Chapter Text
If someone asked her to name the emotion she feels when Jay rounds the bottom of the stairs, she’s not sure she’d have an answer. She feels too many things at once and somehow nothing at all.
A little hurt. A little numb.
She never thought this would happen. That this thing between her and Adam would every morph into something that involved others.
Involved Jay and the look on his face.
She forces herself to breathe. Takes a step back from Adam.
Takes in Jay’s words.
She tries to tell him it’s nothing but it’s pretty evident it’s something. It’s written all over his face.
He’s not wrong. They can’t do this here.
Jay, to his credit, is his usual self with her for the rest of the day. Perhaps a little more contained, but she’s used to him getting like this on cases. It’s her who’s struggling. She desperately wants to say something to him, but she doesn’t know where to start or where she’d end.
Maybe she should have told him. He’s her partner (Hell he’s her best friend at this point if they were going to stick a label on it.) And she’s dating someone else in their team. Their very small team of six. It feels like she should have told him but there’s a part of her that knows Jay is the last person she wanted to tell any of this too - though she’s not willing to think too much about that fact.
She wonders if he’s mad that she clearly lied to him when Adam showed up at her apartment the other week. When Jay has asked her if Adam would get the wrong idea that she and Jay were together. She drags a hand through her hair at the mess she’s made. Is making. With Voight, with Jay.
And it’s him who comes to her. Finds her alone.
She forces herself to look at him as she speaks because looking anywhere else is easier than looking at him and the kind, contained expression on his face.
‘I should have told you,’ she tells him holding back tears. ‘I’m sorry.’
He meets her gaze. ‘I get it, and you didn’t have to tell me anything.’ It’s not accusatory. His words soft and meant to comfort her. She knows that. Knows him.
His voice too is rich with emotion when he speaks again. ‘We’re good and we’re always gonna be good.’
She nods shakily. She needed to hear it. Selfish though that may be. She needs her and Jay to be good. Now and always.
She doesn’t want to lose his friendship or their partnership. It’s the best thing in her life. Has been for a while now.
It’s the reason she was so upset that night he was shot. The reason she leaned on Adam and didn’t stay with Jay; she was downright terrified at the thought of losing him. And she’d been hurt. Hurt by his words about her father.
And she knows Jay has no idea about the kind of childhood she endured. Knows he was hurting and lashing out. But words hurt more when they come from the people you care about the most.
He’d apologised, profusely, and meant it. They’d moved past it, but she drives home that night and wonders how things might be different right now if that conversation hadn’t happened.
————
She finds him leaning against the front hood of the car on his own. To most, it seems a casual pose but she sees the tension in his shoulders and the frown creasing his brow.
She feels for him even if she can’t quite understand what this case has dredged up for him. She needs him to know he did the right thing. That he made the right call, but she knows it’s easier said than done when it comes to Jay. He’s overly critical of himself when he’s forgiving of others.
‘What thing?’ he asks her.
She tries her best to put it into words. Their friendship, their trust. But she’s never been particularly verbose, and she ineloquently settles on ‘thing’.
‘It’s the thing that works between us. Bad case - one of us doesn’t want the other one around. The other one stays anyway. We talk. We feel better. We can go to work the next day.’
He turns his head to look at her and gives an almost imperceptible shake of his head as he smiles at her bumbled words before he opens up to her.
His trust means the world to her. She knows it’s not easily given. Neither is hers but she’d follow him blind.
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They sit nursing beers at the bar at ease in one another’s company.
The bar is quiet, but they do their usual people watching game where they try to work out the relationships between people and what they might be saying. He makes her laugh when he decides that the bald guy chatting up the women at the other end of the bar is putting on an English accent to try and charm them. One of the women turns and catches their eyes as they both laugh and the way she smiles and rolls her eyes at them makes Hailey think Jay probably wasn’t far off the mark.
Her phone buzzes and she turns it over quickly seeing it’s another message from Adam. My new place comes with a mean bath if you’re feeling lonely?
The words are so Adam she can’t help but smile a little as she turns it back over so it lies face down on the bar.
‘That Adam?’ Jay asks softly.
‘Yeah,’ she breathes.
Jay nods to himself and gives her a half smile. It almost reaches his eyes. ‘You should go.’
She bites her lip and meets his gaze. She wishes she didn’t, or maybe she’s glad that she does, because it only confirms how decent Jay is.
She grabs her jacket and leaves before she allows herself to find a reason to stay.
She wonders idly on the drive if that pretty blonde at the other end of the bar catches Jay’s eye again. Wonders why the thought is even on her mind.
————
It all gets more complicated than she’d ever wanted it to. This thing between she and Adam.
It suddenly involves more people than she'd ever like it to have - Voight, Kim, Antonio, Trudy. It’s all a messy web of secrets and half-truths and she knows they’re dancing on a knife edge. Threading a tiny needle as Trudy put it.
The only person who doesn’t make her feel like it’s complicated is Jay. He’s kept remarkably quiet about it the whole time. Just steadily had her back like always.
She’s infinitely grateful for the fact but she wishes in some ways he’d been frustrated with her, them, like everyone else. Maybe then Jay wouldn’t be on her mind so much. Maybe then she wouldn’t feel like she’s leaving half of herself behind every time she’s apart from him.
She knows the way it’s going to play out. It really wasn’t ever supposed to be anything more than two people seeking comfort in one another, but they already cared about each other as friends and colleagues so it was never going to be as neatly packaged as she thought.
She, they, end things. It stings a little but it’s not heartbreak. She knows that. She just wishes love was easier. They both do.
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They’d nearly died today. She and Jay. Despite lasting only seconds, it felt like forever lying in his protective arms on the floor of the van. And god, he’d pulled that damn vest around her at great risk to himself. He always tells her he has her back. Today he proved it in a different way.
There had been a moment when she had a coherent thought in amongst all the adrenaline that this might be it. This might be how she leaves this world and all she could think was that she’d be okay with this being her last moments because she was with Jay.
If she allowed herself to dwell on that, she knows it would lead her thoughts to a place she’s not willing to address.
She just can’t. Not when there’s so much at stake. She can’t risk it. She won’t.
And Kelton is now the god-damn mayor. They all know what it means for them: their jobs, their ranks. Nothing is certain.
They’re downstairs after the raid unpacking their gear when Jay casually says, ‘Besides, I’m going where you go.’
It makes her stop in her tracks. The way he says it - matter of fact. Like it’s a given that he’ll go where she goes. She’s never had that. Never had someone choose to stick with her.
She throws a smile at him over her shoulder. Couldn’t hide her grin if she tried. ‘Oh, yeah?’
Their conversation halts as the rest of the team come barrelling through the doors and it’s probably a good thing because she’s fairly certain she may have stopped breathing.
He’s her partner though. It’s normal to feel that way.
She repeats it like a mantra to herself throughout the rest of the day.
He’s my partner
He’s my partner
She can’t afford to lose that. She won’t.
She watches as he walks up the stairs, trance-like, an hour or so later. He walks straight past her in a world of his own and heads straight into the break room. Something’s wrong.
The shell-shocked expression on his face when she follows him in to the room only confirms it.
‘I have no idea,’ he breathes when she asks him what’s going on.
He tells her Voight finally voiced what she already knew - that this unit would be Jay’s someday. Jay’s possibly the only one who doesn’t see that he’s the future of this unit.
He leads without trying. Commands respect because he earns it. The team look to him in the field, Voight trusts him to make the right calls - and he does. He steers them straight. It’s only ever himself he leads astray; never the team.
She tells him Kelton’s day of reckoning will come and she believes it. There’s only so long a man that slippery can escape the noose.
‘Not in time for this unit,’ Jay says before he quietly adds words that overwhelm her, ‘for us.’
It’s the closest they’ve ever come to naming whatever lies between them.
There’s so much she could say: I want you; I don’t want to lose you; I don’t want to know who I am without you.
She says none of them.
‘We’ve only been partners a couple of years. You’ll forget about me just fine.’
His look says it all. She knows she’s deflecting, and she thinks he knows it too. ‘Hailey,’ he says in disbelief. That soft half smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. He looks as if he's about to say more. She can feel it between them though; he doesn’t need to say any more.
They teeter on the edge for a moment before she makes the decision for them both. ‘We’ll be alright,’ she says. They have to be.
She can’t imagine them being any other way.