"The Long Way Home"
Rating: K+ for some swearing
Timeline: directly after "Last Dance"
Summary: After a long, tiring shift, the last thing Sam wants to deal with are distractions during his bike ride home.
A/N: No beta, all mistakes are mine. Inspired by a particularly frustrating day of car-bike relations of my own. I don't own Flashpoint, the storylines, the characters or the actors.
"Just as well; I wouldn't want you to get in trouble with the little lady."
"Remind me: who dumped who again?"
Can you truly be mine?
The sun had risen, Spike had made a Timmy's run a few hours ago, and finally the paperwork was coming to an end. They'd all finished up various files, and Sarge had just signed the Incident Report for the Scheinmann file. Everyone was getting ready to depart. Overtime was always tiring, Sam knew, but this all-nighter had been more emotionally taxing than Team One had expected. It was time to go home, after yet another too long day.
One of the last to stand up from the briefing room table, Sam sighed and tried to blink away the fatigue as he walked to the locker room, vaguely listening to Lew and Spike argue about who would be at home, asleep, first. There was a tap on his elbow, and he turned to find that Jules had matched his step walking toward the locker room.
"Heading home to sleep?"
The eager look on her face and the fact that she was biting her lip clearly indicated that she had something she wanted to say, and he was guessing her previous question wasn't it. Tiredness prevented him from bothering to think about what to expect from this conversation, so he went with the flow.
"Yeah, you?" Luckily he wouldn't have to wait long.
"Sam –" she stopped and turned to face him, almost putting a hand on his shoulder but pulling back at the last second. Sam paused and half-turned toward her, hoping this exchange would be brief. The mention of sleep made him eager for his comfy bed, but he was starting to make a mental list of what he needed to do today before his date with Tiffany, and it was adding up quickly.
"Sam, I'm sorry for the way I reacted in the SUV. I hope you have a good time on your date." She looked and sounded sincere, as far as he could tell. And maybe a little sad. This was not what he expected her to say. Was it remorse for her comment, or something else?
"Yeah…" he faltered, distracted by thoughts of what prompted her to tell him this. Maybe the case had hit home for her, too, and she didn't want to leave things unsettled between them. Maybe she, too, had been thinking about how you never know 'what if,' nor what can happen. "Sure, thanks."
He met her eyes and hope she saw that he was just tired. She gave a small smile and continued into her locker room with an "I'll see you tomorrow," her guilt apparently assuaged. Sam didn't move for a few seconds, slowly processing her words before wandering in to the men's room, making it to his locker out of habit instead of out of conscious thought. Standing there after opening the door, focusing neither on the folded clothes in front of him nor or the pictures taped to the metal, his brain finally engaged with a burst of angry adrenalin and his mouth tightened. Jules had slipped away into her locker room like she slipped away from her guilt; he found himself standing alone with a sudden, confused smoldering of hurt anger making its way to the surface.
Even if she were sincere, he had now, again, been reminded of the fact that she'd pushed him away. At the end of the day, he was now forced to go home and find someone else, someone who was not Jules. Yup, that was just what he wanted to be thinking of ten hours before a date. With someone who was not Jules.
"Bye, Sam; have a good afternoon," Ed offered on his way out the door with a tired wave.
"Bye," Sam replied, barely turning his head. After a few more seconds, he reached in his locker and grabbed some gym clothes. Now on his fourth or fifth wind due to anger, he had some frustration to work out of his system. As everyone else headed home, Sam suited up to lift weights until he was temporarily able to get over Jules, again.
It took fifteen minutes of curls to get over the initial anger, and by then the adrenalin had woken his brain fully up enough to realize that he needed to save some strength for the bike ride home.
The handlebars were refreshingly cool through his gloves, and the city whipping past him as he cycled finally gave him a slight reprieve from his somber thoughts. He smiled for the first time in many, many hours – you could count on Toronto to be refreshingly crisp, that's for sure.
Sam took the roundabout way home through Alamosa Park, so he was able to stick mostly to bike paths until he merged on to Finch Avenue. He was able to keep his head clear until he saw a group of teenagers sitting on a bench waiting for the Finch East bus. One of the boys had his arm around a slender brunette with her hair in a ponytail… his mind immediately jumped back to Jules, and a scene from yesterday played over in his head: "Wouldn't want to get you in trouble with the little lady."
"Who dumped whom, again?" he paraphrased out loud to himself as he pedaled harder. Jules didn't have any right to be jealous anymore. She broke his heart, and he felt damn well entitled to try to repair it. Even if Tiffany was just a rebound.
On the road now, he was vaguely aware that the car behind him was following pretty close as he accelerated after a red light. After a couple dozen more meters, he glanced quickly behind him. Yup, there was a silver van was staying right about a bike's length away, even though they were nearly the only ones on the road.
"Change lanes, buddy, and I won't be in your way anymore," he sent the thought toward the driver. "This is not what I need, today," he added to himself.
Toronto drivers were usually pretty decent about respecting bicyclists, in Sam's experience. He'd never had any serious problems before, even if you could tell when a driver was nervous or impatient if there wasn't a dedicated bike lane. Sam did a quick mental check of his status: no flat tires, all the obvious parts were still on his bicycle, and his bag didn't feel like it had torn and was losing items. Nothing. But this guy, he would just not let up!
The third time he heard the engine getting really close, he took his left hand off the handlebars to make a waving gesture, indicating the driver should pass him. He resisted the urge to add in a different hand gesture, too. He didn't want to make the situation any worse, but he had just about had enough.
The van moved into the other lane, finally, and caught even with Sam, not even attempting to speed ahead and make it through the next yellow light. "What the hell kind of road rage is this?" Sam wondered as he rested his right foot on the curb. After being honked at ("It's a red light, buddy, calm down!"), he took a breath and finally decided to face the obnoxious driver. 'Just get it over with; negotiate with as few words as possible so you can get to bed,' he prepared himself. As he reluctantly turned his head, he heard the passenger-side window open and thought he heard someone open their mouth to shout. Alright, that was it: Sam's patience had reached its limit today; they were gonna get a piece of his mind.
"Share the road, jackass!" he yelled.
As the red faded from his vision, he was able to properly focus on the van and its occupants. The entire Wordsworth family was staring at him from inside, mouths open: Shelley driving, Wordy leaning out at him from the passenger seat, and all three girls in the back. Sam could see Claire, the oldest, giggling and smiling nervously at him. Lilly's small voice made it to the front of the vehicle and out the window: "Mommy, what's a 'jackass?'"
Now it was Sam's face turning red. He looked down at the handlebars for a moment, horribly embarrassed, then turned back to the family with what he hoped was a sincere smile of apology. "Uh, hi! How's, uh… how's everyone doing?"
Shelley smirked; she wasn't going to let him forget about teaching Lilly that new word, he had a feeling. Still leaning toward Sam through the window, Wordy apparently decided to begin the conversation anew, asking diplomatically, "We're headed home, just picked up lunch. Want to join us?"
His apartment was so close… "No, thanks, I think I just want to crash," he started to say, but at the mention of lunch his stomach let out a growl that he could tell Wordy heard. A muted giggle from the back seat made him look back, and he saw Claire press her face up against the glass, mouth open and cheeks puffed out. For some reason this silliness made him reconsider.
His embarrassing outburst temporarily being ignored, food and good company didn't sound half bad. He was exhausted, yes, but he didn't exactly relish the idea of going home with only those somber thoughts about his love life bouncing around in his skull.
"Okay, yeah, that does sound pretty nice, actually. But," he glanced down at himself. "I'm pretty sweaty for a lunch guest."
Shelley chimed in sarcastically from the driver's seat: "Well imagine that, we just had the shower installed!"
Sam smiled, "If you wouldn't mind waiting while I get cleaned up, I'd love to come over."
Wordy made a "follow us" gesture very similar to Sam's "pass me, buddy" handsign. "We're less than ten minutes away, even at bike speed," he added as Sam got his feet back properly on the pedals.
The light had been green for a while when the van and following cyclist finally accelerated away from the intersection. Sam smiled to himself as he followed the silver vehicle (he thought he saw miniature moose ears being made at him from the back seat).
Even after the hardest of days in the SRU, this camaraderie was why he still showed up to work the next morning. The team was his family; they always managed to help him pick himself back up when he got down.