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Upon reflection, running after a knife-wielding poltergeist all by herself, without any back up, hadn’t been Nancy’s brightest idea.
“Nancy, wait,” Ace pleads after her, watching her bouncing ponytail disappear into the depths of the house alone. Moments later, the doors flew shut of their own accord, locking Nancy inside the mansion haunted by a vengeful spirit completely solo.
By the time Bess manages to cast something to counteract the magic that had locked the doors, Ace is out of his mind with worry, imagining every possible worst case scenario. As soon as the door unsticks, he takes off into the house by himself, adrenaline coursing through his veins as he runs across the rotten floorboards of the decrepit house looking for a shock of red hair. Ace can barely hear Bess’s put-out cry from the roar of blood in his ears.
“Nancy,” Ace calls. “Nance, where are y—”
Ace’s heart stops in his chest at the sight before him. The room is dark, blackened around the edges as if it had been aflame. But the room is cold, a chill so intense that his breath is visible in the frigid air.
Nancy’s satchell lies unspooled on the ground. A tube of lip balm and a recognisable black beanie scattered on the floor beside it, clearly discarded in a hurry.
“What time do you call this?” asks Nancy weakly from her spot on the floor. Her voice is husky and slightly trembling. Tufts of red hair have been pulled out of her formerly neat ponytail, strands falling in disarray. Her face is as white as a sheet, save for a nasty looking cut running down her left cheek and splotches of charcoal grey smearing her skin. There are smaller cuts on her arms and torso, and the bottom of her jacket looks singed from some sort of fire (that, bizarrely, hasn’t touched anything else.)
She looks like hell, frankly. But Ace has never been so relieved to see her. He runs through his mental checklist. She’s alive, she’s conscious, she’s talking. All good things. It could have been worse. So much worse. If only he’d been faster, then none of this would have happened.
Ace moves towards Nancy, scrubbing at the circle of salt surrounding her as he goes. He drops down to his knees, eyes level with hers, searching every inch of her for signs of further damage.
“Are you okay?” Ace asks urgently, trying (and failing) to keep the worried quaver out of his voice. The last thing Nancy needs right now is to have to comfort him.
“Well,” starts Nancy, shrugging her shoulders gingerly. “I’ve had better days.”
Ace almost snorts. “Yeah, me too.”
Nancy coughs, then winces. She lifts her hand to her face to trace the mark there. Her fingers come away wet with blood. The other cuts on her clothes and arms don’t look too bad, but this one is noticeably worse.
“That’s gonna hurt in the morning,” she quips.
“It doesn’t hurt now?” Ace asks. The wound doesn’t look like it’s cut through any muscle—a miracle, considering the ferocity of the poltergeist and the sheer number of its ghostly blades—but it’s long, curving its way around Nancy’s cheekbone. Ace briefly wishes he was further ahead in his medical training to be able to treat her right there and then.
“I mean, yes. It stings a little. But, you know, adrenaline. Plus, I was more focused on the whole vanquishing-a-hostile-spirit thing than preserving my face.”
He cups Nancy’s face and strokes a thumb over her jaw. “But it’s such a lovely face,” he says.
Nancy smiles up at him, tired but clearly glad to see him. Ace’s pulse is slowly returning to some semblance of normality at having Nancy so close. “Can you walk?” he asks.
Nancy nods, so Ace helps her stand. She’s a little unsteady on her feet, but able to put one foot in front of the other without too much effort. The protection circle is well and truly destroyed now, salty footprints following them out of the room.
“Please don’t take this as a slight against your ghost-vanquishing skills, but how the hell did you manage to get rid of it alone?” Ace asks, registering the utter chaos of the inside of the old house. Floorboards have fallen through, strange flame marks on the walls, light fixtures hanging from the wires. The place is a death trap, even without the homicidal haunting.
“Oh, I did the salt circle and just kept repeating that chant from Bess’ bestiary’” says Nancy, almost casually.
“You memorised that entire thing?”
“Yep.”
“In Latin?”
“Eidetic memory, baby!” Nancy lifts her hand and taps her temple twice. She winces as she does it.
Every nerve ending in Ace’s body is shot. Nancy’s been in scrapes and close calls before. She’s almost fallen off the bluffs, been hunted by an evil sea spirit, and run into a house rigged with a nail bomb. But ever since their curse, it’s been different.
Every time Nancy doesn’t answer a text for an unusual amount of time, or she takes off on her own after a killer or some sort of mystical being, there’s a hot thread of utter terror running through Ace’s body. A low grade hum that has him extremely agitated at best, and going out of his mind with white hot fear at worst.
And it’s not like him, really. After more than two years of spending time with Nancy, Ace can count on one hand the number of times he’s truly been concerned with her safety. Because, well, she’s Nancy Drew. Whip smart, resourceful and innovative. She can get herself out of any situation, talk her way around the most stubborn of people. If Ace has faith in anything, he has faith in his Nancy.
But since their curse was lifted— well, it’s not exactly that his belief has been shaken. It’s just that Ace is suddenly more aware of Nancy’s mortality than he had been before. On bad nights, he sleeps fitfully, plagued by dreams of the day she collapsed in his arms and ended up in the hospital. He reaches for her while she’s asleep, just to check if she is still there. Still breathing.
They make it out of the dingey old house to find Bess waiting for them in the dark, with only the light of Florence’s front headlights to illuminate the clearing. She's talking animatedly on the phone to, Ace assumes, Nick and George.
“Oh here they are,” Bess exclaims. “False alarm, sorry to wake you, my loves! We can debrief in the morning.” Bess ends the call and starts towards them, but then she falters when she sees the state Nancy is in. “Oh my god, Nancy—”
“I know, I—”
But Bess cuts her off. “You look so pale, and your hair!”
“Gee, thanks, Bess.” Nancy smiles fondly at her friend as she makes a beeline for Florence’s passenger door. Nancy tilts her head slightly to smile at Ace, but he’s not in a particularly jovial mood. His returning smile feels forced, plastered on his face like a mask. His own adrenaline levels haven’t quite gone down just yet and he’s focused on putting one foot in front of the other to get all three of them the hell out of here.
Ace holds Nancy’s door open for her before going round to the driver’s side. He starts blasting the heat and sets off for Bess’s place. Nancy chats animatedly about the poltergeist with Bess as they wind their way through the empty streets of Horseshoe Bay. Bess whips out her phone to start typing up her account in her notes app, saying she’ll need Nancy to do the same as soon as possible so she doesn’t forget any details. Bess is mildly disappointed that she didn’t get to face the spirit head on, but extremely pleased the book she pulled from the shelves at the Historical Society was helpful. She also wordlessly hands Nancy a pocket hairbrush from her purse, which Nancy accepts graciously.
Ace can physically feel his frustration rising as he drives. He’s disappointed with himself for not being quick enough to get into the house with Nancy. He is, once again, not good enough. Not fast enough. Lacking. And as much as he loves Bess, he’s irritated that she’d try to push Nancy to do even more ghost-related work after the night she’s had. And there’s a glimmer of something else that he’s not sure he wants to look at just yet. A small sliver of simmering anger that he definitely shouldn’t be feeling. He can’t be angry at Nancy for running off on her own and being reckless with her life. Again. She’s Nancy. This is her whole deal. He knows who she is, and he loves every part of her. But Ace can admit to himself that he would like it if she had slightly better self-preservation skills, because it’s going to turn his hair white with worry otherwise.
He grips the steering wheel tighter and focuses on the road. He just wants to get home.
-*-*-*-
Something is off with Ace. It doesn’t take a detective — let alone the Hero of Horseshoe Bay— for Nancy to deduce that. Ace is eerily quiet, silent in an uncomfortable way, rather than the easy stillness Nancy is used to. In fact, he’s barely said a word since they got back to Florence, even after dropping Bess back at her apartment.
Nancy can practically hear the wheels turning inside of Ace’s head. But he’s not sharing those thoughts with her.
Now, Nancy is a modern woman. She’s no shrinking violet, she doesn’t need constant reassurance. She is by no means needy by nature. And, after years of friendship and six months of dating, Nancy is sure that Ace knows her best and vice versa. If it’s important, he will share it with her.
But.
But the silence sits between them thick with unspoken things, and Nancy isn’t sure what to do with that. A small panicky feeling sits in her chest, a memento she’s tried to push to the back of her mind. A souvenir of the time Ace had made a decision without talking to her about it, walked away, and left her with nothing but silence and anguish for months.
But this isn’t that. Nancy is like, 95% sure. She tamps down the sickly feeling in her gut.
“You want to stay at mine tonight?” Ace asks as he flicks the turning signal and glides right onto the highway. “I have some medical glue at my place for, you know, your face.” He looks at her out of the corner of his eye. So serious.
Nancy holds back a laugh. Of course he owns medical glue. She makes a mental note to tease him about this later.
It’s not the worst idea in the world. She doesn’t relish having to go to the hospital to get poked and prodded. But the main draw to going back to Ace’s apartment is not the medical glue. It’s getting to sleep in the same bed as him all night. And, even better, getting to wake up next to him tomorrow morning too.
“Are you offering to be my personal physician?” Nancy asks, trying to lighten the heavy mood that’s fallen over them.
Ace’s lips quirk. It’s a small, tired smile. But Nancy is relieved to see it. The first smile she’s seen from him this side of midnight. Ace may only be three months into college classes so he can, someday, become a medical examiner, but Nancy takes making jokes about him inspecting her anatomy or doing a full body work-up very seriously.
“More like your personal bodyguard,” Ace quips back, pulling into another lane. The floodlights cast a warm orange glow over his face. It’s still slightly pinched.
“I would love to go back to yours,” Nancy confirms.
“Cool,” says Ace, slowing down as they come to the next exit.
They make it back to Ace’s apartment building and trudge upstairs. Nancy’s still toeing off her boots when Ace appears with a first aid kid and a tube of medical glue and instructs her to hop onto his kitchen counter. She does as instructed.
It’s quiet, but less uncomfortable than the car. Nancy feels warm at Ace’s intense attention as he stares at the wound on her cheek. He’s so close Nancy can smell him—laundry detergent and something warm and smokey. She inspects the very light, barely-there handful of freckles that sit just under his eyes, a detail about Ace she’d never noticed before they’d become more than friends.
Nancy takes the opportunity to soak up more of him while he’s not fully aware of how much attention she’s paying him.
It’s been six months since they broke Temperance’s curse. They’ve had six months of laughter and sweet kisses and waking up together. As much as everything has changed, so much is still the same. Ace is still Nancy’s biggest supporter. Her preferred partner when she’s working on a case. Someone she naturally gravitates towards, a little planet orbiting the sun. He is her best friend and favorite person. Every time he looks her way, cracks a smile, traces a small circle on her skin with his hands, Nancy’s chest glows warm with a fierce affection she’s never truly felt before.
She’s dated other people, of course. But nothing, not a single one of them, compared to this. It feels like forever. And that’s an intense realization to have at nineteen years old. But Nancy can’t fight that feeling and, frankly, she doesn’t really want to.
With that in mind, she steels herself.
“Hey, are we okay?” Nancy asks.
Ace continues his ministrations, pressing a cotton swab gently to Nancy’s cheek. But he flicks his gaze down to Nancy’s, checking in. “Of course we’re okay, why wouldn’t we be?”
“You seem sad.”
Ace pauses, pulling back to put the screw cap on the tube of medical glue and setting it, and the cotton swab, down on the counter next to them. He runs a hand through his hair and twists up his mouth in thought.
“I mean, I am sad. I hate seeing you get hurt. And I hate that I wasn’t there to stop it.”
Nancy blinks. This is what he’s upset about?
“Ace, I’m fine,” says Nancy, lifting her hands to place them on Ace’s forearms in reassurance. He takes the tiniest step towards Nancy. Ace reaches for Nancy’s hand, tangling them together. Absent-mindedly, he begins to rub small, gentle circles on Nancy’s thumb. She squeezes his hand in response.
“The thing is, Nance, you don’t look fine.”
Nancy lets out a breath, feigning mock offense.
“You look like you’ve been through a war,” Ace adds.
“It’s just a few cuts, I’ll be okay.”
“It’s not a cut,” Ace says, lifting his eyes to the wound on Nancy’s face. “It’s a pretty deep laceration. It probably needs stitches,” Ace counters.
Now is not the time to make a medical inspector joke, Nancy thinks.
“Okay, but even so. It’s a flesh wound. No broken bones, no hospital visit. And,” Nancy adds, trying for levity, “Think about how cool the scar is going to be. You love scars.”
Ace doesn’t laugh so much as let out a slight puff slightly amused air.
Nancy pulls one of her hands away from Ace’s, trailing it along his arm before lifting it to thread her fingers through his hair. She cups the back of his head, running a thumb gently back and forth. His breathing changes as she does it.
Nancy has to admit that she is more than a little bit obsessed with Ace’s hair. It’s so soft and looks good in every possible style. Longer, shorter, pushed back, pulled up. She has a soft spot for when it’s mildly disheveled after a particularly good makeout session on his couch, hair standing on end and slightly frazzled.
He has, on more than one occasion, expressed to her that the sentiment is very much mutual.
“Sad boy,” she says. Ace meets Nancy’s gaze, then darts a look at her lips.
Nancy starts to pull Ace down and he meets her half way. As always.
Ace’s lips are soft and slightly tentative, like he’s afraid he’s going to break her. Nancy moves hers against his and pulls him closer, tilting her head to deepen the kiss and—
“Ouch,” exclaims Nancy, pulling back from the kiss.
Ace’s eyes are dark and Nancy isn’t sure if it’s with desire or regret that she’s in pain.
“Come on, let’s go to bed,” says Nancy, hopping off the counter. She takes Ace’s hand and leads him out of the kitchen. They brush their teeth side by side in the bathroom where Nancy finally has the opportunity to inspect the slash on her face. It looks worse than it feels, with gnarly pink edges running along her cheek bone, shiny from Ace’s attempt at first aid.
They change into sleep clothes and get under the covers in silence. Nancy promptly resumes her forever position as the little spoon and pulls Ace’s arm over her waist so she’s cradled in his strong arms.
The light goes out and she exhales. All in all, it hasn’t been the worst day. They vanquished a nefarious spirit, managed not to send anyone to the hospital in the process, and she’s ending the day (well, it’s very early morning by now) with Ace by her side.
But neither of them seem to be able to sleep. Ace’s breathing never changes to the soft, deep breath she’s used to hearing. Her own brain can’t shut off. Turning around the events of the evening, looking at them from every angle, seeking missing answers and clues.
The clock ticks over to 4.a.m. To Nancy’s surprise, Ace clears his throat and begins speaking into the darkness of his bedroom. She can feel his breath on the nape of her neck as he does so.
“I was really scared today,” Ace says, his voice slightly hoarse from disuse.
It’s not a shock to Nancy that this is what has been keeping him awake. That this is why he’s been so weird since he found her lying in that salt circle. She usually likes Ace’s weirdness, cherishes it, in fact. But this evening has been different.
Nancy wriggles around in the bed to face Ace. The room is dark, but her eyes have adjusted so she can make out the Ace-like shape in the gloom.
His next words come out all in a rush: “When you run off on your own like that, I just. I don’t know. I start to panic and I wish that you wouldn’t. And I know that’s not fair to say, okay. I know it’s my own thing to get over. I know who you are, I know who I fell in love with.”
Nancy’s heart swoops, her stomach fizzing. They told each other they loved one another months ago, but it’s still a thrill every time Ace says it.
He continues: “But every time, I am so afraid you’re going to get hurt. Or that you’re not going to come back at all. Or, worse, that you’ll come back, seem fine, and then collapse out of nowhere. Like, what if we didn’t actually break the curse and something bad is going to happen to you? I just don’t think I’d handle that very well, Nancy.”
Nancy reaches across the darkness to pull Ace to her, and he goes willingly. She pecks him on the lips and then his cheek. She wraps her arms around his shoulders, pulling him in as close as she can get, so they’re skin to skin.
“We did break the curse, you know that, right? Bess confirmed it half a dozen times,” Nancy says, muffled.
“Logically, I know that, yeah, but,” Ace murmurs into her hair. Nancy pulls back to look at him and tangles their hands together between them on the bed.
“But it doesn’t make it less scary,” Nancy finishes for him.
“Yeah. It’s scary.”
Nancy mentally kicks herself for not picking up on how Ace has been feeling. How he might react every time she runs headfirst into danger. After the months of heartache and pain between them, when they were both terrified for each other’s lives, that fear infected every fibre of her being.
The first time Ace had gotten into Nancy’s passenger seat after the curse was broken, she had paused, a sick apprehension curdling her stomach. Rationally, Nancy had known that whatever forecast Temperance had shown her was just that: a forecast, not a guarantee of reality. She had also known that the curse was well and truly gone, confirmed by Bess and Addy after hours of rancid potions and incantations at the Historical Society. But still, the fear lingered in the back of her mind. What if this was all part of Temperance’s trick? What if Ace was right, and she was ten steps ahead of them? What if she was about to see Ace die in her arms all over again, this time for real?
The knowledge that the curse was fully gone, without consequence, had gone a long way to dissipating Nancy’s fears. But a small tendril of that dread had nestled into the back of her brain—and clearly Ace had the same affliction.
“I’m sorry for scaring you,” says Nancy, pressing a kiss to the inside of Ace’s wrist.
“You don’t need to apologise, Nancy. You didn’t do anything wrong,” Ace whispers.
“Well, maybe not, but I’m sorry anyway.”
“Well, I’m sorry for going quiet on you,” Ace adds, stroking a lock of Nancy’s hair. “I was freaked out and then felt guilty for feeling freaked out and. I didn’t deal with that in the best way.”
Even in the darkness, Nancy can just about make out a slight embarrassed flush on Ace’s cheeks.
“I really appreciate that,” says Nancy. She takes a beat and decides to push through the discomfort at the vulnerability of what she’s about to say. If she’d learned nothing else over the past two years—and the past six months especially—it’s that being vulnerable leads to good things.
“I get scared too sometimes.”
Ace pauses his playing with Nancy’s hair and tilts his head, eyes boring into her quizzically.
“You do?”
“Yeah, I just. Ugh, this is hard to say.”
Nancy sits up in the bed and Ace follows her. They sit cross-legged with the duvet pulled around them, eyes level with one another. Everything in Nancy is screaming at her to shut up, to not say what she’s going to say. But she’s going to do it anyway.
“I know that you know this, but when you decided you didn't want to keep trying to break the curse last year, that really hurt me.”
Ace looks down at the bed, ashamed. “I do know that.”
Nancy takes his chin and tilts his head back towards her so they’re looking directly at one another again.
“And even if I understand your reasoning for that at the time, I just worry that one day I’ll do something reckless and you’ll decide it’s too much,” says Nancy, her throat thick with emotion. “Or, maybe you’ll get scared and not talk to me about it before it’s too late.”
Nancy realizes that she’s crying at the same time Ace swipes away the hot tear that’s slipped down her unblemished cheek. She swipes at her eyes again, carefully avoiding the wound on her face as she does so.
Ace is biting the inside of his lip, watching her with a mixture of chagrin and awe. He leans in closer, his voice barely above a whisper, as if he’s telling her a secret.
“Nancy, I promise, I am never going to let fear control me like that again. You know I’m in this, right? With you. Forever. You’re not getting rid of me.”
Nancy lets out a wet laugh. She doesn’t think she could ever want to get rid of him. Hell, she fought a centuries old witch and defied her own death curse so she could be with Ace.
“Good, I don’t want to get rid of you,” Nancy admits, crossing the remaining distance between them to crash her mouth into Ace’s. She knocks him backwards and he tumbles back onto the bed, pulling her with him. Nancy kisses him with all the fierceness of her feelings towards him. Best friend, partner, love of her life. Ace meets her in the kiss with ferocity, running his hands along her back and teasing at the bottom of her shirt.
Their kisses become languid and lazy, perhaps because of the physical and emotional exhaustion they’re both feeling. Nancy pulls away slowly and Ace chases her lips. She giggles at the disappointed look on his face.
“Listen, as much as I’m loving this, we should probably sleep. We have a case in the morning.”
Ace turns to look at his alarm clock. It’s getting closer to 5.a.m. His alarm will go off in less than three hours.
Nancy settles back down on the bed, resting her head on Ace’s chest, her hand over his heart. She exhales as Ace lifts his arm to hold her, letting her snuggle closer.
After a moment, he says “We should just call in sick to Nancy Drew Investigations tomorrow.”
Nancy feels his chest rumble with mirth.
“I have an in with the owner,” teases Ace. “She has a thing for me.”
“Oh that’s good. And is the feeling mutual?”
“Yes,” says Ace, lifting his head to press his lips to Nancy’s. “Very much so.”