Title: Best Laid Plans

Author: ZombieJazz

Fandom: SVU

Disclaimer: I don't own them. Law&Order: Special Victims Unit and its characters belong to Dick Wolf. The character of Jack, Benji and Emmy have been created and developed for the sake of this AU series.

Summary: Olivia Benson and Brian Cassidy continue to work at regrouping from the trauma and challenges of their year by taking some time away from New York City. They take their kids on a family vacation to visit Cragen and Eileen in Florida. The story is set in the Hello Goodbye, Welcome Home and Facing Forward AU.

"Bubba! Wake up!" Emily demanded in the backseat and Olivia gave another glance over her shoulder to assess the situation.

She was about at the point she was ready to nudge Benji awake herself. Brian kept asking if he should 'stop to fill the tank' – i.e. if she want him to pull off the highway so she could pretty purposefully wake up Benji. So they'd get something resembling a reaction out of him about the strip of highway they were on before they arrived at their destination. But Emmy was doing a good enough job of more than nudging her brother out of his Dramine stupor.

Olivia actually almost wished she'd gone the Bad Mother route and given Emmy a dose too. Just to encourage their little girl to sleep through the long night-time drive down. But even without it, she had to give Emmy that she'd had done fairly well with sleeping in the SUV. Though, their girl had still done her typical rousing whining for a bathroom break – and wanting to drink more water so they'd inevitably need another bathroom break - in the middle of the night. It was OK, though. They needed stops for stretches, gas and coffee anyways. But Benji had slept right through all that too.

Their sick little boy – finally just out of the last of six monthly IVs, before switching to longer intervals – had opened his eyes a couple hours ago and requested a pee break. But after they'd been back in the car he'd been silent again, just staring out his window for a while before he drifted off while they were still outside the city limits. His headphones were propped lopsided on his head and the iPad flopped down in his lap looking like it was ready to fall to the floor. Whatever he had been watching had been long ago forgotten and likely wasn't even playing anymore. It'd exceeded its runtime. He should be able to hear his sister's impatience. She was being loud enough.

"Ben-gee!" Emily said loudly, pressing her nose to the glass and tracking as with her eyes off behind her as they went passed the billboard she was fixated on. "Dere it is again! Another 'Pie-der-man sign!"

Benji groaned a little and let his eyes flutter open. He exhaled with mild annoyance and stared at Emmy. She pressed her finger purposely against the glass.

"Dere! See!"

He didn't see. They were passed that sign now. But it seemed like they were hitting the next one about every hundred yards. They were well into the flurry of commercial advertising propaganda now.

But Benji still only blinked as his eyes adjusted to the light and yawned and stretched in his seat. One of Brian's old 1980's Transformers that Benji had claimed out of the boxes of junk that kept being schlepped over to their house from Janet's toppled from his lap.

The toys – which were even more impossible to transform than the 21st century version of the action figures – had become a near favorite fidget toy for their son. Even better than the ones Olivia had spent ridiculous amounts of money on at so-called educational toy stores.

Benji batted the headphones down around his neck and stretched his arm to retrieve the Transformer. He made another noise that was somewhere between pained and annoyed as he grabbed it.

"Dad, Sideswipe's door-arm shield armor thing came off again."

Brian looked at the kids in the rear view mirror, pulling his eyes from the road. "I'll take a look at it when we stop," he said.

Benji still made a frustrated noise and fiddled with it – making an even more frustrated noise.

Olivia would give that as much as she hated when Benji or Emmy got frustrated with the transformation puzzles of their current – and still ever expanding – collection of Transformers, at least the 'modern day' incarnations somehow seemed sturdier than the ancient ones from Brian's childhood. And she didn't think it was just their antique 'collectible' status that made them fall apart so easily.

"Little Fox," Olivia said, leaning back into the back seat to gently reach out for him to give her the toy. "Just leave it. Daddy knows the trick. He'll do it when we stop."

Benji let her take it. She worked at trying to get the piece to pop back into the hinge herself despite what she'd just told her son. But even though Brian had showed her the trick about how and where to twist the joint and the angle everything had to be at to get it to snap back into place, Olivia never seemed to be able to get to do it properly.

Brian had always been the Transformer Master in their family – from nearly the get. From before she'd opened herself up to trying a relationship with him (again). She'd never really had to graduate beyond the simple Rescue Bot transformations. One, two, three steps at most. Though, she'd done her best to keep up with the growing number of variations the kids had in their toy box of these robo-vehicles. But with each passing year, as her little boy grew up and wanted the newer and more sophisticated bots, the puzzle and engineering behind the toys just got harder and harder.

Olivia got almost as frustrated when she got asked to help as her kids were when they brought them over to her. They almost inevitably got set aside – out of everyone's sight and mounting frustration levels – until Brian was home and could switch the damn things to whatever shape they were supposed to be (or the kids thought they should be).

With this older ones, though, it was even more difficult. To her they often didn't remotely look like what they were supposedly transforming into. Even more so than the latest and greatest models. But since these were Daddy's toys and "originals" and "collectibles", they were currently on high rotation in the Transformer game. She hadn't be surprised when Benji had picked one to throw into his backpack as car-time distraction. But she also wasn't survived the thing was now in need of repair – as usual. And even though she'd like to help, Olivia just didn't have the practiced manoeuvre down to muscle memory. Or her fingers weren't strong enough. Or she was just too afraid she was going to break the fragile plastic and that it would create even bigger frustration and meltdown out of the kids (and likely Brian too). But their son still exhaled some frustration and slouched in his chair and Olivia saw Brian's eyes again take him in in the rear view mirror.

Brian had insisted making the drive wouldn't be a problem. He'd insisted that if they did it at night it wouldn't be a problem for the kids either. He'd said that Benji had survived the drive to Chicago – which wasn't too much shorter than this.

But that had been before they had medical terms and labels for what their son was going through. It'd been before treatment upon treatment upon the handfuls of medication they were having to get him to swallow every day. So Olivia still hadn't exactly believed that this drive would go as smoothly as Brian had claimed.

But Olivia would give him that he'd mostly been right.

She still wasn't sure that spending over sixteen hours in a vehicle – driving through the night – was how she envisioned starting a vacation. Really – as much as she loved Brian – spending sixteen hours with him in an enclosed space without much of a break (beyond taking their daughter to pee at service stations in the middle of the night) wasn't her idea of a good time. It rarely did anything to increase her love for him. Or to help their relationship in any way. They definitely worked on an absence makes the heart grow fonder scenario in their relationship.

They needed their breaks from each other or else they just argued. About everything and anything. It was actually less that they argued and more that they bickered.

They bickered like that so much that about a week before they had gone down to the courthouse, to make their life partners title a little more official sounding than that, Jack had spouted at them: "Do you really even need to get married? You already bicker like an old married couple."

Olivia couldn't even remember what they were going at each other about in that moment. Likely something inconsequentially. Breakfast or dinner or some errand or chore. It was just how they communicated. It always had been. Bicker and banter and sarcasm. Sometimes it went too far – it was usually her that took it to far and ended up rubbing Brian the wrong way or causing hurt feelings. But she was getting better about that too. She knew the topics – and his cues – for when she was toeing the line. And she knew she had to be careful about it – because there were times their bickering did escalate to arguing about more consequential things – like whether or not they should drive to Florida. Or got to Florida at all.

But they'd driven. That had been an argument that Brian had won. She'd backed down. Even though a lot of the times it was Brian who stepped aside and let her have her way – usually directly stating: "I don't want to fight with you anymore." Or that summer she'd more likely get: "Fine, whatever, we'll do it your way. Happy wife, happy life."

It always gave her a bit of pause when he put it that way. But it also gave her pause when he kept pushing something – because when he did that she knew it was important to him, even if she didn't agree with it. And, really, she'd also accepted with this being a partnership – and a marriage – she had to let him win sometimes. After the better part of her adult life being single, it was an area she was still having to work on a lot.

But he'd won that time. She'd backed down about the flight – because it really didn't matter that much in the grand scheme of … anything. It was Brian just could get so hung up on money – when Olivia felt they lived within their means. But she hated arguing with him. When they moved beyond bickering and into an actual argument, they were both just bad at it. They both just dug in their heels. They were both beyond stubborn. And she didn't want the vacation – that their family so needed – to be based around one big, ongoing argument.

It'd been close enough to that negotiating the booking furlough and how many days to take and when to schedule it with their jobs and the kids schedules and Benji's health and cases at work and Brian's mom and John state and what/if/how to include Jack (if he even wanted to be included). Sometimes it felt like Brian thought him taking any sort of furlough was some sort of comment on him as a cop, worker or man.

And, she supposed she understood she always had been lax about taking her holidays too – until she was put on forced furlough. Even after the kids were a part of their lives, it wasn't like they booked it off quite as well or as regularly as they should. They didn't use it to the full extent they had available. But they were working on that.

Benji getting sick had definitely given them some pause and slowed them down as a family. It'd changed their dynamics a bit – and Olivia thought for the better. It was nice to not feel quite as rushed. To feel less like they were in a pinball machine of running between work and picking up the kids from school and daycare and trucking them to their after-school and weekend activities and doing bedtime routine and homework and endless cooking and lunch-packing and groceries and house cleaning. Life felt a bit more manageable right now. The time they were spending as a family felt a bit more meaningful. And in all of that, it was like … they were becoming better parents – a stronger family. But they were also becoming a better couple too. They were finding more time as a couple and more time as individuals too. As horrible as knowing their child had a life of chronic illness ahead of him was – as overwhelming as it still was – it'd helped them grow a lot and there'd been positive aspects too.

Not that Fin would agree right now. He'd definitely been unimpressed she'd booked two weeks of furlough right at the end of summer – leaving him in charge just as kids got back from camps and college students arrived back in town and they had a flood of reports and victims and outcry witnesses and just drunken stupidity landing in their unit needing a lot of investigation and follow-up and interview and paperwork time. That last half of August and most of September was resulted a bit of an added circus in the workflow at SVU. And, admittedly, that'd been part of the reason she'd pushed Brian to agree to that scheduling too. She just wanted a break from having to deal with it. Though, she knew with the way Fin was with paperwork she'd arrive back to a whole lot of catch-up when her two weeks were up.

Brian needed a break too. His office – the courts, the DA's office – saw their own up-tick in the workload as the fall rolled around. Everything got a bit quieter in the summer while people with means took vacation time and went on holidays and got out of the concrete city with its repressive humidity and unceasing heat. It definitely had been a humid one that year – with more rain and thunderstorms than Olivia could remember in years. But at least it hopefully prepared them for the heat, humid and daily afternoon rain storms they'd been told to be prepared for in Florida.

And yet even though they'd survived the trip so far, with all it felt like they still needed to be prepared for, Olivia still wasn't sure how she felt about her and Brian starting a vacation on no sleep and functioning under highway hypnosis.

She'd actually slept on the drive more than she'd expected when it was her turn in the passenger seat. Brian had let her sleep longer than their agreed on driving shifts to make this trip. Not that that was going to be doing anything for his demeanor as the day went on either.

Olivia was pretty sure Brian had only managed an hour or two shut-eye through the night. And he might've just shut his eyes – not actually slept. Not that that was particularly uncommon for him. But usually when he was up all night he was staring blankly at the television not the endless center-lines and tail-lights on the highways and freeways down to the southern states.

But so be it. This was the agreement they'd reached to have this vacation. But as part of the agreement, she'd made sure Brian acknowledged that not having to fly or rent a car was saving them a lot of money. And they were already saving a lot of money with staying at Cragen's and Eileen's for the majority of their vacation. Considering where they were and the amount of time they'd ultimately agreed to take off for this holiday – they were having a pretty budget-friendly vacation.

That said, the agreement had been that with saving that money – she wasn't going to hear Brain complaining about giving the kids a couple days that weren't just beach days. Not that she wasn't looking forward to getting to the beach – and getting to spend some time sitting and doing nothing in the sun and sand and surf, beyond hopefully having to watch the kids play and read a book. Though, she more than suspected that wasn't going to be exactly how their holiday would play out either.

Not that she had a lot of family vacations under her belt with the kids to know. But that also meant the kids hadn't had a lot of full-on getaways to have much of a point of comparison of what a vacation was supposed to look like. So hopefully beach time at Captain's and Nana's fit their limited expectations. And everything else they thought they might try to do or see would just be icing on the cake.

It better be – because Olivia still really wasn't sure how much Benji could handle. Benji's health had definitely made planning this a challenge. But he'd had a reasonably good summer. Considering all the fear mongering the doctors had given them about the sun and heat and humidity and the chance for a flare in Benji's symptoms – they'd done really well. Though, they'd been vigilant. They'd made a lot of adjustments.

But they'd been going through a whole year of adjustments. 2019 was proving a very big year of adjustments for them. They all just needed a break from that. Or a moment to celebrate how far they'd come. And that's what this was really about.

But Olivia still feared that they might be setting themselves up for disaster. Beyond the necessity to be vigilant with Benji's health (and limits) in a whole new (and much hotter and humidier) setting, Brian had more than stated that he was pretty sure none of them were made for the kind of holiday they were starting this trip out as.

Olivia wasn't entirely sure she agreed with that either. And she wasn't sure Brian completely believed it when he said it too. She thought he was more excited than he wanted to readily admit about what they had planned for their first few days of holidays.

The reality was that Brian had initiated it. Even though they'd talked about coming to Florida for years, she really hadn't waded into doing a theme park with the kids. For a lot of reasons. Beyond the cost and the kids' ages, she hadn't really been sure that it was her kind of vacation. A day, two – maybe. But an actual theme park vacation? Not so much.

It had been Brian who'd heard Benji out in his starting to reach the point other kids around him were getting that family holiday experience. Brian who'd gone looking into it in more detail than her. Who'd broached the subject. Shocked her a little bit.

But there were a lot of things Brian was getting better at initiating lately. A a lot of things. Conversations. Sex. The what, when, how of family time. Projects around the house. Errands and chores without her having to badger him. Taking better care of himself – on a whole lot of levels. Mentally, physically and a emotionally. As a man and husband and father. And she knew that would mean as a cop too.

Olivia thought that it was another big change for them that year. Brian working through … admitting and accepting his victimhood. Them learning to cope with that as a couple. But as … hard … and challenging as some of that had been (as it still was, and likely would be for a long, long time, if not always), it had also been a period of growth for them as a couple. Olivia felt like – knew – as hard as it'd been on their relationship, it'd also solidified it. It'd made them slow down and put time into their relationship – and each other – that they'd been lax about for too long. Too much of their energy and time had been focused on being parents. There hadn't been enough time spent – put aside – for them. But she felt like they were in a good place right now. A strong place. A more intimate place. It was better for both of them.

So right now as much as Brian was preaching that 'they weren't made for this kind of vacation' – she was taking it with a grain of salt. Her response had pretty much consistently been that she was sure it'd be fine. Even though multiple people had told her that they were being overly optimistic about their ability to just show up at an Orlando theme park and play it all by ear. But kids – parenting, especially when there was a sick little boy involved in it all now – usually meant it played it by ear anyway. And she didn't want to get herself (or Brian – or most especially the kids) all invested and excited about something that might not entirely work out.

Her and Brian were horrible at vacation planning anyway. It was an added reason as to why they didn't utilize their furlough very well and why they even more rarely ventured outside the city limits. And when they did – it was usually day trips. They were pretty last minute, play it by ear people when it came to family time and the kids. Especially now with Benji. And even just with the demands of their jobs and how murders, rapists, child molesters and pedophiles really didn't work on a 9-to-5 clock that suited a business hours, Monday-to-Friday schedule. They were on-call and on-rotation and listed as duty officer for various units, districtions or emergency scenarios more times than not. Really the only way to get out of that was to specifically put in for furlough and make sure arrangements were in place that they were covered off.

So they did have a loose plan. The very loose plan being based mostly on Brian's minimal research and priorities. He wanted to take the kids to the Super Hero land at Universal – and, of course, they'd make sure to get over to the Transformer ride too (which, apparently was not in Super Hero land because apparently they were distinct from super heroes. Olivia hadn't bothered with arguing about that distinction and its stupidity either.).

None of that likely would've been Olivia's plan. But she acknowledged that both Emmy and Benji would love it. That she knew Brian was acting like they were just doing this for the kids – but that he'd get a certain amount of enjoyment out of it too. And she knew they both would get a lot of enjoyment out of watching the kids interact with it all.

If they managed anything more than that in the bit of time they were slotting for starting their trip out in Orlando – of which the kids were completely unaware was even happening – it didn't really matter. It was enough of a plan. A loose plan that worked for their family. That was just how their family worked.

And as for when they did actually get to Cragen and Eileen's?

Brian might not love the beach – because he just burned. Or became one giant freckle, depending on how you looked at it (and how much he actually applied sunscreen). Much like her son. Benji – always so much, and so strangely, Brian's.

But Brian did thrive on outdoor time. He thrived on time with the kids. He liked fishing. He liked to grill. He liked going for bike rides and playing with the kids in the water. So Olivia knew that even though this might not have been his first choice of how to book some summer vacation time – he much would've preferred a cabin and the mountains – he'd still end up enjoying it.

She really hoped, because he needed and deserved the break so much too.

She'd tried to make sure Cragen and Eileen had reasonable expectations about who Brian was and the way Brian was too. That he moved between two states – that he'd be perfectly happy sitting with a beer doing nothing beyond watching whatever was on the sports channel and then he'd be so restless that he'd be wanting to find some kind of project, whether that was taking over all the cooking or dragging the kids to every playground within bike ride distance.

She really hoped that Don and Eileen didn't get over-exposed to all of them. She was nervous about that. More so with Eileen than him. She was pretty sure Cragen had more than a good idea of exactly how and who her and Brian were. But he'd been good about her warning about Brian. He'd assured they'd stay out of their way and that it was their vacation to do with it whatever they wanted. To make themselves at home. And at least Don and Eileen had a general idea of what their home life looked like. Even if the kids generally were on their best behavior for their Captain and Nana. That might change when they had almost two weeks to show of their true colors and insanity, though.

But Olivia was trying to go in with an open mind. She was determined to keep Brian and the kids flexible in their expectations. Generally, she thought they did a pretty good job at keeping their kids' expectations fairly low.

In a lot of ways the majority of this vacation wouldn't be that different from the rest of their summer. They pretty much lived in parks and at playgrounds and checking out the various beaches around the city in the hours they weren't at work. And when they weren't one of those three places this summer – they'd been in their garden.

She was so glad they had bought a house even with that small space to call their own. It was big enough for the kids to have some outdoor toys to dirt around and play around and get dirty while breathing in some outside air. It was big enough for her to have a patio and chair and shade to read in. Big enough for Brian's grill that he'd become quite proficient at that summer.

They'd all been quite content and happy. It'd been a nice couple months of them enjoying the weather (such as it was) as much as they could for as long as it lasted. Though, the forecasters were saying the Indian Summer that year was going to be much nicer than what the actual summer had brought them. But that was good too. Their family usually liked the fall too. That was one season they did seem to make an effort to get out of the city some to see the colors – to go on a hike or two - and to get to orchards and pumpkin patches with the kids.

So even if these first few days of this trip – the effort they were gunning for - did derail a bit and they had to pull the plug earlier than she hoped – Olivia still hoped the kids would be happy. And their wouldn't be too many frustrations, trauma or waterworks in the process.

There's where the gamble came in. And she thought maybe they were both still weighing if they should just pull the plug before they even tried. Go to Plan B. But that's not what she wanted. And, again, she didn't think it was what Brian wanted either. They wanted to make this work – for all of them.

"How you doing back there, Ben?" Brian asked.

"I want to lay down," Benji grumbled. "In a bed."

Her and Brian shared a look. Not the best sign.

"We'll make sure you get to lay flat and stretch your legs out soon, Little Fox," she assured.

"Not me," Emmy said. "I'm not gonna sleep more. I;m gonna go swimmin'. At the beach. In da ocean. 'Cuz the sand at Cap and Nana-Lean's is special. Right?"

Olivia gave her a little smile. "You're right, Little Duck. It's quartz. So it's white – not brown like in sandboxes and on the beaches at home. And it's supposed to be really sticky and good for making sand castles."

"Jep," Emmy nodded. "That's what Cap'n and Nana-Lean say too. But I make a sand narwhal. Not a cas-ill. They kinda white. And sticky sand will make it easy to make its horn-tusk. So I won't have to use a tree stick. But maybe I'll find a good, big shell for its tusk. And teeth. Be-cuz Cap'n say there SHARK TEETH on his and Nana-Lean's beach. So I'll find lots of those. Right, Mommy?"

"We'll definitely try to find shark teeth," she agreed.

"Jep," Emmy allowed. "We hafta use a special shove-il. It's like a sand shove-il and a snow-shove-il. Together. Dat what Cap'n said."

"Well, he'd know better than me," Olivia allowed.

If anything it had been Cragen and Eileen who might've risen their kids expectations for this trip. Benji and Emily had been hearing about their grandparents place in Florida for years now. Both the kids had latched onto little things they'd been told about their place and the area it was in. There definitely was a bit of a bucket list of activities that the kids kept mentioning they could do at Cragen and Eileen's.

There was no way they were going to have time for them all. But Olivia also thought as soon as the kids saw the volume of sand and beach toys that Cragen and Eileen had in supply – and then saw the actual beach and ocean – the bucket list might get forgotten. She knew her kids could lose themselves in a park, playground and beach for a whole day. They did it at home all the time.

But Cragen had definitely made sure she knew about activity options and daytrips in the area. And, she was sure they'd try to get at least a couple of them in. Maybe after she'd gotten to sit on the beach a couple days herself. She'd like to get to Tarpon Springs and to see the sponge docks and boats coming in. And there were some specific beaches and islands that she hoped she they might get to.

She also hoped she might be able to sneak away one day and go to one of the outlet malls to do some actually hoping. Brian had scoffed at that – when they lived in New York City. But she rarely got a chance to go out to do clothes shopping anymore – and when she did it was usually just to one or two stores that were spread all over Manhattan and priced at points she was usually no longer willing to pay. It'd be nice to just hit some of the stores all in one place. And she also suspected as much as Brian had a commentary about that – he'd likely end up coming too and them just letting Cragen and Eileen have a grandkids day. Brian might not be as put-together as the kind of men she'd imagined she'd end up with, but he did have his own sense of style and he didn't get shopping much either anymore. He'd go into his own stores. And maybe he'd buy her lunch before they headed back to the kids.

Really big plans and high hopes she had for their vacation. It was going to be low key. After these first few days. If they turned off the exit coming up. If they were able to make it work.

"Jep," Emmy nodded again and bounced a bit in her chair. She was so excited about getting to the beach, Olivia was almost concerned that their pending delay in getting there might be a let down to their little girl that would cause waterworks undo their own.

"How much farther to Captain and Nana's?" Benji muttered.

"Their place is still about hundred and thirty miles away," Brian said. It wasn't a lie. "Two hours or so, bud."

Benji groaned at that and gazed out the window a bit, squinting at some of the passing cars and signs. Olivia stared again watching him do a bit of a double-take, his eyes tracking with another billboard. That one had a giant Transformer on it.

"OP-TIM-IS!" Emmy cried and pointed. "See! Ben-gee! I tell you! You been missin' all da pictures! El-sah and Oh-loof and Mickey M-O-U-S-E and Minions and dino-sores and ass-too-nots and HULK and 'PIE-DER-MAN!"

"Where are we?" Benji asked.

AUTHOR NOTE:

There will be a continuation of this chapter. It was getting too long.