fredbassett | Fic, Whispering Island, Part 6 of 8, Stephen/Ryan, 15

Title : Whispering Island, Part 6 of 8
Author : fredbassett
Fandoms : Primeval & Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books
Rating : 15
Characters : Stephen/Ryan, the Kirrin family and dog
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Word Count : 17,620. This part 2,671.
Spoilers : None
Summary : Stephen and Ryan get the chance to spend a weekend on a private island off the south coast.
A/N : 1) 1) For full author’s note see Part 1 2) Links to previous parts Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5.

“This castle has dungeons?” Ryan was incredulous. “I thought it was just some rich idiot’s folly, not a real castle.”

“He was a rich idiot who liked dungeons,” Dick supplied. “I’ve never wanted to enquire too closely into Lord Trelawney’s idea of a good time.”

“Dick! We’ve got a problem!” Julian’s voice came from inside the main part of the ruin, where the roof timbers and those supporting what had been the first floor were now long gone, victims of the elements that had battered them for over 100 years.

Ryan followed Dick as he ran over to where his brother was standing under a stone archway pointing to a large pile of rubble.

“Don’t tell me, the entrance to the dungeon is under that lot,” Ryan hazarded.

“Got it in one,” Dick said as he stared at the mess of stone and wood. “Don’t worry, we won’t have to give up the ginger cake. There’s another way in, but for that we need to get down to the cove where we left the boats.”

To Dick’s obvious surprise, George shook her head. “It’s a no go from that direction as well. That big storm in February shifted some rocks on the beach and the entrance to the tunnel is blocked.”

“So there’s no way of getting at your emergency supplies of food?” Ryan demanded. He hadn’t been surprised to discover that the Kirrins kept stockpiles of tinned food on the island, it was just the location of the food that had seemed a little unusual.

Dick eyed Ryan’s lover in an appraising manner. “There’s one way that might work. It depends how good Stephen is with tight squeezes, really.” He gestured over to the well and started walking across the courtyard. He leaned over the lintel and pointed into the darkness. “You can’t see it from here, but there’s a small door in the stone lining that leads into one of the underground rooms. It was easy enough to get through when we were kids, but there’s no way any of us would manage it now.”

“You think Stephen would get through?” Ryan wasn’t enamoured of the idea, but they could really do with the food. The animals would be a good deal more tractable with full bellies and hopefully that would be enough to prevent them coming in search of any other source of food, namely themselves.

“He might be skinny enough,” Dick said. He reached out for the thick rope that dangled down the well-shaft and grabbed it then looked at Stephen. “You’ll need to climb down this, swing your feet over to the door and then try to wriggle through. Just make sure you drag the rope after you so you can come out head first, holding the rope on your way out.” He turned to his brother and added, “Ju, haul the bucket up, we need to get this rope properly tied off.”

In response to Ryan’s concerned look, Stephen simply reached over and gave Ryan’s hand a quick squeeze. “If I don’t think I can get through, I’ll come straight back up.”

The prospect of climbing down a rope and trying to wriggle through a tight hole might have appealed to Lyle, but it sure as hell didn’t appeal to Ryan. He could feel the clog-dancing butterflies forming up in his stomach as Stephen zipped a Maglite handed to him by George into a pocket as the chances of losing a head-torch down the well were too high for using one of them to be a feasible option. The elastic head straps wouldn’t be enough to keep the light in place if he ended up doing any impromptu gymnastics on the rope. He stripped off his thick shirt, leaving just a thin black teeshirt, making sure he’d taken everything else out of his pockets and handed them to Ryan.

“The rope is secured now,” Julian announced.

After another light touch of his hand against Ryan’s, Stephen sat on the edge of the well, took firm hold of the rope and then swung out, wrapping his feet around the rope. He then proceeded to lower himself down, the muscles in his arms cording visibly with the effort. Ryan’s stomach muscles were clenched with tension. This was starting to descend into the sort of mad caper usually thought up by the unholy trinity of Lyle, Blade and Finn, and Ryan didn’t like it one little bit.

“I’m level with the door!” Stephen called up to them. “It’s closed. Is there a lock on it?”

“No!” George called down to him. “That rusted away years ago. You should be able to kick the door open!”

With the rope firmly wrapped around his forearms, Stephen swung his legs up and to one side and Ryan heard a dull thud as the soles of Stephen’s trainers connected with wood. The words, “Got you, you bastard,” drifted up to Ryan. It sounded like Stephen had achieved his first objective.

Julian was pointing the beam of a torch down the well, so Ryan could watch as Stephen did his best to wriggle into the small hole in the side of the well shaft. It was clear from the litany of quiet curses that Stephen wasn’t finding the task an easy one. Eventually, he managed to push himself back out of the hole so that he could wrap the rope around his legs again.

“No fucking chance,” he ground out through gritted teeth as he hauled himself painfully back up the rope.

Stephen was trembling from the effort as Ryan and Dick dragged him over the top of the well shaft.

“Too tight on my hips,” he panted.

“We’ll just have to think of something else,” Dick said. “Nice try, though.”

To Ryan’s surprise, Anne Kirrin stepped up to the well and reached out for the rope. She’d stripped off her sweater and was standing there in only a light cotton shirt and a pair of brushed denim trousers. She was slender and barely reached up to Stephen’s shoulder. She also had narrower hips.

“Anne, no bloody way!” Dick said, sounding every bit as stunned as Ryan felt.

“We need the food, Dick. Besides, it’s ages since I’ve had this sort of fun.”

“You’re a tax lawyer, for God’s sake, not bloody Bruce Willis!”

Anne patted her elder brother lightly on the arm. “Dick, darling, I probably go to the gym more frequently than you do. So be a good boy and shut the fuck up for once.”

Before either of her brothers could stop her, Anne sat on the lintel, wrapped the rope around her forearm and then swung out. Ryan watched as she swarmed down the rope looking like a cabin boy in an old pirate film, her short blonde hair gleaming in the light of Julian’s torch. She reached the hole, swung her feet over as Stephen had done and then slipped through the small doorway with no obvious effort, dragging the rope after her.

With a broad grin on her face, George declared, “Bloody hell, good old Anne! Do you remember when she chased those two thieves right off this island? And the day she chucked that bucked of water over Wilfrid!”

“We always said she was a tiger when she wanted to be.” Julian laughed. “Twenty-five years in a desk job hasn’t changed that.”

“I’ve heard her ordering her clients around,” Dick said. “She definitely hasn’t changed.”

Within a matter of minutes, one of the rucksacks had been attached to the rope and slid down to Anne. She quickly filled it with food and then ordered them to pull it up. Two more loads were hauled up after that, making Ryan wonder quite what sort of siege the Kirrins had been expecting to encounter. When it came to the return up the rope, she was as quick and competent as she had been on the descent and was soon standing in the courtyard, smoothing down her shirt, trying – and failing – to suppress a smile of satisfaction at the looks on their faces.

“Nice to know I’m still as good as a boy as well,” she commented.

“Do I get the impression your brothers were a pair of sexist pigs as kids?” Stephen said.

Anne rolled her eyes. “The phrase simply doesn’t even begin to cover it, but in fairness to them, we had very old fashioned parents. I think we’ve mostly taught them better manners now, haven’t we, George?”

George grinned at her cousin. “We certainly have. Come on, watching you making all that effort has made me positively ravenous. I think we ought to check that the ham and corned beef hasn’t gone off before we feed it to those poor creatures.”

Ryan hadn’t been in the army for the best part of twenty years without seeing the consumption of some very strange meals, but even he had to admit that slices of ham topped with cold baked beans and tinned fruit might well have been even stranger than some of Lyle’s culinary efforts.

“Brings back memories,” Dick said, happily wolfing down a large plateful of food and watching with amusement while Ryan and Stephen conservatively stuck to ham, corned beef and beans mopped up with large chunks of bread. “Someone pass the ginger beer.”

After a leisurely lunch, Anne spent some while opening several tins of meat and emptying the contents into a carrier bag. On Stephen’s advice, she didn’t go totally overboard, as if the animals hadn’t eaten properly for a while, too much rich food would simply come straight back up again if they were allowed to gorge themselves.

As they made their way back across the island, Ryan insisted on everyone equipping themselves with a hefty stick, just in case they ended up having to adopt a defensive strategy where the young bear-dogs were concerned.

“What are they called again?” George demanded, taking an experimental swing with her stick and neatly decapitating a large pink rhododendron flower.

“Amphicyon,” Stephen supplied. “They died out around 20 million years ago.”

“How did you end up with a job like yours?” she asked enviously.

Stephen shrugged. “I was in the right place at the right time, I guess.”

Ryan shared a smile with Stephen, pleased by the fact that Stephen had chosen to put it that way rather than describing it as the wrong place at the wrong time.

“I take it that’s how you two met?” Anne said. Her sharp blue eyes clearly missed very little.

“Yes,” Ryan said. “I’ve been seconded to the project since the beginning.” He glanced over at Dick. “How come you knew about it, sir? Has someone been talking out of turn?”

Dick shook his head. “Let’s just say that I still do quite a bit of consultancy work for the Directorate. I was one of the people who argued for Joel Stringer’s team being assigned to your project full time. Or at least as full time as we can afford at the moment,” he added.

“Thanks for that,” Ryan said. “Nice to know there’s someone else fighting our corner.”

Dick’s revelation at least went a long way to assuaging Ryan’s fears about security. He hadn’t been relishing explaining to Lester how their secrecy had come to be busted, but if Dick Kirrin did consultancy at that level, it put him a long way above Ryan’s pay grade. And the same was no doubt true of Julian. He wondered for a moment what these four had been like as kids. George had clearly been the tomboy of the group, with Anne as the more girly girl, if the jokes were to be believed. Julian would have been – and no doubt still was – the steady older brother, probably very conscious of his responsibilities, whereas Dick had almost certainly been the more carefree one of the boys. He rather suspected that there were several good stories to be told, if some of the remarks Wilf Layman had made about his own youth were anything to go by.

Stephen put a hand up to silence the conversation. “We’re getting close to the rock outcrop now,” he said quietly. “The wind has changed direction, so we can rely on watching them from the rocks.” He looked around at the trees. “We should be able to take cover here. The only problem is that we’re too far away to be able to throw the meat close enough to the hole to entice our friends out, so I’m going to have to get over there and hope they don’t find the smell too off-putting.”

“You had a shower before we left yesterday, Hart,” Ryan commented. “And you had a wash under that waterfall.”

Stephen rolled his eyes. “Don’t give up the day job, sweetie.”

“There’s another way,” George said. “Timmy can take the meat over there and leave it. And that way, if one of them appears while he’s doing it, he can just scarper back here.” In response to Stephen’s look of surprise, George declared hotly, “He’s the cleverest dog ever! If I tell him not to eat the meat, he won’t!”

“I swear my cousin reverts to the age of 12 at the drop of a hat,” Dick murmured. When Dick held his hands up in mock-defence, she glared at him. Dick only laughed, and clearly took his life in his hands by ruffling her already-tousled hair. “Relax, old thing. I’m not insulting Tim. All his predecessors have been clever, but Timmy the Fourth is exceptional, even by their standards. But you’re still as quick to fire up as ever.”

George’s eyes softened for a moment and she stroked her dog’s large head. “OK, Tim, you’re on your honour now.” She took one of the big chunks of corned beef out of the carrier bag, held it in front of Timmy’s nose and shook her head, saying the word ‘no’ to him three times. The dog sat at her feet, tail wagging. When she handed the meat to him, he simply held it in his mouth, without chewing. “Away!” she told him, pointing at the rocky outcrop.

Timmy the Fourth trotted obediently in the direction she had indicated. When he had almost reached the burrow that the three young bear-bogs had dug as a refuge, George gave two low, sharp whistles. Timmy promptly dropped the meat and returned to his mistress at a loping run. They repeated the action three more times, with the contents of two more tins of corned beef and a large tin of ham. He was rewarded for his efforts with a thick slice of corned beef, which he wolfed down in one bite.

Anne shook her head, an amused expression on her face. “None of the Timmys have ever taken their time over their food.”

“They take after their owner,” Dick muttered, earning him another of George’s punches.

“Stop squabbling and pass me a corned beef sandwich,” Julian said, settling himself down in the shade of a large oak tree. “We might be here quite some while and I’m hungry.”

Ryan’s eyes widened slightly. The man was as thin as a rake but managed to eat as much food as Kermit and Finn put together, which took some doing. No wonder they kept a mass of tins in an old dungeon. A rowing boat would no doubt sink under the weight of what this lot could put away for a weekend.

“Sandwich?” Anne said as she handed a packet around to everyone.

“Don’t mind if I do,” said Stephen, giving her a beaming smile.

Ryan accepted the packet Anne was holding out to him. “Thanks.”

There was certainly no danger of starving if you were out in the countryside with the Kirrin family. And there was a lot to be said for their constant refrain that food tasted nicer when eaten outdoors. Especially when washed down with a cold bottle of ginger beer.

Munching contentedly, Ryan settled down to wait for the young bear-dogs to rise to the bait.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

bigtitch.livejournal.com

Go Anne! That showed them!

Great ep!

From:

telperion-15.livejournal.com

Relax, old thing. I’m not insulting Tim. All his predecessors have been clever, but Timmy the Fourth is exceptional, even by their standards.

It had just occurred to me to wonder when I read this how many Timmys there must have been! Otherwise he would have been a rather elderly pooch... :)

And hurrah for Anne, taking matters into her own hands!

From:

aunteeneenah.livejournal.com

I like Anne. She just goes ahead and gets the job done. I think if Stephen wasn't with Ryan, he and Anne would probably do the tube-steak boogy. Well done.

From:

Fic, Whispering Island, Part 6 of 8, Stephen/Ryan, 15

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