Houseguests, pt 1
Fandom: Primeval / Buffy / Angel
Pairing: Spike/Connor/Lester, Angel/Becker
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: This part: 4,917 (total:13,458)
Summary: Lester’s children come to stay.
Notes: #9 in the Spike at the ARC series- full list here. This whole series is set in series 3.
Houseguests, pt 1
Lester was pacing. He had been going back and forth across his office for the past five minutes and it still wasn’t actually helping. He’d already called Spike and Connor to come up a few minutes earlier and now he waited, not really sure what he was going to do when they got here. If he’d had a bit more time, maybe…
The door opened and Connor came hurrying in, followed at a more leisurely saunter by Spike. The vampire avoided the small stripe of sunlight that had got in through the crack in the blinds and went to stand in front of Lester, blocking his path. He prevented Lester from going around him with a hand on his arm.
“What’s wrong?”
Lester looked into concerned eyes, noticing Connor watching him warily too.
“I’ve just had a call from my sister in law,” he began. “There’s been an accident. Amelia’s car was struck at a junction; the other driver ran a red light and hit the driver’s side of her car.”
“Is she okay?” Connor asked, knowing that despite their divorce, Lester was still on friendly terms with his ex wife. He had another horrible thought. “Were the kids in the car?”
“David was at his football practice but Amelia was taking Jessica to her friend’s house. She’s got a broken wrist and a few scrapes. She was lucky.”
“And Amelia?”
“Amelia has whiplash from the impact, and a broken leg as well as a few other minor cuts and bruises but the hospital says she can go home tomorrow.” He paused for a moment, looking at them both. “She’s asked me to take the kids until she can get around a little easier. With her leg, she can’t look after them at home and-”
Connor smiled. “James, it’s fine. Of course they should come and stay with you.”
“Yeah,” Spike chipped in. “We’ll help; I’m great with kids. Just ask Buffy. I looked after Dawnie while she was dead- Buffy, not Dawn- and we had some great times, me and the little bit.”
Lester remained silent, not meeting their eyes.
“They don’t know about us, do they?” Connor asked. “Do you want us to move out while they’re here? I’m sure Abby would let us have her spare room again if I asked.”
“No.” Lester’s response was immediate. That was the one thing he knew he didn’t want. “I’m not going to turn you out; I don’t want you to leave. Besides, they already know that you live there, Connor. It just means we’ll have to remember that they’re in the flat.”
“So, no shagging on the sofa while we’re watching TV,” Spike said, then grinned. “What? I’m helping.”
“It means that James will be staying in his room, and we’ll be staying in mine, right?” Connor asked. “Nothing over PG rating in front of the kids, or anywhere they might walk in or overhear. And Spike will wear clothing when he sleeps so we don’t have to worry about him wandering about in the buff.”
Grateful, Lester nodded. He should have known that Connor and Spike would support him in this, help him out however much they could.
“So what are you going to tell them?” Spike asked. “Just so we don’t get our stories crossed.”
Now that was the big question, wasn’t it? How exactly did he explain a vampire living in his flat, in Connor’s bed?
“I’ll just tell them that you’re friends of mine, at least to begin with,” he said decisively. Glancing at his watch, he swore.
“I have to go and collect them. I don’t suppose you two could go back to the flat and have a bit of a tidy up, could you?”
Spike stood, ushering him out of the door. “Go. We’ll go hide the porn.”
“There isn’t any porn, James,” Connor told him, glaring at Spike. “We can sort it out. You go and get the kids.”
~.~
By the time Lester arrived back at the flat, the spare room had been changed back into the bedroom it was meant to be, the clutter removed and the bed made up. Connor had taken all of his books and his laptop from Lester’s room into his old bedroom, piled them in the corner and closed the door to hide the mess. They would have to put David in the study, Connor decided. There was a sofa bed in there that they pull out, and plenty of room for an eight year old.
“Better move anything that he shouldn’t be reading,” Connor said, collecting up any paperwork that mentioned the ARC or the creatures.
A squeak at his feet made him look down and he saw Sid and Nancy watching him curiously. Nancy looked up at the freshly made bed and he could see it in her eyes- it was part ‘where did the sofa go?’ and part ‘ooooh, something to jump on’.
“Don’t you dare,” he told her as she crouched to get a better leap up onto the bed. “Sorry, guys, but you’re moving into my room for a while. I’ll take you over to Abby’s soon and then you can go and play with Rex for a couple of days. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
They heard the sound of voices out in the hall, signalling Lester’s return.
“Too late. Spike, can you grab Nancy and I’ll bring Sid and their bed.”
They had just managed to get the two Diictodons into Connor’s room when the door opened and Lester came in. Spike went to get the bags from him, taking them to the two rooms, while Connor tried to keep out of the way.
“Jessica, David, you remember Connor, don’t you?”
David nodded, smiling. Since finding out that Connor knew lots about dinosaurs, as well as video games, they’d quickly become friends. Jessica remained a little more aloof, merely muttering ‘hi’ to him. She was cradling her wrist to her, a bright purple cast covering it, and there were a few scrapes visible on her cheek from the accident.
“And this is Spike,” Lester introduced, as the vampire returned.
Now Jessica looked interested. Spike actually got a smile.
~.~
Lester had just returned to the kitchen after showing the kids to their rooms when there was a scream. The three of them all made a dash for Jessica’s room, tripping over David on the way as he came out to see what all of the excitement was about.
“It went under the bed!” she told them as soon as they reached the door. She was standing on her bed, looking around nervously.
Connor glanced at Spike. “If it’s a spider, I’m not getting it.”
With a sigh, Spike crouched down and peered under the bed as Lester tried to calm his daughter down. He grinned, reaching under the bed.
“Well, it’s not a spider but it is a pest,” he said to Connor, dragging a squirming, protesting Nancy out and picking her up. He took a pink t-shirt with the word Princess across the front of it in sparkly letters away from Nancy and handed it to Jessica. “Yours, I presume. Unless your dad has something he’d like to tell us.”
That made Jessica smile before she looked back at the diictodon, still wriggling against Spike’s grip on her.
“She’s called Nancy. She’s harmless,” Lester told her, offering her a hand to help her down off the bed. After a minute, she took it. “There are two of them and they were supposed to be locked in Connor’s room,” he added with a pointed look at Connor and Spike.
Jessica was still eyeing Nancy curiously. She half reached out a hand to pet her but pulled it back at last minute, looking to her dad.
“She doesn’t bite?”
To prove it, Lester petted the top of Nancy’s head, the little creature making a happy squeaking sound as he did so. Eventually, Jessica reached out again.
“It’s okay,” Connor told her. “My friend Abby is going to look after them while you’re here. I was going to take them over to her this evening.”
Gently stroking Nancy’s head in the same way she would a dog, Jessica frowned.
“She just scared me, that’s all. You don’t have to send them away.”
Connor heard Sid’s cries from his room, missing Nancy, and went to get him. The door must have swung shut behind Nancy, trapping Sid, and he wasn’t happy about it.
“Can we keep them here?” David asked, barging into the room and giving away the fact he’d been listening in. “Please, dad? They’re cool.”
Looking between his children, Lester sighed. “Fine. Though you many regret that decision the first time you find one of your shoes half-eaten.”
David shared none of his sister’s hesitation, going to pet Sid straight away.
“Can they fetch?” he asked Connor. “Can I play with them?”
After a nod from Lester, Connor and Spike put the two creatures down on the floor again. Sid scampered after David as he hurried into the living room but Nancy just sat down, looking up at Jessica.
“It’s okay. She can stay in here if she wants.”
Lester lifted her bag up onto the bed so that Nancy couldn’t steal anything else while she unpacked, hesitating.
“Does your wrist hurt?” he asked. “I could get you one of your pain tablets. Or help you unpack, if you wanted me to.” When Jessica rolled her eyes at him he held his hands up in surrender. “Sorry, it’s just that I was worried about you.”
Connor and Spike, waiting outside, heard the sadness in Lester’s voice and the lack of response from Jessica, and it took all of Connor’s willpower not to hug him when he came out, closing the door behind him.
“She’s unpacking,” Lester told them, as though he didn’t know they’d been listening.
~.~
That evening, Connor and Spike met with the rest of the team in the local pub, leaving Lester to have some time with his children. It seemed strange without Lester there; since they’d become involved, Lester always came out with them for a drink.
It just didn’t seem the same, though.
“Let’s go back,” Spike said after a couple of hours. “The munchkins will be asleep by now, so we won’t be disturbing anything.”
Connor nodded and they took the short walk back to Lester’s flat, going in quietly. They were almost to Connor’s room when a voice asked,
“And what time do you call this?”
Connor turned back to the living room, seeing Lester sitting on the sofa, the TV on with the sound turned down low.
“It’s not that late,” he protested.
Lester smiled. “That’s exactly what I mean. I thought you were going out on the town with the rest of the team.”
Spike dropped into Lester’s lap, his knees either side of Lester’s legs on the sofa. “We were, but we missed you. Besides, I’m hungry, and I’m in the mood for a James-flavoured snack,” Spike told him, leaning in to nibble gently on the side of Lester’s neck.
For a moment, Lester let his head fall to the side to give Spike more room, but then he suddenly sat up straight again.
“I can’t: what about the children?”
Spike took Lester’s hand and climbed off the sofa, pulling Lester up with him. He led him into Connor’s room, Connor following them in and closing the door behind them.
“Their rooms aren’t next to mine,” Connor reminded him. “It’ll be fine. Come on, James, please?”
Between Connor’s pleading look and Spike slowly removing his shirt as his hand roamed, Lester took one last look at the door and sighed. How the bloody hell was he supposed to resist the pair of them when they teamed up?
Connor grinned and pounced on him, kissing him hard. It had been strange not being able to touch their lover all day, not being able to show him any affection. Even at work they didn’t have to be so secretive, not since Helen had blurted out the truth about their relationship a few months ago.
“I’ll set the alarm so that we’re up early enough for you to get back to your own room,” Connor promised. “They’ll never know where you spent the night.”
Lester smiled gratefully. “Thank you. I know this isn’t easy for you two. I just wanted to tell you that I appreciate your efforts.”
Spike smirked and finished unfastening Lester’s belt. “Don’t start getting soppy on us,” he joked, before his tone turned serious. “We know how important it is that everything goes okay, and so we’ll do what we can to help. For now, though, we’ve got you to ourselves so I think we need less talk and more shagging.”
Lester kicked his shoes off and watched as Connor and Spike stripped, climbing onto the bed with him. He was still wary about this, what with the children in the flat, but he had missed the contact as much as the other two. Spike pushed him back onto the bed, crawling over him and pressing his slightly cool body along Lester’s. Leaning down, he stole a kiss.
He moved lower, tasting his way down Lester’s body until he could lick a stripe along the underside of Lester’s cock.
At Lester’s nod, he took Lester into his mouth, sucking, licking, and making the other man utter a low groan of satisfaction.
“Quiet now,” Connor teased, putting a hand over Lester’s mouth. “If you can’t be quiet, we’ll have to gag you.”
Spike lifted his head and smiled. “I think he likes that idea.”
Connor laughed softly. From Lester’s reactions it certainly appeared that way, something Connor hadn’t expected. He had never assumed Lester would like that.
“We can save that idea for later, when we’ve got the time to play,” he said. For now, they were going to have to be quick and quiet.
Spike continued to tease, never letting Lester reach his climax, backing off each time he sensed that the other man was close.
“Can I?”
Lester didn’t even need to ask what he wanted permission for, nor did he have to consider the answer.
“Yes- wait, Spike. No visible marks.”
Spike grinned at him. “None’s going to see ‘em, trust me,” he said, his features changing as he sank his teeth into Lester’s skin, in the crease of his leg, just over his femoral artery.
“Fuck…”
Lester’s eyes rolled back as he came, Spike drinking his fill and then licking over the wound to heal it again.
Letting Lester catch his breath, Connor pulled Spike in for a kiss, smiling when his fingers touched something wet in Spike’s hair. Trailing a finger through it, he turned to Lester.
“You got him all dirty.”
Lester smirked. “So I did.” He turned on his side, a hand under his head. “I like it.”
Connor crawled over him, laying his body alongside Lester and kissing him. Spike grumbled for a moment about feeling left out before curling around Connor, making the younger man grin and wriggle in Lester’s arms. Lester ran his hands down Connor’s back, over his arse, and realised what Spike was doing to make Connor react like that. Reaching over for the bottle of lube he’d seen Connor hide in the bedside cabinet, he passed it to Spike.
“Fuck him, Spike. Let me watch.” He heard a cap being snapped shut and the bottle being dropped on the floor, before Connor’s breath hitched.
“Now remember, Connor,” Lester teased, his hand covering Spike’s as two of the vampire’s fingers pressed into Connor. “Be quiet.”
Connor let out a low whimper, pushing back against Spike. “Please.”
Spike took another few moments to get him ready before sliding his cock into Connor, seeing Connor bite his lip to stop himself making any sound. Lester helpfully hooked his hands under Connor’s thighs, spreading him wider for Spike and holding him in his arms as Spike fucked him.
He could feel Connor’s hard cock pressed against his stomach, feel Connor trying to rub off against him, and smiled.
“No, Connor,” he whispered. “Not yet.”
Connor whined. “But James…”
Spike’s teeth nipped at Connor’s shoulder, not hard enough to draw blood but enough to stop Connor’s protests. Taking Connor hard, he then made sure that talking was the last thing on the younger man’s mind.
~.~
The following morning, Lester awoke as someone placed a cup of tea on the bedside table. He opened his eyes to see David trying not to spill the tea as he put the mug down. When he noticed that his dad was awake, David smiled.
“Spike said breakfast is ready,” he reported before turning and bolting for the door, calling back over his shoulder, “He’s making pancakes.”
“For breakfast?” But David was gone, leaving Lester to get out of bed and ready for work.
When he emerged ten minutes later, he found Spike loading pancakes onto the kids’ plates and pouring them more orange juice. He cringed as Connor poured a diabetic-coma-inducing amount of treacle over a stack of pancakes, an act copied by David.
“See? I told you that’d taste good.”
David grinned, forking breakfast into his mouth as fast as he could.
“Hey, niblet, you might want to chew some of that,” Spike pointed out. When he saw Lester he started toward him to greet him but stopped himself in time. Instead he smiled, the grin telling Lester all of the things he would have done, had the kids not been here. “Mornin’ James. Sleep well?”
He knew the answer to that perfectly well, Lester thought, as he’d spent the majority of it pressed between Spike and Connor. As promised, Connor had woken him at just after four this morning, giving him time to get back to his room before either of the children woke up. Unfortunately, he had then fallen asleep again, only to be woken by his alarm clock at five thirty.
“You didn’t have to make breakfast, Spike. I could have done it.”
Spike handed a plate of pancakes to Jessica. “There you go, love.”
Jessica tried to pick up the treacle but the cast on her arm meant that she couldn’t get hold of it properly. She tried again, this time knocking a mug over on the table beside her.
“I hate this stupid thing.”
Lester reached over to pick up the treacle, taking off the lid. “Let me help you.”
“I don’t want any help!”
Lester watched in dismay as she scraped her chair back from the table and went back to her room. He got up to follow her but Spike stopped him.
“You stay here with David and finish your breakfast,” he said, picking up the plate, treacle and a fork. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
Spike knocked on Jessica’s door before going in. The girl was sitting on her bed, her knees up to her chest with her arms around them.
“Here,” he said, putting the plate down beside her and sitting down on the end of the bed. “Before it gets cold.” There was a faint scuffling from under the bed and Nancy emerged, looking up at the food, her eyes sparkling. “Well, before Nancy gets it, anyway.”
Jessica smiled, picking up her pancakes and letting him put some treacle on them.
“You fancy talking about it?” She shook her head, eating quietly. “Okay then.”
As he got up to leave, she frowned. “That’s it?”
“What were you expecting?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know.” There was a moment of silence and then, “I don’t like him treating me like a kid, wanting to do everything for me.”
Spike sat down again. “He’s just trying to help, pet. When he heard about the accident, your dad was really worried about you. I’ll tell you what- I’ll ask him to back off a bit, if you give him a break, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Good. Now, how about coming back to sit with us?”
Jessica nodded, eating the last of her breakfast and following him out, mumbling “Sorry, dad,” as she sat down.
Ten minutes later, the dishes were washed and put away and Lester was pulling his jacket on. He had already agreed with Jessica that she could take today off school given that she was still feeling a bit sore from the accident, but David wanted to go.
“Are you sure you’re alright to go to school?” he asked David as the boy stood in front of him, clutching his lunch bag. “You had a bit of a shock yesterday.”
He nodded, looking quite worried at the prospect of not going.
“Would you mind if Connor took you, while I take Jessica to Auntie Emma’s house?”
“Cool!” There was no hesitation on David’s part, eager to have Connor to talk to for the whole journey there.
Jessica, on the other hand, didn’t look quite as excited. “Can’t I just go with you today, dad? I won’t get in your way, I promise. Please?”
“You’d be bored there,” he told her, trying to put her off. It wasn’t as though he could tell her the real reason she wasn’t allowed in the ARC. “I’ve got work to do so I won’t be able to keep you company.”
“I can take my book, and I’ve got an essay due that I can write. I don’t want to go to Auntie Emma’s.”
Spike could see Lester trying desperately to come up with an excuse but, unfortunately, Jessica could see that too. The crestfallen look on her face made him take Lester to one side.
“She can stay with me if the team have to go out, or in your office. We can make sure no one tells her anything she shouldn’t know,” he said. “She just wants so see where her dad works.”
It was that which did it, Lester sighing loudly. “This is a bad idea,” he told Spike before turning back to his daughter. “Fine, but you have to promise me that you go wandering off. There are some places where you aren’t allowed to go.”
She nodded, hurrying back to her room and returning with a paperback novel, an A4 writing pad, pens and a text book.
~.~
Connor arrived at the ARC an hour later, just as Lester was starting to fret. It was a twenty minute journey to the school, give or take a few minutes for traffic, and then back to work. It shouldn’t take him an hour unless something had happened.
“Sorry,” Connor told him when he finally came hurrying through the door. “David wanted to show me his geography project, and then the teacher started talking to me.”
Lester frowned. David hadn’t shown him that project; he’d talked about it, but never offered to show it off.
“It’s just because I was there; it doesn’t mean anything,” Connor continued, seeing Lester’s expression. He moved to Lester, reaching out a hand before remembering that Jessica was in the room and stopped himself.
Lester looked up as Becker came into his office, pausing when he saw Jessica.
“Becker, come in. Jessica, could you give us a minute?”
Spike slung an arm around the girl’s shoulders and steered her out of the room.
“Come on, pet. Let’s go get a cuppa,” he said, before smirking in Becker’s direction. “And while Becker is in here, we can nick some of his biscuits. I know where he stashes them.”
Becker rolled his eyes at Spike. “Take Angel with you. He’s been hanging around my office looking bored for the past half hour.”
Spike led Jessica out, Connor following and veering off toward Abby’s office, heading for the break room.
“Who’s Angel?”
“Becker’s boyfriend,” Spike told her, pointing to the vampire in question when they reached Becker’s office. “Hey, nancy-boy, Becker sent us to get you out from under his feet.”
Angel glared at him but he stood up anyway, holding out his hand to Jessica.
“Since he can’t remember his manners, I’ll introduce myself,” he said with a pointed look toward Spike. “Hi, I’m Angel.”
“Jessica Lester.”
Angel eyed her curiously for a moment. “I heard you were staying with Lester, sorry, I mean your dad, for a while. How’s your arm?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Okay, I suppose.” She looked up to Spike when she realised what she’d said but he just grinned.
“I won’t tell him if you don’t. Might as well get a few days off school if you can.”
They walked to the break room, Angel tagging along behind. When they walked in, the conversation stopped as everyone turned to look their way before it started up again. This time, Spike noticed, the language had been toned down with no mention of dinosaurs or anomalies.
“What does dad do?” Jessica asked. “He’ll never tell me. And why are there lots of soldiers? Does he do something dangerous?” Her eyes lit up. “Is he a spy like James Bond and this is all some super secret spy base.”
Spike laughed. “He’s not a spy. He, and the rest of us, protects the public from things that would hurt them. He-”
Jessica jumped, sloshing her tea over the side of the mug, as the anomaly detector started wailing. Around the room, the soldiers abandoned their mugs and scraped back their chairs, hurrying out.
“What’s going on? Was that a fire alarm?”
“No, it just means that them lot have to go to work. Anyway, didn’t you say you had an essay to write?”
She nodded, not looking particularly enthusiastic at the thought. “It’s history. It’s just so boring.”
Angel and Spike shared a look. “That’s because, in school, they don’t teach you the exciting bits,” Spike told her. “What are you studying? Maybe we can help; we’re good with history.”
~.~
Three hours later the field team returned, muddy and annoyed after having to chase what Becker referred to as ‘stupid overgrown chickens’ around a farmers field while trying in vain to make them go back through the anomaly. Connor had poked his head into the office on his way past, heading for the showers, just to let them know he was back. Normally, Spike would have waited until the others had finished and sneaked in to join Connor, but today he stayed where he was. Angel, on the other hand, wasn’t trying to keep anything a secret. Jessica already knew he was with Becker and so he excused himself with a smile.
“Hils might need some help,” he said. “You know, washing those hard to reach places.”
Spike glared at him, partly from frustration that he couldn’t do the same. Nodding in Jessica’s direction, he zipped a finger across his lips. Angel just grinned and left.
“Who’s Hils?”
“That would be Becker. His name is Hilary, but we only call him that when we really want to pis- annoy him.”
Jessica was silent for a minute, a frown on her face. A second later, she blushed. “Oh! So when Angel said help, he meant he and Becker were going to-”
“No, he didn’t.” Bugger bugger bugger! Lester was going to be pissed that they were corrupting his little girl.
“Its okay- I do know about this stuff. My friend Louise’s big brother, Darren, has got a boyfriend and the other day at her house, me and Louise walked in on them kissing. And Darren had his hands on Richard’s bum!” she added with a giggle. “It was so embarrassing!”
Spike heaved a sigh of relief. Kissing, minor groping; that wasn’t too bad. If that was the worst she thought Becker and Angel were doing right now then he’d take it.
“Is Connor your boyfriend?” she asked, the essay abandoned now that something more interesting had happened. “You sleep in his bedroom.”
How had the conversation ended up here? He thought. He really wanted to say yes, that not only was Connor his boyfriend but Lester was too. It would take away all of the hiding and secrecy, let them behave normally around the flat, but it wasn’t his place to tell her. If Lester wanted to, then that was his decision.
“Yes, Connor is my boyfriend,” he told her, watching the sappy smile appear on her face and seeing the questions forming in her mind. “Right, now where were we with this essay?”
Jessica reluctantly picked up her pen again, looking disappointed.
By the time Lester came down to check on them, the essay was almost finished and Spike was entertaining her with stories of the things that they don’t put into the history books. He leaned down and kissed the top of her head, before apologising when she uttered a long-suffering, “Da-ad.”
“Sorry, sweetheart. I know, you’re getting too old for things like that. So, have you and Spike been keeping out of trouble?”
This time, both of them protested, much to Lester’s amusement.
“I meant to come down earlier to have lunch with you but something came up,” he continued.
Jessica smiled. “That’s okay. We decided to wait for you.” The pen was dropped onto the note pad again and she was on her feet. “Spike and Angel have been helping me with my history essay. Well, Angel was until he went to make out with Becker.”
Lester’s mouth dropped open. “What?”
“Come on, dad. Let’s get some dinner,” Jessica said, oblivious to his reaction. “I’m starving.”
Spike sighed. “I swear it’s not my fault.”
~.~
To be continued… ---Part 2---
Pairing: Spike/Connor/Lester, Angel/Becker
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: This part: 4,917 (total:13,458)
Summary: Lester’s children come to stay.
Notes: #9 in the Spike at the ARC series- full list here. This whole series is set in series 3.
Houseguests, pt 1
Lester was pacing. He had been going back and forth across his office for the past five minutes and it still wasn’t actually helping. He’d already called Spike and Connor to come up a few minutes earlier and now he waited, not really sure what he was going to do when they got here. If he’d had a bit more time, maybe…
The door opened and Connor came hurrying in, followed at a more leisurely saunter by Spike. The vampire avoided the small stripe of sunlight that had got in through the crack in the blinds and went to stand in front of Lester, blocking his path. He prevented Lester from going around him with a hand on his arm.
“What’s wrong?”
Lester looked into concerned eyes, noticing Connor watching him warily too.
“I’ve just had a call from my sister in law,” he began. “There’s been an accident. Amelia’s car was struck at a junction; the other driver ran a red light and hit the driver’s side of her car.”
“Is she okay?” Connor asked, knowing that despite their divorce, Lester was still on friendly terms with his ex wife. He had another horrible thought. “Were the kids in the car?”
“David was at his football practice but Amelia was taking Jessica to her friend’s house. She’s got a broken wrist and a few scrapes. She was lucky.”
“And Amelia?”
“Amelia has whiplash from the impact, and a broken leg as well as a few other minor cuts and bruises but the hospital says she can go home tomorrow.” He paused for a moment, looking at them both. “She’s asked me to take the kids until she can get around a little easier. With her leg, she can’t look after them at home and-”
Connor smiled. “James, it’s fine. Of course they should come and stay with you.”
“Yeah,” Spike chipped in. “We’ll help; I’m great with kids. Just ask Buffy. I looked after Dawnie while she was dead- Buffy, not Dawn- and we had some great times, me and the little bit.”
Lester remained silent, not meeting their eyes.
“They don’t know about us, do they?” Connor asked. “Do you want us to move out while they’re here? I’m sure Abby would let us have her spare room again if I asked.”
“No.” Lester’s response was immediate. That was the one thing he knew he didn’t want. “I’m not going to turn you out; I don’t want you to leave. Besides, they already know that you live there, Connor. It just means we’ll have to remember that they’re in the flat.”
“So, no shagging on the sofa while we’re watching TV,” Spike said, then grinned. “What? I’m helping.”
“It means that James will be staying in his room, and we’ll be staying in mine, right?” Connor asked. “Nothing over PG rating in front of the kids, or anywhere they might walk in or overhear. And Spike will wear clothing when he sleeps so we don’t have to worry about him wandering about in the buff.”
Grateful, Lester nodded. He should have known that Connor and Spike would support him in this, help him out however much they could.
“So what are you going to tell them?” Spike asked. “Just so we don’t get our stories crossed.”
Now that was the big question, wasn’t it? How exactly did he explain a vampire living in his flat, in Connor’s bed?
“I’ll just tell them that you’re friends of mine, at least to begin with,” he said decisively. Glancing at his watch, he swore.
“I have to go and collect them. I don’t suppose you two could go back to the flat and have a bit of a tidy up, could you?”
Spike stood, ushering him out of the door. “Go. We’ll go hide the porn.”
“There isn’t any porn, James,” Connor told him, glaring at Spike. “We can sort it out. You go and get the kids.”
~.~
By the time Lester arrived back at the flat, the spare room had been changed back into the bedroom it was meant to be, the clutter removed and the bed made up. Connor had taken all of his books and his laptop from Lester’s room into his old bedroom, piled them in the corner and closed the door to hide the mess. They would have to put David in the study, Connor decided. There was a sofa bed in there that they pull out, and plenty of room for an eight year old.
“Better move anything that he shouldn’t be reading,” Connor said, collecting up any paperwork that mentioned the ARC or the creatures.
A squeak at his feet made him look down and he saw Sid and Nancy watching him curiously. Nancy looked up at the freshly made bed and he could see it in her eyes- it was part ‘where did the sofa go?’ and part ‘ooooh, something to jump on’.
“Don’t you dare,” he told her as she crouched to get a better leap up onto the bed. “Sorry, guys, but you’re moving into my room for a while. I’ll take you over to Abby’s soon and then you can go and play with Rex for a couple of days. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
They heard the sound of voices out in the hall, signalling Lester’s return.
“Too late. Spike, can you grab Nancy and I’ll bring Sid and their bed.”
They had just managed to get the two Diictodons into Connor’s room when the door opened and Lester came in. Spike went to get the bags from him, taking them to the two rooms, while Connor tried to keep out of the way.
“Jessica, David, you remember Connor, don’t you?”
David nodded, smiling. Since finding out that Connor knew lots about dinosaurs, as well as video games, they’d quickly become friends. Jessica remained a little more aloof, merely muttering ‘hi’ to him. She was cradling her wrist to her, a bright purple cast covering it, and there were a few scrapes visible on her cheek from the accident.
“And this is Spike,” Lester introduced, as the vampire returned.
Now Jessica looked interested. Spike actually got a smile.
~.~
Lester had just returned to the kitchen after showing the kids to their rooms when there was a scream. The three of them all made a dash for Jessica’s room, tripping over David on the way as he came out to see what all of the excitement was about.
“It went under the bed!” she told them as soon as they reached the door. She was standing on her bed, looking around nervously.
Connor glanced at Spike. “If it’s a spider, I’m not getting it.”
With a sigh, Spike crouched down and peered under the bed as Lester tried to calm his daughter down. He grinned, reaching under the bed.
“Well, it’s not a spider but it is a pest,” he said to Connor, dragging a squirming, protesting Nancy out and picking her up. He took a pink t-shirt with the word Princess across the front of it in sparkly letters away from Nancy and handed it to Jessica. “Yours, I presume. Unless your dad has something he’d like to tell us.”
That made Jessica smile before she looked back at the diictodon, still wriggling against Spike’s grip on her.
“She’s called Nancy. She’s harmless,” Lester told her, offering her a hand to help her down off the bed. After a minute, she took it. “There are two of them and they were supposed to be locked in Connor’s room,” he added with a pointed look at Connor and Spike.
Jessica was still eyeing Nancy curiously. She half reached out a hand to pet her but pulled it back at last minute, looking to her dad.
“She doesn’t bite?”
To prove it, Lester petted the top of Nancy’s head, the little creature making a happy squeaking sound as he did so. Eventually, Jessica reached out again.
“It’s okay,” Connor told her. “My friend Abby is going to look after them while you’re here. I was going to take them over to her this evening.”
Gently stroking Nancy’s head in the same way she would a dog, Jessica frowned.
“She just scared me, that’s all. You don’t have to send them away.”
Connor heard Sid’s cries from his room, missing Nancy, and went to get him. The door must have swung shut behind Nancy, trapping Sid, and he wasn’t happy about it.
“Can we keep them here?” David asked, barging into the room and giving away the fact he’d been listening in. “Please, dad? They’re cool.”
Looking between his children, Lester sighed. “Fine. Though you many regret that decision the first time you find one of your shoes half-eaten.”
David shared none of his sister’s hesitation, going to pet Sid straight away.
“Can they fetch?” he asked Connor. “Can I play with them?”
After a nod from Lester, Connor and Spike put the two creatures down on the floor again. Sid scampered after David as he hurried into the living room but Nancy just sat down, looking up at Jessica.
“It’s okay. She can stay in here if she wants.”
Lester lifted her bag up onto the bed so that Nancy couldn’t steal anything else while she unpacked, hesitating.
“Does your wrist hurt?” he asked. “I could get you one of your pain tablets. Or help you unpack, if you wanted me to.” When Jessica rolled her eyes at him he held his hands up in surrender. “Sorry, it’s just that I was worried about you.”
Connor and Spike, waiting outside, heard the sadness in Lester’s voice and the lack of response from Jessica, and it took all of Connor’s willpower not to hug him when he came out, closing the door behind him.
“She’s unpacking,” Lester told them, as though he didn’t know they’d been listening.
~.~
That evening, Connor and Spike met with the rest of the team in the local pub, leaving Lester to have some time with his children. It seemed strange without Lester there; since they’d become involved, Lester always came out with them for a drink.
It just didn’t seem the same, though.
“Let’s go back,” Spike said after a couple of hours. “The munchkins will be asleep by now, so we won’t be disturbing anything.”
Connor nodded and they took the short walk back to Lester’s flat, going in quietly. They were almost to Connor’s room when a voice asked,
“And what time do you call this?”
Connor turned back to the living room, seeing Lester sitting on the sofa, the TV on with the sound turned down low.
“It’s not that late,” he protested.
Lester smiled. “That’s exactly what I mean. I thought you were going out on the town with the rest of the team.”
Spike dropped into Lester’s lap, his knees either side of Lester’s legs on the sofa. “We were, but we missed you. Besides, I’m hungry, and I’m in the mood for a James-flavoured snack,” Spike told him, leaning in to nibble gently on the side of Lester’s neck.
For a moment, Lester let his head fall to the side to give Spike more room, but then he suddenly sat up straight again.
“I can’t: what about the children?”
Spike took Lester’s hand and climbed off the sofa, pulling Lester up with him. He led him into Connor’s room, Connor following them in and closing the door behind them.
“Their rooms aren’t next to mine,” Connor reminded him. “It’ll be fine. Come on, James, please?”
Between Connor’s pleading look and Spike slowly removing his shirt as his hand roamed, Lester took one last look at the door and sighed. How the bloody hell was he supposed to resist the pair of them when they teamed up?
Connor grinned and pounced on him, kissing him hard. It had been strange not being able to touch their lover all day, not being able to show him any affection. Even at work they didn’t have to be so secretive, not since Helen had blurted out the truth about their relationship a few months ago.
“I’ll set the alarm so that we’re up early enough for you to get back to your own room,” Connor promised. “They’ll never know where you spent the night.”
Lester smiled gratefully. “Thank you. I know this isn’t easy for you two. I just wanted to tell you that I appreciate your efforts.”
Spike smirked and finished unfastening Lester’s belt. “Don’t start getting soppy on us,” he joked, before his tone turned serious. “We know how important it is that everything goes okay, and so we’ll do what we can to help. For now, though, we’ve got you to ourselves so I think we need less talk and more shagging.”
Lester kicked his shoes off and watched as Connor and Spike stripped, climbing onto the bed with him. He was still wary about this, what with the children in the flat, but he had missed the contact as much as the other two. Spike pushed him back onto the bed, crawling over him and pressing his slightly cool body along Lester’s. Leaning down, he stole a kiss.
He moved lower, tasting his way down Lester’s body until he could lick a stripe along the underside of Lester’s cock.
At Lester’s nod, he took Lester into his mouth, sucking, licking, and making the other man utter a low groan of satisfaction.
“Quiet now,” Connor teased, putting a hand over Lester’s mouth. “If you can’t be quiet, we’ll have to gag you.”
Spike lifted his head and smiled. “I think he likes that idea.”
Connor laughed softly. From Lester’s reactions it certainly appeared that way, something Connor hadn’t expected. He had never assumed Lester would like that.
“We can save that idea for later, when we’ve got the time to play,” he said. For now, they were going to have to be quick and quiet.
Spike continued to tease, never letting Lester reach his climax, backing off each time he sensed that the other man was close.
“Can I?”
Lester didn’t even need to ask what he wanted permission for, nor did he have to consider the answer.
“Yes- wait, Spike. No visible marks.”
Spike grinned at him. “None’s going to see ‘em, trust me,” he said, his features changing as he sank his teeth into Lester’s skin, in the crease of his leg, just over his femoral artery.
“Fuck…”
Lester’s eyes rolled back as he came, Spike drinking his fill and then licking over the wound to heal it again.
Letting Lester catch his breath, Connor pulled Spike in for a kiss, smiling when his fingers touched something wet in Spike’s hair. Trailing a finger through it, he turned to Lester.
“You got him all dirty.”
Lester smirked. “So I did.” He turned on his side, a hand under his head. “I like it.”
Connor crawled over him, laying his body alongside Lester and kissing him. Spike grumbled for a moment about feeling left out before curling around Connor, making the younger man grin and wriggle in Lester’s arms. Lester ran his hands down Connor’s back, over his arse, and realised what Spike was doing to make Connor react like that. Reaching over for the bottle of lube he’d seen Connor hide in the bedside cabinet, he passed it to Spike.
“Fuck him, Spike. Let me watch.” He heard a cap being snapped shut and the bottle being dropped on the floor, before Connor’s breath hitched.
“Now remember, Connor,” Lester teased, his hand covering Spike’s as two of the vampire’s fingers pressed into Connor. “Be quiet.”
Connor let out a low whimper, pushing back against Spike. “Please.”
Spike took another few moments to get him ready before sliding his cock into Connor, seeing Connor bite his lip to stop himself making any sound. Lester helpfully hooked his hands under Connor’s thighs, spreading him wider for Spike and holding him in his arms as Spike fucked him.
He could feel Connor’s hard cock pressed against his stomach, feel Connor trying to rub off against him, and smiled.
“No, Connor,” he whispered. “Not yet.”
Connor whined. “But James…”
Spike’s teeth nipped at Connor’s shoulder, not hard enough to draw blood but enough to stop Connor’s protests. Taking Connor hard, he then made sure that talking was the last thing on the younger man’s mind.
~.~
The following morning, Lester awoke as someone placed a cup of tea on the bedside table. He opened his eyes to see David trying not to spill the tea as he put the mug down. When he noticed that his dad was awake, David smiled.
“Spike said breakfast is ready,” he reported before turning and bolting for the door, calling back over his shoulder, “He’s making pancakes.”
“For breakfast?” But David was gone, leaving Lester to get out of bed and ready for work.
When he emerged ten minutes later, he found Spike loading pancakes onto the kids’ plates and pouring them more orange juice. He cringed as Connor poured a diabetic-coma-inducing amount of treacle over a stack of pancakes, an act copied by David.
“See? I told you that’d taste good.”
David grinned, forking breakfast into his mouth as fast as he could.
“Hey, niblet, you might want to chew some of that,” Spike pointed out. When he saw Lester he started toward him to greet him but stopped himself in time. Instead he smiled, the grin telling Lester all of the things he would have done, had the kids not been here. “Mornin’ James. Sleep well?”
He knew the answer to that perfectly well, Lester thought, as he’d spent the majority of it pressed between Spike and Connor. As promised, Connor had woken him at just after four this morning, giving him time to get back to his room before either of the children woke up. Unfortunately, he had then fallen asleep again, only to be woken by his alarm clock at five thirty.
“You didn’t have to make breakfast, Spike. I could have done it.”
Spike handed a plate of pancakes to Jessica. “There you go, love.”
Jessica tried to pick up the treacle but the cast on her arm meant that she couldn’t get hold of it properly. She tried again, this time knocking a mug over on the table beside her.
“I hate this stupid thing.”
Lester reached over to pick up the treacle, taking off the lid. “Let me help you.”
“I don’t want any help!”
Lester watched in dismay as she scraped her chair back from the table and went back to her room. He got up to follow her but Spike stopped him.
“You stay here with David and finish your breakfast,” he said, picking up the plate, treacle and a fork. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
Spike knocked on Jessica’s door before going in. The girl was sitting on her bed, her knees up to her chest with her arms around them.
“Here,” he said, putting the plate down beside her and sitting down on the end of the bed. “Before it gets cold.” There was a faint scuffling from under the bed and Nancy emerged, looking up at the food, her eyes sparkling. “Well, before Nancy gets it, anyway.”
Jessica smiled, picking up her pancakes and letting him put some treacle on them.
“You fancy talking about it?” She shook her head, eating quietly. “Okay then.”
As he got up to leave, she frowned. “That’s it?”
“What were you expecting?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know.” There was a moment of silence and then, “I don’t like him treating me like a kid, wanting to do everything for me.”
Spike sat down again. “He’s just trying to help, pet. When he heard about the accident, your dad was really worried about you. I’ll tell you what- I’ll ask him to back off a bit, if you give him a break, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Good. Now, how about coming back to sit with us?”
Jessica nodded, eating the last of her breakfast and following him out, mumbling “Sorry, dad,” as she sat down.
Ten minutes later, the dishes were washed and put away and Lester was pulling his jacket on. He had already agreed with Jessica that she could take today off school given that she was still feeling a bit sore from the accident, but David wanted to go.
“Are you sure you’re alright to go to school?” he asked David as the boy stood in front of him, clutching his lunch bag. “You had a bit of a shock yesterday.”
He nodded, looking quite worried at the prospect of not going.
“Would you mind if Connor took you, while I take Jessica to Auntie Emma’s house?”
“Cool!” There was no hesitation on David’s part, eager to have Connor to talk to for the whole journey there.
Jessica, on the other hand, didn’t look quite as excited. “Can’t I just go with you today, dad? I won’t get in your way, I promise. Please?”
“You’d be bored there,” he told her, trying to put her off. It wasn’t as though he could tell her the real reason she wasn’t allowed in the ARC. “I’ve got work to do so I won’t be able to keep you company.”
“I can take my book, and I’ve got an essay due that I can write. I don’t want to go to Auntie Emma’s.”
Spike could see Lester trying desperately to come up with an excuse but, unfortunately, Jessica could see that too. The crestfallen look on her face made him take Lester to one side.
“She can stay with me if the team have to go out, or in your office. We can make sure no one tells her anything she shouldn’t know,” he said. “She just wants so see where her dad works.”
It was that which did it, Lester sighing loudly. “This is a bad idea,” he told Spike before turning back to his daughter. “Fine, but you have to promise me that you go wandering off. There are some places where you aren’t allowed to go.”
She nodded, hurrying back to her room and returning with a paperback novel, an A4 writing pad, pens and a text book.
~.~
Connor arrived at the ARC an hour later, just as Lester was starting to fret. It was a twenty minute journey to the school, give or take a few minutes for traffic, and then back to work. It shouldn’t take him an hour unless something had happened.
“Sorry,” Connor told him when he finally came hurrying through the door. “David wanted to show me his geography project, and then the teacher started talking to me.”
Lester frowned. David hadn’t shown him that project; he’d talked about it, but never offered to show it off.
“It’s just because I was there; it doesn’t mean anything,” Connor continued, seeing Lester’s expression. He moved to Lester, reaching out a hand before remembering that Jessica was in the room and stopped himself.
Lester looked up as Becker came into his office, pausing when he saw Jessica.
“Becker, come in. Jessica, could you give us a minute?”
Spike slung an arm around the girl’s shoulders and steered her out of the room.
“Come on, pet. Let’s go get a cuppa,” he said, before smirking in Becker’s direction. “And while Becker is in here, we can nick some of his biscuits. I know where he stashes them.”
Becker rolled his eyes at Spike. “Take Angel with you. He’s been hanging around my office looking bored for the past half hour.”
Spike led Jessica out, Connor following and veering off toward Abby’s office, heading for the break room.
“Who’s Angel?”
“Becker’s boyfriend,” Spike told her, pointing to the vampire in question when they reached Becker’s office. “Hey, nancy-boy, Becker sent us to get you out from under his feet.”
Angel glared at him but he stood up anyway, holding out his hand to Jessica.
“Since he can’t remember his manners, I’ll introduce myself,” he said with a pointed look toward Spike. “Hi, I’m Angel.”
“Jessica Lester.”
Angel eyed her curiously for a moment. “I heard you were staying with Lester, sorry, I mean your dad, for a while. How’s your arm?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Okay, I suppose.” She looked up to Spike when she realised what she’d said but he just grinned.
“I won’t tell him if you don’t. Might as well get a few days off school if you can.”
They walked to the break room, Angel tagging along behind. When they walked in, the conversation stopped as everyone turned to look their way before it started up again. This time, Spike noticed, the language had been toned down with no mention of dinosaurs or anomalies.
“What does dad do?” Jessica asked. “He’ll never tell me. And why are there lots of soldiers? Does he do something dangerous?” Her eyes lit up. “Is he a spy like James Bond and this is all some super secret spy base.”
Spike laughed. “He’s not a spy. He, and the rest of us, protects the public from things that would hurt them. He-”
Jessica jumped, sloshing her tea over the side of the mug, as the anomaly detector started wailing. Around the room, the soldiers abandoned their mugs and scraped back their chairs, hurrying out.
“What’s going on? Was that a fire alarm?”
“No, it just means that them lot have to go to work. Anyway, didn’t you say you had an essay to write?”
She nodded, not looking particularly enthusiastic at the thought. “It’s history. It’s just so boring.”
Angel and Spike shared a look. “That’s because, in school, they don’t teach you the exciting bits,” Spike told her. “What are you studying? Maybe we can help; we’re good with history.”
~.~
Three hours later the field team returned, muddy and annoyed after having to chase what Becker referred to as ‘stupid overgrown chickens’ around a farmers field while trying in vain to make them go back through the anomaly. Connor had poked his head into the office on his way past, heading for the showers, just to let them know he was back. Normally, Spike would have waited until the others had finished and sneaked in to join Connor, but today he stayed where he was. Angel, on the other hand, wasn’t trying to keep anything a secret. Jessica already knew he was with Becker and so he excused himself with a smile.
“Hils might need some help,” he said. “You know, washing those hard to reach places.”
Spike glared at him, partly from frustration that he couldn’t do the same. Nodding in Jessica’s direction, he zipped a finger across his lips. Angel just grinned and left.
“Who’s Hils?”
“That would be Becker. His name is Hilary, but we only call him that when we really want to pis- annoy him.”
Jessica was silent for a minute, a frown on her face. A second later, she blushed. “Oh! So when Angel said help, he meant he and Becker were going to-”
“No, he didn’t.” Bugger bugger bugger! Lester was going to be pissed that they were corrupting his little girl.
“Its okay- I do know about this stuff. My friend Louise’s big brother, Darren, has got a boyfriend and the other day at her house, me and Louise walked in on them kissing. And Darren had his hands on Richard’s bum!” she added with a giggle. “It was so embarrassing!”
Spike heaved a sigh of relief. Kissing, minor groping; that wasn’t too bad. If that was the worst she thought Becker and Angel were doing right now then he’d take it.
“Is Connor your boyfriend?” she asked, the essay abandoned now that something more interesting had happened. “You sleep in his bedroom.”
How had the conversation ended up here? He thought. He really wanted to say yes, that not only was Connor his boyfriend but Lester was too. It would take away all of the hiding and secrecy, let them behave normally around the flat, but it wasn’t his place to tell her. If Lester wanted to, then that was his decision.
“Yes, Connor is my boyfriend,” he told her, watching the sappy smile appear on her face and seeing the questions forming in her mind. “Right, now where were we with this essay?”
Jessica reluctantly picked up her pen again, looking disappointed.
By the time Lester came down to check on them, the essay was almost finished and Spike was entertaining her with stories of the things that they don’t put into the history books. He leaned down and kissed the top of her head, before apologising when she uttered a long-suffering, “Da-ad.”
“Sorry, sweetheart. I know, you’re getting too old for things like that. So, have you and Spike been keeping out of trouble?”
This time, both of them protested, much to Lester’s amusement.
“I meant to come down earlier to have lunch with you but something came up,” he continued.
Jessica smiled. “That’s okay. We decided to wait for you.” The pen was dropped onto the note pad again and she was on her feet. “Spike and Angel have been helping me with my history essay. Well, Angel was until he went to make out with Becker.”
Lester’s mouth dropped open. “What?”
“Come on, dad. Let’s get some dinner,” Jessica said, oblivious to his reaction. “I’m starving.”
Spike sighed. “I swear it’s not my fault.”
~.~
To be continued… ---Part 2---