fredbassett

Title : Outlook Changeable
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 15
Characters : Nick/Jenny, Connor, Lester, Lorraine
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Summary : ”It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.” PG Wodehouse
A/N: Written for Nick/Jenny week on 52 Weeks of Primeval, using the prose prompt from the March Monthly challenge as set out above.

“Yellow warning,” Connor muttered. He promptly slid to the floor, slipped underneath the bank of computer screens and started to fiddle – urgently and diligently – with various wires and connectors, a look of intense concentration on his face.

Jenny stared down at him, mentally recapping their conversation over the past couple of minutes and wondering what she’d said to precipitate such a hasty withdrawal. Her internal review came up blank. They’d only been talking about the previous night’s episode of Supernatural…

“Will someone tell me why that man is always so bloody unreasonable?” The r in unreasonable stretched to breaking point, teetered on the brink of a precipice, then snapped back into place with an almost audible twang.

Jenny winced. Nick’s 10.30 meeting with Lester had clearly not gone to plan. Or, to be more accurate, had not gone to Nick’s plan, whilst Lester was almost certainly chalking up another victory on the clipboard he kept in his desk drawer for exactly that purpose.

“He considers it a vocation,” Jenny commented. “Good morning, Nick, nice to see you, did you have a pleasant evening yesterday?”

Nick blinked several times, looking like a bemused but faintly irritated owl Jenny had once encountered in a zoo. “I spent yesterday evening doing my expense claims. Of course it wasn’t pleasant.”

Jenny rolled her eyes. “This is the first time I’ve seen you today. I was making polite conversation, you should try it sometime.” The bemused air deepened as did the thunder cloud hovering over Nick’s head. Jenny tried a different tactic. “Coffee?” she asked, as brightly as she could manage. “I think I might even have a packet of biscuits stashed away somewhere. You can tell me what James has been up to now.”

Two mugs of coffee and a packet of chocolate biscuits later, Jenny finally managed to pack Nick off to his own office with the promise of doing her best to mediate with Lester on the subject of Nick’s latest budgetary requirements. It was the best she could offer. She certainly wasn’t getting involved in the ongoing and acrimonious row over what constituted an acceptable expense claim. That way lay madness.

Once Nick was out of the door, Jenny turned on her laptop and, while 106 emails were downloading, idly surfed the Met Office website.

Connor had been right.

Severe weather is possible over the next few days and could affect you. Yellow means that you should plan ahead, thinking about possible travel delays, or the disruption of your day to day activities. The Met Office is monitoring the developing weather situation and Yellow means keep an eye on the latest forecast and be aware that the weather may change or worsen, leading to disruption of your plans in the next few days.

Jenny was going to have to keep an eye on the latest spat and see if she could head off further problems, even if it meant taking a hand in the budget argument herself and doing something to knock Nick’s numerical illiteracy into some degree of shape. Or alternatively prevail on Stephen to help, as he’d obviously been re-writing (or writing) Nick’s grant proposals for the last umpteen years, otherwise Nick’s funding would have dried up a long time ago. Brilliance and paperwork didn’t always go hand in hand, as she was starting to learn.

****

“The man’s a weasel-headed fucknugget!”

“He speaks very highly of you, too, Cutter,” Lester said, not bothering to stop his eyes from performing a neat back-flip. “And might I remind you there are ladies present?”

Cutter looked around, his eyes sliding across Jenny without settling on her, clearly trying to identify the ladies in question.

“Staff equality, please, James,” Jenny said mildly, before adding, “But if anyone refers to me as a ‘girl’ I reserve the right to deck them.”

“In that case, remind me to invite you to our next meeting with the weasel-headed fucknugget. He does that all the time.”

Lester’s dislike for the current Home Secretary was an ill-disguised secret and, on this occasion, it appeared he and Nick had at last found some much-needed common ground.

Jenny was about to bow out, leaving them to trade pleasantries at someone else’s expense for a change, when Lorraine appeared in the doorway, a frown on her usually smooth forehead. “The Home Secretary’s PA is on the phone again, sir. She said he expects you both in his office at 5pm tomorrow. Apparently, he’s not satisfied with the latest budget proposals.”

Deciding discretion was the better part of valour, Jenny mouthed, “Strong coffee,” at Lorraine and followed her out.

The warnings had reached amber proportions.

There is an increased likelihood of bad weather affecting you, which could potentially disrupt your plans and possibly cause travel delays, road and rail closures, interruption to power and the potential risk to life and property. Amber means you need to be prepared to change your plans and protect you, your family and community from the impacts of the severe weather based on the forecast from the Met Office.

There had been nothing about volatile academics in the job description. She was beginning to understand why.

****

There was only one level above yellow and amber, and it didn’t take much of an imagination to work out that a red warning told of something best avoided.

According to the Met Office website, red meant Extreme weather is expected. Red means you should take action now to keep yourself and others safe from the impact of the weather. Widespread damage, travel and power disruption and risk to life is likely. You must avoid dangerous areas and follow the advice of the emergency services and local authorities.

When Nick and Lester left Marsham Street after the much-anticipated meeting, the Home Secretary’s PA phoned Lorraine and Lorraine phoned Jenny.

Jenny glanced at her watch. At 7pm, there was little chance of Nick going back to the ARC. The most likely thing to happen was that he would go home, hit the Scotch and fume on his own. He would almost certainly fire off intemperate emails to all and sundry, not realising that Lorraine had temporarily disabled his email account. Stephen was out on a shout in the wilds of Essex with Abby and was unlikely to be back for the rest of the evening, so he would be no help in Cutter-wrangling, and Connor was in the middle of some routine maintenance on the main ADD.

The sensible thing to do would be to call for a takeaway, turn her mobile phone to silent, and pour a large glass of wine. But Jenny had never spent much of her life courting ‘sensible’, and she didn’t feel like starting now.

She left the chilled Pinot Grigio in the fridge and picked up two good bottles of Rioja. Nick’s house was only a fifteen minute car journey away, and she could always get a taxi home.

Nick opened the door with the look on his face of a man expecting to do battle with a Jehovah’s Witness. He looked at her with a faintly constipated expression that she chose to interpret as stupefaction.

Jenny held up both bottles.

An unexpected smile broke through the storm clouds. Nick stood to one side and waved her in.

The house was its usual untidy but welcoming self. Jenny handed the bottles to Nick and made herself comfortable on one of the old red leather sofas.

He arrived back with one bottle, two large glasses and two packets of cheese and onion crisps.

“Do you want to tell me about it?” she asked. Her grandmother had been a great advocate of lancing boils.
Nick ripped open his packet of crisps with slightly more force than was necessary, but then surprised her by saying, “No. I’ll save it for tomorrow’s team meeting. Connor’s already running a book on whether I’ll use the word thundercunt.”

Jenny almost snorted wine out of her nose. When she eventually regained some composure, she asked, “Where the hell did he get that one from? I didn’t realise Connor knew that sort of language.”

“Stephen says he’s found a Scottish insult generator on the internet. He’s made it into a bingo card and is selling them for a fiver a time. Ryan’s lot think it’s the best thing since sliced bread.”

Jenny kicked her shoes off, tucked her feet up under her and took another mouthful of wine. That one went down the right way. “How many squares did weasel-headed fucknuggett fill?”

“Won Lorraine the £50 quid jackpot.”

Jenny smiled. It was nice to know that Met Office warnings could sometimes be inaccurate.

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From:

lukadreaming.livejournal.com

This made me hoot! There are some great lines in it (Cutter does do the constipated look at times!) and the Scottish random insult generator is genius.