Title: A Day With the Cole Brothers
Summary: She wouldn't have had to resort to trickery if tough-as-nails-in-all-other-areas Casey Novak wasn't such a ride wimp.
Spoilers: None.
Pairing: None.
Disclaimer: Casey Novak and Olivia Benson belong to Dick Wolf and NBC. I'm not going to pretend I'm not still angry for what he did to Casey, so I don't even care if he finds out I stole her for a little bit. ;)
Author's Note: Response to a friend's prompt: Casey, Liv, cotton candy, and a carnival ride. Lynn and Stephanie Novak were introduced in "Stalemate" and are completely un-canon. But as I said before, Dick Wolf never bothered to give Casey a family so I'm still not tagging this AU. I'm stubborn like that. Enjoy!
"You know what I'm going to do when we get there?" Lynn Novak asked, bouncing excitedly in the back seat of the taxi cab. "I'm going to ride the Scrambler over and over again until my stomach hurts. And then I'm going to go on the Tilt-a-Whirl."
"Wonderful," her sister, Stephanie, muttered. She gave a swift roll of her eyes before returning her attention to the tall buildings that were flying past the car window. "The kid has an iron stomach. I'll get sick long before she does."
"And it's not like your aunt's going to be much help," Olivia Benson offered, grinning over her shoulder at all three Novaks in the back seat. "Her stomach might just be weaker than yours." In response, Casey narrowed her eyes and stuck her tongue out at the detective, causing Lynn to slap a hand over her mouth to muffle her giggle.
Snickering, Olivia faced forward in her seat. The four of them were on their way to the Cole Brothers' Carnival, one of those traveling affairs that sets up shop in an empty park for a few days in the summer before taking off for its next location. And Olivia was not at all ashamed to admit that this particular outing was one hundred percent her fault.
She had justification, though. She wouldn't have had to resort to trickery if tough-as-nails-in-all-other-areas Casey Novak wasn't such a ride wimp. The ADA didn't like any ride that spun faster than a carousel or went higher than a standard Ferris wheel. Bumper cars were okay, but all other rides were strictly on the No list. And since she would go on all of three rides, she absolutely hated carnivals.
Unfortunately for Casey, Olivia adored carnivals. She had also discovered during the first couple of fairs she dragged Casey to that the opportunities for giving the ADA crap were endless. Once Casey finally caught onto the detective's ulterior motives, she refused to go to any more with her.
And that was why, Olivia waited until Lynn and Stephanie were visiting Casey for an overnight to bring up the Cole Brothers' Carnival. Just as she'd hoped, Lynn had jumped up and down before throwing herself at her aunt, begging her to take her to the fair. Though Stephanie was a little less enthusiastic about rides than her sister, she seemed excited by the prospect of fried dough with cinnamon and midway games. After all that, Casey didn't have it in her heart to tell the girls she wasn't going to take them.
"So completely unfair," she'd murmured to Olivia, who had just given her a wide grin in response.
The cab ride lasted another twenty minutes, which must have felt like twenty hours to Lynn. The driver had barely eased the car to a stop along the curb outside the fenced-in park before Lynn clicked off her seat belt and bolted out the door. She skipped across the sidewalk to the chain link fence, and, grasping the sun-warmed wire in her hands, pressed her face up against it. "Look! There's a Tilt-a-Whirl and the bumper cars! Oh, and a Zipper and a Gravitron and--yes! There's the Scrambler! I couldn't see it at first."
Olivia met Casey's gaze with wide eyes, her expression clearly indicating she hadn't quite thought through bringing an energetic and ready-for-anything eight-year-old to a traveling carnival. "Just remember, Detective, this was your idea," Casey murmured in an almost singsong as she climbed out of the cab.
"You're going to be no help to me at all, are you?" Olivia asked, giving the ADA a small pout.
"Not in the slightest." Casey raised her eyebrows and smirked at Olivia before walking over to tug Lynn away from the fence. "All right, Peanut, calm down. Let's not get your face stuck in the fence, okay?"
"I wouldn't get my face stuck, Auntie Casey," Lynn argued, gripping her aunt's hand. "The openings are too little."
"It'd be really funny if you did, though," Stephanie said with a giggle, amiably nudging her sister's shoulder.
"Oh God, that would most definitely not be funny," Casey groaned. Lynn began tugging at her hand in an attempt to pull her towards the entrance gate. "Because then we'd have to call an ambulance to get her out of the fence and then I'd have to call your parents and then I'd never be allowed to take either of you anywhere ever again."
Now that everyone was moving, Lynn had to quicken her pace to keep up with Casey's long strides. "You'd still be able to take us places. Mommy said that she'd let you take us anywhere you wanted to after The Pomegranate."
"The Pomegranate?" Olivia asked, raising an eyebrow at the little girl.
"She means the hostage crisis," Stephanie quietly explained. "It helps her deal with things if she gives it a funny name. She called Grammy's funeral The Kumquat."
Olivia shook her head, chuckling. Out of all the little kids she'd met, she'd never met anyone quite like Lynn Novak. Hell, the entire Novak clan was certainly unique, but that was what made them so much fun to be around.
She was hoping, though, that she and Casey would be able to have at least a little bit of time to themselves. At first Olivia thought they'd be able to send Lynn off with her sister for a while, but it was quickly becoming clear that if the group were to split, it would be the ride lovers versus the ride haters. Meaning she'd be taking Lynn on all the rides while Casey and Stephanie … did whatever ever it was ride wimps did when their companions were on the rides.
"All right," the detective said after admission had been paid and everyone was through the entrance gate. "What's up first on the agenda?"
Lynn began to list ride after ride, pointing helpfully to the structures in the distance. Speaking up to be heard over her excited little sister, Stephanie tapped her aunt's shoulder. "Can we get something to eat? I'm getting hungry."
"I'm a little hungry, too," Casey agreed over Lynn's protests. "Food it is."
Lynn frowned. "Can I at least get some cotton candy?" she asked, crossing her arms over her chest in a tiny huff.
"You think I'm crazy enough to give you pure sugar this early on in the day?" Casey replied, giving a small shake of her head. "It's lunchtime, Lynnie. Get something meal-like, a hot dog or a slice of pizza or something. We'll get snacks later, I promise."
The foursome followed the hot and sticky scent of French fries and fried dough to one of the many concession stands set up in the park. Lynn hemmed and hawed and decided at the last minute to get a hot dog and a cup of lemonade. Stephanie ordered her fried dough with powdered sugar and cinnamon and a soda to drink. Casey and Olivia both got a slice of cheese pizza and a bottled water. Once everyone had received their food and drink, they plopped down at an empty picnic table.
In between bites, Lynn happily outlined her plan for the day, which seemed to consist solely of riding the Tilt-a-Whirl and the Scrambler multiple times with a break every so often for the Gravitron. Olivia looked down at the half-eaten slice of pizza in her hand and frowned. Maybe she should have reconsidered her lunch. Her stomach was turning at the mere thought of all that spinning, and she didn't even get motion sickness!
Luckily for Olivia, Stephanie halted her little sister's notions in their tracks. "Uh, no. You want us all to be throwing up this afternoon?"
"But I never get to ride the Scrambler!" Lynn whined. "Or the Tilt-a-Whirl!"
"She's not saying you can't go on them, Lynnie," Casey spoke up with a patience Olivia hadn't been aware she could muster. "She's just saying that a little bit of time between spins is not necessarily a bad idea."
Lynn pouted in Olivia's direction, clearly hoping that the ride-loving detective would back her up. "Sorry, kiddo," she said, giving the little girl an apologetic smile. "I happen to agree with the ride wimps on this one."
Both Stephanie and Casey looked up at Olivia sharply, taking mild offense to the label of "ride wimp." However, considering that she was agreeing with them, they both decided it wasn't worth saying anything in protest.
Lynn finished eating first but miraculously managed to sit quietly until everyone else was through with lunch. "I don't want think I want to spin right now," she said as Casey collected and balled up wrappers, napkins, and empty paper plates. "Can we do the bumper cars instead?"
"That sounds like a perfect after-lunch ride, Peanut," Casey said, smiling at her niece while simultaneously seeking out a trash barrel in which to deposit the remnants of their meal.
Once her eyes finally landed on a barrel, Casey excused herself. "Maybe I'll even be tall enough this time to drive the car by myself!" Lynn said optimistically as she pushed herself up from her seat. Lynn, a tad small for her age, was in that awkward phase where she was a bit too big for kiddie rides but not quite tall enough for some of the adult rides. Her dad had to drive at the last amusement park she went to while she sat on the passenger side and navigated. Somehow slamming her car into Stephanie's wasn't the same when she wasn't the one doing the slamming.
"I'm sure you will, sweetie," Olivia assured her. "You've grown a whole bunch in the last couple of months."
When Lynn grinned a little kid's smile full of empty gaps between teeth, Olivia chuckled and reached out to ruffle the girl's dark red hair. Before Olivia had a chance to bring her hand all the way down to her side, Lynn hung onto it and sidled up next to the detective. Casey returned then and the four of them made their way to the bumper car arena.
There was a small line curled partway around the circular arena when they arrived. Olivia kept one eye on the riders and the other on the Novaks. Stephanie and Lynn were occupying themselves by giving each other sisterly shoves and flicks, and Casey was trying fruitlessly to settle them. A smile curled onto her lips. Who would have thought that one of the best ways to spend a day off would be going to a traveling carnival with the squad's ADA and her two nieces?
The girls brought out a side of Casey that Olivia never saw on the job. Around them, she was playful and silly but still able to keep them mostly in control. The sparkle in her eyes and the ease of her smile when she was with her nieces was nothing short of amazing. After her first outing with the three of them, Olivia had come to the quick conclusion that Casey needed to smile more.
Lynn's shriek of excitement startled Olivia back to reality. As it happened, Lynn was indeed tall enough to drive a car by herself, and she made a beeline to the first available blue car. "I'm going to get you, Auntie Casey!" she hollered as she slung the safety strap over her shoulder.
The ADA rolled her eyes but she couldn't hide the indulgent smirk on her face. Olivia smiled herself as it dawned on her that the gauntlet had just been thrown: it was now Lynn versus Casey in the bumper car Demolition Derby. "They always do this," Stephanie whispered to the detective. "And they get so wrapped up in chasing each other that they're totally shocked when I ram the both of them from behind."
Olivia laughed aloud. God, she loved the Novaks. She chose the closest empty car, a green one, and only thought for a moment before deciding that Lynn wasn't going to be the only one gunning for Casey.
She managed to get in a few good slams, too. The first couple were the best because Casey hadn't been expecting them at all. Then Casey was prepared and managed to slam the detective while also chasing her little niece. The prize for the best slam, though, went to Stephanie. She waited until Casey chased Lynn into a corner and rammed into the back of Casey's car. The resulting shockwave went through Casey's car to Lynn's to the arena's edge and back again. "Two jolts for the price of one," Stephanie grinned.
As they headed down the exit ramp when the ride was over, Lynn walked backwards and chattered on about how now it was time for the Scrambler. Apparently, her stomach had settled a little after her lunch. "This one Steph can handle," Casey whispered to Olivia. "Want to go on the ride or do you want to wander for a bit?"
"I'm not quite up for spinning yet," Olivia admitted. Carnival pizza was a bit heavier than take-out pizza. "You sure Steph's all right to watch her for a little while?"
Casey nodded, giving the detective a smile. "Steph, will you take you sister on the ride? Liv and I are just going to go for a little walk."
"Sure, Aunt Casey." Stephanie reached down to take hold of her sister's hand, and Olivia smiled at the motherly gesture.
Upon feeling her sister grab her hand, Lynn threw a glance over her shoulder to pout at the adults, but the ADA spoke up before the girl could even begin to protest. "We'll be back by the time you guys get off the ride, Peanut."
Lynn heaved a sigh and turned to face front as both girls took off for the Scrambler line. "Is she mad?" Olivia whispered to Casey as the two of them walked towards the midway.
"Nah." She shrugged. "She likes to pretend to be mad to see if she can get her own way. Trust me, by the time she and Steph get off that ride, she'll be my best friend again."
The detective chuckled. A tiny breeze swirled through the midway, carrying with it the aroma of fried food, fresh popcorn, and hot sugar. Ringing bells and whoops of joy from the game stands met their ears. "How come you call Lynn Peanut?" Olivia asked after a moment or two of comfortable silence.
"I've never told you that?" Casey asked, meeting the detective's eyes with a barely noticeable frown on her face.
"If you'd told me, why would I ask you?"
"Fair point." The ADA smiled. "When Lynnie was born, she was all of seventeen inches long and weighed a whopping six pounds."
"Oh, wow. Was she early?"
"Nope. She was just a small baby. 'A little peanut,' I said at the time, and the nickname stuck. I'm the only one who gets away with calling her that, though."
Olivia smiled and found herself closing the space between the two of them. Casey never talked about her family at work. Probably her way of keeping the two halves of her world separate, although the two had collided more than once in the past. A year and a half ago, Lynn's entire school was taken hostage, and just a few months back, one of Stephanie's teachers had overstepped his bounds with her.
Until the night before Lynn's seventh birthday, Olivia hadn't even been aware that Casey had nieces. The detective and the ADA were in Casey's office over a take-out dinner, going over Olivia's testimony, and Casey had suddenly remembered aloud that she hadn't yet gotten Lynn a present. In the days following the incident at the elementary school, Casey talked about her family a lot, mostly in response to colleagues' questions as to how everyone was doing. Then came Stephanie's encounter with her teacher and Casey once again stopped mentioning her family. The detective had a feeling that the whole thing had thrown Casey a lot more than she let on.
Sometimes it was hard to imagine that this was the same young attorney who stepped on everyone's toes when she first started with SVU. She'd grown as a lawyer and settled in so much in the last couple of years. Olivia never would have guessed in a million years back then that she and Casey would have grown into such good friends or that she would volunteer to spend a day with the ADA and her family.
"Hey! Earth to Benson!"
Olivia blinked hard and glanced over at Casey, who was watching her with a mildly amused expression on her face. "What?"
The ADA pouted. "You completely spaced out on me."
"Sorry." Olivia smiled to cover her slip.
"Whatever. I see how it is." Casey fixed a teasing grin on her face. "I'm not interesting enough for you."
Before Olivia could even begin to think of a proper retort, the two of them heard a young voice hollering for Casey. They turned in unison in the direction of the sound and saw Stephanie and Lynn, fresh from their ride on the Scrambler, hurrying towards them. "You said you'd be back before we got off the ride!" Lynn accused, slightly out of breath and frowning up at her aunt.
"Sorry!" Casey cried, raising her hands in surrender. "We lost track of time. Can you forgive us?" When Lynn's frown deepened as she pretended to think it over, Casey reached down to tickle her niece's sides. "Please, please, please? Please forgive us?"
"Yes!" Lynn shrieked, pushing against Casey's hands to make her stop tickling. "Yes, I forgive you!"
The next few hours passed in a similar fashion. Sometimes Casey would send Lynn and Stephanie on a ride to give the two women a couple minutes to themselves. Olivia took Lynn on more than a few rides since Stephanie and Casey refused to get on anything more thrilling than the bumper cars. She did manage to talk Lynn into only one ride on the Gravitron, though; the sensation of the centripetal force pressing on her chest, she found, was not a pleasant one. Soon the girls began complaining that they were getting hungry.
"It's time for snacks now," Casey agreed. The small group made its way to the nearest concession stand. Stephanie ordered a small bag of kettle corn, and Lynn, showing an uncharacteristic amount of restraint, asked for a small puff of cotton candy. Casey turned to Olivia. "Cotton candy okay with you?"
"Sure," the detective said, shrugging.
The ADA added a bag of cotton candy for her and Olivia to split and four bottles of water onto the order. Once the food and drink and distributed, and taking advantage of the fact that her little sister's mouth was full of cotton candy, Stephanie asked, "Can we go on the Ferris wheel, Aunt Casey?"
Casey smiled. Stephanie never asked to go on rides, and after letting Lynn dictate much of the day, she was happy to let her older niece choose what to do next. "Sounds like a plan to me," she said, glancing to Olivia for confirmation. The detective nodded, happy that she wasn't going to be spinning for this ride.
The sun was going down fast. The sky had turned a deep pink and orange, and it was darkening by the minute. There were only a few people ahead of them when they arrived at the serpentine so they reached the front of the line in almost record time. The adults let the kids get on the ride first, and Olivia and Casey were given the car right after theirs.
They began the slow ascent, the wheel stopping every so often for the operator to discharge and load other riders. "I somehow don't find it fair," Casey murmured to Olivia as soon as they were out of earshot of the operator, "that this was your idea and you don't seem nearly as exhausted as I am."
Olivia turned her head to look at the ADA, smirking. She did indeed look like she was ready to fall asleep right on the spot. "It's all that energy you put into hating carnival rides," she teased.
"Ha ha," Casey muttered.
"Seriously, Casey, if you went on a ride or two here or there, the adrenaline would help keep your energy up."
"I'm on a ride, aren't I?" she said, waving her hand at the metal structure around them.
"This hardly counts as a ride. Get on the roller coaster and then I'll be impressed."
The ADA rolled her eyes before snatching the bag of cotton candy from Olivia's hand and tearing off a chunk of the pink candy. "Maybe the sugar will wake me up."
Olivia couldn't resist. "You know, cotton candy is mostly air. There's surprisingly little sugar in it. This whole bag only has a couple of tablespoons."
Casey shot the detective a weary look. "You couldn't just let me believe it would wake me up a little? Let me get all sugar high on the placebo effect?"
"Nope." Olivia grinned even as the ADA gave her shoulder a hard shove.
The Ferris wheel eased to another stop when their car was one spot away from the top. In the car ahead of them, Lynn turned around in the seat until she could see the adults and grinned at them excitedly. "Auntie Casey, look! We're at the tippy-top!"
Olivia could tell just by the look on Casey's face that she wanted to scream at the little girl to sit correctly before she fell. Somehow she managed to control herself enough to simply call back, "Yes, Peanut, I can see that. Steph, can you make sure your sister doesn't jump from the car, please?"
"I'm on it," Stephanie answered, laughing as she yanked her sister back down until she was facing forward. Olivia heard several other riders chuckling as well.
Casey relaxed considerably once she was certain that Lynn was safely seated in the car. "Isn't this the biggest cliché ever?" she asked, returning her attention to the detective. "Getting stuck at the top of the Ferris wheel like this?"
"Only if the two people at the top of the Ferris wheel are on a date," Olivia teased, nudging the ADA's shoulder with hers. "And we're not exactly at the top, if you hadn't noticed."
"We could be."
"At the top or on a date?"
Were she not so tired, the ADA would have recognized the teasing, rhetorical question for what it was. Instead, she tried to answer. "On a date. We're sitting together on the top of a Ferris wheel and we're sharing a bag of cotton candy. We certainly look to all the world like we're on a date."
The detective raised a single eyebrow at her. "Are you trying to tell me something, Novak?"
Even in the dark, Olivia could see a rush of pink color the ADA's cheeks. "No. Sorry. I'm just rambling," Casey muttered, shaking of hear head. "I ramble when I get tired."
"When you get tired and when you get nervous," Olivia agreed with a tiny smile. "You either ramble or you speak in legalese."
"Yeah, thanks for noticing."
"You're very welcome," the detective teased.
Finally, the ride operator stopped loading new riders and let the wheel spin for a few revolutions. The breeze was growing cooler as the evening wore on. Casey gave a tiny shiver as a sudden chill ran down her spine. She hadn't prepared for the warm day to turn chilly so early.
Once she was off the ride, though, the chill went away. She and Olivia met back up with the girls just outside the Ferris wheel's exit gate. Next on Stephanie's agenda were a couple of the midway games. Lynn got herself a brown plush puppy at the duck pond, and Stephanie managed to win a purple teddy bear from the ring toss.
Casey let Stephanie play a couple more games before noticing that Lynn looked as if she was asleep on her feet. "I think it's time to call it a day," she said, tiredly wiping her hand across her forehead. "What do you say, girls?"
"I agree with that statement," Stephanie said around a quiet yawn. Lynn just gave a nod.
The adults raised their eyebrows at each other. Both of them had expected Lynn to argue. The poor thing was completely exhausted.
Casey grasped Lynn's hand as the four of them headed back towards the front gate. The curbside had become a kind of ad hoc cab stand. Half a dozen yellow cars sat idling, waiting for fares, and a few more were circling the park. Casey escorted her little party to the closest cab.
Stephanie climbed in the front seat while explaining that she'd never sat in the front of a cab before. Casey got Lynn all buckled in before climbing in herself, followed by Olivia. Since the girls were staying the night at Casey's, she gave the cabbie her address.
After the car had safely pulled into traffic, Olivia leaned her head back against the seat and stared out of the window. She could see in the side-view mirror that Stephanie was doing the same thing, watching the buildings fly by them in a blur. Only when the cabbie stopped for a red light did the gray blur once again become distinct structures.
The detective was pulled from her daydream when she heard Casey let out a quiet sigh. She turned her head to ask the ADA what was wrong but stopped short. In the roughly fifteen minutes they had been in the car, Casey had dozed off into a light sleep, her head resting against the back of the seat. Lynn, too, had fallen asleep, her body turned sideways so that her feet pressed against the door and her back was leaning against Casey's left side.
Olivia grinned. "Hey, Steph," she whispered, not wanting to awaken the two sleeping passengers. When Stephanie shifted in the seat to look behind her, a smile curled onto her lips. "You have your cell phone on you?"
"Yep," Stephanie whispered back. She dug into her pocket until she grasped her cell phone, pulled it out, and snapped a quick picture with the phone's camera.
"I want an email copy of that," Olivia said.
The girl merely smiled. "Oh, believe me, the distribution list on this thing is going to be huge."
Olivia laughed. "Good girl." She watched out the window for a few more minutes before reaching over and repeatedly poking her finger into Casey's shoulder. "Casey, we're almost at your apartment."
"'Kay," Casey murmured, her eyes fluttering open and instantly shutting again.
The detective sighed. They could carry Lynn from the cab into Casey's apartment if need be, but Casey herself needed to be awake when the cab pulled up to the curb.
But Casey was more awake than she appeared. She inhaled deeply, swiped her hand across her eyes, and sat up straight while taking care not to jostle Lynn. "I had a good time today," she said, her voice soft. "I may be exhausted, but it's the good kind of exhausted."
"I had fun today, too," Olivia replied.
"Me, too," Stephanie spoke up from the front seat. She looked over her shoulder to address her aunt. "And since nothing ever knocks Lynn out like that, I think it's safe to say that she had fun as well."
Olivia smiled widely. She hadn't been agreeing simply to be agreeable; she really did enjoy herself with the Novaks quite a bit. She had a funny feeling that somehow, she'd be trying to find other ways to spend a day with Casey and her nieces.