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It feels like the blood is dripping into his eye again. It tingles and irritates and makes him flinch, get up, and go to the mirror in the bathroom for the fifth time in an hour. When he looks, as carefully as he can, he finds nothing. The wound slicing through his left eyebrow is still there, but the blood is tacky and the cut is beginning to heal. He takes a step back and sighs. It is almost two in the morning, and he knows it would be useless to try and sleep.
He would work, if he could, if Deakins hadn’t sent him home hours ago with orders to eat something and sleep – really sleep – until the morning. He had looked terrible even then, even he admitted it. Unshaven for days, bags under his eyes, and hair that desperately needed to see water. Now, he thinks, he more accurately resembles a corpse. A mere shower is unlikely to help much, but he strips anyway, slowly, trying to keep the material of his undershirt away from his injured face. The water is hot, but not hot enough. He catches himself shivering, even when the temperature should be burning him.
Twenty minutes later, he rubs a towel through unruly hair and glares at himself in the mirror. If only he could just run into a telephone booth and change his entire appearance, turn up for work in a few hours looking rested, clean, and in a crisply pressed suit. As it is, Deakins is likely to take one look at him and put him on suspension for a week, just to get him to sleep. It won’t work, of course. He can only ever sleep when he isn’t trying. When he isn’t thinking.
The doorbell rings three times before he realizes it’s real, that it’s not the music of the kids next door, or intermittent tinnitus. He checks his wristwatch, a little surprised that anyone he knows is still awake. For protection, he ties a towel around his waist and grabs his gun from the belt among his discarded clothes. He’s not worried. Any potential attackers would be scared away by his mere appearance. When he checks through the spyhole, though, he suddenly becomes embarrassed. Still, there is little he can do. He runs the fingers of his free hand through his hair (not that it helps) and opens the door.
Eames obviously doesn’t know what to make of him. Bobby doesn’t know either. He has no idea what to say. No words really seem sufficient. Finally, she blinks and it seems like reality returning. “What did you do to your head?” she looks up at him with some concern.
He touches a finger nervously to the wound. It feels wet, but only with water. “Uh… Is there a problem? A case?”
“No,” she says absently, as if it is totally normal for her to be standing outside his door in the early hours of the morning. “Bobby, you need to clean that cut…”
Before he can think of anything to say, she is already past him, into his apartment, and heading for the bathroom. “Uh…?” he protests, and decides he should just shut the door. “I already cleaned it,” he points out, as she returns, having found alcohol and cotton swabs from somewhere deep in the recesses of his medicine cabinet. He wonders whether she has noticed any of the other bottles in there. He hopes not.
“Sit down,” she motions to the couch.
Bobby doesn’t have the energy to protest. He pushes a pile of old books aside and clears a space for himself on the couch, putting down his gun on the table. He closes his eyes for a moment. His head is really starting to hurt.
“Bobby?” A hand touches his arm.
He opens his eyes with a start. The lights in the room suddenly seem too bright. Had he actually fallen asleep? Eames was looking at him like she normally looked at some of their more unbalanced suspects. “Bobby? Do you feel okay?”
He closes his eyes, takes a breath, and opens them again. “I’m fine,” he says, and hopes his voice doesn’t sound as shaky as he feels.
Eames kneels down on the floor, and gently turns his head so she can see the wound over his eye. He knows it is swollen, red, and black and blue. He feels like he has been hit by a lead pipe, or a bolt of lightning. It’s easier just to close his eyes. Keeping them open requires far too much effort. He feels her daubing at the cut. It’s fine, it’s bearable. Eames is good at this sort of thing. An hour ago, Bobby had just splashed alcohol on his face in the vain hope that everything would miraculously be fine the next morning.
“I think maybe I should drive you to the hospital,” Eames says, throwing a bloody cotton swab into the bin next to them. “Looks like it could need stitches.”
“No… I’ll be fine,” Bobby doesn’t even convince himself, but the thought of getting dressed and sitting in ER all night with drunks and victims of car accidents has little appeal.
“You could have a concussion as well...” her voice is serious. “What happened, Bobby?”
He smiles a little. It feels somehow reassuring for her to call him that, like a friend, an ordinary friend who isn’t paid to spend time with him. “Nothing, I just… Nothing.”
Eames glances at him, a look that tells him that she knows how much he’s bullshitting her, but also that she isn’t going to force him to talk. After all, he has a gaping wound in his forehead. Now is obviously not the best time to ask him questions that might require more than a monosyllabic response.
“I’m sorry,” Bobby says quietly. He doesn’t know why.
She cuts a strip of gauze with surgical precision and sets about taping it in position.
Bobby suddenly feels compelled to talk, to add some sense of normalcy to the situation, to pretend that everything really is fine. “So, um, why did you come here tonight?”
“Because I had nothing better to do,” she grins. “Deakins asked me to stop by. He had a hunch you wouldn’t be sleeping.”
“He asked you to check if I was sleeping by waking me up?” Even Bobby has a hard time figuring that one out.
Eames finishes with the gauze and sets it back on the table. “Bobby, you never sleep. What were the chances?” She ruffles his wet curls, like she might do to her nephew, and sits back on her heels.
He smiles and touches a hand to his head. It feels, somehow, better. “Thank you.”
She looks at him, as if struck by a sudden thought, or about to say something. Abruptly she gets to her feet and turns away. “Do you have anything to eat in here?” She opens the door of his fridge and seems surprised to see any food at all. Bobby’s surprised too. There isn’t much that’s leafy, green, or anything close to fresh, but most of it looks edible.
Bobby sits where he is and wonders whether he should put on some real clothes. It isn’t modesty so much as the fact that he’s still covered in water from the shower, and his hair is dripping tears down his face. He gingerly gets up.
“Be careful with your head,” Eames warns, pulling a bottle of mineral water from the fridge and closing it. “And it’s not as if you look so bad in a towel.”
Bobby would raise his eyebrows at that, had it not hurt so much. He walks to his bedroom, closes the door halfway, and dries himself off as much as he has the energy for. He reappears, dressed in the black sweater and jeans he had found on the floor. At least they don’t smell.
“Coffee?” he suggests.
Eames is flipping through one of his books, frowning. She looks up. “No, that’ll just keep you awake all night.”
“It’s almost three,” Bobby protests. “I’m going to be up all night anyway.”
Eames looks at him as if contemplating something. “Deakins didn’t ask me to come,” she says, finally. “I wanted you to look at something.” She pulls a sheet of paper, folded into quarters, from the inside pocket of her jacket, and reaches out to give it to him. “This was in my mailbox when I got home tonight.”
Bobby unfolds it and hopes that his eyes will focus enough to let him read. The paper contains typewritten text, neatly formatted, which seems to be in the form of a poem. He sits down beside Eames on the couch, and reads.
“You’re the only person I know who knows anything about poetry,” Eames explains once she sees that he has finished. “So what do you think?”
Bobby isn’t quite sure what she’s asking. “It’s a love poem. Very romantic. Did your boyfriend write it?”
“Probably not, since I don’t have a boyfriend, as you well know.”
“Now that’s one thing I don’t understand,” Bobby cocks his head and looks at her with analytic eyes. “How can a woman as beautiful and smart as you not have a boyfriend?”
She laughs. “Don’t interrogate me, Robert Goren. I know all your tricks.”
Bobby shrugs. “As a friend then, tell me, why not?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
Bobby looks away, back at the poem. “That’s not the same thing at all. With me it’s obvious.”
“Obvious?” Eames, surprisingly, looks genuinely puzzled.
“Well…” Bobby sighs. “I date. I do. But… The last five dates I’ve been on have lasted approximately one hour each and have all culminated in the woman declaring her opinion that I should be locked up in a mental asylum. Sometimes they throw things.”
Eames eyes the bandage on his head. “Oh, so that’s what happened?”
“No…”
“So what about the sixth date?”
“Oh.” Bobby thinks for a moment. “Not much better. I busted her for drug smuggling after ten minutes. Pity. The first nine minutes seemed so promising.”
That makes her laugh. He doesn’t see her smile very often, but it’s always worth it when she does. He turns back to the poem. “If you want a literary assessment, it’s not very good.”
“I liked it.”
Bobby keeps his eyes on the page. “Probably because it takes all its better points from Shakespeare, Milton, Matthew Arnold – men who could really write. As an original piece it has no real value,” he sneaks a glance at her, “but I suspect it was composed for a much higher purpose than publication.”
“A higher purpose?”
He nods. “Yes. Winning your heart.”
Eames doesn’t say anything, and there is only so long he can stare at one piece of paper. After a moment, he sets it down, turns, and looks at her. The way she is looking at him is the way he has imagined, has dreamed of, for years. He cannot speak.
“Did you write this, Bobby?” she asks, finally, and the question seems unreal.
“I…” He looks down, examines his fingernails. “I don’t know whether you want me to say yes.”
After the briefest of moments, he feels her fingertips on the soft hair at the back of his neck, her other hand cool against his unshaven cheek. He looks up, and she kisses him. He never expected this, this sudden tenderness from a woman he has grown to respect for her professionalism, toughness, and intellect. Even his dreams, he has no idea what to do.
She draws back, a little embarrassed, worried perhaps, because he has remained so still, because he is looking at her with an expression she has never seen before. He reaches out, touches the back of his hand to her cheek, and tries to remember to breathe. He kisses her, touches her lips with his, just a gentle caress of skin that seems to last longer than anything else he knows. When he stops, she looks at him with something between longing and hunger. “Bobby…”
It’s been too long since he had anyone in his arms, and this seems awkward, like one of their assignments where they merely pretend to be lovers. Bobby never found it too hard to pretend. “I’m sorry,” he says in a whisper. “I’m not very good at this.”
Eames takes his hands in hers. “Bobby, it took you five years to tell me how you feel. Do you need another five to do something about it?”
He considers his appearance and grins. “I’m not exactly your Prince Charming.”
“No,” she agrees. “But I’ve been reliably informed that there’s a handsome man under there somewhere.”
“Really? And where did you get that information, Detective Eames?”
“I have my sources, Detective Goren,” Eames gets to her feet and pulls him up. He feels awkward standing next to her like this, feels awkward being tall. He remembers years of schoolteachers reminding him to stand up straight. He was never any good at trying to be normal.
“Alex…” He feels that he should say something poetic, something like the paper that brought her here, even though nothing comes to mind. “I want to do this properly. I always make such a mess of things.”
She looks at him, at his bandaged brow, messy hair, and unshaven face, and smiles. “You’re doing just fine.”
The next morning…
Bobby wakes up with the sun in his eyes and a warm pressure on his chest. When he lifts a hand to push whatever it is away, his fingers encounter soft hair. Alex. A smile comes to his face and he almost forgets what woke him up in the first place – the cellphone chirping beside him on the cabinet. Careful not to disturb her, he answers the phone and tries to clear his eyes of fog. “Goren.”
“Where the hell are you, Goren?” The familiar voice of Deakins comes through the speaker. “I’ve been trying to reach you for an hour.”
“Well, I’m… I’m in bed,” Bobby has always believed honesty to be the best policy, particularly when Deakins was the one who told him to sleep.
Deakins is taken aback by this. “Oh. Good. So you’re all right?”
Bobby frowns. This seems like an odd question to ask. “I’m fine,” he says, as Alex shifts position in her sleep, “but I think I’m going to take your advice and stay in bed today.”
“That’s all very well, Goren, but I’ve been trying to reach Eames as well. Any idea where she is?”
“I spoke to her last night, and she seemed very tired, Captain,” Bobby replies. “Maybe she’s taking a sick day too. She certainly deserves it.”
This idea is greeted with a moment of silence on the other end of the phone. Finally, Deakins speaks, in a different tone of voice. “You two have fun, Bobby. But, please, the next time you walk into a lamppost, try not to drop your badge at the same time. I’ve had homicide on the line all morning, convinced you’re lying in a pool of your own blood somewhere.”
“Ah, right,” Bobby says, wondering if he looks as embarrassed as he feels. “I’ll do that.”
As he switches off his phone, Alex blinks and looks up at him sleepily. “You walked into a lamppost? I thought you’d done something unspeakably heroic.”
“I did,” Bobby strokes her cheek with a finger. “I wrote you a poem.”