The following Monday morning found Deakins stepping carefully off the elevator on the eleventh floor of One PP, holding his briefcase in one hand and a box containing a dozen donuts, which had a cardboard tray that held two cups of coffee balanced precariously on top of it, in the other.
He let out a sigh of relief when Hutchinson, one of the newer members of the squad, happened to pass by, stopped short as his brain processed what he'd seen, and backtracked. "You need a hand, Cap?" he asked, already reaching out to relieve Deakins of the coffee tray.
"Yeah, thanks." He gave the detective a grateful smile and explained, "I told Goren he could come back today . . . figured the least I could do after banishing him for a week was bring him breakfast."
"Um . . . Goren?" Hutchinson said hesitantly. "Just him?"
"Yeah, just Goren. Who else would there be?" Deakins asked, confused.
The young detective looked away from him as he said with a shrug, "No reason. Just making conversation. So, uh . . . we gonna bring these over to him?"
"Course. Thanks for the help," he added over his shoulder as Hutchinson followed him out of the elevator vestibule and into the squad room itself. "I was starting to worry I'd end up wearing his coffee before I could get it to . . ." He stopped walking abruptly, escaping a collision with the man behind him only because Hutchins had been expecting the reaction and dodged to the side. ". . . him. You!" he shouted, staring at the two occupied desks in front of him.
Both occupants of the desks lifted their heads and gave him politely blank looks. "Morning, Captain," Goren said pleasantly, not looking at the woman sitting across from him. "I see you brought breakfast."
Deakins distractedly set the box of donuts on the corner of the nearest desk and glared at Goren while pointing an accusing finger at Eames, who just looked at him silently, pale but composed. "What the hell is she doing here?"
"Paperwork," she answered before Goren could. "And you should damn well be thankful that I'm doing it. You know how Goren always forgets to get it in on time."
"What?" Deakins exclaimed incredulously, his voice rising in both pitch and volume. "Damn it, Alex, I don't care what you're doing right now; I want to know why the hell you're sitting at your desk to begin with, given that you're not even supposed to be out of bed for another four days!"
"I got bored," she said nonchalantly, returning her attention to the form she was currently working on. "Guess there's no coffee for me in that?" she asked Hutchinson after sneaking a look at the tray he held.
"Uh, no, I don't think so. Sorry."
"Give me that!" Deakins barked, pulling the tray out of the man's hands. "He is not sorry," he told Eames emphatically. "I don't buy coffee for people who aren't supposed to be here!"
"Would you just calm down?" she snapped. "You think Goren didn't already try to tell me I couldn't come in today? Trust me, Captain, whatever argument you're about to make, I already heard it from him."
"Eames," Goren began tiredly.
"You didn't let me out of bed the whole damn weekend!" she interrupted him waspishly, her voice rising as she got more frustrated. "I'm on a low enough dose of the painkillers now, and I'm totally recovered from court last week, and -" Her words trailed off as she realized that the room had fallen completely silent. "What?" she demanded, looking around at her co-workers and noticing that everyone had suddenly become very interested in the surfaces of their desks.
Deakins's lips twitched and he tried to look oblivious.
"What?" she repeated, glaring at him.
"Uh . . ." He smothered a laugh. "In the future, you . . . might want to watch how you phrase your complaints. People might get the wrong idea, you know?"
"Oh, for the love of god," she said in exasperation, throwing up her hands as she realized what her words of a few seconds ago had seemed to imply. "Would you people get your minds out of the gutter and just leave me alone? I promise you, the only harm paperwork is going to do to me is a papercut or two, at worst."
Goren looked up at Deakins and shrugged resignedly. "You're wasting your time arguing about it. Trust me, I'm keeping an eye on her, and her brother's on call in case she gets too tired and I need to send her home."
"You didn't tell me that!" Eames said, looking at him in surprise. After a second's pause, she added, "Which brother?"
"Rob. Now do your paperwork."
"Since when do you even know my brothers?" she persevered.
Deakins looked from one detective to the other and sighed. "Fine, go ahead and stay. Silly me, thinking you might obey your boss's orders. But you overdo it, Alex," he said, leveling a threatening gaze at her, "and I just might skip your brother and go straight to your dad." Looking back to Goren, he added, "And you! You'd better keep her in check, Detective, or I might be tempted to call her father on you, too." Then, heaving an exasperated sigh, he snatched a donut out of the box and headed for his office.
"Well," Alex said, resting her chin in one hand and reaching for a donut with the other as she watched Deakins shut his office door behind him, "that sucked."
Bobby raised his eyes from the file he'd opened and gave her a slight smile. "All things considered, it could have been w-"
"Hey, wait a second," she cut him off abruptly. "You didn't tell me how you know my brother."
"Well, I don't really 'know' him . . . I mean, I'm not friends with him or anything . . ."
"Bobby," she warned, knowing she didn't need to raise her voice for him to get the message. "Get on with it."
Looking at the file instead of her, he shrugged. "You were in the ER for almost an hour and then surgery for something like five hours. Your family and I waited together. We were all trying to forget that we might . . . uh, that you could . . ." He sighed, trying to gather his thoughts, and started again: "We were all trying to forget the worst-case scenario. So we filled up the time talking."
"You can say it, you know," she told him quietly. "You were all trying to forget that I might die."
"Yes," he confirmed flatly.
"So then, who did you meet?"
"What?" he said with a blank look.
"My family, Bobby. Who did you meet? And why didn't anyone mention this to me?"
"I don't know," he said with a shrug. " 'Who was in the waiting room' isn't a topic that comes up in conversation, even conversation about what happened that day. And to answer your other question, there were a lot of people in the waiting room," he added. "I counted what looked like three brothers and two sisters, along with your parents, but I only got a few names, and it was hard to keep track of who was related with everyone's spouses running around, so I'm not sure . . ."
"No, you got it right, three brothers and two sisters . . . Rob, John, Sean, Kate, and Beth," she said, ticking them off on her fingers as she named them. "I'll quiz you later about who was who," she added with a grin.
"Please don't," he implored as he grabbed a donut for himself. "I was lucky I could remember my own name that day, let alone anyone else's."
"I'll take you to meet them one day. Mom's been begging me to come home so she can feed me, which is code for 'putter around and generally treat me like a five year old who needs to be taken care of.' She'd probably have a ball with two injured detectives to cluck over instead of just one."
"Um . . ." He bit into the donut to buy time while he studied her face, trying to figure out if she was kidding.
"I'm serious," she said, easily picking up on his confusion. "I'll bet you anything my parents are desperate to thank you again for pulling Brewer off me."
Bobby just shook his head. "Me being there would just remind them that you were hurt in the first place. Now, you should get to work on those forms," he told her with a little more force than he intended.
"Touchy, touchy. You want some of my Vicodin to curb that attitude?"
He raised his eyebrows. "Didn't work on yours."
She threw an eraser at him. "Jerk."
"Paperwork, Eames," he reminded her. "You stop being productive, I call your brother."
She grumbled something unflattering about him but picked up a pen and returned her attention to the pile of paper in front of her.
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Two hours later, Alex was pulled from sleep by someone shaking her shoulder. "Mmph?" she mumbled, bleary-eyed, as she raised her head off her arms.
"Come on and get up, Al. Your partner's sick of your snoring," said a voice from behind her.
"Rob?" She looked at her brother, then back at Bobby. "You called him?"
"You've been asleep for over an hour. I was hoping it was just a catnap, but when you hit the half hour mark, I gave up," Goren said with a helpless shrug.
"I do not snore!" she huffed to Rob as she tried to stand up and narrowly missed tumbling face first onto her desk instead.
"Whoa!" He caught her by the arm and steadied her, then took a moment to look at her more closely. "Ribs taped?"
"Yeah," she muttered, reflexively putting a hand to the area.
"Got your meds?"
"Yes, mother," she replied testily. "You know, one mom is more than enough. I don't need three more."
"Why, who else dares to have the balls to actually . . . gasp . . . worry about you?" Rob asked with deliberately-overdone sarcasm.
"Oh, never mind." She glanced over at her partner. "Bobby, are you going to come over after work and make me dinner again? I'm starting to get used to it."
"Dinner, eh?" Rob repeated speculatively. "You guys been 'having dinner' a lot lately?"
She kicked him in the leg. "Stop it. I only allow one insinuation about my sex life per day, and I beat you to it hours ago."
Bobby choked on a sip of coffee and smothered a laugh by coughing into his hand instead.
"Shut up," she ordered, glaring at him. "It was your fault to begin with."
He just grinned and shook his head. "Take her home," he told Rob. "And make sure she doesn't try to do anything except sleep."
"You know, I've been taking care of myself for most of my life. I'm perfectly capable of continuing to do it now," Alex snapped at him before turning back to her brother. "If I have to leave, can we get me out of here before Deakins comes out and joins this circus?"
"Whatever you say," he said easily. "Let's go. Thanks, Goren," he added over his shoulder as he began to lead her away.
"Don't encouragehim!" she hissed as he helped her into the elevator.
"Why not?" Rob shot back. "Someone's gotta keep you from messing yourself up any more than you already have. He seems like a nice enough guy."
She sighed and leaned against the wall. "Don't start."
"Don't start with what?" he said innocently. "All I said was that he's a nice guy."
"Yeah, and you said it with your sneaky look. I know you, Robbie."
Rob just smiled at her and they rode in silence for a few seconds before he asked, "Why the hell were you making insinuations about your own sex life?"
"I wasn't," she said with a sigh. "At least, I didn't mean to be. I said something to Goren that just came out wrong."
"What kind of 'something'?"
"I yelled at him that he hadn't let me out of bed all weekend," she said with a rueful laugh.
His head snapped up and he stared at her. "Excuse me? Exactly why was your partner in bed with you?"
She was saved by the bell as the elevator chimed to inform them that they'd arrived on the ground floor. "It's a long story," she muttered as he led her to his car.