Adam-12 One-Shots

X - Study

Language, violence, graphic injury depiction. Rated M.

Summary: Pete Malloy has learned a lot about Jim Reed.

Start notes: This is a character study, headcanons, and mostly Malloy PoV all at the same time. Yay me!

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Jim Reed, Pete Malloy is beginning to notice, is many things.

Jim's a perfectionist, for one. Every time he messes something up, he makes himself practically sick with worry over it. When he brought the patrol car back from gassing it with a long scratch down the front, he'd been nothing short of mad with anxiety.

Every time he makes a report, he asks Pete to read it over first. And every time, it's absolutely perfect. Still, Jim frets about it until after Mac also affirms him that it's all just fine.

The first time Mac spots an error in one of Jim's reports, a report about a 211 with two fatalities, Jim goes quiet. Pete glances at him, and he looks absolutely crestfallen.

"It's alright, Reed," Mac assures him, "just proofread it next time."

As Jim and Pete's partnership goes on and Jim becomes a little more comfortable in his work — less "yes sir", "no sir" and more "yeah, okay", "nah, it's fine" with Pete — Pete notices that Jim frets a little less. He still reads and rereads every report, and makes Pete read it as well just to be sure, but when Mac comes across a punctuation mistake, Jim accepts the constructive criticism and takes it in stride. It makes Pete proud to see his young partner willing to accept his mistakes.

Pete considers Jim one of his closest friends within just a month. He notices little things — Jim's facial expressions are usually pretty subtle, but still Pete can tell when someone's getting him worked up. His jaw clenches, his hands shake slightly, and there's just an air around him that says, I'm about to throw hands. He's an open book to just about anyone.

He can tell when Jim's tired, upset about something, or has a headache. When Jim gets overwhelmed by police work, Pete's there for him. Sometimes Pete can't tell if he wants to shake Jim's shoulders to knock some sense into him, or wrap him up in a bear hug, but he's perfectly fine with that.

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Nobody ever said being a policeman was easy.

Jim's been staring out the window for the past five minutes, still shivering and soaking wet after pulling that little girl out of the pool. Pete wishes he'd thought to ask if he could take an extra blanket, anything to keep Jim a little warmer.

"What's going on in that brain of yours?" Pete asks, turning on the heat and flicking the vents to face directly at Jim.

"She was like a rag doll, Malloy," Jim whispers. Malloy. Not Pete. The use of a formality shows just how upset Jim really is about this. "To think this all happened because of a noise complaint..."

His shaking seems to be worsening, but his face has melded into a steely, unreadable mask. He doesn't want anybody to know what he's feeling, Pete realizes, because Pete's always told him not to think about stuff like this after it happens.

"That woman should've gone back there first, asked her to turn it down. Maybe she would've seen it happening then," Pete says darkly. "Then that little girl wouldn't be dead."

"Can we stop talking about it?" Jim asks. Pete shuts up immediately. He catches a look at Jim's face in the headlights of a passing car — a red Ford pickup — and he looks like he's about to be sick. Pete can hear his breaths coming out sharp and quick, and he's paler than a ghost.