icarus_chained (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
icarus_chained) wrote2015-12-12 12:59 am
icarus_chained) wrote2015-12-12 12:59 am
And Again (Fo4 Fic)
One more quick story before I go to bed for two days and pretend that work is a thing that happens to other people. Heh. Not a prompt fic this time. I thought I'd try Nick/F!SS.
Title: Mornings Grey and Bright
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Fallout 4
Characters/Pairings: Female Sole Survivor, Nick Valentine, Ellie Perkins. Nick/F!SS, Nick & Ellie
Summary: Nora wakes up achey and exhausted at the Valentine Detective Agency, and shambles out into the office to find a half-dressed and rather startled Nick Valentine staring at her. To be fair, she's doing some staring herself. It's not a bad sight to wake up to of a morning
Wordcount: 3928
Warnings/Notes: Exhaustion, aches and pains, unexpected nakedness, embarrassment, coffee, explanations, banter, attraction, insecurity, comfort, romance, happy ending
Disclaimer: Not mine
Title: Mornings Grey and Bright
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Fallout 4
Characters/Pairings: Female Sole Survivor, Nick Valentine, Ellie Perkins. Nick/F!SS, Nick & Ellie
Summary: Nora wakes up achey and exhausted at the Valentine Detective Agency, and shambles out into the office to find a half-dressed and rather startled Nick Valentine staring at her. To be fair, she's doing some staring herself. It's not a bad sight to wake up to of a morning
Wordcount: 3928
Warnings/Notes: Exhaustion, aches and pains, unexpected nakedness, embarrassment, coffee, explanations, banter, attraction, insecurity, comfort, romance, happy ending
Disclaimer: Not mine
Mornings Grey and Bright
Nora blinked open her eyes, squinting exhaustedly in the greyish light that filtered through from somewhere. It was ... She fumbled for her pip-boy. God. It was the asscrack of dawn. She was sprawled out on Nick's cot, and every muscle in her body ached like she'd gone ten rounds with a supermutant. Which she hadn't, as far as she remembered, at least not recently, but she'd sure as hell done something, which her entire body was more than happy to let her know about right now. Ugh. Why in the name of God and little mutated fishes was she awake?
She rolled carefully onto her back, staring dry-eyed up at the battered wooden steps over her head. After a couple of minutes the initial surge of 'ow, ow, morning, why' started to fade off, and she gradually became aware of noises in the next room. Not intrusive ones, not really, not something she'd have thought would be enough to wake her after ... what had happened last night? Oh, right. Showered in debris by a trigger-happy Raider with a grenade. That was it. Anyway. The little tinkering noises from the office really shouldn't have been enough to wake her, given how absolutely wiped-out she'd been only a few hours ago. Why had she ...?
Someone'd come in. She had a vague memory. The sound of voices? Someone had come in, and then they'd left again. Instinct had jolted her awake, if not necessarily rendered her sentient, and she'd listened to voices for a ... a couple of minutes? Half an hour? She wasn't sure. It hadn't been unfriendly, anyway. She thought she remembered Nick chuckling, warm and playful, not worried at all. Ellie, probably. Just Ellie coming by to check on things. Nora's brain and her instincts, mutually fed-up and exhausted, had both taken that as permission to go the hell back to sleep. She'd dozed off again.
Except, apparently, not all the way. Some bit of her had stubbornly refused to go properly back to sleep like a sane exhausted person, and now here she was. Squinting in the grey light of dawn, listening to Nick fiddle with things and ... Huh. And hum quietly to himself, little snatches of old pre-war tunes while he obviously thought no one was listening.
Nora felt a little smile creep onto her face, even in spite of the aches and pains. Aw hell. She was awake now anyway, and she guessed Nick's oblivious company wasn't that bad of a thing to wake up to.
Not a bad thing at all.
She rolled over quietly, swung her legs off the cot and levered herself up to sitting. She winced, but did her best not to give voice to the suddenly very insistent twinges along her back and neck in particular. She wasn't even sure why, when Nick would have heard her the second she moved to get up. It was just ... it was barely even dawn, and it was nice and quiet around here, and she didn't particularly want to disturb that just yet. Let things just stay calm and quiet a little longer. She could use a bit of that.
She pulled herself the rest of the way up with the help of the overhead stairs, pawing briefly at her face and giving her head one short, sharp shake to try and get a couple of the cobwebs out. She regretted that part almost instantly. Ow, ow. Okay. Pulled something in the neck or shoulder vicinity, yes ma'am, got it. Don't make any sudden head movements for a while. Roger that. Nora groaned quietly, cupping her face briefly in her palms, and then she gave up. She dropped her arms down by her sides, making sure to do it gently in anticipation of any new and interesting aches, and started shuffling zombie-like out into the office. This was not going to be a morning for grace and elegance. This was barely a morning for verticality. It was ...
She paused in that thought, blinking at the sight that greeted her in the office and wondering for a second if she'd actually woken up as much as she thought she had. Nick, apparently so distracted that he hadn't, in fact, heard her get up, stared back at her in startled wariness from the desk chair. He had a deer-in-the-headlights sort of look about him. She probably wasn't much better herself. Her gaze tracked downwards, skimmed across him, across rather more of him than normal, and then made its bewildered way back to his face. If he'd been human, he'd probably have flushed bright red.
It wasn't a morning for grace and elegance. It also wasn't a morning for clothes, apparently. Nora shook her head, very carefully. She blinked at Nick in helpless confusion. Nick, naked to the waist, his trademark tie and trenchcoat nowhere in evidence, blinked back. For a good minute there, neither of them said anything. Neither of them could. The silence stretched cheerfully in the grey, post-dawn confusion.
"... Um?" Nora tried at last, waving her hands through the air in aimless question. "I think I should ... I should go back to bed? I don't think ... I think maybe I'm not all the way awake yet. I'm having some sort of a dream." She let out an exhausted giggle, hiccupping at the sight of his concerned expression. So familiar, and yet so strange, sat above the not-at-all familiar sight of him damn near in his altogether. Nora pressed her hands to her mouth, feeling vaguely hysterical suddenly. "I'm sorry, Nick. I should go back to bed. I'm sorry I disturbed you."
She turned right back around, rather more smartly than any other motion she'd managed this morning and mostly out of giddy mortification, and behind her Nick scrambled hastily to his feet. He spluttered a bit, wrongfooted, and reached out towards her. Nora, who'd half-turned back towards him at the noise, blinked at him some more. Taking in the view, maybe. Just a little bit. She resisted the urge to giggle again. Nick looked alarmed and constipated enough as it was.
"No, you--" he said, grimacing uneasily. "I mean, there's no need to go if ya don't want to. I'm not ... I mean ... Aw hell. Sorry, kid. I thought you wouldn't be up until later, and I figured I'd be dressed by then. It's, ah. It's just that it's laundry day, ya know?"
He grimaced again, reaching up to rub the back of his neck in embarrassment. He used the left, the skin-covered one, and Nora was mildly distracted for a second noticing that the synthetic skin went all the way up the arm. It was almost completely whole, a pretty distinct contrast to both the other arm and the chest and throat between them. Nick had a few chunks taken out of him, ragged tears here or there. There was a surprising amount of intact skin, though. Arranged in panels, like you saw on gen-2s. She couldn't help focusing on it. There was ... there was just so much. So much Nick, so much she'd never seen before. She had to shake herself before the staring started to get really embarrassing.
"... Laundry day?" she managed faintly, pinning her eyes to the wall of case files behind him in an effort to avoid further distraction. "You ... You have laundry days? I didn't think ..."
She trailed off, realising there was no way to finish that without making even more of a fool of herself, and Nick chuckled abruptly. He was shaking his head when she looked back at him, and his yellow eyes looked warm and amused without the fedora to shadow them.
"It was Ellie's idea," he explained, moving back towards the desk and gesturing gently for her to follow him. He even pulled out a chair for her, steering her into it while he rooted around for a mug and the coffee pot. Nora sat, mostly out of a lack of anything else to do, and Nick smiled down at her some. "I didn't think of it for ages either. I mean, it took me a while to get clothes, ya know? I crawled out of a garbage heap and scrounged whatever I could find for a while, until I got established enough to set my sights a bit higher than some pants and a bit of rope to hold 'em up. Even when I got myself a bit of style back, washing just didn't occur to me all that often. I don't sweat, so it didn't seem that urgent, the odd emergency with oil and muck aside."
He was moving around while he told her this, getting the coffee ready. His pants were hitched up around his waist with a battered leather belt. They came in a bit further on one side, where another gap in his skin gave them a small lip to hang off. She could see them shifting across him as he moved, without the trenchcoat and shirt tails to cover it. She was trying her best not to be hypnotised by it. It ... It wasn't as hard as it might have been otherwise. The clench in her gut as he talked distracted her. She'd seen him nearly naked now, in nothing but a pair of pants. It was ... she could admit it was a pleasant sight here, in a hazy sort of way, but imagining him like that because he had nothing else was ... different. Bad. She didn't like it at all.
"It all changed once I got Ellie," he was saying, coming back to set a hot cup of coffee on the desk in front of her. She blinked at him, caught in her staring, grateful and embarrassed. He was nice enough to ignore that, sitting back down across from her to continue his story, lighting up a cigarette for something to do with his hands. "She was ... She was amazing. Those first few weeks. She straightened a lot of stuff out for me, ya know? Looked after me. I hadn't thought I needed it. I thought I'd gotten myself together pretty good, but she put the lie to that soon enough. Got things fixed up in no time. Me as well." He smiled crookedly, the smoke curling out through the tear in his throat. "I guess you don't realise how much you're missing until suddenly you have it back. You know what I mean?"
Nora swallowed, picking up the coffee to hide her reaction to that. She nodded carefully. Once she'd washed the lump in her throat down with some half-way scalding caffeine, anyway. "I know what you mean," she agreed quietly, and he sobered slightly, recognising some things in the undercurrent of it. Some of her own history, coming back in the early morning light. He inclined his head gently her way.
"Guess you do," he noted quietly. "Guess you'd know better than many, huh? Sorry, kid. Got caught up in myself again. Didn't mean anything by it."
Nora smiled at him, bright and watery. She was waking up some, she thought. Loosening out a little, losing a couple of the aches and pains, becoming less like the walking dead. She knew Nick wouldn't taunt anybody like that. Besides. She did know what he meant, because ... because she'd been getting a lot of things back these last few weeks herself. She had things this minute that she'd been afraid she'd never have again, even if they were slightly different now. A little half-naked company over the breakfast table maybe not least of all.
So she smiled at him, wry and happy, and saluted with the coffee mug. "I know, Nick," she said, trying to coax a little grin in return. "Come on, private eye. I'm not so sentient over here. Get to the part with the laundry, will ya?"
He laughed, shaking his head and resting his cigarette in the ashtray for a minute. "Right, right," he said. "Sure thing. Okay. So Ellie had been working for me a little while, yeah? We'd gotten to know each other a bit. And one day I came back, I was stinkin' to high heaven. I'd bitten off a little more than I could chew with the case, had to take some evasive action on the way home. Ended up wading through ... I'm not even sure. I smelled like a mirelurk's behind, though. And, ya know, the office ain't exactly the biggest space in the world. The second I came through the door, after she got over the sight I made, Ellie put her foot down. Clothes off, mister! Right this second! She had me down to my parts before I'd so much as figured out what was what. I was standing there naked as a jaybird in the middle of the floor."
Nora choked, snorting coffee and grabbing at her nose in pained amazement. She stared at him through watering eyes, and he grinned back at her, knowing exactly what kind of picture he was painting. Nora wiped her mouth, looking at him half in disbelief. He put his hand on his heart, tapping his chest panel in scout's honour.
"Oh, I'm not joking," he continued serenely. "I'm probably lucky she didn't try to hose me down where I was standing. I think it was my panicked flailing that probably made her take pity on me, though. She tossed me a spare shirt and vanished with everything else, pretty much telling me to stay put and don't step in anything smelly until she got back." He grinned to himself. "I forgot to actually put the shirt on for a couple of minutes. I was just that flabbergasted. Must have made quite a sight when she came back in, standing there in my birthday suit, shirt in my hands and dazed expression on my mug."
"... Quite a sight," Nora echoed faintly. Just for a second, she knew a distinct and rather virulent moment of jealousy towards Ellie. She hoped, rather pettily, that at least Ellie had reacted with a bit of stunned staring as well. Given her own shambling hysteria this morning, just from the sight of him with his pants still on, Nora thought that if Ellie had managed to still be put-together and in command when faced with him naked and confused then she might have to do something drastic. Like crawl back into bed and bury her head until a pillow for the next, oh, five or six years or so. You know. Something small like that.
Nick squinted at her for a second, wondering at her sudden flush, but praise to the gods of achey, semi-sentient vault survivors, he didn't seem to make anything of it. He shrugged instead, and took another draw on his cigarette before carrying on.
"I guess there's not much more to it after that," he mused lightly. "Aside from the embarrassment of being steered into my shirt like an idiot, I mean. I wasn't exactly my usual suave, handsome self that day." He flashed her a little teasing smirk, maybe looking for some return sarcasm, and Nora found herself unable to manage it. She just grinned at him instead, helplessly and possibly besottedly, and that slightly worried squint came back again. "It just became sort of a tradition after that. Laundry, I mean. About once a month or so Ellie just leaves me a spare shirt or set of pants and steals the rest of my kit to run it through a wash. She was by about, oh, forty minutes ago. We do try to set it up so that clients aren't likely to wander in around that time, to avoid any awkward situations. Dawn is usually okay. Not too many up in the grey hours, ya know? Exhausted, insomniac partners who ought to know better aside, anyway."
He looked at her sideways there, a long, dry sort of look, and Nora hastily hid her face in her coffee mug again. Damn it. She was going to be permanently red at this rate. It wasn't her fault! She was sore, and exhausted, and hadn't exactly expected to be woken up by nearly-naked detectives this morning, okay? Cut a girl some slack over here.
"Don't look at me," she said, managing a decently carefree, mildly teasing tone. "I offered to go right back to bed, remember? I'd have been perfectly content to write my nearly-naked partner off as a funny dream. You were the one who made me coffee and told me to stay up. The fact that I'm awake enough to question your lack of clothing is entirely your own fault, bucko."
Nick blinked at her for second, and then he grinned. Slowly, thoughtfully. "So it is," he agreed, crinkles of humour appearing at the sides of those bright-yellow eyes. "Not that you've exactly asked a lot of questions so far, mind. Mostly you've just sat there and looked stunned. I guess I must be quite a sight, huh?"
He said it like a joke, just a little tease between the two of them, casual banter over morning coffee. Nora caught the flicker in his expression, though. She caught the tiny hint of doubt, the touch of a real question floating around under there. He was genuinely worried, she realised. He had been from the moment he'd turned around and found her staring at him in shock. If ... If he'd thought the staring was about something else besides exhausted confusion and badly-hidden prurient thoughts ...
There it was again. That little clench in her gut, like the thought of him crawling battered and naked out of a pile of junk. A thought she didn't want to have, a thing she didn't want to picture him having to go through. Add it up with the reason for her staring, with jealousy towards Ellie, with waking up and smiling to hear him humming of a morning, with sitting across from him at breakfast and feeling like she'd gotten back something precious, and shit. Shit, she had it bad, didn't she? She had it for her partner so damn bad, whether he was nearly naked or not.
The naked part wasn't putting her off, though. Not the way he was clearly wondering if it did. Let's be honest, the nearly naked part was doing kinda the opposite of putting her off over here. And hell. She was in this deep. She might as well let the guy know about it, huh?
She leaned over. She caught his wary, cautious eyes with hers, reached out and grabbed his metal hand in her own. Held it up, studied it some before threading her fingers through his, linking them cheerfully together. He blinked at her. Nora smiled.
"You're a sight, all right," she said, low and maybe a little husky. It was just her normal morning voice. Honest it was. "You're the best sight I think I've woke up to in this hell hole so far, Nick. And, if you don't mind, I think I'd like it if you told me when laundry day's scheduled for next month too. I think ... I think maybe I wouldn't mind waking up like this again sometime. If that's all right with you?"
He stared at her, his yellow eyes wide and stunned and hopeful. Her battered-looking partner, who'd crawled his way up out of a garbage heap with just a bit of help here or there. Okay. So Nora wasn't feeling jealous of Ellie anymore. Right now, she was leaning more towards 'stupidly grateful', with a side of 'happy to kill people on your say-so'. Nick stared at her, that strange, warm expression on his face, and right then Nora would happily have shot up any number of Skinny Malones and their gangs for him and Ellie both.
Maybe it showed. Maybe something else did either, Nora wasn't sure. Nick smiled suddenly, small and soft and amazed, and carefully curled his fingers closed around her hand.
"Sure thing, partner," he said, and it was too soft and quietly happy to be banter. "Though, ya know, you don't have to wait until laundry day. If you don't want to, I mean. I could ... I could pencil you in any time." He ducked his head, his hand fretting slightly. "Not to be presumptuous or anything, you understand. It's just that way we don't have to run it by Ellie or anything."
Nora bit her lip, squeezing his hand gently. His skinny metal fingers were surprisingly delicate-looking. She waited until he looked back at her, and then she nodded, suddenly calmer than she'd been in a long, long time. Calmer, and more thoughtful, and about as determined as well.
"I think we can run it past Ellie at least once, actually," she said, turning his hand in hers. He blinked, and she smiled quietly. "She looks out for you, right? She gets you fixed up, and does things like send me to save your skinny ass when you get yourself kidnapped. I'd be okay with letting her know about ... Uh. About extra mornings." She flushed a little for a second. "I mean, I'm okay not to hide it if you are. Ellie seems like she'd be okay with it?"
Nick blinked at her again. His face twisted, an expression torn half between humour and a distant sort of wonder. He tilted his head, holding her hand tight. "Are you ...?" he asked, carefully and more than a little disbelievingly. "Are you talking about asking my secretary for permission to court me over here?"
Nora grinned at him. "Actually, I was thinking more about buying her a bunch of flowers for giving me the opportunity to see you mostly naked," she said, shrugging slightly. "Your idea works too, though. Probably be cheaper, as well."
Nick snorted, this big, startled huff of laughter. He shook his head, picked up his cigarette with his left hand while keeping his right all tangled up with hers. "You know, it probably would at that," he agreed, and leaned back happily in his chair. "Though I don't know, doll. Ellie can be mean when she wants to be. You might want to buy her a little something just in case anyway. A scarf or something. You know, something pretty."
Nora laughed, leaning back herself. "Hey," she said. "Maybe Ellie ought to buy me something, for taking Mr Troublesome over here off her hands. At least part time, anyway. I'm saving her a lot of grief. Maybe she should be getting me a present."
Nick raised an eyebrow her way. "Excuse me?" he said. "Which one of us is supposed to be trouble, again? I may have started out the damsel in this relationship, but you're not exactly the safe-and-timid type yourself!"
Nora listened to him, just smiling and letting the teasing wash over her. Like his humming, when she'd first woken up this morning, alone and aching in the grey light of dawn. She let his voice just roll over her, a few more promises ahead of her and a few more things she hadn't realised how much she missed until suddenly she had them again, and she felt her neck and shoulders unknot that little more with every word.
Not a bad thing to wake up to, no. Not even at the asscrack of dawn, not even after crawling out of a garbage pile the night before. She held Nick's hand, and listened to Nick's voice, and let herself just smile away the aches.
For sure, Nick Valentine was never a bad thing to wake up to at all.
Nora blinked open her eyes, squinting exhaustedly in the greyish light that filtered through from somewhere. It was ... She fumbled for her pip-boy. God. It was the asscrack of dawn. She was sprawled out on Nick's cot, and every muscle in her body ached like she'd gone ten rounds with a supermutant. Which she hadn't, as far as she remembered, at least not recently, but she'd sure as hell done something, which her entire body was more than happy to let her know about right now. Ugh. Why in the name of God and little mutated fishes was she awake?
She rolled carefully onto her back, staring dry-eyed up at the battered wooden steps over her head. After a couple of minutes the initial surge of 'ow, ow, morning, why' started to fade off, and she gradually became aware of noises in the next room. Not intrusive ones, not really, not something she'd have thought would be enough to wake her after ... what had happened last night? Oh, right. Showered in debris by a trigger-happy Raider with a grenade. That was it. Anyway. The little tinkering noises from the office really shouldn't have been enough to wake her, given how absolutely wiped-out she'd been only a few hours ago. Why had she ...?
Someone'd come in. She had a vague memory. The sound of voices? Someone had come in, and then they'd left again. Instinct had jolted her awake, if not necessarily rendered her sentient, and she'd listened to voices for a ... a couple of minutes? Half an hour? She wasn't sure. It hadn't been unfriendly, anyway. She thought she remembered Nick chuckling, warm and playful, not worried at all. Ellie, probably. Just Ellie coming by to check on things. Nora's brain and her instincts, mutually fed-up and exhausted, had both taken that as permission to go the hell back to sleep. She'd dozed off again.
Except, apparently, not all the way. Some bit of her had stubbornly refused to go properly back to sleep like a sane exhausted person, and now here she was. Squinting in the grey light of dawn, listening to Nick fiddle with things and ... Huh. And hum quietly to himself, little snatches of old pre-war tunes while he obviously thought no one was listening.
Nora felt a little smile creep onto her face, even in spite of the aches and pains. Aw hell. She was awake now anyway, and she guessed Nick's oblivious company wasn't that bad of a thing to wake up to.
Not a bad thing at all.
She rolled over quietly, swung her legs off the cot and levered herself up to sitting. She winced, but did her best not to give voice to the suddenly very insistent twinges along her back and neck in particular. She wasn't even sure why, when Nick would have heard her the second she moved to get up. It was just ... it was barely even dawn, and it was nice and quiet around here, and she didn't particularly want to disturb that just yet. Let things just stay calm and quiet a little longer. She could use a bit of that.
She pulled herself the rest of the way up with the help of the overhead stairs, pawing briefly at her face and giving her head one short, sharp shake to try and get a couple of the cobwebs out. She regretted that part almost instantly. Ow, ow. Okay. Pulled something in the neck or shoulder vicinity, yes ma'am, got it. Don't make any sudden head movements for a while. Roger that. Nora groaned quietly, cupping her face briefly in her palms, and then she gave up. She dropped her arms down by her sides, making sure to do it gently in anticipation of any new and interesting aches, and started shuffling zombie-like out into the office. This was not going to be a morning for grace and elegance. This was barely a morning for verticality. It was ...
She paused in that thought, blinking at the sight that greeted her in the office and wondering for a second if she'd actually woken up as much as she thought she had. Nick, apparently so distracted that he hadn't, in fact, heard her get up, stared back at her in startled wariness from the desk chair. He had a deer-in-the-headlights sort of look about him. She probably wasn't much better herself. Her gaze tracked downwards, skimmed across him, across rather more of him than normal, and then made its bewildered way back to his face. If he'd been human, he'd probably have flushed bright red.
It wasn't a morning for grace and elegance. It also wasn't a morning for clothes, apparently. Nora shook her head, very carefully. She blinked at Nick in helpless confusion. Nick, naked to the waist, his trademark tie and trenchcoat nowhere in evidence, blinked back. For a good minute there, neither of them said anything. Neither of them could. The silence stretched cheerfully in the grey, post-dawn confusion.
"... Um?" Nora tried at last, waving her hands through the air in aimless question. "I think I should ... I should go back to bed? I don't think ... I think maybe I'm not all the way awake yet. I'm having some sort of a dream." She let out an exhausted giggle, hiccupping at the sight of his concerned expression. So familiar, and yet so strange, sat above the not-at-all familiar sight of him damn near in his altogether. Nora pressed her hands to her mouth, feeling vaguely hysterical suddenly. "I'm sorry, Nick. I should go back to bed. I'm sorry I disturbed you."
She turned right back around, rather more smartly than any other motion she'd managed this morning and mostly out of giddy mortification, and behind her Nick scrambled hastily to his feet. He spluttered a bit, wrongfooted, and reached out towards her. Nora, who'd half-turned back towards him at the noise, blinked at him some more. Taking in the view, maybe. Just a little bit. She resisted the urge to giggle again. Nick looked alarmed and constipated enough as it was.
"No, you--" he said, grimacing uneasily. "I mean, there's no need to go if ya don't want to. I'm not ... I mean ... Aw hell. Sorry, kid. I thought you wouldn't be up until later, and I figured I'd be dressed by then. It's, ah. It's just that it's laundry day, ya know?"
He grimaced again, reaching up to rub the back of his neck in embarrassment. He used the left, the skin-covered one, and Nora was mildly distracted for a second noticing that the synthetic skin went all the way up the arm. It was almost completely whole, a pretty distinct contrast to both the other arm and the chest and throat between them. Nick had a few chunks taken out of him, ragged tears here or there. There was a surprising amount of intact skin, though. Arranged in panels, like you saw on gen-2s. She couldn't help focusing on it. There was ... there was just so much. So much Nick, so much she'd never seen before. She had to shake herself before the staring started to get really embarrassing.
"... Laundry day?" she managed faintly, pinning her eyes to the wall of case files behind him in an effort to avoid further distraction. "You ... You have laundry days? I didn't think ..."
She trailed off, realising there was no way to finish that without making even more of a fool of herself, and Nick chuckled abruptly. He was shaking his head when she looked back at him, and his yellow eyes looked warm and amused without the fedora to shadow them.
"It was Ellie's idea," he explained, moving back towards the desk and gesturing gently for her to follow him. He even pulled out a chair for her, steering her into it while he rooted around for a mug and the coffee pot. Nora sat, mostly out of a lack of anything else to do, and Nick smiled down at her some. "I didn't think of it for ages either. I mean, it took me a while to get clothes, ya know? I crawled out of a garbage heap and scrounged whatever I could find for a while, until I got established enough to set my sights a bit higher than some pants and a bit of rope to hold 'em up. Even when I got myself a bit of style back, washing just didn't occur to me all that often. I don't sweat, so it didn't seem that urgent, the odd emergency with oil and muck aside."
He was moving around while he told her this, getting the coffee ready. His pants were hitched up around his waist with a battered leather belt. They came in a bit further on one side, where another gap in his skin gave them a small lip to hang off. She could see them shifting across him as he moved, without the trenchcoat and shirt tails to cover it. She was trying her best not to be hypnotised by it. It ... It wasn't as hard as it might have been otherwise. The clench in her gut as he talked distracted her. She'd seen him nearly naked now, in nothing but a pair of pants. It was ... she could admit it was a pleasant sight here, in a hazy sort of way, but imagining him like that because he had nothing else was ... different. Bad. She didn't like it at all.
"It all changed once I got Ellie," he was saying, coming back to set a hot cup of coffee on the desk in front of her. She blinked at him, caught in her staring, grateful and embarrassed. He was nice enough to ignore that, sitting back down across from her to continue his story, lighting up a cigarette for something to do with his hands. "She was ... She was amazing. Those first few weeks. She straightened a lot of stuff out for me, ya know? Looked after me. I hadn't thought I needed it. I thought I'd gotten myself together pretty good, but she put the lie to that soon enough. Got things fixed up in no time. Me as well." He smiled crookedly, the smoke curling out through the tear in his throat. "I guess you don't realise how much you're missing until suddenly you have it back. You know what I mean?"
Nora swallowed, picking up the coffee to hide her reaction to that. She nodded carefully. Once she'd washed the lump in her throat down with some half-way scalding caffeine, anyway. "I know what you mean," she agreed quietly, and he sobered slightly, recognising some things in the undercurrent of it. Some of her own history, coming back in the early morning light. He inclined his head gently her way.
"Guess you do," he noted quietly. "Guess you'd know better than many, huh? Sorry, kid. Got caught up in myself again. Didn't mean anything by it."
Nora smiled at him, bright and watery. She was waking up some, she thought. Loosening out a little, losing a couple of the aches and pains, becoming less like the walking dead. She knew Nick wouldn't taunt anybody like that. Besides. She did know what he meant, because ... because she'd been getting a lot of things back these last few weeks herself. She had things this minute that she'd been afraid she'd never have again, even if they were slightly different now. A little half-naked company over the breakfast table maybe not least of all.
So she smiled at him, wry and happy, and saluted with the coffee mug. "I know, Nick," she said, trying to coax a little grin in return. "Come on, private eye. I'm not so sentient over here. Get to the part with the laundry, will ya?"
He laughed, shaking his head and resting his cigarette in the ashtray for a minute. "Right, right," he said. "Sure thing. Okay. So Ellie had been working for me a little while, yeah? We'd gotten to know each other a bit. And one day I came back, I was stinkin' to high heaven. I'd bitten off a little more than I could chew with the case, had to take some evasive action on the way home. Ended up wading through ... I'm not even sure. I smelled like a mirelurk's behind, though. And, ya know, the office ain't exactly the biggest space in the world. The second I came through the door, after she got over the sight I made, Ellie put her foot down. Clothes off, mister! Right this second! She had me down to my parts before I'd so much as figured out what was what. I was standing there naked as a jaybird in the middle of the floor."
Nora choked, snorting coffee and grabbing at her nose in pained amazement. She stared at him through watering eyes, and he grinned back at her, knowing exactly what kind of picture he was painting. Nora wiped her mouth, looking at him half in disbelief. He put his hand on his heart, tapping his chest panel in scout's honour.
"Oh, I'm not joking," he continued serenely. "I'm probably lucky she didn't try to hose me down where I was standing. I think it was my panicked flailing that probably made her take pity on me, though. She tossed me a spare shirt and vanished with everything else, pretty much telling me to stay put and don't step in anything smelly until she got back." He grinned to himself. "I forgot to actually put the shirt on for a couple of minutes. I was just that flabbergasted. Must have made quite a sight when she came back in, standing there in my birthday suit, shirt in my hands and dazed expression on my mug."
"... Quite a sight," Nora echoed faintly. Just for a second, she knew a distinct and rather virulent moment of jealousy towards Ellie. She hoped, rather pettily, that at least Ellie had reacted with a bit of stunned staring as well. Given her own shambling hysteria this morning, just from the sight of him with his pants still on, Nora thought that if Ellie had managed to still be put-together and in command when faced with him naked and confused then she might have to do something drastic. Like crawl back into bed and bury her head until a pillow for the next, oh, five or six years or so. You know. Something small like that.
Nick squinted at her for a second, wondering at her sudden flush, but praise to the gods of achey, semi-sentient vault survivors, he didn't seem to make anything of it. He shrugged instead, and took another draw on his cigarette before carrying on.
"I guess there's not much more to it after that," he mused lightly. "Aside from the embarrassment of being steered into my shirt like an idiot, I mean. I wasn't exactly my usual suave, handsome self that day." He flashed her a little teasing smirk, maybe looking for some return sarcasm, and Nora found herself unable to manage it. She just grinned at him instead, helplessly and possibly besottedly, and that slightly worried squint came back again. "It just became sort of a tradition after that. Laundry, I mean. About once a month or so Ellie just leaves me a spare shirt or set of pants and steals the rest of my kit to run it through a wash. She was by about, oh, forty minutes ago. We do try to set it up so that clients aren't likely to wander in around that time, to avoid any awkward situations. Dawn is usually okay. Not too many up in the grey hours, ya know? Exhausted, insomniac partners who ought to know better aside, anyway."
He looked at her sideways there, a long, dry sort of look, and Nora hastily hid her face in her coffee mug again. Damn it. She was going to be permanently red at this rate. It wasn't her fault! She was sore, and exhausted, and hadn't exactly expected to be woken up by nearly-naked detectives this morning, okay? Cut a girl some slack over here.
"Don't look at me," she said, managing a decently carefree, mildly teasing tone. "I offered to go right back to bed, remember? I'd have been perfectly content to write my nearly-naked partner off as a funny dream. You were the one who made me coffee and told me to stay up. The fact that I'm awake enough to question your lack of clothing is entirely your own fault, bucko."
Nick blinked at her for second, and then he grinned. Slowly, thoughtfully. "So it is," he agreed, crinkles of humour appearing at the sides of those bright-yellow eyes. "Not that you've exactly asked a lot of questions so far, mind. Mostly you've just sat there and looked stunned. I guess I must be quite a sight, huh?"
He said it like a joke, just a little tease between the two of them, casual banter over morning coffee. Nora caught the flicker in his expression, though. She caught the tiny hint of doubt, the touch of a real question floating around under there. He was genuinely worried, she realised. He had been from the moment he'd turned around and found her staring at him in shock. If ... If he'd thought the staring was about something else besides exhausted confusion and badly-hidden prurient thoughts ...
There it was again. That little clench in her gut, like the thought of him crawling battered and naked out of a pile of junk. A thought she didn't want to have, a thing she didn't want to picture him having to go through. Add it up with the reason for her staring, with jealousy towards Ellie, with waking up and smiling to hear him humming of a morning, with sitting across from him at breakfast and feeling like she'd gotten back something precious, and shit. Shit, she had it bad, didn't she? She had it for her partner so damn bad, whether he was nearly naked or not.
The naked part wasn't putting her off, though. Not the way he was clearly wondering if it did. Let's be honest, the nearly naked part was doing kinda the opposite of putting her off over here. And hell. She was in this deep. She might as well let the guy know about it, huh?
She leaned over. She caught his wary, cautious eyes with hers, reached out and grabbed his metal hand in her own. Held it up, studied it some before threading her fingers through his, linking them cheerfully together. He blinked at her. Nora smiled.
"You're a sight, all right," she said, low and maybe a little husky. It was just her normal morning voice. Honest it was. "You're the best sight I think I've woke up to in this hell hole so far, Nick. And, if you don't mind, I think I'd like it if you told me when laundry day's scheduled for next month too. I think ... I think maybe I wouldn't mind waking up like this again sometime. If that's all right with you?"
He stared at her, his yellow eyes wide and stunned and hopeful. Her battered-looking partner, who'd crawled his way up out of a garbage heap with just a bit of help here or there. Okay. So Nora wasn't feeling jealous of Ellie anymore. Right now, she was leaning more towards 'stupidly grateful', with a side of 'happy to kill people on your say-so'. Nick stared at her, that strange, warm expression on his face, and right then Nora would happily have shot up any number of Skinny Malones and their gangs for him and Ellie both.
Maybe it showed. Maybe something else did either, Nora wasn't sure. Nick smiled suddenly, small and soft and amazed, and carefully curled his fingers closed around her hand.
"Sure thing, partner," he said, and it was too soft and quietly happy to be banter. "Though, ya know, you don't have to wait until laundry day. If you don't want to, I mean. I could ... I could pencil you in any time." He ducked his head, his hand fretting slightly. "Not to be presumptuous or anything, you understand. It's just that way we don't have to run it by Ellie or anything."
Nora bit her lip, squeezing his hand gently. His skinny metal fingers were surprisingly delicate-looking. She waited until he looked back at her, and then she nodded, suddenly calmer than she'd been in a long, long time. Calmer, and more thoughtful, and about as determined as well.
"I think we can run it past Ellie at least once, actually," she said, turning his hand in hers. He blinked, and she smiled quietly. "She looks out for you, right? She gets you fixed up, and does things like send me to save your skinny ass when you get yourself kidnapped. I'd be okay with letting her know about ... Uh. About extra mornings." She flushed a little for a second. "I mean, I'm okay not to hide it if you are. Ellie seems like she'd be okay with it?"
Nick blinked at her again. His face twisted, an expression torn half between humour and a distant sort of wonder. He tilted his head, holding her hand tight. "Are you ...?" he asked, carefully and more than a little disbelievingly. "Are you talking about asking my secretary for permission to court me over here?"
Nora grinned at him. "Actually, I was thinking more about buying her a bunch of flowers for giving me the opportunity to see you mostly naked," she said, shrugging slightly. "Your idea works too, though. Probably be cheaper, as well."
Nick snorted, this big, startled huff of laughter. He shook his head, picked up his cigarette with his left hand while keeping his right all tangled up with hers. "You know, it probably would at that," he agreed, and leaned back happily in his chair. "Though I don't know, doll. Ellie can be mean when she wants to be. You might want to buy her a little something just in case anyway. A scarf or something. You know, something pretty."
Nora laughed, leaning back herself. "Hey," she said. "Maybe Ellie ought to buy me something, for taking Mr Troublesome over here off her hands. At least part time, anyway. I'm saving her a lot of grief. Maybe she should be getting me a present."
Nick raised an eyebrow her way. "Excuse me?" he said. "Which one of us is supposed to be trouble, again? I may have started out the damsel in this relationship, but you're not exactly the safe-and-timid type yourself!"
Nora listened to him, just smiling and letting the teasing wash over her. Like his humming, when she'd first woken up this morning, alone and aching in the grey light of dawn. She let his voice just roll over her, a few more promises ahead of her and a few more things she hadn't realised how much she missed until suddenly she had them again, and she felt her neck and shoulders unknot that little more with every word.
Not a bad thing to wake up to, no. Not even at the asscrack of dawn, not even after crawling out of a garbage pile the night before. She held Nick's hand, and listened to Nick's voice, and let herself just smile away the aches.
For sure, Nick Valentine was never a bad thing to wake up to at all.