Title: Merry Little Christmas
Author: ZombieJazz
Fandom: Law & Order: SVU
Disclaimer: I don't own them. Law and Order SVU and its characters belong to Dick Wolf. The characters of Will and Noah have been created and developed for the sake of this AU series.
Summary: Set in the Olivia/Will/Noah AU, this short story looks at how Olivia's family is doing in the aftermath of the events in Her Negotiation story of this series. Olivia and her family prepare for their first Christmas following their encounter with William Lewis.
"Tape," Olivia said and held out her finger again.
They were sitting on the floor of Will's childhood bedroom. She always felt a little silly when they were holed up in Will's old bedroom. Somehow it felt a little sillier – yet somehow appropriate – that they were now in the room that her husband would've laid awake on Christmas Eve waiting for the dim lights of morning while they were surrounded by their son's Christmas presents and an even bigger mess of shopping bags, receipts, wrapping paper, tissue paper, bows, ribbons and tape. And, really, as much as her head knew that this was the room that Will slept in as a child – and a teenager, and while home on visits from college and occasionally again while a gainfully employed adult – there was something comforting about the room too.
It didn't much look like the room of a little boy – or even a teenager. Not anymore. There'd been a point in her relationship with Will that the space had seemed rather caught in time – like it had aged with him until his 18th birthday and then had never evolved any further. But whatever memories of childhood that might've been in the room before, his parents had finally started modernizing it when her and Noah had entered their son's life. It started to look more like a guest room – for grown-ups – than a bedroom of a teenaged boy. The remnants of Will at that phase of his life had officially disappeared from the room when their family had all but moved in following their ordeal in the spring. Ted and May had done their best to make the space theirs and Will and Olivia had done their best to try to feel comfortable there. Feeling comfortable anywhere was a bit of a feat at that point. Really, it still was.
But there was something comfortable about the room. In a way. Especially while sharing the space with Will. Even though he was giving her a slightly annoyed look. Yet, he again ripped a piece of tape off the dispenser and deposited it on her finger. She wasn't even looking at him as he did. She was so focused on the present she was wrapping and where she was holding the two places together while she waited for him to do his part of the job in the late-night wrapping process.
"You think that maybe next year we can manage to not be wrapping Noah's presents on Christmas Eve?" Will asked. "For once."
She glanced up at him after she got the tape in place. "I like wrapping them Christmas Eve," she told him. "It's tradition."
It was a tradition. Not necessarily one that had developed purposely but she definitely seemed to have become an expert at leaving her Christmas wrapping to the last minute. She used to leave her Christmas shopping to the last minute too. Though, Will arriving in her life and then wanting to participate in the shopping for Noah had put a bit of a nix on that. He hated doing things last minute and he hated dealing with the last minute crowds more.
He didn't have to argue with her to get her to go out weeks ahead of schedule that year. She had no interest in being caught in a crowd either. She'd actually contemplated doing all of her Christmas shopping online that year. So Will had gotten to talk her out of that instead – and somehow talk her into doing her Christmas shopping with his mother and sister-in-law in tow. Olivia wasn't sure that had made for a less stressful shopping experience. But Noah had certainly reaped the benefits of having more than her credit card at disposal for the gift purchasing. He was getting a little spoiled that year.
"It's 2 a.m.," Will rolled his eyes in lukewarm protest.
She shrugged at that comment. "Your parents wanted us to go to Midnight Mass with them," Olivia offered as an excuse.
"YOU wanted to go to Midnight Mass with them," he put back to her.
She glanced at him again and delivered another shrug. "It was a nice service," she said flatly.
It was true. His parents had invited them to attend the Christmas Eve service with them. They always did. Every year. But they'd usually dodged that obligation. They'd be long gone from the family's Open House before they even began to prepare to make their way to church.
This year, though, there was no Open House. No large gathering that Will's parents knew that all three of them would struggle in. No alcohol or groups of men smoking on the front or back porches. No loud music or chaos or clogged spaces in the family's modest-sized house that they always seemed to pack at least half of the FDNY into on most occasions. Or at least they tried.
With the cancellation of the Open House – a McTeague tradition that Olivia sensed had existed from the time Will was a small boy even though no one had placed a specific anniversary number on the event for her - they'd known that there was an open invitation to them be at his parents' instead. They'd struggled with that. If that's what they wanted to do? If they wanted to spend their entire Christmas with Ted and May and his brothers and their families? Or if they needed their personal space?
Other years they'd maintained that they needed their personal space. That they wanted time to have their own Christmas – the space to have their own traditions – with Noah. It'd been a hard pill for Ted and May to swallow – and Olivia had known that it was likely made harder by Will's rather transparent glee that he finally had good reason to bail out on his family's affairs and to start having Christmases of his own definition with her and Noah. They still submitted themselves to a McTeague Christmas. Just to a lesser extent. They made their afternoon appearances at the Open House and they returned again the following day for some extended family time, presents and May's massive Christmas dinner. But beyond that they kept things quiet and just had alone time – the three of them.
It was different that year, though. As much as they wanted alone time none of them ever seemed to want to be alone anymore – at least not for long and not without knowing that another person was available in just the next room. Beyond that, the new apartment just didn't exactly feel like home yet. It felt like a cautiously safe place. Sort of. And even with the Christmas decorations up – with the new furniture and beautiful view and modernized design – it still just felt like a place they were just visiting. A place that they'd situated themselves while they tried to figure out how to exist again – or where they could exist and exist normally. Olivia hoped that it would eventually feel more like home – at least for the sake of her son, but that just wasn't the case yet. No matter how hard they tried to make it feel that way.
It had reached the point that it made the most sense for them to spend the holidays at Ted and May's. It made sense for them to not be alone in an apartment that still made them a little sad. It made sense for them to be with the people who had provided them with at least the support and foundation that let them slowly ease back into almost being functioning human beings again (some days). It seemed like the best option to facilitate them at least attempting to have something that resembled a Merry Christmas. So it had also made sense to accept the invitation to attend Mass with Will's family.
Or at least that's the way Olivia had seen it. She knew it was something important to Will's parents. Their faith was still a staple in their lives and likely would be until their dying breathes. Will had definitely done his best to remove himself from his faith. At least he thought he had. Olivia thought in some ways her husband was grossly unaware of just how Catholic he could be. But he'd had an entire childhood being indoctrinated. It had become a part of him – and his thinking, his morals, his values, his behaviors – whether he liked it or not. She thought Will had also used her non-adherence to any organized religion as another way to distance himself from that part of his family's life – an excuse. Still, she didn't think it would hurt them to attend a single service. It would likely have hurt Ted and May if they'd declined to tag along, no matter how understanding they might've been of their decision.
The truth, though, was that Olivia had sort of wanted to attend the service. She thought she could do with some of the quiet reflection time. A period to think about some of the positives and to be thankful for them rather than dwelling on the negatives of the year that had been. She thought all three of them could use some of that mediation.
She'd liked it. The service. Her comment that it had been a nice service was truthful. It had been. She hadn't been to that kind of high and solemn ceremony many times in her life and the stillness of it had resonated with her – the quiet celebration that had echoed in her being. But what she'd liked the most was having each of her boys on either side of her. Will gripping her hand in his lap and Noah sloped a little sleepily against her, her arm around his shoulder holding him tight. The entire McTeague family in a row. Ted and May on Noah's opposite side and the rest of his family taking up the entire long pew. Generations in a row.
It was strange for Olivia. To be a part of a family. But sitting in the church and looking down the pew, it'd become that much more visible what a part of a family she'd become. It'd been yet another reality she'd had to come to terms with in the wake of her assault. As much as she'd been welcomed into the McTeague family many times over – as much as they'd been there for her and her son before – it had been during the summer months that the commitment of their presence had really set in. She wasn't sure how her and Noah would've survived the ordeal without having them to lean on. Their support – which had often been surprisingly quiet for the McTeague clan – had prepared all of them to tentatively return to the harshness of the real world, outside of the warm confines of the families' homes. But sitting in the pew and seeing all of them – her in-laws, her nieces and nephews, her son and husband – she'd realized even though they'd vacated the houses, they hadn't left their confines, or their embrace. It was harder to separate herself – or Will, or Noah – from them now. They were part of a larger unit.
Will sighed at her. "Will you at least let me help so we can think about going to bed soon? He's going to be up in a matter of hours."
She glanced at him again from folding the end of the one parcels. "No. You're too picky. You take forever."
"I do not take forever," Will said.
"You do take forever," Olivia insisted. "Everything has to be symmetrical. It's ridiculous."
"Well that's the proper way to wrap a present," Will informed her.
She snorted at him. "Like it matters when he rips the paper off in two seconds flat."
Will let out a bigger laugh at that. "He does not. You don't let him."
She shot him a look. "You can thank your brother for that. Watching Tom's kids open their presents in a whirlwind of paper. They don't even know who they got what from or who each present belongs to by the time they're done. It's disgusting."
Will rolled his eyes. "I'll be sure to pass that along to Tom," he said.
She shrugged. "I've told him myself before. I don't like it. Our son has manners. We're here but he's going to know who gave him what and he will thank them and take the time to appreciate his presents."
Olivia had been mildly horrified the first Christmas she'd spent with Will's family when it had come time for the grandchildren to open gifts at Ted and May's. Noah had still been barely more than a toddler and they'd sat him down on the floor with the rest of the kids.
Olivia wasn't sure what she was expecting. Her mother hadn't really excelled at Christmas. Even on the years where she'd been sober enough in the lead up – or Christmas morning – and there were some presents under the tree, with her being an only child without even an extended family, the holidays had been a quiet affairs. She'd kept them rather quiet with Noah too up until that point. It had just been her and him. She didn't have cousins or grandparents or aunts and uncles to fawn over him and spoil him at Christmas. The most there might be was a small gift from the Stablers and Munch would usually begrudgingly submit himself to buying Noah a 'holiday' present. But that was it. It wasn't a mountain under the tree and there was never a flurry of wrapping paper. If anything, Noah was still small enough that he had to be encouraged to unwrap each gift and he was more than happy to sit and examine the new toys for quite some time before being interested in opening the next. A lot of times he was far more interested in the tissue paper, boxes or packaging than he was the actual gift. Olivia, though, was fine with that slow pace. It gave her time to enjoy it and to enjoy her son too. So the introduction to the McTeague present unwrapping had been a bit of a shock to the system.
She thought she likely expected gifts to be handed to the children one-by-one. "This is from your Uncle Rob and Aunt Karen", "This is from Nana May and Popa Ted", "This is from your cousins" was likely more what she was expecting – followed by the family watching the child open the present and everyone having a chance to see what it was and the child thanking the giver before the next item was opened. That, though, certainly wasn't what presents with the rest of the grandchildren had looked like at all.
Tom's children had near dived under the tree and dug out the boxes labeled for them, ripping the wrapping paper off and moving onto the next item before they likely even registered what it was. Rob's children had been a little better – but they were older. Either way, Noah had ended up sitting amidst a pile of torn wrapping paper and bows, still working on his first present by the time the rest of the kids were done. One of Tom's children had actually asked why Noah had more presents than the rest of them when her son was still working at unwrapping his. It wasn't a case of more present. It was just a case of her son not acting like a Tasmanian Devil and her moving to sit with him to make sure she could see what he was getting and encourage him to thank each person who'd given him a gift. She'd come away from it knowing exactly who had given her son what and she'd said her thanks too. Though, she'd eventually heard thank you from the rest of the grandchildren's parents, there'd never been a peep from the kids. She'd hated it.
She'd resolved that Christmas that her son wasn't going to tear through his gifts like a crazy person. She didn't care how old he got or how excited he was. It had just struck her as so rude. Him doing that with gifts from her and Will was one thing but doing it from others? She wasn't going to allow it. So since she'd worked at encouraging Noah not to just rip off the paper and to tear apart of the packaging. Her son was handed presents. He was told who they were from. He was encouraged to look at the tag and he took the paper off slowly and carefully. Or at least as slowly and carefully as could be expected of a little boy. She knew Will thought she was being a bit of a hard-ass about it. But he felt that way about a lot of her parenting. She felt that way about a lot of his too. She figured it eventually evened out.
Will gave her a look. "Share what you want with Tom but don't say that to Becky," he said seriously.
"I won't," Olivia assured him.
One of Olivia's fears about spending the whole holidays with Will's family was their interactions with Tom's side of the family. Their relationship had improved in the wake of the family's ordeal but it would never be like what her and Will had established with Rob and Karen. Tom just rubbed her the wrong way. She knew part of that was just Tom and her own personality. She knew another part of it was the reality that he'd rubbed her husband the wrong way for so much of his life. She didn't much like that. And even though they'd had their mea culpas and Tom had put in effort to demonstrate his care for the three of them, there was still a strain.
That strain was often made worse by how Kyle seemed to just antagonize Noah. As much as Tom had tried in the months that their family had been living with the rest of the McTeagues on Staten Island, his son certainly hadn't been instructed to put in the same effort. Or he just didn't have him in it. Though, Olivia doubted that it had much to do Kyle's age as it did his personality – and genetics. Kyle was definitely his father's son. It was another reminder for her where she stopped in wonderment of how exactly Will had evolved out of the same upbringing as his brothers and shared the same genetics as other members of his family. As much as he was a McTeague – and as much as she'd grown to love members of the McTeague family for who they were – there were other ways he just so wasn't. Kyle, though, was a McTeague through and through.
That likely wouldn't have bothered her much if Noah hadn't so wanted to be his best friend. But more times than not, Kyle wanted next to nothing to do with him. Yet, at family functions he was often forced to play with him due to age and gender. Sometimes Olivia wished that the family didn't feel so compelled to make them play together. Kyle always seemed to say something that upset Noah. He seemed to be particularly good at it at Christmas, based on years past.
Tom and Becky always seemed to get their kids somewhat extravagant gifts at Christmas. Not so much extravagant as gifts that were clearly beyond their means on a paramedics salary with a stay-at-mom and three children. Some years Ted and May seemed to buy into it too – offering to pay for some specific item for all the grandchildren. The one year it had been new portable game systems that they'd wanted to buy each of the kids. Olivia had said no. She didn't care what the other kids got, she just didn't want Noah having the latest-and-greatest in portable entertainment. She found regulating his DS consumption to be more than enough. But her nixing that for Noah had apparently meant the other children had been asked to not bring the systems over to the grandparents' on Christmas Day. That likely would've been fine if Kyle hadn't decided to indicate to Noah that he was ruining all their fun. Tom had further taken it upon himself to indicate to them that they were ruining all the kids' fun.
Apparently her and Will should've been spending money on bigger ticket items for Noah at Christmas and trucking them over to Staten Island for their son to show off. Tom didn't seem to believe that they weren't spending a fortune on him at Christmas and that they just weren't bringing it over to his Mom and Dad's place. They'd been informed that if he and Becky could afford it, they certainly could on 'their salaries'. The comment had pissed Olivia off to no end at the time. It'd been one of those moments that she'd spat a commentary back at Tom until Will had calmly reminded her of Becky.
Really their sympathy for Becky and for her having to put up with Tom was what restrained her from ripping Will's brother a new one most of the time. She felt sorry for Becky and she certainly didn't want to make things worse for the other woman. Sometimes she wasn't sure why her sister-in-law stayed with Tom. Though, she reminded herself that she may see a very different man at home and in private than what Olivia ever interacted with. She reminded herself too that as timid and quiet as Becky was she was part of the problem too – she let Tom and those kid run amok in the house and then her husband and son making those kinds of comments to her or Will or Noah was just bound to happen. Meanwhile, if not even half of the comments that came out of Tom or Kyle's mouths ever exited Will's or Noah's, Olivia would be giving them a stern lecture and packing them up head for home after they'd delivered apologies. That wasn't how Tom's family worked, though. So she'd just have to bite her tongue and try to protect her son from any wayward commentary as much as possible.
Though, Tom might get his wish in seeing them having spent more money than they should've on Noah that year. It hadn't felt like that much as the time but with her wrapping efforts, it was definitely feeling like she'd gone a little overboard.
