Some mostly lightheartedness, the day before Connor moves out.
"C'mon, Connor! Anomaly alert, we're going to be late!"
"Mhhf..." He mumbled, face in his pillow.
"Get up before I let Sid and Nancy pee on your best waistcoat!" That got him up, falling out of bed, a leg and an arm caught in the blankets haphazardly strewn about. He looked up blearily to see Abby standing in his doorway.
"You wouldn't!" He would later deny that the sound was a wail as he spoke.
"How much you wanna bet?!" Abby said, leaving the room with a smirk. He grumbled, untangled himself, and reluctantly trudged to the loo. Five minutes later, a dressed-but-still sleepy-looking-Connor made his way into the kitchen. Abby rolled her eyes at him and passed him a mug of coffee, sipping at her own tea as she got ready to go. A few moments of Connor grumbling as he munched on toast with butter, and Abby rolled her eyes again and disappeared into the loo.
"Connor! Again?!"
"Wha'?"
"Your boxers, Connor. Are you that sleep-deprived that you can't remember not to leave them around?!" She snapped at him.
"Oh. Sorry." He was, but she was sort of right. He'd been working like crazy to get the ADD back up to speed as well as build his anomaly locking device.
She made an irritated noise and kicked the boxers into the hall with her foot, closing the door in his face.
"Hey, Conn?" He looked up from the ADD, fingers stilling over the keys.
"Yeah, Abbs?" He asked, curious.
"Sorry. About earlier, I mean. I know things are hard. You've been coming home exhausted, I shouldn't expect you to remember everything first thing in the morning." She admitted, leaning on his shoulder to look at the screen.
"Eh, it's alrigh', Abbs. I should've known better than ta leave 'em around, yeah? But thanks, for apologizing I mean... What're you doing?" He furrowed his brow in confusion.
"How do you even understand any of this, Conn?" She asked, somewhere between amused and impressed. He grinned easily.
"Dunno, comes easily to me."
"Why'd you choose Paleontology in the first place, then?" She asked, sitting down in the other chair and swiveling around.
"Well, computer stuff's really easy for me, y'know. I could hack my school's systems by the time I was 8. But I always loved dinosaurs, and fossils, and it was more of a challenge for me than computer programming or somethin' like tha." He told her with a chuckle. She raised her eyebrows, smiling at him.
"You hacked your primary school's computer system? Why?" She asked, laughing.
"Y'know Duncan? Me 'n him, we knew each other since we were really young. He knew how smart I was, told me I was a bloody genius, since I could've been promoted at least three times, but I turned 'em down." She wondered why, but she wanted to hear the rest of the story. "So, we had a really mean, nasty old berk of a teacher, an' He didn't like me or Dunc at all, dunno why. I hacked in, messed around a bit on his private computer he'd hooked up ta the main system, and I found a video."
"Oh?" She asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Yeah, really embarrassing. His ex-wife'd recorded him talking in his sleep, singing in the shower, stuff like tha'. So I took tha', uploaded it to every computer in the whole school, and didn't even get suspected of it!" Connor finished, laughing easily for the first time in days, and she joined in, grinning.
"Wow, wouldn't have thought you'd be the one ta prank a teacher, Conn." She told him, still chuckling.
"You should've seen what me, Dunc, and tom got up to at uni." He said, with another flash of that wicked, mischievous grin. Which faded a moment later as he realized what he'd said.
"Connor..."
"I'm fine." It was almost snapping, except that his tone was more weary than irritated.
"Well, don't go back to work just yet, it's past lunchtime now. C'mon. Becker and Jenny are probably wondering where we are..." Abby said slowly, leaning forwards.
"They'll know I'm here, working on the ADD like I'm supposed to, and you're going ot be on your way back, yeah?" He said shortly, trying to avoid her gaze.
"You're not hungry?" She gave him a careful, searching look.
"No." His stomach protested loudly at that moment, and he met Abby's eyes, cheeks a little pink. "Maybe. Sort of."
"Idiot." She said with a chuckle, grabbing his hand and towing him after her to the break room.
"Abby!" He whined, but was grinning as he caught up to her and they walked side-by-side through the corridors of the ARC.