New C/O! The Awakening, part three
The Awakening
by DiNovia
Fandom: L&O:SVU
Pairing: Casey/Olivia
Rating: NC-17/MA
Spoilers: "Night", "Day"
Notes: Sequel to The Good Earth, which was based on fewthistle's Look Homeward, Angel .
This seems to be the first in a series of C/O stories based on holidays. Be on the lookout for the next one, dealing with Christmas/New Year's, coming to an LJ near you.
Part Three
---
"Here. Let me."
Olivia took the delicate gold chain from Casey's trembling fingers and unclasped it, her unexpected dexterity belying her all-consuming need. She handed the chain and its charm to the redhead who laid it on the ebony dresser in front of her.
Dinner downstairs at the inn's four star restaurant had been a frustrating experience for Casey. Liv had arranged it and had meant for it to be romantic, no doubt. And it had been! But every time Liv had lifted another gourmet morsel of food to her mouth with her sterling silver fork, Casey had been reminded how much happier she would have been with a slice of cold pizza and a warm Coke if only that had meant she'd spent the preceding two hours licking something--champagne, chocolate, a nice merlot; it wouldn't have mattered--off every inch of Olivia Benson's beautiful body.
Now back in their warm room with the ghost of Olivia's touch cooling at the nape of her neck, Casey's heart pounded in her chest with the urgency of a red alert klaxon. When she felt Olivia press her lips softly to the curve of her shoulder, she almost fell apart on the spot.
"Olivia," she breathed, stark longing and desire present in the simple exhalation.
"Shhh..." hushed the older woman. Slowly, she unclasped the catch between the younger woman's shoulder blades and brought her hands up to brush the straps of the little black dress from milky shoulders that glowed in the amber firelight. "Don't let it drop just yet," she whispered, leaning distractingly close to the attorney. Close enough, in fact, that the spicy-musky scent she wore made Casey's mouth water. "I want to see you."
Casey swallowed heavily and nodded, too unsure of her voice to say anything. She felt Olivia's fingers drop to the small of her back in order to release the tiny zipper there and then she felt herself gently turned so that she was facing the detective and her smoldering eyes. She held her arms crossed over her torso, knowing that when she relaxed them the dress would simply fall to the burnished hardwood floor, unwanted and unnecessary.
Olivia stepped back and let her gaze linger on the young attorney. Casey was, very simply, the picture of tender vulnerability and want. Slowly...hungrily...Liv took in everything. Casey's pale, bare shoulders, the way she clutched the slackened fabric of her dress to her body, her long legs, the shimmering desire in her dark jade eyes... The older woman was completely captivated.
"Let it go, Casey," she ordered softly.
The redhead didn't hesitate. She never took her eyes from Olivia as she dropped her arms to her sides, letting her dress flutter to the floor with a swish. Olivia's only outward reaction was a slight widening of her eyes and a sharp intake of breath. Something in the detective coalesced in that moment and the very air around her seemed to change. It was as if she somehow became sharper and more defined. A tiny, almost predatory smile dusted her lips and she took two deceptively leisurely steps closer to the counselor.
"God," she whispered. She licked her bottom lip in anticipation. "Gorgeous."
Unable to tear her eyes away, Liv tenderly cupped Casey's breasts in her warm hands and lowered her mouth to one dusky and swiftly tightening nipple.
"Ungh..." Casey threw her head back as soon as she felt Olivia's searing tongue curl around her pebbled flesh. "Liv..." Her long red tresses whispered along her spine.
Olivia blessed the other nipple with her attentions before slowly descending Casey's body, worshipping as she went. She dragged her fingers lightly over skin that shimmered with goosebumps. She nipped at tender places just below Casey's ribcage and swirled her tongue into the shallow vessel that was her navel. Taking a deep, steadying breath, she hooked her thumbs in the thin straps of the attorney's lurid green panties and pulled, slowly lowering them to reveal the beauty that lay beneath.
Lured like a moth to flame, Olivia leaned forward and pressed small, burning kisses to the seductive place where Casey's inner thigh met her hip.
Her voice shaking, Casey pleaded with the detective. "P-please, Liv. Bed." She took a steadying breath of her own. "Can't s-stand."
Olivia grinned at the younger woman from her kneeling position and quickly unbuckled the straps on her sexy black heels. Carefully, she helped Casey step out of them and the tangle of dress and panties beneath her feet. Then, moving faster than Casey thought was possible, Liv stood, wound her fingers in Casey's silky hair and plundered her lips and mouth with a kiss designed to lay waste to whatever strength the attorney might have had left.
When she pulled away, she grasped the younger woman's hands in her own and began to pull her towards the big bed. "I'll help you," she whispered against the alabaster skin of Casey's long, leonine throat. Before either of them knew it, they were at the edge of the bed and Olivia turned with Casey in her arms and tumbled her into its luxurious depths.
She fell into Casey's intoxicating embrace like a woman dying of thirst. Heat like she had never known immolated her to her very core and she raged over Casey's body, pale and fine like desert sand, divining for the sweet, cool relief of her lover's liquid release.
"Want you..." Blinded by her desperation, she didn't even realize that she was still fully clothed.
Casey, however, was keenly aware of that fact and she began to tug at Liv's starched white shirt, as bright and relentless as the noonday Sun. "Need to feel you..." she begged and Olivia--as lost as she was--heard Casey's plea and slowed down only long enough to pull her shirt and the white cami beneath it straight over her head, discarding both with an utter lack of conscious thought.
Casey was absolutely struck dumb by the sight before her, as if caught unawares by the revelation of the Divine in the wilderness. She rose from the bed with a hiss of pleasure like morning dew made steam by the gaze of The Eye of Heaven and captured Liv's lips in a boiling kiss. Her fingers fumbled with the button holding the detective's black tuxedo slacks to her body. Impatient to the point of carelessness, she almost tore the button from its mooring before she finally unfastened it. She made short work of the zipper and began pushing the fabric off Liv's hips.
Olivia's hands joined in the quest to rid her body of the last of her clothing and soon she was finally bare to Casey's touch. Pulling away from their mouths' ecstatic connection, Casey could have wept.
"Oh, God..." It was all she had the strength to say.
With hands made deft by deepest need, she cupped and cradled and caressed; she touched and teased and tempted until she was filled with awe-tinged hunger. She raised turned copper eyes bright with lust and locked gazes with Olivia.
"Take me," she ordered, her soft voice edged with steel. "Take me now, Olivia. I want you inside me." She licked her bottom lip. "I want you to make me scream."
Together they fell back to the bed, hands clutching, bodies entwining, mouths kissing and biting and soothing the marks that stung. Like rushing flood waters seeking their own level, they raced for the depths until the whole world stilled, balancing precariously in Olivia's hand as she cupped Casey for a long, breathless moment. Then slowly--ever so slowly--she entered the younger woman. She had her other arm wrapped securely around Casey's curvaceous hips and she rested her burning forehead against the redhead's taut stomach.
Olivia groaned as her eyes fluttered closed.
"You're so wet," she breathed, pressing kisses into and around Casey's navel. She delved deeper, letting the liquescent incandescence of her lover's secret places suffuse her, drowning in their molten recesses. She wanted to stay there, still and golden, forever... And she would have if not for Casey's quiet plea.
"Olivia, please... Need you... Now..."
Her hips rolled beneath Liv's touch like the soft sea, seeking her salvation, her satiation from those long fingers. Olivia matched Casey's rocking heartbeat for heartbeat. She held tight, clutching the redhead's waist like a shipwreck survivor clutching the last of her hope in the dark waters.
"Casey..." Olivia hid her face against her lover's heaving belly then turned without warning and bit the spot where Casey's hipbone flared. Casey cried out with the flash of sensual pain and as quickly as it burned, it was soothed by Olivia's sweet, soft mouth. The brunette increased her pace until the two of them were made whirlwind and their blood howled in their ears.
"Liv... Yes..." Casey's voice was tight, strained. She struggled to keep from being flayed alive by Olivia's passion, from having her bones shatter in the wake of Olivia's powerful touch unleashed. She tangled her fingers in her lover's dark locks and held on, her whole world fusing into one whirling, cacophonic maelstrom until finally it broke apart into jagged, flaming pieces that seemed to herald the end of Everything.
Casey screamed.
Olivia's own catastrophic release followed on the heels of Casey's, triggered by the young woman's unrelenting aftershocks. They vibrated through their intimate connection all the way to the brunette's core like a devastating surge of power, her body the willing conduit. She lay entwined with her lover and gulped air into her tortured lungs.
When she was finally able to move again, to see again, she slowly unwound herself from Casey's embrace and reached up to capture the attorney's passion-bruised full lips in a heartbreaking kiss.
"Are you okay?" she asked softly when they separated. She sifted strands of red-gold through gentle fingers.
Instead of answering, Casey responded with her own question. "Are you?" Her emerald eyes were so bright, so clear, Olivia might have sworn under oath that they were forged from gemstone and not real at all.
"Yeah," she said, grinning beautifully. She leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the corner of Casey's mouth. "I'm perfect."
Casey searched Liv's bark-brown eyes for any hint of uncertainty and found none. She smirked at her lover and said, "Well, duh! Tell me something I don't already know."
Olivia glanced at Casey briefly, an unreadable expression coloring her features. Finally she took a deep breath.
"Okay," she said with only a hint of disquiet in her voice. "I'm in love with you."
---
Olivia slowly walked down the center aisle of the dimly lit room. Depressing organ music played softly in the background and the air was thick with the cloying perfume of dozens of lilies, tastefully arranged and displayed around the chapel.
Elliot and Fin stood quietly talking half way down the aisle but as she approached them they stopped and Elliot sneered viciously at her.
"Nice work, Partner," he ground out through a clenched jaw, clearly disgusted.
"Why's she even here?" snorted Fin and together the two men turned their backs on her.
Stung and confused, Olivia continued on. She wondered whose funeral it was, whether or not she knew the victim. Clearly Elliot and Fin did.
She encountered Cragen next and he was consoling an obviously grieving Munch. Amy Solway? Maybe John's friend had finally succumbed to her debilitating disease. As she moved to offer her colleague her own comfort, Cragen stepped in front of her.
"He doesn't want to talk to you, Olivia. Just go."
She started to protest, to ask why, to ask what she had done, but Cragen shook his head. "Go, Olivia. It's better this way."
The lump in Olivia's throat burned fiercely and she felt tears begin to gather in her eyes though she was determined not to let them fall. Why were her friends so angry with her? What had she done that she couldn't remember doing? She stumbled on and found herself standing beside Arthur Branch who was shaking his head sadly.
"She told me after her first case that she didn't want the job. I told her she would. That I'd chosen her especially for the position. And just when she started to really want it, this happens." The big man turned and looked at Olivia, his face a mask of scorn. "I hope you're happy, Detective," he spat and he walked away.
Olivia watched him go, stunned by his harsh words. She turned back toward the casket but couldn't bring herself to take the necessary steps to continue toward it. Who could he mean? Who had he chosen and for what position?
A flash of red caught her mind's eye and she turned, looking for the owner of those Autumn tresses amongst the other mourners. Her eyes darted around the room, searching for that face, for those turned-copper eyes. She was nowhere to be found. Except...
Standing by themselves in a tight knot of familial despair were Matt and Chris Novak and Julie Roberts. Julie's face was streaked with tears but her eyes were filled with hatred. Even still, they were not as hard and as merciless as the twin looks given her by the colonel and his son. Chris's face was red with rage and he took a menacing step toward Olivia only to be stopped by his father. Once Matthew Novak had his son under control, he turned and made the short journey to where the detective stood himself.
For a long moment, he said nothing. Only stood at attention as his eyes became cruel and implacable.
Finally, he said one thing. "It should have been you." Then he turned and walked away, gathering what was left of his family in his arms as he wept openly for his crushing loss.
Reluctantly, Olivia turned back toward the casket. Bile rose in her throat and bitter tears welled in her eyes. She knew then. Knew beyond a shadow of a doubt the name of the deceased. But still she couldn't make herself believe.
She thought, If I stand here and don't look... If I never look, it's not real. She's still here. She's still with me. If I never look.
"Oh, you'll look," said a viciously dark voice. Involuntarily, the brunette turned towards it. She wiped away her tears as if afraid to have them discovered.
"Mother?"
Serena Benson snarled a grotesque version of a smile and raised a glass to her daughter, clear liquid sloshing over its side. "The one and only."
Olivia looked back at the casket, noting dispassionately the cream-colored satin lining the inside of the lid. "I can't look, Mother."
"Maybe not. But you will. After all, this is your fault. All your fault." When Olivia turned pleading, desperate eyes toward her, she laughed. "What?" she asked, taking another drink from her never empty glass. The ice tinkled as she moved and it sounded like gunshots and screams to the detective. "What were you expecting? It is your fault, daughter mine. Everything is your fault. My whole horrible, useless life was YOUR FAULT! NOW LOOK WHAT YOU'VE DONE!"
Serena Benson lunged at Olivia and shoved her forward. The younger woman lost her balance and found herself catching it on the edge of the open casket. Unable to look anywhere else, she looked down. Down at Casey Novak, her eyes open and haunted, bruises and cuts marring her once perfect face. A shattered cut-crystal vase lay on her chest and a dozen red roses, their blooms crushed and stained with black blood, lay strewn around her. Her dead eyes sought out Olivia.
"You left me alone to die," she accused softly, her voice hollow and empty. "You left me all alone."
"No!"
"NO!"
Olivia bolted straight up in the unfamiliar bed. Sweat beaded on her forehead and her tortured lungs once again gasped for air, this time out of fear and not carnal satisfaction. She tried to shake the nightmare images from her vision but instead found herself hugging her knees to her bare torso as she stared into the distance, still caught somewhere in the dream.
She didn't feel Casey Novak's arms around her.
"Liv? Honey, it's okay. It was just a nightmare. Just a dream."
Casey's voice was soft and soothing despite the terrified pounding of her heart. Soundly and blissfully asleep in the cradle of their new intimacy, she was completely unprepared for Olivia's gut-wrenching cry in the dark. She tried to calm her breathing, to hide her own fear while attempting to quiet her lover's. Soon she realized her efforts were having no effect...on either of them.
"Honey? Liv, look at me. Look at me." Trembling herself, Casey held the smaller woman tightly, her warm, dry hands briskly rubbing the detective's arms as if to ward off a chill.
"Casey?" Even though she was calling for her, Olivia was not consciously aware of her lover's presence. The spoken name was a frightful thing, broken and desolate, like a dove dying in the soft grass below a plate-glass window. Whichever Casey she saw, it was not the beautiful woman next to her becoming more and more unsettled as the moment wore on.
"Yes, Casey. It's Casey. Please look at me. Olivia." The younger woman cupped the brunette's face in her hands and tried to turn her. She failed utterly. "Olivia," she snapped. "Wake up right now!"
Something in that tone--the desperation, maybe, or the crack of command--broke through Olivia's nightmarish prison and she took a sudden deep breath. Blinking, she turned toward her lover, her stiffened limbs melting into the younger woman's embrace before she even realized what she was doing.
"Shhh," hushed the redhead as she rocked Olivia gently. "I'm right here."
For ten blissful seconds Olivia soaked up Casey's tenderly offered comfort before the dream began to creep back into her mind, souring the sweetness of it. Embarrassed and emotionally uncomfortable, Olivia struggled to free herself from the counselor's embrace.
"I'm fine," she said by way of explanation but she couldn't meet Casey's eyes when she said it. "I'm okay."
The ADA shook her head. "No you aren't. Liv, was it--? Do you wake up that way a lot?" Concern flooded her voice but Olivia, defensive and wary, mistook it for pity.
"It's nothing, Casey. Don't worry about it." She began to turn, intending to roll over and go back to sleep if she could. Casey did not let her.
"It is not nothing, Olivia," countered the young woman angrily, stopping her. "You're as white as a sheet. You sat bolt upright in this bed and wouldn't respond to me. That's not nothing." Casey looked at the older woman for a long moment, gauging her next words and actions carefully. Finally she leaned forward and gingerly put her arms around Olivia's rigid body. Gently, she rested her chin on one bronze shoulder. "Are they about work?" she asked quietly. The anger in her voice had faded away. "Do you have nightmares like that every night?"
What are you going to do, Benson? Liv asked herself. You said you loved her and--miracle of miracles--she says she loves you back. Are you going to let a stupid nightmare ruin that?
"Not...every night, no," whispered the detective. "Most but not all."
Viscerally aware that she'd just entered an emotional mine field, Casey trod as carefully as she ever had. "Are they about work?" She had moved closer to her lover and now had one arm wrapped around her waist. She rubbed circles on Liv's belly, hoping to soothe her.
Olivia sighed. The last thing she wanted to do was to burden Casey with this idiotic weakness. The very last thing she wanted to do was to admit the content of this particular nightmare and the real reason she'd been having it--or a version of it--since the first time she'd closed her eyes that night in the hospital with Casey.
"Please talk to me, Olivia," pleaded Casey. She tightened her arms around her lover and brushed her lips over her shoulder. "I love you. I want to help if I can."
Olivia didn't think Casey could help her with this particular affliction but... What did you tell Elliot? She makes you want to make things different? So make them different, Benson. Here's your chance.
"Sometimes they're about work, yeah," she admitted quietly.
"Sometimes," repeated the young redhead. "But not this time?"
Olivia shook her head but wouldn't say anymore.
Something in her older lover's reluctance made Casey suspicious and she sighed. "Zergin," she muttered. She didn't know how she knew but she did. Would it ever end? She herself had stopped having nightmares about that night right around the time Kyle Ackerman had held a gun to her head in court. Apparently the shock of the one had disrupted the terrible routine of the other and most of her dreams--when she dreamt at all now--were either a discordant rehashing of whatever awful case she was working on or a chaotic farce reminiscent of a performance of Cirque de Soleil put on by schizophrenics. Either way, it was a relief.
"Tell me," she whispered.
Olivia shook her head again. "It was... You were... It was my fault. That's all. My fault."
Casey frowned. "You know that isn't true. Liv, you weren't there--"
"I should have been there! I shouldn't have left you--"
"You went to get us coffee! You couldn't have known!"
Olivia let her head fall forward. "That's not why I left," she said, her voice so low that Casey almost couldn't hear her. "It... It was the flowers."
Casey's frown deepened and became more confused. "The flowers? What about them?"
Suddenly it all seemed ridiculous to Olivia. Leaving Casey's office so she didn't have to see the ADA's reaction to the flowers? So she didn't have to find out who they were from and how Casey felt about that person as it happened? So she didn't have to smile and "make nice" while burning with jealousy?
Fucking stupid reasons to leave her alone, Benson. Fucking stupid reasons to almost lose her.
She chuckled to herself under her breath, a derisive and self-accusatory sound. Realization dawned for Casey at that moment.
"You were jealous." She wanted to laugh with the absurdity of it all but she knew better. Instead she held Olivia more tightly. "You were jealous and there I was, wishing they were from you."
Slowly, Olivia turned to look at Casey. "You were?"
Casey nodded, smiling as she pressed a kiss to Olivia's bare shoulder. "We're quite a pair, aren't we, Detective?"
"What do you mean?" Olivia did not see the source of the counselor's amusement.
"We didn't kiss for the first time until almost four months after that night. What took us so long?"
Olivia Benson didn't know whether to laugh or hit something. Why wasn't Casey more concerned? She'd left her alone to face Zergin because of some flowers, for God's sake! Why wasn't she angry?
If I'd only kept it together that night, I would have shot that fuck before he ever laid a finger on her. And she acts like she could care less.
"Casey, you're--"
"--not taking this seriously enough?" finished the young woman, raising one delicate eyebrow at her lover. "Don't you think you're doing that enough for the both of us?" Before Liv could protest further, Casey gently tipped the older woman's chin toward her and captured her lips in a deep and tender kiss. When they parted, she nuzzled Olivia's cheek.
"Let it go," she ordered softly. She twined her body around the older woman seductively, her brief kisses intended less to comfort and more to entice. "For me, Olivia. You did nothing wrong and I won't give up who I am now, what Zergin made me, to save myself a few bruises and a split lip."
As spellbound as she was by Casey's bewitching mouth, Olivia still tried one last time to make her case. "It wasn't 'a few bruises and a split lip', Casey," she countered. "It--"
"It happened," cut in the attorney as she laid a burning chain of kisses along Olivia's throat. "Nothing can change that." She raised eyes made emerald by her growing passion and gazed at Olivia. "I survived, Liv," she told the woman. "I'm stronger because of it." Cupping Olivia's face in her warm hands, she drew the detective to her and captured her mouth with her own. Their tongues danced together languidly, the heat they generated consuming the two of them. The urgency quickly building between them made their hearts thrum painfully in their chests.
When they finally separated, Casey's eyes glittered in the dim light from the street outside their room. "Stop trying to save that Casey, Olivia. She's gone." She lay back against the pillows and pulled Olivia with her, moaning when she felt the weight of the older woman's body settle on her own. "Be with me instead. The one who loves you."
With little more than a passing doubt, Olivia Benson took a shallow breath and surrendered herself to Casey's love, slipping body and soul into its unfathomable depths.
When she finally slept again that night, she did not dream.
---
Olivia braced herself against the wall of the marble shower stall and let the scalding water pound against her cranky, aching muscles. It was their last day in DC and they had nothing touristy planned beyond brunch with Casey's family before they climbed in the rental and headed home.
Home, thought Olivia, as she waited for the hot water to work its magic on her poor back. Nice, quiet Manhattan. Where I never have to see another monument, museum, or landmark ever again.
Not that she hadn't enjoyed every minute of it because she had. In a definite fish-out-of-water sort of way, yes, but she'd still had a blast. It was as if she'd crammed every single field trip from her entire school career into one extended weekend. All those trips she'd missed; first because her mother had been too drunk to sign the permission slips or had lost them and later because her mother had forbidden the trips, fearing that Olivia would use them as a jumping off point to leaving her for good. High-school-aged Olivia had had to be content with souvenirs brought to her by a few trusted friends: a stuffed gorilla on a stick from the Philadelphia Zoo, an official FBI baseball cap from Quantico, a book of exhibits from the Smithsonian...
All that frustrated childhood excitement had surged back this trip, sweetened by the excitement of sharing the experience with Casey, making Olivia overestimate her energy levels as she tried her damnedest to see everything there was to see in one three-day-weekend.
"Never again," she whispered, almost jumping out of her skin when a voice behind her said, "Never again what?"
"Jesus FUCKING Christ! Casey, what the Hell?" She made a move to face the 'shower invader' but strong hands urged her to remain as she was. She couldn't decide whether she was angry or embarrassed by not hearing her lover enter the steam-filled glass cubicle.
"I thought you'd like some help washing your back," said Casey innocently as she reached for the soap on the ledge next to her. She quickly limned her hands with a generous coating of lather and began working it into Liv's back, smugly noting how knotted muscles hastily melted under her touch.
"Unghhh..." groaned the detective. The annoyance generated by being startled dissipated under her lover's sure and confident touch and Liv bowed her back, its long, graceful curve suggesting appreciative felinity. For several long, blissful moments Olivia enjoyed the feeling of Casey's hands as they made short work of the aches and pains she'd begun to fear were permanent. Until...
A new sensation caused Olivia's eyes to snap open.
"Um...Casey?"
"Yes?" The attorney's voice was lower and softer than usual and Liv could almost hear the predatory smile she wore.
"Honey, that's not my back..." Her eyes fluttered shut and she swallowed reflexively. Were those stars she was seeing?
"Good," growled the younger woman as her particularly precise touch deepened. "Because technically I'm no longer 'washing'..." She stepped forward and fitted her silky wet body to Olivia's, encircling the older woman's waist with her left arm in an attempt to support them both. She inclined her head and licked a blistering path from the nape of Olivia's neck to one bronzed shoulder, pausing only so that she could sink her teeth into that lovely, firm musculature.
Olivia's head jerked backward and she hissed a long susurration of pleasure and pain. "Oh, God," she rasped, her voice torn asunder by sudden passion. She widened her stance slightly in order to keep her balance and found that movement allowed Casey to deepen her touch even further. Blindly she turned her head towards her lover, meeting and capturing her achingly lovely mouth in a crushing kiss.
Casey's hips rocked into Olivia's, keeping time with her thrusts. Her left hand glided up over taut muscles until it found its hoped for destination, her fingertips teasing Liv's dusky peaks. The detective moaned into Casey's blazing mouth as her nipples tightened and then she suddenly pulled away. "Harder," she murmured between the breathless kisses she laid along the redhead's jawline. "Please..."
Casey was only too happy to comply and she roughly widened Olivia's stance even further with one well-placed and powerful thigh. She drove her fingers harder into her lover. Urgently. Relentlessly.
"Fuck, Liv," she groaned, pressing her face hard against Olivia's long throat. She gasped with the weight of her burgeoning desire.
The raw language from the ADA set Liv's thighs quivering. Wildly, she pushed backward, her need overwhelming her caution in this precarious position. Her bloodless hands flattened against the marble as they strained to keep her braced and upright.
Casey's hungry and unstoppable mouth strove for every inch of skin within her reach, kissing and biting whatever she found. She whorled her tongue around Olivia's ear and sucked the sensitive lobe in her mouth, tugging on it gently, insistently. She moaned deliciously as the ache between her thighs grew vast.
Olivia's body was on high alert. She felt everything with a painful intensity; the sultry water raining over her body, Casey's breasts pressed against her shoulder blades, Casey's hips rocking into hers from behind, Casey's fingers delving or teasing depending on their location, Casey's ferocious mouth laying waste to the last of her resistance... Her blood pounded in her chest and against the inside of her skull and tunnel vision stole her eyesight, the edges succumbing to fiery flashes of light. Somewhere in the back of her mind she wondered if she was going to pass out.
Then...
One breath. One heartbeat. The world began to implode.
One breath. One heartbeat. Time, thought, sensation; all coalesced, fusing into one infinitesimal pinpoint of white-hot incandescence.
One breath. One heartbeat. The single blazing dust-mote that encompassed all her awareness throbbed and pulsated savagely until--suddenly, totally--it stilled, cold and utterly frozen.
Olivia's eyes were wide and astonished. She felt it. She felt it coming; the blissful destruction, the rapturous devastation.
A percussion of silence struck then, holding the moment and both of them within it suspended. Time stretched out of all proportion and Olivia was sure she could hear the screaming of her asphyxiated blood cells.
Hold on, hold on, she thought desperately. Don't pass out...don't...don't...
The roaring detonation of Olivia's exquisite release was like the ground zero blast of an atom bomb and Casey held on for dear life, keenly aware that she was clinging to raw, untamable lightning: electric, cataclysmic, and so very lethal.
But oh, to die that delirious death...
A couple of hours later, somewhere between her first and second heaping plates of piping hot eggs and crisp bacon, Olivia seemed to come to and she paused in the shoveling of food into her mouth to gape at Casey. Or more specifically, her neck. Or rather, what was on it. Unhidden. Unmistakable.
Just above Casey's collarbone, shining like a blood-red moon in a starless sky, was a still-purpling love-bite.
It could be nothing else. In fact, Olivia was sure that if she were to examine it more closely she would find evidence of her teeth marring that pale, porcelain skin. And further evidence, perhaps... Of a raging passion unleashed in those long, beautiful arms. Of pushing Casey against the wall of the shower while pinning her wrists over her head...
Olivia began to choke.
Chris Novak, sitting nearest to her, began to pound on her back as all conversation at the table came to a screeching halt. "Are you okay?" he asked earnestly.
Casey's worried eyes found her lover's wide mocha ones. "Liv?"
Olivia held up one hand and grabbed her water glass with the other. After a few hurried gulps she cleared her throat. "Fine," she gasped. "I'm fine." She smiled a little in an attempt to convince them.
Conversation slowly returned to normal. Casey tore a cinnamon bun to pieces while continuing to regale her father and Julie with stories about some of her funnier moments in court. There were few enough of those considering the types of cases she usually tried, but those there were she enhanced with her own signature storytelling style until she had everyone laughing with her. Chris kept half an ear on his sister while he leaned closer to Olivia, who was still struggling though she had managed to get herself back under some semblance of control.
"You sure you're okay, Olivia?" he asked. Then he caught the burning line of her gaze. Following it, he finally saw the source of the detective's distress. He almost snorted.
"Oh yeah," he said, nodding to Casey. "She's been wearing that like a badge of honor all morning. You didn't notice?" When Olivia shook her head 'no', he continued on. "You didn't get much sleep last night, did you? She couldn't be prouder of that if it were an engagement ring!"
Liv--in the middle of another sip of water--began to sputter all over again. This time Chris couldn't help but laugh at her distress.
"You're too easy, Detective," he grinned. "You're going to have to get a thicker skin if you're going to hang around with this family very much."
"I'll keep that in mind," squeaked Olivia. She smiled politely as Matt turned to her to ask a question, profoundly thankful when it didn't have anything to do with that...that thing so prominently displayed on Casey's leonine throat. After answering him she was able to finish her breakfast in relative peace...even if it wasn't as comfortably or as carefree as before.
When Casey took the last sip of her third cup of post-breakfast coffee, she raised sad eyes to meet Liv's, realizing that she couldn't put off the end of the meal any longer. Reluctantly, they settled the bill and said their goodbyes in the parking lot of the restaurant behind the women's rental car. Casey couldn't hide her sorrow as she hugged Julie and Chris to her. Then she marched over to her father, presenting herself at attention, head held high even through her tears.
Matt took Casey's hands into his own and sweetly rested his forehead to her own. Standing like that, father whispered to daughter until daughter wrapped her arms around father's neck and held on until he gently extracted himself from her embrace. He kissed her forehead once then sent her on to the car.
Olivia was accepting a fierce goodbye hug from Chris when Matt finally shooed his son away, admonishing him for monopolizing the detective. Chris grinned and countered that it was actually Casey that was doing that, if anyone cared to notice. Then he half-heartedly complained that the oldest child always got blamed for everything. Matt scowled at him until he left.
"Olivia," said Matt, pinning the brunette with an inscrutable sea-green gaze.
"Matt," said the younger woman, returning the colonel's gaze with one of her own.
They stood there for a moment, regarding each other solemnly as the air bristled around them until Matt finally broke, his features splitting into a wide grin. He gathered Olivia into a great bear hug, laughing all the while.
"One day I'm going to win that staring contest," he promised, pulling away to look at Liv's grin and her bright eyes.
"Dream on," retorted Olivia, chuckling. Soon though, their laughter faded.
"My little girl's crazy in love with you, Detective," said the giant of a man after a moment.
Olivia nodded and swallowed hard. "I love her, too, sir," she whispered, the lump in her throat shattering her voice into tiny shards of glimmering devotion.
"Good." The colonel's own voice was rougher than Olivia had ever heard it. "Because I can think of no one else on Earth that I would trust to keep her safe."
A single tear crested and broke over Olivia's eyelashes. "Thank you," she whispered sincerely. "I'll take good care of her. I promise."
"If you promise to take good care of yourself as well, I'll consider it a deal. And a damned good one at that."
Olivia flashed him a sideways grin. "I'll do my best. Though I think Casey might be better at that than me."
"That's entirely possible, Detective," he noted somberly but with a hint of humor. "That's entirely possible."
The two shared a last chuckle before Liv climbed into the driver's side of the rental and backed it out of their parking space.
Casey was pressed to the glass of her window, still waving though they had long ago driven out of range of even the sharpest eye. Olivia glanced at her lover, smiling softly at the redhead's ponytail and the old NYPD sweatshirt of hers that she'd borrowed to wear home, declaring that it smelled "happy". She topped the outfit off with a long Navy blue scarf that was a last minute gift from Julie, the 'Nifty Knitter'. Olivia had a matching one in Cayenne pepper.
"Casey?" Olivia merged the Camry onto the highway then stole another brief glance at the ADA.
"Yeah?" The younger woman finally conceded that her family could no longer see her waving and she settled back into her seat, readjusting her seatbelt.
"Can we come back here for Thanksgiving next year?"
Casey stared at Liv for a long moment, her eyes wide with shock. Then a grin as bright as the noonday sun took over her features.
"Yeah," she said as she reached for Liv's hand, entwining their fingers. "Absolutely."
Outside the car the jealous sun burned silently in the empty winter sky, bound by time and nature to guide them home.
---
"I'm telling you it was the dogs' fault!" Elliot Stabler slapped both of his hands on the top of his desk then promptly hissed with pain. He jerked both his arms into the air and gritted his teeth against the relentless stinging radiating from beneath two nearly identical bandages on either forearm.
"Dogs?" asked Fin Tutuola, ignoring Munch's snorts of laughter. "What dogs, E? You ain't got no dogs!"
Olivia Benson, just entering the squad for her first day back, gave Fin a quizzical look. "Dogs?" She peeled off her coat and turned to look at Elliot, doing a double take when she saw his bandages. "Oh my God, Elliot! What happened?" Putting two and two together, her eyes widened. "Somebody's dogs bit you?" When he didn't answer, she turned to Fin who threw up his hands.
"I ain't touchin' dat."
John came to her rescue. "Elliot's injuries were not inflicted by dogs, Olivia, but rather by a turkey."
"A turkey bit you?" Olivia's eyes couldn't have been wider if she'd just been told that Cragen had won this year's Miss NYC Drag Queen pageant.
"NO!" Elliot scowled darkly as he gingerly lowered his arms back to his desk. Even Fin was laughing now.
"The turkey in question was deceased at the time of the incident," clarified John.
For a second Olivia was completely confused. Then she closed her eyes and shook her head. "Oh no. Fried turkey again?" she asked knowingly.
John leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers over his midsection. "Barbecued," he said simply.
When one delicate eyebrow rose in question, he explained. "Turkey on grill. Children in yard. Children playing with dogs. Marine opens grill hood. Marine bastes turkey. Dogs smell turkey. Dogs run toward grill. Grill topples over. Marine catches turkey." He emphasized the last by mimicking a standard log-carry position.
Olivia covered her mouth with one hand in an attempt to squelch the laughter bubbling inside her. She turned her twinkling eyes on her partner and when she was able to speak without breaking down, she said, "Kathy's back in charge of the turkey next year, isn't she?"
"Yeah," he said dejectedly, his shoulders slumped. "She made me swear on the Bible."
That did it. Liv couldn't stop herself and she burst out laughing. Which immediately drew Cragen out of his office.
"Nice to have you back, Detective Benson," he greeted, seemingly less than pleased. "Now that we're all here, do you think we could get to work? There are some loose ends to tie up with the Marshall case, if I'm not mistaken." He turned to glare at Munch and Fin as well. "And you two have some witnesses to interview about that tower thing, don't you? So let's get to it, people." When he was done giving his terse orders, he marched back to his office and slammed the door.
"What's with Cragen?" asked Olivia, still blinking at the captain's tone.
"Well," said John. "Since you were off to sunnier climes for your Thanksgiving dinner, the Stablers found themselves with an extra place at their holiday table. To which they invited our intrepid captain."
"So?" That didn't explain anything.
If possible, Elliot's features became even more glum. "He was standing with me by the grill when it fell over," he explained. "The turkey was so hot that...that..."
Ever helpful--particularly when it was at someone else's expense--John finished Elliot's thought. "He threw it to Cragen. Who caught it in much the same way Elliot had." His grin as he spoke was positively evil.
"You mean--?"
"Dey got matchin' gauze thingies," said Fin, grimacing with empathetic pain.
Olivia looked from Elliot to her captain's ominously quiet office and back again. She didn't know whether to laugh again...or run. "Uh Elliot, we've got this Marshall thing. Maybe we should--"
"Right behind you, Liv," he said, already shrugging carefully into his coat and shepherding Olivia toward the door. He was ecstatic to have the focus of the conversation on something else. Anything else. "Remember that kid, Wayne? I think he's lying about where he was the night Amy was attacked. I think he was with Bobby Marshall. We're going to take another run at him; see if he changes his story."
"Oh. Okay." Olivia grabbed her own coat from the back of her chair where she had practically just deposited it.
"New scarf?" asked Elliot when they were through the doors, watching as his partner wound a long swath of knitted yarn around her neck. He raised an eyebrow of his own, eyeing the item dubiously. "What color is that anyway?"
"Cayenne pepper, I think. It was a gift from Casey's brother's girlfriend, Julie." When she was through donning her scarf, Olivia caught her partner's knowing grin. "What?"
"A gift from Casey's brother's girlfriend?" He smirked. "So I take it this little vacation...went well?"
There was no mistaking his meaning and color flooded the female detective's cheeks. "Let's just say that I have a lot to be thankful for this year," she said, smiling enigmatically.
Elliot took a moment to study his partner, looking for anything amiss there amidst her easy grin and her relaxed demeanor. He found nothing.
"Good to hear it, partner," he said, clapping her on the back goodnaturedly. "And can I just say..."
"Yeah?" Liv glanced at him uneasily, afraid of what he might say. He winked at her playfully.
"It's about damn time, Liv," he said, grinning. "It's about damn time."
---
fin
Hope you enjoyed it!
Twoodles!
DiNovia
by DiNovia
Fandom: L&O:SVU
Pairing: Casey/Olivia
Rating: NC-17/MA
Spoilers: "Night", "Day"
Notes: Sequel to The Good Earth, which was based on fewthistle's Look Homeward, Angel .
This seems to be the first in a series of C/O stories based on holidays. Be on the lookout for the next one, dealing with Christmas/New Year's, coming to an LJ near you.
Part Three
---
"Here. Let me."
Olivia took the delicate gold chain from Casey's trembling fingers and unclasped it, her unexpected dexterity belying her all-consuming need. She handed the chain and its charm to the redhead who laid it on the ebony dresser in front of her.
Dinner downstairs at the inn's four star restaurant had been a frustrating experience for Casey. Liv had arranged it and had meant for it to be romantic, no doubt. And it had been! But every time Liv had lifted another gourmet morsel of food to her mouth with her sterling silver fork, Casey had been reminded how much happier she would have been with a slice of cold pizza and a warm Coke if only that had meant she'd spent the preceding two hours licking something--champagne, chocolate, a nice merlot; it wouldn't have mattered--off every inch of Olivia Benson's beautiful body.
Now back in their warm room with the ghost of Olivia's touch cooling at the nape of her neck, Casey's heart pounded in her chest with the urgency of a red alert klaxon. When she felt Olivia press her lips softly to the curve of her shoulder, she almost fell apart on the spot.
"Olivia," she breathed, stark longing and desire present in the simple exhalation.
"Shhh..." hushed the older woman. Slowly, she unclasped the catch between the younger woman's shoulder blades and brought her hands up to brush the straps of the little black dress from milky shoulders that glowed in the amber firelight. "Don't let it drop just yet," she whispered, leaning distractingly close to the attorney. Close enough, in fact, that the spicy-musky scent she wore made Casey's mouth water. "I want to see you."
Casey swallowed heavily and nodded, too unsure of her voice to say anything. She felt Olivia's fingers drop to the small of her back in order to release the tiny zipper there and then she felt herself gently turned so that she was facing the detective and her smoldering eyes. She held her arms crossed over her torso, knowing that when she relaxed them the dress would simply fall to the burnished hardwood floor, unwanted and unnecessary.
Olivia stepped back and let her gaze linger on the young attorney. Casey was, very simply, the picture of tender vulnerability and want. Slowly...hungrily...Liv took in everything. Casey's pale, bare shoulders, the way she clutched the slackened fabric of her dress to her body, her long legs, the shimmering desire in her dark jade eyes... The older woman was completely captivated.
"Let it go, Casey," she ordered softly.
The redhead didn't hesitate. She never took her eyes from Olivia as she dropped her arms to her sides, letting her dress flutter to the floor with a swish. Olivia's only outward reaction was a slight widening of her eyes and a sharp intake of breath. Something in the detective coalesced in that moment and the very air around her seemed to change. It was as if she somehow became sharper and more defined. A tiny, almost predatory smile dusted her lips and she took two deceptively leisurely steps closer to the counselor.
"God," she whispered. She licked her bottom lip in anticipation. "Gorgeous."
Unable to tear her eyes away, Liv tenderly cupped Casey's breasts in her warm hands and lowered her mouth to one dusky and swiftly tightening nipple.
"Ungh..." Casey threw her head back as soon as she felt Olivia's searing tongue curl around her pebbled flesh. "Liv..." Her long red tresses whispered along her spine.
Olivia blessed the other nipple with her attentions before slowly descending Casey's body, worshipping as she went. She dragged her fingers lightly over skin that shimmered with goosebumps. She nipped at tender places just below Casey's ribcage and swirled her tongue into the shallow vessel that was her navel. Taking a deep, steadying breath, she hooked her thumbs in the thin straps of the attorney's lurid green panties and pulled, slowly lowering them to reveal the beauty that lay beneath.
Lured like a moth to flame, Olivia leaned forward and pressed small, burning kisses to the seductive place where Casey's inner thigh met her hip.
Her voice shaking, Casey pleaded with the detective. "P-please, Liv. Bed." She took a steadying breath of her own. "Can't s-stand."
Olivia grinned at the younger woman from her kneeling position and quickly unbuckled the straps on her sexy black heels. Carefully, she helped Casey step out of them and the tangle of dress and panties beneath her feet. Then, moving faster than Casey thought was possible, Liv stood, wound her fingers in Casey's silky hair and plundered her lips and mouth with a kiss designed to lay waste to whatever strength the attorney might have had left.
When she pulled away, she grasped the younger woman's hands in her own and began to pull her towards the big bed. "I'll help you," she whispered against the alabaster skin of Casey's long, leonine throat. Before either of them knew it, they were at the edge of the bed and Olivia turned with Casey in her arms and tumbled her into its luxurious depths.
She fell into Casey's intoxicating embrace like a woman dying of thirst. Heat like she had never known immolated her to her very core and she raged over Casey's body, pale and fine like desert sand, divining for the sweet, cool relief of her lover's liquid release.
"Want you..." Blinded by her desperation, she didn't even realize that she was still fully clothed.
Casey, however, was keenly aware of that fact and she began to tug at Liv's starched white shirt, as bright and relentless as the noonday Sun. "Need to feel you..." she begged and Olivia--as lost as she was--heard Casey's plea and slowed down only long enough to pull her shirt and the white cami beneath it straight over her head, discarding both with an utter lack of conscious thought.
Casey was absolutely struck dumb by the sight before her, as if caught unawares by the revelation of the Divine in the wilderness. She rose from the bed with a hiss of pleasure like morning dew made steam by the gaze of The Eye of Heaven and captured Liv's lips in a boiling kiss. Her fingers fumbled with the button holding the detective's black tuxedo slacks to her body. Impatient to the point of carelessness, she almost tore the button from its mooring before she finally unfastened it. She made short work of the zipper and began pushing the fabric off Liv's hips.
Olivia's hands joined in the quest to rid her body of the last of her clothing and soon she was finally bare to Casey's touch. Pulling away from their mouths' ecstatic connection, Casey could have wept.
"Oh, God..." It was all she had the strength to say.
With hands made deft by deepest need, she cupped and cradled and caressed; she touched and teased and tempted until she was filled with awe-tinged hunger. She raised turned copper eyes bright with lust and locked gazes with Olivia.
"Take me," she ordered, her soft voice edged with steel. "Take me now, Olivia. I want you inside me." She licked her bottom lip. "I want you to make me scream."
Together they fell back to the bed, hands clutching, bodies entwining, mouths kissing and biting and soothing the marks that stung. Like rushing flood waters seeking their own level, they raced for the depths until the whole world stilled, balancing precariously in Olivia's hand as she cupped Casey for a long, breathless moment. Then slowly--ever so slowly--she entered the younger woman. She had her other arm wrapped securely around Casey's curvaceous hips and she rested her burning forehead against the redhead's taut stomach.
Olivia groaned as her eyes fluttered closed.
"You're so wet," she breathed, pressing kisses into and around Casey's navel. She delved deeper, letting the liquescent incandescence of her lover's secret places suffuse her, drowning in their molten recesses. She wanted to stay there, still and golden, forever... And she would have if not for Casey's quiet plea.
"Olivia, please... Need you... Now..."
Her hips rolled beneath Liv's touch like the soft sea, seeking her salvation, her satiation from those long fingers. Olivia matched Casey's rocking heartbeat for heartbeat. She held tight, clutching the redhead's waist like a shipwreck survivor clutching the last of her hope in the dark waters.
"Casey..." Olivia hid her face against her lover's heaving belly then turned without warning and bit the spot where Casey's hipbone flared. Casey cried out with the flash of sensual pain and as quickly as it burned, it was soothed by Olivia's sweet, soft mouth. The brunette increased her pace until the two of them were made whirlwind and their blood howled in their ears.
"Liv... Yes..." Casey's voice was tight, strained. She struggled to keep from being flayed alive by Olivia's passion, from having her bones shatter in the wake of Olivia's powerful touch unleashed. She tangled her fingers in her lover's dark locks and held on, her whole world fusing into one whirling, cacophonic maelstrom until finally it broke apart into jagged, flaming pieces that seemed to herald the end of Everything.
Casey screamed.
Olivia's own catastrophic release followed on the heels of Casey's, triggered by the young woman's unrelenting aftershocks. They vibrated through their intimate connection all the way to the brunette's core like a devastating surge of power, her body the willing conduit. She lay entwined with her lover and gulped air into her tortured lungs.
When she was finally able to move again, to see again, she slowly unwound herself from Casey's embrace and reached up to capture the attorney's passion-bruised full lips in a heartbreaking kiss.
"Are you okay?" she asked softly when they separated. She sifted strands of red-gold through gentle fingers.
Instead of answering, Casey responded with her own question. "Are you?" Her emerald eyes were so bright, so clear, Olivia might have sworn under oath that they were forged from gemstone and not real at all.
"Yeah," she said, grinning beautifully. She leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the corner of Casey's mouth. "I'm perfect."
Casey searched Liv's bark-brown eyes for any hint of uncertainty and found none. She smirked at her lover and said, "Well, duh! Tell me something I don't already know."
Olivia glanced at Casey briefly, an unreadable expression coloring her features. Finally she took a deep breath.
"Okay," she said with only a hint of disquiet in her voice. "I'm in love with you."
---
Olivia slowly walked down the center aisle of the dimly lit room. Depressing organ music played softly in the background and the air was thick with the cloying perfume of dozens of lilies, tastefully arranged and displayed around the chapel.
Elliot and Fin stood quietly talking half way down the aisle but as she approached them they stopped and Elliot sneered viciously at her.
"Nice work, Partner," he ground out through a clenched jaw, clearly disgusted.
"Why's she even here?" snorted Fin and together the two men turned their backs on her.
Stung and confused, Olivia continued on. She wondered whose funeral it was, whether or not she knew the victim. Clearly Elliot and Fin did.
She encountered Cragen next and he was consoling an obviously grieving Munch. Amy Solway? Maybe John's friend had finally succumbed to her debilitating disease. As she moved to offer her colleague her own comfort, Cragen stepped in front of her.
"He doesn't want to talk to you, Olivia. Just go."
She started to protest, to ask why, to ask what she had done, but Cragen shook his head. "Go, Olivia. It's better this way."
The lump in Olivia's throat burned fiercely and she felt tears begin to gather in her eyes though she was determined not to let them fall. Why were her friends so angry with her? What had she done that she couldn't remember doing? She stumbled on and found herself standing beside Arthur Branch who was shaking his head sadly.
"She told me after her first case that she didn't want the job. I told her she would. That I'd chosen her especially for the position. And just when she started to really want it, this happens." The big man turned and looked at Olivia, his face a mask of scorn. "I hope you're happy, Detective," he spat and he walked away.
Olivia watched him go, stunned by his harsh words. She turned back toward the casket but couldn't bring herself to take the necessary steps to continue toward it. Who could he mean? Who had he chosen and for what position?
A flash of red caught her mind's eye and she turned, looking for the owner of those Autumn tresses amongst the other mourners. Her eyes darted around the room, searching for that face, for those turned-copper eyes. She was nowhere to be found. Except...
Standing by themselves in a tight knot of familial despair were Matt and Chris Novak and Julie Roberts. Julie's face was streaked with tears but her eyes were filled with hatred. Even still, they were not as hard and as merciless as the twin looks given her by the colonel and his son. Chris's face was red with rage and he took a menacing step toward Olivia only to be stopped by his father. Once Matthew Novak had his son under control, he turned and made the short journey to where the detective stood himself.
For a long moment, he said nothing. Only stood at attention as his eyes became cruel and implacable.
Finally, he said one thing. "It should have been you." Then he turned and walked away, gathering what was left of his family in his arms as he wept openly for his crushing loss.
Reluctantly, Olivia turned back toward the casket. Bile rose in her throat and bitter tears welled in her eyes. She knew then. Knew beyond a shadow of a doubt the name of the deceased. But still she couldn't make herself believe.
She thought, If I stand here and don't look... If I never look, it's not real. She's still here. She's still with me. If I never look.
"Oh, you'll look," said a viciously dark voice. Involuntarily, the brunette turned towards it. She wiped away her tears as if afraid to have them discovered.
"Mother?"
Serena Benson snarled a grotesque version of a smile and raised a glass to her daughter, clear liquid sloshing over its side. "The one and only."
Olivia looked back at the casket, noting dispassionately the cream-colored satin lining the inside of the lid. "I can't look, Mother."
"Maybe not. But you will. After all, this is your fault. All your fault." When Olivia turned pleading, desperate eyes toward her, she laughed. "What?" she asked, taking another drink from her never empty glass. The ice tinkled as she moved and it sounded like gunshots and screams to the detective. "What were you expecting? It is your fault, daughter mine. Everything is your fault. My whole horrible, useless life was YOUR FAULT! NOW LOOK WHAT YOU'VE DONE!"
Serena Benson lunged at Olivia and shoved her forward. The younger woman lost her balance and found herself catching it on the edge of the open casket. Unable to look anywhere else, she looked down. Down at Casey Novak, her eyes open and haunted, bruises and cuts marring her once perfect face. A shattered cut-crystal vase lay on her chest and a dozen red roses, their blooms crushed and stained with black blood, lay strewn around her. Her dead eyes sought out Olivia.
"You left me alone to die," she accused softly, her voice hollow and empty. "You left me all alone."
"No!"
"NO!"
Olivia bolted straight up in the unfamiliar bed. Sweat beaded on her forehead and her tortured lungs once again gasped for air, this time out of fear and not carnal satisfaction. She tried to shake the nightmare images from her vision but instead found herself hugging her knees to her bare torso as she stared into the distance, still caught somewhere in the dream.
She didn't feel Casey Novak's arms around her.
"Liv? Honey, it's okay. It was just a nightmare. Just a dream."
Casey's voice was soft and soothing despite the terrified pounding of her heart. Soundly and blissfully asleep in the cradle of their new intimacy, she was completely unprepared for Olivia's gut-wrenching cry in the dark. She tried to calm her breathing, to hide her own fear while attempting to quiet her lover's. Soon she realized her efforts were having no effect...on either of them.
"Honey? Liv, look at me. Look at me." Trembling herself, Casey held the smaller woman tightly, her warm, dry hands briskly rubbing the detective's arms as if to ward off a chill.
"Casey?" Even though she was calling for her, Olivia was not consciously aware of her lover's presence. The spoken name was a frightful thing, broken and desolate, like a dove dying in the soft grass below a plate-glass window. Whichever Casey she saw, it was not the beautiful woman next to her becoming more and more unsettled as the moment wore on.
"Yes, Casey. It's Casey. Please look at me. Olivia." The younger woman cupped the brunette's face in her hands and tried to turn her. She failed utterly. "Olivia," she snapped. "Wake up right now!"
Something in that tone--the desperation, maybe, or the crack of command--broke through Olivia's nightmarish prison and she took a sudden deep breath. Blinking, she turned toward her lover, her stiffened limbs melting into the younger woman's embrace before she even realized what she was doing.
"Shhh," hushed the redhead as she rocked Olivia gently. "I'm right here."
For ten blissful seconds Olivia soaked up Casey's tenderly offered comfort before the dream began to creep back into her mind, souring the sweetness of it. Embarrassed and emotionally uncomfortable, Olivia struggled to free herself from the counselor's embrace.
"I'm fine," she said by way of explanation but she couldn't meet Casey's eyes when she said it. "I'm okay."
The ADA shook her head. "No you aren't. Liv, was it--? Do you wake up that way a lot?" Concern flooded her voice but Olivia, defensive and wary, mistook it for pity.
"It's nothing, Casey. Don't worry about it." She began to turn, intending to roll over and go back to sleep if she could. Casey did not let her.
"It is not nothing, Olivia," countered the young woman angrily, stopping her. "You're as white as a sheet. You sat bolt upright in this bed and wouldn't respond to me. That's not nothing." Casey looked at the older woman for a long moment, gauging her next words and actions carefully. Finally she leaned forward and gingerly put her arms around Olivia's rigid body. Gently, she rested her chin on one bronze shoulder. "Are they about work?" she asked quietly. The anger in her voice had faded away. "Do you have nightmares like that every night?"
What are you going to do, Benson? Liv asked herself. You said you loved her and--miracle of miracles--she says she loves you back. Are you going to let a stupid nightmare ruin that?
"Not...every night, no," whispered the detective. "Most but not all."
Viscerally aware that she'd just entered an emotional mine field, Casey trod as carefully as she ever had. "Are they about work?" She had moved closer to her lover and now had one arm wrapped around her waist. She rubbed circles on Liv's belly, hoping to soothe her.
Olivia sighed. The last thing she wanted to do was to burden Casey with this idiotic weakness. The very last thing she wanted to do was to admit the content of this particular nightmare and the real reason she'd been having it--or a version of it--since the first time she'd closed her eyes that night in the hospital with Casey.
"Please talk to me, Olivia," pleaded Casey. She tightened her arms around her lover and brushed her lips over her shoulder. "I love you. I want to help if I can."
Olivia didn't think Casey could help her with this particular affliction but... What did you tell Elliot? She makes you want to make things different? So make them different, Benson. Here's your chance.
"Sometimes they're about work, yeah," she admitted quietly.
"Sometimes," repeated the young redhead. "But not this time?"
Olivia shook her head but wouldn't say anymore.
Something in her older lover's reluctance made Casey suspicious and she sighed. "Zergin," she muttered. She didn't know how she knew but she did. Would it ever end? She herself had stopped having nightmares about that night right around the time Kyle Ackerman had held a gun to her head in court. Apparently the shock of the one had disrupted the terrible routine of the other and most of her dreams--when she dreamt at all now--were either a discordant rehashing of whatever awful case she was working on or a chaotic farce reminiscent of a performance of Cirque de Soleil put on by schizophrenics. Either way, it was a relief.
"Tell me," she whispered.
Olivia shook her head again. "It was... You were... It was my fault. That's all. My fault."
Casey frowned. "You know that isn't true. Liv, you weren't there--"
"I should have been there! I shouldn't have left you--"
"You went to get us coffee! You couldn't have known!"
Olivia let her head fall forward. "That's not why I left," she said, her voice so low that Casey almost couldn't hear her. "It... It was the flowers."
Casey's frown deepened and became more confused. "The flowers? What about them?"
Suddenly it all seemed ridiculous to Olivia. Leaving Casey's office so she didn't have to see the ADA's reaction to the flowers? So she didn't have to find out who they were from and how Casey felt about that person as it happened? So she didn't have to smile and "make nice" while burning with jealousy?
Fucking stupid reasons to leave her alone, Benson. Fucking stupid reasons to almost lose her.
She chuckled to herself under her breath, a derisive and self-accusatory sound. Realization dawned for Casey at that moment.
"You were jealous." She wanted to laugh with the absurdity of it all but she knew better. Instead she held Olivia more tightly. "You were jealous and there I was, wishing they were from you."
Slowly, Olivia turned to look at Casey. "You were?"
Casey nodded, smiling as she pressed a kiss to Olivia's bare shoulder. "We're quite a pair, aren't we, Detective?"
"What do you mean?" Olivia did not see the source of the counselor's amusement.
"We didn't kiss for the first time until almost four months after that night. What took us so long?"
Olivia Benson didn't know whether to laugh or hit something. Why wasn't Casey more concerned? She'd left her alone to face Zergin because of some flowers, for God's sake! Why wasn't she angry?
If I'd only kept it together that night, I would have shot that fuck before he ever laid a finger on her. And she acts like she could care less.
"Casey, you're--"
"--not taking this seriously enough?" finished the young woman, raising one delicate eyebrow at her lover. "Don't you think you're doing that enough for the both of us?" Before Liv could protest further, Casey gently tipped the older woman's chin toward her and captured her lips in a deep and tender kiss. When they parted, she nuzzled Olivia's cheek.
"Let it go," she ordered softly. She twined her body around the older woman seductively, her brief kisses intended less to comfort and more to entice. "For me, Olivia. You did nothing wrong and I won't give up who I am now, what Zergin made me, to save myself a few bruises and a split lip."
As spellbound as she was by Casey's bewitching mouth, Olivia still tried one last time to make her case. "It wasn't 'a few bruises and a split lip', Casey," she countered. "It--"
"It happened," cut in the attorney as she laid a burning chain of kisses along Olivia's throat. "Nothing can change that." She raised eyes made emerald by her growing passion and gazed at Olivia. "I survived, Liv," she told the woman. "I'm stronger because of it." Cupping Olivia's face in her warm hands, she drew the detective to her and captured her mouth with her own. Their tongues danced together languidly, the heat they generated consuming the two of them. The urgency quickly building between them made their hearts thrum painfully in their chests.
When they finally separated, Casey's eyes glittered in the dim light from the street outside their room. "Stop trying to save that Casey, Olivia. She's gone." She lay back against the pillows and pulled Olivia with her, moaning when she felt the weight of the older woman's body settle on her own. "Be with me instead. The one who loves you."
With little more than a passing doubt, Olivia Benson took a shallow breath and surrendered herself to Casey's love, slipping body and soul into its unfathomable depths.
When she finally slept again that night, she did not dream.
---
Olivia braced herself against the wall of the marble shower stall and let the scalding water pound against her cranky, aching muscles. It was their last day in DC and they had nothing touristy planned beyond brunch with Casey's family before they climbed in the rental and headed home.
Home, thought Olivia, as she waited for the hot water to work its magic on her poor back. Nice, quiet Manhattan. Where I never have to see another monument, museum, or landmark ever again.
Not that she hadn't enjoyed every minute of it because she had. In a definite fish-out-of-water sort of way, yes, but she'd still had a blast. It was as if she'd crammed every single field trip from her entire school career into one extended weekend. All those trips she'd missed; first because her mother had been too drunk to sign the permission slips or had lost them and later because her mother had forbidden the trips, fearing that Olivia would use them as a jumping off point to leaving her for good. High-school-aged Olivia had had to be content with souvenirs brought to her by a few trusted friends: a stuffed gorilla on a stick from the Philadelphia Zoo, an official FBI baseball cap from Quantico, a book of exhibits from the Smithsonian...
All that frustrated childhood excitement had surged back this trip, sweetened by the excitement of sharing the experience with Casey, making Olivia overestimate her energy levels as she tried her damnedest to see everything there was to see in one three-day-weekend.
"Never again," she whispered, almost jumping out of her skin when a voice behind her said, "Never again what?"
"Jesus FUCKING Christ! Casey, what the Hell?" She made a move to face the 'shower invader' but strong hands urged her to remain as she was. She couldn't decide whether she was angry or embarrassed by not hearing her lover enter the steam-filled glass cubicle.
"I thought you'd like some help washing your back," said Casey innocently as she reached for the soap on the ledge next to her. She quickly limned her hands with a generous coating of lather and began working it into Liv's back, smugly noting how knotted muscles hastily melted under her touch.
"Unghhh..." groaned the detective. The annoyance generated by being startled dissipated under her lover's sure and confident touch and Liv bowed her back, its long, graceful curve suggesting appreciative felinity. For several long, blissful moments Olivia enjoyed the feeling of Casey's hands as they made short work of the aches and pains she'd begun to fear were permanent. Until...
A new sensation caused Olivia's eyes to snap open.
"Um...Casey?"
"Yes?" The attorney's voice was lower and softer than usual and Liv could almost hear the predatory smile she wore.
"Honey, that's not my back..." Her eyes fluttered shut and she swallowed reflexively. Were those stars she was seeing?
"Good," growled the younger woman as her particularly precise touch deepened. "Because technically I'm no longer 'washing'..." She stepped forward and fitted her silky wet body to Olivia's, encircling the older woman's waist with her left arm in an attempt to support them both. She inclined her head and licked a blistering path from the nape of Olivia's neck to one bronzed shoulder, pausing only so that she could sink her teeth into that lovely, firm musculature.
Olivia's head jerked backward and she hissed a long susurration of pleasure and pain. "Oh, God," she rasped, her voice torn asunder by sudden passion. She widened her stance slightly in order to keep her balance and found that movement allowed Casey to deepen her touch even further. Blindly she turned her head towards her lover, meeting and capturing her achingly lovely mouth in a crushing kiss.
Casey's hips rocked into Olivia's, keeping time with her thrusts. Her left hand glided up over taut muscles until it found its hoped for destination, her fingertips teasing Liv's dusky peaks. The detective moaned into Casey's blazing mouth as her nipples tightened and then she suddenly pulled away. "Harder," she murmured between the breathless kisses she laid along the redhead's jawline. "Please..."
Casey was only too happy to comply and she roughly widened Olivia's stance even further with one well-placed and powerful thigh. She drove her fingers harder into her lover. Urgently. Relentlessly.
"Fuck, Liv," she groaned, pressing her face hard against Olivia's long throat. She gasped with the weight of her burgeoning desire.
The raw language from the ADA set Liv's thighs quivering. Wildly, she pushed backward, her need overwhelming her caution in this precarious position. Her bloodless hands flattened against the marble as they strained to keep her braced and upright.
Casey's hungry and unstoppable mouth strove for every inch of skin within her reach, kissing and biting whatever she found. She whorled her tongue around Olivia's ear and sucked the sensitive lobe in her mouth, tugging on it gently, insistently. She moaned deliciously as the ache between her thighs grew vast.
Olivia's body was on high alert. She felt everything with a painful intensity; the sultry water raining over her body, Casey's breasts pressed against her shoulder blades, Casey's hips rocking into hers from behind, Casey's fingers delving or teasing depending on their location, Casey's ferocious mouth laying waste to the last of her resistance... Her blood pounded in her chest and against the inside of her skull and tunnel vision stole her eyesight, the edges succumbing to fiery flashes of light. Somewhere in the back of her mind she wondered if she was going to pass out.
Then...
One breath. One heartbeat. The world began to implode.
One breath. One heartbeat. Time, thought, sensation; all coalesced, fusing into one infinitesimal pinpoint of white-hot incandescence.
One breath. One heartbeat. The single blazing dust-mote that encompassed all her awareness throbbed and pulsated savagely until--suddenly, totally--it stilled, cold and utterly frozen.
Olivia's eyes were wide and astonished. She felt it. She felt it coming; the blissful destruction, the rapturous devastation.
A percussion of silence struck then, holding the moment and both of them within it suspended. Time stretched out of all proportion and Olivia was sure she could hear the screaming of her asphyxiated blood cells.
Hold on, hold on, she thought desperately. Don't pass out...don't...don't...
The roaring detonation of Olivia's exquisite release was like the ground zero blast of an atom bomb and Casey held on for dear life, keenly aware that she was clinging to raw, untamable lightning: electric, cataclysmic, and so very lethal.
But oh, to die that delirious death...
A couple of hours later, somewhere between her first and second heaping plates of piping hot eggs and crisp bacon, Olivia seemed to come to and she paused in the shoveling of food into her mouth to gape at Casey. Or more specifically, her neck. Or rather, what was on it. Unhidden. Unmistakable.
Just above Casey's collarbone, shining like a blood-red moon in a starless sky, was a still-purpling love-bite.
It could be nothing else. In fact, Olivia was sure that if she were to examine it more closely she would find evidence of her teeth marring that pale, porcelain skin. And further evidence, perhaps... Of a raging passion unleashed in those long, beautiful arms. Of pushing Casey against the wall of the shower while pinning her wrists over her head...
Olivia began to choke.
Chris Novak, sitting nearest to her, began to pound on her back as all conversation at the table came to a screeching halt. "Are you okay?" he asked earnestly.
Casey's worried eyes found her lover's wide mocha ones. "Liv?"
Olivia held up one hand and grabbed her water glass with the other. After a few hurried gulps she cleared her throat. "Fine," she gasped. "I'm fine." She smiled a little in an attempt to convince them.
Conversation slowly returned to normal. Casey tore a cinnamon bun to pieces while continuing to regale her father and Julie with stories about some of her funnier moments in court. There were few enough of those considering the types of cases she usually tried, but those there were she enhanced with her own signature storytelling style until she had everyone laughing with her. Chris kept half an ear on his sister while he leaned closer to Olivia, who was still struggling though she had managed to get herself back under some semblance of control.
"You sure you're okay, Olivia?" he asked. Then he caught the burning line of her gaze. Following it, he finally saw the source of the detective's distress. He almost snorted.
"Oh yeah," he said, nodding to Casey. "She's been wearing that like a badge of honor all morning. You didn't notice?" When Olivia shook her head 'no', he continued on. "You didn't get much sleep last night, did you? She couldn't be prouder of that if it were an engagement ring!"
Liv--in the middle of another sip of water--began to sputter all over again. This time Chris couldn't help but laugh at her distress.
"You're too easy, Detective," he grinned. "You're going to have to get a thicker skin if you're going to hang around with this family very much."
"I'll keep that in mind," squeaked Olivia. She smiled politely as Matt turned to her to ask a question, profoundly thankful when it didn't have anything to do with that...that thing so prominently displayed on Casey's leonine throat. After answering him she was able to finish her breakfast in relative peace...even if it wasn't as comfortably or as carefree as before.
When Casey took the last sip of her third cup of post-breakfast coffee, she raised sad eyes to meet Liv's, realizing that she couldn't put off the end of the meal any longer. Reluctantly, they settled the bill and said their goodbyes in the parking lot of the restaurant behind the women's rental car. Casey couldn't hide her sorrow as she hugged Julie and Chris to her. Then she marched over to her father, presenting herself at attention, head held high even through her tears.
Matt took Casey's hands into his own and sweetly rested his forehead to her own. Standing like that, father whispered to daughter until daughter wrapped her arms around father's neck and held on until he gently extracted himself from her embrace. He kissed her forehead once then sent her on to the car.
Olivia was accepting a fierce goodbye hug from Chris when Matt finally shooed his son away, admonishing him for monopolizing the detective. Chris grinned and countered that it was actually Casey that was doing that, if anyone cared to notice. Then he half-heartedly complained that the oldest child always got blamed for everything. Matt scowled at him until he left.
"Olivia," said Matt, pinning the brunette with an inscrutable sea-green gaze.
"Matt," said the younger woman, returning the colonel's gaze with one of her own.
They stood there for a moment, regarding each other solemnly as the air bristled around them until Matt finally broke, his features splitting into a wide grin. He gathered Olivia into a great bear hug, laughing all the while.
"One day I'm going to win that staring contest," he promised, pulling away to look at Liv's grin and her bright eyes.
"Dream on," retorted Olivia, chuckling. Soon though, their laughter faded.
"My little girl's crazy in love with you, Detective," said the giant of a man after a moment.
Olivia nodded and swallowed hard. "I love her, too, sir," she whispered, the lump in her throat shattering her voice into tiny shards of glimmering devotion.
"Good." The colonel's own voice was rougher than Olivia had ever heard it. "Because I can think of no one else on Earth that I would trust to keep her safe."
A single tear crested and broke over Olivia's eyelashes. "Thank you," she whispered sincerely. "I'll take good care of her. I promise."
"If you promise to take good care of yourself as well, I'll consider it a deal. And a damned good one at that."
Olivia flashed him a sideways grin. "I'll do my best. Though I think Casey might be better at that than me."
"That's entirely possible, Detective," he noted somberly but with a hint of humor. "That's entirely possible."
The two shared a last chuckle before Liv climbed into the driver's side of the rental and backed it out of their parking space.
Casey was pressed to the glass of her window, still waving though they had long ago driven out of range of even the sharpest eye. Olivia glanced at her lover, smiling softly at the redhead's ponytail and the old NYPD sweatshirt of hers that she'd borrowed to wear home, declaring that it smelled "happy". She topped the outfit off with a long Navy blue scarf that was a last minute gift from Julie, the 'Nifty Knitter'. Olivia had a matching one in Cayenne pepper.
"Casey?" Olivia merged the Camry onto the highway then stole another brief glance at the ADA.
"Yeah?" The younger woman finally conceded that her family could no longer see her waving and she settled back into her seat, readjusting her seatbelt.
"Can we come back here for Thanksgiving next year?"
Casey stared at Liv for a long moment, her eyes wide with shock. Then a grin as bright as the noonday sun took over her features.
"Yeah," she said as she reached for Liv's hand, entwining their fingers. "Absolutely."
Outside the car the jealous sun burned silently in the empty winter sky, bound by time and nature to guide them home.
---
"I'm telling you it was the dogs' fault!" Elliot Stabler slapped both of his hands on the top of his desk then promptly hissed with pain. He jerked both his arms into the air and gritted his teeth against the relentless stinging radiating from beneath two nearly identical bandages on either forearm.
"Dogs?" asked Fin Tutuola, ignoring Munch's snorts of laughter. "What dogs, E? You ain't got no dogs!"
Olivia Benson, just entering the squad for her first day back, gave Fin a quizzical look. "Dogs?" She peeled off her coat and turned to look at Elliot, doing a double take when she saw his bandages. "Oh my God, Elliot! What happened?" Putting two and two together, her eyes widened. "Somebody's dogs bit you?" When he didn't answer, she turned to Fin who threw up his hands.
"I ain't touchin' dat."
John came to her rescue. "Elliot's injuries were not inflicted by dogs, Olivia, but rather by a turkey."
"A turkey bit you?" Olivia's eyes couldn't have been wider if she'd just been told that Cragen had won this year's Miss NYC Drag Queen pageant.
"NO!" Elliot scowled darkly as he gingerly lowered his arms back to his desk. Even Fin was laughing now.
"The turkey in question was deceased at the time of the incident," clarified John.
For a second Olivia was completely confused. Then she closed her eyes and shook her head. "Oh no. Fried turkey again?" she asked knowingly.
John leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers over his midsection. "Barbecued," he said simply.
When one delicate eyebrow rose in question, he explained. "Turkey on grill. Children in yard. Children playing with dogs. Marine opens grill hood. Marine bastes turkey. Dogs smell turkey. Dogs run toward grill. Grill topples over. Marine catches turkey." He emphasized the last by mimicking a standard log-carry position.
Olivia covered her mouth with one hand in an attempt to squelch the laughter bubbling inside her. She turned her twinkling eyes on her partner and when she was able to speak without breaking down, she said, "Kathy's back in charge of the turkey next year, isn't she?"
"Yeah," he said dejectedly, his shoulders slumped. "She made me swear on the Bible."
That did it. Liv couldn't stop herself and she burst out laughing. Which immediately drew Cragen out of his office.
"Nice to have you back, Detective Benson," he greeted, seemingly less than pleased. "Now that we're all here, do you think we could get to work? There are some loose ends to tie up with the Marshall case, if I'm not mistaken." He turned to glare at Munch and Fin as well. "And you two have some witnesses to interview about that tower thing, don't you? So let's get to it, people." When he was done giving his terse orders, he marched back to his office and slammed the door.
"What's with Cragen?" asked Olivia, still blinking at the captain's tone.
"Well," said John. "Since you were off to sunnier climes for your Thanksgiving dinner, the Stablers found themselves with an extra place at their holiday table. To which they invited our intrepid captain."
"So?" That didn't explain anything.
If possible, Elliot's features became even more glum. "He was standing with me by the grill when it fell over," he explained. "The turkey was so hot that...that..."
Ever helpful--particularly when it was at someone else's expense--John finished Elliot's thought. "He threw it to Cragen. Who caught it in much the same way Elliot had." His grin as he spoke was positively evil.
"You mean--?"
"Dey got matchin' gauze thingies," said Fin, grimacing with empathetic pain.
Olivia looked from Elliot to her captain's ominously quiet office and back again. She didn't know whether to laugh again...or run. "Uh Elliot, we've got this Marshall thing. Maybe we should--"
"Right behind you, Liv," he said, already shrugging carefully into his coat and shepherding Olivia toward the door. He was ecstatic to have the focus of the conversation on something else. Anything else. "Remember that kid, Wayne? I think he's lying about where he was the night Amy was attacked. I think he was with Bobby Marshall. We're going to take another run at him; see if he changes his story."
"Oh. Okay." Olivia grabbed her own coat from the back of her chair where she had practically just deposited it.
"New scarf?" asked Elliot when they were through the doors, watching as his partner wound a long swath of knitted yarn around her neck. He raised an eyebrow of his own, eyeing the item dubiously. "What color is that anyway?"
"Cayenne pepper, I think. It was a gift from Casey's brother's girlfriend, Julie." When she was through donning her scarf, Olivia caught her partner's knowing grin. "What?"
"A gift from Casey's brother's girlfriend?" He smirked. "So I take it this little vacation...went well?"
There was no mistaking his meaning and color flooded the female detective's cheeks. "Let's just say that I have a lot to be thankful for this year," she said, smiling enigmatically.
Elliot took a moment to study his partner, looking for anything amiss there amidst her easy grin and her relaxed demeanor. He found nothing.
"Good to hear it, partner," he said, clapping her on the back goodnaturedly. "And can I just say..."
"Yeah?" Liv glanced at him uneasily, afraid of what he might say. He winked at her playfully.
"It's about damn time, Liv," he said, grinning. "It's about damn time."
---
fin
Hope you enjoyed it!
Twoodles!
DiNovia