Fic: Changeling
Additional Note: Apologies if this ends up rougher than anything else. I am absolutely exhausted and chose to do my final edits in a state where I am only fit to go to sleep. *bows head in shame*
He awoke to the sound of voices.
“You have to understand, Mr. Hunt,” Brett’s mild tones came through static. “He was family.”
He sat up slowly, finding himself in his flat, on the lumpy, uncomfortable bed. His fingers immediately touched his chest only to find it painless. Further investigation proved he wore an unstained shirt, and underneath that, had unmarred skin. His head, previously bordering on agonizing, felt mildly muddled, as though he’d slept a bit too long and hadn’t had time to wake up. Other than that, he seemed surprisingly well for someone who’d been dying not so long ago. Or so he thought.
He swung his legs over to the floor, trying to figure out where the voices echoed from. The TV, his first suspect, was off and wouldn’t turn on with his coaxing. The phone, normally his next source of disembodied voices, was not plugged in. He held it to his ear for a few seconds just in case but nothing changed. With the receiver still pressed to his ear, he found his eyes wandering upwards, as though to imply the sounds came from “up there” with the angels and Almighty.
“And I’m sorry for what happened,” Brett’s voice rising in strength. “I am. Please, I never wished anyone harm. None of us did.”
He tried the door next but his fingers wouldn’t budge it. Not even the full weight of his body, thrown into it shoulder first, rattled it. It seemed to have changed from portal to wall and had little intention of turning back. He tried a normal turn of the handle, then his own special jiggle, then, in desperation, searched for a screwdriver to pull apart the hinges. But the door sealed itself to his attempts and left him isolated with nothing but the walls and Brett’s voice for company. A shudder enveloped him and he sank down the wall next to the door, legs sprawled out before him, eyes shut, trying to keep down panic. No worse than the hospital with June, he convinced himself, no worse than that when the lights went out.
“My father started it, after our mother died,” Brett’s voice again, tired, tear sopped. “He-Blakely-he wasn’t… well, he wasn’t… normal. Ever, really, but our mother kept him in check, and when she died, something in him broke. He never grew up, Mr. Hunt, even if he pretended to be an adult every now and again. All of it, his supposed accident, the charade, the quiet decline into poverty, it was all for him. He was my father’s special boy.”
He waited to hear Gene’s response, for the shouting, the raging, the sound of flesh on flesh; five minutes later, disappointment ate at him. His eyelids parted and he dragged himself to his feet, the window in mind. Velvety, heavy drapes lay across it, drapes he’d never seen in his life, and he had every intention of using them to shimmy out into the open. To his pleasure, they flew apart with more force than he applied to them, bringing in a surge of light. Eyes watering, he worked at the window but found it as stuck as the door. Freedom taunted him, showing him his neighborhood as daily life rolled by but no matter what he did, the window wouldn’t budge.
“He didn’t get… violent until he overheard that I had to leave. We were running out of money and I went to a good school. One of our Father’s friends had offered to take me on in his company and I agreed. I thought that he would be all right with the staff, especially Mrs. Crankston whom he absolutely adored. Then the incident-he pushed her down the stairs-and I found her lying there. When I confronted him, he pushed me, too, and injured my back. But he was so remorseful afterwards, that I tried to cover it up, tried to make things normal again. If only he hadn’t gotten worse and worse and worse. Or discovered I found Sally appealing and started acting funny around her.”
A car pulled up-the Cortina, he recognized it anywhere-and he pressed himself against the window, watching his DCI emerge. He tried shouting at him but no sound came forth. His hands touched his throat, trying to dislodge whatever lump secured itself but failed. Before a better course of action could find him, Gene disappeared into the bottom level of his complex and he sat hard on the window ledge.
“He killed her. He was jealous and he killed her. Then I had to report it, Mr. Hunt. One murder is one thing but two? And him declining so steadily? He took the choice from me, Mr. Hunt, completely and all I had left was the hope that you all would solve it, and then, the one man who did, received a bullet through the lung from the very man I needed taken away. I had hoped that the concussion would-”
The abrupt end of the sentence confused him and he looked towards the ceiling only to see the familiar stains and watermarks that he saw every morning. Any second, Gene would be at his door and whatever psychosis attacked his mind currently would vanish into the air. The Guv would rescue him from this room, this strangeness; just a moment of confusion, he assured himself, even though he wasn’t sure. Just a moment of confusion.
“I deserved that. I hit DI Tyler much harder. At the time, I was so crossed in what I should do. Part of me wanted him to solve it, to end it. The other part wished to deter him so that everything could continue in peace.”
The door knob turned and he turned with it, towards the ceiling, towards the floor, into a supine position where he struggled, weakly, against the binding equipment. Alarms filled his hearing and rocks filled his chest and his eyes closed before he could tell them to stay open. The person in the doorway somehow caught him, somehow kept him from striking his head against the walls; he could feel that someone supporting him as he twisted.
“Easy, easy, Sammy,” Gene said in his ear. “I have ya. Just relax. I have ya.” A hand on his head, rubbing back his hair; arm still wrapped about him. “Just try to relax.” Not to him, but to someone else. “We bloody done yet? Lad’s heart’s going faster than a rabbit’s at the dog track.”
“Yes, we’re finished, Mr. Hunt. And I’m only going to let you stay if you keep your voice down.”
Gene, just barely whispering, “Lousy bastard. Thinks he runs the joint or somethin’. If he didn’t take such good care of ya, I wouldn’t stand for it.” The support started to give way to something softer, something cooler, something not as real. He just managed to clasp unbendable fingers about the person holding him.
“Stay?” he tried to say, but it didn’t come out.
“Come on, Sammy, just getting ya settled. Let go now, there’s a good lad. I ain’t going nowhere.”
***
Gene Hunt pushed into his office, taking a sip from his hipflask as he did so just to keep his back straight. The building exhaustion from the past month and a half had finally caught up with him sometime during his interview but he didn’t need anyone else to know. The members of his department depended on him for strength and he had every intention of showing it to them until this shit ended. Right now, he needed a minute to pull himself together, maybe run his razor over his face and then he would go to the pub to see his team; it would assure them that Internal Affairs hadn’t done anything worse to him than they’d suffered.
And they’d all suffered through interviews just as long as his.
He loosened his tie and scrubbed at his face. A change of shirt would do well too but he’d have to go to the lockers for that. He hadn’t replaced his spare from his desk-the one Cartwright had brought with her to the hospital a month and a half ago-leaving him with nothing but a fresh tie and an overused jacket in his bottom drawer. Oh, and one of his flasks which he couldn’t seem to get the bloodstains off of but couldn’t seem to throw out either. It just sat there, sad, forlorn and tinged a dark red-brown on its leather lining.
He flicked the light on, pulling at his face, and realized, for the first time, that he wasn’t alone. A weaker person would’ve jumped out of their skin, hollered, shouted, raised a stink; instead, he just felt the sharp pain in his chest from surprise and then a severe amount of annoyance at that.
“What’re you doing here?” he snapped, looking at the man sitting in his chair with what he hoped was a glare.
Sam blinked at him, half-awake. “Oh, hullo to you too, Guv.”
“You’re supposed to be in the hospital,” and he hid the worry even as he carefully investigated his DI’s appearance.
“Let me out today,” Sam said, rubbing his face. “So I left.”
He didn’t buy it but didn’t argue as he hadn’t been in to see Sam all week. Tyler still looked like three week road-kill, pasty, flattened and lifeless, which meant he should still be in the hospital. The little catch with each inhale echoed through the room, and the way he sat, protecting his left side, didn’t assure Gene he’d healed. Throw in the obvious lines of pain around his eyes and the fact that his shirt wasn’t buttoned right, and, well, Gene wondered if Sam just grabbed his clothes and ran, forgetting the whole Doctor’s approval part.
“And what, you walked here?” he asked, prowling about the room, no longer wanting the shave and not knowing what else to do.
“Cab,” Sam said, watching him with hazy, drugged up eyes. “Wanted to see people before I went home but everyone’d already left when I got here.”
“You should’ve gone home. You look like shit,” Gene said, deciding that he should forget the rest and go to the pub.
Sam nodded and the agreement hurt. But Sam had done a lot of agreeing of late. “Yeah, probably.” He stood and shook visibly. “Is everything all right?”
“Believe it or not, Gladys, this place ran fine before you and continues to run fine without you.”
He grabbed his coat off the stand, his new one as the old one had been ruined beyond repair, and chose to keep his shirt. Tyler walked about the desk, holding unobtrusively to the sides. “I mean with Internal Affairs.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gene lied, pulling his gloves out of his pockets.
“I passed Kelso in the hall,” Sam told him. “He said that Internal Affairs has been all over all of you for the past week or so.”
“Nothing to concern yourself with,” Gene found his keys, also in his pocket. “I’ll take ya home.” He paused, reaching into his inner jacket for his cigarettes and then thought the better of it when Sam coughed a little. Choosing another method of coping, he walked out the door instead.
Sam followed, slowly. “What are they looking into, Guv?”
“Told you to not worry ‘bout it,” Gene said, catching sight of Tyler’s desk. Chris straightened it three weeks ago, when it looked like Sam would recover well enough to come back. While his precision didn’t meet Sam’s standards, it was a fair mimic and Gene could almost pretend that this was a regular day, with Sam’s regular haranguing, with a regular case.
“But, Gene,” Sam started and then stopped abruptly on his own accord, hacking. Gene stopped too, torn between staying where he was and hovering, as Sam folded up, arm wrapped about his chest, gasping for air.
“You should still be in the hospital,” he shifted the topic of conversation with ease.
“Said I could finish recovering at home,” Sam wheezed between each word. “Sent me with the drugs and the oxygen-”
Gene looked at him, no bags, only his shirt and pants, and the cleaned leather jacket. “Invisible are they?”
“Downstairs,” Sam informed him, straightening but still paler than he’d been before. “Phyllis told me to leave it so I wouldn’t have to drag it about.”
“Right,” Gene said. “Well, take you home on my way to the pub then.” And he dove for the elevator.
Because he wasn’t in the mood for a girly, willy-nilly chatter with Tyler about what happened, or how he felt, or what was happening in the station. Just looking at him made his innards twist and his heart race; he could almost see the blood spilling back over his hands and soaking into his clothes. And he’d spent too much time removing that blood from the creases of his elbows, clipping his nails short so it wouldn’t show. He’d sat for hours and hours, pulling off little dry flakes of what he’d missed, waiting for the doctor to finally say, “Don’t worry, he’s going to pull through” and receiving, more often than not, “I’m sorry, but I just can’t say definitively if DI Tyler’s going to make it.” And after that, after watching every complication, every set back, every missed internal contusion, he didn’t want-didn’t need- to relive any of it.
He still held the door open so Tyler could limp in next to him. Sam immediately slumped against the wall, tired, his belt on the last hole and barely holding his trousers up. His shirt bagged in a way that made Gene feel overfed.
“Are you sure everything’s fine?” Sam asked, again, and he had to resist the urge to throttle the other man. He thought that had to be a good sign. He hadn’t had that feeling in a long while.
“Yes.”
“I’ve not done any-”
He snarled, “Bloody hell, Tyler, it’s not always about you! Some of us have lives and jobs outside of sitting in the hospital and hearing what color your sputum is.”
“No more blood,” Tyler offered and there was a sudden change about him. Gene studied his still wilted figure and couldn’t figure out what exactly it was.
“What?”
“In the sputum,” Tyler clarified, a little smile on his lips.
The doors to the elevator opened. “Tart.”
He grabbed Tyler’s bag-filled with clothes that no doubt fit even less than what he wore-and the other medical kit-filled with drugs he didn’t understand and mixtures he didn’t want to understand as long as they got Sam well-before Tyler could protest. Down to the car he went, bags over his shoulder, Tyler in tow, carefully pacing himself so Sam wouldn’t rush to keep up. The bags he put in the back, not tossed, but set, and he sat down to wait. He had to draw the line somewhere between help and mother henning but had, since he first held the other man through body shaking coughs, forgotten where somewhere was; so, he started fresh by choosing not to open the door or buckle Sam’s seatbelt.
Sam got to the Cortina, sweaty but still different in that unspeakable manner. His actions had energy as he pulled the door shut and worked with his seatbelt. Even when Gene, overriding his newly established rule of personal space, reached over and roughly fixed the belt for him, Tyler still looked as though he’d discovered the meaning of life or some sort of shit. It concerned Gene, almost, but he turned away and started the car instead, muscle memory kicking in.
“I thought we were going to my flat,” Sam said, moments later, as they pulled up in front of the pub.
“I thought you came to the station to see people,” Gene retorted. “People are in there. They’ll be glad to know your skinny arse can actually still move.”
Sam managed a tiny smile under a rough laugh. “All right, Guv.” And he got out all by himself, as Gene pretended to check the dials on the dash, before emerging himself. As he shut the door, he found Tyler looking at him over the car with an expression that made him distinctively uncomfortable.
“I ain’t interested in it, Sammy-boy,” he quipped. “You’ll have to go back to Hyde where all you men do their kissing and bonding over tea and biscuits.”
“It’s not your fault, Guv,” Sam said in reply. “Sometimes, shit just happens.”
He had an answer for that sort of thing, made it up long ago so he could pull it out in a situation such as this; but he couldn’t recall it for the life of him. Sam gave him one last look, deep, probing, frightening, before pushing into the pub. From his position, he could hear the sudden applause and shouts, the cheers Sam deserved for simply staying alive. He intended on joining in, maybe, one day, but he couldn’t get his legs to move. He leaned against the roof of the Cortina, and suddenly, he saw thick red droplets decorating his fingers, smudging onto the front of his shirt. The panic, the knowledge, the consequences swirled about him again just as the desperation started to take hold.
He could hear Sam’s voice, “Stay” not just the first time, but every time after, in half-conscious delirium. It overlay with Internal Affairs whispering misconduct, the ever echoing medical jargon of the doctors, and Blakely’s whimpered, “It’s not like the book at all.” Because, in the books Gene remembered reading, everyone felt just fine in the end. Changeling’s discovered, children returned; that was how it was supposed to go.
“Damn right it’s not my fault,” he shouted, slamming his door shut. He doubted anyone in the pub heard him. “Drinks are on Tyler.”
He awoke to the sound of voices.
“You have to understand, Mr. Hunt,” Brett’s mild tones came through static. “He was family.”
He sat up slowly, finding himself in his flat, on the lumpy, uncomfortable bed. His fingers immediately touched his chest only to find it painless. Further investigation proved he wore an unstained shirt, and underneath that, had unmarred skin. His head, previously bordering on agonizing, felt mildly muddled, as though he’d slept a bit too long and hadn’t had time to wake up. Other than that, he seemed surprisingly well for someone who’d been dying not so long ago. Or so he thought.
He swung his legs over to the floor, trying to figure out where the voices echoed from. The TV, his first suspect, was off and wouldn’t turn on with his coaxing. The phone, normally his next source of disembodied voices, was not plugged in. He held it to his ear for a few seconds just in case but nothing changed. With the receiver still pressed to his ear, he found his eyes wandering upwards, as though to imply the sounds came from “up there” with the angels and Almighty.
“And I’m sorry for what happened,” Brett’s voice rising in strength. “I am. Please, I never wished anyone harm. None of us did.”
He tried the door next but his fingers wouldn’t budge it. Not even the full weight of his body, thrown into it shoulder first, rattled it. It seemed to have changed from portal to wall and had little intention of turning back. He tried a normal turn of the handle, then his own special jiggle, then, in desperation, searched for a screwdriver to pull apart the hinges. But the door sealed itself to his attempts and left him isolated with nothing but the walls and Brett’s voice for company. A shudder enveloped him and he sank down the wall next to the door, legs sprawled out before him, eyes shut, trying to keep down panic. No worse than the hospital with June, he convinced himself, no worse than that when the lights went out.
“My father started it, after our mother died,” Brett’s voice again, tired, tear sopped. “He-Blakely-he wasn’t… well, he wasn’t… normal. Ever, really, but our mother kept him in check, and when she died, something in him broke. He never grew up, Mr. Hunt, even if he pretended to be an adult every now and again. All of it, his supposed accident, the charade, the quiet decline into poverty, it was all for him. He was my father’s special boy.”
He waited to hear Gene’s response, for the shouting, the raging, the sound of flesh on flesh; five minutes later, disappointment ate at him. His eyelids parted and he dragged himself to his feet, the window in mind. Velvety, heavy drapes lay across it, drapes he’d never seen in his life, and he had every intention of using them to shimmy out into the open. To his pleasure, they flew apart with more force than he applied to them, bringing in a surge of light. Eyes watering, he worked at the window but found it as stuck as the door. Freedom taunted him, showing him his neighborhood as daily life rolled by but no matter what he did, the window wouldn’t budge.
“He didn’t get… violent until he overheard that I had to leave. We were running out of money and I went to a good school. One of our Father’s friends had offered to take me on in his company and I agreed. I thought that he would be all right with the staff, especially Mrs. Crankston whom he absolutely adored. Then the incident-he pushed her down the stairs-and I found her lying there. When I confronted him, he pushed me, too, and injured my back. But he was so remorseful afterwards, that I tried to cover it up, tried to make things normal again. If only he hadn’t gotten worse and worse and worse. Or discovered I found Sally appealing and started acting funny around her.”
A car pulled up-the Cortina, he recognized it anywhere-and he pressed himself against the window, watching his DCI emerge. He tried shouting at him but no sound came forth. His hands touched his throat, trying to dislodge whatever lump secured itself but failed. Before a better course of action could find him, Gene disappeared into the bottom level of his complex and he sat hard on the window ledge.
“He killed her. He was jealous and he killed her. Then I had to report it, Mr. Hunt. One murder is one thing but two? And him declining so steadily? He took the choice from me, Mr. Hunt, completely and all I had left was the hope that you all would solve it, and then, the one man who did, received a bullet through the lung from the very man I needed taken away. I had hoped that the concussion would-”
The abrupt end of the sentence confused him and he looked towards the ceiling only to see the familiar stains and watermarks that he saw every morning. Any second, Gene would be at his door and whatever psychosis attacked his mind currently would vanish into the air. The Guv would rescue him from this room, this strangeness; just a moment of confusion, he assured himself, even though he wasn’t sure. Just a moment of confusion.
“I deserved that. I hit DI Tyler much harder. At the time, I was so crossed in what I should do. Part of me wanted him to solve it, to end it. The other part wished to deter him so that everything could continue in peace.”
The door knob turned and he turned with it, towards the ceiling, towards the floor, into a supine position where he struggled, weakly, against the binding equipment. Alarms filled his hearing and rocks filled his chest and his eyes closed before he could tell them to stay open. The person in the doorway somehow caught him, somehow kept him from striking his head against the walls; he could feel that someone supporting him as he twisted.
“Easy, easy, Sammy,” Gene said in his ear. “I have ya. Just relax. I have ya.” A hand on his head, rubbing back his hair; arm still wrapped about him. “Just try to relax.” Not to him, but to someone else. “We bloody done yet? Lad’s heart’s going faster than a rabbit’s at the dog track.”
“Yes, we’re finished, Mr. Hunt. And I’m only going to let you stay if you keep your voice down.”
Gene, just barely whispering, “Lousy bastard. Thinks he runs the joint or somethin’. If he didn’t take such good care of ya, I wouldn’t stand for it.” The support started to give way to something softer, something cooler, something not as real. He just managed to clasp unbendable fingers about the person holding him.
“Stay?” he tried to say, but it didn’t come out.
“Come on, Sammy, just getting ya settled. Let go now, there’s a good lad. I ain’t going nowhere.”
***
Gene Hunt pushed into his office, taking a sip from his hipflask as he did so just to keep his back straight. The building exhaustion from the past month and a half had finally caught up with him sometime during his interview but he didn’t need anyone else to know. The members of his department depended on him for strength and he had every intention of showing it to them until this shit ended. Right now, he needed a minute to pull himself together, maybe run his razor over his face and then he would go to the pub to see his team; it would assure them that Internal Affairs hadn’t done anything worse to him than they’d suffered.
And they’d all suffered through interviews just as long as his.
He loosened his tie and scrubbed at his face. A change of shirt would do well too but he’d have to go to the lockers for that. He hadn’t replaced his spare from his desk-the one Cartwright had brought with her to the hospital a month and a half ago-leaving him with nothing but a fresh tie and an overused jacket in his bottom drawer. Oh, and one of his flasks which he couldn’t seem to get the bloodstains off of but couldn’t seem to throw out either. It just sat there, sad, forlorn and tinged a dark red-brown on its leather lining.
He flicked the light on, pulling at his face, and realized, for the first time, that he wasn’t alone. A weaker person would’ve jumped out of their skin, hollered, shouted, raised a stink; instead, he just felt the sharp pain in his chest from surprise and then a severe amount of annoyance at that.
“What’re you doing here?” he snapped, looking at the man sitting in his chair with what he hoped was a glare.
Sam blinked at him, half-awake. “Oh, hullo to you too, Guv.”
“You’re supposed to be in the hospital,” and he hid the worry even as he carefully investigated his DI’s appearance.
“Let me out today,” Sam said, rubbing his face. “So I left.”
He didn’t buy it but didn’t argue as he hadn’t been in to see Sam all week. Tyler still looked like three week road-kill, pasty, flattened and lifeless, which meant he should still be in the hospital. The little catch with each inhale echoed through the room, and the way he sat, protecting his left side, didn’t assure Gene he’d healed. Throw in the obvious lines of pain around his eyes and the fact that his shirt wasn’t buttoned right, and, well, Gene wondered if Sam just grabbed his clothes and ran, forgetting the whole Doctor’s approval part.
“And what, you walked here?” he asked, prowling about the room, no longer wanting the shave and not knowing what else to do.
“Cab,” Sam said, watching him with hazy, drugged up eyes. “Wanted to see people before I went home but everyone’d already left when I got here.”
“You should’ve gone home. You look like shit,” Gene said, deciding that he should forget the rest and go to the pub.
Sam nodded and the agreement hurt. But Sam had done a lot of agreeing of late. “Yeah, probably.” He stood and shook visibly. “Is everything all right?”
“Believe it or not, Gladys, this place ran fine before you and continues to run fine without you.”
He grabbed his coat off the stand, his new one as the old one had been ruined beyond repair, and chose to keep his shirt. Tyler walked about the desk, holding unobtrusively to the sides. “I mean with Internal Affairs.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gene lied, pulling his gloves out of his pockets.
“I passed Kelso in the hall,” Sam told him. “He said that Internal Affairs has been all over all of you for the past week or so.”
“Nothing to concern yourself with,” Gene found his keys, also in his pocket. “I’ll take ya home.” He paused, reaching into his inner jacket for his cigarettes and then thought the better of it when Sam coughed a little. Choosing another method of coping, he walked out the door instead.
Sam followed, slowly. “What are they looking into, Guv?”
“Told you to not worry ‘bout it,” Gene said, catching sight of Tyler’s desk. Chris straightened it three weeks ago, when it looked like Sam would recover well enough to come back. While his precision didn’t meet Sam’s standards, it was a fair mimic and Gene could almost pretend that this was a regular day, with Sam’s regular haranguing, with a regular case.
“But, Gene,” Sam started and then stopped abruptly on his own accord, hacking. Gene stopped too, torn between staying where he was and hovering, as Sam folded up, arm wrapped about his chest, gasping for air.
“You should still be in the hospital,” he shifted the topic of conversation with ease.
“Said I could finish recovering at home,” Sam wheezed between each word. “Sent me with the drugs and the oxygen-”
Gene looked at him, no bags, only his shirt and pants, and the cleaned leather jacket. “Invisible are they?”
“Downstairs,” Sam informed him, straightening but still paler than he’d been before. “Phyllis told me to leave it so I wouldn’t have to drag it about.”
“Right,” Gene said. “Well, take you home on my way to the pub then.” And he dove for the elevator.
Because he wasn’t in the mood for a girly, willy-nilly chatter with Tyler about what happened, or how he felt, or what was happening in the station. Just looking at him made his innards twist and his heart race; he could almost see the blood spilling back over his hands and soaking into his clothes. And he’d spent too much time removing that blood from the creases of his elbows, clipping his nails short so it wouldn’t show. He’d sat for hours and hours, pulling off little dry flakes of what he’d missed, waiting for the doctor to finally say, “Don’t worry, he’s going to pull through” and receiving, more often than not, “I’m sorry, but I just can’t say definitively if DI Tyler’s going to make it.” And after that, after watching every complication, every set back, every missed internal contusion, he didn’t want-didn’t need- to relive any of it.
He still held the door open so Tyler could limp in next to him. Sam immediately slumped against the wall, tired, his belt on the last hole and barely holding his trousers up. His shirt bagged in a way that made Gene feel overfed.
“Are you sure everything’s fine?” Sam asked, again, and he had to resist the urge to throttle the other man. He thought that had to be a good sign. He hadn’t had that feeling in a long while.
“Yes.”
“I’ve not done any-”
He snarled, “Bloody hell, Tyler, it’s not always about you! Some of us have lives and jobs outside of sitting in the hospital and hearing what color your sputum is.”
“No more blood,” Tyler offered and there was a sudden change about him. Gene studied his still wilted figure and couldn’t figure out what exactly it was.
“What?”
“In the sputum,” Tyler clarified, a little smile on his lips.
The doors to the elevator opened. “Tart.”
He grabbed Tyler’s bag-filled with clothes that no doubt fit even less than what he wore-and the other medical kit-filled with drugs he didn’t understand and mixtures he didn’t want to understand as long as they got Sam well-before Tyler could protest. Down to the car he went, bags over his shoulder, Tyler in tow, carefully pacing himself so Sam wouldn’t rush to keep up. The bags he put in the back, not tossed, but set, and he sat down to wait. He had to draw the line somewhere between help and mother henning but had, since he first held the other man through body shaking coughs, forgotten where somewhere was; so, he started fresh by choosing not to open the door or buckle Sam’s seatbelt.
Sam got to the Cortina, sweaty but still different in that unspeakable manner. His actions had energy as he pulled the door shut and worked with his seatbelt. Even when Gene, overriding his newly established rule of personal space, reached over and roughly fixed the belt for him, Tyler still looked as though he’d discovered the meaning of life or some sort of shit. It concerned Gene, almost, but he turned away and started the car instead, muscle memory kicking in.
“I thought we were going to my flat,” Sam said, moments later, as they pulled up in front of the pub.
“I thought you came to the station to see people,” Gene retorted. “People are in there. They’ll be glad to know your skinny arse can actually still move.”
Sam managed a tiny smile under a rough laugh. “All right, Guv.” And he got out all by himself, as Gene pretended to check the dials on the dash, before emerging himself. As he shut the door, he found Tyler looking at him over the car with an expression that made him distinctively uncomfortable.
“I ain’t interested in it, Sammy-boy,” he quipped. “You’ll have to go back to Hyde where all you men do their kissing and bonding over tea and biscuits.”
“It’s not your fault, Guv,” Sam said in reply. “Sometimes, shit just happens.”
He had an answer for that sort of thing, made it up long ago so he could pull it out in a situation such as this; but he couldn’t recall it for the life of him. Sam gave him one last look, deep, probing, frightening, before pushing into the pub. From his position, he could hear the sudden applause and shouts, the cheers Sam deserved for simply staying alive. He intended on joining in, maybe, one day, but he couldn’t get his legs to move. He leaned against the roof of the Cortina, and suddenly, he saw thick red droplets decorating his fingers, smudging onto the front of his shirt. The panic, the knowledge, the consequences swirled about him again just as the desperation started to take hold.
He could hear Sam’s voice, “Stay” not just the first time, but every time after, in half-conscious delirium. It overlay with Internal Affairs whispering misconduct, the ever echoing medical jargon of the doctors, and Blakely’s whimpered, “It’s not like the book at all.” Because, in the books Gene remembered reading, everyone felt just fine in the end. Changeling’s discovered, children returned; that was how it was supposed to go.
“Damn right it’s not my fault,” he shouted, slamming his door shut. He doubted anyone in the pub heard him. “Drinks are on Tyler.”