The plan had come together beautifully, in the end. Homicide, Serious Crime, and the Drugs squad had joined forces, and their two-pronged attack worked like a dream. The crews watching the Deputy Mayor's house had intercepted a team of three men on their way to kill him, and the crew who'd joined with Drugs in their bust down by the harbor had arrested no less than ten people in a warehouse full of guns and heroin. An hour after arriving at the station three of their arrested suspects were singing like canaries, and two hours after that they were all booked and sent down to spend what remained of the night in lockup. Sergeant Wolfe had called a briefing, for those detectives who'd been awake during the raids; half of the team was at home in their beds, and they'd take over once the sun rose.
And so it was Joanne Conner found herself leaning against a wall in the briefing room, her body still vibrating from adrenaline and too much caffeine, listening to Duncan Freeman rib his mates when the Sarge and his partner walked through the door.
Something had changed, Jo could see that at once. Despite the positive result both the Sarge and Detective Mapplethorpe looked drawn, haggard almost. They moved through the doorway as one, stood a little too close together as they surveyed the people milling about the room. There were grass-stains on the knees of the Sarge's trousers, and when Detective Mapplethorpe crossed her arms Jo caught a glimpse of a bandage covering her palm. Souvenirs from the dustup at the Deputy Mayor's house, no doubt; Jo had been across town with the Drugs squad, dealing with her own piece of the excitement, and so did not know, yet, what had befallen her Sarge. No one had been wounded, that was the report Jo had received, and with the Deputy Mayor safe, the suspects in custody, and all their people still standing, she would have expected the Sarge to smile.
Only he didn't.
She would have expected him to call out to his team, to gather them all around him for their own little check-in before the official debrief, but he didn't do that either. Nor did he fling himself into one of the empty chairs gathered around the table. He didn't raise his hand to wave at Duncan, who he'd promised to take out for a drink. He didn't even catch her eye and nod in recognition. He just stood there, shoulder-to-shoulder with Mapplethorpe, almost touching. Almost, but not quite; the barest inch separated them, but they seemed shrouded somehow, standing in a bubble of their own making, set apart from the rest of the team.
What happened out there? Jo wondered as she looked at them. What could have left them both looking so miserable? She didn't think they'd fallen out with each other; surely if either of them were cross they wouldn't have lingered like that, together. Had they enjoyed working with one another once more, were they disappointed at the thought of their impending, inevitable separation? Had someone caused problems for them on the raid? Or was it something else, something to do with the way Detective Mapplethorpe had swayed towards him in the breakroom the morning before, the way the Sarge had reached for her before he let his hand fall away?
"All right, boys and girls!" Terry Jarvis came walking in the room behind them, and the Sarge and Mapplethorpe both moved at once, drifting away from one another and towards their respective teams, but as Jo watched them she saw how their eyes lingered on one another, and she wondered.
The briefing lasted an hour, as each crew relayed the information about their role in events. It had all been down to drugs in the end; the drug ring had orchestrated the murders to elevate the Deputy Mayor's position, but after he'd spent an entire day with the police crawling all over his house they began to doubt his dedication. He knew too much, names and dates and plots - he was currently spilling his guts to Sergeant Ryan in an interview room - and they decided it would be best to remove him. One team had gone to silence him while the rest of the crew had set about packing up their stash of contraband, intending to ship it elsewhere and wash their hands of it, but that was when the Drugs squad nabbed them.
Jen couldn't have cared less about any of it. All she cared about, truly, was Nick. When she closed her eyes she didn't hear the shouts of her team identifying themselves or the sharp echo of gunfire or the curses of the would-be assassins; when she closed her eyes all she heard was Nick's voice, soft and full of heat, telling her I've been waiting for you since the day we walked out of the Claybourne house the first time.
She hadn't had a chance to respond to him. She hadn't yet had a chance to tell him how much she missed him, how desperately she wanted him to hold her. There had been no bloody time to tell him that she felt exactly the same. It had been five years - closer to six - since the first time she walked away from Nick, and while her career had continued to advance the rest of her life had remained locked in stasis. There had been no boyfriends - with the notable exception of Brian Van Der Burgh, may he rot in peace - and her circle of friends had not expanded beyond her team. She lived in the same house, went to work at the same place, lived the same days over and over. It was not until Nick had come marching into Matt's kitchen that she felt as if her life, her heart, had started moving once again. Everything had changed, when Nick came back to her, and she had felt herself hurtling towards something, the biggest change of all. That was what had scared her off, six months before, the terrifying thought of losing everything for the sake of one man, but the last half a year without him had taught her a valuable lesson. None of it meant anything, if she didn't have him.
That was what she wanted to tell him, that she was finally ready, that neither of them needed to wait any more, that if he was in, she was in, completely. Marriage, babies, moving into his nearly-finished house, spending every moment they could together, jogging through the park on Saturday mornings, falling asleep wrapped up in one another every night; she was ready for it, all of it. All of him. And she rather thought he was ready, too, but maybe he wasn't, maybe he wasn't prepared to forget how things had fallen apart, maybe he would need more coaxing, maybe she'd have to earn his trust again. She wanted to know, wanted to talk to him once more, but this was hardly the setting for it, and she did not know when next she'd have a chance to speak to him alone.
"The rest of the suspects are going to spend the night in lockup," Jarvis was saying. "Day shift will handle them come morning. You lot, type up your reports, go home, and get some sleep. We're going to be untangling this for days."
It was currently about 4:00 a.m. on Sunday morning. By the time Jen finished her report the sun would be rising. But she'd have the day to rest, and maybe after she got some sleep, maybe then she could call Nick, and they could talk again, properly talk. All around her people began to file out of the room, but Nick wasn't one of them; he didn't seem to be in any hurry to go. The pretty blonde girl, the one who'd been partnered with Duncan, she kept looking at him, and Jen wondered what that was about, if the girl might have harbored a crush for her Sarge. The thought made her smile. Nick wasn't the type to carry on a relationship with a subordinate, and when it became clear that he had no intention of meeting her gaze the girl gathered up her bag and marched away.
Jo was trying to catch his eye, as everyone else started to leave, but Nick ignored her. She had her marching orders, and if she wanted to talk shop she could wait until Monday, when everyone was fresh and the chaos of the last twenty-four hours was a distant memory. Right now the only thing in the world that mattered to him was Jen.
There had been tears in her eyes, when he told her that he had been waiting for her, was waiting for her still, that she was the reason he'd never really given all of himself to Juliet. She had told him outright that she had gone to him the night before, and he needed no further proof of her resolve; if she had found the courage to drive to his house, then she must have been certain, as he was certain. And if she was certain, well...Nick knew who he wanted to share his bed when next he tumbled into it, who he wanted beside him now and always. There was only one woman for him; there had only ever been one.
He just needed a chance to bloody talk to her.
Jen hadn't left yet, either; she was watching him, her grey eyes shining, and in those eyes he saw all the reassurance he needed. They were, once again, on the same bloody page. The only question was how; the room wasn't empty yet, and Jarvis and Wolfie and Waverly were gathered in a little clump in the corner. If Nick lingered too long he knew they'd start to wonder what he was about, and the last thing he wanted was to draw attention to himself, or to Jen. And so he took a deep breath, uncrossed his arms, and walked right over to her.
"Hey," he said softly as he reached her, hanging his head so that his voice wouldn't carry beyond her ear.
"Hey," she answered, swaying slightly towards him, and oh, but his heart rejoiced at that, knowing that the push and pull between them was still the same, that she still drifted towards him in quiet moments such as this one.
"I'll need an hour to finish my report," he told her. Jen looked up at him, so close that his lips almost brushed her cheek as she moved her head, and the sudden, desperate need he felt to kiss her nearly overwhelmed him. "But after that," he continued, "when we're done. Let me drive you home?"
The question hung in the air between them for an instant. Jen had been driving all bloody day, and it was her car, not his, that was currently in the forensic team's custody after being riddled with bullets in front of the Deputy Mayor's house. It was time, Nick thought, for her to take a break, time for him to step in and care for her as he so dearly longed to do. Time for both of them to rest.
"Yeah," she said, and relief washed over him in waves. "All right."
She wanted to talk to him, too. She was no more willing than he to let this opportunity pass them by. Maybe, just maybe, he thought, they were going to be all right.
"I'll see you in an hour, Jen," he said.
"One hour, Buchanan," she told him, smiling. That smile was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life, and it filled him with hope.