PULL ME OUT FROM INSIDE

by Jeannie

Rating: PG-13

Summary: Goren and Eames finally start to deal with the events of Purgatory (the season 7 ep in which Goren went undercover). Spoilers through season 7, especially Purgatory and Henry Kissinger (the one with the murders centered around a posh preschool), for which this is technically a post-ep. G/E established relationship...sort of!

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DISCLAIMER: These characters are not mine. They belong to Dick Wolf, Vincent D'Onofrio and Kathryn Erbe. No infringement is intended; no profit is being made.

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Author's Note: Remember "Vanishing Act" in season 7 - the one with Goren doing all those adorable magic tricks? A lot of people thought that those antics were his attempt to win Eames back after he had betrayed her trust by going undercover without telling her, in "Purgatory". I totally subscribe to this interpretation...but I felt like there had to be a step in between. She was SO mad - in my mind, there was no way he would even feel like he had the right to try to jolly her round, and no way she would have *let* him, if they hadn't already come to some sort of preliminary understanding. Hence, this story. [It's written in the same universe as all my other LOCI fics, in which our heroes have been in a personal relationship - albeit a rocky one - since somewhere around the middle of season 4.] The title is from "Colorblind" by Counting Crows - lyrics at the end of the fic. Feedback is cherished!

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They had kids too.

As the uniformed officers drag Marla out, Goren turns away from the betrayal in her tear-stained face. His gut churns with a familiar mix of anger and pity, and he breathes in deeply to steady himself. Get a grip, he tells himself sternly. Eames catches his eye.

"You okay?"

She speaks shortly, but he figures it's probably to cover the fact that she's trembling inside, just like him, with receding adrenaline and the cold, sickly awareness of how much worse this could have gone. Marla, the gun, the two terrified women, all those sleeping kids...it doesn't bear thinking about.

"Yeah," he mumbles, waving a hand vaguely. Okay enough, anyway. "You?"

But his partner is already turning sharply on her heel. Without another word, she leaves him standing like an island in the middle of the brightly-decorated classroom, cops and paramedics swirling in eddies around him.

Shit.

He scrubs a hand over his face, wiping away drying sweat, and tries tiredly to think of a reason for Eames to be mad at him – a more immediate reason, that is, than the one that has loomed large and constant between them since he went undercover and didn't tell her, and ended up staring down the barrel of her gun.

He'd traded professional purgatory for a more personal kind, the day he'd said yes to Ross's offer. It's cold comfort now to remember that he did it with his eyes open, knowing that Alex would find out eventually and that she'd be furious... weighing that against his instinctive unwillingness to drag her into the whole sordid affair, and his driving need to do exactly as he was told for once, because that was how he'd get his badge back. It was the latter that had tipped the balance towards secrecy, in the end. The job was the necessary first step out of the fog of grief and anger and doubt he'd been living in for months. It had to be; he couldn't see any other way forward. Couldn't fathom how to begin to fix all the other crap that was wrong – up to and including his relationship with Alex – until he had work, a routine, something solid to set his back against.

He hadn't counted on Alex being the first cop through the damn door, though – and he still wants to know what the fuck Ross was thinking, putting her on the Testarossa case when he knew Goren was in it up to his neck. Not that even the most considered rationale would have made a difference – the damage was done, irrevocable, in those few frozen seconds. He saw it in her eyes, wide and terrified above her rock-solid firing stance, and again later in the holding cells when she'd figured it all out (worse then, god, like he'd punched her in the stomach).

He tried to explain, of course, tried to apologize. But she didn't want to hear a word of it. I hope it was worth it, *Detective.* She'd flung those words at him and stalked out of the interrogation room, and that was that. Ever since, she has treated him with a rigid professionalism that reminds him painfully of the very early days of their partnership. She's crisp, often impatient and always distant. He doesn't know how to reach her; he can't even tell if she wants him to try. Maybe this is it, he thinks sometimes on the really bad days. Maybe I miscalculated; maybe I finally hurt her worse than she can stand, and she really is done with me.

The only thing that keeps him from full-blown panic at the idea is the instinctive feeling that if it were true, (a) she would have said so, in so many words; and (b) she would have requested some sort of change at work. Their personal relationship is all tangled up with their professional partnership in a lot of ways that probably aren't entirely healthy, but in this case, he thinks - he has to believe - that the fact that she's still willing to work with him is a hopeful sign.

So he's been keeping his head down and doing his job to the best of his ability. Away from One PP, he's working on getting the rest of his life back on an even keel. Alex hasn't given any sign of noticing that he's trying to eat better and exercise more, or that he's seeing his psychiatrist regularly and limiting himself to one afternoon per week of obsessively visiting homeless shelters to ask after Donny. He reminds himself continually that he can't be doing all this for her, anyway – that it won't stick unless he's doing it for himself, unless he believes himself worthy of the effort.

It's a hard thing to believe, some days. Okay, most days. But he's trying.

And the thing is, lately he has started to feel like it might, maybe, be getting easier. It's probably not a coincidence that things between him and Alex have seemed a little better too. But now... they're driving back to One PP, Marla a hunched figure in the squad car just ahead, and Alex's hands are clenched so hard on the steering wheel that he's having trouble breathing, just sitting beside her. Clearly he's done something to plunge her back down into that deep well of anger that she carries around, but for once he honestly can't figure out what it was. He twists in the passenger seat and tries to catch her eye, but she won't look at him, not even for a second.

Damn it. We were doing okay this week, until now.

He's disappointed, and frustrated, and he just misses her so much. Before he can think better of it, he bursts out irritably:

"What? What's wrong?"

Pause. He watches Alex press her lips together in a tight line. "Nothing," she says very evenly.

It's an obvious lie, and he could almost believe that she's enjoying this power she has over him, letting him twist in the wind while he tries to figure out what the hell is going on. He suppresses a violent desire to punch the dashboard; breathes out carefully; faces front again. Wishes, for what feels like the thousandth time, that Alex were the shouting type, so they could have a big screaming fight about it all. Or more than one. Whatever it would take to clear the air. But Alex doesn't shout, when she's really angry. She goes cold and silent and inscrutable, and it twists him into these awful, familiar knots of fear and resentment inside, and...

"You remind me of my mother, when you get like this," he hears himself mutter.

The words hang between them for a split second, long enough for him to think shit, I can't believe I said that out loud as Alex's head jerks round.

"What?"

Her voice cracks a little, high and incredulous, and it's something, it's a reaction, it's maybe the only opening he's going to get for days, weeks. Blindly, desperately, he does what he always does in interrogation, when he can smell blood on the water: he keeps talking, provoking, pushing.

"She'd go into these – ice-cold r-rages. I never knew what triggered them. She'd sit there for days, sometimes - "

"Jesus Christ," says Alex harshly, and drags on the steering wheel. She pulls off the road into an alley and stops with a screech of brakes. In the sudden silence he can hear her breathing in uneven counterpoint to his own, and then she makes a noise of inarticulate fury and flings herself out of the car, slamming the door behind her. After a second he follows suit, and stands by the open passenger door. Be careful what you wish for, he thinks, bracing himself for the fight with a mix of relief and dread. Are you ready for this? He watches Alex walk a few steps down the alley, back stiff and movements jerky, and then she's coming back towards him.

"What the hell, Goren? You – you..." She breathes in and out hard through her nose, and starts again. "You and your goddamned emotional blackmail. You don't know why I'm angry? You don't know?"

"Of course I know," he snaps. "But the silent treatment is getting really old, okay? I wish you'd just tell me how long I'm gonna be doing penance, here."

Her eyebrows fly up. "Penance? Is that what you think this is? God. You don't get it at all, do you?"

She's laughing at him, brittle and humorless, and it makes him crazy because how can he understand if she won't talk to him? He steps forward, right into her space, pushing up close the way he would with a suspect, desperate for a breakthrough.

"Don't I?" he sneers. "Please, explain it to me, Detective."

Alex stares up at him in furious disbelief, and lifts both hands to shove him back, hard.

"You asshole," she says, low and venomous. "Come up with your own damn explanation. Tell me why it's always you in the room facing down the perp, without a gun or even a vest, and me on the other side of the door."

He blinks.

"I – what, you mean earlier? But – you volunteered to get the kids out. That was the right thing to do. Marla was talking to me...I had to keep the conversation going."

"They always talk to you," Alex mutters sulkily.

"So, what - you're pissed off about that? Come on – what the hell else was I supposed to do?"

"I don't know!" Alex explodes. "I'm just sick of it, okay? I am so fucking sick of seeing you in the line of fire."

It's the truth, he can tell, a tiny glimpse at everything that she's been holding in for such a long time. But...he doesn't understand, can't make it fit with the sense of profound, unprecedented betrayal that he's been getting from her up till now. Seeing each other in danger at work - that's an old problem for them, one that he'd thought they 'd more or less found ways to handle. Hadn't they?

"It's the job," he says lamely. "I'm trying to do my job, that's all..."

Alex stares at him. "Are you? Because...there's doing the job, and there's using the job as a way to self-destruct. And - and I can't tell anymore which it is, for you."

Oh.

Suddenly he's having trouble breathing again, because, yeah. Looking back on some of the things he's done over the past few years, sometimes he can't tell either. He can see, now, that for a long time there he was even more messed up than he realized, and yes, his judgment was affected. Facing up to that knowledge, admitting that his professional abilities - last bastion and benchmark of sanity - were compromised...is one of the hardest things he's ever done. It has taken him weeks in therapy to be able to say it out loud, let alone talk about it. But even worse is the awareness that his decisions and actions might have - probably did - put people in danger: victims, perps, colleagues. Alex.

With a great mental effort, he wrenches his mind away from the familiar, nauseating merry-go-round of guilt and fear. Shut up, he tells himself. Listen to her.

"Ever since your mom died...maybe even before that," Alex is saying, and she sounds like she can't get enough air into her lungs either. "You've been...pushing me away. Doing these reckless things. And every time you end up in front of someone's gun, I can't help it, I wonder if this is it, this is the day you're just going to let go, do something brave and stupid and let some perp finish the job - "

Her voice goes high and tight, the way it does when she's struggling not to cry.

"Stop," he says, flinching. "Alex. I would never - even if...even if I did feel that way, I would never put you - "

Never put you through that, he's about to say. If I ever did kill myself, I would make sure you were a thousand miles away when I did it. Alex lets out a breath of that painful, humorless laughter.

"You would never," she echoes. "Right. Actually you went one better, didn't you? You set me up so it might have been me who pulled the trigger."

Her meaning doesn't register immediately. He's still scrambling to process the fact that she thinks he was - is - suicidal...that she's been living with the idea for years, it sounds like, while he has only just recently admitted the possibility to himself. Then the penny drops, and suddenly he's reliving the Testarossa bust, seeing it as she must have seen it through the filter of her fear for him. Alex, who lost a man she loved to a gunshot once before.

Oh, God.

He understands it now - the strength of her reaction, and her need to keep him at arms' length for so long. He understands, but he has no idea what to say to her, how to convince her that her fear is unfounded when it isn't, not really. Helpless and tongue-tied, he reaches for her, hoping wildly that she'll accept reassurance from him this way if not the other.

"Don't," Alex chokes out, twisting out of his grasp. She turns half away, staring blindly at the wall of the building beside them, arms tightly crossed. He passes a hand over his face. Thinks of his therapist saying don't worry so much about explaining everything. Just try to say something that's true.

"Okay," he says. "Listen. You're - you're not wrong. I was...seriously screwed up for a long time. More than I admitted to you or anyone. But I was never - never actively suicidal."

At that, she turns her head to look at him, and his heart hitches in his chest. Her eyes are full of tears, and he can see that she doesn't believe him.

"I wasn't," he insists, as firmly as he can, willing her to hear certainty in his voice. "Not even on my worst days. I did th-think about it sometimes, okay? But I never got to the point of doing anything."

"Not consciously, anyway," Alex says, carefully and painfully.

"Not at all." He takes a deep breath. "I can see why you think - I did do a lot of things that were self-destructive. I'm still trying to get - get a handle on that. But...God, it's hard to explain. I think...I think it was more...grief and g-guilt, and just...flailing around, trying to figure out who I was. Like I had to get to the bottom before I could start to rebuild...or something."

And I dragged you down with me, he doesn't say. Farther even than I knew. He wants to apologize to her, again – properly, this time. He wants to make it up to her, or at least try, in a thousand different ways.

"You know how it is...," he finally says, as lightly as he can manage. "Some men have mid-life crises, they start driving sports cars and dating women half their age. Me, I...lost my mom, found out my biological father was a s-serial killer, got thrown in jail, had a nervous breakdown..."

Saying it all out loud like that leaves him a little shaky, and he doesn't know what he'll do if his weak attempt at a joke fails. Black humour has always, always been their saving grace.

What if we don't even have that left?

But Alex makes a sound that's about halfway between a laugh and a sob, and turns round to face him. Tears are slipping down her cheeks, and her voice cracks on his name. He thinks his heart might be doing the same, from pain and relief and gratitude.

"I'm sorry," he says softly, holding her gaze. "For scaring you. For - everything. And...I'm not - I'll never leave you. Not that way. I promise, Alex."

She looks at him for a long moment, and then suddenly covers her face with her hands.

"God, Bobby. I want to believe you."

He aches with how tired and defeated she sounds. He reaches out and gently circles her wrists with his fingers.

"Let me prove it to you," he says. "I know it'll take time...but I'm in it for the long haul. I really am. Come on, haven't you noticed? I've been working my ass off to get better."

He puts an extra plaintive note into that last, and glory hallelujah, she chuckles a little in spite of herself, and lets him tug her hands away so he can see her.

"I love you," he says, helplessly, and Alex's face crumples.

"Say that again," she says, low and fierce and pleading, and it undoes him completely. He outlines her head with his hands, presses his lips to her wet cheeks, eyelids, forehead – whispering as he goes, I love you. I love you. I love you - until she makes a muffled yearning sound and tilts her head to meet his mouth with hers.

It's the first time they've kissed in – god, months – and it's hard and clumsy and the angle is awkward, but the feel of her against him is instantly familiar, and the relief of connection, of touch, is so strong that he's shaking with it.

Eventually – too soon, far too soon – she pulls away. She's trembling too, he can see, and still crying a little, but she swipes the tears away and glares at him mutinously.

"Don't think this is forgiveness, Goren. I'm still mad as hell."

"I know," he says, but he can't stop the helpless grin from spreading across his face. He believes her, but some part of him also believes that they're going to be okay now, and that part wants to sing, laugh, grab her up and swing her around. He settles for pulling her close again, wrapping his arms around her, thrilling to the fact that she lets him. He holds his breath, and after a few seconds, she turns her face into his chest and finally, finally relaxes against him.

"I know," he says again, lips pressed to the top of her head. "We have a lot to talk about."

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I am
taffy stuck, tongue tied
Stuttered shook and uptight
Pull me out from inside
I am ready
I am ready
I am ready
I am...fine
I am covered in skin
No one gets to come in
Pull me out from inside
I am folded, and unfolded, and unfolding
I am...colorblind

-- "Colorblind", Counting Crows

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END