Author's Note: Hello, readers! It's been a while, but I bounced around a few ideas until this story finally wrote itself. (I love when they do that!) It takes place in the episode "Conscience" when Goren and Eames flew down to talk with the lawyer in New Orleans, but it really has nothing to do with the case. I was going for a theme here – and with a little luck I pulled it off. You, of course, will have to decide and let me know.
It was always open to him to accuse her of seeing him as the most harmless of maniacs, and this, in the long run - since it covered so much ground – was his easiest description of their friendship. He had a screw loose for her, but she liked him in spite of it and was practically against the rest of the world, his kind wise keeper, unremunerated but fairly amused and, in the absence of other near ties, not disreputably occupied.
"The Beast in the Jungle" – Henry James
If he lives to be one hundred, he is sure that he will remember this moment for the rest of his life. Certainly there's nothing outwardly special about it, nothing that would draw the attention of an uninformed observer and cause him or her take pause and make note. It's just a quiet, unobtrusive moment, the kind that appears out of nowhere and makes its presence known not with its suddenness, but with its ability to alter and to overwhelm with simplicity and subtlety.
When Detective Bobby Goren thinks back on this day and this moment - as he inevitably will from time to time - he will remember it with a title, almost as though it is an essay he wrote in the fourth grade about his summer vacation. He will call it "The Moment I Felt Myself Breathe."
They're on an airplane coming back from Louisiana – he and Alex Eames, his partner and fellow Major Case detective. It's been a whirlwind trip – down and back in less than a day – and both are feeling the effects of the pace they've been keeping. It was important that they meet with a New Orleans trust lawyer in conjunction with their current case and the trip was worth it because they gathered some good information. This doesn't, however, negate the fact that the partners boarded their southbound flight at 5:00 a.m. and they worked through lunch, stopping only to grab a cup of coffee at Starbucks as they ran to catch their return flight to JFK. Bobby's used to going on little sleep thanks to his stint in the Army and constantly cycling thoughts so it doesn't really bother him - besides, once his brain gets cranking it usually forgets that it's low on fuel anyway. Eames, on the other hand, reports herself to be a seven to eight hour a night sleeper and between working their case, preparing her questions for New Orleans, and then getting up at 3:00 to make their morning flight, she's essentially wiped out. In fact, after the pair boarded the plane she barely made it past take-off before her eyes closed and she surrendered to her exhaustion, her head listing gradually to the left until it ultimately came to rest on Bobby's shoulder, where it now remains.
And it's that small, seemingly inconsequential gesture of complete trust that has caused the breath he has been unconsciously holding to whoosh from his lungs so that now his respiration is even and the weight pressing inside his chest has vanished, leaving only the thick thud of his heartbeat to fill the space. He's breathing again for the first time in what seems like the longest time, his breaths perfectly in sync with his sleeping partner.
Sleep, as most people know regardless of how many scientific textbooks they have read, is a helpless state and one that one must be completely relaxed to attain. To be able to do this on a plane is impossible for many and Eames has told Bobby that she is included in this group – especially since the events of September 11. Yet here she is, resting fitfully, her breathing deep and slow and her head on his shoulder while the psychological information Bobby has catalogued away into his brain begins to cycle through like mental flashcards – as usual. Still, it didn't take a textbook to teach him that to fall asleep beside someone and use them as a human pillow speaks volumes about the amount of trust between the two. In fact, though it's said by many that total trust must exist for two people to sleep together in the biblical sense, Bobby Goren is of the opinion that far more trust is required for the two to sleep together in the more literal way. It signifies a transfer of faith from one to the other, a willingness for the sleeper – in this case, Eames – to allow the other person to see her at her most vulnerable and trust that person to protect it – and her. It's not to be taken lightly and Bobby certainly doesn't.
Thus, despite the discomfort that accompanies folding a burly, six-foot four-inch frame into an economy seat, Bobby Goren finds himself completely at ease. His long legs are stretched out as far as they can go, the left one snaking awkwardly into the aisle, and still he feels comfortable – all because she trusts him enough to fall asleep on a plane beside him with her head on his shoulder, his nostrils filling with the familiar floral scent of her shampoo and the musky odor of a hastily slugged latte. It's so simple really – and yet so simultaneously monumental.
Sometimes he wonders why she is this trusting, wonders if her faith is justified. After all, what is he but an often erratic, overly analytical, and potentially schizophrenic New York City detective? How many times have these characteristics put her in dangerous and even potentially deadly situations? He hesitates to count the number (though he probably could name every instance, as they're frozen in the dark part of his memory) – yet she never blames him. She forgives him when he makes a mistake and she has to clean up the mess. She stays with him and works with him and does it with such energy and poise that he can't imagine his life without her in it.
Yet in that cold and gloomy part of himself where his deepest anxieties reside and where attempts to take in a full breath leave him gasping, this fear is the most monstrous of them all: the fear that one day she will have had enough, that she'll become fed up and walk away. There will be no one to guide him if this happens, no one to anchor him to the real world with a smirk and a well-placed remark. He'll be alone, devoid of oxygen, and left to suffocate inside his mind. He's had twinges of this stifling sensation before and he fears it as much as he fears her leaving. To suffocate seems to be the most cruel and agonizing way to die and to do so mentally seems even worse, yet he knows as long as she is with him he will be spared this fate. As long as she is with him, she will continue to help him breathe. Alex Eames: CPR for the psyche. She should have it added to her business card because she seems to resuscitate him on a regular basis - like today. Yet today seems bigger even than normal somehow. Today he is uncannily aware of the breaths that flow in and out of his lungs. In fact, up until this moment, he can't remember back to the last time he actually felt himself breathe and he suspects it's been a couple of decades - at least. Truth be told, he thinks he must have begun unconsciously holding his breath the day his mother was diagnosed and suspects he's been holding it ever since. He knows for a fact that he held it through the mandatory Army and police department psychological fitness exams, waiting with trepidation for the results to be delivered not by anyone from either agency, but by men in white coats ready to commit him. Of course they never came (which probably means that the government and the police really are as crazy as the media makes them out to be), but Bobby has continued to hold his breath ever since – just in case.
Yet Eames somehow manages to get around all of his defenses and feed oxygen to him. She possesses the ability to keep him from shutting off so completely that he asphyxiates himself through his fervent desire for self-preservation and likes nothing more than to poke holes into the bubble he occasionally surrounds himself with, to draw him out so the fresh air can banish the darker thoughts and realities in his working and his personal life. She helps him breathe and she makes it seem so easy and that is why he knows that if he lost her, he'd face the rest of his life taking shallow breaths of dank, re-recycled air – the air she created with such ease. As long as she's around, though, he doesn't have to fight his battles alone. As long as she's around, he knows he will have a steady supply of oxygen. After all, Bobby's worst opponent is himself and no one is better at fighting that particularly stubborn demon than Alex Eames. She knows just the right moment to reel him in and when to let him run at full speed – though if she was awake right now and could hear his inner thoughts, she'd most likely roll her eyes and convince him that he should be napping right now too.
As if on cue, turbulence suddenly causes the plane to drop and buck in the air, rattling the luggage in the overhead compartments and the wing flaps outside the windows. Alex jerks awake, eyes wide and disoriented, and she grabs her partner's arm with both hands and gasps, "Bobby?"
"It's turbulence," he says succinctly, patting her clasped hands on his biceps gently and with reassurance. He's a bit shaken too - not by the turbulence, but from the shock of being so suddenly jolted from his thoughts and brought into the brightness of the outside world. The difference is such that he tries not to squint as he focuses on the woman beside him.
She blinks rapidly a few times and shakes her head to clear it, then loosens her grip and straightens in her seat.
"Wow," is all she manages as she peers out the window. The plane is once again flying smoothly and Bobby peers outside too – nothing but blue sky and fluffy clouds.
"We must be over Pennsylvania," he offers.
She quirks an eyebrow at him. "Turbulence tells you that we're over Pennsylvania?"
"No," he shakes his head and thrusts his chin towards the wristwatch worn by a man in the window seat in front of them who is resting his arm in the window well. "We're a little over an hour from JFK."
She rolls her eyes in her usual bemused fashion and settles back in the seat, head close to his shoulder again but not resting on it. She doesn't look at him but stares directly at the seatback in front of her when she speaks, though he is sure she doesn't quite grasp the power of her words and neither does he at first.
"For a second when we hit that turbulence, I thought I was falling and you weren't there."
He doesn't know what to say. He's always been there – it was she who left him for a time and only just came back, a period in which he glimpsed what life without her would be like and which stirred his ultimate fear of her leaving for good into its current state of heightened awareness. Knowing that she might just share a similar fear quells his a bit - thought it doesn't banish it entirely. Nothing will do that.
Finally he seizes on a thought and says: "I'm always here. Besides, the reason you thought you were falling – aside from the plane dropping, of course – has to do with the suspended nature of sleep…"
She cuts him off: "I'm not awake enough for a science lesson, Bobby."
"Right," he offers a half-smile.
"Besides," she settles deeper into her seat with a sigh, "if we're not getting in to JFK for another hour or so, it looks like neither of us is going anywhere."
Her head comes to rest on his shoulder once more and her breathing slowly deepens until he knows she's asleep again.
And only then does he exhale the breath he's begun holding again, for she is here with him now and as long as that's the case, he'll continue to breathe.