(no subject)
Title: Ohio
Author: MissForsythe
Summary: Nathan musing on the identity thing.
Disclaimer: Don’t own nothing. Based on a “Ohio” by Peter Bradley Adams, which I also do not own.
Reviews: yes please.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'll call you Ohio
From a song I once heard sung
One I couldn’t help but love
He reads the names in the journal, everyone she’s ever been. It dates back to well in the 1700’s, sometimes only accompanied by a description, other personalities well documented. Prudence, Mary, Louise, Sarah, Lucy, Audrey. He watches as she appears in vague sepia photographs, moving right along to the picture he took with his phone last month.
And he imagines all those lifetimes, the men in the photographs. Men that she loved, men that she had to leave behind with broken hearts. He gently combs his fingers through her hair as she sleeps, and he wants to whisper her name.
Just for a second, he hesitates and the sound won’t come.
I'll call you Ohio
Cause it falls easy off the tongue
It falls easy as the road that you run
It’s breaking her, this identity thing. She has to fill out paperwork for some course up in Orono that she wants to take and she never gets past that first question where she has to fill out her full name. He watches as she fusses with the white out and as she crumples the paper and tosses it in the trash.
She storms out of the office, and he doesn’t go after her.
Later that night, he finds her rummaging around her apartment. She’s doing something to her dinner table, and she looks so very lost. They don’t talk, and without prompting, he helps her until she’s satisfied that the table is clean. He hugs her close and she cries into his shoulder.
Hey there
Ohio, your mother needs you now
But say you'll meet me in your spring
Hold on Ohio, another chance will come around
So come sit with me
awhile before you leave
One night, she dreams about her parents.
She sees her own eyes, and strawberry blonde hair, and where all the little things that make her come from. She sees a worried father and a caring mother, she sees another girl, maybe a year or so younger then her.
It makes her feel safe and loved in different way then she feels when she’s with Nathan.
In her dream, her mother doesn’t look like Lucy Ripley and doesn’t look like a rock star. But there’s something about her that she can’t readily define. It’s only later, when she wakes and the coffee machine won’t co operate that it clicks.
She looked like something that her eight year self never realised.
Familiar. She looked familiar.
And you don't have to live this way
anymore
No, they're telling you to stay
The first time she feels at home in Haven, really at home, isn’t when they throw her a birthday party or when she starts having poker nights at Duke’s.
It’s the first morning after her conversation with Agent Howard, about taking vacation time.
She doesn’t do vacation, is always underway. She enjoys the feel of airports before take off, has a collection of hotel room soaps and shampoos (and one bathrobe, but that was an accident). But somehow, this decision seems like the first thing she’s ever gotten right.
Maybe this town is weird, and maybe her new “partner” is broody and odd. But she keeps thinking that maybe that that’s what she’s been looking for. She can do weird, she can do broody.
She stops longing for travel and Boston and instead, starts to settle in.
And you can't give them
what you give anymore
And it’s ok
It’s ok
Somedays, she wishes everything wasn’t so damn serious all the time.
Like when she and Nathan chase a man who can turn himself into the elements through the woods, and he makes them trip and land in a pit of mud. They lay side by side, and she starts giggling. Really, out of control giggling. Nathan is leaning on his elbow, looking at her like she’s deranged.
He tells her she’s crazy, and she rubs a handful of mud through his hair.
Later, when they get back to the Gull, the stairs are blocked so they have to go through the bar. Duke glares and they get cat calls and offers for drinks. They decline, opting for a joint shower and a bottle of Jack that she’s hidden in the back of the fridge.
They find the suspect the next day, when he tries to sneak into the swimming pool changing rooms by turning himself to water. They arrest him for having them on a wild goose chase, the woods, the tripping, and for being a perv. In that order.
Hey there
Ohio, come dance for me awhile
I know it's time for you to go
Don't stop Ohio, don't stop until you smile
Nathan is a lousy, lousy dancer.
She knows because she watches him from her bed, as he moves around the kitchen making pancakes. She bites back a groan and tries to erase the images by hiding under the covers. Then she hears him sing along, and it’s not a bad voice. A bit gravelly, no better or worse then the random singer songwriters on the radio.
The voice comes closer and gets under the sheets with her, wrapping it’s arms around her and singing close to her ear. They entwine their fingers and their bodies, like dancing. Her favourite kind.
And I'll watch you as you dance out the door
Duke Crockers is not a man to believe in wishes and dreams. He doesn’t believe in true love.
Until he met Audrey Parker, that is.
She compels and enthralls him, and he finds himself hopelessly drawn to her.
One night, when he comes up to her apartment to say goodnight, he hears her giggling in the bathroom, and he sees Nathan’s jacket on the back of the chair. He listens to them chatter for a while, and then makes his exit, still compelled and enthralled and drawn.
She’s made her choice, and he’s too late.
And you don't have to live this way anymore
No they're telling you to stay
And you can't give them what you give
Anymore
One day, The Troubles end. Just end.
And she doesn’t vanish into thin air. She wakes in Nathan’s bed, when he’s already gone to get ready.
She takes her time to do her hair and her make up, put on her dress.
The Gull is nicely decorated with lilacs and lilies and white roses, and they say their vows with the ocean steadily flowing outside the window.
And it's ok
It's ok