Fic: Spare, green cortina, dakfinv
Title: Spare
Author: dak
Word Count: 3869 words
Rating: green cortina
Warnings: character death
Parings: implied Sam/Gene, Gene/Cecil
Summary: Cecil wasn’t sure what he was meant to believe, only that he did.
A/N: So, this is the final fic in my LoM/Meat crossover series. (Meat was a TV film which featured John Simm playing a rent boy called Cecil.) The previous fics can all be found HERE. A big thank you to everyone that's read and commented, and a special dedication to culf who forced me at sonic screwdriver-point to adopt this bunny in the first place.
The pub was quiet and still. The empty space gave no indication of the loud revelry bound to inhabit it by tonight. The lamps were off, and the only light came streaming through the clouded windows. The tables were clean - the stools and chairs still stacked atop their polished surfaces. The jukebox had yet to be switched on, and the beer mats were still hanging over the radiators - washed and dried and ready for another night of drips and spills. It was the rare day when there were no deliveries to disturb the morning silence.
Cecil loved the pub like this. It could only be this quiet in the warm morning light and in the cold, silent evening. By closing time, Cecil was usually too tired to appreciate the stillness.
He’d made himself a fresh pot of coffee in his kitchen upstairs, and hobbled down the steps with his mug, careful not to spill a drop on the newly washed floors. Setting the mug down on the corner table - the table that had been His - Cecil unbolted the front doors and limped down the street to pick up his morning paper, careful not to get his cane caught on the cobblestones.
Back inside the pub, the coffee had cooled to just the right temperature. Cecil breathed the soothing aroma in deeply, letting it waken his senses and calm his mind. Folding open the paper, he grabbed his trusty pencil and immediately headed for the Code Word puzzle. Gene had always told him he should stretch his brain, and Code Word was much more interesting than those fucking Sudokus.
He had just decoded the number corresponding to the letter “A” when he heard the front doors swing open and felt the cool, morning air sweep in.
“Tills ain’t in yet, Charlie. I were going to do it in a few minutes, but you can do it if you want.”
When there was no answer from Charlie, Cecil looked up from his paper. The man standing in the doorway was definitely not his boss.
“Sorry, mate. We’re closed. Come back at noon if you like,” Cecil hid his shaking hands underneath the table and pretended to stare at his puzzle.
“This...it’s...you’re...It’s here...” the man stammered.
“Say again?” Cecil asked, focusing very hard on decoding the letter “E.”
“It’s a pub,” the man said in astonishment.
“Er, yeah. Course it is. There’s a chippy down the street if you’re hungry.”
Not number fourteen. No, an “E” couldn’t go there. What about twenty-two?
“It’s real,” the man said quietly, his voice on the verge of tears. Cecil finally glanced up and watched the man turning slowly about the room, rubbing his hands over the chairs and walls. He looked as if he hadn’t seen a pub in years. In the bare light, Cecil noticed how pale the man looked. His suit hung loosely from his slight frame - it seemed two sizes too big - and he seemed unwell, as if he would collapse any second.
“Oi, man. Here. Why don’t you sit down, alright?” Cecil asked, grabbing his cane and rising from his own chair, before helping the man to his table.
“I’m sorry. I...this must seem very odd,” he apologized after stumbling into a chair.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Cecil mumbled under his breath. “Want a drink?”
“I thought you said you weren’t open?”
“We’re not. But you look like you could use it. Whiskey?”
“Thank you,” he nodded.
Cecil wandered over to the bar and poured out a small measure of whiskey.
“My name’s Sam, by the way. Sam Tyler.”
Cecil’s stomach clenched as the name echoed throughout the cavernous pub. He was glad his back was turned. The man couldn’t see him wince.
“I know,” he replied, capping the bottle and returning with the glass of whiskey.
“You...you do?” Tyler asked suspiciously as he took the glass.
“Saw it on the telly. You’re that copper what woke up from a coma, yeah?”
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s me,” the man sighed (or was it sneered?), as he sipped his drink.
“Me boss, Charlie, saw your picture in the paper. Said I sorta look like you,” Cecil laughed nervously.
“Really?” Tyler looked him over. It was a copper’s glance, something Cecil had experienced so many times before. “Don’t see it,” he decided, and stared back into his glass.
“Me neither,” Cecil nodded. “Uhm, look, mate. Not to be rude or anything, but is there a reason you’re here?”
The sooner he could get him out of the pub, the sooner he could go upstairs and forget about his past, again - forget about his mistakes. But, what if that was why Tyler was here? What if he had found out? What if he had a gun hidden in his suit jacket?
“No. Probably not,” Tyler replied with defeat. “This...how long has this been a pub?” he asked cautiously, as if afraid of the answer.
“Long as I’ve been here. Course that’s only been about twelve, thirteen, years. Don’t know how long before that,” he shrugged, fingering his paper. There. He’d given him his answer. Couldn’t he leave now? Cecil waited and waited.
Tyler didn’t respond. He sat there staring into his drink with a hollow expression too old for his young face. Cecil figured if he stayed silent, Tyler would stop asking questions and leave him in peace. He nearly laughed at the thought. He’d never be at peace from Sam Tyler. The empty man’s gaze flickered to the corner; the paint had chipped where Cecil had covered the holes left by the long-gone brackets.
It was then Cecil’s stomach began to churn. Tyler’s eyes wanted to ask about that corner. They wanted to know what happened to that telly. They wanted to know if there had ever been a telly. But, the man’s mouth remained firmly shut. Tyler looked back at his drink and picked nervously at a scratch in the table. Cecil knew that look. It was the pained gaze of a man scolded for asking too many pointless questions, even though he was in desperate need of answers.
Cecil put that aside for now.
What worried him more was why this Tyler wanted to ask about those fucking brackets. This was a different Tyler. This wasn’t His Tyler. This was a copycat, a cheap imitation, a spare part.
Cecil pushed down his anger. He had worked so hard to control it. He wouldn’t disgrace himself again, not because of this man.
“Uhm,” Ces interrupted the too-long silence. “D’you need me to call anyone? A mate or...?”
Tyler released a hollow laugh and shook his head.
“It’s probably best they don’t know I came here. They’ll only worry.”
Against his better judgement, Cecil asked again.
“Then, why did you come here?”
“Does there have to be a reason?” the pale man sighed.
“Well, me? I’m always up for a bit o’ spontaneity. What normally gets me in trouble. But generally, when I do important things, I always have a reason.”
“How do you know this is important?” Tyler countered.
“I don’t know. Might not be. Just seems like it, is all,” Ces shrugged. He didn’t know why he kept talking to this man. He should have stuck to his original plan - stay as far away from any Sam Tyler’s as he could. But, silence hadn’t made the bloke shift it. Maybe conversation would.
“Have...have you ever experienced something so...extraordinary...there was no doubt that it was real?”
“Are you talking about acid? Cos there was this one...”
Tyler cut him off with a sigh and a shake of his head.
“Guess you don’t mean drugs, then.”
“I don’t know what I mean. Not anymore.”
“Sounds like a personal problem.”
“Yeah,” Tyler laughed, his voice still empty. “Guess It is.”
He finished off his drink and set the glass on the table with a heavy thud. Tyler seemed ready to leave, but not by choice. Cecil had seen enough lost souls - in both his previous profession and his current one - to recognize a man looking for something he already knew he’d never find.
“Me old boss - guv’nor what ran this place when I were hired - he had this way...he always knew what to say to any punter. Always said the right thing. I’m good with people, me, and I watched him for years, but I’ll never be as good as he was.”
“Well, I appreciate the effort,” Tyler smiled sadly.
“I don’t know what you’re after mate, but I don’t think it’s here. Not anymore.”
“If it ever was,” Tyler added, rising from his chair.
Cecil watched him stand as straight as he could, then followed Tyler’s head as he gazed around the room. With each glance, Cecil watched as a memory danced across Tyler’s brain, prickling his eyes with tears. His gaze moved from the missing brackets to the table below. Gene once told him that table was where he’d groped Sam publicly for the first time. His eyes turned towards the dart board. It was the same board on which a nervous Sam had substituted for an injured DS and won the big match against RCS. Gene had told him that story on Sam’s birthday. Tyler looked to the corner where, for 50p a chair, a man could find himself partaking in the best game of poker Manchester had to offer. It was Nelson who had told him that one.
While Tyler focused on the bar, Cecil focused on him. Suddenly, something changed.
DCI Sam Tyler, the one whom tormented Gene...
DCI Sam Tyler, the one whom Cecil had stalked...
DCI Sam Tyler, the whom Cecil had run down with Charlie’s car...
...that hadn’t been Gene’s Sam.
Cecil had realized his mistake too late. He had learned it when Gene remained almost impassive upon hearing of the accident. He had hated it when Gene returned to London, saying there was nothing for him in this distorted version of his Manchester. He had made a tentative peace with it as the months had passed by.
The man that had caused all that, it hadn’t been Sam Tyler.
But, this man? This man gazing around his pub, remembering things he couldn’t possibly have experienced?
This was Sam Tyler.
Fuck if Cecil knew how. He could be imagining the whole bloody thing.
Except, he knew he wasn’t.
The defeated voice. The hollow gaze. The emptiness which devoured him from the inside out. Cecil had seen it before. Not in some stranger. Not in some punter. He’d seen it in Gene. This Sam, he mirrored Gene’s emotions so perfectly, it erased all the uncertainties - all the impossibilities - from Cecil’s mind.
This was Sam.
Now, it was only what Cecil was going to do about it that worried him. He could keep it to himself. It would be best for all if he just kept it to himself. Sam didn’t need to know. Gene already knew. For once, Ces could just keep his big mouth shut.
“Fuck,” he sighed, breaking Sam’s reverie.
“Excuse me?”
“I just realized...” he trailed off.
“What?”
“I’m not that bad a man,” Cecil stated with resignation.
It appeared that Ces had confused Sam so much, the man had momentarily forgotten his own troubles. Maybe that had been Nelson’s trick after all.
“Could you wait here? Just a mo,” Ces asked.
“Alright,” Sam replied. If the man did indeed have somewhere else to go, he was in no rush. Cecil got the feeling, however, that Sam was almost exactly where he wanted to be.
Grabbing his cane, he hobbled up the steep steps to the pub flat as fast he could. Charlie had no problem with him continuing to live there, even though Cecil had relinquished control of the pub after entering rehab. He knew that Charlie was a good bloke.
Cecil hurried downstairs as fast as his legs would take him, having quickly found what he was looking for. True to his word, Sam had remained, but was now running his fingers over one of the support beams in the most peculiar fashion. Ces cleared his throat to get the man’s attention.
“He said you always had a knack for picking the winners. ‘S why he stopped betting against you.”
“Who?” Sam asked. Cecil could tell he didn’t know. Sam didn’t believe. Cecil wasn’t sure what he was meant to believe, only that he did. Maybe this was that faith-thing his parish priest had always told him about.
“Gene,” Cecil tried to say it casually, but the impact of that one, solid syllable knocked the breath right out of Sam.
“Gene...Hunt?” he stammered.
“You know any others?”
“But...no. It’s impossible.”
“He were an impossible sorta bloke. Well, still is, I guess.”
“He’s...re...alive?”
“Last I heard he were in London, celebrating retirement with an old Sergeant of his. Carlton, I think?”
“Carling. Ray Carling,” Sam corrected.
“Yeah, that’s the bloke.”
“He’s re...alive, too?”
Cecil’s words - instead of draining the empty man further - were filling him up, adding a glimmer to eyes Cecil thought had been so cold.
“Guess so.”
“It...it was all real?” Sam didn’t correct himself this time.
“Gene, when he were a regular here...used to mention this DI Tyler, whene’er he were pissed.”
“Nothing but hatred, I’m sure,” Sam’s mood quickly dampened, his words full of guilt, not anger.
“Why would you say that?”
“Nothing,” Sam shook his head. “You wouldn’t understand. Sorry.”
“Why does everyone always say that? Why do you all tell me I’ll never understand? Pisses me off man, cos right now I think I understand a shit-load more than you,” Cecil fumed and shoved the picture into Sam’s hands. Sam stared at it for several minutes before Cecil filled in the details.
“Grand National. 1986. You and your boyfriend.”
“My...? Gene wasn’t...he wouldn’t...”
“Oh well try telling him that. Gene weren’t one to speak much about feelings or girly shite like that, but get him drunk enough and he’d talk non-stop ‘bout his best mate. His equal. His greatest shag.”
Sam blushed.
“He might never have used the term, but it’s how he felt. Actually, I’d say it were stronger than that. But, I don’t know. I hardly knew him,” he admitted.
“1986,” Sam said. “That means...but when I left...but...”
“That day, one of his best memories, he always said. Why he carried that picture round with him.”
“That...then...I can get back.”
“Wish you would. Got meself a pub to run,” Cecil huffed. Confessing aloud that he never knew the person he cared most about, had easily thrown him into a foul mood. Even if it was the truth, he’d never planned on actually admitting it. Since he’d sworn off alcohol, Cecil dug his hands in his pocket and pulled out a crinkled pack off fags. Smoking ban be damned. The Arms wasn’t even open yet, anyhow.
When he looked back at Sam, the man’s face was going through such a myriad of emotions, Cecil didn’t even want to begin to decipher them. After an eternity, Sam slipped the photo into his jacket pocket.
“Thank you.”
“For what? I ain’t done nothing.”
Cecil Saxon should be the last person on Earth thanked by Sam Tyler.
“You’ve...given me what no one else would.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“Answers,” Sam smiled and walked calmly to the door.
So, that was that. This Sam knew Gene. This Sam cared about Gene. This Sam would get back to Gene and this Sam and that Gene could be happy, together. Except, this Sam would still die of prostate cancer in 1988. Cecil was unsure if he could do that to this Sam. He knew he couldn’t do it to Gene.
“Oi,” he called out when Sam’s hand was on the door. The fragile man turned and stared, waiting for more. “Look,” Cecil continued, “good luck. And, uhm, remember - these things aren’t the only shite that can kill you,” he motioned to the cigarette. Sam cocked his head to one side, a sign of confusion. “ ‘Specially in the Eighties. You know, they say early detection, it’s best and all that. You...it...before you go to that race, I’d...and if there’s not...just every month, I’d go. Maybe even in ‘85. Take advantage of NHS, and all that.”
Cecil thought he saw Sam’s eyes flicker with understanding, but the man was out the door before he could say anything else.
Ces disappeared upstairs as soon as Charlie arrived at the pub. He said it was the flu. The next day, he read that DCI Sam Tyler committed suicide by jumping off the roof of the police station. Cecil didn’t know if he should be surprised or disgusted that he’d killed the same man twice. He decided he’d sleep on it and see how he felt in the morning.
*
“Spare change? Change? Cheers mate. Anyone? Help the homeless, man. Just a few pence’ll do.”
Cecil jiggled his chipped styrofoam cup. Business was slower today, he thought, then coughed violently into his borrowed handkerchief. The cold weather could have had something to do with it. London was quite chilly for this time of year. Most people were staying indoors or rushing to their destination. Of course, it also could have had something to do with the man on corner dressed in cardboard and preaching about the end of the world.
“No one sees the invisible ties that exist outside our minds! We control them. We can’t see them, but we control them. If they control us, it all will fall!”
“Oi! C’mon, Alfie,” Cecil shouted, even though it burned his lungs. The grimy streets certainly weren’t doing him any favors. “You’re hurting business, man.”
“It’s different now,” Alfie pointed right at Cecil. “Things are changed. You moved the strings. You controlled them and the world has changed.”
Cecil rolled his eyes and shifted on the cold concrete. If his leg weren’t wrapped in two tons of plaster, he’d go over there and shut Alfie up himself. As it was, Ces just had to hope the man disappeared on his own.
“Ignore the nutter, ladies and gents. World’s just fine. Even the economy’s good, eh? So good, bet you could afford to part with a couple of quid. Isn’t that right, sir?” Cecil held up his cup, nearly dropping it as a violent coughing fit took hold of him once again. He set the cup down carefully, the pulled his thin jacket tightly around him. He made sure his beanie was secure, then held up the cup once more. If he ever found that punter what broke his leg, Ces vowed to make sure the man received a few broken bones of his own. If it weren’t for him, Cecil could still be on the game, instead of on the streets. He sighed and shook the cup.
“...had to drag me into Tourist Town for a bloody drink.”
“Because we’re going to the theatre and when going to the theatre, it’s customary to get a drink beforehand.”
“No wonder. Man has to get pissed to sit through the damned thing. Which brings me to another point, Gladys. Why the hell are we going to the bloody theatre?”
“Because you promised me. And you shouldn’t be complaining. You’ll like Les Miserables.”
“You didn’t tell me it was French, you bastard bender!”
“Yes. It’s French. Sort of. But, it has guns, alcohol, and whores. Your three favorite pastimes.”
“Favorite pastimes, you say? Guess that makes you my little rent boy, eh Sammy?”
The two men strolled down the street, not arm in arm, but close enough that their shoulders or elbows touched with every step. Despite their bickering, their faces contained distinct signs of happiness. Cecil continued to rattle his cup as the men came closer. They looked oddly familiar, but he couldn’t place a face to a name, or a place for that matter. His memory had been awful lately. Things he thought he knew were simply slipping away. He figured it had something to do with being sick.
When the men reached the crossing, the green man was already flashing. While the larger bloke quickly strolled across, the thinner stayed behind. Cecil shook his cup at him and began to speak, but his words came out as coughs. Despite Ces’ inability to speak, the man still noticed.
“Hey? You alright?”
Cecil felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up and, through bleary eyes, saw the familiar-but-not man looking at him with worry.
“F-fine. ‘M fine, man. Cheers,” he faked a smile.
“You sure?”
“Right as rain.”
“Oi! Tyler! Stop mucking about with them homeless tossers and get your arse over ‘ere. Me throat’s parched.”
The man called Tyler rolled his eyes, then reached into his pocket and slipped several quids worth of bills into Cecil’s hands.
“Thank you,” he smiled, his hand still on Ces’ shoulder.
“Think that’s my line, mate,” Cecil replied, quickly shoving the money into his pocket. The man drew back his hand.
“You don’t look well. Maybe you should go to hospital.”
“Yeah. Sure. I’ll think about it. Cheers.”
The man stared at him a second more, so many expressions wafting across his face, Cecil couldn’t even begin to decipher them.
“Tyler!” bellowed the oaf across the street.
The man smiled at him and nodded, then hurried to meet his partner.
“Coming!” he replied.
“I certainly hope not,” he shouted with a smirk.
“Must you always...”
Their voices faded as they walked further and further away. Cecil watched them until they were out of sight. For some reason, he was happy. He decided it had to do with the money. After another five minutes of panhandling, Cecil determined that he’d made enough for the day, possibly the week, and decided to head home.
The money tucked safely in his pocket, he struggled to his feet, balancing awkwardly on the crutches. He couldn’t get the hang of the damned things. With the puny sticks to aid him, Cecil stumbled down the pavement, making the long walk home. The tube was too difficult to maneuver on stilts, and he’d rather save the money, anyhow. He thought a walk would do him good.
By the time he reached the abandoned factory, every inch of him was exhausted. All he wanted to do was sleep. Just lie down and sleep. He was so tired, he wasn’t even hungry. That was a first.
Since he’d returned to the squat early, there were plenty of mattresses and blankets for him to choose from. He laid down on the closest one and pulled the blanket to his chin. Despite it’s warmth, he felt chilled to the core. The increasingly wet coughs made it difficult to fall asleep. He could feel every spring in the worn mattress. The blanket was itchy and hot. Cecil was uncomfortable in every sense of the word.
But, for some reason, he was happy. He didn’t think it had to do with the money.
When exhaustion finally took him, he dreamt of pubs and Manchester and coppers.
When pneumonia finally took him, he imagined strong arms and green eyes holding him until his body hurt no more.