A Tale Told by an Idiot
Title: A Tale Told by an Idiot
Rating: Teen/Blue Cortina
Word Count: 1,360
Contains: Non-explicit violence, kidnapping, Sam/Gene
Summary: Eliot got things all mixed up. Your day starts with a bang and you whimper. God only knows how it ends.
Notes: Written for dakfinv for the prompt "Sam is missing, books, the phrase 'That's not blood. Is it?'"
Eliot got things all mixed up. Your day starts with a bang and you whimper. God only knows how it ends. Nothing’s gone the right way since you’ve arrived in this godforsaken place. This world keeps sweeping your feet out from underneath you, and you thrash as you fall.
The voice in your head that didn’t used to be there tells you to stop being such a div and wanking off to your own misery. Fuck that voice. You’re entitled to a little bit of whining.
But the voice is right. It usually is-something you’ll never admit, not to its source and normally not to yourself, but this is a desperate situation even by your generous standards. This is no time to wallow. They grabbed you at a crime scene and shoved you in the boot. You were alone. The area was empty. No one expects you back at the office until tomorrow, and when they figure out you’re missing, they won’t know where you’ve gone.
In 2006, there will be radios. Mobiles. Procedure. No one gets taken while they are on their own because no one goes out on their own. You chose this, and it’s hard not to feel some regret with a bag shoved over your head and your hands tied behind your back.
You flail because you can and you need to do something. You need to plan, but you can’t think. You’re too distracted by the rope around your wrists, by the cold of the room, by the way your damn head won’t stop pounding.
And you think, that’s not blood. And then, is it?
And then you think, oh, shit.
Your head hurts too much to think too hard. The room’s too cold and they’ve taken your jacket, your jacket, the only thing in this time you claim. You feel flayed without it.
A fact springs to mind, a tidbit that people love to throw about. The blind compensate with their other senses in ways that sighted people can’t. You’ve never fully believed it, mostly because it’s primarily said by people who think blind people have superpowers, but the concept makes sense. Right now, you can’t be certain if it’s you adapting to the dark or just the fog clearing in your head, but the room begins to take shape around you. To your left, pipes clang. The room smells like mould and dirt, but the ground under you is concrete. Your mouth tastes like copper. You think of Gene. You feel better.
You’re lucid enough to know that thought can’t be healthy.
Focus. You need to focus. You have a head wound. Some other wounds too, but the head wound is what matters right now. It’s the fuse of the bomb. It’s your time limit. Your brains are dribbling out of your head, and you’re too disoriented to even know if that’s metaphorical or not. The longer you wait, the stupider you’ll get. You need to move.
Think, just think. The rope around your wrists is too tight. It keeps your hands at too harsh of an angle. Struggling against that would just be a waste of time. You struggle anyway. That’s what you do.
You click your heels together in the dark because you have to try something. The silence laughs at you.
You feel so much lighter without the blood. You could float away into the sky and never come down. The ground is cold underneath you, cold and hard. You bang your head against it, kick start your brain with a little bit of violence. It’s been so long since you worked on a case that didn’t involve a punch-up.
The static in your head roars like an ocean. You pant and you breathe in burlap, and they’ve tied the damn thing too tight. If you could just see, if you could just stretch, if you could grab, run, hide, shout, think, think, think. But it’s like your thoughts are salmon swimming upstream and the river’s dammed anyway. And your fury at this keeps your heart beating. Because you are a mad man, and you are alone, and you are freezing and hurting and bleeding. But you are not stupid. It will take more than a kick to the head to knock your brains out. You will live. They will find you. You will live, and you will lock up the bad guys, and you will kiss Gene Hunt in the sunlight with your coppery mouth.
And you, who are capable of rejecting fifteen impossible things before breakfast, actually convince yourself of this.
Steps on the stairs sound loud as bombs. You scramble, sit up, look strong, be proud. Don’t let them see you down. These fools don’t know what man they grabbed. They rip the bag off your head and expect you to gape at the light. You rage instead. You kick, catch the slow one in his soft gut, hear the oof of his breath bursting out. His friend smashes his foot against your ribs and something goes crack, but you barely hear it over your screaming. The world is sound and fury and his foot on your chest. You have to laugh even as your lungs burn. You really thought you’d win. In a just world, you would have, but your story’s written by a poet with a tin ear, a hack at a typewriter recycling the same tired plots. What a world you wrote.
And here at your climax, I step forward out of the shadows and let you see me.
I’ve missed your eyes, Sam, the magnificent hatred in them as you glare at me. They sparkle like black holes in the empty sky. We’re at the crossroads and I’m holding out my hand. The slow one, the angry one now, steps forward with a knife in his. You are going to die. You know this. You look at me, and you shake your head. And, Sam, I don’t understand why. But I take my hand back.
The door bangs like a gunshot when the door bursts open. The men jump away from you, blinded by the light spilling down the stairs, and the room fills with the general chaos that you find you comforting. Gene’s not much of a knight, is he? And he’s hardly the god in the machine. But you wanted him, and here he is with a gun in hand, Ray and Chris sliding around back. How lucky for you.
It’s lucky that bad dreams drove Gene Hunt out of his bed tonight. Lucky that his wife’s foul mood cast him out onto the streets. Lucky that his tired brain ceded control to his wandering feet, and lucky that the roads of Manchester twisted to your flat. And it is so very, very lucky that when he saw you were gone and he searched his mind for where you could be, the first place he thought of was this house, right here.
I know you’ve never believed me, but this is the truth. I am your friend. And I am even willing to concede that I’m not your only one.
I was ready. You knew that, didn’t you. You know it now, as he holds you close, as you bury your face in his shoulder so you don’t have to see me. Are you grateful for the pain, Sammy? For the opportunity to love him in front of others? They won’t judge you. They’ll ascribe no ulterior motive to this beyond a friend comforting a friend, and if the truth slips close to their mouths, they’ll lock the words away out of fear. I’ll make sure of that. My gift to you.
I don’t know why you thought I went away. I never abandon my friends. You choose to stay. I can accept that. And someday, you’ll choose to go, and I’ll help you with that too.
But today, help carries you into the light with strong arms powered by weak lungs. Gene should be dead from three packs a day. I used the tar I took from him to paint the shadows in the corners a darker shade of black.
Rating: Teen/Blue Cortina
Word Count: 1,360
Contains: Non-explicit violence, kidnapping, Sam/Gene
Summary: Eliot got things all mixed up. Your day starts with a bang and you whimper. God only knows how it ends.
Notes: Written for dakfinv for the prompt "Sam is missing, books, the phrase 'That's not blood. Is it?'"
Eliot got things all mixed up. Your day starts with a bang and you whimper. God only knows how it ends. Nothing’s gone the right way since you’ve arrived in this godforsaken place. This world keeps sweeping your feet out from underneath you, and you thrash as you fall.
The voice in your head that didn’t used to be there tells you to stop being such a div and wanking off to your own misery. Fuck that voice. You’re entitled to a little bit of whining.
But the voice is right. It usually is-something you’ll never admit, not to its source and normally not to yourself, but this is a desperate situation even by your generous standards. This is no time to wallow. They grabbed you at a crime scene and shoved you in the boot. You were alone. The area was empty. No one expects you back at the office until tomorrow, and when they figure out you’re missing, they won’t know where you’ve gone.
In 2006, there will be radios. Mobiles. Procedure. No one gets taken while they are on their own because no one goes out on their own. You chose this, and it’s hard not to feel some regret with a bag shoved over your head and your hands tied behind your back.
You flail because you can and you need to do something. You need to plan, but you can’t think. You’re too distracted by the rope around your wrists, by the cold of the room, by the way your damn head won’t stop pounding.
And you think, that’s not blood. And then, is it?
And then you think, oh, shit.
Your head hurts too much to think too hard. The room’s too cold and they’ve taken your jacket, your jacket, the only thing in this time you claim. You feel flayed without it.
A fact springs to mind, a tidbit that people love to throw about. The blind compensate with their other senses in ways that sighted people can’t. You’ve never fully believed it, mostly because it’s primarily said by people who think blind people have superpowers, but the concept makes sense. Right now, you can’t be certain if it’s you adapting to the dark or just the fog clearing in your head, but the room begins to take shape around you. To your left, pipes clang. The room smells like mould and dirt, but the ground under you is concrete. Your mouth tastes like copper. You think of Gene. You feel better.
You’re lucid enough to know that thought can’t be healthy.
Focus. You need to focus. You have a head wound. Some other wounds too, but the head wound is what matters right now. It’s the fuse of the bomb. It’s your time limit. Your brains are dribbling out of your head, and you’re too disoriented to even know if that’s metaphorical or not. The longer you wait, the stupider you’ll get. You need to move.
Think, just think. The rope around your wrists is too tight. It keeps your hands at too harsh of an angle. Struggling against that would just be a waste of time. You struggle anyway. That’s what you do.
You click your heels together in the dark because you have to try something. The silence laughs at you.
You feel so much lighter without the blood. You could float away into the sky and never come down. The ground is cold underneath you, cold and hard. You bang your head against it, kick start your brain with a little bit of violence. It’s been so long since you worked on a case that didn’t involve a punch-up.
The static in your head roars like an ocean. You pant and you breathe in burlap, and they’ve tied the damn thing too tight. If you could just see, if you could just stretch, if you could grab, run, hide, shout, think, think, think. But it’s like your thoughts are salmon swimming upstream and the river’s dammed anyway. And your fury at this keeps your heart beating. Because you are a mad man, and you are alone, and you are freezing and hurting and bleeding. But you are not stupid. It will take more than a kick to the head to knock your brains out. You will live. They will find you. You will live, and you will lock up the bad guys, and you will kiss Gene Hunt in the sunlight with your coppery mouth.
And you, who are capable of rejecting fifteen impossible things before breakfast, actually convince yourself of this.
Steps on the stairs sound loud as bombs. You scramble, sit up, look strong, be proud. Don’t let them see you down. These fools don’t know what man they grabbed. They rip the bag off your head and expect you to gape at the light. You rage instead. You kick, catch the slow one in his soft gut, hear the oof of his breath bursting out. His friend smashes his foot against your ribs and something goes crack, but you barely hear it over your screaming. The world is sound and fury and his foot on your chest. You have to laugh even as your lungs burn. You really thought you’d win. In a just world, you would have, but your story’s written by a poet with a tin ear, a hack at a typewriter recycling the same tired plots. What a world you wrote.
And here at your climax, I step forward out of the shadows and let you see me.
I’ve missed your eyes, Sam, the magnificent hatred in them as you glare at me. They sparkle like black holes in the empty sky. We’re at the crossroads and I’m holding out my hand. The slow one, the angry one now, steps forward with a knife in his. You are going to die. You know this. You look at me, and you shake your head. And, Sam, I don’t understand why. But I take my hand back.
The door bangs like a gunshot when the door bursts open. The men jump away from you, blinded by the light spilling down the stairs, and the room fills with the general chaos that you find you comforting. Gene’s not much of a knight, is he? And he’s hardly the god in the machine. But you wanted him, and here he is with a gun in hand, Ray and Chris sliding around back. How lucky for you.
It’s lucky that bad dreams drove Gene Hunt out of his bed tonight. Lucky that his wife’s foul mood cast him out onto the streets. Lucky that his tired brain ceded control to his wandering feet, and lucky that the roads of Manchester twisted to your flat. And it is so very, very lucky that when he saw you were gone and he searched his mind for where you could be, the first place he thought of was this house, right here.
I know you’ve never believed me, but this is the truth. I am your friend. And I am even willing to concede that I’m not your only one.
I was ready. You knew that, didn’t you. You know it now, as he holds you close, as you bury your face in his shoulder so you don’t have to see me. Are you grateful for the pain, Sammy? For the opportunity to love him in front of others? They won’t judge you. They’ll ascribe no ulterior motive to this beyond a friend comforting a friend, and if the truth slips close to their mouths, they’ll lock the words away out of fear. I’ll make sure of that. My gift to you.
I don’t know why you thought I went away. I never abandon my friends. You choose to stay. I can accept that. And someday, you’ll choose to go, and I’ll help you with that too.
But today, help carries you into the light with strong arms powered by weak lungs. Gene should be dead from three packs a day. I used the tar I took from him to paint the shadows in the corners a darker shade of black.