I'd've Baked a Cake 1/14
Title: I'd've Baked a Cake
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: If I owned Stephen I'd keep him dressed in nothing but a loincloth for my personal amusement. Sadly, I don't. Nor do I own anything else you might recognise.
Rating: PG, this may change in time.
Summary: Stephen and Connor meet for the first time under unusual circumstances and it forges a very important friendship. AU
Notes: I made up the town Connor lives in because that way no one can tell me I have geography or anything else wrong about it (per se, anyhow). I'm sure I'll get someone's back up about schools, again, but I am trying. I gave in and referred to the Primeval wiki for Stephen's home town, thus I will do my damndest to never say anything about it but the name. This will be Connor and Stephen friendship, nothing smutty will be happening (sorry aunteeneenah), and I, as always, have no idea where I'm going with this. Wish me luck! As always, if you see something Brit-picky (or nit-picky) in the fic that seems likely to make you scream, feel free to let me know.
***********************************
Torquay, Devon, 1991
This was one of the stupidest experimental exercises in education yet, Stephen thought. There had been some sort of report made to some idiot government body or other about the failure of the schools to teach handwriting properly, or some such idiocy, and now they had to exchange handwritten letters with pen friends chosen from some other school also participating in the project.
At times like this he wished he went to a school that was government funded and had far less of a tendency to experiments on the students. Give him a straightforward class lecture where he took notes, did essays and readings for homework and the occasional in class test or exam. He looked with great disfavour at the list of topics they were supposed to cover over the course of the letter exchanges. Physical appearance, favourite kind of music, birthdate, hobbies, favourite class in school, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Well, at least he wasn't going to have to cover the cost of postage.
He glanced up to see Mrs. Smythe shooting him a stern look, sighed, and started composing a letter.
To whom it may concern,
Since I have no idea who you are, and you won't know who I am until you read this, I'll be brief. My name is Stephen Hart, my birthday is February 13th and I am taller than most of my classmates, with blue eyes and light brown hair. I participate in the school's track and football teams and my favourite class is not being in one.
I hate this letter writing exercise, so I hope you don't expect that I'll become your best friend or something stupid like that. This is for class and nothing else, so let's get through this in the minimum number of letters possible. In case you're one of those people who apparently can't read directions, that's ten. You write ten, I write ten. Then we stop. Feel free to put that into the report you have to produce to your teacher to prove that you're actually exchanging letters.
The only reason I haven't crammed everything into this letter is so that I have something to write in the rest of them.
Sincerely,
Stephen Hart
He folded up the letter, which he had written onto the foolscap with double spacing and the largest handwriting he thought he could get away with and not squeezing anything. Having been careful to use up all the page space, he handed the sheet over to Mrs. Smythe and went to sit down and get on with his Biology class reading in the time left in the class period.
A week later he received his letter from the other school. Cracking it open, he noticed that the handwriting looked fairly childish, it was double-spaced like his own had been and was written half in green ink and half in blue.
To whom it may concern,
I checked, that's how you're supposed to start a letter to someone when you don't know who's going to be reading it. My name is Connor Temple and I'm hoping to get this over with, because I think my teacher arranged this because she wants her pet project (me) to be more normal or something. I don't know. Her name is Olive Murphy and she gets very snippy when you take her word that she wants to be friends and call her Olive. She said she wanted to be friends on the first day of school
The ink changed here from green to blue.
I have been told that I shouldn't say that and that I need to use blue ink, but Miss Murphy won't say why. I'm about the same height as everyone else in my class, I have dark brown eyes and hair and I go to after school math programs and play computer games for fun.
I really don't want to do this, but since we have to, my favourite kind of music is the Madonna my older brother listens to, because Dad turns really purple when he hears it and I hate sports and like reading and computers and dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are
Yours sincerely,
Connor Temple
Well, that was interesting. Weird, but interesting.
********************************
Miller's Field, 1991
Connor looked disconsolately around the classroom. Kids his age were idiots. If only his mum and dad could afford a school for smarter kids, or they were in a city where there'd be one of the regular schools aimed at smart kids, or even if they'd let him skip a year or two ahead. But his mum and dad also thought that it would give him a swelled head or something, so here he was, in year three, and no one was interested in dinosaurs, except the babies in the nursery school nearby, no one liked books with lots of pages and big words and all the teachers were always doing weird things to 'enrich his school experience'.
The least they could do, in his opinion, was let him go read if he finished work early, instead of giving him more of the same really easy maths problems or history quizzes, acting like it was a real treat to get them. He didn't bother telling the teachers he was finished anymore, he just waited until time was up and tried to subtly draw dinosaurs in the margins of his textbooks and things.
He looked at the letter that was Miss Murphy's latest attempt to 'enrich'. Opening it, he read it through and smiled. He sort of liked this Stephen Hart already.
Dear Stephen,
I agree we should just get on with it and just answer a few points per letter. I mean, you're on a football team and everything, you probably would try to steal the nice bits of my lunch the way the other kids are always doing to me here when they're good at sports.
We're supposed to talk about our families and where we live, so let's do that next. I live in a small town called Miller's Field. Well, Miller's Field Upon Tyne, but no one calls it that. There are about ten roads in total and we buy almost everything at the post office on Baker Lane, because they've turned it into a sort of store, except for stuff from the bakery on Post Street. I'm the only one who finds that wierd.
My mum and dad are pretty traditional. Mum cooks and cleans and stuff like that, Dad is a mechanic, and it's the only thing he's good at being smart about and my brother plays rugby and tackles me a lot. Dad says that's what brothers do, but I wish he played football instead, because he'd probably never get the idea to tackle me from that.
My gran lives in a terrible house with no electricity in the middle of nowhere, and every Christmas we go there and play charades for hours, because it's my gran's favourite game and she can't play it by herself.
Mum has one sister and three brothers. They and their families live in other towns near here, except Uncle Hubert, who lives in America somewhere and no one talks about him except to tell us kids that we're not supposed to be like him. How we're supposed to not be like him when we don't know what to avoid, I don't know.
Dad has one brother and one sister and he doesn't talk to his sister, because she ran off to be an Irish nun, and he yells at his brother a lot, because instead of working in the same garage, Uncle Kieran started his own garage somewhere else.
Not very interesting, is it?
Sincerely,
Connor
A week later he got his first reply from Stephen Hart.
Dear Connor,
I will take this one statement at a time. First, if you don't want me to wind up reading the crossed out bits, you'd best get a fresh sheet and start over, one line through won't stop me from reading it. Or I suppose you could scribble over it until I can't read it, but I think having a second draft version will probably serve you better.
As for your teacher, it sounds like she is patronising to an appalling degree, and I pity you for having her attention. I assume then, that she's trying to do some sort of idiotic experiment to try to improve your school experience, rather than getting on with teaching things. I hate it when they do that. If they're not going to do anything useful, they could just leave us alone to read or get homework done in class.
I haven't the faintest notion why it would matter in this whether you use blue ink or green. Hell, use purple ink for all I care, this is supposed to be a handwriting exercise, or so they say.
As for Madonna, making your father turn purple may be the only valid use for her albums, but it's a better reason for listening to her than I've heard from anyone else. I assume your brother listens so that he can . . . well, best not talk about that in a letter some teacher might read.
The last thing is two questions. You go to after-school maths programs, is that for fun (misplaced modifiers, maybe)? And dinosaurs? As in you want to be a paleontologist or something like that?
I'm from Torquay, in Devon. My favourite music is from groups like Guns N' Roses and Queen. I know it's not really cool, but my favourite television show isn't even on anymore, Doctor Who. I've had to look everywhere to find tapes of the really old episodes, but I found some.
I think that's enough writing to keep my teacher happy about it.
Sincerely,
Stephen
In spite of how much he still didn't like being Miss Murphy's pet project, Connor sort of liked having someone to talk to who wasn't like his classmates. He set himself to answering the letter.
Part 2
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Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: If I owned Stephen I'd keep him dressed in nothing but a loincloth for my personal amusement. Sadly, I don't. Nor do I own anything else you might recognise.
Rating: PG, this may change in time.
Summary: Stephen and Connor meet for the first time under unusual circumstances and it forges a very important friendship. AU
Notes: I made up the town Connor lives in because that way no one can tell me I have geography or anything else wrong about it (per se, anyhow). I'm sure I'll get someone's back up about schools, again, but I am trying. I gave in and referred to the Primeval wiki for Stephen's home town, thus I will do my damndest to never say anything about it but the name. This will be Connor and Stephen friendship, nothing smutty will be happening (sorry aunteeneenah), and I, as always, have no idea where I'm going with this. Wish me luck! As always, if you see something Brit-picky (or nit-picky) in the fic that seems likely to make you scream, feel free to let me know.
***********************************
Torquay, Devon, 1991
This was one of the stupidest experimental exercises in education yet, Stephen thought. There had been some sort of report made to some idiot government body or other about the failure of the schools to teach handwriting properly, or some such idiocy, and now they had to exchange handwritten letters with pen friends chosen from some other school also participating in the project.
At times like this he wished he went to a school that was government funded and had far less of a tendency to experiments on the students. Give him a straightforward class lecture where he took notes, did essays and readings for homework and the occasional in class test or exam. He looked with great disfavour at the list of topics they were supposed to cover over the course of the letter exchanges. Physical appearance, favourite kind of music, birthdate, hobbies, favourite class in school, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Well, at least he wasn't going to have to cover the cost of postage.
He glanced up to see Mrs. Smythe shooting him a stern look, sighed, and started composing a letter.
To whom it may concern,
Since I have no idea who you are, and you won't know who I am until you read this, I'll be brief. My name is Stephen Hart, my birthday is February 13th and I am taller than most of my classmates, with blue eyes and light brown hair. I participate in the school's track and football teams and my favourite class is not being in one.
I hate this letter writing exercise, so I hope you don't expect that I'll become your best friend or something stupid like that. This is for class and nothing else, so let's get through this in the minimum number of letters possible. In case you're one of those people who apparently can't read directions, that's ten. You write ten, I write ten. Then we stop. Feel free to put that into the report you have to produce to your teacher to prove that you're actually exchanging letters.
The only reason I haven't crammed everything into this letter is so that I have something to write in the rest of them.
Sincerely,
Stephen Hart
He folded up the letter, which he had written onto the foolscap with double spacing and the largest handwriting he thought he could get away with and not squeezing anything. Having been careful to use up all the page space, he handed the sheet over to Mrs. Smythe and went to sit down and get on with his Biology class reading in the time left in the class period.
A week later he received his letter from the other school. Cracking it open, he noticed that the handwriting looked fairly childish, it was double-spaced like his own had been and was written half in green ink and half in blue.
To whom it may concern,
I checked, that's how you're supposed to start a letter to someone when you don't know who's going to be reading it. My name is Connor Temple and I'm hoping to get this over with, because I think my teacher arranged this because she wants her pet project (me) to be more normal or something. I don't know. Her name is Olive Murphy and she gets very snippy when you take her word that she wants to be friends and call her Olive. She said she wanted to be friends on the first day of school
The ink changed here from green to blue.
I have been told that I shouldn't say that and that I need to use blue ink, but Miss Murphy won't say why. I'm about the same height as everyone else in my class, I have dark brown eyes and hair and I go to after school math programs and play computer games for fun.
I really don't want to do this, but since we have to, my favourite kind of music is the Madonna my older brother listens to, because Dad turns really purple when he hears it and I hate sports and like reading and computers and dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are
Yours sincerely,
Connor Temple
Well, that was interesting. Weird, but interesting.
********************************
Miller's Field, 1991
Connor looked disconsolately around the classroom. Kids his age were idiots. If only his mum and dad could afford a school for smarter kids, or they were in a city where there'd be one of the regular schools aimed at smart kids, or even if they'd let him skip a year or two ahead. But his mum and dad also thought that it would give him a swelled head or something, so here he was, in year three, and no one was interested in dinosaurs, except the babies in the nursery school nearby, no one liked books with lots of pages and big words and all the teachers were always doing weird things to 'enrich his school experience'.
The least they could do, in his opinion, was let him go read if he finished work early, instead of giving him more of the same really easy maths problems or history quizzes, acting like it was a real treat to get them. He didn't bother telling the teachers he was finished anymore, he just waited until time was up and tried to subtly draw dinosaurs in the margins of his textbooks and things.
He looked at the letter that was Miss Murphy's latest attempt to 'enrich'. Opening it, he read it through and smiled. He sort of liked this Stephen Hart already.
Dear Stephen,
I agree we should just get on with it and just answer a few points per letter. I mean, you're on a football team and everything, you probably would try to steal the nice bits of my lunch the way the other kids are always doing to me here when they're good at sports.
We're supposed to talk about our families and where we live, so let's do that next. I live in a small town called Miller's Field. Well, Miller's Field Upon Tyne, but no one calls it that. There are about ten roads in total and we buy almost everything at the post office on Baker Lane, because they've turned it into a sort of store, except for stuff from the bakery on Post Street. I'm the only one who finds that wierd.
My mum and dad are pretty traditional. Mum cooks and cleans and stuff like that, Dad is a mechanic, and it's the only thing he's good at being smart about and my brother plays rugby and tackles me a lot. Dad says that's what brothers do, but I wish he played football instead, because he'd probably never get the idea to tackle me from that.
My gran lives in a terrible house with no electricity in the middle of nowhere, and every Christmas we go there and play charades for hours, because it's my gran's favourite game and she can't play it by herself.
Mum has one sister and three brothers. They and their families live in other towns near here, except Uncle Hubert, who lives in America somewhere and no one talks about him except to tell us kids that we're not supposed to be like him. How we're supposed to not be like him when we don't know what to avoid, I don't know.
Dad has one brother and one sister and he doesn't talk to his sister, because she ran off to be an Irish nun, and he yells at his brother a lot, because instead of working in the same garage, Uncle Kieran started his own garage somewhere else.
Not very interesting, is it?
Sincerely,
Connor
A week later he got his first reply from Stephen Hart.
Dear Connor,
I will take this one statement at a time. First, if you don't want me to wind up reading the crossed out bits, you'd best get a fresh sheet and start over, one line through won't stop me from reading it. Or I suppose you could scribble over it until I can't read it, but I think having a second draft version will probably serve you better.
As for your teacher, it sounds like she is patronising to an appalling degree, and I pity you for having her attention. I assume then, that she's trying to do some sort of idiotic experiment to try to improve your school experience, rather than getting on with teaching things. I hate it when they do that. If they're not going to do anything useful, they could just leave us alone to read or get homework done in class.
I haven't the faintest notion why it would matter in this whether you use blue ink or green. Hell, use purple ink for all I care, this is supposed to be a handwriting exercise, or so they say.
As for Madonna, making your father turn purple may be the only valid use for her albums, but it's a better reason for listening to her than I've heard from anyone else. I assume your brother listens so that he can . . . well, best not talk about that in a letter some teacher might read.
The last thing is two questions. You go to after-school maths programs, is that for fun (misplaced modifiers, maybe)? And dinosaurs? As in you want to be a paleontologist or something like that?
I'm from Torquay, in Devon. My favourite music is from groups like Guns N' Roses and Queen. I know it's not really cool, but my favourite television show isn't even on anymore, Doctor Who. I've had to look everywhere to find tapes of the really old episodes, but I found some.
I think that's enough writing to keep my teacher happy about it.
Sincerely,
Stephen
In spite of how much he still didn't like being Miss Murphy's pet project, Connor sort of liked having someone to talk to who wasn't like his classmates. He set himself to answering the letter.
Part 2
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