Chapter Text
In the aftermath, when she was driving away from One PP and he still wasn’t talking about it, she was just glad he’d agreed to go with her. After they’d left Rodgers’ office, he’d insisted on going back to Major Case to finish out the day. He’d brushed off Ross’ concern and hardly said anything as they completed the administrative tasks around their case.
When the time had come to leave, she’d insisted he let her drive him home. He’d curled into her sedan, the extra coat balled onto his lap. It was larger than her previous car, but still too small for his large frame to fit in with any real comfort. But she hadn’t liked the idea of him alone on the subway, lost in his thoughts. As she approached his apartment building, she realized she didn’t like the idea of him alone at all.
“Let’s get something to eat,” she said, her voice sounding loud in her ears after the silence of the ride.
“I’m not hungry, Eames.”
“Then let me buy you a drink. There’s that pub I like by your place.”
“Fine.”
It took a while to find a space to park, but she eventually found one about halfway between the pub and his building. In the bar they found a booth far enough toward the back to be away from the bustle of the early evening crowd.
The waitress stopped at the end of their table and gave them an expectant look.
Alex waited a beat, but Bobby stayed quiet. Her call, then – beer rather than something harder. “Got Newcastle on tap?"
"Sure. A pint?" The waitress made a note against her tray.
"Yeah, and a water,” Alex said.
Bobby said, “I’ll have the same, but skip the water.”
They sat, surrounded by the hum of the other patrons’ chatter, only breaking the silence after the drinks arrived.
“Talk to me, Bobby,” Alex said after watching him take a few sips of his beer.
Bobby sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “You knew I wouldn’t be good company tonight.”
“Maybe. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to know what’s going on in that head of yours.”
Bobby's only response was a look of flat challenge.
“I’m concerned about you, Bobby,” she said meeting his stare. “One day, you’re just going to have to accept that. And that I care about you.”
She watched him work his jaw and start to shift in his seat.
“Look, I don’t mean to push, or to make you uncomfortable. It’s just…”
“I was thinking about when Frank went to college,” he said, cutting her off.
He paused, taking a drink of his beer. Alex kept silent as she waited for him to continue.
“He ended up at Cal State. He actually got into Stanford, but we couldn’t come close to affording it. Even at a public school, and even with his scholarships, he went into debt to cover the out-of-state tuition. He could have stayed in New York for a lot less, but I think he wanted to get as far away as he could. Not just from the situation with Mom, but from everything. From all of us.
“I was fifteen, then. About a month after he left, my mom just…stopped. I don’t know how else to describe it. She sat in her room in a chair by the window, not really looking at anything. She’d hardly move from that spot. She wouldn’t eat or wash. I had to prod her to use the bathroom. She didn’t come out of it for days. At first, I was afraid to leave her alone, so I missed school—made up something about being sick. But then I was afraid if I missed too much, people would start asking questions. So I went to school and ran home every day at lunch until she finally came out of it.
“I didn’t call him. Didn’t call anybody. I didn’t want anyone to worry, and I wanted… I wanted to prove I could handle it, I guess. That I could take care of things as well as Frank could. When he came home for Christmas, I told him about it. He was sympathetic, but he’d distanced himself. Put up boundaries. That was the only break he ever came home for. We’d talk on the phone sometimes, and he’d ask about her, but he wouldn’t visit. He said it was money, and it probably was that, too. But I think he mostly just wanted a life of his own. After my dad left—since before that, really—he was the one who handled things. Kept everything together. I guess he just couldn’t do it anymore.
“God, I missed him.”
She watched him look at his hands, over at the bar, at the front door—anywhere but at her.
“Mom asked for him. All the time. She asks for him now. It was her birthday this weekend, and she wouldn’t open my gift because she was waiting for him to get there.” He took a drink from his glass. “She’s dying, Eames. She’s dying, and I almost had to tell her Frank was dead.”
He shook his head, then finished his beer and set the glass down with a heavy hand. She reached over the table to touch his arm. It was subtle. Anyone watching them wouldn’t have seen it, but she could feel him tense, ready to pull his arm away. She drew her hand back.
“Thanks for the drink, Eames. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He stood up, and she knew there wouldn’t be any convincing him to stay.
“Okay, Bobby.”
She watched him leave, then looked down at her glass. She’d barely started her beer, but she had no desire to sit and finish it. She was glad he’d been able to say anything and hoped that it had helped him. Bobby so rarely talked about his personal life - almost never without something to distance himself, often speaking in ways that didn’t allow the discussion to turn back onto him.
Alex left her nearly-full glass next to Bobby's empty one and walked back to her car. The bundled coat Goren had given his brother was still sitting on the passenger seat. She started the car and thought about taking the coat up to his apartment, but discarded the idea. It was clear he needed some time alone, and she didn’t know if he’d forgotten it or purposefully left it behind.
During her drive home, she catalogued what she knew about him, the buzz of her thoughts overriding the radio. She wondered, not for the first time, what he was like as a child—what it was like for him to try to hold everything together for everyone, a pattern that hadn’t left him in adulthood. He still nurtured everyone but himself. As she replayed the things he’d told her in the bar, she registered that he’d never described his mother as dying up until that point. It was always that she was a fighter—he hadn’t had room for her not surviving her illness until then.
When she arrived home, she took the coat with her when she got out of the car. After her security check, she pulled a hanger out of her bedroom closet to hang it up. The coat was elegant - well made and well suited to its purpose. Everything about it, including how easily he’d given it away, spoke of Bobby—except for the musty smell it now held. She put the coat on the side of the closet where she kept her clothes in need of dry cleaning. She’d have the coat cleaned and hold onto it until some of the rawness of the week had passed. If he wanted it, he’d let her know.
She left the bedroom and headed to the kitchen where she sat at the table with her cell phone, looking at it for a while before pressing the speed dial. The line connected, and she smiled at the sound of her sister’s voice.
“Hey, Alex.”
“Hey.”
“What’s wrong? You sound upset.”
“Nothing, really…long day.”
“What’s going on?”
“Just the end of a complicated case.”
“The one on the news? With the preacher?”
“That’s the one. But I don’t want to talk about that. Tell me what’s going on with you.”
She felt the day’s tension leave her body as they talked at length about nothing in particular. She wanted to ignore it when her phone beeped to indicate another call, but clicked over when she saw it was Goren.
“Hi, Bobby,” she said. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Eames.”
“My sister’s on the other line. Let me tell her I’ll call her back.”
“No, don’t. I just wanted to…check that you got home all right.”
“I did.” She wanted to talk —to tell him that she’d seen what happened when it became too much for him—but settled on a simple, “Take care of yourself, Bobby.”
“Goodnight, Eames,” he said before hanging up.
“Alex, are you sure everything’s okay?” her sister asked after Alex clicked back over to her line.
She sighed, fighting the urge to go through the events of the day with her sister.
“It is, I promise” she said, almost laughing when the thought that she missed therapy, if only for the opportunity to talk with marked rules and boundaries in place, popped into her head. “You were telling me about the day care you found.”
“Yeah. It’s a Montessori program that we can actually afford. But it was still hard to make the final decision. I swear, I wanted to have you run a background check on everyone.”
She knew her sister wasn’t convinced, but was grateful she was willing to let it go.
“Background checks could be arranged,” Alex said, only half kidding.
Her sister laughed. “We’ll just make sure they know how many of his relatives are NYPD.”
“Sounds like a plan.”