Fic: Some Soft Aberration (1/7)
Some Soft Aberration (1/7)
Rating: PG13
Who: Goren/Eames
Random: Starts post-Blind Spot and will cover the entire season.
Random 2: Thanks to piecesofalice, who is not dead.
Summary: There is a rumbling here.
Bobby has a fistful of Declan’s shirt when he gets the call. He leaves without a word and Declan comes to his own conclusion. He thinks of his daughter, lets his eyes roll heavenward, terrified and a little glad that she finally broke under her own rhythm.
--
He manages to catch up to her gurney before they whisk her off to be examined. He wraps a hand around one of the safety straps and doesn’t let go. As a result, Alex and her medical entourage come to a halt. The two paramedics look annoyed. The doctor on their right sighs loudly.
“Sir, you need to let us take care of your wife-”
“No,” Bobby says. “I’m not - we’re not married,” he corrects.
“Fiancée, then?” the doctor asks, uninterested. “Soul mate? Reason for living?” He signs off on Alex’s chart and hands it back to the paramedics. “Listen, you need to stay in the designated waiting area.”
He stares down at her, presses the tips of his fingers to his hairline, turns and abruptly leaves. Tries to leave. She’s curled her still-strong fingers into the folds of his shirt. He meets her eyes for the first time in seventeen hours, hating both himself and her, and thinks of his mother. Alex and his mother. His mother or Alex. These women. These tiny women and how he couldn't even stand it.
“Hey,” she says, her knuckles pressing into his side.
Her voice is so small and full of tenderness that he nearly gets upset. There will always be violence in his desire for her.
--
After Alex is asleep, he steps out into the hallway, runs a hand through his hair, and calls her mother. He keeps it short, as he is not in the mood. Bobby is courteous, but his feelings are not.
--
When she’s escorted from the room, he stares hard at Jo’s face, as if it bears a map of her father’s failures. He knows where to look. He’s stared at his own face the same way for years.
He turns to watch Declan through the observation window. Bobby wishes he didn’t have so many of these moments, the type he can’t remember later without turning them over in his hands, thinking I should’ve tried harder. It’s an old story with him.
--
“How long?” he asks when she’s awake. “Until you’re out of here,” he adds.
She considers him for a second. He’s the one that could use a sedative.
“Doctor says …” Alex starts, her voice thin and shaky, words abandoned halfway like untied shoelaces. “A day or two. Observation.”
He nods. There’s a flutter in his chest and he nearly panics until he realizes it’s only his cell phone vibrating. He reaches for it, but then remembers the message it displayed hours earlier, and decides against it.
He checks his watch, checks her eyes, checks checks checks -
“The, uh, nurse,” he gestures somewhere behind him, “said visiting hours are over at ten.”
“And we both know how good you are at following rules,” she comments.
Her eyes are as big as he’s ever seen them. Maybe he’s never really had the chance she keeps trying to give him.
“Yeah, well. I should look into that,” he replies, and moves his chair closer.
--
The next day he brings her a cup of coffee. He is exiting the elevator before he remembers she isn’t there. He smirks, thinks about the human brain and its cycles, and throws it away.
--
All he does for the majority of the morning is fill out paperwork. It is even more tedious than usual and he knows why, but tries not to think about it. It’s not that he feels guilty, or somehow responsible, but he feels something and anyone who knows him at all knows he hates things that can’t be classified, people who are constants despite how they are catalogued.
At quarter past eleven, Logan takes the seat across from him, and Bobby doesn’t bother to greet him for that particular reason. Ten minutes pass and Logan finally breaks the silence by clearing his throat.
“So,” his eyes roam Alex’s desk, “Me and Barek, we heard about Eames.”
Bobby is nearly rubbing the skin off the back of his neck at this point. He just wants to get through this week and then things will be back to normal. Alex will be out of the hospital, not in a healthcare-white room, not in a gown so familiar it makes him sick.
“We’re glad she’s okay.”
Bobby sighs, puts down his pen, and looks up at Logan. He’s playing with that ring on his finger again and Bobby finds it a bit comforting. It occurred to him he hadn’t seen Barek this morning, which was odd, as he usually saw her in passing.
“Where’s Barek?” Bobby asks.
Before Logan had a chance to answer, Ross shouted to him from the doorway of his office.
“Logan,” he calls, motioning him over. “Come meet your new partner.”
“That’s a good question, Goren,” Logan mutters, standing. He leaned towards Bobby with lifted eyebrows, and adds, “Who knows? This could be lucky number seven.”
The desk opposite his is too neat, too telling, and Ross has been staring at Bobby all morning like he’s being paid to do it. There is no coffee cup stain on his New York Times, no rustling of a candy wrapper, or the occasional uttered “shit” when she uses too much force and scatters candy across her desk.
He heads for the elevator, eyes wide and blinking, portfolio left behind on his desk.
--
He spends the first half of his lunch hour orbiting her hospital bed. He moves the various machines slightly to ensure they’re parallel with the bed’s frame, close enough to be within reach, but with enough space that even he can maneuver easily.
“You still look like hell,” she tells him. What she said was not a joke. She is aiming for something and her chest is heavy because she cares about this answer. “You okay?”
He looks over at her, stands up, and then looks down at her. She isn’t in the mood for one of his portentous silences and really doesn’t need him hovering over her hospital bed not saying a word while his face conveys an ever-changing array of punctuation marks. It makes her angry that he manages to create and then later avoid the same questions. He again takes a seat, eyes everywhere but on her face. Legs splayed, elbows resting on his knees, he suddenly stares at her and there is a flood in his eyes.
“I got into the wrong side of the car,” he tells her, the words distorted by the fingers over his mouth. “Three times.”
“Three times?” she asks, wryly.
“No, it’s - the third time, I caught myself. Had the door open, but didn’t get inside,” he responds. He seems to relax a little bit and stops using his fingers to cover up the parts of himself he doesn’t want her to see. “Technically, two and a half.”
“You need a chauffeur,” she states. “Technically.”
“No,” he says, staring straight into the face of the one thing he thought he could keep together. “I need you.”
A nurse walks into the room and Alex supposes that is that.
--
He spends the latter half of his lunch hour in a chair, jacket folded neatly across his knees, his hand under the blanket as he hesitantly searches for her fingers.
--
When he forgets again the second day, it isn’t funny at all. He leaves the cup of coffee in the middle of her desk and catches Logan staring at him, like he wants to tell Bobby what to do with partners who can’t be there. Instead, Wheeler gets his attention, and Bobby watches Logan turn around with a wince, as if Wheeler reminds him of six painful things that should all be past tense.
--
He takes a taxi to the hospital. He’s just - he doesn’t want to drive. Lately, he’s gotten tired of choices, easy or not, and his answers nowadays always have sunken, meaty scars.
He runs into Logan coming out of Alex’s hospital room. And with a grin on his face, no less. He still isn’t sure what to make of Logan. He’s a decent detective, but there’s at least two times a month that Bobby wants to scatter his teeth across the squad room floor.
“Logan,” Bobby says, more a question than a greeting
“Relax,” Logan replies, holds up a bag of Skittles, and lets his mouth slide into a lazy smile. “Common interests.”
Bobby wants to ask how common, but instead asks, “How is she?”
“Good.” Logan continues to talk, tells Goren that this is his thing, but what Goren hears is the quiet that happens when God gains on a person.
--
He takes a seat and says nothing. She looks at him. Turns away. Looks back at him. He won’t talk until she does. Her words have no in between and when she does speak, it means something.
“Last time I was in the hospital,” she starts, with no intention of finishing.
“Yeah,” he says.
He doesn’t remember her nephew’s name, something traditional, but she showed him a photograph once. He has that Eames mouth, those thin, tight lips. Bobby shifted in his seat and tried to recall the last time he had found something beautiful and not traced it back to her.
“You don’t have to sit here, you know,” she says. He waits for the comment to brush off his concern and she doesn’t disappoint. “Besides, the nurses aren’t even hot.”
“I don’t want a nurse.”
“I don’t blame you. She gives me the creeps. That doctor,” she paused, and smirked at him, her nose crinkling in that way it does. He feels like he’s getting away with something. “He looks like an extra from a Tarantino movie.”
“Hmm.”
“Seriously, I’m fine,” she reaffirms, a bit too late to be casual.
“No, no, it’s - it’s okay. I’m used to this.” He wonders what this moment will mean to him years from now. Him and Alex sitting here, both probably half-depressed, occasionally amazed at the comfort found in appalling things. “My mother,” he clarifies, as if it’s necessary.
“Holidays spent at bedsides,” she murmurs. He is impossible to open and she stares at him as if she’s lost her place. “She’s killing you, Bobby.”
He refuses to meet her eyes. The pained look on his face is what happens when he disagrees with the subtle shift in a moment. He always stands for what’s coming. Of course, he thinks he’s caused it all.
--
He calls his mother on the way back to the station. All she wants to talk about is her cancer. He is quiet and scared because his mother is really dying and he’s only familiar with pain that isn’t immediate.
I want to live, Bobby, she breathes, slow and confident into the phone. I want to live forever.
“Then don’t scream,” he tells his mother, who is not Alex.
--
A shadow slides over his desk and Bobby thinks if it’s Ross, again, he will not be responsible for what happens. He’s been anxious since Alex called him that morning and said she’d be released from the hospital later that day. What she did not tell him: she needs a ride or his friend’s daughter has made her feel sad and destroyed.
“This is Wheeler,” Logan says, points a thumb to his left. “My new partner.”
“Nice to meet you,” Bobby tells her, awkwardly gathering a pile of papers along with his portfolio. “I have to go,” he says, but doesn’t move. Bobby’s looming over his desk, appearing slightly panic-stricken and with his hands in odd shapes, obviously searching for something. “Ah,” he exclaims, triumphantly clutching car keys.
He pauses for a moment in front of Wheeler, taking in the freckles, the slight overbite, her hair the color of a dying fire.
“You’re tall,” he says, his eyebrow aslant, and leaves.
“Huh.” Wheeler shrugs and turns to Logan. “He seems nice.”
--
When Bobby arrives, he finds her room empty, and makes a beeline for the small bathroom near her bed. He opens the door without knocking, grateful that they are so quiet in the way they trust each other.
She turns around at the sound of the door opening and clutches a thin blue sweater against her chest. He has seen enough: the tattoo on her shoulder blade, a soft spot in her belly where the baby first rested. Her body is not young.
“I can’t,” she says.
He takes the sweater from her hands, slips it over her head, and quietly allows his heart to break.
--
“I’m just going to check,” he points to the bathroom, and she nods.
He walks into the room slowly to make sure there wasn’t anything she had forgotten or was too proud to tell him she couldn’t handle. He finds her hospital gown in the middle of the floor like an island. He exhales loudly through his nose while his arms fold and he briefly hesitates with his ambivalence.
“Bobby?” she calls.
“It’s fine, everything is,” he slows at the lie, eyes lingering on the gown. “Give me a second.”
He picks up the gown, lets his hands wrap around this thing he hates. He folds it and folds it until it’s so small no one will ever find it and thinks about the parts of Alex that saw something so ugly they won’t ever come back.
--
“Going the wrong way,” she says, squinting against the sunlight.
“No.” He carefully checks the rearview mirror and counts to five before signaling his left turn. “We’re stopping somewhere.” He notes her quirked eyebrow and admits, “Your parents’ house.”
“My parents?” she asks, shutting her eyes.
“They should see you.” He tilts his head in that way he tilts his head. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
“One condition,” she offers, crossing her arms. “You’re coming with.”
“What?” he asks, shaking his head. “I’ve never-”
“That’s exactly why,” she responds, smugly.
Alex sporadically hums 'Dancing Queen' for the remainder of the drive and he almost forgets.
--
A floorboard creaks beneath her left foot and she turns to him, places a hand on his forearm.
“Now,” she nods back towards the front door. “While you’ve still got a chance.”
He seems puzzled and she rolls her eyes at his uncharacteristic denseness.
“I counted six cars out front, not including my parents’. What happened three days ago-again, not your fault-is something they want me to forget.”
He still doesn’t understand, but if the look on her face is any indication, he’s run out of chances to tell her. The sudden sound of hurried footsteps is the only warning he gets before sixteen people of varying sexes and ages spill into the room. Loud and smiling, some obviously inebriated, they surround Alex, him by proximity, and he feels like prey. He cannot see Alex’s face, but is positive she’s wearing a tight, uncomfortable smile. He can sympathize, as neither of them knows what to do with affection, especially when it’s gratuitous.
Everyone’s moving closer, arms outstretched and fingers wriggling, and that’s when he gets it. More than a dozen people are trying to greet Alex at the same time. The remaining four unnamed family members are after Bobby, their hands between his shoulder blades, a single one wrapped firmly around his wrist, tugging, though not towards any direction in particular.
He turns around, tries to get a look at her, sees a pair of hands pushing the hair away from her face, the way she’s slightly red from the attention. He liked it when she blushed, though it made him wonder how far down it went. The feeling he has right now, he wants to wrap it around him. He rubs his hands over his face and wills himself not to forget. She is still standing here beside him and it is a knee to the chest. He takes it and won’t let go.
“Bobby?” she asks, worriedly, but what he hears is Alex breathing.
--
Bobby finds her father two rooms away. The older man makes the first move.
“You ever meet Joe?” he asks, and slips something into his pocket.
“That’s-uh, well.” Bobby sees parts of Alex in her father. It’s the lack of eye contact and sparse language. “Quite an opener you’ve got there, sir.”
“Firm handshake. Smile like a white picket fence.” He fingers something in his pocket and Bobby’s head tilts. “He’s the kind of guy that when he died, a bit of you died right along with him.”
“I’m sorry,” he stops, holds up a hand, “to interrupt, but your, uh, pocket? Is there something-”
“Yeah,” the other man replies, hesitantly, and takes the item from his pocket. It’s a necklace, a tiny cross on a gold chain. “Joe gave this to her. She hasn’t worn it since the funeral.”
Alex has never once mentioned her dead husband, but it is not hard for Bobby to imagine loving someone and finding no comfort in it. Her father clears his throat.
“Do something for me, okay?” he asks, and slides a hand onto Bobby’s shoulder.
“Sure,” Bobby says, and hopes it’s enough.
--
He finds her in the kitchen, near the back door, holding an untouched beer. Face blank, she’s staring out into the backyard, and he hates when he can’t make something from what he knows.
“I met your father.”
“Really?” She smirks and the weight of their earlier conversation slips away. “How bad was he?”
“He’s, you know. He’s a father.”
“Yeah,” she replies, staring at him quizzically. “I figured.” She watches him for another moment, and adds, “You’re in full-on fidget mode, Bobby. Just spit it out.”
He smiles nervously, feels something blossoming in his throat, and knows his face is in motion. The windows are all open, the world’s breathing loud into the house, and he leans down towards her, his profile melting away in her face.
“Your father asked me,” he extends his hand, the necklace hanging off the tip of his index finger. “He asked me to give this to you. Give it back.”
She slides the necklace from his finger, lets her hand fold around it, and stares out the window. The bottle in her other hand is sweating and he watches a drop run over her knuckles and along her wrist before falling to the floor.
“It was a robbery gone bad,” she says, her back still facing him. “Don’t they all?” She turns to face him and puts the beer on the counter. “Haven’t worn this in eight years.”
“It’s time to wear it again, maybe?” He bends until he catches her eyes. There is a pounding in his chest and he needs to get this right. “I think so.”
“You’re usually right,” she jokes, but it doesn’t reach her face. “And it matters. What you think.”
She puts on the necklace and flicks her hair out of her face, signaling the end of their conversation. She’s shaken the cross askew and he takes a finger to her neck. When he moves to straighten it, he-she-it shifts, and his thumb into her clavicle is like a key.
--
He was two blocks from her house when she opened her eyes for a minute and looked at him. She grinned, a silly crooked smile due to her pain medication, and he almost hit the car in front of him. He stared at her.
“What?” she asked.
“That, uh, may have been the only time I’ve seen your teeth.”
“Yeah?”
“Ever,” he notes.
She smirked and slouched down into her seat.
“You must be tired.”
He’s never been more right; it seems a lifetime since she’s had a clear mind. Her abduction has only made it worse. All these blurred lines, the way they are framed, both together and apart, the confusing mixture of Alex and Goren and Eames and Bobby. She’d make a joke about possible selves, if only because he’d understand it, but isn’t in the mood.
“I don’t want to be,” she admits.
Alex's breathing is shallow, but only slightly. Her eyes close again and he wants to kiss her. Instead, he takes the last left before her house.
When he finally pulls up in front, she doesn’t move to get out of the car, she doesn’t move at all. Bobby is standing next to the open passenger side door, arms crossed, and he doesn’t have a clue. It’s one o’clock, already into those early-morning hours when everyone seems more vulnerable, overly eager and aching to connect.
“This wasn’t your fault,” she says.
“You said that earlier,” he responds, eyes lowered.
“I mean it more now,” she tells him, the admission pressing at the backs of her teeth.
He walks her to the door even though she denied his help several times. Six hours following her discharge from the hospital, he leaned against the new doorframe, squeezed her forearm through the softness of her sweater, and felt larger than the city he was in.
--
He falls onto his couch fully clothed, weary like so many others who don’t have answers, wishing his hands kept the shape of whatever they held.
--
Forty-five minutes and fifty dollars later she lets herself into his apartment. He is sleeping face down on his couch. The contents of his pockets are in a neat pile on the floor beside him as are his shoes. She sits down next to his feet and loudly clears her throat.
“Hey,” she whispers, causing him to sit up suddenly. There is a pattern on his face from the sofa cushion. “Thought you never slept.”
“Is anything, what’s wrong?” he asks, confused.
She doesn’t reply and he rubs a hand over his eyes before moving closer. He knows about proximity, what it can do, and like with any other person, he can't help but to feel entitled to her dark places.
“After,” she waves a hand, “everything, I’m still - I don’t know.” She always felt ridiculous when mentioning her feelings and paused to stifle a yawn. “I saved myself.”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “You did.”
Her exhaustion begins takes over and she stands and makes a beeline for what she assumes is his bedroom. He’s behind her, somewhat hesitantly, and lingers at the threshold.
“Nice thread count,” she says, a sheet pinched between her thumb and forefinger. She sets her purse on his nightstand but doesn’t remove her jacket. “I don’t get why I’m alive,” she adds, bluntly.
He watches as she lays down on the right side of his bed. He has to bite back a comment about taking off her shoes. He crosses his arms, stares at her back.
“I don’t get it either,” he admits.
He turns off the light, waits in the doorway until she falls asleep, and wonders why their stories always sound the same, another warm head going down in the dark.
--
After three hours, he’s awake and two rooms away, twitchy, and reading about post-traumatic stress disorder. He begins to lose interest when he realizes he’s reading about himself, his behavior for the last three months. He falls asleep with his nose planted in the middle of a paragraph, and even if he did love her, saying so wouldn’t make any sense whatsoever.
--
He reluctantly tells Logan about the night before over coffee the next day.
“She doesn’t know how to give up.” Barek sits down across from Bobby. Logan’s eyes don’t let her go. “She’s out?” Logan asks.
“Yeah. She’s um,” he pauses, waits for the waitress to leave. “Her house isn’t - she stayed with me.”
Barek’s eyebrow was suddenly interested, but she remained silent. Logan seemed somewhat enamored of his wheat waffles, but stopped to take a strawberry from his former partner’s plate.
“Where’s she now?” Logan asks.
“Asleep,” Bobby replies, and reaches for the sugar.
“You two always did look beautiful next to each other,” Barek comments, handing Logan a few packets of sweetener. “She’ll be fine. Just give her time.”
“So,” Bobby looks across the table. “Am I interrupting something, or …?”
“Nah,” Barek says, straightening suddenly. “We just ran into each other.”
“Really?” Bobby slides out of the booth and buttons his coat. He leaves some money for a tip, then adds, “Imagine that.”
“Didn’t you hear, Goren?” Logan asks, smirking. “World’s getting smaller.”
His eyes are hardly open during the ride home. The morning is heavy from the night before and through the window his city is blurry and beautiful.
--
He returns home and once again finds himself standing in the doorway of his bedroom for no reason on which he cares to dwell. Alex is snoring but he’s pretty sure it’s just the odd positioning of her neck and shoulders. He stares at her for a moment until he realizes the snoring has stopped.
“Eames?” he asks, tentatively. “You awake?”
She rolls over with an exaggerated sigh and stares at Bobby like he’s got some pain coming to him. He begins to fidget but doesn’t move from the doorway.
“You woke me with your brain,” she accuses.
“I was just-”
“With your brain,” she emphasizes, and sits up slowly. She makes a face, reaches under her left leg, and pulls out a book. “The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956. No wonder I slept so well.”
He just stares.
“You need to stop that.”
He is still staring at her, searching for new, painful things.
“Come here.” He walks very stiffly into the room and turns on the light. “Closer.”
She looks old and worn to him. He thinks it’s the lighting. He hopes it is.
“I’m fine,” she says, tiredly.
“I know.” His hands are clasped in front of him, one set of fingers curled into another, and he’s now staring at her like she’s a weapon. “You have-”
“No, see. You have to know that I’m fine.” There is a little quake in her voice and she’s trying to say she needs him. “I can’t go back to work with your eyes all big and worried on me.”
“My eyes don’t get big-” he attempts.
“Closer,” she says. He’s close enough that his knees hit the side of the mattress. “Sit.”
As soon as he’s seated she hands him her jacket, which he lays carefully across his knees, before she begins to take off her sweater. She drags it over her head, leaving her hair floating wildly from the static electricity. The sweater goes on top of her jacket and, okay, while she’s a bit different for now, he is not worried. They have always been this way with moments that aren’t supposed to last long, the letting go and the taking hold.
“I’m sorry,” he replies. She grabs his hand without warning and flattens it on her chest, over her heart, and he meets her eyes for the first time in what seems like years. Something slightly opens within him. “I don’t know what to do with people who get better.”
“Just look at me,” she tells him, her palm resting on the front of his shoulder, thumb underneath his shirt collar. “I’m okay.”
He nods, feels her warm heart under his hand, beating beating beating.
--
End 1
Rating: PG13
Who: Goren/Eames
Random: Starts post-Blind Spot and will cover the entire season.
Random 2: Thanks to piecesofalice, who is not dead.
Summary: There is a rumbling here.
Bobby has a fistful of Declan’s shirt when he gets the call. He leaves without a word and Declan comes to his own conclusion. He thinks of his daughter, lets his eyes roll heavenward, terrified and a little glad that she finally broke under her own rhythm.
--
He manages to catch up to her gurney before they whisk her off to be examined. He wraps a hand around one of the safety straps and doesn’t let go. As a result, Alex and her medical entourage come to a halt. The two paramedics look annoyed. The doctor on their right sighs loudly.
“Sir, you need to let us take care of your wife-”
“No,” Bobby says. “I’m not - we’re not married,” he corrects.
“Fiancée, then?” the doctor asks, uninterested. “Soul mate? Reason for living?” He signs off on Alex’s chart and hands it back to the paramedics. “Listen, you need to stay in the designated waiting area.”
He stares down at her, presses the tips of his fingers to his hairline, turns and abruptly leaves. Tries to leave. She’s curled her still-strong fingers into the folds of his shirt. He meets her eyes for the first time in seventeen hours, hating both himself and her, and thinks of his mother. Alex and his mother. His mother or Alex. These women. These tiny women and how he couldn't even stand it.
“Hey,” she says, her knuckles pressing into his side.
Her voice is so small and full of tenderness that he nearly gets upset. There will always be violence in his desire for her.
--
After Alex is asleep, he steps out into the hallway, runs a hand through his hair, and calls her mother. He keeps it short, as he is not in the mood. Bobby is courteous, but his feelings are not.
--
When she’s escorted from the room, he stares hard at Jo’s face, as if it bears a map of her father’s failures. He knows where to look. He’s stared at his own face the same way for years.
He turns to watch Declan through the observation window. Bobby wishes he didn’t have so many of these moments, the type he can’t remember later without turning them over in his hands, thinking I should’ve tried harder. It’s an old story with him.
--
“How long?” he asks when she’s awake. “Until you’re out of here,” he adds.
She considers him for a second. He’s the one that could use a sedative.
“Doctor says …” Alex starts, her voice thin and shaky, words abandoned halfway like untied shoelaces. “A day or two. Observation.”
He nods. There’s a flutter in his chest and he nearly panics until he realizes it’s only his cell phone vibrating. He reaches for it, but then remembers the message it displayed hours earlier, and decides against it.
He checks his watch, checks her eyes, checks checks checks -
“The, uh, nurse,” he gestures somewhere behind him, “said visiting hours are over at ten.”
“And we both know how good you are at following rules,” she comments.
Her eyes are as big as he’s ever seen them. Maybe he’s never really had the chance she keeps trying to give him.
“Yeah, well. I should look into that,” he replies, and moves his chair closer.
--
The next day he brings her a cup of coffee. He is exiting the elevator before he remembers she isn’t there. He smirks, thinks about the human brain and its cycles, and throws it away.
--
All he does for the majority of the morning is fill out paperwork. It is even more tedious than usual and he knows why, but tries not to think about it. It’s not that he feels guilty, or somehow responsible, but he feels something and anyone who knows him at all knows he hates things that can’t be classified, people who are constants despite how they are catalogued.
At quarter past eleven, Logan takes the seat across from him, and Bobby doesn’t bother to greet him for that particular reason. Ten minutes pass and Logan finally breaks the silence by clearing his throat.
“So,” his eyes roam Alex’s desk, “Me and Barek, we heard about Eames.”
Bobby is nearly rubbing the skin off the back of his neck at this point. He just wants to get through this week and then things will be back to normal. Alex will be out of the hospital, not in a healthcare-white room, not in a gown so familiar it makes him sick.
“We’re glad she’s okay.”
Bobby sighs, puts down his pen, and looks up at Logan. He’s playing with that ring on his finger again and Bobby finds it a bit comforting. It occurred to him he hadn’t seen Barek this morning, which was odd, as he usually saw her in passing.
“Where’s Barek?” Bobby asks.
Before Logan had a chance to answer, Ross shouted to him from the doorway of his office.
“Logan,” he calls, motioning him over. “Come meet your new partner.”
“That’s a good question, Goren,” Logan mutters, standing. He leaned towards Bobby with lifted eyebrows, and adds, “Who knows? This could be lucky number seven.”
The desk opposite his is too neat, too telling, and Ross has been staring at Bobby all morning like he’s being paid to do it. There is no coffee cup stain on his New York Times, no rustling of a candy wrapper, or the occasional uttered “shit” when she uses too much force and scatters candy across her desk.
He heads for the elevator, eyes wide and blinking, portfolio left behind on his desk.
--
He spends the first half of his lunch hour orbiting her hospital bed. He moves the various machines slightly to ensure they’re parallel with the bed’s frame, close enough to be within reach, but with enough space that even he can maneuver easily.
“You still look like hell,” she tells him. What she said was not a joke. She is aiming for something and her chest is heavy because she cares about this answer. “You okay?”
He looks over at her, stands up, and then looks down at her. She isn’t in the mood for one of his portentous silences and really doesn’t need him hovering over her hospital bed not saying a word while his face conveys an ever-changing array of punctuation marks. It makes her angry that he manages to create and then later avoid the same questions. He again takes a seat, eyes everywhere but on her face. Legs splayed, elbows resting on his knees, he suddenly stares at her and there is a flood in his eyes.
“I got into the wrong side of the car,” he tells her, the words distorted by the fingers over his mouth. “Three times.”
“Three times?” she asks, wryly.
“No, it’s - the third time, I caught myself. Had the door open, but didn’t get inside,” he responds. He seems to relax a little bit and stops using his fingers to cover up the parts of himself he doesn’t want her to see. “Technically, two and a half.”
“You need a chauffeur,” she states. “Technically.”
“No,” he says, staring straight into the face of the one thing he thought he could keep together. “I need you.”
A nurse walks into the room and Alex supposes that is that.
--
He spends the latter half of his lunch hour in a chair, jacket folded neatly across his knees, his hand under the blanket as he hesitantly searches for her fingers.
--
When he forgets again the second day, it isn’t funny at all. He leaves the cup of coffee in the middle of her desk and catches Logan staring at him, like he wants to tell Bobby what to do with partners who can’t be there. Instead, Wheeler gets his attention, and Bobby watches Logan turn around with a wince, as if Wheeler reminds him of six painful things that should all be past tense.
--
He takes a taxi to the hospital. He’s just - he doesn’t want to drive. Lately, he’s gotten tired of choices, easy or not, and his answers nowadays always have sunken, meaty scars.
He runs into Logan coming out of Alex’s hospital room. And with a grin on his face, no less. He still isn’t sure what to make of Logan. He’s a decent detective, but there’s at least two times a month that Bobby wants to scatter his teeth across the squad room floor.
“Logan,” Bobby says, more a question than a greeting
“Relax,” Logan replies, holds up a bag of Skittles, and lets his mouth slide into a lazy smile. “Common interests.”
Bobby wants to ask how common, but instead asks, “How is she?”
“Good.” Logan continues to talk, tells Goren that this is his thing, but what Goren hears is the quiet that happens when God gains on a person.
--
He takes a seat and says nothing. She looks at him. Turns away. Looks back at him. He won’t talk until she does. Her words have no in between and when she does speak, it means something.
“Last time I was in the hospital,” she starts, with no intention of finishing.
“Yeah,” he says.
He doesn’t remember her nephew’s name, something traditional, but she showed him a photograph once. He has that Eames mouth, those thin, tight lips. Bobby shifted in his seat and tried to recall the last time he had found something beautiful and not traced it back to her.
“You don’t have to sit here, you know,” she says. He waits for the comment to brush off his concern and she doesn’t disappoint. “Besides, the nurses aren’t even hot.”
“I don’t want a nurse.”
“I don’t blame you. She gives me the creeps. That doctor,” she paused, and smirked at him, her nose crinkling in that way it does. He feels like he’s getting away with something. “He looks like an extra from a Tarantino movie.”
“Hmm.”
“Seriously, I’m fine,” she reaffirms, a bit too late to be casual.
“No, no, it’s - it’s okay. I’m used to this.” He wonders what this moment will mean to him years from now. Him and Alex sitting here, both probably half-depressed, occasionally amazed at the comfort found in appalling things. “My mother,” he clarifies, as if it’s necessary.
“Holidays spent at bedsides,” she murmurs. He is impossible to open and she stares at him as if she’s lost her place. “She’s killing you, Bobby.”
He refuses to meet her eyes. The pained look on his face is what happens when he disagrees with the subtle shift in a moment. He always stands for what’s coming. Of course, he thinks he’s caused it all.
--
He calls his mother on the way back to the station. All she wants to talk about is her cancer. He is quiet and scared because his mother is really dying and he’s only familiar with pain that isn’t immediate.
I want to live, Bobby, she breathes, slow and confident into the phone. I want to live forever.
“Then don’t scream,” he tells his mother, who is not Alex.
--
A shadow slides over his desk and Bobby thinks if it’s Ross, again, he will not be responsible for what happens. He’s been anxious since Alex called him that morning and said she’d be released from the hospital later that day. What she did not tell him: she needs a ride or his friend’s daughter has made her feel sad and destroyed.
“This is Wheeler,” Logan says, points a thumb to his left. “My new partner.”
“Nice to meet you,” Bobby tells her, awkwardly gathering a pile of papers along with his portfolio. “I have to go,” he says, but doesn’t move. Bobby’s looming over his desk, appearing slightly panic-stricken and with his hands in odd shapes, obviously searching for something. “Ah,” he exclaims, triumphantly clutching car keys.
He pauses for a moment in front of Wheeler, taking in the freckles, the slight overbite, her hair the color of a dying fire.
“You’re tall,” he says, his eyebrow aslant, and leaves.
“Huh.” Wheeler shrugs and turns to Logan. “He seems nice.”
--
When Bobby arrives, he finds her room empty, and makes a beeline for the small bathroom near her bed. He opens the door without knocking, grateful that they are so quiet in the way they trust each other.
She turns around at the sound of the door opening and clutches a thin blue sweater against her chest. He has seen enough: the tattoo on her shoulder blade, a soft spot in her belly where the baby first rested. Her body is not young.
“I can’t,” she says.
He takes the sweater from her hands, slips it over her head, and quietly allows his heart to break.
--
“I’m just going to check,” he points to the bathroom, and she nods.
He walks into the room slowly to make sure there wasn’t anything she had forgotten or was too proud to tell him she couldn’t handle. He finds her hospital gown in the middle of the floor like an island. He exhales loudly through his nose while his arms fold and he briefly hesitates with his ambivalence.
“Bobby?” she calls.
“It’s fine, everything is,” he slows at the lie, eyes lingering on the gown. “Give me a second.”
He picks up the gown, lets his hands wrap around this thing he hates. He folds it and folds it until it’s so small no one will ever find it and thinks about the parts of Alex that saw something so ugly they won’t ever come back.
--
“Going the wrong way,” she says, squinting against the sunlight.
“No.” He carefully checks the rearview mirror and counts to five before signaling his left turn. “We’re stopping somewhere.” He notes her quirked eyebrow and admits, “Your parents’ house.”
“My parents?” she asks, shutting her eyes.
“They should see you.” He tilts his head in that way he tilts his head. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
“One condition,” she offers, crossing her arms. “You’re coming with.”
“What?” he asks, shaking his head. “I’ve never-”
“That’s exactly why,” she responds, smugly.
Alex sporadically hums 'Dancing Queen' for the remainder of the drive and he almost forgets.
--
A floorboard creaks beneath her left foot and she turns to him, places a hand on his forearm.
“Now,” she nods back towards the front door. “While you’ve still got a chance.”
He seems puzzled and she rolls her eyes at his uncharacteristic denseness.
“I counted six cars out front, not including my parents’. What happened three days ago-again, not your fault-is something they want me to forget.”
He still doesn’t understand, but if the look on her face is any indication, he’s run out of chances to tell her. The sudden sound of hurried footsteps is the only warning he gets before sixteen people of varying sexes and ages spill into the room. Loud and smiling, some obviously inebriated, they surround Alex, him by proximity, and he feels like prey. He cannot see Alex’s face, but is positive she’s wearing a tight, uncomfortable smile. He can sympathize, as neither of them knows what to do with affection, especially when it’s gratuitous.
Everyone’s moving closer, arms outstretched and fingers wriggling, and that’s when he gets it. More than a dozen people are trying to greet Alex at the same time. The remaining four unnamed family members are after Bobby, their hands between his shoulder blades, a single one wrapped firmly around his wrist, tugging, though not towards any direction in particular.
He turns around, tries to get a look at her, sees a pair of hands pushing the hair away from her face, the way she’s slightly red from the attention. He liked it when she blushed, though it made him wonder how far down it went. The feeling he has right now, he wants to wrap it around him. He rubs his hands over his face and wills himself not to forget. She is still standing here beside him and it is a knee to the chest. He takes it and won’t let go.
“Bobby?” she asks, worriedly, but what he hears is Alex breathing.
--
Bobby finds her father two rooms away. The older man makes the first move.
“You ever meet Joe?” he asks, and slips something into his pocket.
“That’s-uh, well.” Bobby sees parts of Alex in her father. It’s the lack of eye contact and sparse language. “Quite an opener you’ve got there, sir.”
“Firm handshake. Smile like a white picket fence.” He fingers something in his pocket and Bobby’s head tilts. “He’s the kind of guy that when he died, a bit of you died right along with him.”
“I’m sorry,” he stops, holds up a hand, “to interrupt, but your, uh, pocket? Is there something-”
“Yeah,” the other man replies, hesitantly, and takes the item from his pocket. It’s a necklace, a tiny cross on a gold chain. “Joe gave this to her. She hasn’t worn it since the funeral.”
Alex has never once mentioned her dead husband, but it is not hard for Bobby to imagine loving someone and finding no comfort in it. Her father clears his throat.
“Do something for me, okay?” he asks, and slides a hand onto Bobby’s shoulder.
“Sure,” Bobby says, and hopes it’s enough.
--
He finds her in the kitchen, near the back door, holding an untouched beer. Face blank, she’s staring out into the backyard, and he hates when he can’t make something from what he knows.
“I met your father.”
“Really?” She smirks and the weight of their earlier conversation slips away. “How bad was he?”
“He’s, you know. He’s a father.”
“Yeah,” she replies, staring at him quizzically. “I figured.” She watches him for another moment, and adds, “You’re in full-on fidget mode, Bobby. Just spit it out.”
He smiles nervously, feels something blossoming in his throat, and knows his face is in motion. The windows are all open, the world’s breathing loud into the house, and he leans down towards her, his profile melting away in her face.
“Your father asked me,” he extends his hand, the necklace hanging off the tip of his index finger. “He asked me to give this to you. Give it back.”
She slides the necklace from his finger, lets her hand fold around it, and stares out the window. The bottle in her other hand is sweating and he watches a drop run over her knuckles and along her wrist before falling to the floor.
“It was a robbery gone bad,” she says, her back still facing him. “Don’t they all?” She turns to face him and puts the beer on the counter. “Haven’t worn this in eight years.”
“It’s time to wear it again, maybe?” He bends until he catches her eyes. There is a pounding in his chest and he needs to get this right. “I think so.”
“You’re usually right,” she jokes, but it doesn’t reach her face. “And it matters. What you think.”
She puts on the necklace and flicks her hair out of her face, signaling the end of their conversation. She’s shaken the cross askew and he takes a finger to her neck. When he moves to straighten it, he-she-it shifts, and his thumb into her clavicle is like a key.
--
He was two blocks from her house when she opened her eyes for a minute and looked at him. She grinned, a silly crooked smile due to her pain medication, and he almost hit the car in front of him. He stared at her.
“What?” she asked.
“That, uh, may have been the only time I’ve seen your teeth.”
“Yeah?”
“Ever,” he notes.
She smirked and slouched down into her seat.
“You must be tired.”
He’s never been more right; it seems a lifetime since she’s had a clear mind. Her abduction has only made it worse. All these blurred lines, the way they are framed, both together and apart, the confusing mixture of Alex and Goren and Eames and Bobby. She’d make a joke about possible selves, if only because he’d understand it, but isn’t in the mood.
“I don’t want to be,” she admits.
Alex's breathing is shallow, but only slightly. Her eyes close again and he wants to kiss her. Instead, he takes the last left before her house.
When he finally pulls up in front, she doesn’t move to get out of the car, she doesn’t move at all. Bobby is standing next to the open passenger side door, arms crossed, and he doesn’t have a clue. It’s one o’clock, already into those early-morning hours when everyone seems more vulnerable, overly eager and aching to connect.
“This wasn’t your fault,” she says.
“You said that earlier,” he responds, eyes lowered.
“I mean it more now,” she tells him, the admission pressing at the backs of her teeth.
He walks her to the door even though she denied his help several times. Six hours following her discharge from the hospital, he leaned against the new doorframe, squeezed her forearm through the softness of her sweater, and felt larger than the city he was in.
--
He falls onto his couch fully clothed, weary like so many others who don’t have answers, wishing his hands kept the shape of whatever they held.
--
Forty-five minutes and fifty dollars later she lets herself into his apartment. He is sleeping face down on his couch. The contents of his pockets are in a neat pile on the floor beside him as are his shoes. She sits down next to his feet and loudly clears her throat.
“Hey,” she whispers, causing him to sit up suddenly. There is a pattern on his face from the sofa cushion. “Thought you never slept.”
“Is anything, what’s wrong?” he asks, confused.
She doesn’t reply and he rubs a hand over his eyes before moving closer. He knows about proximity, what it can do, and like with any other person, he can't help but to feel entitled to her dark places.
“After,” she waves a hand, “everything, I’m still - I don’t know.” She always felt ridiculous when mentioning her feelings and paused to stifle a yawn. “I saved myself.”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “You did.”
Her exhaustion begins takes over and she stands and makes a beeline for what she assumes is his bedroom. He’s behind her, somewhat hesitantly, and lingers at the threshold.
“Nice thread count,” she says, a sheet pinched between her thumb and forefinger. She sets her purse on his nightstand but doesn’t remove her jacket. “I don’t get why I’m alive,” she adds, bluntly.
He watches as she lays down on the right side of his bed. He has to bite back a comment about taking off her shoes. He crosses his arms, stares at her back.
“I don’t get it either,” he admits.
He turns off the light, waits in the doorway until she falls asleep, and wonders why their stories always sound the same, another warm head going down in the dark.
--
After three hours, he’s awake and two rooms away, twitchy, and reading about post-traumatic stress disorder. He begins to lose interest when he realizes he’s reading about himself, his behavior for the last three months. He falls asleep with his nose planted in the middle of a paragraph, and even if he did love her, saying so wouldn’t make any sense whatsoever.
--
He reluctantly tells Logan about the night before over coffee the next day.
“She doesn’t know how to give up.” Barek sits down across from Bobby. Logan’s eyes don’t let her go. “She’s out?” Logan asks.
“Yeah. She’s um,” he pauses, waits for the waitress to leave. “Her house isn’t - she stayed with me.”
Barek’s eyebrow was suddenly interested, but she remained silent. Logan seemed somewhat enamored of his wheat waffles, but stopped to take a strawberry from his former partner’s plate.
“Where’s she now?” Logan asks.
“Asleep,” Bobby replies, and reaches for the sugar.
“You two always did look beautiful next to each other,” Barek comments, handing Logan a few packets of sweetener. “She’ll be fine. Just give her time.”
“So,” Bobby looks across the table. “Am I interrupting something, or …?”
“Nah,” Barek says, straightening suddenly. “We just ran into each other.”
“Really?” Bobby slides out of the booth and buttons his coat. He leaves some money for a tip, then adds, “Imagine that.”
“Didn’t you hear, Goren?” Logan asks, smirking. “World’s getting smaller.”
His eyes are hardly open during the ride home. The morning is heavy from the night before and through the window his city is blurry and beautiful.
--
He returns home and once again finds himself standing in the doorway of his bedroom for no reason on which he cares to dwell. Alex is snoring but he’s pretty sure it’s just the odd positioning of her neck and shoulders. He stares at her for a moment until he realizes the snoring has stopped.
“Eames?” he asks, tentatively. “You awake?”
She rolls over with an exaggerated sigh and stares at Bobby like he’s got some pain coming to him. He begins to fidget but doesn’t move from the doorway.
“You woke me with your brain,” she accuses.
“I was just-”
“With your brain,” she emphasizes, and sits up slowly. She makes a face, reaches under her left leg, and pulls out a book. “The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956. No wonder I slept so well.”
He just stares.
“You need to stop that.”
He is still staring at her, searching for new, painful things.
“Come here.” He walks very stiffly into the room and turns on the light. “Closer.”
She looks old and worn to him. He thinks it’s the lighting. He hopes it is.
“I’m fine,” she says, tiredly.
“I know.” His hands are clasped in front of him, one set of fingers curled into another, and he’s now staring at her like she’s a weapon. “You have-”
“No, see. You have to know that I’m fine.” There is a little quake in her voice and she’s trying to say she needs him. “I can’t go back to work with your eyes all big and worried on me.”
“My eyes don’t get big-” he attempts.
“Closer,” she says. He’s close enough that his knees hit the side of the mattress. “Sit.”
As soon as he’s seated she hands him her jacket, which he lays carefully across his knees, before she begins to take off her sweater. She drags it over her head, leaving her hair floating wildly from the static electricity. The sweater goes on top of her jacket and, okay, while she’s a bit different for now, he is not worried. They have always been this way with moments that aren’t supposed to last long, the letting go and the taking hold.
“I’m sorry,” he replies. She grabs his hand without warning and flattens it on her chest, over her heart, and he meets her eyes for the first time in what seems like years. Something slightly opens within him. “I don’t know what to do with people who get better.”
“Just look at me,” she tells him, her palm resting on the front of his shoulder, thumb underneath his shirt collar. “I’m okay.”
He nods, feels her warm heart under his hand, beating beating beating.
--
End 1