Work Text:
“The X-rays show no fractures, Stephen. I’m happy to discharge you provided you won’t be on your own tonight or tomorrow.”
The young doctor in A&E looked almost as knackered as Stephen felt, but he’d been calm, thorough and reassuring. His verdict was that Stephen had a case of moderate concussion. Stephen had been told to take paracetamol, stay away from any anti-inflammatories in case they caused bleeding, avoid alcohol and not drive until he had completely recovered. He wasn’t to play any contact sports for a few weeks, either. Stephen wondered what the doctor’s view would be of tangling with dinosaurs, but he kept that thought to himself.
“I won’t be by myself,” he promised
The doctor cast a quick look at the pink-haired woman sitting on a chair next to Stephen’s bed and appeared to jump to the conclusion that she was his girlfriend. For the sake of an easy life, Stephen was happy to play along with that. Suzie Stafford worked at Wookey Hole Caves and had ended up with Ryan and Cutter’s group during the appearance of multiple anomalies in the cave and mill complex. She’d offered to take Stephen to the hospital in Weston-super-Mare in her own car and wait with him in the hope of being able to take him back with her. She’d also done a good job of keeping him supplied with cold drinks and, in a low voice, had briefed Stephen on the parts of the anomaly operation that he hadn’t witnessed at first-hand.
He’d winced at her description of Ryan going into a mirror maze after what had turned out to be another phorusrachos, His lover had carefully not mentioned that in the brief talk they’d had before Stephen had been whisked off. Stephen could now see why.
“Keep an ice pack or a packet of frozen peas on that lump,” the doctor advised.
Stephen nodded. He was sure that the Wookey Hole Hotel would manage to rustle up some ice. Lester had already decreed that the team would be remaining on site overnight. He clearly wanted to be sure the anomalies weren’t going to reappear, and there was also the minor matter of the giant salamander Stephen had seen in the cave to be dealt with. By now, he presumed that any remaining dwarf allosaurs in the cave would have been safely tranquilised and were no doubt shortly be on their way to Farnley Hall. The animal transport trucks they used were probably already hammering down the M4, ready to pick up their latest guests.
He shook hands with the doctor and then followed Suzie to her car. The air outside the hospital was refreshingly cold after the stifling heat of the hospital and a light mist was hazing the air. Stephen was tired and his head was throbbing. To his relief, the drive back to Wookey Hole was accomplished in companionable silence. A nice long bath followed by a decent sleep and he was certain that he’d be feeling more human in the morning. As the car wound through innumerable country lanes flanked by high hedges, with passing places few and far between, he was glad someone who knew the area was at the wheel rather than him. Closing his eyes against the glare of any oncoming headlights, Stephen leaned back in the seat and let the tiredness wash through him without fighting it.
“Wakey wakey.”
Suzie’s words brought Stephen out of a doze. He opened his eyes and realised they were now parked outside the hotel. Sean Burns was outside the main entrance leaning against the doorway smoking a fag, rifle slung over his shoulder. When the sergeant saw Stephen open the car door, he came quickly down the steps.
“Head intact?”
“Mostly. I’ve been told not to play rugby.”
“Were you intending to?”
“Nope. They told me not to drink, either.”
Burns’ grin widened. “Fat chance. The boss is in the bar. I said I’d take the night shift. We cleared the cave of vermin. They’re all on their way to the Hall. There’s a wire net over where the river comes out of the cave and the Witch King says everything else will wait until tomorrow.”
Stephen nodded. Lester had the right idea. If the cave was clear, there was no rush to deal with anything else. He turned to Suzie. “Thanks for the lift, and for everything you did today.”
She waved a hand airily. “No probs. See you tomorrow.”
“There are no punters left on site,” Burns said as Suzie drove off. “We’ve got the hotel to ourselves. Boy Wonder says there’s been no sign of any of the damn things coming back and it’s all quiet everywhere else, thank fuck.”
The bar area in the hotel had been taken over by the civilian team and the soldiers who weren’t covering the night shift. As Fiver was busily serving drinks and grinning cheerfully, it looked like they’d been left alone to help themselves from the bar. Dane was sprawled out in a corner, a pint in front of him, talking to Claudia and Cutter. Ryan was facing the door with what looked like a pint of coke in front of him. As Stephen walked in, he saw the warmth return to Ryan’s eyes and his lover smiled.
“Beer, Stephen?” Fiver called. The Special Forces lads had no time for any medication that didn’t mix with alcohol.
Stephen flung caution to the winds and nodded. In response to questions from Claudia and Cutter, he gave the short version of what the doctor had told him. Ryan passed a pint of beer to him in a glass appropriately labelled Potholer, and pushed the coke to one side and accepted a pint from Fiver.
“Want some crushed ice?” the young soldier asked.
The throbbing in Stephen’s head answered that question and he nodded. Fiver wandered off and a few minutes later, Stephen heard the sound of thumping coming from the kitchen area beyond the bar. Knowing Fiver, he was probably using the butt of his Glock. Ryan’s team weren’t known for their subtlety, but they sure as hell knew how to get the job done. The ice, when it appeared, was tied up in a tea towel. Stephen pressed it to his forehead and let the conversation flow around him.
Lester seemed surprisingly relaxed for a man who still had a giant salamander to deal with. It sounded like he’d put in a request for a diving team from the Special Boat Service based in Poole. Stephen hadn’t worked with them before, but Lyle had spoken highly of them when they’d provided back-up for anomaly in a flooded quarry not far from Wookey Hole. Like everywhere with caves and mines, the Mendips seemed to attract anomalies. Connor was still working on various theories, but hadn’t yet reached a conclusion.
“Are you intending to dive tomorrow?” Stephen asked, addressing the question to Lester.
His boss nodded. “I know the cave. The others don’t.”
“I can dive,” Cutter said.
“Not in an overhead environment,” Lester said, impervious as ever to the mutinous look on Cutter’s face. “It’s not the same as open-water diving.”
Stephen drank his beer and let them get on with it. The team knew each other well enough by now in a social setting to relax in each other’s company whist still conducting an argument about the best way to handle things. But with a sadistic goblin hammering away inside his head, he wasn’t up to playing peacemaker. They had Claudia for that, and her skill at Cutter-wrangling had now reached higher degree level.
He felt Ryan’s hand slide up his thigh and his lover said quietly, “Time for bed?”
Stephen drank the rest of his pint. “Sounds like the best offer I’ve had all day.”
He handed the now-sopping tea towel with its melting contents back to Fiver and was given a blue packet with the Boots logo on it in return.
“The manager found them. His secretary uses them for migraines. Cold patches you can stick on your head. Ditz gave me some once for an infected mozzie bite.”
Stephen accepted the packet with grateful thanks. They’d be less messy than an ice pack in bed.
The hotel room looked like a clone of every motel Stephen had ever stayed in, from the tightly tucked sheets to the bland splodges of colour on canvas that seemed to pass for hotel art the world over. But the bed was large, the room was clean and there was a decent sized bath as well as a shower. Ryan started to run him a bath as Stephen stripped off his grubby clothes. Their travel bags had already been brought up to the room. The rest of their gear would be under guard in one of the vehicles.
Ryan had emptied a small container of bath foam into the water and the white-tiled room was already filling with the fresh smell of citrus fruit. Stephen slid happily into the warm water and decided to rub a wet flannel careful over his head rather than risk the steri-strips that were holding the gash in his forehead together.
“Let me.” Ryan took the cloth off him, dunked it in the bath, and then started to gently rub it over Stephen’s hair, bringing off the muck and blood from elsewhere that the hospital had left behind. The contact made his head hurt even more but Ryan carried on, mindful of every wince and sharp intake of breath. “Nearly done.” He rinsed out the cloth in the sink and wiped Stephen’s face and neck, even remembering to wash behind his ears.
“Thanks, mum.”
“Bad mental image, Hart. I hope your mum never gave you a blow job.”
His mother had never given him very much of anything, but his childhood wasn’t a time of his life Stephen particularly wanted to revisit. He closed his eyes and sank down into the warm water.
“Fancy anything from the mini-bar?” Ryan asked. “The manager’s told us to help ourselves.”
“I wouldn’t say no to a brandy.”
The alcohol tasted surprisingly smooth for something that had come out of a hotel fridge. Stephen sipped at it, eyes closed, knelt down by the side of the bath and slid one hand gently down Stephen’s chest.
“Mmm, nice,” Stephen said, as Ryan’s hand slipped beneath the water and followed the trail of hair on his stomach down to his cock.
Ryan gently cupped it in his hand and Stephen felt his dick twitch in response and start to fill. It seemed that a certain part of his anatomy was determined to ignore the thumping still going on in his head. The movement of Ryan’s hand stayed gentle, but Stephen wanted more. He thrust up into the circle of Ryan’s fingers and let out a long, slow breath.
“Did the nice doctor prescribe a wank?” Ryan asked, in an amused tone of voice.
“Mmm.”
“You’re lying, Hart.” But Ryan kept up the movement of his hand under the water.
“Ditzy prescribes them.”
“For colds. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him prescribe one for concussion.”
“He prescribes them for most things.”
“That’s just to get everyone out of his office.”
Stephen grinned. It was a tactic guaranteed to appeal to most of the soldiers. He would like to have been a fly on the wall when their resident medic had mistaken the approaching footsteps in the medical bay and, without looking up, had told one of the biologists bugger off and have a wank, thinking he’d been talking to Finn. The man, the very epitome of a spectacle-wearing, timid academic, had turned beetroot red and escaped at speed, much to the amusement of everyone who’d been nearby at the time.
Under the gentle ministrations of Ryan’s fingers, Stephen’s cock had come to full hardness. With the glass of brandy resting on his chest and his eyes still closed, he lay there, enjoying the warmth of the water and his lover’s touch.
Stephen felt the light brush of Ryan’s lips across his and opened his mouth to the kiss. Ryan kept everything slow and gentle, but it wasn’t long before Stephen was thrusting lazily up into his lover’s grasp, chasing more sensation, while Ryan worked his cock harder and faster in response.
It felt good and was taking his mind off the throbbing in his head. Ryan deepened the kiss, his tongue sliding against Stephen’s, as his other hand rubbed across Stephen’s nipples, tweaking them to hardness. A sharp jolt of pleasure shot straight to Stephen’s dick and he gasped into Ryan’s mouth.
Stephen could feel his pleasure building inexorably. His lover knew exactly how to push all his buttons and proceeded to do so, with consummate skill. Ryan took his hand off Stephen’s nipple long enough to lift the glass to his own lips before he proceeded to share it with Stephen in a deep, brandy-tasting kiss. With a sudden warm rush, pleasure washed through him in mounting wave, and Stephen came, his cock pulsing into the scented water of the bath.
Ryan fed him another mouthful of brandy as he gentled him through the small after-shocks. Stephen nipped lightly at his lover’s lower lip, and said quietly, “Thank you.”
Ryan smiled and kissed him again. “My pleasure.”
Ten minutes later, Stephen lay in a comfortable sprawl in bed with Ryan, enjoying the coolness of one of the migraine pads against his forehead, with his head resting on his lover’s shoulder.
It had been an interesting day and he suspected that tomorrow might well be the same.