Author's Note: Thank you all for your support and kind reviews. They mean so very much to me. This fic (if the title didn't give it away) is set the morning on 3x02.


Jiaxin and Ortiz – the patrolmen who responded to the call at Keyes' house along with Roman and Burgess – both clasps him on the back and say they're glad to have him back at work as he ambles up the steps of the district. The patrolmen coming onto shift hurry past him to the patrol cars parked out front while those coming off shift stand around the entrance to the district making sure their paperwork is in order before the sergeant on duty can start getting on their case. And yet nearly all stop long enough to nod their heads in silent acknowledgement of his return as he moves past them, as he makes his way up to the desk in the center of the district.

"Detective," Sergeant Platt greets in a flat, monotonous voice continuing to shuffle through the paperwork stacked in front of her without looking up at him. "You got a doctor's note for me?"

With a nod, Halstead drops the paperwork in his hand – the medical clearance forms signed by his primary care physician, the leave authorization form signed by the doctor who treat him in the emergency room at Chicago Med, and the paperwork signed by Voight that the district's union rep dropped off at his apartment a few days ago – onto the long, wooden desk. The corners furl inward; the papers trying to curl right back in the long cylinder he had twisted them into this morning as he crammed them into the cup holder of his car.

Platt shoots him a sharp look as she unfurls the papers, as she sifts through them and makes sure everything is in order. Her eyes skim over the signatures – Voight's, his, a doctor with the surname Manning over at Chicago Med – but lock in on the final signature, on the lopping 'H' and the unreadable characters that follow in the messy scrawl.

"This your brother's signature?" Platt asks pointing to the line where his primary care physician signed off. Her tone leaves little room for nonsense and because he's more eager to get upstairs than to earn a laugh, Halstead quickly shakes his head side-to-side pointing out the name printed below the signature – Jon Holtzman, M.D.

The accusatory look in Platt's eyes softens as she moves the paperwork upright and taps it against the desk so everything lines up, and she nods her head in dismissal before reaching for the small canister of paperclips she keeps on top of the desk. With a rap of his fist against the desk, Jay turns away heading towards the short set of stairs leading to the palm scanner and the entrance to the Intelligence Unit's bullpen upstairs.

His feet have barely touched the wooden steps when he hears Platt calling his name and he groans under his breath afraid she's found a flaw with his paperwork, afraid she's gonna send him home like Voight did when he tried to show up for work last week. His sergeant had taken one look at the black and yellow rimming his eye, at the laceration to his temple that was still healing and decided that Halstead needed a couple more days to recuperate. Told him that Will's estimate of a week off meant nothing to him and sent him home before the rest of the team – Ruzek and Atwater, Olinsky and Antonio, Erin – arrived for shift that Wednesday morning and he could call on any of them to back him up.

"It's good to have you back, Halstead," Platt calls out, and the soft tone of her voice causes the patrolmen milling about to look up from their paperwork and watch Jay offer her a sort of bewildered smile in reply. And then the detective turns on his heels and jogs up the steps to the palm reader; his smile deepening as he chuckles when he hears Platt snap at the patrolmen for acting as though she's never been glad to see any of them before.

The palm reader unlocks the cage door with a beep, and he is, thankfully, pain free as he wrenches it open. As he jogs up the wooden stairs intent on showing off just how ready he is to be back. And his grin is completely unforced as he reaches the top of the stairs, as the members of his unit rise to their feet at the sound of the heavy door slamming behind him and move to greet him with wide smiles of their own.

Atwater and Ruzek are by his side first clasping him on the shoulder and saying how glad they are to see him. And Halstead's eyes skim around the room to find Olinsky leaning against the filing cabinet to the right of his desk, to see the older man nod his head at Halstead in silent greeting. Al had been the one to drive him home from the hospital per Voight's command and picked up some groceries and his meds for him when he had been too messed up that first day home to drive himself. The one who took one look at him with his bandaged wounds, bag of bloodstained clothes clutched in his right hand, and eyes drifting towards the side mirror as they turned out of the hospital parking lot and told him that Lindsay had gotten her badge back.

Not just like that, though.

She had filled him in with a few, sporadic texts over his first three days home with the conditions of her so-called parole, and then gone quiet when it had finally come out over that short conversation that Voight was piss testing her at random. The silence had been maddening and frustrating, and he had checked his phone more often than he'd care to admit to Will or himself.

And then the night before he was first scheduled to return to the unit, her name flashed across the screen of his iPhone along with a picture of the two of them standing side by side with his arm around her shoulders. One of the few tangible memories of when they had been seeing each other replaced with a less tangible one when he answered the phone, when she asked him if he was watching this late night documentary on multiple personality disorder. Because somehow in the few weeks they had been doing whatever they had been doing, she had adopted his late night pastime coming out of the bedroom of whatever apartment they were at to sit beside him. Either falling asleep against him or kissing him into distraction when she grew tired or bored of him psychoanalyzing their friends and coworkers.

She hadn't kissed him that night, which would have been a difficult feat given she was across town at Voight's and that Halstead didn't know where she or he or they stood. But she had stayed on the phone with him until the end of the documentary, until the credits rolled and she murmured about looking forward to seeing him tomorrow over the gruff sounds of Voight in the background asking what she was doing up this late.

Part of him had wondered if Voight sent him home the first time he showed up for work because he had found out it was him talking to Erin late at night and was still set on keeping them apart. Part of him had been too sore and still too bruised over the ordeal with Keyes to protest too hard.

And, clearly, things are exactly back to being normal just like that given how Erin hangs back from the group. Jay spots her rooted in the doorway of the break room and lets his gaze linger on her for a moment as Antonio disappears around the corner with the promise that he's got a welcome back for Jay. She offers him a smile and then breaks the gaze as she goes back to running her finger around the rim of her coffee cup, as Antonio appears hobbling with the aid of a walker.

"Oh, real original, guys," Jay says with a laugh as Atwater and Ruzek step aside to give Antonio a wide berth. The walker is clearly a regift; he pulled the same stunt when Dawson returned to work after getting shot by Pulpo almost two years ago. But the gift helps him slip easily back into the comradery of the unit, particularly when he picks up on Olinsky muttering about how they needed their resident smartass back to come up with more original jokes.

"Drinks at Molly's tonight?" Ruzek questions before throwing a look over his shoulder in Al's direction with a mischievous glint in his eye. "Al's buying."

"He'll even spring for the merlot instead of the chardonnay," Dawson quips as he folds the walker back up and takes a couple of steps towards the hallway leading from the bullpen to the interrogation rooms. Antonio's disappearance around the corner coincides with the slam of the heavy, metal door leading from the entrance of the district to Intelligence, and the whole unit shifts from watching him walk away to watching Voight amble up the stairs with a nondescript, white coffee cup in hand and a stack of papers held together by a paperclip tucked under his arm.

"Good to have you back, Halstead," Voight gruffly announces when he reaches the top of the stairs and pauses to survey the room. The clasp of Voight's hand to the shoulder farthest from his sergeant startles him – Jay's not sure he'll ever get used to Voight being affectionate with him – and his surprise escalates as he Hank pulls him in for a side hug, as his boss ruminates in a few, gruff words on how grateful this city is to him.

And Jay's gaze slides uncomfortably around the room from Ruzek and Olinsky, from Erin in the doorway of the break room to Mouse shifting from foot to foot by the whiteboard near Voight's desk. He tries to catch Mouse's eye to reassure his friend that he's okay, to let him know that what happened to him two weeks ago wasn't gonna send him back down that path where he needed Mouse to drag him home.

His good friend had been one of the few people to stop by while he was on medical leave, and it had been Mouse who kept him up to date on the unit's happenings – an investigation into the murder of a young woman on DePaul University's campus over in Lincoln Park, how Voight had farmed Mouse out for a day to work on some cyber-crime case Jay had been too drugged up to properly follow, a few tidbits about Erin's return that Mouse wasn't exactly subtle about dropping into the conversation. Mouse whose twitches and tremors returned as he tried to apologize to Jay for freezing up, for needing Voight to spoon him clues on how to track down Jay's location; Mouse who had struggled to make eye contact with him as Jay informed him that what happened wasn't his fault.

The unit's techie seems to be doing a bit better. The twitches have subsided again, and Halstead manages to catch his eye when Voight finally loosens his grip around Jay's neck. Watches him jump into action when Voight barks about needing to see Al and Mouse as he heads towards his office.

The order seems to disseminate the entire unit with Ruzek and Atwater returning to looking at whatever they were examining on Ruzek's computer when Halstead walked in and Dawson going back to his desk as Olinsky and Mouse follow Voight into his office. The whiteboard is empty – Mouse had told him the team closed the DePaul case late Friday night – and Voight didn't instruct any of the remaining team members to catch him up on the old case files before disappearing into his office so Halstead sort of stands around for a minute. Let's his gaze slide around the bullpen once more before he spies Erin standing at the coffee machine in the break room.

He immediately takes a few steps towards her crossing the bullpen in only a couple of strides yet detours at the last second to his desk because he doesn't want to push things. Definitely doesn't want to lapse back into silence with her – the late night phone call followed by the intervening texts had pushed things more towards the realm of normal – but he also doesn't want to draw attention to her and him and them when she's got enough on her plate right now. And so he concentrates on being professional – straightening up his desk, logging into his computer to check if any of CIs have popped up in the recent arrests and read a call out about a missing kid from Rogers Park, making sure Ruzek hasn't stolen his chair in his absence.

The guy is an opportunistic thief and, judging by the mug left on Jay's desk that his tepidly tips towards himself with one finger on the handle, an opportunistic garbage dumper, too. Halstead would hazard a guess that the mug used to hold coffee, but the massive amount of creamer and sugar Ruzek dumps in the industrial-strength coffee to make it palatable has hardened and solidified under a thick casing of mold.

He thinks about sliding this across Atwater's desk towards Adam, about telling the guy to clean up his mess cause his mom doesn't work here, but Jay can also see Erin still milling about the break room out of the corner of his eye and he pushes back his chair before he can rethink the decision. Before he lets the heat of Antonio's gaze and his subsequent chuckle as he returns to his paperwork stop him in his tracks.

"Hey," he greets softly as he steps into the break room. Erin's arms are folded across her chest; the empty mug dangling from her fingers as she waits for the coffee pot to finish brewing enough for another cup.

"Hey," she echoes back with a tight smile as he dumps the coffee mug into the sink and flips on the faucet. He can feel her watching him – he always knows when Erin's eyes are on him – but he keeps his head down and his attention focused on swirling the hot water and a generous squirt of soap around in Ruzek's nasty cup. Only stops and lifts his gaze up to look at her when he hears her say, "Welcome back."

"Same to you," Jay replies.

"Thanks," Erin replies after a long pause that caused the smile to slide from Jay's lips that caused him to shut off the water and turn his whole body towards her. "It's–it's good to be back."

"Yeah," Jay replies watching her reach for the coffee pot. The pot has partially filled in the intervening time, and he shifts uncomfortably against the counter with the knowledge that his window of opportunity is rapidly dwindling. A million questions are sitting on the tip of his tongue, but they're the kind of questions – the who's and the what's – that he needs to give her time to figure out that. Because she's here and she's healthy and while she still isn't really making eye contact with him, she's not hiding behind sunglasses or walking around without her badge on. And when he anticipates her needs, when he slides the sugar jar towards her before she can even reach for it, she smiles rather than scowls.

"Nice to have my partner back, too," Erin adds as she dumps more than a teaspoon of sugar into her mug. And Jay nods in agreement with her; his lips breaking out into a wide grin he couldn't suppress even if he tried to in the name of professionalism. And he can start to feel them slipping back into their usual rapport as she sets her mug down on the counter and reaches for another from the stack of clean ones beside the coffee, as she pours hot coffee followed by the exact amount of sugar he likes into the second mug.

"Thanks," he replies as he reaches for the mug, and both of them freeze when his fingers slide against the back of hers during the pass off. Wide eyes locked and smiles on their lips for a moment before her hand drops back to her side, before she grabs her own coffee mug and they each press their respective mugs to their lips to mask their smiles.

He leans against the countertop again focusing on her and leaving her with the double duty of talking to him and watching for someone to walk into the breakroom. But he needs this moment to see that sparkle in her eyes and the healthy pallor of skin exposed by a blue, sleeves top and the graze of her non-greasy, non-limp hair against her chin and the badge and gun clipped to her side. Need the time to reassure himself that her showing up for him wasn't a one-of or, worse, a dream.

"How you feelin'?" She eventually asks over the rim of her mug as she takes another sip of coffee, and his free hand instinctively goes to his side where Dr. Manning had put in five stitches. The wound had been short but deep; the source of most of the blood that had ended up splattered across his suit.

"Uh, good. Stitches are all out, and the doctors cleared me for full duty," he assures her when he notices her gaze lingering on the place he just touched. On the spot where she been careful not to touch or aggravate when she had tried to lift him to his feet back in Keyes' study. "Wanted to come back last week, but Voight–."

Erin's gaze shifts from his side to the floor to the entrance to the break room at the sound of Voight's name, and he glances over his shoulder afraid he's gonna find Voight standing in the doorway asking how the coffee is. But the bullpen is still pretty empty with Antonio working on paperwork alone at his desk and Ruzek and Atwater laughing about something out of sight.

"Well, you know," he adds as he drags his gaze from the bullpen back across the breakroom to Erin, and she nods her head in reply. Leaves him wondering how much he should follow-up on how she's dealing with Voight's conditions as she calmly sips on her coffee. And he has to lick his lips before he can say anything, before he bends down a little closer to her – close enough that her eyebrow lifts in surprise – and asks in a low, careful tone, "How are you feelin'?"

The question almost seems to startle her, and he watches a range of emotions flicker across her face. Something he tells himself is a good sign because at least she's feeling things again, at least she's stopped trying to bury it all and hide behind her anger from him.

"Uh," she says as she takes a moment to compose her answer. He can see all the possibilities in the eyes she isn't hiding from him today, and he takes that as a good sign because Lindsay's always been quick to lie but slow to tell and face the truth. "Voight's got me on a pretty tight leash, but, uh, the last couple of days have been pretty rock solid."

"I'm – I'm really happy to hear that, Erin," he informs her with a wide smile and an earnest tone that he can tell makes her slightly uncomfortable by the way she goes back to drinking her coffee, by the way she refuses to meet his gaze. And he backs away from her, tries to give her some more space. But not so much that he misses the smile hidden behind her coffee cup or the yawn that trails it.

"That window at Voight's place keeping you up?" Halstead asks softly when the first yawn is followed by a second, when Erin's lips part into a large 'o' and her eyes close and the coffee mug in her hand does nothing to hid the reaction. She had let that little detail about her years living with Voight slip late one night when they had been at his place curled up in his bed and he had asked if the street noise was keeping her awake as he trailed his fingers up and down her bare arm.

She had merely replied that the noise had nothing on what the window in her old bedroom made letting the way she snuggled into him and pressed her head into the pillow inform him that she found the noise somewhat of a comfort. And he had smiled against the bare skin of her shoulder because this tiny bit of her adolescent seemingly echoed how he didn't know how to sleep without the noise coming from the open window thanks to his childhood home in Canaryville being located near I-90.

"It's been sixteen years, and he still hasn't fixed that damn window," she scoffs, but he can tell by the inflection of her voice and the light in her eyes that she's joking about her anger. That she as well as he both know he's had far more important things to worry about the past sixteen years than a window that rattles in the wind. And there's a pause as they both take long gulps from their coffee mugs before she repeats that it's good being back. "Voight and the guys, they've let me jump right back–"

"Hey," Dawson interrupts from his spot in the doorway of the break room, and Jay immediately rolls against the counter so his back rather than his side is against it. So he can add a more professional distance between him and Erin. But Dawson seems unaffected or, at least, uninterested in their posture as he gestures towards the door leading to the back entrance of the district with a nod of his head. "Roman and Burgess found a body while they were chasing down a suspect. Little kid. Voight wants us to roll out."

"Just like that?" Jay questions after Dawson disappears from the doorway of the break room. He glances at Erin and watches her with eyes filled with mirth over the rim of his mug as he chugs the last bit of coffee still in his mug.

"Just like that," she confirms as she dumps her empty coffee mug into the sink next to Ruzek's science experiment. And then she sidesteps around him, leaves him watching her walk away until she reaches the doorway and whirls around with a grin on her face that causes her dimple to concave inward. "Voight's giving me back the keys to the 300 tomorrow so I'll be back to driving then and we can go back to riding together."

The smile that immediately appeared on his lips when she smiled at him, when he caught the sparkle in her eyes slides off his face as the words finally register. And he dumps his empty mug in the sink next to her, stalks towards her and the entrance to the bullpen with an exasperated look on his face and a tone of voice that matches as he points out that he's been on medical leave for two weeks and she's still not going let him drive.

"Just helping you get used to having a partner again," Erin replies with a laugh as she steps out of the break room and into the bullpen and he follows after her. His retort to that remains stuck to the tip of his tongue because he came back to work hoping that would be the case, hoping they would go back to partners again.

And maybe it won't happen just like that given that Erin's health is the priority right now, given the lingering question about whether or not what he went through was equivalent enough to Burgess' being shot for them to get a pardon, but getting his partner back? Being a better cop because she's got his back? That's good enough for now.