Tapestry (3/13)
Title: Tapestry, Part Three of Thirteen
Author: mikes_grrl
Rating: Brown Cortina (NC-17) with a tinge of red - Rusty Cortina?
Pairing: Sam/Gene x2
Warnings: Very very very AU, brain damage, ANGST, and Sam kisses himself which is kind of icky.
Word Count: 23,000 (in thirteen parts; part three, 2,000)
Summary: He’s back, and that can’t be good. Can it?
NOTES for Part Three: Some boys are all the same, and Gene starts to makes connections.
Background (links go to my LJ):
I. Looping
II. Aftermath
III. Aftermath2
IV. Tapestry: Part One; Part Two
Tapestry, Part Three
Junior - not Eugene, they both hated that, he tried to remember - sat unhappily on the sofa in Gene’s office. Gene leaned against his desk staring at him, trying to figure out what to say, how to explain to the impatient stubborn brat that no, he could not go over to his friend Tony’s to play football after school hours were over. His life was on the line. He was staying here, at the office. Period. No arguments. At all. None.
“I want to go!”
“You CAN’T! That’s final!”
“Why not?”
“Because I said so!”
“That ain’t a reason!”
“YES IT BLOODY WELL IS!”
“Sir?” Cartwright stuck her head into the office and both Genes glared at her. “Um…no word yet on…um…him…” She glanced nervously at the boy, whose eyebrows furrowed in a familiar pattern.
“Who? Uncle Sam?” He turned to face off with Gene. “This about Uncle Sam? Where is Uncle Sam? Is he okay? What’s wrong? Where…”
“Shut it! Bloody git, you’ll be the death of me. YES, this is about Uncle Sa…DI Tyler. So you just sit there like a good boy and let your father do his job, and stay OUT OF THE WAY!” Gene bellowed as he pushed Cartwright out the door and to her desk, where Ray was waiting. “Nothing?”
“Nowt a word, Guv. No one’s called in claiming responsibility, and the snouts on the street don’ know nuthin’. Got forensics goin’ over his flat, but…” Ray shrugged.
“Check with the neighbors?”
“Chris is still there, interviewin’ everyone on the floor. So far, no one heard anything.”
Gene’s glance went back to his office, where he saw the pest sneaking towards his filing cabinet. “Cartwright….” Gene growled, and after following his gaze, she sped to the office to keep the boy out of the whiskey. It just never ended with that kid, always trying for something or another. Gene began to feel a genuine sympathy for his mother, because if this was the case, no wonder he got smacked so often as a child. Hell his mother kept smacking him around until he was seventeen and moved out. Even then she’d…
“Guv?”
Gene blinked, forcing himself back into the present. His lack of sleep was creeping into his job too much these days, but he had as yet found no remedy. He frowned at Ray as if he had interrupted an important thought, and Ray shifted uncomfortably.
“Send plods out by the empty warehouses and factories.”
“Guv, you don’ think…”
“I’m thinkin’ we need to check everything. You an’ me, we’re goin’ round my flat.”
“Your flat?”
“You goin’ deaf? Get yer jacket. Chris, you stay here and keep an eye on Annie and the brat. I think it's going to take both of you to keep him here. Have Phyllis bring his dinner up from the canteen. I do NOT want him leaving this room for anything but the loo.” Chris nodded so hard it looked like his neck was going to break. Gene went into his office to fetch his own jacket and found Annie frowning at his son. “What in the blazes now?”
“He says he don’ have any homework, sir, but I remember his teacher telling him what problems to do in his math book.”
“Boy! Do yer ‘omework, or get to scrubbin’ these windows ‘ere.” Gene pointed around the office at the deeply grimed windows. Junior pulled a face.
“Ain’t gonna.” The boy spoke with arms folded, eyes set, and legs locked.
By the time Gene walked out both of them were hoarse and the filing cabinet had three more dents from the boy’s kicks and the sofa was broken from Gene’s kicks and Annie was waving a pencil like a lethal weapon, but at least Junior was sitting at the desk in front of an open book. Gene shook his head as he walked out of CID, Ray trailing him nervously. Gene was at the point of hoping to find Sam just to keep Junior in line. No one had a handle on that boy like Sam did…and what that said about himself, he did not want to know.
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Dreams upon dreams. Nothing made sense and he woke up falling three nights in a row. He spent half his days working on a book he thought was never going to get published, because Gene Hunt was a legend and no one would want to read the ugly truth of a closeted homophobic queer who drank himself to death because he could not solve the murder of the man he loved. Hell, it even depressed him and he was writing it. Of course he was also Gene Hunt, and he tried not to think about that too much.
The other half of the day was spent bedside, whispering promises and sweet nothings into Sam’s ear. Everything he said was monitored and recorded and he knew that if he took any risk, made a grab for anything that might go anywhere off the map, they would pull him out and not let him back. If they did that, Gene knew they were both lost, so he was caught between doing nothing productive or doing nothing at all.
“You bloody cunt, wake up. Even the cat misses your bloodthirsty arse,” Gene whispered softly.
“Now I know you’re lying. Queenie is terrified of him.” Annie laughed as she entered the room. “Your endearments make sailors cringe, Gene.”
“Start talkin’ sweet to him now, he won’t know it’s me.” Gene leaned back from the bed where Sam lay, still and pale.
“You think you’re gettin’ through?”
“No.”
Annie sighed and sat down in one of the comfortable guest chairs. Gene was propped up on a doctor’s stool, spun to it’s highest level, scooted in right next to the hospital bed.
“Why not?”
“I think you know why.” Gene glowered at her.
“You think you sent him off the deep end, with that admission about Alpha Gene?”
He did not reply, just looked at Sam and spun back and forth.
------------
His flat was empty of clues, which he expected. Nonetheless he needed to be sure. There was no room to trip up. He checked everything carefully while Ray smoked impatiently on the stoop, but Gene wanted to know that nothing was even touched. It was possible that the Crazy Bastard did not know Gene had the boy and Gene preferred to keep it that way, although chances were slim. If he was smart - and Sam was, unfortunately, one of the smartest men Gene ever met - he checked the orphanage and maybe even set up surveillance on them for days now. Probably. He and Sam spent some time reconstructing Gene’s own abduction over two years ago, and decided that the Crazy Bastard had watched them for at least a week before he moved. Of course, if that was the case, then it proved that he was back for Sam, and not either Gene.
He stormed out and drove over to Sam’s flat. It was not the same crappy place he used to live in, but it was not much better. Something about Sam always seemed temporary, as if he was waiting for things to change, for everything to end or go away or…hell, Gene tried not to think of the alternatives. He knew Sam felt the same way he did, and he would bet money that the fairy gay boy was waiting for Gene to change. To allow it to happen, to be more to Gene than just a DI. Of course he already was Gene’s best friend but that made it worse, the longing and the desire encouraged by innocent invitations to dinner or nights spent late in Gene’s office, the boy asleep on the couch, the men talking quietly over whiskey and case files. It all meant more than that and Gene knew it, and Sam knew it, and there it ended, because Sam could not get within a foot of him without Gene’s nightmares taking over. He nearly killed Sam once when he tried to break that wall and he swore on his own blood that he spilled that night, ripping his living room apart, that he would never hurt Sam again. He lived to that promise, but it put even more distance between them, and Sam’s flat was somehow a testament to that: half empty, waiting.
Every day Gene tried to convince Sam that there was nothing there, even going so far as to date women occasionally. In fact Gene even carried on a half-serious relationship with a fine woman name Janice for four months, pleasant enough and willing enough in bed to make it worth Gene’s efforts to pretend. Sam said he did not care and went his own way, straight into the bed of some fireman named Patrick, whom Gene proceeded to fit up for arson. It was a bad week.
So while Gene tried to convince Sam there was no future to wait for and Sam insisted he was waiting for no such thing, they both orbited each other warily and desperately. Or at least, that is how Gene saw it. Sometimes he wondered if Sam saw it the same way, if at all. The few times they talked it was as if Sam was asking Gene give in to Sam’s demands, as if he could not think, even with so much proof in front of him, that Gene felt the same way.
But he did. Gene loved him madly, he just knew how dangerous that was. Aside from his own problems stemming from the attack, Gene knew how impossible it was for a queer cop to even survive. He saw more than one drummed out of the force for getting reckless, and seen one to many gay men kicked senseless by boys on the street who were never even charged. Gene could not allow it happen between them. Not before, and certainly not now. He knew the cost was that eventually Sam would fall into someone else’s bed for good, and simply stop waiting, stop wanting, stop needing, and when that happened they could both move on and Sam would be free of him. Gene kept trying to give Sam that freedom, begging him to take it in his own way, even though he knew it would destroy him, personally, and even though he knew he never really meant it.
He stood in Sam’s flat, staring at his fancy boots - different now, a lower heel and burgundy, not black, but still fancy and fashionable and always, always glued to the prissy fancy-footwork feet of his DI - and looked around at a life half lived. No knick knacks on the shelves, no pictures on the walls, and the dinette table covered with pamphlets called “The New Science of Forensics” and “Modern Interrogation Techniques” and the detritus of that stupid book he insisted he was writing, “The Future of Criminology.” An empty place, lacking both Sam and the only life Sam cared about: Gene.
With that thought, Gene knew Sam was not dead. Whatever the Crazy Bastard wanted, it had something to do with him and taking Sam was just the first play in the game. It meant he had to find them, fast. He needed to turn the tables and be the one calling the shots because if he let that lunatic take the lead, blood would be flowing in the gutters by the time he was done. At least Eugene…At least Junior was safe.
Gene stormed out and collected Ray, and then went on a tour of the city. Warehouses, factories, empty buildings…Gene knew he was hunting for a very bent needle in a very dirty haystack, but he had to be doing something. He directed the plods already out making rounds and went to fill in the holes on the map.
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Author: mikes_grrl
Rating: Brown Cortina (NC-17) with a tinge of red - Rusty Cortina?
Pairing: Sam/Gene x2
Warnings: Very very very AU, brain damage, ANGST, and Sam kisses himself which is kind of icky.
Word Count: 23,000 (in thirteen parts; part three, 2,000)
Summary: He’s back, and that can’t be good. Can it?
NOTES for Part Three: Some boys are all the same, and Gene starts to makes connections.
Background (links go to my LJ):
I. Looping
II. Aftermath
III. Aftermath2
IV. Tapestry: Part One; Part Two
Tapestry, Part Three
Junior - not Eugene, they both hated that, he tried to remember - sat unhappily on the sofa in Gene’s office. Gene leaned against his desk staring at him, trying to figure out what to say, how to explain to the impatient stubborn brat that no, he could not go over to his friend Tony’s to play football after school hours were over. His life was on the line. He was staying here, at the office. Period. No arguments. At all. None.
“I want to go!”
“You CAN’T! That’s final!”
“Why not?”
“Because I said so!”
“That ain’t a reason!”
“YES IT BLOODY WELL IS!”
“Sir?” Cartwright stuck her head into the office and both Genes glared at her. “Um…no word yet on…um…him…” She glanced nervously at the boy, whose eyebrows furrowed in a familiar pattern.
“Who? Uncle Sam?” He turned to face off with Gene. “This about Uncle Sam? Where is Uncle Sam? Is he okay? What’s wrong? Where…”
“Shut it! Bloody git, you’ll be the death of me. YES, this is about Uncle Sa…DI Tyler. So you just sit there like a good boy and let your father do his job, and stay OUT OF THE WAY!” Gene bellowed as he pushed Cartwright out the door and to her desk, where Ray was waiting. “Nothing?”
“Nowt a word, Guv. No one’s called in claiming responsibility, and the snouts on the street don’ know nuthin’. Got forensics goin’ over his flat, but…” Ray shrugged.
“Check with the neighbors?”
“Chris is still there, interviewin’ everyone on the floor. So far, no one heard anything.”
Gene’s glance went back to his office, where he saw the pest sneaking towards his filing cabinet. “Cartwright….” Gene growled, and after following his gaze, she sped to the office to keep the boy out of the whiskey. It just never ended with that kid, always trying for something or another. Gene began to feel a genuine sympathy for his mother, because if this was the case, no wonder he got smacked so often as a child. Hell his mother kept smacking him around until he was seventeen and moved out. Even then she’d…
“Guv?”
Gene blinked, forcing himself back into the present. His lack of sleep was creeping into his job too much these days, but he had as yet found no remedy. He frowned at Ray as if he had interrupted an important thought, and Ray shifted uncomfortably.
“Send plods out by the empty warehouses and factories.”
“Guv, you don’ think…”
“I’m thinkin’ we need to check everything. You an’ me, we’re goin’ round my flat.”
“Your flat?”
“You goin’ deaf? Get yer jacket. Chris, you stay here and keep an eye on Annie and the brat. I think it's going to take both of you to keep him here. Have Phyllis bring his dinner up from the canteen. I do NOT want him leaving this room for anything but the loo.” Chris nodded so hard it looked like his neck was going to break. Gene went into his office to fetch his own jacket and found Annie frowning at his son. “What in the blazes now?”
“He says he don’ have any homework, sir, but I remember his teacher telling him what problems to do in his math book.”
“Boy! Do yer ‘omework, or get to scrubbin’ these windows ‘ere.” Gene pointed around the office at the deeply grimed windows. Junior pulled a face.
“Ain’t gonna.” The boy spoke with arms folded, eyes set, and legs locked.
By the time Gene walked out both of them were hoarse and the filing cabinet had three more dents from the boy’s kicks and the sofa was broken from Gene’s kicks and Annie was waving a pencil like a lethal weapon, but at least Junior was sitting at the desk in front of an open book. Gene shook his head as he walked out of CID, Ray trailing him nervously. Gene was at the point of hoping to find Sam just to keep Junior in line. No one had a handle on that boy like Sam did…and what that said about himself, he did not want to know.
-------------
Dreams upon dreams. Nothing made sense and he woke up falling three nights in a row. He spent half his days working on a book he thought was never going to get published, because Gene Hunt was a legend and no one would want to read the ugly truth of a closeted homophobic queer who drank himself to death because he could not solve the murder of the man he loved. Hell, it even depressed him and he was writing it. Of course he was also Gene Hunt, and he tried not to think about that too much.
The other half of the day was spent bedside, whispering promises and sweet nothings into Sam’s ear. Everything he said was monitored and recorded and he knew that if he took any risk, made a grab for anything that might go anywhere off the map, they would pull him out and not let him back. If they did that, Gene knew they were both lost, so he was caught between doing nothing productive or doing nothing at all.
“You bloody cunt, wake up. Even the cat misses your bloodthirsty arse,” Gene whispered softly.
“Now I know you’re lying. Queenie is terrified of him.” Annie laughed as she entered the room. “Your endearments make sailors cringe, Gene.”
“Start talkin’ sweet to him now, he won’t know it’s me.” Gene leaned back from the bed where Sam lay, still and pale.
“You think you’re gettin’ through?”
“No.”
Annie sighed and sat down in one of the comfortable guest chairs. Gene was propped up on a doctor’s stool, spun to it’s highest level, scooted in right next to the hospital bed.
“Why not?”
“I think you know why.” Gene glowered at her.
“You think you sent him off the deep end, with that admission about Alpha Gene?”
He did not reply, just looked at Sam and spun back and forth.
------------
His flat was empty of clues, which he expected. Nonetheless he needed to be sure. There was no room to trip up. He checked everything carefully while Ray smoked impatiently on the stoop, but Gene wanted to know that nothing was even touched. It was possible that the Crazy Bastard did not know Gene had the boy and Gene preferred to keep it that way, although chances were slim. If he was smart - and Sam was, unfortunately, one of the smartest men Gene ever met - he checked the orphanage and maybe even set up surveillance on them for days now. Probably. He and Sam spent some time reconstructing Gene’s own abduction over two years ago, and decided that the Crazy Bastard had watched them for at least a week before he moved. Of course, if that was the case, then it proved that he was back for Sam, and not either Gene.
He stormed out and drove over to Sam’s flat. It was not the same crappy place he used to live in, but it was not much better. Something about Sam always seemed temporary, as if he was waiting for things to change, for everything to end or go away or…hell, Gene tried not to think of the alternatives. He knew Sam felt the same way he did, and he would bet money that the fairy gay boy was waiting for Gene to change. To allow it to happen, to be more to Gene than just a DI. Of course he already was Gene’s best friend but that made it worse, the longing and the desire encouraged by innocent invitations to dinner or nights spent late in Gene’s office, the boy asleep on the couch, the men talking quietly over whiskey and case files. It all meant more than that and Gene knew it, and Sam knew it, and there it ended, because Sam could not get within a foot of him without Gene’s nightmares taking over. He nearly killed Sam once when he tried to break that wall and he swore on his own blood that he spilled that night, ripping his living room apart, that he would never hurt Sam again. He lived to that promise, but it put even more distance between them, and Sam’s flat was somehow a testament to that: half empty, waiting.
Every day Gene tried to convince Sam that there was nothing there, even going so far as to date women occasionally. In fact Gene even carried on a half-serious relationship with a fine woman name Janice for four months, pleasant enough and willing enough in bed to make it worth Gene’s efforts to pretend. Sam said he did not care and went his own way, straight into the bed of some fireman named Patrick, whom Gene proceeded to fit up for arson. It was a bad week.
So while Gene tried to convince Sam there was no future to wait for and Sam insisted he was waiting for no such thing, they both orbited each other warily and desperately. Or at least, that is how Gene saw it. Sometimes he wondered if Sam saw it the same way, if at all. The few times they talked it was as if Sam was asking Gene give in to Sam’s demands, as if he could not think, even with so much proof in front of him, that Gene felt the same way.
But he did. Gene loved him madly, he just knew how dangerous that was. Aside from his own problems stemming from the attack, Gene knew how impossible it was for a queer cop to even survive. He saw more than one drummed out of the force for getting reckless, and seen one to many gay men kicked senseless by boys on the street who were never even charged. Gene could not allow it happen between them. Not before, and certainly not now. He knew the cost was that eventually Sam would fall into someone else’s bed for good, and simply stop waiting, stop wanting, stop needing, and when that happened they could both move on and Sam would be free of him. Gene kept trying to give Sam that freedom, begging him to take it in his own way, even though he knew it would destroy him, personally, and even though he knew he never really meant it.
He stood in Sam’s flat, staring at his fancy boots - different now, a lower heel and burgundy, not black, but still fancy and fashionable and always, always glued to the prissy fancy-footwork feet of his DI - and looked around at a life half lived. No knick knacks on the shelves, no pictures on the walls, and the dinette table covered with pamphlets called “The New Science of Forensics” and “Modern Interrogation Techniques” and the detritus of that stupid book he insisted he was writing, “The Future of Criminology.” An empty place, lacking both Sam and the only life Sam cared about: Gene.
With that thought, Gene knew Sam was not dead. Whatever the Crazy Bastard wanted, it had something to do with him and taking Sam was just the first play in the game. It meant he had to find them, fast. He needed to turn the tables and be the one calling the shots because if he let that lunatic take the lead, blood would be flowing in the gutters by the time he was done. At least Eugene…At least Junior was safe.
Gene stormed out and collected Ray, and then went on a tour of the city. Warehouses, factories, empty buildings…Gene knew he was hunting for a very bent needle in a very dirty haystack, but he had to be doing something. He directed the plods already out making rounds and went to fill in the holes on the map.
------------>