Title: Milkshake.

Spoilers: None.

Disclaimer: Not mine.

A/N: Here's a short, lighter ficlet. Set early BA partnership, and I'm gonna use it for...uh...1x01. Yeah. One. Back then, what I knew about our detectives amounted to two things: their names were Goren and Eames, and they worked Major Case. Thus, based on what little information I could glean from One, this was born.

Maybe Goren and Eames like wet days. If so, I apologise.


It's long past lunch, and they're still in the diner.

Two plates sit abandoned on the table. The only evidence of a meal (steak sub for him, bacon and cheese fries for her) are off-colour smears on the otherwise clean cutlery. Goren is toying with what remains of a milkshake. He passes the glass from one long-fingered hand to the other, an air of distraction in the movement. Eames' lunch-time coffee is cooling in the opposite corner. It demands attention, steaming faintly. She ignores it, and him.

She's busy watching the rain. It stains the glass, making the drama of downtown difficult to follow. She doesn't like this weather. It makes people stay indoors. Makes people pick fights. A wet day is fine until some poor schmuck is found at the wrong end of a kitchen knife because their other half couldn't get an evening jog in. People don't know how to handle themselves in the rain. That, and the fact that rain made her hair do strange things. She didn't like that either.

Her new partner is seated opposite, long legs scrunched up under the plastic.

He's quiet, this one. Clever too. (But not a clever as he thinks he is.)

She stifles a smile, refusing to break the long silence.


Goren is amused to find his new partner's feet barely graze the floor.

She's staring out at the wet November day, her face intriguingly blank.

Eames. He tests the name out, rolling it around in his head, tasting it like you would the first sip of wine at a fancy restaurant. Eames.

She's not nervous. That surprises him.

The sound of rain frames the quiet between them; makes it painfully obvious. The noise of the city, muted by the thick panes of glass, is still audible as a sullen thrum at the edge of his senses. Was it always so loud in here? He thinks he can feel a headache coming on. He really doesn't like the rain. It does bad things to his head.

Eames says nothing.

He uses the window's reflection to get a closer look at her, trying to follow her eyes past the window: to see what has caught her attention. But her flickering gaze is too fast for him to follow, and he finds himself slightly embarrassed at the amount of attention he's giving her. Her behaviour is bordering on offensive, he thinks. Normally people are happy to strike up a conversation with him, to have him smile at them, laugh at his-

"Goren, eh?" she says, looking away from the window at last.

He twitches, visibly startled.

She laughs.

"So you like studying people, then. Working out how they think, how they move. Manipulative, maybe? You don't like liars. That much is obvious. Judging by the way you flirted with that witness earlier, you're a ladies' man - like to play the field. No wedding ring though, so you might be flaky when it comes to relationships. And you've been staring at me in the reflection of this window for the past ten minutes now, so I presume there's either something on my face or you don't have the courage to actually ask me what you are trying to work out just by looking. Which explains why people say you have social problems."

Goren blinks, once, twice.

"And there's milkshake on your face."

She laughs, and returns to staring out the window.

He smiles.

Decides he likes her.


A/N: These Eames POV's are becoming a bit of a bad habit.

We're getting Deakins next, because there had to have been some kind of moment where he thought "uh-oh, splitting up the dream team here...", before Bishop arrived.