A/N: Just a little one-shot I recently finished, maybe not one of my favorites, but I hope you'll agree it has its moments! Sorry I've been MIA for a while, but I'm trying to get back in the game... you can encourage me by reviewing!
Disclaimer: I do not own and am not making any profit from the use of these characters.
"FRANK!"
The howling wind stung her face as it carried away her shriek. She could barely see anything through the driving snow falling around her. Her boots slipped and slid on the steep, icy terrain. Her foot caught on a rock buried beneath the snow and she stumbled, falling to her hands and knees.
"Nancy!" a voice called out of the whiteness, and Frank Hardy appeared before her in the swirling snow, extending a hand to help her up. "Thank god I found you."
She gripped his hand tightly in her own, letting the warmth of his fingers soothe the biting chill in hers. She smiled gratefully as he pulled her up, into his arms.
"I was afraid I'd lost you." he said, wiping ice crystals off of her face and resting his hand on her cheek for a long moment. Then he moved away from her, keeping their hands firmly linked. "Come on, we've got to keep moving. We need to find shelter."
"Pete's cabin!" Nancy exclaimed. "Isn't that somewhere near-" She was cut off by a loud noise, a resounding roar that echoed throughout the mountain. It seemed to be getting louder. "Avalanche." she whispered, momentarily frozen with fear.
Frank was looking up at the steadily advancing avalanche, booming and frothing its way down the mountain towards the very spot where they stood. "There's nowhere to hide!" He yelled to be heard over the deafening rumble.
"We can't outrun it!" Nancy yelled back, white with fear.
Frank tugged on her hand. "We have to try!"
Together they ran down the mountain as fast as their legs could carry them, helping each other up whenever they fell on the steep and uneven ground. Pebbles of ice flew past Nancy's ears as the avalanche thundered down upon them, and she clutched Frank's hand for dear life as her vision clouded with the snowy mist.
In the last moments before their snowy doom enveloped them, Frank yanked her behind the trunk of a sturdy pine. Looping one arm around the tree, he grabbed her waist with the other, pulling her flush against his body. She wrapped her arms tightly around his chest, bracing herself for the impact that she just knew they couldn't survive. Her face was inches from his, his desperate yet stoic expression mirroring her own. "If this is it, Nancy, I just want you to know that- well- "
"Yes?" she gasped, wanting nothing more than to hear those last few words in those last few seconds.
Suddenly a scream was wrenched from her as the avalanche hit them like a speeding train, the tree barely shielding the pair from the full brunt of its force. Snow poured around the tree, rushing up to her waist, and she could feel Frank's grip slipping. She threw one arm out, blindly feeling for a hold as the snow pelted her face painfully. Her hand closed around a sturdy branch just as Frank lost his grip. "Nan!" he gasped as he began tumbling away from her, choking on the rushing snow.
She caught his arm above the wrist and began to sob in shock and terror. Inch by inch her hand slipped lower, until she had him only by the fingertips. The next instant he was gone, lost in the swirling whiteness. "FRANK!" she screamed in vain. Snow piled in around her, smothering her with its wet pressure. Her numb fingers slipped off the branch and she tumbled into oblivion...
Nancy sat bolt upright, gasping and shaking. It was a long moment before she remembered where she was... in a hotel room at Mount Mirage ski resort. To her left, her friend Bess slept soundly, buried under a pile of blankets. In the bed to her right, George stirred, but didn't wake. Nancy sank against her headboard for a minute, trying to forget her eerily realistic nightmare... but how easily it could have come true this very afternoon, right here on Mount Mirage...
She wiped her sweaty forehead with her hand and smoothed her tangled hair as she tried to restore her heavy breathing to its normal rhythm. Yes, there was an avalanche. Yes, we found shelter in time. I'm fine. Frank is fine.
Thinking about the older Hardy brother unleashed a whole new train of troubling thoughts. Nancy and Frank had always been close friends, but this afternoon, when they had been snowed in together, alone... Frank had kissed her. Maybe it was just out of desperation, an adrenaline rush, or the thought of impending death, but... it had been wonderful. She could admit it. Even now, closing her eyes and reliving that kiss warmed her all over.
But it was always followed by the sting of a guilty conscience. She had a boyfriend, Ned Nickerson, and she knew Frank had a longtime girlfriend as well. It was wrong of her to have these feelings for Frank, especially when she already had the sweetest, handsomest, most understanding guy a girl could ask for. She knew this... so why couldn't she stop feeling this way towards Frank?
She supposed it was the allure of a man who shared her love for mysteries. The natural camaraderie they shared working together, and the intimacies of an exciting break in a case, or a shared brush with death. Maybe it was the inner strength that radiated from his lean figure, or his dark, intelligent eyes, or the way the warmth in his smile made her knees weak. Maybe it was his silent courage in a desperate situation, or the way he seemed to understand her thoughts. Or the fact that the only time he ever seemed vulnerable was when he was failing to protect someone else. Nancy wasn't naïve enough to think Frank wasn't special. He was one of her closest, most trusted friends, but it wasn't like she was in love with him.
Was it?
She lay back down and closed her eyes, realizing in an instant that she wouldn't be able to go back to sleep. Swinging her legs to the ground, she wrapped her robe around her thin camisole and flannel pants. Quietly, so as not to wake her friends, she stepped into her slippers and crept out the door, shutting it gently behind her.
It was almost three in the morning, but Nancy hoped a cup of hot chocolate and a seat by the lounge fireplace would help her find sleep again. When she entered the lounge, however, she was startled to see that the object of her troubled musings had had the same idea. For a moment she toyed with the idea of going back to her room before he spotted her, avoiding Frank Hardy and this dangerous, intimate, firelit situation. "Great minds think alike." she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Mind if I join you?"
Frank turned at the sound of her voice and a smile spread across his darkened features. "Not at all." he said, standing politely as she crossed the room to stand before the fire. "Couldn't sleep?"
Nancy laughed a little, nodding. "Nightmares." she admitted.
"Me too." Frank said softly. "We had a close call earlier. Are you alright?"
His concern made her heart melt a little more. "I am now." she assured him. She suppressed her sudden desire to hug him, just to reassure herself of his safety. Her dream of watching him crushed by the thundering avalanche seemed so potent here. She shivered.
"Cold?" Frank whispered. He placed an arm around her shoulders and eased them both down to sit on the worn loveseat facing the hearth.
"No, just remembering." She gently removed his hand from her shoulder and squeezed it in her own, holding it tight and bringing them both to rest in her lap.
They watched the crackling flames for a while before Frank broke the silence. "I wanted to talk to you." he said slowly. "I have to tell you something important... but I don't know what it is." he smiled a faint, self-deprecating grin.
"About the case?" Nancy asked quietly, already knowing the answer. After all, hadn't she been tortured by thoughts of Frank's kiss all evening?
"No." Frank whispered, meeting her eyes. "Nan... about what happened today. I wanted to tell you that... that it shouldn't have happened. That it can never happen again." He ran his free hand through his dark hair. "But... geez, Nan. I don't know. Whatever's happening between us, I don't have it figured out. I don't understand it."
Nancy was speechless for a few seconds, hearing Frank speak so ardently. His helpless honesty combined with his low tone were sending chills up her spine. If she affected him in the same way he affected her... how were they supposed to resist the pull between them? "I don't either." she murmured, and watched him draw in a suspiciously shaky breath. "Frank..." He was watching her intently, firelight dancing across his serious expression. She wanted so badly to close the gap between their lips, but her head was already swimming with a dizzying mixture of confusion, desire, and guilt.
As if he'd seen her inner conflict, Frank drew back slowly, painfully. "Your... nightmare. What was it about?" he asked, attempting to ignore the roughness of his own voice.
She told him about the dream. "Talk about an overactive imagination, right?" she tried to laugh it off, lighten the tension between them. "Bad enough having near-death experiences during the day... I have to have them at night too!"
"Yeah." Frank agreed with a slight chuckle.
For a long moment the crackle of flames was the only sound in the stillness.
Nancy knew she was about to tread again on dangerous territory, but she needed to ask. "Frank? Today, in the cabin, what were you going to say to me? 'If this is it, I just want you to know that-'?" The fact that he had echoed the same words in her dream- and not finished his sentence once more- was plaguing her with curiosity.
Frank laughed softly, rubbing the back of his neck. "I don't really know. Dying confessions, I suppose." He looked over at her. "I would have said that you're one of the best friends I've ever had, and that you're one of the most incredible detectives I've ever known. That you mean a lot to me." He finished with a half-grin. "That it was nice knowing you."
Nancy tried to smile back, but her eyes welled up with tears. "Frank..."
He hooked a friendly arm around her and pulled her close. "Don't cry, Nan. Luckily I didn't have to say any of that." he joked gently.
She wiped her eyes quickly with her fingertips. "I'm not upset, just... touched." She shook her head and sighed at her own sentimentality. "I guess it's been a long day." But she knew she was kidding herself. She'd been in dangerous situations time and time again, but never yet had she let it affect her this way. If she'd been stuck in that cabin with Joe, or Bess, would she be having these dreams? Was she really disturbed by what she had almost lost, or was it what she had almost gained?
"Yeah, we should really try to get some rest." he agreed, but made no move to get up. "Do you think you'll be able to sleep now?"
Sighing, she rested her forehead against his shoulder. "I haven't gotten anything figured out." she answered, unsatisfied. But when she closed her eyes, she felt an inviting drowsiness surround her. "Having you here made me feel better, though." she confessed.
Frank rubbed slow, comforting circles on her shoulder with his thumb. "Then I'll stay." he said softly. "I feel better here too."
Nancy lifted her head quickly, a guilty expression on her face. "Frank, I'm sorry... I forgot you'd been having nightmares too. Do you want to talk about it?"
He shook his head with a small smile. "Something along the same lines as yours, I think." he said vaguely.
"I'm sorry." she said sympathetically, resting her head on his shoulder once again. They sat in silence for several minutes, and Nancy began to wonder if he'd fallen asleep until he spoke again.
"Do days like today ever make you want to stop investigating?"
Nancy stiffened, startled by the question. "No." she said automatically, then paused and gave it some thought. "No." she said again. "...What about you?"
"Me neither." Frank said, and Nancy let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. "I don't think I could stop if I tried. These mysteries, these opportunities seem to seek me out. Solving crimes, helping people... It's what I love, it's what I'm good at. It's who I am."
"Me too." Nancy said quietly.
"I know." Frank said, gently squeezing her shoulder. "When I'm investigating I'm doing something that matters. I'm really living. Even when that means almost dying."
"But...?" Nancy prompted, sensing that he wasn't finished. When he didn't go on, she took an educated guess. "You're not afraid of dying, just of losing someone else." she said softly. "Afraid of your investigating endangering your parents, friends..."
Frank nodded. "Yes, but not only that." he said. "We've all made the same choice. Joe." he continued, his voice cracking slightly. "...You. Like today. It's not enough to make me want to stop, but... Nan, it's close."
"I know." Nancy said softly, placing a comforting hand on his chest. It was easy to risk yourself when your loved ones were safe, but accepting that they too wanted to risk their lives was much more difficult. "I understand."
"You always do." Frank laughed a little, looking away. "I guess it's stupid to talk about this. We both know that we're never going to stop. We're always going to be us."
"Who else would we be?" Nancy joked lightly, even though she knew exactly who else they could be. How many times had Ned painted the picture of life without detective work for her? "It's not so bad, being us, is it?"
"Of course not, but-" Frank stopped short, shaking his head a little. Nancy thought he looked a little nervous. "Does it mean... I mean, do you think that it means that things will never change?"
"You mean-" It felt like his gaze was surrounding her, and she swallowed hard before finishing, "-between us?"
He nodded wordlessly.
She was feeling dizzy again, like he sometimes made her do. He had never asked her a question like this before... she had barely dared to ask it to herself. "Do- do you want them to?" she breathed, not sure what she wanted him to say, not sure what she'd respond if he asked her back.
His brow furrowed, but he didn't look away. "Sometimes," he said seriously, "I want it very much."
She shivered a little, and nodded, not trusting herself to speak. His answer had made her feel simultaneously utterly wretched, and like she could fly. Why couldn't Ned ever make her feel like this? As much as she loved Ned, trusted him, he had never connected with her on every level, like Frank did so effortlessly, had never stopped her heart with desire, the way Frank had, just now. And the way Frank was looking at her made Ned feel very, very far away.
This was getting too intense, whatever was smoldering between them, too wonderful, too out of control. If they didn't stop now, she was going to kiss him, and he wasn't going to stop her. "...But-" she only managed to force out one word, but it was enough.
"I know." He stood abruptly and took a few steps away from her, running a hand through his hair. "We can't do this, not here, not now, not in the middle of a case, not while we're in love with other people."
She could hear the bite of frustration in his voice. "Don't beat yourself up, Frank. I'm just as much a part of this as you are."
He looked back at her, smiling wryly. "I know it."
"Maybe we should just..." Nancy paused and took a deep breath before making her suggestion. "Sideline this, whatever it is." With a bit of distance between them, it was easier to think clearly. "We have to focus on the investigation, and this is very-" She looked at him significantly, a twinkle in her eye. "Very distracting."
He laughed, just as she'd hoped he would, and sat back down beside her on the sofa. "Good point." he said.
The tension between them broken, Nancy rested her head on his shoulder once more. He slipped his arm around her to make their position more natural, and while his touch was hardly unwelcome, it wasn't laden with meaning this time, either. "We'll figure things out eventually." she said vaguely, but it was comforting just the same. Nothing was fixed, nothing was settled, but suddenly it seemed like nothing had to be. The feelings they had about themselves, about each other, were nothing new, and they they could deal with them professionally, as close friends, the way they always had. "We're us, remember?"
"Okay." Frank said agreeably, though there was just a twinge of regret in his voice as he added, "You know, if I was Joe I would have just kissed you back there."
She nudged him playfully with her shoulder, feeling him squeeze her other arm in return. "If you were Joe, I wouldn't have let you."