I have a thing for 80s music and after seeing the beginning of episode two I couldn't resist...although this isn't a recreation of the music videos.

Alex was fairly sure she was having one of those dreams again. Gene was giving her yet another talking to in his office, only he wasn't really…he was lip-synching to Yazoo.

Came in from the city walked into the door
I turned around when I heard the sound of footsteps on the floor
Love just like addiction, now I'm hooked on you
I need some time to get it right
Your love's gonna see me through

Can't stop now don't you know I ain't never gonna let you go. Don't go

The lights outside were on the blink, Shaz was illuminated, so was Ray, but the light over Chris was flickering, off more often than on, and the rest of the department was working in the dark. She turned her attention back to Gene who seemed to be at the centre of things the way he always was.

Baby make your mind up, give me what you got
Fix me with your lovin' shut the door and turn the lock
Hey go get the doctor, doctor came too late
Another night I feel alright my love for you can't wait

Can't stop now, don't you know I ain't never gonna let you go. Don't go.

Keats came out of the darkness, only he wasn't the awkward but pleasant enough D&C officer that Alex knew him as. In the shadows he looked angrier than she'd ever seen him, his face twisted with hate and somehow rendered no less threatening by the fact that he was lip-synching too.

Came in from the city walked into the door
I turned around when I heard the sound of footsteps on the floor
Said he was a killer, now I know it's true

Gene blocked her view of Keats and looked her right in the eyes.

I'm dead when you walk out the door
Hey babe, I'm hooked on you

Can't stop now, don't you know I ain't never gonna let you go. Don't go.

As he came closer to the glass walls of the office, he levelled a truly malevolent look at Gene, one that was swiftly reciprocated with the angry glare of the Manc Lion. Alex shuddered when she realised that of the two of them, Keats was more intimidating. He looked evil, possessed even. Her gaze went to Gene again, looking so fierce in defence of his territory. Was he really all that dependant on her? She doubted it. Another song started and Alex felt her lips move of their own volition.

Looking from a window above it's like a story of love
Can you hear me?
Came back only yesterday I'm moving further away
Want you near me

The isolation and loneliness she'd felt since she got out of the hospital surged to the surface. Gene had been her closest friend at one point but now he didn't want anything to do with her out of the office. He'd rather be with that madam from the dating agency.

All I needed was the love you gave
All I needed for another day
And all I ever knew
Only you

Bugger the psychological tactics and the copper-bottom bollocks, she needed her friend back, her constant. She relied on spending her evenings with him to get through the nights on her own. Their estrangement was seemingly unending and her so called life in the 1980s was becoming unbearable.

Sometimes when I think of her name when it's only a game
And I need you
Listen to the words that you say it's getting harder to stay
When I see you

All I needed was the love you gave
All I needed for another day
And all I ever knew
Only you

Thinking about Molly after sending the fake 2008 version of her to live with fake 2008 Pete was more painful than ever. When she left this place and returned to her daughter, which she would because any alternative was unthinkable, there was no way she was sending her away. If she really couldn't cope then Molly could stay with her grandparents for a while, close enough to see her every day. The thought of voluntarily separating herself from her daughter after all this was…well it was never going to happen. Alex needed to be with Molly again almost as much as she needed oxygen and since that wasn't yet possible she needed somebody to distract her from the pain of the separation and take away some of her loneliness. Until Operation Rose that somebody had been Gene but with the way he'd spoken to her since they returned to work it was clear he didn't think of her as a friend anymore, that he didn't think of her much at all.

All I needed was the love you gave
All I needed for another day
And all I ever knew
Only you

This is going to take a long time and I wonder what's mine
Can't take no more
Wonder if you'll understand it's just the touch of your hand
Behind a closed door

It was going to take something dramatic or a lot of time to repair the connection that had been damaged almost beyond repair in just twenty-four hours. Twenty-four hours was more than the time between him listening to that tape and her being in a coma…more time than it took for everything to go so very wrong. She'd told the fake psychologist that she thought that the world she'd found herself in might be real, that it wasn't a world she'd created in her mind using her own childhood and Sam Tyler's experiences, it was a suspicion she'd harboured since encountering things she couldn't possibly have known about as a child in the eighties or a police officer in the new millennium.

As much as she thought knowing the truth about Sam Tyler was vital to going home, she'd thought the same about saving her parents and Operation Rose, when it came down to it she had no real clue and was going on guesswork most of the time. Three years of uncertainty was too much to take, especially now there was nobody there with her in the middle of the maelstrom…but wasn't Gene with her? Wasn't he telling her not to go to Keats? She took his hand in her own and the light in his office got brighter, Keats' grimace deepened. She squeezed Gene's hand and they almost glowed under the incandescent strip light.

All I needed was the love you gave
All I needed for another day
And all I ever knew
Only you

Keats came right up to the office door but couldn't bring himself to open the door, it was almost like the light hurt him, like he couldn't come near the two of them. He started knocking.

"Alex. Alex. Let me in." She didn't want to open the door, she knew no good could come of it, but that didn't stop her taking a step forward. Gene's hand slipped from her grasp, Keats grinned and everything went dark.

She woke with a start on her sofa, the dream fresh in her mind and unlikely to fade, she supposed it served her right for going to sleep listening to a Yazoo album.

Somebody was knocking at her door, it explained more of her dream.

"Alex I know you're in, I can hear music." It was Keats, he was outside her flat, it was the first time he'd come to her home. Nobody from work came up to her flat, not even Gene, not anymore. She knew that her dream had been just that but she couldn't shake the sense of foreboding. She made her way to her door, pulling her purple jumper dress down over her leggings as she went, suddenly feeling underdressed. One deep breath later she was facing him.

"There you are. I've been knocking…"

"I was asleep. Sorry."

"Not avoiding me then?" Keats laughed a little at his own attempt at a joke. She didn't find it all that funny, it just made her more uncomfortable.

"What can I do for you sir?"

"That's the question isn't it? And call me Jim, please." When he didn't explain his presence at her door she raised her eyebrows at him. The expression usually worked on Chris when he was babbling instead of getting to the point.

"Oh, right. I haven't told you why I'm here. I need to know what you have."

"What I have?" His smile widened at her confusion.

"You really were asleep weren't you? What do you have on Hunt?"

"I don't have anything on him in connection with Sam Tyler."

"You've been investigating DI Tyler's death for weeks now. You must have something."

"All I have is a case file with fewer facts than a tabloid article on the possibility of intelligent life on Uranus."

"You have to get Hunt talking. He trusts you."

"I don't know about that…"

"He cares about you. Use that against him."

"What exactly are you suggesting DCI Keats, that I use myself as a honey-trap? Do you want me to lure him up here and shag a confession out of him?"

"Whatever it takes." She had been joking and was flabbergasted that he'd taken her comment as a serious suggestion. "Time is running out Alex. Don't you want to send him down for murder?"

"No."

"What?"

"I want to find out the truth about Sam Tyler's death."

"It's the same thing."

"No it isn't."

"And how do you know that if you don't have anything?" Alex could see the nice friendly Jim melting away, revealing somebody very different. Was this the side of him Gene saw? For all her psychological profiling had she been taken in by yet another man?

"You sound like you have some kind of vendetta against Gene and I won't help you persecute him."

"Persecute him? He's the enemy Alex, the bad guy." Hadn't she told him the exact opposite the first time they'd spoken?

"I have no idea what you think you know about him but I would believe the world was flat before I believed he was capable of murdering his best friend. You don't have any proof, you can't have because if you did you'd have done something by now." Alex let herself laugh. "Game, set and match to Gene Hunt…and he wasn't even playing. You want proof Gene's a murderer and you need my help to get it, but I won't help you unless you show me the proof you don't have."

"The man shot you Alex. He almost killed you."

"That was an accident."

"And I'm sure he's gone out of his way to make it up to you." The barb hit its mark. Gene hadn't really tried to make amends and even though it had been an accident she'd wanted more than the throwaway apology in the lockup where he'd left the Quattro.

"That has nothing to do with anything." Keats saw the brief flash of pain in her eyes and smiled. It wasn't a nice smile, it reminded her too much of the dream.

"Of course not. The fact that he doesn't seem too bothered he could have killed his female DI has no bearing on whether or not he's a bad guy."

"I thought you said he cared about me. Just a suggestion sir, but next time you use psychological tactics on a psychologist, make sure you don't contradict yourself."

"You're so clever aren't you Alex? Private education, Cambridge University, CIA secondment…you think all those brains are going to keep you safe. They won't you know. You might be the highest ranking woman in the Met but you're still running around after the first Neanderthal alpha male to ogle your breasts and grunt in appreciation. You ought to watch your step. You wouldn't want to end up like poor DS Gardiner would you?"

"Are you threatening me James?" She used his full Christian name on purpose, just to annoy him, just like Gene. Keats took a step forward and she fought the desire to take a step back, she would not give this man houseroom and she wouldn't give him the satisfaction of knowing she was slightly intimidated.

"I thought we had an understanding Alex, that we were a team."

"The only team I have ever professed to be part of is Fenchurch East CID." The fact that CID was Gene's team hardly needed to be said.

"We could have helped each other, you could have left Hunt's shabby little kingdom of halfwits and misfits."

"I happen to like those misfits and I would rather stay here, stay Gene's DI until they put me in the ground, than help you destroy the careers and lives of people I care about."

"Have it your way then. Stay in this fetid little world and rot, forget about going home, forget about Molly."

"How dare you bring her into this!" Her palm itched, she was fairly sure that slapping it against something, Keats' face for example, would make it feel much better.

"My apologies, she's not in this at all. You've made another family without her haven't you? You, Hunt, Carling, Skelton and Granger…you're more dysfunctional than the Royals."

"Who the bloody hell do you think you are?"

"I was you last chance at getting home."

"You're not the first person to tell me that you know…a bent DI told me he could help me get home. He couldn't. He just wanted to use me to alleviate his guilty conscience. I don't care what you want to use me for. It's not happening. I can get back to Molly without help from you or anybody else like you."

"No you can't. You've given up your entire world for a decrepit northern flatfoot who'll never tell you he loves you."

"You seriously think that's why I'm not joining you, that I have some delusion about Gene expressing feelings that he'll never have? I'm not joining you, you greasy, maladjusted, rubber-heeled, odious little prick, because I am a good bloody copper. The man you're so intent on taking down, the one who's probably getting pissed in his office on his own at this very second, doesn't even want to be my friend. Something changed over Christmas, whether it was Douglas Lane or something else…we don't know each other anymore, the trust has gone."

"Then who has convinced you Hunt's worth saving?"

"Sam Tyler."

"What?!"

"You didn't know I was his psychologist did you? Sam sent me tapes describing everybody in Manchester…Ray, Chris, Annie, Phyllis, even Litton. I knew all about Gene before I even met him, all about the Sheriff of Manchester's nasty little habits, the checks and balances…and how it used to eat him alive. Even at his worst, he had a line he wouldn't cross and that line was far, far short of what you're accusing him of. I might not know Gene now but I trust Sam's judgement so I know Sam's Gene and trust I him like Sam did. He might have been ten types of bastard but he was not his best friend's murderer. I'd stake my life, Molly's life, on it."

"You stupid bitch. You have no idea what he's capable of." Alex was struck by the thought that she had no idea what Keats was capable of, he'd been around for months but she didn't know him, couldn't trust him. The amount of venom in his voice made her wish he'd tried talking to her downstairs when she was among friends and not on her doorstep when everybody else was getting drunk and rowdy in the restaurant.

"I assure you," she began in the level tone she used when negotiating with criminals, "that I know exactly what Gene is capable of, the good, the bad and the ugly."

"You're deluded. He's rotten to the core."

"What did he do to you or yours?" Inspiration struck like lightening. "Was there a copper you knew that he and Sam put to shame…did that religious upbringing involve any police officers? Was a branch of your family tree serving in the GMP and pruned from the force for being incompetent or corrupt beyond endurance even by seventies standards?"

"You'll shut your mouth Alex if you know what's good for you." He was angry but beneath that Alex saw the discomfort, now that she'd found his Achilles heel she could do a bit of damage to that famous tendon.

"Sam Tyler was a good copper who did things by the book. I'd bet a party seven that whoever you're trying to avenge was guilty of whatever got them kicked off the force. Your entire career, entire life, has been about revenge hasn't it James? When Gene accidentally shot me you thought all your birthdays and Christmases had come at once and after I exonerated him you started whispering in the ears of the rest of the team…you have Chris running around for you when he should be solving crimes, you manipulated Ray into going into a burning building…I bet you talked Shaz into giving her resignation." His eyes narrowed slightly, he hadn't liked her figuring that out. "You're pathetic."

"And you have no idea what you've just done. I'm not an enemy you should have made Alex." Perhaps he had a point and it would have been better to let him think she was still sympathetic, if not completely on side, but she was too angry at what he'd done to her team and too embarrassed at being taken in by his 'aww shucks, please don't hate me because I'm D&C' routine.

"You don't scare me."

He leaned in so his face was mere centimetres from hers.

"I will."

Alex did her best to become the superior, stuck-up bitch people mistakenly took her for.

"Oh piss off and get a real job before I call the police and have you done for loitering…the proper police that is."

"Don't bother Bolly, they're already here." Her head instinctively turned towards the sound of Gene's voice at the end of her hallway. Gene didn't look at her as he strode towards them like he was lord of all he surveyed and she was grateful, she'd been the recipient of the icy glare currently directed straight at Keats and it wasn't something she wanted to experience again. "James I do believe the good lady asked you to do one." Keats' top lip curled in a singularly unattractive way as the two DCIs started each other down. It was never going to be Gene who broke eye contact first. Keats gave Alex a quick contemptuous glance before striding down the corridor to the stairs and out of sight.

"Think you've made a friend for life." Alex looked at Gene who was still watching the end of the hall.

"So exactly how long were you eavesdropping Guv?"

"Long enough to know that was the first time you've called me Guv since you woke up from your nap."

"Then I guess you better come in." Leaving the door open behind her, Alex went in search of the bottle of half decent red she'd been saving for a really good or really bad day, knowing that after talking things over with Gene, the day would definitely be either be one or the other.

With the way things had been between them recently she didn't rate her chances of having anything but a day from hell.