Chapter 1 - Prologue
Hailey threw the ball across the living room, sighing when it hit the edge of the basket and bounced off, flying back and ending up in almost exactly the same place she had grabbed it from. She waves it off, deciding to come back to it as she makes her way around the rest of the living room, clearing up after the chaos the kids had left before Jay took them upstairs for bed.
It was the price to pay for giving them an extra half-hour of manic in an effort to wear them out and get them to bed early.
The rest of the toys are put in their right bin, the legos were stepped on and put in the large tub left of the coffee table and the boxes are shoved into the corner of the room, the stray stuffed animals placed on top and the room returns to looking somewhat normal. She returns the leftover ball to the basket just as Jay comes back down the stairs.
She can't help but notice the defeated look on his face and she rests her hands on her hips. "How badly did you lose?" She asks.
Jay spins the corner and heads straight into the living room. "So badly," he replied, stopping opposite her. "I'll go up in an hour or so, move him into his room. I just wanna make sure he's really asleep this time so we don't have a repeat of Tuesday's fiasco." He says and Hailey cringes slightly at the memory of Alfie refusing to go back asleep in his own bed after having fallen asleep in Macie's room for three hours before he eventually passed out with his head hanging upside down off the couch.
Hailey takes a small step forward. "He'll come out of this phase soon," she reassures, really trying to hammer the thought into both of their heads because right now it didn't feel like there was an end in sight to the two-year-olds sudden obsession with his older sister. Hailey then furrows her eyebrows. "You want a beer?" She wonders.
There's a small lift to Jay's lips as he nods and he follows behind his wife as she makes her way into the kitchen and receives the drink from the fridge, grabbing one for herself too. She hands it over and Jay instantly cracks the top, smirking before taking a sip. He places the bottle on the counter, watching as she shoots him a weird glance.
She pulls the bottle from her lips and jerks her chin forward. "What?"
He shakes his head while trying to hide the tug on the corners of his mouth. "Nothing, I'm just thinking."
Hailey frowns. "About what?"
Jay shrugs. "About how we're not gonna be able to do this much longer," he says but it doesn't seem to clear it up any easier with her so he chuckles. "The drinking every day, we're really gonna have to cut down on the alcohol if we're taking this whole trying thing seriously."
The realization comes over her face with a small groan. "Don't remind me, I'm already starting to question how I'm gonna be able to function without my five coffees in the morning... God we really are crazy to be doing this, huh?"
Jay nods and they both grin at each other before Hailey quickly clears her throat, lifting her bottle in the air.
"To number three." She toasts.
Jay raises his arm, tapping the neck of the glass in his hand with hers. "Here here." He replies before they both simultaneously take a sip of the beers.
Later the following day, Jay was forced to look up from the file in front of him at the sound of a knock on the office door. He greeted his officer with a smile.
"What can I do you for, Kev?" He asks.
Kevin extends his hand, holding out pieces of paper. "I need your signature on these forms." He says.
Jay quirks his eyebrow. "What's that for?"
Atwater steps inside, closing the distance between him and his sergeant. When he got close enough, Jay took the collection from his hand, pulling it down on to the desk. He scanned his eyes over the sheet and after a beat, Jay looks back up the officer with curiosity. "Is there a particular reason why you're putting in for more overtime?"
Kevin rests his hands on his hips, tilting his head to the side slightly. "The detective exam is coming up, I'm gonna sign up for it, thought I'd get as much time on the job as possible."
The sergeant feels the corners of his lips pull up into a smile. "That's great, Kev," he says, putting the pen to paper, signing the bottom of the paper and handing it back off to Kevin.
The officer quickly thanks Jay and turns on his heels, beginning to walk back outside before Jay stops him, calling out his name and making him turn back into the office.
Jay continues to smirk. "Detective sounds good on you, Atwater. And if you need any help, I'm here." He says.
This brings a smile on to Kevin's face also as he hits the paper against his hand. "Thanks, Sarge." He nods before heading back out into the bullpen.
Jay watches out the window as Kevin collects his phone from his desk and disappears down the corridor toward the locker room and he's just about to focus back up on the file he was working on previously before Hailey stands in the doorway, gently tapping her knuckle against the wooden frame.
"Are you ready to go?" She asks.
He leans forward and rests his arms against the desk. "I've just gotta finish this, then we'll head out."
He grabs his pen again and continues making his notes on the unit's latest bust, keeping his focus on there as he hears a loud goodbye being shouted by the top of the stairs as Adam and Kevin headed off for their evening, just raising his hand to wave at them goodnight as Hailey shouted back for the officers to enjoy their day off the next day.
Just as he finished off the last sentence, he brings his gaze up to find Hailey still standing in the doorway as he put his pen down and closed the file cover. He pushes the file to one side for when he came back in in a couple days and stands himself from his chair, throwing his phone into his back pocket as he knits his eyebrows together.
"Ready to go?" He asks, almost repeating her question from before and he approaches her.
She peers over her shoulder into the bullpen. "Actually I thought we could hang out here a while." She says as she steps further into the office, gently pushing the door closed until it clicked, earning a confused look from her husband in return.
"Well unless you wanna help me with leftover paperwork, I'm afraid to say there isn't much to do." He says, making a nod toward the pile on the desk.
Rather than responding, Hailey just shoots him a suggestive look and that's all he needs for his face to drop when he knew exactly what she meant.
His eyebrows raise as he sends a brief look around their surroundings. "Here?"
She shrugs her shoulders. "We've got an hour until we told your brother we'd be home."
This brings a smirk on to Jay's lips. "So we're gonna have sex at work to kill time?"
"Do you want to or not?" Hailey quickly asks.
"I'm not against the idea." He replies.
Hailey still doesn't move from her spot from the doorway. "Yes or no?"
"Yes." He says and he steps forward, pulling on the cord on the side of the window, closing the blinds with a swift tug.
He then steps over to Hailey, stopping right in front of her and he pulls her in for a half-hug with a curious glint in his eyes.
"Where did this come from?" He wonders.
She looks up at him and wraps her arms around his waist. "Do I need a reason?" She asks.
Jay softly shakes his head. "Not right now, no."
Hailey smirks. "You looked good." She replies regardless.
This makes Jay nod and respond quickly, sarcasm filling his voice. "Oh yeah, I bet I looked great after sitting in a room with little to no ventilation for two hours doing paperwork in ninety degree weather, is sweaty the new thing?" He teases.
She rolls her eyes but doesn't say anything, instead just stands up on to her tiptoes and presses her lips against his.
He could feel a smile pull up on the corner of her mouth against his own lips as he brought his hand up and rested it under her ear while her own hands begin to wander up and down his back.
Jay took a step to the side, leading Hailey back toward the desk slowly, placing one arm under both hers and around her back to hoist her up on the table.
The sound of something falling breaks them apart briefly, Jay finding that a pen holder had tipped over and he shakes his head, taking the moment to push anything nearby to the side so that Hailey could sit further back. After that, she quickly picked up where they had left it off, running her hand over the nape of his neck and through the short hairs at the back of his head.
Her legs wrap around him and pull him nearer, earning a staggered hum in return as he begins fiddling with the hem of her t-shirt. He doesn't remove the shirt, instead just places a hand underneath, running it down her spine. It brings a small shiver over her and she tightens her grip around his neck.
He toys with her shirt a moment longer before Hailey gets impatient, breaking away from the kiss to pull the clothing off herself. She tosses it to the side and lands her lips back on his and begins to move her hands south, starting at his shoulders and down his chest, hovering her fingers over where his scar is for a moment before they continue their trail down until she reaches his belt and tugs at the buckle, getting it undone.
She's just about to pull it from the loops when there's a knock on the door that makes them pull back instantly and freeze in their tracks when the voice calls through the door.
"Halstead, are you in there?" Platt asks.
The pair stare at each other for a beat, unsure of what to do because the last thing they wanted was for the sergeant to try the door handle only to find it locked. Right now they had a way out of this, if she tried the handle they'd be outed in a second.
"I can see the light on under the blind, I know you are." She says.
Jay quickly clears his throat, trying to rid his voice of the thickness he could feel. "Yeah, Sarge, what's up?"
"Atwater's forms, you only signed one page, you've gotta sign all of them."
The brunette sighs, dropping his chin to his chest. "Uh yeah, okay, just leave 'em on my desk, I'll get to it in a minute and bring them back down."
"Your desk is in the office I'm locked out of."
Jay's eyes close in defeat. After a beat he shakes his head. "My old desk," he says and he can hear a small grumble from the sergeant on the other side of the door before her footsteps walking away from the office. "Thanks, Sarge." He adds.
Trudy's voice could be heard shouting back. "Yeah yeah, Chuckles, whatever, just get that back to me fast."
Jay waits another moment until the coast was definitely clear before he sighs again, meeting Hailey's gaze, subtly pointing over his shoulder to the office door.
"I've gotta do those forms." He says.
"Yeah."
"Sorry."
Hailey shakes her head. "Don't be," she tells him before wrapping her arms around his neck again, bringing him in for another kiss, this one not nearly as fervid or intense as the last, rather quick and simple. When she pulls away, she shoots him a smile. "Now go be a sergeant."
Jay doesn't move for a beat, he just stays put wrapped in his wife's arms before he groans quietly as he moves his hands to readjust his belt.
On his exit he grabs Hailey's shirt from the floor and hands it back over to her and takes a pen with him to sign the forms.
Three signatures later, he was standing in front of the front desk, handing the papers off to the desk sergeant with an apologetic smile.
"Sorry, Sarge, it won't happen again." He says.
Platt takes the glasses from her nose. "Look, Halstead, I'm not gonna make a comment on whatever you do in your free time but piece of advice, next time wait until you get home, you don't get interrupted."
Jay tries to hide the blush crawling up on his cheeks as he holds up the collection of paper into the air, bringing the desk sergeant's attention to that. "I was talking about this."
"Oh," she mumbles, returning the glasses as she takes the papers and turns her attention to the computer screen beside her. "Well that too."
Jay curls his lips into a straight line as he nods and taps the front of the desk. "Goodnight, Sarge." He says before moving away from the desk, heading back upstairs one final time to collect Hailey.
She's already standing at the top of the stairs with their bags slung over her shoulder. Jay reaches the top and grabs his own bag despite her demands not to touch it and they both head off back down the stairs again.
as usual, here i am to give a couple points of info about this fic before proceeding, and this is a big one, so please give this a quick read if you're interested in going onwards.
1) yes, this is a sequel to 'another life' (finally!), but no, you don't have to have read that one to continue. as some of you might know, i do like to recap almost everything in all of my fics, so there is no doubt in my mind that will happen again, so any important information covered then will be mentioned here to get up to date. this is also in the same timeline as 'macie's story' - but again you don't have to have read that one to read this one.
2) however one thing that has changed is upstead's timeline. this family in my head began building almost 2 years ago now and at that time upstead weren't even together, so somethings were different, but it's about time i caught myself up and adjusted this timeline.
- so rather than being engaged when macie was born, upstead were now married, and all the events from season 8 and 9 are now included (good and bad).
- this also means a slight change to alfie's timeline is necessary, as originally upstead found out about him a month after their wedding. instead, they had been married a couple years.
3) this fic has been a long time in the works, as i've been thinking about it, writing it, rewriting it and rewriting it again for about a year. fingers crossed this time it actually sticks. as of writing this note, we are 10 days from the s9 finale and this could be the last chance depending on if the finale goes a certain way the fandom thinks it will (no pressure then)
4) as with most of my fics, this one is set in the future. this one has picked up the same day as the end of 'another life', so macie is 5 and alfie is 2.
5) this fic does go over the same time as 'macie's story' - so brief mentions of upstead telling her birth to her will be brought up in this, but i won't go into it again, and will instead just skip most of that week (but that's not for a little while anyway)
((that also means a certain question will be answered, but at the time of publishing this chapter the question has yet to even be asked ;) ))
6) and lastly, just because i'm also writing 'macie's story' and because i did rush to get this up in time before the finale, updates will be every two weeks right now to give me time to get ahead with enough chapters to move up to once a week. i haven't got a date designated yet, but i will keep you updated on that on my account :) this shouldn't last long, there's not much left to write on 'macie's story' and i've got about 8 weeks left of college left before the summer, so my writing time will increase soon as well.
anyway i think i've bored you guys enough. i'm so excited to share this sequel with you guys, as 'another life' completely changed my life and i can't wait to continue their journey.