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Chris stands in the back of the church as CID mourns the loss of their DI. He knows he should be at the front, standing with his fellow detectives, their Guv with his arm around the crying widow. Annie has placed them as family, masking the lack, just like always. His own presence will be expected; everyone knows he got on with Tyler.
Sam.
He doesn't understand how the absence of something can weigh so much, can't identify the places within him that feel crushed and stretched all out of shape by it. The confusion, more than anything else, pins him in place. He never could understand Tyler; no surprise none of it makes any more sense now that the man is dead. Not understanding never did make the feelings go away.
People are getting up to speak. They talk of a brave man who worked tirelessly to make the streets of Manchester safe, an honest man who held the world around him to high standards, a loving husband who cared deeply for his wife and his friends, a man who died a hero. Chris decides he is glad he wasn't able to join the others. If he were there they might ask him to speak, and he doesn't know what he would say. You aren't supposed to talk ill about the dead, and Sam was all of those wonderful things, but he was also a bitchy self-righteous prat, a man who intentionally started fights, a real nutter with perverse sexual tastes who cheated on his wife every second Thursday. Sometimes with Chris.
He watches his fellows try and comfort Annie as she struggles to reign in the tears. George moves to put an arm around her, and Gene tries to look manly and strong, but his shaking hands give him away. It is obvious that they all cared for Sam Tyler, that they will miss him terribly, but he wonders if any of them really knew him.
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It's about three months after the funeral when a knock on his door wakes Chris out of a light doze. He wasn't aware of noting that today was the second Thursday, but the first thought in his sleep-fogged mind is that it must be Sam. When reality reasserts itself, he very nearly doesn't bother to get up and answer it. It's only his annoyance with the sudden stab of self-pity that propels him off his sofa, and he pulls open the door ready to take it all out on whoever decided to come knocking.
On the other side of the door is Annie. Chris has only seen her once since the funeral. She looks worn but determined, dressed in a funky skirt and boots that Chris thinks he remembers from her CID days, and carrying a very large bottle of rum.
"Can I come in?"
All sorts of warning bells are sounding in Chris' brain, but he can't think of a single reason that will allow him to say no. So he steps back to give her room to enter. "Of course."
She detours past the shelves to grab two glasses (clean but a bit dusty) before joining him on the sofa and pouring them both a large portion from her bottle. He hesitates a moment, but takes the glass. It's all a bit surreal, and his mind keeps trying to fit this, fit her, into some sort of pattern, to make her presence work with any of the various lives he lives from day to day. He takes a drink to stall for time, but it doesn't help. She doesn't belong here, certainly not on this night, yet here she is, and really there's nothing for it except to just ask. "Annie, why are you here?" He figures her presumption entitles him to the question, even if he can't quite look her in the eye when he does.
She takes a deep drink from her own glass then opens her mouth, but nothing comes out. She shakes her head, sighs, and suddenly she doesn't just look tired, she looks ragged. She tries again. "Honestly, I'm looking for Sam."
"Annie…" Has she ended up as off her head as her late husband?
"Don't look at me like that." she snaps. "That's not what I meant." Another long drink and she begins slowly, feeling her words. "When we were together, Sam and I, it felt like he had stamped himself all over me. Like he had become not just part of my life, but part of me, of who I am. I didn't mind; I like to think I marked him too." Her eyes go disturbingly moist at this, but she beats back the tears with more liquor. "Over the last three months, my husband, my beautiful, annoying, amazing, crazy, Sam has somehow been turned into DI Samuel Tyler, deceased."
Chris knows his utter lack of understanding is written all over his face. It always is, and this time he isn't doing anything to try and hide it, but she just leans in and takes his hand, staring earnestly up at him. "Tonight I looked in the mirror, and I couldn't see him there anymore."
He feels for her, he really does. He might even understand a little of what she is trying to explain, but he doesn't have any idea what she wants from him, so he asks again. "Why are you here?"
"Because he put his stamp on you too."
Chris feels himself flinch, bur her gaze is steady and the desperation is pouring off her in waves so thick he can nearly smell them. They smell just like Sam. It draws him in, it always does, and he reaches up to wrap his free hand around the side of her throat.
She makes a small choked sound, and the pitch is all wrong, but the need in it is just right. He doesn't know how she can't see Sam on her when she looks, because gazing like this, he can't see anything else. So many nights Sam had sat just there, practically vibrating with tension, needing what Chris could give him, but refusing to ask. He always made Chris take, even when his very presence there was practically a demand. Annie looks all wrong sitting in his place. The wrong shape, the wrong clothes, but she feels right in a very wrong sort of way, and he finds himself reacting, just as he would for Sam, and pulling her closer even when it's the last thing he wants to do.
His teeth find the muscle of her shoulder. He can tell by the tone of her gasp that she merely feels pain at the bite, but she presses up into him anyway, and the motion is so nearly right, that he goes with it. Maybe he's a little desperate too.
In the end he takes her over the couch. He doesn't know if she has ever been fucked up the ass before, but she doesn't protest. This isn't about what either of them likes anyway. He doesn't like girls, not for this, and she doesn't like her sex rough. Yet somehow he's hard and willing, and she groans and rubs her breasts against the scratchy fabric of the cushions, pushing back against him when he digs his fingers into her hip, and holds her wrists up behind her with his other hand. Their arousal isn't for each other anyway, but for the missing pieces of Sam Tyler they are determined to get back. With each thrust, his presence in the room grows, and before it is over, they both cry out his name.
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Dazed, they sit on the floor, leaning up against the same sofa, with their arms around each other, lost in their memories. It's a strangely companionable silence. One that's broken when Annie starts to fidget, and he realizes that her arse can't possibly be comfortable on his hard floor right now. He looks at her a little sheepishly, for not thinking of that sooner, but she just smirks up at him and says, a little ruefully "It's all right." Another uncomfortable shift. "But how about next month we just go to a film or sit up late and eat too much ice cream, or something?"
"N.. Next month…" Chris stammers, as the implications begin to sink in through the strange post-coital shock he has found himself in. (A girl. He just did that with a girl!) He is further surprised to realize that at least part of him is pleased at the idea of seeing Annie again, as long as there is much less nakedness involved. "I… I think I would like that." To cover up how awkward this is all becoming he lobs her shirt at her in a pointed suggestion to cover up.
The smile she flashes him as she pulls it on is bright and teasing, and full of Sam's ghost, but no longer so dimmed by it. He begins to understand why the man fell in love with her.