Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Hailey heaves a deep sigh as she gets into her car. It’s been a long, long day, and part of her wants to thump her forehead against the steering wheel and cry, maybe. Or laugh. Or scream. At the Trey case for pulling her away from Jay’s hospital room for hours on end today, at herself for bailing out of her confession moments ago, at the world for taking and taking from people that have already given so much.

But they’re okay, she reminds herself. She presses her hands to her eyes. Jay has made it through this alive, and that is all she really needs.

She doesn’t want to leave him waiting in Med any longer than he has to, so she pulls herself together and starts the car.

She drives around to the front entrance, to where Jay is, and she lets him climb into her passenger seat. Once he’s seated and shut the door, he leans his temple against the cool glass of the window and just watches her quietly. Hailey doesn’t move, taking a second to consider.

All their talk of getting out of Med aside, she doesn’t really know what her next move is now.

For as long as she’d been running point on the case, the only thing keeping her going had been the knowledge that Jay had his brother to check in on him when she couldn’t. She’d assumed Will would go home with Jay, but weirdly, not long after she’d finally finished up on the homicide case, Will had abruptly headed back to his own place. He’d left Jay in her hands with no explanation save for a hug goodbye and a promise to come over in the morning. Morning isn’t long from now, given the lateness of the hour, so it’s not like Hailey needs to worry about it, but of course, she still does.

She tips her head back against the headrest, mirroring Jay’s position so she can look him over. His eyes are a vibrant blue in the reflected hospital light.

She’s pretty sure Jay is under the impression she’s going to be okay with just driving him home, dropping him off, and leaving him alone until morning – which, it goes without saying, she is absolutely not okay with. Even setting aside her own personal feelings, and God, there’s a lot of those, it’s a frankly ridiculous course of action for someone recovering from getting shot.

But she also knows Jay, knows how he gets when he’s hurting. No matter how much she might want to make sure he’s safe and okay and not alone, she figures he might actually yell at her if she just drove him to her place with no explanation. So she does the only thing she can and eases into offering her help – freely given but less freely received.

“Hey, Jay? I’m gonna ask you something, promise me you’ll properly consider it before you answer.” He makes a cautious noise of affirmation, and she continues. “You wanna stay at my place tonight? Or if you wanna sleep in your own bed, that’s understandable, but do you want me to stay with you?”

He sighs.

“Are you and Will tag-teaming babysitting me or something?”

She breathes out a laugh, regretting that she hadn’t been able to talk to Will for longer today.

“Why, did he ask the same thing?”

“Almost word for word.” Jay scrubs his hand across his face and closes his eyes, guilt settling across his expression. “I turned him down. I– I snapped at him, really. I shouldn’t have. It’s just– you weren’t there, and…” He waves his right hand vaguely at the hospital, making a face. Hailey doesn’t blame him. He’s more than earned the right to be in a mood after the day they’ve had. Not to mention how she’s beginning to truly get his aversion to hospitals, unable to think of anything except the haunted look in Will’s eyes when Jay had been barely hanging on to life, and the full breakdown she’d had in the privacy of the bathrooms afterward.

But still, she tilts her head and fixes Jay with a gentle look. She reaches across to squeeze his knee, half to ground herself and half as a silent message to him, and when he opens his eyes, meeting her gaze, she knows he’s heard her.

“I really messed up, didn’t I?” he admits.

“I don’t think he’ll hold it against you,” she replies, and it’s the truth. She knows Will chose to give Jay space for tonight, and that he’ll be over in the morning with no hard feelings. And Hailey’s quickly realizing it’s only because she’s here that Will was able to do that. He’s trusting her with his brother, relying on her the same way she’d relied on him before, and that fact makes her oddly warm inside.

“I’ll text Will and apologise,” Jay mumbles, leaning to the side to dig out his phone. Hailey hides a smile as he types out the message with one thumb.

“It’s just ‘cause we love you.” The words tumble out before Hailey’s even realised what she’s said. She takes a shaky breath in. But Jay needs to hear it, so she can’t stop now. “We care about you so damn much. You’ve been through hell, okay? And you did it alone, Jay. We don’t want you to be alone anymore.”

“You’ve been through hell, too,” he counters. “And it’s because of me. Have you slept, Hails? Eaten?”

She looks away. She hasn’t.

Jay’s voice is softer now, guilty again. “I’m fine. You don’t need to do this. I know you’re my partner, I know it’s your job to watch my six, but– it’s midnight, you’re tired, you’ve been working a case and worrying about me for the past 48 hours. I don’t want you to have to do this too. To have to stay on my couch and eat the the leftovers in my fridge.”

Hailey’s heart breaks a little for him. Given the opportunity to deflect, though, she takes it. She nods towards the backseat, and he turns to look, seeing the massive bag filled with assorted containers of food. “Luckily for you, neither of us are going hungry. Taken care of thanks to our brilliant friends.”

Jay turns back and gives her a weak half-smile, and Hailey watches it waver. Her hands clench on the steering wheel.

“You’re not a burden, Jay,” she whispers. It hangs between them. “Let me do this for you. You’d do the same in a heartbeat.”

And though she wants to, she can’t quite tell him she loves him again, so she starts the car instead.

“Your place, then?”

He nods in response.

Chapter Text

“When are you gonna learn not to argue with me? You’re not going to win,” Hailey tells him, pulling their bags out of the backseat herself. She bumps the back door of the car shut with her hip. “See? I got it. And anyway, it’s not me saying you don’t need to carry anything, it’s your doctor – you’re under orders not to weight-bear for a while, remember?”

“I do have one good arm left.”

“Right,” she corrects, and he snorts when the joke lands. “Your right arm is your good one. Don’t start mixing those up on me now, Detective,” she teases, making him laugh, the sound genuine and bright. She grins. Hours ago, she’d been worried about never hearing that laugh again.

After their conversation in the car outside Med, the rest of the drive home had been quiet – but the good kind of quiet. Jay seems lighter, now, and she’s grateful for it, grateful for the glimpse of normalcy, the comfortable silence the two of them fall into easily. It reminds her of the many days and nights they’ve spent just like this, side by side. 

They’ve made it through every single one of those days. Standing a bit closer to Jay, Hailey thinks they’ll make it through many more.

He shakes his head fondly as they walk into his building.

“Okay, for that comment, you’re sleeping on the couch tonight, Upton.”

She scoffs, hoisting the bags higher into her arms, but she’s careful not to say a word about the way her heart flips foolishly at the old married couple bit he’s doing.

But then again, she doesn’t really need to say any of it, does she?

When they’re inside, it’s like the last bit of weight of the day is lifted off both their shoulders. Jay wanders around flicking on the lights, and Hailey drops the bags of their clothes, shucks her jacket, then heads for the dining table.

There’s still the bundle of pamphlets, prescriptions and pill bottles that Med had sent them home with, but Hailey puts it down, opting to open the food first. She starts pulling out plastic containers as Jay enters the room again.

“Dinner? Midnight snack? We’ve got Greek Islands delivery from Vanessa, Platt brought up some soup – don’t tell anyone I told you it’s from her, she’s got a tough guy reputation to keep up, apparently. Adam put in some ice cream– oh, would you look at that. Double chocolate. I guess it’s all mine then.”

“Ice cream’s overrated anyway,” Jay says, picking up the tub, but he quickly realises he has no hands left to open the freezer door. Hailey’s sliding around him to open it before he even has time to sigh.

“You’re just plain wrong on that one, buddy,” she continues casually. “Ooh, I know your go-to is vanilla, but I had this one coffee-mocha flavoured ice cream once, I’m telling you. You absolutely need to try it sometime. Given how much coffee we consume daily, it could change your opinion.”

Jay hums absent-mindedly in reply. He rubs his hand along the back of his neck as he glances over the table.

Hailey looks like she’s about to ask him if he’s okay, so he tells her, “Greek sounds good for me. Uh, you know what, I’m going to go take a shower before we eat. I’ve still got antiseptic and stuff on me.”

Hailey nods as the memory of herself hunched over a sink, scrubbing her skin clean of his blood, flashes before her eyes. She blinks it away and refocuses on Jay.

“You all good with the –” She gestures at the sling and the bandage that’s just peeking out from under his shirt.

“Yeah, I should be able to clean and redress the wound now.”

“Okay. Be careful,” she mumbles, so quietly he almost doesn’t hear. It’s a silly thing to say, really, but for some reason it just makes him smile a little as he turns away.

“I’ll go grab some clothes that aren’t Will’s spares,” he says over his shoulder. “Oh, and let me get you some pillows.”

“It’s fine, just show me where they are,” she replies quickly, following him into the bedroom.

Jay points her towards his closet while he crosses the room to pull out sweats and a loose band tee he’s owned for an embarrassingly long time. When he turns back, Hailey is on her tiptoes, glaring up at the spare pillows and blankets on the top shelf.

He comes to stand next to her, and she drops her heels back down. “So much for ‘just show me where they are’, huh?” He raises his eyebrows at Hailey, and he’s immediately leveled with the same glare she had reserved for the top shelf. He snickers, reaching above their heads with his good hand to retrieve the bedding himself.

He hands it off to Hailey, piling the blankets up so she has no chance of being able to see over the large bundle in her arms. She grumbles as she backs towards the door – she would know her way around his apartment blind – and it means Jay gets to enjoy the sight of her small frame, half-covered in blankets, clumsily heading for his couch. 

“Count yourself lucky, Halstead,” comes her voice, sounding like she’s holding back laughter, and he shakes his head. They both know in any other circumstance she’d probably be pelting him with pillows right now. 

Jay drops down to sit on his bed and begins trying to shrug off his jacket as Hailey walks back in. She smiles indulgently down at him when he succeeds. He rolls his eyes in return, despite the way something inside him flutters a little at her expression. His thing with Hailey – their thing – is the most comfortable, easiest, the best thing he has, but sometimes, they have these moments where something about them feels almost delicate. Jay suddenly doesn’t know what to do with his hands, or what to do in general.

He stands slowly, and Hailey’s eyes flit away from his own.

“Want help taking off the sling?” Her question is soft, genuine.

“I…” Jay doesn’t finish the sentence, but he doesn’t need to. Hailey wraps her hand around his left wrist in the sling, easing his thumb out of the loop. After a second, Jay moves with his free hand to unfasten the straps of the sling. He lets her support the weight of his injured arm as he pulls the sling away, then reaches back and tugs the neck of his shirt over his head before he can overthink it. 

“Stop moving so much,” Hailey murmurs, helping keep his arm cradled close to his torso as they drag the fabric down off his arm.

Once it’s discarded, Hailey studies the dark bruising that mars his pale skin, one of her hands trailing down over where it’s particularly bad, distinct rope marks twisting their way up his forearms.

“Hails,” he whispers, trying to ease the furrow of her brow.

“Jay,” she returns. 

Her hand moves shakily to ghost over the bandage on his shoulder. She glances up, checking in, and yes, he’s still sore, but it’s okay. Jay rests the palm of his own right hand lightly over hers, over his wound. This is okay. Her fingertip moves a little, traces around the very edge of the bandage, toys with a corner that’s lifting off. His skin there is an odd combination of numb and hypersensitive, and he swallows hard. Hailey’s fingers still.

“Do– uh– Sorry.”

Jay scans her face. He’s reminded of how she’d looked sitting by his hospital bedside when he’d first woken up, and he understands why she’s hesitating. It’s still a bit too soon right now. Too fresh. It’s a lot easier to pretend they’re both whole when she doesn’t have to see the tender red of his wound. Not now. Not when he was bleeding out a day ago, and her hands pressed to it were the only thing that kept him alive.

Jay squeezes her hand gently.

“It’s okay,” he reassures. 

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

Hailey bites her bottom lip, a nervous tell he’s familiar with.

“I’m sorry, I just couldn’t…”

“Hailey, it’s okay. You don’t need to explain. I get it.”

Carefully, she reaches up to his face, fingers brushing across his cheek now, along the butterfly bandage there. He can’t escape the piercing blue of her gaze. With her thumb, she caresses the crease by the corner of his mouth, a silent stop smiling so much that Jay disobeys completely. He reaches out and tucks a loosened strand of Hailey’s hair behind her ear while she works on the bandage.

She finally pries it off his cheek, and the two of them spend another long second just like that, eyes locked on each other.

“I’m going to take that shower now,” Jay says quietly, and Hailey steps back, nodding. She retreats to the living room with one last glance backwards over her shoulder.

Jay strips off his remaining clothes one-handed, making his way to the bathroom and turning on the water. 

He closes his eyes, the only sound in the bathroom the spray of water hitting tile, not quite loud enough to drown out his thoughts. It’s soothing, but not quite as soothing as the sound of Hailey’s voice would be.

He turns towards his reflection in the mirror. The sight that meets him isn’t great, and he hadn’t expected it to be, but he knows it’s probably the best he’s looked in a couple of days. He watches himself hiss in pain as he peels first the bandage and then the dressing off his shoulder, revealing iodine-stained skin and the gunshot wound below his collarbone. Remembering his brother’s nagging, he inspects the wound as he gets into the shower with his arm still bent against his torso, but it doesn’t look any worse, none of the signs of infection he needs to worry about. 

He hunches a little under the hot water, the temperature relaxing his muscles, but not as much as Hailey’s touch did. 

It should be pathetic, really, how he’s only a room away from her and he still already misses her. How every moment is just so much better with her around. Frankly, it should be embarrassing.

But also… he never can quite begrudge himself the warmth she brings him, and if that makes him pathetic, then so be it. Hailey is everything good in his life. He’s grateful he gets to have her, in whatever capacity. 

And he’s not stupid. He knows what it means that she’s constantly on his mind like this, that she’s buried herself into his heart this way. But neither one of them have said a word about it to each other – he’s not going to count what Hailey had said in the car, or what she’d bailed out of telling him in his hospital room earlier, even though both instances have been running through his head pretty much non-stop. (She could’ve been speaking as his friend and partner, she could’ve been about to say something else entirely… The excuses sound flimsy even to his own ear, but plausible deniability and all that.) Neither of them have actually said anything, and that’s where the two of them are. At least for now.

It’s easier to pretend they’re both whole when neither of them have to open up like that.

Or, if not easier, then safer. He can’t really say it’s easier, not when he has these occasional moments when he looks at her and thinks Hailey, Hails, goddamn it, I love you, and he aches to tell her. So yes, sometimes it’s a whole lot harder this way, but it’s safer.

Even so, he’d like to think he knows what she feels for him, too. It’s not nothing, at the very least. They both know how very important they are to each other, and that’s what matters. Thoughts of more are just that, more, and so he leaves it be for now, grabbing his shampoo instead. 

Despite it all, he’s happy with what he has here and now, because he’s alive, and Hailey is in his apartment, and they’re both okay, and they’re still them. He’s more than happy with that, really.

Jay takes possibly the most sparse shower of his life, wincing at the incessant stinging of the countless small cuts on his body when the shampoo gets in them.

He steps out and towels off as best he can, accepting that he’s going to be a bit damp for a while. Suppressing the urge to move his bad arm, he yanks on his sweatpants and curses under his breath at the awkwardness of the task. He’s fairly certain he’s going to lose his mind at some point in the next six weeks with the sling on.

He’s ripping open a gauze packet with his teeth when he hears Hailey’s double knock on the door.

“I’m choosing to be flattered rather than creeped out that you were hovering outside the bathroom,” he calls, and he can vividly picture Hailey’s eyeroll in response.

“Wasn’t hovering,” she retorts through the door. “Just wanted to check you hadn’t passed out in the shower or something. ‘s happened to me before.”

Jay’s stomach turns a little, like it always does at the thought of Hailey hurt, but he pushes his questions down. “Still conscious,” he informs her. He finishes patting the dressing to stick over his wound. “You can come in, I’m decent.”

Behind him, the door opens, and Jay watches Hailey in the mirror. She’s smirking in a way that makes it clear she’s sparing him the response to that last statement of his, and the corner of his mouth twitches. It doesn’t take long for her face to soften as she makes her way over to him, taking in what looks like the contents of an entire first aid kit laid out across his sink. 

She rifles through it, locating another sealed steri-strip for Jay’s face. When she turns back to him, he’s started to wind a bandage roll around his shoulder, holding the end of it in place with his chin pressed to his shoulder. 

Hailey smiles. “Kills ya to ask for help, huh?” She immediately pulls a rueful face at the words, but Jay knows she didn’t mean to hit a nerve, knows that she probably relates to the sentiment herself, so he just tips his head noncommittally. He gestures her closer so she can reapply the bandage to his face while he finishes wrapping his shoulder.

Her cool fingertips hold his face still, smoothing one side of the butterfly bandage over his skin and pulling the edges of the cut together with a murmured “Sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Jay tells her. 

Hailey clearly realizes how much he means it, glancing up at the ceiling with a breathy half-laugh. Jay sees the tears welling up that she’s trying to hide, but he doesn’t comment on it. He lets her finish up with the bandage then squeeze past him to the sink to wash her face, and he turns away and occupies himself instead with putting away most of his medical supplies.

His left shoulder is starting to ache deeply, so Jay doesn’t protest when Hailey moves in close again and lifts his injured arm from where he’d been resting it on the counter. He does press his lips together, though, when she reaches for his T-shirt and starts threading it over his left hand.

“Am I going to have to be helped in and out of my clothes every time like a two-year-old?” he mutters, doing his best to cooperate nonetheless. 

Hailey giggles, eyes shining.

“You make an adorable toddler, Jay Halstead.”

Eventually, once they’ve gotten both the shirt and sling back onto him, they move slowly out of the bathroom. Jay squints in the brighter light coming from the kitchen, a hand coming up to massage his temple.

“Headache?” Hailey asks.

“Kinda, yeah.”

She gives a sympathetic hum. “You got clocked pretty good. Surprised you escaped the concussion headache this long, to be honest.”

He is, too, but that thought is a little hard to entertain over the painful throbbing in the back of his skull. 

“Come on,” Hailey says softly, wrapping a hand around his good arm. “Let’s get some dinner and some meds into you.”

“Dinner? You normally have dinner at 1 in the morning, do you, Hails?” he asks. He might be tired but he’s rarely too out of it for their banter.

“Only when I’m with you,” she replies with a wink, and she’s beaten him again. He wouldn’t have it any other way. 

Hailey’s heated up their food while he’d been in the shower, so they sit down at the table, Hailey at Jay’s right side. Their elbows brush as they reach for the food, but neither of them make a single move to shift away.

Jay breaks into the Greek Islands gyros, closing his eyes in satisfaction at the taste of it – miles better than the hospital food he’d picked at throughout the day. He glances at Hailey.

“How’s the soup?”

Her slurp answers his question, and he nods, amused.

“Good. Very good. Trudy’s comfort food cooking is ridiculous, I’m taking this as more evidence that she’s really a softie at heart.”

“She just likes you the most. Everyone else is scared to death of her, me included. I thought I wasn’t supposed to know the soup was hers?”

Hailey waves her hand abstractly. “Eh. Where do you keep the salt, by the way?” she asks, already standing to get it.

“Left pantry, bottom shelf.”

Jay doesn’t miss the way she pulls her chair closer to his when she returns, and he hides a smile. 

As the two of them eat, they talk about everything and nothing, the same way they always do. Jay asks Hailey a couple of questions about the case their unit had landed while he’d been laid up, but Hailey gives him the bare minimum answers, and he picks up pretty quickly that it’s not her favorite thing to talk about at the moment. They let the conversation peter out comfortably, and Jay bumps his elbow against her forearm to let her know they’re good. After years spent together as partners, they can spend the hours sitting quietly together just as well as they can when they’re chatting. 

This is safe, Jay thinks to himself. This is somewhere they’ve been before. They can almost pretend this is just another dinner the two of them are sharing, and the past day, week, month, have never happened. But, of course, they did.

Hailey’s hand sneaks into Jay’s field of vision, reaching for his food, and he blinks, shaking himself out of his thoughts. Hailey’s busy tearing a bit of bread off the bottom of his gyros. She dips it into the remnants of her soup, and Jay gives her a mock glare. She just shrugs, popping the bread unrepentantly into her mouth.

“Thief,” he mumbles. He lets her steal more of his bread the whole way through their meal.

The next time Jay bothers to check the time, it’s nearly 2 A.M., Hailey’s taking her turn in the shower, and he’s got the cap of a bottle of pain meds between his teeth in an attempt to open it.

“Uh, Jay?” comes Hailey’s voice from the other room.

His reply is mostly muffled around the pill bottle that continues to elude him.

“Left my bag of clothes on the couch, do me a favor and toss it over?”

“Oh my god,” he laughs. He abandons his fight with the meds and strides over to grab Hailey’s duffle bag for her.

The bedroom door is open just a crack as Jay approaches. He sees Hailey’s face on the other side, pressed against the gap while she hides most of her towel-clad body behind the door. Her eyes are closed as she waits, and Jay lightens his step. There aren’t many people that can sneak up on Hailey Upton, and Jay takes pride in being one of them. 

He bends to her level until they’re nearly nose to nose. 

“Boo.”

She jumps, eyes snapping open, a startled bright blue. 

“You ass,” she mutters, holding out her arm through the gap, and Jay gives her the bag, grinning. She withdraws and shuts the door firmly. “Thank you,” she calls through the door after a second, tone still somewhat sarcastic.

“You’re welcome,” he replies, leaving her to get dressed.

Back in the living room, Jay sighs and paces aimlessly for a bit, fidgeting with the bottle of pills. It’s too quiet for his liking, and he’s very aware that it’s ridiculously late and that he’s going to have to go to bed at some point. He’s not exactly looking forward to that.

The first night’s sleep after something happens, no matter what kind of something, is never good.

“Not got any hairdryers in this place?” yells Hailey, pulling him out of his spiral.

“Uh, no?” He gets a groan in response.

He drops down onto his couch, running his hand through his hair and thinking again about Hailey. The woman who’s probably had even less rest than he has, because he’s put her through the wringer by nearly getting himself killed, despite her best efforts. The woman who had insisted on staying the night anyway, just so he won’t be alone. The woman he’s about to inconvenience a whole lot more if he wakes up screaming like he knows he might. 

He still doesn’t feel great about the whole thing. But even worse, the later the hour, the more the guilt’s starting to fade in favor of a selfish sense of almost need. It’s dangerous to admit, yes, but it’s true. He doesn’t want to imagine how much colder the apartment would feel without Hailey here. 

Not for the first time, Jay wonders what he’s done to deserve her.

That reminds him of someone else he doesn’t really deserve, at least not right now. He flips open his phone and checks his messages from Will. 

You’re forgiven, kiddo

Just say thank you to that partner of yours

See you in the AM

Bright and early bc that’s when you need to take another dose of your meds :)

He smirks fondly down at his phone as Hailey walks into the room, dressed in comfy sleep clothes with her hair twisted up in a towel on top of her head. Jay chuckles a little as she bends to shake her hair vigorously out of the towel. 

She scrunches her nose at him and collapses onto the couch.

“What’s up with you?” she asks lightly. Jay pulls a face, remembering, and holds the bottle of pain meds out to her by the cap. She obliges, grabbing the bottom half and holding it steady while he twists, but not without flashing a delighted smile at him.

“Childproof,” she comments.

Jay lets go of the bottle, pointing a finger squarely in her direction.

“Don’t even start.”

“Alright, alright, come back.”

With some maneuvering between the two of them, they finally get the bottle open, and Jay shakes out two pills and stands to get a glass of water. He downs them and looks over at Hailey as she stretches out on the couch, raking a hand through her hair then beckoning him back over. 

He sits back down next to her, and she blows out a heavy breath. Jay lays a hand on her knee, feeling her warmth through the thin fabric. 

“Hails?” he asks. He can tell from the way she’s staring straight through him that there’s something she wants to say.

“It’s just – I know you already know this, but Jay, I’m just so glad you’re alive. I was…” She trails off and reaches for him instead, wrapping an arm around him.

“I know. It’s okay. I’m going to be okay.”

“I know,” she whispers with a nod. Her fingers run over the sliver of exposed skin between the sleeve of his shirt and his sling. Jay closes his eyes and rests his head on her shoulder, inhaling the scent of his soap she’d used. It smells so much better on her than it ever did on him.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows he’s probably toeing a line, a little more intimate than they’ve gotten, but Jay can’t bring himself to care much. The dead late-night silence falls over them again, but he can hear Hailey’s soft breathing, and it’s enough. He leans into her side. 

“Hey, Hails?”

“Hm?” She yawns again, and it sets him off too. She laughs quietly. “Still running on that year’s worth of sleep?” Jay mumbles something indistinct, but opens his eyes. Reluctantly, he drags himself up off the couch to get ready for bed, and Hailey rises too.

Once he’s back in his bedroom sitting on the edge of the bed, he starts to unstrap his sling, but Hailey grasps his wrist to stop him, shaking her head when he glances up at her.

“You’re telling me I have to sleep with this thing on?”

“You really don’t listen when the doctors talk, do you?”

“I have you to do that for me,” he grumbles. Hailey raises an eyebrow, and he rubs his hand down his face, wanting to argue further but aware he’s once again not going to win. “Yeah, yeah, not optional, I get it.”

“Exactly. Wait, I’ve got an idea,” she offers, and she quickly ducks out to grab one of the pillows he’d given her from the couch. She silences his protests with a look, and places the pillow down the left side of the bed. “There. Support your arm.”

He shuffles over and lies back, but it’s not as uncomfortable as he’d expected.

“Ugh.”

“Told you. I’m always right.”

“Don’t push it,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Night, Hails.”

“Night,” she smiles and squeezes his shoulder before moving towards the door. She flicks off the lights but turns back towards him. “Oh, Jay, what did you want to say before?” she asks, her gaze searching in the dark of the room.

He’s not quite sure himself, and he pulls at the covers idly as he thinks about it, Will’s message flashing in his mind.

“Could, uh, could you leave the hallway light on, please?” he asks quietly. “And, Hailey, thank you. For everything.”

“Of course, Jay.”

Jay watches her silhouette leave. Sweet dreams, he thinks, hoping it’ll at least be true for Hailey.