FICATHON: Classico - by Bistokids (S/G, blue Cortina)
Title: Classico
Author: bistokids
Word Count: 4,054
Rating: Blue cortina
Warnings: None
Pairing: Sam/Gene - more pre-slash than slash
Summary: In vino veritas. Prompt was: Sam/Gene, male bonding, "Tell me a secret."
A/N: Lovely recipient - I bow down in apology. I have a proper, psychological-style problem with deadlines! Also, this fic has given me untold grief, I can only hope it's worked as I just can't tell any more. Inspired in equal parts by the ficathon prompt and the alcohol challenge on Flashfiction.
Out of the litany of aspects of 2006 that Sam missed, there was one which had stood out from the very start. Funnily enough, it wasn’t so much the mobile phone, the iPod or any of the futuristic gizmos that had no real meaning in this retro world. All the trappings of modernity that had seemed so essential in his own time (if asked, he would have sworn his life would have come to a complete halt without his PDA) seemed faintly ridiculous when held up against this comparatively austere society.
His craving for something he perceived as normality rooted itself in a desperate desire to go home after a stressful day and relax, as had been his custom, with a proper quality bottle of wine. A nice Chilean cabernet sauvignon, say, or a Chianti genuinely worthy of the name. And fortunately, this level of luxury was achievable if you knew where to look.
He’d struck lucky at the Railway Arms one night - although it certainly hadn’t felt like it at the time. Gene had been in an unusually benevolent mood, having actually managed to extract a confession without having to break a single bone in the process, and was insisting on getting a round in for ‘the team’. The team was, on such occasions, strictly a four-man affair.
Sam, sick of going home bloated from beer and sure his nightmares were being compounded by having to get up every twenty minutes for a piss, decided on a whim to put in an order for a red wine. The profoundness of the silence that greeted this request put him in mind of Clint Eastwood or Gary Cooper strolling into some Wild West bar - he wouldn’t have been at all surprised to hear saloon doors creaking in the background. Ray’s take on the matter turned out, predictably, to be rather less stylish.
“Red wine? You really are a complete pouf, aren’t you?”
Sam glowered daggers, but found himself unable to come up with any riposte wittier than “Sod off, Carling,” which just made Ray’s grin even wider.
Gene chose, unexpectedly, to lend Sam a bit of moral support. “Now now, Raymondo. There’s more to life than beer, believe it or not. Tyler’s used to a better class of boozer, that right Sammy-boy? Doubt they even have pints of mild in Hyde.” He turned towards the bar. “There you go, Nelson. Three pints, one whisky chaser and a glass of your finest red plonk, if you’d be so kind.”
Relieved, Sam took his drink over to their regular spot and sipped gingerly. And had to force himself to overcome the immediate urge to spit it violently across the table. Christ, it was rank. Probably been sitting open for - well, weeks at best. Grimacing, but conscious of Gene’s eyes on him, he took a deep swallow, meeting the assessing gaze with one of defiance.
“Tell you what, though.” Gene’s conversational tone included everyone at the table in his musing, though his eyes remained firmly fixed on Sam’s. “You ever catch me with a glass of that stuff in my hand, you want to get your arses backed up to the nearest wall sharpish, cos I’ll be officially batting for the other team. Cheers, gentlemen!”
He raised his glass in acknowledgement of the raucous guffaws from Ray and Chris, as Sam glumly forced down the rest of his vinegar and called it a night.
Unsurprisingly, then, at the end of the shift the following day Sam was even less keen than usual to respond to the rallying call of “Right then - pub” with the expected levels of enthusiasm. He resorted to burying his head in a pile of files and trying to look overwhelmed with paperwork, a tactic which had proved pretty successful in the past, and thought he had got away with it as the rest of the squad began their customary mass exodus. Until the strident tones of Gene Hunt blasted across the office towards him.
“Oi, Tyler. You coming or what?”
Sam glanced up, adopting his ‘preoccupied and irritable’ expression. “Not right now, Guv. Bit busy with this lot.”
Gene was having none of it. “Oh, don’t be such a girl. The baddies’ll keep till tomorrow. Think how disappointed Nelson’ll be if he doesn’t get to see your happy smiling face brightening up his pub. Now quit fussing and come on.”
Sighing, Sam gave in, grabbing his jacket and following the others towards the exit.
And all in all, he was pretty glad he had in the end. Inevitably Ray wasn’t about to let the events of yesterday pass completely unremarked, insisting on buying a round solely so that he could tag “…and a Blue Nun for the lady” onto the order, waving a hand magnanimously in Sam’s direction. Sam responded with a roll of eyes and a “Oh very mature, DC Carling”, waited a couple of minutes and wandered over to the bar to swap the wine for a pint. Nelson beckoned him closer.
“Listen, Sam. There’s not much call for wine round here, so I don’t usually have the good stuff. I’ve got a mate, though, a specialist supplier - you can have his address if you like. Doesn’t normally sell to the public, but if you use my name he’ll give you a decent deal.”
Sam brightened instantly. “Great, Nelson, that’d be great. Thanks. I’ll drop round there tomorrow.”
Which was how he found himself, a couple of nights later, contentedly home alone with a finely full-bodied Cotes du Rhone placed, trophy-like, on the table in front of him, not to mention several more bottles of varying origins squirreled away for future consumption. The supplier, a man who could easily have passed for Nelson’s brother and had a similar disposition for easy chat, had been surprised but thoroughly delighted at Sam’s enquiry, which had opened the way for a tasting session of a good couple of hours’ duration. Sam, who could hold his wine, nevertheless had to admit to a slight light-headedness by the time he finally dragged himself away, clutching his precious clinking carrier bag of God’s own nectar.
He sat, chin resting on one hand, perusing the label. Good with red meat, apparently. A check of the fridge revealed half a tin of spam and a wedge of Red Leicester. Close enough, he decided happily, decanting them onto a chipped plate.
He fiddled with the radio for a while, trying to find something suitably ambient, stopping as the static scratching its way out of the speaker coalesced into something recognisable as piano music. Mahler, he thought, or something similarly slushy - he wasn’t a big aficionado of classical music, but somehow this suited the mood perfectly. On impulse, he dug out a stubby candle that he kept handy for power cuts, placing it carefully beside the bottle and lighting it, captivated by the flickering amber glow that added unaccustomed warmth to the room.
And only then, when every detail possible had been taken care of, did Sam allow himself the luxury of pouring a generous measure of the long-craved wine. Even the gurgling of the dark liquid flowing from the bottle was evocative of a different time, a different life, and he closed his eyes briefly, allowing himself the luxury of imagining himself back in his clean, shining, modern flat.
Instantly a jolt of some startlingly negative emotion whipped into and through him, his mind immediately and brutally rejecting the image, and his eyes flew open as he wrestled something akin to panic. No - this was all wrong. It was totally unthinkable that he should come to embrace this environment, to feel at home here. He had to keep fighting.
Before he had time to set the maelstrom of his thoughts into some sort of coherent order, he was forced back to what passed for reality by a knock at the door. Well, more of a pounding, really. Setting the bottle, which he found to his surprise was still tightly gripped in his hand, back down on the table, he resisted the impulse to just ignore the banging and hope whoever it was would go away.
“Who is it?” he called.
“Me,” came the gruffly impatient response. “You going to let me in, or leave me standing out here like a jessie?”
Sam sighed, dragged a hand down across his face, and pulled himself up to answer the door.
The scowl that greeted him came as no surprise. What was unexpected, though, was the bottle of wine that Gene was holding in front of him like some sort of makeshift weapon. Sam’s eyes flickered from the bottle back to Gene’s face, where the scowl immediately deepened and sharpened into defensiveness.
“What’s this?” Sam said, deliberately keeping his tone light and mild.
“What’s it look like? Thought it’d cheer you up a bit. Do the world a favour if it stops you moping round the office with a face like a wet Sunday.”
Sam took the offered bottle, glancing down at the label; unable to resist a half-smile as he read the name. Mateus Rose. Well, that was a blast from the past. He couldn’t remember even seeing a bottle since he’d left school.
“Thanks,” he belatedly remembered to say. “That’s - well - thanks.”
“Yeah, well. I don’t suppose it’s up to your usual high standards. Best I could do at short notice, though.”
“No, really, Gene, this is great.” Sam’s smile deepened, and he watched with pleasure as Gene noticeably relaxed. “Look, come in. Have a glass.”
Pushing the door wider in a gesture of welcome, he turned away, moving over to the corner that passed for a kitchen, using the time spent in retrieving a couple of glasses and the corkscrew to gather his thoughts. He was pretty sure he knew Gene’s motivation in coming over - this had been on the cards for a while now, the physicality which had underscored their relationship right from their first encounter becoming more frequent, the excuses for it increasingly spurious. Sam had found himself, unconsciously at first, seeking out the violent contact - goading, pushing limits, watching intently as the fire sparked and kindled within the other man, until Sam could identify, even manipulate, the moment when Gene would snap. And, truth be told, it turned him on viciously.
Just once, the aggression had mutated briefly into something more overt. Apparently deeply offended at being classed as Neolithic, Gene had pinned Sam by the throat against the nearest available wall, leaning in unnecessarily close to yell something angry and unmemorable. Contorted faces inches apart, both men breathing heavily, and Sam wriggling backwards as far as he could to try and prevent Gene becoming aware of his burgeoning erection - Gene chose this moment to close the gap, lips and teeth clashing in a kiss that made up in raw energy what it lacked in romance.
And then, before Sam had time to get to grips with what was happening, to respond in anything but the most instinctive of ways, he found himself slumped gasping on the floor, taken down by a wickedly efficient kidney punch. Watching in bewilderment laced with a distinct edge of anger as Gene’s feet stalked away from him.
Since then, the tension between them had increased palpably. The violence was reined in, their times alone punctuated by unaccustomedly awkward silent moments that threw Sam more than he cared to admit. Both of them knew, neither of them acknowledged, that something would have to give. And now it looked like Gene had decided to force the issue.
Sam turned, a full glass of Mateus in each hand, to find Gene standing in the centre of the room, eyes narrowed as he took in the soft music and the candle light.
“You expecting company, Tyler? Far be it from me to cramp your style.”
Sam laughed, ruefully. “Some hope. My ‘style’ so far has consisted of a knockback from a WPC, and being handcuffed to my own bed and drugged by a prostitute. Not a particularly impressive track record, is it?”
“Hmm.” Gene took a sip of the wine, grimaced, resolutely took a larger swallow. “You ever considered you might be looking in the wrong places?”
Game on, Sam thought, looking him directly in the eye and repressing a shiver at what he saw there.
“Lately? Yes - I have.” A beat passed, not so much a pause as a freezing of time. “I’d be open to suggestions as to what the right places might be.”
“I’ll see what I can come up with.” Gene ran an assessing, lingering gaze down and back up the length of Sam’s body, with a casual arrogance that sent a bolt of arousal shooting straight to Sam’s groin. He took a calming gulp of the over-sweet pink wine, resisting the urge to cast longing glances at his woefully neglected Cotes du Rhone.
Gene saved him the trouble. “Don’t know what you see in this stuff, though,” he said, glaring at the glass in his hand. “Tastes like something the cat did.”
“Yeah. Classy, though!” Sam took the glasses away, tipping the contents without regret down the sink and pouring some of the red to replace it. “Seriously, short of rolling up with a bottle of Babycham, could you have picked a girlier drink?”
“Well, don’t blame me, you’re the one that decided to go all upmarket. Anyway, pink suits you.”
“Right. Thanks. Try this.”
Looking decidedly suspicious, Gene took a wary sip. Sam matched him, self-indulgently rolling the rich liquid around and over his tongue, savouring the subtlety of flavour. Oak, he thought, and maybe a hint of cherry. Mind you, it could be liquorice and bath water for all he knew - he’d never got the hang of all that ‘nose and bouquet’ bollocks.
He returned his attention to the matter at hand.
“What d’you reckon, then?”
Gene looked slightly taken aback. “Yeah. Not bad at all. Not saying I prefer it to a decent pint, mind, but I suppose I can see what the birds drink it for now.”
“Want a top-up?” Sam waved vaguely towards the only comfortable chair the flat had to offer - Gene took up the invitation, shrugging off the ubiquitous camelhair coat and settling himself in the armchair.
“Go on then.” He met Sam’s eyes, and there was a message there that had absolutely nothing to do with wine. “Might as well finish what we’ve started.”
“Yeah. No rush, though.” He sat opposite Gene on the edge of the bed, raising his glass in a toast, trying his best to appear casual despite the thumping of his pulse and the increasingly uncomfortable tightening in his jeans. “Some things are meant to be savoured.”
“I bow to your superior wisdom,” Gene answered with a definite smirk.
The two men sat for a long time, as the candle guttered and the shadows gathered. They drank a lot and spoke little, meaningless comments on work and life in general, but the silences in between now held none of the previous awkwardness. The line had been crossed, a declaration had been made and answered, and now there was nothing left to do but relish the anticipation of the inevitable.
Sam watched Gene through half-closed eyes, listening with one half of his brain to some tale about CID’s latest run-in with Litton (who had apparently sent a couple of RCS boys in on a night-time evidence-stealing raid, only to be sent packing by Phyllis, who had been disturbed in her attempt to have a crafty ten minutes kip while the cell block was quiet). The other half was idly flipping the current situation over and over, examining it from every angle. Of all the people he had met in this new life - met or created, he frankly didn’t know any more - Gene Hunt was the one that mystified him. All the others - Ray, Chris, even Annie for the most part - were safe, predictable characters; if they were constructs of his mind, he could see where they fitted in as metaphors for aspects of himself and his life.
It was Gene that didn’t fit the comfortable pattern. Gene Hunt, with his brash morality and his whimsical intelligence, which meant you never quite knew which way he was going to jump or which side he would come down when he did. Gene, who had become, in a pretty literal sense, the centre of his world here. And yet, what did he actually know about the man in front of him?
“Tyler? Have you been listening to a bloody word I’ve said?”
Startled out of his train of thought, Sam stared at Gene. Apparently the listening half of his brain had drifted off too. He thought for a moment.
“Tell me a secret,” he blurted impulsively.
“Sorry?”
“Come on.” Sam was adamant. “Something you’d never tell anyone else. There’s got to be a few choice skeletons lurking around. Get them off your chest.”
“Right. You mean like how I wear the wife’s undies on Saturdays or stamp on kittens for fun?”
“Not really. I already know about you being a complete dickhead. I was hoping there might be another side to you.”
“Where do you get your ideas from, Sammy-boy? The Gene Genie is an open book. He has no hidden depths.” He paused, as if in deep thought. “And those he might have, he’s keeping to himself, thank you very much.”
Sam rolled his eyes in mock-exasperation, grinning. “Twat.”
“Never in doubt. You got any more of this?” Gene held out his empty glass. Sam realised with surprise that they’d sunk two bottles now, got up to fetch another, snapping on the light as the stub of candle finally gave up the fight and flickered out.
“Here you go,” he said, uncorking the new bottle and pouring a generous measure for them both. “See what you think of this.”
“What’s this one, then?”
“Californian.”
“Seriously? The Yanks do plonk?”
“Philistine. Actually, Californian wine is among the best in the world.”
“Flipping heck. You learn something new every day.” He took a gulp. “You know what? This is bloody good stuff.”
The two men sipped contemplatively for a while, each lost in their own reflections; Sam’s thoughts, inevitably, slipping back to his earlier jarring revelation. He closed his eyes, trying to force an image of Maya, but the picture danced tantalisingly just out of reach - the more he grasped at it, the further away it seemed. And as, exasperated, he gave up and opened his eyes again, and his gaze fell on Gene staring into his glass as though it contained the secrets of the universe - in that moment, with shattering suddenness, it all clicked into place.
“All right,” he said slightly too loudly, crashing into the soporific lull. Gene jerked upright so quickly that Sam wondered suspiciously if he had been on the point of dropping off. “I’ll tell you one, then.”
“Sorry? Tell me one what?”
Sam leaned towards him. “A secret. If you won’t tell me one, I’ll go first.”
“Ooh goody,” said Gene, leaning forward too in a parody of Sam’s earnestness. “Can I take a guess? You’re a closet bum bandit who’s developed a craving for the legendary sexual prowess of the Guv’nor of Love.”
He leered evilly. Sam bestowed upon him the seraphic smile of one who had chosen to rise above such baseness.
“You know, Gene, I never fail to be astounded by your unerring sophistication. Anyway,” Sam was not above the odd leer himself when the moment was right, “that’s hardly a secret now, is it?”
“It’d bloody well better be, Gladys, or we’ll both be looking for new jobs faster than you can say ‘knackers out for the lads’.”
“Er. Well, it’s not that.”
“Okey doke.” Gene rubbed his hands together in apparent excitement. “Do I get another go?”
Sam sighed. Whatever it was that was drawing him to Gene, it wasn’t his listening skills. “Go on then, if you really must.”
“Right.” Gene rested his head against the back of the chair, eyes falling shut, the dreamy amusement in his voice at odds with the incisiveness of the words themselves. “You’re from the planet Somewhere-in-the-Future. You’ve travelled back in time in your own special little space capsule or whatever, and now you don’t know how to get home. That it?”
Sam just gaped, utterly thrown. Of all the many things Gene could have come out with, this was the very last he had been expecting.
“I - not entirely, no.”
“What, then?”
“It’s - look, Gene, I don’t expect you to believe me. Who would? It’s a bloody miracle you haven’t got me locked away in a padded cell somewhere.”
“Don’t think I’m not tempted every day.” There was a drowsiness creeping into Gene’s tone now, which boded ill for any later plans, but which carried with it a sense of peace that Sam realised he had been missing terribly. Since his arrival - in fact, if he was really honest with himself, for a considerable time before that - he’d been off balance, tense, teetering on the edge of control. Now, that tension had evaporated, replaced by a sense of belonging that was as wonderfully calming as it was disconcerting.
Sam watched Gene silently, as the other man’s breathing deepened and slowed into the unmistakeable rhythm of sleep. Carefully, he got up, moving over to the radio which had long since finished playing music and was now quietly burbling to itself. At the instant he stretched out his hand towards the switch, though, the sound sharpened into a voice he had heard before.
“There’s a distinct deterioration. Responsiveness is diminishing at an alarming rate, all our recent tests have had negative results. I’m afraid, Mrs Tyler, that if we don’t see some small improvement soon, we’ll have to consider switching off his life support. We must face the possibility that he might not be able to come back from this.”
Sam snapped off the radio, stood for a moment while his heart stopped pounding and the panic that these interludes always brought with them settled. At last, he turned. Gene slept on, oblivious.
“And that’s it,” Sam said softly. “That’s the secret. I’m happy here. I’ve fought for so long to try and get back, and now I’m not even sure I want to any more.” He peered at Gene, but the other man seemed well out of it as far as he could tell, so he decided to risk going further. “Being here, now, with you - it feels right. It feels like home. And if that means I’m mad, or a coward for not fighting harder - I think I can live with that.”
A gentle snore was his reward for this profundity. Sam stifled a laugh.
“Right. I suppose a night of passion’s out of the question, then.”
To his surprise, Gene gave a grunt. “Probably,” he mumbled. “Did you drug that wine or what? It’s bloody lethal.” A lazy smile spread across his face as he briefly cracked open one eye. “Still, there’s always the morning.”
“I doubt it, if you kip in that chair all night. Come here.”
Sam had never really thought about the practicalities of undressing in front of Gene for the first time, but he was pretty sure he would have imagined something rather more passionate than the matter-of-fact stripping down to underclothes that they both did now, before slipping in together under the blankets and wriggling around to find a position that would comfortably accommodate both of them in a bed that was barely a good fit for one. Sam lay, pressed up against Gene’s back, an arm around his waist, feeling aroused and at peace in roughly equal measure.
“’Night, Gene,” he said, because he could, because Gene was there to say it to. The warmth from the body against his own radiated through him, and time seemed to warp and stretch as he began to drift, to spiral towards sleep that, for once, just might be untroubled.
And certainly, he was undisturbed by the soft hiss as the television set switched itself on, unaware of the young scarlet-clad girl who stood looking down at the sleeping pair, her face wrinkled with concern as she clasped her clown more tightly to her.
“Poor Sam,” she half-whispered. “Rest peacefully.”
Author: bistokids
Word Count: 4,054
Rating: Blue cortina
Warnings: None
Pairing: Sam/Gene - more pre-slash than slash
Summary: In vino veritas. Prompt was: Sam/Gene, male bonding, "Tell me a secret."
A/N: Lovely recipient - I bow down in apology. I have a proper, psychological-style problem with deadlines! Also, this fic has given me untold grief, I can only hope it's worked as I just can't tell any more. Inspired in equal parts by the ficathon prompt and the alcohol challenge on Flashfiction.
Out of the litany of aspects of 2006 that Sam missed, there was one which had stood out from the very start. Funnily enough, it wasn’t so much the mobile phone, the iPod or any of the futuristic gizmos that had no real meaning in this retro world. All the trappings of modernity that had seemed so essential in his own time (if asked, he would have sworn his life would have come to a complete halt without his PDA) seemed faintly ridiculous when held up against this comparatively austere society.
His craving for something he perceived as normality rooted itself in a desperate desire to go home after a stressful day and relax, as had been his custom, with a proper quality bottle of wine. A nice Chilean cabernet sauvignon, say, or a Chianti genuinely worthy of the name. And fortunately, this level of luxury was achievable if you knew where to look.
He’d struck lucky at the Railway Arms one night - although it certainly hadn’t felt like it at the time. Gene had been in an unusually benevolent mood, having actually managed to extract a confession without having to break a single bone in the process, and was insisting on getting a round in for ‘the team’. The team was, on such occasions, strictly a four-man affair.
Sam, sick of going home bloated from beer and sure his nightmares were being compounded by having to get up every twenty minutes for a piss, decided on a whim to put in an order for a red wine. The profoundness of the silence that greeted this request put him in mind of Clint Eastwood or Gary Cooper strolling into some Wild West bar - he wouldn’t have been at all surprised to hear saloon doors creaking in the background. Ray’s take on the matter turned out, predictably, to be rather less stylish.
“Red wine? You really are a complete pouf, aren’t you?”
Sam glowered daggers, but found himself unable to come up with any riposte wittier than “Sod off, Carling,” which just made Ray’s grin even wider.
Gene chose, unexpectedly, to lend Sam a bit of moral support. “Now now, Raymondo. There’s more to life than beer, believe it or not. Tyler’s used to a better class of boozer, that right Sammy-boy? Doubt they even have pints of mild in Hyde.” He turned towards the bar. “There you go, Nelson. Three pints, one whisky chaser and a glass of your finest red plonk, if you’d be so kind.”
Relieved, Sam took his drink over to their regular spot and sipped gingerly. And had to force himself to overcome the immediate urge to spit it violently across the table. Christ, it was rank. Probably been sitting open for - well, weeks at best. Grimacing, but conscious of Gene’s eyes on him, he took a deep swallow, meeting the assessing gaze with one of defiance.
“Tell you what, though.” Gene’s conversational tone included everyone at the table in his musing, though his eyes remained firmly fixed on Sam’s. “You ever catch me with a glass of that stuff in my hand, you want to get your arses backed up to the nearest wall sharpish, cos I’ll be officially batting for the other team. Cheers, gentlemen!”
He raised his glass in acknowledgement of the raucous guffaws from Ray and Chris, as Sam glumly forced down the rest of his vinegar and called it a night.
Unsurprisingly, then, at the end of the shift the following day Sam was even less keen than usual to respond to the rallying call of “Right then - pub” with the expected levels of enthusiasm. He resorted to burying his head in a pile of files and trying to look overwhelmed with paperwork, a tactic which had proved pretty successful in the past, and thought he had got away with it as the rest of the squad began their customary mass exodus. Until the strident tones of Gene Hunt blasted across the office towards him.
“Oi, Tyler. You coming or what?”
Sam glanced up, adopting his ‘preoccupied and irritable’ expression. “Not right now, Guv. Bit busy with this lot.”
Gene was having none of it. “Oh, don’t be such a girl. The baddies’ll keep till tomorrow. Think how disappointed Nelson’ll be if he doesn’t get to see your happy smiling face brightening up his pub. Now quit fussing and come on.”
Sighing, Sam gave in, grabbing his jacket and following the others towards the exit.
And all in all, he was pretty glad he had in the end. Inevitably Ray wasn’t about to let the events of yesterday pass completely unremarked, insisting on buying a round solely so that he could tag “…and a Blue Nun for the lady” onto the order, waving a hand magnanimously in Sam’s direction. Sam responded with a roll of eyes and a “Oh very mature, DC Carling”, waited a couple of minutes and wandered over to the bar to swap the wine for a pint. Nelson beckoned him closer.
“Listen, Sam. There’s not much call for wine round here, so I don’t usually have the good stuff. I’ve got a mate, though, a specialist supplier - you can have his address if you like. Doesn’t normally sell to the public, but if you use my name he’ll give you a decent deal.”
Sam brightened instantly. “Great, Nelson, that’d be great. Thanks. I’ll drop round there tomorrow.”
Which was how he found himself, a couple of nights later, contentedly home alone with a finely full-bodied Cotes du Rhone placed, trophy-like, on the table in front of him, not to mention several more bottles of varying origins squirreled away for future consumption. The supplier, a man who could easily have passed for Nelson’s brother and had a similar disposition for easy chat, had been surprised but thoroughly delighted at Sam’s enquiry, which had opened the way for a tasting session of a good couple of hours’ duration. Sam, who could hold his wine, nevertheless had to admit to a slight light-headedness by the time he finally dragged himself away, clutching his precious clinking carrier bag of God’s own nectar.
He sat, chin resting on one hand, perusing the label. Good with red meat, apparently. A check of the fridge revealed half a tin of spam and a wedge of Red Leicester. Close enough, he decided happily, decanting them onto a chipped plate.
He fiddled with the radio for a while, trying to find something suitably ambient, stopping as the static scratching its way out of the speaker coalesced into something recognisable as piano music. Mahler, he thought, or something similarly slushy - he wasn’t a big aficionado of classical music, but somehow this suited the mood perfectly. On impulse, he dug out a stubby candle that he kept handy for power cuts, placing it carefully beside the bottle and lighting it, captivated by the flickering amber glow that added unaccustomed warmth to the room.
And only then, when every detail possible had been taken care of, did Sam allow himself the luxury of pouring a generous measure of the long-craved wine. Even the gurgling of the dark liquid flowing from the bottle was evocative of a different time, a different life, and he closed his eyes briefly, allowing himself the luxury of imagining himself back in his clean, shining, modern flat.
Instantly a jolt of some startlingly negative emotion whipped into and through him, his mind immediately and brutally rejecting the image, and his eyes flew open as he wrestled something akin to panic. No - this was all wrong. It was totally unthinkable that he should come to embrace this environment, to feel at home here. He had to keep fighting.
Before he had time to set the maelstrom of his thoughts into some sort of coherent order, he was forced back to what passed for reality by a knock at the door. Well, more of a pounding, really. Setting the bottle, which he found to his surprise was still tightly gripped in his hand, back down on the table, he resisted the impulse to just ignore the banging and hope whoever it was would go away.
“Who is it?” he called.
“Me,” came the gruffly impatient response. “You going to let me in, or leave me standing out here like a jessie?”
Sam sighed, dragged a hand down across his face, and pulled himself up to answer the door.
The scowl that greeted him came as no surprise. What was unexpected, though, was the bottle of wine that Gene was holding in front of him like some sort of makeshift weapon. Sam’s eyes flickered from the bottle back to Gene’s face, where the scowl immediately deepened and sharpened into defensiveness.
“What’s this?” Sam said, deliberately keeping his tone light and mild.
“What’s it look like? Thought it’d cheer you up a bit. Do the world a favour if it stops you moping round the office with a face like a wet Sunday.”
Sam took the offered bottle, glancing down at the label; unable to resist a half-smile as he read the name. Mateus Rose. Well, that was a blast from the past. He couldn’t remember even seeing a bottle since he’d left school.
“Thanks,” he belatedly remembered to say. “That’s - well - thanks.”
“Yeah, well. I don’t suppose it’s up to your usual high standards. Best I could do at short notice, though.”
“No, really, Gene, this is great.” Sam’s smile deepened, and he watched with pleasure as Gene noticeably relaxed. “Look, come in. Have a glass.”
Pushing the door wider in a gesture of welcome, he turned away, moving over to the corner that passed for a kitchen, using the time spent in retrieving a couple of glasses and the corkscrew to gather his thoughts. He was pretty sure he knew Gene’s motivation in coming over - this had been on the cards for a while now, the physicality which had underscored their relationship right from their first encounter becoming more frequent, the excuses for it increasingly spurious. Sam had found himself, unconsciously at first, seeking out the violent contact - goading, pushing limits, watching intently as the fire sparked and kindled within the other man, until Sam could identify, even manipulate, the moment when Gene would snap. And, truth be told, it turned him on viciously.
Just once, the aggression had mutated briefly into something more overt. Apparently deeply offended at being classed as Neolithic, Gene had pinned Sam by the throat against the nearest available wall, leaning in unnecessarily close to yell something angry and unmemorable. Contorted faces inches apart, both men breathing heavily, and Sam wriggling backwards as far as he could to try and prevent Gene becoming aware of his burgeoning erection - Gene chose this moment to close the gap, lips and teeth clashing in a kiss that made up in raw energy what it lacked in romance.
And then, before Sam had time to get to grips with what was happening, to respond in anything but the most instinctive of ways, he found himself slumped gasping on the floor, taken down by a wickedly efficient kidney punch. Watching in bewilderment laced with a distinct edge of anger as Gene’s feet stalked away from him.
Since then, the tension between them had increased palpably. The violence was reined in, their times alone punctuated by unaccustomedly awkward silent moments that threw Sam more than he cared to admit. Both of them knew, neither of them acknowledged, that something would have to give. And now it looked like Gene had decided to force the issue.
Sam turned, a full glass of Mateus in each hand, to find Gene standing in the centre of the room, eyes narrowed as he took in the soft music and the candle light.
“You expecting company, Tyler? Far be it from me to cramp your style.”
Sam laughed, ruefully. “Some hope. My ‘style’ so far has consisted of a knockback from a WPC, and being handcuffed to my own bed and drugged by a prostitute. Not a particularly impressive track record, is it?”
“Hmm.” Gene took a sip of the wine, grimaced, resolutely took a larger swallow. “You ever considered you might be looking in the wrong places?”
Game on, Sam thought, looking him directly in the eye and repressing a shiver at what he saw there.
“Lately? Yes - I have.” A beat passed, not so much a pause as a freezing of time. “I’d be open to suggestions as to what the right places might be.”
“I’ll see what I can come up with.” Gene ran an assessing, lingering gaze down and back up the length of Sam’s body, with a casual arrogance that sent a bolt of arousal shooting straight to Sam’s groin. He took a calming gulp of the over-sweet pink wine, resisting the urge to cast longing glances at his woefully neglected Cotes du Rhone.
Gene saved him the trouble. “Don’t know what you see in this stuff, though,” he said, glaring at the glass in his hand. “Tastes like something the cat did.”
“Yeah. Classy, though!” Sam took the glasses away, tipping the contents without regret down the sink and pouring some of the red to replace it. “Seriously, short of rolling up with a bottle of Babycham, could you have picked a girlier drink?”
“Well, don’t blame me, you’re the one that decided to go all upmarket. Anyway, pink suits you.”
“Right. Thanks. Try this.”
Looking decidedly suspicious, Gene took a wary sip. Sam matched him, self-indulgently rolling the rich liquid around and over his tongue, savouring the subtlety of flavour. Oak, he thought, and maybe a hint of cherry. Mind you, it could be liquorice and bath water for all he knew - he’d never got the hang of all that ‘nose and bouquet’ bollocks.
He returned his attention to the matter at hand.
“What d’you reckon, then?”
Gene looked slightly taken aback. “Yeah. Not bad at all. Not saying I prefer it to a decent pint, mind, but I suppose I can see what the birds drink it for now.”
“Want a top-up?” Sam waved vaguely towards the only comfortable chair the flat had to offer - Gene took up the invitation, shrugging off the ubiquitous camelhair coat and settling himself in the armchair.
“Go on then.” He met Sam’s eyes, and there was a message there that had absolutely nothing to do with wine. “Might as well finish what we’ve started.”
“Yeah. No rush, though.” He sat opposite Gene on the edge of the bed, raising his glass in a toast, trying his best to appear casual despite the thumping of his pulse and the increasingly uncomfortable tightening in his jeans. “Some things are meant to be savoured.”
“I bow to your superior wisdom,” Gene answered with a definite smirk.
The two men sat for a long time, as the candle guttered and the shadows gathered. They drank a lot and spoke little, meaningless comments on work and life in general, but the silences in between now held none of the previous awkwardness. The line had been crossed, a declaration had been made and answered, and now there was nothing left to do but relish the anticipation of the inevitable.
Sam watched Gene through half-closed eyes, listening with one half of his brain to some tale about CID’s latest run-in with Litton (who had apparently sent a couple of RCS boys in on a night-time evidence-stealing raid, only to be sent packing by Phyllis, who had been disturbed in her attempt to have a crafty ten minutes kip while the cell block was quiet). The other half was idly flipping the current situation over and over, examining it from every angle. Of all the people he had met in this new life - met or created, he frankly didn’t know any more - Gene Hunt was the one that mystified him. All the others - Ray, Chris, even Annie for the most part - were safe, predictable characters; if they were constructs of his mind, he could see where they fitted in as metaphors for aspects of himself and his life.
It was Gene that didn’t fit the comfortable pattern. Gene Hunt, with his brash morality and his whimsical intelligence, which meant you never quite knew which way he was going to jump or which side he would come down when he did. Gene, who had become, in a pretty literal sense, the centre of his world here. And yet, what did he actually know about the man in front of him?
“Tyler? Have you been listening to a bloody word I’ve said?”
Startled out of his train of thought, Sam stared at Gene. Apparently the listening half of his brain had drifted off too. He thought for a moment.
“Tell me a secret,” he blurted impulsively.
“Sorry?”
“Come on.” Sam was adamant. “Something you’d never tell anyone else. There’s got to be a few choice skeletons lurking around. Get them off your chest.”
“Right. You mean like how I wear the wife’s undies on Saturdays or stamp on kittens for fun?”
“Not really. I already know about you being a complete dickhead. I was hoping there might be another side to you.”
“Where do you get your ideas from, Sammy-boy? The Gene Genie is an open book. He has no hidden depths.” He paused, as if in deep thought. “And those he might have, he’s keeping to himself, thank you very much.”
Sam rolled his eyes in mock-exasperation, grinning. “Twat.”
“Never in doubt. You got any more of this?” Gene held out his empty glass. Sam realised with surprise that they’d sunk two bottles now, got up to fetch another, snapping on the light as the stub of candle finally gave up the fight and flickered out.
“Here you go,” he said, uncorking the new bottle and pouring a generous measure for them both. “See what you think of this.”
“What’s this one, then?”
“Californian.”
“Seriously? The Yanks do plonk?”
“Philistine. Actually, Californian wine is among the best in the world.”
“Flipping heck. You learn something new every day.” He took a gulp. “You know what? This is bloody good stuff.”
The two men sipped contemplatively for a while, each lost in their own reflections; Sam’s thoughts, inevitably, slipping back to his earlier jarring revelation. He closed his eyes, trying to force an image of Maya, but the picture danced tantalisingly just out of reach - the more he grasped at it, the further away it seemed. And as, exasperated, he gave up and opened his eyes again, and his gaze fell on Gene staring into his glass as though it contained the secrets of the universe - in that moment, with shattering suddenness, it all clicked into place.
“All right,” he said slightly too loudly, crashing into the soporific lull. Gene jerked upright so quickly that Sam wondered suspiciously if he had been on the point of dropping off. “I’ll tell you one, then.”
“Sorry? Tell me one what?”
Sam leaned towards him. “A secret. If you won’t tell me one, I’ll go first.”
“Ooh goody,” said Gene, leaning forward too in a parody of Sam’s earnestness. “Can I take a guess? You’re a closet bum bandit who’s developed a craving for the legendary sexual prowess of the Guv’nor of Love.”
He leered evilly. Sam bestowed upon him the seraphic smile of one who had chosen to rise above such baseness.
“You know, Gene, I never fail to be astounded by your unerring sophistication. Anyway,” Sam was not above the odd leer himself when the moment was right, “that’s hardly a secret now, is it?”
“It’d bloody well better be, Gladys, or we’ll both be looking for new jobs faster than you can say ‘knackers out for the lads’.”
“Er. Well, it’s not that.”
“Okey doke.” Gene rubbed his hands together in apparent excitement. “Do I get another go?”
Sam sighed. Whatever it was that was drawing him to Gene, it wasn’t his listening skills. “Go on then, if you really must.”
“Right.” Gene rested his head against the back of the chair, eyes falling shut, the dreamy amusement in his voice at odds with the incisiveness of the words themselves. “You’re from the planet Somewhere-in-the-Future. You’ve travelled back in time in your own special little space capsule or whatever, and now you don’t know how to get home. That it?”
Sam just gaped, utterly thrown. Of all the many things Gene could have come out with, this was the very last he had been expecting.
“I - not entirely, no.”
“What, then?”
“It’s - look, Gene, I don’t expect you to believe me. Who would? It’s a bloody miracle you haven’t got me locked away in a padded cell somewhere.”
“Don’t think I’m not tempted every day.” There was a drowsiness creeping into Gene’s tone now, which boded ill for any later plans, but which carried with it a sense of peace that Sam realised he had been missing terribly. Since his arrival - in fact, if he was really honest with himself, for a considerable time before that - he’d been off balance, tense, teetering on the edge of control. Now, that tension had evaporated, replaced by a sense of belonging that was as wonderfully calming as it was disconcerting.
Sam watched Gene silently, as the other man’s breathing deepened and slowed into the unmistakeable rhythm of sleep. Carefully, he got up, moving over to the radio which had long since finished playing music and was now quietly burbling to itself. At the instant he stretched out his hand towards the switch, though, the sound sharpened into a voice he had heard before.
“There’s a distinct deterioration. Responsiveness is diminishing at an alarming rate, all our recent tests have had negative results. I’m afraid, Mrs Tyler, that if we don’t see some small improvement soon, we’ll have to consider switching off his life support. We must face the possibility that he might not be able to come back from this.”
Sam snapped off the radio, stood for a moment while his heart stopped pounding and the panic that these interludes always brought with them settled. At last, he turned. Gene slept on, oblivious.
“And that’s it,” Sam said softly. “That’s the secret. I’m happy here. I’ve fought for so long to try and get back, and now I’m not even sure I want to any more.” He peered at Gene, but the other man seemed well out of it as far as he could tell, so he decided to risk going further. “Being here, now, with you - it feels right. It feels like home. And if that means I’m mad, or a coward for not fighting harder - I think I can live with that.”
A gentle snore was his reward for this profundity. Sam stifled a laugh.
“Right. I suppose a night of passion’s out of the question, then.”
To his surprise, Gene gave a grunt. “Probably,” he mumbled. “Did you drug that wine or what? It’s bloody lethal.” A lazy smile spread across his face as he briefly cracked open one eye. “Still, there’s always the morning.”
“I doubt it, if you kip in that chair all night. Come here.”
Sam had never really thought about the practicalities of undressing in front of Gene for the first time, but he was pretty sure he would have imagined something rather more passionate than the matter-of-fact stripping down to underclothes that they both did now, before slipping in together under the blankets and wriggling around to find a position that would comfortably accommodate both of them in a bed that was barely a good fit for one. Sam lay, pressed up against Gene’s back, an arm around his waist, feeling aroused and at peace in roughly equal measure.
“’Night, Gene,” he said, because he could, because Gene was there to say it to. The warmth from the body against his own radiated through him, and time seemed to warp and stretch as he began to drift, to spiral towards sleep that, for once, just might be untroubled.
And certainly, he was undisturbed by the soft hiss as the television set switched itself on, unaware of the young scarlet-clad girl who stood looking down at the sleeping pair, her face wrinkled with concern as she clasped her clown more tightly to her.
“Poor Sam,” she half-whispered. “Rest peacefully.”