Authors note: thanks guys for the great reviews, you really are a kind bunch!

Disclaimer: I am not associated with Criminal intent or Dick Wolf in any way, I am financially challenged so please don't sue.

Please R&R!!! seriously, a good review is the best medicine!

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"Alex?" he whispered, as he pulled on his shirt.

Her mouth curved slightly at his request, like on the job. Nothing had changed, everything had. Every little gesture another pungent contradiction. His hands moved so fast down his shirt, tickling the buttons into security in seconds. His head tipped to the side, as he looked at her, head nestled between the back and arm of the couch. Her feet propped over his thighs, and a hand hung loosely over the couch. Every now and then she would shuffle in unease, she didn't speak for fear it would hurt her lips and heart.

He would get this right, this time. You don't learn from your mistakes, you learn by correcting them.

"Coffee?" he suggested abruptly, the words seemed misplaced in his breath, but she nodded; he had risen to his feet before she had the chance to refuse.

She ran her fingers through her hair. "Bobby, I think I might just take a shower." He threw his gaze towards her, his lips slightly parted as he nodded. Motioning towards the hall with a substantial hands, he looked at her apologetically. "Do you want me to leave." His voice did not hint disdain at all, but instead a person troubled by right and wrong. His lips curved around the words, but not with the accuracy she knew. He was conflicted, in a way he would always be. But he had discovered security in his solitary being and he had adulthood forced upon him before any child should. 

"No Bobby, not yet." She replied turning her head back to him as her hand pushed at her bathroom door and slipped through.

He eyed the white door, the shadows, the delicate china handle, and what lay beyond it. He wondered what she was thinking, and what she was escaping. And if his presence had become overrated and unsolicited. She didn't need him, she was the strongest woman he knew. He nursed his coffee a little longer and leaned against bench. Awkward, always so awkward. He couldn't see a future, maybe it was habit of isolation that held him back. He was happy as he was, but then there was that word "potential." It seemed to circle him constantly. He had "potential" or so everyone beamed when he was five. A revolutionary mind; complex, detailed and emancipated. Not from the fathers side, that's for sure, he had no claim to it. Nor did he have entitlement to the disappointment on his face when he discovered that his son would join the army. His father wasn't disappointed for Bobby, the dismay he bore in the crinkles on his nose for  what Bobby might have been, if his potential was a mere ideal. And his mother certainly didn't mind, her mind itself was dissolving, his was irrelevant. But the potential was always there, supposedly balancing every pain he felt, because he had the ability to overcome all of this. But he didn't want too. He had the ability to love Alex, the potential was always there, but maybe it would only be a love for what might be. His eyes watched the floor, but without definition, as his mind travelled a million miles without even moving. It always returned to her, and that was the impasse. He picked up his phone in urgency, stabbing the buttons.

As Alex slithered from the bathroom she noticed him, poignant eyes engrossed in the voice on the other end of the phone. Hunched uncomfortably over himself on the couch, his tongue tickling his teeth in contemplation.

"Hi Mum…Mum, it's Bobby."

"Yes."  She could see the sadness in his eyes. And she began to realise it was a look she had encountered million times before, but she never weighted.

"I'm at a friends. Yes. Yes."

"No you haven't met her."

He grinned slightly. "Yes, I'm sure. I've told you about her, Alex?" Her natural reaction sprung as her name was said, or maybe it was only when the words tumbled from his mouth that she reacted.

Alex leaned her weight against the frame of the door, her head tilted her mind balanced. "Its alright."

"Yeah?" He smiled, and it was heartfelt. Well, at least one woman could do that for him. " I will see you soon, okay?"

"Monday."

"Two days."

"I love you, okay."

"Yes, goodbye, I'll tell him."

She smiled from the doorway. "Hey, tell who?"

He seemed a little surprised presence as he popped the phone back into his pocket. "Dad." He said with a certain detachment. "She forgets sometimes." And its like that doesn't matter, and it's the rhetorical statement of his life.

She sat down next to him, close. "You alright?"

"Yeah…" he brushed something invisible from his pant leg. "You worry about me too much." He said from behind his eyes.

She picked up his hand, just squeezing the fingertips. He watches them fold around his own, and grasped his chance to avoid the conversation just as she clutched his hand. "Your fingers, they're so petite."

She smiled slightly, as he turned her palm over and studied it, running a finger across the skin parallel to her fingers, and then notices. "You broke your finger, your wedding ring finger?"

"Yeah, it got slammed in a perp's car door during vice. I think mum considers it an omen."

 "As opposed to a fracture."

"I think it actually totalled to three." She replied with a dry grin and eyes that have stung for too long. And he smiled and it is heartfelt, he pulls her close and kisses her forehead. He tells her he has hated the word potential all his life, until now, because now he understands it. And love is no longer a mere faded paradigm; it's a prophecy that was never predicted, an inherently impossible ideal that was suddenly realised and the only thing they have ever felt for each other though its aliases are abundant. And as he gently pulled her into a kiss, he stops, and brushing an absconding hair back into place he whispered he loves her.

She grinned, "You pick the moments, don't you?"

~*~*~*~*~

the end – unless I have numerous objections to the quality of the ending.