Disclaimer: You guessed it, I don't own this show.

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Business as usual turned out to be an incredible amount of shockingly routine cases, hardly worth the attention of an Inspector, but Sam put his back into it and worked through them. It was pretty much all he could do. It wasn't like his free time offered any interesting distractions. The friends he'd had before the accident had all moved on, the distance had grown to such an extent that they didn't really deserve the title 'friend' anymore. And his new colleagues offered little solace in that regard. He couldn't really find a way to connect to them. After duty they all went off on their own pursuits, leaving him to his own devices.

It was all quite different from what Sam had got used to. In 1973, the CID team had been close-knit, with a lot of the time not on duty spent with the same people in the pub, playing cards, watching the sport or just drinking. Going along with that had meant he integrated relatively quickly. No such thing happened now. Sam usually did go to the pub just to avoid sitting in his apartment alone, but that just meant that sat in the pub, alone. And not even drinking all that much, since he was still under doctor's orders to take it easy.

Those times really made him miss the good old days.

But there were also times when he didn't miss them, like he first time he managed to solve a case simply by doing an electronic record search that finished in half an hour. At that point he actually kissed the computer. Then he realised the whole room was watching and sniggering. For half a second Sam had wanted to sink into the floor in embarrassment, but then Gene in the back of his head started laughing too, and Sam had to either join in or snark at Gene. Since Gene wasn't actually in the room, that really left only one option. He laughed with them.

"PC Terminal to the rescue."

Shut it.

Actions like that got him the reputation as the office eccentric, but that was nothing new. As long as they let him do his work and did as they were asked, it didn't matter. Well, to Gene it did, but Gene's immediate reaction to anything he didn't like was violence. That didn't work these days.

What did matter was that mild amusement wasn't the only reaction his antics triggered. He'd shocked some of the constables with his rough treatment of suspects during arrest, though it hadn't led to any reprimands yet. Sam really didn't think he was being that rough. Compared to the way Gene used to handle detainees, he was being downright gentle.

Not that he'd said that to the constables; that sort of remark was liable to transform his reputation from 'eccentric' into 'dinosaur'.

"You make that sound like a bad thing. Looks to me like you catch more villains than they do. Give 'em one in the face if they laugh about it."

It's not exactly accepted practice to rough up one's co-workers, Gene.

"Not accepted practice to sit around in a pub on your own either. Still seems to happen a lot lately."

Yeah. I'm sitting in a pub, talking to a manifestation of my subconscious. Why are people starting to think I'm crazy, I wonder?

"So why are you still talking to me then? Could've told me to shove off ages ago."

I did. Didn't work. Maybe I am crazy after all.

"Since when did missing a few marbles stop you?"

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