crack_van | One Year by severinne (R)

Fandom: LIFE ON MARS
Pairing: Sam/Gene
Length: 2,981
Author on LJ:

severinne
Author Website: Fic index
Why this must be read:
For many of the same reasons you should read everything by severinne: she has the show's combination of humor and angst and UST (which here becomes gloriously resolved) down. Her Sam and Gene banter, fight, and sleep together in a wonderful range of places, but they also express their feelings for one another in a way that's their own. Severinne's Sam and Gene aren't off doing Lady and the Tramp routines in restaurants, but neither are they running scared at the idea of using the L-word. It's just there, and it's just them.

This fic in particular has gorgeous details, from the description of Sam wearing Gene's boots to the way Gene imagines tending to Sam's bruises after he's taken him roughly against the wall. There's amazing dirty talk, role play, understated but real emotion, and fabulous insight into how Sam and Gene work.

Sam shook his head, exhaled another blue-grey breath. ‘Later today,’ he explained solemnly, ‘will be exactly one year from the moment I arrived here. The day I joined your department.’

‘Oh.’ Unlike the many forgotten anniversaries of his defunct marriage, Gene felt a pang of regret at his piss-poor attention to these details Sam so loved. That was a day worth commemorating, even if saying it now would sound insincere and stupid. Instead, he pressed his lips tight together and stared into the incomprehensible dark of the back garden, at a loss for words.

‘It’s been a year,’ Sam repeated, with something like the wonder Gene was beginning to feel at the edges of his guilt. ‘Don’t think I’m ever going back now. So it doesn’t matter anymore.’

Gene glanced sideways, brow furrowed as he watched Sam deplete the cigarette with a long, steady drag and hold the last inhale for a breathless pause. The smile that slowly crept over his face when he had finally released his mouthful of smoke into the night made Gene’s stomach clench uneasily with worry that he was missing something significant in Sam’s actions and words, something he should understand by now but that evaded him like a ghost every time.

One Year