A/N: I am hoping to include a little more Galex in this chapter, just for those people who've told me they want it; please tell me if you want more or less of it or what, I am writing for you guys and I want you to like what I write. :) Thanks to everyone who has reviewed so far, and here we go. Jazzola :)

It was a clear-cut plan; take the handset to the station, along with Gene, and use the call tracker there to find out where the signal for the call had come from. Alex had thought it all through. When they found the person who had made the call, Alex would interrogate them, force them to let her go home, and take Gene with her. Her gut told her that leaving Gene once, however temporary that had been, had been hard enough and she didn't want to lose him a second time.

"Don't talk to anyone unless they talk to you first, and don't swear," Alex instructed him as they drove towards the station, sitting in Alex's Lexus and with the seatbelts firmly clipped in place despite Gene's protests.

"Gene Hunt does not wear bloody seatbelts!" he had growled, making to take it off, but Alex had stopped him by grabbing his hand.

"Gene Hunt will have to put up with it, this is 2009 now, Guv. It's the law and you're meant to be a copper, not a common criminal. I would get fined and you might well end up in the dock of a court, so have some bloody sense and leave it on!"

Gene hadn't looked impressed, but he had put up with the sleek black seatbelt and hadn't made any more comments on it.

"So you say this gadget thing can trace a phone call to wherever it came from?" he asked curiously as Alex stopped for a red light. Alex nodded.

"One of the wonders of the modern police force, Guv."

"You'll have to stop calling me Guv," Gene added as they picked up speed away from the light. Alex reached down to change gear and found Gene's hand already on the gear stick.

"Oh… sorry," he muttered, embarrassed, whipping his hand away. Alex changed the gear and smiled at him.

"Being a backseat driver, Guv?"

He glared at her, but his slight smile gave him away.

"Too used to being the front seat driver," he remarked, looking out of the window and drinking in the scenery. The streets had never looked this odd to him… it felt like being a young child being taken through a hospital, looking round at all the strange things on either side of you, the people lying ill and listless in hospital beds. It was so strange and alien that he began to feel frightened despite telling himself firmly, under his breath so that Alex didn't hear, that Gene Hunt didn't do frightened. Alex snuck a sideways glance at him and smiled.

"Seems weird, doesn't it, Guv?" she asked gently, reaching over and putting her hand on his arm, feeling the familiar sensation of his thick black coat under her fingers and rubbing it. He turned and gave her a confused look.

"How the bloody hell would you know?"

Alex focused back on the road as the lights changed, but pulled over as soon as she could.

"You remember when I first arrived in 1981?"

"How could I bloody forget?" Gene muttered. "Dressed like a bloody prozzie and rambling about me being some kind of fantasy and it all being in your head. I was thinking I'd have to call the men from the loony bin in for you, Bolls."

Alex laughed quietly.

"I would have beaten you to the phone, trust me."

Gene eyed her closely, his eyes flickering down to her hand on his arm. Almost sub-consciously, he moved his hand to rest over hers.

"I had just been shot in the head. I thought I was going to die; my life flashed before my eyes, my brain was conjuring up all sorts of visions and such… I had no idea what was going on at all. One minute I was in 2008, the next I was in 1981. I had been working on Sam Tyler's case at work so I thought it was some crazy world my brain had cooked up for me while I was in a coma. But then it didn't seem like it after a while… and I slowly realised that it wasn't. That you were real. All of you. You, Shaz, Ray, Chris, even people like Viv and Keats… you weren't figments of my imagination. You were real as anyone I had ever known. And you remember that little girl whose car was blown up with her parents inside?"

Tears sprang to Alex's eyes as she remembered, and Gene hurriedly put his arm round her, letting her rest her head on his shoulder, his brain working out her next words.

"That was me. That was me as a little girl. That's how I lost my parents, Gene. That little girl was me. And I remembered you taking hold of my hand, and I thought it was Evan, but all this time, it was you. That's when I realised that you were real… well, I stopped thinking you were my imagination, anyway."

Alex sniffed back her tears and looked up at Gene, her eyes pitiful.

"You must think I'm such an emotional little girl…"

Had they been back in Fenchurch CID, Gene would have most likely made up some snippy comeback for that, but they weren't and Alex was clearly very upset so he refrained and bit his tongue back. Unfortunately, he did it literally, biting too hard and drawing blood from his tongue.

"Agh," he muttered, swallowing the blood and turning his attention back to Alex.

"Come on, Bolls, you're home now, and we'll fight together, right? Whoever this bloody bastard is who's stopping you getting home, we'll stop him and you'll see your little girl again."

"What about you, Gene?" Alex whispered, looking deep into his eyes, her familiar, porcelain green into his stormy grey-flecked blue.

"I'll go wherever I have to go."

"No," Alex hissed. "You're coming with me. I can't do this without you, Gene. I need you with me."

Gene smiled slightly.

"You sure about that, Bollykecks? I thought you hated me."

Alex gasped in shock.

"When did I say that? I don't, Gene, I swear I don't…"

Gene smiled properly.

"Just in one of our "arguments"," he said, his fingers sketching quotation marks around the word, the same as Alex's had done around his name upon her arrival at Fenchurch.

"The ones that rocked CID? Oh, I remember," Alex smiled, leaning towards Gene, her eyes still moist. Gene did the only thing he could think to do- he leaned forwards and kissed her, on the lips, softly and calmly but lovingly, like they had done before they had thought they would be parted for years to come. Alex melted into the kiss, closing her eyes, sinking into her DCI's lips.

They broke apart, looking into each other's eyes and smiling. Alex licked her lips and frowned.

"Why can I taste blood?"

Gene put his hand up to his mouth and touched it, drawing his fingertip away stained with blood.

"Oh… shit."

"Spit into that," Alex commanded, holding out a tissue. Gene did so, wiping the blood from his mouth and stuffing the tissue into his pocket.

"What did you do, bite your tongue?"

He nodded, swallowing back more blood. Alex smiled at him and turned the ignition back on, shoving the car into gear.

"Come on. I've got a daughter to get back to."

Gene nodded, but didn't miss the overjoyed look on Alex's face as she rejoined the rush hour traffic.