New Tracks, Part 14
"New Tracks" by Aelfgyfu
PARTS: 20 plus epilogue
RATING: FRT (fan-rated teen: violence, occasional bad language)
CATEGORIES: Drama, angst, hurt/discomfort, some humour; AU, fix-it
SUMMARY: Noel Miller tries to find his place on Nick Cutter's team; Stephen Hart tries to find his way back onto the team; and Nick has to deal with them, creatures from the past, and his own stubbornness.
SPOILERS: Everything through 2.07 and my own story "Fresh Scars"
WARNINGS: Some tasteless humour, some medical detail
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Many thanks to Brilliant Husband (dudethemath), kristen_mara, and lukadreaming, all of whom acted as betas and made many helpful suggestions and corrections. All remaining errors, infelicities, and poor judgement are my own.
DISCLAIMER: Primeval and its characters are owned by Impossible Pictures, ITV Productions, M6 Films, Pro 7, and possibly other entities I couldn't easily find on IMDb. No copyright infringement is intended, and indeed the story probably won't make sense unless you've watched. So watch the show, buy the DVDs, etc. I do not profit from fic except insofar as comments make me happy.
Additional notes and links to all posted parts at this story's launch page
Previous Part: 13
Sorry this is a little late!
So Noel found himself in the rec room the following night, setting things up with Connor. He half expected Abby to come in alone, telling them that Hart had made excuses. The other half of him anticipated she'd phone to say that and not bother to come herself. That was fine. He knew Star Trek wasn't her thing.
He did not expect Abby to tow Hart in at 7 pm on the dot, carrying boxes of pizza. Hart didn't even have his walking stick. Connor, of course, showed no hint of surprise; it had probably never crossed his mind that either of them might not show. Hart pulled up a coffee table on which he could prop his bad leg and sat down on the side of the sofa closest to the door. Good strategic thinking. Abby sat next to Hart, with Connor on her right. Noel pulled up a chair next to Connor's side of the sofa. They'd hooked up Connor's laptop to the big telly so everyone could see. No one asked how or why Connor had Star Trek episodes on his hard drive.
The pizza went quickly, and Hart offered to make the popcorn. "Leg gets stiff if I sit too long," he said when the other two tried to jump up and stop him. Naturally, he didn't burn anything.
Noel had to admit watching Star Trek with this group was fun. Connor kept shushing them, but he clearly already knew all the dialogue. Abby made smart remarks about the women, the science, and Captain Kirk in particular, but she seemed to be having a good time. Even Hart seemed to enjoy himself, though he didn't say much. Noel was still not certain whether it was good or bad that he hadn't managed to pull off his attempt to tell Hart he didn't dislike him. 'I like you' or 'I think I like you' sounded too grammar-school. 'I respect you' wouldn't repair the damage he'd probably done and might make it worse.
The big bowl of popcorn ended up in Connor's lap. Noel and Abby could reach it easily. As they started the Deep Space Nine episode, and Hart leaned forward once again to stretch his long arm around Abby and grab some popcorn, Noel had a premonition. He ought to say something, he knew. It was a little mean to both Abby and Hart, wasn't it? Well, it wasn't as if he'd set them up. They'd brought it upon themselves. And he wasn't even sure it would happen.
Besides, he'd made it through Sandhurst on little entertainments like this.
Sure enough, though, deep into the episode, Hart went to grab popcorn without leaning forward.
"Hey!" Abby shouted, hitting him on the arm audibly.
"Ow!" Stephen yelped.
Yeah, that would leave a bruise, Noel thought.
"You hit him on the injured arm!" Connor gasped.
"Oh, God, Stephen, are you all right?" Abby fussed.
Connor paused the episode with a miniature remote.
Hart sat there rubbing his upper arm and looking at the other two as if they'd lost their minds. "I broke my wrist, not my humerus! And it's healed!"
"It's probably stronger than before," Connor said, dead serious. "That means it's liable to hold and something else will break if you put too much stress on it."
"Like Abby's going to break my bones? Not that I don't think you could if you wanted, Abby," Hart added quickly. "I don't think you'd do it to me for brushing you by accident."
Noel sniggered out loud. They all looked at him, which wasn't quite what he'd intended. Too late to back down now, he said, "Of course it was an accident."
Hart gave him a sharp look. "If I wanted to feel her up, I wouldn't use the back of my arm."
"Hey!" Abby objected.
"What?" Stephen seemed exasperated. "I was not trying to feel you up, it was an accident! Here!" He leaned far forward, grabbed the bowl out of Connor's lap, and shoved it into Abby's. "You hold it, and it won't happen again."
"I don't want it in my lap!"
"Why not?" Connor asked.
"Then I'll eat it!"
"I thought the whole point of popcorn was to eat it?" Connor was clearly out of his depth.
"Not all of it! Not me!"
"I'll help," Stephen offered.
"Maybe we can pass it back and forth?" Abby suggested.
"I've already had to pause Deep Space Nine for minutes now!" Connor objected. "If we're passing popcorn around, we're going to miss things!"
"Look at the time!" Stephen said. "At this rate, I might not even be able to stay for Enterprise!" He leaned back and offered Noel a tentative grin behind the backs of Connor and Abby's heads.
"That'd be a crying shame," Noel said, smiling back.
"Then we'd better get started again!" Connor pulled the popcorn out of Abby's lap and put it on the coffee table. "Here, I'll re-wind it a little, since we missed some when you two started fighting."
"Fighting?" Abby asked, causing Connor to pause it again. "If I were fighting Stephen, he'd have a lot more than a bruised arm."
Even in the dim light of the telly, the look of incredulity on Hart's face was priceless.
"Abby, even with a bad leg I could pick you up and throw you over my shoulder!"
"You wouldn't dare." Abby's voice was dangerously quiet. It was the tone Noel had meant to use on Burroughs, but somehow this petite blonde managed it better than he had.
"No," Hart added thoughtfully, "you're right. Especially in those boots." He grabbed some popcorn while everyone else looked at Abby's boots.
They had very pointy toes.
Hart was turning out to be smarter than Noel had thought. And more interesting.
Connor restarted the show. Abby settled back on the sofa with a huff, crossing her arms.
In the end, Hart backed down on any claims for Janeway, which was no surprise, but by then Abby had somehow been converted to the Janeway cause. Maybe it was sheer perversity. By the time their evening together came to an end-without Enterprise, because it had indeed grown late-Noel wasn't surprised when they agreed to a rematch the following week.
He was a little surprised to find that he rather welcomed it.
***
Stephen looked around cautiously as he entered the gun range early the next afternoon. Good: no one he knew. He'd asked Lorraine about Noel's training schedules with everyone so that he could be sure none of his team-mates were there. He hadn't fired a weapon in something like six weeks. It wasn't going to be pretty. Wanting something light, he started with a Beretta. His first couple of shots went just a little wide of where he was aiming, but he put the next several fairly close to where he wanted them. Stephen let himself relax into the familiar routine, timing his shots against his heartbeat and breathing. His left arm hadn't been injured, but he hadn't picked up a gun since the day he was injured. It was good to know he hadn't lost those skills.
Stephen traded the Beretta for a rifle. It was time to see how well he did with the injured arm; rifles were generally made for right-handers, so he'd always fired those with his right. He knew he'd lost some muscle mass and coordination. He took a deep breath and stilled himself before beginning a new target. His first two shots missed the paper entirely, but he stayed focused and did better with the next several.
When a combination of pain and frustration started to make his shots miss the target completely again a few minutes later, he knew it was time to stop.
Maria had warned him. Stephen had even asked her about shooting, which horrified her; he'd had to assure her he meant target shooting, and that he didn't go gunning down innocent birds or bunnies. Then she'd given him a reasonable idea of what to expect: that after so many weeks, his right arm strength was still way down, and the recoil would probably hurt. He'd become unused to it.
More than that, Maria refused to say, referring him to a doctor instead. Devi told him that he should in time regain full motion and strength with that wrist and hand; he should be able to shoot as well as ever. He'd never be able to run again as he had before because of the scarring in the muscles of his left leg. Only time would tell how much of his speed and strength would return.
Still, Stephen meant to run again. He didn't do it only for his job; he had always enjoyed running. Now that he could walk reasonable distances without the walking stick, he was going to start running a little again. That he hadn't discussed with the doctor. Or Cutter.
He did have to get out of Nick's house. He enjoyed sharing meals with his friend again, and it was reassuring to have someone else in the house when he woke up in a panic, as he still did occasionally. But aside from having Connor in his flat for a few days, Stephen hadn't shared living space with anyone in years. Sharing a tent was different: they'd spend as little time in the actual tent as possible, and they had plenty of space right outside. He and Cutter had done that more than once. In a tent, Cutter also didn't do all the annoying things he did at home.
They hadn't quite reached the point where they were driving each other crazy, but Stephen put that largely down to his own efforts not to set Cutter off. He was getting tired of making those efforts. Lacking an en-suite bathroom, Cutter used the same bathroom as Stephen, and he'd been surprisingly quick to realise that Stephen had started tidying ever so slightly. Stephen couldn't explain it himself: all those years sharing office space with Cutter, and he'd managed to keep his urges to organise things under control. A week in Cutter's house, and he could hardly stop himself straightening things up. And the way Cutter loaded a dishwasher was a disgrace. Worse than Connor.
***
Nick was ordinarily glad of Fridays. They remained on call 24/7, of course, but Saturdays and Sundays were usually free of meetings and paperwork. Now, however, the prospect of another weekend with Stephen loomed menacingly before him. How could he not have realised his assistant was a complete neat freak? At some point, Stephen was probably going to get over the sense of being a guest and start truly treating the house as his own (as Nick had unfortunately urged him to do more than once), and then there'd be hell to pay. All right, the fixation on toiletries could perhaps have been predicted from Stephen's appearance, but who could have known about his kitchen hang-ups?
And if Stephen dropped one more 'hint' about Nick starting to conference papers or journal articles again, Nick was going to drop something a lot heavier than hints. It was ridiculous to think of him going to a conference anyway. "Excuse me, but my assistant and I have been called to subdue a dinosaur; could someone read my paper for me, and make up answers during the question time?" This office could do with some whisky, Nick decided, not for the first time.
A quiet knock on the open door roused him from his thoughts. Jenny took his eye contact as an invitation and came in.
"James liked my contingency plans so well he wants more of them," she said with a smile as she sat down.
"That's the price of being good at your job," Nick answered with a smile of his own, glad of the distraction.
"Oh, I should have asked: am I interrupting anything important?"
Nick took a moment to consider how honest to be and decided he could do with a confidante for the moment. "Only if you consider plotting how Stephen and I will put up with each other for another weekend 'important'."
She laughed. Was it because she was the newest one here, save the slightly dour Noel Miller, that Jenny still had the quickest laugh and the brightest smile in the place? "Two men used to living on their own, suddenly in close quarters. Two very strong-willed men. I think I see the problem."
"We've been on expeditions together. We've been in much closer quarters. But without dishwashers, as they don't fit in tents and generally require electricity. Somehow, that seems to make a difference."
"Oh, no! He has a system for loading the dishwasher? You know, if my fiancé hadn't broken it off with me, I might have had to break it off with him for that. No one should be forced to live with someone like that!" Nick couldn't remember Jenny mentioning her ex-fiancé once since she'd told him the engagement had been ended.
"He moves things after I've put them in!" Nick exclaimed, relieved to be able to share his frustration. "He stands there bent over the machine, furtively moving cups and saucers about, then closes the whole thing and thinks I won't notice!"
Jenny laughed again. "It could be worse. At least he doesn't lecture you on what you've done wrong. But I didn't come here to talk about dishwashers-although my advice is, if he's bored and worried about it, leave everything in the sink and let him do all the loading. And the unloading."
"I can't do that! He's hurt!"
Jenny rolled her eyes. "If he's in good enough shape to go to the shooting range, he's in good enough shape for the kitchen. Now I didn't actually-"
"Wait-he's going to the shooting range?"
Jenny paused for a moment before resuming her sentence. "I didn't actually come here to discuss dishwashers, but to-"
"He told you he's going to the shooting range, but he didn't tell me?"
Jenny's shoulders dropped with her sigh. "Cutter, do you have any idea how you sound? And no, he didn't tell me. He told Lorraine where he could be reached in case of emergency, apparently because he might not hear or feel his mobile if we called while he was on the range."
"And you know this-?"
"I know this because I thought I'd speak to him first about our stock cover stories, because he's less distractible, believe it or not. But he's not here, he's at the range," she repeated, as if Nick were slow.
His "oh" probably confirmed her in that opinion.
Jenny didn't give him time to say anything more before she launched into her explanation. She didn't think much of Abby's 'stolen costume and fireworks' story and wanted to talk about potential scenarios and pre-established cover stories they could trot out of Jenny wasn't first on the scene.
"And God forbid you ever have to deal with the public, Nick, but it could happen," she added.
She was still smiling, though. Jenny had a very pretty smile, when it was a real one and not calculated. This one wasn't calculated. He didn't even mind, not really, when he realised she had not come to discuss plans so much as to tell him what her plans were for various eventualities. He let her talk-and smile.
***
After a second Saturday at Cutter's, Stephen was ready to move back to his own flat. He explained very, very carefully that he needed to get his life back to normal, and living at Nick's wasn't helping. He told Cutter that he kept forgetting to bring this book or that, that Connor had already taken care of his plants quite long enough, and even that he knew he'd awakened Cutter a few times in the night because the floorboards creaked too much.
Cutter still stared at him with what might have been hurt or distrust or even fear for his safety until Stephen finally hauled out his weapon of last resort: "And if you get any more annoyed at me, you'll hit me again, and then you'll feel really, really guilty."
He almost wish he hadn't said it, because the guilt on Cutter's face was as plain as if he had indeed hit Stephen again. Yet the next thing he knew, Cutter was grudgingly asking him when he wanted to go back and whether he wanted someone to stay with him the first couple of nights, and the battle was won.
That first night back, Stephen did wish he'd asked for someone to stay with him. Lester had assigned a soldier to watch his front door, since he'd assured them that Helen was not about to scale the wall to his first-floor flat. He didn't have to worry about unwanted visitors. Not real ones, anyway.
Stephen took a while to fall asleep, but he woke up Monday morning having slept through the night. It was the first time he'd done that in his flat alone since coming home. Of course, he'd only had one night before Helen's unexpected visit, but it was still a win. Jacobs had insisted he set realistic goals, and being able to sleep alone was one of them.
Stephen wished Jacobs agreed that "going out on an anomaly call" was a realistic goal at this point, but Jacobs didn't.
***
Noel had begun to feel that he had become part of the team. Yet he'd also begun to share Connor's confidence that Hart would be back on it in a few months. That left him uncertain. Lester insisted in meetings that a military member would be kept on the team permanently, and that was Noel, for now. What his role would be when Hart came back as tracker, however, he didn't know. Just muscle? Firepower? Hart had been quite a marksman, but six weeks out of commission would have taken away his edge, at a minimum. Noel's engineering training made him an obvious back-up for Connor, and he knew the rover and the ADD well enough to make necessary repairs, in the ARC or in the field, but even with his training he wasn't sure he could compete with Connor's combination of natural aptitude and off-the-wall inspirations. He had the best first-aid training in the team, but Abby knew far more about animals.
Well, every team needed a reserve, to watch their backs and step in when needed. Until Hart returned, Noel was the best tracker they had-as he had to remind himself as he slogged through the mud near a hastily-evacuated pond looking for some kind of lizard the size of a bull. At least its size made it easy to track! Its prints sank well into the mud, and they found the creature taking a kip in an area full of small bushes (some now trodden into the ground). Abby lured it back through the anomaly with food, but only very slowly; it had apparently nearly eaten its fill before the team arrived. Noel didn't even need Hart's help, though he kept the headset on and sent images periodically back to the ARC.
Hart congratulated him on a job well done with almost no trace of hurt or sadness in his voice, and Noel thanked him sincerely before signing off and settling down to a long afternoon of watching the anomaly to ensure nothing else came through. He wished Connor had stayed too, but Connor had responsibilities back at the ARC.
Well, Noel hadn't joined the military to spend his days chatting with friends. It was rather a nice bonus to find that there were times when he could in fact do just that.
***
Nick hadn't realised how accustomed he'd become to Stephen's company until Stephen was gone again. Every evening he had to fight the urge to phone him and make sure he was all right. He felt foolish, because he saw Stephen at work every day. Indeed, Stephen was working well into the afternoons now. Nick tried to worry less. Jenny had made it clear to him how ridiculous he'd become, wanting to know Stephen's every move and feeling hurt if he wasn't the first to know.
The third day after Stephen left, he found himself thinking that he couldn't remember what he'd been doing with his evenings before Stephen had come to his house. That seemed absurd, until he remembered that for well over a month, the evenings he hadn't spent working had been spent visiting Stephen at a medical facility. What had he done before that? He cast his mind back. He'd worked late at the ARC a lot. He'd spent fruitless hours trying to work out where he'd gone wrong: where he'd misread Helen, where he'd misread Stephen; how he'd failed to realise that Valerie would be willing to sacrifice human lives for what she thought of as a pet cat; and how he could have gone so wrong with the sea-creatures from the future (and his own team). He'd put hours into trying to understand who could be working against them, instead of discussing it with his team. He'd drunk rather more than was necessary as well, resulting in a number of completely wasted nights.
He could hardly believe it when he found himself pulling files on hadrosaurs and doing database searches for every hadrosaur find catalogued. Yet it beat the hell out of drinking and second-guessing himself.
***
Stephen had become so used to disappointments that when Maria finally told him he could swim-no kick-board, no flotation devices, just swim-and he made it across the pool and back with little difficulty, he almost cried. He'd lost a lot of his speed, his leg and abdomen twinged, but he could swim again. He hadn't lost it forever. As Jacobs made him say, he had merely put some things aside for a time. He could pick them back up-slower than he'd like, but they'd be his again. Not everything. He'd never fence again. But swimming....
Maria told him he'd still need to come for physio for a few weeks, minimum, but he could swim on his own. She didn't want him running yet, she told him sternly, and he didn't even argue. (He didn't intend to wait for her permission, however. He would take it slowly.)
Then Devi let him return to full days at the ARC (provided he didn't go into the field and worked no overtime), and he began to feel that he might really rejoin his team at some point. Noel Miller seemed to be keeping them safe these days, so he had confidence he'd have a team to which he could return.
***
Part 15
***
PARTS: 20 plus epilogue
RATING: FRT (fan-rated teen: violence, occasional bad language)
CATEGORIES: Drama, angst, hurt/discomfort, some humour; AU, fix-it
SUMMARY: Noel Miller tries to find his place on Nick Cutter's team; Stephen Hart tries to find his way back onto the team; and Nick has to deal with them, creatures from the past, and his own stubbornness.
SPOILERS: Everything through 2.07 and my own story "Fresh Scars"
WARNINGS: Some tasteless humour, some medical detail
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Many thanks to Brilliant Husband (dudethemath), kristen_mara, and lukadreaming, all of whom acted as betas and made many helpful suggestions and corrections. All remaining errors, infelicities, and poor judgement are my own.
DISCLAIMER: Primeval and its characters are owned by Impossible Pictures, ITV Productions, M6 Films, Pro 7, and possibly other entities I couldn't easily find on IMDb. No copyright infringement is intended, and indeed the story probably won't make sense unless you've watched. So watch the show, buy the DVDs, etc. I do not profit from fic except insofar as comments make me happy.
Additional notes and links to all posted parts at this story's launch page
Previous Part: 13
Sorry this is a little late!
So Noel found himself in the rec room the following night, setting things up with Connor. He half expected Abby to come in alone, telling them that Hart had made excuses. The other half of him anticipated she'd phone to say that and not bother to come herself. That was fine. He knew Star Trek wasn't her thing.
He did not expect Abby to tow Hart in at 7 pm on the dot, carrying boxes of pizza. Hart didn't even have his walking stick. Connor, of course, showed no hint of surprise; it had probably never crossed his mind that either of them might not show. Hart pulled up a coffee table on which he could prop his bad leg and sat down on the side of the sofa closest to the door. Good strategic thinking. Abby sat next to Hart, with Connor on her right. Noel pulled up a chair next to Connor's side of the sofa. They'd hooked up Connor's laptop to the big telly so everyone could see. No one asked how or why Connor had Star Trek episodes on his hard drive.
The pizza went quickly, and Hart offered to make the popcorn. "Leg gets stiff if I sit too long," he said when the other two tried to jump up and stop him. Naturally, he didn't burn anything.
Noel had to admit watching Star Trek with this group was fun. Connor kept shushing them, but he clearly already knew all the dialogue. Abby made smart remarks about the women, the science, and Captain Kirk in particular, but she seemed to be having a good time. Even Hart seemed to enjoy himself, though he didn't say much. Noel was still not certain whether it was good or bad that he hadn't managed to pull off his attempt to tell Hart he didn't dislike him. 'I like you' or 'I think I like you' sounded too grammar-school. 'I respect you' wouldn't repair the damage he'd probably done and might make it worse.
The big bowl of popcorn ended up in Connor's lap. Noel and Abby could reach it easily. As they started the Deep Space Nine episode, and Hart leaned forward once again to stretch his long arm around Abby and grab some popcorn, Noel had a premonition. He ought to say something, he knew. It was a little mean to both Abby and Hart, wasn't it? Well, it wasn't as if he'd set them up. They'd brought it upon themselves. And he wasn't even sure it would happen.
Besides, he'd made it through Sandhurst on little entertainments like this.
Sure enough, though, deep into the episode, Hart went to grab popcorn without leaning forward.
"Hey!" Abby shouted, hitting him on the arm audibly.
"Ow!" Stephen yelped.
Yeah, that would leave a bruise, Noel thought.
"You hit him on the injured arm!" Connor gasped.
"Oh, God, Stephen, are you all right?" Abby fussed.
Connor paused the episode with a miniature remote.
Hart sat there rubbing his upper arm and looking at the other two as if they'd lost their minds. "I broke my wrist, not my humerus! And it's healed!"
"It's probably stronger than before," Connor said, dead serious. "That means it's liable to hold and something else will break if you put too much stress on it."
"Like Abby's going to break my bones? Not that I don't think you could if you wanted, Abby," Hart added quickly. "I don't think you'd do it to me for brushing you by accident."
Noel sniggered out loud. They all looked at him, which wasn't quite what he'd intended. Too late to back down now, he said, "Of course it was an accident."
Hart gave him a sharp look. "If I wanted to feel her up, I wouldn't use the back of my arm."
"Hey!" Abby objected.
"What?" Stephen seemed exasperated. "I was not trying to feel you up, it was an accident! Here!" He leaned far forward, grabbed the bowl out of Connor's lap, and shoved it into Abby's. "You hold it, and it won't happen again."
"I don't want it in my lap!"
"Why not?" Connor asked.
"Then I'll eat it!"
"I thought the whole point of popcorn was to eat it?" Connor was clearly out of his depth.
"Not all of it! Not me!"
"I'll help," Stephen offered.
"Maybe we can pass it back and forth?" Abby suggested.
"I've already had to pause Deep Space Nine for minutes now!" Connor objected. "If we're passing popcorn around, we're going to miss things!"
"Look at the time!" Stephen said. "At this rate, I might not even be able to stay for Enterprise!" He leaned back and offered Noel a tentative grin behind the backs of Connor and Abby's heads.
"That'd be a crying shame," Noel said, smiling back.
"Then we'd better get started again!" Connor pulled the popcorn out of Abby's lap and put it on the coffee table. "Here, I'll re-wind it a little, since we missed some when you two started fighting."
"Fighting?" Abby asked, causing Connor to pause it again. "If I were fighting Stephen, he'd have a lot more than a bruised arm."
Even in the dim light of the telly, the look of incredulity on Hart's face was priceless.
"Abby, even with a bad leg I could pick you up and throw you over my shoulder!"
"You wouldn't dare." Abby's voice was dangerously quiet. It was the tone Noel had meant to use on Burroughs, but somehow this petite blonde managed it better than he had.
"No," Hart added thoughtfully, "you're right. Especially in those boots." He grabbed some popcorn while everyone else looked at Abby's boots.
They had very pointy toes.
Hart was turning out to be smarter than Noel had thought. And more interesting.
Connor restarted the show. Abby settled back on the sofa with a huff, crossing her arms.
In the end, Hart backed down on any claims for Janeway, which was no surprise, but by then Abby had somehow been converted to the Janeway cause. Maybe it was sheer perversity. By the time their evening together came to an end-without Enterprise, because it had indeed grown late-Noel wasn't surprised when they agreed to a rematch the following week.
He was a little surprised to find that he rather welcomed it.
***
Stephen looked around cautiously as he entered the gun range early the next afternoon. Good: no one he knew. He'd asked Lorraine about Noel's training schedules with everyone so that he could be sure none of his team-mates were there. He hadn't fired a weapon in something like six weeks. It wasn't going to be pretty. Wanting something light, he started with a Beretta. His first couple of shots went just a little wide of where he was aiming, but he put the next several fairly close to where he wanted them. Stephen let himself relax into the familiar routine, timing his shots against his heartbeat and breathing. His left arm hadn't been injured, but he hadn't picked up a gun since the day he was injured. It was good to know he hadn't lost those skills.
Stephen traded the Beretta for a rifle. It was time to see how well he did with the injured arm; rifles were generally made for right-handers, so he'd always fired those with his right. He knew he'd lost some muscle mass and coordination. He took a deep breath and stilled himself before beginning a new target. His first two shots missed the paper entirely, but he stayed focused and did better with the next several.
When a combination of pain and frustration started to make his shots miss the target completely again a few minutes later, he knew it was time to stop.
Maria had warned him. Stephen had even asked her about shooting, which horrified her; he'd had to assure her he meant target shooting, and that he didn't go gunning down innocent birds or bunnies. Then she'd given him a reasonable idea of what to expect: that after so many weeks, his right arm strength was still way down, and the recoil would probably hurt. He'd become unused to it.
More than that, Maria refused to say, referring him to a doctor instead. Devi told him that he should in time regain full motion and strength with that wrist and hand; he should be able to shoot as well as ever. He'd never be able to run again as he had before because of the scarring in the muscles of his left leg. Only time would tell how much of his speed and strength would return.
Still, Stephen meant to run again. He didn't do it only for his job; he had always enjoyed running. Now that he could walk reasonable distances without the walking stick, he was going to start running a little again. That he hadn't discussed with the doctor. Or Cutter.
He did have to get out of Nick's house. He enjoyed sharing meals with his friend again, and it was reassuring to have someone else in the house when he woke up in a panic, as he still did occasionally. But aside from having Connor in his flat for a few days, Stephen hadn't shared living space with anyone in years. Sharing a tent was different: they'd spend as little time in the actual tent as possible, and they had plenty of space right outside. He and Cutter had done that more than once. In a tent, Cutter also didn't do all the annoying things he did at home.
They hadn't quite reached the point where they were driving each other crazy, but Stephen put that largely down to his own efforts not to set Cutter off. He was getting tired of making those efforts. Lacking an en-suite bathroom, Cutter used the same bathroom as Stephen, and he'd been surprisingly quick to realise that Stephen had started tidying ever so slightly. Stephen couldn't explain it himself: all those years sharing office space with Cutter, and he'd managed to keep his urges to organise things under control. A week in Cutter's house, and he could hardly stop himself straightening things up. And the way Cutter loaded a dishwasher was a disgrace. Worse than Connor.
***
Nick was ordinarily glad of Fridays. They remained on call 24/7, of course, but Saturdays and Sundays were usually free of meetings and paperwork. Now, however, the prospect of another weekend with Stephen loomed menacingly before him. How could he not have realised his assistant was a complete neat freak? At some point, Stephen was probably going to get over the sense of being a guest and start truly treating the house as his own (as Nick had unfortunately urged him to do more than once), and then there'd be hell to pay. All right, the fixation on toiletries could perhaps have been predicted from Stephen's appearance, but who could have known about his kitchen hang-ups?
And if Stephen dropped one more 'hint' about Nick starting to conference papers or journal articles again, Nick was going to drop something a lot heavier than hints. It was ridiculous to think of him going to a conference anyway. "Excuse me, but my assistant and I have been called to subdue a dinosaur; could someone read my paper for me, and make up answers during the question time?" This office could do with some whisky, Nick decided, not for the first time.
A quiet knock on the open door roused him from his thoughts. Jenny took his eye contact as an invitation and came in.
"James liked my contingency plans so well he wants more of them," she said with a smile as she sat down.
"That's the price of being good at your job," Nick answered with a smile of his own, glad of the distraction.
"Oh, I should have asked: am I interrupting anything important?"
Nick took a moment to consider how honest to be and decided he could do with a confidante for the moment. "Only if you consider plotting how Stephen and I will put up with each other for another weekend 'important'."
She laughed. Was it because she was the newest one here, save the slightly dour Noel Miller, that Jenny still had the quickest laugh and the brightest smile in the place? "Two men used to living on their own, suddenly in close quarters. Two very strong-willed men. I think I see the problem."
"We've been on expeditions together. We've been in much closer quarters. But without dishwashers, as they don't fit in tents and generally require electricity. Somehow, that seems to make a difference."
"Oh, no! He has a system for loading the dishwasher? You know, if my fiancé hadn't broken it off with me, I might have had to break it off with him for that. No one should be forced to live with someone like that!" Nick couldn't remember Jenny mentioning her ex-fiancé once since she'd told him the engagement had been ended.
"He moves things after I've put them in!" Nick exclaimed, relieved to be able to share his frustration. "He stands there bent over the machine, furtively moving cups and saucers about, then closes the whole thing and thinks I won't notice!"
Jenny laughed again. "It could be worse. At least he doesn't lecture you on what you've done wrong. But I didn't come here to talk about dishwashers-although my advice is, if he's bored and worried about it, leave everything in the sink and let him do all the loading. And the unloading."
"I can't do that! He's hurt!"
Jenny rolled her eyes. "If he's in good enough shape to go to the shooting range, he's in good enough shape for the kitchen. Now I didn't actually-"
"Wait-he's going to the shooting range?"
Jenny paused for a moment before resuming her sentence. "I didn't actually come here to discuss dishwashers, but to-"
"He told you he's going to the shooting range, but he didn't tell me?"
Jenny's shoulders dropped with her sigh. "Cutter, do you have any idea how you sound? And no, he didn't tell me. He told Lorraine where he could be reached in case of emergency, apparently because he might not hear or feel his mobile if we called while he was on the range."
"And you know this-?"
"I know this because I thought I'd speak to him first about our stock cover stories, because he's less distractible, believe it or not. But he's not here, he's at the range," she repeated, as if Nick were slow.
His "oh" probably confirmed her in that opinion.
Jenny didn't give him time to say anything more before she launched into her explanation. She didn't think much of Abby's 'stolen costume and fireworks' story and wanted to talk about potential scenarios and pre-established cover stories they could trot out of Jenny wasn't first on the scene.
"And God forbid you ever have to deal with the public, Nick, but it could happen," she added.
She was still smiling, though. Jenny had a very pretty smile, when it was a real one and not calculated. This one wasn't calculated. He didn't even mind, not really, when he realised she had not come to discuss plans so much as to tell him what her plans were for various eventualities. He let her talk-and smile.
***
After a second Saturday at Cutter's, Stephen was ready to move back to his own flat. He explained very, very carefully that he needed to get his life back to normal, and living at Nick's wasn't helping. He told Cutter that he kept forgetting to bring this book or that, that Connor had already taken care of his plants quite long enough, and even that he knew he'd awakened Cutter a few times in the night because the floorboards creaked too much.
Cutter still stared at him with what might have been hurt or distrust or even fear for his safety until Stephen finally hauled out his weapon of last resort: "And if you get any more annoyed at me, you'll hit me again, and then you'll feel really, really guilty."
He almost wish he hadn't said it, because the guilt on Cutter's face was as plain as if he had indeed hit Stephen again. Yet the next thing he knew, Cutter was grudgingly asking him when he wanted to go back and whether he wanted someone to stay with him the first couple of nights, and the battle was won.
That first night back, Stephen did wish he'd asked for someone to stay with him. Lester had assigned a soldier to watch his front door, since he'd assured them that Helen was not about to scale the wall to his first-floor flat. He didn't have to worry about unwanted visitors. Not real ones, anyway.
Stephen took a while to fall asleep, but he woke up Monday morning having slept through the night. It was the first time he'd done that in his flat alone since coming home. Of course, he'd only had one night before Helen's unexpected visit, but it was still a win. Jacobs had insisted he set realistic goals, and being able to sleep alone was one of them.
Stephen wished Jacobs agreed that "going out on an anomaly call" was a realistic goal at this point, but Jacobs didn't.
***
Noel had begun to feel that he had become part of the team. Yet he'd also begun to share Connor's confidence that Hart would be back on it in a few months. That left him uncertain. Lester insisted in meetings that a military member would be kept on the team permanently, and that was Noel, for now. What his role would be when Hart came back as tracker, however, he didn't know. Just muscle? Firepower? Hart had been quite a marksman, but six weeks out of commission would have taken away his edge, at a minimum. Noel's engineering training made him an obvious back-up for Connor, and he knew the rover and the ADD well enough to make necessary repairs, in the ARC or in the field, but even with his training he wasn't sure he could compete with Connor's combination of natural aptitude and off-the-wall inspirations. He had the best first-aid training in the team, but Abby knew far more about animals.
Well, every team needed a reserve, to watch their backs and step in when needed. Until Hart returned, Noel was the best tracker they had-as he had to remind himself as he slogged through the mud near a hastily-evacuated pond looking for some kind of lizard the size of a bull. At least its size made it easy to track! Its prints sank well into the mud, and they found the creature taking a kip in an area full of small bushes (some now trodden into the ground). Abby lured it back through the anomaly with food, but only very slowly; it had apparently nearly eaten its fill before the team arrived. Noel didn't even need Hart's help, though he kept the headset on and sent images periodically back to the ARC.
Hart congratulated him on a job well done with almost no trace of hurt or sadness in his voice, and Noel thanked him sincerely before signing off and settling down to a long afternoon of watching the anomaly to ensure nothing else came through. He wished Connor had stayed too, but Connor had responsibilities back at the ARC.
Well, Noel hadn't joined the military to spend his days chatting with friends. It was rather a nice bonus to find that there were times when he could in fact do just that.
***
Nick hadn't realised how accustomed he'd become to Stephen's company until Stephen was gone again. Every evening he had to fight the urge to phone him and make sure he was all right. He felt foolish, because he saw Stephen at work every day. Indeed, Stephen was working well into the afternoons now. Nick tried to worry less. Jenny had made it clear to him how ridiculous he'd become, wanting to know Stephen's every move and feeling hurt if he wasn't the first to know.
The third day after Stephen left, he found himself thinking that he couldn't remember what he'd been doing with his evenings before Stephen had come to his house. That seemed absurd, until he remembered that for well over a month, the evenings he hadn't spent working had been spent visiting Stephen at a medical facility. What had he done before that? He cast his mind back. He'd worked late at the ARC a lot. He'd spent fruitless hours trying to work out where he'd gone wrong: where he'd misread Helen, where he'd misread Stephen; how he'd failed to realise that Valerie would be willing to sacrifice human lives for what she thought of as a pet cat; and how he could have gone so wrong with the sea-creatures from the future (and his own team). He'd put hours into trying to understand who could be working against them, instead of discussing it with his team. He'd drunk rather more than was necessary as well, resulting in a number of completely wasted nights.
He could hardly believe it when he found himself pulling files on hadrosaurs and doing database searches for every hadrosaur find catalogued. Yet it beat the hell out of drinking and second-guessing himself.
***
Stephen had become so used to disappointments that when Maria finally told him he could swim-no kick-board, no flotation devices, just swim-and he made it across the pool and back with little difficulty, he almost cried. He'd lost a lot of his speed, his leg and abdomen twinged, but he could swim again. He hadn't lost it forever. As Jacobs made him say, he had merely put some things aside for a time. He could pick them back up-slower than he'd like, but they'd be his again. Not everything. He'd never fence again. But swimming....
Maria told him he'd still need to come for physio for a few weeks, minimum, but he could swim on his own. She didn't want him running yet, she told him sternly, and he didn't even argue. (He didn't intend to wait for her permission, however. He would take it slowly.)
Then Devi let him return to full days at the ARC (provided he didn't go into the field and worked no overtime), and he began to feel that he might really rejoin his team at some point. Noel Miller seemed to be keeping them safe these days, so he had confidence he'd have a team to which he could return.
***
Part 15
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