Title: Little Ghost
Author: Scribere Est Agere
Pairing: Goren/Eames
Spoilers: After Frame
Rating: T
Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me.
Summary: Are you really here? Am I?
/
Little ghost, little ghost
One I'm scared of the most
The White Stripes
/
He wakes up and everyone is still dead. Funny how that happens, keeps happening. He wakes at odd hours these days and nights, lies on his back and stares at the ceiling, the clock, the square window of light that keeps on getting lighter.
He is starting to expect someone he knows to die every single day now. He wonders, against his will, who is next.
Rodgers?
Ross?
Lewis?
His barber?
The guy who sells him his morning coffee?
Eames?
His feet hit the floor then, every time, and he fumbles and rushes to get ready, to shower and dress and get to work because he only sees her at work and he wonders, every morning these days, if he's going to see her ever again.
/
The woman is dead. She is in her early 40s maybe, successful, accomplished, married with children, loved and cherished, and now she's dead.
Very dead.
Bobby crouches over her, studies her sprawled arms and legs, her hair dark with blood. He tries to be objective because his job depends on objectivity, but it's getting harder every day. Focus, he thinks. Okay. Surprised, he thinks. Attacked, from behind. Someone she knew? The husband? No. Someone the husband knew? Possibly.
He can't move. He can't think anymore. Attractive woman, from what he can see. She's small, small form, small hands curled into smaller balls. Hair was probably light, but it's hard to tell with all the blood. Was she happy, before she died? Would the husband miss her? Who knew? Did she at least do some of the things she'd wanted to do before—
"Bobby?" She is very near to him. He can feel her warm breath on the side of his face. She is studying him. He hasn't moved in some time. His legs are starting to cramp and he can feel sweat along his hairline. He turns to look at her.
"What are you thinking?" she says.
Eames.
She's alive, very much. She's not dead.
Not yet, anyway.
/
She takes him out for lunch. He watches her eat her sandwich as he picks at his. She notices, of course.
"You not hungry?" She wipes her mouth on her napkin, takes a drink of water. She's concerned but doesn't want to make it too obvious. He knows she's concerned because she's doing that frown thing and she keeps tossing her hair away from her eyes with a twitchy motion.
He shrugs. He feels like he's swallowed something sharp and bitter. He's having trouble breathing. He pushes his plate away, takes up his own napkin, begins to shred it. She watches him do this for a long moment, then reaches out and puts her hand over his. He stops. Startled, he looks up, watches her watching him.
"What are you thinking?" she says again.
"I can't protect you," he finally says. There.
She gives him a look halfway between a smile and a frown and flicks her hair.
"What do you mean?"
"I can't…keep you safe." He is speaking very quietly and she has to lean forward to hear him over the lunch-hour noises; silverware on china, heels on linoleum, voices talking and laughing and arguing and people generally living life all around them.
She tightens her fingers on his hands. She has small hands, he notices.
"You don't have to."
Yes I do.
He shakes his head. He's not being clear, he knows, but he also knows he can't say, possibly ever, what he does want to say. All the noises around him. He can barely think. He shakes his head again, starts to smile, then stops.
Oh God, he's going to cry. How fucking embarrassing. He blinks hard, two, three times. And, of course, she notices.
"Bobby…"
"What am I thinking? I'm thinking no more funerals. No more. I'll fucking die before I have to attend one more goddamn funeral." He laughs. She doesn't. He pulls his hands free with a jerk and motions wildly for the bill.
/
He can't reach her one morning. She's late (unusual) and not answering her cell (odd) and of course all he can hear out the office window is the sound of sirens wailing, near and far.
"Where's your partner?" Ross asks. Bobby hits redial, again. Then she walks in.
"Sorry," she says to Ross. "My car and my phone chose this morning to, effectively, die." She drops her coat and bag on her desk, sighs, looks at Bobby who is staring as if he's seen a ghost.
"What is it?" She reaches up. "Do I have bed head or something?"
Funny, but not really, how every time she leaves the room these days he wonders if he'll ever see her again.
/
He meets Rodgers in the hallway. She nods coolly, professionally. He stops her.
"Listen. Uh…I just."
She doesn't say a word. Sometimes he hates her a little. Sometimes she just scares him.
"I've been dealing with a lot of…shit, lately."
"I see death every single day, Goren. It's my job."
"I know."
"No, you don't. But you don't have to." She blinks, softens a tiny bit. "And it's always different when it's someone you know."
"Thank you."
"I know."
/
The woman is dead. Early 40s, maybe, slight, attractive, successful, accomplished. Not married, no children, but still, very much loved, and now very much mourned.
He crouches in front of her, studies her sprawled form, the light hair darkened with blood. He feels his pulse quicken, his breath hitch in his chest. There is no noise. It's very quiet.
He reaches down, pushes the hair, stiff with blood, away from her face.
Eames.
Oh, oh—
Then he wakes up.
/
Alcohol, he finds, is a most effective means of delaying the barrage of memories attacking him these days. A way of keeping the ghosts at bay, so to speak. Yeah, yeah, he has to face them all when he sobers up, but for awhile, for a few blessed hours he can forget, he can float away, think about something other than death, watch TV, smile a bit.
Sometimes he calls her up, late at night, just to shoot the shit, just to see if she's home. She always is and she always sounds both pleased and wary to hear from him. He tries to ignore the wary part.
"Am I keeping you from anything?" he always asks.
She always says reading or watching television or sometimes cleaning, which always makes him smile. Eames with yellow rubber gloves and a can of Comet. A toilet brush, a bottle of Windex.
Tonight he holds the phone close to his ear and the glass of Scotch close to his mouth. Sometimes he doesn't know why he says the things he does, really. He just needs to tell someone and everyone else is dead.
"Frank was cremated. Did I tell you that?"
"No, you didn't."
"We talked about it once, years ago. We both said it was the way we wanted to go. No bodies rotting in the ground, y'know?"
She sighs.
"Fuck. We were probably both drunk. I hope he meant it."
She laughs a little.
"I have his ashes. Right here."
She stops laughing.
"Oh, Bobby."
"I know! I'm like, what the fuck am I supposed to do with these? It's like, have a funeral? Who would come? His dealer?"
He drinks. Suddenly he's sorry he called. He really needs to stop calling her when he's almost drunk. Dangerous things, things that swirl around quite safely in his sober brain, have a way of actually coming out of his mouth when he's been drinking.
"I'm surrounded by ghosts. I live with them, eat with them." He stops, shakes his head. The glass taps against the phone. "I sleep with them."
"Bobby—"
"Everyone I know…everyone I love…has become a ghost."
"I'm not a ghost."
"I know. But sometimes I think you're fading away and I couldn't handle it if it happened to you, too."
/
The woman is dead. The woman is very dead and he knows who it is without touching her, without moving the hair aside. He knows because of how he feels when he looks at her.
Panic. Horror. Planets colliding and bursting into balls of flame.
Eames.
No. No no no.
Then he wakes up. He blinks.
Eames.
She's still here.
/
"I was worried," she says simply. She smells like night air. Her cheeks are flushed and she's slightly out of breath, like she hurried to get here. He can only stare. The smell of Scotch fills the room but he is now cold sober.
"I'm…fine," he says. His voice sounds funny, like he just woke up, which he did, but still. He clears his throat, struggles to sit up on the couch. He's so absurdly happy he could cry.
She's sitting close, but not so close he could reach out and grab her or anything. She's vibrating with some kind of energy he can't quite pinpoint just yet. It's dark in the room, but he can see her clearly, like she's glowing.
"I just…I feel…so badly for you, and everything that's happened." Now she's going to cry; he can see the shine of tears, can hear it in her voice.
"You're here…out of pity?" It comes out harsh, but he finds he doesn't really care about the answer. She's here. Fine. Great. He's more than okay with that fact.
She shakes her head hard. "No. No. Not pity. Never." He believes her. "It's…life. It's too…short."
He nods.
"And I'm just really tired of death."
"Me, too."
She moves closer, then, closer than she's ever moved to him before. She puts her arms around his neck and she hugs him. At least, he thinks it's a hug — they've never done this before and he actually can't remember the last time anyone hugged him — and he puts his arms around her waist and pulls her closer. He feels her sigh and settle against his neck, feels something like tears there, too. He can smell her hair, can feel the muscles under her coat, her fingers curling on the backs of his shoulders.
Now, what? He thinks.
He kisses her.
It's a small kiss. He turns his head so his lips can touch the skin of her jaw, but she feels it. She jumps and he hears her swallow.
I do love you, he thinks.
This is life, he thinks. This, here.
She moves away so her mouth can find his and for the first time in weeks, years maybe, death is the absolute furthest thing from his mind.
She backs away, breathing hard. She touches her mouth.
"Are you really here?" He reaches out for her, stops just short of her collar bone. She catches his hand in hers, fingers sliding between fingers.
"I am."
"Am I?"
She nods.
He pulls her to him again. "Okay, then. Here. Here—"
/
"It's coffee."
He stares at it.
"You're supposed to drink it. It's good for hangovers." She leans down, as close as she dares in the workplace; he can feel her warm breath on his cheek, her hand on the desk right next to his own. He stares at it. Small hands. He thinks of what those small hands did to him last night.
"Thank you," he says.
She nods.
"You, too."
Still here, both of them, and alive, very much alive, for now.
/
Fin