#and it made me laugh thinkin about how my high school self would react to that

[lylahammar]

While a lotta pipelines are dangerous and bad, the “ew furries are cringe and gross” → “I’m not a furry myself but I support them <3” → “I am a furry” pipeline is a beautiful thing full of love

[lovemesomerafael]

It’s Complicated                    Chapter 1:  Don’t Get Me Started

Source:  @repls

How does “Hate at first sight” become “Where have you been all my life?”

Rafael Barba did not make a good first impression on Francisca Rojas.  At all.  In fact, she found him to be an insufferable ass and hoped never to have to work with him. Unfortunately, given her new job, that was not going to happen.  Well, she was an adult, and a Forensic Psychiatrist, and realistic enough to have known that she wouldn’t like everyone she met at NYPD.  She could deal with Barba.  Frankie wondered whether her friend George Huang had ever met him.  If he had, it seemed like he should have warned her when she told him she had accepted his former position with NYPD.  

Mark Stephens was not their rapist.  Barba wanted him to be.  Frankie could understand wanting the guy they had in custody to be the doer, but he wasn’t, and Barba was just going to have to deal with that.  She wasn’t particularly impressed with a Prosecutor who wanted to take the easy way out.  A guy as arrogant as Barba needed to be able to back it up and, so far, Barba was looking like he might be all hat, no cattle.  

Francisca Rojas made an even worse impression on Barba.  He had been a Prosecutor for over twenty years.  A bunch of fancy diplomas and an FBI pedigree didn’t hold a candle to that kind of experience.  He knew what the hell he was doing.  She clearly didn’t.  Yet there she’d been, parading her ignorance before the entire squad, telling them that Stephens wasn’t the rapist because he didn’t fit her profile.  In what universe was that evidence?  

Olivia Benson was concerned. The Forensic Psychiatrist and the A.D.A. assigned to SVU needed to have a good working relationship.  She couldn’t have them disagreeing on something as basic as whether their prime suspect was the one.  She sure as hell couldn’t have them at eachother’s throats.  Liv kind of had to side with Barba on this one – Stephens was caught on the scene of the latest rape, and he had scratches on his face consistent with the size of the victim’s hands.  Even he admitted that the tests were going to show that it was his DNA under her fingernails.  A profile was only good to let them know who to look for – it was useless once they’d found the skel who did the crime.  Was their new Forensic Psychiatrist so conceited that she couldn’t admit she was wrong in the face of the evidence?  This could be bad.  

“Hey, Doc,” the tall, gangly, ridiculously pretty detective called to Frankie.  What was his name again?  Something Italian.  He caught up to her at the entrance to the stairs.  “Hey, um…  I’m interested in your thoughts about Stephens.”

Frankie took a few seconds to breathe.  She strongly suspected that the correct translation was, “I’m about to call bullshit on your theory.”

“What is it you want to know, uh… Detective?”

“Carisi.  Call me Sonny.”

“Detective Carisi. Sonny.”

“Well, you seem pretty, um, sure that Stephens isn’t our guy.  And Barba seems pretty sure he is.  I’m an attorney, so I’d like to understand why the evidence we have isn’t doin’ it for ya’.  Because I’m thinkin’ if you’re not convinced, a jury might not be, either.”

Frankie blinked.  He seemed sincere.  “Well, thanks for that.  I appreciate you asking, rather than just deciding I’m wrong.”

“Don’t worry about the squad.  They’re not closed-minded.  They’re just going off of what they see in the evidence.  If it goes in another direction, so will they.”  

Frankie laughed humorlessly. “And Barba?”

“Barba’s… Barba.  You’ll get used to him.”  

“Well, he’s wrong. And here’s why.  It’s a couple of things, actually.  First, Stephens’ story makes sense.  A woman who’s just been raped and beaten sees a man bending over her? She could react violently, just as he said.  She could misinterpret an attempt to help her as an attack.  And she’s not telling us differently, because she doesn’t remember anything.  Second, Stephens is talking to us.  He won’t shut up.  He’s doing everything he can to help.  Our guy, he won’t be like that.  He does everything he can to humiliate his victims.  He taunts law enforcement.  He thinks he’s smarter than anyone and can just play with us.  So in an interrogation, he won’t be talking.  He’ll be mocking.  He’ll be disrespectful, angry and superior.”  She smiled.  “Like Barba.”    

  Frankie’s shoulders slumped when her assistant told her that A.D.A. Barba was holding on Line One for her. She knew it.  She’d known very quickly after meeting him that he was going to be trouble.  He was the exact type that always was.  She looked up to the ceiling, shook her head, and sighed, “Put him through.”

“Dr. Rojas.”  

“Mr. Barba.  What can I do for you?”

“You can tell me what the hell that was back there at the station house.  How do you justify ignoring the facts in favor of a theory that doesn’t fit them?”

“I’m not ignoring the facts, because the facts do fit the theory.  You just don’t like the way they fit.  I wish I could agree with you.  I wish Stephens was the guy.  But I don’t think he is.”

Barba massaged his temples with his hand.  “Well, you aren’t afraid to stick to your position, I’ll give you that.”  

“Did you call to try to browbeat me into your way of thinking?  Because that would be a waste of time.”

Rafael wasn’t quite seeing red yet, but he hadn’t wanted to make this call in the first place, and that comment definitely made him mad.  “No.  I do not intend to ‘browbeat’ you.  I thought I would take an opportunity to try to discuss this case one-on-one, like adults.  But I appreciate you letting me know that would be a waste of my time.”

Really?  This overbearing troll was calling her a child? For standing by what all of her training and experience told her?  Frankie tried hard to hang on to her temper.  “Mr. Barba, I did my research.  I know who you are.  Your resumé is as impressive as your attitude would suggest, and so is your record in court. Your peers talk about you in superlatives, nobody wants to see you on the other side of a case, and the NYPD holds you in especially high regard.  I’d be an idiot to take a position counter to yours without damn good reason, and I am not an idiot.”

“I suppose that ‘fountain of praise’ technique usually works fairly well for you?”

Frankie, had she known it, mirrored Barba’s position at her desk, her hand massaging her temples.  “There’s always one,” she sighed to herself, before responding.  ���Look. Stephens’ DNA will either match the rapist’s, or it won’t.  If it does, I’m wrong and you’re right.  You put Stephens away and you get bragging rights.  I can live with that.  But if it doesn’t, we still have a rapist out there.  And that is honestly all I care about.  This isn’t about ego for me.  It’s about stopping a rapist.”

“You expect me to believe that.”

“You know what?  I actually don’t.  Lucky for us, it doesn’t matter whether you believe me or not.”

“Doctor, we are going to have to find a way to work together.”

“Yes, we are.  And you may be surprised to learn that I’m sure we will.  This is not new territory for me, Mr. Barba.”

“Meaning what?  Everyone finds you difficult to work with?”

“Not everyone.  Just a certain kind of man.”

Rafael was certain he wasn’t going to like this.  “Enlighten me.”  

Frankie could hear the sneer through the phone.  Self-righteous prick.  What a piece of work.  At that point, despite her hard-won self knowledge and the many techniques she’d learned to control it, her temper pushed all her higher instincts out the window. Again.  

“You did your due diligence on me, same as I did on you.  And you’ve decided I’m a dilletante.  You know I’m Salomon Rojas’s daughter and you think daddy bought me some degrees so I could dress up and play FBI Barbie.“

Rafael said nothing.  She was uncomfortably close to the mark.

“I’m used to it,” she continued.  “So go ahead and discount me all you want.  And you’re welcome to set up whatever hurdles and challenges you find necessary.  They all do.”

“Well, thank you for reducing me to a cliché.”  

“Look, let me just save you some time.  I’ve been set up to fail by the best.  During medical school, during my residencies…  It didn’t get me to quit, Mr. Barba.  It made me a better doctor.  And you don’t want to know what I went through my first few years in the FBI, but suffice it to say that you will not be able to best those guys in either ingenuity or cruelty.  So bring it on.  The sooner you figure out I’m the real deal, the sooner we can get to work.”

“Thank you for sharing that poignant slice of your life with me, irrelevant though it was.”

“Was it?”  Rojas’s voice dripped meaning.

“You are a psychiatrist, aren’t you?  Next you’re going to ask me how I feel about my mother.”

“You adore your mother. And she adores you.  I’m not getting much of a father figure in your life, though.  That may be behind some of the attitude.”

It wasn’t often that Rafael Barba was at a loss for words.

Frankie stepped into the silence.  “When the DNA results come back, we’ll know.  And we’ll take the next step, whatever it is.  If Stephens is the rapist, I’ll be the first to acknowledge that you were right and I was wrong.  If he isn’t, I hope you’ll let me do my job and contribute to planning the team’s next move.”

“Well.  I thought I just heard you acknowledge the possibility that you might be wrong.”

“See?”  Frankie’s voice was all sarcasm.  “Your preconceptions are crumbling already.  Anything else?”

“Just…  Try to disagree with me a little more discreetly in the future.”

They both slammed down the phones at the same time.

Frankie cradled her head in her hands and groaned.  She’d done it again.  Barba couldn’t help it if he was the exact type of asshole who instantly got under her skin.  And she should be far, far above this kind of thing.  She was a damn psychiatrist, for fuck’s sake!  And she’d just set a land speed record for letting her temper take control of her big mouth.  She wondered how hard it would be to get her job in Quantico back.

The groan Barba uttered as he got up from his desk to refill his coffee cup was very similar to the one Frankie had just made.  She had an answer for everything, didn’t she? Rafael did not appreciate being pigeonholed or labeled, and he saw right through that tactic.  She thought she could dismiss his misgivings about her as part of some macho, “elite of the bourgeoisie” flaw in his character, turning any questioning of her into proof of his own inadequacy.  Clever. And annoying as fuck.  Rafael understood how she’d ended up in the FBI; he only wondered why she wasn’t in Psy Ops.  He couldn’t wait to see what happened when the DNA came back showing Stephens was the rapist.  

Only it didn’t.

The DNA under the victim’s fingernails was Stephens’s, as he’d said it would be.  But his DNA did not match the rape kits of any of the three victims tied to the Pattern 20 rapist.  The squad took it in stride, Lieutenant Benson was intrigued, and Barba was annoyed.  He could see absolutely no indication of gloating or superiority in Dr. Rojas as the team settled in around the SVU conference table at the station house.  Which was surprising, because he was watching for it. He knew it would come out eventually.

Amanda Rollins had been the one to state the obvious.  “Well, you were right.  Stephens isn’t our guy.”

“I wish he was,” Rojas had said, sliding a thin laptop out of her leather carryall before stuffing the carryall under her chair.   She hoped that was all she would have to say about it.  

“Sorry if it seemed like we doubted you,” the sexy black detective with the weird name said.  

“Don’t be.  We need to be candid with one another.  When you think I’m wrong, say so.  Trust me, I’ll fuck up,” she responded, lifting a cup of coffee to her lips and making a dismissive gesture with her other hand.  

“Fin, you want to start us off?”  Lieutenant Benson asked, beginning the briefing.  

Fin, that’s right. And his last name was…  Tortuga, Tutahkhamen, something like that.

Frankie was intrigued to see what Barba’s attitude would be. As Carisi had predicted, the squad seemed perfectly willing to follow the evidence wherever it led, but they hadn’t seemed to put their own credibility on the line as to whether Stephens was the rapist.  He had.  She was actually relieved when he said nothing about having been wrong, and gave no indication that there was anything to say.  Sometimes egotistical blowhards like him could be even more insulting when they tried to be polite.  

The briefing was fairly routine.  Having gotten through this first hiccup, Frankie hoped things would run more smoothly with her new team.  She couldn’t help feeling like she’d dodged a bullet in being right about Stephens.  Barba and the SVU squad all knew each other.  They’d worked together for years.  They could make all the mistakes they wanted at this point, and it wouldn’t change their baseline impressions of each other.  But if she’d been wrong, their first impression and permanent impression of her would be – well, it would be what Barba’s was. That she was a pushy know-it-all who couldn’t stand to be wrong, even when the evidence made it clear.

What she’d said to Barba was mostly true; she didn’t have much of an ego.  But she did have a tendency to say what she thought when keeping her peace might be a better choice, and when the team had looked to be concluding that Stephens was their rapist, she had been sure they were wrong, and had said so before she could think better of it.  She cursed herself, for the billionth time, for making such a stupid mistake, especially in a new job.  As she’d told Barba, she knew what people tended to expect when they first met her.  So why couldn’t she have kept her mouth shut?  It didn’t matter what she thought – the DNA was going to tell the truth, anyway.  She’d never learn.  Sometimes she thought her life would be easier if she’d been born mute.

When the briefing was over, the team all had assignments, including her.  She re-packed her carryall to return to her office and get to work re-analyzing the victim and witness interviews.  Seeing Barba waiting for the elevator, she headed for the stairs.  

“Avoiding me now?”  He caught her just as she entered the stairway.

Frankie turned around to face him.  “Of course not.  I just like to take the stairs.”

“Don’t you want to hear me say that you were right and I was wrong?”

“To tell you the truth, not particularly.  I actually find that more awkward than the other way around.”

“That’s odd.  I don’t.”

It took all Frankie’s self-control not to make a snarky reply.  Of course this man didn’t mind hearing he was right.  “Well, I’m sure you’ll have that opportunity, Counselor.  Will you excuse me?  I’d like to get back to work.”    

“Not before I apologize and acknowledge that you were correct.”

“Right… um…  it’s all good.  Apology accepted.  I appreciate it.  I’m gonna just…”  Frankie pointed to the stairs and began to descend, deeply uncomfortable and desperate to get out of this situation.  

Barba shook his head as he watched her basically run down the stairs in her pumps.  Normally, he would have wondered how someone that amateurish had achieved the things this woman had.  But in the case of Francisca Rojas, he had a pretty good idea.  She’d said it herself.  She was a rich girl whose father had undoubtedly bought her way into Texas A&M, and all the way through medical school.  She hadn’t mentioned her looks, but Rafael had no doubt that all she’d had to do was shake that long, black hair and bat those dark eyes to get wherever she wanted to go from there.  FBI Barbie.  She had no idea how accurate he found that description.  

 “Hey!  Doc!”  

Frankie turned around to see Carisi standing in line at the coffee cart outside the station house.  He must have made a beeline from the briefing to be there already.  

“Detective Carisi.”

“Sonny.”

“Is ‘Sonny’ short for something?”

“It’s Dominick.  But my father is Dominick, so…”

“Got it.  Sonny.  And I’m Frankie.”

“Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

“I’d love it.  Thanks.  I’m addicted to the stuff.  Double-shot skinny latte.”

“Hey, that’s what Barba drinks.”

“No kidding.  You’re clearly a great detective.  You may have just found the one thing he and I have in common.”

“You two don’t seem to have gotten off to a very good start.  If you don’t mind my saying so.”  

“I don’t mind you saying the sky is blue, either.  Some things are just true.”

“So what’s the problem? Still the Stephens thing?”

“It’s nothing.  We’ll work it out.  We’re both professionals.”

Sonny knew a conversation diverter when he heard one. “Rojas.  That’s Mexican, right?”

“Right.”

“When I heard your name, and that you were from Texas, I wasn’t sure what kind of accent to expect. But I don’t hear one at all.”

Frankie laughed.  “Would you believe me if I told you I speak Spanish with a Texas twang?”

“Is that a thing?” Carisi smiled, which made his blue eyes crinkle in a way Frankie found endearing.  

“Actually, yes.”

“Barba speaks Spanish.”

Frankie tried not to show her irritation.  She really wanted to get off the subject of Barba.  “Great.  Then he can hate me in two languages.”  

They reached the front of the line and Carisi ordered their coffee.  “He’s a good guy, you know.  Really. Kind of a sharp tongue, but when you get to know him, you’ll see that’s just the way he talks.”  

Frankie didn’t believe him, and she made another attempt to change the subject.  “Speaking of accents, would it be rude for me to ask about yours?”

“Staten Island.  Born and raised.  Where are you from in Texas?”

“Just outside of Austin.”

As the conversation turned to more pleasant subjects, Frankie started to enjoy the opportunity to spend a few minutes outside on this sunny spring afternoon, having a calm, enjoyable conversation with one of her new coworkers.  It was even better when Amanda Rollins came out to join them, soda in hand.  She suggested they take a short walk to stretch their legs, which Carisi declined, saying he had some calls to make.  

“Is Sonny really as nice as he seems?”  Frankie asked as she and Amanda set off down the block.

“Unbelievably, yes.  He can also toss a perp against a car with the best of them when the situation calls for it.”

“Nice combo.”

“You know, I couldn’t help but notice things aren’t starting out so well with you and Barba.”

“Shit.  Sonny was just telling me the same thing.  I’m embarrassed.  I can actually behave like a professional, believe it or not.”

“But can you toss a perp against a car when the situation calls for it?”

“Probably not,” Frankie laughed.  “Although I’d like to try it with Barba.”

“Yeah, what’s up with that?”

“It’s more me than him. I just have a visceral reaction to his type.  Arrogant, snide, macho, chauvinistic, you know.”

“You might be surprised to learn that Barba’s none of that,” Rollins noted.  “OK, arrogant and snide, maybe.  But in a good way.”  

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am totally serious. But in your defense, I thought the same thing about him at first.  Except I thought it was hot.”

“Hot?  Barba?”

“Of course.  Even if you don’t like him, you have to admit he’s got that whole green-eyed latin thing happening.  And the way he dresses…”

“Ugh.  Sorry.  I can’t get past the personality.”

“I’ll make you a bet. In a month, you’ll like him a lot better than you do now.  And you’ll agree with me that he’s hot.”

“I’ll take that bet.  What are the stakes?”  

“Well, I’m a compulsive gambler in recovery, so we better keep it to something in the realm of foods that aren’t good for us.”

“I’m a total sucker for anything with frosting.”

“Oh, well that makes it easy.  Patsy’s Cupcakes on Church Street.  Loser buys a dozen for the winner.”

“You’re on.”