Chapter 3
Disclaimer: I don't own Primeval
Authors Note: I wanted to give Abby a past that would lead her to refusing to let an infant go into foster care, but wouldn't make her different from the strong, confident character we all know and love. This is the best I could do. This isn't gory and graphic but I'm making the next chapter a T just to be safe.
Thank you all my reviewers! This means you Trude, Fiona Bee, Maddi, Fairepeacock, iEvenstarEstel, SveaR, Cehsja and dorito! You inspire me to keep going ;)
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Abby plopped down on the couch and started right in. "Jack and I got taken into care when I was nine. I went through a bunch of foster homes and group homes. Sometimes Jack and I would be together, sometimes we wouldn't. There wasn't anything I could do about anything. So I became very independent," she waved her hands about to emphasis her point, "they said I was wild, or being a teenager or going through a phase or some shit like that."
Obediently, Connor kept his mouth shut and let her continue.
"So, when I was twelve I got a boyfriend. He lived down the row. I thought I was perfectly normal to have a boyfriend. I'd had other boyfriends before but I always got moved away from them, sent to a different school or whatnot." She took a deep breath, "The only problem was that Jasper was nineteen."
She was aware of Connor's eyes bugging out but she'd explained this so often it didn't make her hesitate. "I'll admit now that I was a bit young to be making decisions like when to start having sex-"
Connor couldn't help it, "You were twelve! He-"
"Was my boyfriend. Shut up Connor and let me finish. It was my decision, not his, he didn't pressure me or molest me like they said. I wanted to go all the way." Abby sighed at how naive she was, "Of course, we got caught, he got charged as a child molester but he didn't do much jail time because I told anyone who would listen he didn't molest me, he was my boyfriend and that's what girls did with their boyfriends. The only problem was that no one would listen."
Abby looked at him then and caught him studying Maddy, like he couldn't stand to face her after this revelation. He looked so sweet looking at the baby, and incredibly nervous. She went on with the rest of it, there was no going back now. If he thought she was a slut, then, well, there wasn't anything she could really do about it.
"Social services has a procedure they follow in what they term, 'molestation' and I got sucked into the system even further. They made me go through a medical exam which was absolutely horrible, they finally had to sedate me because I wasn't letting all of them get a gander under my jeans."
Connor could just picture a twelve year old Abby trying to fight off doctors and nurses and his heart broke a little for her. She continued on.
"They said he'd brainwashed me and that's why I wouldn't cooperate with them." She could still see their faces in her mind, telling her that they were just there to help her and she could trust them. They lied, but she had learned the important lesson about trust. The list of people she trusted as an adult was terribly short. Connor... and to a lessor extant some of the other people from the ARC. Abby dragged her attention back to her story.
"Then they made me go to counseling and they don't do it any more but then it was popular to put a bunch of girls in a room and encourage them all to relate their trauma." She started to pick at a piece of lint on her jeans. "That did something inside me, I'd have to sit there and listen to all these girls about my age talk about what their dad or uncle or mum's boyfriend had done to them and when it was my turn I'd just refuse to talk because for me...it wasn't like that."
Abby sighed deeply, "That just made it worse, the more I had insisted I wasn't abused the more they would insist that I had been and I was just in denial. We went around and around, I don't know how many therapists they made me see. Finally I just started running away to get away from it. My caseworker took that as a sign of my repressed abuse was making me act out. She finally locked me in Juvie until I finished school. I got done with two years in eight months." Abby stated a little proudly, "I started college a year early."
"Wow Abby, that's wonderful." Connor tried to find the bright side, "Can I ask a question?"
Abby reached out and let Maddy grab her finger, "Yes, you can ask a question."
"It was totally your decision to have sex?" Connor wanted complete clarification.
She reached out with her other hand and rested her hand on his cheek. "Yes. It was completely my decision. I was too young to be making that type of decision but I didn't have anyone to look out for me. That's why I couldn't let Madeline go into the system."
"Okay then. Well. That's quite a bit better than what I was expecting." Connor told her frankly, with his trademark grin, but then it faded a little, "but, you were twelve, he had to have...well...hurt you." He blushed furiously and went back to staring at the baby.
It took Abby a second to figure out what exactly he was hinting at then she laughed, "No Conn, he was tiny. It was pretty sad actually."
He perked up, "Oh, really? That's good then. I mean, well-"
Abby leaned over and meant to kiss him on the cheek, just a little friendly peck, but he chose that exact moment to look up again and her lips landed on square on his. He was surprised, but not for long. Before she could pull back he was leaning into her, and running his free hand in her hair to gently hold her close. She didn't mean to, but she found herself kissing him back just as passionately as he was kissing her.
She leaned over the baby and wrapped both arms around his neck, he dropped his hand and slid it around her waist to try and pull her closer in reflex, but there wasn't room. Eventually they broke apart to breath. They were both panting and Connor was thanking all the supreme beings in the universe he had brushed his teeth that morning.
"Wow." Abby said softly, Connor echoed her, "Wow." The baby said, "Waaaaahhhh," and she wasn't pleased about being pinned between them, even though they weren't actually pressing on her. Abby backed off a little and Connor relaxed his hold on her waist, but he left his hand resting on her hip.
"So...Can I kiss you again?" He asked in a rush. Abby laughed again as the awkward tension from the night before didn't surface at all. Instead, she only had Connor's handsome face.
"If you like. But we should wait for her to go to sleep again." That wasn't happening anytime soon. Maddy was getting wound up. Sid and Nancy galloped into the living room, attracted to the squalling baby. They had been intensely curious about her when she was crying but Abby and Connor didn't let them get too close. They were going to have hell when she started crawling and walking.
Connor stood up and started walking with her, "I think we should be getting a rocking chair or a swing or something." He commented as she quieted almost immediately as either the new view or the movement soothed her. "She gets bored in one place.
"A rocking chair would be nice. Maybe we could go by Tiny Tots tomorrow after work. I'll bring a thermos with us. We can put hot water in it when we leave work and make a bottle at the store after she wakes up."
Connor grinned at her, "Abby that's brilliant." She returned his smile and didn't tell him that the daycare lady had given her that tip. Brilliant was brilliant.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
The next day they had a creature incursion, nasty slimy giant slug creatures that wouldn't have left any evidence in the fossil record. They were gross and Connor managed to fall on one of them while they were herding them back through the anomaly. Becker was still laughing about it.
He was showering in the locker room while Abby retrieved the baby. Lester called her right after she got Maddy from the nursery. His terse demand to come by his office before leaving made her roll her eyes at the phone. "Come on Maddy, let's go see uncle Lester."
She shifted the baby to her other arm and headed back downstairs. Abby spotted Becker flirting with Jess in the form of elaborately reenacting when Connor fell on his ass in a pile of giant slimy slugs that turned out to be very cuddly when someone was on their level and couldn't get up. Jess was laughing with one hand over her mouth as he waved his arms around. He stopped when he noticed Abby walking into the main room.
Becker looked guilty for a brief instant and Abby suddenly had a wonderful idea. "Just the people I wanted to see. Watch her for me, will you? Lester wants to see me." Before he could protest Abby had deposited the baby in the startled man's arms and swept away up the stairs to the sound of Jess's giggling.
"Yes? You wanted to see me?" Abby said by way of introduction, his door wasn't even shut. Lester barely looked up from the file he was working on. "I wanted to give you something, it's more for Madeline when she's older." He passed a photograph across the desk. Abby looked at it for a moment before recognizing her. "It's her real mother."
"Yes. I had the funeral parlor clean her up and take that before she was cremated. I thought that her daughter would like to see what she looked like." Lester tried and failed to keep emotion out of his voice. Pretending to be focused on paperwork wasn't fooling anybody so he gave it up and looked at Abby.
"That's sweet of you. I didn't even think about it." She said numbly as she studied the photo of the young woman. She looked a bit like Abby's grandmother, with high cheekbones and very fair complexion. Whoever had styled her body for the photo had arranged her hair around her face like a bright red halo on the pillow. She was beautiful and looked as if she was only sleeping. Lester kept talking to cover the awkwardness.
"Quite all right. That's why I make the big bucks. The medical examiner estimates that she wasn't more than fifteen years old. Analysis of her clothes and diet estimates that she was from about 700 A.D. somewhere along the coast of Scotland. Naturally, records are very sketchy from that period but if she was right and everyone else in her village/farm was killed then even if the vikings didn't run the baby through, she would have died of exposure before anyone found her."
Abby shivered, "So the time line is safe then?"
He shrugged, "As far as we know."
The sound of a baby crying drew their attention, they both looked out the glass onto the operations floor. Madeline had gotten tired of being handled like a large hand grenade and she was letting Captain Becker know it. Jess took her away from him and rocked her, to no avail.
"I'd better get back down there." Abby excused herself. She was halfway down the ramp when Connor was drawn into the room by the squalling. "Here," Jess said quickly and passed her over. "Becker upset her."
The dark haired soldier was insulted, "I did not. She started wailing all on her own." He tried to defend himself to the womenfolk. Connor came to his defense, "Sometimes she just likes to be noisy." This was despite the fact as soon as Connor had her she quit crying. "Yeah!" Becker agreed.
Connor spotted the photo in Abby's hand, "What's that?"
Abby glanced down at it again, "It's her real mother." She passed the picture around to the three of them. "Lester had it taken, he thought she might want it when she's older."
Jess was holding it and scrutinizing it closely, "She was gorgeous." Becker would have agreed with that assessment if it didn't make him look like a lecherous old man. Instead he said, "You're going to have hell with the boys when she's older."
Connor looked insulted. "She's not allowed around boys until she's thirty."
"That's a bit harsh, I was thinking more like sixteen." Abby and Connor jokingly bickered back and forth as they left. They went to the baby store, Tiny Tot's, and picked out a swing. They parked Maddy in all the floor models and bought the one she seemed to like best. She seemed to like the shopping trip. Connor managed to put more star wars themed items in the cart that Abby pretended to ignore.
That evening Connor decided to bring up a subject he had raised a few days before. "So...Abby...about us staying in the same room..." She looked up from her laptop and gave him a very skeptical look, "I'm not picky, we can all sleep in my room." He offered selflessly.
Abby sighed theatrically, "I supposed, in the interest of convenience, as long as she's waking up two or three times a night, we could all stay in the same room. But there's got to be some guidelines."
He grinned like Rex with a fresh mango. "Anything you want."
"You'd have to stay on your side of the bed. No wandering hands."
Connor shook his head firmly, "Absolutely not." He came over and started to rub her shoulders, "We wouldn't want to move too fast...I mean, two kisses in three years, that positively hasty by some standards." Abby laughed and wasn't surprised at all when he bend down to kiss her again.
"Oooh, Spiderman kiss." She whispered. "What?" He pretended to be surprised. "You said to wait until she was asleep." They both glanced over at the new swing that was set up in the middle of the room. Madeline was sleeping like, well, a baby. Rex was laying along the top with his tail hanging down. He seemed to enjoy the slight swaying of the swing. Abby made a mental note to cover the top with heavy canvas or something that he could dig his claws into.
Connor sat down beside her and tugged her towards his side. "Abby, I love you." She leaned against him and sighed, "I know." His whole face lit up, "Really?"
"Yeah. I love you too, and I don't want to mess us up. Can we move slowly on this?" She asked him a little desperately. He understood that she needed time to adjust, "Yeah, we've been living together for a few years, got a baby now, soon we'll work our way up to two kisses every quarter."
Abby laughed again, "I don't mean that slowly, just, lets ease into things. I'm saying I don't want to skip to the end right away, right?"
"I kinda fancy some endings." Connor pouted, still with his arms around her, "Like when Han Solo kisses Princess Leia right before Boba Fett freezes him in carbonite?" She giggled, "So you're about to be frozen and delivered to a intergalactic crime boss?"
"Well, not precisely. It was terribly romantic, she finally says I love you, he says I know-"
"I just said that!" Abby exclaimed in surprise.
"It was very sweet of you to quote Star Wars during a romantic moment." She looked up at him, completely aware of how he had oh so casually slid his arms around her. His eyes twinkled at her and he was smiling, like he was wondering just how much he could get away with now.
"Just kiss me again." She requested softly. He happily complied.
This time he broke it off, "If you want to take things slow," He panted, "We'd better stop making out now." He could feel her heart racing under his hand. "Yeah," she agreed, somehow she had ended up nearly laying on top of him on the couch, "I think you're right." Damn but he felt good under her, she thought, having no idea that his current thoughts mirrored hers exactly.
"Come on, we've got to wake her up, feed her and put her back down before it gets too late." Connor told Abby as they shifted apart. She had a different idea, "What if we just left her asleep? It's almost nine. We could see what happens."
"All right. We'll see what happens."
She didn't stir as Abby gently lifted her out and carried her upstairs to her crib. "Which half is your half?" Connor whispered. "That one." Abby waved at the far side of the bed. Actually, it was the middle half, but that wasn't going to fly right now. Connor commenced shucking his clothes off. She tried to be subtle about checking him out clad only in boxers while he climbed into bed. He had a nice ass.
Abby took the time to take a shower and give Connor time to get settled in. He had gotten cleaned up right after they got home so hopefully he'd be asleep when she got out of the shower. Everyone seemed to be sleeping peacefully when she returned. She checked the baby, an action that was already second nature before getting into bed. The tank top and underwear she was wearing made her feel decidedly overdressed for bed but it was the least she could wear and be decent.
Madeline was still sleeping peacefully on her back, with her arms flung up over her head. She was adorable, even with her bald head.
Abby settled in on her side, Connor was laying in a mirror of Madeline, with his arms underneath his pillow. He cracked an eye open and admired her slender form. She caught him watching. "Good night Connor."
"Good night Abby. I love you."
"I love you too."
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
They only slept until eleven, when their air raid siren went off. Connor was right, it went faster with them both in the same room. She changed the baby while Connor made the bottle. Abby settled back into bed and fed Maddy. "It's more relaxing laying in bed doing this than sitting on the couch." She commented quietly.
Connor had propped himself up on one side and was watching her. "You're beautiful."
She blushed. "It's your turn next."
"I'm sure I won't be as gorgeous at it as you." He rumbled as he laid back down in the bed. "This mattress is really soft, is it a pillow top?" Abby rolled her eyes at him. "It's comfy." He tried in vain to defend himself. "Marry me."
"Connor!"
"Was that not taking it slow?"
"NO!"
"Sorry." He wasn't repentant at all and she knew it.
O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
A few hours later it was his turn to stay up with the baby while she ate. She ate slowly and sometimes Connor had to jostle her to keep her awake and sucking on the bottle. Abby was right, it was more relaxing to lay in bed during these middle of the night feedings then to sit on the couch.
Abby had dropped off again after making him a fresh bottle. He took the chance to study her while she was sleeping. He thought she was adorable, but he'd thought that from the moment he met her. He noted interestedly that she snored a little. He could live with that. He realized with a complete shock that he was happy. He had his own little family to look after and it wasn't just comprised of reptiles.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
In the morning Abby became aware of consciousness slowly, she was warm and wrapped in a something cozy. After a few seconds she realized it was Connor, spooning up against her with one arm flung over her side. They were pressed together firmly, between skin and blankets she was totally comfortable.
"Morning," he whispered in her ear. "Morning." She replied with a yawn and stretch.
"Before you say anything, I didn't violate the very firm my-side-your-side rule." He continued on resolutely.
"What?" Abby lifted her head up slightly and looked around. She was solidly on his side of the bed. "I think this means unconsciously, you want me." He smirked.
"I do want you." She told him, still too comfortable to move away. "I just want to enjoy dating for a while."
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
A/N: Life isn't all sunshine and kittens for our intrepid heros! In the next chapter they get to face the scariest monster of all. A Bureaucrat With A Firm Expectation Of What Is Right And Proper With The Law.