Erin laid on her side, facing Jay who was on his back. His eyes were shut, but he wasn't sleeping. He needed to sleep, but it wasn't coming to him. Having Erin there with him helped him to relax, but after the day he had, they both knew sleep wouldn't come easy. He sighed as he felt her hand run through his hair, trying to ease him into sleep.
Six hours earlier.
It had been a slow day for them. They closed a case late last night, and decided to leave the paperwork until the morning. Voight told them that they weren't taking on any active cases for the rest of the day, giving everyone a break to relax.
"No, listen Will. You told me he wasn't going to be there. That's why I left work to go." Erin heard him sigh loudly into the phone, obviously frustrated with his brother. "I don't care. He shouldn't have been there, he didn't even care about her in the end." The two detectives saw Voight come into the bullpen, glaring at Jay who was still on the phone. "Will I gotta go. No we'll talk about this later."
She knew that he had been off all day. He left her apartment early, like and hour earlier than they needed to. Erin saw Jay leave out the back door during lunch wearing a suit, which she thought was odd because he didn't mention anything to her. She knew that he hated wearing suits, ever since then she had been trying to get answers out of him. She watched him out of the corner of her eye while Voight updated them on the case they closed. He had a lost look in his eyes, dazing off into space. His shoulders sagged as he slouched lower in his chair.
Present
"Babe?" Her hand moved from his hair onto his chest, tracing patterns across his skin. She felt him take a breath and turn his head to face her.
"I'm sorry. I know I should have told you but I couldn't."
"Why not?"
"My family can be difficult." Jay moved back to lean against the headboard. "My dad, we haven't spoken in over two years. Before that, I don't even know, maybe seven." His arm found his way to her back, drawing shapes against her shirt. "I know that that's probably nothing compared to what you went through with your family, but my family used to mean the world to me."
"Jay I get it, everyone's families are different. I don't want you to think that your family problems aren't important just because you didn't have an addict for a mom." She pressed a kiss against his shoulder. "You're important to me, everything about you is important to me."
At the district
"Hey," Erin leaned against the counter as Jay busied himself making coffee. "Everything alright?"
"Yeah, it's fine." He kept his head down, not looking her in the eye.
"I heard you on the phone with Will." She put a hand on his arm, pulling his attention away from the coffee. "I'm here for you, remember? If you want to talk about whatever it is you have going on."
"Erin, I told you I'm fine." Erin was about to protest, tell him that clearly something is wrong. That he's hiding something from her. But before she got the chance Ruzek knocked on the doorframe.
"Hey man, Platt said you got a visitor downstairs."
"Yeah thanks." He noticeably stiffen, throwing the spoon he was using in the sink before going down the stairs. Erin went to sit at her desk, but not even five minutes later she hears Jay yelling.
"Why can't you just leave me alone? You had no problem when I was younger, so why now? Why can't you just leave again?" Erin ran down the stairs, standing just outside the gate, listening, watching her partner and this man.
"Jason, just hear me out?"
"No! I told you I'm done with you when you left her." Erin made her way down the stairs.
"Jay, come on let's go upstairs." She put a hand on his arm, just to have him shrug it off. "Jay,"
"Erin, meet my father. Dr. Robert Halstead. Absentee father and one hell of a husband." Jay deadpanned while looking at his dad.
"Babe, come on. Just come up stairs before you say something you regret."
"I don't have anything left to say." Jay turned walking up the stairs with Erin, pausing when he got to the gate. "Leave me alone, just do us all a favor leave us alone." And with that, he went up the stairs and sat on the bench in the locker room.
By the time Jay slammed the locker room door shut, the entire unit was standing around wondering what happened. The only one who had some sort of idea was Mouse, who paid no attention to anything that was going on, instead he was spaced out on his computer.
"Mouse, can you give me a little something here? I'm in the dark." The tech looked up at her. "He's never mentioned anyone in his family to me except Will."
"His mom died two weeks after we got back from that last tour. He was a mess because no one told him how bad she had gotten so quickly, he knew that she needed someone with her since Robert was never around." Mouse took a breath and leaned back as he looked at his best friend's desk. "When we did get back, he spent every minute in the hospital. Got the nurses to let him sleep overnight wherever there was an open bed. Bouncing back and forth between my room and hers for a couple days until he convinced them to let us share a room."
"Wait, where was Will during all of this?"
"Will was uh-" his brow furrowed, trying to draw back a memory. "New York, no no not New York that was after. Boston? Yeah, Will was in Boston for a couple years. After the funeral he stayed for another month before transferring to New York."
Present
"Wanna know what I think of this?" She felt his hummed response through his chest. "I think you had it worse." She turned her body, positioning herself so her back leaned against his leg.
"You knew what it was like to have it all- the nice family, the dinners and Christmas morning. You had it all, and then you didn't. Because you're father suddenly became a jackass." Jay's gaze dropped to the sheets, watching her thumb stroke patterns against his skin. "You had a good childhood, until he ruined it for you. But you stepped up. You became a man when you should have still been a boy. But you became a great man, and everything you do, everything you had to do because of him, made you better, stronger."
"Erin, he was my dad. He was supposed to be there when shit got tough. He was supposed to be there for me and Will when our mom died. He was supposed to be there for her when she was sick." Jay looked away and chewed his lip.
"Mouse told me a little bit of what happened when you got home from your tour." She felt his grip on her leg tighten. "I'm not saying you have to tell me about it, I'm just saying that I know a little bit." She looked at him, tears in his eyes waiting to drop. Erin straddled his waist, and pulled his head against her chest. "Baby," she dropped a kiss against his hair. "I know that he was awful, and he should have been there. But he's your dad. There was a time when he was a good man, maybe you can't remember because there are too many bad memories. But he was in love with your mom, and he loved you and Will like crazy." His arms were tight around her waist.
"Sometimes I wish that he was never there at all." His words were muffled against her shirt but she heard every one of them. "Like if he just up and left before Will was born. I like to think that we would have been better off that way, just me Mom and Will." Erin pulled him away, hands cupping his cheek, thumbs brushing his tears. "Maybe everything would be different, and I'd have my mom still." Jay closed his eyes before dropping his voice to a whisper. "God, Er I miss her so much some days."
"I know you do, babe. And it's good that you do, it means that she's still here." Her hand rested over his heart.
At the district
"So, Will was in Boston when she died? What about their dad, Robert?"
"First of all, when you talk to Jay, he'll tell you Robert's not his dad. He was never there after Jay started junior high. Always working 24/7, taking double shifts. Then eventually he got some big promotion, started sleeping in the office, missed all their games and school things. Flash forward a couple years, Jay graduated and enlisted, Will was finishing high school and looking at med schools, because that's what Robert wanted."
"He didn't want that for Jay?" Mouse scoffed.
"He did, he wanted his boys to be doctors. But Jay was Jay, went against everything Robert wanted. The only person he listened to was his mom. She supported him enlisting, told him that she couldn't be more proud of him. Between his second and third tours, he was home for about 13 months. She didn't feel good so he made her go to the hospital, they found a lump. Told her that it was advanced and she had two years at the most."
"He's never told me how she died, just little things about her."
"Yeah he didn't take it well. He went and saw Robert, begged him to help them out, get her the best doctors. He took one look at her scans and told him there was nothing they could do. See me and Jay, we met on his second tour, it was my first and he helped me out, let me crash at his place when I was too drunk to go to my parents. But when Marie got sick, I was dragging him out of bars, breaking up fights."
"Who took care of her when he left?"
"Jay pulled some money together, made Will throw some in, they managed to get a nurse to stay with her. Our tour got cut short because of the- uh the convoy."
"Hey, Mouse." His eyes met hers, blue enough to be considered his brother. "I know about the convoy, it's okay." Her hand rested on his shoulder.
Present
She gently pushed him so he was laying on his back. Her hands trailed down his chest, fingers tracing the long scar on this side.
"The convoy. I was behind Sticks, the driver. A piece of the door bent and kept me pinned down against the seat. Mouse got me out, he had some medic training so he knew what to do." His eyes glazed over at the mention of his friend. "He got me out, and stood to see if we were getting back up. He started walking to the other guys and then nothing. I woke up in the hospital, discharged that day." His hand covered Erin's. "An IED went off 45 feet away from him, sent him 20 feet in the air and nearly cracked his skull open." He looked up to her. "That's why he's the way he is. And that's why I don't mind sitting in the passenger seat."
"Then you came back and-"
"And my mom died a week later." His hand brushed some hair out of her face. "She would have loved you, probably more than me. And you two would probably gang up on me, and she'd be all over us about kids. But she would have loved you so much, she always wanted a daughter."
"I would have loved to meet her." She felt his heartbeat under her hand. "So, do you want to tell me why Robert was here and why you were yelling at Will on the phone?"
"I left at lunch because that was her anniversary mass, down at Kings Cross. Me and Will planned to meet for the mass and then after shift we were going to go out for a beer."
"But your dad showed up."
"He walked in with Will, hadn't seen me since her funeral. I just walked out, I feel horrible because I didn't stay for the service, but I couldn't. Not with him there, pretending to actually give a damn."
"We can go tomorrow morning."
"But work."
"Voight will understand. It's family." She leaned down to kiss him, his lips sighing against hers.
In the locker room
Erin walked in and stood against the door watching him. He was on the ground, like he collapsed. Head on his knees, hands in his hair.
"Jay." Her whisper barely audible. But he looked up at her, cheeks stained with tears. She walked over and sat next to him, pulling his head to her lap. "It's okay, I'm here." She played with his hair, rubbed his back, until his sobs turned into hiccups. "He's not your family, Jay. We are. I am."
"You're my family."