Fic: And Everything Changes
Title: And Everything Changes
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: The usual maundering on about how I don't own anything that ever appeared on Primeval and I don't think I could make money from it.
Rating: NC-17
Summary: The world changed around behind Connor's back and it sent him off in a new direction.
AN: Right, so this is an excuse for Connor/Stephen smut, plain and simple.
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Everything had just been a blur since he'd taken that shot to the head leading the g-rex away. Becker pulling him into the car, Jenny on the verge of cussing out that Danny Quinn bloke, trying to get the new anomaly locker to work right and then being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the dinosaur's head swinging around, sending him into the anomaly along with his locker. He scrambled away, frantically dashing back through, Danny Quinn helping him back out, hauling the locker with them, and then Connor finally slammed the new device back down, got it running and got the anomaly locked.
"Not bad," said Quinn.
Connor smiled at the man. "Thanks for the help," he said. "Maybe we can talk Lester into something."
"What the hell is that and where did it come from?" demanded a familiar voice.
He turned, frowning, and then felt the entire room spin around him. "Stephen?"
"That doesn't answer my question, Connor," Stephen said.
"What did . . . how did . . . where . . ." Connor wasn't even sure what he should be asking. "You're dead!" he blurted out.
The tracker had a blank look on his face. "Was that some sort of threat?" he asked.
Quinn turned to Connor. "What does that mean?" he asked. "The bloke looks pretty alive to me."
"Leek's little zoo," Connor said, ignoring Quinn a moment. "When the doors couldn't be shut from outside, Cutter said that you went in to do it manually. You were killed by raptors and things."
Abby, Jenny and Stephen exchanged looks, then suddenly the two women seemed to turn away from Stephen, making the man's eyes shutter with something that might have been hurt. "Did you take a shot to the head?" Abby asked, sounding concerned. "Cutter's the one who died in Leek's zoo."
"That's . . ." Connor suddenly had an inkling of what Cutter must have felt coming out to find Claudia Brown gone. "Oh no. The anomaly. The timeline's changed," he said.
The detective turned to Connor. "What's that mean?" he asked.
Connor swallowed. "See, the anomalies go to different times, yeah? Except if you go into the past and change the wrong thing you can wind up changing the present. But you won't know until you come back, and then it's too late."
Their new friend eyed Stephen. "I don't remember him being here," he said slowly. "You're saying he was dead?"
"Died months ago," Connor confirmed. "I saw . . . what was left. Cutter saw him die. There's no chance . . ." he raked his hands through his hair.
"Damn," Quinn said. "I'd best go and check if something's gone wrong in my life." With a look of a sort of grim whimsy, he said, "Maybe Patrick's not missing now either."
Stephen strode forward and yanked Connor around. "What the hell are you talking about?" he demanded.
"Remember when Cutter came out of the anomaly talking about Claudia Brown?" Connor asked. "Or do we have Claudia back now?" He glanced at Jenny.
"Yes, I remember," Stephen grated out. Belatedly Connor remembered that that had been when Helen's infidelity with Stephen had been revealed, marking the beginning of the end for Cutter and Stephen's friendship.
He shook off the memories. "I think the same sort of thing happened here. Because I don't remember Cutter as the one that got killed," Connor told him. "It was you. Cutter only died a couple weeks ago," he said.
The others exchanged looks and then Stephen asked, slowly, "What happened?"
"Helen had her clones invade the ARC," Connor said, feeling the lump in his throat as he suppressed a new wave of grief. "She had a clone of Cutter. He, the clone, shot him."
There was a moment of silence, then Jenny asked, "So, erm, about that . . . thing," she pointed at the anomaly locker. "What is that?"
"My anomaly locking device," Connor said. "This was the first field test," he explained. "Looks like it works, too."
Stephen glanced from the device to the balled-up anomaly. "Nice work," he said, smiling a little.
Connor nodded. "Thanks."
But even as he spoke, Abby said to Stephen in darkly dismissive tones, "Like anyone cares what you think."
That was weird, but Connor decided not to interfere. If this was a brand new timeline there was no telling what Stephen had or hadn't done. No reason to step in it until he had to. But it was still odd to see just how snide Jenny and Abby were to him. Odder still to see the previously friendly man shrink away from interacting with the SFs, when it used to be that he'd forever be joking with them, forming a sort of solidarity with them that came from a mutual respect about guns. He would have seemed sullen were in not for the way Connor kept seeing Stephen looking longingly at Abby, him and Jenny.
Lester threw his hands in the air at the tale and muttered balefully about Cutter and whether madness could be transmitted like a flu and if it had been in remission.
The strangest part of it all had been watching Lester and Stephen be civil, nearly friendly with each other. When the debriefing was over, Connor put off heading back to the flat to catch Stephen alone. "What's going on between you and everyone else?" Connor asked. "They're acting like you're a rat carrying the Black Death."
"It's my fault," Stephen told him a little obliquely. "If I hadn't been such an idiot we would have been split up. Helen and Leek wouldn't have . . ." he trailed off, taking in a shaking breath, tried again. "Nick wouldn't be . . ." There was a crack in the man's voice and he turned away from Connor, clearly reaching for his normal self-possession.
Cutter had been gutted by Stephen's loss. It looked like Stephen was equally gutted by losing Cutter, and Connor put a hand on Stephen's shoulder to comfort him, succeeding in making Stephen jump and whip around to stare at him. "What happened down there, Stephen?" he asked.
The story was mostly the same one as Cutter's, but where Cutter had been the one to propose going in and dying to lock down the doors, Stephen had been the one to do it first here. "I was going to go in when he hit me," Stephen said, sounding empty and lost. "He shoved me away and got in and had the door shut before I could do anything. He wouldn't come out. Told me to look after you and Abby, make sure you didn't get into trouble, and then . . ." Stephen's eyes shut and he turned away, grief in every line of him.
"Cutter was gutted when you died," Connor said. Stephen's head came up and he stared in shock. "I think sometimes he wished he'd died there instead of you, just so that you wouldn't be dead."
"I thought sometimes he might have hated me for what I'd done," Stephen confessed. "And Abby and Jenny just . . . and you too," he told Connor. "I mean, before. I can't be Cutter. I can't step into his place, but somehow I have to be the team leader even though no one trusts me and they all think that I'd let Helen do that to me again."
"I'm sorry the other me was such a berk," Connor told him. He reached out again, laying a hand on Stephen's shoulder, feeling the muscles there so tense it was like he was comforting a statue. "You know," he said, reaching for a topic that might not upset the man, "I hadn't found out. Did you meet Quinn before today? Because we met him at the anomaly in that old house," Connor said.
"With the chameleon creature?" Stephen asked. "No, I wonder why?"
Connor realised he'd stepped in it a bit, referring to Cutter's prediction, but he pushed onward, and it actually seemed to help Stephen to hear about what his friend had been doing in the other timeline. They talked for hours, comparing the differences that had come about from the one point of change, wondering if there had been any other changes, and it wasn't until the caretaking staff came in and shot them dark looks that they both left, Connor heading back to the flat he shared with Abby, Stephen heading home to his flat.
When he came in the door, he was startled to see no sign of Sid and Nancy. It gave him a little pang, but clearly this was another difference between the two realities. Abby shot him a slightly annoyed look as he came in. "Where were you?"
"Talking to Stephen," he answered. "I just wanted to know what the differences were between a few things here and the timeline I'm from." In some ways he really wasn't going to complain. That morning both Stephen and Cutter had been dead. Now Stephen wasn't dead and Connor couldn't help but feel a little like that was a win on his personal score card.
"And you couldn't ask me?" Abby wanted to know. "Why would you want to talk to him anyhow? He got Cutter killed."
He loved Abby, really he did, but she took some things so personally sometimes. "He didn't get Cutter killed. He messed up, yeah, but Abby, do you really think you'd have felt better if he'd died instead of Cutter?"
"I . . ." she stopped, a frown on her face. Maybe thinking about what Connor'd just said. She shot Connor a speculative look, but the next day seemed to ease up on Stephen.
Things settled into a new sort of status quo after that. New, because without Cutter Sarah hadn't been brought in, without Cutter there was no model predicting the anomaly in the house and Danny showing up and breaking in was an even more complete surprise than it would have been otherwise.
The most interesting thing to watch that day was the way Danny and Stephen had danced around each other, talking guns, shooting trophies and some hyper-masculine posturing that made Abby and Jenny both roll their eyes in disgust. But it was Stephen who backed Danny's wish to join up to find his brother, and Stephen who seemed to sag in relief as Lester put Danny in charge.
Connor sighed wistfully as Abby left, wondering when he'd get his stupid heart to give up on her. "Why are your boxer shorts all over this room?" Stephen asked, eyeing Connor.
"I . . . Abby's brother's in town and . . . I can't go back while he's there," Connor found himself spilling the truth to Stephen, who'd always been his competent, kindly, sometimes helpful older brother who'd take the mick and still help in the end.
He found himself the object of a fixed blue stare. "Come on," Stephen said. "You can sleep on my couch for a while. It has to be better than at the ARC."
And because the reason he'd been staying at the ARC was because he didn't have any mates anymore, just people he didn't know well enough and Abby, Connor gratefully collected his things and headed off to Stephen's flat.
Staying with Abby had taught him a few things about being a good roommate, some of them from what Abby'd hit him for doing, some of them from things he'd've hit Abby for doing if he hadn't known he'd wake up beaten and dangling from the rafters if he tried. "Thanks for this," he said to Stephen as he put his bag down. "I-" but he never finished as, squeaking and tumbling from the bathroom, came, "Sid! Nancy!" He was so happy to see his pets it didn't even register that they weren't Sid and Nancy anymore until he was already on the sofa, two squirming diictodons on top of him and Stephen next to him looking amused.
"I take it these two are familiar?" he asked, a small smile on his lips.
Sid was already trying to eat Connor's shirt while Nancy wriggled her way off Connor's lap to Stephen. "When they got left behind I took them in. I sort of thought they must've all made it back through the hospital anomaly when they weren't at Abby's."
Stephen was handily playing with Nancy, rolling her around, petting her and making her squeak happily. "I missed having a dog," he admitted. "Being on the road so much, first with Helen, then with Nick, I couldn't keep a pet in good conscience. When these got left behind I exercised what little authority I had to bring them home. I mean, now that I'm home most evenings and all."
Unsaid, but lying between them like a pink elephant in the room, was that Stephen had been lonely, isolated from everyone because of his guilt, both deserved and undeserved, for what had happened to Cutter. He looked strangely vulnerable to Connor. "So, what'd you name them?" he asked. "Because when Abby and I named them, I mean, back in my old timeline, it was sort of a tribute to Cutter, who'd called us Sid and Nancy once when he was making fun of how we dress."
A blush crept up Stephen's face as he mumbled, "Mario and Peach."
"Really?" Connor asked, disbelieving. Then he spotted, half-hidden in a storage cabinet, an old game console, from back in the days of cartridges and super-simple controllers.
"I was always pants at Duck Hunt," he said to Stephen. "You ever played Mario Galaxy?" he asked, passing Mario the Diictodon to his owner and pulling out his Xbox and game collection. Stephen's face lit up.
******************************************
Living with Stephen was different from what Connor had expected. For one, Stephen wasn't nearly the neatnik his apartment suggested. He just kept it simple because it made cleaning faster. This Stephen was also so starved for companionship that he was friendly with Connor and familiar in ways he never had been before the mess in Leek's zoo. Connor had stopped even thinking about moving back in with Abby, when one evening took him in a direction he'd never expected.
Not that he'd ever regret it either.
It was after the mess with Christine Johnson, getting her booted out of the ARC, terror birds and terror and nearly dying. They made it home, fed Mario and Peach and were sitting side by side in front of the telly which was playing highlights from a football match. Connor wasn't sure which teams, because he wasn't paying attention, and it was pretty much on just for the white noise.
"Connor?" Stephen's voice sounded hesitant.
He turned to look and found himself caught up somehow in blue eyes that looked a little stricken and a little tearful. "Yeah?"
"Jesus, don't ever do that again," Stephen said. "Don't . . . I don't know what I'd do if I lost you," he said, and quite suddenly they were kissing.
It was nice. He hadn't expected it would have been that nice. After all, he'd never thought about it, and most recently he'd thought mostly about what kissing Abby would be like. But Stephen was strong and determined and it was a little how Connor imagined kissing Abby would be like, because he'd never gone out with a girl who was strong like that.
That was the last he thought of Abby.
When they finally broke apart, he asked, "Why? I mean, it's not . . . well, actually, I'd never thought about it, but I wouldn't have thought you'd . . ." He was going to say something really stupid, especially since he didn't know what he was going to say, so he just shut up.
"Because I wanted to," Stephen told him frankly. "You're not exactly hard on the eyes, Connor."
"Oh," Connor said, his mind whirling and absently refiling Stephen as definitely-not-his-older-brother. "I haven't, you know, I mean with someone that's not a girl," he confusedly explained. As Stephen started to pull away, Connor felt a sense of loss hit him. Like if he let Stephen pull back he'd lose something important. "Not that I don't want to," the words bumbled their way out of his mouth. "I just don't know what to expect exactly."
How had he never noticed the way Stephen's whole face lit up when he smiled? "I can go slowly," assured the tracker. Then he kissed Connor again.
It was like kissing a girl, except that Stephen was just really really good at it. Connor didn't know, didn't really care, just found himself almost climbing into Stephen's lap in his eagerness to get closer. And when Stephen, who seemed to know exactly how to drive Connor mad with just his mouth on Connor's and strong hands pressing them together, sliding into his trousers to squeeze gently and get Connor to press his hips firmly into Stephen's, nipped gently at Connor's lower lip, Connor couldn't stop himself from retaliating. He pressed his mouth to Stephen's throat, kissing and licking there, feeling Stephen's groan, because they were pressed so tightly together the vibration rattled against his chest.
"Fuck," Stephen said, and half slammed Connor to the sofa. His hands cleverly tugging on Connor's clothes, fingertips slipping over Connor's nipples, that sinful mouth following the paths of skin laid bare . . . as the last of his clothes were pulled off, Connor felt a vestige of sanity return as Stephen sat back a moment, apparently enjoying the view.
That sanity wasn't the sort that would put a stop to things. It was the sort that pointed out that proper sex involved everyone being naked and Stephen wasn't naked yet. Also, he was probably awfully uncomfortable in those trousers, the jeans' zip distended from the swollen cock behind it.
It was Connor's turn to shove Stephen down, grabbing at that always present unbuttoned shirt, briefly giving in to the curiosity of what it was like to slip one of those gun-calloused fingertips into his mouth (it was sort of like watching Stephen's eyes roll back in his head a moment and the tracker's other hand landing on Connor's thigh, perilously close to where Connor's erection was leaking everywhere), flinging that shirt away and tugging the t-shirt off to reveal taut muscle and pebbled nipples that Connor just had to lick.
He dropped to the floor off the couch, grinning as Stephen's eyes seemed to darken when he unzipped the trousers, then snickering a little at the pout that appeared when he did nothing else, moving to get Stephen's boots off instead.
It was a blur of skin and touch, tongue and taste, and they stumbled across the room to Stephen's bed, Connor shaking because it had been so long and it all felt so good. And then they were naked, pressed body to body, and something in Connor's mind pinged a little. "Stephen, I . . . erm . . . oh God," he moaned as he lost his train of thought at the feeling of strong fingers wanking him. He somehow got the presence of mind to drop a hand down and stop Stephen a moment. "Not that this isn't brilliant or anything," he said. "But I really haven't done this with a not-girl and the mechanics aren't really, erm . . . obvious, intuitive, yeah?"
"Then we'll worry about mechanics some other time," Stephen told him. "I just . . ." he kissed Connor. "Abby doesn't know what she's missing," said the handsomest man Connor had ever met. "You're brilliant, you know that?"
And Connor swallowed some tears of his own, because he didn't think anyone had ever said that to him and meant it, and kissed Stephen hard, trying to tell him without his stupid big brain and stupid words getting in the way how he felt.
He was forced to stop kissing then, though, because Stephen had put his hand back down, and it felt incredible, and when Connor looked down he nearly came right then, because Stephen had wrapped a hand around Connor's cock and his own at the same time, and was wanking them both at the same time and it was the sexiest thing he'd ever seen. His hips seemed to have some sort of diplodocus ganglion mini-brain of their own, because they weren't moving with his conscious direction, just bucking frantically into that warm, tight grip that was slicked by their combined pre-ejaculate, feeling Stephen's cock against his own.
It felt amazing, it felt better than anything ever had, and he didn't want it to stop. Not yet. But his orgasm was rushing up on him, was going to hit him like Stephen had used Cutter's car to his the gorgonopsid what felt like an eternity ago. Even as he writhed and thrust, clinging to Stephen and kissing him in the few moments he wasn't panting and speaking in gibberish, Connor desperately tried to stave off coming by running calculations for the anomalies in his head, mentally rewiring the anomaly locker's circuitry and playing World 1-1 of the original Mario Brothers in his head.
"Just let go," Stephen whispered in his ear. "Come for me, Connor."
The low voice in his ear did him in. Clinging to Stephen, who seemed the only solid thing left in the world, Connor came. Riding the high and aware as he did it that Stephen was coming too, Connor finally collapsed, shaking. He felt vaguely gratified that when Stephen slipped a strong arm around him and pulled him close, the other man was trembling as well. "So much for slow," Connor heard himself say.
Stephen chuckled. "It's not my fault you're talented enough to make me forget any resolutions to behave myself."
But now that sense had returned, Connor had to ask and turned around to look at Stephen and blurted out before he lost his nerve, "This is something, though, right? I mean, it's not convenience or a one night stand or-"
A finger was laid on his lips, stopping him from babbling any more. "It's not convenience, it's not for just one night. It is to see if maybe we could be more than just mates," he told Connor firmly. "You need to stop doubting yourself."
There was an odd undertone to Stephen's words, and some intuition Connor hadn't even known he had made him say, "You too, you know. You have as much right as anyone else to be on the team. I wouldn't be here if you were that sort of horrible."
An inquiring squeak at the end of the bed made them both look up to see Mario and Peach, staring at them. "That's one thing I didn't miss about having pets," Stephen muttered. "When they come and stare at you when you're trying to have sex."
"You haven't been traumatised 'til you've had Rex land on your chest while you're wanking," Connor told Stephen. It made the other man laugh, as he'd planned, and they both decided to ignore the diictodons.
Right before he drifted to sleep, a frisson of delightful anticipation made him shiver, the words, "Next time, your arse is mine," following him into sleep.
Return to Primeval Archive
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: The usual maundering on about how I don't own anything that ever appeared on Primeval and I don't think I could make money from it.
Rating: NC-17
Summary: The world changed around behind Connor's back and it sent him off in a new direction.
AN: Right, so this is an excuse for Connor/Stephen smut, plain and simple.
**************************************
Everything had just been a blur since he'd taken that shot to the head leading the g-rex away. Becker pulling him into the car, Jenny on the verge of cussing out that Danny Quinn bloke, trying to get the new anomaly locker to work right and then being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the dinosaur's head swinging around, sending him into the anomaly along with his locker. He scrambled away, frantically dashing back through, Danny Quinn helping him back out, hauling the locker with them, and then Connor finally slammed the new device back down, got it running and got the anomaly locked.
"Not bad," said Quinn.
Connor smiled at the man. "Thanks for the help," he said. "Maybe we can talk Lester into something."
"What the hell is that and where did it come from?" demanded a familiar voice.
He turned, frowning, and then felt the entire room spin around him. "Stephen?"
"That doesn't answer my question, Connor," Stephen said.
"What did . . . how did . . . where . . ." Connor wasn't even sure what he should be asking. "You're dead!" he blurted out.
The tracker had a blank look on his face. "Was that some sort of threat?" he asked.
Quinn turned to Connor. "What does that mean?" he asked. "The bloke looks pretty alive to me."
"Leek's little zoo," Connor said, ignoring Quinn a moment. "When the doors couldn't be shut from outside, Cutter said that you went in to do it manually. You were killed by raptors and things."
Abby, Jenny and Stephen exchanged looks, then suddenly the two women seemed to turn away from Stephen, making the man's eyes shutter with something that might have been hurt. "Did you take a shot to the head?" Abby asked, sounding concerned. "Cutter's the one who died in Leek's zoo."
"That's . . ." Connor suddenly had an inkling of what Cutter must have felt coming out to find Claudia Brown gone. "Oh no. The anomaly. The timeline's changed," he said.
The detective turned to Connor. "What's that mean?" he asked.
Connor swallowed. "See, the anomalies go to different times, yeah? Except if you go into the past and change the wrong thing you can wind up changing the present. But you won't know until you come back, and then it's too late."
Their new friend eyed Stephen. "I don't remember him being here," he said slowly. "You're saying he was dead?"
"Died months ago," Connor confirmed. "I saw . . . what was left. Cutter saw him die. There's no chance . . ." he raked his hands through his hair.
"Damn," Quinn said. "I'd best go and check if something's gone wrong in my life." With a look of a sort of grim whimsy, he said, "Maybe Patrick's not missing now either."
Stephen strode forward and yanked Connor around. "What the hell are you talking about?" he demanded.
"Remember when Cutter came out of the anomaly talking about Claudia Brown?" Connor asked. "Or do we have Claudia back now?" He glanced at Jenny.
"Yes, I remember," Stephen grated out. Belatedly Connor remembered that that had been when Helen's infidelity with Stephen had been revealed, marking the beginning of the end for Cutter and Stephen's friendship.
He shook off the memories. "I think the same sort of thing happened here. Because I don't remember Cutter as the one that got killed," Connor told him. "It was you. Cutter only died a couple weeks ago," he said.
The others exchanged looks and then Stephen asked, slowly, "What happened?"
"Helen had her clones invade the ARC," Connor said, feeling the lump in his throat as he suppressed a new wave of grief. "She had a clone of Cutter. He, the clone, shot him."
There was a moment of silence, then Jenny asked, "So, erm, about that . . . thing," she pointed at the anomaly locker. "What is that?"
"My anomaly locking device," Connor said. "This was the first field test," he explained. "Looks like it works, too."
Stephen glanced from the device to the balled-up anomaly. "Nice work," he said, smiling a little.
Connor nodded. "Thanks."
But even as he spoke, Abby said to Stephen in darkly dismissive tones, "Like anyone cares what you think."
That was weird, but Connor decided not to interfere. If this was a brand new timeline there was no telling what Stephen had or hadn't done. No reason to step in it until he had to. But it was still odd to see just how snide Jenny and Abby were to him. Odder still to see the previously friendly man shrink away from interacting with the SFs, when it used to be that he'd forever be joking with them, forming a sort of solidarity with them that came from a mutual respect about guns. He would have seemed sullen were in not for the way Connor kept seeing Stephen looking longingly at Abby, him and Jenny.
Lester threw his hands in the air at the tale and muttered balefully about Cutter and whether madness could be transmitted like a flu and if it had been in remission.
The strangest part of it all had been watching Lester and Stephen be civil, nearly friendly with each other. When the debriefing was over, Connor put off heading back to the flat to catch Stephen alone. "What's going on between you and everyone else?" Connor asked. "They're acting like you're a rat carrying the Black Death."
"It's my fault," Stephen told him a little obliquely. "If I hadn't been such an idiot we would have been split up. Helen and Leek wouldn't have . . ." he trailed off, taking in a shaking breath, tried again. "Nick wouldn't be . . ." There was a crack in the man's voice and he turned away from Connor, clearly reaching for his normal self-possession.
Cutter had been gutted by Stephen's loss. It looked like Stephen was equally gutted by losing Cutter, and Connor put a hand on Stephen's shoulder to comfort him, succeeding in making Stephen jump and whip around to stare at him. "What happened down there, Stephen?" he asked.
The story was mostly the same one as Cutter's, but where Cutter had been the one to propose going in and dying to lock down the doors, Stephen had been the one to do it first here. "I was going to go in when he hit me," Stephen said, sounding empty and lost. "He shoved me away and got in and had the door shut before I could do anything. He wouldn't come out. Told me to look after you and Abby, make sure you didn't get into trouble, and then . . ." Stephen's eyes shut and he turned away, grief in every line of him.
"Cutter was gutted when you died," Connor said. Stephen's head came up and he stared in shock. "I think sometimes he wished he'd died there instead of you, just so that you wouldn't be dead."
"I thought sometimes he might have hated me for what I'd done," Stephen confessed. "And Abby and Jenny just . . . and you too," he told Connor. "I mean, before. I can't be Cutter. I can't step into his place, but somehow I have to be the team leader even though no one trusts me and they all think that I'd let Helen do that to me again."
"I'm sorry the other me was such a berk," Connor told him. He reached out again, laying a hand on Stephen's shoulder, feeling the muscles there so tense it was like he was comforting a statue. "You know," he said, reaching for a topic that might not upset the man, "I hadn't found out. Did you meet Quinn before today? Because we met him at the anomaly in that old house," Connor said.
"With the chameleon creature?" Stephen asked. "No, I wonder why?"
Connor realised he'd stepped in it a bit, referring to Cutter's prediction, but he pushed onward, and it actually seemed to help Stephen to hear about what his friend had been doing in the other timeline. They talked for hours, comparing the differences that had come about from the one point of change, wondering if there had been any other changes, and it wasn't until the caretaking staff came in and shot them dark looks that they both left, Connor heading back to the flat he shared with Abby, Stephen heading home to his flat.
When he came in the door, he was startled to see no sign of Sid and Nancy. It gave him a little pang, but clearly this was another difference between the two realities. Abby shot him a slightly annoyed look as he came in. "Where were you?"
"Talking to Stephen," he answered. "I just wanted to know what the differences were between a few things here and the timeline I'm from." In some ways he really wasn't going to complain. That morning both Stephen and Cutter had been dead. Now Stephen wasn't dead and Connor couldn't help but feel a little like that was a win on his personal score card.
"And you couldn't ask me?" Abby wanted to know. "Why would you want to talk to him anyhow? He got Cutter killed."
He loved Abby, really he did, but she took some things so personally sometimes. "He didn't get Cutter killed. He messed up, yeah, but Abby, do you really think you'd have felt better if he'd died instead of Cutter?"
"I . . ." she stopped, a frown on her face. Maybe thinking about what Connor'd just said. She shot Connor a speculative look, but the next day seemed to ease up on Stephen.
Things settled into a new sort of status quo after that. New, because without Cutter Sarah hadn't been brought in, without Cutter there was no model predicting the anomaly in the house and Danny showing up and breaking in was an even more complete surprise than it would have been otherwise.
The most interesting thing to watch that day was the way Danny and Stephen had danced around each other, talking guns, shooting trophies and some hyper-masculine posturing that made Abby and Jenny both roll their eyes in disgust. But it was Stephen who backed Danny's wish to join up to find his brother, and Stephen who seemed to sag in relief as Lester put Danny in charge.
Connor sighed wistfully as Abby left, wondering when he'd get his stupid heart to give up on her. "Why are your boxer shorts all over this room?" Stephen asked, eyeing Connor.
"I . . . Abby's brother's in town and . . . I can't go back while he's there," Connor found himself spilling the truth to Stephen, who'd always been his competent, kindly, sometimes helpful older brother who'd take the mick and still help in the end.
He found himself the object of a fixed blue stare. "Come on," Stephen said. "You can sleep on my couch for a while. It has to be better than at the ARC."
And because the reason he'd been staying at the ARC was because he didn't have any mates anymore, just people he didn't know well enough and Abby, Connor gratefully collected his things and headed off to Stephen's flat.
Staying with Abby had taught him a few things about being a good roommate, some of them from what Abby'd hit him for doing, some of them from things he'd've hit Abby for doing if he hadn't known he'd wake up beaten and dangling from the rafters if he tried. "Thanks for this," he said to Stephen as he put his bag down. "I-" but he never finished as, squeaking and tumbling from the bathroom, came, "Sid! Nancy!" He was so happy to see his pets it didn't even register that they weren't Sid and Nancy anymore until he was already on the sofa, two squirming diictodons on top of him and Stephen next to him looking amused.
"I take it these two are familiar?" he asked, a small smile on his lips.
Sid was already trying to eat Connor's shirt while Nancy wriggled her way off Connor's lap to Stephen. "When they got left behind I took them in. I sort of thought they must've all made it back through the hospital anomaly when they weren't at Abby's."
Stephen was handily playing with Nancy, rolling her around, petting her and making her squeak happily. "I missed having a dog," he admitted. "Being on the road so much, first with Helen, then with Nick, I couldn't keep a pet in good conscience. When these got left behind I exercised what little authority I had to bring them home. I mean, now that I'm home most evenings and all."
Unsaid, but lying between them like a pink elephant in the room, was that Stephen had been lonely, isolated from everyone because of his guilt, both deserved and undeserved, for what had happened to Cutter. He looked strangely vulnerable to Connor. "So, what'd you name them?" he asked. "Because when Abby and I named them, I mean, back in my old timeline, it was sort of a tribute to Cutter, who'd called us Sid and Nancy once when he was making fun of how we dress."
A blush crept up Stephen's face as he mumbled, "Mario and Peach."
"Really?" Connor asked, disbelieving. Then he spotted, half-hidden in a storage cabinet, an old game console, from back in the days of cartridges and super-simple controllers.
"I was always pants at Duck Hunt," he said to Stephen. "You ever played Mario Galaxy?" he asked, passing Mario the Diictodon to his owner and pulling out his Xbox and game collection. Stephen's face lit up.
******************************************
Living with Stephen was different from what Connor had expected. For one, Stephen wasn't nearly the neatnik his apartment suggested. He just kept it simple because it made cleaning faster. This Stephen was also so starved for companionship that he was friendly with Connor and familiar in ways he never had been before the mess in Leek's zoo. Connor had stopped even thinking about moving back in with Abby, when one evening took him in a direction he'd never expected.
Not that he'd ever regret it either.
It was after the mess with Christine Johnson, getting her booted out of the ARC, terror birds and terror and nearly dying. They made it home, fed Mario and Peach and were sitting side by side in front of the telly which was playing highlights from a football match. Connor wasn't sure which teams, because he wasn't paying attention, and it was pretty much on just for the white noise.
"Connor?" Stephen's voice sounded hesitant.
He turned to look and found himself caught up somehow in blue eyes that looked a little stricken and a little tearful. "Yeah?"
"Jesus, don't ever do that again," Stephen said. "Don't . . . I don't know what I'd do if I lost you," he said, and quite suddenly they were kissing.
It was nice. He hadn't expected it would have been that nice. After all, he'd never thought about it, and most recently he'd thought mostly about what kissing Abby would be like. But Stephen was strong and determined and it was a little how Connor imagined kissing Abby would be like, because he'd never gone out with a girl who was strong like that.
That was the last he thought of Abby.
When they finally broke apart, he asked, "Why? I mean, it's not . . . well, actually, I'd never thought about it, but I wouldn't have thought you'd . . ." He was going to say something really stupid, especially since he didn't know what he was going to say, so he just shut up.
"Because I wanted to," Stephen told him frankly. "You're not exactly hard on the eyes, Connor."
"Oh," Connor said, his mind whirling and absently refiling Stephen as definitely-not-his-older-brother. "I haven't, you know, I mean with someone that's not a girl," he confusedly explained. As Stephen started to pull away, Connor felt a sense of loss hit him. Like if he let Stephen pull back he'd lose something important. "Not that I don't want to," the words bumbled their way out of his mouth. "I just don't know what to expect exactly."
How had he never noticed the way Stephen's whole face lit up when he smiled? "I can go slowly," assured the tracker. Then he kissed Connor again.
It was like kissing a girl, except that Stephen was just really really good at it. Connor didn't know, didn't really care, just found himself almost climbing into Stephen's lap in his eagerness to get closer. And when Stephen, who seemed to know exactly how to drive Connor mad with just his mouth on Connor's and strong hands pressing them together, sliding into his trousers to squeeze gently and get Connor to press his hips firmly into Stephen's, nipped gently at Connor's lower lip, Connor couldn't stop himself from retaliating. He pressed his mouth to Stephen's throat, kissing and licking there, feeling Stephen's groan, because they were pressed so tightly together the vibration rattled against his chest.
"Fuck," Stephen said, and half slammed Connor to the sofa. His hands cleverly tugging on Connor's clothes, fingertips slipping over Connor's nipples, that sinful mouth following the paths of skin laid bare . . . as the last of his clothes were pulled off, Connor felt a vestige of sanity return as Stephen sat back a moment, apparently enjoying the view.
That sanity wasn't the sort that would put a stop to things. It was the sort that pointed out that proper sex involved everyone being naked and Stephen wasn't naked yet. Also, he was probably awfully uncomfortable in those trousers, the jeans' zip distended from the swollen cock behind it.
It was Connor's turn to shove Stephen down, grabbing at that always present unbuttoned shirt, briefly giving in to the curiosity of what it was like to slip one of those gun-calloused fingertips into his mouth (it was sort of like watching Stephen's eyes roll back in his head a moment and the tracker's other hand landing on Connor's thigh, perilously close to where Connor's erection was leaking everywhere), flinging that shirt away and tugging the t-shirt off to reveal taut muscle and pebbled nipples that Connor just had to lick.
He dropped to the floor off the couch, grinning as Stephen's eyes seemed to darken when he unzipped the trousers, then snickering a little at the pout that appeared when he did nothing else, moving to get Stephen's boots off instead.
It was a blur of skin and touch, tongue and taste, and they stumbled across the room to Stephen's bed, Connor shaking because it had been so long and it all felt so good. And then they were naked, pressed body to body, and something in Connor's mind pinged a little. "Stephen, I . . . erm . . . oh God," he moaned as he lost his train of thought at the feeling of strong fingers wanking him. He somehow got the presence of mind to drop a hand down and stop Stephen a moment. "Not that this isn't brilliant or anything," he said. "But I really haven't done this with a not-girl and the mechanics aren't really, erm . . . obvious, intuitive, yeah?"
"Then we'll worry about mechanics some other time," Stephen told him. "I just . . ." he kissed Connor. "Abby doesn't know what she's missing," said the handsomest man Connor had ever met. "You're brilliant, you know that?"
And Connor swallowed some tears of his own, because he didn't think anyone had ever said that to him and meant it, and kissed Stephen hard, trying to tell him without his stupid big brain and stupid words getting in the way how he felt.
He was forced to stop kissing then, though, because Stephen had put his hand back down, and it felt incredible, and when Connor looked down he nearly came right then, because Stephen had wrapped a hand around Connor's cock and his own at the same time, and was wanking them both at the same time and it was the sexiest thing he'd ever seen. His hips seemed to have some sort of diplodocus ganglion mini-brain of their own, because they weren't moving with his conscious direction, just bucking frantically into that warm, tight grip that was slicked by their combined pre-ejaculate, feeling Stephen's cock against his own.
It felt amazing, it felt better than anything ever had, and he didn't want it to stop. Not yet. But his orgasm was rushing up on him, was going to hit him like Stephen had used Cutter's car to his the gorgonopsid what felt like an eternity ago. Even as he writhed and thrust, clinging to Stephen and kissing him in the few moments he wasn't panting and speaking in gibberish, Connor desperately tried to stave off coming by running calculations for the anomalies in his head, mentally rewiring the anomaly locker's circuitry and playing World 1-1 of the original Mario Brothers in his head.
"Just let go," Stephen whispered in his ear. "Come for me, Connor."
The low voice in his ear did him in. Clinging to Stephen, who seemed the only solid thing left in the world, Connor came. Riding the high and aware as he did it that Stephen was coming too, Connor finally collapsed, shaking. He felt vaguely gratified that when Stephen slipped a strong arm around him and pulled him close, the other man was trembling as well. "So much for slow," Connor heard himself say.
Stephen chuckled. "It's not my fault you're talented enough to make me forget any resolutions to behave myself."
But now that sense had returned, Connor had to ask and turned around to look at Stephen and blurted out before he lost his nerve, "This is something, though, right? I mean, it's not convenience or a one night stand or-"
A finger was laid on his lips, stopping him from babbling any more. "It's not convenience, it's not for just one night. It is to see if maybe we could be more than just mates," he told Connor firmly. "You need to stop doubting yourself."
There was an odd undertone to Stephen's words, and some intuition Connor hadn't even known he had made him say, "You too, you know. You have as much right as anyone else to be on the team. I wouldn't be here if you were that sort of horrible."
An inquiring squeak at the end of the bed made them both look up to see Mario and Peach, staring at them. "That's one thing I didn't miss about having pets," Stephen muttered. "When they come and stare at you when you're trying to have sex."
"You haven't been traumatised 'til you've had Rex land on your chest while you're wanking," Connor told Stephen. It made the other man laugh, as he'd planned, and they both decided to ignore the diictodons.
Right before he drifted to sleep, a frisson of delightful anticipation made him shiver, the words, "Next time, your arse is mine," following him into sleep.
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