What I Need- a Hank Voight Chicago PD fanfiction

Faint

"I may have been wrong about this one, Sergeant," Commander Crowley slid his badge across her desk towards where Voight stood, expressionless but it still felt smug, "But I'm not wrong about you."

Voight plucked the badge from the desk, clipped it next to his returned firearm on his belt.

"Anything else, Commander?" There was the barest of smiles on his lips, and Crowley's shoulders rolled back in mute frustration. "Good, cause I got work to do."

He crossed through the lobby, nodded to Platt who had just shooed away a couple of officers. She spared him a smile that bordered on the edge of self-satisfied before calling the uniforms back. She handed them the keys to a new cop car they had requested. She was feeling generous.

Voight took the stairs up to Intelligence. Stepped onto the floor of his unit. Ruzek was kicked back in his chair, tossing a wad of paper into the air, acting as a sounding board as Attwater rattled off theories on their latest case. Ruzek said something stupid and Attwater snatched the paper ball from mid-air.

"You could try not being useless," he muttered, catching sight of Voight a moment later. "Yo, welcome back, boss."

Erin looked up, hopping off of where she was perched on Jay's desk. "Hey, guess Crowley came to her senses, huh," she gave him a quick hug, "had me worried there for a second."

"Nah," Voight shook his head, smile holding a fondness he didn't often let in his workplace, "I knew you'd sort it out for me, kid."

She grinned, just cheeky enough as Antonio walked out of the breakroom.

"Hey, you're back," he looked more pleased than Voight had expected until he held out his hand, palm up, to Jay. "Pay up."

Jay's eyes widened with a good bit of horror before cussing Antonio out with a glance. Voight settled his arms over his chest, just watching.

"I thought it would take Crowley longer, is all," he muttered, fishing around in his wallet and dropping a bill into Antonio's palm. "Glad you're back."

"Uh-uh." Voight's face was firm, lip barely turned up at the corner, and Olinski pushed up from his seat.

"Shouldn't bet against the boss, kid," he handed Voight a ready cup of coffee, "Not when he can see anyway."

Voight chuckled, tipping the coffee to Olinsky in a quick thanks. "So," he surveyed the room, gaze fixing on where Lana stepped into view from the break room, leaning against the door frame with a warm look in her eye. "What do we got?"

Ruzek and Attwater ran him through what they working on for the commander, a series of carjackings with ties to a drug ring, and Voight shrugged.

"Alright, Erin, Jay, you work that with them. Rest of you," he glanced Olinsky's way, and Olinsky nodded.

"Kid's case, already on it." he waved Lana over to what he had been working on, as Jay and Erin focused on Attwater's desk. Voight walked through the sounds of shuffling papers and overlapping voices. It was the kind of energy this place held that filled the good moments here. Active but not desperate. Solid work that wasn't pressed against a ticking clock with someone's life on the line. They had seen too many of those.

Right here, it was simple police work. Some kids came up quick into a uniform and liked to talk about the action, the need to take someone down, hard and fast. Ruzek had a streak of that in him. But the satisfaction of a life saved, a bad man stopped on the streets of his city, they were the high moments that wouldn't survive without this. Without the diligent focus of his people, his team. What needed doing, they'd get it done, and Voight dropped into his chair with an absent smile, the kind barely there that you weren't even aware of. The kind that felt a little something like peace.