“Keepsake, Pt. 2” by Scripted Starlet

(Post-ep to “Brother’s Keeper”)

Rating: T/M. Only adults for this chapter. Even if I am aiming for un-explicit.

A.N. Yup, it’s finals week. ‘Scuse my inacitivity.

Gail, I’m sorry but I got your shower rec right about when this story was done. It’s been done, practically, for about a week. I just haven’t had the time or vigor to polish it. But rest assured I will write a B/A shower story one day & dedicate it to you. Trust me, I always take your suggestions to heart.

…

Alex is buzzed from wine and sated from sex when she decides to share a secret.

“So now you’re my favorite.”

Bobby rouses. He hears her smile and it is furtive.

“Favorite what?” he whispers indulgently.

“Thing to do.”

And then it’s time to see her again.

Her waist is the spindle that he turns to set things back into motion. She writhes in pretense, twisting and letting out a girlish squeal that he knows is for his benefit—but far be it from him to mind. Face to face, Bobby wrestles Alex into submission and then wraps himself around her, sealing her still with drawn elbows and cuffed knees.

“You make rash decisions,” he accuses.

“No-o, I make snap decisions. And tonight was a night full of snaps.”

“Snaps? So that’s what the kids are calling them these days…”

“Right,” she snarks. “’Cuz I’m so in touch with ‘the scene’.”

“You’re quick,” he says, his words sluggish as she livens her tongue. “My little Eames is always so quick.”

You’re wonderful, Alex thinks, kissing him all the harder so that he quits mumbling for lack of oxygen. Handsome, intelligent and with banter to spare.

Her leg flirts with his and he rocks in response.

“You’re quick, too,” she chuckles.

And to Bobby’s ears it’s nothing but melody.

He joins her for distraction, his brain pickled with a strange cocktail of emotion. He’s happy, of course, but also anxious and addled. And it’s different. So very different than it has been with lovers past.

“Alex,” he says solemnly, “I think we may really have something here.”

“You could say that…”

Her finger is frisky, spawning a crazy, curly design on the plate above his heartbeat. Bobby stiffens, watching warily as she paints it all over his chest, brushing blindly like chaos incarnate.

“Eames—”

“We have you and me.”

“Yes, but… besides that,” he hesitates. “I’m never going to be able to look at you the same. To go back to the way it was. You know that if… if this doesn’t work out, our jobs will just—”

“It will work out,” she interrupts. But she’s not so much certain as she is hopeful. “We’ll make it work.”

“No matter what?”

“We’ll work,” she insists. But she’s not so much hopeful as she is stubborn. “You and me, Bobby.”

“Okay.” He soothes his hand down the small of her back, a place where inner tension scatters on surface. “You promise to put up with me?”

“Hey, that goes both ways,” Alex yawns, idle with slumber. “I’m not perfect, you know.”

“Oh, I beg to differ.”

But whatever he’s intending, it has the opposite effect.

“Bobby, I’m not!” She’s wide awake. Bridled but bristling against his chest. “I have plenty of problems. Plenty of hang-ups. Plenty of bad habits that are sure to annoy the hell out of you.”

“Tell me about your habits.” He kisses the dip before the slope of her nose. “They sound cute.”

“Well, they’re not. They’re ordinary and pretty boring like… like every time I eat an orange I forget to put the peel in the trash. And so it just sits there. Sometimes for days.”

He grins, imagining a citrus-ridden household.

Eh, better than a rodent-ridden one.

“I’m happy to clean up after you.”

“But you wouldn’t want me to do your laundry. I bleach everything. Absolutely everything, Bobby. It’s like I’m colorblind. For some reason I can’t distinguish between the lights and the darks…”

“Well, I would never ask you to wash my clothes, Eames. I mostly dry clean, anyhow.”

“And the blow-dryer,” she remembers. “It’s always plugged in and too close to the sink. It’s a wonder I haven’t gotten electrocuted yet.”

“Now you’re stretching it.” He traces her worry lines with growing love and amusement. “But if you fear for your life then I highly suggest air drying. Works for me.”

“There’s more,” she says tiredly. “Uggh, there’s so much more. If Joe was here he’d say something. He’d tell you.”

“And I’d tell ‘Joe’ that he didn’t know a good thing when he had it.” Alex’s lips thin with shock while Bobby’s shoulders round in indifference. “Just what I think.”

It starts slowly. And were she not naked and in another man’s arms, she might have been able to dam it. But there’s something about the timing. Something about the temerity of the situation is completely beyond her control.

She can feel it rising. Surging. The pressure whelming until her eyes and cheeks are pinched by tears.

Bobby does a double take. He’s sick with remorse, bemoaning the idiocy of what he just said.

“I’m sorry.” If he had a gun now he’d shoot his own foot. “Alex, I wasn’t thinking. That was stupid of me. I’m so sorry.”

Alex cocks her head and looks past him, staring at a short stack of Tim O’Brien and Kurt Vonnegut hardcovers. She has read two out of the four and, despite everything else, she finds this discovery encouraging. Advantageous, even. She knows this is an opportunity to build on those books. To foster their ever-burgeoning connection.

I want him to understand, she thinks, but it’s going to hurt. It’s going to hurt like hell.

“I’m sorry, Alex,” he’s pleading, and that—she finds—hurts more than anything else. “Look, can’t we just take it back? This has been such a perfect evening. Can’t we just pretend that I never said it?”

“No,” she says sadly. “We can’t.”

…

The bed is big and she is small, and while Bobby’s off foraging Alex is rolling like a child. She grabs her ankles one moment and stretches lithely the next; a bundle of newness betwixt the sheets. She spins onto her stomach and throws her face into his pillow, inhaling greedily before she spreads in imitation of a snowflake. Fresh and white and glistening with content.

“Well, this is a surprise.”

Her head pops, a fan of hair sweeping her shoulder.

“You expected me to just sit and wait?”

“Are you really naked under there?” he asks tightly.

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Oh.” He sets a basket on the nightstand. “Can I peek?”

She straightens and gathers her bare legs beneath her.

“You can do a lot more than that, Bobby.”

The fabric slips and Bobby slides. Hard. From the neck down, Alex is twenty-three and not a day elder.

And from the waist down…

“I may not survive this,” he mutters. But it’s far from a complaint.

Alex pats the spot alongside her.

“I’ll see you through.”

He smiles uncertainly, bending down to taste her lips and sweep his thumb over a petal pink nipple. The blushing bud blooms and veers in time to Bobby’s lengthening erection and the harmony throws him. He withdraws hastily, fearing they may be a little too in sync.

“A few preliminaries,” he says then, wagging a finger that does nothing to stifle her pout.

“Candles…” he begins, digging into the basket and producing a pair of waxy wands. “Condoms…” he continues, tossing the requisite six-pack near her ankle. “And a vintage merlot,” he finishes fluently, “for after.”

Alex watches him scratch the matches and pour their glasses with festering unease.

“I’m not this high-maintenance, Goren.”

“Humor me, Eames.”

She waits until he is near again to enlighten him.

“Clever,” she admits, pointing to the candles. “Classy,” she adds, gesturing towards the wine. “But these—” she kicks the condoms off the bed, “—are entirely unnecessary.”

“Is that right?” he perks.

“Yup.” She pools her cheek into the graze of his palm. “Looks like I get to feel all of you.”

“You sound smug,” he comments, moving back to rid of his sweater.

“No, just thankful, really. I love you, Bobby, but if you’d tried to put on some Yanni it would’ve been the last straw.”

He coughs. Caught off guard with his shirt half-risen and his pants half-mast.

It’s not enough that I love you, he thinks. Now you’re going to make me fall.

But aloud he says, “How many times have we gone over this, Eames? They were my ex-girlfriend’s.”

“And yet suspiciously still rotating in your CD tray?”

“What can I say? I missed her.”

Alex’s feet go cold. The chill of fear punching tiny holes into her toes.

“So umm… where’s that Yanni hanging out nowadays?”

“Beats me.” Bobby steps out of his slacks. “I couldn’t care less.”

She gasps. Her mouth inordinately moist as he climbs onto the bed and drapes his big, powerful body over hers. It’s too much, she feels. And she has enough horse sense to tug the blankets higher before she’s swallowed up altogether.

“So what are you… shy now?”

The question is typical Goren. One part stutter, two parts swagger.

“Give me a moment.”

She pushes at his shoulders so that she can see him.

Bobby retreats in an awkward fashion, his skin spiked with insecurity. His immediate theory is that he’s not what she expected. His proximal hypothesis is that Alex is probably used to being with smaller men, shorter men, less… intimidating men, perhaps?

It’s pure conjecture, he realizes. He doesn’t know what’s bothering her. Nevertheless, there’s an uglier possibility that’s making him want to drop to the floor and give her fifty.

Alex is fascinated.

The hair on his chest is much like the mop on his head, a soup of wayward curls sprinkled with salt. There are ropes of muscle aligning his arms and legs—thick and knotted but tastefully long. Loosening the linens, she runs her hands down his sides, skimming the hints of handles that she already loves. She feels elated. Elevated. Moved by her partner’s firm yet mortal beauty.

“You’re a bit of a contradiction, you know that?” she remarks.

The excavation heads south, her fingers bridging the border so that Bobby grunts heedfully.

Feel better now? Alex thinks.

And Bobby’s beside himself it’s that good. “How so?”

“Well, for starters,” she flicks her tongue out against his, “you’ve got this adorable lil’ baby face. Makes you look like you’re fresh out of prep.”

“Eames,” he whines. She’s pulling and stroking but he’s still semi-chagrined. “It doesn’t bode well for a man’s ego when a woman calls him ‘adorable’.”

“You didn’t let me finish. This is all about the contradictory part.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah,” she purrs. “Really.”

He’s sitting back on his haunches with a now ravenous Alex plastered against his front. Her kisses are hot and honeyed, and she rains them down his neck with a confidence born of experience and ease. His throat is tense, his thighs taut as she pumps over him, inciting the very friction that will undo them both. And then Bobby can feel her—slick as sin and softly spun. Soft as fleece.

His fingers itch, aching to explore new territory but his sensibilities are detained when her mouth skids, latching onto the flat of his nipple. His skin breaks beneath her teeth and Bobby is injected with a luscious nectar that sears and spreads—flooding through his insides and seeping out his pores.

He grips the sheets with tipsy fingers. Licking his lips as he drinks her in.

“You know that I want you, Bobby, but I’m not sure you know just how much.”

She’s pushing him back, caressing his chest with the tips of her breasts.

“But then there’s so much to want when it comes to you.”

She shimmies upward and Bobby doesn’t recognize the woman on top of him. It’s Alex but it’s not. It’s a side he’s never seen before.

“You may be the strangest man I’ve ever met, but you’re the smartest, too. And you’re the sweetest…” Her tongue flutters in his ear. A liquid bee that hums and burrs. “And the sexiest…”

Her curves are impossibly supple. His hands in heaven as he spools her close.

“Yes, you’re offbeat. Yes, you can be… hard to follow. And sometimes it’s a little annoying when you’re perceptive to a fault but otherwise…” she ventures, and as far as ‘egos’ go his is ready to pop, “I think so much of you, Bobby. Really. You’ve been nothing but good to me and I think the world.”

He opens his eyes and looks into hers. They’re full. Serious and shimmering with something beyond desire. She fans her knuckles around his temple and sits back on his flattened stomach. Waiting. Hoping that he can believe what she already knows to be true.

That he’s done everything to deserve her.

“I don’t know where you came from, Alex Eames,” he says finally, his words clipped with precision. “But I’ll take you just the same.”

Alex wanes. She doesn’t know what do with that.

Bobby is quick to deliver assurances as his fingers bunch between the streaks of her hair. He drags her down so that their mouths can meet, rounding her teeth before slipping into the sleek of her center.

A dance begins as they tease one another in farce, understanding that whatever tenderness they exchange is no longer driven by inhibition but consideration. Their need is a mutual one. And there will be nothing but honesty from hereon out.

“You’re an angel,” he exhales upon parting. “An absolute angel. Did you know that, Eames? My smart, sweet, sexy little Eames…”

“You keep talking to me like that, Bobby, and I just might stay the night.”

She’s repositioned herself, hovering right above where he protrudes and fondling him with expectancy. Bobby starts to sweat. There’s a warm, wet suction inviting him. Inducing him. And he wants it to happen. He wants it more than anything else.

“Not yet,” he manages.

“Why not?”

She sinks. She sinks and his body screams in pleasure.

“I want you my way.”

She pauses, her expression quaint as he lifts her off of him.

…

Alex is dying.

Stuck on her side, she drifts aimlessly while the world swings in and out of focus. It’s a lazy phenomenon, highlighted only by the numbers on Bobby’s digital clock. They swim together, splashing and dashing after each other until they’re spooning and feeding and merging into one.

They’re leveling out, she notices. Tapering off into a thin blue line. It’s the same line that she’s crossed twice in the past… how many minutes?

She can’t tell anymore. It’s not as though she can time it.

“God, I love you,” Bobby murmurs, his digits strumming her folds while his thumb plucks her clitoris.

And Alex dies a little more, wishing that she could see him.

“You know some women climax and it’s practically nothing. Not you.”

He nips the back of her neck. It feels like ages ago that he found out what this does to her and he’s been milking it ever since.

“With you it’s a sermon.” His fingers fork the pliant flesh that lines her walls. His hardness parts the press of her cheeks. “A grand oration…”

“If you’re trying to make me blush, Bobby, then I think we’re well past that by now.”

“I don’t want to make you blush,” he scoffs, shifting his angle with one hand and pinching her nipple with the other. “I want to hear you beg again.”

“Bobby, please,” she obliges him. “Just do it already. I can’t take anymore of this, it’s... it’s not enough. I want to take all of you. I want to feel all of you. Please just do it. Make love to me.”

Groaning loudly, he grabs her chin and turns her face, covering her lips to keep her quiet. Begging is one thing. Imploring is another.

“Not enough!” She breaks their backwards kiss. It strains her neck and does nothing to satiate her needs. “Please, I want you inside of me. Now. Not later. Right now, Bobby, please.”

“Do you have any idea what you do to me?”

He grinds and she pushes, her want unrivaled as he nudges her entrance.

“Do you have any idea what hearing those things—from your mouth—does to me?”

Bobby rises. Tossing one leg over and the other out. Alex receives him. Ecstatic to see the color of his eyes and to not have to feel his arms hooking from behind and between her thighs. So distant. So frustratingly removed.

“Alex,” he breathes, the name hitched with amazement. “Six years we wasted. All that time, all that insanity. When all the while you were right here.”

He clears the bangs from her forehead and laughs vacantly. It’s a sound that would’ve been full if not for the irony.

“And who would’ve thought it, Eames…”

“Who would’ve thought what?” she asks.

He’s silent, memorizing every detail of her delicate little face. Her sunken cheeks, her sly mouth. And for the first time he notices the half-moons of her eyelids.

“Bobby?” she urges. “Who would’ve thought what?”

His neck cranes. Dropping an answer between their lips.

“That you’d love me back.”

He’s vulnerable then. Weakened but not necessarily worsened because sometime between the couch and now Bobby has stumbled upon an epiphany. And Alex is no longer his pretty partner and devoted friend with whom a relationship seems plausible. Alex is the one he has been looking for. The one he’d almost given up hope of finding.

And she’s here.

In his bed.

And he’s so far gone he can’t even see straight.

From inches above, he crowds her legs apart, his mind still dizzy from the spell. Alex readies herself from below, knowing that this might be tricky. It’s always trial and error when you’re petite. Trying to make love to a large man.

They don’t fit, she supposes. But people don’t get to choose these things. It’s the luck of the draw. And Alex considers herself very lucky to have been drawn by Bobby.

“Do you mind being there?” he asks respectfully.

And she doesn’t, really. It’s rather impractical, but she knows he needs to be the dominant one tonight.

“No, I like it,” she murmurs. “Very… old school.”

He smirks, spotting his fingertips along the insides of her thighs.

“I take it you think you have a few things to teach me.”

“Well,” she sniffs for effect, “I don’t mean to be presumptuous…”

“Twenty minutes, Eames,” he retorts, pressing gentle but persistent kisses on the base of her jaw. Her head falls onto the pillow. Her eyes shut with enjoyment.

“Twenty minutes and I’ll show you something new.”

She thinks about how happy she is. How fortunate life is that she can give this to him. After all, Bobby can’t control what’s happening at work or at home, but now that she’s in the picture she can give him a little bit of both. Make each area of his life that much brighter.

“Tell me if I hurt you,” he’s saying, and she thinks about how silly he is. How much she loves it when he’s fidgeting and dancing and goofing around.

But Alex’s thoughts are made brief with the splitting breach of pleasure.

Unbearable, unfathomable, bottomless pleasure.

Knuckles rap the headboard. Arms flail in exclamation.

And Bobby moans. Long and deep.

The stroke is swelteringly slow as he retracts. Startlingly swift as he returns. He finds her mouth. Flickered and featured by the lull of the candlelight.

“Say what you said before,” he pleads.

“I love you, Bobby.”

“And you’re sure?”

“I’m certain. I’d do anything for you. But please don’t stop.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.” He lips the top of her head, breathing in her spiced scent. “We’ll make this last, Alex. You’re the kind of woman with who things last, okay?”

She hears him. Knows that what he’s getting at surpasses tonight, tomorrow and the fair-weather months after. Alex hears him. And she no longer considers herself ‘lucky’ so much as disgustingly blessed.

Bobby’s stomach is stretching. His limbs springing as his back flexes and his heart pounds. He’s never been with anyone so small… so snug… so shallow and slight. He loves the challenge of easing himself out and coaxing her open as he drives back in. Licking her ear works. She likes it when he clasps her waist, too. Makes her feel slender, she tells him. With her eyes revealing everything and her mouth emitting nothing but gasps.

She’s getting closer. Wetter and wilder so that their relative positions become less of a problem and Bobby can push in completely at once. Alex makes a face that’s somewhat of a wince and somewhat of a smile, and she’s gorgeous in the between. So exquisite that her partner practically slavers at the sight of her. He finds himself wishing, only fleetingly, that he had her on camera.

Maybe in time… he thinks.

“Bobby,” she says, her toes kinked as the thrills unfurl. “Oh, God, I’m close. Help me, Bobby, I’m so close.”

He slides his hands beneath her bottom, prompting her higher. Her heels peg onto the sheets for balance. It almost hurts to have to stay splayed and give rise to the thrust he’s requesting. But then Bobby places a tiny kiss on the hollow of her throat. It quells her. She wants this and she trusts him enough to follow his lead.

When their hips meet Alex gives. Her nails rake his shoulder blades and then there’s a vacuum between their bellies before they meet again. And again.

She screams. Falling onto the mattress and bouncing from the impact.

The images that swarm her are made up of colors and contrast. Bits and pieces of a Technicolor dream. Her body is suspended even as Bobby lowers his face and takes her piqued nipple into his mouth, sucking leisurely while his hands float above her skin. She sighs. His thrusts aren’t coming anymore and all she can feel is the delicious static. The silent noise that snakes upon her fingers and coils over the crowns of her breasts.

“Is it strange that this feels so natural?” he asks.

She’s warm. Relaxed. Her eyes sparkling as she stares up at him.

“You, Eames,” he clarifies, and begins to move again. “You feel like you were made for me.”

“Mmm, all that time,” she says in agreement. “All those years we wasted...”

“Not anymore.” His kiss is stubbled. Almost coarse with conviction. “Let’s not waste another second, Alex.”

She gives a partial nod and then wiggles closer. Bathing his neck with her neat little tongue.

“You can come now, you know.”

Bobby feigns offense. “What makes you think I’m anywhere near finished?”

“I can feel you…” She grabs his flesh from behind and cinches her muscles from inside. “…twitch.”

“That’s cheating,” he growls, but spurs a bit faster as he sinks his teeth into her skinny shoulder. Not too deep. Just enough to be warning.

“Kiss me.”

He looks at her dazedly. His loins are on fire as she takes him further and swivels her hips for good measure.

“I want your tongue in my mouth when it happens.”

He moans again, the combination of her words and heat taking him places other women could never produce. She brings one leg nearer to his and buffs the arch of her foot down his thigh. She hooks that same leg over his waist, hurling their bodies east and then stealing his lips with her own.

Bobby’s bows out as he braces himself, propping his elbows onto the dampened sheets. Alex is clenching and unclenching in a systematic rhythm that’s merciless. Terrible and yet… the most incredible thing he’s ever experienced. The walls melt. The room spins with sensation. Her skin is so soft. Her hands so smooth as she roams him, canvassing every section within her reach.

He shouts. Or at least he would have if not for her tongue. His head is light and she is laving. His limbs are lost and she is savoring the contours of his teeth and tissue.

At his wit’s end, Bobby thrusts harder. Trying to get as firmly rooted as possible. She cries out his name, arching her back and heaving herself up from the forearms.

“Oh, God, just like that. Right there. Keep going, Bobby. Right there.”

One minute you want me to come and the next…? he shakes his head in bewilderment.

“It feels so good,” she sobs, digging her fingers into his sides. “I can’t believe this. Can’t believe you can do this to me again.”

Bobby can’t believe it either. He wasn’t counting on Alex coming again so soon.

His stomach slings itself in. His legs shake and he begins to push deeply and deliberately, attempting to draw out some stamina. It isn’t working. He’s losing control, as evidenced by the harsh, wet sounds lingering on his lips.

“Oh, Alex.” She thrashes beneath him, thriving on his voice. “Damn, Alex, you’re so… it’s so…” His hands skid. His hips pump erratically. “...good.”

He seizes her face and forces his tongue into her mouth. She bucks, struggling to reciprocate as he speeds up, making the headboard whack against the wall. Each thrust is moving them further and further up the bed and suddenly she can’t contain it any longer. Tearing her lips from his, she throws back her head and laughs excitedly.

Her smile is what does it.

Bobby swells. His nerves wired as he flies apart. He’d like to taste her but his aim is off and so he sideswipes her chin, grunting “Alex” before he ejects all of his grief… all of his passion… all of his unrest directly into her.

It’s a blast. A barrage of sorts as Bobby remembers a time before the present. A time before the past, even, when each day could be better than the last. Happiness floods him and purpose finds him as he comes violently. Relieving himself in the simplest, and indeed, basest of acts.

And perhaps the experience would have been cheapened if not for the light. The pure, bright, undulating light that rips through his gray matter and leaves him feeling… cleansed. His whole body refined and renewed. There are no colors in Bobby’s release.

Only white.

He jerks to a still. His legs jelly and his weight dead. Bobby can’t keep from collapsing then, but somehow manages to land his cheek on the full of her breast.

“Hey.” Alex strokes his hair and then starts. The pads of her fingers are singed by his scalp. “You okay?”

He’s warm. Relaxed. His eyes sparkling as he lifts his head.

…

“Please don’t go,” he pleads.

Alex tucks her legs closer to her body. She could do with some distance, all right. But he’s blowing it way out of proportion.

“I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. I don’t know what came over me. I’m usually not that insensitive, Eames, I—”

She presses two fingers against his lips. His speech dwindles, clogging his throat and choking him with its failure to fix whatever damage he’s wrought.

“Don’t go,” he says again. “Please, Alex. I know that he meant a lot to you. I know I can’t replace him and, believe me, I would never be so arrogant as to try. But after tonight, after everything we’ve been through together… I’ve fallen for you, Alex. It would kill me if you left.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Something passes from her eyes to his. Bobby’s heartbeat stabilizes somewhat and his lips seal themselves tight. A lot of good words do him, anyhow.

“Could you just…” Alex falters, blinded by the pain on his face, “allow me to explain?”

He can’t help it. He kisses her. And when she responds the emotion is so great that he vows he’ll never let go.

“Bobby—”

“Okay.” He’s still cradling her. Clinging to her as though she’s a wisp of gas about to evaporate. “Okay, Alex. You can talk but just... just stay here. If we’re going to have a conservation I’d rather not have it from across the room.”

“It’s not about you,” she says impatiently. “What I’m feeling, how I reacted just now, that was not about you.”

“All right.” He treads carefully. “You gonna tell me what it’s about?”

Alex pales. She doesn’t know how to admit such a thing with his face so near her own. Cowering, she buries her head in the crook of his chest.

“I loved my husband,” she begins, hot and hoarse against his neck. “I really did. I loved him more than anyone. My parents, siblings, friends… I loved Joe more than anything. Even the job. When we were dating, and even after we got married and I saw the... lesser side, I’d almost always brush off whatever I was doing to make time for him. I was crazy about him, you know? All he had to do was ask.”

“I know,” Bobby hastens. “He was your husband, Alex. I get that.”

“But you don’t—”

“Alex, please.”

He’s desperate. It hurts too damn much for a man to be told that he could never measure up. Even when that man’s willing to settle for second place.

“You need to know,” she says throatily. “Bobby, if you love me you’ll listen.”

He feels her whimper and clenches his teeth. Letting her speak even though it’s torture to hear it.

“A week after Joe died, the day before his funeral… I found some letters.”

She’s terrified all of the sudden. This is another secret. A deeper, more tragic one that she’s never told anybody because, after all, her husband had died a hero. And who was she to meddle with such a memory?

Bobby’s listening, though. In fact, he’s listening so attentively that he already has some notion of where this is going. And he’s already furious.

“They were in this trunk of his,” she mutters. “He never let me see what was in it. He always kept it locked. It was a joke between us back then. Joe and his treasure box…”

“And so you opened it,” he says softly. “Thinking it would bring you closer. Thinking it would help you rediscover him now that he was gone.”

“Yes.” Her heart bleeds, skewered by Bobby’s insight. “I thought that.”

“And the letters…?”

“They were love letters.” Her voice thickens. Hardening with the gout of long repressed fury. “From some law clerk he was seeing. Had been seeing for almost two years, as far as the dates went back.”

Bobby’s fighting to keep his anger in check.

“And you never knew?”

“Not a clue. I figured it out, though. How he kept me from noticing. He was never with her when I was around. He’d wait until I spent weekends away with my family. Or when I was in the middle of a sting and working undercover. Those were the days he’d ask for time off.”

She shivers uncomfortably. Ghosts of her former self sifting through.

“I guess… I guess that’s why we never went on vacation.”

“Alex, I’m sorry,” Bobby says sincerely. Apologizing for that which a dead man cannot. “Nobody should have to go through that. It must’ve been awful.”

“I didn’t cry at the funeral. I cried that day. I cried so much, Bobby. But I didn’t cry at the funeral. God, they must’ve thought me a monster.”

“You’re not.” He’s suffering with her, kissing her darling face with an intensity fueled from distress and devotion. “You’re brave, Alex. Most people wouldn’t even have gone.”

“I was so depressed,” she confesses, weeping now without shame. “I was devastated, Bobby. It took months for me to start going out again. A whole year for me to accept a date. I just kept dwelling over how he could’ve done that. I gave him everything. Everything I could’ve given and it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough…”

“You are more than enough.”

He holds her and she doubts him. Pondering being pretty and not beautiful. Clever and not brilliant. All of the potent venoms that Joe’s betrayal had instilled in her.

“It was him, Eames,” Bobby asserts, trying his hardest to get through. “There was something wrong with him all along.”

It helps, of course. To hear it aloud and from another person’s mouth. But Alex can’t stop wavering. Can’t stop wondering if, one day, her charm will wear off on this man, as well?

“You know that after tonight, I’d sooner hold Ross’s hand than be with another woman, right?”

She looks up. Questioning whether she’d heard him correctly. When she sees that she has Alex cracks. Rumbling through the stomach and out her mouth.

“In front of Logan and Wheeler?”

“In front of everyone,” he beams, grateful to see a spark. “The whole squad room.”

“Would you—” she’s heaving, holding her middle and gasping for breath, “—would you put your arm around him?”

“Alex, if you asked me to… I’d even kiss him on the lips.”

She roars. Horrified and titillated at the same time. Clawing at his bicep, she’s still tittering when she says, “Wow. I must really make you happy.”

“Yes.” He recounts every moment. Every instance that her brains and beauty have brought him. “I love you, Alex.”

She sobers. Strong enough now to issue the ultimatum that’s so frightfully unfair.

“But will I keep making you happy, Bobby? How can you… guarantee something like that?”

He thinks for a few seconds. Wheeling and dealing the possible reactions in his head. Decision made, Bobby takes Alex’s hand, sucking her ring finger into his warm and waiting mouth.

This calms her. Arouses her, even. And then he begins to speak.

“I don’t… have a trunk, Alex. I don’t have a vault. I don’t have some safety-deposit box where I stash things downtown and I don’t have any skeletons in my closet that you don’t already know about. More or less.”

“I know,” she says affectionately.

And I would never accuse you of such.

“I may not be the richest man, but I’m also not a stupid one. And I can’t give you everything you deserve but there’s one thing I can promise you and that’s fidelity. Alex, I would never want for anybody else as long as I was with you.”

She gapes at him. He shrugs off her surprise.

“Tonight,” he says, lowering his voice to a captious whisper, “this, Alex—that was the best. You are the best I’ve ever had. And I’ve… been around the block, or so to speak.”

She laughs again, her eyes squinting with tears as she hugs him fiercely.

“If you need me to promise you forever I will.”

She jumps. Her head bumping his as she resurfaces.

“Bobby, I don’t need—”

“Forever. You and me, Alex.” He’s taking her hand again, kissing that same finger and watching her pupils fly with panic. “I mean it.”

“Bobby…”

Alex doesn’t know what to say. Doesn’t know what to do now that he’s pulled the rug out from beneath her.

“Or maybe I need to hear it.” Bobby looks past her and swallows. Visibly and audibly. “You don’t have to… do anything, Eames. I just need to hear that—”

“Yes,” she finishes.

The two of them gaze at each other. Their sights steady. Their smiles even.

“Yeah?” he asks, looking delectably boyish as she grins all the wider.

“Forever,” she repeats. “You and me, Bobby. I mean it.”

“You mean it,” he sighs, kissing her nose… her cheeks… her eyebrows and her little half-mooned lids.

“I mean it,” she swears, and it’s the second to last thing Detective Alexandra Eames says before rolling on top of her partner and proving her point.

“For keeps.”

…

For Bekkah.

A.N.

“Fallout” readers: The story is not stalled creatively, just suffering as a result of school and my social life. Rest assured, half of Chapter 9 is written and Alex will still be very much alive at the end. Regular updates will resume after next Friday.