2008 Ficathon Pinch-hit
Late like woah, and I'm so sorry for that-technically it was done in time for the 30th deadline, but it wasn't really, there were all sorts of problems with the end that were resolved when I wrote a half a page more during Chem. Hm. I should have known meeting one deadline was pushing it, meeting two just wasn't going to happen. Hope you all enjoy it despite the wait!
Title: Dust on the Bottle
Rating: Brown Cortina for insinuated sex. I am physically incapable of writing actual sex apparently.
Word Count: 2,305. Maybe not ten thousand, like last time, but I'm still pretty happy with myself, I haven't been writing nearly as much as I should recently so...
Warnings: Intermittant language issues, me attempting to throw in a bit more of that Manchester dialect without turning the dialogue into a startling resemblence of the midwestern states--I'm TRYING. Also slightly dubious consensual sex and unbetaed, because I haven't seen Val all week and have no idea what's happened to her. Some of it still feels a bit strange to me but this is probably as good as it's going to get any time soon and I did promise Saturday at the latest. More parenthesis, because I have a serious addiction to them (admitting you have a problem is the first step...)
Pairings: Gene/Sam, though not exactly in a very happily ever after sort of way like I wish for these two. Sorry. Past allusions to Sam/Annie, but only in an emotional context, and a few references to early Sam/Maya, because Maya's a fantastic character who didn't get nearly enough screen time. Or, er, something like that.
Spoilers: Episode one, the Warren episode for that little tidbit about Sam's gap year, the final episode for the bit about the coach crash, that interview with Phillip Glenister where he said that Gene's wife ran off with a woman before Ashes 2 Ashes and a few vague references to Ashes 2 Ashes (though I haven't actually watched the show, so not much, really). Nothing terribly important really...
Summary: “Gene worries that he’s going to lose Sam, and on October 7, 1980, he does; just not the way Gene ever thought he would."
Disclaimer: I do not own Life on Mars. I made a joke about hardware stores and the UK's legal age of consent to Val after we watched the show together, but I never really intended to make anything of it--I have also never worked in a hardware store before; but I have closed and opened a store before, and have been held up as well, which is nearly the same as a mugging so let's all pretend I know what I'm writing about, yes?
Notes: Written for the prompt Sam/Gene in the Future, Mobile Phones. I realize that this is probably absolutely nothing like what the requestor wanted, and I am sorry for that, but I hope, whoever you are, that you enjoy it regardless. I'm much better at writing weird angst than I am waffy comedy. And I realize that the mobile phone is only in there barely, but the bit about the area code was honestly researched, and I've most certainly never been one for doing things the simple way. Er, 1987 is in the future, right?
Dust on the Bottle
1973 is a difficult year to be queer; so’s ‘74 for that matter, ‘75 and ‘76.
In the spring of ‘77, Ray pulls Gene aside to tell him that he don’ get it, Guv, least not with the Boss of all people, but it’s nobody’s business ‘cept the team’s, and you don’ have to worry ‘bout nothing, Guv, we aren’t gonna say nowt, and Gene buys the whole bar a round and tries to ignore that niggling in the pit of his stomach that tells him he and Sam aren’t being nearly as subtle as they thought they were. He doesn’t tell Sam any of this though - boy has the ability to worry about the damndest things sometimes, and fretting about something after the fact has only ever lead to stomach ulcers anyway.
And if he slams a fist into Sam’s kidneys the next time his DI starts preaching on about minority rights, well, it’s the least the twit deserves for being so bloody obvious.
Annie transfers to Bolton near the end of ‘78 (Sam spends most of that year tetchy and exhausted, but finally manages to track down the one women’s lib empowered division in the country). Gene sends her off with a smack on the arse and a commendation to sergeant and Sam hides away in the collator’s den, because he still sort of loved her and he’s tired of watching people leave.
In a remarkable fit of irony, the missus runs off with a florist with perky tits and easy access to those long neck star lilies - which always were the old girl’s favorite - in ‘79, and Sam starts nattering on about co-less-teral and BP-something and getting this strained look around his eyes that tells Gene he isn’t sleeping again. Gene eats his sprouts, stops smoking and drinks less, even goes out jogging with Sam in the morning, but that skittish, cornered look doesn’t go away.
Only gets worse as time goes on.
Gene worries that he’s going to lose Sam, and on October 7, 1980, he does; just not the way Gene ever thought he would.
They never do find the body, but Annie comes down from Bolton with her husband the lawyer for the funeral and brings with her a tall stack of papers covered in that familiar untidy scrawl and bids him to keep an open mind (there’s a darkly glittering sort of guilt shadowing her eyes that makes Gene think that maybe she hadn’t done so when she’d been trusted with this secret all those years ago, when the two were still bosom buddies who braided each other’s hair and talked about which boys they liked over a tub of ice cream and chocolate syrup - Gene silently vows not to fail Sam in this way as well.)
He gets sent to London in ‘81 and gets a brand new pretty faced DI in heels and a psych degree who twitters on like a headcase, and except for the breasts it’s all so terribly familiar that Gene drinks himself sick most nights.
But before any of this, (before he very nearly falls in love again with the exact wrong sort of person, before he loses yet another DI) he tracks down Ruth Tyler and her little boy - finds them both in hospital after a coach crash and feels such a stab of need when he looks in on twelve year old Sam that he scares himself; signs the boy’s cast and lays Sam’s old Christopher medal around his neck and applies for an immediate transfer, because he’s not sure exactly what he wants to do now that he’s found Sam again, but he’s almost certain whatever it is isn’t legal.
From 1981 to 1987 he stays in London - first working, than retired, because he’ll be damned if he let’s anyone chain him to a desk like they did Harry - and tries and fails not to think about Sam.
When he counts the years, there are two sets of numbers running parallel in his head. One is how old his Sam would be now - if he hadn’t sunk down deep into the murky waters - and the other, how old Sam Tyler really is, now, growing up in Manchester with his mum and auntie Heather. And when the second count reaches eighteen, somehow, he finds himself back in Manchester.
Distantly, he recalls a conversation years ago, about brackets and hardware stores and a gap year, and even as he tells himself that this is, unequivocally, the worst idea that he has ever had, that doesn’t stop him visiting every store in the city searching for a pair of familiar hazel eyes.
He has no idea what he’s planning on doing when he finds them.
Gene wonders if it’s wrong to want to fuck an eighteen year old kid if you’d already slept with him fourteen years ago; wasn’t it just like coming home?
***
The old guy in the corner’s been staring at him more than he has at the hammers in front of him, and Sam’s been trying for the last half hour to figure out where he knows him from.
He toys idly with his saint’s medal as he sorts through a mixed pile of bolts and screws and thinks up a worn camelhair coat and breath that smelt of whisky.
(Sam had spent one Summer when he was sixteen playing bars with a couple of mates from school; there was no money to be made in it, but it was a good experience at any rate, and there had been one run by a clever old Jamaican - used to be cop bar, back when it was okay to show up to work with a hangover - and while he hadn’t let any of the boys drink like some of the other barmen had, he lets Sam sniff at open bottle necks after hours without asking any embarrassing questions that Sam had no idea how to answer, had only smiled thinly when Sam finally identified the acrid scent of whiskey, pulled out an untouched bottle of single malt and told Sam, without even a hint of the islands about his speech, that he’d know when to open it and that, much like life, one couldn’t let the first bitter sip put you off the rest of the experience.)
(He still hasn’t opened it, he never will.)
The image is so strong in his mind that he has to close his eyes for a moment; when he opens them again, the man’s standing right in front of him and Sam startles back with a shout, and it’s only the guy’s quick reaction, arm shooting out to wrap a hand tight round his wrist like a vice, that keep him from falling back into a display of ratchets and monkey wrenches.
“Thanks. Sorry.” Sam says, and then, “Er,” when the guy doesn’t let go of his wrist, actually pulls him closer in a way that looks a whole lot like an altogether different service than the one he’s supposed to offer, and while he may be old enough to be Sam’s dad (no, don’t go there, Sam’s mind insists) he’s got a strong grip that means Sam isn’t going anywhere until he wants him to.
Sam tries to convince himself he doesn’t smell whiskey in the air.
It’s late and his hours are winding down, and he’s worked here long enough for the owner to trust him to lock up on his own, so it’s just the two of them, and there’s a strange twist to the guy’s mouth that’s setting off all sorts of alarm bells in Sam’s head, mostly because he doesn’t know why it’s there. He says, “Yer a cop aren’t you?” because he doesn’t know what else to say, and the silence is starting to get dangerous.
He stiffens suddenly and finally releases Sam’s wrist (Sam rotates it a few times subtly to restore the blood flow and wonders idly, as he watches the cascading emotions flit across the guy’s face faster than a hummingbird’s wing beat, if he’ll have bruises there tomorrow) takes a few steps back and mumbles almost sullenly, “Was.” and after another heavy pause, “Retired.” and looks at everything in the store except Sam.
Sam can’t help the eye roll, customer service or not, like this guy is suddenly so shy.
“Don’ you roll your eyes at me, you little punk. I’m more’n old enough ta put you over my knee.”
Not without a harassment charge, Sam thinks, but what comes out it. “How did you--”
His reply is quick and gruff, “Know you, don’ I?”
“Well, yes,” Sam frowns and nibbles thoughtfully at his bottom lip and doesn’t miss the way the man’s (Hunt, his brain supplies, rifling distractedly through the appropriate files, DCI Hunt) eyes narrow and his pupils expand (basic biology, arousal prompts the release of endorphins and yes, thank you for that oh so helpful lesson brain, but no one present really cares, so please shut. Up.) “But that was six years ago. For five minutes. And you wrote numbers on my cast.” and maybe Sam is pouting at the end of this but whatever - eighteen has never meant mature and anyone who’s ever thought otherwise was obviously fooling themselves.
Hunt looks thrown for a moment, confusion clouding his gaze, but a second later it clears and a leer settles comfortably on his face as he growls, low and heavy, “Could tell you were a minx even then, couldn’t I?”
Sam takes a few steps closer, pasting himself into Hunt’s personal space, eyes heavy lidded and nearly black in the half light, “I’ve gotta close,” he whispers, lips brushing against Hunt’s ear, and pulls away to do just that.
“Always were more trouble than you were worth,” is directed at his back, but Sam is too busy counting the till to give it much thought and besides, he could very well have imagined it, it’s said so quietly.
Hunt’s already gone by the time he’s finished locking up, which saves him the trouble of running the bloke off himself, but there’s a single peony sitting on the doorstep the next time he opens, and when he gets mugged a month later walking home from work, Hunt takes to walking with him, because God knows you aren’t gonna take care of yourself (and Sam knows better than to let this guy know where he actually lives, retired cop or not, stops off instead at the apartment of one of aunt Heather’s ex boyfriends, a kindly older man who owned a bookstore and taught Sam how to make a quiche, and lent him old beat up copies of Kerouac and Asimov with notations made in the margins and drove Sam the three remaining blocks to his mom’s place every night without asking too many questions) and eventually, Sam finds himself in the one place he swore he wouldn’t - Hunt’s bed.
“You always did want to be wooed,” Hunt grunts above him and Sam bites his lip and closes his eyes and breathes through the pain, “Like a bleedin’ bird, aren’t ya Tyler? Demanding flowers and chocolate and poetry before you’ll put out, and as soon as it don’t fit your fancy no more you head south for warmer weather. Well not this time, ya hear me? You aren’t leaving me this time.”
He writes a long string of numbers across Sam’s right forearm in black pen that looks a bit like a mobile number and sends Sam home with a pat on the head and Sam swallows down fiercely on the bile that threatens to bubble up his esophagus, argues with himself the whole way home that no one in their right mind would work that hard for a one time fuck and that, while obviously, strangely, dangerously obsessed with Sam, if Sam wasn’t allowed to leave than neither was Hunt, right?
Sam tries to convince himself that it isn’t trapped if he wants to be there, but he’s never been so good at lying (he’s not even so sure he does want to be there and he’s almost entirely certain that Hunt isn’t in his right mind).
He writes down the numbers on a spare scrap of paper and applies to the academy the very next day, and he doesn’t know if Hunt’s stopped looking for him or he’s just gotten really good at running and hiding (and sometimes Sam’s afraid that’s all he’s been doing his whole life, but he’s far more terrified of that small part of him that doesn’t want to run at all; he’s read the psych books, knows all about displacement and dependency) but he never does call that number.
Which was for the best, really, Sam realizes years later when he pulls that same piece of paper out of his wallet while he’s looking for something to write down that pretty new DS’s phone number when she corners him in the break room and asks him if he knows how to make green curry, because it was too short to be a proper mobile number, even if the area code did match the first two numbers of the sequence; Roy gives it a once over as she’s scrawling her own number below it and remarks that it looks a bit like a date, and she’s right of course, only Sam has no idea what might have happened in 1980 that has anything to do with him anyway.
Two years later, in 1973, he thinks he may finally get it.
(He starts to hate Gene all over again.)
(He hates himself even more for finally giving in, but he’s just so damn tired of being alone, that he’ll take what he can get.)