Title: Interesting Dynamics
Author: ZombieJazz
Fandom: Chicago PD
Disclaimer: I don't own them. Chicago PD and its characters belong to Dick Wolf. The character of Ethan has been created and developed for the sake of this AU series.
Summary: Hank and Erin are forced to re-explore their complicated 'family' dynamic when an unexpected 'family emergency' causes Voight to have to deal with demons related to his wife's death, his failings in parenting, and the challenges his work has created for his family and for his ability to be the father he wants to see himself as.
Ethan glanced at Hank as he came to the door of the bedroom. He'd clearly been gazing at a framed photo from one of the boxes but quickly dropped it back into the box and pretended to be lugging one of his bulking binders of baseball cards over to the bookshelf instead.
"Starting to look good in here," Hank offered him, and stepped inside moving toward where the box he was working on emptying was sitting on the bed.
It was true. The room was looking more like a bedroom than it had in years. And there was space to move. An added bonus. The room really had been a little cramped to have two boys in it. But the house only had so much space.
It was a little strange, though, to see the bedroom taking shape as a place for his youngest. Ethan had been doing a good job at picking away at it – without much complaint. They'd gotten Justin boxes moved and the stuff for the baby hauled down for temporary storage in the basement. Now it was the storage and laundry space that didn't have much room to move. It'd be OK, though. Hank would get Justin's boxes better organized under the stairs and hopefully in a few weeks he and Olive would be there to get the crib and change table out of his fucking space.
They'd decided to leave the bunk bed set up for the moment. Ethan had waffled on whether or not he wanted it. When Hank had pointed out he could reassemble it so the kid had a loft bed and they could put the dresser or the desk under it to give the room a bit more space, his son seemed even more confused and indecisive. So whatever. They'd leave it. See where they were at when the school year started up again. Besides even if Ethan was there, Hank suspected major homework supervision was going to be happening – so having a desk set up in the kid's room wasn't likely going to be necessary. It was going to be a giant pain in the ass.
The kid had some clothes hanging in the closet now. In the drawers of the dresser. Little fucking knickknacks starting to line the bookshelves again that hadn't been sitting there for years. Dinosaurs. Baseball caps and balls and Little League trophies. G.I. Joe figures and some various little cop car diecasts from back in the day when Hank had still tried to brainwash his kids that they wanted to join up. One of them was even something his own dad had given him and it'd travelled down between both his boys only to end up in a box and now back sitting on a shelf – likely just collecting dust. Maybe Justin's son would get it at some point – when Ethan was ready to let it go.
Strange to see it all. Strange to have a kid back in the house. He'd been starting to live the delusion of being a bit of an empty-nester. It wasn't so much that as it felt like he was supposed to be alone in the house. That that was part of the punishment for what had happened to Camille. That if she wasn't in the house, he didn't really get to have any of the kids there. For a long while having the kids there had been hard.
Comfort and strength? That's the fucking line some of these assholes feed you. What your kids were supposed to be after you lost your spouse. A distraction. A reason to live and keep going. Hank didn't buy into that bullshit. Being his reason wasn't his fucking kids responsibilities. Any jack-off that felt that way might as well just eat their gun right then – because they were already being selfish fucking bastards. Might as well finish it off.
Camille dying – what'd happened, why it'd happened – that was enough to keep him going. Because someone had to fucking pay for that. There had to be redemption in the retaliation. The revenge. And, after that, his kids fucking needed their father. Probably more than before. Because all of them had acted out in their own ways after that. They'd fucked up and gotten fucked up. And gotten themselves in all kinds of fucking situations that likely wouldn't have happened if Camille had been around. And, dealing with all that – that was Hank's duty. His responsibility. They were his fucking kids. Period. It wasn't about strength or comfort. That wasn't derived from his children. They were children. Not some sort of magic answer to all life's problems.
Hank looked into the box to see what Ethan had put down before retreating in his effort to look very concentrated on reorganizing his little baseball figures in an exact straight line along his bookshelf. The kid could be so OCD. Hank felt a small sting in his chest as he saw the framed photo sitting at the top of the box – turned upside down in a failed attempt to hide what he'd been looking at.
He reached and picked it up, turning it around, and just gazed at it for a moment. That strike to the chest never got much easier with time. It was another lie people told you about losing a spouse – give it time. It was one he'd tried to buy into. One he fed to his kids. One that he fed to people when they asked him how he coped. That it got better with time. That you just needed to give it time.
Thing was time didn't really make it better. Time just made it different. Because you changed. Your life went on. Your kids' lives went on. And you had to keep living and keep moving forward – whether you really wanted to or not. Moving the fuck on was your responsibility – as a person, as a father, as a fucking human being. You were a fucking coward if you didn't. If you took alternative routes. It wasn't like moving on was easy. And, it wasn't like you really ever moved on. You just moved forward. Another day went by on the calendar and you were still breathing even though the love of your life wasn't. Soon that day turned into a week and then a month and then a year. Before you knew it years.
It wasn't like things felt any better years later, though. It was just more time had passed. You realized that you were able to keep living without them. Sometimes you didn't much like living without them. But you did it. What were the alternatives? Hank didn't buy into the alternatives. The coward's way out. He wasn't a fucking coward. You weren't allowed to be a fucking coward when you had kids. Fuck Camille would've slapped him silly. Jumped down his throat so far, if she even caught wind of him having a passing thought about leaving their kids to cope on their own.
Hank wouldn't do that anyways. He'd seen what the system did to kids left to fend for themselves. They had a living reminder in their house. Erin still provided reminders. Especially these days with Bunny being fucking back. Those scars never went away. Didn't matter if the kid was five or seven or fourteen or twenty-nine. That shit stuck with you for life. His kids didn't fall through the cracks. They didn't get left for the city to fucking chew apart and spit out. They got a home. They got stability – such as it was. They got a roof over their head and food in their bellies and clothes on their back. They got fucking rules and responsibilities. And they had people who fucking cared about them. Even if they'd lost their mom in the process.
And, there she was staring back at him right then. Reminding him all over again that he wasn't allowed to fuck up. Not to fuck it up for their family. Not to fuck it up for the kids. Being knee deep in the gang unit. Not being home as much as he should. That might've been OK when she was around – but it wasn't anymore. He'd fucked it up for his family. He brought the bullshit home and it destroyed them. They'd taken his wife but they'd also shattered his family. His kids. Hank would spend the rest of his life making up for that for them. As best he could. He owed that much to Camille. To Justin and Erin and Ethan too. Maybe Ethan the most. A boy that age – they needed their mother – especially when they're in the hospital like that. Hank didn't have the tender touch for that. He pushed Ethan through it. And he dragged him kicking and screaming when the kid thought he wasn't ready. But he'd gotten him through it. Just not the way Camille would've. She likely would've handled it better. Or at least differently.
Because look at that smile. She would've fucking handled it differently.
Hank tried to remember when the photo was taken. He couldn't pinpoint it. He suspected it might've been some sort of work barbecue of Camille's. Looked like summer and a park. And it was just the three of them. Him, Camille and Ethan. The other two were no where in sight. Likely too big for their breeches to be attending something of their mom's. Supporting her. Ethan would've still been little enough that potato sack races and water balloon fights would've been all the rage. Based on the smile and temporary tattoos on his cheekbones, he was having the afternoon of his life. Camille was glowing too. But she always was. She had a smile that could light up a whole room – and then some. Fucking radiant. Her fucking eyes twinkled when she pulled out those grins and they were doing it in the photo too. Hank hated to admit it but he still looked like some sort of gob-smacked teen in the photo with the way he was looking at his wife and son – not the fucking camera – while the other two stared directly into the lens. He had a quite smile pulling at his lips too. But most of the photos with family time, he did. Some of the little wanks in the unit would likely be surprised to see that if they ever got to spend much time in his home – which they wouldn't – and see the family shots on the walls and shelves and end tables.
Thing was as much as Hank hadn't taken down much of Camille's stuff – that he'd left it her house – he had taken down some of the family portraits. It'd only happened the past two years – with the kids gone. With the house empty. With his family really fucking shattered for a second time and him trying to fucking piece the puzzle back together in a meaningful way yet again. All those frames staring at him had just been an added reminder to how much he was floundering in getting his family's life back on track. How much he didn't know how to fix their breaks. He couldn't have Camille staring at him. Reminding him. Those eyes and laughs echoing into his being.
So they'd come down. Gotten put away. For now. Maybe for always. The ones with just him and the kids. The ones of just the kids. They'd stayed up. But Camille's smiling face had slowly been put away. Set aside in boxes and his safe and his bedside drawer – just for him to look at. When he was up to it. When he needed it. He had three in his bedside table that he looked at every night. He was sure the shrink would tell him that wasn't healthy. But what did these fucking shrinks know anyways?
Hank reached and set the photo frame on Ethan's bedside table. Hank might not like having Camille staring at him in every room in the house – but this was Ethan's room and he deserved to at least have some memory of his mother. Especially a happy one. It was sort of an added bonus that he appeared to be a part of that happy memory. Maybe at some point his little boy could see him that way again.
Ethan glanced at him as the frame plunked on the table. He looked at it for a moment but then wordlessly turned back to the shelf.
"You know Erin left a while ago?" Hank put to him.
"Yeah," Ethan said quietly.
"So we're doing talking," Hank said after it was clear 'yeah' was the extent of his response. "You can come back downstairs."
The kid just shrugged at him.
"Hey," Hank barked out a bit more forcibly prompting Ethan to give him a look over his shoulder. "I'm you're father. You don't talk to me in," he mimicked his son's shrugging.
Ethan blinked at him. "OK," he said quietly.
Hank gave a little nod. "So, come down then," he said and started to move toward the door.
But Ethan gave his head a little shake. "I'm just gonna keep working on this."
Hank gave him a sterner look. "What are you working on?"
Ethan's fingers kept twitching at trying to get his little plastic figures to sit the way he wanted. "This," he said.
"Ethan, they're fine," Hank said probably a little too forcibly.
Sometimes the kid's quirks just got to him. He wasn't sure that evening he could handle them – not after the talk with the fucking shrink. And Erin – and all her fucking opinions. Sometimes he felt like Camille had fucking found a way to speak through that girl and just give him hell in ways he didn't want to deal with – or fucking her. Erin was one of the best things that happened to their family – but fuck, some days he still wanted to slap her silly. But that was true of his two boys as well. Kids were blessings and fucking nightmares. That was for fucking sure.
Ethan gave him a hurt glance. "I'm going to do my cards after," he said a little more timidly.
Hank gave him a little nod. "OK," he tried a bit more calmly. "So grab your binder and come downstairs. I want to see what ones you got."
The boy gave him another little headshake.
Hank let out a slow breath and crossed his arms, glaring at the kid. "Look, Magoo, I've done the whole teenager living in their room thing twice before. You've seen how it works here. In this house, you don't get to live in your room."
"The door's open," he said meekly.
"Good," Hank said.
He did acknowledge that so far Ethan had been doing a good job at toeing the line and honoring the rules. One of them was that they didn't do closed doors in their house. Likely wasn't a huge deal with Ethan yet at twelve. He wasn't too likely have girls in there yet – and the pot and pharms – he wanted to hope he'd nipped that in the bud for the moment. He had control of Ethan's prescriptions – looked in his desk drawer. And as for him drinking pot or cigarettes or booze into the house? Well, his backpack was getting searched every time he set foot in the house after camp and boxing and Hank fully intended to be doing a bedroom search about once a week to start.
So far, though, he hadn't seen any signs that Ethan had been indulging on his own. He had the kid on a short enough leash it'd be hard for him to get into too much trouble. And he hadn't been around long enough to network with any of the lowlifes to make any connections to hook him up yet either. And – with Hank having confiscated his stash Ethan didn't have his little side business available to peddle to the fucking little kids at camp either. Because that's just what he needed. Fucking twelve-year-old dealer. Jesus Fuck. He'd taken his eye off his youngest too fucking long. The little kid he'd had to send to broading school while things got sorted out had come back too maturely dumb for anyone's good.
"But I want you to come downstairs," Hank said flatly.
"Why?" Ethan asked a little defiantly. "You said one of my jobs is to organize this room. I'm organizing this room."
"And, you're doing a good job," Hank said, "but I want you to come downstairs."
"Why?" Ethan spat again.
"Because I want to talk to you," Hank said flatly but gave him a look to clearly warn him that he was starting to step passed the line and he'd be tossed back so quickly that he wouldn't know what hit him.
"We can talk here," Ethan said. "We're talking now."
"I want to talk to you downstairs – and you'll listen and do as I say, because I'm your father," he said firmly.
Ethan glared at him a moment but then pushed passed him, making for the door. "Open door policy, Dad," he spat. "I already heard you and Erin talking. But fine, I'll go downstairs so you can tell me I'm a retard in the living room."
Hank puckered, holding back the anger that he wanted to spew at the boy. The urge to grab him by the shoulder and spin him around – to tell him not to talk to him that way. That he wouldn't tolerate it. But he bit at his lip while he bit his tongue. Having this conversation with Ethan was going to be hard enough – having it in anger wasn't going to help.
His son was going to be hurt and angry as it was.
His role was to try to fix it.
He glanced over at the frame on the bed stand one more time. Trying to find some kind of fucking answer in those simpler times. Like the Camille there would know. But she didn't. She wasn't there to provide any key. Maybe she wouldn't have known it either. But she'd know better how to say this in a way that didn't make Ethan feel like a retard. Because he wasn't that.
Hank let out a sigh, moved for the door, switched off the light and followed his son downstairs.
So this might be the last chapter. At least for a while. I appreciate the comments/reviews I've gotten since I advised that it might be it but still not really sure. The stats and fandom community and reviewers seem a bit better over in SVU land and I've had a lot of requests to continue on with the series on that side of things.
We'll see. I'll see if the stats over here improve at all and how much demand there is for continuance.