Yet another AU from me, again based on one of the alternate Connors from iEvenstarEstel's 'Cloudy With a Chance of Connors'. (Well, hey, there were seventeen of them to pick from!) This one comes from a world in which no anomalies exist at all, and Connor is a professor following in Nick's footsteps. In Evenstar's fic, he's dating an alternate Abby who likes corrupting his stuffy exterior. I decided to write about their first meeting. I'm not sure why I wrote it this way, but it seemed to fit. I may add more if the mood strikes and there's enough interest.

Disclaimer: I do not own Primeval or any of the characters or concepts therein. Nor do I own any of the alternate-universe Connors from iEvenstarEstel's fic.

o...o

Was a man entitled to a stag night after he'd already been married, Connor wondered? It wasn't as though Cutter was a traditional single bloke since his divorce, playing the field and having wild parties. His idea of a 'wild night' was having a few whiskeys and then grading papers drunk. He wasn't a dull man, he was just... reserved. Claudia Brown—soon to become Claudia Cutter, he remembered, which sounded a bit odd but to each his own—was the best thing that'd ever happened to him. He'd come to life when he met her, smiling, happy, vibrant—young.

Ten years ago, Nick's Helen walked out on him. He came home and there was an empty wardrobe and a note explaining her year-long affair with Stephen Hart and that their marriage was over. It turned out that Stephen's friendship with his mentor was more important to him than his youthful fascination with Helen Cutter, and he wouldn't have her, either. The last anyone had heard of her, she was arrested making a nuisance of herself somewhere in the Forest of Dean, blabbering on about tears in space and time and 'everything can be undone!'—she was put into a psychiatric hospital following her assault on a police officer.

Cutter wasn't the same man after she left, though. Eventually the rift between him and Stephen was repaired and he made some effort to go on with his life, but it was clear it plagued him. And then one night there was Claudia, desperate to escape a bad pickup-artist by going for the most harmless-looking bloke at the bar under the guise of seeing her boyfriend. He was smitten right away and she'd been an unwitting witness to Helen's madness—she was with Cutter when he was informed of her arrest—and she never flinched when she learned the story. From then on they were attached at the hip. Cutter was ready to ask her to marry him in two weeks, and everyone close to him was surprised he'd waited two years before actually doing so.

And tonight was his stag night. Really, he'd've been happy having a few drinks and telling lame stories at his usual haunt in the pub near the university but Stephen, who was the best man despite everything that happened between them in the past, wouldn't let that happen. He took it upon himself to herd them all to a swankier place, the kind where sexy girls wore leather tops and the drinks were the colour of highlighter ink. It was Stephen and Cutter, his brother Robin, the brusque jack-of-all-trades Danny Quinn whom he'd become close to following Danny's stint as a chopper pilot ferrying a helicopter full of palaeontologists back and forth to Greece—and Connor.

And Connor felt pretty damn out of place. Stephen was always ready for a party, especially where there were cute girls (and the occasional guy) to chat up. People were drawn to Stephen—he was magnetic and charming and so freaking hot it made Connor want to punch him. Danny was perpetually single and was quite familiar with the bar scene, as was Robin, who wasn't a damn thing like his older brother. After a few drinks, even Cutter had loosened up. But Connor wasn't a drinker and didn't like bars. While other guys from uni were waking up naked in unfamiliar flats next to women whose names they couldn't remember, he was illegally downloading episodes of Battlestar Galactica and loitering around Star Wars fan forums. Perhaps there was something to that old saying, 'Youth is wasted on the young'. But he wasn't young anymore—over thirty—and at times he felt like he had wasted his youth. He was generally considered to be a smart man—he consistently tested high on IQ tests, he was intellectual and had a near-encyclopaedic knowledge of dinosaurs, and he was one of the youngest professors at the university, teaching palaeontology—but he was woefully naive about the social world around him. He wasn't sociable or outgoing, not in the least. The only girls and women who had ever been interested in him were those who felt sorry for the poor socially awkward geek wearing an X-Men t-shirt with a waistcoat.

So he sat at the bar nursing a club soda and watching Danny drunkenly lurch around the floor and call it dancing. He'd turned up at the bar 'pre-festive', as he called it, already a little wobbly on his feet and tipsy. Now he was just drunk—eventually he'd get to the point where he'd hit on anything upright that didn't slap him, which generally tended to be something like a jukebox or telephone booth, and Connor would have to take him outside and pour him into the back of Stephen's truck so he could sleep it off and pray to anything that might listen that the man wouldn't vomit on himself or the car and be at least moderately human in time for the wedding tomorrow afternoon.

At the moment when Danny stumbled off the dance floor and walked sideways straight into the ladies room, Connor decided it was time to put him outside before he ended up arrested. Again.

"Stephen," he had to say his friend's name three times right into his ear, and very loudly, to get his attention over the thudding music. "Stephen, I need your keys!"

"Why, you found someone you want to take into the back seat?" He asked jokingly.

"It's just Danny—"

"You wanna take him into the back seat? Never figured him for your type."

The girly giggle made Connor look up and he was immediately taken aback by the shockingly beautiful blonde woman with a short haircut and a tight red t-shirt with the neck obviously cut out. Her eyes were clear blue and her skin like porcelain and her cheeks and lips tinged pink. He was grateful for the bar stool behind him that he quickly sank into when his knees buckled out from under him. He was going to make some stupid smartass comment at Stephen and then demand his keys again, but the entire English language died in his head when she met his eyes and smiled a radiant white smile at him.

"Hi," she said cheerfully. "Are you... friends?" The emphasis she put on the word suggested she thought he and Stephen might be together and looking for a threesome.

"We're, uhm... going to a wedding," Connor said slowly, unable to peel his eyes away from her. How did Stephen get all the gorgeous girls? Because Stephen was gorgeous, he imagined. He never wanted to kick another human being in the face as badly as he did just then.

"Oh, are you?" She asked, eyebrows raised as she looked back and forth between the two of them.

"Oh—oh! Oh, god, no, not like that! It's, uhm, we're—I'm—he's—we're not..."

Stephen shoved his car keys into his hand and turned Connor by the shoulders, effectively saving him from himself. "Go put Danny in the car, he's just gotten chucked out of the ladies."

"Right. Ta." He was glad for the dim lighting inside the club that hid the fact that his ears were turning a remarkable shade of red.

He grabbed Danny and draped his friend over his shoulder, leading him out of the dense air of the club and into the cool May night. He carelessly chucked him into the back seat—by now he wasn't feeling any pain—and closed the door. He didn't go back into the club but instead rested his forehead against the cold metal of the truck door.

Why the hell did he so consistently make an ass of himself in the presence of attractive girls? For goodness sake, he was thirty-three, not thirteen. But he'd never really learned the skills, had he? All of his experience with women was accidental, incidental, or purely professional. He never felt anything for any of his fellow professors and teaching aides, because, well, that would be unprofessional. He could deal with his female students all right, but they were his students; a small handful of times, after the term was over and he was no longer their professor, a young woman would make some kind of romantic offer to see each other outside of the confines of the university, a prospect that not only made Connor feel like a dirty old man but that also filled him with an unparalleled sense of dread. Without the propriety of the student-professor relationship for a shield, he always found himself stuttering stupidly like an escapee from some kind of group home. He refused every time, flustered and embarrassed and muttering about impropriety and unprofessional boundaries.

Indiana Jones never had that problem, but then again Indiana Jones was a badass of the highest order, not some overgrown science-fiction nerd.

In his mind he kept replaying his brief encounter with Stephen's stunning blonde—he'd get her phone number and make a date with her, he knew. Were it any other night, he wouldn't even wait that long and would sleep with her tonight, but they had a wedding to attend tomorrow and he could hardly turn up as Cutter's best man in last night's clothes. Stephen would undoubtedly smooth over the idiot way he'd stuttered and stumbled like a teenager and the blonde would forget he ever existed. Or maybe he'd turn into some running joke between herself and her friends, an inside-joke tossed around on Twitter or something.

"Stupid—stupid—stupid!" He growled at himself, clunking his head on the side of the car. He sighed and looked back at the club. He didn't really want to go back in, but he knew Stephen would probably come out looking for him eventually. He could always get a cab and go home, but he didn't want to disappoint Cutter. So, reluctantly and dragging his feet all the way, he went back up to the building.

"Hey."

His head snapped up and he promptly tripped up the pavement when he saw her there. He caught himself and didn't even bother to try damage control—she already thought he was an idiot so there was absolutely no point. Now that he got the whole picture, she was even more beautiful and he knew he'd be even more stupid if he dared open his mouth. He'd either not be able to talk at all or talk way too much. Either way was bad.

God, she was gorgeous. She was fairly tall and petite, all subtle curves and softness under her club-wear—the cut-up red t-shirt now covered by a black denim jacket, festooned with colourful badges and buttons and patches, tight faded jeans and black lace-up boots. There was a delicate pink silky scarf loosely draped around her neck and over one shoulder. She had a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, and she offered him one. He shook his head.

She jerked her head at the door. "Your friend in there's a bit forward for me. I said I had to make a call—just wanted some fresh air, really."

"Which is naturally spoiled with cigarette smoke."

He wasn't even thinking when he blurted it out and immediately snapped his mouth closed and wished he hadn't said anything at all. To his surprise, she laughed good-naturedly.

"All right, you got me," she said. She snuffed the barely-smoked cigarette out on the brick wall behind her and tucked it back into the pack. "I'm Abby," she said.

"I'm—I'm Connor," he stammered, surprised that he could actually remember his own name for once.

"What is it you do?" She asked. "You look awful out of place here. Jittery."

"I'm a professor—I teach palaeontology."

She paused and looked him up and down slowly, her gaze nearly tangible. He had an incredible urge to cover himself with his hands, because no matter how old he got and what he academically knew, a lifetime absorbed in comic books meant he was always afraid that someone somewhere really did have x-ray vision.

"You look awful young for a professor. Either that or you're in your fifties and just aged really well." Her broad smile was infectious and he couldn't help but return it. It put him at ease, if only slightly. She hadn't run away in disgust, at least not yet.

"I guess there's something to be said for being closed up inside an airtight office all the time," he joked. "What about you?"

"I don't have an airtight office."

Now it was his turn to laugh.

"No, I mean—"

"I work at the Wellington Zoo," she said before he could finish the question. "I'm a zoologist but my speciality is herpetology. Lizards and snakes and the like. Sounds like we're sort of in the same business—you study dead lizards, I study live ones."

"Well, strictly speaking palaeontology isn't just the study of dinosaurs, 'dead lizards' as you put it. It's the study of all forms of prehistoric life, all of life on earth, and their evolutionary patterns and timelines and the like. Even early humanoids come under that heading. Really, dinosaurs only account for a small portion of palaeontology. And anyway, current theory suggests that dinosaurs weren't as closely related to modern lizards as we originally thought but have more genetic similarities with birds—"

Oh, god, he'd done it again. He was yammering on like an idiot who didn't know when to cut his losses and shut the fuck up. Abby looked more than a little stunned at his sudden verbal spike, her eyebrows raised and her hands on her hips. Her expression was one of surprised interest, like he was some kind of novelty.

"Oh, hell, I'm sorry," he said, his whole face flushing. "I didn't mean to—I'm sorry. I shouldn't have gone all... all..."

"Indiana Jones?"

"He was an archaeologist."

Again with the saying stupid shit! Why couldn't he just do something convenient like faint dead away and give this poor woman a chance to escape?

"I'm sorry," he said again. "I'm just gonna turn my back and let you run screaming into the night."

"What makes you think I wanna do that?" She asked. It was then Connor realized that she'd been inching closer to him this whole time, and was now barely six inches from him. He could reach out and touch her.

"Uhh..."

She giggled and put her arms around his neck, so close now that he could feel her breath on his face and the heat of her body. "I like you," she whispered.

And then she kissed him. Really kissed him, open-mouth and tongue and everything. He thought that maybe her friendliness and willingness to talk to him was due to her being drunk, but she certainly didn't taste like she'd been drinking, and in seconds he'd abandoned all higher thoughts and kissed her back.

He operated entirely on instinct he didn't even know he had, matching her fervour with his own and pushing back against her. His hands settled on her waist, daringly slipping under her jacket to settle on that skin-tight t-shirt. She was warm and inviting and made no move to stop him. Her hands threaded into his hair and pressed into his scalp and the back of his neck, her body flush against his—chest to chest, belly to belly, her hips grinding into his—all making him whimper softly.

He felt her smile into their kiss and then, in a surprising display of strength, physically turned him around and backed him into the alley next to the club. He stumbled, trying not to trip over his own feet or hers or bump into anything without breaking this electrifying kiss.

She pushed him back against the wall, hands scrabbling at his layers of shirts—waistcoat and hoodie and t-shirt with the guitar-playing T-rex and the words 'Tyrannosaurus Rox' printed on it. No matter how old and boring and stuffy he got, he never let go his fondness for screened tees. He never wore an undershirt under his shirt and tie at work but kept wearing his superhero and sci-fi tees.

She popped the buttons off his waistcoat and sent them clattering off into the darkness, then pulled his sweatshirt open to reveal the startlingly juvenile shirt beneath it. She stepped back to get a look at it in the dim light of the alley and grinned.

"Guitar-playing dinosaurs and Indiana Jones? You're just a kid at heart, aren't you?"

"Don't spread that around, yeah?" He rasped.

"Gonna make me?"

It was meant as a light-hearted tease, but the breathy tone of her voice and her swollen pink lips and her half-lidded eyes made his groin tighten and his chest flutter. Then he brought his mouth back down to hers again and she laughed huskily before sighing and cupping the back of his neck—let her think it was his clever answer to her tease. He just wanted to kiss her again.

He had no idea what'd gotten into him, if his drink was spiked with something or if he'd inhaled something illicit while in the club, that made him behave so totally differently than he ever would have before. Snogging a girl he'd only just met in a dark alley next to a club was something other guys did, not him. He was too shy, too awkward, too afraid of the unknown and failure and humiliation and rejection to dare make such a bold move. But here he was. Abby made the first move and he followed her lead—no hint of rejection or failure in sight as she mewled kittenishly at everything he did, pressed closer, silently begged him for more. And he complied, give and take. It was like there was some strong magnetism between them, pulling them together.

He wrapped his arms tight around her, trying to do away with every single last air molecule between them and deepened the kiss, pouring all of himself into the kiss. She smelled good, tasted good, felt good. She was warm and inviting and the more he kissed her the more of him she seemed to want. He squeezed her hip and then boldly brought his hand around over the swell of her backside; when he was met with no resistance, he slide that hand up the back of her jacket and up the back of that tight t-shirt to trace the contours of muscle and the dip of her spine. The contact of skin on bare skin was electric and flooded them both with heated excitement, her soft skin against the coarse pads of his fingers. He could feel the slightly raised pattern on her skin that he recognized as a tattoo. He couldn't tell what it was by touch alone. He wondered if he'd ever see...

She pushed away from him suddenly, and for a brief moment Connor felt the familiar sharp lance of panic rise up in his chest. Had he done something wrong? Had he gone too far? What happened?

And then she tugged at the bottom of his shirts and the top of his jeans, and he knew what was going through her head. Her cool, delicate fingers slipped under the waist of his boxers and the breath slammed out of his lungs.

"Wait!" He hissed, in a sudden moment of clarity in his lust-fogged brain.

Immediately her hand was gone and she'd stood back. That meant a lot, didn't it? One word from him and she'd backed right off. "You wanna stop?" She asked.

"Yes—I mean no! I mean, not here." He panted, trying to gather some shreds of self-control. His jeans were uncomfortably tight and his chest was heaving. "I still have Stephen's keys." The last thing he wanted was to get too far into something and have Stephen turn up looking for his car keys and see... everything. Oh, god, he'd never hear the end of it if that happened.

"So..." she leaned back into him and drew out the syllable, tracing his cartoon dinosaur with the tip of her finger. Even though his shirt it made him shiver delectably. "You're going to give 'em back?"

He nodded.

"And then what?"

She whispered the question, a loaded question, close to his lips.

Abby stayed carefully back to avoid Stephen as Connor went into the bar to give his friend back his keys. By now he'd found another girl to chat up, a tall leggy woman with bronze toffee skin and glittering black onyx eyes, and barely noticed the return of his keys.

And with that, hand in hand like giddy teenagers, Connor and Abby made their escape.

If anyone noticed that he turned up at the hotel the following morning with his morning suit slung over his shoulder, his eyes tired and in last night's clothes, they said nothing.