Fic: Appearances (Part Twenty-Three) by Mikey, brown cortina
Title: Appearances, Part Twenty-Three of Thirty
Authors: mikes_grrl, with angeweeks on ‘Gene dialogue duty’ and more than a little credit to draycevixen for plot assistance.
Rating: Brown Cortina (NC-17)
Pairing: Gene/Sam
Warnings: AU, post-2.08, and representations of bigotry which are unpleasant
Disclaimer: All owned by Kudos, kudos to them. I’m just having fun.
Word Count: 55,000~ total (part Twenty-Three, 1,900)
Summary: Sam tries to broaden Gene’s horizons but Gene won’t listen to reason (surprise) and sure as hell won’t ‘dialogue’. Meanwhile the city is experiencing a rash of hate crimes, a few of which are perpetrated against gay men, just as queer activism hits Manchester.
NOTES to Part Twenty-Three: See? I promised daily updates! Okay, this is plotty as plotty gets as the roller coaster drops. And, yeah, see that warning about representations of bigotry up there? *nods* Yep, here they come.
Appearances:
Prologue; Part One; Part Two; Part Three; Part Four; Part Five; Part Six; Part Seven; Part Eight; Part Nine; Part Ten; Part Eleven; Part Twelve; Part Thirteen; Part Fourteen; Part Fifteen; Part Sixteen Part Seventeen; Part Eighteen; Part Nineteen; Part Twenty; Part Twenty-One; Part Twenty-Two
( Undercover-AU:
I. Undercover
II. Exposed
III. Smirk )
Appearances, Part Twenty-Three
“Sorry, sir, he really did not say where he was going.” Annie shook her head. Gene found her with the Tower family, and she acted more than unusually nervous. David and Chris camped out with the family while he got her alone in a hallway off the waiting room and backed her up against the wall.
“And why’d he send you here, then?”
“Oh, uh, he wanted me to talk to…to talk to Shelton Tower, the boy’s older brother. Figure…uh, figured he’s wrapped up in all this somehow.” Annie gulped air nervously, but not guiltily. She was telling the truth, even if she was leaving something out, so Gene backed off for now.
“And did you?”
“No, sir. No. He’s not here. The mother…” She motioned towards the boy’s hospital room. “The mother says she doesn’t know where he is, but I don’t think she is telling the truth.”
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
“Deathstar?” Annie used Sam’s code word for whenever anyone said they had a bad feeling about something, which made no sense to anyone but had come to mean ‘something bad on the horizon.’ Gene paused, wondering when his team had gotten so fucked up, but decided that as long as they all knew what they meant, he did not have to worry about it yet. More importantly, they needed to find this Shelton kid, he was key to all of it, and Gene only cursed himself for not picking him up sooner. Finally, he nodded at her.
“Exactly. Bloody big damn Deathstar.”
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Sam let his guard down, and he had no better excuse than that. He ran out of the building to get to the car, intending to radio in Jimmy’s almost-certain kidnapping, and tripped. When he fell down his brain rushed into panic mode and barely registered the fact that someone was behind him, that he did not trip, that instead he had been efficiently taken down. He looked up at Larry, who was in the car with a shocked expression on his face.
His attacker fell on him with his fists and Sam rolled over to give it back, but was stopped by a kick to his side. There were three of them, and one was running for the car, yelling something. Larry had managed to jump into the driver’s seat and start the engine, even with one wrist handcuffed to the steering wheel, and was looking far too homicidal. Sam gathered himself up and hurled his body towards the automobile.
“No! Get out! Get help! Tell Gene…” He went down screaming when a bat cracked over his shin, breaking bone. He barely had time to glance up to see Larry’s horror before he was under attack again, and he did not know what was going on, only that the car engine was fading away. Larry was safe, but Jimmy…Sam blacked out.
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David was not willing to be shaken off, so Gene sent him back to CID with Annie, figuring the girls could protect each other from Ray long enough for Gene to get back before anyone lost an eye. Or his dick, as Gene was bizarrely confidant that in a showdown with those two, Ray would lose. He took Chris with him to go pick up Shelton Tower, who was out with co-workers at a pub close to the mill where his whole family worked, and fairly easy to find once Gene applied pressure to old Mrs. Tower. When he was brought in, the boy broke on contact, admitting to being part of the beatings on Edwards and Rami, but that was barely on Gene’s radar at this point. He needed to know where Sam went, and why, but the boy’s confession was all over place and he was more worried about going down for murder than where Gene’s DI might have gone to.
“I never meant…it weren’t supposed to…” Shelton shook, his nerves on edge.
“You useless shite, beating them to death, for what? Kicks? A few quid?” Gene glared at him, unforgiving.
“No! I mean, it wasn’t supposed to go that far…fuck…” Shelton hit the table. Ray moved closer, looking for a sign, but Gene did not give it. Next to him, Annie sat quietly with her hands folded.
“You found some Paki walkin’ around, didn’ like the looks of him and killed him. Kicked him to death. Explain to me just how far you intended it go!”
“No! I just…we were only supposed to scare him. That’s all…”
“And your own brother? Get your jollies beating up on your own flesh and blood?”
“NO!”
“Should just lock you up and let your mum have at ya.”
“Oh God! Don’t tell Mum! They were just…I mean, it wasn’t supposed to be like that…just, you know, teaching him a lesson…”
“Beating him into a coma, good way to get your point across.”
Shelton slammed his head on the table. “He’s me baby brother! I didn’t…I…” Shelton pounded his fists onto the table. “I didn’t mean none of this, Tom was just, you know, he hates the Pakis and coloureds and we’d just go along, I never meant Dan to get hurt like this…”
“Shelton, maybe you just got in over your head, but now we need to know the truth.” Annie said calmly, and Gene felt that little burst of pride he always got for her when she acted like a real detective. A real girl detective, what with the calm dulcet tones and the sweet, understanding smile and the flipping of hair off her pretty face, which was all just fine because Gene knew good-girl-cop/bad-boy-cop when he saw it.
“Tom said he could teach Dan a lesson. Just, you know, rough him up. Nothing serious. Dan weren’t listening to me, about nothin’, so I figured…” His voice trailed off and he studied the table top.
Gene nodded quietly, since it was pretty much exactly what he and Sam had figured out earlier. Now he needed to link Larry into this mess, and figure out where Sam went, and where this murderous Tom Fields was so he could send Ray out with five cars of backup to nick his sorry arse.
“Shelton, we know…well, we know your brother’s gay.” Annie said quietly.
Gene tried not to twitch. This was not the good-girl-cop tactic he was expecting, so he spiraled in his chair to look at her critically, without saying anything to give the game away. Or whatever away that Annie was playing at. Shelton sat frozen still, red fury creeping up his face.
“We know you want to protect him, but we already know about it, okay?”
“You know about that bastard sodomizer?” Shelton yelled, standing up, and for a bleak second Gene thought the boy meant Sam.
“Larry Fletcher? Yeah, we know, Shelton. We know. So you ain’t protecting anyone by hiding anything.”
Gene tried not to twitch again, and with a quick glance from Annie, figured it out. Sam sent her to say this to Shelton, to get him to crack. And miracles of miracles, it was working.
“Fine! Then you can imagine what he did to my little brother! That queer freak…” Shelton was close to sputtering. “And that paper! That fucking…he was luring my brother into helping him! Turning him into something he’s not! I had to shut it down, had to stop it!”
“I know, Shelton, I know it’s hard, to watch your brother get corrupted like that…” Annie said soothingly while Gene held back from beating the boy senseless. Shelton picked up on Gene’s tension, though, and sat down.
Gene leaned forward. “We need to know where to find your fucked up mates, including Tom Fields. Then you’re going to sign a confession to killing Dusty Moore…”
“Wouldn’t had to teach Danny a lesson if that perv hadn’t…hadn’t…got on him!” Shelton yelled while Annie looked confused.
“Moore, Guv?” Annie said, then stopped, realizing she was out of line. Gene shrugged.
“Bookdealer, close ‘confidant’ to Larry Fletcher.” Gene sneered, making the innuendo, and Annie nodded in understanding. At least the biases were easy to play off of, Gene thought gratefully. He turned back to the boy.
“AND the murders of Edwards and Rami, and the assault on your own dear brother.”
“That queer Moore deserved it! Disgusting bastards, you should be locking them up instead of me!”
“Maybe I could lock you all up together, have a nice party in the cells. Pretty boy like you, sure to be popular.” Gene snarled. Annie scooted backwards, flushing deeply red, but she did not interrupt.
“FUCK YOU!” Shelton stood up like he meant business but Ray slammed him back into the chair and kept his heavy hands on him.
“Not my type, you ain’t got enough tits.” Gene said slowly, and Ray grinned. “Goin’ down for murder, bad enough. Going down for nearly beating your own brother to death…real shame, that.”
“Oh fuck, I just wanted to shake him up, let him know what comes of hanging with them queers, yeah? Scare him. But Tom, he…gets into it. Sees red, yeah? Just kept goin’, even after we tried to pull ‘im off. I tried to stop him, I tried to get in there, but…but…” Shelton’s voice went quiet and he held his head in his hands.
“Them boys just got out of hand and you couldn’t stop ‘em.”
“Yeah. I stayed with Dan once the other guys dragged Tom out of there, but he was crazy, man, just…gone. He HATES fags. I didn’t know how much, I didn’t know…”
“Bet you don’t. That’s why you torched Moore’s place, your great love of humanity…”
“That’s different! That were personal, what he was trying to get my brother into!...The beatings, that was all Tom.”
Gene frowned and then looked at Ray and Annie. “Out.”
Ray stared at him in surprise, and did not move.
“OUT!” Gene yelled and Ray bailed for the door in confusion, followed by Annie, who cast him a suspicious look. The boy looked at Gene nervously, probably expecting the worst now that all ‘witnesses’ were out of the room. Instead Gene offered him a cigarette.
“Drag queen. Got beat up a bit later. That Tom too?”
Taking a long drag to calm his nerves, Shelton shook his head in surprise. “Yeah, he really got tore up thinking about…well you know. What them fags do to nice kids.”
“Right lot of pervs, them.” Gene nodded sympathetically.
“Yeah, yeah. And that one, he was a rugby player, you know that? Fuckin’ good sport there. Now he wears goddamn dresses, the freak…but me, I figure the Pakis are a bigger problem. Wanted to keep after them meself, but I heard Tom would not let the queer thing go.”
“You heard?”
“Kinda dropped out…well, Dan. At the hospital, and mum all tore up…” The boy curled into himself, genuinely upset about his brother, although it was a bit late for regrets, Gene mused sourly. He nodded and they sat in silence for a bit, smoking amicably. Finally Gene put out his cigarette.
“Boy’s still in a coma, Shelton. Hurt bad. An’ I got three dead men on slabs, which you can pin two on Tom, but Moore’s bake job is all yours. You ain’t getting’ off.”
“Look! I’ll give you Tom, okay? I know where he is! That’s got to help something…” His voice took on a panicked edge.
“That’s for you an’ yer brief to figure out. Got to charge you either way.”
“Just a damn queer…”
“Be that as it may, boy, he’s dead, an’ you helped him get there, along with a few others. Appreciate yer help with the case, and we’ll be bringing Tom in, but you ain’t going to find me offering to help you on a plea bargain.” Gene stood up and Shelton glared at him, but Gene just handed it back at him. “Might start greasin’ yer arse up now, you’ll be a fine date for some jailhouse buggery for the next twenty years.”
“You queer lover, settin’ me up to help you. Fuck off!” Shelton growled, angry but defeated.
Gene stepped out and sent Annie and Ray in to get his full statement, and the location of Tom Fields’ hangout. It was all over, except that Sam was God knows where, but it was over. Well and truly over, especially for one young queer-hating fuck. Gene did feel sorry for him, to a point, because he was young and ignorant and not very smart. A good recipe for jail time. The boy was going up for a while, and yeah, he was just pretty enough to be walking into Hell.
>----------
Authors: mikes_grrl, with angeweeks on ‘Gene dialogue duty’ and more than a little credit to draycevixen for plot assistance.
Rating: Brown Cortina (NC-17)
Pairing: Gene/Sam
Warnings: AU, post-2.08, and representations of bigotry which are unpleasant
Disclaimer: All owned by Kudos, kudos to them. I’m just having fun.
Word Count: 55,000~ total (part Twenty-Three, 1,900)
Summary: Sam tries to broaden Gene’s horizons but Gene won’t listen to reason (surprise) and sure as hell won’t ‘dialogue’. Meanwhile the city is experiencing a rash of hate crimes, a few of which are perpetrated against gay men, just as queer activism hits Manchester.
NOTES to Part Twenty-Three: See? I promised daily updates! Okay, this is plotty as plotty gets as the roller coaster drops. And, yeah, see that warning about representations of bigotry up there? *nods* Yep, here they come.
Appearances:
Prologue; Part One; Part Two; Part Three; Part Four; Part Five; Part Six; Part Seven; Part Eight; Part Nine; Part Ten; Part Eleven; Part Twelve; Part Thirteen; Part Fourteen; Part Fifteen; Part Sixteen Part Seventeen; Part Eighteen; Part Nineteen; Part Twenty; Part Twenty-One; Part Twenty-Two
( Undercover-AU:
I. Undercover
II. Exposed
III. Smirk )
Appearances, Part Twenty-Three
“Sorry, sir, he really did not say where he was going.” Annie shook her head. Gene found her with the Tower family, and she acted more than unusually nervous. David and Chris camped out with the family while he got her alone in a hallway off the waiting room and backed her up against the wall.
“And why’d he send you here, then?”
“Oh, uh, he wanted me to talk to…to talk to Shelton Tower, the boy’s older brother. Figure…uh, figured he’s wrapped up in all this somehow.” Annie gulped air nervously, but not guiltily. She was telling the truth, even if she was leaving something out, so Gene backed off for now.
“And did you?”
“No, sir. No. He’s not here. The mother…” She motioned towards the boy’s hospital room. “The mother says she doesn’t know where he is, but I don’t think she is telling the truth.”
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
“Deathstar?” Annie used Sam’s code word for whenever anyone said they had a bad feeling about something, which made no sense to anyone but had come to mean ‘something bad on the horizon.’ Gene paused, wondering when his team had gotten so fucked up, but decided that as long as they all knew what they meant, he did not have to worry about it yet. More importantly, they needed to find this Shelton kid, he was key to all of it, and Gene only cursed himself for not picking him up sooner. Finally, he nodded at her.
“Exactly. Bloody big damn Deathstar.”
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Sam let his guard down, and he had no better excuse than that. He ran out of the building to get to the car, intending to radio in Jimmy’s almost-certain kidnapping, and tripped. When he fell down his brain rushed into panic mode and barely registered the fact that someone was behind him, that he did not trip, that instead he had been efficiently taken down. He looked up at Larry, who was in the car with a shocked expression on his face.
His attacker fell on him with his fists and Sam rolled over to give it back, but was stopped by a kick to his side. There were three of them, and one was running for the car, yelling something. Larry had managed to jump into the driver’s seat and start the engine, even with one wrist handcuffed to the steering wheel, and was looking far too homicidal. Sam gathered himself up and hurled his body towards the automobile.
“No! Get out! Get help! Tell Gene…” He went down screaming when a bat cracked over his shin, breaking bone. He barely had time to glance up to see Larry’s horror before he was under attack again, and he did not know what was going on, only that the car engine was fading away. Larry was safe, but Jimmy…Sam blacked out.
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David was not willing to be shaken off, so Gene sent him back to CID with Annie, figuring the girls could protect each other from Ray long enough for Gene to get back before anyone lost an eye. Or his dick, as Gene was bizarrely confidant that in a showdown with those two, Ray would lose. He took Chris with him to go pick up Shelton Tower, who was out with co-workers at a pub close to the mill where his whole family worked, and fairly easy to find once Gene applied pressure to old Mrs. Tower. When he was brought in, the boy broke on contact, admitting to being part of the beatings on Edwards and Rami, but that was barely on Gene’s radar at this point. He needed to know where Sam went, and why, but the boy’s confession was all over place and he was more worried about going down for murder than where Gene’s DI might have gone to.
“I never meant…it weren’t supposed to…” Shelton shook, his nerves on edge.
“You useless shite, beating them to death, for what? Kicks? A few quid?” Gene glared at him, unforgiving.
“No! I mean, it wasn’t supposed to go that far…fuck…” Shelton hit the table. Ray moved closer, looking for a sign, but Gene did not give it. Next to him, Annie sat quietly with her hands folded.
“You found some Paki walkin’ around, didn’ like the looks of him and killed him. Kicked him to death. Explain to me just how far you intended it go!”
“No! I just…we were only supposed to scare him. That’s all…”
“And your own brother? Get your jollies beating up on your own flesh and blood?”
“NO!”
“Should just lock you up and let your mum have at ya.”
“Oh God! Don’t tell Mum! They were just…I mean, it wasn’t supposed to be like that…just, you know, teaching him a lesson…”
“Beating him into a coma, good way to get your point across.”
Shelton slammed his head on the table. “He’s me baby brother! I didn’t…I…” Shelton pounded his fists onto the table. “I didn’t mean none of this, Tom was just, you know, he hates the Pakis and coloureds and we’d just go along, I never meant Dan to get hurt like this…”
“Shelton, maybe you just got in over your head, but now we need to know the truth.” Annie said calmly, and Gene felt that little burst of pride he always got for her when she acted like a real detective. A real girl detective, what with the calm dulcet tones and the sweet, understanding smile and the flipping of hair off her pretty face, which was all just fine because Gene knew good-girl-cop/bad-boy-cop when he saw it.
“Tom said he could teach Dan a lesson. Just, you know, rough him up. Nothing serious. Dan weren’t listening to me, about nothin’, so I figured…” His voice trailed off and he studied the table top.
Gene nodded quietly, since it was pretty much exactly what he and Sam had figured out earlier. Now he needed to link Larry into this mess, and figure out where Sam went, and where this murderous Tom Fields was so he could send Ray out with five cars of backup to nick his sorry arse.
“Shelton, we know…well, we know your brother’s gay.” Annie said quietly.
Gene tried not to twitch. This was not the good-girl-cop tactic he was expecting, so he spiraled in his chair to look at her critically, without saying anything to give the game away. Or whatever away that Annie was playing at. Shelton sat frozen still, red fury creeping up his face.
“We know you want to protect him, but we already know about it, okay?”
“You know about that bastard sodomizer?” Shelton yelled, standing up, and for a bleak second Gene thought the boy meant Sam.
“Larry Fletcher? Yeah, we know, Shelton. We know. So you ain’t protecting anyone by hiding anything.”
Gene tried not to twitch again, and with a quick glance from Annie, figured it out. Sam sent her to say this to Shelton, to get him to crack. And miracles of miracles, it was working.
“Fine! Then you can imagine what he did to my little brother! That queer freak…” Shelton was close to sputtering. “And that paper! That fucking…he was luring my brother into helping him! Turning him into something he’s not! I had to shut it down, had to stop it!”
“I know, Shelton, I know it’s hard, to watch your brother get corrupted like that…” Annie said soothingly while Gene held back from beating the boy senseless. Shelton picked up on Gene’s tension, though, and sat down.
Gene leaned forward. “We need to know where to find your fucked up mates, including Tom Fields. Then you’re going to sign a confession to killing Dusty Moore…”
“Wouldn’t had to teach Danny a lesson if that perv hadn’t…hadn’t…got on him!” Shelton yelled while Annie looked confused.
“Moore, Guv?” Annie said, then stopped, realizing she was out of line. Gene shrugged.
“Bookdealer, close ‘confidant’ to Larry Fletcher.” Gene sneered, making the innuendo, and Annie nodded in understanding. At least the biases were easy to play off of, Gene thought gratefully. He turned back to the boy.
“AND the murders of Edwards and Rami, and the assault on your own dear brother.”
“That queer Moore deserved it! Disgusting bastards, you should be locking them up instead of me!”
“Maybe I could lock you all up together, have a nice party in the cells. Pretty boy like you, sure to be popular.” Gene snarled. Annie scooted backwards, flushing deeply red, but she did not interrupt.
“FUCK YOU!” Shelton stood up like he meant business but Ray slammed him back into the chair and kept his heavy hands on him.
“Not my type, you ain’t got enough tits.” Gene said slowly, and Ray grinned. “Goin’ down for murder, bad enough. Going down for nearly beating your own brother to death…real shame, that.”
“Oh fuck, I just wanted to shake him up, let him know what comes of hanging with them queers, yeah? Scare him. But Tom, he…gets into it. Sees red, yeah? Just kept goin’, even after we tried to pull ‘im off. I tried to stop him, I tried to get in there, but…but…” Shelton’s voice went quiet and he held his head in his hands.
“Them boys just got out of hand and you couldn’t stop ‘em.”
“Yeah. I stayed with Dan once the other guys dragged Tom out of there, but he was crazy, man, just…gone. He HATES fags. I didn’t know how much, I didn’t know…”
“Bet you don’t. That’s why you torched Moore’s place, your great love of humanity…”
“That’s different! That were personal, what he was trying to get my brother into!...The beatings, that was all Tom.”
Gene frowned and then looked at Ray and Annie. “Out.”
Ray stared at him in surprise, and did not move.
“OUT!” Gene yelled and Ray bailed for the door in confusion, followed by Annie, who cast him a suspicious look. The boy looked at Gene nervously, probably expecting the worst now that all ‘witnesses’ were out of the room. Instead Gene offered him a cigarette.
“Drag queen. Got beat up a bit later. That Tom too?”
Taking a long drag to calm his nerves, Shelton shook his head in surprise. “Yeah, he really got tore up thinking about…well you know. What them fags do to nice kids.”
“Right lot of pervs, them.” Gene nodded sympathetically.
“Yeah, yeah. And that one, he was a rugby player, you know that? Fuckin’ good sport there. Now he wears goddamn dresses, the freak…but me, I figure the Pakis are a bigger problem. Wanted to keep after them meself, but I heard Tom would not let the queer thing go.”
“You heard?”
“Kinda dropped out…well, Dan. At the hospital, and mum all tore up…” The boy curled into himself, genuinely upset about his brother, although it was a bit late for regrets, Gene mused sourly. He nodded and they sat in silence for a bit, smoking amicably. Finally Gene put out his cigarette.
“Boy’s still in a coma, Shelton. Hurt bad. An’ I got three dead men on slabs, which you can pin two on Tom, but Moore’s bake job is all yours. You ain’t getting’ off.”
“Look! I’ll give you Tom, okay? I know where he is! That’s got to help something…” His voice took on a panicked edge.
“That’s for you an’ yer brief to figure out. Got to charge you either way.”
“Just a damn queer…”
“Be that as it may, boy, he’s dead, an’ you helped him get there, along with a few others. Appreciate yer help with the case, and we’ll be bringing Tom in, but you ain’t going to find me offering to help you on a plea bargain.” Gene stood up and Shelton glared at him, but Gene just handed it back at him. “Might start greasin’ yer arse up now, you’ll be a fine date for some jailhouse buggery for the next twenty years.”
“You queer lover, settin’ me up to help you. Fuck off!” Shelton growled, angry but defeated.
Gene stepped out and sent Annie and Ray in to get his full statement, and the location of Tom Fields’ hangout. It was all over, except that Sam was God knows where, but it was over. Well and truly over, especially for one young queer-hating fuck. Gene did feel sorry for him, to a point, because he was young and ignorant and not very smart. A good recipe for jail time. The boy was going up for a while, and yeah, he was just pretty enough to be walking into Hell.
>----------