I'd've Baked a Cake 6/14
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-13 now, it looks like.
Summary: Stephen and Connor meet for the first time under unusual circumstances and it forges a very important friendship. AU
Notes: It's doing it again. It's all getting away from me, and this is trundling off on its own path and I do not know how long it will take me to get it back to the point where it's not just melodrama. *headdesk*.
******************************
Allison was leaving and heading off to work at some godforsaken outpost of the Amazon, and Stephen was shocked to realise he'd forgotten his sometime girlfriend and sometime shag buddy was leaving. They were quite involved in each other on the sofa, when the front door opened and shut, followed by a squawk of dismay from the teenaged boy who'd just walked in. "Oh! I'm sorry, I'll just . . . the library'll be open 'til eight, I'll come back then," Connor said. "I'll just grab my laptop . . . not looking . . . not looking." There was a thud, and Stephen sat up to see Connor bumping into the wall as he tried to walk around the flat with his eyes closed.
Allison had a hand over her mouth and was clearly trying not to laugh. "It's alright, Connor. We're both decent."
"Erm . . . hi," Connor said, flushing as he took in Allison's usual clothing of tight jeans and tighter teeshirt. "I'm Connor, and I really didn't mean . . . I mean," he shot Stephen a dirty look. "Stephen didn't warn me he'd have someone . . . over."
"He forgot," she said with a small smile. "I suppose that might be down to you. He's mentioned you, of course, but he never said anything about you visiting."
"It's a long story," Connor said. "It was sort of unexpected, actually. Unplanned."
Well, he clearly wasn't going to get to pick up where he and Allison had left off, Stephen thought, so he just said, "Well, we were going to order in, maybe watch a film. You're welcome to join us."
The look Connor shot at him should have been in the dictionary under incredulity. "You think I want to stick around and watch the two of you make googly eyes at each other in lieu of shagging?" Then he blinked and flushed. "No. And now I'm going to the library where I will pray to anything listening that the Earth will swallow me up." He turned to Allison. "Nice to meet you and remind Stephen that I'm stuck coming back here at eight thirty."
He fled before they could say anything else, and Allison shot him an intrigued look. "So, you failed to mention your houseguest."
"I did forget," Stephen said, pointedly adding, "I would have said something, but you'd stuck your hand on my-"
"Ah, the male inability to maintain bloodflow enough for all their parts to keep working when their bits come into it," she said with a grin. "So, he's why you forgot I'm leaving. How long'll he be staying?"
"Until he's eighteen," Stephen said, sighing and giving up on anything that might resemble sex.
Her eyes widened. "What's going on, Stephen?"
"I . . ." he paused, then said slowly. "I guess I should really talk to Connor about this. It's . . . he should have a right to say how much he wants to tell people."
"That sounds ominous," Allison said. "But I suppose it's not exactly my business. I'm leaving this weekend, after all."
"You'll keep in touch, though?" Stephen asked. "I'll miss you."
"You'll miss being able to have a girlfriend to trot out at family weddings so no one tries to foist a date on you," she teased.
He grinned. She had saved him from a lot of awkward situations with that. "That too." Then he scooped up his jacket and said, "Shall we catch up to him? You two can take the mick about me all evening."
"Sounds like fun!" she said, and they hurried out to catch Connor and bring him home.
The next day was far less good, starting as it did with the news that Helen Cutter still thought he was a dilettante and wouldn't take him on. Some of that boundary testing must have happened with Connor, because he whinged the whole day about everything, picking and picking until he snapped Stephen's last nerve and was denied the gameboy in response. Then he sulked all evening and the fun time of watching a Who episode neither had seen before didn't happen, because there was a nearly visible cloud of sulk surrounding the fourteen-year-old.
In desperation, Stephen did something he'd always sworn he'd never do if he had children, which he never would, because who wanted children? He called his mother.
"Stephen?" she sounded a little shocked. And, alright, so he never contacted her until she'd sent him a letter or left a sarcastic message reminding him that he had not been formed out of nothingness to appear fully formed as though sprung from the head of Zeus. Or something like that. The metaphors got weirder the more piqued she was. "What's wrong?"
"Why does something have to be wrong?" he asked, knowing as he asked, that she would . . .
"You mean other than the fact that you'll only call when I impress you with the guilt you should be feeling?" she asked dryly.
"Hypothetically," he said, trying to put off the moment he had to introduce Connor to his family.
"Oh, dear," said his mother.
"If a fourteen-year-old boy were sulking in his room about being denied the video games for being a petulant little berk for no reason, what would you do?"
"I don't know what I would do, because I don't know the boy in question. Why is there a teenager in your flat with his own room?" she asked.
"I . . . er . . . there was a . . . Connor's, erm . . . there was an incident," he finished, not really sure what to say. "I don't want to really say anything without okaying it with Connor."
"Say anything about what?" Connor asked from behind him. "I'm sorry for complaining, Stephen. I guess I just . . . you actually listen when I say things. I guess I sort of took it for granted."
His mother's voice was wavering between suspicion, horror and confusion as she said, "Stephen, I sincerely hope this is not what it sounds like. Because if you've taken up with that boy-"
"Mum!" Stephen squawked into the phone. "Why do people keep thinking that?"
"Keep thinking what?" Connor asked.
"That bloody social worker accused me of sleeping with him too! What is wrong with you all?"
Connor tripped over thin air and landed on top of Stephen and they both went down in a tangle of legs and arms. "Stephen?" came his mother's alarmed voice.
Connor had the phone in hand from where Stephen had dropped it trying to break his fall. "He's fine, Mrs. Hart," Connor said cheerfully. "I just got a little surprised that anyone would think Stephen would do that when he could be scarring me for life with Allison on the sofa."
"Connor! Give me the phone!"
The teenager was scrambling around, keeping the phone away from Stephen, even as he grinned and said, "Oh, she's gone now. They agreed to stay friends, but she's going to be in the Amazon for the next few years, so he's not going to be dating her-" Stephen got the phone back finally.
"Ignore him, Mum."
"I don't think I will. He seems like a charming boy, Stephen. Now, I don't suppose you'd explain why he's staying with you?"
"Stephen's my legal guardian now," Connor put in.
"Connor, get off the extension."
"Why do you have an extension? Oh, wait, this one's in the bedroom. Does that have to do with Allison-"
"Connor! I'm on the phone with my mother!"
"Sorry," Connor said, chastened, and hung up. He added, now speaking off the phone, "I'll just go send that stuff to Dr. Cutter."
"What stuff?" Stephen asked warily.
"He said he would look at my Bakker notes," Connor told him. "I'm just taking him at his word."
"You're just being obnoxious," Stephen grumbled. "Sorry, Mum."
"So, I almost have another grandchild now?" she asked.
"He's more like a younger brother," Stephen said.
"And you're now his legal guardian," she said. "Why?"
"It's complicated," Stephen hedged.
"Then you and Connor can come out to the cottage next weekend and explain it to us then," his mother said.
Damn.
*******************************
Stephen was out, at the library as he researched to create another proposal for his second choice of supervisor for a PhD. The phone was ringing. Connor looked around, then decided that, since he lived there now, he could answer the phone. "Stephen Hart's flat, can I take a message?"
"Connor Temple?" came the voice of Dr. Nick Cutter.
"Professor Cutter," Connor said in delight. He'd been exchanging email with the man ever since he'd had to explain the rebuttals he'd been writing to bakkerfan_1, amused that Cutter's opinion of him, whoever he was, matched Connor's disdain. "How are you?"
"I'm doing pretty well, actually," Cutter said, "But I wanted to talk to Stephen, actually."
Connor sighed. "He's at the library. He needed to do some research into some biochemistry so he can write a proposal for Dr. Pritchard."
"His second choice for supervisor?" Cutter asked.
Making a face even though the professor couldn't see him, Connor said, "Fourth or fifth. Everyone he wanted to work with isn't taking anyone. And then there's your wife-"
"That's why I needed to talk to him, actually," Cutter said. "Could you tell him to give me a call at this number," he rattled off the digits quickly. "I wanted to discuss something with him."
"Sure," Connor said, scribbling out a note. "I'll let him know."
He plonked down after they'd hung up, flipping idly through the various school descriptions and brochures Stephen had got him, amazed that he had actual options in terms of where he'd be going for year nine and onward. When Stephen came in a half hour later, he passed on Cutter's message and thought no more about it as he compared the advantages of going to a school that offered some extracurriculars that would be really useful for him if he went into paleontology, with a school aimed at gifted students, with a school that was perfectly fine and a five-minute walking distance away, which would be really nice, given that he hated getting up in the morning, so he'd be able to leave at the last possible minute to get there in time in the morning.
Stephen came back in looking shell-shocked and flopped down next to Connor. "We need to talk."
"What about?" Connor asked, concerned. "Are you okay? You look like something awful just happened."
"Cutter . . . Nick Cutter offered to be my supervisor," Stephen said. "We'd be leaving for Gambia just as soon as I'd got my passport and all worked out."
"That's . . ." Connor stopped dead before he said brilliant. "What about me?" he asked.
"Cutter thinks he's being clever, but he said that if you could come out of school with an average of seventy percent, having missed all your exams, no less, that you'd be able to keep up at any school we signed you up for, and that I should bring you along."
"Wha'?" Connor knew he was gaping gormlessly, but that was the maddest notion he'd ever heard. "Me? Gambia? I've never been anywhere but here and Miller's Field. I don't have a passport or anything. And what would I do?"
"He thinks you'd be useful, or learn a lot, or something," Stephen said. "I don't know. He wasn't all that clear, but I'm not completely sure I didn't agree by the time we'd hung up. The man's a hurricane." He looked as perplexed as Connor did.
Connor frowned, then said, "Maybe . . . you said we were going to have to meet your parents this weekend," he offered. "Maybe you should ask them. Maybe . . ." he paused, because Stephen really was the super-cool older brother he'd always wanted, and he'd miss him a lot if he left. "You could ask them if I could stay with them while you were gone," he suggested reluctantly. "I mean, people couldn't really object, right?"
"I wouldn't just dump you in someone's lap like that, Connor," Stephen told him with a glare. "But," he paused. "I asked Cutter for time to think about this. It's . . . maybe I should talk to my parents."
Well, that didn't make Connor any less nervous about meeting the elder Harts.
Part 5
Part 7
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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-13 now, it looks like.
Summary: Stephen and Connor meet for the first time under unusual circumstances and it forges a very important friendship. AU
Notes: It's doing it again. It's all getting away from me, and this is trundling off on its own path and I do not know how long it will take me to get it back to the point where it's not just melodrama. *headdesk*.
******************************
Allison was leaving and heading off to work at some godforsaken outpost of the Amazon, and Stephen was shocked to realise he'd forgotten his sometime girlfriend and sometime shag buddy was leaving. They were quite involved in each other on the sofa, when the front door opened and shut, followed by a squawk of dismay from the teenaged boy who'd just walked in. "Oh! I'm sorry, I'll just . . . the library'll be open 'til eight, I'll come back then," Connor said. "I'll just grab my laptop . . . not looking . . . not looking." There was a thud, and Stephen sat up to see Connor bumping into the wall as he tried to walk around the flat with his eyes closed.
Allison had a hand over her mouth and was clearly trying not to laugh. "It's alright, Connor. We're both decent."
"Erm . . . hi," Connor said, flushing as he took in Allison's usual clothing of tight jeans and tighter teeshirt. "I'm Connor, and I really didn't mean . . . I mean," he shot Stephen a dirty look. "Stephen didn't warn me he'd have someone . . . over."
"He forgot," she said with a small smile. "I suppose that might be down to you. He's mentioned you, of course, but he never said anything about you visiting."
"It's a long story," Connor said. "It was sort of unexpected, actually. Unplanned."
Well, he clearly wasn't going to get to pick up where he and Allison had left off, Stephen thought, so he just said, "Well, we were going to order in, maybe watch a film. You're welcome to join us."
The look Connor shot at him should have been in the dictionary under incredulity. "You think I want to stick around and watch the two of you make googly eyes at each other in lieu of shagging?" Then he blinked and flushed. "No. And now I'm going to the library where I will pray to anything listening that the Earth will swallow me up." He turned to Allison. "Nice to meet you and remind Stephen that I'm stuck coming back here at eight thirty."
He fled before they could say anything else, and Allison shot him an intrigued look. "So, you failed to mention your houseguest."
"I did forget," Stephen said, pointedly adding, "I would have said something, but you'd stuck your hand on my-"
"Ah, the male inability to maintain bloodflow enough for all their parts to keep working when their bits come into it," she said with a grin. "So, he's why you forgot I'm leaving. How long'll he be staying?"
"Until he's eighteen," Stephen said, sighing and giving up on anything that might resemble sex.
Her eyes widened. "What's going on, Stephen?"
"I . . ." he paused, then said slowly. "I guess I should really talk to Connor about this. It's . . . he should have a right to say how much he wants to tell people."
"That sounds ominous," Allison said. "But I suppose it's not exactly my business. I'm leaving this weekend, after all."
"You'll keep in touch, though?" Stephen asked. "I'll miss you."
"You'll miss being able to have a girlfriend to trot out at family weddings so no one tries to foist a date on you," she teased.
He grinned. She had saved him from a lot of awkward situations with that. "That too." Then he scooped up his jacket and said, "Shall we catch up to him? You two can take the mick about me all evening."
"Sounds like fun!" she said, and they hurried out to catch Connor and bring him home.
The next day was far less good, starting as it did with the news that Helen Cutter still thought he was a dilettante and wouldn't take him on. Some of that boundary testing must have happened with Connor, because he whinged the whole day about everything, picking and picking until he snapped Stephen's last nerve and was denied the gameboy in response. Then he sulked all evening and the fun time of watching a Who episode neither had seen before didn't happen, because there was a nearly visible cloud of sulk surrounding the fourteen-year-old.
In desperation, Stephen did something he'd always sworn he'd never do if he had children, which he never would, because who wanted children? He called his mother.
"Stephen?" she sounded a little shocked. And, alright, so he never contacted her until she'd sent him a letter or left a sarcastic message reminding him that he had not been formed out of nothingness to appear fully formed as though sprung from the head of Zeus. Or something like that. The metaphors got weirder the more piqued she was. "What's wrong?"
"Why does something have to be wrong?" he asked, knowing as he asked, that she would . . .
"You mean other than the fact that you'll only call when I impress you with the guilt you should be feeling?" she asked dryly.
"Hypothetically," he said, trying to put off the moment he had to introduce Connor to his family.
"Oh, dear," said his mother.
"If a fourteen-year-old boy were sulking in his room about being denied the video games for being a petulant little berk for no reason, what would you do?"
"I don't know what I would do, because I don't know the boy in question. Why is there a teenager in your flat with his own room?" she asked.
"I . . . er . . . there was a . . . Connor's, erm . . . there was an incident," he finished, not really sure what to say. "I don't want to really say anything without okaying it with Connor."
"Say anything about what?" Connor asked from behind him. "I'm sorry for complaining, Stephen. I guess I just . . . you actually listen when I say things. I guess I sort of took it for granted."
His mother's voice was wavering between suspicion, horror and confusion as she said, "Stephen, I sincerely hope this is not what it sounds like. Because if you've taken up with that boy-"
"Mum!" Stephen squawked into the phone. "Why do people keep thinking that?"
"Keep thinking what?" Connor asked.
"That bloody social worker accused me of sleeping with him too! What is wrong with you all?"
Connor tripped over thin air and landed on top of Stephen and they both went down in a tangle of legs and arms. "Stephen?" came his mother's alarmed voice.
Connor had the phone in hand from where Stephen had dropped it trying to break his fall. "He's fine, Mrs. Hart," Connor said cheerfully. "I just got a little surprised that anyone would think Stephen would do that when he could be scarring me for life with Allison on the sofa."
"Connor! Give me the phone!"
The teenager was scrambling around, keeping the phone away from Stephen, even as he grinned and said, "Oh, she's gone now. They agreed to stay friends, but she's going to be in the Amazon for the next few years, so he's not going to be dating her-" Stephen got the phone back finally.
"Ignore him, Mum."
"I don't think I will. He seems like a charming boy, Stephen. Now, I don't suppose you'd explain why he's staying with you?"
"Stephen's my legal guardian now," Connor put in.
"Connor, get off the extension."
"Why do you have an extension? Oh, wait, this one's in the bedroom. Does that have to do with Allison-"
"Connor! I'm on the phone with my mother!"
"Sorry," Connor said, chastened, and hung up. He added, now speaking off the phone, "I'll just go send that stuff to Dr. Cutter."
"What stuff?" Stephen asked warily.
"He said he would look at my Bakker notes," Connor told him. "I'm just taking him at his word."
"You're just being obnoxious," Stephen grumbled. "Sorry, Mum."
"So, I almost have another grandchild now?" she asked.
"He's more like a younger brother," Stephen said.
"And you're now his legal guardian," she said. "Why?"
"It's complicated," Stephen hedged.
"Then you and Connor can come out to the cottage next weekend and explain it to us then," his mother said.
Damn.
*******************************
Stephen was out, at the library as he researched to create another proposal for his second choice of supervisor for a PhD. The phone was ringing. Connor looked around, then decided that, since he lived there now, he could answer the phone. "Stephen Hart's flat, can I take a message?"
"Connor Temple?" came the voice of Dr. Nick Cutter.
"Professor Cutter," Connor said in delight. He'd been exchanging email with the man ever since he'd had to explain the rebuttals he'd been writing to bakkerfan_1, amused that Cutter's opinion of him, whoever he was, matched Connor's disdain. "How are you?"
"I'm doing pretty well, actually," Cutter said, "But I wanted to talk to Stephen, actually."
Connor sighed. "He's at the library. He needed to do some research into some biochemistry so he can write a proposal for Dr. Pritchard."
"His second choice for supervisor?" Cutter asked.
Making a face even though the professor couldn't see him, Connor said, "Fourth or fifth. Everyone he wanted to work with isn't taking anyone. And then there's your wife-"
"That's why I needed to talk to him, actually," Cutter said. "Could you tell him to give me a call at this number," he rattled off the digits quickly. "I wanted to discuss something with him."
"Sure," Connor said, scribbling out a note. "I'll let him know."
He plonked down after they'd hung up, flipping idly through the various school descriptions and brochures Stephen had got him, amazed that he had actual options in terms of where he'd be going for year nine and onward. When Stephen came in a half hour later, he passed on Cutter's message and thought no more about it as he compared the advantages of going to a school that offered some extracurriculars that would be really useful for him if he went into paleontology, with a school aimed at gifted students, with a school that was perfectly fine and a five-minute walking distance away, which would be really nice, given that he hated getting up in the morning, so he'd be able to leave at the last possible minute to get there in time in the morning.
Stephen came back in looking shell-shocked and flopped down next to Connor. "We need to talk."
"What about?" Connor asked, concerned. "Are you okay? You look like something awful just happened."
"Cutter . . . Nick Cutter offered to be my supervisor," Stephen said. "We'd be leaving for Gambia just as soon as I'd got my passport and all worked out."
"That's . . ." Connor stopped dead before he said brilliant. "What about me?" he asked.
"Cutter thinks he's being clever, but he said that if you could come out of school with an average of seventy percent, having missed all your exams, no less, that you'd be able to keep up at any school we signed you up for, and that I should bring you along."
"Wha'?" Connor knew he was gaping gormlessly, but that was the maddest notion he'd ever heard. "Me? Gambia? I've never been anywhere but here and Miller's Field. I don't have a passport or anything. And what would I do?"
"He thinks you'd be useful, or learn a lot, or something," Stephen said. "I don't know. He wasn't all that clear, but I'm not completely sure I didn't agree by the time we'd hung up. The man's a hurricane." He looked as perplexed as Connor did.
Connor frowned, then said, "Maybe . . . you said we were going to have to meet your parents this weekend," he offered. "Maybe you should ask them. Maybe . . ." he paused, because Stephen really was the super-cool older brother he'd always wanted, and he'd miss him a lot if he left. "You could ask them if I could stay with them while you were gone," he suggested reluctantly. "I mean, people couldn't really object, right?"
"I wouldn't just dump you in someone's lap like that, Connor," Stephen told him with a glare. "But," he paused. "I asked Cutter for time to think about this. It's . . . maybe I should talk to my parents."
Well, that didn't make Connor any less nervous about meeting the elder Harts.
Part 5
Part 7
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