Nineteen seventy three, if it wasn't actually real it had done a fantastic job of pretending to be, good enough to fool anyone. Everything was bright and hot and granite hard and while it was never entirely pleasant everything was brutally, desperately real. It made you feel everything, while two thousand and six just seemed determined to make you numb.

Of course there was no way on earth he could explain this to Gene, unless he wanted to leave the pub in a white jacket, and he couldn't half explain it and still make sense.

Though large quantities of scotch seemed to be making him blurt random parts out. Parts which didn't make sense but didn't sound insane either.

"I chanced everything-no that's not right, I weighed everything up and decided it didn't-that it wasn't enough, that it didn't measure up." Sam made a frustrated sound, pushed his glass back and forth through spilled scotch.

Gene gave him a dirty look, a look that suggested scotch this good should stay in the glass and not be used for interior decoration.

Sam tried to imagine Gene using the phrase 'interior decoration' and his brain went off in strange directions.

"I did something stupendously reckless, something beyond insane, and I wasn't even certain-I didn't even know for sure, I didn't know if it would work for sure."

"I'm going to pretend, in the manner of slightly drunk people everywhere, that I know what the bloody hell you're on about." Though it was clear Gene would not be slightly drunk for a while yet, which was more pretending than he was usually comfortable with, so Sam let it go.

"I was there, I was actually there and it was-" Sam shook his head. There was too much to explain and no way of making it come out sounding anything less than absolutely insane.

"And I remembered everything I was supposed to do but it was all paper and meetings, and actually getting anything done is...so slow, it's like running through treacle. We never get anything done, it's not like here. You're not allowed to get anything done there."

"Is that right?"

"It's right, it's wrong. It wasn't what it should be, wasn't what it was supposed to be. It's been tied into knots by it's own bureaucracy, it's own paranoia. It's just as bad in it's own way. You don't win, no matter where you are, no one owns the world, no one controls it. Everything's become buried under all the other shit, me included I think and I damn near had to chop my own fingers off to realise it."

Which is so starkly, brutally, true that he's amazed he managed to say it out loud.

"I can't believe I actually-" He stops talking, stares at his glass. "God knows what they're thinking right now."

"Superiors going to pissed are they?" Gene looked curious, in his own particular way, which was more of a...vibration than a facial expression. He wasn't sure whether he should be disturbed by that, that he can apparently read his boss's vibrations.

"I don't know what they're going to be." Sam said honestly. "But if I get any advice on my existential crisis from anything resembling a puppet I'm throwing the television out of the window."

Gene looked pointedly at his glass, like he might slide it over and sniff it to make absolutely sure they were ingesting the same thing.

Other than that he didn't react, he was probably used to Sam talking what he considered absolute bollocks, he'd probably gotten used to it ages ago.

"There's probably medication for what you've got." Gene said carefully. "It's probably yellow." But, after a pause, he lifted the bottle tipped it and let a more than generous amount slosh untidily into Sam's glass. It was a disturbingly generous gesture from him. It suggested he was either unhappy about all the talk of puppets, or he honestly believed Sam had done something ridiculously stupid to whatever figments/non figments of his imagination happened to even now be cursing his name in Hyde...or not. It was all rather more complicated than he wanted to think about with large quantities of scotch sloshing round his back teeth.

It struck Sam as he watched scotch sway back and forth in his glass that he was probably in reality (or not as the case may be) a damn sight crazier than everyone thought he was.

Still he thought he might be able to work on that.

"How about if I promise to be less obviously insane at inconvenient moments, and more generally but quietly insane." Gene set the bottle down again, further away from Sam than it had been before.

"I would wager, Tyler, that I'd be hard pressed to tell the bloody difference."

Sam shook his head, put his hand on the bar, swiveled on his stool until he could look out at everyone.

"What would you do to someone that you were absolutely certain wasn't real." Sam said carefully. "Someone who you knew without doubt was a figment of your imagination."

"Nothing," Gene said bluntly, set the bottle back down. "People who aren't real don't matter, they're bloody irrelevant." He slammed a hand down on the bar, managed not to spill a single drop of any of their collected beverages. "Now shut the hell up about fake people, this entire conversation is a waste of good scotch."

Sam gave up, picked his scotch, he should probably make a good start on inebriation because being drunk made the physical violence a random blurred memory of shouting and bricks and sometimes antiseptic, also if they got into trouble someone else would have to fill out the paperwork.

"I think I want to try this for real properly this time."

"You think?" Gene said sharply. "That's bloody decisive that is isn't it."

"I want to try this for real." Sam said

"Under me? Because you would be, don't think you're getting a promotion while I'm still breathing, you're going to have my boot up your arse til fucking doomsday." Sam rather thought he deserved that.

He drained his glass, reached for the bottle, only to have it dragged out of his fingertips.

"Get your own you thieving git." Gene slid it even further away, protected it with a scowl and a cloud of cigarette smoke.

Sam was already halfway up the bar before it occurred to him that he'd actually paid for the damn thing.