Eddie looks up from her phone when the driver's side door swings open. "Hey, you're late!"
Her partner passes her a Starbucks cup and grabs his own from where he'd placed it on the roof of the patrol car. "I come bearing gifts."
She grins appreciatively and wraps the cup in both hands, which are still recovering from the frigid temperatures outside. "Forgiven."
He smirks as he maneuvers himself into the seat. "At least you're not hard to please."
"This coming from the guy who said I was demanding."
"Somehow, Janko, you manage both."
She rolls her eyes good-naturedly as he called them in over the radio. "So how was the big family shindig?" she wonders as he clicks the mic off and pulls out of their parking spot.
He looks over at her quizzically. "Didn't happen yet."
She furrows her brow. "So you're missing it? I thought that was like, a crime in the Reagan family."
He shrugs. "Yeah, well, the Commish didn't see fit to move our shift around, so…"
"They couldn't move dinner for you?"
"You kidding? Gramps thinks it's sacrilege to eat Thanksgiving dinner before four in the afternoon. He's all, 'the Pilgrims didn't eat Thanksgiving lunch'."
"Yeah, well, there's a lot the Pilgrims did that we don't do."
"Try telling him that! He had a heart attack one year right before Thanksgiving and we brought food to the hospital, and afterward he complained that it was in the middle of the day."
She shakes her head amusedly. "Your grandpa's a character. I kind of want to meet him."
"Oh, he'd love you. He'd call you a spitfire."
She narrows her eyes. "You saying I'm not a spitfire?"
He chuckles. "No, you definitely are." There's a lull for a moment before he continues, casting a mischievous look at her. "He'd also ask when we're gonna get married."
She raises her eyebrows at him. "I was wondering that too, actually." Her face is serious and her tone completely devoid of sarcasm, and Jamie's stomach sinks for a moment before she breaks into a grin.
He rolls his eyes. "Maybe I should introduce you. Get the both of you out of my hair."
"Please do. It'd be nice for someone to see my side every now and again."
To Jamie's great relief, that particular line of banter is broken off by the tandem squawking of the radios on their shoulders, reporting a 10-24 assault a few blocks away. Eddie radios them in as responding, then switches on the siren. "What do you think?" she calls over the blaring of the alarm.
"About what?" Jamie glances over quickly, focused on driving through the narrow streets of the neighborhood.
"What kind of crazy holiday shit went down on this call? Fryer oil or corkscrew to the head?"
He snorts. "Could just be a regular assault case. Street crime doesn't stop for the holidays."
"Don't I know it."
Once they get to the scene, the partners quickly realize that Eddie is right. A pair of brothers have been fighting all morning, with the argument culminating in one of them flinging a pot of boiling oil at the other. They let the paramedics deal with the burned man, but even so there's a lot of pulling apart screaming aunts and cousins before they wrestle the cuffed assailant into the back of the squad car. Eddie glances at Jamie from the other side of the sullen perp. "You and your brothers ever get into it like this?"
He snorts, shaking his head as he attempts to make eye contact with the man in the backseat. "Can't say we did." After he slams the door shut, though, he steps closer to her conspiratorially. "Let's just say it's a good thing we've always roasted the turkey."
She shakes her head, still laughing as she climbs back into the passenger seat. "You wouldn't."
He shrugs. "There's a lot you don't know about me, Janko."
She pulls her expression into mock seriousness. "Guess so."
After booking the first perp, they spend the next few hours of their shift basically pinballing between various iterations of Thanksgiving domestics. Jamie's barely back in the car after booking a woman for a particularly gruesome incident involving a carving knife before he's calling them in for a meal break.
Eddie looks over at him amusedly. "Hungry?"
"That, and need to restore a little faith in human nature."
"By eating with me? How sweet."
"No, I'm gonna go down to central booking and eat with the drug dealers."
She smacks him on the arm. "In the spirit of the holiday, Reagan, I'm gonna pretend you never said that."
He nods. "Probably good. Where do you want to go?"
"I don't care. You pick."
He furrows his brow in mock concern and takes her wrist in his hands, which despite the very platonic nature of the moment still sends an unwanted thrill through her. She covers with a raised eyebrow, to which he responds by exaggeratedly checking for a pulse. "You good, Janko? I don't think you've let me pick since – maybe ever."
She rolls her eyes. "It's my gift to you. Take what you can get."
He shrugs. "Okay, but if you actually care, speak now or we're going to that salad place."
She shakes her head. "Rabbit food it is."
After picking up their food, they opt to sit in the patrol car instead of waiting for a table at the strangely crowded salad bar. Eddie catches her partner's gaze on her as she eats. "What?"
He shakes his head. "Just – is that even a salad?" He gestures helplessly to the plastic dish in her lap, which admittedly is mostly full of chicken and various unusual vegetables.
"Hey, I let you get salad. Don't judge what I eat."
He shrugs. "You're right."
"I'm right. Did you hear that, folks?" She casts a glance around the patrol car and pumps a fist.
"Folks?"
"It's an expression."
He nods. "Oh, I thought you were referring to your alternate personalities."
She smacks him again. "You are pushing the boundaries tonight, Reagan. Lucky I have such a great holiday spirit."
He chuckles, and they eat in silence for a moment before he speaks up more seriously. "Hey, mind if I'm on the phone?"
"No, go ahead."
He pulls his phone from his pocket and scrolls through for a moment before bringing it to his ear. She tries to mind her own business and focus on her food, but her interest is piqued when she hears him say, "Hey, Nicky." As the conversation continues, she excuses her nosiness by telling herself that in their confined environment it doesn't matter whether or not she tries to hear him, because she's going to either way. She can only hear his side of the conversation clearly, but there's a lot of background noise on Nicky's end – probably the Reagan family shindig, as she'd called it. Jamie's not saying anything too revealing, just general pleasantries, but he looks serious, which is making her mildly concerned.
Once he hangs up the phone, telling Nicky he'll talk to her soon, Eddie waits a few seconds and then looks up at him quizzically. "Everything good?"
He nods, glancing out the front windshield instead of looking at her. "Yeah, just checking in."
"Checking in?"
He sighs and looks over at her with a resigned expression. "On Danny and the boys."
Eddie's "Oh" of realization is barely a sigh, and she's immediately sobered. She almost can't believe she had to ask, but going through the day-to-day with Jamie it's easy to forget that he lost someone who was essentially a sister to him less than six months ago. She forces her expression back into a neutral one. "How are they?" His momentary silence makes her backtrack. "Not really my business, sorry. You don't have to say."
He gives her a half-smile. "They're okay, she says. Quiet, but not too out of it, considering." Considering the fact that they've never done this day without their wife and mother, respectively, and now he's not around to be at least another warm body in an already too empty room.
She nods. "That's good." She pauses for a moment before looking back up at him. "How are you?"
Coming from anyone else he probably would have been annoyed, but there's an earnesty in her tone that makes him want to be honest with her. "I'm doing okay."
"Because I know this can't be easy for you – I mean, to have her not be around, and to not be with them today."
He nods. "Yeah, it's not easy. But it's getting better. And they're getting better, which is good. I don't feel like I have to worry about them as much."
There's no response from her for a moment, prompting him to glance over at her. "I believe you," she starts tentatively.
"But?"
"But. You know if everything ever isn't okay, you can tell me, right?" He furrows his brow. "I just – I know you don't want to talk about this with your family because you feel like they're all feeling it worse than you. But I'm – removed, I guess you could say. So you can come to me about it."
As she's talking, he slides his gaze away and fixes it on the dashboard in front of him. "Thanks, Eddie."
"Good. Because I can't handle when you BS me, Reagan. It's rude."
He chuckles, grateful for the relative levity. "You ready to head back out?"
"Honestly, Reagan, this shift is making me glad I don't have family to do Thanksgiving with."
He shoots her a quizzical look before she rolls her eyes. "Sorry. Bad joke. Let's do this."
"Alright." With one more concerned look at her, he calls them back in from the break.
When he exits the locker room at the end of tour, Jamie is surprised to see Eddie leaning against the wall outside. She looks up from her phone as he approaches. "Whoever said women take longer to get ready clearly never met you, Reagan."
"Wasn't aware I was on a clock," he responds, rolling his eyes.
She links her arm through his. "Let's go!"
Hesitantly, he lets himself be tugged along for a few steps before stopping and moving around to face her. "Go where?" Shaking her head, she beckons him through the front doors of the precinct and towards the corner of the building. "Janko, what are you doing?"
She releases his arm and grins. "Did you drive to work today?"
"Yeah, I – "
"Good, we'll take your car."
He shakes his head helplessly. "Take my car where?"
"You'll see."
"I'm not letting you drive my car unless you tell me where we're going."
"You'll let me drive if you want to know what I'm talking about."
He sighs, trying unsuccessfully not to fold to her shameless manipulation of his curiosity, before reluctantly digging his keys out of his back pocket. "Fine. But you're paying for gas if we run out."
"Oh, I'm not taking you on some long trip, Reagan," she replies, shaking her head as though it were obvious. "It's not that exciting."
"Then why not just tell me where we're going?"
"Oh, please. It's way more fun this way."
"For you." He shakes his head, chuckling, as she links their arms again and leads him down the street.
"Chinatown?"
Eddie pulls the keys from the ignition and looks over at him. "Observant."
"What's in Chinatown?"
"Aside from, I don't know, awesome cheap things and bubble tea?"
"Aside from that."
"My favorite dim sum place. It's open 24/7 and you can never get a seat during the day, so I figured what better place to take you for Thanksgiving at midnight?" She pauses. "Well, I guess it's not technically Thanksgiving anymore."
Her tone is a mix of projected confidence and some degree of uncertainty, and he finds it sort of charming. He'd honestly just wanted to go home and watch football after tour, but her enthusiasm must be rubbing off on him or something because he feels himself grinning. "Works for me."
She grins and passes the keys over to him. "Let's go."
As they stroll down the block towards the restaurant, Jamie looks over at her and notices her burrowing down into her coat. "You cold?"
She rolls her eyes. "That obvious?"
He chuckles. "Leather jacket's not gonna cut it anymore."
"I'm getting that," she retorts, rolling her eyes. He takes pity on her and slings an arm around her shoulders, pulling her into him as they walk. She gasps a little in shock when he does so, but masks it as a sigh of relief, removing one hand from her pocket to reach back around his waist. "So what do you want to get?"
He looks down at her. "I've never had dim sum before."
She picks her head up from where it's fallen against his shoulder and gives him a scandalized look. "You've never had dim sum?"
"Never."
She shakes her head. "And you call yourself a New Yorker. What would you even do without me?"
"I don't even know. Eat salads for the rest of my life?"
"Probably," she agrees, nodding. "Let me tell you, Reagan, you've been missing out. You're gonna thank me for this."
"That's what you said about Korean barbecue, and look how that turned out."
She starts shaking her head even before he's finished. "I didn't know that place was going to be sketchy! I just – "
"Food poisoning. For three days, Janko. It was – "
"I know how it was, Reagan, remember how I came over to visit you on your deathbed? Anyway, this place is good. I've been here a million times and I'm still standing here."
"I'm convinced you could drink straight-up arsenic and still be standing here."
She rolls her eyes. "Come on. I'm broadening your horizons."
"That sounds vaguely sexual."
"Jamie – "
He deepens his voice in a faux-seductive tone. "I'll broaden your horizons tonight, baby."
She drops her head in mock dismay. "I can't believe you were ever engaged to a woman."
"Some people find me devastatingly attractive, Janko."
"Don't I know it," she mutters, sort of to herself but also wanting to remind him of the reality of their situation. He's saved from having to respond by her stopping short in front of the restaurant. "Here we are!"
True to her word, the place is almost empty but for a few groups of drunk college kids, and they're led to a table almost immediately. He lets her take the lead in talking to the waiters, feeling vaguely overwhelmed by the array of Chinese characters and English translations that don't quite make sense on the yellow menus they've been handed. After a moment, a pot of tea is left on their table and they're left alone.
Eddie pours herself a cup and gestures toward his, filling it when he nods. They sit in silence for a moment, Eddie looking out the window as he tries not to stare at her. But there's something about the late hour and the emptiness of the restaurant and the spontaneity of this whole thing that makes it hard for him to rein himself in. As he watches her, he's transported back for a moment to the comment she'd made in the patrol car earlier, about how she's almost glad she doesn't have a family to go to for the holidays. It almost makes him feel guilty for being down about not getting to be with his own today – he knows they're there, and he'll see them in a few days anyway. He thinks about all the times he'll call up his siblings for beers or just stop by his dad's house some night to mull over some problem, and wonders what he'd do without any of those people in his life.
"What'd you do last Thanksgiving?" He doesn't really mean for the question to slip out, and almost regrets it, thinking she might be somehow embarrassed to answer.
She seems to snap back to reality, looking back over at him. "What?"
"I just – I was wondering what you'd normally do today, if we weren't working. Because you know what I do, but I guess I never really thought about the fact that you don't –"
"I don't have the whole family thing going on."
He casts his gaze downward, suddenly feeling guilty at her matter-of-fact tone. "Yeah, I guess."
She gives him a half-smile. "It's okay, Reagan. I'm not sitting here pining that my life isn't a Norman Rockwell painting." He chuckles, and she goes on. "Three years ago I went out to my college friend's family reunion in Long Island. The year after that I pulled an extra shift without you. Then last year I went down to see my dad for a bit." She glances up at him before turning her gaze away again. "So. That's what I do." She sighs. "Maybe there was a tiny bit of self-interest in me abducting you. It wasn't entirely because I wanted to make you feel better."
A part of him wants to express sympathy that her holidays are so impersonal, but he also knows that that would just make her feel more awkward than she clearly already does. His response comes quickly and instinctively, without any real rumination. "Well, you know you're always welcome at my dad's."
Her eyebrows fly up and she chuckles a little, more out of shock than anything. "Funny, Reagan."
"I'm serious! It's not like he's gonna be hanging out in his dress blues with the DCPI. He's just a guy. They're all just people. And they like you, and not just because you're my partner."
She bites her lip, nodding as he speaks. "Okay. I appreciate it." She leans in across the table and he unconsciously mirrors her movements as she lowers her tone to a conspiratorial whisper. "But there are lines that we've drawn. That you've very emphatically drawn." He closes his eyes for a moment in guilt as she continues. "And going to your dad's house for a holiday is a very…girlfriend-y thing to do. So I think in the interest of preserving those lines, that can't happen."
He sighs, shaking his head more at himself than anything. He knows she's right, but at the same time the idea of Eddie being alone because of his own stubbornness is killing him. So his response isn't well-calibrated, but it's truer than anything he's said tonight, stripped of banter or attempts at casualness. "Or it's a family thing to do." She wrinkles her brow in confusion as he attempts to explain. "You're – you're family, Janko. No matter what kind of…labels we put on it or don't put on it. You're my partner, and that's family. And my family, the ones at home, they all get that. They're all cops, or they've been surrounded by cops long enough to get that. So when I say you're always welcome, it's not like, out of pity, or…any kind of undefined thing. It's because you're family."
She's gone serious listening to him, and hearing her highly organized partner struggling to articulate what she means to him is making her choke up, to her dismay. He looks up at her when he's finished speaking, and she watches his face change notice the tears in her eyes. She tries to smile to take the edge off his concern, but she can't make it convincing through the other emotions at play. "Thank you, Jamie. That's…I don't know. That means a lot to hear."
He nods. "All true."
The moment is interrupted by the arrival of a waitress at the table, pushing a cart full of bamboo dishes. She confers with Eddie for a moment and then leaves them with an array of dumplings and vegetables on the table. Jamie returns his attention to the table to see Eddie gazing at him. He raises a questioning eyebrow. "All good?"
She nods. "All good." After a moment, she continues. "Hey. Thanks for going along with this. I know you probably just wanted to go home and watch football, but I'm glad you're here."
"Who, me? Never," he responds with good-natured sarcasm, making her roll her eyes. "But seriously, Eddie, this is way better than falling asleep on the couch with a beer."
"Wow, really? I'm honored." Her tone is more amused than offended.
He rolls his eyes. "You know what I'm saying."
"Do I?"
He huffs out a laugh. "Shut up." Shaking his head, he continues, infusing his sarcastic words with a note of earnesty. "Thank you for abducting me and probably giving me food poisoning."
"Seriously, Reagan, you're not – "
"Yeah, yeah. I know."
She shakes her head, trying to tamp down the grin that's spreading inexorably over her face. "Happy Thanksgiving, partner."
He nods, taking her hand for a moment where she's resting it on the table and squeezing it. "Happy Thanksgiving."