TRAUMA
Disclaimer: Not for profit, characters owned by Kudos and Sky.
Felt bad for posting such a short last chapter and they kept talking, making me write more. Afraid I need to tell them to shut up for a while so I can get on with real life. Hope everyone enjoys this and understands that it may be quite a while before the next update - and if you do enjoy I love reviews!
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Chapter 3
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He extends his hand with an introduction.
'Quinn.'
His grip is warm and reassuring but this hand has known moisturiser and manicures. But even though it feels wrong, because she so wants this hand to be Gene's, she holds it longer than she should. He notices. His eyebrows register pleasure at the contact and he gives her a shy twinkly smile that would have melted her had it come from a different, more aware place.
He says, 'I think we have a case of mistaken identity.' He faces her full-on, allowing her to dispel the image of the man he assumes she's hanging on to, but he can see she's still not quite believing he isn't him.
She responds with a nod, the only answer she can summon from her confusion to give to this not quite Gene Quinn man.
When she lowers her gaze he blusters. 'At least it must be because I think I'd remember someone like you.'
Her eyes snap up then and her expression is one of deep scrutiny.
He steps back, embarrassed. He's been out of the dating game too long he's spinning her ridiculous, absurd lines. He consoles himself with the fact he didn't say anything as gauchely ridiculous as, "I'd remember someone as beautiful as you."
'What are you doing here?' She asks. Her voice is a hissy whisper as if she thinks they know each other and that she's annoyed because he's breaking cover.
'I'm here for the conference, I'm a psychology lecturer - no actually I was a psychology lecturer. Further education. I'm working out my doctorate proposal.' It's an honest enough rebuff and she seems to react positively. He relaxes a little in relief.
'So you'll be Doctor Quinn?' She hides her giggles behind her hand. The image of Gene in a Little House on the Prairie type frock dispensing frontier medicine flits through her brain, fuel to the madness bubbling under the surface.
He wants to join in with her laughter but he holds back, not quite sure yet how he should behave with her - just how ill she is.
Whilst he's looking bashfully away she adds, 'You couldn't make it up.' Her tone has changed on a sixpence and experience tells him she's applying a form of interrogation. Beautiful and smart. There should be alarm bells ringing in his head but her complete openness when she ran to him earlier has deafened them.
She sees him glance at a chair opposite hers and realises he wants to sit but is waiting for her to indicate permission. She lowers her eyes as if granting it but raises them quickly - hoping to catch him out. Hoping that she'll spot a spark of recognition, but she doesn't.
He sits on the chair and crosses his legs, not aggressively at the ankle in the way Gene would, but delicately, thigh over thigh. His free leg swings back and forth bringing attention to his bare sandalled feet.
'It's not everyday women run towards me.' He begins, running his hand along the leg of his trousers, picking at an imaginary brush of dirt at the knee. 'I normally only attract pissed up northern tarts or ones with a Daddy fixation.'
He's throwing her a line so like Gene she feels the need to enter a teasing riposte to widen the chink.
'An Electra complex?' She hopes throwing a psychological term at him might get him to drop the facade. But it doesn't.
His returns with a flash of brilliantly white teeth, quickly covered.
'Ah yes. A girl's psychosexual competition with her mother for possession of the father. Those Greeks had a lot to answer for didn't they? That's not you, is it? With the father fixation?' He worries suddenly that his self-effacing pessimism has uncovered an unwelcome truth. He attempts recovery with a strained laugh that dies as soon as it begins.
She responds with barely concealed disappointment.
'No, but my father succeeded in blowing up both himself and my mother in front of me when I was eight - well he would have killed me too but I got out of the car in time.' Her voice is edged with bitterness. He retreats into a professional response.
'I'm sorry. That must have been awful for you.'
She's starting to realise she'll get no more hints of Gene from him now, but he senses a nerve hit and seeks to change subject, accidentally bumbling into the one foremost in her mind. 'So this man, the one you thought I was in the car park, who was he?'
She gulps. Is this a test? How can she explain Gene to this Gene Quinn man?
'A colleague.' His eyebrows lift, waiting for her to expand. 'I'm a police officer. I was a police officer, a DI. I was shot in the line of duty. I'm in recovery - as I'm sure Margery told you. He...well it's complicated.' She looks to him for reassurance. He gives it, unconsciously uncrossing his legs and leaning closer. 'He was my DCI. Gene Hunt.' She lingers on his eyes for as long as she dares as she says Gene's name. Then it becomes too much, the blankness, the unflinchingness of his unknowing gaze. She seeks distraction in the unparallel lines of the venetian blinds behind him, in the stray cotton hanging from the sleeve of her jacket, anything.
'So where is he now?' He asks gently. Her hope that the Quinn man sitting opposite her is really her Gene is smashed a little more with each polite sensitive exchange.
She takes a deep breath. 'I don't know.' She pauses, 'they don't know. They think he's dead but they haven't found a body.' Her explanation is a mixture of half truths and truths. The first thing she did when she'd been discharged from hospital was to look through the records for him, but all she'd found was a PC with the same name who'd vanished in the 50's.
'So this Gene, he must have meant a lot to you...' Her mouth opens as if to rebuff his intrusion on her memories. He senses the need to apologise. 'I'm sorry it's just my personal observation. Just my personal opinion. Your face - when you thought I was him - you looked, well somewhat ecstatic, and I just thought…'
'You thought what?' She snaps, her tolerance in this absurd situation she's conjured leeching away as the feeling of loss threatens to engulf.
'Nothing. I thought nothing.' He counters defensively, holding up his hands in half surrender, but then he feels slightly ashamed at his dishonesty. 'I thought you must have been close, that's all. I'm sorry.' He admits sadly, sure he's blown their fragile connection.
He makes to stand, as if to leave. He pats his pockets. She recognises the nervous fidgeting. Another smoker - but then she senses he's wavering and remembers Margery has bound them together for the duration of her lecture.
'It's a bit stuffy in here, don't you think?' She says. Now faced with the prospect of him leaving her she realises she doesn't want to lose his contact for all that her recent rudeness indicates otherwise. 'I could do with a walk outside. Would you take me?'
He grasps the lifeline she's thrown him.
'Of course, but I hope you don't mind if I…' He raises two fingers to his lips to mime smoking.
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It plays on his mind as they negotiate the labyrinth of college corridors. He'd always believed women appreciated honesty until he got married, and divorced. Now he wants to know something that only this woman, this beautiful, sexy, smart woman, stepping in line beside him can tell him and he doesn't know how to ask without being painfully honest. He sends her sly glances, checking she's keeping up with him, wondering if he'll ever be able to trust anyone enough to let them in.
As they walk shoulder to shoulder she's aware of the irony. The existence of this man with an air of mystery she can't help but feel attracted to. A man with Gene's body. A fellow psychologist. An educated man, most probably a cultured man. A man with manners. If she'd been asked to construct a male companion would she have made one like him? Probably. Has she made him? She reaches out a hand to touch his arm, seeking to reassure herself of his existence.
He takes her gentle touch as a request for support and offers his arm to her.
Unable to give any other explanation for her action she links her arm in his. He smells of smoke and suncream and with the faint whiff of the chemical they use in dry-cleaning. She has to resist the urge to lean her head onto his shoulder. She knows being close to him hasn't made her feel as safe as being with Gene would, but she doesn't feel afraid either.
He's buoyed by the fact she's looked at him and wanted something he has. Even though he's spent every day of the past few months analysing each action of the ordeal of Alvo's death and getting to know himself in the process, he realises with the linking of her arm in his that underneath he's a child, an adolescent seeking confirmation of his existence as a man and it makes him cross with himself because he knows he needs that affirmation more than anything. Even if it is secondhand, borrowed from a dead man.
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They find themselves sitting in the bus-shelter - looking over the car-park.
'Married?' She asks. Her question inspires a flicker of hope but he hides it behind a puff of smoke.
'Divorced. You?'
'Divorced.'
'From him?' Part of him, the part that wants her affirmation, even though he knows it's inappropriate, wants to imagine this sexy beautiful woman and his doppelganger married.
'No, not from him.' His eyes stay on the cars in front of them. She senses discomfort, she must have touched a nerve. 'Did she break your heart?'
Smart. He'd forgotten smart. This sexy, beautiful, smart woman, sliding under his armour and finding Nina.
'No. That was the trouble.' He flicks the ash from the end of his cigarette. 'Got my heart broken long before that.'
If she's surprised by this honesty she doesn't show it.
'What happened?'
'Oh, the usual. I wasn't enough for her. Went off with my best friend - well one of my best friends.'
'And you've never got over it?'
'Time heals, but no. Never got over it.' He looks at her again. He wonders if she sees something of this Gene in him now or if he's just blown it.
His honesty both surprises her and yet doesn't. Would she really want someone without the scars of life? She wonders how much more of herself is she exposing in her construction of him.
'So what was he like this friend?'
'Rick? - A prick. Doesn't deserve her - not that I'd tell her that.'
She smiles. A gentleman with honour. Gene would approve.
'Children?'
'Two. One of each, both at university. You?'
'Daughter, 14. Lives part-time with me, part-time with her father.'
'And Gene, he's not her father?'
'No. He was later.'
'So were you….'
'What?
'Sleeping together, or is it deemed unprofessional, fraternisation within the ranks?' If she's shocked by his question she doesn't show it.
'No. The police force isn't that dated. We weren't. But if we'd have been allowed more time together I think we may have had something special.'
'And he looked like me?' She knows she shouldn't let the look of this man draw her in but she can't help but be attracted.
'Yes.' She admits, staring into his eyes and trying not to see Gene there. 'Very much like you.'
She stares out at the car park, finding interest in a driver attempting to squeeze their gas-guzzler into a space designed for a mini.
'I'm sorry - well no I'm not bloody sorry - because I wouldn't have met you.' He cringes at how inept he feels, 'but, well, you know what I mean. So what was he like?'
'The most difficult, stubborn, obnoxious, misogynistic and reckless human being I've ever met.'
'But…?'
'But underneath he was a good, kind, decent man.'
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TBC
Borrowed a few lines from the shows, bet you've spotted them...