Hi! So here is another story from me for this wonderful fandom. I wanted to get this out before the start of the New Year but I was burning the candles at both ends so to speak finishing up all my other stories so I decided the best thing to do was to take a little break and recharge and get into a good place to start this one.
So this is based on 3x11-A Dead Kid, A Notebook And A Whole Lot Of Maybe's. I found this episode with Jay and Ethan incredibly moving and I know that even though they didn't show it Ethan got a card at the end of that episode, I genuinely think he was Jay's Nadia. So I decided to do my own tweak on it and put them both through the whumper again. And so we have 22 chapters based out of one episode. Yeah...here we go again.
Disclaimer-Nothing here is mine.
Please Read and Review.
I do not do private messages anymore. If you have a question then please stick it in a review and I will try to answer it in the next chapter notes.
I will try to update as soon as work allows me. Spelling and Grammar have never been my friends please keep that in mind too.
I do swear a lot in this chapter and in this story and so if you don't like that stop here. The usual pairings are the Season 3 pairings. Jay/Erin, Kim/Adam, Al/Meredith etc.
There will be TRIGGERS for child abuse in this story and in this chapter. Please consider that before you start reading.
Call It Paradise
AU in which Jay is the single father to a teen—Ethan James-EJ-Halstead. When his son is arrested as a suspect in a bomb threat it sets off a change of events and emotions that affect both father and son and may or may not help them both get a happy ending. Set Season 3. AU Erin/Jay, Kim/Adam.
Chapter 1-Blood The Boy
In which we meet Jay. A teenager and then later a man who is just trying to keep his head above water.
Teenage fatherhood was not in the plan. Okay so there was not much of a plan but he'd known that teenage fatherhood was not in it. Getting the hell away from Pat like Will had done was in it but teenage fatherhood was not in it.
The second however that Allie had told him she'd been adamant that she didn't want to keep the baby and he had been adamant that he wanted to. Her parents had been fantastic, had offered him a place to stay and all that but their daughter was understandably their priority and Jay didn't know how to not feel out of place in that house.
When Ethan had been born she had all put pushed him into his arms and then gone. Her parents had been very accommodating, had asked Jay for time but he'd taken his baby boy and been gone by then. Pat was so half drunk half the time that at fourteen he'd thought that he could do it all himself. He didn't need school in those first few months, Will was in New York and sending money when he could so they could keep the house and all he had to do was to keep his son away from his father.
Yeah. Jay was fourteen. He never said he was smart.
Ethan had been crying, a combination of something else and lack of food Jay thought when the crying started. He too had not ate in what felt like days. His Dad had slung him out onto the street and so he was sat on the path in the snow clutching his baby completely unsure of what the hell he was supposed to do now. He could march back up into that house but his Dad had threatened to bash his baby boy's head against the wall if he didn't shut up and he didn't know weather or not he was being truthful. When Pat got into one of his mean moods he didn't know what he was capable off.
So here he was freezing his ass of in January in Chicago shaking violently with no coat and a screaming baby and no clue what the hell he was going to do with his Dad smashing the house up behind him when the cop car showed up.
Cause you know.
Naturally.
Fuck Jay's life.
The cop car turns up and out comes the police. Jay is from Caneyville he has a dim opinion of the cops. Comes with the territory. So he doesn't move when he sees them both looking at him sat cold, broken and bleeding on the stone steps clutching his wailing son who looks so much like him with his tuft of dark hair and bright eyes wailing away while his father sat on the steps in some kind of numbed state that no doubt made him look stoned.
"Hi there" one of them said coming forwards. "You okay kid?"
Jay forced himself to look up and then as he did the full force of the light hit him and he looked down as Ethan started screaming again. He tried to push his son closer to his body but it didn't work. The warmth wasn't seeping through, the food wasn't there and Jay had utterly failed as a parent.
"What?" he managed finally when the other cop tutted and moved towards the house. First cop sat down next to him and it took all of Jay's hard earned battle ground won after round after round with Pat not to flinch.
"You cold kid?"
Jay shook his head but then the coat was on his shoulders and he shivered. The cop sat there looking down at Ethan as Jay pointlessly rocked him back and forth trying to get him to stop crying.
"Someone's not happy"
"He's hungry. I think. I can't get him to shut up. That's why I'm here"
There was another loud bang and a bottle being thrown against wood and Jay flinched.
"Ah"
"Yeah"
"You should go" he said finally through cold lips. "Your partner might need you"
"Ah if Al can't handle an abusive drunk by now then he deserves the knock to the head and he would be the first person to tell you that as well. My concern is you kid, your brother looks cold and hungry and I don't think either one of you are safe here—"
"Son" he said flatly turning for the first time to look at the cop. He had a shock of brownish hair and Jay looking at him saw that his eyes had a far away look as if Jay sat here with a baby in the cold both of them crying and one of them beaten black and bloody was nothing he hadn't seen before.
"You and your son aren't safe here. I think you know that."
Jay nodded.
"I know. I just…don't take him please I…I am trying I am I…I just…I thought there was money for food and then he started crying and I just…please don't take him!"
"I am not gonna take him."
"Please" he said wiping his eyes ashamed of his wailing. "It's all you guys do."
"Kid I do not take peoples children from them for kicks. I would like to take a look at him if I could make sure he's okay. Maybe get him to stop crying."
"He's hungry"
"I don't think that's why he's crying. I have a son about your age and he was a right bawler. Trust me I know a hungry cry when I hear one. I don't think that's why he's crying. I think he's picking up on your mood."
"He's six weeks old"
"Yeah and babies are a lot smarter than they look. Listen…kid—"
"Jay"
"Jay. I'm Hank by the way, look can I take a look at him, check that he's okay? I promise I'm not gonna take him. I am not gonna take him off you or anything like that. I just want to check him and then I'm gonna get you both someplace warm"
Jay didn't know what to say to that but he was so trusting in a world where trust was hard to come by and so he passed Ethan over to Hank.
"His name is Ethan"
"Ethan huh? Nice name. Well he's a looker too."
Gently he rocked Ethan back and forth and sure as he said it Ethan quietened down. Jay wiped his eyes on the back of his hand and then the truth of it came crashing down on him. The truth of it hit him so hard he nearly gagged with it.
"I'm a shit Dad" he said wiping his eyes. "I am a shit Dad I just—"
"Jay the guy in there is a shit Dad" Hank said casually. "Your just a fucked up kid"
Jay had never heard it said like that, put into so many words like that and it stunned him into silence. And actually to be honest he was quite sure that he was right.
"I don't know—"
"Jay have you got somewhere else. Ethan does he have a Mom?"
"Not one that's interested. Her parents…they might but…she was in school and I don't know if…I mean…I don't know weather or not I can crash there cause it's hard on her if she doesn't want him to see him…"
"Aha"
"I have a brother but he's in New York and I don't…" the door to his house opened and the other cop came in and looked at him and Hank sat on the steps and then.
"You know if you take home another stray Camille will be pissed"
"Please. For this I'd get a medal. Jay…you think these grandparents of your son's will wanna help?"
Jay shrugged. "They offered once" was all he said.
"Works for me. Get in the car kid—"
"Billy"
"Billy?"
"Bear's teddy bear"
"Give me a mo."
"See" Hank said as the other guy went back inside. "You're already doing well. Your making sure that he supports the right football team"
There was a pause and then Jay snorted. He was suddenly so tired that he pitched forwards and rested his head on the other man's shoulder who patted his own a bit awkwardly in the only display of comfort that he'd had in a long time.
"Listen" Hank said later that night passing him a card. "You call me if you need anything you understand. Anything. I'll pick up"
Jay nodded, pocketed the card, and thought no more of it.
To be fair Allie's parents had been shocked at the state of them. Allie had gone to stay with her Aunt for a bit in Maine and she'd graduated there and Jay had finally looking back managed to get a grip on his life. Neither one of them did anything for him—both were grandparents who let him be the parent but it was nice to have someone in his corner. Even when he moved out when Ethan was a healthy boy of six he still went round there every Sunday.
The one thing that never discussed was Ben. It was by mutual consent and though Ethan had asked a couple of times who the boy in the picture was it was always shushed and hushed. Lennie Rodiger was a dark shadow in the world that they never discussed though when his son reached Ben's age and the nightmares came back Jay decided to make it his personal mission to make the bastard pay.
(He had his own father to thank for that in the end)
Anyhow as time went by he forgot all about the card and the cop. Forgot about Hank Voight and the total helplessness he had felt. He graduated high school and did decide to be a cop but he had support for his chosen career. He thought that he had done a good job a great job even when Ethan at the age of thirteen had come to him shyly and told him that he was getting a swimming scholarship to Webster Country Day.
And that looking back was where it all went to shit.
He didn't realise it at first. He'd done six months undercover trying to work a bar angle with Molly's that place he'd heard about only when he'd heard they'd been the group of firefighters who had tried and ultimately failed to tame Hank Voight. He had remembered the name and remembered the man who had been unfailingly kind to him when nobody else was and he'd smirked into his beer when he had heard how it had failed. Sleeping with Gabriella Dawson had been part calculation, part pleasure and a good dose of revenge.
He couldn't help it.
Denny Woods was his CO and a bastard at that but somehow he and his son scrapped together a living. Maybe it was that sense of pride that made him unable to see what was right in front of him. Maybe it was his boss working him half to death under the table. Maybe he just didn't see it…maybe he had been right all those years ago when he had told the nicest cop he'd ever met that he was a shit parent.
But the next time he saw Hank Voight it was at the 27th Precinct where he had just been told that not only was there an active shooter at his son's school but a bomb.
And that his son was involved in it.
And that he'd had the crap kicked out of him to boot.
And that was the start of the worst day of the rest of Jay Halstead's life.
And so there you go, I hope you enjoy this first chapter and I will do my best to update as soon as I can.
Next Chapter-Hank doesn't really think much of the kid, but then he gets a call of a potential shooter at some private school and the past collides with the present starting off a chain reaction with one hell of an atmospheric ignition.