Fic: Broken In
Title: Broken In
Fandom: Life On Mars
Rating: PG-13 or 'Blue Cortina'
Pairing: Sam/Gene
Summary: The History of Sam and Gene, as told by Sam's Trademark Jacket.
Spoilers: No Spoilers
Author's note: Just a Drabblet I posted a while ago to lifein1973 and want to back up.
Sam’s been here two years now, and his favorite jacket’s looking a little worse for wear.
The battered leather now has permanent creases along the shoulders and elbows, imprinted from the position he just naturally seems to assume on long hours of stake outs in the Cortina, going soft and slightly white along the stress lines.
The second button has come off entirely on at least two occasions. Both times he’s been lucky enough to find it and sew it back on, ignoring Gene’s comments about being a perfect little housewife.
There’s a small puncture in the lower back that’s either from the corner of that damn file cabinet or that darts game where Chris’ aim was a bit off from the half a dozen lagers Ray and Gene helped pour down his throat.
There’s a blood stain, barely visible on the dark leather, but more than obvious on the rather garish lining, from the fourth (or was it the fifth?), time some lunatic held him hostage at gunpoint. Gene managed to shoot the bastard, but due to some ridiculously poor timing, the gunman took that moment to shift his balance, and the round grazed Sam’s side as it took his captor down.
It wasn’t a serious injury, and there was barely even a scar anymore, but every once in a while when Sam was lecturing Gene on why rushing in guns blazing without good intel wasn’t a fantastic idea, his jacket would casually fall open, and Gene would reluctantly agree to whatever completely logical point he was making, unconsciously able to drag his eyes from the fading brown mark.
There are scuff marks all across the back from the night two weeks after that, when Gene finally snapped, threw him against the wall of the alley they were supposed to be watching to make sure a suspect didn’t slip out the back while Ray and Chris tried their hand at arresting him, and kissed him for the first time.
Sam actually hadn’t noticed anything until he’d wandered into the office the next morning to the sounds of catcalls, and Gene had winked and commented that Sam must have bagged a real tiger in the sack. Examining himself in the bathroom mirror, he saw the broken bricks scored the leather in an imitation of claw marks. No amount of buffing or polishing could quite get the marks out.
“Oi, Gladys, when’re you going to junk that old jacket and get a new one? Don’t the other girls tease you for wearing last season’s clothes? Honestly, you’re making our whole department look shabby.”
He knows he should. But he can’t quite bring himself to give it up quite yet.