#youtried.doc

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Addendum, Part Twenty-Four (Chicago P.D.)

Title: Addendum

Chapter: Those Left Behind (Part Twenty-Four)

Fandom: Chicago P.D.

Rating: T/PG-13

Author’s Note: I always hated that we never saw Jay comfort Erin in “Start Digging” (3x23) so this scene is set between Hank telling Erin to get everyone back to the District from Med and Hank interrupting Antonio telling the rest of the unit to let him know if they aren’t comfortable working the case now that Justin is a victim. (In that particular scene, you can see Jay standing behind Erin and the two of them off to the side from the rest of the unit, which I guess was supposed to be the hint of him comforting her.) This is the penultimate chapter to this series. There will be one more to bridge the final scene of the season three finale and the start of “The Silos” (4x01).

The sound of the side door to the garage opening causes him to shift his gaze from the oil stain on the concrete floor to the grimace on Antonio’s face. The grimace is difficult to read, and the small shake of Dawson’s head when the two men make eye contact across the garage is even harder to decipher. To gauge whether or not Dawson is telling him that Justin is gone, that Erin and Voight are now two more people who have been left behind and must be faced.

The knot in his stomach from hearing her call number and the frantic request for an ambulance over the radio tightens at the realization that he’ll never escape this. That for all Olinsky’s suggestion that they start drawing straws on notifications, Jay will always be the one standing in front of the mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, wives and children left behind and trying to tell them that their sacrifice was worth it.

Except he doesn’t know if that was the case here. This isn’t a training accident on base or a fight against terrorism in Afghanistan or an effort to bring freedom and democracy -- whatever that looked like after thirteen years of combat -- to Iraq. This is a single mother and, now, a married serviceman with a baby caught up in something -- a dealing with the cartel, a crossed path with the Russians -- that ended with one stuffed in the trunk of her car with her throat slashed and the other being found by his father and the woman who is basically his sister in need an ambulance.

A married serviceman with a baby who Erin swore up and down was turning his life around, was finding the rhythm needed to be a good dad and a good father and a good Signal Corps officer. A married serviceman with a baby who was placing multiple phone calls to their female victim and, presumably, sneaking off to Chicago to see with Voight or Erin or his wife’s knowledge.

His posture straightens as Antonio comes closer towards where he stands waiting near the door to the back staircase; his shoulders square as he silently waits for the older detective to fill him in. And he keeps that rigid posture as Dawson explains that he doesn’t know much, that Voight had demanded Lindsay get them all back to the District before he could get more information from the doctors or nurses at Med.

“Atwater went to check on Justin’s car. Make sure it’s being towed to Twenty-One,” Dawson informs him, and the statement clues him in on how this is going to played out. That his suspicion when Mouse brought him the phone records in a hushed whisper that the case will be handled by Intelligence rather than handed over to Area Homicide as the Ivory Tower’s rule book still holds true.

“And Erin?” Jay questions because he hasn’t heard from her since her voice cracked across the radio. Since Dawson had grabbed Atwater and announced the two of them would met Voight and Lindsay at the hospital, directed Halstead and Ruzek and Olinsky to sit tight and wait in case backup was needed. The instructions had ticked him off at the time, and the part of him still simmering over that is evident in the clipped tone of his voice.

But the answer to his question comes from the sound of the side door to the garage opening rather than from Dawson, and Jay careens his neck to the right at the audible intrusion to see her walking into the garage. Steps to the right in what ends up being a silent dismissal of Dawson so he can walk towards her, so he look into the face of a family member who was left behind.

And there is a moment where she refuses to make eye contact with him, where her posture remains rigid as though she is unaffected or trying to remain professional given the place and the audience. But his left hand reaches out to touch her shoulder, and the facade she’s being trying to maintain gives way. Heavy, gasping sobs released as he pulls her into a tight hug, as he tries to keep his own posture firm and rooted in order to offer support while she crumbles.

“He was shot,” she murmurs against his chest, and he wraps his arms around her even tighter as her voice cracks with another cry. The tears fall against his black t-shirt -- the salty water causing the color the darken -- as she presses her face into his chest, as her body gasps and shudders with another cry. “I just saw him last night for Daniel’s--”

The reminder of why she pulled up at the crime scene with Voight last night, why she blew off drinks with the guys with a smirk and a comment about spending the night with her favorite guy causes her tears to flow harder and his posture to soften. His head dipping down, his lips skimming against the top of her head in a silent apology because this wasn’t how things were supposed to go.

Because her biggest concern was supposed to be whether or not Daniel liked the present she bought him for his first birthday. A present she had picked out after three weeks of agonizing over the choices, of letting him drive so she could thumb through Amazon and Toys ‘R Us on her phone trying  to find something that was educational enough for Olive’s granola views on parenting and fun enough for Justin’s and age-appropriate enough for a child she couldn’t believe was already one and sturdy enough for the destructive nature of a Voight.

That last caveat had come from him. Earned him a roll of the eyes along with muttered words about how he and Will had probably been just as destructive as Justin growing up followed by a jab to the spot between his vest and the waistband of his jeans when he clarified that he meant her and the messes she left behind in his bathroom. Earned him a scoff and a sassed reminder that maybe it was good thing the last place her showed didn’t even have a bathroom.

“He was doing so good. Making Camille proud,” she cries against his chest, and the hands gripping his forearms become fists. Pound against his chest with one, two jabs because her pain is twisting over into anger. “And--and--”

Her voice trails off, and her fist become open palms that are pressed against his biceps. That give him a squeeze and then push him away so she can step out of his embrace. And there is a moment where he resist her efforts, where her tries to keep his hands on her upper arms for comfort and support -- for her, mostly -- in case she’s started to feel as though the hug has become oppressive, but his grip releases when it becomes clear she needs her space. Needs the opportunity to comfort herself the way she has all her life -- alone with arms wrapped around her chest and tears stuck to the rim of her eyelids rather than rolling down her cheeks.

“What did the doctor say?” Jay questions when she’s pulled herself apart from him to find the space to put herself back together because Dawson didn’t have much to share. Because he’s trying to comfort her without knowing all the facts, and there are enough questions -- whos, whats, wheres, and whens -- in this case already.

“I don’t know,” she says as her body shakes, as she gasps in air as though her lungs are getting enough oxygen. “They were speaking so fast, and Hank -- he, he told me to come back here before Goodwin could ex--”

The crack in her voice as she informs him that Voight sent her away without answers, without a word from Goodwin on whether or not she found the murdered and dumped body of someone she loves again causes anger to surge within him. A surge that straightens his posture and distracts his attention away from her until her voice cracks again. Until she lifts her chin and lets him see the fresh round of tears gathering in her eyes as she says that she heard something about neuro and a CT.

“I’ll give Will a call,” Jay promises. He has no idea if Will is working today, if his brother has managed to make it two weeks as the ED’s newest attending without Goodwin revoking some of his privileges. Again. But he’ll get the information for her somehow. Offer her support however she needs it. Today. Tomorrow. A year from now. Twenty years from now.

A promise he tries to reiterate for her by taking a step towards her, by reaching out to grasp her hand in his and give it a squeeze. A promise that is interrupted by a throat being cleared behind them, by the way she pulls her hand from his when they turn to see Ruzek standing in the doorway leading to the back staircase.

“Uh,” Ruzek stutters out lifting his gaze from where their hands had been clasped together for just a moment to look them both in the eyes. And his gaze reverts solely to look at Jay as he jerks his thumb backwards pointing over his shoulder, as he announces that Dawson wants to see everyone up in the bullpen.

Ruzek’s announcement is answered with the nod of Erin’s head, with the sound of her boots on the concrete floor moving to follow his retreating form back up the stairs to the bullpen. But the knot in Jay’s stomach is still lose enough for him to turn quickly on his heel to catch her, to call out her name in the hopes that she’ll turn in face him.

“Whatever you need, however you want to play this,” he promises softly when she turns to face him, when his softened gaze connects with her tear-filled eyes, “you let me know.”

And there is a long pause where she studies him, where he waits for her to take in what he is promising given how that they both know there are really only two directions this case can now go. What he is  -- or isn’t -- saying about the roles of interferer or collaborator that he is willing to take on despite his own moral compasses and codes of conduct. Yet the conversation is ended with words, without her telling him what she wants.

At least, not verbally because he can read the look in her eyes -- the hope that they will find the guy responsible without crossing from the gray into the black -- and that is the hope he also carries with him as he follows her up the stairs to the bullpen while tapping out a request for information about Justin’s condition from Will. As he ignores the five sets of eyes that follow him and her as he perches himself behind her desk. As he bites his tongue while his tongue while Antonio instructs them all to say something if they aren’t ready to cross a line.

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Ideal (Chicago P.D.)

Title: Ideal

Fandom: Chicago P.D.

Rating: T/PG-13

Author's Note: I probably watched one too many romantic dramas this weekend, but I was trying to make myself feel better after the announcement about Sophia's departure. To me, the best case scenario we can hope for after 4x23 (and given Sophia may be coming back for a few episodes in S5) is a follow-up to Erin and Jay's conversation in 4x21 about ideal living situations so this is what I came up with.

She will never get used to the hustle and bustle of this city - the constant honking of car horns, the way people push past each other on crowded sidewalks without the apology that comes with Midwestern nicety, the thin crust pizza being hawked by the slice at the same cart selling skinny hot dogs that don't deserve to be called sausage or bratwurst, the turf wars among precincts over which borough they serve, or the tunnel vision the highrises create making it is impossible to see city landmarks.

That last change was - is - probably the hardest to adapt to because it used to be she walk down the back steps of the District or swing by Firehouse 51 or chase down a suspect and be able to see Sears Tower standing up straight. Offering orientation as she floored the 300 or the Sierra or as she hopped over a fence in a foot chase. Now? Now she orients herself by the number of blocks to the FBI's headquarters, by the coffee shops and hole in the way restaurants that Lieutenant Benson pointed out to her the night she arrived in New York City with Hank's admonishment not to look back still ringing in her ears.

Advice Hank himself hadn't followed given that Benson was waiting for her at baggage claim, that the first person she saw upon arrival was someone from her past. It had been Benson who helped her find a place - one that was smaller than her condo in Chicago and without the floor to ceiling windows or the fireplace, but in a neighborhood that didn't feel quite so sterile or gentrified as the place the FBI set her up with. It had been Benson who took her out to the coffee shop around the corner from her new apartment and offered her a position in her own unit. Offered to open up doors for her at the NYPD that would let her out of a life spent in starched, white blouses and pantsuits.

But she had to pass, had to take Hank's advice that she not look back because she couldn't imagine facing the kind of monsters like Yates every single day. Couldn't handle the mental mindfuck that would come every time a woman was brutalized that way Nadia had been. And she had to keep the deal she made five months ago. Five months, eleven days, and six hours ago.

So much for not looking back.

"What can I get started for you, ma'am?" The questions startles her slightly as she had been mindlessly moving forward in line at the coffee shop. It is the same coffee shop that Benson had taken her to about two months after she arrived in the city, after it became obvious that the homesickness for Chicago wasn't abating with time.

The same, but different because it has been more crowded now, more inundated with tourists and the yuppies who bought the overpriced condos built on top of the hotel down the block. And now the barista moves down the line asking for orders before the customer can reach the cash register and pay.

"Can I get a large, black coffee and, uh, a large latte?" Erin questions glancing from the barista's smiling face to the board and back again when she sees the milk options listed on the righthand side. "Almond milk for the latte."

"Ok, I've got a large, black coffee and a large latte with almond milk. Anything else?" The barista questions nodding her head in reply when Erin replies in the negative as she scribbles the order on a paper cup. "Can I get an name for the order?"

"Lindsay?"

The callout of her last name comes not from Erin but from a voice - a male voice - further in front of her in the line, and both Erin and the barista turn to spot the speaker standing in front of the cash register. To see a redhead wearing a suit craning his head around the line to stare at her, to offer her a small, hesitant smile. And she offers him one in return as she tells the barista that Lindsay is the name for the order.

"Here you go, sir," another barista interrupts handing a coffee cup to the redhead. The grin on her face, the way she giggles over his charm causes Erin to roll her eyes because it appears that nothing has changed in the five months since she's been gone. That the eldest Halstead hasn't lost the charm that always got him in trouble, that always meant she had to listen to the youngest Halstead rail about how his brother needed to get his act together. Needed to focus on his career in New York and, then, in Chicago; needed to choose Nina or Natalie.

But he doesn't really offer her that boyish, charming grin as he moves to join her in line, as the two of them awkwardly dance around the question of whether or not they should hug because that's what they used to do. Quick hugs and/or warm smiles at Molly's when he'd join them for a drink after work or at their place - her place - when the game would end and they weren't so subtle about telling him that it was time to go.

Now, though, they skip the hug, and she finds herself curling her wrists upward so she can tug on the sleeves of her starched blouse under her black jacket. So she can silently address the discomfort she feels as he explains that he didn't expect to run into her here, as she wonders how much he knows about what's transpired in the five months since she last saw Will Halstead.

The lanyard around his neck announcing his name and his hospital affiliation explains why he's in New York rather than at work in Chicago, but Erin asks about the conference anyways. Listens to him explain that Goodwin has either started to trust him, or she just wants a week where he isn't around to give her more grey hairs.

The laughter Erin offers in reply clearly isn't the answer that Will was going for because the smile on his face doesn't reach his eyes. Because he's still staring at her with the stoic impression that Erin is convinced is hereditary as she inquires how everyone else at Med is doing while handing over a waded up twenty to the barista working the cash register. Because his eyes flash with anger when one of the four baristas working today interrupts the exchange of change and the exchange of niceties to hand her two coffees.

The flash of anger dissipates, though, as his gaze darts from to the two coffees in her hand to her face, and the anger is replaced with resigned sadness so quickly that Erin doesn't have time to really register what he's thinking. To say anything in her own defense as he mumbles about it being good to see her before turning away and striding towards the door. To even say his name before he's turned back around and moved towards her, before his proximity and his gaze makes it feel like they are the only two in the coffee shop.

"He was gonna propose to you. Told me that he knew he blew it, but that you were all he thought about. Had me get Mom's ring out of the safety deposit box cause you were the right girl," Will informs her, and the knowledge causes her to stumble backwards a bit. To lose her footing on the high heels that she's never really enjoyed wearing because it is too difficult to stand up right after such a blow. "And you - you really hurt him, Erin."

Despite all the years she spent learning how to suppress her emotions, how to make sure no one ever saw her weaknesses, the tears still spring to her eyes. Leave her vision a cloudy mess and a lump in her throat so she can't find her voice when Will tries to explain that he doesn't mean to hurt her. That he just wants her to know how much his brother cared - cares- about her.

Except she does know. Knew with every look and touch; knew with the five missed calls on the night she left and the smattering of texts after that. And she manages to find her voice not to tell Will that, not to tell Will that Jay is all she thinks about, but to wish him luck with his conference and make a break for the door.

Her visions is still cloudy as she makes her way down the crowded sidewalk towards her apartment, and the coffee cups slosh in her hands as people bump into her left and right. But the lump in her throat has grown and her heart is racing too much to take on the New Yorker tactic of scowling, to do anything other than focus on getting to her apartment.

Apartment not home. Because this is New York not Chicago. Because this is where she's biding her time rather than living her life. Because it is hard to move forward when you're still looking back at your past.

It takes some maneuvering with the coffee cups to open the front door of her building - almond milk latte spilling on the stoop on her building - and then to unlock the front door of her apartment. Takes further maneuvering around the half-unpacked boxes stacked in the hallway and the living room to find her past looking back at her from the closet-sized kitchen.

To find her past wearing sweatpants hung low on his hips and bare back muscles flexing as he runs the spatula across the frying pan, as he announces that he couldn't find the waffle maker in any of the boxes labeled kitchen so scrambled eggs will have to do.

"You were going to propose?" The question comes out more strangled and weaker sounding than she meant it to be, and the tone clearly catches him off guard because his head snaps around so he can stare at her. So she can see those bright eyes dim with a tiny bit of sadness as he nods his head eyes.

"You were going to propose," she repeats again. This time the question is more of a statement. This time he reaches to turn off the stove, moves the skillet off the burner, and spins around to face her. To rub his fingers against the hairline along his forehead and refuse to meet her gaze as he verbally confirms what he had planned to do five months, ten days, and roughly twelve and a half hours ago.

"You were going to propose, and I just left," Erin says as though he needs the reminder of what exactly happened that night. Of waiting for her at Molly's with the ring box in his pocket; of calling her repeatedly and driving by the apartment they used to share wondering where she was. Of dragging himself into work the next morning hoping to see her sitting at her desk and being told by Voight that she was working with the FBI. Effectively immediately.

"And you came back," he interjects because maybe she needs the reminder of what happened three months ago. Of sitting at Molly's staring at his fourth drink of the night wondering if he should finally let himself fall over the edge; of ignoring the sound of the door opening and shutting behind him because the rest of the unit wasn't really into drinking with a guy who wouldn't even try to be the life of the party. Of hearing a 'hey' in her voice beside him and wondering if he'd lost count of his drinks already until he felt her hand on his bicep.

They had ended up back at his place, at the apartment he officially shared with Will but unofficially had to himself because his brother spent all his time with Natalie. They ended up with her pantsuit on his floor and her nail marks on his back and not a lot of words spoken between them in the next three hours. The touches and kisses and caresses saying what they both felt even when they were in between rounds. And then, in the morning, he took her out to breakfast at her favorite diner, let her steal bites of his egg white omelete to balance out the unhealthiness of her double stack of pancakes, and asked if she was back.

She wasn't. And it had nearly killed her to see the way his face fell, to see the mask she thought he was trying to break down fall back in place as she explained that she was in town just for the night. That she had to get back to New York. That she wanted to stay so badly; that she felt her resolve to leave weakening with every passing moment.

She hadn't said the last part, but she had texted him as soon as she landed in New York. Texted him multiple times a day. Texted him so much that he'd stopped replying for a few hours and then come back with an excuse that his new partner, Al, had become annoyed with all the texting. Had taken away his phone and locked it in the glove compartment of that police-issued car he wasn't allowed to drive. And then texts had become calls. Short chats on the nights they both worked late and could barely keep their eyes open; lengthy ones on the days when she found herself looking up one way flights to Chicago.

So much for not looking back.

And, apparently, he had been doing the same during those phone calls because he's standing in her kitchen cooking her scrambled eggs and she's buying him a latte with almond milk. His ticket is round trip; Chicago is still his - their - home. But he's here to drown her in kisses at night and mock her pantsuit in the morning and, apparently, there was a time when he was going to propose.

"Are you still plan-" She forces the question to die on her lips because she doesn't want to know. What they're doing right now - the showing up on each other's doorsteps, the sneaking around dad's back - is complicated and confusing and undefined enough as it is without throwing the ultimate definition of a relationship out there. Without asking him to tell her if she's wrecked things enough that he's no longer considering asking her; without asking her to tell him if he's blew it so badly that she no longer wants to be asked.

"Do you remember me telling you about that couple? The ones that lived in separate houses, but were together for like, forty-two years?"

She remembers, of course. Remembers wondering where exactly he was going with that story when he first told it to her and then wondering how they went from him asking her to move in together to him telling her the ideal situation was him coming over for dinner and sex and then going back to his own place to sleep and work on the motorcycle she wasn't - isn't - thrilled about him wanting. Remembers him correcting her and saying that it wasn't ideal.

"I'd rather have that with you then nothing at all," he informs her and she finds herself shaking her head. Reminding him that they live in separate states rather than houses across the road from one another.

"Yeah," he agrees folding his arms across his chest and leaning back against the counter. His stare is unwavering much like his posture as he continues, "it's not ideal. But unless you're ready to stop protecting Bunny and come home-"

"Jay," she warns with the shake her head because they've had this agreement. Over text. Over the phone. And she doesn't want to rehash it all over again when he's standing in front of her and, according to his brother, may or may not have a ring in his pocket.

"So," he interjects with a sigh of frustration, "separate houses, separate states sounds like the best option right now cause, Erin, not being with you is far less ideal than cramming myself into those tiny seats on Spirit for a two hour flight."

There's a long, pregnant pause where she mulls it over. Where she wonders how they went from living together to being apart to him planning to propose to now contemplating long distance for foreseeable future. And then she finds herself nodding her head, offering him a whispered okay that she knows he heard because he breaks out in a wide, boyish, and charming grin. One that makes his brother's seem small in comparison. One that she sort of emulates - dimples appearing - as he crosses the room, as he pulls the coffee cups from her hands and places them on the table by the couch, as he plants a kiss on her lips and mumbles how he loves her.

Because, yeah, living in New York isn't ideal. Being an agent with the FBI rather than a detective with the Chicago Police Department isn't ideal. But the last five months and the weeks before that have shown her that not being with him also isn't ideal. And that's one thing that she can change right now, can let herself keep from her past even as she sacrifices for another portion of it.

"Do me one thing," she murmurs when the second - or, maybe third - kiss breaks, and she feels him pull away slightly from her. Watches her run her hand against his chest before tipping her head up to look at him, to offer him a stern look that clashes with the dimples she can't make disappear. "Don't propose to me. Not yet, anyways. I don't want it to be a rushed thing, okay?"

His gaze softens at the comment, and she knows it's because a part of him sees it as a dig, as a pointed comment about his past and how he made it to the altar the first time around. And there's a part of her that means it that way. That can't stand the idea of him ever describing them as a joke or a twenty-four hour thing or of their relationship being cobbled together in panic the way their decision to move in together last year maybe was.

"You know that I support you one hundred percent, right?" Jay asks, and the comment causes Erin's brow to furrow because, of course, she knows that. Has known that since their first ride along as partners, since he put on a suit and went to her high school reunion with her, since he waited for her to tell him about her past, since he pulled her back onto the force when she was falling down a hole, since he held her together when her world was falling apart, since he offered advice and support even when she didn't want. And when she tells him that, of course, she knows, he nods his head and says, "Then I can wait to propose when it's more ideal."

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Addendum, Part Twenty-One (Chicago P.D.)

Title: Addendum

Chapter: Glad You Weren’t As Bad a Mom (Part Twenty-One)

Fandom: Chicago P.D.

Rating: T/PG-13

Author’s Note: My biggest complain about this episode was the brief moment out on the sidewalk in front of their suspect’s house where Erin tells Jay that parents like the ones they just interviewed make her want to send a greeting card to Bunny. His reply about there being a whole section called “Glad You Weren’t As Bad of a Mom As I Thought” took me by surprise because Bunny is pretty high up on the bad list to me, and I thought Jay, at least, would be in agreement on that. So, I tried to explore why both he and Erin might feel that way given what we know about Bunny and yet don’t know about Jay’s parents as well as explain why they were missing from so many full unit scenes in this episode. This addendum is set immediately before they give Tana Meyer’s parents a visit during “In a Duffel Bag” (3x20).

The long, skinny French fry falls back onto the red, plastic tray as she pushes the small bite she managed to take into her cheek and tries to suppress a distasteful look from flicking across her face. She’s barely managed to pick at her food this afternoon, to swallow small bites of the burger and fries set out on the table before her because she should be out there. Should be chasing  leads and tracking down each person in their new suspect’s sexual history in order to check alibis and run DNA tests.

But Hank had told them to sit tight, to use the brief lull in the case to grab something to eat while he went at their suspect. Tried to ascertain why a guy from Rockford would care for a baby -- his daughter -- for two weeks only to dump her out by the Chicago lakefront; tried to ascertain why a guy from Rockford would deny knowing about the existence of his child.

“He may not have known,” her partner replies. His words startle her slightly because she hadn’t meant to utter her musings out loud, and her gaze darts up from the red, plastic tray in front of her to look at him. To take in the fact that Jay has barely touched the hamburger he ordered because, like her, he’s been too busy mulling over the few facts they have about this case.

Or, more likely, too busy mulling over how much this case has her on edge. The look that passed between Voight and him when she returned from talking to Platt about the Wisconsin Dells and the status of their victim, the decision that she and Halstead would be the first to grab lunch today while Al and Ruzek brought in their suspect was pretty much a dead giveaway about the two of them being in cahoots.

And that fact would normally piss her off, would have her insisting that she was fine and needed to stick around for when their suspect came in, but she decided to adopt Platt’s attitude of stopping while she’s ahead and take a break from sitting in a chair with photos of duffle bags and pink blankets tapped up over her left shoulder. A break from reminders that a child can be loved and well-cared for and tenderly wrapped up in a blanket one day and end up clinging to life at Chicago Med the next.

“You’d know if you had a baby,” she retorts knowing how ridiculous her words sound the moment they leave her mouth. But it’s too late for her to take them back, and Jay’s already raising one eyebrow at her and drawing out a long ‘o’ in the first word of his rebuttal.

“No, you’d know,” he pointedly reminds her with a shake of his head and a hand reaching out to pick up the fork on the right-hand side of his  tray. “There’s no sign that would tell him, hey, that girl you hooked up with, she’s pregnant.”

“There is if you don’t use a condom,” she bites back -- her tone far harsher than she intended for this conversation -- as she watches her almond milk drinking partner stab at the pitiful pieces of lettuce he ordered instead of fries.

His eyes flicker upward to meet hers at her words, and the way he looks at her is a nonverbally reminder of how he knows that. How they’ve been monogamous for months now but each still keeps condoms on their shopping list because neither one of them is ready to add a baby into this partnership. Not right now. Not when they both know Daniel will run her ragged after just a few hours when Justin and Olive bring the baby up to visit Hank later this week.

“He’d still need her to tell him,” Jay replies before popping the fork and the lettuce attached to it into his mouth. He takes a moment to chew, to let her mull over his words before forcing himself to swallow and racing to elaborate on what he means. To cut her off before this conversation -- one centered on the case, but quickly becoming more abstract -- can turn into an argument that attracts the attention of those few patrons who aren’t already openly staring at the star badges clipped to their belts. “And maybe she had a reason not to. Wanted to protect her baby from him.”

His comment causes her to pause because she knows what he’s trying to get at, knows from the sort of teasing and sort of serious look on his face that he’s thinking of the hot date she blew him off for two nights ago. Although, sitting in the stands with only watery hot chocolate and Annie’s body pressed up against her while they watched Travis’ team get their asses handed to them by a wealthier team from the other side of town doesn’t exactly count as hot in her book.

And Annie had kept Travis’ existence a secret for years in order to protect herself, her best friend, and her son from his father. A secret that Erin, in hindsight, should have kept as well for all the interest and good Charlie has taken or done in Travis’ life.

But, if that was their mystery mother’s aim here, then she was clearly keeping the wrong person in the dark because their suspect was adamant that he didn’t know and that tiny, two-week-old baby -- his daughter -- still ended up in a duffle bag with no signs of life.

“Some people just aren’t meant to be parents,” Jay adds after a long pause, and she finds herself nodding along in agreement almost immediately because he’s not wrong.

Because there are parents like Annie and Olive who rise to the occasion and get themselves and their children out of bad situations. Parents like Hank and Camille who see their children -- biological or not -- as something worth sacrificing for and are brave and kind and unselfish in all the years it takes to raise them. And then are also parents like Bunny who are sober and then aren’t, who run thorough men and  lose track of their kids in the wake of an unstable home life.

Parents who, she finds herself conceding, are shitty and selfish and weak, but don’t purposefully leave their two-week-old baby out in the cold to die. And she opens her mouth to vocalize that, to let Jay know that for all the shit her mother put her and Teddy through as they were growing about, Bunny wasn’t as bad as Baby Doe’s mother.

But the rebuttal dies on her lips because Jay’s eyes have narrowed, because he’s looking at her with that mixture of pity and frustration and concern that she sees every time Bunny comes up. A look that she has grown to loathe because she knows it means he has adopted Hank’s view about Bunny being a cancer in her, knows this conversation will end with her reminding Jay that Bunny is her mom and Jay reminding her that Bunny will never change. That the best thing she can do is cut Bunny out of her life, which is, apparently, the position he’s taken with his dad.

Not that she’s learned that information from Jay. Rather, all she’s had to go on is hints and clues and overheard chastisements from Will that are cut off mid-sentence when she approaches his and Jay’s table at Molly’s leaving her with little understanding as to the whys and the whens as they pertain to Jay’s relationship with his father.

The whys and the whens that clearly serve as the foundation of his belief that people cannot change despite the evidence they see in this job -- rarely, but enough -- showing otherwise. Despite the fact that he rides around with her -- an addict, a woman who was once a fifteen-year-old headed down a path where she was likely to end up dead or with a kid or two calling her mom before she turned eighteen -- all day and sleeps next to her at night and relies on her to have his back twenty-four seven.

“I doubt your mom and dad would have dumped a baby out by the Lake,” Erin retorts. She allows herself to push against a topic that’s been off-limits, to use today’s nightmare scenario in defense of both a parent she knows and parents she doesn’t.

There’s a long pause while she waits for his answer. One that leaves her wondering if she’s pressed on a nerve she didn’t know existed, if it’s possible that things in Canaryville were worse than those on her side of town. But Jay eventually hums out his agreement telling her that his parents would never have been as bad as their current suspect or Baby Doe’s unidentified mother. Words that she barely catches over the sound of the ringing phone in her pocket.

The flash of Dawson’s name on the screen causes her to sigh because maybe that was an opening with Jay, but the way his features smooth out and then harden as she answers the call and the way he begins to gather up their trays without waiting for to answer the phone tells her that door or window or whatever she wants to call it into Jay’s past wasn’t really open.

And so, instead, she focuses on the update -- that Baby Does’ mother has been identified as an eighteen-year-old named Tana Meyer -- and the instructions to check in with the baby’s grandparents that Dawson is giving her. Gathers up the car keys and prepares to confront the kind of parents who helped their daughter care for her infant for two weeks yet turned a blind eye when -- or worse, helped -- their daughter put their granddaughter in a duffel bag and dumped that baby like a piece of garbage. The kind of parents who are than Bunny and Jay’s parents; the kind of parents that don’t deserve to walk free while their granddaughter clings to life.

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Addendum, Part Nineteen (Chicago P.D.)

Title: Addendum

Chapter: Kasual Motherhood (Part Nineteen)

Fandom: Chicago P.D.

Rating: T/PG-13

Author’s Note: I couldn’t think of a new scene for “Kasual with a K” (3x18) beyond something that is entirely AU to the rest of the episode (let alone the rest of the series) so I decided to take Erin and Jay’s final scene and expand it a bit with additional dialogue and some thoughts on Jay’s part about what Erin is sharing with him and why his reaction is to pour Erin a drink.

The sound of her voice causes him to whirl around, to twist his neck and stare at her because he hadn’t expected to see her at Molly’s tonight. Had expected to park himself on a stool making idle chitchat with Doctor Rhodes about their shared victim while he internally stewed on the piece of information she shared about herself with their other victim. Information that he didn’t know about despite the fact that he’s seen what Bunny does to her, that he knows she went to live with Voight as a teenager, that he’s read her file.

“Leave the bottle,” she instructs, and the smirking laughter provided by Connor in responses causes Jay to draw his hand to his mouth. To pull at the stubble on his lip with his thumb and his index finger as he wonders if her having access to a whole bottle paid for by someone else’s tab is such a good idea. If her adrenaline isn’t still at a level where she should be sidelined.  

And so he turns to face her, to let his eyes glance up and down in appraisal as she moves to join him on the barstool to his right. But the tongue pressed to the inside of his cheek -- pressed so hard to dimples pop along the left side of his mouth -- falls to keep his questions in, and the fact that she never told him that she stayed in a shelter comes tumbling out.

He knows immediately that he should have tried harder to keep the question masquerading as a comment to himself because she leans back away from him. Because her mouth gapes and her hands clap and she can’t seem to manage more than a ‘yeah’ in confirmation.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” he promises because he doesn’t want to push her, doesn’t want to crowd into the space she afforded him last month when Terry was murdered and Voight sidelined him for a week. A week where she’d stop by his place after work with takeout and the two of them would eat in silence on his couch. A week where he couldn’t find the words to answer the questions he knew she had.

But she had shared this piece of information about their with their victim to get her to talk, and now he trails off with a ‘but’ in the hopes that she’ll talk. Because he’s been turning it over in his head ever since wondering if her stint in the shelter is why she stands on the other side of the room when they fight. Wondering if Erin letting Bunny back into her life today is because there is still an eleven-year-old inside of her who thinks if she loved her mother more, then she -- Bunny or Erin -- wouldn’t be so-called bad news.

“No, not, it’s not a thing. It’s not like a bad memory,” she promises and yet the sweep of her eyes up to the ceiling clues him in that her statement may not be entirely true. That this is a memory she has to search her brain for because she’s kept it locked away for some time.

“Um, it was summer. Air conditioner rattled a lot. It was, like, right next to my bed,” she adds with a sad shake of her head. With a long pause that allows his brain to jump to its own conclusions, to remember. one night last year when they were sneaking around as a heat wave swept through Chicago.

A night where she had taken one look at the creaky, old window air conditioning unit he keeps in the bottom of his closet during the off-season and insisted on them going back to her place. How she had given him a tight smile -- a smirk, he thought at the time -- when he made fun of her for springing for central air conditioning for the two months a year the heat became unbearable. How he had been coy about having his own place to cool down when she’d commented on hearing him complain about the heat in the 300 last summer because he was already thinking about Wisconsin in August with her.

“Bunny forgot my first day of school,” she informs him, and this time her gaze darts over to him. Gives him a small nod and an upward gesture of her hands because, honestly, it is not like this bit of information is surprising to either of them. And then her gaze sweeps upward -- the smallest smile on her face -- as she continues, “So the lady that ran the place, she walked me all the way there. She held my hand the whole way.”

The comment causes his frown to deepen because that shouldn’t have been a one-off for her. Because no matter how bad things got with his dad, he always had his mom to walk him and Will to school on their first day of school. To clutch onto their hands long after it stopped being cool -- a moment he remembers hitting way before turning eleven -- so they were consigned with the label of ‘Mama’s Boy’ by schoolyard bullies. By their dad, too, when he’d come downstairs to find their mom had made blueberry pancakes and smoked trout -- Will and his favorites, respectively -- instead of Pat Halstead’s standard biscuits and gravy for breakfast in honor of their first day of school.

“Actually drove by there a couple weeks ago,” Erin says interrupting his thoughts, and he watches as she keeps her gaze fixated on the bar counter. Watches a smile slip across her face as his own deepens further into a frown and his eyebrows pitch upward in surprise. “And I saw her and she was walking another little girl to school.”

“She recognize you?”

Once again, the question comes tumbling out because despite how many years he’s been on his job and how many victims and their families that’s he has dealt with and how unlikely it is that anyone in this field of work can remember everyone, he hopes that she did. That this woman who offered Erin a safe haven for three months, who was likely the first -- and, likely only -- person to walk her to school still remembers Erin as fondly as Erin does her.

“I don’t know. I didn’t stop.”

The reply causes his head to nod, to move slowly because he thinks he gets it. Understands not wanting to ruin a good memory with the possibility of rejection. And he finds himself reaching for the bottle of alcohol and pouring her a shot despite his earlier uncertainty because he gets that, too. Understands -- as a cop -- the desire to forget a shitty day where the case hit too close to home with a drink and understands -- as a person -- the desire to forget a shitty memory that you’ve just been forced to share with a drink.

And all Erin does in reply is raise her eyebrow, lift her hands up in a gesture that seems to say it is what it is as she watches him set the bottle aside. As she holds his gaze and waits for him to take another swig from his beer bottle before lifting the shot to her lips and taking a sip rather than knocking it back. An action that surprises him, that causes him to set the beer bottle aside because maybe the conversation about this part of her life isn’t entirely over.

“Did Voight’s wife ever walk you to school?”

“Camille?” Erin questions and this time a smile -- a real one that causes her dimples to pop -- appears on her face as she sets the three-quarters full shot glass back down on the bar.

“Yeah,” Jay replies before offering his own smile, before dropping his voice into a teasing tone as he questions if she was too busy playing undercover for that. And if the fact that he remembers their first real conversation about her past where she told him about her ruse for the bitchy rich girls at her school surprises her, she doesn’t show it as she shakes her head side to side.

“Voight drove me for the first couple of months. Camille, she, uh, she wasn’t too thrilled about me moving in at first. Had her hands full with Justin and then I came along,” Erin replies with a small shake of her head. “But, uh, for my first day back after Christmas break, she made me a special breakfast. Pancakes -- blueberry and apple -- waffles, eggs, bacon, and sausage because she didn’t know what I liked best.”

“You must have given her some Christmas present,” he says, and she nods ever so slightly. Takes another sip of her shot and keeps it clutched in her hand even after she’s set it back down on the bar as she explains how it was actually Camille who gave her the Christmas present. How she had come home after school -- breaking dress code, of course -- to find Camille sitting in the living room with a dress from Marshall Fields.

“She used her Christmas money to buy me that dress,” Erin says softly before knocking back the remaining alcohol in her shot glass, and he finds himself reaching out to curl his hand around her left hand when the empty shot glass makes it way back to the bar.

And the touch causes Erin to turn towards him, to shift her gaze to meet his again because they’re still figuring out how to manage the professional and the personal at a place frequented by their coworkers and their colleagues. But she doesn’t pull away when he gives her hand a squeeze. A fact his is grateful story because while he didn’t know the dress part of her story, he gets this loss. Understands what it is like to lose a mom who uses her Christmas money to buy something special for her kids to cancer.

“My mom used to make us blueberry pancakes for our first day, and she’d get us trout from Calumet’s.”

The second part of his comment causes her to wrinkle her nose in disgust because his attempt to introduce her to his favorite food at one of his favorite places in Chicago hadn’t gone well. About the only part of that dinner she had enjoyed were all the childhood stories Will shared with her.

“Thank god, Camille, didn’t do that. It was apple pancakes for my first day until I graduated from the Academy,” she informs him with that real smile again, and he can’t help but mimic her. To smile over the fact that Erin had someone in her life to hold her hand and walk her to school and someone else to make her something special on her first day of school. That Erin had people who weren’t Bunny, who were more than merely casual about their role as Mom in her life. And that is a fact he decides he can drink to as he takes advantage of Rhodes’ open tab and pours them both a shot.

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Addendum, Part Fifteen (Chicago P.D.)

Title: Addendum

Chapter: Lost (Part Fifteen)

Fandom: Chicago P.D.

Rating: T/PG-13

Author’s Note: Apologies for the severe delay in updating. I tried to get back into the mindset needed to finish this fic; I’m not sure if I’ve been successful. This is the second addendum (or, oneshot) to 3x14, “The Song of Greg William Yates”. This one is set after the episode and is an attempt to bridge the gap between what we saw between Linstead in 3x14 and Erin talking about love in 3x15.

The robotic voice chirps instructing her to take a left turn on yet another nonexistent road, and she lets out a frustrated groan as she presses her foot against the brake. Gravel crunches under the tires as the 300 slows to a painful crawl, and Erin’s eyes scan across the windshield trying to find this road the Garmin mounted on the dashboard keeps trying to send her down.

“Make a U-turn,” the electronic box chirps before changing its computerized mind about which why they should go. “Drive three hundred feet and turn right. Turn -- lost satellites.”

Another frustrated sigh passes over Erin’s lips as the Garmin repeats what it has been announcing since it told them to take the next exit off US-51 about an hour ago. As she glances out of the corner of her eye to see her partner sitting with his right arm pressed up against the passenger side door -- his knuckles pushed into the side of his face in an attempt to hold his head up -- and the paper map of Wisconsin Hank tossed at them on their way out of the bullpen this morning draped unopened across his left knee.

“I thought the Army taught you how to read a map,” She snaps shifting in her seat slightly so she can get a better look at him, so she can catch the way his eyebrows pitch upward even as his gaze remains fixated on the sea of brown grass and white snow bisected by a gravel road ahead of them.

“I thought you didn’t want me to talk,” he sasses back without missing a beat, and she shakes her head as she glances from him to the Garmin mounted on the dash. He isn’t entirely wrong; she had told him to stop asking if she was okay, to stop hovering over her like she was some damsel in distress. And when it was all over, when Yates ended up with a bullet between the eyes, she may have told him something to that effect again.

Because she was willing to admit that she wasn’t sure how she was when he asked for the umpteenth time how she was doing, but she had taken Voight and Benson's eyes on them as out and had used their mantra of professionalism as a way to dismiss him and his concern from behind her desk so she could go home and crash. So she could look at the picture of Nadia pinned to the fridge and tell herself that it was over. That no other woman who have to go through the nightmare that Nadia did.

Yet when the bullpen empty, when she no longer felt Jay’s concerned gaze on her from the desk across the aisle because his paperwork was done and Voight had told the rest of the team to get out of there, Voight and Benson had run interception. Refused to let her go home until after she agreed to grab a drink at Molly’s at Benson, until after she sat on a bar stool and was too far down a glass of whisky and a bunch of advice to pay attention to the buzz of her cell phone with texts asking if she wanted to grab a drink, if she wanted to crash at his place, if she was okay.

Silence had begotten silence, apparently, because his eyes had remained downcast when she walked into the bullpen the next morning, when Voight came out of his office to tell her that she needed to follow protocol for a fatal police shooting. Needed to talk to one of the shrinks employed by the Ivory Tower before he could let her off desk duty. And while his heavy footsteps behind her as she exited the bullpen down the back entrance hadn’t exactly been silent, the words on his lips had died when she told him that she didn’t need to talk about it with a shrink or with Benson or with him because she was fine and it was over.

All he had done then was nod, and all he has done since is nod. Nodded when she returned to the bullpen this morning with her papers certifying she’d spoken about the shooting with someone down at the Ivory Tower. Nodded when Voight announced that Halstead and Lindsay were going to pick up a suspect being held by the one-man police department in some town outside of Wisconsin’s Flambeau River State Forest while the rest of the team chased another lead. Nodded when she snatched the keys to the 300 off his desk and announced she was driving as they exited the bullpen.

And, even now, she thinks she catches sight of a little nod as she throws the car in reverse, as she drapes her arm over the back of his seat and watches out the back window of the 300 while stopping on the accelerator. There is no way she could pull off a three-point turn on this narrow, gravel road. Not without dumping the 300 into a ditch or getting them stuck perpendicular to the flow of the nonexistent traffic. And so she settles on backing up until there is a place they can turn around, until --

The Chrysler jolts as the rear tires roll backwards, and the two of them are tossed upwards in their seats for the split second it takes for Erin’s foot to move from the accelerator to the break. Panic flitters across both of their faces, and Jay’s head tears away from where it rests of his fist as he twists around to glance out the rearview window. Twists again to glance at the side mirror in an attempt to see what she might have hit.

They had both gone through training in the academy about all the dangers a cop needs to look out for while driving -- the kids riding their bikes in the neighborhood, the cats that dart out into the road, the old ladies who forget to wear their hearing aids and don’t hear the sirens approaching an intersection -- and worst case scenarios rom Chicago plus those unique to Wisconsin -- the dairy cows crossing the country road, the eagles picking at road kill -- are rushing to the forefronts of their minds as Erin pulls on the parking break, as they both fumble to exit the car.

He reaches the back wheel first thanks to his long legs and possession of the passenger seat, and she barely has an opportunity to peer at him over the hood of the car before he’s shaking his head at her. Before his lips are tugged upward into a half-smile as he explains that she must have run over some sharp cheese curds or a really big mosquito because the 300 has a flat.

“I’ll call,” she starts to say, but the chirp of the Garmin announcing once again that it has lost satellite reception cuts her off. No satellite service means there isn’t likely to be any cell service, and she has no idea where the tell the tow truck to come get them anyways.

So, instead, she reaches into the car to shift the gear into park, cut the engine, flips on the hazard lights, and pop to the trunk. Pulls her beanie down over her head a bit more to ward off the February chill as she slams the front door shut and moves around to the back of the 300. Jay is already rooting around for the jack and the socket set, and he doesn’t bat an eye when she starts yanking out the spare tire.

“Should be enough to get us to Winter,” he announces leaning down to give the spare a squeeze before he steps around her and moves towards the flat tire. The assurance, the enunciated capitalization of a season gives her pause, and Erin abandons the tire up against the back bumper of the 300 so she can follow after him.

“Do you know where we are?” The incredulity seeps into her voice, twists her features, and heightens further when Jay merely nods in reply because they’ve been lost for the last hour listening to the stupid Garmin tell them to take a jumbled series of turns and he never said anything. Never told her if the right turn down that narrow dirt road was right; never told her if taking the exit off US-51 was even correct.

“You’ve known this whole time?” She questions as he crouches down next to the wrecked tire and begins wrenching on the first lug nut. He merely nods in reply choosing instead to focus on removing the lug nut, on getting them back on the road, but her frustration has bubbled over and her next few words are spat out at him. “You never said anything. You just let me listen to the stupid GPS and get us lost for the last hour.”

At that, his eyes snap up to look at her and there is an uncomfortable moment where her hardened gaze meets his soft one. Meets the same eyes that tried to inquire if she was okay a mere three days ago, that followed her nearly every move from the moment she returned from New York with a banged up knee and an unwavering determination to find Yates before he hurt anyone else.

“I’d never let you get lost on purpose,” he replies. The cold February wind nearly carries away his words, but they still manage to reach her ears. Probably would have anyways because she knows from the way he’s looking at her that he’d never let her get lost in Wisconsin or slip on a banana peel and fall down a hole. Knows from experience that he’d chase after her when she does.

And then it is her turn to nod, to remain silent as Jay states that he didn’t say anything because she was, actually, going the right way. Explains how the road they were headed down before she decided to throw the 300 in reverse cuts through the forest and loops back to reach Winter while the the road she was returning to runs around the state forest, but also leads to Winter.

“It’s about eleven miles from Winter to where we need to go,” Jay informs her, and then his lips twitch upward into a bit of a smile as he adds that the cabin -- the one his grandfather had moved by mules, the one he once said he wanted them both to retire to -- is another fifty miles or so up the road from Winter in the opposite direction.

“Guess I should have let you drive,” she acquiesces when Jay returns to working on the removing the lug nuts, and she braces herself for him to merely nod. Yet, this time, he shrugs and mouths off something about how she should have taken advantage of his razor-sharp mind back at the Illinois-Wisconsin border instead of telling him to shut up and turn on the GPS unit. Lets it go unsaid but understood that she should have let him talk.

“I know I don’t always listen to you,” she says after a moment, after he’s managed to remove the first two lug nuts and placed them into her hand for safekeeping, and she waits for the scoff or the roll of the eyes or the muttering about how that’s an understatement to come because it wouldn’t be an inaccurate reaction. Because she heard when he said her name and told her not to as she opened the mysterious box. Because she heard the concern in his voice when he asked about her knee. Because she knew she was chasing after Yates alone only a few weeks after promising him that she’d never go in without backup again.

But this -- her need to find Yates, to get Yates without or without backup -- was about Nadia and had nothing to do with their partnership. And she hopes he understands that. Thinks that maybe he does because he remains silent as he continues to work on removing the third lug nut from the wheel, as she as she tries to find a way to formulate the ‘but’ part of her statement without scaring him off. Without using words that she’s not sure she knows how to say to anyone but Camille Voight.

“I get it,” he adds after a long moment of her shifting from one foot to the next as she tries to keep her extremities warm while her mind races. “You loved -- love -- Nadia, and love makes us do crazy things.”

“Like go in without backup,” Erin offers up as an example, and she sighs when Jay nods his head. Finds herself copying his movement when he looks up at her and offers his own examples of badgering your girlfriend about how she’s doing when she just wants you to back off or driving by her apartment to make sure she’s okay because she hasn’t had time to change her locks yet.

“Or walking away after she tells you how she’s really doing because you know that means she needs space,” Erin interjects onto his list. “And then keeping quiet until she’s ready to talk to you.”

“Something like that,” he replies as he finishes removing the fourth lug nut, as he moves to drop it into her outstretched hand without looking up at her. And she only hesitates for a moment before she reaches out with her free hand -- the one empty of lug nuts -- to brush against his back, to get him to look up at her.

“I know I don’t always listen to you,” she repeats again, and her voice grows even more gravelly as she settles on the words that will follow the ‘but’ to that sentence. “But I do know that I’m glad I have you as my partner. Both professionally and unprofessionally.”

And, this time, the nod of Jay’s head doesn’t piss her off because it is accompanied with a smile that makes her own lips twist upward in reply.  Because it is accompanied with a surefooted ‘ditto’ and a long pause where his eyes linger on hers before he moves on to instructing her to grab the spare tire and bring it over.

“So,” she drawls out as she rolls the fat donut spare over to him, “if we’re so close to where we need to be, think we’ve got time for you to drive us up to the cabin for a bit?”

She offers the question with a smirk, but it melts right of her face when he replies with a quick ‘no’. And she wonders briefly if he’s letting the need for professionalism extend too far outside of Chicago or if the conversation they just had still hasn’t ended the silence between them. But then Jay glances up at her -- the serious look on his face betrayed by the look in his eyes -- and says, “If I take you to the cabin in the middle of winter -- no bald eagles, no fish in the river, and snow up to the windowsills-- I’ll never get you up there again.”

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Heartbeat, Part Eight (Chicago P.D.)

Title: Heartbeat

Chapter: Part Eight

Fandom: Chicago P.D.

Rating: T/PG-13

Author’s Note: Apologies for the severe delay in updating. I tried to get back into the mindset needed to finish this fic; I’m not sure if I’ve been successful. Either way, I appreciate you reading the update and sharing your thoughts after all these months of waiting.

He can tell the kale has become lodged against the roof of her mouth by the way her jaw clenches. Her left cheek bulges as she slides her tongue around, her eyebrows as she tries to dislodge the particle of food, and her hand stops piling the assortment of healthy vegetables onto the end of her fork. Instead, she starts pushing the fork aimlessly around the plastic container and glancing over at the half-eaten sausage, egg, and English muffin held in his right hand.

“Sure you don’t want me to get you one?” He asks tilting his head over towards the food truck parked down the street from where they sit. A line has begun to form as the hospital’s support staff – the custodians, the orderlies, the security guards – change shifts, but he’s more than willing to stand in line for her. To save his unborn son from being subjected to the kale, arugula, and beets concoction that Helen cooked up for Natalie to  eat during her breaks as a gesture of goodwill after her less than enthusiastic reaction to learning her grandson would soon have a half-sibling.

“No,” she replies in a tone that, to him, feels slightly icier than the temperature they’re being subjected to as they enjoy their breakfast on a bench outside the ambulance bay. “This is good for him. Brain food.”

“You don’t really believe that, do you?” He questions as he glances from the plastic container in her hand to watch her grimace as she jams the fork into her mouth. As she smacks her jaw and looks a hell of a lot like the cows he used to see on those long drives up to his grandfather’s cabin in Wisconsin. Not that he’d ever tell her that. Especially since he’s still clearly on her bad side, still hasn’t managed to win her over with all his attempts to talk to his brother today.

“Hmm,” Natalie replies as she tries to swallow the vegetables down, “can’t hurt to try to give him a few more brain cells so he can think before he speaks.”

The comment stings even though he knows she’s got a point, knows that he hasn’t exactly been in her good graces since Jay told her that he told his brother to leave Erin. Which isn’t at all what he meant – something Jay should know given the way their dad treated their mom after her diagnosis – even if that’s actually how the words came out. Even if that is another example of how Will needs to learn not to stick his foot in his mouth.

And her words dig at the thoughts and worries he’s kept buried that something will go wrong. That he’ll manage to screw all this up. That Owen is so wonderful and perfect and amazing because he wasn’t really around enough early on to mess him up. That Natalie was right to push him away five years ago. That all the work he’s done to be a better doctor and a better boyfriend and a better brother and a better man doesn’t matter because he still manages to step into at every turn.

And, suddenly, the taste of the breakfast sandwich has soured in his mouth. The look of it in his hand – the paper wrapper pressed up against the gold band on his finger – looks utterly unappetizing, and his gaze shifts to look away from it as his arm falls down to his side. There’s a trashcan just past the entrance to the hospital, and he mumbles something about throwing away their trash and getting back to work when he feels Natalie’s hand brush against his, when he glances down and sees her hungrily eyeing the half-eaten sandwich in his hand.

“Here,” he offers thrusting the sandwich towards her before she can make up some lie about only wanting the sandwich because it’s a waste to throw away good food. And he can’t help but bark out a laugh as she eagerly takes the sandwich in her hands, as she shoves nearly a quarter of the sandwich into her mouth in one bite and lets out a moan of pleasure.

“I’ll get some napkins,” Will tells her as some of the bacon fat dribbles down her chin and she moves to wipe it away with the back of her hand. She gives him an appreciative nod, crams another bite into her mouth as he walks away towards the food truck.

His hand immediately slides into the pocket of his coat; his fingers grasping around the ten dollar bill and assorted change he shoved in there after his first loop through the line in front of the food truck as he settles on buying her another sandwich. But his elbow remains bent and locked against his side when the sliding doors of Chicago Med’s entrance open, when a man with those same features that stare back at Will in the mirror every morning steps out into the open-air walkway.

Will’s feet falter in their steps forward as those eyes that glazed over while making a hasty exit from the cafeteria, that hardened while standing outside the room of Natalie’s patient for nearly three hours meet his. And those eyes that Jay so clearly inherited from their mother are quick to dismiss him, to look anywhere but at him as Jay moves past him and towards where Natalie sits near the pedestrian entrance to the employee parking lot.

He considers letting his brother go, letting their words – spoken and unspoken – fester in the space between them, and letting himself continue to be the coward he knows Jay has always considered him to be. The flakey guy who runs at the first sign of commitment; the older brother who’d rather not rock the boat and the good thing he’s got going with their dad.

But he’s not that guy again. Not since someone detonated a bomb in the middle of the emergency department back in 2015. Not since Natalie agreed to marry him. And he ends up following after Jay, reaching out to grab his little brother’s arm in an effort to make him stay and listen to him so the two of them can get it all out in the open.

It’s probably not the smartest idea to grab someone in the CPD who used to serve in the Army. Not with the way Jay’s arm muscles flex under Will’s grip or the way his hand immediately moves into a defensive stance. And, for a brief, moment Will wonders if Jay is going to hit him. If he’s going to end up spending the rest of his shift in the doctor’s lounge with an icepack over his eye and Goodwin telling him to leave his personal problems at the door. But, despite the threat, Will’s hand remains clamped on his brother’s arm, and he refuses to look away when Jay’s gaze snaps to him.

“I’m not like Dad. I’m not,” Will hisses out. His voice is low and terse – an effort to keep his private life somewhat private from the colleagues milling – but he knows Jay can hear him because his younger brother’s eyes harden in response. Because Jay’s features twist into that look of disbelief and displeasure their mom used to give him when he’d make fun of eight-year-old Jay for wetting the bed, when he’d tell her that Dad was at his baseball games rather than the truth about where the old man went on Thursday nights.

“I know I used to be. I know that you don’t believe I’ve changed because of how things went down with Nina and Natalie. I know I let you down all your life and that I wasn’t there when you needed me most,” he continues yet the terseness of his voice breaks as the memories creep in. As he remembers getting a call from the owner of the restaurant and mini-mart up by Grandpa Sam’s cabin expressing sympathy for the Halstead family’s loss before explaining that Jay had stopped by and near cleaned the mini-mart out of alcohol. That he’d been seen popping pills in his truck between rounds at the local gun range and seemed to be taking his anger out on the few who call remote, northern Wisconsin home year round.

And Will hadn’t been able – or, more accurately, willing – to deal with that. Had abandoned his brother and told himself it was because Jay had abandoned their family by joining the Army; had only called him up after Will learned from the Canaryville gossip mill after the sister of an old high school friend had looked him up in New York City that his brother had joined the Chicago police force and seemed to be doing well from himself. Wasn’t going to services at St. Gabriel’s, but how many people their age from the area really were?

“But I’m not Dad,” Will asserts. “And I would never want you to treat Erin the way Dad treated Mom. I’d help her bury your body up in Wisconsin, if you even tried.”

The promise – or, more accurately, the poor attempt at a joke – seems to fall flat because Jay’s gaze remains resolute as he tries to yank his arm from Will’s grasp. The effort on Jay’s part is pretty feeble, though, because Will knows his brother could shake him off, if he really wanted to. Could have him pinned up against the wall faster than Will ever managed when they were kids. And Will takes it as a sign to keep going, to try to extract his foot from his mouth once and for all.

“All I want is for you to think this through,” Will informs him. Those standing around the entrance to the hospital are staring now, and Will only has to tilt his head a fraction to the right to see Natalie cautiously watching them. Her hand is pressed against the side of her stomach; her brows are furrowed in concern. But the sight barely registers because Will’s heartbeat is pounding away in his head along with the memories of what losing Mom did to their family. With the memory of watching his brother’s world crumble once more on the night Erin showed up, shoved her engagement ring in Jay’s hand, and told him that she didn’t want to be with him anymore.

“Because I know what happened to you when we lost Mom and I saw what happened when Erin ended things and if she...if she…” Will trails off because, for all his training as a doctor and all his experience being the one to break bad news, he can’t bring himself to finish the sentence. To watch his brother try to push the pain in his eyes back behind the wall of stoicism that life with their dad and in the Army built inside him. “I don’t want to watch you go through that again.”

“I won’t,” Jay immediately hisses back, and Will nods his head because he hopes his brother is right. He hopes that in a year or two or twenty, he’s still wondering how his dorky little brother managed to end up someone as hot and as cool as Erin Lindsay. But he’s been through this enough with his patients and with his own family to know that life doesn’t go the way you want.

That his brother could wake up in a year or two or twenty and realize he missed out trying to make up for the sins of their father with his own son. That the women he hopes will one day be his sister-in-law doesn’t deserve that animosity in her life. Not after this uphill battle.

And that’s all he wants his brother to think through, to consider the long-term ramifications of what will hopefully be a short-term problem. Because, thankfully, Jay’s not like the way Will used to be or the way their father largely still is. He’s the kind of guy who never gets far when he tries to run, who puts others before himself, who has been dealt shitty hand after shitty hand and still manages to be the best guy that Will knows. To be the kind of guy that Will hopes Samuel one day sees him as.