A/N: You (all of you who're old enough to read M- and E-rated fics!) can make a drinking game of this: one sip for all the dumb references, drain your glass if you get the classy ones. Anyone who knows what a persiflage is, indulge yourself with a whole bottle. I may have had a drink while writing this.
Prompt #87: Elliot and Olivia get called in on a case and Kathleen takes Noah trick or treating
Spiderman, Wonder Woman, and the Big, Bad Wolf
~oOo~
Of course, it happened just as Noah was putting the finishing touches on Elliot's head.
Ring, ring.
Olivia chewed on her lower lip, as she watched her son's face fall. The boy sat back on her partner's knees and dropped the arm that was previously occupied with drawing a life-sized cobweb on Elliot's freshly shaven head.
"Fin," she sighed into her phone, motioning for the room to be quiet for a second. Five heads turned to listen to the one-sided conversation. Noah wore an expression of utter disappointment; Kathleen pouted into her second mimosa of the night; Bernie tut-tutted into hers, and even Eli looked put-off by the Sergeant's interruption of their preparations for what was going to be a first family Halloween get-together. Only Elliot sported a look of understanding, but Olivia had never felt more like a kill-joy.
"Yeah," Olivia mumbled. "Let me just arrange for childcare. Might take a while." It wasn't a complete lie. She would have to instruct Katie to stay firm about their agreed extended bedtime — any further extensions were non-negotiable. She would have to tell her to take Noah's inhaler with them when they go trick-or-treating, just in case, because you never know what might happen. She would have to remind them with a sharp look in Bernie's direction that caries exists on October 31, too. But Fin didn't need to know all these details.
"No, um," she hesitated, crossing her fingers behind her back, "I can call him while I wait." That was the lie.
She ended the call and addressed her partner. "There's a rather explicit threat to some celebrity TV producer. You're called in, too. Joint taskforce and all that jazz for a big white dude with a receding hairline."
She could barely finish before Eli blurted, rapt with attention, "Is it a star we know? Can we come?"
"Nope," Elliot cut him off. "And that's classified." Now it was Eli's turn to pout.
Olivia returned her attention to her son. "I'm so sorry we have to go," she said as she ran her fingers through his curls. "But you still get to do all the fun stuff we planned if Katie is okay with that."
"Course, she is," Elliot answered for her. "And Katie is also going to stop drinking her mimosas now so she can be an acceptable babysitter."
The young woman in question rolled her eyes, while Bernie, to the amusement of all, quipped, "Can the apparently unacceptable babysitter keep drinking her mimosas and get her face painted?"
"Yes!" Noah's face lit up again at the prospect of having another human canvas, while the adults chuckled about Bernie's fondness for the fizzy drink.
"I know you probably have to take your make-up off," Noah trailed off as he climbed off of Elliot's lap.
"No way!" Elliot knew how to humor a nine-year-old. "It'll spook the bad guys into confessing more quickly so we can come home sooner–"
"El–" Olivia's said silently, warningly.
But Elliot was going to have his way with this one. "My bald head, my decision," he announced. "In fact, why don't we give your mum a reminder that Halloween can be fun at work too, buddy?"
There was a mischievous glint in Elliot's eyes. Noah, of course, was all excitement, and Olivia only raised a sceptical brow. Before she could so much as lift a finger, he launched himself at her and landed an exaggerated kiss on her temple. One loud smack after another and the left side of Olivia's face and neck were full of black smudges and Noah was dissolving in giggles.
"You're ridiculous," she protested and turned her face away, but this only spurned her partner on. He spun her around in his arms so her back was pressed into his front, pinning her arms to her sides in the process. For Noah's benefit, he took a deep, audible breath in and on the breath out blew a raspberry into the back of Olivia's neck, making her squeal and Noah shriek with laughter.
Olivia wriggled out of Elliot's embrace, spun around and prodded his chest with her index finger. "You are so lucky this eyeliner isn't waterproof!" she huffed with mock indignation. "And now, if you would follow me to my stash of wet wipes."
Elliot trudged after her into the bathroom. Olivia already had a wet wipe in her hands, attacking the smudges on her cheek. When Elliot turned to close the door, he could only faintly hear his son saying, "I got an idea." Undoubtedly, he thought, that was addressed to the sixth unofficial Stabler child. A smile crossed his lips at the thought of their families fusing together so neatly.
"Will you just rub it off?"
Elliot's reverie was interrupted by an irritated Olivia shoving a wet wipe into his chest. "No," he retorted, confused, "I told Noah I'd leave it on."
"Fine," she huffed. "I'll take these with me and you can do it in the car."
"No," Elliot insisted. "I promised, and if you can't tell, I'm trying to get your kid to like me."
"Well, have you thought about what to say to everyone at work?" Olivia argued. "Because in case you haven't noticed, we work with a bunch of detectives," she started to ramble. "And they might notice that the better part of your scalp is covered with a child's drawing, and I can't come up with a better explanation than the kid of my former-partner-now-superior-officer who I've been secretly screwing slash having an undisclosed relationship with drew on me!"
"Well," Elliot drawled, as he stepped closer and rested the calming weight of his palms on Olivia's shoulders, "I was going to forego all these extraneous details and go with 'my son drew on me'. What'cha think?"
Olivia's mouth opened and closed again. She was gobsmacked – at Elliot's calmness in the face of this situation that would certainly end up with them outed, at his steadfast belief in their relationship, at this glimmer of hope that Noah might finally have someone to call 'dad.'
But before she could think of a reply that would do justice to all these contradictory emotions, her partner continued, "And before you start to freak out, this is not a proposal. I know we're not there yet, seeing as you don't yet want to tell our colleagues that we're screwing, as you've so eloquently put it. But I get it – it's harder for you as a woman in a position of power, but anyway, you've got a son, I've got two. Who cares which one drew on me?"
Olivia felt a wave of love wash over her. It was almost as if it went without saying for Elliot to put her desires first – the important ones, at least, not the make-up-related ones. She rose on her tiptoes and pressed a soft kiss on his lips, pulling his body into hers for the briefest moments of time. It was the only way she could think to express her gratitude, her love, without saying those three words. Seconds later, she dabbed the remnants of black eyeliner from her lips and took his hand in hers to go to work.
~oOo~
Olivia was making her way up from the parking garage. She had given Elliot a five-minute head start while she stayed in the passenger's seat tying her hair into a convenient pigtail – all to keep up the illusion that they hadn't arrived together. She was just making her way into the squad room as she overheard her team teasing Elliot mercilessly.
"Well, you know," her partner laughed it off, "I'm just glad my son's enjoying doing kids' stuff again after the year we've had. Makes all your jibes well worth it."
Elliot turned around and winked at Olivia with a glint in his eye, but she pressed her hand just above her heart, knowing that this new assessment of Eli's mental state had its roots in the blossoming friendship with her Noah. She took a deep breath, banishing the second wave of emotion of the day, strode into her squad room, and addressed a "What have we got?" to her team.
"You'll love this," her Sergeant jumped in. "There's this rich white dude, Romulus Willy, a producer of some twenty-odd different medical soap operas, you know, where the doctors play god, eighty percent of the cast is white and only us black dudes die? There's this shitstorm going on on Twitter 'cause he fired this actress everyone was going nuts about and traded her in for a younger, cheaper, blonder model."
"Right," Velasco cut in, in a valiant attempt to get back to the facts of the case, "but now, someone posted a threat on the dark net, explicitly stating that, and I quote, 'when the eleventh-hour chimes on All Saints' Day, Romulus Willy will have that figurative racist, misogynist stick up his ass replaced by a real, wooden one,' hence SVU, 'and nothing but dense smoke, like smoke from a furnace will remain of Willy Productions,' hence OCCB."
"Lyrical, isn't it?" Fin chimed in. "Obviously, Chief McGrath wants updates every thirty minutes, and his new best friend, the little Willy has asked for the Captain of SVU herself as his protective detail."
Olivia rolled her eyes at her Sergeant and breathed out a sound halfway between a huff and a laugh.
"'Oh, he's serious," Amanda chuckled.
"Don't shoot the messenger!" Fin shot back, hands in the air, mockingly adopting a position of surrender.
When Olivia only groaned in response, Amanda jumped in. "Better you than McGrath sitting there, listening to the little guy whine. Think of it," she drawled, "if McGrath adopts Willy's logics when it comes to hiring and firing, you'd be out on your ass with your six-figure Captain's salary; Fin's criminal black face would be demoted; it would be me or Velasco for CO, and I believe my years of experience, charming demeanor, and pale complexion would speak in my favor!" The blonde cackled in delight at her own joke.
"What about me?" the latest addition to their team asked, always eager – too eager – to please.
"Well, you, Gracie, Gracie Gold," Amanda conspiratorially lowered her voice, "you're the squad's eye candy."
"That's enough, Amanda," Olivia interrupted. Her tone tolerated no protest, and the squad room fell silent once more, waiting for her orders, but not before Fin had muttered under his breath in the blonde's direction, "Amanda, Amanda Knox 's more like it."
Olivia was back in CO-mode. "Ayanna, Fin, you share the lead on this one. Jet, find out what you can about the author of the threat on the dark web. Rollins, Velasco, scour through Twitter and try to find any posts that are worded similarly, biblical references and all. The perp will reserve the threats for the dark net, but if they're such a diehard fan, they'll have a Twitter account too and be vocal about their support of this actress." She breathed out a sigh. "I will go and play bodyguard, and I'll take Spiderman here with me, 'cause I deserve a bit of a laugh."
~oOo~
It had been two hours and fifty-six minutes of sitting at the dining room table in Romulus Willy's NYC mansion. It had been twenty-three times that Elliot had to remind Mr. Willy to please stay in the one room. It had been fourteen times that Elliot had prized the big white dude away from the windows. But it was the one time that Olivia asked her partner to get her a coffee, milk, two sugars from the bodega downstairs that had caught the media mogul's interest.
"So you really are Captain Benson," Willy mused. "I could have sworn you were having me on!"
Olivia fought the urge to roll her eyes. "I thought it was clear that when you stretched out your hand and said, 'Thanks for coming, Captain Benson,' and my partner said, 'She's standing next to me,' that I was."
"Yes, yes, of course," the man's suave attitude drove her up the wall, "but if I were writing a crime procedural, I'd make sure that someone like Detective Stabler was the lead, you know, big bloke, all muscle, hot-headed, hard to reign in. And then I'd maybe cast you as the second fiddle, the sexy partner, the yin to his yang, maybe empathetic to the victims –"
"I am empathetic with the victims," Olivia muttered under her breath, annoyed she'd ever asked Elliot to leave to get her a coffee.
"– but ultimately the pretty backdrop to the lead actor's masculinity," Willy finished.
Olivia didn't want to say anything, not really. She was proud of her stoic demeanor, she really was. But something about the assumption of her fictional counterpart being second in the opening sequence to Elliot's in a crime procedural based on their partnership had her on edge. "You know, Stabler was my partner when I first made detective," she snapped, "and when he decided to call it quits over a decade later, I was just fine being the lead detective of my squad."
It was all revolting to her. It was as if this sleazebag believed that her empathy, her compassion, her dedication to the victims of sexual assault were second fiddle to one of Elliot's less-than-fine moments of bashing a perp's head against the interrogation table. It was as if the victims, the survivors were second only to the great New York City Police Department that needed to be shown in all of its glory. Willy's view didn't sit right with Olivia. She had learned so much from the survivors she had encountered over the decades – she had learned so much from becoming a survivor herself, from conceptualizing herself as such. "You know," she all but spat at the man, "empathy can be a pretty great driving factor in and of itself."
"I suppose," Willy mused, "I could see a female protagonist rally from the abandonment of her partner, maybe only after she experienced one of those heinous crimes done to herself, you know the ones she usually only investigates. And maybe then she could rise above herself, grow into her own, realize she's her own person – but we'd need another handsome male lead to tide over the loss of the first one, I guess…"
Olivia's palm smacked the table as she dropped it from the position supporting her neck. It was right at that moment that an all too familiar voice announced, "Coffees are here!"
"You'll need to stop me from murdering him myself," Olivia muttered under her breath as the searing hot beverage was set down in front of her.
"What did he do now?'"Elliot asked, as his hand made its way reassuringly, discreetly underneath the table onto her thigh.
"He envisioned," she rolled her eyes, "my life as if it were part of a crime procedural, cruel assault and all, just to spark my character's growth."
"Dick!" El whispered. "And he's probably envisioning himself earning some 200k per episode of making you survive trauma after trauma."
"Exactly," she hissed. "Can you please distract me? I feel like I'm not doing a hundred percent on this ridiculously overpaid job if I'm envisioning ways to murder our victim."
"At your service," El whisper-announced with a mock salute. Then, in a more pensive tone, "I was a bit disappointed when you called me Spiderman of all the superheroes you had to choose from."
"What did you have in mind instead?" Olivia concealed a snort. "The hulk?"
"Well, someone more masculine than Peter Parker," he smiled, all the while trailing his hand up his partner's thigh.
When he got dangerously close to where her slacks' inseams met all under the guise of integrity under the table, she countered in form of a barely audible whisper, "So you had a superhero in mind for me?"
"Catwoman," he answered much too quickly.
Olivia nearly cackled at this. "Didn't Halle Berry win a Razzie for that film?" she asked incredulously.
"May have," Elliot returned, "but her costume designer certainly did not."
"So that's what you're all about," Olivia's voice dropped an octave. "You want to see me in a skimpy bra and catsuit combination."
"Would that be so wrong?" Elliot countered.
"Well," Olivia murmured, "maybe for the annual NYPD ball I'd rather like to be wearing a cape."
"You're already Wonder Woman, cape or no cape." Elliot's voice had ditched its flirtatious undertone, and he leaned closer to his partner.
"Are you two gonna be done playing around with this unresolved sexual tension?" Willy thundered from across the room, "Or will I actually have to make a crime procedural to get the two of you to jump in the sack?"
The deafening silence that ensued was interrupted by the crisp ring, ring of Olivia's phone. "Saved by the bell," Elliot muttered under his breath, as Olivia gave curt answers to whoever was ringing with an update, followed by an appreciative, "Good job."
Olivia ended the call with a chuckle. "We're done here," she addressed her partner, then shifted her focus onto Willy. "If you would show us to your daughter's room? We need to confiscate her electronic devices."
Elliot huffed out a laugh that was only poorly disguised as a cough. "How old is your kid?" he asked as the three adults trudged up the stairs into what was far too roomy, luxurious, and lavish to be called a thirteen-year-old's (as Elliot had learned) bedroom – her own personal apartment was more like it.
"Young lady," Olivia announced once they had prized the girl's attention away from the latest model of the iPad, "We're here to take away all of your electronic devices as part of our investigation into the threats against your father, and then the two of you will be escorted to the 16th precinct, where we will clarify why and how the time and resources of two squads of the New York Police Department were wasted today."
This went down as well as can be imagined. There were "How can you do this to me's?" thrown around from both sides, followed by "This will cost me millions," and "How could you fire Kayla?" and "This is all your fault!" The gist of the situation was that daddy hadn't taken into account whom his daughter was currently girl-crushing on when he wrote out the actress pushing forty on his most successful show, and he'd also invested in a poorly-chosen IT course for his daughter that had better be advertised with the slogan 'Hacking for dummies – how to make your children trick you and rob you.'
When the girl shrieked, "I hate you!" and finally ran out of the room, sobbing, the big Willy turned to the two officers and let out an exasperated sigh. "How do I even begin to deal with this?" he asked.
Before Elliot could put his foot in, however, Olivia jumped to answer the question. "I'm sure we've got the one or other leaflet about parenting and cyber security at the precinct. Don't let me forget to give them to you." She shot a glare in Elliot's direction as if to say, 'That's it – parenting advice is lost on the little dude.'
~oOo~
Three hours later and the big Willy and his rebellious daughter had been dealt with. There was only this pesky and seemingly unshrinkable pile of paperwork left to do, and Olivia might make it home in time to kiss her son goodnight and ruffle Eli's hair – because they definitely weren't ready for good night kisses yet. But they were getting into an easy family dynamic, Olivia thought. Shared school runs and pick-up times, family board game evenings, weekend sleepovers, and the general craziness when you try to fuse a family of two with one of seven – but Olivia wouldn't have it any other way. Her boy finally had someone to call grandma – someone who was neither psychotic (on most days) nor drunk (notwithstanding a slight predilection for mimosas). She'd even witnessed a sleepy mumble that sounded a lot like "night, Dad" the other day when Elliot carried her son into his bedroom after an evening of popcorn and movies that lasted way longer than her nine-year-old's regular bedtime. Olivia remembered the brotherly affection when Dickie had taken his two 'bros' to a ball game. Dickie had made a conscious effort to include Noah as one of the Stabler children, but with Eli, it all came naturally. It was a response, Olivia thought, to having the rug pulled out from under his feet in the past year, and now all he wanted was to be a kid again. She also remembered the ballet tickets that Liz booked for Noah and the girls – because, as the twin had put it, if Dickie gets to do the epitome of butch bro time with the newest addition to their family, she wants to show him that Noah will have just as much fun doing girly stuff (and boy, was she right)! It was of her newfound family that Olivia thought, as she mindlessly put her signature on the umpteenth DD5, when she was suddenly pulled out of her reverie by the sound of a commotion in the squad room.
She just made it out of the confines of her office to see Kathleen, all dolled up with flowers and ghosts adorning her cheeks, stride into the bullpen with their two young boys in tow, heading for where Elliot was standing. "Your children," she seemingly repeated the words that had alerted Olivia that something was going down, "Your children are insufferable!"
When Katie was face to face with her father, she reached out with her hands, landed them on the boy's necks, and pushed them a step forwards. "Tell Dad what you did."
Eli's eyes flitted nervously over to Noah, who gathered all his courage and admitted, "We drew on Grandma B, but we didn't use mummy's eyeliner–"
"It was my idea," Eli cut in, emboldened by his younger sibling's display of bravery. "I thought it would be funny if we used a sharpie instead. And then Katie wouldn't relax–"
"So I suggested she wear Grandma B's sleep mask so she can't look while we draw on her," Noah added, eyes on the floor.
Olivia's hand moved to cover her mouth as she leaned back against the door of her office. If there were any moment she'd like for the ground to swallow her whole, this was it. Her eyes traveled across the squad room. Ayanna rolled her eyes; Fin could barely taper his amusement; Amanda outright cackled with joy (and perhaps a little bit of Schadenfreude); Muncy looked confused, Jet annoyed; and Velasco had a dreamy look on his face, making no effort to keep himself from staring at the angry blonde.
"Exactly," Katie's voice pulled her from her thoughts, "which is why Grandma and I are in need of a spa that does facials 24/7, and you can have your kids back. And just so you know, we have confiscated the bag of sweets from their little trick-or-treating adventure, which is the least we're owed."
It was then that the young woman spotted Olivia. She strode over to the older woman's hideout, reached into her bag, and pulled out the eyeliner that was the reason for all of this hubbub. "Next time, keep your forty-dollar eyeliner," Katie huffed. "Your boys do just as well with a pair of five-quid sharpies."
Your boys. Plural.
Embarrassment and emotion battled for dominance in Olivia's chest. She could feel the five pairs of eyes of her squad on her, and yet she basked in this unfamiliar sensation of belonging.
She didn't get to make a decision as to which of these feelings got to win out, because Katie had resumed her speech. "But to be honest, Livvie, your Noah was a lot better than this one," she motioned toward Eli. "I'm sure you'll want to interrogate him as to why Grandma now sports a gravestone on her cheek."
Olivia swallowed, and swallowed again. She willed her voice to work, to sound as authoritative as she always did when in the squad room, when in the field, when in command – to no avail. "Let me get you my credit card for the spa treatments," she all but whispered, hands clutching the eyeliner that Katie had eventually handed over.
"No, no, no," Elliot jumped in. "I got this." He marched over, already pulling his wallet out of his back pocket, and within a few moments Katie was gone, the boys were ordered to sit in her office and Olivia felt whiplashed.
"I –um–" she started, but her brain wouldn't cooperate. She felt Elliot move in beside her, take her hand in his, comforting her with a squeeze of their palms together.
"Don't look so shell-shocked, Livvie," Amanda repeated the younger woman's term of endearment, with a lot more than a hint of glee in her voice.
"Yeah," Fin supplied with a smirk. "You do realize you work with two squads' worth of detectives, and if the months of smiling at your phone weren't a dead giveaway, the black smudge on the back of the collar of your blouse sure is!"
"I am so sorry!" Elliot rallied, realizing that his shenanigans earlier that day, the raspberry he blew into her neck was the reason they'd been made, as Olivia self-consciously covered the back of her neck with her free hand.
"You shoulda better worn your hair down, eh?" Amanda cackled, amid a chorus of 'I'm happy for you's.
Olivia took a deep calming breath and looked up to Elliot, whose face was plastered with a guilty look worse than the ones their kids had sported. She squeezed his hand in return. This could've gone down a lot worse.
~oOo~
Later that night, after the kids had been sent to their room, being grounded as it were, Olivia and Elliot were lying in bed, side by side. "Could you imagine if this really was a crime procedural, you and me sitting across from one another, making eyes at each other for hours on end, that anyone would watch it?" Olivia mused.
"I don't know," Elliot returned, "but I'd pay a good deal of money, say two to three months' salaries to watch you make eyes at me for the rest of our lives."
"Maybe in a couple of episodes' time," Olivia teased, as she rolled onto her side, pulled her partner into her body, wrapped her arm around his neck, and enveloped him in a searing kiss.
"Unresolved sexual tension, my ass," Elliot mumbled against her lips.
A/N: For the record, I really love all the Law and Order shows, but that doesn't mean there's nothing wrong with them.
Note: The author of this SVU: Fall in Love story will be revealed in November
