Fic: Reunion (Sam/Annie)
Title: Reunion
Author: chelseagirl47
Rating: Green Cortina
Notes: Sam/older Annie, friendship or romance, depending on your pov. It's 2006 and Sam Tyler has returned to the present, and he's looking up old friends.
Thanks to neuralclone and bakednudel for betareading, mrs_sean_bean for Britpicking, and v23474 for final reassurances! This is for galacticowl if she wants it.
It isn't every day that someone you last saw thirty-three years ago rings your doorbell.
Reunion
It isn’t every day that someone you last saw thirty-three years ago rings your doorbell.
It was a Saturday morning, and I was in the middle of cleaning. I was at home alone. Susie, my youngest, was off at uni down in Sussex, though Tim was working locally and living at home again. He was training for a marathon and had been off hours ago. So when the doorbell rang and I answered it, wearing my oldest jeans and an equally ancient jumper, I thought it was going to be the package I was waiting for from Amazon.
And there he was, Sam Tyler, looking not a day (well, perhaps a couple of months, let’s not be literal here), but in any case, certainly not thirty-three years older than when I’d last seen him, in 1973.
“Annie?” he asked, squinting just a little.
I put my hand up to smooth back my hair, then realized how self-conscious it looked and stopped halfway through the gesture. I can’t say I hadn’t wondered if this would happen. I’d never really believed Sam was from the future, not ‘til the very end. And then I’d wondered, and had been wondering, ever since.
“Sam,” I said. And then wondered what sort of thing one usually said to a time-travelling former crush who was suddenly considerably younger than oneself. Tim and I had got into the habit of watching Doctor Who together, and I thought Sarah Jane Smith had handled it reasonably well, but of course that was science fiction with aliens and time machines, and this was real life. And there really were no words, so I collected myself as best I could and out came the all-purpose standard response. “Cup of tea?”
He nodded, and followed me inside to the kitchen.
“Earl Grey? Lapsang souchang? Or I’ve got some Yorkshire Gold, if you’re wanting to strip the paint off anything.”
“Earl Grey would be lovely.”
I couldn’t help but keep sneaking glances at him as I made the tea, mechanically. I could tell he was using his keen DI . . . or was that DCI . . . powers of observation, trying to fill himself in on three decades of my life through souvenir tea towels and random cookware.
“You were the hardest to find,” he blurted out suddenly, just as I was about to ask why he hadn’t phoned first. I think I knew the answer to that, anyhow.
“What?” I asked. “Oh, did you google me?”
It must have seemed strange to him, me familiar with all the jargon, though of course I’d had those thirty-three years (and the help of my two kids) to catch up.
“Silly thing,” he said. “I kept looking for Annie Cartwright. I mean, I’d expected you’d have got married and everything, but somehow it didn’t occur to me to look for you under another name. I’m sure I could have found records, but in the end, Chris told me.”
“How is Chris?” I asked quickly. “I hear from him and his wife at Christmas, but it’s been years since I’ve seen him.”
“Really good. Really, really good. He’s so . . . I mean . . . the chair, you hardly notice it after awhile and . . .”
“It was you who inspired him, you do realize that? After the shooting, when it was clear he wasn’t going to walk again, he decided to study all the science you used to talk about - toxicology and pathology and all those other ologies. And come back to the department to help build up the labs.”
Sam smiled. “He’s made quite a name for himself. That’s not much to do with me, and everything to do with him. And you?”
“An ology, too. After Chris got shot, well . . . Bill, that is, my . . . my ex-husband now, my fiancé, then. . . Anyway, he’d been trying to get me to quit the force, saying it was too dangerous what with us planning to have kids and everything. I wouldn’t have it, I’d really made a career for myself there after you’d left. But then Chris got hurt, so I quit, got married, had babies, and went back to do my postgraduate work in psychology. Which is what I do now. I’m a therapist. The kids are both grown, so not much to do there anymore.”
I refilled his cup, and handed him the milk. “Biccie?”
“I can’t imagine you engaged to someone who wanted you to leave the force.”
“That’s because you can’t imagine anyone not wanting to be a copper. Anyway, between Neil and all his psychoanalyzing everything, and then you with your ‘I’m from the future, no, I’m from Hyde, no, my television speaks to me, no, I’m a perfectly sane and functioning police officer except that my dad’s this criminal who’s nearly ten years younger than me . . .’ I mean, I can see now that it . . . anyway, I liked the notion of a bloke who knew his own mind. Which Bill most definitely did.”
“But it ended?”
“It did. I decided, in the end, that I didn’t like the notion of a bloke who was so certain he knew his own mind and mine as well.”
“Kids?”
“Susie’s at Sussex, doing Cultural Studies, and Tim’s in computers. He’s moved back home for awhile; he’ll be home later. Maybe you could meet him.”
“I’d like that. How old?”
“Twenty-five.” We both smiled, recognizing. That was the age I was when Sam and I had first met. He’d been thirty-seven. And now he was still thirty-seven and I was twenty years older than him. I suppose I knew I’d aged well, as they say. People always assumed I was about a decade younger than I actually am, and I’d kept my figure. Maybe it helped that I was never a stick insect to begin with. But here I stood in my kitchen, twenty years older than Sam Tyler, and it was stranger even than I’d imagined. And let’s be honest, I’d imagined it.
“But, Sam, what about you? You just went missing one day and we never knew.”
“But you suspected.”
“That all the nonsense you’d told me wasn’t nonsense? I did, but I could never tell. Not even the Guv . . . well, especially not the Guv. He was frantic, you know.”
“Gene Hunt, frantic?”
“It was a strange and fearful sight.”
“I can only imagine.”
“By the way, how’d he take the news?”
“He yelled a lot into the receiver. I haven’t seen him yet, so he doesn’t actually know . . .”
“That you’re not seventy years old? That will come as a bit of a shock.”
“I was almost as shocked to find out he’d retired to . . . Florida? Never saw him setting foot in America, unless it was the Old West.”
“He’s got a boat, and he’s a leader of the expat community in the Fort Lauderdale area. Spends a lot of time writing letters to the editor against all the public smoking bans.” I smiled, thinking of Gene in a Hawaiian shirt and a pair of Bermuda shorts, the way I’d seen him a few years ago when I’d brought the kids over for a visit. Back in 1973, I’d never have imagined being a houseguest of Gene and his Missus. Things change.
“Chris wasn’t all that surprised, though.”
“Well, the not telling . . . I kind of confided in him after you’d gone. He was the only one who seemed like he’d be halfway open-minded about it. . . . More tea?”
“Another cup and I might float away.”
“So?”
“So?”
“Well, you?”
“I’ve been back from medical leave for about a month now. I’ve got my old job back, though sometimes I feel like it’s really Gene’s old job, not mine.” He suddenly looked away from me, “Maya and I decided things weren’t going to work out. But the important thing is that she’s safe. If nothing else, I really did change things.”
“Oh Sam, I’m so glad! Glad that she’s all right, I mean. It was that first killer, the one right after you’d come to us from Hyde . . . or wherever . . . wasn’t it?”
He nodded. “Edward Kramer.”
“And your mum?” I winced, thinking we were probably about the same age.
“She’s well. I wish I could have changed things for her, too, though. I wish somehow she could have known my father wasn’t worth thinking about, comparing other men to, all those years. I wish she could have moved on.”
Me, too, I thought. And not just her. But that wasn’t really true. There’d been a few men between the time Sam left us and the time Bill and I got together; surely the reasons for each break up were about the relationship itself and not about the fact that none of them were Sam Tyler. They weren’t potentially mad or completely obsessed with their jobs, either, which had been all to the good. There’d been some dating since Bill and I split up, as well, but not so much. It’s hard when you’re a forty-something, and then a fifty-something, with kids and work that gives you all the emotional drama you could ever need. Especially the second. “Will he call?” just doesn’t stack up next to having a patient on suicide watch and another threatening to return to an abusive relationship.
“I’ve got something of yours,” I said, changing the subject abruptly. “We found it at your place after you disappeared. The Guv couldn’t imagine you’d have gone anywhere without it; he was sure it meant you were dead.”
“Not--?”
“Ummhmm. It’s held up pretty well; I hope you don’t mind, but Tim used to wear it, before he started dating that vegan who had him wearing nothing but canvas and nylon for awhile.”
“I wasn’t expecting ever to see it again.”
Until Tim had unearthed it, a few years back, it had been in a trunk in the attic. But . . . where had he left it? Tim had exchanged the vegan for a veterinary student who did eat meat, but he hadn’t adopted the jacket again. I plunged into the back of the hall wardrobe, and there it was.
Sam took the leather jacket from me, but he didn’t put it on. Maybe it didn’t fit who he was now, in this time and place. Until he smiled, and I could how pleased he was, seeing it again, even if it was only weeks or months ago for him.
“It means a lot that you kept this for me. I know . . . I know you’ve all gone on and had whole lives without me. It’s . . . just really nice that you cared enough to hang onto it.”
“Of course,” I said, leaving out the bit about the trunk in the attic. “Listen,” I said, “don’t be a stranger, all right? Stay in touch.”
“Absolutely.” I wasn’t sure whether he meant it or not. But he stopped, hand on the doorknob and looked at me in a way that would have had my heart beating faster, back in the old days. “Annie,” he said, “have dinner with me Friday? I’ll cook.”
I didn’t hesitate. “I get off work at half six. Anytime after that.”
For a moment we just looked at each other; I was trying to figure out what he was thinking and I’d wager he was doing the same.
He gave an address in Queen Mary Road. “But you’ve been there already. Remember the mill where Jimmy Saunders was killed?”
I smiled and nodded my head. “I thought you were such a liar that day. Turns out Ray Carling must have been listening to you for once - he started a sideline as a builder, converting industrial loft space; eventually left the force and got rich off property.”
He took my hand and squeezed it for just a moment. “See you, Annie. Next Friday, half seven.”
I watched him walk to his car; it looked like we were picking up just where we’d left off. I’d no idea whether the dinner invitation meant anything more than a desire to rebuild a friendship; I’m not the young woman he knew, maybe just months ago. But there was something about the way he looked at me, the way he squeezed my hand, that made me wonder.
On the other hand, now that I was older and wiser, would I want to get mixed up with someone like Sam, even if that was what he wanted? Far too driven professionally, and not the picture of emotional health. But thinking about sitting down to dinner in his flat - I imagined the glass of wine, the entrée I couldn’t quite pronounce and hadn’t even seen outside of the odd cookery programme - I had butterflies in my stomach. I didn’t know what I wanted. I suspected he didn’t know what he wanted. But I was certainly looking forward to Friday night.
Author: chelseagirl47
Rating: Green Cortina
Notes: Sam/older Annie, friendship or romance, depending on your pov. It's 2006 and Sam Tyler has returned to the present, and he's looking up old friends.
Thanks to neuralclone and bakednudel for betareading, mrs_sean_bean for Britpicking, and v23474 for final reassurances! This is for galacticowl if she wants it.
It isn't every day that someone you last saw thirty-three years ago rings your doorbell.
Reunion
It isn’t every day that someone you last saw thirty-three years ago rings your doorbell.
It was a Saturday morning, and I was in the middle of cleaning. I was at home alone. Susie, my youngest, was off at uni down in Sussex, though Tim was working locally and living at home again. He was training for a marathon and had been off hours ago. So when the doorbell rang and I answered it, wearing my oldest jeans and an equally ancient jumper, I thought it was going to be the package I was waiting for from Amazon.
And there he was, Sam Tyler, looking not a day (well, perhaps a couple of months, let’s not be literal here), but in any case, certainly not thirty-three years older than when I’d last seen him, in 1973.
“Annie?” he asked, squinting just a little.
I put my hand up to smooth back my hair, then realized how self-conscious it looked and stopped halfway through the gesture. I can’t say I hadn’t wondered if this would happen. I’d never really believed Sam was from the future, not ‘til the very end. And then I’d wondered, and had been wondering, ever since.
“Sam,” I said. And then wondered what sort of thing one usually said to a time-travelling former crush who was suddenly considerably younger than oneself. Tim and I had got into the habit of watching Doctor Who together, and I thought Sarah Jane Smith had handled it reasonably well, but of course that was science fiction with aliens and time machines, and this was real life. And there really were no words, so I collected myself as best I could and out came the all-purpose standard response. “Cup of tea?”
He nodded, and followed me inside to the kitchen.
“Earl Grey? Lapsang souchang? Or I’ve got some Yorkshire Gold, if you’re wanting to strip the paint off anything.”
“Earl Grey would be lovely.”
I couldn’t help but keep sneaking glances at him as I made the tea, mechanically. I could tell he was using his keen DI . . . or was that DCI . . . powers of observation, trying to fill himself in on three decades of my life through souvenir tea towels and random cookware.
“You were the hardest to find,” he blurted out suddenly, just as I was about to ask why he hadn’t phoned first. I think I knew the answer to that, anyhow.
“What?” I asked. “Oh, did you google me?”
It must have seemed strange to him, me familiar with all the jargon, though of course I’d had those thirty-three years (and the help of my two kids) to catch up.
“Silly thing,” he said. “I kept looking for Annie Cartwright. I mean, I’d expected you’d have got married and everything, but somehow it didn’t occur to me to look for you under another name. I’m sure I could have found records, but in the end, Chris told me.”
“How is Chris?” I asked quickly. “I hear from him and his wife at Christmas, but it’s been years since I’ve seen him.”
“Really good. Really, really good. He’s so . . . I mean . . . the chair, you hardly notice it after awhile and . . .”
“It was you who inspired him, you do realize that? After the shooting, when it was clear he wasn’t going to walk again, he decided to study all the science you used to talk about - toxicology and pathology and all those other ologies. And come back to the department to help build up the labs.”
Sam smiled. “He’s made quite a name for himself. That’s not much to do with me, and everything to do with him. And you?”
“An ology, too. After Chris got shot, well . . . Bill, that is, my . . . my ex-husband now, my fiancé, then. . . Anyway, he’d been trying to get me to quit the force, saying it was too dangerous what with us planning to have kids and everything. I wouldn’t have it, I’d really made a career for myself there after you’d left. But then Chris got hurt, so I quit, got married, had babies, and went back to do my postgraduate work in psychology. Which is what I do now. I’m a therapist. The kids are both grown, so not much to do there anymore.”
I refilled his cup, and handed him the milk. “Biccie?”
“I can’t imagine you engaged to someone who wanted you to leave the force.”
“That’s because you can’t imagine anyone not wanting to be a copper. Anyway, between Neil and all his psychoanalyzing everything, and then you with your ‘I’m from the future, no, I’m from Hyde, no, my television speaks to me, no, I’m a perfectly sane and functioning police officer except that my dad’s this criminal who’s nearly ten years younger than me . . .’ I mean, I can see now that it . . . anyway, I liked the notion of a bloke who knew his own mind. Which Bill most definitely did.”
“But it ended?”
“It did. I decided, in the end, that I didn’t like the notion of a bloke who was so certain he knew his own mind and mine as well.”
“Kids?”
“Susie’s at Sussex, doing Cultural Studies, and Tim’s in computers. He’s moved back home for awhile; he’ll be home later. Maybe you could meet him.”
“I’d like that. How old?”
“Twenty-five.” We both smiled, recognizing. That was the age I was when Sam and I had first met. He’d been thirty-seven. And now he was still thirty-seven and I was twenty years older than him. I suppose I knew I’d aged well, as they say. People always assumed I was about a decade younger than I actually am, and I’d kept my figure. Maybe it helped that I was never a stick insect to begin with. But here I stood in my kitchen, twenty years older than Sam Tyler, and it was stranger even than I’d imagined. And let’s be honest, I’d imagined it.
“But, Sam, what about you? You just went missing one day and we never knew.”
“But you suspected.”
“That all the nonsense you’d told me wasn’t nonsense? I did, but I could never tell. Not even the Guv . . . well, especially not the Guv. He was frantic, you know.”
“Gene Hunt, frantic?”
“It was a strange and fearful sight.”
“I can only imagine.”
“By the way, how’d he take the news?”
“He yelled a lot into the receiver. I haven’t seen him yet, so he doesn’t actually know . . .”
“That you’re not seventy years old? That will come as a bit of a shock.”
“I was almost as shocked to find out he’d retired to . . . Florida? Never saw him setting foot in America, unless it was the Old West.”
“He’s got a boat, and he’s a leader of the expat community in the Fort Lauderdale area. Spends a lot of time writing letters to the editor against all the public smoking bans.” I smiled, thinking of Gene in a Hawaiian shirt and a pair of Bermuda shorts, the way I’d seen him a few years ago when I’d brought the kids over for a visit. Back in 1973, I’d never have imagined being a houseguest of Gene and his Missus. Things change.
“Chris wasn’t all that surprised, though.”
“Well, the not telling . . . I kind of confided in him after you’d gone. He was the only one who seemed like he’d be halfway open-minded about it. . . . More tea?”
“Another cup and I might float away.”
“So?”
“So?”
“Well, you?”
“I’ve been back from medical leave for about a month now. I’ve got my old job back, though sometimes I feel like it’s really Gene’s old job, not mine.” He suddenly looked away from me, “Maya and I decided things weren’t going to work out. But the important thing is that she’s safe. If nothing else, I really did change things.”
“Oh Sam, I’m so glad! Glad that she’s all right, I mean. It was that first killer, the one right after you’d come to us from Hyde . . . or wherever . . . wasn’t it?”
He nodded. “Edward Kramer.”
“And your mum?” I winced, thinking we were probably about the same age.
“She’s well. I wish I could have changed things for her, too, though. I wish somehow she could have known my father wasn’t worth thinking about, comparing other men to, all those years. I wish she could have moved on.”
Me, too, I thought. And not just her. But that wasn’t really true. There’d been a few men between the time Sam left us and the time Bill and I got together; surely the reasons for each break up were about the relationship itself and not about the fact that none of them were Sam Tyler. They weren’t potentially mad or completely obsessed with their jobs, either, which had been all to the good. There’d been some dating since Bill and I split up, as well, but not so much. It’s hard when you’re a forty-something, and then a fifty-something, with kids and work that gives you all the emotional drama you could ever need. Especially the second. “Will he call?” just doesn’t stack up next to having a patient on suicide watch and another threatening to return to an abusive relationship.
“I’ve got something of yours,” I said, changing the subject abruptly. “We found it at your place after you disappeared. The Guv couldn’t imagine you’d have gone anywhere without it; he was sure it meant you were dead.”
“Not--?”
“Ummhmm. It’s held up pretty well; I hope you don’t mind, but Tim used to wear it, before he started dating that vegan who had him wearing nothing but canvas and nylon for awhile.”
“I wasn’t expecting ever to see it again.”
Until Tim had unearthed it, a few years back, it had been in a trunk in the attic. But . . . where had he left it? Tim had exchanged the vegan for a veterinary student who did eat meat, but he hadn’t adopted the jacket again. I plunged into the back of the hall wardrobe, and there it was.
Sam took the leather jacket from me, but he didn’t put it on. Maybe it didn’t fit who he was now, in this time and place. Until he smiled, and I could how pleased he was, seeing it again, even if it was only weeks or months ago for him.
“It means a lot that you kept this for me. I know . . . I know you’ve all gone on and had whole lives without me. It’s . . . just really nice that you cared enough to hang onto it.”
“Of course,” I said, leaving out the bit about the trunk in the attic. “Listen,” I said, “don’t be a stranger, all right? Stay in touch.”
“Absolutely.” I wasn’t sure whether he meant it or not. But he stopped, hand on the doorknob and looked at me in a way that would have had my heart beating faster, back in the old days. “Annie,” he said, “have dinner with me Friday? I’ll cook.”
I didn’t hesitate. “I get off work at half six. Anytime after that.”
For a moment we just looked at each other; I was trying to figure out what he was thinking and I’d wager he was doing the same.
He gave an address in Queen Mary Road. “But you’ve been there already. Remember the mill where Jimmy Saunders was killed?”
I smiled and nodded my head. “I thought you were such a liar that day. Turns out Ray Carling must have been listening to you for once - he started a sideline as a builder, converting industrial loft space; eventually left the force and got rich off property.”
He took my hand and squeezed it for just a moment. “See you, Annie. Next Friday, half seven.”
I watched him walk to his car; it looked like we were picking up just where we’d left off. I’d no idea whether the dinner invitation meant anything more than a desire to rebuild a friendship; I’m not the young woman he knew, maybe just months ago. But there was something about the way he looked at me, the way he squeezed my hand, that made me wonder.
On the other hand, now that I was older and wiser, would I want to get mixed up with someone like Sam, even if that was what he wanted? Far too driven professionally, and not the picture of emotional health. But thinking about sitting down to dinner in his flat - I imagined the glass of wine, the entrée I couldn’t quite pronounce and hadn’t even seen outside of the odd cookery programme - I had butterflies in my stomach. I didn’t know what I wanted. I suspected he didn’t know what he wanted. But I was certainly looking forward to Friday night.