(no subject)
Hello, everyone! Mad busy lately, revision and rehearsals and all sorts, but have been trying to write more regularly so I thought I'd bring you the fruits of my labour. It's not very good, but practice is practice, isn't it?
Title: Things Could Be Much Worse
Fandom: Life on Mars
Rating: PG
Summary: Set directly after episode 2.7 - literally, I pick up from the very second the credits started - so spoilers for that one. You hear me? SPOILERS. It's basically just me musing away, most of it is Sam and Gene interaction (gen, but you could probably read slash into it because we are talking about Sam and Gene me, here).
A/N: Thanks to ailcia for having a wee look at this. Again, as I say: not great. All feedback is lovely.
When the lift doors close, all the sound leaves the world for just a moment. Sam thinks maybe he’s having one of his turns before he realises that, no, it’s shock - just normal, mortal abject terror. He stumbles backwards, suddenly sober, but doesn’t know what to do with himself because part of him wants to go chasing down the stairs, swinging his arms around and shouting, wait! Stop! Get back here now and tell me how to go home. The other part of him, though, that one’s far harder to understand - all it keeps saying is, what, now? Now, when things maybe aren’t as horrible as they were. Not that he’s happy of course, he reminds himself, not that he could ever, ever be happy here. Although he does let himself wonder why Morgan didn’t turn up on all or any of the nights he lay in that bed in that flat, hoping against hope that if he concentrated hard enough he might roll over and see Maya grinning at him in the dark.
He doesn’t do anything. He doesn’t run out into the night, he doesn’t go after Annie, he doesn’t shout or scream or panic, no, he just stands there - useless. Useless, hopeless and, oh, how impossibly alone. Not since his first week in 1973 has he felt as out of time as he does in that one long, horrible moment, feeling his skin crawl hot-cold-hot-cold in waves; it passes, though, in the way that everything here passes sooner or later.
Sam tries to go back to the party, he really does, but all the laughter and the singing and the joy aren’t loud enough to block out Morgan’s words, still ringing ominously in his ears. He can’t shake that prickly-warm feeling at the back of his neck whenever he looks at Gene, some kind of bizarre guilt over some unknown thing he’s worried he might do, might have to do, but isn’t that insane? No more insane than having an accident and waking up in the past, he reasons, trying and failing to recapture the bliss of just moments earlier, basking in the second-hand glory of Gene’s victory. Gene himself is perched on a desk with Ray, who has his back to Sam and is gesticulating wildly or at least is, well, about as animated as he ever gets. Gene glances past him to grin at Sam and for once that’s literally all it is, a grin - there’s nothing concealed or drenched-in-meaning or anything about it, he’s just happy, Sam can’t remember ever seeing him so happy and it’s all too much, too horrible to think about.
Sam stumbles out of the room again as quickly as he can, with no idea where he’s going until he feels the metal of a coatpeg under his hand and realises that he’s in the locker-room. He slides down to sit on the bench with his head in his hands, listening to the sound of his pulse racing and counting one, two, three. He’s not sure how long he’s been there when he hears the door swing open, a familiar set of footsteps approaching, and already knows who it is.
"Gene," he murmurs.
"Aye?" Either he hasn’t noticed what Sam called him or he’s chosen to let it slide tonight, but neither of these theories make Sam feel any less sick. "Everything alright?"
Sam doesn’t answer and he doesn’t look up, but apparently Gene’s drunk enough not to see this as any kind of discouragement, so sits down beside him. They stay like that for a while, in silence, until Sam’s psyched himself up enough to sit back against the wood panelling and actually look Gene in the eye.
"Shouldn’t you be in there?" he asks flatly.
"Shouldn’t you?"
There’s a pause. Sam opens and closes his mouth, suddenly desperate to just tell him everything, because Gene trusts him, he said that he trusts him, and Sam has to find something or someone he can cling to. But how on earth could he start that conversation? Would he go in with maybe, ‘I’m from the future’, or might it perhaps be better to use that classic opener, ‘yeah, I think maybe the only way I can get home is to stab you in the back, is that alright?’
Instead he shrugs and mutters, "I’m just tired. I don’t know, call it a delayed reaction or something. What do you want?"
Now it’s Gene’s turn to be evasive, affecting nonchalance and shuffling a little in his seat. He’s always larger-than-life, but when he’s had a lot to drink it’s as if everything about him’s been exaggerated, like a picture where all the edges have been sketched in charcoal then pulled outwards with the artist’s thumb.
"I just, you know. Thought I’d say thanks."
Sam winces, wanting nothing more than to shout, no, don’t thank me, don’t even trust me, who knows what I’m going to do to you? He can’t help thinking of the night they arrested Woolf, the shock of seeing Gene so suddenly sincere tempered with pride and with, if he’d let himself admit it, affection. He considers telling Gene not to make a habit of this gratitude thing, but instead he just says, "No problem."
Why was it so much easier to trust Gene in the face of all that incriminating evidence than it is to trust himself not to do anything stupid? He remembers what Annie said before she went home and wonders just how dependent he really is on certain things or, rather, on certain people - then he decides that maybe the real issue is, how desperate is he to come home? Desperate enough?
The sounds of laughter drift into the room from down the hall and Gene smells odd tonight, the usual cigarettes and alcohol but also something else; Sam realises a moment later that it’s the smell of his own flat, something indefinably familar. How could he possibly have created all of this himself? The rhythm of those dooming words still beats in his ear like a drum.
"I’m sorry," he suddenly blurts out.
Gene looks across at him, frowning. "Why?"
Sam blinks. He almost says he doesn’t know, because he doesn’t know, but eventually he just shrugs and replies, "For, you know. For thinking that maybe you really had... killed them."
He’s distantly surprised to realise that he genuinely is sorry, that it sounds more sincere spoken aloud than he thought it would. That he actually cares, quite a lot. Gene gives him a masculine pat on the shoulder, more interested in Sam now than in whatever spot on the wall had been holding his attention.
"Nonsense. Water under the bridge, Sam. Really. Dunno know what would’ve happened if -" he pauses, not wanting to finish that sentence for whatever reason, and when he speaks again his voice has softened a little. "You did well. And I’m grateful. Now can we go back to the bloody party, please? I’m not drunk enough to have this conversation yet."
Sam laughs and stands up as he decides to let himself forget for just one night - to let himself have fun, have a drink, put it all out of his mind until the morning. 2006 will still be there for him to worry about tomorrow, he rations, trying desperately to ignore the little voices murmuring away that, for once, tomorrow’s where he wants the future to stay.