Title: Pretending
Author: Shu of the Wind
Rating: T (for CSI: New York-level violence, romance, and humor.)

Disclaimer (applies for all chapters): …if I ownedCSI: New York, I'd be tight with Jerry Bruckheimer, who also produced thePirates of the Caribbeanfranchise. And if I hung out with JB, that means I'd be all over Johnny Depp. Seeing as I'm not all over Johnny Depp…

Warning! OC.

Summary: Begins pre-Blink. Flack doesn't believe in psychology. At least, until he meets her. F/OC, Live!Aiden, eventual D/L, SMacky subtext.

1.1

If there's one thing I love about New York, it's the food stands.

The crepe is dripping with Nutella, and some of it lands on my fingers as I take it from the guy behind the counter, trying to work the money out of my wallet to pay him so that Angry Businessman behind me can order his strawberry-mango monstrosity. Down the road, I hear someone shouting about their knish; on the other side of the block I know that there's a pair of hot-dog stands battling it out as to who gets that side of 52nd Street. It's wonderful, and a huge difference from Tucson, where the only food you can buy on the street is a bad Sonoran hot dog or, if you're lucky, Polish sausages at the Tucson Meet Yourself festival.

But that's only once a year. Here, there are food stands everywhere, year-round. You can buy coffee on the street in the middle of the night if you have to.

It's the crepes I'm after, though. I give the crepe man a ten-dollar bill (smeared with Nutella) and let him dump the change in my purse. As I slide away, I can hear Angry Businessman begin an argument with the crepe seller. Apparently they're out of mangos.

"You're not actually eating that thing, are you?" Aiden looks disgusted as I lick the Nutella off my fingertips, like she can't imagine ingesting it. I scowl at her.

"I keep telling you to try it. You just have something against hazelnuts."

"I have something against nuts, sure," she says, with a raised-eyebrow look in my direction that makes me want to kick her. "You realize that you could probably just steal Simon's Ben and Jerry's out of the back of the freezer and get your kicks that way? It'd be easier. And probably more sanitary."

"I'm not taking Simon's ice cream. He'd kill me with his kicked puppy-dog eyes. You know that." The crepe melts in my mouth, just the way it's supposed to, and I swallow before continuing. "Besides, crepes are warm. That's the whole point."

Aiden rolls her eyes towards the sky, as if she's asking for guidance, and tucks her burrito into her purse, still wrapped. "Whatever."

I waggle my eyebrows at her before stepping off the curb, heading east. "Aw, come on. You know you want one."

"I said whatever,Bridge." She nudges my shoulder, laughing. "You can keep your insult to all foodstuffs, and I can promise you, I'm never gonna try and steal it from you."

"Your loss." I grin, and knock her back. It's been a long time since Aiden and I have been able to spend time together. I've missed her. Ever since she found her own apartment, she's been so wrapped up in work that she hasn't been able to visit her family, let alone spend time with her old college roommate. Since graduation, I've seen her a grand total of maybe five times. We email a lot, but still, it's not the same at all.

I've missed Aiden. We'd taken the same criminalistics course as sophomores, and afterwards she and her friends had effectively adopted me, all the way through school and into the force. Even after I'd swerved off of criminalistics and into psychology, we'd had too much in common to break the friendship. It had infuriated my parents, even more than my decision to head for CUNY instead of Harvard, but by that point I was beyond caring what they thought of me. I haven't spoken to them in months.

"How are the brats?" she asks, flipping off a taxicab that swerves too close to us for comfort. Aiden was born in Brooklyn, and feels more comfortable with that sort of thing than I do. Mostly I just swear under my breath and try not to scrape myself up too badly as I dodge. "You said you had a new kid showing up sometimes."

"Matt." An image of her looms in my mind's eye – only fourteen, but easily a head taller than I am, rail skinny, with tattoos up and down her arms and fresh needle tracks between her toes. She comes in on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when she isn't sleeping in an alley somewhere. "I think she's a runaway. I know she's an addict. She doesn't talk much, though. If I try to help her, she looks like she's gonna punch me."

"So you kick the crap out of her until she listens to you." She shrugs. "It's not that hard, Bridge."

"That's kinda illegal, but sure."

"Hey, I'd let you get away with it."

I scowl at her. "Funny."

It's Aiden's day off – no case – and I have time to kill, so we head for Central Park. What was it that one book said about the city? Basically, if you put a fence around New York City, you'd have the world's biggest nontraveling circus. Truer words. Even at two o'clock on a Monday, the park is stuffed full. We pass a group of kids in expensive school uniforms traipsing along the benches, laughing and shoving each other. Across the way, a fleet of joggers tromps down one of the paths. There's a woman dressed in a distinctly Victorian outfit, walking her Great Dane and posing for tourists with heavy cameras and I Heart New York T-shirts. Aiden snorts as we pass her; the woman snaps around, lifting her walking stick, but thinks better of it at the sight of Aiden's NYPD T-shirt. It makes me wish I hadn't moved back to Tucson for that year. TPD just…isn't as classy. It sounds like a brand of toilet paper.

"What is it with people putting big dogs in tiny apartments?" She cracks her knuckles, not threateningly, but out of habit. "It sucks."

"You don't know she has a tiny apartment." Of course, it's far more likely than a loft on Park Avenue, and we both know it. "At least it's better than walking a sewer rat." I shrug, and wipe my fingers clean on the napkin I snitched from the crepe stand. "I still think that thing was a rat, by the way."

"It was a hairless dog, so get over it." She drops down on the bench beside me, laces her fingers behind her head, and leans back, stretching her legs out over the path. A bicyclist swerves to avoid her, and she swears loudly. "Oi, watch it, loco!"

"I swear, if you keep picking up Spanish, people are gonna mistake you for a chica." I waggle my eyebrows. "Tu eres loca, no?"

"Girl, you're whiter than ice cream, so don't pull that on me." Aiden smirks, and then draws her legs under the bench again. "It's been so long since I just had a chance to sit and do nothing. You have no idea."

"You're the one who joined the NYPD right out of school." I crook my fingers. "Don't worry, Bridge, it's what I wanna do. And now you barely have time to go out for a drink after work, let alone spend time with friends."

"It's just…" She waves her hand. "It's New York, whaddaya expect? Lots of cases means little time for socializing. Besides, it's not like you can talk. You're always stuck with the kids."

"I live in the Safe House, Aiden. Of course I'm always stuck with the kids." We called it the Safe House, though there was probably some big, official title for it, because that was what we tried to make it – safe for the runaways and the kids that had no place else to go. The best way to describe it is a Big Brothers, Big Sisters, only it's more of an aid station than anything else. Since David's out of town, that leaves me and Simon, and Simon's a psychology intern from Colombia. We'd probably hire him if he wanted to join us after he graduates, but until then, he's an unpaid lackey.

"Don't worry, Aiden, it's what I want to do," she mimics, and grins. "Living in the house of eternal adolescence. You asked for it, anyway."

"Shut up."

By the time she gets a call from Danny – who, she tells me, is almost thirty, single, and very into redheads (I nudge her away from this train of thought) – it's nearly nine, and we've migrated to Tully's, a bar in Greenwich Village. It's pretty much a neighborhood secret; in the last six months, we've maybe had one newcomer show up, and they skedaddled right after they discovered that it's run by an ex-Mafioso. (Or so Connor claims; it might have just been a story to impress tourists.)

"Hey, so Flack's gonna pick me up –" I bob my head, as though I know who this person is, because Aiden looks so excited, "– and we're gonna head to that cop bar over on 42nd. You could come if you want?"

"Is it an option?"

"For once, yes." Aiden grins. "I mean, if you tell your kids that you spent the evening with a bunch of cops, it might make them less eager to graffiti the walls."

"Tempting." My phone buzzes, and I flip it open. Simon, asking where I am. I get the feeling he's a little frazzled; usually he doesn't text me if I'm out. "I'm gonna have to rain check though. I have to get back to the Safe House."

Before she can say much else – because I know if she had a chance to open her mouth, I'd be tagging along to the cop bar and probably never getting back to the Safe House tonight, which is definitely not a go – I collect my things and kiss her cheek. "I'll see you later, yeah?"

"It's my birthday next Friday. We're having a thing. You should come."

"I'll see if I can get away."

"I'll email you."

"Right," I say, and vanish out the door.

The Safe House is only a couple of blocks away from Tully's, and it's quiet when I finally unlock the back door and slide into the kitchen. Everyone's either in the game room or showering or asleep, though there's evidence on the table that Willow and Wilder are here; nobody else inhales all the cereal and leaves the boxes on the counter except the twins. Simon sticks his head in as I dump my purse on the counter, and lets out an anxious breath.

"Oh, thank God."

"Thank me for remembering to keep my phone on." I send him a smile that he doesn't return. "What's up? Anything wrong?"

"We have a parent in the waiting room."

I hiss. "Whose?"

"Minzy's." He pushes his glasses up his nose. "I've convinced them to stay there, thankfully, but Minzy should be back any minute and she comes through the front door."

"We can't legally keep them away from each other, Simon." Minzy's seventeen; she's not her own person yet. David and I each operate as advocates for the kids who come into the Safe House, but if the cops show up I don't know if we can stop her parents taking her away.

"I know." But he looks torn, and I can understand why. If her parents are looking for her, then it's finally clear – Minzy's a runaway. We've never been sure – she never talks about it – but it's the only explanation that makes sense. She showed up about a year ago looking for somewhere to sleep, and pretty much never left, working as a volunteer and basically cleaning up after the other kids. She's never explained why she appeared in the first place, but she also never talks about her parents; I thought she was mainly just keeping away from a family she might not want to stay near, but this…

This could be bad.

"Head Minzy off." I grab my nametag from the wall, settling the lanyard around my neck. "I'll talk to them, see what's going on."

Minzy's from Boston, and her accent has dulled after a couple of years of living in the city. Her mother and father, though, are still clearly from Southie. They both stand, the mother wringing her hands; her eyes are rimmed red. Oh, great.

It's the father who takes the lead though, stepping in front of his wife. He's about a foot taller than I am, and he's clearly aware that he could probably snap me over his knee if he tried. "You're the one in charge?"

"I'm Bridget Carter." I hold my hand out to him. The mother peeps at me around his shoulder. "I'm in charge until David gets back, yes."

I hear the back door slam. Simon's going around.

"Graham Lockyer." He doesn't shake my hand. Instead, he pulls a photograph from the envelope he's holding, and holds it out to me. It's a few years old, but it's definitely Minzy – minus the nose ring and the dyed hair, of course. "Have you seen this girl?"

"I've seen her around," I say, carefully. Legally, there's nothing I can do to keep Minzy away from her parents, or vice versa, but I'm not going to be definite about her living here, either. We're a 501(c)3, not a government institution; if he accuses us of harboring runaways, we could be in serious trouble. It's illegal, and it's in the manual we hand out to every kid who comes through here, explaining what the Safe House is, what we do, who we can help. It's a rulebook and a warning guide, and it means that runaways keep their mouths shut.

Sometimes that's a good thing. Sometimes it's not. The man in front of me – scrubbed, well shaven, his eyes flat as slate – might be from the latter. He looks nothing like Minzy, I think, looking at him. Minzy's mother is Korean, and a near-copy of her daughter; either Minzy doesn't take after her father, or they're not related. Personally, I'm leaning towards the latter.

His mouth tightens. "We need to see her."

I bite my tongue to keep myself from swearing. "Sir, this is a home for the teenage homeless. Kids come here when they have no other resources. Sometimes they just show up for a shower at the beginning of the week; sometimes they stay for a couple of days and then we never see them again. Your daughter may not even be here right now."

The woman flinches at the word daughter, as though she's been struck, and turns to stare at the wall. There's a photograph of the Safe House there, from when it was first founded twenty years ago; David was one of the first kids to stay here. It looks a lot older now. I eye her, and wonder why she's so quiet.

"Look, Ms…. Whoever you are." His eyes sweep me from top to toe. "If my stepdaughter is in this building, we're going to see her. If she's not, we'll wait until she comes back. But either way, you're not keeping us away from her."

He steps forward. I step in front of him, and wonder if I'll have to kick him. "Sir, I'm sorry. Beyond the lobby is a restricted area. Only the advocates and the kids are allowed past the front desk."

His mouth twists, and I see his fists clench. "You have no right –"

"If Minzy is staying here, in myfacility, I have every right to advocate for her." He meets my gaze, and his eyes narrow. "So I'm going to have to ask you to sit and wait while I check to see if she's here, and, if she is, whether or not she wants to talk to you."

He looks about ready to punch me. "If I have to call the police, I will."

"I can dial for you if you like."

Mr. Lockyer's ready to have an aneurysm. The back door shuts, and the stairs creak. Minzy's upstairs. I let myself relax a little, and step away from him, slanting my eyes at Mrs. Lockyer. Simon appears in the doorway.

"Simon's an intern here." He bobs his head, adjusting his glasses. "If you want anything, tea, coffee, he can get it for you while I talk to Minzy. But I can't guarantee she'll want to see you."

I turn away before he can argue, and vanish with Simon into the kitchen. He's almost green, and I fight the urge to give him a basin. Simon gets nervous easily, and even though I've seen him turn almost emerald multiple times since he became an intern six months ago, I've never seen him vomit. Thankfully.

"She knows," he says, before I ask. "She's locked herself in her room."

"Fabulous." I rub the end of my nose until my finger goes hot. Then I dive for the freezer. There's a box of cookies in there that I keep for emergency cravings, but right now, the familiarity might be the only thing that will get me in to talk to Minzy. "I'll go talk to her. Make them coffee or something. And make sure Francesca doesn't come in drunk and start flirting with Mr. Lockyer. That'd make everybody's night."

Simon takes a breath. "Right."

Minzy's room is the last one on the right. Since she's been here for so long, and stays so often – almost every day of the week – she usually leaves her door open during the night, in case some of the younger kids have questions or concerns that they don't want to take to me or David. Now, her door's locked; she has a drawing of an anime character taped to it. I knock.

"Minzy, it's me."

"Go away." It's almost silent, but the walls are paper thin; it sounds like her face is muffled in her pillow. Frankly, I'm surprised she's not packing her bags; maybe she already has a backpack with necessities ready to go for when her parents leave.

"Sweetie, you don't have to see them if you don't want to. I just wanna talk to you." I knock again. "I bring Girl Scout cookies."

There's a hiccup, as though she's stifling a laugh. Then the lock clicks, and I hide a smile. Thin Mints work every time.

She's touched up her dye job. It's a veritable explosion of color on her head; there's a streak of almost every color of the rainbow mixed in with her naturally black hair. There are three piercing in her right ear, four in her left, and a stud in her nose rather than the usual ring; you can see how skinny she us under the wife-beater and short-shorts that she usually sleeps in. Her eyes are almost as red as her mother's, and her mascara's all runny; she's been crying.

I hold up the cookies. "Peace offering?"

"It's not your fault," she says, but takes the box of cookies and lets me in.

I'm up until about two in the morning acting as liaison between Minzy and her parents, and by the time we're done, we've finished off the box of Thin Mints as well as the Tagalongs I had stashed in the very back of the pantry, behind the cans of cat food. Other than the freezer, it's the safest place to hide them: nobody ever touches the cat food except for me when I'm feeding the alley cat.

Minzy isn't going to meet with her parents until she's certain that they're not going to take her home, which basically means we're at an impasse. I offer multiple times to act as her advocate, and to call some of my friends (i.e. Aiden) who will see things her way and make sure they didn't take her out of the Safe House, but she just keeps shaking her head, hiding her shaking hands by closing them into fists and keeping her eyes fixed on the poster on the back of her door. Finally, I stop talking about it, and we end up chatting about bad daytime TV until she's calm enough to go to sleep and I can go downstairs and dismiss her parents until visiting hours tomorrow.

I have to report her as a runaway to the police, but for now, I won't. It's illegal, but at two in the morning, I don't really give a damn.

The look on Mr. Lockyer's face says that we haven't heard the end of this, but Mrs. Lockyer pulls him out the door before he can say anything. Simon's called them a taxi. I'm surprised he managed to find one so late, but at least I don't have to worry about Mr. and Mrs. Lockyer getting mugged on their way back to their hotel.

I send Simon home the next morning with strict instructions not to come back until he's caught up on sleep. He salutes me with a grin and vanishes in the direction of the subway, and I brew coffee. Simon may get to sleep, but I don't. I'm the only one on duty until David gets back – our volunteers have been dropping like flies.

Aiden finds me in the laundry room at about two in the afternoon, spinning the dryer over and over again in an attempt to get the lint off of my favorite shirt. The danger of living with teenagers is that you eventually start to dress like them; it's a band T-shirt from a concert I went to a couple of months ago, and it's turned into the best comfort shirt I could possibly find. The cloth's worn thin and soft from too many washings.

I don't bother asking how she managed to get by the front desk. I'm the one who's supposed to be staffing it, after all. "Aiden, hey."

"Hey." She sticks her thumbs through the belt loops of her jeans, trying to hide a frown. "You okay? You look whacked."

"Up late." I shrug, and pull my shirt out of the dryer, yanking it on over my tank top. "What's up?"

Thankfully she's come in plainclothes; I think if she'd shown up in one of her cop outfits, with the sharp creases and business coats and the badge attached to her waist, half the kids in the living room wouldn't have dared to come back. "We had a call about you this morning."

"Brilliant. I love it when parents complain." I fold a pair of my old jeans, which somehow keep finding their way into Minzy's closet, and set them in the laundry basket. "The Lockyers?"

She nods. "Look, when I heard it was about the Safe House, I told Captain Gerrard that I'd check it out. But there've been grumbles about this place for years, Bridge."

"Look, Aiden, I've checked the law. As long as those kids under my roof, I'm their appointed advocate." Minzy being a runaway changes things. Both Aiden and I know it. I shift gears. "Minzy's seventeen – if she doesn't want to see her parents, then she's old enough to be making her own decision about it. It's difficult for the court to force a kid who's old enough to be driving to see her family."

"You know I know that." Her voice is tight, and immediately I feel bad. Sometimes I forget that Aiden was in foster care for two years when she was a teenager. "I just think you could be a little less confrontational. That's all."

I bite my tongue, and hand her the end of a sheet. She takes it, and we fold it together. "Sorry. It just…Minzy's been here for a year. I trust her. If she doesn't want to see her parents, it's for a good reason."

"You want me to look into his record?"

The look in her eye is completely serious. I waver. "I'd appreciate it. Try Minzy's – Minette's – hospital records too. I know it's kind of a waste of time, but –"

"Hey, you'll owe me after this one." She grins. "And I already have a way for you to pay me back."

"Come to your birthday 'celebration' on Friday?" I crook my fingers, and toss the sheet into the basket as well. "If you try to pair me off with anybody, I'm out, okay? I don't have time to date right now."

"No. Well, yes. If you want. And you always have time to date."

"And how long have you been single, Aiden?"

She ignores me. "Actually, I've been trying to find a psychologist for a few days now. I don't know why I didn't think of you before. Guess I forgot you were trained."

"I'm not liking where this is going."

"Look, I wouldn't ask you, but everyone else we know has a full plate. I guess the Park Ave families pay more."

"How do you know I have time?"

"I know you have a little more time than, say," she waves a business card in my direction. "Dr. Yuri Makov, whose newest clients are of the anorexic supermodel variety."

"And plus you can probably get my work for free."

Aiden shrugs. "We'd pay you full price. This case is right up your alley, too. Besides, you keep saying you miss clinical psychology."

"I'm doing clinical psychology."

"No, you're babysitting a bunch of runaways and dealing with parents who should probably be either arrested or kicked in the ass. Or both."

I snap out another pair of jeans, not looking at her. Aiden sighs and sets her hip against the dryer, and I fight the urge to push the on button. "Look, Bridge, it'd be a huge favor. Just this one time, all right? For old times' sake."

"Hey, Bridget." It's Minzy, paused on the threshold, her eyes flicking from me to Aiden and back again, warily. It looks like she's just rolled out of bed; at least I know where my Tweety Bird pajama pants have gone. She holds out her arms. "I can help you take the laundry upstairs if you want?"

"So you can steal my shirts?"

She grins, but takes the laundry anyway and shuts the door behind her. Aiden shoots me a look.

"That her?"

I nod. Aiden worries her lip between her teeth, and then crosses her arms over her chest.

"Look. I can pull up the hospital records without a hitch. Shouldn't be too hard, I've already been assigned to check into it anyway. But it'd be a really huge help if you work this other case. I mean, it shouldn't take that long. And I remember how excited you used to get when you took that criminal psychology class. You were good." She reaches out, and touches my shoulder. "It's just one time, Bridge. Please."

"Fine." I grab the other laundry basket, and set it on my hip. "Fine. But this is the only time. Okay?"

"Only time." She raises a hand. "Promise."

Somehow, I don't think this is the last time we're going to be talking about this.

A/N.

6/8/2012: I'm going through the majority of the posted story (AKA chaps. 1-18) in order to make minor modifications and textual edits. No major changes will be made.

The hiatus will not last much longer. Please be patient! Thank you for everything thus far, and I hope you like Pretending.