Title: Strange Similarities
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: I haven't owned anything I've written fanfic for yet, I'm not about to start claiming it now.
Rating: PG-13 ish? It's not really adult, but . . . well, I'm not so great at rating unless I'm doing out-and-out porn, which this isn't.
Summary: Stephen never realised how similar he and Connor were until he saw his teammate in his natural habitat. Kind of a timeless thing, but most likely S1-S2ish. Possibly. I sometimes warp timelines to my own purposes. There's no spoilers, anyhow.
A/N: So, first, I have no beta and definitely no brit-picker, so while I'll try my best, I'm Canadian, so please don't kill me if I miss something. I'll try to remember the big things that everyone knows, like car boots and bonnets, the classic truck vs lorry sort of thing, but my idioms and colloquialisms are either simply not there, or Harry Potter. Which is pretty much inapplicable. Have mercy. Second, I totally wrote off the cuff and in the LJ box, before I lost my nerve. Third, I don't know how I did with Stephen here, and this Connor is kind of a thought of my own about what he might be like around a collective of nerds like himself. I live on the fringes of university nerd communities, so a lot of this is sort of a composite sketch of that. Wish me luck!
From the first he'd seen Connor, Stephen had seen him as the kind of bumbling foolish student that was too socially inept to find someone to snog with, let alone to have managed to stop being a virgin. Unless it was a pity fuck or a bet or the like.
Certainly Connor stumbled over his words and didn't quite know what to say to people in casual small talk. He bragged about the oddest things, video game high scores and computers he'd done arcane things to, and possibly with, but Stephen had usually tuned out enough that he really couldn't be sure of any of the details. The ways he tried to woo Abby were awkward at best, and the way he was always chasing after some sort of approval from Cutter, Abby or even himself were clear markers of someone who had no self-confidence and very few friends.
Still, over the weeks and then months that he worked with Connor on the anomaly project, it became clear that the kid was really brilliant under all of his desperate plays for approval and attention, and while he didn't seem to have any particular talent for the physical parts of the job, when it came to a moment of confrontation, came to the crux, he could appreciate that Connor didn't seem to even know how to back down. Stephen was pretty sure he wouldn't have been as calm about facing down a mosasaur with nothing more than a paddle, but Connor had not only faced it down and beaten it off, he'd been together enough to pull a rough identification together off the top of his head. And yes, the database was the sort of pathetic thing only geeks with nothing better to do with their time because they had no lives in the outside world would do, it was still an impressive feat of organisational skill, and he had to admire that.
Lastly, underneath the awkwardness and the prattle and the senseless interest in trivial science fiction and fantasy, there was some raw potential. Connor didn't know how to fire a gun, but he was, oddly enough, a mean hand with a blunt object, and once he got over his weird complex about calling Stephen the mighty hunter, he was a not-terrible tracker. Not great, but his paleontologist's eye, trained over the course of a lifetime of interest in the topic and a lot of digs and fossilised dinosaur trackways, was quite good at picking out the things out of place that signified the passage of something over the ground and through the brush. In fact, as far as trackways went, if you gave him straight footprints, he was actually better than Cutter at reading them.
When he'd said as much, Connor had flushed and muttered something about a trip to the United States and R.T. Bird's biographies.
So, having spent years working with Cutter, and having taken the time out to get to know Abby's interests (which seemed to be lizards and taking the piss over that damned boa constrictor she'd left him holding in that woman's apartment that time), it only seemed right that he should see what Connor did when he wasn't tripping over himself in front of Cutter, Lester and Abby.
Which was how he'd wound up at this . . . he wasn't quite sure what to call it. It seemed to be part bar, part night club, part video arcade and part coffee shop. The word of the day for the clothing there was nonuniform. No one seemed to dress like anyone else. He'd see pockets of people dressed alike, but everyone there seemed to mix easily, despite clearly being of a variety of social cliques. He saw some who were dressed quite nattily, button up shirts and black or pinstripe trousers with leather dress-type shoes sat on couches and at tables, playing video games and talking about Star Trek and Doctor Who with women dressed in typical goth wear, side-by-side with young men and women dressed in ways that said nothing more than, "I'm up, I'm dressed, what more do you want?" Scattered throughout were those in somewhere more esoteric clothing, Connor's oddly nifty look of skinny jeans, Torchwood t-shirt, waistcoat, hat and ubiquitous fingerless gloves competed with a few young women dressed by the Society for Creative Anachronism in a combination of corsets, faux-velvet skirts and doc marten boots.
He didn't feel out of place in his clothing, and he knew enough bits and pieces about the topics he was hearing about the TV shows and comic books that he didn't feel like a complete fish out of water. Sure, the mathematical and computer esoterica being discussed by Connor and his friends, a circle of people drawn from every area of the university, from law to physics to English lit to one professional musician with the orchestra at the Royal Ballet, it left him out, but someone was always moving onto another topic that he could track again, and Connor was kindly redirecting the conversation into things Stephen could contribute to if he so desired.
What made him feel wrong-footed by the whole thing was the way that Connor had transformed as they'd stepped through the door. Nervous shuffling suddenly turned into a calm and easy lope that took him through the crowds. His body language became confident and Stephen had been shocked at how . . . well . . . sexy, Connor was.
When he left off the fumbling, let his shoulders relax and settled down at the table his friends had commandeered, it was like he was a completely different person. Smooth, confident, his sense of humour impeccably timed and riotously funny, it made Stephen wonder where this Connor had been hiding all the time. The dark eyes flashed and the dimple in his cheek practically flirted for him. His accent, which normally made him stand out in poor contrast to the others who tried so much harder to normalise to a properly BBC and Oxford University-style of RP, something you just did to get respect in the professional world, became almost a rough-and-ready warning that he was dangerous and sexy, and Stephen found himself ordering another beer to hide how . . . unsettled it was making him.
"Smooth bastard," muttered one of Connor's friends.
Stephen, who'd heard enough people call him that, (along with 'pretty boy', and the apparently eternal 'Hart the Tart'), turned to the friend. "Peter, wasn't it?" he asked.
"Yeah," said the student. "Conn's a good friend and he's fun and all, but he just gets all the girls falling all over him."
Connor turned, and with a cheeky grin Stephen remembered having on his own lips quite frequently, said something Stephen also remembered saying himself. "Oh, come on, Pete, just 'cause you're an ugly sod doesn't mean you have to ruin it for the rest of us!"
"Just 'cause you won't go off and find some Angelina Jolie to shag and leave the normal birds to the rest of us doesn't mean I'm ugly, pretty boy."
The whole exchange was nearly painfully familiar, as was the easy cocky grace with which Connor wound up snogging some girl while Stephen wondered if this sense of disconnection and separation from the real fun was something other people felt a lot. He wound up playing wallflower as Connor vanished slowly into the crowd, preening and laughing, Stephen's expert eyes picking out the girls sighing after his colleague.
It was just like when he'd gone out for a night of beer with his own mates, Stephen thought, except that instead of competing over who was better at football, pool, darts or skeet shooting, the competition was about who could build a better robot, hijack a computer better or beat someone else's high score at a computer game. The form was the same, but the skills needed were different. In this, Connor was an alpha wolf. He certainly was prowling around like one.
They left together much later that night, and Stephen watched as Connor's confidence and grace seemed to melt away, until by the time he was dropping Connor off at Abby's flat, the geeky, silly, uncomfortable boy had completely replaced the coolly sexy young man.
The whole thing left Stephen in a contemplative mood as he went home that night, wanting to see more, intrigued by Connor Temple's chameleon act.
He spent the day watching Connor be the awkward boyish and coltish person he'd been used to before, but now each flash of that dimpled smile was punctuated by the evening before and images of this sleek and confident Connor he'd seen. He wondered over it, his mind wandering as those small flashes of Connor Temple in his natural habitat intruded on his thoughts. Stephen found his eyes skirting over the way Connor's long fingers flashed over the keyboard and wondered if Nick's student was as competent at using them on another person as he was at plying his keyboard.
The thought of Connor as experienced would have been complete anathema to Stephen forty-eight hours before, but now he couldn't get the thought out of his head.
He wondered if Connor had experimented with men as well as women.
When Connor asked him with a hangdog expression if he'd like to go to something he was calling Plungers and Python Night, Stephen was hopeful enough of seeing this unknown Connor again that he agreed without even asking what it was supposed to be about.
It turned out to be a gaggle of nerds in someone's living room, arguing at length about which Doctor Who episode they should put on and the value of Classic Who over the newest iteration begun with Eccleston and whether the ninth or tenth Doctor was better.
On enquiring what Plungers and Python referred to, he was treated to a lengthy explanation about the iconic nature of a dalek's plunger appendage and how they sometimes did this with Monty Python films and episodes and that it was really a shorthand for whatever they could all agree to watch, which was sometimes just QI.
Then they talked through the whole thing because they were all so familiar with every nuance of the episode that not one of them had to do more than glance at the screen for a cue to wander into a vaguely related topic.
Connor was in the midst of it all, the life of the party, and the mayhem (involving enough bags of crisps to feed three times that many people and one desultorily produced vegetable platter) reminded Stephen of his undergraduate days. But he felt awkward. Whereas in those days he could have brought up the latest face-off between Arsenal and Manchester United (well, he was a City fan, actually, but sometimes it wasn't worth it to broadcast the fact) as an in to conversation, or whether Labour was doing something foolish in the media, here it seemed, no one cared.
Well, they were well enough informed about the politics, they just also all seemed to feel no desire to consider it a topic of conversation, preferring instead to bypass that straight to the political manoeuvring of the Federation of Planets in later series of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
Stephen found every conversational gambit he tried rebuffed, unless it was asking questions about the show that was on, or seizing hold of the conversation to tell some of his weirder stories from being out on paleontological expeditions to Patagonia.
He'd faded back into the position of wallflower again when Connor appeared at his elbow. "You look like how I feel at those inter-faculty meet-and-greets."
"You mean the ones that no one wants to go to but all the TAs and Contract faculty feel morally obliged to wind up at?" Stephen asked.
With a grin, Connor said, "Really, there's no reason to force the hard science snobs to interact with us soft wibbly science losers."
"Says the guy who gave up real science for mucking around with random guesswork and statistics." This was said by a woman dressed in that way that indicates a person who only cares that they are wearing clothing and doesn't much care as long as it's not too flashy, putting her in sharp contrast with her apparent boyfriend, who was impeccably clothed in dress shirt and trousers. The emphasis she put on the word 'statistics' was one of utmost, albeit joking, disdain.
"Says the mathematician who doesn't even do science, but mucks around with pointless numbers," Connor jeered back.
"Statisticians think they're God, and God thinks he's a mathematician," she riposted, with what was apparently some sort of punch line to a joke Stephen didn't get, but that sent half the room into laughter, and the other half into eyerolls.
"Science people," came a ragged chorus of mockery from some of those who had rolled their eyes.
"Artsies," came a good-natured return sneer.
Stephen had never been much for that particular rivalry in university life, but as he watched the easy camaraderie, including a couple foreign exchange students who someone fitted in better than Stephen, he asked in a small flash of insight, "Is this how you feel when we're in the field?"
Connor paused at the question, looking thoughtful, then said. "A little, I think. I mean, I know what to do with the other nerds like myself. My best pickup lines are jokes. You know, 'Hey baby, if you're cold we can huddle together for warmth.'" Abby had complained about the blatant line Connor had used to Stephen, who'd thought it was a sign of inexperience. The delivery in this room, however, made it a joke and invited the person on the other end to share in the ridiculousness of pickup lines. "I once got a date out of listing off every bad pickup line I'd ever seen and a few I made up on the spot."
"Abby thought you were serious."
Connor made a face. "I know. I just . . . I don't know how to make anything else work for me."
Stephen thought of his usual pickup lines and ways of landing a date and looked around the room. "I get the feeling I'd fare pretty badly here."
"I'unno," Connor said in joking contemplation. "You are pretty good looking and your arse seems pretty nice to me."
Stephen froze, and saw Connor do the same in the wake of that statement. Their eyes locked, and Stephen vaguely heard himself saying that he needed to get home because they had an early day tomorrow, which was a blatant lie. Connor agreed, their excuses were made efficiently, since he'd been Connor's ride over. The ride down in the lift was silent, and it wasn't until they were at the car, that Stephen heard Connor curse (somehow, the sound of that accent made his head spin), and the younger man pulled Stephen into a kiss that made him moan and clutch the no longer surprisingly taut arse in the skinny jeans and press their hips together.
For a few heady moments there was nothing but groping and the soft sounds of the pair of them snogging the living daylights out of each other. Hollering from the balcony brought them out of it. "Connor! Get your latest conquest off the street!"
Connor flipped them a rude gesture and hopped into the car.
Stephen practically flung himself into the driver's seat and said, "My place?"
"Oh, yes," Connor said. The grin he gave Stephen was that same smooth, confident and sexy smile that had captivated him in that club the day before. He felt a similar smile tug at his own lips and was gratified to hear Connor whimper and see a hand dart down to adjust things a little better.
He was just pulling into the street when he chanced a glance at Connor and nearly swallowed his tongue at the sight of Connor spraddle-legged in the passenger seat, his fingertips playing with the zip on his jeans. He heard himself whimper before he forced his eyes onto the road. When Connor chuckled, clearly having intended for just that response, he said, "Just remember who's got more pull with Nick."
"Pulling rank, Stephen?" Connor asked. He sounded husky, and damn if that didn't just make it harder to concentrate on the road.
"Whatever lets me stay top dog," Stephen replied.
They didn't speak again the rest of the way, and they were on each other the moment the door shut behind them. But before there just wasn't breath enough to speak or blood enough above the waist for any sort of cognition, Connor issued one last challenge. "Well, I guess we're about to see who's coming on top."
Fin