Primeval fanfic: Understanding
Title: Understanding
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: I own nothing that anyone recognises, and I'm making no money off it, either.
Rating: PG-13? I guess? Maybe R but I don't think this is explicit enough for that.
Summary: Stephen's got troubles of his own. No one could have known, except the one person who might understand.
AN: This is because I like to create an excuse for some of Stephen's behaviour that doesn't involve him just being a jerk. Or possibly a berk. Not slash, because I didn't feel like it this time. *Muttering about prehistoric carnivorous bunnies*. This is, by the way, set after Stephen somehow miraculously survives the end of S2. I'd clarify how he's saved, but it's enough not the point that I'm trusting you all to imagine your own dei ex machinae. Or however you would pluralise that, I never took Latin.
**************************************
They didn't understand, no one did. They were all staring at him like he was wrong somehow, more than they had been before. Nick, who was never that subtle and tended to take the bull in a china shop approach to interpersonal relationships, had tried, but he was so angry and disgusted with him, and rightfully so, that the doctors and nurses had all thrown Nick out. Abby was better, but she was so confused, so totally without understanding, he'd just lied to her, pretending it was all a mistake, and she'd accepted it with nary a qualm.
He'd arranged to get himself out of the hospital, signed himself out against the advice of everyone, knowing that no one would care enough to make him stay, and headed straight home. The stillness and silence of his flat was soothing, and he closed his eyes a moment to absorb the peace.
Then the memories crept in and he made his way to the kitchen. He'd been foolish to try where and when he'd tried. Killing himself in the middle of the ARC? He might as well have put a big banner over his head saying, "Help me!" He didn't bloody want help, he wanted it all to stop hurting. He wanted to stop feeling like a fake, like someone who wasn't even real. And he did. He was always a title, a joke, an adjunct, a something-that-wasn't-him.
Sometimes he hated living in this country. If he'd been in America or Canada or any number of other places he could have got himself a gun, quickly, easily. But he wasn't in one of those places and anything he might have had access to was at the ARC.
The kitchen. He could find knives there, couldn't he? They'd take longer, but work as well in the end.
But there weren't any. There wasn't a single damned sharp edge to be found there.
"Looking for something, Stephen?" asked a voice from behind him.
In spite of himself, he spun around, looking for something to use in self-defence, It was habit, he told himself as he straightened. Connor was standing in his flat, looking . . . sympathetic? "What are you doing here, Connor?" he asked, bracing himself to put on the brave hunter front.
"Keeping you from finishing what you started," Connor told him. "I'll admit, it came as a bit of a surprise, but then, the ones who come close to succeeding always do." He smiled sadly and said, "I know it came as a shock to Tom and Duncan when I tried."
"Connor-"
"Of course," he continued, settling on the arm of the sofa, "I hadn't tried to fling myself into a pit of monsters a few weeks before, either. I just took stupid dares while I was drunk." A slightly sardonic smile was on his lips as he said, "I don't look like the kind of person who'd try cycling the wrong way around on a London roundabout during rush hour, do I? I got arrested that time."
It all took Stephen so much by surprise that he wasn't even thinking about the knives and guns and whether he should try an anomaly when the next one opened. "You tried to kill yourself?"
"I did," Connor replied evenly. "I was bullied through primary and high school, finished early to get away from them all and then was bullied at uni because no one likes some stupidly brilliant kid to show them up in class. The professors hated me, the students hated me, my dad thought I was stupid for even bothering because I was his hope to continue the garage dynasty back home. I had no one and nothing except schoolwork." He fixed Stephen with an understanding look. "But work's not enough in the end, is it?"
This wasn't Abby's desperate need to see him okay or Nick's violent anger, transmuted into bafflement. It wasn't Jenny's snappish uncaring because she seemed to have never had a day of trouble in her life until then and it wasn't Lester's inability to keep his wit to himself.
And maybe it was just that. That Connor seemed willing to hear why, seemed like he wanted to really understand what hurt so bloody much that made Stephen start to speak.
"I know you've cracked everyone's files at the ARC," he said, looking at Connor. "What's in mine?"
Connor moved from the sofa arm to the proper seat, and said, "You mean, do I know about your psychologist mother's need to trot out her theories about how to get a child prodigy out of any offspring?"
"That's not in the file," Stephen said, obliquely asking.
"I was a bit of a child prodigy," Connor said. "So, nothing really hit until I noticed your mum's name, Alicia Norton, which was something I heard a lot from the child psychologists what came out to try to see how my brain worked different from other kids."
So, he did know. "Yes, mother dearest decided I was the perfect test subject, wanting to see whether the child of two oh-so-brilliant scientists could turn out brilliant, if only helped just right." The bitter laughter welled up. "I was a performing dog to them, one they didn't even need to see, because all they needed to do was send me off with my nanny, then a governess, then tutors. All hand-picked to give me the precise sort of upbringing they thought I needed."
"So, really, she decided to voluntarily not factor in isolation, then?" Connor asked.
He shook his head. "Oh, no. I saw plenty of other youngsters. Of the right sort, you see," he said, snorting. "Don't forget, Geoffrey Hart's descending from a lord and all. We can't be seen mixing with the wrong sort."
"Ah," Connor nodded in understanding. "Yeah. The nice girl from the wrong part of town that you actually like has to get thrown over because she's not good enough for Mum or Dad, because they've got someone with more money or better parents in mind."
That was a surprise. "You're hardly from those circles," Stephen protested.
"Oh, I'm not, but lower class people social climb just as much. Instead of titles, it's making sure the girl's father owns a shop instead of being a day labourer, or maybe has rich family in London. Sometimes, it's just that you need to be sure to marry someone from around there instead of one of those new interlopers from the evil," Connor wiggled his fingers parodically, "City."
The pause in conversation, Connor's interjection had let the need to let off steam at someone build up again. This was what those idiot doctors with their degrees and bloodless understanding of the human psyche would never get. It was the things that Nick couldn't get because he'd never been at the wrong end of his own family. "Anyhow, those afternoons where I was supposed to play polo and learn skeet shooting, go on fox hunts, those were about the only times I didn't feel like I was living in a wealthy bubble."
"You wound up at Harvard," Connor prompted. "I thought it was a little odd."
Stephen laughed. "I convinced my parents that it would be broadening for me to go to a school somewhere else in the world, and Harvard may not be Oxford, but it was enough to make them agree to let me go." He leaned back, smiling now. Remembering those first heady days when he'd realised that no one bloody cared who he was, all they cared about were whether he was good in school, or any fun. "I remember the first time Ken took me hunting. Proper hunting. Putting on those awful orange hats and jackets, hiding behind bushes and reading animal tracks, it was brilliant." He closed his eyes on the grief. "It was my own stupidity that got him killed. I was so convinced of my own brilliance that . . . he pushed me out of the way of the bear. It ripped him apart because I was so stupid."
"You made a mistake, Stephen," Connor said softly. "We all make mistakes."
"His family didn't think it was a mistake," Stephen said bitterly. "That was how my parents found out I was running around with people beneath my station," his voice by the end of the sentence was sarcastically biting.
"They were grieving, Stephen," Connor was firm. "I know it's hard, but people who are grieving aren't always the most rational."
He shook his head. "I had to leave, I still had my grandfather's money, and I just . . . went to another university. Downgraded to one that would be less expensive. I had to when my parents found out and cut me off from the family money. They still had my sister, after all, to carry on the proud family tradition of excellence." More anger that he'd shunted to the side.
"It still hurt," Connor said. "Didn't it? I know it hurt when Dad told me never to come home again. It didn't even matter that I'd sworn I never would, didn't want to take over the shop, didn't want any of it really, but that he could cut me out like that, without seeming to care at all . . ."
Stephen found himself laughing. "You know, if anyone had ever told me you'd be the one person I had the most in common with before today, I'd have laughed at them."
"I'll have you know that I'm a real superhero at Halo," Connor said. "Top scorer, lowest number of betrayals and suicides on the boards, thank you very much." His grin was enough to set Stephen off laughing again.
He settled back, feeling something he hadn't felt for a very long time. "I just sort of shut down then," he admitted. "I stopped caring about anything but things that would help me in working in the field. I had a talent for shooting and I was able to work with the NRA and get a lot of free shooting lessons on the side."
"So, that's where you learnt to shoot a machine gun?" Connor asked, wide-eyed and curious.
"No," he said. "That was from a South American guerilla I was stuck with in the middle of the Amazon for a few weeks. We'd both got lost, and he had ammunition to spare, and we agreed that I wasn't going to be any sort of threat to him, so he taught me to use his." He sighed. "They called me the crazy Englishman because I just did anything without giving a damn how dangerous it was."
Connor nodded. "That part of you that realises how little you really care right now about whether or not you'll make your next birthday, because the rush of having not died feels good enough to keep you from feeling awful."
"Riding the wrong way around the roundabout?"
"I hacked the security on the Crown Jewels and left a bobble-head of the queen in one of the cases," Connor admitted. "Took me six months of planning, and visiting practically every day to do it."
Stephen choked.
"I got arrested, obviously," Connor went on, "Gave Tom and Duncan a right turn when the police showed up at their flat over that."
"I can imagine," Stephen said faintly.
Connor shrugged. "When they realised it was a stupid stunt they let me do my time by amping up the security on the servers there."
That was just . . . "You are completely mad, you know?" Stephen said. "That's got nothing on going swimming with a boa constrictor."
"I beg to differ," Connor said. "I wasn't going to die."
"Oh, you absolutely could have," argued Stephen. Then he couldn't keep from laughing. "A bobble head of the queen?"
"It seemed appropriate." Connor broke the moment by saying, "So, how did you get to the point where I'm having to steal all your silverware and utensils?"
"She took everything away from me, you know?" Stephen said. "When we first . . . the first time we slept together we both agreed it was a mistake, hormones or what-have-you and I thought that was it. But she kept coming back, and I convinced myself that she would leave Nick if I just waited long enough."
"And then she vanished," Connor said. "You must have been gutted."
He nodded. "I was. She's an incredible . . . the person I thought she was, was an incredible woman. Passionate, intelligent-"
"She's still those things, she just doesn't seem to have any . . . erm . . ."
Stephen snorted. "You can say it, she's run completely mad. I just can't believe I didn't see it. We were talking, and she never wanted me to help her convince the rest of you she was right, just wanted me to run around behind everyone's backs. It was stupid and just . . . mad." Just as he started to delve into self-recrimination, Connor's voice popped up beside him.
"Would you like a cup of tea?"
His colleague was wearing one of Stephen's old brown leather jackets, and a hat his mother had once insisted he wear because she thought it was stylish. Why he'd never got rid of it he didn't know, but the mischievous look on Connor's face made him smile, even as he tried to figure out what Connor was doing. "What?"
Connor blinked innocently at him. "Hatter? The Mad Hatter from the American special they did a few weeks ago redoing Alice in Wonderland?" He pouted as Stephen stared blankly. "Abby thinks Hatter's hot, so I figured I'd try out the look, but she says I don't have the right attitude, whatever that means."
"So, you're going to steal my hat?"
"You're not wearing it," Connor shot back.
He'd been distracted again. "You're good at this. You should forget the dinosaurs and open up shop as a therapist."
Connor made a face. "You're my mate and you've got too much going for you, including all the girls who think you're just," he feigned a swoon and high-pitched tone of voice, "Sooooo gorgeous!"
He'd heard them. He didn't see what made him so much more attractive than, say, Nick or any of the other professors or assistants, but he'd heard them. "That's not really something worth living for."
"You could have had Abby until this whole mess happened," Connor said frankly. "And I wouldn't have blamed her either, for all that I'm mad for her. I can be a pretty gormless prat when I'm not thinking about it." Then he sighed. "So, I guess we're at the crux, aren't we?"
"What do you mean?" he asked. He hadn't enjoyed himself in this way since that first year of university in America. Before he got Ken killed, when he was just another student.
Connor looked around. "I've been here for hours. I knew you'd sign yourself out. I did it myself. Duncan and Tom practically moved into my flat with me for the next several years and never let me go anywhere alone." He stood abruptly and walked around. "Look at this Stephen. No pictures, not of you, of Nick, of anyone. No paintings or posters on the walls. You've got nothing here but the bare necessities. I've never heard you say a word about your football team, rugby team, cricket team, nothing. All you are is your work, Stephen. It's like you're halfway to saying goodbye already."
Stephen looked around. It was true things were a little sparse, but he'd never needed any of that clutter.
"You don't have books or a television either." Connor said. "I've hacked your internet, Stephen. You don't do anything but check your email and read professional journals and the occasional newspaper."
The utter gall. "How dare you! You have no right to invade my privacy-"
"I have every right if I can use that to keep you from killing yourself," Connor snapped back. "I spent years with none for myself because Tom and Duncan were afraid for me. They were right, and I'll do the same to you if I have to. You have as much pride as I do, Stephen, and I won't let you die for pride." He was breathing hard, his eyes filled with tears. "More than that, I won't lose you just because Helen's such a jealous bitch she kept you from being anything but your work."
He had nothing to say to that.
It was the start of some of the most gruelling, aggravating, exhausting, high-pressure, difficult and amazing months of his life. Because Connor did practically move into Stephen's flat, leaving Abby baffled. He took the emotional gut-punches Nick was dealing out over the whole affair for Stephen, but never kept Stephen from properly earned criticism. And on the nights when things still felt too much to deal with, he'd find Connor there with a cup of tea, forcing him to watch all the films Connor felt were essential to a well-rounded childhood or delighted beating him at the video games which only bore a passing resemblance to real life, and required a functional logic all their own to navigate.
Connor was there when he stepped in front of the rampaging pristichampus and kept him from dying stupidly, took the hits from the chameleon monster for him, saying as he sat stricken and angry at his hospital bedside, "If you're so upset about my possibly dying, Stephen, what makes you think I'm not going to feel that way about you?" He'd been feeling like he had nothing left at all but trekking into the ARC and back to his empty flat for so long, that the moment shook him. Because when he realised how much he'd miss Connor if he weren't there, he also realised that if he died, there'd be no Connor.
When Nick died and he felt like he'd lost everything all over again, Connor was the one person who just understood what had been lost and didn't try to make him feel better. Maybe because for the first time he was supporting Connor as much as Connor was supporting him.
Most of a year later, he had something that had been missing in his life for a very long time. Becker, Connor and Danny, friends that he could talk to about things other than work, Sarah constantly moaning about how just once she'd like to have a date at his flat that didn't have Connor and his diictodons trying to be stealthy in the background, and just a life that he'd never known existed.
He owed all that to Connor.
So when Connor vanished along with Abby and Danny, chasing after Helen, it was all he could do not to chase after them into an anomaly.
A year later, he dangled from the ceiling, telling Connor to drop the stupid anomaly machine and hang on instead of trying to send the spinosaurus back. When the thing had been swallowed up finally, he was kept from his ranting by Connor, cheeky as ever, asking, "So, where do you think I can get a cappucino?"
"I should just drop you."
"I saw Abby kickbox a raptor into submission back there. You want to test my girlfriend's temper?"
"I taped all the Who episodes you missed for you."
"Really?"
"I don't know what people see in Eleven, really I don't."
Connor hooted with laughter, and all was right with the world.
Back to Primeval archive page
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: I own nothing that anyone recognises, and I'm making no money off it, either.
Rating: PG-13? I guess? Maybe R but I don't think this is explicit enough for that.
Summary: Stephen's got troubles of his own. No one could have known, except the one person who might understand.
AN: This is because I like to create an excuse for some of Stephen's behaviour that doesn't involve him just being a jerk. Or possibly a berk. Not slash, because I didn't feel like it this time. *Muttering about prehistoric carnivorous bunnies*. This is, by the way, set after Stephen somehow miraculously survives the end of S2. I'd clarify how he's saved, but it's enough not the point that I'm trusting you all to imagine your own dei ex machinae. Or however you would pluralise that, I never took Latin.
**************************************
They didn't understand, no one did. They were all staring at him like he was wrong somehow, more than they had been before. Nick, who was never that subtle and tended to take the bull in a china shop approach to interpersonal relationships, had tried, but he was so angry and disgusted with him, and rightfully so, that the doctors and nurses had all thrown Nick out. Abby was better, but she was so confused, so totally without understanding, he'd just lied to her, pretending it was all a mistake, and she'd accepted it with nary a qualm.
He'd arranged to get himself out of the hospital, signed himself out against the advice of everyone, knowing that no one would care enough to make him stay, and headed straight home. The stillness and silence of his flat was soothing, and he closed his eyes a moment to absorb the peace.
Then the memories crept in and he made his way to the kitchen. He'd been foolish to try where and when he'd tried. Killing himself in the middle of the ARC? He might as well have put a big banner over his head saying, "Help me!" He didn't bloody want help, he wanted it all to stop hurting. He wanted to stop feeling like a fake, like someone who wasn't even real. And he did. He was always a title, a joke, an adjunct, a something-that-wasn't-him.
Sometimes he hated living in this country. If he'd been in America or Canada or any number of other places he could have got himself a gun, quickly, easily. But he wasn't in one of those places and anything he might have had access to was at the ARC.
The kitchen. He could find knives there, couldn't he? They'd take longer, but work as well in the end.
But there weren't any. There wasn't a single damned sharp edge to be found there.
"Looking for something, Stephen?" asked a voice from behind him.
In spite of himself, he spun around, looking for something to use in self-defence, It was habit, he told himself as he straightened. Connor was standing in his flat, looking . . . sympathetic? "What are you doing here, Connor?" he asked, bracing himself to put on the brave hunter front.
"Keeping you from finishing what you started," Connor told him. "I'll admit, it came as a bit of a surprise, but then, the ones who come close to succeeding always do." He smiled sadly and said, "I know it came as a shock to Tom and Duncan when I tried."
"Connor-"
"Of course," he continued, settling on the arm of the sofa, "I hadn't tried to fling myself into a pit of monsters a few weeks before, either. I just took stupid dares while I was drunk." A slightly sardonic smile was on his lips as he said, "I don't look like the kind of person who'd try cycling the wrong way around on a London roundabout during rush hour, do I? I got arrested that time."
It all took Stephen so much by surprise that he wasn't even thinking about the knives and guns and whether he should try an anomaly when the next one opened. "You tried to kill yourself?"
"I did," Connor replied evenly. "I was bullied through primary and high school, finished early to get away from them all and then was bullied at uni because no one likes some stupidly brilliant kid to show them up in class. The professors hated me, the students hated me, my dad thought I was stupid for even bothering because I was his hope to continue the garage dynasty back home. I had no one and nothing except schoolwork." He fixed Stephen with an understanding look. "But work's not enough in the end, is it?"
This wasn't Abby's desperate need to see him okay or Nick's violent anger, transmuted into bafflement. It wasn't Jenny's snappish uncaring because she seemed to have never had a day of trouble in her life until then and it wasn't Lester's inability to keep his wit to himself.
And maybe it was just that. That Connor seemed willing to hear why, seemed like he wanted to really understand what hurt so bloody much that made Stephen start to speak.
"I know you've cracked everyone's files at the ARC," he said, looking at Connor. "What's in mine?"
Connor moved from the sofa arm to the proper seat, and said, "You mean, do I know about your psychologist mother's need to trot out her theories about how to get a child prodigy out of any offspring?"
"That's not in the file," Stephen said, obliquely asking.
"I was a bit of a child prodigy," Connor said. "So, nothing really hit until I noticed your mum's name, Alicia Norton, which was something I heard a lot from the child psychologists what came out to try to see how my brain worked different from other kids."
So, he did know. "Yes, mother dearest decided I was the perfect test subject, wanting to see whether the child of two oh-so-brilliant scientists could turn out brilliant, if only helped just right." The bitter laughter welled up. "I was a performing dog to them, one they didn't even need to see, because all they needed to do was send me off with my nanny, then a governess, then tutors. All hand-picked to give me the precise sort of upbringing they thought I needed."
"So, really, she decided to voluntarily not factor in isolation, then?" Connor asked.
He shook his head. "Oh, no. I saw plenty of other youngsters. Of the right sort, you see," he said, snorting. "Don't forget, Geoffrey Hart's descending from a lord and all. We can't be seen mixing with the wrong sort."
"Ah," Connor nodded in understanding. "Yeah. The nice girl from the wrong part of town that you actually like has to get thrown over because she's not good enough for Mum or Dad, because they've got someone with more money or better parents in mind."
That was a surprise. "You're hardly from those circles," Stephen protested.
"Oh, I'm not, but lower class people social climb just as much. Instead of titles, it's making sure the girl's father owns a shop instead of being a day labourer, or maybe has rich family in London. Sometimes, it's just that you need to be sure to marry someone from around there instead of one of those new interlopers from the evil," Connor wiggled his fingers parodically, "City."
The pause in conversation, Connor's interjection had let the need to let off steam at someone build up again. This was what those idiot doctors with their degrees and bloodless understanding of the human psyche would never get. It was the things that Nick couldn't get because he'd never been at the wrong end of his own family. "Anyhow, those afternoons where I was supposed to play polo and learn skeet shooting, go on fox hunts, those were about the only times I didn't feel like I was living in a wealthy bubble."
"You wound up at Harvard," Connor prompted. "I thought it was a little odd."
Stephen laughed. "I convinced my parents that it would be broadening for me to go to a school somewhere else in the world, and Harvard may not be Oxford, but it was enough to make them agree to let me go." He leaned back, smiling now. Remembering those first heady days when he'd realised that no one bloody cared who he was, all they cared about were whether he was good in school, or any fun. "I remember the first time Ken took me hunting. Proper hunting. Putting on those awful orange hats and jackets, hiding behind bushes and reading animal tracks, it was brilliant." He closed his eyes on the grief. "It was my own stupidity that got him killed. I was so convinced of my own brilliance that . . . he pushed me out of the way of the bear. It ripped him apart because I was so stupid."
"You made a mistake, Stephen," Connor said softly. "We all make mistakes."
"His family didn't think it was a mistake," Stephen said bitterly. "That was how my parents found out I was running around with people beneath my station," his voice by the end of the sentence was sarcastically biting.
"They were grieving, Stephen," Connor was firm. "I know it's hard, but people who are grieving aren't always the most rational."
He shook his head. "I had to leave, I still had my grandfather's money, and I just . . . went to another university. Downgraded to one that would be less expensive. I had to when my parents found out and cut me off from the family money. They still had my sister, after all, to carry on the proud family tradition of excellence." More anger that he'd shunted to the side.
"It still hurt," Connor said. "Didn't it? I know it hurt when Dad told me never to come home again. It didn't even matter that I'd sworn I never would, didn't want to take over the shop, didn't want any of it really, but that he could cut me out like that, without seeming to care at all . . ."
Stephen found himself laughing. "You know, if anyone had ever told me you'd be the one person I had the most in common with before today, I'd have laughed at them."
"I'll have you know that I'm a real superhero at Halo," Connor said. "Top scorer, lowest number of betrayals and suicides on the boards, thank you very much." His grin was enough to set Stephen off laughing again.
He settled back, feeling something he hadn't felt for a very long time. "I just sort of shut down then," he admitted. "I stopped caring about anything but things that would help me in working in the field. I had a talent for shooting and I was able to work with the NRA and get a lot of free shooting lessons on the side."
"So, that's where you learnt to shoot a machine gun?" Connor asked, wide-eyed and curious.
"No," he said. "That was from a South American guerilla I was stuck with in the middle of the Amazon for a few weeks. We'd both got lost, and he had ammunition to spare, and we agreed that I wasn't going to be any sort of threat to him, so he taught me to use his." He sighed. "They called me the crazy Englishman because I just did anything without giving a damn how dangerous it was."
Connor nodded. "That part of you that realises how little you really care right now about whether or not you'll make your next birthday, because the rush of having not died feels good enough to keep you from feeling awful."
"Riding the wrong way around the roundabout?"
"I hacked the security on the Crown Jewels and left a bobble-head of the queen in one of the cases," Connor admitted. "Took me six months of planning, and visiting practically every day to do it."
Stephen choked.
"I got arrested, obviously," Connor went on, "Gave Tom and Duncan a right turn when the police showed up at their flat over that."
"I can imagine," Stephen said faintly.
Connor shrugged. "When they realised it was a stupid stunt they let me do my time by amping up the security on the servers there."
That was just . . . "You are completely mad, you know?" Stephen said. "That's got nothing on going swimming with a boa constrictor."
"I beg to differ," Connor said. "I wasn't going to die."
"Oh, you absolutely could have," argued Stephen. Then he couldn't keep from laughing. "A bobble head of the queen?"
"It seemed appropriate." Connor broke the moment by saying, "So, how did you get to the point where I'm having to steal all your silverware and utensils?"
"She took everything away from me, you know?" Stephen said. "When we first . . . the first time we slept together we both agreed it was a mistake, hormones or what-have-you and I thought that was it. But she kept coming back, and I convinced myself that she would leave Nick if I just waited long enough."
"And then she vanished," Connor said. "You must have been gutted."
He nodded. "I was. She's an incredible . . . the person I thought she was, was an incredible woman. Passionate, intelligent-"
"She's still those things, she just doesn't seem to have any . . . erm . . ."
Stephen snorted. "You can say it, she's run completely mad. I just can't believe I didn't see it. We were talking, and she never wanted me to help her convince the rest of you she was right, just wanted me to run around behind everyone's backs. It was stupid and just . . . mad." Just as he started to delve into self-recrimination, Connor's voice popped up beside him.
"Would you like a cup of tea?"
His colleague was wearing one of Stephen's old brown leather jackets, and a hat his mother had once insisted he wear because she thought it was stylish. Why he'd never got rid of it he didn't know, but the mischievous look on Connor's face made him smile, even as he tried to figure out what Connor was doing. "What?"
Connor blinked innocently at him. "Hatter? The Mad Hatter from the American special they did a few weeks ago redoing Alice in Wonderland?" He pouted as Stephen stared blankly. "Abby thinks Hatter's hot, so I figured I'd try out the look, but she says I don't have the right attitude, whatever that means."
"So, you're going to steal my hat?"
"You're not wearing it," Connor shot back.
He'd been distracted again. "You're good at this. You should forget the dinosaurs and open up shop as a therapist."
Connor made a face. "You're my mate and you've got too much going for you, including all the girls who think you're just," he feigned a swoon and high-pitched tone of voice, "Sooooo gorgeous!"
He'd heard them. He didn't see what made him so much more attractive than, say, Nick or any of the other professors or assistants, but he'd heard them. "That's not really something worth living for."
"You could have had Abby until this whole mess happened," Connor said frankly. "And I wouldn't have blamed her either, for all that I'm mad for her. I can be a pretty gormless prat when I'm not thinking about it." Then he sighed. "So, I guess we're at the crux, aren't we?"
"What do you mean?" he asked. He hadn't enjoyed himself in this way since that first year of university in America. Before he got Ken killed, when he was just another student.
Connor looked around. "I've been here for hours. I knew you'd sign yourself out. I did it myself. Duncan and Tom practically moved into my flat with me for the next several years and never let me go anywhere alone." He stood abruptly and walked around. "Look at this Stephen. No pictures, not of you, of Nick, of anyone. No paintings or posters on the walls. You've got nothing here but the bare necessities. I've never heard you say a word about your football team, rugby team, cricket team, nothing. All you are is your work, Stephen. It's like you're halfway to saying goodbye already."
Stephen looked around. It was true things were a little sparse, but he'd never needed any of that clutter.
"You don't have books or a television either." Connor said. "I've hacked your internet, Stephen. You don't do anything but check your email and read professional journals and the occasional newspaper."
The utter gall. "How dare you! You have no right to invade my privacy-"
"I have every right if I can use that to keep you from killing yourself," Connor snapped back. "I spent years with none for myself because Tom and Duncan were afraid for me. They were right, and I'll do the same to you if I have to. You have as much pride as I do, Stephen, and I won't let you die for pride." He was breathing hard, his eyes filled with tears. "More than that, I won't lose you just because Helen's such a jealous bitch she kept you from being anything but your work."
He had nothing to say to that.
It was the start of some of the most gruelling, aggravating, exhausting, high-pressure, difficult and amazing months of his life. Because Connor did practically move into Stephen's flat, leaving Abby baffled. He took the emotional gut-punches Nick was dealing out over the whole affair for Stephen, but never kept Stephen from properly earned criticism. And on the nights when things still felt too much to deal with, he'd find Connor there with a cup of tea, forcing him to watch all the films Connor felt were essential to a well-rounded childhood or delighted beating him at the video games which only bore a passing resemblance to real life, and required a functional logic all their own to navigate.
Connor was there when he stepped in front of the rampaging pristichampus and kept him from dying stupidly, took the hits from the chameleon monster for him, saying as he sat stricken and angry at his hospital bedside, "If you're so upset about my possibly dying, Stephen, what makes you think I'm not going to feel that way about you?" He'd been feeling like he had nothing left at all but trekking into the ARC and back to his empty flat for so long, that the moment shook him. Because when he realised how much he'd miss Connor if he weren't there, he also realised that if he died, there'd be no Connor.
When Nick died and he felt like he'd lost everything all over again, Connor was the one person who just understood what had been lost and didn't try to make him feel better. Maybe because for the first time he was supporting Connor as much as Connor was supporting him.
Most of a year later, he had something that had been missing in his life for a very long time. Becker, Connor and Danny, friends that he could talk to about things other than work, Sarah constantly moaning about how just once she'd like to have a date at his flat that didn't have Connor and his diictodons trying to be stealthy in the background, and just a life that he'd never known existed.
He owed all that to Connor.
So when Connor vanished along with Abby and Danny, chasing after Helen, it was all he could do not to chase after them into an anomaly.
A year later, he dangled from the ceiling, telling Connor to drop the stupid anomaly machine and hang on instead of trying to send the spinosaurus back. When the thing had been swallowed up finally, he was kept from his ranting by Connor, cheeky as ever, asking, "So, where do you think I can get a cappucino?"
"I should just drop you."
"I saw Abby kickbox a raptor into submission back there. You want to test my girlfriend's temper?"
"I taped all the Who episodes you missed for you."
"Really?"
"I don't know what people see in Eleven, really I don't."
Connor hooted with laughter, and all was right with the world.
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