4.

It was pretty fucking late and Duke was- well, he'd been planning to be pretty fucking drunk, but halfway down the bottle he'd realised he was only getting more morose and more pissed off, and faced with the day's lessons on impulse control, he'd turned to coffee, instead. Once he'd sobered up enough, that had turned into coffee and boat maintenance; something he could do with his hands that would distract his brain and clear his thoughts.

That was how Nathan found him, on the deck of the Cape Rouge.

"It's late." The gravelly voice floated over, and when he looked up, he saw his oldest friend and enemy standing with his arms hanging still at his sides as they'd not been all day - no point in extraneous movement or touching if you couldn't feel it - waiting for Duke's permission before he crossed onto the boat.

"Yeah," Duke acknowledged. It was almost dark. "It is late." He turned the accusation back around. Nathan was still wearing his gun and badge, and there was blood in his hair, a bandage over the wound on his temple. The rest of him had been patched up, but it all had a temporary sort of appearance.

"Just finished working, in fact." They were briefly silent. Duke tackled a wayward screw, and Nathan sat down on a step and watched. Unacknowledged black bruising marked the joints of Nathan's fingers where they curled over the edge of the step. Duke was so used to Nate by now, that only became freakish as he thought how he'd been just as unfazed when he could feel it. "We got them all. Liam's in a cell with no reflective surfaces, but I think he's wound down for now. Perhaps his Trouble provided enough trauma to overshadow whatever triggered it. The kid in the coma woke up a few hours ago. Long term, we may have to think of something else... Matter of time before that kid decides it'd be great fun to do it all over again."

"Hunter meteor shower's in two weeks," Duke said. "Might not have to think of it for long."

Nathan opted not to say anything to that, just tightened up his jaw.

This time last week, sitting this companionably would have been as likely as them visiting the moon.

"Dwight." Duke changed the subject quickly. "I need to buy that guy a fruit basket or something. Saved my life. Took the bullet... Is he okay?"

Nathan nodded in a more amenable silence, before offering, "Done it for me, before, too."

"I'm surprised you came here." Deeming all his efforts to keep from thinking about the day in vain, Duke gave up on the repairs and stood. He expected Nathan to do the same, but he didn't, which you had to figure was exhaustion or concussion and not the fact he was comfortable enough to stay relaxed on Duke's boat, with Duke looming over him, after everything that had happened earlier. "You know," his words half swallowed by a bitter laugh, "you took what happened between you and... me... bad-me... incredibly well, and that... actually, that worries me. Seriously, are you alright?"

Nathan smiled wryly. He did seem a bit spaced out. "Truth? It felt like... well, it felt. Like it didn't happen to me. All that sensation."

Duke grimaced. "Like an out-of-body-experience. I get it."

"I'm fucked up, Duke." The declaration came with a raw, directionless anger behind the swift words. Duke was relieved the anger wasn't aimed at him - the universe, maybe - but Nathan's anguish still cut. "Even when the Troubles end - if they end - I don't think I'm ever going to be normal. Been too long like this."

"...I'm sorry," Duke said. That had to be one bitter pill to swallow.

Nathan twitched. "Forget it. I'm - whatever I am, I can handle it." His hand sliced the air, aggressively cutting off the subject and pushing it away. "The rest? It's not the worst thing in the world. You and me, we fooled around before."

Duke choked. "Like hell. When? Where? What did you do with my memory of it?"

Nathan rolled his eyes. "We were kids. Twelve, thirteen, I don't know. Dirty mags - you stole them from Petey Benson, I remember that - mutual masturbation, figuring it all out. Not like what happened today got much further."

All right. That, he did remember, sort of, though in later years his teenage ego had mostly blanked out the memory of the actual touching, he discovered, though he knew logically it must have happened. Jesus. He figured it said something about Nate's sexual experience, that he'd count that as a sexual experience. Or maybe it was just about different ways of drawing out the lines, and Nathan's line was drawn around any intimate touch. And, fuck, what? What the hell? In the land of Nathan Wuornos-logic, he and Nathan had been sexually intimate? "Okay, how you remember that may not be how I do, but... you're comfortable with that." He laid it out slowly.

Never one to waste words where an infuriating blank could be substituted, Nathan shrugged.

Fucking twelve years old! Duke thought, and had to wonder what parts of his subconscious, how far buried, held the motivations Liam's Trouble had mined. By contrast, Nathan's Evil Twin had most rigidly maintained 'I can't feel you and therefore have no interest in you', and that was... interesting... in hindsight.

"Audrey," he said aloud as the thought hit. The same thought, in fact, that the dickhead version of him had spouted, but who was to say it wasn't the one good idea that guy had had? Because it hit him like a truck, and he had to then pick up all the scattered pieces of the thought and work up to voicing it again to Nathan, who was looking at him like he'd stopped making sense instead of just started. "Fuck. That guy was right. You ever think about not asking her to choose?" Nathan blanked him on that, so he pitched it again, "What if she didn't have to choose between us?"

Nathan tipped his head on its side and peered at him suspiciously. "You're sure you're the right one?"

"Yeah. Hah. I may not be the most stand-up guy, but I'm not that guy." Duke scrubbed his hands through his hair, frustrated. "I know. He said it. Fuck him." Did he really think Audrey would be ready to hear that after today? "Fuck him!" he shouted to the marina, following it up with a torrent of other abuse, which Nathan watched, semi-amused, semi-baffled. "Damn that bastard. Audrey... has so little time left," he concluded, breathless, leaning closer in to Nathan than he probably should, "and she is not going to choose. She loves you. She... maybe she even loves me. But... she's not going to hurt either of us by choosing the other before she goes. We could get there, though. The three of us."

"She's not going," Nathan said flatly, and added like a ton of bricks, "I'm with Jordan, Duke." Fucking Jordan, thought Duke. "Jordan needs me. She can't touch anyone else."

As if his double had had the slightest interest in Jordan, once you peeled back the surface. He'd sure looked like he was 'with Jordan' when Duke's evil double had been sucking him off and he hadn't been shooting that sonuvabitch. Duke's temper exploded. "How about what you need? Aside from playing out everything you only wish Audrey Parker would do for you with that woman?"

The absence of argument and Nathan's silence stung and silenced him by turn. Nasty. Yeah, Jordan was a big pile of ouch.

Nathan pried himself off the step and got himself standing. His face was grey. Whether it was the subject matter or his physical state was anyone's guess. "I'm too tired for this." His anger was so dulled and wretched Duke could even see it was true.

"Shit." He planted his face in his hands, his rage climbing down. Duke didn't need this; didn't need to make things worse for Nathan, either. "Look, it's been a hell of a day, Nathan. Hell being the key word. Audrey. Is she... is she alright?"

Nathan paused, considered, and eventually decreed, "She's fine. Better than either of us, maybe. She's gone home. I told her to." He looked envious. "And I promised... I have to go to the hospital. After the way you left earlier, I figured I'd look in on you on the way." He stopped again. "Audrey was trying to provoke the clone. That's all. You know that, don't you?"

Duke's head couldn't cope with this discussion, and the hospital wasn't particularly 'on the way'. He shook his head and watched as his friend started to turn to leave. Of the two of them, even without the baggage his duplicate had racked up with Nathan, he'd have expected Audrey tonight. But probably Audrey had enough else on her mind. She'd had to pick up after both of them, today.

Man… he didn't even understand any of what that Trouble brought out. He'd never thought of himself as, as possessive like that. The opposite, seriously. It wasn't like he was big on commitment! Hell, he lived on a boat. Duke Crocker was the king of temporary!

If Audrey could get over what Nathan's duplicate had done, his own duplicate's actions ought to slide past, too, when he could bring himself to look her in the eye again... Although… he had the feeling the clones hadn't been the only ones being asshats, at certain points today. His eyes returned to Nathan's back.

"Nathan," he said abruptly. "Nathan. Let me drive you. You shouldn't, with-" He gestured to the side of his own head to highlight the other man's injury.

A barked laugh. "If you did, I'd have to arrest you. Think I can't smell that?"

"That was-" Hours ago, but he let that go, too, mostly because he had no doubt the threat was sincere. "Fine, but let me come with you. It's that or still be hammering the decks at 4AM." Audrey, he'd had to run from, but Nathan... there was nothing they didn't know about the worst parts of each other. He supposed that was its own state of comfortable.

"Why the concern?" Nathan chewed up that last word with more than even his usual Eastwood-esque sourness.

"Lets just say I have no plans to see you die again in this lifetime."

"Fine. But it'll be a walk." At Duke's gawping, he pointed to his head and added, as though to a very stupid child, "Concussed, maybe. Left the car at the station."

"You're kidding? Jordan couldn't pick you up?" But he was kicking off his slippers and pulling on some decent shoes as he spoke. "Or anyone else take out a car for the freakin' Chief of Police?"

"...Yet, strangely, I'm not feeling much like talking to Jordan right now." He paused and softened the (deliberate, well-aimed) bite by adding, "She'll only go crazy about all this. I'll see her tomorrow, when it's starting to fade. As for the casual abuse of police resources, you do know how over-stretched we've been today?"

"Yeah... Fine. I'll walk you. You're crazy." Duke sighed. Maybe it wasn't a day to criticise Nathan's conscientiousness, after a taste of what he might be like without it. Duke pulled on a jacket with a mind for the growing chill of the air, and opted to make no comment about Nathan being in shirt sleeves.

Night was marching in. Another day crossed off the calendar, lost from the countdown of Audrey Parker's existence.

"Maybe," Nathan said, very low, as they stepped off the Cape Rouge and began to pick their way over the marina. "Maybe you could tell Audrey that idea of yours, some other day."

Duke tried hard to control his face. He turned and walked backwards, better to mark Nathan's expression as he pointed out, carefully, "Not too many days left." Nathan moved mechanically, one foot in front of the other, the unfeeling machine, but dark smudges etched the underneaths of his eyes. Silent and stubborn, he made no reply to Duke's statement, or simply assumed that his reply went without saying. There was no particular reaction in him to indicate he'd just agreed to a theoretical threesome that involved Duke Crocker.

"...Right," Duke said, turning again to face forward which, coincidentally, hid his smile. He nodded. Not really along with Nathan, who wasn't even going to face the reality that they might not be able to stop Audrey going, but more like capping his own statement, as if he'd always intended to. He said, "Not many days left. So we had better make them count."

END