My first L&O fic, though I've shipped Goren/Eames from the beginning. These characters belong to Dick Wolf, NBC/Universal/USANetwork. I'm just taking them out to play.

It wasn't the first time, and she knew it wouldn't be the last. She remembered thinking that as he led her away from the crime scene, the doors of cororner's van closing with finality behind the body of their friend. And again as his hand grazed her lower back, and as he met her gaze with that particular look, as he unlocked the door to his apartment and held it open for her, and as the scotch burned her throat.

Not the last time. They needed the comfort of each other, as they had before. They needed the companionship that had nothing to do with crime scenes and murder investigations, with guns and badges and last names as only names. That had nothing to do with words, or justifications, or apologies.

They needed the continuality of it, too. They had been here before, and would be again. As they counted all their lasts with Captain Ross, this was comfortably neither a first nor a last. He knew she took her scotch neat after a day like this, and she knew how many steps it was from the light switch to his bed, and how to navigate it in the dark. He knew that afterwards she would curl into his side and not speak, not for lack of things to say but because there were too many things to say, and silence was a luxury best enjoyed together. And she knew which drawer he kept his tshirts in, but knew too that he liked to hand her one, presenting it in an almost ceremonial way. She knew what it would smell like, and that in the morning she wouldn't want to give it back.

Which was why firing him had been so difficult – and so easy. It was another last, in a week when she didn't think she could stand any more. The last time they would be partners, the last time they would work together. Maybe even the last time she would see him.

But as his stubble grazed her skin, as he kissed her cheek with more affection than he had ever dared to show under the buzzing hum of the florescent lighs, all she could think was: Not the last time.

She had decided what she would do as she waited for the elevator, rode down three flights, crossed the squad room and motioned him into the Captain's office. Her office, for the next two minutes. She was Captain Pro Temp, and she had her orders. She had been prepared for him to rage, ready to use that bluster to propell herself out the door as well, as soon as he'd gone.

But he had taken it so well, smiling at her and seeing it for the mercy and care that it was, and all the fight had gone out of her. She had clung to this job, through suspensions and bad cases, through death and pregnancy, insanity and near-misses, because as long as she had this job, she had him. And as long as she had him, each time he gave her that look that at once understood and begged for understanding, she knew it wouldn't be the last.

So when he smiled and brushed off her insufficent platitudes, something crumbled. Had he not clung to this job as desperately as she had? Had those evenings that were neither firsts nor lasts ever meant as much to him as they had to her? Had the silence been not a luxury, but a curse?

But then he had doubled back and kissed her, and held her close for the space of a heartbeat, and her mind cried, Not the last time, not the last time.

She waited for the elevator doors to close behind him, without any sort of finality, before she neatly placed her badge and her gun on the clean, vacant desk, and made the call she had planned since before she had left the Chief of Detectives' office. Because she had to believe it meant as much to him as it meant to her, and it was high time they started using words to justify it.

As she left the Captain's office, crossed the squad room, waited for the elevator, she started to think about first times. Not those in her past, but those in her future. The first time that needing him wouldn't be about a bad day, but a good day. The first time she wouldn't have to give his tshirt back in the morning. The first time she would tell him she loved him. And it wouldn't be the last time. She wouldn't ever let it be the last time.