I'd've Baked a Cake 4/14
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: Sorry about my absence, I am now back. And on with further nonadventures of the sappy brotherly kind!
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Stephen glanced at the ever-so-disapproving Rachel Green. She had insisted on driving straight to the Temple home, no doubt to be completely sure Connor was being abused, and to make sure he'd been telling the truth about talking them into giving him a sort of provisional guardian status over Connor. She glanced at him herself a moment, then said, "In my bag there's a set of papers. I need you to read them, and when we get there you'll sign them."
He frowned, then dug around in the bag on the floor until he pulled up a set of papers. They were a sort of contract, effectively saying that the Temples had agreed to let him take care of Connor, that he had placed them under no duress to make that agreement and that Stephen agreed to feed, clothe, educate and discipline Connor as needed. "This says we need to sign it in front of a witness and a solicitor," he said. "I assume you'll be the witness-"
"I've already contacted a solicitor to meet us there," she told him coolly.
She had that look. The one he was so familiar with from his parents. The, you're-too-young-to-know-what-you're-doing look. "On such short notice?" he asked.
"Do you think child protective services don't have solicitors on the payroll?" she asked him.
Stephen shrugged. He'd never much thought about it. The only reason he hadn't objected to the trip out was that having Ms Green with him was a guarantee that he'd be able to gain access to Connor's room and collect his things. As much as Stephen was sure that he could manage to find Connor clothes, it would probably be for the best that he didn't waste money on those things.
When they got to the Temple home late that afternoon, they were greeted by a chipper man who introduced himself as the solicitor required. Connor's father was oddly average-looking. Average height, brown hair and eyes, the slightest hint of paunch. "So, you'd be Stephen Hart, then?" Harry Temple said. He looked Stephen up and down with great disfavour.
"Yes," he said. "I must presume you're Harry Temple? I'm here to collect Connor's things."
"Oy! Penny! That posh nutter that wants to adopt Connor's at the door!" Connor's mother, she was where he got his looks from. The hair and those dark eyes were just like her son's.
Stephen blinked, having never particularly thought of himself as posh in any way, then decided it wasn't worth thinking about just in time to dodge out of Rachel Green's way as she marched in, looking utterly intimidating. "Mr. Temple? I'm Rachel Green, and I'm here on behalf of Child Protective Services in London, as we have some concerns about Connor's wellbeing."
Harry Temple looked flummoxed, and let them in and had the agreement signed before he seemed to really realise what was going on. Stephen left Ms. Green to her job of intimidation after that, while he nipped upstairs with a few large bags and a stack of boxes and followed Connor's descriptions of where his room was. Not that Connor knew they were there, but he'd described the layout of the house once in a letter, and Stephen stepped into a room with a Princess Leia poster on the wall, Stephen paused to admire the print, which was a painting rather than a publicity shot, and was very artistic, along with being a picture of a woman wearing nothing but a metal bikini. There was a poster advertising some American football team, surrounded by scantily clad cheerleaders, a Doctor Who poster he'd sent Connor one year for his birthday and dozens of science fiction toys.
There was also a shelf full of books. Schoolbooks, science fiction and fantasy, paleontology, physics, he smiled a little as he remembered Connor joking that the most important trio in his life were all named Stephen. Hawking, Gould and Hart. He started taking the books down and loading them into the boxes.
"So, have you been fucking my son?" came a sharp, angry female voice. There was Penny Temple.
Stephen coolly told her, "No, but then I don't expect you to believe me. He's brilliant, and even with the age difference, I think of him as a friend. Maybe even a little like family." He kept on putting the books into the box.
"It's your fault, isn't it?" she demanded. "Your fault that he thinks he's too good for us and-"
"It's not my fault your husband beat him into unconsciousness, and it's not my fault he's still hospitalised for his injuries," Stephen snapped. "Nor is it my fault he felt he had to leave after being beaten half to death."
She blanched. "Hospital?"
"Yes, Mrs. Temple," he said shortly. "The hospital." The box was full, and he moved on to a second one. He didn't say any more, not sure whether he'd suddenly start shouting at her, taking out the terror and anger he'd felt when Connor had collapsed in front of him, looking like he'd had a run-in with a freight train. He filled three boxes in the end, taking a risk and leaving out anything that he already owned. He moved on to Connor's clothes, stuffing them without care into the bags, figuring anything that needed ironing could always be dealt with later. He was mostly through when Rachel showed up.
"Some people should be bloody sterilised," she muttered, snatching up the last box and moving Connor's action figures and models into it.
In spite of himself, Stephen turned to stare at her. "That's . . ."
She hissed in annoyance. "People like him are the ones that we have to let slip through the cracks," she said. "There's nothing we can do unless and until they do something egregious."
"Like beating their children?" he asked.
"Exactly," Rachel said. "There's no evidence and no one ever thanks us when we're overcautious and make a mistake. It happens, but we prefer to take the children from the parents and find out later we were wrong, than to leave them and find out later we were wrong. One way is mildly traumatising, the other way kills." She closed her eyes a moment. "No matter which way, we lose. The public gets angry when we don't take the children away on hearsay evidence, then they get angry when we do on concrete evidence, it just depends on which way we guessed wrongly."
It was with a lot more sympathy, Stephen said, "I understand, I just wish you'd ease up on me a bit."
"Raising a child is not easy," she told him. "Connor is your responsibility now, and there is no telling how he'll test boundaries. You'll have to be ready for that and you'll have to be prepared to be his parent then, not his friend." She looked at him earnestly. "You mean well, and that's important, but you've never done this before."
She was clearly worried, and Stephen nodded, deciding that he'd talk to Connor about it all, and hope like hell none of that testing boundaries would happen. "All I can do is promise that I'll do my best and try not to do anything stupid."
They finished collecting the last of Connor's things and carried them back to the car. Rachel would help him unload it all at his apartment, then he'd head to the hospital and tell Connor what was happening next.
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Connor had been dozing, bored with the tv, done with the books Stephen had left him and hoping to discourage kindly nurses from babying him. Stephen arrived finally, carrying a bag. "Connor?"
He blinked awake. "Hey," he said. "How'd the interview go?"
"Interview?" Stephen asked, frowning.
"The interview with Dr. Cutter," Connor prompted. "You'd said in your letter you'd be having it in a few days, unless you'd already had it by the time the letter got to me, but I thought that was where you'd been all day."
"Oh," Stephen said, his face clearing. "I missed the interview. No, I was up-"
"What!?" Connor stared. "What do you mean you missed it? How did you just miss the most important meeting in your academic career?"
Lips twitching, Stephen said, "You sound like my mother, you know."
"Stephen . . ."
"I was here," Stephen told him firmly.
He felt a little sick. "You . . . Stephen, that was important. You can't . . . you gave that up for me?"
"You're more important than some interview, Connor," Stephen said. "And I'll be able to make that up. I've already contacted Dr. Cutter's office and I've rescheduled the meeting to explain to her what happened. Even if I don't get her, there are other people I can get a doctorate under."
"Stephen-"
"Connor, I'd do it all over again," Stephen said.
It was really stupid, but he felt tears prick at his eyes. Neither of his parents had ever done anything like that for him. He knew that if he'd been in hospital near Miller's Field, he'd've been lucky to see his mum once a day, his dad on the weekends. Instead, Stephen had been there the whole time, getting him books from the library and just sitting and talking to him about whatever. "Thanks," he said, pinching his leg to try to keep himself from blubbering like a baby.
"As I was saying," Stephen said then, "I was up to Miller's Field all day, collecting your clothes and things and being given rather impressive lectures by Rachel Green about how I was going to have to learn how to discipline you when you inevitably start testing boundaries."
"Which means what?" Connor asked.
Stephen flopped into the chair next to him. "It means that I need to talk to you about all that stuff. You're too old for me to just set up a bunch of rules arbitrarily, so here's what we'll do. You won't have total veto power on punishments, should you do anything that it turns out I need to punish you for, but you'll have a sort of partial veto."
That sounded okay so far. "What were you thinking?"
"The usual," Stephen said. "Grounding, taking away your laptop and internet, making you use school computers for typing up papers and things-"
Connor made a face. Nothing worse than school computers. They were slow, everyone was always using them and there was always some idiot who managed to get the whole system buried in viruses. "Bleh."
"See, it's a good idea already," Stephen said with a grin. "As for boundaries, I think we're going to have to figure that out as we go. Your grades have always been too good for me to have to come up with any ideas about that to start with, so I won't bother. You'll have to always make sure I either know or have a quick and easy way of knowing where you'll be, you'll have a curfew that I'll probably work out once we're both home and all, and maybe I'll hang something like making you join a football team over your head if you get too bratty."
"Sounds fair," Connor said honestly. After all, he couldn't think he was too offensive, so maybe it would be okay. If he minded his p's and q's, after all, he'd probably be fine. "Although the grades thing . . . I've missed my final exams," he admitted. "And I know I passed, I added up everything, but I'm going to have a sixty-something average this year."
"Let me think about that," Stephen said. "I'll call your old school and see if we can't work out a deal for you to make them up." He looked apologetically at Connor. "You may have to head back up there just to take them."
He sighed. That would be unpleasant, but it would be for one day, not with the fear that it was for the rest of his life. "I understand, and thanks, really."
"Well, enough unpleasantness, because we'll have to figure out those things as we go," Stephen said. "But I've got some things for you." He dropped a bag full of books on Connor's lap along with a rectangle of plastic.
"A gameboy? Stephen!" Connor felt his jaw drop open. He'd played some computer games, but there were limits, and he'd had to forgo even thinking of one. Then he noticed that the corners were scratched and the buttons were showing a little wear. He eyed his friend, whose lips were quirked at the corners. "This is yours?"
"Sorry," he said with a grin. "But it's mine. And now I can openly leave it out and tell anyone who asks that it's yours."
"So, I'm really just a scapegoat for anything embarassing?" Connor asked him dryly.
Stephen just plopped Super Mario Land 2 into the little machine and started up the game. Connor instantly knew what he'd be saving up for next when he got a part time job somewhere for pocket money. This was brilliant. "Do you have a proper system?" he asked Stephen, even as he hissed and desperately urged his little man to jump over things.
"No," Stephen said. "I really don't have the time or the interest, frankly. But this I can carry with me, so I have it. My older brother has kids, though, and they've got one, maybe next time I visit I'll drag you along and you can see."
They settled into a comfortable almost-silence, Connor playing Stephen's gameboy and Stephen reading a book. It was a pleasant evening until the nurse came in and told Connor the electronic device's noises were disturbing the other patients and made him put it away.
Part 3
Part 5
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