Title: Love You Forever
Author: ZombieJazz
Fandom: Law & Order: SVU
Disclaimer: I don't own them. Law and Order SVU and its characters belong to Dick Wolf. The characters of Will (and his family) and Noah have been created and developed for the sake of this AU series.
Summary: Olivia's continued adventures in motherhood - as she balances raising her son with her career. This story is set in my AU series. It would take place several years after Undeserved.
Author's Notes: This AU series is for SVU fans and readers who want Olivia to have something that resembles a more normal life outside of work and a family of her own - hopefully somewhat realistically within the canon of SVU. The timeframe would have it outside of the TV series' current timeline and would likely have Olivia into her early 50s. My stories are not EO and never will be. You may want to read some of my other ones for context on the characters in this AU first - though, it's likely fairly self-explanatory on its own too.
WARNING: THIS STORY MIGHT KIND OF BE A SPOILER FOR READERS OF UNDESERVED.
She rapped her knuckles on his bedroom door and waited for some sort of answer.
After Noah had realized that she was taking a personal day to stay home with him, he'd opted out of sitting on the couch and watching television for the day. Rather than retreat down to his lair in the basement, where she could just enter whenever she wanted without any kind of announcement, other than him hearing her coming down the couple steps, he'd returned to his bedroom and shut the door. The whole situation had her wondering why she'd even bothered to take the day – but her son hadn't seemed to have improved much over night and she didn't want to leave him alone.
She was starting to think that he wasn't going to answer – that maybe he was sleeping, which she kind of thought would be a good idea, or maybe he had his headphones on and hadn't even heard her knock. But finally he mumbled a "Yeah", and she took it as an invitation to open the door. She opened it slowly – giving him a chance to scream at her if she actually had only been supposed to talk to him through the door. But no objection came and she finally got to take a look at him.
The room was a complete disaster. She hated when he let it get like that – but she tried to maintain that it was his space and he could do with it as he pleased. Still the clothes all over the floor and the blankets in a giant wadded ball at the bottom of the bed made her a little angry.
His posters of sports heroes had mostly been replaced by ones of defiant looking punk bands that she'd barely heard of, and morbid interpretations of some of his favourite comic characters. She had never realized that Batman was such a dark character until Noah got a bit older and graduated into the more grotesque versions of the comics. If the grimness of Batman wasn't enough, he seemed to have a particular liking for some of the villains from the books – or at least the graphical interpretations of them and they glared down at her from nearly every bit of wall space in the room, which he nearly never turned the overhead lights on in anymore. He kept the blinds closed too and really just switched on the light beside his bed to read or depended on the glow from his computer at his desk.
His bookshelves were a mess too. Nothing was put back properly – instead it had just become more space to stack things. More of his action figures, baseballs, piles of coins, little model creations he'd made and some of his toiletries lined the shelves than actual books. He had hi books in giant piles sitting on his bedside table and the floor under his window – rising to about the windowsill.
His closet door was thrown open and she could see that more clothes were in a pile on the floor inside of it than there were on hangers. She really wished he'd put a little more effort into keeping his room a little more organized.
Noah was sitting at this desk, though, which he managed to keep looking rather neat compared to the rest of the room. At least sometimes. There were still scattered papers and pencil crayons, drawing pencils, modeling clay, scalpels, glue and other art supplies not put away and piled on the little shelve above his head. Papers containing pieces of incomplete art were in one pile while on the opposite side of the desk was a stack of a couple textbooks and notebooks and some printed-out pages from research he had been doing. But at least it looked like there was some sort of organization to the mess.
He had his music going at a level so low she could just barely hear it and he seemed almost oblivious to her having come into the room – his back slightly to her with where he was sitting off in the corner. He didn't look at her or acknowledge her.
Olivia walked over to his desk and looked over his shoulder to see what he was up to that had him so absorbed. It wasn't schoolwork. She should've been able to obtain that much just based on his posture over there. Instead he was scribbling away working on one of his comic books. It looked like nearly a full-page panel he was shading in with one of his dark pencils. He had that look of concentration on his face that at times concerned her that her son could become that focused and lost in his thoughts. It was just so intense for someone so young – but she saw it in him a lot.
Noah loved his drawing. He could spend endless hours doing it. Sometimes she wondered where it came from. It was clear to her from a young age that Noah had an interest in art and she'd nurtured it – partially because it was so much fun to do with him and to just see how his mind and imagination worked. It had quickly become clear, though, that it wasn't just something that he had fun doing, he did have a talent. Her son was incredibly visual and was able to construct the things he saw in his head in ways that she couldn't even imagine being able to do. He made it seem almost effortless – whether it was drawing, clay, Lego, or any other art or construction supply that was set in front of him.
She wondered if that was a gift he'd somehow picked up genetically from her – there was so much she didn't know about where she came from, or if maybe Kurt had come from a family of artists. She supposed it didn't really matter, even though she found it fascinating. Either way, though, however it had happened, or whomever he'd inherited from, her boy had a gift.
If Noah wasn't drawing, he was almost playing Tim Burton and sculpting little figures and designing small sets all out of modeling material and clay. He'd then shoot little frame-by-frame pictures of his claymation and spend even more time on the computer editing together his little movies, which eventually he'd almost always let her and Will watch. A lot of the characters he'd created for his comic series made appearances as three-dimensional little clay models in his movies. Some of the comics and movies were almost rib-breakingly funny but a lot where just heartbreaking and a little dark. That sometimes made her a little sad too. At times it seemed like her son carried the weight of the world on his shoulders.
She'd been told it was normal for childhood cancer survivors to suffer from depression – or worse from post-traumatic stress. She'd tried to get Noah help for both in a way that wouldn't leave him feeling like he was some how more screwed up than he already seemed to feel he was, in a way that wouldn't make him angrier about having to have endured cancer. But he resented having to go to a counselor and he seemed to hate the group therapy they'd tried. She really wasn't sure either had helped him much - or he'd even participated much. Especially now. A counselor should've picked up on some of these problems and brought them to her attention.
"You're so talented," she told Noah quietly as she watched him work. But he made a loud sigh and lifted his pencil from the page – stopping his work.
"What do you want?" He demanded, still not looking at her.
"I'm just checking on you," she told him, touching his shoulder but he jerked away. She didn't push it. "You've been in here about three hours. It's almost lunch."
He just shrugged and stated, "I'm fine."
She nodded and went and sat at the foot of his bed, grasping her hands between her knees and watching his back again. He seemed to feel her movement away from him was enough to allow him to return to his artwork and his hand started moving again. She sat quietly for several minutes just watching his movements from behind.
She looked at the floor and sighed. "Sweets," she said quietly and glanced up a bit seeking out any sort of reaction from him – but there was none. "I know you don't like me very much right now – but I just really want you to know that I'm here for you."
There still wasn't any reaction from him – no acknowledgement she'd spoken at all. She rubbed at her eyebrow. She'd been thinking a lot about what she wanted to say to him and how to get it out in a way that wouldn't send him spiraling away from her.
"Noah," she tried again. "I know you aren't a little boy anymore – and I know you're at the age where you don't want much to do with your mom. I know that's just part of growing up and you're a teenager now – that you're learning more about who you are and you want space to be able to do that, you want your independence. I know, sweetheart. I know you think I don't understand – but I've been there too. But as your mom, it's still a little hard for me to completely let go of my little boy and to let you grow up. As your mom too, I have a responsibility to be here and to still have rules and to help you through your teens, Noah, because you aren't all grown up yet. You've got lots of challenges coming up – girls, high school, parties, sex, drugs, drinking, college applications.
"You get to make your own mistakes and your own choices – but as your parent, I get to make sure you're equipped to deal with those things and if you do something stupid, Noah, I get to tell you. And if you get hurt or you need help, you're allowed to tell me too. I may not like all your choices. I may even end up being very disappointed in some of your choices and wish that you knew better or wish that I'd taught you better. But no matter what happens, what choices you make – good and bad – you are still going to be my son and I will always love you. Always."
Still no response. She sighed.
"When I was your age – I hated my mom. I really, really hated my mom. I couldn't wait until I was going to be old enough to get the hell out of her house and to get away from her and to have my own life. I don't want our relationship to be like that," she said. "I really miss getting to have a relationship with you, Noah. I can't always be your friend – I am your mother and I have to be your mother. But we can still have fun together. We can still talk. I miss getting to have that with you lately – and having to wait until you're done with your teens for us to get to have that back, it sure seems like a long time to me. I don't want us to have to wait that long, do you?"
"I thought your mom sucked," he finally said quietly after a long silence between them.
She took it. Anything out of him at that point was something.
"Well, she had her problems, but we all do," she said. "No one's perfect. I know I'm not perfect and I'm not a perfect mom either, Noah. I know I've made lots of mistakes but I really do try hard for you."
"You're OK," he allowed again quietly.
She let herself have a small smile at that and watched his back again for a few moments.
"Noah, you not talking to me about what's going on right now – it hurts, sweetheart. Right now I have all sorts of alarm bells and awful things going through my head about what you're dealing with. I feel like I missed something. That you are hurting and I didn't see it and didn't react. That I didn't get you the help you needed. It's making me feel like an awful mother and it's making me really scared for you.
"I just really need you to know that I'm here for you – whatever it is – and I want to help. Sweets, it's my job as your mother to help and to try to make this a bit easier for you, even if I can't fix it. I hope I can fix it – but I can at least try to help. If you'll let me. You just need to talk to me."
She got no response.
"If you feel like you can't talk to me about it – I really, really hope you will talk to Dad about it when he gets home on the weekend," she said.
"He doesn't care. He doesn't even talk to me," Noah said angrily.
She sighed. "Noah, Will does care. He cares so much. He loves you so much. He'd do anything for you. He really would. You know that. He just struggles with trying to talk to you on the telephone. You're very stand-off-ish with him on the phone, sweetheart. He just doesn't like the attitude. Neither of us do. You haven't been very nice to us lately. You've been pretty disrespectful. Dad finds that really frustrating."
She watched him. "Noah, I should've seen your mood changes, your attitude as more than just you being a teenager, more than just puberty and mood swings, more than just you being worried about finishing middle school and starting high school and all the applications. I'm sorry I didn't see that. Dad is too. You need to talk to us. He is going to want to sit down with you when he gets home. Will you talk to him?"
Her son just shrugged.
She sighed.
"OK," she said quietly. "I won't say anything more about it today, sweets, but this isn't going away."
She watched his back again for a bit.
"I wanted to see if you feel up to walking to the theatre," she offered. "We could see a movie, go into Artie's for lunch. I'll even buy you an Icee for your crotch if you want. Your pick on the flick."
He gave her a small glance at that offer.
"I thought I'm grounded," he said.
She shrugged. "You are. But this is a sick day. We haven't gone to a show in a long time. I don't get days off that often. I should do something with the time since you aren't letting me play nursemaid for you."
"Taking me to a movie won't make me talk to you," Noah warned her.
"I know, sweets," she nodded. "I'd just like to spend some time with you."
He thought about it. "Can we stop at the book store too?" He finally asked at a near whisper.
"We can," she confirmed. "You looking for something there?"
He shrugged. She knew it could be either way – he was looking for something specific or he just wanted to look. Noah could blow a whole afternoon in a book store. She didn't really mind. She was happy to buy a book or magazine and go sit in the coffee shop while he looked around for hours on end. He always ended up leaving with something. She supposed she should be thankful that he spent a lot of his allowance on books and comics and art supplies and not candy, pop and pizza slices – or God knows what else at school.
"OK," she said, standing from the bed. "It sounds like we've got an afternoon planned. So why don't you clean yourself up a bit and take some more painkillers and we'll head out in about 15?"
He gave a little nod from his desk and she started to head for the door.
"I love you Mom," he said softly as she was almost out the door.
She looked at him. He still had his back to her. "I know, sweets. I love you too. Lots." She tapped her fingers on the doorframe and started to pull the door shut for him to have a bit of privacy while he got cleaned up.
"Mom?" He said quietly again.
"Yeah, Noah?" she said.
"How come you don't hug me anymore?"
She pushed the door open and looked at him. "Sweetheart, you pull away whenever I touch you."
He gave a little nod of acknowledgement.
"Would you like a hug, Noah?"
He gave another small nod.
She opened the door fully and stepped back into the room.
"So stand up and come and get one," she told him. "I can't hug you with you sitting over there with your back to me."
He glanced at her and met her eyes for the first time in the whole conversation. He seemed to think about it for a long time but he finally got up and trudged over to her. She wrapped her arms around him tightly and stroked his head after he rested it against her shoulder, where he barely reached with his stunted stature. She placed a small kiss against the side of his head and he let her.
"You can have a hug whenever you want, Noah," she said quietly. "I thought maybe I wasn't supposed to hug you anymore. I don't know the rules with boys. I don't know your rules. I'm learning as I go too, sweets."
She felt him give a small nod but he still wasn't letting go of her. So she rubbed his back and placed another kiss on his head.
"It's OK, sweetheart, whatever it is, it's going to be OK – and I'm not going anywhere. OK?"
He nodded silently again and his arms loosened from her back a bit. So she pulled him away from her a bit and examined his face. He looked so sad and he avoided meeting her eyes. She pushed some of his mess of hair away from his forehead and gave him a small smile.
"OK, sweets, get ready," she told him. "I'm going to go and do the same."