DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of the Chicago PD, Fire or Med characters, only my OCs!

AN: Warning - definite M rating! May contain some triggers.

"Jay, for once in your life — just let it be." Voight's words rung in his ears, the taste of bourbon still bitter on his tongue. His heart was beating out of his chest when he went to get into his car to drive home. Then he stared at the steering wheel for what felt like hours, unable to move. Inside of him there were so many undefined, indescribable feelings battling to be heard and dealt with, but he couldn't get a real hold of them. At least not yet. In addition to this he was afraid that once he really opened up this pandora's box he would not be able to stop the downwards spiral of feelings he was well accustomed to. His mobile vibrated in his jeans-pocket, once he got it out he noticed that his hands were slightly shaking, a knot in his chest making it hard for him to breathe. It was Hailey: "Hey, you all right?" The concerned voice of his partner greeted him.

"Yeah, I am going to be." He knew she knew he wasn't, but he was not in the mood to talk about it.

"Do you need me to come check on you?"

"I don't think so Hailey, I just wanna be alone right now."

She was silent on the other end of the line. He knew this was not what she had wanted to hear, but she let him be for now. Jay closed his eyes, feeling worse for shutting her out. He felt like he didn't deserve her concern.

"Okay, call me if you need anything – I will call you in the morning anyway."

"Yeah, thanks. You have a good-night." He hung up and found he knew exactly where he wanted to be right now. Like on autopilot he started the motor and drove off to Streeterville.

"Can you get that?"
Nate exclaimed from the couch, where he and some friends were watching the game and getting into second and third rounds of beer and bourbon. Rianne, curious as to who could knock on their door at this time, did as she was asked. When she took a peak through the spy on their door she was surprised to find Jay standing there in a plain black henley shirt, looking sexy as ever, if a little lost, maybe even unsure of himself. She wondered for a second how he had gotten through security downstairs, but then he was a cop with a badge, so…

Rianne found he was the opposite of unsure of what he was doing here. As soon as she opened the door, she only got as far as to say:
"Hi, what..." and then she was being backed into the doorframe and attacked by his lips that landed hard on her mouth. Jay kissed her in that passionate and desperate way she was familiar with by now, hell she even did it herself the other way around.
A little voice inside her head told her she should be careful around him this time, but was so turned on in an instant, that she didn't want to listen to it. The raw tension between them was burning wholes into her whole body. She had banned any thoughts of worry about him from her mind since she saw him on scene on Tuesday and hadn't even realized that it was stressing her body out seriously. Rianne just now felt that some weight was being lifted from her at the pure fact he finally came to see her. Hell-bent on continuing this inside, Jay began pushing her into the hallway. She firmly put both of her hands on his chest and pushed him back a bit.
"I'm sorry, but we can't..."

"Why the hell not?"
Only now he really looked at her and Rianne had a moment to take in his swollen lips, his disheveled hair where she had grabbed him just seconds ago and a look in his eyes she couldn't quite fathom. It was somewhere between wont and yearning, disappointment and impatience and something else. Rage, sadness, desperation?

"Nate's having a guys night in and there's only so much room for privacy in this loft." And she didn't feel comfortable enough with this whole situation to rub it into Nate's face right now.

"Okay, then... come back to my place?"
And when she didn't agree to this right away because she was a little confused by the need in his voice, he reached out his hand to cup her chin and make her look into his eyes:
"Please, I need this – I really need you. I can't be alone tonight."

The urgency in his demeanor gave her the creeps and some goose bumps. Jay had never actually asked anything of her up until now.
Finally she nodded, signaled for him to wait at the door, while she got her stuff and gave Nate a heads-up. He frowned a bit when she told him where she was going. She knew that he wasn't too happy about her fooling around with Jay. But she didn't want to lie to him and for once in the last two years of living together she didn't really want to care what Nate thought was best. His eyes told her that he wasn't sure if this was such a good idea, but he didn't say so in front of his friends.

Preparing for everything and nothing at the same time, Rianne took her own car and followed Jay back to his place. There was something going on with him, she was sure of it, but tried to remember: She wasn't his therapist! It must have something to do with the case Intelligence had been working non-stop for the last days.

She didn't even get a chance to ask why he didn't want to be alone tonight when they got to his place and neither did she get to take in how he lived although she was curious for sure.

Jay seemed to be hell-bound on calling the shots tonight. He hadn't said a single word to her since they'd arrived at his building, just kept their bodies close all the time, making sure they didn't loose contact for a single moment, man-handeling her into his territory.

In the beginning it was fine by her. She was all for a rough and tumble canoodling, especially since it had been a while. Jay rid them of all of their clothes in mere seconds after entering his living area, all the while covering her with feverish kisses and running his fingers through her hair. Rianne still was fully on board when he walked them into his kitchen, grabbed her arms and turned her around so that she was facing his kitchen counter. He made sure she was ready to go, before he quickly positioned himself at her entrance, pushed her upper body down on the cool worktop and thrust into her determinedly.

At first Rianne enjoyed how he pounding into her with a force that she hadn't experienced before got her feeling ecstatic and turned on, full of him and under his control. But the longer Jay held her down the louder that voice in her head got that something was completely off. Once she'd managed to bend her body so that she could take a look at his face, she knew she wanted to stop. Jay until now had never been so grim looking and silent during sex, his eyes normally bright and full of passion, not dead somehow. Something wasn't right and panic spread through her body. She was used to some detachment between them, but not to this extent, not while doing this! She wasn't feeling any connection to him right now.

"Jay? Jay! Please, slow down!"
When he didn't react right away, adrenaline joined the bad feeling that had taken over, and she tried to free herself from the grip he had on her shoulder and waist. He seemed to be far away, not really registering her increasing resistance. She knew she had been able to fight him one time, but that had been different. It had been for fun, this was no fun anymore:
"Jay! Stop it!"

Trying not to freak out, she took a deep breath and pushed herself off of the counter with every piece of strength she could gather, managed to get closer to his body and elbow him in the ribs, not caring how hard she hit of him in the process. Taking advantage of the moment he loosened his grip on her, Rianne duck away sideways, turned to face him and pushed against his chest with all her might.
Jay stumbled two steps backwards, but immediately grabbed her by her elbows forcefully, holding her in place for a second, staring at her as if he wanted to keep fighting her. A heartbeat later he let her go immediately like someone who just put his hands on a hot stove and noticed his flesh was burning.

Rianne was breathing heavily, ready to hit him again. She would say that she was someone who didn't get scared easily, but this change of demeanor right here did. But then she registered the expression on Jay's face.

"Sorry, I … fuck! I, I am so sorry," he stammered, running his hands over his face, looking at her and through the room incredulously, as if he was waking up from a bad dream. He seemed torn between reaching out to her to apologize and backing up into the far away corner of the kitchen like a hurt animal.

It was kind of ridiculous, standing here in the middle of the kitchen, stark naked and heaving with a ton of emotions. But instead of legging it out of here and leaving him alone in this weird mood, she found she couldn't.

It was suddenly so quiet, and for a second they were just caught into a staring match, the sound of heavy breathing the only thing to be heard.

What the hell had she gotten herself into with this man? What had just happened?

Jay was frozen in place, although he wanted to do so many things at the same time.

He wanted to wrap her into his arms, tell her he was sorry and that he didn't mean to hurt her and that he was simply a mess and needed help. On the other hand he would have liked nothing more than to make a quick get-away, naked or not, just leave this situation and all the guilt he felt on so many levels right now. Create another situation he could feel guilty about, it felt like he was collecting those throughout his life.
Maybe it would be better for her to get out of here, away from him before he destroyed her too with all the drama that seemed to follow him around.

Before he could make a decision on how to unfreeze himself and clean up this mess one way of another, her voice caught his attention.
As usual she had gotten herself back together pretty quickly, quicker than he could, although there was no denying the emotional state she was in.
Her voice was steady, but raised, as if she was talking to a child who had just done something really bad:

"Look, I'm all for rough sex if it's for fun, but this feels like something serious is going on with you and you're not really here with me right now. And I don't like that and am kind of freaking out here. Because I am not some common whore you can just fuck any way you want to make you feel better."

She began to search the floor for something to wear and grabbed her own panties and a shirt. Jay registered that it was his and for a brief moment was relieved to have some kind of assurance she might not be planning on leaving right now. He really did not want her to go he noticed, he wouldn't know what to do alone with himself right now.

She threw his boxers at him: "Put these on – I can't talk to you with your freakin' cock on sight."

He didn't argue, he did as she told him, but found he still didn't know what else to do. Jay still felt like he didn't get enough air to breathe, shaking all over and only hanging on to a small portion of control over himself. As he did not say anything Rianne all the more kicked into action-mode. She went and opened his fridge, took out a beer for herself, then went over to his kitchen window and opened it.
Suddenly the room wasn't so quiet anymore, the city noise of Chicago at night being let in.

The cool air caused his skin to crawl and even though his lungs seemed to be filling with slightly more oxygen than before the shaking and shivering increased and he felt a sob escaping his throat and mouth. He felt hot and cold at the same time, his feet would not carry his weight anymore, so he sank down the wall of his kitchen island and found himself crying. First they were silent and angry tears and then all the despair and guilt he had tried to gulp down drinking bourbon with Voight before, surfaced again. There was no stopping the panicky breathing, the sobs and loud cries coming out of him. He wanted it to stop so bad, because this was embarrassing, but he just couldn't.

When he felt a body crouching down before him and wrap strong but soft arms around his head, he held on for dear life. Rianne's voice kept making shushing and soothing sounds at him, but he was out of control, not a man of logic and reason anymore. That guilt wave rolled over him and didn't let himself surface for a long time.

Jay kept screaming the same things at her over and over again, but she didn't bother answering. These questions were not for her to answer. These questions were his questions at the world. He was out of his mind and nothing could reach him. Why did he let this happen? Why did he have to take such drastic actions? Why did he trust a technique that wasn't yet approved and based his case on that? Why couldn't he catch a break? He'd been so full of hope and happy a few days ago. Why did he behave like a douchebag with the woman he had sought comfort from?

"Jay, breathe and look at me!"
He registered her saying after a while. Jay didn't even know if it was the first time she said that or if she had been talking to him for some time now. Rianne managed to free herself from his death grip on her and sat down on his lap, taking his face in both of her hands and making him look up at her:
"Tell me what happened to you!"

She patiently waited for him to open up and after what he'd done to her before, he felt he owed her a real explanation as to why he was so upset and couldn't handle himself. Jay knew he wasn't allowed to give up the details of their investigations normally, but screw this. Her blue eyes were soft on him, but pained and a tear rolled down her cheek as well.

So he told her.

He told her all about his last four days of horror ever since he stumbled upon those two poor boys.
Finding their killer had been such a priority to him that he'd blown through every stop sign of reasonable police work. How the realization that he probably got the wrong guy the longer they looked into the case hit him like a brick in the stomach, how then his world crumbled even more when that wrong guy, that he had put in prison to get a confession and a conviction, had been attacked there. First he'd been in a coma, then finally he died because of his brain injury. An innocent man… Because of the unorthodox ways his sergeant still resorted to sometimes, the real killer had been beaten to death by the gang in the meantime and gotten his rightful punishment, but for the whole city Marcus West was the felon who had gotten what he deserved in prison. A supposed child-killer! It was all over the news, the police department of Chicago a heroic example of quick work. It made him feel even sicker to play along to these games of politics instead of sticking to the truth.
It was their fault ultimately, why had they trusted a new, not yet approved, technique over police groundwork in the first place?

"I hear you. I am really sorry this went so terribly wrong. But you can't fuck away your trouble, your guilt..."
Rianne still held him, even pressed her forehead to his while she was saying this. He felt too embarrassed and terrible about what had just happened to really look at her.
Of course he knew sex wasn't the answer to his problems. He had found out that out the hard way when he came back from Afghanistan. Funny how one resorted to the same coping strategies over and over again.

"I didn't want to hurt you - I am not that guy…" he urgently wanted to get across.

She nodded at him, wiping the dampness from his face with her thumbs: "I know you're not!"

They were quiet for a little while, Jay found he still couldn't move.

"You're fucking cold Jay, let's run you a bath and get you into bed then!"Rianne stated when she let her hands ran along his arms.

As he found he could not really act on his own and she noticed that, she handled him. Pulling him up with her she took his hand and quickly found her way around his apartment. As it wasn't that big there weren't so many possibilities where his bathroom could be. This was not the luxurious, roomy home like hers, but tonight he couldn't care less about optics. Hell she was still here instead of running for the hills. This must count for something at least.

There was nothing sexy about it when she ran him a bath, made him get in and carefully washed his hair and body while sitting on the ridge of his bathtub. If he hadn't been feeling so numb he surely would have protested that he could do this himself, but right now he just let it happen. Afterwards she wrapped him in a towel and steered him into his bedroom, where he managed to get into some sweatpants on his own.

When his body hit the mattress he felt like he hadn't slept in years, heavy and wiped out. Anyway Jay feared that he might not be able to sleep, because days and cases like this were prone to get his nightmares and PTSD to flare up again. So he was glad when Rianne climbed into bed with him too and just lay down next to him waiting for him to fall asleep, watching over him. And eventually he surprisingly did…