Sleeping Patterns (3/6)
Title: Sleeping Patterns (Part 3 of 6)
Author: echo_fangirl
Characters: Connor/Lester (angsty pre-slash)
Rating: PG
Words: 3,459
Spoilers: Season 3, starting at 3.05
A/N & Thanks: Thank you to fredbassett, who very generously beta'd and cleaned this up for me!
Disclaimer: Not mine, as nice as it would be
Previous parts:
( Part 1 )
( Part 2 )
---
Part 3:
The anomaly alarm shouldn't have come as a surprise to Connor but, lost in his thoughts as he was, the siren almost had him fall off his seat. He jumped up, stumbling almost immediately when the damaged sole of his foot made its presence known. Connor made a frustrated noise at no one in particular, grabbed the walking stick from its resting place on the side of the table and hobbled as fast as he could to the operations area.
Unfortunately though, 'as fast as he could' wasn't actually very fast at all, and by the time he reached the anomaly detector one of the technicians was already seated at the controls with the signal isolated.
Connor knew the area pinpointed on the map, although it was certainly not a place he would have chosen to frequent in his increasingly sparse free time. The anomaly was located deep in a large body of marshland. It wasn't easy going at the best of times, and there had been a lot of rain recently. The place would be just the sort of untraversable bog which would be poorly suited to a person with limited mobility and a walking stick.
Danny and Becker were already coordinating their plans, deciding on what to take with them and how to split the team best between the two vehicles. It was rapid fire, a routine well-practiced and, once settled, Becker went off to collect whatever equipment that had been decided on.
Danny turned his attention to Connor.
"Might be best this time if you..."
"Yeah," Connor interrupted, lifting the walking stick up as evidence. "Probably best if I just sit this one out. Man the detector."
"Good man." Danny slapped him on the back just hard enough to require him to readjust his balance without actually knocking him over.
Connor recovered quickly enough, but the rest of the team was already on their way out.
Connor flopped down into the recently-vacated detector control chair and stared intently at the blinking icon identifying the anomaly. He wondered if he could make this anomaly safe by force of will and a steely glare.
There was no harm in trying.
---
Between the portable radio the team had left behind for him announcing their status every few minutes, and the detector screen occupying most of his visual range, Connor was almost oblivious to anything else in the ARC. Nothing of any note had happened to the team yet, but even so the tension was almost unbearable. He had a horrible sick feeling in his stomach, like he'd eaten a whole bag of crisps, then finished it off with a whole bottle of coke, then the crisps had swollen up and were making him nauseous, only this was more emotional and less crisp-induced. It was not an unfamiliar sensation, but it was wholly unwelcome. Especially since he hadn't even been able to enjoy the crisp-eating part.
A light hand placed on his shoulder almost made him jump a mile. Fortunately he managed to stay in his seat, although his surprised yelp was probably audible from just about anywhere in the building.
Lester raised an eyebrow at the reaction, but didn't break the casual contact.
"It's not as easy as it ought to be," said Lester, quietly. The words had been pitched softly enough that it was clear they were only intended for Connor, but they were spoken without any pretence to stealth.
Connor's eyes traveled from Lester's hand up his arm, finally resting on his face. Lester's brow was slightly furrowed, his focus on the screen in front of them.
"What do you mean?" Connor asked.
Lester tilted his head towards the radio on the work bench. "Listening. Watching. Being here, when the team is out there. It's not as easy as it ought to be."
Connor considered this, the way his heart raced every time the radio was silent for more than a minute, and the gentle grip Lester still had on his shoulder.
"No," he acquiesced. "I guess it's really not."
----
There were no disasters that day, although at one point Sarah had dropped something during one of the regular updates. The combined noise of Sarah's squawk of surprise and the clatter of the object in question had caused Connor enough of a shock to send his face bone-white.
Lester had considered sending him home, or at least off to the bunk room for a lie down, but had thought better of it. The stress of not knowing would probably have done more harm to his fragile state of mind than anything else. Instead of sending him away, he had laid a calming hand over Connor's shaking one, taken the radio and calmly requested from Becker a confirmation that everyone was still intact.
It wasn't until the anomaly had been safely closed that Connor had begun to relax. Even so, there were undercurrents of... something... lingering all through the evening. It wasn't that Connor was jumpy from the scare, nor could it be said that he seemed overly anxious, but there was definitely something going on in his head. He was being quiet again, and hesitant to make eye contact.
Connor had taken himself off to bed early once again. Lester was almost certain that they were both heading towards another night of disturbed sleep. After completing his normal evening routine - half an hour for the news, a phone call to the kids, putting away the dinner dishes and a brief yet harried round of ‘chase the diictodons into their cage’ - he got the kettle and two large mugs out in preparation. He placed these on the kitchen bench where they would be easily accessible, then he turned out the lights and went to bed.
---
Connor blinked several times before the real world reasserted itself in his mind. It took him a few more seconds before his mind regained full control over his body, instructing his muscles to relax and his lungs to function again. It was a sequence he was all too familiar with, no matter how much he wished he wasn't.
He reached out to turn on the bedside lamp. It was an instinctive reaction, a fruitless attempt to make the darkness a little less all-encompassing. He drew his arm back under the duvet quickly, before his warmth escaped. The lamp had made the room brighter, but the darkness was still there.
Breathing was important. That was one constant to which Connor had always held. He tried those deep breaths that Abby had tried to teach him that time when he had asked her about her yoga classes. It was, in hindsight, an effort that had been doomed from the start. Connor was terrible at sitting still for more than a minute without something to occupy him, and meditation was impossible with a mind as active as his.
Right now was a case in point. No matter how much he told himself that dreams were irrational and nonsensical, the thoughts and feelings they dredged up were very real, very vivid and very circular. They kept spinning around and around, chasing each other, gaining momentum until their combined centrifugal force shook him apart from the inside out.
So he breathed deeply, and tried to focus on the objects in his room, instead of the hurricane in his head. He focused on his game collection, stacked up in order of most recently played. He focused on the selection of mangled diictodon toys on the floor. He focused on his laptop, lid down, on the desk.
There was a knock on the door.
Connor gasped in surprise, his respiratory system momentarily forgetting that it had already taken in a deep breath. Connor's lungs, now overfull, protested and he made a coughing, spluttering sound.
"Connor?"
Connor managed to coordinate his lungs with his vocal cords well enough to answer with a slightly wheezy, "Yes?"
There was a short pause, allowing Connor to bring his breathing back under control.
"Connor, do you, by any chance, sleep in the nude?"
This statement gave Connor considerable pause. There weren't many things which could break him out of one of his anxiety cycles, but that... Well as far as reset switches for an over-active brain went, that was damn effective. "Uh," he eventually stammered. "Uh, no... Nope. Pyjamas."
Lester's voice came from the other side of the door. "In that case, you won't mind if I come in."
Connor blinked several times, and opened his mouth, but no sound managed to escape.
"Connor?"
Finally his brain caught up. "Yeah, I, uh, sure..." he answered, then rapidly appended, "If you want to, it's your house. But I'm fine, if you want to go back to bed."
Lester remained silent on that matter, choosing instead to enter Connor's bedroom.
Walking backwards.
In red and blue striped pyjamas.
The pyjamas were incongruous on their own, but it was the walking backwards which caused Connor his first moment of confusion. When Lester turned around to reveal that he was carrying a mug in each hand, that confusion was resolved only to be replaced by a more complex one. Why had Lester brought two mugs into his room at a few minutes past three in the morning?
Lester placed the mugs on Connor's bedside table, then moved to pull the small arm chair closer to the side of the bed. He had to remove several discarded items of clothing from the seat before it was usable, but once clear he settled into it quickly.
Connor felt immediately self-conscious and opted to stare at the two mugs rather than look at his companion. The mugs were steaming.
"You brought tea?" he asked, "That's very..." he hesitated. Thoughtful? Unexpected? British?
"You seemed to be having some trouble sleeping," Lester replied. "When Josephine was six, she used to have night terrors. She'd wake up distraught, with no idea why. Sometimes she was so upset that she refused to go back to sleep. A hot drink, on occasion, helped to persuade her."
"Oh, I, um... Thank you." Connor stammered.
"Of course, I expect you are suffering from bad dreams, not night terrors," Lester continued, his forthrightness making Connor feel increasingly uncomfortable.
Connor didn't trust his voice, so he nodded instead.
Lester mirrored the nod, but made no other movement. "I think the hot drink might be worth a try anyway." He picked up one of the two mugs and took a sip. He looked pointedly at Connor.
Connor quickly did likewise, taking a small sip. He raised his eyebrows, surprised. "It's quite weak," he said.
Lester's lip quirked upwards very slightly.
"It's water, Connor. No flavoured drinks after bed time."
Connor felt a smile work its way onto his face. He braved a glancing eye contact, noting the unexpectedly soft expression on Lester's face. "How do you do that?"
"Make hot water?" Lester queried. "You're no Jamie Oliver, but I expect even you could figure that one out by yourself."
"No," answered Connor, stopping himself a moment before he rolled his eyes. "I mean that switching thing you do. When you change from Sir James Lester - big scary bureaucrat -, to James Lester. regular guy who talks like a dad telling off his three year old?"
Lester sucked on his lip thoughtfully for a moment. "I expect that fact that I am, on occasion, dad to a three year old helps somewhat," he answered. "And of course, wrangling a team of academics and scientists bears a striking similarity to wrangling a group of overtired toddlers."
Connor grinned. "We're not that bad, and you've got a whole lot of special forces soldiers to keep an eye on us."
Lester nodded. "That's certainly true. I wonder if Captain Becker and his team would be willing to provide crowd control for Charlotte's next birthday party?" He gestured to Connor's mug. "Drink, before it gets cold."
Connor took another sip. It had already cooled to a comfortable drinking temperature. He watched Lester as he did likewise. "Tell me more about them?" Connor asked. "Your kids, I mean."
Lester raised an eyebrow. "What would you like to know?"
"Anything. What they like, what they don't like, what they're doing at school, embarrassing baby stories... Whatever."
Lester's eyebrow worked its way up an extra few millimetres. "Why the sudden interest?"
Connor dropped his eyes, his cheeks growing traitorously warm again. "You're always happy when you're talking about them. I... Well... It's nice, that's all."
"I see..." Lester said slowly. "Very well then. Let's start with Michael."
---
When Lester had started talking, Connor had interrupted frequently with questions and requests for clarification, but as the minutes stretched on towards morning, those comments had been fewer and farther apart. Lester had hoped that this was a sign that Connor was calm enough to sleep again, but he was showing no such signs. If anything, he had begun to grow increasingly pensive.
When Connor did eventually speak, it was quiet. "Do you miss them? During the week, when they're with their mum?"
Lester looked carefully at Connor. A life in the civil service had given Lester the ability to spot a loaded question from several miles away, and this one was far from subtle. He sucked on his lip again, considering his answer.
"Yes, I do. More than I would ever have thought possible." He watched Connor carefully for several seconds, waiting to see if he would volunteer any new information. He didn't. "And you, Connor? Do you miss them?"
Connor looked down at his hands, a gesture Lester immediately recognised as one of his least effective avoidance strategies. "I've never met your kids."
"I think you know that's not who I meant."
Connor sat silently for a moment, before quietly acquiescing, "Yeah." It was ambiguous enough to leave Lester wondering which question he was answering, before Connor elaborated, "I guess, a little bit."
Lester refrained from pointing out that spectacular under-exaggeration. "Is that what you're dreaming about?" he asked. It was a bold move, he knew, but timely.
Connor went very still. He even seemed to have stopped breathing. If it weren't for the fact that Lester could still see his eyelashes moving as he blinked a little too rapidly, he could have assumed he was looking at a statue.
Then, all of a sudden, Connor looked up again. He had a smile on his face, conspicuously forced and at odds with the distant look in his eyes. "Nah, that's just the usual stuff. You know, running late to an exam, showing up to work in my underwear..."
Lester couldn't help but comment at that. "I would have thought you were fairly well desensitised to showing up at work in your underwear by now." Connor barely even reacted. Lester sighed, making a conscious effort not to press on the bridge of his nose in frustration. "I'd strongly recommend against a career in the civil service, Connor," he said. "Or professional poker for that matter. You must be one of the most unconvincing liars I've ever met."
That was clearly the wrong thing to have said. Connor pressed his lips together and looked away, shutting himself out of the conversation they had just barely begun. Lester waited patiently in silence for several long seconds before Connor eventually spoke again.
"I'm not..." Connor twisted the bedclothes between his fingers. "I'm sorry for keeping you up so long, I wasn't thinking. You should go back to bed. I'll be fine. The hot water was great, thanks."
He rolled over in the bed, away from Lester, effectively ending any and all conversation.
At the very clear sign of dismissal, Lester collected his now empty mug and went to leave, disappointed, but paused with his hand on the door handle. He turned, looking at Connor, evaluating alternative courses of action.
After a few moments, Connor looked over his turned shoulder at the door to check if it was okay for him to turn the light out. When he spotted Lester still standing there, Connor furrowed his brow.
"Aren't you going to go back to bed?" he asked.
All at once, Lester came to a conclusion. "Yes actually," he answered. "I think I am".
Lester placed the empty mug precariously on the top of a pile of video game boxes, closed the bedroom door, and walked back to the bed. It was only a single bed, but it was on the largish size. It would be very crowded, but it would work.
"Move over then," Lester instructed. Connor stared, uncomprehending. "Move over. I won't fit if you're taking up all the space."
Connor opened his mouth, then closed it again, completely failing to make a sound.
Lester took matters into his own hands, taking the corner of the duvet and stripping it back from one side to make room for him to get in. Connor instinctively wormed back under the remaining covers to escape from the cold air, effectively clearing half of the bed. Lester took advantage of the newly-vacated space and set himself down, pulling the duvet back over both of them. He regarded Connor, who was so still he might as well have been suffering from some sort of premature rigor mortis.
"You can turn the light out now," Lester prompted.
Connor blinked. "But you're in my bed." he pointed out uselessly.
"Yes, which is why you can turn the light out now," agreed Lester.
"Did you want me to go? I can go out into the living room, sleep on the sofa if you want to stay here."
With all the patience he could muster, Lester kept his voice level. "There is no shortage of beds in this house, I think the sofa will be unnecessary."
"Oh. Well maybe I should go sleep in your bed then?"
Lester smirked. "Perhaps tomorrow night, Connor," he answered, letting the implications fall where they may. "But tonight I think here will work just fine."
"But..." Connor tried again, "You're in my bed. At the same time as me. We're both in my bed. Together." Without apparently moving, Connor had managed to manoeuvre himself so close to the edge of the bed that he looked likely to fall off.
"Yes, I thought that much was rather self evident." Lester replied. "I sometimes wonder what Cutter was thinking when he called you a genius." It was a gamble, mentioning Cutter, but Lester hoped that the veiled praise would counteract it. Connor was already caught off guard, there was a risk that the words could break the tentative trust they'd begun to establish. But then, crawling into bed with Connor in the first place had been a pretty big gamble. Lester was the one who had thrown Connor off balance in the first place, and there was no point in leaving a job half-finished.
Connor was staring at him. Lester was very much aware that he was being assessed, and remained passive. Eventually Connor came to a decision. He rolled onto his back and flicked the lamp off. They were bathed in darkness.
"I'm not, you know," Connor said a few seconds later.
"Not what?" Lester asked.
"A genius," Connor replied. Lester couldn't see much in the dark, but he could almost hear Connor's self-deprecating half smile. "I'm not stupid or anything, but that doesn't make me a genius. That was Cutter's job. He had the genius ideas, I just wrapped electronics around them. That's all."
Lester remained silent. His gambit seemed to be paying off, and he didn't want to spoil it by speaking prematurely.
"Why are you in my bed?" Connor asked.
"It was getting cold standing in the doorway," he answered, feigning a casual air.
"That's not the reason." Any trace of surprise from earlier was gone now. What remained was a combination of suspicion and curiosity.
Lester weighed up his possible answers carefully.
"Do you remember a few days ago, I told you that if you had something important to say to me, then you should say it. That I would listen. Do you remember?"
Connor nodded, although in the darkness it came across more as a rustling of pillows.
"Well then," continued Lester. "I'm giving you the opportunity to do so."
Author: echo_fangirl
Characters: Connor/Lester (angsty pre-slash)
Rating: PG
Words: 3,459
Spoilers: Season 3, starting at 3.05
A/N & Thanks: Thank you to fredbassett, who very generously beta'd and cleaned this up for me!
Disclaimer: Not mine, as nice as it would be
Previous parts:
( Part 1 )
( Part 2 )
---
Part 3:
The anomaly alarm shouldn't have come as a surprise to Connor but, lost in his thoughts as he was, the siren almost had him fall off his seat. He jumped up, stumbling almost immediately when the damaged sole of his foot made its presence known. Connor made a frustrated noise at no one in particular, grabbed the walking stick from its resting place on the side of the table and hobbled as fast as he could to the operations area.
Unfortunately though, 'as fast as he could' wasn't actually very fast at all, and by the time he reached the anomaly detector one of the technicians was already seated at the controls with the signal isolated.
Connor knew the area pinpointed on the map, although it was certainly not a place he would have chosen to frequent in his increasingly sparse free time. The anomaly was located deep in a large body of marshland. It wasn't easy going at the best of times, and there had been a lot of rain recently. The place would be just the sort of untraversable bog which would be poorly suited to a person with limited mobility and a walking stick.
Danny and Becker were already coordinating their plans, deciding on what to take with them and how to split the team best between the two vehicles. It was rapid fire, a routine well-practiced and, once settled, Becker went off to collect whatever equipment that had been decided on.
Danny turned his attention to Connor.
"Might be best this time if you..."
"Yeah," Connor interrupted, lifting the walking stick up as evidence. "Probably best if I just sit this one out. Man the detector."
"Good man." Danny slapped him on the back just hard enough to require him to readjust his balance without actually knocking him over.
Connor recovered quickly enough, but the rest of the team was already on their way out.
Connor flopped down into the recently-vacated detector control chair and stared intently at the blinking icon identifying the anomaly. He wondered if he could make this anomaly safe by force of will and a steely glare.
There was no harm in trying.
---
Between the portable radio the team had left behind for him announcing their status every few minutes, and the detector screen occupying most of his visual range, Connor was almost oblivious to anything else in the ARC. Nothing of any note had happened to the team yet, but even so the tension was almost unbearable. He had a horrible sick feeling in his stomach, like he'd eaten a whole bag of crisps, then finished it off with a whole bottle of coke, then the crisps had swollen up and were making him nauseous, only this was more emotional and less crisp-induced. It was not an unfamiliar sensation, but it was wholly unwelcome. Especially since he hadn't even been able to enjoy the crisp-eating part.
A light hand placed on his shoulder almost made him jump a mile. Fortunately he managed to stay in his seat, although his surprised yelp was probably audible from just about anywhere in the building.
Lester raised an eyebrow at the reaction, but didn't break the casual contact.
"It's not as easy as it ought to be," said Lester, quietly. The words had been pitched softly enough that it was clear they were only intended for Connor, but they were spoken without any pretence to stealth.
Connor's eyes traveled from Lester's hand up his arm, finally resting on his face. Lester's brow was slightly furrowed, his focus on the screen in front of them.
"What do you mean?" Connor asked.
Lester tilted his head towards the radio on the work bench. "Listening. Watching. Being here, when the team is out there. It's not as easy as it ought to be."
Connor considered this, the way his heart raced every time the radio was silent for more than a minute, and the gentle grip Lester still had on his shoulder.
"No," he acquiesced. "I guess it's really not."
----
There were no disasters that day, although at one point Sarah had dropped something during one of the regular updates. The combined noise of Sarah's squawk of surprise and the clatter of the object in question had caused Connor enough of a shock to send his face bone-white.
Lester had considered sending him home, or at least off to the bunk room for a lie down, but had thought better of it. The stress of not knowing would probably have done more harm to his fragile state of mind than anything else. Instead of sending him away, he had laid a calming hand over Connor's shaking one, taken the radio and calmly requested from Becker a confirmation that everyone was still intact.
It wasn't until the anomaly had been safely closed that Connor had begun to relax. Even so, there were undercurrents of... something... lingering all through the evening. It wasn't that Connor was jumpy from the scare, nor could it be said that he seemed overly anxious, but there was definitely something going on in his head. He was being quiet again, and hesitant to make eye contact.
Connor had taken himself off to bed early once again. Lester was almost certain that they were both heading towards another night of disturbed sleep. After completing his normal evening routine - half an hour for the news, a phone call to the kids, putting away the dinner dishes and a brief yet harried round of ‘chase the diictodons into their cage’ - he got the kettle and two large mugs out in preparation. He placed these on the kitchen bench where they would be easily accessible, then he turned out the lights and went to bed.
---
Connor blinked several times before the real world reasserted itself in his mind. It took him a few more seconds before his mind regained full control over his body, instructing his muscles to relax and his lungs to function again. It was a sequence he was all too familiar with, no matter how much he wished he wasn't.
He reached out to turn on the bedside lamp. It was an instinctive reaction, a fruitless attempt to make the darkness a little less all-encompassing. He drew his arm back under the duvet quickly, before his warmth escaped. The lamp had made the room brighter, but the darkness was still there.
Breathing was important. That was one constant to which Connor had always held. He tried those deep breaths that Abby had tried to teach him that time when he had asked her about her yoga classes. It was, in hindsight, an effort that had been doomed from the start. Connor was terrible at sitting still for more than a minute without something to occupy him, and meditation was impossible with a mind as active as his.
Right now was a case in point. No matter how much he told himself that dreams were irrational and nonsensical, the thoughts and feelings they dredged up were very real, very vivid and very circular. They kept spinning around and around, chasing each other, gaining momentum until their combined centrifugal force shook him apart from the inside out.
So he breathed deeply, and tried to focus on the objects in his room, instead of the hurricane in his head. He focused on his game collection, stacked up in order of most recently played. He focused on the selection of mangled diictodon toys on the floor. He focused on his laptop, lid down, on the desk.
There was a knock on the door.
Connor gasped in surprise, his respiratory system momentarily forgetting that it had already taken in a deep breath. Connor's lungs, now overfull, protested and he made a coughing, spluttering sound.
"Connor?"
Connor managed to coordinate his lungs with his vocal cords well enough to answer with a slightly wheezy, "Yes?"
There was a short pause, allowing Connor to bring his breathing back under control.
"Connor, do you, by any chance, sleep in the nude?"
This statement gave Connor considerable pause. There weren't many things which could break him out of one of his anxiety cycles, but that... Well as far as reset switches for an over-active brain went, that was damn effective. "Uh," he eventually stammered. "Uh, no... Nope. Pyjamas."
Lester's voice came from the other side of the door. "In that case, you won't mind if I come in."
Connor blinked several times, and opened his mouth, but no sound managed to escape.
"Connor?"
Finally his brain caught up. "Yeah, I, uh, sure..." he answered, then rapidly appended, "If you want to, it's your house. But I'm fine, if you want to go back to bed."
Lester remained silent on that matter, choosing instead to enter Connor's bedroom.
Walking backwards.
In red and blue striped pyjamas.
The pyjamas were incongruous on their own, but it was the walking backwards which caused Connor his first moment of confusion. When Lester turned around to reveal that he was carrying a mug in each hand, that confusion was resolved only to be replaced by a more complex one. Why had Lester brought two mugs into his room at a few minutes past three in the morning?
Lester placed the mugs on Connor's bedside table, then moved to pull the small arm chair closer to the side of the bed. He had to remove several discarded items of clothing from the seat before it was usable, but once clear he settled into it quickly.
Connor felt immediately self-conscious and opted to stare at the two mugs rather than look at his companion. The mugs were steaming.
"You brought tea?" he asked, "That's very..." he hesitated. Thoughtful? Unexpected? British?
"You seemed to be having some trouble sleeping," Lester replied. "When Josephine was six, she used to have night terrors. She'd wake up distraught, with no idea why. Sometimes she was so upset that she refused to go back to sleep. A hot drink, on occasion, helped to persuade her."
"Oh, I, um... Thank you." Connor stammered.
"Of course, I expect you are suffering from bad dreams, not night terrors," Lester continued, his forthrightness making Connor feel increasingly uncomfortable.
Connor didn't trust his voice, so he nodded instead.
Lester mirrored the nod, but made no other movement. "I think the hot drink might be worth a try anyway." He picked up one of the two mugs and took a sip. He looked pointedly at Connor.
Connor quickly did likewise, taking a small sip. He raised his eyebrows, surprised. "It's quite weak," he said.
Lester's lip quirked upwards very slightly.
"It's water, Connor. No flavoured drinks after bed time."
Connor felt a smile work its way onto his face. He braved a glancing eye contact, noting the unexpectedly soft expression on Lester's face. "How do you do that?"
"Make hot water?" Lester queried. "You're no Jamie Oliver, but I expect even you could figure that one out by yourself."
"No," answered Connor, stopping himself a moment before he rolled his eyes. "I mean that switching thing you do. When you change from Sir James Lester - big scary bureaucrat -, to James Lester. regular guy who talks like a dad telling off his three year old?"
Lester sucked on his lip thoughtfully for a moment. "I expect that fact that I am, on occasion, dad to a three year old helps somewhat," he answered. "And of course, wrangling a team of academics and scientists bears a striking similarity to wrangling a group of overtired toddlers."
Connor grinned. "We're not that bad, and you've got a whole lot of special forces soldiers to keep an eye on us."
Lester nodded. "That's certainly true. I wonder if Captain Becker and his team would be willing to provide crowd control for Charlotte's next birthday party?" He gestured to Connor's mug. "Drink, before it gets cold."
Connor took another sip. It had already cooled to a comfortable drinking temperature. He watched Lester as he did likewise. "Tell me more about them?" Connor asked. "Your kids, I mean."
Lester raised an eyebrow. "What would you like to know?"
"Anything. What they like, what they don't like, what they're doing at school, embarrassing baby stories... Whatever."
Lester's eyebrow worked its way up an extra few millimetres. "Why the sudden interest?"
Connor dropped his eyes, his cheeks growing traitorously warm again. "You're always happy when you're talking about them. I... Well... It's nice, that's all."
"I see..." Lester said slowly. "Very well then. Let's start with Michael."
---
When Lester had started talking, Connor had interrupted frequently with questions and requests for clarification, but as the minutes stretched on towards morning, those comments had been fewer and farther apart. Lester had hoped that this was a sign that Connor was calm enough to sleep again, but he was showing no such signs. If anything, he had begun to grow increasingly pensive.
When Connor did eventually speak, it was quiet. "Do you miss them? During the week, when they're with their mum?"
Lester looked carefully at Connor. A life in the civil service had given Lester the ability to spot a loaded question from several miles away, and this one was far from subtle. He sucked on his lip again, considering his answer.
"Yes, I do. More than I would ever have thought possible." He watched Connor carefully for several seconds, waiting to see if he would volunteer any new information. He didn't. "And you, Connor? Do you miss them?"
Connor looked down at his hands, a gesture Lester immediately recognised as one of his least effective avoidance strategies. "I've never met your kids."
"I think you know that's not who I meant."
Connor sat silently for a moment, before quietly acquiescing, "Yeah." It was ambiguous enough to leave Lester wondering which question he was answering, before Connor elaborated, "I guess, a little bit."
Lester refrained from pointing out that spectacular under-exaggeration. "Is that what you're dreaming about?" he asked. It was a bold move, he knew, but timely.
Connor went very still. He even seemed to have stopped breathing. If it weren't for the fact that Lester could still see his eyelashes moving as he blinked a little too rapidly, he could have assumed he was looking at a statue.
Then, all of a sudden, Connor looked up again. He had a smile on his face, conspicuously forced and at odds with the distant look in his eyes. "Nah, that's just the usual stuff. You know, running late to an exam, showing up to work in my underwear..."
Lester couldn't help but comment at that. "I would have thought you were fairly well desensitised to showing up at work in your underwear by now." Connor barely even reacted. Lester sighed, making a conscious effort not to press on the bridge of his nose in frustration. "I'd strongly recommend against a career in the civil service, Connor," he said. "Or professional poker for that matter. You must be one of the most unconvincing liars I've ever met."
That was clearly the wrong thing to have said. Connor pressed his lips together and looked away, shutting himself out of the conversation they had just barely begun. Lester waited patiently in silence for several long seconds before Connor eventually spoke again.
"I'm not..." Connor twisted the bedclothes between his fingers. "I'm sorry for keeping you up so long, I wasn't thinking. You should go back to bed. I'll be fine. The hot water was great, thanks."
He rolled over in the bed, away from Lester, effectively ending any and all conversation.
At the very clear sign of dismissal, Lester collected his now empty mug and went to leave, disappointed, but paused with his hand on the door handle. He turned, looking at Connor, evaluating alternative courses of action.
After a few moments, Connor looked over his turned shoulder at the door to check if it was okay for him to turn the light out. When he spotted Lester still standing there, Connor furrowed his brow.
"Aren't you going to go back to bed?" he asked.
All at once, Lester came to a conclusion. "Yes actually," he answered. "I think I am".
Lester placed the empty mug precariously on the top of a pile of video game boxes, closed the bedroom door, and walked back to the bed. It was only a single bed, but it was on the largish size. It would be very crowded, but it would work.
"Move over then," Lester instructed. Connor stared, uncomprehending. "Move over. I won't fit if you're taking up all the space."
Connor opened his mouth, then closed it again, completely failing to make a sound.
Lester took matters into his own hands, taking the corner of the duvet and stripping it back from one side to make room for him to get in. Connor instinctively wormed back under the remaining covers to escape from the cold air, effectively clearing half of the bed. Lester took advantage of the newly-vacated space and set himself down, pulling the duvet back over both of them. He regarded Connor, who was so still he might as well have been suffering from some sort of premature rigor mortis.
"You can turn the light out now," Lester prompted.
Connor blinked. "But you're in my bed." he pointed out uselessly.
"Yes, which is why you can turn the light out now," agreed Lester.
"Did you want me to go? I can go out into the living room, sleep on the sofa if you want to stay here."
With all the patience he could muster, Lester kept his voice level. "There is no shortage of beds in this house, I think the sofa will be unnecessary."
"Oh. Well maybe I should go sleep in your bed then?"
Lester smirked. "Perhaps tomorrow night, Connor," he answered, letting the implications fall where they may. "But tonight I think here will work just fine."
"But..." Connor tried again, "You're in my bed. At the same time as me. We're both in my bed. Together." Without apparently moving, Connor had managed to manoeuvre himself so close to the edge of the bed that he looked likely to fall off.
"Yes, I thought that much was rather self evident." Lester replied. "I sometimes wonder what Cutter was thinking when he called you a genius." It was a gamble, mentioning Cutter, but Lester hoped that the veiled praise would counteract it. Connor was already caught off guard, there was a risk that the words could break the tentative trust they'd begun to establish. But then, crawling into bed with Connor in the first place had been a pretty big gamble. Lester was the one who had thrown Connor off balance in the first place, and there was no point in leaving a job half-finished.
Connor was staring at him. Lester was very much aware that he was being assessed, and remained passive. Eventually Connor came to a decision. He rolled onto his back and flicked the lamp off. They were bathed in darkness.
"I'm not, you know," Connor said a few seconds later.
"Not what?" Lester asked.
"A genius," Connor replied. Lester couldn't see much in the dark, but he could almost hear Connor's self-deprecating half smile. "I'm not stupid or anything, but that doesn't make me a genius. That was Cutter's job. He had the genius ideas, I just wrapped electronics around them. That's all."
Lester remained silent. His gambit seemed to be paying off, and he didn't want to spoil it by speaking prematurely.
"Why are you in my bed?" Connor asked.
"It was getting cold standing in the doorway," he answered, feigning a casual air.
"That's not the reason." Any trace of surprise from earlier was gone now. What remained was a combination of suspicion and curiosity.
Lester weighed up his possible answers carefully.
"Do you remember a few days ago, I told you that if you had something important to say to me, then you should say it. That I would listen. Do you remember?"
Connor nodded, although in the darkness it came across more as a rustling of pillows.
"Well then," continued Lester. "I'm giving you the opportunity to do so."