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fredbassettTitle : When in a Hole, Stop Digging, Part 1 of 2
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 15
Characters : Lester/Lyle, Ralph Lyle, Julia Denton, Henry Rossington
Disclaimer : Not mine (well, actually, everyone other than Lester is mine), no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Summary : There are times when Lester considers a) taking up a new hobby b) finding a new boyfriend and, finally, c) changing jobs. This is one of those times.
A/N : 1) Written for the every lovely![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lukadreaming for the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
primeval_denial Secret Santa for this pairing and the prompt Up is the only way to go when you’re down, which, with sufficiently powerful binoculars, you might even be able to spot. 2) Set in my Stephen/Ryan verse.
“Remind me again why I let you talk me into this, pumpkin?” Lester asked, forcing the words out between gritted teeth.
He was head down in a narrow passage, arms stretched out on front of him, doing his best to grab handfuls of leaves, sticks and assorted other items of flood debris that were currently preventing the free flow of water through the narrower channels beneath him.
“Because you’re noble and public spirited?” Lyle hazarded from about three metres away, shouting to make himself heard over the noise of the water.
“Nope. Try again.” Lester jammed one elbow against the rock that was pressing in around him on all sides and stuffed a thick mat of leaves into a plastic container jammed between his legs.
“Because you’re thinner than me and can get into smaller holes, oh sweetest of pygmy shrews. And because you don’t want to put up with the whinging from the good folks of Cheddar if the road ends up getting closed for three months like it did last time.”
Lyle was right on both counts. After the work they’d put in two years ago to channel the Longwood Valley stream back underground where it belonged, he was damned if he was letting an inconvenient storm wreck what they’d achieved. For two years, Longwood Valley Sink had been able to cope with the winter rains, but this year, Storm Angus had hit the Mendips hard after the driest autumn on record. More rain had fallen on the hills in six hours on Friday night than had dropped in the past three months put together. The water had promptly gathered up all the leaves and tree debris that had fallen in the stream bed and swept them down the valley, overwhelming Top Sink almost instantly and hurtling on down the valley and into LVS, as it was known to cavers, before piling up against the grill over the entrance and finally blocking access to the lower sink as well. By the look of things, Longwood Valley Sink, had withstood the worst of the flood for some while, but had finally given up the unequal struggle when the grill had become completely choked.
At that point, the water had just swirled up, overtopping the drystone wall that held back the earth bank and raced on down the rest of the valley to Cheddar Gorge to deposit a vast quantity of leaves, wood, and gravel across the tarmac. It had also undermined the road on both sides. The police had done the only thing possible and closed the road.
Lester and Lyle had driven down from the ARC through the worst of the storm, and only Lyle’s expert driving had kept them from aquaplaning on the swamped motorway at the height of the storm. The car was heavily-laden with everything they needed to spend a family Christmas at Lester’s cottage. They were expecting Lester’s brother Ralph, as well as Lyle’s mother and stepfather. The car was crammed with a turkey the size of a small ostrich, plus what looked like half a pig for Boxing Day, a smoked dried ham (without which Lyle insisted no Christmas would be complete) and enough smoked salmon to feed a not-inconsiderable army. There was also enough booze to render the same army entirely insensible. Lester’s insistence that the cottage was hardly running short of supplies had fallen on deaf ears as had his assurance that Tesco in Wells was open throughout the Christmas period.
Neither of them had relished the idea of failing to reach the cottage on time, not when they were within touching distance of a much-prized week off together. With rain lashing against the windscreen and the wind buffeting the car, even Lyle’s usual stream of quips had quickly run dry, unlike the weather, and they’d driven the last hour in silence, broken only by the occasional profanity when something had yet again caused Lyle to take avoiding action.
It had taken them six hours and some interesting detours around fallen trees, downed power lines and the occasional wrecked car, but they’d finally made it, and after a hasty supper and several much-needed beers, they’d fallen into bed, too tired even for the sound of the storm to keep them away.
The following day had brought home the full scale of the floods. Large areas of south Bristol had been swamped, with flood waters rising so fast that some people had only narrowly avoided getting struck in their cars as the relentless waters had risen around them. Homes and businesses were swamped, rivers burst their banks throughout the region and people could wallow to their heart’s content in the time-honoured British pastime of complaining about the weather.
A bad dose of flu had laid several of the usual suspects from their weekend digging team out for the count, so Lyle had loaded a two-metre-long wrecking bar into the Land Rover and insisted they take a look at the sinkhole. They’d been greeted by the sight of swirling brown water completely covering the valley floor. Lyle had cursed fluently in three different languages and ended up wading chest deep into the water in an attempt to locate the grill and force the mat of leaves through the bars with the pole. He’d been partially successful and after spending a lot longer in the water than had been sensible, especially as he hadn’t been wearing caving gear, he’d succeeded in getting the water level to start to drop. After two hours of freezing cold work, the stream was no longer flowing across the road at Black Rock Gate and Lyle had finally admitted there was nothing more he could do. He’d trudged back up to the Land Rover, white with cold. It had taken an hour in a hot bath followed by three hours in front of the woodburning stove to get him even approaching a normal temperature.
Two days later, it was Lester’s turn to get cold and wet. The stream had subsided enough to let them slither down the entrance pipe – a section of road drain set at a 45-degree angle into the earth – and get inside the cave. Friends of theirs had spent the last two years burrowing like moles, aided by industrial quantities of explosives, in an attempt to break through into more passage – the holy grail of all cave-diggers. Lester and Lyle had joined in when time allowed and steady progress through a series of narrow rifts was being made. But if the sink was to have any hope of coping with more floodwater, it was essential to remove as much flood debris as possible, especially the thick mats of leaves that had built up in almost archaeological layers, completely blocking the lower parts of the dig.
At first the compacted leaves had come out fairly easily and Lester had been able to fill the homemade buckets with no trouble, leaving Lyle to drag them back to the bottom of the pipe where a friend on the surface hauled them out with the aid of a winch and deposited the contents downstream of the cave.
As Lester manoeuvred yet another bucket into place he caught a strong whiff of lavender and grinned, despite being freezing cold and fucking knackered. Their latest supply of digging buckets came courtesy of a company in Glastonbury that sold essential oils. They bought the stuff at a knockdown price in bloody great big plastic containers and then decanted it into tiny little bottles and flogged them on at an exorbitant mark-up. Just about every caving club hut on the Mendips now had a mound of empty oil containers just waiting to have their bottoms cut out and rope handles added. Lester couldn’t decide whether he preferred the lavender or the tea tree oil but both were preferable to Eau de Mendip Mud. Even the Land Rover was starting to smell like the inside of a massage parlour.
“Am I entitled to time off for good behaviour, mon petit chou-fleur?” Lester enquired, wondered what the hell his colleagues in the Home Office would think if they could see him now, wearing an old, patched wetsuit, wellington boots, a pair of bright blue washing up gloves and a somewhat battered caving helmet.
“Ten more buckets,” Lyle said. “That’ll make it 100. Can you handle that, sweetie?”
Lester was tempted to point out that a) he was fucking freezing, b) he could no longer feel his hands or feet, and c) there was a stream of cold water running down the back of his neck and d) no, he couldn’t fucking handle it, thank you very much, but his stubborn streak kicked it and he just grabbed another handful of leaves and stuffed them into the latest bucket.
The buckets were getting heavier and harder to manoeuvre now as there was a lot of silt mixed in with the dead leaves, but they were getting close to the end of their self-appointed task. Lyle had taken the first stint underground, dragging out the larger pieces of wood and stones that had been swept down by the flood pulse, but once he’d cleared down through the main rift, they’d had to swap over so that Lester could reach the last of the blocked passages.
Lester was cold, wet, bruised, tired and thoroughly fed up, but with the sharp smell of lavender oil in his nostrils, he kept shoving handfuls of leaves into bucket after bucket, then wriggling far enough back to let Lyle haul on the rope and drag the black buckets away from him while he grabbed the nearest empty one and started the whole miserable process all over again.
“Last one!” Lyle yelled cheerfully, even though he must have been freezing cold as well.
Lester reached as far as he could down the narrow rift and grabbed hold of another handful of leaves. Behind them, he could at least see bare rock. He wriggled backwards and started to add some broken rock to the bucket, courtesy of the last explosive charge that had been set down there. He inched his way backwards, heedless of the sharp rock pressing into his body through the five millimetres of neoprene that was all that stood between him and the interior of the Mendip Hills. He was so bloody cold that every movement was an effort now. He managed to get both hands behind the heavy bucket and push it backwards towards Lyle. The relief when Lyle took its weight and started hauling was enormous, and for a moment, he simply sagged against the rock and fought to get his ragged breathing under control. His heart was pounding in his chest and he would have quite happily exchanged his knighthood for an anomaly leading directly to a hot bath.
The sound of the bucket bumping its way back up the passage spurred Lester into the effort needed to extricate himself from the section of passage known as Triassic Tunnel. He was at the stage where every movement felt like some bugger had attached lead weights to every limb, and the inability to feel his hands wasn’t helping. Inch by painful inch, he made his way backwards into the small chamber where Lyle had been sitting to haul the buckets back up out of the end passage and was at last able to turn around, for the first time in what felt like a lifetime but had actually been less than an hour.
The last obstacle to overcome was the ascent of the entrance rift and then the climb up the plastic pipe. Ordinarily, neither of those things was particularly difficult, but with a stream still pouring down the pipe, the ascent of the rift wasn’t going to be pleasant. Lester could feel his strength starting to ebb, and he was already shivering, his teeth chattering from the cold.
In wet weather, they had a finely-honed routine in place to make the final section of the cave easier. As soon as Lyle caught sight of the light from his headtorch, he would sit at the top of the pipe, using his body to temporarily damn the flow of water underground, allowing Lester to get around the awkward corner at the bottom of the pipe without water pouring on his head. But he would have to be quick, as Lyle wouldn’t be able to hold the water back for long.
Lester dragged in a shaky breath and started to climb the right. Half a metre up, his right boot slipped off a foothold and he dropped back down, banging his elbow on the cave wall as he slid unceremoniously back to where he’d started from. He cursed through his chattering teeth and started to climb again. This time he met with more success, but he was now having problems using his left arm. The thump against the rock had managed to connect with a nerve point… He jammed his shoulders into the tight rift and wriggled, pushing upwards as much as he could, just hoping that his footholds were good.
His breathing was now even more ragged, and he could feel water starting to splash on his helmet. The stream was obviously mounting up around Lyle now and it wouldn’t be long before it was gushing down the entrance pipe again, despite his lover’s best attempts to hold it back. Lester braced himself against the rock again and did his best to get his feet higher up. There was a good foothold here somewhere, he knew it…
With a final heave, Lester got his head through the awkward bend at the top of the rift and his right arm and shoulder quickly followed.
“I don’t want to rush you, James,” Lyle called, “but it’s about to get wet down there…”
Despite his circumstances, Lester grinned. He always knew a situation was serious when Lyle dropped their pet-name game. He was on his last reserves of strength, but he couldn’t let an opportunity like this go to waste.
“It already is wet, my little swamp rat!” he yelled back. “Now keep that fat arse of yours right there for one minute more…”
Lester reached up with his right arm and grabbed one of the rungs of the thin metal ladder that was dangling down the pipe and hauled himself through the constriction just as more water started pouring down the pipe. He got his left hand and arm through and caught hold of a second rung. As the water streamed around him, Lester pulled as hard as he could, kicked out with his feet and scrabbled past the corner and into the plastic pipe. It felt not unlike being flushed around the U-bend in a loo, but Lester could see daylight now and he was out of the tight section. There was no way in hell that he was losing ground now. There was only one way he was going and that was upwards.
He dragged himself hand over hand up the dangling ladder, and as soon as his lover could see that he’d got a firm grip, Lyle pulled himself out of the pipe and let the full force of the stream go, as there was no way Lester could get out while he was blocking the top. Water cascaded around Lester in an icy torrent, but he had a firm hold of the ladder and he knew that all he had to do was hang there for a minute while the backed- up water fell over his head and shoulders, buffeting him from side to side.
As soon as the torrent slowed, Lester started hauling himself up again, rung by rung, until a pair of strong hands slipped under his armpits and hoisted him up the last couple of feet to land him in the stream like a prize salmon.
Lyle grinned down at him. “Game, set and match to you, fruitbat.”
With Lyle’s help, Lester struggled to his feet and stared around in surprise at a light covering of snow on the ground. He looked up at a gunmetal grey sky from which fat white flakes were drifting on a light breeze. It had been bright sunshine when he’d gone down the sinkhole.
“I had 50 quid on a white Christmas,” Lyle said with satisfaction. “Good odds, too.”
Lester accepted a plastic mug of steaming hot coffee heavily laced with brandy and drained it even before he’d climbed out of the stream bed. The digging kit was already packed away, and as soon as the grill had been lowered back into position and chained shut, they started to make their way back up the valley. The snow made the trek even more slippery than usual, and by the time they’d reached the Land Rover, Lester was shivering hard, too cold and knackered to do anything more than climb onto the front seat and wave a frozen hand to their friends as Lyle chucked the digging gear in the back and pulled cautiously onto the already-white road.
****
The snow was falling hard by the time Lyle pulled the Land Rover into the drove road that led to the cottage, but from the wheel marks in the white coverlet, it was obvious that two vehicles had recently driven down the track. It looked like their visitors had arrived.
Lyle pulled up in front of the garage and Lester fumbled with the door handle. His fingers were still numb and his feet were no better. The door was pulled open from the outside and his older brother Ralph grinned at him.
“Bloody hell, Jim, you look like death warmed up!”
“Who said anything about warm?” Lester muttered through clenched teeth.
“And this is why you shouldn’t be allowed nice toys, Jon, you little sod!” a fresh voice exclaimed. “Get the poor boy out of whatever the hell it is he’s wearing before he freezes to death!”
Lester leaned against the Land Rover and held out one foot so that Lyle could haul off his Wellington boot. “Hello, Julia.”
Lyle’s mother shot her offspring a reproving look, kissed Lester on both cheeks, and declared, “You need one of my special hot toddies!
Julie Denton departed in a haze of cigarette smoke, looking even more like the wicked witch from The Wizard of Oz than usual.
Lester laughed weakly. “What goes into her special hot toddies?” he asked.
“Closely guarded secret,” Lyle said, hauling off the second boot and then peeling the wetsuit back from Lester’s shoulders while Ralph stopped him from falling over. “But the smart money’s on a metric fuckton of whisky.”
Between them, Lyle and Ralph quickly stripped him down to his underwear and bundled him into a large towel kept in the garage for après-caving, an activity rather less glamourous than après-ski, but usually involving considerably more alcohol.
“Shower then a long soak in a hot bath,” Lyle declared. “I’ll be up as soon as I’ve sorted the kit.”
With his feet encased in an old pair of slippers, Lester padded into Drove Cottage and shook hands with Henry Rossington, Julia’s fourth husband, a retired investment banker whose personal fortune ran to something over 30 million pounds. Henry was dressed casually in cords, a dilapidated sweater and a pair of slippers that had seen even more wear than the ones Lester had on.
“Have you considered taking up golf instead?” Henry asked. “Or alternatively getting a more civilized boyfriend?”
“Jon tells me I wouldn’t suit the Rupert Bear trousers,” Lester said. “He also tells me I’d miss him if I traded him in for a more user-friendly model. But I must admit, golf is starting to look more attractive by the minute.”
“Get upstairs!” Julia ordered. “I have no desire to break in another would-be son-in-law if you happen to freeze to death.”
“Yes, ma’am…”
Walking upstairs when he still couldn’t feel his feet wasn’t the easiest thing, but Lester finally deposited the old towel and his underwear in the laundry basket, set the hot tap on the bath running, and then stepped into the shower. Warm water cascaded down around him, making Lester almost instantly start to feel more human. Upgrading the plumbing system and hot water delivery at Drove Cottage had been money well spent, especially since Lyle had taken up residence in his life and insisted on him reprising his caving career.
A few moments later, Lyle joined him in the bathroom. After running a small amount of cold water into the bath and adding a large dollop of lavender-scented gel (from the same source as their digging buckets), he declared the bath to be ready. Lester quickly transferred himself from the shower to the bath and slipped thankfully down into the hot, scented water, feeling the warmth start to seep into his body, even though his skin still felt cold to the touch, despite his time in the shower.
Lyle stepped under the jets of water and reached for the gel. “Good job there, sweetie. And at least the snow will give them chance to fix the road. When it thaws, there’ll be plenty of capacity in LVS.”
“And the good folk of Cheddar won’t have to make a massive detour.”
“There were times I was tempted to say sod the good folk of Cheddar, but don’t quote me on that. Even I was getting fucking cold down there.”
A loud knock on the bathroom door heralded the arrival of Julia, a steaming mug in each hand.
Lester winced, and was glad of the small amount of lavender-scented foam that was currently preserving what was left of his modesty.
“Thank you, Julia,” he said as she set both mugs down on the small shelf at the end of the bath.
“For fuck’s sake, mother!” Lyle protested. “You’re not meant to barge in like that, you old harridan!”
“Neither of you have got anything I’ve not seen before, you ungrateful brat,” Julia countered. “Although I have to admit that your cock looks a bit like an albino slug. It’s a good job you’ve already pulled, if that’s all you’ve got to offer.”
Lester snorted with laughter and sat up, reaching for the mug, ignoring the stream of obscenities Lyle’s was currently directing at his wholly unrepentant parent.
“You’re covered in bruises, James,” she pointed out, confirming what he already knew. “You really do need a new hobby.”
“Henry suggested golf.”
“I was thinking more of bridge.”
“Don’t play cards with her,” Lyle warned. “She cheats. Mother, would you please stop ogling my boyfriend. It’s bad manners.”
Julie rolled her eyes. “He’s far too skinny for my taste, brat. And far too bruised.”
Lyle opened the door of the shower enough to reach for his own hot whisky. “Yes, I know, this is why I’m not allowed nice things because I always break them.”
Lester took a sip of the whisky, revelling in the rich scent and the fiery trail it left behind as it slipped down his throat. He sighed appreciatively. “Julia, is there any chance I can persuade you to dump Henry and marry me instead?”
Julia Denton looked down at him and appeared to be giving the matter due consideration.
Lester resisted the urge to cover himself up, deciding it would only look coy.
“Sorry, James darling, there’s this small matter of 40 million quid standing between us….”
“Forty?” queried Lyle from the shower.
“Money breeds money, cherub,” Julia said nonchalantly. “If you’re lucky, we might buy you a packet of dry biscuits and an orange for Christmas. Now drink up, if you’re good boys, you might even get a second one.”
Lester felt he was courting insensibility drinking one, let alone two, but between the hot bath and the even hotter whisky and, he was starting to feel almost human again, rather than doing a passable impersonation of Otzi the Iceman. He slid down in the water, resting the mug on his chest, and closed his eyes. “Thanks, Julia. I won’t have a word said against you. You’re a pearl amongst women.”
“A pearl amongst swine, more like, but you’re too good for that wretched offspring of mine,” Julia declared and exited, slamming the bathroom door behind her.
“Good job we weren’t shagging,” Lyle commented, shutting off the shower and stepping out onto the bathmat as he grabbed a towel from the heated rail. “Someone really needs to instil a sense of public decency into the old bag. You’re going to regret inviting her for Christmas, my little chickadee.”
“Not if she continues making me hot toddies like this.”
“If she keeps making you hot toddies like that, you’ll be unlikely to see Boxing Day.”
“You have a point,” Lester conceded. “Be a dear boy and run some more hot water in for me.” He snagged the plug chain with his toes, letting out some of the now cooling water. “Wake me up when it’s time for canapés, sweetpea.”
Part 2
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 15
Characters : Lester/Lyle, Ralph Lyle, Julia Denton, Henry Rossington
Disclaimer : Not mine (well, actually, everyone other than Lester is mine), no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Summary : There are times when Lester considers a) taking up a new hobby b) finding a new boyfriend and, finally, c) changing jobs. This is one of those times.
A/N : 1) Written for the every lovely
lukadreaming for the primeval_denial Secret Santa for this pairing and the prompt Up is the only way to go when you’re down, which, with sufficiently powerful binoculars, you might even be able to spot. 2) Set in my Stephen/Ryan verse.“Remind me again why I let you talk me into this, pumpkin?” Lester asked, forcing the words out between gritted teeth.
He was head down in a narrow passage, arms stretched out on front of him, doing his best to grab handfuls of leaves, sticks and assorted other items of flood debris that were currently preventing the free flow of water through the narrower channels beneath him.
“Because you’re noble and public spirited?” Lyle hazarded from about three metres away, shouting to make himself heard over the noise of the water.
“Nope. Try again.” Lester jammed one elbow against the rock that was pressing in around him on all sides and stuffed a thick mat of leaves into a plastic container jammed between his legs.
“Because you’re thinner than me and can get into smaller holes, oh sweetest of pygmy shrews. And because you don’t want to put up with the whinging from the good folks of Cheddar if the road ends up getting closed for three months like it did last time.”
Lyle was right on both counts. After the work they’d put in two years ago to channel the Longwood Valley stream back underground where it belonged, he was damned if he was letting an inconvenient storm wreck what they’d achieved. For two years, Longwood Valley Sink had been able to cope with the winter rains, but this year, Storm Angus had hit the Mendips hard after the driest autumn on record. More rain had fallen on the hills in six hours on Friday night than had dropped in the past three months put together. The water had promptly gathered up all the leaves and tree debris that had fallen in the stream bed and swept them down the valley, overwhelming Top Sink almost instantly and hurtling on down the valley and into LVS, as it was known to cavers, before piling up against the grill over the entrance and finally blocking access to the lower sink as well. By the look of things, Longwood Valley Sink, had withstood the worst of the flood for some while, but had finally given up the unequal struggle when the grill had become completely choked.
At that point, the water had just swirled up, overtopping the drystone wall that held back the earth bank and raced on down the rest of the valley to Cheddar Gorge to deposit a vast quantity of leaves, wood, and gravel across the tarmac. It had also undermined the road on both sides. The police had done the only thing possible and closed the road.
Lester and Lyle had driven down from the ARC through the worst of the storm, and only Lyle’s expert driving had kept them from aquaplaning on the swamped motorway at the height of the storm. The car was heavily-laden with everything they needed to spend a family Christmas at Lester’s cottage. They were expecting Lester’s brother Ralph, as well as Lyle’s mother and stepfather. The car was crammed with a turkey the size of a small ostrich, plus what looked like half a pig for Boxing Day, a smoked dried ham (without which Lyle insisted no Christmas would be complete) and enough smoked salmon to feed a not-inconsiderable army. There was also enough booze to render the same army entirely insensible. Lester’s insistence that the cottage was hardly running short of supplies had fallen on deaf ears as had his assurance that Tesco in Wells was open throughout the Christmas period.
Neither of them had relished the idea of failing to reach the cottage on time, not when they were within touching distance of a much-prized week off together. With rain lashing against the windscreen and the wind buffeting the car, even Lyle’s usual stream of quips had quickly run dry, unlike the weather, and they’d driven the last hour in silence, broken only by the occasional profanity when something had yet again caused Lyle to take avoiding action.
It had taken them six hours and some interesting detours around fallen trees, downed power lines and the occasional wrecked car, but they’d finally made it, and after a hasty supper and several much-needed beers, they’d fallen into bed, too tired even for the sound of the storm to keep them away.
The following day had brought home the full scale of the floods. Large areas of south Bristol had been swamped, with flood waters rising so fast that some people had only narrowly avoided getting struck in their cars as the relentless waters had risen around them. Homes and businesses were swamped, rivers burst their banks throughout the region and people could wallow to their heart’s content in the time-honoured British pastime of complaining about the weather.
A bad dose of flu had laid several of the usual suspects from their weekend digging team out for the count, so Lyle had loaded a two-metre-long wrecking bar into the Land Rover and insisted they take a look at the sinkhole. They’d been greeted by the sight of swirling brown water completely covering the valley floor. Lyle had cursed fluently in three different languages and ended up wading chest deep into the water in an attempt to locate the grill and force the mat of leaves through the bars with the pole. He’d been partially successful and after spending a lot longer in the water than had been sensible, especially as he hadn’t been wearing caving gear, he’d succeeded in getting the water level to start to drop. After two hours of freezing cold work, the stream was no longer flowing across the road at Black Rock Gate and Lyle had finally admitted there was nothing more he could do. He’d trudged back up to the Land Rover, white with cold. It had taken an hour in a hot bath followed by three hours in front of the woodburning stove to get him even approaching a normal temperature.
Two days later, it was Lester’s turn to get cold and wet. The stream had subsided enough to let them slither down the entrance pipe – a section of road drain set at a 45-degree angle into the earth – and get inside the cave. Friends of theirs had spent the last two years burrowing like moles, aided by industrial quantities of explosives, in an attempt to break through into more passage – the holy grail of all cave-diggers. Lester and Lyle had joined in when time allowed and steady progress through a series of narrow rifts was being made. But if the sink was to have any hope of coping with more floodwater, it was essential to remove as much flood debris as possible, especially the thick mats of leaves that had built up in almost archaeological layers, completely blocking the lower parts of the dig.
At first the compacted leaves had come out fairly easily and Lester had been able to fill the homemade buckets with no trouble, leaving Lyle to drag them back to the bottom of the pipe where a friend on the surface hauled them out with the aid of a winch and deposited the contents downstream of the cave.
As Lester manoeuvred yet another bucket into place he caught a strong whiff of lavender and grinned, despite being freezing cold and fucking knackered. Their latest supply of digging buckets came courtesy of a company in Glastonbury that sold essential oils. They bought the stuff at a knockdown price in bloody great big plastic containers and then decanted it into tiny little bottles and flogged them on at an exorbitant mark-up. Just about every caving club hut on the Mendips now had a mound of empty oil containers just waiting to have their bottoms cut out and rope handles added. Lester couldn’t decide whether he preferred the lavender or the tea tree oil but both were preferable to Eau de Mendip Mud. Even the Land Rover was starting to smell like the inside of a massage parlour.
“Am I entitled to time off for good behaviour, mon petit chou-fleur?” Lester enquired, wondered what the hell his colleagues in the Home Office would think if they could see him now, wearing an old, patched wetsuit, wellington boots, a pair of bright blue washing up gloves and a somewhat battered caving helmet.
“Ten more buckets,” Lyle said. “That’ll make it 100. Can you handle that, sweetie?”
Lester was tempted to point out that a) he was fucking freezing, b) he could no longer feel his hands or feet, and c) there was a stream of cold water running down the back of his neck and d) no, he couldn’t fucking handle it, thank you very much, but his stubborn streak kicked it and he just grabbed another handful of leaves and stuffed them into the latest bucket.
The buckets were getting heavier and harder to manoeuvre now as there was a lot of silt mixed in with the dead leaves, but they were getting close to the end of their self-appointed task. Lyle had taken the first stint underground, dragging out the larger pieces of wood and stones that had been swept down by the flood pulse, but once he’d cleared down through the main rift, they’d had to swap over so that Lester could reach the last of the blocked passages.
Lester was cold, wet, bruised, tired and thoroughly fed up, but with the sharp smell of lavender oil in his nostrils, he kept shoving handfuls of leaves into bucket after bucket, then wriggling far enough back to let Lyle haul on the rope and drag the black buckets away from him while he grabbed the nearest empty one and started the whole miserable process all over again.
“Last one!” Lyle yelled cheerfully, even though he must have been freezing cold as well.
Lester reached as far as he could down the narrow rift and grabbed hold of another handful of leaves. Behind them, he could at least see bare rock. He wriggled backwards and started to add some broken rock to the bucket, courtesy of the last explosive charge that had been set down there. He inched his way backwards, heedless of the sharp rock pressing into his body through the five millimetres of neoprene that was all that stood between him and the interior of the Mendip Hills. He was so bloody cold that every movement was an effort now. He managed to get both hands behind the heavy bucket and push it backwards towards Lyle. The relief when Lyle took its weight and started hauling was enormous, and for a moment, he simply sagged against the rock and fought to get his ragged breathing under control. His heart was pounding in his chest and he would have quite happily exchanged his knighthood for an anomaly leading directly to a hot bath.
The sound of the bucket bumping its way back up the passage spurred Lester into the effort needed to extricate himself from the section of passage known as Triassic Tunnel. He was at the stage where every movement felt like some bugger had attached lead weights to every limb, and the inability to feel his hands wasn’t helping. Inch by painful inch, he made his way backwards into the small chamber where Lyle had been sitting to haul the buckets back up out of the end passage and was at last able to turn around, for the first time in what felt like a lifetime but had actually been less than an hour.
The last obstacle to overcome was the ascent of the entrance rift and then the climb up the plastic pipe. Ordinarily, neither of those things was particularly difficult, but with a stream still pouring down the pipe, the ascent of the rift wasn’t going to be pleasant. Lester could feel his strength starting to ebb, and he was already shivering, his teeth chattering from the cold.
In wet weather, they had a finely-honed routine in place to make the final section of the cave easier. As soon as Lyle caught sight of the light from his headtorch, he would sit at the top of the pipe, using his body to temporarily damn the flow of water underground, allowing Lester to get around the awkward corner at the bottom of the pipe without water pouring on his head. But he would have to be quick, as Lyle wouldn’t be able to hold the water back for long.
Lester dragged in a shaky breath and started to climb the right. Half a metre up, his right boot slipped off a foothold and he dropped back down, banging his elbow on the cave wall as he slid unceremoniously back to where he’d started from. He cursed through his chattering teeth and started to climb again. This time he met with more success, but he was now having problems using his left arm. The thump against the rock had managed to connect with a nerve point… He jammed his shoulders into the tight rift and wriggled, pushing upwards as much as he could, just hoping that his footholds were good.
His breathing was now even more ragged, and he could feel water starting to splash on his helmet. The stream was obviously mounting up around Lyle now and it wouldn’t be long before it was gushing down the entrance pipe again, despite his lover’s best attempts to hold it back. Lester braced himself against the rock again and did his best to get his feet higher up. There was a good foothold here somewhere, he knew it…
With a final heave, Lester got his head through the awkward bend at the top of the rift and his right arm and shoulder quickly followed.
“I don’t want to rush you, James,” Lyle called, “but it’s about to get wet down there…”
Despite his circumstances, Lester grinned. He always knew a situation was serious when Lyle dropped their pet-name game. He was on his last reserves of strength, but he couldn’t let an opportunity like this go to waste.
“It already is wet, my little swamp rat!” he yelled back. “Now keep that fat arse of yours right there for one minute more…”
Lester reached up with his right arm and grabbed one of the rungs of the thin metal ladder that was dangling down the pipe and hauled himself through the constriction just as more water started pouring down the pipe. He got his left hand and arm through and caught hold of a second rung. As the water streamed around him, Lester pulled as hard as he could, kicked out with his feet and scrabbled past the corner and into the plastic pipe. It felt not unlike being flushed around the U-bend in a loo, but Lester could see daylight now and he was out of the tight section. There was no way in hell that he was losing ground now. There was only one way he was going and that was upwards.
He dragged himself hand over hand up the dangling ladder, and as soon as his lover could see that he’d got a firm grip, Lyle pulled himself out of the pipe and let the full force of the stream go, as there was no way Lester could get out while he was blocking the top. Water cascaded around Lester in an icy torrent, but he had a firm hold of the ladder and he knew that all he had to do was hang there for a minute while the backed- up water fell over his head and shoulders, buffeting him from side to side.
As soon as the torrent slowed, Lester started hauling himself up again, rung by rung, until a pair of strong hands slipped under his armpits and hoisted him up the last couple of feet to land him in the stream like a prize salmon.
Lyle grinned down at him. “Game, set and match to you, fruitbat.”
With Lyle’s help, Lester struggled to his feet and stared around in surprise at a light covering of snow on the ground. He looked up at a gunmetal grey sky from which fat white flakes were drifting on a light breeze. It had been bright sunshine when he’d gone down the sinkhole.
“I had 50 quid on a white Christmas,” Lyle said with satisfaction. “Good odds, too.”
Lester accepted a plastic mug of steaming hot coffee heavily laced with brandy and drained it even before he’d climbed out of the stream bed. The digging kit was already packed away, and as soon as the grill had been lowered back into position and chained shut, they started to make their way back up the valley. The snow made the trek even more slippery than usual, and by the time they’d reached the Land Rover, Lester was shivering hard, too cold and knackered to do anything more than climb onto the front seat and wave a frozen hand to their friends as Lyle chucked the digging gear in the back and pulled cautiously onto the already-white road.
****
The snow was falling hard by the time Lyle pulled the Land Rover into the drove road that led to the cottage, but from the wheel marks in the white coverlet, it was obvious that two vehicles had recently driven down the track. It looked like their visitors had arrived.
Lyle pulled up in front of the garage and Lester fumbled with the door handle. His fingers were still numb and his feet were no better. The door was pulled open from the outside and his older brother Ralph grinned at him.
“Bloody hell, Jim, you look like death warmed up!”
“Who said anything about warm?” Lester muttered through clenched teeth.
“And this is why you shouldn’t be allowed nice toys, Jon, you little sod!” a fresh voice exclaimed. “Get the poor boy out of whatever the hell it is he’s wearing before he freezes to death!”
Lester leaned against the Land Rover and held out one foot so that Lyle could haul off his Wellington boot. “Hello, Julia.”
Lyle’s mother shot her offspring a reproving look, kissed Lester on both cheeks, and declared, “You need one of my special hot toddies!
Julie Denton departed in a haze of cigarette smoke, looking even more like the wicked witch from The Wizard of Oz than usual.
Lester laughed weakly. “What goes into her special hot toddies?” he asked.
“Closely guarded secret,” Lyle said, hauling off the second boot and then peeling the wetsuit back from Lester’s shoulders while Ralph stopped him from falling over. “But the smart money’s on a metric fuckton of whisky.”
Between them, Lyle and Ralph quickly stripped him down to his underwear and bundled him into a large towel kept in the garage for après-caving, an activity rather less glamourous than après-ski, but usually involving considerably more alcohol.
“Shower then a long soak in a hot bath,” Lyle declared. “I’ll be up as soon as I’ve sorted the kit.”
With his feet encased in an old pair of slippers, Lester padded into Drove Cottage and shook hands with Henry Rossington, Julia’s fourth husband, a retired investment banker whose personal fortune ran to something over 30 million pounds. Henry was dressed casually in cords, a dilapidated sweater and a pair of slippers that had seen even more wear than the ones Lester had on.
“Have you considered taking up golf instead?” Henry asked. “Or alternatively getting a more civilized boyfriend?”
“Jon tells me I wouldn’t suit the Rupert Bear trousers,” Lester said. “He also tells me I’d miss him if I traded him in for a more user-friendly model. But I must admit, golf is starting to look more attractive by the minute.”
“Get upstairs!” Julia ordered. “I have no desire to break in another would-be son-in-law if you happen to freeze to death.”
“Yes, ma’am…”
Walking upstairs when he still couldn’t feel his feet wasn’t the easiest thing, but Lester finally deposited the old towel and his underwear in the laundry basket, set the hot tap on the bath running, and then stepped into the shower. Warm water cascaded down around him, making Lester almost instantly start to feel more human. Upgrading the plumbing system and hot water delivery at Drove Cottage had been money well spent, especially since Lyle had taken up residence in his life and insisted on him reprising his caving career.
A few moments later, Lyle joined him in the bathroom. After running a small amount of cold water into the bath and adding a large dollop of lavender-scented gel (from the same source as their digging buckets), he declared the bath to be ready. Lester quickly transferred himself from the shower to the bath and slipped thankfully down into the hot, scented water, feeling the warmth start to seep into his body, even though his skin still felt cold to the touch, despite his time in the shower.
Lyle stepped under the jets of water and reached for the gel. “Good job there, sweetie. And at least the snow will give them chance to fix the road. When it thaws, there’ll be plenty of capacity in LVS.”
“And the good folk of Cheddar won’t have to make a massive detour.”
“There were times I was tempted to say sod the good folk of Cheddar, but don’t quote me on that. Even I was getting fucking cold down there.”
A loud knock on the bathroom door heralded the arrival of Julia, a steaming mug in each hand.
Lester winced, and was glad of the small amount of lavender-scented foam that was currently preserving what was left of his modesty.
“Thank you, Julia,” he said as she set both mugs down on the small shelf at the end of the bath.
“For fuck’s sake, mother!” Lyle protested. “You’re not meant to barge in like that, you old harridan!”
“Neither of you have got anything I’ve not seen before, you ungrateful brat,” Julia countered. “Although I have to admit that your cock looks a bit like an albino slug. It’s a good job you’ve already pulled, if that’s all you’ve got to offer.”
Lester snorted with laughter and sat up, reaching for the mug, ignoring the stream of obscenities Lyle’s was currently directing at his wholly unrepentant parent.
“You’re covered in bruises, James,” she pointed out, confirming what he already knew. “You really do need a new hobby.”
“Henry suggested golf.”
“I was thinking more of bridge.”
“Don’t play cards with her,” Lyle warned. “She cheats. Mother, would you please stop ogling my boyfriend. It’s bad manners.”
Julie rolled her eyes. “He’s far too skinny for my taste, brat. And far too bruised.”
Lyle opened the door of the shower enough to reach for his own hot whisky. “Yes, I know, this is why I’m not allowed nice things because I always break them.”
Lester took a sip of the whisky, revelling in the rich scent and the fiery trail it left behind as it slipped down his throat. He sighed appreciatively. “Julia, is there any chance I can persuade you to dump Henry and marry me instead?”
Julia Denton looked down at him and appeared to be giving the matter due consideration.
Lester resisted the urge to cover himself up, deciding it would only look coy.
“Sorry, James darling, there’s this small matter of 40 million quid standing between us….”
“Forty?” queried Lyle from the shower.
“Money breeds money, cherub,” Julia said nonchalantly. “If you’re lucky, we might buy you a packet of dry biscuits and an orange for Christmas. Now drink up, if you’re good boys, you might even get a second one.”
Lester felt he was courting insensibility drinking one, let alone two, but between the hot bath and the even hotter whisky and, he was starting to feel almost human again, rather than doing a passable impersonation of Otzi the Iceman. He slid down in the water, resting the mug on his chest, and closed his eyes. “Thanks, Julia. I won’t have a word said against you. You’re a pearl amongst women.”
“A pearl amongst swine, more like, but you’re too good for that wretched offspring of mine,” Julia declared and exited, slamming the bathroom door behind her.
“Good job we weren’t shagging,” Lyle commented, shutting off the shower and stepping out onto the bathmat as he grabbed a towel from the heated rail. “Someone really needs to instil a sense of public decency into the old bag. You’re going to regret inviting her for Christmas, my little chickadee.”
“Not if she continues making me hot toddies like this.”
“If she keeps making you hot toddies like that, you’ll be unlikely to see Boxing Day.”
“You have a point,” Lester conceded. “Be a dear boy and run some more hot water in for me.” He snagged the plug chain with his toes, letting out some of the now cooling water. “Wake me up when it’s time for canapés, sweetpea.”
Part 2
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Date: 2016-12-29 02:04 pm (UTC)OMG, Lester/Lyle and caving and Drove Cottage! I feel cold just reading this. And Julia has all the best lines, with Lyle's a close second ...
*Scuttles off to part two*
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Date: 2016-12-29 02:08 pm (UTC)And it was most amusing that we drove past the cottage several times.
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Date: 2016-12-29 02:18 pm (UTC)At least we didn't go visiting this time!
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Date: 2016-12-29 03:48 pm (UTC)Jon and Julia are absolutely crazy together.
*g* Love how you brought in your latest flooding problem!
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Date: 2016-12-29 04:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-29 10:27 pm (UTC)Julia is of course, as epic as ever. What a woman! No way to get bored with her around.
Big yay for Lyle/Lester, I love them so much!
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