A/N: Happy Sunday peeps! Also, just to say, I made the deliberate decision to not go into details about this case, by the way. I want my story to focus on their relationship, not their work, although naturally that will be a backdrop to their time spent together. It felt like I didn't need to think up something awful - if you want heinous crime, SVU has you covered!
Despite what the past six days had held, neither woman could stop the smile spreading across their faces as Frannie danced excitedly around them, forever overwhelmed with love whenever her owner returned. And increasingly whenever Olivia arrived too. The tall brunette was becoming an increasing feature in the dog's life and therefore was greeted with equal enthusiasm. This was significant to Amanda, as Frannie was not usually indiscriminate with her love.
Together, they took Frannie for a brisk walk in the cold winter air, two circuits of the park and then hurrying back into the warmth of Amanda's apartment. Content with her short walk (because in truth she wasn't all that keen on the chilled outside world), Frannie jumped up into the armchair and lay her head on her paws. She watched as the two women shed their outdoor layers, hanging up coats, scarves and gloves, before toeing off their boots and lining them up neatly against the wall.
"Wine?" Amanda asked after she stepped back out into the living room, having changed into her casual clothes.
"Yes please," Olivia nodded. "And do you mind if I change into something a bit more comfortable too?"
Amanda shook her head and gestured in the direction of her bedroom before making her way to the kitchen to find a bottle of wine. Olivia hesitated for a moment but then decided they had all evening to address what was on the blonde's mind. The first thing was getting out of her work clothes.
When she reemerged, clad in sweatpants and an old sweater proclaiming her support for a football team in Georgia she'd never heard of, Olivia spotted the generous glass of wine waiting for her on the counter. As she made her way towards it, she realised that the blonde had climbed into the chair beside her hound and was wrapping the sweet natured dog in her arms.
"Tough case," Olivia said simply as she sipped her wine. "Do you want to talk about it?"
Amanda shook her head, fingers now stroking the silky soft ears, eyes watching the repetitive movement of her digits, as if they weren't part of her own body. Olivia noticed that the younger woman's own wine glass was already half empty. The senior detective understood. She couldn't begin to count the number of times she'd gone back to her own cold, empty apartment after a harrowing case and downed a bottle or two. There was something in the comforting numbness which alcohol offered that was sometimes necessary, if not entirely healthy. There were some things which couldn't be explained, processed, understood. Sometimes, the world was just too terrible to comprehend.
"I thought I'd cook us something for dinner," Olivia went on, not wanting to push the blonde to talk about something she wasn't ready for.
"I don't think I've got much in," Amanda replied, still not looking up from her dog who'd now closed her eyes and was basking in the gentle attention. She couldn't remember the last time she had gone shopping for groceries.
"That's ok. I can be inventive. Mind if I rummage around?"
"Go ahead," Amanda said.
Knowing that Amanda would talk in her own time, Olivia set about exploring the blonde's small kitchen and trying to find ingredients with which she could cobble together a meal. Olivia had never been a particularly talented cook but she was pretty damn good at making meals out of random or limited ingredients. It was a skill she'd developed first as a broke student and then as a cop with an unpredictable schedule. By the time she had located half a bag of pasta, some slightly wrinkled mushrooms and a carton of long life cream, she had a meal in mind. A tired onion was the first to the chopping block as she set to work.
The sound of the knife slicing through the vegetable made Amanda look up at last, fingers still absentmindedly tracing over Frannie's ears. The action always soothed her. She watched as the brunette moved deftly around her kitchen, becoming increasingly familiar with the location of her pitiful range of cooking implements. But aside from her embarrassing lack of domestic tools, Amanda was struck by how natural it seemed to be watching Olivia make dinner for them, the two of them unwinding after a long week of work. Oh yeah, work.
"You think he'll get the max?"
Olivia looked up from the pan where she was now gently frying the onions in some butter. "You mean Spencer?"
At the mention of the man's name, Amanda's brow furrowed. A tight knot in her stomach, which had been there all week, hardened. "Yeah. Alex said he could get twenty years for each count, right?"
"Yes, that's the maximum sentence, and he will get twenty years for every single count. I have no doubt that Alex will be able to convince a jury firstly of his guilt, and then convince the judge that he should never, ever be allowed out onto our streets again. He's going away for life, Amanda, I promise you that."
Uncurling herself from Frannie, Amanda made her way across the living room and entered the kitchen, the spaces delineated where the carpet changed into tiles. Manhattan apartments were not generous when it came to walls. The chill of the hard surfaces made Amanda shiver slightly and look down at her feet, arms wrapped around her body. The posture did not go unnoticed by her companion.
"Hey, it's over," Olivia said, turning the heat right down on the onions and coming to stand in front of Amanda, resting a hand gently on her shoulder.
Amanda looked up into the earnest face before her for a moment before falling forwards into Olivia's arms. The brunette hugged her fiercely, pulling her close and wrapping her in such a way that she felt protected and safe, hidden away from the world, from the bad. She was surrounded by good. Amanda looped her own arms around Olivia, a distant part of her brain recognising that she couldn't have been the only one of them affected by the week's events.
"It's not over. It might be over for his victims but what about their families? What about us?"
The quiet questions, muffled into Olivia's shoulders, were the first glimpse into what had been eating Amanda alive. While they were huge questions to answer, Olivia first felt relief that the woman was talking to her, acknowledging that she had been affected by what had happened, and was willing to be vulnerable.
"You're right," she whispered into the blonde hair. "It's not over for their families. It never will be. This is something they are going to have to learn to live with and I can't even imagine where they start to come to terms with what has happened. But we have to do the same thing, except from a professional point of view. We see the worst of humanity in this job, Amanda. And yes, this week was awful on so many levels. But we stopped him ever doing it again. Because of us, he won't have any more victims. We did our job. And part of our job is dealing with the shit we see and learning how to move on to the next case."
"You mean just get over it and stop being sentimental?" Amanda asked, still not releasing her hold on the taller woman.
"Not at all. It would have been more worrying if all of us had been unaffected by this case. We have to feel. We have to have empathy; it's one of the skills we need to be good at our jobs. It allows us to connect to survivors and fight for justice. But unlike the families, we can't afford to let this take over our lives. Next week there'll be someone else who needs our support and our help. Case like this change us, Amanda. That's unavoidable. But we can't allow one monster to destroy our faith in humanity, our faith in the system. We have to get back out there and be ready for the next person who comes to us needing help."
Amanda nuzzled herself closed to the warm, familiar body. She knew Olivia was right but she wasn't quite ready to hear it. It wasn't as if she was an eternal optimist before this case. She knew the world included people who committed unspeakable crimes. But the darkness which had stemmed from their latest case had struck deeper than usual. She was wounded. And it would take her some time to recover. But she would recover, because she agreed with Olivia. They had a job to do.
"Thank you," she murmured, blinking the tears from her eyes before she pulled back. "That helped."
Reaching up slowly, Olivia traced the delicate line of Amanda's cheek then jawbone before cupping her face gently. "You're allowed to hurt, Amanda. You don't have to be strong around me."
Those tears fell as if on command, the excuse handed to them and they spilled over at once. Amanda offered a watery smile of gratitude while Olivia's own eyes sparkled with pain. It wasn't only Amanda who'd had her world rocked that week.
"I've found talking helps," Olivia replied.
"You mean to a shrink?"
Olivia shook her head. "Apart from the occasional mandatory sessions the department orders, no. That's never really been for me, although I know it works for some people. But I have friends I talk to. Alex, mostly. It helps. If you ever want to talk about this stuff with me, I'm here to listen. While it might be our job to keep catching the bad guys, sometimes we need the time and space to reckon with what we've witnessed. If you need to take a step back, decompress, even take some time off, that's completely understandable."
This time it was Amanda's turn to shake her head. "No, I'll be fine. I'm being stupid. It's ok."
"You're not being stupid, Amanda. You think I don't feel sick to my stomach when I think about Spencer? It's not just you and me, either, I promise. Finn and Amaro will be in the same headspace. Cragen too. It doesn't matter how long you're on the job. Some things we can't unsee or unhear. They become a part of us and we have to deal with them before we can move on. This is completely normal, I promise."
"Thanks. I guess you're right. But I really will be fine. Anyway, I've got a few days off at Christmas. Anything I need to deal with, I can deal with then."
Olivia smiled and bent down to kiss Amanda lightly. "Don't be too hard on yourself. If you ever need to talk, you know where I am."
"Yeah, in my kitchen, apparently," Amanda teased, unwinding herself from Olivia at last and grinning at the woman as she returned to the softening onions. "What are we having?"
"Well, someone had to give your oven a workout before the poor old thing forgot what its purpose in life was," Olivia replied, grinding some salt into the pan. "And just pasta with creamy mushrooms. Simple but comforting. I think we could use some comfort tonight."
Amanda chuckled. It was true; her kitchen was woefully underused and she did need a pasta-shaped hug. But maybe, with Olivia around more, she'd spend more time in it. Cooking together, enjoying one another's company.
"Can I help?" Amanda asked.
"Sure, you can slice those mushrooms up," Olivia said, pointing to the pack of fungi which had certainly seen better days.
Twenty minutes later and the two women sat on the couch with their steaming plates of food in their laps. Amanda's aversion to cooking meant she hadn't even invested in a dining table. But she didn't mind, because it meant as soon as she and Olivia had finished eating, she was able to slide across the nestle into Olivia's side, feeling the woman's strong arm around her back, as a reminder that all wasn't lost for humanity.
So distracted by that week's case and the emotional fallout from it, however, that neither woman remembered that their shared evening was their fifth date. They whiled away the hours in front of the television before going about their nightly routine, Olivia now having her own toothbrush at Amanda's for just such an occasion.
They climbed beneath the covers and immediately gravitated towards one another, bodies searching for warmth and comfort rather than heated, sexual stimulation. Tonight wasn't the right time, even if either woman had done the calculation. They drifted off to sleep slowly, their minds still haunted by what they had seen. But eventually, gratefully, the night claimed them and they slipped from consciousness, a brief reprise from the darkness of the world.
A/N: So, who was blown away by the power of this week's new episode?