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Three weeks after he goes missing, Ace shows up at her back door, bloody, bruised, and beaten.
Nancy has been frantic with worry for him—although frantic is an understatement in itself, really—she has been tormented, desperate.
When Horseshoe Bay’s girl detective couldn’t track down her best friend, her favourite person, she had nightmares—awful, horrible, lasting nightmares where she stumbled over Ace’s body in Gorham Woods, where she found him cold and pale in The Claw parking lot, where she lost him, lost him, lost him.
Six weeks ago, she had naively thought the whole thing was over—she’d been called into the police station when they had found Jake’s body in front of his cafe, and not a minute later she had turned around to find Ace being led in—with her father, no less.
Nancy had been unable to do anything other than gape at him, whisper his name, feeling like she had been gut punched at the sight of him, looking so lost and lonely and sad, and he hadn’t even looked her in the eyes, had just cast his gaze away from her and let himself be led away.
If she could move, she would have followed him.
She’d pulled a few strings at the police station and found out it had something to do with Bertram Bobbsey, but no other information was volunteered, and she went home that night panicked with what Ace could have gotten himself tangled up in.
He was back at The Claw the next day like nothing had happened, and despite all of her questions, he would offer her nothing other than a shrug and a cool, “it’s over now.” Eventually, he had caved and said that the police had just had questions for him because he was dating Bertram’s daughter, but she’d gotten the feeling there was more to the story than that. And she had pressed Carson on it, but he had been unusually tight lipped as well, saying that it was Ace’s business and she had to ask Ace if she wanted to know.
And Nancy wasn’t one to let things go, but she had another serial killer to contend with and her however-many great-aunt on her hands, and it was over. Ace had said so, and she trusted him, even if she wasn’t altogether sure she should.
So, she let it go, and it was fine. She’d been worried about the way he acted after, distant and cool, but attributed it to Amanda, that something was going on with their relationship and he just didn’t feel comfortable telling her about it. And, well, if Nancy was being totally honest, she wasn’t exactly sure she wanted to hear about it either.
Until three weeks after, when Ace didn’t show up for his shift at The Claw.
If it was anyone else—if it was her, Nancy wouldn’t have worried. But Ace was better than that, better than her. He would never leave her hanging.
And one missed call became two. Became twenty. One missed shift turned into a missed day, into frantic calls to Rebecca and Thom, who hadn’t seen him for twenty-four hours.
That was when the panic set in.
She and Bess and George and Nick had scoured every inch of Horseshoe Bay the first few days, hoping to find some trace of him, but there was nothing. And then Nancy had turned to the supernatural, anything to try and find Ace, but without Hannah here, the only person she trusted was Bess. And Bess, while coming into her power in her own right, couldn’t find someone who didn’t want to be found.
(and that broke her heart into two, because that meant wherever ace was—he didn’t want her to find him)
She’d become so desperate she had almost struck a deal with Temperance to find him—would have done almost anything, really, just to know he was safe, but her friends had talked her out of it.
It would only backfire in the end, and Ace would have never forgiven her.
She still regretted not making the deal when she had the chance, because Temperance had calmed down in the past few weeks. Nancy knew Temperance was cooking up something, that she was just biding her time, but, frankly, all of Nancy’s attention was focused on the fact that Ace wasn’t here, wasn’t by her side, and she couldn’t have dealt with anything else.
Blissfully, FHK had been silent as well, ever since Jake. Nancy knew the killer was targeting people who hurt her, and for several heart-stopping days, Nancy had thought the killer had taken Ace, given how upset she was at him, but when Ace’s body didn’t show up, devoid of his heart, she ruled that theory out. It just wasn’t logical.
But ruling that option out made it worse. Because then she had nothing to focus on, nothing to distract her from the fact that there was a rotating cast of dishwashers George had hired at the last minute, that Bess wanted to have a sleepover every night in their living room, that Nick insisted on walking Nancy out to her car every night.
(losing ace was more painful than she could have ever anticipated. more than her person, more than her best friend, ace was her sun. he seeped into her soul, filled cracks she didn’t even know were there. and without him there were gaping wounds, aching, never to be filled)
She hadn’t given up on finding FHK, or trying to deal with Temperance, but all of that really paled in comparison to not having Ace with her.
The whole time he was gone, every torturous, painful day, she had beat herself up for not pushing harder in the three weeks between his arrest and disappearance. Something in him had changed, and he’d withdrawn even more. She’d been worried, wanted to know what was going on with him the longer it went on. The more time went on, the less and less likely it seemed that it was Amanda, like she had thought before.
She could still remember what she said to him a few days before he disappeared, in the locker room of The Claw.
“Ace?” Nancy raps on the door of the locker, just to alert him of her presence. “Can we talk?”
He looks up at her and just nods.
“Hey.” She wipes her hands on the front of her uniform, suddenly nervous. “So, I—uh, I just wanted to check in and make sure you were ok?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
Nancy gnaws on her lip, suddenly uncertain. “You—uh—you haven’t been acting like yourself lately.”
“I act a particular way regularly?” he says, and that in and of itself is enough to worry her. Because normally Ace would say something snappy, some quip about acting like a pod person, but instead he just looks at her, face unbearably difficult to read.
“You’re just—different.”
“It’s nothing,” Ace says, voice clipped, short, dismissive. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
And normally she would push, normally she would say something, but there is something about the way Ace is hunching over himself that makes the words die in her mouth.
(nancy has never been able to be as brave towards him as she needs to be)
And so she drops it.
Later, when he would go missing, she would regret it more than anything, regret that one of their last conversations was a fight.
(regret that she cannot even remember what her last words to him were, before he vanished from her life)
And now he is here, standing in her backyard.
For a moment, Nancy thinks he is a ghost, and she feels every single cell in her body crumble to dust, at the thought that she has lost him.
It would not be out of the realm of possibility for Horseshoe Bay, and so losing Ace like this, and having his ghost come to her, haunt her, would destroy her.
She has broken down sobbing more than once in these three weeks, unable to sleep, because whenever she does she sees Ace, murdered by Bertram Bobbsey, Ace, in another accident.
Ace, gone.
But—no, this is not a ghost. He is here, and she knows this because he gasps her name. She cannot hear him through the screen door, frozen in her place, but she can see the word his lips form.
Nancy.
It is pouring rain, but Nancy does not care, throwing open the door and rushing out towards him. She is soaked by it instantly, chilling her to the bone, and her teeth are chattering when she stops a few feet away from him, still not quite able to believe after so long he is here, he is alive.
“Ace?” Nancy swallows. “I—is it you?”
“Nancy,” he breathes. “Please, help.”
She looks at him, really looks at him for the first time, and she can barely stifle a gasp.
There is a black circle around his eye, a bruise on his jaw, blooming blueberry against his skin, a cut dripping blood underneath his eye, his hands shaking and bloodied. He winces as he rolls his shoulder back, clutching his side as he breathes, and the scariest part of all of it is the blood soaking his shirt, a scarlet ribbon winding over his shoulder.
“Oh my god, Ace, what happened?” Nancy rushes forward, hands outstretched, but she stops, unsure where to put them that wouldn’t hurt him.
“I can—explain,” he gasps, stumbling a bit, and Nancy presses her hand against his uninjured (relatively speaking) shoulder, her heart aching at the sight of him.
He is warm under her touch, even through the rain, and it is this, more than anything, that convinces her he is here, that this is her Ace.
“Get inside,” she mutters, gently guiding him to the door and inside her house.
Ace looks lost as he hovers just inside the doorway as Nancy bustles past him, throwing open drawers and pulling every bottle of medicine she has in her cabinet out. Thankfully, she’s always well prepared and has plenty of bandages in her first aid kit, which she pulls out.
“Sit down,” she commands, refusing to let her hands shake as she pulls everything out.
Ace winces as he leans against the counter, gently settling himself on a stool. “Can we limit the pain-inducing actions for the rest of the night? I’ve had enough to last a lifetime.”
Nancy glares at him, blinking back the tears. “Just—stop talking.”
Ace seems to know not to push her, and Nancy shoves everything over, taking a deep breath to steady her shaking hands before touching him.
She tears open the package for the disinfecting wipe, rubbing at the blood on his cheek, and he winces. “Ouch.”
“Sorry,” Nancy mutters, although she’s not that sorry, all of the hurt and worry and anger of the past few weeks bubbling up inside of her, on the tip of her tongue.
His blood stains the wipe pink, but the cut is far less worse than she feared, so she tosses it down on the table, reaching for a bandaid to lay it gently over his cheek.
The silence between them is stifling, Ace’s eyes locked on hers even as her eyes are on his face, and eventually she can’t hold the words back anymore. “So where have you been the past three weeks?”
He huffs out a laugh. “Would you believe me if I said I went hiking?”
“You show up at my backdoor looking like you've been through a wood chipper, and you promised me an explanation.” Nancy breathes out, unscrewing the cap of a tube and squeezing a bit of the pain ointment onto her fingers, tilting his chin up to smear it over the bruise on his jaw. “Three fucking weeks, Ace.” She tries not to let her voice break, but it does anyway, the knot in her throat too large to overcome.
“I—“ Ace swallows, and he looks at her, raw and exposed, like an open wound. “I’m sorry, Nancy.”
“I don’t want your sorry,” she snaps, fingers trembling slightly as she rubs the cream into his skin, trying not to let her fingers linger on his jaw. “I want an explanation.”
Ace closes his eyes, breathing out gently. “I—it was Bertram Bobbsey.”
Nancy feels her body go cold. “I thought that was over.” She breathes. “After—after what happened at the station, you said it was over.”
Ace swallows. “No.” Nancy runs her tongue over her lips, unable to look him in the eyes. She reaches down, picks up his hands, starting to clean them off as he speaks, ignoring the way they shake in her own hands. “No, it wasn’t.”
Nancy bites the inside of her cheek, letting him speak. “The police—they had a video of me and Bertram together,” Ace admits. “And I had kicked him out of my car—said I wasn’t going to help him or carry out his dirty work, and he said I would regret it, but they still thought I could get in.”
She focuses on wrapping the bandage around his palm. “Because of Amanda.”
Ace breathes out. “I mean, I—in a way, yes.” Nancy ignores the stab of jealousy in her chest at his words. “They thought because—because of Amanda, I would be able to get him to forgive me. And they were right. For three weeks I worked for him. Delivered the boxes with the notes and just did whatever the fuck he told me to.”
Nancy stares at him, a horrific realization dawning on her. “You were working for the police, undercover with Bertram?”
Ace nods, tight and stilted. “Yeah.”
“What did—” she breaks off, almost scared to answer, “—what did they want you to do?”
Ace clenches his jaw. “At first it was just delivering boxes to communicate with drug suppliers. And then it was—going to meetings, being Bertram’s getaway driver if he needed it. More shady deals in parking lots and dealing with people who would not pass even George’s background check at The Claw.”
She feels a hot rush of anger at his words, the sheer rage nearly bowling her over. How—how could they? Ace wasn’t a trained police officer like his father, he wasn’t an FBI agent like Agent Park, he wasn’t anything but Ace.
Beautiful, selfless, idiotic Ace.
“That’s—so there was something going on,” she says, pulling out a roll of bandages from her kit, tearing off the wrapper. “You—you lied to me.”
Ace looks pained, more than anything physical. He looks like she has wounded him in the worst way possible. “I was trying to keep everyone safe.”
“And in doing so,” she snaps, stepping closer to him, “you put yourself in danger.”
He grimaces, looking away from her. “I thought I could handle it on my own.”
“Clearly, you couldn’t.” She closes her eyes, trying to get a hold on her anger.
“Nancy, I—”
“Just take off your shirt, Ace.”
She expects him to fight her, but instead he sags against the counter and nods tiredly, wincing as he tugs the bloodied shirt over his head.
As much as Nancy’s focus is on his injuries—which are worrying, a cut that looks deeper than she imagined and bruises around his ribs—she can’t also help but go a little breathless at all of the skin on display, golden, tanned skin pulling over taut muscle, and, as he flexes his shoulders with a wince, her mouth goes dry.
She can’t quite stop her gaze from drifting lower, following the lines of muscle on his chest to his abs, a bit purpled from his injuries, and yet it’s still—fuck, she wants her hands on him, wants to press her lips to every single one of his injuries and cure them, wants to be able to run her hands over his shoulders and touch every inch of his skin, wants to memorize the whole plane of his chest in her mind. She wants, even though he’s not hers to want.
Nancy doesn’t manage to pull her gaze away in time, and when Ace glances up, he catches her staring at him, mouth slightly agape. “Nance?”
It is the first time he has said her name like that in three weeks—longer, even, she thinks, and there is something about his voice, low and gravelled and hesitant, that sends a shiver down her spine, even as she snaps her gaze to his, blushing.
She blinks, trying to break herself out of this trance he has put her into, stepping closer, even though she’s sure that’s the worst possible course of action to take.
Nancy steadies her shaking hands, ripping open another wipe and beginning to clean the blood from the cut on his shoulder. “How—did this happen? Where have you been for the past three weeks?”
Ace breathes out, his warm breath washing over her neck, goosebumps erupting over her skin. She keeps her gaze trained on his shoulder so he cannot look into her eyes and see everything she is thinking. “Things got worse—with Mr. Bobbsey. And the police—they needed me for something big that was going down. A meeting with a major supplier, in New York.”
“New York?” Nancy hopes her voice does not tremble like she thinks it does, even as she sets down the wipe and picks up the bandage. His skin is cool under her touch, and he shivers when she touches him. She focuses on carefully wrapping the bandage around the cut, trying to resist the urge to drag her fingers over his shoulder blades.
She feels as though she’s on fire.
“Yeah.” Ace shakes his head, strands of damp hair falling in his eyes. “So I—I left to help them. Met up with Amanda too—her dad pulled her into it as well.”
Nancy ignores the sharp stab of jealousy at her heart. “You saw Amanda?”
He swallows. “Yeah. And she—she wasn’t exactly happy I was there.”
Nancy smiles bitterly. “Guess we have more in common than I thought.”
She rips off a piece of medical tape and secures the bandage to Ace’s shoulder, opening a new roll.
“And how did—did this happen?” She gestures to his stomach, the purpled bruises blooming up his ribcage, mottling his skin, and she feels as though she is the one who has been beaten.
“Well,” he breathes, as she finally works up the courage to look him in the eyes. They are piercing, and she realizes with a start that in the mere three weeks he was gone, she has forgotten the exact shade of blue they were. “They—uh—they found out about my extracurricular activities.”
Her heart stops in her chest. “They found out you were working for the police?” she whispers, horrified.
Ace nods. “They weren’t exactly thrilled,” he chuckles, a tired smile quirking over his lips. “Guess my resume wasn’t bad enough for them, you know, hacking being a new wave crime, and all of that.”
“And they did—this to you once they found out?”
Ace shakes his head. “They didn’t—touch me at first, actually. Amanda went to bat for me, said she would keep me out of the way. They just threw me in a room—locked me up.”
She can’t look at him anymore, every word cutting her like the cold wind, so she refocuses on her task. “Hold this here,” she orders, pressing the bandage to his ribs, feeling a stab of guilt when he winces, but then he lays his hand over hers, pressing it into his stomach.
Nancy sucks in a breath at the electric jolt that runs through her body, a livewire to her systems.
Ace’s breath hitches, and she doesn’t—can’t—think about the implications of that, so she pulls her hand away, making sure the bandage stays firmly pressed against his skin as she wraps it around his ribcage. “If Amanda went to bat for you,” she murmurs, “you must have gotten this hurt—protecting her.”
He laughs then, groaning in pain a second later. “No, that wasn’t it. Apparently, criminals don’t like it when you uh—try to convince their daughters to turn against them.”
Dread dawns on her, ice cold. “Mr. Bobbsey did this to you?”
Ace nods, not quite looking at her. She realizes she’s stopped wrapping the bandage around his ribs, so she resumes, his muscles flexing under her touch as he breathes out. “I tried to—get Amanda to let me go. And come with me. To testify against her dad and put him in jail.”
Nancy swallows, hardly unable to believe it. “She told her father?”
Ace nods. “He waited. Pulled her away on something else and—visited me.”
It is almost painful to sit here and listen to him say this, and Nancy can hardly do so. “And?” she whispers, not knowing if she wants to hear him say the answer when she is here, feeling the evidence of what he has been through under her fingertips.
Ace looks at her, blue eye bright against the purpling bruise, and Nancy cannot resist raising her hand up and tracing the line of his cheekbone underneath his eye, barely grazing the bruise with her fingertips. “You’re the girl detective.”
She is grateful for his answer, because she does not think she can bear to hear about it, how he was hurt and alone and injured, how he was miles away from her. How Bertram Bobbsey did this to him when she was safe.
(she does not care about being safe if ace is not safe either)
“No awards for girlfriend of the year for Amanda, huh?” she mutters, as she finally finishes wrapping the bandage around Ace’s ribs, trying to keep the bitterness out of her voice.
Nancy is not a vengeful person. She knows what vengeance can do, has seen the effects of being cold and callous and cruel through her own bloodline. She doesn’t know the thirst for revenge.
But right now, with Ace wounded, bleeding, injured under her hands, with him being kept from her for three fucking weeks, with him shaking under her fingertips (she can feel him trembling) she wants to burn the whole place down. She wants to use every favour she has and lock every single one of them away, wants to do whatever she can to protect him, this boy she loves so much, who has been betrayed by someone close to him, who must be hurting in more ways than one.
(she could not save him before, but damn her if nancy will not try to save him again, in every universe)
When she did it before, to Everett, that was the wraith. But this time it would be her, only her, and she wouldn’t regret it.
Ace chokes out a laugh. “I don’t know about her as my girlfriend, but I don’t blame her.”
Nancy stares at him. “Ace—why—you don’t blame her?”
She can only think of one reason he would not blame Amanda, and that is if he is in love with her.
The thought is more crippling than it has any right to be.
“I couldn’t have made it out without her, Nance,” he whispers, staring her in the eyes. “She set me free, she—let me go.”
Nancy swallows. “She saved you.”
Ace cracks a tired grin, eyes gazing at her with an intensity that makes her lose her breath. “I wouldn’t say that. But she helped. And I hotwired a car in the parking lot that I’m pretty sure belongs to a criminal, so I don’t feel too bad about stealing it, and I drove here. I didn’t—couldn’t trust anyone in New York. I had to make it back home.”
“And why—you came here?” She licks her lips. “Why did you—why didn’t you go to a hospital?”
“I needed to see you.”
Nancy swallows. “Amanda didn’t come with you?”
Ace cracks a wry smile. “Yeah….turns out being beat up by your girlfriend’s dad pretty much tanks any chance you have at a lasting relationship. But it’s not like she was overly committed in the first place either.”
“Your parents, then,” she whispers. “Ace, they’ve been worried about you.”
“I know,” he murmurs. “But—I had to come here first. I had to see you.” There is a weight in his gaze, and Nancy finds she’s terrified of what he is about to say.
(and she has something to say first)
Nancy blinks at him. “Three weeks, Ace,” she chokes out. “Do you know—what it did to me?”
His eyes are mournful as he looks at her, bandage stark white against his cheek, jaw still mottled purple. “I—I couldn’t sleep,” she confesses. “Because every time I slept I just had nightmares of you. I found your body in them, and I—god, Ace, it nearly killed me to not know where you were.”
Ace reaches up, his hand curling around her wrist, palm warm against her skin. “Nance.”
She shakes her head, eyes brimming with tears that dot her eyelashes, but don’t quite fall. “Do you know what it was like to look for you, and not find you? To come back to The Claw and not see you there?”
(he haunted her, in the corner of her eye. she would look around horseshoe bay and only see him)
“I tried—everything,” she whispers, the admission more painful than anything else. “I looked everywhere, and I would never—I couldn’t give up on you, Ace. I would never stop looking for you, but eventually I had to come back.” She looks at him, a horrific realization dawning on her.
“I tried to ask Bess to conjure a spell to tell you where you were,” she whispers. “But it said that—the spell wouldn’t work on those who didn’t want to be found.”
Ace says nothing, but he does not need to. The look in his eyes is more than enough.
“Why didn’t you want me to find you?”
“I couldn’t—I had to keep you away from everything, Nancy. Please, understand I did it for you.”
She looks down at her hands, which are trembling in front of her. There is no part of her that is touching him right now, and she is grateful for it, does not think she could handle it. “I would have never stopped looking for you. You know that. You know that I would have never given up on you. You knew that I would always try to bring you back home.”
(what she does not say: you knew that i would always try to bring you back to me)
“And you let me look.”
“Nancy, I was only trying to protect you,” he whispers.
“You left me, Ace,” and her voice breaks on his name, the tears finally spilling down her cheeks and dripping onto her floor. “You left us. I had to—to deal with it. To hold Bess while she cried and watch Nick look for you and deal with George grieving—you weren’t fucking here. You left me to pick up the pieces of us you broke when you left.”
“I couldn’t—I did this, Nance,” he admits, his voice closing up, and his voice is as raw and exposed as hers. “It was my mistake, and I—I had to keep you guys—you—out of it. I wasn’t going to put you in Bobbsey’s line of fire.”
His words are raw, and coarse, and they make her feel like she is standing in front of a flame, waiting for it to burn her.
“I thought of you,” he whispers, as he reaches up and brushes a strand of her hair back, tucking it behind her ear. “Every—every day.”
Nancy trembles. “Ace,” she pleads, although she is not quite sure what she is begging for.
(for him to stop, or carry on?)
“Amanda didn’t save me, Nancy.” Ace’s eyes are full of emotion, and it is like his soul is laid bare for the first time. “You did.”
Her throat goes dry, and she has nothing to say, can do nothing but stare at him, his mouth slightly agape.
“The thought of you,” he says, swallowing. “The thought of you got me through it all. When Mr. Bobbsey locked me away. When he—when he was hurting me, I thought of you. You were the only thing I thought about.”
Ace’s fingers brush over her cheek, and she is not the injured one, but she is the one who feels like every part of her is being torn open. “Your face. Your laugh. I was locked up for two weeks and you were the one thing that got me through.”
She cannot breathe.
“I had to see you again. I had to—to get home to you.” Ace smiles, slightly, barely there. “I had to get to you, because you make everything ok. I didn’t need anything else to—to feel ok, Nancy. Just you. I knew that as soon as I got to you it would mean that I was safe.”
It is too much for Nancy to bear, these words falling from his lips, and she cannot breathe, his words overwhelming her. She needs a moment, needs space, and just being in the house is stifling.
“I—I can’t,” she breathes.
Wrenching herself away from Ace, she runs outside, into the pouring rain, gasping as she stops outside in her yard, hands on her knees as she bends over, trying to catch her breath.
She is soaked to the bone within seconds, the cold rain chilling her, but she cannot bring herself to go back inside, heaving, hand pressed to her chest as she tries to gather herself.
“N—Nancy?” Ace says, because of course he followed her outside.
(there is no place nancy runs that ace does not follow)
She gathers herself as best she can, tears hot against the rain on her face as she turns around. “How can you say that now? After—after everything.”
“Because it’s true, Nancy,” he says softly, and he is stepping towards her, the rain soaking his bandages, running down his shoulders, plastering his hair to his face. He is still not wearing a shirt, and it must be freezing cold for him, but it is like he does not even notice with the way he is looking at her, soft, and tender, and against all odds, hopeful.
(he is looking at her like she is the only warmth he needs)
“How can you say that—that you knew you would be safe with me when you’re always getting hurt because of me?” she pleads.
“This isn’t your fault, Nancy.”
“Not this time,” she says. “But it’s just a matter of time, Ace. You—I know you. You’re going to get hurt because of me.”
“Because that’s what we do for each other, Nance,” he insists, taking a step closer to her, his blue eyes impossibly luminous in the dark. “We get hurt for each other because we care.”
She tries to breathe around the lump in her throat. “You’re my safety too,” she admits, voice cracking. “You’re my safety, but you weren’t here, and I—you disappeared, and I wasn’t okay.”
“I will never leave you,” Ace breathes, getting closer to her. “I will always find a way to come back to you, Nancy.” He steps closer to her, takes her hands in his. “If you believe one thing, if you trust me at all,” he murmurs, “believe that. You are my home. Nothing will stop me from coming back to you.”
“I can’t lose you again,” Nancy whispers. “It nearly killed me this time, Ace. And now—”
Ace steps closer, pulling her to him. “My place is by your side, Nancy,” He cups her face in his hands, fingers gently diving into her hair to tilt her face up to his, even as the rain continues to fall around them. Her hands wrap around his wrists, grounding herself with his pulse, the one place on his body he is not injured. “I don’t plan on leaving it ever again.”
Something about the look in his eyes, blue moonlight, breaks her open, and she has waited so long for him to come to her like this, waited so long for him.
And he is here in front of her. He is alright, he is here, he is alive.
And he is here for her.
She reaches up, tangling her hand in his hair, dragging him down, lips meeting his.
And it is not the perfect circumstance. He is injured and she is still angry, and they are both wounded and there are a million things they need to fix between them. There are scars that must be tended to, other people to see, more words to be said.
But here, right now, there is nothing else to say.
Ace does not waste a moment, clutching her to him, dragging her body against his and kissing her fiercely, like this has been his one thought.
(and, given what he told her, that was entirely possible, and that makes nancy’s whole body electrify)
He kisses her like he is the storm itself, like a torrential downpour, and she kisses him back with all the force of a hurricane, trying to memorize everything about this moment.
There is no other way to describe it other than desperate, and he kisses the breath from her lungs, leaving her dizzy and gasping for air when he finally pulls away.
He doesn’t let her go far, pressing his forehead against hers, their noses brushing, and she cannot bear to extract herself from his grasp, not after she finally has him here in her arms.
Nancy cannot bring herself to say anything, and neither can he, it seems, because she stands there, breathing him in.
It could be another minute or another hour before she opens her eyes, looking up into his. “We’re going to catch a cold,” she laughs.
Ace smiles, his thumbs tracing over her cheekbones gently, smoothing away a mix of rainwater and tears. “Worth it.”
She laughs again, something she hasn’t done enough of lately, and leans up, pressing her lips against his in a chaste, soft kiss.
And it is cold outside, and it is raining, but Nancy has never felt warmer and safer in her life than she does now.
