Title: The Job

Summary: Don Flack is a cop, through and through. Even if all his nightmares start with the sound of bagpipes.

Rating: Some slight language.

AN: For those of you reading 'Familiarities', I promise, an update is coming.

Disclaimer: They aren't mine.

Don Flack Jr. was thirteen when his father woke him 5AM and instructed him to dress in his one and only suit; it was a black boys classic from Sears, a hand me down from his older brother Christopher that would suddenly ride up at the ankles when he hit his growth spurt the next summer. However at the time it had fit like a glove, slightly well worn but good enough for church. They'd eaten a solemn and silent breakfast together in the kitchen while the rest of the family still slept. His dad was wearing his dress blues, an outfit that Don could only ever remember seeing in his parents wedding photo framed on the mantle.

"This uniform,"his father had sighed in the quiet morning, gesturing to his special attire, "saw the best day of my life, but unfortunately after that it's only seen most of the worst."

The drive to the cathedral had been just as quiet. Usually his father insisted that car rides made for unavoidable family time, the best situation to talk to his kids about any and everything because they couldn't get away from him. It had been on a particularly awkward trip the dentist's office two weeks prior that Don Flack Senior had decided to explain the birds and bees to his youngest son. Don hadn't had the heart to tell his father that he'd already learned most of what he was being told in the schoolyard of St. Veronicas. On this morning however, his father was silent. He didn't even open his mouth to swear at the man who cut him off. The silence had been more uncomfortable than the sex talk.

Outside the cathedral a friend of his father's had stopped them. He'd shaken hands with his father and glanced down at Don with a tired smile.

"I guess it's only right you see all aspects of the old man's job."

"Donnie wants to be a cop someday," his father had place a hand on his shoulder and Don had stood up as straight as he possibly could. When he'd made the announcement to his father at the dinner table a month ago it had been received with a small grunt and a dismissal of 'you're only thirteen Donnie.' Hearing his father acknowledge the statement aloud was surprising. "I figured I might as well bring him with me, make sure he really understands what the job means."

Inside the cathedral he'd cried. He hadn't wanted to, had tried his hardest to fight it. Except the officer who had been killed had an eleven year old daughter, and she was sitting in the front pew with round, terrified eyes and a constant stream of tears was pouring down her face and all he'd been able to think about was how she didn't have a dad anymore. And what if it was his dad.

And at the same time he'd been proud. The officer had been shot trying to stop an armed robbery, given his life for the sake of what was right. Don didn't ever want his dad to do something like that, but he was proud to know his dad was the kind of guy who would do it.

All he'd been able to hear was bagpipes for days. Before the sound had been something he mentally associated with the St. Patty's parade but never after that day. From then on bagpipes made the muscles in his stomach clench. The sound played in his mind at basketball practice, during dinner and haunted his sleep.

A week later in the front seat of the car, his little sister Sammy giggling about something in the backseat, his father had turned to him. "So you still wanna be a cop?"

"Yes," he'd answered quick and sure even though the pipes were still sounding in his mind and his father had simply nodded and grunted a little and said "Alright then."

Seven years later he graduated the academy at the top of his class. He worked a beat in one of the toughest neighborhoods a guy could get and loved every second of it. The people in the neighborhood grew to know him, the good ones sought him out and everyone else learned to make themselves scarce when he was around. His boots were well worn and it got him noticed. He made detective younger than most and never looked back.

He couldn't imagine ever being anything besides a cop. He was the job, or the job was him; whichever way you spun it Don Flack Jr. was a cop through and through. Everything about his life revolved around the NYPD. Every important person in his life seemed to wear a badge or belong to a police family. They were the only ones that understood.

His best friends, his girl, his mentors, all cops. All people that could truly understand what he meant when he said he'd had a tough day. They were the only people that understood why he never really wanted a reason to pull his dress blues out of the closet.

It happened though. He always rose early and he always cried in the cathedral. There was always a new kid in the front pew with big, scared eyes.

He'd nearly died once, in an explosion. He wore the scars across his abdomen now and did his best to be proud of them. Psych evals had been a departmental requirement and he'd lied when the shrink had asked if he was suffering from nightmares.

It wasn't a real lie though, sure he had nightmares, but didn't they all? They were cops. As proud as they were of the job it left them flawed. On a daily basis they had to confront the parts of the world that most people tried to hide from. They put themselves on the line for others and sometimes got spit on in return for it.

To deal they made inappropriate jokes and drank too much. Their relationships were strained and all they could really do was laugh about it. And they all had nightmares, whether they admitted it or not. Sometimes his were about dead bodies but only after particularly brutal cases. Criminals killing criminals didn't keep him up at night anymore. Every once and a while though a vic was so completely innocent that the details of the case never really left him. Usually though, his nightmares took place in cathedrals and they all started with the sound of bagpipes. The body in the flag draped casket was always different. Sometimes it was him. Mostly it was someone else he cared about; Danny and Lindsay were frequent, their young song crying in the front pew. Once it had been Jess and that had been the worst.

He'd woken up early that morning, unable to fall back to sleep despite the fact that he had a rare morning off. He'd made the twenty-minute drive to his father's house, the home where he'd grown up. His parent's marriage had been another sacrifice of the job and silently Don wondered if his father still considered his dress blues to have seen the 'best day of his life'. He wasn't surprised to find his old man alone at the kitchen table frowning at the sports page. The house was earily quiet to Don who would always remember it the way it had sounded when he and his brother and sisters were always tumbling through. He didn't know how his father could stand to live there in the silence.

"Couldn't sleep?" his father inferred simply, not looking up from the Yank's spring training insert.

"Nope."

"I'll make you some breakfast," his father finally put the paper down and got to puttering around the kitchen, cracking eggs in a pan.

"You ever regret it pop? Being a cop I mean."

"I probably should," his father chuckled, sliding bread into the toaster, "It made me a shitty husband, mediocre father and the pension isn't even that great. But I don't. The truth? If my body didn't know how old it was I'd still be out there."

Don nodded and his father raised an eyebrow.

"You've been on for a long while now Donny, you've seen a lot," he gave a small, knowing smile, "Still wanna be a cop?"

"Yes," he answered quick and sure. And he meant it, even if all of his nightmares started with the sound of bagpipes.