First You Knock
She loped into the bullpen behind Renzulli, with a pile of attitude perched on her shoulder. "He's printed, and in holding," she informed him of their suspect, in that carefully modulated voice that evoked the same response as his mother yelling his full name across the house.
Jamie wasn't sure what she was steamed up about, precisely, but he figured she was probably mad at large violent men in general at the moment, and not too impressed with his undignified street boxing match, either. "Right. You wanna finish the booking sheet?" he asked.
"No. I wanna talk about what happened."
He glanced down, then over at the other occupied desks. "What'd you mean?" Oh, cool lawyer trick, he griped at himself. Feign innocence to get the other guys information and make any issue their problem.
"Let's walk."
He followed her into the hallway, and she turned on him. "You just went off on that guy," she hissed, furious, but trying not to attract every ear in the joint. God only knew a fight between them would make the rounds in seconds.
"What was I supposed to do?"
"You were supposed to let me handle it."
As usual, when in a spot, he found a rope of logic and pulled on it. "Wait, let me get this straight. You're mad because I reacted too quickly to a guy that beat up his girlfriend, and knocked you off your feet."
"You made it look like I couldn't handle myself," she shot back, "In front of the boss, no less."
He frowned, taken aback. He honestly hadn't thought that for a moment. He knew how adept she was at tackling large perps, even if they usually worked in tandem. He'd have done the same if some big idiot had knocked Vinny over. Wouldn't he? Was that where the amped-up reflex had come from – not being able to handle watching another partner go down at a bad scene? Or was that just an excuse?
He'd thought he'd channeled the Reagan reflex to fight for the people and things they loved into dry legal arguments and regulated boxing matches, and sure, he enjoyed a scuffle with a perp now and then to work off some juice – but okay, maybe he'd gone a little nuts when he saw the bruises on their vic's face, and then Eddie on the ground. Maybe.
Renzulli pulled him away just then, as if the two of them had planned this. His boss, however, had other concerns. At least he did him the favor of not assuming outright that he and Eddie were dating, or even just sleeping together, as the rest of the house seemed to think. But he made it very clear that he was not going to entertain such activities or even distracting feelings between partners under his command, as much as he liked the both of them. Renzulli genuinely seemed to be trying to help him. If he and Eddie had been in an actual jam about their relationship and needed to come clean, Jamie felt, Renzulli would smooth their way as much as he had the power to do so. Jamie had a sudden flash of Renzulli beaming at them both, probably hugging both of them into a headlock and taking them to his favourite old-timey espresso joint.
It was this last thought that propelled him to catch Erin at her office after work, for a perspective from a legal mind that navigated emotional mazes the same way he did. Erin seemed to point him in the same direction. He admitted she might have a point with the opinionated-and-bossy thing. Syd's ability to parse and dissect his legal arguments and analogies on the fly was what first drew his attention in class, after all. Eddie had a habit of projecting his own internal beliefs onto a large map for him, and pointing out the gaps and conflicts, if she wasn't already shoving him across them.
He was still chewing the whole gloomy affair, or non-affair, by the time Monday evening rolled around. He knew his little speech to Renzulli was partly reactionary – his usual reflexive burying of a deeply emotional pressure-point that had been exposed in public – but it was also, he hoped, a reasoned approach to a difficult situation. After a good post-tour workout and shower, he had simmered down to the point that he could acknowledge the truth in everyone's well-intentioned words, but that only pushed him from frustration with himself and the whole drama, into a state of melancholy.
Except it wasn't just dramatics. It was a real, vital, deepening…something…that deserved a chance to take root and grow, and in any other situation, they could let it happen.
He half-hoped Eddie would have taken off on her own, and wouldn't realize he had bailed on her celebratory drinks night until much later. Being near her, especially on an evening when she'd be the center of attention and he as well, by association, as her partner and the training officer who had seen her through her probationary period, was a recipe for nothing good.
With the locker room deserted, he was able to take his time and spread out his gear on the bench, so naturally he was hanging out in his skivvies when she suddenly appeared. He had a momentary realization of surprise, irritation and amusement, but at least, he thought, she seemed in a much better frame of mind than she had been on Saturday. He just hoped his Sergeant was nowhere nearby.
"First, you knock," he told her.
She smirked and rapped deliberately on the doorjamb. "C'n I come in?" she purred, in what she called her Sally Sue voice. He rolled his eyes.
"Doesn't matter what I say, you come in anyway," he muttered. She shrugged, unconcerned.
"I mean, everyone already left. They're probably all out partying without us."
He took a breath and plunged in. "Yeah, well, they're gonna have to party without me, tonight."
"What?" she sounded immediately concerned. "Why?"
"Promised my Grandpa that we'd hang out tonight."
She stared. "Are you serious?" She knew a whiff of bullshit when she smelled it, and wasn't going to back down. "You can hang out with your Grandpa any night." When he remained silent, she went for cajoling sunshine, which she knew full well usually disarmed him effectively: "It's our anniversary! It – I'm officially a cop. This only happens once, Reagan."
"Yeah, I know. I was there for the important part."
"Yeah, and now you should be there for the fun part, too."
He was out of comebacks, and could only stand there looking like an idiot.
"Come on," she pleaded softly. Ah. Now he understood, and felt even worse. She was hoping to clear the air after this weekend fracas, and get them back on an even keel. Dammit. She could always read him, but she must have thought that his going cold on her was because he was upset with her, not his own messy emotions. He looked down and shook his head.
Eddie's smile fell and she threw him a sad little look as she turned to go.
If it was possible to feel like a bigger schmuck, he really didn't want to know. This was more than just Eddie pouting up a storm. She was hurt by his distance, and knew he was hiding something from her, which made the hurt all the worse. Even after all this time, personal betrayal was an automatic assumption for her to grasp onto, and it killed him to think she might be feeling that way about him.
"Hey, have – have one for me, okay?" he tried, as she moved towards the door. A lame attempt, he knew, but some note of genuine apology must have filtered through, because she turned around again. She gave him a wry little smile and extended an olive branch of sorts.
"I'll never forget the look on your face when I introduced myself as your new partner. Uniform said NYPD. Face said 'Eagle Scout'."
You're still an Eagle Scout on the outside, her eyes said, but I know you're a living, breathing man under there, with a heart and a cock and a temper, and I wouldn't change it.
"Yeah?" he returned, "Well, you looked you were about eleven. Going trick-or-treatin', dressed like a cop."
She gasped, mock-wounded, and gave that giggle that always did something to his guts. "Well, how do I look now?" she asked, half in jest and half in challenge.
He regarded her, her slim curves backlit against the hall window in her camisole and gauzy shirt, her hair sort of waving like the sea around her bright face, and her eyes dancing as they played along together. Right now you look so fucking pretty and feisty and warm that I just want to wrap my arms around you, he thought. And if I'm honest, kiss that smart mouth quiet for a while.
And there it was. That was exactly why he couldn't go there. Because their decisions on the road took maybe a tenth of a second to make, and if he was thinking at all about being concerned for her as anything but a partner, or by pissing her off by making a split-second call she didn't agree with, they were both compromised.
It wasn't fair. The closer they got, the farther away he had to hold her. But he hadn't taken the job because the word was fair. Quite the reverse. Fighting against the unfairness of the world was why he had become a cop, and she'd become his grounding-pin and counterbalance. As vital as piece of his field kit as his own weapon. And that was something he couldn't give up.
Henry snapped the cards deftly into a fresh shuffle, and eyed his youngest grandchild. Of the four of them, Jamie had always had the best poker face, and had even developed a few fake-out tells to put his siblings off track. Undercover work was in his genes, Henry knew, but all those layers of recreational and professional bluffing were built upon a natural tendency to hide his most vulnerable feelings even from himself.
"You're a good kid, spending time with your old Pop," he told him. "Not many working stiffs would make the effort."
"Aw, hey, you know I enjoy this," Jamie replied, leaning forward in his chair. "Besides, you're old and need someone to watch you, in case you break a hip walking to the kitchen or something."
"I take it back." Henry said, "You're a young punk with no respect."
"That's right." Jamie grinned. "So set 'em up again and pound some respect into me, why don'cha, instead of letting me win?"
"I could do that. Or I could get you likkered up until you 'fess up why you're hiding out here."
"What d'you mean? I said I'd come hang out. I knew Dad's got that thing downtown tonight and you'd be rattling around here alone."
"And I know that delightful partner of yours has just gotten off probation, and you're hiding here instead of celebrating with her," Henry told him, dealing out the next round.
Jamie opened his mouth, and closed it again. Gotcha, thought Henry.
"For starters – " Jamie began, clearly thinking fast. "For starters, I explained to Eddie I had plans with you, and for another, how could you know about a probie's one-year party?"
"In this family? Please. Jamie, why are you here? In my day that would have been a slap in a face to a partner. How would you feel if everyone but Tony Renzulli had turned up for your one-year drinks, and he gave you some half-assed excuse like that?"
"I – "
"You afraid you're getting in too deep with the lovely Edit?"
"I got warned off, okay?" Jamie finally spat it out. "Not just house talk. Sarge saw me take down this mook who pushed her down, and he came to some conclusions. Told me I better stop acting like I had feelings for my partner. 'Cause of the job, you know the rules."
"Ah hah." Henry said slowly, "Let's unravel this. Sarge – you mean Sergeant Renzulli – "
"Yeah."
"Saw you take down some clown who pushed Eddie."
"Yeah, big dude, been hitting his girlfriend when we rolled up. He took a swing at Eddie and sent her to the ground."
"And what did Eddie do?"
"She, ah. She got up. Did a roll and got on her feet."
"Like she'd been taught."
"Yeah."
"Okay. And then?"
"Then I went after the dude."
"Was he still going after her?"
"Well, yeah. I mean, he was this big angry dude, and she's pretty small, even if she's good out there, and I –"
"Was he still going after her?"
Jamie sat back. "Maybe not," he admitted. "He might've been just pacing."
"Okay. Eddie's on the ground, rolls and gets up. Your big angry fella is pacing. Then what?"
"I, ah. I used my hard control technique on the guy, and – "
"Jamieson."
"I did! I, ah – I had him on the ground on his back, and he wasn't cooperating, so I delivered one blow, maybe two, and –"
"You tackled him to the pavement with no discipline, hauled off on him, and weren't planning on stopping till Renzulli hauled you off. You lost it for a minute there."
"Who…who was it told you? How would something like that get back to you?"
"Nobody told me," Henry said kindly, looking his grandson straight in the eyes. "I know because I've been doing this a lot longer than you, and when you're sitting here, you'll know how I know."
Jamie was silent.
"Son," Henry said, "That's not hard control technique. That's personal. Tony was right."
"I know."
"And he told you you'd better stop acting like that?"
"Not just acting. He said I had to decide whether I had feelings for her or not. He said I had to make a choice. Or he'd split us up and have us reassigned to different houses. And he's right. You can't function as a professional police team with distractions like that, even if you've decided not to do anything about it."
Now we're getting somewhere, thought Henry.
"And what choice did you make?"
"Look, Eddie's my partner, and she's solid. I don't want to lose that. And I know it's hard enough for her being my partner. I mean, people jump to conclusions about us all the time. Even this family. Or she'll get ragged on for having a Reagan hook from her very first week on the job. Imagine if one of us gets reassigned just to see if these "feelings" go anywhere. If she get transferred, she's the girl who picked her Reagan connection and her emotions over doing the job. That sticks with her forever. If I do, it still sticks to her, because she's the girl who made me leave my first and only house."
"You've got the whole thing figured out, haven't you?"
"It's just what I gotta do, Pops. For her as much as for me."
"Bullshit. That's lawyer talk."
"Huh?"
"Son, I'm going to tell you a family story you won't have heard the end of."
"Okay."
You know I loved your grandmother very deeply, and was faithful to her to the very end. But you're old enough to know what I mean when I say that people are more complex than that. The Commandments are the Commandments because they go against human nature in many ways. We covet, we lust, we want, we lie. In those days we all married young and we stayed married. We didn't test-drive relationships like people do nowadays. So by the time I got partnered with Colleen McGuire, I was already married, and she got herself married pretty quick, to my best friend. That way, we could keep working together, and nobody dared gossip about us, since it was clear we were all on the level with each other. And it meant that we would never, ever, hurt our families by stepping out."
Jamie was utterly silent. Henry took a breath and went on: "I don't regret the choice I made. You're all here, because of it. Frank, and Colleen's two, Meara and Brendan, all the grandkids. But if it all happened to a young couple today, before all the kids came along? I don't know. People seem to encourage people to follow their soulmates nowadays, even if it means leaving a marriage. Maybe that's kinder, in the long run, I don't know. I do know that if I picked up the phone and called her tonight, the years would melt away. And neither she nor I is going to do that, because as you said, we're old, we don't have all the time in the world left, and we don't ever want to regret. We don't want to ever think of our spouses as the ones who denied us the time we might have had. We know we did good work together, saved some lives, got stories for a lifetime. We made that be enough."
Henry looked up. His youngest grandson was sitting quietly, watching him with tears standing in his eyes, his elbows on his knees and his shoulders hunched forward.
"Jamie." He said. "I'm going to ask you not to repeat this to your father. He's never felt this and he's a more straitlaced man than I ever was. It wasn't enough. Not when it could have been – everything."
"I don't know what to say," Jamie admitted
"Don't say anything, then. Just sit for a minute and try to see yourself sitting here in fifty years, knowing you've made a good and honest life with a loving family, and knowing Eddie's done the same. But not with you."
Jamie was on his feet in nine seconds, and heading for the door.
Henry smiled, a little wistfully, and let him go.
The commute seemed to take hours. He drove quickly and efficiently, but was still sorely tempted to floor the gas like he'd been called to a scene, and flash his badge if he got pulled over. His luck improved with the parking situation. He slid into a metered spot that was just being vacated, on the hedge-lined side of the bar where Eddie wouldn't see him right away.
He'd spent the drive concocting all sorts of plans, and discarding them. Striding in through the front door of the bar, heading straight for Eddie and asking her then and there if she wanted him for a work partner or a romantic partner. Flowers, maybe? If she turned him down, or if he chickened out, he could say it was just for a congratulations gift. What about simply explaining that Sarge was going to be watching them both for any signs of growing too close, and that's why he went cold on her? That would imply they'd been talking about her, or about his feelings for her, and that was risky as hell. Whatever messages he thought he was receiving from her, he had no proof if she felt the same way or just liked having someone to pal around and flirt madly with. God knew they both tried to date others, however dismally it tended to turn out.
What about texting her to come meet him outside? Nah. In a place that noisy, she wouldn't hear or feel her phone, and messages might be read by anyone.
What about just slipping in beside her and ordering her another drink, as he usually did?
Nothing like tradition.
He walked up the side of the bar, and spotted her through the window. She was chatting with Kelly Girard, a fellow officer she'd come through the Academy with, and tossing back a shot of what looked like vodka. If he was lucky, she hadn't had too many yet, but at least he could drive her home after the party – nobody could fault him for that – and they could talk later.
He took a breath, and headed for the door. The bouncer nodded at him as usual, and swung the heavy oak door open for him. The place was an overheated cacophony of music and shouting and glasses clinking, but she turned towards him as if he'd spoken her name.
Her entire being seemed to light up with a grin, and she put her next shooter back on the bar as she hopped off the stool. He wound his way between the tables, and planted his feet just in time to catch Eddie as she pitched herself at him.
"You're here," she said, thumping his chest. "I knew you'd come."
"You did, huh?"
"Your Grandpa okay?" she asked, still leaning into him. "I'm sorry I was such a jerk. I don't have any grandparents left, right? I forget what it's like to want to make the most of your time with family."
"He's fine," he assured her. He wrapped his arms around her, as he had been aching to do for far longer than he cared to think. "He told me the most amazing story. Kicked my ass and put everything in perspective. Sometime when it's quiet I'll tell you."
She went very still in his arms, and looked up at him curiously, but then nestled a little closer.
"Jamie, I know what Renzulli said. I thought you decided – "
"I know. So did I. I was incredibly, stupidly wrong – "
She dropped her forehead onto his chest and groaned, before looking up again with that head-tilt thing that undid him. "God, we both were."
Their words were starting to tumble out over each other. This was not the time or place. People around them were starting to notice the officer of the hour canoodling with her partner, and knowing eyebrows were going up all over. "Wanna get out of here?" she asked, stepping away as casually as she could, and heading back to the bar.
"But it's your party," he said, "I haven't even bought you a drink yet. And if we leave now – "
"Especially after that little – "
"They'll never stop talking."
"Jamie," she said, "They're never going to stop talking, anyway. Wherever they send us. You're a Reagan in the family biz, and whatever else is going on with us now or in the future, you are stuck with me as a pal for life, so we're just going to have to learn to deal with it. We'll deal with the brass tomorrow. I have a feeling Renzulli isn't going to want to lose either of us from the one-two, not really."
"I thought the same thing."
"We'll get him a box of pizelles tomorrow and explain," she sighed. He rubbed her shoulder sympathetically.
"That's tomorrow. For now, can I buy my best girl a drink?"
"You may," she said, settling herself back on her stool.
"And can I drive you home later?" he asked, indulging in some serious gazing.
"You better," she told him.
"Who're we toasting tonight?" someone hollered, as the bartender slid their beers towards them.
"Henry Reagan," Eddie hollered back.