Unbreakable

It's reflex more than anything else that makes Nathan groan as Duke's weight presses him into the mattress. He still can't feel the hands on his shoulder and his hip. He knows they're there, but needs focus and the clues of his other senses to tell him. Six months ago he might have asked, what's the point? But at least chemically, he can still appreciate the rush of sex, and since he can be mentally and physically aroused -- if he's willing to subject himself to the sometimes-humiliating struggle to get there -- he's decided maybe he'll start asking instead, why the hell not?

That first night back in Haven, he fell into bed with Duke. He's been there at least some part of each night since. It doesn't count as a routine yet: five days isn't long enough for that.

"God, Nathan," Duke grunts. His face is buried in the back of Nathan's neck, trailing bites and kisses barely distinguishable by the noise of lips against skin or the faint growl in Duke's throat when his teeth connect. Nathan feels neither the pleasure nor the pain, but pushes harder back against Duke, because they've got to be near, by now. Even without sensation, there's a point where it starts to scatter thought, where he gets that fizz at the back of his brain.

He looks to where their combined weight on his braced hands twists and compresses the bedding, then cranes his head back to see Duke's tanned body covering his. Shifting position to brace on an elbow, he reaches back and grinds his fingers over Duke's where they gouge his hip, pressing, pulling, encouraging Duke to deliver increasingly rough thrusts until their rhythm breaks to pieces.

Duke collapses on top of him and curls both their arms around under Nathan's waist, keeping their fingers interlaced. Nathan's field of vision gets shoved around a bit as Duke continues to nuzzle the back of his neck. "This is the craziest thing, you know? All those years fighting. You being so determined to be... fucking untouchable. Just think what else we could've been doing."

"You do know I can't feel that?" Nathan checks.

"But I know I'm doing it," Duke responds with patient logic.

"Are you still inside me?"

"Yeah."

"Then pull out." The weight's not bothering him but a face full of bedclothes is beginning to. "I want to turn over."

"Jeeze, you're demanding," Duke mock-complains. "You have to know how staggered I was to discover this could actually fit in that ass of yours." He's patting his cock as he lets Nathan up. Nathan rolls on top and supplants Duke's hand with his own. It gets tricky, then, because he can't see what he's doing, but he figures Duke will tell him if he does anything weird.

He initiates the kiss, but lets Duke lead it. Opens his mouth and waits for the dim awareness of when Duke's lips and tongue move his own to suggest what he does next. Taste is a sensory explosion, but not the most use as a guide. They have discovered that if Nathan takes the lead, Duke's response is usually "ow", so they've been sticking to this way around for most things. Last year, it would have been unacceptable, but there are any number of things Nathan once would have given a damn about that he's now letting go. It's probably why Duke's finding him so much easier to get along with.

Nathan had never actually thought about putting himself in such a position with another man before a few months ago. And though that was one guy who offered him ten times his usual rates to beat him up and throw him down and fuck him, it didn't particularly shame him, or stain his sense of masculinity, and it even gave him a buzz that left him itching for more, so who knew? He wasn't about to make a habit of it at the time, because it struck him as a more dangerous play than the rest and he had a few problems after that incident, too, and the main object of being on the run was still survival.

Duke doesn't know about that guy, and as far as Nathan is concerned, he's never finding out. There was a moment, that first night, when with a weird clarity it descended on him that if he could trust anyone to do this for him -- to him -- it had to be Duke. After all, if Nathan wants to be used, then everything about their history suggests Duke is the perfect candidate. Instead of shoving his advances away with a curse, Duke kissed him. That wasn't exactly what he was looking for, either, but things got a bit muddled after that.

A while of numb petting later, Duke says hoarsely, "Well, I'm ready to go again, if that's what you were aiming for."

Nathan pushes up and looks down, and is mildly surprised by the sight of their two erections reporting for action. "Yeah, if you want to," he says. They've already gone at it fairly enthusiastically, but while his body might be sore, it won't bother him anyway.

It won't bother him at all.

He rolls over again, and absorbs the shifts in balance and weight as Duke climbs on top and pushes in. His mind flashes back to another night, a different room, and someone else's weight making it a challenge to stay on his knees. He does try to put it aside, because it's Duke who's here now. But he still hisses, "Harder," under the punishment of Duke's first few thrusts, and it's absolutely not a problem that he has no way of knowing what damage he might be doing himself.

***

Nathan wakes to light streaming through the skylight directly onto Duke's bed; but that's not the first thing he sees when he opens his eyes. The first thing he sees are Duke's eyes staring back at him. Unprotected, for a moment, where he's clearly not expecting Nathan to wake and see him looking. A hand that's been tracing his skin guiltily retreats. Duke swallows and says, slightly hoarse with the morning hour, "Hey." The sun is in his hair. His voice is softer, more naked, than Nathan has ever heard it before.

Pushing up onto one elbow, Nathan looks around, confused and disoriented. He's really been here all night? Normally he doesn't sleep, or at least wakes up and leaves, certainly doesn't hang around to be underfoot in the morning. "Sorry," he grunts muzzily. "I guess I slept--"

Duke presses Nathan's lips closed. "I'm not complaining." Duke replaces his fingertips with his mouth, briefly, then pulls back with an apologetic grimace for morning breath. He reaches for his glass of water on the nightstand and drinks from it, taking his time to swallow. His skin seems to glow in the all the sunbeams, and the remaining water sparkles, sloshing in the glass, as he stretches his arm to set it back down.

Nathan, dazzled, rolls onto his back and lifts his hands to scrape his hair out of his face. It was careless to sleep here. He doesn't really know how he could've. Duke mistakes something in his sigh, though, giving him a wolfish grin and ducking under the comforter. Stupid with sleep, he blankly watches the lump of Duke moving around beneath the cover, crawling between his legs and pushing them wide. Then he gets a surreal morning blow job, both unfelt and unseen.

It's almost comedic as Duke burrows back up, poking his head out above Nathan's stomach. "You good?" he asks, his eyes very intent, searching Nathan's. "You better tell me now, are you up for morning sex, or is this something that only works after you're numb from a day of Troubles-policing and several stiff drinks?" He grimaces and corrects, "Numb-er."

"I'm--" Nathan can be enticed. Maybe he's still just half asleep. "Okay." He pulls himself up to sitting, and shoves back the comforter, revealing Duke crouched between his knees. He makes to turn over and is stopped by what he realises a confused moment after is Duke's hand curling an iron grip on his wrist. "How about we try it face to face? You're limber enough, right?" Duke leans forward and slides both hands up Nathan's chest while Nathan cautiously settles back how he was. Something he can't define lurks in Duke's eyes, and a strange, expectant daring in his face.

Nathan has no idea. He's only ever done it the one way. "If it hurts, I won't know," he concedes, and although it's not meant as an argument against, the whole suggestion gives him an odd sort of disappointment. He dislikes the break in pattern.

"Yeah, you're hilarious," Duke deadpans. "I'll try not to freakin' hurt you, whether you can feel it or not, okay?"

"You really don't have to be careful." It's an ironic source of frustration, when they've spend so many years wilfully hurting each other at every opportunity. "I'm not made of glass." He'd have thought Duke, of all people, could do this without constantly asking after damage he might have done, damage Nathan doesn't care about. Maybe it's the memory of seeing him shot.

Nathan flops on his back, defiant and careless in the gesture. His sprawling arm rattles the stuff atop the nightstand, so he must have caught a corner of it. He adjusts and curls his lower body up to Duke, raising his eyebrows in challenge as he prods at Duke with his feet.

"Okay, let me just figure out the angles, damn it," Duke bitches. "I never had that much practice at gay sex. Because Evi liked to watch, mostly, at that," he adds, with a defensive check. But a moment later he's settling between Nathan's thighs and crouching forward over his midriff, trying to figure out how to balance his weight, while Nathan braces hands on his chest and shoulder to help. Being in a position to look at each other while they do this does make a difference: it makes it awkward. "Okay, this is fucking weird..." Duke laughs uncertainly. "Maybe this wasn't such a great idea. I mean, now you can scowl at me all the way through, it's gonna put me off my game."

"What game?" Nathan jabs. "You were planning to make something happen?"

"Oh, now," Duke drawls, his voice sliding in a teasing mockery of accusation. "I see what you did there."

This morning it seems he's not going to ask the usual half-dozen times whether Nathan's absolutely sure he's okay with this, but Duke still has that dazed look like he can't quite believe it really is okay.

Nathan smoothes his hands on the well-defined muscles of Duke's upper chest and shoulders. The way those muscles flex and shiver is proof that his touch was there, and that has to be enough, here and now and forever, because he'll never have Audrey, and he'll never have anything else after they find Audrey. He won't feel again, the way normal people feel, before he dies.

Duke releases a long groan, entering him, and Nathan pushes upward to meet the thrust, challenging that noise, deepening the need in it. The support of his hands frees Duke's to wander over his body. Nathan feels lacking in the comparison, because you can tell he's not been eating regularly from the scratchy sides of his rib cage, and his muscle definition has suffered, but Duke touches his skin like it's something precious. Then their eyes lock and don't stray. And it's the strangest feeling, a step into an intimacy he wasn't expecting. For a suspended stretch of time, Duke's gaze takes over his world.

Then, Duke's regular movements start up that invisible singing in Nathan's body. His grip falters as he reacts, because this, right now, is the closest to feeling he can get, gasping for breath as the chemical payload hits his brain. Duke clamps his hands where he can to balance them both, the left one sliding down below Nathan's right shoulder to brace upon the mattress.

Duke's eyes flash silver, and for a spiralling, violent sixty seconds Duke's not being careful anymore, and it's not a clumsy exercise of balance. Duke's strength and control hold them both easily as he draws his right hand underneath Nathan's thigh and bends them into a position that couldn't possibly be sustainable if they were normal. His thrusts shake the whole bed. His lips clamp down over Nathan's to catch his first surprised cry and all the others which follow.

Then it's over, and Duke's eyes fade to brown again as he draws back his hand from Nathan's shoulder; brown eyes glaze with confusion and start to assert all sorts of other things. Guilt, concern -- tiresome things. "Shit." He grabs a stray item of clothing -- someone's shirt -- and uses it to yank at Nathan's shoulder in investigation as he rolls off him. "That was -- damn, that was fucked up. I am so sorry. Goddamn it, I'm sorry. Nathan--"

The shirt comes away spotted sparsely with red. Nathan twists and spies a cut on that shoulder, probably from the nightstand. His blood got on Duke. Mystery solved, nothing further of interest, so far as Nathan is concerned. "It's okay," he says groggily. He feels dazed. Exhilaration he can't let Duke see wars with legitimate concern. He crooks his leg to examine himself as best he can, but gives up because he realises that if he had bled down there then Duke's rush would have lasted beyond pulling the hand from his shoulder.

"It is not okay." Duke's hands hover over patches on Nathan's thighs where he gripped so hard bruises are already starting to form. "I fucking hurt you, after I said I wouldn't. I--"

"Accident." Nathan grabs his chin and locks their lips to shut him up. It requires a bit more work from him than usual, to tease Duke into surrendering to the kiss, but he's less into the idea of letting this get complicated. "I'm fine," he concludes as he pulls away. "I can't feel it."

"You know..." Duke gathers himself, but doesn't exactly take it in a helpful direction: "That argument is double-edged. You don't feel any of this. So how is any of it supposed to mean anything?"

Nathan rolls his eyes. "Just don't, Duke." He's wasted enough time fretting about the Crocker legacy, and he at least was already aware that he was getting into bed with it. He's Troubled. He bleeds fairly often, frequently when he doesn't know about it. They start doing crazy stuff like this, it's inevitable he was going to set Duke off one day. He pats his hand to Duke's cheek, briefly. "If I can't make the most of it when it's useful, that's even more depressing."

"Right." Duke fills the word with scepticism as he slaps Nathan's hand away and scrambles out of his reach. He turns, hooking his legs over the edge of the bed to sit. His shoulders are tight. What Nathan can see of his face is a mask, and his voice sounds strained as he says, "I knew we should've talked about this before. I was just... I was a dick, alright. You can't feel. You're in a low place right now. I should never have..."

"Hey. Some things I can still feel." But Duke has stopped listening and Nathan can't be doing this. It was all wrung out of him last October, and anything left in him then has had six months of numbness to atrophy and die. So he doesn't have any capacity left to fight for this relationship, or whatever the hell it is.

But something snaps in him at the sight of Duke's back, at the thought that it's over, and before he knows what he's doing, he's up on his knees, grabbing Duke and shoving his shoulders back to the mattress, pushing down with all his own weight. "Duke, enough." It's very nearly a shout. "I don't need this crap. You enjoy it. I do. It's enough."

"Wow," Duke says, and he seems to falter for a moment, his Adam's apple jumping as he swallows, his face changing oddly. Then his mouth curls as he carefully forms the words, "A spark. I'm honoured, I think." He twists but Nathan digs in and keeps him down. Duke's words make no sense and Nathan has no intention of letting go until he's absolutely sure he won the argument. Duke stills and they glower at each other from a distance of a few inches. Then Duke finally pokes Nathan in the chin and asks, "Does it also speak?"

They're back to that old joke again? Well, he's not a robot. He heaves an unsteady breath. "I don't have a lot of time left. I just want to grab something... while I still can." That's so hard to understand? Duke's the one who just finished saying how much time, over the years, they wasted. Now they don't have time, they're arguing again, and Duke started it. Again. This is so typical.

The dull anger that's sent ripples across the flat tableau of Nathan's emotions is surprising to him. He suddenly can't remember the last time he was actually angry.

He thinks his stomach is churning. It's not just the confrontation, it's -- how he reacted, just now. It's realising this has become something other than a bandage for Audrey to both of them, and he doesn't know what the hell to do with that.

Nathan can't read what's on Duke's face now. Abruptly, his braced weight crumples as Duke stops resisting his pinning hold and pulls him close-in instead. "Nathan..." Duke's voice is a muffled growl as he buries his face in Nathan's neck. "You are not going to die." Since Nathan doesn't plan on giving him a choice about it, it's another thing that's not worth an argument, and the crisis seems averted for now. Face full of Duke's shoulder and scent, he falls into silence, and apparently that's taken for acquiescence.

They pull apart. Nathan does have to go to work again, now, which is still a funny feeling, even after five days, after the disarray of his life in the last six months. Also pretty peculiar is the fact that today, at least if what they agreed yesterday still holds, Duke's coming with him.

"We should get that scratch sorted out," Duke says. "And we should shower. Probably separately, or on past performance we are both going to be late."

Nathan stands and goes to really study the scratch in a wall mirror. It's nothing. He says so. It doesn't even need a band-aid. The blood's already starting to clot. He'll put a dark-coloured shirt on over it. He'll steal one of Duke's. Duke shrugs and accepts that, edgily.

What neither of them say is it's in a spot where Nathan couldn't reach it himself, and Duke trying to apply first aid, with the Crocker curse looming between them, would be even more of a problem.

***

In the past six months, death had come to Haven and danced in the streets with indiscriminate glee. It's jarring to absorb the changes, and for Nathan, a horrible exercise in assignment of guilt. People gone, stores closed due to damage or death or the folks who ran them just up and leaving, unable to take any more. Things that hadn't changed, had been part of the fabric of town for all the thirty years or so Nathan could remember, uprooted and gone. It must be easier for Duke, who only came back a few years ago and whose visits had been sporadic for years before that.

Nathan crouches down next to the most recent body and tries to make his study objective, setting aside the fact that this, like the rest, is his fault.

On the face of it, it looks like a normal death. The man, whose name is Leon Arbroath, has been beaten to death with a blunt object. It's a classic anger killing. But because it's in Haven, Nathan doubts very much that it's a classic anything. He slips his hand inside an evidence bag to explore the body, examining for wounds or anything else hidden underneath.

"Wonder who he pissed off," Duke says, hanging back by the door. Duke isn't squeamish, exactly, but Nathan's always noticed he doesn't like spending too much time around corpses, which makes him... normal, Nathan supposes. Not like himself and Audrey, who could always push the horror aside to focus on the puzzle. He's having more difficulty than usual doing that today.

His fault.

"Was he Troubled?" he asks Duke, trying to make the question casual, not daring to look up. It's not like he'd ask lightly, but they ought to know, since an anger killing could be a bad sign of a split forming in the town's population again, though he hasn't seen any of Reverend Driscoll's old crowd since he got back.

"How would I--?" Duke starts, then gets it. "Use my killer curse like a pH test. Right. Let's do that." He hesitates, and Nathan supposes he deserves that very mixed look, after his behaviour last year. With a moment to rethink, he almost recalls the request. Then Duke bends and touches a fingertip to one of the blood splashes. His eyes turn silver and he shivers, shakes himself, and steps back. "Yeah. He was Troubled. Don't know what. These things don't come with a different flavour per icky specialty."

It could have been anything. The girl who works in the library can turn inanimate objects yellow at will. Yellow. Not every Trouble is dangerous. Arbroath might have been harmless. Then again, Nathan's Trouble is harmless, and look at the damage he's done.

Either way, it's an alarming development to find a Troubled person beaten to death, with everything else that's going on in town. It's also irritating on a personal level, because it probably means he's not going to be able to keep the Guard away from this case.

There's something else bothering him about the body. The blood's drying, and Nathan has seen enough of it in his time to recognise what are and aren't blood stains. There are other reddish smears, which look close, but they're not blood. He rubs a little off onto the plastic of the evidence bag and raises it to his nose, ignoring the face Duke pulls in the background. Soil. It smells like soil. Which means it's probably residue off whatever blunt instrument was used to beat Arbroath to death. Maybe they used a spade. The lab will have to tell him more.

"You notice something funny about this scene?" Duke's standing back again, shifting his feet.

"What?" Nathan isn't interested in guessing games, and besides, Duke's gaze is fixed outside the window and the open door.

"No Vince and Dave. It kind of makes me wonder what else is happening this morning."

He's right, but Nathan stands up and hazards hopefully, "Maybe they've still not managed to replace their van." He paces in frustration and finally joins Duke, craning out of the doorway. "What I want to know is where's the coroner's van?" The road traffic is exceedingly light, and no, there's no van magically pulling up just because he wills it. He radios in. "Laverne? Can you give me an ETA on Lucassi and the morgue van?"

She responds, "Five minutes ago, Nathan, hon."

Not helpful. "It's not here. Can you--?"

"Whoops, wait up." She clicks her tongue, hasty and embarrassed over the error. "You're at 17 Bell Lane, check? The van stopped at 24 Drift Av., 'round the corner, first."

Nathan stands very still and schools his voice to stay calm. It's not Laverne's fault. He's used to being kept in the loop at all times. They've had six months without him and now he's back to detective. "How many bodies are there, this morning?" He watches Duke's eyebrows climbing his forehead at the question.

It turns out there are five.

That's five deaths that didn't have to happen, five more Troubled -- two others they know for sure, but three is already looking enough like a pattern -- left to suffer because of Nathan's actions.

They manage to check out another two scenes before cleanup, butting heads with the officers already assigned at one place because Jefferies is of the camp who're none too keen to see Nathan back anyway, definitely not infringing on his case, and absolutely not with Duke Crocker in tow. Even if 'Detective' Wuornos has started calling Crocker a 'consultant'.

Back at the station, they argue a while in Nathan's new office, the one he already spent half a dozen years in as detective. He hasn't argued with Duke since they got back to Haven, but today seems to be the day for it. At least this time they're only arguing about the case.

"It's got to be a Trouble," Duke says. "No-one is this busy in one night without leaving a lot more traces."

Right. He's not even officially a consultant and he thinks he can start lecturing Nathan on evidence? "Multiple perpetrators," Nathan proposes. "An organised attack. I wish it wasn't. Believe me, I'd rather deal with a Trouble out of control than the damn Rev's murderous followers."

Duke throws up his hands. "What about your red mud?" Nathan took Parker's old desk, which means Duke is left to drape his feet over the desk that used to be Nathan's, which funnily enough was his favourite target for just that when he used to sneak in and hang around the office before.

"We'll see what Lucassi says." Whether they found it at any of the other crime scenes or not, it could prove something useful. Nathan's desk is covered by post-it notes, mostly in Laverne's loopy handwriting. Messages from all the places he contacted yesterday in his ongoing search for Audrey Parker. He peels them off, reading on autopilot, and consigns them to the wastepaper basket one by one.

He checks the clock again. Lucassi is busier than he's been since they found the Bolt Gun Killer's lair, and bothering him will not make results come quicker. On the plus side, they haven't had any further murders in daylight. That gives them maybe eight to ten hours before more lives will be endangered, Nathan figures, and lest he goes crazy waiting, suggests, "Lets go get lunch."

That causes Duke to tidy his feet and straighten up, peering with curious askance at Nathan. "You want to eat together? In public?"

Nathan sighs, flips him off, and walks to the door. Duke, if he chooses, can follow. He does so choose and together they meander across the street to the sandwich bar that's opened up where Rosemary's used to be. The wind that buffets them on the way is fairly strong, but he called Marion that morning to check on her and she's doing fine. Fine as she can be. They sit in a corner and between bites, Nathan manages to read through the file he brought with him and formulate a few more ideas, outside of the clutter of the office.

Maybe it's distracting him more than he expected it might, being in their old office, at Parker's old desk, with bits and pieces of her stuff still showing up to give him frozen moments of recollection.

Five people turned up dead last night, probably all Troubled, all beaten with the same unreasoning rage. He wonders if Duke could be right, and this is a Trouble that specifically targets its own kind. The lack of evidence is glaring. Their five scenes don't have a single set of fingerprints in common, and it doesn't look like they have too many unique sets unaccounted for. There were no signs of forced entry, undamaged doors left locked from the inside. Is it supernatural? Or was it someone like a preacher, someone people would trust and let in, along with whoever was with him, no matter the hour? Nathan knows the Rev's replacement finally arrived in town, but hasn't met the man yet. The problem with that theory is it at least looks like three of the victims were killed without leaving their bedroom.

Their victims are four men and one woman, so it's possible their hypothetical killer has a bias. The youngest is 29, and none of them are over 65. Maybe it's harder to excuse damage like this on a child, a youth, a woman, an old person. Their victim pool would have to expand to prove it. But to Nathan's mind, that fits the sort of victims the Rev's men would begin with. Adult males, the easiest targets to justify.

"Earth to Wuornos." Duke is waving a hand in front of his face, looking like it's not the first time.

"Thinking." But Nathan sits back and closes the file and stares off over the heads of a dozen or so other diners, catching a few not quick enough to turn and hide their scrutiny. At the moment, he's still the new show in town. He supposes the only way for it to get better is to wait it out. He finishes his sandwich, chewing carefully. The new place favours crusty French bread rolls, the kind he could easily cut a gum on.

There's a high-pitch, impatient rattle from Duke as he taps his fingers on the side of his empty cup. "Talk to me, Nathan. And do not tell me this is Driscoll's old crowd out in force to murder the Troubled. One of them, I'd buy; one of them gone completely off the rails, but not with five victims in one night, who just let them walk in and do it, apparently even covered in blood from their previous murders. Rev's people don't get their hands dirty. Not like this."

It's a good point, but still. "We don't yet know everything we've missed. Tensions are a lot higher than they used to be. Trust me. I'm the one fielding all the stares." Some of those make Nathan think he still needs to watch his own back. At least the Guard wields something of a control over Jordan and the rest of their membership. Not so for any random joe on the street.

Duke snorts. "Yeah, funny that. I used to think I was the town pariah."

That's a bit close to the bone, so Nathan ignores it, although he gets the sense Duke's left disappointed. He checks his phone instead, and discovers the ambient noise level has been loud enough to hide a call. The message from Dr Lucassi, not five minutes ago, says he's got something. It's not been long enough for anything conclusive or official, but Lucassi is one of the few people he's sure is still loyal to him. He calls back, lifts the phone to his ear and innocuously ventures, "Hey."

Lucassi launches straight in. "Blunt force trauma. I can't isolate any single shape for the implement used from the different injuries, although they're all... alike. For sure it had no corners, no straight sides, and... well, no distinct shape at all. If I had to guess I'd say it was some kind of amorphous..." He stops. Breathes. Sounds like he needs it. "I thought you should know. The injuries were made with tremendous force. Time of death looks staggered throughout the night. I've got one at approximately one to three, a 3.11 corroborated by a broken watch, and Arbroath who was found with the blood still warm. I need to go back and finish now."

"Thanks. Lucassi--" Nathan suspects he just managed to catch Lucassi before he cut the call without having let a word in edgewise. "What about the red stains?"

The question seems to catch the doctor off-balance. "On all five," Lucassi says, flustered and dismissive. "Clay. Regular clay, the type that sits under the soil of half the town. Transfer from whatever... weapon... was used."

"All right." He's talking to the air. Lucassi's gone. Nathan looks at Duke, who watched all of that without much clue. "All right." Directing the words at Duke, this time. "Maybe you were right. It's looking like this might be a something." Part of him does approach relief. This might mean nobody's actually beating Troubled people to death with that level of fervent hatred on purpose.

It could be accidental. They might not even know they're doing it.

That part's not so comforting. Nathan puts his phone away and stands. Duke pops up from his chair like a jack-in-the-box and struts in his wake without a word, though Nathan's not too sure about the expressions he directs at some of the faces trailing their progress out of the cafe. It's an irony: now he feels like he has a guard dog. Duke is ready to savage any of them to defend his name, even if his name is indefensible.

Nathan isn't ready to address that, but as soon as they're out into the street, he asks, "You worked for Danny Whiting for a while, back in school. Reckon you still know him well enough to ask a favour?"

"Sure, Nathan," Duke says with an eyeroll and a flatness to his voice. "What do you need from a building surveyor?"

"Need to know which parts of town are on clay. Preferably a map." And okay, it's not the most conclusive lead in history, but it might come in useful for narrowing things down. "Just don't tell him it's for me and you should be fine."

While Duke does that, Nathan takes himself elsewhere. It's not just because his ability to charm favours out of Haven's populace has taken a crashing dive. He goes back to the station and argues Dwight around to giving him the lead on the multiple homicide case.

Dwight proves surprisingly persuadable, and Jefferies is going to be spitting mad, but frankly, fuck him. Something about these killings twists like a knife in Nathan's gut. It's too close to the Troubles and too important, whether it's actually caused by a Trouble or not. "Surprised you want it," Dwight confides. "The Guard are gonna be all over this one."

"Well, we have to learn to work with each other sooner or later," Nathan chews sourly. Half of him is hoping it won't come to that and he can get it resolved quickly.

"Don't get me wrong," Dwight says, setting a broad hand on Nathan's shoulder. "It's great that you're back. Just... mind how many anthills you kick, okay?"

He's been back a week already. It seems to him everyone's making even less sense than usual today.

He goes to pester Lucassi in an above-board and official capacity, filling in the full details of times of death and everything else. The timeline is a line. It's undeniable that the perp went from one victim to the next. There've even been traces of a few victims' blood isolated in samples taken from the later scenes. Duke shows up partway through and looks like he wishes he'd found an excuse to wait a bit longer.

"So if this is a Trouble, what is it?" Nathan asks, wondering aloud, after Lucassi flips the sheet back to re-cover the last corpse, hiding caved-in forehead and bulging eyes. "Strength, check. Stealth. They're getting in somehow, and no-one's yet owned up to seeing them stalking the streets covered in blood."

"Lab brought back the reports from the Daisy Attringham scene," Lucassi offers. "More clay traces found on the cat flap."

"Probably from the cat," Duke snerks. "Attringham. Marl Way." He jabs his finger at the paper he's been waving around as if to proudly announce, Hey, I did something.

Nathan grabs the paper. Duke's right. Attringham's on clay. The rest are on or near. It's not half the town, it's sort of splashed across the geography of Haven in a distinct band, filling a quarter of the actual town area, much less of the outlying. It's still too much ground to really start narrowing things down. It's also likely that the clay on the cat flap did come in with the cat.

It's mid-afternoon, the day wearing on. They interview friends and family of the victims. This is more stressful for Nathan than usual, and he tries to embrace his numbness, cloak it around him for detachment. Focus on the victims, not the families' anger at himself. Did they know that person was Troubled? How long had they known? Who else knew? He manages to establish that these five were to all intents and purposes 'out'. None of them had Troubles they could really hide. None of them were particularly dangerous, either. But it does look like it was common knowledge, so there's nothing to suggest whoever's doing this has a capacity to sniff out Troubles on their own.

Nathan feels like he's been a step shy of the Guard all day; the one of them ahead or behind, witnesses commenting on 'Vince's weird militia' also hanging around and asking questions. It's ten past six and they're thinking of heading back to the Rouge when the dodging game finally fails.

Jordan cuts them off, blocking the sidewalk, rifle in full view in her hands. "Calling it quits already?" she barks. At Duke, she directs a glare and a warning waggle of her gloved fingers; he flinches.

Nathan turns to establish the usual couple of thugs are standing behind him. "On the same side on this one," he supplies, offering a tip of his head and wishing she'd just quit, already.

"We're protecting the streets." Jordan scowls. "What are you protecting, Nathan? We're making sure it stays safe for our own kind to live in this town. We'll be patrolling tonight, and if whoever this is tries again, he'd better pray." Her emphasis indicates that she believes the Rev's people are behind this, and having been in town this last six months, she might have her reasons, but by now Nathan's convinced.

"We think it's a Trouble," he says.

It doesn't win him any friends. "Go home," Jordan tells him. "I already know how dedicated you are to protecting any of us."

Nathan's head is spinning, by now. He's been trying so hard to force things together, to find something he can use before the second night draws in, bringing with it a possible repeat of the killing spree. Yesterday, and the days before it, were not as hard as today has been. He needs the downtime, or he'll be useless tomorrow, and he's not standing Guard tonight to win points or prove a point with Jordan. "Be careful," he starts, and just what's wrong with their plan belatedly clicks: if the Guard are out in force tonight, and someone or something is after the Troubled, they might just be laying out a line of easy victims. Saving even the effort of a silent, traceless break-in. He manages, "Don't forget that you're a target, too."

His body lurches, not of his own volition; Nathan looks down and sees Duke's hand on his shoulder, trying to pull him onward. "Nathan, let's go."

"Right." This is an un-winnable argument anyway, and it makes no sense to worry about someone who wants you dead. He lets Duke drag him away, feeling Jordan's eyes trying to burn a hole through his nerveless back.

***

"You still wondering if you should be out with them?" Duke asks bluntly as they hop out of his truck at the marina and head towards the Cape Rouge.

Nathan thought he'd been unusually quiet on the short drive. "Wasn't thinking that."

"Good, because I need my beauty sleep, and no way am I spending all night worrying which of them puts a bullet in your back -- again -- before the killer can even get to you."

"That's... almost sweet." He offers Duke something close to a smile.

They've come back to the Rouge together, without discussion. Tomorrow, Nathan might have to stick his head in at home to get some more clean clothes, or else do laundry. He's been home only briefly since returning to Haven; fell into Duke's bed that first night, after discovering Duke's brother took over the Gull, with the thought of Jennifer sleeping in Audrey's old apartment preying on both of them, and energy and aggression to burn off. He left so late that all he did at home was fall into bed for a few hours, then step from the shower to a change of clothes to the front door in the morning. Same for all the other nights, except one he went straight to the couch in his office.

"Sweet, my ass. Do you know the last time I got to have regular sex with anyone this accommodating?" Duke's insincerity paints a huge grin across his face. "And don't take this the wrong way, man, but I wouldn't have put money on that being you."

"Accommodating, huh?" Nathan echoes sourly. He doesn't miss the flicker in Duke's eyes, and that -- Duke's been testing him out, trying to push his buttons all day, he thinks. Which, since Duke always does that anyway, makes him realise now how much Duke hasn't been doing it since their return. Something inside him comes very close to being offended. Not by Duke's deliberate jab, but by his care.

It's easier to push it down and smile, and back Duke against a stack of crates. After all, he's discovered a new way to shut Duke up, so he might as well apply it. If he could have thought of it years ago...

"Mf!" Protesting, Duke breaks Nathan's grip and twists his face aside. "Are you crazy? People will see."

Nathan frowns. "Either of our reputations could be worse?"

"Okay..." Duke waggles his head slowly and concedes, "Fair enough. But let's get on the Rouge and have some privacy." There's a fair snap in his step as he does that. Nathan decides that if he doesn't care what anyone sees, he's not going to care that Duke does care... Anyway, maybe Duke's right. It would just muddy the waters.

He grabs Duke again as soon as they're behind a closed door. "Today--" he presses a hard kiss over Duke's lips, concentrating on taste, since it's his primary sense here "--sucked, so let's..." He slides briefly over the goatee, that's picked up a cocktail of ambient tastes from throughout the day, and down to a salt-sweat-sweet throat, where his attentions drag up a groan. "Let's do something to take our minds off it," he concludes in a mumble against Duke's collarbone, hands exploring blindly between their bodies. Clumsy. He's clumsy, damn it. He's not equipped to do this fast and dirty.

Nathan's hands stop being able to move. His wrists have been grabbed, from the look of Duke's arms, but Duke doesn't push him away. Instead, they settle into the kissing, which goes on a long time, tasting each other, then retreating again. Hands Nathan doesn't feel slide over his jaw, down his neck, and at some point he discovers his shirt is half undone without him ever realising it was happening. Of course, Duke doesn't need his eyes to work tasks requiring fine motor control.

Finally, Duke breaks off. "If I don't cook soon, we are not going to eat tonight," he says. "Plus, I have checks to do. Boat checks. Unless you want to risk waking up on the bottom of the sea."

Nathan looks down, confirming his suspicion that he's hard, and warns Duke, "You're wasting it."

Duke snorts and pats him on the cheek, mocking. "You're not so difficult to set off as all that. It's not like it'll bother you in the meantime, either."

"Bastard." Nathan doesn't change his tone. "I can do the boat checks."

He gets a dubious look for the offer. "Thanks but no thanks. You know your way around a boat, but you're no sailor."

"Then I can chop vegetables. Show me what you want done."

"You know I don't trust you with sharp objects." But the quip's just for show. Duke sets him his share of the tasks, and for the next hour or two things are... worryingly domestic. Nathan tries not to over-think it. Duke plants wine in front of him, but he pushes it away again. His senses get more confused than most after a drink, and it's not like he didn't notice how securely Duke buttoned down the hatches when he did his check. Someone out there is killing known Troubled people. There aren't many Troubled more visible than Nathan.

"It's been interesting, watching you finally try to come back alive today," Duke says, as they fall once more into bed, clothes shed beforehand in purely practical decision. Duke manoeuvres them so he falls on top. He laces their fingers together and lifts Nathan's arms above his head. Then his hands press down on Nathan's wrists, and his weight pins them tight.

Nathan flexes, but can't move. "You're trying to imply something. Too bad I'm not taking the bait. We can do it this way if you want, though. You remember I've actually got handcuffs?"

Duke's breath catches, but he shakes himself, and his obvious distraction, and Nathan isn't quick enough to take advantage and roll them both over. "That's not-- Another time, right?" Duke proposes with a plaintive note.

"Ah. So this is an interrogation?" Nathan picks up, and doesn't answer the question. Let Duke sweat that it was a one-time offer. "I've been trained in those. You don't have a hope."

Duke kisses him, softly for all the immovability of his grip. "Maybe I have a hope."

Nathan swallows. "Okay. Maybe." Duke tastes of the wine he denied himself, rich and red, complementing the tastes of their meal. "Doesn't hurt, so I can do this all night, but I'll be cursing you if I can't move my gun hand tomorrow."

Duke rolls off him immediately, although that's not really what he was going for. Sitting up, Nathan rubs his wrists, restoring circulation that's invisible to him. He asks Duke's tense back, "What's wrong with you, today?" It's been almost a week of fucking to bury despair, loss, their dual bereavement of Audrey Parker. He understands that Duke was shaken by the Crocker legacy getting activated that morning, but Nathan checked himself thoroughly when they got undressed, and Duke saw him do it. Frankly, Nathan wants sex sometime this evening. Duke's skittishness and delay tactics are starting to annoy him. The meal was great, but he'd have happily grabbed a sandwich at midnight. Realising he's dangerously close to being provoked into a reaction, he stops and lies back on what's become his side of the bed, and waits. Duke's the talker, so let him talk.

"All right," Duke says, and twists around, coming down cross-legged atop the mattress. "You tell me that I am not taking advantage."

Well, that's easy. "Duke, you're not--"

"No. You don't just out and tell me that, asshole. This -- this is not you! This has never been you! Did you ever even sleep with someone before while you couldn't feel?"

Not in the way Duke's thinking. Nothing he's going to admit to. Nathan eyerolls frustration. "Who gives a fuck?"

"I do!" Duke says, explosively. "Because I want you to convince me I'm not just fucking some shadow who doesn't give a damn what he does anymore!"

Well, see, that might be difficult, Nathan concedes. But he sits up and narrows his eyes at Duke and tries to act like he means it. "You do know we did this this morning?"

"And we're gonna keep doing it till I know. You were letting people beat you up for money! Christ! So, no. Sorry, Nate."

"You're gonna make me fight for it?" Nathan voice comes out a lot rougher than anticipated. "Duke, I don't need this. Someone's out there killing Troubled people. The only reason they're still Troubled is me. Those five deaths -- and every other death that follows -- they're my fault. Dwight wants me to take on the Troubles. Taking on the townsfolk seems something I can't avoid at every turn. The last thing I need is to come here and have to fight, too."

Duke crumples. He flops forward and buries the crown of his head in Nathan's shoulder. "Shit. I can't deal with this. We fight. It's what we do. What you do. The way you were those first few days, I thought you needed -- fuck, I thought I was helping!"

"What--?" Nathan draws a line under that thought, and a breath that hisses through his teeth. He closes his fingers on Duke's shoulder, trying to pry him up. "Are you saying that if I call you an asshole and punch you in the mouth, we can still fuck?"

"No, we can fuck now," Duke mutters, muted. "Let me find the damn KY." He rolls over and off the bed, landing on his feet and shaking his head as he pads away. When he returns, though, it's his own legs he sprawls wide and reaches between with the grease.

Nathan pulls a face, props himself on his elbows and watches sceptically. "We tried that first night. You didn't like it. Remember? Hollered like a cat in a bathtub?"

"Yeah? Well, maybe I was a dick that night. Now I want to try again." Duke says that, but he's sweating.

"Because you think it actually matters which of us does the what to--"

"Shut up," Duke says, and he's got his wish, because now they're sort of arguing. "It's not fair you being the one that gets fucked just because you can't feel. I do not want to be cast as... I don't know what the fuck is going on in your head, okay? But if we're doing this, we're both doing this. Now shut up and... for the love of God, try to be gentle, this time. If you can."

Jesus. This is going to go so well. "And here I thought it was just sense." So they've spent days figuring out what works for both of them, just for Duke to decide he doesn't want to do that anymore? "Is this still about my blood--?" If he's honest with himself, that incident was the opposite of a problem for him, but he also knows it would be fucking stupid to toy with the thing that turned God knows how many of Duke's ancestors into casual murderers, and he won't be asking for a repeat.

"No." Duke sounds pissed off.

While Nathan's not thrilled with the development, he hopes it's just a matter of re-establishing that no, Duke really didn't like it, then Duke can use Nathan all he likes and be assured they're both getting everything out of it they need. "Damn it, lean back and let me."

"Gentle," chokes Duke. It's so obvious he's freaking out inside that it should be funny. His breath already comes in quick pants. Nathan lifts Duke's leg, easing it up against his shoulder, rests his head against the knee, and greases a finger to slip inside.

He knows he hurt Duke last time, alright -- he knows that -- and this, here, smacks of some kind of test, but he's cornered. It's more difficult for him this way, because he doesn't have to maintain an erection on zero sensation for Duke to fuck him. Annoyed and off-balance, he's not ready to walk away or admit defeat, and he doesn't want to hurt Duke, either. Watching Duke's face this time and not his own fingers, Nathan focuses intently on the effect of what he's doing, adjusting whenever he sees pain.

Duke's tremors turn into something else and he gets a glazed look. His body jolts as Nathan's rubs excite an unfelt prostate. If he's got it once, he's made muscle memory an art form. He takes a kind of sadistic glee in turning Duke into a hopeless mess, even though success in the venture will be ultimately self-defeating. "Ready?" Nathan asks eventually, still with a trace of annoyance. "Maybe I lie down, you go on top? Less bruises."

Stubbornness greets that suggestion. "No, we're good like this."

"Fine." Nathan swaps out his fingers for his cock. He's not really ready, still a bit flaccid, but he feeds himself inside slowly and can see the shaft finishing the process of stiffening up from the surrounding pressure, even if the signals don't reach his conscious brain. From Duke's grunts, it's obviously still not comfortable for him, but he's not howling yet. Nathan rubs his thumb into the cavity behind the knee he's still holding, as a distraction while he pushes the rest of the way in; tickles his fingers down Duke's thigh as he adjusts his position, curling the leg over his hip. It's not an elegant angle and it might not be comfortable for Duke's upper body, but Nathan can see most of what he's doing and is pretty sure Duke would rather that than the alternative.

Duke groans and says, "Ow," but it's a relatively mild note of complaint which he follows up with, "No, it's good. Just push there. Slowly. Out and back. God." His head rocks back and he hisses as Nathan does as requested. Nathan takes initiative and keeps going, guessing those funny noises must be positive noises since Duke seems to have lapsed beyond words, just his whole body melting and curling back, pushing into each thrust, moaning softly in a broken rhythm. His eyes are squeezed shut. Nathan's faintly amazed, and some of his impatience is starting to dissipate, but at the same time it's too slow and too careful, and this is not him, either, and it's definitely not him-and-Duke.

He presses forward, speeding up a fraction. "I could--"

Duke's eyes snap open. "You do not fucking dare."

The outcome of that is, crazily, laughter, and Duke comes as he laughs. Nathan pulls out and lets Duke's leg drop, then sprawls forward on top of him to hold him, heedless of dampness he can't feel between their bodies. "Damn you and your--" Duke starts finally, and breaks off with a detour into curses. "That was good, and gentle, and... normal... normal people do not need to be introduced to anal sex by your numb-ass bull-in-a-china-shop tactics that leave them bruised for a week! Would you have done that with Audrey?"

Now, there's an uncomfortable silence.

"I can feel Audrey," Nathan reminds him, pushing up. "It's... Okay, sorry. It's not on purpose. I just can't--"

"I know." Duke throws an arm around his neck, briefly, more an assault than a loose hug. Whatever Duke was aiming for, he seems to have got it, that awkward moment aside. Some sense of -- of evenness, or whatever. He makes a noise of protest, though, as Nathan tries to pull away again. "You didn't."

No, his bobbing erection says not. Nathan thought he might not have, but couldn't be completely sure without seeing it. "I lay myself out for you, and you don't even come," Duke says, but his offence is a mockery. Still, it's one with an edge. He gets up and pushes Nathan down and then it's back to the interrogation. "So why is this not working for you, huh? This notion you've got where you just want to be pinned down and fucked, like that's all you think sex--" His tone changes, incredulous. "Wait, is that it? You want to be punished?"

Duke wraps his hand around Nathan's cock. From the way muscles stand out on Duke's arm, the grip is fierce. Nathan's throat closes up enough in joint arousal and dismay that for a moment he can't breathe. "Seems so." His words crack, and his breath shudders. Part of that's not knowing what Duke will do next, whether he'll give him what he wants or turn away in disgust. The shifting expression on Duke's face provides no clues, and that question on Duke's lips has left him almost incapable.

"Then I'll punish you... my way." Duke leans on him and wrings him out fiercely while whispering insults in his ear until he comes. Then Duke wipes his hands off on Nathan's chest, and bends across and kisses his mouth, while Nathan's still shuddering and wordless. Softly, he says, "And none of that was true."

Nathan almost chokes on laughter.

Duke stands and turns to go get cleaned up, then double-takes, looking back. "Well, some of that was true. Wouldn't want your self-esteem to get too damn frisky."

***

At 3.35 in the morning, Duke shoves Nathan out of bed with the comforter. Granted, it's probably the only way to actually wake him fast in relative silence. Touch won't do it, but a big enough jolt will register on his balance functions. He wakes with his head reeling and Duke's hand over his mouth. "Sorry. Someone's here." The whisper barely makes a sound on the air.

Nathan nods slowly behind the gag and after a pause, finds himself released. "Thought I was the one with good hearing." He tries to match Duke for volume.

"It's my boat. You sleep like a deaf, nerveless lump."

They're working in the dim light of the one wall lamp, which Duke left on because Nathan can't function well in darkness when he gets up to leave in the middle of the night and Duke got fed up of being crawled on while he looks for a light. Nathan reaches up onto the nightstand for his belt and draws his gun. Duke already has... two? He stares at them, but the crook shrugs. "One taped behind the headboard, plus the one under the pillow. What? Someone's killing Troubled people." He tips his chin toward Nathan.

That's almost sweet, too.

"So how do you want to play this?" Duke asks.

"Take the sides of the door and wait?" If his perp is coming for him anyway, why go stumbling around? They might be cornered, but Nathan isn't planning to run. They want this bastard, and the chance has been gifted to him. Better him than anyone else. He'll stop it here and now.

Duke gives him a fairly mind-reading look, but they split to either side of the closed bedroom door. Neither of them is wearing a stitch, so if they get killed in this fight, that'll paint an interesting picture for the Teagues and their front page.

Nathan tries to still his breath and listen. Finds, a moment later, that he almost didn't need to. The steps coming towards them are heavy, not trying to disguise the fact they're coming at all. Nathan exchanges a glance with Duke, who's looking a little perplexed. Most intruders at least try to be silent. Nathan reminds himself that this intruder isn't necessarily normal. They still don't know what the Trouble is, but it involves a fair amount of brute strength. Maybe he's too big to quiet his steps.

Nathan keeps his eye on the door handle and counts the seconds. The steps reach them and then... nothing. The door doesn't move. The handle doesn't stir. Whoever's on the outside has fallen completely silent.

Except... somewhere close, some kind of odd, shuffling, sucking sound...?

"Jesus!" Then Duke's jumping back, and much as Nathan whips around, trying to spot what he's reacting to, he can't see anything. "Nate -- the floor." Wood splinters fly up as Duke delivers several rounds below the base of the door. Reflex makes Nathan cover his face and turn aside, so he doesn't see what Duke's seen until Duke stops shooting.

It's coming under the door. A crack of less than an inch is seeping some kind of dark matter which hasn't reacted the least to being shot. It flows and gloops around the pock-marks in the wood and starts to form a more distinct mass inside the room, substance adhering together and building upwards. Nathan stares and keeps his service pistol trained on it as it rises into a shape. He edges backwards. Fine, so it's in a malleable, near-liquid state at the moment, whatever it is, and even if there's nothing logical about that, he has to think like Parker would. Draw logical conclusions about the internal rules of the intrinsically illogical. Just because bullets don't work now doesn't mean they won't work when it forms into something else. If it caused the deaths they've seen, it must be able to hit flesh. If it can do that, surely they can hit it back.

Clay, thinks Nathan, squinting into the dim light. He can't see the colours clearly, but he's betting. Reddish-brown clay.

Duke reloads one of his guns, swearing through the process. "Shit, shit, shit. This is like -- wait, the Lady Justice thing, what did Dave call it?"

Nathan barely remembers the case; he had his own thing going on back then. But he pulls the word out. "Golem."

"If this is one of those... Fuck! That thing was unkillable, Nate! Unkillable! Un-freakin'-stopable!"

"Well, let's try not to panic just yet." Which is all very well to say, but the thing has been reforming faster and faster while they speak and now it almost looks humanoid, with a round shape for a head on top of masculine shoulders, fast developing nubs for nose and ears. This is why it seemed like the victims had let their murderer in, he thinks crazily. It's a shapechanger -- a, a morph. There's probably no locked room in Haven that's proof against it.

It puts on a human face that's half familiar, that washes with colour in the blink of an eye, no longer rich red dirt but caucasian flesh and brown hair. Staring at it, Nathan has no idea if this is a Troubled person or the creation of one. They've seen weirder things happen to people's bodies. Taxidermy and Arla Cogan spring to mind.

"Stop," Nathan says to it hoarsely, and as far as he's concerned that's his fair warning and effort at communication, a thought that solidifies with it's flesh-like hands, already stained with blood. The Cape Rouge is not its first visit tonight. Nathan copies Duke, adding his own curse to the air. Then he lines up his gun and shoots.

A large hole in its head and the splat of a liberal daub of clay against the back wall don't stop it stepping towards him. Nathan unloads the rest of the clip, first a few more at its head and when that doesn't seem to be working, the rest into its lower legs, hoping to chop it off beneath the knees and at least impede its movement. It flows and reforms around the damage, not seeming to miss the substance that's been gouged away from it.

"Nate, get out of its way!" Duke yells. "Shit! Why didn't I hide any automatic weapons in the bedroom?"

From anyone else, that might seem weird. Nathan throws the useless gun at the morph and tries to dodge around it, feinting to one side then lunging for the other, for the door. There's got to be something he can use against it: household chemicals, water -- clay's soluble, right? -- fire...

It can move faster than its lumbering approach led him to believe. Its fist slams into his ribs, and probably nobody else would be able to calmly watch that impact and notice how the fist crumples out of shape even as it hits, ridges of knuckles turning... yeah, amorphous, folding back into clay and then reshaping to a hand as the limb draws clear. The room's starting to move sideways as he's watching, the human-looking fist receding from him. Then he's sprawled in the corner between wall and floor, wedged on three sides. The golem's bloody hand comes down toward him again.

"Hey, Terminator Swampy!" Duke aims high, emptying both guns into its chest even as he's closing the gap between them, until his last few shots are fired point blank, the muzzles of the weapons pressed against its back. Nathan tries to get out of the way, not fast enough to avoid a large glob from the midsection that splats unpleasantly onto his bare shoulder. The morph has a hole in its middle, but the hole is already filling in from the sides, and it barely acknowledges any damage.

Duke finally has its attention: it turns and slaps him clear across the room. Its hand reforms from a flattened slab of clay like a wobbly paddle as it pulls back.

"Hey," Nathan says intently, staring up from his cornered position. "Why are you doing this?"

It's not a person. In that moment, he's as sure of that as he can be. Its eyes are dead. It's wearing a human mask, but that's all. The Troubled person, whoever they are, is somewhere else. He hopes they're wearing the same face, so if he lives through this he has a chance of finding them.

"It's like Lady Justice," Duke says groggily. "No anima, no soul... just follows the whims of who made it."

Nathan does remember they didn't deal with Lady Justice but with the person who made her. Same way Parker usually dealt with Troubles: by talking. They can't talk to this thing. "Duke, we're in trouble."

"You think?!" The sarcasm breaks off into a genuine warning cry.

Nathan rolls out of the way of the first blow, which only scrapes past his cheek, but on the return it grabs his throat and effortlessly swings him up. It speaks then, hollow and unpleasant. "The Troubled are destroying Haven. They deserve to die." As he's dangling there, pinned, it starts to land punches like pile-drivers. He can't escape; can only take the hits. He can only hope that because his body's swinging loose and moving with the impacts, that reduces the force. It probably doesn't do anything for the pressure on his neck, though. In the background, Duke is yelling his head off and trying to get back onto unsteady feet.

Because he doesn't have to contend with the distraction of pain, Nathan fixes his hands around the wrist in front of him and squeezes, applying all the force he can. Clay is soft. Somewhere in there is malleable material.

The flesh slowly narrows to a stringy red-brown thread between his pulling hands, and the grip fails. He's probably only beaten the bright spots multiplying in his vision by seconds. Nathan staggers free, legs not too crazy about holding him up. There's indisputably been damage done somewhere. He hurls the detached hand, which is fast melting into a hyperactive glob, into the furthest corner of the room and staggers sideways holding onto the edge of the bed. The spongy mattress offers lousy support, but what he's aiming for is the beaker of water on the nightstand at Duke's side. He sprawls forward across the mattress and grabs for it.

He doesn't hold out much hope for the idea, but drags his arm around in an arc to score the oncoming golem in the face with the liquid. The beaker slips out of his hand, too, though that's accidental.

Broken glass sprays. The morph's melted features run down its face, flesh fading to red-brown, but it's going to take a lot more water than that to stop it. Dump it in the sea and maybe it'll lose coherence, but this? Nathan isn't even convinced it needs its eyes to see. It's a supernatural creation, and as he dives back across the bed to join Duke, who is just about standing again, it seems to follow his progress unerringly.

"Nathan!" Duke's voice is full of alarm. Nathan looks down. He just rested his left hand on the edge of the mattress to push himself off and upright. Turns out he put it down on top of a big glass shard from the base of the broken beaker, and it's lodged in his palm. Nathan pulls a face and drags it clear without thinking. It bleeds like a bitch. Duke's breath hitches, and this time his inference is wholly different when he says, "Nathan..."

Nathan twists his face into something that probably fails to be a smile and plants his bloody mess of a hand into the centre of Duke's bare chest.

His palm print soaks in. Duke's eyes flare silver.

"Right," Duke says. Even his voice changes. It's insane to watch. Nathan knows Duke, and this is... He can't put words to it. Whether it's Duke amplified, or something else altogether. Well -- on second thoughts it's definitely still Duke, because what he says next is, "It's clobberin' time."

He meets the golem head on. Fists powered by Nathan's blood throw clay around the room, and Nathan never thought about that part before, but it seems Duke barely notices whenever the morph lands a hit in between.

He breaks off to stagger back, brown eyed, dazed and frantic, reaching out and yelling, "Tag! Tag!" Nathan claps the outstretched hand and watches the surge take over Duke: power welling up, eyes transforming to something inhuman.

That's the first of half a dozen more refreshers, with Nathan hovering on the edges of the fight letting his palm drip, before the golem figures out it's beaten. Isolated patches of red-brown sludge start to sneak off, and then the whole thing collapses and oozes out under the door again. When Duke doesn't move, Nathan lurches for the door handle, slamming a spare clip into his gun, which he edged around to retrieve during the uneven fight. Then Duke moves -- to stop him.

"We need to go after it," Nathan protests.

"Yeah?" Duke is brown-eyed, gasping and breathless, but can still muster sarcasm. "You need a few other things too." He looks pointedly down Nathan's very naked state. "Leave it. It's sliding home with its tail between its legs."

"If it's not?" Nathan says stubbornly. "If it kills someone else tonight?"

"I can't do much more of this tonight." Duke is trembling with reaction. "And you're numb, not unbreakable. We've enough to find him. We've got a face. It must mean something even if that's not our Troubled person." He staggers. Nathan starts forward, then realises he's covered in blood. Holding his injured hand clear, he sort of half-catches Duke between his shoulder and elbow and fields him toward the bed. He pulls the top sheet up and throws it around Duke, then pulls him close, still holding the injured hand clear, turning away the side of his face he suspects is also bleeding.

"Hospital?" Nathan asks reluctantly. The cut on his hand really is dripping. He wraps it in the corner of the sheet and closes his fist to try slow it down.

"...Yeah. I guess so."

Other than the hand, which he's sure he'll survive, Nathan has no idea how severely he's injured.

***

It amounts to bruised ribs, a bit of superficial damage to the right side of his face, and thirteen stitches in his hand. Duke gets off with a hairline fracture of the ulna and bruises. By the time Nathan's had his enforced MRI -- he's lost count, and will have to ask the hospital to check their records and update him -- it's nearing 7AM. They go from the hospital to Nathan's place so he can grab some clean clothes and swap Duke's truck for the Bronco, and from there to town, where Jordan McKee is a blaze of righteous anger standing over the corpses of two of her Guard compatriots.

Her furious eyes go straight to Nathan but he holds his hand up before she can finish opening her mouth: the left one, with strips of gauze and linen taped across it to protect the stitches. "I know. Anyone else?"

Jordan's eyes dart between him and Duke and she absorbs... something other than the brace on Duke's lower arm, which is a thin sheath that wouldn't even be visible under his shirt and jacket if he'd just stop scratching at it. Interestingly, she seems not to give a damn once understanding flashes across her face. She sketches a delayed headshake in answer to his question, which backs up what the station told him when he rang in. "No. Just two. So far."

It had taken until mid-morning to find all the casualties of the previous night's spree. Nathan rubs his forehead, a gesture that's purely cosmetic, and sighs. "We stopped it--" He breaks off, nods toward Duke and corrects, "He stopped it." Duke needs all the extra points with the Guard that he can get. "Fought it off, anyway. This happened earlier."

"How?" Jordan's fingers clench on her rifle. "I shot at that thing. I hit it four fucking times and that didn't stop it." Jordan is lucky, too. She has a bruise on her chin and there's blood dripping from the seal between her glove and jacket sleeve. Both of those things mean she survived her encounter.

Nathan looks at Duke, who's been unusually quiet and doesn't volunteer the information himself. Their solution won't work for the Guard, but he probably owes that much explanation. "The Crocker Legacy. My blood."

The disgust on her face is priceless. "I had to run. Damn it..." It's alarming how much she's shaking, with her hands still around the rifle. "It would have killed me. I couldn't help them. You've got to give me more than that!"

"It doesn't like water," Duke offers, "but you're gonna need a lot of it."

Nathan entertains a half-hearted notion they can bring Marion Caldwell in on this, but then, the solution might turn out to be a bigger problem than they already have. "We're going to find the Troubled person behind this before sundown today. We've got a face. I'll work up a composite, maybe a sketch if Vince isn't too busy playing Napoleon. How clearly did you see it?"

Jordan shakes her head again. "It was dark." Every word is shaped with exquisite resentment. Nathan feels... tired. Not just from the three or so hours of sleep he got last night. "I'll be working on a backup plan," Jordan says. Since he failed to catch the killer yesterday, and now two more of their kind are dead, her eyes accuse. "Water, right?"

"Right." It's probably wisest to plan for it anyway. "Good luck."

She purses her lips and stalks away. Her parting look is more a threat that he needs to do better than any kind of acknowledgement. Nathan sighs and scratches his neck, although all he really wants is a few seconds to hide whatever's showing in his face from Duke.

"Hey." Duke yanks on his arm and turns them both so they're facing away from the battered corpses. "It doesn't come out in daylight. We know which parts of the town have got this clay -- that's where he lives, he's got to have a source of it near, to create these things. We'll do the composite. Screw Vince, I can use a computer, I'll figure it out. We'll do this today."

"We can canvass the streets," Nathan says grimly. "The guy... I think I recognised him. I mean, it's not like I know everyone in town, but..."

"You meet a lot of people." Duke shrugs. "Friendly Police Chief. Detective Do-Right."

Nathan musters a glare. "I've met him. Sure of it. Just not recently or significantly enough to remember." He sighs and regrets six months on the road drinking and courting head trauma. "Doesn't really help, I guess. Isn't like we can go over all my old files for every witness, family member and vague connection I might have spoken to."

"Yeah. Besides which, he could have been your postman." Duke shifts uncomfortably and jabs a thumb backwards over his shoulder. "Look, just for the sake of... How long do we have to stand out here with the dead people?"

It's a good question. Nathan checks the time on his phone. He's used to the perks of being Chief, or at least being the town's popular detective. Now he's a not-very-popular detective at all, and even that on sufferance. "Until the van gets here. Hang on." He's about to call Laverne to ask who else died this morning when he spies the van lumbering down the road towards them.

***

They pick up two coffees almost strong enough to melt the paper cups, falling in with the doors at the coffee shop on the way to the station. Duke looks rough and sounds rough, and Nathan can't imagine he's in any better a state himself. They haven't really talked about the attack, practicalities of what they learned about preventing another one aside, and they don't talk about it now. Duke falls onto the couch and starts snoring next to his untouched coffee. Nathan peels a dozen more post-it notes off the screen into the bin and switches on Parker's computer while chugging from his cup without regard for possible temperature. He gets her composite software up and running, then goes and pokes Duke awake. Considering that Duke threw him out of bed this morning, even if he did have his reasons, he doesn't bother being too gentle about it.

"Evil," Duke groans. "You're evil." He takes long swigs of his coffee before slamming the cup down with a grimace and crawling from the couch to the computer. "That's cold. Jesus, how long was I out?" He winces again at Nathan's efforts on the composite. "He looks like Papa Munster. No. And, no." He flails at the mouse with lack of coordination from sleepiness. Nathan grips his underarms and drags him up and plants his ass in the seat. Maybe he'll manage it better from there. Then, Nathan heads back to the couch and collapses.

"Just wake me up when you've got something or it's late enough to go quiz Lucassi." Sleeping without any capacity for discomfort is often just like switching out a light. The world goes blank for a while.

He wakes because Duke's shouting at him. Insults again, as it happens, and he raises his hand to cut them off. "All right."

"I'm kinda glad you woke up," Duke says, "because now there're a dozen cops looking at me funny through your window there. That spooks me. Make them stop."

Nathan casts them an impatient glare and waves them off. The clock on the wall says it's nearly ten. "You were supposed to--"

"Yeah, whatever. I got our guy. I think. You might've had a better look than me, while he was strangling you, so come and help fine-tune. And then I want the couch. Oh, and Lucassi's been ringing."

"You answered my phone?" And he slept through it?

"Details."

"I specifically said I wanted to talk..." Damn it. Nathan gives up, with the general impression he's onto a loser while Duke's this tired and intractable. He'll probably be more use the rest of the day for the extra sleep, anyway.

At Parker's desk, Duke's finished off Nathan's coffee and several cups of the police station's own swill, and also managed a fair stab at the man-morph from last night. The face isn't quite right. "It's the eyes," Nathan decides, after a bit of squinting and racking his memory. "Smaller. And the nose. Size is about right but he had a bump in the middle. Like an old break."

"I knew it. You have the eye for detail, but I have the technology." Duke fist-pumps, makes a few alterations until Nathan's satisfied with it, then prints out their work of genius. "C'mere," he says, on his return from a semi-drunken lunge at the printer, and casts the composite aside on the desk in favour of grabbing Nathan's chin. Nathan's caught by surprise, so doesn't muster any resistance before his mouth is captured and he's jubilantly kissed, in the middle of the police station, in an office with a glass door and windows.

"Duke," he says, as his lips are released. He sighs and lifts his hand to pat Duke's cheek with a faint note of sarcasm. "Get some rest." He leaves the printer printing off plenty of spares of the composite and Duke sleeping off his caffeine high -- if he can -- and goes to see Lucassi.

One variety of stare isn't much different to any other, so he guesses it's not actually around the building already, though it's just a matter of time now. Not that people wouldn't have started to assemble the pieces anyway when they heard he and Duke were together when the attack took place. But as he told Duke yesterday, the fact he's sleeping with another man is just icing on the cake next to shooting down everyone's chances to be Trouble-free for another twenty-seven years. It's just -- damn it, Duke, this is work.

It's actually a trace disconcerting to realise he still has some professional pride.

Lucassi has seven bodies now. Same M.O., same clay residue, no surprises. Faces beaten beyond recognition, eyes burst, noses split and flattened, cheek bones shattered. Nathan gets a flash memory of that clay fist coming at him, of its distorted shape as it pulled away. That blunt anger. This could have been him. For the moment, he's escaped with soft tissue damage he can't feel anyway.

This time, there's no need to test the newest two victims for Troubles -- they were in the Guard; they have the tattoo.

He checks out the evidence box and takes it back to his office, where he sits and stares at the contents and tries to ignore Duke's snoring. He gets up, ventures in search of coffee and a donut -- Stan's saved him one again -- and then sits and stares some more.

There are a couple of scrapings of that clay from people's houses; windowsill, cat flap, ventilation grill. Locked rooms; no mystery now. He idly marks out the crime scene locations on his map showing the clay deposits. He already knows they don't match up. Last night's attack took place on Duke's boat. The morph doesn't have to be on clay soil to function. But he wonders if there's a looser correlation. None of them happened, say, at the other end of town. They stopped following Jordan when she ran. Maybe they can't venture too far from the clay, or else from their creator.

He tries to remember where he saw that face before, staring at the composite. He knows this guy. They shouldn't have to canvass.

Memory drawing a frustrating blank, he assesses last night with brutal dispassion. Anyone could have been following the investigation and tipped to the fact he was involved in it, or that the Guard were out in force -- they wear tattoos, for fuck's sake. Those attacks aren't helpful. He discards them in favour of the first victims. The killer knew all five of those people were Troubled, and that was common knowledge, but it wasn't like it had been printed in the Haven Herald, so the killer probably knew those people from his immediate neighbourhood. One or two, he maybe could have found out about more chancily. Nathan returns to the map and circles on it the part most resembling a cluster. Three points. They're not all on the clay, but the remaining two victims are more scattered. He draws another circle that encompasses the clay area nearest to the first three points.

There. The killer lives there. Or that's where he's going to start.

He leaves Duke snoring and heads out to canvass the streets, dropping in copies of their composite and a brief verbal report to Dwight on the way.

"Nathan--" Dwight catches him pointedly as he's trying to leave, his eyes heavy with a burden Nathan recognises all too well and has no desire to shoulder again. It might actually be easier to die for Haven than to bear day-to-day responsibility for its troubles. "I'm told there's an unconscious Duke Crocker snoring in your office."

"If he's causing a distraction, I'll put him in the car."

Not what Dwight meant. "Just take it easy. I don't know how many toes in town you've got left to step on. Could be it's down to single figures."

Yeah. Nathan grimaces and nods, and leaves the giant Police Chief to his old responsibilities. This is easier. He feels a twinge of jealousy, though, because damn it, people do listen to Dwight. It always seemed an uphill fight to get anyone to listen to him.

Trying to canvass is just another demonstration of the way no-one listens to him -- or wants to see, or speak to him -- now. He manages to cover a few streets without result before returning, frustrated, and is forced to ask Dwight to put a couple of other officers on it instead, which will make him even less popular in his own police station.

"All right." Dwight nods and offers a look of sympathy, but Nathan suspects he's seriously pondering everyone's protests that Nathan shouldn't be working right now, if his circumstances won't even allow him to do routine legwork. "It'll be done in the next few hours."

"Don't let anyone else approach this guy," Nathan warns tightly. "I'll handle it. I'll take Duke."

"Jordan will want in."

"Jordan isn't a police officer, and no-one's asked her to be a consultant." She might be still on his books as an informant, though, which would be an unfortunate oversight. Nathan winces.

"I still have to sign off on Crocker. Or receive an official request about Crocker." Dwight eyes him with disapproval. "Last time I spoke to him about it, he didn't seem too thrilled."

Great. "I'll talk to Duke." Duke has effectively been a consultant for most of the time Audrey was around already. It's just the formalising of it that makes him jittery. If you're allergic to cops, must give you a problem, almost being made one. "I'm still taking him. That thing last night, there's no way I could have fought it off without him."

"Fine," Dwight sighs. "But don't be surprised if the Guard show up."

Because you'll tell her, Nathan fills in, and inwardly curses. He never realised Dwight and Jordan were as close as they demonstrably are.

"Don't look like that. She's got a plan."

Nathan jerks his chin up and heads swiftly out the door. Was he thinking earlier that he'd not take his old job back for the world?

Fuck... He catches himself on the edge, and stops, deliberately, to lean on the wall and just breathe. To force himself to examine what he was just thinking. He didn't even want to be a cop again, and as for the chief cop-- He reminds himself that he's just treading water; would have to do a hell of a lot more than that if he had Dwight's job. He needs to let it go.

He did make another stop on his way to the station, and diverts back to Laverne's desk to pick up the bag before returning to his office. Sandwiches for both of them, plus coffee for him and chai for Duke, who's demonstrably had more than enough coffee for one day. Duke's sitting up on the couch with a hunted look about him and glares at Nathan sullenly. "You left me. Alone. In a building full of cops."

"You were sleeping." Revenge is sweet. Although he takes himself back five minutes and wonders if that feeling of satisfaction isn't another indulgence. Nathan is... losing track. "I fetched lunch."

Duke reaches for the bag but still voices a gruff, "You're not forgiven," around his BLT sandwich.

Nathan rounds the desk to his noticeboard, taking intermittent bites and chewing without tasting in between pinning up the crime scene photos.

Duke makes a noise of protest and turns his back. "No. Now I definitely don't love you anymore."

Nathan stops, turns and eyes him carefully, but Duke doesn't make any obvious double-take, not that his back is the most helpful informer, and doesn't seem to think anything of it. With a tease of a false start just in case he can catch Duke out, Nathan returns his attention to the board and attempts to focus.

He pins up the rest of the photos and lets them spin in his head, trying to think. When they find the killer -- and he's been hoping the canvassers will find him soon -- Nathan will have to talk him down or stop him more permanently. Parker always used to do this on the hop, but he's not that kind of thinker. He needs a way in. What does he know about this guy? He's angry. He hates the Troubled, thinks they're destroying the town. He wants to save Haven. None of those things are helpful. All they make Nathan is a target.

He can at least hope that if their killer is still hung up on Nathan as the next target, no-one else will die until they've gone through him first.

He sits on Parker's desk with his feet parted and propped on the edges of the chair and his injured hand resting palm-up between his knees.

In many ways, it was a lot easier being on the run. He didn't have to think. Didn't have to care. Sometimes it's easier to live without hope than always trying to chase that damn carrot. But now he has Duke back and he knows he has to fix things. Save Parker. Save Haven. But it's all so heavy, and he's starting to feel it after he told himself that he wouldn't. He should be better able to foster a habit of being numb, he of all people. Instead, he's starting to care. He's realised it's too late to castigate himself for that; too late by at least a day and maybe longer. His resolve lasted less than a week. Caring is hard, and... very dangerous. He knows where that led last time. It's messy and confusing, and maybe where he rightly belongs is in those rough bars and cheap rented rooms, paying his way by letting guys beat the hell out of him, or worse.

Thought stops. For a moment, it seems everything does, even his heartbeat.

"Self-loathing," Nathan says, roughly.

Duke shuffles around and squints suspiciously up.

"It's not just anger. Not anger at them, anyway." He rolls his hand toward the battered figures whose pictures line the board. "This guy hates the Troubled, and he's one of them. That's why this... depth of violence." They've seen it before. Not quite like this, but shades of it. One of them fell on Duke's knife to damn well prove it.

"Well, you'd know." Duke says it, but that doesn't mean he likes it. He stands up and discards his cup and the remnant of his sandwich. "Nathan..."

"Maybe he doesn't know he's doing it," Nathan says.

"I think he does."

Nathan thinks he does, too. He realises then that it was nagging at him all along. Otherwise why strike at night, under cover of dark, in secret? Troubled people who don't mean to kill don't cover their tracks, don't arrange the times of their Troubles' flare-ups for convenience. And it seems to him there's a component of deliberation to this, too. He can't know how this Trouble works with any certainty, but wouldn't clay need to be shaped, sculpted, and have life breathed into it, before it's sent on its way?

Damn it. "I'm an idiot."

"Hey. Easy, man." Duke grabs his shoulder as he slams down off the desk, grazing his hip on a corner and stumbling on numb feet. "I thought that was pretty smart going, for you."

"Not that." Nathan makes a noise of frustration and shoves him off. He no longer has the art shop programmed into his new phone, and has to drag out a directory to find the number. He dials up Mary on his desk phone. "Hey, Mary." Her voice is instantly as over-familiar, bright and chatty as ever, and he's seen so little of that from Haven's residents it almost aches to cut her off. "Yeah, it's been awhile. I'm ringing from work. I need any information you can give me on sculptors, potters, or classes. Anyone local who might work in clay."

He stops again. Pottery class. Fuck!

"Scratch that," he tells her wearily. "You remember the pottery class that was run a couple of years back by... Margery someone. You remember her full name?" It's Cottam. Duke's eyebrows are going up. "Right. Thanks. You don't have her number there, by any chance?" He writes it down, thanks Mary again, and clicks the receiver even as he pounds it slowly into his forehead.

"You took--?" Duke starts, and Nathan lifts his head to see Duke's grin elongating.

Not now, he thinks, and says aloud, "I know where I've seen the guy before."

***

"So you're telling me that not one, but two alleged men took a pottery class?" Nathan tries to filter out Duke's vocalising as they drive down. Their killer is called Martin Skovann, and as it happens, he was one of only two men among six or seven women who took an eight-week pottery class run in Margery Cottam's studio back in early 2008.

Animating clay mannequin's... it's one thing to have a Trouble that specific. It's another to have opportunity to find out about it. Like Landon Tyler and his taxidermy, their man had to have worked in the medium.

Of course, the court clerk just stared at a wall for years on end to create her golem, but he's choosing not to think about that one. After all, the line of reasoning worked. He found Martin. And Martin is their guy.

"Don't you need a sense of touch to use a potter's wheel?" Duke keeps prodding.

Nathan says flatly, hoping to put a cap on the subject once and for all, "After my Trouble came back, I took up a bunch of stuff to exercise fine motor control. For the sake of being able to do normal stuff, like use eating utensils, shave, write, or fire a gun."

"One of those things is not like the rest," Duke murmurs, but shuts up. For a moment. Nathan pulls the Bronco in to the side of the street and takes out his cellphone. "So what else did you-- What are you doing?"

"Calling Jordan."

"Are you crazy? No, don't answer that. Nathan, she's not helpful. She's a damn loose canon!"

He manages to tweak the side of his mouth in an almost-grin back and ask, "Who isn't?" before his call gets picked up. That conversation goes about as well as could be expected, but he hammers out an agreement that they'll go in first while Jordan is to wait outside the house. Nathan puts his phone away and slams his numb forehead into the steering wheel a few times.

"Talking to her makes me feel like that as well," Duke says. "Seriously. Jordan?"

"Dwight was going to tell her anyway." He hadn't, but Nathan will have to figure out what that means later. "It's all too possible this Trouble isn't restricted to the night time hours by anything but convenience. We need the back-up. She's the only one with any idea what we're up against."

Duke sighs. "So we go in, try talk this guy down, and if he won't..." He swallows. "I guess then we'll need to use my thing again. Right?"

Nathan slides his gun from its holster and holds it up. "Stick to my blood, and if he needs to be stopped for good, I'll stop him using this."

Duke hisses breath through his teeth. "About that. I can't say I'm loving that arrangement, either. Maybe I don't have to kill him, but I'll make that bastard bleed, Nathan. Why should you?"

Angrily, Nathan says, "I'm more worried about you than a couple more cuts I won't feel anyway. Are you likely to lose control and kill me?"

"No way." Duke's anger flares instantly. "And if you think--"

"Then this is safest."

"You're still an ass, Wuornos," Duke growls. Given the extreme irritation with which he growls it, Nathan isn't expecting to be grabbed and kissed with a fervour that makes his heart beat faster even without sensation; Duke's attentions fall on his lips, the line of his chin, his throat, and back to his lips, and Duke's grip keeps them both twisted around and locked together across the front seats of the Bronco truck. It's made slightly weird because Nathan still has his gun in his hand and has to watch what he's doing with it. "Don't change," Duke tells him, with some force, inches from his lips, the arm around his neck seeming more like a chokehold. "Don't you fucking dare change that."

Duke plants a last kiss, then pulls away. Nathan stares at him incredulously before he holsters his gun and starts the car.

***

Jordan's black SUV is already there when they reach the house. She had plenty of time to get a head-start on them. Now, she's sitting in the front coolly sipping coffee, next to a white-blonde woman wearing sunglasses and a grey suit jacket. Nathan doesn't know the blonde, and she stands out enough he's pretty sure he'd remember. A recent arrival, perhaps. His head jerks around with a surprisingly sharp stab of offence when Duke gives a low whistle and says, "Fucking hot." Duke's face falls. "Like you weren't thinking it? What? So we're doing that? We're really doing that? We're so exclusive I can't look, now?"

Nathan sends him back, "She's Jordan's friend. Maybe you could get lucky, she and I get back together, we can double-date--"

The shudder that prompts is entirely satisfying. "Do not even." Duke grabs Nathan's shoulder hard enough to deliver a warning. "Whoops, Crazy Town just clocked us."

"Come on." Nathan tugs his arm away and ducks out of the Bronco, sketching half a wave to Jordan in acknowledgement, although since the glare she's giving him is anything but friendly, keeps it curt. He tucks both hands in his jacket pockets and ducks his head as he rounds the SUV to the driver's side window.

She rolls it down and says crisply, "Checking in?"

"Who's your friend?" Of course Duke still asks, and bestows his most ridiculous shit-eating grin on the blonde, too. His little wave of greeting is very friendly.

Jordan barely reacts, and what's more obliges him with an answer, which makes Nathan suspicious, even if Duke isn't. The woman is in the Guard, after all, and therefore Troubled somehow. Maybe she eats the men she dates. "Valerie Smeaton." Jordan jerks her head at both men dismissively. "This is Duke Crocker and Nathan Wuornos... the boys responsible for screwing up this town."

"This town was screwed up a long time before anything I--" Duke starts, and Nathan shushes him, cutting him off to tell Jordan, "You know what to do."

"Anyone starts screaming or shooting, we'll be in. Well. Maybe we'll listen and savour for a moment or two first." She tips her head and shrugs.

"Anyone starts screaming, it won't be me," he reminds her.

He hears her mutter, "Yeah, ain't that a bitch," as he turns and heads for the house, Duke on his heels. Valerie watches them go, but she hasn't really reacted that Nathan can see. Nothing that isn't hidden behind her sunglasses. He doesn't actually think the glasses are covering up anything more sinister than normal eyes and shame. That one, he's got quite adept at recognising over the past months. He wonders what's wrong with her; what she does, what she is.

The house is plain but tidy, new boards and a paint job patching recent meteor damage. It's not overly large, but a long, wide garden of mostly lawn surrounds it. Once they get beyond the tool-shed and an obscuring wall of trellis wholly lacking in any plant growth, the hole in the ground is obvious. The stripped earth is a familiar red-brown. Nathan notices what's missing from the scene unpleasantly swiftly. "Where's the excess? The dirt he took out?"

Duke says, "That's way too big a hole for just one morph."

Nathan takes out a knife and drags it over his palm, parallel to the dressing already there, slicing the pads of flesh at the base of his fingers. Duke turns around and his mouth falls open. "Saving time," Nathan says, getting ahead of the inevitable protest. He puts the knife away and draws his gun.

"I can get by on a drop." Angrily, Duke grabs and shakes him by the front of his jacket. "Quit hacking lumps out of yourself, Mr Martyrdom, because we are gonna talk about this."

Nathan leans his face away from the finger being jabbed in it. "Pack it in. Killer mud monsters?"

"This isn't over." But the reminder prompts Duke to let go and pay attention again.

Nathan is faced with an annoying choice. He can't easily get the door with his left hand, and on no account is he holstering his weapon. He can either struggle or let Duke go first. Duke is carrying a freakin' compact sub-machine gun, lest Nathan have been naive enough to think he was joking when he quipped about bringing automatic weapons. But Duke is still a civilian and, annoyingly, has become someone Nathan would particularly prefer not to see joining the array of bodies in Lucassi's cold storage.

He curses, falls back a step, and levels his gun. "Try the door and back off. Don't step in the line of my shot." Only Duke could look that smug about opening a damn door.

By the time Nathan realises it didn't open and Duke's doing something to the lock, it's too late to protest. Duke shoves the door open a moment later and steps out of the way.

But nothing charges out at them, and nothing seems to lurk waiting inside. Nathan enters and checks the room before jerking his head for Duke to follow. Beyond the hallway is a sitting room; muted colours, masculine styles. Skovann leans upright in a high-backed chair, eyes blank and fixed. For a moment, Nathan thinks he's dead. Then he realises he isn't real. A hand trailed in front of the golem's eyes elicits no reaction.

Duke mouths, "Creepy," but not even he dares speak aloud and risk waking the killing machine in the chair.

There are two of them in the kitchen by the back door. One is just standing, the other half-melted on the linoleum, its humanoid body dissolved into sludge from the waist down. Duke and Nathan tread softly across the gaze of eyes that don't move with them, to the base of a flight of stairs where there's another golem, sprawled but oddly straight. That one has blood on its hands.

Nathan carefully picks where he plants his feet as he steps over it. He's trying to keep his cool and do anything more useful than just looping the worst curses he knows around his brain. Four. They could barely handle one. There's no real guarantee these four are all there is, either.

Duke looks fidgety and just about ready to explode. He hops cockily over the prone morph. He has that body-language that he gets, sometimes, where Nathan's left honestly unsure if he's itching for a fight or itching to turn and run.

They pause on an upper landing full of closed doors. Nathan checked the time before they started, and it's almost five o'clock. But if he needs to exercise conscious control over his monsters, this guy was up all night, and probably made the extras in reaction to losing, early this morning. Nathan turns and mouths, "Asleep."

Duke starts to nod, then freezes.

From behind a closed door, they hear the sound of an alarm clock.

***

Duke turns his nod into a stretched, silent "Aaaargh", widening his mouth as he thuds his forehead into the heel of his hand and hisses at Nathan, "We may actually have the worst luck of anyone. In the universe."

He makes a solid argument. Nathan steals a wild glance over his shoulder then dives for the door he thinks the alarm clock sounded nearest to. It's a cupboard, and Duke's theory is winning. He backs out. Reaching for the handle of the next door along, he sees something flow up the stairs behind Duke out of the corner of his eye. There's too much space between them. Caught off-balance and still turning, Nathan yells a hoarse warning. He squeezes the fingers of his left hand closed as hard as he can and re-opens them as he dashes the hand forward, splashing his blood at Duke and hoping like hell that one drop reaches skin.

The silver in Duke's eyes beats the first thudding blow by a split second.

Duke falls back no more than a step. Nathan's guess about the enhanced resilience the Crocker Legacy seems to hold true. Maybe it's Duke who's the unbreakable one. The thing Duke's facing off against shifts from an amorphous blob into Martin Skovann, colours fading in as the details complete. It moves more fluidly than last night, body stretching and flowing around wherever Duke's fist tries to land. The rattle of the gun in Duke's right hand splits the air, but the morph seems fast and smart enough now to switch between states, letting the bullets pass through. Only one or two shots spatter its substance; the rest just put holes in the wall. Is this the 2.0 version? Nathan wonders, and frantically lunges in to tag Duke on the wrist.

Another morph flows up the stairs; the incomplete model. It tries to change but can only manage a human head and arms on top of formless clay. Nathan shoots at it, then turns and tries the door handle.

Someone on the other side forces the handle back, and he hears the click of a lock. "Die, you bastard!" chokes a voice made thick and foul by rage. "I know you, Wuornos! Fucking die."

Nathan shoots out the lock. The door must have a bolt, or something's jammed in front, because it still won't open. He steps back and lifts his foot, and Duke starts yelling hoarsely for his help.

A bullet buys him a second, but it's blood Duke needs the most. Nathan lunges, straining his left hand out toward extended fingers, and gets slammed between the wall and Duke's suddenly oncoming body. Wondering why his hastily-closed grip has done nothing, he looks down and sees he only scored Duke's sleeve. The morph grabs and shakes Duke, and Nathan clings tighter, willing the blood to soak through fabric to skin quickly, rather than risk being shaken off altogether. His head reels from an impact with plaster as the morph kicks him; its leg lengthens as it lashes out to make the strike.

He's blind to his own ploy, since he can't feel the blood soak in to gauge his success. The unfinished morph reaches them, flopping clay across his sprawled legs, clutching for his face. Duke swears as Nathan loses his grip and slides down the wall.

Nathan manages to level the gun still in his hand and empties what's left of the clip at point blank range. Mud spatters the walls and the golem's arms flop as useless stubs, trying to reform usable appendages. Nathan's just thinking that at least it still works on that one, when he sees the gunk covering his feet warp oddly. Grimacing, he kicks one foot loose, but the clay clings to the other and seems to shrink -- or, wait, compress. Like it's trying to apply pressure inwards.

Shit. The gift is that he noticed, or he could have stayed oblivious while it crushed his limbs to soggy shrapnel.

He kicks out wildly. He can't feel his ankle anyway, but it wants to cooperate with him right now even less than usual.

Damn it. He slams his cut hand with the empty gun, and flails it desperately toward Duke again.

Duke surges up. The body of the whole morph takes flight for the opening onto the stairs. It expands both arms into thick clay tentacles and uses them to grab the walls before it can go over. A second Martin Skovann ascending behind it falls back a few steps, where an unexpected jet of water catches and spins it. It totters briefly, then falls out of sight. The jet of water cuts off and for a moment Nathan just stares.

"Nathan! Pay attention!" Duke seizes the partial morph and drags it away. His strength rips at its substance when it tries to cling to his bare hands.

"Nathan...! Crocker!" Jordan's voice yells. Something explodes.

Loud is the closest to real pain Nathan can get. After that, there's too much silence. Smoke blurs the air, concentrated nearer the stairwell. Nathan is no longer sure how much of his grogginess is from the recent impact of his head with the wall and how much of it just the shock of the explosion. He struggles to regain sense of the world. His shoulders are propped against the wall, or he'd be on the floor.

Duke is fighting, and needs his help.

Sound rushes back. He can hear the gush of water, the hiss of it encountering flames. The thuds of blunt impacts. Shooting. He registers Duke's gun and a clip landing in his lap. "Reload!" Duke yelps, and, well, Nathan can see he doesn't have the time to say "please". He wonders how close Duke is to needing the other kind of reload, then realises he's left plenty of bloody handprints around. He looks at his hand. The culprit isn't only the neat line of the new cut. He's pulled his stitches and then some.

Nathan has never handled the type of gun before, but somehow his fingers figure it out. He fires its stream of bullets to support Duke, then thinks about getting to his feet. He still has Skovann to finish, and once they put him down, it ends all of this.

His ankle doesn't want to support his weight yet, but he keeps his shoulder to the wall and clumsily reloads his service pistol as he staggers, abandoning Duke's empty automatic on the floor.

He can't kick down Martin's door anymore, so smashes his shoulder against it instead. From somewhere downstairs, he hears Jordan shout, then there's another explosion. The shock is less this time, his ears maybe prepared by the previous one, or just still half deaf. Sound disappears again for several seconds. When it comes back, Skovann is yelling on the other side of the door. "What the hell are you freaks doing out there? Jesus!"

Nathan slides along the door, bringing his mouth close to a bullet hole. "Haven P.D.," he scrapes roughly through his smoke-seared throat. "Stand down, Skovann, or there's only one way this ends."

His ears have cleared a little more by the next time Martin speaks. "Like I'd surrender to you, Wuornos. You're not even a real cop. You ran away. And I heard what else you did!" His voice cracks with rage. Nathan tries to track its direction within the room. Squinting his eye to the bullet hole provides no additional help. He gives it a go anyway and puts a few carefully-placed shots through the door itself. The cheap, modern substitute for wood it's made from probably doesn't even slow the bullets down.

He hears Martin cry out and hit the floor. When Nathan turns around hopefully, the morphs Duke is fighting are still there. Skovann's wounded, but not dead, and there's no guarantee he'll expire in time to make a difference to this fight. And Duke's in trouble.

Nathan makes a slightly contentious decision in the interests of fucking finishing this and slams his shoulder into the door again. If he can just get to Skovann--

The door jerks away from him. He hits a wall, bounces off, tries to roll with it and find some semblance of balance, tries to turn and use whatever's left in his gun to give answer to the partial morph slithering after him. He makes the mistake of being more aware of the oncoming threat than where his feet are. By the time vertigo kicks in and he realises he's falling backwards with one foot inches clear of the top step, it's too late to save himself.

Turning limp to take a fall is easier without the instinct to brace for oncoming pain. He shuts his eyes to protect them and pulls both arms up to cover his head.

He still seems to be moving when he opens his eyes, but he's sideways and half upside-down with his legs wedged in a knot above him on the steps, so he thinks the movement is just in his head. A big chunk of the staircase and balustrade are blast-damaged, and the sea of wood splinters he must have ploughed through coming down makes him wince. Despite protecting his head, a feathery fan of blood decorates the linoleum outward from his face. He hopes that's only a split lip, since he can taste enough of it in his mouth. Ironically, it's likely his own fist that did it, ricocheting off a step.

In his line of vision, Jordan is hacking chunks off one of the morphs with what looks like a machete and sealing them into buckets with lids from a stack next to her. She's soaking, hair stringy and dripping, red-faced with effort. It's not a perfect solution; the buckets are jumping about, their sentient contents straining to escape.

Water flows over the spray of Nathan's blood on the linoleum, washing it clear. Where the hell is the water coming from? Just a few feet away from him, there's a small step down into the main part of the kitchen, and beyond that, the floor is sopping. Jordan's ankle-deep.

More importantly, where's the other morph?

Nathan gets an elbow under him and twists his head to put the world at a more normal angle. Sees white-haired Valerie with her mouth open insanely wide and spewing out the fast, constant stream of water that nailed the morph on the steps. The spout is aimed at a melting pile of shifting clay that keeps trying to form into something, but the dissolving force of the water keeps it in check.

The third and last humanoid morph pitches over the side of the stairwell to land, pancaked, in the water. Then Duke is at Nathan's side, the echoes of his pounding footfalls down the steps still ringing. "Fuck--" He turns, briefly distracted by Valerie. "That is the new all-time winner for 'most disturbing thing I've ever seen'. Nate, are you all right?"

Duke's eyes are fading to brown as he speaks. Nathan sluggishly lifts his hand out of a puddle and reaches up, intending to smear Duke's cheek.

"No." Duke catches his wrist, though he looks over his shoulder to nervously check on the morph. His other hand curls under Nathan's waist to give him a hoist. "All right, come on. Up--"

Duke gets him standing. Surprisingly, the world starts to make a lot more sense from there. "I--" Nathan looks around. "Where's the other one?"

"Slithered under Skovann's door."

Nathan curses. "We still need to get him." He checks his body. Arms seem okay, legs, torso. Nothing obviously out of joint or bleeding.

Duke watches Jordan slam the machete through the morph he just chucked down, darting from the reach of a foot-wide, stretching flail of clay. As it swings back for another try, she stops, lifts the blade above her head and lets the clay come down and find her. It finds the machete first. She chokes and swears as she's bathed in muddy spatters.

"Nobody ever said it was all dignified heroics," Duke offers jovially. She swears at him, too, although there are plenty of other things she has to focus on. Duke clamps his arm across Nathan's back, under his shoulders. "Come on, we'll deal with Skovann. Seems the ladies have things in hand down here."

"...fucking kill you, Crocker," is Jordan's fragmented parting promise.

***

Nathan gets his legs back, more or less, by the time they reach the top of the stairs, although the semi-crushed ankle still doesn't much like supporting his weight. The door that presumably still has Martin Skovann behind it waits, bullet-riddled and battered, clay stain decorating its lower edge, although Nathan supposes Martin could have used the aid of the unfinished morph to climb through a window and sneak out, depending how badly he's hurt.

"Did Jordan have a rocket launcher?" Duke asks incredulously.

Nathan thinks back to what he saw downstairs. "Couple of grenades, I think."

"Who would give that woman that much firepower? I swear, Vince is losing it."

"Saved our bacon," Nathan reminds him. Firepower was one reason he did want the Guard in on this. Some things he can't organise without drawing attention to the Troubles from the wrong sort of authorities, whereas who knows where Vince gets hold of the stuff he does?

On the landing at the top of the stairs, Nathan shoves off Duke's support and stands unsteadily, trying to take stock. He finds his service pistol placed back in his hand, and Duke produces a smaller gun for himself. "What? This one's human. It'll work. Curse-free. Don't tell me you're still hoping to talk him down."

Nathan gives him a sour look. He stomps unsteadily to Skovann's door and raps on it with the knuckles of his bloody hand. "Martin, damn it. Open the door and give yourself up. Last chance."

"We left the girls to make mud pies with your Things downstairs," Duke supplies. "They're really good at it."

Nathan mouths "shut up". Louder, he says, "I understand, Martin. The Troubled are destroying Haven. You wanted to save the town. I want to save Haven, too. But the Troubled are Haven. You can't do it this way. Talk to me, Martin."

"Fuck off, Wuornos." From the weakness in his voice, this might not take very long even if Skovann resists to the last.

"We can get you medical attention," Duke says, his tone deceptively soft and light with all the I'm-your-best-friend promise Nathan recognises of old, belying the fierceness of his expression. "I can call them. I got my phone right here." He takes it out and dubiously looks at it, then worriedly shakes it. "Soon as you give the word, they can be on their way. Only we need you to stand down the mud monsters."

"Duke Crocker," Martin sneers bitterly. "You were supposed to help us. Kill the cursed... kill the curses. What use are you? Sharing a bed with him, the worst of them all."

Nathan and Duke exchange a glance. Nathan supposes it make sense that Martin must have some idea what his creations see.

"Don't let's get personal," Duke protests mildly.

Skovann laughs at them, a wild noise that scrapes all over the place before his voice fails him, falling into rasping coughs, then rasping silence. "I wanted them dead," he croaks, eventually. "All of them, dead. Started with the ones I knew. Then... they were stepping right out there in the open! Wuornos, back in town. The freaks with the tattoos, parading it like a badge. Right there, like an invitation. I would have done myself last. None of them deserve to live. I don't, either."

"Come on," Nathan says uncomfortably, rattling the door again. "You should know if anyone does that the Troubled are just people. Why, Martin? Why would you do... all of this?"

"As if you needed to ask! Crocker wasn't going to do it. Someone had to. Can't kill the curses but I can kill the cursed, and that gets the job done, too..." His giggles veer off into rasping again. Duke's jaw drops, and he looks stunned. Nathan swaps his gun into his left hand, wipes his right thoroughly on his jeans then presses it to Duke's face, doing his best to take the sting from the words. He leans back against the door jamb wearily. Facing each other, as they listen to Skovann's crazy spouting, Nathan offers what comfort he can.

Duke lifts his hand and tweaks a finger across Nathan's lip. Nathan doesn't understand fully until Duke's eyes change and he leans across to shove the door. Obligingly, its hinges cave, dragging out plaster dust, and whatever's blocking it moves inward until the door falls in, coming to rest half askew and leaving space enough to enter.

Nathan folds his right hand over his injured left on his service pistol and steps sideways over the threshold into the room.

Skovann looks like a ghoul. He stands half-supported, half-cradled by the replica of himself that's still formless clay from the waist down. He's pale like death, with blood on his lips, and Nathan thinks he probably killed him already. They're just biding time until the facts catch up. Martin stretches his mouth in a bloody grin and says, "One last favour to Haven. I can still finish off the two of you."

The incomplete morph lets him go and he slumps, slowly, to his knees, and then sideways to the floor.

The morph straightens and... straightens. It shifts itself into another perfect duplicate of Skovann.

Duke says, "Uh-uh. He must have given up on one of the ones downstairs. Conservation of mojo, I guess. Nathan...?" Slowly, reluctantly, he stretches out his hand.

Nathan shakes his head tightly, levels his gun and takes a step closer to Martin's prone figure. He adjusts his aim carefully, bearing in mind that the target's prone on the floor and the angle is screwy, then kills him all the way with a shot to the head.

The morph sags instantly into a pile of red-brown clay on the bedroom carpet. Duke sags almost as dramatically. His hand curls around Nathan from behind, his face pressing to the back of his neck. He says, next to Nathan's ear, voice shivering with exhaustion and reaction, "Jesus. Fuck. Let's not do that again."

Moments pass, measured by the sounds of both their heartbeats gradually slowing down, before Duke says, with his voice rough and tense and his grip on Nathan tightening enough that even Nathan notices, "Don't freak out, but... you need to know this. Your blood... it's like... like the most fucked up high ever. I can't do this again. It's gonna mess me up. So bad I don't even know what I'd do."

Nathan folds his arm over Duke's.

"I'm sorry." It seems... inadequate. Nathan waits a moment, but can't think of anything better.

"Hey." Duke's voice strains towards something brighter. "We beat the mud monsters."

Nathan eases out from the clutch to briefly kneel down and close Martin's eyes, and it doesn't matter that he can't feel for a pulse because the hole in the centre of Skovann's forehead is unquestionably final.

The thing about seeking death in Haven is that it will tend to find you.

Standing up again is harder than getting down, but he braces unfeeling muscles and makes it happen. He holsters his gun. He looks back once as he walks away, but doubts he'll be losing any sleep over Skovann, who murdered seven people and would probably have kept going indefinitely.

Duke retrieves his automatic as they cross the landing and hides it furtively under his jacket.

At the bottom of the stairs, Jordan waits for them, legs braced apart and trembling, leather gear soaked, and Nathan can only think she dunked her head in the water to rid the clay from her hair. Her friend is hunched on the bottom step, prettier without the sunglasses but mired in misery and exhaustion. Duke seems to have lost any compulsion to flirt under the pretence of offering comfort. Jordan stares at Nathan, her eyes taking in the careful way that he's moving, and a sick horror paints her features. She waits until he sets his foot down from the last step.

"Oh, God." It's almost a whisper. "You fucking idiot. I-- All of us. So stupid. You could have died, Nathan." Her hand rises to her mouth and then whips out, echoing a crack as it connects. The water in the room distorts the acoustics oddly. The slap in the face doesn't have quite the dramatic effect it would on anyone else, and in the circumstances, fails to even startle him. "You could have died fighting this asshole, and then where would we be?"

"He's tickled pink that you care," Duke snaps, leaning over Nathan's shoulder from the step above. "Now fuck off."

Jordan spreads her arms helplessly and steps aside. Nathan has a moment of deep unease. This... is not a result he expected from his plan to keep the Guard at bay, and the thought that they'll want him tucked away somewhere, sealed and safe, a passive victim awaiting his own execution -- it creeps the hell out of him, and sends a psychosomatic twinge of nausea through his insides.

There's nothing he can do. The card is already played. If he doesn't plan to fulfil the role their way, he's going to have to fight again, and again, and again.

Duke's hand grips his shoulder, rocking him gently mid-step to call attention to itself, a reminder there are still other things that he wants.

***

They go to the station. Dwight sends them to the hospital. Eventually, the hospital sends them home. Someone in the imaging department has sense of humour enough to have weathered Nathan's new infamy because he gets a card that looks like it's been hastily put together in MS Paint, which says 'Congratulations on Your 30th MRI'. A few of the staff slap his shoulder and laugh, and it feels like the first chip in the ice.

"Hey," Duke says with a certain amount of force, as he's still gazing after them bemusedly with what's likely a stupid smile on his face, and he tips Nathan's chin up with a wry finger. "They know what you have to deal with. You didn't do what you did lightly. You're still just as Troubled as the rest."

Nathan hasn't really thought of it that way, but okay.

The MRI was kinder to him than it had any business being, after that face-first trip down the stairs. He has a split lip, some smashed cartilage in the side of his nose, a bit of soft tissue trauma on his arms and back. The crush injury to his ankle has left impressive bruising, but the doctors don't think anything important is broken or torn. And he has a brand new set of stitches holding the palm of his left hand together.

Duke's all right. Well, his cracked arm is still cracked, but the doctors already said it should barely give him any bother. Apparently being bounced around while silver-eyed and super-strong really doesn't make much impression.

"Thanks," Nathan says stiffly, standing in the corridor with hospital noises, antiseptic smells and too-bright strip lighting an assault on his senses, looking at Duke like he's seeing him for the first time again after a whole week. "I couldn't do this if you hadn't come back," he realises, aloud. "Wouldn't have the heart." Duke gives him heart?

"Bullshit," says Duke. Just because Nathan wouldn't have the heart to do this without him doesn't mean he still can't be dead wrong.

Nathan snorts, jerks his head and starts walking, and they head out, head home.

***

Duke declares that he's too dead-beat to cook and they're getting take-out, but because it's Duke, it's gourmet take-out stolen from the Gull. Nathan doesn't spare more than a moment's thought for whoever had to wait twice as long for their dinner as they sprawl on the bed and eat from carry-out boxes while drinking beer from bottles.

Duke finishes first, sets his empty box aside and groans as he sprawls back into the pillows. "I swear, this town... Damn it. And you. You are not a fun boyfriend. You made me fight mud monsters. I broke my arm. Chicks had to save our butts."

"That's anything new?" Nathan asks, looking up from his food. He's still a way behind Duke due to careful chewing to spare his torn lip. He nods at Duke's arm, which looks normal beneath his shirt sleeve. "You barely broke your arm. You can't even tell it's broken. A week or two of Codeine, that's all you get."

"Mud monsters," Duke says stubbornly. "Crappy boyfriend." But he picks up Nathan's foot, where it rests on the bed near his hand, and draws it across into his lap. They're both almost completely dressed, because they're tired and fell on the food first. Duke tugs Nathan's sock off and rubs his hands over the uncovered foot, digging into the sole with his thumbs. "Even the muscles in your feet are strung like wire." He has an exploratory poke at Nathan's bruised leg. "Your ankle's totally black now."

"Doctors said it would be fine." The tough leather of his shoe protected his foot, mostly, though he can see a few yellowish-green smudges on the upper part. Nathan shoves his box away and twists onto his back, offering the other foot to Duke as well. He spreads his arms out and stares at the ceiling and tries to pretend relaxation. Tries to remember what relaxed felt like and superimpose that feeling onto the useless absence that's his body now.

Duke balls up Nathan's socks and tosses them off the bed, one by one. "You gonna get your belt and zipper?"

He does, and Duke pulls his jeans off him, inch by weary inch, taking his underwear along as well. Nathan reciprocates by stretching his arm out to pull at the toes of Duke's socks, though it's a bit half-hearted. He can see by the way the fabric sits that they're still damp, and supposes his must have been too. There's a tide mark a few inches up Duke's jeans. Nathan quits his impression of a sack of potatoes, then, and rolls up, curling his shoulders, sliding his feet apart to rest either side of Duke's thighs. "Let's get you out of those wet things, too." He ignores a few crunches from his back as he bends almost in half to reach Duke's waist, slides numb fingers over the fastenings until he gets them, but he'll need a lot more cooperation from Duke to get the jeans off from his current position. Since he knows 'cooperation' and 'Duke' are highly unrelated concepts, he shifts again to improve his leverage. Duke's hands catch him under the thighs, sliding up to his buttocks, guiding him forward until he's straddling Duke's lap. Nathan's semi-erect cock scrapes against the bulge still covered at the front of Duke's jeans.

They tackle each other's shirts between the odd fumbling, tired kisses, and occasionally a mumbled complaint, such as, "Watch your ankle, idiot."

"Come on, move," Nathan grunts as he yanks at Duke's jeans again.

Duke groans. "You do know that those of us with working nerve endings are sore? Also, by the way, nowhere near energetic enough to go the whole hog tonight. Sorry."

"I'll come up with something," Nathan wryly promises. He sets his hands under Duke's butt and heaves, bringing their crotches together, though it's not actually his primary objective. Duke manages to get a hand in the back and shuck his jeans down as far as his thighs while he has the lift. Nathan briefly detours to pull them all the way off, then crawls up Duke's body again and sits on top of him, their cocks brushing together between them.

Duke says, almost petulantly, "You're squashing me." That much movement seems to have drained the rest of anything he had left, and now his whole body flops. Well... most of his body.

"Stop complaining."

Nathan holds Duke's jaw and negotiates a very careful kiss, part to avoid any chance of making his lip bleed again, and part in an effort not to make it the mess of teeth that it usually is when he takes the initiative. He slips his right hand down between them, lines up both their shafts in his fist, and starts to thrust slowly, letting his friction take care of Duke.

Duke groans again, which starts off as sarcasm but ends unravelling into a higher pitch of desperation. He audibly swallows and manages to say thickly, "All those years of insults, I never thought of your Trouble making you like the fucking Energiser Bunny of sex. Don't I look stupid now."

"You look stupid always," Nathan informs him. "I just didn't like to say."

"You love--" Duke's voice breaks up temporarily "--to say." He ends on a long hiss. "Yeah. That's working. Don't stop." Duke loses enough of his ragdoll lassitude to place his hands on Nathan's hips. Nathan can only assume that's meant to help guide his movements, but it's not like there's enough effort going in for him to register it, except by sight.

Anyway, Nathan thinks, good, because the other option was his mouth, and even if it wasn't torn up enough to make it even more difficult than usual, that's been put out of bounds by Duke days ago, and with such extreme prejudice that he suspects it's still out of bounds. And he'd thought lack of a gag reflex would be a plus.

For a while they just match their breathing, which is an awfully long time for Duke to stay quiet, so Nathan imagines white fluffy snowflakes are drifting down in hell. But eventually the silence breaks with a sort of long drawn-out whimper as Duke's comes. Nathan's hand slips, holding them together, but he finds he's following right after Duke at just the sight. Which is probably his body telling him he's tired too, and should quit moving about. Duke reaches a hand between them to help finish Nathan off with a few sleepy tugs.

"You're uncannily well-behaved today," he tells Nathan's penis.

Nathan doffs him in the side of the head with his bandaged hand and slides off the bed, intending to go get a towel to rub them both down. His ankle almost folds when it hits the floor, but Nathan catches himself and carries on. Since being up and about looks like it presents a challenge, he readies himself to turn in for the night at the same time. When he returns, Duke is climbing stiffly back into bed, having done the same. The take-out boxes and beer bottles have been cleared away. Nathan ditches the towel and climbs back in beside him.

Duke turns over, flings an arm across him while settling face-down, and declares to the pillows that if any mud monsters attack tonight, Nathan is to deal with them himself.

"You'll throw me out of bed again so I can do that?"

"Yeah. Sorry. That was rude."

"Mitigating circumstances." Nathan traces one of Duke's tattoos on the shoulder facing him.

Enough time passes that Nathan thinks he might actually have gone to sleep, before Duke pulls his face out of the pillows and props himself up to regard Nathan with -- worryingly -- a bad case of serious face. Nathan rolls his eyes. These sort of bedroom conversations are getting old and he can do without being given that face last thing on a night. He beats Duke to the punch with his demand of, "What?"

Duke frowns at him. "All right. But I was just going to say..." It's not reassuring that he needs to pause and take that kind of a deep breath to say it. "You don't need me." His hands are already rising between them to stall protest. "Not like this. Not 24/7." Frustration rolls out from him. "It's been -- this week -- I'm not saying I wouldn't like to hide in this room and have sex every spare hour of the day, but you are not the only one with responsibilities. Jennifer... I brought her to Haven, and I promised I'd spend more time with her, do the whole showing-around, and tomorrow... Yeah. Tomorrow I should do more of that. Then there's all the shit with Wade and the Gull, which I really should start getting a handle on, and... Damn it, I guess I just don't know about this almost-a-cop business. It's freaking me out. Not that I don't want to work with you, but I really don't want to do your work." He gives an uneven laugh and a shudder, sighs and grips Nathan's shoulder, and leans in to touch their foreheads together.

"'Responsibilities'." Nathan nods cagily into the contact. He tells himself it's not a rejection but, damn, it might as well be. He wants to seize what he can while he's still breathing, for however long that lasts, but supposes he can't expect Duke to put his life on hold. He himself may have learned from his and Parker's mistakes last year, but Duke's still convinced Nathan isn't going to die.

"Also," Duke adds, "you need to go home. Tidy the place up or something. I don't know how you can live with it in that state."

"I'm not," Nathan reminds him.

"Right. And that's--" Duke scowls at him suspiciously. "I do not want to see you get the wrong idea here, because I fucking want this, okay? I want this. It's just -- things have to shuffle around. You're better now. Ish. Mostly. Anyway, life goes on. Or resumes, or whatever."

Better? thinks Nathan, and he still doesn't understand, doesn't get what they've all been talking about. He's fine, and he's been fine. Okay, it took a bit of readjustment being back in town, getting used to no longer feeling like someone was going to kill him at every corner -- or, okay, perhaps not so much that one. But getting used to going back to something like his old life, his old self. That's not the same as not being--

"Fine," he says. "After work tomorrow I'll go home. But you call me when you've got a spare hour or two, and in the morning--"

He'll take this one day and one negotiation at a time, since any tomorrow could be the day he finds Audrey and the day that ends him. But he has high hopes for the morning.

"Yeah, okay," Duke says, tension draining out of him in an almost visible whoosh, and that was unexpectedly easy, so maybe this really will be okay. "In the morning. Now go to sleep, you insane and... unexpected nymphomaniac. Since it sounds like I'm gonna need my energy." He turns over, but snags Nathan's arm under his, so Nathan's face ends up against the back of his shoulder as he's tugged along too.

Duke mumbles, almost too quietly to hear, "This is going to take some explaining when Audrey gets back."

Nathan keeps his mouth shut, and lets Duke keep his captured hand. He can't feel Duke's bare flesh above or beneath it, although the small movements of breathing tell him there's something there, shifting his hand in a slowing rhythm. Sensation, Nathan can't have. He spent years knowing that. It took despair and the inexorable sense of time running out on him to realise that pleasure, pain -- shadows of them, anyway -- are at the limits of his grasp. At this point, it almost doesn't matter which one he clutches for... though he's leaning towards pleasure, this week.

***

In the morning, Nathan is forty-five minutes late joining Dwight on a crime scene because fifteen minutes earlier, he was still fucking Duke, and half an hour before that, they were still arguing about it.

END

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ENDNOTES: Spook_me ficathon, prompt: shapeshifter. Haven has a few canon examples, so I tried to take the monster in a different direction.

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