A.N. Not mine, not profiting, please don't sue me.
It is sometime past one in the morning and Alex is curled in the interview room chair, her body slanted, not quite lying down (not enough room). Her eyes are closed but she is not asleep.
Ross is dead.
The thought blocks her throat, leaves a bitter taste. The weight of this whole goddamn week is pressing at the back of her eyes, red and blaring, and she wishes she could sleep. She is so tired but she is wide awake.
A rustling sound as Bobby shuffles some papers. Nichols is out on a coffee run. Rodgers is at home, or should be.
Ross is dead.
More rustling, then a definite papery thwack. She feels Bobby's eyes settle on her.
The legs of his chair scrape along the floor as he pulls it alongside hers, and sits again. She can see the change in light through her eyelids as he blocks the fluorescent glow, red to red-brown. Like blood.
An intake of breath like he's about to say something, and she braces herself for another apology, another confession. Another martyrdom. She wishes he could understand how much she needs him not to fall on his own sword, not again.
(There are enough saints and sacrifices in the world already, and she has never wanted him to be one of them.)
He doesn't say anything.
(He said Captain Ross was their friend earlier and even while she was trying so hard not to cry she was thinking that that really wasn't the right word for someone whose orders you questioned and mumbled about and ranted over and usually followed because you usually trusted him, whose hair you made fun of and whose family situation you felt for, who could be completely humorless and then slide in a sly one-liner out of nowhere. Not the right word at all and if Ross deserved nothing else, surely he deserved that?)
He just reaches out—his left hand, she can tell—and strokes back a lock of her hair. Her heart seizes up, bunches itself into knots at that touch because it's not them, it's not what they do. But then his hand is on her right arm (clenched tight around her waist) and he rests it there, right above her wrist. Warm and present, his pulse against her pulse. A furnace under his skin.
She hears her breathing speed up, with a jagged edge she can't afford right now, and she shoves it back down, presses it back into a slow and steady rhythm. No mercy.
She hears his breathing follow her pattern exactly.
His touch is hesitant at first, light, probably waiting to see if she'll shrug him off like at the crime scene (his arm felt so heavy on her shoulders her head sank back just like that, origami folding inward) but when she doesn't he presses into her arm a little firmer, squeezes slightly as he runs his hand up and down and up and down, rustling the fine hairs there and then smoothing them back down. Lingering, calloused and warm and so beautifully, beautifully there.
She reaches out blindly and grabs his other arm, and she can tell he wasn't expecting that because he starts, twitches back for just half a second before relenting. Eyes still squeezed shut, she pulls his right hand to her, tucks it under her cheek. Turns her face slightly into his palm, feels him twitch again—don't you dare pull away.
He stills, and then he leans forward and presses his forehead into her shoulder, one, two, three, before sitting back with a ragged breath. His left hand slips down to the crook of her elbow, where his thumb makes slow, steady circles on her skin. Here. I'm here.
The weight of her head and his hand is pressing her knuckles into the thin metal arm of the arm and starting to hurt, but she's not going to move. She breathes deep, concentrates on the feel of both his hands, the feel of him so close. Rubs her cheek against his palm.
I'm still here too.