Disclaimer - I do not own anything even remotely related to The Mighty Ducks. I only wish I had thought of them first…

Italics indicate character thought.

Again, thanks for the reviews. They rock! Sorry for the few days with no updates. I've had a killer case of the flu. Bleck!

-

"Oh…man." Beau sat up slowly, raising a hand to her head and grimacing. Now that is a headache. Finger combing her hair she looked around, smiling. Sitting on the beside table next to her she saw a glass of water and two Tylenol. Charlie. She thought back to the previous night and remembered kissing him on the dance floor, then kissing some more by the door, and then even more on the couch. She also vaguely remembered people leaving and then Charlie insisting on leading her up to his room, covering her gently with a blanket on his bed, and then sleeping on the couch in the living room. Who says all the nice guys are dead?

The house was quiet, and relishing in the lack of sound, she leaned her head back against the wall and looked around his bedroom. A small group of presumably dirty clothes were piled neatly in the corner. She smiled at that. His desk was messy, papers stacked in piles here and there, and his computer ran through a screensaver of NHL hockey team logos. Cute.

Spotting a small rack of CD's, Beau got up and curiously began to look through them. Pantera. Hmmm. Pretty hardcore. I can deal with that. Several mixes. James Taylor. Nice. She smiled and began humming a Taylor song she couldn't quite remember the name of. Green Day. Now that I can dig.

Her eye was caught by a picture frame as she stood to examine the next wall and she couldn't help but raise a hand to her mouth and sigh. The entire wall that stood across from the door was covered in a chronicle of Charlie's hockey career. The centerpiece was a framed Ducks jersey, sporting the number 96 and his last name. The wall was filled with pictures, pucks, sticks, medals and trophies.

She was particularly drawn to the many frames, as they seemed to trace Charlie's life from a young age. She saw a picture of what she assumed was the original group of Ducks. Mismatched jerseys, newspapers for pads, a rag tag group smiling broadly in the middle of a frozen pond. There was an older Charlie, surrounded by an even larger group, all wear the red, white, and blue of the Goodwill Games track suits. A high school team photo. A picture of Charlie sharpening skates and grinning like an idiot. Lower on the shelf she found two pictures which seemed to paint a very different picture. The first was of Charlie, very young, his arms wrapped around a woman's waist, smiling up at her broadly. They looked so much alike it could only be his mother. Several pictures down was the same woman, smiling slightly at the camera, Charlie, close to the age he was now, standing almost a foot away, hands shoved in his pockets, looking directly into the lens, his gaze a bit hollow. It broke Beau's heart in small measures to see the change that had clearly taken place over time. She couldn't help but think of her own mother and how, even through the challenge of learning to get along during her teen years, they had still remained loving and close. She was still bent over looking at the pictures when Charlie entered the room behind her.

"Morning."

She turned around and smiled, a little sadly he thought, at him. "Morning." Pointing over her shoulder at the pictures. "I was just looking at all of your great stuff. You were adorable as a little boy." She looked up at him. "What happened?"

Charlie laughed as he walked over to her. "Gee. You're very funny in the morning." He ran a hand over the top of her head. "And beautiful."

She sighed and took a step back. "Charlie. Really. Don't you think this is going a little fast?"

He flopped down on the bed, his hands behind his head as he laid back and looked up at her. "I like you a lot, Beau." She interrupted.

"Charlie, you don't even know me that well."

"Everything I learn about you makes me like you even more. Why take it slow?"

She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back against the wall. "Well, because I think…it's just…I want…" She stopped raising her hands. "It just seems smarter."

He laughed a little at how flustered she had gotten. "I'm not here to play you, Beau. If I wasn't serious, I wouldn't act like I was. I want to be your friend, I want to date you, I want to keep kissing you, and I want to know everything there is to know about you." He stuck out his bottom lip playfully. "Don't you want to get to know me?"

She sighed. "Well geez. How can I resist that?"

-

Cole had spent the night on the living room floor and by the time Beau had showered (alone, thank you very much), changed into one of Charlie's button up shirts, and made her way downstairs, Banks, Fulton, and Guy were all up as well. When she traipsed into the living room, she got a sly look from Cole and Guy and Fulton was completely unable to hold back a soft cat call.

She pointed a finger at him, her gaze stern. "Stifle it, Reed."

"Not a party girl, my ass." This was from Cole who was spread out on a pillow on the floor. Beau leaned over to smack his head and lay down beside him.

"You and I are supposed to stick together, jerk. I don't need the comments from you too."

Charlie came pounding down the stairs, his hair still wet and curly from his shower, his hooded sweatshirt looking cute and warm. "Beau? You ready for me to walk you home?"

She drug herself from the floor, nudging Cole on the way. "Yeah. Do you have my cell phone?"

"Check." He tossed across the room to her.

As he opened the door and waited for her to walk through onto the front porch, Fulton called out from his spot on the couch.

"Try not to run into each other and start making out on the way back to her dorm!"

The boys all looked and caught a brief glimpse of Beau's red face and Charlie's middle finger just as the door slammed shut.