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"New Tracks" by Aelfgyfu
PARTS: 20 plus epilogue
RATING: FRT (fan-rated teen: violence, occasional bad language)
CATEGORIES: Drama, angst, hurt/discomfort, some humour; AU, fix-it
SUMMARY: Noel Miller tries to find his place on Nick Cutter's team; Stephen Hart tries to find his way back onto the team; and Nick has to deal with them, creatures from the past, and his own stubbornness.
SPOILERS: Everything through 2.07 and my own story "Fresh Scars"
WARNINGS: Some tasteless humour, some medical detail
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Many thanks to Brilliant Husband (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dudethemath), kristen_mara, and lukadreaming, all of whom acted as betas and made many helpful suggestions and corrections. All remaining errors, infelicities, and poor judgement are my own.
DISCLAIMER: Primeval and its characters are owned by Impossible Pictures, ITV Productions, M6 Films, Pro 7, and possibly other entities I couldn't easily find on IMDb. No copyright infringement is intended, and indeed the story probably won't make sense unless you've watched. So watch the show, buy the DVDs, etc. I do not profit from fic except insofar as comments make me happy.
Additional notes and links to all posted parts at this story's launch page
previous part (Part 2)
Noel was not entirely surprised to be summoned to James Lester's big glass office. He wasn't pleased, either, but he could keep that to himself well enough.
Lester wasted little time on pleasantries, although he did motion Noel to sit. He got quickly to the point, or very nearly the point: "So, how are you settling into the team?"
"Fine, thank you, sir," Noel said with what he hoped came across as sincerity. He hadn't had much of a chance to get the measure of the man yet.
Lester regarded him with obvious disbelief. "Well, that was fast!"
"I'm still settling in, as you say, sir, but I think things are going well. I've read all the incident reports, and...."
Lester held up a hand to cut him off. "Yes, yes. I'm sure you're very diligent. That's what it says in your service records, after all." He leaned forward a little, as if to impart a confidence. "But how are you adjusting to... their quirks? Their personalities?"
Noel hadn't expected quite such a direct approach, although perhaps he ought to have done. He tried to buy a little time. "We all have our—"
Lester slammed a hand onto the desk. "If you tell me that great men all have their eccentricities, I'll transfer you today!" Lester snapped. His veins were standing out a little on his neck.
Noel blinked but tried to keep his face neutral, not at all sure what he'd said wrong.
Lester's shoulders dropped. "Never mind. That's just a reply I never want to hear again."
Noel filed it for the future. He didn't think his planned reply had been close to what Lester thought he was going to say, but obviously there was some history he didn't know. Wasn't that the case with the whole team?
"Let's try again. How are you getting on with Cutter?"
Noel thought for a moment. "Well enough, as far as I know, sir." Cutter's tendency to ignore or forget about him when they weren't one-on-one didn't merit mention here. He’d noticed Cutter doing the same to Connor, and occasionally Abby too.
"He doesn't give you any nonsense about not being Stephen Hart?"
"No, sir." Not as such.
"And he seems to be... holding it together all right?"
What was he supposed to say? Did Lester think he was some kind of spy? Some of the soldiers joked about when Cutter was going to lose it; was Lester honestly worried about that? "All my interactions with Professor Cutter have been professional, sir, if that's what you mean."
Lester nodded. "How is his training coming along?"
Noel raised his eyebrows. "We've only had two sessions of hand-to-hand and one on the firing range. I'm not yet prepared to evaluate his combat skills. I can tell you, however, that Professor Cutter is a decent shot, especially for someone who doesn't like guns, sir."
Lester leaned his chin against his hands, his elbows on his desk. "That's good to hear. And Temple?"
Noel almost smiled. "He'll do much better once he gets used to the recoil on real guns, sir."
"Ah, his 'I'm a crack shot at video games!' excuse." Lester shook his head. "We should have had him training much sooner. Of course, I never thought we'd need him shooting. I'd rather we didn't, frankly." Lester's eyes drifted off Noel's face briefly, to a point somewhere over his shoulder.
Lester resumed soon enough. "And Abby Maitland?"
"Very good shot, sir."
Lester's eyes flicked over some papers on his desk. "I see you're working with her separately on hand-to-hand."
"Yes, sir." No need to elaborate unless he was asked.
"Are you training her differently, or is it a matter of not letting her show up the men?"
Noel's eyebrows rose of their own volition.
"Probably a good choice," Lester said, somehow correctly interpreting his surprise as agreement. "Connor wants to impress her, and Cutter's probably even more difficult when his pride is on the line. In fact, you might want to work with them each individually. I know it will take more time, but...."
Noel nodded. He'd realised that today already. Connor's verbal encouragement did not help Cutter; Noel had sent Connor to the showers while he'd finished with the Professor, and the man had loosened up a bit with his protégé gone. Not a lot, but it was some improvement.
"And Hart?"
Noel's eyebrows went up again. "Sir?"
"How is your training coming?"
Noel made an effort to keep still. "I've made a start, sir. I have... a lot left to learn, apparently." It was an honest assessment.
"And how is Hart doing?"
Noel hesitated. He wasn't sure what Lester was looking for here. He wasn't comfortable reporting on team-mates, but it surely couldn't hurt to offer verifiable facts. "He managed to walk for the better part of 90 minutes yesterday, mainly without using his stick much. His tracking skills are obviously still sharp." Far sharper than Noel's.
Lester made an impatient little humph. "If I want a doctor's report, Lieutenant, I'll ask a doctor. How did he seem? How does he feel about training the man he must think of as his replacement?"
If you want a psychiatrist's report, sir, perhaps you should ask a psychiatrist. "I didn't feel any resentment, sir," he said, and it was true, though he hadn’t thought about it before. "He's concerned for his team."
Lester nodded. "With good reason. It's a miracle any of them are still alive—but Hart even more than the others." Lester leaned back in his chair. "You don't have to look so tense, Lieutenant."
Noel cursed silently. He thought he looked relaxed.
"I'm not asking you to betray anything personal. I thought that as a new member, you might be more objective than... some." Lester's chair pivoted just slightly, right and then left. "Sometimes they think I'm the enemy."
Noel didn't point out that asking questions about them behind their backs might contribute to this impression.
Lester leaned forward again. "I'm not the enemy. I think they know that now. But they'll act differently with you than with me." He clasped his hands. "If there's a problem, I need to know. I didn't know Cutter and Hart were so much at odds until it was too late. I had no idea Helen Cutter had been dropping in on Hart. We can't afford those kinds of secrets here. If there are tensions that affect the team's functioning, if there are secrets that might compromise our security, I need to know. And it's your duty to tell me."
Noel nodded. "Yes, sir," he said, and he meant it. Unfortunately, he didn't have much of an idea how he was going to know which problems might affect the team's functioning or compromise ARC security.
***
Stephen had a slightly guilty look that evening when Nick arrived at the rehabilitation centre.
"You don't have to visit every evening, you know," Stephen told him as they sat down in the lounge. "It's not like I'm in danger of... I'm doing well."
Nick rolled his eyes. Stephen had started this refrain last week. Nick wasn't even coming round every evening, only when he wasn't too tired from work or at an anomaly.
"Tired of my company?" he asked jokingly, but Stephen didn't laugh.
"No, of course not!" the other man protested. "If it weren't for you, I'd have been bored—" He cut himself off, obviously realising he'd started arguing against his own position. "It's just... I must be taking up a lot of your time."
"Because I have such a scintillating social life otherwise," Nick replied. "You know if I weren't here, I'd be sitting home watching the telly."
"Or reading, or writing."
Argumentative tonight, are we? "It's not like I can write anything these days anyway! Everything's Official Secrets. Nothing to write." And it chafed. Nick knew he should be thrilled simply to see all these wonders, but to be unable to share them rankled. The internal documents he generated for the ARC weren't the same as real academic writing.
Stephen shook his head. "You're learning things that you can write up. You don't have to reveal that you learned them by seeing these creatures close up! Now that you know what to look for, you can re-examine the fossil record. Those raptors at the shopping centre? They didn't exactly match any known species, but I bet we've got some fragmentary pieces of similar ones that no one realised were different because they didn't know what they were seeing."
Nick shook his head, but Stephen was apparently only warming up. "The dodos! They turned out to be from an intermediate stage of development; they don't—"
"No, Stephen," Nick said. "Lester would know I'm writing things I shouldn't, and I don't have time."
For a moment guilt flashed across Stephen's face, and then it was gone again. "You don't have time because you're wasting it all—"
"Wasting it all doing paperwork, for God's sake! Lester has us creating all kinds of contingency plans—he's got you working on them too, I know." Stephen nodded grudgingly, holding a hand up to interrupt, but Nick would not be put off. "I'm not wasting time visiting a friend who's hurt. I'm—"
"But I'm doing better," Stephen insisted. "They're letting me go home."
That brought Nick up short, with his mouth open. He closed it and considered. Stephen still needed the walking stick. He'd graduated from the one with the four little feet that had so horrified Nick to a normal stick that went straight down to a rubber tip, and he didn't rely on it as heavily as he had. Yet he didn't even walk from his room to the lounge without it.
"When?" he finally managed to ask.
"Next week. Monday, Maria thinks; they reckoned moving back home would be a good substitute for my Monday session." A hesitant smile played around the corners of Stephen's mouth.
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday were Stephen's heavier sessions, Nick knew. It still didn't sound right.
"Home?" he asked. "As in the place with all those stairs?"
Stephen's smile looked a little more forced. "Yeah. But it's not like I have to go up and down them all day long." When Nick hesitated, Stephen added, "The flat's all on one level," as if Nick didn't know. All right, he'd spent very little time there, but that much he knew.
The physiotherapists here must be a bunch of nutters. Or Stephen had charmed them into something they shouldn't be doing. Of course, it wasn't as if Nick's house was much better. He had a slightly wider staircase and better banisters, perhaps, but both the bedrooms were on the first floor.
"It's okay, really," Stephen said a little anxiously. "Connor's going to move in with me for a few days to make sure—"
"Connor?" Maybe Stephen was tired of his company. Nick doubted the hyperactive geek with coordination issues made the best companion for someone newly out of hospital. And he would drive Stephen crazy. Surely....
Stephen was frowning. "Connor offered," he said, wriggling a little nervously in his seat. "He can sleep on my sofa without being in pain all the next day. And...." He broke off as he often did when he'd realised he'd started something he didn't mean to say out loud. Stephen could keep quiet for long stretches, but once he started talking, he sometimes said more than he intended.
"And what?"
"And... I thought you might be tired of me at this point." Stephen addressed this not quite to Nick, but apparently to an invisible person just over Nick's shoulder.
"And Connor's not?"
"Connor doesn't visit every day any more," Stephen said with a gesture marking the room as empty of Connor.
"That's because he's e-mailing and texting you every five minutes. I'm amazed you can manage any physio between his missives."
That brought a real smile to Stephen's face. "Oh, the messages pile up when I'm busy. I get to them later."
"What the hell is he constantly telling you, anyway?"
"Oh, just making sure I don't feel I'm missing anything. Lester's snarky remarks. Your responses—if they're worth relating." Whatever guilt Stephen was feeling wasn't sufficient to keep him from being cheeky. That was probably all to the good. "What he's been working on with Miller. Why is it Connor never took me up when I offered to train him?" His voice became plaintive at the end.
"Ask him. I didn't even know you'd offered."
"I kept telling him he needed to know how to handle himself. And he wanted a gun! But only in the field; whenever we were at the ARC, he was always too busy with something to give it a go." Stephen fidgeted with his stick, turning it over and over.
"Why didn't you ask me to encourage him?" Nick asked. Then he realised: these conversations had probably come after Nick's world changed, after he stopped talking so much with Stephen. Connor hadn't mentioned them, and Stephen....
Stephen frowned directly at him. "You don't like guns, and I couldn't get you to do any training!" He offered another tentative smile. "Then again, you have tended to be a bit more of a 'do as I say, not as I do'—'"
"Oh, stop it," Nick huffed. "You know they've got Miller training me too?"
Stephen smiled crookedly at him. "Better him than me!" He twirled the stick some more, watching the slight wobbling of the tip on the carpet. "So how's it going?" he asked a little too casually, and Nick suspected Connor hadn't been keeping Stephen filled in on his own training.
Yet it felt good to complain to Stephen about the regime Noel had started them on, even if Stephen overdid the sympathy more than enough to ensure that Nick knew how fake it was. He didn't ask about Stephen's physio. That was something he could only get away with once every few days. It must be going reasonably well if they were sending him home, though, surely.
But he had all those stairs to reach his flat....
***
After another quiet week, Noel found himself on a Monday afternoon almost wishing for an anomaly. He spent much of his time going through old reports, trying to learn what he could of the team and their methods. He found himself constantly frustrated: now that he knew what the reports of the raptor incident concealed, he kept wondering how much else had been left out or twisted, so the reports didn't help him much anyway.
He was also not at all certain the team had much of a method. Connor ran the technology, but Noel had learned that much the day he started. Hart tracked animals. The Professor made wild leaps of faith and reason, if it could be called that, and those seemed to succeed far more often than they should. Abby seemed to know the most about animal behaviour—and team-mate behaviour, Noel suspected.
The reports proved nearly as frustrating as training the male half of the team. Abby was quite limber and very responsive to constructive criticism. She didn't weigh much, but Noel was teaching her to use her weight for all it was worth. Noel made a mental note to ask her questions about the reports—and the team dynamics.
Connor remained cheerful no matter how many times Noel dropped him to the mat. He shook it off and was game to try again. He simply didn't learn very well. He seemed genuinely to be trying his best, but he couldn't remember when to watch Noel's feet and when to watch his hands; half the time he was watching his own limbs too much. At least he seemed to be gaining skill on the shooting range. Repetition taught him to compensate for the recoil, and Noel could measure his improvement. Noel suspected he saw more use in the weapons training. They all hoped they'd seen the last of conspirators, but Connor needed to learn to protect himself physically. Even Hart had once had to fight off a raptor with pieces of a laser tag maze rather than a gun.
Then there was Professor Cutter. The man was brilliant, and Noel had looked up to him his during first few weeks on the job—especially before he had to teach him. He wasn't sure if the professor had a mental block convincing him that he could only rely on his brains and not his physical skills, or a true reluctance to fight, or if he suffered from wounded pride because he couldn't do as well as younger men (and especially a newly-minted second lieutenant). Cutter's hand-to-hand skills were still non-existent. He'd already been a decent shot when Noel started with him a couple of weeks before, but he had some sloppy habits, and they were proving difficult to root out. Even as simple a matter of timing his shots against his breathing seemed to elude him.
Cutter had got the day off to help Hart move back to his flat, and Connor bounced about the ARC in excited anticipation of going to Hart's place after work and... what? Making sure Hart didn't hurt himself falling down the stairs? Connor's near hero-worship of a man who had slept with his best mate's wife was a little disturbing, especially since Noel otherwise quite liked his fellow geek. Noel had hardly been the lone geek in the engineering course at Sandhurst, but he had come in for some teasing for being a bit harder core than some of the others. And when his mates found out his taste in movies, he'd really come in for ribbing.
Noel turned back to the hundreds of photos of creature tracks they'd amassed in the ARC database. They were very hit-and-miss, mostly taken by Connor for fun, apparently. When he'd asked Abby about the database, she'd said darkly that perhaps Noel should ask Stephen why he hadn't made better plans for how the team would carry on without him before he decided to lock himself in a room full of predators. Noel knew better than to answer that, and she'd added that they'd never given much thought to training anyone else.
Mr Lester had changed that. Since the disaster a month ago now, many procedures had been codified and policies put in place. Everyone had to write his or her own job description—even Noel, new as he was to the team. His was a joke; he'd only been on four anomalies so far, one of which had produced no creatures. The other three hadn't given them any major problems, except that he absolutely hated spiders and did not ever want to see one bigger than his hand again.
Noel knew he should be grateful for all kinds of things. He should be glad he hadn't faced a real test yet. He should be thrilled to be still in England! He'd expected to be posted to Afghanistan with his mates. Now that he'd settled into the ARC, he'd be allowed the occasional night off at home with his wife.
Yet Noel missed his mates. He'd thought for ages that he knew where he'd be going, what he'd be doing—and it would be with some of his friends. He didn't expect to be the one person pulled off the list before their posting. He got e-mails from Derrick and Flash all the time. They told him what they were doing. Sort of.
He could only tell them that what he was doing was classified. They thought he was doing something exciting; they were sure he was doing anti-terrorist work, and he couldn't say anything. Worse, Jessica had decided that too, and she told him it was fine when he couldn't say anything. She was proud of him, she said.
If they'd seen him sitting here squinting at photos of muddy messes that were supposed to be the tracks of a sabre tooth tiger, they'd fall out of their chairs laughing, he suspected.
Part 4
PARTS: 20 plus epilogue
RATING: FRT (fan-rated teen: violence, occasional bad language)
CATEGORIES: Drama, angst, hurt/discomfort, some humour; AU, fix-it
SUMMARY: Noel Miller tries to find his place on Nick Cutter's team; Stephen Hart tries to find his way back onto the team; and Nick has to deal with them, creatures from the past, and his own stubbornness.
SPOILERS: Everything through 2.07 and my own story "Fresh Scars"
WARNINGS: Some tasteless humour, some medical detail
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Many thanks to Brilliant Husband (
dudethemath), kristen_mara, and lukadreaming, all of whom acted as betas and made many helpful suggestions and corrections. All remaining errors, infelicities, and poor judgement are my own.DISCLAIMER: Primeval and its characters are owned by Impossible Pictures, ITV Productions, M6 Films, Pro 7, and possibly other entities I couldn't easily find on IMDb. No copyright infringement is intended, and indeed the story probably won't make sense unless you've watched. So watch the show, buy the DVDs, etc. I do not profit from fic except insofar as comments make me happy.
Additional notes and links to all posted parts at this story's launch page
previous part (Part 2)
Noel was not entirely surprised to be summoned to James Lester's big glass office. He wasn't pleased, either, but he could keep that to himself well enough.
Lester wasted little time on pleasantries, although he did motion Noel to sit. He got quickly to the point, or very nearly the point: "So, how are you settling into the team?"
"Fine, thank you, sir," Noel said with what he hoped came across as sincerity. He hadn't had much of a chance to get the measure of the man yet.
Lester regarded him with obvious disbelief. "Well, that was fast!"
"I'm still settling in, as you say, sir, but I think things are going well. I've read all the incident reports, and...."
Lester held up a hand to cut him off. "Yes, yes. I'm sure you're very diligent. That's what it says in your service records, after all." He leaned forward a little, as if to impart a confidence. "But how are you adjusting to... their quirks? Their personalities?"
Noel hadn't expected quite such a direct approach, although perhaps he ought to have done. He tried to buy a little time. "We all have our—"
Lester slammed a hand onto the desk. "If you tell me that great men all have their eccentricities, I'll transfer you today!" Lester snapped. His veins were standing out a little on his neck.
Noel blinked but tried to keep his face neutral, not at all sure what he'd said wrong.
Lester's shoulders dropped. "Never mind. That's just a reply I never want to hear again."
Noel filed it for the future. He didn't think his planned reply had been close to what Lester thought he was going to say, but obviously there was some history he didn't know. Wasn't that the case with the whole team?
"Let's try again. How are you getting on with Cutter?"
Noel thought for a moment. "Well enough, as far as I know, sir." Cutter's tendency to ignore or forget about him when they weren't one-on-one didn't merit mention here. He’d noticed Cutter doing the same to Connor, and occasionally Abby too.
"He doesn't give you any nonsense about not being Stephen Hart?"
"No, sir." Not as such.
"And he seems to be... holding it together all right?"
What was he supposed to say? Did Lester think he was some kind of spy? Some of the soldiers joked about when Cutter was going to lose it; was Lester honestly worried about that? "All my interactions with Professor Cutter have been professional, sir, if that's what you mean."
Lester nodded. "How is his training coming along?"
Noel raised his eyebrows. "We've only had two sessions of hand-to-hand and one on the firing range. I'm not yet prepared to evaluate his combat skills. I can tell you, however, that Professor Cutter is a decent shot, especially for someone who doesn't like guns, sir."
Lester leaned his chin against his hands, his elbows on his desk. "That's good to hear. And Temple?"
Noel almost smiled. "He'll do much better once he gets used to the recoil on real guns, sir."
"Ah, his 'I'm a crack shot at video games!' excuse." Lester shook his head. "We should have had him training much sooner. Of course, I never thought we'd need him shooting. I'd rather we didn't, frankly." Lester's eyes drifted off Noel's face briefly, to a point somewhere over his shoulder.
Lester resumed soon enough. "And Abby Maitland?"
"Very good shot, sir."
Lester's eyes flicked over some papers on his desk. "I see you're working with her separately on hand-to-hand."
"Yes, sir." No need to elaborate unless he was asked.
"Are you training her differently, or is it a matter of not letting her show up the men?"
Noel's eyebrows rose of their own volition.
"Probably a good choice," Lester said, somehow correctly interpreting his surprise as agreement. "Connor wants to impress her, and Cutter's probably even more difficult when his pride is on the line. In fact, you might want to work with them each individually. I know it will take more time, but...."
Noel nodded. He'd realised that today already. Connor's verbal encouragement did not help Cutter; Noel had sent Connor to the showers while he'd finished with the Professor, and the man had loosened up a bit with his protégé gone. Not a lot, but it was some improvement.
"And Hart?"
Noel's eyebrows went up again. "Sir?"
"How is your training coming?"
Noel made an effort to keep still. "I've made a start, sir. I have... a lot left to learn, apparently." It was an honest assessment.
"And how is Hart doing?"
Noel hesitated. He wasn't sure what Lester was looking for here. He wasn't comfortable reporting on team-mates, but it surely couldn't hurt to offer verifiable facts. "He managed to walk for the better part of 90 minutes yesterday, mainly without using his stick much. His tracking skills are obviously still sharp." Far sharper than Noel's.
Lester made an impatient little humph. "If I want a doctor's report, Lieutenant, I'll ask a doctor. How did he seem? How does he feel about training the man he must think of as his replacement?"
If you want a psychiatrist's report, sir, perhaps you should ask a psychiatrist. "I didn't feel any resentment, sir," he said, and it was true, though he hadn’t thought about it before. "He's concerned for his team."
Lester nodded. "With good reason. It's a miracle any of them are still alive—but Hart even more than the others." Lester leaned back in his chair. "You don't have to look so tense, Lieutenant."
Noel cursed silently. He thought he looked relaxed.
"I'm not asking you to betray anything personal. I thought that as a new member, you might be more objective than... some." Lester's chair pivoted just slightly, right and then left. "Sometimes they think I'm the enemy."
Noel didn't point out that asking questions about them behind their backs might contribute to this impression.
Lester leaned forward again. "I'm not the enemy. I think they know that now. But they'll act differently with you than with me." He clasped his hands. "If there's a problem, I need to know. I didn't know Cutter and Hart were so much at odds until it was too late. I had no idea Helen Cutter had been dropping in on Hart. We can't afford those kinds of secrets here. If there are tensions that affect the team's functioning, if there are secrets that might compromise our security, I need to know. And it's your duty to tell me."
Noel nodded. "Yes, sir," he said, and he meant it. Unfortunately, he didn't have much of an idea how he was going to know which problems might affect the team's functioning or compromise ARC security.
***
Stephen had a slightly guilty look that evening when Nick arrived at the rehabilitation centre.
"You don't have to visit every evening, you know," Stephen told him as they sat down in the lounge. "It's not like I'm in danger of... I'm doing well."
Nick rolled his eyes. Stephen had started this refrain last week. Nick wasn't even coming round every evening, only when he wasn't too tired from work or at an anomaly.
"Tired of my company?" he asked jokingly, but Stephen didn't laugh.
"No, of course not!" the other man protested. "If it weren't for you, I'd have been bored—" He cut himself off, obviously realising he'd started arguing against his own position. "It's just... I must be taking up a lot of your time."
"Because I have such a scintillating social life otherwise," Nick replied. "You know if I weren't here, I'd be sitting home watching the telly."
"Or reading, or writing."
Argumentative tonight, are we? "It's not like I can write anything these days anyway! Everything's Official Secrets. Nothing to write." And it chafed. Nick knew he should be thrilled simply to see all these wonders, but to be unable to share them rankled. The internal documents he generated for the ARC weren't the same as real academic writing.
Stephen shook his head. "You're learning things that you can write up. You don't have to reveal that you learned them by seeing these creatures close up! Now that you know what to look for, you can re-examine the fossil record. Those raptors at the shopping centre? They didn't exactly match any known species, but I bet we've got some fragmentary pieces of similar ones that no one realised were different because they didn't know what they were seeing."
Nick shook his head, but Stephen was apparently only warming up. "The dodos! They turned out to be from an intermediate stage of development; they don't—"
"No, Stephen," Nick said. "Lester would know I'm writing things I shouldn't, and I don't have time."
For a moment guilt flashed across Stephen's face, and then it was gone again. "You don't have time because you're wasting it all—"
"Wasting it all doing paperwork, for God's sake! Lester has us creating all kinds of contingency plans—he's got you working on them too, I know." Stephen nodded grudgingly, holding a hand up to interrupt, but Nick would not be put off. "I'm not wasting time visiting a friend who's hurt. I'm—"
"But I'm doing better," Stephen insisted. "They're letting me go home."
That brought Nick up short, with his mouth open. He closed it and considered. Stephen still needed the walking stick. He'd graduated from the one with the four little feet that had so horrified Nick to a normal stick that went straight down to a rubber tip, and he didn't rely on it as heavily as he had. Yet he didn't even walk from his room to the lounge without it.
"When?" he finally managed to ask.
"Next week. Monday, Maria thinks; they reckoned moving back home would be a good substitute for my Monday session." A hesitant smile played around the corners of Stephen's mouth.
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday were Stephen's heavier sessions, Nick knew. It still didn't sound right.
"Home?" he asked. "As in the place with all those stairs?"
Stephen's smile looked a little more forced. "Yeah. But it's not like I have to go up and down them all day long." When Nick hesitated, Stephen added, "The flat's all on one level," as if Nick didn't know. All right, he'd spent very little time there, but that much he knew.
The physiotherapists here must be a bunch of nutters. Or Stephen had charmed them into something they shouldn't be doing. Of course, it wasn't as if Nick's house was much better. He had a slightly wider staircase and better banisters, perhaps, but both the bedrooms were on the first floor.
"It's okay, really," Stephen said a little anxiously. "Connor's going to move in with me for a few days to make sure—"
"Connor?" Maybe Stephen was tired of his company. Nick doubted the hyperactive geek with coordination issues made the best companion for someone newly out of hospital. And he would drive Stephen crazy. Surely....
Stephen was frowning. "Connor offered," he said, wriggling a little nervously in his seat. "He can sleep on my sofa without being in pain all the next day. And...." He broke off as he often did when he'd realised he'd started something he didn't mean to say out loud. Stephen could keep quiet for long stretches, but once he started talking, he sometimes said more than he intended.
"And what?"
"And... I thought you might be tired of me at this point." Stephen addressed this not quite to Nick, but apparently to an invisible person just over Nick's shoulder.
"And Connor's not?"
"Connor doesn't visit every day any more," Stephen said with a gesture marking the room as empty of Connor.
"That's because he's e-mailing and texting you every five minutes. I'm amazed you can manage any physio between his missives."
That brought a real smile to Stephen's face. "Oh, the messages pile up when I'm busy. I get to them later."
"What the hell is he constantly telling you, anyway?"
"Oh, just making sure I don't feel I'm missing anything. Lester's snarky remarks. Your responses—if they're worth relating." Whatever guilt Stephen was feeling wasn't sufficient to keep him from being cheeky. That was probably all to the good. "What he's been working on with Miller. Why is it Connor never took me up when I offered to train him?" His voice became plaintive at the end.
"Ask him. I didn't even know you'd offered."
"I kept telling him he needed to know how to handle himself. And he wanted a gun! But only in the field; whenever we were at the ARC, he was always too busy with something to give it a go." Stephen fidgeted with his stick, turning it over and over.
"Why didn't you ask me to encourage him?" Nick asked. Then he realised: these conversations had probably come after Nick's world changed, after he stopped talking so much with Stephen. Connor hadn't mentioned them, and Stephen....
Stephen frowned directly at him. "You don't like guns, and I couldn't get you to do any training!" He offered another tentative smile. "Then again, you have tended to be a bit more of a 'do as I say, not as I do'—'"
"Oh, stop it," Nick huffed. "You know they've got Miller training me too?"
Stephen smiled crookedly at him. "Better him than me!" He twirled the stick some more, watching the slight wobbling of the tip on the carpet. "So how's it going?" he asked a little too casually, and Nick suspected Connor hadn't been keeping Stephen filled in on his own training.
Yet it felt good to complain to Stephen about the regime Noel had started them on, even if Stephen overdid the sympathy more than enough to ensure that Nick knew how fake it was. He didn't ask about Stephen's physio. That was something he could only get away with once every few days. It must be going reasonably well if they were sending him home, though, surely.
But he had all those stairs to reach his flat....
***
After another quiet week, Noel found himself on a Monday afternoon almost wishing for an anomaly. He spent much of his time going through old reports, trying to learn what he could of the team and their methods. He found himself constantly frustrated: now that he knew what the reports of the raptor incident concealed, he kept wondering how much else had been left out or twisted, so the reports didn't help him much anyway.
He was also not at all certain the team had much of a method. Connor ran the technology, but Noel had learned that much the day he started. Hart tracked animals. The Professor made wild leaps of faith and reason, if it could be called that, and those seemed to succeed far more often than they should. Abby seemed to know the most about animal behaviour—and team-mate behaviour, Noel suspected.
The reports proved nearly as frustrating as training the male half of the team. Abby was quite limber and very responsive to constructive criticism. She didn't weigh much, but Noel was teaching her to use her weight for all it was worth. Noel made a mental note to ask her questions about the reports—and the team dynamics.
Connor remained cheerful no matter how many times Noel dropped him to the mat. He shook it off and was game to try again. He simply didn't learn very well. He seemed genuinely to be trying his best, but he couldn't remember when to watch Noel's feet and when to watch his hands; half the time he was watching his own limbs too much. At least he seemed to be gaining skill on the shooting range. Repetition taught him to compensate for the recoil, and Noel could measure his improvement. Noel suspected he saw more use in the weapons training. They all hoped they'd seen the last of conspirators, but Connor needed to learn to protect himself physically. Even Hart had once had to fight off a raptor with pieces of a laser tag maze rather than a gun.
Then there was Professor Cutter. The man was brilliant, and Noel had looked up to him his during first few weeks on the job—especially before he had to teach him. He wasn't sure if the professor had a mental block convincing him that he could only rely on his brains and not his physical skills, or a true reluctance to fight, or if he suffered from wounded pride because he couldn't do as well as younger men (and especially a newly-minted second lieutenant). Cutter's hand-to-hand skills were still non-existent. He'd already been a decent shot when Noel started with him a couple of weeks before, but he had some sloppy habits, and they were proving difficult to root out. Even as simple a matter of timing his shots against his breathing seemed to elude him.
Cutter had got the day off to help Hart move back to his flat, and Connor bounced about the ARC in excited anticipation of going to Hart's place after work and... what? Making sure Hart didn't hurt himself falling down the stairs? Connor's near hero-worship of a man who had slept with his best mate's wife was a little disturbing, especially since Noel otherwise quite liked his fellow geek. Noel had hardly been the lone geek in the engineering course at Sandhurst, but he had come in for some teasing for being a bit harder core than some of the others. And when his mates found out his taste in movies, he'd really come in for ribbing.
Noel turned back to the hundreds of photos of creature tracks they'd amassed in the ARC database. They were very hit-and-miss, mostly taken by Connor for fun, apparently. When he'd asked Abby about the database, she'd said darkly that perhaps Noel should ask Stephen why he hadn't made better plans for how the team would carry on without him before he decided to lock himself in a room full of predators. Noel knew better than to answer that, and she'd added that they'd never given much thought to training anyone else.
Mr Lester had changed that. Since the disaster a month ago now, many procedures had been codified and policies put in place. Everyone had to write his or her own job description—even Noel, new as he was to the team. His was a joke; he'd only been on four anomalies so far, one of which had produced no creatures. The other three hadn't given them any major problems, except that he absolutely hated spiders and did not ever want to see one bigger than his hand again.
Noel knew he should be grateful for all kinds of things. He should be glad he hadn't faced a real test yet. He should be thrilled to be still in England! He'd expected to be posted to Afghanistan with his mates. Now that he'd settled into the ARC, he'd be allowed the occasional night off at home with his wife.
Yet Noel missed his mates. He'd thought for ages that he knew where he'd be going, what he'd be doing—and it would be with some of his friends. He didn't expect to be the one person pulled off the list before their posting. He got e-mails from Derrick and Flash all the time. They told him what they were doing. Sort of.
He could only tell them that what he was doing was classified. They thought he was doing something exciting; they were sure he was doing anti-terrorist work, and he couldn't say anything. Worse, Jessica had decided that too, and she told him it was fine when he couldn't say anything. She was proud of him, she said.
If they'd seen him sitting here squinting at photos of muddy messes that were supposed to be the tracks of a sabre tooth tiger, they'd fall out of their chairs laughing, he suspected.
Part 4
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Hearts Nick getting the day off to help Stephen move back home, and poor Stephen not wanting Nick to feel obliged to keep visiting while Nick tries to get through to him that he wants to *G*.
Interesting points about the writing that Nick COULD do! Yay for Connor keeping Stephen so up to date with the ARC ;)
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Loved it that Connor keeps Stephen informed about the ARC, hehe.
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And slow is good - it allows for details! Details are lovely.
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I'm glad you enjoy the details!
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:)
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Clearly no one else wants to whisk Noel away to Paris for the weekend :D
Happy home life isn't much good for angst and drama, my favourite things, LOL!!
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I like happily married couples and think one can still get angst and drama with them (see Zoe and Wash from my icon!). I also like happy unmarried couples (Jack and Ianto!—who still managed loads of drama, and maybe weren't always a happy couple, "Children of Earth" should never have happened).
I must concede, however, that happily married couples don't make for happy slashers very often.
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Ah yes, I recognise them. They're fun!
*denies CoE*
Hmm, yes, I can see that. I was tugging at my own ring and wondering about it the other day, LOL! I don't think my mum can get hers off!
:D