Fic: What's Expected
The first time he’s injured on the job (outside of the bruises when he conflicts with his DCI), Gene doesn’t sit with him like a great, big, weepy Nancy. In fact, he doesn’t even come see him in the hospital and avoids him until he returns for duty a week later, haggard, still drugged up to his gills, but insisting (despite the constant beeping in his ears) that he’s ready to be back on duty. Then, just as he sits down and leans back gingerly, trying to avoid his still tender wound, Gene says to meet him in Lost and Found. This means one of two things: a) they have a suspect to question and Gene wants him there for it or b) Gene’s going to show him just how much he holds back when talking to potential killers. He has a feeling, as he limps in after him, that it’s the latter of the two.
He’s correct; after getting the gist of what this place is about, he finds he’s very often right in his predictions.
Gene slams him against the wall so hard that his ears ring and his back flames up even with the painkillers. He yells, Gene smashes a hand over his mouth and they tussle for control. It lasts all of two seconds before Gene has his forearm across his throat, his considerable bulk holding him down. His head spins and he closes his eyes to keep from upchucking down Gene’s front which would be a bad idea at this point.
“Listen up, you bastard,” Gene snarls. “Open your eyes and look at me, Detective Inspector!” He does. What choice does he have? “If you ever pull a stunt like that again, ever, you’re on your own. Do you understand that? I will not put up with your willy-nilly, holier than thou, off on your own bullshit especially when it puts members of my team in danger! Do you understand me, Tyler?” The shake rattles his brain. “If it happens again and you survive, you’re back to Hyde so fast you’ll forget your knackers.” The final shove leaves him reeling and Gene drops him to the ground.
He hears the door to interrogation fly open and snap shut, and decides the floor’s just fine for him. Probably deserved that, he thinks woozily as he shifts positions and feels the stitches pull; not that he’ll ever say that aloud but he did go in without a good plan, without a second thought, without considering what the outcome would be and everyone nearly bought it. Yeah, he deserved every bit of the Guv’s anger because he almost got Ray, Chris and Annie killed.
He didn’t do it to hurt anyone. At the time, he’d been confident in his knowledge-gleaned from his future memories-and had acted on what he’d called “a hunch” just to keep everyone happy. Also, in his defense, he didn’t consider any of them real. Yes, over the days, he’d become rather attached to them, relaxed his guard, started to think of them as friends, but deep down he knew they were hallucinations of his own mind, just as devious and terrifying and subversive as the blond girl and her damn clown. For him, there was no guilt until the bullet hit Annie and her only reaction was a surprised little ‘oh’ before toppling down.
In the ensuing brawl, the remaining three fought, and all three went down. He was on his hands and knees, crawling, trying to get away when the Guv busted in with some plods and Litton, and beat the shit out of every dick in the room. He’d curled up on his side and let it pass him by, hearing the words of nurses about a slow bleed and emergency surgery, as well as the warning the Guv had given him when he’d stomped out of the station that afternoon. He saw Gene’s shoes by his head but there wasn’t a worried man at his side; Gene walked right by him, shouting orders, kneeling next to Annie then Ray then Chris. Each of them were carefully loaded and taken away to the hospital, and then Gene came to his side.
“DI Tyler,” his voice was flat.
He tried to answer but ended up passing out instead, into his paralyzed 2006 body.
He thinks of the flowers and Airedale plushy he left for Annie at the front desk (he wasn’t allowed in her room), the attempts to see Chris, the questions after Ray and wonders why he has to be such a div about everything. Then he marvels at the fact that he’s referring to himself as a div. Scrabbling with weak hands, he pulls himself up the wall but finds he cannot walk further than the table. He slouches into the chair, hissing as his injury pulls, and then runs a weary hand down his face. Right now, he wishes that the light will fall out of the ceiling, clobber him and wake him up in 2006 where he’s the boss and his hunches are correct.
Instead, he finds the energy to get up an hour later and go home. He’s no good to anyone when he’s so conflicted. Everything needs to settle first, he convinces himself as he lies down that night; then things will sort out. He even stays home for the rest of the week, like the doctors told him to; it’s not exactly fun-he spends a large portion of it arguing with her and waking up in cold sweats and, then, drinking on top of his pills to dilute the images of her stabbing Annie or beating Chris with his doll-but he makes it to next Monday and tries again.
Annie’s back, pale, her smile faded, her eyes glassy. She’s in her civvies, surrounded by a crowd, chatting in a rough, tired voice. The Guv hovers in the background, watching her like a particularly vicious guard dog, and as he approaches to welcome her back, the gaze falls on him. He ends up diverting the path to his desk instead and staring hard at the paperwork waiting for him. That doesn’t mean he can’t feel Gene’s eyes tearing apart his skin.
“All right, ladies,” Gene drawls. “Give Flash Knickers a break so she can do what she’s paid to. She ain’t going anywhere; gossip time over!”
It’s difficult controlling himself but he handles it, like everything else, even manages not to freak out too badly when the phone rings and it’s his doctor on the line, saying that his brain chemistry is out of whack again but that it’s a positive thing because it means he’s fighting. He says a polite thank you before taking a blank paper and writing a number of curse words in it in big, bold letters. The whole time, Annie doesn’t approach him, though they’re both there for a twelve hour day.
It becomes a routine of sorts as each of them returns to work, battered but alive, suffering but smiling. He doesn’t say anything because the Guv would probably rip his throat out and they don’t seek him out. Teamwork doesn’t decline so much as become unnecessary; they all do exactly what Gene tells them, down to the last detail without question. The others work on a current case while he delves through stacks of closed and cold mysteries because, unofficially, Gene’s suspended him. There’s no forms filed or complaints filed against him; he just isn’t included in conversations, isn’t taken out to question people, isn’t given a chance to have an opinion. Suddenly, Gene’s quite interested in the organization he’s tried to implement since he arrived and has him labeling and alphabetizing everything he’s done as a DCI.
He personally starts to chafe the week after Chris returns (he’s the last and still wobbles when he stands too quickly) and by Friday, he’s prepared to openly defy something.
“You can’t just burst into their house like some untrained gorilla!” he snaps as Gene plots the next move on the drug case they are working. And by they, of course, he means the team. He just happens to overhear most of their conversations. “You have no proof.”
Everyone goes quiet and the Guv turns to him, hands in pockets, fag in the corner of his mouth. “DI Tyler, I don’t believe I asked for your opinion. If I need some wailing, complaining or trouble making, I’ll be sure to talk to you.”
It’s worse than being screamed at in some ways. He’s come to respect the familiarity he shares with Gene, the dominance game they’ve played since he arrived. Even if it often ends in pain for him and Gene winning, it’s a dependable part of his everyday life. He “sulks” after this, but, really, he simply hurts. It’s another thing, on top of his slow healing injury, hallucinations, the lonely moments at the pub where Nelson shoots him sympathetic looks but the others sit as far away from him as possible. It doesn’t matter that he catches Annie and Chris giving him a meek glance, or Ray a glare, because, combined, they’ve barely spoken more than a sentence to him. He’s so isolated, he almost welcomes the moments his mother’s voice invades his mind.
He’s starting to wonder if he’s created his own little hell.
Nights get bad after that. When he sleeps, he dreams of the bullet hitting Annie’s throat instead of the soft part of her stomach. Chris gets a knife through the eye or Ray, yes, even Ray, is beaten to death before his eyes. When he’s awake, she comes and sits next to him or on the television or at his table or on the windowsill, and whispers his faults into his ears while he screams for her to shut up. Alcohol doesn’t help drown her out, doesn’t dull the dreams, even though he’s drinking like a fish at Nelson’s and taking a bottle home with him. It just steals away his appetite the next day when he dresses and showers, eyes sunk and appearance haggard, and goes to the station.
“Boss,” Chris says in his ‘I think I may be doing something wrong but please don’t call me names’ voice. “What do you think of this?”
The dull thudding behind his eyes echoes the distant, slow heart monitor. “Of what?”
Chris shows him a set of pictures and the two of them spend the next hour comparing the blurred snapshots with the artistic rendering of their latest bad guy. He tells Chris, without even thinking, that a computer would be so useful right now and Chris tells him they wouldn’t be able to fit it in here, unless, of course, he means, like from Star Trek.
“Yeah, and you’re Chekov and the Guv’s Kirk,” he plays into it a little, companionship like warm soup in his sickness.
“Annie’s Uhura?”
“Or the Nurse…what’s ‘er face…”
“Chapel.”
“Yes, Nurse Chapel.”
They trade an awkward smile and Chris suddenly decides he’s going to show the Guv the comparison. He stays in his seat, thinking how nice a scotch would taste right now, when the Guv and Chris enter the room. Gene’s got the thrill of the hunt aura about him and grabs Annie and Ray. They all leave him to sit alone, and wait for their return. In their absence, he looks over what they’ve been doing, confirming Annie’s suspicions of the drugs being transported in vases. The confession Ray acquired (and taped no less) supports Chris’s belief that Gregory Hadsbeth is in charge of the whole thing while his wife owns and runs the fine antiquities shop where the drugs are traded.
The phone rings and he answers just in case it’s them and they need him. The voice on the other end disappoints him considerably.
“Sam, we’re concerned about your depressed brain activity of late and we’re going to put you on an experimental drug which should help boost your level of consciousness. There may be a few side effects but the benefits outwei-”
He slams the phone down and leaves immediately. By the time the cab reaches his house, he’s seeing 2006 and 1973 at the same time, an overlay of each other so there are two sets of people and two sets of doors and two sets of buildings. He staggers into his flat and sees both of his flats, even though they aren’t located in the same place; his big, luxurious flat with its high def television and couch and big dining table with state of the art appliances next to his dingy room with its little bed and dirty windows and miniscule kitchenette. He can’t figure out which bed to lie down on so he settles on the floor and waits for everything to stop spinning, to stop ringing, to stop turning upside down and…
The phone rings again. He has to crawl on his stomach to get to it.
“What now?” he whispers in a paper thin voice.
“Boss, is that you?” Chris asks. “We need you here if it is you that is.” He sounds winded and there’s a tremor in his voice. “Boss, it’s the Guv…”
He doesn’t need to hear it twice so he puts the receiver down and fumbles for the only thing that will counterbalance this. Under his bed, in 1973, he finds half a whisky bottle and a still corked red wine. He chugs them and watches as 2006 melts away and 1973 stops swaying like a hammock. There’s a bit of scotch in a tumbler on the counter and he tips that back as well, just to lengthen the effect. The funny part, he decides, on his way down the stairs, is how he’s not pissed. He can walk a straight line, he can say the alphabet backwards, he knows his name, his age, his date of birth; he even manages to remember where the station is and gets there before too long.
He reaches the floor, demands, “Who, what, where, when? Tell me. Details. Now.”
“Bloody hell, you smell like a brewery,” Ray says. Everyone’s staring at him instead of acting which irks him because this is not the time for that. Later, when Gene Hunt’s safe and sound, making everyone’s lives miserable, then they can ask him why he’s pawing through Gene’s desk for his stash.
“Sam, are you drunk?” Annie asks, slowly, like she’s talking to a wounded animal.
“Luv, he’s bloody pissed out of his mind,” Ray snaps. “Look at him!” He’s just finished off one flask and puts the other in close reach.
“I am NOT pissed,” he snarls, slamming his hands against the desk. Everyone stops, surprised by how loud he is, surprised about how clearly he speaks. There’s a computer on Annie’s desk so he drains the other flask and searches for more. He finds a nice single malt in the bottom drawer with a bow on it and vindictively opens it. “Now, tell me what the hell happened.”
He has the details in thirty minutes, laid out before him on different pieces of paper. Annie’s standing next to him, frowning, clearly trying to ignore his almost persistent alcohol intake. Ray, on the other hand, seems a bit stunned while Chris is watching him with awe. Everyone else simply can’t believe he’s still standing after he finishes the bottle of scotch off.
“Okay,” he says slowly, with less annoyance. “Lemme make sure I have it right.”
“You all went to confront Hadsbeth?”
“S’right, Boss,” Chris confirms.
“At the store?”
“Where else?” Ray retorts.
Sam ignores him. “And when you got there, Hadsbeth was dead and his wife, apparently, missing.”
“Yes,” Annie nods. “But we should’ve known someone else was there. All the signs-”
He holds up his hand and sees a mobile resting under hers. “It doesn’t matter. Everyone makes mistakes,” he doesn’t notice them trading glances over his head. “So, Hadsbeth’s wife was the real ringleader and Hadsbeth was the fall guy?”
“That’s what it looks like. She got the Guv while we were searching the place. Must’ve had some men with her because she’s a tiny thing,” Annie points to a pile towards the corner of the desk. “Here’s the houses they have in town.”
“Do we have people looking at those places?” Ray’s suit is changing to something very modern, his hair shortening. “And have we put out a notice to keep an eye out for her?”
Negatives; he’s up to his knackers in negatives. No one functions unless he or the Guv force them to so he barks orders like he’s Gene and puts his mind into figuring out where in the world she would go to ground. She’s a potter, he reads in the statements, she loves to cook. She has two cats and a dog at the house just outside of town and a horse in the country. Utter rubbish, he decides bitterly, as a big, flat screen telly hangs itself on the west wall. He’s out of booze and time.
“Do we have anyone at her workshop? Down on fifth?”
“No, Boss,” Chris pauses in his frantic search for a pen. “But why-”
“Get back up in order, we’re heading there,” he says, giving Gene’s desk one last one over for booze. “Well, hurry up!”
They reluctantly do what he tells them. He forces himself to sit for a moment and puts his head in his hands, trying to block out the sound of printers and the flashing of an atomic clock near his elbow. There’s a radio playing alternative rock and the Beatles simultaneously. His foot taps in rhythm with all of it, listening to mobile phones, to espresso machines, to ruffling files, to chairs scraping on the floor.
“Boss, we’re ready,” Chris, in front of him, wearing tennis shoes, skinny jeans and a button down shirt. He’s gauged his ears in the past twenty minutes and put on a variety of necklaces.
“Ray, you take the lead,” and Ray looks strikingly modern with his sunglasses and his tailored suit. “Go to the shop. If she’s not there, make rounds at the houses.”
Ray’s expression screams that he thinks he’s a wanker and a pansy, but he whistles and everyone follows him out the door. Chris pauses in the doorway, brow knit, clearly disappointed about something, before passing through. There’s a moment where Sam thinks he might speak but it’s lost in the crooning of a pop star. He gasps out a sob and shoves his thumbs in his ears, only to hear her voice in his head, without the pleasure of the television.
“Oh Sam,” she sighs. “How can you stand it? Letting everyone down again. They think you’re just throwing them to the wolves.”
“Shut up,” he mumbles. “Please.”
“But Sam, I only want to help,” she coos.
“Well, you’re not,” he snaps and opens his eyes to find Annie kneeling before him, her hands on his knees.
“Then what can I do?” she asks. She’s in a sundress that fits her curves and makes her hair glow. Why she would wear that to work, he hasn’t the foggiest idea. “Sam, tell me what I can do to help you.”
He swallows and tentatively, ever so tentatively, reaches out to touch her, just as he did on his first day. Her pulse thrums under his fingers, slightly fast but not overly so. He leaves his hand there for a few moments, relaxing, slowly, ignoring the fact that he thinks Maya is in the room with them.
“Just go, Annie,” he manages. “I’ll be fine. The Guv needs you.”
“But Sam-”
“There’s no time for arguing,” he pushes her away, gently and stands. The world’s solidifying into 2006. “Go with Ray. Get Gene back. We’ll talk afterwards.”
But they don’t. In fact, no one ever speaks about how the Boss drank through all of the Guv’s liquor in less than an hour or how he organized a rescue from scratch or how he sat the actual commencement-after all, he was still on desk duty-out. They talk about how dashing Ray was, bursting in and saving the Guv from a glazing and cooking, and how marvelous Annie and Chris were in getting the flunkies. His name only comes up as, “Where was DI Tyler in all of this?” The answer is, he was curled up under his desk, smacking his head against the underside in hopes that it would change the scenery before his eyes.
The phone rings before they’ve returned, not the mobile which is lying on the floor next to him but somehow beyond his reach, but the office phone. With one arm still wrapped around himself, he fumbles with his free hand to grasp the receiver. He doesn’t want to know what they’re putting into him, now.
“What is it?” he whispers, his throat sore.
“It worked!” Chris is jubilant. “You were right, Boss! You were right!”
“G-good,” he mumbles, his lips numb. “Guv okay?”
Quiet and then, “They’re taking him to the hospital just in case ‘cause his head’s a bit banged up but he had his wits about him when they loaded him in. Yelling about how we were a right bunch of fools and how he weren’t never happier to see us. Will probably convince ‘em to drop him at the station instead.”
He sets the phone in the cradle, done with that particular conversation for now. The double images are worsening so that he has tunnel vision. When he stands, he’s surfing the waves in Mexico again, trying not to fall off, but he’s unsuccessful. Instead, he droops on the floor and stares at the ceiling which hasn’t changed in all of those years. It rotates on a semi-sideways axis, just like the Earth and he twirls with it, pondering whether or not it’ll stop.
“All alone,” a voice sighs. He doesn’t recognize it. “All alone, DI Tyler, and helpless, too. I’d rather hoped that Mr. Hunt would drink that-I had it mixed specially for him once he started nosing around-but there’s a certain irony in you doing it. You’ve not been involved in this case much at all, have you?”
She’s thin, pretty, in the fashion for the 2000s, and gleeful. Under her arm, she holds folders and tapes like a little yap dog. He doesn’t recognize anything but the tang of her words and the colors flashing behind her. They taste funny and sound like Mozart.
“I suppose everyone’s out searching for Mr. Hunt?”
He shakes his head and then slouches over, twirling with the floor, which happens to be made of the silky scales of a dragon. Its glowing yellow eyes are the ceiling and its teeth cleverly hidden by the doors.
“Not a conversationalist, are you?” She squats before him all roses and peaches and black cats on her feet. Her lips are clouds brushing his ear. “Good bye, DI Tyler. If you’re still around when they get back, tell them I needed to move on anyway.”
She’s a great big spider, with her many legs, and he can see through her eyes as she views everything a thousand times over, in a thousand details, only describable with thousands of thousands of words he doesn’t know. There’s web spinning out of her, wrapping around 2006 and squeezing the life out of it so it gags and turns purple and smells like nine and seven and one and three. He bats with a lazy hand at the trail, watching it melt into pudding and then glop into rocks which hurt his body. It hears cold and hot and feels music and dance, and he knows that he’s very, very wrong.
“Take another step, love, and I’ll shoot,” a voice warns. “And it’d be a shame to hurt a pretty bird like you.” The gun fires and he feels the thump causing an earthquake. The earth cracks and shakes and smokes and rumbles; he gags and coughs. “That’s a new level of sissy, even for you, Tyler. She can’t weigh more than a hundred when wet.” He can see the tiles, feel their cool warmth and wonders why they’re stealing his soul. “Tyler?” The touch of pure heat which burns, “Sam?”
He wakes up for a brief moment in 2006 to see his mother leaning over the bed, stroking his face, whispering how she loves him. She’s still beautiful, her hair grey, her face wrinkled from life, mostly around her eyes from smiling.
“Sammy?” She has such hope. “Sammy? Can you hear me?”
The respirator keeps him from speaking but not from nodding his head. Something else prevents that.
“That’s it, darling,” she encourages. “Come back. We’ve all been waiting for you to-”
“-come back and find you dead, you div. Come on, Tyler, breathe, damn it.”
They never talk about it because Gene Hunt’s the only person who knows where Sam Tyler was and what was wrong, and as far as he’s concerned, it’s no one else’s business. If they want answers, they can read his report.
The second time DI Tyler ends up in the hospital, Gene does sit by his side, for the better part of two days, waiting for him to come to even if the doctors aren’t hopeful. He’s not a girl about it though-he brings nudy magazines to piss the uptight bloke off (he’s dying to hear the ‘disrespectful‘ speech) and listens to the TV loud and complains about the food Sam’s not conscious to eat and says crude things to every single nurse who works the floor-and no one, ever, sees him touch the other man. He puts his feet up on the bed, scratches his balls, belches, drinks excessively, smokes even though there's oxygen in the room; but not even accidentally, does he let any part of his anatomy brush Tyler. At the same time, he doesn’t leave Sam’s side unless it’s to use the toilet or get some food, and even then, only when Annie or Chris can sit with him. I can get some kip when I’m dead, he informs Sam’s doctor, so bugger off.
Sam Tyler finally wakes up at an awkward time, about four in the morning when the TVs not working and he’s bored with the magazines, and the idiot blinks up at him as though he doesn’t quite get it. Gene’s tilted on two legs in the chair, throwing pencils up at the ceiling so they stick in the paneling, not aware (or, perhaps, not caring) that his DI’s watching him with a mixture of fascination and horror.
“Y’know,” his voice cracks, “those’ll take your eye out if they fall.”
Gene lets the chair fall down on all four legs with a thwak. “Awake for two minutes and you’re already nagging me.”
“S’dangerous.”
“Stop being a pissy lady so I can appreciate the fact that you’re not some vegetable like they said you’d be,” Gene growls. Sam almost listens but his mouth opens again as a pencil begins to fall. It strikes the tile, just inches away from the chair.
“See?” He coughs. “Told you.”
“Smart ass,” Gene replies. He stands up and stretches. “Well, then, now that me back’s permanently damaged, I’m gonna leave you in the capable hands of Nurse Buttercup and her lovely tits. Some of us have work to do, princess.”
It’s not meant to be a jab but he sees Tyler wince and knows he’s said the wrong thing. He pauses at the foot of his bed, looking at the chart as though the medical gibberish makes sense to him, and waits for Sam to speak his mind; because, everyone knows that’s what Tyler’s best at, regardless of the weather, the company or the rules. Another pencil falls and he watches it hit the chair.
“Sorry, Guv,” Sam says finally. “Let you down.”
It’s all he wanted to hear. After the incident, after nearly watching his whole team die, after holding poor, little, frightened Cartwright’s hand-and calling her a tart just to keep the situation light-and trying to keep Chris’s blood in his body and hoping that Ray’s head wasn’t broken beyond repair, after going to Sam’s side, thinking the ponce was brooding about the turn of events, only to find he was half-dead like the rest, all Gene Hunt expected was acceptance (that Tyler had been wrong) and an apology. He would have preferred it weeks ago, when he had Tyler against the wall, when he was as angry as hell and ready for a fight, but Tyler rarely ever gave him what he wanted when he wanted it.
“Don’t think about it anymore,” he says, a bit gruffly. “It’s done. We’ve all learned from it. Just get better, Sammy boy, and get back to work ‘fore Ray takes over your desk.”