Work Text:
Title: Equilateral -- A Love Story in Three Parts
Rating: Green Cortina (PG-13 for language)
Pairing: Sam/Gene/OFC (Cynthia Baxter)
Summary: Three people's views of the same marriage. Written for the lovely 
ladygrey as part of the 
help_nz auction. She's graciously allowed me to share it here.
The Boy Who Once Was Your Husband
She almost vomited the first time she saw him at the Training Academy. It had snuck up on her like a fog, 1983, a year she didn’t want to face. The year he’d enter the Academy, barely older than Janine, and already out trying to protect the public from the bad guys. Except the bad guys were bad and he was nothing more than a skinny kid and not quite the man who’d left her a widow just a few years before.
“So you’re the head of SOCO huh?” Newly minted PC Tyler asked as they stood staring at the body of Tina Wemberly lying with her head cracked open and bleeding out onto the payment on Satchmore Road.
“I am indeed the head of SOCO,” she answered as she tried not to face him. The last thing she needed to do was deal with her husband, her former husband she reminded herself, as nothing more than a baby faced kid on his first body call.
“You don’t find this all a bit gruesome?” he asked as he stared at the body, a light sheen on his forehead and a greenish pallor on his cheeks. She hadn’t seen Sam Tyler sick up since the day they got married and he wasn’t anymore appealing losing his lunch at 19 than he had been at 36. And all in all the math was making her a bit dizzy to think about it.
“I find all of it more than a bit gruesome,” she muttered as she hurried away from him. Except he was talking about the dead woman in front of them while she thought about the dead man by her side.
Years passed and Sam climbed the ranks quickly. Quicker than even she’d thought possible and he told her about his meteoric rise in the Manchester Constabulary. She’d always thought he had embellished a bit about how fast he’d been promoted up the ranks but he hadn’t. If anything he’d been modest about it. She should have known. The bastard.
“Hey Dr. Baxter,” DC Tyler asked as he wandered into her office one day, leather jacket slung casually over one shoulder and she could feel tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. He almost looked like her Sam. He was too slick, too young, too untested still. No, not too untested. He’d spent the past three months as part of an undercover narcotics operation that had left him anything but untested. But there was still that glint in his eyes that hadn’t softened yet. He still had a ladder to climb and an axe to grind with anyone who stood in his way. “You got the information I need on that powder I brought you?”
“Yeah,” Cynthia nodded quickly and kept her head down. The last thing she needed to do was burst into tears as she looked at her former husband and remembered the man he would become.
“Hey Doc,” he came around the desk and patted her on the shoulder. “Everything okay?”
“Just tired,” she shook her head quickly as he wrapped an arm around her shoulder and gave her a friendly squeeze. “Nothing important. Haven’t been sleeping well is all.” She didn’t dare tell him that she hadn’t slept a whole night through since he’d gone undercover. Or that she kept peeking into Janine’s room, waiting for her daughter to one day disappear in a cloud of smoke. Poof! Sam Tyler would die here, in 1996, and Janine would cease to be. A whole world destroyed in the blink of an eye.
“Well,” he squeezed her shoulder lightly. “Try to get some rest huh? We need you too much around here for you to not be on your game. And if you want to talk ...”
“I’ll keep that in mind Detective Constable,” she said as she rolled her eyes at him. She most certainly would not be coming to Sam Tyler to tell him about her problems.
“Cindy,” Detective Sergeant Sam Tyler slurred through the connection on her mobile phone.
“Ciiiiiinnnndddyy!”
“Sam?”
“Cindy you’ve got to come get me,” Sam sang in a singsong voice that let her know he was most decisively drunk. What a way for the youngest DS in the Constabulary to behave, drunk as a skunk and laughing like a loon as the clock struck midnight on a new millennia.
“Where are you?
“I don’t know, hold on. Hold on. Hold on.”
“I’m holding on Sam,” Cynthia rolled her eyes as she imagined what her former husband looked like. She remembered the way he tried to logic things out when he was drunk. His face would be screwed up in a pout and he’d be waving his finger in the air as if he were lecturing, his eyes crossing as he tried to concentrate on that single point in space.
“Let me ask Dan.” Cynthia’s heart froze. She didn’t have any reason to feel like a betrayed wife. And she had no reason to hit him with the cricket bat Gene had always made her keep next to the door in the front parlor. This Sam wasn’t her husband. This Sam didn’t know her, or love her, or love Gene. This Sam hadn’t chosen to make a life with them yet. This Sam hadn’t betrayed her. And her Sam never would. That didn’t change the fact she wanted to beat this Sam’s head in with a cricket bat for being with someone as absolutely repulsive as Dan Sinclair, real estate mogul and all around ass. But Instead of hanging up she fought the crowds on New Years to retrieve his drunken ass and shovel him into her car. And she didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty for dumping Dan Sinclair in the canal and telling Sam -- once he’d revived from his drunken slumber -- that she had no idea how it happened. Dan had just refused to let her drive him home and she’d put him into a cab. Why would she throw a drunken man into the canal? Completely ridiculous.
When he made Detective Inspector she actually showed up for two rounds of drinks. He’d still been sober and the big hug he’d given her had felt genuine. She’d sent a bottle of single malt to his office and a package of pink wafers. When he asked her about it afterwards she just told him that she’d thought of him when she saw them together in the shops. He’d given her a funny look, his head cocked to the side, as he tried to decide just what she was playing at.
When he started flirting with DS Maya Roy she’d made her excuses and left. Then she went home and finished off a bottle of red wine and sobbed along to Elton John. Her Sam would never betray her but it didn’t make it hurt any less that this Sam was with another woman.
“What do you mean the stash of white powder Maya confiscated from Mickey O’Donnell was nothing more than baking soda and a bit of washing powder?” Detective Inspector Tyler’s eyes were wide and his mouth was gaping.
“There’s no way she made such a trivial mistake.”
“But she did,” Cynthia pursed her lips at him and glared. “Run the tests yourself if you don’t believe me. But I’ve had a doctorate in Chemistry since before you were out of nappies and off your mother’s tit so I’m pretty sure I can run a basic chemical analysis to determine whether or not something is cocaine or not.”
Especially since she’d rigged the results herself. Petty true, but Ray Carling hadn’t blamed her and had more than a few ideas of how to get rid of a large stash of cocaine without being caught. O’Donnell had been so happy to get his product back he’d even given them a small cut of his profits. They’d planned a long week in the South of France to celebrate. Just her, Ray, Chris, and Janine. It would be good to let the girl spend some time with her god fathers anyway.
When he’d made DCI she skipped the party and just got drunk instead. Who could blame her? He’d taken her along to pick out the ring he planned on offering DI Roy. She’d been so annoyed that she actually had picked out a rather lovely ring. If she’d have been thinking she’d have picked out something god awful just for spite. She secretly watched Maya for weeks, waiting for that lovely 3 carat princess cut in its platinum setting to appear on her left ring finger and was relieved when it never did. She never told Sam that though. In fact, she never mentioned the ring again at all. It was safer that way.
The day Sam Tyler’s body was found on the ring road, comatose and barely alive she pulled a sicky and left early. But only after ordering the Medical Examiner to call her immediately if any information came his way. Janine was gone, happily married and with a life of her own. Sam was safe, if confused, with Gene and now it was her time. She called Janine and left a voice mail, letting her know, in as clinical a voice as possible, that DCI Sam Tyler had been involved in an accident on the motorway. Janine would understand what she meant. After all, the two of them had figured it all out years ago.