Title: Watching
Author: DorsetGirl
Fandom: Life on Mars
Disclaimer: I don’t own these characters or their universe. BBC/Kudos do. I’m not making any money out of this.
Rating: Blue? Cortina for angst
Pairings: Sam/Gene implied
Word Count: 1,514
Summary: This is a sequel to
Body and Soul, and takes place some time before
Fighting to Survive.
A/N:
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Comments 33
And having Ray be the one to take control of an enraged Guv and be the voice of reason? Brilliant. I like this Ray, and of course he would hit on the nurse.
This just gets better and better and it will be placed securely in my mems where it can be taken out and reread over and over.
Thank you!
ETA: And the last line was breathtaking.
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Thank you! Yes, that is exactly what I had in mind here, that he thinks Sam is dying, taking away his whole world, and he is powerless to do anything about that yet he still has to be the DCI.
It had to be Ray, really; he has the physical strength, and the history with Gene that will allow him to treat Gene like this and live!
Thank you so much for a lovely comment - and mems! Thank you.
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If you could get plasters for the mind.
But for my part, the real win of this story was Ray, because in just a few short segments you've gathered together so much of his character and made him a sort of realistic core to an unmanageable situation - laying the boots to Gene if need be while still being strangely compassionate, and still finding the time to make a pass at the nurse, lol.
Loved it. Thank you!
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Well, I never thought I'd be writing what would appear to be h/c, but the inspiration has been a little thin on the ground since Christmas, so I'm just taking anything that strikes at the moment.
So far as I can recall, this is the first time I've given Ray even a single line of dialogue, so I'm glad you thought he was OK. He did have a bit of a difficult job to do here but I was quite pleased at the way he turned out.
Thank you very much for commenting.
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That was just brilliant. You could feel Gene's pain when he thought Sam was dying. He was almost incoherent but still powerful - and I love the way Ray took control, almost a role reversal in that he became the Daddy to Gene's child.
Excellent stuff. Thank you.
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I actually wrote most of this the day after Fighting to Survive (ie before writing Body & Soul), but I couldn't find a satisfactory ending. Gene had to end up quiet enough to be allowed to stay but without simply caving in, so it was lucky that Ray showed up. (Actually he brought Gene to the hospital, but Gene is too out of it to have registered that).
Thank you for commenting. Might see you Tuesday!
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Yep, I'm definitely going now - hubby has booked a hotel for us on Monday and Tuesday night and has agreed that he will go and sit in a pub for a couple of hours while I squee, dribble and generally make like a 12 year old at HMV!
Aw, bless him! He's really good at putting up with my Phil addiction and is now even encourating it.
The only problem now is that he wants to go and see a show on Tuesday night which means I'll miss "the shower scene" in Clocking Off that night!
Oh well, I'll just have to buy that series of Clocking Off on DVD so I can perv to my heart's content *g*
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He sat in the chair and wondered how long it would take for the bones to heal and the fear to fade and the world to start again. If it would be the same.
I know that feeling... different cause, but same feeling. *sobs*
I really like how you've made Ray the voice of reason here.
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I've scribbled a little Sammy think-piece, which is set around the same time as Fighting to Survive - maybe a week or two earlier. It's still in longhand atm, so I'll see how it looks when I've typed it up. Different style again - I'm just taking what comes on this, because if I start planning it won't work or I'll get fed up with it.
I know that feeling. I'm sorry.
Ray the voice of reason. I'm not too sure of Ray's motivation here, but I think it comes from his great admiration - and possibly hero-worship - of the Guv. He doesn't want him to make an arse of himself, and that's more important than his jealousy and suspicion of Gene wasnting to stay with Tyler.
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Then I came back and just read it through again at a slower pace. That's when it dawned on me that what seemed OOC wasn't actually being expressed to anyone surrounding Gene, only to us the reader. That we were being exposed to his thoughts and feelings while the hospital people were just being exposed to Gene doing his bull-in-a-china-shop impersonation. That's when it snapped into place for me that this was in fact very much in character for Gene -- his body might betray him by being sick, but he doesn't cave in any other way.
Thank you!
Oh, and I really like Ray here too! :D
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I do spend entirely too much time reading and reading before I post, checking for continuity, order of events, general flow etc, but I don't think much about whether the guys are in character or not. Which is a pretty serious omission.
So, I think you're saying that the OOC wasn't actually too bad in the end, which is a relief, but I would be very interested to know which bits struck you as being OOC - on first reading, and on second.
I guess it's human nature simply not to comment if we can't find anything positive to say, but genuine concrit is very useful and quite hard to come by. Thank you for being honest!
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Ah, damn. I was hoping to learn something from the way you saw this and what wasn't clear enough. I think actually Gene is pretty emo here. Partly because, as has been said recently, I tend to write Sam/Gene a little more "sweet" and "romantic" than others do. Hmmm. But mainly because I'm convinced this man really does have emotions, and hell, if he doesn't get a little overwhelmed when he thinks Sam - his centre - is going to die, then he's not the man I see at the end of 2.02
Thanks for coming back to me; I hope that if you do think something's gone badly wrong you would say so. I always half-expect someone to email me and say "Take it down NOW, you're embarrassing yourself."
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