Hello, another story from me and back (after a very long break) to come back to this wonderful fandom with a new story.
So yeah this is massively AU. I don't really have a lot of background notes in the works in terms of the timing for this story, I am going to put it about seven to eight years before the first season, also I am not an adoption/medical expert nor an expert on teenage parents in another state so I don't know how accurate this is going to be.
I know I have made Mamma Reagan the enemy in this story, I am choosing to make her the villain of this story because A. we needed one and B. She's not really a character I ever write so it was easy. I am also choosing to write that her reaction to Jamie and the pregnancy on the same day she got the diagnosis for her cancer. Again this is AU so if she is a bit OCC...believe me she pays the price later on. Hopefully this story begins to make more sense as we get into it.
I don't know when I will be able to update, it used to be weekly but that was before I got a job so...I will try and update when I can. I predict this little story will be seventeen (ish) chapters.
Disclaimer-Nothing here is mine.
Please Read and Review and let me know what you think when you get a chance!
AU for Trigger Warnings for Cancer, underage pregnancy, medical issues and a lot of swearing-I swear a lot in my stories so if that is something that you struggle with them please keep that in mind.
And yes...Eddie makes an appearance at some point...I just don't know when.
Spelling and Grammar are never my strongest points and so please keep that in mind as you read.
There's A Place Where Lost Things Go
Chapter 4-War Of The Words
Frank this time! Frank gets a phone call to tell him that both of his sons have gone AWOL as he sits in his brand new office and ponders how on Earth he is going to find a third. AKA a shorter introspective on Frank.
Frank sits in his desk and he sits there from the morning to the end of the night. He sits there and tries very hard to think, very hard not to think about Jamie and very hard to think about anything or anyone else. He doesn't know what else it was that he could do to get through the day.
Not now that Mary was gone. Now that she was gone he found that there was nothing to distract himself from the endless circle of wondering just what had happened to Jamie and the baby.
He'd had no idea what had transpired between his wife and his son when he had gotten out of the car that night. He'd thought looking back that maybe he'd have seen Jamie at the end of the street but then again back then he wouldn't have been able to check what with Mary screaming in the house so loudly it had made him want to grab his gun and kick down the front door certain an intruder had his wife hostage.
He had not been expecting to walk into find out that his son had knocked up one of his classmates, had been thrown out of the house and that oh by the way his wife of over twenty three years had cancer and the likelihood of her getting out of this alive was not very good.
And that had been before Joe and Danny had found out what had happened. Joe had listened and then had turned on his heel and walked straight out the house and Danny…well…he had seriously thought Danny was going to kill someone when he had come home to find out what had happened.
It wasn't that Mary had regretted it because she had. Frank knew she had the second that he had walked through the door and seen her in the state that she was but his wife was a proud woman and admitting that she was wrong did not come naturally to her. Especially as Jamie had just…vanished.
He had gone to his girlfriends and they had moved with them to Florida. Frank knew that much because he had found out through sheer force of will. He had managed to threaten the girls father with the kidnapping a minor (which was technically true because there was no way in hell Frank would have given his son permission to go globetrotting to Florida) and he had learnt that the baby had been born and that Jamie had wanted to keep him and that meant that the family had left him there.
He had been in Sid Gormley's prescient when that had happened and the man looking aghast himself had very firmly pried Frank's fingers off the desk took him into his office and made him a coffee with a scotch in it and told him sternly and respectfully all at the same time that the boys in blue liked him as Commish and maybe if he didn't kill anyone he could stay that way for a long time.
Frank had made a note of Sid Gormely's name there and then and vowed to keep an eye on his career because the man had a common touch when it came to the police force that Frank knew was sadly lacking in his department.
He twirled his pen around and tried not to think about Jamie. Thinking about his youngest boy out there with a baby of his own hurt. It brought up old feelings against his wife as well and Frank wasn't sure how he felt about that either. His love for Mary had been the strongest love that he had felt for anyone and it had been eclipsed only by his love for his children but when he had seen the cancer eat away at her from the inside out, taking away everything that she was until she was a shell of a woman at the end it had been hard to be mad at her. Hell it had been hard to be anything at her other than just desperately sad.
Erin he knew had taken the same philosophy. Erin wasn't impressed with what her mother had done her raised eyebrow over the dinner table had said more than a thousand angry words but she had been a young wife turning into a mother herself. Nikki was a baby too…well a sturdy six year old now but the point was it had been hard for Erin to look at her own daughter and see what her mother had done. But Erin and to some extent Jack was a pragmatist. She had believed that the priority was getting their mother well again so that they could find Jamie together as a family.
He wondered sometimes scotch in hand weather or not Erin had believed that right up until his wife had flatlined.
He closed his eyes and resisted the urge to lean back in his chair. As much as he wanted to do nothing but he knew that he had a reputation to upkeep and if someone found him here looking like he did now they were bound to send him home like some naughty child and he was not in the mood for that. Home was too empty even with his father at home, home was too tiring and the ghosts of the past mistakes were all on the walls and there was nothing that he could do stop their smiling faces from haunting his every waking moment. He was finding he was getting tired at the easiest thing possible. Maybe that was grief taking it's full force out on his body. Frank didn't know.
He just knew he missed his wife and he missed his son and the other two were so close to getting themselves kicked off the force it wasn't even funny.
Okay…so maybe that was an exaggeration. Frank suspected that it was but even so…
Joe had made peace with his mother out of sheer necessity. His disapproval and his disgust at her actions was clear in his face whenever he was out of the room and it was clear that he didn't want to speak to Mary unless he really, really had to but that was almost a breeze compared to Danny and his reaction.
Danny who Frank genuinely thought wasn't going to show up to the funeral only for him to slink in through the back looking like he had fallen off the bar at three in the morning. He'd stayed for the wake shoved some food down his throat and then had gone and there had been nothing from either one of his sons on whether or not they were going to come to family dinner. They were angry still, raw, terrified of what was happening to their brother. Frank was the same…well…he knew he would be same if he could feel anything but bone deep exhaustion.
He just missed her that was all. He had wanted to make it all better for her. Her biggest regret was Jamie and if he could have gotten Jamie back for her to make it all alright even if it was just for show in that one moment.
And it wasn't…look Frank wasn't exactly thrilled with what Jamie had done but it two to make a baby and he was achingly aware that out there somewhere he had a grandchild. He would have dragged Jamie home had he got to him first and they would have sorted it out. Might not have been the easiest thing that he had ever done but it wouldn't have been the hardest.
When he had said that to his Dad his Pops had simply patted him on the shoulder and told him that hope was the best option. There was always hope that maybe Jamie would come home, that he knew deep down that he was loved and he had a home to go too. Frank had personally cultivated relationships with every police captain in LA so that he could find his son, the Commissioner of the Police there had personally assured him that if she found his son she would see to it that he was the first person called and each day that went past where he didn't receive a phone call—well—he was still on the fence about which one was worse.
The phone light blinking on his desk tore him out of the dark mood he was in and he sat up staring at the damn thing. There was a gentle knock on his door and Baker the Detective he'd handpicked to be his assistant popped her head round. Frank knew there was a lot of jokes about him hiring a young blonde with nice legs but the truth was he had hired Baker because he'd heard she'd single handedly taken down a pimp who'd tried to run riot over the precinct and had gotten a smacked jaw for his trouble. Call Frank cynical or call him a soft touch but he liked Detectives who had their own personal sense of style and Baker had been underestimated for so long that giving her a place to shine was the least he could do.
Also she had this little knack for knowing just when to leave him alone and just when to come and get him and sometimes it was like his wife had possessed her because she also knew in the past week or so since he had come back to work that he wasn't eating and she had a knack of sitting in his office with her own lunch and staring at him pointedly when he refused to eat his own.
Seriously…he was never letting his Pops near this woman. Heaven forfend the damage that they could do.
That being said her recipe for chicken salad was something else.
"Commissioner?"
"Baker"
"Sargent Gormley and Sargent Fitzpatrick just called up. They both wanted to emphasise that this was an act of courtesy and they would follow your lead whatever happens next. But they don't think there's anything to worry about"
Oh God.
This was not the kind of phone call that he needed today. Not his sons bosses. He really, really did not need this today.
"What happened?"
"Nothing"
"Baker"
"No sir" she said slipping into the office and shutting the door behind it. "Nothing happened. That's the whole point of this phone call. They both just wanted to know that neither one of your sons came to roll call today. They are both official declare AWOL…well…unofficially as the case may be"
Frank stared at her for a second and then he sighed.
"Did you call Linda?"
"She's on shift…apparently she was working at this homeless clinic but I rang Brian…I mean…Officer…"
"Baker the less I know about your private life the happier I assure you the both of us will be"
Baker nodded and her cheeks coloured a pretty pink which told Frank all he needed to know about this Brian character.
"Well he was at the hospital and he said that Detective Reagan's car is there. The blue one"
"Joe?"
She shrugged delicately. "Brian knows him from work and they go drinking sometimes whenever the football is bad—he watches soccer as well so—"
"Yep"
"But there's absolutely no record of them being injured absolutely nothing at all. I've checked and double checked so if they are both with the other Detective Regan's fiancé then they are absolutely off the books"
Frank sighed and tapped his nails against the desk and then he took in the blue sky and the bright cloudless morning and the snow on the ground. It was one of those perfect New York winter days where from the sky everything looked right and from the ground it looked terrible.
Fuck it, he thought rather randomly, he was going to talk to both of his boys while he still had them.
"Cancel my afternoon appointments Baker and get my detail. And get your coat too you can come with"
Baker nodded and scurried off to grab her coat as Frank grabbed his.
He was getting answers from his sons.
One way or another he was going to get some answers as to what was going on.
He just really, really hoped that it wasn't another drama.
He just didn't think his already shattered, broken heart could handle it.
And yeah, so we all know what is coming.
Next Chapter-Meanwhile as Frank comes this way Joe and Danny are determined to get to the bottom of what happened to their baby brother. Neither one of them like what they hear.