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Audrey finds pieces of herself in the after-images of dreams. In the slow molasses moments when her body rouses from sleep without alarm. Mornings when she stirs to the sound of Nathan grinding coffee at the kitchen counter, Duke pressing a sleep-soaked kiss against the sweaty hollow of her throat. She feels slivers of memory twist and turn under her skin, both alien and familiar, an intrusion and a returning home.
She looks up at the sound of the door to see him enter the bar, soft brown hair pulled back from his face, windbreaker shrugged on over a well-worn cotton t-shirt. He stands in the doorway, blinking as if he’s letting his eyes adjust to the dim restaurant lighting.
“Oh, hey stranger!” she says, feeling an unpremeditated smile light up her face. She scrambles to remember the guy’s name. Oh, God, this is embarrassing. “It’s been awhile --” she can’t honestly remember. Six months, a year ago? He -- at one time he must have been a regular.
She reaches for the forty-year Glenfiddich before he’s crossed the sparsely-populated room to slide into a seat at the counter. Lexie’s always been better at drinks and faces than she’s been at names, but -- this guy.
She really ought to remember this one. She twitches her nose in annoyance as she pulls a glass from beneath the counter and drops in the ice.
“Yeah,” the guy says, gaze on her like she puzzles him as much as he puzzles her. “Yeah, I’ve been ... traveling?” It’s almost a question. She nods encouragingly. Traveling sounds right. This guy, she remembers him always on the move.
She slides the glass across the bar to the man, who catches it smoothly, though with a look of surprise -- “How did you --?”
“You’re whiskey on the rocks, sailor boy,” she says -- and where had that come from? But she suddenly remembers how he took her on board, once, how he’d rucked up her shirt, pressed her back to the gunwale, and licked her nipples hard in the cool air of an early autumn night. She can feel the heat of his hands firm at her waist, a contrast to the evening breeze off the ocean. Fingers slipping into her waistband, her own hands gripping the cold edge of the painted steel against her ass --
She blinks. She wonders how drunk they’d both been, and under what circumstances. Lexie doesn’t drink on the job, so -- but. She can’t -- she can’t remember how they’d reached that point, or -- or afterwards, how they’d left things.
But looking at him, she doesn’t feel ... doesn’t feel like he was one of her mistakes.
Why the hell can’t she remember his --?
“Duke,” the man says, holding out a hand in greeting. “Name’s Duke.”
“Duke,” Audrey sighs awake, smiling, against Duke’s lips as Nathan slides a palm down to the small of her back, pulling her into the tangle of their limbs. “Audrey,” Duke whispers back, “Audrey,” like he knows she needs to hear him say it. She’s been waking disoriented the past few days, feeling a jumble of selves close to the surface. Duke is always there to remind her.
Why does she know Duke will always be there to remind her?
Lexie looks up as he enters the bar in the slant of late-afternoon light. A tangle of brown hair pulled back from his face, a shadow of scruff on his chin. He catches her eye across the room and she feels a smile spread across her face to match his own.
God, it’s been too long. He used to be such a regular, what, a year, six months ago? And then -- “Hey stranger! Where ya been?” she says, as he weaves through the near-empty restaurant, and slides onto the bar stool before her.
“Hey,” he says, something unexpectedly soft and slightly ... baffled sliding across his face. Like he can’t quite remember her name but feels he ought to. Like she’s pretty sure she should remember his. And now they’re eyeing one another in mutual embarrassment as she pours his Glenfiddich and slides it across the bar. Because suddenly she’s remembering the feel of his lips on hers, his hands on her back, on her ass, the way she’d groped hungrily back.
The look on his face, and the way his fingers fumble against hers as he takes the glass, tells Lexie he remembers too.
Danny? No. Doug? Ugh, no. She’d dated a loser named Doug in high school and swore she’d never have sex with anyone by that name again.
She runs a hand through her hair in irritation -- she can’t actually remember how they left things. God, this is embarrassing.
“So --” he says, tossing the shot back and shaking his head, slightly, on the downswing. “--how’s ... everything with you? ...here?” He waves the hand not hold his glass in a gesture that takes in Rhonda running the mid-afternoon register reports, their three regulars in the back corner talking over pints of Sam Adams. “I’ve been ... away? On a trip. Sorry I haven’t ... been by in awhile.”
It’s almost a question, like he’s not sure how long it’s been himself, and why he stayed away.
And Jeez, Lexie wants to be pissed at him. Wants to put a hand to her hip and drawl, What, you can’t pick up a phone? like it doesn't really matter, like she hadn't really expected to see him again and now who does he think she is strolling back in here like they can just pick up where -- pick up where -- But instead what she feels it a stab of confused sympathy. Because the harder she tries to recall what sort of thing they'd shared -- remember the sex that's left her feeling this aroused and wanting, even after half a year’s absence -- the more the specifics retreat into the recesses of her mind. Like so many dreams she’s been having lately: rich with detail that she feels certain she’ll remember upon waking, only to find that by the time she’s stepping into the shower all she knows the feeling the dreams have left lodged deep in her gut.
Except -- “Duke. God, it’s good to see you again.” At least she remembers his name.
She loves Duke like this, hair mussed against the pillow, skin soft in the warm light of the bedside lamp as he wraps his hands around the spindles in the head of their bed and anchors himself as Nathan presses kisses down the line of his throat. Without lifting his head, Nathan reaches back and hooks a hand behind her thigh, steadies her where she’s braced above Duke’s hips, pelvis tilted so Duke can work himself against the soft flesh of her belly, between her thighs, against her clit, slick with lube and her own arousal.
“God, Duke, do you even know how beautiful you are to me?” she mouths against his clavicle, “Fuck, I could do this all night --” he whimpers against Nathan’s cheek, the thrust of his hips growing more urgent as she in works her own back and forth, rising and lowering herself from the bed in steady counterpoint.
“Jesus, Audrey, please --”
Nathan runs his palm up over her rump, along her spine as she arches her back, dragging her breasts in slow circles across Duke’s chest, enjoying the weight of them, the way her nipples catch on his, the feel of the soft-rough hair scattered down his breastbone. She presses her forehead into the curve of his shoulder and rolls her hips, feeling how his breath stutters, grows harsher. His hands come up, greedy, to pull her in closer --
When Lexie looks up from the till to find Duke standing, hesitant, at the door of the empty bar, she wants to deny that her first reaction is pure pleasure. He’s here, he’s come back to her, he’s -- fuck, just as beautiful. She wants to ask where have you been and why haven’t you called. But it's not like she has any right to expect -- after a night? a week? God, it’s embarrassing. All she can really remember is how good they’d been together. It’s not like she’d had any illusions of permanence, except --
She puts a hand to her head, pressing her thumb and index finger against the ache in her temples.
“Hey, I -- is this a bad time?” Duke takes a step toward the bar.
“Hey, Duke,” Lexie responds, pushing the hair back from her forehead -- as if the gesture can clear the cobwebs clouding her memory away -- “no, I -- it's good to see you. Where you been?”
There’s a pause. “I -- I don’t actually -- on the Rouge?” He poses it as a question. “Traveling, I guess. I didn’t -- I didn’t mean to be gone so long.” He pauses again. “It’s been a rough ... a rough few months. I’ve been having trouble keeping track of things. I probably owe you an apology for -- an apology. I’m sorry.”
“Mmm.” She presses her lips together against a sound that comes out more sympathetic than skeptical. Because the thing is, she wants to be pissed. But she gets what he’s saying. Shit happens and you mean to -- you mean to go back to -- and then with one thing and another it’s -- maybe it’s too late.
She doesn’t want it to be too late.
Duke slides into a seat at the bar, leans heavily on his elbows. He looks tired, and he clearly hasn’t gotten around to shaving in a day or two. There are circles under his eyes. Lexie wants to reach out and brush the soft brown hair away from his face, tuck it behind his ears, kiss the furrows between his eyebrows smooth.
Jesus, she’s got it bad.
“I’m sorry too,” she says, and there’s a moment of silence as they study one another. It’s warm and almost eerily quiet in here, the late-afternoon sun slanting through the frosted restaurant windows, and Lexie is suddenly aware of how alone they are. It’s odd since usually there are a few regulars this time of day, washed up in their booth in the corner, and Rhonda should be here by now but maybe she’s running late -- she’s probably texted but Lexie hasn’t checked her phone since -- her phone since --
The last night, before he’d -- she’d? -- left, they’d made love in her bed. A bed that had already become their bed in the handful of days they had had together. Her body remembers, viscerally, after she’d come the first time, how the urgent hunger for Duke to be inside her had welled up through her belly. How he’d pressed inside as she’d lain loose-limbed against the pillows and hands -- and hands -- there had been --
-- another, sudden stab of pain ricochets through her skull -- dammit, these headaches of hers are getting worse -- and when she can see again her vision blurs, flickering at the edges, and across lacquered bar top Duke looks strangely doubled. As if behind his face lay a shadow of -- of someone else.
“Au --” Duke’s hands are on her, sliding up her arms where she’s braced on the bar, cool against the back of her neck, cupping her cheeks, she can smell him now, the scent of the sea and the pepper-patchouli incense he favors. She couldn’t have said two minutes ago what the man smelled of, and now she wonders how she went a single day in the past six months without mourning the loss.
She inhales, almost gasping with relief, then inhales again, gripping Duke’s forearms like he’s pulling her out of the Atlantic ocean.
“I missed you,” is what comes out of her mouth, pathetically, and fuck is she going to regret that admission if he’s just here to wish her a good life and move on.
“Yeah,” is his response, though, ragged, almost beyond exhaustion, as if -- “Yeah, I’ve been missing you too.”
Her boss is probably going to fire her for this, Lexie thinks, as she pulls Duke into the shadowed recesses of the dining room. She would fire her ass for this because what the fuck is she even thinking? Pressing a guy she hasn’t seen in six months up against the graffitied wall of the restroom hallway. All over him like she's never left senior year of high school behind. If Rhonda walks in on them now Lexie’ll never hear the end of it.
But she can’t bring herself to care because she doesn’t want to waste her time thinking about the man in front of her any longer -- thoughts are what make make her headache worse. While touching him makes everything better.
The more of him she has beneath her hands, the more warm skin she feels under her fingers, mouth, pressed against her belly as she pulls his t-shirt up over his willing torso, arms, head, the more herself Lexie feels she's becoming. As she slides a hand behind his neck and pulls him down into a kiss it feels like she’s groping her way out of the tangled half-memories that send pain lancing down her brain stem, as if she’s emerging from a stifling labyrinth of stale, recycled dreams into the open air, awake, awaking. Duke tastes and smells and feels like someone key -- someone vital -- to well-being, to life. Her brain can’t make sense of how or why. If this was what they had together why had he ever -- she ever -- walked away?
So she stops trying to make him make sense altogether.
She just needs him. Closer.
“Hey, hey,” Duke is murmuring in her ear, “Hey, this isn’t -- God, I’ve missed -- hey, I’m not going -- I’m not going anywhere. I’m sorry. I’m -- I’m not sure what happened, I can’t remember -- I can’t fucking remember what --”
“It’s okay, it’s okay --” she’s mumbling against his lips, into the stubble along his jawline, his skin hot even against the heat of her mouth. She feels feverish, as if everything is happening at a slight distance and a little too close simultaneously.
It’s like being high. Except she can’t remember the last time she’s had a joint to smoke.
“--just, please, you’re back. You came back. You -- found me, Duke. You’ve found me. Please, just -- touch me. Please.” She’s babbling. She’s not even making sense to herself. So she stops trying to talk and steadies herself against his breastbone with her forehead so her hands are free to unbutton, unzip, and shove at her jeans.
Her hands are shaking.
Duke presses a kiss against her temple and seems to understand what she needs without her asking, thank God, because he says, “Here, babe, I gotcha --” and turns her gently in his arms, pulls her back against his chest, and wraps his right arm across her chest, a strong, sure hand pressed firm to her breast, a steadying pressure even through the cotton of her shirt and bra. She reaches back to scrabble at his hips, shoving back against his groin with her ass, hips restless with want.
He laughs softly against her ear, a fond knowingness that coils deep in her belly like hope.
He palms his free hand down across the swell of her stomach, curls his fingers to drag blunt fingernails with a teasing scritch across the fur that begins low on her abdomen. And then his fingers are slipping under the worn elastic of her panties, pressing between her folds as she adjusts her footing, opens her hips to accommodate him, and feels his fingers find her clit. His technique is a little rough, and she wordlessly grips his wrist to gentle him. He backs off immediately -- have they done this before? she has the thought, then lets it go -- and spreads his fingers to play just the way she likes it with long, slender fingers on either side of the nub and shaft, push and pull, push and pull, and --
-- ohFuck -- she’s shaking in his arms, almost before she realizes the orgasm is upon her, and Duke is bracing himself, knees locked, behind her, holding her tight, murmuring nonsense syllables in her ear.
What words she picks out from the rest carrying a dangerous weight to them, carrying truths she can’t afford to examine, not yet.
Her heart is still pounding in her ears, clothes uncomfortable against over-sensitive skin, as she fumbles to turn around, place a steadying hand against the wall next to Duke’s flank, and grapple with uncoordinated fingers at his belt and zipper, wanting access to the cock she can feel engorged and hot beneath the denim.
“Let me, here --” Duke says, voice tight with desire, batting her clumsy hands aside so he can undo the belt and yank down his own zipper.
She giggles against his shoulder, feeling slightly drunk on her post-coital high. She watches, marveling, as he undoes the belt buckle, button, zipper, eases his jeans down his hips. This man who’s walked into her bar today, he’s already hers -- he’s letting her see, touch, taste, smell, get the scent of him under her nails where she’ll carry it through the long night shift into the morning. At this point, she doesn’t even care -- she absolutely one hundred fucking percent cares -- if they never do this again -- she wants to do this every night for the rest of her life -- or if they’ve ever done this before -- she remembers pressing her nose into the velvet-skin-scratchy-fur at the base of his dick, tonguing wet kisses along the twisting vein that traces shallow beneath the skin, feels a mouth on her clit, hands steady on her hips --
She shakes her head, abruptly, before the pain can even knock on the door, and runs a hand down his forearm elbow to the back of his hand, fingers intertwining, clasping, squeezing, then moving on, pressing down along the curving length of him, feeling him pulse against the caress, a hiss of breath escaping his lips. His hands flatten back the wall, fingers reaching, and she knows without knowing who it is he’s reaching for -- shadows, second faces -- can’t think don’t think -- sees him find purchase on the thin strip of molding at the door to the ladies’ washroom.
She spreads hands at his hips and slides both hands under the waistband of his pants, working his briefs down, gently, until his dick comes free, then presses her body back against his side and returns her hand to his groin, this time with no fabric between them.
It doesn’t take long, he’s already close, and as long as she doesn’t look directly at the memories welling up from some closed-off place inside her she can let her body recall the movements, remember how to squeeze and pull, how to play her thumb over the swollen head of his penis, not pausing to determine whether the desire to place a kiss just there is borne of past experience or anticipatory desire.
Next time. There will be a next time.
She won’t think about how. Or where. Or when. Or anything beyond this moment of breath and pull and twist and press and --
“Fuck,” Duke arches back against the wall, hips jerking hard against her pelvis, beneath her hands, coming hot against her wrist and forearm as she hmms against his shaking fingers and keeps a steady rhythm.
“Fuck, Audrey --!” he gasps --
-- and the pain explodes behind Lexie’s eyes.
“Hey,” Duke finds Audrey out on the porch cradling her rapidly-cooling second cup of coffee in cupped palms. It’s a bright New England morning, the kind that make residents feel briefly that winter is worth the slog for the autumn that precedes it. There’s a light mist rising off the bay.
He leans on the rail beside her, hands clasped before loosely in lieu of coffee, and squints out over the water. “Nathan texted to say he and Farley are on their way back from the vet’s. I’ll need to get down to the kitchen in a bit. Jay’s coming by at two to help with prep.”
Audrey takes a swig of coffee, then turns to lean back against the rail. The windows of their apartment, curtains pulled back to let in the midday sun, don’t offer her any easy entré into what she wants to ask, or say.
“Sometimes I have these -- dreams,” she starts.
“Yeah. I know,” Duke says, ducking his head in acknowledgement. “Nathan and I -- we know.”
They haven’t talked much about them, yet. Mostly because Audrey isn’t sure how to put words to how it feels, all of these multiple histories jostling beneath her skin, wrapping their fingers around her bones. Sometimes, she sees wisps of them in the mirror, feels them in the arc of a gesture, in the tenor of a laugh.
Them. Us. Me.
“Audrey,” Duke says to his hands. “You know -- you know Nathan and I are gonna be okay with this whole multiplicities-of-you thing, right? Hell, it’s not the weirdest thing that’s ever happened in Haven. It’s not even the weirdest thing that’s happened to us.”
Of course she’s worried about scaring them. She’s worried about scaring herself.
She’s not sure if the remembering is making it easier, or worse.
Shards of truth are sometimes harder to bear than the imprint left behind by absence.
Duke, reaching for Nathan and grasping at air.
The silence of the bar-that-wasn’t, a t once a prison and a refuge.
She’d run away and he’d come to find her. Again. And again. And again.
“Sometimes,” she begins again. “Sometimes, I have these dreams. That aren’t dreams. Memories. From before. They’re like dreams. They don’t usually make -- they don’t make sense. They’re hard to piece together. I don’t always know which me they belong to. Sometimes they’re just -- an impression of color. A feeling. I wake up and I think, ‘God, I did that? How did I ever forget' and then by the time the radio clicks on it’s gone --” She gestures with her hand, pfft, a starburst of fingers out toward the sea.
The memories, they’re like the mist on the water.
“Sometimes,” she says, looking over at Duke who’s listening with his whole body in that way he does, listening as he watches a hawk circle over the distant pines. “Some nights I have these -- I remember things from when I was in the barn. I thought, when I came out, and Lexie was still right there” -- she passes a hand in front of her face, thinking about how her Lexie-self rode so close, those first days, when she’d needed Lexie to help keep Nathan alive -- “I thought I remembered everything.”
“Yeah, I thought I had too,” Duke agrees. He glances over his shoulder, checking her expression. Puts out a hand and curls his fingers into the hollow of her elbow.
The contact helps, as it always does.
“But you’ve -- remembered more? Since then?”
“I think,” he clears his throat. “I think I found you. I think the barn didn’t want you found. I don’t think I remembered I was looking, or why I was there, but I still found you. I think I had to keep finding you. Keep walking into that damn bar over and over and over again.”
“Until the last time,” Audrey says, squinting into the sky. Remembering black pepper, patchouli, and the taste of his skin beneath her tongue.
Duke turns his whole body toward her now and she balances her coffee mug on the rail so she can drape her arms around his neck, pulling him into an embrace. “I still don’t trust my memory,” Duke says, pressing his forehead against hers, “It comes back in bits and pieces, and only when I’m not pushing to remember.” He flushes, even as a smile catches at his lips. “It can be -- awkward sometimes. Like when I remember during practice.”
Audrey laughs. She remembers enough, now, to imagine that intrusive memories would make mindfulness ... difficult. Duke dips his head for a kiss.
“I love you,” she says against his cheek, because it seems important to say. "I love you." They’ve all three of them been saying it a lot, lately. Life in Haven, life in general, seems to warrant it. “I love you, Duke. You found me.”
“I found you, Audrey mine.” Duke agrees. “I found you, and you knew me. Every time. From the moment I walked in the door.”