Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Over the weekend, two renovations were made to the 27th precinct in Manhattan off a corridor of Homicide's bullpen. If Mike hadn't been told in advance, he wouldn't have noticed, and only an out-of-the-loop janitor would have opened the door after they were notified of its new purpose. He doesn't know what he expects to find; the room was a six by six broom closet to begin with.

In the center of the repurposed room is a tall glass capsule, more modern than the one Mike spent his youth sleeping in, but familiar in its thick acrylic windows and muted indigo lights. Despite the hum of power electrifying its air, its door is cool to the touch when Mike tests the handle. Most of the shelves on the surrounding walls have been removed to make room, leaving only one to boast a cell phone charger, a water bottle, and a digital picture frame of three teenagers in a laboratory. Relatives of the new consultant, perhaps. But, however meagre the showing of personal belongings, it suggests a slightly less lonely upbringing than Mike’s, and for that, he’s grateful.

Mike has read the papers about the new generation of bionics, more refined and powerful than his own. He'll be out of his depth, but the little understanding he has was enough for a shiny promotion to “Bionic Handler,” according to the command phrased like an offer. Douglas Davenport’s follow-up brief had been bare: beneath the bold Davenport Industries logo was a name, Chase, and a list of abilities that seemed impossible for a single human to hold. Bionics alone shouldn't do this. Looking it over sent a spasm of sympathetic pain down Mike’s back, and the memory of it has him twitching again.

Despite the size of the closet, Mike imagines it'll be comforting to the new consultant. If they've spent their life in a lab, like he had, the privacy will be a welcome change without overwhelming them. No amount of training or preparation will truly make a lab rat ready for the real world until they experience it. At the very least, they'll have him to help; Mike had to figure it out on his own in the army barracks.

He gets back to his desk in time to meet Sonny, balancing two coffee carriers. By the looks of it, he’s made his usual beeline to Mike first. “Blonde roast, milk, no sugar,” Sonny recites, struggling to remove Mike's cup without disrupting the others. Quieter, he adds, “Today, right?”

“Any minute,” Mike replies, taking pity on Sonny and stabilizing the carrier. “Thanks.”

Sonny shrugs and sets his sights on Amanda. The whole squad is here, too distracted by Benson’s meeting with the commissioner in her office and the impending arrival of their bionic consultant to comb through bar receipts. Each agonizing minute past nine stretches on for an eternity. But Mike won’t stare at the elevator in desperation, not when he’s supposed to set a good example for the other detectives- they’ll be looking to him for guidance, and any unease on his part would ripple through them.

He’s met plenty of rich inventive types like Mr. Davenport, and it doesn’t surprise him so much as mildly irk him that they’re late, by nearly twenty minutes according to his desk clock when the CEO materializes in the center of the bullpen.

To their credit, no one on the squad jumps in surprise. They do, however, all turn their wide eyes to Mike once they notice the new consultant–the kid–leaning away from Mr. Davenport’s iron grip on his arm. Chase, the middle teenager from the photo Mike saw, is slightly shorter than his creator, with a gangly awkwardness unique to the middle of an adolescent growth spurt and a distasteful expression zeroed in on the point of contact between them, as if he’d like nothing more than to jerk away despite his planted feet.

“I apologize for our tardiness,” Chase says, not looking at any of them. “It won’t happen again.”

“Yes it will,” Mr. Davenport replies.

Mike steps forward, desperate to cut the tension in the room. “It’s no trouble.” He extends a hand, which Mr. Davenport shakes before mouthing an instruction to do the same at Chase. For a bionic kid, his grip is clammy and unsure- hesitant in a way only someone shaking hands for the first time in his sheltered life could be. “Sergeant Mike Dodds.”

A green light flickers across the bottom of Chase’s eyes, one and then the other. “You’re my Handler,” he notes, tilting his head to one side and observing Mike as if committing him to memory.

“More like your liaison,” Mike corrects, “so don’t hesitate to ask me for anything you need. It’s my job to make yours easier.”

Chase furrows his eyebrows, processing this statement, when Mr. Davenport finally releases his arm. He stumbles a couple steps away, only for Mike’s instinctive reach to steady him to be met with a dismissive tut.

“I wouldn’t touch him,” suggests Mr. Davenport, too casual for Mike’s liking. He gives Chase a pointed look that makes the kid shrink away. “Chase’s got some defensive abilities you won’t enjoy discovering.”

Evidently as off-put by this interaction as Mike, Munch breaks from the pack with a wide smile that spells bullshit from a mile away, to those who know him well. “Mr. Davenport, Lieutenant Munch. I’ve actually got some paperwork for you, if you would come over to my desk? Dodds will give Chase the tour.”

Taking the out, Mike pastes the most reassuring smile he can manage onto his face. Sonny’s always been better at the whole empathy thing, at making people feel comfortable no matter the circumstances, but he’d be too far out of his depth this time around. Mike nods for Chase to follow him out of the bullpen, away from the interrogation-hungry gawking of his squadmates.

The kid falls into step behind Mike near silently. There’s a faint hum about him, a static charge that sets Mike’s hair on end and echoes in the finely tuned bionics of his ears, but he refuses to say as much. Chase is too new to the world. Without a reference point, he'd likely take it as a complaint.

“They installed your capsule over the weekend,” Mike says in a tone he hopes sounds conversational. “Room’s a bit small, I’m sorry, but there’s not much I can do about that.”

Once they reach the closet and Mike opens the door, Chase darts in to snatch the photo from its shelf. He clutches it to his chest with a shaking, white-knuckled grip that strikes a chord deep in Mike’s heart, even as the relief paints a glassy sheen over his eyes..

“Is everything okay?” Mike asks.

He should’ve asked Sonny to join them. Or Captain Benson. 

Chase nods. “I just, uh, really like this picture,” he defends.

“You’re the one in the middle, right?”

“Oh. Yeah.” 

Reluctantly, Chase puts his photo back on the shelf, straightening it twice to be certain it sits exactly as he found it; whether this is personal preference or learned from Mr. Davenport, Mike can’t say for sure. “That’s my brother, Adam,” he starts, pointing at the other boy in the picture, “And my sister, Bree. ” Judging by the Chase in the photo, it was taken in the last couple of months. His heavy tone suggests it was a goodbye.

“It’s a nice photo,” Mike tells him, because he doesn’t know what else to say. He can’t promise Chase will see his siblings again, not when it’s been a couple of decades since Mike saw his own brother, and he knows the statistics on long-term survival for bionic humans. They’ve all beaten the odds already.

Chase huffs. “The first fourteen weren’t. Adam kept blinking.” At that, he abruptly turns away and leaves the closet, not bothering to shut the door behind him. “So, do you have any open cases right now? I checked your database last night and saw that you had a couple of cold cases, but I haven’t found anything of note on them yet.”

“Let’s get through the tour first,” Mike redirects. “Captain Benson will brief us afterward, then we’ll get to work.”

“A tour’s a waste of time. I already downloaded the building’s blueprints; I’ll just reference those if I need to find something.” While Chase speaks, the green illuminates his eyes again, likely laying the map over his vision. “For example, the break room is down this hallway to the right, and the schematics show three vending machines installed.”

Instead of explaining how it’s different to actually see and familiarize himself with the building, or that Chase deserves the chance to explore beyond what’s strictly practical, or any number of protests that rise up Mike’s throat like bile, he asks, “Do they tell you what we stock?”

The light brightens, then vanishes.

“No,” Chase admits, leaning onto his back foot as if ready to run, “but I can’t have any of it.”

Mike waves Chase along with him, too aware that the kid’s been trained to follow orders, on the path to the break room. “No? You have allergies, or what?”

Then Chase gives him a strange look, head cocked to the side. “Mr. Davenport said you were bionic, too.”

“I am.”

When Mike opens the break room door, Chase pauses in the threshold. “Then you should know we require a specialized diet. Our systems are too delicate for all that processed stuff, like, like…” his eyes land on the oldest vending machine, sandwiched between the fridge and the lockers, “...frosted animal cookies.”

“Huh,” Mike says. He nods for Chase to go in and follows behind, already reaching into his pocket for a crumpled fiver as he walks up to the machine. “Maybe when we’re young. My dad always said that.” Already certain it’s too wrinkled, Mike buffs the bill on the corner of the machine, keenly aware of Chase tracking the motion. “I ate through a tube until I was your age.”

Bolstered by the familiarity, Chase nods. “Mr. Davenport developed protein pellets for us. Contemporary research suggests that chewing and swallowing are important for proper muscle development in the head and throat.”

If Sonny heard those words, he’d probably keel over on the spot. Mike wants to. But he forces his legs to hold his weight as he feeds his money to the vending machine and adds, “It’s also better for digestive health. Means you can tolerate solid food.”

With a beep, the machine spits the bill back out.

“I’m built to tolerate anything,” Chase says, voice cracking in the middle of tolerate , “but the pellets ensure I get all my proper nutrients.”

“Right,” Mike agrees.

Another round of buffing brings the bill up to snuff. It disappears into the vending machine with a satisfied beep, the credit scrolling across its tiny screen while Mike punches the code for animal cookies twice in a row. From the corner of his eye, Mike notes Chase twitch at the subtle smack of the packets hitting the tray. His hearing might need calibration to the uncontrolled environment of the precinct. 

“I didn’t taste a cookie until my mid-twenties.” Mike bends to retrieve the animal cookies and tosses a bag to Chase, who catches it with perfect reflex. “Mostly because I was in a war zone, but also because I was half-convinced I’d die on the spot.”

One of the other rangers, a man named Grant going gray at his temples, talked Mike into trying a box of Caramel Delights sent with the girl scouts’ monthly drop. It was the best thing he’d ever put in his mouth. They were perfect, miles above medications and MRE’s, the sweet buttery caramel soothing the grit of the coconut shavings, both melting across his tongue like the first kiss he still hasn’t had, and so decadent in its complexity, it could make the rest of the world disappear until dust overtook its aftertaste.

“I can’t have these,” Chase insists, turning the package over in his hands. His eyes light up once more, this time projecting a faint blue glow over the foil as he scans the nutrition information. “I’m a precision machine, and this would be like pouring cooking oil in the gas tank of a Corvette.” He glances up at Mike, so quick he’d have missed it if he wasn’t watching Chase so closely. “Which I’ve obviously never done before. That’d be crazy. Who would do something like that?”

There’s too much to unpack at once, but Mike starts with the most important piece. “You’re not a machine, you know. You’re a kid.”

“I’m sixteen,” Chase snaps.

As if that makes a difference. Mike had been sixteen when he enlisted in the army, but he wasn’t this young, this small, this… this much of a child. There’s no other way to frame things. Chase is a fucking kid, assigned to the homicide unit, and Mike knows better than anyone that pushing back against this would only land Chase in trouble, which leaves them here: six feet apart, with a table between them, both holding a single-serving pouch of animal cookies and both wishing for Chase to try them.

“Yeah,” Mike admits, keeping his voice level. “Still a kid.”

Chase narrows his eyes. “I’m a great detective. You haven’t given me a chance.”

“Hey, relax, I didn’t-” Mike stops, sorting his words carefully. “I’m sure you’re brilliant, and you’ll definitely get to prove that, but I meant…”

That Chase shouldn’t have to? That he shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be bionic, shouldn’t be afraid to try cookies? Mike doesn’t know how to finish the sentence. By some miracle, he’s saved by Fin poking his head into the break room.

“Sarge, Mr. Davenport’s gone,” Fin says, briefly glancing at Chase. “Captain wants to see you both.”

“He didn’t say goodbye,” Chase comments softly.

Mike opens his mouth to comfort him, but Fin beats him to the punch.

“He seemed like a dick anyways.” The insult earns a hint of a smile from Chase. Fin has that effect on people. “I’m Fin, by the way.”

And Chase looks to Mike, then, like he’s waiting for something, and he can’t decide if Mike is being stupid or cruel. The tilt of his brows belies confusion and the set of his mouth screams hurt regardless.

“C’mon,” Mike says when the silence becomes unbearable, “I’ll introduce you to Captain Benson.”

Fin holds the door for them on the way out and falls in step next to Mike, Chase close on their heels. Clearing his throat, Fin throws a pointed look at the animal cookies. Rolling his eyes, Mike hands them over.

“Somehow didn’t think these’d be your thing,” Mike muses. He can feel Chase’s attention burning a hole in his back, studying the interaction like his life depends on it. “Forget breakfast this morning?”

“More like Carisi forgot. He always brings something on Mondays.”

That’s true. Sonny must’ve been running late this morning to have only stopped for coffee, Mike thinks, and makes a mental note to check in with him later. “Cut the guy some slack, we all worked overtime last week.”

Back in the bullpen, everyone studiously avoids looking at Mike and Chase, which is only slightly less conspicuous than staring at them. Fin lingers by Munch’s desk while Mike leads the way to Benson’s office. Though the blinds are shuttered tight, the heavy wooden door hangs open on its hinges like an invitation that has a pavlovian soothing effect on Mike’s nerves. He’s never come to Benson with a problem she couldn’t help him solve.

When they walk in, she pushes her reading glasses up onto her head and sets aside the file in her hand. From across the room, Mike can make out the iconic lines of the Davenport Industry logo- she must have the same brief he received.

“Mike, if you’d shut the door?” she asks pleasantly. Once his back is turned, she addresses Chase: “You must be our new bionic consultant. I’m Olivia.”

The silence grows too loud for Mike to hear past his own heartbeat. When he faces Benson again, he finds Chase staring at him with that same disquieted concern. 

“Chase, was it?” Benson prompts.

Still, Chase watches Mike, waiting, until he remembers Mr. Davenport’s subtle prompt for Chase to shake his hand. It breaks his heart all over again. The kid’s waiting for Mike’s permission.

“You can talk to the squad,” Mike says, ignoring the shock on Benson’s face. “You know that, right?”

Mulling it over, Chase asks, “Can we trust them?”

“Absolutely,” Mike confirms, “especially Captain Benson.”

He sits down in one of the chairs opposite her desk, mostly to show Chase it’s alright to do so. As he expected, Chase follows suit and crosses his arms defensively over his chest. He reminds Mike of those movie scenes where the troublemaker visits the principal's office, but the comparison is so far removed from reality, it only makes him nauseous.

“He’s right, you can come to me about anything, at any time. Even if it’s not strictly work-related.”

“I won’t need anything,” Chase says confidently.

Mike cuts back in with, “It’s alright if you do. Adjusting to life outside a lab can be challenging; it was for me.”

For a moment, Chase simply stares at him, assessing, like he’s preparing for a fight. “All due respect, but that was you, years ago. My training simulations were state-of-the-art, so realistic that an unenhanced person wouldn’t be able to tell it was fake; I can do this.” He turns to Benson quickly and repeats, more firmly, “I can do this.”

“I believe you,” Benson soothes, comforting instead of condescending- a difference Mike can’t land. “I just want to make sure that you- you have everything you need to do your best work.”

The subtle familiarity is enough for Chase to nod in agreement. “My capsule takes care of my needs, but I’ll keep that in mind, ma’am.”

“Olivia or Liv is fine.”

For what feels like the hundredth time in the past ten minutes, Chase looks to Mike for approval, then fits the sounds into his mouth like each sound takes a tremendous effort to produce. With bionics like his, more computer than enhancement, it wouldn’t surprise Mike to learn he had programs in place to dictate his interactions. Whether that’s better or worse than pure psychological conditioning is yet to be seen.

“Hey, kid, can you give us a few minutes?” Mike asks. 

Chase blinks at him. “Where should I go?”

“Wait at my desk, I’ll only be a few minutes.”

Despite the eye roll Chase must think more subtle than it is, he gets up and marches out of Benson’s office, forgetting to close the door behind him like he had with the closet. Shaking his head, Mike gets up to fix it. He has no idea where to start, nor how to begin explaining the precarious situation to her in a way she’d understand- not for a lack of trying, but the simple absence of experience.

“He’s… “ Benson begins, trailing off as she searches for the right word. Mike doesn’t rush her. “...young,” she eventually finishes.

Mike nods. “Sixteen.”

She hums in disapproval.

“Too young for this, I know, but I was- I wasn’t much older, when I started working, and you have to know that we can’t do anything.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Benson counters, leaning back in her chair. “We can look after him. Keep him from the worst of the job, prepare him for a future beyond DI.”

All Mike wants to say is that there isn’t one, not when Chase is the crown jewel of the new generation of bionics, but he wants to believe there could be. “You think he has one?”

“I think we owe it to him to try.”

Chapter Text

Out of the three desks in the squad room not currently occupied by a person, only one has a brass name plate, which thankfully designates it as Michael Dodds’ when Chase scans the text. He walks slowly, hoping to catch part of Dodds’ conversation with Olivia, but Lieutenant Munch steps into his path before they start talking. 

Instinctively, Chase shrinks back, dropping his gaze from the Lieutenant’s plastic buttons to his double-knotted dress shoes. “I’m going to the desk,” he asserts, hoping none of his new colleagues hear the waver in his voice.

“Knock yourself out,” the Lieutenant says. “I just have a question for you.”

Dad prepared Chase for questions; he knows how to evade an answer like a level three biohazard, distracting any potential threats with sensationalized product pitches until they forget their curiosities. It works on Adam, but not Bree. A quick search and scan of the Lieutenant’s file offers no guidance on Chase’s chances of success, but the purposefully non-threatening way he curls his shoulders and the mismatch between his smile lines and the current wrinkles of his expression tend to be a good sign.

Chase drops into Dodds’ chair–which spins, like the chair Dad had before Bree spun Adam around too fast and made him sick–and crosses his legs on its worn cushion. “Ask away, I know literally everything.”

Something about the Lieutenant’s slow nod warns Chase he doesn’t believe him.

 “Yankees or Mets?”

A quick cross-reference of his memory bank brings up the American Civil War and the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Chase can’t connect either to the cold cases he’s been studying, nor to the precinct around them, so it must be a character test. According to Dad, most civilians sort each other into arbitrary categories with questions like these, and Chase’s answer could easily be the difference between making an ally and an enemy. So, Chase gives it serious thought.

Choosing the Civil War suggests an interest in history, which Chase does have. He prefers science and mathematics over imperfect accounts, but he finds the complicated tapestry of the past fascinating to dissect, like a puzzle waiting to be solved. It could alienate him, however, if the Lieutenant means to assess his political stance in a roundabout way.

On the other hand, the Metropolitan Art Museum is associated with wealth and status, which Dad has–as does Chase, by proxy– in addition to its value as an art conservator. For all Chase’s computational abilities, he struggles to pin down the soft, washy meaning behind nonfunctional creativity. It wouldn’t be a deceitful choice, and may be safer than the first.

This process occurs in the time it takes the Lieutenant to blink.

“The Met,” Chase answers. “You?”

“Orioles,” the Lieutenant says.

That wasn’t an option. Chase has nothing for it in his memory bank, but a quick database search turns up a category of bird. He… doesn’t know what to make of that. He also can’t figure out how to compare it to the options he was presented with, so he broadens his search to the entire internet including all three words in conjecture. Yankees + Mets + Orioles. 

They’re baseball teams.

Chase knows about baseball from The Sandlot and about professional athletes from the Olympics, but Dad never gave him information on local teams- an oversight, one he makes careful note of for the next time they talk. It isn’t on the calendar yet, but Dad promised they’d conference call with Adam and Bree every couple weeks, which will surely pass faster than it looks on paper. Not that Chase needs them; he simply knows how useless they are without his guidance and he's worried- no, he simply likes to keep an eye out. Just in case. 

Regardless, Chase chose the Mets when the Lieutenant prefers the Orioles, and attempting to change his answer would only worsen any distrust his failure has built. At least Dodds and Olivia weren’t around to hear it. Chase sorts Dodds’ pens by color and line weight while he downloads as much information as he can about baseball. He won’t be caught off-guard again. 

Bored already two minutes later, he listens for Dodds’ low timbre, but can’t pick out the conversation in Olivia’s office from the ambient noise of the precinct. Might as well pass the time studying it. Besides the Lieutenant, Olivia, and Dodds, there are three detectives at their own desks and a half-dozen uniformed officers milling about with their morning duties; the detectives will be Chase’s most frequent contacts, and therefore the most important to study.

He starts with Fin. A quick search fills in his name as Detective Odafin Tutuola, a former army ranger like Dodds, but unenhanced by bionics. There’s no disciplinary action on his record that Chase could find. Aside from the Lieutenant, whose cocked hip balances against the desk for support, Fin’s personal space is mostly devoid of knicknacks. Only a mug reading World’s Okay-est Detective and a picture frame, its back to Chase, interrupt the space’s utilitarian professionalism- more than Dodds has managed.

Out of the corner of his eye, Chase notices Fin noticing him. He panics for a split second, but Fin shrugs and looks back to the other detectives, continuing his conversation about breakfast preferences without alerting his colleagues. In the moments it takes Chase to calm his racing heart, he comes to the following conclusions:

1. Dad woefully underprepared him for the real world,
2. Though Chase is smarter, the detectives are more observant than him, and
3. Their behavior is guided by an ulterior motive.

He can’t be sure of the details yet, but they’re all too calm about the social blunders he’s caught himself in, and past experience suggests Chase has made plenty more without realizing. Dad taught him this interrogation technique. Make a subject comfortable, allow them to make mistakes unacknowledged, and eventually they’ll trust him with the information he needs. But Chase can’t think of any knowledge locked within his mind that would interest homicide investigators. Corporate saboteurs and competitors of Davenport Industries might have interest, but the police? The mere thought nearly makes him laugh. Almost everything they do gets forwarded to one governmental official or another.

Still, Chase hates to miss a piece of a puzzle, doubly so when it could threaten his wellbeing. He makes a mental note to guard as much information as possible about his siblings from here on out; any danger that befalls him is his own making, but he cannot allow anything to happen to Adam and Bree.

He moves onto the next detective, a tall man in an ill-fitting three piece suit with dirty blonde hair and the deepest smile lines at the corner of his eyes Chase has ever seen. A search identifies him as Detective Dominick Carisi Jr.. Like Fin, he’s without a notable record, but boasts a much more cluttered desk. Between mismatched photographs of what Chase assumes to be family members, Carisi has an assortment of tchotchkes such as a ceramic cannoli, a fake potted plant, four different novelty pens, and a sticker of a cat clinging to a tree with the phrase HANG IN THERE! plastered above it. He’s less intimidating than the others, Chase decides.

That leaves the platinum blonde woman, whose desk is a happy medium, with a picture frame turned away from Chase on its corner and several clearly hand-made art projects decorating its edges. His internal search reveals Detective Amanda Rollins, the first of the group to have been suspended after an officer involved shooting. Her case was closed, ultimately without wrongdoing, but Chase will spend time this evening cracking into IAB’s servers for a detailed account of her mistake. Like Fin, she notices his attention, but Rollins doesn’t avert her eyes.

Instead, she smiles at him and waves him over.

“Hey, Chase, c’m’ere,” she says.

Chase glances behind him, almost asking if she means him before deciding it would come across ditzy or disingenuous, as opposed to freeing him from a sudden onslaught of questions. At the last second, he stuffs his hands into his pockets to hide their shaking. He needs to appear confident. Civilian relationships are complicated, nuanced, requiring a curated persona if he wants their respect. 

“Yes, Detective Rollins?” he asks as he steps up to the edge of Carisi’s desk. Chase can feel all of their eyes on him like flies, darting from perch to perch before using their acid-spit to dissolve pieces of him into digestible goo- an imperfect metaphor. Bree would call it disgusting.

He doesn’t miss her already. 

Rollins looks at the Lieutenant instead of him and frowns. He’s made another mistake.

“Amanda’s fine,” Amanda corrects, following Olivia and Fin’s lead with such ease that Chase wonders if they coordinated this decision before his arrival. “I thought we’d do some introductions, if you’re up for it?”

Relief floods through Chase. “I’d love that, actually.”

His internal database only has so much information, and Chase cannot concentrate on an in-depth search until he has peace and quiet to think at the end of the day. The basics will do until then, but an overview will help him navigate his first day with more success than his first impressions. 

Carisi slurps coffee from a paper cup and points at Amanda. “You first.”

“Well, my name is Amanda-”

“Hi, Amanda,” the Lieutenant deadpans in a practiced cadence. Carisi and Fin both snicker, but she scowls and throws a pen at him, to which the Lieutenant responds with, “I’m hit. Don’t forget to invite my exes to my funeral.”

Fin stage-whispers to Chase, “Ignore him.”

“Anyways,” Amanda cuts in, “I grew up outside of Atlanta, and spent a few years with APD before transferring up to New York. Now, I’ve got two daughters, Jesse and Billie, and my dog, Frannie.”

“Which of your girls is older?” Chase asks politely.

Based on Amanda’s smile, he did well. “Technically Frannie, but Jesse’s a few years older than Billie.”

There’s only a year between Chase and Adam, and only a few months between himself and Bree. They’re all close enough to the same age that, including Adam’s stupidity and Chase’s bionic intellect, they progressed through all of their training and most of their education together. He has no idea what it would be like to have a younger sibling, let alone one born multiple years after himself. Of course, Chase would have to help take care of a baby, but the mere thought of such responsibility makes him shudder. He’d mess it up. He’d ruin it. He just knows it.

“Me next?” The lieutenant asks. “Oh, goody.” He folds his long, knobbly fingers together and smiles at Chase. “John Munch, put in a couple decades at Boston Homicide, retired, got bored,” he looks to Fin with a half-smirk, “graced Manhattan with my presence, got promoted, and now I supervise these idiots.”

“Don’t let him fool you,” Amanda teases, “he came with the building.”

The lieutenant cups a hand around one ear, “What was that? I can’t hear you.”

“With ears like those?” Carisi asks.

“They’re turning against me!” The lieutenant puts a hand over his heart and shakes his head, feigning disappointment despite the twitchy grin beneath the shadow. “Can you believe this, Chase?”

The banter reminds him of rare days off with Adam and Bree. At the lab, there was always something to do, be it training or work for the company, but the occasional weekend passed with Dad on a business trip and no missions to obstruct the primal adolescent desire to punt one’s annoying siblings across a room of highly valuable equipment. To Chase’s credit, he was more careful with expensive tech and more capable of repairing it when necessary. Gentle ribbing like this usually came before, though, and reminds Chase of movie marathons tucked between them.

Although he wouldn’t typically choose sides, Chase needs to make up for his earlier misstep. “Not cool,” he adds, fixing his sternest glare at the detectives. 

“Aw, c’mon, I didn’t mean it like that,” Carisi entreats, glancing between Chase and the Lieutenant. “Guys.”

Everyone dissolves into laughter at a joke Chase must have missed. 

“You’re making a bad impression,” the Lieutenant says, “now poor Chase is going to have a complex about his under-sized ears.”

“They’re normal-sized!” Chase interjects.

The Lieutenant gestures toward him as if this proved his point.

“But you can call me John, or Munch. Whatever you prefer.”

Following the pattern laid by their colleagues and applying the primacy bias, Chase assumes the Lieutenant wants to be called John. He can do this. The books he’s read suggest police refer to one another by their last names except when friends. He’s passing their tests. 

“Still Fin,” Fin introduces with a loose wave. “There’s not much else to say. You read our files, right?”

Four expectant expressions zero in on Chase, sending a burst of adrenaline through his system with enough force to trigger an alert across his vision and make his hand twitch in his pocket. He forces himself to breathe deeply before he can glitch.

“I might have, uh, skimmed them,” he admits, “but there wasn’t much to go off of,” and then he bites his tongue so he doesn’t ask them to forgive the transgression, and squeezes his eyes shut so he can’t flinch if they punish the mistake.

“Pay up,” Amanda says.

Chase dares to open one eye. She has one hand out in front of her, wiggling her fingers, as John fishes a billfold from his pocket. When she catches Chase watching, she explains, “I bet him five bucks you’d research us before your first day.”

“I’d hardly call it research-” Chase starts.

At the same time, Carisi says, “Cut the kid a break, it’s his first day.”

There’s that word again. Kid. Chase ‘celebrated’ his ‘sixteenth birthday’ with Adam and Bree a month or so ago. Dad recorded their actual days of birth somewhere, he’s sure, but the years were better measured in new bionic abilities and the desktop calendar in the lab than through a party, like in Toy Story. He knows he’s about sixteen. He knows he’s an adult in the eyes of the government, albeit one kept to heel. He knows he’s more responsible than any other sixteen-year-old on the planet.

“I’m not a kid,” he re-iterates. For good measure, he adds a firm, “I’m more than qualified.”

As if pulled taught by an invisible string, the laughter snaps from their faces.

“My deductive skills are objectively better than yours,” Chase continues, unable to help himself when he needs their respect far more than their friendship, which matters far more than the sinking, squirming sensation at his gut. “I’m here to solve the cases you can’t, and I’m sixteen.”

Their silence is deafening.

“You don’t have to believe me now, you’ll see for yourselves the next time you get a case. I was literally designed for this-”

“Okay, okay,” Amanda interrupts, chasing his eyes with her own, not noticing Chase’s efforts to look anywhere but her face. “We believe you, man. Carisi wasn’t thinking when he called you kid. His foot practically lives in his mouth.”

“That’s impossible,” Chase fires back automatically.

Carisi doesn’t seem bothered by either of them. “It’s an expression. Uh- figurative language. Like metaphors-?”

“I know what figurative language is, Detective, thank you.”

“Yeah, of course.” Before sipping his coffee again, Carisi swirls it a couple times and squints at the hole in the lid. “And just Sonny, please. Everyone calls me Sonny.”

Amanda rolls her eyes but no one contradicts Sonny aloud. It’s a fitting name, round and warm like his voice, with a nickname’s introduction that has Chase wondering whether it dates back to his childhood or has been slapped into place like the badge awkwardly clipped to his belt.

Oblivious to Chase’s musing, Sonny carries on. “I grew up in Staten Island with three sisters, I’m Italian, and I’ve been doing night school.”

“Fordham Law,” Fin adds.

Sonny grimaces. Curious, Chase runs a quick search on the school and finds it to be one of several law programs within the city, and though it’s no Harvard, it’s a competitive enough school for him to appreciate Sonny’s acceptance.

Behind him, Olivia’s door opens.

“You know your eyes glow?” Amanda asks.

Chase opens his mouth to explain the complicated workings of his bionics, how his eyes aren’t emitting light so much as laying a digital screen over his vision which, to the untrained observer, may appear to glow in comparison to his typical iris color, and to inquire why she believes this may be new information to him, but Olivia saves him the trouble.

“Amanda,” she says, firm but not impolite as she and Dodds approach the gathering, “You know questions about Chase’s bionics go through me or Sergeant Dodds.” Then she turns toward Chase. “I’m so sorry- you don’t have to answer invasive questions, and no one should be asking you, either.”

He shrugs. If it weren’t for Dad’s endless lectures about proprietary technology, he would happily explain the minutiae to his new colleagues. Then again, they probably lack the foundation of knowledge to understand him anyway.

“I don’t mind,” Chase replies, “but I can’t divulge company secrets.”

As Dodds and Olivia join the circle, Dodds slots himself between Chase and Sonny, making it his turn to introduce himself. His file had been more detailed than the others’ were, full of notations on his bionics and the damage they’ve incurred over the course of his career. He’s an older generation–not engineered for his bionics, or maintained with such precision–but it still made Chase shudder to think he and his siblings could one day break down.

Olivia studies him too closely for his liking. “That’s ultimately your decision.”

He looks back to Dodds for guidance. It’s not readily apparent whether he fields these questions, but Chase’s bionics are a work of art, and his siblings have always called him a ‘showoff.’

“But to answer Amanda’s question, yes, I know that my HUD creates a noticeable visual disturbance. You can rest assured that it doesn’t impede my sight.”

Most of the time, he leaves unsaid.

“Good to know,” Olivia muses, tilting her head slightly as she watches him with more attentiveness than any of Chase's family ever have. “Until we get a call, you should shadow Dodds- observe, learn, and we'll go from there.”

Chase nods. He likes clear orders, and these will ensure he proves just how quickly he commits processes to memory. All he needs is a chance.