Title: I'll Be Home for Christmas
Summary: A snowstorm on Christmas Eve strands a homeward-bound Casey at the 16.
Pairing: slight Casey/Olivia
Spoilers: None.
Disclaimer: The SVU gang belongs to Dick Wolf and NBC. Though, if he ever starts handing them out, I'll be first in line.
Author's note: I have writer's block, yet I still managed to get this idea. I also made a lot of stuff up for this, so hopefully I don't get too screwed over by canon later. Merry Christmas, y'all. :)

Casey Novak stepped through the door of the sixteenth precinct, dragging her suitcase and a bag of Christmas presents behind her. The heavy snow that had settled in her hair and on her shoulders during the thirty seconds it had taken her to hurry from the cab to the door was already starting to melt in the heated lobby. Groaning, she ruffled her hair and headed towards the elevator.

The snow had been falling heavily for the past six hours. Snowstorms on Christmas Eve were something Casey prayed for every year when she was small and even when she grew up, there was something about waking up to snow on Christmas morning that made her feel like a little kid again. A snowstorm on Christmas Eve day should have made her feel like she was five years old, but for the first time in her life, she was cursing the snow and herself for booking her flight home to Providence on Christmas Eve.

As the elevator car dinged on the correct floor and the doors opened, Casey pushed her suitcase out in front of her and then grabbed the bag with her presents. "Casey?" Olivia Benson asked, surprised to see the young ADA. She hurried over to her and took the gifts from her. "I thought you were going home!"

"I thought I was, too," Casey grumbled. "Halfway to the airport, I got a text message notification that my flight had been canceled because of the snow. So I called Amtrak, figuring that it would take me a bit longer than flying, but hey, it's only Providence. Turns out Amtrak's running on about a four-hour delay, not that it matters, because they have no seats because of the flight cancellations."

"So why did you come here?" Olivia asked as she led Casey towards a place to sit down. She set the presents down next to her desk chair and poured Casey a cup of coffee.

"It's a white-out. It was easier to tell the cabbie to drop me here than to turn around and go all the way back to my apartment. And seriously, if any of you expect to get home tonight, you should think about leaving now."

"But shouldn't you be at the airport anyway, waiting for the next flight?" Elliot Stabler asked her by way of a hello.

"Yeah, because what I really want to do is spend Christmas Eve by myself in an airport," Casey replied, rolling her eyes. She instantly felt guilty for giving the detective attitude for asking what was a perfectly fair question. "I'm sorry; I'm just frustrated. This is the first year I've missed Christmas."

Olivia gave her a comforting smile as she handed her a mug of steaming coffee. "Here. This'll warm you up a little."

"Thanks," Casey said as she accepted the mug.

"Have you called your dad yet?"

Casey shook her head as she sipped the hot liquid. "Providence is under just as much snow as we are, though, so I'm sure he's figured it out by now. I'll call him in a minute."

The detectives went back to their work, leaving Casey with as much privacy as they could give her. After Casey had guzzled a third of her coffee, she set the mug down and picked up the phone receiver out of its cradle. She slowly dialed her home number and waited for the call to connect.

The phone only rang once before her father answered. "Hello? Casey?"

"Hi, Daddy." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw John Munch look up and smirk at her use of such a childish name. She blushed slightly and turned her head, staring down at Olivia's desk calendar instead. "You'll never guess where I am."

"Stuck in a cab on Fifth Avenue?"

"Well, no, I'm in the squad room, but there's no way I'm leaving the city today. I'm so sorry, Dad, I shouldn't have waited until the afternoon of Christmas Eve to try to come home, but you guys are only a couple hours away and--"

"Don't worry about it, sweetheart. You can't control the weather and you couldn't have known when you booked your flight that it was going to snow today."

"But this is the first year I've missed Christmas!" She knew she was whining, but she didn't care.

"Jeff, Sarah, and the girls are stuck in Boston, too. No one's coming here tonight. We'll have our Christmas when things calm down. So the Novak Christmas is on the twenty-sixth or the twenty-seventh this year. So what?"

Casey gave a sad half-smile; while her father was trying his hardest to make her feel better, she felt more homesick than ever. She wanted nothing more than to be sipping her mother's special cocoa in front of the fire with her dad on one side of her and her mom on the other.

"Casey? You're not alone tonight, are you?"

"No," Casey replied, clearing her throat so she wouldn't sound upset. "I'm with friends."

"Good, good. You go be with your friends now and don't worry about getting here until it's safe. I love you, Peanut."

"I love you, too, Dad. Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas, Casey."

With a heavy sigh, Casey hung up the phone and slouched back in Olivia's desk chair. She closed her eyes as she felt hot tears prickling at her eyelids. No no not here not now, she thought furiously. She knew the tears were solely from frustration but she still didn't want her colleagues to see her crying over this.

A comforting hand rested on her shoulder and gave a light squeeze. Opening her eyes, she saw Olivia standing over her, smiling warmly. "Come on; let's get your stuff upstairs. The mayor just called a snow emergency and all non-essential road travel has been suspended. Looks like we're all stuck here for the night."

-----

Downstairs, the detectives were throwing a party. Well, they were throwing as much of a party as they could throw with hors d'oeuvres from the vending machine and coffee as the only beverage. Elliot, Fin, and Captain Cragen were playing poker for Fritos instead of money, and John Munch had hung a sprig of mistletoe over his desk and kept trying to get Olivia close enough to be considered as underneath it. Olivia kept telling John, in not as many words, to go jump in a lake. They were both kidding around with each other and having a great time.

Casey knew she should join the party, but for the past couple of hours, she had been upstairs, lying on one of the beds and sulking. Elliot had come up once to try to get her into the poker game; he had offered to start playing for Goldfish crackers instead of the Fritos because he knew she liked the Goldfish better. She had smiled but begged off, telling him instead that she wanted to be alone. She was aware of the fact that she was being somewhat selfish. After all, everyone else was stuck in the squad room on Christmas Eve, too, and they were all making the most of it. But she couldn't bring herself to stop moping for reasons she wasn't entirely sure of.

When the door to the crash room creaked open, Casey closed her eyes and groaned inwardly. Who else was coming in to try to get her to be social? "Casey?"

It was Olivia. She supposed she could be fairly social with Olivia. "Hey," she answered back quietly, sitting up on the bed.

"I really wish you'd come downstairs. Fin found a radio station that's playing nothing but holiday songs, and Elliot and Munch have started making paper snowflakes. It's like a third-grade art class down there right now."

Casey smiled and glanced down at her feet, not wanting to meet Olivia's eyes. She knew that if she looked into Olivia's eyes, she'd get so lost she'd agree to anything, and she really didn't want to go downstairs and pretend to have fun. "I don't feel well … I think I'd just rather stay up here."

"Do you not feel well because you're sick or is it because you're upset?"

"I don't know." She gave a half-hearted shrug as Olivia sat down on the bed next to her.

The detective wrapped her arm around Casey's shoulders and gave her a small sideways hug. "Honey, I know you're homesick, but isn't sitting here by yourself just making it worse?"

She shrugged again and rested her head on Olivia's shoulder. "Probably."

Olivia smiled and began twirling a lock of Casey's hair around her fingers. "Your dad wasn't upset, was he?"

"No," Casey answered. She lifted her head and shifted position so that she was facing the detective. "My brother and his family are stuck in Boston, so it's not like I'm going to be missing much. But still, you know? I just miss home; when my dad called me Peanut tonight, I almost cried."

"Your dad calls you Peanut?" Olivia asked, raising a disbelieving eyebrow. Casey was taller than Olivia by at least three inches, and Olivia was in no way what one would call short. "You weren't one of those tiny little kids that went through a huge growth spurt, were you?"

Casey laughed. "No, I was always tall for my age. My dad just has a rather ironic sense of humor. He also nicknamed my brother's pet snake Fluffy."

Olivia chuckled. "Your brother had a pet snake?"

"It was a garter snake he found in the front yard," Casey explained with a mischievous smile. "He named it Killer and kept it in a shoebox in his room for about three weeks before my mother found out and told him to get it out of the house this instant and to never do that again."

The detective shook her head with an amused grin. "That's too funny. You didn't make any pets out of the animals in your yard, did you?"

"No," Casey replied. "Well, I accidentally bred a gypsy moth once."

"What? How?"

Casey laughed at the detective's confused expression and repositioned herself so she could tell the story better. "Okay, when I was little, I liked to play with caterpillars. One day I decided I wanted to keep one, so I took him inside and kept him in a mason jar. My dad drilled air holes in the lid for me and I kept feeding the caterpillar leaves and taking good care of it. One day, he disappeared; he just wasn't in the jar anymore. I figured he was hiding but then I kind of forgot about him. Imagine my surprise when a couple weeks later, I woke up and found this thing flying around the mason jar. I freaked out, brought the jar down to my dad in tears, and told him that this mean, gross bug had eaten my caterpillar. He examined the jar for a minute and then told me, 'No, Peanut, this is your caterpillar.' I learned the caterpillar becomes a butterfly, or in this case, a gypsy moth lesson the hard way."

Olivia cracked up laughing. "You didn't see the cocoon?"

"No! He made the cocoon on the underside of the lid. When I was looking for him when he disappeared, I never looked under the lid. I was six, what do you want from me?"

"That is the most adorable story I've ever heard in my life," Olivia said, chuckling. Casey blushed and gazed down at her hands. "Oh, quit with the false modesty. You know that story's adorable; that's why you told it to me."

Casey grinned coyly. "If you say so."

"You know," Olivia whispered conspiratorially, "Munch hung some mistletoe over his desk. If you were to go downstairs and sit as his desk while he's fighting with the scissors and copy paper …"

She raised an eyebrow at the detective and shook her head. "I don't think so. Not that I don't appreciate the offer, but we don't need mistletoe." She leaned forward and gently kissed Olivia's cheek. "Thank you."

"For what?" Olivia whispered after Casey pulled back.

"For making me laugh tonight."

Olivia smiled and stood, then held her hand out to the ADA. "Come on; the guys want you downstairs just as much as I do. Okay, maybe not quite as much, but still, they don't like to see you sulking."

"Okay, okay," Casey said, letting out a mock sigh. She stood and slipped her hand into Olivia's, squeezing gently. "I guess I can find my Christmas spirit, if only for you."

-----

Casey didn't just find her Christmas spirit; she managed to out-Christmas all the detectives combined. She sang along, loudly and slightly off-key, to every song that played on the radio, she showed Elliot and Munch the proper way to make a paper snowflake, and she made everyone peppermint hot chocolate with some cocoa mix Olivia had found in a cabinet and the candy canes Casey had intended on bringing home.

She and Olivia stayed up long after the guys had gone up to bed, talking about anything and everything, memories of Christmases past and hopes for Christmases future. Olivia had never seen Casey that animated; usually she kept quiet about her childhood. Olivia wasn't quite sure why, but talking about her past was something Casey wasn't comfortable with in the slightest. So when the stories started coming fast and furious, Olivia didn't want to say or do anything that would put a stop to them.

Eventually, Casey started nodding off at Elliot's desk, so at around three in the morning, she and Olivia had gone upstairs to bed. Which was why when Elliot shook her shoulder roughly at quarter after seven, Olivia wanted to smack him. "What?" she whined.

"Shh," he hissed. "Can you do us a favor?"

"If I say yes, will you let me go back to sleep?"

"Well, that's the thing."

Groaning, Olivia sat up and blearily blinked open her eyes. "This better be good, Stabler."

Elliot just smiled at her. "Fin and I were up early this morning, poking around corners in this place that no one's touched in years out of sheer boredom. And we found Christmas decorations. Can you just do us a favor and make sure Casey doesn't wake up and go downstairs? We're putting the decorations up for her, and we don't want her walking in on the surprise."

Olivia smiled at her partner. "That's really sweet of you guys. I'll keep my eye on her and I'll keep her up here if she wakes up."

"Thanks, Liv."

Olivia watched as Elliot tiptoed out the door, then leaned over the bunk bed and peered down at Casey. The ADA was curled up on her side, half-buried under the blanket, and snoring softly. Elliot really shouldn't have been worried about her waking up; she slept so soundly that she wouldn't have awoken to jingle bells being shaken in her ear.

Now that she was sort of on duty, Olivia had to get up before she fell back to sleep. She climbed down from the bed, taking care not to jostle Casey, and peered through the window in the door. Strings of colored lights had been wrapped around the railings, and the small tree was covered in clear lights with a tiny angel sitting on top. Elliot, Cragen, and Fin were in the process of placing the ornaments on the tree while Munch was taping the snowflakes they had made the night before to the windows.

Olivia smiled, knowing that Casey was going to love the decorations, and turned away from the door, walking instead to the window and pulling back the shade just a tad. The city was covered with at least a foot and a half of snow and it was still falling, albeit a lot more lightly than the day before. The road crews, at some point between when she had gone to bed and then, had been able to get ahead of the snow and had finally started clearing the roads. From the lack of traffic, she assumed the snow emergency was still in effect, but probably for only another couple of hours at most.

After a very boring and quiet forty-five minutes, Munch knocked on the door and pushed it open without waiting for a response. "We're ready. You think you can wake her up?"

Grinning, Olivia nodded. "Oh yeah. Just go downstairs and wait for us."

Munch gave her a knowing smirk before closing the door. Chuckling, Olivia sat down on the edge of Casey's bed and ran her hand down the ADA's arm. Surprisingly, Casey flinched at the contact, but unsurprisingly, she didn't awaken. Olivia leaned down and gently kissed Casey's cheek. "Wake up, sweetie," she whispered into her ear.

Casey moaned quietly as her eyelids fluttered open. "I've been asleep for like, two minutes," she whined. "Why are you waking me up?"

"Merry Christmas, hon," Olivia said by way of an answer.

"Merry Christmas," Casey replied, her voice thick with sleep. Rubbing her eyes, she sat up and threw the covers off her legs. "Where is everybody?"

"Downstairs. The guys have a surprise for you."

Frowning curiously, Casey quickly ran her fingers through her hair to tame the tangles that had taken over during the night and followed Olivia. When the detective opened the door, Casey's eyes lit up in surprise. The entire squad room was decorated for the holiday with lights and garland and wreaths and even a small tree. "Oh my God!" she exclaimed, hurrying down the stairs and running over to the tree. "This … this is amazing! How did you guys do this?"

"Elliot and I found the decorations hidden in a couple of boxes in the storage closet," Fin answered, smiling.

"And then, we had the idea," Don said. "You couldn't be home for Christmas, so we'd bring Christmas to you."

Fin gave her a wide grin. "Merry Christmas, baby."

"Oh, thank you so much!"

"See, Casey?" Munch said, peering at her over his dark glasses. "Even though you're not with your family for Christmas, you're still with family."

Casey gave him a shy smile. She was beginning to feel a little foolish for moping so much the night before. She hadn't known that the detectives considered her family, and she was extremely touched by their small but loving gift to her.

"Thank you all," she said softly, choking up a little. "I can't even tell you what this means to me."

Olivia stepped forward and wrapped her arm around Casey's shoulders, allowing the ADA to rest her head against her shoulder as she admired the decorations. Snuggled together with Olivia, gazing upon decorations put up for her by the rest of the squad, she came to realize that perhaps she had been home for Christmas after all.