Aftermath2
Title: Aftermath2
Author: mikes_grrl
Rating: Green Cortina? (R)
Pairing: Sam/Gene x2
Warnings: AU, post 2.08, more brain damage, ANGST
Word Count: 2,500
Summary: Snapshots into the lives…
NOTES: A new entry in the Angst!athon that seems to be in full roll out here on this comm these days. Ow. This is a continuation of the insane Looping saga. If you don’t know it, you won’t get it, so don’t bother. If that isn’t enough of a warning for you, then you deserve what you get. Oh, and please lay blame where credit is due: dorsetgirl, who keeps encouraging the madness.
Background (links go to my LJ, btw):
Looping
Aftermath
Aftermath2
November, 1975
Gene flinched. It was instinctive, and he tried not to, but Sam saw it.
“What?” Sam asked carefully as he stood back from following Gene into the living room from the kitchen.
“Nuthin’.” Gene said simply and walked over to the ‘bar’, which was the telephone table he kept his three bottles of whiskey on: cheap, good, and single malt.
Sam was invited over for dinner by Gene - the other Gene, ‘Junior’, who was sent to bed over an hour ago while the ‘men’ sat talking shop around the dinette table. Sam suspected his role as ‘beloved Uncle Sammy’ weighed as much on his ability to make a mean mac’n’cheese as Junior’s undying affection, but that was fine, he loved the Hunt household and took every advantage to camp out there for however long he was allowed.
Gene kept his back to Sam as he finally walked into the room. He never knew what set Gene off, whether it was a word or a tone or a look or…anything. It was frustrating because he could find nothing consistent to grab on and stop doing; sometimes it felt like it was not anything he did but just the fact that he was which set Gene off. Sam leaned both hands against the fireplace mantle and closed his eyes. Sometimes things were so good, so damn normal that he could forget about this. He could pretend that he was never going to go insane and Gene was never hurt and that the boy upstairs who everyone called ‘Junior’ really was just, simply, Gene’s son. But none of that was true. It had been over a year but still, sometimes, Gene flinched. And every time it broke Sam’s heart.
He felt Gene next to him and looked over. Gene held out a glass, a double shot, probably the single malt because that seemed to be Gene’s standard apology at these moments. Gene never talked about his experiences and he genuinely did not appear to blame Sam for any of it, but it was all there, bottled up inside, and sometimes it even scared Sam. He could not imagine how much it scared Gene.
“Sam, it’s not you.”
“It is me. That’s the whole fucking problem, isn’t it?”
“I don’ see it that way. Neither should you. You made it through ’74, maybe it won’t ‘appen the way they said.”
Sam just shook his head as he took the drink. Gene leaned up against the mantle on with one arm propped up, his drink in his other hand.
“Somehow…some of the things they said…I don’t think anything about that is written in stone, Gene.”
Gene pursed his lips. “What did they say that got your knickers in a knot?”
Sam paused. This was probably the most they had talked about it since it happened, and the last thing on earth Sam wanted to tell him was that the lunatic version of himself threatened to come back. Gene was out of it at the time, covered in blood on the floor and did not hear it, but Sam would never forget looking at that mirror image of himself. That version of Sam was malicious and pure evil, and Sam did not doubt that he would make good on his promise. It was his own death sentence, and logic decreed that he warn Gene, but he simply could not bring himself to do it.
“Sam…” Gene sounded worried, and he leaned over as he rested a hand on Sam’s shoulder.
Sam felt the charge and looked up at him, and it was there: desire. Hidden beneath worry and the cagey box that was Gene’s emotional life, but it was there, and Sam had to take the chance. He loved this man, and had for years now, and he needed him. He moved closer and kissed him solidly, without reservation or hesitation, knowing that Gene would accept or reject but never respect less. He stepped forward, pleased with his bravery and deliriously happy as Gene pulled him in, kissing back, needing him just as desperately as Sam did. It was a sexy, mouthy kiss full of whiskey and Gene Hunt and it was beyond perfect. Sam pulled back and held Gene’s face in his hands.
“You are bloody gorgeous.”
He felt the snap before he saw it. Gene, flinching, and then Gene was gone. Sam knew it was what he said, or how he said it, and he cried out in a bid to take it back but Gene was already over the edge, not seeing him, but that other creature, the one who raped him and tried to torture him to death. Sam saw sparks like this before but never this close or this harsh, and he nearly fell backwards trying to escape but Gene was fury unleashed as he picked Sam up and threw him across the room. Sam landed on the couch but his head smacked against the wall and he was dazed enough to lose his bearings as Gene bore down on him. He managed to roll to the side when Gene’s fist came down, so it hit his face and not the back of his head, a lethal blow if it had met. Sam fell onto the floor and had just enough time to register that Gene’s foot was heading towards his ribcage. He pulled in his arm and it was painful as hell as the foot connected but at least it was not five or six broken ribs. Sam was reeling and in shock and he knew he might block one or two more hits or kicks but after that he was dead. Gene was going to kill him, and he could not stop it, and in his heart he could not blame him. Sam knew he was that monster and maybe now this was simply cosmic justice.
“DAD!”
Sam looked up to see Junior standing in the living room, every inch of his frame shaking with fury. He never looked more like Gene Hunt in his life, and Sam just stared, then realized that the elder version stopped moving. He looked up at Gene, who was still emanating pure wrath, but now horror as well as he realized that his ‘son’ was watching him beat a man to death. Sam wondered vaguely if this was some kind of replay of something from Gene’s own youth, and with that terrifying thought, Sam forced himself to move.
“I’m…I’m okay…”
Junior ran to stand in front of Sam, who was using the couch to pull himself up.
“You hit Uncle Sammy again and I WILL KILL YOU!” Junior roared at the man who was nearly three times his weight and twice his size. Gene stepped back.
“Junior, come on, ‘elp me out. We just need to leave your dad alone, okay? Help me, I need your ‘elp…” Sam pulled the boy to him with all of his strength. Finally Junior turned to help him, and they started walking, Sam leaning heavily on the nine year old, but in too much pain to do anything else.
“Sam…”
Sam stopped and turned to look at Gene, who was still tinged with insanity and who was shaking but he looked straight at Sam, genuinely grief stricken.
“I was wrong, Gene, I was just wrong. It can’t ‘appen that way, I know it, I jus’ wanted more.” Sam glanced at Junior, who was confused, but doing his best to keep Sam standing. Sam was trying to find a way to say this without the child knowing what happened . “I’ll always want something I can’t have. We both know it….Junior’s leavin’ with me tonight, I’ll put him up at Annie’s. Tomorrow, this never happened. None of it. None of it.” Sam pulled and led Junior out and they both knew what the sounds behind them were as they closed the front door: Gene was ripping the room apart.
----------------
June, 2014
Gene flinched. It was instinctive, and he tried not to, but Sam saw it.
“What?”
“You’re a scary bastard sometimes, Sam.”
Sam looked at him, confused, and Gene scooted back on the couch.
“Someday, I’ll kill you.” It was not a threat or statement of pride, this time, just a slightly bewildered observation, but Gene was not going to humor Sam’s mood.
“Maybe that’s why I get a tingly inside whenever I see you.” Gene looked back towards the TV, where Top Gear was roaring along.
“I never…I never want to kill you. You just disappoint me.”
Gene snapped his head to look at Sam, and stared. It was not insane Sam, but it was not the confused, amnesiac Sam either. It was…Gene lost his breath, realizing that he was talking to Alpha.
“I get mad because you aren’t the original Gene. Then you get mad because you think I don’t love you. Then I…go crazy. Over and over…” Sam’s voice trailed off thoughtfully, intelligently, as if he were trying to solve a problem. No, as if he were trying to solve a case. DCI Sam Tyler. He was still on the books as DCI Sam Tyler, despite it all, drawing a pension that he did not need and would never use.
“You’re pretty clear about your reasoning. We have a few of the killings on video.” Gene decided to treat this as his own version of a ‘case.’ He was a reporter; time to verify facts.
Sam looked at him, disappointed but not horrified.
“What we don’t understand is why you keep dragging me - Gene - into this instead of going back and grabbing Alpha Gene.”
“Alpha Gene? Clever.”
“We try not to use those terms around…you.” Gene was breaking more than a few regulations, but he was not exactly a military man and he figured screw it, it was not as if he volunteered for this mission anyway.
“Because he never loved me. He never…touched me, other than to beat me into the ground a few times.”
“Put you in the hospital once. That’s one hell of a beating.”
“You broke my arm once.” Sam smiled mischievously, calling him out, and despite the topic it almost felt domestic.
Gene stalled, though, because it was true, and he did it in some time slip stream that was not very advanced with medicine, and Sam nearly lost his arm. But that was homicidal Sam on a runaway train, and Gene never meant to damage him, he was only trying to stop him from killing. What surprised him most was that Alpha Sam remembered it. Previous resurfacings of Alpha Sam were rare, even rarer now, but he seemed mostly amnesiac about his lunatic side. This time, for the first time, Gene was talking to the complete package, and he knew that if he died tonight it would be worth every second he spent with this man.
“I never want to hurt you, Sam. God, I love you. You make sure of that.”
Sam studied him. “You think ‘Alpha’ Gene did?”
“How can you even ask that?”
“He never touched me…” Sam trailed off as he repeated the statement.
“Sam…have we never shown you the case files on your murder?” Gene sat forward, thinking. He always assumed Sam knew. They told him that Sam was briefed when they found out, when they put it all together.
“No. I’m certain of it. I remember everything that’s happened, everything I’ve done….murder. Every Gene. Hell I remember both torturing myself and being tortured by me, for christ’s sake. I remember waking up…” Sam bounced up and began pacing angrily, and Queenie fled.
“Shit.” Gene leaned back.
“Why?”
“Sam…jesus, Sam.” Gene ran his hands through his hair. Alpha Sam he barely knew at all, and he simply did not know how Sam would take this, but now he understood why they were so strict with instructions never to discuss Alpha Gene with him.
Sam sat down next to him gently and put a hand on his thigh. It was loving and soft and it was not a pass, which was about the only time Sam usually touched him in any way short of hits or post-coital cuddling. Gene stared, then looked up in the clear brown eyes of Sam Tyler. He wanted this to last, but he knew it would not. He could not bring himself to even hope that much.
“Sam, Gene destroyed himself. He pulled out a murder investigation for the books, there are even procedurals named after him. Re-wrote forensics trying to find out what happened to you. Made himself a legend, more than I’ll ever be. But…nothing. He could not find your murderer, how could he? So he retired a year later. Quit. Gave up. He was dead within five years. Autopsy showed liver failure but…it was suicide. Everyone knew it. The man loved you more than life itself.”
Sam recoiled in horror, and the look of shame that covered him broke Gene’s heart, but he was determined to tell him everything. Honesty, for a change; how much more damage could Sam take?
“I’m writing his ‘authorized’ biography, that’s the work you never get to see me working on. I’ve tracked down old colleagues, rumors, old cases. There are bits and pieces that would not make sense to anyone not looking, people he knew and places he went and certain cases that were handled off the books. And then there is me. Us. Every Gene you pull falls in love with you. We’re all the same, you bastard, we are ALL Gene. How could I love you, need you, fuck you, if he didn’t? He was gay, Sam, and he loved you, and he probably thought you were straight or thought he was protecting you by not making a move.”
There was a knock on the door. The beginning of the end, and Gene knew that his private quarters were as private as Waterloo Station when Sam was there, but he let them knock.
“They don’t want you to know. Promise me you’ll remember.” Gene sat forward, grabbing Sam and shaking him lightly. “Where ever your brain goes, remember this. I’m going to pay for telling you this. For god’s sake, promise me.”
Sam was crying, but he was silent for a moment before taking Gene’s face in his hands.
“I’m sorry. I thought…I thought I could re-make him…I’m so sorry…god what have I done, to you, to the people I’ve killed, oh god….I promise, I promise I’ll never forget but Gene, don’t give up on me…I promise…”
The door opened and they hauled Sam off him as they kissed, and eventually the medical staff were called in to sedate Gene as he ripped the room apart.
######
Author: mikes_grrl
Rating: Green Cortina? (R)
Pairing: Sam/Gene x2
Warnings: AU, post 2.08, more brain damage, ANGST
Word Count: 2,500
Summary: Snapshots into the lives…
NOTES: A new entry in the Angst!athon that seems to be in full roll out here on this comm these days. Ow. This is a continuation of the insane Looping saga. If you don’t know it, you won’t get it, so don’t bother. If that isn’t enough of a warning for you, then you deserve what you get. Oh, and please lay blame where credit is due: dorsetgirl, who keeps encouraging the madness.
Background (links go to my LJ, btw):
Looping
Aftermath
Aftermath2
November, 1975
Gene flinched. It was instinctive, and he tried not to, but Sam saw it.
“What?” Sam asked carefully as he stood back from following Gene into the living room from the kitchen.
“Nuthin’.” Gene said simply and walked over to the ‘bar’, which was the telephone table he kept his three bottles of whiskey on: cheap, good, and single malt.
Sam was invited over for dinner by Gene - the other Gene, ‘Junior’, who was sent to bed over an hour ago while the ‘men’ sat talking shop around the dinette table. Sam suspected his role as ‘beloved Uncle Sammy’ weighed as much on his ability to make a mean mac’n’cheese as Junior’s undying affection, but that was fine, he loved the Hunt household and took every advantage to camp out there for however long he was allowed.
Gene kept his back to Sam as he finally walked into the room. He never knew what set Gene off, whether it was a word or a tone or a look or…anything. It was frustrating because he could find nothing consistent to grab on and stop doing; sometimes it felt like it was not anything he did but just the fact that he was which set Gene off. Sam leaned both hands against the fireplace mantle and closed his eyes. Sometimes things were so good, so damn normal that he could forget about this. He could pretend that he was never going to go insane and Gene was never hurt and that the boy upstairs who everyone called ‘Junior’ really was just, simply, Gene’s son. But none of that was true. It had been over a year but still, sometimes, Gene flinched. And every time it broke Sam’s heart.
He felt Gene next to him and looked over. Gene held out a glass, a double shot, probably the single malt because that seemed to be Gene’s standard apology at these moments. Gene never talked about his experiences and he genuinely did not appear to blame Sam for any of it, but it was all there, bottled up inside, and sometimes it even scared Sam. He could not imagine how much it scared Gene.
“Sam, it’s not you.”
“It is me. That’s the whole fucking problem, isn’t it?”
“I don’ see it that way. Neither should you. You made it through ’74, maybe it won’t ‘appen the way they said.”
Sam just shook his head as he took the drink. Gene leaned up against the mantle on with one arm propped up, his drink in his other hand.
“Somehow…some of the things they said…I don’t think anything about that is written in stone, Gene.”
Gene pursed his lips. “What did they say that got your knickers in a knot?”
Sam paused. This was probably the most they had talked about it since it happened, and the last thing on earth Sam wanted to tell him was that the lunatic version of himself threatened to come back. Gene was out of it at the time, covered in blood on the floor and did not hear it, but Sam would never forget looking at that mirror image of himself. That version of Sam was malicious and pure evil, and Sam did not doubt that he would make good on his promise. It was his own death sentence, and logic decreed that he warn Gene, but he simply could not bring himself to do it.
“Sam…” Gene sounded worried, and he leaned over as he rested a hand on Sam’s shoulder.
Sam felt the charge and looked up at him, and it was there: desire. Hidden beneath worry and the cagey box that was Gene’s emotional life, but it was there, and Sam had to take the chance. He loved this man, and had for years now, and he needed him. He moved closer and kissed him solidly, without reservation or hesitation, knowing that Gene would accept or reject but never respect less. He stepped forward, pleased with his bravery and deliriously happy as Gene pulled him in, kissing back, needing him just as desperately as Sam did. It was a sexy, mouthy kiss full of whiskey and Gene Hunt and it was beyond perfect. Sam pulled back and held Gene’s face in his hands.
“You are bloody gorgeous.”
He felt the snap before he saw it. Gene, flinching, and then Gene was gone. Sam knew it was what he said, or how he said it, and he cried out in a bid to take it back but Gene was already over the edge, not seeing him, but that other creature, the one who raped him and tried to torture him to death. Sam saw sparks like this before but never this close or this harsh, and he nearly fell backwards trying to escape but Gene was fury unleashed as he picked Sam up and threw him across the room. Sam landed on the couch but his head smacked against the wall and he was dazed enough to lose his bearings as Gene bore down on him. He managed to roll to the side when Gene’s fist came down, so it hit his face and not the back of his head, a lethal blow if it had met. Sam fell onto the floor and had just enough time to register that Gene’s foot was heading towards his ribcage. He pulled in his arm and it was painful as hell as the foot connected but at least it was not five or six broken ribs. Sam was reeling and in shock and he knew he might block one or two more hits or kicks but after that he was dead. Gene was going to kill him, and he could not stop it, and in his heart he could not blame him. Sam knew he was that monster and maybe now this was simply cosmic justice.
“DAD!”
Sam looked up to see Junior standing in the living room, every inch of his frame shaking with fury. He never looked more like Gene Hunt in his life, and Sam just stared, then realized that the elder version stopped moving. He looked up at Gene, who was still emanating pure wrath, but now horror as well as he realized that his ‘son’ was watching him beat a man to death. Sam wondered vaguely if this was some kind of replay of something from Gene’s own youth, and with that terrifying thought, Sam forced himself to move.
“I’m…I’m okay…”
Junior ran to stand in front of Sam, who was using the couch to pull himself up.
“You hit Uncle Sammy again and I WILL KILL YOU!” Junior roared at the man who was nearly three times his weight and twice his size. Gene stepped back.
“Junior, come on, ‘elp me out. We just need to leave your dad alone, okay? Help me, I need your ‘elp…” Sam pulled the boy to him with all of his strength. Finally Junior turned to help him, and they started walking, Sam leaning heavily on the nine year old, but in too much pain to do anything else.
“Sam…”
Sam stopped and turned to look at Gene, who was still tinged with insanity and who was shaking but he looked straight at Sam, genuinely grief stricken.
“I was wrong, Gene, I was just wrong. It can’t ‘appen that way, I know it, I jus’ wanted more.” Sam glanced at Junior, who was confused, but doing his best to keep Sam standing. Sam was trying to find a way to say this without the child knowing what happened . “I’ll always want something I can’t have. We both know it….Junior’s leavin’ with me tonight, I’ll put him up at Annie’s. Tomorrow, this never happened. None of it. None of it.” Sam pulled and led Junior out and they both knew what the sounds behind them were as they closed the front door: Gene was ripping the room apart.
----------------
June, 2014
Gene flinched. It was instinctive, and he tried not to, but Sam saw it.
“What?”
“You’re a scary bastard sometimes, Sam.”
Sam looked at him, confused, and Gene scooted back on the couch.
“Someday, I’ll kill you.” It was not a threat or statement of pride, this time, just a slightly bewildered observation, but Gene was not going to humor Sam’s mood.
“Maybe that’s why I get a tingly inside whenever I see you.” Gene looked back towards the TV, where Top Gear was roaring along.
“I never…I never want to kill you. You just disappoint me.”
Gene snapped his head to look at Sam, and stared. It was not insane Sam, but it was not the confused, amnesiac Sam either. It was…Gene lost his breath, realizing that he was talking to Alpha.
“I get mad because you aren’t the original Gene. Then you get mad because you think I don’t love you. Then I…go crazy. Over and over…” Sam’s voice trailed off thoughtfully, intelligently, as if he were trying to solve a problem. No, as if he were trying to solve a case. DCI Sam Tyler. He was still on the books as DCI Sam Tyler, despite it all, drawing a pension that he did not need and would never use.
“You’re pretty clear about your reasoning. We have a few of the killings on video.” Gene decided to treat this as his own version of a ‘case.’ He was a reporter; time to verify facts.
Sam looked at him, disappointed but not horrified.
“What we don’t understand is why you keep dragging me - Gene - into this instead of going back and grabbing Alpha Gene.”
“Alpha Gene? Clever.”
“We try not to use those terms around…you.” Gene was breaking more than a few regulations, but he was not exactly a military man and he figured screw it, it was not as if he volunteered for this mission anyway.
“Because he never loved me. He never…touched me, other than to beat me into the ground a few times.”
“Put you in the hospital once. That’s one hell of a beating.”
“You broke my arm once.” Sam smiled mischievously, calling him out, and despite the topic it almost felt domestic.
Gene stalled, though, because it was true, and he did it in some time slip stream that was not very advanced with medicine, and Sam nearly lost his arm. But that was homicidal Sam on a runaway train, and Gene never meant to damage him, he was only trying to stop him from killing. What surprised him most was that Alpha Sam remembered it. Previous resurfacings of Alpha Sam were rare, even rarer now, but he seemed mostly amnesiac about his lunatic side. This time, for the first time, Gene was talking to the complete package, and he knew that if he died tonight it would be worth every second he spent with this man.
“I never want to hurt you, Sam. God, I love you. You make sure of that.”
Sam studied him. “You think ‘Alpha’ Gene did?”
“How can you even ask that?”
“He never touched me…” Sam trailed off as he repeated the statement.
“Sam…have we never shown you the case files on your murder?” Gene sat forward, thinking. He always assumed Sam knew. They told him that Sam was briefed when they found out, when they put it all together.
“No. I’m certain of it. I remember everything that’s happened, everything I’ve done….murder. Every Gene. Hell I remember both torturing myself and being tortured by me, for christ’s sake. I remember waking up…” Sam bounced up and began pacing angrily, and Queenie fled.
“Shit.” Gene leaned back.
“Why?”
“Sam…jesus, Sam.” Gene ran his hands through his hair. Alpha Sam he barely knew at all, and he simply did not know how Sam would take this, but now he understood why they were so strict with instructions never to discuss Alpha Gene with him.
Sam sat down next to him gently and put a hand on his thigh. It was loving and soft and it was not a pass, which was about the only time Sam usually touched him in any way short of hits or post-coital cuddling. Gene stared, then looked up in the clear brown eyes of Sam Tyler. He wanted this to last, but he knew it would not. He could not bring himself to even hope that much.
“Sam, Gene destroyed himself. He pulled out a murder investigation for the books, there are even procedurals named after him. Re-wrote forensics trying to find out what happened to you. Made himself a legend, more than I’ll ever be. But…nothing. He could not find your murderer, how could he? So he retired a year later. Quit. Gave up. He was dead within five years. Autopsy showed liver failure but…it was suicide. Everyone knew it. The man loved you more than life itself.”
Sam recoiled in horror, and the look of shame that covered him broke Gene’s heart, but he was determined to tell him everything. Honesty, for a change; how much more damage could Sam take?
“I’m writing his ‘authorized’ biography, that’s the work you never get to see me working on. I’ve tracked down old colleagues, rumors, old cases. There are bits and pieces that would not make sense to anyone not looking, people he knew and places he went and certain cases that were handled off the books. And then there is me. Us. Every Gene you pull falls in love with you. We’re all the same, you bastard, we are ALL Gene. How could I love you, need you, fuck you, if he didn’t? He was gay, Sam, and he loved you, and he probably thought you were straight or thought he was protecting you by not making a move.”
There was a knock on the door. The beginning of the end, and Gene knew that his private quarters were as private as Waterloo Station when Sam was there, but he let them knock.
“They don’t want you to know. Promise me you’ll remember.” Gene sat forward, grabbing Sam and shaking him lightly. “Where ever your brain goes, remember this. I’m going to pay for telling you this. For god’s sake, promise me.”
Sam was crying, but he was silent for a moment before taking Gene’s face in his hands.
“I’m sorry. I thought…I thought I could re-make him…I’m so sorry…god what have I done, to you, to the people I’ve killed, oh god….I promise, I promise I’ll never forget but Gene, don’t give up on me…I promise…”
The door opened and they hauled Sam off him as they kissed, and eventually the medical staff were called in to sedate Gene as he ripped the room apart.
######