Goren put down the phone for the eighth time that night. He was finally beginning to accept that Alex wasn't going to answer his calls, no matter how much he pleaded with her answering machine, and the thought was beyond depressing. Particularly because he knew that she'd interpreted his actions the wrong way and he desperately felt the need to explain to her what he'd really meant.

This was ridiculous, he reminded himself. It was midnight. She was probably already in bed, had been for hours, maybe didn't even know he'd been calling. He had to work tomorrow; he couldn't stay up until the wee hours hitting redial again and again. With a sigh, he hung up the phone and stood up from the kitchen table he'd been using as a command post.

He had to put this out of his mind, at least until tomorrow.

He'd just sat down on the bed and shucked off one shoe when the sound of his door buzzer gave him a jolt. Who the hell was buzzing him at well past mid-

He shot to his feet and ran to the door as best he could with one shoe on and one shoe off.

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Alex heard thumping and crashing noises coming from behind the door and wondered what had happened to her partner's usual grace. Clutching her bag to her chest, she took a step back in anticipation of him flying through the door.

Just before he reached for the doorknob, Goren forced himself to a stop and tried to compose himself. He didn't even know who was behind the door, he reminded himself. The last thing he needed was to scare his eighty year-old neighbor by throwing open the the door and getting in his face.

To Alex's surprise, the knob turned slowly. She watched it move, watched the door swing backwards until it revealed Goren's face. His eyes widened slightly at the sight of her.

"Uh, hi," she mumbled. "Can I come in?"

Wordlessly, Bobby swung the door wider and motioned her in. He was almost afraid to speak, knowing that when they started talking, their argument would have to resume.

Alex watched him as she entered his apartment, waiting for him to ask why she'd come, to ask anything at all, but he just looked back at her silently. After a few seconds, she thrust the bag she'd been holding into his hands. "I brought drinks."

He took the bag, but continued to just stare at her for a second. "You what?"

"I thought maybe you'd want to work on a game plan for my interview with Andrew Kim," she muttered, turning her back to him and walking deeper into his apartment. "Since it's starting to look important."

"You brought . . . drinks," he repeated, finally comprehending her words. "Uh, thanks, I guess." He didn't ask if she was going to stay and consume the drinks with him. Her answer would probably be "no," and he didn't want to hear it.

She slowly turned back toward him and he got his first good look at her. She must have changed out of her business suit hours ago, he realized. Now she was wearing a loose pair of jeans and beat-up flannel shirt that looked big enough to fit three of her. He wondered if it had been her husband's.

"That's it?" he asked after a few seconds.

"Huh?"

"You came over to work on the Kim interview?"

"Yes," she said defensively. "But if you're not up to it, I'd be happy to leave . . ."

"No!" he said, quickly stepping between her and the door. "I just . . . was wondering if you're going to let me explain about last night."

"What's to explain?" she said with false brightness, focusing her attention on opening the bag he'd taken from her. "We both know what happened. There's no need to rehash it. Look," she added. "Vodka, rum, cranberry juice, Kahlua," she listed, naming each bottle as she pulled it out and set it on his coffee table.

"Did you clean out your liquor cabinet?" he asked in surprise.

"Only part of it," she said, keeping her voice as upbeat and innocent-sounding as possible. "You still have that scotch in your private stock?"

Bobby was far from fooled. He knew her well enough to see that she wasn't even close to "relaxed"; she looked like she'd jump out of her skin if he came a step too close to her. "Yes," he said, trying to sound neutral. "Let me get it and some glasses and then we can, uh, get to work."

Ok, so she hadn't come to hear his explanation, he thought as he rummaged in his kitchen cabinets. But she had still come, and at such a late hour, he knew it couldn't have been just a work-related whim. He could deal with this; if she was going to be drinking, the odds were even better that he'd be able to convince her to talk to him.

Who was he to complain if the woman wanted a drinking buddy?

Alex was still standing by the table when he reappeared with two highball glasses and a shot glass. "Going to be doing shots?" she teased, picking up the smallest glass as he set it down.

"It's for measuring." He removed it from her hand and set it back on the table. "What, uh . . . I'll make the drinks; what do you want?"

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Ten minutes later, they were settled against opposite arms of his couch, her legs propped up on the back of the couch, his dangling over onto the floor. Each held a photocopy of Andrew Kim's records in one hand and a drink in the other. Their combined notes from the day's interviews lay on the cushion between them.

"He seemed very focused on being seem as better than the others," Goren mumbled, half to himself and half to her. "Should you feed that, or fight it?"

She took another sip of her drink and looked up. "Depends. Am I trying to charm him or scare him?"

"Eames, what I said about you flirting . . ." he began, seizing the opportunity to speak.

"I guess charm is good, at least at first. If it doesn't work out, I can always switch or send you in," she said, pretending she hadn't heard him.

Bobby, frustrated, swallowed half of his drink in one gulp. He had hoped that once he had her settled, she'd be willing to open up, but apparently that wasn't the case. "You can intimidate him quite well on your own; you don't need send me in to do that," he finally said.

She didn't look up this time. "I know. But it's your case too, you're allowed a shot if you want it."

"Well, thank you, I guess. Alex, what happened last night . . ."

"I could drop subtle references to his background," she went on. "According to the school's financial records, his family didn't have the money to send him anywhere. He's only there because of a fellowship. Maybe I can rattle him by acting like that's something to be ashamed of."

"Alex . . ."

"We need to find out when he last saw Li, and whether he ever saw the guy outside of school."

"Eames."

"You think I should show him the abbreviation from the date book? Maybe he can translate it."

"Alex!" he said, speaking loudly enough to drown her out.

She blinked and looked up at him. "What?"

"Are you going to let me talk about last night?"

"No," she said firmly, and returned her eyes to her notes. "I bet he can read it. Or we could call Robi tomorrow and see if he can do it. One or the other of them must be familiar enough with his habits."

Deciding he needed time to plan a strategy, he stood up and plucked the glass out of her hand. "How about a refill?" he asked, then turned and headed for the table without letting her answer.

Bent over their makeshift bar, he searched his head for some technique he hadn't already tried. He'd done the abject apology thing; he'd tried being casual and waiting for her to bring it up; he'd attempted to slip it into the conversation without her noticing. He'd even come out and asked her directly, twice. What was left?

His mischievous id suggested an even more direct approach: touch her. She couldn't ignore him if he was forcing her to keep her mind off work.

But as satisfying as that would be, both mentally and physically, he realized that it was the worst choice he could make. She already resented him for kissing her last night; he didn't need to make things worse by doing it again, and this time blatantly to control her.

"Bobby?" she asked from the couch. "You ok over there?"

Snapping back to reality, he looked down and noticed that he had almost overfilled his glass with the scotch he had been pouring. "Just fine," he told her quickly, carefully lifting the glass and drinking enough of the liquid to make it portable. Putting his new drink down, he moved on to hers. Her glass was still half-full, but he topped it off with another healthy dose of vodka followed by a dollop of cranberry juice.

He watched her as he carried their drinks back to the couch. Her face was mostly hidden by her hair, which she hadn't bothered to pull back, but he could tell that she was concentrating on the folder in her hands. How could she possibly focus with all this tension filling the room? He wished he had her equanimity.

"Thanks," she mumbled, accepting the drink without looking up.

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One hour and two refills later, Goren was working his way across the couch toward his partner, moving excruciatingly slowly. He'd covered five inches in the past fifteen minutes and was nearly ready to tear his hair out, but it was working - Alex, absorbed in Andrew Kim's history, was oblivious. She was also slightly drunk.

He'd known it wasn't fair to keep pace with her; four drinks had hardly affected him, but they were about the most Eames could consume without becoming officially drunk. He was perfectly aware of that, which was why he had no intention of giving her any more alcohol to drink. It was also why he felt that he might have a chance to talk to her now.

She was much more relaxed now, slouching against the arm of the couch. Her face was no longer so tense, although he didn't doubt that she'd snap back to normal in a second if he started talking about last night again.

Therefore, he wasn't talking about last night. Instead, he was going to run an experiment: how close could he get to her before she got alarmed? And what would happen when she noticed, in her somewhat intoxicated state?

He slid forward another half-inch.

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Alex was busily sketching out an outline of tomorrow's interview on a piece of scrap paper when something brushed her shoulder. She jumped, dropping her pencil and managing to give herself a papercut. "Shit!"

Goren, who had been focused on controlling the amount of pressure he used when he touched her shoulder and hadn't been expecting her sudden movement, jumped too. Taking in the situation, he bent over to retrieve her pencil, slipped it into her uninjured hand, and took hold of the hand with the papercut. "Sorry."

She blinked, noticing that now that she'd moved her eyes away from the paper, things were looking slightly blurry. Great, not only had she been dumb enough to go to Goren's apartment in the middle of the night, but she'd been enough of an imbecile to go and get drunk while she was there. "What? Oh, it's ok. I was concentrating too hard." She had to think for a second to remember what it was that had startled her. "Was it you that just touched me?"

Bobby stilled, but kept hold of her hand. "Uh, yeah."

"You need something?"

"No," he said slowly. "I was just . . . rearranging myself."

"Oh." She looked at him warily for a second. "Can I have my hand back? It's just a cut."

"Sure." He put her hand down and pretended to shift his weight, using the movement to cover the fact that he'd moved another inch toward her. "Sorry I scared you."

"It's ok." She gestured at the notes she'd been making. "I was concentrating on my evil scheme."

"Oh?" He held out his hand for the paper. "Let me see."

She handed him the paper and moved her attention back to Kim's records. Her interest was caught by a short paragraph stapled to the back cover of the folder, and she looked closer. "Hey, look at th-" she began, cutting off abruptly when she raised her head to look at him and found his ear less than an inch from her face. She froze.

"Huh?" he asked, turning his head to look at her, which placed his lips in the position his ear had been in a moment ago.

He didn't seem to have noticed how close he was to her, she thought. "Uh, Bobby?"

"Hmm?" He was no longer looking at her; he'd lowered his eyes to where her finger was pointing in the file. "Dr. Li didn't want to admit him," he murmured after reading the paragraph. "Now that's interesting."

"Bobby."

He looked up at her. "Yes?"

She smiled weakly and tried to make a joke out of it: "You might as well just sit on my lap if you're going to sit this close."

He blinked. "I'd crush you."

She didn't know whether he was being purposely obtuse or whether he was really that clueless, but the situation and the alcohol finally broke through the last of her restraint. She started laughing.

Hard.

Bobby watched her with interest. She was laughing instead of trying to kill him - a big improvement over her previous reactions to him in the past few days. "I mean, I can if you want," he pushed on, curious to see how far she'd let him go. "But you'd have to give me a hand."

Eames laughed harder and slumped against him, shaking.

"Of course," he said, inching an arm around her shoulders, "we could always do it the other way."

"What other way?" she said teasingly. "I think there's only one way to sit on a lap."

"How about you sit in my lap?" he said.

Her laughter stopped as if someone had just turned off the spigot. "Don't."

He sighed. "Would you please let me explain about last night?"

She moved away. "Goren, I told you . . ."

"You know you're stuck here for at least another few hours anyway while you sober up. Just give me ten minutes."

She sighed. "Fine. I don't know what you think you're going to explain, though. It seemed pretty clear-cut to me."

"Well, it wasn't."

"Fine," she said again, and just looked at him, waiting.

"Can I . . . move closer?" he asked, moving his hand toward her gingerly.

"I don't think that's a good idea."

"Why?"

She pushed his hand away. "Because it's become obvious that you know that touching me will shut me up, and I don't like being manipulated."

"But I don't know that!" he protested. "You're giving me too much credit. I kissed you last night because I wanted to know how you'd react to me, not because I thought it would give me an advantage."

At the word kissed, she closed her eyes, trying to contain her embarrassment. Even in his apology, he knew what she was talking about before she could make her argument! "That was a mistake."

"No it wasn't!" he said, stricken by the idea that she thought of him as a mistake. "It wasn't a mistake. You liked it."

"Don't start on that. How do you know it had anything to do with you? Maybe I would have reacted to any guy who kissed me; you know I don't get out much."

Goren felt like she'd slapped him. He hadn't thought of that; he had assumed it was him she was reacting to. The thought that he was just a convenient body was as painful as the thought that she saw him as a mistake.

Alex caught his rapid change in expression and wanted to kick herself. At the very least, she could have phrased that more delicately. Where was her usual perceptiveness? "Look, I'm sorry."

He shook his head. "You have nothing to be sorry for. I . . . pushed you."

His face had taken on the look of exhausted defeat that she associated with his Nicole Wallace encounters and she wanted to reach out to him, to tell him that it wasn't his fault. Did her rejection really cut him as deeply as his battles with the woman who'd wormed under his skin and eaten away at his soul?

What if he was telling the truth, and he really had just wanted to kiss her? He was so shy about personal matters; she could only imagine what he'd be feeling now if she'd just shot a hole in something he honestly wanted.

But what did she want? She wasn't sure. He was right, she'd enjoyed the kiss. More than enjoyed. He probably could have made love to her last night without a hint of protest from Alex . . . but he hadn't. She closed her eyes and tried to remember exactly what the sequence of events had been . . .

He'd kissed her so intensely. She hadn't even been conscious of almost falling, but he had been, and he'd caught her. He'd looked at her, murmured that this was her decision. There had been triumph in his voice, but it wasn't the triumph of a man who'd bent a woman to his will. It had been the same kind of triumph she'd heard in his voice so many times before, as they closed a case. His voice of triumph that meant, I went out on a limb for this one, but I was right. I was right!

And then he'd pulled away, telling her that he was going to get himself killed. He'd known her well enough to understand that her acquiescence in the moment might not last. He'd called her "My Eames" then, and looked embarrassed when she caught it. He'd been afraid he was scaring her - with his physical contact, or his words, she wondered?

And then he'd left.

What did it add up to? She bit her lip, knowing what conclusion she was going to be forced to reach: if he'd started the kiss because of some secret agenda, he'd abandoned the plan within seconds. He'd continued to kiss her because he wanted to. More importantly, he'd left because he knew she would have wanted him to if she had been coherent. He hadn't taken advantage of her, far from it. He had stopped himself before crossing the line, specifically because he didn't want to take unfair advantage.

She opened her eyes and found Goren watching her intently. He hadn't moved; in fact, he looked like he was frozen in place. His eyes were glued to her face and his own face bore the expression of someone waiting for the axe to fall.

"Bobby . . ." she managed, meeting his eyes. "I'm sorry."

It was his turn to close his eyes and shake his head. "Don't be. I, uh . . . I understand why you're angry. I can see what it must have seemed like . . ."

"No! No," she cut him off. "I was angry because I lost control, but I only . . . I just realized now that the whole time, you kept your mind on me."

He blinked. "I don't understand. I mean, of course I was thinking about you while I was kissing you."

"Not like that. You kept yourself focused on me, Alex, as the Alex you knew. You didn't do what you wanted . . . you did what you knew I wanted."

He stared at her, still not understanding her point. "I-"

"Look," she said, sliding nearer to him and sitting up on her knees to bring her head level with his, "you kissed me because you wanted to. I kissed you back because I wanted to. I assume you would have, uh, wanted more, but you didn't even try, because you knew that I might not want it. So you left, instead."

He stared at her, shocked that she understood, and so clearly. What had happened to the Eames of a few hours ago, who wouldn't even speak to him? "Uh . . ."

"I may be slower than you," she said with a shrug, reading the question in his eyes, "but I catch up eventually."

"So you're . . . not angry?"

She thought about that for a second. "I still am, a little. More like 'annoyed.' Let's just say your technique was a little lacking."

He continued to stare at her for another long second, and then the impassive mask he'd kept on for most of the argument shattered. The look of delight that spread across his face would have seemed comical to Alex if she hadn't been too busy wondering whether he would kiss her again, now that she'd admitted liking it.

He made an obvious effort to contain himself and said hesitantly, "Are you sure you're telling the truth now? You're not just trying to mitigate the effects of your last comment?"

"I promise. I wouldn't lie to you about this. I may be a bitch sometimes, but I'm not that much of a bitch."

He nodded slowly. "No, you're not. So are we . . . you really forgive me?" He was having a hard time adapting to this sudden change. He'd expected to spend the night trying to win her over, but now it seemed like the winning had already been done . . . and he was at a loss for what the next step was supposed to be.

"So," she said, looking down at the folder that still sat in her lap. "You, uh, liked my reaction, then."

He swallowed.

She looked at him.

He stared at his hands.

Silence reigned.

And then the phone rang.

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A/N: Ok, yes, I admit I am an exceedingly cruel person to end the chapter this way, but it just seemed right! To everyone who's been asking if I'll eventually resolve the tension, the answer's yes, but I can't tell you exactly when (mostly because I don't know, myself). So just keep hanging on!

A/N, Jr.: Thank you for pointing out that posting error, thousand-miles, and for recommending me to your Yahoo! group. It makes me feel all squishy inside to know that people think I'm good enough to recommend!