It Seemed Like a Good Idea - Chapter 19
Summary - Hailey’s US visa was due to expire, which normally wouldn’t be an issue as the CPD would get it renewed but due to a backlog of paperwork, this wasn’t possible. This meant Hailey was faced with the real possibility of having to leave the country, her job and everything she held dear. That was until Jay offered up a solution which would allow her to stay in Chicago, in Intelligence, with him - they could get married. Getting married was a good idea, right?
Chapters - 19/21
Chapter Title - The Confession
Notes - it’s been a long time coming but it’s finally time! Hope you all enjoy! AO3 Link
Will hung up the phone with a disgruntled huff. How could his brother be so stupid? He had never seen Jay happier than he had been since Hailey and he had tied the knot. Will knew that originally the marriage hadn’t come about because of a burning sense of true love, but he had also known from the start that his brother's feelings for his partner were more than just friendship. And over the past few months, he had seen Hailey’s feelings change too, even before her slightly botched confession to him in this very break room.
And now two people he cared about were about to make a huge mistake. If they got divorced now it would cause irreparable damage to their relationship, friendship even their partnership and Will wasn’t sure they would ever be able to walk it back from there.
His mother had always told him not to interfere in Jay’s romantic life, that he could stand up for him in a fight or when someone was picking on him, but matters of the heart were something he would have to deal with alone. That conversation had occurred when Will had considered asking Mary Sue to prom on behalf of Jay, he knew he had the biggest crush on the girl but was too chicken to ask her himself. But his smarter than most mother had said how would it look to a girl if his big brother had to get in the middle - the answer was not good. So Will had taken a step back and someone else had asked Mary Sue to prom.
But this was different, Jay couldn’t see what was right in front of his face. And he had told him he was in love with Hailey.
This wasn’t an unrequited teenage crush, this was two people who loved each other who were too self sacrificing or self deprecating to realise that the person they loved could possibly love them back. Or maybe they were both too stubborn. Whatever the reason, he had the power to do something about it and to hell if he was going to let his idiot brother make another idiot mistake and lose the best thing in his life.
He pulled out his phone and made two phone calls and hoped his mother would forgive him for interfering for what would hopefully be the final time.
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Hailey barrelled into Med with speed for the second time that day, at this point they might as well make her a frequent visitor badge and she could earn a gold star for every visit - 10th visit is free.
Will had called her to say that the doctors had taken another look at Jay’s notes and test results and that the CT was needed after all, she had known it but that hard headed doctor, Doctor Sosa, hadn’t listened to a word she was saying. Will had said he had called Jay directly and he was coming in straight from the apartment so Hailey had abandoned the takeout salads she was putting together in the grocery store and legged it to her car.
Will hadn’t sounded too worried over the phone but needing a CT was never a good thing so she had dropped it all and made Med her new destination. Luckily Will had told her the exact room so she hadn’t needed to bother one of the ED nurses with her panicked wife/partner routine again and was currently bounding up the stairs two at a time as the elevator had taken more than two seconds to arrive and Hailey’s patience was at the end of its tether.
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Unfinished paperwork, that was what Will had told him. Jay had tried to call bullshit but Will explained that without it he wasn’t being signed off as clear to return to work and Jay was damned if he was being stuck on desk duty any longer than he needed to be. He thought about shooting Hailey a text to let her know where he had gone but figured he’d be gone a maximum of 15 minutes and if she was worried she could give him a call. As per their last interaction Jay wasn’t certain she wanted to speak to him anyway. And he wasn’t sure he could blame her.
He as good as told her he didn’t want to be married to her anymore and then proceeded to get hurt at work and clearly scare the living daylights out of her if the way she had thrown herself at him at the hospital had been any indication. And then there was the fact that he was more in love with her than he thought was humanly possible. Talk about mixed signals.
Jay stomped his way through the hospital, searching for the room that Will had told him he would meet him in to complete the remaining paperwork. If he had thought it was unusual for Will to be handling the paperwork or that he would ask him to come to a patient room to complete it, Jay didn’t show it. He was more concerned with getting this done and getting back to the apartment before Hailey had a chance to worry. He had caused her enough worry.
Finding the door in question, he tugged it open.
‘Alright Will, let’s get this sorted,’ he said before coming to a halt when his eyes had a chance to focus. Will wasn’t alone in the room. Hailey was sat on a chair by the empty bed, her eyes filled with concern that phased to a hint of confusion at his arrival. Jay turned quickly to look at Will who had moved behind him to sneakily take a hold of the door handle and was pulling it closed with him on the otherwise.
‘I’m going to leave you both in here until you can discuss it like adults, okay?’ He said, a tiny smirk appearing on his freckled cheeks.
‘Discuss what?’ Jay said, confused.
‘How madly in love with each other you both are and how equally stubborn you are in refusing to admit it,’ Will said firmly and closed the door behind him. Jay heard the lock twist and moved forward to grab the door handle himself, rattling it and yanking it to no avail. The bastard had locked them in.
‘That bastard,’ Jay huffed, giving the door one final heave even though he knew it was useles at this point.
‘Why did you agree to marry me?’ He heard quietly from behind him. Jay let his head fall against the locked door with a thud. He should have known this was coming. It was clearly Will’s plan and after spilling his guts to him the previous night and his tone on the phone when he said he had got the divorce papers, Jay should have known he would pull something like this.
‘Why did you agree to marry me?’ Hailey asked again tentatively when Jay failed to turn around. He took a deep breath, tried to ignore how shaky it was and slowly turned to look at her. She was standing now, just in front of the plastic chair a couple of feet in front of him, the room was single occupancy so wasn’t large, he could be breathing the same air as her if he took just three steps forward.
‘Because,’ Jay said before swallowing and running a hand through his hair. Was he really about to tell her, tell her that he loved her, had loved her for months, for longer than he had known and that the thought of her leaving the country was not something he was willing to comprehend? He looked at her, at the shimmer of tears in her eyes, her golden hair flowing down over her shoulder, begging to have his hands run through it. She looked ethereal. The most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and he knew in his heart he would ever see. And she looked hopeful? Like she wanted Will’s words to be true. Like she wanted him to open up to her and to confess his love.
‘Because I love you,’ Jay said with small chuckle he couldn’t control. His love wasn’t funny but the situation they had ended up in was. He saw her lips turn up into a smile, her hands stopped twisting around each other in nervousness and he let himself take a step towards her.
‘I’m not laughing because loving you is funny,’ Jay clarified with a little shake of his head, ‘it’s the most serious thing I’ve ever felt, but because we’re so stubborn that my brother had to lock us in a hospital room together to get us to admit our feelings to each other.’ Hailey let out a wet chuckle, the tears having broken through and were making their way down her cheeks. He longed to reach out and wipe them away, to cradle her face in his hands and to draw her lips to his, everything else forgotten. ‘Well because I’m stubborn,’ Jay carried on, taking another couple of steps forward when Hailey hadn’t said anything else besides her giggle, ‘so I needed to admit my feelings to you. I don’t expect you to reciprocate, or say anything. I just needed you to know, I just wanted-’
Hailey reached out and pressed a finger against his lips to stop his flow of speech, ‘I love you too,’ she whispered, her smile as soft as he had ever seen it. She loved him. His breath caught in his throat as he processed that she loved him back. ‘I guess we are both as stubborn as each other,’ she chuckled, letting her finger fall but instead of returning to her side, her hand fell to his neck, letting her thumb graze against his stubble. Her hand on him was like electricity, pulsing through her fingers into his skin.
Jay let his eyes close for a second, revelling in her touch before they flew open again as he remembered everything else he wanted to say. The dam was open now, there was no putting the genie back into the bottle.
‘I don’t want to divorce you,’ he said, letting his fingers curl around her waist and keeping her close. ‘I never wanted to, I just didn’t want you to stay tied to me if you didn’t want to be. We got married for a reason and that reason didn’t exist anymore. I was just trying to set you free,’ he said, choking back a tear as the woman that he had loved for so long was looking up at him with nothing but love and adoration. He had dreamed of this look, dreamed of holding her close and telling her he loved her, but only rarely did he let himself dream that she would say it back. Yet here she was, saying those words to him.
‘I don’t want to be free,’ she said back, her voice barely louder than a whisper.
‘That’s good,’ Jay said with a smile. ‘Because I want you with me for the rest of my life Hailey. I love you. I love you more than I ever thought possible, you make me a better person, you make me laugh, you get mad at me when I get hurt which makes me never want to get hurt again. You’re the best person I know.’ He knew it was sappy, knew he was almost overdoing the love confession thing but how many times did you get to do this, to tell someone how much they mean to you. ‘And if you want to get divorced and never speak of this again, then I’ll submit the papers today.’ He said with a small frown because it was the last thing he wanted to do, but for her, he’d do it, he’d do anything she asked. ‘But I’m really hoping you don’t.’
‘I don’t,’ Hailey responded, and before Jay could take a breath, she had pushed herself up onto her tiptoes and pressed her lips against his.
Before that moment he thought he had experienced everything he possibly could when kissing Hailey. He had relived the moments that their lips had joined on multiple occasions and the memory of the taste of her had seen him to sleep on restless nights. But he had never experienced this. Kissing someone back and knowing they are feeling the same thing as you, knowing they love you back, it was like a million fireworks going off at once, but silently in the night sky.
There was nothing in his head apart from the feeling of her against him, his hands on her hips, her fingers sliding through the hairs on the back of his neck, her lips pushing against his, prizing them open and their tongues meeting once again. If he never felt anything like this again, Jay thought, he would die a happy man. This was the happiest he had ever been.
He wrapped his arms around her back and lifted her up slightly so they were on the same level, she giggled slightly at the movement and he felt her smile against her lips.
‘I love you,’ he murmured in between kisses.
Pulling back he let their foreheads rest together but didn’t place her back on the floor, her weight in his arms was a comforting sensation and he wanted to live in the feeling a moment longer.
‘You can put me down you know,’ Hailey said quietly, ‘I’m not going anywhere.’
‘Not willing to risk it,’ he said and squeezed her tightly.
‘Jay, you’re at risk for concussion and pretty sure the doctor said no strenuous activities,’ she sassed.
‘Firstly, he said no such thing, don’t worry,’ and he winked at her, eliciting another round of girlish giggles from her. ‘And secondly, Hailey you weigh almost nothing, there is nothing strenuous about this.’ He gave her a peck on the cheek but loosened his hold on her slightly so she slid down his front until her feet touched solid ground again.
For a brief moment they just got lost in each other’s eyes, smiles fixed firmly on their faces, arms still looped around each other, not even the slimmest of gaps present between their two bodies.
‘What happens now?’ Hailey asked softly, breaking the silence.
‘We get Will to unlock this door and we go home I guess,’ he said with a small shrug, reaching out to push a wayward lock of hair back behind her ear, letting his fingers brush gently against her skin.
‘And then we stay married?’ She asked.
‘If that’s what you want,’ Jay said honestly. ‘I want you as my wife Hailey, but if you don’t want that then we submit the papers. If you want to divorce but then date, I’ll do what you want. If you want me to move out and start from scratch like a regular relationship, we can do that too. Whatever you want.’
Hailey seemed to consider her options for a moment and Jay held his breath. ‘I don’t want any of that,’ she said, her blue eyes twinkling. ‘I want to be your wife Jay. I don’t want you to move out, though you can move out of the spare room if you want. I want this. I want you.’
That was all Jay needed to hear to crash his lips back into hers and let all his senses get filled with her. Her taste on his tongue, her soft moans filling his ears, his hand had snuck its way under her shirt and was now flat against the smooth skin of her back and he could smell her floral shampoo. It was an all out attack on his senses and he loved it. She was everywhere and he couldn’t get enough.
Hailey seemed to be equally enjoying it if the way her fingers were digging into his hair was anything to go on. And both were too wrapped up in each other to hear the door behind them click open until Will’s voice entered the room and broke the spell.
‘Glad to see you two have come to your senses,’ he chuckled and Jay pulled back from Hailey slightly to give his brother a death stare for interrupting them. He kept his arms tightly locked around her though, a subconscious action to keep her close to him. ‘But you need to get a different room, preferably not at the hospital as we need this for patients.’ He chuckled again, shaking his head slightly but Jay could see the grin still plastered on his face as he left them alone again but this time with the door wide open.
‘Come on then,’ Jay said, unwrapping his arms but linking the fingers of his right hand with her left. ‘Let’s go home.’ And as he walked out of that room hand in hand with his wife, he realised the word home had never held such meaning as it did in that moment. Home was no longer just a place, four walls and a roof. Home was a person. Home was a feeling, a feeling of safety, of love, of wantedness. Home was Hailey, and he intended to show her for the rest of his life, exactly what that meant to him.
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