Fic: The Kept Man (33/40), brown cortina, dakfinv
Title: The Kept Man (33/40)
Author: dak
Word Count: 2351 this part; [61,629 overall]
Rating: brown cortina
Warnings: angst, sexual situations, swearing
Spoilers: 1.04, 1.05, 1.07, 2.08
Pairing: Sam/Warren, Sam/Gene
Summary: AU. Sam woke up with amnesia when he landed in 1973, able to only remember his name, and ended up in the grasp of Stephen Warren. When he and Gene Hunt finally cross paths it starts a chain of events that will either save Sam or damn him.
A/N: From an idea from talcat given via culf . I promise I'm going to advance the plot. Just not in this chapter. And I couldn't resist a Hot Fuzz reference, or two. Please enjoy!
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 Part 17 Part 18 Part 19 Part 20 Part 21 Part 22 Part 23 Part 24 Part 25 Part 26 Part 27 Part 28 Part 29 Part 30 Part 31 Part 32 Part 33 Part 34 Part 35 Part 36 Part 37 Part 38 Part 39 Part 40
He was still trembling when he eventually removed himself from Gene’s hold.
“Better now?” Gene asked as Sam busied himself with drying his face on his jacket sleeve.
“Oh. Yeah. Brilliant,” he laughed, but Gene could see through the sarcasm and knew it was true, at least partially. “I haven’t been here for hours, have I?” He asked with uncertainty.
“Fifteen minutes. Tops,” Gene assured him.
Sam nodded, double-checking that he’d wiped away all his tears. “I’ll, uhm, I’ll go back to CID, but really, I’d prefer it if no one bothered me. Just, give me some work and leave me to it. I don’t think I’m up for much conversation right now.”
“Don’t worry, Gladys. I’ve got plenty of paperwork I couldn’t be bothered to sort.”
As they exited the stall, they tripped over each other, both vying to be the first one out of the tiny space, and Gene had to control himself from sneaking a grope as they maneuvered free from the small confines. He could not take advantage. Not again. Not right now. Sam seemed completely oblivious of Gene’s internal debate. Of course, the emotionally exhausted detective seemed so dazed, half the building could’ve collapsed and Sam probably wouldn’t have noticed.
“Tyler,” Gene called out as they entered the corridor, Sam a few steps ahead.
“Yeah?” He asked with a heavy sigh.
“That...you did good work in there. The good cop, bad cop bit.” It was a common technique, but one he hadn’t used in a long while. He usually did interrogations with Ray and those employed more of a bad cop, worse cop scenario.
“All I did was examine the information and evidence we had available to us, and present it to the suspect in the manner which would be most damaging to his psyche,” he replied with a tired shrug.
“Right. Well. It worked. Good job.” Gene wondered when Tyler had last received a compliment that hadn’t been related to his forced sexual activities. Clearly, it had been awhile because Sam had no idea how to react.
“Oh. Okay,” he twisted his body self-consciously, as if suddenly unaware of what he should be doing or where he should be going. “Did you stop the tape recorder?”
“No.”
“Shit,” Sam turned and ran back into Lost and Found, leaving Gene in the corridor, shaking his head.
*
He was sat up in bed, staring at nothing and thinking of everything. Again. The rest of the day had passed without much fanfare. DS Carling and DC Skelton had returned with nary a sign of the elusive Edwards. Sam had immersed himself in the paperwork Hunt had provided for him. When his shift had finally come to an end, he ducked out before he could be refused an invitation to the pub. They wouldn’t want him there. Not yet.
He had never done much fraternizing with his 2006 team. There was a time when he used to, back when he had first joined the force, continuing into his years as a DC. Joining his work mates for a drink or a night out had petered out sometime between his time as a Sergeant and his promotion to Inspector. By the time he was a DCI, it had disappeared completely.
There simply wasn’t time for it. There was always so much work to do. Crime was a constant, and if it wasn’t for the police, it would be constantly on the rise. The city needed people like Sam to keep it safe, to keep crime to the barest minimum possible, and if that meant working long hours and less nights with the boys, then that’s what it meant.
Sam had always been an expert in the art of self-sacrifice. As long as it was for the greater good, what did it matter if he lost some mates, some girlfriends, some personality. If, at the end of the day, the bad guys were put away and the good guys were safe, what did it matter if Sam Tyler was sore, stressed, and strung-out? Not that he ever let it show, of course. As his mother had told him years ago, way back when his dad left, he hid his bad feelings away.
Sam flopped off the bed and padded across the room to the kitchen. He knew there wasn’t any food there, he really needed to inquire into getting some cash in order to pay for such things, but he hoped maybe there was something stashed in a back corner that he hadn’t noticed before. He sighed as he discovered a dented tin of baked beans and, although the loaf of bread Gene had sitting out was a bit stale, Sam could still pick off the mold and toast it. He had to eat and it was better that than nothing.
As he heated the beans and waited to see if the beat up toaster Gene had would actually work, he flicked on the radio and tried to lose himself in the music. That was the one thing about The Warren he could fondly look back on, the music. T-Rex, Slade, Bowie, the club had played all his favorites. At the time, he thought he just enjoyed the music. Now, with his memories restored, he realized he loved the nostalgia of the music.
He had always held a passion for the music of the Seventies. His mum had played him records all the time when he was young and even as an adult, music was the one indulgence he had allowed his cynical, work-obsessed self. Right now, though, the one station that could come in at the ill-placed flat was Roger Whittaker. Sam sighed and switched off the radio. He just wasn’t in the mood for “The Last Farewell.”
The toast was dry, the beans were lukewarm, and he wasn’t sure if it was healthy for him to be drinking the tap water, but it was food. So, he ate it, sitting alone in an empty flat, nothing but silence for company, and he tried to forget how similar this all was to his life in 2006.
*
Gene arrived at the station early, hung-over, and irate. She had called last night, wanting to “talk things over,” but of course she’d called after he’d returned from the pub, which meant after he was thoroughly and utterly pissed. She knew he’d be drunk, and that it would be easy to get a rise out of him, which it did, which is why she had called when she did. All she had wanted was another excuse to go crying to her mum and her mates and whinge about her drunken, inattentive, lout of a husband. By timing her call so precisely, that’s exactly what she had gotten. The rotten cow.
He burst through the doors, waiting for the calm only the stillness of an empty station could provide, startled to find the effect ruined by Tyler already sitting at his desk, poring over some paperwork. At least, that’s what he appeared to be doing, though on closer examination it seemed he was only staring absently into space. The initial shock quickly wore off and Gene proceeded to walk to his office with nary a falter in his step. “Good night?” He muttered as he passed Tyler’s desk.
“Never better,” Sam replied in a tone identical to his own.
“You have breakfast?” Gene asked as he paused in his doorway to remove his gloves.
“I’m still recovering from dinner,” he sighed, chin resting in his hand, eyes rereading the same line of print on the paper.
“Want to grab something in canteen?” He stuffed the gloves in his pocket.
“If you say beans on toast, I’ll kill you,” Sam pouted.
“There might be oatmeal,” Gene suggested.
“Oatmeal,” Sam replied with a sigh. “Would it be asking too much for it to be organic?”
“Or-what?”
“Yeah. I guess so,” Sam set down the paper and stretched, then rubbed his eyes clear. “Okay, oatmeal it is.” He stood and shrugged on his leather jacket, just as Gene was removing his camelhair coat. Hunt ducked inside his office to hang the coat on the rack, and returned to see Tyler leaning wearily on his desk. Gene was good at reading body language, it came in quite useful during interrogations and interviews, and he could tell Sam was on the edge. The edge of what, he wasn’t certain, but the lad was certainly teetering.
“How’s it going to be today?” He asked quietly as they began to walk.
“Honestly, Gene? I have no idea.”
Gene nodded and sincerely hoped it was not beans and toast day in the canteen.
*
One of the struggles facing a detective was that even if some cases remained unsolved, new ones still arose. Criminals weren’t kind enough to wait until the police had solved their existing cases before committing new crimes. Maybe in some of the smaller villages where an officer’s biggest worry was the missing town swan, but not in a city, like Manchester.
Sam begrudgingly accepted some of the smaller cases that had come in over the night, knowing it was better for him to get readjusted to police work, while at the same time knowing he could do more. He did find the monotony of menial tasks soothing, and was secretly pleased that he didn’t have to worry about anything more serious than a few missing containers of Hoops.
Everyone seemed to sense that he was barely holding it together, or that’s what it seemed like. Hardly anyone approached him and even Annie was keeping her distance. That was alright, though. It was a struggle enough just being surrounded by others, let alone trying to have a normal, everyday chat with them.
Sam knew he was growing paranoid, working for Warren tended to do that, but he felt like everyone knew he was hiding a secret from them. The truth probably was that they believed he was still readjusting from an intense undercover operation. That was what the small, logical part of his brain reasoned. The larger, unsound portion was attempting to convince him that they knew what he’d really been doing with Warren. That somehow they knew about the drug peddling, the blow-jobs, the sex.
What would happen if they found out? They barely respected him now, if at all. He knew Carling didn’t trust him already. If they found out he’d been Warren’s plaything, his perfect, little rent boy, what would they think of him then? The embarrassment, the admonishing stares, the gossip, it would be worse than the past itself. Wouldn’t it?
This thought flittered through his mind every so often, and every so often his hands would begin to shake, and he’d feel the sweat beading on his forehead, and he’d sense that every pair of eyes was on him, even if they weren’t. It didn’t matter if they were or not, because it felt like they were. So, every so often, he’d have to close his eyes, calm himself, and wait for the thoughts to pass, wait for his hands to still. Sometimes it took a few seconds, other times a few minutes. Only once did he have to disappear to the toilets.
Whenever he did finally relax, he’d open his eyes and Gene would be looking at him. Not staring, just glancing at him from someone’s desk or from behind the blinds in his office. At first he thought it was because Hunt was ashamed of him, ashamed that Sam couldn’t hold it together and act professionally. With each passing attack, he realized it was because if he was going to have an attack, Gene would hustle him out of there. Keep him away from the prying eyes of the team. What Sam was struggling to decipher was if Gene would have done it to protect Sam from the team, or protect the team from Sam.
The clock kept ticking, the day kept passing, and suddenly it was five o’clock, the end of another shift. The boys were packing up their things, mainly cigarettes and girly magazines, Sam noted with slight disgust, and soon it was just Tyler and Hunt, alone again in the now quiet office. Sam was pleased. However he would feel tonight, alone in the flat, he could look back on today and remember that he had been able to hold it together. Barely, and with a few close calls, but he had maintained his fragile composure.
Of course, as he began to think of the night that lay ahead, another night of silence and boredom and stale bread, he struggled with serenity once more. If there was one thing he hadn’t been at Warren’s, it was alone. If he wasn’t with the man himself, one of the girls was always around. It was like living at the Academy dormitories again. No privacy, though the camaraderie at the club was little more despairing.
Gene said his good-nights and started striding towards the door. Sam had been debating this all day, in between his sudden bouts of paranoia, and now he watched Gene leave, his hope disappearing with each step. All he had to do was ask. All he had to do was find enough courage to ask, never mind what the answer would be. He’d be able to tell himself that he’d asked.
“Gene?”
“Hm?” The DCI turned just as he was about to exit the squad room.
“Are you going to the pub?” He inwardly cursed himself for sounding like a five year old.
“Best place for a drink,” Hunt shrugged.
At least he could ask. Even if the answer was no, he’d had the courage to ask. “Can...can I come?” He waited for the inevitable answer. Waited for the pit in his stomach to form as he sullenly realized the truth he’d been trying to deny. They wouldn’t want him there. He wasn’t one of them. They knew what he was. They wouldn’t want him.
The pit never fully emerged, however, as Gene’s face broadened into a wide grin. “Thought you’d never ask, Sammy-boy. Grab your coat.”
______
Part 34
Author: dak
Word Count: 2351 this part; [61,629 overall]
Rating: brown cortina
Warnings: angst, sexual situations, swearing
Spoilers: 1.04, 1.05, 1.07, 2.08
Pairing: Sam/Warren, Sam/Gene
Summary: AU. Sam woke up with amnesia when he landed in 1973, able to only remember his name, and ended up in the grasp of Stephen Warren. When he and Gene Hunt finally cross paths it starts a chain of events that will either save Sam or damn him.
A/N: From an idea from talcat given via culf . I promise I'm going to advance the plot. Just not in this chapter. And I couldn't resist a Hot Fuzz reference, or two. Please enjoy!
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 Part 17 Part 18 Part 19 Part 20 Part 21 Part 22 Part 23 Part 24 Part 25 Part 26 Part 27 Part 28 Part 29 Part 30 Part 31 Part 32 Part 33 Part 34 Part 35 Part 36 Part 37 Part 38 Part 39 Part 40
He was still trembling when he eventually removed himself from Gene’s hold.
“Better now?” Gene asked as Sam busied himself with drying his face on his jacket sleeve.
“Oh. Yeah. Brilliant,” he laughed, but Gene could see through the sarcasm and knew it was true, at least partially. “I haven’t been here for hours, have I?” He asked with uncertainty.
“Fifteen minutes. Tops,” Gene assured him.
Sam nodded, double-checking that he’d wiped away all his tears. “I’ll, uhm, I’ll go back to CID, but really, I’d prefer it if no one bothered me. Just, give me some work and leave me to it. I don’t think I’m up for much conversation right now.”
“Don’t worry, Gladys. I’ve got plenty of paperwork I couldn’t be bothered to sort.”
As they exited the stall, they tripped over each other, both vying to be the first one out of the tiny space, and Gene had to control himself from sneaking a grope as they maneuvered free from the small confines. He could not take advantage. Not again. Not right now. Sam seemed completely oblivious of Gene’s internal debate. Of course, the emotionally exhausted detective seemed so dazed, half the building could’ve collapsed and Sam probably wouldn’t have noticed.
“Tyler,” Gene called out as they entered the corridor, Sam a few steps ahead.
“Yeah?” He asked with a heavy sigh.
“That...you did good work in there. The good cop, bad cop bit.” It was a common technique, but one he hadn’t used in a long while. He usually did interrogations with Ray and those employed more of a bad cop, worse cop scenario.
“All I did was examine the information and evidence we had available to us, and present it to the suspect in the manner which would be most damaging to his psyche,” he replied with a tired shrug.
“Right. Well. It worked. Good job.” Gene wondered when Tyler had last received a compliment that hadn’t been related to his forced sexual activities. Clearly, it had been awhile because Sam had no idea how to react.
“Oh. Okay,” he twisted his body self-consciously, as if suddenly unaware of what he should be doing or where he should be going. “Did you stop the tape recorder?”
“No.”
“Shit,” Sam turned and ran back into Lost and Found, leaving Gene in the corridor, shaking his head.
*
He was sat up in bed, staring at nothing and thinking of everything. Again. The rest of the day had passed without much fanfare. DS Carling and DC Skelton had returned with nary a sign of the elusive Edwards. Sam had immersed himself in the paperwork Hunt had provided for him. When his shift had finally come to an end, he ducked out before he could be refused an invitation to the pub. They wouldn’t want him there. Not yet.
He had never done much fraternizing with his 2006 team. There was a time when he used to, back when he had first joined the force, continuing into his years as a DC. Joining his work mates for a drink or a night out had petered out sometime between his time as a Sergeant and his promotion to Inspector. By the time he was a DCI, it had disappeared completely.
There simply wasn’t time for it. There was always so much work to do. Crime was a constant, and if it wasn’t for the police, it would be constantly on the rise. The city needed people like Sam to keep it safe, to keep crime to the barest minimum possible, and if that meant working long hours and less nights with the boys, then that’s what it meant.
Sam had always been an expert in the art of self-sacrifice. As long as it was for the greater good, what did it matter if he lost some mates, some girlfriends, some personality. If, at the end of the day, the bad guys were put away and the good guys were safe, what did it matter if Sam Tyler was sore, stressed, and strung-out? Not that he ever let it show, of course. As his mother had told him years ago, way back when his dad left, he hid his bad feelings away.
Sam flopped off the bed and padded across the room to the kitchen. He knew there wasn’t any food there, he really needed to inquire into getting some cash in order to pay for such things, but he hoped maybe there was something stashed in a back corner that he hadn’t noticed before. He sighed as he discovered a dented tin of baked beans and, although the loaf of bread Gene had sitting out was a bit stale, Sam could still pick off the mold and toast it. He had to eat and it was better that than nothing.
As he heated the beans and waited to see if the beat up toaster Gene had would actually work, he flicked on the radio and tried to lose himself in the music. That was the one thing about The Warren he could fondly look back on, the music. T-Rex, Slade, Bowie, the club had played all his favorites. At the time, he thought he just enjoyed the music. Now, with his memories restored, he realized he loved the nostalgia of the music.
He had always held a passion for the music of the Seventies. His mum had played him records all the time when he was young and even as an adult, music was the one indulgence he had allowed his cynical, work-obsessed self. Right now, though, the one station that could come in at the ill-placed flat was Roger Whittaker. Sam sighed and switched off the radio. He just wasn’t in the mood for “The Last Farewell.”
The toast was dry, the beans were lukewarm, and he wasn’t sure if it was healthy for him to be drinking the tap water, but it was food. So, he ate it, sitting alone in an empty flat, nothing but silence for company, and he tried to forget how similar this all was to his life in 2006.
*
Gene arrived at the station early, hung-over, and irate. She had called last night, wanting to “talk things over,” but of course she’d called after he’d returned from the pub, which meant after he was thoroughly and utterly pissed. She knew he’d be drunk, and that it would be easy to get a rise out of him, which it did, which is why she had called when she did. All she had wanted was another excuse to go crying to her mum and her mates and whinge about her drunken, inattentive, lout of a husband. By timing her call so precisely, that’s exactly what she had gotten. The rotten cow.
He burst through the doors, waiting for the calm only the stillness of an empty station could provide, startled to find the effect ruined by Tyler already sitting at his desk, poring over some paperwork. At least, that’s what he appeared to be doing, though on closer examination it seemed he was only staring absently into space. The initial shock quickly wore off and Gene proceeded to walk to his office with nary a falter in his step. “Good night?” He muttered as he passed Tyler’s desk.
“Never better,” Sam replied in a tone identical to his own.
“You have breakfast?” Gene asked as he paused in his doorway to remove his gloves.
“I’m still recovering from dinner,” he sighed, chin resting in his hand, eyes rereading the same line of print on the paper.
“Want to grab something in canteen?” He stuffed the gloves in his pocket.
“If you say beans on toast, I’ll kill you,” Sam pouted.
“There might be oatmeal,” Gene suggested.
“Oatmeal,” Sam replied with a sigh. “Would it be asking too much for it to be organic?”
“Or-what?”
“Yeah. I guess so,” Sam set down the paper and stretched, then rubbed his eyes clear. “Okay, oatmeal it is.” He stood and shrugged on his leather jacket, just as Gene was removing his camelhair coat. Hunt ducked inside his office to hang the coat on the rack, and returned to see Tyler leaning wearily on his desk. Gene was good at reading body language, it came in quite useful during interrogations and interviews, and he could tell Sam was on the edge. The edge of what, he wasn’t certain, but the lad was certainly teetering.
“How’s it going to be today?” He asked quietly as they began to walk.
“Honestly, Gene? I have no idea.”
Gene nodded and sincerely hoped it was not beans and toast day in the canteen.
*
One of the struggles facing a detective was that even if some cases remained unsolved, new ones still arose. Criminals weren’t kind enough to wait until the police had solved their existing cases before committing new crimes. Maybe in some of the smaller villages where an officer’s biggest worry was the missing town swan, but not in a city, like Manchester.
Sam begrudgingly accepted some of the smaller cases that had come in over the night, knowing it was better for him to get readjusted to police work, while at the same time knowing he could do more. He did find the monotony of menial tasks soothing, and was secretly pleased that he didn’t have to worry about anything more serious than a few missing containers of Hoops.
Everyone seemed to sense that he was barely holding it together, or that’s what it seemed like. Hardly anyone approached him and even Annie was keeping her distance. That was alright, though. It was a struggle enough just being surrounded by others, let alone trying to have a normal, everyday chat with them.
Sam knew he was growing paranoid, working for Warren tended to do that, but he felt like everyone knew he was hiding a secret from them. The truth probably was that they believed he was still readjusting from an intense undercover operation. That was what the small, logical part of his brain reasoned. The larger, unsound portion was attempting to convince him that they knew what he’d really been doing with Warren. That somehow they knew about the drug peddling, the blow-jobs, the sex.
What would happen if they found out? They barely respected him now, if at all. He knew Carling didn’t trust him already. If they found out he’d been Warren’s plaything, his perfect, little rent boy, what would they think of him then? The embarrassment, the admonishing stares, the gossip, it would be worse than the past itself. Wouldn’t it?
This thought flittered through his mind every so often, and every so often his hands would begin to shake, and he’d feel the sweat beading on his forehead, and he’d sense that every pair of eyes was on him, even if they weren’t. It didn’t matter if they were or not, because it felt like they were. So, every so often, he’d have to close his eyes, calm himself, and wait for the thoughts to pass, wait for his hands to still. Sometimes it took a few seconds, other times a few minutes. Only once did he have to disappear to the toilets.
Whenever he did finally relax, he’d open his eyes and Gene would be looking at him. Not staring, just glancing at him from someone’s desk or from behind the blinds in his office. At first he thought it was because Hunt was ashamed of him, ashamed that Sam couldn’t hold it together and act professionally. With each passing attack, he realized it was because if he was going to have an attack, Gene would hustle him out of there. Keep him away from the prying eyes of the team. What Sam was struggling to decipher was if Gene would have done it to protect Sam from the team, or protect the team from Sam.
The clock kept ticking, the day kept passing, and suddenly it was five o’clock, the end of another shift. The boys were packing up their things, mainly cigarettes and girly magazines, Sam noted with slight disgust, and soon it was just Tyler and Hunt, alone again in the now quiet office. Sam was pleased. However he would feel tonight, alone in the flat, he could look back on today and remember that he had been able to hold it together. Barely, and with a few close calls, but he had maintained his fragile composure.
Of course, as he began to think of the night that lay ahead, another night of silence and boredom and stale bread, he struggled with serenity once more. If there was one thing he hadn’t been at Warren’s, it was alone. If he wasn’t with the man himself, one of the girls was always around. It was like living at the Academy dormitories again. No privacy, though the camaraderie at the club was little more despairing.
Gene said his good-nights and started striding towards the door. Sam had been debating this all day, in between his sudden bouts of paranoia, and now he watched Gene leave, his hope disappearing with each step. All he had to do was ask. All he had to do was find enough courage to ask, never mind what the answer would be. He’d be able to tell himself that he’d asked.
“Gene?”
“Hm?” The DCI turned just as he was about to exit the squad room.
“Are you going to the pub?” He inwardly cursed himself for sounding like a five year old.
“Best place for a drink,” Hunt shrugged.
At least he could ask. Even if the answer was no, he’d had the courage to ask. “Can...can I come?” He waited for the inevitable answer. Waited for the pit in his stomach to form as he sullenly realized the truth he’d been trying to deny. They wouldn’t want him there. He wasn’t one of them. They knew what he was. They wouldn’t want him.
The pit never fully emerged, however, as Gene’s face broadened into a wide grin. “Thought you’d never ask, Sammy-boy. Grab your coat.”
______
Part 34