AN: So, I decided start you off into a new week with a new chapter. I'm sorry it took so long, but I had the opportunity to meet my 6 week-old godson for a weekend, so fiction took a bit of a backseat. But now here we go:
I tried to switch a little between present (which is when Rianne and Jay are on their way back to Chicago) and the things that happened during their vacation. I always like stories that tell things in a non chronological order from time to time, so I thought I'd give it a try too. I haven't figured out the whole trip yet, but this is what I can tell you so far:

Chapter Title "All Is On My Side" by Sam Fender

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

Rianne watched Jay's head gradually tilt to the side and knew that he'd probably wake with a start as soon as his chin hit nothingness, so she reached out and cradled his neck in her hand, which he turned into in his sleep. Him so peaceful and at ease was making her heart-muscles contract almost painfully every single time, just like so many things about him. That he'd closed his eyes after the lights had been switched off on the plane and was dosing now told her lots about his state of relaxation, so she had to smile when she thought back to how frustrated with himself he had been just a little over twelve days ago:

"I'm afraid I'm not very good at this!" he had almost yelled at her.

"Good at what?"

"Going on a vacation? Letting loose, relax!"

"So? Then you're just not. Maybe we'll get into a fight over it, even lots of them and we'll take it from there!"

"But I don't wanna fight with you!"

"You forget how good we are at making up!"

Whereas now easy and comfortable silence had settled over them on their way back to Chicago, there had been a lot to discuss on their outward flight. 15 hours travel time were a long while to talk things through. Although Rianne had iced him out conversation-wise until their stopover in Dallas and a shot of whiskey to be bold enough to say anything that needed to be said, just in case. On principle she couldn't have let him off the hook so easily. For the first hour together her whole body had been shaking all over, trying to deal with the devastating feeling that lingered how close he had come to miss that flight and leave her hanging out to dry. She wouldn't have wanted to explain that to anyone in her family, when they were already so excited to meet him.

"What if your father thinks I am not good enough for you?"

"Oh, you got daddy issues now? Jay, it doesn't matter what my father thinks! I will always choose you over my family, shall I write it down for you?"

She had done that for Andrea and she would do it for him all over again if necessary. Only Rianne thought that there was no need. He had survived her mum, he actually had been pretty great around her, better than she was. So her dad shouldn't be the problem. Jay had kept arguing that he knew it was different with dads and daughters. Thinking back to that long and draining argument Rianne wanted to strangle him anew for not believing in himself enough and ever doubting his abilities to win over other people by just being himself, when she had known from the start he would be totally fine.

"Why's it so hard for you to believe and see that everyone just loves you and wants you to be happy?"

"Because I ask myself why? Why do they care so much? I didn't do anything special to deserve this!"

Between crossing time zones and oceans Jay had eventually told her how everyone back home had been on his back throughout the day so that he would snap into action and get to the airport already. He seemed to be surprised that they were so invested in this. It even almost irritated him why his personal well-being and happiness were so important to them.

"You don't have to do anything specific for that love! You would have done it for your brother, wouldn't you? If you thought he was making a mistake, wouldn't you have tried to talk some sense into him?"

"Yeah, of course!" Jay would have probably been the first one on Will's case.

"So, what 'special thing' did Will do to deserve your love?"

He didn't have an answer to that, hopefully beginning to see her point.

"There's always going to be someone who doesn't see your worth Jay! Just don't let it be you!"

She wondered if this sort of manifest of being undeserving of other people's care was, besides other reasons, still connected to his time overseas and some survivor's guilt.
Anyway, hearing his side and what a close call it had been, Rianne felt like she really had to write everyone, Trudy Platt especially, a 'thank you' card at least.

For a little while she had scolded herself that she had forgiven him so quickly for how he had left her to wonder if he would come at all, how he had made her question him and them even for a minute. She hadn't been able to push him away physically, rather initiated that desperate kiss, just because she had to make sure that at least his body was in it. To make sure that even though she was mad and hurt she still felt that same undeniable connection.
Rianne pinned it on his really nice and soft slim fit sweater that he'd worn on their outbound flight, as well. They always made it so hard not to cosy up against him, touch him, eventually forgive him!
Who could really blame her? This was the man she loved! A man sometimes riddled with doubts, with exorbitant sense of responsibility, conscientiousness as well as a whole load of self-criticism. A little bit messy, a little bit ruined. And yet there were so many things on the plus side. A beautiful disaster, in some ways just like her. Maybe real love was always chaotic.

In the end he was the only one she wanted to be by her side more than she ever wanted anyone else to be. This realization had hit her ten times over during so many different moments of this vacation. Sometimes it still intimidated her, but mostly Rianne knew it made her sparkle and glow from the inside and she wouldn't change that for another, possibly safer option.
It was strange that only two weeks later their bumpy start seemed to belong to another universe.

What she remembered most of their last weeks together, the things she found most remarkable and herself falling in love with all over again:

By far the sound of his laugh! His carefree laugh, his resounding belly laugh, that goofy cackle that started very silently in his throat and gradually shifted into something deeper. A laugh that resounded through his whole body and hers whenever she was close enough to feel it. And she had been pretty close many times.
His surprised laugh, when at one point he found out that she was actually afraid going downhill-mountainbiking, like 'I'll-scream-if-you-make-me-do-it' scared, but bold enough to climb on a horse with no saddle underneath her.
His teary eyed, resulting in abdominal cramps laughter, when he was throwing the ball around with the other guys at the beach and accidentally hit her with it hard, making her collapse just when she and her cousins were in some kind of handstand challenge. She had chased him down screaming for revenge until they both landed in the sand on top of each other.
His devious smile, when she'd told him that she really needed someone else to put sunscreen on her back, because if he kept doing it like some sort of tantra massage she'd take her clothes off right in the middle of her dad's patio and jump him.
His amused cackle, when they were all standing around the barbecue and someone in the group cracked a silly joke that made him almost choke on the beer he was nursing.
The way she knew he always was suppressing a snicker whenever her father pronounced his name 'Yay' instead of 'Jay'.

How he kept that freaking ugly dog of her father's entertained and himself in the process by throwing stick after stick for him, seeming to not get enough of the canine's enthusiasm for that repetitive game.
To see how her teenage cousins Pepe and Danilo, that had arrived with her aunt Eliana and her Brazilian husband at one point, quickly had roped him into any kind of sports challenge during their stay and Jay had not once told them no, because he was of course always game and so soon their hero.
The way she could see that cockiness and confidence seep into him again, straightening him up. Not in a rigid way, but softer, still modest and yet just as impressive.
The way his eyes had slowly, but gradually brightened up everyday, his darkened and now even more impossibly freckled skin bringing out their color in a radiant green twinkle.
His heat, his nightly sweat, his sex sweat, any parts of his skin on hers, the taste of salt, garlic, cigars, mate, Malbec and dulce de leche on his lips and tongue.
A new favorite position: his head on her belly, her hand in his wet and sandy hair.
The moments whenever he rolled over in his sleep to put his arms around her and pull her closer, sighing into her neck.
Yeah, she guessed these were her favorite memories. That and everything in between…

"You don't have to be someone else for me Jay, someone you're just not! You can be messy, complicated and afraid, I don't fucking care! As long as you show up anyway! You once said whatever I do I shouldn't disappear on you! If I had pulled a stunt like you did today: You would have gone ballistics! You can't do that to me either. We can figure this out together and if you feel you can't take it you freaking talk to me and we'll be on the next flight back to Chicago or whatever it is we decide together, you hear me? But I won't accept chickening out before even trying!"

And wasn't he glad that he hadn't chickened out. In retrospect he could only laugh about how he had behaved in the beginning. It was amazing what could change in such a relatively short amount of time. He had learned so much: About life, about people, about himself, Rianne, love, family and ties, differences and similarities.

But what would he remember most of his time in Argentina?

The colors! Definitely! The many different smells that were sometimes exotic to him. The unusual heat of the sun on his skin, making him sweat a lot in the beginning. Good quiet times, times to take deep breaths, the times where he didn't find his fears validated. Lots of music and laughter, people singing at any chance they got, late night talks, a lot of skin on skin moments with a girl who he still found himself falling deeper for every day.

It had certainly been a journey of senses. Everything moved in a different rhythm, time wasn't of the essence like it normally was for him every day. That had taken some getting used to in the beginning.

There was a brightness in everything he had found himself drawn to right from the start. From the very beginning where Rianne's father's driver had picked them up with a toothy smile, an old-fashioned black chauffeur cap and a sign that read: "Senorita Rianne, Senior Jay!" it had made him feel like he was in a movie. A movie with a soundtrack he didn't yet know the words to. A movie he wasn't so sure he would get, but was dying to see anyway.

On their approximately one hour drive from the airport, across the city to a gated community of the affluent neighborhood of Pilar, everything had been a contrast to what they had just left behind: humidity and warm winds instead of ice-cold gusts, palm-trees lining the streets they were passing instead of snowy hills and bald trees, European architecture instead of tall city skyscrapers, bright colors instead of fading ones. And he had seen this lightness and diversity come to life in one special person more than ever before.

Looking at the empty seat next to him and all the clutter consisting of a journal and a pen, books, a scarf and blanket, headphones and a bag of sweets, he smirked absentmindedly. This trip and their surroundings, the way of life they had been living for the last days had made her messier than ever.

Jay had gotten another crash-course in getting to know Rianne Torres Delgado in more facades than he already was familiar with. Ultimately he had come to admire that everywhere she went she never seemed or looked out of place. He wondered if this had something to do with her upbringing, never really settling down, getting to know many people, many different languages and countries at a young age, always having to adapt and to start from scratch, having to try out so many roles in order to find the one she was happiest in. Deep down she was used to being a nomad. That unrest irrevocably embedded somewhere in her bones. Rianne was so adaptable and eclectic that she was in fact many women rolled into one:

A straight-talking social-worker and a qualified trauma expert were just the professional titles she carried, but by far not all there was to her.

There was the artist within her, the dreamer, the musician, the passionate lover, the loyal friend. A person of ingenuity, someone who wore her heart on her sleeve. A networker who silently and so effortlessly organized and prepared for any scenario, because she liked to treat people to things she knew they enjoyed and it served her urge of being in control.

Getting to know the country of her father and learning all the things that connected her to it had revealed another new side: The daughter, who had been a bit of a loner just like Jay had been. Certainly not in the exact same way! In fact he was sure he would have hated her in school, because she would have been one of the rich kids, probably no one he would have made friends with. But on the inside Jay was sure she had been lonely through her childhood and teenage years a lot. More than once trying to fit in and coming up short, or having fit in and being ripped away from that again. At the very least yearning for more attention from the people who were too busy with themselves to give it to her.

Right upon their arrival at her father's estate Jay had gotten an impression on how it must have been like:
As it had turned out her father wasn't even there. The newest maid (yes this had also made him feel like he had walked through the wrong door and a little out of place at first) had welcomed them and informed Rianne that Señor Torres Delgado and his wife Inès (pretty interesting chapter in itself) were still on a business trip and would presumably join them in the evening.
Rianne's face had fallen for a second, but then she'd shrugged it off.

"Well, that was to be expected!" She hadn't been able to suppress this bitter comment though.

"I thought you said he's retired?" Jay could only imagine how busy he had been when in actual business back then.

"Oh well, he's always doing something on the side I guess, I couldn't even tell you. I would have been surprised if he'd actually been here to welcome us. No need to feel bad on my behalf though: I've been spending more time with our staff than with my parents growing up anyway, so this is nothing new. Maybe that's why I've got such a big heart for the working-class… who knows…"

The gravity of what he had almost done to her sank in when Jay understood that little something more about her childhood: In no uncertain terms Rianne had shown him over and over again that she would do everything on her own, if she had to. She was used to being disappointed and had long since stopped waiting for people to come around until she made a move or a decision for herself. Had stopped begging for attention.

Suddenly Jay had felt an unfamiliar gratitude for his own upbringing. Something no one could ever take away from him and that he tended to forget:
Maybe he hadn't had her kind of lifestyle and the financial resources, he hadn't seen all those countries.
Quite the opposite: Money had always been a little tight growing up. It had been enough, enough to sent him and his brother to a private school, but not that much for fancy clothes, a bigger house and holidays and eating out a lot.

However there had always been someone waiting for him when he came home from school, someone who would ask how his day had gone, someone who was making sure he was well fed, did his chores and who took him out for ice-cream and a baseball game once in a while. Someone who would get mad at him if he brought home bad grades, someone to reprimand him and try teaching him something. A promise had always been a promise, he had been able to rely on his parents, however much he had resented his father for not being more understanding and generally warmer sometimes.
He had had his steady neighborhood. People knew him and his family, it was a tight knit community, the Halstead's were well respected. People looked out for one another and: Jay had always had his big brother! In general he had found himself thinking about his own childhood, his dad and especially his mum a lot during this trip.

Rianne had told him once: She was used to fending for herself, but he just now understood what that really must have meant for her as a little girl. The more it surprised him that she had turned out as compassionate as she had and that she was giving him a chance to make it up to her.

"Good Lord! I hate that we have to put on winter clothes again. These jeans were actually loose fit. Look at the zipper: it barely closes now!" Rianne complained when she got back from the bathroom, interrupting Jay's train of thoughts.

To be prepared for the expected draft on the airplane and the very different weather conditions when they would touch ground in the US again they had had to say goodbye to shorts and comfy wide summer dresses a few hours ago.
Jay smiled up at her nonetheless, pulling her into his lap and away from the aisle she was currently blocking:

"I kinda like it!" He squeezed her hip for good measure, pressing his lips to hers and indulging in a heartfelt smooch before she could protest how it was unfair that he hadn't gained any weight. He himself was wondering how that was possible considering how much food and drinks and sweet stuff they had allowed themselves. Seeing her revel in the local delicacies, even the simplest ones, had been incredibly sexy though. It was like hearing her talk in Spanish passionately and notice her whole demeanor and voice change with it like she was putting on a slightly different layer, appearing in another light, definitely full-blooded and all sensual.

All in all she just looked incredibly healthy right now. Inwardly he knew she wasn't really too worried about that weight gain:

"Also those little extra reserves might actually serve you well back in the Chicago cold!" Jay added and prepared for Rianne to pinch his chest hard, which of course she did.

"Thanks a lot you little brat!" she grumbled fake annoyed, ending them in a play-fight he easily won by pinning her hands down in a tight embrace. He mostly did win those or she always let him, he wasn't so sure.

Rianne combed her fingers through his hair the moment he loosened his grip on her, smiling into his eyes teasingly:

"Think anybody's gonna even recognize you at home wild man?"

She was referring to his slightly longer hair that had begun to curl itself again a little on his forehead and the fact he hadn't bothered to shave in at least five to six days. So his usual stubble resembled now the beginning of a real beard. Despite a little sunburn on their first days he had managed to also work up a nice tan that had even surprised Jay himself. 'Trudy would be proud', he thought.

It made him think of the first time Rianne had seen him exchange his jeans for shorts and took in the color of his legs in broad Argentinian daylight:

"Oh my, you're just so damn white…" she had chuckled, already a shade darker than him by nature and tanning just so much easier.

"Are you making fun of me now?"

"No… I was just thinking about something Atwater once said… you had a case where you were chasing a perp that was like really, really white? He told me the offender was indeed so white that he even made you look like Lil Wayne… thought that was funny! That guy however must have been an albino or something…"

That comment had landed her in the pool fully clothed a few minutes later.

When they had been trying to figure things out and loosening the tension between them on their way there, Jay had asked her to try not to mother him throughout this holiday and to call him out on his shit instead. It seemed she was taking it very seriously, being as blunt and as hands-on as she usually was, teasing him at any sacrifice whenever they were alone at least. In front of her family she was first of all extremely supportive and protective of him.

He really wanted to be the person she deserved. A person who was willing to dig through his flaws for her as well as him. Someone who could consider himself blessed with a woman by his side willing to face all of his restraints and barriers full force:

"You need an assignment to feel secure? I can give you plenty! How about I dare you to have sex with me in all the public places we can find without getting caught? Or that I want you to wake me up with a massage every morning? I could assign you to getting to know all my father's hobbies, give golfing and polo play a shot, swim 50 lanes in the pool before breakfast every day or to play catch with the ugliest dog you will ever see, just because no one else does. Shall I go on?"

This and her very agitated face while she was making an imaginary list of the things that could help him get over his 'lost without his job' issues, when they were still in the air to Buenos Aires, had elicited the first real laugh out of him. She was so adorably crazy and so serious about it!

"Oh, another good one: I dare you to hate this holiday so much that you will never go on another one with me again. I actually dare you to not have any fun at all!"

"This supposed to be some kind of reversed psychology?"

"Whatever helps you get through the day, Jay!"

Creativity concerning problem solutions was certainly one of Rianne's strengths.

This whole special time together had given Jay plenty to think about, just like the little round-shaped golden thing sitting in his bag.

They really were each other's 'I dare you'.

Thinking back to the beginning and how he was now, how he had been in the end even in front of her family, reaching for and kissing her at any random moment, whenever he just felt like it (and he obviously felt like it a lot) Rianne had to smile to herself when she thought back to his inhibitions in the beginning:

Jay's astonished, maybe even unbelieving face when she had just stripped off her clothes in her father's backyard and jumped straight into the pool without getting changed into bathing gear first, just in her underwear, was forever imprinted on her mind. For her it had been a moment to behold because she felt her boldness and spontaneity take over, reminding herself what kind of a woman she was. A woman that didn't care about something so profane as a bathing suit when she wanted to get into the cooling water as soon as possible. Someone who, unlike Jay, didn't want to go get settled in and "unpack first". She rather wanted to enjoy the moments as they came.

Jay's hesitation and bewilderment had been hilarious. It had taken a little bit of convincing to coax him into doing the same.

It had also taken him a while to get used to the way her family was actually not quite so catholic when it came to openly talking about sex or the topless sunbathing even her aunts and stepmom took a part in, be it at the pool at the Buenos Aires estate or at their beach house in Mar Azul. Her mission to get Jay to fool around with her in the pool on their first day had miserably failed.

"Since when are you so shy about it?"

"Since we're at your father's house! What if he comes back right now? I already made a pretty naked first impression on your mother!"

"But I can see and hear him from a mile away, we could always just stop!"

"Still… it's awkward…"

From what she knew about Jays past relationships it had dawned on her that he had never really done that part before. He had never made that step of staying at his girlfriend's parents house, sneaking around, trying to keep it quiet and not get caught when it came to sexual activities. It had made for a priceless conversation she would tease Jay about for a long time.

"Knowing my father he might be doing Inès every night…"

"Oh my god! Why would you even say that? Are you all this open about sex?"

"I told you my mum's even worse. In contrast to her otherwise very correct outerior she'd probably be walking around naked all the time if this was still her home."

"I'm sure my parents never had sex!"

Rianne had laughed even more when she'd seen Jay's very serious face as he said that.

"Right, so how would you explain the existence of Will and you then?"

"I mean I am sure they didn't have sex for fun…"

"You're really, really funny sometimes…"

"I am serious! I don't wanna imagine my parents having sex for fun, like ever! May they rest in peace!"

"Well, be like that darling! But I will get you to make love to me in this pool some other time!"

Of course she had succeeded at one point, the memory still sending shivers down her spine, just where Jay's hands now tenderly held her pressed against him, already falling asleep again. Rianne tried to push the fear that all of those happy memories would begin to fade away as soon as they touched ground in their hometown again, as far away as she could.

AN: So, next chapter you'll finally get to meet Rianne's father in person. I'm really excited too! :-)