Four Times James Lester Didn't Hook Up With Abby Maitland

May 02, 2010 16:06

Title: Four Times James Lester Didn't Hook Up With Abby Maitland
Author: not_from_stars
Recipient: curia_regis (Ayla Pascal)
Prompt(s): Romance between Lester and Abby, or a series of fics where they didn't get together.
Pairing(s): James Lester/Abby Maitland
Rating: PG
Summary: Every time Lester came up with a way to approach and possibly woo Abby, something always managed to get in the way.
Warnings: Mentions four specific episodes and what transpired in them. S1 and S2.
Words: 1,063
Disclaimer: The characters and world are not mine and no copyright infringement is intended.
Notes: Written for primevalathon Fic Exchange



It was all because of that damned flying lizard.

It wasn't a secret that James Lester wasn't exactly enamored with Nick Cutter when he first met him. Nick was the complete opposite of him and so they weren't destined to be friends. It should have been this way with everyone on Nick's team, and it was except for one of them.

Abby Maitland. Lester didn't know what it was exactly, but he was drawn to Abby almost immediately. Too bad that she didn't seem to feel the same. She wasn't very happy with him when he was overseeing the examination of the lizard from the past that she seemed so attached to.

She told him that they should be careful and not treat an angry lizard that way, but he waved off her concerns. After all, the lizard was small for a prehistoric creature and it couldn't really hurt them, now could it?

Except it could fly.

That had been some information that no one had seen fit to give him. Next thing he knew, he was following Abby -- dressed in that ridiculous leather jacket of hers -- as they chased the lizard through the building. After they had retrieved the lizard and kept him from flying out of the window and off to who the hell knows where, Lester was considering talking to Abby further.

Cutter pointing out the fact that the lizard had made a mess on his suit put a stop to that idea right away.

***

There were a few rules that James Lester had when dealing with scientists.

One should not allow amateurs into your mind or allow them to do a dangerous job -- no matter how much scientific skill and knowledge they might seem to have.

Lester hadn't been happy with the idea of Cutter and his team investigating an influx of poisonous beasts in the rail system. Cutter wanted to shut down the entire transit system and there was no way that could happen.

Of course, Lester would probably have been able to hold out against any of Cutter or Stephen's arguments if he hadn't thought about how much Abby would appreciate this. He could just picture that mixture of pixie and punk rocker all blended together as a scientist and how him agreeing to let them investigate would mean to her.

So, he went against his own instincts as a business official and allowed them to investigate.

He made sure that Claudia Brown was given the tools and electronics so that Cutter's team could do whatever Cutter thought they were going to do down there. He sent them down into the tunnels with weapons and tools, and pondered the best way to approach Abby about things.

He should have expected everything to go wrong no matter how much planning he put into it.

Stephen got bitten or stung or whatever and was rushed off to the hospital possibly dying from the poison from some creature with fangs or a lot of legs. He didn't have all of the details about what had happened down there. What he did know was that when Stephen was taken away to the hospital, Abby went with him.

***

James Lester had never seen anything all that interesting about Dodo birds. The name itself summed up all of his thoughts about the blasted thing better than he probably could. There was a reason it died out. There was a reason it had gone extinct. It was simply too stupid to continue to survive in the world that it lived in.

Leave it to the Cutters to end up making him have to deal with a creature that was that annoying. He probably shouldn't have been surprised by it.

It all started when Helen told them that if they didn't allow her to take them to the site of the next anomaly opening that there would be a large group of sabretooth cats that were going to come through. They were going to come through the anomaly and start eating or killing everyone in their sight because they were always hungry.

That did not happen.

No, what happened instead was that those stupid birds came through, Helen escaped into the anomaly field and on of Connor's stupid friends stole government property. Connor's friend ended up possessed by some parasite and went after Abby.

Lester could have come up with all kinds of things to do to help and could have done something to protect or rescue Abby. He listened to the interrogation of Connor's other mate and was ready to make a call to Abby in the hospital lab she was working in to warn her.

He was reaching for the phone when he heard Stephen slam his hand on the table and yell at the boy. "You idiot! You made her bait!"

So it was Stephen and not Lester who ran from the offices and managed to save Abby.

***

It was no secret that James Lester and Nick Cutter's relationship had become a little more antagonistic since he returned from one anomaly and started ranting about the disappearance of some woman none of the rest of them had known. It had only gotten worse through subsequent assignments.

When the boy disappeared and they were investigating some shark creature, Cutter rubbed him the wrong way one too many times. He finally laid down some rules and told Cutter that he expected him to follow those orders and do the job like he told him to do it.

He should have expected that Cutter would go against everything he said in order to try to prove him wrong. What he didn't expect was what the cost was going to be.

When he received the news that Abby had been taken and was most likely dead since they disappeared in the bottom of the canal, Lester was a mixture of rage and grief. If Cutter had only done what he was told, this never would have happened. He was so angry that he did something that he tried never to do. He went out to the work sight where the team had been.

He removed Cutter as the lead investigator and ordered Stephen to find the creature that had killed Abby and to destroy it.

It was the one time where he was glad that Stephen was around when it came to Abby.

character : james lester, character : abby maitland, fandom : primeval

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