Is That an Anomaly in Your Pocket, or...
Nick woke up to find Stephen in his bed.
Considering the fact that the last time Nick had seen Stephen he'd been watching the man get ripped to pieces by a menagerie of creatures stolen from all over time, Nick felt fully justified in pulling his lab tech into a tight hug.
Which was when he discovered that Stephen was naked.
And so was Nick.
Jesus Christ.
He was going to kill Helen for this, he really was.
"Nick?" Stephen asked, undoubtedly startled at waking up in Nick's bed.
Naked.
Couldn't forget the naked part.
"It's okay, Stephen," Nick said, getting a thrill out of being able to say that name again, to speak to Stephen instead of to a grim wooden cross. "We'll get to the bottom of this."
Stephen raised an eyebrow (he really had the most striking eyebrows, Nick couldn't help but notice, arching over stunningly blue eyes) and slid a hand under the sheets. Nick gasped. "I prefer the middle myself," Stephen said with a sly smile.
"W-what are you doing?" Nick stuttered.
"Nothing we didn't do last night," Stephen said, his smile morphing into a wicked grin. "And as I recall, you weren't complaining then."
Nick cleared his throat and attempted to focus. "Uh, what exactly did happen last night?"
Stephen abruptly stopped what he was doing below the sheets. Nick tried not to whimper. "You don't remember?"
"Apparently not," Nick snapped, then felt a bit guilty. After all, Stephen had been dead a few minutes ago. Not that that excused the man from not finishing what he started.
Even if Nick couldn't quite figure out how they got in the position where Stephen could start in the first place.
Christ, his head hurt. It was too bloody early in the morning for this shite.
Stephen shifted up until he was seated and rubbed his hands roughly over his face and through his hair. His hair was rather lovely, Nick reluctantly admitted, especially when it was all tousled like that.
"Okay, the short version -- last night you and Helen came back from tracking the future predator young through the Permian anomaly. Helen asked you to go back through the anomaly with her, you said no, and then she said--"
"That you two had slept together," Nick finished softly.
Stephen looked inexpressibly sad. "I am sorry about that, Nick. I know it doesn't help, but I was a stupid graduate student with a crush on my teacher. It only happened the one time and--oof. Uh, Nick? Nick, I can't breathe."
Nick loosened his grip slightly, but refused to let go completely as the extent of what had happened revealed itself. Back in time, clearly, just before everything had gone to hell. Just in time for a possible second chance. Nick closed his eyes and buried his face in Stephen's neck.
Stephen smelled good, Nick acknowledged with a sigh, musky and earthy with just a hint of pine and fresh air.
Clearly confused, but willing to play along, Stephen wrapped his own arms around Nick's back and they simply sat there for a minute, holding each other.
"So you want to tell me what's going on?" Stephen finally asked.
Nick sighed and sat back. "First, I have a couple of questions. Have you ever heard of a woman named Claudia Brown?"
Stephen was shaking his head before Nick even finished. "You asked that last night. Several times. No, I've never heard of her."
Bollocks. Nick sighed. "Okay, then explain to me again how we ended up in bed. Because that definitely didn't happen in the original timeline."
Stephen's eyebrows shot up, but he answered readily enough. "After Helen left, you stormed off, refusing to speak to anyone. I volunteered to go after you and followed you to a pub where I bought you a drink. Or six. And, well, things escalated from there."
"And whose idea was it to come back to my place?"
"Yours," Stephen said. "Mostly," he added with a wince. "And I can see you're having second thoughts, so..."
"No," Nick said quickly. Then he had to repress the urge to smack himself. The fact was, he was having still working on having first thoughts but he also wasn't quite ready to let Stephen out of his sight. Frankly, he wasn't certain he'd ever be ready to let Stephen out of his sight again.
Stephen's smirk returned in full force. "Well, in that case..."
"Wait," Nick said. "There's a few things you should know first." Stephen heaved a sigh, but sat back. Nick found himself admiring the man's sharply defined chest and pale skin and heaved a sigh of his own. "First, you should know that someone, probably Helen, has altered this timeline." Stephen raised both eyebrows, but said nothing, so Nick forged on. "I'm actually from a few months in the future, which means at some point I went through an anomaly without my knowledge. Possibly one appeared on my bed?"
"That seems like a pretty big coincidence," Stephen said with the air of someone doing his duty. Nick tried not to notice the way Stephen's eyes kept dropping down from Nick's face to something considerably lower, or the way the something considerably lower reacted to Stephen's glances.
"I know," Nick said, fighting back the conflicting urges to preen and to cover himself up. "It means that the anomalies must be of human origin and that Helen has found a way to master them." Which was pretty bloody terrifying, and Nick wasn't quite ready to face the idea just yet. Instead, he launched into a monologue of possibilities: Helen's possible motives, the possible changes coming up in the current timeline (was there even an Anomaly Research Center anymore? And what about Abby? Nick rather liked the new, kick-ass version of her, especially since she spent far less time hanging off of Stephen. Which, in retrospect, should have been a hint that maybe Nick's reaction to Stephen sleeping with Helen had less to do with Helen and more to do with, well, Stephen), the ways that Nick could use his knowledge from the previous timeline to speed along Connor's inventions. He finished by stating the obvious: "So, you can see that it's vitally important that we find Helen as soon as possible."
Stephen listened patiently as Nick rambled, looking thoughtful and occasionally nodding his head. The moment Nick stopped talking, however, Stephen ducked his head under the blankets and scooted down the bed.
"Oh! Well, maybe we can talk about this later," Nick said breathlessly.
Stephen hummed.
"Much...much later."
END