Title: Lockdown
Author: ZombieJazz
Fandom: SVU
Disclaimer: I don't own them. Law&Order: Special Victims Unit and its characters belong to Dick Wolf. The character of Jack, Benji and Emmy have been created and developed for the sake of this AU series.
Summary:
TRIGGER WARNING: THESE O/Ss deal with the COVID-19 PANDEMIC. A series of stand-alone, non-chronological ONE-SHOTS set in Hello Goodbye, Welcome Home, Facing Forward, Best Laid Plans, A Step At A Time, The Night Before, Beauty in the Mundane Moments AU. A law enforcement family with high-risk, vulnerable family members, attempts to weather the COVID-19 Pandemic in Brooklyn, NY.
PLEASE NOTE: THESE SCENES DEAL WITH THE PANDEMIC. This may increasingly prove upsetting for certain readers. Please do not read, if it is. But please also know it is being written as one mechanism of coping (and being shared, as I know some readers use these characters stories as a form of strength, inspiration, distraction and coping through difficult times too). Also know that the author writes from a place of truth and knowledge of the medical system and high-risk/vulnerable populations, front-line workers and familiar concerns at this time. This is not meant to glamorize it or diminish anyone's experience in anyway.
The first few chapters were originally posted in BEAUTY IN THE MUNDANE MOMENTS but are being moved to a separate story file to pull these instances out of the main story of the characters and the original intent of BEAUTY IN THE MUNDANE MOMENTS.
These chapters are stand-alone SCENES or ONE-SHOTS. This is not a chronological story and there is no planned continuity, though there will be strings throughout. It is just a collection of moments. Not all will be heavy or sad. They can't be. Though most will focus on LIV, BRIAN, BENJI and EMMY, there will be references and opportunities to explore the experiences of other people in their lives including JACK/RENEE, MUNCH, JANET, CRAGEN, EILEEN, BARBA, ALEX/LAGDON/LEO, ROLLINS, FIN, CARISI and KAT.
TIMEFRAME: Set in MARCH-JULY 2020
Brian spread his arms, leaning against the kitchen island's counter, head hanging while he considered Liv's argument and attempted to process some kind of rebuttal that wasn't worth making. He didn't have any kind of argument to any of this.
"Well, what did his doctor say?" he finally managed.
She sighed. She had reason too. They'd gone over this multiple times. Like multiple. They'd both been on the phone to the doc multiple times in the like past two weeks. They'd grilled him at their appointment the previous month. Grilled the nurses and the techs when Ben had been in for his lab work and IVs. Not that they'd been able to tell him much of anything. Instead they'd just been watching the news and the WHO reports and the CDC reports with an increasing sense of dread – their stress and anxiety continuing to grow, reaching a near boil point now.
Liv pursed out her exhaustion and frustration in their effort to mitigate this shit. To manage it. As cops. Parents. Adults. Human beings.
"The same thing he keeps telling us," she said and stared off out the glass of their door into their small back lot that Ben had retreated into to get the hell away from them.
He was out of sight. But they couldn't hear his basketball beating against the paving stones in their cramped little lot, though. It rebounding off the backboard. The scrape of his hockey stick on cement or the bang of a hard plastic ball hitting the brick wall one the one side of their lot where a chalk net had been drawn only to ricocheting off with such force it bounce back right to smack against the wall on the opposite side of the lot. Brian suspected that Ben might've darted down the steps and rapped on Johnny's door in an effort to really get some reprieve from Mom and Dad. That Munch – and his ranting about how all this had been years in the making (that really didn't seem anything like conspiracy anymore at all. Not that much of anything did in an America governed by Trump. They lived in some sort of fucked up Dystopian Reality that was likely vindicating Johnny on so many levels. He was likely almost fucking glad he was living to see it. Thankfully he almost kept his venting and ranting and political mumbo-jumbo prophetizing to a minimum when the kiddos were around. He saved that for him and Liv.
Even then the most John said about a lot of it was that he'd 'had a good run'. Like he just knew this was the end of him. And if all the news reports and CDC and WHO reports were right – it could well be. Like Brian wasn't struggling enough with the reality that he knew John wasn't likely going to see 2020 to the end. Now it felt like it might be some kind of miracle if they got John through the next three months. Through fucking COVID-19.
And apparently Ben had decided getting out of their house and stealing out back and likely down to his Unkie Munchie's place was still the way, way, way fucking better option. Because apparently him and Liv weren't doing so great at hiding just how high this fucking coronavirus shit was upping their own anxiety – about him and his health and safety and mortality. Or Johnny's either.
Because apparently they weren't doing so great at hiding just how high this fucking coronavirus shit was upping their own anxiety – about him and his health and safety and mortality.
"That lupus compromises the immune system. That that puts him in the at-risk population – but that overseas, generally, children seem to be fairing better than the elderly. That we probably have to be more worried about John. But that we should trust our gut, be cautious and use our discretion."
"So he didn't say we should pull him out of school?" Brian put back to her.
She sighed harder at him and hung her head at him in a tilted glare that likely told him they'd been together far too long. It was way too much of a glimpse of just the kind of looks he gave her. Almost more so than when the kids gave him the head tilt and he knew where they'd picked it up.
"Brian, the whole city is shutting down. Private schools are already shutdown. Teachers are crying out for the city to do the right thing and cancel classes – to keep kids home. Other parents are already keeping their kids home."
He exhaled hard too and hung his head again and stared at the counter. "I just don't want to freak him out more than he's already freaking out, Liv. Did you see his hands? He's washing them raw."
"And that's just more reason to not have him out in public spaces, Brian. With open sores? Touching surfaces that who knows the last time they've been disinfected?"
"And, Liv, what difference is it going to make if we're both still fucking—"
She hushed him. And gave him a look. Brian gave another sigh and glanced over his shoulder to check on Em. But she'd completely missed his F-bomb. She was absolutely absorbed in the unexpected videogame time she'd been handed that afternoon while him and Liv hashed this out. Ducky looked like about in settled into complete zombie mode. Didn't bode well for what was to come – pandemic or not.
"It's not going to make a difference," he put back to Liv as he turned back to her, "when we're both still going out into … whatever this is turning into."
"It's a pandemic, Bri," she pressed at him. "It's a national crisis – that our so-called president isn't reacting too. That our mayor and governor and police commissioner are dragging their asses to avoid a complete economic crash while struggling to get the public to wrap their heads around the necessity of all this in a way that doesn't cause complete panic about the potential health catastrophe we're on the brink of."
"That sounded a little panicked," Brian said.
"I am not panicked," Liv spat just a little. "I am at a complete loss at what we should be doing here, Brian."
He shook his head and stared at that counter. "I don't know, Liv. I think we just treat it like 9/11—"
"Brian, as much as I agree that I feel like I am watching whole sections of this city – country – crumble without a whole lot of information available to me, and as much as the cop in me wants to be boots to the ground – I am not, we are not, the people we were in 2001. And we aren't a cop family where just one of us is a First Responder or a Front Line worker. We have children, Bri. We have a chronically-ill child. We have a … " she gestured at the floor and the garden unit. "An elderly family member who has cancer and is undergoing treatment. You're likely technically high-risk too, Brian, if you'd call your cardiologist."
"I'm fine," he muttered.
"You're on heart medication," she pressed but there was a weakness to it. "You haven't been in for your annual tests yet. You've been complaining about shortness of breath."
"Because it's fucking allergy season in New York, Liv," he said. "And my chronically-ill kid has been running my 48-year-old ass off its ass with basketball and floor hockey all winter and now my six-year-old has me in the dirt and pollen of every fucking park in Brooklyn."
She sighed at him. "Well, all that's going to stop. We're doing this … self-quarantine and social distancing."
"And how exactly is that going to work?" he nodded at her. "Because I haven't heard you say you aren't going to work."
Liv took a slow, deep breath and stared at him. He stared right back.
"Bri, I'm still NYPD. I'm still going to be an essential service. I don't see them letting the specialized units move into work from home. I think it's more likely they'll reassign most of us."
"You're C.O.," he put to her. "Same as weekends, holidays. You can play point from here. We've got the firewall, secure network, VPN already setup for you."
She exhaled. "You know they'll take me to task if I start looking for 'special' treatment. It took me fifteen years to make rank, Brian."
He shook his head at her. "It took you fifteen years to take the lieutenant's exam. You don't know that you wouldn't have climbed the ladder sooner."
She sighed at him. "Dodds pulled strings to get me Captain," Liv said. "You know that. You know we need that extra salary right now. The benefits in the Captains' Beneficiary. We talked about this. I've barely held the rank three months. They've still got eyes on me. I've taken so much time this year with Benji's lupus and appointments."
"Yea," Brian nodded. "And so you go out there – in the field."
"The office. The precinct," she argued.
"It doesn't matter, Olivia. You're still going to be in contact with … what fifty, a hundred cops every day. Lawyers. Perps. And what if them exposes you to COVID? What happens then? You don't come home? The kids don't get their mom for … what? Fourteen days? Or … what three months? Eighteen months? Or worse - what if you don't even know you've been exposed and you bring it into this house and you expose Ben or John to it? They get sick. How is that going to make you feel? What are you going to do to yourself if that happens?"
The sadness that painted across her whole face pained him almost as much as he could tell that it pained her. She'd thought about all that. He could tell that too. And she didn't know who to deal with any of that either. There wasn't an answer or solution she'd come to about that either. She hadn't even formulated an argument about how she was going to approach it yet.
"There's going to be a spike in domestic violence during this," Liv said. "That usually correlates to a spike in rapes."
"Not necessarily reported ones and not necessarily in Manhattan," Brian said.
She exhaled. "I have a job to do, Brian."
"Yea, Liv. And I've got a job to do too."
"The courts are closing, Brian," she nearly yelled at him. "Beyond essential services. As grotesque the crimes your cases deal with, they are not going to be classified as demanding the essential services of the courts."
"I'm still on the witness list of trials that have already started, and until I get told those trials have been held over until all this blows over, I can't exactly not show up," he pressed with his own touch of anger.
"But I'm pretty damn-well sure you can manage to do you job from home there after," she spat back.
He looked at her. And then nodded. "OK, Liv. Sure, fine. You're right. But, not because of why you think. Because, you know what? Investigator. Supervisor. I can figure it out, make arrangements to do it from home. Because I've got another job: Dad. And so do you: Mom. And you're right. We don't have the luxury of them both being perfectly healthy kids and if our family gets exposed we'll likely just have two weeks of a really shitty flu. So – if we're pulling him out of school and quarantining and not doing this half-assed – you have got to figure out how you're not doing it half-assed either. You're usually a pretty fucking spectacular Mom to them. And you are going to fucking hate yourself if you make choices right now about the job – and the city – that end up costing them big time."
Brian moved away from the counter and the devastated look she was giving him. He shrugged a little.
"We can talk about it more if you want. Talk. About you. Me. Ben. Em. That's sorted – the way you wanted," he said and gestured at the backdoor. "I'm going to check on him. It's way too quiet out there."
And she'd gotten way too quiet in there too. Even with Ducky's videogame going on in the background and the clattering of the pot trying to boil over on the stove. It was fucking deafening. Terrifying so. So much fucking noise and none of it contained any kind of answers that made any kind of sense.
AUTHOR NOTE:
If people do happen to have moments, experiences or thoughts they'd like to share or see explored, let me know. DM is likely best, but if you want to share with the wider community, leave a review/comment.
This story will be updated as I am able and as it seems like an appropriate outlet. I do have other IRL projects on the go.
BEAUTY IN THE MUNDANE MOMENTS with previously mentioned chapter ideas will continue to be updated, as I have the time, ability and interest in writing there too.
Please stay smart and safe out there. WHEN/IF you don't absolutely have to be out there — STAY THE F HOME.
And as a final note, it was suggested I consider moving to AO3 for posting FF. I got an invite. I'm looking into it.
Oh — and, yes, I saw the news about the Stabler comeback/spin-off. And, yes, I may play with that. I'd been contemplating playing with him in terms of a Brian/Stabler interaction and fallout/reaction in terms of Liv. But had then sort of moved toward plugging Tucker into that story arc idea instead. May shift back.
And on the very off-chance some of my CPD readers have been following these stories — I have been considering doing a crossover scene with Voight as per his family life in my CPD AU. And, I am currently using rewatching some CPD as part of distraction procedure and it has me vaguely contemplating revisiting my CPD stories too.