Disclaimer: I own nothing of Primeval or anything else you might recognise.
Connor and Becker exchanged presents that evening, despite it being before Christmas, because Connor wanted to be sure the present he'd asked Stephen's mum to pick up for Becker on his behalf went over well.
Becker peeled away the wrapping paper and laughed. "The Idiot's Guide to Basic Training? Thank you, Connor. Oo! The Encylopedia of Firearms? Wicked!" He began paging through it, muttering about which ones he liked.
Meanwhile, Connor dug into the box to find a biography of Jack Horner and, "Raptor Red? What the . . . Oh, my God. He just straight up wrote a novel. I can't wait to show this to Cutter." Connor scanned the summary of the book, written from the perspective of a utahraptor and giggled.
Then next afternoon, Becker left and Connor plopped down next to Stephen, where his guardian was brooding. "I'm sorry I set your mum on you," he said. "I just . . . she's not . . . I don't like her."
"It's alright, you were right," Stephen said, "And you're not my mother, please don't do that again."
"If you're just after someone sexy, I know that there's a secretary at the consulate that's forever doing her makeup if she thinks you're stopping by," Connor offered. The look Stephen shot him was dire, and he bolted, trying to get away before. "Ack! No! Not your armpit!" He struggled, but Stephen was smarter than the bullies back in Miller's Field, and knew how to dodge around all the ways he used to use to get away from headlocks. The painfully affectionate knuckling of the crown of his head made him smile and wince at the same time. Not that he stopped struggling. "Okay! Okay! I'll stop!"
"Your brother was clearly a terrible influence," Pauline said as she walked by Stephen's room, not interfering with their horseplay. "Try not to do that in front of his children."
The next couple weeks, Connor was included in the first family Christmas where no one was horrible to him. People got drunk and even Reg had an argument with one of his brothers about who was at fault for the destruction of some family heirloom they'd been smacked by their parents over, but while there were some chilling silences, no one got into a fistfight, nobody started to cry, and he was allowed to act just like the children and scatter wrapping paper all over the floor as he tore into a variety of computer games, dinosaur books and gift certificates from people who clearly had no idea what to get him. Frankly, he preferred that to someone getting him a poorly fitting jumper.
Dutifully, he spent some money and sent his parents a card. He wasn't quite sure why it hurt that much when he got it back in the mail, having been unopened. Stephen found him in the room that was to be his whenever they were at Stephen's parents' place. "What's wrong?"
"I just . . . I know they don't want me because I'm not . . . what they wanted," he said, lamely. "But it just sort of . . . why wasn't I good enough?" he asked. Stephen frowned as he saw the envelope and realised what happened.
He sat next to Connor, wrapping a brotherly arm around his shoulders and said, "I don't know, Connor. I wish I knew. I wish they had the sense to see how brilliant you are. It's the only thing I regret about this situation," he said. Connor just sighed and leaned against him. "When you're ready, come down. William's gone to that boutique store that sells nothing but gourmet cupcakes. You'll want to get one before there's no choices left."
A final comforting tightening of the arm around him, and then Stephen headed out the door. Connor looked at the letter, the one that as much as said he didn't have a family anymore. Then he thought of Stephen's older brother and how he and Stephen harassed him together, teaching little Grant, who was finally starting to talk properly, how to say dinosaur names, Pauline and Reg scolding him for his table manners in the same breath as they did to Stephen and William and even Professor Cutter, joking with him about bad science.
He swung by the fireplace as he walked to where everyone was arguing about who got which cupcake and threw the card in. So his family didn't want him. This was better anyhow.
Eventually their time in the Gambia ended and they moved back to London. Stephen discovered no lack of female friends to pass the time with, because Connor went out of his way to make himself invisible when needed, charming when useful and Stephen's friends called him the weirdest wing man ever.
All this effort was, apparently, due to a determined desire to keep Stephen occupied and away from Helen Cutter. She eventually snagged herself a doctoral candidate that was a devastatingly handsome Italian chap, and when Stephen heard her giving the other man the same lines she'd given him, he decided he was well quit of her and switched to wondering if he should tell Cutter at all.
Connor, meanwhile, thrived in his new school in London. He'd done quite well in the Gambia, but he was now at a school specifically created for gifted students and had stopped calling school a, 'soul-sucking pit of despair from which you emerge broken to the yoke of authority.'
His first day, picking up in March, he'd left looking like he was leaving for his doom and came back, dark eyes glittering with enthusiasm, practically bouncing. "There's a paleontology club that meets on Wednesdays after school and they want me to come and tell them about Gambia, and they're going to try to arrange a trip out to a dig that's going on around Colchester."
"That sounds interest . . . wait . . . I think that's being run by Carla Lowe," Stephen said, frowning. "She's the dullest human being to ever give a lecture on ecological systems."
Connor shrugged. "Still, we'll get to go, and it'll be more interesting than other things. Our computer teacher's really cool, he was showing us all sorts of programming tricks and things and he said he knows this really great algorithm I can use for my database if I want to modify the programming since I'm using a stock program right now." He was buried headfirst in the fridge a moment, digging out a snack. "And," he finished triumphantly, "I have a date on Saturday unless there's something I forgot about that we have to do. There isn't is there? Because Catherine wants to see that new film by-"
"No, there's nothing that needs doing," Stephen said, trying not to laugh. He really didn't want to accidentally quash Connor's good mood, and the kid's first date was the sort of thing that had to be handled carefully. It turned out he had nothing to worry about until he received an irate telephone call from Catherine's mother. "Is this Stephen Hart?"
"Yes, who-"
"I'm Catherine Crenshaw's mother, your son might have mentioned me?"
Stephen just barely avoided choking. "You mean Connor? I have custody, but he's my cousin, not my son."
"Oh." There was a pause as she seemed to be having to reset her mental paradigm, but then she continued on. "I just got a call from the cinema. My daughter and your . . . cousin. They were tossed out for . . ." another pause, then an exasperated sigh. "Snogging the living daylights out of each other, to be blunt."
"Oh no," Stephen said, groaning. "Where should I go? Are they still there or-"
"No," she said grimly. "I brought them both home with me. I was so furious I just . . . argh!"
He took a deep breath, then said, "Well, I'll come down right now and collect Connor, and you can tell me whether you want them to never see each other again or whether we can simply coordinate some sort of punishment."
"I think my dragging them both past what were apparently half their classmates, shouting at the top of my lungs probably did the trick for any joint problems," she told him. "They seem to have just been carried away by the moment."
"Well, I'll talk to him," Stephen said, well aware that he would have far less impact than he ought to with any lecture, because he'd done a few things himself in dark cinemas that Connor was aware of, at least peripherally. They said polite farewells and hung up. He was about to head out the door, when he paused. Turning back to the phone, he dialled, "Hey mum."
"Stephen? Well, what's wrong right now?"
He didn't even bother commenting, since she was sort of right. "Connor got himself thrown out of a cinema for snogging sufficiently indecently to make it happen," he told her. "Can I get away with making him join a sports team as punishment or do I need to ground him or something?"
"Since it's Connor," his mother said contemplatively, "I think he'll hate all the running around enough to make the lesson stick."
"Brilliant," he said cheerfully. "Then I'll go pick him up, congratulate him and tell him he's lost his free Saturdays."
"And I'll tell him this weekend all about the time you got caught naked in a car with that redheaded chit," his mother said equally cheerfully.
"You're such a loving mother," Stephen told her. "So, doting. I'll call again soon."
"Have fun dear!"
He arrived at the house and was let in by Mrs. Crenshaw, who looked him up and down, then said, "Hmm." He was led to the living room, where Connor was sat looking petrified on the sofa, pinned by Mr. Crenshaw's glare, while the man idly stroked a cricket bat and the girl in question looked mortified. "Good afternoon," he said, and received the same up and down look from the father.
The girl's eyes went wide at the sight of Stephen, and said rather loudly, "That's your cousin? Is he a model? Or an actor?"
"Hi, Stephen," Connor said, hastily trying to wave his girlfriend into silence. "You're here, great, we can go-"
"And I can put you on the line with my mum. She'll be delighted to talk to you," Stephen said, knowing that it would be a mixed blessing letting her talk to Connor, but the fear in Connor's eyes and the threat soothed the two irate parents, who clearly were delighted someone responsible would be dealing with Connor.
"Oh no," Connor said.
"We'll talk about the rest of your punishment on the way home." Stephen gave a weak, perfunctory smile to the elder Crenshaws and ushered Connor out.
Once the door was shut behind them, Connor was making a face and saying in a high-pitched voice, "Is he a model? That's exactly why I didn't want you being the one to drive us. Someone's mum is way less embarrassing than my girlfriend wanting to ogle you."
"You do realise I'm going to be giving you some punishment for this," Stephen said. "You can't just get yourself thrown out of a cinema for public indecency."
"Nothing . . . bad happened," Connor said hesitantly.
"You'll be joining up with a recreational football team," Stephen told him.
"Stephen!"
"On weekends. If you're good enough, I'll probably expect you to try out for the school team." He grinned as Connor burst into vociferous protest. It was fantastic being able to punish Connor with something most boys Connor's age would think of as a privilege. It would make it sting all the worse.
When Connor turned out to be reasonably talented at it and was promoted to something more serious, Stephen arranged for him to be on the competitive team as their best goalkeeper. "I hate you," Connor told him when the team made the finals, ostensibly because of him.
"You're really brilliant," Stephen heckled from the sidelines. "I bet you could make a career of it."
"I really hate you," Connor grumbled again.
Connor's teachers found out somehow and tried to sort-of blackmail Connor with references to university application advantages of demonstrating he was well-rounded to get him onto the school team permanently. Connor had none of it in the end, as soon as Stephen let him stop playing. And anyhow, Cutter liked bringing Connor along on their trips to Paraguay, the Amazon, once to Australia even, because unlike Stephen, Connor was flattered to be asked to do the grunt analysis of things, and anyhow, as long as Cutter provided Connor with a power source, he was good enough to run statistical programmes for them, which helped in-field analysis.
Stephen was happy to have Connor along, because the threat of frogs in her clothing kept Helen Cutter at bay.
He didn't know what to say when he was woken late one night by Nick, gutted over the fact that his wife had vanished from the Forest of Dean. He did his best to be comforting, trying to help the poor sod that she'd taken on as a student when the university practically threw him at Cutter. He lasted two weeks, then fled home to Italy. Stephen suspected that Helen had either expected less of him than Cutter did, or had offered up blow jobs as rewards for good work, along with a mistaken belief that she was in love with the unfortunate man.
Luckily for Nick, a distraction arrived on Connor's birthday in the form of a phone call.
"Hello?"
"Stephen?" Connor sounded uncertain and slightly frightened. There was a growling sound and a thud from the other end of the line. "I . . . er . . . you know that thing Becker and I were looking into, for my birthday?" he asked.
"Are you at a cinema or something?" Stephen asked as another set of rather disturbing noises drifted down the line.
"No," Connor said. "We're in Brighton, right, the park where they said the monster was."
"And . . .?"
"I think I've got a pretty good distraction for Cutter here," Connor said. "Because we're in a tree, and it looks like the styracosaurus isn't going to give up on trampling us."
"The what?"
"Well, the frill's pretty impressive, and-"
"What the hell do you - are you saying you found a fucking ceratopsian dinosaur in Brighton?"
"Yes. Could you bring guns? Maybe the tranqs?"
"If this is a prank Connor-"
"Give me the goddamn mobile!" came Becker's voice down the line. "Stephen'll be on the M23 for hours! Lieutenant Ryan should be at the recruitment centre, we can ask him to bring guns!"
Then the call was cut off. "Cutter," Stephen said as soon as the other man picked up, "You're going to want to meet me at the car. We're going to Brighton."