A/N: I promise that I will get around to the sequel to Today Was A Fairytale. I've just decided that I want to write the whole story first rather than try and write and upload at the same time, as that's sometimes a bit difficult as I've learned. Anyway, this is just a random idea that came to me and begged to be written. I hope you enjoy it. As always I'm really interested to know what you think, especially your opinions on Jess' secret.

"No! Not again!" Jess shouted as the lockdown was initiated.

"Sorry," Connor replied meekly over the comms, looking at the lovable lizard in his lab.

"I give in. Rex can come and live in the flat if it'll stop these bloody lockdowns every week."

"He won't bother you, I swear," Abby said, joining the conversation over the comms.

Jess sighed and set to work on the computer, booting her laptop up and finding the necessary cables to link it to the ADD and enable her to sneak in the trapdoor she and Connor had left in the system after that first lockdown Rex had triggered. It was lonely work. Whilst she was in the hub with the ADD, Abby was with Matt in the Menagerie, Becker was in the armoury taking apart the EMDs and cleaning them, Connor was in his lab with Rex and Emily was in the rec room making tea.

"Well, this is boring, innit?" Connor muttered either to Rex who chirped in response or to himself, not really realising that everyone else would overhear him through the comms.

"Sorry, Temple, but perhaps we could all have been doing something fun if you'd contain Rex." Becker's temper had been on a short leash all day.

"Calm down, Action Man. I was just saying that there's not a lot to do now that we're all stuck in separate parts of the building," Connor said defensively.

"We could always play a game," Abby suggested.

"Ooh, what kind of-"

"-I don't like games," Becker interrupted, his voice heavy and surly.

"Come on, don't be a spoil sport. I'll have a pint with you afterwards," Matt cajoled.

"Fine. What stupid game are we going to play when we can't see each other?"

"I was thinking we each reveal a secret…" Abby answered, her voice betraying the mischievous smile no-one but Matt could see.

"What if you don't have any secrets?" Emily asked politely.

"Everybody has secrets," Connor laughed.

"You don't, Temple, because you can't keep your mouth closed for one second."

"Oi! For your information, Becker, I happen to like to keep my colleagues informed of developments in my life."

"Yeah, but no-one really wants to hear you describe in detail how the anomaly deflector you were trying to build failed," Matt said gently, like he was trying not to disappoint a child.

"One day, that deflector will save your lives and then you'll all be grovelling to me," Connor replied stubbornly, crossing his arms and feeling proud of himself for standing up to his friends.

"Are we playing then?" Emily asked.

Everyone answered their assent whilst Jess mumbled to herself, concentrating on her task.

"Jess?" Abby called over the comms.

There was no answer.

Matt frowned and repeated her name, beginning to be concerned. It wasn't like Jess to disappear.

"Jess," Becker asked insistently, the sound of his voice finally drawing her attention.

"Sorry, I was miles away."

Abby relayed the idea and Jess told them she'd play but really focus on the computers and might not actually hear what they said.

"Okay, so who's going first?" Abby asked, pursing her lips and waiting for someone to volunteer.

"Well it was your idea…" Becker prompted.

"Right. So I'll go first…"

"And it has to be your biggest secret," Matt reminded everyone.

"Preferably something no-one else knows," Connor added.

"Yeah, but you and Abby share everything anyway – you're a couple," Becker objected.

"Enough. At this rate no-one will tell a secret."

"Sorry, Abs," Connor murmured. She was always so moody with him. It had started not long after they'd shut down the anomaly at Prospero and she'd proposed to him. Every day she seemed to be more and more tired. He knew why, but it wasn't nice to have his fiancé snapping at him every few minutes.

Abby took a few deep breaths to calm down, aware of Matt's calculating gaze, and decided to simply get her secret over with quickly.

"I'm pregnant," she blurted.

"I knew it!" Matt exclaimed. "I knew there was something bigger than marriage that dragged Connor back here from the future!"

"Did I hear that correctly, Miss Maitland?" Lester demanded over the comms. "Not only has your infernal pet caused this mess again, you've been going out into the field whilst pregnant?"

An awkward silence settled over the ARC, as the six friends remembered that everybody could hear the conversation if they were wearing ear pieces.

Abby stared helplessly at Matt before he slowly answered Lester's questions.

"It's my fault, Lester. I suspected that this was the case. I shouldn't have allowed Abby into the field."

She mouthed him a silent thanks whilst Lester sent a stream of sarcastic, abusive comments into Matt's ear before removing his comms unit and swearing loudly in his office where no-one but his secretary, Janine, could hear. Matt unhooked the earpiece and looked at it as though doubtful that Lester's reprimand was over before replacing it.

Jess' voice came over the comms announcing that she'd managed to isolate their units from everyone else's now that she was back in the system.

"If you're in the system, isn't lockdown over?" Becker asked in confusion.

"Nope, the new lockdown system requires a preliminary sweep of the ARC to ensure that there is no creature incursion before lifting the security measures. I'm about to run it now but it'll still be a good ten minutes at least. I'm also rebooting the security cameras and checking the external feeds. I need a conversation to keep me sane whilst I'm doing all that."

"Sorry everyone had to find out that way," Connor said to Abby and Abby alone, despite he knew that Emily, Becker, Jess and Matt would be listening.

Matt turned away from Abby to stare at the wall, whistling quietly to give her privacy.

Becker returned his own attentions to the EMDs and Emily made a commotion with the biscuit tins so as to not overhear their conversation.

"It would have come out one way or another," Abby answered evenly. "At least this way I've told everyone rather than had it spread via rumour."

Connor picked Rex up and held him tightly. "Rex wants to say congratulations."

Abby smiled and blinked away the tightness in her eyes. "Right, who's going next?"

"I'll go," Matt bravely offered. "I don't really have many secrets left-"

"-Oh come on, you must have loads! You're from the future!" Connor interrupted, rolling his eyes. "You must know everything!"

"I was going to say that all my secrets are related to the fact that I'm from the future and you already know that. Everything else I've told you all is true."

"Well what's your secret then?" Emily asked, speaking the words everyone else was thinking and wondering what Matt could have possibly hidden from her.

"My secret is that when I first met all of you, I suspected each one of you of sabotage."

As Matt had thought, his statement was met with a barrage of shouts – Becker the loudest, who was yelling about trust and how as Head of Security he was the most trustworthy person in the ARC. Only Emily remained silent because she already knew Matt had suspected her – she'd been one of the one's trying hardest to support him.

"Guys, calm down," Jess tried. No-one would listen, so she used one of the ADD controls to send a burst of sound through the ARC. Abby, Becker and Connor stopped shouting at Matt to listen to the alert. "Look, it makes sense. Imagine you're Matt. You don't know who you can trust so everyone has to be a suspect. It was the fate of the world in his hands – you can't take the situation lightly."

"Sorry, Matt, Jess is right," Abby admitted.

"Yeah, sorry mate," Connor said, feeling guilty.

Becker gruffly mumbled something unintelligible that could have been an apology but no-one would ever know.

"So Matt and I have gone," Abby commented. "Who's going now?"

"I will," Connor volunteered excitedly. He had known what his secret would be from the moment the game had started. He looked left and right, keeping a pause between his volunteering and his secret to keep everyone in suspense. "My middle name is Solo."

"That's not a secret," Matt said, laughing. "It's on your file."

"What I took that off!" Connor protested.

"Come on, Temple, you need to tell us something else."

"Fine," Connor replied, desperately trying to think of something else. All he could come up with was too embarrassing to tell.

"Time's up, Connor," Abby said.

"Abs, you're meant to be on my side! You're my fiancé!"

"Sorry, Conn, but it's part of the game. Tell us your secret," she told him.

"I was a virgin until I met Abby. Happy?"

"Aw, Connor," Abby smiled. He really was the sweetest.

Becker, Matt and Emily never answered Connor. It hadn't been something they'd really wanted to know, though it was heart-warming that Connor and Abby were such a close and endearing couple. Even Becker found himself feeling happy for them. Things couldn't be better for his oldest friends at the ARC. They were together, happy, engaged and expecting their first child.

"Right, Becker or Emily, who's going next?" Matt asked.

Becker flat-out refused, so Emily graciously took her turn.

"Before Matt rescued me, I stole my husband's pocketwatch and gave it away to a beggar to sell on in a pawn shop," she said simply. "It was my last chance to be myself again and I enjoyed watching him search high and low for the watch he thought had been stolen by the prostitutes he used to enjoy in the taverns."

"Go Emily," Abby muttered, staring wide-eyed at Matt who looked equally shocked.

"Action Man, you're up."

"What? It's not my turn," Becker said, panic-stricken.

He couldn't tell his biggest secret. He just couldn't.

"Come on, no backing out, Becker," Abby said.

He glanced around the armoury, checking for any of his men and tried to work out how long ago Jess had stopped listening to the conversation. She hadn't said anything for at least ten minutes. She had to be daydreaming about chocolate, he thought. If she wasn't listening then he would have no problem revealing his secret so long as she never heard about it.

Becker cleared his throat and mumbled, "I like Jess."

"Well that's no surprise. Jess is a very likable person," Connor said, feeling disappointed. He'd been expecting something like 'I killed my first man aged five and a half.'

Jess snapped back to the conversation when she heard Becker say her name.

"No, Connor, I think Becker means he like likes Jess," Abby interjected in awe.

Jess sat numb in disbelief, not daring to think it could be true. Becker had never given her any inclination that he liked her too. She'd been worrying for months now that her crush on him had become too obvious, that he thought she was obsessed with him in such a stalker-like manner that he'd been frightened away.

"Is that what you mean, Becker?" Matt asked to clarify.

Jess' heart stopped. She didn't breathe while she waited, praying fervently, for his answer.

"Yes," Becker answered, the word coming out in strangled half-sounds, finding it as hard to tell other people the extent of his feelings as it was to admit them to himself.

Jess' mouth formed an 'o' in her surprise and her heart thudded unevenly while she refrained from breathing.

"Jess? You there? It's your turn," Abby called, bringing Jess back to her body.

"Sorry, the scan's almost done. I was watching the progress on the screen. It's my turn?"

"Yep," Connor answered, popping the 'p' and desperately trying not to think about Becker's secret and what he would do to him if he accidently let it slip to Jess. He certainly wouldn't live long enough to put a ring on Abby's finger let alone see the birth of his child.

"Okay…I'm a blonde."

"But your hair is brown, Jessica," Emily said slowly.

"Yeah, but it's dyed. My natural colour is blonde. I dyed it before I started working at the ARC. In my experience smart people tend to look down on blondes because they think that we're bimbo's. I had that a lot when I was at Uni. I dyed my hair so that none of the techs here would think of me that way," Jess explained to her shocked colleagues.

Her hair colour suited her so well that none of them had ever stopped to consider that it was unnatural.

In the silence, Jess began to worry and fret. "You don't think differently of me now do you?"

"No," Abby assured her, but she wondered if Becker would have said the same.

Jess breathed a relieved sigh and contemplated letting the brown dye grow out as her laptop screen showed the ARC scan go from 99% complete to 100% complete. The lockdown lifted and Connor scooped up Rex to go and find Abby.

Jess took her computer seat and set up the ADD to scan the country for anomalies. They could only hope nothing had happened in the hour that the computers were down.

Matt left Abby and Connor in the Menagerie to give them privacy and went to find Emily in the rec room.

Once the ADD was back to normal, Jess collared Steve, one of the computer techs, into watching the machine for her. After quickly rechecking the CCTV, she headed down to the armoury, bumping into someone and falling with them to the floor.

She turned bright red when she found herself lying on top of Becker, who also looked highly embarrassed.

She immediately rolled off him and sat against one of the corridor walls. Becker sat beside her wondering why she hadn't simply gotten to her feet and carried on going wherever she had been going.

"Did you mean it?" Jess asked, suddenly turning to face him.

"Mean what?"

Her heart sank. "Your secret…"

Becker swallowed before nervously nodding.

Her heart leapt and Jess beamed, staring fully at Becker as she had wanted to since she had met him. Only he wasn't looking at her like he used to.

Anxiously, Jess patted down her clothes and asked, "What?"

Becker leaned forwards and closed the distance between them, placing both his hands on either side of Jess' face, cupping her cheeks, and pressed his lips to hers. Her hands crept up to rest on his shoulders and she titled her neck, deepening the kiss while her toes curled in pleasure.

Breaking the kiss, Becker murmured, "I knew I always loved blondes," before returning his lips to Jess' shocked ones.

A/N: So...what did you think?