Okay. I know the show has been off the air for quite a while, but i still have the DVDs and i love it. been watching alot recently. I don;t own any of it... if i did, it would still be running, dammit. Aidy is mine own invention, hope you enjoy her as much as i do. Here's chappy one.

P.S. As some of you already know, I can survive only on a steady supply of reviews... or babies' tears. You've been warned.

Irish Problem

Deputy District Attorney David McNorris was grinding his teeth so hard everyone else in the room could hear it. "Can't you go any faster?" he demanded for the third time. Joel had long since gone into mediator mode.

"Counselor," he began, his voice the epitome of reasonable. But the DDA was having none of it. He raised one beefy hand, palm out, to halt Joel's good intentioned interference.

"We need this DNA," the prosecutor told the lab tech, as though she were unaware of the fact until now. She did not even glance up.

Adeliene Creed had only been working at this particular L.A. crime lab for three months and this was her first contact with any of the three men now hovering around her work area. Joel and his partner, Fearless she thought she'd heard him called, seemed like good guys. Even though they knew how important the DNA results on this case - a triple homicide where all three victims were under the age of twelve - were, they still managed to stay calm. DDA McNorris, on the other hand, seemed about as calm as a tightrope walker on meth. She, herself, appreciated Joel's attempts at peacekeeping, but it was more for McNorris's benefit than her own. She would not have returned his aggression no matter what he said. She understood, she thought, he was passionate about his work and this kind of case upset everyone within hearing distance.

That did not mean she was not going to say anything. If the boys upstairs were under the impression they could walk all over the lab techs, it was time for them to be disillusioned. Her predecessor might have been meek, but she certainly was not.

"You don't say?" she snarked, quietly. He drew a breath and she knew he was going to launch into a lecture on the importance of the case and how everything hung on these DNA results and she really hadn't the patience to listen to it. "Is Cotton always this much fun?" she asked Joel, effectively cutting off the lawyer before he even got out word one. Joel had the good grace to suppress his smile, Fearless did not. Across the room, her lab "partner" and fledgling friend Daschle Hermes snorted and tried not to laugh.

In the half hour that the two detectives and the attorney had been loitering in her lab, Adeliene had referred to Mr. McNorris as "Powder", "Casper, the Surly Ghost", and "Whitey". That last one had sent Daschle sputtering into the hallway so as not to draw down the wrath of the DDA on him with his uncontrollable laughter.

McNorris sighed in annoyance. "Why do you keep-"

She turned towards her, leaning over the arm of her chair, and cut him off mid-statement, knowing what the full question was. "You're extremely pale," she informed the man before her. Those misbegotten blue eyes of his widened slightly in surprise at her bluntness. She continued, determined to give him a verbal smack to the back of his white-blonde head - however facetious it was. "Paler than most people. I bet people use you as a marker at the beach when they go swimming." She added, looking slightly passed him, brow furrowed as if searching for something off in the distance, "We were three blankets down from that clear guy."

She heard Daschle's head drop to his desk. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Joel cover his mouth and turn away nonchalantly. McNorris was staring at her with a mixture of irritation, surprise, and piqued interest; his pale rosy lips quirked fractionally upward in one corner.

"How much longer?" Fearless asked, his voice smooth and undemanding, drawing them out of their stare-down.

"Eight minutes longer than it would have taken me without Tab A over here-" she jerked her head back and to the left, indicated the DDA hovering over her like a vulture. "-breathing down my neck."

"Tab A?" the Irishman repeated, questioningly. She glanced back at him, face a mask of bland sweetness.

"It's a nicer way of saying you're a dick," she informed him, lightly. Joel, Fearless, and her cohort chuckled quietly. McNorris only gave her a look of mild annoyance. Aidy turned back to her computer, the printer at it's side having just started up. "Why don't you all go wait in the hallway, so I can actually do my job?" she said. It was phrased as a suggestion, but her tone made it an order. The three men filed out silently, DDA McNorris, bringing up the rear, glanced back at her once before exiting the room.

Daschle rolled over to her on his desk chair, chocolate eyes wide with shock and sparkling with amusement. "Whitey?" he practically squeaked. She grinned at his reaction. Daschle was probably six foot two (courtesy of his African American father), with those chocolate eyes, glossy black hair, and mocha skin (gifts from his Latino mother). Sweet and funny, the man was the very definition of the term heartbreaker. Lucky for Adeliene, he was also very happily married with three equally gorgeous children - Maya, RJ (Rufus Jerome, after Daschle's father), and Gaelen. She knew all this because the man kept a large family portrait on his desk and was exceedingly proud of his wife, a teacher, and children to the point of obsession. It was rather endearing. She had teased him over the photo, asking what it was that had happened slightly to the left of the camera that made everyone so happy. Daschle had seemed to decide at that moment that he was going to love Adeliene. Platonically, of course.

Three days later, he had invited her to dinner with his family. The littlest one, Gaelen, had latched onto her like an adorable parasite and had taken to sending crayon masterpieces to her through his father. Daschle's wife, Megan, was bright and spunky and possessed the same kind of quirky sense of humor as her husband. All three children had inherited their mother's glowing green eyes and father's good looks. In ten years or so, the world had better watch out, Aidy mused.

"Are you trying to make enemies already?" Daschle demanded with a smile. She rolled her eyes.

"If it keeps McNorris and others like him from coming down here and busting my chops, then I don't care if he wants to burn my likeness in effigy," she told the dark man.

"Busting your chops?" he snorted incredulously. She waved him back to his station, where he was working on trace evidence from a separate crime. Ten minutes later, she found herself in the hallway, DNA results on the triple homicide case in hand. She passed them to McNorris, noting the way his pale eyebrows went up in an expression of hopefulness.

"You've got your bad guy," she told him, then looked to Joel and Fearless. "Go get 'em."

The detectives gave her smiles that were so similar, it gave credence to the idea that the more time you spend with someone, the more like them you become. David McNorris seemed to deflate like a balloon, he relaxed so suddenly. Those ice blue eyes thawed a bit and he actually smiled a little.

"Thank you," he said, voice much warmer than it had been mere minutes before. She gave him a forgiving half smile in return and nodded in acknowledgement, then returned to her lab. It felt good to get the work done and know that it would be put to good use by the boys upstairs. The feeling was fleeting at best, though, as there were still dozens of cases to process and more coming in everyday. Still, chalk one up for the good guys.