A/N. A short Casey-centric fic, which I've never done before, but, hey, there's gotta be a first time for everything. It's a bit rough around the edges, but what're you gonna do? Dedicated to my reviewers, especially the JA shippers who have been so patiently waiting for me to update It Takes Two and Vivification. Disclaimer: Not mine.
----------------------
There was this look that they used to give me.
You know the one. The one that said, "Girl, please. Dream on." And when I was a kid, that's exactly what I did. I dreamt, and I planned, and I accomplished. Veni, vidi, vici. It was so nice to see the flabbergasted looks on their faces when I blew them out of the water. Needless to say, I was not a well-liked child, but I did what I had to do to get ahead.
I graduated high school with high honors and went off to law school, which I finished at the top of my class. I graduated and was poised to shake the world of corporate crime and send those embezzling CEOs quaking in their leather Armani golfing loafers…
But Arthur Branch, that bastard of a southerner, pulled me back and dumped me in the SVU. I tried to tell him that I didn't want it (and that my name wasn't Cassandra. I even showed the man my birth certificate: I was born Casey Katherine Novack. Did that stop him from calling me that awful name? Don't think so). But he kept me there, held beneath his thumb only by the need to stay politic. If I'd wanted to play politics, I would have become a senator. God knows I could have done better than a few of them.
Nevertheless, I knew that if I balked, he would shoot down my career "faster than a duck dipped in marmalade on an afternoon in April." Whatever that means.
So I went to SVU, and I hated it. For the first time in my life, I was the underdog. It didn't help that I had followed in the footsteps of the Late Great Alexandra Cabot. Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler missed their ADA, which was understandable, and forgivable. What was neither understandable nor forgivable was the way they closed me out, kept me out of the look, and made snappish comments.
And for the first time in years, I'd gotten that look. The one that said, "Take a hike. You don't belong here. You can't cut it. You're playing with the big kids, now.
We'll break you."
Oh, and they tried. They tested me relentlessly, cut me off at every turn, and made me an outcast. I overcame their obstacle course, and earned a sort of grudging respect from them. We could look at each other now without glaring daggers into one another. But we sure as hell weren't friends. Not yet.
Friendship grew sometime into the second year. I visited them on stakeout at three in the morning in Alphabet City on an absolutely frigid night in February. I knew that their car's heat was busted and that the department was too cheap to spring for a new system. I knew that they had badly fitting doors that would let the cold air whistle in. I knew that they had been on stakeout for nearly four hours, and their shift was only half done, and I knew that they hadn't slept in three days, and that there would be no coffee runs because there were no coffee shops in that part of the slums.
I pulled up half a block down and walked the distance to their tailgate. I rapped on the passenger-side window sharply. Olivia slowly rolled down the glass, looking like Death herself. Wordlessly I held out a thermos of coffee and a box of cold tuna sandwiches. I passed in the extra blankets that I keep in my car in case I ever get stuck in the cold.
Olivia accepted them with something like a moan of thanks. Like a true police officer she went straight for the coffee. She unscrewed the thermos' top, letting the steam curl around her pale, drawn face. "Caffeine." She gave me a tired, lopsided smile. "I think I love you."
Elliot tore into a sandwich. His mouth full of food, he grinned.
"What?" I asked.
"You know, Casey," he remarked, "You're pretty okay."
It wasn't much, but somehow it was everything.
"You two're pretty okay yourselves. 'Night."
"Hey, Casey?" I turned when I heard Olivia's voice. "Thanks."
I nodded. "What're friends for?"
I walked back to my car with the trace of a smile on my lips. I'd won over the two toughest, bad ass sex-crimes in the One-Six.
Two down, six billion to go.
Bring on the world.