Chapter 2! This story is my baby now because I actually have a beginning and an end. Middle not so much but I can work around that. Thank you SO much to the deepest secret for helping me when I was brain dead and couldn't think of anything. Also to imthequeenoffandoms for coming up with the whole plot of this story with me. Happy birthday to her! So this is the longest chapter I've ever posted so congrats to me. Enjoy!
"Halstead?" Erin Lindsay asked deliriously from her hospital bed. Jay Halstead hadn't left her bedside since she'd been admitted to Chicago Med that morning with severe dehydration and a fractured skull.
"Hey, you're up," Jay smiled after opening his eyes. He had finally been able to doze off for the first time since the doctors had left her to rest up.
"My head hurts," Erin moaned, putting her hand to her head and getting confused when she felt a bandage.
"You passed out from dehydration and fell off the ledge. You hit your head on the concrete and got a concussion. There's a bunch of stitches too," Jay summarized for her. He had held onto the doctors' and nurses' every words and by then could probably tell her what had happened better than a medical professional.
"Oh." She was silent for a moment, "Where's your shirt?" she inquired, noticing him with a thin hospital blanket wrapped around his bare upper torso.
"I used it to bandage up your head. You know, most people faint after I take off my shirt." There was that smirk she couldn't stand. He always did that like they were some sort of friends with a level of intimacy that, in reality, wasn't there. Erin didn't like to play friends with her coworkers, she became a cop to do a job, to keep Chicago safe. Halstead just refused to accept that.
On most days she wondered if he was being deliberately obtuse or just painfully ignorant to her obvious desire for distance. Right now, her budding headache did nothing to help his case, so she chose to dignify that comment with nothing but silence and an unamused look.
"So why are you here?" She asked bluntly. Looking out the window she could see that it was dark out; she'd obviously been there a while.
"Because you're my partner," Jay told her. Why wouldn't he be there? He was a bit dumbfounded as to why she would even ask him that. What kind of partner- what kind of person did she think he was? He would have waited a week in that uncomfortable hospital chair rather than leave her to wake up alone. The shock from seeing her unconscious and hurt on those concrete steps still held a tight grip on him. Of course he had to make sure she was going to be okay.
Before she could even respond, Jay's brother, Doctor Will Halstead, walked in wearing a white lab coat over blue scrubs.
"Officer Lindsay, you're up! How are you feeling?" He smiled, an identical one to her partner's, as he checked her pupils.
"Been better," she grumbled. Her head was pounding despite heavy dose of the pain meds she was on and she felt nauseous. She told him her symptoms. If she had been standing up she probably would have been swaying.
"That's to be expected with a head injury," her partner's brother reassured her, "You've got a moderate concussion, we don't need to keep you overnight, just take it easy for a few days. We've also stitched up your head and pumped you with fluids. You were pretty dehydrated. Unless you have any questions, we can probably discharge you pretty soon here. Do you have someone to stay with you?" Will asked her.
"Me. She'll stay at my place," Jay stated rather than suggesting before she even had a chance to utter a word. She definitely would not have said this. Erin wondered what the hell was going on in her partner's head.
"That's actually a good idea," Will agreed, to which Erin groaned internally. It was the last thing she wanted, "That way I can keep an eye on you when I'm home."
"What?" Erin asked, now utterly confused.
"He lives with me," Jay explained. Of course he did. Today was her lucky day.
With a sigh Erin resigned herself to a few long (and she was sure torturous) days at Jay's apartment. She was too tired and drugged to care. "Just...go sign stuff so I can leave."
"So, I'll take the couch, you can have my bed." Jay volunteered as he welcomed Erin into his orange and brown toned apartment. After leaving the hospital, they had stopped by her apartment to pick up enough things for her to stay with him for a few days. Jay had offered to grab stuff for her later, but there was no way in hell she would let him go through her things. When they'd gotten to her place, Erin pleaded with him to let her stay right where they were, but Jay (and her throbbing headache) had won and after an exhausting packing session, they'd headed back to Jay's.
"That one?" Erin asked, pointing to her left. The pocket doors to Jay's bedroom were open, revealing an extremely comfy looking king sized bed.
Jay nodded, "Yeah, Will's is down that hallway, it's atrocious in there," he said with a chuckle and pointed a thumb in the general direction of his one guest room before bringing Erin's bags into his bedroom. She followed him, passing a dark colored leather couch and briefly wondered how her tall partner would ever sleep comfortably on it before deciding that she didn't care; as long as her concussed head was comfortable.
As Jay was setting Erin's bags against the wall, she was already climbing under the puffy duvet and making herself comfortable. "Do you want the TV remote, or some water or anything?" Jay asked nervously, almost afraid that she'd bite his head off for being too overbearing.
Erin almost shook her head, but remembered how much of a bad idea that would've been and resigned to mumbling a "no" before letting her eyes close and falling asleep.
Jay wasn't surprised at how fast she'd fallen asleep, considering how lethargic she'd been since she'd woken up at the hospital. He grabbed some blankets and a pillow from a chest at the foot of his bed before turning the light off, sliding the door closed and making the short walk to his couch. A couch that he knew he wouldn't be getting a good night's sleep on. He set his alarm to wake her every so often and settled into a restless sleep.
"Will?" Jay said as he woke up late the next night around 11pm. Someone was making noise in the kitchen but he couldn't see from his line of sight on the couch.
"Erin," his partner corrected from where she was rummaging through the fridge. She'd been asleep for nearly 24 hours and was finally starting to feel better. And hungry.
Jay shot up from the couch and began to make his way to the kitchen, "Erin, are you okay?" he asked, concerned.
"Yeah, I'm hungry, You don't have anything good to eat either," she commented without turning to look at him. Jay was standing in the doorway now, wearing nothing but a pair of black sweatpants.
"Yeah, I'm not home all that often, so food spoils quickly," he reasoned awkwardly. He should've asked Will to pick up some groceries earlier, of course she'd be hungry when she woke up. "I have soup I can make, do you want some?"
Erin stood up and finally turned around to face him, "Yeah sure." Her eyes followed her partner as he pushed off the doorway and went to the cabinets, producing three different cans.
"Chicken noodle, clam chowder or tomato?" Jay rattled off with a grin.
"Clam chowder," Erin chose and sat on the lone chair across the room as he prepared the soup.
"So how's your head?" he asked after a few moments of silence.
"Better." This was weird. Normally she barely talked to him and now she was sitting in his kitchen watching him make her soup.
"Good," Jay said watching her as she sat on the counter and swung her legs back and forth.
The conversation, or what little there was to begin with, died down. Fortunately, the soup was ready within a few minutes and Jay ladled it into two bowls. Erin took hers and went to the couch in the attempt to escape the awkward silence.
"Can I sit?" Erin looked up at her partner who was standing there expectantly.
With an inward groan, Erin slowly and almost sarcastically nodded, "It's your couch."
He sat down carefully, a good measure away from her. She almost laughed at him. It was like he was afraid of her. Biting her tongue before she said another not so nice thing, she turned to the TV. He really didn't deserve the attitude she'd given him, she knew that. He had been nothing but nice since she had come to his apartment, not that she would ever admit that out loud.
"What?" He asked her as he grabbed the remote to turn the TV on before flicking to the Netflix app. He had noticed her eyeing him with a smirk. "You were going to say something. Just spit it out!"
"No, I wasn't." She tried to play it cool, but couldn't prevent the small smile from appearing on her lips. He never missed anything when it came to her.
"Uh-uh. Whatever, Erin." He laughed, turning back to the TV.
"Shut up Halstead, and give me the remote we're not watching this!"
"Then what, oh jeez, Grey's Anatomy?" he asked, rolling his eyes and leaning back on the couch as he balanced the nearly empty bowl of soup on the arm rest.
"Yeah, it's good, I'm in the middle of season seven," Erin replied, already engrossed in the show. She'd been working on binge watching in her free time over the past month or so and she absolutely loved it.
Half an hour later, her eyes were still firmly trained on the TV, but Jay was fighting to stay awake. He normally would have been sleeping at 1:02am, but since the couch temporarily served as his bed, he had no choice but to stay. The only thing that kept him occupied was watching Erin as she reacted to what happened on screen. She didn't even notice when Jay would glance at her, nor when he finally had enough of the medical drama and got up to head to the kitchen.
"Ow," Erin mumbled something cold was placed on her bare knees a few minutes later and she was snapped out of the the fictional world at Seattle Grace Hospital. Her eyes darted from the flatscreen to what was now on her lap. It was a bowl of cookies & cream ice cream with a liberal amount of chocolate syrup, incidentally, her favorite flavor and topped exactly how she liked it. "How did you-" Erin began but was cut off.
"A few months ago we had a conversation about ice cream after we responded to the call at the that Baskin Robbins got held up, remember? And you said that they don't give you enough chocolate syrup at ice cream shops," Jay recalled nonchalantly. He internally cringed afterwards, as he realized that she might be a little weirded out that he remembered little things like that about her.
Erin stared at him incredulously before giving him a sincere smile, "Thanks, Jay." He clearly knew her so much better than she knew him and for a moment she almost regretted how little she had cared to get to know him.
Jay watched in amusement as Erin practically inhaled the ice cream and then proceeded to curl in on herself and into the corner of the couch. He reached out and took her empty bowl for her, which gave her an extra arm to cross over her chest. Letting out a laugh, he reached behind him for the down throw he kept draped over the back of the couch.
"Slow down there, Frosty, did you get a brain freeze?" Erin looked up at him, her miserable expression eliciting more chuckles from him. She slowly shook her head and followed him with her eyes as he gently laid the blanket over her shivering body. "Better?"
Erin nodded as her face relaxed, looking over at him and giving him the second sincere smile of the night. He knew her moves before she even made them and paid attention to things about her that she herself didn't. Maybe she had misjudged the guy.
About an hour later, Jay noticed Erin struggling to keep her eyes open. A new episode of Grey's Anatomy had just begun, opening with gratuitous aerial shots of Seattle. He figured she wouldn't be awake that much longer, so he decided to quickly clean up their dishes before getting ready for the night. As he stood up, his arm bumped the bowl he'd set on the armrest earlier, sending cold clam chowder splattering down his black shirt and pants.
"Shit," he mumbled, loud enough to attract Erin's attention. She immediately burst out in laughter at the sight of her soup covered partner standing frozen in place.
"I'm…gonna go shower," he said watching Erin laugh herself into tears at his expense. He didn't mind at all. He loved her laugh, he couldn't get enough of it.
After Jay placed the bowls in the dishwasher he hopped into the shower to wash off any potential dried clam chowder stink.
Meanwhile, Erin had finally dragged herself off of the couch, and headed back to Jay's bed. She knew she wouldn't be awake for much longer.
She'd just set foot into the bedroom when the en suite bathroom door swung open and out walked her partner, clad in nothing but a loose towel around his lower half.
"Oh, sorry," Erin mumbled, catching his attention. Jay obviously hadn't known she wasn't still out in the living room on the couch and gave her a deer in headlights look. "I thought you'd bring clothes to the bathroom," she explained stupidly.
"No! I should've. Sorry. I thought you were still in there. I thought you fell asleep," Jay apologized haphazardly, his chiseled chest and abs still dripping with water. His hair was a mess from being toweled dry. Erin moved to turn away but she couldn't, she was paralyzed.
After a few moments of silence and staring he spoke again, "I'll-so I'll just grab my stuff and change in the bathroom. Are you going to bed?" Erin nodded and he smiled, "Okay, goodnight."
"Night, Jay."