fredbassett

Title : Christmas is Coming
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 15
Characters : Stephen/Ryan, Nick, Lyle, Finn, Lafarge
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Summary : Christmas isn’t a good time to be apart.
A/N : Written for

cordeliadelayne's fandom stocking and posted now as Xmas fic doesn't seem quite so out of place with snow on the ground!

“Coffee?” Nick offered, standing up and stretching the kinks out of his shoulders for the first time in several hours hunched over his keyboard.

The paper he was writing was progressing at about the same pace as the evolution of the creatures he was writing about. At this rate, he’d be finished in about another 35 million years.

When no answer came from Stephen, Nick glanced over to check he was still in their shared office.

He was.

Stephen had his elbows on the desk, his chin cradled in his cupped hands. His vivid blue eyes stared at the computer screen, but it was plain he was looking without seeing. It hadn’t been an easy month for Stephen. Ryan had been pulled off the anomaly project on a couple of hours’ notice and whisked off somewhere well above their collective security clearance. Nick knew Stephen had received no word from his lover, nor had any of the other soldiers, but that wasn’t unusual. The special forces contingent was used to being pulled off the anomaly project in ones and twos when their skills were needed elsewhere. So far, they’d always come back, but everyone lived with the niggling inner voice saying that might not always be the case. Not that chasing dinosaurs was inherently much safer…

“Coffee?” he asked again, a little louder that time. Nick considered physical contact but dismissed the idea. Startling someone with finely-honed survival instincts at close quarters was generally not a wise course of action.

Stephen blinked twice and looked up. “Sorry, did you say something?”

“I thought for a moment I was going to have to strip naked and dance round the room to get your attention.”

“I’d pay good money to see the look on Lester’s face if you did, and the CCTV footage would be worth a small fortune.” Stephen looked like he was replaying the last couple of minutes in his mind. The point at which he got to Nick’s offer became clear when he said, “Yes, please, I’d love a coffee.”

“Come on then, let’s take a walk to the break room. Neither of us has moved from here in the last four hours.”

“Good bladder control.”

“Not enough to drink and not enough food.”

Connor was in the break room, poring over his laptop. Three of the soldiers were playing cards. Lyle looked up as they came in and said, “Thank fuck for that. I’d just drawn the short straw to see if either of you wanted a drink. I wasn’t looking forward to getting my head bitten off.”

Nick raised his eyebrows. “Are you casting aspersions on our sunny natures?”

“No comment.” Lyle chucked his hand on the table. “Straight flush. I’ll be nice to you all and put the kettle on.”

“Biscuits, boss?” Finn said hopefully.

“Nope, you’ve not finished the mince pie mountain yet. No biscuits until they’ve all gone. Government departments can’t run to biscuits as well as mince pes. Well known fact. Are you two coming for a beer tonight? I might even stand a round if you’re nice to me.”

Stephen smiled and nodded. The soldiers had quietly and unobtrusively closed ranks around him in their captain’s absence, but it was obvious that Stephen’s mind was elsewhere whenever an anomaly shout wasn’t actively distracting him. With Christmas fast approaching, Nick hoped his friend would get some good news soon.

****

Ryan lay unmoving on a rock floor trying his best to ignore a multitude of small discomforts that together added up to one fucking huge discomfort.

He’d spent the last month holed up in Syria’s Jabal al-Druze mountain range working with a French special forces covert entry team tasked with finding and taking down an IS commander responsible for a recent terror attack in Marseilles. Ryan was there because he was one of the few people who could be sure of recognising the man, so in a rare moment of détente, his political masters had agreed to him working with the French on a strictly deniable basis.

They’d followed some potentially dodgy intel to a remote area of Syria’s southern mountains. The peaks, volcanic in origin, according to one of the French lads who was a bit of a geology nut in his spare time, reached up 1,800 metres high and at this time of year were a fucking wilderness of snow and rock. Ryan had spent most of the time freezing his arse off in inadequate shelters keeping watch on a remote camp, waiting for their target to show himself. The mountains were well outside Daesh’s usual stamping grounds, but the French had taken the intel seriously enough to keep a six-man team in the area for the past four weeks.

“Fuck this for a game of soldiers,” muttered Capitaine Etienne Lafarge of the Brigade de Forces Spéciales. “If I lie on this fucking slab of rock much longer, my dick will drop off.”

“So how long do we wait before calling bullshit on your sodding intel.”

“Not my intel,” Lafarge said, rolling onto his side and rubbing his crotch. “Blame the idiots in the DGSE.”

The Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure was France’s military foreign intelligence service. As far as Ryan could tell, Lafarge’s mob held their colleagues in the DGSE in some contempt, which mirrored the often-difficult relationship between the SAS and MI6.

“I repeat, how long before they pull us off this fucking wild goose chase?”

“Fuck knows. Missing Stephen?” Lafarge asked, with a sly grin.

“Yes, I fucking well am. Are you missing your dinosaurs? Found a pretty one yet?”

“I live like a monk, mon ami, as you well know.”

When he wasn’t out chasing terrorists, Lafarge ran the military side of the French government’s anomaly response. A close co-operation had grown up between the UK and the French that would no doubt have had some politicians foaming at the mouth if they’d known about it but both countries had benefited, with the UK taking on board the souped-up taser technology that the French had pioneered, with the UK gifting the French a fully functioning ADD. Other European countries weren’t being quite so forthcoming, but that was an area Ryan didn’t have to worry about. Not his circus, not his monkeys.

Ryan tried to get some life back into his freezing cold fingers by flexing them inside his gloves, but the prospect of warmth was now nothing more than a distant dream. He was cold, hungry, tired, and very, very sick of lying on a bed of rock with a pair of binoculars pressed to his eyes. He’d lost track of the days, but knew that Christmas had to be fast approaching. He wanted to be back home in a warm flat, tucked up in bed with Stephen doing nothing more strenuous than having a lazy shag.

And some Christmas turkey wouldn’t go amiss, after a month on ration packs.

Lafarge finished trying to rub some life back into his dick and rolled onto his stomach again, his binoculars back to his eyes. A moment later he muttered something in French that Ryan didn’t catch, followed by, “Incoming!”

An ancient truck was climbing the steep road to the camp. The first movement they’d seen in days. Ryan quickly trained his binoculars on the vehicle and followed its progress into the camp.

A man jumped out of the passenger seat, dressed in combat fatigues. Ryan immediately recognised the hawk-like face, with its hooked nose, heavy beard and high cheekbones. “Bingo. Fucking bingo.”

The group’s AS50 sniper rifle, a British-made long-range killing machine that could propel a high explosive .50 cal round up to 1,800 metres with deadly accuracy, had been set up since they’d arrived at their observation post. The AS50 could fire five rounds in 1.6 seconds from a single stacked box magazine. They had enough ammunition to rip the camp apart, and had been waiting a long month for this moment.

The man Ryan was staring at was responsible for the deaths of at least a thousand innocent civilians, 150 of them in the Marseilles attack.

“It’s him,” Ryan said. “Take the shot.”

For the avoidance of doubt, Lafarge confirmed the order in French.

A heartbeat later, the A50 started firing.

****

To the dismay of his colleagues, Stephen had obstinately refused all invitations to spend Christmas eve and Christmas day with other people and had insisted on spending the time at home, by himself. He had no idea if Ryan would make it home for Christmas, but if he did, Stephen was determined that he wouldn’t arrive home to an empty flat.

There was a small turkey in the fridge which Stephen was intending to cook, even if he had to be living on turkey curry until Easter. He’d brought in the small potted Christmas tree from the balcony from where it had defied all expectations and actually survived the year. It was now decorated with some strings of multicoloured fairy lights and the few ornaments he and Ryan possessed.

He couldn’t decide if looking at the tree made him feel better or worse. There was champagne in the fridge, but he didn’t feel like drinking.

He’d known what he was letting himself in for when he’d started going out with Ryan, but that didn’t make the unexplained absences and lack of news any easier to bear.

There was fuck all on the telly and he couldn’t settle to reading. He had a couple of large baked potatoes in the oven and would have them with cheese later. Until they were ready, there wasn’t really anything for him to do.

The sound of a key in the front door sent his heartrate off the scale, although he knew Lyle had a key to the flat. He wouldn’t put it past the lieutenant to make a final attempt to get Stephen to join him and Lester for Christmas.

“Hi honey, I’m home!”

Stephen was off the sofa and into the hall in a time that Usain Bolt would have been proud of. Ryan had already dropped his rucksack on the floor and had his arms open ready to envelop Stephen in a crushing hug. Stephen melted into his lover’s arms, cheek pressed against Ryan’s feeling the familiar rasp of stubble. Ryan looked exhausted, but there were no new shadows haunting his grey eyes, and his expression was open and cheerful.

The kiss they shared was intense but tender and when they drew apart, Stephen lost himself for a moment in the warmth of Ryan’s smile, before pulling his phone out of his pocket.

“Better let the others know you’re safe. Welcome home, Tom.”

“Happy Christmas,” Ryan said, planting a kiss on the end of Stephen’s nose.