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The twenty-first feels different.
Jay has parked in this spot thousands of times. He is more than familiar with this building, its creaks and its cracks. He didn’t think he would be here tonight.
The thread that ties him to Hailey always seems to get tangled up here. When he heard the first messages twelve hours ago, he had just returned to base. Two days out of contact was fairly common in his position. He typically would reconnect to find a couple messages from Hailey while he was away- wishing him well, asking how he is doing, asking when he is coming home. All these questions he didn’t have answers to. He loves her- God, he loves her- but he didn’t know what to say to her. He did a double take when he turned on his phone and found a message from Torres. And Trudy. Torres, again. Will. Hailey.
She went missing. Jay used to have nightmares about it. Terrible dreams where he would reach for her as she was dragged away into some darkness, but their fingers barely brushed and he was too late every time as she vanished in front of him. Every time this dream plagued him, he would wake up in a cold sweat, panting. He would reach across their bed to feel her curled up under the covers and pull her to him until he was the only thing swallowing her up.
Jay listened to each message on a loop. It played like his worst nightmares as he drove from base to the airport. Torres called when he thought she might be missing. He checked in just in case Hailey had told Jay some plans she didn’t tell anyone else. She didn’t. Trudy called when it was confirmed she was gone. Torres called again once they found her and Will called once she was released from Med. Hailey called last to tell him everything from the district parking lot that night. His CI did this. He did this. Somewhere along the way, Jay became the darkness he used to protect her from.
The plane touched down in Chicago as burning tears of anger slipped down his face. He stepped off the plane and got sick in an O’Hare bathroom out of fear or relief or exhaustion, or a combination of the three. When he checked his phone on US soil, he expected to see her name again, but it’s blank.
And perhaps he doesn’t deserve to see her name on his screen anymore. Lord knows he watched her name appear then disappear from his screen enough times in the past several months to warrant never seeing it again.
He trusted the team to find her when she was missing- he did, but he should have been there. There is not a door in Chicago he would not have kicked down for her, and he can’t help but feel that if he were here- if he never left her like he promised- they would have found her sooner. Even more, she would not have been taken at all.
Home was his first stop. Jay knew she wasn’t there the moment he walked in the door. The rooms were dark and dreary, markedly different from the light she filled their apartment with. She had been safe for twenty-four hours at that point, and she should have been there.
He checks each room anyway, and it feels like a museum built for him. His hat is hanging from the rack and his mug sits untouched on the counter. His razor is where he left it in the bathroom. She used to hate it when he left it there. Is it that hard to move it one foot up into the cabinet? she used to tease. Now, she couldn’t bear to move it an inch. The only thing different in their home are photos, framed and put on display like they were holding his place until he came back to her.
Hailey could have died.
The thought alone has tears stinging his eyes again as he crosses the district parking lot. All these months he has been telling himself that he has been healing to come home to her. Agony aches in his bones when he realizes he could have been coming home to her funeral. Picking out an inscription for her headstone and taking apart that museum of an apartment to pack her stuff into boxes memory by memory.
That agony simmers into anger when Jay remembers that someone did this to her. Someone put their hands on her. One day, he may visit their headstones. He’ll tell them how lucky they are they don’t have to face him too, and how stupid they were to choose her as a target in the first place.
The building that is so loud in his memory is deathly quiet when Jay steps into the twenty-first district doors. Officers on the night patrol shift do not pay him much mind as he makes his way to Trudy’s desk. It always felt like they did not quite belong here in these late hours- like patrol took over the building at night and anyone else pulling long hours were visitors on their turf. That has not changed.
Trudy looks up from her computer when he reaches the desk and greets her stiffly. “Sarge.”
She was expecting him. Of course she was after Jay called and asked Trudy to ping Hailey’s phone only to be told she didn’t need to. There are days worth of emotions etched on her face. Somewhere under the fatigue and the worry, she might be a little relieved to see him tapping at her desk again. “Jay,” she nods. Trudy takes off her glasses and folds them on the desk. “Glad to see you made it here in one piece. How you holding up?”
He is already pushing away from the desk towards the stairs when he answers. “I just want to see her.”
“Stop.” Trudy waves him back and leans forward on her elbows. She stares at him in wait until Jay trudges back to the desk. “That didn’t answer my question.”
“Seriously?”
“She who holds the buzzer holds the power,” Platt answers flatly. “Come all the way back.”
Jay closes the small gap he left between himself and the desk. Trudy stays leaning on the wood, studying his face. He suddenly feels conscious of his red-rimmed eyes and skin flushed with adrenaline. “I’m going to ask you again. How are you holding up?”
“I’m not good,” he stammers. How could he be? “I don’t… I just want to see my wife. That’s all I want, Trudy. So, please just…” Jay motions weakly to the bullpen door. He has never been kept out of Hailey’s life by anyone but Hailey herself. This was always his role. She was always his to know and his to protect, and at some point over the past eight months he let that change. He is on the outside.
“She has been through hell and back.” Trudy levels with him. She does not give a time frame. Today, the past week, the past eight months. “Jay, did you not stop to think about why she's at the station at this hour?"
"I assumed she's on a case. She tends to bury herself in work when things get-"
"No," Trudy cuts him off. "The only reason she is spending the night in my station is because I promised her nothing could hurt her here. Nothing and no one will make me break that promise so before I buzz you up, you are going to be honest with me about how you are really doing.”
“I’m solid, okay?” He lies. “You know better than anyone that I would never hurt her.” Again. Jay would never hurt her again- and he would never even think of laying a hand on her out of anything but love.
“Well, you know what they say about fooling people twice,” Trudy mutters. She studies Jay’s pleading face one more time before reaching for her glasses again. She unfolds the stems and slides them behind her ears. “That might not have been fair... or maybe it was, I’m not entirely sure anymore. Just understand that I’m not buzzing you up there for you to turn around and leave again, but if she doesn’t want your company, it’s you I’m kicking to the curb tonight.”
“I understand,” Jay sighs. “Please.”
With one last glance, Trudy agrees and reaches to buzz Jay up into the bullpen.
He can tell on the walk up that the room is dark and quiet, completely still. He steps softly so he doesn’t startle her. Hailey’s desk faces away from the stairs. She won’t see him coming. When Jay reaches the top of the stairs, he doesn’t see her at all.
Jay glances at each empty desk and through the blinds into Voight’s dark office. He would usually find Hailey to be at her desk hunched over a stack of cases she swore were important to cover tonight, yet her desk is tidy.
He is just about to check the locker room when he spots the bottom of her shoes. It is just the soles- those worn-down, tattered boots she loves too much to get rid of. Hailey is laying on the couch in the breakroom with her feet up on the armrest.
Something inside of him breaks when he sees her asleep here. Sleep never came easy for her at home even with him nearby. The fact that she was so beaten down, so exhausted to feel safe falling asleep in the district hurts to his core.
Or maybe she felt safer falling asleep here than she did in their home, and maybe that hurts more.
Most nights, he would expect her to wake up when he walked in the room. Her sleepy smile greeted him on numerous late homecomings when he trudged in from work hours after her. He stands over her for a moment, waiting for her eyes to blink open and her lips to quirk up when she sees him like so many times before, but she stays asleep like he isn’t even there.
Through the shadows, Jay can see the marks on her face. Pale skin gives way to dark purple bruises around her left eye and across her jaw. Her lip is split and swollen, and she wears a long sleeve shirt and pants that he is sure cover miles of bruises he can’t see.
The tips of her fingernails are dark from the caked blood she wasn’t able to completely scrub out, and her hands are raw. Her fingers… her finger. His lungs go cold. Jay swears it is just a trick of the light at first- that the dark band he put on her finger is lost in the darkness of the room, but deep down he knows he is wrong. She took off her ring.
It almost knocks him to his knees. It is a kind of pain that he can feel clawing from his gut, prickling like needles on his skin. He drops to sit on the floor next to the couch and scrubs his hands over his face.
There isn’t a lot Hailey can’t come back from. She survived things she hasn’t even told him about. He has watched her be beaten, assaulted, manipulated and betrayed. She has come back from a lot.
Of all the things that could wreck her, he never meant for it to be him.
Jay sits with his knees drawn up and watches her sleep for a few long minutes. He wonders when she took that ring off. Was it the day he left? The first call he let go to voicemail? The fifth? What was it that convinced her he was done? He knows Hailey, but for the first time he realizes he does not know anything about her right now.
Every phone call they had was about him and what he needed. She supported him through everything, but she still had a life here. Jay doesn’t know about what her days were like or the cases she worked while he was away. It took her nearly dying to get him home.
It is ironic that she was the only one upholding their vows with a bare ring finger. Jay glances down at the black band on his finger, stark against his pale skin and the vows he broke to her.
More than anything, he just misses her. He ached for her every day while he was gone but having her two feet away makes it unbearable. She is right in front of him, and somehow she feels like a stranger and the person he knows better than himself all at once.
Jay reaches out to touch her just to remind them both that as long as she is here, he is still in this. He moves slowly to wake her up. He wraps his fingers around her shoulder gently and drags his thumb along the neckline of her sweater, back and forth until she stirs.
Jay is a dark silhouette in a darker room. He banked on Hailey recognizing his touch before she even opened her eyes, but when they do shoot open, they are wild. Her gaze is unfocused and he can see the way her throat constricts in panic. All Hailey sees is a figure looming over her and all she feels is his grip on her shoulder before she lunges up for her gun that she left on the small table by the couch.
“No,” Jay reaches to stop her when he sees the weapon. “No, no, no. It’s me.” He grabs her wrist as her fingers graze the gun, and he pulls her back. It is the only time he will use his strength against her when he holds her off so he can reach the weapon to turn on the safety and push it farther away on the table. “Hey, it’s me. It’s me.” He whispers, his voice as quiet as it has ever been.
Hailey falls back onto the couch in a heap, and he can hear her ragged breathing in the quiet room. Despite his better judgment, Jay’s first instinct is to pull her to his arms and shield her from everything, so that is what he does. He reaches for her and wraps her up, whispering that she is okay.
With two hands pressed to his chest, she pushes him away. Jay could be hit and hit until his face was marked like hers, and it would not have hurt him as much as that.
He presses up from the ground to cross the room and turn on the lights. When he can finally see clearly, Hailey does not look completely panicked anymore. Her breathing is shallow but steady and her eyes are fixed solely on him. She stares at him like she is looking at a ghost and perhaps to her, he is one. "Jay?"
“Yeah, you’re safe,” he assures. Jay keeps both hands out in assurance. He releases a deep breath when Hailey nods subtly because if she did not feel safe with him anymore, he would have lost her completely and he can’t- he can’t- do that.
"I'm sorry," she mumbles groggily. Hailey pulls her knees up and hugs her legs to her chest. She has been safe for over twenty-four hours now, and Jay would bet that the last people to touch her were the doctors at Med. Before that, the men who did this to her. This is Hailey’s pattern, to shrink herself down and build the walls high. If they let her, she would retreat completely. "I didn't mean to-" she trails off and gestures toward the gun on the table.
"You don't have to apologize for that. Not to me." Jay squats in front of her on the couch. He gets the first good look at her he has had in almost nine months. "Hi," he smiles sadly. She doesn’t look at him like a ghost anymore, but she doesn’t look at him like she used to either. He sets one hand on her knee and holds the other arm out to her. “Can I?"
There is a notable hesitation in her response, but she leans forward slowly. Hailey doesn’t hug him back. She doesn’t even uncurl from the ball she folded herself into when she leans into him with her legs pressing into his chest and her head tucked against his shoulder. Warm tears trickle down Jay’s neck while he wraps his arms around her back and assures her how relieved he is that she is safe, and how good it is to see her.
Through it all, she muffles words about how much she missed him into his skin, but she never questions why he is there. Hailey never asks why he came home or why he tracked her down at the district. Deep down, she understands. Despite it all, he still believes she would have been the one on the plane to Bolivia if she was on the receiving end of the voicemails he got.
Jay keeps his hands running up and down her back slowly. Her body is tense and those damn boots are digging into his stomach. “Can I stay here with you tonight?”
“No.”
Hailey answers quickly. It is the quickest she has responded to him since he was shaking her from sleep at just past midnight. If it is possible to feel someone’s heart breaking, Jay swears she will feel his where her legs are pressed into his chest. He can’t blame her, but he can wish beyond anything that her answer was different.
She pushes against his shoulders to fall away from him onto the couch. “No, I'd rather you didn't,” she repeats.
The second no doesn’t feel any better. Jay has been searching for clarity for almost nine months. He has been trekking through rainforests and foreign cities searching for some kind of answer for why he didn’t like the person he was becoming. He never found it. It is nine months later, and he thinks he dislikes the person he has become even more. Jay never found much clarity in the CPD, but he never found it with the military either. He lived in worlds of gray until she came walking into a bank with clear blue eyes. He likes who he is with her.
Still, he is not in a place to expect anything of her. Jay nods and presses his hands to his knees to stand. “Okay,” he resigns. “I can go home.” He assures he she can call him for anything, anytime so she doesn’t think her no today means he is about to walk away. “I’m not going anywhere,” he promises as he turns in the doorway before he leaves.
“Wait," Hailey gasps. Jay pauses with one foot out the door. He taps his palm against the door jam a couple of times before he looks back at her.
"Yes." Hailey says thickly. “I don’t know," she corrects. Her face scrunches and she stomps one foot in frustration at the tears that slip out again. She is so damn tired of crying. She shrugs weakly. “I don’t know.”
Jay crosses the room to her again and reclaims his spot squatting in front of her. He reaches out to swipe a tear from her cheek, but she tilts her head away from his touch. As much as he hates seeing her cry, she hates crying in front of him more. His hands drop onto the couch next to her thighs. “It’s okay to not know how you feel about me right now, Hailey. I get it.” Jay taps the floor next to him. “I just want to know you're safe tonight. I’d sit right here, okay? Please.”
Hailey wipes her face with her long sleeve and agrees quietly, but she doesn't look him in the eyes again.
“Why don’t we take off your shoes?” Sleeping in boots is a trick he perfected at boot camp when he would be startled awake for early morning workouts. You leave your shoes on so you can transition from sleeping to sprinting in the time it takes to stand up. “I promise, you don’t need them tonight. Give it here.” Jay motions for her right foot.
Hailey is quiet while he unties the laces on her right boot and works on shuffling the shoe from her foot. As the leather gives, words spill from her mouth like she has been keeping a secret just by not saying them yet. “I took off my ring.” The words tumble out without any familiarity on her tongue.
He places her right boot to the side and glances up from where he still kneels in front of her. “I saw. Give me your left foot, please.” She switches her feet, and he gets to work on the left. Jay loved her long before he put the ring on her finger. He lost sight of a lot of things recently, but he will be damned before he loses sight of that. “I’m still not going anywhere.”
She huffs out a heavy breath. It seems like she wants him to fight her over the ring. That, or she wants to fight him over his words, and she wouldn’t be wrong to. Maybe she wants to fight about how easily he showed back up twelve hours after she was telling herself he might be gone for good. She just wants him to fight with her. "Do you trust me to be here in the morning?" Jay peers at her as he lines her boots up at the end of the couch and toes of his own shoes next to hers.
"Yeah, I do," Hailey relents.
"Okay," he nods. "We'll take this one day at a time." He slides the belt from his jeans and throws it in the same pile. Jay peeks over at Hailey again as she makes herself comfortable on the couch. He gestures to the table. "And if you catch me trying to sneak out, you can shoot me."
Hailey lets out a breathy chuckle despite herself. "That's not even a little bit funny."
"Little bit." He holds up a pinch.
Hailey is fully reclined again by the time he makes his way to the switch to turn off the lights. He strides through the darkness and sits against the side of the couch where he promised he would. He leans back onto the cushion, and the top of his head brushes against her hip. Jay can tell by the way she breathes when she is fully awake to when she is just about to drift away. He may not know everything happening in her life right now, and that is on him- but, yeah, he still knows her.
“Hey, Jay-”
“Mmm hmm?” He knew this was coming, too.
“This can’t… this doesn’t fix everything.”
“I know.”
In the darkness, they go silent. This will be a marathon, not a sprint. Yet, in the darkness, he feels her hand drop from the couch and search for his until they make contact and hold on tight.