Erin doesn't seem to notice anything off when she wanders in, running a hand blearily through her hair. They eat breakfast and drive in to work together and if Erin's eyes flicker with worry and curiosity to rest on Mouse more frequently than usual, well it's not exactly surprising. Mouse ignores it. Business as usual.

The day passes, a new case landing on their desks when a triple homicide filters in from the beat cops. Mouse spends the day sifting through the lives of the dead, two men and one woman in their early thirties, while the rest of the unit is running around the city searching for answers. They stay late into the night, chipping away at a whole lot of dead ends. When Voight cuts them loose for the night, Mouse drives home in the dark, reheats leftovers from the night before last, and crawls into bed.

Without any real time to compartmentalize between work and sleep, it's no wonder the case permeates Mouse's dreams. Or, it would be no wonder, if it weren't so unusual for recent events to feature in his nightmares. Usually they stick to older trauma. It leaves Mouse feeling off balance in the morning, just like the stiffness between he and Jay.

They're back at it early. Mouse spends most of the day alone in Intelligence, only joined when the unit returns to regroup occasionally. It's 5 o'clock when they make the arrest, 6 o'clock when they get their confession, and 7 o'clock when Mouse pulls into his parking space and climbs the stairs to his apartment. He sheds his coat, only trading it for a more comfortable sweater, and clicks on the TV. He doesn't want to bother with much effort for dinner, so he puts on some water for pasta, flicking through channels while he waits for it to boil. The flickering lights resolve into the tuxedo skin of penguins shuffling through the snow, and Mouse's fingers falter. The familiar, awkward animals stumble, one tumbling forward before finding its way to its feet. Mouse lifts the remote… then puts it down again.

When the water boils, he leaves the TV on, stirring in the noodles, and leaning on the counter to watch the TV and reaching over to stir occasionally. When it's done, he brings his pasta back to the living room and burrows his way into his pile of blankets. He eats, then slides the bowl onto the coffee table and pulls the blankets tighter around himself and stares at the TV. The intensely familiar, soothing images and sounds wash over him.

When the screen becomes dark and the credits start rolling upwards, Mouse blinks, coming back to himself suddenly, like an elastic at the end of its reach snapping back into shape. His heartbeat thumps, foreign, in his chest. He realizes his left foot is asleep. His neck has grown stiff.

His whirling, winding thoughts, in which he got lost through the last hour, coalesce. He'd always thought that Jay was just better than him, or stronger, because after those first terrible months, he learned how to be okay. And when Mouse didn't have keeping Jay together all the time to focus on, he started drowning. Spiralling deeper and deeper, and there was Jay, always, okay. Not perfect of course, still haunted, still hurting, but okay. And he was terrified that he might one day drag Jay down with him, so he disappeared. And only now did he begin to accept that there was another reason he left. Shame. Jay was okay, and he wasn't, and he was ashamed of his weakness. And he lost himself trying to escape, trying to find 'okay' in all the wrong ways. Until that night, until the fireworks assaulting his ears sent him reeling, alone in a dark alleyway, and he took a pill to stop the panic, and then another, and then another, grasping for 'okay' until his vision swirled and his mind caught on a single lucid image of the empty orange bottle and shaking fingers made the three tones blare in his ears on the cheap phone.

"911, what is your emergency?" The cool voice of the operator had said, and Mouse struggled to force his stumbling mind and clumsy tongue to cooperate.

"Need 'n ambulance, accidental overdose," he'd slurred. The rest was a blur but for images of startling clarity that would rise up in his dreams: a dirtied white roof, a pair of blue eyes, the flashing of the red and blue lights, mixing into bruise-like purple blurs. He'd woken to the scratchy warmth of hospital blankets and the papery fabric of the gown, the cold chemical smell, the overwhelming whiteness of the walls, and Jay's sleeping body slumped in a chair.

He'd gotten clean, and done his best to be okay again. And while Mouse stumbled, and panicked, and failed, through it all, Jay was okay. At least, that was how Mouse had always understood things to be.

The things is, he thinks now that 'okay' is just a lie. Mouse isn't okay. He hasn't been okay since before his first tour, not really. But, he thinks, maybe that's alright. Maybe I don't have to be okay. His fingers find the coin again, pulling it out and running it across his knuckles. But I want to be okay, really actually okay, someday. And pretending isn't the way to get there. And keeping their silence is just another way of pretending. The coin spins around his fingers.

But he doesn't want to tell a stranger, or a group of strangers. No matter how much they might be able to sympathize, talking to them wouldn't be real. Not a bunch of people he has no real connection to. And he still doesn't want their stories, their pain, their pasts. There are only two people he wants to talk to – and can't. Not because Jay is okay, but because he isn't. Because he never has been. For all that Jay was angry and broken and falling apart after they first got back, he never really accepted not being okay. Just like Mouse, he shoved it down and tried to escape; it just turned out that Jay's way of running looked healthier, was better at pretending it wasn't running. Jay probably even believed it, and Mouse couldn't see a way to open his eyes without tearing everything they have to the ground. Mouse's breath catches at the idea of Jay pushing him away, of losing him, and losing Erin.

An immense grief presses down on his chest. Rock, meet hard place. Can't go over, can't go under, have to go through. Except how can I? Abruptly furious, his arm whips up and the coin goes whizzing across the room, ricocheting off the wall, leaving a sharp dent, and rolls across the floor. He doesn't pick it up.

He picks up the TV remote again instead, opening Netflix and putting on Firefly. He watches, comforted by the familiar scenes, until it's late enough to sleep. His dreams that night are erratic, jumping from scene to scene, like a horrific highlights reel. In the morning, he slumps out of his apartment, ignoring the small glint of sunlight on metal from the floor.

He greets Erin and Jay when they walk into the unit together, smiling and sipping his coffee like nothing has changed. Really, nothing has, except his perception. It's too easy to slip back into the lie of 'okay,' except when he finds his fingers reaching for his pocket. His hands are more restless than usual. There's a moment, after the news comes in that a beat cop in another district got shot – a minor wound, in the scale of bullets, through and through, flesh wound – and the unit are settling back into their chairs, back to work, where Mouse looks at Jay. Jay's hands rest on his keyboard, unmoving, eyes staring blankly at the screen. For a second, Jay looks like an empty body, and then Antonio walks up to ask a question.

"Hey, Jay," Antonio says, and Mouse sees the minute jolt as Jay comes back to himself, a flicker of ghosts in his eyes, and then Jay turns to Antonio, fine just fine.

"Yeah, what's up?"

Mouse goes home to his apartment that night, shucks off his coat once again, and strides over to the living room wall, fingers finding the new groove impressed into the old paint. Have to go through. Mouse sighs and picks up the coin, slipping it back into his pocket.


AN: Read and review!