Silencer

It all started with a bar fight, which was not Duke's fault. He didn't see why that concept should prove so baffling to Nathan, because he naturally preferred if people did not fight in his bar. Fights resulted in mess, which he had to clean up, and produced damages, which he had to pay for. People not fighting in his bar was very much preferred.

If he considered things that way, it had been nice of Nathan to step in. On the other hand, Nathan might be a cop, but no fight in history had been improved by Nathan Wuornos getting involved in it. Duke had known him thirty years and would not only swear to that being the truth, but illustrate it with diagrams. When bottles started flying and Billy Lacost started yelling, Nathan moved to slide off his bar stool with intent in his face. Duke leaned across, grabbed his arm, and offered a warning shake of the head. "You really don't want to do that." Lacost was a grade-A nutter and the worst kind of mean drunk, but he usually got it out of his system quick and then keeled over.

Nathan returned him a look that was seriously judging him, shook off the hold, and raised his voice stonily over the shrieks and sounds of glass breaking. "All right, Billy, that's enough--"

So not only was it not Duke's fault, he'd even tried to prevent it.

You could see it coming. Or... not exactly, because Lacost picking up the nearest table and slamming it edgewise into Nathan's face -- who the hell could see that coming?

Nathan went down. He got back up -- because he was good at that -- and downed Lacost with a kick to the back of the thigh as the other man was walking away, then sat on him and cuffed him with extreme prejudice.

Something, though, was horribly amiss. The bar's patrons at the other end of the room picked up a whispering, horrified murmur. Duke squinted at Nathan's profile, head ducked down securing the handcuffs, and tipped his own head to one side trying to figure out the angles and just what, exactly, he was seeing, because his eyes seemed to be playing tricks and he was sure that a face did not normally--

Nathan got up and turned about, yanking Lacost with him, and the pretty blonde Duke had just finished serving screamed and spilled her drink.

The scene that followed, even Duke would admit, was not very funny. It took half the bar to convince Nathan that his face had been rearranged and it wasn't just Duke shitting him (which, fair enough, he'd done that once, but they'd been eight at the time), and damn it, a man should react when the lower half of his face was on sideways and he had bone poking out of his cheek.

What followed in the six weeks after -- that was pretty funny. Either way, it was still in no part Duke's fault, and Duke maintained that if you were watching your best enemy spend the better part of two months with his jaw wired shut and on a liquid diet, you couldn't blame any man for indulging in some joyful warm fuzzies.

There were people who claimed they didn't notice, and that was simply awesome. Duke wouldn't normally make mockery of someone else's pain, but that was the very best part of it, the part that made it guilt-free, because it didn't pain Nathan, it just pissed him off, and you could see it in the glint of his silent eyes.

With Nathan forcibly silenced, Duke experienced weeks of no police harassment while his arch-enemy was made to endure sick leave. He occasionally saw Nathan hanging out with Audrey, consulting on some extracurricular Troubles-related thing. Eventually Nathan was put on light duties, still mute but minus the bandages and some of the metal supports, with the shape of his jaw back to normal. While he dealt with desk work, cats up trees and babysitting trainees, Duke chortled privately and the world was good.

Sometime towards the end of Nathan's requisite six weeks of punishment, Duke ran into Nathan and Audrey in town. Both cops were standing in mute study of a human-shaped indent in the grass: not straight out of Looney Tunes, but recognisably caused by a person falling from high up. Duke joined them in staring at the cartoonish imprint on the ground.

Nathan noticed his presence first and drew Audrey's attention with a tap on her sleeve and incline of his head. Almost the funniest thing about this was that his communication styles had barely changed from before his injury to his current recovery period. He could grunt and mumble by now, but Duke didn't think he was allowed out without Officer Parker because criminals might mock him. Who could imagine it, right?

"Audrey," Duke acknowledged, friendly. "Detective Andros... I mean, Wuornos. The steely jaw of the law."

"Are you going to get tired of this ever?" Audrey asked, exasperated.

Duke weighed it up. "Unlikely. How are... things?" He eyed the shape in the turf.

Nathan sort of hiss-mumbled something. There were still a few wires visible between his lips, which would only open about half an inch, and honest to God, he was not being funny, Duke could not hear what he said. Glaring, Nathan pulled out his new best friend the memo block -- he'd gone through half a dozen so far, and bizarrely, the new one had a blue choo-choo train on it -- and scrawled savagely, "someone has a flying trouble".

"Huh," said Duke, because for once Wuornos' temporary hilarious disability was not the most interesting thing present. "But not a very good one. You know what this says to me? 'Wile-E-Coyote was here.'" He circled the indentation, admiring it.

"You would find that funny." A more recognisable grunt from Nathan, using an excess of control to force the words out clearly. He stepped stiffly in to prevent Duke from wandering too close.

"Don't worry, Nate. You're still funnier." Granted, he said that and kept his distance.

The returning glower almost made him step even further back.

"Boys?" Audrey picked up impatiently. "Enough. Whoever did this probably paid a visit to the hospital. Let's find them and put a lid on it before they really hurt themselves or anyone else."

Duke studied the outline closer and more or less concluded, teenager, what with the skinny limbs and not-quite-formed build. The ground was soft and bouncy, the mud easy to compact with his toe. "At least they got a soft landi-- Hey!"

They were walking away from him across the turf, Nathan's hand pressed deviously in the small of Audrey's back, herding her steps as she spoke obliviously to her partner. Duke charged after them, but was brought to a halt when Nathan turned and grabbed his shoulders, manhandled him around to face the other way, and gave him a get lost shove.

Duke spun back around in disbelief, because Nathan? Usually not so handsy. In fact, he normally went to lengths to avoid touching anyone. Obviously he'd had to improvise with physical methods of getting his point over in recent weeks. "Temper, temper," Duke said to cover his shock. Nathan lifted his foot, threatening a final kick. There were no illusions where it would be aimed.

"Nathan!" Audrey protested, giving him a swat on the arm, which he didn't notice.

Duke held up his hands and edged safely away. "You missed your calling," he said. "As a mime. All right, I won't help."

You are no help, was what he thought Nathan mumbled, while Audrey rolled her eyes apologetically. "See you later, Duke," she said, sketching a small wave.

Massaging out the grumbles from his shoulders where Nathan's hands had dug in, Duke watched them walk away. As they turned onto the street, they ran into a little black kid, around ten years old. Nathan gripped the kid's shoulder in a much friendlier manner, then made a few hesitant gestures on the air with his hands. The kid's face lit with a big smile and he replied with further gestures, faster and more confident than Nathan's.

Duke recognised sign language when he saw it. Not least from the late night TV he tuned into occasionally, usually because he was drunk and one of the regular signers was really hot and her chest bounced all over the place when she got enthusiastic.

Damn, he thought incredulously, and then, What? Okay, so Nathan had effectively been a mute for six weeks, but surely it was a bit extreme to go off and take up sign language?

Oh, crap. Unless there was more going on here than he'd been told. An unpleasant chill slid through him, partnered with the realisation of how much a heel he was going to feel if it turned out this was more permanent than he'd been led to believe.

"Officer Parker," he said, pressing her for information that evening in the Gull -- playing hardball with the FBI agent might be a mistake, but he'd have an answer on this or go crazy, "if you want to drink in my bar, you should know that disclosing the details of Detective Wuornos' secret hidden private life is not a matter of option." He waggled his hands in demonstration. "Spill. What's this?"

"Duke..." Audrey sighed. "It's been a long day. I want to take half an hour for a quiet drink, then go crash. Ask Nathan. He's quite capable of telling you himself."

"No. He's not."

She rolled her eyes. "I can always drink at The Rusty Bucket instead."

His wounded look at that heresy apparently melted her because she said, "Nathan thought he might as well do something useful while he couldn't speak and couldn't work, so he's been helping out with a group of deaf kids staying at a summer camp nearby. Don't be a dick about it."

Duke grinned his relief broadly back, and oblivious to her deepening scowl, said, "I don't know what you mean and I'm hurt by the implication." The idea, though? Gold, and completely wasted on Nate, who'd probably failed to notice propositions from seventeen women already, their hearts won by his injured selflessness and proximity to small, wounded children. If he ever broke his jaw, Duke was going to do that, but do it right. He frowned at Audrey. Then again... "So it doesn't make you go all googly-eyed and mushy? Nate. Deaf kids. Sign language?"

"Please," she scoffed at him. "I've already seen him with babies. It deeply disturbed me."

He pressed, "But in what way?" and she smacked him on the chest.

"Behave. He's not doing it to win points. He was bored. He's... contributing. It's nice." Her face scrunched up. "Oh, all right, he's like some kind of inanely righteous action figure, but behave anyway, Duke. He's had a rotten few weeks. And I will come after you."

The threat was ten times scarier than any ever made by her partner, but Duke mainly thought, Awesome. He'd known Audrey was a sane, well-rounded individual, and therefore had to be able to see that Nathan was really a pod person. The revelation made him feel magnanimous enough to let her have the drink he'd been holding hostage, and he pushed it to her across the bar. "Thank you, Officer Parker."

"Asshole," she said. She lifted her glass, paused as her eyes strayed beyond him to the door, then quickly knocked the drink back. The line of her mouth tightened in resignation as she set the glass down and shoved it back across the counter, grating its base upon the wood.

Duke was delighted to turn and see Nathan heading toward them, and accordingly leaped into conversation with a series of gestures, not all of them made up on the spot or entirely polite, and watched Nate's flat expression tighten a little bit. That was the other thing -- no clenching his jaw and flexing those gloomy, glowering facial muscles of doom. Audrey had shared, earlier in Nathan's convalescence, that one doctor had flat-out told him to stay away from Duke.

"Asshole," Nathan grunted, and turned to Audrey. That was two for two, and under the circumstances, Duke conceded they probably had a point. Nathan tipped his chin to his FBI partner, his face serious, and presented a ready-written note. With time and preparation, he'd filled most of a sheet of notepaper. Audrey was already getting up from her bar stool as she reached out to take it. Duke scooped up her empty glass and hovered with one ear for their conversation, but that was the drawback of Nathan's situation: nothing to eavesdrop on.

"See you later, Officer Parker," he called with exaggerated good humour as the two cops left. "Later, Detective Lockjaw."

A silent glare tagged him ominously. Duke was beginning to harbour a little uneasiness as the days of his hilarious reprieve wore to a close. The flipside was fast approaching, and he had the feeling he'd be paying for his weeks of fun. Wasn't that the way with all life's sweetest things?

Despite his occasional Buddhist leanings, Duke disliked the idea of Karma. If it all came back at you, he was screwed about fifty times over, so why pursue a belief that could only end so... depressingly?

That was only one of the reasons it annoyed him to wake up in the middle of the night and discover that when he rolled over with a sea of curses on his tongue, they produced no sound at all.

Duke bolted upright in bed. It wasn't just his voice. There were no sounds. The springs in the mattress were silent, and the covers didn't rasp as he moved against them. The usual noises of the Cape Rouge were completely absent.

For one horrible, appalled moment, he thought he'd gone deaf. Then he thought, fuck that shit, this is a Trouble, and mouthing every curse he knew -- an entirely unsatisfying exercise without sound -- grabbed his phone and text messaged Nathan.

Yeah, he did indeed have Nathan Wuornos on the top of his phone contacts. Funny, but it had been that way for years. Even when either of them had to change numbers due to phones dunked in the sea, trashed in bar fights, eaten by Troubled teenagers or displaced dinosaurs (small, blunt-toothed ones, thank God), they'd always updated each other. It wasn't all that weird, seriously; they mostly used it to send insults to each other in dull moments, and occasionally the middle of the night.

This time, Duke sent, "YOU ARRANGED THIS ONE JUST FOR ME, RIGHT?" Impatient after thirty seconds without response, he added, "BUDDHA TEACHES FORGIVENESS NOT REVENGE. I THOUGHT YOU WERE BIGGER THAN THIS." After further dissecting the situation, largely by clapping himself over the ears and getting nowhere, he sent, "YOU UNBELIEVABLE ASSHOLE."

He'd barely sent that last when finally, finally he had a reply. It said, "What, Duke?" so it wasn't exactly an Earth-shattering reply, but still. In swift succession, he also got, "Go to sleep."

Duke decided he might not have had an excess of clarity in his earlier offerings, so he sent, "THIS IS A TROUBLE AND YOU'RE IGNORING A LAW ABIDING CITIZEN IN DISTRESS."

For his extra effort, he was rewarded the curt disagreement, "Lying crook." But Nathan was nothing if not dutiful, and there was only a short interval before his phone's screen flickered again, noiselessly announcing receipt of a further message: "What's the problem?"

Ten minutes later, he was watching Nathan's Ford Bronco pull up on the edge of the marina, its familiar engine roar absent. Even the sea made no sound. It was creepy as all hell. The full moon made it brighter, but no less creepier. Who knew what was about in Haven on a full moon, after all? Waiting here, alone... it was so late in the damn night, or early in the morning, that the marina was empty, and he'd never been so glad to see anyone. Nathan's clothes were rumpled and thrown on from the day before. How you could tell on that immovable face Duke wasn't sure, but he did look tired. And annoyed. Duke sketched a wave of greeting.

Nathan cast him the briefest of weighing glances, then bent his head over his memo block, resting on the hood of his car to write. He handed the square over cautiously, as if he suspected Duke of some part in this, suspected a trap. "Been deaf since the middle of town. This is weird."

"No shit," said Duke. Mouthed Duke.

Nathan stood a moment in inner debate, then split his memo block along its adhesive edge and handed half over, fishing a pen out from his pocket to offer afterwards with a dumb flourish.

Duke drew ears on the choo-choo train on the uppermost sheet, tore it off and handed it back. The lights of the marina provided just enough visibility to write by. "A CHOO-CHOO TRAIN? RLY?"

"Gift from one of the kids."

Oh yeah. The poor little deaf kids that Saint Nathan was helping over the summer. Duke wanted to be sarcastic about that, but not so much he could be bothered to write it down, at length, on a memo pad with a choo-choo train. This was a problem for him. He waggled his head sarcastically to convey the general reaction and let the matter drop. Wrote instead, "DEAF KIDS. THINK ONE COULD BE CAUSING THIS?"

Nathan's wall of a face took on a more pissed-off cast than usual, but the seconds edged by and eventually he moved one hand in a so-so motion and gave a brief, reluctant nod. He wasn't thrilled by the idea but couldn't rule it out. After further pause, he looked pointedly at Duke and jerked his thumb towards the truck.

"You want me to--" Damn, that reflex was a pain in the ass. He pressed his soundless lips together, pulled a face, and irritably climbed into the passenger side of the Bronco. Nathan leaned on the dashboard and started writing, so Duke scribbled a few notes of his own and decorated the steering wheel with them while Nate was occupied.

"THIS IS NO PAIN AT ALL TO YOU, IS IT?" "TELL ME, DO YOU MISS VERBAL COMMUNICATION IN ANY WAY?" "WHERE'S AUDREY? THOUGHT YOU WERE BOTH LIKE NEEDY CONJOINED ALIEN TWINS NOW?" And just for variety, a picture of Nate pulling a 'grr' face with his iron jaw.

Nathan brushed them off onto the floor and pulled a pared-down version of his 'you're hilarious' face, thus rather proving the point. He eyed what he'd just written, tore it off, and wrote a new note to hand over instead: "Parker up till about 1hr ago talking down the flying kid. The only reason I'd let you be backup."

If Audrey had been up that late, and he knew it, then presumably so had Nathan, but Duke was distracted from comment by the original note, offered across sandwiched between forefinger and middle finger, accompanied by patented Wuornos raised brow. Duke plucked it out and returned a so-funny sneer as Nathan retracted his forefinger and left the hand with middle finger extended, hovering it on the air several moments longer than was really necessary to get the point across.

The note said, in tiny, crushed-in writing, "We can go to the kids' counsellor first, Katherine Peet. She'd have an idea if any of them could be doing this. Plus she's Haven born & bred, so she knows about the Troubles."

Duke scrawled across it. "YOUR HANDWRITING SUCKS."

Nathan's face said stop being a dick and let's get on with it. He started the car and drove up into the main streets of town, swiping away further notes and trying to ignore Duke entirely.

"YOU KNOW YOU'RE BASICALLY NONVERBAL ANYWAY." "GOOD THING ELSE LIKE THIS YOU'D BE VIRTUALLY INCOMMUNICADO." "THIS FUCKING SUCKS." "I NEED BIGGER NOTES TO INSULT YOU WITH." "HOW THE HELL DID YOU DO 6 WEEKS OF THIS SHIT?"

He was frustrated by Nathan's ability to brush the insults off without ever looking at them. It wasn't fair. He'd put... thought and, and... effort into thinking up those! Not to mention writing them, in a moving vehicle in the shifting light from the streetlamps. Just for Nathan!

Nathan pulled up outside a white-painted house whose frontage glowed in the full moonlight, save for two tall shadows cast by big evergreens that stood like guards at the end of the yard. He scribbled and handed over, "Smacks of desperation, this need of yours to be heard... CONSTANTLY."

Duke scowled and tore it up. Not funny. He tried to ignore Nathan's restricted smirk.

"YOU ONLY BROUGHT ME WITH YOU TO GLOAT!" "SMUG ASSHOLE NO-PERSONALITY DICK OF A COP." "I HATE YOU." Witty banter had never been this much of an effort, and he knew he was desperate when he resorted to the last one. When this Trouble was put to rest, he was going to loose the tirade of obscenities to end 'em all, just to hear the fucking beautiful sound of it. Yeah. Meanwhile, he threw the memo block on the floor in disgust as he got out the Bronco.

Several steps later, he dragged Nathan around to open up the truck again so he could get it back.

Nathan didn't knock or ring a bell. There wasn't one, and it wouldn't have done him much good anyway. What he did do was turn over a stone in the rock garden and fish out a key. It was too dark in the shadow of the porch and the trees for Duke to write him, "YOU DOG", so he watched Nathan use the key to let them in, without comment.

The house was dark, occupant long asleep. Well, this was going to be interesting. Nathan obviously knew the place, turning on light switches without struggle despite his lack of touch. The interior was clean and crisp, vaguely feminine, but mostly... academic. Duke didn't think he'd seen so many books in one place short of a library. A good deal of them seemed to be about psychology and counselling. Nathan was dating a shrink? You'd think that was a risky game. Duke had always figured if they got their hands on him, they wouldn't be letting him out again in a hurry.

At the bottom of the stairs, Nathan pressed a stalling hand on Duke's chest and then pointed at the floor, hard-eyed -- stay put. Duke waited till Nathan was at the top, then followed. He caught up with him standing outside a bedroom door, having opened it a crack and now reaching through to flick the lights on and off... huh. Nathan saw Duke's shadow, turned briefly to shove him forcefully backwards -- no questions about that body language -- then stuck his head around the door. Cautiously, he walked a bit further in, signing with his hands to the unseen occupant. Duke crowded at his back and managed to catch sight of a woman with long brown hair who apparently slept in the nude and was trying to cover herself with a sheet while sleepily clawing glasses from the nightstand.

He wondered if that gesture Nathan made meant emergency. There seemed less mystery about the next -- an apologetic retreat. Nathan nearly backed into him and shoved Duke again, with murder in his eyes. Duke just managed to save himself from a hard tumble by catching a door jamb across the corridor. He rebalanced and raised his hands swiftly in surrender.

They waited. The anger in Nathan's glare dulled, and Duke ventured a note. "SO, DEAF GIRL? THIS WHY THE SIGN LANG? PROUD OF YOU, BUD." That was... friendly, he thought. He mimed wiping a tear from the corner of his eye with a fingertip. "I GET IT TOTALLY. I'D HIT THAT." Aaaaand Nathan's expression flashed murderous again. He scarred the memo block with jerky scores of the pen and handed across, "Go to hell."

Did that mean he wasn't screwing the deaf girl? Or, more likely, he really wanted to screw the deaf girl and was merely tormenting himself due to his... lack of capacity. Because Duke had wondered how that feel-nothing-ever shtick worked in bed. More often than he probably should. In fact, that Nathan Wuornos' sex life ever crossed his mind was the definition of needing a hobby.

At least the entertainment potential was huge. He drew a rude cartoon and filled the speech bubble coming from glasses-chick with "OH NATE ~ YOU MISSED AGAIN!"

Nathan tore it up, eyed the closed bedroom door, scrunched up the bits and mashed them deep into his jeans pocket. He eyed the door again, looked dubiously at his memo block, stuffed it back in his pocket, pointed at the door -- "attractive bespectacled babe in a state of undress", Duke filled in for the absent dialogue -- pointed at himself -- "stiff just barely a step up from a mannequin", Duke inserted -- and shook his head while crossing his hands emphatically in the air.

"In total denial," Duke decided.

No sooner had he finished the show than the door opened, revealing sexy-librarian, dressed. She was curvy and tall. She frowned at Duke and made several agitated gestures to Nathan that suggested neither of them were among her favourite people at the moment. Nathan responded with more hesitant gestures. Occasionally, from the woman's obvious perplexity, he got something wrong. It was, however, a conversation Duke was starting to feel left out of. He gripped Nathan's shoulder -- which went unnoticed until he physically dragged him around -- and mouthed what?

Nathan rolled his eyes and made apologies to his girlfriend. Making an elaborate show of every movement, he took out his memo block and wrote.

"Telling Kate re. the trouble. Asking re. the kids, or was about to. Shut up."

Duke threw his hands up and went to play with some ornaments on a nearby shelf, turning his back on the mute lovebirds and keeping it that way. An age seemed to pass before Nathan's hand gripped his shoulder -- too hard, though that didn't necessarily mean it was deliberate. He swung around with brows raised: finished?

Oh, look, a note. He took it and rolled his head sarcastically as he read it. "Kate doesn't believe it's any of the kids, but she'll get us into the camp to check it out."

Duke wrote on top of it and passed back, "AUDREY.'"

Nathan's expression went stiffer, but he nodded.

Which was how they came to be outside Audrey Parker's B&B at 4AM. Nathan stalled at the door and stood looking around helplessly. So, no secret clandestine ways into this girl's life in the middle of the night -- lacking cellphones, at least. Duke thought, good, and tapped himself smugly on the chest while he brushed past and went around the house to climb in through Audrey's window.

He wasn't expecting to be met by a rough hand on the back of his neck, a violent shove forward to wreck his balance, and for a gun to be stuck in his face while he was still trying to retrieve it from the carpet. He raised his hands and tried to protest, and she relaxed and lowered her gun as she recognised him. She diverted briefly to turn on the light, then swung back around to help him up. Her lips were moving as she tried to talk to him, and... she didn't stop trying. She didn't seem to notice anything amiss. Apart from, obviously, that her friend had just climbed in through her bedroom window in the middle of the night.

Duke smiled winningly. The little white nightdress thing she was wearing? Seriously cute. Not what he might have expected from Officer Parker, but still cute. He gave her a small thumbs-up which he felt articulated the majority of his opinion, and she looked down, looked pissed, and folded her arms over her chest. Her lips moved again. Okay, for a fairly intelligent woman, she was taking a long time getting this.

He dug out his memo block, wrote a note and handed it over. "CAN'T SPEAK, CAN'T HEAR, THIS IS A TROUBLE." She gave it a cursory glance, turned it back on him, and pointed. Duke nodded sagely. Parker rolled her eyes and crossed to a chair with her previous day's ensemble hung untidily over the back of it. She stopped and scowled at him. Drew her gun from her belt and twitched it in his general direction. Duke turned around obediently. While he didn't dare peek -- yes, Officer Parker surely had gotten late to bed last night -- there was a fairly good reflection in the glass of the window where she'd flung back the curtains on him.

When she'd got as far as jeans and a camisole top, he diverted his attention to halving his memo block and searching around the room for another pen. Once she had her belt on with her gun safely holstered, he ventured closer to hand her the Nathan Wuornos Patented Voice-o-Matic Kit. She pointed at the choo-choo train, lips moving in one word he could read: "Nathan?" He jerked his thumb over his shoulder: outside.

She let them both out the easy way, through the front door. Nathan was waiting impatiently in the chill open air. Kate, who was sitting in the Bronco, had nonetheless acquired his jacket, but Nathan being a sap was not news.

Nathan nodded at Audrey and sketched a quick note in the light from the headlights which he passed only to her, but Duke caught sight of it and raised his eyebrows sardonically. Really, Nate? "Do you want me to arrest him for B&E?"

She shook her head, and hey! What did he have to do to earn that smile? If it'd been up to Nathan, they'd have left her out of this, cold. No appreciation, that was the problem.

Haven's Finest clearly had the deal with the notes down to habit after 6 weeks of it, as Nathan rattled off the situation in a few kindergarten-coloured squares and Audrey nodded along. She at one point eyed Kate with a moderate dose of suspicion, but Duke judged that more related to Detective Wuornos' secret hidden love life than their Trouble. Knowing his luck, it was probably jealousy -- yeah, Audrey and Nathan, who couldn't feel and would never make a damn move anyway. What a waste. Good friend that he was, it was practically Duke's duty to get in the way and save both of them from the embarrassment of such a relationship.

Nathan signed a brief exchange with Kate when they got back in his car, and Audrey's brows rose further. Duke didn't see the note she passed across -- not for want of trying, but he'd been shunted into the back with the deaf lady now -- only Nathan's expression looking up from it.

He gave a nod, OK, and started the car, taking refuge in driving.

Duke surreptitiously pushed onto Kate's lap a note that said, "PLEASE TEACH ME HOW TO SIGN ASSHOLE," and got frozen out of sight for it.

They never reached the camp. As they crested a rise going out of town, the sound returned to the world in an explosion that had Duke clamping his hands over his ears, because after an hour of dead silence, yow. They were probably all fortunate in Nathan's tendency to under-react (like a stiff, wooden toy), because he managed to skew the car to the edge of the road and slam the brakes on without planting them into anything.

"Nathan! Nathan! Duke!" It was nice that she thought of him, but really in that moment Audrey's yelling was not helpful. A hand gesture from Nathan got her to lower the volume, and after about half a minute everything normalised. Duke waggled fingers in his ears to clear them while Nathan just sat stiffly. Audrey asked quietly, "Are you all right? The sound came back, didn't it? The car engine and you guys and even the wind outside. It's kind of amazing how many things make noise that you normally don't even notice."

"That... would be the case." Why hadn't it hurt her? Even Nathan had flinched... though it shouldn't be a surprise he could be vulnerable to sensory overload, if nothing else. Then again, Audrey had only been awake all of ten minutes.

"So, then, is it over?" she posed. "Or did something else just happen?"

"Not over," Nathan responded, in his mumble of a voice. "Localised. Had sound back at my place, too." He signed to Kate, who surprised Duke by opening her mouth and talking. He'd assumed she didn't hear or speak normally. Her voice was a burr, precise edges of sounds lost without her own ability to judge them, but she was easier to understand than Nathan was at the moment.

"I told you it wasn't any of the kids."

"Right," Parker said, "which is good, because I for one was wondering how we were going to get across the concept of 'bring back the sound, please' to a Troubled kid who's been deaf since birth. I guess that answer was too convenient. But where do we even start, now?"

Nathan signed something to Kate, who smiled and advised, "Keep practicing."

"We know this Trouble's back in town, not out at the camp," Duke said, watching them together a bit too intently. He nudged Nathan on the shoulder hard enough to jerk him in his seat. You had to do that, because he didn't know you were tapping him unless he could notice the jolt. "Nate, take the Mystery Machine around Cole Springs and head back into town from the west."

"Right. We can get a bead on where the centre of this Trouble might be," Audrey said. "And Duke? I have a gun. Don't push it." She eyed Duke's hand, still digging into Nathan's shoulder.

He snatched his hand back. "What? Back massage." Her expression didn't change. "Neck rub? I thought he looked stiff. He looks stiff." That one nobody could dispute. Nathan scrubbed at the back of his neck roughly to make sure it was clear, a hiss of displeasure escaping his locked teeth. Now everything else was back to normal, his silence was again a thing of note.

Audrey turned to Kate, half climbing the back of her seat. "Could you swap with him?" She made a sort of rolling-over gesture with her hands, pointing at Duke, which was no kind of sign language, just pure Audrey Parker. "Or he'll be kicking Nathan all the way back to town."

"I have driven a minibus full of seven to thirteen-year-olds. It's a lot like this," Kate said, doing an exchange-shuffle with Duke across the seat -- one that he was all too happy to oblige with. She had a great ass, he noted as it brushed his knee. Was it perverted to find something sexy about the indistinct burr of her voice? Maybe it was just that she had one of those throaty voices that curled in the base of the stomach. Then again, when he wasn't old iron-jaws, so did Nathan, and... mental commentary shutting up now.

"I can still throw spit balls at him from here, you know," Duke advised Audrey, screwing up a page from the memo pad and miming putting it in his mouth. She rolled her eyes and exchanged a look with Kate before turning back around in her seat. "You know, I'd threaten to spank you if you wouldn't take it the wrong way."

"Now there's a proposition Nathan couldn't appreciate," Duke said warmly. Nathan started his truck with an angry lurch, and took them off up the left turn to Cole Springs with a squeal of stressed gears. "Okay, mom, I'll behave. But just to let you know, this guy was being a real dick to me, earlier."

"Poor baby. Too bad you've been building up a tab these last six weeks, otherwise I might have some sympa--" The smirk in Audrey's voice cut sharply silent as they encountered a twist in the road. They came out of it again within seconds, the roar of the Bronco's engine coming back to life. The silence had been too brief to hurt this time. "Well, I guess we know where that boundary is."

Nathan grunted, and Duke said, "Wow, it's like you don't even miss the entire element of sound." Nathan flashed an extended finger over his shoulder.

"Did you really miss talking that much?" Audrey asked, the perky tone of the question at odds with how uncomfortably pertinent it was, especially with the cloak of silence ready to re-descend and the itching sense of do not want Duke had about that scenario.

"No. Hey, why would I? As Troubles go, this almost doesn't even suck, right? It's not deadly, or messy. We're not bleeding out of our ears. Sound-gobbling Trouble? Ooh, scary."

Nathan mumbled something.

"Excuse me?" Duke prompted, leaning forward.

"Could you be more of an ass?" Audrey said disgustedly.

"What? I'm behind him and he's talking in Caveman! I can't hear over the engine!"

Kate's opinion was probably rude. Well, it looked rude. Duke sat back with an exaggerated huff, while Nathan took the turn that brought them back into Haven from the west, grim and silent as a stone. Audrey said, "Well, Nathan's right. It'll be light soon and people will be awake -- and panicking. It may not be that destructive on the scale of things, but it is noticeable, and widespread. We need to shut this down fast."

Nathan put in a single, distinct word, "Teagues."

"Yeah." Audrey nodded. "We need Vince and Dave's archives. See if 'Whole Town Falls Silent' ever made the headlines before. We also need the police station and a map. I have no idea what whoever's on duty will be making of all this."

"At least he won't have to worry about the phones," Duke said brightly, but that only gained him a steely look that said he wasn't forgiven.

"We're going to have to split up. Nathan, you know this town better than me. Can you drop me and Duke off at the Teagues' place and take Kate on to the station to handle the maps?"

"Wait," Duke said in disbelief, waggling a finger between himself and Nate. "Seriously? You're splitting us up?"

"They can communicate with each other without the paper trail. How else would you do it? Besides, we pass the Teagues first, and Nathan's driving. I--" Her lips continued to move but all trace of her words disappeared from the air; the engine noise, the small sounds of their breathing, it all cut out between one moment and the next. Duke sighed -- silently -- and flopped back in his seat and scrubbed his hands through his hair, frustrated. "Back again," he mouthed sarcastically at Kate, who shrugged. Of course, she cared less than Nathan. Bitch.

Audrey made quick use of the full moon in a break between the trees to scribble and hand over, "You get me to yourself & you're not happy?"

Duke tipped his head this way and that and pulled out a smile. When you put it like that...

The Teagues were even worse at being disturbed in the night than the damn girl cop. It was a hell of a thing trying to explain, without words, what they were doing prowling around the bedroom of two geriatric gasbags while Vince had Duke on his knees at the wrong end of a shotgun. As if the nightwear wasn't trauma enough. That, plus the fact they still slept in twin beds in the same room, although they had clearly delineated space that divided the centre of that room as sharply as the Berlin Wall.

Audrey, though -- well, they had a soft spot for Audrey, that was for sure. Soon as they saw her, both of them lit up with cooperative smiles. She managed to get the situation explained relatively easily, because the Teagues weren't much surprised by anything the Troubles threw at them anymore. Reporter's notebooks out, scribbling fingers flying across the pages, they conversed -- mostly with each other -- like lightning and shortly agreed to head down to the Herald offices to search the archives.

"Think there was something in 1955," said Dave's note. "Now get out, need to get changed & pee."

While waiting outside, after Duke had finished miming his opinion of the nightwear and bedroom and his severe trauma, he handed Audrey a note. "YOU GAVE NATHAN THE FUN JOB. FAVOURITISM, OFFICER PARKER."

"Nathan & the deaf counsellor breaking & entering? I think this was a job for you and me." Her eyebrows waggled in amusement. Hot damn, she was cute.

Down at the Herald office, Dave silently booted up the computer, while Vince fussed around with the answering machine, curiously hitting 'play' on half a dozen silent messages and shrugging. You had to wonder how many of those messages would still be silent when this wore off.

Dave held up a finger. Vince leaned over his shoulder and excitedly waved everyone else around. Duke, a bit crowded out, managed to read the headline, Mysterious Blackout Covers Neighbourhood -- Third Day. Audrey leaned across and tapped the printer, smiling coyly. Dave grinned and printed that article and followed it up with however many other days' worth of news it had provided.

Vince handed around a torn leaf of his notebook that, when Duke finally managed to seize it, read, "Blackout my ass. I was there. & blind!"

Dave chuckled on mute. "I remember they moved the population out to temporary berths in a school downtown and the 'blackout' followed!"

Audrey had grabbed the articles from the printer and was skimming them through. Again, Duke had to fight just to get a look-in, and Audrey was too preoccupied to pay attention to his mimed complaint. She forsook Nathan's memo block for a blank sheet stolen from the printer and wrote large to flash over everyone, "SOMEONE HAS A TROUBLE THAT CAN BLANK OUT SENSES."

The Teagues nodded happily. Duke arranged the articles in date order on the desk and followed the progression of the saga. Even flashlights were affected. No shit.

"NO-ONE KNOWS HOW IT ENDED?" Audrey asked, producing a shrug and blank spread of hands from both newspapermen. Yeah, Duke had reached that part. It ended 'mysteriously'. Wow. Okay, names... He stole Audrey's first abandoned placard and started writing a list on the back of it, jotting down every citizen named in the series of articles. He scrawled the word "OBITUARIES?" over the bottom and handed it to Dave, who made an 'aha!' kind of face.

A moment later, Vince looked up and gave him a thumbs-up. Duke practically vaulted the desk to get back there and see. Oswald Vaughn, said the short article. The death matched the date the blackouts had ended.

Dave brought up a Wordpad window on the screen and typed, enlarging the lettering, "I remember that old cuss. Claimed he never had any luck. The one time he agreed to leave his home, the £&*!!*))*! 'blackout' followed him!"

"Well, we know why." Audrey stuck her note to the top of the screen, followed by, "Any Vaughns still in town?'

Duke texted Nathan, who replied after some delay that they'd got a calculation of the centre. It wasn't the same neighbourhood as 1955, but it did match an address for one of the Vaughns on the Haven Herald's delivery list. And Duke wanted to spare a moment to consider how deeply worrying it was that these two dodgy old fellows had an instant bead on every resident in town.

Right now, Audrey was trying to persuade them not to come along. Outside, dawn was breaking, and very shortly half the population of the town would be waking up wondering why they couldn't hear anything. Duke couldn't imagine what story they might come up with that would fool even the very stupid. (Blackout? Seriously?) When he looked up again, hands were pointed accusingly in his direction. He'd missed the conversation but could deduce it being to the effect that Duke Crocker certainly wasn't a police officer either. He raised his hands and obligingly backed toward the door, but paused halfway and took out his memo block. He wrote with a flourish, and handed his note to Audrey with a bow before fleeing the scene:

"CAN WALK THERE FROM HERE. SEE YOU IN 10."

Duke quickly realised he hadn't thought that one over, because it was creepy as hell walking around town in total silence. He found himself constantly turning to look behind him, dogged by the feeling there could be someone there, silent and unnoticed.

He'd been walking about ten minutes when he felt his phone vibrate. Another text message from Nathan. It said, "DO NOT GO IN UNTIL WE LAND." Aww, widdle Nathan had discovered capital letters.

Delighted to have the distraction, and with the world, in a way, no longer silent, Duke texted back, "SO SWEET THAT YOU CARE. ::HUGS::" Communication made the world go 'round, so he immediately sent, "HONEY, DON'T MAKE ME WAIT TOO LONG."

Shortly, he got back, "Ignoring my phone now. Can't hear it, so should be easy." Oh, right. Vibrate setting wasn't going to work for Nathan. Like so much else.

It was starting to get light, and already the odd person wandered the streets, looking confused. Across the road, a guy in pyjamas next to some trashcans was thwapping himself on the ear. Duke crossed to him and handed over a memo note. He stared at it blankly, then turned and trudged back inside his house. Duke wondered if he'd be able to sell "BACTERIA IN WATER SUPPLY ATTACKS THE INNER EAR" to the Haven Herald.

Duke kept moving, and nearly fell down from a heart attack when out of nowhere someone tapped him roughly on the shoulder. Spinning in panic, he saw Nathan leaning out of the window of his Bronco, smirking as much as his iron face would allow. Judging by Audrey in the back, silently laughing, Duke's efforts to cover up his fright were unsuccessful. She shoved the door open and shifted over to make room.

"Together again," he mouthed. He kneed the back of Nathan's seat hard enough to make him turn, and mouthed, "Hilarious."

Nathan's returning smile was way too relaxed, and seeing it cranked up Duke's temper a notch.

They basically only had to turn a corner to arrive at the house, where they piled out of the car again. Duke, patting his pockets with increasing franticness, discovered he'd dropped his memo pad when Nathan scared the crap out of him. Nathan watched his dismayed search and quirked the corner of his lips. Bastard. But when Nathan moved to check his gun and badge, he cast a hard, weighing stare at Duke, then simply handed over his pen and the rest of his memo pad.

Duke's jaw might have dropped a little. 'Astonished' didn't really cover it. Nathan added some vaguely-angry pointing gestures at the pad and Duke and himself that Duke took to mean he wanted it back. Still, it was not possible to act like a proper gun-toting, badge-waving hardass while writing, and besides, Audrey... well, everyone knew it was Officer Parker who did the talking in this duo. Duke couldn't, even then, think of a good reason why Nathan would so readily relinquish his voice.

A light blue door guarded the front of the house. It was a little more run down than the others on the street. Haven didn't have too many bad areas, or even mildly-less-nice areas, but this would come close. As he watched, Duke thought, not for the first time, that Officer Parker was really good at lock picking. Did they teach that in the FBI, or in state orphanages? He also thought about how nobody really appreciated the ability to politely get someone's attention until they couldn't hear you. For example, they were about to be far from popular in this household.

Maybe it was the silence, more than anything, but something here didn't feel right. Hanging back behind Audrey and Nate, he peered around them to pick out the dusky details of the rooms in the early light. There were toys indicating the presence of a child, but they were oddly regimented, boxed, or arranged on shelves, like it all belonged to a child who didn't dare to play.

These houses didn't have an upstairs: faint flickers of light were coming from one room, at the back, so that was the door Audrey eased open first, holding her badge at the ready to identify herself. Inside, a girl of perhaps nine years old sat in a t-shirt nightdress with a cartoon frog on it, pulling the speak-string on a teddy bear and watching it not-talk, over and over again, while a small TV flickered on advertisements in the background. She turned her big, dark eyes to Audrey, who holstered her gun carefully and waved her badge, pointed to herself, smiled, and knelt next to the girl. Hi, I'm a policewoman.

The girl put her finger to her lips and silently went, Shh.

Audrey put her badge away and took out her piece of memo block. She wrote in large letters, "AUDREY", and held it up to herself, then pointed at the girl.

--Who gave her a disapproving, nervous look back. She jabbed the memo pad agitatedly and covered her mouth with her hand and shook her head. Duke passed across to Audrey, discretely, "YOU'RE CHEATING."

He was beginning to get a bad feeling about all this.

Audrey wrote, firmly, "It's not cheating." She kept her writing large because of the bad light, and who knew what reading level the kid was at anyway, so she needed another note for, "Who told you not to talk?"

The kid shook her head and didn't answer. She did seem agitated, peculiar. She'd been crying, which could be seen in the puffiness of her eyes, but she'd probably stopped at least an hour ago. So if the Trouble was caused by the kid, what the hell happened to a kid in the middle of the night that could explain this?

Oh, shit, thought Duke, and multiplied that a thousandfold. He urgently waved Nathan back a step; he was suddenly acutely aware that two men hovering at the door might not help this situation. Nathan backed out into the corridor entirely and Duke bobbed his head around the corner to see him checking his gun with a grim focus.

When he peeped back in at Audrey, she'd got there already and was holding up a note saying "HOW ABOUT IF WE ALREADY KNOW?" and followed it up by tentatively offering the girl her memo pad.

Slowly, the girl uncurled an arm from the defensive posture she'd hunched into and took it.

Sound rushed back into the world. It wasn't as noisy here as it had been in the car, so only merited a minor head-clutch. The little girl mirrored it, whimpering. Audrey still didn't. What was with that?

"Benny said big girls don't tell tales," the kid said, a whisper. "I'm gonna be in trouble. Benny said I was big enough, now."

Big enough for what was a horror, and Duke really did not want to listen to this. They needed Kate. Audrey would have to do in the meantime. First they needed to deal with the piece of shit whose fault this all was.

"Did... Benny hurt you?" Audrey asked hesitantly.

The girl nodded, her eyes starting to well up anew.

"It's never going to happen again," Audrey said, her voice very hard.

"Yeah," Duke hissed. "Me and Nate, we're gonna go take care of that. Okay?" He dived out of the room. Nathan still leaned outside the door, listening, a faint tremor in his limbs and an expression on his face Duke hadn't seen before. And he'd thought he'd seen Nathan Wuornos in every possible shade of mad.

Nathan reached back and closed the door. "Kill this bastard," he mumbled. Okay, that was pretty clear.

"One, get in line behind me, and two, you do know that as an officer of the law I'm sure it's frowned upon to say things like that?" Oh, wow. His voice. His words. His hilarious mockery of Nathan. Not having to reduce everything to scratches on paper... would be so much more awesome if this situation they'd walked in on was less appalling. "Ben Rowan," Duke said, back to serious. "The other resident the Teagues had listed along with Marlena Vaughn."

He got a grunt and an eyeball for his trouble. There were low noises coming from the door of, presumably, the household's main bedroom. Nathan waved Duke back, his badge out and gun drawn, if mostly pointed at the floor -- to avoid temptation, Duke suspected -- and stamped across the corridor to burst into the room with a distinctly unnecessary force. "Mr. Rowan," he chewed, his best Clint Eastwood growl barely impeded by the wires, "Haven P.D. Explain to me the condition of that child."

Duke craned over his shoulder to see a man in skivvies half out of bed. A tired-eyed woman blinked, uncaring, at them from the sheets. The man's head snapped up, anger twisting his face. "That little bitch! I goddamn told her to keep her mouth shut!" The brutality and speed of his reaction caught everyone off-guard. He surged from the bed and, oblivious to the threat of the gun rising at him, hammered a fist at Nathan's face. Nate twisted into the punch, no time to avoid it entirely, but went down before Duke could see where the blow landed. Duke, unarmed and with an angry, near-naked asshole coming at him, chose the most karmically pleasing option and kicked his attacker in the groin, letting the guy's own momentum add to the force. Rowan went down like a stone. Duke leaped over him -- all right, stood on him -- and grabbed for Nathan's shoulders.

"Nate! Shit, talk to me! Or, y'know, grunt... Shit!" Nathan dozily half-dragged himself as far as hands and knees. Duke caught the sides of his head, trying to assess the damage without making it worse. "Look at me, buddy. C'mon--"

--Hell. It was okay. No bones sticking out, this time, no blood, and no mess of displaced wires, either. He might have a black eye, but not another six weeks of smashed bone and silence.

"Is it--?" Nathan grunted, groggily, indistinctly.

"It's fine," Duke said. "You're all right."

Nathan shook him off with impatience: Get off me, then. His eyes were still a bit spacey, and he stayed on the floor ostensibly for ease of crawling across to the downed man and cuffing him. "Not the smoothest arrest in history," he mumbled. "But I'll take that confession." He relaxed somewhat with Rowan in cuffs, and when he raised his head, gave Duke the oddest look, but only said, "Go get Kate for the kid." The woman moved, trying to sneak out of bed, rustling the sheets. Nathan shifted his gaze to her, ominously. "You stay put."

With Nate in that mood, Duke settled for a brief nod and cleared out of the room just as fast as he could.

Goddamn silence. It was catching.

A day later, Duke found Audrey Parker back in her familiar place propping up his bar. Smiling in greeting, he moseyed across to her, dispatching Janine to the customers at the far end with a tip of his head.

"Do you wonder what Oswald Vaughn did, all those years ago, that he so badly didn't want people to see?" Audrey mused.

Duke didn't care. "You've got a great voice, you know that?" He toasted her voice with his drink. "Cute and perky, Officer Parker. You sound like... sunshine."

"Thanks, I think," she said rolling her eyes. But her face fell as she turned from the interested speculation, and her expression tightened. "You know, the lawyers are all over us about the procedural failings in Rowan's arrest. It's not like we can roll out investigating the Troubles or not being able to talk at the time as an excuse for not knocking on the door or announcing ourselves entering the house." She shoved her glass at him in a demand for a refill.

Ah, so tonight was angry Martinis. By now, Duke was fully conversant in all the flavours of Audrey Parker's Martinis.

"That asshole might not even do time." She sagged in her seat. "I suppose at least he won't be living under the same roof as the kid, but all the same..." Duke said, "I think you'll find it's amazing how little a man can enjoy not being in jail when his neighbours know he abused his girlfriend's kid. Haven's a small town, Audrey."

She tipped her shoulder in a still-annoyed shrug. After a moment, she tried to climb down from her fury with, "Nathan's got a great voice, too. It's nice to be able to hear it again."

Duke almost snorted his drink. "You know there are some who've known him years and still never heard him speak?"

"Don't start that again." She wagged her finger in his face warningly, and the way she lurched and caught herself as she did it make him wonder how long she'd been drinking before he walked in. "He told me what you did. You can't fool me with your don't-care act. You, Duke Crocker, care. And don't you dare disparage those smoky tones. They may not surface often, but hey, they are worth waiting for when they do."

"Fine, I care," Duke said. "Mostly about the chance to laugh my ass off. Everyone's ass needs a giggle every now and then. Even yours, Officer Parker. You know--" He smirked, and pushed his luck. "Follows you around, answers to 'Wuornos'?"

"Sweet," she said, determinedly ignoring that. "I thought it was sweet. Being all concerned over your hated enemy."

"We're not enemies." Duke abruptly turned away to pick up a tea towel, and started attending to waiting trays of wet glasses. "We're just... on a break at the moment. From being friends."

"A break from the age of seven?" Her words were getting loud. They'd already been prying.

Duke eyed her and then the already-empty glass on the counter. He leaned in close. "The advantage of being the owner is I can cut you off."

She smirked at him, unrepentant. "You like our conversations way too much to be that petty." That, unfortunately, was true. "Anyway, what was up with that? The concerned act. Almost two months of unashamed hilarity, right? Could've been nearer four."

"You think I want him hurt?" Duke asked, pained by the idea.

"You certainly seemed to enjoy it."

"That's not wanting him hurt. That's making the most of him being... pissed and frustrated."

"Aww." The way she sagged towards him over the counter was definitely a few units beyond her usual. "That is sweet. In a strange, twisted, Duke-and-Nathan way. You two really need to sort out your issues. And oddly? The most appropriate means that comes to mind is a marriage counsellor."

Duke choked while Parker laughed. Evil. She was evil when drunk. A little bit evil the rest of the time, too, when he thought about it. Why did he always go for the women with that sense of humour? Maybe they were just the ones who'd stick around to talk to him. There could be more to explore in that theory.

"Anyway, it was hilarious," he said, taking away her glass and replacing it with a sugar bowl and cream jug. "I defy you to claim that it wasn't."

"Hey--"

"I will make you the best coffee you've ever tasted, Officer Parker. Trust me. Your limit has been reached. You're working in the morning, remember?" A sure bet. She was always working.

She nodded brightly. Unlike any regular person, work was almost more like a shiny promise than a grumble-worthy determent. "I might find a new case. To get my mind off this case. With... people turning into aardvarks. Or something." While Duke brewed his best Colombian import coffee, she started building a small wall out of sugar lumps, and eventually remembered the conversation. "It was not hilarious. He could have permanent nerve damage."

Duke shot a questioning glance over one shoulder.

"In his face. He's not numb all the time. The Troubles go away."

"That sucks." More soberly, Duke put a clean cup and saucer in front of her, with a genteel flourish. Might be a waste of time in her current state, though. "I didn't know that."

"Of course not. Anyway. What makes you think he was pissed? He was frustrated about missing work, but hey, he went out and found stuff to do, with the deaf kids. Which he enjoyed. He's sad he doesn't have time to do it now he's reinstated. And what I said before about him being some kind of righteous child-friendly action figure? Totally still goes, by the way. No, you'd be pissed. That's you. Projecting."

"I am impressed that word is still in your vocabulary after all your angry Martinis," Duke told her, skeptically laughing off her claim. "If he's not pissed, explain why he's looked so pissed for the last two months."

Audrey returned to him the look he'd given her a minute ago.

"No, that one does need explanation," he clarified. "That--" he gestured in front of his face as he mockingly mirrored her expression "--doesn't cut it. Sorry."

She muttered something down at her waiting cup, then lifted her head and said plainly, "He was pissed around you."

...Oh.

"Strangely, he's usually pissed around you. I'm surprised you noticed any difference."

"Hunh. Well, it must have been... all the cruel and unusual dentistry." He chose to distract himself by pouring her coffee.

"The wires? Yes. Or you. Projecting. Because you could not handle not being able to talk for six weeks. In fact, I will bet you. Not even six weeks. One single day. It is not possible for you to keep your mouth shut for one day. Tomorrow. Are you in?" She dug in her pocket and slapped the contents of her wallet down. "I do mean around people. No cheating and disappearing off to sea!"

Duke laughed. "No fucking way. Why would I even?"

"Are you man enough?" Oh, God, a drunk Audrey Parker. This was so... evil. That little wriggle she'd just done on her seat... "Twenty four hours. Starting tonight. Are you not man enough? Seriously! Duke!" She slapped the counter top, making her coffee jump.

He jerked his chin at the bank notes. "Not for that."

"All right. Up the stakes. Dinner, which I will not miss this time on pain of death. If you lose, however, which you will, you are at my mercy." She stared at him. "You're not chicken?" Scowled. "I'm not offering up my virtue, if that's why you're holding out."

Duke choked again and made every effort to turn away and go back to helping Janine serve actual paying customers. "I'm not having this conversation."

Audrey made a clucking noise.

Duke faltered, incredulously, and turned back. "What are you? Twelve? Drink your coffee."

"I smell desperation... and hey, really great coffee. Where'd you say you got this?"

"I didn't, and you, Officer, don't want to know."

She slammed the counter with her palm. "...Your illegal but delicious coffee will not get you forgotten and forgiven. Duke! Small, feathered animals! Have more guts!"

...He was doomed. Doomed.

A few evenings later, Nathan showed up at the Cape Rouge carrying a crate of beer, a Best of Hockey 2009 DVD, and a handful of... flashcards? "Nate. Something you want to tell me?" Baffled, Duke squinted into the inscrutable expression, slightly marred by the fading black eye.

Nathan put down the beer and DVD and held up, LOST A BET WITH PARKER.

Duke grimaced sourly. "...Right. That does seem to be something that's going around." He had such a sinking feeling. Audrey had said his penance would turn up sometime in the next few days, and he'd know it when he saw it.

Nathan stuck that card at the back of the stack and revealed, SHE WANTS US TO BOND and I HAVE A PLAN: SAY NOTHING.

"You are fucking kidding me," Duke snapped, jerking I HAVE A PLAN out of his hand and wielding it murderously. "Audrey put you up to this, too, didn't she?"

Nathan looked annoyed, and it was a flavour of annoyance with a good deal of insistence about it, especially as he held up, firmly, I FIGURE OUR BEST CHANCE TO GET THROUGH THIS IS NOT TO SPEAK. Scrawled at the base of that was added, or write, or communicate in any way.

"No," said Duke. "Because that worked so well last week? That's your plan? We sit and ignore each other and watch some trash DVD?"

Rather less certain now, Nathan vaguely waved a final card, which in fact said THIS IS MY LAST CARD, and then with an annoyed twitch ditched the stack over the side of the boat into the sea. "Fine. Then what do you suggest?"

Duke gaped at him. "Your voice!" He leaned closer, actually halfway to poking at Nathan's mouth in search of wires before he made himself pull back. He couldn't see any wires.

"Yeah." Nathan rubbed his jaw with his fingers and managed his rare, subdued smile. "All fixed. Only took so long because I can't feel. Doctors couldn't risk taking the wires out, me forgetting, undoing everything."

"Wow, so, all back to normal. Normal for you, anyway, so... not that normal."

"Thanks, Duke. Really." But there was amusement in the snort he gave. "And for your input over this last... what? Six weeks?"

"Yeah, about that." Duke shifted uneasily. He was not a man who made apologies, generally, and damn it, he wasn't going to make one now. But he could bring himself to admit, "I might have gone a bit too far. I'm not saying it wasn't funny, because it was totally--"

"Just stop." It was weird to see regular mobility returned to the face that was now smirking at him. Not a huge amount of mobility, granted. It was still Nathan.

"So you lost a bet with Audrey, and I lost a bet with Audrey, and we have to bond." Duke summarised fatalistically. "But I'm not doing it your way. Hell, you should be tired of silence if anyone should. Six weeks, man! Communication makes the world go 'round. You do know that?"

Nathan shrugged. "Surely it matters more what you do. Particularly someone who lies so often as you do." He paused for contemplation, scanning Duke with a new twist to his newly-mobile mouth.

"Even the silence Trouble turned out to be a cry for help. You think about that." ...Hell, who was he kidding? Nathan did silence more eloquently than anyone: case in point, as he stiffly hefted the beer and jerked his chin at the door belowdecks. "We have to bond," Duke concluded flatly, and had a quick check around for Audrey, because no way she wasn't spying on them from somewhere, somehow. There -- aha, he could see Beattie, slouching over the way, ticking off on a clipboard and looking busy and official. Audrey didn't need to spy. Audrey had spies. "Watch it," he hissed to Nathan, sliding his eyes in Beattie's direction. "The women are against us."

Nathan twitched and managed not to turn to look.

Duke picked up the abandoned DVD. "Not the biggest fan of hockey."

"I know."

Which was another reason anyone who thought Nate was the innocent victim in this relationship could get screwed.

Duke's lips twitched as he glanced down at the DVD and back up. "You ever watch the sign language channel? Of course you do. Educational, right? You probably take notes."

"You want to watch--" Nathan stopped. Gave him a serious stare and then some. "No. The woman with the--?"

"Oh yeah," Duke confirmed, with a friendly but over-firm pat to Nathan's shoulder that Audrey's spies could chew on. "Come on, if we're lucky she might be on the mating habits of dolphins scheduled tonight."

He'd earned himself a little disdain and the weary admission, "Lead on."

"Speaking of the sign channel and mating habits, how are things with Kate?"

"I can still hurt you once we get out of sight," Nathan growled.

"Yeah." The other reason this was a phenomenally bad idea. The last few times they'd been together on his boat, they both ended up bruised for a month. "How about a pact? We both make sure not to leave marks anywhere she can see, because otherwise she'll only think of something worse tomorrow."

"Deal."

"Shake on it?"

"Don't touch me."

It didn't come to blows, although they did pelt each other with bottle caps all evening, and Duke secretly suspected it was the most fun either of them had had with their clothes on since they were teenagers.

END

Endnote: Because this story never strays from Duke's point-of-view, it's fiendishly difficult to get across how the Trouble in it is affecting Audrey, so for the sake of clarity, here goes: This Trouble silences things, so Audrey, immune, is her own little bubble of sound. She can hear herself speak, and any noises she directly causes -- ie. her own footsteps. However, Duke and Nathan are both deaf and mute, and she can't hear them, or other background noise, and the result is that she can't communicate normally any more than anyone else can. So although she might suspect something strange is going on, she doesn't fully connect how she's experiencing the Trouble differently from everyone else.

I know lots of people still manage to speak with a broken jaw. My line of thinking is that Nathan has more problems than most because of his Trouble, and has probably been advised not to try because he can't tell which movements hurt and might aggravate the damage.

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