![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drsquidloveSomeone Like You
by Dr Squidlove
drsquidlove @@@ livejournal.com
Oz/Law & Order: SVU crossover
Tobias Beecher's trying to rebuild his family in the shadow of the man he was in prison. Elliot Stabler's struggling to continue in the wake of divorce while his job eats away at his soul. It makes for an odd friendship, but it works.
Rated R for violence and explicit references to sexual violence.
Wordcount this post: 4394
Full headers are on chapter 1.
Oz is the property of Tom Fontana and HBO. Law & Order: SVU is the property of Dick Wolf and NBC. The characters are used without permission, but with much appreciation.
Someone Like You
chapter 4: Beer
by Dr Squidlove
Previously, in chapter 3, A social life:
Toby went to the conviction of Leo Markstrom's rapist, for no particular reason, certainly not in the hope of- Oh, hey, there's Chris Keller's clone, Detective Stabler. Surprisingly, Stabler invited him out to lunch. Even more surprisingly, they had a decent conversation, chatting about their kids, but when Toby called to meet up again, Stabler didn't seem interested.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Cragen gave him a nod as he accepted the report. "Don't beat yourself up over it, Elliot. It was a tough case."
It was surprisingly kind of the captain, considering Elliot's temper had made it all worse. "Shouldn't have gone down like that."
"Yeah, well, we're cops, not psychics. You've put in a long couple of days. Why don't you get out of here?"
Go home to that empty apartment to replay it all again? Elliot straightened. He didn't have to go home. Maybe. He'd been itching to call Toby, especially since hearing the disappointment in his voice when Elliot put him off the other day. Elliot gave Cragen an absent nod and fished out his phone on the way back to his desk.
"Hey, Elliot." Toby sounded surprised, like he'd given up already.
"Any chance you're free tonight?"
"Um. Yeah. Sure."
"You don't have Holly?"
"She's at my mother's."
It was ridiculous for Elliot to feel this eager. "My captain's kicking me out, and I need a beer like you wouldn't believe." Elliot tidied his desk, shoved a couple of folders in the drawer. "Toby?"
"A beer?"
Elliot checked his watch again. "Sorry, it's too late, isn't it? Maybe some other-"
"No, no, it's fine. I can come out for a beer. Where do you want to..."
"I know a hole in the wall on the Lower East Side." That was nearer to Brooklyn, at least. "Unless you've got a good place in your neighborhood; I'm the asshole dragging you out at-"
"No, it's, I can make it over there. It's no trouble."
"That's great." A beer and the distraction of Toby's company was exactly what Elliot needed.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Chris Keller was sitting in a dim corner of the wood-panelled sports bar in a shirt and tie, sleeves rolled up, eyes on a flat screen showing a football game. One amber beer rested on the table between his broad hands and one sat on a napkin in front of the empty seat across from him. Elliot was killing him with thoughtfulness.
Toby took a long breath. He could do this. One night of control was a bargain price for staring at Chris for an hour or two. Control, or he was going to make the biggest fucking idiot of himself, and he'd never have another chance. Toby could do this; he'd been in bars often enough since he got out. Of course in Franco's, he'd been focused on cock, not staring at Chris's ghost over a couple of tall frosty glasses of temptation.
It hadn't escaped his memory that his last binge had sprung from that first incredible kiss in the laundry room, Chris tasting like moonshine and love.
Elliot felt his stare, and the football game was forgotten with a wide smile. "Hey, Toby."
"Hi."
"I just asked for the pale on tap. Is that okay?"
No. But no way on earth was Toby about to tell Elliot he was an alcoholic. The beer could stay right there and get warm. He didn't sit yet. "That's fine. Do you know if the kitchen's still open? I wouldn't mind a snack." Maybe he could keep his hands occupied with fries instead of pulling on the beer.
"Maybe. Give it a go."
Fries were still on offer, thank god. Toby put in an order and went to join Elliot. "You're out of the sling."
"Finally." Elliot stretched his arm. There was a marine insignia tattoo sliding out from under the rolled-up sleeve. Maybe Elliot had killed people. Probably not as many as Chris.
"How is it being back on full duties?"
"It's been a long week. But the bad guy's gonna go down, even if he's not gonna go down for as long as we'd like, so..." Elliot shrugged. Feigned disinterest; Toby knew that shrug.
Toby rested his fingers on the smooth cold glass, beads of condensation slipping over his skin. He could smell the hops. He pushed it a couple of inches further away. "I couldn't do your job. Facing that shit every day?"
"You lived amongst that shit for eight years."
Toby huffed a laugh. He didn't think about it like that. "I just kept out of their way, as much as I could. I wasn't responsible for stopping people from doing what they do." Sometimes he was one of them.
Elliot took a pull from his beer. "I'd never make it pushing papers in an office to make a corporation money."
Him and Chris both. Toby had invented a thousand fantasies of Chris alive and magically pardoned, magically fitting into the domestic life. Abandoning the scams and the penchant for murder to play house with Toby and Holly and Harry as though the sheer force of their love could instil the impulse control it never did in Oz.
Chris whispered in his ear. Whaddya think, Tobe? Here's your neutered substitute, straining a business shirt and fucking tie, straight out of the genie's lamp. Think he could make you come like I did?
Maybe he could, Toby thought back. Maybe I'll find out.
Chris laughed. He's straight, you asshole. Genies always fuck with your wishes.
Toby leaned forward on his elbows, focusing hard on Elliot. "So what have you been up to lately that wasn't tainted with misery and violence? Have you seen your kids?" He caught himself breathing deep, trying to compare Elliot's scent to Chris, but all he could smell was that beer. He forced himself back.
"I took the twins to Coney Island at the weekend. They're still young enough that my wallet makes it worth being seen with me."
Toby grinned. "Do you go on the rides?"
"Ferris wheel. Doc won't let me on the bumper cars 'til my arm's back in shape."
"Not the Cyclone?"
"A man shouldn't ride roller coasters past his thirtieth birthday." He paused as the barman deposited a basket of fries between them. "Do you?"
"Hell, no. I always hated roller coasters." He would have gone on it with Elliot. Long drops and stomach-churning turns would have felt like old times.
Toby lifted his glass and drank. The taste burst through his mouth before he'd realised what he was doing, warmth stretching down his throat to his stomach as he swallowed, reaching up to spread across his face. Sober so long that the first sip went to his head.
"Toby? Is it all right? I'll drink it if you want something else." Elliot showed his own glass, already half-gone.
"No, it's... It's good." Good? His whole body wanted to crawl inside the glass, soak it in through his pores. It was a damned relief that Elliot drank beer, because if this had been a martini or a tumbler of Jameson, Toby wouldn't have stopped until he was on the floor. Toby could stop. His face was warm. He forced the glass back to the table and very deliberately chose a fry. Seven and a half years clean, gone in one sip.
Slumbering need awoke, and stretched, and roared. Toby shoved his hands in his lap before Elliot could see them shaking.
One mistake. He could do this.
"What about Holly? She like Coney Island?"
Holly. Think of Holly, make good choices. He pushed his fingers into his thighs until it hurt. He couldn't be a drunk fuck up for Holly. "Holly's terrified of the whole place. I took her just after I got out, we got as far as Nathan's, and she dragged me back to the D. She's not a fan of creaky wooden buildings."
Elliot's face softened, and Toby kicked himself for getting distracted. He didn't want to be one of Elliot's victims. He gave up too much of that already. Toby had never fully understood what Chris saw when he looked at him, but it wasn't a victim. Chris had given him a hard kick any time he acted like one. Toby would bet Elliot didn't kick his victims. Probably didn't tug them into dark corners, out of the guard's view, to fuck them, either.
"Holly likes museums. And the zoo. Any zoo, she's crazy about animals."
Elliot sipped, licked the foam off his lip, and Toby watched like it was pay-per-view. "Is she begging for a pet?" Amused blue eyes under that familiar sharp brow, high forehead. Elliot would taste like Chris if Toby kissed him, plus the tang of alcohol.
Holly and pets. "This week it's chickens. Last week it was a cat."
"Lucky you don't indulge her every whim, then."
Another mouthful of beer slid over Toby's tongue, cool and deliciously bitter. "I'm still learning how to look after us." The lingering aftertaste of hops said he was shit at that, but his damp fingertips stayed on the smooth, hard glass, making paths through the condensation.
Seven and a half years, he'd been sober. Seven and a half years, and now the taste was on his tongue, the memory of bright warm confidence nagging at him, and he took another careful sip. This was the confidence that got him though countless performance reviews, dinner with his grandmother, plenty of fights with Genevieve. "How come you invited me out to lunch after the trial?"
"Beat facing the mountain of paperwork on my desk."
Toby didn't want a pat answer. "Come on. You don't seem like a cop who regularly goes for burgers with random witnesses." Especially slutty gay ones. Or did he?
Elliot took a drink, avoiding Toby's eyes. Maybe he was going to tell the truth. "There've been a few cases lately... This one..." He lifted his newly-healed arm. "This happened at the trial after a school shooting. A playground of six year-olds."
Toby's hands closed tight around his glass.
"I've been in SVU for fourteen years. We get scumbags off the streets for a while but we don't cure anyone. Lives don't get fixed with a check from the insurance companies."
"I know."
He leaned in, elbows on the table. "That's why I wanted to talk to you. I needed to see someone who'd rebuilt his life. I need someone to convince me the girl forced into sex slavery while her mother was murdered is going to be able to step up and raise her little brother and sister. I need some hope that the little boy who survived the execution of his family by Columbian drug traffickers is going to find some peace in witness protection. We had a case a couple of years back, some famous anti-gay psychiatry professor who murdered his gay son's lover, beat his son, then sat in court and preached about how homosexuality was a perversion. After being raised like that, you think that kid's ever going to have a happy, healthy relationship?" Elliot sat back, seeming surprised by his own rant. "You've got a stable job, you and Holly are close. I'm sure your life isn't perfect, but tell me you're okay. Tell me she's okay."
Toby took a long pull from his beer, licked the last drop from his lips. "We're okay." Elliot's glass was empty. Toby's was half-gone, and warm. "It's my round. I'm going to get a whiskey, you want something stronger?" The words were rolling out as though the last nine years hadn't happened at all and this was just another night drinking with colleagues before driving drunkenly home.
"Sure."
Johnnie Walker Double Black Label was the best this dive had. Good enough. If Toby was going to allow himself this one mistake, he wasn't going to waste it on Sam Adams.
Elliot sniffed and tasted. "Nice."
Toby just breathed in for a moment. Divine. Hard to believe fucking everything up was this easy. He was flushing everything away to grasp an evening of twisted memories of his dead lover. Something near enough to Chris was holding Johnnie Walker to his lips, in no hurry to leave, and it was absolutely worth the price. Toby drank, eyes near-closing at the pleasure. Maybe Detective Stabler was a three beer queer, and Toby could ride his cock tonight. If Toby could have Mr Close Enough up his ass this fall from grace would be worth every drop.
Elliot was here looking for redemption. Toby had lost his hopes for redemption half a glass ago. Now he just wanted a fix. He wanted to suck Elliot's cock. Find out if all the rest of the details were perfect.
They talked and they drank. The alcohol loosened Elliot's tongue and Toby's inner alcoholic. Toby persuaded the bartender to let them have the bottle, and the world got soft at the edges; the words got soft in Toby's mouth. He was out of practise: nine years ago, a few glasses of whiskey would barely have touched the sides. This lazy, warm buzz was as good as he remembered.
"Have you tried dating?"
Elliot almost choked on his drink. "Dating?"
"You said it's been a year."
"No. No, I'm not, I don't... I barely got my ring off, you know?" He touched the pale band on the skin of his finger. "Have you?" Some people might have called that a blush. "I mean...something serious."
Something where Toby knew his partner's name, not just his prison record. "No." Toby savoured a long pull from his glass, savoured the edge of wood smoke and citrus. "You can ask me, you know."
"Ask what?"
"You're dying to know. You have been ever since you first saw Holly."
"I don't know what you mean." The flash of guilt in his eyes said differently.
"Go on. How does a straight, married father find himself fucking men?"
"So you think you were straight?" The question burst out like Toby just popped a cork.
"Yes."
Elliot shook his head. "You couldn't have been."
"I was."
"So what changed?" Elliot asked, in a tone that said he didn't believe it at all.
Toby didn't mind. Alcohol was blurring away the tiny physical differences, every sip bringing Chris a little closer, making Toby a little surer that he could get something tonight, maybe just give Elliot a hand job in the toilets. Even that would be an embarrassment of riches. How many whiskeys to get Elliot's strong hand around Toby's aching cock? "In prison... there's nothing gentle. The days are hard, the men are hard, the beds are hard. In my first year, I never saw my kids. Saw my wife once, and I couldn't..." He hadn't been able to get it up for Genevieve in that Lysol-soaked conjugal room, ass still aching from Vern's good luck fuck. "You try living that way for a year, and tell me you wouldn't shank your own mother for someone to touch you like you're a human being."
Toby had thought he didn't want anyone to touch him ever again, until Chris absently - seemingly absently - helped strip his shirt after a nightmare, and goose bumps rose in the wake of his gentle hands. Toby wished he could manufacture half as good an excuse for laying his own hands on Elliot. "Fucking in prison doesn't exactly make me unique."
"Yeah, but you're not in prison now. If you can just 'turn gay', doesn't that make all the crusaders like that psychiatry professor right? If prison turned you gay, maybe letting boys play with dolls and wear their mothers' shoes makes them gay."
"God, I don't know Elliot. Ask your precinct shrink. Maybe trauma turned me gay. Or maybe prison just stripped away every assumption I'd made about who I was, left me a blank slate." Maybe he wasn't gay at all. It wasn't love he was looking for in Franco's.
"So you just..." Elliot lifted his hand and leaned back, ducking his chin
"So I just what?" Toby wanted him to say it, wanted to hear the buttoned-up Chris-twin talk about sex with men.
"Nah, never mind."
"How can I fuck men?"
Elliot made a face.
Toby liked talking about sex with Elliot, while his cock was pressing against his zip. He liked using the word 'fuck', seeing how it made the seasoned detective squirm in his seat. The very opposite of Chris, but fun all the same.
"So you just stopped wanting women? Soft skin and the smell of them, the taste of them... God, I miss..." Elliot flushed as he trailed off. "I must be fucking drunk."
"You miss going down on your wife?" Toby was salivating. The image of Elliot eating out his wife, burying his face in her cunt as her thighs clamped around his ears. Maybe if you peeled off that starched shirt there was a sexual animal beneath, a little Chris Keller after all. Toby leaned in. "That's not something a man should be ashamed to say." Tell me more.
Elliot chuckled and rubbed his face. "Once I sober up I'm never going to look you in the eye again."
Then Toby would make the most of tonight. "I still get a hard-on for women. I want them, I just can't stand to touch them. I know where I've been." He still looked, still wanted, but he couldn't bring himself to put his dirty hands or mouth anywhere near them. Better to stay in the gutter with his own kind, where he couldn't hurt decent people.
Unless Stabler offered. Toby brushed his fingers over the bulge of his cock, wondering if Elliot would notice. Was all this alcohol and sex talk making Elliot as hard as Toby?
"Does Holly know?"
"She's eleven years old. You really think she thinks about where I stick my dick?"
Elliot screwed up his face. "There's nothing in the world that could make me want a man."
Toby lifted the bottle and topped up their glasses. He wanted to test that theory. "Once upon a time, I would've said that, too." He reached across and touched the tattoo peeking out of Elliot's sleeve, let his fingers linger on his hot skin. "You were in the service."
"Marines."
"Did you do active duty?"
"Desert Storm." There was a clench to his jaw, a tiny Chris-like warning to be careful where this line of questioning went. Toby was still tracing the anchor of his tattoo, but strangely Elliot held still.
"Do you think you came out the same person you were when you joined up?"
Elliot's fingers twitched. He finally took his arm away and took a long pull from his whiskey. "I didn't switch teams."
One night, Toby thought. One hour, and I'd change your team. "I didn't come out of Oz qualified to join the police force. I'm just saying, things change us. And you never know how until you come out the other side and wonder how the fuck you got here."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Toby grunted and cracked his eyes, screwed them shut against the light. He was alone. Apparently it took more than a few shots of whiskey to turn Elliot into Chris.
Years of sobriety down the drain so he could play pretend, and all he as left with was- He wasn't alone.
The crack of the door had woken him. Toby jerked up. There was Holly standing over his bed, still in her jacket and scarf, looking like he'd betrayed her all over again.
"Hol..." he croaked.
"Holly!" His mother's voice, and then there she was in the doorway, mirroring Holly's expression. "Holly, can I speak to your father a moment?"
With a quivering lip Holly ran out, and Toby curled into a ball. His head hurt and his heart hurt. He was always going to be a fuck-up.
The bed dipped. "What happened, Toby?"
"Nothing happened, Mother." He pushed his face against the pillow.
"The kitchen reeks of gin, and so do you. Is this what happens when Holly is with me?"
"No!"
She was quiet for a long time. "Talk to me, Toby. Please."
He wished he could tell her something terrible happened, some pitiful excuse so she'd pull him into her arms and tell him she understood. He wished his head was clear enough to invent one. 'I wanted to stare at Chris Keller's ghost,' didn't seem like it would earn her sympathy.
"Toby."
He pulled himself tighter, and rubbed his eyes.
"I can't help you if you won't talk to me, but by god I'll protect Holly. I'm taking her home again. Call me when you're sober."
Toby listened to the click of her heels retreating. His door closed and Holly's opened, low voices and then Holly cried, "No, I'm not going!" and burst into his room, and suddenly his bed was full of her as she burrowed into his arms.
Toby's eyes burned. He could still taste last night, and knew without doubt she could smell it on him. "I'm sorry Hol. I fucked up."
"I want to stay here with you."
"You should be mad at me, not your grandmother."
"I'm not mad at her. I just don't want to go."
He didn't deserve this, but he couldn't punish Holly. He struggled to sit up, rubbed his gluggy face and squinted against the stabbing light. "What time is it?"
"Eight."
Eight in the morning. Toby would have traded anything to crawl back under the covers. Anything but Holly. "Why don't you offer to make your grandmother some breakfast, and I'll shower, try to make myself human."
"All right." Her voice quivered. "I love you."
"I love you too, Hol. I'm sorry." He squeezed her hard and then let go, and she went.
Mother was waiting in the hallway as Toby headed for the bathroom, looking equal parts sad and angry.
"Can you stay, Mother?"
"I can."
He hesitated in the door. "The kitchen stinks because I poured most of the bottle down the sink. I don't do this every time Holly's with you. This was the first time since I got out."
She didn't believe him. Why should she? That sympathetic look made him cringe. "Why, Toby? Did something happen?"
He lifted his shoulders. "I didn't say no."
He braced himself against the tiles and let hot water beat against his back, his shoulders, his neck. Sobering just enough to sharpen the self-hatred.
He'd let Holly down. Again. The only thing he cared about in the whole world was protecting her, and he couldn't get that right. He was a miserable piece of shit.
And there wasn't enough whiskey in the world to make Elliot into Chris, or even to make him comfortable enough to let Toby suck his very straight cock. Toby didn't know how obvious he'd been in those muddy later hours, but maybe the best he could hope for was that Elliot would bother to tell him he never wanted to see him again. That'd be poetry. Maybe he'd break Toby's arms for old times' sake.
Toby wished he'd never laid eyes on him. He'd been doing well enough. Missing Chris through the lonely nights like a toothache but he'd been coping in his own way, keeping it together for Holly. And then Elliot showed up, beautiful and alive and tempting, reawakening the hunger, growing hope where it didn't belong.
Like a taste of alcohol after years of sobriety.
Toby didn't know how long he'd stared at that gin last night. He'd picked it up across the street, fingers caressing the brown paper bag all the way home. He'd poured a glass and finished it standing at the kitchen counter, and then he'd been frozen, the glass weight of the bottle in his hand. The sick-sweet stench. Nights huddled in his pod, gut churning as he waited for Chris to return from solitary. Mornings arguing with Gen. Kathy Rockwell's small body, broken across his windshield.
Acid burned its way up Toby's throat and he heaved, but nothing came out.
He'd forced himself to turn and look at the papers on the fridge: school notices and photos and pieces of Holly's artwork, a pencil drawing of their apartment she'd labelled 'home'. And a thirty dollar bottle of Miller's had gone down the sink.
It would be something to be proud of, if he hadn't been too drunk and stupid to think the smell would linger. Too drunk and stupid to worry about what time Mother would bring Holly home, what state he'd be in today.
They were in the kitchen waiting for him, so Toby picked up the soap and tried to wash last night away. He must have made an idiot of himself. He didn't know why he'd offered to explain to Elliot how he'd been turned around to men in prison. It wasn't like he'd ever figured that out himself.
Looking back, he couldn't even put a moment on it. Was it having Chris there for him when McManus told him Gen was dead? Was it when Chris gave him the spine to call his grandmother, and insist on seeing the kids? Or had Vern planted the seeds when he came up Toby's ass? Sometimes Toby thought he didn't really know how bone-deep his feelings went until the supply cupboard, when he shoved that shank inside Chris and realised he couldn't go all the way, couldn't bleed him out like he did with that dirty screw Metzger, and he hated Chris in that moment all the more for being jammed inside him, necessary like oxygen or food.
Elliot deserved better than to play substitute in that fantasy. Chris deserved better than to be replaced with a weak carbon copy.
The oily smell of frying sausage and eggs was brutal on his queasy stomach but he choked down the entire plate to placate the women.
His mother stayed, watching with worried eyes that scraped his hung over nerves. He cleaned the kitchen and got Holly to pick a movie to put off conversation, cuddled up with her on the couch.
By lunch Toby felt almost human. He made sure Holly was within hearing when he called to make an appointment with the alcohol counsellor Sister Pete had recommended to him. Out of Holly's hearing, he told his mother again that it was only once, and didn't blame her at all for not believing him.
"I wish you would let me help."
"You do, Mother."
"Clearly not enough." She looked so sad. "Holly can't go through more than she already has."
"You think I don't know that?" He had no right to snap. He calmed his voice. "I know that."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
end chapter 4
Dr Squidlove inappropriately touches all feedback. Concrit thoroughly welcome, warm fuzzies treasured. Here or at drsquidlove @@@ livejournal.com
The complete works of Dr Squidlove can be found at http://members.iinet.net.au/~tentacles/squidfic.html
S.
by Dr Squidlove
drsquidlove @@@ livejournal.com
Oz/Law & Order: SVU crossover
Tobias Beecher's trying to rebuild his family in the shadow of the man he was in prison. Elliot Stabler's struggling to continue in the wake of divorce while his job eats away at his soul. It makes for an odd friendship, but it works.
Rated R for violence and explicit references to sexual violence.
Wordcount this post: 4394
Full headers are on chapter 1.
Oz is the property of Tom Fontana and HBO. Law & Order: SVU is the property of Dick Wolf and NBC. The characters are used without permission, but with much appreciation.
Someone Like You
chapter 4: Beer
by Dr Squidlove
Previously, in chapter 3, A social life:
Toby went to the conviction of Leo Markstrom's rapist, for no particular reason, certainly not in the hope of- Oh, hey, there's Chris Keller's clone, Detective Stabler. Surprisingly, Stabler invited him out to lunch. Even more surprisingly, they had a decent conversation, chatting about their kids, but when Toby called to meet up again, Stabler didn't seem interested.
Cragen gave him a nod as he accepted the report. "Don't beat yourself up over it, Elliot. It was a tough case."
It was surprisingly kind of the captain, considering Elliot's temper had made it all worse. "Shouldn't have gone down like that."
"Yeah, well, we're cops, not psychics. You've put in a long couple of days. Why don't you get out of here?"
Go home to that empty apartment to replay it all again? Elliot straightened. He didn't have to go home. Maybe. He'd been itching to call Toby, especially since hearing the disappointment in his voice when Elliot put him off the other day. Elliot gave Cragen an absent nod and fished out his phone on the way back to his desk.
"Hey, Elliot." Toby sounded surprised, like he'd given up already.
"Any chance you're free tonight?"
"Um. Yeah. Sure."
"You don't have Holly?"
"She's at my mother's."
It was ridiculous for Elliot to feel this eager. "My captain's kicking me out, and I need a beer like you wouldn't believe." Elliot tidied his desk, shoved a couple of folders in the drawer. "Toby?"
"A beer?"
Elliot checked his watch again. "Sorry, it's too late, isn't it? Maybe some other-"
"No, no, it's fine. I can come out for a beer. Where do you want to..."
"I know a hole in the wall on the Lower East Side." That was nearer to Brooklyn, at least. "Unless you've got a good place in your neighborhood; I'm the asshole dragging you out at-"
"No, it's, I can make it over there. It's no trouble."
"That's great." A beer and the distraction of Toby's company was exactly what Elliot needed.
Chris Keller was sitting in a dim corner of the wood-panelled sports bar in a shirt and tie, sleeves rolled up, eyes on a flat screen showing a football game. One amber beer rested on the table between his broad hands and one sat on a napkin in front of the empty seat across from him. Elliot was killing him with thoughtfulness.
Toby took a long breath. He could do this. One night of control was a bargain price for staring at Chris for an hour or two. Control, or he was going to make the biggest fucking idiot of himself, and he'd never have another chance. Toby could do this; he'd been in bars often enough since he got out. Of course in Franco's, he'd been focused on cock, not staring at Chris's ghost over a couple of tall frosty glasses of temptation.
It hadn't escaped his memory that his last binge had sprung from that first incredible kiss in the laundry room, Chris tasting like moonshine and love.
Elliot felt his stare, and the football game was forgotten with a wide smile. "Hey, Toby."
"Hi."
"I just asked for the pale on tap. Is that okay?"
No. But no way on earth was Toby about to tell Elliot he was an alcoholic. The beer could stay right there and get warm. He didn't sit yet. "That's fine. Do you know if the kitchen's still open? I wouldn't mind a snack." Maybe he could keep his hands occupied with fries instead of pulling on the beer.
"Maybe. Give it a go."
Fries were still on offer, thank god. Toby put in an order and went to join Elliot. "You're out of the sling."
"Finally." Elliot stretched his arm. There was a marine insignia tattoo sliding out from under the rolled-up sleeve. Maybe Elliot had killed people. Probably not as many as Chris.
"How is it being back on full duties?"
"It's been a long week. But the bad guy's gonna go down, even if he's not gonna go down for as long as we'd like, so..." Elliot shrugged. Feigned disinterest; Toby knew that shrug.
Toby rested his fingers on the smooth cold glass, beads of condensation slipping over his skin. He could smell the hops. He pushed it a couple of inches further away. "I couldn't do your job. Facing that shit every day?"
"You lived amongst that shit for eight years."
Toby huffed a laugh. He didn't think about it like that. "I just kept out of their way, as much as I could. I wasn't responsible for stopping people from doing what they do." Sometimes he was one of them.
Elliot took a pull from his beer. "I'd never make it pushing papers in an office to make a corporation money."
Him and Chris both. Toby had invented a thousand fantasies of Chris alive and magically pardoned, magically fitting into the domestic life. Abandoning the scams and the penchant for murder to play house with Toby and Holly and Harry as though the sheer force of their love could instil the impulse control it never did in Oz.
Chris whispered in his ear. Whaddya think, Tobe? Here's your neutered substitute, straining a business shirt and fucking tie, straight out of the genie's lamp. Think he could make you come like I did?
Maybe he could, Toby thought back. Maybe I'll find out.
Chris laughed. He's straight, you asshole. Genies always fuck with your wishes.
Toby leaned forward on his elbows, focusing hard on Elliot. "So what have you been up to lately that wasn't tainted with misery and violence? Have you seen your kids?" He caught himself breathing deep, trying to compare Elliot's scent to Chris, but all he could smell was that beer. He forced himself back.
"I took the twins to Coney Island at the weekend. They're still young enough that my wallet makes it worth being seen with me."
Toby grinned. "Do you go on the rides?"
"Ferris wheel. Doc won't let me on the bumper cars 'til my arm's back in shape."
"Not the Cyclone?"
"A man shouldn't ride roller coasters past his thirtieth birthday." He paused as the barman deposited a basket of fries between them. "Do you?"
"Hell, no. I always hated roller coasters." He would have gone on it with Elliot. Long drops and stomach-churning turns would have felt like old times.
Toby lifted his glass and drank. The taste burst through his mouth before he'd realised what he was doing, warmth stretching down his throat to his stomach as he swallowed, reaching up to spread across his face. Sober so long that the first sip went to his head.
"Toby? Is it all right? I'll drink it if you want something else." Elliot showed his own glass, already half-gone.
"No, it's... It's good." Good? His whole body wanted to crawl inside the glass, soak it in through his pores. It was a damned relief that Elliot drank beer, because if this had been a martini or a tumbler of Jameson, Toby wouldn't have stopped until he was on the floor. Toby could stop. His face was warm. He forced the glass back to the table and very deliberately chose a fry. Seven and a half years clean, gone in one sip.
Slumbering need awoke, and stretched, and roared. Toby shoved his hands in his lap before Elliot could see them shaking.
One mistake. He could do this.
"What about Holly? She like Coney Island?"
Holly. Think of Holly, make good choices. He pushed his fingers into his thighs until it hurt. He couldn't be a drunk fuck up for Holly. "Holly's terrified of the whole place. I took her just after I got out, we got as far as Nathan's, and she dragged me back to the D. She's not a fan of creaky wooden buildings."
Elliot's face softened, and Toby kicked himself for getting distracted. He didn't want to be one of Elliot's victims. He gave up too much of that already. Toby had never fully understood what Chris saw when he looked at him, but it wasn't a victim. Chris had given him a hard kick any time he acted like one. Toby would bet Elliot didn't kick his victims. Probably didn't tug them into dark corners, out of the guard's view, to fuck them, either.
"Holly likes museums. And the zoo. Any zoo, she's crazy about animals."
Elliot sipped, licked the foam off his lip, and Toby watched like it was pay-per-view. "Is she begging for a pet?" Amused blue eyes under that familiar sharp brow, high forehead. Elliot would taste like Chris if Toby kissed him, plus the tang of alcohol.
Holly and pets. "This week it's chickens. Last week it was a cat."
"Lucky you don't indulge her every whim, then."
Another mouthful of beer slid over Toby's tongue, cool and deliciously bitter. "I'm still learning how to look after us." The lingering aftertaste of hops said he was shit at that, but his damp fingertips stayed on the smooth, hard glass, making paths through the condensation.
Seven and a half years, he'd been sober. Seven and a half years, and now the taste was on his tongue, the memory of bright warm confidence nagging at him, and he took another careful sip. This was the confidence that got him though countless performance reviews, dinner with his grandmother, plenty of fights with Genevieve. "How come you invited me out to lunch after the trial?"
"Beat facing the mountain of paperwork on my desk."
Toby didn't want a pat answer. "Come on. You don't seem like a cop who regularly goes for burgers with random witnesses." Especially slutty gay ones. Or did he?
Elliot took a drink, avoiding Toby's eyes. Maybe he was going to tell the truth. "There've been a few cases lately... This one..." He lifted his newly-healed arm. "This happened at the trial after a school shooting. A playground of six year-olds."
Toby's hands closed tight around his glass.
"I've been in SVU for fourteen years. We get scumbags off the streets for a while but we don't cure anyone. Lives don't get fixed with a check from the insurance companies."
"I know."
He leaned in, elbows on the table. "That's why I wanted to talk to you. I needed to see someone who'd rebuilt his life. I need someone to convince me the girl forced into sex slavery while her mother was murdered is going to be able to step up and raise her little brother and sister. I need some hope that the little boy who survived the execution of his family by Columbian drug traffickers is going to find some peace in witness protection. We had a case a couple of years back, some famous anti-gay psychiatry professor who murdered his gay son's lover, beat his son, then sat in court and preached about how homosexuality was a perversion. After being raised like that, you think that kid's ever going to have a happy, healthy relationship?" Elliot sat back, seeming surprised by his own rant. "You've got a stable job, you and Holly are close. I'm sure your life isn't perfect, but tell me you're okay. Tell me she's okay."
Toby took a long pull from his beer, licked the last drop from his lips. "We're okay." Elliot's glass was empty. Toby's was half-gone, and warm. "It's my round. I'm going to get a whiskey, you want something stronger?" The words were rolling out as though the last nine years hadn't happened at all and this was just another night drinking with colleagues before driving drunkenly home.
"Sure."
Johnnie Walker Double Black Label was the best this dive had. Good enough. If Toby was going to allow himself this one mistake, he wasn't going to waste it on Sam Adams.
Elliot sniffed and tasted. "Nice."
Toby just breathed in for a moment. Divine. Hard to believe fucking everything up was this easy. He was flushing everything away to grasp an evening of twisted memories of his dead lover. Something near enough to Chris was holding Johnnie Walker to his lips, in no hurry to leave, and it was absolutely worth the price. Toby drank, eyes near-closing at the pleasure. Maybe Detective Stabler was a three beer queer, and Toby could ride his cock tonight. If Toby could have Mr Close Enough up his ass this fall from grace would be worth every drop.
Elliot was here looking for redemption. Toby had lost his hopes for redemption half a glass ago. Now he just wanted a fix. He wanted to suck Elliot's cock. Find out if all the rest of the details were perfect.
They talked and they drank. The alcohol loosened Elliot's tongue and Toby's inner alcoholic. Toby persuaded the bartender to let them have the bottle, and the world got soft at the edges; the words got soft in Toby's mouth. He was out of practise: nine years ago, a few glasses of whiskey would barely have touched the sides. This lazy, warm buzz was as good as he remembered.
"Have you tried dating?"
Elliot almost choked on his drink. "Dating?"
"You said it's been a year."
"No. No, I'm not, I don't... I barely got my ring off, you know?" He touched the pale band on the skin of his finger. "Have you?" Some people might have called that a blush. "I mean...something serious."
Something where Toby knew his partner's name, not just his prison record. "No." Toby savoured a long pull from his glass, savoured the edge of wood smoke and citrus. "You can ask me, you know."
"Ask what?"
"You're dying to know. You have been ever since you first saw Holly."
"I don't know what you mean." The flash of guilt in his eyes said differently.
"Go on. How does a straight, married father find himself fucking men?"
"So you think you were straight?" The question burst out like Toby just popped a cork.
"Yes."
Elliot shook his head. "You couldn't have been."
"I was."
"So what changed?" Elliot asked, in a tone that said he didn't believe it at all.
Toby didn't mind. Alcohol was blurring away the tiny physical differences, every sip bringing Chris a little closer, making Toby a little surer that he could get something tonight, maybe just give Elliot a hand job in the toilets. Even that would be an embarrassment of riches. How many whiskeys to get Elliot's strong hand around Toby's aching cock? "In prison... there's nothing gentle. The days are hard, the men are hard, the beds are hard. In my first year, I never saw my kids. Saw my wife once, and I couldn't..." He hadn't been able to get it up for Genevieve in that Lysol-soaked conjugal room, ass still aching from Vern's good luck fuck. "You try living that way for a year, and tell me you wouldn't shank your own mother for someone to touch you like you're a human being."
Toby had thought he didn't want anyone to touch him ever again, until Chris absently - seemingly absently - helped strip his shirt after a nightmare, and goose bumps rose in the wake of his gentle hands. Toby wished he could manufacture half as good an excuse for laying his own hands on Elliot. "Fucking in prison doesn't exactly make me unique."
"Yeah, but you're not in prison now. If you can just 'turn gay', doesn't that make all the crusaders like that psychiatry professor right? If prison turned you gay, maybe letting boys play with dolls and wear their mothers' shoes makes them gay."
"God, I don't know Elliot. Ask your precinct shrink. Maybe trauma turned me gay. Or maybe prison just stripped away every assumption I'd made about who I was, left me a blank slate." Maybe he wasn't gay at all. It wasn't love he was looking for in Franco's.
"So you just..." Elliot lifted his hand and leaned back, ducking his chin
"So I just what?" Toby wanted him to say it, wanted to hear the buttoned-up Chris-twin talk about sex with men.
"Nah, never mind."
"How can I fuck men?"
Elliot made a face.
Toby liked talking about sex with Elliot, while his cock was pressing against his zip. He liked using the word 'fuck', seeing how it made the seasoned detective squirm in his seat. The very opposite of Chris, but fun all the same.
"So you just stopped wanting women? Soft skin and the smell of them, the taste of them... God, I miss..." Elliot flushed as he trailed off. "I must be fucking drunk."
"You miss going down on your wife?" Toby was salivating. The image of Elliot eating out his wife, burying his face in her cunt as her thighs clamped around his ears. Maybe if you peeled off that starched shirt there was a sexual animal beneath, a little Chris Keller after all. Toby leaned in. "That's not something a man should be ashamed to say." Tell me more.
Elliot chuckled and rubbed his face. "Once I sober up I'm never going to look you in the eye again."
Then Toby would make the most of tonight. "I still get a hard-on for women. I want them, I just can't stand to touch them. I know where I've been." He still looked, still wanted, but he couldn't bring himself to put his dirty hands or mouth anywhere near them. Better to stay in the gutter with his own kind, where he couldn't hurt decent people.
Unless Stabler offered. Toby brushed his fingers over the bulge of his cock, wondering if Elliot would notice. Was all this alcohol and sex talk making Elliot as hard as Toby?
"Does Holly know?"
"She's eleven years old. You really think she thinks about where I stick my dick?"
Elliot screwed up his face. "There's nothing in the world that could make me want a man."
Toby lifted the bottle and topped up their glasses. He wanted to test that theory. "Once upon a time, I would've said that, too." He reached across and touched the tattoo peeking out of Elliot's sleeve, let his fingers linger on his hot skin. "You were in the service."
"Marines."
"Did you do active duty?"
"Desert Storm." There was a clench to his jaw, a tiny Chris-like warning to be careful where this line of questioning went. Toby was still tracing the anchor of his tattoo, but strangely Elliot held still.
"Do you think you came out the same person you were when you joined up?"
Elliot's fingers twitched. He finally took his arm away and took a long pull from his whiskey. "I didn't switch teams."
One night, Toby thought. One hour, and I'd change your team. "I didn't come out of Oz qualified to join the police force. I'm just saying, things change us. And you never know how until you come out the other side and wonder how the fuck you got here."
Toby grunted and cracked his eyes, screwed them shut against the light. He was alone. Apparently it took more than a few shots of whiskey to turn Elliot into Chris.
Years of sobriety down the drain so he could play pretend, and all he as left with was- He wasn't alone.
The crack of the door had woken him. Toby jerked up. There was Holly standing over his bed, still in her jacket and scarf, looking like he'd betrayed her all over again.
"Hol..." he croaked.
"Holly!" His mother's voice, and then there she was in the doorway, mirroring Holly's expression. "Holly, can I speak to your father a moment?"
With a quivering lip Holly ran out, and Toby curled into a ball. His head hurt and his heart hurt. He was always going to be a fuck-up.
The bed dipped. "What happened, Toby?"
"Nothing happened, Mother." He pushed his face against the pillow.
"The kitchen reeks of gin, and so do you. Is this what happens when Holly is with me?"
"No!"
She was quiet for a long time. "Talk to me, Toby. Please."
He wished he could tell her something terrible happened, some pitiful excuse so she'd pull him into her arms and tell him she understood. He wished his head was clear enough to invent one. 'I wanted to stare at Chris Keller's ghost,' didn't seem like it would earn her sympathy.
"Toby."
He pulled himself tighter, and rubbed his eyes.
"I can't help you if you won't talk to me, but by god I'll protect Holly. I'm taking her home again. Call me when you're sober."
Toby listened to the click of her heels retreating. His door closed and Holly's opened, low voices and then Holly cried, "No, I'm not going!" and burst into his room, and suddenly his bed was full of her as she burrowed into his arms.
Toby's eyes burned. He could still taste last night, and knew without doubt she could smell it on him. "I'm sorry Hol. I fucked up."
"I want to stay here with you."
"You should be mad at me, not your grandmother."
"I'm not mad at her. I just don't want to go."
He didn't deserve this, but he couldn't punish Holly. He struggled to sit up, rubbed his gluggy face and squinted against the stabbing light. "What time is it?"
"Eight."
Eight in the morning. Toby would have traded anything to crawl back under the covers. Anything but Holly. "Why don't you offer to make your grandmother some breakfast, and I'll shower, try to make myself human."
"All right." Her voice quivered. "I love you."
"I love you too, Hol. I'm sorry." He squeezed her hard and then let go, and she went.
Mother was waiting in the hallway as Toby headed for the bathroom, looking equal parts sad and angry.
"Can you stay, Mother?"
"I can."
He hesitated in the door. "The kitchen stinks because I poured most of the bottle down the sink. I don't do this every time Holly's with you. This was the first time since I got out."
She didn't believe him. Why should she? That sympathetic look made him cringe. "Why, Toby? Did something happen?"
He lifted his shoulders. "I didn't say no."
He braced himself against the tiles and let hot water beat against his back, his shoulders, his neck. Sobering just enough to sharpen the self-hatred.
He'd let Holly down. Again. The only thing he cared about in the whole world was protecting her, and he couldn't get that right. He was a miserable piece of shit.
And there wasn't enough whiskey in the world to make Elliot into Chris, or even to make him comfortable enough to let Toby suck his very straight cock. Toby didn't know how obvious he'd been in those muddy later hours, but maybe the best he could hope for was that Elliot would bother to tell him he never wanted to see him again. That'd be poetry. Maybe he'd break Toby's arms for old times' sake.
Toby wished he'd never laid eyes on him. He'd been doing well enough. Missing Chris through the lonely nights like a toothache but he'd been coping in his own way, keeping it together for Holly. And then Elliot showed up, beautiful and alive and tempting, reawakening the hunger, growing hope where it didn't belong.
Like a taste of alcohol after years of sobriety.
Toby didn't know how long he'd stared at that gin last night. He'd picked it up across the street, fingers caressing the brown paper bag all the way home. He'd poured a glass and finished it standing at the kitchen counter, and then he'd been frozen, the glass weight of the bottle in his hand. The sick-sweet stench. Nights huddled in his pod, gut churning as he waited for Chris to return from solitary. Mornings arguing with Gen. Kathy Rockwell's small body, broken across his windshield.
Acid burned its way up Toby's throat and he heaved, but nothing came out.
He'd forced himself to turn and look at the papers on the fridge: school notices and photos and pieces of Holly's artwork, a pencil drawing of their apartment she'd labelled 'home'. And a thirty dollar bottle of Miller's had gone down the sink.
It would be something to be proud of, if he hadn't been too drunk and stupid to think the smell would linger. Too drunk and stupid to worry about what time Mother would bring Holly home, what state he'd be in today.
They were in the kitchen waiting for him, so Toby picked up the soap and tried to wash last night away. He must have made an idiot of himself. He didn't know why he'd offered to explain to Elliot how he'd been turned around to men in prison. It wasn't like he'd ever figured that out himself.
Looking back, he couldn't even put a moment on it. Was it having Chris there for him when McManus told him Gen was dead? Was it when Chris gave him the spine to call his grandmother, and insist on seeing the kids? Or had Vern planted the seeds when he came up Toby's ass? Sometimes Toby thought he didn't really know how bone-deep his feelings went until the supply cupboard, when he shoved that shank inside Chris and realised he couldn't go all the way, couldn't bleed him out like he did with that dirty screw Metzger, and he hated Chris in that moment all the more for being jammed inside him, necessary like oxygen or food.
Elliot deserved better than to play substitute in that fantasy. Chris deserved better than to be replaced with a weak carbon copy.
The oily smell of frying sausage and eggs was brutal on his queasy stomach but he choked down the entire plate to placate the women.
His mother stayed, watching with worried eyes that scraped his hung over nerves. He cleaned the kitchen and got Holly to pick a movie to put off conversation, cuddled up with her on the couch.
By lunch Toby felt almost human. He made sure Holly was within hearing when he called to make an appointment with the alcohol counsellor Sister Pete had recommended to him. Out of Holly's hearing, he told his mother again that it was only once, and didn't blame her at all for not believing him.
"I wish you would let me help."
"You do, Mother."
"Clearly not enough." She looked so sad. "Holly can't go through more than she already has."
"You think I don't know that?" He had no right to snap. He calmed his voice. "I know that."
end chapter 4
Dr Squidlove inappropriately touches all feedback. Concrit thoroughly welcome, warm fuzzies treasured. Here or at drsquidlove @@@ livejournal.com
The complete works of Dr Squidlove can be found at http://members.iinet.net.au/~tentacles/squidfic.html
S.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2014-10-05 03:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-05 10:24 am (UTC)lol. Toby has a degree in hair shirt. Sometimes I think he does the stupid shit he does just because he wants to have more to feel guilty about.
Canon Elliot could most certainly be an arsehole. I think I liked him anyway because he seemed to be doing more damage to himself than anyone else, and because I could totally see his job doing that to him.
I actually found him more believable for it; usually TV lead characters have bad days but are inherently more lovable than the rest of us. I liked that he ruined his marriage. (I like that after they got back together, he was still the same crappy husband.)
We shall see if I can earn your Elliot-sympathy without losing his character. A challenge!
Thanks, helvetica!
S.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-05 07:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-05 10:33 am (UTC)Thanks, mazephoenix!
For all the awfulness that is prison life, there were always people around. It's one hell of an adjustment.
S.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-05 03:34 pm (UTC)And then you had to turn the screw again by bringing Holly into it - good grief you know how to make it hurt - and you do it in the best possible way - lovely chapter.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-06 09:26 am (UTC)Yeah! Split pity, just what I wanted. :-)
Much like in New York, I'm trying to juggle making the most of these guys being fathers, without turning this into kid-fic. Don't ask me where my father-kink came from.
Thanks sparrow!
S.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-06 04:21 pm (UTC)And speaking of New York, I recently re-read it on a transatlantic flight and it read as beautifully as a complete story as it did when I was breathlessly following it as a WiP. And if you ever felt the need to drop in on those two crazy boys just to see what they're up to, I certainly wouldn't say no! :)
no subject
Date: 2014-10-06 09:39 pm (UTC)Heh! I think you said at the time you were going to save it for a transatlantic flight.
It's unlikely - I still have a Voyager fic from fifteen years ago I swear I finish one day, and there's at least one Star Wars that I'm tempted to finish, but I think New York broke the Giles/Xander muses for me.
Let's hope this is one day good in-flight reading as well.
S.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-07 02:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-08 02:20 am (UTC)So very true. That's what makes them so much fun.
S.