Though it wasn't precisely avoidance, she did not see Jack for several days after that. Once jury selection began she spent most of her hours in the Supreme Court building itself, debating with Ben over which questions to ask which jurors. He did not take her request to first chair badly; in fact it had changed him the way Jack said it might -- making him more aware of Claire's presence and Claire's eyes and, consequently, Claire's opinions. He listened more to her, it seemed, over the early jury-picking days, and in fact seemed almost brighter, happier. Since as far as she knew Alexa and he were history, Claire could only assume it had not been as serious as she had thought it was, and that he had gotten over it quickly. He was not entirely his old self, but neither was he as distracted as before. What Claire had hoped all along, what she would not argue with McCoy about, seemed to have happened: once the case existed as a daily trial, a ritual for which they had spent all this time preparing, Ben snapped into place.
Claire still thought of Jack, she thought it was a shame that the two of them had been unable to connect for more than one drink out. But apparently so long as she felt first loyalty to Ben, interacting with Jack about work on almost any level was going to be fraught with arguments. She considered, during one of her lunches, heading back over to the office and barging in on him, then held back. Though the memory of standing out in the cold by her apartment still stood in fresh relief in her mind, she got the impression that he was disappointed in her somehow, that because she could not develop a harder shell towards Ben Stone she was not someone he could deal with. Claire wondered if his other assistants had been so willing to disparage. She liked Jack a lot, outside of that one glaring problem. She thought of how he had led her through Chinatown and how willingly she had been led, of the feel of his rougher, larger hand on hers, of the lines at the corners of his eyes that crinkled when he grinned that boyish beam of a smile.
But the case took over much ruminating; Claire was in the office with Ben by eight each morning, at court by nine-thirty, and home sometime after seven or eight. Trials were just like that; the in-between business of life just had to be put on hold. Some nights Ben excused her and continued working on his own, rereading juror questionnaires as she disappeared into the elevators. It was alone work, if not lonely work, and not conducive to outside relationships. Dean hadn't understood that -- for him, a late night was perhaps six or six-thirty, and he and Claire had dissolved the first time a trial took her away from him. It was the risks of the profession. Claire could not change any of it.
That first day of trial everyone was tense. Ben seemed slightly flustered and rushed, stuffing notes into his briefcase and running back upstairs twice before they were able to head off to the courthouse, which was very unlike him. Then the judge had some sort of cold and blew her nose through most of Ben's opening statements, recessing the court an hour past normal break time, so that Amelia's lawyer Bayles could finish his remarks and the trial proper could begin after lunch. Freed, the spectators and workers filling the room hurried out, fleeing the stale air, while Bayles' team cleared the defense area with Amelia, who shot Ben and Claire a malevolent glare as she was led away.
Ben gave Amelia as good as he got, then turned back to his briefcase, snapping it shut, and Claire heard the finality. "So, do you want to grab something for lunch?"
He shook his head. "Think I'll just head back to the office for a few," he said, "get caught up on more reading."
"Ben, you don't have to show off for me," she told him lightly, still wondering if he was thinking she wanted to second chair. "I'm not worried about your leading the case any more, your opening statements were right on the mark."
Ben frowned at her. "Ms. Kincaid, if you thought for some reason I was making a display for you I must say you were mistaken. I have never had any doubts about whether I could try this case, and just because you have changed your mind about me I hardly think you need to be patting me on the back for doing my job. I will see you here in a little over an hour." With that, he picked up his briefcase and stalked off to the lobby, leaving Claire alone in the courtroom, with just a spare bailiff organizing a few files.
She sank back down in her chair and sighed. These days it felt as though she could do nothing right, and she kicked herself for sounding patronizing. Then again, there was Ben, once again oversensitive and snapping at her. It made her angry; why did she have to always be the one to anticipate his mood swings? Why wasn't he a little more forgiving?
"This pew taken?"
Claire swung around and rested her hand on the divider between the prosecutor's chairs and the audience seats. Jack McCoy stood at the head of the audience front row, his hands pushed deep in his pockets, and when she turned he took mincing steps to end up in the seat directly behind her.
"Hello, Jack," she said, watching him move in place, molding himself into the seat the same way he fit whatever contour he was closest to, and she was surprised at how glad she was to see him. All at once things looked not so bad; here was perhaps one person who didn't actively blame her for something. Other than, as he had said on the phone, not understanding.
"So, are you winning yet?"
She made a noise in her throat. "Nobody's winning yet. We just had opening statements."
He gave her a deadpan look she had seen before when she failed to recognize one of his jokes.
"You just happened to be wandering the courthouse halls?"
"Lunchtime," he shrugged. "It was too quiet down the block. I thought I'd check in."
"And here you are," said Claire.
"Turn around," he said, making a twirling motion with his finger, "and lean back in your chair."
"Why?"
"Just do it."
She turned her back on him and folded her arms, sitting up straight and back. His fingers rose to her skewered bun and pulled the pins out, letting the hair fall as he had when they were outside her apartment. "At least no squishies."
"Scrunchies," she laughed softly.
"Right." He smoothed her hair down with the flat of his hand and she closed her eyes, relaxed and stirred at the same time by the feel of his fingers on the contours of her head. "I had a professor in law school," he began after a moment, "who insisted a trial was won or lost in the opening statements."
"What, the jury convicts based on the color of the lawyer's tie? I've heard that one."
"Nope," continued Jack. "He said juries don't listen to evidence, they go on whose story they think is more believable. And they get two stories in an hour or two, at the top of the trial. From there on out they've all but made up their mind."
"I see."
"Complete horseshit, of course."
Claire laughed again, muffling her mouth with the back of her hand, and felt Jack's breath on her shoulder and neck. She knew he had leaned over and was hovering right next to her ear, but she didn't want to open her eyes just yet, wanting to feel that same kind of freefall she had experienced on the back of his cycle. "I missed seeing you," she told him.
"So I notice you rushed right over to find me."
"Some of us have work to do," she said.
"Us lazy lawyers on the eighth floor wouldn't know anything about that."
"I guess not."
He paused so long she opened her eyes and realized he had not moved. Claire brought up her hand and touched the side of his face.
"Hungry?" he asked.
"Starved."
"You're buying this time."

---

"No," Jack told Claire, leaning over her lunch to pick up the supplemental textbook, "that's not what they're saying. The jury asked for a DD5 from a witness they called 'Jennifer Hill.' There was no witness named 'Jennifer Hill,' but there were two prosecution witnesses named Jennifer Bell and Maxine Hill."
"So it was an easy mistake," Claire nodded, spooning some egg drop soup and letting the air cool it.
Jack shrugged, pointing to the case reference. "Sure, but Bell's statement was entered into evidence and Hill's wasn't -- it was just referred to in cross. So when the jury received bothstatements and then they didn't even tell the defense attorneys until after the trial was over --"
"No chance to rebut statements not entered into evidence," said Claire.
"There you go. Of course, it didn't fly on appeal." Jack pushed the book away. "Is this how you spend every lunch?"
"Only the ones where I get in arguments with other lawyers on the way back to the office, Jack."
"You started it."
"Fine. You want to talk about something else?"
He stared into his fried rice. "As a matter of fact, yes. If I had known you were going to be a Scrooge over lunch, I'd have volunteered to buy something."
"You spins your wheel, you takes your chance," she said. "I like Chinese food."
"I suppose," Jack told her, "I had pictured a cozy little table in a dimly lit Italian restaurant..." he trailed off at her dubious look, then continued, "...somewhere in the Southern tip of Sicily...under this canopy of stars...from a vantage point where we could hear the ocean...and where we'd be the only two people in entire restaurant." He thought a moment longer. "Other than the waiter and the chef. And the busboy."
During his speech Jack had rested his hand across the back of her chair and leaned toward Claire, his smile thin and teasing but intent, and she felt impelled to keep her distance, so she laughed. "All of this in an hour so I could get back to the trial on time?"
"It could be done," he said, and did not move back.
Claire tore her eyes from his gaze and sat back in her chair, grasping for some other area of conversation. They had walked back from the courthouse, talking about the Page case, then moved into a memorable trial he had prosecuted, debating over what juries ask for and what they're allowed to get, and ended up bringing some takeout Chinese food back to the offices, stopping briefly by Claire's cubicle so she could pick up a file. And though he had not made any passes that entire time, once they were in some measure alone she felt Jack's focus impatiently shift. The thing about it was that she wanted to act on her reactions to his advances, but he seemed to have little regard for time or place, and with only twenty minutes until court came back in session, Jack's unwavering gaze was the last thing she needed on her mind. She was certain he knew it, too. "Did you notice," she squeaked out, "that Ben wasn't in his office when we were up there earlier?"
"I hadn't paid the least attention."
"I just thought it was funny, you know, he said he was going back to the office to do some work during lunch."
"I suspect he's in a dimly lit restaurant eating Italian with his friend Alexa."
Claire turned back to him, frowning. "He told me they weren't...together any more."
"Well, she's around."
"How do you know?"
"She was in the courtroom today."
Claire searched her mind and came up with no familiar faces in the audience. "I don't think so."
"I saw her come out after the recess began, Claire. She wore a hat and dark glasses, as if she wouldn't be recognized if she dressed up like every clichŽ disguise in the world."
Claire seemed to remember a hat. "Oh."
"Now," said Jack, "can we move back to Sicily?"
She pushed her chair back. "No time." She stood, hastily pushing trash into a paper bag. "Got to get back to court."
Jack snatched up her arm and made her turn to him. "Hold it a minute. Look at me, Claire."
Reluctantly, she met his gaze.
"Tell me what's going on -- I'm throwing them and you're not catching. Did I miss one of the chapters in the Women are from Pluto book or whatever it's called? Are you going to slap me with some kind of harassment suit in another week?"
"I..." she began, then put some emphasis into her voice as her thoughts solidified. "I like you, Jack. I don't like bringing it up here. You want to tell me about Italy, you should do it outside in the real world, not up here where we have to work."
He blinked at her. "So I suppose the 'my love has no earthly boundaries' argument won't work here."
"Is that what it is, Jack? Love?"
His mouth opened but no sound came out, and his face lapsed into complete bewilderment.
"Right," she said, and gently removed his fingers from her arm. "That's about what I thought. Look, I really have to be getting back to court." She picked up her folders and hugged them to her chest, standing, waiting. "Well?"
"No, Claire," he said, hushed. "Though I don't know what it is."
"Then..." she sighed, "then pretend it is something you know about, Jack, and do what you normally do."
"Which is?"
She shrugged once, gently, and headed to the door. "Last I checked, it never hurts to actually ask someone out when your love has no earthly boundaries." She didn't wait for a response and closed his door behind her, lightly jogging back to the courthouse, very much pleased with herself.

---

Post-it note on her phone: Adam's office. Six-thirty. She was already ten minutes late, but who could have known? The trial for that day ran late and then Ben wanted her to make a few calls...but here was the note, pasted with Jack's left-handed scrawl on top of her receiver. "Lots of fun being popular," she muttered to herself, realizing this was going to be yet another long lost evening immersed in work.
"Going to Adam's," she said, sticking her head in Ben's office, but he was not where he had been ten minutes ago when she left him and ducked in the toilet. He could not have taken off for home that quickly. Claire frowned. So where had he gone? She scribbled her own note and left it on his desk, telling him where she was, then headed upstairs to Adam's office on ten.
When she opened the frosted-glass door after knocking once, Claire paused in surprise to find Jack standing by Adam's desk, Adam behind it, and Ben sitting tiredly in one of the soft chairs on the other side of the room. Well, that investigation comes to a close, thought Claire lightly, but she knew with Ben and Jack in the same room it couldn't be good news. There was more to find out: something was up. "Sorry," she said. "Didn't mean to interrupt."
"Did you need something, Ms. Kincaid?" Adam glanced up at her and she realized how tense everyone was. The lines on Adam's face stood out even more deeply than usual, and Jack was all but bearing down on him, the expression on his own face determined, forceful. Ben was gazing out the window at the night sky, his arms folded, his eyes half-closed. Claire knew how he felt; that afternoon had been long, tedious, and full of unpleasant courtroom surprises. All she wanted to do was go home, but she knew the two of them had easily an hour's work to go.
Then she heard what Adam was asking. "I -- I got a note to be up here at six-thirty. Sorry. I didn't mean to be late."
Adam glanced between his two EADAs, and then Jack righted himself. "Let her stay, Adam."
"What is this about?" Claire's forehead creased. She was half in and half out of the office and had never felt like so much of an intrusion before. Part of her resented it: she had been here nearly two years by now and still was treated as the outsider, but the rest of her knew she had no place here, regardless of who had done the requesting. She began to back away.
"There is no reason," Adam breathed to Jack, "for this to involve anyone but you and Ben. Ms. Kincaid, please. You may go home."
"I'll be downstairs making calls," she said as Ben threw her a glance, then pulled the door shut behind her. A fit of trembling came over her arm as the door latched in place, and as if held by electricity she could not move away. The voices came clear through the door.
"I don't know which of the two of you invited her up here," said Adam, and Claire could almost imagine him boring right into Jack as he said it, "but I will not have your factional bickering bleeding out into the ADAs. Now. As to this Egan case."
The name rang bells for Claire: a month or so ago a subway uptown had been gassed and twenty people died. The middle of rush hour traffic. All black commuters. The suspect was a taciturn, blank-faced white man named Egan. There was some rumor he might have had something to do with a similar bombing in Maryland, and some Baltimore detectives had come up for part of the investigation. Claire had heard of all this only peripherally -- another ADA had handled the arraignment, and she herself had been locked away with Page. She counted off in her head that Ben only had a few more days until the prosecution would rest, and she could not wait for the break.
"I told you, Adam," Ben was saying behind the door. "I can't do it. I just don't have the time. Let McCoy have it."
"I don't want you to give it to me, Stone. It isn't yours to hand over," Jack bit, and Claire winced. She saw it playing out from much before she arrived: Adam was about to delegate yet another high-profile case to Ben and skip right over Jack, workload be damned. It wasn't very fair, and Claire resented the little foresight Adam was displaying. She thought of Jack down in the garage the last time he went head-to-head with Adam, how he had looked so angry, yet so vulnerable, and she wondered just why it was she was also giving him such a hard time about whatever it was they were doing together.
"Fine, Jack, fine," Ben told him, and Claire heard sounds of movement. "Adam, I have a trial to work on. Give it to me or don't give it to me; right now I just can't work up energy enough to fight both of you."
Claire heard his voice coming closer and she ducked away quickly, scurrying off down the hall, barking her shin on a chair on her way out. She paused and rubbed it, then stood and nearly jumped as Ben appeared behind her.
"I don't recommend listening at keyholes, Ms. Kincaid," he told her, and his face was shadowed by the darkness of the hallway.
"We all have our bad habits," she whispered to him.
He guided her to the elevators and did not contradict.

---

An hour or so later Ben let her head out; by the time she had gotten to the phone calls no one was available even on the West Coast to give her information, so she had spent most of her time leaving messages on voicemail after voicemail. Once again, he appeared silent and gothic at her darkened desk area, and told her she could leave.
"What about you, Ben?" she asked, concerned. "You look as if you need a good night's sleep."
He shrugged. "I'll get it this weekend. I'll get it after we rest. Until then, you know the drill."
"I didn't mean to overhear," she told him abruptly.
He glanced over at her phone where the post-it from Jack still adhered, and plucked it up, reading, then glanced down at Claire. "Anything you want to know, Claire. Just ask me." He waved the note slightly before balling it up in his fist. "Don't risk Schiff's respect over this kind of nonsense." And he melted away, back behind his own office door, as silently as he had come over.
Quickly, she assembled her coat and briefcase and headed to the elevators. While waiting, Claire wondered if he suspected about what was going on between she and Jack. And she realized how awful it was not to know if someone suspected, and how equally awful it was to feel as if you had to sneak around. She felt a great sympathy for both Jack and Ben just then, both put in impossible situations not entirely of their own making, and both unable to extricate themselves properly.
The elevators were taking an age, and suddenly she realized she didn't need to wait to get to the floor she wanted to be on just then. Hurrying to the fire exit, Claire bounded as best she could in her heels to the eighth floor and paused at the bottom. Then she loosed her own hair from the knot it was in and shook it out. That was how she liked it best, anyway, slightly wild, slightly teased. It was much more her than the buns and short ponytails the office seemed more insistent on.
She had guessed right, Jack was in; his desk light glowed as nearly the only thing on the floor still using electricity, a yellow and green beacon to which she felt drawn. But slowly, slowly she advanced across the floor, watching him through the blinds on his windows, unsure just what he was doing. The angle was odd; his chair was turned most of the way towards the window but he was not in it. He was instead slumped on his sofa, arms bent on his knees, head bowed, down, staring at the ground. He seemed in the process of getting ready to leave, and his motorcycle shirt was still untucked from his jeans. She felt as if she was intruding on something she should not see, but the light drew her inextricably forward. She set her briefcase on an outside desk and peered through the glass door. He had his face turned to the carpet, his fingers buried in the back of his hair. He had put one boot on and left the other work shoe on, and looked so misaligned, so out of step that Claire grew concerned.
She did not knock, instead twisting the handle to the doorknob slowly and carefully, not trying to sneak but to seem less like she was barging in. Jack's head jerked up at the door's opening, and he had a horrified look on his face, as if desperate not to be caught in such disarray. Perhaps he expected Stone, perhaps he expected Adam, because when he realized it was Claire the shock turned more to self-loathing, and he his hands flew to his shirt and finished buttoning it, as if he had paused for just a moment to think. "You're still here," he said plainly.
"Yes."
"You should get home. You must have better things to do."
"No," Claire told him, "not a one."
She didn't know exactly what was propelling her but he was even more attractive when vulnerable, and she did right then want to elicit the teasing look he had. Still in her coat, she knelt down in front of him and rested her hands on his knees, craning her neck up to him, pressing her forehead on his. "It's official," she said softly, "you earn the dissolute synonym award for the night." And she brought her lips up against his, feeling him surprised under her touch, so surprised that it was a full heartbeat before he responded, and when he did he slid his hand against her throat and bent down over her, catching her arched back so she did not fall. He started hesitantly and then his mouth widened on hers, insisting on more, and kissing her back in long, slow exhalations that drew all of the air from her chest. When Claire broke away it was just to catch her breath, and she felt a strange sleepy tingliness in the tips of her fingers and somewhere in her heeled feet, as if circulation had stopped and only just now resumed. She kept her hands on his knees and stared into his face, studying his eyes, and still saw so little of the light usually there that she did not know what else to do.
"I think," he said after a moment, "that was the only thing which might have gotten me moving. If you hadn't come down I might have sat here all night."
"What happened, Jack," she asked, firmly. "What went on in there."
"We had another argument."
"So I guessed."
"And then I quit."
She brought her hand to her mouth, which still felt a little raw from kissing. "Jack, you didn't."
"I'm hardly in the mood for joking around right now."
"You mean after all that he still wouldn't give you the case?"
"After all what?" Jack frowned slightly.
She slouched back on her heels, sitting on the floor, staring up at him. "I confess to eavesdropping a bit. No warrant for the tap. Sorry."
"No," he said, and ran his hands through his hair. "No harm done. No, he gave me Egan."
She sat up straight. "Then I don't get it."
"I didn't want it that way, Claire, I didn't want it because Stone's too busy with all the other interesting cases."
Claire slapped his knee and stood, angry. "Not everything comes on your terms, Jack. It isn't supposed to be about who gets what case and why, it's supposed to be who does the best job. Who cares how Schiff gave it to you? You take it, you run with it, you do it right."
He shook his head. "I told you before, Claire, you just don't understand."
"Damn right I don't," said Claire. She stood in front of him, frustrated. "I can't believe this is how you're just going to give up and move out, after all these years. It's heresy. It's insane, and it's totally unnecessary. You don't need me to tell you you're making a huge mistake; you're sitting right in front of me looking like you just lost your best friend. I know you don't want to hear this, but you and Stone, you're just alike: this job is your whole life. You'll dry up and blow away if you quit. You can't let it get to you like this, Jack, you have to draw the line in the sand some other way."
His features drew long as she spoke and by the time Claire had finished he was blinking furiously away from her, not keeping his composure very well any more. "It feels like the biggest mistake I've ever made," he told her. "I just feel...dead inside."
She let him curl his hand around hers and pull her next to him on the couch. Her fingers strayed to his cheek and traced the long line from his nose to his mouth, and kissed him there. "Come on," she said, "let's get out of here."
"I don't want your pity," Jack told her. "I can get through this without anyone else's sympathy."
She reached down and picked up the one loafer he had already taken off, setting it on his leg. "I don't think so," she told him. "And sympathy isn't pity. I came down here before I had any idea you needed me to. Before I even knew you were here. Come on, I'll see you home this time. And tomorrow, you're going to apologize to Adam."
"Fat goddamn chance of that," Jack spat, but without much emphasis.
"And," she emphasized, "then you're going to let me second chair. I want the experience. Consider it entirely selfish as a motive on my part."
"I'll think about it," he said, and a sight sly curl appeared at his mouth as he bent over her, making her lie against the couch. "It's under advisement."
"That'll do for now," she told him, and let him kiss her again, this time a little more controlled, but still just as hungry for her, just as eager.
The shoe clattered to the floor.