A Family Affair

5

Will slowly shuts the apartment door, furrowing his eyebrows deeply at Jay. "About what?"

Before Jay says anything, he sets off on the move again. He goes into the kitchen, helping himself to two beers from the fridge, handing one over to his brother who had followed him into the room closely. Then he stops in the living room, leaning his ass against the back of the couch, Will entering the room close behind him.

"It's about what started the fight," he begins, cracking the top off the beer as he sees his brother tense up in the corner of his eye. "There's something I didn't tell you about my side of it, that I've never wanted to tell you, but if I have to tell you to fix things with Olivia, then I'd do it a million times over."

Will quickly makes his way over to the chair beside the couch, sitting down and urging Jay to do the same. Slowly, Jay makes his way around the furniture and sits down, taking a chug of the alcohol before he says another word. Gently, he puts the bottle down on the coffee table and leans forward.

Jay takes in a sharp breath before giving Will a saddened look. "What happened that day was the dumbest thing I've ever done, and it all happened because I was just trying to prove to Voight he was wrong."

Will scrunches his face up a little with confusion, but he doesn't cut in and just lets Jay continue.

"He had said you couldn't do it, that you'd blow your cover and screw the whole thing up, that we should've gone for an actual cop. When things started going a little sideways, he said for everyone to get ready to storm the place and put an end to it, but I told him not to. I insisted that you'd get yourself out of the mess and that I trusted you to get it back on track," Jay sighs. "And then the whole situation went downhill so quickly. When the guy pulled out the gun, I panicked and I just froze. Kevin managed to snap me out of it and we went in. The guy was just about to pull the trigger, you could tell by his hand, how it was itching to do it, and I made that happen. Like Voight said after, if I had listened to him none of this would have happened. If I hadn't froze up, we would have got in there sooner and you wouldn't have almost been shot dead. If we had gone in when Voight said, you never would have seen the gun, it never would have gotten to the point where you had the muzzle against the side of your head."

When Jay goes quiet, Will subtly looks around the room and leans back into the chair more than he already had. He doesn't look to his younger brother until moments later, and he sees the emotion that screamed across his face. Will grabs his attention by standing up in the chair and walking over to him. He grabs Jay's arm and pulls him up off the couch before wrapping his arms around him.

Will nods once in the embrace, patting Jay's shoulder. "You stood up to your boss because you had my back. You didn't know it was gonna go to shit so quickly. We're good, I promise." He says, pulling out of the hug.

Jay looks across to meet Will's gaze, nodding a few times before straightening his face again. "You sure?" He asks.

Will gives his brother a small smile. "Yeah," he replies, "We're good."

************

It had been ten minutes or so since it had all ended, but Jay couldn't help but notice that Will still looked really shaken up.

He was sat in the back of the ambulance, one of the blankets draped over his shoulders, staring out into space. He had been out of it when they shot down the offender, despite Jay's numerous attempts to try and start a conversation, or just to tell him it was all over now.

Jay parted from the conversation he was only half contributing toward anyway and made his way over to the ambulance, sitting down beside his brother. He stays quiet for a moment, to see if maybe Will would spark the conversation first, however when he didn't Jay spoke up instead.