A quick one-shot that demanded to be written just as I'm supposed to be deep in term papers.

***Okay, I've never done this until now, but this is an updated and expanded version of the original. I needed to get the scene out of my head, but there was a little more work left to do. If anyone's coming back for a repeat read, you're not remembering it wrong. Enjoy!***

Based on the short preview clip from 8x18 - no further spoilers in the summary until it's aired! I'm usually not one for angst, but Jamie is such a pressure cooker, and Eddie has no patience with people who beat around the bushes emotionally. Such fun these two are.

Slow Bleed

There's only one way to describe it.

Jamie comes rampaging over and pounds on her door like he's been throwing back shots for the last three hours and has something he's decided he has to tell her about. Last time it was a case he'd mis-cited in a Harvard mock trial, for God's sake, that he was still sore about. Still, she'd been laughing helplessly by the end.

She looks around her kitchen, where she's been literally walking between the fridge and the pantry for twenty minutes in search of her appetite, and sighs. Drunk Jamie tripping over denials and staring at her mouth and cleavage from the other end of the couch is not what she needs right now. She's been holding her breath for something like this to happen tonight. Ever since she gently convinced Barry not to follow her inside after he dropped her off from the hospital.

She pads to the door in her bare feet and considers not opening it, for a split second, but a partner is a partner, and Jamie is Jamie. Work-husband. Whatever gets you through the shift, Janko. She lifts the bar and unlatches the deadbolt, and she's just about to swing the door towards her when Jamie elbows it open like he's got a warrant.

He's not drunk. He's stone cold sober. He doesn't even have his jacket on in the raw wind and rain of April, and wait, she thinks, did he take the train the whole way here in this state? His hair is damp and he smells of the rain and warm flannel and Jamie. His eyes are wide and mossy green and frantic but his jaw is set firm and what's happening now? He grabs clumsily for her shoulders, but then he swoops down and takes her mouth, and she can only think: oh fuck yes and kisses him back, hard.

She crumples the back of his collar in her fist and tries to hang on as he finds her tongue. A primitive groan scrapes under her ribs. He echoes her like they're sharing the same aftershocks and kisses her hungrier, deeper.

This is not what she was expecting.

It's a thousand times better and more intense than she ever imagined, and she's imagined this, like, a lot over the years. He takes a step into the apartment and backward-kicks the door shut. She's starting to feel light-headed, and drags him with her towards the kitchen, where at least there's a solid counter to lean on. That turns out to be a very good idea. She takes the brunt of them slamming against the counter and feels a savage delight in the hard shove of his hips into hers. She grapples his shirt out of his jeans and drags her palms up the ripples and bones of his spine, taking a second to snatch a breath and bite at that damnable lower lip of his, and in the next second his hand is sliding under her button-down and up her uninjured side, and excited little supernovas are going off wherever he touches her.

She remembers then that she's all bare under her shirt. Her side is going to be badly bruised and achy for days, even with the high-grade soft armor she had on and the good drugs they gave her at the hospital, and she's not wearing a bra for a while unless she has to. Is he going to think…?

But then she's writhing and mindless under the desperate urgency of his hands, his hard ungentle teeth in her throat, his thumb dragging up her sensitive stomach and up up up over an agate-hard nipple, the other hand warm and tight on her back, and all she can do is ride out the crashing waves. Jesus. He could hoist her onto the countertop and pull off her jeans right now, and…actually, she really wishes he would.

A needy whine escapes her at the thought of it, and she feels herself sliding hot and fast into yes please just do something anything right now. For a second he chases her there, his mouth soft now on the pulse near her collarbone, and his hand closes over her breast like he already knows it, till she gasps with the shattering burst of pleasure. Jamie. Oh God. Jamie.

"D'you feel like that with him?" he demands, a harsh murmur against her throat. She shakes her head mutely and pulls him closer by the hair, heart pounding, panting for more, feeling him thickening and heavy against her. She gets a flash of his eyes, dark and furious and lost.

His fingers blunder into the edge of the bandage and he blinks and freezes. '"Eddie, Eddie…" he mutters, pressing his forehead against her shoulder.

Oh, no, he's not. "Don't you fucking apologize," she hisses.

"I'm not. Jesus Christ, Eddie, look at me." He apparently means look at the state I'm in, since he still won't meet her eyes. He's not sprinting away, though. "Do you know how scary it is for me to not be able to think straight? What's that like, knowing you're the only one who makes me completely crazy?"

"I make you crazy?"

"Like you don't know."

"Then why the hell," she enunciates, holding him off with her hands…and honestly, sort of feeling up his abs, "have you kept me at arms' length all this time?"

This time, he looks at her. He pulls her distracting hands away, but holds onto them. And he actually talks.

"I – I'm not like anyone I ever saw you date. You said it yourself. And I'm like a fucking time bomb sometimes, it's too much to ask anyone to…the amount of shit I never got around to dealing with is…I mean, there was always someone who needed help more than I needed to talk, you know? Something else that needed sorting out first. So I just kept going. I lost Mom and Joe and Linda, and Vinny fucking died in my arms from a gunshot, and I absolutely can't lose you. You're the only thing that keeps it all from flying apart sometimes."

"Fuck, Reagan, you just said I drive you crazy. Make up your mind."

"You do! Don't you get it?" He lets her hands drop and shoves a hand through his hair, shrugging helplessly. "You're just…everywhere in me. And I can't…I can't hold you back from being with people that make you happy, or ask you to stay and keep being all that for me. It's not fair. That's like some super-possessive crazy-entangled relationship stuff that only ever ends really badly. I mean, we've both seen how shit like that ends up."

She scoffs in his face. Honestly. As if she doesn't know they both get incandescent with jealousy over each other. And how quickly that would all dissolve if they could just be assured of each other. This slow internal bleeding has become a chronic condition, slowly sapping them of all that makes them great together, while they try to press on regardless and not let each other down.

"That's a bullshit rationalization." she snaps. "It's just bullshit," she says, more tenderly, and her fingers slide through the damp furze at his nape as she pulls him down to lean his forehead against hers. She slides her other hand right over his heart and tries to match his breathing, his pulse.

"How do you know?" he asks, as if he truly needs to know.

"How do I know? Jamie, how many women have you dated since we met? Jen? Dana? Sweet little Tara – "

He pulls back and stares at her, dismayed.

"Fuck, no, not Tara. I thought you believed – "

"Of course I believe you. That was a fucking joke. Remember jokes? My point is, remember how I freaked out over them all? How Tara made me crazy enough to come storming over to your place? You think that wouldn't have happened again if you ever had some cute girl drive you home from the hospital? You're not the only one that does shit like this when they get pushed too far. It's not crazy. We're human, Reagan. We get to be human."

"I nearly did when you were seeing Hipster Beard with the fragile nuts," he confesses.

"Well, what stopped you?"

"You wanted me to come over like this?"

She heaves a telling sigh. "Yes, you idiot."

"I stood there and told you you were too good for him."

"That was, like, a big door with a neon sign you missed, genius."

"How was I supposed to follow up 'you're too good for him' with 'but not too good for me'?"

"Okay," she allows. "Fair point. You sort of painted yourself into a corner there."

He tugs her around gently to switch places with her, so he can cuddle her against him without squishing her. She slides her arms around his waist, under his shirt, and strokes the skin of his back so he purrs. She always figured he'd be a big cat if she ever got her hands on him.

His body is so familiar to her, from years of barging into each other's personal space. Knowing every foot-fall pattern of how they move around scenes. Looming over each other's shoulders to read a monitor or phone screen, wrestling and whacking each other like kids in the corridors at the house. But now they can't stop touching. Hands and fingers need to ground on bare skin, for now, trying to keep the electricity from sparking up again till they can clear just a little more of the air. The warmth of his palm resting lightly over her bandage feels like a healing compress.

"I…did you…feel like this?" he asks, resting his cheek on her crown. "Is this what it was like? When you came over after the Tara thing? Like you were just going to burst or something otherwise?"

"Yes. And you fucking told me you had feelings for me and then shut me down."

"You sorta ran out on me."

"I fucking danced with you. You know exactly how that felt. People don't dance like that unless it's real."

"It was real for me, too, all right? Letting you go off alone that night killed me."

"You're still standing," she observes drily.

"Because I knew I'd see you in the morning. Even if we couldn't talk about it on the job. Or, actually, ever again, as it turned out."

She sighs. He's right again. She's not stranger to bittersweet sacrifices, but they never seem to get less bitter over time.

Jamie raises his head and looks at her. "So…where's Barry, anyway?" he asks. "He coming back here tonight? Waiting for you to call and say goodnight?"

She wonders what on earth he envisioned happening if Barry had been here with her when he pounded on her door. Mumbled an excuse to drop by, probably, just to check on her, or to drop off a medical leave or union insurance form that needed signing? Challenged him to a duel on the street? Grabbed her and kissed her anyway? Did he even think that far ahead?

No, she thinks, he knew she'd be alone. He knows she doesn't like to be seen when she's sick or not at her best. He knows he's the only one she lets in when she's hunkered down and hiding out.

"There's no Barry," she tells him, quietly. He tries to read her eyes, watching her thinking.

"What?"

"There's no Barry. Not anymore," she assures him.

"You didn't just…"

"Yeah. I did. For once. Figured maybe it was time I learned to cut a good man free instead of making him into the bad guy, again."

"That was…sudden," Jamie says, not sounding at all concerned.

"Not entirely unexpected," she admits. "He always knew. Soon as he met you, he knew for sure. He's a good guy, and a smart one, too. And – " she pokes him lightly in the stomach, "He asked me, you know. He went to the actual trouble of asking me out and seemed to find me attractive."

He drops his head again, nuzzles her crown and flutters her hair with a warm breath, "I'm not allowed to find you attractive. Not on the job. Lucky for me I have a very good visual memory, because you are the most beautiful woman I have ever met."

"Reagan!" she gasps, giggling despite her aching side. "I'm afraid you're having delusions. Maybe I really do drive you crazy."

"Well, we got partway there," he says hopefully, "But I'm up for a road trip if you are."

She pulls back and narrows her eyes at him, but doesn't turn him down cold. Is seven minutes a decent interval before hauling one's partner into bed while on serious painkillers? It's not in the Patrol Code. "We have a lot of talking still to do."

"I know."

"Everything's gonna change."

"I know."

"You won't be able to think your way through all of it. And I'm gonna stop you if you try."

He takes a breath and looks her in eyes. "I know. I'm in, if you are."

She nods, slowly, holding his gaze. Then, "I'm gonna have a really wicked bruise, you know," she grins. "Wanna see?"