Silentflux's Realm

Title: Then everything fell...
Author: Andrea/silentflux
Fandom: Primeval
Pairing: Lester/Nick
Rating: FRT
Spoilers: For the S2 Finale - If you haven't watched it and don't want major spoilage, don't read this!
Warnings: angst
A/N: I was just watching the S2 finale, and with the interplay between these two, I just saw...something. Thought I'd expand on it... not really sure where this is going or if it even is going somewhere, but I thought I'd give it a shot. It's also my first Primeval fic - hope you enjoy :) Also, I don't have a Britpicker, not really, so any mistakes I made in the British English, totally my bad.

Summary: Nick reflects...


~ * ~ * ~

Nick sighed, looking away from the computer and rubbing the back of his neck as he tried to work out the knots that seemed permanently ensconced along his spine. The latest anomaly had been quite easy - nothing deadly, nothing contagious, nothing to really be contained. Just had to safe-guard the area to make sure no one stumbled into the glowing portal. That had been a blessing. A high-strung anomaly on the day of Stephen's funeral would have struck every nerve they still managed to possess.

Rolling his shoulders, he tried to shake the stars out of his vision as memories of laughter and companionship caressed along his consciousness. He was too tired to rage against the uselessness, too weary to be angry with Stephen for not fucking listening to him. God, he missed the stubborn bastard. And he refused, absolutely refused to replay all the memories that sat like stones on his chest, scraping every time he took a breath. The way Stephen used to smile at his random references, how his eyes flared in an argument, how his touch and gaze had once softened just for Nick. Lost opportunities, bittersweet and sharp, twisted around him and pulled.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he slammed his fist on his desk and pushed away. He couldn't do this, not now. Not ever. Stephen just couldn't... God, he wished he'd never seen it, but he couldn't just turn away from his student, his friend, someone he loved that much, even when he didn't believe he could bear it. Now every time he tried to sleep, all he saw were the predators circling and clear blue eyes staring out at him with sadness and determination and no little fear and courage. Waiting to be torn apart.

~He hadn't moved by the time the others had gotten there, curled up against the door, trying not to flinch at the sounds of flesh tearing and creatures screaming in pain and rage. It quieted down after what seemed like hours, and one of the soldiers looked through the portal reporting most of the creatures dead or wounded enough that they could be taken care of easily.

He listened as the men cleared the room, and taking a breath, smelled the stench of blood, sweat, fear, and other scents he'd rather he had no acquaintance with before he pushed himself to his feet and forced himself to look. The room was awash in red, the yellow and black paint almost obscene underneath, and he couldn't stop his eyes from straying, searching. And finding. They had tried to be judicious with the body bag, but Nick knew. The tattered and blood-soaked jeans and shreds of flannel. Stephen. Nick turned and promptly lost all control over his body, collapsing against the wall and heaving until his muscles ached with it, bile burning at his throat.

The soldiers gave him the privacy he needed, he felt no gazes on him at all as they continued their clean up, silent except for a few orders and the gunshots to finish off those creatures who still managed to live. When it was time, there was a touch on his shoulder and he nodded, pulled himself up, holding himself together with little more than the feral need to do this possibly insignificant yet still all-important action - escorting Stephen back to the ARC. He kept vigil. ~

The dreams were always the same, always leaving him in the cold, sterile morgue with Stephen who eyes stared back at him, flat and dark. Taking a deep breath, Nick forced himself up from his desk and paced, boots scuffing tiredly on the floor. He should go home and rest, but he couldn't. Not with that memory waiting for him. And worse than the memory of that day were the dreams of what could have been, what should have been, what had been. All the memories that choked him and the possibilities that now lie dead as the man who had embodied them.

"Cutter."

Nick blinked hard, noticing the hand on his shoulder and following it with his eyes, surprised to see Lester at the end of it. "James." His own voice startled him - shredded with grief and darkness.

"Go home. This can be finished later." There was a flicker in those eyes, something close to sympathy that Nick didn't appreciate but he no longer possessed the energy for anger anymore.

"I'm fine. I'll get this done and then go."

Lester's eyebrow rose, and Nick almost flinched at that piercing gaze. "Go home, Nick."

Shaking his head hard, he asked, "And do what? There's nothing there."

Nick could feel the other man's eyes on him, assessing and weighing options. "A drink then?"

He looked up startled, fast enough to see Lester's own surprise at his suggestion. Nick snorted and nodded. "Could do with a bit of scotch." He couldn't help the automatic urge to call Stephen to join them, and the pain of realization froze the air in his lungs.

"Maybe more than just a bit," Lester murmured, pulling the professor along and maneuvering him to the car park.

~ * ~ * ~

It wasn't easy. God, was that an understatement. The next few months, there wasn't a moment where Nick could breathe without being scraped raw. Pauses in his lectures and waiting for Stephen to fill in the details, reaching to his right and expecting to have whatever he'd forgotten shoved into his questing hands, turning and searching for flashing blue eyes. His team didn't notice anymore as he was good at covering, at least for Connor and Abby. The times he couldn't hide it were the late nights spent in his office at the ARC, wishing for the warmth of his University office and the company who'd almost always been present.

More often than not, if he was at the office late enough, Lester would come and interrupt with some excuse or another. Of course, the man had to remain as aloof as possible, but Nick sometimes wondered. He'd always thought him to be nothing more than a glorified bureaucrat, but through several instances Nick had learned how much backbone and integrity the man actually had. Not to mention that seriously dangerous wit and no filter to stop the perfectly chosen, razor-sharp words the poured forth at any given moment of the day. By the time James had stood up to Leek, Nick had discovered a grudging respect for the officious prat.

Now, it seemed that James Lester, pain in the ass bureaucrat, was the only person who truly saw the pain anymore, long after it had apparently dulled for his team. Nick wasn't sure how he felt about that type of vulnerability in front of the other man, but as long as it kept him in free scotch, he couldn't complain too much.

~ * ~ * ~

"Goddamn it, Cutter," Lester ranted - no, lectured him, voice tight with bridled anger. "If you don't care for your own life, at least have some sympathy for the rest of us, will you? Where would I find your replacement?"

Nick let his head fall back onto the hospital-thin pillow, sighing inaudibly as he listened to the controlled dressing down the other man gave him with no avenue for escape unless he wished to crawl. Even then, Lester would probably just walk along side him and continue his restrained tirade. He'd screwed up, almost gotten killed. The fact that he couldn't bring himself to care more than Lester about that fact should have disturbed him. It didn't.

~ * ~ * ~

"That's it. No more."

"What?"

"You're buying the scotch this time."

"I'm what?"

"It's been almost a year. My sympathy isn't infinite, Cutter."

"Sympathy? Is that what you call it?"

"Okay, my tolerance for paying for your alcoholic binges which inevitably land you on my couch is not infinite."

"Hmph."

"Are you drunk already?"

"What? No."

"Tell me something. Are you still in love with him?"

"Yes....Fuckin' hell."

"You're drunk. C'mon. The couch is yours."

~ * ~ * ~

Sighing heavily into his tea, James looked up from his desk. He much preferred working at home than the ARC - the warmth of wood and the familiar smells of his home relaxed him much more than that stainless monument to metal. Of course, it didn't pay to be relaxed at the office - this he knew well. Shaking his head at his thoughts, he rose and went in search of the scotch he kept hidden from the insane Scotsman that seemed to have invaded even his home life. His couch had never had so intimate an acquaintance as one Professor Nick Cutter. But ever since Stephen's funeral, Lester had taken it upon himself to make sure that the team leader remained functioning.

And he had. At least to a point. The man would run himself to ruin if he wasn't interrupted, and Lester could practically see the ghosts in his gray eyes and predict the abortive sentences or movements. It had taken Nick this long just to manage what bit of distance he had, but no one noticed anymore - Cutter tended to catch himself quickly. Fast on his feet, brain always turning - one of the reasons why Hart's death was so hard on the man, Lester mused. He watched him through the French doors separating his office from the living room, blond hair peeking up over the edge of the couch, socked feet sticking out beyond the blankets. The man did like to sleep with his feet free for some unknown reason.

James admittedly did have a file of possible replacements for Nick, but he couldn't truly bring himself to contact any of them. Cutter would be fine, he was sure. Setting his cup on the tray, he went in to watch the other man for a moment, aware of how stupid the action was. Sleep never seemed to calm him, and James was sure all he saw was Stephen and that room. That horrible room. The moment Lester had walked in and seen Nick slumped on a stool next to his former student's body in the ARC morgue, he'd promised himself that Helen Cutter would pay for that and pay dearly. He'd never had someone's emptiness and shock affect him so readily, Nick's despair slamming into him until he was breathless and it was all he could do to maintain his usual facade.

Reaching out as if to pull the blankets further up to cover Nick's shoulders, James stopped, closed his eyes and breathed out. Now was not the time. He was quite sure there would never be time for that. But he was a man used to never having that time, and this was the closest he'd been to content for a long while.

Just leave it, he thought, nodding to himself as he turned away and gathered the coat and tie that he'd removed upon arriving home. One last quick glance at the man sprawled in his parlor, and he headed up the stairs to his room. In a few hours when his phone began to ring shrilly and the pace of his life once again resumed to its normal chaos, it would hardly matter anyway.