WEDNESDAY
"I need a favor." Ross, staring at them as they drift into his office.
He blinks. Can't stop blinking, scrubbing his hands over reddened eyes and twitching around the room trying to stay awake, since his fake sleep in the conference room was less than satisfying.
"What is it, Captain?" Eames. Eames' voice. That voice lulling him off into darkness last night/this morning/some time ago but he can't remember exactly when because that would require brain cells to yawn and blink and stretch and they're all still slumped over their tiny little brain cell desks feeling just as sick as he does this morning.
"I need the two of you to come to a stakeout tonight. Nichols and Wheeler need backup, and"—Ross sighs—"it's a high profile case. They suspect the top investment banker in New York for soliciting murder, so I need all my best detectives out there tonight."
He feels rather than sees Eames glance over at him. He nods, and it feels far too loud and off-balance in the quiet hum of everyday office noise.
"Are you up for that, Detectives?"
He's still nodding.
"We are," Eames says. But as they walk out of the room together she turns and puts her hand on his arm. Her fingers burn. "Are we?"
"We are," he echoes her.
Ross sticks his head out of his office. "Actually, you two, go home for now. Get some sleep and come back here at eight."
"I don't think that's necessary," he begins, but Ross glares him into silence.
"It's an order, Detective. I need you both awake tonight."
He kicks the floor and walks away. He's at his desk, collecting his things, when Eames comes up to him, stifling a yawn behind her hand. "Your place is closer."
Back at his apartment he takes Eames some blankets in the guest room before going into his bedroom and shutting the door and settling down to try and sleep in this glaring sunlight.
But not daylight, and not even Eames in the next room will allow him to turn off his mind and edge into sleep.
He rolls over on to his side and clicks the television on. If he's not going to sleep then he's going to deaden his mind some way.
The blankets wave warm and heavy against his skin. The pillow huddles soft beneath his head. The low drone of crime show marathons murmurs in the background.
So comfortable. So long since he's slept. So achingly close.
Almost...
"Bobby?"
He sits straight up before he even realizes what his body is doing, his limbs jolted into instinctive action by her voice. "What's wrong?"
She shakes her head. "Nothing." But she sits down on the edge of his bed.
"Can't you sleep?"
She slides under the covers and props herself up against the headboard. "Not really. I heard your tv so I figured you couldn't, either. What are we watching?"
He stuffs the remote in her hand and lies back down on his side, his back to her. "I'm just going to…close my eyes, Eames."
"Okay." Her hand finds its way on to his back and she absently begins rubbing his shoulders. "Relax. Go to sleep, if you can."
"I can't," he mutters.
Her hand on his back slows. "Do you want me to go?"
He cranes his head over his shoulder to see her. "No—stay. It's fine. It's not you."
"Then what is it, Bobby?"
He rolls back over as her hand continues to swirl over his back. "I've been thinking about my mom lately." There. He said it. The words are out there now and he almost doesn't care because he can feel sleep sucking away at him.
Eames eases down until her head is right behind his, her voice murmuring in his ear. "Why?"
He closes his eyes. Imagines her thumb rubbing his stomach.
"You can tell me," she whispers.
His breathing evens out and he dozes off--only to wake up minutes later to the alarm on his cell phone going off.
"Time for the stakeout already?" he mumbles into something soft and warm. He huddles up to the warmth, throws an arm around it and tugs it closer under his body.
And then it hugs him back.
He sits straight up in bed, glancing with some horror at what appears to be his partner lying beside him. "Eames?"
"You were expecting someone else?"
"I didn't even realize…sorry. I don't know what I was thinking."
She gets out of bed and stretches, pulling her arms above her head and God it's like a magnet, he can't stop looking, until her back cracks so loudly that he ducks. "I didn't figure you'd cuddle up to me fully conscious, Goren. It's okay."
She slides her shoes back on and leaves his bedroom without looking back.
Going to be a fun stakeout…
It's freezing. Which is ridiculous at the end of May, but he's so damn cold in the car that he keeps shivering; violent, sudden shivers that wrack his entire body; shivers that he pretends not to even notice in the hope that Eames won't say anything.
"I can't believe you're cold," Eames smirks. "It's almost summer."
He huddles deeper into the seat and keeps his eyes trained on the road.
"Although you do get cold when you don't sleep a lot," she muses out loud. "Which you haven't been doing."
Was that a movement? He presses his forehead against the cool window and tries to will his headache away.
"So why the insomnia?" she persists. "You were starting to tell me earlier and then I think you dozed off."
"Aren't you cold?"
"I've been sleeping just fine, thank you." But there's a little note of something in her voice that makes him turn to her.
"You sure about that?"
She shrugs. "Mostly."
"Tell me."
A sudden shiver (hers), and she remains silent.
"Eames?"
"You know, I am cold," she says. "The temperature must be dropping."
"Must be."
She lifts her coffee and drinks steadily.
Two quiet hours later he's shaking so badly he can barely see straight.
"I'd turn the car on, put on the heater, but I think that might be a bit of a giveaway."
"It's okay," he manages. "'M fine."
Eames rolls her eyes. "Right. Get over here."
"What?"
"Come here, Bobby."
He stares at her, doesn't move. A sigh gusts out of her and she reaches out towards him. Pulls him to her so they're propped up shoulder to shoulder. "You were in the Army; didn't you learn about using body heat for warmth?"
Her shoulder presses into his arm not uncomfortably. "I—we did. Had to use it a couple of times, actually."
"And did it work?"
"It did. But"—he leans back and wraps his arm around her shoulders. Tugs her closer, so she's leaning against his chest—"you need more than shoulder to shoulder contact for it be effective."
She hesitates. Her muscles stiff and unyielding underneath his fingers--but then she rests her head back against his chest. "Official purposes," she murmurs. "We can't be proper detectives if we're popsicles."
"Of course." He finds himself playing with her elbow, rubbing the tip and slowly stroking her arm through the cloth of her jacket.
"Ah—Bobby, I can't imagine this went over too well in the Army."
He snorts into her hair. "Nope. I tried to restrain myself there."
She leans back so she can see his face. For a brief hopeful moment he thinks she's going to kiss him—his mouth suddenly crumbles dry and he swallows thickly. "Not that there's anything wrong with it," she murmurs, and her face breaks out into a wild grin, almost as if she was reading his thoughts about her lips and nose and earlobes and clavicle and the magical bits below.
But nothing more is said. Eames turns back around, and his arm is still around her, and this warmth of hers, heat gushing out of her body until he feels enveloped in his partner, drenched in her, consumed in her; until he wants to burrow under the covers with her and tell her the real reason he's not sleeping, that this week is the anniversary of--
The car radio crackles and Ross' disgusted voice comes out staticky and irritated. "Goren, Eames, go home. Stakeout's over. SVU just got a call about a body two blocks over and it's him."
Eames grabs for the radio. "Roger that, Captain."
She shrugs out of his arms and starts the ignition. "Guess we can have the heat on now."
"Right," he murmurs, thinking that maybe he preferred the other method.
"I'll drop you back at your place," she says as she pulls out and heads for the highway, "so you can get some sleep before work."
Sleep.
Right.
A/N. What's pink and fluffy?
Pink fluff.
And what's this?
Take away the pink.
Also, my brain is fitzing out with commas and there are a lot of places where I can't decide if there should be one or not (amazingly enough, every comma lesson since the fourth grade has happened when I've had band lessons, or chorus lessons, or wandering the hallway time--oh, the misspent youth), and so since I have 29 minutes to make my Wednesday deadline I am just going to post this. If you do see any mistakes, drop me a line and I'll fix it then.
