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fredbassettTitle : Reduced For A Quick Sale
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 15
Characters : Nick/Lester, OCs
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Summary : Nick and Lester answer a cry for help.
A/N : Set in![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
knitekat ‘s Wolf!Verse. I wrote this for her for a fandom stocking a while ago. Posted now as a spooking offering for the upcoming Halloween.
The sound of a child’s scream brought both Nick and Lester to a halt, heads tilting automatically to one side to get a better directional fix on the noise.
In Nick’s case the reaction came from long engrained habit in the field. In Lester’s case it was simply instinct as on this occasion his ears were somewhat furrier than Nick’s. A low growl told Nick that Lester was intending to remain in wolf-form while they investigated the source of the cries.
They both broke into a run, but Lester’s four paws covered the ground far more quickly. Nick saw him break out onto the road and turn the corner, heading towards a rather charmless red brick house that had stood empty for some while, an estate agent’s board proclaiming to anyone that might be interested that it was for sale.
A woman was down on one knee on the pavement, trying to console a small child that was busy bellowing at the top of its considerable lungpower.
Lester came to a rapid halt, several paces away, no doubt conscious of the fact that something that looked like an exceptionally large German shepherd dog would not necessarily be welcomed by either mother or child. Alert for any obvious sign of external threat, Lester remained stationary, trying – but not altogether succeeding – to look unthreatening. Fortunately, the woman was too engrossed in attempting to calm her child to notice anything else.
Nick arrived, trying not to make it obvious that he was slightly out of breath. “Is everything all right?
The woman looked up at him, pushing her reddish-blonde hair away from her face in a harassed gesture. “She’s fine,” she said. “Something in the house frightened her.” She laughed, slightly shakily. “I guess that’s a thumbs down for this one.”
The child clung to her, face buried in the woman’s thick blue coat. From the shoulder-length pale blonde hair, Nick presumed the child was female, but kids were very definitely not his specialist subject. Lester could probably tell by smell alone, but then Lester was far better with kids than Nick was, in wolf-form or out of it.
“Does she like dogs?” Nick asked.
“She loves them.” The woman groped with one hand into one of her jacket pockets. “Bingo will hopefully work his magic. Then she’ll want to stroke yours, if that’s all right?” Lester could see the woman groping around inside the pocket before she finally came up empty-handed. “Oh shit,” she muttered. “Chloe, we must have dropped Bingo in the house. Let’s just go back in and get him, shall we?”
“Nooooooooooo!” The wail was instant and heartfelt.
The woman looked puzzled. “Come on, darling, it won’t take a minute, then we’ll go home.”
The wail intensified and it would have taken someone with an advanced degree in applied linguistics – or alternatively a parent – to interpret the racket.
“I can’t leave you out here, darling, and we can’t go home without Bingo.” She glanced at Nick and added, “She won’t sleep without him.”
Nick smiled at her. Lost toys were something they had a good track record with. “If you can let us in, Shadow will find the toy for you, no problem. He once saved the day by finding a buried teddy bear on a beach in Cornwall.” He’d also foiled a kidnap attempt in these same woods, but mentioning that might scare the kid even more. She looked like she didn’t need any bogeymen in her life at the moment. “My name’s Nick, by the way.”
“Thanks. Mine’s Sara. Chloe’s just over-tired. I’ve trailed her around half a dozen houses today and they’ve all been dire.” She rolled her eyes and mouthed, “Bloody estate agents.”
Nick grinned. “Don’t tell me this one was described as close to all amenities?”
“No, but they did use the phrase ‘considerable period charm’ and told me it was reduced for a quick sale.”
Nick gave the red-brick monstrosity an appraising glance. “I think they lied, at least on the first point.”
She fished a set of keys out of her pocket. “I’m really sorry to bother you with this, but if you could find her toy, I’d be eternally grateful. It’s a very moth-eaten grey dog, answers to the name of Bingo. There’s no burglar alarm. The place is empty, that’s why they just gave me the keys. I should have been suspicious when they weren’t even wasting their time with a sales pitch.”
“That bad?”
“Probably worse.” She handed the keys over to him. “She definitely had Bingo when we went in. Then she started crying in one of the upstairs rooms and wanted to go outside. I thought I’d stuffed him into my pocket, but I must have dropped him.”
“Back in a jiffy,” Nick said, in what he hoped was his best reassuring voice. He wasn’t much better with harassed mothers than he was with screaming kids, and didn’t want to give the wrong impression. Having a dog usually helped inspire confidence for some reason, but he still needed to be careful not to appear over-friendly and end up looking creepy.
There were only two keys on the ring. The first he tried fitted the lock and it turned easily. The house had the sort of chill that only came from standing empty. A musty smell infiltrated Nick’s nostrils and from the disgusted sneeze that came from Lester, it was obvious that it was even worse for a sensitive nose.
Nick stepped inside, taking in the peeling wallpaper in a rather unappetizing shade of dull orange, the yellowing, once-white skirting boards and the bare floorboards. If ever somewhere was in need of a house makeover, it was this dump. But even with the current state of the housing market, Nick was surprised that it was still on the market. He’d seen the board up outside for months, and it was obvious from the state of the garden that the place hadn’t received any TLC for quite a while.
He made his way to the staircase and had got as far as putting his foot on the lower treat when he realised that Lester wasn’t following him.
A low growl sent an atavistic shiver up Nick’s spine.
He turned to see Lester standing just inside the doorway, his dark eyes gleaming in the shadows of the empty house.
****
“James?”
Lester heard the note of question in Nick’s voice, but for once was at a loss to know how to answer. Normally, they had little problem communicating, no matter which form he was inhabiting, but now Lester wasn’t sure how to convey the deep sense of unease that had settled on him the moment he’d put his first paw over the threshold.
All he could do was growl, but that seemed somehow inadequate.
The dust coupled with a deeply unpleasant smell that was probably more noticeable for him than Nick had made him sneeze almost immediately, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he was shit-scared, and that wasn’t a feeling he was used to experiencing in wolf-form. No fucking wonder the kid had screamed the place down. He felt like tucking his tail between his legs and running outside, yelping.
“James?” Nick repeated, concern in his voice.
Lester shook himself and took another pace inside, sniffing the air and sneezing again. The feeling of threat receded slightly, and he began to wonder if he’d simply been reacting to the emptiness, the smell and the appalling wallpaper. After a second shake – largely for Nick’s benefit – he strode purposefully across the hall and started to climb the stairs.
The sound of his nails raking across the bare wood of the stairs sounded unnaturally loud in the silence of the empty house. Lester felt Nick’s hand brush lightly over his thick fur and the touch was oddly reassuring.
The woman had referred to the toy probably having been dropped upstairs, so that was the obvious place to start. There were five rooms at the top of the stairs: two large bedrooms at the front, and a bathroom plus two smaller rooms at the back. Lester checked the ones at the front first. It was easy to see at a glance that there were no lost toys in either of them. The rooms had been completely stripped, no carpets, no curtains, nothing at all. They felt cold and oppressive, but fortunately lacked the feeling of menace that had assailed Lester’s senses when he’d first stepped into the house.
The bathroom was quickly dismissed, as was one of the smaller rooms.
Lester stood outside the final room, uncomfortably conscious that he’d been leaving this particular room to last. The strong sense of threat had returned, rolling through Lester like an advancing wave on a beach. He stood rooted to the spot, feeling his hackles rise. He wanted to throw back his head and howl, but that wouldn’t help. There was nothing here he could see that was triggering his flight or fight mechanism, but at the moment, the idea of flight was very attractive indeed.
Nick walked up to him and put a hand on the bristling fur around Lester’s neck. “Something’s bugging you, isn’t it?”
Lester looked up at Nick and growled again, once, meaning yes.
“I can see the toy,” Nick said. “Wait here, I’ll get it.”
Nick stepped over the threshold of the room and Lester felt the air crackle with tension, the sensation almost auditory, like someone was scrunching up a dry paper bag. Lester growled in warning, but he was damned if he was letting his mate walk into danger alone, so staying on the landing simply wasn’t an option.
Lester forced himself to move forward, into the room. Every hair on his body felt like it was being brushed backwards. The room was bare-boarded, like all the others, but here the walls had been painted a faded shade of light blue, heavily stained in places by damp.
The small grey toy dog was lying on one side of the room, in front of a tall, unframed mirror leaving up against the wall in the far corner.
“Gotcha!” Nick said with satisfaction and went to pick up the toy.
Lester followed him, determined to conquer the fear that was in danger of swamping his senses. He sniffed at the grey dog in Nick’s hand. It was clear that Bingo was a much-loved favourite. One ear looked well-chewed, and there were signs of quite a few repairs.
Nick turned to leave. At the same moment, Lester looked at the mirror and saw the reflection of a man standing in the doorway, directly facing Nick. The man looked to be in his 60s, with thin, greying hair swept over his head in a greasy comb-over that wholly failed to disguise a largely pink, shiny head. The man’s face reminded Lester of a thoroughly irritable weasel he’d once met. He was wearing a dark blue cardigan over a checked shirt and shapeless brown corduroy trousers.
Lester hadn’t heard the sound of any approaching footsteps, even allowing for the fact that the man was wearing a threadbare pair of tartan slippers.
He whipped around quickly, a threatening growl ripping from his throat to echo in the empty room, and found himself facing an empty doorway, with Nick staring at him in surprise.
“James? What’s the matter?”
Lester swung back to the mirror, still growling.
The man smiled at him through the glass, his grey eyes cold and expressionless. He was still standing in the doorway. The doorway that only a second ago had been totally empty.
Lester fought against the urge to spring at the mirror, teeth bared. He understood now what had scared the child. He could have very happily cried for his own mother at that moment.
Nick looked at him, clearly not understanding the problem. No doubt for him, the doorway was as empty as it had been for Lester only a moment ago. But now, in the reflection of the dusty mirror, the man was back, smiling at him with brittle malice, as if he could see straight through Lester’s appearance to the truth hidden within.
This time, Lester didn’t hold back. He sprung straight at the mirror, breaking the glass into numerous fragments, trusting to his thick fur to protect him from the flying shards. In a hail of shattered glass, Lester looked back over his shoulder to the doorway. It was now empty, the only person he could see now was Nick, standing there staring at him as if he’d gone mad, which might possibly be the case.
Lester picked his way carefully out of the wreckage and shook himself, sending more glass flying then, slowly and deliberately, he stalked past Nick, out of the room and down the stairs, his very puzzled lover following him.
Outside, Chloe had calmed down slightly, and a big smile appeared on her tear-stained face as soon as she saw the toy Nick was holding out to her.
With a cry of, “Bingo!” she pounced on the small grey dog and clutched it hard, while staring at Lester out of pale blue eyes, almost the colour of the walls in the room that had contained the mirror.
Nick waved away Sara’s tanks with a smile. “I’m afraid I’m going to owe the estate agents an apology,” he said. “My dog managed to knock over the mirror one of the back bedrooms. It smashed on the floor.”
At the mention of the mirror smashing, Chloe reached out a tentative hand and stroked the fur of Lester’s neck. He leaned into her touch and allowed her to run her hand through his thick ruff.
If he was correctly interpreting the look on the child’s face, he wasn’t the only person who was glad that the mirror was now broken beyond any hope of repair.
Maybe now the house would stand a better chance of finding a new owner.
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 15
Characters : Nick/Lester, OCs
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Summary : Nick and Lester answer a cry for help.
A/N : Set in
knitekat ‘s Wolf!Verse. I wrote this for her for a fandom stocking a while ago. Posted now as a spooking offering for the upcoming Halloween.The sound of a child’s scream brought both Nick and Lester to a halt, heads tilting automatically to one side to get a better directional fix on the noise.
In Nick’s case the reaction came from long engrained habit in the field. In Lester’s case it was simply instinct as on this occasion his ears were somewhat furrier than Nick’s. A low growl told Nick that Lester was intending to remain in wolf-form while they investigated the source of the cries.
They both broke into a run, but Lester’s four paws covered the ground far more quickly. Nick saw him break out onto the road and turn the corner, heading towards a rather charmless red brick house that had stood empty for some while, an estate agent’s board proclaiming to anyone that might be interested that it was for sale.
A woman was down on one knee on the pavement, trying to console a small child that was busy bellowing at the top of its considerable lungpower.
Lester came to a rapid halt, several paces away, no doubt conscious of the fact that something that looked like an exceptionally large German shepherd dog would not necessarily be welcomed by either mother or child. Alert for any obvious sign of external threat, Lester remained stationary, trying – but not altogether succeeding – to look unthreatening. Fortunately, the woman was too engrossed in attempting to calm her child to notice anything else.
Nick arrived, trying not to make it obvious that he was slightly out of breath. “Is everything all right?
The woman looked up at him, pushing her reddish-blonde hair away from her face in a harassed gesture. “She’s fine,” she said. “Something in the house frightened her.” She laughed, slightly shakily. “I guess that’s a thumbs down for this one.”
The child clung to her, face buried in the woman’s thick blue coat. From the shoulder-length pale blonde hair, Nick presumed the child was female, but kids were very definitely not his specialist subject. Lester could probably tell by smell alone, but then Lester was far better with kids than Nick was, in wolf-form or out of it.
“Does she like dogs?” Nick asked.
“She loves them.” The woman groped with one hand into one of her jacket pockets. “Bingo will hopefully work his magic. Then she’ll want to stroke yours, if that’s all right?” Lester could see the woman groping around inside the pocket before she finally came up empty-handed. “Oh shit,” she muttered. “Chloe, we must have dropped Bingo in the house. Let’s just go back in and get him, shall we?”
“Nooooooooooo!” The wail was instant and heartfelt.
The woman looked puzzled. “Come on, darling, it won’t take a minute, then we’ll go home.”
The wail intensified and it would have taken someone with an advanced degree in applied linguistics – or alternatively a parent – to interpret the racket.
“I can’t leave you out here, darling, and we can’t go home without Bingo.” She glanced at Nick and added, “She won’t sleep without him.”
Nick smiled at her. Lost toys were something they had a good track record with. “If you can let us in, Shadow will find the toy for you, no problem. He once saved the day by finding a buried teddy bear on a beach in Cornwall.” He’d also foiled a kidnap attempt in these same woods, but mentioning that might scare the kid even more. She looked like she didn’t need any bogeymen in her life at the moment. “My name’s Nick, by the way.”
“Thanks. Mine’s Sara. Chloe’s just over-tired. I’ve trailed her around half a dozen houses today and they’ve all been dire.” She rolled her eyes and mouthed, “Bloody estate agents.”
Nick grinned. “Don’t tell me this one was described as close to all amenities?”
“No, but they did use the phrase ‘considerable period charm’ and told me it was reduced for a quick sale.”
Nick gave the red-brick monstrosity an appraising glance. “I think they lied, at least on the first point.”
She fished a set of keys out of her pocket. “I’m really sorry to bother you with this, but if you could find her toy, I’d be eternally grateful. It’s a very moth-eaten grey dog, answers to the name of Bingo. There’s no burglar alarm. The place is empty, that’s why they just gave me the keys. I should have been suspicious when they weren’t even wasting their time with a sales pitch.”
“That bad?”
“Probably worse.” She handed the keys over to him. “She definitely had Bingo when we went in. Then she started crying in one of the upstairs rooms and wanted to go outside. I thought I’d stuffed him into my pocket, but I must have dropped him.”
“Back in a jiffy,” Nick said, in what he hoped was his best reassuring voice. He wasn’t much better with harassed mothers than he was with screaming kids, and didn’t want to give the wrong impression. Having a dog usually helped inspire confidence for some reason, but he still needed to be careful not to appear over-friendly and end up looking creepy.
There were only two keys on the ring. The first he tried fitted the lock and it turned easily. The house had the sort of chill that only came from standing empty. A musty smell infiltrated Nick’s nostrils and from the disgusted sneeze that came from Lester, it was obvious that it was even worse for a sensitive nose.
Nick stepped inside, taking in the peeling wallpaper in a rather unappetizing shade of dull orange, the yellowing, once-white skirting boards and the bare floorboards. If ever somewhere was in need of a house makeover, it was this dump. But even with the current state of the housing market, Nick was surprised that it was still on the market. He’d seen the board up outside for months, and it was obvious from the state of the garden that the place hadn’t received any TLC for quite a while.
He made his way to the staircase and had got as far as putting his foot on the lower treat when he realised that Lester wasn’t following him.
A low growl sent an atavistic shiver up Nick’s spine.
He turned to see Lester standing just inside the doorway, his dark eyes gleaming in the shadows of the empty house.
****
“James?”
Lester heard the note of question in Nick’s voice, but for once was at a loss to know how to answer. Normally, they had little problem communicating, no matter which form he was inhabiting, but now Lester wasn’t sure how to convey the deep sense of unease that had settled on him the moment he’d put his first paw over the threshold.
All he could do was growl, but that seemed somehow inadequate.
The dust coupled with a deeply unpleasant smell that was probably more noticeable for him than Nick had made him sneeze almost immediately, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he was shit-scared, and that wasn’t a feeling he was used to experiencing in wolf-form. No fucking wonder the kid had screamed the place down. He felt like tucking his tail between his legs and running outside, yelping.
“James?” Nick repeated, concern in his voice.
Lester shook himself and took another pace inside, sniffing the air and sneezing again. The feeling of threat receded slightly, and he began to wonder if he’d simply been reacting to the emptiness, the smell and the appalling wallpaper. After a second shake – largely for Nick’s benefit – he strode purposefully across the hall and started to climb the stairs.
The sound of his nails raking across the bare wood of the stairs sounded unnaturally loud in the silence of the empty house. Lester felt Nick’s hand brush lightly over his thick fur and the touch was oddly reassuring.
The woman had referred to the toy probably having been dropped upstairs, so that was the obvious place to start. There were five rooms at the top of the stairs: two large bedrooms at the front, and a bathroom plus two smaller rooms at the back. Lester checked the ones at the front first. It was easy to see at a glance that there were no lost toys in either of them. The rooms had been completely stripped, no carpets, no curtains, nothing at all. They felt cold and oppressive, but fortunately lacked the feeling of menace that had assailed Lester’s senses when he’d first stepped into the house.
The bathroom was quickly dismissed, as was one of the smaller rooms.
Lester stood outside the final room, uncomfortably conscious that he’d been leaving this particular room to last. The strong sense of threat had returned, rolling through Lester like an advancing wave on a beach. He stood rooted to the spot, feeling his hackles rise. He wanted to throw back his head and howl, but that wouldn’t help. There was nothing here he could see that was triggering his flight or fight mechanism, but at the moment, the idea of flight was very attractive indeed.
Nick walked up to him and put a hand on the bristling fur around Lester’s neck. “Something’s bugging you, isn’t it?”
Lester looked up at Nick and growled again, once, meaning yes.
“I can see the toy,” Nick said. “Wait here, I’ll get it.”
Nick stepped over the threshold of the room and Lester felt the air crackle with tension, the sensation almost auditory, like someone was scrunching up a dry paper bag. Lester growled in warning, but he was damned if he was letting his mate walk into danger alone, so staying on the landing simply wasn’t an option.
Lester forced himself to move forward, into the room. Every hair on his body felt like it was being brushed backwards. The room was bare-boarded, like all the others, but here the walls had been painted a faded shade of light blue, heavily stained in places by damp.
The small grey toy dog was lying on one side of the room, in front of a tall, unframed mirror leaving up against the wall in the far corner.
“Gotcha!” Nick said with satisfaction and went to pick up the toy.
Lester followed him, determined to conquer the fear that was in danger of swamping his senses. He sniffed at the grey dog in Nick’s hand. It was clear that Bingo was a much-loved favourite. One ear looked well-chewed, and there were signs of quite a few repairs.
Nick turned to leave. At the same moment, Lester looked at the mirror and saw the reflection of a man standing in the doorway, directly facing Nick. The man looked to be in his 60s, with thin, greying hair swept over his head in a greasy comb-over that wholly failed to disguise a largely pink, shiny head. The man’s face reminded Lester of a thoroughly irritable weasel he’d once met. He was wearing a dark blue cardigan over a checked shirt and shapeless brown corduroy trousers.
Lester hadn’t heard the sound of any approaching footsteps, even allowing for the fact that the man was wearing a threadbare pair of tartan slippers.
He whipped around quickly, a threatening growl ripping from his throat to echo in the empty room, and found himself facing an empty doorway, with Nick staring at him in surprise.
“James? What’s the matter?”
Lester swung back to the mirror, still growling.
The man smiled at him through the glass, his grey eyes cold and expressionless. He was still standing in the doorway. The doorway that only a second ago had been totally empty.
Lester fought against the urge to spring at the mirror, teeth bared. He understood now what had scared the child. He could have very happily cried for his own mother at that moment.
Nick looked at him, clearly not understanding the problem. No doubt for him, the doorway was as empty as it had been for Lester only a moment ago. But now, in the reflection of the dusty mirror, the man was back, smiling at him with brittle malice, as if he could see straight through Lester’s appearance to the truth hidden within.
This time, Lester didn’t hold back. He sprung straight at the mirror, breaking the glass into numerous fragments, trusting to his thick fur to protect him from the flying shards. In a hail of shattered glass, Lester looked back over his shoulder to the doorway. It was now empty, the only person he could see now was Nick, standing there staring at him as if he’d gone mad, which might possibly be the case.
Lester picked his way carefully out of the wreckage and shook himself, sending more glass flying then, slowly and deliberately, he stalked past Nick, out of the room and down the stairs, his very puzzled lover following him.
Outside, Chloe had calmed down slightly, and a big smile appeared on her tear-stained face as soon as she saw the toy Nick was holding out to her.
With a cry of, “Bingo!” she pounced on the small grey dog and clutched it hard, while staring at Lester out of pale blue eyes, almost the colour of the walls in the room that had contained the mirror.
Nick waved away Sara’s tanks with a smile. “I’m afraid I’m going to owe the estate agents an apology,” he said. “My dog managed to knock over the mirror one of the back bedrooms. It smashed on the floor.”
At the mention of the mirror smashing, Chloe reached out a tentative hand and stroked the fur of Lester’s neck. He leaned into her touch and allowed her to run her hand through his thick ruff.
If he was correctly interpreting the look on the child’s face, he wasn’t the only person who was glad that the mirror was now broken beyond any hope of repair.
Maybe now the house would stand a better chance of finding a new owner.