Take Your Punches

"Oh my God, Bobby, you should have had stitches for this!" Eames cupped his jawbone in her hand. "How bad are you hurt?"

He made only a split second of eye contact. "Oh, you know, it's not bad, it's just-" As her right hand trailed down his ribs, he winced and pulled back, sucking in his breath.

"You broke something?" She asked him, keeping her hand gently resting on his ribs.

He pushed her hands away. "No, you know, it's just… bruised or something."

Alex frowned at him. "Why didn't you go to the ER?"

He rolled his eyes and slowly turned away from her. "I, you know, it doesn't matter. Too late now, who cares?" Bobby made his way to a kitchen chair. He was moving carefully and at a snail's pace. Something was definitely wrong.

"It's not too late," Alex said. "You need to see a doctor."

He shrugged his shoulder and reached out for the glass of water he'd been sipping before she arrived.

"Goren," she said, shaking her head. "I have never seen anyone so damned stubborn."

"Look, Eames, you're giving me a headache."

"I could say the same."

"I'm fine. I just need a little time, that's all."

"What the hell happened, anyway?"

He bit his bottom lip and closed his eyes. Bobby shook his head slightly.

"Aw, c'mon, Goren! If you won't let me take you to a doctor, the least you can do is tell me how you ended up this way."

He scraped his teeth against his bottom lip, and the muscle at the hinge of his jaw twitched. "You remember I was going to see my mother Friday?"

"Yeah," Alex said, pulling up a chair. "You left early that day."

Bobby looked away again. This time, he chewed on the inside of his cheek. He hated to talk about his family. Eames was a friend, and he'd told her more than most people, but he knew she couldn't possibly hear the whole truth without casting some kind of judgment on him. It was only natural, after all. Apples don't fall far from trees.

The tips of her fingers landed on his thigh. He snapped his head back in her direction.

"I, uh… my… my brother… he was there."

"He was?" Alex hadn't heard Bobby mention his brother beyond childhood stories. As far as she knew, he was dead or a million miles away or something.

"Y-yeah." Bobby started to rest his head on his hand, but his fingers hit the cut under his black eye and he lifted it right back up. He flattened his hand on the table instead, tracing a path around each finger with his eyes. "He, uh… he shows up now and then." Bobby looked away and chuckled under his breath. "It's never a good thing, really, when Frank shows up. I always forget that."

Alex almost asked the question, but she was afraid he might clam up again. Bobby was talking, and she told herself to be patient and listen.

"Ma was… she was," he was obviously upset at the memory, but he laughed about it as he told her. "… pretty worked up." He paused again to chew on his lip, and then gave Alex a fleeting glance. "I hate to see her that way."

Alex scooted her chair in closer to his and replaced her hand on his leg, just above his knee. "I know you do, Bobby."

"It's just that Frank, he… he gets her like that, with his sob stories about how life has been so unfair to him! Whenever he sees her, I think he convinces her that… that…" Bobby's words trailed away. He didn't know how to explain it. He'd witnessed his brother and his mother interact all his life, and he could explain the result with ease, but he couldn't explain the conversation that got them there. It was crazy, paranoid rambling. Frank dished it out, his mother lapped it up, and then they both ran with it until she was out of her head and everything was Bobby's fault.

"Bobby, I'm listening," Alex said softly.

He laughed about it again and shook his head. "It's, you know… it's all my fault. Everything. I should do more, I should be more, I should give more. I should take care of them, the both of them." His hands got so fidgety he craved a cigarette just for the sake of giving them something worthwhile to do.

The worry in Alex's eyes was clear. It went well beyond his physical condition, now.

"She got so bad, I had to… to call in the nurse."

He shifted again, and made himself wince. Alex gave his thigh a squeeze. She knew how much he hated to see his mother sedated. She could only imagine what it must have been like, his mother fighting until they subdued her and then restrained her until they could get the needle in her arm. And then the forced calm, the quietness after all that mayhem. It was like the eye of the storm for him. The quiet wasn't real, the storm was still raging and it was sure to come back full force, only Bobby never knew when.

"I… I made Frank take a walk with me."

Alex's heart caught in her throat. Again, she wanted to ask the question.

"He's my brother, Alex!" Bobby cried. "Why can't he just…?!" He shook his head and turned away again, and his face turned red as he forced himself not to shed any tears.

Her patience was at an end. "Did he? Did Frank do this to you?"

His nod was a quirky mishmash of yes and no. "We were arguing, and I shoved him. And… " Again, the pressure built up, but he refused to let his emotions get the best of him. After a moment, he took a shaky breath. "Alex, he's my brother."

"He hit you?"

Bobby nodded.

"And you didn't defend yourself."

Bobby shrugged. Now was the time when she would see just how fucked up he was. Now was her chance to run like hell.

Alex didn't run. She leaned in until she was off her chair. Stooping, she gently lifted the hem of his shirt and got a good look at the bruising on his ribs. "God, Bobby," she breathed.

For just a moment, she looked into his eyes. She wasn't running away, and instead of rejection, all he saw there was concern.

"How is she now?" Alex asked, straightening up to root through his cabinets. She found the bottle of ibuprophin and shook out two. "Your mom?"

"Uh," he said, surprised and relieved by the question. "Better. She was pretty out of it yesterday, but today she sounded, you know… okay."

Alex handed him the pills. "I'm glad, Bobby."

THE END