BACK ON THE CHAIN GANG – chapter 1 of 4
Disclaimer: all together now…All publicly recognizable characters and places are the property of Universal Studios, NBC and Dick Wolf et al. This piece of fan fiction was created for entertainment, not for money. No infringement on copyrights or trademarks was intended.
"Don't coddle me, Bobby!"
It comes out even more harshly than she'd meant it to. Her partner flinches, and looks away.
"Sorry," he mutters, and goes back to his examination. They're investigating an art theft at a trendy gallery on the Upper East Side – a case that was looking pretty run-of-the-mill, until they arrived at the scene and found the white walls of the gallery slashed and defaced, covered in viciously racist graffiti.
"The hate…it's palpable," Bobby had said. Alex had only nodded, feeling sick.
So much for an easy case to smooth the back-to-work transition, she had thought wearily.
She has actually been back from maternity leave for almost a month, but the Captain has had her on mandatory desk duty for most of that. This is only the second case they've caught since she started working full time in the field. The first had started things off with a bang, literally – bank robbers with fake bombs, which escalated to real ones, and she'd almost shot a suspect in the street. But then she and Bobby had pulled off a neat trick in interrogation to get Margery and her not-so-charming prince to confess, and she'd thought – we're okay, we're finding the old rhythm again.
But it's actually been hard, so much harder than she thought it would be, to get back to normal with her partner. "Your telepathy's a little rusty," the captain had joked the other day when she and Bobby stumbled over some question he had asked them, and they'd both stiffened as the jibe hit too close to home to be funny. She tries to tell herself that it's normal – of course they have to relearn each others' cues and patterns of thought and ways of functioning on the job…but she's fighting the sinking feeling that they'll never recapture the way things were before her maternity leave – that maybe it's been too long and maybe they've changed too much, or at least she has, to get back on the same wavelength.
You don't know what you've got till it's gone, she thinks, rolling her eyes at the cliché but unable to ignore the stab of longing that comes with it.
And god, she's tired, always tired these days. Intellectually she knows that this is normal, that it will just take time for her to get her energy and stamina back to pre-pregnancy levels…but it's just so goddamn frustrating. Not to mention the way everyone's watching her – fine, the way Bobby's constantly watching her…If he'd just stop treating me like I might break, we might actually be able to get our old focus back, she thinks grouchily and unfairly. Deakins is doing it too, but he's more discreet (or maybe he just doesn't have as many opportunities as Bobby does to let her know without words that he thinks she's overdoing it) – and, she admits guiltily, she can't get away with taking out her frustration on her boss the way she can with her partner.
She sighs, contemplating his back as he bends to peer at one of the hateful epithets, scratching at it with a fingernail. I shouldn't have sounded so angry, she thinks. All he did was ask if I wanted to sit down – and he even waited till the gallery owner was gone to do it.
Later, in the elevator on the way back up to the squad room at One PP, she takes a deep breath and touches his arm.
"I'm sorry I snapped at you, earlier."
He looks at her with shuttered eyes. "It's all right, Eames."
But she can tell that it isn't, so she tries to explain. "I just – I'm tired a lot, these days, you know that. But that's normal, and it'll pass. I don't want you to feel like you have to – to worry about me."
He lets out a short, sharp laugh with no humour in it at all.
"What?" she says defensively.
"I worry," he says with emphasis. "There isn't a damn thing you can do about it."
He gives her a hard look and she flushes, embarrassed, annoyed and touched all at once.
"But that's not the point," he continues. "I thought…" He makes a frustrated gesture and falls silent.
"What?" she says again, more gently. Now he's staring at his feet, and won't look up.
"I thought – you and I, I thought we'd gotten to a point…a point where it was okay for us to…to take care of each other, a little."
Oh.
Suddenly she feels like they've stepped onto a patch of quicksand, and she casts wildly around for the right thing to say to get them back on solid familiar ground…all the while trying to ignore the little voice in the back of her head that's saying wait, what does he mean by that, exactly?
"But maybe I was wrong," Bobby says flatly into the silence. "It's fine, Eames – just forget it."
And then the elevator doors open, and he's out in the hallway before she can say anything. The captain waves them into his office for an update and by the time they get back to their desks, there are calls and e-mails to return and interviews to set up…and it's all too easy to abandon the conversation indefinitely.
Coward, says the annoying little voice in her head. He wasn't wrong. He wasn't.
Looking back on the end of her pregnancy and the weeks after her delivery when she was still recovering at home, she has to admit that maybe there was a shift in their relationship, so subtle that, at the time, she couldn't be certain that anything had actually changed in any fundamental way. But it had: somehow they'd become friends who were colleagues, instead of the other way round…and she'd welcomed it, and not questioned the possible consequences.
She'd needed a friend, that was the simple truth – as difficult as it was for her to acknowledge sometimes. More than that, she'd needed Bobby, who knew her well and was so uncannily perceptive. Yeah, when you find it hard to admit you even have feelings, let alone understand them or put them into words, it's handy to have a genius profiler around.
And once or twice, looking at the available evidence, she'd let herself admit that, maybe, he needed her too – and not just in ways related to the job.
So towards the end of her leave they'd been…hanging out…more, for lack of a better term. But they were still Goren and Eames, they still mostly talked about work, and she hadn't even been sure he'd noticed the shift, or cared.
But who was she kidding? Of course he had, and since she's been back on the job he's been looking at her with those worried, grateful eyes, and how is she supposed to say I need you to turn the friendship thing off now, please? It's an unstable element, and I don't know what it will do to our professional relationship…
She tries to imagine the conversation. Look, Bobby, remember how Collins over at the Five-Two once asked us how we do that Vulcan mind meld thing in interrogation? Well, the Vulcans were all about not letting emotion get in the way…
Crap.
At the end of their third day on the art gallery case, she's feeling grey and worn and powerless. Already. That's just great. Bobby, who has spent most of the day reading blog postings full of neo-Nazi hate propaganda in an effort to pin down their perp, is red-eyed, twitchy and haunted. She looks at him over the piles of paperwork on their desks and finds him staring dully at nothing, pencil tapping frantically.
"That's it," she says, startling him out of his daze. "We're done for today, Bobby. Time to sign off."
"Oh." He looks vaguely around, not meeting her eyes. "Right."
"I'm going to my sister's for dinner – I'll give you a ride home," she offers. He scrubs at his face and abruptly stands up, fumbling for his coat.
"It's okay, Eames, you don't have to – go be with your family. I'll be fine."
Sure you will. She rolls her eyes behind his back, shrugging her coat on as they head for the elevator. God, I am so tired, she thinks, briefly considering calling her sister and bailing on dinner in favour of a long bath and early bedtime. But she knows she needs to see her family and hold her nephew and remember that there's colour and warmth in the world.
She winds her scarf around her neck and looks sideways at Bobby as the doors ding shut. He's leaning against the elevator wall with his eyes closed, and she can see his hand twitching in his coat pocket, the same hand that had been tapping the pencil. She knows that if she drops him at home he'll probably end up back at the computer within the hour, too tired to make sense of anything but unable to stop looking regardless.
She pulls out her cell phone and hits speed dial 2.
"Hi Jen, it's me. Yeah, I'm on my way. Hey – any chance Mike's making enough for one more?" Pause. "I might bring Bobby, if you guys don't mind. We're in the middle of a really rough case – we could both use a home-cooked meal."
Beside her, Bobby straightens up. "Eames, no, I don't –
She waves a hand, cutting him off. "Thanks. We'll be there in half an hour." She clicks the phone shut and meets his protesting look.
"She says if you're willing to risk Mike's cooking, you're more than welcome. He's making spaghetti, so you're probably safe."
"I'm not a charity case – I can get my own dinner, Eames!" he says sharply.
"I know. But tonight, you're going to let Jen and Mike feed you spaghetti."
"This is your family time," he says stubbornly. "I don't want to impose."
"Bobby. If it was an imposition, I wouldn't be offering." She grips his arm, shaking it a bit. "Come on – they're a cop's family. They know what it's like, coming off a case like this. They'll give you a stiff drink and lots of food and you won't even have to make conversation unless you feel like it."
He removes his arm from her grasp. "Thanks, but I don't need to be coddled."
Ouch.
It's not like him to snipe like that, at least not at her. Her remark the other day must have really hurt him, she realizes. She swallows hard, guilt and worry bitter on her tongue, and keeps her voice light with an effort.
"Hey, I apologized for that." Pause. Not enough, Alex. Stop being such a coward.
"Look, Bobby – what you said before – you were right, okay? We have – we are –
But she can't find the right words, not when he's walking so stiffly beside her, refusing to meet her eyes. Embarrassed and exasperated, she plays her last card.
"Look, just come to dinner. You haven't met my nephew yet, and I'd like you to."
They're out of the elevator now, walking through the parking garage. He stops and looks at her carefully. "Really?"
"Yes, really." And it's the truth – she's surprised by how much, all of a sudden, she wants him to see Owen. He's seen photos, of course – but she put him off when he offered to visit her in the hospital the day after her delivery.
"You hate hospitals," she'd reminded him – but really, she was afraid of what would happen if he showed up and looked at her with his penetrating eyes, in front of Jen and Mike and her parents and the baby. She knew it would be like the emperor's new clothes, she'd be revealed in all her turmoil – to him, to herself, to everyone.
And I was right, wasn't I? She had fallen apart a little, when eventually he did come and visit her at home - but at least he'd been the only one there to see it. She squirms inwardly at the memory, which is coloured with that same peculiar mix of embarrassment and affection and uncertainty that seems to pervade a lot of her thinking about Bobby lately – when he's not being a crabby, stubborn bastard, that is.
He looks at her narrowly across the roof of her car. "I'm not going to be very good company," he warns.
She pushes her breath out in an exasperated hiss. "Whatever," she mutters. "Let's go."
Author's Note: I'm aware that "Unrequited" was actually the first time we saw Eames back on the job after her maternity leave. However, for my own purposes I am assuming that she wasn't back in the field full time during that case (although we did see her with Bobby interviewing subjects outside of the office…). I needed "Pas de Deux" to be the first time that she was really, fully back on the street – in a manner of speaking. I know it's a bit of a stretch, but I hope it doesn't jar the reader too much.