Title: Demons and Ghosts
Chapter Title: Just One Sip
Summary: When the SVU has trouble dealing with their troubled pasts, it brings them closer. But what happens when a case puts more pressure on them than before. Will they survive?
a/n: This idea just kind of came to me...I hope you like it. This chapter is from Cragen's point of view.
My captain looks at me in my drunken stupor. The room is spinning all around me and I can barely stand.
"Don, I've talked to you about this before," he says. "You can't keep showing up to work drunk. Not only does it look bad for us, but you might have just jeopardized our case!"
"Sssory," I slur, leaning carefully against the wall. Things just got pretty rough and the only way everything would go away was with alcohol.
"Sorry just won't cut it this time," he tells me. "There's no way that the defense attorney isn't going to drag that out in front of the jury. And how the hell do I know you won't show up to court drunk?" He sighs, looking at me. I was the best detective on his squad until recently, when the world had started to cave in. "I have no choice but to suspend you until further notice. You better clean up your act, or I will have to fire you."
I look at him in disbelief. How could I have known that it was this far of a fall from the top?
"I'll have Rodriguez get you home. Now, you clean up your act and once you've proven to me that this is all over, I'll let you come back," he tells me sternly, like a father disciplining his son for getting poor grades.
My partner, Luis Rodriguez comes in and holds onto my arm as he leads me to his car. We drive to my place in silence, and once there, he helps me up the stairs and makes sure I'm okay. I tell him that I am, even though, deep down inside, I know that I am not.
Bracing my hand against the wall, I make my way to the bedroom. I open my nightstand and taken out the half-empty bottle of vodka from the previous night. I twist off the cap, bring the opening to my lips, and tilt it back, feeling somewhat comforted by the liquid slowly making its way down my throat…
I wake up with a start. I dozed off while filing the stack of paperwork at my desk that had been gathering there for the past two weeks. I hadn't been feeling like myself lately. And the flashback to my first suspension due to showing up drunk isn't really helping things.
I slowly rise from my desk, gathering a few folders, hoping to get some work done before I go to bed. I reach into my desk drawer to retrieve my gun, and something catches my eye. There is an unopened bottle of scotch underneath the paper clips and post-its.
Sitting down in my chair again, I slowly reach into the drawer and pull it out of the drawer. I stare at it for a long time, wondering if just one sip would hurt me. Like in the flashback, I know, deep down inside, I really shouldn't. But what I would give for just one sip!
I begin to slowly open the bottle, struggling at first with the unopened cap. Eventually, I get it off. I lift the bottle to my lips, smelling that scent that I've longed for all these years…
TBC...Next chapter-Olivia