the_gene_genie | OOM: Room 6620

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alex,
room 6620

OOM: Room 6620

He's never really been one for sitting alone with his thoughts - to be honest, there aren't that many occasions that call for it. He tends to be confident in his actions and decisions and give little mind to his failings or mistakes.

This mood that Saffron put him in though, is actually more normal. And he'd defy any copper to deny they felt the same way, at times. It's a thankless job they do and a never ending one as well. Everyone copes with it in different ways. Gene's way, tonight, is to drink and then drink some more, shifting around the room as various parts of his body complain from his recent excursions.

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"You're not my Gene. You're Sam's Gene."

She shuffles awkwardly to sit up on the bed, blinking, one hand over her mouth, and truth be told, it's as much to stem the rising tide of hysterical laughter as it is to hide her grimace of mortification.

"What year?" The question tumbles out of her mouth before she can catch it.

'1973, luv.'

He says it wearily, like he's sick of being asked this all the time. He isn't. He's just sick of the reaction it normally garners and is expecting more of the same from her.

'An' the Gene Genie don' belong to no one bu' the Gene Genie.'

Just so she knows.

'What year're you from?'

Well, that sentiment sets her back on her heels. (Does her Gene think that way? Would he baulk so blatantly if she called him hers?) She swallows hard, blinking for a moment.

"1982."

She should get up right now and leave. She should just -- to hell with sleeping it off. She can get her own room.

She doesn't move.

'Right.'

He sits and looks at her squarely, the way he does when he's facing a suspect over the table in the Lost and Found. Just sort of waiting for them to speak and give him an excuse to explode. Not that he's planning on exploding at her but she can't deny, this is awkward.

'Well. I was jus' sittin' up here ponderin' existence an' the like but I suppose I could put that aside for a few minutes. Want a drink?'

It'd be a hell of a lot more awkward if she wasn't already over the legal limit. But as she is, she figures, why the hell not?

Her chin drops and she looks at him. Her voice takes on a stern Manc accent. "Gene Hunt does not ponder his existence." Her own plummy tones return. "He drinks himself into oblivion. And since I'm already half way there..."

She toes her boots off, thinking all the while, does this send the wrong message? Do I even care at this point?

'Oh, of course. Thanks for the reminder.'

It was, sort of, what he'd been doing. But he's hardly going to admit it for real and anyway, he was also drinking himself into oblivion. It's the more fun option anyway and she seems good enough company. So he pours her a measure and gets up slowly to hand it over, moving stiffly though he tries to mask it.

'There y'are.' He looks down on her a moment, taking in her face, then moves back to his chair.

'You seem t'know me pretty well.'

The stiffness of his movements is enough to spark something in her chest. A fierce protectiveness edges into her voice. "I know you well enough to know you're hurt. What on earth did you do?"

She takes the glass and sets it aside, moving to follow him.

His eyebrows go up as she bears down on him, surprised more than alarmed.

'Went an' fought some mutants with a kid from here, an' a few others. There was a small atomic blast. S'alright though, jus' a few bruises an' a burn.'

He'd tell her not to fuss but he's been drinking steadily himself for a while now and, while not drunk, is relaxed enough to not want to rile himself up.

'Sit down, you're pissed.'

"A small atomic blast!?" She puts a finger under his chin and tips his face up to the light, hissing under her breath as she sees the nasty purple mottling running along his left temple down to his cheek. "Good Lord have mercy."

She doesn't seem nearly as pissed as she stalks away. "Don't move." She grabs the ice bucket off the side board, and reaches into the tiny trash can to steal a fresh bin liner. She's muttering under her breath as she moves. "Betty will have my hide if you go home looking like that."

She turns to fix him with a look (Alex is a mother; she's perfected that look) and disappears out the door to look for the ice machine. She's only gone a few minutes.

He's about to insist she doesn't fuss but then she mentions that name. He's surprised beyond words for a beat or two and only manages to call out - sounding quite pissed off, it has to be said - as she's leaving the room;

'Oi!

...how d'you know my mam?!'

Oh like she's never heard that tone before, honestly. She finds a towel cabinet on her way back from the ice machine and snags a couple of the softest flannels she can find.

And then she's back, her face set with a resolute determination. "Keep your voice down. I think they heard you in Outer Mongolia." She bundles some ice into the bin liner and wraps it in a flannel. "Put your chin up. And before you roar again, you introduced me to her. You showed up at my door on Christmas Eve, told me to throw a nice frock and some clean knickers in a bag, that we were off to Manchester for the duration."

'Bollocks,' he says, his face just as resolutely determined.

It has to be bollocks. He pulls his head back, away from her ministrations.

'Stop fussin', woman, I ain't a ponce. An' then tell me why I'd ask you to spend Christmas wi' me.'

His expression turns suspicious.

'Are we shaggin'? You feelin' the magic brush of th' Gene Genie's wand, eh?'

Edited 2010-09-28 22:18 (UTC)

She scoffs again. Sam didn't exaggerate much, did he? "You're not a ponce but neither are you bulletproof. And if you don't ice that ruddy thick slab of granite you call a skull, my guess is that it'll take twice as long to heal. You'll go stir crazy long before then, staring at these four walls, waiting to go back, and if you go back before it's healed, you'll have no reasonable explanation for such severe injuries."

That said, and the ice pack reapplied to the side of his face, her tone gentles somewhat. "You took me to Manchester because you didn't want me to spend Christmas alone, and because I'm your DI, you felt -- well, I don't know what you felt, honestly. But it was a lovely holiday, and your mum is a fantastic cook."

There's a genuine affection in her voice for Betty, and she blinks several times, looking back to the glass he poured for her. She drifts away from him, back to the drink which disappears in a few long swallows.

Gene pouts but lets her put the ice back on his head and holds it there. She has a point and he's not stupid. He does want to get back home sooner rather than later.

'Wouldn' ask Sam to me mam's for Christmas, an' he's on his own. How long we been workin' together?'

He wonders what the look on her face is about but doesn't really feel he can ask. There's obviously something more to this than she's saying though, every instinct is screaming it at him.

"Yes, well, Sam didn't watch ... " She lets that thought trail off, sighing with exasperation.

She turns back and gives him a long look. "A little less than a year. And we'd had a case just weeks before -- it turned out just as awful as anything I'd ever seen. Car bomb. Left a twelve year old girl orphaned, and her godfather having to suppress her father's murder-suicide confession from evidence. He didn't want the girl to know what her father had done. That he'd intended to murder her as well."

Alex's voice breaks and she lowers her gaze to her drink. "It hit me hard. And I suppose you took pity on me."

She didn't feel like it was pity at the time, but it's so much easier to put into words.

Hmmm.

'Was her name Alex, by any chance?'

He thinks he's held the icepack to his head for as long as is polite, so it gets chucked on to the table to free up his hand for his Scotch.

'She came in 'ere a week or so ago. She knew who I was bu' I'd never seen her before in me life. Her parents 'ad been killed in a bomb.'

And it's bloody depressing to hear that it was the father that did it.

Fine, be a stubborn arse with a head ache, she bites in her head.

"Yes. Alex Price. She was here?" That seems peculiar. She doesn't really recall having ever come to the bar until just before she was shot.

Her eyebrow quirks a bemused question. "She called you the Gene Genie, did she? Melted that cynical copper's heart, straight away I'd wager."

She brings her glass back and thunks it down on the table before him, clearing asking for another refill. The wobble is back in her step. "You did a lot for her that day."

He crosses his arms decisively.

'Know 'er, do ya?'

Melted heart, his arse.

'I prob'ly did what any good copper would've done.'

It obviously had meant a lot to her, whatever it was. But he's not one to sit around listening to compliments - at least, not when he's in a situation he's not all that comfortable with.

Yeah, you go right on believing that. I know you. I watched you destroy that tape just to spare the feelings of a little girl.

"You did your duty. Now are you going to pour me another or have you joined the Temperance Brigade?"

He rolls his eyes and reaches for the Scotch, all sharp, abrupt movement that speaks of frustration, or annoyance.

'Looks like you might've 'ad enough.'

The measure he pours is still pretty large though.

She laughs again, a sound rich and full, tinged with a delicious irony.

"What are, my mother now?"

She takes her glass and settles back onto the bed with a boneless grace, resting it on her thigh. (Blue jeans, painted on to ample hips and strong thighs, tapered down to her ankles, black socks with little white polka dots on them.)

"You know, Guv. You may not believe it, but you trust me. We're -- you're one of the best friends I've ever had."

Maybe it's the alcohol that's making her speak the truth of the matter. Maybe it's that this isn't her Gene, and he doesn't know her, can't see all the little ways in which he's got well and truly under her skin. Maybe it's that he's the one that's leaving this time.

'Gene Hunt is not friends with girls. I'd drown under all th' hormones.'

He's still trying to get used to the idea of a female DI, full stop.

'What am I doin' in London, anyway?'

This is the question that's been eating him up whenever he thinks on it.

That makes her brow furrow. (She'll ignore the other. She knows the truth.)

"You're doing the same thing you were in Manchester. Driving like a maniac, banging heads, foiling blags, putting scum behind bars." There's a hesitation, but just a momentary one.

"Fighting the worst of police corruption. Drinking the bar dry every night. Lather rinse repeat."

She presents a nice view, lying there like that. He can't imagine his older self not wanting to shag her - hell, he wants to shag her now - so it's weird to him that she says they're not. Unless she's not interested. It wouldn't surprise him, posh as she is. But if they're friends then she must like him at least, so why not?

'I'm bloody glad t'hear it.'

It does seem likely, he has to admit. He can't imagine himself changing that much. But he refuses to think about police corruption. He's had quite enough of that recently, more than enough for a lifetime.

'You don' strike me as someone who I'd have all tha' much in common with. 'Cept the job.'

He's still rather stuck on the concept of them being friends.

"Well, that's all there is, isn't there." Her eyes take on a distant stare.

"The neverending tide of shit, of bodies broken and used up by someone else's greed or hubris or worse, their heartless boredom. Good decent people who never get a break because the predators are always circling, and only us to keep them at bay. Or worse, only there in time to pick up the pieces, and hopefully figure out how to put the bastards responsible away so they can't hurt anyone else. A job made all the more difficult by the greedy and bent among us."

She takes a long drink, again. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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