Title: Check. Mate.
Author: alyse
Fandom: Primeval
Pairing: Abby/Connor
Rating: NC-17/18
Spoilers: Set post series 3, but only vague references to the last episode
Disclaimer: Primeval and its characters belong to Impossible Pictures. No copyright infringement is intended. This is fanfiction, written solely for love of the show.
Word Count: ~13,800
Status: Complete
Author's Notes: Written for![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
irrel for ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
help_haiti who, among other things, wanted Abby/Connor but uttered the immortal words You could write about them playing chess for all I care. So here you go. Abby and Connor playing chess ::g::
Many thanks toaithine for whip-wielding beta duties, as always.
Summary: Queen takes king.
~*~
It was beginning to rain when Abby got home, fat splatters hitting the windscreen of the car. She scowled, toying with the idea of rummaging in the glove compartment to see if she could find the umbrella that had, at one point, been kept in there. But she had a vague recollection of Connor being the last one to use it and that meant it was probably somewhere in the flat, along with everything else that he never put away in its proper place.
She sighed, rubbing her eyes and then glancing guiltily at the clock on the dashboard. It was early yet - far too early for her to be sneaking off home - but Lester was being remarkably lenient these days and she had had several excuses. The first excuse - and it was a good one - was the unusual lack of anomalies, at least since she and Connor had finally found one that led back home. Maybe the universe had finally cut them a break, or maybe Danny had managed to stop Helen and now, without her out there causing chaos, everything was settling back to how it should be. Who knew? It wasn't like Danny was around to tell them.
And that was the second excuse - Danny's continued absence, another loss to add to the many. The ARC was quiet and subdued without him, with nothing to distract the team.
The third excuse was sitting in their flat, probably bored out of his mind and waiting for Abby to get home.
That was the best excuse of all; apart from anything else, a bored Connor was a very dangerous thing. It wasn't just that he tended to get himself into trouble, because he did that even when he wasn't bored; it was more the chaos he left in his wake when he had nothing else to distract him. She'd lost more than one hairdryer, mp3 player or even kitchen utensil to his insatiable need to keep tinkering with things. While he'd always replaced them - at least once she'd reminded him about it six or seven times - that wasn't the point. The fact she didn't dare use the toaster now without checking that it was still in the same place where she'd left it and hadn't been 'enhanced' in the meantime, now that was the point.
Connor had been more or less confined to their flat for a week while his ankle healed, so who knew what he'd managed to get up to today? She was honestly expecting bedlam when she finally opened the door, water dripping from her hair and running down the back of her neck; the silence that greeted her when she did could only be described as 'ominous'.
"Connor?"
There was no answer and she froze, head tilted while she listened out for any sound of movement that wasn't Rex or the Diictodons, all the while telling herself that it was stupid to be scared. They were home now, where it was - relatively - safe. Toaster mishaps aside, there was a limit to the amount of trouble Connor could get himself into in their flat, but even so... Well, she'd be lying if she said that she wasn't still feeling a little twitchy after everything they'd been through recently.
She tried again. "Connor?"
"Yeah?"
There was still no sign of him but even so the relief at hearing his voice flooded her, forcing her eyes shut for a moment as her fingers tightened on her keys until the serrated edges dug painfully into her palm. She loosened her grip when the pain hit and let the keys drop with a clatter into the dish they kept by the door. But there was still no sign of him and she rubbed her thumb idly across her palm while she stopped and thought.
"Everything okay?"
She kept her voice casual, asking the question while she pulled off her jacket and then ran her fingers through her damp hair to separate the strands, but all she got in return was a sound that could, charitably, be interpreted as a grunt. That wasn't like Connor, who could talk the hind legs off a donkey even on his quietest days.
She narrowed it down and found him on the couch in front of the door, the one that - for some reason - they'd decided when they'd moved in would be best positioned facing away from it. It made a perfect little hiding spot for someone who wasn't all that interested in hiding.
When she leant over the back of the couch to peer down at him, stretched out flat on his back along the length of the cushions, Connor's expression was brooding. She'd known him long enough to spot that, even when Connor wasn't normally the brooding type. "Everything okay?" she asked again and, once again, he made a sound that wasn't quite an affirmative. He didn't look at her - instead his attention was on whatever he was holding in his hands, rolling it between his palms, back and forth. She couldn't make out what it was through his fingers but Connor wasn't really the subtle type.
The rest of the chess set was sitting on the coffee table, one piece missing. She'd lay odds that it was the queen, just like she'd lay odds that it was missing because Connor was holding it.
She paused for a second, considering her plan of action, and then moved around to the front of the sofa, unceremoniously pushing his legs off so that she could sit down. She didn't know why he squawked quite so loudly. She hadn't dropped his sore foot on the floor - well, not until it only had a couple of inches to go, anyway. That was practically restrained of her.
He pushed himself upright and glared at her. She ignored it on the grounds that it was an improvement on the brooding.
"Comfortable?" he asked, the sarcasm clear in his voice. She ignored that, too.
"Yes, thanks." She put her feet up on the coffee table, and his glare grew outraged. He didn't follow suit, although that might have had something to do with the number of times she'd told him off about it. Which was funny, but also a little worrying because that wasn't like Connor either, not to push it, at least about things that weren't important. She stole a sidelong glance at him, taking in the frown that still creased the skin between his eyebrows and the way he was worrying at his lip.
Yep. Still brooding.
"How's the ankle?" she asked, more to buy time to think than any genuine curiosity. She already knew it was getting better; the only reason she was back at work while Connor wasn't was because Lester had muttered darkly about health and safety regulations and Connor not being fit for fieldwork yet. It was bleakly amusing in retrospect: the idea that Connor had ever been fit for fieldwork; that either of them had, at least for the kind of insanely dangerous things they did day in and day out.
The idea that Lester had picked now, of all times, to start worrying about health and safety was even more so.
"It would be a lot better if you hadn't just manhandled me," Connor bitched as he struggled upright and she couldn't hide her grin. Didn't even bother to if she was still being honest. Not that she had much of a track record of being honest - really honest - with Connor.
"Manhandled?" She raised one eyebrow, slightly mocking, and he flushed, his gaze darting away, back towards the chessboard. It was only after the word came out of her mouth that she realised how it could be interpreted, and then she blushed, too, feeling the heat of it rising to her cheeks.
No. They didn't have a good track record with each other about being honest where it really counted.
To cover her confusion, she leant forward and picked up one of the chess pieces, feeling the weight of it as it rolled coolly in her palm. It looked - and felt - as though it might be painted pewter and Connor had made her watch the bloody film often enough that she recognised the character it represented.
"Star Wars, right?" she asked, leaning over again to place it on the board again and reaching for one of the opposing pawns instead. She twisted it in her fingers, frowning slightly when she didn't recognise it even though that would never have bothered her previously. "What's this one?"
Connor shifted uncomfortably. "Battle droid," he said shortly and her frown deepened as she tried to place it. God, he was turning her into as big a geek as he was.
Eventually, she had to cave and guess, "Empire?"
He snorted, reaching over to take it from her and placing it back on the board. She didn't miss the way he settled it, turning it so that it faced precisely forward, aligned neatly with the rest of the set.
She hadn't missed how his fingers had brushed against hers as he'd taken it from her either.
"No," he said with a sigh, and then he gave her this little look out of the corner of his eye, not quite turning his head far enough to face her. His cheeks were flushed again; maybe he hadn't missed the way their fingers had touched either, although Connor usually seemed oblivious to such things. Or maybe not so oblivious, not these days. "Episode One."
It took her a second to place it, turning it over and over in her mind until something rose, sluggishly, to the surface. "The Phantom Menace?" she hazarded, and Connor's flush deepened.
"Yes," he said shortly.
"But I thought you hated that film?"
"I did. I mean, it basically took the original series and pissed all over it, and don't even get me started on JarJar Binks. It was worse than the re-mastered editions of the original trilogy."
She only followed about half of what Connor was saying, but that she knew even that much about Star Wars now was worrying, like he was infectious or something, or they'd lived in proximity for so long that she was picking these things up via a process of osmosis.
"So, if you hate it that much, why on earth do you have the chess set?"
Any amusement she might have had died slowly in the face of Connor's silence, killed by the way his expression settled back into brooding, the grief glimpsed underneath. She knew the answer before he said it, but he said it anyway.
"Cutter bought it for me for my birthday year before last."
If she could call back words, she'd call hers back, if only to spare Connor any more grief. But she couldn't. She could only lean back into the soft, welcoming cushions of the couch and if the angle of it meant she ended up settling against Connor as well, well. That was one of the things that simply couldn't be helped, not like her big mouth.
"I think it was Stephen's idea actually," Connor added, the lines in his face smoothing out as the grief was tempered with remembrance. "I can't imagine Cutter thought of it on his own, you know? Much less find the thing."
He turned his head to smile at her and she smiled back, knowing that hers was just as tinged with sadness.
"Duncan and Tom would have given me a really hard time about it. You know, if... well... Things were different."
Although his lips quirked upwards again, the grief still lurked behind it - too much grief, layers deep. Bone deep, and she reached out as he took in a shaky breath, resting her fingers on the back of his hand where it lay loosely curled on his thigh.
"You okay?"
"I'm..." He took in another breath, one that was still shaky, and his fingers twitched underneath hers. "Just had a lot of time to think, you know?"
Yes, she knew. She'd had a lot of time to think, too, since they'd made it back. Time to think about a lot of things. Like how she'd felt as Connor fell, as though her world would shatter if he did. Like how it felt to kiss him, and how it felt to have him hold her when the nights were long and cold and things that should have been long dead roared out there, in the dark.
Things could change in a heartbeat, break and shatter in a second; she knew what it was like to live with regret, and she was tired of it.
She let her eyes track over the lines of his face: the hollow of his cheek and the arch of his brow where the bruises were still fading. She thought about how his stubble had felt against her temple when they'd clung to each other in the dark, how it had scratched against her lips when she'd kissed him, slow and sweet, after her brat of her brother had messed up. She thought about kissing him again, right here and now despite his sore ankle and her damp hair, and about the condoms shoved into the drawer of her bedside table because she'd been brave enough to buy them in the first place but too bloody scared to do anything else. Things might change in a heartbeat, past or present or future all at once, but changing things between her and Connor still scared the crap out of her.
She thought about all those things, but kept silent, and that pause, that hesitation, stretched out between them.
Connor was the one who broke it. "Is there any news?" he asked, the words coming out brisk and abrupt and that - more than anything - told her that he hadn't given up on the hope of Danny walking back through an anomaly any day now, not entirely, because he couldn't. Not Connor.
"No," she said, still softly, and his fingers twitched under hers again, clenching convulsively. And then Connor leant forward again to place the piece he was still clutching on the board. She'd been right - it had to be the queen, no matter what it looked like, and it got the same careful treatment as the pawn, lined up so that it was facing forward.
She wasn't fooled; she knew who Connor was thinking of, who that piece represented, even before Connor jerked his hand back, sending a few pieces flying, including that one, and then scowled down at the board.
"Danny will have stopped her," she said, curling her fingers over his clenched fist, pressing down until some of Connor's tension leached away. "He'll be making his way home, you'll see."
"Yeah." Connor huffed out a breath, something caught between a laugh and a sob. "Yeah, you're right." The last of the tension drained away from him and he turned his head again to give her a smile, a little wobbly around the edges. "I only really got the board out because I was bored."
"I wondered why the TV was off," she said dryly.
"Well, there's only so much Halo a man can play. And don't get me started on daytime telly."
She raised one eyebrow, giving him a look that coaxed a small - very small - smile out of him. "Who are you and what've you done with Connor Temple?"
"Funny." He slumped back into the sofa, all gangly limbs and no grace, and that was Connor. "I thought maybe I'd practice or something, or maybe find someone to play with online."
She reached out and began picking up the scattered pieces, placing them neatly back on the squares to give herself time to think.
"I could play you," she said slowly while she made sure that each piece was neatly aligned, facing straight forward. Facing the future, just like he'd wanted. Maybe she'd find her courage from them.
"You?"
"You don't have to sound so surprised," she huffed, giving him another of those looks, one of the ones she'd perfected because they made him wriggle like an abashed puppy. Those were always fun.
True to form, he didn't disappoint, but she didn't miss the smile that he was trying to hide.
"I'm just saying..."
"Saying what, Connor?" Her tone might have been sweet but she made sure that her smile had just enough bite in it to make his next response carefully worded.
"Well, you've put the king and queen back on the board the wrong way 'round for a start."
She jerked her head back around, staring at the board with a frown. Well, how the hell was she supposed to know which piece was which when they weren't exactly traditional in form?
"See," Connor continued, reaching past her to swap the pieces over. They weren't as straight when he'd finished, but she left them as they were. "The Emperor is the king, and Darth Maul is the queen."
"I'm sure that was news to his wife," she muttered and Connor didn't bother to hide the snort of laughter he let out.
"I don't think he had one. Darth Vader was the one who was married, Abby. Well, before he was Darth Vader, anyway." She didn't roll her eyes - there was something like enthusiasm in his voice, and anything had to be better than Connor brooding or watching Connor remembering everything he'd lost. "Darth Vader," Connor kept on chattering, "was Luke's father, remember? And Maul was the Emperor's apprentice before Vader."
Okay, maybe this time she gave him the look, but there was a limit to her patience, even - especially - with Connor in full on geek mode.
"Well, anyway. Darth Maul - the red guy with horns? - is the queen piece, okay?"
"So, Darth Maul is the Emperor's bitch. Got it."
He grinned at her, delighted. "Well, I was always told it was the queen with the power, the one that controlled the board, so I'm not sure about that. But the queen's role is to defend the king, so maybe."
She rolled her eyes at him, resisting the temptation to ask him if he wanted to teach her how to suck eggs as well, because... well, after the manhandling comment she wasn't sure that a sucking comment was the way to go. At least, not just yet. "I'll play you," she repeated, challenge in every line of her body.
"Okay," he said. "Now that the pieces are the right way around." When she snorted, narrowing her eyes at him threateningly, he simply widened his eyes back at her, all wounded innocence. She swallowed down another smile, feeling something loosen in her, too, something that had been slowly winding tighter and tighter all day, every minute that she'd been away from him.
She looked back at the board, considering her options again. Considering lots of things - like grief and loss and fear and hope and... yes. Other things, too.
Things could change in a heartbeat, and her heart was still beating, fast and furious, in her chest.
"Let's make it interesting," she said, turning her head to look at him and holding his gaze as she drew the words out slowly, still wondering if there was time to turn back. Still wondering if she wanted to.
"Interesting?" He frowned at her, but it was his confused frown, not the hurt one or the annoyed one or the one that said he saw what she was doing and didn't like it; she knew them all now, every single one of them, like she knew most of his other expressions - hope, fear, guilt. Love. "Should I be worried? I mean, if you're going to try and take all my money, Abby, I think I ought to point out that you get most of it anyway."
Yes, she did, that much was true - his contribution towards rent and council tax and bills. God, they even had a joint bank account that they both paid into for all that stuff, and when they'd signed the lease for this flat, it had been both of their signatures on the contract rather than just hers.
Sometimes she wondered what it was that she was still so scared of; it couldn't be falling, not now, not when she was already in this deep. Landing, maybe.
"No. Not money. And not whose turn it is to do the washing up," she added quickly as soon as he opened his mouth. She knew him too well. Too well to want to turn back now, no matter how terrifying it was. They'd faced worse, together.
He shut his mouth again, still watching her with that small, puzzled frown between his eyes, and she took a deep breath, feeling it deep in her chest where it loosened some of that tightness. Only some of it, but it was enough to get the next words out.
"How about... every time one of us loses a piece, we lose something else as well?"
It took him a second - for a smart man, Connor could be remarkably slow on the uptake sometimes - but she saw it click. Click and slip away again; Danny coming home wasn't the only hope that Connor clung to, and it wasn't the only one where he lived, every day, preparing to be disappointed.
She couldn't have that. Not any more.
"How many layers of clothing are you wearing today?" she asked, aiming for casual and knowing she missed it by a mile. She covered for it by leaning over the chessboard and straightening those last two pieces, the king and the oddly shaped queen, so that they were eyes front, preparing for battle. Preparing for the future.
"...What?"
Another breath, another moment to gather her courage, and then she turned to face him, trying to keep her expression under control. Maybe she managed it, maybe she didn't. She couldn't tell from Connor's expression, which stayed stunned. "Just so we're starting from the same place."
"You're talking about... strip chess?" The pitch of his voice had gone up and maybe it was the adrenaline or the nerves or even - possibly, probably - the anticipation, but it made her grin, wide and free, and she watched him blink, dazed, in the face of it.
"Why not, Connor? Scared you're going to lose?"
"Scared I'm going to lose something," he retorted and then stopped, apparently horrified at the words coming out of his mouth as the colour rushed into his face, turning his cheeks bright red.
She took it all in, nodding seriously. "Chicken," she said.
"Abby..."
"Bwah bwah bwah buck."
"...That seriously has to be the worst chicken impersonation I have ever heard."
"Picky, picky, picky," she said, pushing one of the chess pieces so that it was aligned absolutely perfectly in the centre of its square. "Maybe you'll win."
When she turned back to face him he was looking at her, really looking at her, all wide-eyed and open-mouthed, hopeful and fearful both at once. And then his gaze flickered down for a second, settling on her chest before darting back up again.
Boys. And Connor definitely was one, as though she'd ever doubted it.
She cocked an eyebrow and smirked at him, and he swallowed nervously. For a second, the look on his face - still half-terrified - almost made her take it back, turn it into a joke. Except - that's what she always did. Moved a little closer, giving Connor just enough to keep him hoping, and then took a step back, leaving him staggering, off balance and wounded. It wasn't fair to do that to him again. It wasn't.
Things might change in a heartbeat, but sometimes they needed to be changed. That wasn't something the anomaly project should have to teach her.
"Well?" she asked, and there was no taunting in her voice this time; she kept it soft, kept it simple. He swallowed again and she waited, as patient as she could be, for the hope to win out.
"Okay," he said, and then he said, "Okay," again.
She tilted her head and looked at him, weighing him up until he squirmed a little self-consciously in his seat.
"You're wearing more than sixteen items of clothing, aren't you?"
"What?" It broke the ice and he laughed, unable to help it; she relaxed enough to grin back at him, not hiding her pleasure in his enjoyment.
"That's it. I'm definitely going to go and put something on."
"Spoilsport," he grumbled as she pushed herself to her feet, but he was smiling, even if the look in his eyes still reminded her of a deer in headlights, or a rabbit on seeing a fox. She hesitated, once again on the verge of telling him to forget it, but his smile faded slowly, the sadness creeping back into his eyes.
"Won't be long," she said and her fingers twitched with the need to touch him, just his cheek or his shoulder, just so he knew she was there, really there. But she couldn't. Not yet. Instead she said, "Don't start without me," and turned away from him again, heading towards her room and already feeling her cheeks starting to burn.
In the end she grabbed a cardigan; the dampness of the air outside had left her a little chilled, but it was more something to throw on for show than anything else. Something to take off again as well, probably, and her face burned more brightly at the thought. She didn't know why. It wasn't like she'd been all that shy about getting naked with men she liked before; hell, when Connor had first moved in, she'd thought nothing of stalking around her flat wearing whatever she was comfortable in, which was often very little.
But now... well, there were a whole lot of things that were different now than they had been three years ago, starting with her and ending with Connor. Still, she hesitated by her bed for long moments before tugging the drawer of her bedside table open. Better to have and not need - that was the Girl Guide in her coming through loud and clear, although she was pretty sure that the Guides had never had this kind of scenario in mind. That was probably why Abby had ended up switching to tae kwon do classes instead.
Connor was still waiting for her when she made it back to the lounge, sitting on the couch and looking a little shell-shocked. He'd settled on one end of it, facing her bedroom, almost like he was waiting for her to come out again or for her not to come out and instead to tell him she was kidding. His expression didn't change much when he saw her, so she still couldn't tell which it was, but the chessboard had been twisted around on the coffee table to that each end of the couch had a 'side' of the board.
She sat down on the couch, facing him, then stared down at the board, all those serried rows of figures, looking like they had a purpose. She had no idea which pieces were black and which white. Not when both sides were simply painted miniatures. Except, Connor had that horned figure - Darth Maul, she thought he'd called him - in the set closest to him, and he'd muttered about 'turning to the dark side' often enough for her to have registered the meaning of it via that weird osmosis trick if nothing else. So Connor's pieces had to be black, making hers white.
It was rather ironic given the less than pure outcomes she was planning on. It was far from ironic that he'd left the first move to her.
"I'm white, I take it?" Connor nodded, eyeing her far too seriously for what was supposed to be, at minimum, a bit of fun and, hopefully, a lot of fun. "Okay. I open then?" and he nodded again, his expression still unchanging.
She took another deep breath but stayed traditional for her opening move, pushing one of her little robot pawns forward two places. "Let's have some rules," she said, watching the board rather than Connor. Even so, she caught his start of surprise out of the corner of her eye and swallowed her smile, feeling the butterflies settle in her stomach now that she had a set of planned tactics of her own.
"Rules? You mean more than chess rules?"
She nodded. "Rules for... this game." His eyes widened further and she thought he might even have swallowed. She turned her attention back to the board, pretending to study it even as her heart skipped a beat. She probably wasn't fooling him - he hadn't even made his first move yet. "A pair of socks or a pair of shoes or the like counts as one item."
He paused, his fingers already resting on his opposing pawn. "Okay," he said cautiously. "That sounds reasonable."
"And the person losing the piece gets to decide what order clothes come off in." She heard him swallow again, more noticeably this time, and his fingers tightened for a moment on the piece. He still hadn't made a move - she needed to wait until he was fully committed, patience being a virtue and all that. It was weirdly, stupidly superstitious, that need not to make her move too soon, telegraph what she was up to in advance in case Connor found a way to counter it. She still didn't say anything, not until he did.
"Okay."
Now he pushed the piece forward, two squares, matching hers.
"Loser pays a forfeit."
His fingers jerked, almost knocking the piece over again. "What?"
"Loser pays a forfeit, Connor."
He swallowed again and now she looked up at him, smiling as though she didn't have a care in the world, even though her heart was still tripping in her chest, fast and tight, leaving her giddy and near breathless with it. "What kind of forfeit?" he asked and she shrugged, looking back at the board and once again pretending that she was more interested in that than in any objections he might have had.
"I'm sure we'll come up with something."
There was a long silence and when she finally looked up at him again, he was eyeing her suspiciously.
"Is this the point where I find out you're a chess prodigy? Some sort of, I don't know... chess shark or something?"
"Chess shark? What on earth is a chess shark?"
"Like a card shark only... well..."
"With less clothing?"
He swallowed in surprise again and this time it obviously went down the wrong way as he spluttered, the coughing mixed in with laughter. His eyes were still wide, though, and the look in them was still that jumble of everything he was feeling, everything she felt as well.
Her move.
"If you don't want to risk a forfeit, Connor, you know what you have to do?"
"Yes?"
"Win."
"Oh. Funny."
She made a happy little humming noise in the back of her throat and moved another pawn, drawing Connor's attention back to the game. If her fingers shook a little as she moved her next piece, well. It was cold out.
( Check. Mate. Part 2 of 2 )
Author: alyse
Fandom: Primeval
Pairing: Abby/Connor
Rating: NC-17/18
Spoilers: Set post series 3, but only vague references to the last episode
Disclaimer: Primeval and its characters belong to Impossible Pictures. No copyright infringement is intended. This is fanfiction, written solely for love of the show.
Word Count: ~13,800
Status: Complete
Author's Notes: Written for
irrel for help_haiti who, among other things, wanted Abby/Connor but uttered the immortal words You could write about them playing chess for all I care. So here you go. Abby and Connor playing chess ::g::Many thanks to
aithine for whip-wielding beta duties, as always.Summary: Queen takes king.
~*~
It was beginning to rain when Abby got home, fat splatters hitting the windscreen of the car. She scowled, toying with the idea of rummaging in the glove compartment to see if she could find the umbrella that had, at one point, been kept in there. But she had a vague recollection of Connor being the last one to use it and that meant it was probably somewhere in the flat, along with everything else that he never put away in its proper place.
She sighed, rubbing her eyes and then glancing guiltily at the clock on the dashboard. It was early yet - far too early for her to be sneaking off home - but Lester was being remarkably lenient these days and she had had several excuses. The first excuse - and it was a good one - was the unusual lack of anomalies, at least since she and Connor had finally found one that led back home. Maybe the universe had finally cut them a break, or maybe Danny had managed to stop Helen and now, without her out there causing chaos, everything was settling back to how it should be. Who knew? It wasn't like Danny was around to tell them.
And that was the second excuse - Danny's continued absence, another loss to add to the many. The ARC was quiet and subdued without him, with nothing to distract the team.
The third excuse was sitting in their flat, probably bored out of his mind and waiting for Abby to get home.
That was the best excuse of all; apart from anything else, a bored Connor was a very dangerous thing. It wasn't just that he tended to get himself into trouble, because he did that even when he wasn't bored; it was more the chaos he left in his wake when he had nothing else to distract him. She'd lost more than one hairdryer, mp3 player or even kitchen utensil to his insatiable need to keep tinkering with things. While he'd always replaced them - at least once she'd reminded him about it six or seven times - that wasn't the point. The fact she didn't dare use the toaster now without checking that it was still in the same place where she'd left it and hadn't been 'enhanced' in the meantime, now that was the point.
Connor had been more or less confined to their flat for a week while his ankle healed, so who knew what he'd managed to get up to today? She was honestly expecting bedlam when she finally opened the door, water dripping from her hair and running down the back of her neck; the silence that greeted her when she did could only be described as 'ominous'.
"Connor?"
There was no answer and she froze, head tilted while she listened out for any sound of movement that wasn't Rex or the Diictodons, all the while telling herself that it was stupid to be scared. They were home now, where it was - relatively - safe. Toaster mishaps aside, there was a limit to the amount of trouble Connor could get himself into in their flat, but even so... Well, she'd be lying if she said that she wasn't still feeling a little twitchy after everything they'd been through recently.
She tried again. "Connor?"
"Yeah?"
There was still no sign of him but even so the relief at hearing his voice flooded her, forcing her eyes shut for a moment as her fingers tightened on her keys until the serrated edges dug painfully into her palm. She loosened her grip when the pain hit and let the keys drop with a clatter into the dish they kept by the door. But there was still no sign of him and she rubbed her thumb idly across her palm while she stopped and thought.
"Everything okay?"
She kept her voice casual, asking the question while she pulled off her jacket and then ran her fingers through her damp hair to separate the strands, but all she got in return was a sound that could, charitably, be interpreted as a grunt. That wasn't like Connor, who could talk the hind legs off a donkey even on his quietest days.
She narrowed it down and found him on the couch in front of the door, the one that - for some reason - they'd decided when they'd moved in would be best positioned facing away from it. It made a perfect little hiding spot for someone who wasn't all that interested in hiding.
When she leant over the back of the couch to peer down at him, stretched out flat on his back along the length of the cushions, Connor's expression was brooding. She'd known him long enough to spot that, even when Connor wasn't normally the brooding type. "Everything okay?" she asked again and, once again, he made a sound that wasn't quite an affirmative. He didn't look at her - instead his attention was on whatever he was holding in his hands, rolling it between his palms, back and forth. She couldn't make out what it was through his fingers but Connor wasn't really the subtle type.
The rest of the chess set was sitting on the coffee table, one piece missing. She'd lay odds that it was the queen, just like she'd lay odds that it was missing because Connor was holding it.
She paused for a second, considering her plan of action, and then moved around to the front of the sofa, unceremoniously pushing his legs off so that she could sit down. She didn't know why he squawked quite so loudly. She hadn't dropped his sore foot on the floor - well, not until it only had a couple of inches to go, anyway. That was practically restrained of her.
He pushed himself upright and glared at her. She ignored it on the grounds that it was an improvement on the brooding.
"Comfortable?" he asked, the sarcasm clear in his voice. She ignored that, too.
"Yes, thanks." She put her feet up on the coffee table, and his glare grew outraged. He didn't follow suit, although that might have had something to do with the number of times she'd told him off about it. Which was funny, but also a little worrying because that wasn't like Connor either, not to push it, at least about things that weren't important. She stole a sidelong glance at him, taking in the frown that still creased the skin between his eyebrows and the way he was worrying at his lip.
Yep. Still brooding.
"How's the ankle?" she asked, more to buy time to think than any genuine curiosity. She already knew it was getting better; the only reason she was back at work while Connor wasn't was because Lester had muttered darkly about health and safety regulations and Connor not being fit for fieldwork yet. It was bleakly amusing in retrospect: the idea that Connor had ever been fit for fieldwork; that either of them had, at least for the kind of insanely dangerous things they did day in and day out.
The idea that Lester had picked now, of all times, to start worrying about health and safety was even more so.
"It would be a lot better if you hadn't just manhandled me," Connor bitched as he struggled upright and she couldn't hide her grin. Didn't even bother to if she was still being honest. Not that she had much of a track record of being honest - really honest - with Connor.
"Manhandled?" She raised one eyebrow, slightly mocking, and he flushed, his gaze darting away, back towards the chessboard. It was only after the word came out of her mouth that she realised how it could be interpreted, and then she blushed, too, feeling the heat of it rising to her cheeks.
No. They didn't have a good track record with each other about being honest where it really counted.
To cover her confusion, she leant forward and picked up one of the chess pieces, feeling the weight of it as it rolled coolly in her palm. It looked - and felt - as though it might be painted pewter and Connor had made her watch the bloody film often enough that she recognised the character it represented.
"Star Wars, right?" she asked, leaning over again to place it on the board again and reaching for one of the opposing pawns instead. She twisted it in her fingers, frowning slightly when she didn't recognise it even though that would never have bothered her previously. "What's this one?"
Connor shifted uncomfortably. "Battle droid," he said shortly and her frown deepened as she tried to place it. God, he was turning her into as big a geek as he was.
Eventually, she had to cave and guess, "Empire?"
He snorted, reaching over to take it from her and placing it back on the board. She didn't miss the way he settled it, turning it so that it faced precisely forward, aligned neatly with the rest of the set.
She hadn't missed how his fingers had brushed against hers as he'd taken it from her either.
"No," he said with a sigh, and then he gave her this little look out of the corner of his eye, not quite turning his head far enough to face her. His cheeks were flushed again; maybe he hadn't missed the way their fingers had touched either, although Connor usually seemed oblivious to such things. Or maybe not so oblivious, not these days. "Episode One."
It took her a second to place it, turning it over and over in her mind until something rose, sluggishly, to the surface. "The Phantom Menace?" she hazarded, and Connor's flush deepened.
"Yes," he said shortly.
"But I thought you hated that film?"
"I did. I mean, it basically took the original series and pissed all over it, and don't even get me started on JarJar Binks. It was worse than the re-mastered editions of the original trilogy."
She only followed about half of what Connor was saying, but that she knew even that much about Star Wars now was worrying, like he was infectious or something, or they'd lived in proximity for so long that she was picking these things up via a process of osmosis.
"So, if you hate it that much, why on earth do you have the chess set?"
Any amusement she might have had died slowly in the face of Connor's silence, killed by the way his expression settled back into brooding, the grief glimpsed underneath. She knew the answer before he said it, but he said it anyway.
"Cutter bought it for me for my birthday year before last."
If she could call back words, she'd call hers back, if only to spare Connor any more grief. But she couldn't. She could only lean back into the soft, welcoming cushions of the couch and if the angle of it meant she ended up settling against Connor as well, well. That was one of the things that simply couldn't be helped, not like her big mouth.
"I think it was Stephen's idea actually," Connor added, the lines in his face smoothing out as the grief was tempered with remembrance. "I can't imagine Cutter thought of it on his own, you know? Much less find the thing."
He turned his head to smile at her and she smiled back, knowing that hers was just as tinged with sadness.
"Duncan and Tom would have given me a really hard time about it. You know, if... well... Things were different."
Although his lips quirked upwards again, the grief still lurked behind it - too much grief, layers deep. Bone deep, and she reached out as he took in a shaky breath, resting her fingers on the back of his hand where it lay loosely curled on his thigh.
"You okay?"
"I'm..." He took in another breath, one that was still shaky, and his fingers twitched underneath hers. "Just had a lot of time to think, you know?"
Yes, she knew. She'd had a lot of time to think, too, since they'd made it back. Time to think about a lot of things. Like how she'd felt as Connor fell, as though her world would shatter if he did. Like how it felt to kiss him, and how it felt to have him hold her when the nights were long and cold and things that should have been long dead roared out there, in the dark.
Things could change in a heartbeat, break and shatter in a second; she knew what it was like to live with regret, and she was tired of it.
She let her eyes track over the lines of his face: the hollow of his cheek and the arch of his brow where the bruises were still fading. She thought about how his stubble had felt against her temple when they'd clung to each other in the dark, how it had scratched against her lips when she'd kissed him, slow and sweet, after her brat of her brother had messed up. She thought about kissing him again, right here and now despite his sore ankle and her damp hair, and about the condoms shoved into the drawer of her bedside table because she'd been brave enough to buy them in the first place but too bloody scared to do anything else. Things might change in a heartbeat, past or present or future all at once, but changing things between her and Connor still scared the crap out of her.
She thought about all those things, but kept silent, and that pause, that hesitation, stretched out between them.
Connor was the one who broke it. "Is there any news?" he asked, the words coming out brisk and abrupt and that - more than anything - told her that he hadn't given up on the hope of Danny walking back through an anomaly any day now, not entirely, because he couldn't. Not Connor.
"No," she said, still softly, and his fingers twitched under hers again, clenching convulsively. And then Connor leant forward again to place the piece he was still clutching on the board. She'd been right - it had to be the queen, no matter what it looked like, and it got the same careful treatment as the pawn, lined up so that it was facing forward.
She wasn't fooled; she knew who Connor was thinking of, who that piece represented, even before Connor jerked his hand back, sending a few pieces flying, including that one, and then scowled down at the board.
"Danny will have stopped her," she said, curling her fingers over his clenched fist, pressing down until some of Connor's tension leached away. "He'll be making his way home, you'll see."
"Yeah." Connor huffed out a breath, something caught between a laugh and a sob. "Yeah, you're right." The last of the tension drained away from him and he turned his head again to give her a smile, a little wobbly around the edges. "I only really got the board out because I was bored."
"I wondered why the TV was off," she said dryly.
"Well, there's only so much Halo a man can play. And don't get me started on daytime telly."
She raised one eyebrow, giving him a look that coaxed a small - very small - smile out of him. "Who are you and what've you done with Connor Temple?"
"Funny." He slumped back into the sofa, all gangly limbs and no grace, and that was Connor. "I thought maybe I'd practice or something, or maybe find someone to play with online."
She reached out and began picking up the scattered pieces, placing them neatly back on the squares to give herself time to think.
"I could play you," she said slowly while she made sure that each piece was neatly aligned, facing straight forward. Facing the future, just like he'd wanted. Maybe she'd find her courage from them.
"You?"
"You don't have to sound so surprised," she huffed, giving him another of those looks, one of the ones she'd perfected because they made him wriggle like an abashed puppy. Those were always fun.
True to form, he didn't disappoint, but she didn't miss the smile that he was trying to hide.
"I'm just saying..."
"Saying what, Connor?" Her tone might have been sweet but she made sure that her smile had just enough bite in it to make his next response carefully worded.
"Well, you've put the king and queen back on the board the wrong way 'round for a start."
She jerked her head back around, staring at the board with a frown. Well, how the hell was she supposed to know which piece was which when they weren't exactly traditional in form?
"See," Connor continued, reaching past her to swap the pieces over. They weren't as straight when he'd finished, but she left them as they were. "The Emperor is the king, and Darth Maul is the queen."
"I'm sure that was news to his wife," she muttered and Connor didn't bother to hide the snort of laughter he let out.
"I don't think he had one. Darth Vader was the one who was married, Abby. Well, before he was Darth Vader, anyway." She didn't roll her eyes - there was something like enthusiasm in his voice, and anything had to be better than Connor brooding or watching Connor remembering everything he'd lost. "Darth Vader," Connor kept on chattering, "was Luke's father, remember? And Maul was the Emperor's apprentice before Vader."
Okay, maybe this time she gave him the look, but there was a limit to her patience, even - especially - with Connor in full on geek mode.
"Well, anyway. Darth Maul - the red guy with horns? - is the queen piece, okay?"
"So, Darth Maul is the Emperor's bitch. Got it."
He grinned at her, delighted. "Well, I was always told it was the queen with the power, the one that controlled the board, so I'm not sure about that. But the queen's role is to defend the king, so maybe."
She rolled her eyes at him, resisting the temptation to ask him if he wanted to teach her how to suck eggs as well, because... well, after the manhandling comment she wasn't sure that a sucking comment was the way to go. At least, not just yet. "I'll play you," she repeated, challenge in every line of her body.
"Okay," he said. "Now that the pieces are the right way around." When she snorted, narrowing her eyes at him threateningly, he simply widened his eyes back at her, all wounded innocence. She swallowed down another smile, feeling something loosen in her, too, something that had been slowly winding tighter and tighter all day, every minute that she'd been away from him.
She looked back at the board, considering her options again. Considering lots of things - like grief and loss and fear and hope and... yes. Other things, too.
Things could change in a heartbeat, and her heart was still beating, fast and furious, in her chest.
"Let's make it interesting," she said, turning her head to look at him and holding his gaze as she drew the words out slowly, still wondering if there was time to turn back. Still wondering if she wanted to.
"Interesting?" He frowned at her, but it was his confused frown, not the hurt one or the annoyed one or the one that said he saw what she was doing and didn't like it; she knew them all now, every single one of them, like she knew most of his other expressions - hope, fear, guilt. Love. "Should I be worried? I mean, if you're going to try and take all my money, Abby, I think I ought to point out that you get most of it anyway."
Yes, she did, that much was true - his contribution towards rent and council tax and bills. God, they even had a joint bank account that they both paid into for all that stuff, and when they'd signed the lease for this flat, it had been both of their signatures on the contract rather than just hers.
Sometimes she wondered what it was that she was still so scared of; it couldn't be falling, not now, not when she was already in this deep. Landing, maybe.
"No. Not money. And not whose turn it is to do the washing up," she added quickly as soon as he opened his mouth. She knew him too well. Too well to want to turn back now, no matter how terrifying it was. They'd faced worse, together.
He shut his mouth again, still watching her with that small, puzzled frown between his eyes, and she took a deep breath, feeling it deep in her chest where it loosened some of that tightness. Only some of it, but it was enough to get the next words out.
"How about... every time one of us loses a piece, we lose something else as well?"
It took him a second - for a smart man, Connor could be remarkably slow on the uptake sometimes - but she saw it click. Click and slip away again; Danny coming home wasn't the only hope that Connor clung to, and it wasn't the only one where he lived, every day, preparing to be disappointed.
She couldn't have that. Not any more.
"How many layers of clothing are you wearing today?" she asked, aiming for casual and knowing she missed it by a mile. She covered for it by leaning over the chessboard and straightening those last two pieces, the king and the oddly shaped queen, so that they were eyes front, preparing for battle. Preparing for the future.
"...What?"
Another breath, another moment to gather her courage, and then she turned to face him, trying to keep her expression under control. Maybe she managed it, maybe she didn't. She couldn't tell from Connor's expression, which stayed stunned. "Just so we're starting from the same place."
"You're talking about... strip chess?" The pitch of his voice had gone up and maybe it was the adrenaline or the nerves or even - possibly, probably - the anticipation, but it made her grin, wide and free, and she watched him blink, dazed, in the face of it.
"Why not, Connor? Scared you're going to lose?"
"Scared I'm going to lose something," he retorted and then stopped, apparently horrified at the words coming out of his mouth as the colour rushed into his face, turning his cheeks bright red.
She took it all in, nodding seriously. "Chicken," she said.
"Abby..."
"Bwah bwah bwah buck."
"...That seriously has to be the worst chicken impersonation I have ever heard."
"Picky, picky, picky," she said, pushing one of the chess pieces so that it was aligned absolutely perfectly in the centre of its square. "Maybe you'll win."
When she turned back to face him he was looking at her, really looking at her, all wide-eyed and open-mouthed, hopeful and fearful both at once. And then his gaze flickered down for a second, settling on her chest before darting back up again.
Boys. And Connor definitely was one, as though she'd ever doubted it.
She cocked an eyebrow and smirked at him, and he swallowed nervously. For a second, the look on his face - still half-terrified - almost made her take it back, turn it into a joke. Except - that's what she always did. Moved a little closer, giving Connor just enough to keep him hoping, and then took a step back, leaving him staggering, off balance and wounded. It wasn't fair to do that to him again. It wasn't.
Things might change in a heartbeat, but sometimes they needed to be changed. That wasn't something the anomaly project should have to teach her.
"Well?" she asked, and there was no taunting in her voice this time; she kept it soft, kept it simple. He swallowed again and she waited, as patient as she could be, for the hope to win out.
"Okay," he said, and then he said, "Okay," again.
She tilted her head and looked at him, weighing him up until he squirmed a little self-consciously in his seat.
"You're wearing more than sixteen items of clothing, aren't you?"
"What?" It broke the ice and he laughed, unable to help it; she relaxed enough to grin back at him, not hiding her pleasure in his enjoyment.
"That's it. I'm definitely going to go and put something on."
"Spoilsport," he grumbled as she pushed herself to her feet, but he was smiling, even if the look in his eyes still reminded her of a deer in headlights, or a rabbit on seeing a fox. She hesitated, once again on the verge of telling him to forget it, but his smile faded slowly, the sadness creeping back into his eyes.
"Won't be long," she said and her fingers twitched with the need to touch him, just his cheek or his shoulder, just so he knew she was there, really there. But she couldn't. Not yet. Instead she said, "Don't start without me," and turned away from him again, heading towards her room and already feeling her cheeks starting to burn.
In the end she grabbed a cardigan; the dampness of the air outside had left her a little chilled, but it was more something to throw on for show than anything else. Something to take off again as well, probably, and her face burned more brightly at the thought. She didn't know why. It wasn't like she'd been all that shy about getting naked with men she liked before; hell, when Connor had first moved in, she'd thought nothing of stalking around her flat wearing whatever she was comfortable in, which was often very little.
But now... well, there were a whole lot of things that were different now than they had been three years ago, starting with her and ending with Connor. Still, she hesitated by her bed for long moments before tugging the drawer of her bedside table open. Better to have and not need - that was the Girl Guide in her coming through loud and clear, although she was pretty sure that the Guides had never had this kind of scenario in mind. That was probably why Abby had ended up switching to tae kwon do classes instead.
Connor was still waiting for her when she made it back to the lounge, sitting on the couch and looking a little shell-shocked. He'd settled on one end of it, facing her bedroom, almost like he was waiting for her to come out again or for her not to come out and instead to tell him she was kidding. His expression didn't change much when he saw her, so she still couldn't tell which it was, but the chessboard had been twisted around on the coffee table to that each end of the couch had a 'side' of the board.
She sat down on the couch, facing him, then stared down at the board, all those serried rows of figures, looking like they had a purpose. She had no idea which pieces were black and which white. Not when both sides were simply painted miniatures. Except, Connor had that horned figure - Darth Maul, she thought he'd called him - in the set closest to him, and he'd muttered about 'turning to the dark side' often enough for her to have registered the meaning of it via that weird osmosis trick if nothing else. So Connor's pieces had to be black, making hers white.
It was rather ironic given the less than pure outcomes she was planning on. It was far from ironic that he'd left the first move to her.
"I'm white, I take it?" Connor nodded, eyeing her far too seriously for what was supposed to be, at minimum, a bit of fun and, hopefully, a lot of fun. "Okay. I open then?" and he nodded again, his expression still unchanging.
She took another deep breath but stayed traditional for her opening move, pushing one of her little robot pawns forward two places. "Let's have some rules," she said, watching the board rather than Connor. Even so, she caught his start of surprise out of the corner of her eye and swallowed her smile, feeling the butterflies settle in her stomach now that she had a set of planned tactics of her own.
"Rules? You mean more than chess rules?"
She nodded. "Rules for... this game." His eyes widened further and she thought he might even have swallowed. She turned her attention back to the board, pretending to study it even as her heart skipped a beat. She probably wasn't fooling him - he hadn't even made his first move yet. "A pair of socks or a pair of shoes or the like counts as one item."
He paused, his fingers already resting on his opposing pawn. "Okay," he said cautiously. "That sounds reasonable."
"And the person losing the piece gets to decide what order clothes come off in." She heard him swallow again, more noticeably this time, and his fingers tightened for a moment on the piece. He still hadn't made a move - she needed to wait until he was fully committed, patience being a virtue and all that. It was weirdly, stupidly superstitious, that need not to make her move too soon, telegraph what she was up to in advance in case Connor found a way to counter it. She still didn't say anything, not until he did.
"Okay."
Now he pushed the piece forward, two squares, matching hers.
"Loser pays a forfeit."
His fingers jerked, almost knocking the piece over again. "What?"
"Loser pays a forfeit, Connor."
He swallowed again and now she looked up at him, smiling as though she didn't have a care in the world, even though her heart was still tripping in her chest, fast and tight, leaving her giddy and near breathless with it. "What kind of forfeit?" he asked and she shrugged, looking back at the board and once again pretending that she was more interested in that than in any objections he might have had.
"I'm sure we'll come up with something."
There was a long silence and when she finally looked up at him again, he was eyeing her suspiciously.
"Is this the point where I find out you're a chess prodigy? Some sort of, I don't know... chess shark or something?"
"Chess shark? What on earth is a chess shark?"
"Like a card shark only... well..."
"With less clothing?"
He swallowed in surprise again and this time it obviously went down the wrong way as he spluttered, the coughing mixed in with laughter. His eyes were still wide, though, and the look in them was still that jumble of everything he was feeling, everything she felt as well.
Her move.
"If you don't want to risk a forfeit, Connor, you know what you have to do?"
"Yes?"
"Win."
"Oh. Funny."
She made a happy little humming noise in the back of her throat and moved another pawn, drawing Connor's attention back to the game. If her fingers shook a little as she moved her next piece, well. It was cold out.
( Check. Mate. Part 2 of 2 )