As soon as he hears that it's a possible school shooting case, his stomach starts to curl into an anxious knot. Mouse watches Jay grab his coat, nodding as he and Erin pass by to head down the stairs, shoulder to shoulder, faces grim. The bullpen empties out and Mouse starts pulling up everything he can find about Webster Country Day, scrolling through the school website and digging into Colin. He can't help glancing at the phone every few minutes, willing it to ring with an update.
A bomb and the possible suicide of a 15 year old scholarship loner from a rich kid school is not the update that he wanted. And it only gets worse from there, when the ping on Ethan's phone leads to a van spray painted with the word 'pedophile' in slashing angry red. He watches Jay lead Ethan to the interview room, body seeming to curve like he could wrap around the kid and protect him, and the knot pulls tighter, and tighter still at the look on Jay's face when he walks back out of the interview room and Mouse knows the spray paint wasn't just a word. He braces himself to stand, but then Erin is there, hand lightly on Jay's arm, leaning towards each other, and he sits back.
It didn't take long for the gossip to spread through the precinct. The morning after his drink with Will, Mouse came in to find Ruzek and Atwater already there, looking like they'd just arrived, and talking animatedly. When they saw him, Ruzek had grinned and called out.
"Mouse! You hear the news?"
Mouse had grinned and joked and laughed with the rest when Jay and Erin walked in together, firing back deflections at their rowdy teammates, but the smiles never left their faces. Everyone shut their mouths when Voight walked in, but Mouse was sure that Voight knew, and equally sure that Jay and Erin knew he knew, and also pretty sure that both parties were absolutely okay with the situation.
Everyone had settled into their desks after that, though Ruzek kept shooting looks at Jay and Erin, who studiously ignored him. Mouse turned back to his computers, scrolling through the updates and calls from overnight and going about the rest of his morning routine. He looked up at the quiet thunk of a coffee cup beside his keyboard and found Erin standing beside his desk. She curled her hands around her own coffee cup and met his eyes, soft and gentle and strong – are you in love with him? yes – and he reached out and picked up the mug and smiled, holding her gaze.
A stranger watching the unit might not even know Jay and Erin were dating; whether because of Voight, or just their own preference they kept their personal lives out of the precinct except for glances and the occasional small touch. They were more affectionate at Molly's, though Mouse would occasionally feel Erin's eyes on him. If he caught her, he'd toss her a smile and she'd smile back and they'd move on.
The dinners that had started after the Keyes case had begun to peter out a little while before, then stopped entirely. It wasn't like Jay abandoned him, never that. They still had their evenings in the tech room drinking beer, watching a game, and talking; still had random phone calls sometimes in the evening to talk about anything or everything; still got each other coffee or lunch, even Erin. But it was starting to feel a lot like things were reverting to how they'd been before Erin and Mouse took tentative steps towards friends beyond the office, before the three of them felt like a unit of their own, and when Mouse would watch them walking out of Molly's, arms around shoulders and waist, he missed them.
Now he watches when Jay comes out of the break room pale and angry and pained, catching his breath as he picks up his coat, and he watches as Erin curves around him and Jay lets her. This is a good thing. This is exactly what you wanted for him, what you told him to do. This is good. And even though it aches a little, he believes this wholeheartedly, even as his skin feels cold as they walk away.
He breathes a little easier when they get their guy, but he knows Jay is going to talk to Ethan and his mom, and Mouse heads home with the anxious knot still tangled up. He tries futilely to ignore it, fiddling with a bit of programming.
He's just about to start making dinner when his phone rings, Erin Lindsay popping up on the screen and his stomach drops.
"Hello?" He sounds breathless, and Erin must pick up on it because the first thing she says isn't a greeting.
"He's okay Mouse." Mouse sighs in relief.
"Thanks. So what's up?"
"You haven't eaten yet, have you?" Erin asks, and Mouse furrows his brows a bit at the question.
"No…"
"Good, come to Jay's, we're making curry."
"Um."
"See you in, what? Ten, fifteen minutes?"
"Uh, yeah, about that."
"Okay, bye." She hangs up and Mouse pulls the phone away from his ear to stare at in bewilderedly. Then he shakes his head, shrugging, and shuts his laptop, grabbing his coat and heading out the door.
He lets himself in when he gets there, greeted by the sound of Arctic Monkeys and laughter. In the kitchen, Erin is leaning on the counter, head resting on one hand, laughing and shaking her head while Jay chuckles at her. Erin spots him first, straightening up with a grin, and Jay turns. Mouse raises an eyebrow at them.
"What's the joke?"
"Erin," Jay says, grinning widely, "is having a hard time cutting the carrots." Erin swats at Jay's shoulder.
"It's not my fault." She looks back at Mouse. "They just keep jumping off the cutting board." Mouse grins, shrugging out of his jacket and hanging it on one of the chairs.
"They do that. Here, I'm pretty good at keeping them out of the air."
They slip easily back into being together in the kitchen, laughing and talking as they slice, dice, and stir. Mouse's worries about feeling like an intruder on their night slip away, even as he watches Jay press a kiss to Erin's cheek, or her hand resting on his back.
After dinner they stay sitting around the kitchen table with their beers, and somehow they've ended up telling Erin stories from their army training. The kind of stories that used to be traded between units at base camp between missions, or by drunk soldiers in the bar between tours; the kind of stories they haven't told since they became the kind of stories told after funerals.
"So it's our first week of Ranger training, and Baruque pulls us all out of bed at 3 in the morning to run the obstacle course in the dark," Jay is saying, and Mouse cuts in to continue.
"And you run it in two lines, like you're in pairs, and most of the guys just get in line however cause they don't know each other, but Jay and I are already friends from basic training, so obviously we pair up."
Jay takes back over, Erin listening intently as she sips at her beer, grinning.
"And we've ended up at the front of the line so we take off when he blows the horn, you know, and everything's going fine, we get over the wall, under the wire, up another wall and across the wire, whatever, we keep going and we're almost to the end when we get to the tires, easy obstacle right?"
"And we're a little ahead of the rest of the group, not much, but a little, and we're almost through the tires when we hear this thump, and there's some shouting and more thumps."
"Oh no," Erin says.
"Oh yes," Mouse grins. "We turn around -"
"And the guy behind me," Jay pauses for dramatic effect. "Has tripped, right across the tires, taking down not only the guy beside him, but half the guys in the line behind him."
"And there's us, and we're all dripping mud of course, in the middle of the night, standing there with all these guys in a tangled heap behind us."
"Oh my god," Erin laughs. "What did Baruque do?"
"Oh, he was not happy," Jay says, and Mouse snorts a little at the understatement. "Made us run the obstacle course till the sun came up."
"The guy who fell decided that Ranger School was not for him and left that day."
"Wow," Erin says, shaking her head. "It sounds intense."
"It is." Jay nods, suddenly sombre, spinning his beer bottle absentmindedly.
"61 days of rigorous physical training, two meals a day and never more than 4 hours of sleep," Mouse says, taking a swig of his beer. "Graduation is about 50%."
"That's insane," Erin says with wide eyes flicking between Mouse and Jay. Jay and Mouse share a glance before Jay speaks.
"That's war."
Erin doesn't quite seem to know what to say to that. They sit in silence for a moment, Erin frowning at the table before Jay speaks again.
"Why did we stop doing this?"
Erin wrinkles up her nose and shrugs. Mouse shrugs as well, wondering if Erin is thinking anything like what he is – are you in love with him? yes. Are you? yes – and tosses out, "I dunno. Life got in the way?" Jay pulls a face.
"That's a stupid reason."
"Well then, I propose," Erin says with mock pomp, raising her bottle, "that we plan to do this at least once a week from now on."
"Motion seconded," Jay grins raising his bottle as well. Warmth blooms in Mouse's chest and he raises his bottle to the center of the table.
"Motion passed," he declares, grinning as the three of them clink bottles cheering and laughing, sombre moment forgotten.
AN: Please review!
Also! Someone said in a review that Jay is the younger brother and Will the older (in the last chapter, I wrote it the other way) - when we're introduced to Will, in Say Her Real Name, Will says to Jay "What I can't take a break? Come back and hang with my older brother?" Now, maybe this got changed later and I'm not remembering it, but since this is a line that I'm sure of, and because it's how I've been thinking of it, I'm gonna stick with Jay as the elder and Will as the younger. If you know any lines that show the relationship being the other way, please let me know for future reference!