She had mistaken his anger for fear, perhaps; although, with Gene Hunt, she imagined both emotions were one in the same.


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Episode 2x01: Homesick
Episode 2x02: Language
Episode 2x03: Team
Episode 2x04: Blood
Episode 2x05: Loyal

Summers made it sound as if she had to choose between her loyalty to Gene or her loyalty to Molly; but in the end, Alex knew giving in to his demands would mean she would have to betray them both.


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Episode 2x01: Homesick
Episode 2x02: Language
Episode 2x03: Team
Episode 2x04: Blood

They hadn't lost the war, as Gene had said, but they had won a small battle; however, Alex couldn't shake the sick fear that more blood would be spilled before the real war would come to an end.


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Episode 2x01: Homesick
Episode 2x02: Language
Episode 2x03: Team

Hers was usually the language of science, understanding, and sarcasm, and his the language of arrogance, honour, and brute strength; but as they sat in the interview room, their voices soft between them, they had finally mastered the common language of trust.

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Episode 2x01: Homesick

By the time she got back to them, the girl was already dead; Gene sat, cradling her in his arms, her blood soaking into his clothes, and the look in his eyes told Alex he knew all about being so lost, so alone, and so very far from home.

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Eight days. Eight episodes. Eight sentences.

For the next eight days, I'll be doing a one sentence story for each episode of series 2 in conjunction with my re-watch to prepare for series 3 of Ashes to Ashes.

“I've been watching you all night...” He slid into the empty seat next to her, blue eyes boring into her, undressing her beneath his gaze.

She tilted her head at him, brown curls spilling over her shoulder. “You should have said something earlier.”

“Well, I just thought, since-”

“Oi! You!”

The man from the bar jumped from his seat to a standing position in one swift move, like a teenager who just got caught getting to second base in the backseat of a car by his girlfriend's father. Which was probably very akin to what had just occurred.

After all, there were unspoken rules in Luigi's. And one of those happened to be, no bloke was allowed to flirt with DI Alex Drake while she was in the presence of the most esteemed DCI Gene Hunt. ( Or sometimes, even when she wasn't. )


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Cut for adult language and themes.
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Muse: Alex Drake
Prompt: 19.5 [STARTING POINT] I've been watching you all night...
Verse: Open Verse
Word Count: 1299

If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that I'd like to do
Is to save everyday
Til eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you

Standing on a rooftop over London, Alex closes her eyes and breathes in the deep, familiar air of the city. ( Something inside of her stills, and when she opens her eyes, her gaze casts to the ground so far beneath her. )


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Cut for spoilers for the end of Life on Mars
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Muse: Alex Drake, Ashes to Ashes
Prompt: for the song meme: "Time in a Bottle" by Roger Whittaker
Verse: Open and Canon Verses
Word Count: 473

I've lost control.

This world – this creation of my own mind (if that's really what it is, I can't even be sure now) – but this world, this world I live in now, it's as if all within it is completely beyond my grasp. I thought this was about staying in control. Staying in command. Having a rule over my subconscious. All of that was to keep me afloat. ( All of that was to keep me alive. )


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Cut for length and spoilers through 2x08
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Muse: Alex Drake, Ashes to Ashes
Prompt: #320 - What do you command?
Verse: Open and Canon Verses
Word Count: 320

I've forgotten the details.

All the small things. The tiny things I never even knew I knew. What colour were those eyes? What was the sound of that laugh? The tone of that anger?

Sometimes I still hear it. There's a voice that haunts me (It's in the darkness, when I can hear it whisper to me in the night.). But I've lost the details. I've lost the meaning. I've forgotten the importance.

I don't think I wanted it to be like this. Is it easier to forget? Is it easier to move on, if you think the world you came from wasn't real?

That made it easier for Sam. I think, that was why he did what he did. ( What I could never, ever do. )

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Cut for length and minor spoilers for the series.
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Muse: Alex Drake, Ashes to Ashes
Prompt: #309 - What have you forgotten?
Verse: Open Verse, speculative post-series
Word Count: 510

{Thanks to pi_sparrow for the help!}

Inspired by this adorable little illustration of Sally Sparrow, drawn by pi_sparrow (Link is prooobably considered NSFW.)

{{This is also for pi_sparrow. I hope I didn't butcher Sally too badly, bb.}}



“You're not wearing that,” Sally said.

Alex's mouth hung open, and she looked down at her top. It was a lovely red blouse, she thought, with little white polka dots. She'd even undone the top few buttons. Her trousers were slick and black, hugging all the right bits in all the right places, and Sally had certainly never complained about them before.

( Quite the opposite, in fact. )

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Cut for length and adult situations.
Minor spoilers for Ashes to Ashes.
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Muse: Alex Drake
Prompt: [ONE WORD] Cleavage
Verse: Crack/Time Will Crawl
Word Count: 1347

It was an uncommonly quiet night for CID London. The sun set was always lovely over a bustling city, but Alex Drake couldn't enjoy this one; she was fast asleep at her desk. Even if the night was quiet, the week had been unforgivably long, and she hadn't been sitting down more than a half-hour before her head had dropped heavily, her eyes slid shut, and her cheek landed with an unceremonious thump on top of a half-completed piled of paperwork.

This being CID, and no matter how quiet, the nap was never meant to last very long. Duke (himself who had been napping for a few hours under Chris' chair, before Alex's soft snores had roused him) leapt onto the desk stealthily, padding past haphazardly tossed pens and scraps of papers until he reached Alex, whereupon he went about grooming the hair over her ear intently. Grunting back into consciousness, she swatted him away and shifted around her head, but Duke seemed very intent on making sure that the hair behind Alex's ear was going to stay laying down. Or, perhaps, start sticking straight up in the air, depending on the direction of grooming.

"Knock it off, Duke," Alex muttered into her paperwork.

Stake-outs, Alex mused, were intended for the specific purpose of observing, understanding, and reacting to a subject in order to better predict their intentions.

( She certainly was observing, understanding, and reacting on some pretty basic levels. But not to a suspect so much as to how Gene Hunt’s mouth moved against her, how she ground her hips against him, how her teeth bit into her bottom lip as she moaned in the back of her throat. )

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Cut for spoilers, sexuality, adult themes.
Minor spoilers for episode 2x05 of Ashes to Ashes.
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Muse: Alex Drake
Prompt: [SCENARIO] Amomaxia (or in other words, love-making in a parked car)
Verse: My own filthy canon
Word Count: 1278

Alex Drake sits. She sits at the window and stares out over London. She sits at the window in her flat over Luigi’s and stares out over London. And she waits.

She’s not sure what she’s waiting for, if she’s really waiting for anything. She’s spent a long time waiting. Waiting for the phone to ring. Waiting to see her daughter. Waiting for a familiar voice to break through this fantasy and remind her of home. Like what happened to Sam. The way it’s supposed to happen.

( But tonight, there is only quiet. She hasn’t even felt Molly sitting behind her, or felt that painful need to turn around and try to catch a glimpse of her. But Molly isn’t real, not here, anyway. She’s just a fleeting feeling. A fading memory. )
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Cut for Spoilers: Series 1 finale of Ashes to Ashes and minor spoilers for the finale of Life on Mars.
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Muse: Alex Drake
Prompt: None
Verse: Canon
Word Count: 748