crack_van | Brave new world by halotolerant (PG13)

Fandom: LIFE ON MARS
Pairing: Gene/OC, Gene/Sam
Length: 2,250
Author:

halotolerant
Website: List of other life on mars fic by halotolerant
Why this is a must read:

Another Gene backstory rec from me, but it goes in a very different dirrection to the last. It focuses on Gene as a teenager during world war two. This is the only fic with an original character paired with Gene that I find believable and the Original character adding so much to the story while keeping it completley believable that it could have been canon.

It shows Gene struggling to cope with his sexual desires and how he deals with a side to him that is unaccepted by society, the way he deals with it is seen althrough the series making it a believable backstory to how he came to learn that behaviour in the first place. It's a very sad fic, filled with heartache, emptyness and lonelyness but with some very warm emotional moments thrown in as Gene struggles to grow up and become the man we see in Life on Mars.

For three weeks, there was no sign of Bud.

Gene was invited out to the pub with some of the blokes at the docks, and had uproarious and tipsy fun, at least as far as the alcohol rationing permitted. A man called Steve clapped him on the back and called him ‘a good ’un’, and they showed him some nude pin-up girl pictures just to scream with laughter when he blushed.

He was still late home, but this time Stuart didn’t seem to mind, only ruffled his hair and laughed unhelpfully at his hangover the next day.

After a few more days, one of the little girls from next door accosted him in the alleyway and asked when ‘the nice sweetie man’ was coming back.

“The fuck should I know?” Gene snarled, going back inside.

He stopped checking after that.

- - -

“No chance, love” the woman in the nightclub said, after he’d mumbled out some line Steve had told him to say. “You look like a beanpole on a hungry day. I like my men to be of some capacity, if you take my meaning.”

From across the room, a chorus of guffaws met his burning ears.

Mortified as he was, though, there was a sense of relief in the back of his mind that he wouldn’t have to…be with her. It sounded sticky and unpleasant and…

He got in a fight, later, punching the man good, ramming him against a wall and kneeing him in the groin, the cheers of his audience helping remove the sting from earlier.

“Queer!” he spat at the bloke, not for any particular reason, but because it was a good word. “Queer bleeding Jessie fruity poof!”

If he’d never got anything else from his Dad, at least he’d inherited a very impressive vocabulary.

Full fic on LJ