Title: Regret
Summary: Jamie returns home following his brother Joe's death, and isn't sure he belongs.
A/N: I don't necessarily love Jamie, but I love Jamie as Danny's brother, so he's kind of shown here through that lens.
A/N2: This was originally written as a songfic, to Yellowcard's "Shadows and Regrets." But I've had songfics taken down from ff.n, so I'm not posting it as a songfic. If you want to see the original format, in a few days you'll be able see it on my livejournal, jaded_reality, or on the LJ community thebluebloods. My LJ is friends-only, so comment and I can add you.
Disclaimer: I don't own Blue Bloods, the Reagan family, or Yellowcard's "Shadows and Regrets."
As long as Danny kept his eyes on the road, Jamie kept his on the scenery outside the passenger-side window. He kept stealing little glances at his older brother, here and there, trying to gauge… what, he wasn't exactly sure. But there was no sign of Danny doing the same thing.
They hadn't spoken since the airport, and even then all Danny had said to him was that the trunk was open.
Jamie stared out at the glimpse of green that was the Prospect Park Parade Ground, silent with the late hour and cool weather. How many spring and summer evenings had they spent out there, the three of them, tossing the ball around, or cheering each other on from the stands, alongside Erin and Dad and Mom?
A lump formed in his throat, and he dragged the back of his hand over his eyes. It came away wet with tears, and he stared down into his lap, biting his lip and trying to breathe. Determined not to let Danny see him cry.
Once he could trust himself to speak without his voice breaking and betraying him, Jamie shifted to study his brother's face. Danny looked stoic as ever, his lips thin and jaw set, giving away nothing. "How… is everyone?"
Danny went so long without answering that Jamie had resigned himself to the silent treatment for the rest of the way home by the time he finally spoke. And once he spoke, turning the wheel slowly as they rolled onto their old street, he wished for the silent treatment.
"How do you think we are?"
Emphasis on we, as if the Reagan family was an entity all its own, in which Jamie no longer had a place.
He didn't answer as Danny pulled into the driveway and killed the ignition. The lights were on, but the house was silent; there was no movement at the curtains, no one watching for their arrival. Jamie reached for the door, but stopped just as his fingers brushed the handle.
What if Danny weren't the only one who felt he'd abandoned them, gone just they would need him most? What if he spoke for all of them?
Danny's harsh voice broke into his thoughts. "Guess this isn't the homecoming you had in mind, huh, Harvard?"
#
Danny dumped his empty beer bottle in the trash, and then grabbed a second from the refrigerator. He popped the top off, tossing it after the empty, and leaned against the counter. He couldn't handle another minute in the living room, his boys crawling all over their Uncle Jamie, and Dad and Grandpa acting like the prodigal son had returned.
Better for everyone he stayed in here, away from people.
He turned his back to the door and stared out the window into the darkness, raising his drink to his lips as he took a shaky breath. Damn it, Joe.
"Don't you think now isn't the time?"
Danny jerked around, blinking furiously lest his sister see the tears in his eyes. He tipped his beer at Erin, standing in the doorway wrapped in a heavy, cable-knit sweater a size too big for her. "For this? I think it's perfect." He washed down a long swallow to punctuate his words.
Erin shook her head, looking past him to the counter, adorned with a single family photo taken at Jamie's high school graduation. All of them, even mom—probably the last like that ever taken. And now there were two of them gone. "I mean Jamie. Joe…"
Her eyes fluttered closed and she swallowed hard. A tear slipped down her cheek, and Danny wanted to look away, afraid she'd tip him over the edge. But that needed to wait until later, home, with Linda. She was the only one who didn't expect him to hold them all together. She expected him to break. She let him; she held herself together for him.
"Joe's gone. And Jamie's here." She forced her eyes open, staring at him with a watery smile. "I don't know what happened between you two, Danny; I don't know when things changed, or why. But can't you put it aside now? For Dad's sake, if nothing else?"
#
The wake started in an hour. Just an hour—less than that—until he'd see his older brother's face one final time.
Jamie slipped his tie around his neck, and turned around to face his old dresser, his old mirror… his old photographs. One, tucked into the wooden frame, drew his eye before the rest. Him and Joe, taken grudgingly by Danny, out on the front lawn the day he left for Cambridge. But Joe wasn't around for the memory that came to mind.
Jamie turned toward the doorway, and the Danny he saw standing there was a couple of years younger, and just as angry. In just about all of his recent memories, Danny and angry went hand in hand.
"Guess you're all ready to go." Danny leaned one shoulder against the doorframe, the shoulder and collar of his wife-beater just giving a hint of the Marine Corps tattoo that represented, to Jamie, an insurmountable wall he'd helplessly watched rise between them.
Jamie turned back to look at his duffel bag, and the computer briefcase leaning against it—the last two things waiting to go into the car. His father had insisted on driving Jamie up to school, and he hadn't missed the eye roll from his oldest brother in response. He couldn't figure what Danny wanted now. "Just about."
"Erin, I saw it coming a mile away, law school. She was never gonna be a cop, even if mom wasn't determined to make sure she wouldn't even think about it. And she argued like nobody's business, you know? But you…"
"Mom didn't want me to be a cop, either, Danny." Not that she was the reason he'd decided on the law school route himself. But it was probably easier if Danny thought it was.
"Yeah. She didn't want me or Joe being cops either." Danny smirked, in that self-deprecating way that Jamie couldn't quite see through. He really wasn't sure if Danny saw himself that negatively, or if it was some sort of disarming act. "But what else was I gonna be? And Joe…" His voice turned hard. "It's in the blood."
But not in Jamie's. He didn't need to say the words for Jamie to hear them loud and clear.
"So here's what I'm trying to figure out." Danny took a couple steps into Jamie's childhood bedroom, his for as long as he could remember. "You really this passionate about standing in a courtroom? Or d'you just think you're better than being a cop?"
"Yeah, that's it." Jamie shouldered his bag, and picked up his computer case. He shouldered his way by his brother and out of the room, but turned back as he hit the top of the stairs. "I can say one thing, Danny. I sure as hell wouldn't want to be you."
He heard Danny's footsteps, always the heaviest in the house, before he saw his face appear in the mirror. "Dad's waiting on you." Danny turned on his spit-shined heel, and had reached the stairs by the time Jamie caught up to him.
"Danny." He grabbed his brother's shoulder, trying to tug him back around. "I'm sorry."
He wasn't sure what he'd expected, but Danny walking away in silence hurt more than it probably should have.
#
Erin felt Danny's hand slip into her left, just as Jamie took her right. She chanced a glance at each of her brothers in turn, but neither noticed her looking.
Danny stared straight ahead, his unblinking gaze fixed on the altar. Tears shone in his eyes, but she knew her oldest brother better than to think he'd let them fall here, where anyone could see him cry.
Jamie, no doubt unconsciously, mimicked him. Like Danny, he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with her, his right pressed up against their father. The tears were a little more noticeable, but his lips were set in the same thin line, his mouth tightly shut, determined not to show weakness if he could help it.
It ran in the family.
Joe had been the peacemaker, always willing to put himself in the middle; he'd tried, ever since Christmas, to bridge this growing rift between oldest and youngest. Now, standing here between them herself, she missed him terribly.
Not that she'd had one waking moment the last three days without thinking of him. Not that she'd fallen asleep a single night since that terrible phone call without sobbing into her pillow, hoping her daughter wouldn't hear her cry.
Tears burned her eyes and her body shook with every breath. Jamie released her hand, circling her shoulders with his arm. She felt Danny's grip on her hand falter as the tears started to fall, and then what little space remaining between them disappeared altogether. Danny released Linda's hand, reaching across to cover Jamie's, on his shoulder, with his own.
#
Frank slipped his arm around Erin's shoulder as they followed Danny back toward the road, away from the freshly dug grave. He'd thought Jamie was behind them, but once they reached the department SUV, Lieutenant Baker standing beside it in a sober black suit and equally dark glasses, he realized his youngest had lingered, needing a little more time with the older brother he'd seen so rarely—and now lost the chance to know.
"Stay here." He leaned in to kiss Erin on the forehead and then turned away, taking a couple of steps back toward the new headstone that would soon bear his middle son's name, before a hand on his shoulder stopped him.
He could have been blind and deaf and still sensed the tension between his oldest and youngest since Jamie's return home; sending Danny to meet Jamie at the airport hadn't smoothed the way as he'd hoped.
"Let me."
Danny didn't wait for a response; he was off, striding with paces that Frank could recognize as hesitant only because he knew his son so very well.
Jamie straightened, tensing as he sensed his brother's presence at his side. And then Danny reached for him, pulling Jamie into a hug. Frank felt his own eyes fill with tears as Jamie broke in his brother's arms, shoulders shaking with sobs.
Erin pressed into his side, arm circling his waist, and he returned the gesture with one hand, pulling out a handkerchief with the other. "Let's wait for them in the car."