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 — ALONE TOGETHER.

***THE CHAPER BEFORE THIS WAS ADDED TONIGHT AS WELL. PLEASE GO BACK AND MAKE SURE YOU DIDN'T MISS IT***

Apparently the book Voight had handed Erin had grabbed her. But Jay had learned that about Erin. After she found a book she liked, she'd get lost in it. There wasn't much point in trying to pull her out of its spell. It was better to just let her plough through. And she would. Usually pretty quick depending on what they had on the go on the job that week or what their caseload was like.

But even when work and a case were shit, she still seemed to take her little sanity breaks. She'd been doing it more since the whole … Justin thing. He was pretty sure her therapist had told her to. She likely needed to. He could understand that. He likely should do more of that too. Most people probably should. Or at least cops. In ways that didn't involve liquor.

But Erin, that winter - since the New Year, since settling into the house, since dealing with the Bunny brouhaha and the whole "here's your father who's not your father" bullshit and fall out – she'd really seemed to be working on taking sanity breaks. Mental health stuff. And just finding time and space for herself in a different way than what Jay had seen in her in his first years of getting to know her. Likely much better and much healthier ways. Likely more age appropriate ways.

One of her sanity – self-care – periods in the day seemed to be the morning. She often didn't roll out of bed at the same time as him. And it was likely about 70/30 in terms of them catching a ride into District together.

She liked to be getting out of bed around the time he was up and dressed and headed out the door. And he didn't really mind. Because they spent all day at work together. They spent most evenings together. They slept together. A lot of their days off-sked were together.

Jay got just needing some individual time and space in their lives. Because he fucking needed that too. He was a private person too. He just needed to … be sometimes too.

And beyond all that, neither of them were exactly morning people. He had his own morning routine. She had hers. And they just got on with it. They'd see each other at work in a couple hours. They'd talk there. They'd talk that night. They didn't need to be in each other's faces right when they got up. Didn't need to occupy each other's every waking moment. They weren't that needy. Or clingy.

Besides, she liked her own bathroom time. And he liked avoiding the reminders of what a messy person she was. What kind of disaster she could leave in her wake – especially in the bathroom.

For a woman who really wasn't that fucking girly – she sure knew how to make a bathroom look like she'd spent hours in their perfecting her hair and make-up – when he knew she didn't really invest much time in either. At least not for work's sake. But he also knew he really didn't want to – or need to – see the rituals she had that left their master en suite as such a disaster zone.

Just like he didn't need to see how she loved to hang over the sink in the morning eating her plain buttered toast rather than dirtying a plate. But he'd take her hanging over the sink (though not rinsing it – never, not in the bathroom or the kitchen) over when she'd hang over the counter – and not tidy up the crumbs. Because she liked to do that too. While she stared out their kitchen window at whatever it was she stared at in the morning. People coming and going to work and school, he supposed.

Cars leaving their little townhome community. Kids taking off to school. People walking their dogs over to the park. Runners and joggers and stroller-ize moms headed out for their morning exercise or to the community center and its gym and pool and basketball and tennis courts.

It was all another sort of surreal reminder to both of them that … they had moved up in the world. From where they'd spent their early childhoods. For him even from where he'd been living – and how – since being back stateside. And for her – even though it wasn't as sparkling and new as her condo development, this was a family community. It had a different feel than the upper income, up-and-comer Millennials that were trying too hard to be showy, that lived in the gentrified area that Erin had thought was a smart place to buy a condo. And he supposed it was. At least in investment terms. Or at least that was the hope. That's what their real estate agent and guy at the bank seemed to be telling them. If and when they ever got around to her letting the place go or collecting some real rent on it.

Mornings with Erin – with her lack of morning cheeriness - had used to be for coffee too. Copious amounts of coffee. The one she'd have before she left the house and the one she stopped to pick up on the way into the bullpen too. Though, that seemed to have calmed a bit lately.

He'd noticed. Just like he noticed rather than coffee she was now always sipping on fucking peppermint tea or fucking hot lemon water or ginger root. It was fucking strange. For her. Either his lifestyle choices and dietary options that she previously mocked were rubbing off on her or Olive's granola-crunch was. Or there was some sort of pre-pregnancy planning that involved herbal teas and hot water that he apparently should be Googling to fully understand. He'd have to get on that.

Whatever she arrived with though, she still made a beeline for the break room, centering herself more in there too with her little sugar ritual before she came to her desk and the reality that relentlessly awaited them in the bullpen.

Lately she usually snuck in at least a twenty-minute "lunch break" at some point in the day too. She never wanted to talk much then. Even if they were grabbing lunch together. It was another period of the day that was clearly designated as her time.

She'd read whatever she was reading that day or week. If there wasn't a book she was toting around with her, then she sat still staring at a print edition of the newspaper in the break room or at the diner. And if that wasn't available, then she was scrolling through stuff on her phone. Though, she'd also been trying to break her phone habit lately – to the point that she was getting critical of him if he got buried in his while they were sharing the same space and time together.

They'd implemented a bit of a no personal phone policy at home in the evenings after a certain hour to try to avoid … becoming one of those couples. Phone zombies. Lost in the inter-webs. Falling down some sort of Googling time warp. Not watching they had on the TV or acknowledging the other person in the room. Not enjoying the time you had with them. Just fucking tapping at random crap in the never-ending void that was the Internet anymore.

He didn't think them taking some time-out from their personal phones – or at least shutting off the data and the apps – was a bad thing. There was something to be said about unplugging and disconnecting for a bit. There was something to be said about sharing the space with the people you were with in a more actively inactive way that couldn't truly be achieved if you had a phone in your hand. And it was kind of like … that's what being at Voight's house was too. It was this kind of timewarp in terms of technology and streaming and wifi. Maybe it was why they could achieve that alone but together state. Maybe that's why as awkward as being there could be – or frustrating – there was also something sort of calming about it. It was this sort of dead zone. A way to check out of their day-to-day realities for a little bit. Or at least a good two-thirds of them – if they were lucky.

Mindfulness in the moment. Or a space where you could be mindful? It was another thing that Erin had been starting to gravitate toward too. Something that his own shrink had talked to him. Mindfulness. Not just fucking compartmentalization.

With Erin part of that was when she took her work bathroom breaks anymore, she seemed to be taking a bit longer than before. And that she actually took them more than once a day with her previous bladder of iron. He'd made some sort of flippant remark about it once. Just teasing. But she'd got riled up a bit. It was sort of how they got talking about the mindfulness thing.

She'd said that sometimes that the only quiet time she really got at work was those few minutes in the can. That it gave her a chance to do some of these breathing exercises. Add it to the list of things he'd noticed her doing. And not just her – he'd seen Ethan doing them.

To calm anxiety. To breath in and hold your breath and breath out slowly. In through the nose and out through the mouth. With long deep breaths and even longer holds. A similar technique that had been brought up at his own PTSD therapy. To center yourself. To ground yourself. To try to come back to reality when you were spinning out. To mediate and focus. To just feel the fucking ground beneath your feet and air in your lungs for a moment.

But that was the thing. Erin was trying to learn to mediate. Or at least this mindfulness stuff. She had some app on her phone and she did her little 10 minutes a day to try to keep her head on straight. She mostly did it in the morning – to start off her day – so he was only getting exposed to it so much. He'd only really gotten brought in on that being part of her little morning situation and sanity time and self-care recently. Just like he'd only recently admitted to her that his nights where he was presumably disappearing to the boxing gym or Will's to watch a game – he wasn't.

He was going to PTSD group. It'd been a tough disclosure. But one that had needed to be made. Because he'd been starting to really feel like he was lying to her. Like he was living some sort of double life. Like he was trying to go back undercover when he knew what that had done to him. And he'd seen the kind of damage that lying to your spouse did. It never ended in a good way. And for all the things he was cautious with telling her about. For how many walls he still had up and how he still treasured his privacy and how there were just things – he'd done, that had happened – he wasn't ready to talk about yet. But he'd never lied to her before. Not outright. And he wasn't going to start with something where he was … trying to be better. And not just be better for himself. To be better for her.

He'd been afraid he'd be pissed. Pissed at him for having not told her. Pissed at him for going and talking to a group of guys about stuff that he couldn't talk about with her – yet. Pissed that he still wouldn't let her help him in some areas – and maybe he never would. But even though there'd been a flicker of her – both for him and for her, and for them – in her eyes, she hadn't gotten angry. They hadn't fought. And she hadn't all out shutdown on him or shut him out. Rather she'd admitted that she'd been going to some sort of yoga mediation thing and Pilates.

She'd said it'd come up at the family therapy. More for Ethan. And she'd somehow cajoled Eth into going into a couple of the yoga classes at RIC. His physical therapists had been trying to get him to do it for ages and his therapists were now all about it as a bit of an attempt at a stress and anxiety buster.

It hadn't really worked for him. He was too self-conscious and too much of a teenaged boy to be that open to it. But Erin had been allowed to participate in the sessions and had gotten something out of it – so she'd been going when she could – once or twice a week - to some classes on her own at a place that also had Pilates. She'd decided she wanted to try that too. And had. It wasn't her going to the boxing gym or spin class or jogging that had completely ripped her core that winter – it'd been that. She just hadn't to tell him because she knew he'd have some little remark about yoga. And she was right. He probably would've. But he also knew despite any kind of teasing jab he'd cast her way, he wouldn't have cared. Not if it was helping her – physically, mentally, emotionally. And she clearly felt it was. And that was what mattered. That was what was important.

Though, the whole thing – their little disclosures to each other - had maybe shown that they were still a little self-conscious about how the other perceived them. That they didn't tell each other everything. They kept parts of themselves to themselves. That maybe they both still had some embarrassment about who they were and what they were. Maybe they still kept up certain fronts for each other to a point. Maybe it was just another small indication of the walls they had and the walls they still had to keep working at breaking down. But at the same time, it'd also just shown … they were both … trying to be better.

And Jay thought that was allowed. They were allowed to work on who they were as individuals. He thought that maybe that'd make them better as a couple.

And it was like somehow … letting the other person be their own person gave them the space to be together. And to just enjoy space and time together without smothering the person too. That he still felt like he was getting the whole day with her – the afternoon with her – sitting there at her dad's place, screwing around with her little brother while she buried herself in a book. And he liked that. All of it.

AUTHOR NOTE: The chapter immediately before this (Alone Together) was posted earlier tonight. Please make sure you didn't miss it.

Please check back later tonight or tomorrow (i.e. before the 24 hour mark), as I think I will likely complete this extended scene tonight or tomorrow morning and will post it.

Your reviews, comments and feedback are appreciated (on both chapters and/or the scene/Jay's POV as a whole).

I think I'm dragging this out with Jay in both trying to figure out how I feel about this AU and where the character might be within the series and with how to play out the next events.

I have an idea for a Jay/Erin, Jay/Hank and Erin/Ethan chapter(s) set around the S4 finale but casting it differently.

However, I also have a Hank/Ethan scene I am thinking about right now. And with it being Father's Day weekend, part of me is sort of thinking about maybe doing something with that as a bit of a break. Though, I'm not sure what as I don't think it would be a "happy" period for the family.