Chapter Text
“Is this…is it okay if I put my hand here?” Ace asked, groping around in the dark until he managed to slip his hand between their bodies to touch her.
Nancy gasped hard into what she assumed was Ace’s ear and her toes curled at the sensation. “Yeah, that’s…oh, that’s actually really good. Do more of that.”
“If you keep moving your hips like this, I’m not going to last, Nance.”
“That’s the whole point, right?” Nancy cringed the moment the words left her mouth and it was like all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room.
They both knew this was just a favor, they weren’t making love, but she didn’t have to be so clinical about it or make him feel like a thoroughbred stud.
Ace was silent, but his pace slowed for a moment and Nancy could feel the metaphorical temperature of the room drop by about 15 degrees.
Just when things got so awkward Nancy was about to crack and apologize, Ace began to thrust into her harder and faster. “Right.”
The worst part about the entire situation was that up until Nancy had been told she might not be able to have kids, she hadn’t even wanted them.
With a career as a private investigator, often working nights and weekends, Nancy just couldn’t see how having children could work with her lifestyle.
Abstractly, she’d thought about having kids the way one thinks about retiring in the countryside or starting a 401K. These were decisions for Future Nancy to deal with, it wasn’t something most career women in their mid-20’s even had on their radar. And even if it had been, she’d never dated anybody she felt the drive to procreate with.
But, Nancy could never back down when somebody told her no, and when her gynecologist warned her that if she didn’t have children soon she may not be able to have them at all, it became a case to be solved just like the dozens she’d successfully closed in the past.
Nancy had become consumed by the idea.
Two months earlier
“Do you have that photo album from when we lived in Europe?” Nancy stood on a chair and pulled several albums from the top shelf of her father’s study. “When I was a baby?”
“What made you think of looking at those?” Carson smiled as he thumbed through a stack of case files, setting a few aside into a separate pile.
Nancy hadn’t even thought about what she was going to tell her dad about her medical condition or the decision she’d made to become a single mother. She knew he’d support her, even if he didn’t wholeheartedly approve, but until there was concrete news to share she didn’t feel like having another set of eyes on Babywatch™.
Bess had already been staring at her like a pot of water waiting to boil. And Ace? Nancy wasn’t really sure what he was thinking, he never offered his opinion and for reasons she didn’t want to examine too closely, she never felt compelled to ask.
Carson tapped the smaller pile with his finger. “There’s three in there for you, but two of them are probably going to be more in Ace’s wheelhouse.”
“Got it!” Nancy found the album she was looking for and stepped off the chair. “What I’m hearing in your voice is disapproval that I never went to school for comp sci like your beloved, Ace.”
“No, honey, I save my disapproval voice exclusively for referring to the fact that you dropped out of law school with only one semester to go.”
“I feel like you would have disapproved of me more if I’d gone postal on all of my cohorts.”
Carson sighed and pushed the small pile of case files toward her. “Your mom’s been gone three years now, Nancy. That excuse only holds water for so long. You can still go back and finish.”
“Ryan Hudson?” Nancy exclaimed, reading the name on the top of the pile in hopes of pulling her father’s focus from her least favorite topic. “Hudson like Hudson?”
“Yep. He’s been accused of embezzling money from a charitable fund set up in honor of the victims of the Bonny Scot.”
Nancy sat on the corner of her father’s desk and flipped over the first page of the file. “I assume this is a plea deal? What do you need my services for?”
“Actually, he says he’s innocent, that his father set him up.” Carson shrugged and gestured to the file. “Check it out and see if you agree.”
“I hope he’s got deep pockets because we need a new paint job in our office and I feel like this might take a lot of time,” Nancy smirked at her dad’s withering stare. “What? You can’t tell me he isn’t a rich asshole. They’re all assholes.”
“We don’t bilk our clients, Nancy, even the rich assholes. You’ll charge what you normally charge for this kind of work.”
“Hey, I thought your disapproval voice was only for talking about me dropping out of law school?” She scooped up the remaining files and put them into her messenger bag, along with the photo album.
Ace was sitting at his computer with his headphones on, Led Zeppelin blasting through them so loudly Nancy could practically feel the music vibrating through the floor. His hands were dancing across the keyboard quickly but stopped just as the chorus to ‘Ramble On’ began to play, and he pulled a superfluous pencil from his mouth and banged out the drumline on the side of his desk in time with the music as he mouthed the words.
Nancy smiled as she watched him rock out. There was something about the way Ace was so much more himself when nobody was around that she found ridiculously charming. He was so self-conscious most of the time that seeing him this way felt like a bit of a gift because almost nobody but her got to experience him in this unfiltered state.
The chorus ended and Ace bit down on his pencil again and turned back to the keyboard, catching sight of Nancy just as he began to type. He pulled the pencil from his mouth again and shook his headphones down to his neck. “How long have you been there?”
“I just walked in,” Nancy lied and tossed her bag onto a nearby chair.
Ace aimed a dazzling smile at her, full of amusement. “That’s definitely a fib.”
Nancy shrugged, clearly busted. “I was actually hoping if I was quiet enough I’d get to watch you air drum ‘Whole Lotta Love’, complete with sex noises.”
“If you wanted to hear my sex noises, there are less embarrassing ways of going about it.” Ace pointed at her with the pencil, like he was scolding a student, and Nancy held her breath waiting for the punchline because she knew there wasn’t a universe where he’d be hitting on her.
That ship had sailed years ago when he tried to kiss her and she’d flatly turned him down—fled to be more specific. In her defense, her mom had just died and her brain wasn’t really running on all cylinders, but the die had been cast, and in one fateful exchange she had officially friend-zoned herself with the only guy she’d ever truly cared about.
“You’re an expert Peeping Tom,” Ace said, as though the answer were obvious. “Just lay in wait until I find a new girlfriend.”
“Oh, see, that might be a while, considering you haven’t had a date in a very long time.”
“Maybe not too long, Bess and I are going on a double date tonight.” Ace took his headphones off and walked around the desk.
“Oh.” Nancy was suddenly out of quips. “Anybody I know?”
“Doubtful. All I was told is she’s very cute, her parents are Dominican, and she just moved to town. She’s one of Addy’s roommates from college, I think?”
“What’s her name?” Nancy asked, nonchalantly, and could pinpoint the moment he figured out her true intentions.
“Marin—nope! Not today, satan.” Ace pulled the files peeking out of her messenger bag and started to look through them. “You need to stop running criminal background checks on the girls I date.”
“I don’t—okay, maybe I’ve run a few background checks on your dates, but it’s not as though they came up clean. That one girl from last spring was a grifter!”
Ace peered at her over the files. “She was Bess’s friend from home, part of her little Oliver Twist band of orphaned criminals. That wasn’t exactly unexpected information.”
Nancy crossed her arms over her chest. “Maybe you ought to consider letting somebody other than Bess set you up, occasionally.”
What started as a joke was starting to veer into uncomfortable territory.
“Like who?” Ace dropped the files on the edge of his desk and took a step closer to her. “You? Are you going to set me up?”
“No.” She scowled and a lump started to form in the back of her throat, this conversation had taken a direction it wasn’t allowed to go. “You know I don’t have any friends you don’t already know. I don’t have…people.”
Even if she weren’t telling him the truth right now, she’d rather eat glass than set him up with somebody else.
“If you’re not going to…” Ace stopped moving toward her and frowned like he was deliberating if he should continue with the thought. “I know you’re going to do it anyway because you can’t control yourself, but unless they’re a murderer I don’t want to know what you find. Everybody has a past, Nancy. People are entitled to have some secrets.”
“But, that’s what we do for a living, Ace. It’s our job to find out people's secrets.” She held herself very stiff, afraid of how he’d respond.
Ace huffed out a laugh and turned away from her. “I’m not a job.”
It was like a dark cloud had drifted in front of the sun, blocking all light and warmth.
“I won’t look,” Nancy promised, and kind of meant it, even if she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to resist. “Or I won’t tell you what I find, not unless she’s a killer.” She placed a hand on the back of his shoulder. “Hey, are we good?”
After a tense few seconds, she felt his hand cover hers and he looked over his shoulder at her. “Always.”
Nancy exhaled and left her hand on him for longer than appropriate, but he didn’t seem to mind. “What do you think of the new cases?”
Ace turned around with the Hudson file in his hand. “I think Ryan Hudson is going to pay for our new office paint job.”
“My dad said no padding.” Nancy rolled her eyes. “It’s not like this Ryan Hudson character can’t afford it…or that he likely hasn’t done exactly the same to others.”
Ace pursed his lips like he was gearing up to say something big. “I don’t want you to worry about money, Nancy.”
She wasn’t really sure what this was about, but Ace rarely spoke without thinking, and she could count on one hand the number of conversations they’d had over the years about money. “Okay…and I don’t want you to worry about money, either.”
He scratched his head and turned away from her. “No, I meant, I know you’ve had some added expenses over the last few months and I don’t want anything to stop you from, you know, achieving what you want to achieve.”
Nancy’s brow furrowed. “Is there a reason you’re speaking entirely in euphemisms? You can just say artificial insemination.”
“I just thought it might be awkward if I referred to a stranger’s sperm as being weirdly expensive?”
“It’s MENSA sperm, thank you very much,” Nancy yanked the file out of Ace’s hands, “from a tall, supposedly symmetrical-looking stranger.”
“Oh, well, if he’s supposedly symmetrical…” Ace crossed his arms and perched himself on the edge of his desk.
“You’re really uncomfortable that I’m doing this.” She hadn’t noticed before, but Ace always either cracked a joke or changed the subject whenever she talked about insemination. “What about this bothers you the most? Are you worried I’m not going to pull my weight around here when I’m a mom? Or, do you think that…that maybe I won’t be a good mom—that maybe I have no business doing this?” she asked, putting her own secret fears into words.
“No! Of course, you’re going to be a great mom.” Ace scrubbed a hand over his face and sighed. “It’s just, the last four times you tried this it didn’t take, and I just don’t want you to worry about money in case you have to try it again.”
“They warned me that frozen sperm doesn’t work as well as inseminating the old-fashioned way.” Nancy knew it was dumb to feel defensive because he was only telling her what she already knew. They could barely afford to get their office repainted, and she certainly didn’t have a hidden bankroll of cash to blow on a fifth round of IUI should this one fail.
Ace grabbed one of her hands. “I want this for you, okay? I know it’s important to you. I’ve got some money saved up that I was going to use on a computer upgrade, but I can—“
“No.” Nancy pulled her hand back. “No thank you.”
“I mean, this baby is kind of going to be my niece or nephew, right? Or the closest thing I’ll probably ever come to having one, so if I’m going to spoil them after they arrive, why not help them get here?” The earnestness in his eyes knocked the wind out of her.
Nancy locked eyes with him and realized that something about her future child calling him ‘uncle’ just hit strangely, but she packed that thought away along with all the other thoughts she had about him that she had long ago labeled ‘do not touch’.
“I appreciate the offer, I do, but I don’t—I don’t want your money. Not for this.” Nancy grabbed her bag from the chair and handed the Hudson file to Ace. This whole exchange had her feeling raw and unfocused. She had to get out of there. “Speaking of money, why don’t you see if you can find an electronic paper trail or whatever while I’m gone?”
Ace’s forehead creased with unease. “Where are you going? You just got here.”
Nancy had no idea, but she knew she couldn’t stay in the office one moment longer. She wasn’t sure if it was the hormone injections she’d been taking or the fact that Ace would be going on yet another first date tonight that wasn’t with her, but she felt like she was about to lose it and she didn’t want to do it in front of him.
“I have…errands…womb-related,” she tacked on at the last minute, and grit her teeth together to keep herself from audibly groaning at the flimsy excuse.
“Okay.” Ace was looking at her with the kind of concern that made her knees weak, which only made her need to get out of there that much greater.
“Bye.” Nancy turned and rushed out of the front door.
She quickly walked down the hallway of their office complex and across the parking lot, waiting until she was safely shut inside of her car to finally exhale.
“Womb-related? Get it together, Drew.” She pressed her forehead to the steering wheel and silently screamed.
Nancy walked into her small apartment, shut the door, and headed immediately for the fridge. She pulled a bottle of beer from the bottom shelf, popped the top off, and downed half of it in one gulp, then wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve.
“I’m not pregnant yet, this is perfectly fine,” she said aloud, realizing then that her coping mechanisms could probably use a little work if she was going to get through this pregnancy without losing her mind.
Nancy put the bottle on the counter along with her bag and headed for the bathroom. She’d been peeing more frequently lately, though she wasn’t sure if that was due to early pregnancy symptoms or the hormone injections she’d been taking.
She got her answer, the moment she pulled down her underwear and was greeted with a telltale red stain.
Her bottom lip quivered as she looked down, staring at the evidence of yet another failure.
Nancy spent the rest of the evening drinking and was more than halfway in the bag by the time she heard the familiar knock Ace always used when he stopped by.
She didn’t want him to see her like this, but he’d seen her at her worst after her mother died and this was a drop in the bucket compared to that.
Looking at the nearby clock—half past midnight—she noted his date must not have gone well if he was here instead of at Marinwhatever’s apartment.
Nancy smoothed her hair down and pressed her fingertips to her swollen eyes, gauging them to be about a six on a scale of one to dead mom, then took a deep breath and opened the front door.
“Nancy, I’m so—“ Ace paused, taking in her disheveled appearance, and anxiously pushed his way inside. “What happened?”
She shut the door behind him and gestured to the kitchen counter, where she’d been making her way through the remnants of various bottles of hard liquor she had lying around the house.
“Help yourself to a drink,” she said, clumsily gesturing to the alcohol, before noticing that she’d finished it all. “Oh, my bad.”
Ace grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and guided her by the elbow to the couch. “Nancy, what’s wrong?”
“Maybe, maybe it didn’t work because it shouldn’t work, you know what I mean?” She plopped gracelessly down on the couch. “My body probably knows what a terrible mom I’d make and is just trying to protect any potential offspring from my awful parenting skills.”
Ace knelt on the floor next to where she was sitting and handed her the open bottle of water. “Drink this.”
Nancy followed his instructions, too tired to fight with him about being coddled, and his hand began rubbing comforting circles on her back as she gulped down the water.
“It didn’t work,” she said again, between sips, then noticed his confused expression and elaborated. “I got my period.”
“Oh, Nancy.” Ace took the empty bottle from her hands and placed it on the coffee table, then pulled her into a hug. “Come here.”
Nancy gripped the back of his shirt hard and wept into the fold of his neck. “Why doesn’t the universe want me to be a mom?”
Ace brushed a hand down the back of her head. “The universe doesn’t have an opinion on motherhood, this is just something that happens to people sometimes.”
Nancy pulled back abruptly, fingers still bunched in his shirt. “You were right, back in the office. I am out of money and not just for the donor stuff, but for the procedure itself. My insurance has already rejected another round. This was my last chance.”
This was the first time she’d allowed herself to admit that and the stark finality of it all had her hiccuping on a sob.
“No, this isn’t your last chance,” Ace said, softly, as used his sleeve to wipe her face. “I told you I have money I’ve been saving up…”
She shook her head wildly, making herself dizzy in the process. “That’s like throwing good money after bad, and when that round doesn’t work we’ll both be broke and there still won’t be a baby.”
“But—“
“No, Ace! I think I just have to face this just isn’t in the cards for me.” She grabbed his arm and used his other sleeve to wipe her fresh tears. “The only other thing I can think of is just going out and having a bunch of one-night stands, rolling the dice, but that’s not fair to do to a stranger.”
“No, no, that’s…you can’t do that, Nancy.” Ace frowned and sat back on his heels, looking halfway to tears, himself, like he couldn’t help but absorb her emotions. His face was pinched as if he were deep in thought, but then his eyes flicked up to hers and incrementally widened. “I—I have an idea, but it’s kind of, I don’t know, maybe it’s too weird…”
Nancy sighed and leaned back against the cushions. “This entire endeavor is weird, everything is relative at this point.”
His posture grew stiff and he looked oddly nervous when he spoke next. “I could…I mean, I won’t be offended at all if you say no because I know you don’t think of me like…” he stopped rambling and took a deep breath, “I could help you if you wanted.”
She blinked at him as her sluggish brain caught up to the implication of his words. It almost sounded like he was volunteering to…no. That couldn’t be.
“Maybe it’s because I’ve been drinking, but it sounded like you were offering to—“
“I was. If you want.” Ace shoved his hands into his pockets and studied the pattern of the rug with a disproportionate amount of focus.
Nancy slid off the couch and landed next to him on the floor. “Are you serious?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t like seeing you like this.”
“Ace, look at me.” She turned his chin to make him face her. “You’re offering to father my child, not loan me your car.” It was probably a bad comparison, she realized, since trusting others with Florence was probably just as big of a deal to him.
His face did something complicated that Nancy couldn’t parse, then he nodded like he was agreeing with himself. “I’m not a member of MENSA, though I’ve never applied and I’m fairly certain I could get in if I did. I am tall, but I have no idea if I’m symmetrical or not or how important that is to you.”
“You’re—you’re definitely symmetrical.” Nancy looked longingly at the empty whiskey bottle on her kitchen counter to avoid staring at his stupidly symmetrical face. She felt simultaneously too drunk and not drunk enough to be having this conversation. “That’s…yeah, you’re fine in that…realm.”
Realm?
“Okay,” Ace said, cautiously. “Then, this is a yes?”
This was probably the absolutely worst best idea he'd ever had, but Nancy wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. The reality was she couldn’t afford another round of IUI, and she was being offered vetted, quality sperm, not sperm from some rando she had to hope wasn’t able to hide their crazy when being interviewed by the fertility clinic screeners.
She’d be lying if she didn’t admit there had been a not-so-tiny, secret part of her that wished her baby could be Ace’s, however likely she figured it would’ve been to ruin their friendship.
“Would this be an outright donation or did you want to be involved in the raising of this child in some way?” Nancy wasn’t actually sure which answer would be easier for her to live with, so she thought it would be wiser to let the person without the unhealthy emotional attachment choose.
Ace finally looked her in the eyes, expression frustratingly unreadable. “It can be whatever you want it to be. I just want to see you smile again.”
Nancy knew what she wanted, but she would never ask for that. It wasn’t fair to rope Ace into parenthood just because that’s what she’d decided for herself. She’d already inveigled him into joining her P.I. business and convinced him to move just a few doors away from her to make it easier for them to hang out. He was a good guy—the best she knew—and she couldn’t take advantage of his kindness like that.
She’d entwined their lives enough and he deserved an ‘out’.
“If we really go through with this, it’s probably best if we keep things…professional is the wrong adjective,” Nancy bit her lip as she considered her next words carefully, “maybe…clinical?”
“Clinical.” His face did the complicated thing again, but he nodded in agreement. “I can do that. It’s just a favor to a friend. Got it.”
The moment he said it out loud Nancy wished she could snatch it back and give him a different answer. “It’s a really special kind of favor though, Ace.”
“Yeah, well, you’re a really special kind of friend, Nancy,” he countered.
A wave of anxiety washed over Nancy and she grabbed his sleeve to let him anchor her, as he always did. “I don’t want…you’re very important to me. I don’t want things to change between us.”
“Nothing ever has to change between us,” he assured her, wrapping an arm around her waist to lift her to her feet. “Now, let’s get you into bed so you can sleep this off, and you can tell me what you’ve decided again once you’re sober.”