52 Days of Disaster - Day 47
Life on Mars
A repost from travels_in_time's birthday present. She says she guessed it was me immediately. I'm almost hurt; I thought I was much sneakier than that.
Sam had no idea what to get for Gene's birthday. Flowers too sappy (and liable to get him accused of being a girl again), chocolate too mundane (Gene still went through what sweets he had at an alarming rate), and technological gadgetry still hadn't advanced to the stage where buying him anything remotely resembling an iPod would be feasible for... well. For far too long.
Of course, he could always get him a nice gun, but that wasn't quite the sort of message Sam really wanted to send. And buying him alcohol was for successful completion of cases that had been completely ridiculously difficult - and might be viewed as Sam buying it so he could share it with Gene, which while enjoyable, simply wouldn't do.
It was, Sam mused as he paused the interview tape to note down a detail which may or may not turn out to be pertinent to the case, a conundrum. What to get for the man who has no idea what he's missing.
It was a few minutes of staring absently at the cassette player before he finally realised what he could get, and another three days (a string of armed robberies of the local convenience store briefly holding up his progress) before it was completely finished.
Another week before he could give it to Gene. Sam could go for the wrapped option, all shiny with a bow, or just leave it on Gene's desk and see how long it lasted.
In the end, he hid it next to the scotch while Gene was out, and spent the next two days sweating.
Gene never did overtly mention if he'd figured out who left the mix tape in his office, but on Sam's birthday - the birthday the paperwork they had for him in 1973 mentioned, the birthday that Sam didn't mention to anybody ever because it never really registered with him - there was a matching cassette sitting on his desk, partially hidden under the pile of paperwork that Gene had just 'delegated', and Sam looked up and smiled brightly at Gene, who was none-too-obviously looking out his office window at Sam's desk.
For then, it was enough.
A repost from travels_in_time's birthday present. She says she guessed it was me immediately. I'm almost hurt; I thought I was much sneakier than that.
Sam had no idea what to get for Gene's birthday. Flowers too sappy (and liable to get him accused of being a girl again), chocolate too mundane (Gene still went through what sweets he had at an alarming rate), and technological gadgetry still hadn't advanced to the stage where buying him anything remotely resembling an iPod would be feasible for... well. For far too long.
Of course, he could always get him a nice gun, but that wasn't quite the sort of message Sam really wanted to send. And buying him alcohol was for successful completion of cases that had been completely ridiculously difficult - and might be viewed as Sam buying it so he could share it with Gene, which while enjoyable, simply wouldn't do.
It was, Sam mused as he paused the interview tape to note down a detail which may or may not turn out to be pertinent to the case, a conundrum. What to get for the man who has no idea what he's missing.
It was a few minutes of staring absently at the cassette player before he finally realised what he could get, and another three days (a string of armed robberies of the local convenience store briefly holding up his progress) before it was completely finished.
Another week before he could give it to Gene. Sam could go for the wrapped option, all shiny with a bow, or just leave it on Gene's desk and see how long it lasted.
In the end, he hid it next to the scotch while Gene was out, and spent the next two days sweating.
Gene never did overtly mention if he'd figured out who left the mix tape in his office, but on Sam's birthday - the birthday the paperwork they had for him in 1973 mentioned, the birthday that Sam didn't mention to anybody ever because it never really registered with him - there was a matching cassette sitting on his desk, partially hidden under the pile of paperwork that Gene had just 'delegated', and Sam looked up and smiled brightly at Gene, who was none-too-obviously looking out his office window at Sam's desk.
For then, it was enough.