Title: Clouds and Silver Linings
Author: Bella
Characters: Ryan, Stephen/Cutter
Rating: PG, slash
Warnings: none
Spoilers: none

A/N:- Painful as it is to admit, not mine, I'm only playing. And thanks and a gold star to for being a fantastic Beta reader.

Clouds and Silver Linings

Nick dripped his way through the many sterile corridors of the ARC, heading for the main changing room and showers, feigning deafness as he heard Lester calling his name.

He was all in favour of controlling the creatures that wandered through the anomalies, just not when it seemed to involve more water, weeds, and mud than there were in Lake Victoria. He was soaked through, t-shirt and jeans clinging to every inch of skin, fairly certain that he still had seaweed (or lake weed) in his hair, and at least 7/8's of him were coated in mud. All he wanted right now was a hot shower, several drinks and something decent to eat. He certainly wasn't prepared to go and suffer through half an hour of Lester's sniping and demands for a full report of what happened. Fuck reports. Fuck reports and fuck Lester. Though not in the literal sense.

Arriving in the changing area, Nick collapsed on the nearest bench and stripped off his sodden t-shirt. The shirt was quickly followed by boots, jeans and underwear. Reaching upwards, he picked up a towel off a nearby rack and wound it round his waist. Almost itching to feel hot water and a sense of cleanliness again, he turned in the direction of the entrance to the showers, only to be greeted by the sight of Tom Ryan, wearing nothing but a towel and cleanly scrubbed. Lucky devil. Nick would always wonder how the hell the Special Forces soldiers managed to get to the shower rooms so damn quickly.

Ryan moved out of his way and unfortunately Nick was still close enough to notice the tightly-formed muscles shifting slightly as he did so. This was doing nothing to help his now slightly fragile state of mind, and, as he told himself firmly, this was certainly no time to be comparing Ryan to Stephen.

Ryan must have spotted his odd expression because he raised an eyebrow, and asked,

'Everything alright Professor?'

, in a tone that suggested he knew exactly what was wrong.

Nick decided, that, as this was Ryan, who he both had an enormous amount of respect for and did not know particularly well, it would probably be best to play the innocent.

'Tough day. Mud, water, mud, weed and more fucking mud.'

Ryan grinned, and Nick thought he could maybe detect a slight hint of amusement in the light blue eyes.



'Yeah well, you know what they say, 'Every cloud...'

Nick attempted a smile, but he had a feeling that it had come out more as a sort of grimace.

'Well, I don't see the silver lining.'

This time he knew Ryan was laughing at him, the broad grin spreading across the soldier's face. Nick grimaced again, not bothering to try and cover it up this time, and stepped past into the showers.

Steam, and soap-scented air washed over him like a blanket, and he found it harder to breathe in the humid atmosphere. The asthma he'd had as a child had a habit of coming back to plague him at unforeseen moments. To his left he could hear the steady spray of another shower, which meant, unfortunately, that he wasn't even going to be able to clean up in peace. The cherry on top of the icing on the cake of a bloody perfect day.

Dropping the towel, Nick turned the knob on one of the showers and stepped under the scalding spray. He tipped his head back slightly, feeling his hair instantly plaster itself to his scalp and just let the water wash away the mud, and the warmth sear through down to his bones. He was starting to feel slightly better, when he detected, through the roar of the water in his ears, the lack of the steady sound of the other shower.

It was only him noticing this that stopped him having a heart attack, when a familiar voice spoke from somewhere in close proximity to his left ear.

'Cutter?'

Turning, Nick almost crashed into Stephen, only the other man's hand on his upper arm preventing him from losing his balance. It occurred to his tired brain, that he was standing unusually close to his lab technician, and that he must be off-kilter because he didn't bother to even try to stop his eyes flickering down to skate across firm, lightly-haired chest and stomach, toned arms and thin trail of dark hair leading down into the waist of the towel.

When he finally caught himself and dragged his eyes back up to meet Stephen's, he simply wondered how the hell a man could have a body like that, eyes that blue and lashes that long. The blue eyes in question held a mischievous, slightly predatory glint, as if they knew damn well what he was thinking. As Stephen's hand slid lower and a smirk spread over his face, Nick felt his breath hitch. Obviously this was the silver lining he'd been looking for.