On the off chance there's anyone like me out there who wanted more Odyssey content after getting into Epic, possibly read the Odyssey itself, and who then picked up Claire North's Ithaca in her 'Song of Penelope' trilogy and who then, like me, was pissed the fuck off by every choice she made, please let me know because I need to vent my incandescent rage to someone who might share it
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Gentlemen (TV 2024)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Susie Glass/Eddie Horniman
Characters: Eddie Horniman, Susie Glass, Sabrina Horniman, Charlotte Horniman, Freddy Horniman, Jack Glass
Additional Tags: Canon-Typical Violence, Hostage Situations, Everyone is wrong but can you blame them, They won't stop staring at each other
Summary:
Everyone thinks Eddie and Susie are together. It's not a problem, until it is.
I fully understand that the reason Bobby Glass insisted on Eddie being involved with the car theft in episode 3 (when it had nothing to do with him) was because he wanted Eddie to sink deeper into that world, and realize how much he fit in.
However it is deeply funny to me to imagine that Bobby just wanted to set up Eddie and Susie.
Congrats on the 100 followers!! Am i too late to the request party? If not could you do Touch - 17? :)
Unashamedly used this is as an excuse to write something I've wanted to do forever. 2x08 kidnapping with established Nace (that moment was just crying out for a hug!)
Angsty, because, obviously. --- I hope you like it!!!
And I swear these just get longer the more of them I write. Rest is under the cut or Read on AO3
Touching #17 - Holding the other’s chin up
His heart has far surpassed his throat and is practically climbing out through his mouth by the time they reach the door. Nick smashes the glass before he can do it himself, and he’s practically bouncing on his toes, vibrating to get in and save her.
“Be careful, there’s gasoline on the floor!” Nancy’s voice carries through the busted window and the sound of it makes him weak with relief. She’s awake, she’s alert, she’s calculating.
He’s running as soon as the door is open, focus entirely on the flame. But he can’t miss her - the way she’s starting to struggle in fear against her bonds. The way she mutters oh god, like this is it.
Fortunately, they are just in time, his hands stopping the skitter of the rope and the largest breath he can muster extinguishing the candle. He shudders out a shaky sigh as he shares a look with Nick, thoughts plain on their faces. What a sadistic bastard to set this up, and how close they came to losing them.
Nick is frantic and honestly so is he but he knows what Nancy needs now is calm. Withdrawing his pocket knife, he moves in steady steps towards her.
“Hey, be careful - careful. They’re constrictor knots,” she warns.
Ace wants to laugh and smile and kiss her because of course she knows that.
“So if you pull on the ropes we’ll get strangled.”
And he wants to destroy the man who tied her in them. Put him inside this decrepit building and watch it burn.
“Good thing you brought an Eagle Scout.” He aims for light, joking. Hoping desperately for that breathy, shaky, nervous laugh he loves but he misses the mark, coming off far too worried.
She’s not panicking, yet. But there’s that wild edge in her eyes that tells him she’s on the brink, so he begins. Uses her Nancy Drew Mystery Brain against her to keep her calm. Both to instruct Nick on what he’s looking at and to fill Nancy’s head with visualizing how to untie this thing so she does not think about the way the rope is pressed against her throat.
But her breath is still stuttering and her eyes are closed tightly as he works. Clearly his steady stream of chatter about ‘riding turns’ is only half working.
Finally his knife slices through the last thread of the rope and Nancy is scrambling to loose herself from it, coughing and choking a bit at the release. His hands join her trembling ones and soon she’s free. She shoots to her feet and he half pulls her up as she launches herself into his arms.
They just hold each other for a moment, clinging tightly. Arms tight enough around her back that he can feel the hitch of one silent sob. Arms tight enough around his neck that he can feel the few tears that drop there.
They’re forced apart to help calm George, making sure Nick gets her free. But he can’t stop looking at her, can’t stop looking her up and down to be sure she’s really unharmed. His stomach gnaws a hole in him when he sees her pull a hand up to brush lightly against her neck, and he makes a mental note to check on that later. For now he slides an arm around her shoulders and pulls her to him again, lips firm against her temple.
----
Later, at her house, she walks in front of him as they gather to comfort Bess, heading for the other armchair. He snakes a hand out to grab hers, tugging her to sit before she reaches it, needing her close. She settles for sitting on the arm instead, leg brushing his, entwining their fingers and settling their joined hands on her knee.
Ace swallows thickly and closes his eyes as she jokes, wasn’t my first chloroforming.
That is not as comforting as she thinks it is.
----
She’s seeing George and Nick out, closing the door behind them as he descends the stairs. Bess has been sufficiently comforted to sleep, at last. Nancy smiles when she turns, mouth opening to say something but he finds he just can’t. Suddenly feeling immeasurably worn and frustrated and so damn tired. Ace turns before he can see her face fall, heads to the kitchen and pours his frustrated anger into filling the tea kettle, finding the first aid kit.
“Sit down,” he tosses over his shoulder, knowing she’s followed.
She doesn’t. Of course she doesn’t. Cocks her hip against the table and crosses her arms and fixes him with a stare that shows she’s spoiling for a fight.
Good. He is too.
“I’m fine, Ace.”
“You are not fine!” He whirls on her. “You were kidnapped from this house today and tied up. Left to calculate how much time you had left before you were going to die!” She hasn’t said as much but he knows. Knows how she operates. Knows she would have been unable to stop herself from piecing that together as she tried to compile solutions for their escape.
She blanches. “How do you know that?” So he’s right.
Ace stalks over with the first aid kit in response; fits his hands firmly about her waist to lift her to sit on the table. Fingers delicate beneath her chin as he lifts it, tilting this way and that to get a good look at her throat. It’s angrily red with rope burn, the dark purple bruising just beginning to bloom beneath it.
He drops his hand and leans forward, pressing his palms into the table on either side of her thighs. Anger draining as suddenly as it came. “Is this what it’s going to be like?”
“Is this what what is going to be like?”
“Loving you. Am I always going to live in this fear?” He busies himself with the first aid kit to hide how his hands are trembling, pulling out a topical pain relief cream. “How many times am I going to break into an abandoned building with you inside about to be set on fire?”
“Ace -“, she protests, voice beginning to quiver.
“Don’t.” He lifts her chin again but doesn’t meet her eyes. “Please. Please don’t make promises you can’t keep.” Nancy tries to pull herself out of his grasp but he slides his fingers gently around to the back of her head to hold her there, applying the cream in light strokes. “It’s fine, I just -“
“Apparently it’s not fine.”
Ace sighs. “It will destroy me every time. But I don’t know how to not love you. So can we find some middle ground? Some compromise?”
This time she lifts her hands to his, cold fingers curling around his wrists to pull him away from her. “I’m hard to love, Ace. It’s why no one ever sticks around for long. I am relentless to the point of recklessness. I know that. And for every time I wish I wasn’t that way there’s a time where being that way makes me successful.”
She pauses. Drops her eyes to stare at her fidgeting fingers in her lap, picking at a loose piece of skin. “So if you need to go, I understand.” Her voice shakes. “But please do it now then. Because I have been relying on you for a long time already, as my friend, my partner. Please don’t let me learn to lean on you and your love only to snatch it away at some last straw I never see coming. I don’t think I could handle that.”
He breathes deeply to gather his thoughts, gently tugging her fingers apart before she makes her finger bleed. Feels his heart break at how easily she’s preparing herself to be broken, abandoned. “I’m scared, Nancy.”
“And you think I’m not?” Her voice is still trembling, the day finally catching up to her. “I was terrified today.”
He knows. Saw the look in her eye, heard the shudder of her breath, felt the clench of her cold fingers on his arm.
“But today wasn’t even really about me and I still got caught up in it. And people are going to come after you too, Ace. Either because of whatever case we’re on or as a way to get to me. Does that make us even? Because that scares me all the more.” A few tears drop on their hands and he wipes them away with his thumb. “Whatever happened to ‘sometimes you have to just let fear be’?”
Ace leans forward to settle his forehead against hers. “I think I’m learning that doesn’t apply when it comes to you.”
The shriek of the kettle pulls them apart and he busies himself with making the tea, throwing in a splash of -
“Are you putting whiskey in my tea?”
“It’s an old wives’ tale remedy for pain. And if it helps soothe your throat and sleep without nightmares, I’m all for it. Not to mention the pounding headache I know you’re trying to hide.”
She grimaces as he brings her the cup. “I told you Ace, this wasn’t my first chlor -”
“Okay, we really need to have a conversation about this. You keep saying things like that and you are not as cute as you think you are.”
Her grimace transforms into a wicked grin. “You’re right. I’m more cute than I think I am.”
He sighs in fond resignation and presses a kiss to her lips. Can’t argue with that.
I’m also unprepared for Red TV and a new Nancy Drew on the same day. For your lyrics prompt: “This is a State of Grace/This is the worthwhile fight/Love is a ruthless game/Unless you play it good and right” Love your writing!
I don’t know why this turned into like a deeper one but here’s a little short end of world AU drabble - apologies for the angst - enjoy? Lol
grace in it’s many forms
(for this prompt game)
The sky is unnaturally dark, the clouds presenting themselves starkly against the black backdrop with their streaks of blazing amethyst, vivid topaz, and raging crimson. But there was a caveat to the illustrious beauty above them, for this was not something to sit idly by and take in, this kaleidoscope’s reason for being was due to what the ancient text referred to as a renewal, while others like themselves, called it by a more pragmatic name - the end.
“I can still fix this, I can still make this right,” she wriggled out from her already scratched throat, sore from the damage already inflicted upon it, even before the end arrived once and for all.
He placed his hands upon her shoulder in the parking lot of the restaurant, their beloved place of work for so many years, now the backdrop to their final scene, his own strangled words straining out of his own horse throat through his tears, “it’s too late, Nance…”
Sometimes she needed him to say it. Sometimes she needed the comfort of his voice, however awful the words, to let her know the truth. Because sometimes his version of the truth was the only one she could look to for guidance against her own.
(the only one that she could hold onto in the mist of chaos)
(in this case, in the mist of the end)
And looking into his eyes, torn with their own loss as well as the ones they shared (she couldn’t even say their names yet in the past tense, only alluding to them as away and not yet gone), she knew he was right.
As his words settled between them under the mythical skies, she finally let her tears overcome her, let the pain of what had occurred only hours before envelope her in the hurt she had held in until he assured her there was nothing left for her to do.
She hadn’t experienced this kind of despair in so long she forgot how it manifested itself in her, how she lets go of his touch, falling to her knees along with her tears, how she shook and trembled, inaudible sounds trying to escape her through the streaks of tears.
He carefully kneels down beside her on the asphalt, his knees scraped by the gravel, but he doesn’t care, because his only instinct is to comfort, to hold, and so he wraps her in his arms, and lets her tears dampen his shirt, cooing over her cries, “shhh…shhh….”
Sometimes she needed the comfort of his voice, of his touch, of his presence, to affirm where to look next, that how she was proceeding was right, that what she was looking for was on the correct track.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Nancy Drew (TV 2019)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Ace/Nancy Drew
Characters: Nancy Drew, Ace (Nancy Drew), not even a cameo by florence this time :(((, it’s just them - Character
Additional Tags: Angst, LIKE OH MY GOD SO MUCH ANGST, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Love Confessions, Pining, Kissing, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Developing Relationship, Canon Compliant, but not for much longer because i know this will never ever happen i just had to write it, those harlequin romance novels levels of angst and confession and love y'all, Kissing in the Rain, uhhh fuck what else do i tag this as, i literally don’t know, shirtless ace?? but like, gahhhhhhh, it’s like 107 from buffy ifkyk, Talking, Touching, so much touching and talking, Forehead Touching, i didn’t know this was a tag will be using it more, Sexual Tension, a lil bit of that angry kind tho, cause its the best and we all know it
Summary:
Three weeks after he goes missing, Ace shows up at her back door, bloody, bruised, and beaten.
or; nancy and ace patch each other up, in more ways than one
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