P-E-R-S-P-E-C-T-I-V-E
The laptop shuts with a snap. It stills seems to be on, Gene judges from the subtle hum, but at least he couldn't see the screen any longer. Papers pile on top of it, effectively hiding it from prying eyes looking inside his office.
Sort of.
It's good enough, at any rate, and Gene locks the door behind him just in case. CID remains empty and dark ( Read more... )
Sort of.
It's good enough, at any rate, and Gene locks the door behind him just in case. CID remains empty and dark ( Read more... )
'Guv, what the hell-?'
He only manages to get that far before he breaks off with a grunt as Gene sinks a brutal punch into his lower back. It hurts like a bitch, and Sam is frozen for a good moment as the bile rises in his throat and the sick pain of it spills out through his limbs. He's been punched in the kidneys before, and he knows enough to know that that is a low blow, even for Gene Hunt. If he's pissing blood tomorrow, he knows who to blame.
The instant his momentary paralysis dissipates, though, Sam's bucking under Gene in a desperate attempt to get the man off him. It's fairly useless, as Gene's about three stone heavier than Sam, and a head taller, and besides which, he's got his legs locked on either side of Sam's thighs, effectively trapping him on his stomach. He manages a good kick to Gene's lower back though, digging in the heels of his Chelsea boots as he writhes beneath the man.
He has no clue as to the reasoning behind this sudden attack, and with Hunt still on top of him, that makes him furious.
'What the fuck d'you think you're doing, Hunt?' He spits, still struggling gamely. It doesn't get him far, but at the moment, he can't really bring himself to care.
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Then Sam's struggling, twisting and rearing, and Gene's attention shifts just to staying top of the dog pile. A wiley one, is Sam, and hard to hold. Even with the advantage of position and body weight, Gene has to remember to brace his thigh muscles to keep Sam from rolling them.
Just as Gene finds his balance settle again over his haunches, he feels the sharp stab of a heel crack into his lower spine. He arches back as the pain spikes up to his shoulder blades and grabs Sam's neck in vengence, pinching on the nerves there.
'You sodding, squirming bastard!'
He crashes down on Sam's back, using his full weight to his benefit to stun the man to lying still for a moment, and snakes a hand around to Sam's collar bone, effectively arching them both so Gene can plant a knee in Sam's gut.
'Trying to -- ' Gene puffs for breath, half-holding, half-pinning Sam between him and the mattress. 'Trying to give a little perspective. Thought that's what you wanted.'
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'Perspective?' He snarls, the instant he finds his breath again. 'How exactly is attacking me in me flat going to give me any perspective?'
He doesn't wait for an answer, though, before he suddenly jerks his head backwards. There's a satisfying crack as the back of his skull makes contact with Gene's face (his forehead, his nose? Sam can't tell, doesn't really care), and the jittering buzz of pain that comes with cranial impact. It's enough, though, and he wriggles out of Gene's grip.
Instead of leaping off the bed, though, backing up and asking what the hell the man thinks he's doing, Sam finds himself on top of him, and he sinks a punch into Gene's stomach. It's incredibly satisfying, and he snarls.
'How's that for perspective?'
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He thinks that thought, it seems, at the exact second that suddenly his nose gets shoved to the back of his throat. At least it feels like his nose just got shoved to the back of his throat, but that could be the ringing between his eyes distracting him. Black circles rotate outwards, looking like a pattern from one of Sam's goddamn shirts, and the entire room feels like it's trying to tip Gene backwards onto his head.
The blow to his stomach makes him open his eyes to see Sam sitting on top of him, half-smirking and half-growling, saying something in that tone of his that just makes Gene want to claw out his tongue.
Bearings collected or not, Gene pulls up quickly, ignoring the way his head spins, and returns headbutt for headbutt, forehead to chin. His eyes ring again -- or maybe that's still his nose. Iron tinges his lips and he isn't sure if that his blood or Sam's.
'I prefer something better,' he pants and stiff-arms Sam in the breastbone, dodging for the upperhand.
One hand flies out to latch onto Sam's wrist, struggling to tip him backwards against the wall. When Sam resists, Gene meets his eyes, nostrils flairing.
'What the fuck do you think you're doing, Tyler?' he growls, unknowingly returning Sam's words from before. 'You brought this on yourself. Stop making it worse.'
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He struggles instinctively when he feels Gene's palm flat against his breastbone, his eyes narrowed fiercely, all but spitting blood, but his vision's still spinning kaleidoscopically and even his hearing seems to have fuzzed out. It feels like the moment before losing consciousness, and he rages against it. He feels very conspicuously not in control of his own body, cold now with sweat.
When his head finally clears, he finds himself with his wrists pinned above his head against the wall and Gene Hunt growling at him. He strains against Gene's grip, pushing his head forward so that the sinews in his neck cord. It's not much use, though; his chest rises and falls rapidly with his panting breaths and his head's still spinning with the absent, buzzing pain of his headbutt to Gene and Gene's own retaliation. He can still speak though, and he does, eyes blazing angrily.
'Brought this on meself?' He retorts immediately, exhaling a scornful laugh to bare teeth red around the edges with blood. 'You just needed a punching bag, Hunt, and I was the closest option. That's nothing t'do with me and everything t'do with your own issues.'
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'Hold bloody still, will you,' he orders, fighting to stay upright as Sam wiggles and flails beneath him. His attacks are not as succinct as they once were, more striking out to strike out rather than to hit something. Gene catches Sam's other wrist and forces it above his head again, wondering if Sam's feeling like he's about to pass out.
Gene hopes so. After this is done, he wants a strong drink and then plans to be blissfully unconscious for the next several hours.
Holding Sam down in one place now that he's got him here is difficult, but Gene's not going to let Sam roll him again. The man's going to bring about too much damage if he keeps resisting. There's already a good chance that they're both going to have pretty faces in the morning, with Sam spitting blood as he is.
'Me own issues. Like this one?' He jabs Sam in the breastbone again, where he knows it will sting after repeated blows -- hurt but not do too much damage. 'Are they including my smart-arsed DI and his loony-bin friends?'
He glares at Sam, angry that he keeps laughing at Gene even now, angry that he doesn't understand what this is about.
'I bloody asked you what that thing was,' he shouts suddenly, shaking Sam's wrists against the wall to reinforce punctuation. 'I bloody asked you to be straight with me. And you wouldn't. You never bloody are. You just get cagey and sulky. Spoiling for a fight and then running your mouth off to Chris or Cartwright or Ray, leaving me to clean up your messes. Right up until I step in it. I'm sick of your bloody attitude.'
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Because if there's one thing Gene Hunt can't stand, it's being called a pouf. That's 2006 against 1973 right there, and for once, Sam's the one coming out on top.
But then Gene speaks, and he is so utterly wrong that the rage that had quietened somewhat roils up again in Sam's breast.
'You think I wouldn't tell you if I could? I can't!' He rages, and his face is positively incandescent with it. 'I can't fucking tell anyone- I'd get wrapped up in a straitjacket before I could bloody speak! I'd've told you if I'd thought there was the slightest chance you'd've believed me, Gene.'
He swallows, feeling the sick sensation of blood down his throat, and the hot beat of his pulse in his head gets louder.
'I-' I what? He has no idea. Try to explain to the Guv about the community, or beyond that, the fact that he's not from Hyde at all, that he does not, in the most literal of senses, belong here? Explain about computers, mobile phones, police teams who actually rely on surveillance and forensics? But he gets the feeling Gene just doesn't want to hear.
He looks up at Gene through hooded eyes, his head hanging slightly but still tense. 'Get off me.' He mutters.
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The word is out before Gene had time to decide, but once he says it, he knows it's true. He's not gettiing off Sam, not until they have this out. He doesn't feel any better, not yet, because it's still all there in the back of his mind.
He wants to somehow wrap himself up in being DCI, issuing a lesson to his renegade DI, in Manchester, in 1973, where there are no laptops or internet or different worlds. He just wants this world, with its thugs and it's beer and it's CID. He'll even take Sam's procedure bullshit at this point. The world's gone pear-shaped and it's always been his job to set it back to sorts. He just can't do that without Sam, because Sam is the only one he can risk talking to about this.
'No,' Gene grits out and slams Sam's hands again. 'Not until you're straight with me. You never give me the chance, Sam.' He leans down close to Sam, getting right in his face, hissing at him. 'For all your blathering, you've never trusted me with it. So try me.' He punctuates the order with another shake.
He's losing it, being this angry. He should walk away before all control slips because he doesn't want to hurt Sam even when he wants to pound his face in, but he can't bring it in himself to let go. As long as he's got a hold of Sam that means he's got a hold of something. He's not going to let the bastard slip out of this one, not this time.
'Is that what it is? Is that what you keep in that head of yours, all that? My Hyde isn't your Hyde but -- is that what it is?'
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But the worst thing of it is that Sam has no idea what to do. In fighting or policing or drinking- that's all straightforward, and maybe he doesn't always enjoy it, maybe it's unnecessarily complicated, but there, at least, he knows what he's doing.
He can't tell the truth. There's no way. But Gene knows him well enough that he'll be able to tell if he's lying. Sam's head hits the wall with a thud, and his eyes close, leaving only the comforting red of the inside of his eyelids. There's no voices now, no machinery, no noise at all other than the harsh pants of both of their breath and the aggrieved creaking of his mattress, and it strikes Sam after a moment that now the shaking is laughter.
God, how mad he must look.
'I'm not... from here.' He says after a moment, voice measured as if he was speaking to a particularly thick child. 'I'm-'
-DCI Tyler of the Greater Manchester Police in the year 2006. But I'm here now, and I don't know how the fuck I got here, and I don't know how the fuck to get home and god if that computer means a way for me to get back, what I wouldn't give-
But he can't continue. Gene already thinks he's a nutjob, but that'll be nothing to what he thinks if Sam tries to tell the man that he's from the future, or that Gene himself is nothing more than a twisted figment of Sam's imagination.
He can't go on, can't explain. So instead, he thinks of the one thing that ought to ensure that Gene get off him, or at least forget about the topic for the moment. A little, half-amused breath that just manages not to be a sob gusts over his lips, and then, the movement sudden and utterly unexpected, he surges forward and kisses Gene on the mouth, as hard as he can make it.
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Some irrational fear claws its way up the back of Gene's throat, around his nose, to whisper that Sam might being have one of his fits, right now, with Gene sitting on him. He's going to flip his lid right here and maybe suck Gene along with him, into that spiraling pit of Sam's insanity.
Don't you dare, he warns in his head.
I'm not... from here. Thanks for the update, Dorothy.
Gene gets as far as opening his mouth, teeth bared to form the word thanks when a mouth suddenly forces itself onto his. He tastes the thick scent of iron. Blood. Sam's blood.
Sam's mouth plastered against his. His brain can't make it any farther than that. What the hell kind of fighting is this?
Gene freezes. He doesn't know how to retaliate against this. All of his fighting experience has never given him any sort of arsenal for dealing with this. This -- This -- He refuses to identify it at all. He refuses to let himself think what Sam might try to call this later, because even if (when) Gene says that Sam started it, it's not going to erase what it is.
Which Gene refuses to admit.
He does the only thing he can think to do. Releasing Sam's wrist, Gene cracks Sam hard on the side of the face with a closed fist, something between a slap and a punch. He stares at Sam unblinking for a few moments, tight-lipped, unsure what to even think, let alone say, to him.
'You're fighting dirty, Tyler,' he finally grits out and shoves his mouth back against Sam's.
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Gene Hunt is kissing him.
Gene Hunt the homophobe, Gene Hunt who delights in referring to Sam as Gladys or Dorothy or Marjorie, calling him a fairy, a woofter, a ponce. Gene Hunt who refuses to pick a lock because it's too girly. And Sam knows, reasonably, that this is nothing more than retaliation, but that doesn't stop the shock from swamping his system.
His brain absolutely refuses to function, to act on the situation in any way, and so after the barest nanosecond of shocked silence, his body simply takes over, acting on instinct. He shoves back, returning the kiss furiously, angrily. There's no tongue, because even his body isn't that brazen, but it's open-mouthed and sloppy and hasty, and he tears at Gene's lips with his teeth.
It's a very long moment before he pulls away, his chest rising and falling rapidly with breaths that try to be deeper than he can make them. Gene's mouth is smeared with blood and saliva, and Sam stares at him with something like shock. If their positions were conspicuous before, it's nothing to how they are now, and Sam curses the way he has to crane his neck ever so slightly to meet Gene's gaze.
'I'm playing dirty?' He rasps.
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This is -- This is -- This is mad. This is Sam being crazy and bringing Gene down with him. That's the only explanation for why any of this is happening.
And even now, even in the middle of all of this, Sam has to be a cheeky bastard and bloody bite him. Gene can't stand it. He's sick to death of Sam's attitude and Sam's avoidance and being caught in some insane cycle with him where he's the only person Gene can turn to and the one person Gene most wants to chuck out the door once and for all. Sam and his stupid, picky brain and his teeth and the taste of blood in Gene's mouth.
It's not even anger he feels towards Sam anymore. He doesn't know what he feels -- a similar frantic buzz as the one before and just as frusterating, but this one he can at least fight against. He can let out his fury by pressing against Sam, forcing him flat beneath his weight, prying open his jaw with a thumb on his chin. Anytime Sam bites, Gene bites back, snagging Sam's upper lip and clashing teeth against teeth.
When Sam pulls back, Gene puffs heavily through his nose, mouth sore and wet from -- From whatever just happened. He finds Sam's eyes and they're wide as if in shock or disbelief. His face is pale except for two red spots from exertion staining his cheeks. Gene stares at him, feeling both sluggish and energized at once, and doesn't do anything.
All plans of attack have fled his brain. He can feel all of Sam under him and the image flashes into his mind of Sam with the prozzie, naked as a jaybird with his arms hooked over his head. Gene releases Sam's wrists as if suddenly burned.
'You pouncy. Pansy. Poufy. Bent...' He hunts for exactly the right word to throw at Sam and can't settle on just one. 'Great sodding bastard pouf!' That doesn't seem to be enough just to say that, and so Gene drives his elbow into Sam's gut as he swings his leg over to one side.
The door to the flat is still open, so Gene slams it. Maybe he should leave but he doesn't know where the hell to go. He can't go home and he can't go back to CID. Wandering the streets at this hour isn't exactly a brilliant plan either.
He needs a drink, is what he needs. He pats down his pockets as if searching for a flask but it's back in his office from when he and Sam had drinks earlier. He turns towards the wall, unable to look at Sam.
'Got a drink in this place?'
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'Jesus, Guv!' He chokes out in between coughs, but his voice is drowned by the reverberating slam of the door to his bedsit closed as hard as Gene could possibly make it.
He worries for a moment, inanely, that the noise will wake up the other tenants. He doesn't know any of them- he doesn't really have much time for socialising in between work and going mad in his free time- but he's fairly sure there's an old lady living somewhere near him in the building, and he really doesn't fancy explaining to her why he and his superior officer have been grappling on his bed.
His blood is still pounding in his ears, and there's a hollow pain in his stomach where Gene's elbow had planted itself. In point of fact, he's sore all over, and when he wipes the back of a fist over his mouth, it comes away with a streak of diluted red across the skin. He leans over to grab an old tin mug from where it sits next to the bed and spits until there's no more blood forthcoming. He leans over on the edge of the battered mattress, staring at the floor with empty-minded intensity, his hands gripping the side of the mattress with white-knuckled force.
Now, what the hell was that? There's no way Sam's panicking the way Gene is, of course; after all, there's no crisis of sexual identity for Sam. It's not as if he's gay, but he's certainly had a few blokes in his time, and after all, things are different in 2006. But still... he'd not intended that to be anything other than shock, just something to get Gene the hell off him. The last thing he'd expected was for the man to kiss back.
And now... well fuck it, it's not his fault if his body hasn't had anything other than the occasional wank to satisfy itself since he's got here. Not his fault, but it complicates things to a degree he'd really, really rather not think about.
'Hmm?' He looks up vaguely when Gene speaks. 'Oh, oh yeah. I'll just-'
He gets to his feet without really thinking about the action, gnawing on his bloodied lip as he regards Gene for just a moment before he crosses over to what passes for his kitchen. There's a bottle of scotch tucked behind a half-empty box of rice and the little jars of whatever spices he'd managed to find for himself when he got here, and he digs it out and pours two generous glassfuls. It's fairly cheap stuff, but it's alcohol, and that, he fancies, is really all that matters at this point.
'Cheers, Guv.' Sam mutters wryly, handing one of the glasses over and sitting heavily back down on the bed with his own. The springs complain, as they always do, and he gulps down a stinging mouthful of scotch, regarding Gene cautiously.
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He's getting sick and tired of being left up the mental creek without a paddle when it comes to Sam. The man usually doesn't twist his head round this much but this time he's completely --
Gene slams his fist into the wall. Christ. This is not how it's suppose to go. Find Sam, punch, and leave. That's what the plan was. All he was looking for was a way to deal with whatever the hell is sitting on his desk back at CID. A simple punch-up to get everyone and everything straightened out again. But nothing can ever simple when it comes to Sam. The man would fine a way to complicate a straight line.
He hits the wall again and turns just in time to see Sam holding out a glass to him. The muscle in Gene's jaw pulses as he takes, careful to avoid touching or catching Sam's eyes in anyway. He doesn't return the salute, instead gulping down what he can of the drink in one go.
It seems like it was scotch, once upon a time, very long ago.
The glass emptied, Gene drops his hand to his side. His eyes are still ringing and there's blood on his face, which he smears off with his free hand. He can feel Sam watching him, the hair on the back of his neck rising up.
'Do you think,' Gene starts very slowly, words soon gaining volume and speed, 'that you could not bloody stare at me when I am thinking!'
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The latter would seem to be the easiest, but his brain keeps flashing back to the sensation of Gene's lips on his, and Sam really can't ignore it. It's wrong on so many levels- well, mostly just one level, that being that it's the Guv. You don't go around snogging the Guv and then (apparently) wishing for more of the same.
His lip twitches faintly when Gene shouts at him, and he makes eye contact for the briefest of moments, staying there for a pause before he speaks. 'Course, Guv.' He says quietly, before switching his concentration back to his scotch. 'Sorry.'
It's perfunctory, of course, but there's no harm in it. Gene's more likely to divulge whatever it is he's thinking if Sam at least maintains a veneer of civility.
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The smug bastard doesn't even have the decency to be insufferable like usual. At least then Gene would have an excuse to belt him. That'd make him feel better -- just tackle the wanker again and wallop on him for a while. Or maybe even just press his mouth against Sam's once more, but this time do it his way to show Sam how it's really done, because at least that would keep Gene from seeing any of that damn suppressed smugness.
But he can't. He can't do that. There's something seriously wrong that he even thinks about doing that. He scrubs his mouth again his hand, trying to erase any left ever evidence that Sam ever was there.
The glass in his hand feels even more conspicuously and unfortunately empty. He needs another drink. He needs the entire bottle at this point. He needs to figure out what to do right now instead of standing here like inbred.
'Right,' he says, inhaling a deep breath. 'First things first, I need another drink.' He waits until Sam shows some sign of retrieving one before continuing. 'Second. We're not talking about this. So this is what we're going to do. I am going to drink your bad scotch 'til I can see straight again and you are going to sit there. Got it?'
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