By The Time You Read This (2/8)
Title: By The Time You Read This
Author: enochiansigils and not_from_stars
Artist: weaselett
Fandom: Primeval
Pairing/Characters: Hilary Becker/Abby Maitland/Stephen Hart, James Lester, Jenny Lewis, Danny Quinn,
Rating/Category: PG-13
Summary: Abby had thought that after they came back from the anomaly, that the three of them could make a go of a relationship together. However, when Stephen and Becker fall into a pattern of doing nothing but fighting, it leads her to believe that they don't even care about her any longer. She leaves them a letter to say goodbye and disappears. Now, Stephen and Becker have to find a way to heal their old hurts between them in order to find Abby and convince her that they want to make a life together.
Warnings: This is a sequel to our casestory fic, From Where We're Standing, but can also be a stand alone story.
Words: 33,849
Notes: Written for au_bigbang 2011. Thank you very much to weaselett for the wonderful art that she made for us! We've loved writing this story and have very much enjoyed taking part in the challenge this year.
It'd taken Becker a while to get Stephen comfortable enough emotionally to even think about going to bed. Of course, Stephen had insisted he wasn't going to be able to sleep. Becker had just said all right, but that he should at least crawl into bed. Stephen had argued with that, too.
And had promptly been out like a light, the adrenaline finally gone.
Becker, however, was determined not to sleep for a little while longer. He couldn't do much for Stephen at the moment, so he'd do the one thing he could do. He'd sit there and keep the other man safe for a while. Make him feel comfortable enough to stay asleep.
Sometimes it was terrifying to realize that he'd let Stephen back into his heart, that Stephen was once more in a position where he could walk away and break Becker's heart all over again. And then things like this would happen. Oh, not Abby leaving. Obviously not that. But every time Becker started worrying that his heart was going to get hurt again, Stephen would do or say something that made the younger man realize that hey, maybe this was going to work out after all.
He knew it wasn't going to be easy. He wasn't so foolish as to think that it would be. But he could hardly be blamed for enjoying the times where things worked a little more easily.
Becker looked over at Stephen, glad to see that he was indeed still sleeping. "Hang in there," he whispered, brushing the fingers of one hand over Stephen's face lightly. "Hang in there, love. We'll find her. I promise you, we'll find her and we'll bring her home. Whatever it takes, I'll get her back for you."
For himself, too, but he knew Stephen would be feeling a special kind of relief when Abby came home to them.
Sighing softly, Becker turned his attention back to the book he'd been trying to read for the past twenty minutes or so. He wasn't sure what had made him pick this one up, other than the fact that it was something Abby had given him. But it wasn't keeping his attention, despite the way he kept trying to focus. So he shut the book and set it aside, turning his attention back to Stephen.
He'd always loved watching Stephen sleep. He'd spent more than his share of nights doing exactly that while they'd been together. He was pretty sure Stephen had known it, too, but he'd never come out and called Becker on it. So Becker had, more often than not, spent a portion of each night they shared a bed watching his lover sleep. Stephen always looked so peaceful when he was asleep, no matter what was going on; not now, though. Now, he looked every bit as troubled as he had while awake.
"I'm going to fix this," Becker whispered. "I promise."
Except he had no idea how.
Abby sat in the chair next to the window with her knees pulled up to her chin. It was late at night and she knew that the boys must have found her letter by now. Her chest and throat hurt from crying, but the tears were still trickling down her cheeks.
It was a hard thing, realizing that maybe you weren't as important to the men you loved as you thought you were.
It wasn't easy walking out on Becker and Stephen, but there had been no other choice. The fighting between them was tearing her apart. They didn't seem to believe or accept that she loved both of them with an equal amount of her heart. There wasn't either one of them that she loved more.
She buried her face in her knees. She felt like her world had ended. This would be the first time she spent a night alone since she had been rescued from the anomaly that she had been trapped on the other side of. The silence was taking some getting used to -- even if it was peaceful.
It seemed that the only time that the guys hadn't been fighting was when they were all having sex. Oh, the sex was intense and wonderful, but relationships needed to be based on much more than just amazing sex.
Abby sniffled, looking at the mobile phone that she was holding. There were several text messages and voice mails from Becker and from Stephen. She couldn't afford to read them all right now. She had to keep her resolve on this and if she read their messages or listened to her voice mail then she knew she would never be able to do this.
Running her thumb over the keypad once, she then pressed the key to turn off the phone. She just had to do this. She had to cut them out of her life right now. They had to figure things out between them and make peace with each other. They kept hurting each other and in turn hurt her. Oh, she knew they didn't mean to hurt her, but it had become more and more evident that whatever love they had for her took second place to using her as a weapon to cut at each other.
She dropped the mobile phone in the drawer of the table next to the chair. If she didn't have it right in sight, then she wouldn't be tempted to break her heart all over again.
The guys would have to figure all of this out without her. If they could heal each other's hurts, then maybe they could work things out. If they could stop fighting and start loving each other honestly, then things would be all right.
If they could heal things between them, then they would be able to find her.
If they still wanted her.
She swallowed past the pain in her throat. At one time she would have felt confident about telling people how much Becker and Stephen loved her. Lately, though, she just didn't know if she believed it any longer.
She wiped her eyes, but the tears kept coming. There were many reasons she had finally given up, but the most important reason was because of the tiny life that was growing inside her. She hadn't planned on hiding it from the guys, but when the fighting got worse between them, she couldn't tell them.
She wouldn't have the boys stay with her just because she was pregnant. She wouldn't make them pretend to want her because of their child. She had grown up with parents who hated each other and her and she wasn't going to allow any child of her own to go through that.
"We'll be all right, little one," she whispered, placing her hand on her stomach. "I don't know how, but we'll be all right."
She hoped that they would all end up being all right. She just didn't think that they would ever be all right together.
And God, that was threatening to rip her apart.
Time had passed slowly, so damnably slowly, until Becker had looked at the date one day and realized that over a month had gone by since Abby's leaving. A month where the only good thing to happen had been talking to Stephen and working through some of their issues. Not all of them, because he wasn't sure that would ever happen -- much less in just a month -- but some.
Becker was pretty much going through the motions at work nowadays. Oh, still the same dedication, but less of the vested interest.
He shut his locker with a heavy sigh. All he wanted to do was go home and curl up with Abby and Stephen and ignore the world. But Abby wasn't there, maybe wouldn't ever be there again.
He heard footsteps behind him but didn't bother to turn. Whichever member of the team it was, odds are it was someone who no longer liked him.
Lucky Becker, it was Danny. The other man leaned against one of the lockers and looked at him for a long moment.
"Any news?"
"No," Becker said with a quick shake of his head. "We... we don't know where she might be. We've looked everywhere we can think of."
"Maybe you should think about searching in places you wouldn't usually think she would go." He gave him a look. "After all, she quit here and no one ever thought they'd see the day she did that."
Danny, giving him actual advice? Was hell freezing over?
"Good idea," Becker said. "It's as good an idea as any, at least."
"I think it's only fair to warn you that I'm looking for her, too. As well as some of the others."
"We just want someone to find her," Becker said. "We want to be able to talk to her, to tell her that we're trying to work through everything."
"I'm not trying to find her for you, Becker."
"But if you find her, we'll still have some kind of a chance to talk to her."
"Not if she decides she doesn't want to talk to you again." Danny looked like he was slouching against the locker quite comfortably. "Because I don't plan to bring her back into the lion's den with the two of you sods if I find her first."
"If you find her first, will you at least tell her we want to talk to her and ask her if she'll talk to us?" Becker asked, pleading and not giving a damn. He'd lost his pride weeks ago.
"I'll tell her," Danny said. "But frankly, mate, you don't even deserve to be in the same room with her. You not only chased her out of your life, you chased her away from a family that loved her."
"You think we don't know that? You think we don't hate that? You think we don't want to change that?"
"If you truly wanted to change it, you would have done something about it before you hurt her so much she ran." Danny's eyes were hard. "I think that if she'll have me, I'll take a lot better care of her than you have."
"You are getting involved with her over my damn dead body." And that would be Becker launching himself at Danny and taking a vicious swing at him.
Danny let the swing connect and then shoved Becker away. He rubbed his jaw and gave Becker a chilly smile. "That's not something that you get to decide any longer, Captain Becker. You come at me again and I'll plant you on the ground."
"Try anything with her and I'll come at you again, you can damn well count on it. I mistakenly thought I had to worry about losing her to my damn ex-boyfriend, I'm not going to worry about losing her to you, too."
"You already lost her when you broke her heart so badly she ran away from you," Danny's voice was harsh. "Better me than some stranger who wouldn't give a damn about the things she cares about. Have you and Hart even thought about taking care of her creatures in her absence? No, you haven't. Have you even thought of looking in places that would make it easy for her to hide from you in plain sight?"
"I'm going to get her back, Danny. I don't know how or when, but it will happen."
"Don't make bets you can't honor, Captain."
"Oh, I'll honor this one, Quinn. No matter how long it takes."
"Then I guess you'd better hope you find her before I do."
"I will."
Danny smirked as he headed for the door. "Oh, by the way, just so you know? Rex is fine. He's been staying with Sarah or Connor. They wanted to make sure that he was taken care of so when I find Abby he's around for her."
Becker just fumed as Danny walked out of the room.
That night, Becker was still fuming something fierce when Stephen let himself into the flat that was now pretty much unofficially theirs. "Do I even want to know what's got you in such a foul mood?" he asked warily. "Or should I just leave for a few hours and let you be sullen and cranky?"
"Damn Bastard Danny Quinn!"
Stephen blinked. "So... sullen and cranky it is, then? What did Quinn do this time?"
"Wants Abby!"
"Can't have her." Stephen, stubborn and snarly and oh so very meaning it.
"He said if he finds her first he's not bringing her back into the lion's den to get broken again."
"Then we have to find her first."
"She ours and not his. I told him if he tried anything with her I would come at him. He is not taking her from us!"
"I refuse to think about losing her to him," Stephen said, still snarly. "It's one thing when it's one of us, but someone else? No. Just no."
Strangest bonding ever, yes? Yes.
"He said we don't deserve her and I hit him."
"Good for you," Stephen said with a decisive nod.
"I knew that he was angry as hell at us, but I never imagined he might want to keep her away from us if he managed to find her first." He looked at Stephen. "He thinks that he can take better care of her than we can."
"Well, he's wrong," Stephen said firmly. "He's wrong, Hilary."
"I know he's wrong. No one can love her better than we do -- even if we were shite at showing it. I just don't want to think about losing her to someone else, Stephen."
"So we won't think about it," Stephen said. "We'll think about what we can do to find her. We'll think about what we can do when we find her, to convince her just how much we love her."
"Damn bastard."
Stephen looked at Becker from where he'd been sitting on the couch. "Hilary, come here. Sit down."
Becker was fuming, but he went and sat down next to him. "I can't believe he flat out told me he was going to take her from us."
"We're not going to let him, though," Stephen said. "One of the reasons Abby left was because we were too stubborn to stop fighting. Well, we're going to be that stubborn again -- but we're going to focus it on getting Abby back and treasuring her every single day we have her."
Becker sighed and buried his face in his hands. "I wanted to tear him apart when he said that he was going to keep Abby away from us."
Stephen wrapped an arm around him. "Listen to me. If he tries that, he's going to learn the hard way that you don't mess with us. We'll show him how determined we are."
Becker leaned into his embrace. "I want her back, Stephen. We need to get her back. I'm not sure where to look now."
"We've already tried everywhere that would make sense for her," Stephen said. "Which leaves us with... what?"
"Things that we wouldn't associate with her. What did she do before she was a zoologist?"
Stephen frowned, trying to think. "She worked at the zoo..."
"Maybe she's working as a vet somewhere? Or at a museum? We've already checked every live reptile house or rescue that we've been able to find in this damn country." His eyes filled with horror. "What if she left the country? We'd never find her then."
"Let's worry about exhausting our possibilities in the country first," Stephen said gently. "I don't think Abby would want to go too far from the others, just in case something happened to them. She'd want someone to be able to find her."
"Lester," Becker finally said quietly. "We have to talk to Lester, Stephen."
"Then we'll go talk to him. I'll ride into work with you in the morning and we'll talk to him."
Becker nodded. "It's as good an idea as I can come up with right now. If anyone would have any information, it would be him. I don't think he would have just let Abby disappear."
"He's an overprotective bastard, even if he's good at hiding it."
"Abby trusted him," Becker reminded him. "If she went to anyone for help hiding, it would be him."
"Then tomorrow we're going to get some information out of him."
"Good. Because there is no way I'm letting Danny Quinn get to her first."
"There's no way we're letting him get to her first," Stephen corrected, hugging Becker against him.
"Yes, you're right. We're not letting anyone take our girl from us." He leaned into Stephen.
"You know, one of these days I'll go back to the ARC and it won't be for near-catastrophic reasons," Stephen said after a moment.
Becker would have laughed at that if he wasn't feeling so raw right now. "Maybe you should make sure to visit there a few times," he suggested. "After all, you've done other things that you swore never to do again."
"You've got a very good point there."
Becker nodded. "I have them sometimes."
"You have them a lot of the time. Don't sell yourself short, Hil."
"No, that's what we get to have Lester do to us tomorrow."
Stephen snorted. "How right you are, my friend. How right you are."
One || Three.
Author: enochiansigils and not_from_stars
Artist: weaselett
Fandom: Primeval
Pairing/Characters: Hilary Becker/Abby Maitland/Stephen Hart, James Lester, Jenny Lewis, Danny Quinn,
Rating/Category: PG-13
Summary: Abby had thought that after they came back from the anomaly, that the three of them could make a go of a relationship together. However, when Stephen and Becker fall into a pattern of doing nothing but fighting, it leads her to believe that they don't even care about her any longer. She leaves them a letter to say goodbye and disappears. Now, Stephen and Becker have to find a way to heal their old hurts between them in order to find Abby and convince her that they want to make a life together.
Warnings: This is a sequel to our casestory fic, From Where We're Standing, but can also be a stand alone story.
Words: 33,849
Notes: Written for au_bigbang 2011. Thank you very much to weaselett for the wonderful art that she made for us! We've loved writing this story and have very much enjoyed taking part in the challenge this year.
It'd taken Becker a while to get Stephen comfortable enough emotionally to even think about going to bed. Of course, Stephen had insisted he wasn't going to be able to sleep. Becker had just said all right, but that he should at least crawl into bed. Stephen had argued with that, too.
And had promptly been out like a light, the adrenaline finally gone.
Becker, however, was determined not to sleep for a little while longer. He couldn't do much for Stephen at the moment, so he'd do the one thing he could do. He'd sit there and keep the other man safe for a while. Make him feel comfortable enough to stay asleep.
Sometimes it was terrifying to realize that he'd let Stephen back into his heart, that Stephen was once more in a position where he could walk away and break Becker's heart all over again. And then things like this would happen. Oh, not Abby leaving. Obviously not that. But every time Becker started worrying that his heart was going to get hurt again, Stephen would do or say something that made the younger man realize that hey, maybe this was going to work out after all.
He knew it wasn't going to be easy. He wasn't so foolish as to think that it would be. But he could hardly be blamed for enjoying the times where things worked a little more easily.
Becker looked over at Stephen, glad to see that he was indeed still sleeping. "Hang in there," he whispered, brushing the fingers of one hand over Stephen's face lightly. "Hang in there, love. We'll find her. I promise you, we'll find her and we'll bring her home. Whatever it takes, I'll get her back for you."
For himself, too, but he knew Stephen would be feeling a special kind of relief when Abby came home to them.
Sighing softly, Becker turned his attention back to the book he'd been trying to read for the past twenty minutes or so. He wasn't sure what had made him pick this one up, other than the fact that it was something Abby had given him. But it wasn't keeping his attention, despite the way he kept trying to focus. So he shut the book and set it aside, turning his attention back to Stephen.
He'd always loved watching Stephen sleep. He'd spent more than his share of nights doing exactly that while they'd been together. He was pretty sure Stephen had known it, too, but he'd never come out and called Becker on it. So Becker had, more often than not, spent a portion of each night they shared a bed watching his lover sleep. Stephen always looked so peaceful when he was asleep, no matter what was going on; not now, though. Now, he looked every bit as troubled as he had while awake.
"I'm going to fix this," Becker whispered. "I promise."
Except he had no idea how.
Abby sat in the chair next to the window with her knees pulled up to her chin. It was late at night and she knew that the boys must have found her letter by now. Her chest and throat hurt from crying, but the tears were still trickling down her cheeks.
It was a hard thing, realizing that maybe you weren't as important to the men you loved as you thought you were.
It wasn't easy walking out on Becker and Stephen, but there had been no other choice. The fighting between them was tearing her apart. They didn't seem to believe or accept that she loved both of them with an equal amount of her heart. There wasn't either one of them that she loved more.
She buried her face in her knees. She felt like her world had ended. This would be the first time she spent a night alone since she had been rescued from the anomaly that she had been trapped on the other side of. The silence was taking some getting used to -- even if it was peaceful.
It seemed that the only time that the guys hadn't been fighting was when they were all having sex. Oh, the sex was intense and wonderful, but relationships needed to be based on much more than just amazing sex.
Abby sniffled, looking at the mobile phone that she was holding. There were several text messages and voice mails from Becker and from Stephen. She couldn't afford to read them all right now. She had to keep her resolve on this and if she read their messages or listened to her voice mail then she knew she would never be able to do this.
Running her thumb over the keypad once, she then pressed the key to turn off the phone. She just had to do this. She had to cut them out of her life right now. They had to figure things out between them and make peace with each other. They kept hurting each other and in turn hurt her. Oh, she knew they didn't mean to hurt her, but it had become more and more evident that whatever love they had for her took second place to using her as a weapon to cut at each other.
She dropped the mobile phone in the drawer of the table next to the chair. If she didn't have it right in sight, then she wouldn't be tempted to break her heart all over again.
The guys would have to figure all of this out without her. If they could heal each other's hurts, then maybe they could work things out. If they could stop fighting and start loving each other honestly, then things would be all right.
If they could heal things between them, then they would be able to find her.
If they still wanted her.
She swallowed past the pain in her throat. At one time she would have felt confident about telling people how much Becker and Stephen loved her. Lately, though, she just didn't know if she believed it any longer.
She wiped her eyes, but the tears kept coming. There were many reasons she had finally given up, but the most important reason was because of the tiny life that was growing inside her. She hadn't planned on hiding it from the guys, but when the fighting got worse between them, she couldn't tell them.
She wouldn't have the boys stay with her just because she was pregnant. She wouldn't make them pretend to want her because of their child. She had grown up with parents who hated each other and her and she wasn't going to allow any child of her own to go through that.
"We'll be all right, little one," she whispered, placing her hand on her stomach. "I don't know how, but we'll be all right."
She hoped that they would all end up being all right. She just didn't think that they would ever be all right together.
And God, that was threatening to rip her apart.
Time had passed slowly, so damnably slowly, until Becker had looked at the date one day and realized that over a month had gone by since Abby's leaving. A month where the only good thing to happen had been talking to Stephen and working through some of their issues. Not all of them, because he wasn't sure that would ever happen -- much less in just a month -- but some.
Becker was pretty much going through the motions at work nowadays. Oh, still the same dedication, but less of the vested interest.
He shut his locker with a heavy sigh. All he wanted to do was go home and curl up with Abby and Stephen and ignore the world. But Abby wasn't there, maybe wouldn't ever be there again.
He heard footsteps behind him but didn't bother to turn. Whichever member of the team it was, odds are it was someone who no longer liked him.
Lucky Becker, it was Danny. The other man leaned against one of the lockers and looked at him for a long moment.
"Any news?"
"No," Becker said with a quick shake of his head. "We... we don't know where she might be. We've looked everywhere we can think of."
"Maybe you should think about searching in places you wouldn't usually think she would go." He gave him a look. "After all, she quit here and no one ever thought they'd see the day she did that."
Danny, giving him actual advice? Was hell freezing over?
"Good idea," Becker said. "It's as good an idea as any, at least."
"I think it's only fair to warn you that I'm looking for her, too. As well as some of the others."
"We just want someone to find her," Becker said. "We want to be able to talk to her, to tell her that we're trying to work through everything."
"I'm not trying to find her for you, Becker."
"But if you find her, we'll still have some kind of a chance to talk to her."
"Not if she decides she doesn't want to talk to you again." Danny looked like he was slouching against the locker quite comfortably. "Because I don't plan to bring her back into the lion's den with the two of you sods if I find her first."
"If you find her first, will you at least tell her we want to talk to her and ask her if she'll talk to us?" Becker asked, pleading and not giving a damn. He'd lost his pride weeks ago.
"I'll tell her," Danny said. "But frankly, mate, you don't even deserve to be in the same room with her. You not only chased her out of your life, you chased her away from a family that loved her."
"You think we don't know that? You think we don't hate that? You think we don't want to change that?"
"If you truly wanted to change it, you would have done something about it before you hurt her so much she ran." Danny's eyes were hard. "I think that if she'll have me, I'll take a lot better care of her than you have."
"You are getting involved with her over my damn dead body." And that would be Becker launching himself at Danny and taking a vicious swing at him.
Danny let the swing connect and then shoved Becker away. He rubbed his jaw and gave Becker a chilly smile. "That's not something that you get to decide any longer, Captain Becker. You come at me again and I'll plant you on the ground."
"Try anything with her and I'll come at you again, you can damn well count on it. I mistakenly thought I had to worry about losing her to my damn ex-boyfriend, I'm not going to worry about losing her to you, too."
"You already lost her when you broke her heart so badly she ran away from you," Danny's voice was harsh. "Better me than some stranger who wouldn't give a damn about the things she cares about. Have you and Hart even thought about taking care of her creatures in her absence? No, you haven't. Have you even thought of looking in places that would make it easy for her to hide from you in plain sight?"
"I'm going to get her back, Danny. I don't know how or when, but it will happen."
"Don't make bets you can't honor, Captain."
"Oh, I'll honor this one, Quinn. No matter how long it takes."
"Then I guess you'd better hope you find her before I do."
"I will."
Danny smirked as he headed for the door. "Oh, by the way, just so you know? Rex is fine. He's been staying with Sarah or Connor. They wanted to make sure that he was taken care of so when I find Abby he's around for her."
Becker just fumed as Danny walked out of the room.
That night, Becker was still fuming something fierce when Stephen let himself into the flat that was now pretty much unofficially theirs. "Do I even want to know what's got you in such a foul mood?" he asked warily. "Or should I just leave for a few hours and let you be sullen and cranky?"
"Damn Bastard Danny Quinn!"
Stephen blinked. "So... sullen and cranky it is, then? What did Quinn do this time?"
"Wants Abby!"
"Can't have her." Stephen, stubborn and snarly and oh so very meaning it.
"He said if he finds her first he's not bringing her back into the lion's den to get broken again."
"Then we have to find her first."
"She ours and not his. I told him if he tried anything with her I would come at him. He is not taking her from us!"
"I refuse to think about losing her to him," Stephen said, still snarly. "It's one thing when it's one of us, but someone else? No. Just no."
Strangest bonding ever, yes? Yes.
"He said we don't deserve her and I hit him."
"Good for you," Stephen said with a decisive nod.
"I knew that he was angry as hell at us, but I never imagined he might want to keep her away from us if he managed to find her first." He looked at Stephen. "He thinks that he can take better care of her than we can."
"Well, he's wrong," Stephen said firmly. "He's wrong, Hilary."
"I know he's wrong. No one can love her better than we do -- even if we were shite at showing it. I just don't want to think about losing her to someone else, Stephen."
"So we won't think about it," Stephen said. "We'll think about what we can do to find her. We'll think about what we can do when we find her, to convince her just how much we love her."
"Damn bastard."
Stephen looked at Becker from where he'd been sitting on the couch. "Hilary, come here. Sit down."
Becker was fuming, but he went and sat down next to him. "I can't believe he flat out told me he was going to take her from us."
"We're not going to let him, though," Stephen said. "One of the reasons Abby left was because we were too stubborn to stop fighting. Well, we're going to be that stubborn again -- but we're going to focus it on getting Abby back and treasuring her every single day we have her."
Becker sighed and buried his face in his hands. "I wanted to tear him apart when he said that he was going to keep Abby away from us."
Stephen wrapped an arm around him. "Listen to me. If he tries that, he's going to learn the hard way that you don't mess with us. We'll show him how determined we are."
Becker leaned into his embrace. "I want her back, Stephen. We need to get her back. I'm not sure where to look now."
"We've already tried everywhere that would make sense for her," Stephen said. "Which leaves us with... what?"
"Things that we wouldn't associate with her. What did she do before she was a zoologist?"
Stephen frowned, trying to think. "She worked at the zoo..."
"Maybe she's working as a vet somewhere? Or at a museum? We've already checked every live reptile house or rescue that we've been able to find in this damn country." His eyes filled with horror. "What if she left the country? We'd never find her then."
"Let's worry about exhausting our possibilities in the country first," Stephen said gently. "I don't think Abby would want to go too far from the others, just in case something happened to them. She'd want someone to be able to find her."
"Lester," Becker finally said quietly. "We have to talk to Lester, Stephen."
"Then we'll go talk to him. I'll ride into work with you in the morning and we'll talk to him."
Becker nodded. "It's as good an idea as I can come up with right now. If anyone would have any information, it would be him. I don't think he would have just let Abby disappear."
"He's an overprotective bastard, even if he's good at hiding it."
"Abby trusted him," Becker reminded him. "If she went to anyone for help hiding, it would be him."
"Then tomorrow we're going to get some information out of him."
"Good. Because there is no way I'm letting Danny Quinn get to her first."
"There's no way we're letting him get to her first," Stephen corrected, hugging Becker against him.
"Yes, you're right. We're not letting anyone take our girl from us." He leaned into Stephen.
"You know, one of these days I'll go back to the ARC and it won't be for near-catastrophic reasons," Stephen said after a moment.
Becker would have laughed at that if he wasn't feeling so raw right now. "Maybe you should make sure to visit there a few times," he suggested. "After all, you've done other things that you swore never to do again."
"You've got a very good point there."
Becker nodded. "I have them sometimes."
"You have them a lot of the time. Don't sell yourself short, Hil."
"No, that's what we get to have Lester do to us tomorrow."
Stephen snorted. "How right you are, my friend. How right you are."
One || Three.