An Average Day In Paradise


by elfin		 them
 
 Another normal, ordinary day. As normal as it got for me anyway. And definitely not boring, never that.

Waking from a violent, vivid nightmare of being chased and caught by dinosaurs just a second before the hideously early alarm went off, shaving and brushing my teeth at the same time, shovelling down breakfast as I pulled on my trainers, untied and retied the laces. It took three attempts before the car would start and that reminded me I needed to speak to Nick or Lester about borrowing one of the Toyotas until I could get the engine fixed.

The traffic was appalling, really appalling, felt like it had got ten times worse over night. And strangely there was a roundabout, just a mini one - a painted circle in the middle of the road - that I would have sworn, to God and on my mother's grave, wasn't there yesterday morning. In the ARC's underground car park some arsehole had stolen my parking space and there was no sign of the 4 x 4 Nick had commandeered from the university, which meant either he wasn't in yet or he'd already gone off somewhere. I checked the clock on the dash - despite all the rushing around I was still late but I doubted I was late enough to miss the day's anomaly. May Nick was having a rushed morning too.

Stepping out of the elevator on the fifth floor, I pushed open the double doors and slipped my coat off as I wondered nonchalantly down the corridor. Thankfully there didn't seem to be too many people about - specifically Lester - and I threw my jacket into my locker with a breath of relief. Now if anyone asked I could lie - say I'd been in for hours. Cheap trick and it probably wouldn't work thanks to all the CCTV cameras around but hey, I was smiling to myself as I headed to the kitchen to fix a strong, potent coffee.

Connor was filling the coffee maker, not on his skateboard which was unusual - even I'd admit the lad had damn good control of the thing - and not whistling either which was just as odd.

"Morning, Connor."

The greeting didn't get the reaction I'd expected. A simple, mumbled 'morning' back was usual. Instead Connor dropped the coffee pot and it shattered on the white tiled floor, splattering thankfully cold water over the floor and up the legs of his jeans. He seemed not to notice, stared at me, the colour draining from his cheeks, and as I watched, he actually, physically fainted.

#

Nick

Rifle pointed up to the early-morning sky, I squatted in the undergrowth, watching, waiting. I knew the creature was somewhere in the vicinity, I'd tracked it, following the trail of small corpses - birds, voles, even an unfortunate hedgehog which must have caused it an almighty headache - until I'd spotted it, watched it circle its next meal, playing with it for a short time before finally attacking.

I'd been out all night, since mid-afternoon the previous day, since we'd located the new anomaly on a housing estate in the arse-end of the city. We'd seen the creature escape and I'd gone after it, calling back to Abby and Connor that I'd be okay, that they should watch the anomaly to make sure nothing else came through. If it did, they had my permission to shoot it, like we'd shot everything else that had come through all the other anomalies in the last six months. Fuck the consequences, fuck the repercussions. I hoped that one day the first thing through would be Helen and I'd have the pleasure of getting three rounds into her before she even saw me.

It had rained a little overnight and I was cold. I felt slightly sick from the rapid adrenaline surges. I'd eaten one half-melted chocolate bar in twelve hours and I'd forgotten to fill up the canteen before coming out, so I was getting thirsty too. None of that really mattered. I wasn't sleeping well anyway, I wasn't really hungry and it wasn't like I was in the middle of nowhere.

Suddenly the creature put its head above the height of the bushes. My heart started to hammer again as I lowered the rifle, rested the butt of it into my shoulder just like Stephen had taught me and got the creature in the sight, lining up the crosshairs with its head. Taking a single, deep breath I relaxed and tightened my finger on the trigger.

And at that very moment, at the very worst moment, my mobile phone started to chirp merrily in my pocket.

"Fuck!" Startled, the creature took off at break-neck speed. Twelve fucking hours of my life down the drain. "Fuck!" I dropped the nose of the rifle to the ground and grabbed my phone out of my jacket pocket, checking the text on the screen. "Fuck." Lester, who the hell else would it have been? Jenny hadn't called me since I'd stood her up the night which might have been our first date but never was. Abby and Connor never called. I didn't want to answer it but for some reason I did. "What?"

"Where are you?"

I couldn't believe it - he'd interrupted me just to ask me that? "Still hunting the thing that came out of the anomaly yesterday, and I would have got the fucker just now if you hadn't called me, so what do you want?"

"You need to get back to the ARC." As mysterious as ever. As much as I'd come to respect the man over the last few days of Stephen's life, now he was just a reminder of how much was wrong with the world I was existing in.

"I'm busy!"

"And I need you to get back to the ARC immediately." He sounded a million miles away.

"I said…."

"For Christ's sake, Cutter! It's just a snake! People keep snakes as pets! Best case someone will adopt it, worst case it'll bite a small child and in that case we'll get a fix on it again won't we? So let it go and get back here. That's an order."

Sometimes I absolutely hated him.

Stabbing the 'end call' button, I almost threw the phone away but I didn't. I was acting like a rebellious sixteen year old and I knew it. I just couldn't help it. Suddenly I felt every one of the twenty-four hours it had been since I'd last had a shower and my stomach was grumbling. I hoisted the rifle to my shoulder and got to my feet, knees cracking. Looking around I wondered where I'd left the 4 x 4.

#

Lester

"For Christ's sake, Cutter! It's just a snake! People keep snakes as pets! Best case someone will adopt it, worst case it'll bite a small child and in that case we'll get a fix on it again won't we? So let it go and get back here. That's an order. For all the good it'll do me."

On the other end of the line he'd already hung up - I'm surprised he'd stayed on that long - and I dropped the receiver back into the phone's cradle, crossing my office to stare out at the atrium, at where a dead man was looking at the data we'd collected yesterday at the anomaly site. Standing off to one side his shocked team members - Abby and Connor - were staring too while doing passable impressions of goldfish. Colourless ones. And I admit to no one that I felt just a little like pulling the same face myself.

Stephen Hart, a man who'd died six months ago in one of the worst ways I could imagine, watched by the man who'd once been his best friend, had come into work this morning as if there was nothing strange or surprising about that. I'd spoken to him, of course I had; an awkward conversation that had gone something along the lines of,

Stephen - "What's going on?"

Me - "That's a question I was hoping you would answer."

Stephen - "I don't understand. Why are people looking at me like they're seeing a ghost?"

Me - ….

Because we are. The words had been on my lips but I didn't feel the need to utter them. Until I was certain about what was going on here, I just didn't want to tell Stephen categorically that he was dead. And apparently the others hadn't wanted to either because apart from Connor fainting and Abby bursting into tears and hugging the breath from him, they'd mostly just kept quiet. Stephen was obviously suspicious, but he was still just getting on with the day-to-day tasks, the things they did when they weren't chasing dinosaurs. Now and again he would throw a questioning look in their general direction.

Leave it to Cutter to explain this one. If he could.

Turning away, I went to make myself a cup of tea and wait for the Scooby gang's mentally unbalanced leader to show up. I wasn't certain his presence would do any good but I wanted him there for purely selfish reasons. I had to face facts - if watching his best friend get torn to pieces by a whole hoard of out-of-time creatures had messed him up, this was really going to screw with his already unscrewed mind.

#

Stephen

They were staring at me. Everyone was staring at me. I'd already had the Spanish Inquisition from Lester, an overly emotional hug from Abby. And Connor's fainting fit. I'd only seen these people yesterday! Okay, it had been a bad day - a very bad day. Being told that Nick and everyone else was dead, rushing to Helen's rescue only to find them alive and fighting, to find out Helen had been playing me all along, just like she'd played Nick for so many years. Calling the creatures to the feeding room, locking them in hoping they'd tear themselves apart, then finding the climate controls and dropping the temperate so that eventually those who'd survived the massacre lost consciousness, could be tranquilised and shipped out under Lester's watchful eye and remarkably steady hand.

I'd gone home, dropped into bed and fallen asleep as soon as my head had hit the pillow. The nightmares had come later, after I'd slept for hours and hours. And then the alarm had gone off and I'd come into work just like any other day.

Perhaps Nick had told them how we'd saved the day - that would explain Abby's hug but not Connor's weird reception. Didn't explain Lester's strange behaviour either. Maybe Nick would shed some light on it when he got in - he was out tracking a creature apparently. I assumed one of animals from yesterday had escaped somehow, that he was out with Lester's soldiers.

Staring at the computer screens, not really seeing the data there (Lester had said something about an anomaly, I just wasn't sure which anomaly he'd been talking about), I remembered back to the moment yesterday morning, Helen's phone call telling me she'd been kidnapped by Lester and needed my help, telling me Nick, Abby and Connor were dead. I'd believed her, and the news had crashed down on me like a powerful wave, overwhelming, leaving me fighting to breathe passed the constriction in my chest. At that moment I'd loved Abby with all my heart, respected Connor for all his well-hidden talents, and had known Nick forever. I couldn't imagine life without them, but life without Nick in it seemed to be beyond me.

When I'd spotted him in the basement, sitting on the stone steps, bleeding, exhausted, as close to defeat as I'd ever seen him, I'd gone at him, as angry with him as I was with Helen but for no better reason than the hours I'd spent trying to come to terms with a world devoid of him. In the moment I'd laid eyes on him, for that single moment, I'd fallen dramatically and completely in love with him. If he'd asked, or even if he hadn't, I'd have died for him yesterday.

Connor's movement to my left was the first indication of Nick's arrival. I turned to see him walk in through the double doors of the atrium and was stunned by his appearance. He looked like shit, like he hadn't slept in months, hadn't eaten in weeks, hadn't shaved in days. And I knew instantly that something was wrong, that Nick wouldn't be able to explain what was going on, because his expression when he saw me was worse than Connor's had been moments before he'd fainted. I knew just by looking at him that Nick hadn't set out a couple of hours ago on the hunt - or if he had it had been a really bad morning, because his jeans and shirt were covered in damp mud and grass stains and he definitely needed a shower. But if I was surprised to see him looking so dishevelled, it was nothing compared to the shock Nick obviously had on seeing me.

He walked in, door slamming open, words out of his mouth before the echo of it fell away, "So what's so fucking important that I had to let a creature get away…?" He saw me, and I watched while I became his single point of focus, watched him take a step forward and drop heavily onto that foot, unbalancing, almost falling. I saw my name on his lips and before he could suffer the same injury as Connor had in the kitchen - cracking his skull on the tiled floor - I crossed the atrium and grabbed his shoulders, steadying him.

"Stephen…."

"Nick, what's wrong? What the hell's going on here?"

"You're… you're here." He was staring at me, blue eyes wide.

"Where else would I be? I left last night, came in this morning and everyone's acting like they seeing…."

"You didn't leave last night." He shook his head and something cold settled inside me as he lifted a shaking hand to my chest, flattening his hand against my shirt. I could feel the heat of his palm, fingers spread, pressing against me presumably… to feel my heartbeat. He was really scaring me. "You're real, you're here… but this… oh, God, this means she did it." Who did what? I had no idea what he was going on about. "Oh, God."

I watched him start to look around frantically, saw his eye catch and glanced up myself to see Jenny standing on the spiral mezzanine staring down at us. I had a feeling it wasn't Nick she was staring at. He looked behind me at Abby and Connor, up to the office where Lester was watching us.

"Is everyone else okay?"

What? "Of course." I had no idea what he was talking about and my grip on his shoulder tightened, I couldn't help it. "Nick, everyone's fine, everything's fine."

"Everything isn't fine." That much, I admit, was obvious. There were tears in his eyes, breaking free and sliding over his face. Not for years had I seen him break apart like this and it had my heart racing, because something definitely wasn't right and I was getting the distinct impression that I wasn't supposed to be there.

"Talk to me, Nick! Tell me what's going on! Why is everyone acting like they seeing a ghost?"

"Because they are! Stephen… you're dead! You died… six months ago!"

#

Nick

Oh, God. Seeing him again, touching him…. The last time I'd seen him…. The only way he could be standing there was if Helen had done something terrible, something risky, something very, very bad. But at that moment I wanted to hug her, not shoot her, because I think… I think she'd given me Stephen back.

I watched him back up a little and knew despite all the protests he was about to throw up against my claim, some part of him believed me. I could see that in his expression, in the slight frown, the wrinkle of his forehead, the turn of his lips.

"Yesterday… was a bad day." He spoke slowly, deliberately. "Leeke, Helen…. the creatures from the anomalies….."

I was crying, couldn't have stopped the tears even if I'd wanted to and I tried to gentle my voice this time around as I repeated what I'd just blurted out. "That was six months ago."

"What are you talking about?" Stephen took another step back, my hand falling from his chest. "It was yesterday."

"It was six months ago and you… you died, Stephen. I watched you die." Sniffing, I wiped my face with the back of my hand. I see it every time I close my eyes - raptors, the sabre-tooth, the centipede…. Everything I'd faced that day, all Leeke's threats, had been inconsequential compared to what I'd watched Stephen go through. "We buried… you, went to your funeral. Six months ago."

"Stop it. Just… stop it. This isn't funny."

No? So why did I suddenly want to laugh out loud? "God, Stephen, it's not but at the same time… at the same time it's brilliant." I smiled through my tears and to my surprise he took a step back towards me. "You're here and you're alive and… however it's possible, I just don't care. What she's done… what Helen's done… she's given you back to me." I shook my head, knew how I must look and sound to him - hysteria surely masking some deeper mental unbalance. "Don't… leave, just don't leave, okay? We can sort this out."

Now I knew I wasn't making sense, I felt my breath hitch in my chest, the old grief and this new hope, this utter relief, making it impossible to control what I was feeling right at that moment. I dropped my head, closed my eyes, could still hear him breathing, still feel him close by. Then his arms wrapped around me and he pulled me into a silent hug. Head dropping to his shoulder, squeezing my eyes shut, I let it all out, let the sobs rise from so deep within me I felt like my soul was tugging itself lose. His arms tightened and I knew he was doing this because it was the only way to get any sense out of me and I knew he knew it. Once I'd started to dissolve I had to go completely before I could pull myself back together. He knew it of old.

He held me until I'd cried all the tears I could cry, until I was empty of grief. Then he walked me over to the seats at the edge of the atrium and sat me down, staying beside me, touching at the shoulders and elbows. Connor brought over a box of tissues and dropped them onto the floor beside me and I looked up and muttered a thank you before he left us alone. They knew how much pain I'd been in, how much guilt I'd been wallowing in; the nightmares, the sleepless nights, the slow-burn addiction to coffee - mood swings, bouts of depression followed by violent outbursts, distancing myself from them when they probably needed me the most. I just hadn't had anything left to give them.

"How did… yesterday… go, in your mind?" I looked at him, met his bright blue eyes.

"We locked the creatures in the feeding room, they mostly tore each other apart."

"The door… didn't jam?" He shook his head. "The door jammed, Stephen. One of us had to go inside and close it from the control panel. I reluctantly volunteered when Helen didn't. Then you punched me, hard, went in instead and you wouldn't open the door, wouldn't let me in when… when I wish to God you had. I watched, as long as I could I forced myself to meet your eyes and hold it for as long as you…" for as long as you had eyes "… for as long as I could. I watched those creatures…" tear you apart, limb from limb, taking bloody great bites out of you "…kill you. And not once, not once did you scream. I should have been the one to die. Helen wouldn't have gone to so much trouble to bring me back, I tell you." I tried to smile but I couldn't. Instead I dropped my face into my hands and stared into the red darkness behind my eyelids.


Stephen

"I should have been the one to die." Not a chance. Like I said - I'd have died for him the way I felt, seeing him after Helen telling me he'd been killed. Could it possibly be true? Why would he lie and why all the tears, all the drama; his emotions were so real, so powerful, for a man who preferred to keep them to himself. This wasn't pretend. Connor's reaction, Abby's response, all too real.

I'd died then? It sounded horrific but all I could do was imagine it, and it wasn't something I wanted to imagine. Not what I'd expected to hear that morning, not the first thing I'd assumed waking up in the same apartment I've lived in for years. I hadn't noticed it was particularly dusty. Maybe Helen had been living there. Helen… how the hell she'd managed to change my past and not everyone's I had no clue. I hoped whatever she'd done hadn't changed anything more significant than me. I hadn't noticed anything weird on my way to work - Zeppelins in the skies over London or anything - but then I hadn't really been looking.

I should have been more shaken but I wasn't. As far as I was concerned this was just another day in paradise. But for Nick, it certainly wasn't. He looked as if my death had almost destroyed him, and however cruel or selfish it might sound, something like that is so good for the ego. At the same time, I wondered if simply being there was enough to heal him, or if he was too broken for that. He - they - had lived six months in one night. Six months without me. How the hell did I make that better?

I put my hand on his shoulder, moved it across and started to rub his back slowly. 'It's okay, I'm here,' sounded so corny even in my own head and I doubted there were words to take from him six months of suffering, of grief. "Take me to the graveyard," I told him quietly, "I want to see my grave." Actually I wanted to read the headstone, if there was one. As macabre as it might be I was fascinated. It's hard to imagine a death so terrible as Nick had described it, even leaving out the details I knew he knew and wasn't telling. I had no idea of the pain I'd have suffered, couldn't even take a guess and I didn't want to. I had even less of an idea about what it must have done to him to see it, although I was getting a fair insight into his mental state right about then as he lifted his head from his hands and rested it sideways against my shoulder, looking out into the atrium, not looking at me.

"Why?"

"Because otherwise I don't think I'll ever believe you."

He took a deep breath and hesitated for a while, but in the end he nodded. "Okay. If you want to. If you're sure."

I wondered which part of today he thought I could be sure about.

#

The first things I noticed were the fresh flowers and the unopened bottle of Glenlivet whisky in front of the black marble stone. The flowers were beautiful, white roses loosely tied together in transparent red wrapping. There was no card but somehow I didn't need one - they came with the whisky and I knew that could only be Nick.

He stood behind me as I crouched down and when I glanced up I could see the faint embarrassment in his face. "How often do you come here?"

"Almost every day, usually in the evening."

"Dead men can't drink whisky," I told him gently.

"Living men can."

I wondered how many bottles he'd gone through in six months, and what his definition of 'living' was. Only after a time did I look at the inscription on the headstone.

'Stephen James Hart, born 16.8.1975, died 4.3.2007, aged 32.
Loved for all time
God takes the best of us and leaves the rest of us.'

It took my breath away.

"I didn't know what to write." Nick was crouching beside me. "It wasn't something we'd ever talked about - you know - what we'd want on our grave stones. Didn't ever come up in conversation."

Nick had come up with those words? When I could talk, I could only think of one thing to say. "You got my birthday wrong."

There was a pause before he claimed, "I did not!"

I chuckled. "You did. You always do. It's the 17th, not the 16th." He bought me a card every year and a gift so unusual, so thoughtful they'd never once been predictable and never once disappointed. One year he'd taken me to the Natural History Museum and spent over a hundred quid on me in the gift shop, buying me everything I'd ever mentioned I wanted from there. But every single year I'd known him, he'd done all this a day early.

He looked crestfallen. "I'm sorry…."

I cuffed his shoulder. "Don't be an idiot. It's… beautiful, Nick. Thank you." It seemed a weird thing to say but then I couldn't think of suitable words. I lay my hand flat on the soil. "So… I'm under here?"

Another hesitation. "No."

"No?" I turned, looked at him and he locked eyes with me, obviously toying with the idea of not telling me the truth.

Making his decision he dragged his gaze away, to my hand on the ground. "We… buried an empty coffin."

"Why?" Had he been lying to me?! "If all this…."

He shook his head and just before he said it, I understood. "There wasn't…. There was nothing…"

"It's okay." Don't say anymore. "I get it." Ouch. Not enough left to bury. That really would have hurt.

"We had a private ceremony - burned what we could…." I got a mental image of a basement and a furnace and he seemed to read my mind. "We did it all properly," he said quickly, "in the crematorium just down the road. But your family wanted a burial. We told them… that you'd died in a car crash - that it wasn't pretty and they were best to remember you alive." My family. How the hell did I explain this one? Or did I? That was definitely a decision for tomorrow.

We walked back to the 4x4 slowly, side by side in a muted silence. The back of his hand brushed against mine accidentally and a moment later I brushed the backs of my fingers against his deliberately. His head snapped round to look at me and suddenly I was feeling all the same things I had done back in the basement of that place, when I'd spotted him sitting there, bleeding, exhausted, but beautifully alive. Kind of how he'd been looking at me since he'd walked into the ARC and laid eyes on me.

Neither of us said a word. We carried on walking to the edge of the graveyard where we'd left the Toyota, little brief touches keeping us connected until he climbed into the driver's side and I went around to the passenger door. He put the key in the ignition but didn't turn it. Instead he turned to look at me, opened his mouth to say something, and strictly on impulse I leaned across, touched my fingers to his jaw and kissed him, open-mouthed and needy.

I don't know what reaction I expected, but it wasn't the one I got. He growled - literally - then his hands came up to frame my face and he twisted in his seat, tilted his head, swept his tongue over mine and kissed me back with more passion and desperation than anyone had ever had for me.

It was the best thing I'd ever done, pulling him over into my seat until he was straddling me, foot twisted against the handbrake. Mouth never leaving his I got his T-shirt off over his head with incredible difficulty and he popped the buttons on my shirt to get to skin. We unzipped flies and dug around obscenely in each others' underwear until we'd freed one another, erections rubbing together, fingers knitting around them as we both thrust up as far as our positions and the roof of the car would let us. Insane to do this in broad daylight in a damn cemetery but nothing short of a cavalcade of hearses could have stopped us, and breathless we pulled and pushed and twisted awkwardly until we both came within seconds of each other, Nick collapsing on top of me, my mouth finding his again and kissing him like I never wanted to stop.

If I'd expected nervousness, regret or embarrassment from him afterwards I'd have been sorely mistaken. After a few long minutes he apologised for having to clamber out of my lap and dropped back ungraciously into his own seat, looking at me like I was the most precious thing ever to exist in his life. It was a look I would happily live for. We were both a mess; cocks sated, trousers stained, no way was my shirt going to fasten and he regarded his already filthy T-shirt with distaste.

"My place?"

He nodded, grinned. It was closer than his and it had a shower we could both get in at a push. I could only hope to God Helen wasn't living there. He drove half-naked, but at least he fastened his trousers before starting the engine.

#

Nick

There was a time that the extremes of my grief didn't make sense even to me. Suddenly everything was making sense.

Back at Stephen's place we took a long, hot shower together. There wasn't a mark on him that I didn't know the origin of, and that surprised and thrilled me. He washed my hair - no one has ever washed my hair before but me - and the sensations of his fingers through the shampoo, his nails gently across my scalp were indescribable. It was such a simple, innocent touch that aroused me beyond belief. One arm around my waist from behind, he bit and kissed my neck and shoulders while his fist curled around my cock and slowly, agonisingly slowly, he took me to my second orgasm of the day, my second in as long as I could remember.

Head dropped back to his shoulder I twisted until he leaned in and kissed me, tongue languishing in my mouth while I tasted him. I wanted to return the favour but I could barely stand after what he'd done to me, and as it was he had to practically carry me through to the bedroom once we'd managed to dry ourselves. We had meant to go back to the ARC, but Stephen's wonderful big bed was there and we just ended up in it. I swear I was asleep before my damp head touched the pillow, and when I woke up it was getting dark outside. I was hot, Stephen's body wrapped around me, his soft breaths in my ear. I lay awake listening to it, feeling his heartbeat against my back, wondering if people had been trying to reach us all day, wondering if they were worried and not being able to bring myself to care.

Eventually I felt him move behind me and heard him mutter those immortal words, "I really need a piss."

So did I, now he'd mentioned it, but I let him go first and admired the review of his bare backside as he padded around the bed and disappeared into the en-suite, not bothering to close the door. When he came back into the room he crouched down next to the bed in front of me, claimed a long kiss, and smiled at me in a way he never had before.

"Why now, Stephen?" I had to ask. "After so long."

"Well, actually it hasn't been that long for me. I only fell in love with you yesterday afternoon, so this… this is quite quick for me."

Yesterday afternoon. I'd spent yesterday afternoon tracking a snake through suburban London. For him that had been sometime between his finding out that Helen had been using him and getting torn apart… only he hadn't been. "When, yesterday afternoon?"

"When I saw you, alive, sitting on those steps with your head bleeding and that look on your face like you knew the world wasn't worth the effort but you were still trying to save it."

I've looked much, much better that I must have done then. "Why then?"

"Because she'd told me you were dead, and I'd had to imagine living without you. But then there you were, alive and still breathing and suddenly I just needed to keep you with me, not let you go ever."

Wasn't that how I'd felt this morning, seeing him again, seeing him alive?

Could a relationship really survive based on a mutual terror of losing one another? Or was that what all relationships were based on, when it really came down to it?

He kissed me again. "Coffee?"

I nodded dumbly and watched him as he rose gracefully to his feet. I knew it was all wrong, I knew I should have been out there trying to work out what damage had been done by Stephen's miraculous resurrection but his life was a gift to me, and no matter the cost, I wasn't about to question it.