So I was noticing a total lack of fics that were... anything but Scotty/Lilly, LOL. And while I adore them, I wrote this little piece about every single one of the detectives. In Lieutenant Stillman's POV. They really are all very complicated and intriguing characters. I hope maybe, someone's inspired to write a full story on some of the others too.
Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing surrounding the things I've written. Absolutely nothing. Sad truths of life people, get used to it.
These Are The Ones Around Me
I am Detective John Stillman, Philadelphia Homicide Department, Lieutenant. Under my supervision are Detectives Rush, Valens, Miller, Jeffries, and Vera. All are outstanding detectives with great potential and dedication, as well as significant contributions to law enforcement….
Oh, screw that. I throw down my pen and lean back in my chair. Why the hell does the IAB care about this sort of stuff? Yearly evaluations, my ass. My detectives aren't shooting each other, or anyone else for that matter, which in itself should be considered success enough. I shouldn't have to spew out some cookie cutter crap every year, that'll go on file, untouched like every other year, to justify what we've done this past twelve months.
In sudden irritation, well, not sudden, I admit this has been coming for a while, I pick up the barely started evaluation and crumple it into a loose ball. I aim for the waste basket… miss horribly of course. Then I take off my glasses, rub my forehead tiredly, and look out the transparent walls of my office to the group of people I'm supposed to be writing about. God, I must be getting to old for this…
It's not that I don't think they're dedicated, and have potential, and contribute and all that. It's more like… how could I do them justice with a few words of praise and extensive use of the thesaurus? I get the feeling like, I should be writing about them. Lilly, Kat, Nick, Scotty, and Will. Who they are underneath the badge and the gun. Wouldn't that be more useful to the department? Hell, I know I'd want to know more than the outside stuff about people I'm entrusting my city to.
I get a new piece of paper, and start all over. This time I take a different tactic. Just, write whatever comes to mind really. I've known them for years, some longer than others, but… enough to write about who they are.
William Jeffries. I've worked with him the longest. Hell, he would've probably been up for my job, if the department wasn't so damn racist back in the day. Excuse me, I'm dredging up past, ugly history again, and I know you don't like that. But he isn't bitter. In fact, I've never known Will to lose his control about anything ever. Except one time. His wife. He told me later that he tracked down the one who hit her, put a gun to his head… almost pulled the trigger. But he didn't. I don't know if I would've been strong enough to resist at that point, and the fact that he did, that despite all the ways that man had wronged him, that he lifted his chin and acted the bigger, the better, person, and walked away... Some people would call it cowardly… I call it noble, and it makes me respect him a hell of a lot more, if that's possible.
Anyways, that's as close as Will has ever come to crossing the line from serene and calm to… impulsive, angry. His emotions just aren't on the radar, for him or anyone else. I don't know if it's a good thing, or a bad thing, but I know that it's come in handy more than once. Despite his naturally quiet disposition, he cares about everyone else with a fierce intensity, burning just below the surface. I've seen him defend his team members and chase after justice like his life depended on it… I only wish he'd chase after his own love and happiness the same way. Because he's had chances, after his wife… just didn't want them, or didn't let himself want them. I don't know which would be more of a shame, because Will's a good person, that's all there is to it. He's good, and he deserves good things to happen to him.
Nicholas Vera. Will's confidante, partner in crime, fellow practical jokester, whatever you want to call it. They're partners, and they have been for as long as they've both been in Homicide. No troubles, nothing serious anyways, between them, not even once. Nick is… well he's the one we go to whenever something is weighing heavily on us, and we need some relief, some laughs. This isn't to say that he doesn't take his job seriously, because he does. He just… does it in a way that his spirits never get broken. He can solve homicides on one hand, and organize our fridge with Tupperware or draft us to play baseball on the other. The only time I've ever seen him completely hopeless was when his partner was shot. I think he wishes he didn't drink all the damn milk, but that's another story, a long one that'll take too much… ah, what the hell. This is everything about them right?
Nick was married at one point. He doesn't talk about it much, and the rest of us don't ask but he wound up divorced, no children. What a does a single, childless, and broke white man do? Well, he falls for his single, mother of a teenage son, and broke black neighbor next door. Needless to say, it didn't end well, which is how Nick wound up on Will's sofa, and subsequently drank all the milk. One trip to the corner store later, Will was shot, and Nick practically took the head off another poor sap in the hospital chapel. Yeah, I know. Where did all the good nature go then? I suppose we'd all react like that. And you, you pencil pushing, administrative type, you wouldn't understand a damn thing so quit your judging. Yeah, that's better.
Lillian Rush. Where should I even begin with Lil? She's almost like a daughter to me. Now don't get me wrong, I have a daughter, and Janie and I get along just fine thanks. It's just, ever since she was ten, and I caught the man who attacked her, I've cared about Lilly. When she graduated from the academy and spent a few months on the beat, I knew she was perfect for Homicide. She became the first ever female. Some people would call it favoritism; I call it being a good mentor. Anyways, it's not like she's had an easy time of it. She's been shot, she's had to shoot people, hell, her car got run off a bridge and she almost died. Goddamnit. So yeah, I wasn't exactly doing her any favors when I recruited her now was I?
Except, in a way I was. Because all of the crap that happens on the job, well it doesn't even compare to the crap at home. I know, after reading about Will and Nick, you're thinking, great, another one with issues. Well, news flash, we're all like that. So as I was saying, Lilly and her family, what's left of it anyways, they don't get along all that well, and that's probably the understatement of the century. Her mom died last year, on her sofa, the day she was shot. Yeah, I am serious. And her only sister, well she's God knows where now. Didn't leave Lil without a load more problems though. I heard she had a baby, then disappeared and left Lil power of attorney. I mean what kind of… never mind, none of my business. The thing is, despite all this stuff, Lilly still tries. She tracked down her dad, and I think they were patching things up. I dunno how well that's going, but no doubt, Lilly's gonna end up with her heart broken again, and that was hard enough to watch when she was ten. I wonder when Lilly's gonna stop holding on to the people she thinks are her loved ones, when her real loved ones, well they're all around her. Especially Scotty.
Scott Valens. Well, what can I say about a grown man who still insists everyone call him Scotty? He's young, and he's still got that naïve, everything will be alright with the world if he just tries hard enough and does the right things, attitude. The endearing innocence that's been lost on basically everyone else. I don't know how Scotty holds onto it, but God knows, it would do well to rub off on the rest of us. That's not to say that he's never felt hardship or loss in his life. I know, because the loss of his life? I had to deliver it to him. His girlfriend, fiancée, Elisa. Her committing suicide shook him up real bad, and he wasn't the same for months after that. Burnt a lot of bridges during that time, namely the one with his partner. I won't go into detail about his indiscretions with her sister, but I'm sure you can gather much of what happened. But he turned it around, earned her trust and friendship back, as well as the respect of each and everyone one of us.
He's got a temper. Anyone who's known him more than ten minutes will tell you that his fuse is about an inch short and takes next to nothing to light. More than once we've had to stop him from beating our suspects into submission. In the streets, that might mean victory, but in here it means lawsuit… so I do my best to keep him in line. Still, he's an invaluable member of the team. Like everyone else, he has an equal yearning for justice and will stop at almost nothing to get it. I don't think he's realized he's in love with Lilly yet. Because if he has, no way would he be sitting on his hands doing nothing about it. That's just not who he is. Scotty see, Scotty want, Scotty try his damned hardest to get. I'm sure someday he'll come around though, so stay tuned for my next awkward report on why two members of my team have started dating. I'm sure that'll be fun.
Kat Miller. The newest member of our team, fresh from narcotics after a pretty brilliant catch during a raid that led to us closing another one of those decades old cases. She blended in seamlessly, joking about how the dress code was a step up and she needed to shop. Two women, just in my team, I'm pretty sure that's more than all of Philadelphia, you damn sexist jerks. But anyways, I digress. Kat is… well remember the broke, single, black mother that Nick was in love with? Well that's basically her. No! Not like that, Kat and Nick aren't… well, now that you mention it… I don't think either of them would exactly say no. Okay so there's a possibility… another form for you to read, hope you're happy about it…
Kat's got her own set of demons in the past. Mostly in the form of an ex-con who's now out of jail and out for part custody of her daughter Veronica. Still, that's never gonna happen because I know, and everyone knows, that Kat will fight him about that with her dying breath. Her daughter is everything to her, despite the difficult beginning the two of them had. I admire her, and I'm pretty sure all the others do too, because of how resilient she is. Never have I heard her complain about the difficulties of being a single mom, nor has she ever expressed any regret in her decisions. Sometimes I think Kat works a bit too hard, like she still thinks she's got something to prove, and overcompensates. But hey, we all do that from time to time.
I sit back, looking at the four sheets of paper I've filled with all my innermost thoughts on my detectives. It's perfect. It's honest and real, and it could probably teach IAB more about my detectives than any of the other reports I've submitted in the past ten years. My detectives, they are imperfect. They are way too emotional sometimes, and the lines between them are much more blurry than they should be. They are human. They've each got a uniquely difficult past, full of scars and souvenirs of lonely days and sleepless nights. But they've also tasted happiness. And that makes them put their hearts into this job that eats even me alive sometimes, run themselves ragged until they believe that they've brought someone else a bit of that happiness. And they've each got a long future ahead, full of trials and burdens, and successes and love. I don't think I've ever written something better. And I also know that there's no way I can submit this, not without costing all of us our jobs. So I sigh, fold up these papers and reach for some more blank paper. Time to start the cookie cutter process again.
Before I crack open the thesaurus again, and find all the ways I can say 'intelligent' and 'dedicated' though, I put the words I came up with today in a neat little envelope. It's important to me, that I keep the effort at transparency I made safe. Because this is real. The people within these pages are the people I see every morning, not the plastic representations I'm about to ink out. These are the ones around me.
Recently, I've found a love for writing in the first person, I find you can get away with saying stuff that I think would be out of character is said out loud, but okay as a thought, you know what I mean?
Anyways, please leave a review on your way out!