Disclaimer:All of the characters are the property of Dick Wolf. I thank him, the writers, the directors and all the great actors who brought them "to life" for our benefit. Any "liberties" I have taken with them is motivated only by my fond admiration (and a few personal quirks I will seek "help" for).

AN: This story is not set within the accepted "canon" for the characters as it is only officially portrayed by the TV series. So I get to "fool around" with them in ways in which they've never been seen, stretch the limits of that and totally suspend the "reality" that is "fiction" to start with…now there's a contradiction in terms!!

(And yeah Goren I know the proper word for that is oxymoron…now get back to doing the dishes please)

The trouble with "really smart guys" is that there are too few of them in the world. This creates a problem for women in the search and competition to find and secure one…and for the really smart guys themselves. Who find themselves the subject of more female "admiration" than they can handle. So what must…or could…daily life really be like for Bobby Goren…the smartest guy at 1PP…??

RUMOURS AND INNUENDO

Bobby Goren knew another of those rumours about him had started. They went round the 1PP building with the same regularity with which the ventilation system re-cycled airborne bacteria so one section or department or squad was always stricken with something the people three floors below had a fortnight ago. He'd become used to rumours and suffered them with the same calm patience always attributed to saints.

Though he'd never understood that. Nor did what he knew of saints indicate it was true. He'd tried when he was 9 to resolve that seeming inconsistency by speaking to Father O'Malley at St Jude's where he was an altar boy. Asked him "Why if saints are so patient Father didn't St Patrick just wait? For the evolutionary process or climate change to rid Ireland of snakes?" It was questions like that finally ended his career as an altar boy and of course Father O'Malley stayed in the nice rest home he was taken to that afternoon.

It was easy to tell it was happening. Those "mentally undressing" him looks he was getting from the female officers. He wouldn't mind in a few cases if it were for real. Except elevators and hallways were not ideal places to act on the opportunities that would present. And certainly not when he had so much work to do.

Those little groups of three formed into a circle he was always relieved to see were round a water cooler not a steaming cauldron as he went by. The sudden silences that fell when he was around. The increased number of telephone conversations that his partner Alex Eames had of a strange and elliptical nature. So elliptical that had a Mets pitcher ever been able to throw a curveball like that they'd have won the World Series for ten years straight.

Then there were his confidential informants. The contract cleaning crew who would report the sudden increase in poems of an "adult" nature on the ladies rest room walls. Featuring him in ways that occasionally piqued his curiosity and sense of adventure but more often gave him nightmares. Always written in indelible purple marker pen. He had not yet abandoned his quest to identify which female detectives owned such pens. If only to recommend a dictionary and a Thesaurus given the atrocious spelling in some of the offerings and the very limited vocabulary.

After three weeks Captain Deakins called him to his office to show him some data that Human Resources had gathered. How the productivity of the female officers had fallen by fifty percent, time around water coolers was up by an average of twenty minutes per day per woman and the cleaning costs for the rest room walls were threatening to wipe out the budget for the rest of the year. Pointing out that a three-week sample was too small on which to extrapolate a budget out-turn threatened, for a brief time, to send Deakins to the same place Father O'Malley ended up.

Told it was down to him to make sure this didn't end up like the infamous "Boxers or Tighty-Whitey Crisis of '05" when crime figures in New York soared for a while, Goren had no choice but to act. He waited until the end of the shift and entered the female locker room announcing, "Man on the floor". Of course just like in the Army there's always one who pats the bench she's sitting on in a way she considers "inviting" and says "Here will do fine by me Bobby". Always the one makes you think "In your dreams lady…and my nightmares".

Goren felt thirty pairs of eyes boring through the haze of smoke told you someone had disabled the detectors in here and with a familiar scent suggested at least one of them would fail a random drugs screening. Watching as he went to the middle of the room and after a moment's hesitation got hold of the zipper and began to unfasten it slowly.

The only sounds in the room that of the metal teeth parting in that soft "zzz" sound, some breath quickening and one sudden intake so deep that now two of them would fail a dope test. The only movement his hand reaching slowly inside to cradle gently the source of the speculation and three tongues (none of them his) flickering over glossed lips.

Alex Eames' eyes were on stalks as he lifted it out for them all to see and in total silence. Never before achieved in the history of humankind with that number of women in the same room as a slightly heady "Wow" indicated three might now be stoned. Then like a crowd of hormonal teenagers at a Justin Timberlake concert they gathered round to touch, to stroke, to squeal and ask questions with flushed faces and coy glances.

Two hours later and with the squad room to himself Bobby locked his new gun in its case into his desk drawer. As to the "size of the barrel", "smoothness of slide action", "ejection velocity" and "re-load time" of anything else belonging to him…well those women would have to wait on another time…

AN: Please note I am NOT employed by NYPD at IPP and nor do I own an indelible purple marker pen.