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nnon-but-cwnancydrew · 4 months

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Secret Sleuth Exchange (@secretsleuthexchange) for @katmichail13

Merry Sleuthmas Kat! I was honoured to be your Secret Sleuth this year. I hope you had a wonderful Christmas season and I wish a wonderful 2024 for you.

I'm so sorry that the initial fanvid gift fell through. Rest assured I'm still working on it but I'm starting completely from scratch so I wouldn't have had the time to finish before the dateline. Instead, I hope you'll enjoy a Christmassy version of your icon, a playlist, a couple of mood boards depicting AUs of our favorite platonic soulmates, and a few ficlets to go along with it.

And the playlist is here

Without furthur ado, let's begin:

1) Princess and Knight

AU Concept: Nancy "Crown Princess" Drew-Hudson and Ace "First Knight" Hardy Tropes: Forbidden Romance, Childhood Acquaintances to Lovers, Slow Burn, Princess x Body Guard Dynamic, Royal AU Theme Songs: King (Florence + The Machine), Icarus (The Crane Wives), YOUTH (Troye Sivan), False God (Taylor Swift), Afterglow (Ed Sheeran), Fool's Gold (Niall Horan), King and Lionheart (Monsters and Men), Long Live (Taylor Swift)

Plot: Growing up, Ace's father was King Carson's First Knight until a wartime injury forced him to resign lest he wanted to forfeit his life. Thom started training Ace to become a knight after that, the exercises taking up Ace's time and slowly distancing himself from his friends.

Before Thom's injury, Ace and Nancy would play together with the children inside the palace walls, including George Fan, the cook's apprentice. The children would wreak havoc all around the castle, no one was safe; servants would spring it if their way, nobles would learn to fear when things got too quiet and the kitchens gave up trying to stop them from stealing a bun or ten.

Alas, good things never last and when Thom's injury happened, the group began to disband. Ace was taught in the ways of the sword, the bow and more. When Thom taught him all he could, Ace was gifted his own horse, a dappled brown mare, which he named Florence and was sent off to squirehood.

Nancy was saddled with more responsibilities and lessons, etiquette and diplomacy, languages and conversation, politics and household organisations (who said being a princess was easy?). George worked longer hours at the kitchen to earn better wages, needing to feed three younger sisters at home.

Things started to liven up when Bess Marvin, Marchioness Diana Marvin's long lost niece turned up at their citadel. Then, Duke Ned Nickerson, a distant cousin of Queen Consort Tiffany Hudson, appeared from the far south and started to court Nancy. The crown princess, equally besotted, returned his affection. And for a while, that was enough.

Then Queen Consort Tiffany Hudson was murdered.

Nancy didn't particularly care for her stepmother, but Tiffany was always kind to her. Setting out on a harebrained journey to find Tiffany's murderer, she would soon find a trustworthy band of friends in Sir Ace Hardy, Lady Bess Marvin, Ms George Fan and Duke Ned Nickerson. They'll go in to fight witches, evil within the kingdom and anyone that wishes them harm.

Three years later, she would find something even more precious than friendship in Ace, her heart, her love. When he proposes, it as at their secret glade, hidden from the burdens of Crown Princess and First Knight, becoming just Nancy and just Ace.

"Will you solve this part of the mystery with me?" he asks, the golden light reflecting off the water into his blue eyes, Kate Drew's diamond ring in his hands.

Her voice is watery when she says, "Yes", and she moves him until he's standing again, for she doesn't want him to be kneeling to her for this part. "Always. Forever." And she hugs him and kisses him and it's like the first time all over again but it's better and she can't help but laugh with joy.

Her Ace, His Nancy, together in the song of the afternoon. She couldn't think of anything else that sounded more right.

Other Tidbits of this AU:

Nick and Nancy break it off mutually then he has a whirlwind romance with George that ends in disaster. they both do their own thing for a while as friends before coming back together because they realize there's no one else for them romantically.

Bess falls for a couple of women, including Lisbeth the castle guard (they weren't right for each other), Odette Lamar the foreign businesswoman (before she found out Odette had a wife back home named Mary), and Addy Soctomah the small town of Horseshoe Bay's elected mayor (third time's the charm).

Other Tidbits of this AU: Nick and Nancy break it off mutually then he has a whirlwind romance with George that ends in disaster. they both do their own thing for a while as friends before coming back together because they realize there's no one else for them romantically. Bess falls for a couple of women, including Lisbeth the castle guard (they weren't right for each other), Odette Lamar the foreign businesswoman (before she found out Odette had a wife back home named Mary), and Addy Soctomah the small town of Horseshoe Bay's elected mayor (third time's the charm). Ace never became a physician, but he did invest a lot into their kingdom's medical research, helping the industry prosper and saving them from an unknown plague that other kingdoms fell victim to.

And they all lived happily ever after.

2) Ice Skater and Boxer

AU Concept: Bess "Figure Skater" Marvin and George "Hockey Player" Fan

Tropes: Strangers to Lovers, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Kinda Instalove, (Just a Soft Little Fic)

Theme Songs: Silk Chiffon (MUNA, Phoebe Bridgers), Tis the Damn Season (Taylor Swift), Girls Like Girls (Hayley Kiyoko), Friday I'm in Love (Twenty One Two), Enchanted (Taylor Swift), Slow Dancing (Aly & AJ), Ashes (Celine Dion), Daylight (Taylor Swift)

Plot: Girl I'm sorry I tried but I can't really view them from a romantic lens and so for Georgess I'm just gonna leave you with the vibes. I'm thinking a soft dreamy winter love in the big city.

If anyone wants to take a crack at this AU (or any of the others) please feel free. Just tag and credit me because I would love to read it!

3) CEO and Bodyguard

AU Concept: George "Spy/Bodyguard" Fan and Ned "Businessman/Inventor" Nickerson

Tropes: Strangers to Lovers, Spies AU, Forbidden Romance, Ballroom Scene, Making Out to Avoid Being Caught

Theme Songs: I Can See You (Taylor Swift), Plastic Hearts (Miley Cyrus), Weapon (Against the Current), Teeth (5SOS), Delicate (Taylor Swift), Roman Holiday (Halsey), Perfect (One Direction), New Year's Day (Taylor Swift)

Plot: Ned Nickerson thinks he’s done well in his life. Accepted into MIT on the honors roll, top intern at tech billionaire Tom Swift’s R&D department then branching off to start a very successful tech company of his own with the help of Tom and socialite and rich heiress Tiffany Hudson; all before the age of 28. Sure, his life is a little bland and his assistant Addy Soctomah had a bit of a point when she said that he was the most vanilla Black man she ever met but boring was good in the business world.

Then, the universe remembered he existed and made him the sole witness of Tiffany’s murder (which, was very traumatic, thanks for asking) by some terrorist company called the Road Back. Now, he was on the hit list of said terrorist company and had to be assigned a bodyguard (who very clearly did not want to be his bodyguard) that was maybe sorta cute when she wasn’t ignoring him like crazy. George said it wasn’t personal but it didn’t seem like the case to him when she stared at him unblinkingly when he was trying to close a business deal.

The mantra of ‘Fuck Drew’ was all that ran through George’s head when she had to protect Mr “Call me Nick”, rags to riches wonder boy and media darling, every day. She could be out chasing the Road Back with her team right now if Nancy had pulled the pin on that grenade 5 seconds later. 5 seconds and Owen wouldn’t have died; 5 more seconds and her foot wouldn’t have gotten pinned under all that rubble, and she could have lifted that column off Owen before he suffocated to death while their friends tried to get to them in time.

The thought that it took four minutes without oxygen for a person to sustain permanent brain damage was all that ran through her brain as she listened to the harsh wheezing from the person underneath the column slowly stop. George had never really seen the fragile process of human to corpse before, never sticking around after her bullets left their chamber, but she could swear that it took hours for Owen to flatline.

It took three minutes. The brain damage would happen after four minutes. The team took eight minutes to get to them and they were the longest eight minutes of any of their lives.

The team fell apart: Nancy blamed herself bitterly, Bess mourned her cousin, Ace kicked himself for sending them into a trap and George- George was numb. Then she became angry. Claw Superiors kicked their team into mandatory leave and psych eval after 2 months. Guess Carson didn’t want his only daughter to crack mentally even more than she already had.

2 weeks in and George begged Carson for any assignment, after barely passing her psych eval. She snatched the first case he held in his hands from him, not even looking into the file and just showing up at Ned Nickerson’s company the next day. Boy did she regret not negotiating more. Turns out Nick witnessed the murder of Tiffany, the woman whose husband cheated on with George years ago, and now he was the Road Back’s No. 1 target. Talk about awkward.

It took spending 3 days in Nick’s presence to figure out that 1) He had a ridiculously good moral compass, 2) He and Tiffany were super close and 3) Telling him about her past history with Tiffany would make him hate her. So she kept quiet and kept her walls up, not wanting to get close to another person so soon after Owen’s death, not she was just starting to bond with him.

But it’s difficult to spend day in day out with someone and not get close to them at some point. Nick was gentle and persistent with her, prying personal details from George like she was one of the machines he was experienced with. How she was the eldest of four sisters, how she almost went into law school, how her favourite colour was green. In return, he told her about wanting to help troubled kids find a community, how he was discovered by Tom Swift (and had a brief fling with him), how his mother taught him piano because they couldn’t afford it at the time and for her last birthday he’d bought her a grand piano to play to her heart’s content. It wasn’t her favourite mission by far, but Nick wasn’t bad company, and there was little chance of her PTSD triggering in civilian bodyguard life while the rest of her team recovered.

Then Nick caught wind of a Road Back operative that was gonna be at a major social function that’s being hosted by Nick’s dickhead rival companies’ CEO: Everett Hudson. George hatched a harebrained dream of capturing the person to win back the grace her team lost at their agency. Nick offered to be her date so she could sneak in and around but she has to help him find dirt on Everett about the Bonny Scott which can bring justice to 12 innocent people and send Everett to jail. George accepts, which was a horrible idea for them both because now they’re catching feelings for a colleague-ish person.

(As long as you save me a dance, Fan.

You're on, Nickerson.)

At the party, there’s a point where they’re in Everett’s office digging through his files and they hear footsteps coming so they panic. There’s nowhere to hide in the office, and George grips Nick’s arm tightly.

‘Do you trust me?’ she says, urgency coating her words.

There’s a beat of hesitation when they look into each other’s eyes, George begging Nick to say yes. Still, looking, he nods, and she spins him around to pin him against the wall.

‘I’m sorry about this,’ she says quietly, before kissing him.

For a moment, everything in the world narrows to his back against the wall, the girl he likes pressed up against him, her lips on his, her hands on him. Realising his hands are just hanging dumbly by his side, he moves one to run through her hair and the other to cup her cheek.

‘OI! You’re not supposed to be in here!’ A loud voice cut through the air, and he remembers why he shouldn’t be doing this. They spring apart, and he’s sheepish when he addresses the person who caught them.

‘Sorry sir. Won’t happen again.’

‘Not today anyway.’ George’s coy face and satisfied smirk makes him blush and he finds he can’t look at the security guard for more than a second without looking away in embarrassment.

‘I don’t care what you do and where you do it as long as it isn’t in here. Now get going before I change my mind.'

'Got it, sir.' He blocks George from view as she surreptitiously swipes the hard drive that had finished downloading information in the time they were caught by the guard. He repeats, 'Won't happen again.'

Outside, George apologises and they go home but there's still an air of awkwardness. She hands the drive over to Claw Agency superiors and is called back in the week to pursue Road Back members with her old team. Since the Road Back is disbanded, Nick doesn't need a bodyguard anymore and they part ways, both thinking this is the last time they'll see each other again.

Three months later, they round up the last of the Road Back members, and George hands in her resignation form. She makes her team promise to keep in touch, thanks the Claw superiors for giving her a lifeline back then, and shows up at Nick's house to confess her feelings.

'You know,' she says, after the heavy emotional talk. 'We never did get that dance.'

'Never too late,' says Nick. He holds out his hand. 'May I?'

'But there's no music,' she laughs, taking his hand anyway.

He smiles at the sound. 'Don't need music. Your laugh is the most beautiful sound of all.' And she proves him right by laughing again.

When they have their first dance at the wedding, they're laughing merrily through the whole thing, calling each other Mr Fan and Mrs Nickerson.

Other Tidbits of this AU: Everyone on the team is field cleared but George and Owen were the only true field agents so they were closer because they have to trust each other's back in the field. Ace is the Hacker, Nancy is the scientist with a focus on biochem and Bess is the pilot/driver/etc. George and Nick play chess but George is more logical and Nick is more passionate. They're equally skilled. Bess meets Addy while the team visits George and they start talking and start dating just before Fanson's wedding. Nace dance around each other for years before everyone locks them in a small room and they come with messy hair and red lips to a chorus of "Finally"s

In every universe, the Drew Crew wishes Kat Michail a very Merry Christmas and hopes that she enjoys her gift. In this universe, Shannon wishes Kat a Happy New Year too. I hope you liked your gift Kat!

#nancy drew cw #cw nancy drew #nancy drew #george fan #ned nickerson #nace #fanson #ace hardy #ace [redacted]#bess marvin #addy soctomah #baddy #secretsleuthgiftexchange

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