#why am i in juliet is bleeding angst mode

[pigtailedgirl]

Balance Beam

Jack Huey angry character piece. Late season 2.

Being a good detective requires understanding balance. The edge of your skills to push a confession or wait to pull it out. The quiet to study your perspective case or perp, or the voice to strike. Balancing not only what you see but trusting when you know and when you are choosing to act upon it. That's how you close, how you really solve and then can go home to sleep at night.

He can't find a partner who gets this, and his third scotch bottle means no sleep. He doesn't want another one of either anyways but now he's off balance and it's not just the liqour.

Vecchio keeps trying to be there, and it's only vaguely enough. It's not Louis. Louis was his balance. Louis was a damn fool and all mouth and emotion. Never walked into a case with reason. See, that was Huey's place in this partnership. That's how they worked. Louis it was always a hair-brained feeling and instinct or gut.

It was his gut that murdered him. Had to knock it to Vecchio and feed. “Let's get em back for taking our bust with a free meal on mister new first grade dick and no tip Jack.” Or honestly, it was because Louis liked Vecchio. Louis liked the two of them, the mountie and Vecchio, as much as he was jealous of the solve rate comparison. Louis' heart meant he cared when someone else was happy or hurt and he showed it.

It's why Jack tolerates Vecchio now. Didn't blame him for any of this. For Louis. For the similarities of the soul they were or are. Vecchio may be dulled in his emotional grief, but he's still like Louis with temper and passion, he at least cared and showed he feels it, even if it was maybe part selfish, and it tempers the dull ache left in Jack's heart that at least Vecchio tries to balance Jack, or himself. Jack doesn't pin this on Vecchio.

But Jack's happy to stick it to the mountie. Because he's the one Jack blames.

Oh he knows it too. Jack sees it in his quiet eyes. In the way he avoids the conflict and Jack now like the coward. Avoids Vecchio's fixes too, while now, *scoffs* now, turning to softness with Vecchio. No longer pushing there, like he's afraid to tip the scales and break it. So too when Vecchio is with Jack, he trails like a third wheel or keeps a wide berth, watching and desperate on the outside, and Jack likes it. And as Vecchio tries and trips and unbalances juggling the two of them, watches between them with sad distance thinking it's his fault, trying to fix and mend in guilt...well Jack gets his only emotional rise in his jealous pleasure of how it makes the mountie unhappy but the bastard can't stop it.

Cause damnnit if he's superman, if he's so right and just, why couldn't he stop Louis too!

So...it's cruel, but maybe Jack gets his reason or unreason to keep going in the unbalance he's caused them. In can't just mend with him in the middle. His loss is still theirs.

The mountie, Fraser, skirts the lines like he's done since he showed up in the bull and dragged Vecchio to his bosom and madness, but he can't drag them out of grief that easy. Especially if he won't own feeling it.

See, secretly that's why Jack hates him most. Will keep right on doing so, don't give me those sad eyes Louis! No, not for Vecchio either. Maybe one day the 27th will forgive and welcome the canadian back but not him.

Cause there is no reasoning loss. Jack knows it. Feels it for Louis now. And he can forgive Vecchios' feud, or Zuko's criminality, or even god help him Sorrento's planting the bomb, but there's no way it's reasonable or there's a way to justify the why and how Fraser. There was no justice the minute Louis died.

He didn't want it either. He wanted the entire gamed system to pay. Vecchio got that feeling right away. Vecchio shared it. Owned it too. Yet the mountie wouldn't let them... and he's still trying to reason out. Reason Vecchio back, even after when he came to willingly, and reason Jack. The stupid bastard!

Jack's not stupid. Like he said, good detective. Balanced or no, drunk or grief ridden. He wasn't... Louis wasn't dead when the mountie broke at the seems the first time, then pretended he didn't feel, that reason hadn't deserted him. But they let it slide then. For Vecchio's sake. They gave them the support, and held with and against. Yet now he can't give it to them back. Give it to his partner. Not even to Vecchio now.

Jack watches the mountie. He knows lying to yourself. No wanting to balance yourself, pretending with reason or booze when you can't take the hurt.

But to do it at the expense of your partner? No see, that was the unforgivable moment. Or all the moments he held Jack and Vecchio back in the aftermath but had reasons too good to hold on. It makes Jack wanna be sick. Or is that the scotch again? Mountie sandbagging indeed.