How We Smashed Johari's Window (part four) by halotolerant, Brown Cortina, Gene/Sam
Title: How We Smashed Johari's Window (part four - chapters 7-8) Part One, Part Two, Part Three
Rating: Brown Cortina
Pairing: Gene/Sam
Words: ~5000 (this part - for why this finished fic is in parts please see part one!)
Notes: A monsterly large fic, in which essentially I ask (and hopefully answer) the question: What if everything Sam (and the viewer) thinks about his time in 1973 is wrong? What if Gene is absolutely real, but Sam has had all the experiences we've seen and come to love him through? Can the two ever be reconciled (for that matter, can Gene and Sam?)
A Johari window is a psychological tool that divides personality into: things we know and others know about us; things we know and others don't; things others know about us but we don't and; things we and others do not know about ourselves.
Summary for Part Four: In which Gene has deja vu, Sam has some chips, the fic earns part of it's Brown Cortina rating and the plot thickens
Sam gave a low whistle. “Not too bad.”
Gene slammed his car door and scowled. “Yes, I know, we’ve done this already. Go inside.”
It was only after he’d followed Sam up the few steps, opened and then closed the door behind them that Gene turned in surprise. “How did you know what number it was? You can’t remember being here before.”
“It’s number 44, you said so.”
“Yes, only a ruddy month ago.”
Sam grinned: “There! It’s working already.” The concept didn’t seem to worry him, for all it had Gene’s heart racing. “OK, what did we do next?”
Gene closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose. “We got fish and chips.”
“I’m not sure I could eat anything else, but let’s try it, eh?” There was an odd glee about Sam, a sense of the recently liberated. “This feels good, this feels right. I’m sure I’m going to remember something soon.”
“Whoopee” Gene commented, opening the front door again.
And, as before, within twenty minutes they had returned to sit down - around the kitchen table this time, as Gene felt very disinclined to turn on a TV - with their packets of greasy, salty food.
The scent was unexpectedly evocative, Gene found. The fried fat coating the inside of his mouth, soaking onto his fingertips, the vinegar biting at the cuts on his face and piercing his memory in a way that stung no less.
Sam toyed with a chip or two, a distant look on his face. “What did we talk about?” he said at last, with genuine curiosity in his voice.
“Nothing much. The job. Stuff like that.” Gene fumbled in his coat, got to a hip flask and cleared his mouth and mind with Glenfiddich.
“And then?”
“And then you went home.”
“I went home?”
“Yes.” Gene put down his half-eaten chip and pushed his plate away. The food was forming a lump in his stomach. He was losing track of which lie he’d told himself, which to Annie and which he wanted to tell to Sam. And it was tiring. That was why criminals caved and spilled everything, because keeping secrets was bloody tiring.
“I went home to that flat?” Sam asked, getting more excited.
“Yes, as I said. What is this, an interrogation?”
“But the last time you saw me was here?”
“Yes, and..?”
Sam grinned in triumph, folding his arms behind his head and leaning back: “You’d never have made me walk all the way there. There’s no bus. You’d have driven me.” His eyes met Gene’s. “I don’t think I did leave.”
Gene abruptly got up from the table and walked to the sink, turning on the hot tap. He ran a full sink, frothy with Fairy Liquid. Having never washed so much as a fork during his marriage, he usually deeply resented the necessity now he lived alone. But tonight it was something to occupy the time, and it allowed him to face away from Sam.
For a few minutes there was no sound but the clink and scrape of Sam finishing his meal. Then there came a pause that left Gene with the uncomfortable feeling that if he turned round he’d see Sam watching him.
“Well then,” Sam’s voice was artificially light. “As I see it, since you won’t tell me what we were doing at here the last time I was compos mentis, we either killed someone or shagged each other. And you don’t strike me as a murderer.”
“Leave it.” Gene wasn’t having any bullshit over this. They had to just draw a fucking line and walk away.
“No. I won’t leave it.” There was the sound of Sam pushing back his chair and standing up. “You’ve been hedging around something all day, keeping something back from me. I want to know. I deserve to know.”
“I told you to leave it. I don’t want to punch you.”
“And I told you, I want to know.”
“Look, it’s not like repeating what happened is guaranteed to work, is it? Can’t you believe that you’ve been given a second chance most people don’t get, a chance to avoid a bloody stupid mistake?” Gene didn’t turn around from the sink. This was not a big deal, did not need to be a big deal.
Sam’s voice was definitely closer. “Can’t you believe that there is nothing more terrifying that not being able to remember? I want my life back. Not the version they told me in Hyde, not the version you know, cobbled from my own bloody cover stories and station gossip. I want my life, my memories. I want the fucking truth.”
He stepped directly behind Gene, breathing hard, and this was going to turn into fight soon, Gene could feel it in the air.
“And you!” Sam almost yelled. “Don’t you want to get the old Sam back, whoever the fuck he is? Did he mean that little to you that you won’t even…?” As his voice trailed off, Gene stiffened, uncertain.
When Sam spoke again, it was much quieter, softer. “I’m sorry. Gene, please…”
There was a moment of stillness, Gene’s hands were frozen in position as they scrubbed chip fat from the plate, his mind trying to compose any kind of answer or excuse. He was aware of Sam coming impossibly close, of his heat.
Gene shivered, but didn’t try and move, as Sam slowly reached out his hands and closed them over Gene’s under the water. Sam was wrapped around him, head resting between his shoulder blades, breathing fire down spine. He could feel Sam’s pebbled nipples through both their shirts, and his cock…The press of Sam’s cock in the groove of Gene’s arse made his legs shake.
“Yes” Sam hissed, low and breathy and almost unkindly. “This is it, isn’t it? This is what you weren’t going to tell me about.”
Sam’s hands slid over Gene’s, rippling the bubbles. Even their arms were flush together, every movement sparking off another tingling rush of arousal.
Gene swallowed and breathed a little shakily - which Sam could bloody feel, he knew. “You don’t know me. You don’t know us. You don’t know that you want this.”
“Oh I know you, Gene Hunt.” There was still an edge of cruelty to Sam’s voice, something new, foreign. “Or at least I know men like you. I know that if you haven’t decked me one already, what that Sam was to you must have been pretty fucking special. As for what I want, you can feel that.” He nudged his groin closer to Gene’s arse, and Gene let himself close his eyes, since Sam couldn’t see.
The voice continued in his ear, low and enticing: “I never felt like this about her, about my ‘wife’. I told her I loved her but I had to make myself show it. But since I saw you my body’s known things my brain can’t seem to get to. And I want to remember them, Gene.” Sam sighed, breathing deeply, moved his mouth to speak directly onto the back of Gene’s neck, wet and perfect. “Even the way you smell, fuck, Gene, it makes want the craziest things….”
On the last words, he raised his sopping hands to Gene’s shirt front and started rubbing at his nipples, and Gene’s planned ‘Stop’ came out as “Shit, yes” and he turned around in the circle of Sam’s arms and looked into his eyes.
Sam stared back at him. But not Sam. The person looking out of those eyes was not his Sam, not exactly.
The eyes blinked, widened, smiled. There was a soft chuckle.
“You didn’t even get this far, did you?” Sam had that look, the look of instinct validated, of hunches confirmed. “You maybe kissed me - kissed him - you maybe talked, but you didn’t do this, what I’m going to do you, what I want to do to you and aren’t afraid of. You two didn’t fuck.”
And hell, Gene was a bloke. He wanted and he needed and there this was before him - he’d been surviving on nothing and here was a feast. He was only human.
How much further could he have to fall?
He didn’t kiss Sam, this Sam, but there was no need, no indication to. Instead, Gene moved his palm to Sam’s fly, gratified by a low moan as he did so. Then splinters of heat were rushing out from his groin as Sam palmed him through his trousers. Somehow they pulled each other’s clothes off, Gene thinking that there was no way he could stop this now and not look as fucking scared as he felt.
It was like shoplifting as a kid because your mates told you to, thrilling and terrifying, the conflicting feelings of knowing you wanted the prize and their respect, but somehow also that you were surrendering.
“Gene, oh, shit, Gene.”
He had his hand round Sam’s cock, jacking slow and firm, trying not to be distracted by Sam’s hand on his own, warm from the water.
Gene was panting already when Sam’s mouth first returned to his neck, and then he was gasping, struggling to breathe, as Sam’s tongue traced its way up and down the tendons of his neck, right into his ear, swirling and stroking. His hand fell away from Sam’s cock, he was lying out on the floor - how the fuck did they get to the Living Room floor? - prone under Sam’s fucking tongue.
This wasn’t the same Sam at all. This Sam was confident. This Sam didn’t look like he was afraid of, well, of being decked.
This Sam wasn’t saying the things that had been said before, because this Sam didn’t know him. This Sam wasn’t hesitant. This Sam was smiling at with an edge of curiosity, kissing his way down the centre of his chest and flicking at a nipple, which made Gene grit his teeth and just…he couldn’t come before they’d even started, he couldn’t.
Gene’s nipples, his stomach, his navel, Sam traversed them all, until Gene felt like his whole body was an extension of his cock, throbbing and sensitive and turned on. He was trying to grab at the carpet, coming up with tiny fibres.
“Nasty bruises” Sam murmured into the skin above his navel. “You should be more careful who you try and rescue.”
“You’re nothing like the first person I’ve fought to save” Gene replied, struggling to think as he took in Sam’s body, which he’d never seen in the light before.
Looking away, he added: “You’re just the first who helped me do it.”
With an undecipherable expression, Sam moved his attention lower. And not to Gene’s cock.
“What the hell do…you think…you’re doing?” Gene managed to growl, watching in dismay as Sam reached out for one of the sofa cushions and slid it under Gene’s hips, lifting him up. If all his muscles hadn’t been jelly he’d have sat up, and he could, any minute now. Any minute now.
“You’ll like it. I promise.” Sam was grinning, a knowledge and confidence in his eyes that the old Sam categorically not had. It was so unsettling that Gene forgot to protest, and the next thing he knew, there was a sensation like…fuck…like…
“Fuck!” Gene gasped, loud, spreading his legs wider without wanting to, because Sam was…with his tongue, his lips, kissing him there, where it wasn’t supposed to feel good. Except it was fire and iron and shooting nerves and his cock was leaking, begging and he was begging, flexing his arsehole because all he wanted was more of that feeling.
Or even more than that. Sam stopped licking across him, began circling instead, making Gene whimper into the fist he was biting and the circles were getting tighter, smaller, and in a minute Sam’s tongue would poke into him, right through and fuck, he wanted that so much he could cry.
Summoning up every last reserve of strength, Gene pulled himself away, gasping.
“Get the fuck off me, Sam.”
Sam was left there, kneeling, face near the cushion, flushed red, looking up at him in sheer bewilderment.
He had his own dripping, red cock in one hand.
Gene closed his eyes and Did. Not. Come.
For a moment the only sound was their panting. Then Gene, having swallowed a few times, moved forwards. “It’s not for me, yeah?” he said, almost kindly, like he didn’t want to punch Sam in the face, just a little, for teaching him that that sensation was out there.
Sam still looked - well, it was Sam, myriad mysterious and unnecessary emotions, even this Sam was bloody impossible to read. So Gene moved behind him as he knelt up, echoing and reversing their position at the sink. He got his bent knees either side of Sam’s, so that he was flush against his back, and reached around to take Sam’s cock in his hand. On the touch, Sam hissed through his teeth, and more pre-come dripped out of the head. He was close.
“Gets you off, does it, doing that to blokes?” Gene asked, genuinely curious. He dropped a kiss to Sam’s neck to show there were no hard feelings.
“Hey, I’m flying on instinct here, I’m fucking lost.”
“I’m sorry” Gene whispered, meaning it.
“Just do that harder, yeah? Oh yeah.”
And, ignoring the trembling in his thighs, Gene did it harder, drew fifty shades of “Yes!” out of this Sam who was not quite Sam, trying to also ignore the way his arse still tightened as it begged to get the sensations back, trying to ignore his own aching cock and still feeling somehow as if he was taking advantage.
But when Sam came, threw his head back on Gene’s shoulder, he said after a moment, “At least let me…” and turned, urged Gene to lie down again, holding his hands up saying “Not that, I promise, just..” and straddled him, kneeling over him and took his cock in hand. It took a few twisting strokes and Gene was there in the relief of orgasm.
Sam lifted his dripping hand to his mouth and gave it one long, feline lick, which had no bloody right to be anything like erotic, but which made Sam close his eyes and give a little whimper, and made Gene feel like he was starting to come all over again, half-way through.
For a moment it looked like Sam might kiss him, but Gene rolled away. Looked at the wall for a moment and just breathed, overwhelmed.
Sam didn’t follow.
Finally, Gene found the energy to move. “I’ll have the shower first” he said, pulling on his y-fronts. “So, you remember anything?”
Sam was lying out on his back on the rug, hands over his face. “Actually” he said, in the oddest voice, “I can’t even remember why I thought this would be a good idea.”
“Well at least that makes two of us” said Gene, closing the door behind him.
- - -
Chapter Eight
Déjà vu was not usually something Gene was particularly sensitive to. And he’d never have admitted to feeling anything French in any case. But that morning, lying alone in his bed, he couldn’t escape a vague sense that he’d been through this all before. The feeling of unease and the echo both hopeful and regretful of ‘Sam’ - both streamed down a well-worn path in his mind.
Gene lay back and rubbed his eyes, yawning and stretching, trying to avoid noticing the delicious post-orgasmic fluidity of his body. The last time he had felt like this, after all, he’d ended the day curled in the back of his car, murmuring wordless regrets and drooling into the upholstery.
But all the same Gene swung his feet out of the bed and started dressing. He hadn’t got through forty-three years of life by not facing the day just because he had no idea how to handle his circumstances. That, in fact, was his coping strategy: keep going, keep moving, push through and push past. Don’t stop to recover anything you drop along the way, because however much you need it, you need to move ahead and get away even more.
No matter how the poets frame it, though, memory is not a box you can delve in and out of, taking what you want. More, it is like water, to be lost or played in or dammed up, and which, if kept back, will crash down eventually with no more reference to you than the rain.
And so, that morning, Gene found himself remembering precisely how much good his policy had done Stuart, the recollection arriving unsought as always did.
- - -
“I lost him” Gene had told Sam that wet day at the cemetery, speaking the words out loud for the first time in his life. His tone had been matter of fact, cold. “Stuart gave up a great deal to help me escape how we lived, and when I finally managed it, I didn’t want to look backwards.”
He must have looked like a vulture, stood there over the grave with his coat solid around him and his shoulders hunched up.
“You know,” he continued, “When he died, I came home pissed as an Irish sailor and when the wife complained I told her: ‘My brother’s dead, I’m allowed.’ And she said: ‘You don’t have a brother, Gene Hunt, don’t lie to me.’ And I realised I’d never told her.”
“You’ve told me” Sam had replied, quietly. “I’ll remember him.”
“The fuck you will!” Gene had turned, livid with rage as sudden as flame eating through petrol. “The fuck you will, Sam! I don’t fucking remember him properly, alright? I didn’t want to remember and now I fucking can’t!”
Gene had yelled and they had tussled, and not for the first or last time they had hurt each other, but they’d wound up walking out along that gravel path, saying thank-you.
- - -
Thus it was in a confusion of feelings, of half-structured ideas and untouchable thoughts, that Gene descended the stairs. Both body and mind stopped, startled, however, when he caught sight of Sam through the half-open Living Room door.
Gene hadn’t realised until that moment how strongly he had been expecting the pattern to fully repeat itself - had been expecting Sam to have disappeared. Yet there Sam was, also fully dressed and neatening the sofa he’d slept on.
Sam hadn’t panicked, or run. Neither had he come up to join Gene. He had done none of those things because he didn’t understand - couldn’t - what the events of the night before meant. He had no context - didn’t know about weeks and months of mistrust, about fights and deaths and power-struggles. Gene didn’t know what this Sam saw when he looked at him, but it wasn’t really him, Gene knew that much.
Only Sam Tyler had ever really seen the real Gene Hunt.
And it had never gone both ways.
Gene clenched hard at the banister, feeling a profound wave of loss and knowing it at last for what it was. He felt as if, right then, he could have named every emotion he’d ever felt for Sam, bad and good. And some had been good. Just because they were intense and dangerous and life-changing, it didn’t stop them being so. And now, watching the echo of the man he was still fairly sure he’d lost, he could appreciate that too late.
Gene was not sure that, when he’d come downstairs a month ago to find only an abandoned jacket, that if he’d instead discovered Sam making breakfast, he’d have known to tell him all the things he’d now missed the chance to.
He was still standing there, transfixed by revelation as Sam, standing up from his tidying, caught sight of a reflection in the TV screen and walked out into the hallway.
Sam’s smile was tentative, hopeful. Friendly. “Gene? Coffee or tea?”
“Wait a minute, just wait a minute” Gene held up his hand, thinking hard. Something had triggered in his mind and he couldn’t…he’d spent so long repressing all of it that it was hard to…
Of course! He leapt down the remaining stairs, grabbed Sam by the shoulders and shook him: “Sam, I am officially brilliant. Your coat, Sam! Your stupid, poncey, black leather coat!”
“I’m sorry…what?”
“Your coat! You left it here, the day you supposedly transferred.” Almost laughing, Gene moved to pull open the door of the cupboard under the stairs. Stooping, he extracted a selection of empty wine boxes, some anti-freeze, a pair of wellies and finally, triumphantly, the jacket in question.
Grinning, he proffered it to Sam. “I never thought to wonder why you’d left it - too much else going on. But it proves that you didn’t mean to run away. You wouldn’t have left it behind.”
“Run...? Why would I have run away?” Sam’s eyebrows were so high they ran the risk of disappearing even under his ridiculously short fringe. “Did I...?”
Gene’s smile had withered and he shoved the coat into Sam’s hands. “Just look at the damn thing.”
With a calculating look, Sam seemed to be deciding whether to press the issue. In the end, though, he raised the jacket and started rummaging in the pockets. Gene was left with the impression that he’d definitely said too much.
From the outer right pocket, after bringing up a bus ticket and a pencil stub, Sam fished a small, reddish-green object. “What the hell is this?” he asked, passing it to Gene. Their fingers brushed, for mere seconds, but Gene felt a strange metallic surge from stroked nerves run heat over the rest of his skin, even as he lifted his hand to hold the object to the light.
To all appearances it was a small clay model of a sleeping cat, childishly rough and painted with green and red stripes before being varnished and fired hard. On its underside were some clumsily etched letters - EH, maybe FH? It was hard to make out.
“Mascot?” Gene wondered out loud, sternly ignoring any remaining tingles in his fingertips. “But I never saw it before. And you used to have a St Christopher; anyway, for all the good it seemed to do you. Anything else in there?”
Sam fumbled again, with curious distant expression of anyone searching in a space they cannot see. “Something here, oh, 50% off coupon for WH Smith’s. Bit of fluff. Another pencil.” Changing to the inside pocket, his tone became more animated: “Here we go.”
He pulled out a badge and opened it: “Hmm, ‘DI Sam Tyler’. Well, I suppose that’s fairly conclusive evidence you’ve not been lying to me.”
Gene looked at him, and saw the wry half-smile on his face.
“Funny to think” Sam was saying, stroking his thin fingers over the typed name on the badge, “That this isn’t even my real name. I feel like he’s more real than whoever I’m going to turn out to be.” He put his hand in the jacket’s inner pocket again, fishing more things out as he spoke.
“And it’s sad that Sam Tyler will never know the truth. He was knocked on the head, or whatever it was, and changed to become me. And when I find out why I was being drugged in the first place, I’ll know who I really am. But he never gets to.”
His voice becoming increasingly aggressive, Sam slapped the pocket contents onto the small hall table: a football card, a bar receipt, a scribbled note of bus times and a newspaper clipping.
Gene picked up the newspaper and unfolded it, then drew in a sharp breath and set it down on the table, where it lay bent upwards like an offertory bowl, inviting their gaze.
Together, they regarded it in silence.
“Sentimental poof” said Gene, at length, trying to get over the burning feeling in his chest
- - -
It was a photo of them.
It was a photo of the aftermath of the hostage crisis at the Manchester Gazette. Not the Gazette’s own front page image, but a smaller one that had run on page four of The Independent the next day. It had been taken ‘paparazzi style’, catching them un-posed and unawares as they rested from questions for a moment.
It was a photo of Sam leaning back against the car-park wall, one knee bent up so his foot supported him, his head tipped until it hit the wall, his whole body broadcasting exhaustion. It was a photo of Gene in the middle of saying something that was making Sam turn and look wonderfully, pettishly pissed off.
It was a photo of Gene with one hand on the wall by Sam’s head, his body interposing between Sam and the crowd, almost shielding him. Of Sam staring at Gene, into him, seeing nothing but him and so obviously gaining energy from that that it was almost possible to see vibrant waves flowing between them.
It was a photo of them.
- - -
For a little while, Sam was silent, resting both his hands on the table, leaning forward and letting his head hang down to stare at the picture.
“I’m not sure if I care if it’s not the whole truth” he said eventually, his voice rough. “I want this back.”
He drew a long, shuddering breath. “I want not to be the man who didn’t tell you that he kept this. But I’m afraid that when I remember him, I’ll remember why I did it. I’m afraid…” he turned his head away and ducked it, “I’m afraid that I’m a bad person, I don’t just mean…I mean, what if in reality I’m a horrible, evil man?”
With no idea how to frame what he felt in words, Gene reached out and patted Sam’s shoulder, once, twice, then let his hand rest. Still without looking at him, Sam placed his own hand on top of Gene’s and for a moment or two they simply stood there together.
“That morning…” Gene began, with a breath and prayer and a feeling like jumping off a bridge in the dark.
He was interrupted by the ringing of the phone.
- - -
“Guv?”
“Ray?”
“Guv, where have you been? We need you down the station right away.”
Gene didn’t bother to disguise his impatience. “Why? What’s up that you can’t handle this once?”
“It’s the spastic, Sir…” There was a sound of another voice and Ray coughed, “The, um, the Mongol - is that polite enough for you Annie? But it’s his files sir - we’ve got a herd of Secret Service, or something, all here looking for them and saying they can’t find ‘em and… Oi! Not in the Guv’s Office!”
There came to Gene’s ears a distant sound as if of breaking glass.
“Ray!” he barked down the phone, “What exactly has just happened?”
“They’ve smashed your flipping door pane, Guv! Didn’t even ask for the key, just shoved his hand through and opened it from inside.”
“Well, the files aren’t in there!” Gene yelled, “Why didn’t you tell them that before that started…they’re not touching my posters are they?”
“But we can’t find the files! So this bloke - poncey arse git, from London - reckons you’ve got them hidden in your office and I say: ‘No, he hasn’t, he don’t hide things’ and this bloke just brushes past and…”
“Look,” Gene interrupted, territorial rage rising in his belly, “I’m on my way there now. You’re a good bullshitter, Ray, so bloody use your talents. Tell them Frank Hagwood’s stuff is filed in the collator’s office, tell them we sent the files to the pathologist, tell them anything, only get them out of my office!”
“Sure thing, boss.”
Gene couldn’t help sighing. Ray was always happier with an order to obey - any order, provided Gene gave it. It was naïve, if anything about Ray could be so called, and it irritated Gene a little, to the point where, when he’d first heard that he was getting a new DI from Hyde, he’d been secretly pleased not to have to offer the job to the only other possible choice, DS Ray Carling .
And that was the truth of it, really. Ray was a better mate, simply speaking. Ray was easier to work with. Ray was more fun.
But Gene needed Sam around. Always had, even before he knew the bloke.
And there was no reason to think, when they’d sorted this whole mess out, that it would mean getting Sam back again even in the working sense.
Gene set the phone back in its cradle with a slam.
“Do you want that tea now?” said a voice.
Sam was standing in the kitchen doorway, two steam-capped mugs in hand. Matching mugs, Gene mentally added, though mentally speaking he was not at his best when confronted with the sight of Sam’s slouching body leaning on the doorframe, one leg bent and shirt open at the collar. In point of fact he looked hotter than a vindaloo chaser, and Gene let his eyes rake over him without thinking. It was only as he reached Sam’s face that he realised Sam knew exactly what effect he was having.
And that he was pleased about it.
For a long, thick, moment, the air almost seemed to hum.
“That was the station” Gene said, at length, having to swallow and re-start his sentence before it would come out. “A bunch of Special Branch wankers have taken it into their heads to raid our already raided files department because they’ve got a hard-on for some gang-related murder over a factory whose main output is magnolia paint.”
“And you have to go in and sort them out.” Sam guessed, with an air of resignation.
“Precisely. Listen, I shouldn’t take long. Don’t answer the phone while I’m gone and don’t call me at the office - if those blokes yesterday were as serious as the bruises round my kidneys seem to think, they’ll have given some idiot PC a backhander to watch the switchboard. I may not be a bent copper any more, but God knows they’re out there.”
“Wait, bent what? You were a...?”
“Sam, there really isn’t time to go into this now. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Gene had grabbed his coat from the rack as he spoke, and, taking one mug from Sam, he gulped the contents, fanned his mouth, swore, took another gulp, sighed, picked up his keys and left the house.
Just before he drove away he looked back for a moment at the house. The living room curtains had been drawn back, and through the window he could see Sam, sipping at the other mug. Switching on the television.
An obscure feeling of unease shot through Gene. But, time was pressing - he had to get on to the station and his neglected responsibilities there - and as he drove off on he told himself to forget about it.
Part Five