Title: So It Goes

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 Voight and his family try to cope with their struggles at home and work — and the dynamics those conflicting circumstances creat for their blended family in a time of transition. The series focuses on Voight, his sick and disabled son — and what's left of his family and their strained relationships, particularly that with Erin Lindsay and Jay Halstead as they work at establishing their own lives as a young couple.

This is a collection of one-shots/scenes using the characters as represented in the AU established in Interesting Dynamics. The chapters currently represent scenes happening in approximately S04 of the series or early 2017.

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 is not a linear narrative with a beginning-middle-end. It's just scenes. It is generally set so it begins around the mid-point of Season 4 (or about January/February 2017) and may occasionally draw reference to (and have SPOILERS) from the series.

A notification is provided at the beginning of each chapter about where it happens in relation to the other chapters, if they are out of sequence. Chapters will be re-ordered semi-regularly (i.e. if you're reading this weeks or months after the chapter was originally posted, it's likely now in the right place, so just ignore the notification).

SPOILER ALERT: There are MAJOR spoilers in this collection from Interesting Dynamics, So This is Christmas, Scenes and Aftermath. This series also contains SPOILERS related to the finale of Season 3 of Chicago PD and will have occasionally spoilers from Season 4 of the show.

THIS CHAPTER IS A DIRECT CONTINUATION OF THE CHAPTER IMMEDIATELY BEFORE THIS — SATED.

It really was. Jay really couldn't ask for a better birthday. Or post-birthday birthday weekend. After all, he'd had the morning he'd had with Erin. And that had been good. The sex. The talk. The breakfast. You can't really argue with that as a decent way to start a day.

And he really hadn't minded spending his mid-day with Eth. At all. Even though Ethan hadn't exactly been having one of his better days. He wasn't Mr. Cheery at all. There'd been moments of frustration with the kid – but there usually were. But he still liked it. And it wasn't even the opportunity to geek-out a bit with the kid. It was just … Eth was this stabilizing force.

Erin talked about that a lot. When they worked at peeling away their layers. When they tried to stop being onions. And revealed pieces of themselves. Or talked about their childhoods. Or more likely their teens. When they tried to understand where the other came from. Why they were the way they were.

And Erin came back a lot to Ethan. That he'd grounded her. That he provided extra stability. That he was some sort of directional and navigational arrow in her life. This weather vein.

And Jay thought for a time he didn't entirely appreciate that. That he thought she was sort of over emphasizing or romanticizing the whole "big sister" thing. But that maybe that's what she needed to do to make the situation make any sense to her.

But the more time he spent with Eth – the more he knew exactly what she was talking about. Because he'd felt it too. He'd grown to feel it. And to value it.

That having a little kid – even though he wasn't so little, but he still needed them – in your life just gave you this whole different purpose and this meaning in your life. It made how you took care of yourself and how you took care of your relationship different. It made how you worked different. How you did your job and things you thought about while you were on it. How you related to it and the people around you and what you were dealing with. And it made you less selfish. Of yourself and of your time. It shifted your priorities.

And it just gave you this different kind of stability. There was a structure to it. As fucking unpredictable as Eth's health could be. And his temperament on a particular day. Or whatever fucking homework assignment or school project or test coming up was. And all that was spun in with balancing the unpredictability of their work and jobs and cases and crime in the city too. But there was still something nice about knowing that those specific nights of the week they had Ethan. That their evening would be making him dinner and pushing through homework with him. And that if they accomplished that there'd be some dopey teen show on the television in the evening or some sports match or that they'd put in an hour on the Xbox together. There was something comforting about watching their shared calendars populate with Eth's schedule – his medical appointments and physio and therapy and RIC activities and his baseball and his tutoring and his tests and deadlines. To see the who, what, when, where and to plan and co-ordinate all their schedules accordingly. To functions as a unit. And not just him and Erin. To have Voight and Olive in the mix. To act like a family that was just trying to get the whole fucking group of them through day by day.

There was something just so fucking normal – and stabilizing – about going and sitting in the bleacher to watch Eth at ball practice or a game. To take him or Henry over to the park or to the pool. To know that if there wasn't shit hitting the fan in Intelligence there was always a Sunday dinner they could go to at Hank's without needing an invitation. These little routines and traditions. The sort of thing that just made life feel … more complete. That made him wonder what he'd been missing for so long. And just how many pieces had actually been missing.

He sort of wondered sometimes if him and Erin would be where they were at if Ethan wasn't in the picture. But he also knew that if Ethan had been in the picture form the get that Erin likely wouldn't have made the time or space for him. And Jay sort of thought with the person he was then, he likely would've just given up. And he was glad he hadn't. Because as much as sometimes Eth annoyed the shit out of him – he loved what the fucking kid brought to their lives –his life – and their relationship too.

He liked their fucking Saturdays getting Microfighters. He liked the excuse to do a Lego Build. And to even be allowed in the store and to sit at the table with all the bricks since he had a kid with him. He liked that he didn't feel like a dunce standing in line for fucking free comics on Free Comic Day. He liked that he didn't need to provide any sort of excuses or justification about getting a fucking giant greasy burger once a month or pretending that a plate of fries constituted a meal.

He liked that Ethan had someone … allowed him to be a little less serious. To fucking see some breaks in those clouds that had been over his head since he was a kid Eth's age. The ones that got thicker after he was in the Rangers – and seen and done the things he'd seen and done. And the ones that had pretty much turned black after his mom had died.

But Eth … and Erin … they'd help break some of that. To be a little more than wit and banter and smart-ass comebacks. That he was allowed to … be human. To find some enjoyment in life. To even try to go back and enjoy some of the stuff that maybe had been stolen away from him too soon when he was Eth's age. And he liked that too.

And he liked spending part of the first Saturday after his 34th birthday reminding himself of that. Being an adult didn't mean you had to give up on the person you were as a kid. Not entirely. You could share some of that with other people. Those hopes and dreams and more innocent likes and dislikes were still allowed to be there. You didn't need be ashamed of it. Even if reality had corrupted you – robbed you – of that previous naivety. But at least having a kid in your life gave you some excuse to try to look at things through some eyes that still had some of that flicker of hope. Though, Eth only had so much naivety and innocence in him. He was still a kid but the world and life had definitely already touched him – corrupted him – all on its own accord.

Maybe all of that, though, was part of the reason he'd become more … interested … or even restless about getting around to starting a family. About making that fucking time. Maybe time he should've made long ago. But that the timing hadn't been right until he'd taken his decade of recovery. To try to move beyond that label he had that he still struggled with verbally acknowledging. The PTSD. And what that meant for him. As a human being. As a man. As a husband. As a father.

But things were different now. He was different. He had Erin. He was in his thirties. He was a stable, functional, responsible adult man. In a good job. He was setting up a decent life for himself. He was moving up in the world.

And he wanted to have that own little kid of his. One where he saw the naivety and the innocence from the start. One where he got to do his fucking damnedest to try to protecting them from losing that innocence too quickly. To try to keep the world from corrupting them. To give them a different reality than the one he'd grown up in. Or the one Erin had had for her foundational years.

He wanted that. Even though he really wasn't too sure how him and Erin would do with a baby. He wasn't really sure they were baby people. Though, he sort of had some comfort in knowing that Erin seemed to know something about babies even if she wasn't exactly a cooing and gahing kind of woman. And they both seemed to be Henry people even if they weren't baby people. And if they could manage to be Henry people, they could likely manage to be their own kid people.

And they just needed to get through that first bit anyway. Or months. Or years. Because Jay was pretty sure after they had a walking, talking little human being with his or her own interests and personalities and quirks – him and Erin – they'd be pretty kick-ass at that. He was slightly bias. But he sort of thought they already were. And Eth wasn't even theirs.

They were moving that way, though. Slowly. Erin was onboard. He could feel it. He knew she could feel it too. That it wasn't going to happen tomorrow but there would be a baby – or at least a pregnancy – again. Soon. Likely before Erin's magically thrity-three milestone she'd set for herself previously.

Because they were talking about it now. More openly. Not in passing mentions. Not in a sort of quarterly discussion they'd been having for most of that year. Since the unplanned pregnancy. Since the miscarriage. Since the fucking hell of trying to figure out how they were supposed to navigate that as a couple and as partners on the job and as friends and as indivudals. Her as a woman and him as a man. And just what the fuck was he allowed to think or feel about any of it? But he'd thought and felt lots about it. And they were just getting to the point that everything they'd thought and felt was … enough of an experience they could actually talk about the reality of pregnancy and family and babies again. In real terms. With some sort of plan.

Not that they had a plan yet. But he could feel them moving in baby steps towards it. Already. And faster than they had in a year. The condoms were gone. He could actually be with – feel – Erin again. Have some fucking real intimacy rather than feeling like they were dealing with some landmine that was going through them into emotional turmoil again where they were triple layering and triple checking things and he was having to fucking pull out all the time like that was some sort of fourth quarter Hail Mary move that would prevent any mishaps that might get through all their other pre-planning security measures.

It was other things too. Little unspoken signs that he could tell Erin was moving toward telling him she was officially ready to try. Or telling him exactly what the plan was – or should be – from her perspective.

She'd stopped drinking. She'd cut back since Nadia and her banana peel. But she still drank. They'd both indulged on their Florida trip. It was vacation. It might be as fucking close as they got to a real getaway – beyond the cabin – for a long time. They'd enjoyed themselves. But since being back – since their talks on holiday – he hadn't seen Erin drink. He'd seen her outright decline alcohol. And the usual IV drip of coffee into her veins had significantly declined too to no more than a cup or two a day. His combo girl had definitely shifted her eating habits too. When they grabbed lunch together now, it wasn't an Al's Italian Beef or an Elvis dog or a kabob or a Kuma's burger – specifically the Iron Maiden and bigger than her head. It was salad. For all the ball busting she did to Eth about his love of salad, now it was her dropping like seven bucks at lunch to eat fucking leafy greens.

Not that he was complaining about her dietary changes. Because the shifts were definitely starting to show in her body. Not that he'd ever had any real complaints about Erin's body … ever. He actual thought she looked pretty great with some meat to her. It gave her all those curves in just the right places. But lately her abs had definitely come out with the shift away from empty calories and carbs in her diet. And, there was something attractive about that too. The strength. She was so fucking strong in more ways than she wanted to acknowledge. But physically seeing it and being able to touch it was another thing.

It'd actually been enough to let her take the lead in bed a bit more than he generally usually did. Let her be on top. So he could stare and touch her a bit more. A decent payoff for giving up some control. Maybe the more decent payoff was that by relinquishing some of that control, he'd estimate that they'd definitely seen a bit of an increase in their fucking that month. Not that they were too slack in the sack before. But since Florida – since being back – they were definitely working at tallying up their orgasms at a faster rate.

Had that morning. Was sort of hoping they would add another notch to their bedpost that night too.

AUTHOR NOTE:

OK. So this chapter/scene is still going on. I still haven't gotten to what its intention had been (which is the actual dialogue of the scene — so yes, I'm aware there isn't any dialogue yet). Basically, it's become some verbal diarrhea in me working out just what the hell to try to do with this story and AU. And maybe trying to force it more quickly in ways that I would've hoped the series would've incrementally worked toward on some levels over the course of the entire show (which I had previously expected to go up to 7 to 9 seasons). So it's turning a bit sentimental and fluffy. Not sure what that says for what I want to do with it, if anything.

Contemplating going back and doing that Harry Potter Land chapter that I haven't gotten to. Because if I'm going to be light and fluffy — I might as well go for real fluff.

For the people who got overly excited about me saying I might turn back to SVU. I didn't mean it how you took it. I have no intention of working on Welcome Home. I have an idea for an O/S that includes Liv and Jack. That'd be it.

As always, reviews, comments and feedback are appreciated.