Chapter 6: Second Fiddle

When the end of 8.21 goes a little differently, Eddie and Jamie are forced to confront some realities they've been avoiding for a long time.

"You got plans?" She asked casually, like she just happened to think of it just now. The reality is that she'd been waiting for him for the better part of fifteen minutes, trying to ignore what it means that she'd rather do just about anything with her partner than follow through on the plans she'd had with her boyfriend for days now.

"Uh, yeah. To not be second fiddle," he rejoined, just a touch of bitterness in his heart as he spoke. She'd called them each other's consolation prizes once and it seems pretty clear that that's what he is tonight. He doesn't want to be her consolation prize anymore, not when he wants to be so much more than that.

"Hey," she interjected. "You're not," but he didn't believe her, couldn't think of any other way to interpret the implied invitation.

"Seriously, I think it's… it's not good for me, or you and Barry…" he deflected, already inching away.

"Jamie-" She'd tried to butt in, but he'd backed off and backed away before she figured out how to tell him that she'd lied. There was just a weary, "I'll see you tomorrow, Eddie," and then he was gone.

Jamie's four drinks in sitting alone at the pub down the street from his apartment when the clock ticks to nine, an hour and a half after he left Eddie at the precinct. He doesn't really feel like being around people, but he also doesn't want to be the guy who sits at home, pathetically drinking alone because the girl he finally allows himself to want is with someone else, so he compromised by ending up at the pub alone, close enough to his apartment that he can drink as much as he wants and not have to worry about traveling home.

He's never felt so tired. Tired of pretending he's not in love with Eddie. Tired of always fighting everything he feels in the name of their partnership and the good of the force. Tired of watching her date other men and not having the right to care. Tired of going home alone when he always wants her with him. It's a deep, bone-weary tired that he doesn't want to carry anymore.

He's not going to make a habit of this. He's not the wallowing, self-destructive type and he won't let his own poor timing make him into it. He just needs one night to feel the sorrow of missed opportunities before he shoves it back inside again and pretends it isn't there. One night to nurse the losses before he can go back and pretend nothing has changed.

But, everything has changed for him. Everything looks different now, and not in a good way. For a brief moment, there had been this wild, glowing hope that this could finally be their time. Then that hope fizzled and burned out in the face of Barry and work husband and left ashes in its wake.

He'd been so excited to have his partner back after her convalescence. Seeing her lying in that stairwell had shaken the very core of him and his world has been spinning off its axis ever since.

He'd tried to tell himself that things would settle once she was back on the beat with him, that he'd have his partner back and that's all he really needed. But the truth is, he doesn't really have his partner back and that's not all he needs anymore. It's someone else who has her. She's in the car with him but she belongs to someone else when their shift is over, and he finds that that is the hardest truth he's ever had to swallow.

In those days after her shooting, in the wake of his conversation with Erin, he'd finally been ready to lay his cards on the table and ask her to take a chance on them. And then there'd been Barry in the hospital room and Barry at the precinct and Barry at her apartment and she's clearly moved on. If he's going to survive this, if their partnership is going to survive this, he needs to create some distance before the emotional back and forth of being her partner but not her partner knocks him flat. He's got to figure out how to back away and somehow take his heart with him.

She appears as he's finishing his fourth, sidling up next to him through the crowd at the counter and he has to steel himself against the way everything in him seems to cant toward her.

"Eddie." His tone holds a note of warning instead of its usual warmth and it stings her a little, but she ignores it and slides onto the stool next to him.

Jamie Reagan, she can see, is tipping over the edge toward drunk. She's quite familiar with tipsy Jamie. She quite likes tipsy Jamie, actually. He's warm and affectionate and a little bit more physical than usual. Drunk Jamie, it appears, is a different beast. Drunk Jamie looks sad and brooding and lost in his own head.

Watching him walk out of the precinct earlier, away from her, feeling him distancing himself from her and knowing her choices had hurt him, had done something to her. Something she doesn't want to ever feel again. There's been an odd tension buzzing in him ever since her shooting, like he just can't let go and can't quite contain all that he's feeling. She can almost feel him backing off now, closing himself off from her in a way that makes her feel like she's suddenly missing a limb.

"I went to see Barry."

"I thought he cancelled," he mutters, just a little bit bitterly, not sure he really wants to hear any of this.

"He didn't," she admits. "I did. Because the only person I wanted to see tonight was my partner."

His eyes swing her way sharply, deep and darkly mossy in the low light of the pub.

"I went to tell him that we shouldn't see each other anymore." She continues, looking him straight in the eye. "It's not fair to him and it's not fair to me and it's...it's not fair to my partner. Because Barry and I both know that as long as Jamie Reagan is in my life, he's always going to be second fiddle. Because the only person I ever really want to see is my partner."

She takes a deep, wavering breath and continues, silently pleading with him to understand what she's trying to say.

"At the end of the hard days, you're the one I want beside me, the only one who understands, and at the end of the good days, you're the one I want to celebrate with. You're the only one I always want to be with. And I know we kind of had an understanding that we wouldn't—"

Jamie cuts her off by reaching over and laying his hand over hers.

"Maybe," he murmurs carefully, "it's time we came to a new understanding—that the old one isn't working. For either of us."

He's looking at her with those soft, dark eyes and all the warmth that had been missing when she walked in is suddenly there in them, the gold flecks filled with the golden light of the bar. It's a pity, she thinks, that he's had this much to drink already, because she knows he won't kiss her like this—at least not this first real time—when he's not entirely in command of himself, and she'd really like him to kiss her right now.

Instead, she squeezes his hand with hers and leans over in their quiet bubble in this busy bar to lay her cheek on his shoulder. She feels the weight of his cheek on the top of her head then the warm press of his lips in her hair.

"You're still going to feel this way tomorrow, right?"

His response is to shift his hand under hers and lace his fingers between hers, using it to tug her off her stool and crowd her into his body, til she's surrounded by him, pressed close into him. She can feel the tension that's been vibrating off of him lately slowly melt away until his body is heavy and warm and solid against her and all around her. His lips drag across her hairline before he tucks his face into the curve of her neck.

His words are a soft, warm rumble that she feels all the way to her toes.

"I'm pretty sure I'm going to feel this way forever."