Wednesday 3/3 by Time Testudinem, brown cortina
Title: Wednesday
Author: Time Testudinem
Rating: Brown Cortina
Word Count: 1190 this part, 5890 total
Pairing: Chris/Sam
Note: Thanks to seileach67 for yet another super beta, plus the gift of many hyphens and semicolons. Any remaining errors are entirely my own doing. And thanks also to mikes_grrl for general encouragement and help with problematic sentences.
Summary: Yet another day that makes Chris’ life more complicated.
Disclaimer: They don’t belong to me, I make no money.
Chapter 1: It's Tuesday again
Chapter 2: Wednesday Evening
It was Monday before Chris saw that jacket again.
Tyler hadn’t worn it Thursday when he came in to work looking like he had been on an all-night boozer. Since half of CID had done just that, he hadn’t stood out much, and no one commented beyond the usual crap. But Chris couldn’t stand the reminder, and jumped at the first chore that came up, anything to get himself out of the office.
Friday, Tyler had gotten a bee in his bonnet about something or other and run off before Chris made it in. Ray bitched, said the Guv wasn’t pleased about the Boss’ latest crazy idea, but the tone he used let Chris know that the snappy tension between the two of them had eased. It seemed Tyler’s mood was back on keel, with the rest of the team following the lead of the sheriff and his deputy. Chris really wished he could as well.
He spent the weekend worried he would never be at ease in CID again. Not that he ever truly was. Been playing at being something he wasn’t since he got there, really. Still, he mostly liked who he was when he was at work. The team div maybe, but he was learning. He liked learning: applied muscle and intimidation from Ray; intuition, leadership, and just how much could be accomplished with sheer determination from Gene; surveillance and procedure from Sam; and even a bit of that psychology stuff from Annie. He cursed himself for a third-rate idiot for letting his curiosity and his dick turn him into something that might take all that away. He couldn’t believe he had done those things, was disgusted by the fact that he enjoyed them. And if his own reactions made no sense to him, then Tyler’s made even less.
On Monday he managed to avoid the DI all morning, but he was sitting in the canteen with some of Gwen’s quite passable vegetable soup when Tyler walked in, wearing his jacket. It looked clean and tidy, if a little worn, much like Tyler himself. Chris wondered how much four days had dimmed the man’s other marks, and then rubbed self-consciously at his own half-healed knuckles, hating himself even more for thinking about it at all.
“Mind if I join you?”
“Of course not, Boss.” And he meant it, he really did, but the words still came out stiff and unnatural.
Tyler took the seat across from him and looked around, likely to see if anyone was close enough to overhear, before speaking. “I think you’ve been avoiding me.”
“Not at all, Boss.”
That got him a small sigh, as the DI’s shoulders slumped slightly. “Now is not the time for lying to me, Chris.”
“All right, maybe a little bit.” was addressed more to the soup than anything else.
“You know, it’s hard to properly say thank you to someone when they won’t be in the same room with you.”
Chris’s shock at that finally raised his eyes from the table and got him to really look at the man across from him. “What do you have to thank me for, sir?” He couldn’t see much room for gratitude in the images that had haunted his weekend.
“Chris…” Tyler trailed off, rubbing his hand through his hair before starting again. “I can’t even begin to explain my problems to you, and you probably don’t want to hear them anyway. But what you did for me…” Now the man was actually blushing. “I haven’t felt this real since, well, since before I even got here, if I’m honest.”
Chris knew his confusion must have been showing on his face. It usually was.
“Oh never mind. Just, thank you.”
“Uhm, you’re welcome, Boss?”
“Not Boss, I think, not for this one.” Tyler said with a faint smirk that had Chris returning his earlier blush, with interest.
Once he seemed to realize no coherent response was likely to be coming, Tyler turned a thoughtful look on the DC, and added in a interested but confused tone that was familiar from when they were working cases, “I’ve been wondering quite a lot for the last few days, how did you know?”
Chris briefly considered evading or pretending not to understanding the question, but he supposed the man deserved an answer. “I’m a detective, Boss. Err, Sam. I intend some day to be a good one. I guess once a suspect, so to speak, was brought to my attention, I just followed procedure.” He shrugged, hard pressed to really explain.
“And what procedures would those be?”
“Well, first I watched, uh, did surveillance, looking for patterns in the suspect’s behavior. Noted when things didn’t fit. Then I looked for new patterns, to fit the evidence available, and came up with, uhm, a theory.”
Tyler quirked a small smile at Chris’ attempts to use the kind of phrases he tossed around all the time. “ So what did you do about this theory?”
“I waited until there was an opportune moment to test my theory.” Chris relaxed a bit at the widening of the grin on the other man’s face as he got the phrasing right. He felt his own grin start to surface as he added, half sheepishly. “Then I followed my gut and jumped in with both feet.”
Tyler laughed, a full-out unrestrained laugh that Chris wasn’t sure he had ever heard from him before, at least not when the man wasn’t in mortal danger. “That would seem to be the SOP around this place wouldn’t it, Detective Constable?”
The smile that accompanied that question, was infectious, seeming to lighten the mood of the entire room, and widening his own as he replied “Yes, Boss.”
“I’m impressed, Chris, really. That took some serious observational skills, an open mind, and a hell of a lot of guts. If you keep thinking like that, you’re going to make one damn good detective before long. I might have to start looking to my job, with you around.”
The warmth Chris felt at the praise was surprising. He had learned things Wednesday night, about Tyler, about himself, that he just didn’t think he could get past. Yet here he was listening to this opinion of his skills, and reacting as if he still respected the man. How did you respect a man you had seen like that? Visions of dirt and cum and blood assaulted him, the rough brick of the wall, Tyler’s throat wrapped around his cock, the farthest things from respect he could imagine. The man was half crazy, everyone knew that, and now Chris knew he could be a truly twisted fuck at times, but damn it, he still liked him, still thought of him as one of the best coppers he had ever met. It was as confusing and contradictory as Sam Tyler himself, but it was a strangely hopeful thought in ways that Chris couldn‘t bring himself to pin down just yet.
They finished the rest of their meal in silence, but not an uncomfortable one, and when they got up to leave, this time they left together.