Work Text:
Jay is doing paperwork...tons of paperwork. It’s been a long slog of a day so he’s more than happy to drop his pen and push papers aside when his phone vibrates with a call.
“Hey Gail.”
The entire team witnesses Jay’s countenance switch from joy to worry in a heartbeat.
“Gail…Wait wait wait. Slow down…Okay…what happened…”
His face scrunches up in agony and he covers his eyes with his other hand, then walks to the break room and closes the door. Right before the door shuts they can see tears just start to fall.
“Who’s Gail?”
Hailey doesn’t take her eyes off her partner and watches him end the call and put his head in his hands. His shoulders are shaking with quiet sobs.
“She’s Ben Corson’s mom.”
They all know about Ben Corson and what happened to the poor kid, but that doesn’t tell them why Jay is sitting in the break room absolutely wrecked.
Hailey looks at Voight, “It’s got to be Allie or Ben’s dad, Danny.”
She stands up but not sure if he’s had enough time alone yet.
“He’s still close with them?”
She clears her throat, eyes flicking between the unit and Jay, “The Corson’s were like a second family. Allie was his high school girlfriend. They broke up when he enlisted and she went off to college but they’re still good friends.”
She leaves the conversation there, knocks on the break room door, then lets herself in.
When she sits beside him he doesn’t acknowledge her, just keeps crying while trying to pull himself together. He wipes his eyes, takes a breath and slants his head towards her. His tears are rolling in waves, over his lips and off his chin. He tries to talk but can’t do it yet.
He puts his head back down for a few minutes and just breathes. Finally he slouches back against the couch, clasps his hands on top of his head, opens his eyes and blows out a forceful but shaky breath.
Looking at Hailey with eyes overrun by devastation, he doesn’t talk but his lips turn up in a failed smile that lands as a grimace, then he tries to rub the feelings off his face.
Hailey takes a guess, “Allie?”
He squeezes his lips together and scrunches his eyes closed hoping to keep his pain inside or maybe just to keep anymore out.
She pulls him to her in a tight hug when she sees him crumble. Sobbing silently into her neck.
The rest of the team has witnessed the whole transaction of grief and comfort before turning back to their work, giving Jay the privacy he needs.
Ten minutes later, Hailey steps into Voight’s office leaving Jay staring at the ceiling as he tries to disappear into the couch.
“Voight, Allie Corson was killed. I’m going to take Jay over. You good if I stay with him.”
“Take the time you need. We’ll talk later. If I need you I’ll text but I’ll do my best to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“Thanks Sarge.”
“You want me to call Will?”
“Ah…” She looks towards the break room, “Let’s leave it for now.”
He nods. “Let us know if he needs anything."
She gives him a small smile and leaves the room. She grabs Jay’s coat and walks him out of the break room and down stairs. Everyone is silent as they go. Not wanting Jay to have to acknowledge sentiments and platitudes. There would be time for condolences later.
X
He knocks then walks in wiping his feet on the mat, his body’s movements as natural as breathing.
She hangs back while Jay shares a moment with the distraught couple, then moves forward and offers her condolences. She’s met them before, hugs both and then goes to the kitchen to make them coffee.
They are sitting in the living room when she comes back. She puts coffee by each of the three grief stricken people knowing they won’t drink it but she had wanted to give them the space they needed as their hearts broke as one.
There’s not much conversation but the basics are out there. A no fault car accident in Arizona.
She’s not sure what was talked about when she was making coffee but she tunes back in when her partner talks.
His voice is choked, “I’ll go get her.”
This starts another round of tears from the grieving parents. Danny nods and a grateful but pain filled smile touches Gail’s face.
Overwhelmed by the center of the conversation, Jay stutters to the periphery, “Danny, are Kelly and Jack on the way? The girls?”
"They’re on the way. They’ll be here tonight."
Hailey speaks up wanting to be useful, “Gail, is there anyone I can call for you, someone nearby?”
She looks at Jay’s partner, his best friend, through the blur of tears, “Oh…oh, yes…” She chokes on a sob, “Could you get Cynthia?”
Jay’s lips tweak in a broken smile, grateful Hailey came with him, “Across the street one house over. Blue car in the drive.”
She squeezes his knee, “Of course. Be right back.”
X
Jay was gone for 27 hours. He had called the police department in Phoenix found out the particulars and left two hours later.
Given the new level of grief that settled on his face after the call, she could only guess that the accident was bad, that it might be a closed casket. She hoped for the lesser of two evils and it just set in that he would be identifying Allie’s body. Both ugly sides of the same horrendous coin. But a closed casket would just add more pain to the already overwhelming grief they were all already drowning in.
X
Jay had escorted Allie’s body to the funeral home and that’s where she picked him up. He was a mess and barely hanging on by a thread. She knew he hadn’t slept but she also knew he needed to go directly to the Corson’s - he needed to tell them Allie was home.
X
It would be a closed casket. Jay asked them not to look. At first calmly as to not put horrific pictures in their heads; but they were adamant, they wanted to see their little girl, so he begged. Any horrific pictures they could imagine would not be as bad as the reality, it was one thing to imagine it, it was another to actually see it. Finally, his words barely intelligible as he sobbed his pleas, they relented.
X
The funeral was terrible. They all went. They listened as Jay struggled through his eulogy. Any funny stories that you might hear at a funeral, that he might have wanted to tell were thrown out the window after he couldn’t get through the first one. He focused on her achievements and her spirit and how much she was loved and he barely got through that…
…her goofiness and wicked humor could wait for another day.
The graveside service was beyond painful. She had only met Allie a couple of times and she was everything Jay spoke of and more.
Jay, a friend of Allie’s from Arizona and four cousins were the pall bearers. His face pale and his body trembling, she could see he was barely holding on as they got closer to Allie’s grave.
Her eyes followed his line of sight and it was trained on the grave to the left of Allie’s. Ben’s. It was at that moment when it hit her and the rest of the unit hard, slamming the magnitude of this tragedy home, the loss Jay had suffered…the tremendous loss this family had suffered.
Their two children gone. No weddings, no grandkids, no future. Only the pieces of yourself and who you are because of them to cling to. No new memories. Just a promise to carry on without them. Living your life so their gifts to you become gifts to the world around you…
…a good notion. Impossible to grasp at this point. The grief needs to be peeled away before that beautiful thought can break through. It will happen but it never happens soon enough. The salve of the memories doesn’t sooth this close to the loss.
She stood behind Jay with her hand on his shoulder. At some point he grabbed it and held on for dear life. He’s lost so much. Too much grief lay on his heart. More than enough to quash it, but it’s kept beating despite the pain. She hoped that with Allie the burden didn’t become too heavy.
X
The gathering afterward was a blur. Pay your respects. Share stories. Eat so you don’t have to talk, so you can pass the time until you can leave so you don’t notice how hard it is to breath so you don’t notice that people steal your oxygen when you are forced into a memory too painful to hear…
Jay made himself scarce, avoiding everyone but still checking in with Gail and Danny even though they were surrounded by family.
She looked in Allie’s room first but found him in Ben’s - this loss was older, almost…almost, bearable.
She sat with Jay as he held the catcher’s mitt he had given Ben on his birthday the week before he was murdered. She knew the story - the two of them had played catch until both their arms felt like they would fall off. It had been a good day…he didn’t know at the time it would be the last day he would see Ben alive.
X
Later he found himself in Allie’s room. Sitting on the floor deep in thought, tears flowing. He looked at her bed where they had both lost their virginity when her parents and Ben were on a camping trip. The rug they sat on when they did their homework. The brown spot were he spilled his can of Coke…where Ben, as young as he was, kicked their asses in Monopoly…where the two of them would quiz Ben for the next day’s spelling test…
There was so much laughter in this room, so much joy…after Ben, so much grief…after Allie…
X
She watched from the door as he slowly looked around the room rolling through the memories of his first love. Both Allie and Ben’s rooms would remain forever the same. Ben’s, that of a grade schooler who saw so little of what life had to offer. Allie’s, even after all these years, was that of a high school graduate gone off to college to make a life of her own. Her mirror was filled with pictures of them, of their friends. Tons of pictures even after she had taken so many with her to college.
He cleared his throat and stood, offering his partner a smile of gratitude. He wasn’t surprised she was there. Hailey always had his six, even when his life wasn’t in danger but his heart was broken.
X
It was ten when she got him home. He was on auto pilot but running on fumes. She was hoping she could get him to bed before he crashed.
“Do you want something to eat? You didn’t eat anything earlier.”
He just shook his head and escaped to the bathroom and a shower. She heard him moving around the bedroom a bit later, then found him curled up in bed.
She sat beside him and held his hand, wishing she could make everything better.
“Thanks Hails.”
She smiled and squeezed his hand.
“Get some sleep. I’ll be right out here.”
She was almost to the door when he asked her to stay. The anguished ‘please’ almost undid her.
She grabbed one of his t-shirts from a drawer and changed, crawling into bed beside him. He rolled over to face her, fingers entwining with hers in the space between the pillows.
She watched as his tears flowed, glittering in the light from the window, until he finally fell asleep and the tear tracks had dried; until his hand loosened in hers and his breath flowed with ease, losing the ever present hitch of the last week. It seemed this was the first time in days that his body, not his sorrow was in control of his breathing…
…and tomorrow would be a new day…
…a day when Jay would begin to pick up the pieces of his broken heart and put it back together around the dust of a newly shattered piece…Allie.