Prosecutorial Misconduct // Rafael Barba

08 || A WHIRLWIND OF EMOTIONS

TW; this chapter contains mentions of attempted suicide
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When a new case came teetering across the wire that morning, Melanie was the first, and only, one out of the team to volunteer to take the details into Liv. On any other day, she wouldn't have. She'd have simply leaned back in her chair, watching happily, with her feet up on her desk, as Carisi was forced to get up from his and begrudgingly deliver the news himself.

However today...things were a little different than usual.

For starters, Carisi wasn't even at his desk in order to be forced to stand up from it. He was still hiding in the break room with Rollins and Fin, after they'd all been quick to make a point of not wanting to be in the bullpen when Chief Dodds inevitably came strolling in with the new Sergeant in tow. And it wasn't because they were nervous around William. Or partially reluctant to meet Mike after having asked about him once, only to then have Melanie snap furiously at them and warn them what would happen should they do so again. No, it was simply because of one thing and one thing only...

Fear.

That's right. All three of those big brave detectives were cowering simply because of their shared, deep-seated, and anxiety induced fear over finally seeing how Melanie would react to having her brother walk in, as they had no clue that the twins had made up the other day. If they did, then there wouldn't be any need for them to be hiding in the break room, metaphorically shaking in their boots over the possibility of World War Three breaking out in the squad room... which, if we're being totally honest here, may have been entirely Melanie's purposefully planned out fault.

She had been fully intending on telling them the truth, honestly, she had been...but then she'd overheard them last night, at Rollins' baby shower. After they'd all learned that Mike would be joining the team in the morning, she'd stumbled across the three of them all huddled together in the corner, 'deducing' with one another over how Mike, a cop who'd never worked a day of sex crimes in his life, could have possibly gotten this job on such short notice, and if she was telling the truth, that pissed her off even more than her desk duty did. 

As if Mike didn't get this job the exact same way she did: through hard work and determination, which had absolutely nothing, whatsoever, to do with their father as neither of them needed him to pull any strings to get to where they were. And okay, yes, William might have put Mike's name into the hat for the Sergeant's position, but it wasn't him who made the final decision as to the winner. That was the role of the higher ups, and they wouldn't have picked Mike had they not found him impressive and qualified enough for the job, and it was because of that...

Because of the audacity they had to form a childish little gossiping session to talk about her brother, that Melanie had been rather happy to keep her co-workers on edge that morning, as maybe then they'd think twice about ever pulling the nepotism card out of that deck of answers again.

But anyway, minor revenge plotting aside and getting back to the present day situation, the sole reason as to why Melanie was the first one to volunteer to take the case into Liv was because it was Mike's first day at SVU. And I know what you're thinking, why would that encourage her to actually want to do her job considering she may lose it? Well I'll tell you why, and it's simple really... You see, when William first came waltzing into the precinct with Mike in tow, Melanie had been all for getting in on the introductions with Liv, as who better to talk Mike up other than his literal other half who wanted nothing more than for him to feel welcome?

At least, that's what she been thinking to herself all morning but apparently, for some eye-twitchingly annoying reason, William hadn't agreed with her thus resulting in him being far too quick to forbid — that's right, you read correctly, forbid her from so much as being near Liv's office for the duration of those nicety introductions... And if that didn't piss her off more than her gossiping co-workers did, then Lord knows what would, so you can see why Melanie was rather glad to finally get an excuse to interrupt things.