Primeval fanfic: Taking it Back
Title: Taking it Back
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: I don't own nothin'. Well, I have gum. So . . . I suppose if you think a debt could be paid in four chiclets, have at you. Otherwise, please don't sue.
Rating: PG-13 for safety's sake.
Summary: Stephen survived Leek's menagerie unscathed, now he has to deal with what Helen's lies to him have caused.
A/N: So, this was inspired in a sideways way by lonely_candle's fic, Trial and Error. Also, more imaginary Connor backstory! One of these days I'm going to try to moosh them all together, and it'll be the most tragic and horrible thing ever. Anyhow, as always, britpick away in the comments, because the more I write in this fandom, the more I become aware of some glaring holes in my grasp of colloquialism from the far side of the pond. Do you know how often I have to stop and remember that this sports metaphor which is totally perfect can't be used because it's a baseball thing? All the freakin' time. I'm sure I missed something.
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They'd come out of the debacle with Leek unscathed, and things had never been more uncomfortable for Stephen in his life. He wanted to make amends, he did, but sometimes he wondered if that chance had left with Connor's sudden appearance and inspired fix of the locking system. If Stephen had martyred himself, he could have proven to Nick that he truly meant it. But now, all he could do was continue to work with them all and hope that one day they'd all move past all the ways he'd betrayed them.
Only one thing, person rather, made it something he could deal with.
Cutter was terrible. He was hurt that Stephen had slept with Helen, both because he'd committed adultery with Cutter's wife, and also because he'd let her lead him around by the dick when he should have known better and trusted Nick. Abby was, well, awful. It was as though she'd taken his betrayal of Nick personally, and all of that amusing and girlish fancying had turned into a kind of violent woman scorned, as though she felt he'd somehow spurned her, rather than simply having been uninterested. Lester was never any help and Jenny had an irritating holier-than-thou air whenever she spoke to him.
But Connor helped.
There had been one day of hurt confusion, and then he'd showed up at Stephen's flat late, carrying an enormous case of lager and proceeded to invite himself in and get them both roaring drunk. A few bottles in and his tongue had loosened on all the hurt. "She just kept saying that, while she didn't love Nick like that anymore, she loved him too much to hurt him the way she would if she just left with me."
"She was convincing," Connor said. He didn't ask, he just said it. Like he knew. And it was true, too.
He was nodding. "She was. She had tears in her eyes and she just looked so . . . I figured that time would pass and I could convince her to make a clean break. I mean, since she made it clear she was only with him for his sake."
"I'm sorry, Stephen," Connor said sincerely. "I know it doesn't help, but I am sorry." A gloved hand rubbed against his back briefly, then an arm went around his shoulders for a short hug. Nothing sappy and girly, but the contact grounded him a moment and Stephen felt briefly like he could breathe again.
"When she vanished, I was absolutely gutted, you know?" he continued, grabbing another bottle and cracking it open. He took a swallow and saw Connor knocking back the last of his and opening another as well. "Then she's back and she's alive and it hurt so much to know she hadn't come back. She could have come back for me and I'd've left in a moment."
Something in his colleague . . . no, friend's voice was bleak as he said, "You loved her that much you'd have dropped everything if she'd just given you the chance."
"Yeah," he sighed. "So, when she got here, I just . . . I couldn't turn her away. Everything she said made sense. It always made sense." That was the worst of it. She'd lied and twisted him until he hadn't known which was was up, and part of him still wanted to do nothing more than romance her with flowers and sweet words and make her smile. But the rest of him . . .
"Did she play your libido, Stephen?" Connor asked. There was something curious in his voice. "Get you wound up until you couldn't think, then leave you mad and too late in the day to wank?"
She had, but the way Connor said it . . . "You too?" Stephen asked slowly.
Connor turned dark eyes to him. "I had a Master's advisor once. She was married too."
In that moment, Stephen didn't need to know the details. He just knew that someone understood. "I remember when she started pressuring me about staying in or getting in a little more time on the gun range." He gave a bitter laugh. "I thought she was just giving me a leg up in the field. Getting me better prepared. I was just so convenient for her when she wanted to go on expeditions, and I never even questioned it. Nick's not half bad, but with me, she didn't have to deal with some guide she didn't have in her pocket." He turned to Connor, who just had an understanding and sad half smile on his face. "What about you?"
"Wha'?" Connor looked up at him, startled. "It's okay, Stephen. Tonight's your night to unload." His eyes weren't their usual warm brown, though. They were a nearly impenetrable black.
Stephen had the sudden feeling that Connor had never had anyone to do for him what he was doing for Stephen. He'd've offered to listen, but he didn't think his nerves were up to it. "Alright. But when you feel up to it," he left the offer hanging in the air. He continued. "I remember getting calls from my mates, going out of an evening and coming back to her telling me I didn't really care because I should have been helping her with her own projects instead of having an evening at the pub watching Chelsea." The memory hurt just as much as everything else. "I don't really have any friends anymore but Nick. She drove me away from them, and I told myself it was because they couldn't understand what I wanted out of life."
It was like lancing a boil, a horrible poison of isolation and trickery, of lies and manipulation that had stifled him. He remembered that he'd once been on a football team. Nothing professional, just an amateur league, but he'd played Saturdays. He remembered lazy evenings in front of the telly and going to films, eating out with friends and going to that silly French EuroDisney just because he wanted to do something irredeemably ridiculous. Helen had eaten away at that him until all that was left was tracking and science, guns and adventures, her and Nick, with him trapped between the guilt at betraying his friend and the lust and pain that was Helen that he'd confused for love.
The bitterness and envy he felt at Nick's golfing hobby and the way the man happily buried himself in his science, while Stephen was just the assistant, too educated to find work anywhere else, too trapped in his persona of the great tracker and master sportsman to advance further with the science.
They both got drunker and drunker, Connor eventually passing out on Stephen's couch, and Stephen staggering to his bed, collapsing in a sodden heap on the covers, passing out to the odd thought that maybe he ought to try actually decorating if he was going to be actually living there instead of just sleeping while he hoped to avoid thinking about Her.
The next morning was hell. Utter hell. Stephen woke to the sound of someone retching in his bathroom, and barely made it to the sink in time himself. Luckily, in one sense, neither of them had had anything to eat, so all that came up was bile and liquor, and that was easy enough to rinse away, at least. On the other hand, if they'd had something to eat and maybe some water, maybe they both wouldn't feel like death warmed over. "I think m'head's goin' 'a fall off," Connor moaned, his accent thickening in his distress.
Stephen, slumped next to him, leaning against the bathtub, muttered, "If you can get up, the painkillers are in the cabinet."
"You get up," Connor muttered back resentfully. They both stared balefully down at their uncooperative bodies. A moment later, Connor snorted softly in amusement, then groaned. "Laughing is bad," he informed Stephen.
That made him laugh, then wince as pain lanced through him more strongly along with deepening nausea. "You're right," he agreed.
Eventually they staggered up and knocked back something to hold the pain at bay, while Connor mumbled about hacking databases to create a means of ordering morphine. Stephen wasn't completely sure he was joking, either. Certainly Connor had hacked the files of everyone on the ARC project, which meant he was capable enough of part of that, but . . . he shook off the train of thought.
They wound up at an American-style diner that served breakfast 24 hours a day, played Elvis on an old jukebox in the corner and made Stephen tell Connor all about the addiction he'd developed to the Internation House of Pancakes when he'd wound up lost in the American countryside on what was supposed to be a driving tour during a gap year before uni, and turned into aimless wandering along the American highway system, boggled by the fact that they were still in the same country even though they'd been driving long enough to have reached Russia from Paris.
Connor in his turn told Stephen all about working as a mechanic part time while being an honours student at Oxford, because scholarships only covered so much, and he was a working class boy from a poor family. "I'd've gone somewhere with more comprehensive scholarships and all," Connor remenisced, "But I had to prove to Dad I could make a go of it. So I applied to Oxford and got in. He couldn't say no to that. Not when he could brag to the whole town I was at the most prestigious university ever."
Then, because the universe hates people with hangovers who are trying to eat a quiet breakfast, both their mobiles went off with the news that there was an anomaly somewhere and they had to report. Connor looked mournfully at his bacon as they left. Stephen tried not to snicker as he asked if Connor was going to leave the meat strips his number.
When they caught up with the others, the easy mood of the morning vanished. Cutter was sharp and verging on irrational in dealing with the struthiomimuses that were zipping around The Oval, far too fast for anyone to hit them with a tranq, and the lot of them trying to just frighten the creatures into heading back into the anomaly. Abby was accusing Stephen of trying to kill them, which he wasn't, just seeing if maybe the report of a gunshot would startle the things into going back. Stephen watched as Connor tried to flag Cutter's attention, seeing for the first time how useless Connor sometimes felt while Cutter, Abby and himself were playing hero. "What is it?" he asked.
"I wanted to see if I couldn't get into the stadium's loudspeakers and play a reconstructed T-Rex roar. Maybe that'll do what your gun couldn't."
At least someone didn't think the worst of him. Stephen agreed, and they went looking for the control room. Not surprisingly, since there wasn't a match on, it was locked. "No problem," Connor said with a grin. Then he looked at Stephen very seriously. "You didn't see anything, it was like this when we got here, alright?"
"Like what?" Stephen asked him, perplexed. Connor didn't say anything, just grinned, dropped to one knee and pulled out a . . . lockpicking kit. Would wonders never cease? Expertly he cracked the door open and they slipped inside. It was the work of moments for Connor to hook his laptop into the system, and a moment later, a frighteningly realistic roar sounded. The struthiomimuses froze a moment, then tore into the anomaly at speed.
They made their way back to the others, Cutter in particular looking grumpy. "Where the hell were you two?" he demanded.
"Getting into the PA system to play the T-Rex roar," Stephen answered. "Connor's idea. Looks like it worked, too."
Since they'd managed to save any more SFs from getting kicked in the head by the lightweight and speedy, yet still dangerous dinosaurs, Cutter couldn't precisely complain, but he could set Stephen the obnoxious jobs on cleanup and divert Connor back to the lab because he wanted Connor working on equations. In the end, Cutter was so aggravating, Stephen rode back in icy silence with Abby, because at least the silent treatment let him keep his temper, where Cutter would have picked and prodded until Stephen roared back just to prove to that Stephen was the bastard.
He found Connor scribbling away at complex maths that he could only barely follow at their simplest. "You know, you're so good at that, what were you doing in paleontology?"
Cutter walked past the lab Connor had claimed as his own, and shot a look of confusion mixed with disgust at them both. Stephen chose to ignore it. There was no point in bearding Nick now. All it would result in was hurt feelings. Once the worst had worn off, then he'd try. But not until then. Connor meanwhile had his back to the door and missed the whole interchange. "You know those news stories about obnoxious child geniuses that can do trig when they're six?"
It didn't take one of those geniuses to guess what Connor was about to say. "You one of those?"
"Yeah. Dad didn't take kindly to the dog an' pony show what comes with it, but Mum was so proud, he let it go on for years." Connor sighed in exasperation. "Luckily thing were kept relatively quiet, but I'd completed undergraduate masters in computer science, physics and engineering when the other kids my age were doing their A levels." He made a face. "I hated it, but Dad wanted something useful if I was going to be a freak."
"And you have another BSc with joint honours in biology and chemistry that you did at Central Met," Stephen said. "You really know how to make someone feel like an underachiever."
Connor's laugh was a little bitter. "I suppose I should thank my Master's advisor at Oxford. If she hadn't . . ." he cut himself off, "I wouldn't have had to leave and find myself a completely different faculty." He shook his head. "Anyway, it's all come in handy now that Cutter wants me off the dinosaurs and doing the maths for him."
"You've never actually got your PhD, did you?" Stephen asked.
"No," Connor said.
Stephen nodded. "I know that one." Then he slipped away, collected the samples he was supposed to be analysing and the information he needed for his reports, and set up shop in Connor's lab because he didn't want to be by himself, and Connor seemed content to putter away quietly in his corner.
That day put another odd wedge into the team. Because Cutter resented his young protege supposedly siding against him, Connor was suddenly at odds with Cutter as well, and seemed fairly hurt by it. With the hints he let slip about his father, Stephen supposed it wasn't odd that Connor had been looking for some paternal sort of validation. Abby was also in an odd position, because Connor's support of Stephen meant being at least civil to him in order to keep the peace in the flat she shared with Connor, but it all left her stretched thin with divided loyalties between Cutter and Connor and her anger at Stephen.
So, when Stephen got himself a separate car in order to stop sharing incredibly uncomfortable time with Cutter in the Hilux, Connor stopped travelling with Abby and took to riding with Stephen.
Stephen reciprocated this support by taking the time to give Connor real training in shooting that didn't involve someone walking away just because the cerebrally-oriented young man hadn't picked up everything on instinct. Connor finally stopped being a hazard to everyone else in the field when he had a gun, and Stephen managed to get a curt, unsarcastic nod out of Cutter.
"So," Connor spoke in the worst imitation of an American accent Stephen had ever heard, "I know a guy who knows a guy, and I got tickets to the game."
Stephen was laughing so hard, it took a minute to pull himself together enough to ask, "Which game?"
Connor dropped the silly accent, which was a good thing, because Stephen couldn't have taken him seriously otherwise. "Chelsea versus Tottenham?" He waved the tickets at Stephen, who snatched them away. He'd been unhappy because he'd been trying to get tickets, it'd been ages and a million years since he'd seen a match, either live or on television, and Chelsea was the team he supported, so he'd been hoping. He'd resigned himself to asking if Connor was interested to spending an afternoon in front of the telly watching the game, but this was . . .
"Did you steal these? Or bribe someone? What illegal thing did you do to get tickets this good to a sold-out match?" Stephen demanded.
Connor made a face. "Indentured my immortal soul to my cousin." At Stephen's raised eyebrow he heaved a sigh. "Richard's an accountant with Celtic, so he's gone mad and likes to pretend he's Scottish."
"You have a very strange family, Connor," he said.
Laughing, Connor said, "I think everyone has someone mad in their family. It's just unnatural if they don't. Anyhow," he said redirecting back to his story. "Richard mentioned me to someone in the club who was after some sort of statistics generator to help them recruit based on some sort of secondary characteristic they think'll get them better strikers." He shrugged. "I don't know. They've been reading some baseball something-or-other. I stopped paying attention after a while. He doesn't really know what he's talking about."
"This is possibly the oddest story I've ever heard leading up to free tickets, Connor," Stephen told him. "Especially since I don't really see how Celtic lends itself to tickets to Chelsea."
Nick, passing by, said, "What about those numpties in Celtic?"
"Nick's a Rangers fan," Stephen said to Connor, faux-confidentially.
The look on Connor's face would have been pure malice on anyone less good-natured than Connor. In this case it was just mischievous. "You know, having just crunched the numbers earlier, I really do think Celtic looks better to win the game next weekend."
Nick turned purple.
Connor finished, "Anyhow, Richard begged me to do him the favour, I pretended that setting it up would be so complicated I needed a proper favour, not seats to some game in Scotland I'd never be able to get to, and somehow he came up with these."
"Well, you're now my best friend for life," Stephen said with a grin.
Abruptly, Nick grabbed Connor by the scruff of the neck and dragged him down the hall to his office. Stephen chased after them, just barely getting through the door before Nick slammed it. The older man was so angry, he didn't even seem to register that Stephen was there. He clearly also hadn't noticed Abby waiting for him with something she apparently wanted him to look at. "What they hell are you doing, Connor?"
"What?" Connor was baffled, Stephen and Abby weren't much better. Then the realisation struck Stephen. Nick was still angry about Helen. He was angry at Stephen and he was angry at Connor for supporting Stephen.
Stephen put himself between them. "Nick, it's me you're angry at. If you want to take out your temper on someone, take it out on me, not Connor."
"You, I know are a bloody bastard," Nick growled. "I just thought Connor's naivte wouldn't extend to rampant stupidity."
Connor flinched back as if struck, but Abby stepped in where Stephen had been struck dumb in shock. "Cutter! Leave Connor alone! Just because he's being a nice person-"
"Just nice?" Nick snapped. "Tickets to a sold out match for Stephen's favourite team? Tickets he had to do some sort of obscene favour to get?"
Shaking, Connor replied, "I didn't realised statistical modelling had become obscene now."
"What?" Nick was thrown off his stride by that.
Rallying, Stephen told him, "Nick, his cousin asked him to help him with some sort of computer model for helping Celtic with recruitment."
Stubborn Scotsman, he gathered the wreck of his anger about him and snarled, "That still doesn't explain why, Connor."
"I don't have to explain myself to you," Connor snapped back. "It should be enough that I don't think Stephen deserves to have the blame for everything gone wrong in the world heaped on his shoulders." He launched his own sally. "You seem pretty determined to blame him for everything and pretend that Helen had nothing to do with it beyond peripherals."
"Don't talk about what you don't understand," Nick told him, starting to calm, but still furious.
Something inside Connor seemed to snap at that, and Stephen was afraid he was about to hear the story Connor hadn't wanted to tell him, the story he knew would hurt the young genius just in the telling.
He was right.
"What do I know about my thesis advisor seducing me, stringing me along, lying to me and pretending that playing cocktease was love? What do I know about being tricked and twisted and pulled away from my friends until I don't have any willing to stand up for me? What do I know about having nothing left but her, her games and my work? What do I know about what happens when everyone finds out and no one wants a thing to do with you because you're an adulterer and she plays the wounded party, seduced by your . . . whatever the hell she claimed I could do to seduce." Connor was pale as death and shaking and angry and filled with a very familiar self-loathing.
"Connor, it's okay," Stephen tried to soothe him, pull him back from the edge, but Connor was too angry and Stephen knew that he needed to let this out before it festered into something else in him.
Two steps forward and Connor was in Nick's personal space. "I know what it's like to have someone lie and pretend that emotional abuse and manipulation is love and I know exactly what it does to you. Stephen knows what that does to you," Connor snarled.
Nick's startled eyes shot up to Stephen, who felt his lips tighten and tried not to look away from the horror Nick had in his face. If he did, he might see Abby, who he could hear softly crying next to him.
"But I don't want him to go through what I did," Connor went on. "I had no one to turn to. No one. Do you understand what that's like? To know that you were used and twisted and maybe even broken by someone who took advantage, and no one gives a damn because she was married when she did it to you?" The fight went out of him as he sagged onto Nick's desk, heedless of whatever he might be upsetting. "By the time it was all done, I couldn't do my viva in physics for my masters at Oxford. I couldn't do it anywhere in the whole UK, because the academic community is so small, anyone in my area of specialisation knew that I was Jake Temple."
"Jake Temple?" Abby's trembling voice inquired.
"Connor's me middle name," he explained. "I went by it at home, but since Jacob's my first name, it was on all the attendance sheets at uni. I didn't correct anyone there, because it's hard enough to be fourteen and at university without making an arse of yourself over a name." He heaved a sigh. "Central Met was my second try. New faculty, new name, new me, no one to know. Stephen deserves better than having to uproot himself from his whole life just to find somewhere people treat him like a human being and not a demonic leper." He turned on his heel and left, just this side of not running.
"Oh, Connor," Abby said, and raced after him.
Stephen shot his possibly ex-friend a sardonic look. "Happy, Nick?"
"No," Nick said softly. "Worse yet, Connor's right. I was so hell-bent to be angry with you, I didn't even think about Helen." The look he fixed on Stephen had a peculiar appearance of fear in it. "Did she . . . was it as bad as Connor's made out?"
He didn't want to talk about this with Nick, but this might be the only chance to put it behind them. "Why do you think you're the only friend I had for three years before she disappeared?" He asked. "Nick, she made damn sure all there was room for was her and work. You were there because she couldn't figure out how to string us both along without throwing us together. I'm just sorry I was too stupid to see it."
"No more than I was," Nick said. "Maybe . . . give me some time, Stephen. I'll get over this. Somehow."
Abby poked her head in, glaring at Nick. "I'm taking Connor home, Cutter. And if he doesn't get an apology when he comes in on Monday, I'm telling Lester."
"Why do I get the feeling someone's tattling to the headmaster?" Nick asked him wryly.
Stephen felt a grin tugging at his lips. Maybe it could all be salvaged. "Don't say that to Connor, God knows where he'd take that notion."
Nick slapped him on the back, and Stephen headed out himself. He'd stop by Connor and Abby's flat before heading home. Maybe see what they thought about asking a few of the techs or some of the SFs to meet them at a pub of an evening sometime. It was about time he started reclaiming his life.
But first he'd make sure Connor wasn't going to forget the tickets. He'd be damned if he was missing that game for anything short of anomaly-based chaos.
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