Fic, Talisker for Two, Nick, Lester, 15
Oct. 26th, 2013 04:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fredbassettTitle : Talisker for Two
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 15
Characters : James Lester, Nick Cutter
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Summary : Lester hates drinking alone.
A/N : Thank you to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lukadreaming for the beta. This is for my ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
trope_bingo square ‘in vino veritas/drunkfic’
From: James Lester [mailto:james.lester@arc.gov.uk]
To: Nick Cutter [mailto:nick.cutter@arc.gov.uk]
Subject: Working Time Directive 203/88/EC
You have exceeded it. Go home.
JPL
From: Nick Cutter [mailto:nick.cutter@arc.gov.uk]
To: James Lester [mailto:james.lester@arc.gov.uk]
Subject: Working Time Directive 203/88/EC
So have you.
NC
From: James Lester [mailto:james.lester@arc.gov.uk]
To: Nick Cutter [mailto:nick.cutter@arc.gov.uk]
Subject: Working Time Directive 203/88/EC
Touché. However to continue this exchange would no doubt result in childishness on your part. Changing the subject, I have a rather fine bottle of Talisker 25-year-old in my desk drawer.
JPL
From: Nick Cutter [mailto:nick.cutter@arc.gov.uk]
To: James Lester [mailto:james.lester@arc.gov.uk]
Subject: Working Time Directive 203/88/EC
I have a half-eaten cheese sandwich, three out of date textbooks, a large ball of elastic bands, an envelope full of paperclips that followed me here from CMU, a mouldy orange, various items of correspondence consigned there to be ignored forever and something that looks suspiciously like an alien life-form but which might – or might not – be one of Connor’s socks.
You win.
N
From: James Lester [mailto:james.lester@arc.gov.uk]
To: Nick Cutter [mailto:nick.cutter@arc.gov.uk]
Subject: Working Time Directive 203/88/EC
I also have two Dartford crystal tumblers and a pronounced dislike of getting drunk alone.
J
* * * * *
Nick rolled the whisky around in the glass, savouring the peaty smell. “The king o' drinks. Stevenson certainly knew his liquor.”
“He wrote a good adventure yarn, as well.” Lester finished what was in his glass and reached for the bottle. “Believe it or not, when I was a kid, I used to dream about adventure.”
Nick found that hard to believe. He held his own glass out for a refill. “You mean you weren’t born in a pin-striped suit and a natty tie?” He eyed Lester dubiously. “So what did you want to be when you grew up?”
Lester’s hand was still steady as he poured more amber spirit into Nick’s glass, not even chinking the bottle against the rim even though he’d already drunk enough to stop a charging entelodont in its tracks. The way the man was putting away a bottle of something that only had a limited run of 21,000 bottles, Nick was certain that there was probably a case of the stuff at Lester’s house – or flat. Nick realised with something of a shock that he actually had no idea where the man lived when he wasn’t in the office.
“I wanted to captain a war ship. Except all I knew about boats was straight out of Swallows and Amazons, so that wasn’t much help when it came to a career choice. And being chronically sea-sick in anything bigger than a rowing boat put paid to that idea. I would have liked the uniform, though.” Lester’s voice had taken on a distinctly wistful tone.
Nick tried to imagine a young James Peregrine Lester messing around in boats and failed. In fact he couldn’t visualise a young Lester at all. With or without a yellow silk tie.
“That tie is starting to look bilious,” he said accusingly.
Lester unleashed a hard stare. “If you throw up that whisky, you’ll be off this project faster than Temple can break a piece of expensive kit.”
“I have never thrown up good whisky!” Nick was outraged at the suggestion and let it show. “Now lose that buggering tie, man. It’s an offence to the eyes.”
“My wife bought it for me,” Lester said, as he stripped off the tie and dropped it into a desk drawer. A moment later, he frowned, fished it out between his finger and thumb and then dropped it into the wastepaper basket at the side of his desk. Then with a look of a man throwing off the shackles of oppression, he opened the neck of his shirt and leaned back in his chair.
“Was she mad at you at the time?”
Lester took a moment to consider his answer and then said, “Probably. It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence.”
“Past tense?” Nick queried. He also knew next to nothing about Lester’s personal circumstances.
“Very much past tense.” The closed look on Lester’s face told Nick that he was unlikely to learn any more now, either. “It seems we are both somewhat unlucky in our choice of spouses.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” Nick acknowledged, but like Lester, that wasn’t territory he wanted to stray into. “So, you got the adventure you wanted, after all.”
“I don’t recall any dinosaurs in Arthur Ransome,” Lester said moodily, taking another mouthful of Talisker. “But I suppose I did enjoy The Lost World and Journey to the Center of the Earth.”
“Be careful what you wish for, my old gran used to say.” She used to say a lot more than that, Nick recalled fondly, but he doubted her patented monologue on the subject of dry socks had much bearing on the current discussion. “I used to dream of meeting real, live dinosaurs and I’ll never forget seeing that scutosaurus for the first time. But now when that over-sized bloody alarm clock goes off, all I hope for is that no one gets killed and that we can get whatever it is home in one piece without right royally fucking up the timelines.”
The word ‘again’ hung in the air between them and might as well have been written in orange neon letters. Nick was relieved when Lester didn’t go there, either. He preferred not to talk about Claudia Brown now, and had even gone nearly a month without inserting his foot in his mouth and earning Jenny Lewis’s wrath. Things were definitely looking up… in some ways, at least.
“Are you ever going to forgive and forget where Hart’s concerned?”
Lester’s demand caused Nick to jerk upright in his chair and slop a small amount of Talisker onto his trousers. He stared mournfully down and wondered if Lester really was telepathic. It would certainly explain a lot.
“No, of course I‘m not telepathic,” Lester said, only contriving to compound Nick’s belief in the man’s almost preternatural powers of observation. “Hart’s wandering around like a lost – and rather lovelorn – puppy and you still have your own personal thundercloud hanging over your head. And the smell of burning martyr is almost enough to set off the sprinkler system. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the pair of you still haven’t kissed and made up.”
Nick studiously avoided eye contact and swallowed rather more whisky than was sensible. He held out his glass without a word and was pleasantly surprised when Lester poured another generous measure.
“It doesn’t count as infidelity if the two of you weren’t an item at the time.”
“I might be drunk, but I’m not too drunk to remember that I was still married to Helen when Stephen shagged her.”
“I wasn’t talking about Helen,” Lester said with exaggerated patience. “I was talking about Hart.” Lester paused, presumably for dramatic effect, and then added, “And you.”
Nick met Lester’s eyes, delivering a look that had cowed generations of irritating students, but Lester was clearly made of sterner stuff. Either that or he was just too fucking drunk to notice that Nick was considering clubbing him to death with the Talisker bottle.
“You wouldn’t waste that much good whisky,” Lester said.
“Are you fucking telepathic?” Nick demanded.
Something suspiciously like a grin quirked the corners of Lester’s mouth. “No, but you’re fucking obvious. Don’t ever play poker, Cutter, you’d be crap at it.”
“There is no Stephen and me.” He rolled the grammar around in his head and wondered if it was correct. “Stephen and I,” he tried, then waved his hand airily. “Whatever, you know what I mean.”
“Maybe, but I also know that you were sleeping with him before Helen’s little bombshell.”
Nick choked on the whisky.
“Cutter, you’re working on a top secret government project surrounded by highly-trained Special Forces operatives. Ryan had run checks on the lot of you by the end of his first week on the job. Did you really think I didn’t know?”
Not for the first time in his life, Nick cursed a complexion that was prone to betraying him at the worst possible moment. He compounded the flush in his cheeks by talking another gulp of Talisker and wondering at what point in the proceedings he would end up face down on Lester’s dark blue carpet.
“He was seduced by your hell-bitch of an ex-wife while he was still a student. A student under her tutelage, might I remind you? Do the words ‘abuse of power’ mean anything to you, Cutter? If they don’t, then they should. The poor little sod didn’t stand a chance. According to the inestimable Captain Ryan’s report, Hart had the pleasure of her on precisely three occasions before she dropped him in favour of a younger, blonder, victim. He was in her tutorial group as well. The word on the streets was that she was shooting for a full house.”
“There were girls in that group,” Nick said disbelievingly.
“Oh dear,” Lester said, flicking a probably imaginary fleck off one sleeve. “Something else you didn’t know about dear Helen. Would it help if I gave you the report? She crowned you with more horns than the Pamplona bull run. To quote my late, unlamented grandmother, there’s none so blind as those who won’t see. Now, I’m going to ask you again, Cutter, what will it take to get you two to kiss and make up? You can’t carry on like this. I need you both to be fully-functioning – or what passes for it around here – not mooning around like moody teenagers, or sniping at each other like my brattish nephews.”
Lester pulled open his desk draw again and withdrew a plastic bound report simply labelled Helen Cutter. He slid it across the desk. “Keep it. I have another copy. And take the rest of the whisky with you. I have a feeling you’re going to need it.”
With as much dignity as he could muster, Cutter stood up, steadying himself on the edge of Lester’s desk. He wondered if he could make it as far as the ARC’s bunkrooms with both hands occupied and rapidly rejected that idea in favour of rolling up the report and stuffing it into the back of his jeans. He finished what was in his glass and resisted the urge to smash it on the desk.
“You’re a bastard, James Lester.”
“So I’ve been told,” Lester acknowledged. “But – contrary to popular opinion – you aren’t a fool. So read that report and give Hart the apology he deserves. He’s done eight years penance for a youthful indiscretion. That’s punishment enough for anyone.”
Accompanied by possibly the best bottle of scotch he had ever tasted, Nick made as dignified a withdrawal as he could manage, carefully putting one foot in front of the other until he finally succeeded in getting horizontal.
By the time the world finally righted itself on its axis, Nick had reached the conclusion that Lester was right.
But Nick still stuck by his final words.
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 15
Characters : James Lester, Nick Cutter
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Summary : Lester hates drinking alone.
A/N : Thank you to
lukadreaming for the beta. This is for my trope_bingo square ‘in vino veritas/drunkfic’From: James Lester [mailto:james.lester@arc.gov.uk]
To: Nick Cutter [mailto:nick.cutter@arc.gov.uk]
Subject: Working Time Directive 203/88/EC
You have exceeded it. Go home.
JPL
From: Nick Cutter [mailto:nick.cutter@arc.gov.uk]
To: James Lester [mailto:james.lester@arc.gov.uk]
Subject: Working Time Directive 203/88/EC
So have you.
NC
From: James Lester [mailto:james.lester@arc.gov.uk]
To: Nick Cutter [mailto:nick.cutter@arc.gov.uk]
Subject: Working Time Directive 203/88/EC
Touché. However to continue this exchange would no doubt result in childishness on your part. Changing the subject, I have a rather fine bottle of Talisker 25-year-old in my desk drawer.
JPL
From: Nick Cutter [mailto:nick.cutter@arc.gov.uk]
To: James Lester [mailto:james.lester@arc.gov.uk]
Subject: Working Time Directive 203/88/EC
I have a half-eaten cheese sandwich, three out of date textbooks, a large ball of elastic bands, an envelope full of paperclips that followed me here from CMU, a mouldy orange, various items of correspondence consigned there to be ignored forever and something that looks suspiciously like an alien life-form but which might – or might not – be one of Connor’s socks.
You win.
N
From: James Lester [mailto:james.lester@arc.gov.uk]
To: Nick Cutter [mailto:nick.cutter@arc.gov.uk]
Subject: Working Time Directive 203/88/EC
I also have two Dartford crystal tumblers and a pronounced dislike of getting drunk alone.
J
* * * * *
Nick rolled the whisky around in the glass, savouring the peaty smell. “The king o' drinks. Stevenson certainly knew his liquor.”
“He wrote a good adventure yarn, as well.” Lester finished what was in his glass and reached for the bottle. “Believe it or not, when I was a kid, I used to dream about adventure.”
Nick found that hard to believe. He held his own glass out for a refill. “You mean you weren’t born in a pin-striped suit and a natty tie?” He eyed Lester dubiously. “So what did you want to be when you grew up?”
Lester’s hand was still steady as he poured more amber spirit into Nick’s glass, not even chinking the bottle against the rim even though he’d already drunk enough to stop a charging entelodont in its tracks. The way the man was putting away a bottle of something that only had a limited run of 21,000 bottles, Nick was certain that there was probably a case of the stuff at Lester’s house – or flat. Nick realised with something of a shock that he actually had no idea where the man lived when he wasn’t in the office.
“I wanted to captain a war ship. Except all I knew about boats was straight out of Swallows and Amazons, so that wasn’t much help when it came to a career choice. And being chronically sea-sick in anything bigger than a rowing boat put paid to that idea. I would have liked the uniform, though.” Lester’s voice had taken on a distinctly wistful tone.
Nick tried to imagine a young James Peregrine Lester messing around in boats and failed. In fact he couldn’t visualise a young Lester at all. With or without a yellow silk tie.
“That tie is starting to look bilious,” he said accusingly.
Lester unleashed a hard stare. “If you throw up that whisky, you’ll be off this project faster than Temple can break a piece of expensive kit.”
“I have never thrown up good whisky!” Nick was outraged at the suggestion and let it show. “Now lose that buggering tie, man. It’s an offence to the eyes.”
“My wife bought it for me,” Lester said, as he stripped off the tie and dropped it into a desk drawer. A moment later, he frowned, fished it out between his finger and thumb and then dropped it into the wastepaper basket at the side of his desk. Then with a look of a man throwing off the shackles of oppression, he opened the neck of his shirt and leaned back in his chair.
“Was she mad at you at the time?”
Lester took a moment to consider his answer and then said, “Probably. It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence.”
“Past tense?” Nick queried. He also knew next to nothing about Lester’s personal circumstances.
“Very much past tense.” The closed look on Lester’s face told Nick that he was unlikely to learn any more now, either. “It seems we are both somewhat unlucky in our choice of spouses.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” Nick acknowledged, but like Lester, that wasn’t territory he wanted to stray into. “So, you got the adventure you wanted, after all.”
“I don’t recall any dinosaurs in Arthur Ransome,” Lester said moodily, taking another mouthful of Talisker. “But I suppose I did enjoy The Lost World and Journey to the Center of the Earth.”
“Be careful what you wish for, my old gran used to say.” She used to say a lot more than that, Nick recalled fondly, but he doubted her patented monologue on the subject of dry socks had much bearing on the current discussion. “I used to dream of meeting real, live dinosaurs and I’ll never forget seeing that scutosaurus for the first time. But now when that over-sized bloody alarm clock goes off, all I hope for is that no one gets killed and that we can get whatever it is home in one piece without right royally fucking up the timelines.”
The word ‘again’ hung in the air between them and might as well have been written in orange neon letters. Nick was relieved when Lester didn’t go there, either. He preferred not to talk about Claudia Brown now, and had even gone nearly a month without inserting his foot in his mouth and earning Jenny Lewis’s wrath. Things were definitely looking up… in some ways, at least.
“Are you ever going to forgive and forget where Hart’s concerned?”
Lester’s demand caused Nick to jerk upright in his chair and slop a small amount of Talisker onto his trousers. He stared mournfully down and wondered if Lester really was telepathic. It would certainly explain a lot.
“No, of course I‘m not telepathic,” Lester said, only contriving to compound Nick’s belief in the man’s almost preternatural powers of observation. “Hart’s wandering around like a lost – and rather lovelorn – puppy and you still have your own personal thundercloud hanging over your head. And the smell of burning martyr is almost enough to set off the sprinkler system. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the pair of you still haven’t kissed and made up.”
Nick studiously avoided eye contact and swallowed rather more whisky than was sensible. He held out his glass without a word and was pleasantly surprised when Lester poured another generous measure.
“It doesn’t count as infidelity if the two of you weren’t an item at the time.”
“I might be drunk, but I’m not too drunk to remember that I was still married to Helen when Stephen shagged her.”
“I wasn’t talking about Helen,” Lester said with exaggerated patience. “I was talking about Hart.” Lester paused, presumably for dramatic effect, and then added, “And you.”
Nick met Lester’s eyes, delivering a look that had cowed generations of irritating students, but Lester was clearly made of sterner stuff. Either that or he was just too fucking drunk to notice that Nick was considering clubbing him to death with the Talisker bottle.
“You wouldn’t waste that much good whisky,” Lester said.
“Are you fucking telepathic?” Nick demanded.
Something suspiciously like a grin quirked the corners of Lester’s mouth. “No, but you’re fucking obvious. Don’t ever play poker, Cutter, you’d be crap at it.”
“There is no Stephen and me.” He rolled the grammar around in his head and wondered if it was correct. “Stephen and I,” he tried, then waved his hand airily. “Whatever, you know what I mean.”
“Maybe, but I also know that you were sleeping with him before Helen’s little bombshell.”
Nick choked on the whisky.
“Cutter, you’re working on a top secret government project surrounded by highly-trained Special Forces operatives. Ryan had run checks on the lot of you by the end of his first week on the job. Did you really think I didn’t know?”
Not for the first time in his life, Nick cursed a complexion that was prone to betraying him at the worst possible moment. He compounded the flush in his cheeks by talking another gulp of Talisker and wondering at what point in the proceedings he would end up face down on Lester’s dark blue carpet.
“He was seduced by your hell-bitch of an ex-wife while he was still a student. A student under her tutelage, might I remind you? Do the words ‘abuse of power’ mean anything to you, Cutter? If they don’t, then they should. The poor little sod didn’t stand a chance. According to the inestimable Captain Ryan’s report, Hart had the pleasure of her on precisely three occasions before she dropped him in favour of a younger, blonder, victim. He was in her tutorial group as well. The word on the streets was that she was shooting for a full house.”
“There were girls in that group,” Nick said disbelievingly.
“Oh dear,” Lester said, flicking a probably imaginary fleck off one sleeve. “Something else you didn’t know about dear Helen. Would it help if I gave you the report? She crowned you with more horns than the Pamplona bull run. To quote my late, unlamented grandmother, there’s none so blind as those who won’t see. Now, I’m going to ask you again, Cutter, what will it take to get you two to kiss and make up? You can’t carry on like this. I need you both to be fully-functioning – or what passes for it around here – not mooning around like moody teenagers, or sniping at each other like my brattish nephews.”
Lester pulled open his desk draw again and withdrew a plastic bound report simply labelled Helen Cutter. He slid it across the desk. “Keep it. I have another copy. And take the rest of the whisky with you. I have a feeling you’re going to need it.”
With as much dignity as he could muster, Cutter stood up, steadying himself on the edge of Lester’s desk. He wondered if he could make it as far as the ARC’s bunkrooms with both hands occupied and rapidly rejected that idea in favour of rolling up the report and stuffing it into the back of his jeans. He finished what was in his glass and resisted the urge to smash it on the desk.
“You’re a bastard, James Lester.”
“So I’ve been told,” Lester acknowledged. “But – contrary to popular opinion – you aren’t a fool. So read that report and give Hart the apology he deserves. He’s done eight years penance for a youthful indiscretion. That’s punishment enough for anyone.”
Accompanied by possibly the best bottle of scotch he had ever tasted, Nick made as dignified a withdrawal as he could manage, carefully putting one foot in front of the other until he finally succeeded in getting horizontal.
By the time the world finally righted itself on its axis, Nick had reached the conclusion that Lester was right.
But Nick still stuck by his final words.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2013-10-26 04:28 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2013-10-26 07:05 pm (UTC)Well done.
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Date: 2013-10-28 08:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-26 07:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-28 08:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-26 09:30 pm (UTC)And LOL at the grandmother quotes. Aren't they always wise?
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Date: 2013-10-28 08:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-26 10:49 pm (UTC)Loved the contents of Cutter drawer :-D
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Date: 2013-10-28 08:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-26 11:47 pm (UTC)I bet Lester has a special drawer for that scotch - a velvet lined one!
Hee and yay re Lester's Helen report. Reminds me of a fic where Lester said to Nick something like: "The Government don't care who you sleep with, just as long as we know about it"
Love their sniping and sharing, and Lester pushing towards a reconciliation and ditching his tie *G* Brill!
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Date: 2013-10-28 08:48 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2013-10-29 07:19 pm (UTC)And as always Lester rocks my socks and is a devious bastard at the same time ;)
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Date: 2013-10-29 07:23 pm (UTC)*glomps* Thanks, hon :)
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Date: 2013-10-29 07:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-03 07:58 pm (UTC)Nice one.
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Date: 2013-11-12 08:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-21 10:43 am (UTC)>>And the smell of burning martyr is almost enough to set off the sprinkler system.<<
ROFL
I think I scared my neighbours with my high-pitched bought of laughter.
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Date: 2014-01-21 09:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-11 09:12 am (UTC)Loved the email conversation, and Cutter's reaction to Lester's telepathic abilities!
The 'smell of burning martyr' made me choke on my tea.
I really do wish this had happened in the show. I've never really understood why Helen wasn't castigated more for sleeping with her student.
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Date: 2015-01-11 11:07 am (UTC)