A/N: Mmm, gotta love my unique kind of fluff-that-wants-to-be-smut-but-just-isn't, eh?

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"Your place or mine?" Alex asked, playfully bumping his hip with hers as she and Bobby stood outside O'Malley's, watching Logan and Barek disappear toward their homes in two different directions.

He looked down at her, slightly startled at being pulled out of his thoughts. "What?"

Instead of repeating her question, she leaned one shoulder against the brick building and looked at him curiously. "What's going through that weird mind of yours?"

"I was just . . . trying to piece together the similarities between the waitress and Claire Young," he said with a shrug. "Let's go home."

"That's what I was saying in the first place." She pushed herself off the wall and slid her arm through his. "I asked which 'home' you want to go to."

"Oh," he said absentmindedly.

"Ok, either you're drunk or you're off in la-la land," she said with a tolerant sigh. "So I'll decide: we're going to your place."

"Okay." He didn't move.

Rolling her eyes and accepting the fact that he had no idea what she was talking about, she gave his arm a yank. "Come on. We'll walk."

"It's fifteen blocks, Alex!"

"Oh," she said arching an eyebrow, "now you're paying attention? Come on, we need to work off all that alcohol anyway."

"But . . ."

"Move," she ordered tiredly, giving his arm another pull. "We'll talk it out while we walk."

"I'm not drunk," he said abruptly.

"What, are you operating on a twenty-second delay tonight? Just walk, Bobby. As simple as that."

"Sorry." Forcing his mind back to the moment at hand, he obeyed her command and they began to walk down the street. A few seconds later, when she hadn't said anything else, he paused and looked at her. "Sorry."

"You just said that," she pointed out. "And don't worry - I'm not mad. Just tired."

"Sor-"

She gave him a shove into the wall they were walking past and advanced a step. "Would you stop apologizing?" She moved a step closer, amused to find that Bobby the behemoth was retreating and now had his back against the wall. "Hmm, I think I like this."

He blinked down at her. "Like what?"

"This," she said, demonstrating by putting a hand on either side of him in a parody of the way he'd pinned her to walls in the past. "Makes me feel powerful."

He made no move to escape her arms, just looked thoughtful. "You mean you don't usually feel powerful? You?"

It took her a second to think of an answer to that. "There are different kinds of power. Some of them I have, some of them you have."

"Different kinds of power?" he echoed, pulling her hands off the wall and starting to walk again, towing her with him. "Give me examples."

"Well . . ." She followed him without thinking about it, her mind focused on his question. "Well, there's power when it comes to our casework. That's yours."

"It is?" he said skeptically.

"Yes," she said shortly, deciding that that would be a whole conversation in itself and tonight was not the time to get started on it. "And then there's power over our . . . emotions. That's mostly mine, I think."

"All yours," he corrected.

"Ok, all mine. We're . . . Bobby?" she asked, noticing that he'd pulled her to a stop again.

"Emotions," he said pensively.

"Yeah, emotions. You know, those things that make you do stupid stuff like try to hit Mike Logan?"

"Yeah, I know. You just . . . gave me an idea."

She sighed and started walking again, slipping her hand out of his when he didn't immediately follow. "God save me from your late-night ideas. I was hoping to actually get some sleep tonight," she told him over her shoulder.

He jogged a few steps to catch up with her. "I wasn't going to keep you from sleeping. I was just . . . saying."

"Saying what?" she asked without turning around.

"How much control over a person does another person have if they control the person's emotions?"

She mouthed the question to herself, trying to sort out the different persons he'd just referenced. "If you have control over a person's emotions - assuming it's a personal relationship and not a business one or something - then you have pretty solid control of the person as a whole. Is this where you tell me you think I'm a controlling bitch?" she asked warily, only half-joking.

"What? No!" Before she could reply, he stopped short and grabbed her arm, pulling her out of the path of a bike messenger who was bearing down on them in the crosswalk. "Whoa, watch it."

She paused next to him, blinking. "Sorry. Now you've got me thinking and forgetting where I am."

"Too much thinking."

"That's what I've been telling you for the past fifteen minutes, genius," she said, unable to resist sticking out her tongue.

He looked at that pink tongue a little too long, then pulled his eyes away. "Don't give me ideas."

She grinned. "Why not?"

He just shook his head and stepped into the crosswalk with her behind him. "Two more blocks."

"You getting tired already, Goren? Maybe I need to get you to the gym more often," she teased.

" 'Tired' is not the word I'd apply to it," he muttered. "Come on."

She followed until they reached his building, figuring that whatever he had in mind, it would probably be more comfortable inside his apartment than against a rough brick wall.

On second thought, that "rough brick wall" idea sounded kind of intriguing . . .

Eyeing the raised staircase that lead to the front door of his building, she pulled him to the side of it before be could put a foot on the bottom step. "C'mere."

He stumbled, unprepared for the sudden lateral movement, then caught himself and allowed her to drag him into the shadows between the side of the stairway and the front of the building. "What . . .?"

She leaned back against the concrete side of the staircase and quickly reached up, taking his face in her hands and pulling him down so she could kiss him - which she did, hard.

A hiss of surprise escaped him as he planted his hands against the wall to keep from falling and crushing her between him and the concrete. When he'd regained his equilibrium, one hand left the wall to touch her cheek, then trail down her neck to her shoulder. "Alex, we -" he attempted, pulling his mouth from hers with great effort and trying to stand up straighter.

Ignoring his weak protest, she put her arms around his neck, an overextension that she usually found uncomfortable when he was standing up straight, and hugged him, pressing her body against his. "Did I ever tell you," she began, looking up at his face meditatively, "that part of the reason I decided to forgive you when you were being a jerk last week was that I remembered how you took care of me after that Christmas party a couple years ago?"

Her looked at her, bewildered. "What?"

"You don't remember?"

"I remember that night, if that's what you mean, but that's as far as I'm following you."

"Oh." She shrugged, feeling slightly self-conscious about it now that she didn't know if he'd noticed the change between them that night. "I was just thinking that, you know . . . I got sick, and you took care of me long enough to get me home. That would be as far as most people would feel obligated to go, and they would have left after that."

"With the shape you were in?" he protested. "No one would have left you alone."

"Yeah, a lot of people would have. My point is that you didn't, and you stayed practically the whole night."

He looked down at her face and wrinkled his brows in confusion. "I'm following your words, but I'm still not getting your point."

"Never mind," she sighed, annoyed with herself for ruining a perfectly good light-hearted night by bringing the topic up. "It's not important anyway, I was just thinking out loud."

He gently pulled her arms from around his neck and brought them to her sides, his own arms continuing around her waist after releasing hers. "You never let me get away with saying that; no way am I letting you get away with it," he told her, leaning down again so he could look into her eyes.

"Honestly, it's not anything deep and meaningful," she said, relaxing slightly so that his arms around her waist were supporting most of her weight. "It was just that you didn't even hesitate at the thought of spending a night cleaning up every time I got sick. It made me feel . . . well, you didn't give it a second thought, so I didn't feel guilty, which I normally would have about someone doing that. It felt . . . different."

"What did?"

She leaned closer so she could put her arms around him, in turn. "You."

"I felt different?" he repeated dubiously. "Different than what?"

There was a short pause. "Not now," she said with a firm shake of her head. "It doesn't feel nearly as naughty to have a thoughtful discussion when I have you up against a wall instead of to tease you."

"What?"

She grinned at his obvious shock. "Why did you think I stopped you out here?"

"Uh . . ."

She leaned her weight back against the wall again, pulling him with her. "I'm starting to think you might be too pure and innocent to hang out with me," she told him with a smirk.

"But I . . " He couldn't seem to get his feet back under him when it came to this conversation.

"Then again, thinking about that Christmas Party, I'm reminded of the rumors I told you about . . . which would necessarily indicate that you're not nearly as innocent as you pretend."

Now that he had an answer for, at least sort of: "Oh god, not that again."

"You're absolutely the only man I know who would be embarrassed by the fact that women gossip about how big he is, you know that? We need to work on your self-confidence, Bobby."

"There's nothing wrong with my self-confidence," he argued, bracing himself against the wall with his hands again. "I just don't see why it needs to be gossiped about at all."

"Ever wonder if I've confirmed any of the rumors, now that I can?"

"No, that's -" He stopped, blinked, looked down at her slightly suspiciously. "Have you?"

She grinned. "Wouldn't you like to know."

"Alex!"

Using his tie to pull him down to her level, she kissed him again. Only when she felt one of his hands go to her hair did she pull back and say indulgently, "Idiot. Of course I haven't, and I'm not going to. I don't feel like having to beat off women with a stick with get to go home with you at night."

Still nose-to-nose with her, he stared into her eyes for a second. "That's ridiculous." When she just gave him a tiny smile and shrugged, he stood up and grabbed her hand. "Let's go inside. It's getting cold out here."

She raised an eyebrow. "Trying to escape already? I thought I just said something about talking against the wall not being what I stopped here for . . ."

He gave her a speculative look that she couldn't quite read, dropped her hand, and without further discussion, put his hands under her arms and hoisted her up to his level. Stepping forward and bending one of his knees to pin her body between his and the wall at that height, he freed one hand and traced her jawline with a finger. "Was this what you were aiming for?"

She swallowed, eyes wide. "Uh . . . something like that, yeah."

"Glad to oblige." Enjoying her shock, he slid his fingers from her jaw into her hair, holding her head still as he kissed her deeply.

Her arms crept around his neck, fingers tangling in the hair at the back of his head, and she found herself very glad that he was holding her upright, since she wasn't sure she'd be able to do it herself. "Jesus, Bobby!" she gasped when he allowed her to pull away for a breath. "What brought on that change of he-" Her question ended on a squeak that turned into a moan as he pulled his upper body away from hers, leaving only his knee between her legs to hold her up.

He gave her a knowing smile. "Ready to go inside now?"

She nodded mutely and stared at him as he straightened his leg and set her on the ground. "You . . ." She licked her dry lips and tried to glare at him. "You did that on purpose, just to get me to cooperate! Damn, you can be manipulative when you want to be."

"Can I?" Bobby said mildly as they mounted the steps and entered the building.

"Yeah," she said tightly, crossing her arms as they entered the elevator that had conveniently already been on the ground floor. "And you know . . . I think I'm starting to like it," she finished with a smirk.