i.

Jay is always the last person she touches before they breach a door.

Depending on who goes first (usually her, though she never knows if that's out of respect for her abilities or old ranger habits) there is one hand on the shoulder, (usually his) a final, I've got you, before the doorframe splinters or groans and anything can happen on the other side. After their bricks shatter the glass, she is first through the stash house back door. And until they're back at the precinct unloading their spoils, Hailey's heart seems to live in her ears, a roaring soundtrack to the story cloaked entirely in black and spoken in aggressive shouts.

Though it's not nerves, not more than the standard I really don't want to get shot, it feels like everything is muffled beneath a pressing reminder of everything they stand to lose.

"That was a five hundred thousand dollar rip," she marvels aloud. "...that we can't tell anyone about."

"And if this whole thing doesn't work," Jay says in that dry tone of his, "We're gonna go back to writing traffic tickets."

Levity feels like the only way they can look at the possibility of their failure head on. It's too much, she thinks, to consider how everything might change for the unit if they can't bring Kelton down. And for them. The second thought is a little harder to bear, though it's an admission Hailey makes only to herself.

"Your sergeant at organized crime take you back?" she asks. Would he take me, too?

"No," he replies around a laugh. It's nice to hear him laugh again. "He holds grudges. He was so pissed when I left. Besides, I'm going where you go."

Jay says it so matter of factly that Hailey has to stop and look at him.

"Yeah?"

He keeps her gaze. "Yeah. It's hard to find a good partner."

Something's happening inside her chest, that thing she's been trying to ignore for months now. "That sounds good to me." Her cheeks can't hold up a smile too long. "We both know Kelton won't let any of us stay together."

Jay's jaw sets, but before either of them can say anything more, the rest of the unit reappears and it's back to business.

Later, Hailey thinks. Think about this later.

ii.

Later, of course, there's no time to think.

The first shot pops off — barely muffled — her hand lands instinctively on her gun but it's useless; the next four tear through the van like it's made of butter.

"Get down!" Before she can even gasp, Jay is yanking her down to the floor. Only instinct and training keep her from hitting her head. He peels away; she can't catch her breath.

Hailey gives up on her gun. The unmistakable weight of a vest falls open over her back and then Jay's arms are around her again, dragging her closer, tight around her shoulders and her neck, forcing her head down against him. The part of her brain that says, this might be it, is shouted quiet by the rest of her brain that says, Jay's here.

He's got you.

Debris and dust and light hail down; he growls and it jolts her out of her panic.

She wants to tell him that one vest isn't going to cut it. She wants to tell him that by holding her this way he's exposed – his arms, his hands, his head – she wants to ask him if her ears are ever going to stop ringing – and then it's over. The whole thing couldn't have lasted more than eight seconds, but it felt like years between one heartbeat and the next. Does Hailey look as different as she feels? Jay's solid warmth pulls away again and she wants – for a split second – beyond all reason or logic or anything resembling professionalism, to fold herself back into him.

Where she's safe.

His hand is on her face, calluses rough against her cheek. Hailey can see his mouth moving, forming the syllables of her name, but she can't hear yet.

"You good? You okay?"

She can't speak yet either it seems; Hailey just nods, almost frantically. Voight's voice from outside the hollowed van sounds as though it's coming from underwater.

"Jay! Hailey! You good?"

"We're good, we're good!" Jay shouts back, and she jumps; her hearing is back, now dialled up to eleven.

Are we?

"Do not exit till we get the all clear! Who's got eyes?"

Jay's chest heaves with exertion as he pushes up to his elbows above her. Adam is audible through the radio on the table, miraculously unscathed, but she can only just understand him over the tinny sound still in her ears. Wilson is down.

Dread curls like a root in the pit of her stomach.

Hailey has to swallow before she can speak.

"Jay," she says, and that's all her mind can come up with. His hand lands on her shoulder, squeezing gently. I've got you. Hailey finds her eyes glued to his stomach, where she knows the scar of a bullet should have lived beneath his shirt. As they haul each other mostly upright, the vest slipping to hit the floor with a solid thump, her fingers brush the spot of their own accord.

"I'm okay." Jay touches her hand with his own and Hailey pulls away, feeling oddly like she's been caught. "I'm okay."

I thought he was dead.

Her breath shudders on the way out; the next is better.

Hailey can feel the weight of his stare, as familiar as the kevlar. He starts, "You sure–"

"I'm good." She meets Jay's gaze to prove her point. He just looks back, some of the adrenaline fading from around his eyes, and it's a little too easy to fall back into the routine. Upton and Halstead: partners in Intelligence. She nods once and he lets go, shifting back only enough to sit heavily against the desk with a sigh.

Hailey just follows him down to the floor, suddenly too bone-weary to care that they're pressed together from hip to shoulder. She finds her eyes glued to the kevlar vest still splayed half-open at their feet. We almost died. He probably saved your life.

You're alive.

"Think we have to write up the cost?" Jay asks sardonically, gesturing at the side of the vehicle riddled with holes. Hailey just snorts. He doesn't say more and neither does she, suddenly content to come back down to earth in comfortable, relative quiet.

It's hard to tell how much time passes this way, though Hailey just lets herself be in it a while. Give us a break. But soon enough, sirens and tires and clamouring voices fill in the silence. Someone thumps on the side of the van — "All clear!" — and if Jay notices her flinch, he doesn't say anything. Hailey takes one last deep, steadying breath and pulls herself to her feet.

"I'll take Wilson's body, you check in with Voight? Maybe we can get lucky with his phone."

"Sounds good," Jay replies. A uniformed officer pulls the door open; she has to squint against the light.

He touches her shoulder again, just once, and lets her out first.

iii.

She knows something's up the moment he appears at the top of the stairs. When she follows him into the break room and asks what's going on, Hailey is half-expecting Jay to lie, for her to have to work a little harder to get at whatever it is that's bothering him.

"I have no idea."

And he doesn't, she knows; it's the same not knowing that's been plaguing half the unit for weeks now— ever since Eva. While Kim and Kevin may be more content to politely pretend they can't see the furtive looks Voight, Adam, and Antonio have been exchanging, it prickles beneath Hailey's skin– and now, clearly, it's come to a head with Jay too.

"Voight just left and he said—" Jay breaks off and it takes everything in her to be steady— "he said something about me running the unit."

The root of dread coils tighter. Hailey follows Jay's gaze out to the bullpen, where the announcement of Kelton's victory still plays, and then back.

"We lost."

She hasn't seen him look this way in a long time— not since he almost died and she was almost too late to save him. Hailey takes a deep breath. Jay's not wrong. So what's left?

"Kelton is who he is," she says firmly. "His time for reckoning is coming."

He scoffs a little, more out of frustration than anything. "Not in time for this unit. For us."

Us? Her heart stumbles.

"We've only been partners a couple years," she starts, going for more levity and probably failing. "You'll forget about me just fine."

Hailey forces a smile, but she can't hold it up against the way Jay's looking at her now, too open and unguarded to handle.

"Hailey…" He does that thing where he laughs with just one corner of his mouth and trails off, shaking his head. Jay opens his mouth as if to speak. She thinks, not now. I'm not strong enough.

Hailey knows him, and he knows her; Jay doesn't say whatever he's thinking— because he won't (or can't) give voice to whatever their partnership has become. She tries to smile again.

Maybe she's the one who can't let him.

"We'll be alright," Hailey says, and wills it to be true.

iv.

Kelton's reckoning occurs through blood and bullets; theirs could also be counted in shell-casings and scars, but at least she and Jay have survived. So far, at least.

With half the unit out of commission (speaking of things Hailey can't look at head on), Voight's strangely dark premonition comes to pass. As the most senior remaining detective, Jay assumes command of Intelligence. All their attempts to reach both Antonio and their sergeant go unanswered, which only carves deeper frown lines in Platt's face.

(She's taken herself off the front desk to help them and pulled her best patrol officers up into the bullpen. Kim takes responsibility for them without being asked; Hailey mirrors Jay's immensely grateful look at the routine grunt work being taken off their plates for the time being.)

Whoever had killed Kelton had been careful; there's evidence of a break-in but absolutely no DNA that isn't their former mayor's. It's also hard to decide whether it's a relief or not that the potential list of killers is long, since Jay had pointedly avoided eye contact when he told them that both Hank and Antonio were in the wind.

I'm going to do what needs to be done. Voight's last words to Jay keep replaying in her mind, but Hailey can see that they haunt her partner. Chicago, as difficult and often corrupt as it already is, feels truly rocked by this – the Ivory Tower calls for an update seemingly every time the unit tries to come up for air. CPD's new interim superintendent is not exactly sympathetic to the strain the 21st district (and arguably the entire force) is now under; as the days wear on with few leads, Jay takes fewer and fewer breaks and stays behind later and later.

Is their city just full of monsters? Are they only pretending to fight a darkness that already exists inside of them, rooted and watered by the horrors of this job? There has to be light somewhere, Hailey thinks, as she buzzes herself up the stairs in search of her phone she'd left behind. The solitary glow of her partner's desk lamp lighting the Intelligence bullpen is perhaps a bit too on the nose. Voight's office is still shuttered and closed; Jay refuses to work in there, even though his paperwork pile is already twice the height of hers.

"You good?" he asks, beating her to the punch. Hailey nods, reaching into her drawer and holding up her cell.

"Just forgot this. What are you working on?"

Jay sighs, dragging a tired hand over his face. He'd tell her he needed a shave, she knows, if she pointed out the two-day scruff. She doesn't.

"I hate reports," he complains. It's a familiar conversation. Hailey feels an abrupt urge to smile that she hasn't had in at least a week. "I dunno how Voight dealt with all this red tape all the time."

He didn't, a lot of the time, she thinks. Hailey doesn't say that either.

"Have you been home since yesterday?" she asks instead. "You were already here when I got in this morning. You haven't eaten."

The scratching of pen slows. "What day is it?"

"Wednesday." Jay's jaw flexes just slightly, his version of a wince. "You gotta get some rest Jay," Hailey goes on. "You can't keep this up. You're gonna be dead on your feet."

"I'm fine," he says. The stubbornness in his tone is familiar, too. "We have to get this right. Intelligence isn't safe just because Kelton's dead."

"We're a team," she counters. "You don't have to do this all by yourself."

A shadow creases his face. Hailey knows there's some things about his last conversation with Voight that Jay didn't tell her, that his relationship with their (former?) sergeant is longer and more complex than even Adam's was. Is. But she won't back down.

"Finish that and then I'm taking you home. You can ride with me tomorrow and get your car after shift."

Years or months or even a few weeks ago, Hailey would have considered what their co-workers would think at the sight of them arriving together. Besides the fact that neither Kim nor Kevin would say anything (Platt is probably another story), tonight she finds she doesn't care. Her partner opens his mouth as if to argue, but Hailey just shrugs out of her coat and settles across from him in her own desk chair. She can be stubborn too.

After a long beat of silence, Jay exhales slowly and his pen resumes its task across the page. Hailey forces herself not to look up from her phone, but every so often she can feel the weight of his stare. He doesn't often accept support; even the spoken value of their 'beer and talk' arrangement sometimes isn't enough to get Jay to cave. Hailey would cave though, for him. She'd do nearly anything if he was the one asking.

Hailey has to resolve, right then and there in the silent and mostly dark bullpen, to never examine that truth too closely.

"Okay," Jay says sometime later, pulling her out of a mindless game of Crossy Road. "I'm done." He leans back in his chair with a long sigh. "Tell me we're doing the right thing here, Hailey."

You know I can't tell you that. Though the unit and the district may have their suspicions as to the timing of Kelton's murder and Intelligence leader disappearances, no one dares speak them aloud. Hailey squares her shoulders and meets Jay's eye. "We're doing our jobs."

It's not an answer, of course; his scoff calls her out. But when Jay speaks again, it's full of a quiet desperation she's only heard a handful of times since they became partners. "I just hope I'm wrong."

Hailey doesn't bother pretending. "I think we're all hoping that too." She picks up her coat and he follows as she hoped he would. "We can only do our jobs. The rest is for someone else to decide."

Jay possibly (probably) disagrees, but he just ushers her through the gate. As Hailey turns out of the district lot, he props his elbow against the window and tilts his head against his hand, staring out at nothing. She finds her attention drawn, almost unwittingly, over to him as the late night lights of Chicago pass them by. He looks so far away, even with the scant distance between them.

So she reaches out the only way she knows how. "Molly's? I could use a drink."

Jay stills; Hailey braces herself for a refusal. Please just let us be us.

"We can drink at mine," he says. "I know I have a bottle of something kicking around."

She squeezes the steering wheel a little in relief. "Sounds good."

When they arrive, he holds the door open for her to enter first. "Sorry about the mess."

There's a somewhat rumpled blanket over the back of the couch, half a newspaper on the coffee table, and Jay's beanie dangling from a hook by the door. "This is a mess?"

He laughs dryly. "Old habit."

Hailey drops herself onto the couch as he disappears into the kitchen. She hears cabinets and the clinking of glasses and wills her shoulders to relax. Jay isn't the only one taking on more than usual; she'd never hear the end of it if he caught her not taking her own advice. A minute later, a heavy glass of amber liquid lands audibly in front of Hailey. Jay pulls the blanket from behind his back and tosses it unceremoniously into her lap.

"You're always cold," he says when she just looks at him. "Don't even try to deny it."

Hailey just busies herself with the throw and her glass so she doesn't blush. "Thanks."

She holds her glass out; Jay clinks against it with a silent nod. There's gratitude in his eyes. Hailey just smiles gently and hopes it's enough. The scotch burns on the way down and she thinks, you're alive.

You're alive.

jh

She wakes with a start; the blanket slips from around her shoulders (when had that happened?) and Hailey's mind flashes back to the kevlar vest on the floor of their ruined surveillance van. But she blinks blearily and Jay's apartment returns, quiet and dark. And when she turns her head, she's surprised to find him slumped beside her, still holding his empty glass.

Something aches deep inside her chest.

Hailey sits up carefully. Leaning forward, she wraps her fingers around Jay's glass and pries it gently from his hand. Before she can do anything more, his eyes snap open, bright and wild; Jay seizes her wrist in an iron grip before she can even reel back, and Hailey's heart leaps up into her throat.

"It's me," she says, as quiet and calm as she can manage. "It's just me."

"Hailey," Jay breathes. The hair on the back of her neck rises. He releases her. "Shit, sorry."

She just shakes her head. "I can't believe I fell asleep."

"You and me both," he replies. Hailey musters a faint smile.

"I should—"

"Stay."

Jay isn't touching her anymore, but he may as well be for the way all her limbs suddenly freeze in place. Hailey sees a flash of that open expression from the break room, before everything truly went to hell.

"It's late," he continues. "You've had a few."

"I'm fine, Jay." It's not a lie, exactly. But her body won't stop betraying her. They haven't been this close since the van. It's like she suddenly stopped knowing how to be around him. Jay swallows; Hailey watches his Adam's apple bob and hates herself a little.

"I'd feel better if you stayed." She can only stare. How can he be so inarticulate one day and so unselfconscious the next? Hailey wishes she could blame the alcohol, or the hour, but Jay is a Ranger; he's asleep to alert faster than she can blink. "We can stop by your place before we go in."

"I keep an emergency go bag in the car," she blurts, unthinking, and Jay exhales a laugh with just one side of his mouth.

"Of course you do."

This is a bad idea.

"Are you actually going to sleep?" she asks, "If I stay?"

Jay's jaw works. Gotcha. "Probably."

Hailey rolls her eyes fondly. "Gotta work on your poker face there, Halstead."

He chuckles and leans back. "Pretty sure it's no use with you."

It's so frank and honest that her stomach pitfalls. Hailey stands then, handing the glass back to Jay and feeling abruptly silly for playing hot potato with it.

"Be right back." When Hailey returns, Jay is in sweats and a t shirt, putting sheets on the couch. It's the most dressed down she's ever seen him.

"I just washed the ones on my bed," he says with a smile. "Promise. All yours."

"I'm not kicking you out of your own bed," Hailey protests. "I'll take the couch. You'll barely fit on it anyway." Jay goes to counter, but she musters her best don't fuck with me glare. His lips twitch like he wants to laugh; he just puts a pillow down.

It feels downright domestic, standing in the bathroom with him and brushing her teeth. The part of Hailey that wants to fidget in her pajama shorts and t-shirt struggles with the rest of her that is always a little more instinctively relaxed around her partner, in a way — if Hailey's being honest with herself — she had to work for with Adam.

Besides the disaster that was Booth, Jay makes no demands of her, never asking for more than she's ready to give. They've disagreed before, certainly, on cases. But never morally – never fundamentally — or in a way that spoke to the core of their personalities clashing.

Hailey supposes that's the upside of dragging each other's demons into the light and finding support in looking right at their own darkness.

"Sure you're okay out here?" Jay leans on the doorframe of his room and watches as she slides beneath both the throw and another blanket he'd insisted on leaving out for her.

"Beats a concrete basement floor," Hailey quips. He makes a face and she laughs lightly at him. "I'm kidding. Jay this is fine, really. Go to bed. I'll see you in the morning."

Jay looks at her a moment longer, before apparently deciding against whatever's on his mind. "Night."

Hailey lies awake for longer than she'd like to admit, but he doesn't have to know that.

jh

The smell of coffee draws her into awareness.

Hailey tries to sit up quickly, suddenly too mindful of Jay potentially catching her asleep and vulnerable again. But there's no sign of him until she's folding the blankets carefully into a small pile on one end of the couch.

Jay emerges from the kitchen with two mugs and offers her one, which she accepts with a grateful, "Thanks."

Hailey pulls her legs up to sit cross legged, leaning back against the arm of the couch while he shifts to face her. It would be too easy, she thinks, to shuffle forward a little and be touching knees.

Somehow it seems more intimate than being locked in his arms with nowhere to go.

"Get any sleep?" Jay asks, eyeing her over the rim of his mug.

"Yeah," Hailey admits after a moment of thought. "Actually. You?"

She can see the edges of a smile: the corner of his mouth, the gentle crinkle of his eyes. "Yeah, actually." There's something inexplicably tender in his expression, despite the fact that she can't see half his face. Hailey suddenly wishes she could flee, but just wraps both hands around her cup and drinks instead.

"Bathroom's all yours," Jay says. "I'm just gonna get dressed."

The rest of the morning passes in the same quiet camaraderie that settles in during a long sting. By the time they're pulling back up to the precinct, Hailey can almost pretend the last 12 hours were just a strange dream. She and Jay are early enough to work that not even Platt has arrived quite yet; the buzzer of the gate up to Intelligence feels almost jarring in the quiet.

Hailey can see Atwater's desk before they hit the top of the stairs. She's almost there; they're almost back to normal and then—

"Hailey."

His fingers brush her elbow and she turns. Just behind her, Jay is just below as well; they're very nearly the same height. The air feels close, like it did on the couch, and the van, like something electric is rising, or a flash flood that might just sweep her away.

He glances down then up, as though suddenly boyish and bashful. It's somehow difficult to imagine any other version of Jay that isn't calm and confident. His jaw flexes. She sees that same look, that almost lost, vulnerable, and open one that always catches her off guard; she's unmoored and the one thing that usually grounds her is the same thing knocking her off balance.

Jay's just looking at her, like he wants to speak but he knows that the truth — whatever the Truth is — might be the thing that shatters them both to pieces.

She thinks, tell me.

She thinks, don't.

And then Hailey stops thinking. She just leans forward and slides her arms around Jay's neck, letting herself fit between the open edges of his jacket. He stiffens, but before Hailey can jump back over the enormous line she's just crossed, Jay pulls her in. His arm wraps around her so far that she's sure he can feel her ribs, while his other hand touches the back of her neck, so lightly at first that Hailey shivers.

And then Jay tightens his grip and she's suddenly safe again. Hailey hooks her chin over his shoulder; he turns his face into the curve of her neck. She can only keep breathing as Jay sighs, so deeply that Hailey can feel his whole body rise and fall against hers.

The whole world seems to have narrowed into sensations: fingertips tangling into her hair, calluses on the nape of her neck, warm breath over her collar. Hailey closes her eyes.

You're alive.

She pulls back first, if only because she risks never moving again. She also risks crying, with the look in Jay's eyes. But Hailey manages a smile and puts her hand on his shoulder.

"C'mon. Let's get to work."

As she turns, Jay's hand touches her own. He squeezes, just once. Hailey returns the pressure without looking back and Jay releases her, following her up into the bullpen.

It's not enough, she thinks, a little selfish and foolish and desperate. But for now it has to be.