Title: Pages of Memory
Fandom: Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys
Rating: K+
Summary: Frank and Nancy's relationship feels like it has always been there and always will be, whatever sort it is. These are the moments that make that relationship precious.

Series: No name yet, but takes place in the same time period as Learning How to Deal with It. As opposed to IT, which I originally typed, as be they disembodied brains or deranged clowns or spiders, manifestations of evil are not always appropriate in a story.

Word Count: 1,049

Pairing: Ned/Nancy, Frank/Nancy
Disclaimer: I own nothing. I make no money. I write out of love only, and the hopes that someday adult-level Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys mysteries will be released. Preferably with Nancy and Frank together.

***

Are we not like two volumes of one book?

Marceline Desbordes-Valmore

***

The first time Frank meets Nancy, he is 14 months old. She is two weeks short of her first birthday. It is a party, of sorts; Carson Drew and Fenton Hardy had been working on a case—Fenton the solving, Carson the prosecuting—and the two young families had decided to celebrate the moment by going on a weekend vacation.

They are at a cabin in the mountains; Laura and Elizabeth had chosen it, and their husbands were not sure how much the women had been joking when they informed the men that if they dared to talk about work for even a moment…well, it was an awful long walk to the cars, and a twenty minute drive then to a store, and it would be horrible to remember that they had forgotten something urgent, wouldn't it?

Both Carson and Fenton had looked slightly guilty as they had nodded their agreement and gotten the message.

It had, after all, been a long case.

It is afternoon. Elizabeth and Laura are lounging in front of the fire, talking and listening to the radio and reading, while keeping one eye on the two young children playing together on the floor. "I hope," Laura says wryly, one hand resting on her swollen stomach, "that he gets along as well with his little sister as he does with Nancy."

Elizabeth laughs. "I thought you weren't going to find out the gender yet!"

Laura looks sheepish. "We haven't. But I think it would be nice to have one of each. Though I think Fenton has his heart set on naming the baby after his uncle, so we'll have a Jo either way, I suppose."

They are chatting, and Frank is carefully building a tower with his blocks. Nancy watches him with thoughtful eyes, looking almost out of place on her small, chubby face, and holds her stuffed donkey next to the tower, beaming at Frank.

"Big," she says seriously, and Frank's face crinkles as a smile spreads. (Some of the teeth are still coming in; it makes him look more adorable, his mother thinks, than anything else she's ever seen.)

They play, until Elizabeth scoops both children up, one in each arm, and cheerfully announces it's naptime.

Frank is normally well-behaved, but he already hates naps with a passion. There is too much to do, and the grown-ups never understand that! His tower isn't done! He has pages in a coloring book to fill in!

The result is that the face that had so recently been beaming is now pouting as he begins to get fussy, squirming in Elizabeth's arm.

Laura reaches out with one hand to smooth his hair. "Come on, baby. You know it's naptime. Besides, you can keep Nancy company this way," she says coaxingly, hoping to not have one of the afternoons that involves Frank shrieking with tears and needing to be rocked until he fell asleep. "You don't want her to be lonely, do you?"

Frank opens his mouth to fuss, and then he sees Nancy staring at him with large eyes, her thumb in her mouth as her stuffed donkey—she had told him earlier, with pride, that it is named Babo—dangles from her elbow.

After a minute Frank quiets, even if he's still frowning, and reaches for Babo and tries to stick him more securely in Nancy's arm.

Elizabeth smiles at Laura, a little, as she shifts her weight enough to help Frank with his task.

"Kay," Frank says finally, sulkily, but once the two children are in the large playpen, laying on the mattress and covered in blankets, he curls up next to Nancy and makes sure that Babo is settled snugly in with her.

Nancy smiles at him sleepily, happy to have the nap she wants, and mumbles a, "T'anks," before her eyes close.

Ninety minutes later, when their fathers come in to check on them, they find Nancy and Frank curled up around each other, Babo snuggled between them.

Fenton and Carson blink for a moment, even as their hearts warm at the sweet sight. And then Carson smiles a little, bemused, and looks at Fenton before saying, "Is this one of the moments where we take pictures to use and embarrass them when they are older?"

"Yes," Fenton says, earnestly, with a firm nod.

"No," Laura corrects him while rolling her eyes as she and Elizabeth peer around their husbands. "This is one of those moments when we take pictures because it's utterly adorable."

"As long as they're not still doing it when they're 16," Elizabeth muses, and bursts out laughing at Caron's panicked look. "Honey. I was kidding. Worry about her getting her molars first. Boys later."

"I'm going to go grey before I'm forty," her husband mutters, but he's smiling as his wife holds up the camera and finally takes the picture.

They leave, to have dinner and talk, to play a board game and laugh. Everyone but Laura drinks wine, though after Fenton has consumed one glass he is told by his wife that he can damned well have grape juice with her. Carson tries not to laugh, and Elizabeth elbows him in the gut, though she's smiling a little herself.

As for Frank and Nancy, the children hold each other close and dream, too young to even remember at all times there is a difference between reality and the dream world.