"I tell you everything, and hope that you won't tell on me." - C. Love.
/
/
There had been a her Bobby.
Someone she thought she knew. Someone she thought she could trust.
Her partner, Detective Bobby Goren.
Him.
There, wordless and solid, that first and last night with her non-child.
There, anguished but strong enough, telling her, "It, it was Jo … Gage."
Holding the plastic dish and holding her while she vomited.
Him, his hands.
"Can I?" His touch like butterfly kisses, "Open. Close."
After all the long months alone and unsure, that fear had built up and up.
And up.
But then, on his knees at her feet in her kitchen.
Him, and the heat of his skin on her skin.
On his knees at her feet, both of them drowning, reaching.
"Please."
She didn't want that to be over.
She just didn't want it to be over.
"What did you do, Bobby?"
Not tonight.
Not this night.
Sensing that he was about to speak, she silenced Ross with a look that likely would have killed a lesser man. Turned back to her partner, back to Bobby.
"Just say it. Tell me what you did."
In his silence and the furtive glance he couldn't stop himself from sharing with Danny Ross, she just knew. Already regretting, already shutting down, she still did not want this to be true.
On top of everything else. On top of every fucking thing else.
Please.
She wanted him to tell her something (anything) except what he wasn't telling her.
But he couldn't.
He could only tell her about the confrontation downstairs. He could only tell her that he knew. He knew about everything.
And she thought that it was too bad that she hadn't known about 'everything,' especially since 'everything' apparently included …
Her uterus cramped sharply.
Oh.
This is why he came back without the coffee.
Why Ross is looking at me like that.
"Who else did you talk to?"
Not tonight.
He told her who. He told her what.
Not this night.
"Okay," she said to them.
Turned in her chair back to the table and shuffled the photographs of Nicole's heart, so nicely tucked into its nest of white satin, all wreathed with rosy smears. She neatly aligned the edges and slipped them into the brown file folder. Placed it on a tidy stack of similar brown file folders. Then she reached for the photos of Frank Goren lying on the pavement and Frank Goren on Liz Rodgers' slab, Frank Goren's open, staring eyes, and thought that it seemed like her hand looked very old under the white fluorescents, like the hand of another person, an older and maybe a wiser person. She thought idly that perhaps it was someone else's hand, that her real hand might be on the end of someone else's arm.
Then wondered if she was perhaps in shock.
Shock wouldn't be too weird, really, she thought. Not too unexpected.
All things considered …
Spending nearly all of her time with him had been a strange pairing of equal parts dream-come-true and total nightmare.
A lot of sex, and yes, that was very nice.
He was very good at sex.
He could definitely make her forget all her troubles for awhile.
For awhile, it seemed like he planned to keep her in that state of forgetfulness semi-permanently. Not that she was complaining … but.
And the giddiness, she supposed, that had come from the clearing of the slate, from the freshness of honesty that she had believed to be between them now.
But he had moved very quickly and quietly and purposefully from the business of processing the information she had given him, to vigilance and keen paranoia and liquid fear, and a burgeoning compulsion to be 'the protector'.
Had taken to scribbling notes in his binder, carefully shielding the page he was working on with a curved arm.
Had more-or-less stopped sleeping. Had to be coerced into eating.
Kept his eyes hooded, guarded, wary.
Until she was spending every waking moment in his company, sleeping at work …
Dream and nightmare.
He had been persuaded to let her spend time with her nephew on her own, at least. She was permitted to sleep at her sister's house twice each week without him. He managed to let her out of his sight for that long without a breakdown.
Then his brother had to go and get killed, and every tiny particle of terror had exploded into a phantasm of heart palpitations and sweating and confusion and nervous twitches.
Because his brother was killed.
Because someone murdered his brother.
Someone had got Nicole Wallace to murder his brother and feed their Captain tips about insurance policies so now it was looking like he murdered his brother.
And who would do a thing like that?
Focus.
She pulled her lined pad of notes over, picked up the pen on top. She looked blindly at the notes she'd written there, unable to comprehend the shapes in blue ink. There in the top right corner, a spiral scribble when her pen wouldn't work. Used all her discipline, every ounce of it. Forced herself to focus on the scribble. Recalled (was all that only yesterday?) the conversation as she made the scribble.
Agitated, she had been.
They were quarreling.
"He is not involved in this."
"You're so sure? I'm not sure."
"This is too much about fucking with me personally. Too much of a game. He's a cop. He's too by-the-book. And why would he bring someone like her into it? Nicole was … territorial."
"Pfffft. Really, you think?"
"I'm just sayin' … I can't see her sharing. Not information about - look, there's no reason to think she even knew about this other thing … she woulda used that if she'd known."
"Right. And someone sent her heart to the honeymoon suite because nobody has a clue."
"That isn't the same. Declan, when you were … when. Uh, … . Eames, do you really think it's his style? He'd just arrange an accident, right? Why would he even know about the Melville thing?"
"Bobby. Ross said she is your 'white whale.' Where do you think he got the idea for that little turn of phrase? This isn't exactly an unknown."
"It isn't him, Eames. It isn't. I was worried. I admit, I thought … . But when Declan said it would be somebody very close to me, somebody with intimate knowledge of my entire life … you know, he said it might be you -"
"Yeah, I know he wants that thought floating out there. He said as much in front of Ross."
"He did?"
"He said that I know my partner better than anyone."
"You do."
"Yeah, I know more about you than anyone so it might be me. Sure. Right."
"That isn't what I meant. You know even more than …"
"Than Declan?"
Declan.
Back to Declan.
Keeps coming back to Declan.
Time to have a little talk with Declan.
Focus.
She said out loud for Ross's benefit, "He bought the poison in April, paid cash, and if the fact that he's a loathsome troll hadn't already attracted their attention, he attempted to disguise his appearance with a baseball hat and sunglasses. They remember him there. No paperwork, nothing like physical evidence. But he did lie … about his daughter, among other things. I think we can say for that we're comfortable with bringing him in first thing in the morning. I'll call down at six and have the dispatch office call him, then we'll send a cruiser to pick him up. And, we thought that you should bring him in when he gets here, get him feeling like he's important, a 'member of the team'."
When she looked up at Bobby still standing there and Ross still standing there, staring at her, her anger rose.
"Am I wrong in thinking that we're going to get back to work now?"
"Alex," Bobby began. His face was ashen and his fists were tight balls. She silenced him with a potent glare. His jaw was working, and he looked away.
"Eames," Ross said, and she turned her face to him.
"What?"
"This … I had no idea. I'm in shock. I don't know what to … how to … "
"How nice for you." Her words were acid. "Now if you don't mind - while you're deciding how to feel about this titillating revelation, we've got a case here. My partner is being targeted. One of your best detectives is being targeted. Tonight is not the night for … "
"Alex," Bobby said again, plaintively now, and she shot him another sharp look.
He needed to talk.
She did not want to talk.
"Eames," Ross said again, "I'm sorry. I'm deeply sorry that you have been forced to work in an environment that is … I … wasn't aware that you …"
"Have a nasty little incest thing going with my cousin Denny, I know. Now you know. So?"
The silence following this was generating a vacuum and she thought she might actually be sucked inside-out in a moment. Then realized she was holding her breath, and exhaled slowly through her nose. Then turned her blazing eyes back to Bobby.
But now he wasn't looking at her.
Now, Bobby was looking away.
She bit down on the bitterness of his betrayal even while it was filling her up to her throat. But she could feel a shattering in her core. A trembling was beginning. Her ears were ringing. She needed to hurry.
"We discussed this before our attempted coffee break, as well. I think it's a bad idea. But all things being what they are, Detective Goren is going to do this one himself. Maybe you can talk to him about it. I already tried." She tossed her pen onto the notepad. "I can't do this anymore tonight. Considering neither of you seem interested in continuing to do our jobs, I'm going upstairs to get a few hours in the crib before daybreak. "
"What about the …" Bobby's voice was husky with emotion - grief or fury, she didn't know which.
"I can't do anything about it tonight," she told him, and pushed her chair away from the table, and stood up. "He isn't going to go on a rampage. He likes to show his hand when he knows he's holding a good one. He's just letting you know what he's playing. The rest of it's a bluff." She addressed Ross with a cool nod, said, "I'm sure you know what a good poker player he is, Captain. You know he'll pull back now, watch and wait. That's his habit."
"But, he's still in the building."
"So what? He's always in the building, Bobby."
"I … I don't think you should go upstairs by yourself."
She could barely stand to see his face, he was so hurt. And angry. Very angry.
But so was she.
"Who needs to pry now?" She said it before she had time to bite her tongue.
"That's not it," he insisted. "I wasn't looking for that. Don't, don't think that. I … I have to stop him from …"
She interrupted him with a rude snort, jeered at him, " 'To stop him from.' What a bunch of bullshit!"
The Captain was there, now wisely keeping his mouth clamped shut.
"Look at me," she demanded, and he did.
She was sure it was all over.
But in case it wasn't, she asked him, "Do you know me at all?"
Then Bobby was looking right at her, and seeing her.
"There is nothing terrible here that you need to save me from."
"Nothing terrible?" He was incredulous.
"For god's sake, Bobby, don't turn into a … at this point in our relationship? You're going to take issue with someone else fucking me?"
He flinched, and she felt so sad.
Ross's mouth fell open a fraction and his eyes popped out a bit.
"Don't act like it's a no big deal, Alex. When you were a child."
"You'll never make a case for that."
"He can't deny DNA evidence."
She shook her head, arms crossed defensively over her breasts. Said with control, "You have no idea how easily evidence gets lost. And evidence gets found."
They looked at each other over the table. Looked and looked, and she placed her hands down on the table top with her fingers spread wide and leaned on her arms, and sighed.
She said, "What do you do for a living? Denny Moran is Chief of Detectives. There's a reason besides nepotism that he has that job. He is very, very good at what he does. I'm a cop, too. In this job, I have seen things that will haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life. Not counting my contact with Jo Gage."
She could feel his involuntary physical response to the reminder. There it was, even across dead air space, the invisible arcing of electricity that just the mention of the name always brought between them, as deeply frightening as always. But she held his gaze and held her ground.
Told him, "You wouldn't be acting like this if I was a man." And dared him with the prolonged silence that followed to deny it.
He said, "You aren't a man."
"It was just sex. That's all it was. And it was a long time ago. You know what he's going to say, and you will never be able to prove it wasn't consensual. And you know what? There are a couple of thousand women in this city right now who do need to be saved. I'm not one of them." She glared at Ross, used her index finger and her whole arm for emphasis, said, "And you do not need to save me from him. He is my partner and my friend and my ally, and my lover. Not a threat. Capice?"
In spite of himself (she could tell), he let escape a small sound, her partner. A strangled noise, pleasure and agony. But still his voice rose. "You can't expect me to do nothing?" His disbelief could have been funny under other circumstances.
"Yes, that's exactly what I expect you to do," she answered. "That's what you have to do."
"I can't."
It was a statement of fact, and a bottom line.
And the location of the impasse.
And maybe the point.
She had carefully kept the bulk of the table between them through this exchange, but she rounded it now, came to stand directly in front of him, close enough to feel the heat of his skin even through their clothes.
"Then you have to make some choices. Get your head together about this. Who you are, and who I am."
Her eyes begged him, please, don't say it, Bobby. please don't say it. please don't.
She took the biggest risk she could. She put her hand on his chest right over his heart. She asked him quietly, "Are we partners?"
"Yes."
"So then you're going to have to trust me."
Just like that. Punctuation is just like that.
He inspected his shoes, sighed deeply, then sighed deeply again. And that was that.
"Maybe you two can do some debriefing while I'm gone." She shot Ross a pointed look. "Start with Frank's insurance policy - I'm assuming he gave you a head's up? That's where this came together for you?" Ross, looking contrite, nodded. "Then, maybe you two can start fresh? Stop this boring Neanderthal pissing war? If you really want to do something to improve my work environment, Captain, that'd be a nice change."
As she was turning to leave, Ross dared to say. "Eames, you know you aren't in this alone. We can protect you. You can trust us."
She looked at her Captain for a moment, somewhat as though she was seeing him for the first time.
Then she burst out laughing.
/
And after she was gone, Ross asked Bobby.
"Just what the hell does he have on her?"
And then Bobby punched the wall.
/
/
They miss Danny.
Much, much more than either of them thought it possible to miss anyone.
It's like a hole.
They work around it.
Try not to think about it too much.
But they miss him.