Title: Live and Let Die

Subject: Gene and Alex after the night before. Later plot sees a killer come between our heroes.

Rating: T for language and suggestive themes but not gratuitous enough, I think for M - please let me know if you feel I have rated incorrectly

Many thanks to skywise0123000 and Emzi.x for taking the time to beta and be so grammatically observant! This is my first fic so am grateful for all reviews, positive and negative, I'm a big girl, I can take it!

Disclaimer: I do not own Gene and Alex or anyone else. And they do not own me.

Chapter One

Saturday 23 January, 1982

Alex woke slowly and hazily, the sunlight twinkling through the blinds teasing her. Sleep tempted her, pulling her back beneath the covers to the realm of sweet, dreamless unconsciousness. She could lose herself in time and space with no obligation to wake until she was ready. This was darkness without fear: no clown to rush at her; no tortuous glances of her daughter on the periphery of her vision, lost each time she tried to gain full view of her; no car explosion; and no Gene Hunt confusing her sense of loyalty.

Alex sat bolt upright, her body instantly regretting the violent movement. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and leant forward trying to repress the rising bile in her throat and the slow, thundering, banging from the depths of her brain. She turned around slowly, shifting her bum, unable to turn her head on her neck for the pain. And there he lay. Half covered by the pillar-box red duvet, his black shirt undone, one arm draped over the side of the bed, the other crossed uncomfortably across his torso, his head facing the other direction, away from Alex.

"Shit", she swore under her breath. Had she really allowed this to happen? She turned her back to him and closed her eyes, squinting as she tried to remember the events of the previous evening. Flashes appeared to her. Molly had been following her all day, persistently appearing at the corner of her eye. It had been slow at the office and she had inevitably drifted off to sleep at her desk dreaming of Molly's birthday. Interrupted from her reveries, she had been dragged to 'lunch' earlier than usual, lethargy apparently affecting the whole team. Wine was consumed quickly and liberally; not enough food had been ordered. As the team had become more raucous Alex and Gene had segregated themselves, sharing several bottles of red wine between them. Alex squeezed her eyes tighter as she tried to recall their conversation. Had she flirted with him? Tempted him?

Hadn't he moved in first for the kiss? She had swayed, blinded that the moment had finally come. She couldn't remember moving from Luigi's to her flat but she remembered fumbling for the buttons on his shirt eventually ripping them off. They had fallen in a tumbled heap onto the bed, leaving a trail of discarded clothes en route. She flinched as she recalled leading him through the flat, avoiding the now irrelevant wall calendar marking the days to her parents' death.

The act itself…? Alex stood up. She had had sex with Gene Hunt. Despite her disgust for his working methods, his lifestyle and his prejudices, she had grown to like him and even, begrudgingly, to respect him. They worked well as a team - the parents to the schoolboys of CID, bickering constantly, both equally committed to the justice of their profession. She had begun to long for him. His presence, despite her resistance, comforted her. Molly's haunting bothered her less when he was around. He distracted her from the tragedy of her situation. She wanted him to protect her from all the pain, she wanted to lose herself in him, allow him to let her forget.

But at the back of her mind there harboured a seed of doubt, of suspicion. Gene Hunt kept 'saving' her: stopping her from walking in front of a car when she first arrived; rescuing her from Chas Cale's freezer; jumping on top of her when Gil Hollis' bullets were raining on them. He kept her in 'the land of the livin' but where was that? She didn't want to be in this land of the living, she wanted to be home, in 2008. If she 'lived' here then what did that mean for her 2008 existence? So she reined in her feelings for him, certain that involving herself with him would only delay her return home.

Yet here she was, the morning after the night before. She ran to the bathroom, reaching the toilet just in time as she emptied her guts.

After leaning back against the toilet and cleaning herself, Alex leant against the door of the bathroom, wrapped in a black silk robe. He's awake, she noted, taking in the sight of Gene languidly stretching and rubbing his hands over his face as if trying to clear the sleep and his hangover. She ran the back of her hand across her mouth and gave Gene a cursory nod, flicking her eyes away from his gaze, feeling too awkward to return to the bed despite her desperate need to curl up in a ball; neither did she want to seem rude by asking him to leave. Should they talk about what happened last night? She felt too ill. She had wanted this. And here he was but it was wrong. The sex had been wrong: fumbled, messy, sloppy, a jumble of disjointed mages. They had shagged, fucked each other even, but they hadn't been intimate. They had passed out afterwards, each in their own drunken, shagged-out fog, each enjoying the idea of the other. But now, here in the cold light of day, he was too close and he was too real. In the darkness of Luigi's, through the cloud of smoke and the haze of the alcohol, Alex had been able to dress him up as her knight in shining armour, polish him up to be the man she hoped he was.

"We drank a lot last night", she proffered.

Gene sat up. He pouted, looked her in the eyes and then turned his eyes downwards. He reached for his boxers and trousers which were strewn on the floor beside the bed.

"We did. You can put 'em away, Bols"

"I…I don't know what…." Alex stammered.

"Too much wine, 'ey, let's leave it that, shall we?" he interrupted quickly as he finished dressing and looked around frantically for his suit jacket. "Gotta get to work; leave Chris and Raymondo at it too long, I won't have a station left to run!" He found the jacket and, without meeting Alex's eyes, threw a "see ya later" over his shoulder as he fought with the sleeve of his jacket and shut the door behind him.

The clown leant against the door frame, grinning menacingly at her.

TBC