Finally got around to posting the rest of this :) Huge thanks to everyone who has reviewed/favourited/alerted so far.

'Oh!' Natalie turned to Ryan with a luminous smile. 'I nearly didn't recognise you in uniform!'

There was a second's pause, which felt to Ryan much much longer, and during which he had a strong sense of impending doom, before Natalie announced,

'And this is Ryan! Stephen's partner!'

Even Connor appeared lost for words.

Ryan had always considered himself a forthright, blunt sort of person. If he had a problem, he dealt with it. He was not a believer in agonising. He was also extremely difficult to embarrass, and had no patience with people who, when in a difficult situation, prayed for the ground to swallow them whole.

However, as he stood, surrounded by a team of crack scientists, a couple of his men, and two Malibu Barbies, he was rapidly reconsidering that particular philosophy. Right now, it would be quite nice just to sink through the floor and avoid this entire issue.

Summoning the courage that had won him promotion to Special Forces Captain, Ryan shot a glance sideways at Stephen. The other man had his eyes shut, and if Ryan were to hazard a guess at what was going on inside his head, he would have said Stephen was either praying for divine intervention or reverting to the five year old adage that if you can't see a problem, it can't see you. Obviously he was going to be no help.

Abby had turned away politely, and was looking entranced across the entrance car park as though it were the best thing since sliced bread, but no well-mannered averting of gaze could hide the fact that her shoulders were shaking with laughter.

Connor and the Professor, neither world-renowned for their tact, were still staring in shock, and Cutter's mouth was literally hanging open as he stared as his lab assistant.

Malibu Barbie's friend, whom, due to a lack of surnames in the introductions Ryan had mentally christened Simply Sharon, was staring at Becker and Squid with something of a predatory look on her face. The two soldiers were both standing casually, and deliberately not looking in her direction.

Whoever had uttered the phrase 'silence is golden' was clearly a prat because Ryan had never experienced a silence as horribly awkward and suffocating as this. Swivelling his gaze, Ryan looked at the last member of the happy crowd, Motor Mouth herself. To his horror, she was looking right back at him.

Unfortunately, Natalie appeared to misinterpret his horrified look, because she smiled guiltily and simpered,

'Oh dear, have I put my foot in it? God, I'm so sorry, I'm such a blabbermouth!'

Only the gentlemen buried somewhere deep inside him kept Ryan from agreeing with her wholeheartedly.

'God, I'm such an idiot, I'm so so sorry! I didn't realise it was all a big secret! I mean, you seemed so confident about it last night and…'

At the words 'confident about it last night', Ryan could almost feel five sets of eyes swivel and land eagerly on him and Stephen, clearly wondering exactly what they had been confident about the previous evening. He swiftly decided that he had to stop Natalie talking. As in, now. Sadly, as Stephen had discovered last night, he had more chance of stopping the Terminator single-handedly than of halting her in mid-sentence.

'…and I just thought, I mean nowadays, it's much more accepted isn't it, so I just presumed all your friends would know, because, you know, most people are totally fine with it, and I mean, you do look so good together, it's really rather sweet….'

'Oh Christ,' Ryan muttered, rather more loudly than he had intended to.

Natalie paused and looked at him questioningly.

'Pardon?'

Luckily at that moment Stephen cleared his throat. Stepping forward, he bestowed a gleaming smiled on the girl in front of him.

'Don't worry about it Natalie. You weren't to know it wasn't public knowledge. It all had to come out sometime anyway.'

'It did?' Ryan asked, before he could stop himself.

Stephen shot him a Look, which Ryan returned with gusto. What the fuck was Hart playing at? Where were the vehement denials? The 'This is all a fucking mistake's? He could only imagine the looks of sheer glee that would be spreading over Squid and Becker's faces right this minute. Special Forces was a euphemism for rumour mill, and this would quite possibly be the best gossip they'd had all year.

Natalie had opened her mouth, presumably to apologise some more, but Stephen cut her off. Despite himself Ryan was impressed.

'Really, Natalie it's fine. It wasn't your fault at all, you couldn't have known. There's no need to apologise…'

At this, Stephen appeared to have run out of things to say, and he looked to Ryan for help. Very surprisingly, it was Nick who came to the rescue.

'And now, if you'll excuse us, we have to get to work. It was nice to meet you.'

The Professor bestowed a warm smile on Natalie and her friend, and Ryan found himself absently noting how his eyes crinkled at the corners as he did so. And wonderfully, the combination of the smile and the Scottish accent appeared to have charmed Natalie and Sharon because they both smiled back, and began to utter goodbyes.

Abby reached over, and opened the door to the car park, and Stephen dashed through it, completely obvious in his desperation to be as far away from the situation as possible. He was followed by a still giggling Abby, Connor, Becker and Squid, and lastly the Professor.

As Ryan shouldered his pack and moved towards the door, Natalie leant in close, smiling conspiratorially. Ryan refused to allow himself to recoil, figuring he owed her that because she had seemed genuinely sorry.

She leant closer and closer and he thought for one heart-freezing second she might kiss him, but she just smiled ever the wider, and bent to whisper in his ear,

'I do hope it will be okay. I'd hate to see anything happen, because you and Stephen, you do make the cutest couple.'

The indignity at being referred to as both 'sweet' and 'cute' in the space of five minutes overrode Ryan's gentlemanly attempts not to recoil, and he staggered backwards.

Sensing Hart's eyes watching curiously from across the car park, Ryan pasted a weak smile onto his face, hoping his expression read 'Thank you for your support' as opposed to 'Say that again and I might have to machine gun you', and made a hasty bid for freedom and the Land Rover.

It wasn't until they were a good fifteen minutes into the drive to their first destination that Ryan finally found himself relaxing slightly, lulled by the breath-taking scenery flashing past the window. Stephen was driving, having reached the car long before anyone else, and this had the advantage of him not having to worry about the near death experiences they frequently experienced when Miss Maitland took the wheel.

Squid was once more draped over the back of land rover, and impressively, considering both the heat and the space available, Cutter was asleep in the back seat.

Ryan was riding shotgun, which was nice, because he hadn't much fancied being squashed in the back, directly in the firing range for jokes. At least this way there was a barrier of about four inches of foam and fabric in between him and the rest of the team.

Unfortunately, the price he had had to pay for this luxury had been Squid bowing low and swoopingly offering him the seat next to Stephen with a grin on his face that intimated he might just have won the lottery whilst having sex. When they returned to the ARC, Ryan would find some suitably heinous task, possibly related to babysitting Connor on field trips, as revenge for that.

Another five or so minutes passed in silence before Abby finally broke the peace, and really, Ryan was impressed that her self-control had lasted that long.

'So…guys…an explanation?'

Ryan sighed.

'It was a mistake. Last night, Natalie decided to pounce on the brooding and mysterious man alone in the corner and Hart is too much of a gentleman to tell her to piss off. When things progressed to the stage where it looked like he might get eaten alive, I staged a rescue, and got rid of her.'

'By playing the gay card?'

Even in a mere five words, the incredulity in Abby's voice rang loud and clear. Stephen chose this moment to butt in.

'Apparently it was either that or 'disturbingly close brothers'.'

There was a muffled snort and then some gasping, and Ryan wondered idly if someone had choked. Preferably Becker. After a couple of seconds, Abby spoke up again, sounding surprisingly composed.

'Nothing to it really then?'

Was it Ryan's imagination or did she sound the tiniest bit disappointed?

'No.'

'So…why did Stephen tell Natalie it was true?'

And why, just why, did Temple have to choose this moment to showcase a previously unforeseen intuition?

'Because if I admitted I was in fact not gay, I had a horrible feeling I'd be on the receiving end of another come-on.'

'Oh right.'

Stephen's answer appeared to satisfy both Connor and Abby. And really, Ryan could see there was a lot of truth to what he'd said. For someone so unfairly attractive, Hart really did seem awkward about that sort of liaison.

There was quiet in the truck for a few seconds, and Ryan dared to hope they might have satisfied the curiosity. But then Becker opened his mouth and that hope was blown to kingdom come.

'You're definitely not doing Hart then?'

Typically Becker was looking for his own confirmation from Ryan, probably because he knew Ryan had few qualms about lying, unless it was to people he actually gave a damn about. And as the Best Mate, Becker sadly fell into that category - although after that particularly blunt question, Ryan was struggling to remember quite why.

'No Becker. I am not doing Stephen. Clear enough for you?'

'Crystal.'

'So can we fucking drop it?'

As soon as he'd uttered the words, Ryan knew he'd potentially made a huge mistake. He didn't have to turn around to see the smirk he knew would be on Becker's face right now.

'Drop it?'

The tone of Becker's voice implied Ryan had in fact suggested he try to juggle giraffes while dancing naked in the middle of Trafalgar Square.

Silently, he weighed up the likelihood of being able to murder Becker before they returned to the ARC, making it look entirely accidental, of course.

Eventually, somewhat later than planned, they arrived at their destination. The journey had gone swimmingly until they had had to turn off the main road (and admittedly, up until that point there had only been one option in terms of direction), and had from then on disintegrated into snapping at each other, pouring over incomprehensible maps and cursing to high heaven the lack of Australian road signs.

All-in-all, it had been to much relief all round that Connor had spotted the sign reading 'Backerwell Storage Facilities' and Stephen had turned off the road, and driven through a pair of ominously spiked iron gates.

They were now standing in what appeared to be a scrap metal yard, and waiting for whoever it was that had buzzed them through the gates. Remembering Cutter's earlier description of this place as a Government storage facility, Ryan was amusing himself by picturing Lester's face if the man could see the differences between Backerwell and the ARC. Where the ARC was all shiny chrome, and modern minimalism, Backerwell was old heaps of machinery in corners, the faint clanging of metal, and large nondescript grey buildings, presumably for the aforementioned 'storage'.

When he was done with this and there was still no sign of life, Ryan turned his attention to trying to catch Stephen's eye, still slightly curious about the other man's performance back in the hotel reception. However, Stephen appeared devoutly interested in the toes of his hiking boots and was resolutely avoiding Ryan's gaze.

Sighing, Ryan scanned the rest of the team, and was somewhat alarmed to find Abby's eyes on him, a gleam of mischief and amusement present in the light blue. He'd caught her catching him watching Stephen, only she thought that she'd caught him watching Stephen. Fuck. Ryan pulled his expressionless façade back into place and smiled at her politely, the way the Prime Minister might smile at a political enemy.

Abby, unfortunately, grinned right back, seeming un-fooled and completely undeterred. Ryan was forcefully reminded of why he never again wanted to marry a woman, and why they should perhaps, run the world.

Behind him Squid was teaching Becker a rude rhyme about hobgoblins.

It had taken all of fifteen minutes for the scientist that was supposed to have been meeting them to actually appear, and when he did it was in a flurry of mismatched clothing, misplaced spectacles, and misremembered names (Abby became Amy, Professor Cutter became Professor Cooter and the unfortunate Squid became Squat).

The resemblance to Nick was alarmingly strong, and Ryan had a distinct suspicion he'd just met Professor Cutter, Australian style.

They were ushered through an endless maze of identical corridors. Whatever organisational skills this Professor might have, he clearly had an unfailing sense of direction.

The corridors were all lined with grey doors, which Ryan could only presume lead to storage vaults, and after a five minute walk, the Professor, who had since introduced himself as Michael Gray, stopped in front of one labelled 317.

He cranked down a handle, and with a hiss of escaping air, the door slid open. The Professor held the door, and single-file, they all shuffled in.

The air inside the vault was very cold, presumably to preserve its contents, and it was a lot bigger than Ryan had been expecting; roughly fifteen square metres in floor space.

However, it wasn't so much the amount of space that he was finding the most shocking, but the object that was taking it up.

In the centre of the room, curled concentrically into a circle, was the largest snake skin Ryan had ever seen, and that included in horror films. He traced it with his eyes, from the pointed tip of the tail, all the way round three spirals, to the outline of a head that was roughly the size of a well-fed cow.

'Bloody hell,' Squid muttered in Ryan's ear, and Ryan would have been prepared to bet his grandmother that the other man was thinking something a lot ruder.

Professor Gray didn't seemed discouraged by their unhinged jaws and gormless expressions, because he moved right up to the skin, stroked a hand lovingly along a length of the back and said,

'Quite impressive isn't she?'

'She?' The disbelief in the normally immovable Becker's voice perfectly represented what Ryan himself was feeling.

Professor Gray did not seem to pick up on the tone though, and replied seriously,

'I call her Rita.'

Squid emitted a strangled squawk that sounded halfway between laughter and horror.

'We found her a couple of miles away from here, in the boundaries of one of the outlying ranches. A ranch hand discovered her while checking the perimeter fence. Called it into the police who contacted my team…' Cutter made a questioning noise, '…I'm head of the Zoology Department at Queensland University. Of course we've never seen anything like it. The ranch hand seemed to think it was some kind of mythical monster, but it looks to me more like some kind of hybrid, or experiment.'

Ryan took from this that the Government hadn't considered it necessary to tell the Professor about the anomalies.

Gray, now absently polishing a scale with the corner of his jacket, was still talking.

'…funny, the ranch hand and those Government men seemed quite disgusted by her. I can't understand it – never come across a specimen like this in my life, and probably never will again. She's magnificent, absolutely…'

'Beautiful,' murmured Cutter, who had apparently regained his voice. He moved forward, bending to examine the skin in more detail.

'Oh my God, there's two of them,' Squid muttered.

Ryan suppressed a smile; watching the two Professors - now talking animatedly and gesturing at various parts of the snake's anatomy. Gray was looking at Cutter in glee, obviously delighted at finding a kindred spirit, and Cutter looked like Christmas had come early.

After a few moments, Abby and Connor moved forward to join in. Knowing Abby's love of reptiles and Connor's boundless enthusiasm for everything prehistoric, this did not surprise Ryan in the slightest.

He, however, along with Becker and Squid remained firmly stationed by the door.

'Well,' Becker murmured, 'there's no accounting for taste.'

'Beauty is in the eye of beholder,' Squid reminded him sagely.

Looking sideways at Stephen, Ryan had to agree with this wholeheartedly.

Cutter was looking at 'Rita' as though he'd rather like to take her home and display her in his living room. The expression of complete and utter revulsion on Stephen's face was saying something else entirely.