Primeval FF: Negotiated Space (Cutter/Connor/Stephen, R)
Title: Negotiated Space
Fandom: Primeval (ITV)
Pairing: Cutter/Connor/Stephen (eventually)
Rating: R
Length: c3,800 words
Disclaimer: All belongs to Adrian Hodges, Tim Haines, and ITV
Spoilers: Set sometime beyond 2.3, imagining what might happen if some of those secrets come out.
Summary: Stephen knew from the moment the two of them stepped out of the car, together when they shouldn’t be, and too close. It was easy to spot the difference now, or at least it seemed that way; Nick was all smiles and easy words with Connor, and had only silence for Stephen.
AN: I have no actual knowledge of how this season's big secrets will be revealed, but my love of Connor/Cutter cuteness is currently only surpassed by my level of frustration with Stephen not realising that this will end badly. So it does, but only for a little while, I promise.
Nick didn’t know if Connor was waiting for him, or if they had just happened to wander into the locker room at the same time. The strange thing was that now either option was worthy of reasonable consideration. The whole world had come tumbling in on the two of them - Leek and Caroline Steel, Stephen and Helen all over again - and they just kept meeting like this.
Connor didn’t say much, which was starting to worry Nick. Connor not speaking normally meant a Connor who was unconscious, or petrified, or already mostly eaten by whatever had crawled in today. He tapped Connor’s shoulder.
Connor yelped.
“Sorry, I’m sorry,” Nick said reassuringly. “Just me.”
“Oh. Okay then, that’s just…” He trailed off, and flushed. “Sorry. Jumpy. What with all the…”
“It’s been a long few days.”
“You could say that, yeah.”
“Is it…?” “Do you…?”
“Go ahead.” Nick waved a hand for Connor to go first.
“He is sorry, you know,” Connor said, which clearly wasn’t what he had been going to say originally.
“I’m sure he is,” Nick said. “More importantly: since when did you stick up for Stephen?”
“I don’t! I’m not. It’s just that I’d rather not nearly get squashed again because the two of you keep…” Connor bounced his fists off each other, probably not intending it to look like that - unexpectedly accurate, a little while ago anyway.
“These things take time. Now, do you want that drink, or don’t you?”
“You didn’t ask me for a drink, Professor.”
Connor was the only one who still called him that, other than Lester when he was feeling particularly snide. He didn’t feel much like a teacher anymore (if he had ever done before), and today had been one of those days where he’d felt more like a thug with a gun. That thought, naturally, led to Stephen, happiest with something that could kill from nine hundred feet.
He said, “Come and get a drink with me, Connor.”
*
One drink somehow turned into rather more than one, and Connor leaning heavily on his arm when Nick tried to get them both out of the pub.
“I’ve changed my mind,” Connor announced, too loudly.
“That’s good,” Nick said. “About what, exactly?”
“Stephen,” Connor said, and damnit but Nick had thought he’d gotten past the instinctive flare of something dark at the name.
“Really.”
“Yep. He’s an idiot.”
Nick couldn’t help but laugh at that - Connor’s decided tone, or the sudden show of support, though he knew Abby and Connor had taken a dim view of Stephen’s actions from the beginning.
Connor continued, “Why would he pick her?”
“Over Abby? Or over the many beautiful women who threw themselves at him during the eight month period he spent screwing my wife?”
“Over you,” Connor said. “I mean…” He flung his arms about a bit, managing to look obscene and preposterous all at once. “What was he thinking?”
“Connor.”
“Out of all the ridiculous things that’ve happened to us since all this…”
“Connor.”
“Did you say something?”
“Connor. Say that again.”
“Which part?”
“Any part,” Nick said, laughing. Connor, bewildered but still too drunk to really notice it, managed to get out, “you’re… you’re smart, yeah? And look at y-”, before Nick kissed him. Just a kiss, just now. Because Connor had understood the heart of the matter and had been good enough not to mention it until this moment. Because Nick needed someone whose eyes he would be able to meet tomorrow morning.
Connor smiled dopily at him and said something that sounded suspiciously like, “Home, Jeeves,” before loping an arm over Nick’s shoulder. Nick made a mental note to call Abby before she worried, and took Connor home with him. It was far too late in the day to try and figure out how to get themselves back to two different places.
*
The morning was Sunday, and nobody needed to be awake quite yet. Except there was a persistent ringing in his ear, and it eventually registered as a telephone rather than a medical issue. Connor bounded into Nick’s bedroom, not nearly as hungover as he should be. “Anomaly,” he said, as if even the word tasted good.
Nick held out a hand for the phone that wasn’t ringing any more. Probably hadn’t been for a while, if the bemused look Connor gave him was any indication.
“Oh, I linked our mobiles to the detector. So we don’t need to wait for Lester to ring. Look,” Connor waved his mobile phone under Nick’s nose, “location and everything. Shall I get a team to meet us there?”
“Connor, if it wasn’t nine am on a Sunday morning, I could…”
“Kiss me,” Connor said, grinning. “Yeah, I know.” He faltered, suddenly. “I mean… You did mean…”
“Yes. I think I did.” Nick rubbed a hand through Connor’s hair, damp from the shower. “Okay?”
“Yeah… Yeah. Great, actually. If that’s… alright?”
“Good. Now put the kettle on while I get washed up. We can drink it on the way over there.”
In the car, Connor was back to drumming his fingers on the dashboard and looking anxious. Nick found it hard to track sometimes - the times when Connor was like this, just like the Connor he had known, and the times he was brave enough to kiss Nick back. The problem, he thought, was that sometimes Connor looked wound up like a spring, and then would do the brave thing anyway.
“So, about Stephen…”
Like that.
“You called him?” Nick asked, pretending that had been the question.
“What? Yeah, I did, but that’s not… Look.”
“Okay.”
“It’s not as if he’d… He nearly got himself killed yesterday, trying to watch out for you.”
“That’s the easy part.”
“What? I’m sorry, look, I’ve tried that part, and it isn’t easy, thank you very much.”
“For him,” Nick said, and immediately regretted it. “That’s not what I meant. Stephen likes that. He likes the guns and the chasing and… He’s just like her, that way.” He hadn’t meant to say that. “The things he’ll come out with sometimes… About telling the truth, and just letting people face it. Letting them find out if we’re a species worth surviving. He says that, and all I hear is…”
“Her.”
“Yes.”
“Does he really…”
“I don’t know. I hope not. But it was her he lied for.”
“So did you.”
Nick nodded. “Yes, I did.” But it was different, and he didn’t think even Stephen would dispute that.
The shop on the corner of the road caught his eye, and Nick stared at it in the rear mirror. He laughed when he realised.
“What?” Connor asked.
“The shop’s wrong.”
“Wrong like…” he hummed thoughtfully, “before it was a hotbed of sedition and sexual perversion, or wrong like it used to be a Starbucks?”
“Subway.”
“Sorry?”
“It was a Subway.”
Connor laughed then too, but only for a moment, because suddenly Nick was the only one having fun with this. For all Nick knew, every good science-fiction buff would be terrified by the thought of a London borough having different lunch needs in a parallel timeline. They barely understood how the anomalies worked, let alone the consequences of doing the wrong thing when you went through them. That was what made it so odd - the only changes being Claudia, and the ARC, and now this shop. And Connor, sometimes. But any one of them could go through and come back to a different world. One without Connor, or Stephen, or Abby. Nick didn’t feel much like laughing anymore now either.
“I think it still needs to be a universe where you’d go through an anomaly,” Connor said, though Nick hadn’t said a thing. “So you and Stephen are probably safe. Abby too, because she found it without you. But I do wonder, you know, just sometimes…”
“What?”
“What would have happened if I hadn’t come to see you with the paper that day. If I really was just trying to get my dissertation finished, and writing the database the rest of the time. I mean, yeah, no dinosaurs, but on the plus side, no nearly getting eaten all the time. Just, yeah…”
“I dread to think,” Nick said, because it made Connor grin bashfully, and because they had arrived. He parked a little way back from the others, and pulled Connor towards him over the gear stick. Connor twisted himself around from what would be a very painful fall, and leant in to kiss him. He tasted like a mixture of coffee and Nick’s toothpaste, his heart thumping like they were already running from the creature. Nick pulled away slowly.
“Time to save the world?” Connor asked.
“If you like,” Nick replied. He had to admit it seemed more fun that way.
* * * *
Stephen knew from the moment the two of them stepped out of the car, together when they shouldn’t be, and too close. He had known beforehand, really, because standing in the background in disgrace (but at the front of the firing squad) gave you plenty of opportunity to watch. And he had spent eight years watching Nick Cutter resolutely not fall for anyone, waiting for his wife to come home. It was easy to spot the difference now, or at least it seemed that way; Nick was all smiles and easy words with Connor, and had only silence for Stephen.
Outside the showers, he could hear them.
“You know, I haven’t actually - well, I have, of course! This. And, you know, this. But not… this… with.” Connor. Stephen didn’t need to see him to fill in the handwaves and subtext that made up the bulk of the meaning of that monologue.
“I know.” Nick. At least he wasn’t making it easy.
“You… how do you…?”
“You told me, Connor, remember?”
“… Kind of hoped I’d imagined that conversation.”
“No.”
“Ah.”
“Luckily,” Nick’s voice a tease, and nothing cruel, “Mister Temple, I am an excellent teacher.”
“You never show up to your lectures.”
Stephen bit back a laugh, thankful that what was left was drowned under Nick’s.
Nick said, “For you, I’ll make an exception.”
Stephen wondered, he really did, if Connor quite knew what was going on here. Nick was - as Jenny Lewis had pointed out in great detail - not exactly a people person. For a long, very long, time, there had just been him and Stephen, shuffling around papers and fossils in a mostly comfortable silence. Nick had rather resented the others, as a matter of fact, right up until the moment when he hadn’t. Now Connor and Abby were pulled tight into the circle of people Nick gave a damn about - as well as, apparently, the ever-present non-existent Claudia, in a world before this one. It took some getting used to.
Stephen could walk somewhere else, where he wouldn’t hear them whispering, and the noises of clothing being peeled off. He could apologise. He could say, you know it was all about you anyway. But that wouldn’t be true, or not enough to make him worthy of sympathy. It had been so much more selfish, the first time. Nick had called him Mr Hart, and made him feel like a sixteen year old hiding his hard on underneath his school desk. Helen had made Stephen roll off her lips, and he had forgotten what showing teeth meant in a predator’s smile. Nick hadn’t needed him until Helen was gone, but Helen had, even if it was just as proof that she was winning.
He and Nick had only become friends afterwards, when it had started feeling as if they were the only two people left in the world. Stephen had regretted the affair every day, but eventually only at the back of his mind. It was only ever going to matter if she came back.
Nick’s groan was just muffled enough that Stephen could picture his mouth on Connor’s neck. He walked away.
*
Helen, as ever, turned up again just when they had stopped expecting her (Stephen never stopped expecting her and he knew Nick was the same). It had gotten to the point where he didn’t know if she had stolen the car because she had needed supplies or because she wanted to watch what happened.
Only one gun, a loose allosaurus, and Nick had grabbed the weapon from the startled soldier, before tossing it in Stephen’s direction. Much as Stephen was convinced that Connor (and probably Abby) couldn’t be trusted with the heavy weaponry, he wasn’t sure what to make of the gesture. Still wasn’t, standing by the anomaly, listening to Nick yell at Helen, with no longer any love lost there.
“You very nearly got Abby killed, Helen!”
Helen shrugged, and half-smiled.
Connor, predictably, reacted poorly to that. Less predictably, he strode ahead of Nick, and ahead of Stephen, to prod the air near Helen. “Just… will you just leave, please?” Helen was laughing before he had finished the sentence. “I don’t know why you keep coming back. All you ever do is…”
“Make things interesting?” she suggested.
“Listen - listen - if you want to be all… Warrior Princess, dinosaur slayer, that’s fine, all right? The rest of us think we developed brains for a reason, but it’s fine. Just it’s a bit of a laugh, you doing that, and then running back here every time you decide your head hurts or you want a bit of company. Just go. And let us get on with, you know, saving the human race here.”
Helen walked toward them, too close. Stephen watched the way her muscles shifted beneath her skin; all that coiled grace. She said, talking to Nick but looking at Stephen, “Oh, I like this one nearly as much as your last.” Helen brushed a finger along Stephen’s cheekbone. Cutter made a noise low in his throat that Stephen would love to decipher someday. And Connor inched sideways, so that his knuckles rested against Stephen’s thigh, maybe looking for the gun.
“Go,” Connor said again, and when Stephen looked across, Nick was matching Helen’s stare.
Even if she left now, it wouldn’t mean anything. Helen would be back when she felt like it, whether she believed they wanted her to or not. Nevertheless, it felt like a drawing of lines, never mind that she was the only one standing apart. Stephen looked up, and met her eyes. “Go,” he said, and managed to swallow the please.
She walked backwards through the anomaly, smiling triumphantly at him, but with all her attention on Nick. She frowned, just disappearing through the shine, when she realised that Nick’s focus was entirely on the men beside him.
* * * *
Connor didn’t hate many people. He could count on one hand the number of people he really wanted to give a good punch: Lester, and George Lucas (but only when he’d just watched Episode 2) and Leek. Maybe Caroline, but he wasn’t that comfortable with hitting girls, even when they were treacherous snaky things who sold you out for a wad of cash. Point is, Connor wasn’t full of negative feeling, but he still didn’t know what had happened here. He wasn’t exactly, totally, sure when Stephen had stopped being simply a rival for Abby’s affections, (as well as the occasional object of envy/suppressed lust for the way he wore a leather jacket). It helped, sure, that Stephen had saved Connor’s life a few times over now, and that he was really astonishingly good with a gun when they needed him to be. But it was probably more to do with the way Stephen - easy to hate when he stood confidently at Cutter’s side, gun over his shoulder - had looked fucking miserable lately. Connor had always had a soft spot for the underdog, regardless of how utterly moronic said underdog had been to go for the crazy violent woman over the hot professor.
He only realised, properly, that it might be more than sympathy, watching Cutter trying to order blood back into Stephen’s body.
Cutter said, “Stupid, stupid boy,” except that he didn’t look like he was saying that. He pressed a hand onto Stephen’s shoulder and rubbed so carefully where his hair ran into his neck.
Connor stood back, and waited for Abby to arrive with ambulances, or stretchers, or nurses of any stripe because he was exactly zero use with blood.
Cutter only had eyes for Stephen, and how pale he was. All Connor could do was watch them, and twist his hands together awkwardly, and not quite know what to say. He tried, “Professor… Is he going to be… I mean… is he all right?”
“He’s fine,” Cutter said. “Good hard head on him, don’t you Stephen?”
And as if by magic, or because it had been Cutter to ask, Stephen muttered, “Not quite that hard.”
Connor noted the fraction of a sigh Cutter allowed himself before standing back, and murmuring “Good,” and letting the medical team past.
If Cutter hadn’t said, “Stephen,” this morning (nothing else, because even when they’re not speaking, they don’t need to speak), Connor would have been the one standing beside him. Would probably have either got both of them killed, or just himself, not being quick enough to shove Cutter out of the way. So he was absolutely, definitely, not envying, just a bit, the note of fear in Cutter’s voice when Stephen had fallen and not stood up again.
He was better than that. So he pushed Cutter towards the ambulance and said, “Abby’n me’ll follow you to the hospital.”
*
Stephen was awake and growling at nurses and Cutter by the time Connor made it to his hospital room. “I’m fine,” Stephen said.
“You have concussion, Mr Hart,” the nurse insisted, which didn’t appear to help matters.
“Stephen,” Cutter said.
“Fine,” Stephen said. He smiled up at the nurse. “I’m sorry about that. I’d like to leave now, please.”
She fluttered, the way women tended to do when Stephen smiled at them. “I’ll try and hurry the doctor along. We can clear you to go as long as there’s someone-”
“There isn’t,” Stephen said, turning his head away, sullen again.
There was a long, horribly awfully long, pause where Connor waited for Cutter to jump in and save the day. When it became apparent that he was just going to stand there in awkward silence, not looking at anyone, Connor found himself saying, “I’ll go back with you.”
“What?” Triple echo, and he was a little surprised the nurse hadn’t got in on it too. She left, to find a doctor, and Connor found himself facing the stares.
“Well, I’d say you could come to mine,” Connor said, smiling ruefully at Abby, “but we don’t have the room, and there’s Rex to think about. He’s a bit funny with strange men. And women. You know, we probably should have listened to him about Caroline…”
Abby was smiling back at him, shoving her hair behind her ears. “Connor.”
“Yeah?”
“I’ll throw a bag over in the morning, okay?”
“Excellent. Thanks. You know, you really are…”
She interrupted him with a kiss to his cheek. “Yup.” She bent over Stephen’s bed and kissed him lightly. “Feel better soon. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
On the way out, she looked pointedly at Cutter, who ignored her. Mostly. He stared at the wall a bit, so he mustn’t have been completely unmoved.
Stephen was watching Connor, and being watched back didn’t seem to deter him. “Are you sure?” he asked.
Before he could say anything, Cutter interrupted, “Of course he’s not bloody sure, you’re both coming back to mine.”
“Nick,” Stephen said.
“No arguments, you’ll make me change my mind.”
“Wouldn’t want that, would we?” Connor said, trying to get a smile from one of them. He was feeling increasingly ignored, what with the dialogue-free conversation going on over his head. Nick came to stand behind him, resting his solid hands on Connor’s shoulders. Stephen smiled - the quick flashed one with no teeth and no eye contact. It wasn’t the one that drove the nurses wild, but Connor thought maybe that was a good sign.
*
It would, Connor thought, be a much better story if he could say that they had all gone home and shagged each other senseless, until apologies ceased to matter and everyone had got over the awkwardness of sticking what where? But Stephen had a head injury, Cutter was still a bit pissed at him, and Connor was still thinking of Nick by his last name. Plus, he wasn’t actually much good at the wordless sex bit, and when they finally came to the planned nakedness part of their almost arrangement, he started babbling.
It was lucky, then, that Stephen and Nick thought of it as a challenge, aiming to move him to inarticulacy, if not actual silence. Stephen’s long fingers and Nick’s dirty mouth, holding him between the two of them, until even he knew he was spouting nonsense.
“Connor,” Nick murmured, his accent gone all peculiar. Then: “Christ, Stephen,” at whatever Stephen’s previously unaccounted for hand was up to. It was an almighty mess, arms and legs everywhere, but while they had talked out most of the anger, there was enough unresolved something to power the ARC, and Connor didn’t even have the breath left to laugh at the tangle.
“Sorry,” Stephen said, sounding far away. Connor looked down to see Stephen slumped on the floor, leaning on the wall. He dropped down to join him, unsurprised when Nick did likewise, slipping into the middle.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Nick said. “I think it was a pretty good first try.” He laughed, touching his head to Connor’s briefly. Stephen grinned, and kissed Nick’s bare shoulder, before reaching a long arm over his head to tug mischievously at Connor’s hair.
Connor picked up the cue. “Well, not bad, anyway,” he agreed, standing up. Between him and Stephen, they pulled Nick to his feet.
Stephen said, “I bet it’d be even better on the bed.”
A slow smile crawled along Nick’s face. “In the spirit of full disclosure, I could point out that it’s been a while since I managed tw-”
“In the spirit of scientific inquiry,” Stephen said, “I could point out that changing the background conditions might have an effect.”
“Hey!” Connor protested. “I think I’m more than just a…”
Stephen pushed him onto the bed, not roughly, but not like a man about to take no for an answer.
“Revised hypothesis,” Cutter said, as Stephen sat on the bed below Connor’s feet, and then leant down. Tag-teaming, totally unfair, but Connor didn’t complain. Just lay back, tried not to strain upwards and suffocate Stephen, and gave them a second go at moving him to silence. He didn’t fancy their chances, but in their attempts, Nick and Stephen were talking again. It was glances and brushed fingertips and the comfort of shared history, even one with bruises. Stephen’s mouth on him, and Cutter’s hands, and there was a space here he fitted into, or at least the room to see if he could make one. That was sort of beyond a pretty good first try.
FIN. Feedback would be lovely. (I'm sorry about the lack of Abby - I love her, but she just refused to play ball. As did Stephen, but I kind of had to persevere with him to get the threesome going!)
Fandom: Primeval (ITV)
Pairing: Cutter/Connor/Stephen (eventually)
Rating: R
Length: c3,800 words
Disclaimer: All belongs to Adrian Hodges, Tim Haines, and ITV
Spoilers: Set sometime beyond 2.3, imagining what might happen if some of those secrets come out.
Summary: Stephen knew from the moment the two of them stepped out of the car, together when they shouldn’t be, and too close. It was easy to spot the difference now, or at least it seemed that way; Nick was all smiles and easy words with Connor, and had only silence for Stephen.
AN: I have no actual knowledge of how this season's big secrets will be revealed, but my love of Connor/Cutter cuteness is currently only surpassed by my level of frustration with Stephen not realising that this will end badly. So it does, but only for a little while, I promise.
Nick didn’t know if Connor was waiting for him, or if they had just happened to wander into the locker room at the same time. The strange thing was that now either option was worthy of reasonable consideration. The whole world had come tumbling in on the two of them - Leek and Caroline Steel, Stephen and Helen all over again - and they just kept meeting like this.
Connor didn’t say much, which was starting to worry Nick. Connor not speaking normally meant a Connor who was unconscious, or petrified, or already mostly eaten by whatever had crawled in today. He tapped Connor’s shoulder.
Connor yelped.
“Sorry, I’m sorry,” Nick said reassuringly. “Just me.”
“Oh. Okay then, that’s just…” He trailed off, and flushed. “Sorry. Jumpy. What with all the…”
“It’s been a long few days.”
“You could say that, yeah.”
“Is it…?” “Do you…?”
“Go ahead.” Nick waved a hand for Connor to go first.
“He is sorry, you know,” Connor said, which clearly wasn’t what he had been going to say originally.
“I’m sure he is,” Nick said. “More importantly: since when did you stick up for Stephen?”
“I don’t! I’m not. It’s just that I’d rather not nearly get squashed again because the two of you keep…” Connor bounced his fists off each other, probably not intending it to look like that - unexpectedly accurate, a little while ago anyway.
“These things take time. Now, do you want that drink, or don’t you?”
“You didn’t ask me for a drink, Professor.”
Connor was the only one who still called him that, other than Lester when he was feeling particularly snide. He didn’t feel much like a teacher anymore (if he had ever done before), and today had been one of those days where he’d felt more like a thug with a gun. That thought, naturally, led to Stephen, happiest with something that could kill from nine hundred feet.
He said, “Come and get a drink with me, Connor.”
*
One drink somehow turned into rather more than one, and Connor leaning heavily on his arm when Nick tried to get them both out of the pub.
“I’ve changed my mind,” Connor announced, too loudly.
“That’s good,” Nick said. “About what, exactly?”
“Stephen,” Connor said, and damnit but Nick had thought he’d gotten past the instinctive flare of something dark at the name.
“Really.”
“Yep. He’s an idiot.”
Nick couldn’t help but laugh at that - Connor’s decided tone, or the sudden show of support, though he knew Abby and Connor had taken a dim view of Stephen’s actions from the beginning.
Connor continued, “Why would he pick her?”
“Over Abby? Or over the many beautiful women who threw themselves at him during the eight month period he spent screwing my wife?”
“Over you,” Connor said. “I mean…” He flung his arms about a bit, managing to look obscene and preposterous all at once. “What was he thinking?”
“Connor.”
“Out of all the ridiculous things that’ve happened to us since all this…”
“Connor.”
“Did you say something?”
“Connor. Say that again.”
“Which part?”
“Any part,” Nick said, laughing. Connor, bewildered but still too drunk to really notice it, managed to get out, “you’re… you’re smart, yeah? And look at y-”, before Nick kissed him. Just a kiss, just now. Because Connor had understood the heart of the matter and had been good enough not to mention it until this moment. Because Nick needed someone whose eyes he would be able to meet tomorrow morning.
Connor smiled dopily at him and said something that sounded suspiciously like, “Home, Jeeves,” before loping an arm over Nick’s shoulder. Nick made a mental note to call Abby before she worried, and took Connor home with him. It was far too late in the day to try and figure out how to get themselves back to two different places.
*
The morning was Sunday, and nobody needed to be awake quite yet. Except there was a persistent ringing in his ear, and it eventually registered as a telephone rather than a medical issue. Connor bounded into Nick’s bedroom, not nearly as hungover as he should be. “Anomaly,” he said, as if even the word tasted good.
Nick held out a hand for the phone that wasn’t ringing any more. Probably hadn’t been for a while, if the bemused look Connor gave him was any indication.
“Oh, I linked our mobiles to the detector. So we don’t need to wait for Lester to ring. Look,” Connor waved his mobile phone under Nick’s nose, “location and everything. Shall I get a team to meet us there?”
“Connor, if it wasn’t nine am on a Sunday morning, I could…”
“Kiss me,” Connor said, grinning. “Yeah, I know.” He faltered, suddenly. “I mean… You did mean…”
“Yes. I think I did.” Nick rubbed a hand through Connor’s hair, damp from the shower. “Okay?”
“Yeah… Yeah. Great, actually. If that’s… alright?”
“Good. Now put the kettle on while I get washed up. We can drink it on the way over there.”
In the car, Connor was back to drumming his fingers on the dashboard and looking anxious. Nick found it hard to track sometimes - the times when Connor was like this, just like the Connor he had known, and the times he was brave enough to kiss Nick back. The problem, he thought, was that sometimes Connor looked wound up like a spring, and then would do the brave thing anyway.
“So, about Stephen…”
Like that.
“You called him?” Nick asked, pretending that had been the question.
“What? Yeah, I did, but that’s not… Look.”
“Okay.”
“It’s not as if he’d… He nearly got himself killed yesterday, trying to watch out for you.”
“That’s the easy part.”
“What? I’m sorry, look, I’ve tried that part, and it isn’t easy, thank you very much.”
“For him,” Nick said, and immediately regretted it. “That’s not what I meant. Stephen likes that. He likes the guns and the chasing and… He’s just like her, that way.” He hadn’t meant to say that. “The things he’ll come out with sometimes… About telling the truth, and just letting people face it. Letting them find out if we’re a species worth surviving. He says that, and all I hear is…”
“Her.”
“Yes.”
“Does he really…”
“I don’t know. I hope not. But it was her he lied for.”
“So did you.”
Nick nodded. “Yes, I did.” But it was different, and he didn’t think even Stephen would dispute that.
The shop on the corner of the road caught his eye, and Nick stared at it in the rear mirror. He laughed when he realised.
“What?” Connor asked.
“The shop’s wrong.”
“Wrong like…” he hummed thoughtfully, “before it was a hotbed of sedition and sexual perversion, or wrong like it used to be a Starbucks?”
“Subway.”
“Sorry?”
“It was a Subway.”
Connor laughed then too, but only for a moment, because suddenly Nick was the only one having fun with this. For all Nick knew, every good science-fiction buff would be terrified by the thought of a London borough having different lunch needs in a parallel timeline. They barely understood how the anomalies worked, let alone the consequences of doing the wrong thing when you went through them. That was what made it so odd - the only changes being Claudia, and the ARC, and now this shop. And Connor, sometimes. But any one of them could go through and come back to a different world. One without Connor, or Stephen, or Abby. Nick didn’t feel much like laughing anymore now either.
“I think it still needs to be a universe where you’d go through an anomaly,” Connor said, though Nick hadn’t said a thing. “So you and Stephen are probably safe. Abby too, because she found it without you. But I do wonder, you know, just sometimes…”
“What?”
“What would have happened if I hadn’t come to see you with the paper that day. If I really was just trying to get my dissertation finished, and writing the database the rest of the time. I mean, yeah, no dinosaurs, but on the plus side, no nearly getting eaten all the time. Just, yeah…”
“I dread to think,” Nick said, because it made Connor grin bashfully, and because they had arrived. He parked a little way back from the others, and pulled Connor towards him over the gear stick. Connor twisted himself around from what would be a very painful fall, and leant in to kiss him. He tasted like a mixture of coffee and Nick’s toothpaste, his heart thumping like they were already running from the creature. Nick pulled away slowly.
“Time to save the world?” Connor asked.
“If you like,” Nick replied. He had to admit it seemed more fun that way.
* * * *
Stephen knew from the moment the two of them stepped out of the car, together when they shouldn’t be, and too close. He had known beforehand, really, because standing in the background in disgrace (but at the front of the firing squad) gave you plenty of opportunity to watch. And he had spent eight years watching Nick Cutter resolutely not fall for anyone, waiting for his wife to come home. It was easy to spot the difference now, or at least it seemed that way; Nick was all smiles and easy words with Connor, and had only silence for Stephen.
Outside the showers, he could hear them.
“You know, I haven’t actually - well, I have, of course! This. And, you know, this. But not… this… with.” Connor. Stephen didn’t need to see him to fill in the handwaves and subtext that made up the bulk of the meaning of that monologue.
“I know.” Nick. At least he wasn’t making it easy.
“You… how do you…?”
“You told me, Connor, remember?”
“… Kind of hoped I’d imagined that conversation.”
“No.”
“Ah.”
“Luckily,” Nick’s voice a tease, and nothing cruel, “Mister Temple, I am an excellent teacher.”
“You never show up to your lectures.”
Stephen bit back a laugh, thankful that what was left was drowned under Nick’s.
Nick said, “For you, I’ll make an exception.”
Stephen wondered, he really did, if Connor quite knew what was going on here. Nick was - as Jenny Lewis had pointed out in great detail - not exactly a people person. For a long, very long, time, there had just been him and Stephen, shuffling around papers and fossils in a mostly comfortable silence. Nick had rather resented the others, as a matter of fact, right up until the moment when he hadn’t. Now Connor and Abby were pulled tight into the circle of people Nick gave a damn about - as well as, apparently, the ever-present non-existent Claudia, in a world before this one. It took some getting used to.
Stephen could walk somewhere else, where he wouldn’t hear them whispering, and the noises of clothing being peeled off. He could apologise. He could say, you know it was all about you anyway. But that wouldn’t be true, or not enough to make him worthy of sympathy. It had been so much more selfish, the first time. Nick had called him Mr Hart, and made him feel like a sixteen year old hiding his hard on underneath his school desk. Helen had made Stephen roll off her lips, and he had forgotten what showing teeth meant in a predator’s smile. Nick hadn’t needed him until Helen was gone, but Helen had, even if it was just as proof that she was winning.
He and Nick had only become friends afterwards, when it had started feeling as if they were the only two people left in the world. Stephen had regretted the affair every day, but eventually only at the back of his mind. It was only ever going to matter if she came back.
Nick’s groan was just muffled enough that Stephen could picture his mouth on Connor’s neck. He walked away.
*
Helen, as ever, turned up again just when they had stopped expecting her (Stephen never stopped expecting her and he knew Nick was the same). It had gotten to the point where he didn’t know if she had stolen the car because she had needed supplies or because she wanted to watch what happened.
Only one gun, a loose allosaurus, and Nick had grabbed the weapon from the startled soldier, before tossing it in Stephen’s direction. Much as Stephen was convinced that Connor (and probably Abby) couldn’t be trusted with the heavy weaponry, he wasn’t sure what to make of the gesture. Still wasn’t, standing by the anomaly, listening to Nick yell at Helen, with no longer any love lost there.
“You very nearly got Abby killed, Helen!”
Helen shrugged, and half-smiled.
Connor, predictably, reacted poorly to that. Less predictably, he strode ahead of Nick, and ahead of Stephen, to prod the air near Helen. “Just… will you just leave, please?” Helen was laughing before he had finished the sentence. “I don’t know why you keep coming back. All you ever do is…”
“Make things interesting?” she suggested.
“Listen - listen - if you want to be all… Warrior Princess, dinosaur slayer, that’s fine, all right? The rest of us think we developed brains for a reason, but it’s fine. Just it’s a bit of a laugh, you doing that, and then running back here every time you decide your head hurts or you want a bit of company. Just go. And let us get on with, you know, saving the human race here.”
Helen walked toward them, too close. Stephen watched the way her muscles shifted beneath her skin; all that coiled grace. She said, talking to Nick but looking at Stephen, “Oh, I like this one nearly as much as your last.” Helen brushed a finger along Stephen’s cheekbone. Cutter made a noise low in his throat that Stephen would love to decipher someday. And Connor inched sideways, so that his knuckles rested against Stephen’s thigh, maybe looking for the gun.
“Go,” Connor said again, and when Stephen looked across, Nick was matching Helen’s stare.
Even if she left now, it wouldn’t mean anything. Helen would be back when she felt like it, whether she believed they wanted her to or not. Nevertheless, it felt like a drawing of lines, never mind that she was the only one standing apart. Stephen looked up, and met her eyes. “Go,” he said, and managed to swallow the please.
She walked backwards through the anomaly, smiling triumphantly at him, but with all her attention on Nick. She frowned, just disappearing through the shine, when she realised that Nick’s focus was entirely on the men beside him.
* * * *
Connor didn’t hate many people. He could count on one hand the number of people he really wanted to give a good punch: Lester, and George Lucas (but only when he’d just watched Episode 2) and Leek. Maybe Caroline, but he wasn’t that comfortable with hitting girls, even when they were treacherous snaky things who sold you out for a wad of cash. Point is, Connor wasn’t full of negative feeling, but he still didn’t know what had happened here. He wasn’t exactly, totally, sure when Stephen had stopped being simply a rival for Abby’s affections, (as well as the occasional object of envy/suppressed lust for the way he wore a leather jacket). It helped, sure, that Stephen had saved Connor’s life a few times over now, and that he was really astonishingly good with a gun when they needed him to be. But it was probably more to do with the way Stephen - easy to hate when he stood confidently at Cutter’s side, gun over his shoulder - had looked fucking miserable lately. Connor had always had a soft spot for the underdog, regardless of how utterly moronic said underdog had been to go for the crazy violent woman over the hot professor.
He only realised, properly, that it might be more than sympathy, watching Cutter trying to order blood back into Stephen’s body.
Cutter said, “Stupid, stupid boy,” except that he didn’t look like he was saying that. He pressed a hand onto Stephen’s shoulder and rubbed so carefully where his hair ran into his neck.
Connor stood back, and waited for Abby to arrive with ambulances, or stretchers, or nurses of any stripe because he was exactly zero use with blood.
Cutter only had eyes for Stephen, and how pale he was. All Connor could do was watch them, and twist his hands together awkwardly, and not quite know what to say. He tried, “Professor… Is he going to be… I mean… is he all right?”
“He’s fine,” Cutter said. “Good hard head on him, don’t you Stephen?”
And as if by magic, or because it had been Cutter to ask, Stephen muttered, “Not quite that hard.”
Connor noted the fraction of a sigh Cutter allowed himself before standing back, and murmuring “Good,” and letting the medical team past.
If Cutter hadn’t said, “Stephen,” this morning (nothing else, because even when they’re not speaking, they don’t need to speak), Connor would have been the one standing beside him. Would probably have either got both of them killed, or just himself, not being quick enough to shove Cutter out of the way. So he was absolutely, definitely, not envying, just a bit, the note of fear in Cutter’s voice when Stephen had fallen and not stood up again.
He was better than that. So he pushed Cutter towards the ambulance and said, “Abby’n me’ll follow you to the hospital.”
*
Stephen was awake and growling at nurses and Cutter by the time Connor made it to his hospital room. “I’m fine,” Stephen said.
“You have concussion, Mr Hart,” the nurse insisted, which didn’t appear to help matters.
“Stephen,” Cutter said.
“Fine,” Stephen said. He smiled up at the nurse. “I’m sorry about that. I’d like to leave now, please.”
She fluttered, the way women tended to do when Stephen smiled at them. “I’ll try and hurry the doctor along. We can clear you to go as long as there’s someone-”
“There isn’t,” Stephen said, turning his head away, sullen again.
There was a long, horribly awfully long, pause where Connor waited for Cutter to jump in and save the day. When it became apparent that he was just going to stand there in awkward silence, not looking at anyone, Connor found himself saying, “I’ll go back with you.”
“What?” Triple echo, and he was a little surprised the nurse hadn’t got in on it too. She left, to find a doctor, and Connor found himself facing the stares.
“Well, I’d say you could come to mine,” Connor said, smiling ruefully at Abby, “but we don’t have the room, and there’s Rex to think about. He’s a bit funny with strange men. And women. You know, we probably should have listened to him about Caroline…”
Abby was smiling back at him, shoving her hair behind her ears. “Connor.”
“Yeah?”
“I’ll throw a bag over in the morning, okay?”
“Excellent. Thanks. You know, you really are…”
She interrupted him with a kiss to his cheek. “Yup.” She bent over Stephen’s bed and kissed him lightly. “Feel better soon. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
On the way out, she looked pointedly at Cutter, who ignored her. Mostly. He stared at the wall a bit, so he mustn’t have been completely unmoved.
Stephen was watching Connor, and being watched back didn’t seem to deter him. “Are you sure?” he asked.
Before he could say anything, Cutter interrupted, “Of course he’s not bloody sure, you’re both coming back to mine.”
“Nick,” Stephen said.
“No arguments, you’ll make me change my mind.”
“Wouldn’t want that, would we?” Connor said, trying to get a smile from one of them. He was feeling increasingly ignored, what with the dialogue-free conversation going on over his head. Nick came to stand behind him, resting his solid hands on Connor’s shoulders. Stephen smiled - the quick flashed one with no teeth and no eye contact. It wasn’t the one that drove the nurses wild, but Connor thought maybe that was a good sign.
*
It would, Connor thought, be a much better story if he could say that they had all gone home and shagged each other senseless, until apologies ceased to matter and everyone had got over the awkwardness of sticking what where? But Stephen had a head injury, Cutter was still a bit pissed at him, and Connor was still thinking of Nick by his last name. Plus, he wasn’t actually much good at the wordless sex bit, and when they finally came to the planned nakedness part of their almost arrangement, he started babbling.
It was lucky, then, that Stephen and Nick thought of it as a challenge, aiming to move him to inarticulacy, if not actual silence. Stephen’s long fingers and Nick’s dirty mouth, holding him between the two of them, until even he knew he was spouting nonsense.
“Connor,” Nick murmured, his accent gone all peculiar. Then: “Christ, Stephen,” at whatever Stephen’s previously unaccounted for hand was up to. It was an almighty mess, arms and legs everywhere, but while they had talked out most of the anger, there was enough unresolved something to power the ARC, and Connor didn’t even have the breath left to laugh at the tangle.
“Sorry,” Stephen said, sounding far away. Connor looked down to see Stephen slumped on the floor, leaning on the wall. He dropped down to join him, unsurprised when Nick did likewise, slipping into the middle.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Nick said. “I think it was a pretty good first try.” He laughed, touching his head to Connor’s briefly. Stephen grinned, and kissed Nick’s bare shoulder, before reaching a long arm over his head to tug mischievously at Connor’s hair.
Connor picked up the cue. “Well, not bad, anyway,” he agreed, standing up. Between him and Stephen, they pulled Nick to his feet.
Stephen said, “I bet it’d be even better on the bed.”
A slow smile crawled along Nick’s face. “In the spirit of full disclosure, I could point out that it’s been a while since I managed tw-”
“In the spirit of scientific inquiry,” Stephen said, “I could point out that changing the background conditions might have an effect.”
“Hey!” Connor protested. “I think I’m more than just a…”
Stephen pushed him onto the bed, not roughly, but not like a man about to take no for an answer.
“Revised hypothesis,” Cutter said, as Stephen sat on the bed below Connor’s feet, and then leant down. Tag-teaming, totally unfair, but Connor didn’t complain. Just lay back, tried not to strain upwards and suffocate Stephen, and gave them a second go at moving him to silence. He didn’t fancy their chances, but in their attempts, Nick and Stephen were talking again. It was glances and brushed fingertips and the comfort of shared history, even one with bruises. Stephen’s mouth on him, and Cutter’s hands, and there was a space here he fitted into, or at least the room to see if he could make one. That was sort of beyond a pretty good first try.
FIN. Feedback would be lovely. (I'm sorry about the lack of Abby - I love her, but she just refused to play ball. As did Stephen, but I kind of had to persevere with him to get the threesome going!)