Title: Her Negotiation
Author: ZombieJazz
Fandom: Law & Order: SVU
Disclaimer: I don't own them. Law and Order SVU and its characters belong to Dick Wolf. The characters of Will (and his family) and Noah have been created and developed for the sake of this AU series.
Summary: What would happen if the Season 14/Season 15 finale and premiere were set in the AU of Liv/Will/Noah? Cragen sends Olivia home for a couple days after working the William Lewis case. She hasn't heard from her husband or son for several hours when she walks into their unusually quiet house.
"Tighter," Lewis demanded. "I want him to be able to struggle. Not move."
Olivia looked over her shoulder and gave him daggers before turning back to her son. After she'd bound Will's feet to the legs of the chair and replaced the duct tape on his mouth, Lewis had tossed her son onto the bed and approached him with scissors in a way that had sent her again throwing her body on top of his – only for the man to overpower her again and toss her to the side. While her heart skipped beats and her son screamed, Lewis had simply pushed his knee into Noah's back and then used the scissors to slit the duct tape binding his hands. With his knee still pressing the boy into the mattress he'd ripped a pair of stockings in half, that she wasn't even sure where he'd pulled from but were clearly from her garments drawer. He again threw them in her direction and ordered her to tie her son to the bed frame. She'd hesitated but that gun had again pressed into her son's skull and she heard his muffled crying into the bedding. So she'd complied.
She was trying to be as gentle as possible. She'd tried to keep the material from cutting too deep into his wrists and had given him as much slack as the stretchy material would allow as she tied the knots on the iron frame. But with each knot, Lewis briefly lowered the gun and reached forward to check her work and ordered her to redo her efforts. Noah was looking at her with the saddest eyes she'd ever seen. Tears were silently streaming down his face. She wasn't his hero anymore. The disappointment radiating off him was palatable. He didn't understand. Her doing this to him might be his only chance at survival. She hoped. She hoped she wasn't just setting him up for more torture.
"Sweets, you just have to lie still," she whispered as she leaned forward and tightened the last knot. "OK? Lie still and try to rest."
"Oh, that's no fun," Lewis said and she felt the muzzle of his gun press into the back of her head. "Take off his shorts," he demanded.
She looked down at her terrified little boy. "He'll be cold," she said flatly. It was a weak excuse. Noah being cold was really the least of her worried at that point. But it was an excuse that seemed as good as any.
"You do it – or I will," he spat into her ear. His mouth was so close she could feel the warmth of his breath breezing into her ear canal.
She met Noah's eyes. They just glassed more and he looked away from her, gazing at the ceiling. She'd gone through years of cancer treatment, surgeries, rehabilitation with him and she'd never seen his eyes look so empty. That spark was gone. That look that she knew that settled in when victims were waiting for death – when they'd decided it would be better than what lay ahead. It broke her heart and made the extent of her failure settle that much more into the pit of her belly – spreading like a wildfire through her being. It was consuming her. It wasn't enough for this man to try to destroy her. He was destroying her family and taking it to a point that she thought might be beyond repair.
Still, she reached forward and looped her thumbs into the waistband of her child's underwear and worked them down his legs. Despite not having his legs bound, Noah made no move to struggle or fight against the movement. Though she again her Will make a sound behind her. He was full of tears too but with his mouth covered each surge sent him into a heaving, coughing fit that she fears he might asphyxiate himself on his own salvia if he wasn't able to calm himself.
"Now how do you think Noah and Will are going to feel when they get found like this?" Lewis intoned behind her as she finished getting Noah's underwear off. Her son was now sprawled naked on the bed while her husband was bound to a chair, his penis hanging out of his pants, blood caked on his shirt and his face so battered he was hardly recognizable. It was horrifying and humiliating. Yet Olivia still hoped they'd get found sooner rather than later. She'd rather her family be found in a state of brutality than for them to be found dead. "Would've been easier for you to just take off your clothes, wouldn't've it?"
She boiled at the comment and grabbed the blanket from the end of the bed. Opening it and spreading it across Noah. Fuck Lewis. Her son was still trapped. He was still terrorized. He was still scarred and humiliated. He wouldn't be cold too. Though, she knew as soon as he started moving the blanket was likely to more to confine him than it was to warm him.
"You didn't give me that option," she barked harshly without looking at him. Instead she stooped slightly to tuck the blanket around Noah. But it was then that Lewis' weight came down on her – pressing her onto the bed and on top of Noah.
"Didn't I?" he spat even more harshly into her ear and she felt herself struggling against him.
His hands were grabbing at her arms and pulling them back behind her. But what she could really feel was his arousal pushing against her ass as she fought. She wanted to flail so badly – to kick, to scream, to punch, to scratch him. She'd already learned, though, even in their limited interactions that despite his wiry stance, he was built like a lone wolf. There was a power and ferocity in his stature and he could easily overpower her. Beyond that she was acutely aware that now two adult bodies were pressing down onto her small, meek son who was screaming.
"MOOOOOOOOOMMMM! MOOMMMMM!" was he wailed.
Will too was screaming against his gag. A muffled, breathy groan emitting from him. She could feel Lewis just getting off on it even more. The firmness of his erection growing and pressing hard between her ass cheeks as he held her down. Olivia didn't have to see him to know he was smiling. That toothy grin nearly glowing with saliva from his drooling at his power in the situation. She could feel Noah struggling and cries vibrating against her. She could hear Will's chair hopping and knew he was fighting against his own confines. Then there was a clatter. She knew that he'd tumbled to the floor – the chair hitting the ground along with his already badly bruised body. Yet he still continued to scream against the gag and to flail on the floor.
The terror radiating from the two people she loved most in the world forced her to make herself to stop her struggling and to let Lewis do what he wanted – her arms moving behind her back and she heard as he ripped his own strip of duct tape and began to wrap it tightly around her wrists.
She looked into Noah's horrified eyes. "It's going to be OK, sweets," she told him, though she felt her own tears starting to stream out of her eyes. "I'm going to be OK. You'll be OK. Someone will be here to get you soon."
"Don't lie to him," Lewis said as he yanked her up off the bed. He had full control of her now. Her hands bound and the gun still pressing into her.
"MOOOOOMMMM!" Noah screamed again.
Lewis gave the little boy another grin but then grabbed her long hair, pulling it back and directing her to turn around. As she did she saw Will sprawled on the floor as she expected – still squirming in a fight to pull his legs free of the chair or to dislocate his shoulders in an effort to loop his arms free of the back. His muffled cries for her release continued and Lewis gazed down at him.
"This guy just never shuts up," he muttered and then pushed her slightly to the side while bringing his foot back in a kick so harsh to Will's head that his neck instantly snapped back and his body stilled into a slump of dead weight.
"WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLLLLL. NOOOOOOOOOOO!" Olivia felt herself scream before her cop-hardened mind even had a chance to process an acceptable reaction.
Noah's voice joined hers, shifting from his cries for her to an agonizing, "DAAAAAAADDD!"
She fought hard against Lewis, trying to escape to check on her husband. She managed to fall to her knees and crawled to him. "Will? Will?" she cried, fighting against the restraints holding her hands in place. She let her body slump down trying to see if she could still hear or feel his breathing when she couldn't manage to free her hands to touch him. "Will?"
But Lewis only let her have a moment next to him before he grabbed at her elbows and again dragged her to her feet.
"Time to say good-bye," he told her.
"Lewis, Lewis … please …" she struggled more as Noah screamed in the background. But all the sounds were starting to mix together into a throbbing white noise at that point.
He shuffled her forward roughly while she continued to try to pull away from him – trying to get back to her family. Her crumbling family that was slipping away from her right before her eyes. As they passed their dresser again, Lewis stopped her and seemed to examine them in the dressing mirror. Olivia could see she was already coated with a glean of sweat. Her hair having turned into a stringy and matted mess. Even from what she'd endured so far there were the starts of bumps and bruises on her face and neck from her struggles and the pressure of the gun. But it was still nothing compared to what he'd done to her husband up to that point.
Lewis smiled at the picture of them. His eyes glinting as he again traced the gun around her upper body.
"You're going to do things you didn't even know you were capable of," he whispered to her, his grin widening.
She struggled again but he barely seemed to notice. Instead he leaned forward to the small stereo they had there. Hitting the play button and cranking the volume to the max. Even out of the small unit it was enough to make the room bellow – drowning out Noah's continued cries. The unit synced to their devices. The never-ending music that usually filled their house – quieting Will's always analytical mind and distracting her always haunted one. It was usually their most recently played items that popped into the playlist on the bedroom unit. That would mean that it should likely be Will's work-out playlist. The loud, booming soundtrack meant to push him through one of his runs. She could only hope that would rouse someone's suspicions about the level of the noise coming from their apartment.
But it wasn't pumping bass that blared out of the stereo as the Beast set it in motion. Instead it was a song that Will had long ago told her epitomized how he'd grappled with their relationship – their friendship, their undefined status – in the early days. Will – who had soundtrack for his life. Will – who listened to the most obscure bands she'd (n)ever heard of well singing and dancing to silly pop music in an effort to make her make her smile. Will – who treated music like poetry and a life blood that she didn't quite understand but knew that it was ruled by numbers similar to the sports and games and physics that monopolized other parts of his brilliant mind. Will – who had a playlist for near everything and would dedicate hours to making them. Will – who had put this song on a quiet set of music that often played in the background while they made love. A song that had played in the background earlier that week while her husband doted on her in the bedroom and expressed his love to her despite what an absentee wife and mother she'd been being that month while she buried herself in work rather than family.
She could feel Lewis listening to the quiet melody for a moment. In the mirror she saw the toothy smile tug more and more at his mouth as he realized what the lyrics were saying. He brushed at her hair – moving it away from her ear before tugging it hard back, bring the same ear closer to his mouth.
"Do I make you scared, Detective Benson?"
If you're wondering about the song (and didn't recognize the obscure reference to the lyrics of the obscure song by an obscure group) check out Scared by the Tragically Hip.