Prompt #5: When Olivia and Elliot are both called into work at the same time and Noah's regular nanny is unavailable, just like Rollins and Carisi, they have no other option but to call Randall, the coolest, most lenient uncle of all time — who knows nothing about the necessity of bedtimes, candy limits or screentime limits.

Randall is a Nanny

~oOo~

It had been spur-of-the-moment. Randall knew that under any other circumstances it would not have been the case. They trusted him, he knew that, or at least enough to trust him with this task, but he wasn't their first choice. That's for sure.

He arrived for a visit to Elliot's house unannounced, as usual, to find Olivia along with her son Noah there. It was something he should have expected. His brother and the Captain had been together a few months, but that relationship was much stronger than his ex-wife's (though he imagined that was a good thing, after all). The four of them had been having dinner together when two calls interrupted the late hour.

Noah went to get his coat, knowing what was going on even before he did himself. When they hung up, Olivia started pacing, back and forth, more nervous than he'd ever seen her. She looked at Elliot and then at Noah. Randall didn't seem to exist in her plane of vision.

"Lucy is sick, Carisi is involved in the case, and Amanda is on a business trip. I…"

"I can see if any of my children are available. Maureen is with the twins maybe... no, they are sick, they can't make it. Richard is out of state, Eli in Colorado, Lizzie had an important appointment with her theater team. Kathleen...she might be free."

"Could you?"

As Elliot called Kathleen, Randall was still amazed at the communication between them, with a few glances, a few half-spoken sentences and they already seemed to know what they were weighing against each other. When Elliot denied, Olivia sighed and looked back at Noah. He knew what was going on, so he decided to step forward. If the Benson family was now part of his family, he had to start acting like the modern uncle he was.

"I can take care of him, stay here until you get back."

Olivia turned to look at him, up and down a couple of times before asking if he was sure. Randall nodded, knowing it was an important step and that if he screwed up, Elliot will stop talking to him for the other half of his life. He would do well.

"Now I'm like this young man's uncle here, let me take care of him. We'll have a good time."

The phones rang again and as Elliot nodded to her briefly and told her they should leave now, Olivia nodded. She walked over to Noah, hugged him and gave him a kiss before turning to the oldest of them all.

"You have my phone and Elliot's, Noah knows Fin's and Carisi's, but that won't be necessary. If anything happens, the slightest thing, call. He goes to bed at 10," Noah's groan echoed from behind her, "Okay, 10:30, and no sugar at night, he's had too much already. He can use the console, but no more than an hour and..."

"It's okay, Olivia. I've babysat before."

"Yeah, I... just…" she sighed "Sorry, I have a hard time leaving him with new people, that's all."

"If you knew the list of do's and don'ts she gave me when I stayed with Noah the first time you'd be surprised," Elliot joked.

"All right, don't worry, I'll take care of it, and now go save the world. Bye, bye."

Randall watched as the two cops left the scene quickly, surely it must be an important case if in less than five minutes they had called them twice and both at the same time. He wondered what it would be like to see them working together, if they would still be as close as when they were at home, if they were even more so. Were they joking too, or were they going into that cop mode he had seen Elliot in so many times? Truth be told, he'd never seen Olivia Cop beyond a couple of TV interviews, but his brother hadn't looked more relaxed at home since...he couldn't remember since when, even when they were little he always seemed tense (though he didn't really blame him).

Randall turned to look at Noah, who was smiling at him excitedly. Dark curls and blue eyes, good thing he'd been told he was adopted, otherwise he would have thought his brother had been having an affair with Olivia. He was a perfect blend of the two. He imagined that sometimes God was funny with his directives. He didn't know the little guy well, he'd barely met him a couple of times and this would be the first time he'd been alone with him.

"So what... pizza, candy and video games?"

"Didn't my mother say no sugar?" he asked hesitantly, but with interest in the proposal.

"Well, what she doesn't know won't hurt her."

"Then yes, I'll play the game. Have you ever played Fortnite?"

"What's that?"

"You don't know the game? We need to change that right now!"

While Noah went to get the console ready to play the game he had never heard of before, he went to the kitchen and, while preparing some soft drinks and looking in his brother's 'secret' pantry of knick-knacks, called a nearby pizza place. They had barely finished dinner, but a video game session wasn't complete without pizza to go with it.

By the time he got back to the living room it was all set up, Noah sitting on the couch and holding out a controller for him to play with. He showed him the basic controls, or at least he tried to, because he had barely grasped the function of two of the thousand buttons needed for this game. At what point did games become so complicated? He still remembered playing Pac-Man or Pinball, now that was a fun game.

The laughter during the games was constant, because as soon as he touched the ground, he moved - as he could, how could this boy control the camera and move at the same time - and already someone was killing him. When the door rang he offered the controller to Noah and told him to play while he took care of the pizza.

They had lost track of time, the pizza was already finished in the middle of the table, Noah was still playing the video game and they weren't tired at all when the front door rattled. Someone was opening it. They looked at each other quickly, alarmed. They looked at the time, 12am, much later than the time they had given him to sleep.

"Pretend sleep, quick," he whispered and as he watched Noah head to the bedroom, Randall grabbed the remote and started to play, or try to, as the two adults entered the house.

Elliot was the first to notice, with Olivia behind him, a second later, too. He wasn't going to get away with it, he knew, but he wasn't worried. For one, he din't kill the kid, and he'd had a better time than expected. He had missed these times with his brother's older children, when they were still so far apart that there was no contact between them and even though now he had him with Eli and they went fishing and talked it wasn't the same. Noah was still a kid and he liked kid stuff.

"Still with the screens?" Olivia sighed. "When did he go to sleep?"

"And no lying, Randall, or you won't be staying with Noah anymore," Elliot said next to her and knew that, though the last word would be up to the mother, it would be.

"As soon as we heard the door. We were past the hour."

"For an hour and a half."

"Yeah, the game was entertaining. We were having a great time," he tried to justify his actions. "If you're going to scold someone, do it with me, Noah's a good boy."

"Did you have a good time?" she asked.

"I told you Randall was a decent babysitter."

"Hey!" he complained, indignant, but after a glance he remembered that he still couldn't complain, that he hadn't followed Olivia's orders.

"Thank you," she said. "But if you stay with my son again, you better do what I say," she warned. "And now I need to see Noah, if he's awake we can still talk a little."

"Relax Liv, I'll be here when you come out."

He looked at Olivia then for the first time, well, she looked exhausted, as if she couldn't give any more of her soul. She then looked at Elliot and they looked the same. They looked defeated. It was when he was alone with his brother that he asked him what had happened.

"It was a kidnapping of two minors. We lost them. They were Noah's age... it was... it was brutal," he whispered and said no more. He didn't want to know the details either.

Sometimes Randall forgot that being a cop, cops as good as the two of them and not like his father was, meant seeing and experiencing horrible things, meant coming home defeated, having lost children, innocent and only reminded him of his children.

"Did you call Eli?" he asked, thinking that if Olivia needed to see Noah, he would want to do the same for his son.

"And the older ones, I almost scared the hell out of more than one of them but... I needed to see that they were okay."

"Does it get easier after all these years?"

"Never," he sighed. "Luckily I hardly deal with kids now, in Livs unit, where I was before I left, it's more common. I couldn't stand it before and I can't stand it now. It continues to amaze me every day. She is SVU. That unit wouldn't be where it is now without her."

"She sounds like a good cop."

"The best, always was, even when she was still a rookie detective and I was teaching her the ropes. She had a potential and a hand with victims that I've never seen before and that, to this day, I still don't get to see in other officers."

"You better not screw up bro, she seems like the right one for you."

"Oh, I know, I know, I know, don't worry."

"I'll leave you two alone, I guess you need some time together."

"Thanks, Randall. Come back soon, but warn us first, one day you'll catch us in a worse situation than having dinner together."

Randall couldn't help but laugh and headed for the door, smiling. He had known an angry, annoyed and hurt Elliot when he came back, one who seemed to only care about his job and didn't give a damn about family. But during this time he had been getting to know him as he should have been for so many years before. Now they were good, they were getting along and he wasn't as grateful to that as he had been for so long. He liked Olivia, he had seen what she did in him and he knew he had never seen her so happy before. The Benson family was a perfect fit for the Stabler family, that much was clear to him and he hoped it would be that way for much, much longer.

The author of this SVU - Autumn in New York story will be revealed in November