A/N: Just a little drabble-y goodness I wrote based on a tweet. Someone posted a candid photo of Mariska in a fuzzy blue sweater. I retweeted with this comment: "Headcanon: Ever since they left the apartment, Amanda has been asking if Liv skinned a muppet to make that sweater. They finally sit down to dinner. 'Me want cookie,' Amanda whispers, just as Liv puts on her glasses to read the menu. This is the photo she gets" . . . And then this drabble was born. It's set shortly after my fic Idle Hands.
"What the hell is Fraggle Rock?"
Amanda paused with the chair pulled halfway out from under the table. "Oh, come on. Those Jim Henson puppet things with the crazy hair? Kinda like if the Muppets had done a lot of crack in the eighties."
"Sweetheart." Olivia tucked her skirt beneath her as she settled onto the proffered seat. She scooted the chair forward, centering herself at the table, then glanced back over her shoulder at Amanda. For someone who enjoyed poking fun at the fuzzy blue sweater—Olivia didn't even remember buying it, but damn, it was comfortable—the blonde sure couldn't keep her hands off of it. Just then, she was gliding her palms up and down the sleeves. Rather sensually, if Olivia was not mistaken.
She patted one of Amanda's hands, taking her gently by the fingers to guide her towards the empty seat nearby. They were going to start getting looks from the other diners soon, if she didn't get her detective under control. "I turned twenty in the eighties. While you were watching Froufrou Rock—"
"Fraggle Rock," Amanda groaned, flumping down in her chair and shaking her head in helpless amusement. It was a lost cause, and they both knew it.
"—I was moving in with Billy Andrews and making my own questionable hair choices."
Amanda turned her menu over and began to peruse. "What, did you have a perm?" she asked with a derisive little snort.
For a moment, Olivia pretended to read the antlike print that marched across the blurry page in front of her. Damn, she thought, and surreptitiously lowered her glasses into place from atop her head.
Too late. Amanda leaned in, snickering. "Oh my Lord, you had a perm! Please tell me there's photographic evidence."
Pursing her lips, Olivia fixed a playful glare over both menu and glasses. "I could show you, but then I'd have to kill you."
"Aw man, that's not fair. You saw the pictures of me and Kim with our matching mullets. Be nice." Amanda poked at the back of Olivia's hand with one of the long, crunchy breadsticks from a basket in the middle of the table. She munched at the opposite end, grinning. "How 'bout a little tit for tat, darlin'?"
This time, Olivia shook her head in helpless amusement. If Amanda ever got another tattoo, it needed to read: Incorrigible. "I don't think someone who's spent the evening comparing their girlfriend's sweater to fluffy animatronic creatures deserves any. . . tat," she said, smirking as she enunciated the last word.
Breadstick crumbs sprayed across the table, and Amanda gulped from her water glass to allay her strangled cough. "Okay, first of all, warn a person. And second, they're puppets, not animatronics. Didn't you ever watch Sesame Street? I swear, that is the exact shade of blue as Cookie Monster. You murdered my childhood and wore it to dinner."
"Oh my God, I am never taking you out to eat again." Olivia clucked her tongue and snapped her menu open, but it was awfully difficult feigning ire while Amanda played footsie with her under the table. She stole a glance down at the tablecloth and, finding it sufficiently long, slid the toe of her blue suede pump along the back of Amanda's calf.
Ha! That stopped the blonde in her tracks. But only for a second.
One pale eyebrow hiked up, Amanda purred, "Well, I did offer to stay in and eat out, if you remember correctly."
In-cor-rig-ible.
"I remember." Idly, Olivia rubbed the exposed top of her foot against Amanda's stocking. The blonde had worn the silky black thigh highs they'd both discovered Olivia was quite fond of during a private lingerie show in the Victoria's Secret dressing room weeks earlier. Seam up the back, lace garter belt with the little straps. Mmm.
"Are you ladies ready to order?"
The male voice interrupted Olivia's reverie like an unexpected dousing of frigid water. She sat up straight and cleared her throat, eyes locked on her menu. "I think we still need a minute," Amanda told the waiter, suppressed laughter in her tone.
From the corner of her eye, Olivia watched him go. When she finally did look up, Amanda was grinning from ear to ear. She just had to go and bring the dimple into it, the little blonde scamp.
"What?" Olivia asked. Nonchalant. The epitome of cool. That's Captain Benson to you, ma'am.
"Nothing." Amanda crouched behind her menu, shielding the giggles she could no longer contain. From somewhere behind the desserts section, a query eventually drifted up in a cartoonish grumble: "Me want cookie?"
"I know a certain blonde detective who's not getting any of these cookies tonight, if she makes that voice again." Olivia gazed pointedly down at her sweater, then back up at Amanda.
Before her very eyes, the blonde transformed into a perfect angel. Or maybe it was the angel hair pasta Amanda ordered, because just as Olivia was taking her first bite of carbonara, she heard it, in that deceptively casual Southern twang:
"So . . . who's this Billy Andrews fella I hear tell about?"