CONTEST SUBMISSION #4: When the Going Gets Tough

[clayangel.livejournal.com]

Title: When the Going Gets Tough
In the Style of: PDGlyph
Author: trulyobsessive
Pairing: Colin/Ryan
Rating: PG-13
Brief summary: AU. The competitors for science and funding don't always play nice. Sometimes working hard is the only option.
Disclaimer: This is fiction and implies nothing about the people named. No profit is being made.



So many things don't turn out as planned.

I never really wanted to become a lab scientist. Sure, I'd dreamt of being a marine biologist at one point, but dreaming it and doing it are two different things. Even then, I never really wanted to get into the pharmaceutical industry, but I kept hearing about the good pay and the easy-to-get funding, and little by little, I got drawn into it without really meaning to.

Easy-to-get funding. That's ironic, seeing as we're on the brink of losing ours. See, progress takes time. The funding is easy to get alright. It's also just as easy to lose.

There are lots of competitors, too. Some of them aren't as friendly as one might wish, and though I always try to rise above petty competition, doesn't mean that everyone else does too. At best, I found our lab glasses covered with Vaseline one day. Gross and frustrating, but not directly harmful. At worst, I've found our lab results meddled with. Getting the wrong results, or not getting any results at all, only means many hours were wasted for no reason. And the funding people don't exactly have oversight with it, claiming it's our fault for not having better security checks.

That's how we got ourselves into this whole mess.

We'd all been working hard on developing this new pharmaceutical. We knew it would make or break us. I guess the competitors must have known as well.

I was running late that Monday. Ryan, my lab assistant, had spent all morning showering, and getting warm water up in the mansion isn't always easy.

Oh, yes. Did I mention I live in a mansion with my assistant? And yes, the mansion happens to be located on a mountain. Yeah, everyone laughs, but it could be worse. Could have lived in a castle.

I had taken Ryan in because he'd moved here from another city and had no place to stay, and I did have the entire place to myself with several fully furnished bedrooms. Might as well make use of that, I thought.

So that Monday, reluctant as I was, I had to throw myself in to the cold shower. I soaped up and rinsed off as quickly as I could before leaping out, breaking out into full body shivers. Wrapping the biggest towel I had around myself, I huddled, trying to warm up. Stumbling into the master bedroom, I got dressed and went down to the kitchen.

There was Ryan, carefree and munching on a piece of French toast.

"Oh, hey." He looked up, then went back to reading the newspaper.

"Hey?" I snapped. "Hey? Do you know you used up all the warm water?"

Ryan gazed up at me from behind the newspaper as I crept closer to him.

"Sorry," he mumbled, averting my eyes. "I guess I took longer than I thought."

"Yeah, well..." I hadn't seen the apology coming. "Just...come on, hurry up or we're gonna be late."

I watched him as he rose from his chair, and bringing his plate with him, placed it in the sink. Guilty about using up all the warm water, I guessed, because Ryan had a tendency to get lost in his own world from time to time, leaving an unintentional mess in his wake.

We both put our outer coats on. I locked the door. Then we headed to my car, as Ryan didn't have one of his own, and drove off.

I never would have imagined I'd grow attached to Ryan's company so quickly. More than just attached. At first, I thought he was decent company. A regular guy, like myself, striving to accomplish whatever he could in the research field. Decent company turned into great company. And great company turned into this, whatever this was. Not that Ryan knew about my attraction to him, or at least, I don't think he did. But we'd lived together for almost two months now, and part of me hoped he'd never find a place of his own. In fact, when it came to Ryan, I was hoping he would one day see in me what I saw in him.

I never meant to see it either. It's not as though I was looking to crush on my lab assistant housemate, because it certainly didn't make things simple. I often found myself thinking of him, or worse, staring at him. Staring at his hands, his neck, overtaken by daydreams about us cuddling up in front of the fireplace in the living room...



The mood was quieter than usual in the lab. I instantly suspected another incident. I could have sworn I saw Mandy, one of the assistants working in the special analysis lab, wiping tears out of her eyes before approaching me.

"It's happened again," she said.

"What's happened?" I asked, hoping I was wrong in my suspicions.

"The results, sir. They're ruined. Someone must have..." she sniffled, then took a deep breath, composing herself. "Someone must have found a way to break in here."

I rubbed a hand over my face. Dammit. And we were supposed to present these results to the board soon.

"When you say 'ruined'... how bad is it?"

"It's... Jeff's working on trying to fix it right now. We don't know yet."

I went over to where Jeff was working, by a station at the back of the lab. He had in front of him different tubes with all kinds of substances. His forehead wrinkled in concentration, lips pressed into a thin line as he dipped a paper strip into a test tube. When the substance on the strip fizzled, he dipped it into the next container, and when nothing happened, he slammed his fist into the table, letting out a string of curses under his breath.

I felt a hand on my shoulder.

"What can I do?" Ryan said, a determined look on his face.

"Jeff," I called. "What's the situation?"

"Ruined," Jeff grunted. He shook his head, then turned away from me, leaning on the table.

"Okay, listen up, everyone," I spoke up. "We still have a full week. This can still be salvaged. It's an experiment, therefore, replicable. We've kept track of everything we've done so far, so it won't be like starting over from the beginning. Yes, we'll all have to work overtime, nights and weekends, but this is our research, dammit, and I say we finish it!"

An uncertain mumble was heard.

"Well, I didn't start working here for nothing," Ryan said. "I say we might as well get the job done."

"I agree." Jeff gave me a decided nod as well.

Wayne, the other leading scientist, let out a heavy sigh but stepped up. "Alright. We've come too far to give up now, anyway."

"I'll do what I can, too," Mandy said, nodding encouragingly at me.

I looked around. Everyone seemed to be on the same page.

"Alright, we don't have much time to waste then," I said. "Mandy, could you try to find out what the hell happened to our research, if possible?"

"Yes sir," she said, taking the test tube and strip Jeff had been experimenting with and walked off to the next-door lab.

And so, we all got to work. And boy, was it a long day. By the time I and Ryan made it back home, it was past midnight and we were both exhausted, hungry and cranky.



The next day carried on in a similar manner. We were immersed in work, and by the time we came home, hungry and exhausted, we started getting on each other's nerves. Making sandwiches in the kitchen at near midnight, snapping at each other, we then agreed that the next day, we'd buy take-out to take home for the night.

Still. After the sandwiches were made, and after we gulped them down like wolves, we talked. Not about anything, really. About the day. About the work. Ryan's complaining didn't seem nearly as annoying after eating.

I loved the way Ryan seemed to just...be.

The work nagged at me, though. The little sleep I was getting was disturbed by unpleasant dreams. Knowing there was little we could do to prevent us from getting sabotaged again didn't exactly help. We hired extra staff for the security team, but I had the nagging feeling that it wouldn't do much good. We'd had a good security team to begin with, and we'd still been sabotaged more than once.

But then, the next day, I got a call.

"Yeah, Colin Mochrie speaking," I answered my cellphone reluctantly. Ryan and I were already sitting by the table, the food in Chinese take-out containers in front of us making my mouth water. I looked over apologetically at Ryan, pointing to the food to indicate he could start eating without me. He shrugged and nodded back at me but didn't touch the food.

"Dr. Mochrie. Chip Esten here, I'm one of the new security guards. I'm sorry to bother you this late, sir, but, well... we've detained a person. A suspect. We already called Mr. Carey, and he's on his way, but he told us we should call you as well."

"Oh," I said, dumbfounded. Ryan looked at me in a curious manner, and for a moment, I wondered if he'd already guessed what the call was about.

"Yeah. He won't give us his real name, but he pretended to be working as a cleaner." There was a pause. "I...to be honest, I completely bought his story about being a cleaner, too. At first. But something about the way he stalked around the building, and especially the way he avoided me whenever I passed him..."

"I'll be there as soon as I can." I hung up and quickly got up from my seat, feeling a rush of adrenaline. Ryan followed my lead as I headed for the coat rack, putting my outer coat back on.

"They're detaining someone," I explained quickly as we both rushed out to the car, though I suspected Ryan already figured as much anyway from the phone call.

It was late, with minimal traffic, but rain was pouring over the windshield, and the wipers were working frantically. The traffic lights appeared as blurs. I drove as fast as I dared, which, in this weather, still wasn't fast enough.

Not much later, we arrived at the lobby to the lab. One of the security officers, Barry, stood waiting for us.

"Mr. Carey's already here," Barry said, leading us through a door located behind the front desk. We walked through a badly lit concrete corridor until we came to a brown metal door. Barry swiped his security card in the card reader on the side, and the door unlocked with a click.

The room on the other side was as glum as the corridor had been, with three metal chairs lining one of the walls. Chip and Drew were already there. A man wearing square glasses sat on the other side of the table, located in the middle of the room.

"Well, this must be the cavalry." His voice was full of smugness.

"And you are...?" I asked.

"I'm the Easter bunny, nice to meet you." He crossed his arms, eyeing us.

I took a deep breath, reminding myself not to get worked up. "I'm Dr. Colin Mochrie, one of the scientists running this lab. You can either tell me the whole story, right now, or Barry here," I gestured towards the heavily built security officer, "will call the cops."

"Oh, come on." The suspect rolled his eyes. "I'm not an idiot, I know you're gonna call the cops either way."

"Maybe so," Chip interjected, "But you can at least make sure the cops get the…right story. We here, we don't know anything, so who knows what kind of stories we might come up with in our lack of knowledge."

"And you're just gonna condone this?" He looked straight at me as he spoke now. "I haven't done anything. I haven't broken the law. This company hired me as the new cleaner here, and I guess you must have lost the records or something. It happens all the time."

I looked over at Chip. He shook his head.

The mystery man kept claiming he was a cleaner and denying all accusations for almost an hour. I was sure I wasn't the only one whose patience was running thin. Ryan had already been out to smoke twice. Drew had taken a seat on one of the chairs by the wall.

Chip was still going at it, with a cup of coffee in one hand, but he had a whole new look of frustration across his face. "For the last time!" he snapped. "We know you're not a cleaner. We know you weren't hired by any company working for us."

"Well, double-check it then," the stranger said. The way he slumped in the chair gave away the frustration he must have felt as well.

Chip exhaled sharply, and I could see his hands tying into fists. I guess I wasn't the only one who noticed. Drew got up and walked up to him.

"Hey, Chip, why don't you take a break," Drew said, patting him on the shoulder. Chip's expression changed, his features softening, and he suddenly looked a lot more tired than he had a just a few seconds ago.

"Yeah, alright. Thanks." He smiled tiredly at Drew.

As Chip left the room, I took a seat opposite that of the stranger's. "Would you just stop? Enough with the mind games." Boy, was I tired. "We may not know who you are, but we already know that you're not on our side. And Chip's stubborn like you won't believe. He's not gonna let it, or you, for that matter, go anytime soon."

The stranger looked genuinely pensive. He shot a look over at Drew, then back to me. Nervousness was starting to show in his face.

With a sigh, he began. "Fine. It's Greg, alright? Greg Proops. I refuse to name names, so let's just say a 'rivaling company' put me up to this. They offered to pay handsomely -- really handsomely -- for me to sneak in wearing a cleaner's uniform, which they provided too, by the way. They said to put this," he took out a tiny vial containing a fine powder from his pocket, "in your vacuum concentrator. Said it would mess everything up for you guys."

"And you decided to just...do it?" I asked.

"Yeah, well, I needed the money." He shrugged.

Ryan, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, snorted and mumbled, "Asshole," under his breath.

"And you don't actually have any loyalties to this company?" I asked Greg, ignoring Ryan. I had an idea.

"No," Greg chuckled. "Couldn't care less."

"Then, Mr. Proops, I might have a proposition for you. How about you work for us instead? Until Monday, including the weekend."

Drew shot up from his chair. "What? Are you insane? This guy's--"

"No, think about it. If he works for us, he doesn't work for them. Not to mention we could use all the help we could get."

Drew turned to Greg. "Do you even do anything?"

"Oh, hey, I'm not here applying for a job. It was his idea." He nodded in my direction.

"It doesn't really matter what he's trained to do at this point, but if the other company, whoever they are, think he's still working for them, when he's really working for us, they won't bother getting anybody else." I turned to Greg. "Think you could pull that off?"

"Yeah, that's no problem."

"We can barely afford lab equipment and materials as it is, and you want to pay this clown to basically do nothing?" Drew protested.

"If we don't get results in a few days, we won't have any money anyway. But it's your call, of course."



It was nearly three a.m. by the time we got home.

"D'you think it was the right decision?" I asked Ryan.

"What, with the guy on our team?" he replied in a half-slur, then yawned. "Who knows. I gotta get some sleep, Col. G'night." He stumbled off to his room.

"Yeah, 'night."

Feeling a pang of affection, I couldn't help but smile after him.



I woke up annoyed and ill-rested the next morning. It didn't help that my alarm had gone off right as I was having delightful dreams involving Ryan. Feeling the dream dissipate from my memory, I groaned and pulled myself out of bed.

Friday. We'd end up working all weekend, of course, but Friday still had that special feel to it.

For now, I still had to survive the morning. And Greg Proops. I had almost forgotten about that. Making that decision had seemed so easy then; just hire him, end of story. In the dawn of light, however, I wondered what it would be like, having him around the lab. Would he be in the way? Would he listen to any of our instructions? And worse, what if he had lied about having no loyalties to whoever paid him to sabotage us?

Taking a deep breath, I decided to just take the day as it came. No reason to freak out before anything bad even happened.

I made my way to the kitchen. Pouring out the stale, old coffee out of the coffee pot, I made a new one, feeling slightly annoyed with how long it was taking. However, all traces of annoyance left me when Ryan came into the kitchen, fresh from the shower, wearing nothing but a pair of boxers.

"Hey," he greeted me cheerily.

"Good morning," I said, trying to find something, anything, else to fix my eyes on. They kept drifting back to his body; his shoulders and chest, his legs, the boxers... Part of me wondered if he had any idea. If he knew, surely he wouldn't walk around like that? But another part of me suspected...or hoped, maybe...that he did know, and that he walked around like that exactly because he knew.

I cleared my throat. "I'm gonna go shower, too," I mumbled, fully aware that I was going to do more than just shower. It wouldn't be the first time, either.



Wayne was already at the lab when I and Ryan walked in. He looked up from the microscope in front of him.

"Oh, hey," he said, stepping away from the work station to wash his hands before approaching me. "What's this I hear about you hiring a criminal?"

"Talked to Drew this morning?" I asked, suspecting that Drew still hadn't grown fond of my idea of hire Greg.

"Yeah. He didn't seem to happy about it...? Said you chose to spend the last of our funding on this idiot." Wayne frowned.

"Drew could have said no if he'd really wanted to," Ryan offered. "He does have the final say in all decisions, so I guess he couldn't have thought it was that bad of an idea, otherwise he'd put a stop to it."

"And it's not as though we have lots of other options. Not much time left, either," I pointed out.

The familiar beep of the card reader was heard through the door, and we all directed our gaze in that direction. Greg entered.

"Hey gang," he said with a big grin plastered on his face. "Let's get to work?"

I didn't know whether to trust him or not. He seemed eager. Almost too eager.

"You can begin by..." My first instinct was to make him run and get us coffee, but having a criminal bring you coffee in a building full of lethal chemicals seemed stupid. In fact, I could barely think of anything I'd trust him with. I wondered if Drew had been right, and if we would have been better off just reporting him to the police.

"You can clean out those test tubes," Ryan said, pointing to a row of test tubes at the work station in the very back. He then shot me an encouraging smile, knowing I had put my ass on the line for this. "And they better be really clean. There are gloves right by the sink," he pointed at it. "Use the green bottle of soap, it's made especially for this lab kind of stuff."

"Right, boss." Greg saluted Ryan with a grin before walking off to the back of the lab and getting started on his task.

The card reader beeped again, and Jeff walked in. He looked as tired as the rest of us. I hadn't seen him complain yet, though.

"Hey," he greeted us cheerily, before Greg and the water running in the sink caught his attention. "Who's that?" He nodded his head in Greg's direction.

"Colin, care to explain?" Wayne bumped me in the side with his elbow, then grinned and went back to his work station.

"Um, yeah... He works for us now. He was caught by the security team last night, pretending to be a cleaner. It's kind of a long story." I looked over at Greg, watching him thoroughly wash out the test tubes, wearing yellow rubber gloves. If he was paying any attention to our conversation, it was impossible to tell.

"Alright," Jeff said with an accepting nod. "He works for us." With that, he went off to help Wayne.

I kept sending equipment Greg's way to be cleaned, keeping a steady eye on him throughout the morning. He hadn't screwed up once yet. A couple of hours later, I sent him to fetch us some coffee. He didn't screw that up either.

When lunch time came around, I invited him to sit with me and Ryan.



That day, we left the lab earlier than we had all week. I was in a superb mood, feeling relaxed and at ease. I was starting to think that maybe we'd make the deadline after all.

"Hey, Ry, what you say we go out tonight?" I asked as we were getting ready to leave.

"Go out? Where?" Ryan turned off the lights in the lab and we started making our way towards the parking lot.

"I was thinking dinner, maybe a couple of drinks? Nothing special or anything. It's just, Friday night and all..."

"You know what?" Ryan looked over at me with a grin. "I'd love to."



Our night out didn't last for too long. We had dinner at a restaurant, but we both decided we'd rather go home after that. Sitting on the couch just seemed like a more comfortable alternative.

I still insisted on pouring us each a glass of scotch as we flipped through the channels on the TV.

"Ah, screw the TV, there's nothing on anyway," Ryan said.

Agreeing, I shut it off.

We sat and drank our scotch in enjoyable, comfortable silence until we both got sleepy. When Ryan announced he was going to bed, I had to fight the urge to ask him to stay.



We'd worked through the entire weekend, all of us. By Sunday evening, we were all stressing out, even though it started looking like we might finish on time. Mandy kept running in and out of the lab, taking samples of this and that. The distraction was incredibly annoying. When Greg started asking, seemingly every five minutes, what he could do to help, it only annoyed me further.

"Greg. Fuck off," I ground out, trying to concentrate on my work.

He raised his arms in the air defensively. "Alright, alright," he said, then walked off.

"Ryan, you gotta work faster than that."

Ryan shot me a look, then went back to his work.

I skipped lunch break to work, which meant I was only getting crankier with time. I kept snapping at everyone around me, including Ryan.

"Look, Colin..." he said.

"Don't you 'look' me. We're almost out of time, so get to work!"

He stared at me.

"Now!"

"You know what? Fuck this. I don't need this. I'm going for a smoke," he said. "Get a grip, Colin. It's not the end of the world."

I sighed, rubbing a hand over my face. He was right. We were almost done, anyway.

And just then, Mandy came rushing in. "Guys! We did it. I just ran the final tests, and the results are right here! We did it!"

I drew a sigh of relief. It wasn't a sure deal until the board took a look, of course, but we'd done our part, and amazingly, we'd finished on time.



I wasn't sure whether the mood was actually still tense between me and Ryan, or whether I was just imagining it, but I gave in and apologized as soon as we got home.

"Hey, I'm sorry. About earlier," I mumbled while heating the take-out in the microwave.

"Don't worry about it," Ryan said. "I get it. You were stressed, we had a lot to do..."

"Yeah. Too damn stressed." I snorted. "Even now, I can't stop stressing. What if the board doesn't think it's enough or something?"

"It is enough. Trust me."

I sat down on one of the chairs by the dinner table, listening to the microwave heat, and closed my eyes, taking deep breaths. I started slightly when I felt Ryan's hands on my shoulders. He was kneading my muscles, and I relaxed right into his touch. My head rolled forward. He was good, his fingers digging into my flesh just where needed. Instinctively, I moaned in pleasure, realizing with embarrassment a second later that I'd done it.

Ryan must have noticed it too. He stopped abruptly. I held my breath. He resumed shortly, though, digging in deeper. I did my best not to moan again.

"Feels good?" Ryan asked.

I bit my lip. "Yeah," I said as casually as possible.

His hands moved from my shoulders to my neck, and I felt him stepping in closer to the chair; closer to my body. I could now feel his body heat against my back, warm and comforting.

"Oh, Ryan," a moan escaped my throat again. I was horrified, but he didn't even stop this time. "I'm sorry," I mumbled, feeling heat creep up my cheeks. "It just came out," I laughed.

"I don't mind," Ryan said. Warm breath on the back of my ear startled me. When had he come so close?

"Ryan? What..." I started as I turned my head back in his direction, but all thoughts left me as his face turned out to be a mere inch away from mine. I only had a second to search his eyes for answers before he closed the distance, his lips on mine, his hand sneaking up the side of my neck and up to caress my face.

"Jesus," I gasped out when the kiss ended.

"A good Jesus, I hope?" Ryan grinned.

"You knew all along?"

"Oh, come on. The way you stare? I'm amazed I had to make the first move."

"Yeah, well... I didn't want to make you uncomfortable or anything. You live here too, after all..."

"Well, I'm not uncomfortable." Ryan closed the distance between us again. I got up, awkwardly, from the chair I was sitting on, trying not to break the kiss. I pressed myself up against him, trying to get as much of him as I could. His scent, taste, feel... It was all intoxicating.

Hitting the 'stop' button on the microwave, we left the food there, and instead made our way up the stairs to my room. We stayed there all night.



“Right, get on with it,” Brad Sherwood said. He was the newest owner of the corporation, and from the disinterested look on his face, I guessed this wasn’t exactly a passion of his.

I was suddenly glad Wayne offered to do the presentation instead of me. My palms were sweating, my stomach turning, and all I had to do was sit here and watch Wayne do the pitch to a corporation that was already paying us.

Wayne checked the presentation board in front of him one last time, then looked over at me and winked.

"Um, well, as you can see from the formula here," he pointed to an image on the board, "this substance binds to this one, causing a chemical reaction right here," he pointed. "When it gets taken up in your body, then, it acts as--"

"Just cut to the chase, would you?" Mr. Sherwood interrupted, head propped up by his arm. "All we want to know is, does it do the job?"

"Oh, it definitely does the job," Wayne said truthfully.

I looked over at Ryan, smiling warmly at him. He smiled back, and I swear I felt my heart skip a beat.

"Great. Keep working then. Meeting adjourned." Mr. Sherwood rose from his seat. "Oh," he added as if he just remembered something. "Good job, everyone."

It was strange. I felt happy about the research, about getting our funding renewed and saving our project, but really, next to Ryan, it all seemed so...unimportant, somehow. I couldn't wait for the day to end. Couldn't wait to go out and celebrate together with Ryan.

As we walked out the door, I got high-fives from everybody; Wayne, Jeff, Drew, Mandy, and even Greg. Everybody except Ryan, who instead shot me a secretive smile I was more than happy to be at the receiving end of.

"Good call on that one," Drew said, nodding his head in Greg's direction. "And you," he now spoke to Greg. "Great job. You’re welcome to stay on our team, if you like." He patted Greg on the shoulder before walking off.

"Back to step one, huh?" Wayne grinned at me.

"Guess so, yeah. I just hope the next one's less demanding."

"Tell me about it. I'm exhausted."



"Hey, Ry? We're celebrating tonight, aren't we?" I asked a few minutes before the end of the work day.

"Oh, definitely. And not just about this project." There was that secretive smile again.

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"I...I found an apartment."

I stared at him, confused. Ryan was moving out?

"You... That's...great." I feigned a smile, trying to pretend like it wasn't bothering me. I cleared my throat. "Yeah, we'll celebrate that too."

"Hey." Ryan quickly glanced around, then stepped right up to me and took my hand. Leaning in close, he mumbled, "I thought it might be weird, what with us living together and dating and all... Thought I'd give this relationship an actual chance to build up. You..." he looked away, clearly embarrassed. "You sort of mean a lot to me," he mumbled.

"Oh, you big ol' softy, you," I teased but squeezed his hand, hoping it conveyed what neither of us could yet put in words.

"And after we're done celebrating...what say we go back to my new place, and really 'celebrate'? He grinned suggestively, and I felt my own grin widening in response.

"I say it sounds like the perfect plan."

I hung my lab coat on one of the hooks mounted on the wall, then looked over the lab. Silent. Calm.

I turned the lights off.

Ryan and I left together.