Title: Morning After
Author: A.j.
Rating: R/light NC-17
Notes: It's, apparently, porn day.  That's a day I can seriously get behind.  
So.  This!

Summary: His fingers smell like her.

[()]

Bobby wakes up with his hands smashed under his jaw and instantly knows that 
he's alone.

When he rolls over and shifts around, the bed behind him is cool.  Also 
telling is the distinct lack of feminine clothing on the floor.

It's Tuesday morning and he's alone and he's naked.

But his fingers smell like his partner's arousal and all of him is pleasantly 
buzzed.  He thinks it might be a fair trade.

They don't do this often.  Standing beside his bed, stretching a kink out, 
Bobby thinks they don't do this often enough.  He always feels... better 
after they spend an evening (or afternoon) figuring out new and interesting 
ways to make each other orgasm.  Which is a thought Eames would totally mock 
him for.

Of course he feels better.  He's |relaxed.|

But that's not entirely it.  He shuffles into the bathroom and smiles at note 
taped to his mirror.  'Laundry, shopping, gym. Chinese food.  8.’

He feels better because they |never ever| do this when they need it.  They do 
this on Monday evenings when they've been reading reports for seven hours and 
have the next day off.  And on Saturday afternoons when he's sick of staring 
at the trees in Central Park, and she decides that his couch is much more 
comfortable to sit on naked.

Bobby totally adores that she likes to sit on his furniture naked.

And Eames always makes the amused face when he brings it up.

Eames likes to goad him when he gets sappy.  She says he's enough of a dork 
when he's |not| sniffing her hair and picturing the best way to get her on 
top of him.

No, they don't do the sex and relaxed freakishly happy thing when they need 
to.  Because that's a different set of emotions and touches and support.  
This whole big living breathing thing that is their partnership has rules and 
checks and balances.  Sex is great and fun, but when everything's broken and 
raining down hellfire, a hand on the shoulder is so much more than fucking 
her from behind could ever be.

Because if there's one thing he's learned in this crazy-ass life, it's that 
everyone is a different person every moment of every day.

And that he gets weirdly cerebral staring at himself, naked, in the mirror.

He smiles at himself, and chuckles a bit at his own silliness.  A quick 
scratch to the jaw has his sense-memory bringing last night back and in full-
technicolor.  Bobby takes another sniff at his fingers, and there she is.  
Spicy and faint X hours after the fact.  His grin deepens as he recalls the 
way she shook under his hands and bellowed at him to get his mouth working 
already, goddammit.

He likes to go down on her for minutes at a time.  Previous lovers had gone 
on about how he was 'sensitive' and 'empathic'.  Eames just grins at the 
ceiling while gasping and mewling and tells him it's because he's a control-
freak bastard who really, |really| likes it when he makes her scream for God.

Bobby knows this difference is another reason he can't ever see his life 
without his partner.  Even if the sex doesn't last, the partnership will.

And that is more than a fair trade.

-fin-