Rating: T, sexual references
Disclaimer: Not mine, you know whose
Spoilers: Everything
Pairing: Gene/Alex
Summary: Gene and Alex's love story comes full circle. Missing scene and post-ep for 3.08. Picks up just after Keats steals Gene's team and Alex chooses to stay.
A/N: A continuation of "Blind" and "Better and Better" which you can find immediately before this story on my author page. Thanks for reading and please feed the box.

She only remembered as she stood looking down at him. His slumped body, dishevelled clothes, his bloody nose and broken spirit. On that night back in '82 – that one night during which they'd loved and trusted each other unreservedly – she'd woken during the night. The usual nightmares had found their way in. A predictable, twisted mixture of memories, fears, regrets and realities. Only that night, Gene was there to comfort her. Hold and assure her.

She'd felt herself fall onto the mattress as if from a great height, her body limp and small and powerless. She'd thought she was all alone – she usually fought such demons solo. But then a figure turned towards her in the bed. An unidentifiable lump under the covers at first, then a hand, reaching out. Then hair, blond and gleaming in the early morning light. Then a face and voice she recognised. She'd only been half-awake at the time. But now she remembered him gathering her against him, warming her chilled bones and calming her shaking flesh.

"Alex," he'd said. "S'okay, sweetheart, s'just a dream..."

She'd panted his name into his chest, exhaled in relief as his arms wrapped round her.

He'd kissed her forehead and stroked her hair. "I've got you, love, I'm 'ere…"

She'd slept after that. Blankly. Dreamlessly. And awoken several hours later with her face buried in his neck, her chest plastered to his and his arms slung loosely about her. Had she known then how impermanent, how fleeting that blank bliss would be, maybe she wouldn't have slipped out of his embrace, leaving the bed in search of protein and caffeine. Had she known then all she knew now, she'd have savoured it more, protected it better.

Alex crouched at his side, not quite sure how they got from there to here. Gene glanced sideways at her, shame and defeat in his eyes. It was not a look she'd seen on him before, not emotions he'd ever betrayed. This wasn't the Gene Hunt she knew. It was the Gene Hunt she'd sought though. The Gene Hunt she'd always wanted to know, craved to understand. She'd sought him out because she'd loved him. And knowing the truth of him only made her love him more. But her ruthless pursuit of the man she wanted to know had all but destroyed the man she did know but couldn't bring herself to trust. And now, all she wanted was to re-erect his breached boundaries, restore his magnificent ego, mend the scared scarecrow that once upon a time had been an almighty lion.

She reached out, smoothed the hair off his face. She ran a hand down his lapel, straightening his clothes as best she could. Gene's eyelashes dipped once, his eyes shifting away and head turning from her. She hesitated before moving in, slipping her arms under his and around his body. She grunted as she tried to lift his dead, uncooperative weight. Gene just slid back into his dejected slump.

She tightened her grip, "Come on, Gene," and tried again, "I know you're in there somewhere."

"Give over," he slurred, removing one of her hands but not having the energy to throw it back at her. "I'm done…"

Alex drew back. She bit her lip as she stared at him. He didn't sound like himself either. That last sentence should at least have ended with Bols or segued into a dry quip. Rising to her feet, she turned towards his office, "I'll get you a drink—"

"No—" A hand curled round her wrist.

It was desperate and hesitant, lithe and soft. It didn't feel like his hand either. It wasn't the hand she remembered from the few times he'd touched her, the two times she'd taken him into her bed.

After the shooting, after their three-month separation and dramatic reunion, they'd tried to revisit that blissfully blind night back in 1982. Cocooning themselves in her flat, they'd fumblingly attempted to recreate their swiftly vanished faith and intimacy. To ignore the trauma that lingered and the outside forces that threatened to encroach. Forces that would eventually rip them apart. Keats clearly had a sixth sense for such things because they were in bed together when he called. Gene had just given her the most incredible orgasm of her life and they were working on generating two more of the same. Together they were striving to return to where they'd so briefly been before reality took a brutal nosedive into hell. But the murder was on Gene's patch, the jurisdiction his. When Gene hesitated, Keats offered to call in someone else, to assign it to Ray instead. He was, after all, a DI now and had run the department without incident in Gene's absence.

As he left her bed and pulled her with him, Gene promised they'd pick up where they left off. They never did. Their love-making remained unfinished, unconsummated and unmentioned. As her faith in him wavered, his pride smarted and tongue bittered. The wedge Keats was driving between the two of them was wreaking far more damage than anything Summers had attempted. They were becoming unrecognisable to each other as friends and partners, let alone as the lovers they'd once been.

Alex looked down at the unfamiliar hand on her wrist, the long fingers and flawless skin. She followed the line of the blue sleeve up to a face she'd only seen in the half-dark. In nightmares or visions she hadn't understood. She'd only ever seen his face with a shotgun wound marring the forehead and a vacant, haunted expression in his eyes. Now, he looked at her with affection. And a juvenile twinkle of mischief.

"I don't drink," he murmured, lips twisting into a smile.

Alex crouched slowly down again, voice catching as she answered, "You will."

"You'll drive me to it," Young Gene told her, adjusting his grip on her wrist so he held her hand lightly in his. "Waitin' for y' will."

She opened and closed her mouth a few times, unsure how to answer. "Sorry I took so long," she whispered, lowering her gaze to their joined hands.

He lifted them, pressed his lips to the back of her hand. Then, turning her hand over in his, he flattened her palm against his perfect, unstubbled cheek, pressing another kiss to her skin, right next to her lifeline. The kiss was unbearably slow, heart-haltingly yearning. Her eyes closed over and her fingers stroked the place where one day his whiskers would grow.

"Stay," he rumbled.

She opened her eyes on the old Gene. The Gene that matched that cloaked, hoarse, insistent voice. The Gene she knew and loved so much that her heart ached in her breast for him, for her, for them and their plight. He nodded at his office as if traversing the wrecked bullpen to fetch a whiskey bottle from his desk drawer was a journey that would stretch and snap the invisible string attaching her heart to his.

"Don't—" He broke off, cleared his throat. "Just…" Gene squeezed her hand, looked her in the eye. "Stay."

Releasing a breath, Alex sat on the floor with him, tucked her feet to one side. She budged in close, stole her hand from his grip and lifted it to his face. She used her thumb to swipe at the line of blood that trickled from his nose to his upper lip. As soon as she did, another fat trickle replaced it, meandering down his lip to collect in the corner of his mouth. She swiped away the second trickle then leaned in to kiss the corner of his mouth. She collected his blood on her tongue, lapped him clean. Disappearing a third bloody trickle, she kissed the other corner of his down-turned mouth with open, warm, wet lips.

"I've got you, love." She drew back, palmed his face and caressed his lower lip with her blood-stained thumb. "I'm here."

Gene's body seemed to come to life. He surged, arms reaching out for her. He wrapped her up and hauled her close and clutched her tightly to him. His lips slid against hers, hard and desperate and slippery with saliva and blood. He kissed her with unrestrained passion and impending sorrow and a love she could hardly bare. She held onto his big, bent, beaten body with all the strength she had left and returned his kiss as if it was the last thing she'd ever do in her life. But soon – too soon – he was pushing her away, killing their kiss and ordering her vaguely to: "Go. Go…over there."

Only later would she realise that he was preparing her. Already priming her for the ultimate severing, that final distancing, his last whispered word. A tender, resolute, "Go". Obediently, she'd propped her back against her upturned desk, facing him on the floor, amongst the wreckage. He'd known then what would need to happen. But she was still intent on fixing him, reuniting his team, re-establishing his world, solving one final case before she left. They both knew she'd need to. But she thought she was leaving him to return home to her daughter. With one look, Gene told her otherwise. And in that look, she saw her own pain mirrored, her predicament doubled. The impossibility, the utter incommensurability, of loving the deceased.

He still tasted of blood when she kissed him goodbye. And his blood still stained her hand when she reached for the door of The Railway Arms.

-x-

Bowie was playing inside. Chris and Shaz had claimed a corner table. Pints in front of them, they seemed more concerned with making up for lost time. They pulled out of a sloppy kiss only to press their foreheads together and murmur at each other in hushed, giggling voices. Ray stood nearby, engaged in an argument with a man twice his size over who had next dibs on the use of the dartboard.

The place was warm – shabby but cosy. It reminded her of Gene somehow and, after resisting the urge as she walked away from him, Alex now gave into it. She glanced over her shoulder at the door, expecting to see his shadow through the clouded glass, hoping to see it swing open as he stepped over the threshold to join her. Her head turned back, and lowered. She stood for several moments in stillness before forcing her feet to move.

She smiled at the man behind the bar as she approached, as she ordered Gene Hunt's drink of choice. "Whiskey, please…." She had to stop herself from adding the name Luigi to her order, just out of habit.

The tall, dread-locked figure set a glass in front of her, selected a bottle from an extensive collection, then paused as she lifted her hands onto the bar. "Aahh…I see someone has brought lifelines with dem."

Alex swallowed, willing some strength to return to her voice. "…Lifelines?"

He uncapped the bottle and pointed the nozzle at her blood-tinged hand holding onto Molly's scarf. "The scent of one. The blood of another…" He began pouring her a shot of whiskey, but stopped to caution her: "Don't go thinkin' they entitle you to endless visitations, mind. One only."

She frowned at him. "One…?"

"Well," he mused, completing her shot, "one per lifeline. One for de scent of…?"

"Molly," she answered as he indicated the scarf. "My daughter."

"And another for…" he twisted the cap back on the bottle and grinned a little, "I tink I know who dis one belongs to." His black eyes twinkled at her. "Wha'd you do, punch him in de mouth?"

Alex returned his smile with a weak one of her own. "More than once."

"Few would blame you," he muttered, setting aside the whiskey bottle and propping both hands on the bar. "Sure you want to revisit dat stubborn sonovobitch?"

Alex lifted her drink, sipped once and replied in an alcohol-strained voice, "I'm sure." She looked down, swirling the liquid and adding quietly, "I love him."

The bartender humphed, hesitated, then told her, "Don't let the blood fade den. Not the scent neither. Or the lifeline becomes invalid." He pushed away from the bar, crossed his arms over his chest. "No makin' new memories neither. No nippin' forward to see your daughter married and havin' kiddies of her own. Has to be something dat's already happened. And once you use your lifeline...'tis spent."

She gripped her glass and gave a nod. "Understood."

"Alright." He leaned in, patted her arm and gave a little wink. "You come to me den. When you decide who you wanna visit when."

"Thanks, ah…"

He smiled widely. "Nelson is de name."

"Thanks." She dipped her chin, tears threatening her eyes. "Nelson."

She watched him move to the other end of the bar to serve another costumer. Then lowered her gaze to the scarf in her hand, the dried blood on her skin. One memory with Molly would take some thinking about. But one with Gene took none at all. There was one day – or one night rather – that stood out against all the other colour-filled, frenetic, fantastical days of the past three years. There were many she'd like to revisit, redo, re-experience. But only one she absolutely must.

She would wait though. Not long enough for the blood to wane and lose its potency. Just long enough for her desire to peak, for her longing to grow unbearable. Then she would go to Nelson and tell him to send her back to 1982, where she would await that drunken, insistent, midnight knock at her door.

END.