frank kept his face pleasantly calm as he went into his room.

"And why are you getting a shower?" Joe said. "I'm the one covered in dirt. I should be claiming first rights."

"Because I'm the older brother." Frank hefted a towel in a way that suggested, wet or not, a rat-tail could be imminent. "And you're younger, smaller, and more easily intimidated."

Joe rolled his eyes.

Frank went back to pulling out clean clothes from his bureau. His room finally felt like his; he and Joe had swapped rooms so that Frank had space for the huge oak desk he'd gotten from Joshua shortly after they'd arrived. The room's brick walls and hardwood floors matched the rest of the center, but now with the desk, the framed John Audubon prints and antique maps, the deep blue-and-indigo quilt patterned in interlocking squares, and the solid oak bookshelves, the room had more personality. The room of an intelligent man, Frank decided.

"So why is Nancy coming out? New York to San Francisco's a bit far for a social call." Then Joe cocked his head. "Did you hear something?"

Assorted screeches filtered in through the windows, topped by Downs' bellow for kids to settle down; Frank shook his head. "She says she's running down information for a case. She wouldn't tell me anything more than that."

"Great. Something that Carson's working on that brings her all the way out here. That means it's big. He usually stays pretty local." Joe peered towards Frank's closet. "Frank, I'm not joking — I'm hearing something."

"There's a few dozen screaming kids outside," Frank said as he brushed past Joe and headed towards the bathroom. "Anyway, Nancy told me to stay out of it. Which means we'll get dragged in sooner or later."

Joe didn't answer: he'd gone into Frank's room, headed for the closet.

Now that went too far. Frank and Joe shared almost everything, and Frank had no secrets from his brother, but they did respect each other's privacy. Joe could ask before he went into Frank's room like that.

"Frank, your closet's purring."

Frank throttled his irritation. "You better not be claiming Fred's here." Fred was the monster in the closet from when they were kids.

But Joe slid the closet door back, pushed clothes aside…and stopped. "You'd better come see this."

Frank had already come up behind him. The smell was horrible: wet damp, musk, blood. The source lay on the floor of his closet, curled up in a pile of sweatshirts and sweaters…

"I'd say this makes you officially a father," Joe said.

…one purring, content female cat, licking her newborn litter of kittens.