His coworkers think it's arrogance, the way he corrects them every time someone accidentally calls him officer instead of detective. They like to talk about it behind his back sometimes, one of those fall back drinking topics where the drunkest of them, which is almost always Anderson, does the impressions and they have a good laugh.
Maybe part of it is jealousy, because Halstead is one of the fastest rising detectives, coming onto the job as an officer fresh out of the Rangers and making it to detective faster than any of the boys he was in the academy with, and faster than other officers who'd been on the job longer. Faster than Anderson's friend Jimmy, or Mercer's friend Samson. And maybe they don't want to admit that he earned it, because he had the army experience, because he worked his ass off to get there, because he was aggressive, because he wasn't afraid to take risks, because he poured everything into his job. No, it was definitely arrogance, they decided, that was the reason he never went out for drinks with the boys, it was arrogance that made him correct them every time they slipped up the first little while after Halstead was moved up to Detective, arrogance that made him correct other officers, civilians, witnesses, perps…
How were they to know that every time someone left off the Detective where it should have been, it made him think of staring out at the little crowd when he graduated the Academy and seeing only one familiar face there. Only Mouse, and strangers where he wished his mother could have been, if she wasn't buried under a cold granite headstone in Graceland Cemetery, where Will should have been, if he wasn't off living it up in New York, where his father should have been, if he was a different man. How were they to know it made him remember signing his name on a dotted line to say that he had no beneficiaries should he be killed on the job.
How were they to know that every time it made him think of the way his father scoffed and scowled when Jay told him he'd enlisted. The way his father shouted that there was no honor in pulling triggers, that if he wanted to make a difference, to save lives, he should be a doctor like Will. They way Jay had shouted back that there was more than one way to make a difference, and he was going to serve his country, and his father threw him out, and his mother was crying and pleading, and they didn't know yet that she was dying. Maybe she wasn't yet. And it made him think of sitting by his mother's hospital bed and then standing by her grave and his father telling him that he was nothing.
And how could they know it made him think about the day Mouse found him on the floor of his apartment, room torn apart, knuckles red from another fight, turning his gun over and over in his hands. How he'd yelled and pushed at Mouse the day before, when Mouse said he needed to start taking better care of himself, and he threw acidic words back in his face "You're one to talk." And Mouse had gone blank, and left, and Jay thought he'd finally done it, finally pushed away the last person who cared about him in the world. But Mouse came back the next day and found him holding the gun, and Mouse tore it from Jay's hands and told him that he was never allowed to think about hurting himself like that, told him that he knew how much it hurt, how hard it was to breathe all the time, but their friends had died in that desert so they could live, so they could be something, and this, this wasn't something.
How could they know that the day he made Detective he called Mouse, and found a line disconnected, and he wouldn't find Mouse again until months later when it was his turn to start dragging his friend back from the ledge and into the light, and it was only his position as Detective that made it possible to make Mouse a CI and remind him how to be the kind of someone that people had died to send home.
They thought it was arrogance, but how could they know that "Detective" was so much more than a title or a position. How could they know that it was a reminder that he wasn't nothing, because this was something his father couldn't take from him, and it was a reminder of the brothers he'd lost and the one that he hadn't. And every time someone left off the "Detective" it felt like a broken promise.
When he made Intelligence, Anderson and the boys went to the bar and got drunk and spat laughter at the arrogant son of a bitch, but Jay called Mouse and they ordered pizza and toasted clinking beer bottles to Detective Jay Halstead, Intelligence Unit, and to the 1 year NA chip Mouse flipped in the air. And the next day he reported to the 21st Division, and Antonio introduced him around, and everyone called him Detective, and it wasn't easy at first, being in Voight's unit, but one day a perp spat at him when Jay slapped the cuffs on him after a chase and snapped "Go fuck yourself, Officer," and Jay opened his mouth to respond – only Erin got there first, shoving the perp against the car and spitting out "It's Detective, actually." And for a second, it felt like he'd been running for years and was finally catching his breath.
AN: Just a blurb, inspired by a gifset of Jay reminding Roman, and Platt, to call him Detective. Review! Tell me what you think.