Title: One Night at Anthony's
Fandom: SVU/Sports Night (don't look at me like that...they're both set in NYC ;P)
Summary: Casey Novak goes to Anthony's after a hard day.
Spoilers: None.
Disclaimer: SVU belongs to Dick Wolf and NBC. Sports Night belonged to Aaron Sorkin and ABC many moons ago.
Author's Note: This was suggested jokingly by a friend. I took it as a challenge and wrote it to take my mind off some end-of-vacation angst. I promise, it's funny. Or at least, I think it is anyway. ;)
Casey Novak didn't want to get drunk in a cop bar. Or even a lawyer bar. She wanted to get drunk in neutral territory, someplace where people didn't know her. Someplace where she wouldn't have to listen to everyone else talk about their cases, the crimes they were investigating, the inhumanity of some of the people in the city. After the day she'd had, she wanted something bright and pleasant, not dark and dreary.
When the motion to dismiss had been granted, Casey had never felt so disappointed in herself. She should have argued harder, found a bigger loophole. Olivia Benson had offered to take her out for a drink, but Casey had refused. It wasn't the alcohol she had been refusing; it was that she knew that Olivia would want to go to Maloney's and Casey really, really didn't want to get drunk in a cop bar.
So she had gotten into a cab from her office and had asked the cabbie to recommend someplace where she could get a drink in a bright, happy atmosphere. The cabbie had smiled and made a good-natured joke about Cheers being in Boston, not New York, but he had taken her to a large restaurant called Tony Anthony's. The trees on the sidewalk outside the restaurant had been wrapped in clear Christmas lights. Despite the fact that it was March, Casey thought it was gorgeous. She paid the cabbie, slipping him a nice tip, and looked up at the restaurant for a moment before walking in.
It was amazing how much of a difference a little bright light and some upbeat songs on the sound system made. The restaurant was noisy but not overly loud, busy but not too crowded. It was a bustling that one didn't see in cop bars: people moving around, talking, joking, laughing. Smiling to herself, she took a seat at the bar.
The bartender was a kindly man named Jack. Casey only knew his name because the woman seated on her right side had said it when she was ordering her drink. He made the other woman's order, then fixed his dark eyes on Casey. He seemed a little surprised to see a new face. Casey had the feeling that most of the people who came to Tony Anthony's were regulars. "And what can I get for you, Miss?" he asked.
"Gin and tonic, please," Casey replied.
"Coming right up." The man turned around to make her drink.
Casey took that opportunity to glance around at the other patrons in the restaurant. From what she could tell, the clientele seemed to be mainly businesspeople stopping off for a drink or a quick bite to eat after work. In one table behind her sat a man and a woman who were very obviously on a date. The man had his hand over the woman's on the table and she was smiling at him, a flirty smile. The two of them seemed vaguely familiar to her; she thought for a quick moment that she knew them. At the very least, she'd seen them around before. Perhaps on the job.
The soft clink of ice in a glass being set down on wood brought her attention back to the front. "Here you are," Jack the bartender said with a smile.
"Thank you." She returned the smile and began sipping her drink. Soon, the events of the day would become just a blurred memory.
She had only managed to finish off about a quarter of her drink when someone sat down on her left side. "The usual, Jack," the new arrival said.
She glanced to her left and the guy gave her a flirty and just slightly cocky smile. She smiled back, just to be polite, and then faced forward. The last thing she wanted after the day she'd had was to be hit on by some random guy who frequented the bar at Tony Anthony's. Even if he was kind of cute.
"So. I've never seen you in here before."
Casey closed her eyes for a quick moment, took a deep breath, and hoped she wouldn't sound as irritated as she felt. "I've never been in here before."
"What brought you in here tonight?"
Don't want to talk about the day, she thought. Just want to forget it. "I had a bad day at work," she replied vaguely. "Didn't want to go to my normal place. My normal place is kind of … well, dark. This place looked bright."
"It is," the man said with a soft smile. "I like it in here. I work across the street, so I'm in here all the time on my meal breaks and after work. Let me tell you, this place is hopping at around one in the morning."
Casey raised an eyebrow at the man. Great, just what I need. To be hit on by some guy who stays in this bar until all hours. "One in the morning?"
"I work until midnight," he said, chuckling at her incredulity. "My coworkers and I like to unwind here."
"Oh."
"So what do you do? You said you had a bad day at work."
Sighing, Casey sipped her drink. "I work in the DA's office. Had a case go sour on me today. Wasn't pleasant."
"I'm sorry," the man said. The apology seemed genuine, which sort of confused Casey a little. She had thought he was just hitting on her. Perhaps he was. She wasn't sure. Maybe the gin and tonic was stronger than what she was used to.
"It's happened before. It'll happen again." She gave a light shrug. "Still doesn't make losing any easier."
"Was it a really bad guy?"
She glanced over at the man and gave him a soft smile. God he had nice eyes. "Yeah. One of the worst. Raped a five-year-old girl and left her for dead in a ditch. Got thrown out on a technicality. Goddamn loopholes." She closed her eyes, faced forward, and downed the rest of her drink in one gulp.
Sighing, she set the glass down and looked back over at the man. He was trying to think of something to say to her to make her feel better, and the look of panic and confusion on his face struck her as almost comical. She smiled. "It's okay. No one ever knows what to say."
He nodded. "You prosecute the serious shit, huh?"
"Yeah." Enough about me, enough about my job. "What about you? You mentioned you work across the street. What do you do?"
"I work in television." The man shifted in his seat and began running his thumb and forefinger up and down the glass of beer in front of him. "Sports."
"Oh, cool."
"You follow sports at all?"
"I read the sports pages in the paper, but I don't really watch the games." She shrugged. "I'd rather play them than watch them."
"Fair enough," the man laughed. "My name's Casey. Casey McCall."
Casey snorted into the new drink Jack had brought her. "My name's Casey Novak."
The man looked at her blankly for a moment, as if trying to figure out if she was being serious, then he laughed. "Well, that's different. Nice to meet you, Casey."
"Nice to meet you, too." She couldn't call him by name. That, along with the alcohol in her system, would be sure to send her into a giggling fit and she really didn't want to start that at the moment. "So, you always hit on the girls you see sitting here by themselves?"
"Just the redheads." He shot her a wide grin.
She chuckled and looked away so that he wouldn't see her blushing. She took a large gulp of her drink and smiled as she felt the alcohol go down into her stomach. "So, Casey McCall, you work in television? Or on television? Should I recognize you?"
"On television. I'm one of the anchors on Sports Night. It's a good show, if you've never seen it." He grinned at her, inching his bar stool a little closer to hers.
She raised an eyebrow at him and returned his grin. He had such a nice smile. Careful, Novak, don't fall for a sports anchor. You have a snowball's chance in hell. You're just a dinnertime flirt to him. "I'll have to keep my eye out for it."
"You should." He winked at her and took a swig of beer. "You feeling any better than when you came in here?"
"Yeah." She shot him a grateful smile. "Thank you for that."
"While I'd like to take all the credit for making you feel better, Casey, I can't." He pointed to her empty glass. When the hell had she finished off the second drink?
"Oh." She pushed the glass away and grinned, her cheeks turning a light shade of pink. "Yeah. I should go soon."
"Casey!"
They both turned around the sound of the voice. The man that was walking up to the two of them was not someone that Casey Novak recognized. She snickered when she realized that Casey the sports anchor was the one being called. "What is it, Dan?" he asked. "Oh, this is my partner, Dan Rydell. Dan, this is Casey Novak."
Dan looked from his partner to the ADA and raised an eyebrow. "And here I was just going to tell you that I'm sitting on the other side of the restaurant joking around with a cop named Danny. The planets must be aligned funny or something tonight."
"That's great. Goodbye, Dan."
Dan darted his eyes between the two Caseys and a sudden look of understanding crossed his face. He grinned at his partner. "Ohh. I get it. I'll see you back at work."
They watched him walk back to the table where he was sitting with a bunch of other guys, one of which had to be the cop named Danny. In fact, Casey Novak thought one of the men looked vaguely familiar to her, much like the couple from earlier in the night. She had to have seen them at the courthouse or something.
"Sorry about that," Casey McCall said.
"Don't be. It was funny." Casey fidgeted in her seat and grinned at the sports anchor. "So you're on TV, huh? And this is your dinner break?" He nodded. "What time do you have to go back to work?"
"A few minutes." He gave a sad shrug. "I don't want to leave, though. I'm having a good time talking to you."
It's a line, she thought, it's just a line. "I'm having a good time talking to you, too."
"So this is what we'll do." He pulled a pen out of his back pocket, took a cocktail napkin, and began writing something down on it.
Casey laughed. "You carry a pen around in your back pocket?"
He grinned and handed her the napkin. "It comes in handy when people want an autograph. And it's perfect for occasions like this."
She took the napkin and smiled widely when she realized that he had written his phone number down on it. Maybe it hadn't been just a line. Maybe she wasn't just a dinnertime flirt. Grinning, she pocketed the napkin. "I'll call you."
"Yeah?" he asked her, smiling.
"Yeah." She set her money on the bar, slid off the barstool, and smiled. "I've never flirted with someone who had the same name as me. This is kind of interesting, if a little weird."
He smiled. "Just wait until it gets past the flirting stage."
She blushed furiously. "Bye, Casey."
As she walked out of Tony Anthony's, stumbling ever so slightly, she couldn't help but think that maybe stepping out of the comfort zone of cop bars every so often was not necessarily a bad thing.