TITLE: The Month that Everything was Tested
AUTHOR: DramaLexy
SUMMARY: The sequel to my story "The Year that Everything Changed." It's set three years after that fic ended. I'll let the rest be a surprise. :-)
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Okay, so this is what giving me good reviews will get you - faster writing :-) Thanks to all those who took the time to leave me a note. I'm hoping this lives up to the first story. And FYI, there will probably be a third installment at some point as well.
Olivia looked up from the leftover food she was putting away when she heard a distinct THUD somewhere within her house. A few seconds later, the noise came again, and this time, after a moment's pause, it was followed by the sound of a child wailing.
"What happened?" she called up the stairs as she came out of the kitchen. Elliot came down a moment later, holding their son, Ben, who was the source of the wailing.
"I got a boo-boo!" the little boy whimpered as he displayed his arm for his mother.
"I heard," she told him with a sympathetic smile.
"Long-jump competition using beds for springboards," Elliot explained. Olivia rolled her eyes as she led the way to the hall bathroom.
"Were you officiating?"
"No, I am innocent for once."
"For once."
"He okay?" Elliot turned at the sound of his other son's voice.
"Yeah, Rick, he'll live." The twelve-year-old had finally outgrown his childhood nickname a year or so earlier. His twin sister had later revealed that the school bully had given him some incentive – 'Dickie' had been shortened to a rather nasty and taunting 'Dick' on the playground.
"I told him he couldn't really fly."
"Fly?" Olivia asked.
"Like Michael," Ben told her. She and Elliot both looked to Rick for an explanation.
"Me and Lizzie are reading Peter Pan for school. We figured we'd read it together to save time, and Ben was listening, too."
"Wendy, John, and Michael," Elliot realized. "Got it."
"We fly to Neva-land," Ben told his mother as she set him down on the counter by the sink.
"You're not flying anywhere without a pilot's license," she replied, inspecting his arm. "Other than a good rug-burn, I think you're okay."
"Band-aid?" he asked.
"Ah, yes. Magic Spiderman band-aids fix everything."
"Do me a favor?" Elliot asked Rick. "Find something to do that doesn't run the risk of you breaking your furniture or your brother." He rolled his eyes.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. He flew pretty far across the room, though, for being so small."
"I didn't need to hear that," Olivia told her stepson. Both boys grinned.
"Come on, sport," Rick said to his brother. Newly outfitted with a band-aid, Ben hurried after his brother back up the stairs.
"Bedtime in fifteen minutes, Ben," Olivia called after him. "Rick, you and Lizzie can come down here if you want to keep reading together."
"And when's your bedtime?" Elliot teasingly asked her once the boys were out of earshot.
"After we have four children soundly asleep," she replied. "And only if you behave yourself."
"Yes, ma'am."
There were some weekends where the three older kids were split between their mother's house and their father's house, depending on who was doing what when and with whom. That weekend, however, everyone was at home. When Elliot came back into the house after taking a morning run, he found the rest of his family in the kitchen making breakfast together. Olivia and Lizzie were having fun making funny-shaped pancakes, Kathleen was making eggs, Rick was making bacon, and even Ben was helping out by folding napkins for the table. He'd folded about four times as many as they needed, but he was still contributing. And Elliot couldn't think of a better sight to come home to.
"Have we worked out who's going to be where this week?" Elliot asked as they all sat around the table.
"We're going to Mom's tomorrow," Kathleen told him.
"Cell phone," Elliot reminded his daughter as he noticed the device in her hand. She rolled her eyes, but shut it off.
"I'll be back Wednesday," she finished.
"Me, too," Rick added.
"I'll be back Thursday," Lizzie told him. "I've got dance rehearsal, and Mom wants to come." Elliot nodded.
"Well, that's three," he said. "How about you?" he asked Ben, turning to the little boy. "Any big plans?" He shook his head.
"Don't break my PS2 while I'm gone," Rick warned his brother. Ben loved getting into everybody's stuff, and it was even easier for him with Rick's things since they shared a room.
"An almost-empty house," Elliot commented to Olivia once the kids had started cleaning up. "What shall we do with ourselves?"
"Probably not as much of what you're thinking as you're thinking. You're on-call."
They did enjoy the three days of quiet – other than Ben. The little boy liked the rare opportunities to be the only child in the house. He got his parents' undivided attention.
"Look at me, Mama," Olivia heard him say on Monday night as she and Elliot were trying to sort through the load of clothes he'd just removed from the dryer. Ben was standing on the bottom step of the stairs, and before she could stop him, he leaned forward and did a somersault off of it. Everyone heard the noise when he banged his head, however the little boy was giggling when he sat up.
"Owie," he said as he rubbed the spot.
"Owie is right," Elliot told him. "Come here." Ben ran over. He made sure his youngest hadn't really hurt himself (although he knew there would have been alligator tears if he had) and then turned him around. "Now, which one of your siblings put that idea in your head?" Ben smiled innocently.
"Had to have been Lizzie," Olivia told him. "Practicing her dance stuff."
"I dance, too, Daddy," Ben told him before proceeding to raise his arms over his head and walk on his tiptoes across the room. Elliot shook his head with a laugh.
"Men don't dance," he told the little boy.
"Oh really?" Olivia asked him. "Then who exactly has been my dance partner for the past few years?" Elliot sniffed.
"That's different."
"Mmm-hmm. Com'ere, Ben," she said. "You can dance with Mommy." She picked him up and waltzed around the room with him. The little boy was laughing his head off.
"No music, Mama," he told her.
"That's never stopped her before," Elliot told him. Olivia stuck her tongue out at him.
"Where are you sleeping tonight, again?" she asked him.
Later that night, once Ben was sound asleep and Elliot and Olivia were getting ready for bed themselves, she went back to what had happened in the living room.
"Would you have a problem if Ben decided he liked dancing?" she asked Elliot. He stuck his head out of the bathroom, toothbrush in hand.
"What?"
"It's a simple question, Elliot."
"No. Why?"
"You made a comment to him earlier that I'm hoping he wasn't paying attention to."
"When?"
"Downstairs. When you told him that guys don't dance."
"You know what I meant."
"Yes, I did, but I don't know if a three-year-old would have. El, he's got three sisters and a brother. Just about everything he does comes from imitating one of them. This week he's watching Lizzie practice for dance. Next week, he'll be annoying Rick to play video games. The week after, he might decide to do some face painting with Kathleen's makeup. You've gotta be okay with that."
"I am okay with that, just…the image of boys playing with trucks and girls playing with dolls is a hard one to give up, you know?"
"I know. Especially when he's supposed to be one of the macho, tough Stabler men." Elliot threw a wet washcloth at her.
"Seriously, Liv," he said as he came out of the bathroom and turned off the light behind him. "He can grow up into anything he wants and it would be okay with me." He leaned across the bed and kissed her. "I'm gonna go check on him before we go to bed. I'll be right back."
Ben was still asleep, alright, although he was upside down in bed. Elliot shook his head with a smile as he pulled his son from under his blankets and flipped him around. They'd had several mornings where Ben would wake up stuck underneath his blanket and start crying because he didn't know how to get out; he didn't need another one.
Out in the hall, he stopped to look at the pictures on the walls. There was one of Maureen and Kathleen dressed up for Easter service when the latter couldn't have been any older than Ben was now. Another of Lizzie and Rick that had been taken only a few weeks after the twins had been born. The picture of all five kids after Ben had been born, another one of all seven of them at Elliot and Olivia's wedding, Kathleen's senior photo, a picture from Maureen's college graduation…the list went on. Outside of Ben and Rick's room was a picture from the last Halloween. Ben had been dressed as a puppy – he'd had a fascination with Dalmatians at the time – and Rick had been inspired by one of his video games to dress up as a wrestler. He was striking a 'tough' pose for the camera, and Ben was, of course, imitating his brother. The younger of the two was still better described by 'adorable' than anything else, but it was a nice picture of them together. They had a happy family.
"He still sleeping?" Olivia asked as Elliot returned.
"Oh, yeah. Couldn't wake him with a herd of elephants."
"We probably ought to get some sleep, too. Just so you can say they woke you up when they call at 2AM with a case." Elliot grinned.
"Sleep? Who needs sleep?"
It turned out that the only night Elliot was awakened for work was Tuesday night. He wound up working late, too, so Olivia had dinner with Kathleen, Rick, and Ben once the older two got back home, and made sure everything was in order for the night by herself.
Thursday night would have been a family dinner except Kathy wound up keeping Lizzie a little late, and Kathleen was off with her friends.
"Did Kathleen get here yet?" Elliot asked his wife as she cleaned up the kitchen after they ate. Olivia shook her head.
"She said she had a lot of work to get done for her project."
"Yeah, I just…I don't want one of her friends driving her home late at night. I don't trust them."
"You don't trust anyone driving with your kids in the car."
"That's not entirely true. I just don't trust anyone under the age of 25 driving with my kids in the car."
"Mmm. Well, if one of us is supposed to be picking up Lizzie tonight from her mom's, then we can get Kathleen, too."
"Yeah, now I've just got to get her to answer her stupid cell phone. Considering the fact that we can't pry that thing out of her hands with a crowbar when its time for dinner, she sure misses a lot of calls when she's out with her friends." Olivia laughed.
"When you were her age, did you want to have to deal with your parents?"
"What's that got to do with anything?"
Lizzie was waiting in the foyer of Kathy's house, dance bag and school stuff in hand, when Olivia showed up to pick her up. "You're a whole thirty seconds late," she told her stepmother.
"Wonderful to see you, too," Olivia told her with a grin. Lizzie returned it.
"Just kidding. Dad's the one who's always late."
"Yeah, well he's trying to beat your brother at whatever video game he's gotten now."
"NHL All Stars," Kathy supplied.
"Mom got it for him," Lizzie explained. The two women shared a look.
"Thanks," Olivia said after a moment. "I think Elliot had been talking about getting it. He goes through them so fast." Kathy gave her a half-nod. They weren't friends, but they were civil. And civility usually was dependent upon them interacting as little as possible. And the kids knew it.
"Bye, Mom," Lizzie told her before the awkward silence could stretch out.
"Bye, sweetie. You looked great today."
"Thanks. I'll let you know when my recital is."
"Okay."
"We gotta go pick up Kathleen," Olivia told Lizzie as they headed out to her car.
"Where?"
"In the city. She gave me the address. It shouldn't take too long."
By the time they got to the neighborhood where the address was, Olivia wasn't too thrilled with the area. She knew that if Elliot was picking up his daughter, Kathleen would never hear the end of it.
The teen was outside with a couple friends when Olivia drove up and said good-bye before jumping in the car. "I thought your dad said you were working on a project with Megan and Lucy."
"I was," Kathleen told her. "And a couple other people like Kyle and Aaron. We were at Aaron's place."
"Has your dad met either of them?"
"No."
"Or your mom?"
"No."
"I think it might be a good idea to have future meetings at houses where one of them has met the people. Especially if there are boys involved."
"We weren't doing anything, Olivia. And I'm not Lizzie; I'm eighteen."
"I understand that, but we both know that your dad would have had a fit if he came to pick you up tonight, wouldn't he?" Kathleen had to agree.
"Are you going to say anything to him?"
"I don't know. I don't keep secrets from him."
"I know just…don't give him all the details, kay?"
TBC...
How bad is it so far?
