Disclaimer: I own nothing of Primeval or anything else you might recognise.

Connor stared around at the bright blue sky, a colour he'd never seen anywhere back home, at the plants he'd only ever seen in magazine photos and on the telly, the dusty ground which wasn't the right colour for dirt, the strangely dressed people and was startled when he was suddenly guided into the cool confines of the consulate. "Here," Stephen said. "Cutter and I will be spending a fair bit of time over the next month on short day trips. We'll bring you along on some, but I'd just as soon you were at some sort of real school a lot of the time."

"Stephen, this is . . . I mean, it's amazing," Connor said, sincerely. And it was. He was in Gambia. Okay, so Cutter's wife, Helen, was sort of creepy sometimes, and he thought she was coming on to Stephen, but this was super-cool, and Cutter had promised he'd let Connor play assistant and Stephen had been giving Connor a crash course in guns and tranquiliser rifles.

"Mr. Hart?" asked the teacher, a stiff-looking man in uncomfortable-looking tweed.

"Yes," Stephen replied. "This is my cousin, Connor Temple." They'd decided to stick with the small fiction just to simplify things. No one wanted a repeat of the question of whether Stephen was sleeping with a teenager.

The man smiled, saying, "Well, I'm Lewis Perry, Mr. Perry to you, Mr. Temple." He gestured into a classroom with a bunch of kids of varying ages. "We don't have so many students that I can divide up classes," he said regretfully. "It's more of a one-room schoolhouse, but I'm sure, based on your previous school performance, that you can excel."

Connor smiled weakly and dropped into a seat beside a boy a couple years younger than he was. The boy was slouched unhappily in his seat, seemingly wishing he were anywhere but there. He could sympathise, of course. School wasn't fun, it was something you did until you could do something better. He learned over the course of the morning that the boy's last name was Becker, and that there was something about him that made the other kids there laugh at him.

"Hi, Hilary," jeered a girl over the break. "I'd offer to share my makeup with you, but since you really wouldn't know what to do with it, we'll just have to leave you something to help you feel pretty."

"Well, that's just as well," Connor said to her, seeing Hilary clench his fists. "I mean, you actually need it."

While she frothed at the mouth, Connor smirked at her. He'd been harassed the same sort of way about his dinosaurs in Miller's Field, and he knew just how infuriating it was to get picked on like that. There was never any way to respond to it that wouldn't get you in trouble with everyone, while they came out of it smelling like roses. Unless someone else stepped in. Connor started to walk away, but Hilary grabbed his arm and half dragged him away, to hiss, "I don't need your help."

"Okay," Connor said. "Sorry. I just . . . at my last school the kid would pick on me like that and I guess it was sort of like having the chance to finally get back at them all here."

Looking him up and down, Hilary said, "Why would they?" He spoke very clearly, his accent all posh and fancy. Like all the other kids here.

Well, here it came, he thought. "I want to be a paleontologist," he said, shrugging. "So people like to take the mick about the fact that I'm older than six and I still like dinosaurs." He just had to ask, "Don't you have a middle name or something you could go by?"

Hilary winced. "I tried. I tell people that my name is James, which is my middle name, and then my mum shows up, shouting to the world that she's here to see Hilary." He was quite bitter. "Then she starts calling me darling and . . ." he trailed off.

"She won't listen no matter how many times you tell her it's not helping anything?" Connor asked, wincing.

"No," he said glumly. "I can't wait until I'm old enough to tell people just to call me by my last name."

In the end, even though there were a few others about who were more Connor's age, he became friends with Hilary, who he took to calling Becker, because it was what his new friend wanted. They weren't all that similar, but Connor had a few computer games that were all about running around shooting things with guns, and Stephen was still trying to teach him how to shoot, so they met in the middle. Becker came to idolise Stephen, who indulged his interests in guns and offered him pointers about fitness and running, which Becker happily absorbed because he wanted to go to Sandhurst after he finished school, partly it seemed, just to upset his diplomat parents.

Becker wasn't a brilliant student, but he was sharp and dryly sarcastic and they'd watch bad films together, mocking them on weekends.

His new friend wasn't the only fun thing, though. The second weekend they were there, Stephen packed him up and he got to go along on one of the expeditions they were on, which were all about tracking the behaviours of predators, trying to work the behavioural markers backwards and how they would relate to therapod behaviour. It was cool, and even though he was just playing sort of academic gofer, he got to see how all the work came together behind the scenes.

One day, finished with his schoolwork, Stephen too busy to haul him off on some fitness crazy or shooting lesson or anything else, bored with his computer games and things, he dropped in on Becker. "Hello Mrs. Becker," he said to the kind lady who'd taken to mothering him. "Is James in?"

"I don't know why both of you insist on not using his first name," she said, shaking her head. "It's a perfectly good name."

Connor didn't want to ask her if she'd never been a child or teenager, because it would be rude and alienate her, so he shrugged, and just said, "He prefers it."

"Connor!" Becker said with a grin, "What are you doing here?"

They headed up to Becker's room, decorated with military posters and paraphernalia. "I was done with all my work and stuff and Stephen's busy doing something delicate in the lab, so I thought I'd drop by and run an idea past you. I don't know if it'll happen, but I didn't want to ask before I knew if you were interested."

"Interested in what?" Becker asked, a little warily.

"In coming along on Cutter and Stephen's next run out to the reserves," Connor said. "There's something they wanted to look at about animal claws and hyena faeces, but they've been too busy to answer my questions. But anyhow, I was wondering, since we'll have that time off school and all, if I should ask if your parents are okay with it, and Cutter and Stephen."

"That sounds like it could be really cool," Becker said eagerly. "So, you'll ask?"

"I will," Connor promised.

It took pleading and a lot of judicious use of his puppydog eyes to make it happen, but Becker got to come along and ask Stephen about all the guns while Connor picked Cutter's brain about comparative anatomy. And when the adults were busy with no real time for the boys, Connor collected empty darts for the tranq guns and taught Becker how to use them. Then was suitably piqued by the fact that his friend was better at it than he was by a long shot.

"It's not fair when Stephen's been doing all this stuff to teach me, and you're better than I am with my crappy instruction," Connor grumbled good-naturedly as they waited in the Jeep, watching Cutter and Stephen collect samples. Then he saw it. "Shit."

"Connor?" Becker asked. Connor just pointed at the lions stalking up on Cutter and Stephen, who'd got themselves out of range of their own guns, and weren't going to be able to avoid the predators.

"Stephen! Behind you!" Connor shouted, scrambling to load up and aim the tranqs. Beside him, Becker was faster. Stephen and Cutter were running, but they were going to be overwhelmed. Except they weren't, because Becker fired off a perfect shot, thudding home in the one lioness and sending her head over tail as it kicked in. The others checked a moment, buying the two men some more time, and Stephen fired off a shot while running, like some sort of superhero.

"Wow," cooed Becker at the stunt, even as he fired off another perfect shot. Connor finally fumbled things into place and hit another one on the rump.

With the confusing downing of their pridemates, the lions broke off and milled in confusion while Cutter and Stephen hurled themselves into the car and drove off. "Nice work," Stephen said to Connor. "I knew you'd pick it up."

"I didn't," Connor said hastily, before Becker could get angry at him stealing the twelve-year-old's thunder. "It was all Becker."

From then on, Becker informed Connor that, as soon as he was able, after he was done with his military training, he was going to hang around with Connor and keep him from being eaten by the animals he was studying.

He wasn't quite sure how he'd wound up like this, but Stephen found, as he gasped and flung his head back, that it was very hard to care.

"A-hem," said a youthful voice pointedly. Stephen looked up, past Helen, to see Connor, bright red and glaring, standing in the doorway. "I'm not going anywhere this time," he said pointedly to Stephen. He then plopped down on the bed, elbowing the two adults apart and started reading, pointedly in the space he'd created between them.

The look on Helen's face was amusing, and Stephen muffled his laughter desperately, because it wasn't the time, no one would thank him, and he was probably drunk from the liqueurs Helen had been plying him with.

She slid off the bed with a feline grace that swept any notion of laughter from his thoughts and glancing hastily at Connor, did a quick adjustment of just where things were inside his trousers. The look Connor turned on him just went to prove that he hadn't been nearly subtle enough. Helen smirked and sashayed off. Connor watched her leave as though she were a cobra that had wandered into the flat. "You have twenty-four hours," Connor told him, "And if you haven't stopped, I'm telling Professor Cutter."

"Connor," Stephen started, then stopped, searching for the right thing to say.

His sort-of-adopted little brother kept right on glaring. "She's horrible, Stephen. She was horrible to you and about you right up until she saw you, you know. I met her first at the airport and she said all kinds of horrible things. Then she saw you and got all creepy."

"What do you mean?" Stephen asked, frowning. Helen had been nothing but charming and deeply apologetic for her treatment of him, admitting that she'd misjudged him before.

"I mean, she was all, 'I can't believe we're bringing that useless lump of a student along, not to mention his bratty cousin . . .'" Connor trailed off, a parodic imitation of someone seeing something startling on his face. "'Oh my, look at the young stud-'"

"She did not say that," Stephen interrupted, scandalised.

"She didn't have to. She looked like that girl in my class, Ismene Harrison, you know, the one who always tries to lean over in front of you when you stop by to take me out of school," Connor said pointedly. Stephen winced, because the girl's crush was embarrassing for all concerned, and she was about as subtle as a pink elephant in Harrods. "You watch her," Connor said. "Look at Helen, not just at her breasts when she starts waving them at you like she's been doing whenever the professor's back is turned."

They were all out the next day, him, Cutter, Connor and Helen, and Stephen tried watching Helen instead of reacting, and damned if Connor wasn't right. But worse, was that Cutter truly loved his wife, thought she hung the moon. So, he told Helen no, that he was very flattered, but that as long as she was married, he simply was not going there. Not even if she had him pressed against a wall and a hand on the front of his trousers that was so clever and strong and oh God . . .

She shrieked, backing away, batting at her top. Cutter and Connor rounded the corner a moment later to see Helen yank her top off and a couple frogs come climbing out of her brassiere. The smirk on Connor's face said it all. "Connor!"

"You little cretin!" shrieked Helen, lunging at Connor, who took to his heels with alacrity. The moment the pair were out of sight, Cutter burst into laughter.

"I shouldn't laugh," he said, chuckling. "Helen will kill me if she finds out."

Much later that evening Stephen told Connor that, as a consequence of his prank he was banned from the next couple outings, and then asked how he'd done it. "Trade secret," Connor said. "And if I see her at it again, they're going in her pants."

The whole incident took the bloom off that romance, more so when Connor turned out to have written Stephen's mother about it too, and she called long distance to take him down a few pegs. When they went home for Christmas, accompanied by Becker, who had wanted to have a proper Christmas with his grandparents, rather than with his overworked parents in the Gambia, they were greeted at the airport by his mother saying, "You're not still letting that woman lead you around by your bits, are you?"

"No, mother," Stephen said, sighing. "She stays away ever since Connor managed to get frogs into her underwear while she was wearing it."

"You must be James," his mother said to the sombre twelve-year-old. "Connor's said a lot about you."

Becker seemed to perk up, grinning happily at being addressed the way he wanted to be. "Nice to meet you, Mrs. Hart," he said. "Thanks for letting me stay over until my grandparents pick me up."

"It's no trouble at all," his mother assured the boy.

The long trip back to the house was filled with the eager chatter of the two boys, Stephen blushing much of the time, because Becker's idolisation of him was sometimes a little uncomfortable, and the looks his parents were levelling at him made it fairly clear they were going to take the mick something fierce over that. Connor and Becker practically bolted up the stairs to the room they'd be sharing for Becker's overnight stay, and Stephen found himself faced with his mother.

"So, is she still leading you around by your bits?"

"Mum!"

"Don't scandalise him too much, Pauline," his father said. "Otherwise he'll be like a nun at an orgy and you won't get a word out of him of any use."

"Thanks so much, dad," he said.

His father shot him a disapproving look. "I don't think you've got much you can say in your own defense right now, Stephen. Not when you're making that kind of choice."

"It won't help in the slightest if I say she was convincing, will it?" Stephen asked rhetorically. "I know it was stupid, I knew it then. She just . . ." he shook his head, sighing. "One minute we're talking-"

A high-pitched voice, the teenaged boy imitation of the female voice issued from the stairs. "Oh, Stephen, you're so brilliant and handsome. Let me shove my chest at you!"

Becker was standing next to Connor, looking a tad gutted. "He was . . . with Creepy Mrs. Cutter?" He looked like he'd just been told that Christmas was cancelled because Santa Claus had been murdered by his own elves for running a sweat shop.

"You'll understand when it happens to you," he warned Connor.

Connor snorted. "It won't happen to me, Stephen, because I'm not Hollywood pretty like you. I'm sorry, it's just a cross you'll have to bear alone."

"I wish you would let that go," Stephen said, sighing.

Poor Becker still looked lost. "She's creepy," he said again.

"This is a sad, sad day," his mum said.

"How can I trust you?" Becker asked.

Stephen was about to reassure him, when he saw the hint of smirk on the twelve-year-old's face. "Cute, Becker."

"C'mon," Connor tugged on Becker's arm, "It's Christmas. We can always be horrible after the holidays're over. I've got Wolfenstein on the computer here."

"Cool," Becker agreed.

"You mean, you're going to set my parents on me even worse, then run before you get sucked into the chaos," Stephen said irritably.

"Or that," Connor agreed as the boys scampered upstairs again.

"I should let him get eaten by a crocodile," Stephen said with a sigh as he turned back to his parents' heckling.