A/N: Sometime this summer I was taking one word prompts for specific pairings on my tumblr, and this was in response to "Olivia and Elliot's kids, glitter." Clearly I could not resist, clearly I was in the mood to surrender my dignity as a writer for these two because twins, and clearly I have no shame regarding the aforementioned. I ended up writing a few more similar oneshots in response to other prompts I received (with other pairings as well), so if anyone would be interested in having me post some of them or is interested in sending me their own one word prompt, let me know here or at .com.
Glitter
"Mommy, Maisie's takin' the markers!"
"M'not!"
Deep breaths, Olivia. In and out. She turns to face her two three-year-olds from where she sits at the breakfast counter. They're saddled at the dining room table, crayons and paper and mess, basically, everywhere. "Mais," she asks, her voice slow. "Are you sharing with your sister?"
Huge, dark eyes stare up at her, nodding from underneath a mop of light curls and a cowboy hat. Maisie had decided that morning that today was a pajama-and-hat kind of day. Ella, on the other hand, has elected to wear a tutu and tights. They are oil and water those two—different in more ways than they'll ever be alike. She wonders how it'll be when they get older and have real things to disagree upon. For now she sighs, sets her coffee down, and moves across the room.
"Ella baby, how about Mommy helps you with the pencils?"
"I don' think I like the pencils, Ma," her child says, contemplatively. Any decision regarding the coloring apparatus of the afternoon is very, very serious. Suddenly, Ella's face lights up. Olivia knows what's coming.
"Can we do glitter?"
Maisie's hand, poised over the paper and covered in washable greens and reds and blues, stops abruptly. She looks up, eyes wide, voice breathy. "We haveta do glitter, Mommy."
They kill her. The two identical pairs of eyes looking at her like she can hang the moon and sun and stars if only she gets out the squirtable, metallic glue will always kill her. "You promise you guys'll share?" she asks, raising her eyebrows.
They nod triumphantly. Maisie rolls a purple marker across the table and it falls into her sister's lap—an affirmation of their promise.
"And you won't make a mess for when Daddy gets home?"
"No!"
"No, Momma, we clean it!" Cwean it.
Olivia feels herself walking into the kitchen and reaching into the "Mommies and Daddies Only" basket she keeps on top of the refrigerator. It's reluctant. Every time, her plan fails miserably. Every time, it's adorable.
—
Elliot Stabler is a man surrounded by noise. He's got the noise of the city, the noise of the job, the noise of his apartment when he gets off the elevator every day and walks to his door. He's got the noise of two little, incessant voices—perfect and innocent and babbling—and he's got the noise of Olivia's lungs filling and emptying every night beside him in bed. Today is no exception; his knock on the door is followed by the noise of little feet smacking against hard wood, socks sliding along the floor. Daddy! Mommy lis'en, Daddy's home!
He knows they'd done crafts today. When his wife pulls open the door, however, it appears, as usual, that crafts had done them.
Olivia Stabler, hard ass detective, the best shot he knows, is covered in glitter glue. It's stuck in the wavy strands of her bob cut and there's a green smudge of it across her cheek. More has made it down the front of her blouse, clinging to the buttons. "I thought we'd given up on the glitter," he laughs, and he's so, so in love with her deadpan expression, her do you really want to mess with me?, the way she looks ridiculous when she's glaring at him from under her armor of bright, shiny goop.
"No," Ella says from where she grabs onto his pant leg. Maisie holds the same chunk of fabric as her sister although there is a perfectly viable and unoccupied option to her left, and this makes him laugh. "Mommy loves glitter." Woves gwitter.
"S'that right?" he asks, bending down.
"She's a princess so she needed some," Maisie explains. "Can we have 'cakes later?" Pancakes. Breakfast for dinner. He can do that.
"Yeah, Munchkin." He kisses her on the forehead. Ella's jaw drops as if she's momentarily been slighted, as if her sister—a mere seven minutes her senior—should in no way be hello-kissed first. "C'mere," he laughs, tugging her by a ruffle of her full ballerina skirt. She giggles, squeals out loud. It peels across the apartment and something inside of his skin warms.
Liv's looking down at him—the way he squats on the floor with one toddler on each side of him, telling him something about coloring and trying to count the raindrops on the window glass that morning and how they'd overfed Banjo, their goldfish, again—and he knows that there's a sheen in her eyes. He remembers the days when they thought this would never happen; when, even after getting one another, kids had seemed impossible.
"I'm not… I'm not going to be some young mother, Elliot. You've got all these thirtysomethings walking around Manhattan with uteruses—God, what's the plural of that—like the fertile fucking crescent, a-and..." she always spoke with her hands, waved them around like a wild woman, and when she got stuck, the anger fizzed out her fingertips. "... and then there's me."Leave it to his wife to compare sex organs to Mesopotamia. He thinks he couldn't even find that on a map.
"I don't want a dumb thirtysomething, Liv. I want you."It had been gruff, possessive, a growl, a promise.
Her voice was hauntingly quiet. "It's been almost a year of trying, Elliot. Maybe it's not… we're not—"
"You're gonna be a mother, Olivia. Whatever we've gotta do, we'll do it."They would. He would. He'd stroll to the ends of the earth and back if that's what it would take; he'd do it walking on his hands.
"I'm tired."
He'd smushed a kiss into her hair.
"S'gonna be worth it."
A million doctor's appointments, two trials with In Vitro, and nine months later, it had been. Twice over. He's got his second set of twins.
"You okay?" he asks as tiny hands pull at his tie, because Olivia used to tell him how scary it'd been when she realized she couldn't cry anymore. My eyes always gloss over, she'd said, but they never cry. She swallows. Nods. It's perfect.
It isn't hollow the way it once had been. Her life is so full now, so overwhelmingly full and wonderful and covered in sparkly gloop and stripes and ruffles that she feels ridiculous, like one day all of this love is going to overflow and come spilling out of her and onto the street. She'll leave a trail of glitter across Manhattan—it'll leak and ooze out the doors of the Sedan.
"Yeah." Her voice whooshes out in a breath. He loves her. Loves her loves her loves her. She beats him to it.
"I love you."
"I love you too."
"Me too!"
"Me!"
He does. Two times over and a billion seconds back.