A/N: This fic is a response to Nicole Clevenger's Incomplete Information (which can be found here: ?storyid=1717024), written with her blessing.
Disclaimer: Not mine, no infringement intended.
Flawed Formation
Once, Bobby saw Eames flirt for a full 39 minutes with Neil Mahney from Narc. Bobby had introduced them, and the three of them, and Nathan's partner, Fiona Johnson, had all gone for a beer around the corner.
Eames flirting was a sight to behold. Fiona and Bobby had given each other knowing looks, and sat and smiled indulgently at the sexual banter being flung across the table, but when it had come time to go, Eames had stood, Neil had asked for her number, and she'd smacked him down.
Cold, real cold.
This is what Bobby remembers on Wednesday morning.
He makes two coffees, without thinking, because Eames calls in sick about as often as he does. Never. In his mind he knows she's not there, understands that this day, like this day every year for as long as they've been partnered, is the one time she puts the call through to Deakins and says she's ill. But his hands just keep pouring the coffee, putting cream in (no sugar), stirring, stirring, stirring...
Funny, because she was away for months. But one day off seems so much more significant than maternity leave ever did.
He leaves the coffee just sitting there, doesn't even bother pouring it out. He goes back to his desk and he's got paperwork to do, fact checking, because even though they're in the middle of a case this stuff takes time. The endless phone calls and web research never makes it into the prime time cop shows. And he hates it, because he'd prefer to sit and think, but that's what Eames normally lets him do and he doesn't want to leave a backlog of the shit detail for her to come back to tomorrow.
He wonders what she does, on this day every year. Probably visits his grave - Jonathon, that's his name - probably visits Jonathon's grave. He can almost see it, some cold tombstone surrounded by snow in a graveyard full of them, and Eames would stand in front of it with her gloved hands in front of her. Maybe she'd talk to him. Lay flowers? But flowers die, and she doesn't like them much anyway.
A copy of her file is in his desk at home, sitting next to the files of every partner he's ever had. But hers is the only one that's been opened more than once.
She wouldn't go to the grave, he decides suddenly. Maybe she's with his family. Jonathon Eames. Alex Eames. Jonathon and Alex. They roll strangely over his tongue. She never mentions him, never talks about him, not even in the way that partners bring up family members in anecdotes and examples, reasons for the things they know (my uncle had a taxidermy hobby, my grandfather flew a bomber in the war, my dad became a cop because otherwise he knew he'd be a crook).
No stories about Jonathon. No pictures in obvious places in her apartment, although he's never seen her bedroom. And that cold shoulder when another cop dared to ask her out.
He can't see her with Jonathon's family, either. In fact, he can't see her sitting silently alone and crying. He can't see her quietly pressing down 364 days of grief and then letting it out at the carefully planned place and time. Holding it in and choking it up and never saying a word. He can't see her grieving every day.
Maybe today isn't about letting it out, but about bringing it in. Making sure she remembers. But he can't see it. He just can't picture how. And this upsets him.
That night his hand hovers over the phone. He goes to bed without calling. His ritual, once a year. Lies with his head on the pillow and that report. It lists all the details, but leaves out the most important information. The parts that would make him understand. The Alex in the death of Jonathon Eames.
Thursday morning he makes two coffees. Eames is at her desk by the time he's finished, and she smiles up at him distractedly, holds up the DMV records and starts grilling him. He watches her carefully, but on this part of her life, there's no tell. Nothing to give her away.
And he knows that, because of this, his profile will always be flawed in its very formation.
--fin