Title: Scenes
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: A collection of one-shots/scenes using the characters as represented in the AU established in Interesting Dynamics. The chapters currently represent scenes happening immediately after So This is Christmas. As I continue to update, they'll just provide one-shot snap shots into the characters' lives and likely some recasts of scenes from the show. This series focuses on Voight and his family, as well as Erin Lindsay's growing relationship with Jay Halstead. This is not a linear narrative with a beginning-middle-end. It's just scenes.
SPOILER ALERT: There are MAJOR spoilers in this collection from Interesting Dynamics and So This is Christmas.
Voight stepped out of his office as Trudy got Magoo to the top of the stairs, reaching to flip the case board out of his sight. Not that the kid hadn't seen one before. Thing was his kid just didn't need to be seeing this one. He really hadn't needed to see any of them. Just sometimes he'd been a little lax about getting things out of sight in a timely manner. Or maybe it was more he was grooming E a bit – slowly. Getting him used to the way things were in a bullpen. Because maybe some day he'd be in one of his own. Contributing to cases – and the city, and the CPD – in his own way. If that was still what he wanted. Sure seemed a whole lot better than other available options, which sometimes seemed like it would be his kid in a Walmart vest stocking shelves or a visor asking if some dunce wanted fries with that.
The way his kid was looking at him in that moment, though, Voight got the impression that Magoo sure felt like his future didn't include anything too bright. Trudy was frowning at him too. She'd clearly sensed E's hurt when he'd gotten in the door. He'd heard as much in her voice when she'd called up to let him know that E was there.
Magoo wasn't supposed to be there. Voight had told him to make his way home on his own. It was good practice for him. Showed some trust in the kid to navigate the buses. Deal with a bit of walking and standing with his crutches in the winter. None of this coddling of the parents who hardly let their kids walk down the block – let alone to school or get on the bus or L. Got a little fucking ridiculous sometimes. Liked his kids to be independent. Him and Erin picked him up at school enough. Didn't need to be happening every day. E needed to learn to trust in his own abilities to fend for himself. To get home – or wherever the fuck he was supposed to be that afternoon. To stay out of shit for a few hours. Start his homework. Do some dinner perp. Or just have the house to himself without fucking destroying it. Trust and responsibility. Kids needed that. Especially at that age. And especially with Magoo when so much of his illness caused them to coddle him and baby him a bit more than Voight would like. But it's hard not to when your kid is hurting and struggling like that. Life's a fucking struggle, though.
Voight gave a little nod at Platt and gestured for his boy to get his ass over there – and E sullenly did. His crutches clicking in a way that garnered glances from the guys in the bullpen. Magoo purposely avoided eye contact with all of them – no greetings for Dawson or O, who'd he usually engage in some brief exchange with. None of this nonsense fucking bru talk that fell out of Ruzek's and Atwater's mouths that made Voight question the kind of education that either of them had ever got. The two of them – men in boys bodies still trying to fucking hard to play with the big boys. Good police. Worth the effort. But still a whole fucking lot of work and growing up to do.
Biggest give away, though, was that E completely shrunk from Mouse and Halstead. Might as well as have crawled into himself he tried so hard to get them not to look at him.
Voight just put his hand on his kid's shoulder as he got over there and guided him into his office, closing the door halfway and leaning against the front of his desk, eyeing him.
Magoo had that completely defeated body language. His son was tired. And he was clearly disappointment. He was avoiding eye contact but Voight didn't need it to sense the tears that were welling in his kid' eyes. But E was doing his best to be a man about all this.
"So what happened?" Voight put to him, crossing his arms.
Ethan scuffed one of his crutches against his toe, looking at the maneuver like it was fascinating. "It went real bad," E muttered under his breath.
"What went wrong?"
E's shoulders rose and fell with defeat. "Everything," he whispered.
Voight shook his head at him. "Don't give me that," he rasped at him. "What do you think went so bad at the tryouts?"
E let out a little sigh and looked up at him with those sad eyes. Those fucking heart-breaker eyes. "There was reading, Dad," he said. "And math."
Voight shrugged. "OK. They have someone help you with that?"
"Yes …" Magoo said quietly.
Voight gestured at him. "Then what's the problem? You knew this team's going to involve that. That's real life, Ethan. You've got to learn to speak up when you need the help and to fucking accept the help."
E just eyed him. "We had to build a 'moving object'," he said.
Voight shrugged again. "OK. You know how to do that. You're driving me and the mutt crazy with the thing you've got at home."
"It was with Lego, Dad!" Ethan protested. "And without wheels or motors! And my hand's shaking bad today!" he added and pulled his one hand off the crutch to out it out to prove it.
Voight hated looking at that tremor in his kid. When he saw it, he just wanted to grab him and hold him until the fucking thing stopped. Thing was it didn't usually stop. It'd calm. But the moments of it being gone seemed less and less – even with the medication. It had seemed like it'd been more under control in the week before he was back at school – but now with his son tired and rundown a bit from managing to get back into the swing of things – it was creeping out in a more visibly way.
"It's a robot club, E," Voight provided evenly, though. "You're going to have to build things. And you're going to need to learn a way to manage that with your tremor."
Ethan huffed at him and gazed at his feet again. "We had to explain things too. Like what we built and how it worked and get them to build it without seeing it by explaining it. So like talking and working in teams and partners. And planning missions and problem solving. … No one wanted to work with me."
"So the coach paired you up with a group, right?" Voight put to him.
"Yea …" Ethan shrugged.
"OK," Voight sighed and looked at him. "Well, you remember when they recruited you onto junior varsity? Some of the guys didn't want to practice with you at the start either, right?"
"But the club's for Grade Seven to Twelve, Dad," Ethan near whimpered at him. "The poster said so. I'm allowed to be there this time!"
Voight watched his boy. Yeah. He was allowed to be there. But he'd pulled strings to get his boy the chance to be there. He'd been left with the expectation that it was going to mean that his kid would get a little more consideration than just showing up at the tryouts. But maybe not. Maybe he wasn't as ready for this as he'd been lead to believe. Maybe Caruso was just doing him lip service to get him the hell out of his office. Still, he so fucking hated seeing disappointment on his kid's face. Life was so fucking full of disappointment. Magoo knew that. He didn't needed to be taught that again. And again, and again.
"You got to remember, Magoo, that this is a competitive team. Not everyone who tries out gets on the team. But you went out there, you tried your best and you'll just have to wait and see what the rooster says when they post it. I'm proud of you for going out."
"I really wanted to be in the club, Dad," E said quietly.
"I know," Hank acknowledged. He wanted that for his kid too. Badly. Enough that he'd actually looked into this whole robotics league thing. The competition dates in their city and region. The rules. The kind of equipment – and the cost of it – that Magoo might need. Started processing the learning supports his boy might need in it all. Furlough he might need to book to make sure he was available on competition weekends for his boy. He'd fucking intended to support his boy in this. Give him the opportunity to try it. To see if it was his thing. To develop these skills. To try to get his son back on some sort of track again. Make it easier – better – for all of them. Reset. "But, you've still got lots of opportunity to try out again. Next year."
Ethan gave him sad, watery eyes but Voight didn't have the opportunity to tell him to man up – to set aside the crocodile tears. His door burst open – Halstead handing off the knob.
"Sarge, we've got to roll," he said with no shortage of urgency. Voight's eyes shifted to see the frenzy going on in the bullpen. His guys were bolting for the exits. "It's Lindsay."
Voight pointed at E, already moving to the door. "Stay here," he barked.
"What's wrong with Erin?" Ethan asked, his eyes widening even more at the chaos in the room behind him.
"Stay here," Voight pressed again and charged out the door after the rest of them.
AUTHOR NOTE: A few things …
-I'm at the point where I'm just going to kind of jump around where I like. The chapters will get reordered eventually to make more complete sequences and arcs. But they might seem kind of disconnected when reading. Hopefully it's not that confusing for people who are regular readers.
-FF only seems to send updates and bump a story to the top of the queue if you update in periods of 24 hours or greater. I had been trying to be conscious of that for a while. But it's kind of a pain in the ass. I know a lot of the "guest" readers who aren't registered users just look for it to be bumped to the top of the list. But basically — that's not going to happen as much anymore. Because it's a pain in the ass. I'm just going to update as I update. If I happen to have several chapters ready and feel like posting them all in the same day — they're going to post. You won't see the story bumped to the top. So you might want to either sign up and follow the story or my author listing so you do get alerts — or you might want to just start checking in on the story regularly. I can tell from the readership counts that a lot of the "guest" type people don't see chapters when the story doesn't get bumped. Like a third of you.
-My stories in this CPD AU have the best readership of any of my FF stories. Like I regularly get over 5,000 of you reading a chapter and huge numbers on days I update. That's really flattering and I do appreciate so many of you read the stories and clearly enjoy them enough to keep coming back to them. But I do sometimes find it really disheartening to see such awesome readership and get like only one or two … or no … reviews for a chapter. Especially if it's on a chapter I was really, really happy with how it turned out (recent examples being Fireworks and Everything Uniform). Now, I really don't except all of you to be commenting every chapter or anything like that. But, honestly, some positive feedback really does go along way. If there was a chapter you particularly liked or you're just a long time reader, you know, it's much appreciated if you drop a note every once and a while.