"I didn't think I would see this again." Connor said quietly to Abby but Becker was close enough to hear it, too. He wondered when exactly during the last seven months they had given up on being rescued.
Danny on the other hand looked curiously around and said with a wide grin:
"It's good to be home."
"Rex!" Abby laughed when he came sailing through the ARC and landed on her shoulder. Rex chirped, apparently equally happy to see Abby again.
"Where are Sid and Nancy?" Connor asked. He looked at Becker but it was Lester, who had just come down the ramp, who answered:
"I hope you don't mind sharing them because my kids are rather fond of them." He told them in a tone as if none of them had spent months in another time. He nodded at Becker:
"Good work, Captain."
"Thank you, sir."
Before Lester could say anything Abby had already crossed the distance and hugged him tightly.
"Thank you." Becker could hear her whisper: "Thank you."
Lester returned the hug awkwardly but when Abby let go he pulled Connor into his arms nonetheless and really, Becker thought, someone should have taken a picture of this occasion.
But of course that had been the easiest part of this whole mess. There were people that wanted to know exactly what had happened when and where and how. Connor, Abby and Danny had to answer thousands of similar questions and recount every day of the last seven months at least twice.
Becker kept his distance, watching them from afar. He noticed that Abby and Connor were even closer than before but told himself to shove his jealousy somewhere else. After all this time and everything that happened he had no claim on Connor anymore and it would only be natural if Abby and Connor...
Becker shut his eyes for a moment. It hurt to think about it, about the possibility that Connor wouldn't want him anymore.
/
It was late when Becker finally got to leave the ARC with Connor. He had been faintly but pleasantly surprised when Connor had asked him if he could sleep with him. The trouble still hadn't died down and wouldn't for a while but Lester had put his foot down so that Connor and Abby would get to sleep in a real bed after seven months in the Jurassic.
If he hadn't had to drive he wouldn't have taken his eyes off of Connor at all but he had to drive and made do with throwing him glances whenever he could. A part of him was still afraid that Connor would vanish without a trace as soon as he looked away. Seven months... it had been so unlikely that they would still be alive. But even Lester had snapped at everyone who as much as implied that his team might be dead. Danny had the tans of all tans and had to stay in the infirmary over night and Abby's badly healed fracture would have to be re-broken and set right but they were all alive and they were all here.
"Stop staring at me!" Connor snapped.
"Sorry," Becker answered immediately and tried to keep his eyes on the road.
"Hilary..."Connor hesitated and Becker's heart beat faster, whether in anticipation or in fear he couldn't have said. Connor shook his head:
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean it."
"It's okay."
They reached Becker's flat without another word between them and except for asking for a razor they didn't exchange any words in the flat either. Becker went to the kitchen and made tea. He remembered that Connor liked red tea so sweet that it made your teeth ache.
"Hilary." Connor called from the bathroom and Becker came immediately. He found Connor on a stool, freshly shaven with a pair of scissors in his hand, which he held out to Becker.
"Please."
"I'm not very good at this." Becker warned him.
"I suppose hairdressers didn't die out while I wasn't here, did they?" Connor asked with a ghost of his former smile. Becker watched him in the mirror and thought that Connor looked younger without the beard but with the longer hair. Becker ran his fingers carefully through Connor's hair and cut it down to the length he remembered it had before.
He wondered if Sarah was doing the same for Abby on the other side of the city.
"Do you want to talk about it?" He asked after a while and could have punched himself because Connor just had spend the whole day talking about what had happened in the Jurassic.
"No, not ...yet. Do you?"
"Do I what?"
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"Why?"
"It was a long time for you, too, wasn't it?"
"It was seven months."
"Huh..." Connor sounded surprised: "It felt a lot longer."
"I bet it did."
Connor looked down as if he was counting the tiles but when he looked back up he met Becker's eyes in the mirror.
"I know I was gone a long time. If you met someone else you can tell me, I promise I won't die of shock."
"What makes you think that?" Becker was genuinely shocked. For the past sixteen months he had thought of nothing else but getting Connor back, Abby and Danny too, but first Connor.
"You didn't touch me all day. I think even Lester touched me more than you did."
"I didn't know whether..." Becker trailed off because it sounded ridiculous now but he had feared that Connor and Abby...He dropped the scissors into the sink and rested his hands on Connor's shoulders.
"You can have the bed." He finished finally: "I'll sleep on the couch."
Connor let him go without another word.
/
Becker didn't sleep one second during this night. He didn't pace around or watch Connor sleep because he didn't know what reaction either would provoke from Connor but he laid on his side, on the couch, facing the bedroom door and tried to remember how to breathe.
The next morning wasn't any less awkward or maybe it was but only because they didn't talk beside the necessary small talk. Becker remembered saying things like
"You can stay here as long as you want to." And
"We're working on that anomaly opening machine, maybe you want to take a look at it later?"
And a thousand of other things that felt hollow and flat as soon as he said them out loud.
Connor interrupted him when Becker was beginning to clean their breakfast dishes.
"You don't have to do this, you know?" Becker stared at him and Connor shrugged uneasily: "I mean if you don't want to."
"Connor, why wouldn't I want to-"Becker began but when he caught Connor's expression he realised something: "You didn't think we would come for you."
Connor shrugged as if he wanted to avoid answering but then did it nonetheless:
"It seemed...unlikely, especially after a while. I mean I knew firsthand how hard it had been to get where we were in the first place and for all you knew the Afar region was far more important than ours." Something of Connor's old tendency to ramble resurfaced: "And if you have to choose between two of your friends and humanity then you have to choose humanity, no matter what."
Once upon a time he would have joked to Connor that saving him and humanity wasn't mutually exclusive like it always was in the movies because real life didn't work that way but that time was long gone, seven months gone to be exact.
Instead of everything else he should have, could have said, Becker asked:
"Do you want more tea?"
Connor visibly retreated into himself but Becker didn't have the courage to help him. They had sent him into three different warzones and he was fighting creatures from all Earth Era's but that had happened to him, not to someone else and certainly not to someone he love-...Becker suppressed the thought violently like he had done so often in the past seven months in order to stay sane.
"No, thanks" Connor replied with a fake smile.
/
Connor made a phone call while Becker was under the shower but he could guess who it had been Connor had called because he picked up his clothes and put them into his spare clothes bag he had kept at the ARC.
"Are you..." Becker and Connor stood in the hallway in front of the locker rooms after another day of questions without end.
"No." Connor interrupted him quickly: "I'll sleep at a – friend's place."
"You could come back. I told you I don't mind." An awkward silence followed and Becker quietly cursed himself because he sounded like he was having Connor for pity when nothing could be farer from the truth.
"I think we expected too much too soon from each other." Connor said finally: "We should take things slow."
"Slow." Becker repeated.
"I promise I'll come to work tomorrow." Connor added with a brief but sincere smile.
"Tomorrow then."
"Tomorrow." Connor agreed and left Becker standing in the empty hallway, trying to remember how to breathe.
Connor, however, did come back to the ARC the next day, trailing in behind Lester and Becker, while it still felt harder to breathe each time he lost Connor from his sight, at least remembered how to do it.