Chapter Text
She doesn’t look at her phone with a desperate hope of seeing his name anymore. She doesn’t avoid the other side of the bed where he once laid. She no longer fills the time between waking and sleeping with endless activity in an attempt to stomach the fact that he won’t be there when she gets home. His clothes hanging in the closet haven’t smelled like his cologne in months. There isn’t a promise for return lingering where he used to sit on the couch.
It isn’t normal.
But it’s all she has.
It burns in her throat when she drinks too much whisky.
Because all of those things might be true, and she might have learned how to come to terms with this new normal that she didn't have a choice in, but it doesn’t mean she’s okay with it.
She is anything but okay with it.
But it's all she has.
If only she knew when he said she had to let him go, he really meant… letting him go.
It’s her fault, she thinks, for not wanting to believe what was standing right in front of her. The man she loved began slipping away from her long before he ever left. He wasn’t the same. They weren’t the same. She can’t help but wonder if he’s doing better now. If the ground he stands on feels sufficient enough to hold his weight. If he trusts it to keep him upright. She doesn’t spend too long thinking about it, though. Lest she become jealous of the things he puts his faith in to do so when she’s thousands of miles away.
Doesn’t he know she would do anything to be that for him?
Anger is an emotion she keeps locked up tight in the cellar of her rib cage. She despises it, the way it twists and writhes and bubbles. How it betrays the person it belongs to into becoming someone they aren’t. (Or who they have always been.) It’s never served a purpose to her. She’s seen what it can do. She can be frustrated, and hurt, and sad, and vulnerable— but never angry.
Except she thinks that maybe she is.
At herself. At him. At love and all of its costs.
At Voight.
So, she adds a double lock to her cellar of bones. Knocks back another whisky. It burns.
But it’s all she has.
Until one day, it isn’t.
It always comes when you least expect it, doesn’t it?
One second she’s pouring a coffee in her favourite mug like it's any other morning. The next, he’s staring at her from the front door as it closes behind him and she finds herself afraid to blink. She questions if she’s hallucinating. If she’s finally lost her sanity and given into the fact that she’s not okay with not being okay anymore. Then, she thinks she should want to blink. She hates herself for it, but it’s undeniable how much easier it would be. There certainly would be less words.
Although neither of them are saying much of anything with their mouths.
It’s in their eyes.
(At least that much hasn’t changed.)
The space between them would also feel less like space and more like distance if he disappeared.
Space. Distance. Who knew they could be different things?
But at least it would feel normal.
Because that’s all she... had.
“Hailey,” he manages her name first.
Her chest constricts. Air has one job, to fill her lungs. And it can’t even do that right now.
“I didn’t know if you’d be home.”
She thinks she didn’t hear him right. She couldn’t possibly have heard him right. Why wouldn’t she be home? She lives here. This is her home. It hasn’t been his home in over a year.
But it’s Friday.
She should be at work.
They closed the latest case last night, though. There hasn’t been another yet.
Their eyes continue to search each others, trying to gauge where they stand.
It isn’t the welcome he thought he would get.
But it wasn’t the goodbye she thought it was either.
Perhaps they’re on an even playing field now.
“Don’t jinx it.” The words slip from her lips far less softly than his did.
There’s no hello, no running into his arms, no welcome home.
Just a husband and a wife and silence.
“Hails…” He sets his bag down and she swears she sees the same flicker of relief in him as she feels to have something to fill the quietness.
He begins to cross the apartment to her.
Hailey blinks.
She runs a hand through her hair, looking away, unable to be beneath his gaze any longer. How many months did she spend waiting for something, anything, that would remotely resemble him coming home? How many months did she spend reaching for him in bed? How many months…
And she fucking blinked.
To what?
To see if he would disappear.
“I was about to go for a run,” she says quickly.
From the second he walked through the door she’d felt frozen to the place she stood. Now, as the space between them grows physically smaller, the last thing she wants to be is rooted to one place.
“Now?” His tone is all the indication she needs; he’s hurt.
She doesn’t have to be looking at him to picture the way his brow raises. She can easily see the way he’s looking at her as she moves to dump the cup of coffee she’d poured into a water bottle. She’s lying and he knows it.
Of course he does.
She is still Hailey, after all.
The one he loved.
The one who stayed.
(The one he’d left.)
Is she, though? Losing half of yourself changes a person.
“Yeah, now,” she repeats, as if it isn’t the most ridiculous idea that her husband just returned from rotation and she would do anything just to escape this moment with him.
The silence grows again.
Why is silence so loud? She asks herself.
“Okay.” Jay acquiesces. He doesn’t want to, but he knows he has to. Better yet, he knows he doesn’t have the right to push her. Not like this.
“Okay.” She’s all straight lips, no smile, and a sharp nod.
Avoiding his gaze, she walks past him like his body isn’t taking up residence in their home. Like he isn’t there at all. She can’t focus on him standing there, watching her with his sad, worried eyes she would normally melt beneath as she collects all the things she needs for a run she had no intention of going on until she spoke into existence just a minute ago.
He wavers where he stands. He fights the urge to reach out and put a hand on her arm—no, take her into his arms—and tell her that he’s sorry or some variation of words that means something bigger than sorry because one five letter word just doesn’t feel like enough.
But he doesn’t.
And she’s thankful for his strength when hers threatens to collapse.
Then, she leaves without another word.
Now it’s just him alone in a home he hasn’t called home in thirteen months.
Hailey runs until she can’t feel her legs. The wind is harsh, it reddens her cheeks, and she can tell they’re numb because when she absently picks at the skin all she feels is pins and needles. Somewhere between the last few blocks the thoughts had finally stopped. It’s the comforting kind of quiet: everything and nothing at once. The only thing she can hear and feel is the sound of her heart as it beats wildly in her chest.
It’s easy to pretend it’s because she’s been running for nearly three hours now.
(Or staring down into the Chicago river with tears in her eyes but it was too far down to see her reflection.)
She doesn’t think about how it picks up speed when she nears the apartment.
Checking her phone one last time, Hailey realizes her saving grace won’t be coming before she reaches the front door. No case will tear her away from the inevitable. All those times a lack of cases could have saved them. It won’t save them now.
It’s her walking through the door this time. She leaves her headphones in. There’s a bit of comfort to be felt that he isn’t still standing there, staring at the door, waiting for her.
The anger yanks at the door it’s locked behind.
She once stood there, staring at the door, waiting for him.
And she hadn’t even known when he would be back. If he would be back.
Is he even still here?
Hailey looks around. She doesn’t dare to go near the bedroom. The run offered her clarity. She isn’t ready for it to be broken yet by the image of him in such a sacred place. Reaching the kitchen, she puts her stuff down, takes out her phone and releases the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.
One long, steady breath.
She pauses the music.
The shower is running.
As if he knew she was listening, it turns off.
She doesn’t know what to do with herself in the time it takes for him to dry off and exit. Here she is again, waiting for him.
The anger slams harder this time.
She swallows it down.
“You’re back.” He says it like a breath of relief.
(There was no case to detour her, is what he means.)
“Yeah, sorry.” She can’t help the apology, but she wishes she could take it back.
“You’re not the one who should be apologizing.”
Hailey wants to tell him he’s right. She deserved better than to be left in the dark. To have him standing in front of her one minute and on a flight the next. It hurt, but she had understood. The love she had for him had allowed her to understand because he would come back to her. He was the love of her life, he’d said. Always. But she hadn’t heard another word from him after that.
She recalls the day she found out about his extension. Swears she can still feel the way it took her heart and shattered it into a million little pieces.
She never could collect them all.
Can feel herself stepping on them now.
“Jay—” She chokes on his name.
He comes to stand on the opposite side of the counter from her.
She doesn’t have anywhere else to run.
He knows this.
But he’s kind enough not to back her right into a corner.
That breaks her heart a little more.
“We have to.” He tells her in that voice she loves so much. Loves, not loved. Because she still loves him even when she packed it away for the sake of survival.
Her lips are dry from the cold. They quiver. But not from the cold.
“We don’t.”
“We do.”
There’s that silence again. Their eyes are screaming, but their mouths aren’t moving.
It feels like it lasts forever.
“What do you want me to say, Jay?” It’s honest, at least. She doesn’t know what he wants from her. She doesn’t even know what she wants from him.
“Anything. Everything. I can see your mind spiralling. There’s gotta be something…” He says it so quickly that she suddenly realizes he’s had more time to think about this than she has.
She didn’t think he was coming home.
This conversation wasn’t hers to conjure up.
“Don’t do that.” She bites back.
His brows knit together. He’s confused by this.
“Do what?”
“That,” she re-clarifies.
“I can see your mind spiralling.” She emphasizes the words she’s referring to. “Don’t stand there and pretend like nothing has changed. That you can still…” See her for exactly who she was before he’d left.
“Hailey, I’m just trying to—” He isn't under the impression that arguing is avoidable. The gravity of the situation isn’t lost upon him. And while he would never deny that what she’s feeling is because of his actions, he also can’t say it didn’t hurt him, too. He’d made mistakes. It was why he left. She wasn’t supposed to get hurt in the process. He hadn’t even realized what he was doing until the damage was done and he was too ashamed to try and put the pieces back together in a text bubble or over some crackled phone call.
“I know what you’re trying to do, and I’m asking you not to.”
Because she’d had everything.
Then she’d had nothing.
And that was all she had.
His crestfallen expression forces her to grip the counter to keep her composure.
“Do you want me to go?” He asks. The last thing he wants to do is hurt her more.
Her phone vibrates. She reads the text.
(Relief fills her chest.)
Her saving grace.
“No, you stay.” Hailey pulls herself together in a flash, moving just as fast. “I have to go.”
He’s the one left staring at an empty spot again. He doesn’t watch her leave.
What the hell has he done?