Whump!bingo fic: Addiction (Gene/Sam, Brown Cortina, character death)
Title: Addiction
Rating: Brown Cortina for multiple character death
Word Count: 1,972
Notes: I have my computer back. I thought I'd whump everyone to celebrate. (Six Trojan viruses! Honestly.) So this is my first entry to the whump!bingo, in which just about everyone gets whumped.
Summary: Gene is addicted. Hopelessly so.
It’s quiet, deadly quiet. Until Woolf speaks.
“So… how do we get out of this?”
And Gene can only think one thing, that they can’t get out of this, none of them can, because Woolf has gone too bloody far and now they’re all tangled in his bloody web of back-handers and lies. His gun is cold in his shaking fingers. Every breath is a struggle, his chest constricted with shame and hate and Woolf’s eyes are so bloody kind, even now. He feels like shooting him. He feels like stamping on his bastard body. He feels like running. He feels like crying.
He stands stock-still, jaw clenched, and levels the gun at the man who used to be his everything.
A single shot rings out.
“SAM! NO! JESUS, NO, SAM, CHRIST, NO!”
-0-0-
He sees Sam’s face swimming in the whisky, clasped in his trembling hand. Smiling at him. The bastard’s always smiling, that content expression on his face, the one that he used to imagine in his cold, empty house at night. He wants to throw the whisky from him, but instead he throws it down his neck. The off-licence on the corner refused to sell him any more booze when he went there earlier, and he’s in an even worse state now than he was then, half a lager tipped down his front and his eyes bleary with exhaustion and drunkenness; no use wasting precious alcohol.
This was what his dad used to look like, he’s sure. He lifts his head, staring into the mirror opposite him in the hallway, and it’s just as he imagined, the monster staring back at him. The man who used to smile at him, just before he’d knock Gene’s head back into the wall and laugh at the scream of pain, the tears in his eyes. He turns away, but the reflection’s still there, haunting him, and the only way to get rid of it is stumbling up from the sofa and over to the armchair in the corner, in the dark.
The darkness hides him, his shame and his wasting away. Gene reaches out for the bottle on the mantelpiece and slugs another half-inch of whisky, throws it into the hallway, and sighs with relief as he hears the mirror shattering.
If only his aim had been so good when…
He snatches a bottle of beer from the table, drinks it, and smacks his own head back into the wall over and over, until the pain makes him drowsy enough to sleep.
-0-0-
Sam laughs. Just as he did knelt in front of Reg Cole, just as he did after Red Rum won the Grand National. It’s carefree, light, happy, until it turns into a gurgling cough and blood spills from his mouth, down onto that poncy leather jacket. So soft under Gene’s frantic hands.
“Gene… it’s OK. Nothing you can do. My time an’ all that.” He looks up at Gene, reaches to Gene’s face, brushing the very tips of his fingers over his cheek. They’re icy cold. As though Sam’s dead already. “Just… keep holdin’ me. That’s all I a-” He stops, coughs, watches Gene with half-closed eyes as more blood dribbles down his chin. “Ask. Just keep h-hold of me.”
Glen’s already rushed off. Harry lies dead, propped up against the radiator, and Gene doesn’t know who did it but it wasn’t him. There’s warmth on his kneecaps, and if he looks down to see what it is, he knows it will destroy him, so he keeps his eyes on Sam’s and does his best to mop up the blood all over his face and shirt.
“Come on, Sam. Not that serious, not for a picky-pain like you, is it? My DI? What, taken down in the line of duty, you want that to be yer epigraph, do you. Come on, Sam, just one little bullet, that’s all.”
“Gene… I wish it were that simple.” And even now, Sam’s fussy about his grammar. “You’ll be alright, won’t you? Won’t you?”
He closes his eyes just a second too early to see the agony flitting across Gene’s face.
-0-0-
Ray is the only one brave enough to come in the next morning. Gene’s ensconced himself in his office, with a full bottle of whisky and a blanket, and it might just be his mind playing tricks on him, but his trousers don’t seem to fit as they once did, they seem very baggy suddenly. Maybe the launderette’s done something to them, but he hasn’t been to the launderette since-
He cuts himself off with a gulp of Scotland’s finest. It burns his mouth until all he can think about, all he can taste, is the eye-watering pain on his tongue and not the stench of fresh blood in the air, the tang of gunpowder, the cleanness and gentle musk that was and another bit of whisky, Gene. Hide those bad thoughts away.
Ray puts something down in front of him. Gene pushes it away.
“Guv, armed mugging in the city centre. Aren’t you interested?”
He should be. Christ knows, he would’ve been once, but when he opens his mouth to reply taking a breath in hurts, and Ray’s straight round the desk to rub his back as he coughs.
He shoves Ray backwards, and Ray retreats, pain in his eyes. He doesn’t want Ray to see the funny coloured sputum he keeps coughing up. But someone might come in any second, so he forces himself to wash it down with more whisky and not to spit it out, however tempting it might be. Something inside is sore as he shifts about, probably his liver, but once again, the part of him that should care has been dowsed in something very strong and very, very acidic.
He lifts the bottle again, only to find there’s nothing left in it. Shit.
-0-0-
Sam’s no longer moving, no longer heaving in breaths. He’s not dead. There’s the tiniest pulse, faint, erratic. Gene rubs a thumb over Sam’s cheek, bends his head to press against his DI’s, and pushes the bundle of towels and shirts and bits of uniform harder into Sam’s wound, ignoring the sudden gasp of pain from within the crook of his arm.
“Sam, see, yer holdin’ on. Doin’ well. Ambulance is on its way, yeah? You can’t give up, you bastard, you strung me along an’ now yer desertin’ me. You think I don’t take offence at that?”
“Well, unless you- want to- stamp- on my g-grave… not a lot y- ahh- can d-do, Guv…” Sam’s shivering now, from head to toe, and Gene can only clutch harder to him, keep the cloths and whatever else in place. “Y-you’ll pick a d-decent song?”
“You pick yer own songs, you bastard. You die on me an’ I’ll be sendin’ you off to ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’, just about sums you up, bloody weirdo.” He ignores the cramping in his arm, the pain in his chest. Sam is not dying. Sam is not dying. Sam will not die. “Come on, they’re on their way, you’ll be fine. My round at the pub when yer well enough, yeah?”
“Now I know I- I’m not c-argh- comin’ back.” Sam squeezes his eyes shut, lifts one hand to latch onto Gene’s with all the strength he has left. His voice is soft, peaceful. “Bastard.”
“Sam, don’t say that, please don’t bloody say that.” He’s begging. Begging. This is what Sam does to him. “Yer not dyin’, yer not dyin’, don’t bloody die, Sam, you ‘ang on in there, that’s an order, don’t you dare die.”
The fingers laced in his go limp.
-0-0-
Nelson asks Annie to take Gene home. He’s not serving Gene, nor is anyone else. CID are forbidden from buying him drinks. Gene tries to snatch a bottle of whisky from behind the counter, but his hands are shaking too hard to grab it, and Annie hauls him away from what he so desperately needs as he screams at Nelson that he’ll have him, he’ll be in a cell this time tomorrow, you bastard, I’ll see to it myself that you-
Annie throws him against a wall, and Gene is caught so off-balance and so bloody sober that he slams into it and collapses into the dust, clutching his bleeding head.
“You need to stop bloody drinkin’!” Annie shouts at him, grabbing his arm in an unforgiving hold and hauling him to his feet. “Just because Sam died, doesn’t mean you ‘ave to go to the dogs, you stupid man! Yer a DCI, you’ve got responsibilities, you need to act like a bloody adult instead of picklin’ yerself until you can’t see straight!”
She manhandles him into the passenger seat of the Cortina, slamming the door shut on him. He presses the central locking mechanism. No jumped-up bloody plonk is going to get the better of him, especially one who dares to injure their DCI. Annie screams at him, spitting insults, but Gene simply clambers into the driver’s seat (not an easy feat, his vision seems to be going on him) and slots the keys into the ignition, flooring the accelerator as soon as he’s in gear.
There’s nothing wrong with him that a good scotch won’t fix.
-0-0-
The ambulance arrives to Gene’s keening cries, screaming at his DI to stay alive as he desperately pummells Sam’s chest, breathes into his mouth, over and over, just as Sam taught him. It’s hopeless. They know that the second they approach.
Someone pulls Gene up and to his feet, bundles him away. They get as far as the door to CID before Gene registers that Sam’s not there anymore and punches the bloke straight in the face, struggling against the arms of his own department trying to hold him in place as he reaches out towards Sam, pale as death, being carried past him, why aren’t they carrying on the CPR, why aren’t they trying to save Sam, why have they stopped him doing it-
Ray pulls him into a chair, Sam’s chair, and Gene collapses, too exhausted even to scream, bending double and dry-retching, his forehead brushing the congealing blood on his trousers.
-0-0-
The ambulance arrives to a man collapsed on the floor of his lounge, barely breathing, scotch and lager bottles strewn around him like confetti as a young brunette woman kneels beside him, fingers on his throat and forehead. Alcoholic. Too far gone to help.
Annie is told that as soon as she gets to the hospital. Gene’s given up. His lungs are filled with infection, his brain is damaged, his liver is shot to pieces. He can’t hold on, not even with the hospital’s help. He’s got two hours, max. If they operated on the bleed in his brain, maybe ten, fourteen at the most, but finding a surgeon who would want to operate on a man in such a state would probably take as long as Gene’s got. They’ll pump him full of morphine so that it’s peaceful. There’s nothing else to do.
Within ten minutes of Annie calling the Arms, the tiny bed bay is crowded with coppers, silent, watching as Gene’s body withers away bit by bit, emasculated and shrunken. The power Gene Hunt once carried is gone; a breathing corpse remains. Annie holds his hand, in the slim hope that some corner of Gene’s brain will be able to register the comfort, and bites her lip hard to hold back her tears as Ray delves in Gene’s coat and retrieves his warrant card to tuck beneath the hospital gown, over Gene’s heart.
It isn’t until after it’s all over, and the doctors press it into her hand, that Annie discovers it wasn’t Gene’s warrant card, but Sam’s, that her Guv died bearing.
Rating: Brown Cortina for multiple character death
Word Count: 1,972
Notes: I have my computer back. I thought I'd whump everyone to celebrate. (Six Trojan viruses! Honestly.) So this is my first entry to the whump!bingo, in which just about everyone gets whumped.
Summary: Gene is addicted. Hopelessly so.
It’s quiet, deadly quiet. Until Woolf speaks.
“So… how do we get out of this?”
And Gene can only think one thing, that they can’t get out of this, none of them can, because Woolf has gone too bloody far and now they’re all tangled in his bloody web of back-handers and lies. His gun is cold in his shaking fingers. Every breath is a struggle, his chest constricted with shame and hate and Woolf’s eyes are so bloody kind, even now. He feels like shooting him. He feels like stamping on his bastard body. He feels like running. He feels like crying.
He stands stock-still, jaw clenched, and levels the gun at the man who used to be his everything.
A single shot rings out.
“SAM! NO! JESUS, NO, SAM, CHRIST, NO!”
-0-0-
He sees Sam’s face swimming in the whisky, clasped in his trembling hand. Smiling at him. The bastard’s always smiling, that content expression on his face, the one that he used to imagine in his cold, empty house at night. He wants to throw the whisky from him, but instead he throws it down his neck. The off-licence on the corner refused to sell him any more booze when he went there earlier, and he’s in an even worse state now than he was then, half a lager tipped down his front and his eyes bleary with exhaustion and drunkenness; no use wasting precious alcohol.
This was what his dad used to look like, he’s sure. He lifts his head, staring into the mirror opposite him in the hallway, and it’s just as he imagined, the monster staring back at him. The man who used to smile at him, just before he’d knock Gene’s head back into the wall and laugh at the scream of pain, the tears in his eyes. He turns away, but the reflection’s still there, haunting him, and the only way to get rid of it is stumbling up from the sofa and over to the armchair in the corner, in the dark.
The darkness hides him, his shame and his wasting away. Gene reaches out for the bottle on the mantelpiece and slugs another half-inch of whisky, throws it into the hallway, and sighs with relief as he hears the mirror shattering.
If only his aim had been so good when…
He snatches a bottle of beer from the table, drinks it, and smacks his own head back into the wall over and over, until the pain makes him drowsy enough to sleep.
-0-0-
Sam laughs. Just as he did knelt in front of Reg Cole, just as he did after Red Rum won the Grand National. It’s carefree, light, happy, until it turns into a gurgling cough and blood spills from his mouth, down onto that poncy leather jacket. So soft under Gene’s frantic hands.
“Gene… it’s OK. Nothing you can do. My time an’ all that.” He looks up at Gene, reaches to Gene’s face, brushing the very tips of his fingers over his cheek. They’re icy cold. As though Sam’s dead already. “Just… keep holdin’ me. That’s all I a-” He stops, coughs, watches Gene with half-closed eyes as more blood dribbles down his chin. “Ask. Just keep h-hold of me.”
Glen’s already rushed off. Harry lies dead, propped up against the radiator, and Gene doesn’t know who did it but it wasn’t him. There’s warmth on his kneecaps, and if he looks down to see what it is, he knows it will destroy him, so he keeps his eyes on Sam’s and does his best to mop up the blood all over his face and shirt.
“Come on, Sam. Not that serious, not for a picky-pain like you, is it? My DI? What, taken down in the line of duty, you want that to be yer epigraph, do you. Come on, Sam, just one little bullet, that’s all.”
“Gene… I wish it were that simple.” And even now, Sam’s fussy about his grammar. “You’ll be alright, won’t you? Won’t you?”
He closes his eyes just a second too early to see the agony flitting across Gene’s face.
-0-0-
Ray is the only one brave enough to come in the next morning. Gene’s ensconced himself in his office, with a full bottle of whisky and a blanket, and it might just be his mind playing tricks on him, but his trousers don’t seem to fit as they once did, they seem very baggy suddenly. Maybe the launderette’s done something to them, but he hasn’t been to the launderette since-
He cuts himself off with a gulp of Scotland’s finest. It burns his mouth until all he can think about, all he can taste, is the eye-watering pain on his tongue and not the stench of fresh blood in the air, the tang of gunpowder, the cleanness and gentle musk that was and another bit of whisky, Gene. Hide those bad thoughts away.
Ray puts something down in front of him. Gene pushes it away.
“Guv, armed mugging in the city centre. Aren’t you interested?”
He should be. Christ knows, he would’ve been once, but when he opens his mouth to reply taking a breath in hurts, and Ray’s straight round the desk to rub his back as he coughs.
He shoves Ray backwards, and Ray retreats, pain in his eyes. He doesn’t want Ray to see the funny coloured sputum he keeps coughing up. But someone might come in any second, so he forces himself to wash it down with more whisky and not to spit it out, however tempting it might be. Something inside is sore as he shifts about, probably his liver, but once again, the part of him that should care has been dowsed in something very strong and very, very acidic.
He lifts the bottle again, only to find there’s nothing left in it. Shit.
-0-0-
Sam’s no longer moving, no longer heaving in breaths. He’s not dead. There’s the tiniest pulse, faint, erratic. Gene rubs a thumb over Sam’s cheek, bends his head to press against his DI’s, and pushes the bundle of towels and shirts and bits of uniform harder into Sam’s wound, ignoring the sudden gasp of pain from within the crook of his arm.
“Sam, see, yer holdin’ on. Doin’ well. Ambulance is on its way, yeah? You can’t give up, you bastard, you strung me along an’ now yer desertin’ me. You think I don’t take offence at that?”
“Well, unless you- want to- stamp- on my g-grave… not a lot y- ahh- can d-do, Guv…” Sam’s shivering now, from head to toe, and Gene can only clutch harder to him, keep the cloths and whatever else in place. “Y-you’ll pick a d-decent song?”
“You pick yer own songs, you bastard. You die on me an’ I’ll be sendin’ you off to ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’, just about sums you up, bloody weirdo.” He ignores the cramping in his arm, the pain in his chest. Sam is not dying. Sam is not dying. Sam will not die. “Come on, they’re on their way, you’ll be fine. My round at the pub when yer well enough, yeah?”
“Now I know I- I’m not c-argh- comin’ back.” Sam squeezes his eyes shut, lifts one hand to latch onto Gene’s with all the strength he has left. His voice is soft, peaceful. “Bastard.”
“Sam, don’t say that, please don’t bloody say that.” He’s begging. Begging. This is what Sam does to him. “Yer not dyin’, yer not dyin’, don’t bloody die, Sam, you ‘ang on in there, that’s an order, don’t you dare die.”
The fingers laced in his go limp.
-0-0-
Nelson asks Annie to take Gene home. He’s not serving Gene, nor is anyone else. CID are forbidden from buying him drinks. Gene tries to snatch a bottle of whisky from behind the counter, but his hands are shaking too hard to grab it, and Annie hauls him away from what he so desperately needs as he screams at Nelson that he’ll have him, he’ll be in a cell this time tomorrow, you bastard, I’ll see to it myself that you-
Annie throws him against a wall, and Gene is caught so off-balance and so bloody sober that he slams into it and collapses into the dust, clutching his bleeding head.
“You need to stop bloody drinkin’!” Annie shouts at him, grabbing his arm in an unforgiving hold and hauling him to his feet. “Just because Sam died, doesn’t mean you ‘ave to go to the dogs, you stupid man! Yer a DCI, you’ve got responsibilities, you need to act like a bloody adult instead of picklin’ yerself until you can’t see straight!”
She manhandles him into the passenger seat of the Cortina, slamming the door shut on him. He presses the central locking mechanism. No jumped-up bloody plonk is going to get the better of him, especially one who dares to injure their DCI. Annie screams at him, spitting insults, but Gene simply clambers into the driver’s seat (not an easy feat, his vision seems to be going on him) and slots the keys into the ignition, flooring the accelerator as soon as he’s in gear.
There’s nothing wrong with him that a good scotch won’t fix.
-0-0-
The ambulance arrives to Gene’s keening cries, screaming at his DI to stay alive as he desperately pummells Sam’s chest, breathes into his mouth, over and over, just as Sam taught him. It’s hopeless. They know that the second they approach.
Someone pulls Gene up and to his feet, bundles him away. They get as far as the door to CID before Gene registers that Sam’s not there anymore and punches the bloke straight in the face, struggling against the arms of his own department trying to hold him in place as he reaches out towards Sam, pale as death, being carried past him, why aren’t they carrying on the CPR, why aren’t they trying to save Sam, why have they stopped him doing it-
Ray pulls him into a chair, Sam’s chair, and Gene collapses, too exhausted even to scream, bending double and dry-retching, his forehead brushing the congealing blood on his trousers.
-0-0-
The ambulance arrives to a man collapsed on the floor of his lounge, barely breathing, scotch and lager bottles strewn around him like confetti as a young brunette woman kneels beside him, fingers on his throat and forehead. Alcoholic. Too far gone to help.
Annie is told that as soon as she gets to the hospital. Gene’s given up. His lungs are filled with infection, his brain is damaged, his liver is shot to pieces. He can’t hold on, not even with the hospital’s help. He’s got two hours, max. If they operated on the bleed in his brain, maybe ten, fourteen at the most, but finding a surgeon who would want to operate on a man in such a state would probably take as long as Gene’s got. They’ll pump him full of morphine so that it’s peaceful. There’s nothing else to do.
Within ten minutes of Annie calling the Arms, the tiny bed bay is crowded with coppers, silent, watching as Gene’s body withers away bit by bit, emasculated and shrunken. The power Gene Hunt once carried is gone; a breathing corpse remains. Annie holds his hand, in the slim hope that some corner of Gene’s brain will be able to register the comfort, and bites her lip hard to hold back her tears as Ray delves in Gene’s coat and retrieves his warrant card to tuck beneath the hospital gown, over Gene’s heart.
It isn’t until after it’s all over, and the doctors press it into her hand, that Annie discovers it wasn’t Gene’s warrant card, but Sam’s, that her Guv died bearing.