fredbassett | Fic, A Midsummer Day's Dream, Claudia, Ryan 15

Title : A Midsummer Day’s Dream
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 15
Characters : Claudia, Ryan, Connor, Lester
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Word Count : 1,966
Summary : Sometimes its not the big things that come through anomalies that cause the problem.
A/N: Written for the

primeval_denial Art Challenge for this artwork by

lsellersfic. Thanks to

lukadreaming for the beta. And special thanks to

lsellersfic for making this lovely cover for the fic.

“Claudia, it’s weakening!” Connor called. He looked up from the device he’d spent most of the afternoon consulting, his face animated, despite the stifling heat.

“It’s not the only one,” Ryan muttered, from his position leaning against a nearby tree.

Claudia shot him a sympathetic smile. The soldiers were bored stiff and even Ryan’s usual mask of professional impassivity had started to slip. They’d be glad when they could pack up the kit and head back to base, and Claudia didn’t blame them. Epping Forest on the hottest day of the year hadn’t been anyone’s idea of fun. Her blouse was sticking to her back, her anti-perspirant had long since given up the unequal struggle and even in sensible shoes her feet felt twice their normal size. And to complete her irritation with the day, she’d snagged her trousers on a barbed wire fence on the walk through the woods. They were going on expenses, whether Lester liked it or not. She’d written off quite enough of her wardrobe on this job.

“How much longer, Connor?”

He shrugged. “Not long, it’s fading even faster than Captain Ryan.” The look he threw in Ryan’s direction was amused. “I thought you lot were used to running around in full kit in the Brecon Beacons on days like this, mate?”

“We are. Doesn’t mean we like it.”

The anomaly had started to shrink, looking less well-defined around the edges, not so sharp or so bright, no longer snatching at a coin on the palm of Claudia’s outstretched hand. She didn’t particularly mind the boredom; in fact on some of their wilder days, Claudia often felt that boredom was a worthwhile aspiration, but the heat was definitely a trial. And so were the insects. She was sick to bloody death of being eaten alive by midges, horseflies and other assorted flying irritations. In fact she was starting to take their attentions personally, and Ryan’s remark that they were being attracted by her sweat hadn’t helped. In response to her arch response that ladies didn’t sweat, they glowed, he’d simply pointed out that in which case, she appeared to be glowing like a pig.

The slight smile that was currently twitching at the corners of his mouth told her that he was no doubt mentally revisiting that conversation. She slapped crossly at the latest thing to inflict its unwanted attentions on her.

“You shouldn’t do that,” Connor commented. “Apparently it only attracts more of them.”

“You’ve been slapping at them all afternoon!”

“I’m not very good at taking advice.”

Claudia wondered if she was too late to join the betting pool on exactly when the anomaly would vanish. Just as she was reaching for her purse, the anomaly collapsed in on itself, there one minute, gone the next, leaving nothing behind but empty air and a now unobstructed view of the soldier on the other side of the small clearing, who was busily picking his nose.

“My win,” Ryan said, checking the time on his watch. “A drink on me when I’m off shift?”

“I’m happy to take advantage of your ill-gotten gains, but have you forgotten that Lester wants a budget meeting when we get back?”

“We’ll need a drink after that,” Ryan pointed out.

She certainly couldn’t disagree with that statement.

* * * * *

“The Home Secretary wants a full report by the end of the week, Miss Brown. That won’t be too taxing, I presume?”

Lester’s voice sounded like it was coming from far away, rather than just across the desk. Claudia blinked, trying to ground herself back in the meeting room at Marsham House, and put up her hand to tuck a wisp of hair back behind her ear. Her head was aching violently and she wondered if the air conditioning was actually working, because if it was, it was doing nothing to cool her down.

She could feel a trickle of sweat making its way inexorably down her spine and for an awful moment, Claudia thought she was about to faint.

“Miss Brown?” The pain hammering at her temples blunted the sharpness of Lester’s words. She was hot, her head hurt, and quite frankly, she didn’t give a damn about what the Home Secretary wanted. She opened her mouth to tell Lester that, but a last vestige of common sense that hadn’t quite collapsed under the weight of the oppressive atmosphere in the room asserted itself and she bit back the words.

The clink of glass as Ryan reached over and poured some water from the bottle in the middle of the table and the scrape as he pushed the tumbler of water over to her sounded almost impossibly loud in the silence. Claudia fought against the urge to put both hands over her ears just to keep the noises at bay. Why was Lester’s voice so loud? Why was someone standing outside the door shouting about the fact that a photocopier wasn’t working? Who cared about the bloody photocopier?

“Claudia, are you feeling all right?” Even Ryan, normally the most quietly spoken man on the team, seemed to be shouting.

“I’m fine,” Claudia said, even her own voice sounding impossibly loud in her own head, the words ricocheting around her skull, sending sparks flying behind her eyes.

She reached out for the glass of water, but her hand shook and the glass fell to the table, water spreading everywhere, soaking the papers in front of her, pushed out of the glass by the slug-like creature that followed the water. Instead of the glass, a large spiral shell is in the middle of the table, looking like one of the enormous fossils that Cutter keeps scattered amongst the mess that he calls his office.

Claudia stares at the creature as it oozes towards her. She pushes her chair back, the water that splashes onto her legs feeling icy cold in the heat of the room, sending a shiver through her nerve endings. Things are starting to move on all sides, not just on the table. Something scuttles across the floor, another fossil creature that doesn’t know when to stay extinct. Looking like a horseshoe crab, but spikier, bonier… she can’t remember its name… maybe Connor will know, but Connor’s not here… he managed to make an excuse and head back to the university with Cutter, both of them anxious to avoid yet another meeting with Lester, leaving her and Ryan to deal with it between them…

The glass rolls to the edge of the desk, about to fall to the floor when Ryan’s hand catches it and returns it to the table with a thump that nearly splits Claudia’s head open as it reverberates through the room like a blast from one of the soldiers’ rifles. She turns to him, wanting to plead with him to be quieter, but the words won’t come. Instead she’s left wondering why everything is suddenly so brightly coloured making her feel like she’s just stepped into one of the crazier colour schemes in the dreadful home make-over programmes that her mother seems to addicted to.

Purple. There’s purple everywhere. The crab-like creatures are purple, so are the ammonites, but these ammonites aren’t just staying in one place, holding down the papers on the desk, they’re slithering everywhere, leaving wet trails behind them… A crab-thing… no, a trilobite… she remembers Connor calling them trilobites….scuttles around the doorframe… but what she can’t remember is why they’re crawling up the walls in the Home Office… though maybe that’s why people are shouting… people don’t like things crawling around the room… Ryan doesn’t even like spiders, so how he’s coping, she doesn’t know…

Everything’s so sharp, so fractured, so high-coloured… Ryan and Lester both look like they’ve spent too long in the sun today, faces red, all flat planes and sharp angles. They’re both staring at her as though she’s the only thing in the room. She lifts her arm to point to the things crawling across the ceiling but neither of them look where she’s pointing.

Ryan opens his mouth to say something, but to Claudia’s horror, his tongue thickens and elongates, looking like the creatures that are starting to slither even further out of their shells.

She screams and the sound sends sharp jabs of pain through her own nerves, as though someone is poking at her with red-hot wires, jabbing at her all over her body. Everything is too sharp, too bright, too hot. She’s burning up from the inside, her own tongue swelling inside her mouth as if one of the ammonites is trying to make its way out of her head… She can’t breathe…

The shouting is getting louder now, so loud that Claudia hopes the creatures are going to be driven away by the noise… the room is starting to spin on its axis as though someone is using the ammonites as wheels to turn it around, cranking a giant key to wind the wheels like clockwork, spinning faster, spinning her with it like washing in a drier…

Pain flares brightly in her thigh, the shock of it making the creature in her head slither back into her mouth like a snail retracting into its shell…

She feels Ryan holding tightly to her hand, crushing the bones, sending more pain lancing through her body, too much pain. The dark walls crowd in around her and it’s only Ryan’s grip on her hand that stops her sliding into the abyss that’s opening beneath her feet…

* * * * *

Claudia could feel the gentle pressure of gun-calloused fingers on her hand.

She did her best to open her eyes, feeling like she was trying to claw her way back from a dark dream. Fragments of memory swirled in her head like the broken shards of time that she’d spent the afternoon watching. She was tired, but no longer felt like she was burning up from the inside out.

“Claudia, are you awake?” Ryan’s voice sounded uncharacteristically anxious.

She wondered what had happened to make him sound like that. Her last memory was of getting in the car with him to return to the Home Office for a meeting with Lester.

“Was there an accident?” she asked, her tongue feeling thick and dry in her mouth. She had a horrible feeling she must have fainted. As far as she could tell, she was in hospital. The faint smell of antiseptic was unmistakeable.

Ryan shook his head. “We think something bit you. Maybe some sort of insect that came through the anomaly. When we got back to the Home Office you started to go into anaphylactic shock in the meeting room. One of the secretaries had an EpiPen in her bag and we used that. The paramedics gave you another dose when they got there.”

She looked up at him and held hard to his hand as the broken pieces of her memories started to coalesce. But the walls of the hospital room stayed white and nothing started to climb up them. Claudia let out a shaky breath. She desperately needed a drink of water.

Ryan held a plastic beaker to mouth and she sipped gratefully at the cool liquid.

He smiled at her and pushed damp tendrils of hair off her forehead. “You frightened the life out of me,” he said quietly. “You went a very funny shade of green and started babbling about things coming out of people’s mouths.”

Claudia squeezed his hand. “You weren’t the only one that was frightened. I’m never going to look at Cutter’s fossils the same way again.”

She was just going to have to hope that she hadn’t been put off French-kissing for life as well. But as Lester had just appeared in the doorway, now probably wasn’t the time to mention that.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

fififolle

Hee! That's so adorable. And damn scary! EEK.

In response to her arch response that ladies didn’t sweat, they glowed, he’d simply pointed out that in which case, she appeared to be glowing like a pig.
LOL!

Great dialogue, brilliant use of the art, all round cute hurt/comfort, yay!

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Fic, A Midsummer Day's Dream, Claudia, Ryan 15

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