Title: Prelude in C Minor
Author: alyse
Recipient:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dominique012
Prompt: Prompt 2: island, darkness, tea, happy.
Pairing: Abby/Connor
Rating: PG13
Length: ~13,000 words
Warnings: Angst
Disclaimer: I do not own Primeval. Impossible Pictures do.
Author's Notes: Fordominique012 who wanted Abby/Connor; angst with a hopeful or happy ending; hurt comfort; and romance. I hope this suits.
Many thanks toaithine for the beta.
Summary: Journeys start with a single step.
-o-
( Prelude in C Minor - Part One )
-o-
They keep heading south, like birds heading to warmer climes for the winter. It's further into autumn now, and the starlings are flocking, gathering on pylons and overhead cables, then wheeling into the air like dark clouds that wax and wane.
He watches them and thinks about what they once were.
-o-
Stonehenge is smaller than he thought it would be, less impressive somehow. But he walks around it anyway, along the well trodden gravelled path. Visitors are no longer allowed to touch the stones and there's no sense of history for him, no connection to the past, not even when he reads all of the information boards that tell him how it was built or when.
The stones came from Wales originally. Perhaps they were washed up here as well, even if they didn't follow the same paths that Abby and he have travelled along.
Avebury is slightly better, maybe because the stones have merged into the landscape. There are gaps where the menhirs have been removed over the years, used to build or maybe just because of superstition, and he wanders around the circle, staring down into the village.
History seems like it's been tamed here, like people have managed to stamp themselves permanently over the landscape and the past is staying where it belongs, part of a progression, past to future, no messing about. He doesn't say any of this to Abby, and Abby doesn't say anything at all.
But he likes Woodhenge best. There's nothing much to see. The wooden posts have long since rotted away, leaving just imprints like fossil footprints in the earth. It seems right, somehow, and it weirdly it makes it easier to sit on the grass, close his eyes and visualise what it once must have been like.
Abby sits beside him, her arms wrapped around her knees again. She's shivering slightly and he moves over, closer to her, an instinctive sharing of warmth that isn't all about the Cretaceous.
She gives him a strange look but doesn't move away.
“Connor...?"
He makes a sound, some kind of affirmative that he's heard her, but his eyes are fixed on the landscape. Now that the signs aren't obvious - no huge, non-native rocks thrusting up to show that man was once here - he perversely wants to see some sign, a hillock or outline of a ditch that shows him the past.
“I'm sorry," she says and that gets his attention. He looks at her, frowning. Things are still weird between them, a little off, a little stretched and strained, but he should be the one apologising, again, not her.
She shrugs, the skin of her neck flushing slightly, but she doesn't look at him, not this time. “I... I get scared sometimes," and this is not a conversation he wants to have.
There's no escape though, and he can't help but wonder if Abby planned it that way. He may never understand her, not entirely, but she's always seen right through him. He's been running and she's been letting him, only now she's closing the door.
He swallows. “If this is about... what I said the other night... I'm sorry."
“No," she says, then, “Yes. Well, not exactly." She takes a deep breath, and her shoulder brushes against his arm. “I... I mess you about sometimes." She looks at him now, and adds, “Most of the time."
“It's not -"
“Connor." The word comes out sharp and silences him. “I'm sorry... it's... Look." Another deep breath and he still can't see. “I... I get scared." She gives him another one of those smiles like a grimace, all nerves. tight around the eyes and mouth. “Ugly divorce, bitter mother, absent father. Take your pick. I didn't ever want that. To be that. That... vulnerable, I suppose." She picks at the picnic blanket they'd bought at a service station somewhere and doesn't look at him.
“Jack..." She trails off and then begins again. “There was only Jack and me, and I was his big sister, supposed to keep him from going off the rails." She sighs. “But he did anyway, didn't he?"
He takes the question as rhetorical and doesn't answer, shifting a little uncomfortably. Maybe he could treat all of the questions as rhetorical. It would make life easier if he didn't have to commit.
“I'm sorry," she says again and her voice is sad, quiet, and he twitches again. “I didn't mean to hurt you, it was..."
“It was just you and Jack, and Jack comes first," he says and finds a smile of his own, one she'll hopefully buy. “I understand."
“No," she says, still quiet, still sad. “I don't think you do. But then, neither did I."
-o-
“Are you still scared?" he asks her as they trudge up the hill towards another barrow. He tries not to think of death, of bones turning to dust in chambers under the ground, but it's hard sometimes.
She pauses and looks at him, raising her hand to shield her eyes from the low, autumn sun.
“I guess," she says. “I probably always will be, I suppose." She seems okay with it and he can't imagine why.
“So... So how do you cope with it?"
This time she tilts her head and the look she gives him is quizzical. Then she shrugs. “Try not to be," she says, as though it's ever that simple, and then she smiles, quick and fierce. “Race you to the top."
-o-
They end up in Glastonbury and it's full of little curio shops, catering to the tourists, all new age hippy and crystals. He wanders through them and Abby trails in his wake, rolling her eyes every now and then. She still pauses by the CD racks, though, touching the ones about whale song.
Once he'd have teased her about that. Maybe he'll store it up and they'll come back at some point, a point where he doesn't feel like he's just barely anchored to the surface of the world instead of actually being part of it.
Then he finds something in one shop and he knows he's never, ever coming back here.
It's a key chain, so innocuous, like something they've seen in all of these shops, kitschy and ugly. Only, this one's in the shape of an alien's head.
He holds it in his hand for long moments, his fingers so tight around it that they hurt. His knuckles are white and when Abby finds him eventually, hidden behind the rack, and uncurls his fingers, the palm is red, creased and marked with its imprint. She reaches up and her voice is soft, distressed, as she touches his face. It's only when her thumb smooths across his cheek that he realises he's crying.
Thankfully she doesn't buy it for him; it's weird how it's the stupid little things that stick, that mean so much. Instead, she leads him out of the door, her fingers wrapped tightly around his, and they walk, hand in hand, up the Tor.
He sits on the grass next to her, staring out over the town, as the breeze slowly dries the tears on his cheek.
-o-
Lester's talking about counselling. When Abby passes the message on, her voice is diffident, uninvolved, like she's just talking about the weather but her eyes are anxious. Stress. Depression. They're strange words. They make him think of geological pressures, of the way the tectonic plates shift, mountains forced up, magma forced through. Of cracks and crevasses forming in something as supposedly as solid as the earth, of water washing everything away and leaving nothing but hollows behind.
Maybe they're the right words after all.
-o-
It's not that the nightmares are better; it's that by now he's exhausted and sleep drags him so far under that not even the dreams can push him back to the surface again.
He thinks he still dreams but he can't remember them when he wakes up, and it's the small things you appreciate. Like the fact that sometimes when he wakes, his eyes gritty and his head fuzzy and with vague thoughts lurking on the edges of his consciousness, Abby is curled up in his bed behind him, her arm thrown over his waist.
Sometimes she gets up as soon as he stirs and heads into the bathroom, burying herself - and him - in the flurry of getting ready for the day, her face flushed as she avoids his eyes. Sometimes she doesn't, and they lie in the warm nest they've made as the pale autumn light creeps across the room and the day grows older.
It's another thing they don't talk about.
-o-
Plates shift and things crack and the pressure has to be released somehow.
-o-
Abby wakes him, calling his name and shaking his shoulder until he's dragged back into the real world, spluttering and gasping, dumped unceremoniously on the shore.
The nightmare is still lapping at him, twisting around his consciousness and trying to suck him back down.
“Connor?" Abby's face is pale in the moonlight, furrowed with concern. “Connor?"
He pushes her off, stumbling out of bed and almost tripping over the covers that have pooled on the floor in his hurry. She follows him, hovering in the background while he throws up his supper, maybe even his lunch and breakfast from the way he can't stop. He's shaking, the sweat of fear evaporating from his skin and taking all of his warmth with him, and the rim of the toilet bowl is ice cold under his grip.
She waits and he wants her to leave, doesn't want her to see him like this but he's not the kind of person who gets what they want. At least she hands him a glass of water when he's finished, his stomach aching and his knees sore. He swirls and spits and then flushes the toilet.
She's too close and he can smell the scent of her shower gel rising from her body because while she always washes her hair in the morning she also still showers again in the evening and how weird is it that he knows that?
“Okay?" she asks him, her face drawn. He nods; he's not sure what 'okay' is any more but he's on his feet and that's got to be an improvement. He moves back into the bedroom, clutching at the glass like a lifeline, and she follows him there as well.
“Are you ever going to tell me what's going on?" she asks. There's sadness in her voice and other things as well, strange harmonics that he's never been able to read because 'female' is an alien language and 'Abby' is even more so.
His pillow smells like her and he closes his eyes.
“I built the anomaly detector," he says. “Me."
“Okay," and he doesn't have to open his eyes to picture her nod, her small, serious face.
“I know Cutter figured out the interference angle but the rest, that was me."
“Okay."
He opens his eyes again and stares at the ceiling. “And the hand-held detectors, and the anomaly locking mechanism."
“You forgot the robot," she says quietly, but she isn't joking. When he looks across at her she's watching him, her chin on her knees and her arms wrapped around them. Her feet are tucked away out of sight and she looks so young it doesn't make it any easier to keep going.
“Yes," he says and goes back to staring at the ceiling.
“My hair dryer has never been the same," she says and this time it's the humour but it falls flat.
“I built it all," he says and his voice comes from a long way away, drifting back from where things are real, normal, before he learnt how to put things together.
“Are you... feeling unappreciated?"
He can hear the frown in her voice, but her tone is curious, not condemning. Not yet.
“We've seen the future," he says, “and it's fucked." She shifts position; he can hear the sheets rustle and knows she'll be leaning closer, studying his face for clues.
He keeps his eyes closed.
“Helen... Helen used that machine, the one in the future. Used it to hop around time and mess everything up, and even now she might be out there somewhere, trying to wipe us off the face of the earth. No. Off the face of time."
“And that's what you're worried about?" she asks. “Connor, we did everything we could. And we're still here. If Helen had succeeded..."
“No," he says. “You don't understand. Helen said that the ARC brought about the end of the world -"
“Helen lies. You should know that, Connor. She lies and..."
“And that machine, the one the ARC were using, will be using. The one Helen was using." He opens his eyes and looks at her, reading the confusion in her face. “The one that's messed everything up so badly." She's still not getting it.
“Who do you think is going to build it?"
Her eyes widen. She's not stupid - she's never been that - but he has to spell it out anyway, the words bubbling over even if he'd wanted to stop them, his heart breaking, shattering inside his chest and he can feel the shards digging into his skin.
“Abby... I think I'm going to destroy the world."
-o-
He doesn't want to talk about it now that it's out there, said and made real. If they don't talk about it he doesn't have to think about it but for once Abby isn't being patient with him and she isn't being kind. She keeps trying, as though that's going to help.
He's started to run out of excuses and, since she holds the car keys, he's also running out of places to run.
In the end, tired of waiting, she simply outmanoeuvres him, pulling the car into a lay-by where she climbs out. It's picturesque here, with a view and a picnic table; Abby ignores the former and sits on the latter, facing the car and waiting.
He holds out for as long as he can but it's Abby and in the end he always gives Abby what she wants. He doesn't make it easy for her, though.
“I think I should leave the project," he says, no preamble, not giving her time to launch on whatever well rehearsed arguments she'll have prepared.
She doesn't look surprised. Instead, she nods, seriously, watching him with that same unreadable look in her eye and that throws him off. “I thought you might say that," she says. “Can I ask you something?" As though him saying 'no' will stop her.
She crosses her legs and rests her hands on them, once again looking like she's settling in for the long haul, and he sighs.
“What happens... you think it's because you stay on the project, right?"
“Abby..."
“Yes?"
He nods, quickly and jerkily, just wanting the conversation to be over.
“What if you're wrong? What if it happens because you leave?"
Words have weight and these hit him hard, right in the chest, his breath catching in his throat.
It's instinctive to protest, “That's not fair." It comes out weak and breathy.
“No," she says, and again something like grief shifts underneath the planes of her face, barely hidden below the surface. “It's not."
-o-
She lets him run after that, along beaches, up hills, through forests.
But she's always waiting when he gets back, sometimes calm, sometimes not, but always present. Somehow that makes the whole running thing kind of pointless.
He stops after a while.
-o-
“Whatever you decide," she says, poking at her ice cream tub with her small, plastic spoon, “it's for both of us."
He tries to pretend like it doesn't matter.
-o-
They're still drifting, washed around by whim and the tide, when she makes an “Oh!" sound. It's genuine, not careful, and he wanders over towards her, around the carousels of tourist tat - spoons and bookmarks and Celtic decorated quaich, even this far south.
“What is it?"
“Oh." She looks flustered, her finger resting on the open, plastic covered book in front of her. It's another thing that's the same wherever they go - the local list of hotels, B&Bs and hostels that each Tourist Information branch seems to hold. “Just... can we stay here? If there's room?"
He blinks; it's not the first time she's asked that question but it's the first time she actually sounds like the answer matters.
“If you want," he offers and she smiles, a flash of brightness in what has so far been a dull and never-ending day.
-o-
It's a castle. A castle on the edge of a village, built by a Victorian with too much money and too little sense. A Folly, Abby announces, rolling the word around her mouth with obvious enjoyment. There's a small smile playing around her lips but it's genuine, unaffected.
He can't remember the last time he saw it.
'Folly' might be the right description. It's a strange, surreal place and the man who owns it - Geoffrey, with his balding pate and dandelion hair and definitely non-Somerset accent - is best described as 'eccentric'. The plumbing rattles and clanks, letting out deep groans when the shower finally splutters temperamentally into life. The windows are the original wooden sashes and stick when it's damp, and in October it's always damp. They end up leaving the one in their room wedged open an inch when refuses to shut and it lets in the cool night air.
But it sits in an acre of overgrown grounds, wild and untamed. The weather's been mild and the smell of late blooming honeysuckle drifts up to their window, carried on the breeze. Geoffrey keeps chickens and peacocks, who alternately strut and preen, and at night the peacocks scream, blending into the dreams they both have still.
They share a bed. It's not the first time they have but it should be weirder than it is. When Connor wakes - whether from the pipes or the peacocks or his own dreams - it feels normal, and he rolls into Abby's warmth and goes back to sleep.
-o-
Geoffrey's an awesome cook; it doesn't take long to get used to his hangdog face and flowery apron as he dishes up bacon that's just crispy enough and scrambled eggs that are perfect. In the afternoon, there are scones or freshly baked teacakes, eaten on the terrace with a pot of piping hot tea. He wouldn't be surprised if Geoffrey churned his own butter, because the pats he places on small saucers, alongside the thick cream, are oddly shaped but delicious.
For that, Connor can forgive the plumbing.
-o-
They don't talk about it, but they stay. Abby fans the leaflets out in front of him again and asks the question she's asked him every day since the first: “Where do you want to go today?"
For once he pays attention, sipping at his tea as he pushes them around on the table top.
“That one," he says eventually, drawn by the bright colours and the picture on the front, and she blinks at him, surprised.
“Okay," she says, and then she smiles.
-o-
Everywhere is quiet - half term isn't until the following week and the main tourist season is over. Connor likes feeling as if it's just the two of them, no one jostling or running or screaming. No crowds, no noise, no pressure.
He's not sure why he picked the caves. Maybe it was the cheesy animatronic dragon on the front of the leaflet, or maybe it's just that there's something about caves, something primal and safe. People have been hiding in them for as long as there have been people, and how can he argue with that?
Or maybe it really is the cheesy dragon. He could do with more cheese in his life, and Cheddar seems perfect for that.
Abby stays close as they walk down from the car park, and her hand brushes against his every now and then. The sky is pale, watery blue, not grey; the rains have come and gone, and small puddles have collected in the dips in the path. He breathes in deeply and this time when Abby's hand brushes against his, he catches hold of her little finger with his.
He was right about the tableaux - they are more than simply cheesy and kind of awesome because of it - but once they're away from the flashing lights and piped in roars, the caves themselves are more impressive. He wanders deeper and deeper, to where it's still and quiet and all he can hear is the soft 'plink plink' as water drips from the ceiling. All around them are the beautiful twisted shapes of stalactites and stalagmites, formed over aeons.
There are lights down here as well but they're not the flashy reds and yellows of fake fantastical beasts. They're green and blue, shining steadily in the darkness as they play across the rocks, picking out shadows and catching in Abby's pale hair so that it glimmers like the ocean.
Abby's still and quiet, too, staring out over the underground lake. The look on her face is calm, thoughtful, and when she feels the weight of his gaze on her, she turns to look at him.
She doesn't smile. She doesn't need to.
He closes his eyes and tilts his head back, feeling the breeze from the hidden pumps brushing over his skin. There are tonnes of rock above him, maybe half a mile or more, but for the first time in a long time he doesn't feel that weight.
For the first time in a long time he can breathe.
-o-
At the end of each day, he walks in the woods that wrap around the edges of the guest house - guest castle - kicking up the leaves that have fallen into piles of red and gold. Sometimes Abby comes with him and sometimes she waits on the terrace, held there, he thinks, as much by the prospect of Geoffrey's cooking as a concern that she's intruding.
He doesn't mind. If he gets tired of being on his own, he can head back, knowing that she'll be there waiting.
He sleeps better, which means so does she. But even better isn't perfect; sometimes the peacocks wake him or Abby shifting in her sleep. Sometimes it's the warmth of her body as she moves closer to him in the night, a heat he's just not used to, not yet.
Sometimes, yes, it's his dreams that snatch him out of slumber, but if Abby is still asleep he can lie there in the dark and listen to her breathe. And if it's late enough, or still early enough, he'll get up and wander again, listening to the castle settle around him, the timbers and the plumbing and the floors, the groans and ticks that tell him time is passing and that everything finds its place eventually.
Sometimes he makes it as far as the parlour where he sits and listens to the wind, or to the owls or the peacocks when they're in full flow. Geoffrey has a bookshelf that's as esoteric as the man himself, graphic novels wrestling for space with battered early editions of Biggles and essays in Latin. The first time he plucks a book off the shelf and loses himself in it, Geoffrey finds him there, not long after the clock has struck five.
It startles him and he stares at Geoffrey for a long moment, at the hair that's even more tousled this early in the morning and at the awful, bright purple cords that Geoffrey is wearing, ones that not even Connor would be seen dead in. And then he offers, lamely, “I'm sorry. I couldn't sleep."
Geoffrey nods, like it's the most natural thing in the world to find him here at five in the a.m. “It happens," he says briefly. “It's kind of a bitch when it does though." He doesn't seem at all put out; he seems distracted, or maybe still half asleep. “What are you reading?"
“Oh." He wonders if it's a faux pas to have made himself that much at home, especially as he's not so much reading as staring blankly at the pages. He tilts the book to read the spine and Geoffrey doesn't seem to find anything odd in that. “John Donne."
Geoffrey nods again. “No man is an island," he offers prosaically and when the words are intoned by Geoffrey, in his slow, mournful drawl, it actually sounds like it means something. “I thought I'd make pancakes for breakfast, for a change."
Connor blinks. “Oh," he says, completely thrown. “That sounds... good."
Geoffrey nods again. “I'll make bacon and eggs as well," he decides, and Connor only seems to be incidental to that decision.
“Geoffrey," Connor calls after him, as he turns and heads back into the kitchen and when he pauses it occurs to Connor that he's not quite sure what he intended to say. “Can I... is it too early for me to go out for a walk? In the grounds, I mean?"
Geoffrey doesn't seem to find anything odd about that, either. “Key's on the hook by the door," he says. “Watch out for the hens. I haven't fed them yet and they'll be right buggers until I do."
“Thanks." And then, because it seems the right thing to say, Connor adds, “They're descended from dinosaurs, you know. The hens I mean. Well... all birds, really."
“Huh." Geoffrey pauses to consider this. “That makes perfect sense."
Yes. Connor supposes that it does.
-o-
When he gets back, it's still early and Geoffrey is still busy in the kitchen, whistling off key. The other rooms are all silent, their inhabitants still lost to sleep, and he creeps along the corridor so he doesn't wake them, wincing at each creaking floorboard.
Abby is still asleep but she soon wakes up when he warms his feet up on her calves. She swats at him, grumbling sleepily, but when he wraps himself around her, stealing her warmth, she doesn't push him away. Instead, she tumbles back down into sleep with a soft sigh.
He follows her.
-o-
The days pass but they still don't move on. Instead they pore over the leaflets that Geoffrey has shoved haphazardly into the stand he has in the hall. They don't come right out and say it, but he knows that both of them are looking for places close by, ones they can drive to there and back in a day rather than find another hotel, some place else. England is a small country, and an old and deep one; they find places and excuses, and they stay.
They visit Wookey Hole and if anything it's even cheesier than the Gorge, with its own set of animatronic models and an alleged witch to boot. There isn't that sense of peace as they move further underground this time, but maybe that's because of the children who now seem to have miraculously appeared. They're everywhere he looks, loud and excited and having fun.
It might be contagious. He drags Abby into the Handmade Paper Mill as well, where the tour is dull but the activities are fun. She sighs and rolls her eyes but makes paper with him anyway, squeezing the water out of old, torn paper with a frown of concentration between her brows and her tongue stuck between her teeth.
He waits until she's not looking and scatters petals into her small frame. She waits until he turns away and scatters small paper hearts into his.
He thought he'd forgotten how to hope but maybe, just maybe, she's not as scared now.
-o-
He asks Abby how long they've got and, for once, she doesn't say anything about however long he needs. Instead, she scrunches up her face in thought, working it out.
“We've been at the ARC for almost three years," she says. “How many days annual leave have you actually taken in that time?"
He has no idea, but he breathes more easily. “I bet that went down well with Lester," he says and she gives him a searching look. It's the first time in a long time that he's actually said the man's name; he assumes Abby's still checking in each day, but he's never asked.
There's a soft sound of agreement as Abby beats him to the last scone. “I think he's just pleased he doesn't have to pay us for it instead," she says as she butters it then spreads jam neatly, al the way to the edges. “Or have us take all that unpaid overtime off as lieu leave as well." She puts half the scone on his plate. She doesn't ask him if he wants it; perhaps she doesn't need to.
“I suppose," he says, and beats her to the cream.
-o-
“Maybe," he says and then hesitates, biting at his lip. “Maybe you should ask Lester if he has anyone in mind. For the... counselling, I mean."
He doesn't look at her but he can feel the weight of her gaze on him anyway. It's more bearable than he thought it would be.
“Okay," she says mildly.
“I mean, it's not like I can just pick one of out the Yellow Pages - are they even in the Yellow Pages? Psychiatrists, I mean?" He stumbles over the word. It's something he never thought he'd use, not in connection with himself. 'Therapy' is an alien concept for someone who feels as British as he does, where stiff upper lip and simply coping go with the territory, at least until they aren't possible any more. “Because if I did, then it's not like I could talk about state secrets or anything."
“You could tell them but then you'd have to kill them."
It's actually funny, for a second.
Her fingers reach out and brush over the back of his hand and then come back, more firmly this time, wrapping around his.
She's had them in her pockets up to now, and they're warm and steady.
“I'll talk to Lester," she says.
-o-
That night it rains. He lies in the warm, soft glow of his bedside lamp, listening to it pattering against the window panes and drip down onto the sill. The scent of it is strong in the air, the smell of early autumn, leaves and smoke and damp. That open inch at the bottom of the window is enough to let in the smell of it but it keeps out most of the cold and the thick quilts keep out the rest.
Abby is an oasis of warmth curled up next to him, something concrete and real, even in the dim light that blurs all of the room's lines. She's wide awake, her pale hair spread across the pillow and her blue eyes fixed on the ceiling, listening to the sounds of the world. He can smell her shower gel again; the heat of her body scents the sheets and the air with it. When he shifts position, rising up to rest his head on his elbow and stare out into the darkness, tracking the drops that roll down the window pane, she turns her head to look at him.
Her eyes are warm and so are the fingers she traces gently over his face, across the curve of his cheek, brushing over the delicate skin in the dip beneath his eye. He switches his attention from the night to her and she stares back quietly, almost solemn. Her thumb is resting by his mouth and he turns his head, just a fraction, so that it brushes against his lips.
She closes her eyes. When she opens them again they're still warm, still deep. He doesn't think she's scared any more.
He isn't. Not of her.
This time he's the one who leans in and presses his mouth against hers, breathing in her breath. They fit together, like this. More than he's come to expect.
Her hands sink into his hair, fingers tracing over the curves of his skull, gentle and sure. She pulls him closer and he goes where she leads, cradled by the contours of her body. He thinks for a moment that he's too heavy, that his weight will crush her, but she makes this soft, disappointed sound when he begins to pull away. He kisses her again and her hands are warm when they skim over his body, sliding under the t-shirt he wears to bed and across the bare skin of his back. He kisses her again and she kisses him back, first warm and then heated.
When he first - finally - slides into her, his fingers curled nervously into the pillow and her breath hot against his face, it feels like coming home.
-o-
Abby's not there when he wakes, but he doesn't worry about it. It's late and the watery sun is already high in the sky and Abby hates lying in bed in the morning, when there are things to be done. She won't have gone far and she won't have gone without a reason, even if the reason is to clear her head.
It's strange not to have that fear hanging over his head, the idea that he's going to mess up with Abby and that will be it, no future for them, nothing to hope for, to live for. It's strange but he thinks he'll learn to live with it.
Instead he showers and then he heads down to breakfast; he's ravenous and if he waits any longer, Geoffrey will have stopped serving it, although with Geoffrey that can happen anywhere between nine thirty and twelve. When he notices the car's not there any more he tries not to let that worry him, either. If she's running... well, he'll wait until she comes back. That's all there is to it.
She gets back when he's on his second cup of tea and first round of toast and flops down into the seat beside him. There's rain in her hair and her face is flushed, bright spots of red high on her cheekbones.
Where have you been? he thinks. Why did you leave me? He was more afraid than he realised until he sees her, afraid of being wrong, again.
What he actually says, “Hey, you."
She smiles and steals a slice of toast from his plate.
“You okay?" he asks and she pauses, crumbs on her lower lip.
“I'm fine. Were you worried?"
He shrugs and the lie he tells is only a little one. “Not really. I thought maybe you needed some space or something. Time to clear your head."
She smiles again, her cheeks still flushed from the cool autumn air, and shakes her head, her teeth buried in her lip rather than her toast. “No... it's..." The smile this time is sheepish, and she lowers her eyes, glances around the room at the few other couples.
They're all immersed in their own domestic situations; none of them are interested in Abby and Connor.
Connor and Abby. Abby and Connor. He likes the sound of it whichever way around it is, and takes another bite of his toast with it ringing through his mind.
“No," she says again, “I needed something, that's all. Just..." She shoots him a sidelong glance. “We weren't that careful last night."
It takes a second to sink in and he freezes, guilt and embarrassment surging through him. “I'm sorry," he says. “I'm not used to... I didn't think..."
“It's fine." She reaches out and squeezes his hand, leaving her fingers wrapped around his. “There were two of us there, Connor. Neither of us thought."
He could have ruined their future, in more ways than one. He swallows another bite of toast but it's dry and goes down hard. “I'm sorry," he says and it's nowhere near adequate but the look she gives him now is a mixture of amusement and affection.
“It's fine," she repeats. “I went to the chemist, I took a pill, it's dealt with, okay?" She steals his tea as well as his toast and takes a sip. “I'm... just not ready for anything else, not yet."
He leans over to the next table and pinches an empty cup for himself. It occurs to him, as he pours the tea out again from the small tea pot that might not match the plates, cups or saucers but which doesn't - blessedly - leak, that they're actually having a grown up, adult conversation.
“Not used to?" Abby asks mildly, watching him over the rim of her - his old - cup and he flushes a deep red, adulthood be damned.
“No."
“And by that you mean...?" Her eyes are dancing and he has no idea what's going through her mind.
“Yes, Abby, you deflowered me, all right?" and she laughs, bright and loud, drawing attention. He kicks her under the table, just hard enough to register, and she grins back at him, unrepentant.
He smiles back.
“I... might have bought some other things at the chemist as well," she says, and the look in her eyes this time is open and affectionate, only a little scared. Her hair is still damp and tousled, and her hand is wrapped negligently around her cup where it rests on the table.
She's beautiful.
“Oh." He's blushing again, and she gives him another of those smiles, small and a little twitchy but genuine, before she looks away.
“So," she says, the colour rising to her face again and matching his. “What do you want to do today?"
He reaches out and brushes his thumb over the pulse point on the inside of her wrist, feeling her heart beat, strong and steady, under his touch.
“Go back to bed," he says.
-o-
It's better this time, now that he knows what he's doing, and Abby's sharp little cries mingle with the peacocks' outside.
-o-
They drive out to the coast and walk along the beach. Abby comes with him, her footprints next to his on the sand. It's blustery and cold, and the wind whips around, blowing icy droplets of rain into their faces, so it's no wonder that they're more or less alone. Everyone else must have more sense.
Abby slips her hand into his as she kicks up some sand, staring out into the horizon. Her fingers are cold and he shoves both - her hand and his - into his pocket.
“I was thinking..." he says. He lets go of her hand, wrapping his arm around her shoulders instead. She keeps her hand in his pocket but her nose is just as cold when she presses it against his neck.
“Dangerous," she murmurs against his skin and he ruffles her hair with his free hand before he wraps that arm around her as well. “What were you thinking about?"
“How good you look naked," and she pushes him, laughter in her eyes, so that he stumbles backwards, almost losing his balance.
She catches him; she's still smiling and he kisses her, swallowing all that joy down.
The sea is stormy, blue and green and white. He stares out over it, Abby's hair brushing against his cheek, his chin, as she snuggles in closer. “Maybe," he says against the burnished brightness of that hair. He can be brave, if Abby can. “Maybe you should call Lester... Ask him to set something up."
She hesitates before she nods, taking it all in. Her arms tighten fractionally around him but it's enough.
“Okay," she says. “Today?"
He closes his eyes and breathes in her scent. “No. Tomorrow. Tomorrow will be soon enough."
The future stretches out ahead of them.
The End
Additional Notes: Connor and Abby visit, among other places, The Great Orme in Wales, Bath, Cheddar Gorge and Wookey Hole in Somerset and the South East coast. There is actually a Victorian Folly that looks like a castle - or there was about fifteen years ago - but I took some liberties. It's not actually in Somerset but the windows do stick.
Author: alyse
Recipient:
dominique012Prompt: Prompt 2: island, darkness, tea, happy.
Pairing: Abby/Connor
Rating: PG13
Length: ~13,000 words
Warnings: Angst
Disclaimer: I do not own Primeval. Impossible Pictures do.
Author's Notes: For
dominique012 who wanted Abby/Connor; angst with a hopeful or happy ending; hurt comfort; and romance. I hope this suits.Many thanks to
aithine for the beta.Summary: Journeys start with a single step.
-o-
( Prelude in C Minor - Part One )
-o-
They keep heading south, like birds heading to warmer climes for the winter. It's further into autumn now, and the starlings are flocking, gathering on pylons and overhead cables, then wheeling into the air like dark clouds that wax and wane.
He watches them and thinks about what they once were.
-o-
Stonehenge is smaller than he thought it would be, less impressive somehow. But he walks around it anyway, along the well trodden gravelled path. Visitors are no longer allowed to touch the stones and there's no sense of history for him, no connection to the past, not even when he reads all of the information boards that tell him how it was built or when.
The stones came from Wales originally. Perhaps they were washed up here as well, even if they didn't follow the same paths that Abby and he have travelled along.
Avebury is slightly better, maybe because the stones have merged into the landscape. There are gaps where the menhirs have been removed over the years, used to build or maybe just because of superstition, and he wanders around the circle, staring down into the village.
History seems like it's been tamed here, like people have managed to stamp themselves permanently over the landscape and the past is staying where it belongs, part of a progression, past to future, no messing about. He doesn't say any of this to Abby, and Abby doesn't say anything at all.
But he likes Woodhenge best. There's nothing much to see. The wooden posts have long since rotted away, leaving just imprints like fossil footprints in the earth. It seems right, somehow, and it weirdly it makes it easier to sit on the grass, close his eyes and visualise what it once must have been like.
Abby sits beside him, her arms wrapped around her knees again. She's shivering slightly and he moves over, closer to her, an instinctive sharing of warmth that isn't all about the Cretaceous.
She gives him a strange look but doesn't move away.
“Connor...?"
He makes a sound, some kind of affirmative that he's heard her, but his eyes are fixed on the landscape. Now that the signs aren't obvious - no huge, non-native rocks thrusting up to show that man was once here - he perversely wants to see some sign, a hillock or outline of a ditch that shows him the past.
“I'm sorry," she says and that gets his attention. He looks at her, frowning. Things are still weird between them, a little off, a little stretched and strained, but he should be the one apologising, again, not her.
She shrugs, the skin of her neck flushing slightly, but she doesn't look at him, not this time. “I... I get scared sometimes," and this is not a conversation he wants to have.
There's no escape though, and he can't help but wonder if Abby planned it that way. He may never understand her, not entirely, but she's always seen right through him. He's been running and she's been letting him, only now she's closing the door.
He swallows. “If this is about... what I said the other night... I'm sorry."
“No," she says, then, “Yes. Well, not exactly." She takes a deep breath, and her shoulder brushes against his arm. “I... I mess you about sometimes." She looks at him now, and adds, “Most of the time."
“It's not -"
“Connor." The word comes out sharp and silences him. “I'm sorry... it's... Look." Another deep breath and he still can't see. “I... I get scared." She gives him another one of those smiles like a grimace, all nerves. tight around the eyes and mouth. “Ugly divorce, bitter mother, absent father. Take your pick. I didn't ever want that. To be that. That... vulnerable, I suppose." She picks at the picnic blanket they'd bought at a service station somewhere and doesn't look at him.
“Jack..." She trails off and then begins again. “There was only Jack and me, and I was his big sister, supposed to keep him from going off the rails." She sighs. “But he did anyway, didn't he?"
He takes the question as rhetorical and doesn't answer, shifting a little uncomfortably. Maybe he could treat all of the questions as rhetorical. It would make life easier if he didn't have to commit.
“I'm sorry," she says again and her voice is sad, quiet, and he twitches again. “I didn't mean to hurt you, it was..."
“It was just you and Jack, and Jack comes first," he says and finds a smile of his own, one she'll hopefully buy. “I understand."
“No," she says, still quiet, still sad. “I don't think you do. But then, neither did I."
-o-
“Are you still scared?" he asks her as they trudge up the hill towards another barrow. He tries not to think of death, of bones turning to dust in chambers under the ground, but it's hard sometimes.
She pauses and looks at him, raising her hand to shield her eyes from the low, autumn sun.
“I guess," she says. “I probably always will be, I suppose." She seems okay with it and he can't imagine why.
“So... So how do you cope with it?"
This time she tilts her head and the look she gives him is quizzical. Then she shrugs. “Try not to be," she says, as though it's ever that simple, and then she smiles, quick and fierce. “Race you to the top."
-o-
They end up in Glastonbury and it's full of little curio shops, catering to the tourists, all new age hippy and crystals. He wanders through them and Abby trails in his wake, rolling her eyes every now and then. She still pauses by the CD racks, though, touching the ones about whale song.
Once he'd have teased her about that. Maybe he'll store it up and they'll come back at some point, a point where he doesn't feel like he's just barely anchored to the surface of the world instead of actually being part of it.
Then he finds something in one shop and he knows he's never, ever coming back here.
It's a key chain, so innocuous, like something they've seen in all of these shops, kitschy and ugly. Only, this one's in the shape of an alien's head.
He holds it in his hand for long moments, his fingers so tight around it that they hurt. His knuckles are white and when Abby finds him eventually, hidden behind the rack, and uncurls his fingers, the palm is red, creased and marked with its imprint. She reaches up and her voice is soft, distressed, as she touches his face. It's only when her thumb smooths across his cheek that he realises he's crying.
Thankfully she doesn't buy it for him; it's weird how it's the stupid little things that stick, that mean so much. Instead, she leads him out of the door, her fingers wrapped tightly around his, and they walk, hand in hand, up the Tor.
He sits on the grass next to her, staring out over the town, as the breeze slowly dries the tears on his cheek.
-o-
Lester's talking about counselling. When Abby passes the message on, her voice is diffident, uninvolved, like she's just talking about the weather but her eyes are anxious. Stress. Depression. They're strange words. They make him think of geological pressures, of the way the tectonic plates shift, mountains forced up, magma forced through. Of cracks and crevasses forming in something as supposedly as solid as the earth, of water washing everything away and leaving nothing but hollows behind.
Maybe they're the right words after all.
-o-
It's not that the nightmares are better; it's that by now he's exhausted and sleep drags him so far under that not even the dreams can push him back to the surface again.
He thinks he still dreams but he can't remember them when he wakes up, and it's the small things you appreciate. Like the fact that sometimes when he wakes, his eyes gritty and his head fuzzy and with vague thoughts lurking on the edges of his consciousness, Abby is curled up in his bed behind him, her arm thrown over his waist.
Sometimes she gets up as soon as he stirs and heads into the bathroom, burying herself - and him - in the flurry of getting ready for the day, her face flushed as she avoids his eyes. Sometimes she doesn't, and they lie in the warm nest they've made as the pale autumn light creeps across the room and the day grows older.
It's another thing they don't talk about.
-o-
Plates shift and things crack and the pressure has to be released somehow.
-o-
Abby wakes him, calling his name and shaking his shoulder until he's dragged back into the real world, spluttering and gasping, dumped unceremoniously on the shore.
The nightmare is still lapping at him, twisting around his consciousness and trying to suck him back down.
“Connor?" Abby's face is pale in the moonlight, furrowed with concern. “Connor?"
He pushes her off, stumbling out of bed and almost tripping over the covers that have pooled on the floor in his hurry. She follows him, hovering in the background while he throws up his supper, maybe even his lunch and breakfast from the way he can't stop. He's shaking, the sweat of fear evaporating from his skin and taking all of his warmth with him, and the rim of the toilet bowl is ice cold under his grip.
She waits and he wants her to leave, doesn't want her to see him like this but he's not the kind of person who gets what they want. At least she hands him a glass of water when he's finished, his stomach aching and his knees sore. He swirls and spits and then flushes the toilet.
She's too close and he can smell the scent of her shower gel rising from her body because while she always washes her hair in the morning she also still showers again in the evening and how weird is it that he knows that?
“Okay?" she asks him, her face drawn. He nods; he's not sure what 'okay' is any more but he's on his feet and that's got to be an improvement. He moves back into the bedroom, clutching at the glass like a lifeline, and she follows him there as well.
“Are you ever going to tell me what's going on?" she asks. There's sadness in her voice and other things as well, strange harmonics that he's never been able to read because 'female' is an alien language and 'Abby' is even more so.
His pillow smells like her and he closes his eyes.
“I built the anomaly detector," he says. “Me."
“Okay," and he doesn't have to open his eyes to picture her nod, her small, serious face.
“I know Cutter figured out the interference angle but the rest, that was me."
“Okay."
He opens his eyes again and stares at the ceiling. “And the hand-held detectors, and the anomaly locking mechanism."
“You forgot the robot," she says quietly, but she isn't joking. When he looks across at her she's watching him, her chin on her knees and her arms wrapped around them. Her feet are tucked away out of sight and she looks so young it doesn't make it any easier to keep going.
“Yes," he says and goes back to staring at the ceiling.
“My hair dryer has never been the same," she says and this time it's the humour but it falls flat.
“I built it all," he says and his voice comes from a long way away, drifting back from where things are real, normal, before he learnt how to put things together.
“Are you... feeling unappreciated?"
He can hear the frown in her voice, but her tone is curious, not condemning. Not yet.
“We've seen the future," he says, “and it's fucked." She shifts position; he can hear the sheets rustle and knows she'll be leaning closer, studying his face for clues.
He keeps his eyes closed.
“Helen... Helen used that machine, the one in the future. Used it to hop around time and mess everything up, and even now she might be out there somewhere, trying to wipe us off the face of the earth. No. Off the face of time."
“And that's what you're worried about?" she asks. “Connor, we did everything we could. And we're still here. If Helen had succeeded..."
“No," he says. “You don't understand. Helen said that the ARC brought about the end of the world -"
“Helen lies. You should know that, Connor. She lies and..."
“And that machine, the one the ARC were using, will be using. The one Helen was using." He opens his eyes and looks at her, reading the confusion in her face. “The one that's messed everything up so badly." She's still not getting it.
“Who do you think is going to build it?"
Her eyes widen. She's not stupid - she's never been that - but he has to spell it out anyway, the words bubbling over even if he'd wanted to stop them, his heart breaking, shattering inside his chest and he can feel the shards digging into his skin.
“Abby... I think I'm going to destroy the world."
-o-
He doesn't want to talk about it now that it's out there, said and made real. If they don't talk about it he doesn't have to think about it but for once Abby isn't being patient with him and she isn't being kind. She keeps trying, as though that's going to help.
He's started to run out of excuses and, since she holds the car keys, he's also running out of places to run.
In the end, tired of waiting, she simply outmanoeuvres him, pulling the car into a lay-by where she climbs out. It's picturesque here, with a view and a picnic table; Abby ignores the former and sits on the latter, facing the car and waiting.
He holds out for as long as he can but it's Abby and in the end he always gives Abby what she wants. He doesn't make it easy for her, though.
“I think I should leave the project," he says, no preamble, not giving her time to launch on whatever well rehearsed arguments she'll have prepared.
She doesn't look surprised. Instead, she nods, seriously, watching him with that same unreadable look in her eye and that throws him off. “I thought you might say that," she says. “Can I ask you something?" As though him saying 'no' will stop her.
She crosses her legs and rests her hands on them, once again looking like she's settling in for the long haul, and he sighs.
“What happens... you think it's because you stay on the project, right?"
“Abby..."
“Yes?"
He nods, quickly and jerkily, just wanting the conversation to be over.
“What if you're wrong? What if it happens because you leave?"
Words have weight and these hit him hard, right in the chest, his breath catching in his throat.
It's instinctive to protest, “That's not fair." It comes out weak and breathy.
“No," she says, and again something like grief shifts underneath the planes of her face, barely hidden below the surface. “It's not."
-o-
She lets him run after that, along beaches, up hills, through forests.
But she's always waiting when he gets back, sometimes calm, sometimes not, but always present. Somehow that makes the whole running thing kind of pointless.
He stops after a while.
-o-
“Whatever you decide," she says, poking at her ice cream tub with her small, plastic spoon, “it's for both of us."
He tries to pretend like it doesn't matter.
-o-
They're still drifting, washed around by whim and the tide, when she makes an “Oh!" sound. It's genuine, not careful, and he wanders over towards her, around the carousels of tourist tat - spoons and bookmarks and Celtic decorated quaich, even this far south.
“What is it?"
“Oh." She looks flustered, her finger resting on the open, plastic covered book in front of her. It's another thing that's the same wherever they go - the local list of hotels, B&Bs and hostels that each Tourist Information branch seems to hold. “Just... can we stay here? If there's room?"
He blinks; it's not the first time she's asked that question but it's the first time she actually sounds like the answer matters.
“If you want," he offers and she smiles, a flash of brightness in what has so far been a dull and never-ending day.
-o-
It's a castle. A castle on the edge of a village, built by a Victorian with too much money and too little sense. A Folly, Abby announces, rolling the word around her mouth with obvious enjoyment. There's a small smile playing around her lips but it's genuine, unaffected.
He can't remember the last time he saw it.
'Folly' might be the right description. It's a strange, surreal place and the man who owns it - Geoffrey, with his balding pate and dandelion hair and definitely non-Somerset accent - is best described as 'eccentric'. The plumbing rattles and clanks, letting out deep groans when the shower finally splutters temperamentally into life. The windows are the original wooden sashes and stick when it's damp, and in October it's always damp. They end up leaving the one in their room wedged open an inch when refuses to shut and it lets in the cool night air.
But it sits in an acre of overgrown grounds, wild and untamed. The weather's been mild and the smell of late blooming honeysuckle drifts up to their window, carried on the breeze. Geoffrey keeps chickens and peacocks, who alternately strut and preen, and at night the peacocks scream, blending into the dreams they both have still.
They share a bed. It's not the first time they have but it should be weirder than it is. When Connor wakes - whether from the pipes or the peacocks or his own dreams - it feels normal, and he rolls into Abby's warmth and goes back to sleep.
-o-
Geoffrey's an awesome cook; it doesn't take long to get used to his hangdog face and flowery apron as he dishes up bacon that's just crispy enough and scrambled eggs that are perfect. In the afternoon, there are scones or freshly baked teacakes, eaten on the terrace with a pot of piping hot tea. He wouldn't be surprised if Geoffrey churned his own butter, because the pats he places on small saucers, alongside the thick cream, are oddly shaped but delicious.
For that, Connor can forgive the plumbing.
-o-
They don't talk about it, but they stay. Abby fans the leaflets out in front of him again and asks the question she's asked him every day since the first: “Where do you want to go today?"
For once he pays attention, sipping at his tea as he pushes them around on the table top.
“That one," he says eventually, drawn by the bright colours and the picture on the front, and she blinks at him, surprised.
“Okay," she says, and then she smiles.
-o-
Everywhere is quiet - half term isn't until the following week and the main tourist season is over. Connor likes feeling as if it's just the two of them, no one jostling or running or screaming. No crowds, no noise, no pressure.
He's not sure why he picked the caves. Maybe it was the cheesy animatronic dragon on the front of the leaflet, or maybe it's just that there's something about caves, something primal and safe. People have been hiding in them for as long as there have been people, and how can he argue with that?
Or maybe it really is the cheesy dragon. He could do with more cheese in his life, and Cheddar seems perfect for that.
Abby stays close as they walk down from the car park, and her hand brushes against his every now and then. The sky is pale, watery blue, not grey; the rains have come and gone, and small puddles have collected in the dips in the path. He breathes in deeply and this time when Abby's hand brushes against his, he catches hold of her little finger with his.
He was right about the tableaux - they are more than simply cheesy and kind of awesome because of it - but once they're away from the flashing lights and piped in roars, the caves themselves are more impressive. He wanders deeper and deeper, to where it's still and quiet and all he can hear is the soft 'plink plink' as water drips from the ceiling. All around them are the beautiful twisted shapes of stalactites and stalagmites, formed over aeons.
There are lights down here as well but they're not the flashy reds and yellows of fake fantastical beasts. They're green and blue, shining steadily in the darkness as they play across the rocks, picking out shadows and catching in Abby's pale hair so that it glimmers like the ocean.
Abby's still and quiet, too, staring out over the underground lake. The look on her face is calm, thoughtful, and when she feels the weight of his gaze on her, she turns to look at him.
She doesn't smile. She doesn't need to.
He closes his eyes and tilts his head back, feeling the breeze from the hidden pumps brushing over his skin. There are tonnes of rock above him, maybe half a mile or more, but for the first time in a long time he doesn't feel that weight.
For the first time in a long time he can breathe.
-o-
At the end of each day, he walks in the woods that wrap around the edges of the guest house - guest castle - kicking up the leaves that have fallen into piles of red and gold. Sometimes Abby comes with him and sometimes she waits on the terrace, held there, he thinks, as much by the prospect of Geoffrey's cooking as a concern that she's intruding.
He doesn't mind. If he gets tired of being on his own, he can head back, knowing that she'll be there waiting.
He sleeps better, which means so does she. But even better isn't perfect; sometimes the peacocks wake him or Abby shifting in her sleep. Sometimes it's the warmth of her body as she moves closer to him in the night, a heat he's just not used to, not yet.
Sometimes, yes, it's his dreams that snatch him out of slumber, but if Abby is still asleep he can lie there in the dark and listen to her breathe. And if it's late enough, or still early enough, he'll get up and wander again, listening to the castle settle around him, the timbers and the plumbing and the floors, the groans and ticks that tell him time is passing and that everything finds its place eventually.
Sometimes he makes it as far as the parlour where he sits and listens to the wind, or to the owls or the peacocks when they're in full flow. Geoffrey has a bookshelf that's as esoteric as the man himself, graphic novels wrestling for space with battered early editions of Biggles and essays in Latin. The first time he plucks a book off the shelf and loses himself in it, Geoffrey finds him there, not long after the clock has struck five.
It startles him and he stares at Geoffrey for a long moment, at the hair that's even more tousled this early in the morning and at the awful, bright purple cords that Geoffrey is wearing, ones that not even Connor would be seen dead in. And then he offers, lamely, “I'm sorry. I couldn't sleep."
Geoffrey nods, like it's the most natural thing in the world to find him here at five in the a.m. “It happens," he says briefly. “It's kind of a bitch when it does though." He doesn't seem at all put out; he seems distracted, or maybe still half asleep. “What are you reading?"
“Oh." He wonders if it's a faux pas to have made himself that much at home, especially as he's not so much reading as staring blankly at the pages. He tilts the book to read the spine and Geoffrey doesn't seem to find anything odd in that. “John Donne."
Geoffrey nods again. “No man is an island," he offers prosaically and when the words are intoned by Geoffrey, in his slow, mournful drawl, it actually sounds like it means something. “I thought I'd make pancakes for breakfast, for a change."
Connor blinks. “Oh," he says, completely thrown. “That sounds... good."
Geoffrey nods again. “I'll make bacon and eggs as well," he decides, and Connor only seems to be incidental to that decision.
“Geoffrey," Connor calls after him, as he turns and heads back into the kitchen and when he pauses it occurs to Connor that he's not quite sure what he intended to say. “Can I... is it too early for me to go out for a walk? In the grounds, I mean?"
Geoffrey doesn't seem to find anything odd about that, either. “Key's on the hook by the door," he says. “Watch out for the hens. I haven't fed them yet and they'll be right buggers until I do."
“Thanks." And then, because it seems the right thing to say, Connor adds, “They're descended from dinosaurs, you know. The hens I mean. Well... all birds, really."
“Huh." Geoffrey pauses to consider this. “That makes perfect sense."
Yes. Connor supposes that it does.
-o-
When he gets back, it's still early and Geoffrey is still busy in the kitchen, whistling off key. The other rooms are all silent, their inhabitants still lost to sleep, and he creeps along the corridor so he doesn't wake them, wincing at each creaking floorboard.
Abby is still asleep but she soon wakes up when he warms his feet up on her calves. She swats at him, grumbling sleepily, but when he wraps himself around her, stealing her warmth, she doesn't push him away. Instead, she tumbles back down into sleep with a soft sigh.
He follows her.
-o-
The days pass but they still don't move on. Instead they pore over the leaflets that Geoffrey has shoved haphazardly into the stand he has in the hall. They don't come right out and say it, but he knows that both of them are looking for places close by, ones they can drive to there and back in a day rather than find another hotel, some place else. England is a small country, and an old and deep one; they find places and excuses, and they stay.
They visit Wookey Hole and if anything it's even cheesier than the Gorge, with its own set of animatronic models and an alleged witch to boot. There isn't that sense of peace as they move further underground this time, but maybe that's because of the children who now seem to have miraculously appeared. They're everywhere he looks, loud and excited and having fun.
It might be contagious. He drags Abby into the Handmade Paper Mill as well, where the tour is dull but the activities are fun. She sighs and rolls her eyes but makes paper with him anyway, squeezing the water out of old, torn paper with a frown of concentration between her brows and her tongue stuck between her teeth.
He waits until she's not looking and scatters petals into her small frame. She waits until he turns away and scatters small paper hearts into his.
He thought he'd forgotten how to hope but maybe, just maybe, she's not as scared now.
-o-
He asks Abby how long they've got and, for once, she doesn't say anything about however long he needs. Instead, she scrunches up her face in thought, working it out.
“We've been at the ARC for almost three years," she says. “How many days annual leave have you actually taken in that time?"
He has no idea, but he breathes more easily. “I bet that went down well with Lester," he says and she gives him a searching look. It's the first time in a long time that he's actually said the man's name; he assumes Abby's still checking in each day, but he's never asked.
There's a soft sound of agreement as Abby beats him to the last scone. “I think he's just pleased he doesn't have to pay us for it instead," she says as she butters it then spreads jam neatly, al the way to the edges. “Or have us take all that unpaid overtime off as lieu leave as well." She puts half the scone on his plate. She doesn't ask him if he wants it; perhaps she doesn't need to.
“I suppose," he says, and beats her to the cream.
-o-
“Maybe," he says and then hesitates, biting at his lip. “Maybe you should ask Lester if he has anyone in mind. For the... counselling, I mean."
He doesn't look at her but he can feel the weight of her gaze on him anyway. It's more bearable than he thought it would be.
“Okay," she says mildly.
“I mean, it's not like I can just pick one of out the Yellow Pages - are they even in the Yellow Pages? Psychiatrists, I mean?" He stumbles over the word. It's something he never thought he'd use, not in connection with himself. 'Therapy' is an alien concept for someone who feels as British as he does, where stiff upper lip and simply coping go with the territory, at least until they aren't possible any more. “Because if I did, then it's not like I could talk about state secrets or anything."
“You could tell them but then you'd have to kill them."
It's actually funny, for a second.
Her fingers reach out and brush over the back of his hand and then come back, more firmly this time, wrapping around his.
She's had them in her pockets up to now, and they're warm and steady.
“I'll talk to Lester," she says.
-o-
That night it rains. He lies in the warm, soft glow of his bedside lamp, listening to it pattering against the window panes and drip down onto the sill. The scent of it is strong in the air, the smell of early autumn, leaves and smoke and damp. That open inch at the bottom of the window is enough to let in the smell of it but it keeps out most of the cold and the thick quilts keep out the rest.
Abby is an oasis of warmth curled up next to him, something concrete and real, even in the dim light that blurs all of the room's lines. She's wide awake, her pale hair spread across the pillow and her blue eyes fixed on the ceiling, listening to the sounds of the world. He can smell her shower gel again; the heat of her body scents the sheets and the air with it. When he shifts position, rising up to rest his head on his elbow and stare out into the darkness, tracking the drops that roll down the window pane, she turns her head to look at him.
Her eyes are warm and so are the fingers she traces gently over his face, across the curve of his cheek, brushing over the delicate skin in the dip beneath his eye. He switches his attention from the night to her and she stares back quietly, almost solemn. Her thumb is resting by his mouth and he turns his head, just a fraction, so that it brushes against his lips.
She closes her eyes. When she opens them again they're still warm, still deep. He doesn't think she's scared any more.
He isn't. Not of her.
This time he's the one who leans in and presses his mouth against hers, breathing in her breath. They fit together, like this. More than he's come to expect.
Her hands sink into his hair, fingers tracing over the curves of his skull, gentle and sure. She pulls him closer and he goes where she leads, cradled by the contours of her body. He thinks for a moment that he's too heavy, that his weight will crush her, but she makes this soft, disappointed sound when he begins to pull away. He kisses her again and her hands are warm when they skim over his body, sliding under the t-shirt he wears to bed and across the bare skin of his back. He kisses her again and she kisses him back, first warm and then heated.
When he first - finally - slides into her, his fingers curled nervously into the pillow and her breath hot against his face, it feels like coming home.
-o-
Abby's not there when he wakes, but he doesn't worry about it. It's late and the watery sun is already high in the sky and Abby hates lying in bed in the morning, when there are things to be done. She won't have gone far and she won't have gone without a reason, even if the reason is to clear her head.
It's strange not to have that fear hanging over his head, the idea that he's going to mess up with Abby and that will be it, no future for them, nothing to hope for, to live for. It's strange but he thinks he'll learn to live with it.
Instead he showers and then he heads down to breakfast; he's ravenous and if he waits any longer, Geoffrey will have stopped serving it, although with Geoffrey that can happen anywhere between nine thirty and twelve. When he notices the car's not there any more he tries not to let that worry him, either. If she's running... well, he'll wait until she comes back. That's all there is to it.
She gets back when he's on his second cup of tea and first round of toast and flops down into the seat beside him. There's rain in her hair and her face is flushed, bright spots of red high on her cheekbones.
Where have you been? he thinks. Why did you leave me? He was more afraid than he realised until he sees her, afraid of being wrong, again.
What he actually says, “Hey, you."
She smiles and steals a slice of toast from his plate.
“You okay?" he asks and she pauses, crumbs on her lower lip.
“I'm fine. Were you worried?"
He shrugs and the lie he tells is only a little one. “Not really. I thought maybe you needed some space or something. Time to clear your head."
She smiles again, her cheeks still flushed from the cool autumn air, and shakes her head, her teeth buried in her lip rather than her toast. “No... it's..." The smile this time is sheepish, and she lowers her eyes, glances around the room at the few other couples.
They're all immersed in their own domestic situations; none of them are interested in Abby and Connor.
Connor and Abby. Abby and Connor. He likes the sound of it whichever way around it is, and takes another bite of his toast with it ringing through his mind.
“No," she says again, “I needed something, that's all. Just..." She shoots him a sidelong glance. “We weren't that careful last night."
It takes a second to sink in and he freezes, guilt and embarrassment surging through him. “I'm sorry," he says. “I'm not used to... I didn't think..."
“It's fine." She reaches out and squeezes his hand, leaving her fingers wrapped around his. “There were two of us there, Connor. Neither of us thought."
He could have ruined their future, in more ways than one. He swallows another bite of toast but it's dry and goes down hard. “I'm sorry," he says and it's nowhere near adequate but the look she gives him now is a mixture of amusement and affection.
“It's fine," she repeats. “I went to the chemist, I took a pill, it's dealt with, okay?" She steals his tea as well as his toast and takes a sip. “I'm... just not ready for anything else, not yet."
He leans over to the next table and pinches an empty cup for himself. It occurs to him, as he pours the tea out again from the small tea pot that might not match the plates, cups or saucers but which doesn't - blessedly - leak, that they're actually having a grown up, adult conversation.
“Not used to?" Abby asks mildly, watching him over the rim of her - his old - cup and he flushes a deep red, adulthood be damned.
“No."
“And by that you mean...?" Her eyes are dancing and he has no idea what's going through her mind.
“Yes, Abby, you deflowered me, all right?" and she laughs, bright and loud, drawing attention. He kicks her under the table, just hard enough to register, and she grins back at him, unrepentant.
He smiles back.
“I... might have bought some other things at the chemist as well," she says, and the look in her eyes this time is open and affectionate, only a little scared. Her hair is still damp and tousled, and her hand is wrapped negligently around her cup where it rests on the table.
She's beautiful.
“Oh." He's blushing again, and she gives him another of those smiles, small and a little twitchy but genuine, before she looks away.
“So," she says, the colour rising to her face again and matching his. “What do you want to do today?"
He reaches out and brushes his thumb over the pulse point on the inside of her wrist, feeling her heart beat, strong and steady, under his touch.
“Go back to bed," he says.
-o-
It's better this time, now that he knows what he's doing, and Abby's sharp little cries mingle with the peacocks' outside.
-o-
They drive out to the coast and walk along the beach. Abby comes with him, her footprints next to his on the sand. It's blustery and cold, and the wind whips around, blowing icy droplets of rain into their faces, so it's no wonder that they're more or less alone. Everyone else must have more sense.
Abby slips her hand into his as she kicks up some sand, staring out into the horizon. Her fingers are cold and he shoves both - her hand and his - into his pocket.
“I was thinking..." he says. He lets go of her hand, wrapping his arm around her shoulders instead. She keeps her hand in his pocket but her nose is just as cold when she presses it against his neck.
“Dangerous," she murmurs against his skin and he ruffles her hair with his free hand before he wraps that arm around her as well. “What were you thinking about?"
“How good you look naked," and she pushes him, laughter in her eyes, so that he stumbles backwards, almost losing his balance.
She catches him; she's still smiling and he kisses her, swallowing all that joy down.
The sea is stormy, blue and green and white. He stares out over it, Abby's hair brushing against his cheek, his chin, as she snuggles in closer. “Maybe," he says against the burnished brightness of that hair. He can be brave, if Abby can. “Maybe you should call Lester... Ask him to set something up."
She hesitates before she nods, taking it all in. Her arms tighten fractionally around him but it's enough.
“Okay," she says. “Today?"
He closes his eyes and breathes in her scent. “No. Tomorrow. Tomorrow will be soon enough."
The future stretches out ahead of them.
The End
Additional Notes: Connor and Abby visit, among other places, The Great Orme in Wales, Bath, Cheddar Gorge and Wookey Hole in Somerset and the South East coast. There is actually a Victorian Folly that looks like a castle - or there was about fifteen years ago - but I took some liberties. It's not actually in Somerset but the windows do stick.