Chapter Nine
CID are gathered in the office during a departmental meeting all wearing formal suits.
"Where is he?"
Gene's panting as he lurches into the eighth floor office where the meeting is being held, the lift was taking too long and he's in no fit state to wait for anything.
Around a long conference table, twelve or so people look up indignantly at him.
"I beg your pardon," a man at the table head says, "but we're in the progress of..."
"Where. Is. Sam. Tyler?" Gene steps forward, and fuck it if they want to fire him for this, fuck it if they want his head on a plate, none of that matters now. His gut feels like a lump of ice, his hands are freezing with the rush of fear that crept over him as he listened to Sam's tape.
Back here, nothing seems real.
Sam's voice on the dictaphone, disembodied, pale and thin as his body had always seemed, as divorced from the world as that empty shell had been. Heavy-sounding, tired. Despairing. Waiting for the asteroid to end the whole mess – Gene knows that mood, knows that mood better than any other.
"I can't feel anything really. I find that... I miss those people, those... is that common? After a coma? When I was with him – when I was with those people, I didn't feel alone. But they were real." said DS Gene Hunt.
The man standing by the whiteboard with 'Challenges' written on it is also looking at Gene like he's mad, but answers slowly all the same.
"He went out, seemed a bit..." He looks round his colleagues as if for consensus, fucking bureaucrats. "Seemed a bit unwell, maybe? Said something about the roof."
"The roof?"
"I guess he wanted to smoke," the man starts saying but Gene is out and running to the stairs again before the sentence can be finished.
"Sam!" Gene cries out, loud as he bloody well can, a desperate shout he seems to have had bottled inside himself for a lifetime.
The sprint up the stairs has left him breathless as hell as he bursts through the metal door onto the police station roof, but he shouts anyway, with every bit of energy he's got.
At the sound, the slim figure standing within inches of the opposite edge, face turned slightly upwards, twists round like he's had a bullet fired past him, something like horror on his face.
"No..." Sam is saying, softly, shaking his head. "No, you can't be."
Gene's running again, towards him, and the closer he gets the more he can see how pale Sam still is, even as he tries to process the almost miraculous sight of him standing, moving, talking and actually fucking looking back at him; still some fire in the dark-rimmed eyes.
"No, not here..." Sam's hitting his head with his palms now, wide-eyed, open mouthed. "Not here, I can't... You're either real or you're not, Gene, please..." feeling suicidal towards his blue eyed colleague with a long blonde mullet hairstyle almost past Gene's eyes.
Gene's moving more slowly now, cautiously, approaching with one hand outstretched like he would a nervous animal. "Sam," he says again, low. "Sam, listen, I'm here."
Mustn't spook him – there's only one bloody reason Sam would have come up to this roof and the rail around the edge is horribly low.
Sam is breathing more quickly now, chest rising and falling, maybe on the edge of panic, but there's an anger somewhere underneath it too, Gene can tell, an instinctive irritation that seems to ignite between them no matter how they meet.
"Listen," Gene says again, stopping now, hand still held out. "Listen to me, Sam. I suppose I should thank you for not telling every last damn one of my secrets to..." he looks at the envelope still crumpled in his hand, "DI Alex Drake, London Metropolitan Police's Clinical Psychologist."
Sam's eyes are wide, wary: "What do you mean?"
"Well, you mention Stuart, but not what happened when I found him, and there's none of my Mum in there and you've left my ex-wife out of it entirely except for – for some reason – her taste is music which proves the human brain is a fucking mystery and most of all yours – hope you're leaving it to medical science. Would have rather you didn't talk about the backhanders but that's done now, I stopped, who's going to believe it was something I told you rather than something your diseased little mind cooked up? Besides, you've got my fucking job, what else do you want?"
For a long moment, Sam stares at him, frozen.
Then he takes a deep breath, blinking, squinting at him as if he's suddenly come into the sunlight.
"DS Hunt?"
Gene has to pause to finally breathe himself. "Yes. DS Hunt. From the Tactical Driving Course? The insane lunatic driver without the risk assessment? The one who bloody well found you on the ground and caught your bloody assailant and Colin Raimes if you don't mind me mentioning it – did you just not care about any of those details when you woke up, you utter idiot?"
"I didn't want to... someone said something about an officer from Traffic but... and, what, you visited me? Were you the one that... Mum said she did know your name." Sam shakes his head. There are tears in his eyes. "Everyone keeps saying they're real and I just can't..." He gazes into Gene's eyes, some strange mixture of fear and intense affection that has Gene's spine tingling. "I thought I left you behind."
"Sam, dammit! I'm here, OK?"
Gene grabs his hand, pulls him forward, staring into his eyes – if Sam needs to feel something to stay here, then fine, Gene can give him that, because even if it's hate, this'll produce something.
He kisses him.
It's too rough to be chaste, too desperate to be romantic, too uncertain to be tender, but it feels like the whole fucking universe between them.
Sam collapses, or Gene does, either way they sink together to the filthy, dusty rooftop, leaning against the rim and each other. "I know, I know. But I still prefer you being here with me. The real me."
"Gene," Sam says at last, voice full of wonder. His eyes are wide open and blazing and beautiful.
They're still holding hands, connected. Sam squeezes down half-experimentally.
Gene leans over and pinches the back of his hand.
"Feel that do you? Fuck me, let's never do this again."
"Gene!" Sam's smiling, still gripping on. It's a mess, it's clearly going to be a mess for a while but here they are, in the sunshine, together and maybe things happen for a reason and maybe they don't, but this is what happened.
"I don't even want to think about what I would've done if you had gone through with that stupid idea of yours, Tyler."
"Jumping from the police building?"
"Yes, that and all. All that nonsense about getting back to 1973..." Gene looked at him sternly.
They're together now. Close. Only inches away from each other.
Gene Hunt tilts his head back in the sunshine and laughs with delight, and breathes, and feels utterly and completely and brilliantly alive.
