Chapter Seventeen: Interlude
Author's Note: Here, have some fluff! :) The painting and artist Callie refers to are completely fictitious.
The Hardys' apartment was strangely quiet when Nancy let herself in early Sunday morning. She hung up her coat, smoothing the skirt of her green plaid dress, and peeked into the kitchen. Callie was there, dancing to the music on her iPod, a piece of beef jerky in one hand and the pancake flipper in the other. She pulled out one earbud when she saw Nancy.
"Good morning, sunshine. Blueberry pancake?" she offered, gesturing to the plate of golden-brown cakes beside the griddle.
"Yes, please," Nancy said, helping herself. The pancake was delightfully warm in her chilly hands.
"Good, right?" Callie asked, watching her take a bite. Nancy nodded.
"Even better than they smell, and that's saying something."
"They're even better with beef jerky."
"I'll take your word for it," Nancy said.
"It's the sweet/savory thing," Callie explained. "I don't think it's too bizarre."
"Okay, I see your point. Most people go with bacon at this hour of the day."
"Too greasy," Callie said, flipping two golden pancakes onto the plate and pouring fresh puddles of batter on the griddle.
"I'm just glad you can eat, no matter how peculiar your menu is," Nancy said. "You look a thousand times happier now."
Callie nodded. "I am. I'm still sick first thing when I wake up, and certain smells make me feel nauseated, but it's getting easier to keep most food down."
"Good boy, Weatherby," Nancy said, directing the words toward Callie's abdomen.
"Or girl!" Callie chimed in.
"Which would you rather?" Nancy asked idly, finishing the last bite of her pancake.
"I don't have a preference. I'm still trying to accept the fact that I'm having any kind of baby," Callie confessed.
"Are you doing all right?"
"I'm still scared." Callie put a hand to her still-flat belly. "You know me. I don't like things to get out of control. And this is about as far out of control as I can imagine. My own body is doing bizarre things and my whole life is changing..."
"You'd better flip those," Nancy said gently, nodding toward the griddle.
"Oh! Thanks."
"Think of it this way," Nancy suggested. "Your life was changing, anyway, with the move and the wedding. You're just getting the change of having your first child out of the way at the same time as all the rest of this stuff. You won't have to worry about it later on, or go through the hassle of deciding when is the right time."
"You can be such a Pollyanna!" Callie said, but she was smiling.
"It's incredibly easy to have a cheerful perspective on someone else's life," Nancy remarked, smiling back at her friend.
"You're not wrong. I mean, we did intend to start a family within a few years," Callie said.
"Regardless of the timing, you two are going to be great parents."
"Have you ever seen Frank with his little cousins at family things?" Callie asked, reaching for another piece of jerky.
"No. I haven't been invited to many big events yet. I think I'm still in my probation period," Nancy joked.
"Well, just wait for the reunion next summer."
"Is Frank good with kids?"
Callie closed her eyes. "Mmm-hmm. Talk about sweet. I could just pour him on my pancakes and eat him up." She opened her eyes again to look at Nancy. "That's one of the things that's been helping me get through this. I imagine him holding his own baby, our baby, and it makes me so happy. Don't you giggle at me, Nan. Tell me the idea of Joe holding a baby doesn't make you all swoon-y too."
Nancy bit her lip. Her mental picture of Joe cradling his niece or nephew did, in fact, make her pulse quicken a little. The image tapped into the dichotomy of strength and tenderness she loved so much.
"Ha! You're imagining it," Callie said, pouring out the last of her batter with a satisfied air.
"I can't help it! It's a biological conspiracy," Nancy said, flustered. She smoothed her skirt again. "Where are the boys, anyway?"
"My boy is working this morning. Your boy is still asleep."
"Just where I hoped he'd be."
Callie's eyebrows lifted delicately. "Are you planning what I think you're planning?"
"Possibly," Nancy said cautiously. "What do you think I'm planning?"
"I think you're planning to corrupt young Joseph with your feminine wiles. And on the Sabbath, too! Aunt Gertrude would have you put in the stocks," Callie teased.
"Young Joseph was long since corrupted when I got to him," Nancy said, rolling her eyes. "Gertrude is probably the only person on earth who imagines that boy is a virgin."
"He doesn't exactly discourage his reputation, does he? I wish he cared more about his image."
"It's more to his advantage to be underestimated," Nancy said thoughtfully. "Besides, I think after Iola he didn't exactly care what anyone thought of him for awhile."
"You're right," Callie said. She had been eying Nancy appraisingly. "You're not wearing anything under that dress, are you." It was not exactly a question.
"Nary a stitch," said Nancy airily. "I'd turn my music up for a little while if I were you, Cal. I'm going in."
"I appreciate the warning!" Callie said, retrieving the earbud she had let fall. "Um. Enjoy, I guess? I'm not sure what the protocol is here."
"That works!" Nancy said, laughing.
Joe slept on a hair trigger. Nancy could count on one hand the number of times she had managed to sneak up on him. That made it all the sweeter when she managed to cross the room and slide under the covers before his eyes opened.
"It's me," she said softly, twining her legs with his.
"I hoped so," he murmured back, relaxing. "This would be a little awkward if it were anyone else."
"Usually your first move is to grab a weapon, not to cuddle."
Joe wrapped his arms around her and nuzzled into the side of her neck. "My subconscious must be getting used to you."
"Took you long enough. Why do you sleep with a knife, anyway? Why not a gun?"
"Too easy to pull a trigger on instinct. The knife makes me take a moment to let the rest of my brain catch up."
"I asked Callie, once, if Frank is this paranoid."
"He's not," Joe said immediately.
"Yeah, that's what Callie said. Why is that?"
Joe shrugged. "I've always relied more on instinct than he has. Besides, he's a cop. He has a lot more faith in the system than I do." He paused. "Does it bother you, Nan?"
"No." She kissed him, letting the kiss draw out into a lazy, hungry rhythym: need without urgency, desire without haste.
"You taste like blueberries," he said finally, without pulling away, so that he shaped his words directly against her lips.
"Callie's making pancakes."
He did pull back, then, moving as though he intended to get up and go into the kitchen. "And you didn't bring me one?"
"You'd pick pancakes over sex?" Nancy demanded, tugging him back down. She threw a leg over him and sat up, rocking against his hips. Joe's hands slid up her thighs, caressing the smooth warmth of her skin.
"Sex? Who's having sex?" he teased, looking around the room in exaggerated confusion.
"Not you, if you can't behave!"
"Since when is good behavior a prerequisite for fucking?" he asked, drawing whisper-light circles on her inner thigh to make her squirm. "That sounds boring as hell."
Nancy leaned forward to trace a delicate line along his throat with her tongue. She loved how mouthy he got when he was aroused, loved the cool and cocky drawl in his voice. "All right, then, Hardy. Let's misbehave."
"I don't know, Drew." One hand drifted up to the apex of her thighs and cupped her there, caressing lightly. "I have a little dilemma here."
Nancy bit him, lightly, just above the collarbone. "What's the dilemma?"
"Do I get up and get me some homemade blueberry pancakes? Or do I stay here and continue investigating the Mystery of the Missing Panties?"
"Here's a clue. The bra is missing, too," Nancy told him. "I considered coming over in nothing but a trench coat."
"Well, why didn't you?"
"Too cliche."
"I wouldn't have complained." One finger dipped into her warm wetness, as if he couldn't help himself. He moaned. "Mmm. Definitely no complaints. You could show up in a clown suit and I'd still want you." He paused, though, the hand at her center going still.
Nancy rolled her hips against that hand, asking for more pressure. "Still thinking about those pancakes?" she asked.
"No, I'm thinking about those damn stitches."
"Don't."
His fingers started moving again, gently and steadily. "I don't want to hurt you. We can stick to hands and mouths today."
"You're not going to hurt me, and this is starting to get demoralizing!" Nancy told him.
"Oh, well, if it's a question of morale," Joe teased, finishing a stroke with a swirling semi-circle that made her gasp. "We can't have you trying to solve cases with low morale, detective. Terrible for productivity."
"What are you going to do about it?" Nancy asked, ending with another gasp.
"I'm afraid there's only one thing I can do," he intoned solemnly, grabbing her thigh and gently moving her off his lap. He sat up and licked his wet fingers.
"Come on," he said.
"Where are we going?"
"Right here." He slid off the bed, pulling her over to sit on the edge of the mattress, and he knelt between her knees. "I think, Miss Drew, that you will soon find yourself re-moralized." He was pushing her skirt up as he spoke. Nancy leaned back, bracing her hands on the bed behind her, and gave a shiver of delight as he began trailing a line of kisses up the inside of her left thigh.
"Re-moralized, huh?" she said distractedly.
Joe, who had skirted up to kiss her hip bone, paused there, resting his chin in her navel. "I could always get dressed and go have pancakes," he said.
Nancy hooked her leg around his broad shoulders, laughing. "No! Don't even think about leaving me hanging like this, Joe."
"Oh, were you enjoying that?" He dipped his head and gave her a leisurely lap with his tongue, grinning when he felt her shiver again.
"Joe," she said again, helplessly.
"Yes, dear?" he asked, looking up at her impudently. Nancy laughed out of the sheer joy of being with him and pulled him up for a kiss.
"I adore you," she told him.
"That's funny. I was just saying the same thing to you," he said, brushing a stray lock of hair back from her face. And then he buried his head between her thighs again, and Nancy ceased to have any coherent thoughts for quite some time.
When she came back to earth, Joe was stripping off his shorts. He climbed back into bed and reclined against the headboard, looking at her.
"Take off your dress," he said.
Nancy knelt on the bed and began undoing buttons, slowly, teasing him, until he lost patience and sat up to pull her close and kiss her, fumbling blindly with her buttons until the dress was loose enough to pull up and over her head. He dropped it over the side of the bed and sat back to look at her. Nancy made no movement to cover herself. She sat up tall and shook her hair back over her shoulders to bare herself to him completely. His gaze traveled across her body, lingering at every bruise and every stitch. By the time they reached her face his eyes had gone dark with fury; and there was that jaw muscle again, clenched tight, betraying his anger. He reached out with unwonted hesitation and touched her, drawing his fingers lightly across the fading bruise on her cheek before dropping his hand to curl lightly around her shoulder. All the playfulness in his touch had evaporated.
"I could kill him. I wish I had. He hurt you, and I let him walk away."
"Joe." Nancy cupped his face briefly in one hand, brushed her fingers through his tousled blond hair, trying to ground him in the peace of their shared bed. The look in his eyes was breaking her heart: fury and pain and a love so intense she felt burned by it. She knew this side of him, though he very rarely revealed it even to her. George called it his dark side, though it was really not so much darkness as intensity. It was the flip side of the coin, the familiarity with rage and loss and despair which lent a poignant depth to his natural joyful exuberance.
"It's the truth," he told her, his voice still taut with anger.
"Now you know how I feel when I see your bullet scar." She leaned in and wrapped her arms around him, trailing one hand down the front of his torso to touch a small bruise she had noticed there.
"Did I do this?"
He looked. "Yeah."
"You deserved it, you know," she told him. His expression softened.
"That's the thanks I get for helping out?" He was coming back to her, letting the weight of existence roll back off his shoulders. Nancy lay back against the pillows, pulling him down on top of her and kissing him to remind him that they were together and naked and alive. His response left her with no doubt that he was both aware of these things, and deeply appreciative of them.
"I missed this," Nancy said, after some time.
"It's only been a few days." Joe's laugh was muffled against her breast. When he lifted his head, though, he was serious. "I know, Nan." There was no need to say more than that. They both knew this was more than a physical act, for them; it was an emotional connection, a shelter from a world they knew to be frequently cruel, and a time of absolute transparency.
"I love you," he said, simply. And from that point on reality narrowed to eyes and lips and hands; Joe's voice growling beautiful, dirty, maddening things into her ear; the taste of salt on his skin; the heat pooling low in her belly. Nancy gave herself over to the act with mingled pleasure and relief which Joe seemed to feel as well.
The couple emerged from Joe's room a little before noon, blinking in the sudden light of the living room. Callie had the curtains pulled wide open and was sitting at her easel, working happily.
"What are you doing out of bed already?" she demanded, dabbing color onto her brush. "It's a rest day. Go wallow in your hedonism like the rest of the world."
"You're not wallowing," Joe pointed out.
"We got hungry," Nancy explained, pulling Joe's robe tighter around herself. "Is that our painting?"
"It is. Come tell me what you think of it."
"It's beautiful!" Nancy said, delighted.
Joe went in for a closer look, his gaze moving from Callie's painting to her photograph of the original work. "You're amazing. Your brushstrokes look identical to his. What is this painting, anyway?"
"So you're saying I have the potential to become a really successful art forger?" Callie asked, grinning.
"I'm not advising it," Joe said, smiling back at her.
"It's a copy of a painting called Reverie, by someone named Horace Wright Watson. It went missing in the 1930s. It's valuable enough to catch your criminal's fancy, but it's nothing that will set the art world on fire."
"Good choice, Cal," Nancy said. "Thank you so much for doing this for us."
"I've really enjoyed it," Callie said. "And I promise it'll be ready by Tuesday. That's still when you want it, right?"
"That's when we said our fake exhibition is taking place. But we can always change that," Nancy said. "I don't want you to feel pressured."
"It'll be done by this evening," Callie promised. She was looking at Joe, though, rather than her canvas. Curious as to what Callie was finding so interesting, Nancy looked, too. Joe was leaning forward, intently comparing the two paintings. His hair was mussed, his posture was confident and satisfied, and the flannel pajama pants slung low on his hips did nothing to hide the bite mark over his hip bone or the scratches on his back. Nancy, feeling Callie's gaze shift to her, blushed.
"You both look completely debauched," Callie said sternly.
"No surprise there," said Joe absently, as he peered at another section of the painting. "We put a lot of effort into it."
"I know. I heard."
"I'm really sorry," Nancy said. "You must be dying to move out of here."
"Actually, no. I'm really going to miss this."
Joe arched an eyebrow at her. "You're feeling nostalgic about living in a place with walls so thin we all know every detail of each other's sex lives? Those pregnancy hormones are nuts, Cal."
"Trust me, not even crazy hormones could make me sad about not having to overhear some of the things I've heard you say!" Callie said. "But I'll miss living together. I know it can get ugly. We all have to deal with each other's clutter and PDA and, yeah, puking in the kitchen sink." She looked apologetic. "But we've all grown really close, living here. I'm going to miss watching baseball with you, Joey. And Nan, I feel like I finally have a sister. It's been so much fun hanging out with you and sharing clothes and makeup."
"Hey," Joe said gently. "Don't cry. The TV is Frank's. I'm going to be over at your place every time I want to watch a game."
Callie laughed through her tears. "You'd better be over there all the time, anyway, to play with your niece or nephew."
"That depends on what team the kid roots for," Joe joked.
Nancy leaned in to give Callie a hug, careful not to bump her paintbrush. "I feel the same way, girl. I'll miss having you around. But we're not going to be strangers."
"Good." Callie set her brush down, suddenly, and turned away from her easel.
"I need to tell you something. I should probably hold off until Frank gets home, but I don't want to wait any longer."
"What's going on?" Nancy asked, her mind immediately presenting her with a tidal wave of worst-case scenarios. The wedding is off. There's something wrong with the baby. We've done something to offend her. Something is wrong with Frank.
"Nothing bad!" Callie said quickly. The two faces trained on her relaxed visibly.
"Frank and I were talking, a few nights ago, and we realized that if something...if something happened, to me, or to, to, the baby, he really has no legal ties to us. So we want to get married."
Nancy stared at her. "You are getting married."
Joe was a few steps ahead, already. "You're moving the wedding up?"
Callie shook her head. "No, we're going ahead with the wedding as planned. But we're going to have a quick courthouse ceremony Wednesday afternoon, just to get all the legal stuff in order. And we want you to be there."
"Do Mom and Dad know?" Joe asked.
"They know."
"When did you get the license?"
Callie smiled. "Friday morning, before we stopped to get sink parts and visit you. The judge knows Mr. Hardy, and he rushed it for us. We weren't expecting to get it until after Thanksgiving."
Nancy finally found her voice. "Of course we'll be there!" she said, hugging Callie again.
"Damn right we'll be there," Joe echoed. "I can't believe Frank kept this from me."
"Oh, honey, he didn't. We just decided last night that we wanted to do it on Wednesday." Callie patted Joe's arm. "And we also decided that if you couldn't be there on Wednesday, we would change the day. You know he wouldn't get married without you."
Joe looked somewhat appeased. "Good," he said.
Callie picked up her brush again, smiling serenely. "Didn't you say you came out here to find some lunch?"
"That was before we knew there was anything more interesting to think about!" Nancy told her. "What time is it going to be? And have you told your parents? And what are you going to wear?"
"Easy there, Drew," Joe said, tugging her by the sleeve toward the kitchen. "Let's get some sustenance before the interrogation."
"I'll answer anything you want if you bring me an apple!" Callie called after them.
"Deal!" Nancy called back. She brushed a playful kiss to Joe's shoulderblade in passing and began getting out the ingredients to make veggie wraps. The sooner they ate, the sooner she could get her answers.