A/N : This little ficlet was inspired by the song below, and was originally Spuffy, but I though it'd work better with Gene and Alex, cos A) there's the whole her seeing ghosts people from the other time thingy, and B) cos there's not nearly enough Ashes to Ashes fanfiction out there. Incase you hadn't noticed by the awfulness, this is my first fanfic I've had the guts to post, and is un-betaed.

"There's still a little bit of your taste in my mouth

There's still a little bit of you laced with my doubt

It's still a little hard to say what's going on

There's still a little bit of your ghost, your witness

There's still a little piece of your face I haven't kissed

You step a little closer each day

Still I can't see what's going on"

Vienna Teng - Cannonball

"If I turn around you'll be gone" Alex whispered to the image in the mirror. She knew how it worked now. If she dared look at him through anything other than the corner of her eye, he'd disappear, and she'd be left alone again in the room that didn't feel like it was hers any more. The situation was nothing short of torture, stuck with blurred visions when she wanted nothing more than to run to him, to breathe in the scent of cigarettes she never thought she'd miss, to hold him close and feel his warmth against her, so she knew she hadn't gone insane.

Gene didn't reply to her comment. He never did. He would only watch her, occasionally lighting a cigarette as she talked about her day over a glass of red wine.

"They let me go home from the hospital yesterday. They wanted to keep me longer; it's not everyday someone wakes up from a 3 on the coma scale for no apparent reason, but I was desperate; I needed to get home. Only, when I got there it wasn't. Home I mean."

She paused another moment to wait for a reply; "Bolly, yer makin' about as much sense as a Thatcherite feminist with a speech impediment." or something else so completely Gene Hunt to say. But it remained quiet yet again, an awkward silence that was finally broken by Alex's sigh.

"Now I know I'm insane" she muttered "No one can silence the great Gene Hunt. Even the doctors think I didn't come back right. They've sent me to see a psychologist! Can you believe that? The cheek! I can do a perfectly good job myself, I don't need some undergraduate unsensitivle yprodding at my subconscious. Not that I'm going. 'Cos there's going to be questions and I don't think I can answer them. They're gonna ask what I did there, and what am I meant to tell them? That I went back to 1981, woke up dressed like a prostitute -hell, they'll have enough fun with that one alone- where I got rescued by a - how did Sam put it?- an overweight, over-the-hill, nicotine stained borderline-alcoholic homophobe with a superiority complex and an unhealthy obsession with male bonding? And that's not even the best part! Shortly after, while being locked in a freezer by an epileptic, ex conman and his wife, I have an epiphany, and realise I've fallen for said nicotine stained homophobe, and that in some weird way he loves me too. Which consequently leads to mind-boggingly good sex wherever we can find a flat surface and a locked door. Until there's one day, where we're lying there in the store cupboard, and the door opens, but we don't notice. We're so lost that we barely notice the bullets... and then everything is too white and too clean... and I should be worrying that I've been shot... or that I don't know where I am... but all I'm thinking is Gene should be here, because he always saves me... and I...and I just can't go on." She sobbed, slamming her fists into the mirror, accentuating every word with another punch. "You hear that Gene? I. Can't. Go. On. And you don't even do anything! You just stand there while I'm dying inside! You don't even care! Do you? DO YOU?" On the final syllable the glass cracked, and Gene was gone from his vantage point on her bed. Instead, he was right up close to her, closer than she had ever seen him here, one gloved finger curled in her hair. She could smell the alcohol on his breath and the cigarette smoke that clung to him like a second skin. She could feel the electric tingle that came hand in hand with his presence. And she could hear his voice- gruff, but soft and tender at the same time- whisper in her ear.

"Bolly?"

"Yes Gene?"

"Yer making about as much sense as a Thatcherite feminist with a speech impediment."

---

They fell asleep tangled up in eachother's embrace: Alex's skinny frame entwined with Gene's rather large one. She remembered talking long into the night, without need for alcohol to help the flow of the conversation. She remembered laughing as he struggled to fit in her single bed, and him punching her playfully on the shoulder in return, making a mumbled excuse about being big boned. And she remembered feeling like she was alive, and home again. The moment felt so perfect that when her alarm clock rang in the morning, she didn't want to move, she was quite happy to stay in a constant state of limbo curled up in her sheets. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and leaned over to where Gene had been sleeping next to her.

"I'm alive." she whispered. "I'm alive. I'm home."

He didn't reply. What she had mistaken for his body was just her duvet wrapped across her arms, one corner stained red from where she must have knocked over one of the bottles of wine that littered her room. Alex froze. It had all been a dream. A delusion- no doubt bought upon her by the copious amounts of alcohol she had been drinking. But none the less she stayed there, trying to imagine he was there again. She lay there completely unmoving for hours, until her daughter entered, handed her a mug of coffee, and asked her what the tall man who left her room in the middle of the night had been so upset about.