A/N: One more before we finally get there. I felt it was time to bring Carrie back and we'll definitely see more of her in the future - not right away but soon enough. Thanks for the incredible feedback. You guys are awesome. And thank you for the continuous support although I sometimes vanish for months at a time.
...
That night in bed Olivia tosses and turns. No matter how hard she tries to close her eyes, relax and convince her shabby little mind to allow her some sleep, sleep does not come. It's nerves. And it's nauseating.
There are a hundred ways this whole thing can go wrong. And by God, Olivia does not want anything to go wrong. For as much as she has thought with time everything would get easier, she realizes now that she's been kidding herself. Noah and Tom meeting outside of school was never going to be easy. And as innocent as they are planning to make it look, the truth is that relatively soon Noah would either see through his mother's bullshit or she'd come around and tell him the truth, give him a crappy speech about how Tom is not just a friend-friend but a very special friend - that he's her boyfriend.
They had this sort of conversation once, shortly after Noah had turned four. Olivia remembers like it was yesterday when her son had brought up the question of all questions.
Where's my Daddy?
Olivia had always been forthcoming and truthful about her son's origin. That he was born to another mother and father but that they were no longer around. To be fair, she had always focused on Ellie more than on the piss poor excuse of a father that Johnny D. was.
She isn't too heartbroken that Johnny Drake is six feet underground. In fact she sleeps a little better at night knowing the son of a bitch was never going to be responsible for another person's death. So when her son had asked where is daddy was, it had thrown Olivia for a loop and she had needed to elaborate and dig a little deeper and not come around and explain how his father was a really bad man who's either been insane or suicidal when he grabbed a gun and shot his way out of a court room and was subsequently taken out. And when Noah realized that his father would never be in the picture he had started to ask if he could have an other Dad, just like Olivia was an other Mom to him. It stung. Because Olivia would have loved to tell her son that yes, of course she would make sure he'd get to grow up with a father figure or maybe even someone who'd raise him like his own. But she couldn't. And a year ago Olivia hadn't been very comfortable that she'd ever be able to make it work with anyone in the long haul. So, instead she had told Noah she was going to try but that she couldn't promise anything and upon his request to know why she had eventually found herself at a loss.
There had been no way for her to explain to a four-year old child that she had a set of issues. Trust issues, commitment issues, issues to allow herself some happiness even. And Jesus, that were just those on the surface that didn't include her fear of opening up to someone else about how screwed up and traumatized Lewis had left her. How scared she was to open herself up to someone completely, period. In the end she had awkwardly smiled the question away and successfully redirected her son's focus by tickling him and suggesting they'd watch a movie over a gigantic bowl of ice-cream, cookie-dough, his favorite. The boy could eat his weight in Ben & Jerries.
Ten or elven months later here she is. With a boyfriend who knows about her son, who knows her son. A boyfriend that is about to meet her son at a McDonald and subsequently take them ice-skating.
Olivia knows Tom is good with kids. She knows he adores children in general, that he teaches with a passion, that he doesn't see them as little robots that should bend at their parents command but are in the world to challenge them. Tom Tetley is the kind of person who truly believed that children were not only the future, but that they make the present so much better, much more bearable. He is the kind of person parents trust their children with.
And despite all that Olivia is worrying herself out of sleep, out of rest and out of peace of mind. Because this is so much bigger. This is about her future, about her son's future and even Tom's future. It isn't just about Noah meeting her boyfriend of six months and hopefully accepting the man by Olivia's side. Quite the opposite. They laid the groundwork for… something. Something more, something that neither Olivia or Tom could foresee at this point.
And that something could possibly be a break-up sometime in the future. Maybe in a few months from now. Maybe in a couple of years.
Olivia may have allowed herself to open up - well, kind of. She may have let herself get to know Tom, trust him, fall for him. She may have allowed herself to finally truly feel. She also knows that love can be very ephemeral. That relationships end, hearts break. That sometimes giving your best simply isn't good enough to make it work with someone else in the long run. And that is the truly scary part. The nauseating part.
To imagine that Tom and Noah could grow close, that the man would invest in her child and for Noah to need Tom only for it all to fall apart is crippling. To imagine that life could take something from her son yet again, when he had already lost so much, no matter if he never knew his biological parents -.
Olivia's stomach churns violently. She realizes that she has to stop obsessing about tomorrow. There no longer is an option. It is not fight or flight this time. No way is she going to tell Tom that she has changed her mind because she's a) a coward and b) is imagining every scenario of their relationship turning sour. No fucking way.
Sighing, she presses her eyes shut and pushes the heels of her hands into her orbits until she sees tiny, white dots dancing in front of the curtain of her eyelids. She has to stop. Period.
Only it proves a lot harder than Olivia has anticipated. Her mind doesn't listen, doesn't just shut off on her command. Instead she decided she should focus on what she knows.
Number one - Tom is a good guy. God, he is such a good guy.
Number two - He is an honorable person.
Number three - It's been six months. Six good months. Six months in which Olivia has smiled more and felt more energized. Six months of many insecurities that she's overcome for the most part.
Number four - They are solid. This relationship is solid. They know each other on more than just a basic level by now.
Number five - She doesn't want this to end.
Number six - She is in love.
She is no longer sure when exactly she has realized this but she damned well knew for sure when she had opened his Christmas gift, the Cabbage Patch Doll that had now found a home in her bedroom. It is still in its box and probably would always be, but Olivia loved to wake up to it sitting there on her dresser as a reminder of …
Of what? Tom? A miserable Christmas decades ago when she had gotten an Easy Bake Oven instead of the desired doll? A reminder of her sometimes very fucked up childhood?
She smiles then.
It reminds me that wishes do come true.
It's corny and yet it is true. It may have taken decades but her Christmas wish had eventually come true and it had come true because of Tom.
Tom who is such a good listener, who has not only a handsome but also an adorable smile with deep dimples that she misses seeing ever since he's grown that beard out.
Olivia releases a heavy sigh and opens her eyes again and wrinkles her nose.
„Enough of this," she mutters to herself and sits up. She needs to finds her confidence and soon, or else she wouldn't get a single moment of sleep tonight and if she needs one thing, desperately, it is sleep. It's always rare and she usually only gets five hours in. And often those five hours come with interruptions. Not even through nightmares, although she does still have them regularly. Mostly her body is woken in a sweat by what Lindstroem says is likely her subconscious. Before a nightmare forms her body shrieks to a halt. It's self-preservation. Unfortunately Olivia can't simply go back to sleep those nights. She often lies awake, tries to calm herself down, because when she wakes up, it's always like she is about to suffocate. It feels like she can't breathe. It also doesn't help when the sheets and her nightwear is drenched in cold, sticky sweat that smells of fear and panic.
She smiles then and it intensifies until her face is split in half with what she is certain must be a stupid grin. She sleeps better when she's with Tom. She usually sleeps through the night. She has never woken up in a cold sweat when she is sleeping in his bed, when her limbs are all tangled up around him and his smell surrounds her, seeps into her skin. She has never had one of her nightmares that trigger insomnia for the rest of the night when with him.
For the first time she realizes that he's more. That there is more to Tom than the fact he's her boyfriend and that they work quite well together. That she's stupidly in love with him.
He makes her feel safe. Protected. With him she is not as haunted by Lewis and PTSD that will likely stay with her for the rest of her life. There still are good days and bad days and days that are just… normal days. There is the occasional case that triggers the trauma big time and there are dates that will always stand out in the calendar. The day the sick bastard has kidnapped her for example. Those days spent in court. The day of his sentencing and the day he had escaped from prison.
The day he died.
All the days he made little pieces of her die.
Tom won't ever shake Lewis or the PTSD off for her. But somehow he has the power to make her a little bit better, a little bit more confident. And shouldn't she try and give that back? Have confidence in him? In them? She should be confident about their future. They have taken baby steps in the past and now here they are - taking strides. And strides, Olivia assures herself, are good. Strides are appropriate at this point in their relationship.
There are no guarantees. She has known this before. And maybe it will all go wrong. Or maybe it won't. Maybe, after all the stress and worrying, after the lack of confidence and baby steps, after the fear it will all be right. Maybe Tom is that concept she has always hoped to find but never truly believed in for herself.
The one.
Mr. Right instead of just Mr. Right now.
Olivia will simply have to woman up and stop living in the past, holding on to all she'd ever known. What she needs to do, she tells herself, is be done with loss and heartbreak and looking for love in all the wrong places, in all the wrong people. Tom is different. He has always been different and however scary different has been from the start Olivia has to finally face that different is good for them. Different is perfect in their case.
Tom is going to meet Noah tomorrow and everything will go over just fine. It will work out perfectly. Because there really is no reason why it shouldn't.
….
Eventually Olivia has gotten two and a half hours of sleep which, she figures, is better than none at all but she is weary and her bodily functions leave a lot to be desired at seven in the morning. Fixing Noah a bowl of cereal on a Sunday morning has never been this… hard. Yawning and on autopilot she puts the breakfast in front of her son who digs in instantly and shovels a big spoonful into his mouth, trickles of milk running down his chin and dripping into his pajama clad lap. Olivia thinks she should probably act like a mother and tell him to eat slowly and not get his breakfast all over himself and the kitchen floor but even that proves to be too much for her to bother.
She starts the coffee machine, cleans up after her kid a moment later who runs to the couch and fumbles with the remote.
„Mom, it's not working." He howls like a wolf cub.
„Uh-huh. Try again." Please, please try again and just succeed.
She glances over and sees her kid, tongue caught between his teeth and sticking out as he's concentrating hard. Again he howls. „Mo-ooom. It isn't working."
„Do you have the right remote?" She does not want to move but knows she will have to. The remote has been acting up for a while, probably the batteries, Olivia thinks.
„Ye-hes. Mommy, can you come help me, please?" She wonders when it has started that everything he wants is accompanied by this whiney little voice, like the world is going to go down any second if his mother is not helping before the problem has even occurred. Olivia loves her son but this trait he's showing as of late makes her think she's going to go crazy and soon.
Her phone starts to chirp from where she put it, somewhere by the coffee machine and groaning she closes her eyes and prays it's not work related.
„Please don't let it be work. Please don't let it be-," she mutters her mantra as she makes her way over as her son groans while he slams his index-finger on the red button of the remote. Her fuzzy brain assembles the letters of the name flashing on her phone.
„Hey Carr," she greets with no enthusiasm whatsoever.
„Hey homegirl," the quirky blonde greets and Olivia tries to find reasons why someone could possibly in such a chipper mood at -what time is it even? - on a Sunday fucking morning. She makes a sound that sounds like a grunt before bracing herself to push a greeting in return past her lips.
„Morning."
„Ah, someone's in a pissy mood, huh?" Carrie teases and Olivia is too tired to roll her eyes all the way back in her head. „Couldn't sleep, right?"
After almost three decades and a different life in a different city Carrie still knows her better than anyone and for a second it lifts her spirits.
„How'd you know?"
„Well, if Mr. Sexy Specks meeting the baby isn't a dead giveaway-„
„He's not a baby and-„
„Momma, I wanna watch. Now-," the cub howls once more, this time really putting his poor soul into it.
Point taken. Very well.
„Okay, he is a baby-," she growls and this time goes through the effort of rolling her eyes. „You were saying?" She sandwiches the phone between ear and left shoulder and starts rummaging through one of the drawers in search of batteries as a storm is brewing that sure enough is to bring along a temper tantrum.
„Your Whatsapp status said online at pretty much all hours of the night," Carrie admitted. „Figured you'd be driving yourself crazy."
Bliss materialized in form of a box of batteries.
„And you know that how?" If she was going to tell Olivia she had a sleepless night as well and still was in such a good mood she will flip. Or ask for the happy pills responsible. The woman was a psychiatrist after all, she knew how to get her hands on the good stuff. The cub stopped howling as mama wolf made her way over. Tantrum avoided.
A wailing sound pierces Olivia's ear although its fake as clear as day. „My first baby spent a night at a pool party."
„It's January. What the hell are the kids thinking? They really do pool parties in winter?" She has seen a hell of a lot while on duty but this is new.
„Indoors. I lost a bet to him which resulted in a 3 AM curfew so momma bear was up all night, too. Funny thing - nerves, right?"
„Hmph," Olivia agreed. The cub is now happily stretching out on the couch, zapping through the channels until he settles on a cartoon that satisfies his cravings. She grabs a mug on her way back and pours herself steaming, black coffee, extra strong. Carefully she blows into the blue ceramic mug.
„How was game night? You went, yeah? Met his friends finally?"
„Carr, too many questions and too little caffeine in my system. Actually - no caffeine at all yet," she muttered and switched the cell phone to her right ear for more comfort. „I went. They were nice. It was… strange in a good way."
„See, told ya it was gonna be good. You just gotta get out sometimes. Meeting new people is good, meeting his people's even better. You got along then?"
„We played games and just… chatted very briefly so I guess so." Her lips wrapped around pottery and she indulges in a long, heavenly sip of black Colombian coffee that instantly kickstarts her systems.
„One of these days you will have to give me a little more, Benson. Do I have to worm every little bit of information out of you?"
„I don't know what else you wanna hear," Olivia groaned and starts to think, wondering what else she could tell. „Tom got drunk."
„Oh, is this the juicy part?"
„I don't know about juicy he just… got wasted."
„You know what they say about drunks right? How their true character comes to show?" She teases.
„They say that? All I've ever heard was that drunks spoke the truth…or something," she mumbles around another sip of coffee.
„Yeah well, maybe it was that," Carrie agreed thoughtfully.
„He's insanely competitive in games and probably a sore loser." She can only assume after all Tom hadn't lost in the game of Running Charades he was so invested in.
„That's not a bad thing."
„He gloated and teased me about it. It wasn't very…" Olivia tries to think of a word but it's hard to describe what she thought about it. It had made him unattractive for a moment and Olivia had to remind herself that it was probably the alcohol that encouraged the extent of his behavior.
„You know, we all have our flaws and we all have some things crawl to the surface under the influence. I remember that you always ugly cried when we got wasted."
„I did not!" The protest comes in an instant, wide eyes and everything. She fights it because it is humiliating to be called out on it, no matter how true.
„Course you did. All the damn time. You'd get all quiet and somber and then you'd bawl like a baby." There have been one or two instances, Olivia admits. Well, maybe five. Six. She may even have gone through one of those drunk breakdowns in front of Elliot which she had made him swear to forget about it and never bring it up ever again. Ever-
„Yeah well, but you… you always cursed like a sailor and had a bit of a mean streak when you drank."
„I always curse like a sailor, Liv." Olivia can practically hear the eye-roll through Carrie's voice. „And I don't have a mean streak, I just tend to be brutally honest when I drink."
„Same difference."
„Yeah, maybe," the blonde grins into her cell. „When are you going to meet Mr. Sexy Specks?" Olivia is positive that Carrie will never let her live that drunk night last year down. Too many bottles of wine and her lack of confidence to go for dating Tom at the time had ended in her whining (but not ugly crying) over the situation and Olivia had thrown in a lot of gushing over the black-rimmed specks that made Mr. Tom Tetley so incredibly sexy. Somehow her best friend had ended up turning those words into a stupid, stupid name.
„Can you stop calling him that?"
„That's a rhetorical question, right? Because the answer is no."
Olivia groans and rolls her head between her shoulders, trying to get rid of some of the tension that has built in the years.
„It's a perfectly suitable name, Liv. I mean, he is pretty damn sexy wearing those glasses, you were right about that."
„Huh-huh," she says with no enthusiasm, hoping her friend would let it go if she didn't give her the satisfaction of complaining.
„I'm going to an Ed Sheeran concert by the way."
„Uh-huh. And you're telling me that why?"
„Because I never even knew who the guy was before you've compare Sexy Specks to him. Nice music. I like."
„Carrie?"
„Yeah?"
„Does this conversation has a point?"
„I love to hear your voice." Olivia's lips crack open and form a goofy smile.
„Aww thanks. I think this is the nicest thing you've said to me in… probably ever," Liv teases softly.
„Gotta throw you a bone sometimes, you know?" The blonde offered. „Seriously though, I miss you."
„I miss you, too."
„You should come visit sometime."
„Yeah, with my schedule," she scoffs. „But you're always welcome here, you know?"
„I might just take you up on that offer." With their own practice it wouldn't be rocket science to clear her schedule for a few days if she planned a couple of months in advance.
„You're gonna let me meet Mr. Sexy Specks, aren't you?" The tone of Carrie's voice is leery. She wouldn't even put it past Olivia to try and keep her away from Tom.
„If you're going to stop calling him that," Olivia retorts in challenge.
„Is it enough if I promise not to call him that to his face?" The blonde woman ponders hopefully.
„Erm… no," Olivia states with emphasis. How is that even an option, calling him Mr. Sexy Specks to his face? Has she lost her goddamn mind?
„What? It's a good deal. I'll spare you embarrassment and I get to meet him, sounds like a win win to me."
„Why are we friends again?"
„Aww, now that just hurts, Benson," Carrie fake cries and sucks in a shallow breath.
„No calling him that, period. Not to me and not to his face."
„And there I was creating such a lovely name for him. Seriously Liv, I just went by what you gave me."
„I was drunk."
„Your point being?"
„I was drunk and you were being mean. In fact you still are and you're not even drunk," she explains, slowly adding something. „I hope." She hears Carries laugh filter through the phone.
„Fine, I'm not going to call him Mr. Se.."
„Carrie." The words a warning, a bite.
„Oh come on, one last time?" She sounds like her son did a few minutes ago, howling cub, and she tries to remember what it takes to stop it. Basically the only way around it is instant fulfillment of needs. She groans and lets her head hang. „Fine, one last time," she allows through gritted teeth.
„Mr. Sexy Specks-," Carrie breathes. „God, that felt good."
„You're such an idiot," Olivia chuckles, shaking her head.
„And you're way too uptight, Benson."
….
