Audrey Parker doesn't like silence. It unsettles her, but she takes comfort in the tiny noises: the sound of the wind on the rooftops and the leaves, someone else breathing quietly, the click clatter of fingers on a keyboard.
Or maybe she does like silences and only thinks she doesn't because she thinks she's Audrey Parker but really she's not she's Lucy or possibly not she could be someone else. If she thinks about it too closely it gives her a headache.
"Maybe," she snaps, rounding on Duke when he offers her a raspberry muffin out of the mixed box, "maybe I do like blueberry muffins, did you ever think about that?" Duke blinks at her.
"No?" he says, and slowly puts the muffin back, watching her like one would a slightly rabid animal, coiled to strike. "Do you want blueberry?"
"Yes," she says, still glaring, and yanks one out of the pink cardboard box, fuming. Duke backs away from her, hands held up in appeasement, and she stomps all the way to her car.
The blueberries are cloying on her tongue, too sweet, and they leave little dots of blue on her fingers. She's about to throw it away in the trashcan by her desk when Nathan comes in and squints at her.
"You don't like blueberry muffins," he says calmly.
"Maybe I do," she says, leveling a glare at him, and he looks back evenly.
"You don't," he says, and he sounds so sure, so resolute, that Audrey's shoulders sag.
"I really don't," she mutters, and he reaches across her desk and throws it away. She wipes her fingers on his white button up shirt to make herself feel better.
Audrey touches Nathan without thinking about it, brushes him when she reaches for the coffee sitting on his desk, touches fingers when they exchange files, taps him on the shoulder and the arms when she wants his attention. He stills, always, and sometimes when they're alone his eyes close and he twitches almost imperceptibly into her touch.
Sometimes Audrey wants to press her face into his neck and slip a hand around his ribcage, drag her nails through his hair and brush butterfly kisses across his cheek, because he deserves it and she doesn't like to see the look on his face, the one he gets when he sees a mother kiss her son on the cheek on the way to school, a teenage girl laughing when her boyfriend swings her into the air.
The day that Audrey lives over and over ends, and she sits with the body for a long time, quiet and thinking of a little girl in green shoes that will never see her father again.
"Audrey," Nathan says softly, "I'll take care of this."
"Will you, um," Audrey says, and swallows hard, "will you make sure he's treated, uh."
"We'll treat him right," Nathan says, and his drawl is calm and steady, like he's making a promise. "Hey," he says softly, and she looks up at him. "Go on," he mutters, and shuffles his feet. Audrey barks out a sob of laughter.
"God Nathan are you even for real?" she asks, and Nathan looks confused.
Audrey walks on the pier and listens to the seagulls. The water is gentle today, and Audrey watches a buoy bob and slip on the waves, the birds spiraling higher and higher on the warm breeze.
"Hey Audrey," Duke says cheerfully, and falls a bit short at the look on her face.
"Not now, Duke," she mutters, and hunches into herself. "Just... not now."
"Okay," Duke says quietly, and the wood of the pier creaks as he walks away, the hollow thump of his footsteps.
Audrey sits on the edge, her feet dangling. She can see the mist of the salt spray darkening the tips of her shoes, tiny light droplets. The water is murky from the boats, not the pretty clear sparkle she's seen from the cliffs and on the beaches.
The pier dips, and Duke settles next to her. He smells like the restaurant, beer battered fish and the crispness of seasoned potato wedges.
"I brought you," he announces in a way that suggests he expects trumpets to sound and the skies to open up for choirs of angels to sing, "a pistachio-pecan muffin." He presents it to her in a blue cloth napkin, and Audrey blinks at him a bit blankly.
"A pistachio-pecan muffin," she repeats, and Duke grins crookedly at her.
"Have you ever had a pistachio-pecan muffin?" he asks, and Audrey thinks about it.
"I don't think so?" she says, and Duke smiles wider.
"No Audrey Parker has ever had a pistachio-pecan muffin," he says firmly, "except you." Audrey feels something warm curl in her chest.
"Thanks Duke," she says quietly, and leans ever so slightly against him, just close enough that their shoulders brush when they breathe.
"This," Audrey hisses, "is officially the weirdest encounter of my life."
"And we live in Haven," Nathan responds. He shifts a little farther under the group of desks they're crouched under, and ducks as another ball of flame, roughly the size of a golf ball, slams through within three inches of his ear.
"Oh my god," a teenage boy shrieks from the front of the classroom, "oh my god oh my god oh my god." Two more flaming rocks slam land to Audrey's left, skittering across the tile and leaving long dark scorch marks.
"What kind of Trouble is spitting flaming rocks," Nathan mutters, and Audrey twists around to cast him a disbelieving look.
"Are you judging someone else's Trouble?" she asks incredulously, and Nathan's lips twitch.
"It's not very manly," he whispers, and Audrey snorts in spite of herself.
"What is happening," the boy shrieks, and Audrey hears a hiss before feeling a thump against her back, with enough force to knock her forward.
"Parker," Nathan yelps, and hits her hard on the back with his open palm. Audrey sits up.
"Did you just use your bare hand to put out a fire," she asks, and Nathan blinks at her.
"Small fire," he says. Audrey glares.
"Tired of this," she mutters, and stands up. Nathan swings up next to her in tandem, and Audrey gathers her best stern command voice.
"Stop talking!" she shouts, and the boy squeaks, clapping both hands over his mouth. Audrey takes a deep breath. "It's gonna be okay," she says reassuringly, and steps closer to him. Nathan tenses slightly, the way he does when Audrey gets closer to potential danger than he is. Just a kid, she thinks, pale and scared in his black skinny jeans, eyes ringed with black smudges wide and with fear. She moves within an arm's reach of him, and Nathan steps up with her.
"You're Troubled," she says gently.
"Help me," he whispers, and on the second syllable he makes a wet coughing noise. A golfball sized ball of fire shoots out of his mouth and arcs a little, heading to Audrey's left. Nathan she thinks, and shoves her hand out instinctively. The pain that flares on her wrist is so searing her breath catches in her chest and her vision tilts. She stumbles sideways, gasping in pain, and Nathan catches her around the waist. There's a line of hot pain across her wrist, stretching down slightly into her forearm, and she curls it into her body, panting.
"Parker," Nathan says, and even though he sounds calm Audrey can feel the strained tension in his muscles, hears the bit of panic under the forced steadiness. There's a whisper of metal on leather, and a soft click of the safety.
"I'm okay," she mutters, and forces herself to straighten. She sways a little, and Nathan keeps an arm around her waist to steady her, his gun drawn at his side, out but not aimed.
The teenager looks close to tears, his hands once again firmly across his mouth. "Your um," Audrey starts, and has to take a deep breath to gather her thoughts. Nathan's fingers flex on the grip of his gun. "Your teacher said that you had gotten pretty mad before, is that true?"
"Do not speak," Nathan reminds him sharply. The boy nods jerkily.
"Your Trouble is triggered by emotion," she says, and tries to ignore the trembling in her fingers. "Close your eyes, take a deep breath, stay quiet, and everything is going to be okay."
The boy takes a deep, shuddering breath, eyes teary, and retches, spitting tiny embers out that fizz on contact with the floor. He sits down on the floor, hard, and Nathan puts his gun away, reaching instead for the radio in his back pocket.
"We're gonna take you to the hospital to get you checked out," Nathan says calmly to the boy, and Audrey can see a couple of bright red welts on his arms and fingers.
Audrey waits for a couple of officers to usher the kid out before she sags against a wall and takes a look at her wrist. Her fingers brush the burn, and she has to bite down a shout, knees buckling.
"Let me see that," Nathan says, crowding her close against the wall. His fingers are gentle on her elbow. He rolls her arm until her wrist is up, and she drops her head on his shoulder, gritting her teeth against the pain as he peels the burned edges of her sleeve away from her arm. "Yup," Nathan says, "you're going to the hospital." His jaw is so tight Audrey has serious concerns that his face is going to crack.
"Mmkay," she mumbles, and slumps a little further against him. Nathan snaps his fingers in her face.
"Hey," he says sharply. Audrey rolls her eyes at him.
"I'm not going into shock over this," she grumbles, and sighs, her nose still pressed against Nathan's chest. "Ow," she complains, and sighs again. Nathan's thumb brushes over her wrist, and Audrey realizes he's been holding his breath.
"Nathan..." she mumbles, and Nathan hooks an arm around her back.
"Let's go," he says.
"I can do my own seatbelt," she grumbles when they climb in the car, but Nathan bats her hands away and does it himself. When he gets in the driver's seat he closes the door so hard Audrey shakes in her seat.
"You shouldn't have done that," he says tightly, after they've been driving a while, and his fingers are white around the steering wheel.
"What," Audrey asks, lifting her head from where she's been leaning it against the window and rolling her forehead against the cool glass.
"Should have let it hit me," Nathan says in that same flat tone.
"Oh but it's okay for you to shield me?" she snaps, the pain making her irritated.
"Doesn't hurt me," Nathan says shortly, and Audrey sits up.
"No" she snaps impatiently, "no, it doesn't pain you, there is a huge difference."
"Whatever," Nathan says dismissively, and Audrey thwacks him on the arm with her left arm without thinking. Her vision flashes white with the impact and blurs, and her breath stutters. She lets out a very embarrassing whimpering sound and sways unsteadily.
"Goddammit Audrey," Nathan says, and Audrey feels the thrum of the engine vibrate through her seat as Nathan accelerates.
When the doctor wipes the burn down with some kind of antiseptic wipe Audrey inhales sharply and her right hand flies out, searching for something. She finds Nathan's hand, and curls her fingers around his tightly.
"Parker," Nathan says steadily, and Audrey locks eyes with him, panting as the doctor rubs ointment across her arm and presses down with a clean white bandage.
"Hey," he says, and the pressure in her chest eases. She smiles at him.
"Hey," she says, and his thumb brushes across her wrist gently.
Brody (Chris, her mind whispers, Chris who brushes his fingers across her hips and looks at her like she's the only girl in the world when he pulls away from their kiss) laughs when she talks about the other Audrey Parker.
"I can't imagine anyone being you but you," he says, and kisses her, curls his arm around her waist and makes her feel warm and safe and wanted.
"Hey," he says one morning, as Audrey hops around the room trying to get into her pants and grab her cellphone and find her keys while he lays in bed, eyes blurry from sleep, "do you think the other Audrey Parker is immune to me as well?" Audrey stills with her fingers on the buttons of her slacks.
"I don't know," she says sharply, and Chris sits up.
"Hey, just wondering," he says, picking up on her tone, and Audrey grabs her keys off the bedside table so hard she scratches a groove in the cheap wood.
"Well don't," she snaps, and bangs the door shut behind her.
"You're looking sunny," Nathan says when she throws her gun into her desk drawer and slams into her chair.
"Yeah," she sighs, and waves her hand in the air in a vague motion. "Just... stuff."
"Stuff," Nathan repeats. Audrey thumps her head on the desktop.
"Urghdnfh," she groans. She hears the squeak of his chair wheels and the creak of his shoes on the floor.
"Let's go get pancakes," he says. Audrey twists her head sideways to peer at him.
"What." she says flatly, and it comes out muffled on the desk. She hopes Nathan can't tell that she accidentally drooled a little.
"Pancakes," Nathan says steadily, "they're small circles of batter heated over a stovetop until golden-"
"Oh shut up," Audrey says, but she's smiling a little.
Sometimes when they're doing paperwork late at night, carefully rewriting reports to omit the mention of the Troubles, Nathan fusses with some kind of camp radio and they listen to the midnight broadcast of the Twilight Zone before they head home, eating cold Chinese broccoli beef over rice and arguing about if the characters are Troubled or not during the commercials.
"There's probably a logical explanation," Nathan argues during one about some guy that sees homicidal circus girls in his dreams.
"Okay Scully," Audrey teases, and Nathan blinks at her.
"Do you want to believe," he deadpans, and Audrey laughs in delight.
"You've seen the X-Files," she says gleefully, and Nathan grins at her.
"You should smile more," she says. "You've got a good smile."
"I smile with you," he says, and Audrey feels a flutter in her chest.
Audrey shows up at Nathan's door on Saturday at a godawful hour of the morning.
"Trust me, I'm not any happier about this than you are," she announces when Nathan opens the screen door, barefoot and hair ruffled. Nathan blinks at her.
"Why are you here," he asks, blinking, and she shoves a coffee at him, the largest blackest kind she could bully Duke into making.
"I broke up with Chris," she says, and he looks confused.
"I know," he says, and she walks right past him to pace in his living room.
"So I was looking at my apartment and I realized, I realized, Nathan, that I don't have any stuff. All my stuff is Duke's."
"That is pretty terrifying," Nathan says calmly, "but you have stuff."
"All my stuff," Audrey says, voice stilted, "is in Boston, and. Isn't... my stuff." She swallows, and blinks a couple of times rapidly, looking at a point above Nathan's right shoulder. Nathan nods slowly.
"Let me get dressed," he says, "we'll drive to the outlets in Portland." He turns to go down the hallway and Audrey darts forward to catch his hand.
"I-thank you, Nathan," she says quietly. His eyes are somewhere between blue and grey, and she can feel the calluses he can't on the tips of his fingers when he squeezes her hand once and lets go.
"Oh my god, Nathan, you have grandma taste," Audrey says with a healthy amount of horror, staring at an awful purple and yellow argyle couch.
"It adds a subtle touch," Nathan says seriously, and Audrey gapes at him.
"Go look at desk chairs," she orders, and Nathan walks away backwards, hands raised in fake appeasement, grinning. Audrey rolls her eyes, and sits on the ugly couch, bouncing a little. "Subtle touch my ass," she mutters.
Audrey finds Nathan spinning in circles in a rolly desk chair, fingernails tapping on the armrests.
"Let's go," she says tightly.
"Picked something out?" he asks, and angles himself out of the chair.
"No," Audrey says, "let's just go, let's go home." She tugs on his jacket.
"Why?" Nathan asks, and Audrey lets go of his jacket and starts walking briskly for the door.
"Au-Audrey!" Nathan chases her, and catches up just as she's turning into the parking lot. "Hey!" he says, and hauls her around by the arm. "What's going on." Audrey wipes at her face and swallows.
"I can't use my credit card," she says, and Nathan's forehead wrinkles. "I can't even use my social security number, the only reason I can even cash checks is that Delores at the bank knows me. I can't use my credit, Nathan, because it isn't mine." Audrey swallows again, and Nathan looks at her for a long minute. Audrey presses the thumb of her knuckle to the spot between her eyebrows.
Nathan tugs her forward until she can lean her head against his chest and take a deep calming breath. She sighs, and thinks that for someone that can't feel his own skin Nathan is comfortably solid. She can feel the warmth of his skin through his shirt, and his breath ghosts across the top of her head, ruffling her hair gently. He reminds her of her bed on early mornings after too little sleep, and she has the sudden ridiculous urge to stretch out against him. Instead she takes a measured step back and drags the back of her hand across her face.
"Let's get lunch," Nathan says, and Audrey nods. When he turns to go to the car Audrey slips under his arm and wraps an arm around his waist, leaning her head against his upper arm. Nathan stumbles, caught out of step, but when Audrey doesn't react he drops his arm across her shoulders hesitantly.
Audrey fiddles with his radio until she finds a classical station that only crackles three times a minute in the Maine wilderness. She likes it when the violins get their solo, the way people can turn screeching into something beautiful.
Audrey responds to a call on the scanner Nathan installed in her car a month after she met him, a disturbance at a country club.
"Fancy," she notes when she meets Nathan on the deep green lawn, perfectly manicured.
"Girl's gone and boarded herself in the toolshed," Nathan briefs her, and then his voice drops. "Witnesses say there were bees swarming around her."
"I hate bees," Audrey mutters. She doesn't like the way the buzzing sounds, the way it builds and builds until it's all you can hear. It makes her palms itch.
They walk to the back of the shed, and Nathan swings the crowbar he's got in his right hand.
"Ready?" he asks, and Audrey smiles. Audrey can feel the weight of her badge on her hip, heavier than the slim FBI identification, and her Haven PD-issued Glock is warm against her palm. Nathan is looking at her like she's always been here.
"Yes," she says.