I figured sticking this somewhere would motivate me to get it done, so, fic post:

Title: "Someday Never Comes"
Fandom: Law & Order: SVU/Homicide: Life on the Street (crossover.)
Part 1 of ? (WIP.)
Rating: PG-13; could go up in later parts, depending on characters' whims. (No, really. They all hate me.)

Summary: When Kay Howard arrives in New York, Munch knows something's up. Something that's come back to bite him. Something he hoped would stay behind. /end bad horror-movie-esque summary.

Pairings: N/A at this part of the fic. (See where I said they hate me? Look at that again.)

Spoilers:  General spoilers through seasons 2 and 3 of SVU; no specific episodes *exactly* mentioned. Major spoilerage for the H:LOTS story arc that runs from 3.12 ("The City That Bleeds") to 3.15 ("Law and Disorder.") Also, spoilers for "Homicide: The Movie" and general, vague spoilers for the run of the series, seasons one through seven. I warned you.

Disclaimer/credit-where-credit-is-due: They aren't mine. The Homicide characters and show/concept belong to Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana, David Simon (Aka Mr-Never-Ending-Paragraphs), whoever else, NBC, etc. L&O: SVU isn't mine - belongs to Dick Wolf (or does it?), various other people, NBC. I have no idea who owns the rights to Munch-the-character now, so... whoever it is, they aren't me.

Fic title is shamelessly ganked from a Creedence Clearwater Revival song of the same name - much props to the awesomeness of John Fogerty.

Ken Briscoe’s tossed Nerf ball sailed by John Munch’s head and bounced off his shoulder, obviously missing the planned target. In Baltimore, he thought to himself, they had better aim.

 

Briscoe scrambled out of his chair and across the bullpen for the ball, grinning broadly. “Sorry, Munch,” he said, pausing to be apologetic.

 

“Forget about it, Briscoe. Take the coffee pot out while you’re at it, hmm?”

 

“No,” the young detective answered, tossing the foam ball from hand-to-hand, easily, “but I will bounce it off Palmieri’s head.”

 

“You do that.” Munch turned to his paperwork, hearing the ball sail by again and Palmieri’s grumbling curse. Nine in the morning was a bad time to start squadroom warfare – any cop with sense knew that.

 

In a very short space of time, the younger Briscoe was standing at the corner of his desk again. Munch sighed and put aside the file in front of him. Was he trying to be as annoying as Cassidy? It was working.

 

“Listen, kid,” he began, eyeing the younger man overtop of his glasses, “just because your uncle and I shoot pool once in a while doesn’t mean I have to…”

 

“Munch.” Ken sounded serious for once. He didn’t look like he was trying to be irritating, either.

 

“What?”

 

“There’s a Baltimore cop out in the hall, looking for you…”

 

“Does he have a name, Briscoe? Or did you ask that?”  It was entirely normal to be hard on the rookie. They just didn’t get coddled.

 

“She. Sergeant Howard.”

 

“Kay? What the hell is Kay Howard doing here?”

 

Ken looked like he was actually going to try to answer, and John threw up his hands. “Never mind, Briscoe – you aren’t supposed to answer that.”

 

He tossed down his pen and left his desk, confused. Kay had complained about hating New York, making it so he had to travel to Baltimore. She didn’t come to the city; she refused to.

 

She stood out in the crowd of neat, uniform blue in the hall easily, with her red hair. As always, her clothes were identical to that a male detective might wear, minus the suit jacket. Unlike Benson, she seemed to have little interest in fashion.

 

“Munchkin,” his former colleague’s tired face lit up with the tiniest of smiles, as she stood to greet him. “Are you working hard or hardly working?”

 

“What are you insinuating, Howard?” He couldn’t be properly angry with her, but he could play along with the ribbing.

 

“Ah, just askin’.” She shook her head and gave him an once-over. “This place treats you well, it looks like.”

 

“She’s no Charm City,” he admitted, not saying anything more.

 

“Got that right. Listen, John – wanna go grab a cup of coffee? I know you’re on the clock, but that train ride was a son of a bitch.”

 

Munch nodded, sympathetically. The train ride from Baltimore to New York was miserable beyond description.” We’re due for a coffee run and I’m not up. Kay, did the phones in Balto stop working?”

 

She sighed, exaggerating it a little. “I would have called, Munchkin, but I didn’t have the time. I’ll explain when you buy me that cup.”

 

“Kay,” he protested, as she let her hand slide from his shoulder. He hadn’t even seen her move towards him. What the hell was going on?

 

The last time he’d seen her in person, she’d been crying on Ed Danvers’ shoulder in The Waterfront, when Brodie had brought the news of Gee’s death. She didn’t look as sad now, but looked more worried than she ever had. “What’s up? Did someone else…”

 

“Not here,” she insisted, stubbornly. “I don’t think it’s something you want running through this department grapevine.”

 

And if he, John Munch, knew anything, he knew better than to argue with women like Kay Howard. It never went well. He had learned something from four marriages and various other women who he’d had the sense not to marry, no matter what Fin said. It got to be a common sense thing, after so long.

 

“All right, but if the captain reams my ass for this, I’m blaming you,” he muttered and she scowled at him, about to say something else. “Fine, fine. I’m getting my coat.”

 

“Ever find it funny how all the squadrooms look alike…?” Kay paused, mid-sentence, as he stirred his coffee, agitated. “What, huh?” She asked, looking at him.

 

“You did not come all the way up here to talk to me about squadroom décor,” John replied, watching her dump sugar in her cup. “Because you could’ve just called me to compare colours…”

 

Her face cracked into a sideways grin, at that. “Nah, I didn’t. I wanted to see if you’d lost your mind and got married again.”

 

“New York women are cold,” he complained, mockingly holding a hand over his chest, “cold, evil creatures.”

 

She propped her chin on her hand and sighed, complaining, “I dunno how they haven’t taken you out back and shot you yet, up here. I should’ve been glad when you left, pain in the ass you are.”

 

“But you didn’t have my wit, darling Kay – how could you be glad?” They were ribbing each other mercilessly, just as they used to in the break room. He’d missed this.

 

She rolled her eyes, tugging at a stray bit of her hair. “You’re ridiculous, yanno that? And didn’t you say Baltimore women were… what was it? ‘Vindictive and cruel leeches,’ wasn’t it?”

 

“They are!” John objected, recalling what he’d told his homicide ‘buddies.’ “Do you know how much Billie Lou is taking me for?”

 

Kay snorted, setting her cup down quickly in order to cover a smile. “Anybody’d marry you probably deserves it.”

 

 “Your detective skills are failing you, Howard. I think I deserve alimony payments…” he answered, tartly. "She's trying to make me pay her attorney's fees, on top of what she wants..."

 

“Take that to court. See how far it gets you - if the judge doesn’t throw you out of court for being a smart ass,” Kay said, leaning back against the back of the booth, all common-sense and, usually, to the point.

 

“Misunderstandings are the bane of my existence,” he grumbled to the coffee shop ceiling, “and a Baltimore judge did throw me out of Family Court once…”

 

Kay’s face turned to shock, then even more amusement as he trailed off. “I don’t wanna know,” she told him, holding up her hands, “I don’t wanna know how the hell you managed to get thrown out of divorce court.”

 

“No? My partner said the same thing,” he remarked, disappointed.

 

“Smart one, isn’t he? Shuts you up before you can even get started.” She sighed and stirred her own coffee idly, looking worried again.

 

“Kay? What’s up?” He persisted, wanting to get to the bottom of this, sooner rather than later.

 

“You haven’t got it?”

 

He stared at her, even more confused than ever. “What are you talking about? This isn’t making sense.”

 

“Gordon Pratt’s parents have filed a wrongful death suit against the department – and you. Their lawyers subpoenaed me….”

 

“What the hell? I didn’t shoot him, Kay,” he hissed, lowering his voice. This had been bound to come back to bite him in the ass at some point; he’d known it would, eventually. But he’d been hoping it wouldn’t; that what he’d left in Baltimore would stay in Baltimore. Stupid wishful thinking on his part.

 

She fixed him with a cold stare, usually reserved for the box. “If you expect me to believe that, I might as well just leave. The whole department knows you shot him – and not a cop there would blame you for it.”

 

“Even the brass?”

 

“Nah, they got their heads in the sand like they usually do,” she replied. “Gee knew. Bayliss knows. Frank’s… Frank. And Stan has to know; he was on the job too long to not put it together.”

 

It would have been stupid of him to assume that the famously sharp, well-educated Frank Pembleton didn’t know that his alibi was shaky and that he had, in fact, shot Pratt. Of course Pembleton would know. Kay, as usual, was spot-on about Stan, as well.

 

“And you?” He asked, knowing he was outed. She’d had a consistently high close rate, while in homicide, but she had always done things the “right” way. No tricks, no bending the rules, no unjustified shootings… What would she think of him, shooting a man who hadn’t gotten a trial? “What do you think?”

 

Her knuckles went white, around her coffee cup and she shook her head, slowly. “Munchkin, Gordon Pratt put two bullets in my heart. I oughta be dead ‘n’ in the ground right now, thanks to him. I don’t know if I could have shot him; but I’m not going to judge you for what you did.”

 

“You wouldn’t have shot him,” he grumbled, sourly. “You would have let him get a trial.”

 

“If I hadn’t’a been stuck in a hospital bed, I don’t know what I would have done. Nobody does, until you’re there. I think we’d’ve all been capable.”

 

She didn’t hate him for what he’d done. She’d known for years that he’d shot a man; that he had, essentially, committed murder and gotten away with it.

 

“I can’t tell ya you were in the wrong,” Kay told him, her face neutral. She wasn’t hiding something… she just was. “It’s not up to me. But you had to know this was gonna come back to bite you sometime, huh?”

 

“I was waiting for it,” he replied, tightly. “I didn’t think I made it as obvious as say, Bayliss, after the Ryland thing.”

 

“He was runnin’ scared,” she agreed, nodding, “and that could be part of why he’s never run you in. He understands it.”

 

They both paused, then and the only sound was the clattering of dishes and the chatter of the other patrons and staff. The waitress – young, college kid, all smiles – refilled their coffee cups and brought him a newspaper.

 

Kay rolled her eyes, upon seeing the paper. “Oh, no. No. Not this again,” she said, trying and failing to stifle a laugh. “This brings back memories, don’t it?”

 

“There isn’t as much weird news in the papers here as there is in Balto,” he told her, unfolding the paper. “There isn’t enough to read to the squad anymore.”

 

“Eh? Yanno what?”

 

“What?” He looked up from skimming the front page, when she spoke.

 

“Baltimore also smells a hell of a lot better ‘n here. This city, it… stinks.”

 

“No kidding.” He’d noticed the same thing when he’d first arrived, after retirement. And had heard the complaint from others who had just relocated. “You learn to live with it.”

 

“Or lose your sense of smell completely,” she answered and they both laughed at that. “You couldn’t stay off the job or what? You did your twenty in Balto, got your pension… and came up here to go back to work?”

 

“I didn’t plan on it,” he replied, looking over the paper. Mainstream news was so much crap that he didn’t even usually bother to read it. “Came up here to get out of Baltimore, but I was bored being ‘retired.’ It’s actually quite dull.”

 

She snorted and turned to regard the street outside the window for a moment. “Only you’d say that. No more being called out to who-knows-where at some hour of the morning, no more red balls, no more politics… I’d be happy. But, no, you, Munchkin, you’re bored.”

 

He looked at her, over the top of his glasses and sighed. “Mock me if you will, Kay, but you know you’d miss the job, too.”

 

She ignored him. Had she somehow gotten better at that? “No homicide openings? Figured you would’ve ended up there, instead of chasing sex crimes.”

 

“No homicide openings,” he confirmed, “and SVU – sex crimes – was the only opening in my bracket. I took the job.”

 

She read his face correctly, with far too much accuracy for his comfort. “Worse than homicide?”

 

“Worse than anybody could ever imagine; I don’t think I could even begin to explain it. In homicide, the victims are dead, they don’t talk. Here, they’re alive and telling their stories.”

 

Kay cringed, visibly. “That’s why I took the fugitive squad, after the shuffle. No more victims. No more families. Just running ‘em down. Nobody goes nuts over a case, because they don’t hit as close.”

 

“Are they missing you down there? How’d you get away to bail me out?”

 

“Simple. Told the lieutenant I was going, took a couple of days and left. I had the time.” She grinned at him. “It’s not all bureaucracy, Munch. It’s easy, especially when you’ve got a bit of rank.”

 

She was using her time, vacation or otherwise, to come inform him. “Jeez, Kay. I would have found out when I got served. And I know you hate New York – you didn’t have to come up.”

 

“Needed to get away, anyway,” she replied, shrugging. “There’s a rookie in my squad – green as grass. I need to keep from strangling him. I figure the only way to do that is not be around when he messes up a bust or shoots himself in the foot, one or the other.”

 

Thinking of Briscoe’s nephew and Cassidy, he nodded. “I know all about that. Did I ever tell you about my first partner when I came up here?”

 

“The kid? The one with nothin’ between his ears? You mentioned him.”

 

“Yeah? Well, he was nearly as capable of shooting himself in the foot – literally – as yours, it sounds like. Did they ever decide whether or not it’s safe to let rookies even carry guns…?”

 

“Munch.” The voice of one ever-so-slightly irritated captain greeted him, as he returned to the squadroom. “Where the hell did you go?”

 

“Coffee run, Cap,” he replied, offering a cup and a bag to Cragen, as a peace offering. “Because these… fine people… are too negligent to make a pot of sludge.”

 

Don ignored his jibe at the other detectives. “Seems like you picked up someone new while you were getting coffee…” he trailed off, looking at Kay, who stood back a bit. Watching him get his ass reamed. Of course, John thought, irritated.

 

“I’m not his date,” Kay interrupted, “or a potential new wife. Sergeant Kay Howard, Baltimore Fugitive Squad, Captain.”

 

“Good to hear it, Sergeant. Captain Cragen, Manhattan SVU.”

 

His boss and former colleague shook hands and Munch shook his head. Misunderstood, as usual.

 

“What can I do for you, Sergeant Howard?” Don was asking. “I didn’t get any notice from Baltimore that they were sending someone up…”

 

“I’m not here on business, Captain. I used to work with Munch in his homicide days – it’s more of a personal trip.”

 

“Somebody say Baltimore?” Fin walked over from the battered photocopier, curious as to these new developments. “You know, if they want the pain in the ass back down there, they can have him.”

 

John glared at his partner. “Thank you, Fin. I’ll remember that.” Tutuola looked unfazed, as usual.

 

“Nobody goes anywhere without my say,” Don cut in and Kay looked at him, pointedly.

 

As he was making the introductions, someone else cut in. “Wait, who’s going? Somebody get transferred?”

 

Don looked exasperated and Fin shook his head. “See what you started, Munch?”

 

It wasn’t even worth it to answer that. It wasn’t. He was determined to not rise to the bait.

 

“Nobody’s going anywhere, people,” the captain informed the shift. More introductions were made, as Benson and Stabler wandered over, followed by Palmieri and Briscoe and the others.

 

Benson seemed to have a respect for Kay, almost instantly and it seemed to be mutual. Stabler was hard to read, but he shook her hand. Briscoe seemed to be in awe of her, but then again, he was a little in awe of anyone with more experience, thinking he could soak up what they knew, somehow. Munch doubted it was working – it probably wouldn’t, until the kid learned to ask questions.

 

 

“John,” Fin caught his attention over the lines of personal effects on their desks. “Hey, Munch.”

 

“I heard you the first time, Fin. What?”  He was rifling through the pile on his desk, looking for notes he’d made to himself with some of the details of a particular case. Eventually, all the cases did start to run together in your mind, and you’d forget a name or…

 

“You really good for that shooting in Baltimore?”

 

Munch looked up, startled out of his train of thought. There was no sense in denying it now. “How did you find out?” A process server had arrived with the documents an hour or so ago, but he hadn’t looked at them and hadn’t mentioned what it was about.

 

Fin sighed impatiently. “Gossip machine has something else to talk about besides whether or not those two,” the other man inclined his head in the direction of Benson and Stabler, who stood by the coffee pot, “are messing around off duty. Everybody notices. You good for that?”

 

He respected his partner too much to even try to lie to him and Fin was too much of a cop to not see through any story he told. He was still wondering how the hell it had leaked out. Kay had been insistent that they talk elsewhere, away from the precinct, when she brought the news.

 

“In a way,” he answered, quietly, unheard over the general squadroom noise, “although I’m sure the State of Maryland isn’t missing him. Do you know how it got out?”

 

Fin shrugged. “Couldn’t tell ya. But I overheard unis talking about it downstairs.”

 

And you’re offended that you didn’t hear it from me. Fin didn’t have to say it, John knew that much just from tone of voice. “I didn’t think it was going to come back to bite me,” he admitted, “if I’d known, I would’ve told you.”

 

His partner fixed him with an exasperated, impatient look. “Ain’t you smarter ‘n that, Munch? You know stuff like that never stays quiet.”

 

“It was Baltimore, it was 1995 and it wasn’t overly high-profile,” he answered, tartly.

 

“Hey, man – you don’t have to justify yourself to me. I’m not gonna hang you,” Fin retorted, coolly, “but the courts might.”

 

“What the hell else is new?” John asked, acidly, thinking of the divorce proceedings which had been his only problem. Up until earlier, that was.

 

“Got yourself a lawyer?”

 

He sighed, inwardly and rubbed at his eyes, fingers behind the lenses of his glasses. “No, not yet.” More attorneys?

 


 

“I’m being a bad host,” he called to Kay from his kitchen. On his lunch break, despite her protests that she’d get a hotel, he’d made her at home in his apartment. “I should take you out and show you the sights.”

 

“Tour me around and sweep me off my feet, huh?” She laughed, a genuine laugh. “Nah. I get enough of cities on the job, John – I never liked them. Yanno, I really could’ve gotten a room.”

 

“Howard,” he protested, from the tiny second ‘room’, fixing her with a look. “Do you know what rooms in this city cost? Do you think I don’t know how much a Baltimore cop makes?” He wondered, briefly, what had drawn her down to the city to be a cop, if she didn’t like them to begin with. It wasn’t any of his business, however.

 

She held up her hands in defeat. “I just didn’t figure you’d be the type to play host.”

 

“Friends don’t let friends rent overly expensive crappy rooms in Manhattan,” he replied, “especially since you came up here for no discernable reason…”

 

“More like to save your skinny ass.”

 

They traded a look and she pushed a lock of hair away from her forehead, idly. “Have a look at that yet?” She, of course, meant the package of legal documents that he’d brought home, after being served with them in the afternoon.

 

Right now, it sat on his coffee table, between a couple of books and a casefile. “No, I haven’t,” he replied, toweling off his hands and stepping out of the kitchen. “Kay?”

 

“Huh?”

 

“It just struck me – Gee’s ghost would come up here and let loose on my ass if I made you rent a room.”

 

His former colleague rolled her eyes at him, but her face held a tiny smile. “You’re ridiculous sometimes, Munch, you know? And sometimes you have a point. I wouldn’t want to face Gee’s ghost, angry.”

 

“Could you believe it? Him – Gee – running for mayor?”

 

Kay shook her head. “Nah. Lewis said he thought it was just a big ol’ joke Gee was pulling on the city; I agreed.”

 

“I personally wanted to blame it on aliens…”

 

“Of course you would…”

 

“But you and Lewis have a good secondary theory.”

 

“’Secondary’ to aliens?” Now she was staring at him, not out of shock, but more or less saying with her face that she thought he was crazy. “Secondary. To aliens. This city has done… things … to your brain, Munch.”

 

“It could be aliens…”

 

“Oh, everything could be related to aliens, they way you talk.” Despite her words, Kay was grinning. “You gonna open that?” She was focused on the package again, diverting his attention.

 

“Might as well,” he sighed, turning serious once again and reaching for the envelope, “even if it does mean I have to go back to Baltimore again.” He broke the seal and pulled the various documents out, skimming over the legalese. It was relatively simple, when translated into normal English – notifying him that the case had been filed in a Maryland court. “I think I’ll phone our ADA in the morning,” he remarked, “see if she knows a good civil attorney.”

 

“Lawyers know lawyers, huh?”

 
“Yeah.”