Disclaimer: I don't own these characters. They belong to Dick Wolf. Thanks, Mr. Wolf.
"Hey, Eames!"
Alex Eames groaned as she looked across the room at Mike Logan. "What do you want, Logan?"
"Dobbs and Burke are still on that stakeout so we're two players short for our softball game tonight. You and the Golden Boy want to play?"
Eames shook her head at Logan's reference to her partner. Most of the squad just left Bobby alone. Logan, she didn't think, ever left anyone alone. "I don't think so…"
"Why not?" Goren asked quietly.
She looked at him as if he'd lost his mind for real this time. "What?"
The corners of Goren's mouth twitched but he just shrugged his shoulders and repeated, "Why not?"
"You want to play softball? With Logan?"
His voice dropped as he leaned across the desks toward her. "Don't worry about Logan, Eames. I don't."
That was true. Logan rarely got under her partner's skin, no matter how he tried. Bobby always looked…amused. "You're sure?"
"Don't you like softball?"
"Yeah, but I didn't think you were much of a ball player."
He shrugged. "If you want to play, I will."
She looked back over at Logan. Five years and her partner could still surprise her. She wondered if that would ever change. "All right, Mike," she said. "We'll play."
Logan looked surprised. "You will?"
"Sure," she smiled.
"Ok, great!" He couldn't wait to see Goren on a baseball diamond, er, softball field…whatever the hell they wanted to call it.
"Who are we playing?" Eames asked.
"Manhattan SVU."
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Don Cragen and Jimmy Deakins shook hands by home plate. "Hi, Don."
"How are things going, Jimmy?"
"Pretty good. How have you been?"
"I can't complain." Cragen nodded toward the opposite bench. "I thought two of your guys were on stakeout."
"They are. Logan convinced Goren and Eames to fill in."
They compared lineups in their books, where Cragen replaced the absent detectives' names with Goren and Eames'. "Good," the SVU captain nodded. "By the way, how's Logan doing at Major Case?"
"So far, so good."
Cragen smiled. "He's a good cop. He just needs to curb that temper."
They shook hands again and headed off to their respective benches. Their teams had been so evenly matched the last two times they'd played, they'd been unable to break the 2-2 tie both games had ended in. Now, no one was sure about how they matched up. It was anyone's game.
