Primeval Fanfic: Happily Ever After
Title: Happily Ever After
Author: TalliW
Pairings: Jenny/Nick, Nick clones
Rating: K+
Disclaimer: Primeval is the property of Impossible Pictures. I write just for fun.
Acknowledgments: Thanks to Fredbassett for beta-reading. I couldn't have done it without you.
AN: For Andrea who wanted some sort of clone fairytale, an unrated married Jenny/Nick story and a fixit for season 3 events.
Due to shortage of time I just mixed it all together in a single story. I hope you like it nevertheless.
Nick Cutter stared at the two men who smiled at him after they had pushed him out of the way of the deadly bullet Helen had fired at him. The still falling debris of the ceiling had now buried his murderous wife almost completely.
He knew he had to be in shock after the events of the day and was probably hallucinating, although the soothing hand running through his hair felt damned real.
"Take him home and then destroy the device! I'll deal with his team members," the one in the soiled black tee-shirt and blue jeans ordered and handed the other one in the tattered black uniform a small gadget looking like the newest Nokia mobile.
The tender washing in the shower, combined with soft kisses along his bruised skin, made Nick feel relaxed and clean but did nothing to straighten out his jumbled mind. The man leading him into his bedroom and snuggling up to him on the bed still looked too familiar.
Hours later, it was already dark outside, another naked man climbed into the bed and pushed his body against Nick, searching warmth and physical contact.
"What?" Nick Cutter mumbled drowsily.
"Hush! Don't worry. Everything is all right. Go back to sleep. We'll talk tomorrow," a gentle voice whispered to him and Nick slipped back into sleep, reassured.
The sun was shining on his face and woke him up from a weird dream about Helen with a gun in her hand and familiar faces.
As he opened his eyes Nick looked directly into the same grumpy face he saw every morning in his bathroom mirror and froze in shock.
"Next time, close the shutters before you go to bed," someone muttered behind him in a soft Scottish accent and the man facing him grimaced and replied sheepishly with the same voice: "I guess I should probably do that," before he tried to pull the bedcovers over his head to hide from the morning sun.
Nick startled both men badly as he panicked and sprung up, in his attempt to get out of the bed tangling himself in the bedcover and stumbling over the man laying left to him. They both ended up in a heap on the floor with a very crabby and very annoyed-looking naked and now slightly shivering man glaring down at them from the bed.
"Silly arses, both of you," he grumbled and snatched the bedcovers back, leaving them both exposed on the floor.
"Don't take it personally. The Professor isn't usually so liverish. He just isn't a morning person. By the way I'm Nicky. It's nice to meet you, at last."
Talking whilst naked, with another naked man on the floor of his bedroom, with a third naked man lying in his bed was the final straw. Nick Cutter was convinced his grasp on reality had finally snapped.
But perhaps it was only a temporary insanity. He just wished the figments of his imagination would stop talking.
"I can assure you I'm not a fiction of your jumbled mind, Mr. Cutter. I'm quite real, just like the other one, who's name is Nicky, as he's already told you. I prefer to be called Professor. Based on my 56 percent higher intelligence quotient than my DNA contributor I think I'm entitled to wear this academic degree despite the fact that I haven't actually acquired it the usual way yet."
"You are clones," Nick Cutter whispered, shocked.
"That's a remarkable realization, Mr. Cutter. I think there is hope for you." The clone on the bed rolled his eyes while the other one on the floor started to giggle. "Of course, we're clones. You met Nicky in the ARC yesterday. Or did you think that was all a dream?"
"But ... Helen... didn't tell me about a second clone. And the explosion... You should be dead," Nick Cutter stammered.
"As should you. In the previous timeline, Nick Cutter died on 10th April 2009 at 16:38 in the ARC, from a gunshot wound caused by his wife. Connor Temple found him after Nick Cutter had crawled back to get the artefact and thereby aggravated his condition and lost too much blood. He died in the arms of his student and left everything in a shambles. I will spare you the details of the subsequent events which would, according to my calculations, lead to the extermination of the whole of humankind."
Nick Cutter stared at the clone, who called himself Professor, in shock.
Before he could say something the Professor carried on: "Before you get agitated, I must point out that I'm not a proponent of interventions in the original timeline but, because your deceased wife has already meddled with history, I've deemed it's necessary to interfere as well.
Helen Cutter's intentions might have been honourabley in the first place, but these were based on wrong conclusions and would have had disastrous effects. Her death was an accidental occurrence, caused by the Anomaly I had opened. But in the end I think it was for the best. I'm sure she wouldn't have seen sense. Through my observations I could ascertain the bitter truth that your wife slowly lost her sanity and finally went completely mad after she had killed you."
The clone looked down, clearly worried. "Mr. Cutter? Hello? Are you still with me? Dear me, Nicky get him up on the bed. He's shivering and is probably going into shock."
Nick Cutter woke up a second time, sandwiched between two naked Nick Cutter's on the bed and instantly felt the desire to close his eyes again to go back into dreamland.
"Oh, he has finally decided to join us again. Mr. Cutter, you are really far too easy to shock, despite all the things you've already witnessed. I hope this time you will have the courtesy to stay conscious long enough so that I can finish my story."
Nick Cutter blinked and mumbled in annoyance: "You almost sound like Lester."
An hour later, Nick Cutter knew that the Professor was the result of an experiment to increase the intelligence level of clones. Helen had funded that secret project and had provided Cutter's DNA.
Fortunately, the project leader had realised the dangers of that research and had destroyed all important results.
The two clones who had already been created, one with a slightly lower IQ from the original DNA donor, and the other clone with more than 50 percent higher intelligence quotient had stayed with the project leader. Then Helen had found out about the existence of the clones.
The clones had managed to act dumb so that Helen Cutter had believed the experiment had completely failed. But she had kept both of them for company and sometimes even talked to them when she felt lonely.
One day she had taken one of them with her and had come back without him.
Soon, the remaining highly intelligent clone, who called himself Professor, had learnt enough about the anomalies and Helen Cutter's plans to decide that the events leading to the death of the original Nick Cutter and his clone-friend Nicky had to be prevented.
When Helen Cutter vanished and Armageddon started, he had stepped into an Anomaly to arrive just in time to remove Nicky out of harm's way when the bomb exploded in the ARC.
Nick Cutter still didn't understand everything. There was just so much information assailing him all at once.
Apparently the Professor had walked out of the ARC in place of Cutter at the moment Connor Temple had wanted to go into the building. They had welcomed their supposed team leader and friend with joy whilst Nicky had brought the real Nick Cutter to his house.
Helen's portable Anomaly devices and the artefact had been destroyed because they belonged to a timeline which no longer existed now.
Nick Cutter only grasped parts of the explanation the Professor had given him about fractional alterations and he still had difficulties in accepting the things he had heard.
Lying cocooned between the warm bodies of his clones, who caressed him soothingly when he started to hyperventilate, helped him to avoid another shock.
But Nick Cutter certainly hadn't expected that Nicky would suddenly dive under the bedcovers to try to relax him in a very unique way, and had been taken by surprise. Before Nick could utter a complaint he fell into a sea of pleasure as Nicky licked him gently while the other clone played with Nick's nipples.
The Professor had declared a little sheepishly afterwards: "We're healthy, sexually active men and when Helen was off again there was just us. And you really taste delicious."
That weekend, Nick Cutter learned some things he hadn't known about himself and the world around him. By Monday he hadn't only accepted the events but he was relaxed and bursting with energy for the first time since Stephen had gone.
He had answered Jenny's bland smile, in the building which would serve as a substitute until the ARC was repaired, with a beaming grin and had felt happy. But he hadn't had the balls to invite her for a drink despite the fact that he wanted to get to know her better.
In the end it was Nicky who had worked up the courage to ask Jenny Lewis out for a date because he had fallen head over heels for the woman the first time he had seen her in the ARC.
With a bouquet of tastefully arranged flowers he'd picked up in the neigbourhood, he'd been waiting outside her front door one day and had swept her off her feet with his declaration of love.
Jenny had been amused by the clumsy, shy but also utterly romantic way Nicky had courted her, which had lead to a first kiss with Nick Cutter on the third date because Nicky was lying with a cold in bed at the time.
As the Professor had confessed a week later, he felt, of course only on a pure intellectual level, attracted to the intelligent vibrant woman he had secretly chatted to on the phone every night, too, the three man realised they could have a minor problem.
But Jenny Lewis, standing on the doorstep on a Saturday evening, asking the surprised Nick Cutter how many clones actually existed had throw all of them for a loop.
Nicky was the first to come out of his hiding place behind the living room wall and invited her in, while Nick tried to recover from the shock with a glass of Scotch that the Professor had poured for him.
It was Nicky who bought the engagement ring and arranged a romantic night on the Thames and Nick who asked for Jenny's hand in marriage and made her his wedding vows at the Registry Office.
The Professor had been happy to take care of all the wedding preparations in secret and was pleased to hear the celebration had been such a big success that the people at the ARC were still talking about it six weeks later.
Since Connor Temple and Nick Cutter had found a way to predict and close the Anomalies, work had got much easier.
Nick could now dedicate himself to the things he was really interested in and he published paper after paper on new theories about prehistoric life and was soon an internationally acknowledged expert on the subject.
He even got along with Lester since the Professor, who liked to write long reports in that crazy bureaucratic language, did all the paperwork for Nick and replaced him at the ARC when Nick didn't want to go to work on days without Anomalies. No one had noticed the difference so far.
Of course Jenny and the Professor suspected James Lester did know the truth, although he never said anything. But Lester's staying clear when the real Nick Cutter was at work, while he often visited Cutter's office for a interesting talk when the Professor was there, was a pretty obvious clue.
Nicky was just happy to play househusband and made sure the other three had a proper home and regular meals all of the time. And he was the one who kept the romance in their relationship alive.
In the evenings, Nick Cutter had animated discussions with the Professor who came up with extraordinarily ideas which always proved to be correct and gave Nick new stuff for more scientific essays while Jenny chatted with Nicky about the crazy spring fashions or other everyday occurrences.
Occasionally, it was only a man and a woman touching each other in the moonlight but most nights all four shared the large custom-built bed.
And from time to time it was just the three of them when Jenny needed some rest and wanted to sleep alone in her own room.
Even 10 years later, when they celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary with Jenny, the outside world was still non the wiser that in the house of the well-known Evolutionary Zoologist and his wife actually lived three Nick Cutters.