Ned and Chuck College, ergh, a pushing daisies fanfic

Completely AU. I just love the characters of Ned and Chuck and wanted to see what it would've been like if they ever got to see each other before Chuck was killed.

I probably, most likely, won't continue with this. I think it's more of a one-shot. I don't really know... I just wrote it to get back into the swing of writing. I'll write a proper Ned x Chuck, Pushing Daisies story when I can actually think of a good storyline!

COLLEGE. ergh.

Ned was dragging an old suitcase behind him, one of the wheels wobbling as if it were going to fall off any second. Digby was following Ned down the hallway, avoiding any contact with his owner. As he dragged the suitcase, and struggled with the large, battered rucksack over one shoulder, a football catapulted past his face.

He looked up with a look of worry, shock and sadness. A large jock-type man in a football shirt called out 'Sorry' from the end of the dorm hallway.

When Ned smiled slightly and muttered 'Don't worry about it', the feeling of loneliness swamped over him like a bucket of cold rain water. He didn't care all that much that the football almost hit him, and he didn't particularly want to join in aimlessly throwing a ball up and down a hallway. But what he did want was friends. Or just a friend, any friend. But not friends like that football guy. Since Ned had left the Longborough School for Boys he had also lost contact with Eugene Mulchandani. Eugene had gone to study Physics, or something more complicated and difficult to spell, at Harvard, a year earlier. And ever since, Ned had been alone in the adventure of going to college.

Ned arrived outside door number 27, checked a map given to him at reception, and saw room 27 was circled. He dropped his rucksack on the floor, and propped his suitcase up against the wall, to dig around in his pockets for the key the woman at reception had given him earlier. As he was trying to get the key to turn in the lock, he saw a girl walk past him. Her back was turned as she walked away from him; her chestnut brown hair swinging from side to side as she walked. She was wearing a brightly coloured dress that dropped to her knees, and flat shoes that matched the yellow of her dress. Ned had never really been one to dress in clothes that reflected the weather, but in being completely intrigued by this girl, he had deduced she was certainly one to reflect the colours of the hot summer day outside.

She wasn't walking in a particularly fascinating or confident way, but when the football guy wolf-whistled and looked her up and down as she walked past, Ned was suddenly filled with anger and a strange desire to be protective of the girl.

As the girl was struggling to turn the key in the lock, as Ned had been earlier, the football guy began to approach her.

'Hey, I think we've got the wrong keys,' Ned suddenly spoke up.

The girl was surprised, but quickly hurried towards Ned.

'My key isn't working either,' Ned explained.

The girl handed him her key, and the football guy held back as if he were waiting for her to go back to her own room and start with his terrible pick up lines.

Ned looked at her key and saw the number 27 on it, and then tried it in his lock. He twisted the key and it turned with ease, and he pushed the door open.

'Come in for a sec,' Ned said quietly. When the girl's face twisted into an uncomfortable look of uncertainty, he spoke again, 'Please? That guy's just creeping me out a bit and it would be a good, if not great, comfort to me knowing that you're safer in here until he's gone,' he whispered quickly but clearly.

The girl looked up at him, pausing slightly as she looked at his face. It was a pause of interest, and then a feeling that she knew him from somewhere. 'Thanks,' she whispered back as they gathered up their bags and hurried into Ned's room.

A few murmurs of confusion were heard from outside the door once Ned closed it behind him. A very loud 'But why go with that nerd, when I'm standin' right here lookin' like this?!' was audible in the room, and probably throughout the whole hallway too.

Ned had been acquainted with "men" like him before in the Longborough School for Boys when they had all hit the age of about 14. But Ned had always kept his innocence, kindness and humanity when many of the other boys hadn't. Perhaps it was losing his mother at such a young age. Perhaps it was never seeing Chuck again and only remembering her as his childhood sweetheart. Or perhaps it was the gift that he could touch things and bring them back to life; that was a likely explanation as to why hormones were overpowered by a decent level of brain activity and logical thought, that was most probably provoked by the act of, unintentionally and accidentally, killing his childhood sweetheart's father. Since that unfortunate incident, Ned had always had quite a mature and isolated view of the world and the people in it, after realising the power of life and death was in the touch of his lightening quick index finger.

When Ned dropped all his bags at the end of his bed he turned back around to face the girl. Digby jumped up onto the bed too, and watched the two of them. He looked at her with great interest and decided to speak before an uncomfortable silence swallowed them both into a black hole.

'Do you remember a little boy that used to live across the road from you? His mother died when your dad died and then he got taken away to boarding school and you never saw him again… Ring any bells?'

'Ned?' Her face brightened up and her mouth was rounded with a smile pulling at both sides of her lips.

'Chuck? I thought I knew you,,' Ned was truly smiling; a real smile, one that had never crossed his face since the day he spent with her destroying a make-believe town dressed as dinosaurs.

'We haven't seen each other in so long… How did you know?' she was amazed and so happy to see him, even if it wasn't a particularly memorable face as the last face she remembered was a 10 year old Ned.

'I'd know you anywhere. I was in lo-… I had a crus-… You were my first kiss…' he spoke hesitantly.

'You were mine too,' she smiled sweetly, 'And thank you for calling me Chuck. Nobody ever called me Chuck since, well, since you.'