"Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but it sure makes the rest of you lonely." - Charles M. Schulz
When her phone rings at a little past 8 at the end of her first Thursday in New York, she's just settling into the plush hotel bed with takeout and reality TV. She barely has to glance at the caller ID before answering.
"Hi, Jay," she says, tucking the phone against her shoulder and muting the TV.
"So tell me more about how you miss me," he greets her. His voice is tinny through the speaker, and it makes her feel like Chicago is a million miles away.
"Regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth."
"Mhmm," he murmurs, disbelief seeping through the speaker. She can hear the familiar sound of his truck door unlocking in the background.
"Are you just leaving the district?"
He's quiet for a moment and she knows it's the engine turning over and the call going to Bluetooth through the truck speakers, the slight reverb she hears when she speaks familiar from a thousand other calls they've shared.
"Yeah. We had to go a few rounds with the guy I told you about the other day. I thought Burgess was gonna jump across the table a couple times."
She smiles. That little anecdote shouldn't make her miss home more, but after almost a week of by-the-books FBI interviews, she wouldn't mind a little more freedom.
"You gonna trade up to Kim when I get home? Make me find another partner?" She's not really worried, but she'd be lying if she said the fear hasn't clouded her thoughts a little in the time she's been here. Distance can do weird things.
His laugh is immediate, but gentle, and she can picture his face so clearly she's almost surprised when she glances to her left and he's not there next to her.
"You know I don't want anyone else," he assures her quietly, and the way the words hit her right in the gut makes her stand and set her food aside for the time being.
"Yeah, it's hard to break in a new partner," she agrees, because that feels like the safe answer. She wanders over to the window and pulls back the curtain, watching the buzz of pedestrians and traffic down below.
It's fun, it's new, but it's not home. Jay's voice in her ear only reminds her of that.
"No sightseeing tonight?" She's been trying to make the most of her time while she's here, doing touristy things in her free time and letting the Feds show her the locals after work.
"No, I have to be up early in the morning, some joint-operation calibration session, so I figured I'd just relax."
"Don't get all Fed on me now, Hailey. Joint-operation calibration session," he mimics, and she can picture the little teasing grin lighting his features too well.
She just laughs until he speaks again.
"I can let you go so you can relax," he says, and something twists inside her at the way he sounds a little disappointed.
"No," she says, probably too quickly. "This is good, this is relaxing."
His voice comes through clearer now, and she knows he's home, phone pressed to his ear, walking into his apartment.
"Good," he whispers. "Tell me more about this tragedy they call pizza."
She settles in a chair by the window and curls her legs under her, watching the traffic below as she begins to talk, his laughter punctuating her sentences.
God, she misses home.
—
She wakes up early and drinks a cup of semi-decent hotel coffee while she does her hair and makeup and pulls on a sensible black suit.
"Don't get all Fed on me now, Hailey," Jay's voice comes back to her, and she smiles. They'd talked about pizza, and the FBI's fancy tech, and a handful of other things until she'd yawned and said she should probably get her beauty sleep.
His quiet, "don't think that's necessary," sticks in her mind now as she looks over her tired features, and on a whim, she swipes open her camera and snaps a picture in front of the full-length mirror.
She pulls up their iMessage conversation, rolling her eyes at the last string of annoyed emojis he'd sent complaining about one of her subpoenas she'd "left him with," adds the photo, and types out a message before hitting send.
This too Fed for you?
It's too early here, and an hour earlier back home, so she knows he's still sleeping. She slips the phone in her back pocket and heads out for the day.
The city is already bustling when she gets out on the street, and the walk is a little longer than she'd normally do, but the weather is mild and it gives her a chance to really see the city.
She passes what feels like a million coffee shops and taxis and listens to the sounds of countless different languages before she makes it to the office. It almost feels like a full day already, and it's barely started.
OA greets her at her desk as she's settling in, and they exchange the same banter she's had with the rest of his colleagues in the last week - polite, surface stuff. She was right when she told Jay it's hard to break in a new partner. Turns out, it's near impossible when the partner isn't the one either wish was next to them.
He's nice, now that she knows every comment isn't a harmful jab, and he's intense in a good, familiar way. Maybe his Ranger training and military precision remind her of her partner as much as her interrogation techniques remind him of his.
But that's pretty much where the similarities end, and that's okay. This is temporary, and she loves the experience, but she wants as clean a cut as possible when she leaves in a few weeks.
She wants to go home and start fresh, with whatever knowledge she gathers here as a bonus.
—
His alarm goes off and he groans. It's not any earlier than usual, but his sleep was littered with dreams of a city he's never visited and the shadow of a woman, blonde hair flowing behind her, always popping behind corners or disappearing into crowds right as he'd reach her.
He swipes the alarm off and sits up, runs a hand down his face. He needs to hit the gym and shower and make it to the district on time. It's his normal routine, but it feels a little foreign with the idea of his workday starting again without Hailey at the desk across from him.
He unlocks his phone as he heads for the bathroom and opens a waiting text.
He's not expecting the picture that pops up, her smiling face and blue eyes and blonde hair bright against a black pants suit. She looks the same as always, just like the image of her emblazoned in his mind when his eyes close at night and open in the morning, but a little more official, and he smiles at her caption.
He'd told her not to get all Fed on him, but he'd really meant come back, be here, steal my district jacket when your too-thin t-shirt makes you cold during stakeouts.
He blames being half asleep on the message he lets himself send instead of deleting.
Looks like the beauty sleep worked.
He works out and showers, and if he does a few more reps with heavier weights than usual, or lets himself stand under the hot shower spray a minute longer than normal, it's not because he isn't ready to work another day without Hailey, or because he's trying to think of anything else but her smiling face in a hotel room.
It's not that at all.
—
There's a tiny part of her that thought, maybe, she'd leave this experience thinking a job with the FBI was the right fit for her.
It hadn't taken long to realize that tiny part was wrong, and the mandatory 8AM joint-operation meeting only serves to confirm the point, as far as she's concerned. It's paperwork, and statistics, and numbers that have very little to do with getting actual criminals off the streets.
Her phone buzzes in her jacket pocket a few minutes into the meeting, but she lets it go. She's shoulder to shoulder with OA and Kristen, and she doesn't want to be that person. She can't think of anyone it could be but Jay, though.
(The fact that there's no one else she wants it to be, well. That buzzes in the back of her mind through the rest of the meeting, drowning out statistics and charts.)
The meeting ends and she's on her way out into the hallway, her phone already in her hand, when a semi-familiar voice calls her name.
She turns, and it's like some weird time warp to a different year, a different city.
Erin Lindsay is standing in front of her, smiling and holding files to her chest.
"I thought that was you," Erin says, reaching out to touch her arm in greeting. "Are you one of us now?"
She laughs. "God, no. Just here temporarily, part of the joint operation training program? I'll go home in a few weeks."
Erin nods, glancing over her shoulder. "You have time for a cup of coffee?"
Hailey glances down the hallway, where OA and Kristen are in the middle of a conversation with a few other people.
"I can sneak away for a sec, yeah," she says.
"C'mon, I know where they keep the good stuff." She follows Erin down a maze of halls, watching her greet a few people along the way. On the way, she tells Hailey about her position, and how it's not at all what she'd thought it would be, but she loves it.
They turn into a small employee break room, and Erin hands her a cup of hot coffee as they settle into uncomfortable plastic chairs.
"Thanks," she says, taking a sip and immediately regretting it. "This is the good stuff?"
"Good is relative on the government's dime, I guess," Erin shrugs. She sets her coffee down and Hailey's aware she's being examined. "So, home is still Chicago?"
She nods. "Wouldn't know any other way," she says, and the unopened text message on her phone pops into her mind unprompted.
"Good," Erin whispers. "Everything the same? Everyone good? I talk to Voight pretty often, so I heard about Al, and Antonio," she frowns.
"Yeah, I mean, good is relative in Chicago too, I guess. But we're all managing."
Erin nods and wraps her fingers around the mug. Hailey knows what's coming before the words are even out in the open.
"I don't - " she pauses, grimacing, and Hailey feels for her. "How is Jay? God, I don't even know if I'm allowed to ask that."
Hailey smiles, and it's partly to put Erin at ease, and partly involuntarily in response to hearing his name, which… feels like something new she should deal with at some point.
"He's Jay," she says, because she doesn't really know if Erin has the right to ask the question either. She knows very little about how they left their personal relationship, except that it took Jay a long time to be Jay again. "He's been through it like we all have, but he's good."
Erin smiles, but it's laced with something that looks like regret. "Good." If she wants more information, she doesn't press, and Hailey's happy to let it be. "Who do they have you partnered with while you're here?"
"OA Zidan," she says, and she watches Erin turn the name over for a moment, and then she smiles.
"Oh. Really tall, more like a GQ model than an FBI agent?" Hailey laughs.
"Yeah, that sounds like him. He's a good guy." She has eyes, she's aware he's gorgeous. But he's not the partner she'd risk it all for.
"What about you? You good, enjoying your time in the city?"
Hailey nods. "I'm good. It's definitely a change from home, but I'm enjoying the work. It's a nice change of pace temporarily."
Erin laughs. "Yeah, but you'll be happy to go home. It took me a while to adjust, I know." Her phone rings, and she glances down at it and frowns. "Ugh, sorry. That's my boss, I've gotta run. But listen, if you have time while you're here and wanna get a drink, call me. It was so nice running into you."
Hailey smiles and nods and takes the business card Erin holds out, and just as quickly as she ran into her, Erin's out of the room in a whirlwind of movement. Hailey just sits for a moment, taking it in.
She figures maybe she could have prepared for this, somehow. She knew Erin was in New York doing something for the same agency she was being loaned out to, but, well.
She'd never imagined actually running into her, or the protective edge she'd immediately feel when Jay's name fell into the mix.
Her phone buzzes. OA is looking for her. She tosses the coffee and heads out.
—