satyricon au go go

Working Without A Net

"Do you like your party?"

Billy nodded emphatically. He was sitting perched on the kitchen counter, drinking beer, legs wrapped around Alan who was standing very, very close in front of him. Billy put his beer down and draped his arms around Alan's shoulders.

"Good party," he purred, leaning forward to kiss Alan. "Nice party." He kissed him again. The kiss was followed by another then another until somebody passing told them to get a room for fuck's sake and they drew apart slightly, at least enough to see a sliver of light between them.

Alan rubbed Billy's thighs where they wrapped around him in a fond and familiar gesture.

"God, I'm going to miss you, you know."

Billy caught the achingly wistful note in Alan's voice.

"This is the way we decided to work this: you tenure, me freelance," Billy reminded quietly.

"I know. I just miss you, when you're away."

Billy smiled impishly. "I'd have thought you'd be glad to get me out of your hair, have some of that peace and quiet you're always accusing me of stealing from you."

Alan tilted his head slightly. Billy was half right, and yet...

"My bed gets cold," he pouted slightly.

Billy took a swig of beer, nodding in agreement. "I know. When I get to London I'm going to fly you over for a fuck."

Alan's eyes sparked with interest, thinking of a long dirty weekend in London. They might even get out of the bedroom this time, maybe.

He leant closer. "I'm going to hold you to that."

"I'll settle just for being held."

Alan's hands rested on Billy's waist and they pressed foreheads and noses together for a moment, sad at their inevitable parting, hours away now, then they drew apart again, before brushing each other's lips with a kiss.

The kiss ended and they just gazed at each other.

"You're eyes are so blue," Billy murmured.

"You're just noticing?" Alan teased.

"Remembering," Billy insisted, making a study of Alan's face. "It's going to be a long six weeks, with only my hand for company."

Alan's lips curled upwards, bemused by Billy's brutal honesty.

Billy slammed the top off another beer bottle with his metal hand. It was the quick, sudden violence of it that always unnerved Alan. Billy had learnt better and better control of his arm, especially his old favourite metal one, but he could also wield it like a club at times, and there was something about articulated metal claws, that even when attached to your lover, were the stuff of nightmares at times.

Billy caught up the neck of the beer bottle between his metal hooks and drank from it that way, keeping his flesh and blood arm draped around Alan, not wanting to break contact, not yet. He had his job, he loved his job, but parting was always such sweet sorrow.

€€

The pile of books kept their promise to tip over and they rained down on Billy from the top shelf of the linen closet.

"Damn it, Alan, do you have to have every damn shelf in this place booby trapped," Billy hissed, bruised, crouching to pick up he books he'd dislodged. Several of them had landed sprawled open and from one had slid an old photo of Alan. An image of a very young Alan looking very, very intense and serious, wearing nothing but impossibly tight dark stovepipe jeans and boots, cigarette in hand, sitting on an unmade bed, leaning up against a wall covered in political posters that just screamed university dorm.

Billy sat down on the floor where he was and studied the photo, deeply amused, and resisting all of Alan's attempts to pluck it out of his hand.

"God, look at you," he breathed, enchanted.

"I was young," Alan excused himself.

"I know," Billy grinned. "Look at you, you were so incredibly hot back then -" he caught himself. "You're still hot, but, I've never seen pictures of you when you were -"

"Your age," Alan finished for him, sourly.

Billy bowed his head. "Alan, I'm getting on a plane in a couple of hours, let's not start this. We're together now, that's all that matters. I've just never seen pictures of you before, pictures like this. You're so damn serious," he looked up, grinning.

"I've always been serious," Alan remarked dryly.

Billy stood, still hanging onto the photo. "I want to keep this."

Alan shrugged.

Billy leant in and kissed him.

"You're hotter now," he promised. "And warmer. I don't think this guy ever smiled."

This brought the flicker of a smile to Alan's lips.

"No, I don't suppose he did."

"See?" Billy kissed him lightly again. "Much better now."

Alan had no need to doubt Billy's sincerity, yet he still felt foolish at times.

Billy had always been serious and committed to Alan but when they'd first gotten together Alan had still been in rebound mode, and he'd been skittish. Alan also suffered all the anxieties and insecurities attendant with taking a very pretty and much younger lover.

Billy had still been very, very young then, barely out of his teens, and he'd kept his own interests, his own place and his own circle of friends. He was always going off and having adventures with these friends, thinking the last thing Alan wanted was to hang out with a bunch of silly young college students. He'd been quite right, but Alan had still felt the pangs of jealousy in spite of himself, and when Billy's friends had answered his phone at odd hours, it hadn't helped.

Most of those friends had melted away after the island and Alan had finally had Billy all to himself, for better or worse. Now Billy's life was back on track and his career had taken off and there was nothing like being on television to widen one's circle of friends, even if it was only on cable.

Alan felt the pull of the world outside and he felt he had to compete for Billy's attention these days. Though it wasn't really true, of course, it was hard to argue the fact when Billy was about to fly away from him again to start work on another short series for the BBC on dinosaur hunting.

A large part of Billy didn't want to go, he wanted to stay here with Alan, but he had his job and he liked his job and he needed his job. They were both professionals with their own careers and this was just the way it was.

Alan's last minute gripings were just his way of saying goodbye. Billy couldn't blame him. Alan had lost Billy on the island, and that hideous sense of loss had never left him. It made him over-protective and fussy and Billy enjoyed it as much as it irritated him at times. It was just Alan's way of showing he cared.

They packed up the books and moved onto Billy's room to gather up the last of his things. Alan was grumbling about Billy leaving things to the last minute, but that was Billy, flying by the seat of his pants, as always.

Alan tried to drag the suitcase out of the back of the wardrobe but it had snagged on something. He gave it a tug and Billy's guitar fell out onto the floor, face first, with a loud and discordant note.

Alan picked it up, annoyed, and practically threw it back into the depths of the wardrobe where it belonged.

"I don't know why you even bother hanging onto that," he snapped, irritated.

Billy shot him a look frozen in hurt and anger and then he'd just dropped the clothes he'd been holding in a tumble onto his bed and stalked out of the room.

"Billy -" Alan tried, calling after him, exasperated.

Alan found Billy standing out on the back porch, as far as he could go in anger when the taxi was due in just under two hours. Billy was hugging himself tightly with one arm, refusing to acknowledge Alan's existence.

Alan stood two paces behind him.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Billy. That was a stupid, insensitive thing to say. I'm so sorry. Please, you can't leave like this. We can't leave it like this."

Billy just turned his head slightly and shot him an impossibly injured and hostile look, then he turned back to staring out at nothing. The island was still between them, and the fact that Alan had left Billy there, alone, to die.

Alan bowed his head. There was nothing he could say or do to make it right. How could he ever make up for what Billy had lost? How could he even try?

"I'm sorry," Alan murmured again and then turned back inside, finishing the job of packing for Billy, fastening his suitcase, feeling very much that Billy really was leaving him this time, all because of a few careless words.

Billy had taken the taxi alone to the airport, and there had been no cheery, beery phone call when he'd finally gotten into London. There was nothing but empty silence, and Alan pretended not to notice, sifting through his notes as he worked on his next paper.

€€

Billy was staring forlornly out of the train window, watching the scenery fly past. He was dressed warmly against the Russian autumn, and the only deep scar that was visible was the one on his throat that hooked up just like the Nike symbol, peeking above the collar of his jumper. The rest were all hidden from sight. Even his metal and plastic hand was disguised beneath mittens.

Strangely, it was more important to keep his prosthetic arm warm than his real one. Nobody had told him how much the mechanics didn't like icy weather, nor how very bloody unpleasant it was strapping something ice cold to himself first thing in the morning. Still, he supposed it was no colder than Montana, and his homesick mind was just playing games with him.

"Cheer up," grinned Iain, lurching back into their compartment and surprising him by thrusting a steaming cup of hot black tea in his face. "It might never happen."

"I think it already has: he's been a sullen and moody bastard since we left London," put in Geoff.

"I think he's homesick," placated Iain.

"Or lovesick," put in Terry, somewhat lustily.

Geoff turned on this line of questioning. "So, what is it? Girlfriend or boyfriend?"

Billy gave them one of his sourest looks. "None of your damn business."

Terry and Geoff shared a grin. "Boyfriend!" They shouted gleefully in unison.

"Fuck off!" Billy yelled at them, kicking the seat between them, but the shout was split with a grin and the kick wasn't that hard.

"We had a fight," he offered quietly by way of explanation once the tittering had died down.

Iain nodded sympathetically, blowing on his own cup of tea and sending up small swirls of steam.

"Good. I thought you might be going all J-Lo on us and being pissy that the BBC is sending you all the way out there by rail. It's just so we can get some extra footage, travelogue stuff."

"I know," Billy turned to them, smile dimpling. "Michael Palin has a lot to answer for," he added, grin growing vicious.

His film crew laughed and Billy returned to gazing out of the ever changing window scene again. "I'm being silly. I've always wanted to do this and I've been too wrapped up in my own problems to enjoy myself."

"It's a film shoot, you're not supposed to enjoy yourself." Terry reminded sourly, but he was only joking, sort of.

It was a working holiday. They had deadlines to keep, footage to get in the can and a schedule that could easily fall apart if they missed a connection or failed to grease any wheels along the way.

The Powers That Be had decided to send Billy out to the Mongolian dinosaur fields by way of the Trans-Siberian railway, second class no less, no doubt hoping the crew could catch a little local colour on film along the way. Billy didn't mind too much, he still had a thing or two about planes, as much as he spent a lot of his life commuting by planes these days.

They were about seven hours into their first day aboard the train and starting to settle into the routine and each other's company. They'd met back in London during pre-production, and Billy had worked with Geoff and Terry before, but there was nothing like a four seater carriage for really getting to know one another.

The train suddenly shuddered to a grinding halt, causing Billy and Iain to juggle their tea, trying not to slop it everywhere.

"Oh, what now," huffed Terry, all piss and vinegar and not at all a happy traveller.

"Mexican bandits holding up the train again," Iain joked, sharing a smile with Billy beside him.

They stood on the tracks for a long while, and watched the conductors walk up and down the corridor once or twice. The landscape quickly grew boring and the quiet waiting even more so.

Just as suddenly the train shuddered, shunted backwards and forwards a bit, then started moving again.

"Must have been a cow on the tracks," Geoff decided.

"More likely the local post," Iain surmised in crisp, expensively educated tones.

Geoff held his peace. Iain was their producer, after all.

The train picked up speed again and they settled back again into dozing, reading, working on lap tops or just staring out the window. They'd been clipping along for about forty minutes when everything suddenly went dark and loud.

€€

Alan ignored the phone, then glared at it, but it wouldn't stop ringing. At last he finally decided to pick it up, or he'd never get anything done.

"Go away, I'm busy, " he started gruffly.

"Alan - it's going to be on the news."

"Ellie?" Now he was confused, and he felt his stomach start to sink like a stone.

"Alan, listen to me. A separatist group boarded the Trans-Siberian railway and took some passengers off the train as hostages, including a BBC film crew."

Alan couldn't manage to make a sound in reply.

"Oh, god, Alan, I'm so sorry."

Alan swallowed, still trying to find the power of speech.

"Billy," Alan murmured, finding it hard to hold up the phone. "Is he - is he?"

"He was alive when they took him, that's all we know - all I know. I'm not supposed to - but I had to tell you - I couldn't just let you find out on the evening news. I'm so sorry, Alan. Mark is working on it, trust me, he is. The Russians want to handle it themselves."

"Oh, God," Alan murmured, remembering that theatre in Moscow.

"I just thought you should be told, not hear it on the news. I'm so sorry, Alan. Can I do anything? Do you need me to come over?"

"No," Alan answered quietly. "I think I just need to be alone right now. Thanks," Alan managed, as an afterthought. He let the phone drop from his hand and back onto its cradled. He found a chair and sat in it and just stared at nothing. He felt like his world had just bottomed out and there was nothing he could do.

€€

The track had been crudely mined with homemade explosives and when the train had hit, it had just gone up, destroying the first two cars utterly, and tipping the rest onto their sides and even upside down as they had sprawled down the hillside.

They'd been tossed around inside the carriage like washing and Billy had been banging on the window, trying to break it and escape when trucks full of wild eyed young soldiers brandishing all manner of weapons had roared up. They had swarmed over the wreck, stealing everything that wasn't nailed down and shooting those who resisted. All papers were checked and re-checked and anyone with an English or American passport were separated from the crowd at gunpoint. Ordinary Russians watched in silence as the hapless foreigners were herded away and loaded onto a truck, probably to be ransomed or never seen again, or both.

The truck rolled and bumped over the countryside and they sat huddled in the middle, banging against the sides on occasion. They kept quiet and they kept their eyes down, lest they be caught staring at the young hot heads guarding them in the back of the truck with the automatic weapons.

At a certain point the truck was stopped and more men with guns climbed onto the back. They all sat perfectly still, terrified as pillowcases were pulled down over each of their heads.

Billy waited, barely able to see through the cotton weave, breathing erratically, feeling terribly claustrophobic and waiting for the worst. Then the truck had simply lurched forward again and they bounded over more rough and uneven road.

The truck had stopped at last after several long hours of bouncing the hostages around in the back like so much produce. It felt like evening from the damp kiss of the air that seeped through their clothes and made them shiver. There was a lot of shouting and the occasional burst of gunfire which had them cringing and crouching down. After a long while more men climbed onto the back of the truck and they were yelled at and pulled up and thrown off the truck and dragged, still blindfolded, into some sort of old government building with long corridors.

Billy was thrown into a room under a bare bulb. His hood was torn off and he squinted at the sudden light, watching the bulb swing slightly, casting erratic shadows across the room. Under gunpoint he was made to strip, tossing his clothes onto the floor in front of him. Every time he paused or took too long fiddling with buttons one handed he was prodded sharply with the gun barrel and it was really starting to annoy him.

Billy glared at them darkly and pulled off his t-shirt over his head, and then they all stood staring at gaping at him. The reason why he'd only used one hand became clear, as they could see the arm strapped to him. He was made to turn around, and they muttered over his scars.

"What war?" he was asked at last.

"No war." Billy met their eyes.

He was prodded on the chest with the cold metal of the gun barrel.

"What war?" he was asked again.

"None."

The gunstock smacked hard across his ear and he went down, bleeding.

Billy rolled on his side, pressing his hand against his head.

"No war," he cried, trying to make them understand. "No war."

"Spy!"

He was spat on and the gun came down again.

When he woke up he was in the room alone and his arm was gone. It had been wrenched from him and he felt the sting where the straps had been torn away. It had probably been sold on the blackmarket by now, even though it was a customised piece of equipment, it was also an expensive piece of equipment. He felt its loss keenly, suddenly feeling very crippled, helpless, unable to push himself up. He just lay there on the cold concrete, too tired and miserable to move.

Two men burst into the room, threw buckets of cold dirty water on him and dragged him out, bare feet dragging on the floor, carrying him down the dark corridor between them.

At the end of the corridor was a room lit with another bare bulb and painted many years ago with depressing institutionalised colours. He would be made to sit in a wooden chair and answer their questions, and when they didn't like his answers they would hurt him, and when he wept they would tell him that no one had asked for him and no one was willing to pay for his release.

Billy just glared at them, knowing Alan would move heaven and earth to get him out of here, surely. Billy still believed in his heart that Alan had sent the Marines to look for him on the island, that Alan had never given up or given Billy up for dead. Alan had never spoken of it, or ever given Billy a reason to think differently.

The questions went on, because they thought he was a soldier or a spy, and if there weren't any questions there was noise and quiet, light and dark, cold and wet. Billy could hear the screams of other people, and still Alan didn't come. No one came.

Billy was thrown back into his cell again. This time there was somebody in the little room with him. It was Iain.

Billy coughed, painfully, feeling his broken ribs. He wanted to retch, but he had nothing left, and he was glad, knowing his ribs wouldn't take it. He was content to just lie on the freezing cold floor and shiver and hopefully pass out in the not too distant future.

"Don't," whispered Iain, coming close. "You won't make the morning if you do that."

Iain dragged him painfully into his corner with him, somehow mistaking the fact that it had been Billy's actual intention to give in to the elements.

Billy just wanted to lie there on the floor, bleeding and freezing to death, but Iain wouldn't let him, picking him up and holding him. Billy struggled a little but Iain held him tight, rubbing warmth back into his skin. He whispered quiet words of reassurance into his ear, explaining that rescuing hostages was a complicated business and that it took time, like a poker game. They were just cards in a poker game.

Billy turned into Iain's comfort, needing it, taking as much of it as he could.

Iain held Billy a little tighter, and the shivering eased, just a bit.

Hazel eyes met blue in the semi-darkness.

"I'm straight," Iain murmured after a long moment.

"I'm with someone," Billy answered in a whisper.

Still they kept holding each other in the darkness.

€€

Alan ran a hand down the guitar strings. There was a thin layer of dust on the guitar, and he regretted his stupid, clumsy words. Billy's guitar had been a staple of every dig right up until the last one, the one before the island. Billy would strum it quietly, in the trailer, when he was bored, or thinking, or both. In the evenings, when everyone was dusty and tired and more than a little bit drunk, Billy could often be persuaded to play. He'd been good, too. Really good. Everyone would watch Billy and want Billy and Alan would glow from a warmth that had nothing to do with the fire, a warmth that came from knowing that Billy was his and his alone.

God, he missed that. He knew what had been missing now from last summer - there hadn't been any music.

He ran his hands across the strings but it echoed back out of tune. He carefully dusted off the guitar and placed it back carefully where it belonged, hidden in the back of Billy's closet.

€€

The door opened and Iain was thrown in, coming to a stumbling halt. Their near daily interrogations had become so much the stuff of routine that Billy only nodded to acknowledge his return.

In his own corner of their little cell Iain straightened up and started jigging around.

Billy sat up properly, watching him.

Iain struggled and writhed about, and he either had a nasty critter roaming about his nether regions, or an uncomfortable looking way of pleasuring himself. Finally he came up with what he'd been searching for, the mobile phone he'd secured in his underwear. Billy didn't want to know where.

Nor did he want to see the phone or Iain taking stupid risks.

"Jesus - Iain, if they find out you took that-"

"We need to make contact, to tell them we're still alive, otherwise they'll work on the assumption we're not," Iain cut off his protests sternly, already dialling.

Billy scrambled in closer, leaning over Iain to hide the telltale glow of the phone and the murmurs as he spoke to someone at the other end, quickly and briefly updating their situation.

He glanced at Billy. "Anything you want to say to your people?"

"Yeah, get me the fuck out of here. Now."

Iain shot him a wry grin, and then quoted him verbatim.

The phone rang and Alan leapt on it, but it was only one of his grad students, trying to book a time to discuss their paper with him. Alan tried his best to listen, but the words bounced off him. He tried his best to take notes but only doodled. He made small listening noises in the gaps from habit and when the call ended he had no idea what had been said by either party and strangely, he couldn't muster up the energy to care.

There had been no word from Ellie and he returned to gazing out his office window with that look of quiet despair settling onto his face once more.

They burst in, screaming, waving and firing their guns wildly into the ceiling. Billy and Iain were dragged into separate corners, thrown up against the wall and punched and slapped about.

When both men were sagging in their captor's arms the man they recognised as, if not the leader then the most dangerous, walked in.

"You have a phone. Give it back, now." There was no opening for discussion.

Iain raised his head, nose bleeding profusely. "What phone? We have no phone." He insisted, while Billy kept his head down. "If we had a phone, we would have phoned out for pizza."

This earned him a chorus of laughter from the guards who spoke English, and another thumping for his cheek.

"We have no phone." Iain insisted. Both he and Billy were thrown together in a corner as their tiny cell of a room was searched again.

Iain watched carefully, from the corner of his eye, but they failed to find the carefully hidden phone. As the search ground to a halt Iain felt Billy start to breathe again. Billy had been giving his best impression of caring more about his beating and the inconvenience, but Iain could feel the small thrums of panic that spiked in him occasionally as the searchers had grown warmer before they'd grown colder again. Fortunately their keeper had missed it, as Iain's antagonism had kept all eyes on him.

The man stalked over to Iain now, getting right in his face.

"One of you made contact. One of you is a spy." He signalled to his men. "Take them outside."

They were lined up against the old wall, all of them filthy, near naked in underwear or jeans and freezing cold, blinking at the sudden daylight. The wall behind them was splattered dark brown paint, only Billy knew it wasn't paint. The yard in front of them was littered with crates and drums, the ruins of vehicles and bales of wire. Billy knew this was serious.

Kalashnikovs were rattled and made ready and pointed in their direction.

"Which one of you is the spy?" was demanded of them again.

No man would look at his brother. They all stared straight ahead.

"We know one of you is a spy. Give him up and the rest of you can go free."

Still they stayed silent.

The man demanding answers nodded to his first mate, who swung his rifle, fired, and Geoff fell down dead.

"Shit! Shit! Shit!" That was Terry.

Billy blinked away the spray of blood that had struck him across the face and stared straight ahead, straight down the barrel.

"Again, which one of you is the spy."

The young man in front of him, much younger than Billy, took careful aim.

"Stop - stop this!" That was Iain. "Just leave him alone. He's a palaeontologist, he doesn't know anything."

"Good." The man approved. The gun dropped from Billy and Iain was dragged away between two of the rebel soldiers. They didn't say anything, they just watched him being taken away. They knew there was little chance of ever seeing him alive again.

Billy sank back against the wall, just thankful that it wasn't him. He couldn't find the energy to care about anything else, at least, not here, not now, not even for Iain.

They were herded back into their dark little boxes at gunpoint, the doors slammed shut and locked behind them. Terry was sobbing noisily next door and all Billy wanted to do was to shut him up, but he just kept sitting there, slumped in his corner, listening to Terry sob through the wall and the muffled sounds of Iain being slowly tortured, until both noises finally stopped. Then, at last, he could curl up and go to sleep, exhausted.

Alan had buried himself in his work at last, finding some strange comfort in the familiar. He lost himself in sketching out illustrations of where and how the Velociraptors in Mongolia might have lived and died. Line drawn raptors played and tumbled across his page and he forgot himself until it was very late. He started with the sudden slap of guilt, the realisation that he hadn't thought of Billy for several hours.

Morning came and the door to his prison was rattled. Iain was thrown back in their cell at Billy's feet, and Billy knew with cold certainty that he was next. Iain was smeared head to foot with blood, piss and vomit. His skin was burned and beaten, his face swollen horribly. He startled Billy by flopping like a fish, groaning and moving. Fuck, he was still alive.

The dangerous man, flanked by two young and dumb and over eager flunkies with AKs stood over Iain, ready to administer the coup de grace.

"Admit you are the spy or we will ask your friend next."

Iain coughed, bubbling up more blood between his lips.

"I've told you, I don't know anything about anyone being a spy. We're a BBC film crew. We do nature documentaries, for fuck's sake."

"So you say."

The gun was turned on Billy.

Iain coughed again, squinting at them through the one eye that wasn't entirely swollen shut.

"Don't be so bloody stupid," he snapped, sounding like a school teacher. "He's an American and he's on television. Put a bullet in his brain and they'll fucking raze your country to the ground."

They considered this for a moment.

"You're right," they agreed and the gun turned on Iain and fired.

Iain jerked back in Billy's arms like a crash test dummy, then lay still, a small bloody hole above his left eye and a gaping exit wound that had splattered all over Billy.

"No, God, no!" Billy screamed, shaking Iain as if he could wake him up, and they shut the door on him, letting his screams echo hollowly through the building.

Iain's body had long since grown cold. Huddled in the other corner of the tiny room, Billy scrabbled at the brickwork to find where Iain had hidden the phone. He found it at last and let out a rush of breath he'd been holding when he tested it and found it still had some battery life left.

He sent two messages only. A curt statement to the number Iain had dialled, telling them what had happened. After a long pause to consider his actions, he dialled a second number with a shaking hand, a number he knew by heart, and, after hearing the annoyed answer, he just spoke three words: "I love you." Then he hung up, tears in his eyes, unable to say anything else.

He hid the phone away again and then just doubled over into soundless sobs.

Alan had snatched up the phone after fishing for it in the empty passenger seat beside him and answered it with one hand on the wheel, annoyed and distracted. It took a few seconds for the cryptic message to filter through. The three harshly whispered words he heard caused him to nearly rear end the car in front of him.

The phone went dead a second later and Alan just stared at it, gaping at it like an idiot, then he pulled off the road, swerving suddenly to much annoyed beeping around him, rocking to a stop on the embankment, hands shaking and sweating too much to drive.

He sat and waited and waited and waited for another call. Darkness fell, and still no call came. Finally, he gave up, drove home, let himself into his cold, empty house. He sat by his phone for the longest time, waiting for another call, but there were no more calls. Either the batteries in Billy's phone had gone dead, or something worse had happened. He tried not to think about that.

Alan curled up alone in his bed, his hand cradling his cell phone, hoping against hope that Billy would call again. He stayed awake for as long as he could, but that call never came.

Alan jerked awake in the morning and reached for his phone, fingers trembling when he saw the batteries had gone dead. He reached for his landline, but there were no messages. Still with shaking hands he dialled another number. At the risk of tying up the line, he called Ellie.

"Ellie, he's alive. You've got to help me do something - please."

"Alan?"

"He called me, last night. Somehow he got a phone and he called me."

"Alan?" She had to ask him to repeat himself: he was speaking too fast.

"He's still alive," Alan managed, feeling his eyes well up with tears. "He found a phone, somehow, and he called. It was Billy, I know it was. Oh, god, Ellie, he sounded - we've got to get him out of there."

Ellie was about to ask Alan how he knew it had been Billy, but thought better of it."

"What did he say?"

"He said goodbye, Ellie. Oh, fuck, you've got to get him out of there, please."

Ellie bit her lip, then delivered him the bad news.

"Alan, there isn't going to be a rescue."

"What?"

"Mark's trying, but there are problems."

"Problems, what problems?"

"There's a situation. The rebels are making accusations that some of the film crew are spies."

Then Alan realised.

"They're not wrong, are they. One of the hostages is a spy."

Alan grew furious, as his realisation ticked on further.

"So they're just going to leave them there, to prove a point?"

"They think Billy's a spy."

Alan snorted: "Billy's no spy."

"They think you're one, too."

Alan was flabbergasted. "Do I look like a spy?"

"The State Department has never been happy with your involvement with the islands, the diplomatic incidents with Costa Rica or having to rescue you. You're considered a nuisance at best and at worst -"

"I am not a fucking spy and I had nothing to do with those damn islands. They misused my research, that's all."

"Yes, but they paid you for it, and your were on site, twice."

"This is because of InGen? Because bloody Hammond has embarrassed the US government they're going to let Billy die?"

"Alan -"

"Ellie, they're going to kill him. You've got to get him out of there."

"Alan -"

"You get him out of there or I'll go public."

"Alan, no, Alan?" Ellie called down the line but the phone had gone dead.

The door rattled and his rations were kicked into his cell.

"Hey, Dino Boy, your friend doesn't smell so good now," the guard taunted, laughing, before shutting the door again, rattling the lock.

They'd left Iain's body in the room with him, and it was now bloated and crawling with maggots.

Billy huddled on his side of the room, too sick to eat his rations, trying not to think of Iain, or anything.

Alan found himself staring at the table of trays full of tiny bone fragments without seeing them. Worse, he had no real recollection of how long he had been standing there. He did know however that these bone fragments, once so important to him, were meaningless. His mind and heart were elsewhere.

He sunk into his chair, an old leather office chair on coasters, almost older than he was, the arm rests worn smooth and shiny and almost worn through in patches.

Worn through, that's how he felt. He gazed about his office, cluttered with the debris of his work, and the life dedicated to it. His life, Billy's life. There was Billy's coffee cup, abandoned on a desk. Riding a pile of journals was a small portable stereo that was also Billy's, with a few CDs scattered about nearby. There was Billy's chair, Billy's chipped old cup full of pens and markers, only a third of which or less that actually worked, and Billy's books and notes scattered about.

Billy spent a lot of his time here, in Alan's office, picking over bones, rummaging through Alan's library or simply just the two of them, sitting back, drinking coffee or something stronger, shooting the breeze.

Fuck, he missed that. Billy had spent less and less time here, now that he was his own man. Now Billy was gone, and the horrible thought that these few relics would be all Alan would have to remember him by shook Alan to the core, squeezing his gut, making it hard to breathe. So the cup, the CDs and the rest of Billy's detris lay untouched: sacred, superstitious objects, and the bones lay on the work table, ignored and uncared for.

Please, please, he pleaded once more, bring him back to me.

Billy had been asleep, an exhausted dreamless sleep, when he was shaken awake by the sound of gunfire. There were short bursts at first, then the firing seemed to come from everywhere, followed by the deep booming bass of artillery fire. The building shuddered, scattering fetid dust down onto him. Billy huddled against the far wall, hearing the down of gunfire come closer. His breath came in rapid gulps and he smelt the stink of Iain's blood again. The door slammed open and an enormous burst of light blinded him. Everything went bright white and loud.

" They've got him."

There was a long pause before Alan could breathe again.

"Is he -"

"He's alive.

Alan closed his eyes. Thank you.

"Where is he?"

"They airlifted him and the rest of the survivors back to Britain. He's in a military hospital at the moment, under observation."

A memory of Billy lying in a hospital bed surrounded by a mess of wires, more dead than alive, fell unbidden into Alan's mind.

"How is he?"

"I don't know, that's all I could find out. They're busy debriefing him, so I assume he's conscious and able to talk."

"Can I see him?"

"It's still a diplomatic issue -"

"To hell with that. Find out where they're keeping him. I need to be there."

"I'll do my best."

Alan bowed his head, eyes shut tight. He heard the tired stress in her voice. He had no idea what she must have gone through to get this information to him.

"Ellie, I'm sorry," he managed at last. "Thankyou for everything. Just let me know when I can see him, okay?"

"I will, Alan, I promise."

He let the phone fall lax from his hand back onto the receiver. He leant back against the wall, eyes still closed, as though the wall were the only thing holding him up. It was. Then he started sobbing. Quietly at first, and then huge rolling gulps as he coughed up all the agony of the last few weeks. Slid down the wall, heaving up great wracking sobs that echoed through his empty house.

€€

London, England

Alan pressed himself forward with a degree of menace, just about ready to climb over the large oak desk and create a diplomatic incident.

"What do you mean I can't see him?"

The British bureaucrat flustered and shuffled papers.

"As I said, immediate family and next of kin only."

Alan stalled. He wanted to reach across the desk and explain to the gentleman, simply and plainly, that Billy was estranged from his family and that he, Alan, had been Billy's partner for just on five years now. Only a fear of making things worse stopped him.

Nevertheless, Alan gave him the eye. The one that could reduce his students to a blubbering mess.

"I'm here on behalf of Mr Brennan's family," he fibbed. "Either you let me see him or I get on television and start talking about how the British government is holding an American citizen in custody, without charges and without access to legal representation or his family."

The bureaucrat was about to call Alan's bluff, and then he saw that Alan wasn't bluffing.

Billy was sitting up in his hospital bed, cuts and bruises dark against pale skin. He looked incredibly brittle, yet pissed off and bored enough to snap at anyone who came near.

Billy glanced up at the tall, slim blonde who entered the room, and then glanced away again, deliberately ignoring her. She could understand his anger and frustration.

"The Brits treating you alright?" she asked at last in a drawl that would be sexy under any other circumstances.

Billy flicked dark eyes at her.

"They died, because I'm an American."

"I know. It sucks. Are you going to cry now or are you going to grow up?"

The next look he shot her was venomous.

"Who's Degler to you?"

"Friend of the family."

"He's been making a nuisance of himself, making noises, putting pressure on us to get you out."

"Thank fuck for the SAS then."

Billy met her eyes, hostile and hurt, betrayed and belligerent, burning into her. It had been the SAS who had eventually got him out, with the rest of the surviving hostages, and not before time. Billy had deeply suspected the Russians had been about to crucify them, literally, or maybe they would have just shot him in deference to his disability.

She'd never know what he'd been through. With any luck she'd never know. By rights he should be dead, or been left for dead, because her government didn't negotiate. Fortunately the British couldn't afford the deaths of a BBC film crew on top of everything else. So here he was, alive, more or less. There was something dead in his eyes.

She glanced away.

"I've told the Brits to let you go when they've finished with you. There's nothing more you can tell them and your friends are being impatient and a nuisance."

Billy's expression registered hope for a second, knowing this meant Alan must be London, surely, but he quickly buried it so she could not see it.

"I'm tired of questions. I've told you everything I know. I just want to go home."

"You will," she promised coolly, noting on his file that he was of little further use to them.

Billy watched her make her little notes on him dispassionately.

"They won't tell me, you know, The Brits, whether Iain was really Five or Six."

She glanced up sharply, then shot him an annoyed look that had tried for bland but failed.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"And you're just from the Embassy, right. Sure. Fine. Whatever."

Billy sank back into the pillows of his hospital bed. This interview was at an end.

They'd kept him there in that hospital, for observation, they said. Billy was bored and he fiddled and frailly prowled the corners of his room, dressed in the clothes they'd given him. He seemed to have exchanged one form of captivity for another.

The men from the British government watched him pace up and down, annoyed he was being difficult but expecting nothing else from an American, and their refusal to be goaded made Billy prickle further.

Billy slumped back into his chair. He was sick of answering their damn questions. He hadn't done anything wrong. He was a victim of circumstance, nothing more. He'd just been in the wrong place, at the wrong time. He didn't know how or why Iain had taken the phone. Iain must have known the risks and he'd paid for it. Billy didn't really know why they had been taken: for money, for publicity, for political point scoring, or all of the above. He hadn't really had a chance to discuss politics in depth with his captors, and they'd mostly just tortured him for laughs.

He scowled at them, tired of the way the questions looped around over and over, as if they expected him to say something different on the tenth or eleventh go round.

Suddenly he paused, distracted. Billy had seen that damn old Akubra bobbing along the tops of the windows in an agitated fashion just outside in the corridor.

Alan.

Billy stared over the heads of his interrogators, eyes focusing. It was like he'd just woken up, and they no longer existed, part of his dream world. He almost looked through them as much as over them, as he slowly and stiffly rose up from his chair.

Alan was there. Alan was just standing there, waiting for him, through the open doorway. Poor Billy's face nearly broke apart with relief and repressed emotion, but he managed to hold himself together, struggling not to burst into tears right there and then.

Ignoring the two British agents who were trying to debrief him, Billy walked around them, shuffling painfully, limping slightly, his face still threatening to break into tears at any moment. A couple of times he nearly lost it, but he paused, gathered himself up and kept on taking shaky yet determined steps towards Alan.

He stopped just in front of Alan, looking very much like a bedraggled dog who'd just walked cross-country rather than be left behind. He gazed into Alan's eyes, searching for forgiveness, looking slightly sheepish, deeply aware that they had left off badly.

He saw more than forgiveness in Alan's eyes and he started to crumple.

"Take me home, please," he whispered in a trembling voice.

"Of course," Alan soothed, deeply relieved to see Billy more or less in one piece again.

Billy fell against him and Alan's arms went around him and held him up. Alan was holding him good and close and he was so warm and familiar and Billy felt safe at last. Billy still didn't break apart but Alan felt a tear slide free and roll down his own cheek as he hugged his beloved boy tight, nuzzling the soft buzz of his hair against his cheek, so glad he had his Billy back.

It was a different Billy that Alan had taken home with him. Billy's hair was shorn short into a dark buzz cut that was only just growing out. Gone were the sun bleached, honey gold, soft strands of hair that would curl gently if he let them. He was terribly thin, which made his face pointed and sharp, and his skin was dull and pale and there were still large dark circles under his eyes. His empty sleeve hung loosely in the too big clothes and army surplus jumper somebody had acquired for him, his own clothes not as yet recovered. His arm was gone, too, stolen, no doubt sold on the black market already. It was a very fancy and expensive piece of equipment and though it had been custom made for Billy alone, Alan supposed whoever had it now wouldn't much care. The empty sleeve in that too big jumper gave him an almost sadly comical urchin like appearance, and his eyes, those dark, wounded eyes that would barely meet Alan's, only to glance away again.

It was an uncomfortably silent trip home in the taxi, and Billy had seemed mildly surprised when they'd pulled up at his flat. He'd been expecting an anonymous hotel room, but Alan had taken him home, and suddenly he was surprised by his things, trapped with the familiar and he had to bite down hard on the need to scratch and claw his way free and escape. It was too much, too normal, as if the everyday couldn't exist side by side with the hell he'd been through.

He'd felt like this before, after the island, yet this was somehow worse. Even though he'd spent nearly the entire time of his ordeal shut up in a tiny room, he suddenly felt so claustrophobic he couldn't breathe, and he swallowed huge mouthfuls of air as Alan pulled the drapes closed on the large bay windows of his terraced flat.

Alan was asking him if he wanted tea, coffee or a beer, and he managed to shake his head. Alan was looking at him with an odd mix of sympathy, pity, bemusement and desire and Billy glanced away again.

Alan was now asking him if he wanted to have a bath and go to bed and Billy managed to nod his head.

The cuts and bruises and dark lines down his back were shocking as he slowly and numbly peeled out of clothes but Alan just about managed to hold onto his distress, fussing with getting the water temperature just right and coaxing Billy's antique pipes to behave themselves just this once. The pipes shuddered and thrummed like a disused organ but Alan didn't care about the neighbours at this point.

Billy sank gratefully into the steaming water, visibly unclenching tensed muscles in spite of himself. He let Alan wash him gently, closing his eyes as the warm soapy cloth softly stroked along his skin, but he was in no mood for anything else. He stayed soft as Alan dabbed hopefully around his genitals, just washing back and forth with the swirl of water currents but nothing more.

Alan took it as a sign of exhaustion. Living with Billy for several years now he knew exactly where to touch Billy to make him respond, just like pushing a button or playing an instrument. Billy clearly wasn't in the mood tonight, so Alan let him be, keeping his interactions tender and concerned, but nothing more.

He bundled Billy into a towel and then his pyjamas like a child, making him sip some warm milk and brandy and try and keep down some dry biscuits before rolling him into bed and curling up beside him, just because he needed to feel Billy beside him.

It was in the wee small hours of the night that found Alan up and making a call to the States. Alan twisted slightly while still on the phone to gaze through the doorway into the bedroom.

"No, the debriefing was rather gruelling, as I understand it, but their doctors checked him over and though he's malnourished and battered all his remaining limbs are all where they should be, and that's all that matters. No, I am going to get him checked out again when we get back to the States, he's in pretty bad shape even though they let him go. I'm pretty sure some of his old injuries have been aggravated - I think that hip fracture might have opened again. No, I'm just glad to have him back, alive. I can't thank you enough. No, really." He paused to wipe his eyes. "Thank you, Ellie, for getting him back for me."

He gently placed the phone down then wandered back into the darkened bedroom. He sat down on the edge of the bed, shoulders sagging, weary as the weeks of worry caught up with him. Billy stirred slightly, feeling the dip in the mattress, surfacing but not quite breaking through his drugged and exhausted sleep. Alan leant over him, brushing his hair and kissing a temple softly.

"Ssh, go back to sleep," he whispered tenderly, stroking skin until Billy's eyelashes closed again. Alan lay down beside him, just spooning up ever so gently. It felt so good to have Billy back beside him. It had been a long hard separation this time and he was glad it was over.

It wasn't entirely over. Billy still had contractual obligations and the BBC had no dinosaur documentary. He was going to have to stay on in London and give them something before they let him go home with Alan.

That's all Billy wanted to do right now, to go home with Alan, to be an indoor palaeontologist, maybe working with Alan on his next book, as a collaborator, or even just a research assistant. It was quiet, safe steady work, and just what he needed as his injuries healed and his sleeping patterns started to return to normal.

Teacup Dinosaur Hunters, Alan had called indoor palaeontologists and sneered at them. Real palaeontologists worked out in the field, in wild and remote areas under the sun in absolutely shitty conditions, and they loved it. Alan only ever bothered to write up his notes into books because his tenure required it. Alan had no time for teacup palaeontologists who worked from libraries, museums or labs, and yet that was exactly the sort of palaeontologist Billy had become.

Since losing his arm Billy had worked less and less in the field and had moved more and more indoors, first writing his books and then ending up on television. Having survived a dinosaur attack, Billy was a curiosity and qualified in ways few other palaeontologists were.

Alan made exception for Billy, of course, and all of Alan's grumblings against the new breed of palaeontologists who used computers rather than picks and shovels naturally included an asterixed disclaimer excluding Billy from his rants, but Billy still felt slighted all the same. Especially since he shared Alan's love of just getting down and dirty with the bones and he hadn't exactly chosen his new career, nor had he expected to be quite so successful in it.

Ironically even being a teacup palaeontologist wasn't safe any more, as Billy had suffered more than any man should be forced to endure. Compared to what he'd been through, lightning strikes and flash floods were a doddle.

Billy was just reacting against the big bad world. He wanted to curl up in his room with his laptop and never come out. He'd get over it eventually, of course, it just didn't help to see Alan's almost involuntary lip curl when he mentioned his ideas to re-examine early 19th Century work as a basis for his next paper.

Alan watched as Billy's hand shook slightly as he stirred sugar into his coffee, but other than the strained expression, the one that slipped through between the smiles for Alan's benefit, he seemed fine.

Well, as fine as could be expected. He was hungry, but he was on a strict diet - Alan had been warned that if he let Billy gorge himself he'd really get sick. He was still stiff and sore and Alan was concerned. Alan remembered the nasty crack Billy had taken against the cliff on the island, not to mention his plummet into the river. It really looked like those old injuries were playing up again.

Alan supposed this whole experience hadn't done Billy's PTS any good either, and Alan was resigned to living with a Billy who was as jumpy as a cat.

The coffee probably wasn't a good idea but Billy looked like he could use it - the shadows under his eyes could put a corpse to shame.

Alan gazed at him over the top of his newspaper.

"So, when can I take you home?"

Billy shrugged, chewing absently on his toast crust. It was a childish habit, one he reverted to in times of stress, without even thinking about it.

"The BBC owns my arse," Billy reminded, muffled through the toast. "They want me around to do a couple of exclusive interviews for them - they're turning our little adventure into a doco."

Alan's expression began to darken into to outrage but Billy shook his head.

"I owe them a documentary, so they might as well get one. There's talk of having another go at the series at a later date, maybe do some stuff in Australia over the winter. I've got a few weeks off, to recuperate, more, if I really need them, I think."

"So," Alan asked carefully. "Do you have plans?"

Billy smiled, dimpling, giving him that little boy look that never failed to work.

"I was thinking of going home with you." The dimples deepened. "And maybe help you with your book?" The voice rose in a plea.

Alan shook his head, bemused that he was such a soft touch.

"That would be fine," Alan relented, trying to look gruff, but his eyes were shining. He missed having Billy work with him, side by side, more than he would admit.

Billy twisted in his seat slightly, happy, and relaxed.

"Good. I really do feel like being a total armchair palaeontologist for a bit. This Indiana Jones shit, it's not as easy as it looks."

"No, it's not," Alan agreed. He gazed at Billy again. "I'm so glad to have you back."

Billy met this gaze. "You were what kept me alive."

Billy pushed himself up across the table to meet Alan's lips in a buttery kiss. Alan licked at the faint traces of marmalade on Billy's lips, and then kissed him again.

Yes, it had been another close call but Billy was back and that's all that mattered.

It was some time during this reunion breakfast that Billy's phone rang, urgently, setting the tone for the weeks to come in which Billy would be urgently summoned to attend either another debriefing, some form of media relations exercise or a further medical checkup. Each time the phone rang Billy would pick up his coat and dash out, leaving Alan feeling as abandoned and uncared for as the dirty cups piling up in the sink.

Alan had put his work, his book on hold. He'd dropped everything to be here for Billy, and here he was, washing up the dishes like he was the hired help, and feeling just about as noticed or regarded.

He knew Billy had commitments, but he felt he was coming in last on a very long list. Billy's initial desire to return home with Alan and pick up his old job as Alan's research assistant seemed to have evaporated. Alan wanted things to return to normal, but apparently this was normal now and he felt as though Billy had been kidnapped by people even more loathsome than terrorists - publicists.

" Billy?" Alan came to the door of Billy's room and saw that Billy was still sound asleep, curled in the middle of the bed, sleeping on his left side. The sheet had slipped from him, leaving his lithe and naked form free for Alan to see. Alan paused for a moment to admire the beauty of his lover: everything from his peaceful face, his slender neck, the muscles of his arm, the shape of his hand and fingers, his scarred back down to the soft curve of his arse, and those long, lean legs.

Alan stepped right up to the bed and brushed a hand along Billy's flank, then he slapped him fondly on the backside, calling his name again.

Billy was normally an impossibly light and skittish sleeper these days, so Alan knew he must have taken something to make him sleep so soundly.

He shook Billy again and Billy woke with a start. Then he rolled over onto his back, stretching slightly and shooting Alan a look that was both shrewish and amused. Billy saw the way Alan was looking at him and stretched again.

"Like what you see?" he teased.

"Always," Alan murmured.

Billy sat up slowly, never breaking eye contact, leaning close to Alan, so close, their noses almost touching. Then he glanced at his clock past Alan and pulled away suddenly, exclaiming that he was late, he was late, like that damned white rabbit.

Alan drew back and let Billy bustle about the room, grabbing at clothes and notes. Alan was learning not to stand between Billy and his work, mores the pity.

"You seem pretty settled," commented Alan, following Billy out into the living room as Billy swept papers into his briefcase one-handed. Nothing in the room seemed to indicate that Billy's work was winding up or that he was coming back to the States with Alan as promised anytime soon.

Billy shrugged his lopsided shrug.

"My work's here now, more or less," he admitted, then he put the boot in. "And I find it's a lot easier to be gay and crippled here. Not to say people don't get mean, but they're less hung up about it. Most people are pretty cool. I like it here."

Alan couldn't say anything to that. What the hell could he say? He wasn't responsible for Billy's sexuality, but the loss of his arm, well, Alan would always carry that cross. As for the rest, well, Alan should have known Billy would find life in the mid-west restrictive.

Alan glanced about Billy's flat. It really didn't look like Billy was ready to leave, or that he had much reason too.

"I've got work to do," Billy explained blankly, his way of sidestepping the conversation. It wasn't even a lie. He was being kept very busy, and he wasn't about to say no to any of the demands being made on his time, because work filled up the hours. Work kept him from thinking about anything else, and he desperately needed not to think about anything else.

Not even Alan. It was all tangled up and twisted into something he didn't want to deal with. And besides, he had work to do.

€€

"Tell me his real name, please," Billy was begging. He'd come to Thames House on a mission, unable to put Iain's ghost to rest in his mind.

"No, impossible. We can't just give that information to just any Tom, Dick or Harry, not even the BBC," the grey suited man added, pointedly.

Billy slumped back, defeated.

"Then give me back whatever film and notes you've recovered. You owe me that much at least. I'll need them for the book everybody's expecting. You wouldn't want me to rely solely on memories, innuendo and speculation." His voice was dripping with sarcasm and anger.

"I'll see what I can do. We can rely on your continued complete discretion of course?"

"Haven't I been a good little boy so far?" Billy challenged. There was a threat in his voice, and the civil servant heard it.

"You'll get your material," the man in the suit promised. Vetted and edited of course, but it was better than nothing. As Mr Brennan had ably pointed out, to say nothing would just lead to more awkward questions and more trouble and the last thing either the BBC or the British, American or Russian governments needed were more questions and more trouble.

They let him go with a promise and more mutterings about uppity Americans behind his back. Billy didn't care. He wanted whatever he could get his hands on, because, politically embarrassing or not, he wasn't about to let Iain be forgotten.

Billy's dogged loyalty to his friend and colleague earned him some credit with the Brits, and for that reason alone they would move to give him what he wanted, as much as possible.

€€

It felt more and more like Alan actually had to book ahead to schedule time with Billy, and he was frequently disappointed. Which was probably why he was pathetically grateful Billy had spent the whole morning with him, just the two of them, though Billy had been working, skimming through journals as he sipped too strong black coffee and smoked those wretched, foul smelling cigarettes he'd developed an unfortunate addiction to. Billy smoked more and more, a restless, nervous habit and Alan hated it.

Alan kept his own counsel on this and many other things, making allowances for Billy, excusing Billy of a great many transgressions. Things were swiftly coming to a head, though, and Alan wasn't one to sit very long in silence once his temper had been roused.

Alan watched Billy, and studied the way Billy flicked from page to page, the way he alternated taking a drag from his cigarette, gulping his coffee or scrawling notes, all with a nervous quickness that irritated Alan. Alan quietly measured when would be the best time to re-enter the discussion on returning to the States. He had his own work to consider, and he was rapidly coming to the conclusion that staying in London was doing Billy more harm than good.

Billy seemed to be at everyone's beck and call and he seemed worn thin with the sheer energy expended in dashing from place to place, trying to be all things to all people.

Billy, in Alan's considered opinion, needed some quiet time away from this circus. Alan desperately wanted to take Billy away from here, and he fantasised about slipping Billy a Mickey Finn and kidnapping Billy to some remote dig site where mobile phones couldn't reach them. Alberta, maybe, or Mongolia, even better. They'd enjoyed Mongolia.

Billy continued to flitter through his work at hummingbird speed, unaware of Alan's gaze or the plans being hatched behind those bright blue eyes that watched him like a predator, just waiting for an opportunity.

As if to prove a point, Billy's mobile suddenly peeped in his pocket. He fished it out, read the cryptic text message and frowned. It just gave the name of a church and a time. Then he realised what it meant.

"Work," he fudged softly to Alan. "Gotta go."

He kissed Alan lightly on the cheek, picked up his coat, and left.

The door closed, leaving a somewhat bewildered Alan in his wake. Alan wasn't stupid, he knew something was going on. Maybe Billy's producer or publicist had suddenly beckoned, or maybe the spooks hadn't finished with him. Something had definitely happened on that train ride, more than just being taken hostage, something Billy wasn't telling him, perhaps even something Billy couldn't tell him.

Billy stepped forward and tossed a single, long stemmed white rose down onto the coffin, then stepped back, ignoring the curiosity of Iain's colleagues who thought the rose an odd choice of memorial. Billy caught the eye of a slim, blonde haired woman, a fellow American, someone he knew by sight and reputation at least, and she also looked and felt out of place, but he glanced away, not wanting to deal with it, any of it, now, or ever. He shoved his hands in his pockets and walked away, not wanting anyone else to ask him who he was, or why he was there.

Iain had been his friend, his colleague, and Iain had died for him. That's all Billy cared about, or wanted to care about. Everything else, his work, people's expectations, they just weren't important.

He cut a sullen figure as he walked away, and he knew they were watching him, but he didn't care.

Alan was miserably hunched over the table with the phone cradled against his ear, spilling his guts down the line to the only person he trusted, the only person he knew well enough to actually care.

"All I wanted was my Billy back. In all those long, terrible weeks, that's all I wanted. Only, I didn't get my Billy back, did I," he announced bitterly. "He's a stranger, and entirely different person, and I'm not sure - he's so much harder to even like. Much harder."

Ellie bit her lip, taking this sudden news to heart. Alan had been so happy, and now he sounded so bitter. This was not the heart-warming reunion she'd hoped for. The Alan she knew had never, ever given up on Billy, until now.

"Do you - do you want to love him?" she asked.

"I don't know."

She could feel the anguish and confusion in Alan's voice, and she wanted to hold him.

"If I could see just a flash, just a piece of who he used to be in his eyes, I know I could love him again, but -"

"Maybe you need to give him time. Maybe he's still processing what happened to him.

"Maybe," Alan sighed. "I just don't know. I don't know anything any more. He's a complete stranger to me, going out at all hours, keeping secrets, drinking and smoking heavily and god only knows what else. He doesn't even smell or sound or even taste like Billy. It's like - it's like he's an imposter. I'm not sure I can -"

"It's up to you, Alan. If you want to try, try. If you don't, that's fine, too, but you've got to talk to Billy before you make up your mind. At least try and get through to him, make him understand how you feel. He's been through a lot, he might not even realise what he's doing."

Alan wasn't so sure. He keenly felt that Billy had been holding him at arm's length. It felt over.

"I'll try," he murmured, more for Ellie's sake than his.

He put the phone down and scrubbed at his face with his hands. Now what? He still loved Billy, with all of his heart, only this creature that had returned, it wasn't Billy. It didn't even have Billy's eyes. It didn't laugh and play or smile and tease. This creature had new habits, a new tone of voice and was far more brutal and cold and unresponsive than Billy could ever be. This creature had secrets and it hid all its thoughts and feelings from Alan. This creature treated Alan as an embarrassing inconvenience, not the other part of his soul. This creature was not Billy, and Alan hated it.

Alan sat down alone on the couch that smelled strongly of those filthy cigarettes and grieved for the Billy he'd lost and now knew would never return.

After a while Alan rose stiffly and walked over to the explosion of Malcolm's chaos theory in action that was Billy's work area in the corner of the living room, Alan having taken over the spare bedroom. That simple fact in itself was evidence that something was terribly wrong. Alan had tried not to crowd Billy or smother him, and now he found himself excluded, isolated, removed to the far corner of the flat like so much unwanted junk.

Alan began picking through Billy's things, trying to get a sense of what Billy was up to and who he was now. If Billy wouldn't talk to him, well, it wasn't beyond Alan's abilities to theorise from what he found buried in the sedimentary layers of Billy's mess.

Alan could see from the debris scattered across Billy's desk that he was working on several projects at once: his notes on his recent ordeal, attempts to salvage that series on dinosaur hunting, preliminary work on a new series on international fossil thieves, the outlines for the accompanying books, a couple of half written children's books and a pile of work for an upcoming display and talk at the Natural history museum.

Billy might no longer get his hands dirty digging up old bones, but he was certainly busy. Legitimately busy. Other celebrity scientists might have research drones to help carry the load, but Billy was regarded as enough of a parasite by some of the palaeontology fraternity that he had no choice but to do as much of his research on his own and all his own writing.

Billy had tried to explain to Alan that picking over the bones of other people's research was as valid as picking over actual bones, but Alan was still having difficulty resigning himself to the fact that his protégé had become exactly the sort of indoor palaeontologist Alan normally despised. Alan's imagined future of them both digging side by side under the hot sun, excitedly caressing the dust from some new found discovery, these dreams were all ruined.

More so, Alan finally realised that this flat, which had been little more than a flop house with a mattress and a couple of suitcases when Billy had first bought it, was now a fully furnished and fully functional home. Things from Billy's place in San Francisco that had not made it to Alan's place were here. The bulk of Billy's belongings and research was here, and he had neighbours who greeted him by name and grocers who kept things aside for him. Hell, he even had a casual soccer team that he played for on Saturdays when he was available.

It struck Alan like a mallet as he was standing there that he hadn't come here to take Billy home at all. Billy was already home.

Alan was sadly replacing Billy's workbooks on the shelves where he'd found them, when a small notebook slipped from Alan's hands.

The picture fell from Billy's journal, a picture of Billy and another young handsome man, both hugging each other and mugging shamelessly for the camera. It was a recent photo, taken on a recent adventure. Alan studied it, and felt the dark spike of jealousy stab at him again.

Billy had his own life, his own career, his own friends and his own adventures, and Alan just couldn't touch that. He didn't mean to be needy and insecure, but there was something in the evident closeness of the two young men. He realised this was probably the friend of Billy's who had died. He set the photo back down. Whatever their friendship might have been, it was over now.

A more suspicious man might have suspect Billy of an affair, but Alan knew it simply wasn't true. It just couldn't be true. Alan at least was still prepared to believe in Billy and excuse his behaviour.

Billy was messed up. Billy was obviously still deeply traumatised and he'd used all these countless errands as camouflage, obviously unwilling to let Alan get too close, to let Alan see his weaknesses.

Everyone had been fussing over the physical effects of his captivity, but nobody had really bothered with Billy's emotional scars, finding it too easy to take Billy's assertions that he was fine at face value, because it was easier that way.

It was easier for Alan that way. Alan was of a different generation, less given to wearing his emotions on the surface the way Billy was. As much as Alan often felt himself stuffy and hamstrung when it came to saying the right thing, and as much as he loved the way Billy would dance across feelings like the fluttering flight of a butterfly, it also made Billy more fragile, more easily wounded, the cuts finding blood every time.

Alan had been distracted by Billy's sleight of hand, seeing only the noise Billy made on the surface, missing the deeper darkness that kept Billy awake at nights unless he took something.

Enough was enough. Alan wasn't going to let the tail wag the dog any more. He'd let Billy push him around too much and maybe that's what Billy needed most: Alan to be his old self and to keep him in line. Alan meant to put things back on a even keel. Billy either sat still long enough for them to figure out where they were, or he didn't. It was as simple as that, and as painful.

It was easy enough for Alan to stand here in this empty room and make plans for Billy, it was quite another to get Billy to listen. Nor was it easy for Alan to consider drastic action like ending it. Almost impossible, in fact. Not only did he feel a strong duty of care towards Billy, Billy was the great love of Alan's life, and it would take a great deal to wipe away everything they had meant to each other.

Alan, for his part, knew that he was still in love. He had been, ever since that dusty afternoon in Montana...

Billy had thought Alan was asleep. He'd certainly looked asleep. Billy had reached down and unbuckled his own belt and pulled it open, and a large hand had closed over his. A warm, callused hand. He glanced up into crystal clear blue eyes that were watching him, curious and amused to see what his next move would be.

Billy pulled open his jeans and pushed them open wider, making his intention and invitation clear. He watched Alan for several long moments, just breathing, hardening in anticipation, and that warm callused hand closed around him at last, and Billy closed his eyes in relief. Alan's hand slid up and down, hesitant at first, and Billy twitched his hips forward.

Alan took the hint, suddenly realising or remembering what to do, that the strokes he used on himself would do perfectly well for Billy.

Billy agreed, giving voice to a soft groan of pleasure, then a second, a little louder, and Alan kissed him, to shut him up if nothing else. Alan's arm was starting to burn with the effort and he knew damn well Billy was trying to hold back, trying to make it last as long as possible, the little bastard, but he finally began to tense in spite of himself and spilled warm and sticky into Alan's hand.

Billy had sighed and snuggled blindly against Alan, still all unzipped and messy, burrowing into his warmth.

Alan, after an awkward moment, had wrapped his arms around Billy and held him tight, feeling Billy's heart still beating fast. He caught the sound of his own name murmured against his skin. Not Dr Grant, or any of the names Billy called him behind his back when he thought he was out of earshot, but Alan, and said so softly, so sweetly.

Alan had still been spinning over that when Billy's stubbled cheek had grazed his throat and half murmured the words: "Love you."

Alan wasn't sure he'd even heard the words or heard them right but he stopped breathing for a minute so he must have. Billy's hair was so soft against his cheek, and Billy's lips were tickling his skin and Alan's heart belonged to Billy from that moment on. Because Alan had known Billy had meant it.

This wasn't some silly student crush, though Billy had pursued and pouted and flirted as wildly as any of them. Billy had made himself indispensable, had insinuated himself as Alan's right hand man, and more. They'd eased into a comfortable friendship and partnership and now it was sealed. Billy was serious and so, Alan was surprised to find in himself, was he. He knew what this meant, and he meant to keep the promise he'd kissed lightly onto the top of Billy's head.

Alan wasn't over Billy yet, and he wasn't about to give up on him this time. Billy had taught Alan that brutal lesson before, of underestimating him, and Alan wasn't about to repeat that mistake. Not so long as there was still something to cling to, the way Billy had clung to his stupid hat. No so long as there was still something between them.

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"Tired?" Alan dropped a kiss lightly on the top of Billy's head. He reached over Billy's shoulder, saved his work and shut the laptop down.

"Hey," Billy protested, though it was a mild protest. Once upon a time Alan would have hit the off button before the save button, and then Billy would have really had something to complain about.

Billy slumped back in his chair. He was tired, and it showed clearly on his face.

Alan could see it, too. He wished Billy would listen to him and not drive himself so hard. It was like Billy had something to prove, and Alan supposed he had, in many ways.

It had been a long road back for Billy, from the island to here. Billy had been in hospital for so long after Isla Sorna. It was like all the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put Humpty together again. They'd sewn him up as best they could but he'd been so ill. Blood poisoning and pneumonia had kept him down, hovering near death for weeks. In the darkest hours Billy had lapsed into a coma. Alan had been warned to expect the worst, told to say his goodbyes, and had been told at best there would be some form of damage. Alan had waited and watched, hoping the doctors had only told him the worst case scenario so he wouldn't sue.

In the end Billy had emerged from his ordeal, and though Alan knew he would never be entirely the same again, but he was still Billy. Billy would always carry the scars from the island, he tired more easily and was quicker to anger, but he was still Billy.

Even now, as much as he tried to pretend Alan wasn't here and as much as he kept himself busy trying to forget his latest horrors, he was still Billy. Nothing ever stayed the same and Alan had to adapt to the changing canvas that was his lover. Alan of all people knew that. Billy was evolving, growing through each ordeal from a boy into a man right before his eyes and Alan knew he either grew and changed with him or he might as well lie down with the bones he studied.

"Come to bed?" Alan asked, gently massaging Billy's shoulders.

Billy rubbed his eyes. He wanted to say no but he was so damned tired and Alan's hands felt so damn good.

"Okay, but I don't..."

"It's okay. Just come to bed with me. Just to sleep."

Billy gave in, letting Alan lead him to his room, lie him down and wrap around him, warm under the quilt. It was nice, it was comforting, and he fell asleep before he even realised it.

Alan quietly watched him sleep. Nothing stayed the same, and every moment was precious. Especially these moments with Billy.

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"I thought we could play tourist, go to the Natural History Museum, maybe talk our way into the back rooms." He stalled when he saw Billy's lack of enthusiasm written plainly across his face.

Alan gazed down, shuffling slightly.

"It's just that we haven't seen much of each other, since you've been back. You've been so busy. I just thought it might be fun, you know, just you and me, and some old bones. Come on," he nudged. "I haven't seen you hold a fossil in your hand for ages - sometimes I worry that you've forgotten you're a palaeontologist."

Billy's eyes narrowed viciously. "That's not fair. I can't work in the field like you. I can't dig and you know it. What I do now is how I stay in the field, and I thought you appreciated that, because it wasn't from damn choice, you know. I can't pick over bone beds, so I have to pick over other people's work, like a scavenger."

"Billy, no, that wasn't what I meant. It's just that, you've been so busy with interviews and magazines and the like, I thought maybe it'd be good to get you back to your roots, remind you of your first love, why you do this."

"You think I need reminding?"

"I think you need to reconnect."

"Reconnect?" Billy repeated, unable to believe the words that were spilling out of Alan's mouth. "I have left you alone too much," he agreed ruefully. "Because it sounds like you've just been sitting on the couch watching Oprah."

"Well, what the hell else am I supposed to do? You've been avoiding me."

"I've been busy."

"You haven't stopped. Look, I know crap happened and I know running about all over the place means you don't have to think about it, but it's time to just stop, Billy. Stop running and make a stand. Decide what you want to do: with your life, with your career, with us."

"Us?" Billy suddenly looked slapped, red highlighting his cheeks. "Alan?"

"In case you haven't noticed, there hasn't been an us since you got back. You've shut me out, and enough is enough. Your choice, Billy, but before you decide, I'm asking you to spend the day with me. Take the time and maybe you can find whatever it is you've lost - because you've lost something. Even I can see that."

"I- I can't."

"Please," Alan asked, holding out his hand. "Just give me today."

Alan was looking so appealing, so ready to forgive almost anything, so willing to try. Alan was also right, Billy had lost something, and it felt like his soul. Maybe he could get it back, or at least reclaim part of it. He was willing to try.

He reached up his hand to Alan, and Alan took it, smiling, relieved.

Billy felt uncomfortable, Thanksgiving uncomfortable. He felt like he had to be on his best behaviour. To be honest, he was shaking inside. Alan had spoken of breaking up and last chances. Of all the things he'd expected Alan to say, neither of those had been one of them.

Billy felt as though he'd been slapped, and slapped hard, and Alan hadn't even touched him, or even said those terrible words. Alan had just hinted, quietly, that he'd had enough. Billy could see now the toll this had taken on Alan, how tired Alan looked. He must be tired, because Alan wasn't usually so subtle when expressing his displeasure with Billy.

Billy had been angry, angry at himself more than Alan, but Billy had been pushing Alan away since Russia, and enough was enough.

Billy should have known Alan had his limits - he'd certainly stepped on them and over them before. He just hadn't given it much thought. He hadn't thought much about anything other than getting from moment to moment, and doing whatever he had to do to get there. He'd shut Alan out because he didn't want Alan to see what he'd done, what he'd become.

He didn't want Alan to see it in his eyes.

Only Alan had. Alan had known something was wrong, very wrong. Alan just couldn't understand why Billy was shutting him out.

It wasn't just Alan. Billy had been desperately trying to shut the whole world out. He'd been stripped raw and he'd thrown up walls in defence where nothing could get in or out, not even Alan.

Alan had managed a breech though, he'd pierced Billy's defences, he'd made Billy do the last thing he wanted to do, he'd made Billy feel something.

Billy was trembling. He'd locked his fear away and now it was threatening to spill over. If he pulled down his walls to let Alan in, everything else would fall out. He couldn't, he just couldn't, but he couldn't lose Alan either. He needed Alan, and that was something.

Alan glanced at him.

"You're quiet."

"Deep thoughts."

"About us?"

Billy looked at him sharply, pain in his eyes. Those wounded eyes.

"Don't leave me."

"I won't," Alan reassured him softly.

This was a start. He needed to push Billy a little, but he could see Billy slowly taking the steps back towards him. It was as if Billy was standing on that damn fence again, only this time Billy was waiting, willing to give Alan a chance to reach out to him.

"Stop looking like you're out on a school excursion, this is meant to be fun," Alan goaded fondly. "Just you and me and some old bones. You never know, we might poke around and find something nobody's ever noticed before, a couple of pieces that fit together like two peas in a pod. You do remember your basic anatomy, right? The knee bone's connected to the thigh bone," he started singing.

Billy slid him a look. "Please stop." Billy almost smiled. That was a definite start.

They wandered around the dinosaur hall, feeling somewhat foolish and out of place as it seemed more circus than science, at least to Alan. Billy, with a look of long suffering, indulged Alan as he loudly critiqued the animatronic and model displays for anyone who cared to listen. He even had a beef about the styled postures of the fibreglass casts that had been arranged into posed plastic skeletons to impress and frighten little children. Billy quietly reminded him that not everyone had eyewitness accounts to work from, nudging Alan, amused at his rants.

Alan, meanwhile, had to suffer the sudden appearance of a crocodile of screeching young schoolgirls. Worse, the schoolgirls all recognised Billy and flocked around him like he was a damn pop star, leaving Alan ignored and off to the side. It had been a while since Alan had been on television, and out of sight out of mind, and while Alan had always been infamous for his strong opinions, Billy was now genuinely famous for his friendly little soft science series.

The little monsters had mobbed Billy, crowding around him, and it reminded Alan of that scene from Close Encounters where the aliens had surrounded Richard Dreyfus and herded him onto the mother ship.

Alan wasn't about to let those little harridans take Billy anywhere, and he waded boldly into the throng, yanking Billy free of their clutches, quite literally nearly pulling Billy off his feet as he dragged him sharply aside.

Billy was almost laughing, accusing Alan with bright eyes of being insanely jealous of a pack of eight year old schoolgirls.

Hell, yes, Alan was jealous. This was supposed to be his day with Billy, and nobody else's, and he wasn't about to start sharing now.

They retreated from the displays and the shrieking, sugar hyped school kids and Alan had to suffer yet a further blow to his already bruised ego. He'd meant to impress Billy, using his reputation to get them into the sacred, cloistered halls of the palaeontology department and into the closely guarded collections. Billy, however, quietly trumped him, not only by producing an access card from his pocket, but also having a small work space set aside from him within.

It was from here that Billy liased with the museum and conducted a great deal of the research used in the series, chasing down both evidence and colleagues with interesting theories and papers. Other experts in his field might do the hard, grinding detail, but Billy pulled it all together, presenting the big picture, often bringing separate projects in touch with each other.

Billy might simplify and popularise new theories and projects, which made some of his more traditional colleagues glare down their noses at him, but Billy brought in the funding and he brought in the punters, and without either of those they wouldn't have their precious research grants. Even the most hard nosed professional was forced to regard Billy as a necessary evil.

Alan would normally have been one of those who regarded Billy as more Barnum than scientist, and Billy knew it. Billy had heard Alan express those sentiments many times, with vehemence, before Billy had been forced to retire from the field. Alan had turned down a great any opportunities to play on his infamy. Billy had embraced them.

Alan was slightly cowed now. He hadn't listened, he hadn't realised. When Billy disappeared for months at a time, when Billy had said he was doing some research at the Natural History Museum, Alan had expected, what? That Billy was just flipping through the books in the gift shop? That he was running around the skeletons like a five year old? Selling tickets and popcorn?

Clearly more hard work and hard science went into Billy's work than his editors would make it appear.

Billy started up the terminal on his little desk.

"Pull up a chair. I've been dying to show you this for ages. I'm going to use this in my next series. They've been making studies of the gaits of modern animals like elephants and emus with motion sensors, and capturing it all on computer, like this." He played a short video of an elephant covered in white dots running slowly across the screen. It reminded Alan of those photographic studies of horses running from the turn of the last century.

"Then they map out the muscles and bones, from careful anatomical study, like so." Billy played another linear computer generated image of a trotting elephant skeleton.

"And by comparing the way the bones and muscles move together, and the wear and tear, we can hypothesise the movements of this Camarasaurus here." He played a computer animation of an extinct beast that was close, but didn't look quite right. It had that slightly jerky, unnatural gait of an old Harryhausen creature, but that was just a fault of the technology and its present limitations. The theory was sound, and Alan could see why Billy was impressed.

Billy was enthusiastic. "Not only can we use this to guess how the animals moved, but we can use it to tell if we've got the right bones the right way around. Stick the wrong bones together the wrong way and the poor thing will fall over. You can even use this to tell if all the bones you've got belong to the same animal."

Alan nodded. Even the best of them mixed up bits from different animals on occasion, especially if the remains were fragmentary or all jumbled together in an untidy mess. They couldn't DNA test the bones to match them, the bones were usually too small, too fragile, DNA extraction too clumsy, too wasteful.

Assembling the bones on computer, seeing what worked, what looked right, like a 3D jigsaw and comparing it against modern animals - yes, Alan was impressed.

He could see why Billy liked his job: he got to play with all the latest toys and ideas, picking which ones to present to the general republic.

Billy had a wistful expression in his eyes.

"Wouldn't it be great to get back to the island, and film those animals, you know, get it all on record before they're destroyed."

"Yeah, film them trying to eat you," Alan groused, still somewhat bitter at the memory. Then it struck him that this was the very first time he'd heard Billy speak of the Island, or mention it at all, without the slightest hint of the pain the experience had cost him.

They decided to walk back through the park on the way home, taking in the scenery and the fresh air that carried the sting of the coming winter.

Billy was walking several paces ahead but he had stopped, head down, as though pondering something.

Billy had borne a lot for a young man. Hypothermia had kept him from bleeding to death on the island, and there had been so much blood in the water, as if Alan could ever forget it. Deeply in shock, freezing cold and torn open, Billy had still managed to climb up a tree and survive.

Billy had survived again. He'd been subjected to every known abuse and he'd lived. He was strong and he took comfort in that, he even took pride in it.

He wanted to stay strong, but afterwards, now that he was safe, now the fear poked at him with sharp pointed fingers, when he was least expecting it. He felt that he had to be on his guard at all times, because if he let his guard down for a minute, it would all come rushing up to him like a wave and he'd drown in it.

He'd kept everything locked up tight, and locked out, including Alan. To let Alan back in would mean letting his walls down, and he wasn't sure if he could, or if he wanted to.

Alan caught up with him and Billy flicked him a wan smile, one that meant to say: 'I'm okay, really,' but his eyes told a slightly different story.

Billy appreciated Alan's concern. He reached out his hand and they twined fingers gently, then Alan leant in close and quickly pecked a kiss on Billy's throat before letting his arm drop loosely around Billy's waist.

Billy slipped him a sideways look, but held his tongue about Alan's uncharacteristic public display of affection. He wanted it and he needed it and he leant into Alan for a moment before slipping away, very gently, feeling claustrophobic.

Alan took Billy's withdrawal with good grace, pointing to a coffee vendor with a cart up ahead and they took their coffee to a nearby park bench, settling onto the soft, damp wood.

Alan didn't know what to say, but the awkward silence that had settled between them was worse, so, fiddling with the plastic lid of his coffee, he asked quietly: "If and when it happens, do I need to practice safe sex?"

"Yes," Billy answered in a small voice, gazing down.

Alan nodded tightly. He'd come to suspect as much.

Billy set his paper cup down on the seat and peeled off the lid of his coffee, letting the steam curl up as it cooled, sipping at it delicately. It was still a touch too hot.

"They said at least three months to be sure, maybe more. It's mostly hepatitis I've got to worry about, because what little they gave us to eat and drink wasn't the best, and often contaminated."

Billy fell silent again, sipping at his coffee.

Alan knew better than to push for more, and he really didn't want to know all of it, though he wondered whether what ran through his imagination was worse than the reality. He knew Billy had been beaten, tortured, starved and kept locked in a dark, tiny little room, but that's all he knew. Billy might tell him more, eventually, when it wasn't so raw.

"I'm okay, Alan, really. You don't have to handle me with kid gloves all the time. I don't break that easily," Billy promised, blowing gently on his coffee as he held it close.

"You look better," Alan acknowledged, because Billy had looked like one of those horrible, haunted camp survivors when he'd first been released. "More like your old self." He smiled at Billy fondly, and a little bit lecherous.

Billy gazed at him over the rim of his paper cup. He was quietly expressing a willingness to try.

Alan was twitching. It had been well over a month and he hadn't had his welcome home shag or any kind of shag with Billy. Billy hadn't put him off so much as found excuses to avoid any and all opportunities.

Alan wasn't heartless or insensitive. He knew Billy was traumatised, but such experiences had usually brought them closer together, not further apart.

He wanted to give Billy the time and space he needed, but he needed Billy, too, and a part of him was afraid that if he didn't reach out and grab hold of the boy then Billy would just fall away from him again. He needed to make contact, he needed to pull Billy back into the here and now.

They drank their coffee in complete silence, watching the park life go by. Then, as the afternoon began to ease into twilight and the temperature dropped a little, Alan reached out and gathered Billy's hand in his again.

So gently and tenderly he turned the hand over in his, caressing and stroking it, teasing the wrist and tracing the long fingers. Carefully, as Billy watched, Alan turned up the palm and kissed it, then blew across the wetness of his kiss, just a little.

Meeting Billy's eyes he performed the same trick on Billy's wrist, lapping and tickling at the pulse point. He brushed his lips to one fingertip, wetting it, teasing it, sucking it, and then he swallowed it whole, sucking hard.

Billy dove forward, burying his face in Alan's shoulder to stop himself from making a sound out loud.

"Oh, fuck, Alan," he managed to breathe. The fuse had been lit. He gazed up into Alan's face urgently.

"Take me home, now." He was desperate: afraid he would lose this moment, like a snowflake melting in his hand.

They hailed a black cab and fell into the back, kissing like a couple of drunken teenagers, Billy giggling as Alan hungrily grazed his cheeks with kisses. Alan was so hard up he no longer cared what anyone thought.

The taxi driver was watching them in the rear view mirror, amused. He was squinting at Billy, trying to place him. He'd get it eventually, after all, how many one armed TV presenters were there?

Billy popped up suddenly, catching sight of something through the window and crying out "Stop! Stop!" until the taxi driver screeched into a gap by the curb.

They fell out onto the footpath, shoving a ten pound note at the driver, and Billy ran back half a block, dashing into the chemist. Billy emerging a few minutes later with a paper bag that no doubt contained the essentials, trotting back up to Alan with his parcel like a happy retriever dog with a mallard.

Alan took Billy by the elbow and they quickened their pace, covering the last few blocks in record time to the Kilburn flat Billy kept when he was in London. His little investment, he called it, but for now it was home and they were barely through the door before Billy was pushed up against the door as it slammed shut. Mouths tore at each other and hands ripped at skin as clothing was pushed and scrunched out of their way. They scrabbled at belts and flies and underwear and dug into each other's pants and came too soon, gasping into each other's mouths, then resting cradled against each other.

After a moment Alan pulled back a little, allowing them to tuck themselves in a little. Billy's shirt was hanging open so very casually and his eyes were bright and he was looking very, very desirable.

"Shower," Billy smiled, brushing past Alan and luring him like a siren.

Alan grinned, a carnal grin, and crouched to pick up the paper bag and keys that Billy had dropped on the floor. He peeked into the contents of the bag: as he suspected, condoms and accoutrements, because Alan hadn't thought that far ahead, and a packet of cigarettes.

Damn Billy and his smoking. He'd always been a recreational smoker, but during his captivity some of the kids guarding him had taken pity on him and given him cigarettes, and Billy had smoked them out of appreciation and boredom. So he was smoking again.

Alan could see he was going to have to stock up on nicotine gum as well as condoms, because he couldn't stand it. Billy wasn't just smoking any ordinary cigarettes, oh no, he had to go and get a taste for Russian cigarettes, or Turkish ones, if he couldn't get those, and they were filthy things, smelling more like burnt camel dung than tobacco. The whole house reeked of them and Alan hated the damn things.

He could hear the shower already running as he slipped the keys in his pocket for safe keeping. Billy had stripped and was testing the water temperature warily with his hand - British showers always required engineering degrees to operate, being so needlessly complicated.

Alan was more concerned with containing his disappointment over his realisation that he wouldn't be able to bathe with Billy for the duration. Damn. He loved the feel of a slippery Billy in his arms and between his thighs. Showers just weren't the same.

Sex just wouldn't be the same. He caught Billy's hand, twining it with his own.

"I won't do anything that -" he began.

"It's okay," Billy finished for him, nuzzling Alan's hand. Then he pulled at the top of Alan's jeans. "Now get yer gear off or I'll pull you in fully clothed," he teased, affecting a British accent, mischief in his eyes.

Alan grinned his satyric grin and quickly shucked his clothes. He stepped under the shower and wrapped his arms around Billy, rubbing his cheek against Billy's shoulder.

Billy covered Alan's hand as it lay flat across his stomach, tracing the silver ring Alan still wore, the ring Alan never took off.

Alan pressed a kiss between Billy's shoulder blades.

"We'll take this as slow as you need."

"Slow is good," Billy agreed, turning in Alan's arms for a kiss that faltered nervously at first under the streaming water, Alan unsure of where to tread. It was Billy who eased them into their natural rhythms, guiding Alan. Slow and sweet they kissed and caressed and traced skin under the water, finding their way again. Slow and gentle, Alan was inside Billy, because Billy wanted him there. Slow and tender Alan made it last, drawing in and out in a long, slow dance until Billy, taken so carefully step by step to the top of the mountain, fell, and Alan was there to catch him in his arms. He rubbed his face against Billy's skin, sighed softly and spilled into his sheath.

Alan withdrew as lightly as possible, snapping off the condom, twisting it and tossing it out into the rubbish bin.

Billy turned and rested against him, eyes closed, sated yet a little sad that their lovemaking had taken on an unwelcome clinical aspect. That had been one of the greatest pleasures in loving Alan, the freedom they had with each other.

"Alright?" Alan asked.

Billy nodded against his shoulder.

"I needed to feel you. It makes this real, the rest a bad dream."

The sky had darkened at last, and Billy was lying on the couch, using Alan as a pillow, as he often did, half dozing in front of the television, neither of them really watching or listening.

Alan was playing softly with the short curling ends of Billy's honey coloured hair, growing out from the buzz cut at last, his fingertips gliding across Billy's scalp. Billy was blissed out of his mind, and Alan knew it. He kissed the top of his lover's head fondly.

"The next time you see your doctors, I'd like to be there, as your partner. Is that okay?"

Billy nodded.

Alan had been excluded this time from Billy's rescue, and he'd not been able to see him until he'd been discharged and debriefed. Chastened and a little terrified by the bureaucracy, Alan had let himself be pushed aside and left out of it, and that had been a mistake. At the time he hadn't wanted to make a fuss, or draw attention to Billy's sexuality, but it wouldn't do. He needed to know what Billy was going through, as his partner. He needed to know the things Billy couldn't and wouldn't tell him.

Billy was a man, after all, and not given to sharing or admitting vulnerabilities unless absolutely necessary. Billy might be fine, like he said he was, and he might have toughened up. Certainly the knowledge that he could endure and survive the most extreme situations had given him a quiet confidence that was deeply charismatic.

Alan worried though that old wounds had been opened, both physical and emotional. Billy had always been a reckless boy, but life had smacked most of the silliness out of him. Alan missed that, in ways he'd never imagined he would. Billy had grown up in his eyes, from boy to man, in just a few short years.

He kissed Billy again. He wanted to ask if Billy knew when he might be getting a new arm, but that question would have to wait, because Billy was asleep.

Getting anew prosthetic arm unfortunately wasn't as easy as buying a new pair of shoes. It didn't help that Billy was a more difficult patient than most, with his amputation being so high and close to his body. Of course it would be, those damn animals had attacked him across his back and shoulders, biting right through to the bone in his arm and breaking it.

It hadn't looked so bad on the helicopter, all bandaged up and strapped down, and Billy had been as high as a kite on all the morphine they'd pumped through him, but it had been bad, very bad, and quite simply the arm had been mauled beyond saving.

How Billy had survived, and clutching Alan's hat of all things, no one would ever know, not even Billy. His ordeal was a jumbled mess of pain, delirium, blackouts and things best forgotten.

Billy's arm would have to be built and fitted to him. It wasn't cheap, it wasn't easy and it was painful and time consuming, but Billy needed a new arm for his job so it was something he had to endure.

Alan stroked the sleeping face with the impossibly long eyelashes very softly. He wished he could spare Billy any further pain, but it was simply beyond his power to do so.

Alan woke up in the middle of the night, feeling his age again, and he noted Billy wasn't in his bed. Nor had Billy returned to his own bed, which was an encouraging sign.

Billy was leaning on his open windowsill, smoking quietly, casually browsing a large wad of printouts. Alan could see clearly that he really was going to have to buy some nicotine patches with his next box of condoms. Billy was practically chain smoking.

Still, there was something rather erotic in watching Billy light up, even one handed, and watching him now as Billy lit one off his own and handed it to Alan, it gave Alan a little thrill.

He joined Billy at the window, indulging himself. The two of them leant there quietly, framed by the window, just smoking and watching the night pass.

Alan glanced down to what Billy had been reading at last.

"That's my book," he noted with some surprise and some small sense of violation.

"I printed it out, I thought I'd make notes."

Alan's lips quirked. He was sure Billy would. Gone was the boyish hero worship, and the deference given to his title and position. Billy wasn't afraid to argue with Alan as an equal these days, and they'd had some pretty heated discussions. Alan enjoyed their academic bickering, and even enjoyed it even more when they grew wildly passionate in their debates, but sometimes he missed simply being able to pull rank on Billy. 'Because I say so', just didn't cut it very much any more.

Billy noted there was now much more of Alan's book than there had been before he'd left.

"Well, I had to do something to keep myself occupied. There's an odd comfort in working, as you know."

Billy's sharp rebuke that Alan obviously cared more for his book than him died on his lips, hearing the heartbreak in Alan's voice.

"I'm sorry," Billy murmured in apology.

"It's alright, it's all over now." Alan moved him on.

"I'd like to hear what you think," Alan asked honestly.

Billy ducked his head. "I haven't finished reading it yet." He wasn't quite up for a full on academic discourse at 3am. At least, not today.

"I thought you might be working on your own book," Alan prodded. He was happy to have Billy collaborate, but he was certain that there was an urgent expectation that Billy's latest adventures would warrant another book destined for the best seller list.

Billy shrugged. "People have been asking, but I want the dust to settle a little bit. It's still too real, too raw. I've been putting it all down in a journal, while it's still fresh, so I won't forget, but it's still too close, you know?"

"Problems sleeping?" Alan asked again, concerned.

Billy inhaled on his cigarette and shook his head.

"No, not really. I think I'm still on Russian time, or Montana time, or something. I was just awake," he shrugged. He saw Alan watching him, like a hawk, and it caused him a wrinkle of irritation.

"I'm okay, really. It wasn't fun but it's over now. I've been in worse situations," he added, and he had.

Alan nudged his empty t-shirt sleeve.

"Any news on your new arm?"

"Nope. They'll call when it's ready. I haven't even been for a proper fitting yet. I don't mind," he added. Billy had been offered the use of a temporary prosthesis from the hospital but he'd hated it. Billy could manage well enough on one arm alone and when he couldn't he just flashed his dimples for help.

Billy had a spare arm back in Montana but Alan hadn't even thought to pack it. Poor Alan hadn't even remembered to pack a change of clothes, for either of them, he been so frantic. Billy couldn't fault Alan for that - it was kind of sweet that Alan had worried so much.

Billy stubbed out his cigarette in the tea cup saucer he was using as an ashtray, balanced on the sill beside him. He cocked a speculative look at Alan, and Alan stubbed out his cigarette beside Billy's.

Billy was sliding up and down on the bed, nuzzling at Alan's stomach, down his thighs, and between his thighs and all over.

Alan, his eyes closed, sighed happily as Billy mouthed him again.

Billy licked at him, and made a small gagging noise, complaining about the taste of latex.

Alan suddenly felt himself ripped bare and Billy's tongue lathing over the delicate skin. Alan's eyes snapped open and he gazed down at Billy, asking a question.

"It's okay, it's just me we have to worry about. I'll be careful, I promise. I won't bite." He grinned and Alan felt a gentle nip.

Alan closed his eyes with a soft groan of frustration. No more playing rough with Billy, either, for the foreseeable future, and he liked it when they were wild and growling and grappling at each other.

Billy was making happy sucking noises. He drew back, licking a trail across Alan's stomach, bringing Alan back into the game.

"I love the way you taste, sliding down my throat," he purred, sliding his mouth down Alan again.

Alan let out a sigh. Slow and steady was good, too, and he knew Billy would be careful. He, too, needed the sensual pleasure of skin stroking over skin, and he shifted restlessly on the mattress as Billy demonstrated just how lovely that sensation could be.

In the morning Alan found Billy had already been down to the local shops for milk, bread, and, yes, another packet of smokes. He'd brought back the morning paper, too, but beside it was one of those high-end glossy fashion magazines, fresh off the presses. Inside there was an interview with Billy, which must have been put in at the last minute before going to press.

Alan was very aware that Billy was spending an unhealthy amount of time on media relations, instead of just relaxing and recuperating, as Alan would have preferred. Unfortunately Alan was no match for the publicists the BBC had hired to spin the incident and its aftermath.

Alan knew he was right though, that Billy would be much better off just being left to unwind, especially when he saw the photographs. They had been taken just days after Billy's release. The photographer had probably thought he was being clever, capturing Billy in harshly lit and forensic detail, like something from a crime scene. A full page black and white image of Billy, turned away from the camera, thin enough to show the bones of his spine, shoulders and ribs sharply through his skin. His skin was still painted in dark bruises and marked with the swatch marks from where he had been beaten and still striped with jagged scars from where the pteranodons had torn at his skin.

Billy's face was turned slightly to the camera, gazing coldly over the shoulder that ended abruptly in his amputation. It was a shocking image, even to Alan. Especially to Alan.

Alan turned the page and was confronted by another haunting image: a close up of Billy's face, and there was his soul, right there in his eyes for anybody to see.

Billy was looking at the camera with an angry defiance, annoyed at the intrusion, yet there was a sad fragility in his eyes, eyes that had witnessed unspeakable horror, eyes that burned betrayal like a beaten dog and eyes that screamed accusation. Those eyes spoke of heartbreak as well as horror. They told of a soul abused and a soul damaged.

Alan had seen those eyes before, but never quite so shockingly forlorn, never captured forever on paper. This was the face Billy tried to hide from him. Alan stroked the glossy paper softly, tracing Billy's face, the paper cold under his fingertips.

Oh, Billy. What had the world done to that bright eyed, smiling little imp he'd known and loved so dearly?

Billy came out of his room, chewing on a pencil thoughtfully, still engrossed in Alan's manuscript, now covered in coffee stains and points scrawled up and down the margins.

"Hey, you're up," he flicked Alan a look, acknowledging his existence in a happy change of temper. He saw that Alan had the magazine open.

"Cool photos, huh."

Alan straightened. "I find them confronting." He spoke evenly.

Billy shrugged. "I was in a pissy mood that day - I think he caught that."

"You were up early." Alan changed the subject slightly.

"Too much coffee," Billy shrugged off his concern again.

Alan knew he was being fobbed off, even gently.

"Billy."

"Alan." Billy teased, refusing to take this seriously. He wasn't in the mood for another serious talk, at least, not before breakfast.

Alan gave in, letting the magazine fall closed.

"You'd tell me, though, if something was really wrong, right?"

"Yeah." Billy tossed off his answer, then frowned in annoyance. "Stop fussing, Alan, for fuck's sake. It's getting on my nerves. Shit happens, it's over, I'm fine, okay? I don't need a mother, I need a lover."

"I'm sorry," Alan fumbled through his apology. "You just looked so sad in the pictures."

"It was a bad day. I wanted to be home with you, not stripping for some stranger in a cold, empty warehouse."

"You should have said no."

Billy shrugged. "Well, you always said selling my soul to be on TV would always come bake and bite me on the arse some day. I was contractually obliged to say yes. I just wanted it over and done with."

Billy sat down at the table, half cluttered with books, ashtrays and empty coffee cups, searching desperately for something to turn the subject away from himself. He dragged the draft of Alan's book towards him.

"Are the differences between American and Chinese velociraptors really that pronounced?" he asked, tapping the manuscript.

"Yes, the more specimens we find, the more variations we can measure. There's discussion on whether we're looking at juveniles and adults, gender differences, species variations or even parallel development." Alan warmed to his topic, pulling up a chair beside Billy.

€€

Billy subsided into the pillows silently, his suddenly lax form the only clue Alan had that Billy had climaxed.

Billy had always used to be a very noisy lover, a screamer. He'd been loud, too loud for Alan at times, but now he never made a sound, not at all. It was as though he kept himself tense and tight and under control, barely breathing. Nor would he make love face to face as often as Alan would like, preferring to turn away, hiding parts of himself no matter how much Alan tried to cajole or reassure him.

Still, Billy had been through an ordeal, and these things took time. Alan had to let him settle back into their life. He could share Billy's bed and hold him and love him, and that was something. Alan wanted to take Billy and make him burn with the old fire and make him scream his name, but that would have to wait for just a little bit longer.

Things were better now. Billy was making a conscious effort to be more affectionate to Alan, and to involve Alan more in this life he'd carved out for himself in London.

The trouble was that Billy was making an effort, where once it had flown from him effortlessly. Billy was going through the motions, doing his best to please Alan, but he wasn't really there, not all the way there, not all the time.

Alan often found this more than a little disturbing at times, more than Billy's previous coldness, and he worried for him and watched him like a hawk when he hoped Billy wasn't watching him back. Billy was trying so hard, and Alan didn't want to rock the boat too much or make too many demands, but still, something was out of kilter. Alan couldn't put his finger on it, but something still wasn't quite right between them, not entirely.

It was as though their deep friendship and partnership, for Alan even now avoided the word relationship, had been smashed to the ground with a heavy hand. They were trying to glue it back together again as best they could, but there were little chips missing and the fragility was there, it would always be there, now, in the faultlines that would break apart if anyone squeezed it.

Alan was still in London. He'd taken a sabbatical. He couldn't in all conscience leave Billy to his own devices. He didn't trust Billy to be left alone. Billy, sweet, successful boy that he was, was damaged goods and it was Alan's duty if nothing else to stay and keep an eye on Billy and be there if the brave face Billy put on for the world started to slip.

It wasn't just duty that kept Alan in London. Duty and guilt might have tied Alan to Billy, but friendship and shared passions held him closer. Physical passion burned for Billy and he took great pleasure in Billy's mind and body: in the way he smelt and the way he tasted, in the feel of his skin under Alan's fingertips, the way Billy laughed and smiled, the light in his eyes, the way they would verbally spar and bounce ideas off each other and the way Billy would look at him, even now. In short, Alan loved Billy and he knew that he would never leave him.

No, it would be Billy who would be the making or the breaking of them and Alan lived from day to day waiting for the other shoe to drop. It was a bad way to be and Alan knew he should push forward or leave, for Billy's sake. But not today.

Alan was walking back to Billy's flat, mind churning away, having little work to occupy it, keys in one hand, two bottles of twelve year old scotch nestled in the other - a seasonal indulgence.

He glanced up at the rather charming façade of Billy's terraced flat as he started up the couple to steps towards the front door and that's when he saw him: Billy standing on top of the very edge of the roof, staring straight ahead, as though he were about to take flight.

The bottles of scotch smashed down beside Alan on the footpath.

Billy was standing on the very edge of the building, looking down into the street, considering.

"Billy!" Alan called out, having raced to the very top of the stairs.

Billy turned, hearing his name, and then Billy smiled, a soft sweet smile. And Billy did nothing. He just smiled, then glanced over the edge of the building again, then took a step. A step away