"Oh, who's a smarty-pants, huh? Can't fool you! Object permanence, kiddo."
"¿Quién es ese?" Angela murmurs to her son. "¿Esa es la Tía Eddie?"
Little Eddie shrieks with toothless glee in his mother's lap and waggles his arms and feet. Officer Eddie, looking every inch the doting auntie that Angela calls her, peeks out from behind her hands and laughs back at her accidental namesake.
It's Friday afternoon, and Angela has proudly invited them over to her and Manuel's pristine little apartment for a mug of champurrado after work, to celebrate the new year. It's her great-grandmother's recipe, made with dark chocolate, cinnamon and whole milk, thickened with corn flour and whipped smooth and frothy. It's spicy perfection on a bitterly cold day.
Jamie, sitting next to his old partner on the Alvarez' couch, tries to repress a grin out of habit, and gives it up as a lost cause. Watching his tough girl melt into a puddle is always a good time, if only for the endless potential for ribbing her about it later. Besides, Little Eddie – Eddito, to his parents – is a special case.
They'd sorted out the name thing on their first visit to the Alvarez' cozy caretaker's apartment on the ground floor, armed with diapers and wipes, when Eddito was just a week old. Angela and Manuel had been so mortified that Jamie almost wished he'd said nothing, but it would have been worse to let the mix-up continue. Eddito was eventually named James Eddie Alvarez, to everyone's satisfaction, at a gala Christening Mass in the local community of Mexican Catholic refugees, where Jamie and Eddie were treated like long-lost cousins.
Eddito has since gotten used to regular visits with Tío Jamie and Tía Eddie, who are second only to a pair of guardian angels and Santa Claus in the Alvarez' book.
The little boy, now a properly chubby sixteen-pounder with a mass of dark curls and brilliant shiny eyes, will always be the first baby he ever caught in his own two hands. There are some shared experiences you never forget. Unless your neural networks aren't fully developed and capable of memory-formation yet, that is. But Jamie's sure that Eddito will be told the story of his precipitous birth in a movie theatre many, many times.
Naturally, he is the strongest, smartest, most handsome and most well-behaved baby in the world, as far as his doting parents are concerned. They're convinced it's due to the influence of the two officers who delivered him.
"Oh, no! Come here."
Eddito reaches eagerly towards Officer Eddie, and Angela passes him over gratefully so she can go and change out of yet another spat-up shirt. The baby has unerring aim: anywhere except where there's a burp rag waiting. This time he's only hit his mother and not his own onesie, so Eddie scoops him up under the arms, carefully, and lifts him to standing on her knees. He's already holding his head up well, as Angela has showed her proudly – and he shrieks again. He reaches for the loose golden hair bouncing at her shoulders by instinct, and Eddie quickly settles him side-saddle on her lap to swoop a wet-wipe around his mouth before he has time to fuss. Angela keeps her hair up and out of reach of grabby little hands, but Eddie's never so much as babysat an infant, and this is all very new. No matter. She and Eddito enjoy practicing on each other.
"That's a good look on you, partner."
Eddie throws him a complex glance over the baby's head. "I think he's what they call an easy keeper. Aren't you?" she croons to the baby. "But four? How on earth did your mother manage?"
"Well, we were spaced out. At least the big two and the little two. Danny and Erin helped a lot with Joe and me, I know. And Grandma was a big presence, even when Dad and Grandpa were off doing the typical dad-at-work thing.
"Thank God these two can work from home and take turns with the baby."
"It's pretty amazing. They're right to hold you responsible for that, Eddie. I don't know where they'd be without you talking Ken Cooper into hiring them on."
Eddie blushes slightly and drops a kiss onto the baby's curls, and startled, he tries to look up. They end up bumping noses, and, it's a whole new game.
Angela, coming back from the bedroom, laughs with delight, whips out her new smartphone and takes a shot of the two Eddies enjoying each other's company. She turns a sly grin to Jamie.
"She's good with baby, no?"
"She's a natural," Jamie replies. "So how was your Christmas, you and Manuel? Did you get to call your family over the holidays?"
"Oh, yes! We talked to my mother and my sisters, and Manuel's mother and father. And I e-mail photos to everyone at home! Since we must have smartphones for our job here, Mr. Kenneth the owner, he helped us to sign up. Because, you know, we must send him pictures of things to be repairing or show when work is done. So we have phones with camera and e-mail now. Mama and Papi are so relieved to see we are all safe."
By "safe", Jamie knows, Angela means "unharmed".
Last Christmas, Angela and Manuel had explained, they had a lovely house of their own, two cars, family and friends and a big church community around them. They had antique furniture and original paintings from both of their families on display in their home, and they loved to take their turn hosting family dinners. Angela worked for a big hospital in their equipment-purchasing office, and Manuel worked for the city as a civil engineer in highway maintenance. They learned they were expecting a baby, and their happiness knew no bounds.
Then the drug cartel war came to their town. They'd stayed under the radar until a hostage-taking and medical supply theft at the hospital placed Angela in the position of having to decide whether to obey the attackers or refuse to give them the drugs and medical equipment they demanded, for an underground clinic.
Stubborn, indignant and with a moral compass that would not be compromised, she'd refused, She'd somehow been let go with a nasty slash on her arm as a warning, and made to leave. Perhaps they'd been impressed with her courage. Angela has a theory that she reminded a few of them of their own mothers. Any one of them might have shot her, at any moment.
As it was, someone else in her office gave them what they wanted. She and Manuel left town that same night, smuggled through a tortuous series of footpaths and anonymous cash-paid bus trips until crossing the border into Texas, and running as far east as they could before her pregnancy became too unwieldly. Their house and cars they'd left to whichever family members might choose to stay in town.
Now Angela is so proud of just keeping her family alive and together, having a phone number and a job, that Jamie finds himself wracking his brain for any strings he might pull with Immigration that he hasn't thought of yet. The city needs hardworking, immovably good-hearted people like Angela and Manuel. He's learned a lot more than he ever wanted to about the drug cartels dividing up the villages and even the larger cities of Mexico for their own profits, forcing honest citizens to join them, assist them, or quite literally be slaughtered where they stand if they refuse.
Trying to explain that to Immigration agents is a different story. ICE tends to insist that drugs cartels are not a reason to be granted refugee asylum because "If you don't get involved with drugs, you'll stay out of trouble" and "We can't just babysit all the good guys while the bad guys take over."
Thanks to Erin's network, they have at least found a professional Immigration Advocate to work with the family, as part of her pro bono legal work. The advocate, Hetty, is about as hopeful for the Alvarez' as any other honest, employed family she's worked with, which is to say, she's clinging largely to hope.
"It's a funny thing," Hetty told Jamie and Eddie, "that ICE will often ignore indigent farm laborers and the lowest level of exploited illegal workers, but as soon as a family looks like it might actually get on its feet, get some power and stability behind them – boom, it's deportation time. Can't have them turning into actual voting citizens. We're actually lucky that the Alvarez' are still in the refugee-hearing stream, not a DACA family. I've got college-educated DACA kids on my list who want nothing more than to serve this country, being threatened with 24-hour deportation windows. Try studying for your final exams with that over your head. But they do it."
"Then the least we can do is exhaust every possible channel."
Watching the Eddies play together while Angela laughs and films a short clip of them, Jamie takes a deep breath and feels a moment of amazement. All the turmoil, religious wars and persecution that drove all of their families to the same city, leading their paths to cross at Eddito's birth.
What would it be like, he wonders, to have to flee his comfortable New York existence and his entire family overnight with a pregnant Eddie, to have to trust in one shady contact after another to make it as far as, say, Canada, with no guarantee of what might happen even if they made it across the border?
Somehow, he and Eddie have taken it upon themselves to guard everyone in this city, all the newcomers and the long-time New Yorkers and the millions of visitors, and keep them safe to live without constant fear. Some days it seems more daunting than others.
It's so much easier when it's not personal. But these connections are what give him focus when his energy flags.
Manuel arrives home then with groceries for a typical Mexican dinner, purchased fresh and in small quantities. They'll never get used to these huge boxes of American food, he and Angela swear. He stands in the doorway and smiles shyly at them all, his English not being nearly as fluid as his wife's, and Angela bustles up to take the groceries to the kitchen. Eddie holds up Eddito for him, and Manuel is suddenly all confidence verging on machismo.
Holding his son on his hip, Manuel makes a strong-arm curl and then pretends to make the baby do the same. The baby squeals to see his father, and Manuel cuddles him close and dances him around. The two clearly adore each other.
Jamie catches Eddie eyeing him just as closely as he was watching her, earlier.
Yeah, he felt it, too.
It's like a physical twinge in his own arms, watching Manuel with his son. Not always, but…it's there. And it's a significant part of the reason why they're genuinely happy to visit regularly.
They're in an old studded-leather clad booth along the side wall of Finnegan's, she, Erin and Nicky, sitting over whiskey at eight o'clock on a dreary, rainy Saturday night. The faux-Tudor Irish pub is warm inside, dimly lit and loud with chatter and the click of pool cues from the back, but the three of them have each other's full attention. It's partly in celebration, partly in commiseration, and partly to remind each other they've got each other's backs.
A proper girls' session out, in other words.
"It's called Nollaig na mBan," Erin explains, "Nulla-na-mon. Women's Little Christmas. January sixth was supposed to be a day for Irish women in some villages to leave the housework behind after slogging through the holidays, and get together for food and drink. They'd stay in the pubs all afternoon, catching up. Supposedly, the men were supposed to be doing the cooking and watching the kids, but I've never been convinced that part actually happened. I'm betting the mothers just cooked ahead and told them to grab leftovers, as usual. It's having a bit of a resurgence among the brunch crowd now. Mothers and daughters, college girls away from home, that sort of thing."
"It's Serbian Christmas, tonight, too," says Eddie. "I had a good Skype chat with my cousins last night, and Jamie got to meet them, too. It's called Epiphany most places, but the Eastern Orthodox churches still call it Christmas."
"Well," Nicky raises her glass, "Happy Little Christmas Epiphany, whatever you're celebrating."
They clink glasses. Nicky takes too big a sip of her Bushmills and tries to mask a sputter, which just makes it worse, and Erin pats her back, trying not to laugh.
"When d'you get your exam back?" Eddie asks. It's been three days since Nicky wrote the intake exam for the NYPD, and Nicky is still buzzing. Erin has her game face on, and is smiling wistfully, but Eddie can tell she's got pride warring pretty hard with worry, hidden away from her daughter as best she can.
"Another week, I think. I can't wait. I know I did well, I just don't know how well. Grandpa was amazing. He had me come up and study with him."
"He did, did he?" Erin asks. Nicky covers her mouth.
"Oops."
Erin grins, looking very like her daughter, "I know, kiddo, believe me. I'd have been surprised if he didn't. Though I wish he'd have asked me first."
"He didn't have to ask. I'm an adult."
"I'm also your mother, and he's my dad."
"You know, even if you aced it completely, it still doesn't mean you have to go further," Eddie points out. "I know a bunch of people who started at Academy, and just knowing they could be good cops turned out to be enough for them. They just wanted to know that the choice was theirs to make, not anybody else's."
"Oh, I'm pretty sure. But yeah, I guess you never know what you're gonna come up against that you didn't expect to hit you so hard."
"That's still a big part of it for me," Eddie admits. "Wanting to know my limits. So far there hasn't been anything I really, truly couldn't handle, but there's always cases that come back to haunt you."
"Everyone says when you stop feeling that, then you should start worrying, 'cause it means you're shutting down."
"Everyone who says that is right," Erin says. "You're old enough to know that your Uncle Danny's been dealing with PTSD since his second tour in Afghanistan. Probably his first, actually. I think he re-upped for a second tour to try to lay some demons to rest. He is not the same big brother I grew up with. That thing he does where he goes distant and solves cases literally in his nightmares? It makes him a really successful detective, and it's nearly torn him apart. More than once."
"Mom..."
"I'm just saying, these are things to know going in."
Eddie's glad Erin's taking the hardline approach, since she herself would feel awkward doing so. Nicky's very focused, but she's also an idealist. She's been raised with a unique combination of normalization of the realities of the job, and protection from the real impact on her own family. The Reagans are very good at abstractedly talking about massive emotional issues, to the extent that Nicky seems to think it's in her DNA to deal with them with less difficulty than most. It's not. She'll have to find her own way through, and the moments of disillusion will be bitter.
Nicky's going to be riding with Walsh and Addison for a series of tours, and then Patimkin and Russell, all of them night shifts. And this time, as an adult and a Cadet candidate, nobody's going to screen her from anything, even as a civilian. Nicky's lucky. Not every candidate gets nudged into so much pre-Academy exposure, and every little helps.
She's also going to start coming to fight nights with her and Walsh, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, alternating boxing, kickboxing and the police judo and weaponless defense classes at the two-five.
"It ain't pretty," Eddie warns her, "We fight for real. There's bloody noses and torn muscles and things, so you might want to resist going full-bore until you've passed your police physical. You don't want to have to take time off training to heal up from anything. But we can sure teach you stuff, and it's great conditioning. Hell of a lot more fun than a treadmill, any day."
"It's cool that it's all women," Nicky says, "But don't you have to learn to fight adult men?"
"Oh, we do. It's only kickboxing that's women-only, mostly because it's specifically a women's class for strength and balance training – and we need some space to let off estrogen. You should totally come. It'll take your mind of waiting for your results. The boxing class and judo are for any NYPD. We'll get you in, though, no problem."
"I used to go to that, you know," Erin tells her daughter, "Before I went off to college. Your Grandpa and Uncle Danny made me take self-defence and judo classes. And Danny taught me some moves Grandpa wouldn't half approve of."
"Aw, they didn't do that for me when I left."
"You were living close to home. You were just a short drive away if you ever needed us. And they knew by then that I wouldn't be getting any Academy training, so they'd better teach me themselves."
"How did you know?" Nicky asks, "I know you thought about it, too. How did you know you didn't want it?"
"I did want it. There were times I wanted it really, really badly," Erin admits, "I'd have been good at some of it, but it wasn't for me, not the whole package. I knew I'd get through training, maybe even last a year or two, but I also knew I'd never learn to let things go. Any bad call, any case that slipped away, everything I saw that I couldn't help with. I know you remember what that's like, Nicky. And this is going back more than twenty years. Things aren't perfect for female cops even now, but back then, they were way worse. I had to pick the fights I had a hope of winning."
"You're more disciplined than I am," Nicky says, "I know you worry about that. About me listening to orders. But that's part of what I need, I think. I do better when I have high expectations put on me."
"Sounds like your Uncle Jamie," Eddie points out. "He doesn't like to admit it, but he's pretty driven by being given a bar to reach. So he can jump clear over it and pretend like he never saw it. Like it was his idea all along."
"That does sound like Jamie," Erin smiles. "You know him well."
"I think he's figured out I use it sometimes," she admits. "I mean, four and a half years, ten hours a day in a car together, plus whatever else after shift...you'd think we wouldn't have any secrets left. But there's always new things to find out."
She knows she's got a goofy grin and a whiskey flush on her, but she doesn't care. She can't seem to help talking about Jamie, and certainly not with Erin and Nicky, who are so damn happy to see them finally together.
"Well, you're sure gonna find out some stuff tomorrow," says Erin. Nicky sighs, afloat on whiskey, post-exam adrenaline and the prospect of Eddie finally joining them for Sunday dinner after Church.
"Okay. Coach me. What do I need to know?" Eddie asks.
"The more Grandpa and Pop yell at each other, the better they like it," Nicky says. "Also, sometimes they gang up and try to trick people into saying stuff, to make it like a test of what people really think."
"Well, that's certainly going in at the deep end," Eddie says, "Erin? Any pointers?"
"If Pop offers you more than two refills of wine, watch out," Erin tells her, "It means he's going to grill you about something after dinner."
"If people go into the kitchen and close the door, or if people offer to do the dishes, just leave them alone, 'cause it means it's a private conversation," Nicky adds.
"Ah. That's useful to know. Thank you."
"It's okay to talk about Linda and Joe," Erin says, seriously. "And Mom and Grandma. Most Sundays it's just a good time to reconnect and be able to talk cop and DA stuff within confidence, without worrying about anything leaking out. Sometimes it's a way to force everyone to sit down and listen to hard stuff."
"Oh, yeah, and what gets said at the table stays at the table," Nicky recites. Erin and Eddie snicker.
"I just bet," Eddie says.
"Hey, wouldn't it be cool if Jack and Sean's girlfriends ever came out with us like this someday?"
"It would indeed," Erin agrees, with a sigh. "And then there'll be no more kids left. Until the next generation."
"Hm," Nicky takes another sip. "I'm gonna wait on that a while."
"You do that, please."
Eddie notices that Erin is strenuously avoiding eye contact with her, her gaze roaming around the bar instead, and decides to take pity on her. "We've just barely started talking about any of that," she tells her, "But it's on the books. Sometime. Don't know when, but...sometime."
"I bet not too long, though," Nicky blurts out, feeling her whiskey a little. Erin sends her a look, and Nicky subsides. "Sorry, I just..."
"No, no. It's okay. I honestly don't know. But I'm looking at thirty-three soon, so...it'll happen when it's supposed to. We're not worried."
Erin sends her an eloquent look that clearly says, yeah, Nicky's right, and Eddie takes an inhale and another sip.
If it happens, they know, it'll be fine, and they'll deal with it, but it shouldn't, not with her level of contraception set to Paranoid. They both have more to do and things to plan out before then. She wouldn't mind being married beforehand. Even being in a relationship in which babies are occasionally discussed is enough of a leap for now. They already know that once they decide they're ready, they're not going to waste any time. They're not getting any younger.
"Would that make me an Aunt? No, they'd still be my cousins. Just way younger."
"I don't think you're going to be an Aunt," Erin says, "Even if Jack and Sean have kids of their own, they'd be your first cousins once removed, not nieces or nephews."
"Wait, I might still be an Aunt," Nicky realizes, "What if Dad ever re-marries, or – or just ends up having other kids with someone?" She looks quickly at her mother, "He doesn't, does he?"
"Not that I'm aware of," Erin says firmly, "And I think your dad realizes that that's not the sort of thing he'd ever want to keep from me if he has any hope of my protecting him from Danny and Pop if they found out first."
"You can talk about Aunt Linda and Uncle Joe and the rest," Nicky explains to Eddie, "But we don't talk about my dad at dinner."
"Sadly true," Erin agrees. "It tends to lead to three hours of Jack's Not So Greatest Hits."
"But a great diversion if you need to take the heat off yourself," Nicky says, with a sly sideways grin that says that she's pulled that one off before.
"You're cut off," says Erin.
Eddie gives an amused snort. "There speaks a fellow only-child." She clinks Nicky's glass.
"I'm outnumbered here," Erin sighs. "Some of us had to be the responsible older sister."
"Well, I've always been the responsible older cousin. And at least we'll have one more woman at the table tomorrow. That'll give us, what, three to six?"
"Slowly but surely," Erin says, "Slowly but surely. What time is that brother of mine picking us up?
"Sometime after ten. At least, he said his boxing session's over at nine-thirty."
"Oh, good," Erin gets up slowly, her hands digging into her lower back as she rubs at a sore spot. She's had a long week of essentially living at her desk, Eddie knows, and worrying about her detective, Abetemarco, while he recovers from a shooting on duty. Erin needed tonight more than she and Nicky. "Round four. My round again."
"I could get used to this," Nicky says, looking around the bar. "Is this what after-shift drinks are like?"
"Ha! No. After-shift drinks are bloodlettings and therapy. Cops turn into family, sure, and safe spaces come in all shapes and sizes, but you and your mom are the real deal."
It strikes Eddie that the NYPD is the closest thing she has to a family to introduce to the enthusiastic Nicky, for all Nicky's eagerness to welcome Eddie into hers. It's certainly good to play an active role in another young woman's entry into The Job, but it's not the same as the openhearted welcome she's received from all of the Reagans. She wishes the comparison wasn't so stark. But if she can help keep an eye on Nicky for the first few years of her career, and maybe Jack, at least she'll feel like she's offered something in return.
"Well," says Nicky, "You and Mom aren't going anywhere anytime soon. So I think we should keep doing this. Maybe not always drinking all the time, but..."
"I'll drink to that," says Eddie.
"Everyone come and siddown!" Danny yells from the kitchen, pushing open the door with his elbow as he appears with a gorgeously browned shoulder of beef in a well-loved Dutch oven. A cloud of rosemary and roasted vegetables wafts behind him in his wake, and her mouth waters as Jack follows with the largest serving-dish of mashed potatoes she's seen outside of a restaurant. Nicky brings up the rear with garlicky green beans and carrots.
The years of solitary, one-dish meals in front of her laptop fade away into distant memory.
"I could get used to this," she remarks to Jamie, as they follow Frank and Henry to the dining room from the front sitting room, glasses of wine in hand.
"Winter food," he says. "Erin'll have us on salads and beans and fish before long."
"Do you have a specialty, Eddie?" Frank asks her. "We may have our habits, but we're always on the lookout for new options."
"I, ah – I used to," she says, thinking fast as she sits down between Jamie and Sean, across from Danny. "I've been living alone for so long that I haven't really had a chance to do a really great meal for a while. But my Dad and I used to make my grandmother Edit's chicken paprikash over homemade noodles. That's about the only family recipe I've got."
"Ooh," Nicky's eyes widen, "Like in Dracula?"
"Yes, actually! We use this smoked Hungarian paprika. It's completely different from the stuff you get at the store."
Nicky smiles and sends her a wordless eye-signal she can't quite pick up on, until she sees that Erin and Danny are smiling amusedly too, their hands folded for Grace. Oh. This is going to take some getting used to. She certainly has nothing against anyone saying Grace, and she's very conscious of feeling more grateful than she has for a long time, but a religious focus for that gratitude in public still feels pretty strange to her.
She listens to Frank reciting what must be an old family prayer, and is just thinking of how comforting it sounds, when they all, Jamie, included, cross themselves and say "Amen," and she's left floundering again. Jamie had explained their usual habits beforehand, of course, and had assured her that they'd had plenty of non-Grace-saying guests at dinner before, but she feels suddenly, visibly not part of the proceedings.
Nobody else even blinks, though, and she's immediately treated as long-lost family member, which warms her thoroughly. She's even roasted gently over "landing" her very first police partner. When she rolls her eyes Nicky-style and replies, "Well, I tried a while back, but someone here needed to think about it some more…" the whole table cackles good-naturedly, and Jamie ducks his head and shrugs and smiles, not at all put out.
Danny's roast is at one tender and toothsome. He's taken to squawking over anyone interfering in his cooking, and he's getting really good. He seems to be finding solace in his grief by stepping into Linda's kitchen habits, which, Eddie thinks, is about as healthy and loving an outlet as she can imagine him finding.
Nobody mentions her not attending church, or anything about their morning at Mass at all. She knows from Jamie that the sermon was a repeat: a reminder that charity tends to wane after Christmas despite the continuing needs of the greater community. She wonders if they're avoiding talking about church so as not to exclude her, and she decides that's probably so. Remembering Sean and Jack's easy grip on theological family discussions, she can't help but think that they'd all be discussing the sermon or debating some point of faith, if she wasn't present.
As it is, the dinner-table debate on Stop-and-Frisk, or as Jamie quietly and consistently points out, Stop-Question-and-Frisk, rages on.
Henry is convinced that letting cops trust their guts among the public has saved lives, especially in high-crime areas. He doesn't care if those communities have a particular ethnic majority or not, but they have to accept increased policing and law and order as a necessary part of cleaning up their act. Danny backs his grandfather on this one hundred percent.
Nicky throws racial profiling into the conversation, and the need for the NYPD to earn trust among newcomers in low-income areas, who have no reason to trust cops at all, given the places they've arrived from.
"How is that our fault?" Sean counters, from beside Eddie. "They chose to come here, right?"
Eddie thinks the Alvarez family might have something to say about that. They were so secure in their middle-class respect for the law that it had never occurred to Angela not to call the police for help, even as an illegal refugee from Mexico. It's pure chance that Eddie and Jamie got the call and not some other cop who might have treated them harshly. There are, she admits, plenty of blatantly racist cops, and many more who just don't want to take the time to consider their own assumptions.
"Don't you think that if cops expect people to behave like good Americans, they should represent the best America has to offer, too?" Nicky shoots back. "How is telling someone you don't like the way they look at you, and you're gonna search them or arrest them if they argue supposed to accomplish that?"
Erin and Jamie, side by side, tag-team each other with a pile of recent stats that show that reducing Stop-Question-and-Frisk has, in fact, lowered police callouts to crimes in progress, and increased proactive calls from the public to help them reduce potential problems, especially in areas that now have NYPD-Community Consultation groups.
"Who let you two go to law school?" Henry grumbles, and turning to smile sweetly at her, asks what she and Jamie have brought for dessert.
"Peach pie and two kinds of ice cream," Eddie reports. "Will we be debating the merits of each kind, or pie without ice cream?"
Frank, up at the other end, seems to be permanently beaming.
After dinner, she, Erin and Sean hang out in the sitting room, watching Jamie and Henry advance upon each other across the checkers board as though they're settling an old duel.
Except for chess, which they play with gravitas and polite chat, the Reagans get into board and card games in a robust, physical way. Old-world pub style. Gestures get large and remarks get ribald as the level in their glasses sinks. Spectators walk around like a Greek chorus, commenting pithily on each player's chances of winning, and counting up all the games they've lost before. Stories and old family fights get retold and re-enacted in between moves.
"Feeling the heat, there, son?" Henry challenges, "You can always forfeit."
"Not in this lifetime," Jamie mutters.
"Edit, you play?" Henry asks. He's apparently decided that her given name makes a better nickname. She's completely taken with the way he says her given name, and he knows it, she decides, seeing the twinkle in his eye over the board.
She smiles back. She can't help it. Henry turns her to mush. She can only imagine what he'd have been like as a cop, back in the day, and she glances up at Jamie, the incumbent Officer Reagan of outstanding charm.
"Not since I was little."
"Come sit by me," Henry says. "I'll get you caught up."
And for the next few minutes, he does, explaining every move he makes. It doesn't seem to affect his and Jamie's game in the least – rather, they both have to work harder to outwit each other. Eddie suddenly sees that it's not a child's game at all, but a game of spacing and timing and anticipating where a piece will be, rather than where it is.
Henry sees the penny drop, and claps her on the shoulder. "Ah-hah," he says. "You get it. That's why I taught all the kids to play from a young age. It's all about taking control of a scene."
"Whoa," she says. "I mean, I knew chess was the ultimate military strategy game, but I didn't think of checkers."
"Chess is a battle between equal and diverse forces. Checkers is your callout to a robbery in progress."
"I'm getting that." She looks up again at Jamie, who has been listening to his grandfather with equal attention, and at Erin, who looks a little misty around the eyes. "This is the stuff you were raised on, huh?"
"Pretty much," Erin says.
"Got us into law school," Jamie digs, "So, thanks again, Pop."
As they're heading out into the evening later on, Henry walks her to the door on his arm. "I hope we've behaved ourselves sufficiently well," he says. "We'd love you to see you next week."
"I'd be delighted," she tells him. "And never behave yourself on my account."
"Oh, now you've done it," Frank says gruffly, waiting at the door, and bends to kiss her on the cheek. "Good night, Eddie."
"Hi, Daddy."
"Hey, Sunshine. You brought company!"
Jamie stands somewhat awkwardly behind Eddie at the door of the pale green and gray Visitor Center at Fort Dix Correctional Institution. He'd been screened two weeks in advance, like any visitor here. Every prisoner knows who's on the schedule to visit whom, via the internal grapevine, so it's not surprise but genuine pleasure that has Armin Janko grinning like Christmas morning. And indeed, given the traditional Hungarian Christmas date of January 6th, they're not that late.
Armin looks well, if a little thinner of waist and hair than the last time they met. They're not supposed to hug in the visitor's lounge, but a brief handshake is allowed. Eddie and her father manage to say a great deal with that handshake, and then Jamie finds himself in Armin's solid grip. He remembers that strength of that clasp from years before, Eddie in her father's arms as Armin was being released from the hospital.
He also remembers the desperate need radiating from Eddie as she hugged her father for the first time in years, and then her silent, shaking tears as she stared out the window as they drove away.
That night was the second time Eddie asked him to stay with her. They'd both pretended to fall asleep talking curled up on her bed, to avoid silly arguments over the couch, and migrated under the covers at some point. That was the first time he woke up with Eddie fast asleep in his arms. Between that, finding the proof of Armin's courage and honesty, and Eddie's trust in him, Jamie had been buoyant for days.
This time there are no tears. Eddie's been writing to her dad regularly since then, and more often in the past year as his release date approaches. He's recently been allowed to send and receive heavily vetted e-mail through the prison communications system. She visits every few months. They've been able to clear some old ground, and start to discuss Armin's post-release life.
"Come in, please, sit down." Armin waves them to the little round table as if they've just dropped in for coffee.
They don't exactly pull out chairs, as the seats are solid steel and bolted to the concrete floor. They thank Armin profusely for the coffee, which he's paid for out of his own meagre earnings in the prison laundry – there is cheap vending machine coffee available for guests, but it's so important to Armin that he have something to offer them. And it's half decent coffee, too, made by the inmates who work in the kitchens, along with cupcakes and pretzels and other treats for visiting days.
Eddie selects a cupcake and drops some change in the tin at the counter, before coming to sit beside her father.
"So I hear you did good work out at the jazz retreat," Armin says.
"Apparently so. How do you know?" Eddie asks.
"Ah, I still have contacts. My old friend Ken Cooper got to wondering if I had put you up to your little stunt with the caretaker's job in one of his buildings, and phoned me up to ask. Told me he'd sent you two out there to work off your end of the bargain."
"Oh." Eddie smiles sheepishly. "I guess I did sort of ambush him. But he seemed pretty happy to have a chance to do something good for someone who deserved it."
"No doubt. But now the little family you helped is in his debt. And he sent you to that festival on purpose, you know. Sam Delamont wanted people with no previous connections to any of his security staff. He thought he might have an industry leak close to home, but he didn't know how close. His own kid, poor bastard. You I can trust, Princess. More than I trust myself."
He turns his smile on Eddie, who looks both touched and disturbed.
It's Jamie's turn to ask: "Wait. How could you know about the kid? There haven't even been any charges laid yet. Nothing's public."
"I'm in a medium security facility with a whole lot of bored people. Intelligence is currency around here. I'm going to miss the access, to be honest, when I'm gone. You wouldn't believe what you can learn."
"Nothing too useful, Dad, I hope," Eddie replies, with a bit of an edge.
"Actually, I think I can be useful," Armin replies, without the slightest indication of offense. He leans forward and wraps his hands around his paper coffee cup as if it's a proper mug, from old habit. "I know you're worried about what I'm gonna do with myself when I'm paroled. I know there are things I'll be barred from doing, and for good reason. I have no quarrel with that, though it's a shame I can't use my professional skills. I want to talk to you about something. I've developed a talent for laundry."
Jamie opens his mouth, closes it, and looks to Eddie for a hint. She shrugs and turns back to her father, unwrapping her cupcake.
"Okay. Spill. I'm assuming you're only talking about washing machines."
"Commercial laundry is one of the invisible backbones of capitalism. Think about it. Not just hotels, restaurants, hospitals and military, but everywhere. Dirty linen means no repeat customers."
"That's true, but even middle sized commercial services have been bought up and consolidated, except for the little mom-and-pop shops. There's even a middle tier of laundry collection and drop off services that don't even do the work – it's all outsourced. Are you looking at niche markets?"
Jamie blinks. He forgets sometimes that Eddie's first career was in financial market analysis. Spending all her days driving around at street level, she sees the ebb and flow of local business in a way he doesn't.
"I like how you're thinking, but no. Take a step back, instead. You see, it gets really boring, working in the laundry here. I mean, talking-to-yourself boring, chanting-nursery-rhymes boring. And one day I had this revelation. I was doing a load of jumpsuits, and I noticed Jacobsen had been taking his meds regularly again. How'd I know? Because his suits were all dirty on the behind, like with actual topsoil. That meant he'd been let out for exercise every day, instead of being on lockdown due to behaviors. He loves sitting under this one tree. And that night, it hit me how much information we wash out of our clothes, our linens, everything. Information is currency, remember? Now multiply that story by a million or so. Little anomalies that point to big changes coming."
"Data mining? From commercial laundry? I mean, you're right, it's a huge amount of information, but isn't that a little creepy, Dad? The whole point of laundry is to forget the dirt ever existed."
"Aggregated information, sweetheart. Nothing to link a person with the item. Census reports only tell you who's living in a space, who's registered there. Tax information only tells you whether they're behaving themselves, more or less. Laundry tells you who's using the space. Say you want a snapshot of ethnic cultural activities in a specific community. So you canvass all the drycleaners and laundry services and you ask them: how many little First Communion dresses? How many Quinceañera gowns, prayer shawls, gold-embroidered saris, Caribbean-style tunics have been handled. Or how about querying the number of restaurant tablecloths with wine-stains over a year, in a lower-middle-class part of town. You'd get an angle on the number of young professionals exploring a new area, and what kind of a crowd is drawn there to spend money. Gentrification in five…four…three…you get me?"
Jamie's impressed. He's already combing his mental file of Harvard contacts who might be interested in playing with the concept some more. Add that dimension to other social science research and you'd have an interesting portrait of a dynamic, everyday community.
"Okay," Eddie allows. "That's cool. How do you see making it work in real life? I mean – I'm sorry to bring the rain cloud, but you're gonna be living in a halfway house with limited Internet and no access to loans to pay developers. And I don't think you're going to be able to raise private investments anymore."
"Oh, didn't I tell you? I've met the post-release support group I've been assigned to join."
"Ohhh," says Eddie, slowly.
"Convicted hackers and data fraudsters," Jamie intuits. "And because you fall into the white-collar category too, you all get assigned the same kind of parole supports. Including brushing up the skills you used to use, to become employable again."
"And because I know dollars, they trust me, even if I'm forty years older than some of them."
"Okay, but let me ask you this," Eddie begins, patiently. "Is anyone going to pay money to contract a group of ex-convicts to literally examine dirty laundry for information? I mean, legitimate money?"
"They will if it's for research towards the social good, and if our rehabilitation stories are part of our brand," Armin replies quietly. "Corporations are all over themselves to show they're socially conscious and involved in their communities."
Again, Jamie's struck by Armin's candor and the many avenues he's already mapped out, but Eddie knows her father.
"But that means talking about me, too, Dad. You've driven it home that Mom and I were the reason you did what you did, to try to give us everything. Did you think maybe we don't want to revisit that? And besides, Jamie and I are being assigned to Undercover next month. We have to stay as far from the news or any promotional stuff as possible."
Her voice is very calm but clipped, remote. Jamie realizes he's over his head, and sits back to follow Eddie's lead. Armin's asking for their support, and more importantly, for them to validate a new sense of purpose to carry him out of prison and into his life as a free man again. It's the kind of emotional outreach that Eddie excels at. But her response suggests there are layers within layers here.
It occurs to him then that Armin hasn't asked Eddie how she's doing, or about Mira, or why Jamie's even there today. It might be the excitement of a new idea, and Armin might assume, or know already, that he and Eddie are together now. Armin might be trying to reassure them that he won't be a burden to them once he is released. But Eddie's right to be cautious. This is charismatic-leader type spin that Armin is weaving, Jamie realizes.
"Sweetheart, I – "
"I'm just saying, this is what you do. You get an idea and you run with it full-speed, good or bad, and carry everyone along till someone stops you. It was Mom for years. I'm just worried it's gonna be me now. I cannot be your babysitter."
Armin holds her eyes, equally seriously. "Not babysitter. As my business advisor, all decisions would go through you. I wouldn't make a move you didn't approve of. You're the one who went to a fancy school to learn all that. Isn't this why? You wanted to use your brains to help your old man help other people succeed."
"Jesus, Dad. Do you hear yourself?"
"Hey, Janko. Four o'clock lineup. Come get your meds and they you can have another half hour."
It's Gordon calling, one of the orderlies Eddie recognizes by now, waving Armin over to the refectory counter. A tray of white paper pill cups is waiting, with name labels clipped to each one, and a row of clear plastic tumblers of apple juice to wash them down.
"Daddy? What're you…are you okay?"
"It's nothing serious, sweetheart. They found a bit of a lag in my thyroid function when I was in hospital, that's all."
"Oh." Eddie says, nonplussed. Armin gets up and heads to the counter. He takes his dose, raising his plastic tumbler to Gordon in a cheerful toast.
"Aren't you his medical contact?" Jamie asks her, under his breath.
"Well…no, actually. I don't know if he has one. He never mentioned needing one."
"Let's grab Gordon on the way out."
"No kidding."
Armin returns to the table and seems to know not to wade back into the topic of Eddie as his business advisor. He remembers to ask how their work is going, and how Mira and Bradley doing. He doesn't ask about Bojan and Jelana, Eddie's Serbian cousins, and Jamie realizes that Eddie hasn't mentioned them to her father yet. And oddly, for someone with such keen skills at observing people, Armin doesn't seem to have registered that Jamie is there as Eddie's boyfriend and emotional support, not her partner on the job. But he's thrilled when they tell him, shaking Jamie's hand again vigorously and beaming at his daughter.
"I'm so glad, Princess," he says. "I'm just so glad. I know he's everything you deserve."
There are tears standing in his eyes as they leave. The guard doesn't stop Eddie hugging her father goodbye, for once, but he watches them carefully anyway.
As they sign out at the visitor desk and retrieve their off-duty weapons, Eddie asks if she can speak to Gordon about her father's medical treatment. There is some confusion at first, as Eddie is listed only as his emergency contact and not his next of kin for medical information purposes, but the fact that she's his daughter and the only living family member still speaking to him does the trick.
"You understand, we have confidentiality protocols," Gordon excuses his hesitancy.
"Oh, I get it," Eddie waves this away. "So – he's okay? He said they found out his thyroid was down, when he was hospitalized after the fight."
"Thyroid? No. He's, ah, he's been on a medium dose of sedatives for years. They're very common here. This is not exactly an "up" place to be. It was high blood pressure the hospital found. He's on anti-hypertensives, now, too."
Jamie's heart sinks. That confirms Eddie's prior suspicions about Armin's state of mind, during a previous visit. He'd thought she was coming home from college to stay with him for good, at the time.
"So, nothing too out of the ordinary for a sixty-two year old in his ninth year of a sentence."
"Not at all. Except in his case, the sedatives he's on are also antipsychotics. In some people with bipolar disorder, they act as sedatives and anti-anxiety medications."
"Bipolar disorder." Eddie's eyebrow scrunches dubiously. "We're talking about Armin Janko, right?"
"Yeah, there's only one of them here."
"When was he diagnosed? There's never been any mention of that, ever. Not in our family, not even at the trial."
"Not long after he started his sentence. Guess he'd been self-medicating, and with the withdrawal came the onset of symptoms."
Jamie's already reaching out as Eddie gropes blindly for his hand. "With what?" she asks clearly bracing herself.
"Cocaine, according to him. Probably masked the lows, and because he didn't need it during the highs, he didn't think he had a problem."
"Was he addicted? Did he have to go through rehab?"
"Dependent, let's say," Gordon eyes her kindly, "Not so much rehab as a difficult cold-turkey. We never had any problems with him since then. You know how he stood up against the drug-running ring we had in here. Look, I know you need to know all this, but we're going to need to set up a formal meeting with the prison psychiatrist and Armin's counsellor here to get any deeper. I definitely think you should get Armin to have you added as his family medical contact. You may need to make care decisions for him from time to time."
"Apparently so," says Eddie.
She looks utterly stricken. She leans heavily against Jamie's side as he walks them through the three locked doors between the Visitor Center and the free world, and hands him the keys to Silver Belle once they breathe the outside air again.
"My father is losing his grip," she says flatly.
Jamie, who had already considered the delusionary effects of blood pressure medication and sedatives combined, suddenly sees how the machinery of prison behaviour-control has locked Armin into a one-way spiral of increasing perceptual skew and increasing medication.
"You wanna be at your place tonight?" he asks, letting them into the Porsche.
Eddie nods.
"I'm giving you the full Jamie Reagan treatment tonight."
He does a horrible job of waggling his eyebrows suggestively, and Eddie drops her forehead into her hand and laughs tiredly, shaking her head. She's leaning back against the bathroom counter in her cherry-red polar fleece robe, a mug of masala chai beside her.
He knows she doesn't want to talk much, after the visit with her father, but she's too drained to exhaust herself physically as she normally would and she's definitely not in the mood for sex. So stronger countermeasures are needed. Jamie's been planning a couple of steps ahead since they got back to her place, and so far it's working.
Tea and fuzzy bathrobe were just the first step. While she was undressing, he rolled his sleeves up and started drawing her a bath with the orange-ginger bubbles she likes. He's stuck on the padded suction-cup neck pillow she likes but rarely uses, as she's not usually in the bath for long. He's put down the bathmat and also rolled up a towel to kneel on beside the tub. He wishes it was as old-fashioned claw-foot so he could sit right behind her shoulders – it's really too small for them both to sit in comfortably, but he'll make do. Lined up on the rim are her scrubby sisal cloth, shower gel, shampoo and conditioner.
He swishes a hand in the water. It's about perfect: it'll be up to her neck, and way too hot for him. "C'mon in."
"Mm hmm."
She flicks off the light switch, and the bathroom is suddenly aflicker with the glow of the half dozen tea lights he's scattered around the place. He turns off the water, and the space feels hushed, drawn close.
He hears the swish of her robe, and turns his head to take in the view. Each time he's graced with the sight of her body is like a hit of something powerful in his brain. She's so small and so strong, perfect but usually sporting a bruise or two, and a few proud scars from the job. She's such a familiar presence after so many years sitting two feet apart, but out of her uniform the tough, cute blonde officer disappears, and a far more complex Eddie emerges: powerful and vulnerable, casual but fastidious, and sensitive to the slightest touch.
She's so unselfconsciously grounded in her body, so comfortable in her own skin after years of hard-won reconciliation with it, that sex with Eddie is more like an ongoing conversation, little touches and cuddling, wrestling matches and barging into each other's space, making love and good hard fucking when they both need it. It's so much more than learning what they both like. It's learning what they both are, and what they might become, with each other's companionship.
It's what they did for each other as cops. It shouldn't be such a surprise that that's how they are as lovers. But it still feels like a delightful surprise.
"You always look at me like that," she protests mildly, as if he should know better by now.
"Like what?"
"Like I'm some sort of, I don't know…"
"Mermaid," he suggests, as she steps into the foamy bath, one hand on his shoulder.
"You are never gonna let me live that down."
"Nope. Get comfy."
"This is nice," she admits, sliding her legs out in front of her. "I'm sorry I'm not great company tonight."
"You don't have to be."
He decides he'd better lose the shirt altogether, and pulls it over his head quickly.
"Lean forward a bit."
She does, idly playing with the foam clusters around her knees as he settles himself beside her. He soaps up her scrubby cloth with her favourite citrus scented gel, the one she keeps for days off, and begins to work on her back and shoulders, in long, slow sweeps.
"Ohh, that's good."
"That's the idea," he says. He gets down as far as her hips before he runs out of room. He's got plans for her shoulders and neck later, but they'll keep. He uses the cloth to rinse most of the soap off her back, and she sighs a little, moving her head from side to side on her stiff neck.
"Okay. Lie back and close your eyes." He hands her a dry washcloth, folded lengthwise. "Seriously," he adds sternly, when she eyes him. "Trust me."
"I do trust you," she says. She sits up and leans over the rim of the tub to kiss him softly, and with a smile brewing somewhere far away in her eyes, settles herself back again, her head propped up by the pillow, the cloth over her eyes blocking even the candlelight.
First he lathers up her scrubby cloth, and reaches for her nearest hand, lifting it out of the water. He brushes kisses over her knuckles, and then starts with the cloth, washing her hand, up her forearm, over her compact muscled bicep and underneath (she twitches and squirms), and then over her shoulder. Everything is slow and hushed, the fall of water and their breathing the only sounds.
It takes a little more effort to get to the other arm, but leaning over her, and taking the opportunity to kiss her once or twice, he manages nicely. By the time he's finished that side, she's breathing a little more deeply, and the crinkles are smoothing out of her forehead.
"Okay?" he murmurs.
"Mm hmm," she sighs.
He strokes his fingers from her knee down to her ankle, and lifts it just enough to start working on her toes. She giggles and her foot jerks in his grip, but he holds on, and soon enough she gets used to it.
"So how many times have you given the full Jamie Reagan treatment?" she drawls lazily, her arms folded limply across her middle.
"Well, only once, to be honest, and it sorta bombed," he admits.
She huffs a quiet laugh. "Really? I gotta hear about this."
"You sure? It was me and Syd, years ago."
"No, I wanna know."
"Well. I tried to plan something like this for Syd once. She'd had a bad day at the end of a bad week. I thought it was the least I could do. And it's not like she wasn't happy about it, but she…kept on trying to direct things. Like she didn't really think I'd know what she'd like. So yeah, she liked it, but I never really had a chance to show her all the things I'd picked up on that I knew she liked, 'cause she kept telling me what to do. It felt more like, I don't know, she didn't want me to do anything she might not like, in case she didn't want to tell me,"
"Hmm." Is Eddie's response to this, and she's silent for a minute. Then: "That's funny, actually, because all those little things are what made us so great together in the first place."
He takes a moment to set down the cloth, and take a long, steadying breath before moving his soapy bare hand up past her knee. She's exquisitely sensitive here, and fending off his response to her response may be difficult. He tries to keep his strokes firm and even over her satiny skin. This is the point she'll probably let him know if she wants him to keep this warm and soothing, or take it further. He'll be perfectly happy either way, as long he reads her right.
"I think so too," he murmurs.
"And it always drove everyone else mad," Eddie grins, under the cloth. "Because one of us would say or do something that sounded totally inconsequential to anyone else, but we'd just know it was supposed to be a compliment. Or a reminder."
"Or a poke," he adds.
"Or a poke."
"Or just something to make you smile."
"And you always knew I was smiling, even if I yelled at you for being so silly."
"Oh, especially then."
"And you always know when I'm trying to apologize for doing something idiotic, even if you're better at saying it."
"Of course I know. And you're never idiotic. We're all just learning."
"You see?" she says, "There you go again, all supportive and…ohhh."
He's found one of her favourite spots around the back of her knee, and her breath is coming a little short. He slides a soapy hand up the side of her thigh, up to the curve of her hip and the swell of her ass, and she sighs and sinks down another inch in the water, hitching up to give him better access.
"You move so sweet," he tells her, low. She hums in response and her mouth falls open slightly on an exhale as he runs his fingers up around the silky crease between her thigh and the neat dark curls framing her pussy.
"Shh, easy," he murmurs. "We got a long way to go yet."
He can see a flush travelling over her breasts, up her chest, with the heat of the water and the speeding up of her pulse under his touch. He can feel himself growing pleasantly half-hard in his jeans, and tries to convince himself not to get any harder. Yet.
"Gimme your other knee."
She does. In fact, she draws her leg up and out of the bubbles at an angle he knows and loves very well, with a sly smile on her face. He picks up the cloth again and concentrates on his task as best he can. But she's completely irresistible, warm and pliant and open to him like this.
He skims his fingers along her impossibly soft nether lips and dips just inside, just once – okay, once more – and a sinuous wave passes through her body as she gasps.
"Wait your turn," he admonishes lightly, whether to her or to his cock, he's not sure.
He lowers her leg back into the hot water, and contents himself with stroking the skin of her belly as she settles down again.
"Fuuuck, Reagan," she breathes.
He grins. And steels himself for the next part, because he's an unrepentant breast man, especially where Eddie is concerned. She's never been shy of flaunting them a little, which makes sense considering that they're magnificent, and strapped down under bulky layers a great deal of the time. In the past, he did a fine job of catching glimpses only out of the corners of his vision, like an astronomer looking for the dimmer stars in the night sky. Over the years he built up most of an image, filing in the rest with an active imagination. But no fantasy approached the real deal, creamy-golden and rose-tipped, the weight and proud rise of them, and the intense sensitivity of them. He can make her relax, purr, or scream and damn near come to orgasm just playing with them. And the feel of one of them cupped in his hand, as she nestles back against him as they're settling for sleep, makes him feel like all is well with the world.
In the candlelight, dripping wet and flushed and peaking slightly, they're a wonder to behold.
He soaps up his fingers again, and smooths his hand up over her ribs and across, under her breasts, unrushed. She sighs deeply and the tip of her tongue flicks out to lick her lips. He finds himself entranced all over again by her, as she relaxes into arousal, so lovely and so trusting.
"You're staring," she tells him.
"You're absolutely stunning," he replies. "And I am a lucky man."
He's not talking about her looks, she knows, but that she lets him see her, just as she is, however she is. She pulls the cloth off of her eyes and blinks, and gazes up at him.
"Kiss me," she whispers, with the telltale edge of pleading that gets him in the gut, every time. He's there in a moment, reveling in the taste of her, the hungry anticipation drawing tight, the feel of her wet seeking fingers, her hand around the back of his neck, and warm droplets running over his chest and shoulders and down his spine.
He strokes the curve over the tops of her breasts, where it always relaxes her instantly, and sure enough, she subsides back under the hot water a little. He slides his soapy hands down and over each, briefly, in time with her breathing. Finally he palms a breast, warm and slightly buoyant under his hand, and strokes slowly over her hard, slick little nipple. A deep shudder runs through her and she gasps aloud, her head thrashing against the pillow. He keeps going, stroking and circling and finally pinching with the slightest pressure, and she curses under her breath and her spine arches up into his touch.
And then the other, as his mouth finds hers again, and her tongue flicks between his teeth. God, there is nothing like Eddie in the throes of serious arousal. She can be as imperious and demanding as an empress or as earthy and giggly as a milkmaid in the hay. He wonders what she must think of him; he can be as tender a lover or as mischievous a bastard as he knows how.
With great difficulty, he pulls back in a moment or two, and smiles, touching a kiss to her forehead.
"Not done yet."
"Aww…"
"Phase two."
"We have phases?"
"Tonight we do. Hang on."
He stand up and undoes his jeans, slipping them and his boxers off and folding them in a bundle onto the counter.
"I like this phase," she leers at him, rather more than half-erect by now. "But I'm out of dollar bills just now."
"I take plastic, too."
He lets the water run warm for a minute, and then reaches in to pull the plug. Eddie slides her feet back under her and stands up to give him room, and he steps into the tub and pulls the shower curtain closed.
"Hi."
"Well, hello there," she says, sliding her hands around his neck, and pressing up against him, warm and soft and wet. Her eyes are warm and gleaming at him. He's got his Eddie back. He kisses her quickly and reaches back to turn on the shower.
"Turn 'round."
She does, and he angles the spray over her hair. Since they got together, she's discovered she really, really loves him washing her hair, and he's happy to oblige. He does so now, massaging the lather over her scalp, especially behind her ears and down along the back of her jaw where the tension hides. Then her conditioner, which makes for a useful slippery medium for a neck and shoulder rub. She leans back into his hands and her purrs become moans as he deepens his strokes as hard as she can take, up behind her shoulder blades and along the tendons in her neck. He'll give her a proper workover later. This is just to get her loosened up and breathing deeply again after the day she's had.
Rinsed clean, she starts to turn around, but he holds her back against him, his arm around her shoulders.
"You are," he murmurs in her ear, "the most wonderful, sexiest ever, best thing that's ever happened to me."
She giggles, and he closes his eyes, feeling it all through her, and everywhere she touches him. Still holding her close, he runs his other hand down over her breast, feeling her up blatantly and enjoying it. She hums and leans back, her head rolling against his shoulder as he plays with her nipples, petting and stroking and pinching till she's breathing fast and heavy. He reaches down for her own hand, and places it on her breast, right where his was. A moan escapes her and she rolls her own nipple in her fingers as he slides down, down, and into the slick cleft of her pussy. He knows exactly what she wants, and he's not going to give it to her, not just yet. He slides his fingers around her clit, not touching the tip, and down further, but not inside her. Just enough to make her arch back and curse at him.
This slow buildup and retreat is so fucking incredible to share with her, the way they take turns driving each other to the brink of control before letting go.
When she tries to turn around this time, he lets her, and her mouth finds a particularly sweet spot on his pectoral to bite down on while she slips her hand around his aching cock. He hisses with the pleasure of it corkscrewing up his spine into his brain, and leans against the wall for support. She works his thickened shaft firmly but so, so slowly, reaching up to kiss him greedily while playing with his balls in between strokes, her tongue tracing maddening incantations over the roof of his mouth. It's always like this, when she touches him. He wants it to last forever, but he needs to come so badly, so soon that it's like being a teenager again.
She kisses him even deeper and does something completely magical with the path from his balls nearly to his asshole, but not quite, that still makes everything clench up and nearly has him exploding in her hand with the hot shock of it. And then she slides her hand off him, and lets him go, taking a half step back with a satisfied grin, because she knows.
"Jesus, Eddie…"
"We staying in here, or going to bed?" she murmurs.
"Bed. I still have plans for you."
"Ohhh, shit," she sighs. "What'd I do to deserve you?"
"Planted yourself in front of me and told me to be gentle with you," he tells her, with complete honesty.
"I did, didn't I?" she says. "I'll be quick. You do your hair, I can't reach." He sends her a heated look, and turns around. While he's washing his hair, she works him over efficiently with his own scrubby cloth – how did he never learn of those things, in the Time Before Eddie? – and taps him smartly on the ass. "You're done," she says.
For two people whose legs are decidedly shaky, it's remarkable how fast they towel off and make for the bedroom. They even think to grab a couple of the tea lights each. Such teamwork.
And there, stretched out clean and comfortable on Eddie's luxuriously-sized bed, he takes his own sweet time driving her out of her mind.
He starts all over again, slowly, combing out her hair while she finishes her chai. He lets her drift back against the pillows when she's ready, sprinkling kisses over her forehead and eyelids and cheeks before taking her mouth, slowly and with deepening hunger. She's so turned on still that every touch makes her moan and writhe a little. He slides a hand over the side of her ribs just to feel her breathing pick up as he kisses the hollow of her throat. Her hands clutch on his shoulders as he brushes kisses over her breasts, seeking out her nipples with a soft mouth. She likes light touches best, he knows, and he gives her just that, little kisses and licks and suckles till her hips are bucking and her fingers are digging in to his scalp unconsciously.
"Jamie…Jamie…"
One hand strokes a path down her hip, down to her thighs, and slides between, urging her legs apart for him. He trails his fingers through the soft, crisp curls there, barely touching, and a harsh groan escapes her. Still playing there, he lets her feel the edge of teeth on her nipple, and she curses, her spine arching off the bed.
"God, Eddie," he grates. She's so incredibly hot to watch.
He lets go of her nipple and lifts his head to kiss her, rough and needy, and she sort of sobs into his mouth, but she doesn't beg, not yet. He smiles and kisses her one last time and slides down her body.
"Oh, fuck…" she pushes a knuckle into her mouth in anticipation.
His mouth draws garlands of kisses from one hip across her belly to the other, as his hand slides under her thigh. Sending her a smirk as he looks up at her, he pushes her thigh up over his shoulder and leans in to the honey-and-vanilla headrush of the scent of her pussy. He lingers, inhaling her, his own cock hard and weeping and impatient, but he's not done with her. He opens her gently with his thumbs and takes the briefest taste of her tangy slick, and feels a groan tear from his chest as she muffles a cry.
Little licks, around her opening and then finally, finally up to her clit, so swollen and sensitive he can feel her pulse under his lips. She shudders and shifts restlessly, and he licks each side of her clit, and then barely skims a circle around it, once, twice, again – and then pulls back just as she's getting into the rhythm.
"Fuck!" she hisses again, her fists bunching up the quilt underneath her.
He holds her open with the fingers of one hand, and traces two fingers up and down her lips, getting them good and wet, and then slowly eases then inside. He has to grit his teeth and press his forehead into her hip; she's so hot and slick and snug, and he knows exactly what it feels like to sink his cock there. But not yet.
Once he's in good and deep, he starts stroking her slowly inside, flickering his fingers back and forth. She cries out in a steady stream as he finds that sweet electric spot, even screaming for him a little, and speeds up the barest fraction. Oh, God, the feel of her clenching around him. It's like nothing else in the world.
He readjusts her knee over his shoulder, and leans in again. She's bucking and cursing now. When she's this sensitive, she can't get enough of his fingers, but she won't come from that alone, no matter how long. So he pulls her to the edge, and swipes his tongue over her clit, just once. A few moments later, he does it again. And then again. And then finally –
"Pleasepleasepleaseohfuckplease…"
He mouths her clit, rolls his tongue around it without touching the tip, and when she's thrashing and cursing him out so he can barely hold her still, her slides a third finger inside, just a mite deeper, and suckles firmly.
She stops breathing and freezes. And then her spine snaps back and wave after wave after wave of pleasure courses through her as she convulses, hard, taken right out of herself. He slows his fingers and gentles his mouth to almost nothing, spinning her out for long minutes. She's still shaking with aftershocks when he slides his fingers from her, and licks up her juices with a rapturous expression. He lets her leg down onto the bed and rests his head on the other, sliding a warm hand over her belly.
The aftershocks aren't letting up at all, he thinks. It takes him a couple of moments, but he realizes what's going on and looks up. Eddie's crying, quietly, just tears leaking out the corners of her eyes really, but she's smiling wistfully at him, her fingers coming to thread through his hair.
"Hey," he whispers, moving up beside her. "Hey, you okay?" She's never been one for post-orgasmic tears.
She nods. "Just – release. Today. This whole week…month. So much going on, all the family stuff…" she waves her hand vaguely in the air. "And you being Mister Wonderful through it all, I don't know. I don't know what I can even offer you in return. Your family's just taken me in, and mine has more mess than I ever knew."
"What you offered me was you," he says. "All of you. It's more than anyone could ask, it can only be offered. And just 'cause my family's in one city and has learned to deal with each other doesn't mean we've got everything figured out. Reagan mess is not pretty."
"And now this. Sorry. Way to kill a mood," she laughs weakly. "I'm okay, really."
"I know. This is…sort of what I wanted for you. I just wanted you to feel safe to let it all out. Taken care of for a bit."
"You do," she says, laying a hand against his cheek. "You always do." She looks down at their bodies, sprawled together, and back up at him. "Hey. Lemme take care of you."
"You don't have to. It's not like a transaction or anything."
"I know. But I – " she says, rolling over and sliding herself over him, "have been waiting all day to have you inside me, Reagan, and you need this, too."
"I'm not arguing," he manages.
"Sit up, sit up a bit."
He does, propping himself up against the headboard, and bringing her with him on his lap.
"This is new," he comments. "This is nice."
"Nice?" she says, with an eyebrow.
"Very nice?"
She shifts her hips forward and he cradles them in his hands as she leans in to kiss him. He tastes her tiredness, but also a fierce, stubborn love and a peacefulness he hasn't felt in her for some time. She takes him in slowly, so wet still that he slides home easily, and he closes his eyes and groans quietly into her shoulder at the feel of her tightening around him. She rises and falls on him, their breathing falling into rhythm, and he's taken back to the hushed intimacy of touching her slowly and softly in her bath.
It reminds him of their dance, actually, and how they just knew how the other would move, and the thousand things they were trying to tell each other under their words.
And Eddie's not so tired that she hasn't realized that this is a really excellent position for her, and she's speeding up a little and biting her lip with the unexpected sharp pleasure of it. And if Eddie losing herself to pleasure, with her glorious breasts right at eye level isn't one of the hottest things he's seen…
He ducks down to find a nipple with his mouth, and they're so sensitive still that she shudders with it and clenches on him, and he pulls his knees up and thrusts deeper. He catches sight of a glimpse of them in the mirror over her dresser, the candlelight flickering off the twisting curve of her spine, his cock disappearing wetly into her, over and over. It's not long before slow and sweet turns into a tightly-wound cascade of giving and taking, driving each other faster and harder, her clit dragging against his length on every stroke and his nails in her ass urging her on till she comes again with a cry, shuddering in his arms, and he breaks and spills inside her, groaning through his teeth at the volcanic intensity of it.
At length, she rolls off him and lands on her side, apparently unable to move a muscle. He slides down too, pausing just enough to tug the tangled quilt out from under them and pulling it up. He curls into her and wraps an arm around her, cradling a breast in his hand.
Exhausted, they sleep.
