Title: The New Guy
Author: ZombieJazz
Fandom: Law & Order: SVU
Disclaimer: I don't own them. Law and Order SVU and its characters belong to Dick Wolf. The characters of Zach Brady has been created and developed for the sake of this AU series.
Summary: The powers-that-be at One Police Plaza decide to bump Manhattan SVU up to six and get everyone paired off. It means a new face appears in the squad room - and causes some major adjustments for everyone, as the detectives work to establish new relationships in their evolving unit.
"Whatever you are eating stinks," Olivia spat across her desk at Brady. The deeply aromatic smell and the noise he was making while he was eating the meal was really starting to piss her off. He was disturbing her night-time space at the office – that she usually managed to get as a couple hours of quiet and alone time to do paperwork, if a case wasn't breaking.
He glanced up from his dinner. She wasn't even sure why he was still there – or what he was doing – besides stinking up the entire squad room with his food. They didn't have him working on anything that required his presence there after shift. But he was still sitting there – even though it was just her and Fin who were left in the squad at the moment. The night before she'd even left the station house before the kid had. What he was doing there at all hours of the night? She couldn't even begin to speculate.
"Sorry," he mumbled at her – but then put another forkful of the food into his mouth, apparently not much caring about her comment. Though, she wasn't sure what exactly she expected him to do about it at the moment anyways. Maybe note it and not ever bring that crap into the squad again. Or leave. That would be her ideal option.
"What the hell are you eating?" Fin inquired.
He glanced over that way now. "Ah … a shawarma plate."
"It smells nasty," Fin added.
Brady looked at him some more and then looked back at his food. "Really?"
"Really," Fin said sternly.
Brady shrugged. "Tastes good."
Olivia shook her head and rolled her eyes. The kid was weird. Nearly two weeks of being stuck with him and she didn't feel like she had anywhere near the kind of read she wanted on him yet. But it sounded like Cragen would be matching him up with Nick next week – so it'd be his turn to deal with the eccentricities. Though, she thought she'd still chip away at figuring out where exactly this kid had fallen from.
A young uniformed officer came into the squad and looked around – spotting her.
"Detective Benson?" he asked. "You're still here?"
She nodded. "Yeah."
"I was just going to leave this in your mailbox," he said but then handed her a thick envelope. "We got that case file pulled out of the archives for you. Are you going to want everything from the investigation pulled from storage?"
"Ah," she said and opened a drawer on her desk and shoved the envelope inside, shutting it quickly. She saw Brady watching her. She almost wished she'd been gone and that the uni had just left the envelope in her mailbox. The young detective sitting there at the moment wasn't going to make her background check on him as transparent as she wanted. "I don't know yet. I'll let you know after I look over the file."
The officer nodded and made his way back to the door.
She turned back to her work. But she could feel Brady still examining her – almost like he knew what had just been handed to her. She didn't even know what had been handed to her yet.
She didn't know anything about the case beyond the citation in the computer system. The database from the 90s was kind of dated and how the information had transferred to their upgraded system in 2010 was kind of incomplete. Corrections were being made manually as the archivists and technicians worked through one-by-one, more on a case-by-case basis.
All that had shown next to the Koltech case in the archive database was that it was a homicide. Though, there'd been an ellipsis, indicating that there had previously been more information and other charges listed in that field that weren't presently visible on the system. So that was all she knew at the moment – that it was a homicide, she assumed with a sexual component to it, since it was a SVU file. But she didn't really know yet – and she wouldn't until she got to look at the file.
She still had no idea what Yannowitz had directed her to it yet either. However, with how Brady was looking at her – and the source of her information being his former partner – she wasn't about to start browsing through it at the moment.
"You get something on a cold case?" Brady had asked after watching her for a few moments.
She glanced up at him and shook her head. "No," she said flatly.
"What'd you have pulled from storage?" he asked.
She looked up at him again. "Just a case file I want to look over."
"Oh yeah?" Zach said. "What case?"
"It's from a long time ago," she said sternly. "It's not pertinent to anything you're working on."
He looked at her some more. "Is it pertinent to anything you're working on?" he spat back just as harshly.
Her eyes snapped at him at that. "You better watch the tone you use with me, kid."
"Detective," he said.
"What?" Olivia glared at him.
"Don't call me a fucking kid," he said. "You want to call me Brady or Zach or any of your stupid nicknames – fine. But don't call me kid. I'm a detective here too."
"Hey," Fin barked from across from them – but Olivia didn't look. She kept a firm glare on the young man sitting across from her. It was a stare down and she wasn't about to be the first to break the eye contact.
"Why don't we call calm down?" Fin ordered.
Brady stood up though and slammed what was left of his dinner into the trash can closest to her desk – and then grabbed his jacket off the back of his chair and made for the door.
"Enjoy that case file," he called at her. "It's going to be some great bedtime reading."
She watched him leave. She could hear him galloping down the steps – clearly not wanting to wait for the elevator and determined to get out of there as quickly as possible.
"What's got his panties in a knot?" Fin asked her.
She shrugged. "Don't know," she said. "Rookies …"
She really didn't know. But based on his reaction, she definitely got the impression that Brady thought he knew what was in the file she'd just been handed – and it made her want to pull it out and look at it that much more.
What could piss the kid off that much? She hadn't seen much in the way of anger in the kid yet. He'd actually been almost too calm and even tempered most of the time – even when they'd been throwing some shit his way to see if they could get him riled, just to see how he'd deal with it. Clearly her having whatever information was in that envelope, though pissed him off. And it was something that his former partner thought she should look at?
She wanted to pull it out of her desk right then and start reading through it – determining how it was connected to the kid. But not in front of Fin. She stood from her desk and started to gather her things – taking the envelope out of her drawer and shoving it into her purse. Fin glanced up at her.
"I'm going to call it a night too," she said, "before the leftovers really stink up the place."
Fin snorted. "Yeah, no kidding. Night, Liv."
He hadn't seemed to much notice – or care – about the uni bringing her the folder. She thought that was a good thing for the moment – at least until she saw what was inside.
