Connor wasn't hiding. He wasn't. He was just...making a tactical retreat. Yeah, that's what it was. In an air duct. Because that was totally normal. Yep.

With a sigh, he laid his head down on the cool metal, hands clasped over the back of his neck. Caroline and Abby had gotten into it again, and he had made a break for it as soon as the claws came out. Why did birds always have to make things so bloody difficult all the time? He didn't get it. He would've thought that Abby would be happy that he got a girlfriend as much as she snapped at him for trying to flirt. She'd already made it abundantly clear that he had a snowflake's chance in hell with her, so what had her knickers in a twist?

He wriggled forward on his belly until he could look down through the grate at the lab that he was currently above. He'd told Cutter and Stephen once that he got claustrophobia, which was kind of true. He did freak out in small spaces, but only if he didn't know how to get out of them. Air ducts didn't scare him; he liked them. It was quiet and cool and nobody ever bothered him in them. By his third day in the ARC, he'd memorized the entire air system.

He couldn't not-hide at the flat, and he and Duncan still weren't on speaking terms after –

Wincing, he shied away from the memory of Tom, not feeling up to rubbing salt in that particular wound today. Either way, he didn't have a bolt-hole to not-hide in anymore, so that only left him with the ARC. Which was actually the coolest place to not-hide ever, because the whole building was full of little nooks and crannies, just like Serenity. He wasn't anywhere near as smart or as badass as River, but he could still find a good place to...not-hide. Because he wasn't hiding. Nope.

Sometimes it felt like he had a lot to not-hide from. Between Abby and her snarling, snapping temper, Cutter potentially losing his marbles, Stephen being sulky and hurt after the whole thing with Helen (that still made his stomach roll, that thought), there was a lot going on that he had absolutely no idea what to do with. Connor hated feeling that way. He didn't like not-hiding from things, he liked to help. But he couldn't very much help stubborn-arsed people that either wouldn't let him or didn't want him to help.

He looked back through the grate again, watching the techs scurry around, like busy little ants in white coats. Lucky buggers. They didn't have to worry about not-hiding from their girlfriends or their flatmates fighting like angry cats in a bag, or from irate professors with a stubborn streak a kilometre wide and a mean right hook, or from trackers trying so hard to act like nothing bothered him when he was hurting so much it made Connor ache.

Closing his eyes for a moment, he laid his head down on the cool metal, wishing that the ARC was like the Serenity, and he could just take a shuttle, fly off, and come back after everyone pulled their heads out of their collective arses.

The AC kicked on, and he felt the breeze ruffle his hair and his clothes. He heard the sound of Cutter's thick burr demanding to know 'where the bloody hell Temple was' and opened his eyes, looking down to see a familiar set of shoulders in a faded military coat and a shaggy mess of red-gold hair. He let out a quiet sigh.

As much as he wanted to, he couldn't not-hide up here all day. Connor started crawling back the way he'd come, towards another lab that he knew was always empty and he could drop down onto one of the desks from the ceiling. He didn't want anybody else to know that he spent so much time in the ARC's air system. Lester would probably find a way to make him leave, and he wouldn't have a bolt-hole anymore.

Maybe the ARC wasn't the Serenity, but it was still a pretty good place to...not-hide.

Because he wasn't hiding.