Written for glasheen25 for Christmas 2006. Falls pretty much immediately after Red Label.
Nancy sat down on the couch. Then she stood up again, reaching for her cell phone, then checked her answering machine again. No calls. Ned hadn't called her back.
She walked into the kitchen, feeling restless, her arms crossed over her stomach. She wanted to call him. She didn't know what to do, without him, but nothing between them was solid yet. Except the ring on her finger. Nancy looked down at her hand, and the ring winked back at her.
She would make dinner, but she didn't know if he'd be coming over later. She would relax into her pajamas, but she didn't know if he'd call her. But if she put her hair up in curlers and waited for him to come over, she'd end up hungry and alone. She knew that.
But maybe he would, too.
Sighing, Nancy pulled her hair up into a ponytail and went through her refrigerator. She usually went to the grocery store on the weekend, but this past weekend...
She sat down heavily at her kitchen table, her eyes distant, solemn in spite of the howling laugh track coming from the television in the other room. She was worried about him, and she hadn't been able to talk to Bess and George about it yet, but the person whose judgement she trusted most wasn't around. Her father had gone to a conference the day after the funeral for Ned's parents, and he wasn't back yet.
Nancy went to the freezer and opened the door, found a bag of frozen chicken, and frowned at it. She'd already hated planning meals before, but it had almost been fun, when she'd known Ned was going to come over. When they were at Emerson together, huddled in one of the tiny, barely adequate dorm kitchens, or down in the Omega Chi kitchen, reading each other instructions off boxes, sharing frosting or loaded glances over the laden table. She missed that.
She closed the freezer door, a wave of sadness washing over her, suddenly, slow and deep. She missed him. She missed the relationship they had shared even then; they had been close before he'd gone away to the academy, before he'd chosen this career, and then she had learned what fear was, and when they were out on their own, in their separate apartments, real true grown-ups, things had become harder, more complicated. When she missed him now the feeling was stronger, perpetual, a low soft hum at the back of her mind. He was in danger all the time now, just as she always had been, but God, this was unbearable.
She had thought it was unbearable, until his parents...
Shaking her head, Nancy found another can of soup in the pantry and settled in for the night.
--
"Nancy! Hey, girl!"
Mascara and lip gloss. Bess had sworn that if she hadn't taught Nancy anything else, with her flawless complexion, all she needed to go out on split-second notice was mascara and lip gloss. Besides, in the dim light of the bar, the din of sports announcers and bass-obscured music, no one would notice the look on her face, the slow tremble in her lower lip.
"Hey," she told... oh, she couldn't remember his name; all she could think about was Ned and how he'd sounded on the phone. "How've you been?"
"Good," the guy nodded his sandy-blond head, dipping the neck of his beer in her direction. "Good. Can't complain. You?"
"Not so bad," Nancy said, standing on her tiptoes to peer over the bobbing heads of the crowd surrounding them. "Seen Ned?"
"I think he went out back to get some air," the guy replied. Nancy took one look at him and saw that he was lying. He was good at it, his tells were nearly imperceptible, but they were still there.
She turned up the charm and shined a thousand-watt grin on him. "Well then," she said. "Guess I'll have to go get some air too."
When she turned she could already feel the slow blooming spark in her belly, her body's instinctual irrational recognition of his proximity, so she was only half surprised when she felt his shoulder brush his. "Sounds like a great idea," Ned said, the edges of his words slurred, but his eyes were clear. "Bill, you been harassing my fiancée?"
By the expression on Bill's face, Nancy knew Ned hadn't told him. "Can't help it, she's gorgeous," Bill covered smoothly. "You sure know how to pick 'em."
Ned gave the man a thin smile, his eyes nearly closed, as he gently bumped the edge of his hip against Nancy's. "Guess she's here to take me home."
Nancy regarded him for a few seconds before she reached up and took his chin into her hands, forcing his eyes to meet hers. She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him hard, his mouth falling open against hers almost immediately, and when she pulled back her expression was thoughtful.
"Yeah, I think so," she replied. "Although even kissing you might have put my blood alcohol over the limit."
Ned's mouth turned up in a smirk she only saw when he had been drinking. "And I don't even feel it," he said slowly, leaning down to stare into her eyes aggressively, and when he moved toward her she closed her eyes, taking the rough weight of his kiss, her fist falling open at her side. So this would be one of those nights.
"Then it's a good thing I'm taking you home."
"One more," he said, tilting his chin up, but this time he wasn't demanding. Bill wouldn't have seen it, but she did, the question, the suggestion of begging in his voice. One more. He was a big boy, he knew what he was doing.
Then his hand rose to rest at her waist, his fingertips sliding just under her shirt, and the blush rose faintly in her cheeks in answer. He did know what he was doing.
Maybe. Or he'd been drinking on top of his pills again. But he had seven inches and sixty pounds on her, so any sort of physical intervention was out.
"One more," she agreed, and she thought he caught the slight fall in her expression, but he turned back to the bar anyway.
--
At his apartment, as soon as they were inside, away from anyone else's ears or eyes, he immediately spun her around and pulled her to him. She accepted his kiss for a minute, then pulled back.
"What's wrong?"
Nancy looked down. "I need to know that I'm more than just a way you make yourself forget."
His belt was already halfway off. He finished pulling it out of the loops, slowly, then sat down heavily on the couch. "Do you mean," he said, not looking at her, and made a vague slow gesture with his palm.
She sat down at the other end of the couch, knees close together, hands clasped between, and nodded, staring at his coffee table, an ashtray from a poker night that he'd emptied but not cleaned, the glass smeared and obscured by traces of ash and burnt paper. An opened box of batteries, a pair of cheap red-plastic-handled scissors, a copy of Sports Illustrated.
"I mean that... that I hate to see you like this."
He ran his hand over his face and shook his head, then pulled himself unsteadily to his feet. "I'm gonna get a glass of water."
His shoes were kicked off next to the door, as he maneuvered around in the dark, around the coffee table, and then she heard the buzz of the fluorescents as he switched those on. She looked sadly at his abandoned shoes, one toe on the mouth of the other, the purse she'd dropped when he'd grabbed her and pulled her close. She'd wanted this for a long time. She'd wanted this kind of closeness between them. Now she wasn't sure if it was closeness at all.
When he came back and stood in the doorway, his hands were gleaming from condensation but empty, and he held them loose and dangling at his sides, unsettled, his eyes glittering. That spark in the pit of her belly told her what he was thinking, but she ignored it and stared back at him, not without sympathy.
"How would you like to see me?"
From the unpleasant curve in his lip she knew he didn't expect an answer, and he pulled his shirt off before she could have given him one.
"Whole again."
His brow creased, at that, but he didn't answer her. Instead he looked her over again, long, speculative, lingering, but he didn't say it and she didn't volunteer.
"Do you love me? Or is this," she said, holding her hand aloft, palm toward her, diamond facing him, "because you're afraid to be alone?"
He frowned. "Nancy--"
"No, really." She stood. "I think you know how I feel about you."
"I think that you were there when I needed you, but I don't know a damn thing about how you feel," he shot back, pushing himself off the doorframe he'd been leaning on, and she could smell the amber bite in his breath from across the room. He took a single step toward her, but stopped there, his face obscured in shadow, between the thin stripes of light coming through the blinds. If she turned the lamp on maybe this tall scared version of him would take its usual place back in the shadows, but it was late, she was so tired, and so scared, and she had been dreading this since her slow reassuring acceptance of his proposal three days before, but she could no longer tell herself that this was working. She had never seen him this drunk. She had never seen him like this before, and she would be damned if she would ever be called a sympathy fuck. On his part, or her own.
"I'd go to the end of the earth for you."
"Then what was so hard about this?"
She glanced at her purse and with a speed his demeanor belied he was between her and the door, almost unconsciously settling into a fighting stance, his shoulders wide and loose, feet apart. She had fought him before, but that had been play fighting, and this was too dangerously close to real for comfort.
"I need to know this is real," she replied, keeping her voice steady. "That this is right. That there was a reason things happened the way they did. I need to walk into this knowing that we're making the right decision, Ned."
"So you don't want to marry me."
"I didn't say that." She bowed her head, then glanced back up at him. "You're not feeling any doubts about this?"
He held her gaze for a while before dropping it, his fist falling open at his side. "I don't feel anything," he said softly. "I don't feel anything anymore. I wake up in the morning and I go to work and I study for my detective's exam and I come home and I lie in that bed alone and that is all I do. They're three days in the ground and I don't know if it will ever stop hurting like this."
"It won't," she whispered. "All we do is find a way to pull back from it a little bit, but it never goes away."
"And I," his voice started shaking, and she had to fight to keep her gaze locked on him, even though her eyes were beginning to fill with sympathetic tears, "have to go on, knowing that? Nan... you're everything, you're all I have left..."
Nancy swallowed hard, almost unable to continue. "But all I can do, is give you myself, Ned. I don't know how to make any of this better. I wish I did. I do... I go to bed with you because I love you, and I have loved you for so long, but, what does it solve? You still wake up in the morning feeling empty and I have a ring on my finger and I feel like you only put it there because you were my first."
He shook his head. "It wasn't like that."
Her throat was suddenly aching, and she looked up at him, the first tears streaking down her cheeks. "I need to know that you didn't propose to me because you were afraid of spending the rest of your life alone."
He made a hard sound. "If you're going to hold that against me then you must be the only person on Earth who's never woken up at two o'clock in the morning wondering if every day is going to be exactly the same, if things are never going to work, if the bed next to them is always going to be empty. Am I worried about being alone? Hell yes, Nancy, I'm worried about being alone. I'm worried about disappearing and no one noticing for days. I'm worried that even if I do get this job, even if I do live the life I've wanted to live, I won't have anyone to share it with. I have wanted you to be mine for a very long time. I never wanted..." He made a vague empty gesture. "This wasn't how I would have had it happen, but the circumstances don't change the truth of it. Is that what you meant?"
Nancy sat down again, slowly, nodding, her hair falling forward into her face, and she brushed the tips of her hair away from the sticky gloss still on her lips. "You're hurting, and I told you... I told you I'd always be here for you. Things... were really great between us, when we were still in college, but since we've graduated, since people we've known have started getting married... it's not that I never saw myself, like that, with you. But I don't want you to feel like you had to do this, or that we have to do this, just because..."
"Because we've had sex?"
Her lips quirked up involuntarily at that. "Yeah," she admitted softly. "I don't want to be engaged to you just because we've had sex, and I don't want us to..." She blushed. "If I can comfort you, I want to do that, but I don't want that to be the only reason we have sex."
He sat down next to her, then pulled her into his lap so that she was straddling his waist. "We have sex because it feels awesome," he told her, leaning in to kiss her neck. "Because it means that I can feel something else. I'm sorry if you thought I was... just using you."
She squirmed when his stubble brushed her collarbone, which only made him hold her tighter. She ran her fingers through his hair. "I'm glad it makes you feel good."
He pulled back, his hair mussed from her fingers, his eyebrows raised slightly. "It doesn't feel good for you?"
She started a second too late to cover, but he knew her tells. "It does feel good," she said, putting as much sincerity as she could into her voice. Because it did feel good. But the way it felt good seemed to be entirely disconnected from what was going on between them physically.
She looked down and he put his finger under her chin, forcing her head up to catch her gaze with his. "But that doesn't change anything. It doesn't mean that there's any... love, in the act, for you."
He traced the backs of his fingers over his cheek and swallowed hard. "Why would you feel like there is no love, in it, for me," he whispered.
"Because it feels like all it is, is a way for you to forget, and I could be anyone, any girl... and you..."
He nodded, slowly, and she remembered again that he was drunk, that everything was still moving too fast for him. She'd pounded down the last half of his beer before they'd left, but that put her nowhere near him, nowhere near his stratosphere. "Because it didn't happen between us until that night," he said, slowly.
She nodded. "What was I supposed to think," she whispered, miserably. "That you never wanted me that way, that I was just a distraction..."
"You know that isn't true," he protested, running his fingers over her hair, down her back, to her waist. "When we were in college, you never let me go far enough, baby."
His fingers slipped inside her waistband and she bit back a moan. "It was different then," she managed. "Everything was different then."
He nodded, then leaned forward and caught her mouth with his, his teeth sinking gently into her lower lip. She had stars in her eyes when he pulled back. "My relationship with you is too important for me to ruin over this, so... if you want to stop having sex, I understand." He looked down. "But I think there are some nights it's going to be hard for me to be alone..."
She nodded, brushing his hair back from his forehead. "It's not that I want to stop having sex," she said. "Not quite like that. But I want to feel like more than... more than your consolation fuck."
He was staring at her mouth when she looked up at his eyes again. "I love the way you say that word," he admitted. Then he shook his head. "It's been all wrong... Nan, I come to you because I love you, because I need to be close to you, because I need to forget, and you're the only person who can make me feel anything even slightly close to normal anymore. If it's uncomfortable for you, I'll find another way, because the last thing I want is to drive you away."
"You're not going to drive me away," she reassured him. Then she bit her lip. "It'll get better..."
A few moments passed before he realized what she meant, and his eyes widened. She nodded, reluctantly, and he exhaled long and hard, leaning back, her thighs still straddling his waist. "That's not why, why I was talking to you about this..."
He appeared to reach some decision, and since he was in some strange alcohol-induced state of certainty, she felt a charge of energy shoot up her spine, warning her, preparing her. "Do you trust me?"
She wet her lips before answering. "Yes."
"Do you love me?"
She nodded.
He picked her up and carried her back to his bedroom, and when she, misunderstanding his intentions, reached for the hem of his shirt, he shook his head. "It's going to be about you tonight," he told her softly, reaching for the hem of her own shirt.
He pulled it over her head and she stood in the middle of his bedroom floor, in her jeans and bra, reaching up to cup his cheek in her hands. She shook her head. "You started thinking about them again today, didn't you."
He nodded. "I can't stop," he said softly. "Part of me doesn't want to."
She pulled his face down to her shoulder and held him there, her fingers cool against the back of his neck, her chest rising and falling against his chest as they stood there, and then he moved and they were on his bed, their jeans-clad legs tangled together, facing each other. She had never been with him here. She reached up and brushed his hair back, her eyes shining in the dark, tensing when his teeth brushed her neck.
"I love you," she whispered. "I'm sorry you didn't know that."
He rubbed his hand over his face, then pulled back. "I need you for a thousand reasons," he said. "This just happens to be the big one right now."
She nodded, searching his eyes. "But do you understand?"
"Yes," he whispered, unbuttoning her jeans, and she arched under him. He smiled. "I'll still love you in the morning. I'll still love you for the rest of our lives."
She smiled. "Good. Because Dad came back into town today and I told him we'd have dinner with him tomorrow."
He stopped in the middle of peeling her jeans down her legs. "Both of us?"
"Both of us."
--
Ned was wearing his best suit the next day when she picked him up from the street in front of his apartment, shifting his weight nervously from side to side. "Are you sure about this?"
She shook her head. "Not really, but it's too late now."
He sighed as he ducked into her car. "We haven't talked about what we're going to say."
She flashed her best smile at him. "Nothing but the truth," she said sweetly. "He just wanted to see how you were holding up."
Ned looked down at his suit. "Eh," he mumbled. "You sure seem happy today."
"You sure know how to treat a girl," she said, her voice soft and low.
Ned had the grace to blush. "Glad I could be of service, ma'am," he said, putting a drawl into his voice, and she laughed.
"I think I'm holding up okay."
"You are," she told him softly, remembering how she had told him the night before to make love to her, to lose himself in her, and the relief on his face. She had held him close to her, closed her eyes and buried her face against his chest, breathing in the mingled scent of their sweat, and for the first time since she had accepted his proposal, she had felt peace.
Ned sighed and Nancy reached over for his hand at the next stoplight, squeezing it in reassurance. "Everything's going to be all right."
He shook his head. "I'm just thinking," he said, then stopped himself.
"What?"
Ned shook his head again, then half-smiled, and that smile held something wicked. "At least he won't think I'm only engaged to you because we've had sex." Then his smile dropped. "Will he?"
Nancy choked out shocked laughter. "Um... no, he won't. As soon as we say I'm not pregnant, I don't think he'll be worried about that."
"Oh."
"Because I'm not."
Ned relaxed visibly, sagging back against his seat. "That's good."
"See? Nothing to worry about."
From the door Nancy could already smell Hannah's spaghetti and meatballs, even though she knew that Hannah wouldn't be around to join them. "Hey Dad," she said, greeting him with a hug, seeing the few more grey hairs again, the subtle changes in his face that she had never seen while still living at home.
Carson returned her hug, then turned to Ned, compassion in his eyes when he shook her fiancé's hand. "Good to see you again, Ned."
"Good to see you too, sir."
Between the three of them they set the table, filling glasses and passing around silverware and rolls, until all the small fidgeting things were done and the three of them were sitting around the meal, with Nancy and Ned surreptitiously glancing at each other every few seconds, half-daring the other to broach the subject. Nancy, for her part, had already turned the ring around on her finger so that the diamond faced inward, to avoid giving it away early. As though the plain gold of the inner band was any less noticeable on her customarily bare fingers.
"I'm sure things have been difficult."
Ned took a sip from his glass of milk and nodded. "They'll be all right," he said, and only Nancy caught the note of doubt in his voice. "How was your trip?"
Carson shrugged. "The usual," he replied. "Stuffed shirts and pompous jerks who think it's more fun to talk about law than to actually practice it." He shook his head. "Don't mind me. I think I've gotten cynical since my only child left home."
Nancy felt her stomach sympathetically clench for Ned at that, and even if his gulp wasn't audible, it might as well have been. She put her thumb against the diamond and pushed it around on her finger without revealing it to her father, stirring the spaghetti on her plate. "Maybe more salad would be good," she said, directing a bright smile at her father. "Ned?"
Ned shoved back his chair and followed her into the kitchen, and as soon as the door swung closed behind them his hand was on her arm. "I should have asked for his permission."
"Where's the spontaneity in that," she teased him gently, reaching up to adjust the knot in his tie. "Ned, it's okay. If you want me to start, I will."
Ned shook his head, an expression of dogged determination on his handsome face. "No. I proposed, it's only fair."
"And I accepted." She pulled him down to her for a kiss. "So the hard part's over," she whispered against his mouth. "He's always liked you."
"I know," Ned replied, not unkindly. "But you're his little girl."
Nancy shrugged, then glanced over her shoulder, making doubly sure they were alone, before leaning up to whisper in his ear, "And last night, my God, Ned, I have never felt like that..."
Ned shuddered under her fingertips, then grasped her arm, hard. "Thanks," he murmured. "And if we talk about it anymore we won't be telling your dad that we're engaged, we'll be explaining to him why I came out of the kitchen with you in front of me..."
"We could take care of it before you walk out..."
She burst into muted peals of laughter at the expression on his face, and after a moment he began to crack, too. When they recovered, panting for breath, he reached out and laced his fingers through hers.
"He's not going to freak out."
She nodded in agreement. "He won't," she added.
If Carson was at all curious, he hid it well. Nancy waited for Ned to give the cue, which he didn't, not until they were all settled with a slice of chocolate cake in front of them. Nancy, who recognized Hannah's cooking like the sound of a mother's voice, was licking the back of her fork in a most familiar manner when Ned cleared his throat.
"Mr. Drew... Nancy and I have something to tell you."
Carson put his fork down. "Is it a good something?"
Ned dipped his head gently a few times, in affirmation. "She and I... have been dating for a long time, and I fi--we finally decided, after I asked her..."
Carson had been a trial lawyer for the majority of Nancy's life, so his poker face was incomparable, but she could see the faintest suspicion in his eyes as he glanced back and forth between them.
"I asked her to marry me, and she said yes," Ned said, the words all coming out in a rush, the slow blush that had been staining his cheeks now fully in bloom.
Carson's gaze immediately went back to his daughter, but it took a minute before he could find an answer. "You're getting married," he said slowly, faintly, with the slightest inflection at the end, and even though it wasn't a question, she nodded in agreement anyway.
"Ned and I are getting married."
Carson glanced back down at his cake but made no effort to touch his fork. "And this is what you two want?"
Nancy's pause after Ned's nod was entirely imperceptible. "I've wanted to marry Nancy for a long time."
Carson nodded thoughtfully. "It's very soon," he said. "I know you two have been together for quite a while--"
"Seven years," Nancy supplied, glancing over at Ned to make sure he hadn't fainted dead out of his chair.
"But are you sure this is a good decision?" Carson appeared to remember something, but didn't say it immediately. "Did your parents..."
Ned took a second to weigh the benefit of a lie before shaking his head. "They didn't know," he said, which was technically true, if only because their deaths had been a rather large part of the cause.
Nancy clasped her hands in front of her on the table. "Well... we already live in the city. I trust Ned. I know he'd never do anything to hurt me," she said, and the look in his eyes changed, subtly, at that. "The time just seems right, and I love him. And I don't want to wait to make sure everyone knows that, anymore."
Carson was quiet. "Well," he said softly. "If this is what you want, if you're sure that this is what you want... I would be more than happy to be there."
Nancy smiled, slowly, as the weak trembling of hope gave way to relief. "So it's okay?"
Carson nodded. "It's okay. Just give me a while, okay? This is a lot to take in, and I'll need a few months to get used to the idea..."
Nancy pushed her chair back and came to her father, swiftly, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. "Thank you," she murmured, and Carson kissed her cheek.
Ned nodded. "It won't be for a few months," he said, glancing at Nancy for confirmation, which she gave him. "And we haven't announced it. You're the first one who knows."
Nancy slipped the ring back on her finger, facing out, as Carson looked down at his plate again, his fingers moving vaguely on the table at either side, shaking his head with incredulity.
"Well, Ned," he said, "I know it isn't much, but... welcome to the family."
"Thanks," Ned replied, then glanced over at Nancy, who was smiling at him. "You don't know how much this means to me."
"Or me," Nancy chimed in.
Carson smiled. "Anything for my little girl," he said, squeezing her hand. "As long as you remember that, Ned..."
Ned shook his head. "I'll never forget it."