TroublesFest story revealed: "All That Time We Were Buccaneers" (Duke/Nathan)

[dorinda]

TroublesFest authors have been revealed, and this is my story:

All That Time We Were Buccaneers (3857 words) by Dorinda
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Haven
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Duke Crocker/Nathan Wuornos
Characters: Duke Crocker, Nathan Wuornos
Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Mind Control, Injury, Alcohol, Kissing, Flashbacks, Hand Jobs, Missing Scene, Pirates
Summary: Duke has been mind-controlled into playing pirate, but Nathan is not playing. Duke is not a pirate, and neither is Nathan, dammit. ...Not anymore.

I'd been interested in writing this missing scene for some time (as you can tell, from my previous post about Last Year's Me). In episode 3x10, "Burned", Duke is mind-controlled for a while by a little girl with a Trouble. And eventually he's playing 'pirate' for her, dashing about, fighting off invisible enemies, with the stereotypical pirate yarrr and so forth. Audrey and Nathan arrive while Duke is swordfighting on the perilous top rail of the Gull's balcony, and Nathan races up the stairs to help him, but before Nathan can get there, Duke slips and falls. Nathan rushes to his side (to put his hands all over him, natch), and tries to look after him, while Duke unwisely staggers to his feet and then passes out. Commercial.

Then there's a scene where Duke and Nathan are both not present, while Audrey talks to the Troubled girl. When we finally see Nathan again, he says that Duke is "resting", and "at least he stopped thinking I'm an enemy pirate".

So, you know, nice hurt/comfort missing scene potential. But what pushed it over the edge for me is a little exchange toward the end of the episode. On the page, it's nothing special; they stand by the truck, Nathan asks Duke if he's good, Duke says he is and asks Nathan to keep the town from imploding until he gets back. But the proximity, the touching, the way they look at each other, the husky softness of their voices, it's a surprisingly intimate moment (and in that gif you can't even see low enough in the frame to see how Nathan is touching him). In season 3, they'd been having some rocky times (rockier than usual), so it was interesting to see their guard so willingly down here.

That was the endpoint I had in mind for the missing scene, then, positing some change that might have happened while Nathan was looking after Duke. Also I figured, what if the pirate thing took a little while to finish wearing off? (Yarrrr. :D)

This is also my entry in the "explain the old pirate sticker in Nathan's truck" sweepstakes--Killa noticed the sticker in season 1 episode 3 and put up a nice screencap: http://killabeez.dreamwidth.org/406570.html , and people have drawn (delightful) connections between it and Duke ever since.

Comments

[roseveare]

Yours was the only one I guessed right, and that's because you'd posted that previous post about it, so I knew it must be a theme that had been around last year. (Sorry, I've been stalking the 'members' posts of the DW Haven comm trying to guess. Not in a creepy way.)

I am beginning to suspect that I will be writing for you every time this exchange is run!

[dorinda]

I can never guess anybody, at Yuletide-time or really anytime, so I'm impressed!

I guess maybe we have interests in common? *eyes your icon with interest*

[roseveare]

Hah, I was so wrong on a few others. I thought someone had a distinctive weird grammar tell and it turned out to be someone else entirely who had written that story!

I think I matched on Dwight/(Nathan/Dwight) and Duke/Nathan both times. I just don't understand the lack of Nathan/Dwight. Or Dwight slash in general. I do kind of struggle with making myself write Dwight though... But for me I think it's because he is nice. There's less tension with characters who are just so intrinsically decent. I have the start of a plot and it's automatically Nathan and Duke that jump into my head because there's that friction and they're so flawed and silly and can snipe at each other the whole way through. I really must try and write a plottier fic with Nathan and Dwight sometime.

[dorinda]

I really must try and write a plottier fic with Nathan and Dwight sometime.

If you do, you have a reader in line right here! :D

It's interesting--I have found Duke/Nathan more challenging/less comfortable for me than a lot of other things I've written, and I think it's because of that exact friction. I think in my fannish life, I more often have gravitated to characters who are already close friends/partners, like the buddy-cop, buddy-spy, buddy-etc. type of people. (Not all of the time, but more of the time.)

I still found plenty of opportunities for tension, but it's a very different kind of tension. Duke and Nathan's sort of "frenemies" tone (at least until season 4, when the show seemed to let them dial down the enemies part) was more prickly at first than I was comfortable with. But I enjoyed tackling them anyway (once I got brave enough to sign up for the Fest), and I figure it's good to get out of the comfort zone sometimes.

[roseveare]

I think in the past a lot of the things I've written have been bickering couples or outright enemy ships. *thinks about it* yeah. And my het OTP for Haven is Jordan/Nathan, which probably says something, too. So Duke and Nathan have a lot sweeter and healthier relationship than most of the things I write. In fact, they're probably encouraging me to get out of my (dis)comfort zone, because I've written much cuter things with them than most of my fannish endeavours. :)

At the moment I'm in a position of pretty much wanting to write sequels for everything, meep. Both those long Troublesfest fics, I really wanted the chance to do more with the pairings (or foursome, in the other case) because I love plot and tying plot into character the most, and I hadn't tried writing either of them before, but I didn't end up having the time or space in a challenge fic to do more than PWPish stories. So I shall see what happens.