They stole their moments together, in between marking tests, running classes, attending classes there was not a terrible amount of time left for them to spend together and the anomalies took up far too much of that. So spending time together always left something else pushed into the background, they'd be sitting together having dinner and Nick's unmarked papers would be pushed onto the lounge.
Sex often meant Stephen would be up preparing for a grant application or Connor would be awake at four in the morning finishing an assignment.
And all over the top of it the massive amount of work associated with the anomalies was always hanging over them.
Every moment of every day they should have been doing something else. Pushing things to the last minute and occasionally beyond, they stole moments, hording them as their ability to push things away disappeared as the crises came.
But they could never regret the anomalies, because they, for all they frustration and pain and time consumption were what had brought them together. Nick and Stephen had been missing something before they became Nick, Stephen and Connor and they, however much they hated having to steal their moments together, could not hate what had brought them together in the first place.