Author's Note: How much did I love last night's episode? Kate Erbe gave the best performance I've seen from her since the show began (which is saying something considering I think she's great in all of the episodes). This ficlet materialized on my morning drive to work – R/R if you like. (PS – Dick Wolf, since you own them, give that woman a raise!)

I wanted you to know I love the way you laugh
I want to hold you high and steal your pain away
I keep your photograph; I know it serves me well
I want to hold you high and steal your pain.

Broken by Seether

It was like a punch to the stomach.

Detective Robert Goren sat in the courtroom and listened as his partner, Alex Eames, read aloud from the witness stand, the words pouring forth from a letter she'd written five years previous. The contents of the letter indicated her desire for a new partner, for someone who wasn't "erratic" and "unorthodox," the gist being that he was too weird to work with.

And yet it wasn't her words that sent him reeling, it was the sight of her reading them that sent his stomach careening to the floor – the sight of her crying as she read aloud words that he knew she'd never intended for him to hear.

Alex Eames didn't cry. At least, the Alex Eames he knew didn't.

Hardened from her years of police service, a stint in Vice, and steeped in the police culture that comes from growing up with a cop for a father, Alex was always shrouded in a rock-hard veneer that kept her from revealing her true emotions. It was an advantage in the interrogation room and in street work and though Bobby (for he was always Bobby to her and he always thought of himself as Bobby when he thought of her) had seen her come close to the boiling point of letting her true feelings come through, she'd never broken. When a suspect in a kidnapping investigation had drawn a pistol and she'd shot him to death in self-defense, she remained calm. When a particularly nefarious liar and ladies man (who was also a serial killer) hit on her shamelessly, she never batted an eyelash. And even when Bobby's nemesis Nicole Wallace belittled her for acting as a surrogate mother for her sister, Alex had remained stoic. Stoic, in fact, seemed to be her typical approach to things.

Until today.

And as she finished reading and began to speak in answer to ADA Ron Carver's redirected line of questioning, her voice gaining strength and her eyes meeting his across the room in guilt and apology and concern, Bobby realized something that had never occurred to him before: Alex had cried because she didn't want to hurt him and also because she didn't want to be hurt.

He held the same power over her that she held over him. They truly were equals.

Why the idea had never materialized previously, he wasn't sure, though he suspected it had to do with the way that he never let people get too close to him if he could help it. Being let down by one too many adults as a child had left him hesitant to form any long-term relationships that could leave him vulnerable to a broken heart (or at least one severely bruised). His relationship with Alex was a prime example – or at least it had begun that way. They worked together, they had the highest solve rate of anyone in the Major Case Squad, and he now realized that somewhere in the midst of all of their working, they'd also developed a closer friendship than he'd ever had with anyone else. Somehow, he'd let her in without even knowing it and she'd let him in too – enough so that she visibly feared losing him over a short letter written in haste and frustration just after their first few weeks together five years ago.

Letting someone in gave them the power to hurt you if they chose and vice versa. Tit for tat. He'd played that game enough with Nicole Wallace – and been burned – that he should have remembered that tiny fact.

And now that he did remember, the idea of Alex being afraid that he could hurt her was a novel one. He'd always feared a letter like the one she'd just read would come about, always feared that one day he'd step too far over the line and look back to find her gone, but he'd never realized that she feared the same thing. He'd never allowed himself access to that kind of power before and he gulped back a wave of remorse and nervousness as he silently shouldered this newfound responsibility. She was, after all, his partner – she'd acquired a taste for him (she'd said)and he would go to the ends of the earth before he would do anything to harm her. Her tears on the witness stand indicated that she felt the same.

Now he just had to tell her that they were okay.

She was standing with Carver outside the courtroom, head in her hand and looking visibly shaken when he found her after the recess was called. She fumbled and apologized and her guilt-stricken eyes cut him to the core. He wanted to gather her in his arms, to hold her close and thank her up and down for staying with him and for protecting his feelings and tell her that it was all right. (He also wanted to punch the defense attorney who'd put her on the spot in the first place, but that emotion would have to be stifled for another day.)

And yet even with his emotions bubbling at a near full-boil, what actually happened was this:

"I'm lucky that you stayed," he told her, then moved away before his feelings overwhelmed him.

It wasn't a hug. It wasn't an outpouring of sentiment. It wasn't even an apology or a thank you. It was like the cop personas that made up their characters and cemented their relationship – real, genuine, and understated.

And it was enough.

FIN