Ficathon: And Never Go To Sleep, by severinne (Brown Cortina, Sam/Gene))
Title: And Never Go To Sleep (1/2)
Author: severinne
Rating: Brown Cortina (with a bit of Red drive-by smutting in Part Two)
Word Count: 6400 for Part One (14,500-ish overall)
Summary: ”I wonder, Mr. Hunt, what part of your subconscious does he hail from?”
Notes: Written for the following Ficathon 2008 prompt: “Gene/Nelson (but not necessarily slash), in the pub, discussing Sam” and I did in fact bypass Gene/Nelson slash in favour of Sam/Gene. I'm only posting the first part at the moment, with huge apologies to my recipient since I’m still ironing out some problems with Part Two, but I promise I’ll have the rest for you inside a day or two, tops.
Huge thanks and a virtual bottle of Jack Daniels go out to candesgirl for being a steadfast and wildly encouraging beta, couldn’t have done it without you *hugs*
ETA: Part Two is finally done! Link provided at the end of this part, thanks for your patience folks :)
‘Prove it,’ he had said, short and to the point and it did the job, Tyler rushing out the door in a flurry of long legs and leather, leaving Gene reeling still, blood racing, set somehow alight. Prove it, he had challenged, just as Tyler was challenging him at every bloody turn since he arrived yesterday, pushing back like no other man under him had dared to before.
Sam Tyler was intoxicating. Warmed him through, gave him the spins, and made him want to heave up in the yard out back, all three at once.
Huffing impatiently at himself, Gene turned back to the bar, easily suppressing any inklings of going back to the station to coax the lads into chasing up new leads or else to simply watch this boy from Hyde in action. Between duty and temptation, another pint seemed the safest choice. He considered just drinking Tyler’s abandoned bitter, but it seemed to have vanished so he waved down Nelson instead. ‘Same as before.’
Nelson’s wide mouth quirked as he collected Gene’s empty glass. ‘Oh, I don’t think so, mon brave.’ He began to pour, and must have caught the confusion on Gene’s face, leaning in past the tap and lowering his voice. ‘Nothing gonna be the same as before with that one around, don’t you think?’
‘Hard to say, innit?’ Gene sniffed, glanced back at the door, the ghost of Tyler’s exit still replaying in his mind.
‘He’s not like the others, this new DI of yours.’
Gene nodded, accepted his pint. ‘He’ll learn. Soon enough.’ This was one of the things he liked about Nelson: he was a sharp enough bloke to read people and situations, to know without being told that Tyler was the new DI on his team.
‘Maybe.’ Nelson said it slow, his voice honeyed with humour. ‘What may be, may be.’ Nodding and smiling, more to himself than to Gene, he set about mopping up the innumerable spills of beer staining the bar top. Gene watched him disinterestedly, sipping his pint, caught slightly off-guard when Nelson looked up again, dark eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
‘I wonder, Mr. Hunt… what part of your subconscious he hail from?’
* * *
‘Hyde.’ Gene spat out the name like a bad bit of curry. ‘Who the hell would want to go back to sodding poncy-arsed Hyde?’
‘Inspector Tyler isn’t with you tonight, then?’
‘Of course he bloody isn’t.’ Gene hoisted the last two pints of the present round, passed them along to Ray. ‘He doesn’t play cards. Doesn’t play darts. S’like he doesn’t want to be here at all.’
‘Where is he now? D’you know?’
‘Don’t see why I should give a toss. Not one hour ago, the daft git’s in my office, asking if I can send him back to Hyde.’
‘And why didn’t you?’
Gene opened his mouth to reply, then paused. The right kind of answers lingered at the tip of his tongue - the paperwork required for the transfer would be a right pain in the arse, and Gene would be damned before he would bend to the lad’s pitiful whinging, just because he had been stupid enough to poke the proverbial hornet’s nest and couldn’t understand why the nasty buggers came rallying up for a sting or several.
Which led, all too conveniently, to the reason that remained stuck further down in Gene’s throat, half-formed around images and impressions too quick to measure in the hasty business of Kim Trent’s arrest. The single strongest memory he could conjure returned time and again to that swell of relief so great it was nearly joy on seeing Tyler, leaning against a water pipe as though it were the only thing holding him up but unharmed enough to smile bravely, gratefully with all that dangerously disarming charm that stirred things in Gene, memories of boys long since sacrificed at the altar of a safe marriage…
At the edge of his awareness, Gene heard Nelson clear his throat in the awkward silence. He gave his head a firm shake, and looked back towards the table, where his men were waiting. ‘Paperwork,’ he mumbled. Nelson’s brow furrowed in confusion, his mouth turning down into a baffled frown.
‘Not sure I follow your drift, brother.’
‘Neither do I, Nelson.’ Bitterly resigned, Gene returned to his seat, rested his cigarette in the ashtray, and gathered up the discarded hands for his deal. The ritual movements of the game looked sluggish to his eyes, and he watched his fingers shuffle the cards - that was all, not like he was sulking - and was just about to snap at Chris to stop that fidgeting already, he was gonna deal soon enough, when Nelson’s voice chimed the smoky air.
‘Hey, pilgrim.’
Gene glanced up. Tyler was braced against the bar with both hands, looking pale and worn. ‘Give me a Scotch,’ he murmured. ‘Don’t fancy going out there tonight.’
Nelson served up Tyler’s drink with his usual share of chatter, soft words that Gene couldn’t be bothered to heed given the greater effort of watching his DI without appearing to watch too closely, holding the shuffle in stasis while he waited for Tyler to do something other than stare into his scotch like he was trying to reckon out the best way to drown himself in such a small measure of liquid. But even Ray was letting off the odd impatient sigh, and Gene realized he would have to take the initiative. ‘You in, Tyler? Fifty p gets you a chair.’
And he didn’t miss the way Tyler first looked to Nelson, the odd glance for permission, but what mattered was that Tyler was walking over, was rummaging in his snug trousers pocket for coins, and that the look on his face was already less weary and lost.
Ray stood up from the table, knocked Tyler’s arm on his way to the bogs - not especially hard, but painfully deliberate - and Gene felt a flash of anger at his sergeant and old friend until Tyler sat in his place and suddenly the heat had gone. Or changed. He really wasn’t sure it had happened at all.
‘Sure you’re in?’
Tyler smiled, and threw in his ante. ‘Deal me.’
Gene dealt his hand, and took a slow, deliberate drag off his cigarette, because, if the knowing light in Tyler’s eyes on that sly upward glance was anything to go by, the curve of Tyler’s mouth was making his own twitch and stretch in a way that surely must look stupid.
* * *
The first time Gene stepped foot in Sam Tyler’s flat, he had felt the world shift beneath his feet with a sense of revelation so shattering that he doubted he ever truly recovered. And that was only partly due to the sight of his DI cuffed to his bed, spread out utterly naked, not a stitch of clothing in sight.
And he had so little clothing at that, once Gene found the chance to investigate. Six shirts. Two pairs of trousers - the black folded into the wardrobe, the red strewn across the floor, tangled with a pair of white y-fronts that Gene was very deliberately not looking at in favour of glaring into the wardrobe. Six shirts.
While Gene’s sole acquaintance with the type of people who come from Hyde consisted of that pointy-nosed bird his mate Jonesy had married after their time with National Service, he didn’t mind reading Tyler as a consistent type of Hyde bloke. He was quaint, ridiculously picky, strutted about with a persistent smell of cleanliness wafting from his hair and skin, a fresh soapy smell that made Gene’s nostrils twitch in a way that wasn’t entirely disgusted, just curious.
A man shouldn’t smell so clean unless he’s been living half his life in the shower, which seemed a ridiculous notion before but now that Tyler had been locked away in his tiny bathroom for the last twenty minutes, Gene was starting to have second thoughts. Daft bugger hadn’t even thanked him when Gene had finally unlocked the cuffs, just shot upright and disappeared into the bathroom, leaving Gene alone to wait with only the flat’s sparse contents and a rampant imagination for company.
Gene thumbed through the hanging shirts again, counting silently. Six. Tyler had a second jacket, didn’t he? A brown - but no, June’s blood had left it ruined in the alley. For all the intensity of his memory of Tyler’s willful, impassioned rage, Gene couldn’t remember what had happened to the jacket afterward, what had happened to the imagined wealth of material things he had expected a picky priss like Tyler to own. Best he could reckon was that Tyler was the sort to pack light. Or else he was so completely daft that he had forgotten to pack altogether.
The water pipes released a low groan of protest, the water likely running cold.
Maybe Tyler wouldn’t have run off to the shower so quickly if Gene hadn’t stopped first to finger the St. Christopher around his neck, turning and tugging it like it were a bloody gift tag on an especially surprising Christmas present. He never would have dared to touch what he had already taken in with his eyes, not when the lad was still helpless like that, but the little medallion had slipped to the side of his neck, somehow appearing more debauched than all that naked flesh, and he had wanted to put it right.
Put it right. Gene snorted, stubbed out his cigarette in an empty wine glass. Nothing about this was right.
The noise of water splashing unevenly from behind the loo’s thin accordion door was seeping into his mind, creating misted images of Tyler moving beneath the spray, displacing the steady flow of water with the movement of his body. This was so easy now that he knew exactly what Tyler looked like naked, so easy to picture all that glowing, solid flesh dripping wet, slippery beneath Tyler’s smooth hands as he soaped himself up, so thoroughly because he was always so clean, so careful to see to every last curve and crevice, such a clean boy… such a dirty boy…
Right. No, wrong. Gene shook his head angrily. This was so utterly wrong. His imagination was no longer allowed to play the waiting game, which left Gene and this shitty derelict of a flat and six lousy shirts. Not for the first time, he cursed Sam Tyler in all his fastidious glory, wished to hell that he would just hurry up and finish himself off… no, not that, just finish…
Goddamn it.
Gene snatched a shirt at random from its wire hanger, desperate to get his hands around something before they dove into his trousers to see to his inconvenient erection. Rubbing the polyester between his fingers, he examined the garment disdainfully for lack of anything safer to do. White with blue and brown stripes. That same clean smell, of Tyler’s skin rather than washing powder, and his cock twitched again. Gene shut his eyes, tried to picture his own wardrobe. How many shirts did he own? The missus usually bought him one every birthday, the mother-in-law at Christmas, and while he tended to reach for the same ones time and again, they were kept in good company with the shirts for special occasions, the shirts in need of mending that would never get done, a whole history of shirts adding up in his wardrobe like the rings of an oak tree.
Six shirts. Two pair trousers. One leather jacket. Empty shelves, empty walls. The numbers didn’t add up to much, made Gene grimace with a pang of loneliness.
‘Guv?’
Startled, Gene jumped and looked over his shoulder, mouth going dry at the sight of Tyler crossing the bedsit, hair spiked with damp, a slightly frayed towel slung about his hips.
‘Bout ruddy time,’ Gene grunted, ignoring the rasp under his false front. ‘Now get some damned clothes on already, we’ve got scum to clean up out there.’
Tyler glanced up from where he was bent forward, collecting his red trousers from the floor. ‘You’re blocking the wardrobe,’ he remarked coolly.
Gene dodged out of the way, quickly and perhaps a bit guiltily. He looked resolutely away, staring numbly at the y-fronts Tyler had thrown aside once he’d untangled them from his trousers, swallowing when the damp towel flew to the corner of the room to join them and realizing he had miscalculated horribly in stepping to the wrong side of the wardrobe, trapped by the bed on one side and Sam’s naked body on the other.
He closed his eyes, started counting shirts in his mind, but six was really such a small number.
* * *
‘I made a huge mistake, Nelson.’ Gene took a bracing swallow of his whisky. ‘Well, a couple, really.’
‘Mistakes will happen, mon brave.’ Nelson was already topping up his glass, bottle always at the ready. ‘Thing is, you’ve got to face up to ‘em, figure out where you went wrong so as you don’t repeat yourself.’
‘Maybe I want to repeat this one…’ Suddenly wary, Gene looked about, but the rest of CID had long since left him and Tyler to their celebration; Tyler had excused himself to the gents, who knew how long ago now. ‘And who knows, maybe it’s alright, actually listening to the crazy bastard, if it means we finally got to put Warren down.’
‘Is that what you’re talking about?’ Nelson chuckled, swept a few more empty glasses off the bar. ‘Oh, brother, that was no mistake.’
‘Oh, give over, Guv.’ Though he didn’t dare look, Gene could hear the exasperated eye-roll in Tyler’s words. ‘Nothing here you haven’t taken a good long look at already, is there?’
‘Not my fault you were showing it off, you kinky tart.’ And he had to glare at Tyler when he said it, to prove that he could, to prove that he wouldn’t flinch even when Tyler did, hands trembling briefly over his belt buckle.
‘And I suppose I asked for it, did I?’ Tyler’s voice was barely a bitter mumble, lost to the muffling cover of the clean white vest he tugged over his head. Something in the way he straightened the thin cotton over his chest and stomach, tucking himself together with that defensive hunch to his shoulders, made Gene frown and wish he had kept his mouth shut.
‘Can I have my shirt, Guv?’
Gene glanced down, remembering the shirt still clutched in his hands, and wondered how long his thumb had been stroking over the polyester like that. ‘This shirt?’
Tyler gave him one of his more scathing looks. ‘Yeah. That shirt.’
‘Quit your sulking, Tyler.’ Gene shoved the shirt into his chest and promptly crossed his arms, drawing his coat around himself to conceal the lingering hard-on tenting his trousers. He watched with narrowed eyes as Tyler fastened the row of buttons with rapid, efficient flicks of his fingers. ‘’S’not like you haven’t got others,’ he grumbled.
‘True,’ Tyler murmured, eyes flickering upward, ‘but you picked out this one.’
A faint, high-pitched whine filled Gene’s ears, prodding his attention towards the television set him and Sam had brought to Nelson a couple evenings ago. God Save the Queen must have droned to a stop some time ago, replaced by the test card with her clown, her noughts and crosses.
He frowned. Even though the Grand National had been a treat to watch in the pub with his mates rather than alone at home under the watchfully disapproving eye of his wife, Gene wasn’t sure that he much cared for having a telly in his boozer, with its ability to mark time moving forward. Time never existed in here before, the light unchanging and the room devoid of clocks.
‘Can’t you shut that damn thing off?’ he grumbled, rubbing at his throbbing temple.
‘Sorry, mon brave.’ Nelson kept to his cleaning, otherwise unresponsive to Gene’s request.
‘Right.’ Gene drained his whisky, shook his head. ‘S’all bloody Tyler’s doing, anyway,’ he continued, thinking back on Warren.
‘Your fine figure of a desk sergeant certainly thinks so.’
‘An’ Phyllis is right on the money there, as usual.’ Gene glanced up, frowned at the faraway look on Nelson’s face, the towel in his hand gliding repetitively over the glass in his hand, long since sparkling. ‘An’ you can wipe that dreamy smirk off your gob an’ all, even if I were prepared to look the other way on that one, she’d eat you alive an’ spit out the leftovers anyway.’
‘Ah, if I would be so lucky…’ Nelson shook his head wistfully, put the glass away with its sisters. Gene snorted derisively.
‘Trust me, Nelson, you’re better off steering clear.’
‘Not so, not so at all.’ The fake Jamaican patois had lapsed into Nelson’s softer Lancastrian accent, as it sometimes did when Gene found himself alone with the barman, as Nelson did with no one else. He fixed Gene with a solemn gaze, that soft smile still curving his mouth. ‘Any love what’s worth it at all is bound to happen on a battlefield, mon brave.’
Something like a stone seemed to sink through Gene’s body. ‘Enough of that romantic bollocks,’ he grumbled, staring back into his pint. ‘You’ll put me off me drink.’
Gene stared, eyes widening at the unmistakably flirtatious tone of his DI’s voice, uncertain how to reply to something that was clearly meant as a deflecting joke but that managed to slice him open all the same. There was something of a challenge in the smile, something vulnerable in the way Tyler’s hands were tugging the unbuttoned cuffs of his shirt to cover the faint welts on his wrists. The combination of both was captivating, stirring up a disorienting rush of arousal, concern, and sheer possessiveness in Gene’s gut.
So help him, but in that moment all Gene wanted to do was snog the strange bastard senseless. Instead, he cleared his throat, hoping the gravelly sound was somewhat forbidding to Tyler’s ears.
‘An’ it looks lovely on you, Dorothy. Now, reckon we can go get some sodding work done now you’re all gussied up?’
‘C’mon, Guv.’ A hand slid over his shoulder, startling Gene upright. ‘Shift it, we’re leaving.’
‘Took your sodding time, thought you’d fallen in.’ Gene craned his neck to glare at Sam. The other man looked strangely flushed, most likely from the booze.
‘Um, yeah.’ Sam looked away, flicked a smile at Nelson. ‘Cheers, mate.’ Pound notes were being passed somewhere beneath his field of vision, gone before he could start to count, and Gene realized that he must be more than a little pissed by now. With a resolute nod, he straightened his spine, prepared to set the gears in motion, starting with his coat… where had his coat gone…
‘Here.’ One of Gene’s outstretched hands caught the familiar heft of camel-hair and slipped into the sleeve that Sam was holding out for him. With an approving hum, he allowed his deputy to fold him into his coat, rolling his shoulders as those finicky hands pulled the garment precisely in place.
‘G’night, Nelson.’ Gene slurred his way off the barstool, supporting himself with a hand on Sam’s shoulder.
Nelson glanced up, broom in hand. ‘Pleasant dreams, Mr. Hunt.’ His dark eyes tracked significantly sideways, indicating Sam’s averted back with a look before meeting Gene’s own blurring gaze, curiously sombre. ‘You’ve earned it.’
Gene wasn’t entirely sure how to respond to that, but Sam was tugging at his coat anyway, so he left with what he hoped was a wise huff of breath, keeping his hand nestled beneath the smooth leather of Sam’s collar so as not to lose his deputy in the darkness of the pub’s back yard. It had started to rain, lighter than a monsoon but steady enough to thread through his hair like fingers and crawl down the splayed collar of his shirt. Sam’s leather coat was growing slick under his hand, and slipped out of his grasp with a remarkably loud and funny sound when Sam turned abruptly around. His mind elsewhere, Gene didn’t fully process the move until his chest collided with Sam’s body, until his gaze collided with the rivulets of water tracing the contours of Sam’s face.
‘Gene.’ The sound of the rain threatened to drown Sam’s voice, but Gene could read his name on those lips, so terribly close and gleamingly wet. His mouth was still open, as though to continue speaking, but the rain was so loud that it seemed sensible to lean in closer to hear what he had to say and there was so little distance left between them that he swallowed his words instead, their lips meeting almost by accident, cool and slick with rain.
The kiss was simple, an anticlimax of sliding pressure and faint movement of mouths yet it made Gene spring away with shock, blinking water out of his eyes, suddenly sober. He stared at Sam’s lips, saw them moving in the dark, snatches of rapid speech drifting to his ears over the pounding rain: ‘… too drunk… an’ hope… won’t remember any… fuck, your eyes…’ Sam looked increasingly more desperate the longer he spoke, and Gene found himself closing the distance again, needing to hear better than this, and suddenly Sam was flush against him again, insinuating his dripping wet, leather-clad arms beneath the dry shelter of his open coat, mouth moving against Gene’s ear, his rough voice amplified over the rain.
‘…and it’s fucking insane, I don’t understand it at all, but fuck, I couldn’t help it, tossing off in the gents just now, so hard just from looking at you…’
Gene groaned weakly, hoped the rain would drown the noise.
‘…and again yesterday, in the shower, knowing you were just outside the door, knowing you’d seen me like that… shit, Gene, you could’ve done anything to me, and I couldn’t have stopped you… wouldn’t have wanted to-‘
And there was nothing accidental about the second kiss, no chance for mistaken impressions in the way Gene grabbed Sam by the back of the neck and turned his head and tore at Sam’s mouth with his own, forcing his way inside and tasting rain and whisky and something utterly unique beneath it all. Sam’s mouth opened wider under his, tongue coaxing and welcoming with a low and delirious sound echoing from deep inside his throat, and Gene chased it down, desperate to see how deep this rabbit hole really went, desperate to hold on as long as he could. His arms tightened around Sam, crushed the weight of a firm body and sodden clothing against his own, everything now wet with rain, and was both surprised and relieved that Sam didn’t simply dissolve into a puddle, a dream at his feet. Oh, what a world…
The first time Gene kissed Sam Tyler, the first time Gene was kissed by Sam Tyler, he knew it wouldn’t be the last time.
* * *
‘Will you be having another, mon brave?’
Gene seriously considered the question, his gaze shifting from his half-empty pint to Nelson’s hand on the tap before he twisted on his barstool to scan the empty chairs and tables. Not even a drift of cigarette smoke filled the room, his last fag long since stubbed out in the ashtray at his elbow.
As a last resort, he checked his watch. The football match would still be going about now, which made it another half hour at least before any other punters would be showing up, and Gene doubted he could stand the silence for quite so long as that. He sighed. He really should have gone to the match after all, eleventh-hour murder investigations and football hooligans be damned.
And Sam really should have joined him for this pint afterwards, not begged off with some half-arsed excuse. Maybe Sam had gone to the match as well, United-supported git that he was, and Gene sighed again, rapping a knuckle ponderously on the bar.
United. Just another thing that made having it off with a bloke so goddamned messy.
‘DCI Hunt?’
Gene shook his head. ‘Nah, Nelson, you’re alright. Best be off anyway.’ He hoisted his pint and took a hearty swig, suddenly anxious to leave.
‘Hold up a moment.’ Nelson raised a thin finger, the gesture strangely grand. ‘There’s something you should see.’
He turned and strained upward, hand gliding past top-shelf single malts and cognac and sliding around a dusty, unopened bottle that he gingerly lifted down, setting it sagely before Gene. He squinted at it, trying to read the dark amber colour through the hazy glass before giving it up for a bad job. ‘Looks lovely,’ he concluded, reaching out and frowning when Nelson shifted the bottle out of reach. ‘What the hell-‘
‘It’s not for drinking, this.’ Nelson slid the bottle forward again with a forbidding look that Gene felt compelled to obey.
‘You’re being a tease, Nelson.’ He reached for his beer, slaking his thirst in tan and bitter instead. ‘So what’s it for, then?’
‘About your Sam.’
His pint glass hit the bar again with a heavy thunk, beer sloshing up its sides and over his hand. Gene stared down numbly at the mess, replayed the words in his mind. Well, two words out of three …your Sam.
He liked the sound of that.
What he liked significantly less was Nelson’s knowing emphasis on the two words, the way his mouth shaped them into something too suggestive for Gene’s taste. ‘What about Sam?’ he retorted.
‘You’re a man who likes his scotch.’ Nelson had produced a cloth from somewhere behind the bar, and was slowly wiping down the sides of the bottle, eliminating dust one steady stripe at a time. ‘Some might reckon, more than any man properly should.’
‘I know me limits,’ Gene snapped defensively.
‘And I’m not one to cater to your limits, Mr. Hunt.’ Something derisive pulled at Nelson’s mouth in his upward gaze away from the bottle. ‘To do so would bode ill for a man of my profession, you understand?’
‘Well, your concern is touching.’ He lifted his pint in a sardonic toast, took a weary sip, and wondered where the rest of Nelson’s patrons had gone off to that he had to drink with this for company. They couldn’t all be at the match.
He was quite sure Sam hadn’t planned to be at the match.
‘A single malt is a fine thing indeed, brother.’ Nelson shook out his dusty cloth, then turned the bottle so that the label faced Gene. ‘This one came to me as a favour repaid, just appeared on my doorstep one day, probably as surprised as I was.’ He chuckled briefly, gave the bottle a friendly pat. ‘Bottled at Port Ellen, over on Islay, not that long ago… 1969.’ His finger tapped the date on the label, written in by the distiller’s hand. Gene raised his eyebrow, knowing this was no common whisky from the local off-license.
‘Four years ago. But before that, it waited, coming of age inside a barrel, sitting in the dark… how long? Thirty years at least for this one, maybe more…’ Nelson shrugged. ‘Funny thing, how a single malt can be two ages at once, don’t you think? Four years old… thirty or more…’
Gene grunted dismissively. ‘Fantabulous. If you’re trying to sell it, you’re doing a fine job, but don’t mean I can afford it on a copper’s wage packet.’
Nelson looked scandalized. ‘I’m not trying to sell it, pal. It’s already yours.’
‘Why didn’t you say so?’ Gene drummed his hands on the bar. ‘Open ‘er up, then.’ But Nelson shook his head with an unchanging air of mild offense.
‘Not yet.’ His dark-eyed gaze fell back to the scotch. ‘These things should properly take time to open. A glass bottle is a peculiar thing indeed, mon brave.’ And now his fingers were tapping notes out of the glass, ascending from the bottom up. ‘I’ve seen a good many scraps break out in my pub, and when they do, a full bottle is a formidable weapon: heavy, strong. But sometimes, if a man isn’t careful, or if he so choose to be careless on purpose, you break the bottle,’ Nelson’s hand closed in a fist around the neck, ‘and it cuts. Still a weapon, but of a different sort. It can kill, rip a man apart.’
Gene felt all the stale air leave the pub, and held his breath.
‘It’s a good scotch, this.’ Nelson’s hand relaxed, stroked the slender throat of the bottle. ‘He’s got such a long neck as well, yes?’
A sudden flash of light illuminated the whisky, cutting its deep amber with waves of blue; Gene’s eyes flickered up to the telly on those brackets Sam had rigged up, wondering when Nelson had turned it on for the evening news or whether his barmaid had done so during their conversation. ‘Are we still talking about the scotch or what?’ he snapped, temper rising.
‘I think you know the answer to that.’
Gene shook his head and drained his pint, recognizing Nelson’s deliberate evasiveness for the stupid game it was, part of the man’s mysterious front that concealed the bland fact of a pub owner’s ordinary life. ‘Til tomorrow then, Nelson,’ he said by way of farewell, dropping coins on the bar as he rose to his feet.
‘Tomorrow,’ agreed Nelson, sweeping the money into his hand. ‘Yes, by tomorrow I think you’ll know.’
Gene hesitated, considered walking out without reply, but turned back with his hands planted on his hips, gazing wearily at the smoke-stained ceiling. ‘Know what?’ he drawled.
‘His eyes.’
‘You what?’ Gene snapped his gaze back to Nelson, who stared back at him steadily, solemnly, his hand still grazing over the side of the single malt.
‘What colour are his eyes?’
Gene opened his mouth angrily, and froze. Nelson was watching him, and looked almost sympathetic now. He asked again, softer.
‘What colour are his eyes?’
In the end, Gene left wordlessly anyway. He didn’t know.
* * *
These were the times when Gene wondered whether he was actually driving the Cortina or if the car took over for him once in a while. He twisted through Manchester with no idea of where he was going, passing the station twice and recalling both times that he had no business there right now, not unless he wanted the peace of CID after hours, secluded in the company of the office bottle. But he had never wanted sobriety more in his life.
His thoughts drove fast through Nelson’s words, arriving time and again upon Sam before drifting away. He needed to see Sam - what colour are his eyes? - but it was getting late and he was hungry too, so maybe home was the way to go. Except that the missus was out tonight so there’d be no tea waiting for him, and somehow beans on toast didn’t seem quite the thing he craved. He craved - what colour are his eyes? - he craved something more substantial, maybe a nice steak pie, warm short pastry crust and piping hot inside, something comforting against the rain pounding the windscreen, and when had it started to rain anyway?
And when had he ended up parked in the street outside Sam’s building? Gene glared out the window at the dark entryway with its peeling paint and lopsided brass number plate.
‘This is all your fault, y’know.’
He swore there was a chortle in the sound of her engine cooling off. Giving the dashboard a familiar slap, Gene took a deep breath, turned up his collar, and stepped out into the rain.
His stomach protested as he climbed the worn concrete stairs, his usual brisk march to Sam’s door a dragging step of dread, knowing that the sound of his stomach growling would lead Sam into a frenetic sweep of his nearly-bare cupboards, cobbling together who knew what ingredients to proudly present him with a smelly plate of foreign-looking something or other that Gene would choke down regardless just to keep the sulky bugger in good enough spirits for a blowjob later.
Gene hesitated, his fist raised to the door, but he was already here, too late to turn away. Sighing, he rapped briskly, twice, then shoved both hands in his pockets.
‘Just a second!’ And damned if that muffled shout didn’t make his irritation waver just slightly.
Then Sam opened the door, and the pleased flicker at the corner of his mouth made Gene realize that he was, in fact, doomed.
‘Wasn’t expecting you, Guv.’ Sam paused, eyes narrowing. ‘There hasn’t been a stabbing or some such, has there?’
Gene shook his head mutely.
‘Good thing, would have ruined my supper otherwise… just give me a moment here…’ Sam was already striding away from the door, leaving Gene to watch in wordless wonder as Sam ducked into the kitchenette and took up a brush and small cup, dipping and streaking what looked to be egg yolk over the pastry covering a pie dish that was almost lost in the clutter of vegetable trimmings, knives and other cooking oddments on the tiny countertop.
Gene sniffed the air suspiciously. ‘What’s that you’ve got there, Gladys?’
‘Steak pie.’ Sam leaned sideways to open the small oven door and hefted the pie dish, easing it carefully inside and giving Gene a view of his arse that really didn’t bear passing up regardless of the anxiety quietly killing the hunger in his gut. ‘Plenty enough for two as well, if you’re sticking around, should be ready in…’ Sam checked his watch, ‘forty-five minutes,’ he finished with a bright grin, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet and crossing his arms. His sleeves were rolled to the elbow.
‘You made steak pie.’
‘Yup.’
‘Honest, simple, English steak pie? No weird spices mucking it up, no using turtle meat instead of beef?’
‘Well…’ Sam looked slightly abashed. ‘It’s steak and Guinness, actually… and okay, I may have added cheese, it’s Jamie Oliver’s recipe you see, but it’s just cheddar, still basic, wholesome, rainy-day -‘
‘Sam.’ Gene cut him off, because he didn’t care about whether the pie contained beer or cheese or even that coriander rubbish Sam had gone on about before. He found he didn’t even care who this Jamie bloke was, clearly some nancy poofter what saw fit to swap recipes with his Sam, but he could deal with that later. For now, he closed the space between them, crowding Sam up against the stove and leaning in close. There wasn’t light enough in this crowded alcove to see the colour of Sam’s widening eyes; they simply came across as dark.
‘I was just thinking about how much I’d like some steak pie.’
Sam huffed a short laugh, sounding both amused and slightly nervous in the face of Gene’s solemnity. ‘Must have read your mind then,’ he remarked lightly.
Gene flinched. ‘Come here.’ Forcing a gentle calm into his gestures, Gene took Sam’s bare forearms into his hands and drew him out towards the centre of the flat, beneath the weak light dripping from that hideous lampshade. He tilted Sam’s chin up with the backs of his fingers, staring deep into Sam’s eyes. What colour are his eyes?
‘Gene…’ The voice brought him back to the face, to the whole being of Sam Tyler, who was leaning into him now, an expectant playfulness twitching at his eyebrows as he eased closer still, covering Gene’s mouth with his own, lips and tongue softly easing him open.
Thinking back on it, Gene could see how Sam had misunderstood him there.
Hands were tangling into his hair, a clever tongue was slipping wet around and inside his mouth, pushing in and out in a lewd rhythm and the idea that Sam was somehow fucking him sparked across his mind and made Gene’s knees buckle, made it easy to follow Sam to the floor, trying to hold tight to his slight body as they rolled together, lips and legs negotiating their respective positions until Gene found himself nestled between Sam’s sprawling thighs, lapping at the tempting mouth of the man beneath him.
Sam’s hips rolled languidly upward in time to their kiss, the full hardness of his arousal thrusting across Gene’s abdomen, insistently hot even through the confines of denim. Gasping softly, Gene pushed his own hips downward, rocking into the heat between Sam’s legs, groaning when Sam’s thighs parted wider, lifting and wrapping around him and pulling them closer together. The layers of their clothing chaffing between their bodies stoked friction and heat like static across Gene’s skin, charged with something desperate and erotic that he couldn’t begin to name, leaving him short of breath at the sight of Sam arching and shifting into him, hands groping mindlessly over Gene’s body, moaning freely like a prossie with those fluttering eyelashes closing…
‘Don’t,’ Gene rasped. His hands lifted to Sam’s face, holding his head firmly in place and forcing his gaze. ‘Don’t close your eyes, just… just look at me, Sammy, let me see you…’
Sam sucked in a startled breath, and Gene could see the subtle shift of sharpening desire in his eyes, pupils blown into that colour he couldn’t quite define. They were lighter than brown, darker than golden…
‘Gene-‘ Sam choked on his name, his movements feverish and desperate.
‘Shhh…’ His fingertips bit into the hollows beneath his cheekbones, holding as bruisingly as Sam’s hands kneading into his arse, forcing their hips tight together. ‘Don’t fight it, Sam, let it come… want you to come for me, want to see it, want to watch… let me see it, Sammy, show me…’
Eyes wide, almost in wonderment, Sam cried out brokenly, hips bucking and twitching beneath Gene’s body, fingers clawing at him like weapons as Sam’s orgasm flooded through him, seeping damp into his trousers and illuminating his eyes.
Groaning deep in his chest, Gene had to bury his own face in Sam’s neck, breathing in the warmed scent of soap and skin as his own hips worked towards release in the cradle of Sam’s body. And yet, even that spine-snapping rush of pleasure couldn’t erase the truth of Sam’s eyes, intoxicating and amber-warm, the very colour of whisky.
Part Two
Author: severinne
Rating: Brown Cortina (with a bit of Red drive-by smutting in Part Two)
Word Count: 6400 for Part One (14,500-ish overall)
Summary: ”I wonder, Mr. Hunt, what part of your subconscious does he hail from?”
Notes: Written for the following Ficathon 2008 prompt: “Gene/Nelson (but not necessarily slash), in the pub, discussing Sam” and I did in fact bypass Gene/Nelson slash in favour of Sam/Gene. I'm only posting the first part at the moment, with huge apologies to my recipient since I’m still ironing out some problems with Part Two, but I promise I’ll have the rest for you inside a day or two, tops.
Huge thanks and a virtual bottle of Jack Daniels go out to candesgirl for being a steadfast and wildly encouraging beta, couldn’t have done it without you *hugs*
ETA: Part Two is finally done! Link provided at the end of this part, thanks for your patience folks :)
‘Prove it,’ he had said, short and to the point and it did the job, Tyler rushing out the door in a flurry of long legs and leather, leaving Gene reeling still, blood racing, set somehow alight. Prove it, he had challenged, just as Tyler was challenging him at every bloody turn since he arrived yesterday, pushing back like no other man under him had dared to before.
Sam Tyler was intoxicating. Warmed him through, gave him the spins, and made him want to heave up in the yard out back, all three at once.
Huffing impatiently at himself, Gene turned back to the bar, easily suppressing any inklings of going back to the station to coax the lads into chasing up new leads or else to simply watch this boy from Hyde in action. Between duty and temptation, another pint seemed the safest choice. He considered just drinking Tyler’s abandoned bitter, but it seemed to have vanished so he waved down Nelson instead. ‘Same as before.’
Nelson’s wide mouth quirked as he collected Gene’s empty glass. ‘Oh, I don’t think so, mon brave.’ He began to pour, and must have caught the confusion on Gene’s face, leaning in past the tap and lowering his voice. ‘Nothing gonna be the same as before with that one around, don’t you think?’
‘Hard to say, innit?’ Gene sniffed, glanced back at the door, the ghost of Tyler’s exit still replaying in his mind.
‘He’s not like the others, this new DI of yours.’
Gene nodded, accepted his pint. ‘He’ll learn. Soon enough.’ This was one of the things he liked about Nelson: he was a sharp enough bloke to read people and situations, to know without being told that Tyler was the new DI on his team.
‘Maybe.’ Nelson said it slow, his voice honeyed with humour. ‘What may be, may be.’ Nodding and smiling, more to himself than to Gene, he set about mopping up the innumerable spills of beer staining the bar top. Gene watched him disinterestedly, sipping his pint, caught slightly off-guard when Nelson looked up again, dark eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
‘I wonder, Mr. Hunt… what part of your subconscious he hail from?’
* * *
‘Hyde.’ Gene spat out the name like a bad bit of curry. ‘Who the hell would want to go back to sodding poncy-arsed Hyde?’
‘Inspector Tyler isn’t with you tonight, then?’
‘Of course he bloody isn’t.’ Gene hoisted the last two pints of the present round, passed them along to Ray. ‘He doesn’t play cards. Doesn’t play darts. S’like he doesn’t want to be here at all.’
‘Where is he now? D’you know?’
‘Don’t see why I should give a toss. Not one hour ago, the daft git’s in my office, asking if I can send him back to Hyde.’
‘And why didn’t you?’
Gene opened his mouth to reply, then paused. The right kind of answers lingered at the tip of his tongue - the paperwork required for the transfer would be a right pain in the arse, and Gene would be damned before he would bend to the lad’s pitiful whinging, just because he had been stupid enough to poke the proverbial hornet’s nest and couldn’t understand why the nasty buggers came rallying up for a sting or several.
Which led, all too conveniently, to the reason that remained stuck further down in Gene’s throat, half-formed around images and impressions too quick to measure in the hasty business of Kim Trent’s arrest. The single strongest memory he could conjure returned time and again to that swell of relief so great it was nearly joy on seeing Tyler, leaning against a water pipe as though it were the only thing holding him up but unharmed enough to smile bravely, gratefully with all that dangerously disarming charm that stirred things in Gene, memories of boys long since sacrificed at the altar of a safe marriage…
At the edge of his awareness, Gene heard Nelson clear his throat in the awkward silence. He gave his head a firm shake, and looked back towards the table, where his men were waiting. ‘Paperwork,’ he mumbled. Nelson’s brow furrowed in confusion, his mouth turning down into a baffled frown.
‘Not sure I follow your drift, brother.’
‘Neither do I, Nelson.’ Bitterly resigned, Gene returned to his seat, rested his cigarette in the ashtray, and gathered up the discarded hands for his deal. The ritual movements of the game looked sluggish to his eyes, and he watched his fingers shuffle the cards - that was all, not like he was sulking - and was just about to snap at Chris to stop that fidgeting already, he was gonna deal soon enough, when Nelson’s voice chimed the smoky air.
‘Hey, pilgrim.’
Gene glanced up. Tyler was braced against the bar with both hands, looking pale and worn. ‘Give me a Scotch,’ he murmured. ‘Don’t fancy going out there tonight.’
Nelson served up Tyler’s drink with his usual share of chatter, soft words that Gene couldn’t be bothered to heed given the greater effort of watching his DI without appearing to watch too closely, holding the shuffle in stasis while he waited for Tyler to do something other than stare into his scotch like he was trying to reckon out the best way to drown himself in such a small measure of liquid. But even Ray was letting off the odd impatient sigh, and Gene realized he would have to take the initiative. ‘You in, Tyler? Fifty p gets you a chair.’
And he didn’t miss the way Tyler first looked to Nelson, the odd glance for permission, but what mattered was that Tyler was walking over, was rummaging in his snug trousers pocket for coins, and that the look on his face was already less weary and lost.
Ray stood up from the table, knocked Tyler’s arm on his way to the bogs - not especially hard, but painfully deliberate - and Gene felt a flash of anger at his sergeant and old friend until Tyler sat in his place and suddenly the heat had gone. Or changed. He really wasn’t sure it had happened at all.
‘Sure you’re in?’
Tyler smiled, and threw in his ante. ‘Deal me.’
Gene dealt his hand, and took a slow, deliberate drag off his cigarette, because, if the knowing light in Tyler’s eyes on that sly upward glance was anything to go by, the curve of Tyler’s mouth was making his own twitch and stretch in a way that surely must look stupid.
* * *
The first time Gene stepped foot in Sam Tyler’s flat, he had felt the world shift beneath his feet with a sense of revelation so shattering that he doubted he ever truly recovered. And that was only partly due to the sight of his DI cuffed to his bed, spread out utterly naked, not a stitch of clothing in sight.
And he had so little clothing at that, once Gene found the chance to investigate. Six shirts. Two pairs of trousers - the black folded into the wardrobe, the red strewn across the floor, tangled with a pair of white y-fronts that Gene was very deliberately not looking at in favour of glaring into the wardrobe. Six shirts.
While Gene’s sole acquaintance with the type of people who come from Hyde consisted of that pointy-nosed bird his mate Jonesy had married after their time with National Service, he didn’t mind reading Tyler as a consistent type of Hyde bloke. He was quaint, ridiculously picky, strutted about with a persistent smell of cleanliness wafting from his hair and skin, a fresh soapy smell that made Gene’s nostrils twitch in a way that wasn’t entirely disgusted, just curious.
A man shouldn’t smell so clean unless he’s been living half his life in the shower, which seemed a ridiculous notion before but now that Tyler had been locked away in his tiny bathroom for the last twenty minutes, Gene was starting to have second thoughts. Daft bugger hadn’t even thanked him when Gene had finally unlocked the cuffs, just shot upright and disappeared into the bathroom, leaving Gene alone to wait with only the flat’s sparse contents and a rampant imagination for company.
Gene thumbed through the hanging shirts again, counting silently. Six. Tyler had a second jacket, didn’t he? A brown - but no, June’s blood had left it ruined in the alley. For all the intensity of his memory of Tyler’s willful, impassioned rage, Gene couldn’t remember what had happened to the jacket afterward, what had happened to the imagined wealth of material things he had expected a picky priss like Tyler to own. Best he could reckon was that Tyler was the sort to pack light. Or else he was so completely daft that he had forgotten to pack altogether.
The water pipes released a low groan of protest, the water likely running cold.
Maybe Tyler wouldn’t have run off to the shower so quickly if Gene hadn’t stopped first to finger the St. Christopher around his neck, turning and tugging it like it were a bloody gift tag on an especially surprising Christmas present. He never would have dared to touch what he had already taken in with his eyes, not when the lad was still helpless like that, but the little medallion had slipped to the side of his neck, somehow appearing more debauched than all that naked flesh, and he had wanted to put it right.
Put it right. Gene snorted, stubbed out his cigarette in an empty wine glass. Nothing about this was right.
The noise of water splashing unevenly from behind the loo’s thin accordion door was seeping into his mind, creating misted images of Tyler moving beneath the spray, displacing the steady flow of water with the movement of his body. This was so easy now that he knew exactly what Tyler looked like naked, so easy to picture all that glowing, solid flesh dripping wet, slippery beneath Tyler’s smooth hands as he soaped himself up, so thoroughly because he was always so clean, so careful to see to every last curve and crevice, such a clean boy… such a dirty boy…
Right. No, wrong. Gene shook his head angrily. This was so utterly wrong. His imagination was no longer allowed to play the waiting game, which left Gene and this shitty derelict of a flat and six lousy shirts. Not for the first time, he cursed Sam Tyler in all his fastidious glory, wished to hell that he would just hurry up and finish himself off… no, not that, just finish…
Goddamn it.
Gene snatched a shirt at random from its wire hanger, desperate to get his hands around something before they dove into his trousers to see to his inconvenient erection. Rubbing the polyester between his fingers, he examined the garment disdainfully for lack of anything safer to do. White with blue and brown stripes. That same clean smell, of Tyler’s skin rather than washing powder, and his cock twitched again. Gene shut his eyes, tried to picture his own wardrobe. How many shirts did he own? The missus usually bought him one every birthday, the mother-in-law at Christmas, and while he tended to reach for the same ones time and again, they were kept in good company with the shirts for special occasions, the shirts in need of mending that would never get done, a whole history of shirts adding up in his wardrobe like the rings of an oak tree.
Six shirts. Two pair trousers. One leather jacket. Empty shelves, empty walls. The numbers didn’t add up to much, made Gene grimace with a pang of loneliness.
‘Guv?’
Startled, Gene jumped and looked over his shoulder, mouth going dry at the sight of Tyler crossing the bedsit, hair spiked with damp, a slightly frayed towel slung about his hips.
‘Bout ruddy time,’ Gene grunted, ignoring the rasp under his false front. ‘Now get some damned clothes on already, we’ve got scum to clean up out there.’
Tyler glanced up from where he was bent forward, collecting his red trousers from the floor. ‘You’re blocking the wardrobe,’ he remarked coolly.
Gene dodged out of the way, quickly and perhaps a bit guiltily. He looked resolutely away, staring numbly at the y-fronts Tyler had thrown aside once he’d untangled them from his trousers, swallowing when the damp towel flew to the corner of the room to join them and realizing he had miscalculated horribly in stepping to the wrong side of the wardrobe, trapped by the bed on one side and Sam’s naked body on the other.
He closed his eyes, started counting shirts in his mind, but six was really such a small number.
* * *
‘I made a huge mistake, Nelson.’ Gene took a bracing swallow of his whisky. ‘Well, a couple, really.’
‘Mistakes will happen, mon brave.’ Nelson was already topping up his glass, bottle always at the ready. ‘Thing is, you’ve got to face up to ‘em, figure out where you went wrong so as you don’t repeat yourself.’
‘Maybe I want to repeat this one…’ Suddenly wary, Gene looked about, but the rest of CID had long since left him and Tyler to their celebration; Tyler had excused himself to the gents, who knew how long ago now. ‘And who knows, maybe it’s alright, actually listening to the crazy bastard, if it means we finally got to put Warren down.’
‘Is that what you’re talking about?’ Nelson chuckled, swept a few more empty glasses off the bar. ‘Oh, brother, that was no mistake.’
‘Oh, give over, Guv.’ Though he didn’t dare look, Gene could hear the exasperated eye-roll in Tyler’s words. ‘Nothing here you haven’t taken a good long look at already, is there?’
‘Not my fault you were showing it off, you kinky tart.’ And he had to glare at Tyler when he said it, to prove that he could, to prove that he wouldn’t flinch even when Tyler did, hands trembling briefly over his belt buckle.
‘And I suppose I asked for it, did I?’ Tyler’s voice was barely a bitter mumble, lost to the muffling cover of the clean white vest he tugged over his head. Something in the way he straightened the thin cotton over his chest and stomach, tucking himself together with that defensive hunch to his shoulders, made Gene frown and wish he had kept his mouth shut.
‘Can I have my shirt, Guv?’
Gene glanced down, remembering the shirt still clutched in his hands, and wondered how long his thumb had been stroking over the polyester like that. ‘This shirt?’
Tyler gave him one of his more scathing looks. ‘Yeah. That shirt.’
‘Quit your sulking, Tyler.’ Gene shoved the shirt into his chest and promptly crossed his arms, drawing his coat around himself to conceal the lingering hard-on tenting his trousers. He watched with narrowed eyes as Tyler fastened the row of buttons with rapid, efficient flicks of his fingers. ‘’S’not like you haven’t got others,’ he grumbled.
‘True,’ Tyler murmured, eyes flickering upward, ‘but you picked out this one.’
A faint, high-pitched whine filled Gene’s ears, prodding his attention towards the television set him and Sam had brought to Nelson a couple evenings ago. God Save the Queen must have droned to a stop some time ago, replaced by the test card with her clown, her noughts and crosses.
He frowned. Even though the Grand National had been a treat to watch in the pub with his mates rather than alone at home under the watchfully disapproving eye of his wife, Gene wasn’t sure that he much cared for having a telly in his boozer, with its ability to mark time moving forward. Time never existed in here before, the light unchanging and the room devoid of clocks.
‘Can’t you shut that damn thing off?’ he grumbled, rubbing at his throbbing temple.
‘Sorry, mon brave.’ Nelson kept to his cleaning, otherwise unresponsive to Gene’s request.
‘Right.’ Gene drained his whisky, shook his head. ‘S’all bloody Tyler’s doing, anyway,’ he continued, thinking back on Warren.
‘Your fine figure of a desk sergeant certainly thinks so.’
‘An’ Phyllis is right on the money there, as usual.’ Gene glanced up, frowned at the faraway look on Nelson’s face, the towel in his hand gliding repetitively over the glass in his hand, long since sparkling. ‘An’ you can wipe that dreamy smirk off your gob an’ all, even if I were prepared to look the other way on that one, she’d eat you alive an’ spit out the leftovers anyway.’
‘Ah, if I would be so lucky…’ Nelson shook his head wistfully, put the glass away with its sisters. Gene snorted derisively.
‘Trust me, Nelson, you’re better off steering clear.’
‘Not so, not so at all.’ The fake Jamaican patois had lapsed into Nelson’s softer Lancastrian accent, as it sometimes did when Gene found himself alone with the barman, as Nelson did with no one else. He fixed Gene with a solemn gaze, that soft smile still curving his mouth. ‘Any love what’s worth it at all is bound to happen on a battlefield, mon brave.’
Something like a stone seemed to sink through Gene’s body. ‘Enough of that romantic bollocks,’ he grumbled, staring back into his pint. ‘You’ll put me off me drink.’
Gene stared, eyes widening at the unmistakably flirtatious tone of his DI’s voice, uncertain how to reply to something that was clearly meant as a deflecting joke but that managed to slice him open all the same. There was something of a challenge in the smile, something vulnerable in the way Tyler’s hands were tugging the unbuttoned cuffs of his shirt to cover the faint welts on his wrists. The combination of both was captivating, stirring up a disorienting rush of arousal, concern, and sheer possessiveness in Gene’s gut.
So help him, but in that moment all Gene wanted to do was snog the strange bastard senseless. Instead, he cleared his throat, hoping the gravelly sound was somewhat forbidding to Tyler’s ears.
‘An’ it looks lovely on you, Dorothy. Now, reckon we can go get some sodding work done now you’re all gussied up?’
‘C’mon, Guv.’ A hand slid over his shoulder, startling Gene upright. ‘Shift it, we’re leaving.’
‘Took your sodding time, thought you’d fallen in.’ Gene craned his neck to glare at Sam. The other man looked strangely flushed, most likely from the booze.
‘Um, yeah.’ Sam looked away, flicked a smile at Nelson. ‘Cheers, mate.’ Pound notes were being passed somewhere beneath his field of vision, gone before he could start to count, and Gene realized that he must be more than a little pissed by now. With a resolute nod, he straightened his spine, prepared to set the gears in motion, starting with his coat… where had his coat gone…
‘Here.’ One of Gene’s outstretched hands caught the familiar heft of camel-hair and slipped into the sleeve that Sam was holding out for him. With an approving hum, he allowed his deputy to fold him into his coat, rolling his shoulders as those finicky hands pulled the garment precisely in place.
‘G’night, Nelson.’ Gene slurred his way off the barstool, supporting himself with a hand on Sam’s shoulder.
Nelson glanced up, broom in hand. ‘Pleasant dreams, Mr. Hunt.’ His dark eyes tracked significantly sideways, indicating Sam’s averted back with a look before meeting Gene’s own blurring gaze, curiously sombre. ‘You’ve earned it.’
Gene wasn’t entirely sure how to respond to that, but Sam was tugging at his coat anyway, so he left with what he hoped was a wise huff of breath, keeping his hand nestled beneath the smooth leather of Sam’s collar so as not to lose his deputy in the darkness of the pub’s back yard. It had started to rain, lighter than a monsoon but steady enough to thread through his hair like fingers and crawl down the splayed collar of his shirt. Sam’s leather coat was growing slick under his hand, and slipped out of his grasp with a remarkably loud and funny sound when Sam turned abruptly around. His mind elsewhere, Gene didn’t fully process the move until his chest collided with Sam’s body, until his gaze collided with the rivulets of water tracing the contours of Sam’s face.
‘Gene.’ The sound of the rain threatened to drown Sam’s voice, but Gene could read his name on those lips, so terribly close and gleamingly wet. His mouth was still open, as though to continue speaking, but the rain was so loud that it seemed sensible to lean in closer to hear what he had to say and there was so little distance left between them that he swallowed his words instead, their lips meeting almost by accident, cool and slick with rain.
The kiss was simple, an anticlimax of sliding pressure and faint movement of mouths yet it made Gene spring away with shock, blinking water out of his eyes, suddenly sober. He stared at Sam’s lips, saw them moving in the dark, snatches of rapid speech drifting to his ears over the pounding rain: ‘… too drunk… an’ hope… won’t remember any… fuck, your eyes…’ Sam looked increasingly more desperate the longer he spoke, and Gene found himself closing the distance again, needing to hear better than this, and suddenly Sam was flush against him again, insinuating his dripping wet, leather-clad arms beneath the dry shelter of his open coat, mouth moving against Gene’s ear, his rough voice amplified over the rain.
‘…and it’s fucking insane, I don’t understand it at all, but fuck, I couldn’t help it, tossing off in the gents just now, so hard just from looking at you…’
Gene groaned weakly, hoped the rain would drown the noise.
‘…and again yesterday, in the shower, knowing you were just outside the door, knowing you’d seen me like that… shit, Gene, you could’ve done anything to me, and I couldn’t have stopped you… wouldn’t have wanted to-‘
And there was nothing accidental about the second kiss, no chance for mistaken impressions in the way Gene grabbed Sam by the back of the neck and turned his head and tore at Sam’s mouth with his own, forcing his way inside and tasting rain and whisky and something utterly unique beneath it all. Sam’s mouth opened wider under his, tongue coaxing and welcoming with a low and delirious sound echoing from deep inside his throat, and Gene chased it down, desperate to see how deep this rabbit hole really went, desperate to hold on as long as he could. His arms tightened around Sam, crushed the weight of a firm body and sodden clothing against his own, everything now wet with rain, and was both surprised and relieved that Sam didn’t simply dissolve into a puddle, a dream at his feet. Oh, what a world…
The first time Gene kissed Sam Tyler, the first time Gene was kissed by Sam Tyler, he knew it wouldn’t be the last time.
* * *
‘Will you be having another, mon brave?’
Gene seriously considered the question, his gaze shifting from his half-empty pint to Nelson’s hand on the tap before he twisted on his barstool to scan the empty chairs and tables. Not even a drift of cigarette smoke filled the room, his last fag long since stubbed out in the ashtray at his elbow.
As a last resort, he checked his watch. The football match would still be going about now, which made it another half hour at least before any other punters would be showing up, and Gene doubted he could stand the silence for quite so long as that. He sighed. He really should have gone to the match after all, eleventh-hour murder investigations and football hooligans be damned.
And Sam really should have joined him for this pint afterwards, not begged off with some half-arsed excuse. Maybe Sam had gone to the match as well, United-supported git that he was, and Gene sighed again, rapping a knuckle ponderously on the bar.
United. Just another thing that made having it off with a bloke so goddamned messy.
‘DCI Hunt?’
Gene shook his head. ‘Nah, Nelson, you’re alright. Best be off anyway.’ He hoisted his pint and took a hearty swig, suddenly anxious to leave.
‘Hold up a moment.’ Nelson raised a thin finger, the gesture strangely grand. ‘There’s something you should see.’
He turned and strained upward, hand gliding past top-shelf single malts and cognac and sliding around a dusty, unopened bottle that he gingerly lifted down, setting it sagely before Gene. He squinted at it, trying to read the dark amber colour through the hazy glass before giving it up for a bad job. ‘Looks lovely,’ he concluded, reaching out and frowning when Nelson shifted the bottle out of reach. ‘What the hell-‘
‘It’s not for drinking, this.’ Nelson slid the bottle forward again with a forbidding look that Gene felt compelled to obey.
‘You’re being a tease, Nelson.’ He reached for his beer, slaking his thirst in tan and bitter instead. ‘So what’s it for, then?’
‘About your Sam.’
His pint glass hit the bar again with a heavy thunk, beer sloshing up its sides and over his hand. Gene stared down numbly at the mess, replayed the words in his mind. Well, two words out of three …your Sam.
He liked the sound of that.
What he liked significantly less was Nelson’s knowing emphasis on the two words, the way his mouth shaped them into something too suggestive for Gene’s taste. ‘What about Sam?’ he retorted.
‘You’re a man who likes his scotch.’ Nelson had produced a cloth from somewhere behind the bar, and was slowly wiping down the sides of the bottle, eliminating dust one steady stripe at a time. ‘Some might reckon, more than any man properly should.’
‘I know me limits,’ Gene snapped defensively.
‘And I’m not one to cater to your limits, Mr. Hunt.’ Something derisive pulled at Nelson’s mouth in his upward gaze away from the bottle. ‘To do so would bode ill for a man of my profession, you understand?’
‘Well, your concern is touching.’ He lifted his pint in a sardonic toast, took a weary sip, and wondered where the rest of Nelson’s patrons had gone off to that he had to drink with this for company. They couldn’t all be at the match.
He was quite sure Sam hadn’t planned to be at the match.
‘A single malt is a fine thing indeed, brother.’ Nelson shook out his dusty cloth, then turned the bottle so that the label faced Gene. ‘This one came to me as a favour repaid, just appeared on my doorstep one day, probably as surprised as I was.’ He chuckled briefly, gave the bottle a friendly pat. ‘Bottled at Port Ellen, over on Islay, not that long ago… 1969.’ His finger tapped the date on the label, written in by the distiller’s hand. Gene raised his eyebrow, knowing this was no common whisky from the local off-license.
‘Four years ago. But before that, it waited, coming of age inside a barrel, sitting in the dark… how long? Thirty years at least for this one, maybe more…’ Nelson shrugged. ‘Funny thing, how a single malt can be two ages at once, don’t you think? Four years old… thirty or more…’
Gene grunted dismissively. ‘Fantabulous. If you’re trying to sell it, you’re doing a fine job, but don’t mean I can afford it on a copper’s wage packet.’
Nelson looked scandalized. ‘I’m not trying to sell it, pal. It’s already yours.’
‘Why didn’t you say so?’ Gene drummed his hands on the bar. ‘Open ‘er up, then.’ But Nelson shook his head with an unchanging air of mild offense.
‘Not yet.’ His dark-eyed gaze fell back to the scotch. ‘These things should properly take time to open. A glass bottle is a peculiar thing indeed, mon brave.’ And now his fingers were tapping notes out of the glass, ascending from the bottom up. ‘I’ve seen a good many scraps break out in my pub, and when they do, a full bottle is a formidable weapon: heavy, strong. But sometimes, if a man isn’t careful, or if he so choose to be careless on purpose, you break the bottle,’ Nelson’s hand closed in a fist around the neck, ‘and it cuts. Still a weapon, but of a different sort. It can kill, rip a man apart.’
Gene felt all the stale air leave the pub, and held his breath.
‘It’s a good scotch, this.’ Nelson’s hand relaxed, stroked the slender throat of the bottle. ‘He’s got such a long neck as well, yes?’
A sudden flash of light illuminated the whisky, cutting its deep amber with waves of blue; Gene’s eyes flickered up to the telly on those brackets Sam had rigged up, wondering when Nelson had turned it on for the evening news or whether his barmaid had done so during their conversation. ‘Are we still talking about the scotch or what?’ he snapped, temper rising.
‘I think you know the answer to that.’
Gene shook his head and drained his pint, recognizing Nelson’s deliberate evasiveness for the stupid game it was, part of the man’s mysterious front that concealed the bland fact of a pub owner’s ordinary life. ‘Til tomorrow then, Nelson,’ he said by way of farewell, dropping coins on the bar as he rose to his feet.
‘Tomorrow,’ agreed Nelson, sweeping the money into his hand. ‘Yes, by tomorrow I think you’ll know.’
Gene hesitated, considered walking out without reply, but turned back with his hands planted on his hips, gazing wearily at the smoke-stained ceiling. ‘Know what?’ he drawled.
‘His eyes.’
‘You what?’ Gene snapped his gaze back to Nelson, who stared back at him steadily, solemnly, his hand still grazing over the side of the single malt.
‘What colour are his eyes?’
Gene opened his mouth angrily, and froze. Nelson was watching him, and looked almost sympathetic now. He asked again, softer.
‘What colour are his eyes?’
In the end, Gene left wordlessly anyway. He didn’t know.
* * *
These were the times when Gene wondered whether he was actually driving the Cortina or if the car took over for him once in a while. He twisted through Manchester with no idea of where he was going, passing the station twice and recalling both times that he had no business there right now, not unless he wanted the peace of CID after hours, secluded in the company of the office bottle. But he had never wanted sobriety more in his life.
His thoughts drove fast through Nelson’s words, arriving time and again upon Sam before drifting away. He needed to see Sam - what colour are his eyes? - but it was getting late and he was hungry too, so maybe home was the way to go. Except that the missus was out tonight so there’d be no tea waiting for him, and somehow beans on toast didn’t seem quite the thing he craved. He craved - what colour are his eyes? - he craved something more substantial, maybe a nice steak pie, warm short pastry crust and piping hot inside, something comforting against the rain pounding the windscreen, and when had it started to rain anyway?
And when had he ended up parked in the street outside Sam’s building? Gene glared out the window at the dark entryway with its peeling paint and lopsided brass number plate.
‘This is all your fault, y’know.’
He swore there was a chortle in the sound of her engine cooling off. Giving the dashboard a familiar slap, Gene took a deep breath, turned up his collar, and stepped out into the rain.
His stomach protested as he climbed the worn concrete stairs, his usual brisk march to Sam’s door a dragging step of dread, knowing that the sound of his stomach growling would lead Sam into a frenetic sweep of his nearly-bare cupboards, cobbling together who knew what ingredients to proudly present him with a smelly plate of foreign-looking something or other that Gene would choke down regardless just to keep the sulky bugger in good enough spirits for a blowjob later.
Gene hesitated, his fist raised to the door, but he was already here, too late to turn away. Sighing, he rapped briskly, twice, then shoved both hands in his pockets.
‘Just a second!’ And damned if that muffled shout didn’t make his irritation waver just slightly.
Then Sam opened the door, and the pleased flicker at the corner of his mouth made Gene realize that he was, in fact, doomed.
‘Wasn’t expecting you, Guv.’ Sam paused, eyes narrowing. ‘There hasn’t been a stabbing or some such, has there?’
Gene shook his head mutely.
‘Good thing, would have ruined my supper otherwise… just give me a moment here…’ Sam was already striding away from the door, leaving Gene to watch in wordless wonder as Sam ducked into the kitchenette and took up a brush and small cup, dipping and streaking what looked to be egg yolk over the pastry covering a pie dish that was almost lost in the clutter of vegetable trimmings, knives and other cooking oddments on the tiny countertop.
Gene sniffed the air suspiciously. ‘What’s that you’ve got there, Gladys?’
‘Steak pie.’ Sam leaned sideways to open the small oven door and hefted the pie dish, easing it carefully inside and giving Gene a view of his arse that really didn’t bear passing up regardless of the anxiety quietly killing the hunger in his gut. ‘Plenty enough for two as well, if you’re sticking around, should be ready in…’ Sam checked his watch, ‘forty-five minutes,’ he finished with a bright grin, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet and crossing his arms. His sleeves were rolled to the elbow.
‘You made steak pie.’
‘Yup.’
‘Honest, simple, English steak pie? No weird spices mucking it up, no using turtle meat instead of beef?’
‘Well…’ Sam looked slightly abashed. ‘It’s steak and Guinness, actually… and okay, I may have added cheese, it’s Jamie Oliver’s recipe you see, but it’s just cheddar, still basic, wholesome, rainy-day -‘
‘Sam.’ Gene cut him off, because he didn’t care about whether the pie contained beer or cheese or even that coriander rubbish Sam had gone on about before. He found he didn’t even care who this Jamie bloke was, clearly some nancy poofter what saw fit to swap recipes with his Sam, but he could deal with that later. For now, he closed the space between them, crowding Sam up against the stove and leaning in close. There wasn’t light enough in this crowded alcove to see the colour of Sam’s widening eyes; they simply came across as dark.
‘I was just thinking about how much I’d like some steak pie.’
Sam huffed a short laugh, sounding both amused and slightly nervous in the face of Gene’s solemnity. ‘Must have read your mind then,’ he remarked lightly.
Gene flinched. ‘Come here.’ Forcing a gentle calm into his gestures, Gene took Sam’s bare forearms into his hands and drew him out towards the centre of the flat, beneath the weak light dripping from that hideous lampshade. He tilted Sam’s chin up with the backs of his fingers, staring deep into Sam’s eyes. What colour are his eyes?
‘Gene…’ The voice brought him back to the face, to the whole being of Sam Tyler, who was leaning into him now, an expectant playfulness twitching at his eyebrows as he eased closer still, covering Gene’s mouth with his own, lips and tongue softly easing him open.
Thinking back on it, Gene could see how Sam had misunderstood him there.
Hands were tangling into his hair, a clever tongue was slipping wet around and inside his mouth, pushing in and out in a lewd rhythm and the idea that Sam was somehow fucking him sparked across his mind and made Gene’s knees buckle, made it easy to follow Sam to the floor, trying to hold tight to his slight body as they rolled together, lips and legs negotiating their respective positions until Gene found himself nestled between Sam’s sprawling thighs, lapping at the tempting mouth of the man beneath him.
Sam’s hips rolled languidly upward in time to their kiss, the full hardness of his arousal thrusting across Gene’s abdomen, insistently hot even through the confines of denim. Gasping softly, Gene pushed his own hips downward, rocking into the heat between Sam’s legs, groaning when Sam’s thighs parted wider, lifting and wrapping around him and pulling them closer together. The layers of their clothing chaffing between their bodies stoked friction and heat like static across Gene’s skin, charged with something desperate and erotic that he couldn’t begin to name, leaving him short of breath at the sight of Sam arching and shifting into him, hands groping mindlessly over Gene’s body, moaning freely like a prossie with those fluttering eyelashes closing…
‘Don’t,’ Gene rasped. His hands lifted to Sam’s face, holding his head firmly in place and forcing his gaze. ‘Don’t close your eyes, just… just look at me, Sammy, let me see you…’
Sam sucked in a startled breath, and Gene could see the subtle shift of sharpening desire in his eyes, pupils blown into that colour he couldn’t quite define. They were lighter than brown, darker than golden…
‘Gene-‘ Sam choked on his name, his movements feverish and desperate.
‘Shhh…’ His fingertips bit into the hollows beneath his cheekbones, holding as bruisingly as Sam’s hands kneading into his arse, forcing their hips tight together. ‘Don’t fight it, Sam, let it come… want you to come for me, want to see it, want to watch… let me see it, Sammy, show me…’
Eyes wide, almost in wonderment, Sam cried out brokenly, hips bucking and twitching beneath Gene’s body, fingers clawing at him like weapons as Sam’s orgasm flooded through him, seeping damp into his trousers and illuminating his eyes.
Groaning deep in his chest, Gene had to bury his own face in Sam’s neck, breathing in the warmed scent of soap and skin as his own hips worked towards release in the cradle of Sam’s body. And yet, even that spine-snapping rush of pleasure couldn’t erase the truth of Sam’s eyes, intoxicating and amber-warm, the very colour of whisky.
Part Two