Author: Beren
Fandom: Primeval
Pairing: Connor/Becker, Connor/Abby
Rating: R
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Tim Haines et al and Impossible Pictures. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Warnings: semi-explicit sex
Spoilers: set after Ep1S3 so anything before that is fair game.
Summary: Connor is testing a device for controlling anomalies that comes from his research on the incident at the British Museum when things go wrong.
Author's Notes: Connor is my woobee, I make no excuses for that. I plan to do many weird and wonderful things to him because it's fun and this it the first. I hope you all like it. Thanks to Soph and Al for the beta.
Link: Part 1 | Part 2
Long Fics | HP Short fics | All Other Short Fics | Series Fics
Chapter 1 Why Messing With Anomalies Is A Bad Idea
There was a pounding in his brain and an aching in his chest and the first thing that drifted through his mind was that he must have hit his head again. What he really didn't expect to see when he opened his eyes was Abby's tear stained face.
"Oh god, Connor," she said as soon as he blinked at her, and then he found himself on the end of a very fierce hug.
Given that there seemed to be lots of people standing around looking at him and most of them looked upset, he began to think he had done something worse than hit his head. However, he couldn't for the life of him remember what it was.
Three hours later, he was sitting in the ARC's break room with his third cup of tea wondering if the headache would ever go away. He'd been prodded and poked and given a clean bill of health by a very nice doctor, but, since he'd been clinically dead for two minutes that morning, no one was letting him go back to work. He still didn't remember what he had been doing, but then he didn't remember most of the morning either, which he had been assured was perfectly normal. According to the professor he'd been testing out the anomaly they had all gone to with the prototype device he'd been working on to see if he could recreate the effects he'd seen in the British museum, only the anomaly had bitten back. Abby had described it as a six foot arc of energy that had tried to fry him.
What he really wanted to do was get to his computer and see if it had recorded anything interesting, but no one was allowing him to do anything. Yes he had a blinding headache, which he was assured would get better, but he was positive that if someone just gave him some aspirin he'd be fine. However, he had been sat down in the break room, told to relax and not do anything until Abby had finished her report and could take him home. He had tried to sneak out once and had been chased back by Lester of all people. It seemed that everyone had been threatened with the wrath of Abby if they so much as let him pick up a memory card.
All the attention had been flattering for about the first twenty minutes, but he was now desperate to analyse any data there might be. The anomaly had done something they hadn't seen it do before and he wanted to know why and what. The fact that it had nearly killed him made him want to understand it all the more. He was feeling a bit weird, but he was also dying to figure out what had happened. He had done all the calculations about what had happened in the British Museum and he was sure he should have been able to recreate the effect, but instead he'd almost died. He really needed to find out what he had done wrong.
The fact that he couldn't remember what he had been doing was very frustrating and he glared at the magazines on the table while trying to make his brain cough up the information. He wasn't really looking at them, but they gave his eyes something to do while he chased down any memories in his uncooperative mind. The problem was there didn't seem to be anything there to find, it was like his brain was a hard drive and the data about the morning had just been wiped away. Unfortunately he didn't seem to have the software to recover the lost data.
"Bugger," he said, annoyed at himself and the world in general and all the magazines fell off the table.
That rather shocked him out of his annoyance, since he hadn't been expecting that in the slightest. Grumbling to himself about people with an inability to stack, he put his tea down and bent down to pick them all up. The problem was that bending over made his head pound even more and he had to sit back before he'd picked up more than two. It was worse than the most awful hangover and he pinched his nose and closed his eyes, trying to make the thumping stop.
"Been destroying the place?" Abby's voice made him open his eyes again and he immediately wished he hadn't as his head throbbed in defiance.
"Someone can't stack," he complained back and rubbed at his temples.
"Head still bothering you?" Abby asked in a much more sympathetic tone.
They had given him some pain killers when he'd been examined, but they didn't seem to have helped much and the effect that they had managed to have seemed to be wearing off.
"Yeah," he admitted.
"Well let's get you home then," Abby decided, picking up the magazines for him.
The slippery publications had managed to make an impressive arc on the floor.
"You should be able to have some more pills by the time we get there," Abby continued to talk, "and then you can sleep off the headache. Your brains will only be slightly scrambled like normal by morning I'm sure."
He would have made a comeback about the scrambled brains, but he really couldn't be bothered. If Abby wanted to mother him, he was going to let her and when she pulled him to his feet he went meekly; anything for a bit of peace and quiet.
====
As it turned out, dying and being brought back seemed to have taken a lot out of Connor, because, when they had reached home, he had fallen into bed even though it was only three in the afternoon and he hadn't woken up until the next morning. It wasn't early either and he'd stumbled to the bathroom, got dressed and managed to make coffee before he found the note from Abby telling him that she had gone to work and he had the day off whether he liked it or not.
He felt fine and he wanted to get on with analysing what had happened the previous day, but he did have enough self preservation instincts not to go up against Abby on this one. Rex had tried it after being injured in the whole Leek incident and had ended up in a cage for three days for his own good. Connor didn't want to end up in a cage.
Resigned to his fate, he eyed the TV and the DVDs they had rented, but not yet had a chance to watch. If he was being forced to have the day off he was doing it properly and he began to potter around the kitchen, preparing snacks so that he could sit in front of the TV and move as little as possible. His head wasn't aching like the previous day, but it did feel a little delicate, so vegetating in front of a couple of movies didn't seem like such a bad idea.
Arranging things carefully, he set up his area so that everything was within arms reach and then he put on the first DVD. With Rex sitting on the chair behind him, watching almost as closely as he was and chirping in response to his comments, it was almost like having a real person to watch the movie with.
Two DVDs and more junk food than was good for him later, he had just sat down to start the third movie when he realised he'd left the remote next to the player when he'd changed discs. He was feeling lazy and lethargic thanks to not moving for so long and he moaned as he realised what he'd done.
"Hey, Rex," he said, turning to where his current companion was happily watching him and the TV, "couldn't get the remote for me could you, mate?"
It was a faint hope; Rex wasn't overly good at fetch, but he had to try. Rex just chirped at him and turned his head on one side: so much for that plan.
The remote was sitting on the DVD player, taunting him from across the room, and he knew he was going to have to stand up again, but he was comfortable. He glared at it as if it was in the wrong and then two things happened at the same time; the remote moved and the DVD started to play. Connor was on his feet in a second, behind the chair and looking for whatever had touched the remote.
"Do you see anything, mate?" he asked Rex, but the small dinosaur just looked at him as if he was a little insane.
It took him five minutes of looking very carefully before he dared venture across the room. His survival instincts were very well trained thanks to working with anomalies all day, every day and he checked everything before he went any closer. The thing was, there didn't seem to be anything there, nothing at all to explain what had just happened and when he picked it up, the remote was perfectly ordinary. He just couldn't work out what had happened, but one thing he did know was that he didn't fancy watching TV anymore.
Deciding that he was being ridiculous, he turned off the DVD and the TV and walked over to the kitchen to make some proper food for lunch. His head was aching gently again and it was probably too much junk in his system, so real food was the answer. A lorry must have gone by or something and caused the remote to move. There was a logical explanation somewhere and, as he set about creating a sandwich, he decided that after lunch he would do a few tests and figure it out. He had just chopped a tomato when his sleeve caught on the knife and knocked it off the side; straight towards his foot.
"Fu..." he began to swear and then his voice cut off as something very freaky happened.
The knife stopped in mid air a couple of inches from his foot and just hung there. It did not sway, it did not turn and in fact it did not move at all as he slowly backed away. He took his eyes off it for a second as he tried desperately to remember where his phone was and there was a thunk and he looked back to see it lying on the floor.
"Oh shit," he said and then hightailed it out of the kitchen area.
It took him about a minute to find his phone and then he dialled Abby.
"Connor," she greeted almost immediately, "what's up?"
"We've got a poltergeist," was what he told her as he looked round the room wondering what would happen next.
"A what?" Abby asked, clearly not believing him.
"A poltergeist," he repeated, trying to calm himself down a little. "The remote moved and the DVD started and the knife floated."
He was just a little freaked out.
"Connor, slow down," Abby said in a very calm tone from the other end, "now what's going on?"
"Things are moving by themselves," he said in as clear a way as he could.
There was silence from the other end of the call.
"I'm coming home," is what Abby said when she finally spoke, "just don't do anything, okay?"
"Um, okay," he replied, a little unsure if Abby believed him or thought he had lost it, but either way, at least she was coming back.
He spent the time it took for Abby to get home sitting on a chair in the living area with an electrical field metre he had fetched from his room and watching for anything odd happening. Strange things usually made him look for explanations, but this had him really spooked, so much so that he nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard Abby's key in the lock. He was on his feet and over to her before she was fully into the apartment.
"Connor, are you okay?" she asked, looking him over critically.
"Yeah," he said, since now that Abby was home he was beginning to feel a little stupid, "but weird things happened."
Abby dumped her coat and bag and walked with him back into the main part of the flat and she saw him look at his half made sandwich on the side.
"I didn't want to go back over there," he said, a little sheepishly.
"Tell me what happened," Abby instructed, seeming to realise he was somewhat on edge.
"I was relaxing like you told me to in your note," he said, going over everything in his head, "and I was watching DVDs, only I left the remote by the TV. I tried to get Rex to go pick it up, but you know he's no good at fetch, and then it moved and the DVD just started going like play had been pressed. When I looked there wasn't anything there so I thought it was just a fluke and I went to make lunch and then I dropped the knife, only it didn't hit the floor it floated for a bit and only hit the ground when I looked for my phone."
"It floated?" Abby asked in a sceptical tone.
"Floated," he confirmed, "a few inches above my foot."
Abby frowned then.
"So it would have hit your foot if it had fallen all the way?" she asked, and Connor was not sure what she was thinking.
"Yeah," he admitted; he hadn't considered it that way before.
"And you wanted the DVD on?" she asked next and Connor began to realise what she was saying.
He nodded as it dawned on him.
"Both were things I wanted," he said as it became blindingly obvious.
Abby didn't seem to mind that he had missed what should have been staring him in the face.
"Well at least if we're haunted, it's friendly," Abby commented and walked into the kitchen area. "Did you get anything on your meter?"
Connor looked down at the equipment in his hands.
"Nothing," he replied since there hadn't even been a peep.
Abby was looking around and ducked down behind the counter, coming back with the knife and putting it on the side.
"There's no sign of anything here," she said in a very scientific manner; "nothing that might indicate invisible creatures or anything like that. So we must be dealing with something else."
Connor walked over, feeling much braver now that Abby was there as well.
"Let's do an experiment," Abby decided and gave him a smile. "Things that you wanted, happened, so let's see if we can see it again. Hungry?"
He nodded, he was rather peckish even if Abby's idea did make him nervous.
"Then you probably want this sandwich, right?" she asked, putting the top on the half made meal for him. "Stand at the end of the counter and, well, want it."
It seemed a rather odd thing to do and Connor felt a little silly, but he couldn't fault Abby's scientific method.
"Just want it?" he asked dubiously.
"Yeah," Abby replied with a nod, "that seems to be the kind of thing that caused the incidents before."
Standing there staring at a sandwich made Connor feel even more stupid, but he did it. He was rather hungry, having promised his stomach food and then failing to deliver, so he concentrated. What he was expecting he wasn't sure, but, when the sandwich slid an inch or so down the counter, he stepped back as Abby swore. He would probably have used some very colourful language as well, but his headache chose that moment to resurface and he pinched his nose instead.
"Your head still bothering you?" was not the question he expected Abby to ask after having seen a moving sandwich.
"Yeah," he admitted, eyeing his lunch suspiciously, "headache keeps coming back every now and then."
"Every now and then after the poltergeist incidents?" Abby asked next and Connor really didn't know where she was going with her questions this time, but nodded anyway.
The damn headache really was annoying.
"Conn," Abby said in a very serious tone, "I don't think we have ghosts, I think we have you."
"Huh?" was about all he could manage in reply to that; what Abby was saying didn't make any sense.
"I think," Abby told him in a very understanding tone, "that you did that."
She pointed at the sandwich and Connor finally realised what she was implying.
"Don't be silly," he said as that just struck him as ridiculous, "how could I do that. 'Use the force, Luke' doesn't really count in real life."
Abby was looking at him with one of her 'stop begin an idiot' looks.
"Connor," she said as if pointing out the obvious, "yesterday you almost died. You got zapped by an anomaly in a way no one has ever seen before. Who knows what it could have done to you."
"It was just like lightning," he protested.
"It was not just like lightning," Abby replied firmly, "I saw it pick you up, completely surround you and then throw you fifteen feet."
"I'm still not telekinetic," he said, refusing to believe the idea, "that would be ... that would be ... huge."
When he finally let himself consider what she was saying, he felt like he might want to sit down.
"Conn," Abby said, placing a hand on his arm, "are you okay? You've gone really pale."
When he was a kid, well actually most of his life, Connor had dreamed about being a superhero or something like that and telekinesis had seemed so incredibly cool, but, faced with the possibility it might be real, he found himself shit scared.
"You really think that I might..?" he couldn't even finish the question.
"Maybe," Abby replied and gave him a supportive smile, "let's try again and see. Can you push the sandwich away?"
Nervous didn't quite cover it, but Connor did as he was asked; he looked at the sandwich and basically willed it away. It took about a minute and this time he was looking for it, so he felt something and then the sandwich moved back to where it had been.
"Bloody hell," was all he could think to say and then the stab of pain hit him between the eyes and he winced.
The headache was not a good side effect.
"I think," Abby said, rubbing his arm gently in a very supportive gesture, "that makes it official."
Now Connor really needed to sit down.
"We should take you to the lab," Abby said after a few moments, "get this checked out."
"Oh god, not today," Connor responded almost instantly, he couldn't think of anything worse, "I don't think I can cope with been prodded and poked, not after yesterday."
Abby looked sympathetic, but serious.
"Conn," she said gently, "this is important and we need to make sure those headaches aren't a bad sign."
Connor really, really did not want to become a lab specimen.
"Tomorrow," he said somewhat desperately, "can't we wait until tomorrow. I swear I won't try and do anything until then and for all we know this might be a temporary thing and it'll be gone by the morning and then they'll have been prodding me for no good reason and..."
"Okay," Abby broke into his begging, "I get it. Stop panicking. You're supposed to have the day off and I told the others I was coming home because you were feeling bad, so they won't be expecting either of us today. We'll wait, but, and I mean it, if anything weird happens before then, I'm packing you in the car and taking you to the ARC, okay?"
Connor nodded, more relieved than he could possibly say.
"Can I eat that now?" he asked, looking at the sandwich and trying to distract himself from his thoughts.
Abby laughed at that, which was just the reaction he was after.
End of Part 1
On to Part 2
