J. Robb - Purity in Death

She sniffed, swiped a hand under her nose. "You want me to walk away because you can't, so I can have a full, meaningful life without the burden of being stuck with you. Well, get fucked, McNab, because I'm not walking. And you managed to piss me off just fine by thinking I would."

"That covers part of it." He sighed, kept his hand on her knee. "You wouldn't walk, Peabody. You're solid, and you wouldn't walk when I'm… when I'm like this. You'd stick, and you'd keep sticking even if your feelings changed about everything. You're solid, and that's what a solid does. After a while, neither of us would know, not for sure, if you were with me because you wanted to be or because you felt obligated."

She got a stubborn line between her brows and turned her head so that she stared at the wall instead of those sober, serious green eyes. "I'm not listening to this."

"Yeah, you are." He eased back, gripped the arm of the chair with his good hand. "I don't want a medical, and you don't want to be one. For Christ's sake, I wouldn't be able to take a piss on my own if Roarke and Dallas hadn't given me this fucking chair. She's keeping me on the job, and she doesn't have to. I'm not going to forget that."

"You're just feeling sorry for yourself."

"Fucking A." He nearly smiled. "You try going twenty-five percent dead and see how quick you haul out the violins. I'm pissed and I'm scared, and I don't know what the hell I'm going to do tomorrow. If I've got to live like this, then that's the breaks."

He wasn't going to be a whiner, he reminded himself. He wasnot going to be a whiner. "But I've got a right to set up the rules, and I don't want you around."

"You don't know you're going to have to live like this." She threw up her hands, trying for exasperated while tears burned the back of her throat. "If it doesn't come back in a few days, you'll go to that clinic."

"I'll go. I'll owe Dallas and Roarke big for that, too, but I'll go. And maybe I'll get lucky."

"They've got a seventy-percent success rate."

"They got a thirty-percent fail rate. Don't talk numbers to an e-man, baby. I've got to focus on myself for a while. I can't think about how things may or may not work out with us."

"So we just box that up so you don't have to worry about it? Now you're a coward, too."

"Goddamn it! Goddamn it, can't you get that I need to do this, for you? Can't you give me a lousy break here?"

"Guess not." Her chin jutted out. "You already had your lousy break. And I'll tell you, I don't know how things are going to work out with us either. Half the time I don't know what the hell I see in you. You're irritating, you're sloppy, you're skinny, and you sure don't match my childhood image of Delia's dream man. But I'm in it now and I make my own calls. When I want out, I'll get out. Until then, you can shut up because I'm going back to bed."

"Guess Roarke's more the image of Delia's dream man," he grumbled.

"Damn right." She swung her legs back into bed, punched her pillows. "Smooth, sexy, gorgeous, rich, and dangerous. None of which you are now, or were before you got zapped. None of which you can hope to be once you're up and dancing again either. Get your own pitiful self back in bed. I'm not your nursemaid."

He studied her as she laid back, folded her arms across her chest and glared at the ceiling.

And he began to smile. "You're good. I didn't see that coming. Piss me off, insult me-the not sexy remark is the one that stung, by the way-and shove the argument out of its orbit."

"Kiss my ass."

"It's one of my favorite recreational activities. I don't want to fight with you, She-Body. I just think we could both use a little time, a little space. I care about you, Dee. I really care about you."

It made her eyes sting again. He never called her Dee. She kept her lips pressed tightly together, afraid she might start sobbing. Certain the killing expression she worked onto her face would have made her lieutenant proud, she turned her head.

Then she sat up like a rocket coming off the launching pad, and stared. "You're scratching your arm."

"What?"

Very slowly, trembling only a little, she pointed. He followed the direction and saw he'd been scratching absently at his right arm. "So, it itches. What I'm trying to say…"

His body went very still. He'd have sworn his own heart stopped. "It itches," he managed. "It feels like a bunch of needles under the skin. Oh Christ."

"It's waking up." She hurled herself out of bed to kneel beside his chair. "What about your leg? Can you feel anything?"

"Yeah, yeah, I-" The itch grew maddening, and his heart began to hammer. "Help me out, will you? Right along the hip. I can't reach. Ahhhh."

"I have to call Summerset."

"Stop scratching and I'll kill you."

"Can you move your fingers, toes, anything?"

"I don't know." He bore down, tried to ignore the sensation in his biceps, in his thigh that was like being pricked with a thousand hot needles. "I don't think so."

"Do you feel this?" She pressed her thumb against his thigh, and thought she felt a muscle quiver.

"Yeah." He fought back the hot flood of emotion that gushed into his throat. "Why don't you shift that grip a few inches to the left? Distract me before I start screaming from this itching."

"Your dick never went numb."

A tear spilled off her cheek, plopped on his hand. And he knew the sweetest sensation he would ever feel was that warm, wet tear against his awakening hand.

"I love you, Peabody."

She looked up at him, with surprise. "Look, don't get crazy-"

"I love you." He laid his good hand on her cheek. "I figured I'd lost my chance to tell you that. I'm not going to risk missing it again. Don't say anything, okay? Maybe you could just give it a chance to settle in."

She moistened her lips. "I could do that. I need to get Summerset up here. He should… do something. Probably." When she straightened, her knees wobbled. And she turned and cracked her shin smartly on the bed. "Shit. Shit. Wow."

She limped to the house 'link while McNab scratched his throbbing arm and grinned after her.

By seven-thirty, Eve was pumping in the caffeine again. Second cup in hand, she headed for the lab for a quick check-in with Roarke before the rest of the team poured into her office.

She was nearly through the door when she heard his voice.

She'd heard that icy tone before-the kind that sliced straight through the belly, spilling out the guts before the victim registered the pain.

Though the victim in this case was a minor, nobody was going to call Child Services.

"Is there something about the rules of this household and your current position in it that's eluded you?" Roarke posed the question the way a cat lurks outside a mouse-hole.

With lethal patience and the gleam of fangs.

"Look, what's the BFD?"

And the kid, Eve thought with a shake of her head, was responding like the mouse stupid enough to think it could outwait or outwit the cat. Foolish, foolish boy, she mused. You are dead meat already.

"You'll mind your tone when you speak to me, James. I'll tolerate a certain amount of idiocy from you due to your age, but I'll tolerate no sass whatsoever. Are we clear on that particular point?"

"Yeah, okay, but I just don't-"

Eve couldn't see Roarke's face, but she could clearly envision the look in his eye. One that had Jamie swallowing back whatever he'd been about to say, and revising it.

"Yes, sir."

"That's good. Saves time and heartache. Now, I'll explain the big fucking deal to you, in words that should be easily understood. Because I gave you a specific order, and when I give specific orders, they're to be followed. And that's the end of it. Any part of that hazy for you?"

"People are supposed to think for themselves."