CI: Telling the Fam' Chapter Three

You don’t have to say you love me, just be close at hand. You don’t have to stay forever I would understand. Believe me. Believe meeeee. Damnit, Linda! Bobby Goren cursed Officer Cornell’s overly chipper wife who always felt the need to bring her husband his lunch practically everyday, usually while humming.

See, this was why he couldn’t work without Eames – he got distracted. With no impending case to work on and nothing but paperwork to fill out, his mind wandered. Even before they were romantically involved, Alex was always there, prodding him along with the promise of the food they were going to have for lunch, if he’d just finish filling out the paper in front of him. At the very least, there would be someone to talk to. And Ross kept making excuses to hover around his desk and Alex wasn’t there to run interference. So he tapped his pencil. Threw himself back in his chair. Looked around. If only he had something to do. It drove Alex a bit nuts, his inability to focus on some things, but his capability to have a militant focus on others.

For example, she was good at surveillance, like sitting on park benches for hours on end looking for faces, yet, if there was forty-eight hours of security camera tape to pour over or recordings of interviews and phone calls from rambling murderers, he was your guy. He just needed to feel like he was doing something as opposed to waiting for someone to come to him.

And that’s what he felt like he was doing now – waiting.

Coffee, he thought, time for coffee. Time for an excuse to get up and move, really, but coffee was as good a pretense as any. Bobby stood up from his chair, glad to stretch. He turned to make his way to the coffee machine.

For the umpteenth time this morning, his thoughts wandered to what Eames was doing at that very moment. He checked his watch while he poured his coffee. She should be back by now. That was, if everything with her parents had gone smoothly. Considering he’d never met her family and all impressions he got of them were second hand from Alex, he couldn’t be confident.

Whenever circumstances with her family presented themselves, like when she was in the hospital, he always visited at off hours, so as not to intrude on family time. He was the one who had given her a window into his family, most of which had been unintentional – randomly running into his brother on the street, his mother’s failing health butting into his work hours and coming up in cases.

Alex had always kept her professional and private life separate. If there were stresses at home, she never brought them into the precinct and vice versa. They were opposites in that way. She was able to remain detached, always, whereas he threw himself in emotions first then was led by his gut. If there was any aspect of their partnership they got frustrated with each over, it was that. When his emotions got involved in a case, he grew distant and despondent. If she got emotionally involved at all, she got angry, but her head was always above water, in the game with him as a team, which was much more conducive to the job – and their partnership.

It’s a wonder she ever agreed to get involved with me, he thought, thinking over his past history. Hell, I wouldn’t get involved with me. Now that his mother had passed and Frank had gotten his life more or less together, Bobby’s life had calmed significantly and he and Alex hadn’t gotten together until after that. It wasn’t by design, well, maybe it was on her part. He wouldn’t have been a very good partner outside of work before that time.

The first few years of their partnership, he had dated women without major incident. But, in about the fifth year of their partnership, life had begun to butt in. And he hadn’t been in a serious relationship since then until now. Every spare minute had been spent either throwing himself into a case or visiting his mother or doing research for both. It was all for the best in the end. Alex had been a major fixture in his life during that time, whether she knew it or not. A touchstone for him, even if she felt he was pulling away. Just the fact of her allowed him to sleep at night. It still did.

Lost in thought, Goren accidentally filled two coffee cups out of habit and his hand was moving to scoop up a handful of sugars for Alex’s cup. Sighing, he threw the sugar down, checked his watch again, compared it to the clock on the wall, and went back to his desk.

“Goren!” an unfamiliarly deep voice boomed across the precinct. The entire Major Case Squad looked up at the burly man hurrying across the floor. He abruptly stopped in the middle of the room, looking around. Bobby could tell the man was agitated and wasn’t entirely sure which one he was. People who were on the phone abruptly ended their calls, those who were milling around the break room found a reason to return to their desks. “Which one of you’s Goren?” Yet, when twenty-five pairs of eyes landed on him, no one came to his aid.

C’mon guys, Bobby thought, you’d think you’d be safe in Goddamn police headquarters. The man had a visitor’s badge on, so he had cleared security. He took a quick glance at the door to the Captain’s office and took slight comfort in the fact that Ross was hanging out his doorway confusedly, taking some tentative steps toward the man. Though Goren was fairly certain Ross wouldn’t be in a complete hurry to take a bullet or punch for him, he might feel inclined to break it up a scuffle just to save himself paperwork and grief.

An older man, who had to be approaching his seventies, though he didn’t move like it, appeared behind the visitor. You could tell he and the younger man came from the same stock. Wait a minute, Bobby took a few seconds to really study them. The younger one looked familiar. From a picture. He ran his mind quickly over the cases they had recently gone over. All the lineups. No, not from work, somewhere else. Alex’s. Alex’s house. The pictures on her bookshelf. Pictures of her family. Suddenly, everything clicked into place. Eames’ brother. And father.

Jesus Christ they are going to shoot me.

Bobby found himself unable to form words so he just stood there like a damn guppy. The two men continued to search the room. “Dad look!” Eames’ brother pointed at the desk across from Bobby. He followed their eyes. The Santa mug. Figures, of all the people in the room, Saint Nick was going to be the one to give him up.

Eames’ brother took his index finger and followed a direct line from Alex’s desk to his, then up to Bobby’s face, who continued to stand there dumbly, coffee cup in each hand. There was a few seconds of a standoff before the two men started forward. Right then, he heard a voice of an angel break through the fog. “Nick!” she hissed, running after her brother and father. Never since knowing her was Bobby more relieved to see Alex. Though, “relief” nor any of its synonyms could be applied to her at the moment. Her livid eyes bounced around the room, visibly embarrassed at the scene her family was making. She shot some whose eyes lingered a little too long a pointed look and they instantly found whatever was on their desks suddenly fascinating.

She caught up with her family, who had continued to advance on Bobby, neither of them turned to look at her. “Dad!” she said, taking a deep breath. “They caught the first elevator and didn’t wait for me,” she explained, the last four words were hard as she glared at her brother and father. Her eyes met Goren’s apologetically.

Neither her father nor brother looked particularly sorry. Bobby took comfort in the fact he had some height on both the male Eames – apparently no one in the family was particularly tall – but where they lacked in height, they made up for in mass. Both men looked liked they’ve been around the block a few times, and wouldn’t mind going again if it’d be worth their while. “We told you, we didn’t want to hurt him, just . . . scare him a bit,” Nick shrugged. Bobby felt his blood pressure finally begin to drop.

“Fine,” Alex ground out, “you got what you came for, now both of you can leave.”

“In a minute,” her father said, absentmindedly patting his daughter on the arm.

“Eames!” a voice rang out. All four of them turned. While her father had not worked in Major Case, apparently he had been one popular guy. A couple of older men who worked in the precinct, who Goren didn’t know very well, were approaching the group, big smiles on their faces. Her dad’s old buddies. No wonder no one was in a hurry to come to his aid, they knew him.

“What are you doing here?” the other man laughed, shaking the eldest Eames’ hand.

Eames’ father turned a stern eye on Bobby, “Seems this one here got my baby girl pregnant.”

This was surreal. If this is what having a well-adjusted childhood meant, Bobby wasn’t sure he’d be willing to trade his in.

“Fitz, you didn’t know anything about this, did you?” he asked warningly.

Fitz shook his head dutifully, “No sir, or I would’ve been on the phone.”

“Oh, for the love of . . .” Bobby heard Alex grumble under her breath. He knew how much this bothered her – the buddy-boy system. He liked to think that was a part of why they worked together – professionally and personally – he wasn’t in the buddy-boy system. None of his close friends were cops. When he arrived at Major Case, most cops thought he was too out there, so he was left out of the loop, which was fine with him. Being eccentric or “an acquired taste” kept him out of all that. Maybe that’s partly why she dropped her partner reassignment request, she could do so much worse.

“But seriously,” his father’s stance finally relaxed, “we just wanted to come down and take you two to lunch. With Alex, who knows when we’d ever meet you. No hard feelings, huh son?” he held out his hand for Bobby, who took it.

Goren shook his head, “No sir,” he replied, a slightly dazed look on his face. He met Alex’s eyes over her father’s shoulder and didn’t read “danger” in them, so he just rolled with it.

“C’mon, grab your jackets you two, I know a place.”

TBC