It had been seven months since Mouse had shocked her into silence in the district parking lot. Six since Terry had died and Jay had fallen apart. Five since Erin had found the courage to ask Jay the question that had been slowly building up inside her. Five months since everything and nothing had changed.
Jay had woken up the morning after Terry's funeral disoriented, and a little bewildered at having both Erin and Mouse in his bed. Erin was amazed, and she could tell Mouse was too, that Jay hadn't woken once in the night, and imagined that he must have just been too exhausted from the stress and the grief and the two sleepless nights before. They sent Jay off for a shower and started making breakfast, and by the time the food was gone Jay was back to claiming that he was fine. Erin didn't buy it for a second, and she traded disbelieving glances with Mouse.
When they found out that Voight had put Jay on a mandatory one week leave, they shared grateful sighs, and then Erin called Voight and authoritatively told him that she and Mouse were using a week of their vacation days. When she hung up, doubt hit her immediately and she bit her lip as she looked at Mouse, afraid she was out of line speaking for him like that. Mouse met her with a grateful, if surprised, smile, and Jay scowled and told them they were being ridiculous. He said that he was fine.
He said it every day that week, even though she and Mouse knew better than to ask. They cooked and watched Doctor Who and played Settlers of Catan, and Jay got progressively more snippy with them and aggressive with strangers. Erin sighed when Mouse told her this was par for the course, that this was an improvement. Finally, five days in, Jay exploded.
"I said I'm fine! I'm not a fucking child, so get the hell out, both of you!"
Mouse was used to this, and Erin was resolute, so they didn't move.
"Jay, you're not fine," Mouse said matter of factly.
"Just talk to us," Erin pleaded, still desperate to do more.
Jay didn't talk to them; he yelled some more and they tried to stay calm but eventually Erin was stinging with desperation and indignation and she started yelling back, and Mouse was telling Jay to stop it and Jay picked up an empty glass from the coffee table and threw it. It hit the wall and shattered, a spray of glittering shards and a crash of clear sound. Everything froze. Erin stared at Jay, could feel Mouse's stillness beside her. Jay's eyes were wide with growing horror. He stumbled back a step, and Erin heard his breath go ragged, one of his hands coming up to cover parted lips. A strangled moan made its way from Jay's mouth, and it broke Erin and Mouse into motion.
They moved towards Jay in concert, and Jay took another step back and fell into the couch behind him. His hands came up to hold his head, hunched over, breathing ragged, and for a moment Erin thought maybe he was having a panic attack like Mouse had had. She and Mouse sat beside Jay on either side and she decided that, no, it wasn't a panic attack. It was a mix of shock and anger and trying not to cry. Erin put a hand on Jay's back and he froze, but she rubbed soothing circles until he relaxed some.
"Jay," Mouse tried again, voice low and soothing. "You need to talk to someone."
"A therapist if not us," Erin added. Jay snorted humourlessly, and Erin understood the implied "this coming from you?" and frowned at Mouse over Jay's back. Her mouth spoke without her permission. "We will if you will."
In the moment before Jay's head came up to look at her in disbelief, Erin watched emotions cycle across Mouse's face: surprise, distaste, consideration, resignation. Jay's head came up, and Erin looked back at him earnestly, and his eyebrows knit together. He turned to Mouse, no doubt expecting a denial, but Mouse met him with a nod.
It took a lot more convincing. Several days' worth of convincing, and promises that if he went they'd stop treating him like glass, stop asking if he was okay, stop being weird about it. She tried to apologize to Mouse about speaking for both of them again, tried to apologize acrobatically without coming out and saying "I'm sorry" because she hadn't forgotten the way those words coming out of her mouth through a telephone had once paralyzed and choked him. Mouse had shrugged and said, "If it works… Besides, maybe… well, maybe it's not a bad thing." Erin thought of the night they sat in the kitchen with their tea and she told Mouse he could talk to her, thought of the agonized expression when he said "I can't" with a weight that Erin was sure she didn't fully understand, thought of their shared midnights before those three words slipped from his lips, thought of the sudden silence on the other end of the phone and thought, yes, maybe it's not a bad thing.
Finally, they got a grudging agreement from Jay; if he went to a therapist, and actually gave it a shot, Erin and Mouse would too. Erin decided that she would go back to Dr. Charles, who already had some background in terms of her sordid history. She had also asked him for a recommendation for a good therapist who specialized in veterans and PTSD for Mouse and Jay after checking to make sure it wasn't some kind of conflict of interest for them both to see the same therapist.
Jay had his first appointment on a Tuesday. Erin and Mouse went to Jay's apartment and started on an involved Indian dish, and Jay came home tense and silent, but with another appointment scheduled. Mouse had his first appointment on Thursday and Erin was glad she had extracted a promise from him that he would come to Jay's after because when he arrived he was pale and quiet and his fingers fidgeted with his NA coin all night. Erin spent most of her first appointment with Dr. Charles hashing out her anger and exasperation and fear for Jay after Terry and his refusal to talk.
After that, things were surprisingly normal. Except for the new addition to their schedules of therapy sessions – for now, once weekly for Erin, twice weekly for Jay and Mouse, which she was shocked they had agreed to – things were almost like they had been before Mouse had said those words to her. Before she knew he loved her.
There were nights of food and laughter, leftovers shared around the lunch table, the rapidly dwindling stock of Doctor Who episodes. There were also nightmares, and midnight discussions to the flickering light of a documentary. There were nights where Mouse stayed, nights where he didn't, and nights where maybe he should have.
The difference was that now sometimes her gaze would linger on him, picking out the line of his cheekbones and wondering what it would be like to brush her fingers along them. She watched Jay watch Mouse with tender affection, felt the warmth in her chest when she watched them both. Sometimes she imagined pulling him away from the couch and the three of them nestled together in Jay's bed. Sometimes she looked at his lips and prodded her mind and waited for something else, the kind of thing she saw sometimes when she looked at Jay's lips. She didn't see it. But she still saw their fingers laced together, a chaste kiss, mornings resting her head on his shoulder watching him scramble eggs while Jay made the coffee. She saw it in the curve of his eyebrow, in his smile, in the way that he looked at Jay. She saw it, and she wanted, wanted with an ache that caught her off guard, wanted in silence, afraid and guilty, wanted and wanted and wanted.