Just when you thought this fic was dead...surprise! Seeing Nick on the 500th ep of SVU, plus all the recent EO stuff, had me in my feels.
A/N: warning for minor mention of sexual assault. Nick's Wheel of Fortune fails are taken from real episodes as well as my own imagination. All quotes from mr. jones by counting crows.
Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoy!
"HAHAHA HAHA!"
Noah bursts into loud, riotous laughter when you walk out of Nick's guest room the next morning, clapping his hands.
"What's so funny, silly guy?" you ask, sitting down beside him on the couch to give him a good morning kiss.
"Silly!"
Nick comes into the living room and snorts, covering his mouth with the back of his hand in a half-assed attempt to fake a sneeze. "Holy..."
"They said that the stage lights wash you out, okay, so I'm trying to compensate," you protest as The Boyfriend joins the rest of you.
"Nice makeup, did Noah do that?"
"Excuse me for wanting to look good on national television." You stand up and glance at your reflection in a nearby mirror, inspecting your side profile. Another instruction you had been sent from the Wheel of Fortune producers told you not to wear black, which left you scrambling for new outfit choices just hours before you got on the plane to LA with The Boyfriend and Noah. "Nick, I'm doing my best to make sure you have a hot wife and not a pale, fat one. And there's not much I can do about this," you say with both hands on your five and a half month-pregnant belly, "so I've gotta try to draw attention to my face instead."
"I don't think you need to be too hot," The Boyfriend warns, standing behind you and putting his hands over yours. He was being very gracious in 'loaning' you out to Nick for the day so that you could be the pregnant wife he claimed he had on his Wheel of Fortune audition video, but his generosity only extended so far.
You turn around and kiss him, hands cupping his face. "I don't think you need to worry about that. No one's drooling over the woman who looks like she swallowed a basketball."
"Not with that makeup, they're not," he admits, and you glare at him before checking yourself out in the mirror one more time. "Good thing I still love you."
That earns him another glare as you bend over to say goodbye to Noah. "You have fun with Dad and I'll see you tonight, okay?"
"T'night," he repeats, and then there's another round of kisses for both of your boys before you get into Nick's car and head out to pick up his kids on your way to the studio where you'll tape the show.
"So everything's really going alright?" Nick asks. "You don't need me to have a talk with Mr. Benson? Lay down the law a little?"
"As much as you would like that, no. Everything's going well. Maybe even too well."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because I'm not used to this." You were still feeling pretty good, albeit large, and you hadn't even taken a sick day from work during your pregnancy. "I mean, I have a power nap in the cribs most afternoons, but that's all. Everything's been manageable. Noah hasn't been sick since Thanksgiving, his speech therapist thinks he's doing fine even without being at preschool...and I'm glad he's getting this extra one on one time with Dad while I'm gone during the day."
"How long until he's officially Noah's dad?"
"Soon, I hope. We have our home study visit in a few weeks, but that shouldn't be too complex because it's basically just updating the last one we had, and our social worker already knows all about us. There's no more skeletons to uncover," you say with a little laugh, almost unable to believe how relaxed you feel about the process considering how stressful it was the first time around (when your life was much more chaotic than it is now). "Mainly, I just hope the paperwork doesn't take forever to work its way through the system, because I want to have an adoption celebration before Lilly's here. One more time that Noah's the center of attention, you know?"
"Okay, but you better wait until I'm in town to have it- hey, what if we plan your baby shower for the same weekend?"
"Who said anything about a baby shower? I thought those were only for your first baby." Noah may love being celebrated, but it's still a strange feeling to you.
"No way. All babies deserve a party, and we didn't even have time to put together a real one for Noah." You thought it had been perfectly fine, especially on short notice, and everyone had been so generous in gifting you the baby supplies you desperately needed. But now, in between the things you had from Noah and some hand-me-downs from The Boyfriend's family, all you had bought so far were some little dresses that you saw online and couldn't resist. You didn't really need anything else. "It's not about what you need or don't need," Nick insists. "We're having one and you're going to enjoy it, end of subject."
"Fine, fine. As long as we have a separate day that's just for Noah- and Dad. Father and son."
"You like saying that, don't you?" he asks. You nod, afraid you're going to start tearing up, and he reaches over the console and squeezes your hand.
"See, this is what I'm saying! Everything's so perfect, maybe more than it should be. And that scares me."
"Or...maybe it's not," he suggests. "Maybe it's just perfect enough."
{when I look at the television I wanna see me
staring right back at me}
Just in case you were worrying that everything was too perfect and that you might be living in some kind of simulation, your Wheel of Fortune experience was enough to disabuse you of that notion.
"Well, it wasn't all bad," you tell The Boyfriend that night after you scrubbed half a dozen layers of blush and eyeshadow and lipstick off of your face. You had access to a buffet table for the entire day, which was about the greatest gift anyone could give to a pregnant woman (or maybe just you?), and you left with a $1000 check. "Only because that's the default prize for the loser."
"What was your final score?"
"Uh...honestly, I stopped looking at the scoreboard, but it was definitely in the negative. Thank God that doesn't mean you actually have to pay them that amount. Now, I got us some points," you say in your defense, but you lost them all when Nick 'bought a vowel'- the letter W (which, apart from not being a vowel, had already been selected) and the number 0 (which, of course, is not a letter at all).
"Then when we got to the last round, I really thought we had a chance to redeem ourselves." It was your turn, and the puzzle was all but complete: AN A_ _LE A DAY KEE_ _ T_E DOCTOR AWAY. "So he blurts out that he wants to solve it, and you know what he says? 'An asshole a day keeps the doctor away'."
"Are we sure it was his knee that was permanently injured and not his brain?" The Boyfriend asks.
"No, he's just really, really bad at this game. Amanda said he always has been. But the audience loved him, and I got to say hi to Noah, so I can't wait for him to see Mommy on TV." That's about the only thing you're looking forward to seeing. To your embarrassment, you discovered that you couldn't lean over the podium to spin the wheel without your belly getting in the way, and Nick had beaten you to the punch during most of your turns to call out a letter, so you really didn't do much other than stand there and clap like a fat demented seal with bright red lips.
"When does it air?"
"Valentine's day! Don't you remember? It's Sweetheart's Week, that was the whole reason I was pretending to be his wife."
The Boyfriend rolls his eyes. "Right. So now that it's done, are you all mine again?"
"I don't know, after a whole day of seeing what it would be like to be Mrs. Amaro?" You laugh, kissing the frown off of his face. It's true, you'd had a few moments in your partnership with Nick where there seemed to be a...something between you, but that was long ago. You see him as a sibling 99 percent of the time and he feels the same way about you- you've slept in the same bed and he didn't even try to cuddle, for God's sake. (Although he did hog the mattress). "I'm kidding, he was a perfect gentleman and yes, I'm all yours again."
The rightful order of the universe now restored, the two of you and Noah enjoyed a few more days of relaxation and California sunshine with Nick before returning to the cold of a New York January and your regular busy schedule. Fin did an excellent job of holding down the fort while you were gone (with Dodds Jr as his shadow), but there's still plenty for you to catch up on and plenty that you want to get done in these next few months to prepare for maternity leave.
You had planned on working right up until it was time to head to the hospital, but your doctor and The Boyfriend thought differently.
"I sit at a desk all day," you protested. Besides, the doctor herself had just said you were having a 'textbook-perfect pregnancy', which you felt no small amount of pride in even though you knew it was largely down to luck.
"Even still, I think the first of April would probably be a good target day to set as your last one in the office," your doctor said, and The Boyfriend nodded in agreement. "You can keep working from home if you feel up to it, but you might be surprised by how taxing those last three or four weeks can be."
You make a noise that they interpret as agreement, but you still don't think it's necessary. Your mother kept going to class until a couple of days before you were born - at least, you're pretty sure.
"It's not a contest, Liv," The Boyfriend says when you tell him this later that night. "You don't have to - hey." He puts his hand on your arm, seeing the faraway look on your face. "What's wrong?"
"Just thinking how...there's so much I don't know. Not that that's anything new, but. It would be nice to have some of that background info." Your doctor had been very sensitive after you explained that you don't have any family medical history on your father's side and that you know next to nothing about your mother's pregnancy, but it doesn't stop you from wondering. "Course, even if Mom was alive, she probably wouldn't have wanted to talk about it anyway, so..." You rest your head on his shoulder and sigh. "I think about it a lot. Wondering what it would be like if she was here now. If she'd be happy for me or if it'd just make things worse between us. If I'd feel more guilty than I already do."
"Why do you feel guilty?"
"Well, maybe guilty isn't the right word. Or maybe it is. But she...now that I'm older, I can see that she really did want better for me than she had for herself. She just had a hard time showing it."
"If Momma isn't happy, nobody's happy," he says.
"Exactly. Or maybe she just thought I deserved to suffer the same way that she did."
"Hey." He sits up straighter, carefully nudging your chin upward until he can see your eyes. "You know that's not true, right? You deserve all the good things in the world, just as much as anyone else," he continues when you don't respond. "Maybe even more. And you deserve to have people who love you, which you do."
You're still working on believing that. You've talked with your therapist about setting an example for Noah, that he's worthy of being loved and loving himself no matter where he came from, and about doing the same for Lilly (who, of course, is a part of you). But you also don't want to burden your children with being responsible for your self esteem or lack thereof, because you know how it feels to have that weight placed on you by a parent.
"You wanna hear my opinion?" he asks, and you nod. "No matter how she might have felt while she was alive- wherever she is now, if she's watching over you- I don't think there's room there for jealousy or resentment or any of that petty shit. She wouldn't want you to waste time feeling guilty when you could be enjoying all that you have. Especially the things that she never got the chance to enjoy."
"Maybe you're right."
"Course I am. Time to stop thinking now," The Boyfriend says gently, having learned when you're likely to perseverate on a thought all day (or night) and need a little nudge to redirect yourself. "Come to bed?"
"You're trying to distract me?"
"Course I am," he repeats. "And I happen to know I'm good at it."
Now that he's definitely right about.
{believe in me
cause I don't believe in anything
and I wanna be someone to believe in}
"Hey. Uh. So I've been thinking."
"I thought I told you to stop that," he chides, but he shifts on the mattress so that you can make eye contact, hand idly rubbing your bare arm. "So what's up? Is everything okay?"
"Oh...yeah, no, it's not this," you say as you gesture between the two of you and give him a quick peck on the lips, wanting to assure him it wasn't about what you had just been doing for the last hour (no complaints there!).
He frowns before kissing you back. "Then what is it? Because if you're still able to think, I must not be doing my job..."
"No, no!" You laugh with delight as he growls playfully and attacks your neck with his mouth, his beard tickling the sensitive skin there.
He relents and you turn over so that he's spooning you from behind with his arm slung around your stomach, feeling more comfortable having this conversation without being able to see his potential reaction. "I...well. I've had this dream. A couple of times now."
You weren't lying, because it has become a reoccurring dream- the one where you get down on your knees and suck him off until he comes down your throat, his hands in your hair. But it's easier to start the conversation by couching it in those terms rather than telling him how much you've thought about it while you're awake.
Sure, it's not exactly the most salacious thing in the world. For you, though, it's a big deal and it's something you and The Boyfriend have never done. Something you hadn't done since before the incident at Sealview, to be exact. You're okay with using your mouth on him- which, combined with your hand, saved him from being completely sexually frustrated at times when you weren't ready for anything else - but actually giving head was out of the question. And although he's always been extremely respectful of your boundaries, you know it's something he would probably enjoy, if the way you can feel his dick twitching against the back of your thigh was any indication.
"I'm sorry, shit. I..." he mumbles when he notices it too, letting go of you and shifting onto his back.
"It's okay, baby," you assure him as you roll onto your other side, albeit much less gracefully than he had. "I wouldn't have told you if I was worried about, ah. How you'd react."
He looks as nervous and unsure as you feel, and for people who met working sex crimes and have been having sex together for a few years now, you're still not always good at talking about it. "Well. It's. Help me out here. Is this something you're..interested in?"
You nod but don't say anything else.
"Alright. That's...alright," and you sense he has another word besides 'alright' on the tip of his tongue, but he's trying to mute his enthusiasm in case you change your mind.
You decide to step in and rescue him from having to come up with something else to say, even though you're certain that you're even more uncomfortable than he is. "But the thing is - I can't, I need you to be the one initiating."
"Liv..."
To say that the road to recovery after being assaulted by the same person in two separate incidents in less than a year was a bumpy one would be a severe understatement. It would have been rough even if those were the only challenges you had to contend with, but when you added in two competing relationships and a new baby, something had to give. Even though you and The Boyfriend were pretty much living together by the time you brought Noah home, it was quite a while before you did anything beyond kissing. You had a one bedroom apartment and a little guy who wanted to be held constantly, and so your lack of privacy and feeling of being 'touched out' pretty much killed any chance of taking things further.
It was somewhat ironic that once you decided that maybe you didn't want to be celibate anymore, it wasn't your past assaults that were holding you back. It was your own fucked up psyche that had come to associate having sex as either a way to avoid thoughts and feelings and conversations that you didn't want to have; or worse, as a way to willingly re-traumatize yourself at the expense of whoever you were with. In other words, it was only good if it made you feel bad. You lost one relationship that way - you know that's the reason, no matter what he told you - and you almost lost another. So maybe it was understandable that you would be hesitant.
After some awkward discussions, a little trial and error, and a lot of patience, you'd come to the conclusion that you needed to let him be in charge. You can always say no, of course, but he's the one who initiates things. It was difficult for him at first. He was worried about inadvertently crossing a line or making you feel pressured, but eventually he realized what you already know- that you trust him for a reason. You're confident in his ability to read you and so far he hasn't let you down. You admit that there were times when you tested him, times when you couldn't stop trying to sabotage yourself and your relationship, and he saw right through your bullshit and refused to let you manipulate him. In the heat of the moment you were burning up with guilt and shame and the anger of rejection, but ultimately you were grateful for him staying strong and then being willing to forgive you once you realized what you'd done.
Since you've been pregnant, the dynamic has shifted slightly, and he's given in at times when it's obvious that you want to be fucked but equally as obvious that there's something weighing on you that you're trying to push away. You're both still learning, still negotiating, and you probably always will be, but this is just one situation where you need him to take the lead.
"I trust you, and I wouldn't have brought it up if I wasn't sure about it," you remind him. You trust him more than you trust yourself to know when you're in the right headspace, especially for something like this where you're taking a big step out of your normal comfort zone.
He nods, chewing on his bottom lip as he thinks it over. "And I decide when?"
"Well, yeah. Although I'd prefer it be before I'm big enough that I need multiple people to lift me up off the floor. Because once I'm kneeling down, there's no telling if my knees will cooperate enough to let me get back up again."
His eyebrows shoot upward as he gulps.
{when everybody loves me
I will never be lonely}
And then, as it so often does, real life intervened.
After you had returned from California, Noah had made a unilateral decision that he no longer wanted to nap in the afternoon. This meant that by the time you got home from work in the evening, he was tired and grouchy and usually throwing a fit, but still refused to go to sleep (or stay in bed) at bedtime.
You were worried that this was a sign of some deeper problem that he didn't know how to express. The Boyfriend disagreed.
"It's called being two. This is what two year olds do." His solution was to sit with Noah in his room until he fell asleep, which you thought was a terrible idea. Again, The Boyfriend disagreed. "I'd rather do that than fight him every night until he grows out of this phase. I've already gotten to where I can just stand by the door, I don't even have to be there next to him."
"Fine, but you started this, so I don't want to hear it a year from now when you're still- goddamnit," you mutter, sitting down on the bed and pulling your legs up toward your chest as far as you can while you reach for the bottle of moisturizer that you keep on the nightstand.
"Is this about the you-know-what again?"
"The- no," you say with a scowl, knowing that he's referring to the brand new stretch marks you found while showering yesterday. You handled it the way Noah would- by shedding a few tears and then sulking for the rest of the night. So much for Badass Benson. "I don't give a fuck about that anymore. Because my feet are too swollen for my boots, and I have these shooting pains in my legs, and I itch everywhere, and I worked so hard to get Noah to fall asleep on his own and now you have undone it all..."
"Hey, time out. This has nothing to do with...he knows he's safe with us and we're not going to abandon him. I promise you, he's just testing us because he's a normal toddler. I swear, okay?" You nod reluctantly until he takes the bottle from you. "Want me to do it?"
"Warm your hands up first," you warn, unwilling to admit that he might be right about Noah but more than willing to let him help you with this particular task. Your skin is usually dry at this time of year anyway, and now that you're gaining weight more rapidly, the scar tissue on your breasts and belly gets itchier as it stretches.
He rubs his palms together briskly as you pull off your t-shirt and lie back, closing your eyes when you feel his slick hands gliding over where your waist used to be. His beard tickles your earlobe as he lowers his head down until it's next to yours. "You are an amazing mother and Noah has come so far. Both of you have."
You let out a soft hum so that he knows you're listening, exhaling with a small gasp as his hand covers one of your breasts.
"Beautiful," he murmurs, kissing just beneath your jawline. "Want you."
Even though you're certain that he hadn't forgotten your conversation from a couple of nights ago, you both knew that right now isn't the time. So you have slow, lazy sex and fall asleep almost immediately afterward, hands joined on top of your stomach to feel Lilly fluttering around inside.
Thursday passed, and then the weekend arrived. You have Fridays off until you go on maternity leave, so you used your free morning to take Noah to the pool before your appointment with your therapist in the afternoon. On the way home, you picked up a pizza (okay, pizzas plural- one for you and one for the boys) to save The Boyfriend from having to make dinner when he got back from work, and after you ate you all watched Wheel of Fortune with Noah and worked on his speech therapy exercises until it was bathtime.
You started fearing the worst when Noah started running around naked, yelling his head off, trying to avoid putting his pajamas on when he got out of the tub. But his energy was short-lived, and he fell asleep before you could even finish Goodnight Moon.
The Boyfriend lifts him up and carefully tucks him into bed. "I'm gonna go shower before the Knicks game starts."
"And then you're going to give me a foot rub while you watch," you remind him, going into the kitchen to sneak another piece of pizza (okay, two) while he's occupied.
Look at how much you've grown in just a year, your therapist said today, and you kinda have to agree.
You realize that the water has been turned off for a while and yet there's no sign of The Boyfriend. He probably sat down on the bed and fell asleep, you think, going into the bedroom to investigate. "Wake up, old man, you already missed tip off- oh."
"Wondered how long it was going to take you," he says with a chuckle, reclining on the bed with nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist.
Oh.