Does and Doesn't: Gene Hunt

A/N: This is a concept fic that I've been working on. Planning to do similar ones for Holmes, Wilson, and Rodney McKay in the future. ^^ OHOHOHOHOYES. And… the best part of writing this was using all the lovely euphemisms. GAY AS A BLOODY CHRISTMAS TREE, FOLKS.

Disclaimer: Life on Mars... Suffice to say that it doesn't belong to me. Or you, in all probability. Despite how much we all want DI Tyler cuffed naked to a bed. *cough*

Gene doesn't think of himself as a flaming queer when he sees Sam Tyler for the first time. The thought couldn't be further from his mind. I mean- DCI Hunt, fairy? Don't be stupid. He'd get you arrested for that, for slander. Or libel- one of the two. On the other hand, Tyler couldn't look more like a girl if he tried, what with his skinny trousers and weak wrists.
Gene actually catches himself staring at the back of the poor tosser's neck a few times. It's his fault really, for having such short hair.

He is as just as certain of his heterosexuality when he kisses Sam Tyler for the first time as he was on that first day. He's drunk, and the Missus is away, and the pouty little twerp keeps talking about Hyde as he swigs his lager down with an undignified shudder. Gene bloody hates Hyde. What the bloody hell is so great about Hyde that you can't get in Manchester? But it gets him randy anyway. Sam talking about procedure tends to do that.
But after all, this sort of thing is just about male bonding.

He breathes in the smell of Tyler's neck and the smell of the street and suddenly he's fallen down and the world is spinning around him like a carnival ride.
Male bonding… or maybe extreme drunkenness.
Sam pats him on the back and says he'll drive him home. He doesn't talk about it the next day. Gene thinks maybe he dreamed it.

He doesn't think that he could possibly be anything less than straight when Tyler asks him out for dinner one afternoon after the culmination of a nasty stabbing investigation. Gene doesn't even think of it as anything more than an officer buying some vittles for his Guv. Ray's done it hundreds of times. And it is just that… until Sam starts running his foot up and down Gene's leg during their salad course: very, very slowly and very, very deliberately. By the time they finish their curry, Gene has to bolt to the toilet to, um, calm down.
Damn foreign food. And damn Tyler's wide grin when Gene sits back down, and his quiet question regarding who's going to pay.

One cold night, tired of his DI's constant babbling, Gene undoes Tyler's pants during a stakeout and jerks him off, fast and hard, making the windows of his poor Cortina steam up. Sam comes with a cry, looking wild and strangely fearful, and Gene licks his lips, ignoring his own sudden arousal.

His eyes meet Tyler's and his lips twitch upward like it meant something. Maybe not anything good, but something. For Sam, that's enough.

Gene doesn't care how the ponce feels about it, of course, as he doesn't have a gay thought in his head and isn't worried about any entering his cranial sanctum at any time.

And he still doesn't when he allows Tyler to do the same thing to him a few nights later, and he finds himself thinking Sam, Sam, Sam- the DI's name over and over again as he plummets over the edge.
No, he's not even worried.

Not when he stays up all night worrying about Sam when the other man is undercover in a seedier part of town, and, when he just can't take it anymore, gets out of bed, into his favourite, though admittedly shabby coat, and drives the Cortina around the block until the sun peeks its yellow head over the horizon. He has a flask of single-malt on him and he drinks it as slowly as possible, trying to feel the imprint of Tyler's lips from a few days ago. He remembers tasting his own semen when he got his tongue into Sam's mouth, and it makes him wonder, sleepily, whether that might be worth a try one day.
Not wanting, just wondering.

And when his wife packs her bags and leaves for her sister's place in Wales, and doesn't say a word to him as she leaves, he just figures that, well, these things happen. He had tried to stop her the night before, but he knew that he didn't mean it, and so did she. She said that it was work; she said that he was always away, doing dangerous things and getting into bad situations. It's DI Tyler that's the problem, though. They both know it. In about an hour, Gene calls Sam and tells him the bad news, and Sam invites him to kip at his place and he accepts.
That very evening, they have sex on Sam's bed. It's hot and sticky and louder than Gene had expected, but he's still quite assured of his masculinity.

He still is when he grabs Sam's hand during stakeout and doesn't let go.

Gene doesn't think that he's gay until one day, just an ordinary day, when he's yelling at his DI and his DI is yelling at him and he likes the way that sounds- "his DI", like Tyler is his Sam and they've retreated into Gene's office and Sam closes the door and begins to rant in a quieter voice about evidence and justice and Hyde and something called the internet which is apparently a series of tubes and Gene thinks to himself that he must be gay, because he's in love with Sam Tyler.
Surprisingly, this doesn't really bother him. Instead, it just gives him a craving for spicy foods. He tells this to Sam, who shuts up. Then they go out for curry.