What's In A Name?
Alex Drake sighed as the battling voices of Gene Hunt and Jim Keats became louder. She glanced towards the DCI's office, where she could see that Gene was stood behind his desk, face set angrily, as Jim stood firmly on the other side of it, hands in the pockets of his grey jacket. Outside of the office, Shaz was glumly typing up reports, pretending not to listen as Ray asked Chris about a date he had been on the night before. The two men were talking animatedly and didn't seem to notice that their DCI was shouting at Keats only a few feet away.
Alex knew that it was tearing Gene apart. The most important thing in the world to him was his role as a DCI, and the team that helped him fight criminals. Keats was a threat, but Gene was running out of options.
The door crashed open, and Keats marched out, a file in his hand and Gene quick on his heels. Chris and Ray were immediately silenced and watched, as did Shaz, as the two men practically thrummed with anger. Alex kept her head down but of course listened in.
"This isn't the seventies anymore, Gene!" Keats yelled, spinning on his heel to face the Mancunian, almost smirking as he did so. "You can't just beat the truth out of people, that won't stand. You might be DCI but that can all change very quickly."
"Nothin' is changin' 'ere, not if I have anythin' to do with it!" Gene roared in response.
Keats snorted and gave Gene a very dirty look, his lip curling arrogantly. "Well, that's the whole point. Soon enough, you won't have anything to do with it."
Gene took a step towards Keats. "Why don't you bloody piss off back to yer poxy little office, Keats? Nobody wants you 'ere."
Keats merely laughed and shook his head slowly, turning to leave. Ray glared after his superior officer, and Chris looked worriedly at Gene, who was stood, head high and fists clenched, looking murderous.
Pausing at Alex's desk, Keats gave the DI a warm smile and dropped a file onto her desk. "The report you asked for from the burglary last week, Bolly."
If the silence of the room had been stunned before, it was even moreso now. Alex looked up at Keats in surprise. Nobody ever called her Bolly except Gene. She felt something stirring in her chest, as the word echoed throughout her brain.
Just as Gene opened his mouth to speak, Alex retorted, "My name is Alex."
It was probably quite impolite, but she couldn't help it. Hearing 'Bolly' coming out of someone else's mouth was making her blood boil and she had no idea why. Okay, so it was the Guv's nickname for her, but so what? Keats was a superior office too. But even as she tried to think rationally, her cheeks were heating up in irritation.
"Oh, sorry," Keats merely blinked, looking at her as if she were crazy. "It's just that Gene calls you that. I thought it was your nickname."
"It is," Alex said coolly, shuffling papers on her desk. "It's his nickname for me. Nobody else calls me that."
Keats chuckled, glancing over at Gene. "Got her well trained, haven't you, Hunt?"
Alex rose from her seat, her chair scraping loudly against the floor. "Excuse me, don't you dare speak to him about me when I am right in front of you."
"I didn't realise a silly little nickname would cause such aggrevation," Keats chided, eyeing Alex carefully.
Alex smiled at Keats in mock amusement. "And I didn't realise that you would find it so difficult to comprehend a single simple piece of information," she practically spat. She indicated towards Gene and continued, "He calls me 'Bolly'. He has called me 'Bolly' since the first day I met him, and he probably will forever. Nobody else calls me that. And it is not because I am trained in any way, it is because he calls me that, and I respond to it. To you, I am DI Drake, or if we're on friendly terms, Alex." She folded her arms. "So for the time being, we'll stick with DI Drake, shall we? Now if there was nothing else."
As Alex sat back in her seat, Keats swallowed nervously. Glancing back at the team - Shaz was grinning from ear to ear, Ray was nudging a confused looking Chris and pointing at Alex, and Gene looked, in all fairness, quite flattered - he nodded to himself and strode out of the room, the door slamming loudly behind him.
Not surprisingly, a silence followed. Alex made a point not to look over at Gene, instead choosing to go through the file Keats had delivered. She sighed with relief as the noise level rose again, and finally, she looked over to Gene's office, where the DCI was looking out of the window and so couldn't see her looking.
"You alright, ma'am?" Shaz asked, approaching Alex quietly. When Alex nodded, Shaz bit her lip and glanced around, before leaning forward to talk to the DI. "That was lovely, ma'am. What you said."
Alex looked at her in surprise. "'Lovely'?"
Shaz smiled. "Yeah. I know that, well, Chris accidentally referred to Keats as 'Guv' the other day, and the real Guv wasn't 'appy about it. I think 'e feels threatened. Like 'e thinks Keats'll take us all away from 'im. But 'e won't. An' now I think he'll be feelin' better about it all."
Alex smiled, glancing again over to the Guv's office. He was now sitting at his desk, speaking into the phone. "It just didn't sound right."
"Nah, ma'am. It wouldn't, would it? Keats has the wrong accent, for a start," Shaz said, and Alex laughed. As the younger woman wandered off to talk to Ray and Chris, Alex bit her lip and couldn't hold back a smile.
As she looked back towards Gene's office, he happened to glance over at her desk, the phone receiver still against his ear. Alex's heart seemed to beat quickly as the DCI gave her a slow, playful wink, and she grinned to herself and continued on with her report.
Hi there, I'm funk2funky, and thankyou for reading my first published story. Please review if you can spare the time. :)
I wrote this a few days ago after the scenario popped into my head. I'm a big Ashes To Ashes fan, and like many fans I am fascinated by the relationship between DCI Gene Hunt and DI Alex Drake. I've always loved the way Gene calls Alex "Bolly". After watching episode four, in which Chris accidentally refers to Keats as "Guv", I thought about how the same could happen between Keats and Alex. I know it's only short; I didn't want to develop this into a full, chaptered story, but I liked the idea, and went with it.
Once again... Thankyou for reading! :)