Work Text:
AU based on Season 1 episode Tagger
Holt: What kind of father would care so little about his son that he allows him to get into trouble without repercussions?
SUBTEXT: Holt views Jake as his son, and Jake is continually acting out /
has his life in some not-inconsiderable disorder as a young man.
He is a brilliant and gifted detective - but he "acts out" in order to push the boundaries of authority, because he's testing authority, having been abandoned by his father.
It's in his nature to rebel against authority.
[Fear he's worthless, causes him to self-sabotage so authority/parental figures WILL abandon him - and he can explain to himself that HE was the problem, HE was why his father left]
////
DIFFERENT OUTCOME TO SEASON 1
+
ADD WOLF "daemon" to this AU.
>Every member of the squad has a wolf daemon.
>Instead of Holt and Jake coming into synch,
some NOTABLE CASE happens,
where Jake's seemingly reckless actions cause a huge problem.
>In reality, it wasn't Jake's actions, it was something else, a criminal,
and yet Jake is unable to prove this,
doesn't know the specifics of what went wrong,
and so though he tries to protest his innocence,
this horrible thing still happened,
and Holt thinks Jake is responsible.
(In reality, Jake was heroic in this case, and his actions saved [person's] life)
>Holt gives Jake the mother of all dressing downs in his office,
his voice so loud, every cop in the bull pen can hear him ripping into Jake.
Jake tries repeatedly to explain his side,
that he didn't do as it seems he did - but Holt just thinks Jake is lying.
Later
>Jake gets suspended and WOULD have lost his detective rank,
been busted back down to beat cop -
but Holt stands in front of Jake and takes the hit with the superiors.
>The day this happens, after it happens,
as Jake and Holt are leaving the hearing,
both dressed formally - Jake hurries after Holt who is striding out the law building.
Jake "Sir! Captain Holt - "
Jogging after him.
Holt stops.
Jake "Sir. Look, I know you think I (did x) - I just...I really appreciate what you did for me in there. Being a detective, it's been my dream, I don't know what I'd do - "
Holt cuts him off.
"I didn't do it for you."
Etc. Holt rips into Jake.
Only reason he stepped in front of him is because HOLT failed.
As pack leader, Holt should have had a much firmer hand with Jake from the beginning.
Jake, trying to cut in, to protest, but Holt silences him with a snarl.
"You listen to me." "If it was up to me, you wouldn't be a detective. You have ability. But you're utterly reckless (spelling out Jake's major flaws)." Looks Jake up and down. "You're not fit to wear that uniform."
But Holt for (reasons) doesn't want Jake busted down to beat cop,
Holt has to keep Jake in his department,
but effectively with this conversation,
Holt makes it abundantly clear that he thinks Jake is unworthy to wear the badge -
and Jake internalises it,
that he will never win Holt over.
He will never be able to be good enough for Holt.
(Just like Jake feels about father figure in his past - he wasn't enough for the man to stay)
Holt walks away from a silent Jake, without another word.
TIME SKIP
We skip ahead two/three years, and a male NEWBIE detective has just joined the department,
to replace (old hand).
We get a run down of the morning routine,
from NEWBIE's eyes, as Newbie is kind of overwhelmed by the smoothly-oiled machine that is the bull pen.
Newbie gets introduced at the meeting place.
Terry assigns Jake to Newbie. Jake, arms folded, rolls his eyes,
but then sits forward with a sigh, slapping his hand on his thighs, before pushing to his feet. Takes the kid under his wind, showing him around.
Later
Newbie quickly, predictably, loves Jake.
It's clear to the reader though that Jake has developed a dependence on alcohol he didn't have before. Newbie taking note of the empties in Jake's car when they ride together working the case.
Even with his body blunted and weakened with his alcohol use, Jake's mind remains razor sharp.
Wolf - Jake has an enviable easy way about him, and his wolf, x, is gorgeous and she nips Newbie's wolf x by the scruff from early on, pulling him along, friendly and easy.
Newbie, who feels so awkward much of the time socially, envies how easy Jake is, how likeable. Even if some people on the squad show him disrespect.
Later
Newbie witnesses the frosty atmosphere between Jake and Holt.
Some reference to his drinking Holt makes, and Jake just makes a joke of it.
Low-key, Amy judging Jake, and pitying him. He was such a promising detective, and now he's a lush, and a precinct cautionary tale.
Later
Newbie makes a decision that ends up in some difficulty. Not major, but Holt doesn't like it.
Post-case, Jake and Newbie in front of Holt's desk.
Jake steps in front of Newbie to take the brunt of Holt's rebuke over something Newbie did.
When Newbie tries to speak, Holt barks (scary) sending him out the office, door slams shut, and inside it's just Jake and Holt, Holt's raised voice.
After, Newbie to Jake,
"You didn't have to do that, Jake. I didn't want you taking the hit for me - "
"Kid, just trust me. There's no love lost between me and the captain." "I'm not his favourite person."
Newbie, in a more informal moment with Jake,
"About the captain...and you." "What happened?"
Jake, looking ahead, hand resting casually on the steering wheel, a slight smile still on his lips, his gaze in the middle-distance of the slow-moving traffic, he seems philosophical, quiet, like he's come to terms with it (he hasn't).
Gives the kid a vague answer, turns into a joke, and just like that Peralta has Newbie smiling and distracted.
Peralta is great at making learning on the job a lot of fun, challenging Newbie.
(Wolf AU - in back seat, their wolves lounge together)
Ahead - as weeks go by,
Newbie sees Jake in action, solving cases. Interrogations. Noticing how much Jake weaves his work AROUND Holt, out of sight of Holt, under the radar, to attract little attention in the flashy moments of brilliance.
He's hero-worshipping Jake by now, and the rest of the squad know it.
"Peralta. Take your puppy and go x." Diaz
Captain Holt is not unaware of this development, and makes efforts to give Newbie some different influences at the station.
One time when this happens blatently, it rankles Jake, who sees why Holt is doing it - the Captain doesn't want Jake screwing up a bright kid like Newbie, turning out a fuck up like him.
Captain even makes a cutting comment to Jake during one clash - "Newbie has a promising career. Don't drag him down."
Jake, stood there absorbing this, striving to not show his reaction, his jaw clenched tight as Captain walks away. Newbie, eavesdropping, sees how tense (Jake's daemon) is.
Jake turns slowly back to (his work) at desk.
////
Newbie goes to Jake, who Holt has sent punitively to the filing room. Demeaning, brain-dead work for a mind like Jake's.
Jake, clearly still stung over Holt, but he does a good job smoothing it over for the kid.
Newbie keeps seeing how frosty Holt is with Jake,
and Newbie doesn't understand - Jake is the best detective in the squad.
He's gifted. It's thrilling to be around Jake when he's working a case - his mind works so intuitively, his fascination with case details is infectious, makes everyone around him jump in with both feet.
But the Captain doesn't like him. Of course there's a personality clash - Holt, so assiduous and tidy, Peralta comparatively messy and chaotic - with a streak of utter brilliance.
But Holt differs in style with many of his detectives - that's natural, that's what Newbie learned to expect in his "pack training" class at the academy. Of course pack detectives had different personalities. And Holt accepted the differences of the others. It seemed impossible a just, fair man like Holt couldn't see that Jake's methods, while clashing with Holt's temperament - got results.
////
[can place this earlier]
Newbie, after a week or so,
asks Diaz:
"Um, Diaz?" On stake out.
Dangerous look from Diaz, but she doesn't say to shut up.
"So...what's the deal with Peralta and the Captain?"
The mood sharpens.
She gruffly shuts Newbie down, warning to keep his nose out of things above his rank. Stay focused on the case.
/////
Later
Squad holiday weekend
Nighttime, the detectives have been sat round a fire, bonding.
Newbie asks Amy what happened in the past between Jake and Holt.
(Jake is temporarily elsewhere)
The thing between Holt and Jake comes up obliquely.
Newbie, taking his chances, asks Santiago what it's all about.
Amy, slowly, reluctantly, starts explaining what happened those three years back.
The rest of the pack, sat round the fire, there's the feeling for telling stories. Everyone staring into the fire as Amy recounts the CASE that went so horribly wrong.
Newbie, listening, utterly rapt.
Newbie, shocked as the story comes to the Horrible Thing.
"Jake x?"
"No." "I mean. We don't know. Only Jake knows what really happened that day."
Amy and the squad all looking sad, [META for Amy, because her career has come along, while Jake's took a hairpin turn that day - we get the texture on this during Jake and Amy's fight, nb maybe that fight should happen IN FRONT OF the Newbie, making it extra impactful, because he's never seen under Jake's careless facade, to where he's really pissed and hurting, until that with Amy]
/////
Newbie, looking at Jake anew.
On duty, him and Jake, kid's riding shotgun. Stealing looks at Jake.
Jake, finally, smiling "What?"
Newbie wants to tell Jake he found out about x Case, and question Jake about it more - but he finds he doesn't have the guts. If Jake really did make such a big mistake, it dents Newbie's image of him slightly, yet in another way, the genius of Peralta as a detective, his streak of rebelliousness, butting heads with the captain - it would make sense Peralta made that sort of mistake, screwed his career.
/////
Later, we cut from the kid.
A case crops up which has uncanny similarities to the Bad One that Jake caught. Jake's case. The one that ruined him.
Jake thinks he's working the case, only to find he's been taken off it. Amy's got the case.
Jake rows with Amy - until Amy has to reveal to Jake that she didn't ask for the case - Holt gave her an order.
Jake storms into the captain's office. Holt orders him out - he's interrupting. Jake demands to know why Holt took him off the case.
Holt bawls Jake out - says yes, he's off the case, because he's [all the reasons Holt no longer trusts Peralta relating to that case].
Holt dismisses Jake ("Or I'll have you up on insubordination.")
Jake storms out.
Putting on a front, like he's fine, to Newbie who heard it all, sat near Jake's desk "C'mon, Newbie. Our work here is done."
Amy "Where are you going?"
"For a drink."
CUT TO: Jake and Newbie at the bar. Newbie drinking tentatively - while Jake can handle his liquor. Jake is in fact getting progressively more shit-faced. He has an outward seeming like he's in a cheerful, careless mood. His defense mechanism. He's coping by drinking.
He gets up and gets Newbie doing x - and even Newbie is sort of convinced by Jake's happy-go-lucky seeming almost manic "up" mood.
This is completely destroyed by Amy's arrival - she lays into Jake "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
Jake, careless still.
The argument climbs - Newbie knowing this is something he shouldn't be seeing. He's never seen Jake like this before.
[ JAKE'S inner thoughts he's trying to block out: He knows his career is going nowhere, because he's screwed up his life. Just like his dad knew he would. Amy finds him there and tries to talk to him. ]
"Just gloat and enjoy it. Revel in it. We both know this is what you always wanted."
"What are you talking about?" "You think I'm enjoying this?"
[Meta: truthfully, Amy can't be happy unless Jake is thriving just like her, as her equal - she's honestly laying into him here at the bar, she came down here, because she's his FRIEND and she's trying to put the breaks on him destroying his career any further. She's sacrificed stuff to pull him back from the brink, even - but he's so pig-headed in his drinking and spiral, he can't even recognise who his friends are]
Later - Amy stung by Jake's insult, she snaps back with something really personal
"You had every chance of becoming the best detective in the precinct, you would have made x by now. You caught a bad one. Okay. If you'd just come clean about what happened - "
that pushes Jake's button
Jake rounds on her with a laugh. "So you finally said it!" "You never did say if you actually thought I'd done it. Thank you!" Laugh.
"Holt always said - if you just CAME FORWARD about what really happened that night." "You belong [advancing] with me, Jake. We were always neck and neck. It's not right."
"What's not right?" Jake, with a smirk
"You're trying to treat this like a joke. You used to care about your career. You're so talented - you're just throwing it all away! The Captain's not unreasonable. He'd listen, even after all these years - "
(Because that old cold case is cooking again, it's stirred it all up, and made it seem like Jake knows more than he's said)
Jake, because he's drunk, getting too hot in reaction, and the bouncer comes over to tell him to get out or he'll throw Jake out.
Jake "Don't worry about it. I'm leaving." Slaps money down on the bar.
Amy after Jake, "Don't dump your issues onto me, Jake."
"No, thank you for removing any doubt." "Don't feel guilty about advancing, okay, Amy? You deserve it. I mean that."
Jake walks away.
///////
SOMEthing like
>The disaster case involved a cop killer.
>Cop killer is back.
>Captain ordered Jake to leave the case alone (during pre-bar office row). Jake can't keep away, and makes vital discovery. He goes to x place alone - and that's where the cop killer swoops on him.
>Jake is captured, his daemon is chained. Has jake in a cell / basement with smooth concrete walls - a torture room. And cuffs Jake to the pipe. Leaves him.
>Jake figured out the cop killer was another cop. He left a crucial clue at the scene where he was taken, for the squad to find. Jake's brilliance as a detective.
>Nine-nine realise Jake has gone missing. Newbie raises the alarm, because he went to Jake's place to try check up on him, and found note Jake left (Jake with prescience that things might go wrong).
>Newbie also put together evidence (being a bright kid after Jake's own heart) that was missing piece that corroborated Jake's account of the events of 2 years ago (e.g. a video tape believed missing, that kid uncovered, that shows on screen, Jake did as he said in his statement)
>Kid takes tape into Captain's office. Captain watching the tape in silence.
>Entire department has swung into action - hoping Jake hasn't been killed and dumped already. Amy not allowing herself to think about that possibility.
>Holt now sees the whole picture, from three years ago. He sees the missing piece that exonerates Jake, and the reason why Jake had kept a particular secret for another person, out of honor (to protect another cop).
It is dawning on Holt, the gravity of the mistake he made three years ago, when he misjudged Jake.
>The squad gather information, an efficient pack working in tandem to bring one of their own home.
Holt cracks the case. He finds the building. SWAT.
>Holt charges down the steps. Jake is slumped limp, cuffed to the pipe, and x (wolf) in wolf-restraint chain on the floor, incapacitated. Holt and other officers are disgusted, that the perp did this, because touching or restraining another person's wolf is taboo.
>Jake has been hit by the killer. He's got blood on his head, dehydrated, but otherwise okay. (Can make it he's been drugged, or not, depends what you want - I like idea of saving out-of-it-Jake for later, with Holt, when Holt touches his wolf in office)
>Jake comes to, and Holt, now with a heart thoroughly melted for this gifted detective, cradles Jake's head.
Holt uses pack touches on Jake, and Jake is putty in his hands. Jake thinks he must be hallucinating this.
Holt, with alpha command, asks Jake a few details of the old cold case in an undertone, as they wait for the bolt cutters on the cuffs.
Jake answers Holt's questions, one after another, thick-tongued, his wolf revelling in his alpha's attention, as Holt's alpha wolf seeks to keep Jake's wolf calm while they wait.
Holt gets through the commanded questions.
Jake, in a daze, amazed at getting commands again from Holt - the man never gave Jake pack commands since that case went bad, as Holt had stopped viewing Jake as pack.
Jake never stopped seeing Holt as his alpha - as Holt sees now.
Holt's wolf crouching protectively over Jake's, as only an alpha wolf would do to his pack member.
Jake is sure this is a hallucination, a brain flicker right as he dies - it is bliss to feel Holt view him as his pack.
Holt hushes Jake.
So starved for his alpha's positive touch, Holt can see - it wrends Holt's heart. This has been Holt's terrible error. How catastrophically he'd misread his own detective. How young Jake's face is as he gazes up unguardedly at Holt.
"I don't mind dying now."
"Shh. Peralta."
Then they've got Jake free. To the hospital. Holt wants more than anything to remain close - but the case demands he make a press briefing, etc., so much work.
//////
NEXT COUPLE DAYS
Pass in a blur. Holt working.
>Back at the precinct.
Holt manages some sleep. Comes into the precinct.
Later the same day, Terry and Jake come in. Jake gets an ovation from the bull pen. Holt, watching as the pack greet Jake. Amy, hugging Jake, with a word about her regret over not believing him.
Holt, from doorway of his office, calls Jake. The Newbie looks up, watching.
Jake, embarrassed as he comes into Holt's office, no idea how to be, his guard still up, because he's got wobbly memories of what happened in that basement, and it could have been a dream,
he could still be met with the Holt of the past three years, a coldness,
his pack status still in question - a Holt who doesn't want him.
Holt can read this last fear in Jake's eyes, after asking Jake how he's feeling, getting through the surface stuff.