AN: Put together a little something for your weekend reading. I am so glad you guys are continuing to read, leave me those very motivational reviews and let me in on your thoughts on the story. THANK YOU so much!

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

Intelligence caught a new case over the weekend and Jay had been on shift for pretty much 72 hours straight and more.

Still welcoming every distraction he could get he was also glad that he had to take care of Hailey for a change and not the other way around. Her long time criminal informant Cameron had gotten shot right before her eyes during an operation where Intelligence tried to get a load of Carfentanyl of the streets.
Hailey had a hard time with it, feeling responsible for Cameron's death, because she had brought him onto the case. Even though she had known that he had the tendency to get way too invested in solving cases than was good for him. It too was a bitter pill to swallow for her that Voight did not act like she wanted him to and decided to still use his CI Darius Walker further, although Hailey suspected him to have killed her guy. Or at least have ordered the hit.

Jay was worried about her.
Not just because she began to do her own thing and tried to be tougher than she was repeatedly. It was also for the reason that their usual thing, which was talking it out over tequila or ouzo wether the other wanted to or not, did not really work like it used to. He had the feeling he couldn't really reach her. Maybe it was because he too hadn't let her in over the last weeks.

Nevertheless he took Hailey out for drinks at Molly's after they had closed the case Thursday.
Even if she didn't want him to, he wanted to show her in his heart he was still her partner and right by her side if she needed him.

Rianne wasn't working, although she had texted him she would be there.
The upside was that way he could fully concentrate on cheering up Hailey, or just sit there in silence with her, drinking. They had that kind of connection where this was never uncomfortable.
Jay still couldn't resist checking his phone from time to time to see if Rianne had called or texted why she wasn't coming in, but there was radio-silence on her end. Somehow he felt a little nervous about that.

Finally Hermann came over to their place at the bar, when they ordered another round and gave Jay a message:
"Casey called and said to tell you that Rianne wanted you to know she might not make it here tonight. Her phone died and she's at a fire-call with 51, involving a bad domestic and she has to sort that out first, take care of the kids involved. She will at least be late."

Jay was contemplating this, his forehead in wrinkles as usual when he didn't like something, but thanked Hermann for passing this on.

Of course Hailey picked up on that, frowning at him:
"Maybe you should try dating someone way out of our orbit. Like a nice girl from a bakery or something like that."

"What makes you say that?" He wasn't sure if she was serious or kidding with him. To him it had sounded a little snarky.
"So at least one of you is the reliable one with the steady work-schedule and you don't have to worry about the other person having a strenuous and maybe even dangerous job as well…"

"Great advice coming from someone that has been sneaking around and canoodling with Ruzek for months. Very steady reliable choice I would say!"
Jay answered a little irritated.

"Woah, nice one Jay! I didn't know that was how you felt about that."

"I don't."

"Then why'd you bring it up?" Hailey was seriously offended.

"Because you seem to have a lot to say about my choices when I never even said anything about yours concerning the dating-matter!"

"I did not. I just…"

"What?"

"I just don't wanna see you get hurt!" She almost yelled at him, blue eyes ablaze.

"I am a big boy Hailey. And I will not repeat all my mistakes, believe me!"
Why did everyone seem to think he needed help managing his life and especially the relationship part in it?

"I hope you don't, because I won't always be on the other side waiting to pull you out of the hole you dug for yourself if you keep giving that stupid heart of yours away so easily." Jay was a bit taken aback. Where did all that come from?

"That's not true! You make it sound like I simply date every woman that comes my way!"
"Not what I said! I meant you tend to put blinders on when you fall for someone…"
Jay considered that for a moment:
Did he have a tendency to let women walk all over him or let himself be tricked into believing they were something they were not?
Was he falling for Rianne?

"It's just that: I wish for you to have something easy and comforting to come home to and not a whole other drama itself, that you have to take care of instead of having a shoulder to lean on too, " Hailey now spoke a little softer and her eyes tried to reason with him to take into account that she was just looking out for him.

Jay sighed deeply, touching her hand:
"Look, Hailey I think we both know that none of us can do nice and easy. That's just not who we are. But Rianne's not 'a drama' she's… something else, I guess I am still figuring that out. And I feel I want to figure it out!"
Anything other than that felt like he was missing out on something that could be really great.

"Okay good. Promise me to look out for yourself anyway, okay?"

Instead of answering he nodded and they shared one of their special understanding glances while clinking bottles. He knew she was speaking out of a place of love and in a way he appreciated her honesty and that she did not hide her concerns from him.

Hailey didn't stay out as long.
She said she was still feeling the repercussions of their last case and wanted to rest up at home for a bit.

Jay was exhausted as well, but he had not yet given up hope to see Rianne tonight and until then his brother (as usual a regular at Molly's after 9 pm), whom he hadn't talked to in a while, kept him company.

Finally at past 10:30 pm Rianne walked into Molly's, Matt Casey in tow, both talking agitatedly and looking fed up.

Jay watched Rianne scan the crowd and spot Will and him in seconds.
The bar wasn't that packed on a simple week-day and they had moved to a prime-spot at a table in the middle of it.

She headed their way straight on, Matt followed.
Once she'd reached them Rianne first hugged Will and then Jay hello, exhaustion seeping out of her every pore when she lingered in the latter's embrace a little longer. She smelled a bit of smoke.
"Sorry it took me so long, I'm glad you're still here…"
As he of all people could understand crazy work-hours Jay wasn't commenting on that, he just held her tight for a bit and then let go, not sure how she wanted to handle 'them' in public. In the intimate atmosphere of Molly's he was less sure about just kissing her than in a random lakeside parking lot with only her best friend around. Also he sensed his big brother was watching him closely, surely to pick up something he could comment on later.

Grabbing Jay's almost full bottle of beer Rianne downed it in one without waiting for his permission.
Will made big eyes at that and held out his to her as well: "Want another one?"

"No thanks, I was just parched! Hermann can we get another round here?" she called out to the bar.

"Well, first you bail on me and then you wanna be served?" Hermann mock complained behind the counter, but quickly went to fetch them some drinks.

"And some shots too," Matt added, equally tired as Rianne.

Jay noticed that she looked a little rough. She had a bruise on her chin that was starting to color black and blue and a split lip, some dried blood in the corner of her mouth and on her jacket sleeve.

"What's the matter guys? You look dangerously close to exploding! And what the hell happened to your beautiful face?"
Will asked the question that was also going through Jay's mind, stepping out of his seat and grabbing Rianne's chin, doctor mode in gear.

Matt and Rianne exchanged a knowing and meaningful look. Then she sighed and motioned to her friend to tell the story:

"She got clocked in the face by a woman she wanted to protect from her drunken and obviously violent husband…"
Matt explained and sat down in Will's seat, while he took a look at Rianne's injuries.

"Yeah, it's been a while since I have been called a 'conniving bitch' for wanting to defend someone…It's okay though Will, I'll live…" she laughed a little sourly.

His brother still was looking concerned and Jay was feeling jealous.
He wanted to be the one to put a soothing touch to her face and it didn't sit right with him that Will had called her "beautiful" in his flirty voice.

It bothered Jay in general when Will acted all important, so he couldn't help but intervene:
"Come on Will, you heard her, turn off the Dr. in you!"
This earned him a curious look from Will with some high raised brows, but his brother let Rianne be and Jay quickly made space for her on his side of the table:
"Come on, sit! Hermann can we get an ice pack over here as well?"
Out of the corner of his eye he could see that Will was smirking to himself, but he tried not to engage with him now.

Rianne scooted over really close to him on the bench, their thighs touching, ankles brushing. His body was on high alert like every time she was near, reacting to every movement and notion he picked off of hers.
Putting her right hand on his upper leg and gently squeezing it she turned into him, proudly presenting her bruised face:
"Do I look bad-ass now?"

"Totally!" Just by looking into her eyes the noise and people around him seemed to fade out Jay noticed.
He didn't know how she did it but she was always so present and vibrant, even after the day she must have had.

"Kiss her already Jay, we all know you want to! I won't even be jealous!" His brother kind of ruined the mood.

"En serio? Madura Will!" Rianne shushed his brother by slightly raising her voice and forefinger at him, before Jay could say anything himself.
He noticed when agitated the Spanish fragments, she sometimes slipped into conversations, increased in number.

"Yeah, what she said!"
Jay liked her siding with him, although he wasn't 100% sure what she exactly said. Something about Will needing to grow up.

Picking up the file she'd put on the table earlier, Rianne provisionally obscured his and her face from their table companions and got even closer to him.
"I think they are not old enough to see this," she whispered near his smiling mouth before she gently put her lips to it. Letting her take the lead and ease into how much show of affection was okay at this point was kind of exiting and the simplicity of it took Jay's mind off other things completely.

"We can also hear you kissing!"
Will laughed from the other side of the table. Thankfully their drinks and the ice pack for Rianne to cool her chin with arrived at that moment.

They started up a conversation about the exact details of their evening.

51 had been called to a house-fire caused by a secret drug cooking operation in that house under the cover of a family with two young children. Husband and wife had been arguing in the aftermath about who was responsible exactly for starting the fire, the two children almost getting burned alive, because they'd been trapped in their bedroom.

"Why weren't we called to the scene?" Jay wondered.

"I don't know, I think Narcotics took the case," Casey explained.

"It's so fucking frustrating. After getting punched in the face I had to explain to these poor kids that Mum & Dad are not going to pick them up after they have talked to the police. I had to take them to a group home after they got checked out at Med, where they are being put to bed by a stranger as we speak, sleep in a funny smelling room and cry themselves to sleep not knowing what went wrong."

"I don't even know how you got them there. They were like screaming all the time when you put them into the car…"
Matt was obviously pissed too that things like this were happening on a regular basis.

"How old were they?" Will asked.

"Four and six years, two boys," Rianne croaked and downed her shot, scrunching up her face at the bitter aftertaste.
Jay silently reached for her hand under the table, intwining their fingers. Hers were ice cold, so he ran his thumb over the side of her index finger a few times and threw her a sympathetic look. She tried to muster up a smile, but her eyes were pained. He knew the feeling.

As Rianne had come to Molly's with Casey and car-pooled to work with Nate this morning, she had no access to a car and asked Jay to give her a ride an hour later.

"Sure thing! You wanna go home now?"

"Yeah, if it's all the same to you, I think I'm beat."
She was glad Jay seemed to feel the same way.

They said their good-byes to everyone left at the bar. Matt told her to give him a call about the lift to the airport on Sunday, if she still needed it. Rianne planned on attending her cousin's bachelorette party in LA and helping with the preparations for the small wedding ceremony on Saturday the following week. Her uncle's family had been living in California for years now and where somehow the only family she had in this country. It was so surreal that she'd be on the West Coast, mostly partying and filling her time with happy and light things, in just a few days when it felt like she couldn't really leave her Chicago-life at the moment. There was just so much to do.

Jay and Will man-hugged (Rianne called those hugs that because they involved a lot of slapping on the back mostly). Will must have said something that annoyed Jay when he let him go, because Jay's eyebrows and eyeballs almost hit his hairline when they left.

"What did he say to you?"
She asked curiously, but Jay just shook his head, and got the door for her: "Nothing!"

But his face told her otherwise and she couldn't help but laugh at his annoyance.
The brothers sometimes still acted as if they were in middle-school, always riling each other up.

"He just loves you Jay! And he loves to press your buttons, that's for sure."

Jay didn't comment on that. They had stepped outside Molly's and into the cooler night air. His truck was parked on the curb just around the corner and when he held open the door for her on the passenger's side and she went to get in, Rianne was suddenly pinned between his hard body and the side of the car, because Jay held her back.

For a moment she thought he would slam his mouth down on hers like he'd done several times before, his eyes burning with something unfathomable. But after a split second of watching her face his hands went up to cup her shoulders and he bent down to caress her bruises with his lips. It was so tender that she didn't know what to feel first. It was hot, it was confusing, it was frighteningly loving, it almost made her cry and call herself an idiot at the same time for being so emotional.

"That's how I really wanted to kiss you in there."
Jay said finally, ending his crusade with one single kiss to her head, then let her go and walked around to his side of the car.

Rianne felt she was just one kiss short of having a heart-attack.

On the ride over to Streeterville, which took about fifteen minutes, they talked about his week at work and her plans for next week.
Jay still didn't tell her about meeting Marcus' West wife and kid and sort of starting his own welfare-project there. He'd given Angela his undercover phone number and said to call her if she needed anything, money, help with her boy, who as it turned out had sickle-cell anemia or just someone to talk. She had been checking in over the last week a few times.

Rianne must've sensed something was up with him though, because she mysteriously said something like:
"Whatever is going on Jay – I hope you know you can tell me! I swear I'll cut the psychology crap if you hate it so much. But just talk to someone at least. I know you're not fine. Don't do anything stupid."
He felt caught out, but couldn't bring himself to tell her yet. He guessed she could be the one to talk him out of continuing this and he knew he wasn't ready to let it go.

When Jay stopped the motor in front of her building, he felt something else was on her mind, bothering her. Rianne wouldn't look at him properly, sitting in silence, mustering up the nerve to get something off her chest.

"Adam came to see me yesterday…" she finally said before Jay could ask what was going on and his heart sank.
Jay already knew what that call had been about, because he had been arguing with Adam about it.

"You know what he told me?" She looked at him inquiringly, taking off her seatbelt and turning around to him.
The usual sparkle in her eyes was almost gone, the glow of a streetlight next to his car shining onto the unbruised half of her face.

"Yeah, I know," he nodded, also turning around in his seat, killing the ignition completely.

Adam had told her that they would be closing the investigation on Andrea as there was no real evidence and state had decided to not open up a case on him. Marco was still at Med, although not in a coma anymore, but not talking. He had lawyered up and awaited his sentence as soon as he was out of the hospital. So what was the point investing manpower in the case of an already dead man? Andrea wasn't one of the big fish they were partly still after. Jay had wanted to wait until they told her, see if there was another way they could provide information or continue investigating on the side. But Adam had been adamant that she deserved to know the truth right now and called her, in Jay's opinion just dumping this on her without a perspective.

He feared she would not be able to let this go, just like he would not have been if their places had been reversed. Jay didn't want her to go off on her own and try to find out more about the past. He pegged her as someone who would just do that, maybe even in a calculated, silent and sneaky way, getting herself into trouble again.

Rianne had been swamped at the office and hadn't really had time to contemplate what this new information meant for her. During the last two days and especially now that she was looking at "that someone new" in her life, she feared that it affected her more than she wanted to. How would she ever know now what had really happened? How would she define her and Andrea's relationship in the light of things possibly being a little different from what she'd believed for a long time? Of all the things she could have said about their relationship she had always thought that one thing was really special: They told each other the truth! Always, hurtful as it might have been. But maybe she had been mistaken.

"I wanna be honest, I don't know how to wrap my head around this and I won't know until I have had time to think about how to live with that uncertainty. I haven't had a single minute to myself yesterday, today and tomorrow? I don't know how that will go. I hope you understand that I just need to sleep on this again and be alone. Anything else wouldn't be fair to you."

Jay was quiet for a minute, just watching her face, before he spoke:

"I get it. Take your time. As long as you don't…"

"I won't disappear, I promise!"
Rianne took his hand into hers and played with his long fingers, loving the warm and dry feel of them.

"That's not what I was going to say," Jay caught her fingers between his and pulled her closer to him, cracking a smile.

"I said it anyway. And I mean it."
She held his gaze, hoping she could convince him with her eyes that it was embedded into her conscience like a mantra: Whatever you do, don't disappear on Jay, don't disappear on Jay! It seemed there was another story to his fear, she would maybe find out one day.

"I just need a good night's sleep, soak in a hot bath and let my thoughts run wild, freak out, have a long cry and then I'll have to make my peace with probably never really knowing the truth…Maybe I'll write a song about it," she joked sarcastically.
Although a part of her certainly wanted to find out on her own if nobody did anything.

"You know that you can have a cry with me too, right?"

"Yeah, I know… Sometimes it just feels that I have used up all my 'crying in front of other people' credits…" She'd certainly used her credits less for the last months, but anyway.

"Okay, I'll see you when you're done…" Jay pulled her into a hug and didn't push her any further. She was glad and a weight had lifted from her heart already, just because she felt she didn't need to completely explain herself in front of him and he could take her being honest. At least it felt like it.

Resting her good cheek next to his, Rianne breathed him in. Jay always smelled so clean and like a fresh breeze of air, she didn't want to let go of him just yet. He seemed to feel the same, instead of letting her go after some time had passed, he only pressed her tighter to him, running his hands over her back and through her hair, her whole body was alert, heat spreading through her every fibre. Just as easy as one would light a match that hug turned into something else entirely.

Putting a hand in his neck, reaching down under his shirt to his taught shoulder muscles Rianne pulled herself up on his lap, straddling him in the driver's seat. Not caring about her split lip at all she began kissing Jay, challenging him to keep up with her hunger for him and he joined in. She felt she wanted and needed so much more than the situation and the space in the car could provide, but nevertheless it was pure bliss to get lost in the moment and just feel: Roaming hands, bodies looking for more connection, more friction, frustration at being not nearly close enough and revelation at being so aware of her heavy beating heart that it was so clear: She was very much alive in this second, here with that somehow still mysterious man it seemed she couldn't get enough of.

"Are you sure you really wanna be alone tonight?"
Jay murmured, his voice having an amused ring to it, when he bit her ear softly, his warm breath whispering over her neck, making her shiver and grab the collar of his jacket tighter.

"Yes, I'm sure… but sometimes I just want you so fucking bad, I can't seem to stop myself…"
Jay groaned at that and kissed her so deeply, hands grasping naked skin under her top, that she thought she was going to explode right then and there.
Her butt accidentally pressing the horn of Jay's truck and probably waking up the whole neighborhood made them topple over with laughter so much, it took the edge off a bit. "Please tell me there's no way to put on the sirens like that…"

Their make-out-session in the car was cut short by a heavy knocking sound. Both of them were frightened for a second, looking out of the passenger window in shock. At closer inspection they saw Nate, peering in through the glass and motioning for Rianne to roll down the window or open up the door.

She straightened her clothes, cleared her throat and scrambled from Jay's lap, almost shy, like someone who had just been caught doing something illegal. It was certainly a side of her Jay wasn't used to seeing. He was trying to calm down his breathing.

As soon as the window was half-way down Nate addressed her sternly:

"Jeezus, I have been calling you non-stop! I was worried sick!"

"Sorry, my phone died somewhere along the line. Where did you come from just now?"

"I drove to Molly's because nobody over there was picking up the phone as well. Thought maybe you were there and needed a ride. But when I arrived they told me you two had left already…what happened to your face?" Nate reached for her chin through the car window.

"Got in between a domestic, didn't end so well for me."

"You'll have to ice that!"

"Already did that man," Jay's voice sounded a little strained.

"Are you coming up then?" Nate purposefully just looked at Rianne. This felt like Rianne's dad scolding them and putting her on house-arrest because she missed her curfew.

"I'll be a minute…just go ahead!" After an awkward few seconds where they all just stared at one another Nate nodded and left to go in the direction of their building entrance. He didn't even say good-bye to Jay who didn't know what he ever did to that man.

"I'm sorry, he's just… overprotective…?" Rianne was certainly uncomfortable and not meeting his eyes.

"That's one way to put it," Jay was getting a weird vibe off of this, but he decided to not intervene yet and just trust her to handle this with her roommate.
On her own.