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fredbassettTitle : The Ghost and Mr Temple, Part 3 of 3
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Characters : Becker, Connor, Lester, Cutter, Stephen, Abby, Lyle, Blade, Ditzy, Finn, (Ryan)
Rating : 15
Word Count : 12,700 (posting in three parts)
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue
Spoilers : None.
Summary : Connor begins to suspect that something strange is going on.
Warning : None.
A/N : Written for my darling Evil Twin,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
munchkinofdoom for her birthday. Thanks to lukadreaming for the fastest beta on record. This is a sequel to The Ghost and Miss Maitland and The Ghost and Captain Becker. I will be posting in three parts. Link to Part 1. Link to Part 2.
Becker’s earpiece crackled and he heard Blade’s voice announcing through the anomaly-induced static that another overgrown kangaroo had just been successfully sent home.
This shout hadn’t been too bad – by their standards. The worst they’d had by way of a casualty count had been a badly-winded Stephen, who’d been punched in the stomach by one of the creatures as they’d been hauling it back to the anomaly in a net. He’d no doubt have a few bruises to show for the encounter, but that was all.
Becker was standing in the middle of the cluster of decaying buildings, staring around, ticking off the ones they’d already checked from his mental list when the harsh cry of a seagull drew his attention. Several of the birds had been perched on the roof of one of the larger warehouses but were now flapping away, mewling in irritation. The source of their disturbance became obvious a few moments later as the sound of falling bricks echoed inside the ruin. Becker grimaced. The whole bloody place was coming apart at the seams. At this rate most of the buildings would be a heap of rubble before the bulldozers even moved in.
A procoptodon came bounding out of the building. Becker acted on instinct and swung his Mossberg 590 off his shoulder as he got ready to chamber a round. The beast hopped straight towards him, covering the ground as though it was had springs on its paws, or whatever you called a kangaroo’s feet.
Becker stepped aside and spoke into his throat mike. “There’s a skippy heading your way, Lyle. Lay out a welcome mat, will you?”
Lyle’s reply was only just recognisable through the static buzz, but Becker caught enough to know his message had been heard. He was about to demand a sit rep from the rest of the team when a prickle in his fingertips betrayed Ryan’s presence in the immediate vicinity. A sudden sense of urgency gripped Becker and without even knowing why, he started running towards the building that had just disgorged the procoptodon, a dark shadow matching him step for step.
Becker hesitated just outside the doorway, viewing the crumbling warehouse with some trepidation. It looked like part of an internal wall had come down, taking out a section of floor in the process. The air was full of brick dust and the smell of rotting wood. He flicked on the barrel-mounted torch attachment on his combat shotgun sending a beam of light across the debris-strewn floor. Rats scurried for cover.
The torchlight illuminated Ryan’s semi-solid form standing now on the edge of a gaping hole in the floor, with jagged roof-beams poking out of it like blackened, broken limbs.
Ryan pointed down into the hole and, in a voice that sounded like winter wind, Becker heard him say, “Connor!”
“Fuck.” Becker made his way carefully across the floor, conscious that it was creaking ominously with every step he took. “We have a man down!” He spoke quickly into his radio, but only a burst of static greeted his words. He swore under his breath and carried on edging forwards. Anomaly-fouled comms were the bane of their bloody lives and today was obviously going to be no exception. He yelled the same words as loudly as he could in the hope that someone was near enough to hear, but from the look of agitation on Ryan’s face, there was no time to go in search of help.
The floorboards creaked again like breaking ice. Becker went down on his hands and knees to spread his weight and crawled towards the hole. The gun-mounted torch illuminated a horrific tangle of broken joists and fallen bricks and glinted off the swirls of oil lying on top of dark river water. But what caught his attention with the force of a steel trap closing on his mind was the sight of one gloved hand, floating listlessly on the surface of the water.
Becker swore violently and, without even stopping to think, swung his legs into the hole and dropped down into the water. The cold took his breath away and he floundered amongst the debris, grabbing for Connor’s hand and trying to pull him up to the surface.
In the dim light reaching into the flooded area underneath the rotting floor he saw Connor’s deathly pale face break the surface of the water, dark hair plastered across his face, eyes closed, mouth partly open.
“Fucking shit!” Becker managed to get foothold on something and tried to get his hands under Connor’s armpits to haul him out of the water. His efforts brought about an absolutely zero result. “Ryan, for fuck’s sake, he’s trapped!”
Becker stared around desperately, looking for something he could use to keep Connor’s head out of the water while he tried to shift the debris off his chest and legs. A section of broken floorboard floated on top of the foul-smelling water. Becker grabbed it and tried to wedge it behind Connor’s head. He couldn’t even tell if the young man was breathing or not.
The rubble and wood in the water shifted ominously and a brick fell from somewhere, narrowly missing Connor’s face. But it obviously wasn’t the only one that had fallen close to him. Blood was running sluggishly from a jagged wound on Connor’s cheek and it looked like he had another cut close to his hairline. Becker propped him up as best he could and felt with his hands beneath the water to try to discover what was pinning him now. His fingers encountered what felt like a metal girder pressing down onto Connor’s hips. He tugged at it experimentally and felt it give fractionally, but not enough to enable him to drag Connor free.
He floundered in the water in the water, looking for something to use as a lever. “Ryan, get help!”
He had no idea if the ghost was still there or not, but he didn’t think Ryan would have deserted his young lover in a situation like this. Becker was too chilled from the water to feel Ryan’s presence, but he could feel a heightened sense of urgency pressing in on him and guessed that the ghost’s agitation was somehow transmitting to him.
“For fuck’s sake, I need some help here fast!” Becker reached down again and grabbed hold of the girder. He wedged his feet against a pile of rubble under water and heaved. The girder shifted again, but still not enough. He gritted his teeth and strained against it, feeling the muscles in his shoulders harden with the struggle.
The sight of Connor’s deathly pale face, lolling in the water, acted as a spur to Becker, but he still couldn’t shift the heavy bar.
“Get Ditzy! I need rope and I need it now!” The sudden emptiness in the air told its own tale. Becker was alone apart from Connor’s still form. Becker wondered for a minute if he should try breathing some air into Connor’s lungs, but overriding everything else was the knowledge that he had to shift the girder and get Connor out of the water so they could work on him properly.
With renewed desperation, Becker threw himself back into the task, heaving and tugging at the metalwork, heedless of the debris pile moving around him and the sound of more objects falling into the water. Something struck him on the shoulder but he shrugged it off. The girder shifted again and for a moment Becker’s hopes flared and he tried tugging again at Connor’s limp form, but all did was dislodge the plank of wood that had been preventing his head slipping back under the water.
Becker swore under his breath again and tried to jam the plank back into position. A moment later he felt a prickle of static electricity on his skin. The sensation raised the hairs on the back of his neck, but went some way to counteracting the bone-numbing cold of the water.
“Ryan?”
“They’re coming.” The voice sounded like it was inside his head. “But they won’t be soon enough. We need to get him out now. Let me in, Becker. Between us we can shift it.”
Becker stared into the darkness. “What do you mean?”
“Let me in,” Ryan’s voice was low and compulsive and Becker could feel the tug of an unearthly power. “Trust me, Becker. If you don’t, we’ll lose him. He’s still alive, I can feel it, but he won’t be if we wait for the others. Trust me!”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Let me in…” As Ryan’s voice sounded in his head, Becker felt that familiar static prickle along his skin. He forced himself to relax, but it wasn’t easy. He had a precarious footing on a mostly submerged pile of rubble and Connor was dying – possibly dead – not exactly circumstances in which relaxing came easily. He sucked in a deep breath and expelled it as slowly as he could. The prickle on his skin sank deeper and for a moment every nerve flamed inside him. He felt like he was viewing events from somewhere in the back of his head, distant and getting more so by the second…
“Don’t fight me!”
Ryan’s voice was definitely inside his head now and, with a sudden sick certainty, Becker knew that he was no longer in control of his own actions. His hands sunk down under the surface of the water and gripped the metal girder again. Becker’s feet shifted on the rubble and moved into a better stance and then he leaned back and pulled with a strength that he knew wasn’t his own. He could feel Ryan inside his head, inside his body, taking command, directing his limbs. He felt the girder start to move.
Ryan sent more strength flooding into Becker’s body and he... they… heaved for a second time. More rubble started to fall as the girder shifted abruptly. Becker felt his muscles straining against the weight of the trapped beam and wondered vaguely how far Ryan was capable of forcing his body into action.
“Trust me, Becker.” The voice was that of a man well-used to commanding others and in spite of his own fears Becker knew that he did trust Ryan. Although he’d never met the man while he was still alive, Becker had worked closely with enough men who had known Ryan, trusted him and even loved him. It was a good enough testimonial for him. It would have to be.
Becker lowered defences he hadn’t even known he possessed, letting Ryan come fully into both his body and his mind.
A final heave wrenched the girder free of whatever was holding it down. Connor’s limp form slipped sideways. Becker was dimly conscious of shoving the girder to one side and grabbing a handful of wet clothes, heaving the unconscious form out of the water.
Connor was too white, too cold. His head flopped lifelessly on his shoulders, dirty water streaming from his dark hair.
Ryan hauled him up and stared up at the hole in the floor. By now Becker was merely an onlooker, watching what was going on through his own eyes, but not directing the actions of his own body.
“Ditzy, I need some fucking help here!” The words came out of Becker’s mouth but it didn’t sound like his voice.
“With you, boss.” The medic’s voice was as calm as ever.
Hands reached down and grabbed at Connor’s jacket. Ryan – Becker – struggled upright on the ever-shifting pile of debris. More bricks and rubble started to slip into the water and above them the wooden flooring creaked even more ominously than it had already been doing. Another surge of strength rippled through Becker’s body and Connor was hoisted into the air, boosted from below and pulled from above. Water cascaded off his limp body and the splintered wood snatched at his clothing and then he was pulled out of sight.
The debris pile started to slide, shifting like quicksand, Becker felt himself slipping and something struck him in the back, sending him face down in the water. His black combat gear was sodden and heavy, pulling him down. Water flooded his nose and mouth and a numbing cold was seeping into his bones. Around him unseen walls started to close in…
“Boss!” The part of Becker’s mind that was still capable of independent thought registered that the new voice was Blade’s and it was invested with an unhealthy urgency. “The whole fucking place is about to come down. Grab my hand!”
His limbs moved almost of their own volition, but Becker knew that Ryan was still in control. He struggled upright, got a foot on… something and stretched his arms upwards. A hand grabbed his wrist and tugged. Fingers gripped the straps of his equipment vest and Becker felt himself being pulled out of the water. Wood snagged at his clothing and he felt – and heard – material ripping but the cold had numbed his flesh and if anything more than his clothing had been damaged, he was too far gone to notice.
He struggled to his hands and knees, shaking off the hands that had pulled him clear of the hole. “Connor!”
“Outside, boss,” Blade told him, getting an arm around him and hauling him to his feet. “Come on, that’s where we need to be as well…”
With Blade’s assistance, he moved at a lurching run, dodging more falling debris. The whole bloody building seemed to be collapsing in on itself. They made it out into the courtyard, where a press of bodies screened whatever was going on from their eyes. Becker felt a surge of fear but didn’t know if it was his own emotion or Ryan’s, or a mixture of both. He shouldered his way past a clearly anxious Cutter without even a muttered apology.
Connor’s lifeless body was stretched out in a damp puddle on the weed-broken concrete. Ditzy was kneeling at his side, his face set in a determined mask as he performed chest compressions.
Hope surged in Becker’s own chest. He knew – without knowing how he knew – that Connor was still alive. He could feel it, a small spark of life that the medic was working hard to reignite. He dropped to his knees next to them and reached out to cradle Connor’s limp hand in his own.
Ditzy met his eyes. The normally imperturbable medic blanched. “Ryan…?”
“Save him, David. Bring him back…” Ryan spoke through him, but Becker threw his own entreaty into the words. Since his secondment to the anomaly project, Becker had gradually come to view all of the civilian members of the team as not just his responsibility but his friends as well, even the irascible Cutter and his reserved, sometimes remote, assistant, Stephen Hart. As for the younger members of the team, it was impossible not to know Connor and Abby without warming to them.
Ditzy nodded and bent his head to exhale into Connor’s mouth, before returning again to the chest compressions.
Ryan gripped his lover’s hand harder and Becker felt some of the strength ebb from his own body. He didn’t know what means of energy transference Ryan had employed down in the water-filled hole, but somehow the ghost had been able to take over and direct his actions, lending him strength in a way that Becker didn’t understand.
And if it had worked once…
Becker fought against fog that had settled on his mind, thrusting his own consciousness against Ryan’s, trying to open a link direct to the man who lay on the ground in front of them, the object of Ditzy’s single-minded efforts.
For a brief moment he felt Ryan resist him. “Don’t fight me, you idiot!” Becker had no idea whether he’d spoken those words aloud or in his own head, but either way, they were effective. Ryan pulled back, this time letting Becker direct their combined efforts. Energy prickled along Becker’s skin and he let it flow down into his fingers and into Connor’s too-still body.
Ditzy pressed hard and rhythmically on Connor’s chest.
Becker felt his own energy start to dwindle but, calmly and deliberately, he kept the link open. It was though he’d succeeded in opening one of his own veins and was letting the blood pour directly into Connor’s body. His head swum and he felt his own consciousness slipping away, but it didn’t matter. It was his job to keep the team alive and to hell with the personal cost…
He could feel Ryan lending him strength and between them they were succeeding in holding onto to that small, weakening spark of life, but Becker knew it would take everything he had to give and more. “Let me do this, Ryan,” he begged, the words forming in his own head where he knew Ryan could hear them. “Let me do this for him…let me go…”
He felt Ryan’s dilemma but Becker knew that even if it took whatever strength remained to him then he was willing to pay that price and he knew that even if it took whatever remained of Ryan’s own energy as well then that price too would be paid. Between them they could do this…
From somewhere, Becker heard a voice yelling urgently for Cutter. He was conscious of the people around them shifting position, attention divided, however unwillingly.
“Professor! The anomaly is flaring!” That was Lyle and the lieutenant’s shout held an urgency that Becker had rarely heard from him. In his experience Lyle was ice-cold under pressure, but something had broken through his normal composure.
Becker’s skin suddenly felt like it was on fire, heat surged through his body, driving the cold of his unexpected immersion in freezing water out of his limbs and replacing it with a sudden flush. For one sickening moment Becker thought he’d lost control of his bladder as his senses swam and he rocked on his heels. Strong hands steadied his shoulders and kept him from falling.
“The magnetism’s gone fucking crazy!” Lyle’s voice again, followed by the sound of boots on the concrete. Someone was running…
Becker felt like he’d been caught in a flashover as every nerve ending in his body ignited sending white hot pain through him. Only Ryan’s relentless hold on his mind held him back from the brink of unconsciousness. A jolt of energy leapt through his body and into Connor’s via their joined hands. A moment later, Connor convulsed under Ditzy’s ministration, his back arching off the ground as though he’d been hit by a jolt of electricity.
“Get out of there!” Even through the black haze crowding his mind, Becker recognised the fear in Cutter’s voice. Something was wrong with the anomaly and – with Ryan’s presence in both his body and his mind – electromagnetic energy was being transmitted through their link and into Connor’s body.
A second jolt followed the first, ripping a silent scream for Becker’s mouth and lifting Connor’s chest for a second time. Time seemed to slow to a crawl. Connor’s eyes flew open and he coughed, expelling water from his body and replacing it with air in one long, shuddering breath.
Ditzy grabbed his shoulders and turned Connor onto his side, holding him while he coughed and choked and coughed again, spitting out more water, his body shaking with the effort.
He was alive, he was fucking alive! A wild exultation coursed through Becker’s body. All he wanted was to take Connor in his arms and hold him until the spasms had passed. He reached out with both hands and, to his surprise, the medic surrendered Connor’s still-heaving body to him and he held his lover – no, Ryan’s lover – close to his chest and stroked the wet hair back from a face that he wanted to shower with kisses.
Connor blinked up at him, his pupils so wide that his eyes appeared almost black. Shock slid into something else, an expression that Becker had never seen on Connor’s face before… an expression he’d sometimes wondered if he’d ever get to see…
“Tom?” Connor’s voice was hoarse with coughing. “Tom…”
Warmth flooded Becker’s body again, although with less dramatic consequences this time. Compelled by a force that he would have had no chance of resisting even if he’d wanted to, Becker bent his head and kissed Connor lightly on the lips. Connor kissed him back. It was a kiss fuelled by desperation and something else, something that had never existed in any kiss Becker had shared before – something which certainly hadn’t been present on the only drunken occasion he’d ever kissed a member of his own sex.
Then Becker felt Ryan draw them both back while he watched anxiously as Connor started coughing again.
“Give him some space, boss,” Ditzy said quietly and Becker knew the medic was talking to Ryan, not him. For all that Becker thought he’d at least managed to earn the respect of the military team, none of them had ever addressed him like that before. He was still too new in his rank for that. He wondered what the hell the others were actually seeing when they looked at him.
Around him, Becker heard a babble of voices, some passing the message that Connor had come round, others relaying the fact that after its sudden flare, the anomaly had now closed. It also appeared that the last of the giant kangaroos had been successfully sent home.
He felt Ryan withdraw from his mind, taking with him the last of the strength that was keeping Becker upright. Weariness hit him with the force of a sledgehammer. Becker swayed and fell… unconscious before he even hit the ground.
* * * * *
Becker opened his eyes and fought down a feeling of nausea. He was cold, wet, uncomfortable and desperately tired.
“Welcome back, sir.” Ditzy gave him a reassuring smile. “We were just about to strip you down. The lads are pulling straws to see who got the job of warming you up.”
“Finn just lost!” Amusement – and relief – were present in equal measure in Lyle’s voice. “Bad luck, mate.”
Becker tried to sit upright and failed when another wave of sickness rolled through him. He was in the back of one of the vans and it looked like he’d been dumped unceremoniously on top of a pile of ropes and other kit, but he presumed their priority had been to get him out of the breeze to reduce the wind-chill factor.
“Connor, is he…?”
“I’m fine,” Connor replied at his side.
Becker turned his head, wincing at the pull of cramped muscles in his neck and shoulders, to find Connor swathed in a blanket over the top of a set of obviously borrowed black combat kit several sizes too large for him.
“Thanks, Becker.” Connor hesitated then gave Becker’s hand a squeeze. “Tom told me what you were prepared to do.”
“We thought we’d lost you for a moment back there, sir,” Ditzy said quietly. “Between the pair of you I think I’ve just aged ten years. If I have to start pulling out grey hairs to maintain my boyish good looks, I’m not going to be please.”
“What the fuck happened?”
Ditzy shrugged. “Buggered if I know. Looks like the anomaly flared up the way it did when we were bringing the boss’s body back through, the same way it did that other time in the Forest of Dean when we all saw him…” he gave a quick grin at Connor. “Or rather when everyone but Connor saw him…”
“Yeah, last to know, as ever,” Connor muttered. “My best guess is that the anomaly threw out some sort of electromagnetic pulse and…”
“…instead of frying Connor’s brains it kick-started his heart,” Ditzy finished for him, shooting Connor a rueful grin. “Which is fucking lucky for you, sunshine. You’d stopped breathing and there was no discernable pulse. Even if this lot didn’t realise it, I was just going through the fucking motions. The chances of bringing someone back with nothing more than CPR are sod-all out of sod-all.”
Becker stared up at the pair of them, a thousand questions that he was just too tired to articulate buzzing like hornets in his mind. He settled for asking, “Where’s Ryan?”
“Outside with Lyle,” Ditzy told him. “He didn’t want you to think you’d shuffled off the mortal coil if the first thing you saw when you came round was him, but he’ll have to make himself scarce in a minute, there’s an ambulance on its way.”
Becker got his elbows underneath him and managed to push himself into a sitting position. “Is he…?” He wasn’t quite sure what he wanted to say, but he thought asking whether a ghost was all right would sound strange even to someone who now chased dinosaurs for a living.
“He’s fading in and out,” Ditzy supplied. “But I don’t think he’s going anywhere. Cutter’s out there with him, giving him the third degree about what the fuck happened, so I reckon the Prof will be having a science-gasm pretty soon.”
“Too much info, Ditz,” Becker muttered. “Can I have a word with him?” He glanced at both Ditzy and Connor and added, “On my own.”
“Only if you promise to let me get you naked afterwards,” Ditzy replied.
Becker laughed weakly. “Didn’t realise you swung that way, sweetie. OK, it’s a deal, but tell Finn his services aren’t required.”
“The lad’ll be gutted,” the medic laughed. “He thought he was about to break this week’s duck on getting up close and personal with someone.”
“Then cuddle him yourself.”
Ditzy opened the back door of the van and jumped out. Becker shivered in the sudden waft of cold air.
“Here, you need this more than me,” Connor said quietly, draping the blanket around Becker’s shoulders. He opened his mouth to speak again and then closed it without saying anything.
The memory of those lips, soft under his, flooded back into Becker’s mind and he felt a flush rising in his cheeks. He fought against the urge to pull Connor into his arms and kiss those same pale lips until the colour came back into them. As Connor slipped out of the van after Ditzy, to be replaced by a dark shadow that sent a familiar prickle back into Becker’s skin, he sighed, fighting against the knowledge that he’d just experienced the urges of his own body, not Ryan’s. The fact that he’d never actually fancied another man before was something he was going to have to deal with in his own time, when he wasn’t more than halfway to a hypothermic stupor. Whether his feelings were just the legacy of Ryan’s possession of his mind and body or whether it something else. Becker didn’t know, and he was too knackered to think about it now.
“Thanks for not kicking me out of my own body,” he said quietly.
Ryan smiled and shook his head. “I told you to trust me. I wouldn’t have done anything like that.”
“But you could have done. It was you they were all seeing back there. Not me. I’m not an idiot, Ryan. You could have kept control and I wouldn’t have been able to stop you, especially not when the anomaly went super-nova. But you didn’t.”
And now they’d all have to live with the consequences of that.
Ryan smiled again and held out his hand.
Becker gripped it and for a brief moment it felt like he had hold of flesh and blood and then the feeling faded.
Outside the confines of the van the wail of an ambulance siren split the silence.
“Lester wants a report.” He was now back to hearing Ryan inside his head again.
“Lester always wants a report,” Becker muttered. “I’ll leave this one to you and Cutter.”
Ryan’s smile slid into a grin and he vanished, leaving Becker alone amidst the sudden bustle of paramedics that appeared in the doors of the van. And later, when Connor’s cold fingers twined with his in the ambulance on their way to hospital, Becker felt no inclination to draw away.
There’d be plenty of time to over-think what had happened later, but for now Becker was just content to go with the flow.
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Characters : Becker, Connor, Lester, Cutter, Stephen, Abby, Lyle, Blade, Ditzy, Finn, (Ryan)
Rating : 15
Word Count : 12,700 (posting in three parts)
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue
Spoilers : None.
Summary : Connor begins to suspect that something strange is going on.
Warning : None.
A/N : Written for my darling Evil Twin,
munchkinofdoom for her birthday. Thanks to lukadreaming for the fastest beta on record. This is a sequel to The Ghost and Miss Maitland and The Ghost and Captain Becker. I will be posting in three parts. Link to Part 1. Link to Part 2.Becker’s earpiece crackled and he heard Blade’s voice announcing through the anomaly-induced static that another overgrown kangaroo had just been successfully sent home.
This shout hadn’t been too bad – by their standards. The worst they’d had by way of a casualty count had been a badly-winded Stephen, who’d been punched in the stomach by one of the creatures as they’d been hauling it back to the anomaly in a net. He’d no doubt have a few bruises to show for the encounter, but that was all.
Becker was standing in the middle of the cluster of decaying buildings, staring around, ticking off the ones they’d already checked from his mental list when the harsh cry of a seagull drew his attention. Several of the birds had been perched on the roof of one of the larger warehouses but were now flapping away, mewling in irritation. The source of their disturbance became obvious a few moments later as the sound of falling bricks echoed inside the ruin. Becker grimaced. The whole bloody place was coming apart at the seams. At this rate most of the buildings would be a heap of rubble before the bulldozers even moved in.
A procoptodon came bounding out of the building. Becker acted on instinct and swung his Mossberg 590 off his shoulder as he got ready to chamber a round. The beast hopped straight towards him, covering the ground as though it was had springs on its paws, or whatever you called a kangaroo’s feet.
Becker stepped aside and spoke into his throat mike. “There’s a skippy heading your way, Lyle. Lay out a welcome mat, will you?”
Lyle’s reply was only just recognisable through the static buzz, but Becker caught enough to know his message had been heard. He was about to demand a sit rep from the rest of the team when a prickle in his fingertips betrayed Ryan’s presence in the immediate vicinity. A sudden sense of urgency gripped Becker and without even knowing why, he started running towards the building that had just disgorged the procoptodon, a dark shadow matching him step for step.
Becker hesitated just outside the doorway, viewing the crumbling warehouse with some trepidation. It looked like part of an internal wall had come down, taking out a section of floor in the process. The air was full of brick dust and the smell of rotting wood. He flicked on the barrel-mounted torch attachment on his combat shotgun sending a beam of light across the debris-strewn floor. Rats scurried for cover.
The torchlight illuminated Ryan’s semi-solid form standing now on the edge of a gaping hole in the floor, with jagged roof-beams poking out of it like blackened, broken limbs.
Ryan pointed down into the hole and, in a voice that sounded like winter wind, Becker heard him say, “Connor!”
“Fuck.” Becker made his way carefully across the floor, conscious that it was creaking ominously with every step he took. “We have a man down!” He spoke quickly into his radio, but only a burst of static greeted his words. He swore under his breath and carried on edging forwards. Anomaly-fouled comms were the bane of their bloody lives and today was obviously going to be no exception. He yelled the same words as loudly as he could in the hope that someone was near enough to hear, but from the look of agitation on Ryan’s face, there was no time to go in search of help.
The floorboards creaked again like breaking ice. Becker went down on his hands and knees to spread his weight and crawled towards the hole. The gun-mounted torch illuminated a horrific tangle of broken joists and fallen bricks and glinted off the swirls of oil lying on top of dark river water. But what caught his attention with the force of a steel trap closing on his mind was the sight of one gloved hand, floating listlessly on the surface of the water.
Becker swore violently and, without even stopping to think, swung his legs into the hole and dropped down into the water. The cold took his breath away and he floundered amongst the debris, grabbing for Connor’s hand and trying to pull him up to the surface.
In the dim light reaching into the flooded area underneath the rotting floor he saw Connor’s deathly pale face break the surface of the water, dark hair plastered across his face, eyes closed, mouth partly open.
“Fucking shit!” Becker managed to get foothold on something and tried to get his hands under Connor’s armpits to haul him out of the water. His efforts brought about an absolutely zero result. “Ryan, for fuck’s sake, he’s trapped!”
Becker stared around desperately, looking for something he could use to keep Connor’s head out of the water while he tried to shift the debris off his chest and legs. A section of broken floorboard floated on top of the foul-smelling water. Becker grabbed it and tried to wedge it behind Connor’s head. He couldn’t even tell if the young man was breathing or not.
The rubble and wood in the water shifted ominously and a brick fell from somewhere, narrowly missing Connor’s face. But it obviously wasn’t the only one that had fallen close to him. Blood was running sluggishly from a jagged wound on Connor’s cheek and it looked like he had another cut close to his hairline. Becker propped him up as best he could and felt with his hands beneath the water to try to discover what was pinning him now. His fingers encountered what felt like a metal girder pressing down onto Connor’s hips. He tugged at it experimentally and felt it give fractionally, but not enough to enable him to drag Connor free.
He floundered in the water in the water, looking for something to use as a lever. “Ryan, get help!”
He had no idea if the ghost was still there or not, but he didn’t think Ryan would have deserted his young lover in a situation like this. Becker was too chilled from the water to feel Ryan’s presence, but he could feel a heightened sense of urgency pressing in on him and guessed that the ghost’s agitation was somehow transmitting to him.
“For fuck’s sake, I need some help here fast!” Becker reached down again and grabbed hold of the girder. He wedged his feet against a pile of rubble under water and heaved. The girder shifted again, but still not enough. He gritted his teeth and strained against it, feeling the muscles in his shoulders harden with the struggle.
The sight of Connor’s deathly pale face, lolling in the water, acted as a spur to Becker, but he still couldn’t shift the heavy bar.
“Get Ditzy! I need rope and I need it now!” The sudden emptiness in the air told its own tale. Becker was alone apart from Connor’s still form. Becker wondered for a minute if he should try breathing some air into Connor’s lungs, but overriding everything else was the knowledge that he had to shift the girder and get Connor out of the water so they could work on him properly.
With renewed desperation, Becker threw himself back into the task, heaving and tugging at the metalwork, heedless of the debris pile moving around him and the sound of more objects falling into the water. Something struck him on the shoulder but he shrugged it off. The girder shifted again and for a moment Becker’s hopes flared and he tried tugging again at Connor’s limp form, but all did was dislodge the plank of wood that had been preventing his head slipping back under the water.
Becker swore under his breath again and tried to jam the plank back into position. A moment later he felt a prickle of static electricity on his skin. The sensation raised the hairs on the back of his neck, but went some way to counteracting the bone-numbing cold of the water.
“Ryan?”
“They’re coming.” The voice sounded like it was inside his head. “But they won’t be soon enough. We need to get him out now. Let me in, Becker. Between us we can shift it.”
Becker stared into the darkness. “What do you mean?”
“Let me in,” Ryan’s voice was low and compulsive and Becker could feel the tug of an unearthly power. “Trust me, Becker. If you don’t, we’ll lose him. He’s still alive, I can feel it, but he won’t be if we wait for the others. Trust me!”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Let me in…” As Ryan’s voice sounded in his head, Becker felt that familiar static prickle along his skin. He forced himself to relax, but it wasn’t easy. He had a precarious footing on a mostly submerged pile of rubble and Connor was dying – possibly dead – not exactly circumstances in which relaxing came easily. He sucked in a deep breath and expelled it as slowly as he could. The prickle on his skin sank deeper and for a moment every nerve flamed inside him. He felt like he was viewing events from somewhere in the back of his head, distant and getting more so by the second…
“Don’t fight me!”
Ryan’s voice was definitely inside his head now and, with a sudden sick certainty, Becker knew that he was no longer in control of his own actions. His hands sunk down under the surface of the water and gripped the metal girder again. Becker’s feet shifted on the rubble and moved into a better stance and then he leaned back and pulled with a strength that he knew wasn’t his own. He could feel Ryan inside his head, inside his body, taking command, directing his limbs. He felt the girder start to move.
Ryan sent more strength flooding into Becker’s body and he... they… heaved for a second time. More rubble started to fall as the girder shifted abruptly. Becker felt his muscles straining against the weight of the trapped beam and wondered vaguely how far Ryan was capable of forcing his body into action.
“Trust me, Becker.” The voice was that of a man well-used to commanding others and in spite of his own fears Becker knew that he did trust Ryan. Although he’d never met the man while he was still alive, Becker had worked closely with enough men who had known Ryan, trusted him and even loved him. It was a good enough testimonial for him. It would have to be.
Becker lowered defences he hadn’t even known he possessed, letting Ryan come fully into both his body and his mind.
A final heave wrenched the girder free of whatever was holding it down. Connor’s limp form slipped sideways. Becker was dimly conscious of shoving the girder to one side and grabbing a handful of wet clothes, heaving the unconscious form out of the water.
Connor was too white, too cold. His head flopped lifelessly on his shoulders, dirty water streaming from his dark hair.
Ryan hauled him up and stared up at the hole in the floor. By now Becker was merely an onlooker, watching what was going on through his own eyes, but not directing the actions of his own body.
“Ditzy, I need some fucking help here!” The words came out of Becker’s mouth but it didn’t sound like his voice.
“With you, boss.” The medic’s voice was as calm as ever.
Hands reached down and grabbed at Connor’s jacket. Ryan – Becker – struggled upright on the ever-shifting pile of debris. More bricks and rubble started to slip into the water and above them the wooden flooring creaked even more ominously than it had already been doing. Another surge of strength rippled through Becker’s body and Connor was hoisted into the air, boosted from below and pulled from above. Water cascaded off his limp body and the splintered wood snatched at his clothing and then he was pulled out of sight.
The debris pile started to slide, shifting like quicksand, Becker felt himself slipping and something struck him in the back, sending him face down in the water. His black combat gear was sodden and heavy, pulling him down. Water flooded his nose and mouth and a numbing cold was seeping into his bones. Around him unseen walls started to close in…
“Boss!” The part of Becker’s mind that was still capable of independent thought registered that the new voice was Blade’s and it was invested with an unhealthy urgency. “The whole fucking place is about to come down. Grab my hand!”
His limbs moved almost of their own volition, but Becker knew that Ryan was still in control. He struggled upright, got a foot on… something and stretched his arms upwards. A hand grabbed his wrist and tugged. Fingers gripped the straps of his equipment vest and Becker felt himself being pulled out of the water. Wood snagged at his clothing and he felt – and heard – material ripping but the cold had numbed his flesh and if anything more than his clothing had been damaged, he was too far gone to notice.
He struggled to his hands and knees, shaking off the hands that had pulled him clear of the hole. “Connor!”
“Outside, boss,” Blade told him, getting an arm around him and hauling him to his feet. “Come on, that’s where we need to be as well…”
With Blade’s assistance, he moved at a lurching run, dodging more falling debris. The whole bloody building seemed to be collapsing in on itself. They made it out into the courtyard, where a press of bodies screened whatever was going on from their eyes. Becker felt a surge of fear but didn’t know if it was his own emotion or Ryan’s, or a mixture of both. He shouldered his way past a clearly anxious Cutter without even a muttered apology.
Connor’s lifeless body was stretched out in a damp puddle on the weed-broken concrete. Ditzy was kneeling at his side, his face set in a determined mask as he performed chest compressions.
Hope surged in Becker’s own chest. He knew – without knowing how he knew – that Connor was still alive. He could feel it, a small spark of life that the medic was working hard to reignite. He dropped to his knees next to them and reached out to cradle Connor’s limp hand in his own.
Ditzy met his eyes. The normally imperturbable medic blanched. “Ryan…?”
“Save him, David. Bring him back…” Ryan spoke through him, but Becker threw his own entreaty into the words. Since his secondment to the anomaly project, Becker had gradually come to view all of the civilian members of the team as not just his responsibility but his friends as well, even the irascible Cutter and his reserved, sometimes remote, assistant, Stephen Hart. As for the younger members of the team, it was impossible not to know Connor and Abby without warming to them.
Ditzy nodded and bent his head to exhale into Connor’s mouth, before returning again to the chest compressions.
Ryan gripped his lover’s hand harder and Becker felt some of the strength ebb from his own body. He didn’t know what means of energy transference Ryan had employed down in the water-filled hole, but somehow the ghost had been able to take over and direct his actions, lending him strength in a way that Becker didn’t understand.
And if it had worked once…
Becker fought against fog that had settled on his mind, thrusting his own consciousness against Ryan’s, trying to open a link direct to the man who lay on the ground in front of them, the object of Ditzy’s single-minded efforts.
For a brief moment he felt Ryan resist him. “Don’t fight me, you idiot!” Becker had no idea whether he’d spoken those words aloud or in his own head, but either way, they were effective. Ryan pulled back, this time letting Becker direct their combined efforts. Energy prickled along Becker’s skin and he let it flow down into his fingers and into Connor’s too-still body.
Ditzy pressed hard and rhythmically on Connor’s chest.
Becker felt his own energy start to dwindle but, calmly and deliberately, he kept the link open. It was though he’d succeeded in opening one of his own veins and was letting the blood pour directly into Connor’s body. His head swum and he felt his own consciousness slipping away, but it didn’t matter. It was his job to keep the team alive and to hell with the personal cost…
He could feel Ryan lending him strength and between them they were succeeding in holding onto to that small, weakening spark of life, but Becker knew it would take everything he had to give and more. “Let me do this, Ryan,” he begged, the words forming in his own head where he knew Ryan could hear them. “Let me do this for him…let me go…”
He felt Ryan’s dilemma but Becker knew that even if it took whatever strength remained to him then he was willing to pay that price and he knew that even if it took whatever remained of Ryan’s own energy as well then that price too would be paid. Between them they could do this…
From somewhere, Becker heard a voice yelling urgently for Cutter. He was conscious of the people around them shifting position, attention divided, however unwillingly.
“Professor! The anomaly is flaring!” That was Lyle and the lieutenant’s shout held an urgency that Becker had rarely heard from him. In his experience Lyle was ice-cold under pressure, but something had broken through his normal composure.
Becker’s skin suddenly felt like it was on fire, heat surged through his body, driving the cold of his unexpected immersion in freezing water out of his limbs and replacing it with a sudden flush. For one sickening moment Becker thought he’d lost control of his bladder as his senses swam and he rocked on his heels. Strong hands steadied his shoulders and kept him from falling.
“The magnetism’s gone fucking crazy!” Lyle’s voice again, followed by the sound of boots on the concrete. Someone was running…
Becker felt like he’d been caught in a flashover as every nerve ending in his body ignited sending white hot pain through him. Only Ryan’s relentless hold on his mind held him back from the brink of unconsciousness. A jolt of energy leapt through his body and into Connor’s via their joined hands. A moment later, Connor convulsed under Ditzy’s ministration, his back arching off the ground as though he’d been hit by a jolt of electricity.
“Get out of there!” Even through the black haze crowding his mind, Becker recognised the fear in Cutter’s voice. Something was wrong with the anomaly and – with Ryan’s presence in both his body and his mind – electromagnetic energy was being transmitted through their link and into Connor’s body.
A second jolt followed the first, ripping a silent scream for Becker’s mouth and lifting Connor’s chest for a second time. Time seemed to slow to a crawl. Connor’s eyes flew open and he coughed, expelling water from his body and replacing it with air in one long, shuddering breath.
Ditzy grabbed his shoulders and turned Connor onto his side, holding him while he coughed and choked and coughed again, spitting out more water, his body shaking with the effort.
He was alive, he was fucking alive! A wild exultation coursed through Becker’s body. All he wanted was to take Connor in his arms and hold him until the spasms had passed. He reached out with both hands and, to his surprise, the medic surrendered Connor’s still-heaving body to him and he held his lover – no, Ryan’s lover – close to his chest and stroked the wet hair back from a face that he wanted to shower with kisses.
Connor blinked up at him, his pupils so wide that his eyes appeared almost black. Shock slid into something else, an expression that Becker had never seen on Connor’s face before… an expression he’d sometimes wondered if he’d ever get to see…
“Tom?” Connor’s voice was hoarse with coughing. “Tom…”
Warmth flooded Becker’s body again, although with less dramatic consequences this time. Compelled by a force that he would have had no chance of resisting even if he’d wanted to, Becker bent his head and kissed Connor lightly on the lips. Connor kissed him back. It was a kiss fuelled by desperation and something else, something that had never existed in any kiss Becker had shared before – something which certainly hadn’t been present on the only drunken occasion he’d ever kissed a member of his own sex.
Then Becker felt Ryan draw them both back while he watched anxiously as Connor started coughing again.
“Give him some space, boss,” Ditzy said quietly and Becker knew the medic was talking to Ryan, not him. For all that Becker thought he’d at least managed to earn the respect of the military team, none of them had ever addressed him like that before. He was still too new in his rank for that. He wondered what the hell the others were actually seeing when they looked at him.
Around him, Becker heard a babble of voices, some passing the message that Connor had come round, others relaying the fact that after its sudden flare, the anomaly had now closed. It also appeared that the last of the giant kangaroos had been successfully sent home.
He felt Ryan withdraw from his mind, taking with him the last of the strength that was keeping Becker upright. Weariness hit him with the force of a sledgehammer. Becker swayed and fell… unconscious before he even hit the ground.
* * * * *
Becker opened his eyes and fought down a feeling of nausea. He was cold, wet, uncomfortable and desperately tired.
“Welcome back, sir.” Ditzy gave him a reassuring smile. “We were just about to strip you down. The lads are pulling straws to see who got the job of warming you up.”
“Finn just lost!” Amusement – and relief – were present in equal measure in Lyle’s voice. “Bad luck, mate.”
Becker tried to sit upright and failed when another wave of sickness rolled through him. He was in the back of one of the vans and it looked like he’d been dumped unceremoniously on top of a pile of ropes and other kit, but he presumed their priority had been to get him out of the breeze to reduce the wind-chill factor.
“Connor, is he…?”
“I’m fine,” Connor replied at his side.
Becker turned his head, wincing at the pull of cramped muscles in his neck and shoulders, to find Connor swathed in a blanket over the top of a set of obviously borrowed black combat kit several sizes too large for him.
“Thanks, Becker.” Connor hesitated then gave Becker’s hand a squeeze. “Tom told me what you were prepared to do.”
“We thought we’d lost you for a moment back there, sir,” Ditzy said quietly. “Between the pair of you I think I’ve just aged ten years. If I have to start pulling out grey hairs to maintain my boyish good looks, I’m not going to be please.”
“What the fuck happened?”
Ditzy shrugged. “Buggered if I know. Looks like the anomaly flared up the way it did when we were bringing the boss’s body back through, the same way it did that other time in the Forest of Dean when we all saw him…” he gave a quick grin at Connor. “Or rather when everyone but Connor saw him…”
“Yeah, last to know, as ever,” Connor muttered. “My best guess is that the anomaly threw out some sort of electromagnetic pulse and…”
“…instead of frying Connor’s brains it kick-started his heart,” Ditzy finished for him, shooting Connor a rueful grin. “Which is fucking lucky for you, sunshine. You’d stopped breathing and there was no discernable pulse. Even if this lot didn’t realise it, I was just going through the fucking motions. The chances of bringing someone back with nothing more than CPR are sod-all out of sod-all.”
Becker stared up at the pair of them, a thousand questions that he was just too tired to articulate buzzing like hornets in his mind. He settled for asking, “Where’s Ryan?”
“Outside with Lyle,” Ditzy told him. “He didn’t want you to think you’d shuffled off the mortal coil if the first thing you saw when you came round was him, but he’ll have to make himself scarce in a minute, there’s an ambulance on its way.”
Becker got his elbows underneath him and managed to push himself into a sitting position. “Is he…?” He wasn’t quite sure what he wanted to say, but he thought asking whether a ghost was all right would sound strange even to someone who now chased dinosaurs for a living.
“He’s fading in and out,” Ditzy supplied. “But I don’t think he’s going anywhere. Cutter’s out there with him, giving him the third degree about what the fuck happened, so I reckon the Prof will be having a science-gasm pretty soon.”
“Too much info, Ditz,” Becker muttered. “Can I have a word with him?” He glanced at both Ditzy and Connor and added, “On my own.”
“Only if you promise to let me get you naked afterwards,” Ditzy replied.
Becker laughed weakly. “Didn’t realise you swung that way, sweetie. OK, it’s a deal, but tell Finn his services aren’t required.”
“The lad’ll be gutted,” the medic laughed. “He thought he was about to break this week’s duck on getting up close and personal with someone.”
“Then cuddle him yourself.”
Ditzy opened the back door of the van and jumped out. Becker shivered in the sudden waft of cold air.
“Here, you need this more than me,” Connor said quietly, draping the blanket around Becker’s shoulders. He opened his mouth to speak again and then closed it without saying anything.
The memory of those lips, soft under his, flooded back into Becker’s mind and he felt a flush rising in his cheeks. He fought against the urge to pull Connor into his arms and kiss those same pale lips until the colour came back into them. As Connor slipped out of the van after Ditzy, to be replaced by a dark shadow that sent a familiar prickle back into Becker’s skin, he sighed, fighting against the knowledge that he’d just experienced the urges of his own body, not Ryan’s. The fact that he’d never actually fancied another man before was something he was going to have to deal with in his own time, when he wasn’t more than halfway to a hypothermic stupor. Whether his feelings were just the legacy of Ryan’s possession of his mind and body or whether it something else. Becker didn’t know, and he was too knackered to think about it now.
“Thanks for not kicking me out of my own body,” he said quietly.
Ryan smiled and shook his head. “I told you to trust me. I wouldn’t have done anything like that.”
“But you could have done. It was you they were all seeing back there. Not me. I’m not an idiot, Ryan. You could have kept control and I wouldn’t have been able to stop you, especially not when the anomaly went super-nova. But you didn’t.”
And now they’d all have to live with the consequences of that.
Ryan smiled again and held out his hand.
Becker gripped it and for a brief moment it felt like he had hold of flesh and blood and then the feeling faded.
Outside the confines of the van the wail of an ambulance siren split the silence.
“Lester wants a report.” He was now back to hearing Ryan inside his head again.
“Lester always wants a report,” Becker muttered. “I’ll leave this one to you and Cutter.”
Ryan’s smile slid into a grin and he vanished, leaving Becker alone amidst the sudden bustle of paramedics that appeared in the doors of the van. And later, when Connor’s cold fingers twined with his in the ambulance on their way to hospital, Becker felt no inclination to draw away.
There’d be plenty of time to over-think what had happened later, but for now Becker was just content to go with the flow.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2011-01-31 09:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 10:04 am (UTC)LOL, I even managed a bit of pseudo-science. *g*
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Date: 2011-01-31 09:49 pm (UTC)I hope there's going to be more in this universe!
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Date: 2011-02-01 10:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-31 10:10 pm (UTC)yay for Ryan helping Becker rescue Connor!
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Date: 2011-02-01 10:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-31 10:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 10:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-31 10:27 pm (UTC)Brilliant! Some tense moments there, and Ryan possessing Becker's body was great.
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Date: 2011-02-01 10:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-31 10:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 10:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-31 10:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 10:09 am (UTC)Yes, it's a rather nice thought.
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Date: 2011-01-31 11:08 pm (UTC)And put my vote in for wanting to see an epilogue or sequel to this (you can add it to your ever growing list!) *vbg*
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Date: 2011-02-01 10:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-31 11:55 pm (UTC)Oh Ryan. *wibble*
WONDERFUL.
*clings*
More of this wonderful series *anytime*!
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Date: 2011-02-01 10:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 05:58 pm (UTC)*clings*
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Date: 2011-01-31 11:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 10:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 12:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 10:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 01:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 10:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 10:54 am (UTC)YAY!!!! The whole possession scenes were wonderful! And how the soldiers knew they were dealing with Ryan and not Becker. And Cutter and his science-gasm. And Becker realising he's attracted to Connor. Lovely! *happy sigh*
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Date: 2011-02-01 10:57 am (UTC)The possession scenes were horribly difficult to write and I was worried the POV would become confusing, so I'm glad that came off ok.
Poor old Becker doesn't know where Ryan's feelings end and his start, if you know what I mean.
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Date: 2011-02-01 10:59 am (UTC)Awwww... poor baby! *evil grin*
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Date: 2011-02-01 11:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 11:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 04:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 04:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 05:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 06:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 06:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 06:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-01 08:17 pm (UTC)That was incredible! Action, angst, Ryan & Becker's being all heroic, hurt!Connor and the whole team working together to save the day. I was in the edge of the seat all the time.
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Date: 2012-02-01 11:28 pm (UTC)Part 3
Date: 2012-02-22 03:52 am (UTC)Re: Part 3
Date: 2012-02-22 09:20 am (UTC)Re: Part 3
Date: 2012-04-18 09:46 pm (UTC)Re: Part 3
Date: 2012-04-18 09:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-18 09:44 pm (UTC)Wow!!!
What stories... I loved All of them.
My favourite bt was when Becker looked at the photograph and realises and then he goes back to fing Ryan to talk to him.
Loved that end bit there too.
Becker possessed!
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Date: 2012-04-19 06:58 am (UTC)If you take a look at my masterlist there's another sequel as well.
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Date: 2012-04-19 01:20 pm (UTC)Wow!!!
Loved Becker, letting Ryan use him to hold and comfort Connor! It felt so right!
Becker is beginning to love Connor too right?
Ah so sweet. It sounded as if Ryan will let Connor and Becker be now and judging by the lack of any further stories featuring this trio, he won't be coming back.
Loved all of them.
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Date: 2012-04-19 01:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-28 08:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-28 10:05 pm (UTC)