Author's Note: Again, this one follows them both. First Bobby then back to Lucy's POV.

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But if my silence made you leave… Then that would be my worst mistake… So I will share this room with you… And you can have this heart to break

Bobby stepped gingerly onto the elevator. He had done too much today. He had an appointment with Captain Ross about returning on restricted duty next week. He was actually looking forward to burying some of his brain cells in the minutia of evidence. He had done entirely too much sitting around. Sitting around was not good for his soul, it led to way too much thinking. And, all he was doing was thinking about Lucy.

Yet Lucy would not have known that, because he had done an excellent job of encouraging her to go forth into the world and try to act like everything was normal. She was keeping her appointments at the office, she had even gone to dinner with her friend Annie. He would have loved to have been a fly on the wall during that dinner. Though, he guessed, that in as much as Lucy had set her life into a tailspin by breaking her engagement, Annie probably still managed to dominate the conversation. He had been out with Lucy and Annie often enough to know that Lucy was content to sit and listen, and if the conversation turned to her, Lucy deftly turned it back to Annie.

Before leaving the squad, Bobby had stopped in the bathroom and taken some of the pain medication. He had gone without taking anything all day. He had wanted to be perfectly clear headed when he met with Ross. In retrospect, he realized perhaps that was a bit of a tactical error, for he found himself somewhat distracted by the pain in his side as he tried to sit still in the small metal chair in Captain Ross's office.

The meeting had gone longer than planned. They had immediately switched from discussing Bobby returning to going over the details of an active case. When, the Captain had to take a call, Bobby indicated he would see him next week and made a break from the squad. After leaving the bathroom, he had run into Logan, who was like some kind of chatty Kathy, going on and on about god knows what. All Bobby could think about was laying down on his side to alleviate some of the pain in his ribs.

In the elevator, he leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. He could feel some of the pain growing dull as his body began to metabolize the medication. He hadn't even realized the elevator was going up, so when the doors opened he was surprised to see he was not on the main floor. He was even further surprised to see a certain CSU walk onto the elevator. He had been having sex with her for more than the past few weeks, but he hadn't talked with her since cracking his ribs.

"Bobby Goren." She smiled at him, her silver eyes sparkling. He smiled in return, trying to catch both his physical and his emotional balance. She moved to stand close to him, and he couldn't help but recall a certain time in this very same elevator where standing close to him had gotten very, very physical. "How are your ribs?" She asked, revealing she knew he had been injured.

"Sore." He said, looking at her, not responding to her advance. Her expression changed as she studied him, she looked less provocative, a bit more introspective.

"Right." She said, still smiling, running her finger slightly down the front of his shirt. He still did not respond to her advance.

"I, um…" He started to say something, but she said it for him

"You were fairly checked out the last time you came by my place." She allowed. He remembered, he had been lost in thinking about Lucy. "Well it was nice, between us." She said, looking up at him. He noted her use of past tense. "If you ever check back in, you know where to find me." She said, effectively acknowledging an end to whatever it was they had between them. Her fingers were still lingering on the front of his shirt when the elevator doors opened. Bobby looked over her shoulder, and found Lucy standing on the other side, her expression a bit confused. Lucy looked at the proximity of the woman in the elevator to Bobby, the way the woman's fingers were on the front of his shirt.

"I, um..." Lucy said, in the same awkward way Bobby had just used the words moments before. And, before Bobby could move, Lucy turned and left.

XxXxXxXxXxX Switch to Lucy's POV XxXxXxXxXxX

I walked out of the building, still a little dumbstruck from what I had just seen on the elevator. I was supposed to meet Bobby so we could ride home to my place together. He was running late and I was cold from waiting so I had decided to go inside. In that moment standing there in front of the elevator doors, I had panicked. Once outside, I realized that I was acting rather self absorbed. Bobby had an entire life outside of the one I was privy to, and I knew that he had been seeing someone. For some reason, I had managed to conveniently forget that fact. So I stood outside blinking against the bright sun light and was surprised to hear someone calling my name.

"Lucy. Lucy Jones." I turned to see Olivia Benson headed in my direction. I did some volunteer work with assault victims, and had crossed paths with Detective Benson over the past year. In as much as we were friendly, I wouldn't say we were friends. But, we did share a mutual respect for each other's work. We had a case in common currently, and I was thinking that was why she was calling me. It was strange to see her a bit out of context. Her office was not in this building, and we were not in some ER hallway.

"Hi Olivia." I replied, looking toward the street, still thinking about what to do. I still felt like an idiot with some kind of processing problem for having fled from standing in front of the elevator. I should have simply stood there to see what was actually happening. I was beginning to regret my instinct to leave.

"Need a ride?" She asked, following the way I was looking out into traffic.

"Yeah, yeah I guess I do." I replied, thinking that we could ride along and talk about what was on her mind. And, that would give me a bit of mental space to regroup.

"Great, my car is over here." Olivia jingled her keys in her hand, and I walked with her to her car. "Office or home or someplace else?" She asked.

"Actually, home." I replied. "But if you don't have the time, my office would be fine." I added.

"Home is good. We can talk, so I can square some things with a case." Olivia offered and I was relieved, I really wanted to head home. She immediately scooped up my full attention into the details of one of her active cases. I realized she was kind of using me as a sounding board, and in the end I didn't really add much to her thinking except my confirmation that I felt she was on the right track. As she pulled up in front of my home, she seemed happy with the conversation and I could tell some of her ideas were more firmly established in her thinking.

"Thanks Olivia." I said, as I got out of the car.

"Anytime." She smiled, and I stood watching her as she drove away.

As I walked toward my home, I was thinking that if you had asked me when I was a girl what my life would be like when I grew up, I am not certain I would have described my current existence. For example, I would have never imagined so much of my life would be spent so close to such violence. As I headed for my kitchen, I couldn't imagine a day in the life of Olivia Benson. I also couldn't exactly imagine a day in the life of Bobby Goren. Then it irrationally occurred to me that I couldn't imagine a day in my life without Bobby Goren. And, I wondered how I could not have seen that before. But I knew that sometimes you didn't see something until it is literally coursing through your brain with such force it feels like lightning such that you can't put the thought aside.

I leaned forward against my kitchen counter, and closed my eyes. I could feel my insides shaking. My brain had way too many thoughts rocketing around. Then, out of no where, as I stood with my eyes closed, I found myself remembering that day in the stairwell, Justin Kemp's fingers closing off my air, the hard metal feel of the gun against my cheek, against my head. I reached forward to get a glass of water, kind of lost in the image. I was turning around with my glass of water in my hands, and jumped to find Bobby standing in my kitchen. I threw water all over the front of him.

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry." I stammered, not knowing how someone so large could have snuck up behind me. I also wondered how he could've gotten home minutes after me, he must've caught a ride or caught a cab about the same time as me. I watched him look down at his wet shirt.

"Lucy, I…" He started to say. "Are you Ok?" He asked. I could tell he knew that I wasn't Ok. But I believed that he was probably thinking I was upset about what I had seen, or thought I had seen, in the elevator. Strangely my brain had moved a bit away from that.

"Yeah, I'm Ok." I looked at him for a moment. "Olivia Benson gave me a ride home, I was just thinking, I can't imagine a day in her life…" I paused. "I can't imagine a day in yours." My hands were trembling. I set the now almost empty glass of water on the counter. "I can't imagine a day in mine…" I started to verbalize what I had been thinking, but Bobby interrupted me.

"Lucy…" Bobby looked as if he wanted to say something, but I could tell he suddenly did not know what to say.

"You don't have to say anything. I shouldn't have run off like that." I offered, still feeling a bit ashamed at being so self absorbed not to recognize that Bobby had a life outside of the interactions he had with me.

"I don't have anything with her. Well, I never had anything real with her, and I don't have anything at all… …anymore… with her." He stumbled through the sentence.

"You're all wet." I stated the obvious, changing the subject a bit, grappling internally with what he had just said, with what I had been thinking about a day in my life without him, and about what it all meant.

I watched him, leaning back against the counter, kind of fumbling with his buttons. Without really giving myself a chance to think it through, I stepped forward to help him unbutton his wet shirt. It was when I was pushing the shirt backward off his shoulders, exposing his bare skin, that I sensed the almost electric shift in the space between us.

My eyes caught first on the bruises across his ribs. I reached out my hands as if to touch his chest, and looked up into his eyes. Softly he caught my chin with two of his fingers, tilting my face up toward his face. He leaned forward and kissed me tenderly, so slowly I lost my breath, his fingers traveled up my jaw, enticing me closer. He deepened the kiss, his hands moving around me, down the back of me, pressing the length of my body against his. As he kissed me and pulled me into his arms I swear I could feel him opening his heart to me, opening his mind to the possibility of me.

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A/N: So, why is it that I get weak in the knees when I think of kissing Bobby Goren? Too much TV for me I suppose… thanks for the reviews :)