fredbassett

Title : Like Mother, Like Son
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 12
Characters : Lyle, Julia Denton, Lester
Disclaimer : Not mine (except Lyle and Julia), no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Summary : In the early hours of New Year’s Day, Lyle and Julia have a heart to heart.
A/N : Follows on from Bake Right Off and The Great British Bake Off

“Ow!” Lyle rolled over in bed, trying to straighten his leg to relieve the sudden searing pain in his right calf.

“Jon?” Lester just managed to grab the duvet before Lyle hauled it off him entirely.

“Fucking cramp. Sorry, cherub, didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Can I get you anything?”

“I’ll walk it off.” The bedside clock declared it to be 3.30am. They’d only been in bed just over two hours but with nothing planned for New Year’s Day, getting up in the middle of the night hardly mattered. “Go back to sleep.”

“Put some clothes on …”

“I think mother’s seen it all before, sweetie, and Henry sleeps the sleep of the virtuous for seven hours every night.” But in deference to his lover’s sensibilities, Lyle grabbed the pair of fleece pyjama bottoms decorated with cartoon reindeer that his mother had bought him for a joke Christmas present, along with a pair of matching reindeer slippers. They were warm and he wasn’t proud – as his parent was very prone to telling him.

After limping downstairs as quietly as he could, Lyle chucked a few logs into the woodburner to stir it back into life and turned on a couple of lamps, along with the multiple strings of coloured lights he’d insisted on dangling up around the fireplace and using to festoon the small Christmas tree they brought in every year from the garden where, to his surprise, it seemed to thrive, despite living in a pot. To Lester’s amusement, Lyle had rigged up an automatic watering system from their rainwater butt to keep it from drying out in hot weather. Lyle claimed it repaid his kindness by not shedding needles all over the floor during its sojourn inside.

A mug of tea was the next thing on the agenda. He was damned if he was pacing around in the middle of the night without a hot drink. The redbush tea Lester liked when he was pulling a caffeine free all nighter over budget proposals tasted enough like the real stuff to be an acceptable substitute. He didn’t need to be wired on caffeine as well as having to put up with a painful leg.

“Stick a real teabag in a mug for me, brat.”

Lyle’s training was the only thing that preventing him embarrassing himself with a yelp of surprise. “Jesus, mother, since when did you practice stealth attacks? Where’s your smoker’s cough when I need advance warning?”

“I’ve cut down, or hadn’t you noticed?”

He had. “Doctor’s orders or Henry nagging?”

“I’d hate you to come into your inheritance too soon.”

He turned around and smiled at her, his voice soft and for once devoid of their habitual teasing. “So would I.”

She nodded at his reindeer pyjamas. “Suits you.”

He was pleased to see she was wearing the impossibly soft white fleecy dressing gown and white ankle boot slippers he’d bought from The White Company. “Not wearing your flashing light reindeer antlers?”

“Henry insisted on going to bed in them.” Julia came up behind him and slipped her arms around his waist. “Thanks for the presents, Jon. You’re getting better at shopping. Must be the whole gay thing.”

He turned and hugged her. “Don’t stereotype or I’ll start buying you cushions from M&S.” He grinned. “And thanks for these. I think I’ll start wearing them in the office. And thanks for the lamp.” She’d bought him a new, expensive and exceedingly bright caving light that he was itching to try out underground. “I’d been thinking out splashing out on one, but we’ve not had much time for caving recently.”

Julia ran her hand over his shoulder. “Does this still give you any problems.”

Lyle’s hazel eyes narrowed. “I didn’t tell you it got dislocated. Maternal intuition or James telling tales out of school?”

“I knew something had happened, so I phoned him and he came clean. There’s no point keeping me in the dark, brat, I always know.”

His arms tightened protectively around her. “I know, and I’m sorry, I really am. I just thought that had been minor enough to have flown under the radar for once.” He hesitated a moment, then asked, “Do you wish I’d gone into a safer line of work? ”

“You would have made a lousy librarian and an even worse accountant.”

“I can add up! And I like books.”

“You also like guns and explosions.”

“Mother dearest, as you are very fond of telling me, you’ve probably spent more time in war zones than I have.”

“And you never grumbled when I fucked off and left you with Madge.”

“It was always fine. She’s even more bonkers than you, and that’s saying something.” Lyle winced as cramp attacked his calf again.

“Put all your weight on it. That used to help when you were a kid.” As he did as he was told, Julia looked up at him, quizzically. “When did your danger sense start? I’ve never asked you.”

Lyle hesitated, then reached for the whisky bottle in the drinks cupboard. “I’m not sure this is a conversation I want to have without alcohol.” He tipped a generous slug into both mugs. “Come on, it’s warmer in front of the fire. That’ll help the cramp, too.”

Lyle sprawled out on the rug in front of the fire, his leg stretched in front of him as he rubbed the tight muscles in his calf.

Julia ticked her feet under her on the sofa and lightly ruffled his hair. “You don’t have to talk about it, brat.”

He drew in a slow breath then leaned back, resting his head against her knee, the way he used to sit as a kid. “It started the day dad was killed. I was at school, getting told off by Mr Jepson for kicked Billy Travis in the nuts. My thumbs started itching like fuck. The bell for class had just gone and I felt like someone had punched me in the guts, but the little fucker hadn’t got anywhere near me before I’d nailed him, so it wasn’t down to him. I got an almighty bollocking and we both got binned back into class. I threw up in the bogs on the way. I knew something fucking awful had happened, I just didn’t know what.”

Julia gently stroked his cheek. “You never told me.”

“It took me a few years to work out why it was happening. And even longer to work out that I could sometimes do something to stop the bad stuff. But not always.”

Her fingers carded lightly through his hair. “No, not always. That’s the bugger about it, isn’t it, kid? I’d been on edge all fucking day when Robert was killed. I phoned his CO, begging someone to get a message to him. The stupid fucker told me there was nothing to worry about. I reminded him of that at the funeral.”

“Added to my vocabulary that conversation did.”

“You weren’t meant to be listening. I thought you were scoffing the pork pies.”

“I was ten, mother, I was always fucking listening. And even then I could nosh pig products and listen in on a conversation. So has everyone in the family had the thumb thing?”

“Sometimes it skips a generation. Unless she was lying to me, which is always a possibility, your grandmother didn’t have it, but her mother did.”

“Christ, her husband went down with the Titanic, didn’t he? That can’t have been pleasant.”

“She said it was a relief when the itching stopped and the feeling of dread went away.”

“Did she think he’d survived?”

“She knew he’d died. She was just glad it was over for him.”

He reached up and caught hold of her hand. “Fucking hell.” Lyle was glad of the warmth from the whisky in the tea, the nagging pain in his leg all but forgotten.

“Look on the bright side, brat. I’ve always known you’ve still been alive, even when it’s been bad and there’s been nothing I could do. And not all of your hair-raising exploits have caused digital discomfort.”

“Thank fuck for that.” He rubbed her thumb with his own. “It’s saved my life often enough, so I’m not grumbling.”

Julia rubbed her other hand over the shoulder he’d dislocated. “Get a blanket, Jon, won’t do the muscles any good to get cold.”

“It was weeks ago.”

“Do as you mother tells you. Blanket, or back to bed with your long-suffering boyfriend.”

Lyle grinned. “He’s snoring like a pig, I can hear him from here.”

He grabbed one of the huge, soft blankets Lester had bought for him when he’d been feeling like death warmed up, and settled down on the sofa with his head on Julia’s shoulder, the blanket draped over them both.

“Mother?”

“Yes, brat?”

“I have to admit, you make bloody good cakes.” He stretched out and settled his head on her lap.

She pulled the blanket around his shoulders and stroked his hair again. “No, sweetpea, you mean I make exceedingly good cakes …”

“Yes, Mrs Kipling,” Lyle murmured. “I’ll cheer you on when you’re on Celebrity Bake Off.”

“Ah, I knew there was something I’d forgotten to tell you …”