The Right Thing
A sequel to chapter 1, "On the Defensive." Maya and Eddie have a little chat about Jamie.
"So…" Maya ventures in the quiet of their meal break on a slow, chilly afternoon of a tour nearly a week after their confrontation in the break room.
"So…?" Eddie echoes.
"You and Reagan."
Really, Maya thinks, she ought to be commended for waiting this long. She's been very patient. A couple of days off and a couple of busy tours may have supplemented her patience, but still.
She's kept her promise not to say anything despite their assurances that it was unnecessary. She'll keep her piece as long as it seems right to do so. She's been watching them, though, and they haven't changed her mind about keeping quiet.
Maybe Eddie challenges him a little more than a typical subordinate would, and maybe he gives her opinion a little more weight than the others. But really, that's nothing more than anyone would expect, knowing their history as partners. It's nothing more than she would do for her own former partner, and there certainly hadn't been any romantic leanings there. She knows Eddie slips in to his desk occasionally for a brief, quiet conversation. But again, other than a few soft looks she catches between them on occasion, that's really nothing she would feel weird about with Javi if he became their sergeant. She's been looking for ways it's affecting their judgment or their responsibilities and she isn't finding them.
"Me and Reagan, what?"
"He was your partner. And now you're getting married. How'd that happen?"
Eddie chuckles. "How do you think that happened?"
Maya smiles, but shakes her head. "I know plenty of guys who wouldn't care about sneaking around with their partner, especially one who looks like you, no matter what the regs say. Reagan doesn't really seem like the type."
"Ohhh, trust me, he's not," she responds, turning her eyes to the sandwich in front of her before smiling back at Maya conspiratorially, "He tried reaallly hard not to fall in love with me."
Maya laughs, but levels her a cynical look.
"It's not always about love."
"With Jamie, trust me, it would have to be about love for him to even think about crossing that line."
She's never quite sure now what to say to Maya about Jamie. There's a certain level of comfort and familiarity she wants to foster with her new partner that would normally entail plenty of sharing about her fiancé. But her fiancé is their sergeant, and she's also aware of the need to make sure that her partner respects him and that the familiarity of her sharing about him doesn't compromise his authority in her eyes.
"That by-the-book thing?" She finally ventures, "That's not really about the book. Jamie… he does the right thing, no matter what the book says–or doesn't say, for that matter. And we thought the right thing for a long time—a reaallly long time—was for us to pretend we didn't feel that way about each other and just be partners."
"Until…" Maya prompts.
Eddie laughs, but sobers quickly.
"Until one day last year I got shot," she says, to Maya's shock. "The vest caught it, but it shook Jamie up pretty bad. But, we were in the middle of trying really hard to ignore us at the time and I was seeing someone else. Then a few weeks later, after I ditched the other guy, a guy with a grudge put a hit out on Jamie…" She trails off and her eyes go faraway.
The memories of that day still come with a jumble of emotions. She'll never forget the terror of that moment, that sudden knowledge that Jamie was in danger and out of her sight, then the subsequent knowledge that she now has two deaths to her name. But the day is softened, too, by the memory of long hours in his arms afterward, the quiet urgency of their declarations and decisions to not waste any more time apart. It had been a terrible, wonderful day.
"And?" Maya's impatience breaks into her jumbled memories.
"And he almost succeeded."
"But he didn't."
"I shot him. And all of that shook me up pretty bad. And we decided the right thing was for us to not pretend anymore," she finishes simply.
"And then our straight-laced sergeant took you in his arms in the middle of the street and declared his undying love for you." Maya jokes with a dramatic flourish of her arms.
To her surprise, Eddie blushes. It was meant as a joke, but Maya gets the feeling that maybe she hit pretty close to the mark.
"Something like that. Jamie proposed two days later."
Maya chokes on her coffee.
"Proposed? You went from partners straight to engaged?"
"Well," Eddie hedges, "there were a couple of days in between there." More like 36 hours, and a hazy, undefined week or two before that, but who's counting?
"Still. That's a little bit crazy."
"We'd already spent five years together by then, like this in the car every day talking about everything. He was my T.O. and then he was my partner and my best friend, and I was falling in love with him for a lot of that time, no matter how hard we tried to ignore it. I already knew almost everything important there was to know about him and he knew me better than any guy I've ever actually dated. Once we decided it was time… there was just no reason to wait. We'd done enough of that already."
"And the commissioner…" Maya says leadingly.
"He told us congratulations and let us know on no uncertain terms that he expected us to find new partners."
"And you did?"
"We balked at first. You know there's actually nothing on the books about that?"
Maya looks at her disbelievingly.
"There's not. Everybody thinks there is, but all unwritten assumptions. But the commissioner… he agrees with it whether it's a rule or not. And he expected us to abide by that as much as any other cops."
Eddie takes a minute to toss her sandwich wrapper back and forth between her hands, thinking about the tension between Jamie his dad after their engagement, the flak that Jamie gets because he's the PC's kid.
"I know you think Jamie has some kind of hall pass because his dad's the commissioner. But it's not like that. It's more like... a weight. Jamie doesn't want anything he hasn't earned, and his dad wouldn't give it to him anyway. And the people around him won't even give him half of what he deserves because they're afraid it'll make them look like they're giving him favors. It just makes everybody watch you all that much harder. It's like living under a microscope.
"Do you know he came in first on the Sergeants exam? He'll never tell you that, but I will. Thousands of cops took that test, Maya. That's got nothing to do with his dad. It's because he's got everything it takes to be great at this. He earned this, and he'll prove it to all of you.
"When it comes to this job, Jamie's going to think really hard about what the right thing is, for the cops on the street and for the people in his neighborhood, and then he's going to do it. And he's going to do it whether the brass— his dad included— agree with him or not. And sometimes you're going to disagree with him, but the really annoying thing is, he's usually right."
"Hey. Hey! You sold me. You can get off your soapbox," Maya laughs.
Eddie's head snaps back to look at Maya. "I did?"
In some ways, it had been the discovery of their engagement that had tipped Maya over the edge in his favor. He may be their sergeant but, in an elemental way, he's still just a man who places the safety of his fiancée into her hands every day, and she's deeply aware of the weight of that. When she thinks of the way he looks at Eddie, she knows that, for him, she has the most important job in the house. It's a silent vote of confidence in her that she's not oblivious to the honor of.
"Reagan's alright," is all she says.
"Good. Now we need to sell the others."
"I don't think we do," Maya interjects.
"What?" Eddie rears back and looks at her, confused.
"I don't think he needs our help." Maya repeats. "He's already won over Tuna, and Tuna's stories –you know he's going to be telling that for weeks—are going to turn some others. He's got Jordan and Yong and the guys who transferred from the 12th in his corner. And you, obviously.
"If what you say is true, just let him do his thing and you do your thing. The rest will come around. They're not all going to be as crazy about him as you are. It'd be a little disturbing if they were. But they'll come around."
Eddie sits back and eyes her contemplatively, willing at least to consider that.
Finally, she nods and relaxes into her seat.
"I know you might not completely believe me yet, but this precinct is going to be better–for everyone—because of him. You'll see."
AN: I wasn't really sure at first if I liked Maya on the show or not, but I'm definitely finding that she's an interesting character that provides potential for good conversations.
Let me know what you think in the reviews, pretty please!