Hi, so even though I shouldn't be starting a new story but I am so...yeah...
This is based of the Season 10 Episode Bone To Pick which has a subplot of Frank dealing with a staff member having an affair with another's wife. I had a REAL problem with this episode mainly because while I don't condone cheating Frank's main plan was to break up the affair because as he put it the husband was so good at his job that he couldn't take anything bad happening in his life. Like seriously?! So this little plot was born about what if it was Eddie who was having the affair with Jamie and she was planning to leave her 'super important' husband. It really did get me how Frank felt he was justified meddling in the marriage because the husband was good at his job and so that made it all alright to speak to the woman or get Baker to speak to the woman and ask her to stay with her husband even though he had no idea what was going on behind closed doors.
So yeah-slight rant over but that's just where I am.
Disclaimer-Nothing here is mine
Please Read and Review.
This is going to be about eleven chapters.
The Edge Of Reason
Chapter 2-Suspicious Minds
Frank didn't know what he had been expecting when Baker and Sid had come back from their assignment. But he was not expecting this.
Frank didn't know what he had been expecting when Baker and Sid had come back from their assignment. But he was not expecting this.
Even Garrett had been stunned as they had stared at the photo of his son, of his youngest baby boy staggering out of a hotel room with the married wife of the arguably most indispensable chief that he had. Nobody could do what John did other than John. And he spoke enough about how having a happy home kept him going, happy wife, happy life and all that shit and now there was Jamie in the middle of it sleeping with a happily married woman and putting at risk the entire city that he served.
Coupled with the fact that it was…well…Jamie. Frank didn't like to think any of his kids capable of this but Jamie even less. Jamie who had always been the boy scout of the family, the good one. Danny…he might have believed. Joe he would have believed…but Jamie?
"Well" Garrett said with an air of breaking the tension "This is awkward"
Sid snorted but kept silent. Baker kept her eyes on him with a flat expression that he translated to we are not amused.
"Boss…you gonna speak to Jamie?"
Yes he damn well was going to speak to Jamie…once he knew what he was going to say.
"Has…has any of this happened…I mean is this a one off?"
"No" Baker said quietly. "And it didn't happen on the job, Jamie was off duty and he put in leave for two weeks too. Technically as far as the department are concerned he hasn't done anything wrong"
Frank shot her a look but she stared him right down in that way she did when she invertedly answered his next question.
He dithered for a second and then.
"Oh"
"Look Boss…I am not an expert in this but they looked…genuinely quite in love with each other"
"She is married Sid"
"Wedding rings come off" Garrett muttered. They all turned to look at him and he rolled his eyes. "Trust me" he said into the silence. "I know better than anyone else in this room that they come off"
He leaned back on his chair. He had dealt with many a crisis as a father but he had never quite had to deal with something like this.
"I need to speak to him." He said more to himself but Baker's sharp eyes were on him,
"What are you going to say?"
"I am going to tell him to end it"
"Oh yeah cause that will do it" Garrett said suddenly. "Nothing like your Dad telling you to do something to encourage someone to do the opposite. Leave it well alone Frank—"
"I can't."
"Why?"
But this time it was Sid that answered for him.
"John is the only one who can do what he does, he runs through more counter terrorism scenarios than anyone else in the department and he has the most experience. He's foiled six major plots and those are just the ones that made it to this office and he has a working relationship with all of the Chiefs of Intelligence all over the world and beyond. Garrett without him we are totally in the dark when it comes to Intelligence sharing."
"There are others who can do the job" Garrett pointed out not unreasonably.
"But they work for Mossad or MI6" Frank pointed out. "Believe me I had this conversation when he wanted to retire a couple of years ago. I need him for as long as he can do the job and if he misses something due to this catastrophe could follow"
Carefully none of them looked out the window where once two towers had stood and the old world that had ended when that first plane had crashed into them leaving them with a scary new future none of them had signed up for.
"Okay" Garrett said with the air of adding one plus one equals two. "So what are you going to do? As Baker said it's not like they were doing this on Department time—"
"You could write them up for conduct unbecoming—Abigail don't look at me like that!" Sid said catching the furious glare from the woman sitting next to him. "Its just a fact that he can do that I didn't say he should"
"You can't write them up for conduct unbecoming"
"Why not?"
She looked at him with that expression that said he had just stepped in dog muck.
"Because this is the 21st century not the 15th" she said coldly. "You cannot write them up because you would have to write half of your department up besides…the press would make a song and dance of it all the way to lunch and back"
"She has a point" Garrett muttered eyes closed as if he could see the headlines now.
Frank sighed.
"I'll talk to him"
Baker dithered as if she was thinking on saying something
"What?"
"How do you know he's not doing the same?" she asked quietly. "Birch is a funny man I never…" she shook her head and then changed tact like a bullet going through the air. "How do you know that he doesn't have a girl in a hotel on his own, how do you know that maybe she isn't filing for divorce, have you considered that maybe they might be in love. Because quite frankly boss they sure as hell looked like it"
Frank paused his nails dusting the top of his desk. He didn't…he didn't want to think about that, he didn't want to think about Jamie being in love with another man's wife. It was not that he was against divorce because there was Erin but the truth was he was old school and Catholic in the regards that you stood there and you meant the vows that you said. He had never looked at another woman when his wife had been around and even now he could barely do it. To think that one of his children was taking the sacraments of marriage and playing around with it as if it was sand in the sandbox was deeply painful. Not to mention the fact that ultimately they needed John to be good at what he did. And if his wife staying with him was what kept him from preventing the next 9/11 then sorry he was going to do what he had to do.
Jamie would just have to understand.
That being said he was also not naïve enough to go meddling in another man's marriage without hard evidence. They had proof of the affair but it would be nice to know that John was blameless before he went and had this confirmation with his son that was ultimately going to be ugly, horrendous as hell and more than likely going to involve a lot of scotch.
"Can you…can you find out?" he asked Baker who shot him a look that made him feel rather like an idiot. "Woman to woman?" he amended and the look she shot him then was even worse.
"No" she said flatly. "I don't have the relationship with her that would make it look like anything other than what it was. And I am not going to pressure a woman to stay in a marriage if that marriage is failing because it makes the man's job better. Not unless you order me too and I can assure you, you don't want to give me that order"
There it was.
Black and white.
Sid shrugged but his lack of offering meant that he too found it deeply uncomfortable. Garrett didn't even try.
"Alright" he said quietly. "I will speak to Jamie."
"And do what boss?"
"Get this to end now."
"And if he says no?" Garrett said quietly.
"He won't"
He was still looking at the photographs of his son and another man's wife and therefore he missed the three looks of deep scepticism that the three members of his team shared with each other over his head.
"Wow" his father said over the phone.
"Yeah"
"I mean…wow"
"Pops you got anything else to say?"
"Forgive me but when you picked up the phone I thought that you were going to say you were late for dinner not that my grandson was committing adultery with one of your chief's wives."
Frank sighed.
"Yeah I guess" he said finally. "I just…I just didn't think it was going to be this…what are you going to do?"
"I am outside his apartment now"
"Aha…and what are you going to do?"
"I don't know…tell him to stop I think"
"You think?"
"Pops it's not like it's everyday that one of my kids has an extramarital affair! It's not like I've done this before."
There was a pause and then…
"Are you sure that everything is perfect in the marriage?"
"Does it matter?"
"Francis—"
"Pops I am not asking that she stay with him if she doesn't want to"
"Sounds like you are"
"I just want my son to not be caught in the middle of this. and if she wants to divorce her husband…"
"You don't want her to"
"No of course I don't! John is good when he has his wife by his side he said as much and he ties his happiness to a happy home life and there is nobody who can do that job better than he can. And then there is this…I mean…an affair would be bad enough but it's with a cop and then that cop is my son! And…he's never mentioned anything, never mentioned this woman before, never really mentioned any woman before—not since Sidney and now he's what? Having an affair with a married woman! I didn't raise him to do that, Mary didn't raise him to do that"
There was a pause as his father took that in his stride.
"And if they are really in love?"
"Then there are better ways to do it. Look Pops I would rather this woman stay with her husband and yes it makes my life easier if she does I wont deny that! But the truth is that if this marriage has to end I want it to be because they have agreed to it and not because John comes home and finds his bosses son in his wife's bed"
His Pa hummed.
"Well I don't disagree with you" he said finally. "I would rather not have Jamie caught up with this but don't do anything that you'll regret. After all, mortal sin or not, he is your son"
And then he had hung up his phone before Frank had rolled his eyes heavenwards.
He was really getting to old for this.
He knocked on the door and Jamie opened it. He was in jeans and a jumper and his smile was readily on his face. It didn't change when he saw his father but Frank saw the light in his eyes shift a little and wondered if he had been expecting someone else tonight.
"I didn't know you were coming" he said finally.
"Evidently. May I come in?"
"Sure"
"You don't have company coming over?"
"No I didn't" he said and then he went to the counter. "Look if this is about those days that I took off I thought that you didn't look into that—"
"I don't. This is not about that"
"Oh" Jamie said reaching for a clean glass. "You want a drink?"
"I want to know what the hell you are doing?"
Yeah…looking back that was not the way he wanted to have this conversation but that was where he was going.
Jamie turned to look at him with an odd expression and then he smiled. This time the smile was tight like his son gearing himself up to a fault. He knew what was coming Frank realised. He knew…he knew what was coming.
Jesus Christ.
And suddenly he was furious. He didn't know what had set it off but he knew that it was coming and he reached for the photograph and threw it at his son over the kitchen island as Jaimie as cool as you could be poured himself a glass of wine.
Frank didn't even know he drank wine.
Right now he didn't know if he knew Jamie at all.
Jamie looked down at the photograph and took a sip of wine and then put the glass down on the island.
"Yeah" he said and when he looked up at his father his face was shockingly cool.
"I guess we have a lot to talk about"
And there you go, see you soon,
Next Chapter-Jamie and Frank have it out. It is not a good conversation.