Written for kink_bingo 2013: bodies and body parts. Takes place (vaguely) in s4. I had three other things I was going to write for this square, and then this happened at the last moment. Written very, very fast, and I'm sorry.
Audrey couldn't stop staring.
The part of her that was still Lexie (a larger part than anyone wanted to recognize) had a keen appreciation for people's physical attributes. Lexie noticed bodies in a way Audrey hadn't before. Something the original Lexie DeWitt picked up as a bartender, maybe, constantly watching and engaging with her clientele.
Audrey kept being distracted at odd moments by the length of a man's fingers and by the fall of a woman's hair. She'd noticed how beautiful Jordan's eyes were, and Nathan's mouth. She'd spent too long gaping at the muscles of Dwight's arms as he shrugged into a ballistic vest. She'd even, God help her, had to lace her fingers together to keep them from reaching out to tangle in Vince Teagues' amazing curly hair. That would have been disastrous, considering he'd had some kind of relationship with at least one of her previous incarnations. The last thing Audrey needed was more leftover echoes in her life.
But none of those attractions compared to the fascination she'd developed for Duke's nose.
It was so prominent on his face, but it suited him completely. On anyone else that nose would've been out of proportion, but on Duke's long face it just...fit. He'd let his hair grow out long and that made him look even more like the pirate he claimed to be, a romantic hero stepped right out of an oil painting. Cyrano come to life, Audrey thought, and then winced; the parallel was a little too potentially accurate, and unsettling.
Duke's nose gave his face character. Audrey loved the length of it, the bumps and bulges, the way light broke against his face and cast unique shadows. Distinctive and powerful.
And appropriate, given Duke's penchant for involving himself in other people's business. Audrey had more than one reason to be grateful for that. Duke had an instinct for finding trouble—or Troubles—and she could almost believe that in his case, the nose knows. Wasn't there a comic-book character like that? "Who nose what evil—"
Audrey Parker wouldn't have made a pun like that. But Lexie (or Lucy or Sarah or some other previous manifestation) might have. Somehow they were all part of her, not as separate personalities but as integrated pieces of a combined persona. Maybe for the first time in her history she really was a singular person: a whole greater than the sum of her parts. Audrey needed to believe that, for Haven's sake and her own.
Her fixation on Duke's nose was starting to become a problem, though. More and more often she wanted to reach out and stroke it, to...
Hell, to lick his nose, to feel it against her cheek and her breasts and her belly, to feel his nose bump against her skin as it traveled lower down—
She was having dinner at the Gull when Duke caught her staring. "Something on my face?" he asked, swiping a hand over his cheek.
"Yes," Audrey choked out, and dissolved into giggles at the way Duke's nose crinkled with his utter befuddlement.
"A large nose is the mark of a witty, courteous, affable, generous and liberal man."
—Cyrano de Bergerac
"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!" And so does his nose.
...I'm really very sorry.