A/N: Warning: there is actual, real, completed-sexual-act smut in here. Also, it's probably badly-written smut, since it's my first. Proceed at your own risk. This fic started with just a mental image of a woman clawing at a man's shoulder, and the rest of the story just kind of spun around that. Probably not the most in-character story ever, but I had fun letting Alex beat up on Bobby anyway. Oh, and the case they're talking about in the beginning is just a plot device . . . I imagined it was something like an abusive husband killing his pregnant wife and unborn baby, and then the wife killing him before she dies. But it doesn't really matter.
"Go home, both of you," Deakins ordered, taking in the slumped, defeated postures of his two best detectives. "There's nothing else you can do here, for either of them. Just . . . go get some rest."
Eames shook her head, not looking up. " 'Rest' is not something that's going to happen any time soon, Captain. I think . . ."
"No, he's right," Goren told his partner quietly, reaching across to cover one of her hands with his own. "I feel every bit as terrible about it as you do, but we . . . she's dead. He's dead. It was ultimately her choice to refuse protection and go back to him. We . . . we did everything we could on this one."
She turned angry eyes to him. "Yeah? You going to blame the baby, next? What choice did it have, Bobby?"
"Alex." Trying to derail the argument before she could start it, Deakins planted both hands on Eames's desk and leaned down to give her a hard look as he said, "This is the last place you need to be right now. Go home - now, or I'm going to have someone escort you out."
Hearing the determination in his words, Eames jerked her head up and gave him a fulminating look. "Oh, now I'm a security concern?" she challenged, standing up and snatching her purse out from under her desk. "God forbid I might actually want to be here."
"Eames . . ." Goren, after watching his partner for a second, stood up, too. "Let me give you a ride home."
"No. I don't care what you do, but leave me alone." And with that, she was gone, heading for the elevators as both men stood by her desk trying to figure out what had just happened.
When Goren got his brain around what she'd just said and done, he grabbed his portfolio and glanced at his captain. "I'm going after her."
"Yeah. You do that. Make her sleep, and get some for yourself, too."
He just nodded and dashed for the hallway, where he was lucky enough to find her only just stepping into an elevator. Throwing a hand out to block the doors, he darted in behind her, then let the doors close again.
She leaned into a corner of the car and glared at him. "Leave me alone."
"No."
"Excuse me? Since when does 'leave me alone' give you a choice?"
"Eames, you're -"
"I know what I am!" she spat as the numbers above the door clicked toward P that denoted the parking garage level. "I'm tired, and I'm angry, but I am not your responsibility, ok? Work hours are over; you don't need to worry about me any more. I'm going home."
"That's fine," he said placatingly. "Just let me take you there. Or follow you there, even. I just want to make sure you're -"
"Shut up!" She stomped out of the elevator the second the doors opened and, not waiting for him to catch up, made for her car. "You don't need to make sure of anything. I can take care of myself."
He was losing patience with this method of persuasion. "Alex . . ." he tried one last time, taking hold of her arm gently.
"I don't try to follow you home when you get moody. You have no right to do it to me." She yanked her arm out of his grasp and moved to unlock her car.
Then the keys were pulled out of her hand, and she whipped her head around to find her partner calmly depositing them in his coat pocket. "You're not going home alone," he told her. "Either you're coming in my car or I'm going in yours, but either way, I'm going with you."
"Give me the goddamn keys, Bobby," she ordered tightly, holding out a hand for them. "Before I decide to rip your arm off right here and now."
"Ok, fine," he said as if she'd just casually refused his offer rather than threatened him with bodily harm, "we'll take my car. Let's go." Taking her arm a second time, this time more firmly, he began to lead her away from her car.
She tried to pull away again, but found his grip much tighter now. "Let me go! I just . . . I want to be alone, ok?"
"No," he said grimly. "Deakins is worried about you. I'm worried about you. I'mnot letting you go home and . . . and curl up in a ball and be depressed, ok? That's not you."
"Bobby -"
"Look," he said, leaning over and lowering his voice so he was speaking directly into her face and only she could hear him, "either you walk with me to the car or I'm going to carry you there. Think about which one you want people to see."
She snorted, then tried not to let her eyes narrow as she got an idea for how to get her keys back. "You've never manhandled a woman in your life, at least one who wasn't a criminal. You're not going to throw me over your -" She stopped abruptly there, deciding he was distracted enough by her protests to give her a chance to snitch her keys out of his pocket.
Distracted, he may have been, but he wasn't oblivious, and he knew how to read her face. He caught her wrist before she even got her hand in his pocket. "Last chance, Alex," he said, pushing her hand back to her side. "You're coming with me one way or another; it's just a matter of whether we do it your way or mine."
"Screw you. Give me my damn keys," she snarled.
Goren sighed, knowing the next ten seconds or so were going to be less than pleasant, for both of them. Relying on his speed and size to beat her in this, he grabbed her hand, bent a little lower until his shoulder was even with her midsection, and hoisted her up into a fireman's carry.
"You fucking bastard!" Eames yelped, trying to kick him in the stomach as she pounded a fist on his back. "Put me down, Goren!"
"I gave you your chance," he informed her, ignoring the blows she was raining on him as he turned and headed toward his own car. "Now, I suggest you stop yelling if you don't want half the world to know what's going on over here."
"You're kidnapping me, is what's going on!" She stretched her arm down and kidney-punched him, taking pleasure in his grunt of pain.
"Eames -"
Someone near a car a few rows away let out a wolf whistle. "Always knew you had it in you, Goren! You tell 'er!"
"You are so dead," Eames muttered, reluctantly lowering her voice. "I'm going to kill you the second you put me down."
"No, you're not." Keeping hold of her legs with one hand, he fished his keys out of his pocket with the other. "And you're going to stay in the car when I put you in it, or else I'll chase you right across this parking lot, and you know my legs are a lot longer. Understand?"
Her response was to jam a foot into his stomach.
"I'll take that as a yes," he said through gritted teeth as he dropped her into the passenger seat of his car. "I'll put you in the back seat with the childproof locks if I have to, Alex."
She crossed her arms, ground her teeth, and turned her face away from him, not trying to escape but still refusing to look at him as he navigated the streets to her apartment.
She still wasn't speaking to him when he parked in front of her building. "Eames?"
Lips pressed tightly together, she turned her head to look at him.
"I'm going to walk you upstairs and into your apartment," he said slowly, unbuckling his seatbelt, "and then I'll go if you still want me gone. Deal?"
She gave him a bored look as she unbuckled herself and stepped out of the car. "Whatever."
"Thank you." He followed her silently into the building and up the stairs, handing her keys over when they stopped in front of her apartment. "You're . . . quiet," he said hesitantly as she pulled the door open.
"Excuse me if bad days don't make me want to dance and sing." She tossed her keys on a side table and ignored him as she shrugged out of her coat and pulled off her shoes and he followed suit.
"Eames -"
"Do you think it would have lived?" she interrupted, turning back to face him.
"The baby?" He looked away, then swallowed. "I don't know, Alex. I'm not a doctor, but my guess would be that no, it wouldn't have, even if he'd . . ."
"Stop." Even though she'd been the one to ask, she suddenly didn't want to know. Turning her back again, she rested her hands on the side table and let her head drop forward. "Never mind. It doesn't matter."
"Eames," he tried again, putting a tentative hand on her arm. "There wasn't anything you could have -"
"Do you think I don't know that?" she exploded, rounding on him without warning. "Do you think I don't know that she and the baby were dead long before we even got the call? Just because I'm upset doesn't mean I'm stupid!" On the last word, she gave his shoulder a hard, open-handed shove, putting all her frustration into it.
He stumbled back a step but kept his eyes on her. "I didn't say you were stupid, and I wasn't thinking it, either. All I was saying was -" His sentence was cut off when her fist suddenly slammed into his stomach and he doubled over, gasping for breath.
"I . . . I'm sorry." Her voice was trembling as she backed away from him. "I didn't mean to . . . I just . . . are you ok?"
With a slight wince, he straightened up and gave her a half-smile. "You pack quite a wallop. I should have remembered that."
"Bobby . . ."
"I'm fine, I promise. I'd rather have you hit me than not speak to me, anyway." He attempted a more comforting smile. "I guess I deserved it, for grabbing you out of the parking garage like that. Do you want me to, uh . . . to go now?"
She looked at him blankly for a second. "What?"
"Uh, I told you . . . I said I would leave after I saw you into your apartment if you wanted me to go," he said warily. "So . . . do you?"
Instead of answering his question, she swallowed convulsively and said, "How could someone do that to their own . . . that baby was dead before it even had a chance to be alive. How could someone do that to their own child, damn it?"
"Alex, you can't keep rolling this around your head. You'll only -" He saw the fist coming this time and ducked his head as he caught her fist in one of his hands with a resounding smack!. "You can hit me if it makes you feel better," he said, squeezing her closed fist gently, "but you have to give me some warning."
"What if I want to let it roll around in my head?" she snapped, ignoring the swing she'd taken at him and his reaction. "What if I want . . . Bobby, I just want to understand what could make a person do that!"
Almost before he knew what he was doing, he'd pulled her against him in a hug. "No, you don't," he murmured into her hair when he felt her relax slightly against him. "You don't ever want to understand something like that."
"Why not?" she demanded, tipping her head back to look at him. "You do, don't you? You do it every damn day and you're just fine. What if I want to be the one to understand for once?" She broke off there to just look at him - not exactly glaring, but just watching his face.
"Oh, come on," he teased gently. "I'm not 'just fine.' Anyone in the Department can tell you that. I'm -"
He stopped abruptly, shocked by what he saw: there were tears in her eyes. They weren't falling, but he could see them glittering on her lashes. "Alex . . ."
Shaking her head, she pulled away from him, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. "I'm fine."
"You're not fine," he contradicted, resting a hand on her shoulder but not moving to hug her again. "You're tired and you're wounded and you feel . . . worthless because there was nothing you could have done."
She let out a choked sob and put her arms around him, letting his shirt absorb her tears as she finally allowed them to fall.
He used one hand to cradle her head and put the other on her waist. "Let's sit you down, ok?"
Her response was a sniffle and a nod, so he carefully pulled her over to the couch and helped her sit down so she could rest her head on his shoulder. She seemed unsatisfied by that, though, and shocked him by climbing onto his lap and pulling his arms back around her.
He pressed a kiss on the top of her head and just held her as the tears fell, then began to taper off. "Shh," he murmured, although he doubted she even heard his voice. "Alex, it's ok . . . everything's ok . . ."
Her head snapped up at those words, startling him, and with the tears still in her eyes, she glared at him. "No! Everything is not ok, Bobby! Why can't you understand that?"
He looked down wordlessly at where her pale face rested against his shoulder. Her chin had a pugnacious tilt to it now, and as he looked into her eyes, he decided that there was probably another punch from her in his future. "I'm sor-"
"Bobby," she said abruptly.
"What?" he replied, interrupting himself to answer her.
When she moved this time, he got a knee in his stomach, but it wasn't in anger. She'd abruptly risen on her knees and taken his face in her hands to hold him still as she kissed him roughly.
His eyes wide, he stared at her closed ones. "Eames . . ." he attempted weakly, pushing at her shoulder.
She answered by putting her arms around his neck, tangling her fingers in his hair, and refusing to be pushed away. "Bobby . . ."
"Alex, no." He reached behind him to pull her hands out of his hair and tried to ignore the way she was moving against him, obviously trying to get herself in a more advantageous position on top of him. "You're upset. I can't . . ."
"You can." Not waiting for his acquiescence, she yanked his shirt out of his pants and tried to slip the first button out of its hole. "Please," she whispered, working her way up the buttons of the shirt. "I need to . . ."
He watched in shock as she pulled the last button open and yanked the shirt down his arms, leaving him bare-chested with his fully clothed partner on his lap. "Alex, you're not -" He broke off on an involuntary moan as her lips moved from his mouth down his chest. "You don't want -"
"Yes, I do." Almost absentmindedly, she pulled her own shirt off and tossed it on the floor. "So shut up and fucking enjoy it, ok?"
That left him speechless. Not only was she on top of him . . . busily taking off their clothes . . . but she was actually demanding that he go along with it? She was wearing a lacy bra, he noticed. And he should not be letting himself look at it . . . "Alex," he tried once more, feeling his resolve crumbling even as he spoke.
Ignoring him, she latched her mouth onto his as her hands went to work on his belt.
"Whoa." He grabbed her hands, forcing them to a stop. If this was really what she wanted, she could have it, with his enthusiastic approval, but he wanted to savor it, not rush through it. "My turn."
She raised her eyes and looked at him blankly until he moved his hands to unhook her bra. Then she leaned forward and kissed him again, attacking his mouth as if she was desperate, while her hands went back to work on his belt.
"Alex," he groaned as his belt gave way and she moved her fingers to his zipper. "Slow down. We don't -"
"Shut up," she told him without looking up from her task. "I need . . . just let me, ok?"
This wasn't right. She was obviously emotionally unstable tonight, and he shouldn't be . . .
Huh? What had he been thinking about?
Whatever it was, it had disappeared when he felt her hands shoving down his pants and boxers. He grabbed her chin and pulled her face back up to kiss her as he determinedly went to work on getting her pants off her.
She let out a low moan when his fingers explored her for a moment before he retrieved them to push her pants and underwear down her legs. She kicked them off, then returned her attention to his chest. "God, Bobby . . ."
He pulled on her arms, trying to get her to straighten up. "Come here. Let me . . ."
Her whole body seemed to go slack when he slid a finger into her, her head falling loosely onto his shoulder. The only exception seemed to be her hands, which dug into his back hard enough that she knew she had to be hurting him.
He turned his head to kiss the side of her face where it rested on his shoulder as a second finger joined the first. "Alex . . . god . . ."
Her body arched as she let out another moan and reached down to grab his hand. "Stop."
Afraid he'd hurt her, he immediately did as ordered. "What . . . what's . . . are you ok?"
She released his hand and shifted her body on top of him pointedly as she pressed her mouth to his again. "Bobby, please . . ."
He shook his head and resumed stroking her. "No, not yet. It's too soon; you're not . . ."
"Now." Without giving him time to respond, she pushed his hand away, lined herself up, and began to sink down on him. He was big and she wasn't as wet as she could have been, and maybe he'd been right that she wasn't ready, but between the twinges of pain, she felt pleasure so intense that she clawed at his back without really knowing or caring that she was doing it. "God," she gasped, resting her head on his shoulder again. "God, Bobby . . . please . . ."
Bobby was busy doing some gasping of his own, and he only half-heard her words through the roaring in his ears. He rested one hand on the back of her neck to hold her head to him and slid the other down her stomach to her center, reveling in the way she gasped and tightened around him in response.
Oh god, the way he was touching her. Alex's emotions, and her body, had been inflamed even before he laid a hand on her tonight, but now, with him inside her, murmuring incomprehensible things into her hair, she couldn't stop herself from letting out a loud groan just in response to their emotional connection. When she returned her attention to their physical connection a second later, she realized that she was right on the edge. "Bobby," she managed to breathe. "More . . ."
He slid his hand down from her neck to the small of her back, pulling her more into him as his fingers danced faster on her flesh.
The world went red, then black, and she sank her nails into his back and her teeth into his shoulder and tried not to scream as she convulsed around him.
He was completely oblivious to the pain of her bite, concentrating first on holding himself back long enough to enjoy the tremors of her body, and then on the excruciating pleasure of exploding inside her.
She sagged against him, her head still on his shoulder and her arms wrapped around his neck, and let out a heavy breath. "Jesus . . ."
"I know." Feeling like he could be quite happy if he never moved again, he leaned his head back against the couch and tightened his arms around her as he tried to steady his breathing. "Love you . . ."
She froze against him and cautiously raised her head. "What?"
"I . . ." He swallowed. "Never mind. Wasn't anything important."
"Bobby." She leaned back, trying to see his face. "You said 'love you.'"
He sighed. "Well, I do. But don't worry about it - I'm not . . . that is, I don't . . ."
"You don't what? Expect to hear it back?"
He nodded mutely.
"Well, what if I want to say it?"
He blinked.
His brain didn't seem to be back up to speed yet. Time for a temporary subject change. "Bobby?" she said quietly. "Why did you let me do this?"
"Do what?" he asked, confused.
She gestured to the two of them and their positions. "This. I mean, I pretty much just tackled you and started demanding sex."
"You say that like it's a bad thing," he teased. "I didn't let you do anything I didn't already want to do. I just . . . never thought it was a good policy to inform my partner every time I had a, uh, fantasy about her."
"You have fantasies about your partners a lot?" she asked, tightening her arms around his neck mock-threateningly.
"Only about one partner."
"The one you're in love with?" she asked, her face becoming more serious.
He swallowed. "Well, yeah. Turns out most of them were pretty accurate, too," he added, running a hand suggestively down her damp back.
"Hmm. That's interesting," she said slowly, tracing a finger lightly over the bite mark she'd left on his shoulder. "The ones I had about the partner I'm in love with were pretty close, too. Although they never involved me nearly tearing a chunk out of your shoulder . . ."
"Alex?"
"Mmm?" She leaned forward a little to see his back. "Oh god, you're a mess. I must have been hurting you! Why didn't you stop me?"
"Huh?" He looked over his shoulder, catching a glimpse of a set of bloody scratches. "Oh. I didn't feel it. Doesn't matter. What I was going to say was . . . did you just say you're in love with me?"
She raised an eyebrow at his tentative tone. "I don't date rape just any consenting partner, you know. So yeah, I think I just might be."
He grinned suddenly, then kissed her. "Good. But Alex?"
"What?" she asked with a sigh. "Aren't men supposed to just fall asleep after sex? I'm supposed to be the one asking all the questions."
"Sorry. If it makes you feel better, I am tired. But I just wanted to ask . . . where do we go from here?"
"From here?" she echoed, waving her hands to encompass the couch they were on. "From here, I say we go to bed."
"That's not what I mean."
"I know," she sighed. "But I'm tired. Can we just say that wherever we go from here, it will involve both of us together, and then leave the specifics for tomorrow?"
"Fair enough. Hold on," he ordered, reaching back to tighten her arms around his neck before standing up and taking her with him. "I believe I heard a request for bed?"
She wrapped her legs around his waist and kissed his shoulder. "You're going to stay, right? The whole night?"
"Of course." He carried her to the bedroom and set her down on the bed. "You thought I was going to sneak out on you?"
She turned slightly pink. "Well I . . . didn't know whether you would or not. I've never had wild, passionate, spur-of-the-moment sex on a couch with you before."
"We'll have to work on that." He pulled down the covers of the bed for her, then slid in beside her. "Alex?" he asked, leaning forward to kiss her forehead as she curled up and prepared to sleep.
"Mmph?"
"Love you."
She turned over and pulled his arms around her. "Love you too. Now, let's go to sleep . . . if you have more professions of undying love, they can wait 'til tomorrow."