Fic: Life On Mars, Sam/Gene, PG - 'And the Reasons We Have'

[mooging]

Shh, this is clearly not another fic sneaking onto my journal except it totally is.

Okay, issues I have with this one (because it would obviously be far too easy for me to actually like something I wrote without having any problems with it, even though I rather like this one a bit more than most): Sam has suddenly become not-Sam-like, Gene is still not Gene-like and FUCK OFF TENSES.

God, when did I become illiterate?

Anyway. I guess this is my attempt at 'post LOM fic', and it took me a while before I could think about our boys without weeping like a child (I still can't, but shhh).

Title: And the Reasons We Have
Rating: PG
Fandom: Life On Mars
Pairing: Sam/Gene
Word Count: 733
Disclaimer: Characters not mine. NOTHING IS MINE, OKAY? The BBC > me.
Summary: Sam tries to explain something, and Gene might listen. Spoilers for 2x08.

 

"I was going to go away," says Sam, and Gene turns to look at him.

"Why didn't you?" asks Gene, snorting in a kind of derision, and Sam sighs and looks to his other side.

It is quiet for a minute, and Sam counts the discoloured petals on the faded flowers on the wallpaper opposite him. Gene shifts a little; there isn't really enough space for both of them on Sam's tiny bed. They are lying so close together that half of Sam is sprawled over Gene and Gene has been ignoring the pins and needles in his side for so long that he's actually started to go numb.

Sam collects his limbs from their positions on Gene's torso, pulls himself round to lie on one side, facing the door and not facing Gene, and Gene kicks his legs up and down, once, because he knows Sam will notice that.

"Right, fine," says Gene. "You were going to go away, but you didn't, so why tell me?"

Gene's voice is lower now, and Sam turns so he's lying on his back again, which Gene has come to know means that Sam is going to tell him something more something than an idle exchange of words.

"I was going to go away," says Sam, again, and he shoots a glance out of the corner of his eye to see if Gene is going to interrupt.

Gene mimes zipping his mouth shut with an overly elaborate flourish. Sam smiles and doesn't say anything for a moment.

"I saw your - I saw a coat, in a shop window," he says, like he's embarrassed and it's fast enough to be an admission, not a statement. "It - it looked like yours."

"And?" prompts Gene, when Sam stops.

"And - and I stayed," says Sam, and, beside him, Gene nods.

They fall silent again.

Sam remembers walking down a bustling street with too many people and too much technology, not long after going back to work. Never one to dawdle, he'd been walking fast and trying to concentrate on this, this today, and he'd walked right past it at first. He'd doubled back, stopped as people jostled past him, stopped and stared.

In a shop window with green paint on the window ledge and a battered wooden door, there had been a camel coat at the very front of the display and Sam had stared, and stared, and stared.

Then he'd turned back to the street, walked back to his car, put his head on his steering wheel, and cried.

The day after that, he'd gone back to the shop and maybe he'd have bought that coat, but it had gone.

The day after that, he'd sat in a meeting, thinking about camel coats and the smell of cigarettes and alcohol worked deep into fabric, and had sliced a knife through his thumb without noticing.

An hour after that, he'd jumped off the top of a very tall building and died.

Everything was all right, then.

Back at the station, out in the corridor, Sam had stood too close to Gene in the inevitable argument (fight, brawl, accusation) and when it had come to blows and Gene had dragged him into the Lost and Found room and slammed him into the wall, Sam had grabbed him by the collar and slammed their mouths together, because it was a kind of brutality that drove them, after all, and this could never be sweet.

And, somehow, it had lasted.

Weeks later, Sam lies next to Gene in his too-small bed and says, "I was going to go away."

Gene moves, stretches out as much as he can, and looks at Sam, who is looking at him.

Gene looks straight ahead again. He wets his lips.

"Sometimes," he says, "I don't know what's girlier: the blouse or the ponce inside it."

He fingers the sleeve of the shirt Sam is still wearing, open over a vest that's caught somewhere between white and grey. He doesn't sound any different and Sam turns his head away again, but Gene's fingers tighten around Sam's arm and Sam knows he's understood.

Sam falls asleep soon after, and Gene, watching him in the dark, lets him take most of the blanket.

*

Comments

[loz]

This is great and I love strangeumbrella for reccing it. Oh, yes.

This is canon.

[moogle62.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

(I feel that the last episode should have included some form of scene like this. Or, failing that, any kind of Sam + Gene + bed = !!! for the masses :D)