7:12 PM

Bobby sighed.

Alex sighed.

Bobby sighed again.

Alex resisted the urge to either sigh or kill Bobby.

He had been almost completely silent since leaving Carmel Ridge earlier that day. Alex knew that their visit with his mother had unsettled him, and she knew him well enough not to take his silence personally, but it was frustrating to be in the same room with him and feel that he was far away. She looked over at him, lost in his own thoughts, and still sighing. Note to self – Alex' new life with Bobby – now with 30 percent more brooding! And 100 percent more…okay, I can live with the brooding.

She nearly jumped out of her skin when he spoke. "Eames, can I talk to you?"

Evidence of the last several hours notwithstanding? "Sure."

"Eames, is this a serious relationship?"

He was nonplussed by her laughter.

Reaching for his hand, she brought it to her lips and kissed his palm. "I'm sorry, Bobby, that just came out of left field. You want to know if you and I are in a serious relationship?"

"Yes, I'd like to know." He looked at her expectantly.

"Are you kidding? Did you think I was just using you for sex?"

He reddened. "No, Eames, I just mean…do we need to have the serious relationship talk?"

Now it was her turn to be nonplussed. "There's a talk?"

"So I'm told." He was dead serious.

Pulling him by the hand she still held, she settled them on the couch and turned to face him. "Okay," she said cheerfully, "talk."

"Well, um, Eames, you're the woman here."

Puzzled, she asked, "Are we establishing gender roles in this talk?"

"No, I just mean, don't you start the talk? Because y-you've done it before. You know, when you were married."

"Oh," she smiled, "well, to be totally honest, we didn't really talk about it. We kind of just played it by ear, you know?"

Bobby looked troubled. "So, I-I'm being unromantic in wanting to talk?"

She leaned over to kiss him. "No, you're just being you. So, what do you want to know? Am I serious about you? Very."

"I'm serious about you, Eames," he stated, seriously.

"Glad to hear it. Are there other specific things you'd like to talk about?"

"Yes. First of all, since you came with me to visit my mother today, do you come every week now? He seemed a little flummoxed by that.

"No, Bobby, just like before, I come when you want me to, or when she wants me to."

"Okay. Um, and then, do I come to your family things? Visits and such?"

Mary, Joseph and the camel, he's checking off a mental list. Oookayy. "Bobby, you always come to family things with me."

"But now I come as your b-boyfriend?" He averted his eyes at this, so she grabbed his chin to force him to look at her.

"You can come as my boyfriend, my partner, my friend; whatever you want. My family kind of predicted this, anyway." It was her turn to avert her eyes.

Bobby was taken aback by this piece of information. "Your family thought we would…um…"

"Yup. There may well be a pool, not that any of them would be dumb enough to let me find out about it."

"B-but why?"

Alex grinned. "I don't know, Bobby. You spent every night by my hospital bed, we don't spend any time apart. I guess they were just whistling in the dark here."

He smiled at her. "People see us together, in their heads, like it's a good idea?"

"I think so." She was touched at his surprise, but that was Bobby; noticing what was going on with everyone else in the world but not with himself.

"Okay, good, next question. Do we start leaving things at each other's apartments, you know, clothes and things?"

"We always did that."

"That's true." He thought about it. "Is there some sort of drawer assignment thing we're supposed to do?"

"Well, in my current apartment, there's not so much in the way of drawers, but I'm happy to clear out some room in the closet and the medicine cabinet, okay?"

"I can do that here too!" He was clearly excited about this, so much so that Alex' heart broke just a little for the part of him that needed physical evidence of their presence in each others' lives. She leaned over to kiss him, running her hand through his hair. "Thank you, Bobby, I would love that."

"Okay, Eames, this is good. Now, what if we decide to have a baby?"

Say WHAT? How the hell did we go from medicine cabinet space to children in just a heartbeat? Okay, calm down, Alex, he's just…planning for the future, or something. Probably wants to start scoping out a temporary partner now, run a background check, do interviews…

"Um…I hadn't gotten that far out, Bobby."

He withdrew from her, nodding to himself, like her non-answer was what he'd expected. Dammit, he was interrogating me. Get me all mushy and then throw in the kicker. Why?

And then she knew in a flash; this wasn't about drawer space or a joint checking account or whether those size thirteens fit in her closet. This was about his mother. This was about his fear. Alex put her head in her hands, trying to find the right thing to say, to do for him. He was pacing furiously now, glancing back at her occasionally, with a wounded look on his face. Be careful, Alex. Be honest.

She stood, getting in the way of his pacing, forcing him to stop and look at her. Once she had captured his eyes, she spoke. "I'm not saying no, Bobby, you just took me by surprise. There are a lot of things we have to consider, and just because we've known each other as partners for so long doesn't mean we shouldn't take our time to get to know each other as a couple."

He gave her a baleful look and started to turn away. Well, that didn't go too well. Dammit. "Dammit, Bobby!" she shouted. "Look. At. Me." He turned back to her, doubt evident on his face..

"Robert Goren, if I ever have a baby of my own, I want it to be yours. But you can't expect me to know this minute if we're going to do that together. What if I'm too old?

"You're not too old." He sounded like a petulant child being denied dessert.

"What if you're too old?"

"Hey!"

"Hey! In case you haven't noticed, neither of us is 25 anymore, Bobby. Oh, and by the way, who will take care of the baby when we're on a case 22 hours a day? Or, God forbid, if something happens to us?"

"I-I don't know." He hung his head.

She got in his face. "Bobby, what if we have a boy and he's short? Are you worried about that?"

"Why would our son be short?" he asked, indicating himself.

"Uh, take a guess!" she answered, indicating herself.

"Well, I don't care if he's short. He's ours." Bobby defended their imaginary short son.

"Well, I don't care if he's schizophrenic. He's ours." Alex countered. "Do you see, Bobby? I'm not afraid of that, I'm afraid of the thousand other things that we have to work out before that happens, like keeping our jobs and not, you know, killing each other, but I'm NOT worried about that. He would be ours, and we would deal with it"

He stood staring at her, stunned. Sometimes he forgot that she could read him so easily, and sometimes he got so far ahead in his brain, he forgot to wait for her to catch up. Stepping to her, he put his arms around her, resting his head on top of hers.

"Okay, Eames, I get it. I'm-I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking about all that stuff. I just…got worried when you saw how my mom is. I didn't want to scare you off."

"I know, Bobby, but going from 'hey, here's your drawer' to 'I wanna be your baby daddy' may not have been the best choice in your non-scaring-me-off plan. Jackass." She leaned up to kiss him, then pushed him towards his bedroom. "Go change. You've been in those clothes all day, put on something comfortable."

He raised his hands in a gesture of defeat. "You know, Eames, I am worried about something our baby might inherit from you."

She frowned. "What's that?"

He grinned at her. "The baby could end up being a bossy, snarky, pain in the ass."

The pillow hit him directly in the back of the head, and he laughed to himself as he went off to do as he was told.

A/N - The joint therapy session will be next, I promise, but there were some issues I knew they wouldn't discuss in front of Beth, or anyone else. :-) Thanks for continuing to read, and a special thanks to my most awesome reviewers. You guys rock.