This is my first Ashes fic - I've written plenty of fic before but never for these characters. I only watched the show around Easter time this year, so I'm new to this, but I had to write my own ending for Gene and Alex! That last kiss outside the pub broke my heart (although to be fair, the angst in this is strong so I can't promise there'll be no broken hearts in the process of reading this! I hope you enjoy, please leave me a review if you're that way inclined :)
Rated M for language - turns out it's impossible to write Ashes fic without strong language!
It was raining, torrentially, the night Alex Drake stepped back out of The Railway Arms and back into London. Bloody typical that not one of them in there suggested she bring an umbrella, meaning she might as well not have bothered making such an effort with her appearance. At her final glance in the mirror, she'd been satisfied with the way her hair (a little longer, but still straight) sat just right, the slight flick of her eyeliner and the fact that for once, red lipstick had not tired to bleed its way into the corners of her mouth. But God only knew what kind of state she'd look, by the time she reached her destination.
At first, she had kept regular tabs on Gene. It was a strange perk of having moved on through the doors of the pub, to be able to look over and keep an eye on those on the 'other side'. It had been Shaz that pointed out the possibility of looking down on those still living on Earth in the present day, too.
"Ma'am, I've been thinking –"
"Shaz, you know you don't have to call me that anymore, don't you?"
The younger woman looked a little embarrassed. "It'll never feel normal! Fine, Alex, I've been thinking, and… You always used to talk about your daughter."
"Molly," Alex said softly, the name tasting sweet in her mouth though it brought a dull ache to the back of her throat. "I know, it just hurt too much to remember her out loud, knowing I'll never see her again."
"That's the thing Ma – Alex! If you can look in on the Guv, what's to say you couldn't check on her too? I know it's not the same as being there, but you'd know she were okay." Shaz started in surprise when her former DI leapt up from where she'd been sitting and threw her arms around her.
"Shaz, you're a genius. Thank you. Thank you." How could she have been so stupid to not see it herself?
Privately, Alex knew the answer to that question. In those early days she had been so wrapped up, so heartbroken by losing Gene after everything that had happened, it hadn't even occurred to her to look back to Earth for Molly. The sense of shame for that had been hard to shake off.
It was true that seeing Molly grow up as she herself had done, without a mother, had been agony at first, but she made peace with it eventually. To Evan's credit, he was every bit as good a parental figure, the second time around.
The weather showed no sign of letting up as she walked dark streets that were becoming more and more familiar. She almost regretted her choice of footwear, before reminding herself sternly that heels had never slowed her down when chasing murderous psychopaths so neither should they be a bother on a wet and windy evening in the City of London.
She arrived at Luigi's nearly soaked to the skin: hair beginning to curl, eyeliner streaming and jacket pulled tight around her. Despite the time she'd been away, walking through the doors of the trattoria felt like coming home. The warm air hit her in the face the moment she was over the threshold. Unbelievably, she realised she had missed that smell: the heavy fog of second-hand smoke mingled with the bittersweet aroma of alcoholic beverages. Even the sound sent a nostalgic shiver down her spine. There was a small crowd of coppers near the bar, all with drinks in hand which no doubt fuelled their jubilant noise. She didn't have to ask, to know that they were CID. No other department could drink like Gene Hunt's CID.
Her eyes scanned the room, finding his familiar table with ease. She expected to see him there, downing a pint or nursing a Scotch while single-handedly ensuring every breath in the place was guaranteed to be nicotine-stained.
His table was vacant, the chair tucked in and no evidence of occupation all evening.
"Signorina Drake!" Luigi's warm Italian tone filled Alex's ears and she couldn't help smiling broadly.
"Luigi, so good to see you again," she replied, leaning in to kiss his cheeks in continental greeting. "I'm looking for –"
"You don't need to tell me who you looking for," he said conspiratorially, one eyebrow raised. But his expression turned sad. "I'm sorry, he's no here – he… he don't often come now."
"What?!" There was something in Luigi's eyes that Alex couldn't place. Something he wasn't telling her, and she had a bad feeling about it. "What do you mean? Why doesn't he come here anymore?"
But they were interrupted by two young-looking detectives leaning on the bar, calling for Luigi, who shook his head sadly in answer to Alex's question before going to serve his loyal clientele.
She turned towards the door, reluctant to head back into the raging storm outside. A hand on her arm stopped her – she slapped it away and wheeled around to give a piece of her mind to its owner, who turned out to be a reasonably attractive officer, probably in his early forties. He was dressed more smartly than anyone she'd ever seen in CID, wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a dark navy waistcoat and dark tie sitting below a top button she was sure would have been done up, earlier in the day.
"Sorry, didn't mean to startle you, love," he said with a guilty smile. "I just had to check – it's DI Drake, isn't it?"
Alex blinked. "Yes, it is – I mean, I am. And you are…?"
"DS James Ackerman, ma'am. Fenchurch East CID."
"Of course," Alex said, "this place has only ever been the haunt of Fenchurch East. Your DCI would never hear of drinking anywhere else."
"No?" James said, a hint of confusion in his voice. "I don't think I've ever seen him in here! Mind you, I only joined the department six months ago, and we've had a busy time of it."
"Oi, Ackerman!" The shout came from across the room, from an officer far worse turned out than his colleague. "It's your round, dick'ead!"
James rolled his eyes. "I'd better go." He reached for his wallet, tucked safely inside his waistcoat. "Pleasure to meet you, ma'am."
Alex was stunned. How did such an immaculately dressed and adequately-spoken man end up in Gene Hunt's department of lost souls? He must have been as much a fish out of was as she was, when he arrived. More pressingly, how did he know her name?
But there wasn't time for second-guessing everything, applying a full psychological evaluation to everything that might have happened since 1983. Even if doing so might prepare her for whatever she might find on reaching that well-known police station. She was acutely aware of her time not being infinite here. She had a task to fulfil, a rescue mission to carry out in a limited time frame.
At first, she'd spent a long time looking over Fenchurch East CID from The Railway Arms. They all had: it was all they knew. Or rather, it was something that tied them all together at a time when they could have felt painfully separated by the revelations of their lives before.
But eventually it was too hard for Alex to see Gene alone in his world full of lost souls. There had been a new Super, manipulative and more corrupt than Mack, applying pressure from every angle on the department. Keats had made several appearances, and she had hated that she couldn't stand between her Guv and someone determined to place him in a living hell. She'd wondered then, why he hadn't sought out the pub, but then he'd never abandon his team.
She'd barely put the glass to her lips when she was interrupted.
"Ma'am?"
Alex took a sip of red, raising her eyebrows to show she'd heard, before answering. "Chris?" It was a lost cause asking him not to use her title; he couldn't help himself and if she was honest, she liked that little reminder of who she had been.
Chris fidgeted where he stood, evidently uncomfortable with whatever he had to say. He'd been dispatched by Ray and Shaz, drawing the short straw to have a conversation he'd rather not. "You – there's something you need to see. It's – I know you didn't want to know, but… well..."
"Out with it, Chris!" she said, half-impatient and half brisk out of the early twinges of worry.
He blinked. Swallowed. "It's the Guv."
She'd refused to look, although in the end it had taken little to sway her decision to return. One voice stuck in her mind as she pushed through the doors of Fenchurch East police station.
"I don't care if you have to drag him back here kicking and screaming. Just get him back here, Alex."
The station was almost dark, and something in the air felt different. Oppressive. Unwelcoming. It was not a safe kingdom anymore. She felt almost embarrassed, approaching the desk in such a dishevelled state, but forced a purposeful stride before reaching for her leather-bound warrant card. She was grateful she'd taken a moment in the porch to scrub the worst of the make-up from under her eyes.
"DI Alex Drake," she said, the title feeling strange to say after so long away.
The desk sergeant, a young man with reddish-brown hair and glasses, blinked in surprise for a moment, taking in the warrant card and the woman before him.
"I know, I know, it's not exactly how I planned to look! I'm here for CID, may I?" If Gene was beside her, there would be some comment about why she was asking permission to enter her own station. Or he'd just grab her by the shoulders and steer her on past the desk, no doubt hurling some abuse at the poor uniformed officer on the night shift.
But she was alone, he wasn't there to walk the dimly lit corridors at her side once the desk sergeant waved her through.
Up in CID, Alex paused for a moment to take it all in. It was still an unapologetically male space, scented by stale smoke and an offensive mix of aftershaves. It had never been a particularly clean room, but it had definitely worsened since 1983. The carpet tiles, although not the same ones present when the old team left, needed changing. They were far past the point of saving with a violent going-over by a hoover. The chequerboard ceiling remained, perfectly in tact, and none of the desks had moved from their former positions. Alex hesitated at the one that had been hers. Absent-mindedly, she stroked the edge of it. So much had happened at and around that desk. She could almost hear the old sounds: the phones, a heated, hushed debate between Ray and Chris, Shaz's typewriter clicking away…
The typewriter sound was not a figment of her imagination. At Ray's old desk (now unrecognisably tidy) sat a young blonde woman who surely couldn't have been more than nineteen years old. Her hair was pulled back with a red scrunchie like she'd just walked off the set of Heathers. Alex had to check herself – that film hadn't been released yet. For a moment, she couldn't stop herself staring, struck by a panging reminder that officers only ended up here for one reason. This young woman, barely out of school or so it seemed to Alex, had had her time cut cruelly short, somewhere in time. Still, she seemed determined to prove herself, a slew of photographs and a small stack of files informing the notes she made.
"Did the lads really go down to Luigi's and leave you up here with the paperwork?" Alex asked, thinking of the way it had never been a question that Shaz accompanied CID to the bar, even before she'd been inaugurated as 'one of the lads' in her own right.
The young woman jumped, startled by the sound of Alex's voice. "Sorry, I didn't even see you come in. I was miles away," she said, deeply apologetic. Her accent was softly Scottish, Shetland, if Alex placed it correctly.
"You were working hard, nothing wrong with that," Alex reassured, eager to put the young officer at ease.
"As for the bar, that's pretty standard, miss – um, Ma'am." She corrected herself on assessing Alex's face with a tiny glimmer of recognition.
"Detectives!" Alex rolled her eyes. "They never change."
"No," the young woman agreed. She rose to her feet, and offered her hand over the desk to shake Alex's. "DS Jennifer Preston."
Alex realised then that she hadn't introduced herself in all the time she'd been merrily chatting away. "I'm –"
"Oh, no need to tell me who you are, DI Drake, Ma'am." Jennifer nodded in the direction of a noticeboard in the corner, something new in this achingly familiar place.
Alex was drawn to the small display on the board. As she focused on the crisp black and white photographs she felt her mouth go dry. Rows of police officers, starting with herself, Ray, Chris, Shaz, Annie and Sam. There were so many others that she didn't recognise – other 'fallen' officers who had moved through Fenchurch East on their way out of planet Earth?
Her reverie was broken by Jennifer's lyrical voice cutting neatly through her thoughts. "I assume you've come looking for the Guv?"
Alex nodded.
"Well, you'll know where to find him."
Alex looked over at the office, the door closed and blinds drawn. She didn't want to ask about CID's current case: it obviously wasn't going well, not that the small-scale riot in Luigi's suggested as much.
She made her way to the door that should have had one of his drawings taped to it. The lion was the popular favourite, but there had been others: he would never admit it but the Guv could be clever with a pen, crafting razor-sharp satirical cartoons when he was in a rare good mood.
Alex had become inexplicably nervous in the space between her desk and his door. That oppressive feeling she'd experiences at the front desk had returned. She couldn't shake the feeling that she was missing a piece of vital information.
The sensation of her knuckles on the cold glass brought her back to this reality and more sensations were quick to follow. Dripping hair down her collar, a shiver down the length of her spine and finally a gruff shout, a voice she hadn't heard in far too long that could make her weak at the knees, given the right words.
"Haven't you seen the time? Go home, for God's sake woman!"
Alex snuck a glance back at DS Preston, who stifled a laugh as she continued typing. Alex prepared herself to knock again, before she stopped herself. What was she expecting? That he'd realise it was her, fling the door open and sweep her off her feet? Unlikely. Not his style. (That said, he had carried her in precisely that style, on more occasions than she cared to remember. What would she have done in '83, when he was still every bit her Guv?
The door wasn't locked: she seized a last-minute shred of bravery and opened the door, quickly closing it again behind her. No dramatics, no sweeping in, certainly none of the fainting from their first meeting.
"I meant it Jennifer!" he growled, not looking up from his desk. "I don't want to hear it unless you're bringing me the name of the bastard what killed that little girl –" He glanced upwards and his flow of speech abruptly dried up. He blinked a few times, but still said nothing.
Alex took a step forward from the door, her eyes raking every inch of him visible over the desk. He wasn't quite the man she remembered. He was a little thinner for a start and he'd changed his aftershave, though its scent still mingled memorably with the same brand of cigarettes and the omnipresent air of Scotch. She met his eyes for a moment and saw an unfamiliar pain reflected back to her. With an unpleasant start, she spotted skin that almost certainly extended well below that crisp white collar, puckered and scarred. Still he said nothing, staring at her as though she wasn't really there.
"Evening, Guv," she said, her voice little more than a whisper.
That voice. That voice. Her clipped, elegant accent was still enough to drive him absolutely crazy, enough to send an enormous rush of adrenaline coursing through his veins. Gene still didn't believe what he was seeing – wouldn't let himself believe it, because… It couldn't be Alex Drake, his favourite DI and so much more than that, standing in his office looking half-drowned, with the door shut and blinds drawn, after CID had all clocked off. How many times had he imagined this?
"Christ, if it wasn't all tits up enough, I've finally bloody snapped and started seeing things too," he murmured, reaching for the Scotch glass in the top drawer of his desk. He set it before him and reached next for the bottle before remembering, as his fingers found the cold, smooth glass, that it was empty. "Bollocks," he said, his voice lower still.
Alex couldn't help herself releasing a small syllable of laughter.
That laugh.
"Do you really think, Gene, that you'd hallucinate me like this?" she asked. "With my make-up streaming down my face and my hair starting to curl from the pissing rain?"
He considered it for a moment. "I'd rather you'd appeared to me in the red lacy bra from the Edgehampton vault," he admitted. His lip curled into half a smile as he saw a hint of colour tinge her cheeks.
"Not the white dress I wore to Luigi's?" she challenged.
"Bloody hell, Bollyknickers, even when you're not real, you're forcing me to sodding think!" In truth, he usually tried not to remember the white dress or indeed any of that evening in Luigi's. The night that was stolen from them by that tosser Keats.
"I'm here, Guv. How much more proof do you want?" She paused and watched him raise one eyebrow and slowly lower his gaze. In that simple motion there was a glimmer of her Gene, restoring her hopes for the outcome of the evening. "Don't answer that question. I am not going to undress in your office when a junior officer who's practically a minor is just outside!"
"She's twenty-four," Gene pointed out. "And I could pull rank and make her leave..."
"Oh, shut up." Alex slowly crossed the room, each step deliberate with her eyes locked on his. She cleared a space and sat on the desk with her back to him, presenting her backside carefully as she did so. She waited for strong, broad hands on her waist, for that cigarettes-and-Scotch breath tickling her ear. But none of it came. For a moment, she wondered if there was another woman. Fleetingly, she believed she'd waited too long, left things too late. "How can I convince you I'm not a figment of your imagination?" she said. "I couldn't be more real – I'm dripping rainwater onto your paperwork!" There was still no response, nothing to suggest she'd been right to come and she had any chance of taking him back with her. "You can touch me," she said softly. "I – I want you to."
Gene hardened his tough exterior to its extreme. He couldn't let her in, even if she was real, which she had to be, because nothing imaginary could make him feel the way Alex Drake did. It should have been easy, and God how he wanted to take every piece of bait she'd waved his way since she tottered in. He wanted to put his hands on that dainty little waist and pull her across the desk into his lap. But – "No, Bolls."
She turned her head over her left shoulder and bit her lip, fluttering her eyelashes. She knew exactly what she was doing and she was about to play her ultimate card. "I'll let you stamp my bum. Again."
When met with silence, Alex's heart cracked. She stood up from the desk and faced him, tears threatening in eyes flashing with angry hurt. "I came back for you!" She wanted to pull in half the force she'd summoned in arguments of years ago, but the emotional baggage of this fight was too much to bear. "I saw you here in this station, day in day out, taking shit from Keats and a beating from the Super, drinking yourself to kingdom come, and I thought –" Her voice broke and she had to swallow hard to gain the composure to carry on. "You know what, Gene? Forget it. I was desperate to see you again after what happened, after everything we went through. I didn't come back to this godforsaken place for any other reason than you." She couldn't read his expression anymore, and that riled her even more. One more twist of the knife. "Even after I've said all this, you can't even look me in the eye!" But when he met her gaze with a cold grey-blue glare, she wished he hadn't.
"Couldn't get your pick o' the fellas in the Great Beyond, then? They not good enough for you, so you come back to your last choice?" He knew he was pushing too hard, and it killed him to see the pain he caused, but it was the only way.
"Piss off," Alex spat. "Why are you being so vile to me? I thought –" She choked out a sob. "I thought you'd be pleased to see me."
She expected a reaction; as much as she was losing control of her emotions she still pushed the old buttons, everything that used to light the fire of fury and force an argument (because just sometimes, forcing it was necessary, and she used to know how.) But she watched as is furious, smoky glare faded into something she couldn't read. There was little point wiping the tears away when they kept coming. Her make-up was ruined anyway.
"I'm not the man you said goodbye to in 1983," he said at last, having watched her cry for long enough.
"Rubbish," Alex retorted, her voice uneven. "You're the Guv, you're Gene Hunt, you're my Guv, you're..." She was babbling and she knew it, but then the breath was knocked out of her and she wondered if she wasn't heading for a return to the days of 1981 where everything seemed to end in a dramatic faint.
Gene slowly stood up from the desk for the first time since Alex had entered the office. He was careful, cautious and deeply ashamed: he leant on a walking stick to steady himself.
Alex could see at once where the pain in his eyes came from. The tears in her eyes changed from hurt to sorrow. "Oh, Gene," she mumbled, clumsily covering her mouth with a shaking hand.
He waved her comment off. "This is why I wanted to push you away, Bolls. I thought I 'ad to, so you wouldn't see this. This isn't what you came for, I'm not the Gene Genie now. It's over."
"It's not," Alex insisted. She suspected he'd interpret her expression as pity, but there was no time to explain.
"No?" he countered. "I'm 'alf a breath from bein' pensioned off, there's nothin' left. It's all over."
He seemed shrunken by his vulnerability and it tore the remainder of Alex's heart the shreds. He didn't hate her for leaving. He hated what he had become, saw his worth as irrevocably depleted by whatever hideous injury necessitated the stick, couldn't bear to be seen as anything less than unbreakable.
It shocked Gene to his core (not to mention nearly knocked him off-balance) when Alex threw her arms around him and pressed her lips to his. For a second he was frozen, stunned, before he could no longer resist her. It had been far, far too long. He put his free hand inside her jacket and rested it firmly on her waist. She really was soaked, but she was warm and inexplicably safe, shrouded by her cloud of perfume and hairspray. He explored her mouth with his tongue, almost nervously at first until she reciprocated with a delicate tongue that tasted of Dutch courage, some crappy red wine from The Railway Arms.
It was torture to break apart from a kiss that was all cigarettes, Scotch and safety, but she could feel him lean more heavily on the stick and knew he'd never admit needing to sit. She reluctantly stepped back, heart thundering beneath her damp blue top. She pressed her tingling lips together, slightly breathless.
"This is why you never joined us in the pub," she said softly.
Gene sighed, slightly raggedly on account of his bloody leg and the pain it now radiated, trying to override everything. He squeezed his eyes shut for a second. When he felt Alex's cold, smooth hand on top of his on the handle of the stick, part of him wanted to kiss her again and never stop, while part of him burned with shame. "Right in one, Lady B." Admitting defeat, he sat once more. She perched on the edge of the desk, facing him, and he could practically feel her eyes, those gorgeous brown eyes, raking every inch of him. There was so much he'd never be ready for her to see.
Alex could only see a sliver of the scars Gene fought to hide – she couldn't and didn't want to imagine how far they might extend below the collar she longed to slip her fingers beneath. It was an off-limits question while they were still on such fragile ground, she knew, but she dreaded finding out the cause of all that damage to the Manc Lion.
"Do you really think it would make one bit of difference to them?" she asked quietly. She reached for his hand again. To touch those calloused knuckles and the silken skin between them, to have him encapsulate her hand in his strong fingers, was a pleasure she had been denied too long. "They still worship the ground you walk on." It wasn't a lie, an exaggeration, or something that would ever change.
Gene let go of her hand and frowned. "And 'ow am I meant to 'andle you lookin' at me like that?" he said gruffly.
"Like what?!"
"I don't want your pity, Bolly. Gene Hunt doesn't do pity."
She pushed out a frustrated breath. "But apparently he does talk about himself in the third person, now?" It was infinitely easier to push his buttons than to work out the word for how she felt. It wasn't pity, and she hated that that was his first assumption.
"I'm not havin' you feelin' sorry for me!"
Alex was very aware of her frustration level rising. He was pushing her away, and she couldn't respond except in anger. "All this time, Gene, and you still can't look past your macho bullshit for long enough to notice that I love you! I honestly thought you knew me better than to think I'd ever look at you with bloody pity!" It was all coming out, like champagne from a shaken bottle. Unstoppable, too fast, a little out of control. "I wanted to come back to you for years, I wanted to come back because I could see you here alone and I missed you. The only thing stopping me was the fact I respected your godforsaken sense of duty to every single copper than walked through those doors, as lost as we all were, once upon a time! It killed me to leave you here and to be on my own but you wanted to be here, I could tell, so I tried to forget. I stopped looking for you and I tried to forget you." She met his eyes, which had turned curiously steely. "I come back tonight and find out that something awful has happened to you in the time between, so just for a minute, could you consider that maybe I'm fucking furious with myself for not coming back sooner, for not being with you when it happened so I could have taken it instead?"
"I'd never have let that happen." His voice was closed, almost cold.
Alex thought the battle was lost. "I love you, Gene," she repeated. "And a walking stick is not going to change that." She glared at him, furious tears welling in her eyes enough to blur the image of him, and got up from the edge of the desk to leave. She was heartbroken as she crossed the office: it wasn't meant to be like this. Catching sight of her bedraggled appearance in the glass of the door only served to make her feel worse.
"Bolly, please."
He sounded… desperate? It wasn't a tone she was used to, coming from him. "Don't bother," she replied sharply, not even turning around. "I'm only going to pity you, aren't I?"
He saw her hand reach or the door handle and it was as though a switch has been flicked in his mind. "Alex, stop!"
It wasn't his DCI-bark, nor the weak shout of a spurned lover. It pulled her up short to hear him use her name, not the name he so often chose for her. She froze.
"I – I'm sorry," he stammered. There was so much more to say, so much that needed to be said that he knew wouldn't even be in his brain without all the psychiatric mumbo-jumbo she'd once crammed into his CID.
Alex slowly turned around to face him; her eyes still full of tears, she couldn't choke out a sound when she watched him stand and come around to the front of the desk, which he discreetly leaned on.
"I am sorry, I'm not good at this. I know I'm shit at all of it, Bolls. But – I'll try, for you."
Her breath hitched in her throat. She took a tentative step towards him.
Gene's voice was low. Nervous? "You always made me a better man, Alex, for all the shit I dragged you through. I've missed you."
"I missed you so much," she whispered, stepping closer to close the gap between them.
"Let me try and do this properly, please."
Alex nodded. She blinked slowly, pushed her hands through her slowly-curling hair and ran cold fingertips over her lips.
"God, I always 'ated when you cried before, but it's so much worse knowin' I made it happen," Gene remarked. He lifted a hand up to her face and wiped away tears with the pad of his thumb.
She let out a strangled kind of laugh, her sad eyes crinkling into something resembling hope. She coughed, then took a slow, measured breath. "Let's start again."
The fire in the moment, which had burned with the ferocity of a supernova, was gone. In its place was a subtle warmth, like glasses of Scotch in the office long after the others had gone home. Like being alone in the Quattro after a breakthrough in a case. Like slow-dancing to Spandau Ballet…
"Um, Guv?" Alex asked, soaking in every detail of the sleek Buick Grand National (and, it seemed, every molecule of second-hand smoke this side of the Blackwall tunnel, not that she minded anymore.)
"What?"
She eyed him carefully, sure he wouldn't like her question. "Are you – are you even allowed to drive, with that leg?"
Jesus, there's a throwback to 1973, he thought. It's like having Tyler riding shotgun again. "Ask me no questions, Bollyknickers, and I'll tell you no lies. Although that's about as likely as the Berlin Wall comin' down this side of the Millennium."
Alex's eyes sparkled with suppressed amusement. The irony is his words was just delicious, but she decided to keep the secret of the fall of Communism for the time being. She switched tack. "I have to say, lovely as your new wheels are, this isn't a patch on the Quattro."
Gene patted the steering wheel wistfully. "Still not forgiven the murdering bastard what did her in."
Alex inhaled deeply, closing her eyes with a smile.
It was still raining when they reached Luigi's, and despite the obscene hour it appeared the party was still in full swing. Licensing laws meant little, Alex remembered, when your clientele was built on off-duty coppers.
Their table was as empty as if it were protected by an invisible forcefield. Although, she reminded herself, there was no saying what might be possible in this strange in-between world.
"Signor Hunt, Signorina Drake!" Luigi looked as though all of his Christmases had come at once. There was more than a hint of smug delight in his eyes – he'd always known it was lies, every time DCI Hunt refused the notion of having any interest in his attractive and intelligent DI beyond the purely professional. The proximity with which they stood protested loudly to the contrary. "The usual, yes?"
Flattered that he would remember after the passage of so much time, Alex was about to nod in agreement when Gene spoke first.
"No. Bottle of bubbly in honour of the good lady, Luigi, and not the cheap shite."
Luigi rolled his eyes fondly. "And you want it on your tab, I suppose?"
"You know it, my friend," Gene replied, nodding in greeting in the direction of the bar and his present DI before steering Alex to that old familiar table.
Her cheeks were warm, tinged pink with pleasure and mild embarrassment, but she shivered involuntarily as she sat down. She crossed her arms around herself absently.
"Here," he said in a low voice. "Not for keeps, mind. Don't go getting any ideas." Before sitting down himself, he removed his long black coat (as he would have done anyway) and instead of tossing it over the back of his chair, he draped it around Alex's shoulders.
"You sure know how to make a woman feel special," she remarked drily. In truth, having his warmth around her was everything she could have asked for to make herself feel special. His scent of cigarettes and aftershave lingered in the coat's fibres and she breathed in all hungrily, making up for lost time. "Maybe the Gene Genie is still in there after all," she said, looking at him through her eyelashes as unruly curls tumbled forwards over her shoulder.
"Yeah, and maybe our Raymondo is next in line for a Nobel Peace Prize," Gene retorted, only half derisively. His eyebrows creased as he looked at her. "Are you smelling my coat?!"
Alex said nothing, looking down at the table with her lips upturned.
As Luigi returned to the table with the uncorked bottle and two glasses, she silently reached for Gene's hand under the table. She might have been wearing his coat, but she wasn't certain he'd want the attention of his team to land on him holding hands with his former DI. But to her surprise, he pulled away from her touch, and presented his open palm on the tabletop instead, in challenge both to her commitment and his own brash exterior. She raised her eyebrows at him and his expression lightened.
"I'm in if you are, Bollykecks."
He closed his hand around her delicate, slender fingers as Luigi placed the bottle of champagne between them, the label facing away from her. Gene look less than a second to read the label and smile, a rare enough event to be critically endangered, although perhaps not with Alex.
She was distracted however, and missed the upward curve of his lips. Luigi pulled a familiar key from the pocket of his jacket.
"I know you say you are not staying, but this storm, Signorina… You have nowhere else to go."
Alex ducked her head ruefully. "Thank you, Luigi. You're sure it's not an imposition, for me to stay tonight?"
Gene bit his tongue to withhold a snort of laughter or a blunt comment about her obsessive politeness.
Waving away any suggestion of inconvenience, Luigi put the key down on the table. "Not at all. New tenant is not due for two weeks, it is no problem to have you again. A pleasure, even."
"Well, thank you. Truly." Her eyes seemed to glow with gratitude.
She turned back to Gene and noticed the twinkle of amusement in his eyes immediately. "What?" She was taken aback by the rare flash of a smile.
"That cheeky sod has far too good a memory," he replied. He turned the bottle so Alex could read the label, and she practically collapsed in a fit of giggles that sent a glorious shiver up his spine. Of course it was a bottle of Bollinger, for the Sheriff of Fenchurch East and his Uptown Girl.
He noticed her eyes dart towards the door, in the direction of the stairs. She'd never say it, but she didn't want to be down here, on show in front of the new team. She might have acted like a sex-starved madwoman in the early days of 1981, but that was under the influence of pure confusion and copious amounts of alcohol. Liberated of either of those, her prim and properness ruled. And he'd never admit it either, but all this meant too much to him to be done in public.
"You want to take this upstairs, Lady B?" he said, blasé as anything though he hoped she'd say yes. Her eyes lit up, glittering with relief. "You'll have to carry the bubbles though. Learned from experience," he said, motioning to the stick that made carrying anything upstairs an impossible ask.
Alex raised her eyebrows at him. "Oh, you've had a lot of experience buying bottles of Bollinger for your DI and sneaking off upstairs, while I've been gone?" she teased. She laughed at the look on his face, and glanced over her shoulder to where the present DI was ordering his drink. "I didn't think he was your type, to tell you the truth, Guv."
"Oh, piss off," he said, his lips curling upwards again. No-one else had ever, could ever, get away with speaking to him like that. "Upstairs, then?"
She nodded. "Upstairs.
They clinked their glasses and drank the first one far too quickly, both eager for the relief of a looser tongue and slightly fuzzy brain. Without the distraction of a charged argument or complex case, it was harder than either of them had imagined to concentrate on any notion of 'them.'
Alex refilled the glasses. "Alright, one drink down. Ready to tell me yet, what happened and who dared wound the Manc Lion?"
Ready?! That was definitely her psychiatry talking. He'd need to be practically pickled in champagne before he'd ever be ready. But she deserved to know. He leaned into her, reaching for his coat hung over the side of the sofa and the hip flask he hoped was buried within. "I'll need something stronger than bubbles, for that." He fidgeted where he sat as he swallowed a large mouthful of Scotch. It was one of those nights that the burn was welcome.
She remained quiet, giving him time. Fearless and unbreakable he might have been, four years ago, but it didn't take a PhD in emotional intelligence to know seismic changes had taken place.
"End of '85, we started investigatin' a violent burglary that turned into two, three, four, and then a young lad ended up dead, protecting 'is mam. Seventeen, he was, and beaten to a pulp.
"That's awful," Alex interjected in a whisper, moved to comment when she'd promised herself she wouldn't. Molly was pushing seventeen, now.
"Grim," he agreed. "Took us weeks to unravel the case: it was a gang and they were clever. Every time we got near nailin' 'em, they slipped right from between our fingers."
She frowned. That didn't sound like the CID Gene Hunt kept.
"I knew there were somethin' up," he went on, "but we was all… distracted. Desk sergeant, an 'ardworkin' WPC on 'er way out o' uniform, died in a house fire. With 'er 'usband and little boy."
Alex winced.
"Which is why it took so bloody long to realise we 'ad ourselves a leak."
"A leak?!"
"Yes, Bolly, a leak, a backstabber, a traitor, an absolute dick'ead of a DS."
"Alright, I know what a leak is! So, what next?" Nothing so far pointed to Gene being hurt, especially not to the extent he appeared to have been.
Gene took another swig from the flask. "Once we dealt with the leak –"
Alex imagined there had been fists involved in 'dealing' with the disgraced officer.
"– it was only a matter of time to pin them down. They were amateurs, not clever at all really, and they started makin' mistakes without their friend on the inside. But they got cocky, and then they came after me." He looked at Alex's eyes, round with alarm, and realised this wasn't so complicated after all. He took her hand and squeezed it. "The big bastard at the top sent his lackeys to stake out the station one night when we'd been workin' late. Only me and DS Preston left. Headache as it is, having a DS so determined to work ten times 'arder than anyone else, if I'd been alone I wouldn't be sat 'ere now." His words hung in the air between them.
"Gene… what did they do to you?"
Whatever she had imagined, the truth was worse. The gang leader had had Gene run over by the lackeys staking out Fenchurch East. Right outside the station, in full view of impressionable, hard-working Jennifer who had ended up saving the life of her DCI. The scare of the initial impact had forced a fearful retreat, pressed against the front wall of the station, and it was a good job too, when the two gang members leapt from their vehicle carrying petrol cans in an attempt to finish off the battered and broken DCI Hunt once and for all. Jennifer's distance meant she was safe, and could radio for help before sprinting towards the flames. The two men hadn't done as requested with the petrol, or else had done a poor job in their efforts, dousing Gene from neck to waist. When she'd managed to smother the fire with her own coat, she'd found his face unharmed, though contorted in agony. Between the hideous burns and his right leg being smashed to pieces, it was no surprise he drifted in and out of consciousness, barely hearing the determined reassurances offered in a soft Shetland accent.
He didn't remember anything after the dark street filled with blue flashing lights and the sound of his officers swearing in horror.
Alex couldn't believe what she was hearing. She knew how much he'd hate it, but she couldn't stop tears pouring down her cheeks.
"We've been through this, Bolls," he said, though he still grabbed the box of Kleenex from the coffee table and sought to dry her cheeks with all the grace of a reversing dump truck, although said dump truck would never have cared so much or been so aware of its shortcomings.
But she couldn't stop, harrowed by her own brain's inventions of him being flung down the road they knew so well, then almost burned alive with a leg already shattered and no doubt other injuries as well. The sobs kept coming, their ferocity relentless.
Gene put his arms around her and looked to the ceiling as she buried her face in his chest. "No use in crying now, Madam Fruitcake," he said, though his voice was laced with affection rather than malice. "It's over and done with, nothin' you can change with tears." He stroked her hair uncertainly. His fantasies of this woman had involved hungry kisses, rapid undressing and the kind of sex only reserved for such fantasies. Intimate emotions were not what he was prepared for or in any way skilled with.
Her tears abated after a while and she sniffed inelegantly as she composed herself. "I should have been here," she said at last. "I should have done something – it should have been me."
He was pulled up short by that and physically flinched enough that she sat herself upright again. "Bolly – Alex – no." He thought for a moment, then slowly removed his jacket and tie. "I won't deny, it would'a been nice to have you to look at in the 'ospital, 'stead of a rotating cast of clueless coppers, but…" He couldn't finish the sentence, so abandoned it. "I need to show you – the first time is not going to be when I finally complete the quest of getting the glorious DI Bollyknickers into bed." He knew this would usually have elicited a snarky complaint, or maybe a laugh and a refute that said quest would ever be accomplished. But usually, there wouldn't be a shake in his voice and she wouldn't be practically holding her breath, either.
Hardly daring to breathe himself, Gene began to unbutton his shirt. "This is not the body I imagined you seeing," he said hoarsely. "Not that the old one was much of an improvement, but it was a damn sight better than this." Her eyes were glued to the scars, he was sure, and he didn't want to know exactly the lens she was viewing him through. "I don't know much, Alex, but I do know that I never would have let them do this to you, or let you take it instead o' me. I'd take the whole lot a hundred times over, before those bastards laid a finger on that porcelain chest o' yours."
Alex was silent, her eyes carefully tracing every mark on his skin. Where the flames had bitten the flesh there were taut pink puckers, uneven craters and strange peaks in the skin. She could tell her silence made him uncomfortable, but there were no words she could say to fix him. He held her hand tightly, but she extricated hers and kissed the fingertips before hovering them over his chest in a wordless question. She met his uneasy gaze and lifted her eyebrows minutely. He mirrored her fractional movement and she laid her hand over his heart, covering deep scars with her flawless palm. He shivered beneath her touch but his heart still thudded away.
In that moment, years melted away. It was 1981 again: he was a brash, unscarred and unbreakable DCI faced with the most beautiful woman he'd ever come across. She was smart, slightly loopy and entirely fearless, faced with someone who instantly made her feel safe. In 1987, time had changed them both but couldn't hold them apart.
Alex smiled as he kissed her first. It was brief, then their foreheads touched and their eyes met, briefly afire before they closed them, ruled by touch and an intricate knowledge of each other. They had waited far too long for this. Their lips touched and the rest of the world ceased to exist.
He might have been broken but he loved her – Gene realised then that she'd always been the one to say those words. He'd never told her that he felt the same. Reluctantly, he broke away from the kiss and put a hand on each of her shoulders, looking deep into her eyes. "I never told you before that I love you."
Alex's eyes grew wide. Her cheeks were flushed with pleasure. "And do you?" She giggled. "Sorry! That's not the response you wanted, is it? I think you just surprised me, finally saying it." She grabbed his flask and drank a mouthful. She'd regret mixing red from the pub, Bollinger champagne and whatever ungodly strong whiskey Gene favoured, but at that moment she didn't care. "I love you too." She wrapped her arms around his neck and rested her head on his bare, warm shoulder.
For the first time since she'd waltzed back into his life, Gene relaxed. "Take me back with you, Alex," he murmured into the curve of her neck.
She sat up. "You're sure?"
"I'll never be as sure of anything again, Bolly." He reached for his shirt, but she put a hand out to stop him.
"Wait," she said, her eyes twinkling. "There's something we need to do first. Something that was interrupted in 1983..." She waited for him to catch her drift: it amused her that he looked blank, having not put two and two together, when at one point she'd thought sleeping with her had been the only thing on his mind. "I believe," she said innocently, "that you once wanted to know whether my bra opened at the front or back."
"I'm a fully professional DCI, Detective Inspector Drake," he replied, mock-seriously. "I'm sure I'd never be so dirty-minded."
She couldn't believe he was stalling for time. Gene Hunt, nervous? "Well, in case you were interested," she remarked calmly, standing up to make for the bedroom, "I didn't own any front-fastening lingerie until the late nineties."
"You're like a bloody cryptic crossword, woman!"
"You might take note that this one fastens at the back," Alex said, spelling it out clearly for him. She dropped her gaze. "It's the red lace."
Gene's jaw dropped almost imperceptibly. Nervous or not, he didn't need inviting twice.
"Ready when you are, Bollykecks."
The words on their own, could have had her convinced that he meant what he said. But there was an audible undercurrent of uncertainty in his voice, and he didn't shake her off when she took his arm to head into the pub. She walked on his left, keeping pace with his injured right leg without saying a word.
They walked through the doorway of The Railway Arms together.
"Guv!"
A momentary silence before the excited chorus had felt like a lifetime. But the energy in the room had changed with the return of the Guv, regardless of a wounded leg. As Alex had predicted, the others didn't even care.
Only Ray was foolhardy enough to attempt to invite the elephant in the room into conversation.
"Alright, Guv?" he said, eyeing the stick cautiously. When he caught sight of the scarring at his hero's collar, his eyes turned wide. He jutted his chin out and raised his eyebrows. "So, what happened?"
Gene's eyes narrowed and Ray withered under the stare. "We're not talking about this –" he pointed to his leg – "this –" he rapped Ray's ankle with the stick – "or these –" he exposed the top of his scars momentarily – "tonight. Just for that, Raymondo, it's your round. Mine's a Scotch, in case you haven't seen fit to hold onto such vital information while you've been gallivantin' around the afterlife like some child at a holiday camp."
Ray ducked his head sheepishly. "Yes Guv," he mumbled.
"Nice one, Alex." Sam passed her a glass and clinked his own against it appreciatively.
Alex swallowed some of the champagne and allowed the bubbles to sparkle down her throat before she spoke. "You knew, didn't you? About all of it – that's why you were do desperate for me to go back for him now."
Sam nodded. He lowered his voice so he couldn't be overheard. "It would have destroyed him to be pensioned off, you know it would. It was weeks away, if not days. I couldn't very well march in there, being a 'dead man' and all, and… I knew he'd listen to you."
She shook her head, curls bobbing as she pinched the bridge of her nose. "He nearly didn't! It was bloody hard work, Sam Tyler!" She couldn't hide her smile though. The plan had worked. They were all back together again. And she'd finally had the night taken from her in 1983.
"You might want to work on that poker face," Sam said knowingly, "or even Chris will work out exactly how you managed to convince your DCI to join you back here."
Alex swiped at his shoulder, eyes blazing.
Sam headed away, over to the bar where Ray and Gene stood, a slight atmosphere between them. Curiosity had well and truly killed that cat, at least for now. Sam cleared his throat. "Actually Ray, reckon it's my round," he said, effectively dismissing the DS which for once wouldn't be something to wind him up.
"Tyler."
"Guv." They stood at the bar in comfortable silence for a moment, before Sam decided they both needed a reminder that this was real. "Gene," he said, offering his hand for the other man to shake. If it had been 2006, the handshake would have seen him pulled into a hug, a faceful of alcoholic, nicotine stained air. But it was 1987, and the hand that his DCI pressed to Sam's shoulder while their palms still touched, meant a whole lot more than a hug, to both of them. "Watch it," Sam teased when Gene's hand remained at his shoulder for a moment or two longer. "People will talk."
"Just let 'em try, Tyler. You've clearly not been on the receivin' end of Bolly's right hook!"
Sam laughed. "You're joking! The lovely DI Drake spent enough time with you to start throwing punches? You must have been a right pillock to deserve that."
"How do you do it?" Gene threw back his Scotch and aimed a partly-furious look at his former DI.
"Do what?"
God, the pair of them can switch it on in a second, like butter wouldn't melt, he thought. I've been in your presence all of five minutes and already I'm feelin' the urge to kick you and your brains seven shades of shitless!"
Sam just smiled and tapped his glass against Gene's empty one. It hadn't gone unnoticed, how many times the older man had glanced over Sam's shoulder to where Alex sat, alone now but not for long. "It's good to see you again too, Guv."