If is for Children
I seem to have accidentally written more Life on Mars fic. Nicked the title from a Roger Whittaker son (?!?). First part of two or three. Beta'd by kirsteena.
Sam Tyler woke up with a very fuzzy head and only one distinct thought floating around in it. For a few seconds of semi-consciousness the Thought drifted just out of reach but then he had it, in big capital letters. Playing With Bombs Is Not A Good Idea. Attached to the end of that thought he found another: I Think I'm About To Be Blown Up.
It took Sam's brain what felt like hours to follow those two ideas back to actual memories but they were all floating out of context and he had no idea of how much time had passed. He remembered a bomb. A classic, straight-out-of-the-movies bomb, with the ticking clock and the dynamite sticks and the two curly wires. If this world was his own creation then Sam's subconscious must like clichés more than he'd ever realised. And unfortunately his police training hadn't covered cliché bombs. He'd never understood the whole red wire/yellow wire thing anyway; even as a child Sam had decided that should he ever want to blow someone up he'd definitely use different colour wires to those described in the manual. He'd discovered early on in his career as a policeman that no-one expected him to learn about ticking Warner Bros. dynamite bombs with curly wires. Instead they'd covered fertilizer bombs and heat detonators and how to identify fake semtex from the real thing and, most importantly, the piece of advice they'd repeated over and over, the only thing a policeman really needed to know about bombs - evacuate the scene, wait for the bomb squad. With hindsight, Sam decided, that was damn good advice.
Not that he could actually remember being blown up. But his brain was fuzzy and he couldn't move, his eyelids didn't react when he sent the command to open and he certainly didn't remember walking away from an unexploded car, so it was a fair assumption. He sifted through the mental debris of half remembered dreams and found nothing after the memory of that raucous alarm sounding. He'd gone for yellow in the end, because there was only five seconds left and he wasn't expecting a flash of divine inspiration and if you're taking a wild guess yellow is as good a colour as red. It was the wrong choice, maybe they were both the wrong choice, maybe snipping either wire would have sounded that alarm. But yellow had definitely been wrong. Sam had wriggled out from under the car and the last thing he remembered was laying on tarmac, hands gripping the back bumper of the car as he'd struggled to pull himself upright and run.
Sam tried for the opening of the eyes again with no joy. Not the slightest reaction, not even pain. His ears didn't seem to be working either, unless he really was in a room with a constant high pitched ringing and no other sound. Still 1973 though, Sam didn't need his eyes or ears to tell him that. The smell of cigarette smoke pervaded, overlaying a harsh disinfectant untainted by modern perfumes. Sam was too tired to feel disappointment; to consider that even blowing himself up wasn't enough to get back to his hospital bed in 2006. He had one more try at opening his eyes but the effort proved too much and the world faded away.
********
The second time Sam woke up the ringing was still there, now overlaid with voices.
"The Guv gone home?" A familiar voice, but it brought no warmth with recognition. Ray, Sam decided after a moment's thought. So he wasn't dead then, or if he was, Sam was dead as well, and he really hoped he wouldn't be sharing an after-life with Ray.
"Nah." Another voice, also familiar, better associations. "Matron took him to get patched up. Never thought I'd meet a bird that could push the Guv around. Does he look like he's going to wake up to you?"
Even over the ringing in his ears Sam could hear the anxiety in the question, and the disinterest in the reply. "Who bloody well cares? Bloke's a menace. Was the Guv bad?"
"Bit cut up. Not as bad as you. He was spitting nails over the coat, though."
"Right then. Pub?"
"Nah, I'll just... Mebbe sit here a bit. Just till the Guv comes back."
"Suit yourself."
Sam tried to thank Chris, but though his mouth was open there was something obstructing the words and for some reason his tongue wouldn't move. The trying was more than he could manage and Sam could feel the world slipping away. The last thing he heard was Carling.
"Don't cry, you great div. His kind always wakes up. No getting rid of 'em."
********
The next time Sam woke the voices were different, and the smell. He was half aware of being moved and jostled, and a stinging pain in his throat. Then the voices faded to a gentle snoring, everything quiet but not black. Trying to move was met with pain so Sam didn't bother and after a few minutes drifted into a more natural sleep.
********
Fourth time proved the charm. Sam awoke and his eyes were open before he'd had time to stop and wonder if it would be possible to open them this time, then his mind had to back-track to fill in the blanks. Hospital, definitely a hospital. The hideous ceiling tiles and unwholesome smell transcended the decades. Sam moved his head to the side to investigate further and the world went red with the sudden agony of it. Sam gritted his teeth - metaphorically, incase his mouth had suffered the same fate as his neck - and clung on to consciousness.
When the pain faded to a manageable level and Sam dared open his eyes again he was facing an out of focus pile of filthy brown rags. Not your typical hospital decor. They appeared to be moving, as well, though that could easily be Sam's eyes or his brain, which was still on the untethered side of floating. Trying to bring the pile into focus conjured a shooting pain in his head but at least that drove away some of the wooliness. A second look at the outside world revealed the pile of rags to be a familiar camel coat, liberally covered in dirt and soot, shifting gently to the rhythm of breathing.
Sam coughed and the coat moved as DCI Hunt sat up with a start. He blinked then his eyes met Sam's, and he stared for a long moment before speaking.
"You back with us, Tyler?" he asked quietly, leaning forward, and Sam felt the slight shift of Gene's elbows resting on his bed. He nodded in answer - big mistake. The pain of his burnt ear rubbing against the pillow made his head spin, his stomach rebelled. In reaction Sam cried out, adding his throat to the list of body parts that weren't feeling at the top of their game. Once the coughing started it was hard to stop and every movement brought more pain. A large hand caught his chin, keeping his head still, and eventually Sam got his breathing back under control.
"They had a tube down your throat till this morning," Gene said softly. "Doctor said you wouldn't be able to talk for a while - I did tell him you could never keep that big trap shut for long."
Sam rolled his eyes, it seemed to be the only movement he could make without painful reprisal. Gene grinned.
"Yep. You're still with us." He relaxed back into his chair with a satisfied snort and pulled out his hip flask. The small one, Sam noted, the 12 year old reserve that usually signalled Gene was running out of booze. "Doc said if your skull wasn't so thick your brain would have blown out of your eye sockets. So it turns out there is a good side to being a flaming moron."
Sam did his best to tell Gene to fuck off, but his tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth and someone had sandpapered his throat and his voice came out a rasp. Gene held out his open hipflask and Sam shuddered at the thought of whisky burning through his insides. He'd learnt his lesson with nodding, wasn't about to shake his head, could think of no painless way of refusing but Gene must have seen the fear in his eyes because he put the flask away with a shrug. A minute or two of effort and there was enough spit in Sam's mouth to form words.
"How long?"
Gene gave Sam a sharp look and patted himself down for a ciggie before answering. "Since you blew yourself up? Three days."
Sam ran his eye over his dishevelled superior. His face was tired and drawn under the dirt and stubble and the cigarette smoke wasn't quite masking the smell of ripe DCI. And Gene's beloved coat was a mess, filthy dirty and peppered with rips and burns.
"Have you been-" another fit of coughing, easier than the last "-here all that time?"
"Don't be so bleeding soft, Samantha! You think I've got nothing better to do than sit by your bedside? The scum didn't declare a holiday when they'd heard you'd blown yourself up, you know." Gene gave an indignant sniff at the idea he could ever be that sentimental, took a long drag of his cigarette. "Been coming up in the evenings to chase that soppy plonk home. You've had her worried sick."
And that, presumably, was Gene Hunt's way of welcoming Sam back to the land of the living. He responded in kind.
"You look like shit."
Gene curled up his lip. "Says Boris Karloff here. If I could get a day or two without any of my officers bleeding well exploding I might find time to go home and take a bath. We can't all be laying around getting sponged by nurses."
A last drag and Gene stubbed his cigarette out on the leg of the chair and flicked it away. Impossibly, he made himself comfortable again on the hard plastic chair by Sam's bedside, head leaning against the wall, coat pulled over him, and closed his eyes.
"Did you get them?" Sam asked.
Gene opened one eye briefly. "In a manner of speaking."
Sam waited but no more was forthcoming and Gene gave every appearance of being asleep.
"You fitted up every Irishman in Manchester, didn't you?" he prompted from his own prone position.
"No."
Reluctantly those green eyes opened again. Gene took another swig from the flask and sat up a little straighter with a sigh and the air of a man with a story to tell.
"Well yes," he conceded. "Rounded 'em up, anyway. Every bastard Paddy I could lay my hands on. So they were all in the nick when the third call came through. Turns out the whole thing was a cover for a bank job. While we were dealing with the hoax - there was no bomb the third time - that wanker Miller was on the other side of town blowing his way into a bank vault."
"But you got him?"
"Nope." Gene grinned again and for a moment the tiredness faded away. "Daft bugger knew all the tunnels. Built the flaming things, didn't he? But he hadn't counted on the steel lining the bank had put in, deflected the blast outwards, so the bomb squad said. Percussion, or summat. He was still unconscious when we turned up an hour later!"
Sam smiled. It didn't hurt too much.
"Ray's out," Gene added. "Walking and talking." There was no particular inflection in his voice but Sam heard the message just the same.
"I know. I heard him and Chris."
"His moustache is singed. Don't think he'll ever forgive you for that."
Probably not. But there was already a long list of things Ray would never forgive him for and that list was headed by 'being Sam Tyler'. "Am I... singed?" he asked.
"Nothing that won't heal eventually, most like. 'Less you wanna take up piano everything should be fine and dandy." Gene glanced out the darkened window rather shiftily as he spoke and Sam got the feeling he didn't want to hear any more details. "Was your brain they were most worried about, though god knows how they found it. You know what year it is, right?"
Despite the automatic insult Sam thought he could hear a trace of anxiety in that gruff voice, so for Gene's benefit he lied.
"1973."
"There you go. Better than new. And it's about time for you to be passing out again, Sammy-boy. Some of us have got a long day ahead, fitting up scumbags."
"You should go home, Guv. Get-" washed "-some proper rest."
"If I'm not here when your plonk turns up at seven she'll be slipping something nasty in my tea. Daft bird's got this mad idea that you might kick it if you didn't have someone talking to you. God knows why, you never listen when you're conscious. And you're lucky you're immune to a nice pair of tits, Tyler, that one's going to be ruling some poor sod with a fist of iron in a year or two."
The hip flask disappeared and Gene leaned back, closed his eyes again.
"You can't sleep in that chair all night!"
The corner of Gene's mouth flicked up. "Now you tell me! Where was that pearl of wisdom three days ago? But don't worry Tyler, sun'll be up any minute. Now kindly let me get some shut-eye."
Within minutes Gene was snuffling softly in his sleep and though he'd only been awake half an hour Sam quickly followed him into oblivion. He went to sleep with a smile on his face and a warm feeling that had nothing to do with third degree burns.
Sam Tyler woke up with a very fuzzy head and only one distinct thought floating around in it. For a few seconds of semi-consciousness the Thought drifted just out of reach but then he had it, in big capital letters. Playing With Bombs Is Not A Good Idea. Attached to the end of that thought he found another: I Think I'm About To Be Blown Up.
It took Sam's brain what felt like hours to follow those two ideas back to actual memories but they were all floating out of context and he had no idea of how much time had passed. He remembered a bomb. A classic, straight-out-of-the-movies bomb, with the ticking clock and the dynamite sticks and the two curly wires. If this world was his own creation then Sam's subconscious must like clichés more than he'd ever realised. And unfortunately his police training hadn't covered cliché bombs. He'd never understood the whole red wire/yellow wire thing anyway; even as a child Sam had decided that should he ever want to blow someone up he'd definitely use different colour wires to those described in the manual. He'd discovered early on in his career as a policeman that no-one expected him to learn about ticking Warner Bros. dynamite bombs with curly wires. Instead they'd covered fertilizer bombs and heat detonators and how to identify fake semtex from the real thing and, most importantly, the piece of advice they'd repeated over and over, the only thing a policeman really needed to know about bombs - evacuate the scene, wait for the bomb squad. With hindsight, Sam decided, that was damn good advice.
Not that he could actually remember being blown up. But his brain was fuzzy and he couldn't move, his eyelids didn't react when he sent the command to open and he certainly didn't remember walking away from an unexploded car, so it was a fair assumption. He sifted through the mental debris of half remembered dreams and found nothing after the memory of that raucous alarm sounding. He'd gone for yellow in the end, because there was only five seconds left and he wasn't expecting a flash of divine inspiration and if you're taking a wild guess yellow is as good a colour as red. It was the wrong choice, maybe they were both the wrong choice, maybe snipping either wire would have sounded that alarm. But yellow had definitely been wrong. Sam had wriggled out from under the car and the last thing he remembered was laying on tarmac, hands gripping the back bumper of the car as he'd struggled to pull himself upright and run.
Sam tried for the opening of the eyes again with no joy. Not the slightest reaction, not even pain. His ears didn't seem to be working either, unless he really was in a room with a constant high pitched ringing and no other sound. Still 1973 though, Sam didn't need his eyes or ears to tell him that. The smell of cigarette smoke pervaded, overlaying a harsh disinfectant untainted by modern perfumes. Sam was too tired to feel disappointment; to consider that even blowing himself up wasn't enough to get back to his hospital bed in 2006. He had one more try at opening his eyes but the effort proved too much and the world faded away.
********
The second time Sam woke up the ringing was still there, now overlaid with voices.
"The Guv gone home?" A familiar voice, but it brought no warmth with recognition. Ray, Sam decided after a moment's thought. So he wasn't dead then, or if he was, Sam was dead as well, and he really hoped he wouldn't be sharing an after-life with Ray.
"Nah." Another voice, also familiar, better associations. "Matron took him to get patched up. Never thought I'd meet a bird that could push the Guv around. Does he look like he's going to wake up to you?"
Even over the ringing in his ears Sam could hear the anxiety in the question, and the disinterest in the reply. "Who bloody well cares? Bloke's a menace. Was the Guv bad?"
"Bit cut up. Not as bad as you. He was spitting nails over the coat, though."
"Right then. Pub?"
"Nah, I'll just... Mebbe sit here a bit. Just till the Guv comes back."
"Suit yourself."
Sam tried to thank Chris, but though his mouth was open there was something obstructing the words and for some reason his tongue wouldn't move. The trying was more than he could manage and Sam could feel the world slipping away. The last thing he heard was Carling.
"Don't cry, you great div. His kind always wakes up. No getting rid of 'em."
********
The next time Sam woke the voices were different, and the smell. He was half aware of being moved and jostled, and a stinging pain in his throat. Then the voices faded to a gentle snoring, everything quiet but not black. Trying to move was met with pain so Sam didn't bother and after a few minutes drifted into a more natural sleep.
********
Fourth time proved the charm. Sam awoke and his eyes were open before he'd had time to stop and wonder if it would be possible to open them this time, then his mind had to back-track to fill in the blanks. Hospital, definitely a hospital. The hideous ceiling tiles and unwholesome smell transcended the decades. Sam moved his head to the side to investigate further and the world went red with the sudden agony of it. Sam gritted his teeth - metaphorically, incase his mouth had suffered the same fate as his neck - and clung on to consciousness.
When the pain faded to a manageable level and Sam dared open his eyes again he was facing an out of focus pile of filthy brown rags. Not your typical hospital decor. They appeared to be moving, as well, though that could easily be Sam's eyes or his brain, which was still on the untethered side of floating. Trying to bring the pile into focus conjured a shooting pain in his head but at least that drove away some of the wooliness. A second look at the outside world revealed the pile of rags to be a familiar camel coat, liberally covered in dirt and soot, shifting gently to the rhythm of breathing.
Sam coughed and the coat moved as DCI Hunt sat up with a start. He blinked then his eyes met Sam's, and he stared for a long moment before speaking.
"You back with us, Tyler?" he asked quietly, leaning forward, and Sam felt the slight shift of Gene's elbows resting on his bed. He nodded in answer - big mistake. The pain of his burnt ear rubbing against the pillow made his head spin, his stomach rebelled. In reaction Sam cried out, adding his throat to the list of body parts that weren't feeling at the top of their game. Once the coughing started it was hard to stop and every movement brought more pain. A large hand caught his chin, keeping his head still, and eventually Sam got his breathing back under control.
"They had a tube down your throat till this morning," Gene said softly. "Doctor said you wouldn't be able to talk for a while - I did tell him you could never keep that big trap shut for long."
Sam rolled his eyes, it seemed to be the only movement he could make without painful reprisal. Gene grinned.
"Yep. You're still with us." He relaxed back into his chair with a satisfied snort and pulled out his hip flask. The small one, Sam noted, the 12 year old reserve that usually signalled Gene was running out of booze. "Doc said if your skull wasn't so thick your brain would have blown out of your eye sockets. So it turns out there is a good side to being a flaming moron."
Sam did his best to tell Gene to fuck off, but his tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth and someone had sandpapered his throat and his voice came out a rasp. Gene held out his open hipflask and Sam shuddered at the thought of whisky burning through his insides. He'd learnt his lesson with nodding, wasn't about to shake his head, could think of no painless way of refusing but Gene must have seen the fear in his eyes because he put the flask away with a shrug. A minute or two of effort and there was enough spit in Sam's mouth to form words.
"How long?"
Gene gave Sam a sharp look and patted himself down for a ciggie before answering. "Since you blew yourself up? Three days."
Sam ran his eye over his dishevelled superior. His face was tired and drawn under the dirt and stubble and the cigarette smoke wasn't quite masking the smell of ripe DCI. And Gene's beloved coat was a mess, filthy dirty and peppered with rips and burns.
"Have you been-" another fit of coughing, easier than the last "-here all that time?"
"Don't be so bleeding soft, Samantha! You think I've got nothing better to do than sit by your bedside? The scum didn't declare a holiday when they'd heard you'd blown yourself up, you know." Gene gave an indignant sniff at the idea he could ever be that sentimental, took a long drag of his cigarette. "Been coming up in the evenings to chase that soppy plonk home. You've had her worried sick."
And that, presumably, was Gene Hunt's way of welcoming Sam back to the land of the living. He responded in kind.
"You look like shit."
Gene curled up his lip. "Says Boris Karloff here. If I could get a day or two without any of my officers bleeding well exploding I might find time to go home and take a bath. We can't all be laying around getting sponged by nurses."
A last drag and Gene stubbed his cigarette out on the leg of the chair and flicked it away. Impossibly, he made himself comfortable again on the hard plastic chair by Sam's bedside, head leaning against the wall, coat pulled over him, and closed his eyes.
"Did you get them?" Sam asked.
Gene opened one eye briefly. "In a manner of speaking."
Sam waited but no more was forthcoming and Gene gave every appearance of being asleep.
"You fitted up every Irishman in Manchester, didn't you?" he prompted from his own prone position.
"No."
Reluctantly those green eyes opened again. Gene took another swig from the flask and sat up a little straighter with a sigh and the air of a man with a story to tell.
"Well yes," he conceded. "Rounded 'em up, anyway. Every bastard Paddy I could lay my hands on. So they were all in the nick when the third call came through. Turns out the whole thing was a cover for a bank job. While we were dealing with the hoax - there was no bomb the third time - that wanker Miller was on the other side of town blowing his way into a bank vault."
"But you got him?"
"Nope." Gene grinned again and for a moment the tiredness faded away. "Daft bugger knew all the tunnels. Built the flaming things, didn't he? But he hadn't counted on the steel lining the bank had put in, deflected the blast outwards, so the bomb squad said. Percussion, or summat. He was still unconscious when we turned up an hour later!"
Sam smiled. It didn't hurt too much.
"Ray's out," Gene added. "Walking and talking." There was no particular inflection in his voice but Sam heard the message just the same.
"I know. I heard him and Chris."
"His moustache is singed. Don't think he'll ever forgive you for that."
Probably not. But there was already a long list of things Ray would never forgive him for and that list was headed by 'being Sam Tyler'. "Am I... singed?" he asked.
"Nothing that won't heal eventually, most like. 'Less you wanna take up piano everything should be fine and dandy." Gene glanced out the darkened window rather shiftily as he spoke and Sam got the feeling he didn't want to hear any more details. "Was your brain they were most worried about, though god knows how they found it. You know what year it is, right?"
Despite the automatic insult Sam thought he could hear a trace of anxiety in that gruff voice, so for Gene's benefit he lied.
"1973."
"There you go. Better than new. And it's about time for you to be passing out again, Sammy-boy. Some of us have got a long day ahead, fitting up scumbags."
"You should go home, Guv. Get-" washed "-some proper rest."
"If I'm not here when your plonk turns up at seven she'll be slipping something nasty in my tea. Daft bird's got this mad idea that you might kick it if you didn't have someone talking to you. God knows why, you never listen when you're conscious. And you're lucky you're immune to a nice pair of tits, Tyler, that one's going to be ruling some poor sod with a fist of iron in a year or two."
The hip flask disappeared and Gene leaned back, closed his eyes again.
"You can't sleep in that chair all night!"
The corner of Gene's mouth flicked up. "Now you tell me! Where was that pearl of wisdom three days ago? But don't worry Tyler, sun'll be up any minute. Now kindly let me get some shut-eye."
Within minutes Gene was snuffling softly in his sleep and though he'd only been awake half an hour Sam quickly followed him into oblivion. He went to sleep with a smile on his face and a warm feeling that had nothing to do with third degree burns.