Primeval fanfic: Making Shifts 2/2
Title: Making Shifts 2/2
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: Really owning nothing anyone recognises, especially the direct quotes and characters. I super-don't own those.
Summary: When Connor takes Stephen's place in the Menagerie, a lot of things change. AU
Series: Well, obviously the end of S2 and moving into S3.
Rating: PG-17
Pairing: Stephen/Connor
A/N: The part I suspect at least some of you have been waiting for, the smut.
**********************
Connor had barely recovered from his moment of despair when they were interrupted by a couple porters who were to take him down to radiology and get some CT and MRI scans of the potential damage done to Connor's brain. Stephen in his capacity as imaginary bodyguard followed down the hall, trying to think of some way to distract Connor before he hyperventilated himself into intensive care.
"So," he grabbed onto the first topic he could think of. "That gap year I was in the U.S. I wound up falling in with a mad batch of NRA members. They were all survivalists and I spent a good few months living in a compound in the middle of nowhere. I'm fairly certain they had more guns and ammunition there than the entire British Army."
Connor turned to stare at him. The porters stopped looking him in the eye and began to squirm. "What? Like a cult?"
Stephen thought about it. "Yes and no. I think, here, yes. As in, in the UK we'd think it's a cult, but America's so . . . large, there are things people get away with, lots of them, in a lot of different places, and it's harder to call it a cult. Anyhow, there wasn't any sort of religious aspect to it. Not really."
Connor's eyes were so enormous, Stephen couldn't keep the amused smile from his face. "So, you were living in a weird American compound for months?"
"Well, not always in the compound," he said. "See, there are a lot of areas in America where hunting for subsistence remains a lot more a way of life than here. We're all set so close together here that it's . . . harder to get that isolated." Stephen shrugged. "I learned a lot about tracking and guns and wildlife." He'd also learned a lot about ignorance and poverty, but he didn't want this to get depressing for Connor, who he was trying to cheer up and distract. "After all that I wound up in Canada for a while too," he continued.
"What was that like?" Connor asked. "I nearly chose to go to university there, you know, closer to the Alberta Badlands and all, but we had some family issues and I had to stay closer to home."
"Oddly like America, actually," Stephen said contemplatively. "It's as big and spread out, but there are some odd qualitative differences if you're there for long enough. For one thing, their political situation is a lot more like the one here, so it's a little easier to follow." He shrugged. "They seem to be more against guns than the Americans, but there are just as many people there who hunt for subsistence to an extent that the actual gun numbers aren't much lower." He added, "The one thing I remember most from them both, though, is just how . . . large both countries are. The distances are just so incredibly enormous."
Smiling a little sadly, Connor told him, "I sort of always wanted to go travelling. I mean, what it must be like to live somewhere that's bigger than the whole of Europe but is still a country." He shook his head. "I have a cousin who went and was planning to do some sort of driving tour. He emailed back that he'd had to give up that idea when someone explained that it would take him weeks just to get from New York to California if he was going to also visit all the tourist stops on the way." The smile got a little amused as he added, "Pete said girls thought his accent was sexy just because he was from the UK and that I should come out because I could get a girl just by talking at her."
"It works to an extent," Stephen said grinning. "They think it's exotic."
"Weird," Connor said, shaking his head.
They reached radiology and Connor was lifted into the machines, one after another, patiently lying there as they took shot after shot of the inside of his head. Then they were walked back up to the room and left to their own devices again. "So, what's this about Coronation Street?" Stephen asked when they got back and Connor promptly turned on some dreadful sort of daytime television programme.
"Well, I figured that maybe the reason these were popular is because the people watching aren't so smart," Connor said. "And since I'm not as smart as I used to be right now, I should see if I can't see what they see in them. See?"
Stephen narrowed his eyes at his young friend. "You did that on purpose."
"Maybe," Connor admitted unashamedly. "But I still want to know." Then he perked up. "Forget that. Art Attack's on!"
Stephen sank back in his chair laughing as Connor eagerly watched the man on the screen build some crafty animal or other out of loo roll, glue and plastic bags. Then he made a strange sort of collage on the ground out of piles of children's clothing, rope, footballs, football jerseys, goal nets and a stack of uncoloured fan paraphernalia. He wouldn't have thought any adult could watch a show like that for pleasure without taking some sort of experience-enhancing illegal substance, but Connor was unashamedly enjoying it. When the talking statue came on, he asked, "You watch this often?"
"Abby's banned me from touching the newspaper once we've both read it, and the loo roll can't leave the bathroom." He pouted. "She got mad 'cause Rex got into the paint and got footprints all over the windows."
Abby spoke from the doorway. "And because you destroyed another of my hairdryers with one of those projects, and it wasn't even to build something for the anomalies, it was just so that you could have an armature for the papier-mache."
"You just don't like fun," Connor grumbled.
She rolled her eyes, handing Connor a case full of DVDs, but the smile she wore was affectionate. "Such an idiot," she told him, then kissed his cheek. "I brought the case you asked for."
"Thank you, Abby," Connor said obediently. Then he looked at her suspiciously. "You didn't slip any of your romances in there, did you?"
As the pair began to banter about their respective appalling taste, Stephen flipped the case open and began to go through it. Abby had, indeed, slipped romances in there. Hugh Grant, Hugh Grant, Hugh Grant . . . "Really Abby?" Stephen couldn't help it. "I never would have pictured you a fan of . . . Mickey Blue Eyes? Really?"
"It's appalling, isn't it?" Connor said with a smile.
"Zardoz?" Stephen asked, unable to help the sardonic lift of an eyebrow.
"It's got Sean Connery in it," Connor protested.
Abby snorted. "'The penis is evil'?" she said to Connor, who flushed.
"I'm fairly sure I don't want to know," Stephen said. "Don't you have any good films in here?"
"Like what?" the pair chorused.
"Philadelphia Story, Father Goose, The Thin Man, Adam's Rib?"
"You mean old films?" Connor asked in the same tone of voice he might have asked if Stephen was sexually attracted to octegenarians.
"I mean classics," Stephen defended. "Real ones, not your, 'This has Connery in it,' rubbish."
"This is going to make film night harder," Connor said to Abby.
She nodded, then turned to Stephen. "So, I guess when we go to the video store I'll have to stand up for Connor's side too."
"You'd better phone," Connor said, "Or I'm telling everyone at the ARC about the costume for your Year four school play."
"You wouldn't dare."
He just glared. "You promised you wouldn't tell anyone about the time the rugby team made me eat two plates of sausages in the canteen at school and I vomited all over the headmistress. How'd that get out to everyone in IT if you didn't tell anyone?"
The back and forth between Connor and Abby was effortless and Stephen felt fairly excluded. It was good that Connor's roommate got along so well with him, and Connor's obvious interest in Abby had clearly not caused much trouble with their living arrangements, strange as they were. Eventually Abby left to check in at the ARC, leaving Stephen alone with Connor again.
Connor sagged back against the pillows. "Thank God."
"I thought you liked Abby," Stephen said.
"I do," Connor whined. "But she came in here, all demanding that I cheer up, and that it could have been worse and I shouldn't whinge about how bad I've got it, and I just . . . didn't want to argue."
Well, if Connor wasn't going to stand up for his right to complain, Stephen wasn't going to do that for him. After all, Abby was right that Connor couldn't spend all his time in a funk over what he might have lost. He was still incredibly intelligent, and while Stephen had discovered he didn't seem to have it in himself to push Connor about it, it was a good thing someone did. So he just changed the topic.
Eventually, as it so often did, conversation wended its way back to the anomaly project. "Have you made any progress on those calculations you wanted to get done for Cutter?"
Connor frowned. "I think so. It's . . . I think I know what's wrong, I mean, why I was having trouble, but . . ." he trailed off, shrugging.
"What is it?" If there was one thing Stephen had learned in the time he'd known Connor, it was that he tended to need to think aloud to process his ideas.
"I need to learn how to concentrate on one thing," Connor said, as though admitting a grievous fault in himself. "See, I sort of multitask a lot, 'cause it gets boring if I spend too long on one thing." He looked mournfully at the computer. "But I can't, and I'm falling behind on things."
Stephen turned the computer to himself and saw two emails open that Connor was in the middle of responding to, and how he was doing that with his hands the way they were he was going to have to find out, one page filled with a variety of equations, Connor's database of dinosaurs, which he seemed to be in the middle of updating and a set of directives from the university regarding how Connor could reenter the stream there to finish up his thesis and viva.
"So, close everything down and just work on one thing, Connor. If you can't do them all at once, step back and just do one thing at a time." Connor's eyes slid away, and Stephen knew he was castigating himself for being 'stupid' again. "Most of us can't do this, Connor. I'm not going to argue that you feel handicapped right now and it's not right that you are, but until you recover, you'll just have to work within your limitations. Now," he said. "Let me see your hands, because you're not supposed to be using them right now."
Sheepishly, Connor showed him a set of fingers in stained bandages. Stephen hit the call button. "I didn't mean to go on so long," Connor explained, "But Ashley in IT needed to know something about the ARC's network and then Leigh needed to know something about the direction the ceratopsian lines would have evolved, something about her DNA testing, and Cutter wants the equations done and my new thesis, and I haven't looked at Morrison's stuff since his class because it was stupid, and all my passwords for the university are gone since I don't go there anymore, so I had to hack the journals database to get started on the research-"
A hand over his mouth stopped Connor quite effectively. "Connor, stop and breathe. Why is IT asking you things about the ARC's network?"
Connor shrugged. "Well, keeping the ADD integrated with the regular network is a lot of trouble because every time I upgrade it throws the system out of whack, so I have to liase with them. Anyhow, Cutter wants access to the ADD for plotting and mapping and the like, so I have to keep it connected to the system, rather than separating it out the way I wanted to originally." He went into a long and technical explanation of how he would have kept the two linked, that boiled down to a lack of time and repeated incompetence on the part of the people who were supposed to run the IT department. "They keep burning out, and I don't blame them what with the fact that the Home Office picked a bunch of stuff that's cheap but incompatible, in terms of both the hardware and the software, but they're just standard office worker types, they don't really understand how critical it all is."
"So, what you're saying is, you run the IT department in your free time," Stephen said slowly.
Connor flushed. "Well, I wouldn't say I run it, but Ashley's not in charge, not really, and he's bad at delegating."
"That's why you're getting an email from someone named Mark asking you to explain how to get Cutter's printer working again?"
Connor rolled his eyes. "That's just Cutter. He's like Dr. Grant. Destroys a lot of computers just by touching them."
"Who?" Stephen asked, trying to think of anyone named Grant in either the university or the ARC.
"Alan Grant? Jurassic Park?" Connor prompted. "You know, 'The point is... you are alive when they start to eat you. So you know... try to show a little respect.'"
There wasn't anything Stephen could say to that. "You can remember something that random and you're worried about your intellect?"
"I've watched that film 23 times," Connor said. "It's not the same thing at all." He shook his head. "That's not the point. I just wish I could ask Duncan to take it. He was always the best at OS work of the three of us."
"Duncan?" Stephen asked incredulously. "Your friend that helped steal the dodo? This-is-all-a-government-conspiracy, Duncan?"
"Stephen," Connor said, laughing. "It is a government conspiracy." Before he could deny it, Connor added, "And even if it weren't, put yourself in his shoes. Remember the interrogation room? The soldiers? The spotlight on that nifty glowy table?"
He winced. "So, you want to ask Lester to bring your friend in?"
"What, you think I'm stupid? Duncan might be the person who gets my programming style best and all, but can you imagine Lester . . ." he paused. "Let's ask anyway. Imagine Lester's face."
It hadn't really solved any of the problems Connor was facing, but Stephen was suddenly faced with the image of Lester, and Cutter for that matter, if asked by Connor to bring that Duncan fellow in, and he couldn't help laughing along with Connor.
Once the nurses had come, changed Connor's dressing on his hands, scolded Stephen for letting Connor type, then left in a flurry, Stephen took up the job of being Connor's hands on the keyboard and promised himself that he'd get his revenge for all of Connor's snide remarks about his incompetence with computers by dragging Connor out to deal with all the practical lab work he avoided in favour of his computers, not to mention a bit of harassing him on the shooting range and some physical training to get his own back.
Of course, when the image of Connor, sweating and shirtless (and his memory could supply him with that image now, since by the end of his stretch in Leek's menagerie he had been) danced briefly across his mind, Stephen was forced to admit that he wasn't being punch drunk, he was just interested in Connor.
With the afternoon wearing on and Connor still recovering, he drifted off to sleep not long after and Stephen was left alone to sit next to him and just watch the afternoon light play across his face. Oddly enough, Connor actually looked a little older in sleep, as the childlike glee he took in things around him was smoothed away to show the young man underneath. The light stubble that was always there stopped looking lazy, like a student who hadn't enough time to shave properly, and took away those last possible hints of childishness.
His jaw line was square and sharply defined. What little softness there had been when the project first started (which was much less than Stephen had thought once Connor lost that incredibly bulky coat of his) had turned to muscle. In fact, Connor's hadn't been so much soft then, as poor and underfed. Underneath that bulky coat he'd been almost waifish until solid pay by the ARC, combined with constantly running for his life had turned him to something sleek. He'd never be bulky at this rate, but Connor's whipcord tension was better suited to slender anyhow.
Without his hats and gloves, his waistcoats and scarves, it was as though he was stripped to the essence of what lay underneath, and Stephen found his hand gently shifting a bit of Connor's hair off his face. Connor's head turned, following the motion in his sleep, murmuring something inaudible.
He was so fucked.
**************************
It was the next day when they finally got the results of all the scans of Connor's brain. The damage was evident in darkened areas. The doctors said that Connor was lucky he was both so high functioning, and that the crippled areas were so relatively small. They were mostly like the results of small strokes, causing some damage to Connor's small motor skills and his cognitive centres. Nothing serious, and nothing that would have impaired him in any way if he had a normal job.
Connor was devastated, and Stephen discovered that every time he stepped out of the room, he'd come back to Connor staring dolefully at the pictures with their dark spots on dead tissue.
He wasn't even cheered by the fact that all the doctors had pointed out numerous incidents where the human brain had regenerated around the damage, creating new neural connections that bypassed the problem and allowed the person to return to their full previous function. All he could see was that he had been damaged in the one thing he saw as useful to the ARC.
So when the self-proclaimed 'logistics and backup' came back to the ARC, Stephen let Abby be the one to harass Connor about not whining and Cutter be the one to push all of Connor's boundaries and Lester to be his usual irritatingly beaurocratic self. He would be the one who reminded Connor that his best was good enough, and that he had to just do one thing at a time. Still, he'd never really realised what Connor did at the ARC. Sure, he knew about the database and the ADD, but until then, he'd generally thought that Connor's role was mostly one of floater assistant to the other three.
But he'd underestimated what Connor did because he could multitask so well. He could run the lab tests for Stephen so that Stephen was free to do the analyses of dung and blood and metabolism and the like that he specialised in, while using that information to update his database in a variety of ways, often relating to physiological details of several animals from the same Family or Genus. He'd do the same when Abby was taking apart the behvioural details of the animals they had to keep at the ARC, as well as the various plants and their adaptations. He'd do the maths for Cutter, freeing up Nick's mind to work on the actual theory once he had hard numbers, but Connor was usually punching those into a separate analysis of the anomalies, helping him finesse the ADD and other gadgets he was forever trying out.
But he also used that time to run the IT department of people hired to make sure the network ran fine and everyone could use their printers and office email when they needed it. It was an entirely mundane job, but it was a full time one, and Connor had somehow fit in about half of the work of IT department head in, around everything else he did. It wasn't all the time, because when they'd had an IT head Connor left well enough alone, but apparently the whole lot were too intimidated by Lester to speak up when they lost their department head and usually applied to Connor to fill in the gap.
It was killing him now, and Stephen could see Connor trying to maintain the same punishing schedule (no wonder he never showed up for his mandatory physical training time with the rest of the team even before the . . . incident, he didn't have the spare time to do it), but without the physical or mental wherewithal to do it.
"I just wish I could ask Duncan to take it. He was always the best at OS work of the three of us . . . Duncan might be the person who gets my programming style best . . ."
He couldn't get the look in Connor's eyes when he talked about the remaining one of his two friends out of his head. Connor was, if nothing else, brilliant. If he truly thought his friend Duncan could and would handle the job well . . . well, they'd all thought Connor couldn't handle it.
It was, quite possibly, the weirdest time he'd ever had explaining anything to anyone.
"So, you're saying that Connor lied about the mind control, but there are rifts in the space-time continuum to other periods in Earth's history, which is where the dodo came from, and Connor's been working with a secret goverment outfit to deal with the incursions of dinosaurs and the like?" Duncan asked.
Stephen nodded. He wasn't quite sure what he'd have to say to convince the . . . no, there was no other word for it, idiot in the bobble hat in front of him. Still, the first step was explaining.
"You said there wasn't a conspiracy," Duncan pointed out.
Wincing, because his declaration that, 'There is no conspiracy,' had been a statement of utmost ingenuousness to the point of idiocy, Stephen said, "Connor pointed out that, just because I don't like it, doesn't mean it isn't one."
"You sure there's no mind control?" Duncan asked. "Because hiding glowy portals that lead to 65 million years ago at the behest of the governmentis a pretty big conspiracy," he said shrewdly.
He was Connor's friend. Stephen would have to remember that. Because Connor was too smart to be friends with utter idiots. "I'm quite sure," Stephen assured him. "I was just . . . in denial about it all. I wanted to try to inform the public."
Duncan stared at him. "That they might get eaten by velociraptors at any second?" he asked. "Why not just tell everyone now's a good time to riot?"
Was he the only person who thought telling people was a good idea?
He told Duncan what Connor had said and was shocked to see the kid nearly tear up. "He said that?" Eyes lit up in happiness, he added, "He said he wanted me to have a spot in a top-secret government cover-up of space-time rifts and dinosaurs?"
"He said you got his programming best, and that our IT people can't seem to keep from clashing with his work on the detection system he set up," Stephen temporised.
"A whole IT department," Duncan said with a look in his eyes rather like the time that Cutter had been told there was a possibility for a properly funded cross-continental study of ceratopsian dinosaurs and their relative evolutionary characteristics. It was also uncomfortably like the look in Helen's eyes that time she'd hijacked him in the showers at the gym at the university after an intramural game of football. She'd been talking about sweaty boys doing things to her libido, and . . . well, he had to stop thinking about that before it put him in a bad mood.
Or he started thinking about sweaty Connor. . . . too late.
He shook it off and sneaked Duncan into the ARC. Showed him to the IT room and gave him a few notes about what he knew about the system.
It seemed Duncan had hidden depths too, because he'd taken command of the room of techs, whose job it was to keep the ARC's regular computer systems running, and was delegating and organising within moments. Fifteen minutes after that, Connor arrived, asking who was messing with the system, and practically ready for a showdown with whoever was on his territory. Then he saw Duncan, saw Stephen standing off to the side, bemused at the whole scene and scampered over. "Thank you," he said as he threw himself at Stephen, hugging him for all he was worth.
Stephen tried very hard not to take it all the wrong way, thinking longingly of cold showers and wondering what he could do until he was able to have one of those, to take the edge off. The sight of Connor and Duncan degenerating into a conversation about how to decorate the IT room in a Jurassic Park theme, and whether they should change all the ARC's screensavers to read, "You had one job, Phil!" took the edge off very quickly.
Jenny and Lester were going to kill him.
Still, the brilliant smile on Connor's face was enough to power the lights for half the National Grid, and the sight made Stephen happy. The way Connor relaxed through the rest of the day, all his tension about the IT department gone (and all the computers, printers, email and network issues practically evaporating under Duncan's surprising competence) gave Connor a loose-limbed sort of relaxed look, and Stephen got tense all over again, picturing that relaxation in other settings.
It must have been the distraction that made him agree to join Abby and Connor at their flat for a film night, but it was stupidity that made him argue with both of them against Antonio Banderas as Zorro. Connor was agreeing to the action and because Zorro was an 'old school superhero', Abby agreed because she wanted to leer at the spanish actor in his prime, and Stephen argued because it was a trashy film and he wanted to watch something good. It all somehow led to the three of them watching Errol Flynn as Robin Hood instead.
***********************
It was a long road to recovery for Connor. Even after the physical problems cleared up, he still went through days of depression from the handicaps he felt he had. It was felt all over the ARC, as the various scientists could no longer bounce ideas off him because what they studied wasn't Connor's area of expertise. The technology he tended to be in the middle of inventing at all times was stalled because the facile mind that let him learn the engineering skills along the way by stopping in the middle to dig up an answer and then go on, couldn't take in the information fast enough anymore for it to be a valid way of working.
Connor's time was eaten up by handling the ADD, running the central database of creatures and finishing his thesis anyhow, so that was what he did. It was hard on him, though. He felt useless, more so when he wasn't in the field to discover what the new addition, Captain Becker discovered on accident, that a jolt of electricity could somehow temporarily make an anomaly ball up and keep anything from getting through, and what Sarah Page, their newest addition, had figured out, that enough of a magnetic field around an anomaly, and you could move it.
Stephen had nearly had to sit on Connor to remind him that he had work, locking anomalies could wait, as could magnetic experiments with moving anomalies, and he already had a full plate of work. Not to mention that Stephen wasn't going to let him shirk on his training anymore. He took the time to force Connor to run the laps once he as well enough again, and got him onto the firing range and generally to do all those things he hadn't done before because no one had seemed to care enough to ensure he got those desperately needed skills for field work.
In return, his flat became a sanctuary for Connor, someplace the younger man hid when he needed to work without the distractions Abby offered, because she just hadn't quite caught on to the problems Connor was having with adjusting to his new mental paradigm.
Stephen both loved and hated these visits. On the one hand, he hadn't stopped being interested in Connor, in fact, chivvying Connor around the track was a favourite pastime as he ran just a little behind Connor to keep him moving, and he'd begun to work with him on rifles, just so he had an excuse to adjust Connor's stances and holds all over again. He hated them, because Connor would come into his flat and make himself at home, sprawled over the furniture, making Stephen want to shove the laptop away from him and just . . . do things to Connor.
Today, though, he just wanted to have a hot shower and collapse into bed. Cutter's accurate prediction of the anomaly in the house had still been a hell of a day. He'd been tossed into walls by that squirrely little chameleon monster, and the fact that a man ten years older than himself had been so bloody cheerful and capable and had garnered such admiring looks from the team had made Stephen perhaps a tad more . . . macho about his bumps and bruises than he ought to have been.
So now he was home, and all he wanted was to nurse his bruises and his ego. Naturally Connor arrived at his door a moment later, grousing about Nick's egotistical joy about his correct prediction. It wasn't until Stephen bent forward, reaching for the beer on the end table, hissing and wincing as his knotted muscles and bruises spoke up that Connor stopped. "Are you alright?"
"Just took a few hits from that . . . thing," Stephen said wryly.
Connor stood, then plonked down next to him, reaching over to pat him on the back. "Well, at least you'll be better soon . . . your back's one massive knot, isn't it?" Connor said, pulling back his hand.
"Yeah, it is," Stephen told him. "I was going to have a shower and-"
"Just take your shirt off and lie on the bed," Connor told him. "I used to do this for Tom. He'd get some really wicked knots after spending all day under a desk working." He was in Stephen bathroom a moment later, puttering around, and coming out with a tube of analgesic muscle rub. "Well?"
He was too sore to even think about the casual way Connor has asked for his shirt off. Instead, figuring that Connor probably couldn't make it worse, and could reach the difficult bits on his back with the rub, Stephen just dragged his shirt off and dropped onto the bed. There was the sound of the lid opening and the squirt of the paste from the tube, a brief pause as Connor moved up to him, then . . .
Bliss. Clearly Connor really did know something as his hands smoothed the rub in first, then gradually increased the pressure just right. All Stephen's tension eased away and he was even able to think charitable thoughts about Danny Quinn, Super-Detective. Well, sort-of charitable thoughts, anyhow.
He didn't want to think about Quinn right then. Connor's fingers dug in, and Stephen couldn't quite suppress a small, rather embarrassing wriggle when Connor's hands pressed down into his lower back. The pain was gone, and with the pain leaving, Stephen was uncomfortably aware of the fact that he had no shirt on and Connor had his hands all over Stephen. He didn't want it to stop, but if it went on much longer, he was going to start doing things to his bedsheets he shouldn't do to bedsheets.
Oh God. Connor had just got onto the bed, straddled Stephen and continued working. A whimper was caught in his throat, trying to escape, but Stephen couldn't let it. He had his dignity, after all.
One last pass, then Connor's hands left and didn't come back. He was still settled over Stephen's arse. "There," he said, his voice sounding a little strange. Strained, maybe. "All done. Feel better?"
"Yes," Stephen replied. For a moment he contemplated how to hide his erection when Connor got off him, then the same reckless feeling that overtook him the night he set fire to his mattress and nearly burned down his flat roared up again. He rolled over, not giving his impromptu masseuse the chance to get away, snagged Connor's wrist and pulled the other man forward so he could kiss him.
Connor let out a startled squawk into Stephen's mouth. For a moment, Stephen felt a twinge of worry about whether this was unwanted and if he had just ruined a perfectly good friendship, just the way he'd ruined a perfectly good mattress.
Then Connor's body eased down, his mouth softening and beginning to work with Stephen, and oh-how-incredible, Connor pressed a cock that felt as hard as Stephen's into Stephen's hip. "Was going mad," Connor murmured as he pulled his mouth away, only to attack Stephen's neck.
Gasping, Stephen told him, "Been thinking about this since you were in the hospital." He bucked and was answered by Connor's hips pressing back, and the pressure between them was so good. "Wanted to get into the bed with you."
"God, me too," Connor moaned. They'd had that conversation before, about changing perspectives, when Stephen had apologised for the way he'd treated Connor before. The menagerie had marked a turning point for both of them as friends, and, it seemed, as more-than-friends. "Thought I was going to have to go home and hide from Abby again."
"Wanking?' Stephen asked, laughing. Now that the die had been cast and rolled in his favour, he could afford to relax, grab Connor's arse and grind their cocks together. "That's what I'd have been doing if you'd left."
"Oh God," Connor moaned again between kisses. "Now I'm thinking about that. S'bloody hot."
This was brilliant, but it would be better with fewer clothes, and Stephen pulled away enough to yank all three layers of Connor's tops off at once, sending a button flying off the waistcoat, then rolled them over so that he could take some control of things.
Connor was, if anything, better built now than in the tainted memories of the menagerie, but his body was still criss-crossed with the scars from teeth and claws. It looked wrong, somehow, on the body of the techie geek who, before the anomalies, had never faced anything more dangerous than a videogame monster. Although, he did claim to have crossed a London roundabout during the morning rush hour once, straight across the full diameter, on a dare.
Stephen wasn't thinking of rush hour, though, just then. He was thinking he was going to run his tongue over every one of those scars that Connor had received saving the lives of thousands of people. As his tongue traced over the first of a set of claw marks from one of the raptors, Connor made a strangled sound and pressed himself upward, trying to grind against Stephen's hip. When he teasingly pulled back, preferring instead to get to the next two marks in quick succession, Connor actually growled.
One of the hands that had been clutching at his back slid around to the front, flicked open Stephen's jeans, and Stephen couldn't keep himself from shouting as it grabbed his cock and squeezed, just right. His eyes slammed shut and he hissed as the sensation spiked through him. When he managed to wrench his eyes open again, Connor was half sitting up, a sexy smirk on his face as he used his talented hands to turn Stephen into putty all over again. This reality was so much better than all the fantasies Stephen had had over the last several months, that it all came together as his hips snapped back and forth a few more times, and then the top of his head came off.
He found himself draped atop Connor, who looked quite wound up, but incredibly pleased with himself.
Competitive as he was, Stephen chose to take that as a challenge and nearly tore Connor's trousers in his haste to get Connor out of them. Before anything could be said, he dove forward, his lips wrapping around the tip of his lover's erection, and he could hear Connor coming apart above him. It had been a while since he'd done this, but it seemed he wasn't out of practice, as Connor's hands couldn't seem to settle on anything, fluttering between Stephen's hair, the sheets and the headboard. "Stephen! God, I . . . ah!"
A little deeper and adding a little more pressure, and Stephen settled in, encouraging Connor's hips to set up a rhythm. It didn't take Connor much longer to come himself, and Stephen rather liked to think it was because Connor had been in as desperate a state as he'd been.
Connor half-naked and dishevelled was one of the sexiest sights Stephen had ever seen, and he stripped his trousers and shoes fully off, then did the same for Connor. Even as he got hard and saw Connor doing the same and they argued about who was going to be on top this time and the next, naked and entwined with Connor, it felt like coming home.
When Connor's brain did, in fact, properly rewire itself to allow Connor to return to his accustomed genius, Stephen found it a point of pride he was the one thing Connor couldn't multitask with.
The End
Back to Part 1
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Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: Really owning nothing anyone recognises, especially the direct quotes and characters. I super-don't own those.
Summary: When Connor takes Stephen's place in the Menagerie, a lot of things change. AU
Series: Well, obviously the end of S2 and moving into S3.
Rating: PG-17
Pairing: Stephen/Connor
A/N: The part I suspect at least some of you have been waiting for, the smut.
**********************
Connor had barely recovered from his moment of despair when they were interrupted by a couple porters who were to take him down to radiology and get some CT and MRI scans of the potential damage done to Connor's brain. Stephen in his capacity as imaginary bodyguard followed down the hall, trying to think of some way to distract Connor before he hyperventilated himself into intensive care.
"So," he grabbed onto the first topic he could think of. "That gap year I was in the U.S. I wound up falling in with a mad batch of NRA members. They were all survivalists and I spent a good few months living in a compound in the middle of nowhere. I'm fairly certain they had more guns and ammunition there than the entire British Army."
Connor turned to stare at him. The porters stopped looking him in the eye and began to squirm. "What? Like a cult?"
Stephen thought about it. "Yes and no. I think, here, yes. As in, in the UK we'd think it's a cult, but America's so . . . large, there are things people get away with, lots of them, in a lot of different places, and it's harder to call it a cult. Anyhow, there wasn't any sort of religious aspect to it. Not really."
Connor's eyes were so enormous, Stephen couldn't keep the amused smile from his face. "So, you were living in a weird American compound for months?"
"Well, not always in the compound," he said. "See, there are a lot of areas in America where hunting for subsistence remains a lot more a way of life than here. We're all set so close together here that it's . . . harder to get that isolated." Stephen shrugged. "I learned a lot about tracking and guns and wildlife." He'd also learned a lot about ignorance and poverty, but he didn't want this to get depressing for Connor, who he was trying to cheer up and distract. "After all that I wound up in Canada for a while too," he continued.
"What was that like?" Connor asked. "I nearly chose to go to university there, you know, closer to the Alberta Badlands and all, but we had some family issues and I had to stay closer to home."
"Oddly like America, actually," Stephen said contemplatively. "It's as big and spread out, but there are some odd qualitative differences if you're there for long enough. For one thing, their political situation is a lot more like the one here, so it's a little easier to follow." He shrugged. "They seem to be more against guns than the Americans, but there are just as many people there who hunt for subsistence to an extent that the actual gun numbers aren't much lower." He added, "The one thing I remember most from them both, though, is just how . . . large both countries are. The distances are just so incredibly enormous."
Smiling a little sadly, Connor told him, "I sort of always wanted to go travelling. I mean, what it must be like to live somewhere that's bigger than the whole of Europe but is still a country." He shook his head. "I have a cousin who went and was planning to do some sort of driving tour. He emailed back that he'd had to give up that idea when someone explained that it would take him weeks just to get from New York to California if he was going to also visit all the tourist stops on the way." The smile got a little amused as he added, "Pete said girls thought his accent was sexy just because he was from the UK and that I should come out because I could get a girl just by talking at her."
"It works to an extent," Stephen said grinning. "They think it's exotic."
"Weird," Connor said, shaking his head.
They reached radiology and Connor was lifted into the machines, one after another, patiently lying there as they took shot after shot of the inside of his head. Then they were walked back up to the room and left to their own devices again. "So, what's this about Coronation Street?" Stephen asked when they got back and Connor promptly turned on some dreadful sort of daytime television programme.
"Well, I figured that maybe the reason these were popular is because the people watching aren't so smart," Connor said. "And since I'm not as smart as I used to be right now, I should see if I can't see what they see in them. See?"
Stephen narrowed his eyes at his young friend. "You did that on purpose."
"Maybe," Connor admitted unashamedly. "But I still want to know." Then he perked up. "Forget that. Art Attack's on!"
Stephen sank back in his chair laughing as Connor eagerly watched the man on the screen build some crafty animal or other out of loo roll, glue and plastic bags. Then he made a strange sort of collage on the ground out of piles of children's clothing, rope, footballs, football jerseys, goal nets and a stack of uncoloured fan paraphernalia. He wouldn't have thought any adult could watch a show like that for pleasure without taking some sort of experience-enhancing illegal substance, but Connor was unashamedly enjoying it. When the talking statue came on, he asked, "You watch this often?"
"Abby's banned me from touching the newspaper once we've both read it, and the loo roll can't leave the bathroom." He pouted. "She got mad 'cause Rex got into the paint and got footprints all over the windows."
Abby spoke from the doorway. "And because you destroyed another of my hairdryers with one of those projects, and it wasn't even to build something for the anomalies, it was just so that you could have an armature for the papier-mache."
"You just don't like fun," Connor grumbled.
She rolled her eyes, handing Connor a case full of DVDs, but the smile she wore was affectionate. "Such an idiot," she told him, then kissed his cheek. "I brought the case you asked for."
"Thank you, Abby," Connor said obediently. Then he looked at her suspiciously. "You didn't slip any of your romances in there, did you?"
As the pair began to banter about their respective appalling taste, Stephen flipped the case open and began to go through it. Abby had, indeed, slipped romances in there. Hugh Grant, Hugh Grant, Hugh Grant . . . "Really Abby?" Stephen couldn't help it. "I never would have pictured you a fan of . . . Mickey Blue Eyes? Really?"
"It's appalling, isn't it?" Connor said with a smile.
"Zardoz?" Stephen asked, unable to help the sardonic lift of an eyebrow.
"It's got Sean Connery in it," Connor protested.
Abby snorted. "'The penis is evil'?" she said to Connor, who flushed.
"I'm fairly sure I don't want to know," Stephen said. "Don't you have any good films in here?"
"Like what?" the pair chorused.
"Philadelphia Story, Father Goose, The Thin Man, Adam's Rib?"
"You mean old films?" Connor asked in the same tone of voice he might have asked if Stephen was sexually attracted to octegenarians.
"I mean classics," Stephen defended. "Real ones, not your, 'This has Connery in it,' rubbish."
"This is going to make film night harder," Connor said to Abby.
She nodded, then turned to Stephen. "So, I guess when we go to the video store I'll have to stand up for Connor's side too."
"You'd better phone," Connor said, "Or I'm telling everyone at the ARC about the costume for your Year four school play."
"You wouldn't dare."
He just glared. "You promised you wouldn't tell anyone about the time the rugby team made me eat two plates of sausages in the canteen at school and I vomited all over the headmistress. How'd that get out to everyone in IT if you didn't tell anyone?"
The back and forth between Connor and Abby was effortless and Stephen felt fairly excluded. It was good that Connor's roommate got along so well with him, and Connor's obvious interest in Abby had clearly not caused much trouble with their living arrangements, strange as they were. Eventually Abby left to check in at the ARC, leaving Stephen alone with Connor again.
Connor sagged back against the pillows. "Thank God."
"I thought you liked Abby," Stephen said.
"I do," Connor whined. "But she came in here, all demanding that I cheer up, and that it could have been worse and I shouldn't whinge about how bad I've got it, and I just . . . didn't want to argue."
Well, if Connor wasn't going to stand up for his right to complain, Stephen wasn't going to do that for him. After all, Abby was right that Connor couldn't spend all his time in a funk over what he might have lost. He was still incredibly intelligent, and while Stephen had discovered he didn't seem to have it in himself to push Connor about it, it was a good thing someone did. So he just changed the topic.
Eventually, as it so often did, conversation wended its way back to the anomaly project. "Have you made any progress on those calculations you wanted to get done for Cutter?"
Connor frowned. "I think so. It's . . . I think I know what's wrong, I mean, why I was having trouble, but . . ." he trailed off, shrugging.
"What is it?" If there was one thing Stephen had learned in the time he'd known Connor, it was that he tended to need to think aloud to process his ideas.
"I need to learn how to concentrate on one thing," Connor said, as though admitting a grievous fault in himself. "See, I sort of multitask a lot, 'cause it gets boring if I spend too long on one thing." He looked mournfully at the computer. "But I can't, and I'm falling behind on things."
Stephen turned the computer to himself and saw two emails open that Connor was in the middle of responding to, and how he was doing that with his hands the way they were he was going to have to find out, one page filled with a variety of equations, Connor's database of dinosaurs, which he seemed to be in the middle of updating and a set of directives from the university regarding how Connor could reenter the stream there to finish up his thesis and viva.
"So, close everything down and just work on one thing, Connor. If you can't do them all at once, step back and just do one thing at a time." Connor's eyes slid away, and Stephen knew he was castigating himself for being 'stupid' again. "Most of us can't do this, Connor. I'm not going to argue that you feel handicapped right now and it's not right that you are, but until you recover, you'll just have to work within your limitations. Now," he said. "Let me see your hands, because you're not supposed to be using them right now."
Sheepishly, Connor showed him a set of fingers in stained bandages. Stephen hit the call button. "I didn't mean to go on so long," Connor explained, "But Ashley in IT needed to know something about the ARC's network and then Leigh needed to know something about the direction the ceratopsian lines would have evolved, something about her DNA testing, and Cutter wants the equations done and my new thesis, and I haven't looked at Morrison's stuff since his class because it was stupid, and all my passwords for the university are gone since I don't go there anymore, so I had to hack the journals database to get started on the research-"
A hand over his mouth stopped Connor quite effectively. "Connor, stop and breathe. Why is IT asking you things about the ARC's network?"
Connor shrugged. "Well, keeping the ADD integrated with the regular network is a lot of trouble because every time I upgrade it throws the system out of whack, so I have to liase with them. Anyhow, Cutter wants access to the ADD for plotting and mapping and the like, so I have to keep it connected to the system, rather than separating it out the way I wanted to originally." He went into a long and technical explanation of how he would have kept the two linked, that boiled down to a lack of time and repeated incompetence on the part of the people who were supposed to run the IT department. "They keep burning out, and I don't blame them what with the fact that the Home Office picked a bunch of stuff that's cheap but incompatible, in terms of both the hardware and the software, but they're just standard office worker types, they don't really understand how critical it all is."
"So, what you're saying is, you run the IT department in your free time," Stephen said slowly.
Connor flushed. "Well, I wouldn't say I run it, but Ashley's not in charge, not really, and he's bad at delegating."
"That's why you're getting an email from someone named Mark asking you to explain how to get Cutter's printer working again?"
Connor rolled his eyes. "That's just Cutter. He's like Dr. Grant. Destroys a lot of computers just by touching them."
"Who?" Stephen asked, trying to think of anyone named Grant in either the university or the ARC.
"Alan Grant? Jurassic Park?" Connor prompted. "You know, 'The point is... you are alive when they start to eat you. So you know... try to show a little respect.'"
There wasn't anything Stephen could say to that. "You can remember something that random and you're worried about your intellect?"
"I've watched that film 23 times," Connor said. "It's not the same thing at all." He shook his head. "That's not the point. I just wish I could ask Duncan to take it. He was always the best at OS work of the three of us."
"Duncan?" Stephen asked incredulously. "Your friend that helped steal the dodo? This-is-all-a-government-conspiracy, Duncan?"
"Stephen," Connor said, laughing. "It is a government conspiracy." Before he could deny it, Connor added, "And even if it weren't, put yourself in his shoes. Remember the interrogation room? The soldiers? The spotlight on that nifty glowy table?"
He winced. "So, you want to ask Lester to bring your friend in?"
"What, you think I'm stupid? Duncan might be the person who gets my programming style best and all, but can you imagine Lester . . ." he paused. "Let's ask anyway. Imagine Lester's face."
It hadn't really solved any of the problems Connor was facing, but Stephen was suddenly faced with the image of Lester, and Cutter for that matter, if asked by Connor to bring that Duncan fellow in, and he couldn't help laughing along with Connor.
Once the nurses had come, changed Connor's dressing on his hands, scolded Stephen for letting Connor type, then left in a flurry, Stephen took up the job of being Connor's hands on the keyboard and promised himself that he'd get his revenge for all of Connor's snide remarks about his incompetence with computers by dragging Connor out to deal with all the practical lab work he avoided in favour of his computers, not to mention a bit of harassing him on the shooting range and some physical training to get his own back.
Of course, when the image of Connor, sweating and shirtless (and his memory could supply him with that image now, since by the end of his stretch in Leek's menagerie he had been) danced briefly across his mind, Stephen was forced to admit that he wasn't being punch drunk, he was just interested in Connor.
With the afternoon wearing on and Connor still recovering, he drifted off to sleep not long after and Stephen was left alone to sit next to him and just watch the afternoon light play across his face. Oddly enough, Connor actually looked a little older in sleep, as the childlike glee he took in things around him was smoothed away to show the young man underneath. The light stubble that was always there stopped looking lazy, like a student who hadn't enough time to shave properly, and took away those last possible hints of childishness.
His jaw line was square and sharply defined. What little softness there had been when the project first started (which was much less than Stephen had thought once Connor lost that incredibly bulky coat of his) had turned to muscle. In fact, Connor's hadn't been so much soft then, as poor and underfed. Underneath that bulky coat he'd been almost waifish until solid pay by the ARC, combined with constantly running for his life had turned him to something sleek. He'd never be bulky at this rate, but Connor's whipcord tension was better suited to slender anyhow.
Without his hats and gloves, his waistcoats and scarves, it was as though he was stripped to the essence of what lay underneath, and Stephen found his hand gently shifting a bit of Connor's hair off his face. Connor's head turned, following the motion in his sleep, murmuring something inaudible.
He was so fucked.
**************************
It was the next day when they finally got the results of all the scans of Connor's brain. The damage was evident in darkened areas. The doctors said that Connor was lucky he was both so high functioning, and that the crippled areas were so relatively small. They were mostly like the results of small strokes, causing some damage to Connor's small motor skills and his cognitive centres. Nothing serious, and nothing that would have impaired him in any way if he had a normal job.
Connor was devastated, and Stephen discovered that every time he stepped out of the room, he'd come back to Connor staring dolefully at the pictures with their dark spots on dead tissue.
He wasn't even cheered by the fact that all the doctors had pointed out numerous incidents where the human brain had regenerated around the damage, creating new neural connections that bypassed the problem and allowed the person to return to their full previous function. All he could see was that he had been damaged in the one thing he saw as useful to the ARC.
So when the self-proclaimed 'logistics and backup' came back to the ARC, Stephen let Abby be the one to harass Connor about not whining and Cutter be the one to push all of Connor's boundaries and Lester to be his usual irritatingly beaurocratic self. He would be the one who reminded Connor that his best was good enough, and that he had to just do one thing at a time. Still, he'd never really realised what Connor did at the ARC. Sure, he knew about the database and the ADD, but until then, he'd generally thought that Connor's role was mostly one of floater assistant to the other three.
But he'd underestimated what Connor did because he could multitask so well. He could run the lab tests for Stephen so that Stephen was free to do the analyses of dung and blood and metabolism and the like that he specialised in, while using that information to update his database in a variety of ways, often relating to physiological details of several animals from the same Family or Genus. He'd do the same when Abby was taking apart the behvioural details of the animals they had to keep at the ARC, as well as the various plants and their adaptations. He'd do the maths for Cutter, freeing up Nick's mind to work on the actual theory once he had hard numbers, but Connor was usually punching those into a separate analysis of the anomalies, helping him finesse the ADD and other gadgets he was forever trying out.
But he also used that time to run the IT department of people hired to make sure the network ran fine and everyone could use their printers and office email when they needed it. It was an entirely mundane job, but it was a full time one, and Connor had somehow fit in about half of the work of IT department head in, around everything else he did. It wasn't all the time, because when they'd had an IT head Connor left well enough alone, but apparently the whole lot were too intimidated by Lester to speak up when they lost their department head and usually applied to Connor to fill in the gap.
It was killing him now, and Stephen could see Connor trying to maintain the same punishing schedule (no wonder he never showed up for his mandatory physical training time with the rest of the team even before the . . . incident, he didn't have the spare time to do it), but without the physical or mental wherewithal to do it.
"I just wish I could ask Duncan to take it. He was always the best at OS work of the three of us . . . Duncan might be the person who gets my programming style best . . ."
He couldn't get the look in Connor's eyes when he talked about the remaining one of his two friends out of his head. Connor was, if nothing else, brilliant. If he truly thought his friend Duncan could and would handle the job well . . . well, they'd all thought Connor couldn't handle it.
It was, quite possibly, the weirdest time he'd ever had explaining anything to anyone.
"So, you're saying that Connor lied about the mind control, but there are rifts in the space-time continuum to other periods in Earth's history, which is where the dodo came from, and Connor's been working with a secret goverment outfit to deal with the incursions of dinosaurs and the like?" Duncan asked.
Stephen nodded. He wasn't quite sure what he'd have to say to convince the . . . no, there was no other word for it, idiot in the bobble hat in front of him. Still, the first step was explaining.
"You said there wasn't a conspiracy," Duncan pointed out.
Wincing, because his declaration that, 'There is no conspiracy,' had been a statement of utmost ingenuousness to the point of idiocy, Stephen said, "Connor pointed out that, just because I don't like it, doesn't mean it isn't one."
"You sure there's no mind control?" Duncan asked. "Because hiding glowy portals that lead to 65 million years ago at the behest of the governmentis a pretty big conspiracy," he said shrewdly.
He was Connor's friend. Stephen would have to remember that. Because Connor was too smart to be friends with utter idiots. "I'm quite sure," Stephen assured him. "I was just . . . in denial about it all. I wanted to try to inform the public."
Duncan stared at him. "That they might get eaten by velociraptors at any second?" he asked. "Why not just tell everyone now's a good time to riot?"
Was he the only person who thought telling people was a good idea?
He told Duncan what Connor had said and was shocked to see the kid nearly tear up. "He said that?" Eyes lit up in happiness, he added, "He said he wanted me to have a spot in a top-secret government cover-up of space-time rifts and dinosaurs?"
"He said you got his programming best, and that our IT people can't seem to keep from clashing with his work on the detection system he set up," Stephen temporised.
"A whole IT department," Duncan said with a look in his eyes rather like the time that Cutter had been told there was a possibility for a properly funded cross-continental study of ceratopsian dinosaurs and their relative evolutionary characteristics. It was also uncomfortably like the look in Helen's eyes that time she'd hijacked him in the showers at the gym at the university after an intramural game of football. She'd been talking about sweaty boys doing things to her libido, and . . . well, he had to stop thinking about that before it put him in a bad mood.
Or he started thinking about sweaty Connor. . . . too late.
He shook it off and sneaked Duncan into the ARC. Showed him to the IT room and gave him a few notes about what he knew about the system.
It seemed Duncan had hidden depths too, because he'd taken command of the room of techs, whose job it was to keep the ARC's regular computer systems running, and was delegating and organising within moments. Fifteen minutes after that, Connor arrived, asking who was messing with the system, and practically ready for a showdown with whoever was on his territory. Then he saw Duncan, saw Stephen standing off to the side, bemused at the whole scene and scampered over. "Thank you," he said as he threw himself at Stephen, hugging him for all he was worth.
Stephen tried very hard not to take it all the wrong way, thinking longingly of cold showers and wondering what he could do until he was able to have one of those, to take the edge off. The sight of Connor and Duncan degenerating into a conversation about how to decorate the IT room in a Jurassic Park theme, and whether they should change all the ARC's screensavers to read, "You had one job, Phil!" took the edge off very quickly.
Jenny and Lester were going to kill him.
Still, the brilliant smile on Connor's face was enough to power the lights for half the National Grid, and the sight made Stephen happy. The way Connor relaxed through the rest of the day, all his tension about the IT department gone (and all the computers, printers, email and network issues practically evaporating under Duncan's surprising competence) gave Connor a loose-limbed sort of relaxed look, and Stephen got tense all over again, picturing that relaxation in other settings.
It must have been the distraction that made him agree to join Abby and Connor at their flat for a film night, but it was stupidity that made him argue with both of them against Antonio Banderas as Zorro. Connor was agreeing to the action and because Zorro was an 'old school superhero', Abby agreed because she wanted to leer at the spanish actor in his prime, and Stephen argued because it was a trashy film and he wanted to watch something good. It all somehow led to the three of them watching Errol Flynn as Robin Hood instead.
***********************
It was a long road to recovery for Connor. Even after the physical problems cleared up, he still went through days of depression from the handicaps he felt he had. It was felt all over the ARC, as the various scientists could no longer bounce ideas off him because what they studied wasn't Connor's area of expertise. The technology he tended to be in the middle of inventing at all times was stalled because the facile mind that let him learn the engineering skills along the way by stopping in the middle to dig up an answer and then go on, couldn't take in the information fast enough anymore for it to be a valid way of working.
Connor's time was eaten up by handling the ADD, running the central database of creatures and finishing his thesis anyhow, so that was what he did. It was hard on him, though. He felt useless, more so when he wasn't in the field to discover what the new addition, Captain Becker discovered on accident, that a jolt of electricity could somehow temporarily make an anomaly ball up and keep anything from getting through, and what Sarah Page, their newest addition, had figured out, that enough of a magnetic field around an anomaly, and you could move it.
Stephen had nearly had to sit on Connor to remind him that he had work, locking anomalies could wait, as could magnetic experiments with moving anomalies, and he already had a full plate of work. Not to mention that Stephen wasn't going to let him shirk on his training anymore. He took the time to force Connor to run the laps once he as well enough again, and got him onto the firing range and generally to do all those things he hadn't done before because no one had seemed to care enough to ensure he got those desperately needed skills for field work.
In return, his flat became a sanctuary for Connor, someplace the younger man hid when he needed to work without the distractions Abby offered, because she just hadn't quite caught on to the problems Connor was having with adjusting to his new mental paradigm.
Stephen both loved and hated these visits. On the one hand, he hadn't stopped being interested in Connor, in fact, chivvying Connor around the track was a favourite pastime as he ran just a little behind Connor to keep him moving, and he'd begun to work with him on rifles, just so he had an excuse to adjust Connor's stances and holds all over again. He hated them, because Connor would come into his flat and make himself at home, sprawled over the furniture, making Stephen want to shove the laptop away from him and just . . . do things to Connor.
Today, though, he just wanted to have a hot shower and collapse into bed. Cutter's accurate prediction of the anomaly in the house had still been a hell of a day. He'd been tossed into walls by that squirrely little chameleon monster, and the fact that a man ten years older than himself had been so bloody cheerful and capable and had garnered such admiring looks from the team had made Stephen perhaps a tad more . . . macho about his bumps and bruises than he ought to have been.
So now he was home, and all he wanted was to nurse his bruises and his ego. Naturally Connor arrived at his door a moment later, grousing about Nick's egotistical joy about his correct prediction. It wasn't until Stephen bent forward, reaching for the beer on the end table, hissing and wincing as his knotted muscles and bruises spoke up that Connor stopped. "Are you alright?"
"Just took a few hits from that . . . thing," Stephen said wryly.
Connor stood, then plonked down next to him, reaching over to pat him on the back. "Well, at least you'll be better soon . . . your back's one massive knot, isn't it?" Connor said, pulling back his hand.
"Yeah, it is," Stephen told him. "I was going to have a shower and-"
"Just take your shirt off and lie on the bed," Connor told him. "I used to do this for Tom. He'd get some really wicked knots after spending all day under a desk working." He was in Stephen bathroom a moment later, puttering around, and coming out with a tube of analgesic muscle rub. "Well?"
He was too sore to even think about the casual way Connor has asked for his shirt off. Instead, figuring that Connor probably couldn't make it worse, and could reach the difficult bits on his back with the rub, Stephen just dragged his shirt off and dropped onto the bed. There was the sound of the lid opening and the squirt of the paste from the tube, a brief pause as Connor moved up to him, then . . .
Bliss. Clearly Connor really did know something as his hands smoothed the rub in first, then gradually increased the pressure just right. All Stephen's tension eased away and he was even able to think charitable thoughts about Danny Quinn, Super-Detective. Well, sort-of charitable thoughts, anyhow.
He didn't want to think about Quinn right then. Connor's fingers dug in, and Stephen couldn't quite suppress a small, rather embarrassing wriggle when Connor's hands pressed down into his lower back. The pain was gone, and with the pain leaving, Stephen was uncomfortably aware of the fact that he had no shirt on and Connor had his hands all over Stephen. He didn't want it to stop, but if it went on much longer, he was going to start doing things to his bedsheets he shouldn't do to bedsheets.
Oh God. Connor had just got onto the bed, straddled Stephen and continued working. A whimper was caught in his throat, trying to escape, but Stephen couldn't let it. He had his dignity, after all.
One last pass, then Connor's hands left and didn't come back. He was still settled over Stephen's arse. "There," he said, his voice sounding a little strange. Strained, maybe. "All done. Feel better?"
"Yes," Stephen replied. For a moment he contemplated how to hide his erection when Connor got off him, then the same reckless feeling that overtook him the night he set fire to his mattress and nearly burned down his flat roared up again. He rolled over, not giving his impromptu masseuse the chance to get away, snagged Connor's wrist and pulled the other man forward so he could kiss him.
Connor let out a startled squawk into Stephen's mouth. For a moment, Stephen felt a twinge of worry about whether this was unwanted and if he had just ruined a perfectly good friendship, just the way he'd ruined a perfectly good mattress.
Then Connor's body eased down, his mouth softening and beginning to work with Stephen, and oh-how-incredible, Connor pressed a cock that felt as hard as Stephen's into Stephen's hip. "Was going mad," Connor murmured as he pulled his mouth away, only to attack Stephen's neck.
Gasping, Stephen told him, "Been thinking about this since you were in the hospital." He bucked and was answered by Connor's hips pressing back, and the pressure between them was so good. "Wanted to get into the bed with you."
"God, me too," Connor moaned. They'd had that conversation before, about changing perspectives, when Stephen had apologised for the way he'd treated Connor before. The menagerie had marked a turning point for both of them as friends, and, it seemed, as more-than-friends. "Thought I was going to have to go home and hide from Abby again."
"Wanking?' Stephen asked, laughing. Now that the die had been cast and rolled in his favour, he could afford to relax, grab Connor's arse and grind their cocks together. "That's what I'd have been doing if you'd left."
"Oh God," Connor moaned again between kisses. "Now I'm thinking about that. S'bloody hot."
This was brilliant, but it would be better with fewer clothes, and Stephen pulled away enough to yank all three layers of Connor's tops off at once, sending a button flying off the waistcoat, then rolled them over so that he could take some control of things.
Connor was, if anything, better built now than in the tainted memories of the menagerie, but his body was still criss-crossed with the scars from teeth and claws. It looked wrong, somehow, on the body of the techie geek who, before the anomalies, had never faced anything more dangerous than a videogame monster. Although, he did claim to have crossed a London roundabout during the morning rush hour once, straight across the full diameter, on a dare.
Stephen wasn't thinking of rush hour, though, just then. He was thinking he was going to run his tongue over every one of those scars that Connor had received saving the lives of thousands of people. As his tongue traced over the first of a set of claw marks from one of the raptors, Connor made a strangled sound and pressed himself upward, trying to grind against Stephen's hip. When he teasingly pulled back, preferring instead to get to the next two marks in quick succession, Connor actually growled.
One of the hands that had been clutching at his back slid around to the front, flicked open Stephen's jeans, and Stephen couldn't keep himself from shouting as it grabbed his cock and squeezed, just right. His eyes slammed shut and he hissed as the sensation spiked through him. When he managed to wrench his eyes open again, Connor was half sitting up, a sexy smirk on his face as he used his talented hands to turn Stephen into putty all over again. This reality was so much better than all the fantasies Stephen had had over the last several months, that it all came together as his hips snapped back and forth a few more times, and then the top of his head came off.
He found himself draped atop Connor, who looked quite wound up, but incredibly pleased with himself.
Competitive as he was, Stephen chose to take that as a challenge and nearly tore Connor's trousers in his haste to get Connor out of them. Before anything could be said, he dove forward, his lips wrapping around the tip of his lover's erection, and he could hear Connor coming apart above him. It had been a while since he'd done this, but it seemed he wasn't out of practice, as Connor's hands couldn't seem to settle on anything, fluttering between Stephen's hair, the sheets and the headboard. "Stephen! God, I . . . ah!"
A little deeper and adding a little more pressure, and Stephen settled in, encouraging Connor's hips to set up a rhythm. It didn't take Connor much longer to come himself, and Stephen rather liked to think it was because Connor had been in as desperate a state as he'd been.
Connor half-naked and dishevelled was one of the sexiest sights Stephen had ever seen, and he stripped his trousers and shoes fully off, then did the same for Connor. Even as he got hard and saw Connor doing the same and they argued about who was going to be on top this time and the next, naked and entwined with Connor, it felt like coming home.
When Connor's brain did, in fact, properly rewire itself to allow Connor to return to his accustomed genius, Stephen found it a point of pride he was the one thing Connor couldn't multitask with.
The End
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