There's a short ding as the waffles pop up , causing her to flinch and break from her daze. She plucks the blueberry Eggos out of the toaster and turns towards the table. The plate is cleaned just moments later - with her fork scraping the remaining syrup up and bringing it to her mouth. Her stomach grumbles some more, and she takes that as her sign that they're still hungry.
"Auntie Erin?" Penelope murmurs from down the hall.
"I'm in the kitchen, El." She answers as she puts the box of waffles back into the freezer after placing two more in the toaster.
The little ones giggle as they poke their heads around the corner and then quickly tip toe over to her.
"Good morning, Sweet Peas." Erin greets as she picks her younger niece up and kisses her cheek.
"Mornin." Penelope whispers as she hugs her aunt's thigh, while Prue snuggles into Erin's shoulder.
"Are you hungry?" Erin questions as her second helping of waffles get done toasting. She looks down at the two of them and sees Prue shaking her head before looking to her older niece, who nods. The waffles are put onto a clean plate and cut up before some syrup is drizzled on them. She sets Penelope up at the table after chopping up a banana and adding to the plate and gets her a cup milk.
"You're still sleepy, huh, Bug?" Erin asks, to which the three-year-old nods this time. She glances back at Penelope before she walks out of the kitchen to take Prue into the living room to lay back down.
"Babe, don't be like that. It's not like it was my choice to arrest your brother. You know how Voight can be." Kevin tries to reason with his wife as he walks one step behind her. One of her hands is on the railing and the other is held in Kevin's to make sure she doesn't trip from the extra weight of her five month baby bump.
"He had you arrest him?" Erin interrupts as the husband and wife finish walking down the stairs. They exchange another look before turning their attention to her.
Kevin sniffles as he rubs under his nose before nodding. "Me and Adam, we tried to talk him out of it. He just wouldn't -"
"I want to see him." She tells them as Prue reaches out for her dad. Kevin takes his younger daughter while looking to his wife to talk Erin out of leaving the house. Hailey shakes her head at Kevin, causing him to sigh. "Voight said you shouldn't be leaving the house unless it's-"
"I don't care about going against your boss' demands, I'm going to see Jay." She states as she slips on a pair of boots - not even paying attention to the fact that they're Hailey's. "You can claim that you didn't know I left or-"
"No." He shakes his head as he kisses Prue's head and then his wife's as he hands their daughter over. "I'll take you to the district."
"Kev, I don't want you to get in trouble." Erin argues and she sees Hailey shake her head.
"He'd be in more trouble with everyone if he let you go by yourself, instead of driving you there himself, especially when he's going there anyway." Hailey tells her, and Erin nods to acknowledge the truth to her words. She knows that Jay specifically would be pissed if his best friend let something happen to her that could have been prevented.
"Do you want to put on a sweatshirt or something? You know so Jay or Voight don't notice." Hailey gestures to Erin's little bump from across the room. She chuckles to herself, seeing her slightly distended abdomen being accentuated by the t shirt she's wearing.
Erin smiles sheepishly as she goes to grab a flannel to cover up with from her room upstairs - choosing a black and blue one that actually belongs to her husband. She descends the stairs just in time to hear Hailey make Kevin promise to be careful.
Her anger subsides just a little seeing the salt and pepper hair of her mom's oldest friend - a woman that's like an aunt to her.
"Trudy." She smiles meekly as she walks up to the tall front desk of District 21.
"Erin, so nice to see you." She tosses a set of keys at a pair of patrolman and dismisses them before focusing back on Erin. The scowl disappears from her face as she begins to talk again. "Did you do something different with your hair? Makeup, maybe? Whatever you did has your skin glowing." Platt questions, earning a quirked eyebrow and a stern look from Erin - even if it has her thinking about what has her 'glowing'.
Trudy nods. "Right, uh... Atwater, make yourself useful and go check on the officer in holding while we head up to Intelligence."
"Sarge, I can let Erin into-"
"Uh huh, I didn't ask you. So what are you still doing here?" Trudy sneers as she comes out from behind the desk.
Kevin just nods with his hands in the air as he walks away.
The bars are slamed shut behind him and he makes his way to the bench in front of him. He paces some and then has a seat, leaning back against the wall.
He sulks into the shower, letting the already cold water wash the day away. It clears his mind of the long, daunting hours spent at work but does nothing to erase the reminder that he'll be alone for the weekend and maybe even longer. He blames his bad mood on the fact that they got into a fight right before she left for Kim's bachelorette trip out of town.
The cool air of the dark, quiet apartment sends a shiver down his spine as he steps out onto the rug and begins drying off. He wraps the towel around his waist and makes his way out to their room. The sight of the light from his phone catches his eye, but he leaves it on the nightstand and continues forward to grab some pants. He almost walks out of the room without his phone, but backtracks to pick it up only to throw the device onto the couch on his way to the kitchen.
The act of heating up some leftovers is momentary and before he knows it he's back in the living room. He turns the TV on and tosses the remote back on the table - not even bothering with changing the channel to something more interesting than reruns of her favorite baking shows.
At some point, he manages to fall asleep and only wakes up when his phone rings. It stops as he sits up and rolls his neck to try to work out the kink he knows is going to be there in the morning. An involuntary sigh passes through his lips, seeing his sister's name illuminated on the screen.
"What, Hailey?"
"What? Are you serious? How can you look at that picture and ask me what?"
"What picture?"
"The one I sent you like an hour ago. She asked for you to call her, and she looks more and more disappointed every time she checks her phone."
He puts her on speaker while he goes to his inbox - seeing a message from his sister and another one from Erin.
His heart aches as he looks over the image of his girlfriend, who looks on the brink of tears - only her face lit up by the phone in her hand. He knows he fucked up - that he ruined their night last night and even tonight.
He told her that he retired from the military and promised he wouldn't leave - yet he was really considering a new post the army offered him. It scared her, that much was more than apparent by the look she was giving him after he told her. And it's obvious even in the dark picture displayed on his phone now. He wasn't thinking about how she'd feel, and he was mad at how upset she became with just the mention of it. The admittance that she was afraid to love someone just to lose them was still fresh. And the promises he made to reassure her that he wasn't another person who claimed to love her and then leave were just made mere weeks ago. Yet he said what he did last night, and those same promises were pretty much deemed null and void.
He sighs."Hailey-"
"You need to fix this, Jay. If you don't to make up, then man up and tell her that."
"I'll call her now." He nods even though his sister can't see him. She hangs up without another word and he takes a deep breath as he dials Erin's number.
"I'm sorry." Her broken voice murmurs, and it breaks his heart. He can hear the club's music booming in the background and he assumes that she's in the bathroom.
"I'm the one that needs to apologize, Erin. I went back on my word because I was being too stubborn to let someone else make the decision for me."
"I don't want to make that decision for you, Jay. If you want to go, I won't stand in your way. My reaction...it was selfish to expect you to stay because you're a soldier - an army ranger, and your service is selfless. I can't take that away from you. It's who you are. And I'm sorry for trying, for making you feel like you had to promise what you did. I just wanted to tell you that before you go." She's crying by the end of her rant, and it makes Jay wish they weren't hundreds of miles apart. He figures the next best thing is to FaceTime, so he takes the phone from his ear and presses the icon - just wanting to see her face.
"You didn't take anything from me, Erin. If anything, you gave me something - something I didn't have before." He admits, and he can hear her sniffle just before she hums in a way of asking him to continue.
"It is a part of who I am, and it always will be. But for the first time since I enlisted I have a reason not to go. You gave me that, Babe. You're my home and my reason to stay." He tells her and she wipes her tears away as she smiles sadly.
"I love you, and I'm sorry for being an ass."
She nods at the phone as she scrunches her nose with a sad smile.
He chuckles at the expression on her face. "What's that look for?"
"You were kind of an ass."
"Hey, I thought I would have made up for it with that."
"Hmm...you did, and I love you too."
"I'll see you tomorrow night. Go have fun with your friends." He says and she nods. Both of them say 'I love you' once more before hanging up.
He remembers the second picture of her that he got from his sister that night. The way his girl looked radiant as she clinked glasses with the rest of them at the table. He lets his mind go through that memory again - wondering if he can salvage the situation now in a similar way to how he did then.
Then he hears Kevin yelling down the hall. A buzzer goes off and then he's rushing into holding.
"What the hell?" Kevin immediately says, seeing his brother-in-law in the second cell. He looks at the officer who brought Jay over and locked him up.
"Voight told me to keep on eye on him." The officer shrugs and Kevin tisks at that.
"Gimme those." Kevin says as he practically snatches the keys from the younger man's hands.
"Hey man, you good?" He asks after he unlocks the door and slides it open. Jay huffs as he pushes himself off the wall.
"Yeah, just living the dream." Jay quips and Kevin nods as he moves out of the way for Jay to walk out of the cell.
"Someone's here to see you." That sentence has Jay's attention, he just hopes it's the someone he's been thinking about since before he was even brought in yesterday.
"I'm here to see my client Jay Halstead." He hears an unfamiliar voice say and then he hears his mom just before he rounds the corner. She yells at Kevin for not keeping him out of trouble, but the worried look on her face disappears slightly as she sees Jay.
"Oh, Sweetheart, you're ok." She cajoles as she gives him a motherly hug.
"Yeah, I'm fine, Mom."
"Good." She clears her throat and he knows that she's mad. "Good, then I can kick your ass for lying to me when I asked if you were in some kind of trouble."
He nods as he thinks back to the last time he saw his mom at his niece's birthday party. "It was true at the time."
She heads straight for his office and she can see him looking at something on his desk. He glances up briefly as she enters the room and then goes back to reading what's in the file in front of him. "Erin, what can I do for you kid?"
"What can you do?" She scoffs at that with an angry smile pulling at the corner of her lips. Her right hand wipes at the side of her nose as she sniffles. Her emotions are already all over the place, and she's only just gotten here. She feels her blood boiling while also being on the verge of tears. "What can you do for me? How about not arresting my husband?"
"He's a part of a crew that's been in my unit's crosshairs for a while. Plus, he was a sitting duck where he was." He closes the file and places it in one of the drawers in his desk and locks it.
"You mean the crew that you put him in? The fucking crew that luckily didn't figure out who he really was earlier and didn't kill him like they did Terry? And you think putting him in jail is safer? Do you really think whatever scum is in the pen won't kill him for bail money?" Erin fires off as she nonchalantly rubs the side of her belly - feeling a new, slightly painful throbbing of sorts. The sensation subsides for now and she focuses back on the man before her.
"Who said anything about jail?" He actually has the gull to look taken aback.
"Are you fucking new here? It's kind of the place one goes after being arrested." Erin jeers.
He juts out his bottom jaw in that way he does as the wrinkles on his forehead deepen. He's confused that much is obvious, and Erin has a good idea of why, but she waits to see if he'll admit it.
"I don't know what he told you, but he was willing to be a CI for this case. Gerwitz and Atwater vouched for him, so I gave him a chance." He laces his fingers together and holds his hands just in front of him as he remains reclined in his office chair.
"Which worked out for you because he - actually they could take the fall if things went south, right? So no one could put together that you're crooked?" She grits her teeth at the thought.
"Watch it, Erin." He warns in a way that she thinks is supposed to scare her. Like he's trying to intimidate her like he could when she was a little girl.
"Or what? Are you going to have me arrested, too? Hmm? What bullshit charges are you going to slap on me?" She feels the same cramp in her abdomen again, but it's short lived also.
"I'm trying to help here, but somehow it's my fault that you don't know the man you married?"
"I know the man I married, and I know that this is not on him. I know he volunteered and did this for his friend. And that he's a good, noble man that you saw as a fall guy."
"Erin, you're being ridiculous. Why don't you head back to the house and relax? I'll swing by tonight to talk." He suggests, seemingly ignoring what she just said, and Erin huffs again.
"Don't you dare try patronizing me, Hank." She shakes her head and begins to pace. "I'm not going anywhere without Jay and I want copies of all the CI paperwork that he signed." She adds after taking a few deep breaths and leaning on the back of the chair closest to the office door, bracing herself on her hands and stiff arms to keep her upright.
He's quiet for a moment, as if he's thinking over a way to flip this on her or Jay. "I can let you see him, but he's not going anywhere. It's not safe for either of you."
"If I'm not safe with him, then I'm not safe with anyone." Hank just nods towards the door, and it causes a confused look to cross Erin's face before she follows his gaze. Relief washes over her entire being as she sees her husband walking up the last couple stairs leading into the bullpen not even noticing the other three people accompanying him. She only sees him as she moves out of the office and meets him halfway.
Her hands cautiously cup his jaw as he looks down. "Look at me, Jay."
"I'm sorry." They whisper to each other at the same time. It's his turn to furrow his eyebrows as he wonders what she's apologizing for. And with just one look in her eyes gives him his answer. He can see that she's sorry for not being more understanding of what he was going through and why he felt he needed to put the distance between them. His right hand wraps around her waist, and the other gets tangled in her hair as he cups the back of her head and she grips his arm tightly as he pulls her into him and presses his lips to her forehead. Their eyes close as they let the world around them fade away to allow them to heal - even if only just a little.
"I love you." He murmurs so quietly, he's not even sure she could have heard him. But as she lifts her gaze to meet his, he can tell that she didn't miss it, and to prove it, she says it right back. However, he can also see that while she's relieved seeing him, she's still on guard.
Time slowed for them, getting lost each other for a while before Voight's booming voice bursts their bubble. Everyone can hear him as he grows increasingly agitated. His voice continuing to raise, not only at the lawyer, but the white shirt that Trudy brought up a moment ago too.
"Atwater, was it? Can we get Mr. Halstead his belongings and an escort home." The woman in the white shirt asks as she exits the office with the lawyer in tow.
"Yes, ma'am." Kevin nods and heads off to collect Jay's things. Hank comes to stand against the doorframe of his office. His back is hunched, and his face is contorted - blatant display of his anger at not getting his way.
Erin keeps her eyes on her husband as he glares at the older man before turning to follow Kevin. Her arm stays entwined with his as they make their exit. She can feel Voight's gaze on her, and it's unnerving, but she doesn't look back. She knows a mere glance would infuriate her all over again. So she basks in the calming effect Jay's presence has on her - focusing on him and only him until they get back to the house.
He talks himself through what he wants to say to his wife - trying to prepare to ask for her forgiveness. But he shakes his head as he pulls a clean shirt on. The towel he used is ran over his hair a few more times as he walks to hang it up to dry in the bathroom. Then, as he's heading towards the door, a loud crash sounds from downstairs. He grabs the gun that he just hid in the closet and runs out of the room.
He rushes into the kitchen, but everyone seems alright. Hailey's setting Prue up at the table with some of the lunch she and Erin just made. He looks over at his wife again and sees her about to bend over to pick up the rest of the pots and pans that he assumes were the source of the noise.
"Hey, I got it." He says as he steps forward to stop her from reaching down. The gun he brought down with him is set in on top of the fridge for now as he goes to pick up the objects from the floor.
"You ok?" His eyebrows furrow with worry seeing the pained look on her face as she keeps her hand on her side and avoids looking at him.
He sets the pots on the counter and turns her toward him when she doesn't answer. "Erin?"
"Yeah. we're uh...I'm fine." She gives him a smile, but it doesn't even come close to reaching her eyes. He can tell she's downplaying it, but doesn't push further.
"Umm... Are you hungry?" She asks, to which he nods after a moment.
He nods. "I can make our plates, though."
Then he's retrieving the gun again. "I just want to get this in a lock box."
Erin nods and points to the cupboard that has one of her mom's old gun safes in it.
"Do you want to go lay down, Erin?" Hailey asks, seeing for herself the look of discomfort on her sister-in-law's face.
"Yes, and I will in a little bit, but I want to eat first." She murmurs back, and both Hailey and Jay exchange a quick look before seemingly accepting her answer.
There's an awkward silence that befalls them as they eat - even the three-year-old seems especially quiet. But Jay finds the courage to address his wife once his sister and niece leave the kitchen. Though it takes him a minute, he manages to get her attention just by clearing his throat.
"I know that I said it already, and I know it's going to take a lot of time for it to actually mean anything, but I am sorry." He starts, and she nods as she finishes chewing the food in her mouth.
"I'm sorry that I felt like I had to lie and leave to keep you safe when I put you in danger anyway. And I'll apologize as many times as I need to, to let you know that I mean it and that I'll never -"
"It means something now, Jay. You don't have to keep apologizing. Because I know you've been hard enough on yourself these last few months." She takes another bite before continuing, but he speaks first.
"So...you forgive me?" He looks at her with some excitement in his beautiful eyes and a small smirk pulling at his lips.
"I didn't say that." She replies sadly because while she wants to forgive him that easily, she's also afraid that this whole thing isn't over and there's a real chance that he could disappear again.
A ping of pain shoots through her chest, seeing the happiness vanish from his expression. "I know that's contradictory, and I have started to forgive you because I get why you left, and I can tell it wasn't easy for you either, but -"
"But you need to be sure that I'm here to stay." He finishes for her, and her head snaps up at that. It was as if he could read her mind because that was exactly what was on the tip of her tongue. She nods ashamedly, knowing that this is hurting him as much as it is her.
"I am here to stay, Babe." He reaffirms, and it makes her heart ache with hope. Hope that he really isn't going to leave again.
She leans over to kiss his cheek briefly. "I love you, and I will forgive you. I just want - I need to be sure that you're done leaving."
He nods as he watches her stand. She takes her dishes to the sink without another word. His fork is dropped, and the plate is pushed away in disappointment as he stays in the same spot at the table. The sound of her footsteps echoes in his ears as she makes her way upstairs - leaving him alone with his thoughts. And it's her departing statement that has him wondering again how he can win her back.