Title: The First Taste

Genre: Television

Series: Haven

Characters: Audrey Parker, Nathan Wournos

Spoilers: 1x03- "Harmony"

Rating: PG

Summary: A not so normal end to a normal day. Audrey/Nathan-implied

I lie in an early bed thinking late thoughts
Waiting for the black to replace my blue
I do not struggle in your web because it was my aim to get caught
But Daddy Long-legs, I feel that I'm finally growing weary
Of waiting to be consumed by you

Nathan had a way of touching her that Audrey was sure had ruined her for life.

It was always casual, never anything deliberate, but Audrey could remember every instance of contact between them. When he handed her something and the touch was no more than a second of searing touch, or when he deliberately placed his hand on her back and the very solid presence of him made the world around her seem to pause, if only for a few seconds. If they were on a case there was almost always a problem that was best resolved with them colliding together and dodging danger, just as often her tumbling into him as he into her. She'd known from the first day they'd met how he felt under her hands, his arms wiry and firm, and his body thin but strong. It was a memory she cherished refreshing with a startling frequency.

She was also startled by how at ease she was with his touching. She'd grown up in an environment where casual touching, while not prohibited, also wasn't encouraged. Too often children like herself were vulnerable to predators and the orphanage she had stayed in had tried very hard to prevent tragedies such as that. Unfortunately because of that Audrey hadn't ever become comfortable with the touch of others.

Nathan seemed to be the exception to her defenses, though, because she didn't mind his touch and she even endeavored to return the affection. Her entire life she'd tried hard to never reach out to others, to never make herself vulnerable in that way, but since she'd come to Haven everything around her was turned upside down. Cases never went how she expected, her private pursuit of the truth behind the woman in the Colorado Kid picture seemed to start and stop in fits, and her personal life was played out between blunt words and quiet intimate conversations that never failed to turn from business to personal.

Sometimes he would take her hand to guide her, because his night vision was better or when speaking wasn't possible because of a lurking danger. His fingers would lace hers carelessly and would hesitate for just a second before releasing her again.

They'd worked together for months, partnered on all of their cases in the town of Haven, from weird to achingly normal. They spent most of their days together, shared every meal and every thought that pertained to the trouble they were embroiled in at that moment, but despite the close nature of their friendship there was also a distance between them that had never been crossed. She knew various innocent stories of his past, things that anyone around town could tell her if they were of mind to share gossip. She didn't know the secrets that only few knew; she didn't know what had made Nathan and Duke such hateful enemies, or why the Chief and his son barely spoke. She'd never heard mention of his mother, or of another woman in his life.

They were questions that not even the stubbornly honest Audrey would ask, and though his touching was perhaps his way of reaching out to her she knew not how to answer his entreaty. She could give him excuses for why she stayed, her pursuit of Lucy, her possible mother, to her curiosity and interest in the weird things that plagued this town. They were obvious things, answers supplied to her by himself and others about town. Answers obvious to the outside, but secret reasonings were kept to herself. They were reasons she didn't know how to justify to herself, let alone to the man who seemed to see through her walls so very easily.

Audrey felt at home in Haven; she'd lived her entire life disconnected from the world around her, moving through the conventional experiences of youth like a surveyor ticking off boxes of a checklist. She moved through school, lower and higher, with the ease of intelligence, average but capable of so much more. She dated the boys her social group thought best, indulged in hormonal experiences that met her expectations (and sometimes surpassed). Her move into the criminal justice field was the first step in her life that had held no long thought out justification. It had been a sudden change from the assumptions of her future that her friends had made but it had suited Audrey in a way that nothing else would have. Years later those friends had faded from her life until all Audrey had was her work, but it wasn't something that she regretted.

Haven had changed her perception of the world, changed the way she approached her job and her life. Nathan felt broken by his inability to feel pain, but Audrey had long ago repressed her ability to feel it, at least emotionally. She'd pressed down her feelings of exclusion and had embraced her state in life and used it to make herself a better agent. Since she'd started working with the Haven police department being so disconnected didn't feel like it it helped her in doing her job. Without realizing it Audrey had begun to change, not for herself or for someone else, but because it was natural and something that had always been meant to happen.

It was like the minute she'd driven into Haven she'd stepped into a bigger picture, that she was seeing something she'd always been a part of but hadn't been able to grasp completely. Nathan had reached into her car and pulled her to safety and it was there that this new life had begun, though she hadn't known it then.

Lying there in their office, stretched out on the couch he so favored when he was nursing whatever wound he couldn't feel, Audrey let her thoughts take a melodramatic route and mused to herself that it was only appropriate that her attachment to this insane little town began with Nathan Wournos and his long-fingered hands pulling her from a plummeting car. Some days it still felt like she was inside, falling through the air but never hitting the ground.

Today was not one of those days, however. Today Audrey was very much in her body, though her thoughts were miles away. That was why she didn't notice right away when Nathan walked through the night-dimmed outer offices and paused on the threshold to study her pensive face as she lay there. "You're still here?"

Audrey snapped to attention and smiled at him lightly. "I was finishing some paperwork."

"You don't look like you're finishing paperwork," he noted as he moved across the room to throw himself into a chair across from her.

Audrey sat up and shrugged, running her hands through her hair before replying. "Finishing paperwork and daydreaming," she admitted before quirking an eyebrow at him. "What are you doing back here? I could've sworn I heard the doctor say something about going home and taking it easy?"

"You're not exactly hard to deal with, Audrey," Nathan teased in his monotone, the only evidence that he was making light of the conversation coming from the slant of his eyes. His lips lifted in a slight smile and Audrey found herself mimicking the expression unconsciously.

"I'm not exactly easy, either. How many times now have you gotten hurt saving me?"

He sighed, and pretended to think hard, pursing his lips and looking at her in a way that made Audrey's fingertips tingle in a not-unpleasant way. She knew the feeling, Nathan often caused it, but she wouldn't give in to her urges. She graced herself by thinking that she had more control than that.

"I stopped counting after my eleventh MRI. I have to say, though, that my doctor loves you. My insurance company, not so much," Nathan glibly announced, laughing when she glared at him. "I'm fine, Parker. Doctor gave me a clean bill of health."

Audrey studied him, taking in the tired look in his eyes and how his skin was slightly paler than normal, and didn't believe him completely. She stood and stepped around the table, pressing her hand to his forehead in a manner she'd seen on television, trying for detached concern and failing. "You feel feverish."

"No, I feel nothing," he correct self-deprecatingly, before shrugging. "Doctor gave me antibiotics, but it wasn't our little tussle earlier that caused the fever. She thinks maybe I'm getting the flu. It's a nice normal sickness that I can take care of myself. I just have to take my meds and rest up."

"This isn't resting," she noted as she lowered her hand and stared down at him. He shrugged and didn't answer. There were times when she loved his silence. There were times when his steadfast nature and quiet words were all that kept her grounded, when her inner thoughts spun in deep circles and mimicked a storm that threatened to pull down the walls she'd spent years building up. She liked her control, Audrey liked being unreadable and untouchable. She liked that Nathan helped her maintain that control even if he was only helping lock himself out.

Audrey bit her lip, and sighed heavily, before impulsively holding out her hand to him. "Come on," she ordered, wiggling her fingers at him and waiting for him to take her hand.

He studied her fingers as if she was offering him a snake coiled and ready to strike in her palm, quirking his eyebrow and wondering, "Where are we going?"

She continued to wait, her hand offered invitingly and when curiosity got the better of him and the tingling in her hands were answered with the weight of his, she pulled him to his feet. "I'm thinking soup at the diner, some NyQuil, and then a couple days of rest. I'll argue with the Chief about it in the morning," she assured him, "but it's not negotiable."

She didn't release his hand as they moved through the mostly empty police department, raising her unoccupied hand to wave at the night operator as they headed out the door. She knew Nathan was still smiling, could feel it in the way he no more let go of her than she of him, and though convention demanded that there be some awkward conversation at this point Audrey knew that she wouldn't be the one to start it. Apparently neither would Nathan.

"Soup? Really?"

Audrey paused and turned her head to gaze at him over her shoulder. They moved through the town at a nice pace, his long legs lending a natural stride, and her nature demanding she not dawdle even in idle time. "I suppose pancakes wouldn't be out of the question."

His answering chuckle was all the reply she needed.

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