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Title: It’s Got to Be a Fetish Thing
Author: roseveare
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Duke asks himself the million-dollar question: why? Audrey/Duke/Nathan.
Notes: Comment meme fic - Trucherrygirl: “Audrey/Nathan/Duke, You know your life is complicated once you've fallen for TWO (not one) cops”.
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It’s Got to Be a Fetish Thing
Duke has considered and dismissed several theories.
1.) Uniform.
It can’t be the uniform, because neither of them wears one. Perhaps, he briefly considers, it’s the spirit of the uniform, that aura of authority, and the fact they can arrest him.
· Amusing anecdote: Duke had thought he’d slept with a uniformed police officer once, only to discover in the morning that she was a stripper – or possibly a kiss-o-gram, he forgets which. Better thinking she was a cop and finding out she was a stripper (or kiss-o-gram) than the other way around, though.
· A regret: He was never in town for Nathan’s brief uniformed-officer days, and this forces him to fuel his fantasies by imagination alone.
· A confession: He’d rather see Nathan out of a uniform than in one, so maybe it isn’t that.
· Addendum: Although Audrey, he can and regularly has imagined wearing all sorts of uniforms…
...Stop it, Duke. Focus.
2.) Armed and dangerous.
It shouldn’t be the guns, considering the number of times he’s had to fight armed dicks off his boat. He’s never felt the smallest hint of attraction to any of those.
· Evidence for the prosecution: All the times Nathan pointed a gun at him do give him kind of a delicious shiver in the recollection. Not that he is planning on telling Nathan this. Ever.
· Also: That one time Audrey did.
· Further evidence: It’s just as well Nathan can’t feel, or it surely couldn’t have escaped his notice how Duke was hard as a rock throughout that last big fight.
3.) Bondage.
It might be the handcuffs, except when Nathan’s around those always end up on Duke and submission is not his thing. (Sorry, Nate.)
· Payback: Would be a bitch and is this really, truly the only reason he’d really like the chance to cuff Nathan? He gets the feeling Audrey would laugh her ass off rather than object.
· The sad truth: There’s no chance in hell it’s ever going to happen.
· The sadder truth: But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t think about it.
Yeah, maybe it’s the handcuffs.
4.) Ass-whupping training.
It could, quite possibly, be the subconscious lure of well-trained bodies that could kick his ass.
· Or not: Because he’s pretty sure he could take Nathan.
· Or maybe not: Call it fifty-fifty. Nathan’s a bitch to put down for more than half a second, courtesy his damn Trouble.
· Or so too, in fact: Because for that matter, he’s much less sure about Audrey.
· Evidence for the defence: If he wanted a dangerously athletic lay so much, he could do better looking at the gym. Not that he is ever telling either Audrey or Nathan that.
…So why? Duke asks himself, tearing up his scribbled list in frustration, and scattering the pieces. Why, why, why, why, why? Freakin’ cops! It’s like a bad joke.
***
Nathan was always the unobtainable object of lust from afar, ever since Duke got back to Haven with all his accumulated life experiences and a new name for that curious warmth and want, and impulse to demand Nathan’s attention that coiled in him whenever he laid eyes on the other man.
Audrey was the bright, brilliant flash of instant attraction, magical, funny and somehow realer than everyone else, so much more there. And Audrey poked and pulled and rearranged them both into different shapes that made Nathan possible. Catalyst of the improbable, dragging them all down into the crazy with her. But maybe there was one spot in Duke’s life where a little bit of crazy could be just what was needed.
Still, cops, man! They could arrest him, shoot him, cuff him, kick his ass, and now he’s courting them, actively courting this?
He must be out of his mind.
***
Duke knows, actually, that it’s not authority, firepower, cuffs, or the promise of officious manhandling that draws him to either of them. It’s who they are, and it’s only his shitty luck that in both instances this comes attached to a badge and the unfortunate habit of narrowing their eyes and looking reluctantly interested whenever he slips and talks a bit too casually about his business.
Not the restaurant. The other business.
He has cops on his boat, these days, more days than not. This is a problem. Considering what else he has on his boat, frequently, and far too many instances of overlap, it’s a whole new level of stupid. A hundred times he thinks that he needs to keep the cops off the boat tonight and it doesn’t happen. Somehow Audrey and Nathan are back again and Duke is smiling and trying to negotiate three-way seductions while ice slides down his spine at the thought of how close one or other of them has wandered to something so secret he doesn’t even know how many years of incarceration it’ll earn him.
Gradually, there are less and less things on his boat that shouldn’t be and the business, when he thinks of the business, is the restaurant, and it drives him crazy to think about this at all, because Duke Crocker changes his spots for no-one.
Then one day he’s negotiating one of his increasingly rare jobs and it slips through his thoughts that he can’t get any cop booty tonight if there’s contraband (booty) aboard his boat, and Duke finds himself fobbing off the client and instead recommending to him a guy he knows a short way down the coast.
When the client has gone, Duke realises what just happened.
He fumes, swears, and walks around his boat kicking things that have surely done nothing to deserve it because this? This is definitely Nathan and Audrey’s fault.
That evening, he waits for their planned date with determined purpose. They arrive together, as they always do. They have all day with each other, but that’s okay because they can keep the police work, mysteries, Troubles, and Ominous Hovering Death. Though they persist in their alarming habit of dragging him into it when they can.
Duke crosses his arms and glares at them. “You,” he says, with emphasis making sure he includes both of them, “have made an honest man of me. I hate you.”
They laugh at him, and Nathan gives Duke a self-satisfied and rather mean smile – who could have predicted it, huh? – while Audrey comes over to stand on her tip-toes, dig her hands into his jersey and pull him down to plant a peck of a kiss on his face.
“We love you too,” she says.
END
Author: roseveare
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Duke asks himself the million-dollar question: why? Audrey/Duke/Nathan.
Notes: Comment meme fic - Trucherrygirl: “Audrey/Nathan/Duke, You know your life is complicated once you've fallen for TWO (not one) cops”.
-------
It’s Got to Be a Fetish Thing
Duke has considered and dismissed several theories.
1.) Uniform.
It can’t be the uniform, because neither of them wears one. Perhaps, he briefly considers, it’s the spirit of the uniform, that aura of authority, and the fact they can arrest him.
· Amusing anecdote: Duke had thought he’d slept with a uniformed police officer once, only to discover in the morning that she was a stripper – or possibly a kiss-o-gram, he forgets which. Better thinking she was a cop and finding out she was a stripper (or kiss-o-gram) than the other way around, though.
· A regret: He was never in town for Nathan’s brief uniformed-officer days, and this forces him to fuel his fantasies by imagination alone.
· A confession: He’d rather see Nathan out of a uniform than in one, so maybe it isn’t that.
· Addendum: Although Audrey, he can and regularly has imagined wearing all sorts of uniforms…
...Stop it, Duke. Focus.
2.) Armed and dangerous.
It shouldn’t be the guns, considering the number of times he’s had to fight armed dicks off his boat. He’s never felt the smallest hint of attraction to any of those.
· Evidence for the prosecution: All the times Nathan pointed a gun at him do give him kind of a delicious shiver in the recollection. Not that he is planning on telling Nathan this. Ever.
· Also: That one time Audrey did.
· Further evidence: It’s just as well Nathan can’t feel, or it surely couldn’t have escaped his notice how Duke was hard as a rock throughout that last big fight.
3.) Bondage.
It might be the handcuffs, except when Nathan’s around those always end up on Duke and submission is not his thing. (Sorry, Nate.)
· Payback: Would be a bitch and is this really, truly the only reason he’d really like the chance to cuff Nathan? He gets the feeling Audrey would laugh her ass off rather than object.
· The sad truth: There’s no chance in hell it’s ever going to happen.
· The sadder truth: But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t think about it.
Yeah, maybe it’s the handcuffs.
4.) Ass-whupping training.
It could, quite possibly, be the subconscious lure of well-trained bodies that could kick his ass.
· Or not: Because he’s pretty sure he could take Nathan.
· Or maybe not: Call it fifty-fifty. Nathan’s a bitch to put down for more than half a second, courtesy his damn Trouble.
· Or so too, in fact: Because for that matter, he’s much less sure about Audrey.
· Evidence for the defence: If he wanted a dangerously athletic lay so much, he could do better looking at the gym. Not that he is ever telling either Audrey or Nathan that.
…So why? Duke asks himself, tearing up his scribbled list in frustration, and scattering the pieces. Why, why, why, why, why? Freakin’ cops! It’s like a bad joke.
***
Nathan was always the unobtainable object of lust from afar, ever since Duke got back to Haven with all his accumulated life experiences and a new name for that curious warmth and want, and impulse to demand Nathan’s attention that coiled in him whenever he laid eyes on the other man.
Audrey was the bright, brilliant flash of instant attraction, magical, funny and somehow realer than everyone else, so much more there. And Audrey poked and pulled and rearranged them both into different shapes that made Nathan possible. Catalyst of the improbable, dragging them all down into the crazy with her. But maybe there was one spot in Duke’s life where a little bit of crazy could be just what was needed.
Still, cops, man! They could arrest him, shoot him, cuff him, kick his ass, and now he’s courting them, actively courting this?
He must be out of his mind.
***
Duke knows, actually, that it’s not authority, firepower, cuffs, or the promise of officious manhandling that draws him to either of them. It’s who they are, and it’s only his shitty luck that in both instances this comes attached to a badge and the unfortunate habit of narrowing their eyes and looking reluctantly interested whenever he slips and talks a bit too casually about his business.
Not the restaurant. The other business.
He has cops on his boat, these days, more days than not. This is a problem. Considering what else he has on his boat, frequently, and far too many instances of overlap, it’s a whole new level of stupid. A hundred times he thinks that he needs to keep the cops off the boat tonight and it doesn’t happen. Somehow Audrey and Nathan are back again and Duke is smiling and trying to negotiate three-way seductions while ice slides down his spine at the thought of how close one or other of them has wandered to something so secret he doesn’t even know how many years of incarceration it’ll earn him.
Gradually, there are less and less things on his boat that shouldn’t be and the business, when he thinks of the business, is the restaurant, and it drives him crazy to think about this at all, because Duke Crocker changes his spots for no-one.
Then one day he’s negotiating one of his increasingly rare jobs and it slips through his thoughts that he can’t get any cop booty tonight if there’s contraband (booty) aboard his boat, and Duke finds himself fobbing off the client and instead recommending to him a guy he knows a short way down the coast.
When the client has gone, Duke realises what just happened.
He fumes, swears, and walks around his boat kicking things that have surely done nothing to deserve it because this? This is definitely Nathan and Audrey’s fault.
That evening, he waits for their planned date with determined purpose. They arrive together, as they always do. They have all day with each other, but that’s okay because they can keep the police work, mysteries, Troubles, and Ominous Hovering Death. Though they persist in their alarming habit of dragging him into it when they can.
Duke crosses his arms and glares at them. “You,” he says, with emphasis making sure he includes both of them, “have made an honest man of me. I hate you.”
They laugh at him, and Nathan gives Duke a self-satisfied and rather mean smile – who could have predicted it, huh? – while Audrey comes over to stand on her tip-toes, dig her hands into his jersey and pull him down to plant a peck of a kiss on his face.
“We love you too,” she says.
END
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