Part Six

Chapter Twenty-Six:

Casey Novak woke up with a searing ache in her shoulders that stretched up into her jaw and pounded behind her eyes. She groaned, unclenching her teeth to try and relieve some of the building pressure, and held her pillow down over her head, blocking out the faintly glowing light of her digital alarm clock. The darkness helped take the edge off of her pain, but didn't offer a complete cure.

Reaching out a hand, the former ADA tried to find the button that would dim the light on her clock, or at least turn it so that the screen was facing in the other direction. Her hand bumped into the spine of a cheap, plastic-covered book instead, knocking it off the nightstand and onto the floor.

"Ummm..." The redhead slowly peeked out from underneath her pillow. "Come back here," she muttered, too tired and sore to care that she was speaking to an inanimate object. She reached over the side of the bed, groping for her Bar exam study guide. Even though she had only been censured and not disbarred permanently, Casey had never let herself think that she might return to the DA's office. A few years ago – 'Hell, even a few months ago, I can admit it,' Casey thought to herself – she had been certain that she would never work in the legal profession again. Remembering the career she had lost was too painful. She didn't need to retake the test, but she figured that brushing up on the fundamentals wouldn't hurt if she ever wanted to reapply for her old job.

Swinging her legs over the side of the mattress, she cracked her toes and stretched, ignoring the sudden rush of vertigo that made her head swim as she sat up. Tossing the study guide onto the foot of her bed, she lumbered towards the door in search of the pain relievers she had in the mixed bottle sitting at the front of her medicine cabinet. Her spine hurt, her shoulders hurt, her neck hurt, and her head hurt most of all, the result of too many nights spent on the couch with her cell phone in one hand and a baseball bat in the other.

There had been no word on her case in the past two days. She knew that the guys in the lab needed time to go through the evidence, and a case like hers might get pushed to the backburner if something more urgent came up, especially since Olivia was handling it for her under the radar, so to speak.

Casey reached out to flip the light switch as she stepped into the kitchen, but thought better of it. The sudden brightness might make her headache worse. Instead, she continued to fumble around in the half-dark, using the illumination of the oven timer clock to feel her way to the medicine cabinet. But the shadows of her kitchen weren't right. The familiar shapes had changed. Stepping backwards carefully, Casey squinted her eyes in preparation and turned on the light. When her eyes adjusted, the sight that greeted her made her gasp in surprise.

"What the hell?" The entire kitchen looked like a hurricane had blown through it, doors hanging off of cupboards and dishes broken on the floor. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph..." she whispered, her eyes wide with shock despite her dilated pupils. She didn't even realize that she had borrowed one of Alex's colloquialisms.

After the original surprise wore off, her first instinct was to reach for the nearest object that could be used as a weapon, which happened to be a kitchen knife. Folding her fingers around the handle, she crept towards the phone mounted on her wall, dialing 911 with her left hand and pressing the button for speaker. If this creep had broken into her house, she needed more help than Olivia could give her.

...

"Your phone or mine?" Alex asked sleepily, shifting underneath Olivia's weight. She had been roused from slumber by the wonderful sensation of the detective's mouth lavishing attention on her nipples, and even though she had only been awake for about a minute, she did not appreciate the interruption.

"Mine," Olivia said from where her chin was resting between Alex's breasts.

"I knew that," Alex lied. She was currently still out of a job, but she had gotten plenty of early morning phone calls during her time at the DA's office. "Are you on call?"

"Uh-uh. I don't know who – hold on..." Olivia stood up, providing Alex with a nice view of her naked figure as she hunted around the bedroom for her cell. She answered the call as soon as she found it. "Benson... What? Let me get dressed, I'm coming over. Did you call it in? ... Good... I'm calling Stabler... Why? Because he'll kill me if I don't. He likes you... Yes, really. Be glad I'm not calling Cragen, Munch, and Fin... I'm on my way. Do you need me to stay on the phone with you? I can... okay..."

While she was talking into her phone, Olivia half-ran over to Alex's walk-in closet, struggling to pull out some clothes and shoes.

Alex curled up on top of the warm space Olivia had left behind, trying to figure out who would call at nearly five in the morning besides Elliot, Munch, Fin, or Cragen.

"Alex? Do we have to leave?"

The soft voice coming from the door to the bedroom nearly made the attorney jump out of her skin. A sleepy looking Calvin was standing in the doorway wearing his nightshirt and rubbing his eyes. Alex immediately pulled the covers up to her chin. "What? No, we don't have to go anywhere, Calvin. Olivia just has to check on something. Can you turn around for a minute so I can get my robe? Then you can come sit with me if you want and we can say goodbye to Olivia."

The young boy obediently turned his back for the twenty seconds it took Alex to grab her robe from the hook on the closet door. She nearly ran into Olivia, who was dressed except for a shirt and trying to pull on her second sock. "What's up, Liv?" Alex asked when she noticed that the detective was no longer on the phone.

"Casey called me. The creep that's been bothering her has escalated. She woke up just now and found her kitchen and living room trashed, but she's fine. The police are on their way, but..."

"I'll hold down the fort." Alex gave Olivia a quick peck on the lips and pressed a shirt into her hands, glad that everything went with the khaki pants that the brunette was wearing.

Olivia took a moment to give one of Alex's cheeks a firm grope from behind before leaving the closet and stepping back out into the bedroom. "Hey, champ," she said, pulling Calvin into a brief hug. "Did we wake you up?"

"Yeah. Do you have to go to work?"

The detective couldn't help feeling a little guilty when she heard the note of disappointment and concern in Calvin's voice. "Kind of. I should be back soon, okay?" Hoping that Alex would be able to reassure any of Calvin's doubts, she hurried out into the hall and went to grab the keys to Alex's Lamborghini from the hook by the front door.

Alex was next to emerge from the closet, and after making sure she was fully covered, she sat down on the couch that was still positioned at the foot of the bed.

"Why is the sofa in here?" Calvin asked, sitting next to Alex and scooting closer against her side when he heard the front door close.

The attorney silently wished that Calvin were slightly less perceptive. "Olivia did it to play a joke on me. I'm sorry we woke you up..."

"Alex, can I ask you something?"

"You may," Alex corrected gently. "I told you, questions are good."

"How come you didn't have any clothes on when I came in? Were you having sex?"

Alex almost choked on air at that question. Falling back on her lawyer instincts, she posed one of her own. "Calvin, why would you ask that?"

The boy shrugged. "Don't people get naked? They said that on TV." Alex made a mental note to monitor Calvin's television time more closely. "Why do people have sex?"

"Hold on, too many questions at once. Give me a minute," Alex stumbled over her answer. How did this kid even know what sex was? When she was ten, she had been too busy with books, cello lessons, and trying to impress her father to ask about things like sex. It was truly a different age...

Eventually, Alex decided not to insult Calvin's intelligence by lying. "Yes, people usually don't wear clothes," she said, her head still spinning. No defense attorney had ever made her feel this confused. "Two people make love to show that they care about each other, Calvin, and sometimes so that they can start a family."

"But two girls can't have a baby..."

"Not the usual way, no," Alex hedged, looking frantically for an escape. "Didn't you learn about this in school? Ugh, why do I even pay property taxes?" Never in a million years had she pictured herself discussing the facts of life with a ten-year-old at five in the morning.

"No... Is it how you make a baby? And you have to get naked?"

"I guess ten is old enough. Come on, let's go to the kitchen," Alex sighed, shepherding the boy out of the bedroom. "I think I'm going to need a pen and paper..."

...