A/N: Mmm, all sorts of angsty goodness in this chapter!

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Eames's apartment, smaller than Goren's, opened directly into a tiny kitchen cluttered with countertop appliances and boxes of cereal and crackers. "Sorry," she said over her shoulder as Goren followed her in. "I get lazy."

He offered her a small smile. "It's . . . easier than putting them away every time, right?"

"I say the same thing every time I bring you here, don't I?" she asked with an embarrassed shake of her head.

"It's part of your charm," he said reassuringly. "You unpack the groceries, I'll start cleaning up."

"You don't need to clean up after me, Bobby. You're the guest."

Ignoring her protests, he gathered up an armful of boxes off of the counter and started slipping them into her cabinets. "I'm not a guest."

"Ok, fine," she said, following him across the room. "You're not a guest, you're my partner. But you still don't need to clean my kitchen."

Giving her a gentle push toward the groceries she'd left on the kitchen table, he said, "It would be more efficient to start dinner while you fight with me."

"Yeah, yeah." With a sour look, she abandoned arguing and starting taking food out of the bags.

They worked in companionable silence for a few minutes, Goren organizing and Eames beginning to stir-fry meat and vegetables, until Eames's cell phone rang. Without needing to be asked, Goren claimed the spatula and took charge of the stir-fry so she could answer the phone unencumbered.

Giving him a quick smile, she flipped open the phone. "Eames."

"Where the hell are you two?" demanded Deakins. "I haven't heard from you since lunch!"

Eames's eyes widened. "Sorry, Captain. We were at the college longer than we'd expected, and . . ."

"Are you still there?"

"Uh, no. We actually decided to call it a day, since we ran so late."

She could sense Deakins's surprise when he said only, "Oh."

She glanced at Goren, who was keeping their dinner from burning while watching her curiously. "Yeah, sorry we forgot to let you know."

"You're forgiven, but don't do it again. And you can tell Goren that, too, when you talk to him."

"We won't and I will, Captain. And we'll be in nice and early tomorrow morning to give you a status report."

"Good. I'll be expecting it. Enjoy your evening, Eames."

"Thanks, sir." She disconnected the phone and sighed, telling Goren, "He's pissed."

"I could tell," he said, holding out a strip of red pepper for her to sample. "Is this cooked enough?"

She took a bite of the pepper, chewing experimentally. "Mmm," she mumbled around the mouthful, "give it another minute."

"Ok." He turned back to the stove, asking over his shoulder, "He's mad we didn't call him?"

"Yeah. You know," she said, reaching past him to grab a serving spoon, "you're supposed to have the great mind. You should be in charge of remembering this stuff."

Goren snorted. "Without you to remind me, I have a hard enough time remembering that I even have a captain. And why didn't you tell him where we are?"

"Because he didn't need to know," she said, wondering why felt the need to ask.

Deciding that their dinner was as cooked as it was going to get, he turned off the burner and gave her an amused look. "If you say so."

She could tell that he was reading into her statement. The look on his face told her that he was probably inferring something that made her look silly. "What does that mean?" she asked defiantly, lifting her chin.

"Nothing," he said, raising both hands in surrender. "I'm just here to cook."

"Bobby," she said tightly, taking a step toward him.

Goren stood his ground, watching as she advanced the few feet from the opposite side of the kitchen. "What did I say?" he asked her, trying to suppress the smile that wanted to spread across his face. Alex could be a difficult, and dangerous, woman at times, but there was just something about the sight of her stalking him in her own kitchen, brandishing a giant spoon, that made it impossible to react with anything but laughter.

"You," she said, stopping less than an inch before she would have run into him, "can be really freaking annoying when you want to be."

He looked down at the top of her head, which was the only part of her he could see without leaning back to neutralize their height difference, and contemplated the situation he was in. He had been teasing her, since he knew that she had withheld the information from Deakins simply to avoid annoying questions, but he hadn't expected to actually anger her. He should be worried . . . but instead he was intrigued. She was nearly on top of him already, so what would she do if he didn't give in? Scale his leg?

"I'm not annoying; you're just wrong," he said, deciding that this was an interesting enough experiment that he wanted to play it out. Reaching behind him, he firmly planted both hands on the edge of the counter. If she tried to take him down, he needed to be prepared.

"What!" she squeaked, tipping her head back and going on tiptoe so she could - almost - glare right into his face.

Goren was even more interested now. Not only had he gotten her goat, but he had also gotten her to stand so close that he could have kissed her with hardly any effort.

Where had that thought come from? He closed his eyes for a second, reminding himself that this was teasing, not flirting, and then opened them again to find that she hadn't retreated and was still in his face. "Alex . . ."

"Oh, now you call me Alex!" she ranted, inching herself a little taller and giving his chest a shove.

Deliberately being obtuse, he widened his eyes questioningly. "You don't want me to call you that?"

"You . . . you . . .!" Unable to get out a retort, she closed her mouth and tried to regroup. Then a thought struck her. "You're doing this on purpose!"

"Me?" he said with exaggerated innocence.

"You are! You are such a . . ." At a loss for words, she threw her hands up in frustration.

Goren grabbed her wrists as they flew past him and held them in front of his shoulders, slightly over her head. "Bastard?" he supplied politely. "Asshole?" He kept his hold on her, resisting her attempts to free herself.

"Both of those." She narrowed her eyes and gave him what she hoped was a threatening look. "Let me go."

"Are you going to hit me if I do?"

She sighed, relaxing a little for the first time since the argument started. "You know I won't. It's not a fair fight."

"It's not?" Who did she think had the advantage? If she tackled him right now, he'd be way too distracted to challenge her.

She tried to pull her arms out of his hands again, but failed. "No, it's not. You won't hit me, and it's not a fair fight if one of the fighters can't hit back."

"Of course I'm not going to hit you," he said, finally releasing her wrists. "I'd probably break you."

She rubbed at her left wrist where the flesh was reddened from his grip. "That wasn't my point."

"Look at this," he said, taking hold of her wrist much more gently and pushing it in front of her face. "I did that with one hand, without having any intention of hurting you."

"Oh, come on," she said, rolling her eyes but not trying to take her arm back. "Wrists have no cushioning, I could do the same thing to you."

He cocked his head to the side. "Want to try?"

"To hurt your wrists?"

"Yeah." He let go of her arm for the second time. "It will make me feel better," he coaxed when she didn't respond.

Alex took a step back as he held out his hands to her. "Are you serious?"

"Completely," he said with a nod. "Go ahead."

"Did anyone ever tell you that you're weird?" she asked, resting her hands lightly under his to hold them still.

"Just about every day. Go ahead, Alex. I won't break either."

Confused but willing to play along, she did as he asked and wrapped her hands around his wrists. She couldn't circle them entirely, since her fingers were too short, but she could grasp more than enough of them to squeeze, which she did. "I don't particularly want to hurt you, either," she warned, holding his arms up between them.

"You're not," Goren said quietly. "I'm . . . sorry for teasing you." He winced slightly when her hands tightened in response to his apology.

"I don't know why I reacted so badly," she admitted. "But it doesn't help that you know exactly which of my buttons to push to piss me off."

He looked down at her, eyes softening slightly. "I don't try to get into your head, you know. You're not a criminal and I respect your desire for privacy."

"Enough," she declared, releasing his wrists. "I know you don't mean to, but you do it anyway, just from spending time with me."

This was getting dangerous. Goren put an escape strategy into action: "Eames . . ."

"Alex," she corrected. "You already said it once tonight, so I know you're capable of it."

"Ok, Alex . . . I think our dinner's getting cold."

She stepped back, startled out of the spell that was holding them in their positions. "Oh."

Goren mentally kicked himself for spoiling such a pleasant interlude. "Sorry, I didn't mean to . . . startle you."

"Oh, no, you didn't. I had just forgotten about the stir . . ." She trailed off, knowing that Goren's immediate response to hearing that she forgot would be to wonder what had made her forget. "Get the plates," she finished instead. "Let's eat."

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"So," Eames said an hour later, flopping backwards onto the couch, "What'd you get from the students?"

Goren set their coffee on the side table and sat down more decorously. "I learned that grad students fight a lot."

"So what else is new?"

He smiled. "They didn't have much that we didn't already know. Li was a bad teacher, he tore apart their work . . ." He shrugged. "I got some impressions, but not much information."

"Well, what were your impressions?" she asked, sitting up and grabbing her notebook off the table.

He leaned back and propped his feet up on the coffee table. "Jana Wu doesn't talk much, but she's not reticent when she does speak. She seems fairly observant; she made no secret of having disliked Li. She also seemed to take Dr. Robi's advances in stride. I don't think she did it."

"She was the little one? Black hair?" Eames asked, jotting down notes as she went.

"Yes."

"Ok, go on."

"Sara King is . . . boisterous. Speaks her mind. Seems good natured, but defensive of her abilities. She bickered with Andrew Kim through most of the time I was there. I'm not writing her off yet."

"Andrew Kim . . . he was the one that Li liked, right?"

"Yes, and he seems to have liked Li, too. Defended him to the other three. In fact, he seemed to hold himself apart from them, and I couldn't tell if it was because of Li or if it was just his way. I'd be interested to see how he's been doing in his classes."

"How come?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Just a hunch. He seemed a little too put-together."

"As in 'holding it together by a thread'-type put together?"

"Maybe." He stretched his arm across the back of the couch, smiling at her. "You know, this is why I like working with you."

"What?" she said, blinking. "Because I have a smartass answer for everything?"

"No." He looked at her contemplatively. "Because I don'thave to have the answer for everything. I make big logical leaps, but you're the one who cleans up my mess and makes it make sense."

Eames thought about that for a second, then grinned. "Why Bobby, I think you just gave me a compliment!"

A flush rose on his cheeks and he looked down at his hands. "It's true."

"I believe you. You just caught me by surprise."

"Sorry."

"It's ok. Keep talking."

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As Eames finished describing her interview with Bhat Robi, she saw a strange look pass over Goren's face. "What?"

He shook his head. "It's nothing. It's just that you . . . you don't seem to be bothered by his attitude toward you."

"Why should I be? After what I've had to do with people like Talbott, I've suffered much worse."

"Ok."

"Really," she added, noticing that he didn't seem convinced. "I worked years of Vice. Add that to how a lot of men seem to have a thing for short, skinny girls like me, and I'm almost surprised I don't get it more."

He cocked his head to the side and studied her face. "You think that's what people see you as? A 'short, skinny girl'?"

"Not exclusively, but it happens often enough that I'm aware of it."

"Well, I don't see you that way."

She smiled gently. "I know. You're the last person who would ever look at me like that."

He wasn't sure he liked the sound of that either. "Why would I be the last person?"

"Well, because you're my partner. You deal with me almost entirely on an intellectual level."

"That doesn't mean I don't still see you," he insisted.

"Why are you so hung up on this?" she asked, puzzled. "You've seen me deal with slime much worse than a horny professor."

"I just . . . don't think that you should assume that you know what others think about you. It can make you . . . bitter."

Dropping her pen onto the table, she leaned back against the arm of the couch and stared him in the face. "Why don't you tell me what the real problem is?"

"I don't . . ."

"Bobby."

"I don't have a problem," he said cautiously. "I was just . . . making a point."

Eames just crossed her arms and kept looking at him. "Look, it's late and we're both tired. I'd like to get some more work done before I go to bed, but we're not going to get anything done until you tell me what's going on. So talk."

Running a hand through his hair, he slouched against the opposite arm of the couch and frowned. "It strikes me that you're a little too complacent about this."

"What, you think I should kick the shit out of every guy who hits on me, instead?"

"That might not be a bad idea. This is New York."

"Oh, very funny. Now, what do you mean by 'complacent'?"

"Ok, look," he said with a sigh. "I'm just saying that you're a lot more than your body, and it feels odd to me that you're not bothered that it seems to be your main investigative tool."

That hadn't come out well, he realized when her eyes widened and she said furiously, "My main investigative tool?"

"Um . . ."

"Goren! I can't believe you just said that to me!"

Uh-oh, she had gone back to his last name. She was definitely unhappy with him. "I didn't mean that . . ."

"What you meant was that you think I don't pull my weight around here."

"Uh!" he managed as his jaw dropped. "I didn't say anything like that, Alex."

"You didn't have to say it. I have a brain to go along with my body, remember? I could tell what you were implying."

"I don't . . ."

"No, enough," she interrupted him, standing up. "We're not going to get anything more done tonight. You should go." She stalked to where he'd hung his coat and jerked it off its hook.

"But I . . ."

She shoved the coat at him. "Here. I'll see you in the morning."

"Alex!"

Eames just gave him a weary look and shook her head as she pulled open the door. "Tomorrow."