Disclaimer:All of the characters are the property of Dick Wolf. I thank him, the writers, the directors and all the great actors who brought them "to life" for our benefit. Any "liberties" I have taken with them stems from my fond admiration (and a few personal quirks I will seek "help" for).

AN: This story is not set within the accepted "canon" for the characters as it is only officially portrayed by the TV series. So I get to "fool around" with them in ways in which they've never been seen, stretching that to the limit and suspending the "reality" that is "fiction" to start with…now there's a contradiction in terms!!!

(And yeah Goren I know the proper word for that is oxymoron…you bet HOW MUCH on the Cards???!!!)

XLlll

Eames was dealing with a mountain of paperwork and silently cussing her missing partner when she first heard him cough in the workroom behind her. Two of those "throat clearing" ones. Which clearly didn't work.

Goren coughed again. Like a cat trying to clear a furball before he made a kind of gurgling noise in his throat and hacked a couple more times. As she turned to look he picked up a glass and tried a drink. All that achieved was a sort of belching noise and the liquid coming right back up. On the floor.

"Eeugh!" Eames thought as by now Goren was standing up and sort of wriggling.

Then he went into a kind of spasm. Of endless hacking coughs interspersed with gasping breaths. Hollow ringing breaths like he had the whooping cough. When Goren stumbled into the table clutching his throat and sending food flying, Eames realised he was in real trouble.

By the time she entered the room the coughing had stopped but Goren's breathing was reduced to a thin and dangerous sounding "wheeze". And he was turning blue.

Eames had always liked Goren in blue. It suited him; especially that time he had been wearing nothing but a blue towel. And the colour of his cheeks and lips on this occasion toned beautifully with his grey shirt and highlighted to perfection, the shades of two days worth of stubble.

Setting aside the memory of that frustrating towel, Eames sprang into action. Did something she had wanted to do for years and Goren had skillfully avoided giving her opportunity for.

She jumped on him.

More accurately she went up behind him and flung her arms around him, just about able to lock her fingers together around his broad frame. That seemed to make things worse as for a moment Goren tried to evade her. Perhaps in the panic or perhaps fearing Eames was finally taking a bold initiative to change the nature of their relationship.

Goren made tiny yelping noises and between them, hideous gurgling sounds as he turned from sky to royal blue. Eames lost her grip two or three times. Her hands ended places only made things worse before she re-established the correct hold.

She jerked the ball of her fists back into Goren's rib cavity once and wondering if she might have to give him a friendly taser burst to get him to quit struggling.

It stopped the ghastly rhythm of his heaving breaths. For a moment Eames wondered if she was about to get another of those annoying lectures from her partner. That even a lungful of air away from death, Goren would still find it from somewhere to deliver an exposition on Henry Heimlich. Born February 1920 and who, in 1974, first came up with the manoeuvre for saving people who were choking named after him.

Sometimes referred to as "abdominal thrusts" Eames could only think as she applied a third and fourth to Goren's body, this was not the sort she had dreamed of sharing with him for so long.

He made a sort of gulping sound and then one something like "blargh" as a glob shot out of his mouth and splattered on the workroom window. Goren still wheezing, wriggled again from her grasp as she watched the glutinous mass slide down the glass.

Small pieces of a hard white material liberally mixed with saliva and a greenish substance Eames would prefer not to know what it was. Or where it came from as Goren resisted examination himself and instead threw himself back in his chair and reached for a beer bottle.

"You were tossing peanuts in the air and catching them in your mouth again weren't you Bobby?" she said quickly working out what happened.

"Was not" he croaked his attention back on the screen in front of him and lying through his back teeth. Back teeth whose fillings he was sure had been loosened by the coughing.

Eames rolled her eyes so much she was in danger of needing ophthalmic help herself and left the workroom muttering.

"I hate the Super Bowl" she hissed.

The only upside for her was that during that struggle with Goren she had touched down firmly in his personal end zone. And a very nice one it was too. She'd leave it to him to decide if it was by accident or design.

AN : As must you dear reader…if y'all want to know about the "blue towel" you will need to read "The Sights You See When You Don't Have A Gun"