1Okay guys, this is my first SVU fan fiction and my third overall, so I'm fairly new at this... but I like honesty. So if it sucks, you're totally allowed to tell me.
He was in by twelve that night.
It was the earliest that he had bumbled inside his efficiency that week, but he found it the same as always. The ceiling was leaking from the apartment just above him. A mouse scurried across the floor as he flicked on the light. The pillow that he kept on the coach for sleeping still had the impression of his head in the middle. He hadn't bought a bed yet. He'd been sleeping on the couch, his own self inflicted punishment, since his last wife left. And lord knew that had been a while ago.
He'd gone out for drinks with Elliot and Olivia that night after a tough case, same as always. It had become a tradition of theirs– nail the bastard, (or not in some cases) then go out to the bar and get as drunk off their asses to forget it. After that, he would usually go home, and Elliot, who was recently divorced, would often go back to sleep in the Crib. Olivia would sleep there too, sometimes, but John never really went in for that. Sleeping somewhere else screwed with his routine. Other things were interchangeable– take out food, furniture, even wives. But John had always slept in his own place, always quiet and deserted. And he took some comfort in his confinement.
The refrigerator played host to various kinds of take out food—Chinese and burger King on the top shelf, a large box of uneaten pizza in the middle, a stale stromboli, and a half eaten Italian hoagie on the bottom, same as always. He'd stopped cooking after his first wife left him, and kept just enough food in the refrigerator for those rare nights that he didn't eat at the station with Olivia, Elliot, and Fin.
He was asked a lot why he didn't go out on dates, why he "didn't believe in love." But that statement was inaccurate—he certainly did. He just didn't believe it would ever work out for him, John Munch, SVU detective for the NYPD. The things he saw daily were not subjects commonly discussed over the dinner table. And after seeing the dissolution of Elliot's twenty-year marriage, he believed even less. If the job could destroy something as solid as he had believed Elliot's marriage to be, than there was no hope for the rest of them. But John Munch wasn't pessimistic. He was a realist. And reality was telling him that the job would always be his only constant.
He lay down on his couch, same as always. He didn't know when he had ceased all his spontaneity. He didn't know why the world had to be such a cruel and ever changing place. All he knew was that he needed to keep up with this daily routine, and not let his job break him. He knew he was going to continue to hang on to the few constants he had been afforded—same as always.
And that's it. Please review. I am a review WHORE.