A/N Please don't ask where this fic came from - I have no idea! It came upon me at 2am the other morning and I think it is a side-effect of finishing If Tomorrow and not knowing what on earth to do with myself. This is a "Rebound Fic" if you will! So, forgive me if its utter piffle! :D
Total fluff - although all the factual information is correct (I love Google!).
Please R&R - there is a second chapter coming soon...
Disclaimer: I don't own Primeval but I bow down to Impossible Pictures and ITV for being so damned awesome. However, I would be quite happy to own Ben Mansfield should the opportunity ever present itself...hehehehehehehehehe :D
Jessica Parker clattered noisily down the corridor, rushing and, quite frankly, in a bit of a grump actually. Who the hell did Lester think he was, making her do such mundane things as filing when that had never been part of her job description. Well, ok, he was the boss - but he had a perfectly good PA for this kind of task. She hated it down here, in the lower levels of the ARC, where all the old mission reports were filed. There was one large storage room on this level, with racks full of boxes upon boxes of reports and paperwork that was required by the Minister to be archived for 30 years. It was cold and dark, with only minimal lighting, and Jess always managed to spook herself with her over active imagination.
Her arms were aching with the amount of files she was carrying. She should really have made two trips but she detested this place so much she overloaded herself in order to complete the task in one go. Hurrying along her foot slipped and her precarious stack of files wobbled before sliding from her arms and scattering across the metal floor.
"Damn it!" cursed Jess, under her breath, before bobbing down to retrieve them.
As she groped around for the paperwork in the dim light her eyes stopped on a pair of boots in front of her. A pair of black combat boots. Slowly she raised her eyes, up the black clad legs, scooting quickly over the hip area with a sudden blush, lingering for a moment on the well defined abdominal and pectoral muscles barely disguised under his tight black t-shirt, and then coming to rest on the amused smirk of Captain Becker. He gazed down at her, barely visible in the badly lit corridor, making her feel small and vulnerable. Her hands stopped reaching for the filing and she grinned up at him sheepishly.
Becker hunkered down, bringing his head level with hers, his hazel eyes twinkling and a smile playing around his mouth.
"What on earth are you doing, Jessica?" he asked, his voice low, making Jess shiver delightfully.
She blushed, she couldn't help it. Why did she always get caught being such an idiot in front of him? It was no wonder he didn't show any interest in her - he must have thought she was a complete imbecile!
"I - um - Lester asked me to file these old mission reports. I just hate it down here so I was rushing and I guess I was trying to carry too many at once and they just slipped out of my hands and I -" she trailed off, conscious of his eyes on her. She began to gather the paperwork once more, just to cover up her nervousness. She was always nervous around him.
"Need some help?" Becker asked, grinning.
They reached for the same file simultaneously and their fingers grazed briefly until Jess snatched hers away, her skin burning from his touch. Becker twitched his eyebrows at her reaction and carefully handed her the file.
"Thank you," she whispered, blushing furiously, glad he probably couldn't see it in the darkness.
"Why don't you let me finish collecting these and then I'll help you to the storage room," he stated in a voice that definitely told her she shouldn't argue.
"Oh, thank you," she said again and stood up, leaning against the wall of the corridor, clutching the files she held to her chest.
Becker finished collecting all the paperwork and stood, towering over her, his arms full of reports. He started off down the corridor with Jess following, her heels clattering as she attempted to keep up with his pace.
"What brings you down here?" she enquired of his back.
Becker smiled although she couldn't see that. "Just a few security checks," he told her, off-handedly, not wanting to confess that he knew she was down here and had made an excuse to find her.
He swiped his wrist band at the door lock to the required storage room and held the door open for Jess, catching himself admiring her legs as she walked past him into the room. Jess flicked on the light and coughed at the dust.
The storage room contained one very large metal filing cabinet, stuffed full of creature reports, security team injury files and civilian death certificates. It was cumbersome and heavy and tall and if it fell on you would probably crush you to death within seconds. Set in parallel rows across the length of the storage room were many floor to ceiling steel racks, each with six shelves, with each shelf containing cardboard boxes full of files, documented by month and year and anomaly reference. It was all dank and musty and covered in inches of dust. Jess shivered, wanting to leave as soon as possible.
She scanned the lines of boxes on the rack nearest the right wall, looking for the correct reference in which to file her paperwork. She breathed a sigh of relief as she found the first one at waist height, which meant she didn't have to use the rickety old step ladder with Becker watching. She'd probably fall off and need to be rescued and then he would turn that smug smirk on her and make her blush and stumble like a school girl, just like she always did. She'd been experiencing too much of that lately and could do without embarrassing herself again this week.
As she reached for the first box, the ground moved and then everything happened so fast but, oddly, in slow motion at the same time. Jess stood, unsteady on her heels, as the floor beneath her feet quivered and heaved, the noise deafening, like a long drawn out explosion. The walls swayed and the racking in front of her began to tip dangerously. She dropped her files as a large black figure flew at her from her left, knocking her back against the wall and looming over her. Jess heard herself cry out as a loud metal shrieking reverberated around the storage room. Becker grunted as he felt the large metal racking come into contact with his back. He placed his hands on the wall either side of Jess's head and braced himself between the storage rack and the small woman in front of him, his body acting like a bridge. Closing her eyes, Jess put her hands out in front of her, in reflex, to shield herself from the falling storage rack. Unfortunately, this placed them directly onto Captain Becker's chest.
The shuddering and noise stopped as abruptly as it had started. Jess and Becker coughed and spluttered as dust and debris swirled in the air around them, making it hard to breathe, and even harder to see in the dim light of the room. The door had swung shut and as the dust settled it became clear that most of the storage racks had toppled over, one of which would have crushed Jess had it not been for Becker's quick thinking. Jess dropped her hands to her sides and pressed herself further against the wall as she realised their predicament. She glanced up at Becker who covered up a wince as he noticed her looking at him. Her eyes were wide and fearful.
"What was that?" she whispered. "Some kind of explosion upstairs?"
Becker considered this for a moment, frowning, before shaking his head.
"No, the vibrations were wrong. This was underground," he said confidently.
Jess stared at him, her eyebrows raised. "How do you -" she started.
Becker smiled. "With a surface detonation you get a different kind of tremor," he told her. "This was definitely below ground, the vibrations were too -" he stopped when he noticed her chewing her lip in an effort to keep from giggling.
"What?" he asked, his expression so innocent that Jess failed to contain her laughter.
"You're such a nerd!" she cried, her shoulders shuddering as she giggled uncontrollably. She could scarcely talk.
"What?" barked Becker, scowling. "I'm not a nerd!" It went against the grain to be compared to Temple.
"You are! You can tell the difference between explosions just from the vibrations! You are so an explosions nerd! Oh my god, you wait until I tell Connor!"
Becker couldn't help but smile at her infectious laughter, until she mentioned Connor.
"Under no circumstances are you to repeat any of that to Temple!" he warned her darkly.
Jess stopped giggling and tried to make her face serious as she looked up at him.
"Ok," she promised. "No telling Connor." Her mouth twisted again as she enjoyed her joke. "Explosions nerd," she muttered quietly.
Becker's face was serious. "Actually I don't think it was an explosion," he said softly, his voice laced with worry. Enough to make the smile drop from Jess's face.
"Then what?" she asked.
"If I didn't know better I would have said it was an earthquake," Becker told her, shaking his head in disbelief. "I've experienced enough of them during my tours in the Middle East. But this is England - we don't get earthquakes!" He looked a little confused.
"Actually," said Jess, her mind accessing the relevant information at a moment's notice, just like it always did. "That's not quite true. Britain experiences between 200 and 300 earthquakes annually, according to the British Geological Survey. Its just most of them are so small they go unnoticed by the general populace. But we do get larger earthquakes from time to time too. The statistics show we get earthquakes of magnitude 5 or higher on the Richter scale once every eight years. The most current one was centred in Norfolk as recently as 2008."
Becker's jaw hung open as he listened to her factual explanation before he recovered himself. "Talking of nerds…" he murmured with a grin.
Jess grinned back and swatted his arm playfully with her hand. This brought Becker back to their current situation. The storage cabinet was getting heavy. He needed to get Jess out of here.
He was arched across her, his feet planted about a foot from her, hands either side of her head, arms braced at his shoulder height, giving her just enough room to escape.
"Jess, scoot out under my arm and call for backup from the corridor. You'll be safer out there," he ordered, his tone authoritative, expecting to be obeyed.
Jess nodded but before she could comply, another stronger tremor rumbled under their feet. Jess screamed and flung herself back against the wall, feeling it rippling disconcertingly behind her. The rumble grew to a roar and storage boxes were flung down as more racking toppled over. Dust and debris fell around them again and Jess tried to scream and failed. There was a sudden metallic crash and Becker lurched forward with a yell, momentarily knocking the scream out of her as he crushed her between his body and the wall. He banged his forehead against the concrete before he could arrest his forward motion with his arms. He let his head remain resting on the wall, dazed and eyes closed, waiting for the disorientation to pass.
The second tremor ceased and Becker and Jess both coughed, hard and hacking, trying to free their lungs from the dust and debris that had been thrown around them. Becker had been shunted forward about a foot by the sudden extra weight from the racking, his toes now touching the wall behind Jess, one leg in between hers, and the whole of his lower body now pressed heavily against her. His upper body had been prevented from crushing Jess's head by his bracing arms, but the space under the bridge he had made with his arms and torso had been severely reduced. Jess's head was barely a few inches from his chest.
Becker lifted his forehead from the wall and gazed down at her, holding his breath as he realised how close her face was to his.
"Are you ok?" he whispered.
Jess nodded, unable to get her voice to work. Whether it was from shock or dust or just how close he was, she wasn't sure.
Becker tensed and Jess felt the tightening of every muscle. Gritting his teeth and breathing in deeply, Becker pushed hard against the wall with his hands, attempting to move the racks behind him, to force them off his back and free Jess from her prison. Nothing happened. Grunting loudly with effort, Becker tried again, pushing harder and for longer. Jess could see the muscles in his forearms and biceps straining, the veins standing out under his skin, and little beads of sweat popping out over his forehead. The result was the same, nothing moved. Becker relaxed slightly, leaving just enough tension in his arms to continue bracing the racks as before. He felt something warm and wet trickling down his back under his t-shirt and knew the sharp metal edging of the storage racking had pierced the skin across his shoulders.
"Sorry Jess," he panted. "Its not budging."
She smiled at him and nodded to let him know it was ok.
Becker looked around them, trying not to look at her, or think about how close she was.
"Jess, try your Comms. She if you can get Matt and a team down here," he ordered, hoarsely.
Jess nodded again and brought her hand up to her ear. Tapping her earpiece she called for Matt, Connor, a security team, and finally anybody. But there was no response. Feeling tears pricking at the corners of her eyes she shook her head and Becker pursed his lips, knowing Comms were down. They were on their own.
He risked a glance down at her and noted the liquid appearance of her big blue eyes. He attempted to keep her talking, to keep her mind focused, while he tried to figure out how to get them out of this.
"So," he began. "Earthquake nerd, huh?"
She looked up at him astonished and then pouted. "Not really," she said. And then she sighed. "Its just I remember everything I read. My mind is so cluttered with all this inconsequential nonsense and facts and its quite distracting actually. Once I saw a road sign warning of speed humps and I was so distracted by all the information whirling around in my head about who invented them, when they were first used, and why they are called 'sleeping policemen' that I nearly crashed my car into a wall -"
Becker listened to her ramble on as he imagined scenario after scenario that allowed for their escape and then discarded them all as impossible. The weight on his back was increasing, his arm muscles were screaming and there was no way out without any give in the racking. Comms were down so there was no outside help to be had either. They were stuck, pressed against each other, until his arms gave out and the racking crushed them both into the wall.
He closed his eyes, listening to Jess's conversation change seamlessly from driving incidents to how she happened to know so much about earthquakes. But closing his eyes turned out not to be such a great idea. His head was still a little fuzzy from its close encounter with the concrete wall and, with his eyes shut, he became acutely aware of how good she felt with her softness pressed against his muscles. With his leg trapped between hers, he could feel her thigh against his, the top of her hipbone against his groin, the gentle swell of her breast against his ribs. Her scent made him feel slightly giddy and his eyes snapped open in horror as, despite their troubling situation, he felt himself stiffen against her hip.
"No, no, no," he whispered, trying to think of cold showers and Lester and his gran in her hair rollers and slippers. Anything but the small, young woman currently pressed against his body, smelling so delicious and looking so beautiful with her smooth hair, sparkling blue eyes, kissable lips, soft curves and legs disappearing under her practically indecent short skirt. Gah, it was impossible! He felt the twitching again and gritted his teeth, hoping Jess was too distracted to notice.
She had stopped talking and was looking up at him, frowning, worried by the tortured expression on his face.
"Becker? Are you ok?" she asked, biting her lip in concern.
He made the mistake of glancing down at her and seeing her twist her lower lip between her teeth. It was his undoing. He bent his head, gently resting it on the wall behind her as his erection sprang up, pushing against the fabric of his combat trousers towards her hipbone.
He groaned loudly, completely mortified. "Oh God, Jess! I'm so sorry!"
A/N Eeeeeek naughty Becker! What is he like? Chapter Two will be up tomorrow hopefully, but in the meantime please let me know what you think! Otherwise I might have to hide behind If Tomorrow as the only fanfiction I will ever write! :(
:D :D :D :D :D