AND THEN THIS BITCH CATBRU COMES ALONG AND RUINS IT. . . At least that's what my bestie said when she wrote this epilogue to my fic. Yes, I did not write this part (it is from Benson's POV - and very different). But I did beta it and do a touch of Carisi (mainly the tax code part). And of course, the graphic (which can be seen on AO3). RockOnJenny grabbed a pix of Benson for me . . . and then I threw it into Photoshop and ran with it. :-) Then Cat approved of the pix for her fic.
It takes years of practice to walk through the precinct and make it into her office without staggering like a college student during finals week, coffee in one hand and cell phone in the other. Exhaustion is part of the job, always has been and always will be. Throw in a child and sleep is more a fond memory than a reality.
Especially when said child decides to have a mid-childhood crisis and relive the glory days of his terrible twos. Fortunately he seems to have gotten it out of his system over the weekend.
She slumps in her chair and for a moment Olivia enjoys the quiet before the others start trickling in. Finn will likely be first. Then Carisi. Her money is on Rollins to arrive last. Some days she would make bank on that. Others, she's glad the wagers aren't real at all.
Did Cragen ever sit here and place mental bets on his staff?
Olivia allows herself one long, jaw-cracking yawn before pulling at the stack of paperwork that she swears reproduced over the weekend.
She's making good headway when she comes across the most recently submitted expense reports. She stares at them for a moment, trying to make sense of some of the expenses being requested for reimbursement. She takes off her reading glasses to pinch the bridge of her nose before walking to the open door of her office.
There's now a gentle thrum of voices, that calming white noise of intermingling of cadences, tones, and accents that somehow always stays the same even when the faces change. Her prey is here, Carisi perched on the edge of Rollins' desk. Their voices are too low to make out either accent let alone words.
"Carisi. Rollins. My office."
There's a moment of deer and headlights. His cheeks turn pink first but Olivia is already heading back to her chair, so she can't see if Rollins' face matches that shade or not.
She picks up the two questionable expense reports as she sits down. A soft scraping of rubber soles against the floor is a tell tale sign that they've entered. After a casual wave of her hand she hears the cushions of the chairs in front of her desk groan and huff. "Accounting is going to have a field day with this."
"Hey, everything on that list is legit." Somehow he's able to make casual leaning look professional. Somehow he's able to casually lean in a chair.
Olivia arches an eyebrow. "The Jekyll Island Club? Something tells me on a group of islands with more hotels than residents, you could have found something a little less pretentious."
"What? You Googled it or something?"
Olivia presses her lips together and shrugs. "When I see something that's obviously not a standard motel chain, yeah. I'm gonna Google it."
"I got us a standard motel chain price tag, though, you gotta admit."
"I'm...not sure I want to know how you managed it. Besides, what was the standard price?"
"Like I said. I was nice." Carisi shrugs. "And like I told Rollins -"
He jerks his thumb towards the blonde detective now strumming her fingers on her chair. Olivia could almost hear the grinding teeth from across the desk.
"' - you catch more flies with sugar, honey.'"
Rollins rolls her eyes at his outrageous - horribly bad - Southern accent and shoots him a quick look before returning her attention to their boss.
Olivia hums, and then examines her newest detective's report closely. "Tell me something Carisi, what did Lighthouse Trolleys Land and Sea Tours have to do with the case?"
"You expensed the ghost tour?" Rollins' voice is hissed, her head tilted to face him.
He holds up his hands. "Hey, it was an impromptu team building exercise."
Olivia just stares at him.
"Look, Lieu, this isn't disallowed under 26 U.S. Code ยง 274. In fact we have full substantiation. I've listed the amount, the date, the place, the reason -"
"The reason?"
"Yeah, like I said. Teambuilding."
"I see 'relationship building' listed here."
"Uh yeah," he answers, ears turning slightly pink. Then he mumbles, "That's the technical term for it."
"Uh huh." Of course he knows the tax code. If pressed he could probably give subsections, a page number, everything. Because of course he'd have it memorized. Attorneys. She shakes her head.
"What about the accidental destruction of personal property?"
Rollins holds up her hand. "To be fair, Lieutenant, he did the country a favor with that one. That thing probably would have grown a mind of its own and terrorized all of Georgia."
Olivia stares at the both of them for a moment. "But it was accidental?"
Carisi nods. "Oh, yes. It was dark."
He turns to look at Rollins. "Maybe she was one of your ghosts dressed like that."
Rollins looks at him like he's crazy. "How does that even make sense? "
"It doesn't, but haunted shackles and a ghost who has no designated place of haunting does? "
Olivia clears her throat, interrupting the Rollins and Carisi show beginning to unfold before her. "Anyway. I trust that there was at least some bonding during this...team building exercise of yours."
There is a split moment where neither answer. All that greet her are mutually stained cheeks and nervous shifting in seats. Carisi is finally able to clear his throat. "Oh, yeah. We even did like a trust fall and everything."
Rollins groans, slumps down in her seat, and rolls her eyes.
Olivia studies the expense statements again and hisses her breath in through her teeth. "Okay. I'll push this through and see where it goes." Her voice softens. "Good job with everything else. Unusual...expenditures aside, you two did well. Keep up the good work."
She pretends to be busy with the appropriate signing, annotating lightly in pencil in the margins and preparing sticky notes just in case. Her eyes move up to watch them leave and the corner of her mouth twitches dangerously upward.
Well. At least they were smart enough to keep two separate rooms.