Rainy autumn days in New York made London seem like Miami. The city streets were darkened with an acrid sheen of rain mingled with the viscous gutter dredge. The view from the patrol car window was obscured by tiny waterfalls, backlit by grey. Eddie and Jamie sat silent in the RMP. To an outsider, it would seem that they were just `affected by the bleak morning. In reality, both were drowning in their own mental whirlpools, unintentionally ignoring one another. It was only 9:30, and the slow passing of time was portent of a dull day. Keeping in character, Eddie broke the silence first.

"Seems like nobody is hard-ass criminal enough to put it out there today. Not that I'm complaining…I personally went to bed too late last night and the weather today is not making it easy to rouse myself…"

She side-eyed Jamie, half hoping he'd snap out of it enough to at least engage in her banter. He gave a taut smile. Truth be told he was not in the mood. The preceding night had left a dull ache in his heart and his mind.

Though he had been the instigator of the jazz-club rendezvous, he was still questioning the sanity of that decision. In the moment, nothing felt more right than their chests and hips pressed unnecessarily close in a sort of unacknowledged desperation, foreheads and wandering fingers coyly meeting in a touch-and-go game. She had been warm, effortlessly sensual, and all at once radiant and devilish. Jamie had tried his hardest to imprint every single second on his memory, laboring against the raucous dance his mind was doing all on its own. Despite all that, the end of the night only afforded him a timid squeeze of Eddie's hand over his own, a disquieted heart, and the uncomfortable pressure of his biological dissatisfaction at such an ending. Watching Eddie float up the stairs of her apartment building, streetlights glittering across the emerald and bronze of her dress, was bittersweet….actually more bitter. He knew he couldn't have it the way he wanted it. He wanted to hold her. He wanted to abscond her. He wanted her gasping and rollicking beneath him so badly he might die. He also knew not having her shotgun beside him every day might just kill him quicker. That in of itself made him question his own virility. He had seen time and time again what men would do to either mentally or physically divest his partner of her dress blues and fall prey to her exasperating temptation. Meanwhile he was trying to decide if that would be worth not riding with her anymore. Any man with normal anatomy and eyes in his head would laugh at his capitulation, he mused. Jamie was deep in the throes of his own mental pity-party this drab morning.

Eddie had not the slightest guess at what he was rolling around in his brain and she was all the better for it. At the failure of her last attempt to coax a smile, she sat back and watched the rain slither over the windows until the radio mercifully killed the silence for them. Dispatch announced a domestic, six blocks out. Eddie groaned outwardly, but she secretly welcomed it as she asked central to show them responding. Jamie did too judging by how quickly he turned on the lights and pushed the speedometer over 75 on the claustrophobic city streets.

They reached the park in two minutes flat. The partners surveyed the scene as they slammed the patrol car doors, squinting against the pelting rain. A man of three times Eddie's size, clearly inebriated, towered over a woman who looked to be 85 pounds soaking wet. She shivered in a drenched flannel and jeans, inadequate for the cold. Neither appeared to be armed. The woman was in hysterics as the man berated her for some unseen crime or another. Jamie and Eddie didn't bother to stand back and listen, sensing that the argument had long since escalated from a reparable disagreement. Jamie watched the man raise his arm above his head and knew their already short window for decision-making had just been cut in half. He chose the superhero route, realizing that stopping the man's arm would be difficult, and drawing a weapon required too much premeditation and potential repercussion with an unarmed suspect. Jamie dove for the woman, wrapping her in his arms and trying to roll away from under the fall of her attacker's heavy arm. He failed to see the flash of a crude shiv in the man's hand. Eddie didn't.

"Jamie! He has a knife!" Eddie's voice pierced Jamie's concentration.

"What…?" He whipped his head around and his heart caught in his throat.

"Eddie! Get the hell away from him!"

Jamie's vocal chords were paralyzed, with fear, exertion, cold….as he watched his partner throw herself between the attacker and his would-be victims as he swung around for a backhand. She was effective in disarming him with the asp in her hand, but only once he had brought his arm across her body at full speed, twisting her violently. The short blade lodged itself under the back of her lowest right rib.

Jamie leapt up, bidden by unfathomable rage and panic. The surly attacker backed up in retreat as he saw Jamie's hand on his gun.

"You! Back up! Back the hell up! Eddie! Eddie can you hear me?"

Jamie had all but dropped the sobbing woman on the sidewalk, racing to his partner. Eddie crumpled to the ground as Jamie caught her under the chest, barely saving her face from the pavement.

"Hey, Eddie! You're alright! It was just a small knife….just a little cut….we can get to the hospital and they'll fix you up and you'll be fine…. " Jamie reasoned with himself more than with Eddie, lightly slapping her cheeks to keep her conscious.

Suddenly realizing his mistake, the perp turned unsteadily on his heel and ran as fast as his drunken legs could take him from the scene of his crime. He was almost immediately apprehended by another pair of officers who had pulled up right as Jamie and Eddie had engaged in the altercation.

But Jamie saw none of that. Eddie was gasping with her head in Jamie's lap, gripping the front of his shirt in blanched fists. Her back arched like she had been stung and her blood mixed with the heavy rain as it fell, thus seeming to bleed much farther and faster than she should be. The shiv dislodged and clattered to the concrete as she writhed, panting through a punctured lung. Jamie felt sick to his stomach, fury and fear roiling deep within him.

"Eddie, Eddie you need to talk to me. Stay with me. We are gonna get you to a hospital and you will be okay," he more or less commanded his partner as he drew her up closer.

She smiled weakly and tried to say something but nothing came out but a shallow wheeze. Jamie panicked. Eddie's eyes went slightly wider when Jamie reached to untuck her shirt from her belt and began undoing the buttons from the bottom up. She was, however, too delirious from the pain and effort to inhale to protest. Jamie opened her shirt enough to find the wound on her side. It sprayed as she breathed, every breath a little lighter.

"No no no…." he whispered to himself, placing his index and middle finger airtight over the wound, despite Eddie's protest to the pain.

"You need to stay with me here, okay, Eddie? I didn't give you up to lose you…." He barely choked the last words out, tears indistinguishable in the downpour, falling from his face to Eddie's. His words sounded crazy even to himself, and in that moment, he knew he would've broken every rule written to keep her with him….to have her in all capacities. The sirens and lights from the ambulance flickered across Eddie's eyes as she reached up a hand to brush his face….only for a moment. They were closed by the time the EMT's had practically wrenched her from Jamie's arms and whisked her away.