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moogingHEY MADDIE
GUESS WHAT
IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Title: I Have Been Here Before
Rating: Phnng, high PG13?
Fandom: Life on Mars/Being Human
Pairing: Sam/Gene, Sam/Mitchell
Disclaimer: These people are not mine: Life on Mars is very much the BBC’s/Kudos’, and Being Human is now also a thing of the BBC (hurrah), and, er, others who are not me. So therefore, I am not making any money from this.
A/N: HAPPY BIRTHDAY MADDIE (lol I typed that as ‘happy mirthday’ so THAT TOO) Also, right, I hope you like this. xxxxx
Birthday offering for a Maddie! I hope it does your celebrating of 18 years of WONDERMENT justice. (Now hopefully with less shitty html)
MADDIE IS AWESOME OH YEAHHHHH
"Tyler!" bellows Gene, striding through the swing-doors. "There’s some nutter in lost-and-found. Give him a crack from me." He thwaps a thin manila folder down in front of Sam’s face. It blows open: the few paper sheets inside it scatter aimlessly, drifting idly down to the floor.
"Right," says Sam, stooping to pick them up.
Gene heads for his office. He tosses the door shut with a heavy hand but catches it just before it slams into the frame, shouting back, "And no funny business."
"Right," says Sam.
***
"Mr Mitchell?" says Sam, sitting down at the worn table, pulling his chair further forwards.
"Mmm," says the man sitting opposite him. He has dark hair and pale skin and very dark eyes. He looks, somehow, weirdly familiar, although Sam couldn’t for the life of him say why.
"Let’s see what delights await us today, shall we?" Sam flips through the file. He raises his eyebrows. "You bit someone?" The incredulity is high in his voice. It mingles in the increased pitch of his question. Somewhere, bats are wincing.
"That I did," says Mitchell. "Whoops." He lifts his hands, palm up, lifts his shoulders, lifts his mouth in a pout. Silly me, his posture says. His eyes say something different.
"Right," says Sam, and he gets to his feet.
***
"Get back in there, you great nonce," shouts Gene, inches away from Sam’s nose. Gene’s own nose wobbles with the volume of his words. Sam wonders whether, if Gene shouted loud enough, Sam’s own nose might wobble too, and, if it did, which nose wobble would be the most noticeable. They’d have to employ an impartial observer to decide. This would clearly be impossible: Ray would support whichever option would make Gene look tough, Annie would either refuse on principle or try to back Sam and Chris wouldn’t know who he was supposed to be seeing the greatest movement in. Then again, neither does Sam. Would a small wobble be better than a big wobble? Another mystery consigned to the ages.
Oh, God.
***
The job of a hospital porter is a thankless one; they may wear the scrubs, but the clothes here do not maketh the man. One of the nameless interchangeable pushes a trolley heaped with medical supplies down a corridor starched with very white, very cold light. A gurney comes past, urgent, a car accident they say, and the porter pulls himself and his trolley into the wall, ducking out of the way. He watches, and it is not every porter that regards the victims of accidents with such fascination.
There is dried blood on the side of the patient’s face. His eyes are open, barely, but they half-focus as they pass the trolley standing scarce inches away in the narrow corridor, alert for this one instant as his gurney passes by at speed.
***
"You’re back then," says Mitchell.
"Under protest," says Sam in a dull sort of voice. Hell, if this is all his subconscious, why shouldn’t he be blunt?
***
"Shouldn’t you be in there too, guv?" asks Chris, chewing idly on a stick that once held an ice-lolly. "I mean, if this guy’s dangerous and all?"
"Can’t risk my pretty face," says Gene, slapping Chris on the back. Chris chokes and splutters and spits the lolly-stick into his hand. Gene makes a disgusted face at him.
Chris apparently takes this as a question. "Strawberry Mivvi," he says, grinning.
Gene’s frown momentarily deepens; then, he says, "Prefer orange myself."
***
"Would you consider yourself to be a dangerous man, Mr. Mitchell?" Sam is tired.
"Would you consider biting people the activity that defines a dangerous man, Detective Inspector?" Mitchell is not.
***
"Of course it makes him dangerous, you fruit-case," Gene says, loudly. Gene does everything loudly.
His nose probably wobbles loudly.
"It’s just, he doesn’t seem like a particularly threatening specimen," says Sam, weary. This is only partly true: if not threatening, there is something not quite right about tall, thin Mitchell, sitting, half-slumped in the hardback chair in the cluttered room behind the panelled doors. He makes Sam feel uneasy, wrong-footed, but everything does, here, now. Or then. Sam supposes either is applicable.
"I do not want someone biting the inhabitants of Manchester, D.I. Tyler, do you?" Gene over-enunciates when he is trying to make a point. Gene has made this point a lot today.
"No, guv."
"I say the bloke he bit is right to feel aggrieved about this state of affairs, do you?"
"Yes, guv."
"Therefore, I think we should keep Mr. Mitchell here for further questioning tonight, would you agree with this deduction?"
Absolutely, guv, would seem to be the thing to say here. It reads like a script: Sam feels like he has forgotten his lines.
***
"We will be keeping you overnight, Mr. Mitchell," says Sam.
"How simply wonderful of you," drawls Mitchell, examining his fingernails. He hasn’t moved all day. The last dredges of sunlight are crawling against the back wall of the room, the rays unlucky enough to fall through the high window droop lengthily across the floor, an inch or less away from Mitchell’s chair.
"You will be placed in a cell for the duration of your evening stay; if you would please accompany me downstairs?" Sam waves a hand listlessly in the direction of the door.
Mitchell looks at Sam and the door and the weak sunlight on the shabby floor and he leans forward, hands splayed palm-down on the table. "Tell me, D.I. Tyler, do you get on well with the charming Mr. Hunt?"
Sam sighs.
Mitchell says, "He looks like the type to bite."
***
Gene shoves Sam up against the cold brick wall. Night is rich in the rough surface, scratching chill through Sam’s thin, striped shirt.
"Think you’re so pissing superior," snarls Gene, slamming Sam’s shoulders further into the wall, "with your paperwork and your protocol and your nancy-boy procedure."
"Oh yeah," says Sam. "It’s a real challenge to make you look stupid."
Gene’s whole face is contorted in fury; Sam is angry: he kicks out, catching Gene hard just above the ankle, making him swear and loosen his grip but just as Sam is shaking himself out, moving alternate shoulders around in alternating ways, Gene rallies and forces him back into the wall.
"You’ll pay for that one, Tyler," he says, body pressed all the way up against Sam’s although they are standing toe-to-toe; Gene is leaning in with the effort to keep Sam pinned down, and Sam leans in too and kisses him, gruff, as simple as that.
***
Sam says, "I wouldn’t know."
***
Gene pulls back with a growl, sneers, "I’m not one of your little bum-boys."
***
"Really?" says Mitchell, like he isn’t bothered either way, and Sam says, "Yes, really."
***
Sam pushes a hand down into the gap between his body and Gene’s, both breathing fast, and gets his hand inside Gene’s trousers. Gene twitches forwards, apparently caught by surprise, and as Sam clenches his fingers, Gene bites down, savage, on Sam’s exposed collarbone.
***
Mitchell laughs abruptly, unprovoked and throwing his head right back, and he has very white teeth.
Sam says, "Does it make you feel important, biting people?"
Mitchell says, "You have a very interesting throat, D.I. Tyler," and Sam says, "That’s it, come on," and Mitchell says, talking over him, "Full of character."
Outside, a cloud swims in front of the late evening sun. Inside, the room falls cold.
"Get up," says Sam, short, and Mitchell says, "My pleasure." He rises languidly to his feet; he moves with a kind of ease, grace, that makes the hairs on the back of Sam’s neck rise up.
***
Before he closes the metal door, Sam asks, "How did you choose?"
"Whom to bite, you mean?"
Sam nods.
Mitchell looks at Sam with heavy eyes and says, "He had an interesting neck." Rolling out the words, he sounds suddenly more alive than he has all day. Sam says nothing. Mitchell adds, "Aren’t you going to ask me why I did it?"
Sam says, "You admit your guilt. And, honestly, I’m not all that interested in your motives today." He rubs his left collarbone without thinking. He catches Mitchell’s eye; Mitchell has noticed.
"I’m a vampire," says Mitchell. There is an undercurrent of mischief lacing through the purr of his voice.
"Of course," says Sam, "and I’m from 2007."
"I’ll make sure to look you up," says Mitchell, and Sam shuts the door.
***
Thirty-four years later, a hospital porter with dark hair and pale skin and very dark eyes, stands over a patient’s bed and listens to the machines around him beep.
*
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-04 06:02 pm (UTC)In other news, Sam Tyler The Angsty Vampire would be a pretty rad AU, rofl. HE'D JUST CRY ALL THE TIME.
Ilu and this and also the fact that Being Human got a series. UNNNNFG xxxxxxxx
no subject
Date: 2008-07-04 06:32 pm (UTC)I have never had a Strawberry Mivvi. Have you? My mother sings their praises.
(I just interrupted this comment to go and leave a comment on your journal lol what. And then it came as an actual surprise to me to close that window and see this one still open. I think my brain is leaking.)