A Family Affair

18

Jay looks up from the computer sat in his lap when he hears his name being called from the bedroom door. He sends Hailey a smile as she walks over to the bed where he was.

She attempts to peak over his shoulder, despite being able to see what he was doing from the doorway. "Whatcha doing?" She asks anyway as she sits down beside him.

Jay sighs, looking back to the screen. "Boring adult things," he replies, looking back over to her - then giving her a quizzical look, "Aren't you supposed to be getting ready to go to work?"

Hailey groans, throwing her head back against the headboard. "I really don't want to deal with that again today."

Jay can't help the slightly amused tone of voice come over him as he lowers the laptop screen, not moving it from his lap though. "I think that's the first time I've heard you say that." He remarks.

She nods, putting her hand up slowly. "Yes it is the first but in the next week and a half it won't be the last time I bring up how much I hate this guy." She says quickly, and Jay can clearly hear the frustrated meaning behind her words.

"What does he do wrong?" Jay wonders.

Hailey subtly shakes her head. "I think the correct question is what doesn't he do wrong," she cut in, "And he does a lot of things wrong."

Jay folds his arms over his chest. "Name one."

She looks directly to him with her answer ready on her tongue without a moment of hesitation. "He's insanely sexist."

There's a pause before Jay nods slowly, turning his head away for a brief second. "Well that's one." He mumbles before having his attention ripped back to Hailey when she sighed audibly.

"He's constantly up mine and Kim's ass about everything, and if we dare do one thing he doesn't like then he'll either bench us or snap at us in front of everybody - because he deliberately waits until we're downstairs and in front of all the patrol to have a go at us, even if what we did wrong was hours before that," she groans, "Yesterday he took me into the office and basically screamed at me for probably a solid fifteen minutes because I wrote a word on the board in the wrong place."

Jay goes to say something but gets stopped by Hailey carrying on about the temporary sergeant in place in intelligence whilst Jay was on medical leave.

"He's unbelievably ignorant and insanely arrogant at the same time, he's so biased and racist, not to mention he does not have the brightest clue on what an acting sergeant is supposed to do. But it's not like I can speak up to him about his actions because it will get back to the Ivory Tower and put another dent into the reasons why I'm an 'incapable person' to lead the unit, but the only dent I actually have is the transfer to the New York bureau as a disciplinary action but that was like fifteen years ago."

Jay sighs slowly, a small smirk appearing on his face as he speaks. "Look if any one, if any unit, could get through with working with a guy like him, it's intelligence and it's you."

Hailey nods, staring out into the bedroom. "I just wish Kevin could have met him, he would have handled him on the first day."

He can't help the small chuckle escape his lips at that, knowing that would definitely be something Kevin would do against the guy, both of them knowing how much of fight he had put up against the person who went after him a few years back.

There's a quiet pause before Hailey shakes her head. "It's just guys like that, people like that, with their heads so far up their ass you can see it through their throats, make me scared for Macie. I don't want to think about people looking at her funny for something she loves just because she's a girl, or putting her down, benching her, screaming at her for fifteen minutes for something out of her control just because she's a girl. Perry never would have done that to Ruzek, or you, or Kevin, or any other male cop that walked into that bullpen. He does it to me and Kim because we're women and he's stuck in this mindset of women can't be cops, they can't be a leader, and I dread to think of someone doing that to Macie because I would have thought that by now people would have changed."