Title: Play the Hand You've Been Dealt

Summary: Jennifer can't sleep, and she and Duke have a late night talk about the book… and other stuff.

Characters: Jennifer Mason/Duke Crocker, mentions of the others.

Spoilers: Season 4, episodes 1-11.

Timeline: Between 4x11 and 4x12.

Disclaimer: Not mine, never were, never will be – sadly. All characters belong to SyFy and their original creators.

Author's Note: Yeah, okay, writing tons and miles of fanfiction (whatever is the right measure for fanfic) is my way of coping with being stuck in that pit of despair that the season finale left me in.

Inspired by:

Build me a home inside your scars,
Build me a home inside your song,
Build me a home inside your open arms,
The only place I ever will belong.
"I Am Still Running" by Jon Foreman~

"If anything happens to her, I'm gonna kill someone"

It was a little past 3 in the morning when Duke jolted awake, his heart pounding like after a short-distance sprint, unsure of what it was that disturbed his sleep. Probably yet another one of the nightmares that haunted him lately, keeping him awake for hours on end until his mind was numb enough to send him into a pitch-black dreamless oblivion.

Duke took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, running his hand down his face as if trying to physically brush off the uneasiness growing inside of him.

Something was wrong.

He rolled over, reaching instinctively for Jennifer, and then sat upright abruptly, his heart sinking and his insides twisting into a tight knot.

The space beside him was empty.

Jennifer.

Duke bolted out of the bed, almost tripping when his legs tangled in the sheets. His mind was running a mile per second, helpfully offering him a million worst-case scenarios of what could possibly have happened to her while he slept.

He jerked the bedside table drawer open and reached for the gun he kept at the bottom of it, and his world only shifted back into place once his hand closed around cold steel of the gun and he could feel reassuring weight of it.

If William had anything to do with this, if he so much as laid a finger of Jennifer—

And this was when he noticed faint light coming from the slightly ajar door leading to the main cabin.

Duke hesitated for a moment before putting the gun back into the drawer and crossing the bedroom in two quick steps, his breath catching in his throat.

He let it out, overcome with relief, when he swung the door open and spotted Jennifer in the kitchen, standing by the counter. The air was filled with thick smell of freshly brewed coffee. Dressed in one of his shirts that hung loose and was almost knee-long on her small frame, with its sleeves rolled up to her elbows, she was holding the book – the magical glowing cheesy paperback – in one hand and a giant white mug of coffee in another. Glasses on. The black-framed ones she wore to the interview at the Herald.

Jennifer looked up when the door let out a low squeal, breaking the stillness of the night, and smiled, almost despite herself, at Duke who was squinting in the light of the reading lamp.

"Hey."

Duke leaned against the door frame for a moment, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and hoping his heart would stop trying to jump out of his throat, before starting towards her.

"Hey," he called back quietly, his voice hoarse and groggy from sleep. "What are you doing here at... this time of the night?"

He stifled a yawn and reached for Jennifer's coffee. Took a sip and allowed it to work its magic on his overheated mind before looking expectantly at her.

"Did I wake you up?" Jennifer asked quietly. "Sorry."

"What? No, I just…" nearly had a heart attack because I thought William took you while I was sleeping. Never mind. There was no need to infect her with his overwhelming paranoia. Duke smiled somewhat ruefully and shook his head. "Did I wake you up? Was I snoring again?"

She scrunched her nose. "No. I couldn't sleep, so I thought…"

"What?"

"The book. I thought maybe there was something in the book. The reason Agent Howard chose it and not something… I don't know, more intellectual. Not just the glowing riddle but something else, like a message that I missed when I read it the first time."

Duke put the mug down, alert at once. "And?"

"And… it kind of makes my brain hurt."

"That bad?"

"You have no idea." Jennifer rubbed her forehead. "But no new messages, only that… prophecy, or whatever it is, and about 35 chapters of awful writing." She grimaced a little, then narrowed her eyes when she caught Duke watching her with a very peculiar expression. "What?"

"That's—that's a nice look on you," he said, nodding at her glasses.

"And now you're making fun of me."

"No." Duke reached to pull her glasses off. He put them on the counter by the coffee machine. "I'm not."

He tucked Jennifer's hair behind her ears, framing her face with his hands, and slanted down, finding her lips with his, needing more than anything to make sure that she was there, that she was real and not just a part of some fantasy, or a dream, or whatever his life seemed to be made of more often than not lately. He needed so desperately to know that he hadn't lost her, that she wasn't taken away like everything else he'd ever cared about.

Jennifer sighed when he pulled away moments later, the feel and weight of his touch lingering on her skin and making it tingle a little. "Duke…"

"Now, you wanna tell me what's bothering you?" He asked quietly, his fingers playing absently with her hair.

Jennifer looked down at her book for a moment, trying to figure out where to start. She felt so exhausted on every imaginable level and there was so much on her mind, she thought her head might physically explode any second. Nothing was making any sense.

"Jennifer?" Duke's voice was soft, urgent, and maybe a little panicky.

Which made her realize that he was just as confused and scared as she, and, unlike her, he was completely in the dark – at least in terms of seeing glowing magical symbols. And Jennifer didn't know what was worse, frankly. She wished she could do something, anything, to make it easier – for herself, for him, for both of them.

"I thought…" She looked up at Duke. "After Audrey came back, after the barn was gone for good, I thought that it was it for me. That my trouble, whatever it was, was gone, too. I hoped I would just be normal again. I wanted to be normal, Duke."

"I know…" he breathed out.

"-but then the book comes along, and this… William, and there're monsters running around, and everything gets crazy again. And if there's a way I can fix it real quick-"

The words were coming out fast and hurried, her voice ringing with panic that kept growing and bubbling inside of her for the past few hours, and there was little Jennifer could do to control it. Because rational thinking wasn't working anymore. Because she couldn't talk herself into believing that all of this was going to end somehow. Because she felt like she was being sucked into something big and bad and dark and scary. Something that was so much worse than anything they had to deal with before. And the more she struggled to free herself from the hold of that darkness, the faster it was pulling her in, like quicksand.

Jennifer swallowed, helpless, and scared, and endlessly desperate to put an end to this all, one way or another. "I don't want to see magical symbols on magical books, Duke. I don't want any of this! How did it happen? How did I end up being some kind of a… savior? I can't be it!"

He ran his hands up and down Jennifer's arms. "I think it started when you broke that weird fish tank guy out of Boston Mental Hospital."

"I knew it would get me in a trouble," Jennifer smiled a little, shaking her head.

"Best adventure of my life." The corners of Duke's mouth tugged up for a moment. "We'll fix it." He searched her face with urgent intensity. "I promise you, Jennifer. We'll fix it, and everything will be okay."

He leaned in to brush his lips against her forehead, and Jennifer, the book still clutched in her hand, wrapped her arms around him, burying her face in his chest. She closed her eyes, feeling like a deflated balloon all of a sudden, and breathed in his smell that was a mix of shower gel and fabric softened from his shirt and something that was so Duke it made her chest hurt. She held on tight as if he was her bayou in the endless sea of chaos. As if letting go meant being carried away by the stormy waves into the big black nothingness.

There was so much comfort in the warmth of Duke's body enveloped around hers like that, in the steady beat of his heart against her cheek, that she could effortlessly believe that all was right in the world. One, two, three, four, she counted in her mind… Thump after thump, a steady rhyme to hold her in one piece.

"What are we going to do about William?" She asked quietly, her voice muffled and raw to her own ears. "I don't think he's going to give up just because I can wave my wand and summon dragons now."

It was Duke's turn to sigh, and Jennifer felt his warm breath tickle the top of her head.

"I thought I'd lost you today." He said after a while, not seeming to have heard her question. "When we found the Herald trashed and empty…" The memory brought back cold, paralyzing fear that held him in a tight grip for hours on end – even after he found Jennifer, even after the monster was destroyed. Like a foreboding, a premonition, a sinking feeling in his gut that it wasn't over yet. "I've never been so scared in my life. Not when I found out that it wasn't just my father's bad habits that I inherited from him but the Crocker curse as well. Not when I jumped into a multidimensional barn." Not even close. "Not even when I ended up in the sealed fish tank in the Boston Aquarium." Now that was quite a memory! And yet… "Don't do it again."

Jennifer chuckled softly, the sound vibrating through her body into his. "Scout's honor." She allowed herself to relax into him. "And here I was, thinking that nothing could be scarier than hearing voices in my head."

Duke pulled back just enough to look into her face, his palm cupping her cheek. "I will never let anything happen to you, Jennifer. I'll never let anyone hurt you. You know that, right?" Jennifer nodded, and he leaned in to touch his lips to her hair. "Come on, let's go back to bed. You can read me your magical book. Bedtime stories never grow old."

She did fall asleep eventually, almost at dawn, curled up against him, her arm draped across his stomach, lulled by the warmth of Duke's body and the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest as he breathed.

"Duke?" Jennifer called out in a soft, muffled voice just as she was drifting off. Her eyelids felt like they weighed a ton each and she stopped struggling to keep her eyes open, finally giving in to her overwhelming exhaustion.

"Mm?"

"You never told me- Why… the boat?"

His lips curved into a half smile. "I've always wanted to be a pirate." And even though he couldn't see it, he knew she was smiling, too.

"I'm serious."

Duke pried the book out of her weak hold to put it on the bedside table before turning off the light and covering Jennifer's hand with his palm. He took in a deep breath and then exhaled slowly. Why indeed? There were so many ways to answer that question her didn't even know where to begin.

"I never thought that I belonged here, in Haven," he breathed out, his hand trailing slow soothing circles on Jennifer's back. "Or elsewhere, for that matter. Living on the Rouge—I always liked knowing that I could take off any moment. Leave and never come back. And it wouldn't matter. No one would care. Nothing would change. No strings attached." He paused. "It's always been making me feel free. Otherwise, I think I would've… I would've suffocated."

He wasn't even sure if he was still talking to Jennifer or to himself.

Wasn't even sure she was awake to listen to him, and yet it felt somewhat liberating to actually be saying all these things out loud. As if letting the words out was the only way to lift the weight of his demons off his shoulders, at last. As if he finally had no other choice but to face everything that kept him trapped inside his own mind so that he could finally leave it all behind.

"The Rouge… It was like having a kind of home that I could take anywhere with me." Like a snail. Duke smiled despite himself even though the idea was more bittersweet than humorous. "It made me feel safe even if I didn't really have anywhere else to go. I just… I didn't want to be stuck here. I didn't want to give Haven a chance to suck me in. All my life, all I saw was how this town was destroying everyone. My family, everyone else around me. I needed to know that I could leave it all behind if it got too much. Flee." God, he couldn't even count the times he was a step away from doing just that. "I think the only reason I'm still here is because I always knew I could take off at any given moment. My back-up plan."

Jennifer's fingers flexed on his shirt, closing around a fistful of fabric. "You still feel this way?"

So, she wasn't asleep yet after all.

"No," Duke responded without hesitation. "No, I don't." He reached to brush Jennifer's hair out of her face and then leaned in to kiss her forehead. "Sleep."

Even though her fist remained closed around his shirt – as if it'd ever cross his mind to disappear or something – it didn't take her breath long to become deep and even, her body basically melting against his.

Duke, however, stayed awake for hours after she'd fallen asleep. His mind restless for at least ten thousand reasons, he watched the sky outside small round window change its color from black to deep indigo to grey as the shadows hiding in the corners of the room started to dissipate into nothingness.

He lay there, listening to the sound of her breath, feeling the beating of her heart against his own chest, and thought about how much Haven had taken away from him, and how for the first time ever it finally gave him something, too. Something so big and important Duke couldn't even begin to wrap his mind around it, couldn't find a way to fully comprehend it yet.

What did Nathan say at the station?

"Everyday I wake up, I think, 'Today is gonna be the day that I'm gonna lose her.'"

Duke was starting to feel the exact same way. Every moment when Jennifer wasn't in his line of vision, he couldn't help imagining all the horrible things that could be happening to her, which was making him not only paranoid but also so scared he couldn't think straight half the time.

Jennifer sighed in her sleep, and Duke shifted a little to make sure she was comfortable, his thumb stroking the back of her hand he'd been holding.

He should never have let this happen, he thought. With his luck, he should have never gotten involved with her. He knew better than that. And yet here he was, realizing with and without surprise at the same time that the Rouge had somehow stepped back and let the woman sleeping in his arms become his home.

And then another realization settled in, both comforting and troubling in its simplicity and resolve – there was nothing in the world he wouldn't do to protect her, and he would rather die than let anyone take her away from him.

He couldn't lose her. Couldn't bear even the idea of losing her.

Except he couldn't shake off what he'd always knew – in Haven, even when you win, you lose.

A/N: Thanks for reading! Man, I can't even begin to say how much we need season 5!