With everything up in the air mentally, physically, emotionally and professionally after 'Untethered', anything could happen.

Goren is a mess. But has anyone checked in with Eames, recently? How is she reacting to everything that has happened to her in the last year or so?

My premise is simple: Perhaps it was Eames all along who needed to "get it out of her system".

I make no claims whatsoever on the characters of Goren and Eames, or the television programme 'Law and Order: Criminal Intent'.

Curiosity.

I look in on him every 15 minutes or so, long after Ross has given up and caught a ride home. Fuelled by terribly vending machine coffee, I sit on a cheap bucket chair by the side of his bed and watch.

You can see all ages of a man in his face when he is asleep. The muscles in the face and jaw all relax. The features become soft and malleable. It becomes a simple feat of imagination to see him as a child, as a teenager, as a young man, as a grizzled veteran on his death bed. They are all there now in his face.

Just before he wakes up, he dreams. His brows knit together and flicker apart again. His nostrils flare. After a moment of stillness, he finally wakes up.

Poor man. The first thing he sees, is me. He licks his lips. There is a saline IV snaking under the blanket into his arm, but I don't suppose he has had enough water through the normal channels. I help tilt his head up and let him sip from a beaker.

Physically I have always had a hint of curiosity about him. Yeah, I'll admit to that. It's not unnatural, when you work close with someone for a long time. Mentally of course I think I know all I need to about how he works, but physically he remains a mystery. I suspect he feels the same way about me. We've been through all sorts of things together, from my pregnancy to his depression. But always at a distance. So ... so, I am still curious I guess.

When he can talk, he says "You look like crap, Eames." Even tries to smile. Idiot. He pulls the covers down to inspect the IV drip; doesn't like it. I see he has wheals on his wrists and he notices them too. Likes that even less, I guess. His face is unreadable as he examines the damaged skin, which is reddened and angry.

He recovers quite quickly, ans leaves the hospital after less than 24 hours. But jumps straight out of the frying pan and into the fire.

He pulls me in with him, of course.

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After three times of trying, he finally answers my call. "Where are you?"

A long pause. "Times Square."

"Stay there. Don't go any place. Do you understand?" But he hangs up.

I find him there: not as difficult as you might imagine. He's the only man in the whole of New York City who is standing so still right now. All around him is motion and light but he looks like someone who is in a dark, still place all of his own. He frightens me. I hold his arm and steer him towards the taxi. Instinctively I cover the back of his head as he folds himself into the back seat, just like packing a perp into a black and white. I give the driver my address and sit watching Goren, trying not to make my attention too obvious because I know it makes him squirm.

Unresisting, he lets me lead him upstairs. I park him in an armchair. He looks so dog tired I expect him to lay back in it and doze off like he sometimes does in the office - power napping, he calls it - what a crock! - but instead he sits pretty much upright, perching on the front of the chair. I don't want to look at him. I make coffee, that faithful stopgap, instead. No more vending machine trash; this is the real McCoy. I put sugar in his.

I sit on the couch and drink my coffee. He drinks. It's almost amiable. But there is a white elephant in the room no one's talking about and we are both staying silent because we don't want to go there.

I look at his shoes, playing a little game with myself - can I tell what he is thinking about just by watching his legs from the knee downwards? No, I can't. My eyes drift upwards.

Curiosity, that's all it is, I tell myself. But I can't stand it. I'm so tired of not listening to the all the questions. All the images in my head, all the violence of my baby's birth and the terror of the abduction, mixed up and mashed around. I'm desperate to do something to stop these flashbacks. Everyone has been concentrating so hard on Goren, on his problems, on his mother and his brother. I've been using what he is going through to distract me from what I am going through, but now I am too tired to procrastinate and evade any more. I need to do something drastic. Suddenly a whole bunch of things that used to seem so important to me seem irrelevant.

I lean over and kiss him on the mouth. I taste coffee, the sticky tang of sugar, and Goren's own personal scent. I have smelt him before of course but not in quite the same way as this. I really should stop. But I'm so curious. He stiffens, and protests.

"Eames what the hell are you doing?" His eyes are staring, more white visible than usual, just like a horse that's spooked. I don't know what I expected but I wasn't imagining he would be frightened of me. His lips curl away from his teeth. Disgust? I no longer care. He tries to pull back and away from me but the chair stops him. I kiss him again. He doesn't want to touch me. Interesting. If he was really that freaked out he could push me away, couldn't he?

Thank God; he closes his eyes. I think he is giving in. Without warning his hands snap upwards and grab me by the head and then he is kissing me back with a real ferocity, it almost feels like desperation. Oh, well I can see that call and raise it by 50, buddy. I shove him back into the chair and climb on, holding him still so I can be very thorough in my investigations - I'm a good cop, I have to find out, I need to know. No more talking Goren, no more cereal-box philosophy, no more picking apart the threads of other people's sad and tattered lives. It's just you and me now. I want to know you.

It's exciting. I know this man, but I don't know this side of him. I feel as safe and terrified at the same time. There are terrible red marks across his chest and stomach where apparently he was secured to a table with chains - chains, for God's sake? I grind my teeth together when I see that. I am so incensed but there's nowhere for it to go, no one to lash out at except Goren. He's not especially gentle but then neither am I at the moment. I shove him around. I'm horrified by what they did to him and I'm also angry ... I want to yell at him and hit him - to punish him for what he has done to me and to himself, to get back at him for pulling me into the wasteland and the mess that is his career. I feel fury and fear all mixed up with trust and care and it is powerfully erotic. This certainly isn't love-making. He's just in my line of fire, that's all.

I do yell, actually. I hope my neighbour hears me. I'm sick of her pitying looks in the hallway. Especially after I went to the hospital in full labour and came home again 48 hours later, empty-handed.

Afterwards? For perhaps half a minute Bobby (No. I have to still call him 'Goren') is tender and vulnerable, pushing his nose into my hair and inhaling deeply as though trying to consume me in some way not already covered by the activity of the last half hour or so. He doesn't let go of me until my leg starts to cramp.

Then the bricks and mortar come straight back up - like watching the fall of the Berlin Wall in reverse. Well. What did I expect? He stands up and pulls his clothes back on.

"So did I finally satisfy your curiosity?" he says archly, buttoning his jeans. He looks at me for an answer but I don't trust myself to speak yet. His heavily lidded eyes regard me with a coldness that is such a contrast, it surprises me. I'm thrown by his question, and refuse to meet his gaze while I throw a smart answer together with precious few ingredients. Looking at his eyes would only provoke him more, I know that. In his present mood I don't think that's a good idea but .. maybe later.

But I don't see him again for three days.