Disclaimer: Not mine, no infringement intended.
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But he had too many question marks on his file, but she just had their solve rates, so one day he's still sitting in Major Case staring at the third new partner in a year.
And Eames is a captain, in the one-nine.
His partner is a woman, because maybe after Eames the powers decided that a female presence was better for him. Her name is Joey, short for Josephine-but-don't-call-me-that, and she's not quite as little as Eames but still small, with a bite like a bulldog but no patience. Just no patience.
She's stirring her coffee with her finger and reading a file, and she's got a foot propped on the edge of her desk. The desk that used to belong to Eames.
How long ago, now?
She's a captain now and dating some guy named Guy, and that is easily the stupidest name he can think of. And they catch up for coffee every now and then, but she's switched to decaf soy lattes (soy!) and he can only see her between cases, because her adrenalin doesn't match his anymore. They're not on the same wavelength anymore.
Joey sucks loudly on her coffee-stirring finger. Nobody is on his wavelength.
He is staring at Joey and long past the point where Eames would have looked up, sighed, declared him a wreck and taken him out for dinner, Joey is nibbling on the end of her nail. Joey is oblivious to him. His cues, his needs, his patterns and rhythms, and his solve rate is down but Joey is happy because hers is up. It's that place in between.
Eames wouldn't have had to meet him halfway, because she'd be right there beside him.
Oh. Joey has a donut. A jelly donut and she's putting it in her coffee and the jelly is in the coffee, just little bits of it floating it around but she's drinking it anyway and oh!-
Standing somewhere near the elevator, away from the bullpen, not close enough for anyone to talk to him, has become a good place to be. Eames would have been standing out here with him, away from Deakins and Carver and just letting him take a moment to breathe and think. And she would have said something brilliant, they would have clicked, and the ball would keep on rolling.
Joey, like Marg before her and Kim before that, sees the ball and confiscated it like some third grade teacher.
And he is getting lost in his own metaphors.
At the one-nine she is happy, because she has settled into somewhat regular hours and has a chance for a life. She and Guy (stupid, stupid name) are getting semi-serious, as serious as anyone's been since her husband died, and he can feel himself getting farther and farther away. She evolves and he just becomes static. White noise. Background music in the elevator. In the elevator she's stepping out of, the sound faint and tinny just before the doors close behind her…
Oh, wait.
She looks so crisp and fresh in her suit, even past six, and smiles faintly in that way he's missed so much, because he's loitering near the elevator and surely she knows what it means.
"How's Joey?" she asks.
"Jelly donut in her coffee," he says grimly, and her smile gets wider because she knows, oh she knows all the little ins and outs of his mind, and jelly in the coffee is so very, very high on his gross-o-metre.
"I'll buy you dinner," she says.
It is in record time that he fetches his coat, waves at Joey, grabs his folder and is listening to that elevator music with Eames.
"How is Guy?" he asks.
"We broke up. He's an idiot," she says, and then, "And what kind of a name is Guy?"
He smiles, as the elevator descends.
"And I've missed you," she says quietly.
He misses her more than he could have imagined, and those warm fuzzies he got as her partner never warned him how hard it would be to let her go, to let her advance away from him and not have her there, beside him working on a case.
Or beside him, not working.
Her hand slips into his, and breath is leaving his body, so he leans in to kiss her, on the cheek, like a friend, but she turns her head. The kiss is on her mouth. She closes her eyes, and leans into it.
They break apart. The doors open at the ground floor, and they look out at the empty lobby.
They both reach for the 'close door' button at the same time, and Bobby smiles into their kiss. They're back on the same wavelength.
He may learn to live with the decaf, but definitely not the soy.
--fin.