A/N: It's that time of year where we sit back and re-evaluate our choices, the relationships that have blessed and tainted our lives, and look to a new year as a new beginning, with new hope. But maybe we need just a bit of help to see it all clearly.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own these characters or basic plot points, I do, however, own the words and storyline of this particular story, so don't sue me, Dick Wolf.
The day after Thanksgiving was never much of a cause for celebration. Not for her. Of course, there was the obligatory excursions with her partner's kids, stores and shoppes and cafes at two-in-the-morning with hot credit and cold coffee. She always felt a bit embittered by their overflowing carts and spill-brimmed bags, while there was never more than five packages in her hands. Six if she was feeling extra generous, if her partner hadn't found a way to end up in the dog house and earned himself two gifts.
This year, though, it was different. It was filled with a tension so thick it almost choked her. An empty chair at the dinner table had somehow tied itself to the ankles of every one else, the weight of hit dragging behind them as it tried to hold them back. She did what she could to lighten moods, even suggesting bad karaoke and ridiculous middle-school appropriate charades before their venture into the Black Friday chaos began, but the mood was still somber, the gloom still stifling.
"You think she went to see Grandma and Grandpa?" the youngest girl, eleven going on thirty, asked with hopful bespectacled eyes.
She opened her mouth to reply, but the child's oldest sister took her opportunity away. "She would've told us," the fifteen year old said, "We all would've gone with her."
The middle child, after a hearty sniff of a cinnamon-scented candle, and an even heartier sneeze, shook her head. "I wasn't supposed to hear, but I heard," she confessed in a sniffled whisper. "She left her wedding ring and a note on the kitchen table." She looked at her sisters, and then at her dad's partner. "She's gone."
Blinking away the memory of that moment in the middle of the night, two weeks ago, she took a sip of her spiced gingerbread latte and licked her lips. Her breath fogged the air in front of her, white clouds swirling before her eyes as she walked. It was another reason to add to the list, the explanations she had for hating the Yuletide season. At least, now, she didn't have to suffer alone, the rest of what she considered her family was miserable, too, making them, somehow, happier.
Her partner, Elliot, and his four children, had woken up the day before Thanksgiving to find that Kathy, wife and mother, had taken off in the middle of the night. Elliot had tried his best to keep it from the kids, hoping they'd think she'd just gone out to buy last minute trimmings for the turkey, got stuck in traffic, but he'd told his partner the truth. Kathy'd left. He'd blamed himself. Nothing could change his mind about that, but for some reason, in the days following, he'd been calmer, almost serene. Everyone in his house seemed to have relaxed, and what should have been a time of confusion and grief, was anything but.
She pulled the pile of dry-cleaning draped over her hand up a bit higher, having heard the plastic drag along the granite, and took another sip of her seasonal brew. She turned the corner, absently humming along to the filtered instrumental music blaring from the speakers hung on the city's telephone poles. The mayor's ghastly attempt at bringing New York together for the holidays seemed to be working.
She ran up the stone steps and pushed the carved-wood double-doors open with her elbows. She smiled brightly when her eyes landed on the person she was here to see. "Here, sweetie," she said, holding the brass hangers out to a boy of about eleven.
"Liv!" the young man cried, taking the pressed school uniform gratefully as he threw an arm around her. "You're a lifesaver!"
She laughed. "That's actually my job, yes," she said jokingly, as she tapped the badge at her hip. She tugged on the boy's navy blue blazer, chuckling, "Drop this one off at the cleaner's on the way home, huh? And I promise, I won't tell Daddy you spilled your juice all over it, again."
"Ah, bless you, Liv!" he said, clasping his hands together in grateful prayer.
"Be more careful, Dickie," she said with a soft smile. "You only have three of these. Maybe I'll guy you a new one for Christmas." She winked at him and laughed when he ran down the hall to change before his next class. She sighed and took a moment to look around the place. The foyer looked more like the entrance to a voctorian mansion than a school, and the walls and floor were pristine, glimmering in the light that bounced off the marble.
Turning her head, she grabbed a brochure out of the plastic display case on the wall. "Damn," she almost choked, scanning the tuition rates, which seemed to increase by grade. She briefly wondered how her partner, Elliot, could afford private school for all four of his kids, on cop's salary, but then she sobered. As she put the pamphlet back into place, she sighed. Kathy's income had probably helped.
She walked back out into the city winter, no longer humming along with 'Jingle Bell Rock," and tried to calculate how strapped he would be by doing it all on his own. "Shit," she seethed, wincing when she assumed that, if Kathy stayed gone, Dickie wouldn't be needing another uniform after all.
Halfway down the block, she found herself humming again, "Silver Bells." Making her way up another set of stone steps, she seemed to forget all about Elliot's potential financial troubles and palmed open the doors to the Sixteenth Precinct. She waved and smiled brightly to the cops and admin staff milling about the lobby. She held up her badge as she nodded to Bill, the security guard, and bypassed the metal detector. She slapped the elevator call button and had just stepped into its opening doors, when an unwelcome companion pushed his way into the box with her.
"Good morning, Detective Benson," the man said, his smarmy smile making his handsome features seem grotesque.
"Not anymore," she scoffed, turning her head away from him and downing another sip of her coffee.
"Aw, not nice," he said with an air of flirtation that seemed to be laced with condescension. "You know, the department Christmas party is coming up."
"Yeah," she said, staring at the glowing orange number, wishing it would magically skip to her floor. "Always happens, ya know, at Christmas."
The man narrowed his eyes. "Something different about you," he said. "You're being...nicer...to me."
She rolled her eyes. "You think this is me being nice?"
"Not in the least," he said. "But nicer. You haven't told me to go fuck myself, yet. Are you warming up to the idea of going out with..."
"Langan?" she interrupted.
He answered brightly. "Yes?"
She timed it perfectly. As soon as the doors slid open, she smiled at him. "Go fuck yourself." She stepped out of the elevator first, sidestepping her way through the hall. She knew he was behind her, and she knew why. She only hoped it was for Munch and Fin's case, not her and Elliot's. She could only stand so much of Trevor Langan.
She veered left and walked into the sqaudroom of the Special Victim's Unit, found her partner standing by a desk in the corner, and strode over to him, handing him the rest of her coffee.
He drank it, without hesitation, and glared at the man in the suit behind Olivia. "What's he doing here?"
As she took off and hung up her wool coat, she said, "Asking me to go to the Christmas party with him."
He choked on a mouthful of coffee. "Sorry," he coughed. "What? What did, um, what did you say?"
"Nothing," she said, folding her arms over her red sweater. "I shot him down before he actually asked," she smiled.
Seemingly relieved, he turned toward Langan. "Okay,so she told you to fuck off, go away."
"Ah, no can do, Stabler," Langan said, tapping the side of his briefcase, and plastering another smug grin on his face. "Here on business. Which way to my client?"
Munch, an older, wiser, more embittered detective, peered at him over a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. "Who's your client?"
Langan looked at Munch, confused. "You all just stand around and do nothing, all day, don't you?"
Olivia rolled her eyes, the second time already that day, and said, "No, but this is SVU, do you know how many scumbags are sitting back there in a box, or across the hall in holding? You can't just say, 'my client,' like we only have a one a day, asshole."
Langan squinted at her and tilted his head. "That's a 'no' on dinner tonght, then?"
"Fuck, Langan!" Elliot snapped. "Who the hell are you here for?"
Langan chuckled, his mission accomplished, and he said, "Darryl Forthman."
"Shit," Munch said softly. "Ours," he griped. "He's in holding, just tell them..."
"I know," Langan said, "Not my first time at the rodeo, old man." He turned, winked at Olivia, and headed across the hall to find his client.
"I guess this means I need to call Novak," Munch said, looking at his partner, Fin, who hadn't seemed to have noticed anything that happened. "Fin? Man, you all right?"
Fin nodded. "You okay?" He was looking at Olivia.
Olivia, confused, took the coffee out of Elliot' hands, drank the last sip, and tossed it into a trash can by her desk. "I'm fine, why?"
Fin shrugged and frowned slightly. "You look different, that's all." He got up and slapped Munch on the shoulder. "Let's ge Novak down here, build our offense." He smiled back at Olivia and Elliot before walking to the back of the room with Munch.
"Wierd," Olivia mumbled.
"Huh?" Elliot questioned, "What's weird?"
Olivia looked at him. "Langan said the same thing," she said, biting her lip. "Said there was something different about me."
"We're all a little different, this time of year," he said, and then he looked at her. "You do look...I don't know. Lighter."
She shrugged. "I've been eating too many of your sugar cookies to be any lighter, Stabler," she joked.
He laughed. 'I mean, like a...like a weight has been lifted, I guess. You look..." He stopped, really took a long look at her, and said, "You look beautiful, actually."
Feeling her cheeks warm, she turned and looked down, at a spot on the floor in front of her feet. "Thanks." She cleared her throat. "You hear from..."
"No," he said before she could finish asking. "No, uh, and I don't think I'm going to." He stepped around her and picked up a thick envelope off of his desk. "These were here when I walked in, this morning."
She took the envelope as he offered it, opened it slowly, and pulled out a stapled packet of papers. At first glance, it was just a bunch of legal jargon she didn't care to understand, but then, she saw three words she recognized. "Dissolution of marriage," she whispered. She looked up at him. "Divorce, oh, God, El, I...I'm..."
"No, don't be," he said. "Look at the filing date at the top. Those are the ones..."
"Oh, she...she kept them? The whole time?" She folded them back up and shoved them back into the envelope, unsure of which emotion felt more genuine, the guilt or the excitement. "What are you..."
"Already made a copy," he interrupted her. "I'm heading down to hand them over to Shiela Atkins, during my lunch. She, uh, she says I got a good shot at coming out of this relatively unscathed." He tried to smile. "The only things taking a hit are my bank account and my eternal soul."
"El, divorce isn't really going to send you to..."
He held up a hand. "I was kidding. Kind of." He took a deep breath and plopped into his chair. "I'm claiming sousal abandonment, this way she can't just walk in and take away everything we just settled into having."
She smirked. "We?"
"Um, uh, yes. Me. The kids. Um, you're my partner. That's we. We're a 'we,' is that a problem?" He suddenly looked sharply at her, defensive.
She knew why. "No, we, uh, we can be a we. I am helping you out, with all of this, so..." she stopped. It wasn't the kind of 'we' she wanted, deep down, but she'd take it. Then, the guilt she'd been fighting finally won. "Maybe...wait a while. I called a few of her friends, a few from the hospital, couple from the PTA. No one's heard from her." She took a step toward him. "I have a BOLO out on the wagon, if she comes back you..."
Her phone chirped, interrupting her, and she pulled it out of her pocket. Her head cocked as she looked down at it, confused. She didn't recognize the number, they weren't in her contacts, and the text message was short, clear, pointed.
Stop looking. Take the favor.
She stiffened as she straightened up. She looked around, her eyes darting from face to face, and she dropped into her chair and pulled up the search her computer had been running for two days straight. "What the..." she questioned, the program's error message popping up.
"What's the matter? Someone send you a dick pic?" he laughed, but when she didn't, he got worried. "Liv?"
She was ignoring him as she typed the phone number into another search, cursing and smacking the keyboard when it came up as a disposable, pay-by-the-minute, phone. No name, no trail. The phone bleeped again, this time more brusque.
I said stop looking. Or else.
"Liv, come on, you're scaring me, here," he said, leaning across his desk. "Who's texting you?"
She shook her head trying to make sense of it all. "Um, Kathy...I...I think." She breathed out heavily and looked up at him. "Burner phone, she said...um...don't try to look for her." She bit her lip, not knowing if she'd just lied to him or not.
He sighed, his heart cracked just a bit, but he slapped his hands onto his desk. "Well, that...settles things, doesn't it." He swallowed hard, blinked and shook tension out of his neck. "So, uh, who are you going to this gala with? I know it's not Langan."
She furrowed her brow, wondering why he wasn't more concerned, more pissed off. "What? No one, why are you even..."
"Because we should go. You and me, I mean, um, we." He waited in silence, watching her face turn from sheer confusion to something nearly unreadable. "Well?"
"Yeah," she said, nodding once. "We...we should go." She gave him a small smile, and just as the captain's door opened to send them spinning into work-mode, her phone beeped once again.
You're welcome.
Who is this? She texted back, confusion swirling within her. An automatic reply told her the number was no longer in service. She stared at her phone a moment longer, but something pulled her out of her daze. Someone humming, soft and low, to the tune of "Silver Bells." She turned to look over her shoulder, but no one was there.
"You ready?" Elliot asked, assuming she had heard Captain Cragen give their assignment.
"Oh, uh, Yeah," she said, standing and shoving her phone in her pocket. She rolled her eyes, again, this time at herself. It probably was Kathy, taking the coward's way out of an unhappy marriage and unhappy life. Kathy'd always suspected there was something between Olivia and Elliot, and Kathy must've assumed it would kick off as soon as she was gone, and this was her way of getting in one final dig. "Not everything is a conspiracy," she thought to herself, the same advice she often gave to Munch when he found political cover-ups in he grounds of his morning coffee.
She felt his hand hit her lower back as they walked toward the door, sending shivers up her spine. She turned to say something, but before she could, he winked at her. She smiled, and walked with him out of the squadroom, noticing a new kick in his step, as if he, too, were lighter in the way he'd said she was.
They chatted and laughed, teased each other and smacked each other, until finally they got into a deep red sedan, oblivious to the black car starting its engine, preparing to follow them.
A/N: Erm...happy holidays?
