Fic, Don't Wait Up, Helen/Nick, 12
Apr. 16th, 2012 08:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fredbassettTitle : Don’t Wait Up
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 12
Characters : Helen, Nick
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Word Count : 1,180
Summary : Helen longs for the days when it used to be her and Nick against the world.
A/N : 1) Written for the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
primeval_denial Challenge Team Fest for a prompt from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rain_sleet_snow, I am just going out, I may be some time.
“You can’t carry on like this, Helen.” Nick stared at her across the breakfast table, his face furrowed into a frown.
“Like what?” She knew perfectly well what he meant, but had every intention of forcing him to spell it out.
“Clinging to this…” Nick hesitated, groping for the right word before settling for, “Obsession.”
“I’m researching a serious scientific theory!”
“It’s preposterous!”
She shook her head, torn between sadness and anger. When they’d first come together – when their relationship had been all new, exciting and passionate – they’d been a team, sharing the same interests and the same ambitions, but somewhere along the line, Nick had been seduced by the establishment and Helen had been sidelined. She hadn’t even really seen it coming until the day she’d asked him to look at a draft paper she’d been working on and he’d read the abstract then simply tossed it aside, telling her he’d get back to it later, but he never had and after that she’d stopped asking.
“There is no rational scientific explanation for the appearance of certain fossils so far outside their own time!” Before she realised it, she’d copied his tone and snapped back more sharply than she’d intended.
“The fossil record is an infinitesimal proportion of what has lived and died, we…”
“Don’t lecture me, Nick, I’m not one of your bloody first years!”
“Then don’t act like one!” He took a swig of coffee, realised it had gone cold and grimaced. “Helen, if you carry on like this, you’ll end up like Myra Shackley.”
“I do not believe in the bloody yeti!”
Nick grinned, his blue eyes changing from annoyed to amused in the space of a heartbeat. “No, and you’re not likely to end up being ordained, either.”
The abrupt change of subject took Helen by surprise. “What’s the relevance of that?”
“Myra Shackley. She’s moved out of tourism into the church. I met one of her friends the other day, I forgot to tell you.”
Nick’s irritation with her had subsided as quickly as it had flared up and for the next ten minutes they swapped gossip about a woman who had once scandalised academia by proposing that residual Neanderthal populations had survived in various inhospitable parts of the world and might have given rise to stories about the almas in the Himalayas and Bigfoot in North America. Shackley had finally abandoned that line of research after nearly a decade, but it had dogged her academic career for even longer. Helen knew perfectly well that Nick was only trying to prevent her committing what would be seen by many as career suicide, but tact had never been one of his strong suits and the more he tried to dissuade her, the more he unwittingly pushed her into continuing.
For all Nick’s dismissive attitude, there were far too many things in the fossil record that weren’t conducive to a rational explanation and as a result, Helen was determined to keep digging – literally and metaphorically – until she had something to show for her efforts. But, so far as her husband was concerned, her latest line of research was taking her dangerously close to the territory of cryptozoology. He simply couldn’t see the parallels that Helen saw. Animals were still appearing both out of time and out of place, even now.
Big cat kills on Exmoor. Sightings of mammoths in the wastes of Siberia. Unexplained tracks in the Forest of Dean. Helen knew perfectly well that 99% of the reports were nonsense, but there was still than one remaining per cent that couldn’t be explained away as the product of an over-active imagination. She’d seen prints near a farm just outside Coleford that didn’t match any predator she knew of, and the ‘big cat’ expert from DEFRA had been equally puzzled. The fact that a government department actually employed someone whose job appeared to be to take sightings like those of the so-called Beast of Bodmin seriously enough to investigate them had surprised her at first, but she’d ended up in the same place at the same time as the man often enough to have got to know him quite well now and over a drink one night in a pub on the edge of Dartmoor, he’d admitted that not everything he came across in his work could be explained away as the activities of a sheep-worrying dog.
The real problem with claims that there were big cats living somewhere like Bodmin Moor were essentially the same as the arguments levelled against the Lock Ness Monster or the Sasquatch. The reports had been around for decades, far longer than the lifetime of any single animal, but if a self-sustaining population existed, what happened to their dead? Not a single corpse had ever been found, no bodies, no skeletal remains, no nothing. The creatures had either never existed, or they had some means of appearing, killing and then vanishing again. Mammoths in Siberia she could almost believe. The area was almost unimaginably vast and it was no particular stretch of the imagination to believe that a relict population had survived, well away from the haunts of man. But Bodmin Moor was made up of only 80 square miles of ground. A fairly inhospitable 80 square miles, it had to be admitted, but it wasn’t on the scale of Siberia.
Creatures appeared, killed and disappeared into thin air, leaving behind nothing but some mangled remains – and not always even that – and occasionally some prints. The ones in the Forest of Dean had been strange, more like a collection of small hooves than claws. Hoofed predators had existed, but Helen knew perfectly well that if she tried to tell Nick that something like a mesonyx was hunting sheep in the Forest of Dean it would only end up in yet another argument, even if she produced the casts she’d taken of the prints. His earlier comments had proved that.
Nick pushed his chair back and stood up. “This bloody grant submission isn’t going to write itself,” he muttered.
As he gathered up the papers he’d spread out across the table while they’d been having breakfast, Helen’s mobile rang. She fished it out of her pocket and glanced at the number on the display before accepting the call.
“Dan?” Dan Davies was a sheep farmer in the Forest of Dean. From the tone of his voice, Helen knew immediately that he’d lost some more stock, but even so, his next words took her by surprise. “You’ve seen what?” She listened as the words tumbled out of his mouth. “No, I agree, that doesn’t sound like a bloody Labrador. OK, I’ll be with you in a couple of hours.” She disconnected the call, grabbed her jacket and her backpack and headed out of the door.
As an afterthought, she turned around and yelled up the stairs. “I’m going out, Nick. I’m not sure when I’ll be back. Don’t wait up if I’m late!”
With that she picked up her car keys and hurried down the path, their argument that morning already forgotten.
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 12
Characters : Helen, Nick
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Word Count : 1,180
Summary : Helen longs for the days when it used to be her and Nick against the world.
A/N : 1) Written for the
primeval_denial Challenge Team Fest for a prompt fromrain_sleet_snow, I am just going out, I may be some time. “You can’t carry on like this, Helen.” Nick stared at her across the breakfast table, his face furrowed into a frown.
“Like what?” She knew perfectly well what he meant, but had every intention of forcing him to spell it out.
“Clinging to this…” Nick hesitated, groping for the right word before settling for, “Obsession.”
“I’m researching a serious scientific theory!”
“It’s preposterous!”
She shook her head, torn between sadness and anger. When they’d first come together – when their relationship had been all new, exciting and passionate – they’d been a team, sharing the same interests and the same ambitions, but somewhere along the line, Nick had been seduced by the establishment and Helen had been sidelined. She hadn’t even really seen it coming until the day she’d asked him to look at a draft paper she’d been working on and he’d read the abstract then simply tossed it aside, telling her he’d get back to it later, but he never had and after that she’d stopped asking.
“There is no rational scientific explanation for the appearance of certain fossils so far outside their own time!” Before she realised it, she’d copied his tone and snapped back more sharply than she’d intended.
“The fossil record is an infinitesimal proportion of what has lived and died, we…”
“Don’t lecture me, Nick, I’m not one of your bloody first years!”
“Then don’t act like one!” He took a swig of coffee, realised it had gone cold and grimaced. “Helen, if you carry on like this, you’ll end up like Myra Shackley.”
“I do not believe in the bloody yeti!”
Nick grinned, his blue eyes changing from annoyed to amused in the space of a heartbeat. “No, and you’re not likely to end up being ordained, either.”
The abrupt change of subject took Helen by surprise. “What’s the relevance of that?”
“Myra Shackley. She’s moved out of tourism into the church. I met one of her friends the other day, I forgot to tell you.”
Nick’s irritation with her had subsided as quickly as it had flared up and for the next ten minutes they swapped gossip about a woman who had once scandalised academia by proposing that residual Neanderthal populations had survived in various inhospitable parts of the world and might have given rise to stories about the almas in the Himalayas and Bigfoot in North America. Shackley had finally abandoned that line of research after nearly a decade, but it had dogged her academic career for even longer. Helen knew perfectly well that Nick was only trying to prevent her committing what would be seen by many as career suicide, but tact had never been one of his strong suits and the more he tried to dissuade her, the more he unwittingly pushed her into continuing.
For all Nick’s dismissive attitude, there were far too many things in the fossil record that weren’t conducive to a rational explanation and as a result, Helen was determined to keep digging – literally and metaphorically – until she had something to show for her efforts. But, so far as her husband was concerned, her latest line of research was taking her dangerously close to the territory of cryptozoology. He simply couldn’t see the parallels that Helen saw. Animals were still appearing both out of time and out of place, even now.
Big cat kills on Exmoor. Sightings of mammoths in the wastes of Siberia. Unexplained tracks in the Forest of Dean. Helen knew perfectly well that 99% of the reports were nonsense, but there was still than one remaining per cent that couldn’t be explained away as the product of an over-active imagination. She’d seen prints near a farm just outside Coleford that didn’t match any predator she knew of, and the ‘big cat’ expert from DEFRA had been equally puzzled. The fact that a government department actually employed someone whose job appeared to be to take sightings like those of the so-called Beast of Bodmin seriously enough to investigate them had surprised her at first, but she’d ended up in the same place at the same time as the man often enough to have got to know him quite well now and over a drink one night in a pub on the edge of Dartmoor, he’d admitted that not everything he came across in his work could be explained away as the activities of a sheep-worrying dog.
The real problem with claims that there were big cats living somewhere like Bodmin Moor were essentially the same as the arguments levelled against the Lock Ness Monster or the Sasquatch. The reports had been around for decades, far longer than the lifetime of any single animal, but if a self-sustaining population existed, what happened to their dead? Not a single corpse had ever been found, no bodies, no skeletal remains, no nothing. The creatures had either never existed, or they had some means of appearing, killing and then vanishing again. Mammoths in Siberia she could almost believe. The area was almost unimaginably vast and it was no particular stretch of the imagination to believe that a relict population had survived, well away from the haunts of man. But Bodmin Moor was made up of only 80 square miles of ground. A fairly inhospitable 80 square miles, it had to be admitted, but it wasn’t on the scale of Siberia.
Creatures appeared, killed and disappeared into thin air, leaving behind nothing but some mangled remains – and not always even that – and occasionally some prints. The ones in the Forest of Dean had been strange, more like a collection of small hooves than claws. Hoofed predators had existed, but Helen knew perfectly well that if she tried to tell Nick that something like a mesonyx was hunting sheep in the Forest of Dean it would only end up in yet another argument, even if she produced the casts she’d taken of the prints. His earlier comments had proved that.
Nick pushed his chair back and stood up. “This bloody grant submission isn’t going to write itself,” he muttered.
As he gathered up the papers he’d spread out across the table while they’d been having breakfast, Helen’s mobile rang. She fished it out of her pocket and glanced at the number on the display before accepting the call.
“Dan?” Dan Davies was a sheep farmer in the Forest of Dean. From the tone of his voice, Helen knew immediately that he’d lost some more stock, but even so, his next words took her by surprise. “You’ve seen what?” She listened as the words tumbled out of his mouth. “No, I agree, that doesn’t sound like a bloody Labrador. OK, I’ll be with you in a couple of hours.” She disconnected the call, grabbed her jacket and her backpack and headed out of the door.
As an afterthought, she turned around and yelled up the stairs. “I’m going out, Nick. I’m not sure when I’ll be back. Don’t wait up if I’m late!”
With that she picked up her car keys and hurried down the path, their argument that morning already forgotten.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-04-16 07:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-17 08:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-16 07:39 pm (UTC)Just terribly real.
“Clinging to this…” Nick hesitated, groping for the right word before settling for, “Obsession.” -I can so hear that delicious Scottish accent, full of exasperation.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-17 08:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-16 07:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-17 08:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-16 08:13 pm (UTC)“Helen, if you carry on like this, you’ll end up like Myra Shackley.”
“I do not believe in the bloody yeti!”
Nick grinned, his blue eyes changing from annoyed to amused in the space of a heartbeat. “No, and you’re not likely to end up being ordained, either.”
I'll say! *g*
no subject
Date: 2012-04-17 08:08 am (UTC)*g* I was a little surprised when I discovered Myra had been ordained.
It was a great prompt, I had fun with it.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-16 08:41 pm (UTC)And things like the Beast of Bodmin have always creeped me out somewhat, for some reason...
no subject
Date: 2012-04-17 08:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-16 08:44 pm (UTC)this is a fine example of Helen in sane mode. (nice analogies and data)
question - DEFRA?
ps: this is the Helen we should have seen at least twice in the series!
no subject
Date: 2012-04-17 08:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-16 08:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-17 08:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-16 09:12 pm (UTC)And meep for tha being their last conversation...
no subject
Date: 2012-04-17 08:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-16 09:39 pm (UTC)I loved the way you explained the Beast of Bodmin Moor, and the Mammoth sighting in Siberia.
I was wondering when someone was going to use one of those in their fics.
Well done!
A wonderful insight in to Helen Cutter.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-17 08:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-16 11:14 pm (UTC)Anomalies certainly are perfect explanations for mysterious animals appearing and disappearing. You've captured that and Helen's interest perfectly - as well as the poignancy of her relationship with Nick.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-17 08:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-16 11:19 pm (UTC)(Hope he didn't wait up! *g*)
no subject
Date: 2012-04-17 08:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-17 01:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-17 08:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-17 01:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-17 08:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-17 11:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-17 11:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-17 11:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-18 07:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-18 09:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-18 09:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-20 02:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-20 02:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-20 09:13 am (UTC)Great story. It showed perfectly the growing gulf between Helen and Nick.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-20 02:57 pm (UTC)Thank you :)
no subject
Date: 2012-04-20 06:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-20 07:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-22 03:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-22 10:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-27 06:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-27 09:06 am (UTC)